Suchergebnisse

Introduction : insiders, outsiders, hiders, and drifters -- The complementarity of deviance and conformity -- Deviance and conformity : the pressure of dual identities -- Fighting for normal? -- Bigfoot : undiscovered primate or inter-dimensional spirit? -- Sexuality and gender identity : assimilation vs. liberation -- Insiders and the normalization of illegal drugs -- Conclusion : studying deviance management -- Appendix 1 : on applying the theory of deviance management -- Appendix 2 : supplemental data analyses.

This study examines whether objective discrimination against religious minorities causes individual members of a minority to form grievances and engage in political activity against the government using data from the World Values Survey and Religion and State-Minorities datasets. We find that higher levels of objective discrimination do not predict more grievances and organizing activity. This contradicts predictions made by relative deprivation theory but is consistent with a social psychology literature which finds a "personal/group discrimination discrepancy." That is, objective discrimination often has little influence on grievances expressed by individuals. Taking these findings, along with the failure of the empirical literature to support relative deprivation theory, the relative success of the grievances-based literature, the arguments of the mobilization literature, and a brief case study we argue that the key factor explaining collective action is the effort of group leaders to mobilize the grievances of group members.

Religion and social control have been a sociological concern since Durkheim and Weber, and the relationship between religion and punishment has long been the subject of speculation. However, surprisingly little empirical research exists on the role of religion or religious context in criminal justice, and almost no research on the role of religious context on actual sentencing practices. We conceptualize the potential relationships between religious context and sentencing severity by drawing from the focal concerns and court community perspectives in the sentencing literature and moral communities theory developed by Rodney Stark. We suspect that Christian moral communities might shape notions of perceived blameworthiness for court community actors. Such moral communities might also affect notions of community protection – affecting perceptions of dangerousness, or perhaps rehabilitation, and might influence practical constraints/consequences (e.g., local political ramifications of harsh or lenient sentences). We examine these questions using a set of hierarchical models using sentencing data from Pennsylvania county courts and data on the religious composition of Pennsylvania counties from the Associated Religion Data Archives. We find that county Christian religious homogeneity increases the likelihood of incarceration. In addition, Christian homogeneity as well as the prevalence of civically engaged denominations in a county condition the effects of important legally relevant determinants of incarceration. Furthermore, we find evidence that Christian homogeneity activates the effect of local Republican electoral dominance on incarceration. We argue that Christian homogeneity effects sentencing practices primarily through local political processes that shape the election of judges and prosecutors

Although previous studies tend to find that religiosity is negatively associated with drug use, their findings are mostly nondevelopmental, whether based on cross-sectional or longitudinal data. Taking a life course perspective, we examine the effects of childhood religious socialization as well as involvement on drug use during later years. Based on the concept of cumulative advantage, it is hypothesized that religious upbringing decreases the probability of using drugs during adolescent years and into the early 20s indirectly not only via childhood religiosity but also through the protective and risk factors of drug use. To test this hypothesis, we conducted OLS regression analyses of three-wave panel data from the National Survey of Children. Results show that survey respondents raised by parents who believe religious training as well as service attendance to be important for children are less likely to use drugs during adolescence and early adulthood than those who were not raised by such parents.