From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sat Apr 1 08:59:51 1995 From: j_young@VENUS.TWU.EDU Date: Sat, 01 Apr 1995 09:04:32 CST To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Subject: Postmodern Phenomenology Philosophy doesn't get a lot of attention in social science grad schools around the country...the presumption is that most such questions have been settled long ago and that all which is now necessary is to teach the grad student about the assumptions of a modern philosophy of science and go on to validate hypotheses and build theory. Not so in postmodern philosophy of science. In this mini-lecture, I'll try to lay out the problematics of the knowledge process as they bend around the questions in phenomenology. Then I will follow up this lecture with another on 'Foundations of Postmodern Philosophy of Science' based upon findings from the new sciences of Chaos and Complexity. A. The Structure of Philosophy. When I took a course in modern philosophy at UMich, philosophy was divided into five parts: 1. Metaphysics comes out of a book by Aristotle and deals with the nature of reality. Aristotle took metaphysics as the body of knowledge about matters more general than any one given body of substantive knowledge. The nature of causality, actuality, teleology and other questions which transcend physics, biology chemistry, psychology and sociology would now be included. 2. Epistemology deals with how is it we know what we know; what can we know with any assurance; how do we obtain reliable and valid knowledge. There are two approaches: empiricism which says that knowledge must mirror 'that which really exists' and rationalism which says that knowledge statements must be coherently connected to one another such that aristotlean logic helps one discover truth. As we shall see, much mischief lurks in the conflation between the two. 3. Ethics deals with that which is good and that which is the right thing to do. The word, 'ethics' means custom or useage. The word, 'moralis' was the Latin translation by Cicero of the word 'ethikos' used by Aristotle. Modern science severed ethics from the knowledge process under the assumption, rightly, that one could not derive a statement about what is good to do by from a statement about what is true. In postmodern phil/sci ethics comes back into the knowledge process since, as we shall see, reality is so complex and so inter-connected that the choice of what to study becomes a political act in which ideas of what is good to know are informed by what is good to do. 4. Aesthetics deals with that which is beautiful and universally appealing to the senses. [You can see the word buried in the term, 'anaesthesia].' Much of modern science builds a theory aesthetics from the perfection of the circle, square, pyramid, and other euclidean forms...as we shall see, Nature don't work that way...not in non-linear dynamics. This means that one cannot build a theory of elegant architecture, painting, poetry or music on symmetry, regularity, precision, uniformity or other neat and tidy terms so much beloved of modernists. Those who have seen 'The Dead Poets Society' will remember that the first thing Robin Williams did in his poetry class was to have the students tear out the first page which said that one could judge great poetry by charting it in terms of both the signif- icance of the topic and the universality of its message. As it turns out, postmodern models of truth ain't all that neat nor are they universal; not in social science. 5. Logic is the fifth part of modern philosophy. It offers a treat- ment of valid reasoning. Aristotle thought that logic was a basic knowledge tool. There are two forms of logic: deductive and inductive. The first starts with absolutely true premises and yeilds absolutely true inferences. The second starts with empirical observations [which may be less than certain] and yeilds less than certain truth claims. As it turns out, both forms of logic exclude statements which may be both empirically observable and, at the same time, contradictory. The new sciences of chaos and complexity demote the use of logic and linear math as epistemological tools. Small changes in a given set of variables can, and often do, produce contrary findings since a small change in one key variable can reverse a causal field or produce an entirely new 'basin' of outcomes. B. Noumena and Phenomena. 1. For most of the history of the knowledge process, there was a division between that which existed and that which 'appeared' to exist. In the time of Plato; what we now take to be reality was viewed as a pale reflection of ulimate reality...i.e., that which existed in the mind of God: perfect, eternal, and coher- ent. Kant reversed the concept to use the term noumena to refer to that which really existed in this world and used the term, 'phenomena' to refer to that which we thought existed. You will note that, in modern science, there is no other, prior world of the supernatural which gives pattern and takes prece- dence over the truth claims of this world. 2. In the most extreme versions of postmodern critique, all is phen= nomena. All is text. All is simularcra for which an original does not exist. There are no structures of class, race, gender or good and evil. These are, variously, texts written by people with a political agenda. People are supposed to take these structures as valid 'representations' of that which actually exists. 3. In the Enlightenment version of governance, rationality is embedded in the knowledge process; enlightened governments are supposed to turn to scientists who will advise them of both natural and social laws which, in enlightened statesmen, will inform social policy. Fascism and much in the way of liberal and conservative politics assume either social, natural or Natural Law to which all enlightened persons must conform or, if not, be inscribed with enough pain [Foucault] such that they begin to listen to reason. Those of you who have seen 'The Madness of King George' will have seen the authority of the Doctor supersede that of the King. The doctor used enough force and pain to condition George to behave himself in ways congenial to the kingly estate. In all this, one can see Comte, Keynes, Marx and anyone else who thinks that universal laws exist which must be used to pattern and shape human behavior. To Marx' credit, he argued that social laws were historically grounded and could be changed by changing the political economy. C. Phenomenology. P. is the bridge between metaphysics [that which really exists] and epistemology [the techniques by which we gain knowledge of that which really exists. I will lay out for you the major points which, in my opinion, leads to a postmodern phenomenology. In so doing we will collect Hume, Hegel, Husserl and go on to Mandelbrot and the very messy, fuzzy, enfolded world of non-euclidean structures and non- linear dynamics. 1. David Hume: 1711-1776 [easy to remember his life span]. Hume is very important to a postmodern philosophy of science. In his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, he made three points of interest: a. Simple impressions yeild simple ideas b. Impressions are said to arise from the external world ...but we cannot prove this to be true. c. We experience a succession of impressions, ideas, and emotions but we do not experience the unifying framework which gives them a name or a meaning. In all this is found the grounds for a radical phenomenology. We shall see that both Hegel and Husserl posit natural categories which pre- exist human consciousness and human socialization to 'that which really exists.' 2. G.W.F. Hegel: 1770-1831. In his Phenomenology of the Mind, Hegel posited some 272 natural categories of being and knowing. They cascaded from the abstract to the concrete and covered all that existed and all the disciplines of knowledge. There is a dialectic of becoming which begins with Being. Being creates/implies Nothing. Nothing and Being combine to produce new Being. Kind of a silly idea but a lot of people believe it. The short version is that 'A' implies 'Not-A'; 'Not-A' forces one to rethink/re-invent 'A.' Out of this dialectic, new 'A's emerge all the time. There is a necessity and a direction to this which bothers postmodernists greatly. God exists; God is rational; Becoming moves from imperfect embodiments and imperfect knowledges to perfect. Nice ending. Teilhard de Chardin will take this model and, later on, say that God is realized in the world as the knowledge process improves toward perfection. Great comfort to those who produce knowledge but small comfort to those who have to conform to ideas of that which is said to be perfect in the way of social organizations: law, religion, family, gender, class or other 'perfected' social forms. As I have said, women, minorities, third world people, other- gendered folks, and the french post-modernists join with critical theorists, cultural marxists, as well as those who work out of a social constructionist view of society and social problemss to question the idea that such natural categories exist. 3. Edmund Husserl: 1859-1938 is given great credit as the founder of modern phenomenology. He gave it a name and an agenda. The agenda was to distill every concept until only the 'essence' was left...he called those essences, 'eidos' from the Greek, meaning form or shape. In Husserl's method, one 'brackets' all the un-essential parts of a thing until one has reached it's essence. This is called 'eidetic reduction.' Look at the cup on your desk. Discard all that is not really a part of 'cupness.' My cup is ceramic but ceramic is not a significant portion of cupness. My cup had a handle but cups can be cups without a handle...japanese tea-cups don't have handles. My cup is beige and brown but cups can be any color or have none at all. My cup is about 8 oz. but cups can be bigger or much smaller...is there ever a point at which a cup becomes too big or too small to be a cup....No! Size is not the essence of cupness...keep on going until you get to the real, irreducible eidos of cupness then tell me what you have. D. Postmodern Phenomenology. I will return to give a bit more detail to the idea...in the meantime, there are a couple papers you can have on the topic. Give me a snailmail address and I'll mail you a disk full of pomo phil/sci if that is where you live. 1. I want to help build an affirmative postmodern philosophy of know- ledge which retains the possibility of fairly good data and fairly adequate statements about how society works and how it can be made to be more congenial to the human condition. 2. I accept most of the postmodern critique of the modernist knowledge process but I claim that the structures and dynamics of social activity do not fit nor follow the linear logic of modern science so much of the postmodern critique of structure is moot. 3. Findings from Chaos theory and from Complexity Theory inform us that the world is very complex and may...or may not be interconnected. In its complexity, the data base from which to extract knowledge statements is so vast that personal choice and cultural concerns have great leeway in looking at it and in extracting from that data base just the kind of 'truth' statements which are needful to social purpose. Given very complex data bases, any number of findings are possible; some of which are contradictory. Indeed, replicability and falsifiability, the twin guns of modernist phil/sci are lost to the knowledge process in complex social dynamics. Thus, poverty may be correlated with crime in at some levels of inequality but not at other levels of inequality. Joblessness may predict on to crime in societies with some low level programs of re-distribution but a small increase in unemployment benefits may produce a large drop in property crime. Reverses come with small changes in one of the same set of variables; not with the introduction of a new variable as is required in modern science. Lots to learn; lots to mull over and lots to do to up-date the knowledge process to take advantage of these new bodies of knowledge. 4. If our purpose is sure and certain knowledge about genetics, about metals, about chemical reactions, about the electro-magnetic spectrum, there is sufficient order in some dynamical regimes to yeild that most helpful information...and from it, we can do better jobs in food production, make more efficient and safer air transport [or rail if we want lower energy transport], do a better job healing and maybe repair some of the harm done to the good earth. The missions and methods of modern, positivistic science do not get thrown on the epistemological trash-heap...not in my pomo phil/sci. 5. If our concern is with change and renewal, there are other dynamical regimes in nonlinear social processes which give us option and variety. Even in deep chaotic regimes, one find enough order to yeild wonder, amazement and joy. 6. There is some mix of order and disorder which is most congenial to the human project. Too much order and we lose flexibility, innovation, variety and adaptability...not to mention interest and curiosity. Too much dis-order and we lose the possibility of planning and knowing. 'Twould be my guess that four to sixteen ways of doing family, gender, child care, word use, clothing rules or health care are adequate to the human condition. 'Twould be my guess that 32, 64 or more choices require too much time and discussion to serve the practical need for human interaction and symbolic communication. I suspect that one can deal with one or two great uncertainties in one's life but two, three or four interact to produce so much stress that few of us can cope. E. A mini-tutorial on Chaos and Complexity next time. Keep the faith; we don't have to concede too much to the artsy-fartsy french post-structuralists. T.R. Young From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sun Apr 2 14:50:44 1995 From: KINRABE@UWYO.EDU id <01HOVAEM0H2O0005XZ@ROPER.UWYO.EDU>; Sun, 02 Apr 1995 15:48:21 -0600 (MDT) Date: Sun, 02 Apr 1995 15:48:29 -0600 (MDT) Subject: Texas A&M To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Hello friends. I've recently been given incentive to consider Texas A&M for my PhD. What do you all think of that program and College Station? Is College Station just part of the suburbs, so that it just blends into other towns in that area? Or is it relatively by itself there in Texas? Is the cost of living high there? Are there jobs? Is housing scarce? Can anyone tell me anything about the professors? If you have comments, please send them to me at kinrabe@uwyo.edu I would appreciate it -- thanks! Brian From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Mon Apr 3 05:08:03 1995 3 Apr 95 08:07:24 +1100 From: "morten g. ender" Organization: University of Maryland,College Park To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Date: Mon, 3 Apr 1995 08:07:05 EDT Subject: children of homosexuals hey socgradders! three students in my deviance course shared different personal stories of 20-something `friends' who have been somewhat `psychologically traumatized' by a believed to be heterosexual parent who later came out of the closet as homosexual...i know nothing on this topic but promised i'd get them some references...does anyone know of any psych or soc literature that addresses this topic...note-- -we're not concerned with about adoptees here, but biological children... morten ^ From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Mon Apr 3 07:32:35 1995 Mon, 3 Apr 1995 07:30:52 -0700 for Date: Mon, 3 Apr 1995 09:24:10 -0500 From: donnelly%eagle.DecNet@eunice.ssc.wisc.edu (It's a nike thing) To: "socgrad@ucsd.edu"@ssc.wisc.edu Subject: Re: Parent's sexuality and children's trauma. I think your topic is interesting, however, I'd like to point out that parent's sexuality in general is probably difficult for children to deal with under certain circumstances which are broader than the type of sexuality. Also, clearly homosexual behavior is not *deviant* in the general sense of the word. It would be equally traumatic for children of homosexual parents to deal with one or both parent's revealing of heterosexuality, if this were to upset the family structure. In sum, you may be dealing with the effects of 'family breakdown' similar to that of divorce, though I would include homosexual parents revealing heterosexuality as family breakdown as well as the other scenario. Essentially, are you interestd in transitions in families affecting family structure and it's effects on children, esp. estrangement from one or both parents, or are you intersted in the effects of parent's discussion of their sexuality, or in exposure of children to homosexuality? From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Mon Apr 3 08:03:03 1995 Date: Mon, 03 Apr 95 10:51:27 EDT From: "Alan G. Davidson" Subject: Contract with America, 3rd waves, and Kuhn et al. To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU The best critique of Kuhn is Paul Feyerabend's Against Method. Albert Hirschmann also has an interesting article entitled "The Search for Paradigms as a hindrance to Understanding." As for Berger and Luckmann, I don't really know b/c there are so many different readings of them. For those interested, Robert Reich has an interesting editorial on the Contract, Newt's allegiance to transition to a third wave economy, and what Reich thinks the proper tax incentives ought to be. One example, for instance, is making tuition tax deductible for parents and independent students. From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Mon Apr 3 08:20:06 1995 Date: Mon, 03 Apr 95 11:16:37 EDT From: DAVIDSON@UConnVM.UConn.Edu To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU I ommitted where Reich's editorial was. It appeared in the Week in Review section of the New York Times. From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Mon Apr 3 10:18:43 1995 Date: Mon, 3 Apr 1995 12:13:44 -0500 (CDT) From: Mary Burbach Subject: homosexual parents To: socgrad Morten; I was doing some searching of my own today and came across this work, which I haven't read so I can't speak to the quality of its content, but your students might want to give it a look.... It includes some articles about homosexual parents. Blumenfeld, Warren J., (1992) Homophobia: How we all pay the price. From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Mon Apr 3 14:06:49 1995 Date: Mon, 03 Apr 95 17:01:43 EDT From: "Alan G. Davidson" Subject: Hirschmann article To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU I know for a fact that it is one of the two editions of Rabinow and Sullivan's Interpretive Social Science from Cal-Berkeley Press. From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Tue Apr 4 08:48:23 1995 Date: Tue, 4 Apr 1995 10:44:42 -0600 To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU From: joly@cicero.spc.uchicago.edu (Jolyon Wurr) Subject: Need F. Thrasher "The Gang" I am trying to locate a for sale, unabridged copy, of Frederic Thrasher's classic work of Chicago sociology, The Gang. This U of Chicago Press book has been in and out of print a number of times since 1927, most recently about 7 years ago, but the Press tells me there are no plans, and little chance, that it will be put back in press again. Anybody have a copy they want to part with or know of a book store, used or new, that has one left on the shelves? Thank-you, Jolyon Wurr joly@cicero.spc.uchicago.edu From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Tue Apr 4 18:20:10 1995 Date: Tue, 04 Apr 1995 21:17:55 -0400 From: "GLENN A. KIRKNESS" To: BLAKE@binah.cc.brandeis.edu, rockers@medisg.Stanford.EDU, socgrad@UCSD.EDU Subject: Politics (Don't read if not interested) -Reply >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Hi folks. I attended an anti-"contract with America" rally yesterday and was struck by the discourse of the thing. Are we (the left) really trying to convince people that throwing good money after bad is the right thing to do? The rhetoric at the rally focused on maintaining the "gains" we have made. And on not casting people loose. In principle, I agree; however, the argument seems to be predicated on the notion that people are being hornswoggled by Newt &Co. (tm). Somehow, the people who voted for them were not thinking clearly, were not aware of what they were doing. Huh? It seems to me that of the people who voted, the majority voted to keep their money where they think it belongs -- in their wallets. Rather than putting the blame on declining real wages, people choose to blame the government As I see it, there are basically two options for the left(s) in this country: 1) Get mean. This seems to be the tack most are taking. Opposing anything and everything the reps propose without really admitting that there is a problem nor offering any solutions. If we don't want them to cut off the redistribution of wealth, we better come up with something that either addresses the classical economics argument that free markets are good, unconditionally. 2) Forget about the next two years and focus on 1996. The Reps won because they got their vote out. We may or may not have a vote to get out, bnut we certainly won't know unless we try. With turnouts so low in the US, a reletively small number of voters can make a big difference to the election. The republicans have the white man vote (excluding this white man, but whose counting?). The question becomes: Is there an emotional issue(s) that we can rally people around and get excited about. Somehow, saving welfare doesn't seem to be it. Thoughts? Criticisms? Flame me privately, please. Scott Blake <<<<<<<<<<<<<<< I wouldn't mind all the Newtian rhetoric so much if it weren't such a pile of BS. As a REMM individual, I don't like paying taxes that I don't get any benefit out of. However, the Contract on America is not an attempt to shrink government, nor to place person's responsibilities on their own shoulders, but to rob the poor to subsidize the rich. Look at what they stand for & why for example:] - defunding public broadcastic will mean that public TV stations wil, in many cases have to fold. Who does this benefit? In a Name: Rupert Murdoch, Newtie's publisher. Why? Rupert Murdoch has quite abit of money, and access to quite a bit more. Because of this, he and his friends have been developing compression technology that would allow a single TV station like WGBH Boston to put out not a single channel's worth of programming, but to put out potentially 12 different channel signals. In other words, with one TV broadcating license one could, potentially, dominate a local marketplace. Ol' Rupe is a smart guy, and he knows that when Public TV stations go under, he can pick them up at bargain basement prices, and turn them into huge profits, especially if the 500 channel TV world comes into being. In other words, for an investment of a measly 4.5 million (give or take) with an Okie like Newt will potentially earn Ol' Rupe billions of dollars. So I sound like a conspiracy freak, right? Why is the federal gov't trying to un-subsidize school lunches? Pepsico and Coca Cola, McDonalds and other fast food franchises have a pretty clear idea. If there isn't a subsidy, and the states have to administer the funds, there are going to be a lot of schools with a food court just like in the mall: Taco Bell and KFC value meals are a whole lot more expensive than Sloppy Joes and Baked Chicken w/mashed potatoes. You all are parents and/or potential parents who are going to have to come up with that kind of lunch money for you kids every day. The whole point of this paranoid ranting is that these knuckleheads in Congress are suffering from that uniquely American illness/institution: Shortsightedness. Don't be fooled for a minute they just want to get over on you. From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Thu Apr 6 06:37:21 1995 Date: Thu, 6 Apr 95 09:35 EDT From: "Frank D. Beck" Subject: science project To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU This is a fun idea so I wanted to pass it on to you folks. If you have international-E-mail-people in your life then please read on! -- Frank ***** original message follows ********** MARCH 15, 1995 My name is Beth and I am in the Fourth Grade at a Catholic Elementary School near Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. Jason and I are doing a science project and we need your help. The project is on email, worldwide communication in seconds!!!!. We are trying to get as many messages from different countries and cities around the world, just by posting this to a few USENET newsgroups and some famous people's email addresses as printed in PEOPLE magazine, we're sorry if it might be off topic but we were trying to get widespread general worldwide distribution of this note. Please send a note with the following information: ***************************************************************** Dear Beth and Jason, Good luck on your science project. My name is (FIRST NAME ONLY) I live in (city, state, province, country) (If school age please give grade level) (If out of school what is your occupation) (If your primary language is other than English please write a greeting along with an english translation) Date and time sent!!!! ***************************************************************** That's all, we hope to get 1,000 responses as our teacher said we might get only 10 or 12!!! Send your email to k.carroll@wildfire1.com We'll check it every day and keep all responses on a disk and a hard copy printout for display at the Science Fair. Thanks for your help in our project!!! /////////////////////Beth /////////// From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Thu Apr 6 09:08:06 1995 From: MERIN@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU (PMDF V4.3-10 #7331) id <01HP0NAZI39C9X6YBV@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU>; Thu, 06 Apr 1995 12:03:30 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 06 Apr 1995 12:03:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: politics response To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU I really agree with Scott's points *and* with person who replied on the topic of shortsightedness (please include your name- also, What is REMM?) I think there's a growing consensus on the new left (as disntinct from some of the tired old institutionalized left wing fundraisiing machines) about the nature of the political problems. What's harder to be clear about is strategy. Has anyone heard about the People's Coalition? A friend of mine went down to their kick-off rally in NYC in March and while they sound like they stand for some ok values, I think the rhetoric is poor. I also saw a video produced about/by this group and found it quite alienating. They seemed to want you to take a ready-made package. I don't want to simply criticize groups like this. I would like to think the left might somehow get together, but I think we need attention to communication and process than a group like the People's Coalition seems to allow. Sorry to be so long. If this doesn't seem appropriate for socgrad, I'd still appreciate any private responses. Thanks. Sarah merin Merin@binah.cc.brandeis.edu From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Thu Apr 6 10:21:08 1995 From: blovitts@nsf.gov Date: Thu, 06 Apr 95 13:18:21 EST To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU, MERIN@binah.cc.brandeis.edu Subject: Re: politics response I know Scott wanted responses off line, but let me throw some more flameable fodder into the mix. First, I've noticed an interesting phenomenon among my friends since the November upheavel. Most of us are in our mid-thirties and up and have been good Democrats all our lives. Yet, somehow, in hushed tones, so many of us have whispered that while we don't agree with everything in the Contract, a lot of it makes sense and that we agree with a lot of it. Second, as a sociologist, I find the left's reaction to the Contract interesting. With all that we know about the effectiveness of small groups and grass roots movements for bringing about enduring change -- witness Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Neighborhood Watches, etc., -- why is everyone in such a tizzy about block grants, which seek to restore individual responsibility through ownership of innovative ideas that are tailored to the situation at hand as opposed to one-size fits all big government solutions that provide no flexibility. The latter is an industrial society manner of governing, the former is a post-industrial society manner. Now I understand that some of what is being proposed threatens the safety net that the left supports and at times favors the wealthy, and I agree, yet, it seems to me that much of what is in the Contract parallels with trends taking place in organizations and institutions throughout the country, if not the world. (see Powers and Hage (1992) Post-Industrial Lives, or any book or article that deals with the nature of post-industrial society). As sociologists, we should do more that have knee-jerk reactions to the "opposition" because it is the "opposition,' but rather look at what is going on from a sociological perspective and determine from a sociological perspective what is good about the Contract and what is bad. Few things in life are either-or -- either all good or all bad. And, I think the Contract needs to be viewed in those terms. Then take what is viewed as bad, with sound sociological grounding, and try to do something to improve it. However, I think it is wrong to dismiss the whole thing wholesale because it was produced by Republicans. By the way, all this is being written by someone who may likely lose her government job as a result of the Contract, so hopefully you wouldn't view me as an ideolog who has nothing at stake. Barbara From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Thu Apr 6 11:59:36 1995 Date: Thu, 6 Apr 95 14:57 EDT From: "Frank D. Beck" Subject: Block grants To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU The points made about block grants and deciding who needs what from whom are interesting. At one level I think communities are best able to understand and respond to the diverse needs of their members. But, historically, groups in power within these communities have chosen not to meet everyone's needs. Some are left out. At the national level, therefore, I think we need some standard by which local programs are judged. But within this set of legal bounds communities have to decide what's needed. Development of community, the level at which folks experience their society, has to come from within. National programs aimed at meeting people's needs (e.g. economic development and assistance to the poor) are necessary but also need to be geared toward the development of communities. Peace, Frank From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Thu Apr 6 12:20:57 1995 Date: Thu, 6 Apr 1995 12:20:29 -0800 To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU From: lichter@nicco.sscnet.ucla.edu (Michael I. Lichter) Subject: Re: politics response At 1:18 PM 4/6/95, blovitts@nsf.gov wrote: >First, I've noticed an interesting phenomenon among my friends since >the November upheavel. Most of us are in our mid-thirties and up and >have been good Democrats all our lives. Yet, somehow, in hushed >tones, so many of us have whispered that while we don't agree with >everything in the Contract, a lot of it makes sense and that we agree >with a lot of it. What's to like? I'm genuinely puzzled. At least from a public-spirited viewpoint ... but I can definitely see that it serves some people's self-interest. >Second, as a sociologist, But what does this implied change in viewpoint over time say to you "as a sociologist"? I find the left's reaction to the Contract >interesting. With all that we know about the effectiveness of small >groups and grass roots movements for bringing about enduring change >-- witness Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Neighborhood Watches, etc., >-- why is everyone in such a tizzy about block grants, which seek to >restore individual responsibility through ownership of innovative >ideas that are tailored to the situation at hand as opposed to >one-size fits all big government solutions that provide no >flexibility. The latter is an industrial society manner of governing, >the former is a post-industrial society manner. Well, you're right that the "post-industrial society manner" seems to be do it yourself. Pay yourself because you can't get a job, doctor yourself because you have no or very limited health care, and so on. Very Flexible and Innovative. You're missing the point of block grants, though, which is to evade responsibility for political decisions. The Federal government says to the states "here, take $10. We know you have $15 in expenses, but we're not willing to take responsibility for getting you $15 (that would mean raising taxes or cutting the military or something else equally awful). We know you're going to cut programs for the poor in favor of programs that serve the more affluent (like locking away the poor for life), and that's what we want, but we're not willing to tell people that straight out." As an example, when the urban programs of Johnson's Great Society (e.g. Model Cities) became block-granted under Nixon, funding for the parts that primarily served the poor shrank significantly (or disappeared) and those that served the rich -- making downtown safe for business once again, by giving away lots of money to developers -- became even more dominant. Now I understand that >some of what is being proposed threatens the safety net that the left >supports and at times favors the wealthy, and I agree, yet, it seems >to me that much of what is in the Contract parallels with trends >taking place in organizations and institutions throughout the country, >if not the world. (see Powers and Hage (1992) Post-Industrial Lives, >or any book or article that deals with the nature of post-industrial >society). The world is growing leaner and meaner, or so it seems. You are encouraging us to take this as a normative standard? It SHOULD be that way? Michael -- Michael Lichter UCLA Department of Sociology From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Thu Apr 6 16:21:58 1995 Date: Thu, 6 Apr 1995 19:19:57 -0400 (EDT) From: Carla M Eastis To: blovitts@nsf.gov Subject: Re: politics response > > Second, as a sociologist, I find the left's reaction to the Contract > interesting. With all that we know about the effectiveness of small > groups and grass roots movements for bringing about enduring change > -- witness Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Neighborhood Watches, etc., > -- why is everyone in such a tizzy about block grants, which seek to > restore individual responsibility through ownership of innovative > ideas that are tailored to the situation at hand as opposed to > one-size fits all big government solutions that provide no > flexibility. Actually,this post comes at a good time for me because I happen to be presenting a research proposal tomorrow (today, by the time you get this) in which I argue that we *don't* really know how innovative things are on the local level. I'm not sure that we have enough information to say that the level of civic balance, meager though it is, that exists on the national level (thanks to years of work by public interest group and social movement organizations) does in fact exist on the local level. The reason a lot of social policy questions are currently dealt with on the federal level is that they are issues which beg to address questions of the public good, and lower levels of government are bogged down in immediate concerns. Just federalism's division of labor, I think, I'm not really sure how it happened historically but it sure seems to be institutionalized now. As sociologists, wouldn't we be a little concerned about pushing questions about education, welfare, and so on, issues which are all about collective good and such, down to levels of government which all evidence suggests have little room for representation of the weak? Actually, my feeling is that we *don't* have any such evidence, really, but neither do we have evidence that things would work out okay. Interested to hear if anyone does know of local level analyses of activism/public interest groups as a sector (across issues), particularly from an organizational perspective. Carla From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Thu Apr 6 17:57:07 1995 Date: Thu, 6 Apr 1995 17:51:18 -0800 To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU From: lichter@nicco.sscnet.ucla.edu (Michael I. Lichter) Subject: jerks of the knee, etc. In my last message I didn't respond to the charge that "the left" is responding to "the contract" (or Republican ascendancy) in a knee-jerk fashion. Change is inevitable, but that doesn't mean that any one particular change in any one particular direction is also unstoppable and ought to be left to the gods to decide. Many people on "the left" (and I take you as meaning everyone politcally to the left of Bill Clinton, inclusive, rather than a more traditional Left that more narrowly includes social democrats, communists, anarchists, syndicalists, and assorted radicals) ARE conservatively clinging to our present institutions. This is true even though the left (and especiall the Left) know these institutions to be flawed. Why aren't they embracing change? Because throwing the welfare state out the window is a purely destructive act (at least if you don't include the construction of new mansions by the rich with their tax savings). There is nothing positive in the Republican program, and it's not even intellectually honest (e.g. "we will get more tax revenues by cutting taxes" -- even David Stockman admitted that he knew he was lying bigtime when he said that under Reagan). If the left/Left knows that current programs are flawed, why aren't they advocating different ones? First, there's no consensus on what the best alternatives are, and second there IS consensus that constructive reform (i.e. anything other than strict downsizing or elimination) is untenable at present; the only questions are what will get destroyed? and how badly? Of course, destruction can have its virtues. Sometimes it's impossible to get directly from point B to point C and you have to backtrack from B to A before embarking for C. You have to wipe the slate clean. You can't have one side of Shiva without the other :). All that stuff. No matter what happens in Congress this year, life will go on -- for most of us. And, to insert another cliche, where there's life there's hope. The distant aftermath of the Gingrich Congress may well be much better than what we have today, and this brighter day may even have been impossible without their actions. Still, it will no more be a moral victory for them than the New Deal was a moral victory for the bankers (and others) who precipitated the Great Depression. Michael -- Michael Lichter UCLA Department of Sociology From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Thu Apr 6 18:07:32 1995 From: SHAFER@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU (PMDF V4.3-10 #7331) id <01HP15R6SMVA9X6NOJ@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU>; Thu, 06 Apr 1995 21:06:34 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 06 Apr 1995 21:06:34 -0400 (EDT) Subject: knee jerk reaction To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU sorry, i am old enough to remember the 60's. block grants is just a 90's term for "states rights". why do the conservatives want to send power and money back to the states? not because they have better ideas. because they have not gotten use the idea that the federal government imposed its power and ideas against segregation. Remember george wallace on the steps of the univ. of alabama guarding its's gates against the onslaught of black folk. a great local idea, huh. How about reagan in the early 80's. same "new idea" of sending power back to the states, this time to undermine federal environmental laws. the conservatives lost the moral war at the federal level, but they know that they can undermine federal legislation easier at the local level. And that is and allways has been their ideology. to let the market rule, to use local operatives to influence local legislation in the the way they know best, by bribery. I have a friend who is on a zoning board in florida. Interesting enough he is weekly approached by some local developer with "new ideas" which sound similar to the old ideas. they try to influence (bribe) him with dinners and business opportunities. sorry, but i do not have positive views of local legislation, too easy to influence, to caught up in local power structure, too few local resources to fight the rich and powerfull. I watched some good state legislation to save the everglades get gutted by the sugar industry (state level) and local interests (25 homeowners in central florida who wanted to keep easy access to lake okeechobee). It took federal legislation to get the poposed changes made. Incidently, the charge was the same made against us. the federal government was interfering with local problems. If we had a weak federal government in the 60's we would still have segregation. Reagan weakened the federal government in the 80's and environmental laws went unenforced. sorry, i like the checks and balances on the federal level, there are ineffective locally. and if this sounds bereft of "new ideas" for a new left it is because the right still is fighting for those old ideas. dave shafer brandeis univ. From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Thu Apr 6 18:51:06 1995 Thu, 6 Apr 1995 18:48:19 -0700 for Date: Thu, 6 Apr 1995 19:50:13 -0600 (MDT) From: Jean Czerlinski Subject: Society for the Quan. Analyses of Behavior (fwd) To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU FYI -Jean ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 11:16:52 CST From: Bill Palya To: mike@santafe.edu Subject: Society for the Quan. Analyses of Behavior Appended below is an announcement of our 1995 program and some info about SQAB. ******************************************************************* THE SOCIETY FOR THE QUANTITATIVE ANALYSES OF BEHAVIOR (SQAB) The Society for the Quantitative Analyses of Behavior (SQAB) was founded in 1978 to present symposia and publish material which bring a quantitative analysis to bear on the understanding of behavior. This can be roughly defined as the use of mathematical formulations to characterize one or more dimensions of an obtained data set, derive predictions to be compared with data, or to generate novel data analyses. The Society is a Special Interest Group within the Association for Behavior Analysis: International (ABA) and is an independent incorporated not-for-profit 501.c.3 organization. Our meetings take place in conjunction with and the day and a half before the annual meeting of ABA. Meetings are open to any person who is interested in attending. ******************************************************************* 1995 PROGRAM (Grand Hyatt, Washington, DC 202-582-1234) THURSDAY May 25 7:00 - 10:00 Cash Bar and Registration (tentative) (Cabin John) FRIDAY, May 26 (Constitutional Ballroom A) 7:00 Registration, Coffee and Pastries 8:20 Michael L. Commons - Richard Herrnstein's Vision and the Society for Quantitative Analyses 8:30 John A. Nevin - Introduction 8:40 John E. R. Staddon - Integration Over Time 9:16 Philip N. Hineline, Paul Neuman, & William Ahearn - Temporal Extension in Aversive and Appetitive Domains 9:52 Edmund Fantino & Hernan Savastano - Delay-Reduction Theory: Support for Still Another Counterintuitive Prediction 10:28 Break 10:43 Peter R. Killeen - Why R(sub o) Means Galileo 11:19 Gene M. Heyman - The Matching Law: History and Implications 11:55 John A. Nevin, Moderator - Remembering Richard Herrnstein: Open Discussion 12:30 Lunch 1:30 Stephen Grossberg - Adaptively Timed Reinforcement and Recognition Learning 2:06 Jose Burgos - The Evolution of Neural Networks in Pavlovian Environments 2:42 John W. Donahoe - Experimental-Analytical Constraints on Quantitative Modeling 3:18 Break 3:33 Melissa Bateson & Alejandro Kacelnik - Rate Currencies and the Foraging Starling 4:09 Leslie A. Real - Foraging and Cognitive Models of Choice 4:45 Dave W. Stephens - Salutary Search Behavior: A Variational Approach 5:21 Break/Cash Bar 5:30 Business Meeting 6:30 - 10:00 Poster Session / Cash Bar SATURDAY, May 27 (Constitutional Ballroom A) 7:30 Coffee and Pastries 8:10 Adam King & C. R. Gallistel - Laplace Transform Models of Anticipatory Feeding and Classical Conditioning 8:46 Gregory Galbicka - Manipulating Contingency in Response Differentiation 9:22 Hilary A. Broadbent, York A. Maksik, & Russell Church - A Fractal Analysis of Random Interval Data 9:58 Break 10:13 Frances K. McSweeney & John M. Hinson - A Mathematical Model for Within-Session Changes in Responding 10:49 Armando Machado - A dynamic model of temporal regulation 11:25 K. Geoff White - Quantitative Analysis of Remembering ******************************************************************* POSTER SESSION - Call for Submissions The viability of a SQAB poster session will be explored this year. Unfortunately, it will not be possible for us to provide typical poster mounting stands, nor a specially laid out room. The poster session will be held in our meeting room during the Friday evening Cash Bar. Therefore, posters must be simple enough to mount directly on the air wall. If you wish to submit a quantitative poster, please send a title and an abstract immediately. Space limitations severely constrain the number of posters which can be accepted for this small exploratory session. Consider presenting the cutting edge of your formulations or the latter stage of ongoing work, rather than a well developed but predictable finding. Feedback from the SQAB attendees concerning the forefront of your vision will be the most productive for you, and the most exciting for your colleagues. Submitters are encouraged to conceptualize their poster as a device to make informal discussion more productive. Construct your poster as a series of illustrations to be referred to, while talking someone through your model, perspective, or analysis. I recommend an almost exclusive emphasis on a visual presentation rather than on a written one. Writing could be limited to a total of "25 words or less" most of which set up or summarize your visuals in a phrase or two. The upside of doing a poster in this pilot session is that you may be able to get early feedback from the SQAB attendees which will help you make your research vision better; the downside is that it is a novel activity for SQAB and may not turnout as well as we would all hope. ******************************************************************* MEMBERSHIP AND REGISTRATION 1995 Membership/Registration Students and Post Docs = $10. Others = $50. 1995 Membership only = $ 5. Fee waived for students and post docs presenting a quantitative paper at SQAB or ABA. Please pre-register if possible. It enables us to effectively prepare. Make checks payable to The Society for the Quantitative Analyses of Behavior or SQAB. Please include: Name Affiliation Address e-mail Phone Send 1995 membership/registration fees to: Program Chair: William L. Palya Department of Psychology Jacksonville State University Jacksonville, AL 36265 205-782-5641 phone 205-782-5680 fax palya@sebac.jsu.edu ******************************************************************* SQAB NEWSLETTER The newsletter provides a timely forum for quantitative issues in research, training and application. Please send ideas, comments or items of interest to the editor, Michael Commons. Subscriptions are available from the editor: Michael L. Commons Department of Psychiatry Harvard Medical School Massachusetts Mental Health Center 74 Fenwood Road Boston, MA 02115-6196 617-497-5270 phone 617-491-5270 fax commons@tiac.net ******************************************************************* SQAB WWW INFORMATION SERVER If you have a World Wide Web browser, such as Netscape or Mosaic, you can retrieve information pertaining to SQAB and abstracts of upcoming papers from our site. If there is interest, I can put the papers on the server and I will set up a discussion list for those papers. "go to" or "open" http://www.jsu.edu/psychology/sqab.html ******************************************************************* AVAILABLE PROCEEDINGS Papers from previous meetings have been published as volumes or as special journal issues. Previous topics have been: 1. Discriminative Properties of Reinforcement 2. Matching and Maximizing Accounts (of Choice) 3. Acquisition 4. Discrimination Processes 5. The Effect of Delay and of Intervening Events on Reinforcement Value 6. Foraging 7. Biological Determinants of Reinforcement and Memory 8. Behavioral Approaches to pattern Recognition and Concept Formation 9. Computational and Clinical Approaches to Pattern Recognition and Concept Formation 10. Signal Detection 11. Neural Network Models of Conditioning and Action 12. Behavioral Economics* 13. Implicit and Explicit Rules in People, Animals and Machines* 14. The Nature of Reinforcement (JEAB) 15. Special Sensitivities and Abilities in Animals* 16. Stimulus Relations: Equivalence Classes (Psychological Record) Lawrence Erlbaum Associates distributes Volumes 1-4 and published Volumes 5-11. Volumes marked with an asterisk are unpublished at this time. ******************************************************************* BOARD OF DIRECTORS President John A. Nevin Department of Psychology University of New Hampshire Durham, NH 03824 Program Chair William L. Palya Department of Psychology Jacksonville State University Jacksonville, AL 36265 205-782-5641 phone 205-782-5680 fax palya@sebac.jsu.edu Sec/Treasurer Michael L. Commons & Newsletter Department of Psychiatry Editor Harvard Medical School Massachusetts Mental Health Center 74 Fenwood Road Boston, MA 02115-6196 617-497-5270 phone 617-491-5270 fax commons@tiac.net Edmund Fantino Department of Psychology University of California La Jolla, CA 92037 619-755-1978 efantino@ucsd.edu M. J. Marr School of Psychology Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GA 30332 404-894-2635 mm27@prism.gatech.edu Dianne C. McCarthy Department of Psychology The University of Auckland Auckland, New Zealand psy_dmccarthy@ccnov1.auckland.ac.nz Howard Rachlin Department of Psychology State University of New York - Stony Brook Stony Brook, NY 516-632-7807 hrachlin@psych1.psy.sunysb.edu ******************************************************************* From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Fri Apr 7 05:10:50 1995 Date: Fri, 7 Apr 95 08:08 EDT From: "Frank D. Beck" Subject: Science project and e-mail courtesy To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Andrew and other socgraders, It did occur to me that the science project e-mail I sent out was in fact someone conducting research. It also occurred to me that the student's request could be genuine. I chose to believe the latter, and thought the student project interesting and fun enough to let others know. If I violated some e-mail norms, then I apologize. But it seems to me that a project undertaken by some young independent minds falls in a different category than chain letters and mass mailings. Think about this for a second: If the original request was genuine, your approach would directly stifle the project these kids were working on and it would indirectly have consequences for some fun-loving interaction. Again, if I broke the rules, I'm sorry. Peace, Frank From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Fri Apr 7 18:44:00 1995 From: estrayer@cats.ucsc.edu Date: Fri, 7 Apr 1995 18:39:51 -0700 To: FDB1@psuvm.psu.edu, socgrad@UCSD.EDU Subject: Re: Science project and e-mail courtesy > Date: Fri, 7 Apr 95 08:08 EDT > From: "Frank D. Beck" > Subject: Science project and e-mail courtesy > To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU > > >It did occur to me that the science project e-mail I sent out was in fact >someone conducting research. It also occurred to me that the student's >request could be genuine. > >I chose to believe the latter, and thought the student project interesting and >fun enough to let others know. If I violated some e-mail norms, then I >apologize. But it seems to me that a project undertaken by some young >independent minds falls in a different category than chain letters and mass >mailings. > >Think about this for a second: If the original request was genuine, your >approach would directly stifle the project these kids were working on and it >would indirectly have consequences for some fun-loving interaction. > >Again, if I broke the rules, I'm sorry. > >Peace, Frank ------------------ I got some flack from a friend, but convinced him that if it is a hoax, so what? If it is real, then very cool. He was concerned about the age vs writing quality. I've seen pretty good stuf from munchkins about that age. Figure it was worth it. Best, Eric From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Mon Apr 10 05:49:43 1995 (PMDF V4.3-10 #7331) id <01HP61TVCIDS9X7VK7@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU>; Mon, 10 Apr 1995 08:45:29 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1995 08:45:29 -0400 (EDT) From: SCOTT BLAKE Subject: To everyone in San Francisco... To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Hi folks- Through a bizarre twist of fate, I will be in SF from mon 4/17 to that friday. If any of you are out there, I'd love to try to arrange a get-together, either singly or en masse, or whatever. I'm also looking for couches to crash a night or two on, so if you would like to extend hospitality to a lost East Coaster, I'd would greatly appreciate it. Thanks. Scott Blake blake@binah.cc.brandeis.edu From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Wed Apr 12 19:04:23 1995 (gstalkr@merak.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.108.10]) by Date: Wed, 12 Apr 1995 21:02:25 -0500 (CDT) From: Glenn Stalker To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Subject: Grad School Help. Hi, I was wondering if there was anyone out there at the University of Toronto, Queens Kingston, UBC, or McMasters that may have any information regarding these graduate programs. Please reply to my address: gstalkr@cc.umanitoba.ca Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, G. Stalker University of Manitoba From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sat Apr 15 14:57:12 1995 Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 17:56:04 -0400 (EDT) From: alan bruce Subject: Software. To: socgrad Just wondering if anyone has any information about software that can be used in teaching a class in Juvenile Delinquency. I will be teaching this class in the Fall and was looking for something to use so that students could run programs to generate their own statistics. I know there are some packages available for other courses but I have not come across anything specifically for juvenile delinquency. Would appreciate it if someone could provide some information about the availability of this kind of software. Thanks, Alan. Alan S.Bruce,++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Department of Sociology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio,43402.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sun Apr 16 05:34:01 1995 Date: Sun, 16 Apr 95 08:32 EDT From: "Jetaway Dave" Subject: Re: Software. To: abruce@falcon.bgsu.edu -- Sat, 15 Apr 1995 17:56:04 -0400 (EDT) >Just wondering if anyone has any information about software that can be >used in teaching a class in Juvenile Delinquency. I will be teaching >this class in the Fall and was looking for something to use so that >students could run programs to generate their own statistics. I know there >are some packages available for other courses but I have not come across >anything specifically for juvenile delinquency. >Would appreciate it if someone could provide some information about the >availability of this kind of software. >Thanks, >Alan. Microcase has a combined data / stat. package designed for use in crim. classes. Just off the top of my head, it has state-level UCR data, national level NCS, some state level demographics and some variables from the GSS. I haven't used it for class, but did pop the program disk in for a test run and it seemed easy to use for a DOS / Windows based program. Jetaway Dave From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sun Apr 16 09:16:06 1995 From: j_young@VENUS.TWU.EDU Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 11:14:58 CST To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Subject: The Typifications of Christ at Easter-Time No. 22 in a Series of mini-lectures written for graduate students in sociology. INTRODUCTION: The Sociology of Religion is, for the most part, a description of that which is: a survey of the social organization of existing religious forms, their own self knowledge, bits and snips of their history together with some demographics. For Marx, Weber, Durkheim and a few others, the soc/religion deals with how given socio-religious institutions fit into the larger political economy in which they are found. There is great concern for both degree and direction of causal efficacy as between religious philosophy and the other institutions of a society; esp. economics and politics. Recently, much soc/religion is oriented to the mis-fits in 'modern' society; vide the Kephart and Zellner book on 'Extra-ordinary Groups.' Then too, there are studies of cults, covens and curious eastern religions; sort of a 'My goodness, look at the quaint folks who live at the margins of civilization' approach which minimizes and marginalizes ways of life most important to the human project. Of late, fundamentalist religious movements are getting a lot of attention since they do not fit well into a fully commodified and secularized political economy....papers, articles and books on these tend to pick out that which is slightly different and magnify it into a sort of demonology or, conversely, as a pathway to salvation out of the faults and failings of modernity. In this mini-lecture, I'd like to do something a bit different. I'd like to approach the typifications of the Christ figure at Easter time using three methods from postmodern critique: first as 'story-telling,' then as 'geneology' and finally as 'deconstruction.' Such approaches might help the grad student better understand postmodern methods and, perchance, better understand the ways in which the image of Christ changes. In all this, the reader should keep in mind that I have a profound respect for religion, especially those which expand their Dramas of the Holy to include rather than to exclude and oppress. Then too, I have not 'believed' in most of the storys about the Christ figure since I was 16. Yet I greatly respect and admire much of the teachings attributed to the Christ figure...especially those oriented to social justice, compassion, forgiveness, redemption and renewal. A. As 'story telling.' Much in the postmodern camp treats all books, theories, songs, dances, descriptions and explanations as stories which have a politics and a poetics. Those of you who have studied or read the works of my most esteemed colleague, Laurel Walum Richardson [Ohio St. U.] have seen this format used with great effect. Each of the epochs in the knowledge process has its own 'story' about the Christ figure: 1. In premodern sensibility, Christ was either the Son of God sent to redeem and to teach those for whom the temple was merely another convenient market place....or a false prophet who pre-empted the power and majesty of God to his own purpose. In some religions, Christ is seen as one in a line of prophets but not divine in his own person. For most of the 1+ billion Christians, the Christ figure is essential to the end of alienation; the sufferings, tragedies and sins of the world are set aside by the love and help of the Christ figure. 2. In modern sensibility, the Christ figure is part of the ancient celebration of death and renewal in the Spring time. Through the long winter, both nature and humanity dies to some degree only to re-awaken with the coming of the summer sun and the promise of food and warmth. As a pathway to knowledge, the Christ figure has been supplanted by science, mathematics and the method of successive approximations to Absolute Truth as embodied in formal theory. 3. The story is more complex in Postmodern sensibility; for some, both god and Christ are dead; and modern science, advanced monopoly capitalism killed them both off. For some, the Christ figure is much like my own reading of it....a good, wise and compassionate man who tried to drive the oppressors from the temple and to invite people to live a life more congenial to the human estate. For some, the Christ figure is much like that depicted in Monty Python's 'Life of Brian,' a nice young man into whose life and times were read a lot by those who, in their own venality and sensuality, need a personal savior. Some feminists reject the male images of the divinity and turn to more feminist images for inspiration and guidence. There are many in postmodernity who see the Christ figure as part and parcel of the sociology of fraud; for Marx, the message of Christ and Christianity worked as an opiate leading people away from the sources of real oppression; Feudalism, slavery, capitalism and the 'idiocy' of primitive communism. For Freud, God, Moses and Christ were various images of father, externalized and, variously, hated or loved...or in the curious world of the subconscious, both. B. As Geneology, Christ emerged at a time when tribal life was being displaced by Empire...the old tribal gods were inadequate to the more Universal Being which trade, commerce, and travel required. With his message that the only test for membership in the Drama of the Holy was a) acceptance of God and b) living His plan fully and wisely. The old tests for membership in tribal Dramas of the Holy required one to be born [or adopted] into the tribe; to change one's ethnicity and to deny one's origins. Christianity emerged in history at a time when 'civilization' was replacing tribalism. Note: I have an article which makes this case in much more detail in the J. of Religion and Theology published at U/Wisc. for those who would like to see a more macro-structural exegesis of 'Universal' religions. The next historical turning point which shaped the meaning of Christ and Christianity was in the 4th century, a time of great economic troubles in the time of Constantine...the story goes that the mother of C. turned to this new religion and that, C. in large part to buy social peace, adopted Christianity and its message of social justice...one of the messages of both old and new testament is the forgiveness of debt...one must forgive debts every seven years in Deuteronomy...not a bad message for all those made homeless by their debts to money lenders, tax collectors and mini-monopolies in the market place. In the 13th century, plague, pestilence, hunger, and poverty moved people toward resistence and rebellion. Clerics and Nobility alike were successful in turning these troubles into a pre-theoretical social movement in which tens of thousands of young men marched to Jerusalem to cast out Islam and, thus to please God and end the calamities He had sent in his righteous anger upon Christians for allowing the Holy Land to be occupied. Generally the Crusades failed. By the 15th Century, Islam had blocked the ancient trade routes to the East where silks, spices and ceramics were obtained for European markets. This lead Prince Henry of Portugal to encourage exploration to the West for a trade route. The result of this event was several centuries of colonial expansion in the name of the Christian God and the Christian kings. In this geneology, the Christ figure is taken around the world and, every where is assimilated into the local customs, beliefs, and human need for comfort and for understanding of the meaning of a thing. The Learning Channel ran a series of the images of the Christ figure as it was accomodated in the Americas, in the Asian countries and in Africa...each very different from the neat and tidy bearded Christ in European imagery. The advent of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton profoundly changed the status of all religions in human affairs. Bacon, in 'De Novum Organum' laid out the structure of this 'new body of knowledge' by which scientists were to replace priests and prophets in the quest of a New Jerusalem. Newton, in 'Principia Mathematica' gave the world of scholarship both a method and a mission. One was to find the laws of nature and society lurking with the data [hypo=below; theses = that which is visible]. The long history of warfare between Science and Theology is well chronicled in the magnificence treatise by A.D. White entitled, The History of Warfare Between Science and Theology in Christendom. A. D. White, for those of you at Cornell, was its first president. In recent times, the Christ figure has been combined with structural marxism in Liberation Theology. Those in Lib theology speak both of personal sin and of structural sin...personal sin is that activity enjoined by the Decalogue and again in Deut. Structural sin is that personal sin which over time, has been institutionalized: racism, sexism, class inequality and political elitism. It speaks in a powerful voice to the oppressed in the 3rd world...in Nicaragua, Guatemale, Honduras, the Philipines, in Haiti and now in Chiapas, Liberation theology and radical transforming social change is re-united as in the first and third century, B.C.E. One final note in this geneology of the images and imagery of the Christ figure; with the collapse of bureaucratic, elitist socialism, Pope John Paul has issued new encylicals...his 'Centissimus Annus' was most interesting. In it, J-P moved far to the left in his economic policy calling for economic justice. The next series of Popes should be interesting as they, too, shape the doxology and theodicy of Christendom to serve the needs of their parishioners. C. As deconstruction, the Christ figure is returned to the larger social life world in which images and understandings of it are embedded in order to make visible that which is omitted or emphasized. The point is not to destroy any given 'reading' of the Christ figure but rather to consider other possible readings. What follows is from an article I wrote several years ago entitled, The Typifications of Christ at Christmas and Easter. It is in the book, the Drama of Social Life along with a lot of other essays about how the symbolic interactional process works and is worked in late monopoly capitalist societies. Machery, 1978, holds that the irreconcilable cleavages in society can be transformed by religious song and story frm the ungraspable richness of everyday life into the understandable, solvable symbol. Machery adopts Althusser's point that ideology woerks to dispel the contradictions inherent in everyday politics, religiong and economy by offering a solution framed within the logics of some one privileged group. In the article mentioned, I return to the ways in which the Christ figure is presented/re-presented in the American media at both Christmas and at Easter time...in short, the Easter Christ in most mass media are typified in the following ways: 1. In many churches and televangelic broadcasts, we see the suffering Christ who looks at the world through the eyes of the poor and those who are weary of heart. He looks out with compassion, forgiveness and redemption. This message appeals greatly to the many, many millions living on the margins of wealth and affluence. This Christ does not look at the masses throught the eyes of the merchant, the usurious money lender [Visa, MasterCharge, 1st Chemical or Chase Manhatten]. This Christ is far to charged with suffering and anguish to be used as a vehicle into which to insert advertizements...not so the infant Christ used at Christmas time. This Christ is far to dangerous to be used for political legitimacy by the Whitehouse. Instead, the Whitehouse reduces the message of Christ and Cruxification to the search for 14,000 brightly colored Easter Eggs today on the White House lawn...carefully watched by parents, the media and dozens of Secret Service agents. 2. Easter remains a celebration of the return of Spring; the egg is a powerful icon of renewal and the pastel colors of the eggs as well as the Easter basket recall, in their colors, the promise of Spring Time. Change and Renewal are the significant typifications in this facet of the Easter story. 3. Most centrally, Christ at Easter is a story about the renewal of the human spirit and the reconstitution of the moral order oriented to community. Christ did not die for the individual sinner but rather for the redemption of all humanity and the movement of the world closer to the City of God. 4. The emphasis, in some stories about the cruxification focussed upon Mary Mother and her despari at the sacrifice of her child. This typification of the Easter story reverberates through the very soul of the 3rd world mother who has lost her children to hunger, disease, migration, crime, prostitution and the secret workings of police in the night. 5. Sometimes the Christ figure and the Easter sermon puts Christ with the Thief and the outcast on the Cross. Ina world where millions of workers are discarded, where other millions are homeless, where the mentally ill are made mentally ill and then pushed out onto the street; in a world where crime is one way for an abandoned mother to feed her children, pay rent, buy fuel or find money to take her child to the doctor, the affinity of Christ with the thief resonates with a hope for forgiveness and salvation. 6. The theme of Redemption is very visible in many representations of the Easter story. There must be a way out of the misery, poverty, meanness and mean-spiritedness of life. This drama of death and rebirth speaks powerfully to those marginalized by modern, high tech society. Fundamentalist religion around the world; in Islam, Christianity and in both the Hindu and the Buddhist tradition promises an after life in which the troubles and the tragedies of this world are repaired and restored. One does not meet the false peace of this world or of the grave but rather, one finds a new life and can, with faith and patience, rise with the Christ figure to the side of his heavenly Father. 7. Church attendence is highest at Christmas and Easter time...most people on this day...other than you and I...will go to church and experience it not as a building but as a community of believers. One does not stay home on Easter morning, one joins the larger community in pain, penance and compassion. 8. There is the displacement of justice and redemption from this place, this life, this nation to another life, another time and another place. For those made small and powerless by the structures of domination; by the great inequalities which daily grow in politics, economics and social honor, this message is comforting. There will come an end to history; there will come a reckoning; there will come a transcending justice which smites down the oppressor and lifts up the oppressed. In affirmative postmodern religion and theology, the suffering Christ reflects the alienation of the world in significant ways. The Resurrection of Christ is a promise of the transcendence of humiliation, indignity, and the suffering of the oppressed. One cannot find such a message in modern science or modern sociology...one can find it in religion...especially in Liberation Theology. Richard Quinney, a marxist criminologist, makes the same point in his recent work...The ideological field in which the Easter Christ dwells is an ideological field which is fundamentally critical of injustice, oppression, and that suffering produced by an exploitative and oppressive world. D. Other notes: Recently I gave a bare bones deconstruction of the wonderful story about the Wizard of Oz...what I did not say is that the story is another Easter story...it is about exploitation, oppression, change and renewal. It is not a coincidence that CBS has shown it for over 25 years near or at Easter time. The story is a morality play...it says that, with brains, courage, love and community we can defeat the Wicked Witches who oppress us...that we all are Munchins made small by racism, sexism and, in Baum's version, by the malefactors of great wealth...the Wicked Witch from the East symbolized finance capital; the WW from the West represented the land and rail barons who oppressed farmers and workers alike on behalf of 'bloated plutocrats' as Vachel Lindsey put it in his poem about the populist movement and Wm. Jennings Bryan. It was not a coincidence that Dorothy and Toto find the Strawman on a cross in a corn field...Baum used the imagery of the cruxification as subtext to the story of finance capital [the yellow brick road represented the gold standard, tight money, high interest rates and supply side economics. The Silver Slippers [not ruby!] represented the silver standard for US currency, low interest rates, and demand side economics. The figure of the Cowardly Lion was also part of the cruxification story...the Lion embodied Wm. Jennings Bryan who once was brave [his most famous speech was directed to finance capitalists; You shall not crucify America on a Cross of Gold!!!]...but, after being defeated by the Repubicans, Byran/Lion became a coward but wanted to find the courage once more to work for change and renewal of America. Finally, I want to point to Wm. Blake and his 'rules' about how to read discourse on religion and renewal. This comes from his New Jerusalem poetics. The Argument: While the true method of knowledge is [direct] experience, the ture method of understanding experience is poetic genius. This is an early statement about the limits of science and empirical observation. It is the same message as Machery, Derrida and Foucault...and earlier, David Hume, that all experience is interpreted out of socio-cultural themes and processes. 1. To be truly human, one must emply one's poetic genius. The 'forms' of all things [experienced] are derived from that poetic genius...which the ancients called Spirit or Angel or Demon. 2. AS all humans are alike in outward form, so, with infinite variety, are all people alike in poetic genius. 3. No human can think, write or speak from the heart but that they intend truth. Thus all religious philosophies derive from the infinite variety of truthful but differing poetic genius. 4. No person could know more than taht which is the common experience of all but, having access to the common experience of all, a universal poetic genius emerges which is available to all. 5. The religions of all nations are derived from each nation's different use of poetic genius....which is every where called the Spirit of Prophecy. 7. As all humans are alike (tho' infinitely various), so all religions have one source: the true source is the true Human, s/he being the Poetic Genius. I do hope this mini-lecture helps you come to the fullness of your morality...and validates the keeping of moral sensibility in your writing, speaking and teaching of sociology...it is your poetic genius which must take hold of the findings of modern sociology and make them work for an infinitely various but more universal sociology than has been the case to date. Go in peace with your God, T.R. Young From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sun Apr 16 17:27:00 1995 Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 20:26:06 -0400 (EDT) From: James Cassell Subject: ANNOUNCEMENT>HyperRESEARCH Software (fwd) To: Social Science Research Methods Instructors , Sociology Graduate Student Discussion Saw this on another list and thought it might interest some of you. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Jim Cassell jwcassell@UNC.EDU Institute for Research in Social Science Phone: 919-962-0782 University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Fax: 919-962-4777 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3355 USA ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 08:44:07 -0700 From:owner-doc-talk@netcom.com To: doc-talk@netcom.com Subject: ANNOUNCEMENT>HyperRESEARCH Software =============================================================================== DEAR DOC-TALK =============================================================================== This was sent to us by Tony Rosati, of NAGPS... =============================================================== From: Bobbi Smith This came in on the wire this morning... A demo disk is on the way and I would be happy to report back to anyone who might be interested. If anyone is already familiar with it I'd like to know what you think of it. Please contact me privately at: smithba@sol.uvic.ca Thanks, Bobbi ___________________________________________________ HyperRESEARCH(tm) from ResearchWare: Software for Qualitative Analysis Content Analysis -- Theory Building -- Hypothesis Testing Qualitative Analysis -- The Old-Fashioned Way Many qualitative researchers still analyze their data the old-fashioned way. After gathering data, they transcribe the source material with a typewriter or word processor, make multiple photocopies of the text, painstakingly read through and assign codes to the material, cut the pages up into coded passages, and then manually sort the coded text. This process can easily take a great many hours, days, weeks, even months. The Pleasure of HyperRESEARCH HyperRESEARCH eliminates the repetitive paperwork of traditional qualitative research methods. You concentrate on your work -- instead of on busywork. With HyperRESEARCH, you can: - Manage any amount of textual data - Assign multiple codes to the same text - Retrieve and manipulate coded data - Test propositions using Boolean searches - Export your data to any word processor - Reach reliable, verifiable conclusions Ease of Use HyperRESEARCH is menu-driven and easy to learn. It comes with a thoroughly detailed and extensively illustrated manual. The manual includes tutorials which use a sample study (included on the program diskette) to guide you through the coding and analysis processes. Coding with HyperRESEARCH The HyperRESEARCH advantage becomes clear as the coding process begins. As you select a passage of text from your source files, HyperRESEARCH presents you with a list of code names you have created. You can choose an existing code name, or add a new one. HyperRESEARCH records the exact location of the selected text, along with the specified code name. It automatically stores this information on an electronic index card as you work. With a single mouseclick or keystroke, you can display any previously coded passage of text instantly. You can easily review and modify your coding. Analysis with HyperRESEARCH Once you have fine-tuned your codes, you can search and sort through them (using Boolean logic) to see how various combinations yield different theoretical insights. Using artificial intelligence techniques, HyperRESEARCH enables you to test hypotheses or propositions against each case in your study to see if your coding supports your ideas. Since HyperRESEARCH takes the work out of handling your data, you can change your criteria and repeat your analysis as often as you like. Coding and testing activities never change your source files -- only your study's electronically coded index cards. System Requirements Macintosh Minimum: System 6.0.7 or later, 2 MB RAM, HyperCard 1.2.5 or later, and a hard disk Recommended: System 7 with 4 MB RAM (or more), HyperCard 2.1 or HyperCard 2.1 Player, and a hard disk IBM PC and Compatibles Minimum: An 80286 microprocessor, MS-DOS 5.0 or later, Windows 3.1 or later, 4 MB RAM, 1.4 MB disk drive, and a hard disk Recommended: An 80486 microprocessor, MS-DOS 5.0 or later, Windows 3.1 or later, 6 MB RAM (or more), 1.4 MB disk drive, and a hard disk. HyperRESEARCH Price List (1994) Available for Macintosh or IBM/Windows. Single Copy Price $225.00 Includes software and manual Volume Purchases Each copy comes with software and manual. Quantity discounts are applicable on orders placed at the same time. Call for dealer pricing. Quantity Discount Price 1-2 $225.00 3-9 14% $193.50 Lab Packs (Site Licenses) Each pack comes with one original disk and the specified number of licenses and manuals. Additional manuals are available at $40.00 per copy, and in quantities up to the original number of licenses purchased. One person per Lab Pack is considered the owner for technical support purposes. Licenses Manuals Cost Cost/User 40 8 $1500.00 $37.50 Add $500.00 for each additional 20 licenses and 4 manuals ordered. The price for an unlimited site license with 40 manuals is $5,000. Demonstration Disks A demo disk of HyperRESEARCH is available for $10.00. The disk is fully functional with the ability to Save disabled. It provides a means for you to "try before you buy" to determine whether HyperRESEARCH meets your particular research needs. Shipping and Handling Charges For orders within the US, please add $5.00 for shipping and handling. Massachusetts residents should add 5% tax. For orders outside the US, the shipping and handling charge is $20.00. For orders including three or more manuals, the shipping and handling charge is $10.00 ($40.00 outside the US). Payment Terms ResearchWare, Inc. accepts orders accompanied by checks, money orders, and institutional purchase orders. All payment must be in US currency. Customers ordering from outside the US are encouraged to use an international money order, or a check drawn on a US bank. Prices are subject to change without notice. ResearchWare, Inc. PO Box 1258 Randolph, MA 02368-1258 USA 617-961-3909 =============================================================================== ASGS Email--asgs@netcom.com, or on the WWW--http://www.vpm.com/asgs/ =========================================================================== From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Tue Apr 18 04:38:41 1995 Date: Tue, 18 Apr 95 07:37 EDT From: "Frank D. Beck" To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU - - The original note follows - - ---------- Forwarded message ---------- For those who are interested, here's a follow-up post from a newsgroup... >MARCH 25, 1995 >PLEASE SEND NO MORE MAIL EMAIL PROJECT COMPLETED >PLEASE POST TO YOUR COLLEGE MAIL SERVER OR LOCAL NEWSGROUP > >WE STILL ARE GETTING H U G E AMOUNTS OF MAIL EVERY DAY >EVEN THOUGH THE PROJECT COMPLETION DATE (3/23/95) HAS EXPIRED > >The Great Email Science project exhibit at our school was a big SUCCESS >We printed the first 1500 of the more than 5,000 responses >Beth and Jason are sure to get a "A+" on their project >The tremendous amount of Email responses has taught us >NEVER TO DO THIS AGAIN! >( On That's Incredible they used to say DON"T TRY THIS AT HOME)=7F >Jason and I both thank you for your participation and hope you will >forward this back the same trail you originally received our >initial request so everyone will hear of our results. > > Beth and Jason, GRADE 4 >near WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS USA > Home of the Worcester ICE CATS, > Holy Cross Crusaders, > and not far from SPAG's > > EMAIL PROJECTED COMPLETED > > PLEASE SEND THIS TO THE SAME MAIL LIST YOU SENT THE ORIGINAL > SOME ONE DELETED THE MESSAGE EXPIRATION DATE ON 3.22.95 > I can't stop the flow of mail to my email box. > H E L P >Beth's Dad!! ------- End of Forwarded Message *** End of original note *** From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Tue Apr 18 07:26:15 1995 Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 10:24:31 -0400 (EDT) From: James Cassell Subject: NEW: CARLU Contemporary Agriculture and Rural Land Use (fwd) To: Sociology Graduate Student Discussion FYI -- Jim ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Jim Cassell jwcassell@UNC.EDU Institute for Research in Social Science Phone: 919-962-0782 University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Fax: 919-962-4777 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3355 USA ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 10:16:08 EDT From: Coughenour Subject: NEW: CARLU Contemporary Agriculture and Rural Land Use The Department of Geography, University of Kentucky has established a discussio n list on land and resource issues that some may be interested in. ou--------------------------Original message---------------------------- Milt Coughenour, Moderator Good Morning-- This is a brand new list which we hope will be of interest to more than just geographers. We've initiated it in an effort to better integrate our group and foster a sense of community among scholars with similar interests. Feel free to forward to the rursoc list. Ted Grossardt Dept of Geography U.K. ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- CARLU on LISTSERV@ukcc Contemporary Agriculture and Rural Land Use or LISTSERV@ukcc.uky.edu The Contemporary Agriculture and Rural Land Use (CARLU) specialty group of the Association of American Geographers invites you to join their Listserv discussion group. The CARLU discussion group welcomes any comments that relate to rural, agricultural, and natural resource issues in the US, Canada, and other developed countries. A broad variety of topics included within the realm of CARLU include: the relationship between agriculture and the environment, questions of sustainability and rural land use, primary production systems and rurality, rural-urban fringe, rural resource base, natural resource conservation, public lands, recreation, tourism and wilderness. Archives of CARLU mail items are kept in weekly files. You may obtain a list files in the archives by sending the command INDEX CARLU in the BODY of e-mail to LISTSERV@ukcc on BITNET or to LISTSERV@ukcc.uky.edu on the Internet. To subscribe to CARLU, send the following command to LISTSERV@ukcc or LISTSERV@ukcc.uky.edu in the BODY of e-mail: SUBSCRIBE CARLU yourfirstname yourlastname For example: "SUBSCRIBE CARLU Joe Shmoe." Owner: (Ted Grossardt) From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Thu Apr 20 14:58:21 1995 Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 17:54:26 -0400 (EDT) From: Kuzminski Frederic Subject: unsub To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU could you unsub me from the list please. i dont have enough time to read my mail... thanks Fr=E9d=E9ric From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Fri Apr 21 09:12:06 1995 From: Jean Czerlinski Subject: socbio To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Date: Fri, 21 Apr 95 11:08:57 CDT Mailer: Elm [revision: 70.85] A few weeks (months?) ago we had a discussion of whether biology was relevant to sociology. It seemed largely irrelevant (to most of us, myself included) because biology seemed to a) set up certain universals which thus didn't get socially changed, or b) be so flexible to social effects that the biological part didn't seem to matter. For example, biology dictates that we must all eat. Thus discovering that every person in the world must eat a certain minimum amount would not be news, nor would it be relevant to sociology. BUT there is flexibility in WHAT we eat, and as long as it meets the basic nutritional requirements, this seems to be completely socially dependent, and so biology isn't relevant. Some cultures get their protein primarily from red meat, some from seafood, some from legumes, some from insects, etc.. Recently, though, I've begun to see there might be some areas where there's a useful interface between biology and sociology. For example, a friend of mine mentioned how there's always been some tension between northern and southern Italians, and this tension carries over to some extent to Italian immigrants to New York. It can carry over because immigrants (unless they came when they were young children) retain the accents of their local dialects in the English they speak. I.e. even when speaking English, Italians can tell approximately where other Italians are from based on their accents in English. This affects who does favors for whom, who hires whom in the ethnic enclave, etc.. (The northern Italians consider themselves better than the southerners.) What does this have to do with biology? Well, the fact that we lose our ability to learn languages perfectly (without accents) must have evolved, and I'm guessing it evolved for SOCIAL reasons, as a tool for distinguishing in-groups and out-groups. Think about it a bit. Communication between groups is still possible-- it's not that we lose our ability to learn other languages, and learn them fluently, and even learn to think and dream in other languages. The only thing we lose is the ability to learn the 100% proper pronounciation, although young children can learn this for many languages. It's a very specific ability we lose, and losing it means we carry a permanent "tag" or "flag" or "signal" of the group we grew up in. This is a loss that is dictated by our biology, and it is universal. Yet we have a choice whether to *use* this tag in making friends, granting favors, hiring, etc.. Also, we can say that this tag probably evolved because people *did* want to make such group distinctions, to protect their own and exclude others. (Mechanism(?): those who could learn many languages w/o accents may have been considered pariahs who didn't really have an identity [i.e. group identity]. Thus they would lose access to any group's resources rather than gaining access to many groups' resources. Of course, this would require public knowledge that the person was trying to 'court' several groups. Note that in-group out-group distinctions could have been taking place over all of human history and even earlier, which would provide the millions of years needed for any evolution to take place. Often proposed "evolved" behaviors could not possibly have enough time to evolve because they were to recent in humankind's history.) SO knowing about the biological loss of ability to speak without accents can affect our sociology of friendships, networks, ethnic enclaves, group formation, etc.. (Notice teens also tend to try to distinguish themselves with special slang, as do professional specialists.) On the other hand, I can only think of this very specific loss (rather than a general loss of ability to learn languages) as being evolved by *social* means. Do any of y'all have other examples? (I suppose "y'all" is a tag of sorts, too, but one easily adopted, especially in the written form.) I've vaguely been thinking of other examples. In the food example, the *amount* of food eaten might have a biological-social interrelation. Or perhaps our nutrition requirements. Other animals eat other mixes of protein, starch, etc.. Or... how about that enzyme that digests milk in adults, which many non-European-stock people lose? That would have an effect on ways of life, e.g. whether dairy farming was present. But none of this works out as well as the above example. What I like about it is that it's a universal, but we can *choose* whether to invoke it or not, i.e. whether to distinguish people according to their accents. Are there other examples like that? AND-- the real question-- does that example or any others suggest that there are in fact areas of research where biology and sociology can usefully interface? Cheers, Jean (jczer@cicero.spc.uchicago.edu) From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Fri Apr 21 09:48:41 1995 From: Jean Czerlinski Subject: socbio revisited To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Date: Fri, 21 Apr 95 11:46:25 CDT Mailer: Elm [revision: 70.85] A few weeks (months?) ago we had a discussion of whether biology was relevant to sociology. It seemed largely irrelevant (to most of us, myself included) because biology seemed to a) set up certain universals which thus didn't get socially changed, or b) be so flexible to social effects that the biological part didn't seem to matter. For example, biology dictates that we must all eat. Thus discovering that every person in the world must eat a certain minimum amount would not be news, nor would it be relevant to sociology. BUT there is flexibility in WHAT we eat, and as long as it meets the basic nutritional requirements, this seems to be completely socially dependent, and so biology isn't relevant. Some cultures get their protein primarily from red meat, some from seafood, some from legumes, some from insects, etc.. Recently, though, I've begun to see there might be some areas where there's a useful interface between biology and sociology. For example, a friend of mine mentioned how there's always been some tension between northern and southern Italians, and this tension carries over to some extent to Italian immigrants to New York. It can carry over because immigrants (unless they came when they were young children) retain the accents of their local dialects in the English they speak. I.e. even when speaking English, Italians can tell approximately where other Italians are from based on their accents in English. This affects who does favors for whom, who hires whom in the ethnic enclave, etc.. (The northern Italians consider themselves better than the southerners.) What does this have to do with biology? Well, the fact that we lose our ability to learn languages perfectly (without accents) must have evolved, and I'm guessing it evolved for SOCIAL reasons, as a tool for distinguishing in-groups and out-groups. Think about it a bit. Communication between groups is still possible-- it's not that we lose our ability to learn other languages, and learn them fluently, and even learn to think and dream in other languages. The only thing we lose is the ability to learn the 100% proper pronounciation, although young children can learn this for many languages. It's a very specific ability we lose, and losing it means we carry a permanent "tag" or "flag" or "signal" of the group we grew up in. This is a loss that is dictated by our biology, and it is universal. Yet we have a choice whether to *use* this tag in making friends, granting favors, hiring, etc.. Also, we can say that this tag probably evolved because people *did* want to make such group distinctions, to protect their own and exclude others. (Mechanism(?): those who could learn many languages w/o accents may have been considered pariahs who didn't really have an identity [i.e. group identity]. Thus they would lose access to any group's resources rather than gaining access to many groups' resources. Of course, this would require public knowledge that the person was trying to 'court' several groups. Note that in-group out-group distinctions could have been taking place over all of human history and even earlier, which would provide the millions of years needed for any evolution to take place. Often proposed "evolved" behaviors could not possibly have enough time to evolve because they were to recent in humankind's history.) SO knowing about the biological loss of ability to speak without accents can affect our sociology of friendships, networks, ethnic enclaves, group formation, etc.. (Notice teens also tend to try to distinguish themselves with special slang, as do professional specialists.) On the other hand, I can only think of this very specific loss (rather than a general loss of ability to learn languages) as being evolved by *social* means. Do any of y'all have other examples? (I suppose "y'all" is a tag of sorts, too, but one easily adopted, especially in the written form.) I've vaguely been thinking of other examples. In the food example, the *amount* of food eaten might have a biological-social interrelation. Or perhaps our nutrition requirements. Other animals eat other mixes of protein, starch, etc.. Or... how about that enzyme that digests milk in adults, which many non-European-stock people lose? That would have an effect on ways of life, e.g. whether dairy farming was present. But none of this works out as well as the above example. What I like about it is that it's a universal, but we can *choose* whether to invoke it or not, i.e. whether to distinguish people according to their accents. Are there other examples like that? AND-- the real question-- does that example or any others suggest that there are in fact areas of research where biology and sociology can usefully interface? Cheers, Jean (jczer@cicero.spc.uchicago.edu) From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Fri Apr 21 22:43:03 1995 From: estrayer@cats.ucsc.edu Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 22:39:14 -0700 To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Subject: UNM suggestions? OK, I've been accepted to UNM grad program. I'd appreciate anyone in the socy grad program sharing experiences and general info. Thanks in advance, Eric ======================================================================== Eric Strayer |"All that is solid melts into air" | estrayer@cats.ucsc.edu | *** Marx | | "Please accpet my resignation, I don't | student * beggar * dilettante| I don't want to belong to a club that | DoD#1120 (408) 423-7973 | would accept me as a member" Marx | ======================================================================== From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sat Apr 22 07:47:29 1995 From: j_young@VENUS.TWU.EDU Date: Sat, 22 Apr 1995 09:45:14 CST To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Subject: Pre-theoretical Revenge, Retaliation, Resistance and Rebellion No. 23 in the Series. INTRODUCTION. Those of you who teach will have students who want to know how to understand the bombing in Oklahoma City. It occured to me that it might be a good idea to shift off the postmodern series and give you some ideas about political sociology which might be helpful to you Monday, next. PRE-THEORETICAL POLITICS. The term, pre-theoretical comes from the marxian critique of those political movements which do not identify the sources of alienation and exploitation; and which as a result do more harm than good in the effort to gain remedy. Historical examples might be the Crusades [inspired by the belief that God was angry with Christians for leaving the Holy Land in the hands of Muslims and, in that anger, sent death, disease, poverty and afflication to people in England, France, Germany and such. Then too, the destruction of weaving machines by the Luddites might be such a politics. More recently, the rise of racism as a scapegoat for the real problems of dis-employed white workers or domestic violence by the dis-employed worker might be read as pre-theoretical violence. Beating one's own children will not change the objective conditions in the larger economy which result in 'down-sizing,' 'capital flight' or 'give-backs' experienced by workers all over the world. In the case at hand, the bombing of Federal Buildings in Oklahoma City will not 'get the government off our backs.' Nor would assassinations of Presidents, Congress-persons, Judges or other officials change the political economy of the nation or the world. It might be argued that assassination of Hitler would have been effective thus, at least partially theoretically informed. It might be argued that stealing from the rich rich and giving to the poor might be, partially, theoretically informed crime...but killing children and agriculture department workers in Oklahoma City could not be much more than pre-theoretical revenge and retaliation for...it is said...the death of the Branch Davidians in Waco two years to the day of the bombing. THEORIES OF THE STATE. There are several theories of the State which are part and parcel of the critique of the far Right which bear on the events in Oklahoma City. In setting these out, I do not want to be read as endorsing such ideas...nor do I want to be dis-respectful to the memory of those who died in the bombing...the point is to understand the reasoning; not to applaud it. 1. Natural Law [with a capital N...]. There are many who believe that there is a Natural Law ordained by their God under which all political life must work. They believe that Natural Law takes precedence over the laws passed by Congresses, State and Municipalities. There is a lot of evidence that the various Militias around the country take that position. Indeed, the reason that Mr. McVey was detained by police was that he did not have a driver's license and he was carrying a gun...many in the Michigan Militia and/or the Patriots, claim that the State has no right to license those who drive private vehicles...that the ability to drive is a god-given ability. And the right to bear arms is justified by both the Constitution [given to State Militias...not private persons per se; thus the name, Michigan Militia...or Montana or any of the other 10 states in which they are currently organized]. Natural Law has a powerful appeal to a great many who do not share the view that violence is justifiable...the good and gentle Jehovah Witnesses went to jail rather than violate their views of Natural Law in World War I. They attained the right of 'conscientious objectors' in WWII. You may recall that Clarence Thomas spoke much of Natural Law in his confirmation hearings...this was a side-bar to the larger issue of sexist harassment levied at him. Both liberal and conservatives in the Republican party liked to hear that...for liberal capitalists, it means that the State should not interfere in private business; for conservative Christians, it means the State should not interfere in patriarchal gender relations, family, church, or educational practices. MODERN THEORIES OF THE STATE. Against the pre-modern view that the State should embody Natural Law or at least defer to it, there is a distinctly modern view that the State embodies what little 'rationality' possible to the human estate. Although Hobbes took the position that the State was a 'mortal god' and while Hegel viewed the State as 'the March of God in the World,' the larger point is that, with the advent of modern science, pre- modern theories of the State were set aside in favor of one in which science could discover natural [small 'n'] and social laws, inform the State and, thus via the State, move toward a more perfect society. While the intention might be admireable, the result was benevolent despotism or, as some now put it, friendly fascism. Given the view that economists, sociologists, political scientists, psychologists and other scientists should discover those laws and advise the State about policy, there was little room for either democracy or theocracy in these modernist/scientific theories of the State. Remember that it was Comte who took this position...he wanted to call sociology social physics at first and took the view that sociologists should dis- place the priesthood as the engineers of social policy. One can see why modern political theory, informed by the logic of modern science, should be dispised and desprized by those who think that political agency should be vested in God or in the body politic. In order to 'ratio- nalize society; in order to control social life, the state must go every- where, enquire into everything, watch everyone and police everyone. The quest for order and for control is part and parcel of modernist philosophies of science [fortunately, there is a postmodern philosophy of science which forestalls Leviathan [Hobbes term; I will conclude the series on post- modernity with some work I am doing on pomo/phil/science]. The result of modernist theories of the state is a proliferation of laws [there are over 5 million statutes on the books in the USA; there are over 1800 law making bodies; the various policing systems expand daily; the number of people in jail, on probation or under surveillance grows logrithmically] and an increasing allocation of national resources to the control of those who do not follow the linear logic of crime and punishment [Foucault describes the efforts of the State to 'inscribe' rationality upon criminals with torture and brutality in his 'Discipline and Punish]. The thought is, from Bentham, that people are/should be rational...they should weight the costs/benefits of an act and decide to maximize reward; minimize cost [read pleasure/pain for cost/benefit]. Modern criminologists advocate increasing pain and decreasing pleasure from the acts which are forbidden by law...so the State expands and comes to be seen as the purveyor of pain; the preventor of pleasure. LIBERAL/DEMOCRATIC THEORIES OF THE STATE. John Stuart Mill whose essays on freedom and a lively debate in the public sphere, accepted the idea of Representative forms of governance [rather than direct democracy] since the people were, for the most part, incapable of Enlightened Self government. But Mills views were a giant step toward full democracy; as was most of the Constitution of the United States. In modern liberal representive government, there is to be a 'market place' of ideas in which the best ideas [those which are the best reasoned] are put into law. MARXIAN THEORY OF THE STATE. For Marx, the State was an instrument of the ruling classes. In Slavery, Feudalism and in Capitalism, laws passed the State were 'ambushes behind which lurked the interests of the Ruling Classes.' Marx spoke of the 'withering away' of the State as communism enhanced human agency and make for direct democracy. Among the points in the Manifesto was a call for political franchise for everyone. In his life Marx wavered about the transitional role of the State...deeply suspicious of the State as the 'alienation' of human agency [one should not give over to the State their own powers to do good or evil], the current reading of Marx is that he favored socialism [state ownership of the means of production; state extraction of surplus value; state allocation of surplus value to common needs; and above all, state control of counter-revolution]. The stalinist version of State agency [also known as vanguardism...the Party should rule since the people are still 'infected' by bourgeois ideas and/or the remnants of feudal/slave mentality] did much to dis-credit the hopes of working class people that the State could be a transitional form and that social justice would result by this temporary role of the State. Instead, Stalinist seemed to validate the aphorism of Lord Acton, 'Power corrupts; absolute Power corrupts absolutely.' The dis-enchantment of the State and its promise to deliver social justice to workers, to the poor and to the oppressed has a wide social base today. The popularity of Rush Limbaugh [I like to listen to him as I drive across this great country of ours...he fills the lonely night with outrageous claims which greatly amuse me] resonates with this dis-enchantment. The renewal of religious sensibility in New Age religion and in Liberation Theology is informed by dis-enchantment with the state; on both the Left and the Right there is a more privatized settlement of human agency. Much of that is to be admired and sustained. The base communities of Liberation Theology are, in my opinion, wonderful embodiments of the best in Christ- ianity and in Marxist social theory. Liberation Theology argues that there is private sin which can be redeemed by acceptance of Christ in one's life; and there is structural sin, [the sin of previous generations institutionalized into racist, sexist, and class oppression] which can be dis-mantled by extricating the liberative message in both the old and the new testament. UNDERGROUND STRUCTURES IN THE DEMOCRATIC STATE. Somewhere I published an article explaining why there were so many underground political, economic and sexual structures in the USA. In brief, I said that in openly exploit- ative societies, the State does the dirty work of the ruling class with little ceremony and less apology. The more democratic becomes a State, [ i.e., the more state functionaries respond to various constituencies], the more likely are those who benefit from racism, sexism or class privilege to go underground. In the USA, the State abandoned its historic role in supporting racist policies. Jefferson wrote a gradual withdrawal from slavery into the Constitution; The Missouri Compromise stalled that with- drawal; the Civil Rights movement in the 50's and 60's renewed it and, now if one wants to claim racial superiority for those who think they are 'white,' they have be circumspect; if they want to act on those beliefs, they have to go underground. The most active underground structures in the USA are those which are informed by pre-modern ideas about race, gender and religion. They tell themselves that they are the agents of God; that they are on a sacred crusade to forestall the 'evil plans' of Jews, the UN, radical separatists feminists, liberals of every stripe [including those such as William Buckley who also inveighs against the State] as well as Anti-Christs. The concept of the Anti-Christ is limited only by the poetic genius of those who write and preach in this most unholy crusade. POSTMODERN POLITICS. There is a negative, nihilist postmodernity in which since there is no God and no legitimate 'authority' to forbid/demand any thing, then all is permitted. There is an affirmative postmodernity which says, that while is it is impossible to ground ethical and moral behavior in either Natural or natural law, still human beings can ground morality on mutually agreeable principles; principles which take the form of general guidelines for behavior rather than Iron Laws. In this politics reason should trump rationality [see the Horkheimer/Adorno essay on Reason and Rationality]. In this politics, something like the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights should guide policy...but not determine it. Steve White, at Virginia Tech, has a book on pomo politics which might be use ful to those of you in political sociology. My copy is at home in Micigan or I would give you the full citation. In all of this, some of your students will be most destressed. They will bring a lot of rumors, half-truths, home truths, and distorted reports to class...be gentle, be helpful, be patient and be willing to by-pass your syllabus to deal with their real concern...one teaches best when the students are ready to learn. Give them something useful to do on the topic and they will be your students for the rest of their lives....such response makes teaching a most rewarding profession. As the Clerk said in the Canterbury Tales, '...gladly wold I lern; and gladly teche.' T. R. Young From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sat Apr 22 08:38:38 1995 22 Apr 95 11:36:36 +1100 From: "morten g. ender" Organization: University of Maryland,College Park To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Date: Sat, 22 Apr 1995 11:36:24 EDT Subject: sociology of the family course socgradders! did not someone request resources for teaching a sociology of the family course a few weeks ago? what did you come up with? i'm teaching a 300 level (mostly juniors and criminal justice undergraduates) in the fall...i'll be concentrating on the following sub-areas as well as others...any suggestions? 1. engaging textbooks; 2. books on the "post modern" family (non-traditional types) 3. books on family violence (e.g., elder abuse) 4. books on the military family (e.g., growing-up military) 5. books on death, dying and the family (e.g., AIDS and the family) morten ender ^ department of sociology univeristy of maryland college park, md 20742 301 405 7707 From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sun Apr 23 06:46:33 1995 From: j_young@VENUS.TWU.EDU Date: Sun, 23 Apr 1995 08:43:16 CST To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Subject: The Demographic Imagination For those of you who are following the O.J. Simpson trial, there is much to consider for the sociology of law, for small group dynamics, for the interface between the justice system and the mass media as well as for the tensions between class, race and gender which cascade back and forth through the trial. Then too, there is much in the work of the defense which lends itself to a postmodern phenomenology. When I get my thoughts in order... and when I have the time, I will organize some mini-lectures on some of these topics. Just now, I want to anticipate the next series of witnesses, their testimony and the response by both jury, defense and the world- wide audience which follows, as do I, this most interesting cross section of the American criminal justice system. The next point of interest will be evidence about DNA. The major point of the prosecution will be that the odds of any one other than O.J. Simpson could have left blood drops at the crime scene reaches odds of trillions to one...the same point will be made with respect to the blood of the victims in the Simpson vehicle and on the socks of O.J. found in his bedroom. As there are only 5.5 Billions of people on the face of the earth at the present moment [give or take 500 millions], how could the odds possibly be greater than 5.5B to one that the blood came from O.J. and only O.J. There is a demographic point and a biological point to keep in mind when you hear someone make that point. First the demographic point; while it is true that there is but a fraction of the people on earth who comprize the 'trillions' of others who could have done it the question of where those other trillions got to requires a bit of demographic imagination. First is is most unlikely that anyone below the age of 16 could have done it...then too, it is most unlikely than any one above the age of 65 could have done it...this leaves about 3 billions candidates in the world [assuming that those under age 16 and over age 65 comprise a goodly hunk of the population pyramid. Secondly, most of the rest of the world were not in L.A. that night and could not have 'done it.' That leaves, say, 10 million within a day's striking distance. The Prosecution needs to draw down the population base of those who could have done, it....the prosecution needs to expand that base in order to discredit the DNA evidence. Seems like with some 10 million prime candidates, the defense is in good shape. Not so. Given that there are some 300 billion base pairs in the human genome, the combinations of given sub-sets of them constitute a veritable Ackerman tower of improbabilities...given that the DNA lab has selected portions of the DNA which vary widely in the human genome [there are some which do not...the genetic information which produces hemoglobin, for example, evolved some 40 millions years ago...every warm blooded creature including human beings share that genetic information. Sample that part of the human genome and a passing porpoise could have done it. But the odds against two and only two people in the L.A. transit area sharing other regions of the genome are huge indeed. Those in the DNA testing lab will testify that they selected a portion of the genome which is most unlikely to be repeated in the genetic information of not only the 10 million in striking distance of the victims but of all the other candidates who could have been in that population base...which brings us to the biological fact which not many will pick up. While there are, say, only ten millions who live close enough to have done this dastardly deed, the population pool from which that ten million came is larger by orders of magnitude...that is to say, for every egg that is fertilized to produce the population base in question, there were hundreds of millions of sperm which could have been in the population base from which to extract the culprit. Given that there are about 10 million sperm per drop in the ejaculata of the males who produced the actual population base in question, there were millions of competitors for the egg actually impregnated. They too, have to be included in the process which set the odds for and the odds against the matching of DNA. The best of all possible worlds for the defense is that there are at least 30 or 40 people in L.A. environs who carry patterns of DNA similar enough to cast doubt on the assertion that O.J. and only O.J. could a dunit. The best of all possible worlds for the prosecution is for the jury to be convinced that the odds are so great against another malfactor with great motive that all 'reasonable' doubt is beyond the demographic imagination of all 'reasonable' persons [assuming that the jury is made up of reasoning and reasonable persons...itself most unlikely]. Did O.J. do it??? Modern science sets as 'superb' confirmation of a hypothesis, odds of some 10 to the 14th power [see Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind]. Social science sets the point at which one can accept an hypothesis at .05, or even better, .01; or even best, .001. Not very good reason...in modern science...for accepting truth claims. But in the next exciting installment, I will talk about the new postmodern philosophy of science now emerging from the new sciences of Chaos and Complexity which alter and illuminate the knowledge process...stay tuned for this next gripping chapter in the life of....CAPTAIN SCIENCE! Oh yeah...did he do it...doesn't really matter; if he did it and is found innocent, the stress, the fees of his attorneys and the certitude of millions that he did it will follow him all the days of his life. If he is innocent and found guilty, he will be freed after lengthy and expensive appeal. If he is guilty and found guilty, he will find honor, knee and approbation among the inmates of whatever prison he enters as well as the certitude of millions that he was 'framed.' If he is innocent and found innocent, the shadow of suspicion will follows him but there are ghouls who will cash in and cash him out for his stories and his endorse= ments of their products. Nor, innocent or guilty, will the CJS system ever 'inscribe' a close connection between crime and punishment such that, for ever after, O.J. will think twice before committing the same crime. As Foucault pointed out in his admireable book, Discipline and Punish, that is the aim of modern CJS; to inflict such pain as to make the costs of crime so much greater than the rewards, that all reasonable men and women will pause and turn away from such actions again. Jeremy Benthem lives again in every cruel thing we do in the name of Justice. Whatever happens, the case is a watershed in American policing, in American court room procedures, in the sociology of Law and in jurisprudence. O.J. is being memorialized. Love one another, T.R.Young From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sun Apr 23 08:26:42 1995 From: Benjamin Alexander Cohen Date: Sun, 23 Apr 1995 11:25:54 -0400 To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Subject: UnivPITT Hello all: I've been accepted to the University of Pittsburgh's Ph.D. program. I'd appreciate any comments or information you have about their program. Sincerely, BC From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sun Apr 23 08:55:14 1995 Date: Sun, 23 Apr 1995 08:53:40 -0700 (PDT) From: LAWRENCE YANG To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Subject: socgrad network I recently heard about a socgrad discussion group....can you tell me how to subscribe? Thanks much! Larry Yang chaos@sfsu.edu From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sun Apr 23 12:49:34 1995 From: D.W.Weatherston@newcastle.ac.uk Date: Sun, 23 Apr 1995 20:48:38 +0000 To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Subject: help pol sociology A small group of u.k postgrads have formed a postmodern politics group. Can anybody suggest postmodern politics texts, books. Any help would be very welcome. rgds. David Weatherston D.W.Weatherston@ncl.ac.uk From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sun Apr 23 21:24:23 1995 Date: Sun, 23 Apr 1995 23:19:01 -0500 From: donnelly@ssc.wisc.edu (PATRICE DONNELLY) To: "socgrad@ucsd.edu"@ssc.wisc.edu Subject: Re: Student Employee Labor Unions Have any students had any experiences dealing with a department which has successfully railroaded student activists out, leaving the ones behind too "terrified" to take any action? I'm attempting to state a scenario in a non-judgemental manner, that is, I am not suggesting that the one's left behind should not be terrified, etc. What I am interested in is any experiences which students may have had, or are currently enduring, which have helped to "unfreeze" the climate for labor activists. I am looking for strategies that people know work, in dealing with this type of situation. From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Mon Apr 24 13:03:10 1995 Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 14:44:25 -0500 (CDT) From: Lauren To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Subject: SUNY Stoney Brook Info wanted I would like tohear from grads (or faculty or undergrads) from SUNY Stoney Brook. I will be part of the summer research apprenticeship program in Sociology and would like a little interaction with those with first-hand knowledge of the dept and the campus. Personal replies would be appreciated so as not to take up bandwith. Best, lauren lauren@osuunx.ucc.okstate.edu From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Mon Apr 24 14:56:08 1995 Date: Mon, 24 Apr 95 16:48 EST To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU From: UHOBBIT@irishmvs.cc.nd.edu Subject: Soc of Ed Area Exams I will be preparing for a sociology of education area exam this summer and need to collect a list of readings (books & articles) to be approved by my committee, etc. Of course they have their ideas, I have mine, and I am writing to get other's experiences concerning area exams in the sociology of education. In other words I wish to collect reading lists and or single books that people feel are crucial to an area in the soc of ed... any full reading lists that might be able to be sent my way would be greatly appreciated - the sooner the better....Thanxs for any discussion that might help me in this endeavour. Dave Brunsma University of Notre Dame From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Mon Apr 24 16:07:33 1995 Date: Mon, 24 Apr 95 18:04 EST To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU From: UHOBBIT@irishmvs.cc.nd.edu Subject: Qualitative Resoiurces From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Mon Apr 24 16:10:30 1995 Date: Mon, 24 Apr 95 18:08 EST To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU From: UHOBBIT@irishmvs.cc.nd.edu Subject: Qualitative Resources Sorry about the blank message... Anyway... I am going to be involved in setting up a qualitative research department of Notre Dame's laboratory for social research. A while back on SocGrad there was a couple of discussions which ended up compiling lists of resources. I was wondering if anyone has the lists of qualitative software packages, etc. from socgrad or if not, I am looking for ideas, reviews, etc., of software people have used in qulitative data entry/analysis. Also, I am looking for the list of qulaitative books and articles which appeared sometime last year from a discussion on the same subject... I'd appreciate that sent to me and , if not... If people have good sources for the various qualitative methods theory and statistical aspects, please send me whatever information you've got. Much appreciated. Dave Brunsma University of Notre Dame From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Mon Apr 24 16:17:36 1995 Date: Mon, 24 Apr 95 18:04 EST To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU From: UHOBBIT@irishmvs.cc.nd.edu Subject: Qualitative Resoiurces From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Mon Apr 24 16:55:31 1995 From: Jean Czerlinski Subject: warning: humor To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Date: Mon, 24 Apr 95 18:49:44 CDT Mailer: Elm [revision: 70.85] > > WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD? > > Plato: > For the greater good. > > Karl Marx: > It was a historical inevitability. > > Machiavelli: > So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has > the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for > whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian > virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained. > > Hippocrates: > Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas. > > Jacques Derrida: > Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the > authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, > DAMMIT, DEAD! > > Thomas de Torquemada: > Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out. > > Timothy Leary: > Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take. > > Douglas Adams: > Forty-two. > > Nietzsche: > Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across > you. > > Oliver North: > National security was at stake. > > B.F. Skinner: > Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from > birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to > cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will> > Carl Jung: > The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that > individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore > synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being. > > Jean-Paul Sartre: > In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it > necessary to cross the road. > > Ludwig Wittgenstein: > The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and > "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualisation o. > > Albert Einstein: > Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken > depends upon your frame of reference. > > Aristotle: > To actualise its potential. > > Buddha: > If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature. > > Howard Cosell (who the hell is he?): > It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the > annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temeritn > pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurrence. > > Salvador Dali: > The Fish. > > Darwin: > It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees. > > Emily Dickinson: > Becuase it could not stop for death. > > Epicurus: > For fun. > > Ralph Waldo Emerson: > It didn't cross the road; it transcended it. > > Johann Friedrich von Goethe: > The eternal hen-principle made it do it. > > Ernest Hemingway: > To die. In the rain. > > Werner Heisenberg: > We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was > moving very fast. > > David Hume: > Out of custom and habit. > > Saddam Hussein: > This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in > dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it. > > Jack Nicholson: > 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored) reason. > > Pyrrho the Skeptic: > What road? > > Ronald Reagan: > I forget. > > John Sununu: > The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite > understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity. > > The Sphinx: > You tell me. > > Henry David Thoreau: > To live deliberately...and suck all the marrow out of life. > > Mark Twain: > The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated. > From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Mon Apr 24 21:09:04 1995 Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 00:03:54 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Miller Subject: A new Website to check out! To: socgrad mail-list I wanted to let you know about a very thorough web site called Microstate Resources. A friend of mine from U. Chicago set it up to serve all those interested in anything about microstates. You'll find maps, data, travel info. etc... The address is: http://www.microstate.com/pub/micros Hey, even if you're just planning a Spring Break trip to Bermuda, you'll find valuable stuff. Later, Andrew ================================================== == dread@acs.bu.edu == Andrew P. Miller == ================================================== == Boston University == Department of Sociology == ================================================== From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Wed Apr 26 15:24:12 1995 Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 18:17:39 -0400 (EDT) From: Gary Reed Subject: Re: Qualitative Resources To: UHOBBIT@irishmvs.cc.nd.edu Regarding qualitative research software, you may want to check out: Computer Programs for Qualitative Data Analysis, by Ethan A. Weitzman and Matthew B. Miles, Sage Publications, 1995. This contains fairly detailed reviews of qualitative data software packages from Ethnograph to Nudist. Matthew B. Miles and A. Michael Huberman have also put together a book on qualitative data analysis appropriately titled: Qualitative Data Analysis, Sage, 1994. From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Fri Apr 28 04:40:03 1995 Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 07:35:01 -0400 (EDT) From: James Cassell Subject: Recruiting Economic-Demographic Modeler (fwd) To: Sociology Graduate Student Discussion FYI; don't know _where_ this job is located, but it's posted from an Austrialian address. Contact Diana Crow for details. Best, Jim ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Jim Cassell jwcassell@UNC.EDU Institute for Research in Social Science Phone: 919-962-0782 University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Fax: 919-962-4777 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3355 USA ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 09:02:50 +1000 From: Diana Crow To: demographic-list@postbox.anu.edu.au Subject: Recruiting Economic-Demographic Modeler Recruiting Economic-Demographic Modeler International firm is seeking the services of an economist, econometrician, or demographer to develop, maintain and application of economic-demographic simulation models. Duties involve model conceptualization, specification, participation in software implementation in Windows-based operating system, adaptation to specific country situations and application in less developed countries. Please indicate interest or send resume to Shea Rutstein. Phone: 301-572-0950 Fax: 301-572-0993 E-mail: rutstein@macroint.com __________________________________ | | | Diana Crow | | Programmer, Demography RSSS, | | ANU | | | | Email: diana.crow@anu.edu.au | | Tel: (06) 2492313 | | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | __________________________________ From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Fri Apr 28 12:48:39 1995 Date: Fri, 28 Apr 95 15:33:48 EDT From: Marni Hancock Organization: Emory University - Atlanta, Georgia, USA Subject: KNOWLEDGE To: SOCGRAD@UCSD.EDU Hello from "My paper is due on Monday and I'm still reading" land :) I have a topic I would like to see discussed. A year or so ago, in class, in a long forgotten context, a faculty member (male) corrected a statement I had made by stating categorically that until a couple of centuries ago it was possible for an individual to "know everything there was to be known at the time." I guess the reason I still remember an otherwise unremarkable event is that I knew at the time he was wrong but I didn't know why. It finally hit me that he meant that it was possible for one person to have read everything that had ever been printed in any language(s) he was able to read. This omits all folk knowledge, and almost everything women knew. Have others encountered similar covert indicators of this kind of "white male European" elitism in their academic environments? I'd kind of like to collect a few to collate and distribute to some of the faculty I know who are certain that they do not exhibit any form of gender bias (the case with the person who made the original statement, of course). :-) Give it some thought between finals and papers and graduation (for the fortunate few who have survived the obstacles!) Marni Hancock socaw059@emuvm1.cc.emory.edu From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Fri Apr 28 13:51:37 1995 From: D.W.Weatherston@newcastle.ac.uk Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 21:50:54 +0000 To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Subject: wanted info. militias Fellow netters, The incident at Oklahoma and the issues relating to USA militias and far right groups are not well understood here in the u.k. This is not helped by the dearth of literature. I have been asked to prepare a presentation to grad students and politics faculty staff on that area. There is a definate need some clarity in this matter. Could anybody suggest useful texts, sources of info that could be used in the preparation and/or follow up by students. *Any assistance would be most appreciated* rgds. David Weatherston Dept. Politics University of Newcastle upon Tyne U.K D.W.Weatherston@ncl.ac.uk From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Fri Apr 28 17:33:44 1995 28 Apr 95 18:58:02 +1100 From: "morten g. ender" Organization: University of Maryland,College Park To: D.W.Weatherston@newcastle.ac.uk, socgrad@UCSD.EDU Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 18:57:52 EDT Subject: Re: wanted info. militias >Fellow netters, >The incident at Oklahoma and the issues relating to USA militias and >far right groups are not well understood here in the u.k. This is not >helped by the dearth of literature. I have been asked to prepare a >presentation to grad students and politics faculty staff on that >area. There is a definate need some clarity in this matter. Could >anybody suggest useful texts, sources of info that could be used in >the preparation and/or follow up by students. *Any assistance would >be most appreciated* rgds. >David Weatherston >Dept. Politics >University of Newcastle upon Tyne >U.K >D.W.Weatherston@ncl.ac.uk they are also not well understood in the u.s....in sociology, 99% of the research conducted on militaries focuses on institutionalized armed forces...you might try a review of the following journals: _armed forces and society_ _journal of political and military sociology_ _peace review_ morten ^ From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sat Apr 29 10:04:20 1995 id <01HPWUD8K3R4QO88SU@UCBEH.SAN.UC.EDU>; Sat, 29 Apr 1995 13:02:09 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 29 Apr 1995 13:01:59 -0500 (EST) From: Dave Purcell Subject: Police Brutality and Racism in Cincinnati To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Some of you may have already heard about this, as I saw a story on the NBC evening news on Thursday, but just in case... On Wednesday afternoon, there was an incident involving brutality and racism on the part of the Cincinnati police force. Fortunately, a reporter and videographer from Cinti's NBC affiliate, Channel 5 (WLWT-TV) just happened to be en route to a story, and caught the whole thing on tape. The incident occurred downtown, at a site where many of the students who attend Cinti's urban high schools wait for a bus transfer to head home. It began with a white police officer telling several black youths to move along, despite the fact they were supposed to be there, as they were waiting for the bus. Pharon Crosby, an 18-year-old senior (and occasion honor student), replied by saying he and his friends were waiting for the bus. The officer responded that Crosby could move along quietly or be arrested. What happened at this point is unclear. The Cinti media have been less then enthusiastic at getting to the heart of the story -- more concerned with pointing out that the incident began before the cameras were rolling, that two of the main officers involved have been decorated several times, and that race IS NOT AN ISSUE. At any rate, the conflict escalted (despite the lack of media investigation, it does not appear that Crosby ever made a physical move toward Officer Eric Hall...rather, the confrontation was strictly verbal), and this is where the video begins. Officer Eric Hall is shown standing behind Crosby, holding him against the trunk of the police car, and spraying mace into his face. Hall is ordering Crosby to put his hands behind his back, but Crosby is *obviously* covering up his eyes because of the mace. When Crosby does slowly begin to put his left hand behind his back, Hall wrestles him around and slams him to ground (some are trying to say that Crosby was reaching for Hall's gun belt...yet Hall *ordered* him to put his hands behind his back). When Hall slams Crosby to the ground, they disappear from the camera's view, behind the cop car for 8 seconds. 3 more cop cars show up, and several white officers get out, led by Officer Steve Pickens. At this point, both Hall and Crosby are on their backs, with Hall firmly in control. Pickens leads the charge by kicking Crosby in the ribs repeatedly. Several other officers are punching and kicking Crosby, who at this point, is completely defenseless. A friend of Crosby's slowly approaches the pileup, asking the officers to let up on Crosby. Officer Pickens pushes Crosby's friend back to the curb. Then, despite the fact that Crosby's pal is still backing away, Pickens forcefully pushes him again in the chest, causing the friend to fall backward over a large planter. The officers get Crosby to his feet, have him in a chokehold, and continue to spray mace into his eyes and mouth, while he is clearly shouting, "I can't breathe...I can't breathe!." The video concludes with officers carrying Crosby, who is now bound at his hands and feet, horizontally to the ground, into the back of a squad car. Crosby was held on $35,000 bond, $26,000 of which had to be paid in cash. This, for a high school honors student with no criminal record, who has won a partial scholarship to Hampton College. Cinti Chief of Police Michael Snowden has promised a full invesigation and has reassigned Officer Pickens to desk duty until completion of the investigation. Snowden has also completely dismissed the notion that race was involved: "the officers did not care that the suspect was black, the suspect did not care that the officers were white...this is NOT a legitimate issue." (I'm willing to bet he didn't ask for Crosby's opinion before speaking for him.) He has also dismissed the notion of police brutality, stating that kicking and chokeholds are "proper police techniques." Many in the community have long known of the hostility that Cinti police officers hold toward youth, minorities, and the poor, not to mention those of who are in what little Cinti has of a counterculture (I'm a long-haired musician who drives a '74 VW...they looove me). For instance, every Friday night, the police block off several streets around a nightclub called PrimeTime (it's frequented predominantly by black college students) as the clubgoers are exiting for the evening. The police funnel them down a couple of streets, to insure that they leave the area in an orderly fashion. Yet, to my knowledge, this club has had no more problems than any white club in the area. Rather, it's the largest black youth hangout in Cinti, so it's an easy target. At any rate, I've got a letter of protest circulating through our Sociology dept here at the U of Cinti. The letter is written for Chief Snowden, with copies going to many local politicians, community groups, and media outlets. If any PSN's wish to sign on electronically, send me a short note with your name and institution. (Granted I won't have your signatures, but I can print out the emails.) I plan on mailing the letter off on Wednesday, so reply as soon as you can. If anyone wants to send a letter directly to the police, the address is: Chief Michael Snowden 310 Ezzard Charles Drive Cincinnati, OH 45214 The people here like to think that Cinti exists in a vacuum...we have no drug problems, no poor people, and no problem with race relations (in fact, a Cinti Enquirer reporter did a 10-day series on race relations in Cinti, and called it "A Polite Silence," because everyone here acts like there is no problem). Please take a minute to let the Cinti police know that people in other parts of the country are aware of this racist, violent incident. Peace, Dave ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dave Purcell/Graduate Student, Sociology Dept/University of Cincinnati internet: purcelda@ucbeh.san.uc.edu listening to: A.M - Wilco, A Blazing Grace - Jason & The Scorchers, Tomorrow... - Jayhawks, Mojo Hand - Lightin' Hopkins reading: Yearning - bell hooks "The sights you remember scare you less then the sights left unseen"-Jason ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sat Apr 29 11:06:40 1995 From: Theresa Chi Lin Subject: info about soc departments To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Date: Sat, 29 Apr 1995 13:05:37 -0500 (CDT) Hi, I'd like to know if there is a collection of all courses offered by sociology departments in U.S..(graduate program and undergraduate program) I know there is a publication from ASA about faculty, tuition and requirements. Thank you for any info provided. Theresa From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sat Apr 29 14:25:30 1995 Date: Sat, 29 Apr 1995 16:08:56 -0500 From: donnelly@ssc.wisc.edu (PATRICE DONNELLY) To: "socgrad@ucsd.edu"@ssc.wisc.edu Subject: Re: Police Brutality and Racism in Cincinnati There was an incident several days ago on my block, in which a police officer was attempting to apprehend a mentally ill man who was screaming incomprehensibly and who was holding a hunting knife. The police officer decided at some point to issue the three obligatory warnings to the individual to drop the knife. I heard everything from this point on and was a witness,though did not see any of it. It was a very odd occurrance, when only hearing the event. One man screaming without making any apparent sense, and another loudly, calmly and rationally commanding him to drop the knife. The command was followed by a series of more incomprehensible screams, and another loud, rational and calm command.... more screams, and then another command. Then THREE GUN SHOTS! The cab driver I had occasion to talk with the next day, called it a return to the days of the Wild West! I contacted a religious person who is following up on the health of the individual who was shot, and hospitalized. The newspapers report was ridiculous. It went on and on about how in these kinds of situations, a shot to the chest is warranted, and how the officer did the right thing, for about 3/4ths of the article. Maybe the officer did act in the best interest of society, however, it would seem to make sense that the news report on the condition of the man shot! The news then went on to comment about how this individual was a notorious problem. He had ran out of the International House of Pancakes one time, owning $6.63. He was apprehended and marijuana was found on him. (possibly planted, or possibly was actually found on him) He had also been found one other time roaming around, as a vagrant. This was his complete notorious legacy. I sincerely hope that this individual is able to find medical treatment, not only for his gunshot wounds, justified or not, but also for his mental and physical well-being. The primary motivation, however, not only for this persons well-being is also important. It is not just so the officer will not have to justify killing this person, if in fact he dies, but it is so that there can be an atmosphere in which societal problems are dealth with compassion, not just rational prescriptions. Clearly there is a basis for issuing 3 warnings. But this blanket application of 3 warnings, is in some cases, ludicrous. A call to a social worker would be most appropriate in cases dealing with the mentally ill, or someone who is in a state of mental and physical crises. Just as we routinely call an ambulance to pick up the pieces, after such an incident, and we require that the police officer reconstruct the event to determine if the actions taken were appropriate, as a society we should demand that social workers accompany police officers to incidents involving domestic disputes, or other actions based on miscommunication leading to violence and suffering. What happened to Clinton's campaign promise to increase the number of social workers? Do we really expect an increase in police officers to solve every problem? A team approach is well-known to be most effective in treatment of persons with complex issues. Many "pilot programs" have demonstrated the effectiveness of having physicians, social workers, criminal justice workers, and attorneys all working together -- in NY, there are a group of the above, all in one location to minimize difficulty which arises in scheduling appointments with a variety of professionals. Single-mindedness, and the inability to deal with anything except 'text-book' cases will continue to drive our society to ruin. As each individual suffers within our society, so do we all. Peace. Patrice From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sun Apr 30 09:13:59 1995 From: j_young@VENUS.TWU.EDU Date: Sun, 30 Apr 1995 10:35:46 CST To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Subject: Postmodern Family/Gender Relations No. 24 in a Series of Mini-Lectures written for Graduate Students in American Sociology by T.R. Young. Sponsored in part by the Red Feather Institute for Advanced Studies in Sociology and by the Sociology Department at Texas Woman's University, Denton, Texas. This is the third last piece in the set about postmodernity. Next I will give you some ideas about postmodern criminology and wind up the mini-series with some stuff on postmodern philosophy of science...informed by the new sciences of Chaos and Complexity. In this mini-lecture, I want to help you trace the changing shape of the family as it threads through human history. One does great harm to the actual events which constitute something called the family but still there is an overview which serves one well in trying to understand the great changes which we see in both family structure and in gender relations. Bear with me while I try to work through this topic. A. A BRIEF HISTORY. Primate families became human families when proto-humans had enough cerebral capacity to form and to use symbol sets and thus create rules and practices not encoded in the depths of genes or body chemistry. Some what more than 400,000 years ago, the first vestiges of this remarkable capacity to think, to imagine, to believe and to reshape gender relations into an infinitely huge number of patterns...appeared. Scratchings on bones and stones in the Dragon bone caves near Peking testify to the emergence of such capacities...out of these capacities was born the beginning of hominid family structure. Mother-child bonding was, arguably, the beginning of family structure and, less arguably, remains so today. But there are bonds between people of a sort which cannot be explained by bonding or by body chemistry. Family forms, in their pre-modern form for many millenia centered around the mother/sister set as long as humans engaged in hunting, gathering, and simple horticulture. Sometime, in the lost history of humanity, a woman or a group of women began to sow the seeds, weave the baskets, store the grains and feed their close kin through the long cold, dry months of the winter. Water was essential to the effort to feed those bonded to each other by touch, taste, smell, voice and by watchful eyes that follow the activity of those they love. Some 4000 years or more, several great hydraulic societies developed, the first in what is now called Iran along the Tigris/Euphrates watershed. Others developed along the great river systems in Eygpt, India, China, West Africa and later, in Mexico and Peru. Profound changes occured in religion, economics, politics and family. Science itself developed out of the need to measure, weigh, re-draw boundaries and to gather taxes and tithes to support an ever growing super-structure of artists, writers, scholars, priests, armies, and royal courts. With the advent of settled agriculture in both dry and wet-land farming, came the notion of property...claims of the right to use and to inherit given acres of land emerged as human families became ever more dependent upon what food and textiles from planting, cultivating, harvesting and storing of crops. The very welfare of the extended family depended upon the legality and the morality of such claims. Out of the many disputes to land and to crops, came the kind of family law found in Deuternomy...patriarchy and the transfer of property through the male line...often the eldest male. B. Patriarchy. This family form replaced, in all probability, a matriarchy in which males had limited contact and limited claims to the children of the mother. Lots of dispute about this in the literature but, by and large, it seems to fit what little we know of pre-history. The rules of patriarchy altered, for centuries, gender relations and sexual norms. First gender relations: there are four rules of courtship and marriage which give power to males to dominate women. 1. Marry someone younger: this gives the male a slight advantage in experience in a number of spheres. Social power accrues. 2. Marry someone smaller: this gives males some slight advantage in physical power. 3. Marry someone with little or no properity rights; this gives males economic power. 4. Marry someone who accepts patriarchal religion; this give moral power to the male. In all new marriages, these rules render females at a great disadvantage. Add to this rules of patri-locality and the woman finds herself surrounded by people with whom the male has been bonded for 12, 15, or with late marriages, 17 years. The great concern for property rights and undisputable claims by the extended family to given tracts of farmland, water rights, herds and farming equipment meant that the sexuality of the female was squeezed into the smallest possible dimensions...the case is simple...if the eldest son is to inherit, it is absolutely essential that the first male born to a woman be that of the patriarch. If males from other families could make claims on the land by virtue of claims on the first son, then a large extended family would be left destitute. It is important to note that, for most of human history, female sexuality was her own; to vest in whatever male happened to be at hand and adequate to the task...apart from the rules of incest and exogamy. There are two things to keep in mind in considering the narrow limits placed upon the sexuality of women...first, the sexuality of men was not so confined. In Deut., males are to stay chaste and faithful to the marriage but in practice, male sexuality roamed far wider than did female sexuality. Second, in other political economies, sexual norms were very different, In Africa and in the Americas, young people were encouraged/permitted to act upon their sexuality...until the first child was born. In Hawaii, I am told, there are 26 sexual relationships permitted....very different concepts of property. Then too, the very concept of the 'bastard' is unknown to other political economies. We accept, love and sustain whatever children are born into the family. Much of the blind ire and anger in America about 'unwed' mothers stems from the ideas and idelogies of patriarchy. With the advent of hydraulic societies and the great surpluses which ensue from competant farming, several sexual norms were imposed: 1. The Rule of virginity...women were not to come to the marriage form pregnant with the child of another male. 2. The Rule of fidelity...women were not to invest their desire and delight in males other than the 'lawful' wedded husband. 3. The Rule of Chastity during absence and/or death of the husband. Women were not to act on their own sexuality and produce a claimant to the land through another lineage. 4. The Rule of Fecundity...women were to produce as many children as possible. There are several reasons for this: a. Children are net energy collectors after age 3 or 4. They add to the resources of the family in a hundred ways. b. Infant mortality rates were high: it takes 10 births to guarantee one male to inherit...five die early...three are female and will leave the family...two are left; one to inherit and one as a back-up in case of death, disease, or decrepitude. c. Social Security. One ages quickly in low tech societies. One needs another generation to take over the labor and management of the land...four of five surviving sons daughters to sustain one in one's later years is a good idea. d. Defense...given the amount of predatory raids and warfare, it is a good idea to have as many kin as possible. These rules are the some of the more interesting rules of marriage and family life we have inherited from the mid-east and from patriarchy. These survive the centuries until the advent of the modern era. Modern Family Forms. The modern era began, it is said, with the work of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton on the laws of motion. By 1610, Bacon had written 'de Novum Organum,' an explanation of the new pathways to knowledge informed by Copernicus, Galileo and others. Newton published, 'Principia Mathematica' around 1680. The modern era lay there simmering and smouldering until the industrial revolution came about. It is said that the first factory appeared in an English village, Huddersfield, in the middle of the 17th century. Production left the farm and cottage to go into the shop and factory. Family structures and functions changed dramatically. 1. At first children were economic assets...they could be sent into mine, mill, shop and factory at an early age to bring home additional income. By the 20th century, children had become net energy 'sinks' rather than collectors and thus, economic liabilities...families became smaller and smaller until your generation when, as we shall see, it tends to disappear. 2. Wages replaces familial forms of production and distribution. By 1970, only 5% of families live on farms...inherited property and sexual repression of women is not revelant to most working class families. The sexuality of both men and women become disconnected from the marriage form. 3. The functions of the family are farmed out to 'experts.' Instead of the full and complex political economy that it was, the family became a socio-emotional form in which love, romance and some light supervision of children a few hours a day remained. Even religion loses its social base in the family. Children go to church, Sunday School, to the doctor, to the child care center, to school and to college...Mom and Dad become as irrelevant in advanced monopoly capitalism to the kids as the kids had become to Mom and Dad a century before. 4. Marriage becomes a contract rather than a life-time commitment. Serial relationships then serial marriages become the norm as both men and women make the impossible quest for the romantic relationship emerging in a thousand modern novels, movies, and lectures in college courses about modern gender relations. 5. Science replaces religion as the way to deal with family problems. Women go to college to take courses in Home Ec where they learn to be good mothers, good housekeepers, interior designers, world class cooks, competant hostesses for father's business colleagues while men go to college to become managers, engineers, professionals, and entrepreneurs. Home and family become temporary retreats from which to return to more important activity. 6. Capitalism changes gender relations beyond recognition. a. Since women work better and more cheaply than do men, they are hired to replace men...to the inchoate anger of the men displaced. b. Since profits require expanded markets and since women have discretionary income from waged labor, women are taught to buy and to enjoy traditional male commodities...and vice versa...unisex emerges in the marketplace. c. Since the capitalist state has severe problems of political legitimacy [it has to protect the capitalist quest for profits and for markets], some programs of social justice are adopted...including social security. As resources in old age, children are replaced by state largesse...in the rich, imperial capitalist states. d. With democratic forms, women use political power and legal power to change and challenge the social, moral and use of physical power by the male to dominate women. e. Capitalism is inimical to full, rich and strong democracy but politicians can give 'cultural' capital instead of financial capital in the quest for political legitimacy...Liberals give cultural capital to Afro-Americans, women, religious and other minorities, while Conservatives give anti-abortion, prayer in school, traditional family values [read patriarchy], anti-gay and anti-government ideology instead of taxing the rich to support health care, child care, housing, environment, public arts, and decent education for the poor. f. Feminist movements appear to offer ideas about how to do gender and female-ness in such social conditions. 1) There is a radical separatist tendency which says stay away from men, they are violent, unreasonable, controlling and self-centered. Build female institu- tions: restaurants, banks, religions, domiciles, arts schools and play-time activities. Most of these are not lesbian but rather older women who have gone a number of relationships only to find violence, betrayal and, too often, alcoholism. 2) There is a bourgeois feminism which says to stay away from home ec, from nursing, from social work and from other 'traditional' female occupations as house wifery and teaching. Go to Yale, Princeton, Harvard Stanford, Michigan; go to law school, med school, bus school and compete with men for status honor, power and wealth. 3) There is a socialist feminist tendency which says that men are not the class enemy; racism, sexism and capitalism is the source of these problems. They have some advice for women until the revolutions comes along First: never get married, drop out of school, have his children and put him through college. He'll leave. Second: stay in school, get a degree, find a job in the monopoly sector or in the state sector. Never let a male mediate your relationship to the means of pro- duction/distribution. [Don't work in the competitive sector; low wages, little job security, no pensions, no health care or vacation benefits] Third: learn self defense; there are words to find and to use which will dampen unwelcome attention in most public places [Do you have a veneral disease??? I do! Learn physical forms of defense...or use some high tech stuff to discourage male aggression. Fourth: get a support group and keep it...you will need it and they will need you over the next 40 years or so. Finally: work for social justice for all your sisters for all your life; not just for yourself but for all the sisters and all the children. g. There is a more traditional solution urged upon women. Phyllis Schafly and the Eagle Forum teach women to go to school, learn to be good mothers and good home-makers...support your man...dress well and take the initiative to keep romance alive...discipline and motivate the children; keep the home a happy, thriving place to be...entertain well and wisely. [As a male socialized to traditional gender relations, it sounds good to me but, as a sociologist, I know that it is increasingly difficult to do]. Whatever course the women who read this or teach this take, my very best wishes go with you...socialist feminists have taught me a lot and I am greatly indebted to them. I have worked with a lot of bourgeois feminists and I respect them, their effort and sheer determination to beat men at their own game. Then too, in a violent, competitive sexist society, there is a real need for separate institutions. I have been 'adopted' as a sister by most of my colleagues at TWU and am permitted to be part of some of these separate activities...and I am told that there is a coven in Ft. Collins which protected me while I helped my Black and Chicano students confront the University with demands and supported the women's movement on campus. I am grateful...I need all the help I can get. You will probably find that some combination in some sequence makes sense in your own life...whatever; good luck to you. C. POSTMODERN FAMILY LIFE. There are two readings which you will want to take a look at in thinking through what you want to know and teach about postmodernity and family life. There is David Cheal's article in the March, 1993 issue of the J. of Family Issues...and there is another by Jon Bernardes in the same issue. Cheal says [and I agree], that what we are seeing is not the dis-organization of the family but the emergence of new forms of intimacy which must be seen as adjustments, divergencies, and different rather than patholog- ical behavior. Postmodern family thought argues that variety and difference has always been the case in family life...that no two iterations of a marriage [or any other social form] is ever alike...it is a political act to insist that there is a 'normal' pattern to which all 'normal' people must conform. Cheal offers an agenda for research in this way of conceptualizing family. Jon Bernardes, of Wolverhampton Polytechnic, U.K., agrees that we 'must reconcile ourselves to the study [not condemnation] of postmodern family life. He notes that, in U.K., only 2% of the families fit the modern concept of 'the normal nuclear family.' Bernardes excoriates modern family theorists [by name] for the grand scale of oppression we endorse by our courses and text on family life. Bernardes offers several 'theorems' for a postmodern sociology of the family: I have shortened and simplified, as is my wont: 1. The concept of the family is archaic. 2. Using the concept is irresponsible, morally and ethically. J.B. makes the case in detail which must be read to be appreciated...I tend to agree with both points...with great reluctance and sadness...not for myself nor for my children but for you, for all men and women and all children who must struggle to find new ways of being and loving in future. D. THE FAMILY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE. I have no idea what forms of intimacy will emerge in the future...I have a lot of confidence in the wisdom and poetic genius of men and women...I expect that for billions of people living today, the traditional family form(s) will suffice...for a billion or more, entirely new ways of doing life and love will emerge...and, as the forms of capitalism emerge, change, and are replaced, new adjustments must be made. Out of all the turmoil in Central Europe, South Africa, Pacific rim Asia, and especially in the core of global capitalism, a thousand new forms of gendering and gender relations will emerge. In all of this, an affirmative postmodern sociologists can work for social justice programs oriented to family life/foundational forms of intimacy: 1. Stable opportunities for pro-social jobs are most essential 2. Adequate response to domestic violence must be instituted. 3. Services for victims of domestic violence are essential; not the cheap-jack, mean-spirited, short-term, punitive response offered by conventional public programs but healing and holistic responses. 4. Community based support systems: housing, health care, child care, low energy transport, clean environment and legal aid. 5. Improved planing for sexual intimacy; education, technique and birth control technology, places to go and things to do for young people. Helter-skelter, they will act on their sexuality our job is to reduce the costs of such wonderful joys. 6. Paid leaves for parents in all sectors of the economy. Free and loving child care close to home and/or work. 7. Universal and generous support/allowances for home-makers of what ever gender; whatever form of intimate co-habitation. I'm not sure where I got these suggestions; Pat Schroeder of Colorado, a wise and good woman in the U.S. Congress is advocate for most of these...I listen closely when she speaks. You may want to add, modify or alter this listing; feel free. E. POSTMODERN 'FAMILY' SOCIOLOGY: 1. No one form of family life is sanctified, celebrated. 2. No one form of gender division of labor is centered or sanctioned. 3. No one person is left to parent the child/children; parenting is diversified and collectivized among caring others. 4. New sources of income are adopted: wage labor is inadequate in the emerging, competitive, globalized political economy. 5. New ideas about career and family must be considered, adopted, tried and refined. 6. Nihilistic postmodern claims of the end of history, the end of intimacy, the end of sociology and the end of the knowledge process may be safely set aside...there is much to do; much to know; much to learn and much to teach until the end of time. 7. Your turn. Bless all the children, T.R. Young