Powerless Groups Research Articles

The Implementation of Constitutional Rights: Insights from Law and Economics

The study of Law and Economics focuses most often on issues of efficiency and growth. The economic approach made major contributions, for example, in the areas of regulation, liability, and contract. But an economic approach to the study of courts and law can also shed light on an area that is seldom investigated by traditional legal scholars: the implementation of judicial decisions. In this essay I demonstrate the relevance of the economic approach to the implementation of constitutional rights. In particular, I show that the economic analysis of law is central to understanding the efficacy of judicial decisions supportive of the interests of relatively powerless groups within society.' Supreme Court decisions are not self-implementing. As Alexander Hamilton pointed out long ago in The Federalist Papers, courts are particularly dependent on the actions of others. Hamilton argued in Federalist 78 that the judiciary has no influence over either the sword or the purse . . . and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.2 Without external support-from the other branches of government or directly from the citizenry-Court decisions announcing constitutional rights are unlikely to affect or change people's lives in important ways. In contrast to traditional legal analysis, the tools of economic analysis can help explain how Court-mandated constitutional rights of relatively powerless groups are actually implemented. In particular, economic analysis suggests that implementation is more likely to occur if at least one of three conditions is present:

First in Flight: Desertion as Politics in the North Carolina Confederate Army

In place of open mutiny, [powerless groups] prefer desertion. . . . They make use of implicit understandings and informal networks. . . . When such stratagems are abandoned in favor of more quixotic action, it is usually a sign of great desperation.Scott (1985: xvi)At the beginning of the Civil War, few suspected how brutal and bloody the conflict would prove to be. During the first months of the war, thousands of men and boys from North Carolina rushed to enlist. As deaths from disease and battle mounted dramatically, soldiers who had agreed to serve for one, two, or three years found themselves legally compelled to stay even after their enlistment was up, and those who had stayed home enlisted reluctantly under the threat of the draft (Wright 1978). Detained in the Confederate army often by threat of imprisonment or even death (ibid.), obliged to fight for a cause that appeared increasingly to be contrary to their own interests (Bardolph 1964), watching as the wealthy plantation owners resigned their commissions and bowed out (Tatum 1934), thousands of soldiers took up one strategy of resistance to the war: desertion. Of the 120,000 North Carolinians who enlisted to fight in the Confederate army, an estimated 12,000 deserted before the war was over. This study will test the hypothesis that desertion was a form of resistance to the war by a relatively powerless group, the small farmers. The central focus of this article will be the predictors of desertion. Of the estimated 10% of the Confederate soldiers from North Carolina who deserted from the army, the majority were small-scale farmers who had long opposed the wealthy elites on a variety of issues.

Woman Suffrage and the Origins of Liberal Feminism in the United States, 1820-1920

In demanding equal rights and the vote for women, woman suffragists introduced liberal feminist dissent into an emerging national movement against absolute power in the forms of patriarchy, church administrations, slavery, and false dogmas. In their struggle, these women developed three types of liberal arguments, each predominant during a different phase of the movement. The feminism of equal rights, which called for freedom through equality, emerged during the Jacksonian era to counter those opposed to women's public participation in antislavery reform. The feminism of fear, the defense of women's right to live free from fear of violent injury or death perpetrated particularly by drunken men, flourished after the Civil War. And in the early 1900s, the feminism of personal development called for women's freedom through opportunities to become full persons. The practical need to blend concepts in order to justify and achieve goals created many contradictions in the suffragists' ideologies. By putting suffrage first, these women introduced radical goals, but as a politically powerless group, they could not win the vote without appeals and bargains that men considered acceptable. Ironically, American woman suffragists used illiberal ideals and arguments to sustain the quest for the most fundamental liberal feminist citizenship goal: the vote. In this book, Suzanne Marilley reframes the debate on this important topic in a fresh, provocative, and persuasive style.

Bad Samaritan: Very Cognitively Disabled People and the Sociological Sensibility

Introduction In this paper I examine critical sociologists' and historians' lack of interest in cognitively disabled people. In a more general sense, the paper is about the selection and development of academic within critical science, and about the identification of the of disadvantage and oppression by critical scientists, since the two types of problem, academic and social, are intimately related. I raise the issue of forms of extreme disadvantage and oppression which do not seem to stimulate a critical scientific response. In this way, I am confronting fundamental issues of critical science practice, but I am not using cognitively disabled as a mere example for a broader purpose; I show why the experiences of cognitively disabled should be a central concern of critical sociologists, historians and theorists. The terms very cognitively disabled people and very extensive used throughout this paper are not intended to carry a technical meaning, such as a defined range of estimated I.Q., a specific level of retardation, or a set of particular disabilities, but to denote the most serious levels of or intellectual disability in a general way. However, I am not thereby intending to avoid the obvious of more technical terms, and to achieve some sort of natural relation between term and referent. The issue of the constructedness of terms relating to disability (including cognitive disability) is central to this paper, and is tackled directly, using the terms I have chosen. Indeed, I begin by examining Philip Ferguson's sympathetic critique of constructionism (Ferguson, 1987) which is aimed directly at explaining critical scientists' abandonment of cognitively disabled people. The examination of Ferguson's position allows me to set up and initiate my discussion of academic disinterest in cognitively disabled people. While accepting his critique of constructionism, I argue that Ferguson does not successfully explain the neglect of cognitively disabled within critical analyses with objectivist elements. In addition, he fails to fully acknowledge the significance of cognitively disabled people's powerlessness as a cause of their academic neglect. I go on to show how constructionist analyses of disability are variants of the constructionist approach to social problems, and I discuss the ways in which the academic neglect of extremely powerless groups has been handled by constructionist social problems theorists in recent years (Collins, 1989; Miller, 1993). I argue that their treatment is superficial because, despite appearances, it relies solely on a sociological, as opposed to an ethical, orientation to develop a response. I claim that the lack of interest of critical scientists in certain vulnerable groups, such as cognitively disabled people, is a product of the sociological orientation itself, or what I call the sociological sensibility, and of the engagement of this sensibility with the socially critical impulse. A central element of the sociological sensibility is the sense that academic relate to significant social-historical forces or processes, but cognitively disabled cannot constitute themselves as a social-historical force. A key component of the critical impulse is the desire to avoid a paternalistic relation to disadvantaged and oppressed subjects through an insistence that critical science elaborates the existing political speech of disadvantaged and oppressed subjects and does not simply speak for them, but cognitively disabled cannot speak for themselves. I do not attempt to destructively deconstruct the sociological sensibility. My aim is rather to identify and examine it, and to discuss some of its limitations. …

Finding Subjugated Knowledge: Personal Document Research

In the November 1992 issue of Social Work, Editor-in-Chief Ann Hartman called for the profession to search for subjugated She claimed that privileged scientific research methods had silenced the voices of disenfranchised, powerless groups in society by refusing to recognize their claim to legitimate knowledge, even of their own experiences. With the growing recognition that all knowledge is partial, limited, contextual, and political, many other voices have joined the chorus for change, predicting a qualitative research paradigm shift that would broaden the criteria for determining valid, reliable, and useful social work knowledge. This shift would bridge the gap between practitioners and researchers and allow clients a greater opportunity to be heard (Rodwell, 1987). However, some ethnic and cultural groups and even research traditions have difficulty having their views aired, much less having them accepted. Whether the predicted shift occurs or a new research configuration emerges depends not only on the ability to be heard, but also on the importance and relevance of the research produced. Unfortunately, as Karger (1983) pointed out, there is no qualitative method being vigorously advocated by the proponents of change to offset the institutionalized power of the quantitative methods now being taught in schools of social work. This article offers document research as a qualitative methodology that attempts to redress the imbalance of power between the client and the researcher by allowing both to have their say within the context of their own stated methodological concerns and assumptions. Using my own experience, I show the contributions document research can make to social work knowledge, practice, and values. Personal Document Research Bogdan and Taylor (I 975) defined documents as first-person account of the whole or a part of his or her life or an individual's reflection on a specific topic or event (p. 96) and can include autobiographies, diaries, letters, journals, oral histories, or other raw materials authored by a single person. Personal documents are different from other personalized documentary accounts such as biographies; case records; public letters; and cultural or collective records of groups, countries, or classes in their emphasis on first-person descriptions of individual experience and everyday life. These other records may be important secondary sources of personal, cultural, and historical information and useful for contrast and comparison, but they are not documents. In fact, much like the historian, the document researcher must actively search out, collect, categorize, and authenticate the various sources of and public disclosure. Personal documents can be solicited or unsolicited, limited or comprehensive, complete or edited. Personal documents can be of any length, from a single interview to multiple contacts of any duration. The documenter can be known or unknown to the researcher, a historical figure or an ordinary person, alive or dead. He or she can be selected randomly or chosen deliberately to represent a certain category, problem, or characteristic and can be the result of chance discovery or a volunteer. Even the idea of research can be planned or spontaneous, a product of a long negotiation or quick agreement. Despite the early promise of document research, the method was abandoned in the face of demands by society for fact-based solutions to social problems. Opting for scientific respectability and objectivity, statistics became the hard currency of social work researchers. Fortunately, recent challenges to the alleged hardness of social scientific facts and the appeals to the profession to reintroduce the client's voice into the knowledge-power equation have revitalized interest in document research (Holbrook, 1986). Much of the credit belongs to the feminist research perspective that recognized that the personal is political (Reinharz, 1992; Sands & Nuccio, 1992). …

From Race to Age: The Expanding Scope of Employment Discrimination Law

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) goes beyond the model of racial discrimination in prohibiting discrimination on a ground not recognized in the Constitution. As a consequence, the individuals protected by the ADEA differ sharply from those protected by earlier statutes such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. An examination of empirical data reveals that claims under the ADEA are brought predominantly by white males who hold relatively high-status and high-paying jobs. These claims mainly allege discriminatory discharge and result in recovery of money judgments several times higher than other claims of employment discrimination. As a whole, claims under the ADEA more closely resemble claims for wrongful discharge than other claims of employment discrimination. It follows that the ADEA cannot be justified, either doctrinally or empirically, because it protects a disfavored and relatively powerless minority group from discrimination.

Introduction

Introduction January 3, 1993, was the 200th birthday of Lucretia Mott. As its contribution to the bicentennial celebrations for one of its more famous founders, Swarthmore College hosted a two-day conference, March 1920 , on "Nineteenth-Century Feminist Strategies for Nonviolence." Wendy E. Chmielewski, Curator of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, chaired the organizing committee, with support from the Friends Historical Library and the Women's Studies Program. This issue oí Quaker History presents four papers from that conference of particular interest to Quaker historians. While the authors were not necessarily addressing the Quaker issues in their presentations, all have a direct Quaker connection. The conference planners chose the theme to stimulate scholarship on a major concern of Mott's that has received far less attention than either abolitionism or women's rights. It also reflected the direct connection in the nineteenth century between the women's rights and peace movements, both in ideology and in personnel. Three of the four papers in this issue deal with specific nineteenthcentury Quaker women leaders in themix ofradical reformmovements that included abolitionism, women's rights, peace, labor rights, and temperance . The work and experience of Elizabeth Pease (Nichol), abolitionist and feminist, invites many parallels to Lucretia Mott, although the two led very different personal lives. More than the other papers, Karen Halbersleben's account addresses the importance ofPease's Quaker background in shaping her reform impulses and her activism. Elizabeth Buffum Chace, an American contemporary ofMott and Pease, considered her childrearing practices a major expression of her radical political commitment. From the writings ofboth Chace and her daughter, Lillie Chace Wyman, Elizabeth C. Stevens extracts a portrait of a parent consciously socializing children into the culture of a radical cause. The only aspects of this portrait that clearly differentiate it from radical parenting ofthe 1960s and 1970s are the specific cause (abolitionism) and the presumption that childrearing is the exclusive realm of the mother. Modern radicalparents may find it comforting that Lillie Chace Wyman not only grew up to share her mother's ideals but recalled with great fondness a childhood spent in the heart of a radical movement, though she never achieved the leadership status ofher mother. Agemate of daughter Lillie, Hannah Johnston Bailey faced the same dilemma ofreaching adulthoodjust as the Civil warbrought the abolitionist cause to a climax and gave pacifism its greatest nineteenth-century challenge . This generation of women activists had not only to resolve the conflict between ends and means but also to find a new outlet for their reformist enthusiasm. Wyman spent much ofher adult life memorializing 2 Quaker History the activities of her mother and other antebellum women abolitionists. In hermajor life work, Hannah Bailey represented an aspectofthe nineteenthcentury reform alliance least familiar to modern radicals (temperance), heading the department ofpeace and arbitration ofthe Women's Christian Temperance Union from its establishment in 1 883 to 1916. In thatposition, Bailey became perhaps the most prolific publicist for pacifist causes in the period before World War I. Like Chace, she was especially eager to mold the minds ofchildren, not only through literature but also through seeking to eliminate militaristic toys and activities. Lori S. Ginzberg's paper on radical feminists in the antebellum nonresistance movement has the least overt Quaker content, although Lucretia Mott is the name that arises most frequently. Ginzberg does not give a narrative of the movement's story but rather an analysis of the issues confronting "ultraist" women, issues that shaped the lives described in the other papers. Almost all of the women reformers accepted the nineteenthcentury ideology of woman's moral superiority and natural proclivity towards peace, with Mott as a notable exception. Is there any basis inreality for this assumption, and if so, can we hold men accountable to the same standards of moral behavior? Do traditional female nurturing roles give women a special interest in peace? Would the "feminization of power" automatically lead to peace or simply substitute one tyranny for another? Is moral authority an effective substitute for power? At what point do reform movements operating through oppressive, violent institutional structures imply support for those structures? Can a relatively powerless group exert more influence through separatist or integrationist tactics...

Effects on Navajo birthrate from loss of the intrauterine device.

The concerns of relatively powerless groups may not be adequately addressed by health-care decisions based on market forces and on considerations of the general population. Calculations of the number of Navajo women at risk of unintended pregnancy suggest that several hundred such pregnancies would have occurred as a result of the withdrawal of intrauterine devices from the United States' market. Analysis of birthrate data confirms this estimate: approximately four to five percent of Navajo births in 1988 may have been due to this market withdrawal. Available data are limited in their ability to assess impacts on small groups of health-policy decisions made for the population as a whole. A mechanism for surveilling such effects needs to be established to protect the interests of such groups, particularly when they have restricted alternatives.

Paediatric pain--concepts for caring.

Caring for the health of children is a relatively modern concept. Furthermore, recognition of children's need for relief from pain is only just beginning to emerge and remains a subject of controversy. Sadly, in the past, children's pain was viewed as a diagnostic aid rather than an entity in its own right. This paper outlines historical perspectives which contributed, not only to the slow evolution of paediatric nursing, but in particular, to recognition of children's pain as an entity. Furthermore, it emphasizes the importance of a sound understanding of children's developmental stages as fundamental to accurate assessment of children's special needs which can only be determined through effective communication. Fundamentally, as children remain a somewhat voiceless, powerless minority group, health professionals are challenged not only to provide care, but to ensure that the care they give is indeed meeting the unique needs of each and every individual child.

Participatory management in large irrigation systems: Issues for consideration

The inclusion of farmers in the decision-making process of management of irrigation systems is now accepted as necessary to increase productivity and income among the poor in the Third World. Hence, farmer participation is not simply a call for empowerment and mobilization of a hitherto powerless group but, more fundamentally, a development strategy. The author evaluates the experience of participatory management in Sri Lanka and arrives at general conclusions, taking into account the size and complexity of the irrigation system, objectives, and capacity of agencies and farmers for participatory management as key aspects in a sustainable development strategy.

Woman as high priest: A kabbalistic prayer in yiddish for lighting Sabbath candles

The absence of women from Jewish mystical movements presents an enduring puzzle for the historian of religions. How is it that women have played such important roles in Christian and Islamic mysticism, yet so negligible a part in Jewish mysticism? 1 The problem is both social and theological. In sociological terms, women and members of other relatively powerless groups are often participants in ecstatic and mystical movements. Sociologists of religion have speculated that temporal powerlessness has led women to seek spiritual power. 2 Yet the social organization of Jewish mystical circles seems to have made no room for women. A mysticism of the learned, kabbalah requires a knowledge of languages and texts that simply was not made available to most women. 3 Indeed, only a small number of men acquired such knowledge. Most kabbalists were members of an esoteric elite that excluded both men and women. However, the Lurianic revival, Sabbatian messianism, and Hasidism all possessed more of a mass character. Did they also provide opportunities for women to participate, or allow women to assume religious leadership? 4

Women in the Greek Resistance: National Crisis and Political Transformation

In a 1982 review article, Theda Skocpol asks the question, “What makes peasants revolutionary?” She analyzes the conclusions of authors who endeavor to explain what leads peasants—a stereotypically powerless group—to engage in collective action that challenges the economic or political status quo. The above example suggests a useful paraphrase of the question: was Stathoula's case exceptional, and if not, what made a Greek working-class woman during the 1940s revolutionary?

TVA's Old and New Grass Roots

Philip Selznick's examination of cooptation reinterpreted the idealized reputation of TVA's grassroots administration as the ordinary pursuit of organizational needs. This article examines cooptation in TVA since Selznick's study including a new round of cooptation related to reforms beginning in 1977. This later look at cooptation shows it to be a changing balance of coopted groups, an agency's leadership, and an agency's political environment. This dynamic concept emphasizes cooptation as a changing process of participation and representation rather than a stable, enduring outcome of bureaucratic process. This is consistent with Selznick's conclusion, although the history of coopted groups makes clearer that the principal function of cooptation, for the agency and the coopted groups, is to legitimate an agency's leadership. In addition, this history suggests two important caveats to Selznick's findings. First, coopted groups, under certain conditions, may acquire real power over an agency; second, cooptation may be a satisfactory and effective form of participation at times for some relatively powerless groups.

Race, gender, and jobs

In his influential indictment of the Great Society, Charles Murray focused upon young black males being unemployed as the result of government programs. He is correct in stating that the employment problems of young black males have worsened since 1965 but wrong in asserting that older black males and white males had no employment problems. Labor force participation for all males has dropped since 1965. The employment problems of young black males resulted from sweeping changes in the job market and, secondarily, the revolution in female employment. Blue-collar jobs and full-time jobs are a smaller portion of the job market, while white collar and part-time jobs have increased substantially. Women have obtained a far higher proportion of all jobs than ever before, and sometimes in occupational categories dominated by males. Both the restructured job market and the competition of men and women for jobs, issues ignored by, Murray, raise painful policy dilemmas. To what extent should a politically powerless group like young black males be directly assisted in their employment struggles? To what extent should they be encouraged to migrate or secure further education? To what extent should women's employment be publicly supported through programs such as day care?

National problems, local solutions: comprehensive services for pregnant and parenting adolescents.

This study identifies a number of factors associated with the successful development and maintenance of local comprehensive adolescent pregnancy programs in the US. The comprehensive programs were located in communities with relatively well-developed social welfare infrastructures. They received basic state support and were able to tap a wide variety of federal, state, and local resources. These comprehensive programs were managed by skillful administrators and drew upon a broad range of leadership talents. Only a minority of exceptional communities possess the essential prerequisites. Within states, grant mechanisms favor those few localities that can put together the winning proposal or that have the organizational capacity to draw on a variety of funding sources. They are not always the communities with the greatest need. Within communities, even the most comprehensive programs served only a small proportion of the potential clientele. They reflected a brief crisis intervention orientation to a problem that is complex and long-lasting in its origin and consequences. National evaluations and comprehensive programs have found that their benefits are limited and short-lived. The study further demonstrates the political vulnerability of local services for stigmatized and powerless groups in the absence of a strong national mandate. Service providers kept a low profile to avoid the attention of potential opponents. A national strategy based on the sponsorship of a limited number of demonstration projects and the dissemination of information about exceptional, exemplary programs is unlikely to accomplish very much. The evidence suggests that the lack of a national policy commitment to pregnancy prevention contributes to the high rate of adolescent pregnancies.

Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers in the United States: A Review of Health Hazards, Status, and Policy

Although the occupation and associated living conditions of migrant and seasonal agricultural workers in the US pose exceptional health hazards to the workers and their dependents, relatively few occupational health professionals have been involved with this group. This articles examines the basis for this neglect and proposes a definition of the population that should be considered in farmworker health policy. It then reviews existing evidence regarding hazards of 4 major occupational exposures--pesticides, the sun, injuries, and poor field sanitation--and policies that have been developed to address these hazards. The extremely negative health consequences of farmworker living conditions, which are indirect occupational hazards, are also summarized. Numerous policy, planning, and research recommendations are made. Adequate solutions for this impoverished and powerless group, however, will require significant sociopolitical advances, such as are developing with unionization and other forms of political organization.

Students, Higher Education and Social Change

This paper discusses changes since the 1960s in the social composition, academic orientation and political behaviour of students in higher education. Its focus is mainly on the United Kingdom, but not exclusively so and its concern is with universities, although not entirely. The central theme which is developed is that how students behave is something directly linked to the changing social functions of higher education, to shifts in the pattern of graduate employment opportunities and to changes in the social basis of recruitment into higher education. These are all interconnected changes and themselves part of yet more profound changes in the structure of the advanced capitalist societies themselves. The broad claim I make is this: that the massive growth which took place in the years since 1960 in the numbers of students in higher education did alter the social composition of the student body but not in ways many people at the time imagined. Neither some of the worst fears- that more students would lead to a deterioration in their quality-or the highest hopes, particularly the essentially liberal hope that growth in numbers would bring in its tow radical changes in the social composition of the student body, have been realised. New inequalities of educational opportunity have emerged. And widening opportunities for young people to enter into higher education and express themselves have, but for what now in retrospect can be seen as an unusual few years in the late 1960s, actually limited what they have expressed. Students have, in general, become more conservative and instrumental in their attitudes to their studies, much more muted in their political expression and much less likely, to use a Weberian term, to 'societalise' the political issues and causes-of which there are many-which they still take up. In this respect they have recovered the political role they always had before the period when student radicalism was a phenomenon of any significance. It must, of course, always be a matter of interpretation, but students in the 1980s are much more likely to adopt a pragmatic attitude to politics and to acknowledge that with respect to the great issues of the day they are a relatively powerless group. Some of these views are reinforced by what has happened over the past ten years in terms of public support for higher education. The academic community itself has failed to withstand government pressure to check its growth, cut it back and define for it a role which is narrower, more socially exclusive and under tighter central control. It is this which explains the mood of fatalism so easily detected in British higher education, a mood which students themselves have absorbed and one which severely limits the ability of higher education to conceive of a different future for itself to that which cost-cutting governments will inflict on it.

BALANCING AUTONOMY AND CAPACITY IN COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS: THE DILEMMA OF OFFICIAL RECOGNITION AND SUPPORT FOR NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATIONS

Community organization helps relatively powerless groups improve their political bargaining position by increasing the stability. persistence, and standing of the group… But… community organizations of relatively powerless groups remain constrained by their need to secure resources and develop incentives to attract constituents. For the most part, those may be acquired only through interactions requiring compromises of group independence and goals.

Material for learning and acting: Video and social change

AbstractWhen powerless groups create materials for their own learning, they may learn to create their own history and thus challenge those who oppress them.

From Scientific Social Science to Responsible Research: the Lesson of the Finnish Gypsies

'Scientific sociology'. as defined by a Western, middle-class, white community of scientists, is Increasingly unacceptable to ethnic and national minorities and to other powerless groups Does this indicate that sociologists and anthropologists are being forced to rethink their position, and possibly to redefine some long-accepted premises from which they have operated? A possible direction for future social science is a change of focus away from the victims of social systems and towards the system itself, the powerful, the oppressors.