Recent Social Science Literature Research Articles

Ageing without senescence: A critical absence in social gerontology?

This paper addresses the absence of the term ‘senescence’ in recent social science literature on ageing. The significance of this omission is considered in light of the emerging standpoint of gero-science, which argues that the central processes defining ageing are concerned with the rising probability of functional decline, development of degenerative disease and death. From this perspective, the separation of ageing and senescence sustains the myth that there exist forms of ageing that are exempt from senescence. The persistence of this myth underlies ageing studies, the sociology of later life and most social gerontology. While there have been undoubted benefits arising from this bracketing out of senescence, the argument of this paper is that the continuing advances associated with this standpoint are outweighed by the need to seriously engage with the consequences of contemporary societal ageing and the centrality of the processes of senescence in establishing an adequate understanding of ageing, its correlates and contingencies and its personal and social consequences.

Religion in Economic History: A Survey

This chapter surveys the recent social science literature on religion in economic history, covering both socioeconomic causes and consequences of religion. Following the rapidly growing literature, it focuses on the three main monotheisms—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—and on the period up to WWII. Works on Judaism address Jewish occupational specialization, human capital, emancipation, and the causes and consequences of Jewish persecution. One set of papers on Christianity studies the role of the Catholic Church in European economic history since the medieval period. Taking advantage of newly digitized data and advanced econometric techniques, the voluminous literature on the Protestant Reformation studies its socioeconomic causes as well as its consequences for human capital, secularization, political change, technology diffusion, and social outcomes. Works on missionaries show that early access to Christian missions still has political, educational, and economic consequences in present-day Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Much of the economics of Islam focuses on the role that Islam and Islamic institutions played in political-economy outcomes and in the “long divergence” between the Middle East and Western Europe. Finally, cross-country analyses seek to understand the broader determinants of religious practice and its various effects across the world. We highlight three general insights that emerge from this literature. First, the monotheistic character of the Abrahamic religions facilitated a close historical interconnection of religion with political power and conflict. Second, human capital often played a leading role in the interconnection between religion and economic history. Third, many socioeconomic factors matter in the historical development of religions.

Religion in Economic History: A Survey

This chapter surveys the recent social science literature on religion in economic history, covering both socioeconomic causes and consequences of religion. Following the rapidly growing literature, it focuses on the three main monotheisms-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-and on the period up to WWII. Works on Judaism address Jewish occupational specialization, human capital, emancipation, and the causes and consequences of Jewish persecution. One set of papers on Christianity studies the role of the Catholic Church in European economic history since the medieval period. Taking advantage of newly digitized data and advanced econometric techniques, the voluminous literature on the Protestant Reformation studies its socioeconomic causes as well as its consequences for human capital, secularization, political change, technology diffusion, and social outcomes. Works on missionaries show that early access to Christian missions still has political, educational, and economic consequences in present-day Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Much of the economics of Islam focuses on the role that Islam and Islamic institutions played in political-economy outcomes and in the long divergence between the Middle East and Western Europe. Finally, cross-country analyses seek to understand the broader determinants of religious practice and its various effects across the world. We highlight three general insights that emerge from this literature. First, the monotheistic character of the Abrahamic religions facilitated a close historical interconnection of religion with political power and conflict. Second, human capital often played a leading role in the interconnection between religion and economic history. Third, many socioeconomic factors matter in the historical development of religions.

Analyzing Partially Correlated Longitudinal Data in Community Survey Research

ABSTRACTCommunity surveys have been widely used to investigate local residents’ perceptions and behaviors related to natural resource issues. However, most existing community survey research relies on cross-sectional data and is thus unable to capture the temporal dynamics of community processes. Longitudinal analysis has received increasing interest in recent natural resource social science literature. Trend and panel studies are two typical approaches in longitudinal community survey research. Due to limited sampling frames, research design, and respondent attrition, longitudinal community surveys often involve both paired and independent observations across different survey waves. Using previous survey data on community responses to forest insect disturbance in Alaska as an example, this research note shows that the corrected z-test is a more appropriate approach to analyze partially correlated longitudinal data than conventional statistical techniques such as the paired and independent t-tests.

Identity, politics, and public policy

ABSTRACTAlthough much has been written about ‘identity politics’ in the narrow sense of the term, students of politics and public policy can take a more systematic look at the connection between identity and politics, as related to public policy. This essay shows that, by putting identity at the center of their analysis of politics and public policy, scholars can gain powerful insight about both explanation and policy prescription. In other words, how actors understand themselves and are seen by others are key aspects of political and policy analysis and they each deserve a systematic and interdisciplinary treatment. The essay suggests this by drawing on recent social science literature, such as identity economics, to explore the relevance of the connection between identity and politics for policy research across different policy areas and regions of the world. Because several of these literatures are seldom discussed together, this essay offers a particularly broad and multi-faceted identity perspective for the analysis of politics and public policy.

Marking and Making Differences: Representational Diversity in the U.S. Southwest

AbstractDiversity is generally valued, although it sometimes contributes to difficult social situations, as is recognized in recent social science literature. Archaeology can provide insights into how diverse social situations play out over the long term. There are many kinds of diversities, and we propose representational diversity as a distinct category. Representational diversity specifically concerns how and whether differences are marked or masked materially. We investigate several archaeological sequences in the U.S. Southwest. Each began with the coming together of populations that created situations of unprecedented social diversity; some resulted in conflict, others in long-term stability. We trace how representational diversity changed through these sequences. Specifically, we review the transregional Kayenta migration to the southern Southwest and focus empirical analyses on regional processes in the Cibola region and on painted ceramics. Results show that, initially, representational diversity increased above and beyond that caused by the combination of previously separate traditions as people marked their differences. Subsequently, in some instances, the diversity was replaced by widespread homogeneity as the differences were masked and mitigated. Although the social causes and effects of diversity are many and varied, long-term stability and persistence is associated with tolerance of a range of diversities.

Concepts of Asia, the West and the Self in ContemporaryIndonesia

This paper explores the imaginations of Asia, the West and various self-conceptsin contemporary, post-Reformasi Indonesia. Departing from aproblematization of the underlying concepts in recent social science literature,the author asks how Indonesians construct their moral order and their sense ofSelf, ‘Asia’ or ‘the East’ by constructing a Westerncounterpart. This question is traced with respect to various religious andspiritual orientations and to Indonesian popular culture. Finally, relocatedorientations towards other imagined centres in the Global South and East areconsidered as potential indicators of an increasingly decentred world. The studyis grounded in empirical fieldwork with people from various walks of life indifferent regions of Indonesia.

Constructing “Social Architecture”: The Politics of Representing Practice

In the context of ongoing economic and environmental crises, “social architecture” has gained traction as a description of those practices that seek to challenge the dominant professional model of capital-intensive, client-dependent architectural production. Approaching “social architecture” as a representation that contains crucial assumptions both about mainstream architectural practice and disparate strategies for its rejection, this paper draws on recent critical social science literature to analyse fieldwork with the Rural Studio, a design-build program in Alabama, USA. Exploring different understandings of “social architecture”—including as expressed by students, teachers, clients and community members—we suggest that the category is, in practice contexts, replete with tensions, rejections and uncertainties; coherence of intention or outcome can certainly not be assumed when architects attempt to deal with contradictions and crises emerging from other parts of capitalist society.

The Russian Middle Class as Policy Objective

The subject of the Russian middle class has engaged the attention of scholars and policymakers inside and outside Russia. Debate over how the middle class should be defined and measured has been contentious. This article examines recent Russian social science literature on trends in the development of the middle class since the end of communism, considers problems in defining and measuring the size of the middle class, describes the role assigned to it by the Russian leadership, and looks at factors inhibiting the growth of the middle class.

Interpretive accounting research

Recent accounting research has begun to utilise resources from the art of interpretation as developed in the recent social science literature. This area of research is gaining prominence, taking th...

The Idea of Power and the Role of Ideas

Since the mid-1970s, the social science debate over the meaning of the idea of power has intensified. Offering a critical discussion of the work of Steven Lukes, this brief article puts forward an amended definition of political power before exploring the relationship between ideas, interests and power relations. Drawing on the recent social science literature on the role of ideas in politics, the article suggests that, among other things, ideational processes help actors make sense of their perceived interests. As argued, this recognition of the power of ideas sheds new light on the idea of political power. Finally, following Craig Parsons, the article discusses the relationship between four types of explanatory factor in political analysis: structural, institutional, ideational and psychological.

National Biobanks: Clinical Labor, Risk Production, and the Creation of Biovalue

The development of genomics has dramatically expanded the scope of genetic research, and collections of genetic biosamples have proliferated in countries with active genomics research programs. In this essay, we consider a particular kind of collection, national biobanks. National biobanks are often presented by advocates as an economic "resource" that will be used by both basic researchers and academic biologists, as well as by pharmaceutical diagnostic and clinical genomics companies. Although national biobanks have been the subject of intense interest in recent social science literature, most prior work on this topic focuses either on bioethical issues related to biobanks, such as the question of informed consent, or on the possibilities for scientific citizenship that they make possible. We emphasize, by contrast, the economic aspect of biobanks, focusing specifically on the way in which national biobanks create biovalue. Our emphasis on the economic aspect of biobanks allows us to recognize the importance of what we call clinical labor-that is, the regularized, embodied work that members of the national population are expected to perform in their role as biobank participants-in the creation of biovalue through biobanks. Moreover, it allows us to understand how the technical way in which national biobanks link clinical labor to databases alters both medical and popular understandings of risk for common diseases and conditions.

The AIDS Epidemic: Challenges for Feminist Economics

Feminist economics can provide critical insights into understanding the HIV/AIDS epidemic – the disease's progression, its microeconomic and macroeconomic impacts, and the effectiveness of policy interventions. Yet, relatively little work has been or is being done by feminist economists on HIV/AIDS. In this paper, the editors briefly survey the recent social science literature on the gendered nature of the epidemic and identify key constructs of feminist economic theory that might be productively applied to understanding HIV/AIDS. For example, an analysis of safe sex within a game-theoretic bargaining framework would highlight the limitations of prevention efforts that focus on changing individual behavior and underscore the impact of gendered institutions on women's likelihood of infection and access to treatment. A gendered analysis of the microeconomic and macroeconomic impacts of HIV/AIDS would contribute to a fuller understanding of the disease's impact on economic well-being. This paper challenges feminist economists to address these important research questions.

Growth Mixture Modeling: Application to Reading Achievement Data From a Large-Scale Assessment

Increasing attention has been paid to growth mixture modeling (GMM) in recent social and behavioral science literature. However, the use of this methodology in educational research is still in its infancy. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate an application of GMM to longitudinal educational data from large-scale reading tests.

Agency Based Community Building in Low Income Neighborhoods

ABSTRACT The decline of community is a significant strain in recent social science literature. The concept of social capital has been used to describe the weakened state of communal structure. The most intense expressions of such decline have been experienced in poor communities. Relatively little attention however, has been paid to the difficult task of social capital formation or rebuilding community. This paper attempts to address that imbalance. It develops a very preliminary praxis framework for community building and locates such practice work within non-profit social service agencies. The framework was constructed from the practice literature and represents a first step in developing a wholistic approach to agency based community building. Critically, the paper also underscores a number of the dilemmas associated with implementing such a framework.

Toward Spatially Integrated Social Science

This article outlines the motivation for a spatial approach as a novel focus for cross-disciplinary interaction and research in the social and behavioral sciences. The authors review the emerging interest in space and place in the recent social science literature and develop a vision for a spatially integrated social science. This vision provides the conceptual basis for a program of six activities designed to promote a spatial perspective: learning resources, workshops, best-practice examples, place-based search, software tools, and a virtual community. The six programs will be informed by advances in the methods, technologies, and principles underlying spatial information science.

Editor's Introduction

Like so much of the recent social science literature, Soviet discussions of migration processes provide abundant evidence of the serious problems confronting Soviet society. The lead article in our current issue, by L. L. Rybakovskii and N. V. Tarasova ("Migration Processes in the USSR: New Phenomena") focuses on two particularly troubling aspects of recent population movements. The first of these concerns the markedly differing quality of population outflows and inflows in recent years. The authors characterize the outflow as a "brain drain" since it includes substantial numbers of skilled technical personnel and representatives of the creative intelligentsia (the article provides data on the ethnic groups involved and the countries to which they have emigrated). The population inflow, on the other hand, although obviously quite small, has included mainly unskilled laborers from Vietnam and North Korea. Such international migration flows have clearly contributed to "a deterioration in the labor potential of the country." The other problem discussed in some detail by the authors concerns the connection between domestic migration processes and the recent rise in interethnic tensions—what the authors characterize as "the problem of [domestic—M.Y.] refugees." This involves not only involuntary population movements associated with open and sometimes bloody groups conflicts (among, for example, Armenians and Azerbaidzhanians), but also the ouflow of Slavic nationalities from the country's southern republics, a process that the authors anticipate will soon characterize the Baltic republics. Soviet migration processes in many of the republics are now affected by the latter's attempts to move toward a "monoethnic population." This article is particularly valuable for its abundant empirical documentation.

Stars are not Born: An Interpretive Approach to the Politics of Disability

ABSTRACT The politics of disability are usually interpreted as attempts to influence government policy in the direction of reducing the negative effects of impairment. This paper enlarges that conventional notion to include attention to how the disabled subject is produced by the discursive practices within which disability is administered. A summary of epistemological perspectives represented by contemporary social thought dealing with disability opens the discussion. Foucault's work is presented as the basis for interpreting recent social science literature on disability from a viewpoint which is sensitive to variations in epistemological presuppositions in that literature and to the political implications of each mode of research for the administration and treatment of disability. A concluding section contains speculation on forms of political action which are relevant to the politics of disability at the constitutive level.

Comment on Krieger's "Lesbian Identity and Community: Recent Social Science Literature"

Comment on Krieger's "Lesbian Identity and Community: Recent Social Science Literature"

Comment on Krieger's "Lesbian Identity and Community: Recent Social Science Literature"

Previous articleNext article No AccessLetters/CommentsComment on Krieger's "Lesbian Identity and Community: Recent Social Science Literature"Chela SandovalChela Sandoval Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Signs Volume 9, Number 4Summer, 1984The Lesbian Issue Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/494101 Views: 4Total views on this site Citations: 30Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1984 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: Introduction, (Nov 2022): 1–31.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478023784-001 From Rosa Luxemburg to the Combahee River Collective, (Nov 2022): 33–66.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478023784-002 Women of Color Feminism and Politico-Ethical Coalition Politics, (Nov 2022): 67–105.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478023784-003 Coalition from the Inside Out, (Nov 2022): 106–149.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478023784-004 Writing Feminist Theory, Doing Feminist Politics, (Nov 2022): 150–188.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478023784-005Satoshi Toyosaki Toward De/Postcolonial Autoethnography: Critical Relationality With the Academic Second Persona, Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 18, no.11 (Oct 2017): 32–42.https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708617735133Jenny Lo, Theresa Healy Flagrantly Flaunting It?, Journal of Lesbian Studies 4, no.11 (Oct 2008): 29–44.https://doi.org/10.1300/J155v04n01_03 From the Appendix to Mother Camp, (Jan 2000): 11–13.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-002 Role Models (1972), (Jan 2000): 14–29.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-003 Preface to the Phoenix Edition of Mother Camp (1979), (Jan 2000): 30–33.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-004 Theater, (Jan 2000): 34–62.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-005 Dick(less) Tracy and the Homecoming Queen, (Jan 2000): 63–89.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-006 High School Crack-Up (1973), (Jan 2000): 93–102.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-007 Marginal Woman/Marginal Academic (1973), (Jan 2000): 103–112.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-008 The Personal Is Political, (Jan 2000): 113–141.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-009 Excerpt from Womenfriends with Shirley Walton , 1976, (Jan 2000): 142–154.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-010 Will the Real Lesbian Community Please Stand Up? 1982/1998, (Jan 2000): 155–164.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-011 The Misunderstanding, (Jan 2000): 167–175.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-012 The Mythic Mannish Lesbian, (Jan 2000): 176–188.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-013 Beyond Freud, Ken, and Barbie (1986), (Jan 2000): 189–194.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-014 My Butch Career, (Jan 2000): 195–212.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-015 DMS, (Jan 2000): 215–218.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-016 Too Queer for College, (Jan 2000): 219–224.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-017 An Open Letter to “Manda Cesara” (1984), (Jan 2000): 225–228.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-018 Of Yams, Grinders, and Gays, (Jan 2000): 229–237.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-019 Lesbian and Gay Issues in Anthropology, (Jan 2000): 238–242.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-020 My Best Informant’s Dress, (Jan 2000): 243–257.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-021 Notes, (Jan 2000): 259–291.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-022 Bibliography, (Jan 2000): 293–309.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381341-023Katie King Audre Lorde's lacquered layerings: The lesbian bar as a site of literary production, Cultural Studies 2, no.33 (Oct 1988): 321–342.https://doi.org/10.1080/09502388800490211