Suchergebnisse

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.

▪ Abstract  Two features have marked the sociological analysis of violence: (a) disparate clusters of research on various forms of violence that have been the object of urgent social concern, and relatedly, (b) an overwhelming focus on forms of violence that are socially deviant and motivated by willful malice. The resulting literature is balkanized and disjointed, and yet narrowly focused. The systematic understanding of violence as a broad genus of social behavior has suffered accordingly. I examine the issues that have clouded the analysis of violence: the importance of physical injuries vs. psychological, social, and material injuries; the weight placed on physical vs. verbal and written actions; the role of force vs. victim complicity in the infliction of injuries; and the emphasis on interpersonal vs. corporate agents and victims. That discussion highlights the widely varying forms of violence in social life, including many instances that are neither driven by malicious intent nor socially repudiated. I consider the diverse motives that drive violent actions and the variant social acceptance or repudiation that they meet. I propose a generic definition of violence, freed of ad hoc restrictions, that encompasses the full population of violent social actions. This directs us to more systematic questions about violence in social life.

Examines Steven A. Tuch & Michael Hughes's "Whites' Racial Policy Attitudes" (1996 [see abstract 9715740]), arguing that the perceived gap between whites' policy principles & specific policy views is illusory. Examples from the 1986 American National Election Study & a 1975 national survey (see Jackman, M., 1994) are used to demonstrate the consistencies in whites' racial attitudes & racial policy attitudes when interpreted as endorsing the rights of all individuals to live according to personal preferences. However, as members of a dominant social group, whites gravitate toward policies that will strengthen their unequal relationships with subordinates; thus, individuals' racial beliefs & attitudes change to serve their policy goals. It is concluded that racial interests, rather than racial beliefs, drive racial inequality. 32 References. S. Barrera

Assessed is the significance to Americans of five common social class terms: poor, working class, middle class, upper middle class, & upper class. After respondents in a 1975 national survey had been asked with which of these five classes they identified, they were asked how they would assign various occupations to the classes & what criteria they used to define membership in their own class. Most respondents were able to assign a variety of occupations to social classes with little or no hesitation, & there was high agreement about the class location of occupations. The prevailing class assignments of those occupations reflect hierarchical socioeconomic characteristics (such as income, job authority, education, & skill) rather than a qualitative blue-collar/white-collar distinction. Finally, the criteria that respondents selected as important in defining the social class with which they identify suggest that class is at least as much a social as an economic phenomenon in the United States. 5 Tables. AA.

The long-standing proposition that higher education produces stronger commitment to the democratic norm of tolerance is challenged. When national survey data measuring both abstract & applied commitment to racial integration are replicated & used to examine that perspective, results indicate that while well-educated whites appear more tolerant on the abstract index, they do not on the applied index. Also, the well educated show no tighter belief-system constraint than the poorly educated in translating their abstract position into an applied position on racial integration. Finally, while higher education produced more rapid adoption of abstract support for racial integration from 1964 to 1972, there was no clear tendency for education to be associated with more support for integration in an applied context. A reevaluation of the efficacy of formal education in producing democratic citizens is presented. 5 Tables. HA.

AbstractTo take stock of the human toll resulting from racial inequality in the United States, we estimate the number of excess deaths that accumulated among African Americans over the twentieth century as a result of the enduring racial gap in mortality rates. We assemble a wide array of demographic and vital statistics data for all years since 1900 to calculate the number of Black deaths in each half-decade that occurred in excess of what would be projected if Blacks had experienced the same gender- and age-specific mortality rates as Whites. We estimate that there were almost 7.7 million excess deaths among African Americans from 1900 through 1999. Those deaths comprised over 40% of all African American deaths over the century.Excess deaths were highest in the early decades (peaking in 1925–1934), but the only period of sustained decline was 1935–1949. Subsequent reductions in excess deaths were relatively modest and unstable, and in the last decade of the century the percentage of Blacks' deaths that were excess returned to levels as high as in the first decade. That trajectory is less positive than the trajectory for the racial gap in life expectancy over the century.Excess deaths fell disproportionately among the young in the early twentieth century, but in the succeeding decades they progressively hit harder among older African Americans, many of them in the prime of life when their economic and social pursuits were vital to their families and communities. Excess deaths were also especially heavy among Black women for most of the century.We conclude by discussing the social and policy implications of the excess deaths. We assess trends in the early twenty-first century as we consider the political challenges involved in tackling the continuing excess death toll.

The major tenets & assumptions of the well-known contact theory of prejudice are examined & compared with the more cynical reasoning implied by the infamous "some of my best friends are black, but$." expression. After assessing the extant evidence for the contact theory, a unique set of national survey data is used to address the central postulates of that theory. Analysis of interview data on the racial beliefs, feelings, social dispositions, & policy views of 1,648 whites who have contact with blacks as friends, acquaintances, or neighbors suggests that personal interracial contact is selective in its effects on whites' racial attitudes, that intimacy is less important than variety of contacts, & that any effects are contingent on the relative SES of black contacts. These findings are used to reassess the contact theory & to propose a more political conception of the attitudes of dominant groups toward subordinates. It is argued that the message contained in the relationship between personal contact with subordinates & intergroup attitudes is less benign than is suggested by the contact theory. 4 Tables, 1 Figure, 2 Appendixes, 32 References. Modified AA

Are social classes meaningful to Americans? The question has attracted popular and scholarly debate since the founding of the Republic. The Jackmans offer a new perspective on the debate by analyzing popular conceptions of social class. Mary and Robert Jackman assert that the meaning and reality of class cannot be evaluated without attention to its place in public awareness, and they draw on national survey to examine the willingness of Americans to identify w