bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Biomarkers and Mechanistic Approaches in Environmental Epidemiology
Authors: Links Jonathan M. , Kensler Thomas W. , Groopman John D.
Published: July 2003

Environmental epidemiological research involves the identification of relationships between previous exposures to putative causative agents and subsequent biological effects with study populations. Such relationships are often hard to fully characterize because of difficulties in accurately quantifying exposure, dose, and effect. Biomarkers are indicators, residing in biological systems or samples, of exposure, dose, effect, or susceptibility. Biomarkers of exposure indicate the presence of previous exposure to an environmental agent; a biomarker of dose bears a quantitative relationship to previous exposure or dose; these include exogenous substances, interactive products, or interactions that change the status of the target molecule. Biomarkers of effect indicate the presence and magnitude of a biological response to exposure to an environmental agent; these include endogenous components, or measures of the functional capacity or state of the system. Biomarkers of susceptibility indicate an elevated sensitivity to the effects of an environmental agent; these include the presence or absence of an endogenous component, or abnormal functional responses to an administered challenge. The development of molecular biomarkers for environmental agents is based upon specific knowledge of metabolism, interactive product formation, and general mechanisms of action. The validation of any biomarker-effect link requires parallel experimental animal and human epidemiological studies.
Workers' Compensation in the United States: High Costs, Low Benefits
Authors: Boden L. I.
Published: July 2003

Studies suggest that income replacement is low for many workers with serious occupational injuries and illnesses. This review discusses three areas that hold promise for raising benefits to workers while reducing workers' compensation costs to employers: improving safety, containing medical costs, and reducing litigation.

In theory, workers' compensation increases the costs to employers of injuries and so provides incentives to improve safety. Yet, taken as a whole, research does not provide convincing evidence that workers' compensation reduces injury rates. Moreover, unlike safety and health regulation, workers' compensation focuses the attention of employers on individual workers. High costs may lead employers to discourage claims and litigate when claims are filed. Controlling medical costs can reduce workers' compensation costs. Most studies, however, have focused on costs and have not addressed the effectiveness of medical care or patient satisfaction. Research also has shown that workers' compensation systems can reduce the need for litigation. Without litigation, benefits can be delivered more quickly and at lower costs.
Variations in Resource Utilization Among Medical Specialties and Systems of Care
Authors: Kravitz Richard L. , Greenfield Sheldon
Published: July 2003

As sweeping changes in the organization and delivery of health care are implemented, it is important to examine the relationship between various types of cost-containment efforts, health care costs, and quality of care. This article reviews the evidence that physician specialty training, the organization of physicians, and the method of physician payment are significant influences upon the utilization of health care services. Data from before the late 1980s raised the possibility that family practitioners employed fewer resources than general internists and that health maintenance organizations used fewer resources than solo practitioners. However, the studies from which these data were derived were marred by insufficient attention to patient mix, failure to account for interactions between specialty and system, and inadequate regard for the complexities of modern practice structures. More recent data from the Medical Outcomes Study (MOS) overcomes some but not all of these problems. In general, it can be safely concluded that primary care specialty training, group practice, and prepaid care are associated with less utilization. Nevertheless, much more research is needed to address remaining methodologic problems and to obtain data that are generalizable to the wide array of modern practice settings.
Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia, Cervical Cancer, and HPV
Authors: Holly Elizabeth A.
Published: July 2003

Major progress has been made to control cervical cancer in the United States and Europe using screening programs, although it remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the developing world. The association between cervical cancer and a sexually transmissible etiologic agent was hypothesized long before identification of human papillomaviruses (HPV) as agents that infected the genital tract. HPVs are among the most common sexually transmitted agents and have been shown to induce several squamous anogenital cancers, including squamous cell cancer of the cervix. After an etiologic role for HPV was identified in cervical cancer and CIN, efforts to understand the molecular biology of HPV were greatly expanded, enhanced by the advent of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) probes to identify HPV infection. Recent research has focused on specific types of HPV in relation to other recognized risk factors in the pathogenesis of CIN and invasive cervical cancer.
Mental Health Problems of Homeless Women and Differences Across Subgroups
Authors: Robertson Marjorie J. , Winkleby Marilyn A.
Published: July 2003

Homeless women are a large and diverse group, constituting one fifth of the US homeless adult population. Although most homeless women do not have major mental illness, homeless women exhibit disproportionately high rates of major mental disorders and other mental problems. Rates of mental disorders are highest among whites and women without children, and important variations by subgroups of homeless women reinforce the need for disaggregated analysis. Many homeless women with serious mental illness are not receiving needed care, apparently due in part to the lack of perception of a mental health problem and the lack of services designed to meet the special needs of homeless women.
Economic Evaluation of HIV Prevention Programs
Authors: Holtgrave David R. , Qualls Noreen L. , Graham John D.
Published: July 2003

Program managers and policy makers need to balance the costs and benefits of various interventions when planning and evaluating HIV prevention programs. Resources to fund these programs are limited and must be used judiciously to maximize the number of HIV infections averted. Economic evaluation studies of HIV prevention interventions, which we review and critique here, can provide some of the needed information. Special emphasis is given to studies dealing with interventions to reduce or avoid HIV-related risk behaviors. Ninety-three cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analyses were identified overall. However, only 28 dealt with domestic, behavior change interventions; the remainder focused on screening and testing without prevention counseling, and on care and treatment services. There are compelling demonstrations that behavioral interventions can be cost-effective and even cost-saving. The threshold conditions under which these programs can be considered cost-effective or cost-saving are well defined. However, several important intervention types and multiple key populations have been unstudied. Research in these areas is urgently needed.
Public Health, GIS, and Spatial Analytic Tools
Authors: Rushton Gerard
Published: July 2003

▪ Abstract  We review literature that uses spatial analytic tools in contexts where Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is the organizing system for health data or where the methods discussed will likely be incorporated in GIS-based analyses in the future. We conclude the review with the point of view that this literature is moving toward the development and use of systems of analysis that integrate the information geo-coding and data base functions of GISystems with the geo-information processing functions of GIScience. The rapidity of this projected development will depend on the perceived needs of the public health community for spatial analysis methods to provide decision support. Recent advances in the analysis of disease maps have been influenced by and benefited from the adoption of new practices for georeferencing health data and new ways of linking such data geographically to potential sources of environmental exposures, the locations of health resources and the geodemographic characteristics of populations. This review focuses on these advances.
GIS and Health Care
Authors: McLafferty Sara L.
Published: July 2003

▪ Abstract  GIS and related spatial analysis methods provide a set of tools for describing and understanding the changing spatial organization of health care, for examining its relationship to health outcomes and access, and for exploring how the delivery of health care can be improved. This review discusses recent literature on GIS and health care. It considers the use of GIS in analyzing health care need, access, and utilization; in planning and evaluating service locations; and in spatial decision support for health care delivery. The adoption of GIS by health care researchers and policy-makers will depend on access to integrated spatial data on health services utilization and outcomes and data that cut across human service systems. We also need to understand better the spatial behaviors of health care providers and consumers in the rapidly changing health care landscape and how geographic information affects these dynamic relationships.
GIS and Disease
Authors: Cromley Ellen K.
Published: July 2003

▪ Abstract  Geographic information systems (GIS) and related technologies like remote sensing are increasingly used to analyze the geography of disease, specifically the relationships between pathological factors (causative agents, vectors and hosts, people) and their geographical environments. GIS applications in the United States have described the sources and geographical distributions of disease agents, identified regions in time and space where people may be exposed to environmental and biological agents, and mapped and analyzed spatial and temporal patterns in health outcomes. Although GIS show great promise in the study of disease, their full potential will not be realized until environmental and disease surveillance systems are developed that distribute data on the geography of environmental conditions, disease agents, and health outcomes over time based on user-defined queries for user-selected geographical areas.
The Relationship Between Plant Disease Severity and Yield
Authors: Gaunt R E
Published: July 2003

The relationship between disease and yield is most often summarized as a simple empirical model that describes average crop performances is the presence of a pathogen. Such models may be robust and useful for surveys but their use is usually constrained to the specific conditions under which the model was developed. Changes in production system usually invalidate the relationship. The alternative is to base the relationship on an epidemiological analysis of the pathogen population and a physiological concept of host growth and development. This review provides the knowledge and conceptual basis and discusses the limitations to progress in the development of such models. It is shown that a host-based assessment of disease is well suited to yield investigations and to multiple pest constraints, and that disease is logically related to yield via radiation interceptions and radiation use efficiency.
Models of Neighborhood Change
Authors: Schwirian Kent P.
Published: July 2003

This review presents an analysis of current sociology and human ecology dealing with neighborhood change. The review is organized in four major sections. The first deals with the concept of neighborhood. The second discusses the classic models of neighborhood change—invasion-succession and life cycle. The third deals with the current perspectives on neighborhood change: demographic/ecological, sociocultural/organizational, political economy, and social movements. The final section focuses on urban revitalization and gentrification.
Distributive Justice, Equity, and Equality
Authors: Cook Karen S. , Hegtvedt Karen A.
Published: July 2003

This chapter provides a general review of the research conducted over the past two decades on individuals’ conceptions of equity and distributive justice and their reactions to inequity. Various theoretical formulations are identified and important topics for further theoretical development and empirical investigation are discussed. In conclusion, the authors suggest that micro-level concepts of distributive justice have certain limitations. Consideration of more macrolevel concepts suggests possibilities for integrating equity and distributive justice theories with sociological theories of power, conflict, and collective action. This integration, if achieved, would bring notions of justice to the forefront in the analysis of social change.
The Sociology of Knowledge: Retrospect and Prospect
Authors: Kuklick Henrika
Published: July 2003

Before World War II the intellectual climate of American sociology was congenial to the growth of a sociology of knowledge akin to Mannheim's. Yet in the postwar period American sociologists committed themselves to ahistorical theory, positivist methodology, and team research; their “scientistic” sociology did not permit the historicism, relativism, and holism necessary to Mannheimian analysis. Currently, however, convergent trends in a number of disciplines—not only sociology but also philosophy, anthropology, literary criticism, and the histories of ideas, science, and art—favor a revival of the Mannheimian program. Analysts of culture now seek to integrate the sociological goals of “explanation” and “understanding”—the formulation of quasilaws of behavior, based on identification of the social structural elements of culture production, and the interpretation of the subjective meaning of culture, based on recovery of actors' intentions. Their research program requires investigation of the peculiar sociohistorical circumstances that condition actors' perceptions, necessitating attention to the cognitive content of culture. This article surveys both the theoretical justifications for such a research program and recent exemplifications of it, focusing on anlyses of what Mannheim termed “objective culture”—such symbolic vehicles for conceptions as religion, the arts, science, and political thought that acquire independent existence, becoming subject to diverse interpretations.
The New History of Sociology
Authors: Jones Robert Alun
Published: July 2003

In 1967, Robert Merton both reaffirmed his distinction between the “history” and “systematics” of sociological theory and lamented the failure of his colleagues to observe it. Since then, however, the influence of what Merton called the “new history of science” (e.g. Thomas Kuhn) has been felt in the historiography of anthropology ( e. g. George W. Stocking, Jr.), political theory (e. Quentin Skinner), and, more recently, in sociology. It is thus possible to speak optimistically of a “new history of sociology” that is, in Merton’s phrase, “authentically historical.” A summary of this literature is presented. Since the value of this new history for sociology itself is avowedly different from that of its “systematic” counterpart, the alternative functions of “authentic histories” of sociology are discussed in the conclusion.
Economic Development and Community Social Change
Authors: Summers Gene F. , Branch Kristi
Published: July 2003

There is growing recognition that economic development in advanced industrial societies involves massive capital migration from one industrial sector to another, from one community to another, and even from one nation to another. Economic development is a continual process of opening new areas, spatially and sectorally, while closing others. Development projects in rural communities provide a timely and valuable laboratory in which to learn how the restructuring of advanced industrial societies affects local social structures. This chapter extracts and reviews what has been learned from studies of communities coping with rural industrialization and natural resource development, especially large-scale projects. Particular attention is given to changes in employment patterns, income, population, agriculture, local businesses, and public sector costs and revenues. The findings reveal an underlying tension between the free movement of capital, on the one hand, and community stability and worker welfare, on the other hand. The authors conclude that local social changesa re integral elements of external processes of economic development. They may be understood by directing attention to the spatial patterns of social, economic, and political inequality and to the mechanisms that generate and sustain unevenness.
White Collar Crime
Authors: Braithwaite John
Published: July 2003

Only banal generalizations are possible in answer to questions of who engages in white collar crime and why. Doubt is cast on the common assertion that firms in financial difficulty are more likely to offend than profitable ones. Qualitative studies of how white collar offenses are perpetrated and how regulatory agencies seek to control offenses constitute the most illuminating part of the literature. This literature depicts consistent pressure for blame for white collar crime to be passed downwards in the class structure, widespread use of international law evasion strategies, and a preference of control agencies for informal, “direct action” modes of social control over litigious regulation. The thesis that the latter reflects “capture” by ruling class interests is critically examined. It is contended that community attitudes toward white collar crime have become increasingly punitive. The review concludes that theoretical progress is most likely via organization theory paradigms, but that partition of white collar crime into “corporate (or organizational) crime” and “occupational crime” is necessary to facilitate such progress.
Urban Poverty
Authors: Wilson William Julius , Aponte Robert
Published: July 2003

This chapter is a state of the art review of the research and theoretical writing on urban poverty. We reveal that there has been an ebb and flow in the study of urban poverty in America. The social reform movement of early twentieth century, responding to the dislocation that accompanied rapid industrialization, prompted a number of descriptive and muckraking studies of poverty in urban areas. At roughly the same time, sociologists at the University of Chicago conducted a prodigious volume of research on urban life, including a number of ethnographic studies on poverty that were far more analytical and systematic than those of the social reformers. However, by the late 1930s scholarly research on urban poverty was on the wane, only to be revived again in the 1960s following the rediscovery of poverty and the emergence of the Great Society program.

We point out that the subject of urban poverty and the structure of the family has drawn considerable attention from researchers since the mid-1960s and has helped to raise the level of national interest in the problems of the inner city and the crystallization of a sizable ghetto underclass. It is emphasized, however, that with the emergence of longitudinal data sets many assumptions about the intergenerational transmission of poverty and persistent poverty in the inner city have been challenged. We furthermore maintain that research on urban poverty and migration has raised questions and generated new insights on the contribution of the urban migrant to the current problems of innercity poverty and social dislocations; and that several recent studies, possibly representing a trend in urban poverty research, have provided significant insights on the relationship between poverty and welfare dependency. However, we point out that since the results of the public policy research are so mixed, it would be risky to draw policy recommendations from them. On the other hand, the most recent studies of the effects of the Reagan budget cuts (the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981) on the working poor are clear and consistent: they reveal the nature of the federal government's dramatic retreat from the Great Society programs of the 1960s.
The Nonmetropolitan Population Turnaround
Authors: Fuguitt Glenn V.
Published: July 2003

Over the 1970-1980 period, US nonmetropolitan areas grew more rapidly than previously, achieving overall a faster growth rate than metropolitan areas, with more migrants going from metropolitan to nonmetropolitan areas than in the opposite direction. This paper reviews the literature that has emerged in seeking to understand this new trend, which was contrary to expectations and became known as the nonmetropolitan turnaround. Work includes macroanalyses of changes in nonmetropolitan settlement structure, changes in the distribution of employment, migration streams and differentials, as well as research on residential preferences and migration decision making. This is a new trend in terms of population distribution processes, although evidence that it reflects a greater importance of noneconomic factors in migration is mixed. Nonmetropolitan growth slowed in the latter part of the 1970s and overall the turnaround reversed in the early 1980s, but a return to a generally concentrating settlement pattern appears unlikely. The amount of research accomplished over a short span of time as a consequence of the turnaround is noteworthy, and the findings have contributed to increased understanding of US population change.
New Black-White Patterns: How Best to Conceptualize Them?
Authors: Pettigrew Thomas F.
Published: July 2003

Black-white relations have changed sharply in recent years. But no overarching sociological perspective has emerged to explain these changes. Many ideas with contrasting conceptualizations have been advanced, however. This chapter uncovers empirical agreements across these rival theoretical positions. At the structural level, race and class studies appear to converge on an interactional position—one that emphasizes the importance of both race and class factors as well as their interactions. A parallel convergence is emerging at the social psychological level. Though increasingly ambivalent and indirect, racist attitudes remain important; but racism must now be placed in a wider context of subjective self-interest, stratification beliefs, and cognitive bias. Hence, the causal complexity and indirectness of modern race relations are repeatedly shown in current research at both the macro- and microlevels. Closer attention to this emerging empirical convergence would further the needed theoretical convergence. The chapter closes with calls for more attention to black American responses and to the links between the macro- and microlevels of analysis.
Social Patterns of Distress
Authors: Mirowsky John , Ross Catherine E.
Published: July 2003

This paper reviews survey research explaining the social patterns of distress. There are four basic patterns: (a) The higher one's social status the lower one's distress; (b) women are more distressed than men; (c) married persons are less distressed than unmarried persons, and; (d) the greater the number of undesirable events in one's life the greater one's distress. The major forms of distress are malaise (such as lethargy, headaches, and trembling hands), anxiety (such as feeling afraid, worried, or irritable), and depression (such as feeling sad, worthless, or hopeless). Sociological theory suggests that alienation, authoritarianism, and inequity produce distress. The research indicates that distress is reduced by control, commitment, support, meaning, normality, flexibility, trust, and equity. The presence or absence of these accounts for the social patterns of distress.
A Sociology of Justice
Authors: Pepinsky Harold E.
Published: July 2003

Although literature on causes and prevention of crime now transcends disciplinary lines, it can still be categorized by the questions addressed. One line of research expands upon questions posed and answers given in the nineteenth century. Another line of research is predicated on a series of criticisms of the nineteenth-century approach, criticisms that appeared in the 1920s and 1930s. This latter line goes well beyond Marxism, offering fundamentally different ways to define and study justice that go beyond conventional political, philosophical, and social scientific debate. The major literature of this sociology of justice is identified and emergent directions indicated.
Childhood in Sociodemographic Perspective
Authors: Hernandez Donald J.
Published: July 2003

This article reviews the emerging sociodemographic literature on the relationships linking children and their families, by focusing on four topics: (a) the short-term implications for children of parents' family behavior, (b) the short-term implications for parents of the number and ages, or spacing, of their children, (c) the long-term implications of childhood family experiences for subsequent adult behavior, and (d) the probable family circumstances of children in the future.

Studies of how parents influence children found (a) that increases in illegitimate fertility and divorce led to a large rise in the proportion of children living in one-parent families, usually with the mother, and in stepfamilies, (b) that children in families maintained by mothers, but not in stepfamilies, experience numerous social, economic, and psychological disadvantages, (c) that, contrary to the popular stereotype, white children in families maintained by mothers are more likely than black children in such families either to be living with or to receive financial assistance from extended family members, and (d) declining fertility and birth cohort size may have led to reductions in the welfare of children compared to the welfare of the elderly during the last 20 years.

Studies of how children influence parents found that the presence of at least one child probably reduced marital satisfaction; the presence of a small number of children, especially preschool children, deters parental divorce; children reduce remarriage probabilities for young mothers, but increase them for older mothers; and at least the first and second child probably reduce family income and savings. Studies of how childhood experiences affect individuals in adulthood find that divorce of one's parents reduces one's own marriage probabilities and increases one's own divorce probabilities; childhood stepfamilies have little effect on adult circumstances; contrary to the popular stereotype, children without siblings are not disadvantaged compared to other children; an increasing number of siblings leads to reduced educational attainments, and increasing educational mobility among men with small or medium numbers of siblings accounts for the increase observed for all men during this century. Recent projections suggest that 50-75% of the 1980 birth cohort may live in a one-parent family during childhood, with a range of 40-70% for whites and a range of 85-95% for blacks.
Rural Community Development
Authors: Summers Gene F.
Published: July 2003

The author discusses rural community development in the United States by tracing its historical origins, reviewing its status within sociology, contrasting development of the community with development in the community, and reviewing three basic strategies of rural community development: authoritative intervention, client-centered intervention, and radical reform. The author concludes that federal intervention policies have created elaborate and complex interdependencies among state and federal governments, the private sector, and communities, and that rural community development requires a sociology that maps these relationships and provides explanations for changes in them.
A Critical Examination of Macro Perspectives on Crime Control
Authors: Liska Allen E.
Published: July 2003

A large number of studies examine the causes and the consequences of crime control at both the micro and macro levels of analysis. This paper focuses on the macro studies. Most macro research on crime control is loosely organized and weakly linked to theoretical perspectives. Studies are reviewed that relate to one of two general sociological perspectives—structural functionalism and conflict; and these perspectives are contrasted with the economic perspective. Empirical studies are employed both to specify more clearly and to evaluate the causal structures and processes implied by the perspectives.
Theory and Research on Industrialization
Authors: Walton John
Published: July 2003

Sociological approaches to industrialization are framed by two major theories: social differentiation, based on classical liberalism and Durkheimian sociology, and uneven development, derived from the critical work of Marx and Weber. Although social differentiation continues to influence general treatments of the subject, uneven development has proven more fruitful in research. Important themes in recent research are reviewed by means of a property space based on epochs and processes of industrialization. A summary of five key research areas describes the important issues in current work and, by way of conclusion, suggests some convergence.
Everyday Life Sociology
Authors: Adler Patricia A. , Adler Peter , Fontana Andrea
Published: July 2003

Everyday life sociology comprises a broad spectrum of micro perspectives: symbolic interactionism, dramaturgy, phenomenology, ethnomethodology, and existential sociology. We discuss the underlying themes that bind these diverse subfields into a unified approach to the study of social interaction. We outline the historical development of everyday life sociology, indicating the individuals, ideas, and surrounding context that helped to shape this evolving theoretical movement. We then examine three contemporary developments in everyday life sociology that represent significant theoretical, substantive, and methodological advances: existential sociology, the sociology of emotions, and conversation analysis. Within these areas, we outline major themes, review recent literature, and evaluate their contribution to sociology. Everyday life sociology has had influence outside its arena, stimulating grand theorists to create various micro-macro syntheses. We consider these and their relation to the everyday life themes. We conclude by discussing the major critiques and assess the future promise and problems of this perspective.
Income Inequality and Economic Development
Authors: Gagliani Giorgio
Published: July 2003

Although good theoretical reasons exist for expecting development to be inegalitarian in its early phase, a reverse-U pattern of change in measured inequality might just as easily derive from a statistical composition effect. That such a pattern occurs in reality, however, is far from certain, and all authors agree on governments' ability to keep inequality in check, if they so desire. The effects of redistribution on income and employment do not seem to be appreciable. All empirical studies, including those offering elaborate models of less developed economies, suffer from the inadequacy of historical data, as well as from unresolved problems in definition, methodology, and measurement. Most authors, but not all, would subscribe to the statement that absolute poverty (which should cause more concern than, and should not be confused with, relative inequality) is reduced by economic development.
The Welfare State, Citizenship, and Bureaucratic Encounters
Authors: Hasenfeld Yehenskel , Rafferty Jane A. , Zald Mayer N.
Published: July 2003

The growth of welfare state programs inevitably leads to an increase of citizen encounters with bureaucratic agencies. Moreover, theories of the welfare state differ in the extent to which citizenship rights are a central aspect of the explanation of the shape of the welfare state. After reviewing major theories of the expansion of the welfare state, we examine determinants of client encounters. The determinants are framed in a social exchange model that draws upon individual resources and agency and program characteristics. The model predicts differences in power-dependence relations and clientele satisfaction with their encounters. The legitimation and protection of citizenship rights may vary from program to program, may vary over time, and may be differently institutionalized in societies at similar levels of economic development. How rights are linked to citizen obligations is also an historical and sociological issue. The chapter concludes with a discussion of methodological issues in evaluating encounters.
Class Mobility in the Industrial World
Authors: Kurz Karin , Muller Walter
Published: July 2003

The main interest of this review is in the developments in social mobility research during the last ten years. These can be characterized as the revitalization of the class perspective, intensive comparative (cross-national and cross-temporal) research efforts, and the large-scale application of the log-linear modeling approach. After discussing the basic ideas of mobility studies conducted in an explicit class framework and the developments regarding class concepts, the review summarizes the major results of empirical research as to intergenerational mobility of men and women. These results are yielded within different conceptual frameworks for several industrialized countries. It continues by examining the constituent worklife processes, stressing the effects of different institutional arrangements and of labor market conditions for intragenerational mobility. Finally, a brief summary of the research desiderata still existing in social mobility research closes the review.
On Discovering and Teaching Sociology: A Memoir
Authors: Riesman David
Published: July 2003

The focus of the article is on the author's experience as learner and teacher. The task of preparing law students for their professional life is compared to that of teaching undergraduates who, in the uniquely strenuous College of the University of Chicago, are interested in books and ideas and are not immediately job-driven. Whereas in the law school setting the author, like other law professors, worked alone, in the College he worked with a staff of colleagues who shared in the choice of readings and in lectures to the entire student body—altogether, in the author's view, a more demanding task for the teacher. Graduate education in sociology is again different: the student is an apprentice professional, but there is no clear road toward professional practice; the faculty member as mentor on the dissertation helps pilot the apprentice through the cross-currents of conflict in the field and in the particular department.

Teaching undergraduates in Harvard College, the author reports, involved tasks different from those faced in the College of the University of Chicago. Rather than working, as at Chicago, with a staff of presumptive equals, at Harvard the author recruited advanced graduate students and junior (and on occasion, senior) faculty whom he treated as colleagues, but whom Harvard undergraduates tended to deprecate as mere “section men,” i.e. teaching assistants. The author details efforts to overcome what was 30 years ago the fabled yet quite real pose of “Harvard indifference” a lack of engagement with subject matter and with noncelebrity faculty. The Harvard colleague group worked to get students to do small pieces of fieldwork, not merely as exercises, but out of interest in a topic and an idea. When with the rise of a radical student-faculty “movement” many undergraduates became less “cool,” the problems of teaching subtly changed. Always, the author notes, teaching is contextual and often needs to work against the prevailing tide.
Organizational Demography
Authors: Stewman Shelby
Published: July 2003

Organizational demography may be conveniently broken into four areas of theoretical development: intraorganizational demography, interorganizational demography, individual careers, and organizational and external populations. The bulk of the work has been conducted in the first three areas and deals with turnover of both personnel and jobs; growth, decline and stability; opportunity structures; and performance and policy. As for the latter, there are new insights into innovation and adaptation; cohort conflict and competition; labor costs and labor cuts; and EEO and Affirmative Action, particularly sex segregation. Here, only one of the four areas, intraorganizational demography, is extensively covered, with the other three areas briefly reviewed. Overall, the potential for organizational demography appears great, especially for yielding new insights into organizational behavior. There are also current linkages with internal labor market theory, and linkages with ecological and network theories are beginning to emerge. New implications for stratification theory and national opportunity structures, the dynamics of labor markets, and for research in aging are also indicated. From this review, we conclude that there is much to be gained from theoretical development at the interface of organizations and demography.
Study of the Arts: A Reappraisal
Authors: Blau Judith R.
Published: July 2003

Sociologist tend now to shift their attention away from the meanings and expressive qualities of art and instead focus attention on the material and social conditions of art. This has resulted in a considerable advance in our understanding of the “peopled” arrangements that help to define the matrix of art production and consumption. However, the topic of art—and culture more generally—provides a unique opportunity for sociologists to investigate the connections between meanings and the social order and the way in which meanings penetrate all levels of that social order, including the level of individuals and that of the entire society. Recent scholarship that employs historical, and often quantitative, methods suggests that there are new developments along these lines.
National Politics and Collective Action: Recent Theory and Research in Western Europe and the United States
Authors: Tarrow Sidney
Published: July 2003

Research on social movements in both political science and sociology was radically renewed by the movements of the 1960s. The 1970s saw the growth in the United States of the resource mobilization approach and in Western Europe of the study of “new movements.” Although political factors were present in both approaches, the connections between politics and movements remained obscure in each. Research in the 1980s has restored politics to its central role in the origins, the dynamics, and the outcomes of social movements. Three important political concepts and the problems they raise for research on movements are explored in this review: the social movements sector, the political opportunity structure, and cycles of protest.
Personal Relationships
Authors: Blumstein Philip , Kollock Peter
Published: July 2003

In this chapter we review recent literature on personal relationships. Conceptual issues are raised regarding the definition of close or personal relationships, and various approaches to the subject matter are characterized. We then consider the problem of creating a property space of types of relationships, necessary, we think, for the mature development of the field. We advocate and illustrate a comparative approach to personal relationships in which theoretically crucial relationship types are used to illuminate important substantive questions. Research is discussed on several core topics in the general study of close relationships: interdependence patterns, justice, emotions, private culture, and the interpersonal construction of the self. We then turn to a processual organization of the literature on relationships, focusing on the stages of a relationship—buildup, continuation, deterioration, and ending. We conclude with a plea for sociologists to broaden their interests to cover the full domain of close relationships and to use to their fullest advantage the insights of psychologists who are working in this area.
Social Structure, Psychology, and the Estimation of Risk
Authors: Heimer Carol A.
Published: July 2003

This paper introduces sociologists to intriguing findings by psychologists about the heuristics that people use in thinking about risk, the resulting biases in estimates, the preferences people exhibit for avoiding risk in some cases and seeking it in others, and the effects of variations in how choices are framed on the attractiveness of competing options. How important these psychological processes are in nonlaboratory settings depends on a series of factors (e.g. how important a decision is, how long a person has to make decision, and whether competing actors offer alternative frames for the decision); these are outlined and illustrated here. Finally, the paper assesses the adequacy of this work as a foundation for a sociology of risk and discusses crucial issues (e.g. noncomparability of choices, risk seeking, and the role of supraindividual actors) that fall outside its purview but that would need to be incorporated into any sociological theory of risk.
Structural Change in Corporate Organization
Authors: Fligstein Neil , Dauber Kenneth
Published: July 2003

The purpose of this review is to assess the adequacy of various economic and sociological explanations in accounting for certain key features of change in large-scale corporations, including vertical integration, product related and unrelated diversification, and the implementation of the multidivisional form. We first review the various economic theories that purport to explain these phenomena, including the structure-conduct-performance perspective, the literature on managerial discretion, transaction cost analysis, contingency theory, and the evolutionary theory of economic change. All of these literatures have efficiency mechanisms that drive their explanations although they work in different ways. We then consider sociological approaches including the literatures in organizational theory on institutionalization and power. Our review of the empirical work provides little support for the economic view of vertical integration and unrelated product diversification, and only modest support for the economic view of product-related diversification and the multidivisional form. The sociological views aid in understanding all of these phenomena to some extent. We conclude by suggesting that the concept of organizational fields may be useful in understanding these structural changes
Internal Labor Markets
Authors: Althauser Robert P.
Published: July 2003

This paper undertakes a selective review of theoretical and empirical studies of internal labor markets (ILMs). Three different conceptualizations of ILMs are identified in existing literature: (a) ILMs as all jobs within a firm; (b) variable describing firms or present in discrete clusters of jobs within firms; (c) and a phenomenon present in some occupational labor markets within and across firms. Some empirical research using each conceptualization is described. Evidence apropo sseveral arguments about the theoretical origins of ILMs is assessed and some topics of future research are indicated. This review documents the absence of consensus about the characteristics defining the 1LM concept; a resulting diversity of approaches to the measurement or location of ILMs further hinders both accumulation of findings and the comparative study of ILMs. The most promising of the theoretical origins of ILMs relates scarcities of highly skilled workers to job structures generating increasing skill and knowledge among workers.
The Social Psychology of Self-Efficacy
Authors: Gecas Viktor
Published: July 2003

The topic of self-efficacy is part of a broad literature which has developed around the issues of human agency, mastery, and control. Its more delimited focus is on perceptions and assessments of self with regard to competence, effectiveness, and causal agency. Self-efficacy has become an important variable within social psychological research because of its association with various favorable consequences, especially in the areas of physical and mental health. It is also quite congruent with the Western emphasis on such values as mastery, self-reliance, and achievement. This review examines the nature of self-efficacy and related terms, reviews the research literature on the development of self-efficacy and how social structure and group processes affect this development, considers changes of self-efficacy over the life course, and reviews the consequences of self-efficacy for individual functioning and for social change. The focus of the review is on the social psychological literature within sociology, psychology, and to some extent political science.
Sex Differences in Earnings in The United States
Authors: Marini Margaret Mooney
Published: July 2003

This paper reviews the current state of knowledge on sex differences in earnings in the United States. The paper has three sections. The first describes the phenomenon under consideration, reviewing what is known about the size of the wage gap, historical and life course variations in the wage gap, and race differences in the wage gap. The second section, which constitutes most of the paper, reviews explanatory theories advanced to account for the wage gap and the empirical evidence relevant to their evaluation. This section is divided into two principle parts. The first considers “supply-side” explanations that focus on the characteristics and decisions of individual workers. These include the human capital theory of economics and alternative views offered by sociologists and social psychologists that focus on processes of socialization and allocation and the operation of social networks. All of these explanations attribute the sex gap in earnings to differences in the qualifications, intentions, and attitudes that women and men bring to the labor market, including the social ties that influence worker-job matches. The second part of the section considers “demand side” explanations that focus on characteristics of the workplace and actors within it. These explanations include theories of discrimination in the labor market developed primarily by economists and social psychologists and ideas about the evolution and persistence of a discriminatory wage structure put forward by institutional economists and sociologists. The final section suggests directions for future work.
Social Change in Post-Revolution China
Authors: Walder Andrew G.
Published: July 2003

As sociological research on China has accumulated over the past decade, perceptions of social change after the revolution have altered markedly. This essay reviews findings in the areas of economic development, community organization, bureaucracy, and social stratification that reflect these changed perceptions and that should be of wide interest in the discipline.
Theory and Research in Organizational Ecology
Authors: Singh Jitendra V. , Lumsden Charles J.
Published: July 2003

Major theory and research in organizational ecology are reviewed, with an emphasis on the organization and population levels of analysis and processes of organizational foundings, mortality, and change. The main approach to organizational foundings examines the roles of density dependence and population dynamics. Six approaches to studying organizational mortality are fitness set theory, liability of newness, density dependence, resource partitioning, liability of smallness, and the effects of founding conditions. Research on organizational change is just beginning to appear in the literature. The convergence between ecological and institutional research is discussed, especially the role of legitimacy in population dynamics, and the effects of institutional variables on vital rates. Some key criticisms of organizational ecology are addressed, and some suggestions for future research are proposed.