Social Institutions and Social Change Series - Böcker

From the sociological point of view, adolescence traditionally has been described as a period of physical maturity and social immaturity. Adolescents reach physical adulthood before they are capable of functioning well in adult social roles. The disjunction between physical capabilities and socially allowed independence and power and the concurrent status ambiguities are viewed as stressful for the adolescent in modern Western society. It has been assumed that the need to disengage from parents during these years will result in high levels of rebellion and parent-child conflict. Moving into Adolescence follows students as they make a major life course transition from childhood into early adolescence.Substantial controversy has been generated within the behavioral sciences concerning the difficulty of adolescence as a transitional period. On the one hand, there are those who characterize the period as an exceptionally and necessarily stressful time in the life course. On the other hand, many investigators treat this view of adolescence as their straw man. To them, the supposed tumult of adolescence is just that--supposed and mythical. The purpose of this book is to study the transition from childhood into early and middle adolescence in order to investigate change along a wide variety of psychosocial dimensions with a particular focus on the self-image.The authors investigate the impact of timing of pubertal change and also the movement from an intimate, elementary school context into a large-scale secondary school environment. The first major movement into a large-scale organizational context may cause difficulty for the child, as may the dramatic changes of puberty. In addition, gender differences and changes in gender differences are studied. Both short- and long-term consequences of transition are examined focusing on is the role of pubertal change and school transition.

This volume provides a detailed description of the situation of women in employment in the early 1990s and considers how sociological and economic theories of labor markets illuminate the gap in pay between the sexes.

This volume provides a detailed description of the situation of women in employment in the early 1990s and considers how sociological and economic theories of labor markets illuminate the gap in pay between the sexes.

This life-course analysis of family development focuses on the social dynamics among family members. It features parent-child relationships in a larger context, by examining the help exchange between kin and nonkin and the intergenerational transmission of family characteristics.

Describes the nature of homelessness, its multiple causes, and its demographic, economic, sociological, and social policy antecedents. Finding the origins of the problem to be social and political rather than economic, Wright (human relations, Tulane) outlines remedies based on existing and modified

Crowd behavior is one of the most colorful but least understood forms of human social behavior. This volume is a major contribution to the field of collective behavior, with implications for social movement analysis.McPhail's critical assessment of the major theories of crowd behavior establishes that, whatever their particular limitations and strengths, all share a general and serious flaw: their explanations were developed without prior examination of the behaviors to be explained. Drawing on a wide range of empirical studies that include his own careful field work, the author offers a new characterization of temporary gatherings. He presents a life cycle of gatherings and a taxonomy of forms of collective behavior within gatherings, as well as combinations of these forms and gatherings into larger events, campaigns and waves. McPhail also develops a new explanation for various ways in which purposive actors construct collective actions.

Although there is growing concern over Satanism as a threat to American life, the topic has received surprisingly little serious attention. Recognizing this, the editors of this volume have selected papers from a wide variety of disciplines, broadly covering contemporary aspects of Satanism from the vantage points of studies in folklore, cults, religion, deviance, rock music, rumor, and the mass media.All contributors are skeptical of claims that a large, powerful satanic conspiracy can be substantiated. Their research focuses instead on claims about Satanism and on the question of whose interests are served by such claims. Several papers consider the impact of anti-Satanism campaigns on public opinion, law enforcement and civil litigation, child protection services, and other sectors of American society.The constructionist perspective adopted by the editors does not deny the existence of some activities by 'real' Satanists, and two papers describe the workins of satanic groups. Whatever the basis of the claims examined and analyzed, there is growing evidence that belief in the satanic menace will have real social consequences in the years ahead.

Although there is growing concern over Satanism as a threat to American life, the topic has received surprisingly little serious attention. Recognizing this, the editors of this volume have selected papers from a wide variety of disciplines, broadly covering contemporary aspects of Satanism from the vantage points of studies in folklore, cults, religion, deviance, rock music, rumor, and the mass media.All contributors are skeptical of claims that a large, powerful satanic conspiracy can be substantiated. Their research focuses instead on claims about Satanism and on the question of whose interests are served by such claims. Several papers consider the impact of anti-Satanism campaigns on public opinion, law enforcement and civil litigation, child protection services, and other sectors of American society.The constructionist perspective adopted by the editors does not deny the existence of some activities by 'real' Satanists, and two papers describe the workins of satanic groups. Whatever the basis of the claims examined and analyzed, there is growing evidence that belief in the satanic menace will have real social consequences in the years ahead.

** Paying for Medicare received the American Risk and Insurance Association's Elizur Wright Award for itsoutstanding contribution to risk management and insurance literature.The Prospective Payment System and the Medicare Fee Schedule, two of the most effectively sustained and successful efforts at policy innovation in history continue to shape decisions about Medicare and cost containment efforts.Smith shows how particular policy alternatives were developed; why chosen or rejected; and how provider interests and American political institutions have shaped their design and implementation.

** Paying for Medicare received the American Risk and Insurance Association's Elizur Wright Award for itsoutstanding contribution to risk management and insurance literature.The Prospective Payment System and the Medicare Fee Schedule, two of the most effectively sustained and successful efforts at policy innovation in history continue to shape decisions about Medicare and cost containment efforts.Smith shows how particular policy alternatives were developed; why chosen or rejected; and how provider interests and American political institutions have shaped their design and implementation.

Clignet's analysis of inheritance patterns in modern America is the first sustained treatment of the subject by a sociologist. Clignet shows that even today inheritance serves to perpetuate both familial wealth and familial relations. He examines what leads decedents to chose particular legal instruments (wills, trusts, insurance policies, gifts inter vivos) and how, in turn, the instrument chosen helps explain the extent and the form of inequalities in bequests, of a result of the gender or matrimonial status of the beneficiaries. The author's major is to identify and explain the most significant sources of variations in the amount and the direction of transfers of wealth after death in the United States. He uses two kinds of primary data: estate tax returns filed by a sample of male and female beneficiaries to estates in 1920 and 1944, representing two successive generations of estate transfers, and publicly recorded legal instruments such as wills and trusts. In addition, Clignet draws widely on secondary sources in the fields of anthropology, economics, and history. His findings reflect substantive and methodological concerns. The analysis underlines the need to rethink the sociology of generational bonds, as it is informed by age and gender. Death, Deeds, and Descendants underscores the variety of forms of inequality that bequests take and highlights the complexity of interrelations between the cultures of the decedents' nationalities and issues like occupation and gender. Inheritance is viewed as a way of illuminating the subtle tensions between continuity and change in American society. This book is an important contribution to the study of the relationship between sociology of the family and sociology of social stratification.

On July 30, 1965, President Johnson flew to Independence, Missouri to sign the Medicare bill. The new statute included two related insurance programs to finance substantial portions of the hospital and physician expenses incurred by Americans over the age of sixty-five. Public attempts to improve American health standards have typically precipitated bitter debate, even as the issue has shifted from the professional and legal status of physicians to the availability of hospital care and public health programs. In The Politics of Medicare, Marmor helps the reader understand Medicare's origins, and he interprets the history of the program and explores what happened to Medicare politically as it turned from a legislative act in the mid-1960s to a major program of American government in the three decades since. This is a vibrant study of an important piece of legislation that asks and answers several questions: How could the American political system yield a policy that simultaneously appeased anti-governmental biases and used the federal government to provide a major entitlement? How was the American Medical Association legally overcome yet placated enough to participate in the program? And how did the Medicare law emerge so enlarged from earlier proposals that themselves had caused so much controversy?

Organizing for Collective Action investigates the political and economic behaviors of national associations, including trade associations, professional societies, labor unions, and public interest groups. It focuses upon the ways that these organizations acquire resources and allocate them to various collective actions, particularly for member services, public relations, and political action. This analysis is structured around three broad theoretical paradigms for collective action: (1) the problem of societal integration which concerns the ways that people are tied to organizations and the ways that organizations connect their members with the larger society; (2) the problem of organizational governance which considers how individuals become unified collectivities capable of acting in a coordinated manner, and (3) the problem of public policy influence which involves interactions among public and private interest groups to formulate the binding decisions under which we all must live.

That family violence injures and kills its victims both physically and psychologically was established over two decades ago by early researchers in this field. Abused and Battered heralds the second generation of domestic abuse research: it examines the implications of the legal and social responses to both victims and offenders by systematically addressing the intended and unintended consequences of programs and procedures designed to ameliorate the effects of spousal and child abuse. Contributors to this multidisciplinary volume represent the leading perspectives in public health, law and criminal justice, psychology, and sociology. They provide new and sophisticated insights regarding the etiology of the multiple forms of family abuse and they suggest innovative strategies for mitigating the anguish resulting from physical and emotional violence against adults and children within households. The results of this research will be of interest to students and practitioners in sociology, public health, psychology and family studies, and to clinicians and therapists who treat victims or offenders.

That family violence injures and kills its victims both physically and psychologically was established over two decades ago by early researchers in this field. Abused and Battered heralds the second generation of domestic abuse research: it examines the implications of the legal and social responses to both victims and offenders by systematically addressing the intended and unintended consequences of programs and procedures designed to ameliorate the effects of spousal and child abuse. Contributors to this multidisciplinary volume represent the leading perspectives in public health, law and criminal justice, psychology, and sociology. They provide new and sophisticated insights regarding the etiology of the multiple forms of family abuse and they suggest innovative strategies for mitigating the anguish resulting from physical and emotional violence against adults and children within households. The results of this research will be of interest to students and practitioners in sociology, public health, psychology and family studies, and to clinicians and therapists who treat victims or offenders.

Adolescent Stress concentrates on a range of major problems—those of a normal developmental nature as well as those of poor adaptation—identified in adolescents.

Adolescent Stress concentrates on a range of major problems—those of a normal developmental nature as well as those of poor adaptation—identified in adolescents.

On July 30, 1965, President Johnson flew to Independence, Missouri to sign the Medicare bill. The new statute included two related insurance programs to finance substantial portions of the hospital and physician expenses incurred by Americans over the age of sixty-five. Public attempts to improve American health standards have typically precipitated bitter debate, even as the issue has shifted from the professional and legal status of physicians to the availability of hospital care and public health programs. In The Politics of Medicare, Marmor helps the reader understand Medicare's origins, and he interprets the history of the program and explores what happened to Medicare politically as it turned from a legislative act in the mid-1960s to a major program of American government in the three decades since. This is a vibrant study of an important piece of legislation that asks and answers several questions: How could the American political system yield a policy that simultaneously appeased anti-governmental biases and used the federal government to provide a major entitlement? How was the American Medical Association legally overcome yet placated enough to participate in the program? And how did the Medicare law emerge so enlarged from earlier proposals that themselves had caused so much controversy?

During the years between the publication of the first of his two major works, The Structure of Social Action (1937), and the writing of his second, The Social System (1951), Talcott Parsons was primarily engaged in political activity through the Office of Strategic Services in its efforts to bring about the defeat of the Third Reich and to set the stage for a democratic reconstruction of postwar Germany. Beyond Parsons' analytic skills the essays reveal a dedicated liberal scholar, far removed from the stereotypes with which he came to be pilloried by later critics. The essays in this collection are the by-products of that special period of intense commitment. They reflect a single dominant theme: National Socialist Germany is seen as a tragically flawed social system but one requiring the same rigorous analysis Parsons brought to more normal and normative systems. Since virulent authoritarianism and even more virulent anti-Semitism were the dominant traits of that system as he saw it, Parsons dedicated many pages to each aspect. While he did not know the full horror of the Nazi "war against the Jews" he was able to develop a theoretical framework that continues to be a foundation stone for the analysis of national socialism. Gerhardt's editorial labors in the Parsons archive at Harvard have yielded nothing less than a "new book" by the foremost American sociological theorist of his time. This collection of both published and unpublished writings conveys Parsons' cohesive intent. To these otherwise fugitive and neglected essays Gerhardt contributes an introductory essay of her own: in part biography, in part intellectual and social history. She discovered Parsons work on National Socialism while studying his sociology of the professions and his use of medical practice to demonstrate how social science could become an antidote for fascism and authoritarianism. Uta Gerhardt is director of the Medical Sociology Unit at Justus Liebig University, Giessen. She has taught sociology at the Free University of Berlin, the University of Konstanz, the University of California at Berkeley, the San Francisco Medical School, the University of London, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The present volume comes out of her sabbatical year as Research Affiliate of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, of Harvard University.

Generational conflict has attracted considerable attention in the media and within academic circles during the past decade. At the center of this collection of papers analyzing various facets of that conflict lie complex issues of generational equity - issues that will remain important for the framing of public policy during the 1990s, What do the young and the middle-aged owe the elderly? In discharging that debt, to what extent are they able to provide for their own old age in a climate of changing notions of welfare? What light do the longer perspectives of history shed on these issues? What role do kinship, gender, and economic status play?The papers commissioned by Bengtson and Achenbaum are intended to give greater analytic rigor to current debates. The volume is interdisciplinary not only by theoretical intent but by the practical imperatives of gerontology. More than a dozen sociologists, economists, historians, demographers, and policy analysts discuss the meanings and ambiguities that are inherent in terms such as "generation," "equity," "compact," "contract," and "conflict," in order to assess how relations between the age groups seem to vary from one sociohistorical context to the next.This distinguished group of contributors raises comparative issues throughout, assessing variations in generational ties by gender, race, class, and geographic location. Several project the extent to which recent changes in the political economy, public philosophy, and demographic structure of most "modern" societies presage greater conflicts, or greater consensus, in family members' relationships and social ties.

Based on sophisticated demographic analysis, Legal Construct, Social Concept argues that legal doctrine on social issues is shaped by the needs and values of society rather than by individuals and interest groups and that it evolves in response to social change but has little impact on that change. The book also explains why a substantial body of social science research has found that although law may be effective for some types of economic problems, its impact on social problems is generally small and of brief duration. At least in the United States, legal doctrine seems to operate primarily to provide symbols that enhance commitment to the social system and increase the cohesiveness of the system.Barnett's approach to legal thought derives from the practices and assumptions of the social sciences, particularly sociology, and not from those of critical legal studies. His main concern is with social issues issues that substantively differ from economic issues. In addressing legal thought on social problems with the conceptual framework and quantitative techniques of macrosociology, he considers a topic that is infrequently investigated and employs an approach that is infrequently used.To illustrate this thesis, Barnett presents data on social patterns relevant to three current issues: sex discrimination, age discrimination, and the availability of contraception and abortion. His analyses of these data are compared to constitutional philosophy, judicial rulings, and federal statutes. Barnett then turns from the evolution of legal doctrine in the past to its possible change in the future and considers whether active forms of euthanasia are likely to be legalized. He concludes with an exploration of additional issues for future research and theory.

This book documents the experiences of rural Iowa families, who lived through the "farm crisis" years of the 1980s, in a fashion that might help families of the future cope more successfully with economic reversals. The documentation could be used to fashion more effective social policies.

This book documents the experiences of rural Iowa families, who lived through the "farm crisis" years of the 1980s, in a fashion that might help families of the future cope more successfully with economic reversals. The documentation could be used to fashion more effective social policies.

This study seeks to reorient our understanding of the early educational determinants of social stratification outcomes. It focuses on the process and consequences of unequal cognitive skill attainment for ethnic and poverty groups within our nation's cities. It draws, theoretically, on the notion that experiences at home and school create a feedback loop by which the "cultural capital" of the students (their toolkit of skills, habits, and styles with which they construct strategies of action) evolves over time and largely determines differential success in mastering the teacher-assigned homework.

This study seeks to reorient our understanding of the early educational determinants of social stratification outcomes. It focuses on the process and consequences of unequal cognitive skill attainment for ethnic and poverty groups within our nation's cities. It draws, theoretically, on the notion that experiences at home and school create a feedback loop by which the "cultural capital" of the students (their toolkit of skills, habits, and styles with which they construct strategies of action) evolves over time and largely determines differential success in mastering the teacher-assigned homework.

This new paperback comprehensively reviews the research evidence on the links between guns, violence, and gun control, and reports results of the author's own research as well. In Targeting Guns, Kleck follows the line of argument and careful statistical inference of his earlier prizewinning volume, Point Blank, while updating the literature reviews and statistical information, and adding two chapters.

Les B. Whitbeck and Dan R. Hoyt begin their report on street children in the Midwest with the statement, "If you live in or have visited even a medium-sized city recently, you have seen runaway and homeless young people. They congregate in certain downtown areas and hang out in malls during inclement weather . . . Mostly, they look like the other kids. . . . The difference is that they won't be going home tonight."This book draws on a study of over six hundred runaway and homeless adolescents and over two hundred of their caretakers from cities in four Midwestern states. It focuses on the family histories of these young people and on the developmental impact of early independence. Street social networks, subsistence strategies, sexuality, and street victimization are all considered, as well as their effect on adolescent behaviors and emotional health.Relying on interviews and data from survey research, and working in partnership with street outreach agencies, Whitbeck and Hoyt lead the reader through the various risk factors associated with precocious independence, beginning in the family and extending to external environments and behaviors. Nowhere to Grow is an emotional account of the cumulative consequences for young people with few good options at the outset and even fewer once they are on their own.

Les B. Whitbeck and Dan R. Hoyt begin their report on street children in the Midwest with the statement, "If you live in or have visited even a medium-sized city recently, you have seen runaway and homeless young people. They congregate in certain downtown areas and hang out in malls during inclement weather . . . Mostly, they look like the other kids. . . . The difference is that they won't be going home tonight."This book draws on a study of over six hundred runaway and homeless adolescents and over two hundred of their caretakers from cities in four Midwestern states. It focuses on the family histories of these young people and on the developmental impact of early independence. Street social networks, subsistence strategies, sexuality, and street victimization are all considered, as well as their effect on adolescent behaviors and emotional health.Relying on interviews and data from survey research, and working in partnership with street outreach agencies, Whitbeck and Hoyt lead the reader through the various risk factors associated with precocious independence, beginning in the family and extending to external environments and behaviors. Nowhere to Grow is an emotional account of the cumulative consequences for young people with few good options at the outset and even fewer once they are on their own.

The increasing proportion of women in the medical profession has been followed keenly both by conservative and feminist observers during the past three decades. Statistics both in Europe and in the United States tend to confirm that women work mainly in niches of the health care system or medical specialties characterized by relatively low earnings or prestige. The segregation of medical work has become increasingly recognized as a sign of inequality between female and male members of the medical profession.Medicine as a social organization is not a universal structure: Health care systems vary in the extent to which physicians work in the private or public sector and in the extent to which they have as a corporate body been able to influence their numbers and the character of their work. The aim of this book is not only to review and to provide an account of women's position in medicine but also to provide an analytical framework. The text revolves around three key issues that illuminate this argument: numbers, medical practice, and feminist agendas of women physicians. The issues are addressed in all the chapters but highlighted as central analytical themes in a cross-cultural context.Challenging previous studies of the medical profession, which have assumed for the most part a gender-neutral stance, Riska's text provides a unique focus. Medical Careers and Feminist Agendas presents a comprehensive, cross-national analysis of the current status of women in three societies where the economics of medical practice vary considerably: a market society, a welfare state, and a formerly communist society in transition. Aimed at a wide audience, this book will be useful for years to come in medical sociology, the sociology of professions, and women's studies. Its historical breadth, current data, and trenchant probing will furnish practitioners and policy-makers alike with a needed analytical tool.