From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sun Jul 2 06:59:43 1995 Date: Sun, 02 Jul 95 08:02:33 EDT From: "T R. Young" <34LPF6T@CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU> Organization: Central Michigan University Subject: Disrupting the ASA To: GRADUATE STUDENTS IN SOCIOLOGY When I was a grad student at U/Colo, I chortled with glee to hear that another grad student, braver than I; with more insight than I, had thrown a pie in the face of the then Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare who, our brave captain said, was really the secretary of death, propaganda and morbidity....or words to that effect. Today, there has been some talk on PSN, the Progressive Scholar's Network [let me know if you want to subscribe], about disrupting the ASA Meetings in Wash., D.C. this year. Seems that some of our braver and more knowledgeable colleagues takes strong exception the to incoming president of ASA and the current theme of the ASA Program. The President of ASA is Amitai Etzioni; the theme is communitar- ianism. The talk on PSN has been just that; no real plans of which I know or others have mentioned on PSN [but then why tell anyone before- hand???]. But there has been a lot of comment, mostly bombast in my opinon, about the dangers of communitarianism and about the many faults of Etizoni. Ric Brown at the Graduate Center of CUNY, has posted the Platform of the Communitarians [I have saved it if anyone wants to read it]. I have read it; seems helpful, hopeful and all 'round good sense to me...I have asked for details on a critique of its points. Some good people in sociology have signed on to it [a list of co-sponsors is found at the end of it]. I want to take the controversy to talk about social theory and social policy for those of you who tend to think, with C. Wright Mills, that the sociological imagination should be harnessed to progressive social policy and action. The heart of the issue is how to read the current political economy of the USA. Some colleagues read it as 'neo-fascist;' others as corporate liberalism; still others as a sort of repressive Christian Right coup d' etat lumbering toward the Emerald City lead by hammerheads and Octospiders. I see the USA as a very complex political economy with a very extensive but mostly privatized system of social control and social protest. The role of the State [and the role of the ASA in general and Prof. Etzioni in particular to be minimal even if suspect]. I want to do three things: first share with you a posting about fascism which, I think, will help one decide how to understand the role of the federal government today. Then I want to put the real problems of the USA today in a brief historical context. Finally, I want to suggest a range of options available to the political process which might be helpful to those of you in political sociology and/or emancipatory sociology. 1. Jim Julian, Indiana, has set forth the major elements of fascism. He says that fascism has the following characteristics: a. the means of production is privately owned b. the state keep tight control of economic and political life in order to sustain capitalism [and contain critique of its many negativities...my comments in []...]. c. business and the state are dynamically coordinated by the ruling/owning class with only fictional opposition. d. a high culture exists for the ruling/owning class [by high I think JJ means that art, science, music, drama and lit are widely available to the sons and daughters of the ruling elites but...] e. a transient and flexible mass hegemonic culture exists for most of us. [very little critical comment on radio, t.v., mags, journals, papers, Hollywood cinema; mostly crime, sex, violence, romance, and sports which divert and deflect good theory and good politics]. f. human life, in both mass cult and in high culture is seen as a market commodity at the disposal of the ruling/ owning class. [I would add that, in some variants of the narrow religiousity we see, human life is seen as very important but the boundaries of this valuation are narrowly drawn to exclude minorities, the poor and often women]. g. Technology [and science including social science] serve the political [control] and economic [accumulation] interests of the ruling/owning class. [I would add that this technology can be used by a wide variety of interest groups including the Christian Co-alition; the various militias in opposition to the state and those of us on PSN who critique the state and the ruling elites...even if we do not own stations, papers, mags nor produce movies]. Given that definition, it is easy to say that the USA is a neo- fascist nation. I think the role of the state is over-emphasized. I think most control is privatized and outside the purview of the federal, state and local governmental purview. There are some eight or ten control systems in the USA making this 'land of the free and home of the brave' one of the most heavily policed societies in the world. These control systems, none very effective in doing what they purport to do, include: 1. The Criminal Justice System composed of some 800,000 police as well as lawyers, judges, jailors, probation people and a lot of suppliers/consultants. It polices most street crime and those elements of the underclass who use crime as a way to stay connected to the system of production and distribution. It uses pain and degradation as a rehabilitation/revenge tactic. 2. The Private Security system. It is composed of some 1.3 million hired police personnel. It policies mostly theft of employees and customers in malls, offices, shops, mills and mines. It is informed mostly by distributive justice [return the goods, resign and don't return]. Of late, the private security system has added a lot of private judges, private prisons and private mediators to deal with the many conflicts in society. 3. The Medical Control System. There are about 700,000 doctors in the USA who use a wide variety of techniques to control those who cannot fit themselves into the present political, economic or cultural social life world at hand. Over a million children are on Ritalin; most of the prescriptions writted by doctors are for tranquilizers...mostly for women who are discontent with their gender/marital/economic conditions. Many cultural crimes are being medicalized: alchohol, drug use, homosexuality, gambling and general discontent of young adults. 4. The Administrative Justice System. Comprized mostly of middle level state functionaries, the AJS tries to moderate the worse excesses of business; OSHA, IRS, FCC, FTC, FDA, EPA, and a thousand other state, city and county agencies try to bring some sort of distributive justice to economic life. The AJS deals mostly with white collar crime [betrayal of trust by professionals and/or managers as well as corporate crime [exploitation of workers customers, competitors and pollution of the environment]. It is not very effective; it is gentle and forgiving to most of us white collar/corporate criminals. 5. The Social Welfare System...often serves a policing/control function. There are over 300,000 social workers in public employ; they monitor mostly women in the underclass for cultural crimes [co- habiting, unwed pregnancies, diet, cleanliness, parenting and unreported wage labor. The policing function is inimical to the intentions of many social workers; they either change jobs, hang on and often violate rules of the agency in order to do the job with mercy and justice. 6. The Peer Review System...is mostly for white collar criminals: professors, doctors, lawyers, brokers...those of us who have managed to distance our selves and our crimes from the CJS. Composed of our friends, collegues, class mates who occupy the same position in the social system, it is user friendly to the accused but not to the plaintiff. Most professions have peer review; distributive justice is the aim but rarely the effect. 7. The Civil Court System...it handles torts instead of crimes; wrongs done by private parties rather than offenses of state and local statute...it has exploded in the past 20 years as people seek distributive justice not available through CJS, AJS, or the Peer Review System. Arbitators, Mediators, Private Courts and state courts serve in parallel to handle a small portion of the defaults on contract and commitment made by one private party to another. 8. The Religious Justice System. For most of history, clerics policed punished, conjoled and corrected those who violated the norms and mores of a society. In the past four hundred years, the religious justice system has been squeezed to a small corner of social life in most Western societies...however it is still very important to a small but growing part of the population in the USA...some 10 to 25 million persons go before their priest/ministor/pastor, confess their crimes...mostly cultural...and beg forgiveness. Mercy, penance and forgiveness inform most of the proceedings of this system of control...but occasionally there is banishment/banning a sort of social death which is the extreme penalty for cultural crime. Beside these more visible control systems, there is the Military Justice System informed by the Unified Code of Military Justice; it is a close cousin to the CJS but without some of the Constitutional safeguards. The INS maintains three or four prisons...it has few procedural safeguards for those defined as illegal immigrants. In addition, there are a wide variety of 'underground' social control agencies ranging from the blacklists kept by various sectors of corporate America [college deans and presidents are said to have an informal blacklist of suspect professors...those of you who know John Leggett at Rutgers, ask him to tell you about it]. There are more active underground policing ranging from the KKK, White Citizens groups and others...mostly on the Right...the action groups on the Left are not very active these days...there is an environmental group which takes direct action against lumber interests in the North west...later on in this mini-lecture series, I'll give you one on 'Underground Structures in Democratic States'...in brief it says that when the state fails to reproduce racial, gender, ethnic or other status inequalities, underground structures develop to do the job. Underground structures in non-democratic societies have, of course, quite another origin. One can see that there is much validity in the claim that the USA is a 'fascist' or 'neo-fascist' society. I haven't mentioned all the technology in place to monitor workers, customers, criminals or competitors. Yet what we see in the USA is very different from what developed in Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy or Franco's Spain. It is, for the most part a very privatized and fragmented fascism if fascism one can call it. All these parallel control systems work different social terrain to different purpose with different philo- sophy. None are particularly effective...nothing like the terror and totality of a police state. Yet, together they generate much alarm and much anger...and mostly pretheoretical response. In Part II, next Sunday, I'll give you a brief historical context with which to understand some of the politics we now see. Then, in part III, I'll lay out for you some of the pathways to the future I see before us...not excluding communitarianism of the sort put forward by Amitai Etzioni and his colleagues...and there are others you may want to know and to think about. Have a nice 4th of July...in the meantime, keep the faith, we can make America a lot better than it is and still honor the real accomplishments we have seen...including people like you who are genuinely interested in social justice and a decent society. T.R. Young T.R.YOUNG@CMICH.EDU From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sun Jul 2 09:51:08 1995 From: KINRABE@UWYO.EDU id <01HSE4FEWGPC0035TU@ROPER.UWYO.EDU>; Sun, 02 Jul 1995 10:47:48 -0600 (MDT) Date: Sun, 02 Jul 1995 10:48:07 -0600 (MDT) Subject: Young's Fascism Message To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU It's hard to argue against TR Young's observations about fascism in the USA. I guess my only question is, what plan do we have for bringing about the social justice Young mentions? I agree that there is a small elite exploiting and passifying us by controlling both material conditions and ideas. So what? Intellectuals have known this for some time. Is the answer to our ills just another ideology or construction of reality that defines different things as right and wrong? Is there any way to prevent a "leftist" construction from becoming simply another system of exploitation, but for a new (or maybe not even new) handful of elites? Because Young attacks the right so hard in his message, I am left wondering if he believes a left-wing approach will be better (perhaps I'm misreading him). In any case, it seems that almost any system *could* work if it stuck to its ideals -- the problem seems to be that it doesn't. For example, the main problem with communist China seems to be that communist party bureaucrats use their authority to extract bribes/favors from the rest of the Chinese. A Chinese friend of mine told me about this awhile ago. I think he otherwise thought the economic system worked fine (and I heard a similar comment from another sociologist who focuses on postmodern analysis of economy). The USSR also seemed to just create a new elite after its communist revolution -- only about 10% of the pop. were allowed to join the party, and the party had special privileges. I'm not too up on Young's ideology, so fill me in. I'm sure no one is suggesting a utopian solution... but what's the plan folks? Is it to disrupt ASA meetings? If so, I think we'd be doing exactly what the fascists would hope. Who *cares* about what the ASA is doing? I doubt most Americans even know what the ASA is. I've been listening to sociologists saying they're going to save the world for years: what are we doing besides publishing and teaching critiques of the status quo? Is this enough? Has it made a difference? When we are successful in getting some liberal policies into the system, do they actually serve anybody other than the politicians and bureacrats that get paid to support them? Young mentions CW Mills in his message -- Mills being the man who promoted "value-laden" vs. "value-free" sociology. Well, many of us would agree value-free science is impossible. So, what values should be promoted? Does Young or anyone else think there are values out there that are inherently right or even values with which a majority of Americans could agree? I don't. If we succeed in achieving a left-wing USA, it seems we will have achieved exactly the same thing that we have achieved right now: we will have pleased some of the masses, we will have created an elite (a new one made up of liberal politicians and bureaucrats), and we will have solved some problems while keeping some of the same ones and creating different ones. A lot of messages on socgrad have a very liberal slant. My question to liberal ideologists is, what have you done besides expressed your ideas? If you have done anything else, what has worked to improve this society? If anything has worked to improve society, can you say there has been any real improvement other than a different system satisfying different people? I'm just being a critic here, but so was Young in his last message. Critique is just the first step. Tell me how you'd design a better society and *why* your design would work. It'll take me awhile to respond to your responses because I'll be gone for a week, but I'm open to your ideas. Sincerely, Brian From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Mon Jul 3 19:49:57 1995 Date: Mon, 03 Jul 95 22:34:14 EDT From: Marni Hancock Organization: Emory University - Atlanta, Georgia, USA Subject: T.R. YOUNG AND FACISM To: SOCGRAD@UCSD.EDU Now that I've taken time to read Young's most recent posting, I have some concerns regarding his post and his scholarship. To nitpick first--it's the UNIFORM Code of Military Justice--and it applies only to members of the military services. Given that those services have bought and preserved (with their lives and blood) the right of Young and the rest of the U.S. citizenry the right to speak openly and negatively about our government and other power structures, it might be wise to consider carefully the need for drastic changes in the way it works. The system does not have the same degree of protection of rights found in the civilian system--but then few of the relationships tested in civilian courts concern persons upon whom your life may depend. It changes your outlook a little and tends to make the persons sitting in judgment less tolerant. Second, while Young identifies attributes of facism, he never defines the entity. Totalitarianism is a much broader category, I think, and regardless, to discuss the topic intelligently there must be some shared understanding of terminology. Finally, if the ASA's were being held in Atlanta instead of Washington, D.C., would there be the same interest in a disruptive demonstration of the power of dissidents (spelling?) during the meetings? Just wondering. I'll look forward to further discussions of the subject. Marni Hancock socaw059@emuvm1.cc.emory.edu From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Wed Jul 5 05:24:16 1995 Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 08:22:42 -0400 From: James Cassell To: Sociology Graduate Student Discussion Subject: GSS Annotated Bibliography available online (fwd) FYI ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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, 1 Jul 1995 17:18:45 -0400 From: DEAN SAVAGE Subject: GSS Annotated Bibliography available online An online searchable version of The Annotated Bibliography of Papers Using the General Social Surveys by Tom Smith, Bradley Arnold, and Jennifer Weseley (Tenth Edition, NORC, 1995) is now available from the Queens College Sociology department webserver. This work lists 3173 articles, books, and other references which have used the General Social Surveys as a data source, and gives author, title, date of publication, the names of the GSS variables used in each reference, and an abstract. It is an exceptionally useful companion tool for GSS users who want to review what has already been published. Searches are for any term in the database, including variable names. You can either search the bibliography online or download the search engine and database for local use (the latter makes sense for instructional or computer lab use). Available via WWW at http://www.soc.qc.edu (This also works for Lynx.) Downloading via ftp at ftp.soc.qc.edu Login as anonymous Password is your email address Dean Savage Sociology Queens College-CUNY  From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sat Jul 8 03:31:03 1995 From: JWL3697@utarlg.uta.edu id <01HSM65CFS5S00L72Y@utarlg.uta.edu>; Sat, 08 Jul 1995 05:30:03 -0500 (CDT) Date: Sat, 08 Jul 1995 05:25:56 -0500 (CDT) Subject: statistics seminar at DC To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Hello, socgradders: I just found out that I will be going to DC for the statistics seminar on NELS:88 data file in AUG, and I am curious whether anyone from this list is going. If you are, please respond to me personally. May be we can have a get-together chat over the net before we actually meet. _________________________________________________________________ Julia Lam - grad stu Department of Sociology University of Texas at Arlington P.O. Box 19599 Arlington, TX 76016 From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sun Jul 9 06:04:43 1995 Date: Sun, 09 Jul 95 07:32:40 EDT From: "T R. Young" <34LPF6T@CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU> Organization: Central Michigan University Subject: O Whence I cried and Whither?? To: GRADUATE STUDENTS IN SOCIOLOGY Mini-lecture 27: Part II. The Sources of Social DisContent and Disorder Reprise of Part I: There is some talk of disrupting the ASA Meetings in August since some progressive scholars do not like Communitarianism and/or Amitai Etzioni, the incoming president of ASA. They say C-ism is racist, sexist and works to refresh capitalism to the April Day...the reasoning against C-ism is a bit strained; the platform of the movement does reads left-liberal but has no long range structural changes in it; Aye, there's the rub...it does not read like the M-E Manifesto. Part of the critique of C-ism was that it was 'fascist' or 'neo-fascist.' Part I of this mini-series used a posting by Jim Julian/Indiana, to give those of you in pol/sociology a working definition of fascism so you could judge for yourself just how fascist C-ism is. [Not very by that def]. C-ism is one of a dozen different solutions to the many problems which beset American Society...in Part III, I will discuss four of five of the more likely but just now, I want to offer a brief historical context out which, in my opinion, come these many problems. This analysis stands in contrast and, often, in opposition to the theories of social problems and social disorder found in most soc texts [differential association, control theory, deviant sub-culture, cultural of poverty, labelling theory, tech lag/cultural lag, genetics, physiology, faulty socialization and such. [It is not that these are necessarily false but rather that they are irrelevant to crime, divorce, teen-age preg, suicide, rebellion, drug use per se...more later in another mini-lecture but one can see that diff/assoc and labelling theory are equally valid for being a Christian or a Malaysian as for being a criminal or drug user...I do like both Ed Sutherland and Howie Becker but....]. A BRIEF HISTORY OF OUR TIMES AND TROUBLES A. The USA, alone of the industrialized nations, survived WWII with its factories, transport and infra-structure intact. Germany, England, France Italy, Japan, and the Scandinavian countries had been devastated by bombs and artilliary...as was Eastern Europe and USSR...the USA had the global economy largely to itself. B. This advantage produced the Golden Years of American Capitalism as well as a great expansion of programs of social justice. Civil Rights, jobs for all, better housing in the suburbs, an explosion in college enrollment as well as the material amenities of a Super-power devolved to the USA and to its citizens. C. The USA developed a vast military-industrial capacity; helped by the various agencies of the federal government, both business and American bases set up all around the globe...business to serve markets; to get cheap raw materials and to take advantages of cheaper labor in 'friend- ly' countries. The military had two roles inter-connected roles: to contain communism and to control opposition to American business in the 3rd world...indeed, most of our military ventures were against local liberal and nationalist movements...most of which had some communist groups loosely connected but not all. The main idea was to expand American corporations around the world...it worked well. D. By 1970, there were about 1000 trans-national corporations, of which some 300 were Americans; these dominated/engineered the New Globalized Economic system we see today. If we mapped out the structure of that Global Economy, we would see the USA still at the top; it is part of the Big Seven which dominates fiscal, industrial, banking, and military policy...NAFTA and the other emerging economic blocs now forming is a sub-story of this, very important in its own way...more in another mini-lecture. E. There were several progressive developments in the USA built in part on this position in the Global Economy: the Civil Rights movement, the women's movement, improvement in health care and health coverage, federal funding of schools, housing and environmental health for a start. These become sources of great discontent as the position of the USA changes after 1970. F. There were/are several changes in the Global Economy which set the stage for the emergence of Right-Wing politics, Fundamentalist Christianity [they are not the same thing!], Communitarianism and the great increase in street crime, corporate crime, drug use, and many practices which are now the focus of both Class War and Cultural Warfare we now see. These changes begin with: 1. The Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe...it worked well. England, Germany, France and the Scandinavian countries began to take a market share; a share in cheap raw materials, and to use cheap labor to compete with USA firms. 2. The Korean War, the Vietnamese War and a lot of military bases pumped billions of dollars into the Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese economies...this produced competitors on the Pacific Rim to go with those in Europe...doesn't bode well for us, does it. 3. In 1970, the French under DeGaulle, lead an attack on the gold standard and the American dollar backed by gold...our gold reserves shrank...Nixon floated the dollar on the world currency market...the dollar fell against most other currencies...this sounds bad since it lowered the price and profits of American goods...when US corporations have a market to themselves, a strong dollar is good since it buys a lot of oil, tin, coffee, tea, and all the other stuff we need to run a huge economic system and to keep food prices low for Americans. 4. After WWII, Communism spread to cover about 1/4 of the world and a goodly hunk of the population...no cheap labor, cheap raw materials or easy access to markets there. All these changes and more altered the status, power and wealth of the USA [thank you, Max Weber]. The USA economy remains the biggest in the world...but the steady improvement in life chances and the stand- ard of living in the USA did not continue. By 1985, there were serious problems in the USA; crime, dis-employment, cut-backs in benefits, real wages and job opportunities were beginning to subvert the American Dream of continual prosperity. G. Class War. The Reagan Administration lead a concerted attack upon the working class...the middle class shrank about 15%; 4% getting richer; 11% dropping down to lower class standards. American capital dis-invested in the USA...high paying jobs in the Monopoly sector were replaced by low paying jobs in the service sector. Civil Rights, Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity and Federal programs in health care, education, social security and housing became an economic liability in these new conditions. The tax base was eroded; tax payer rebellions to the appropriation of 10, 20, 30 per cent and more of private income became onerous as wages and benefits also fell off. H. Cultural Wars. There are a lot of complex and very different elements in the cultural wars we now see. 1. Much of it is fueled by White Males who think that Civil Rights and Affirmative Action takes jobs away from them. In shrinking market and with declining wages, competition for jobs by women, Afro-Americans, immigrants and children trigger great animosity. 2. Some of it is fueled by the commodification of sacred supplies; Orgized crime offers sex, drugs, gambling, and pornography as free market commodities...this offends religious sensibility which, customarily, has used these supplies as pathways to the Holy [drugs, sex, gambling] or as solidarity mechanisms for cherished social relationships [sex, alchohol, gaming, porno]. It is a cosmic irony that the state has displaced crime as the supplier of these commodities in order to solve the fiscal crises in the face of tax payer revolt/reluctance. 3. A lot of the problem is fueled by the liberal movement which has pushed the passage of laws to constrain the worst excesses of private capital...labor laws, safe product laws, pollution laws, tax laws and anti-trust laws...these work to drive capital out of the country to more 'friendly' countries. 4. The Reagan Administration bought a thin political legit- macy by deficit spending on military programs and social welfare programs...while giving lip service to fundament- alist Christian values. H. Out of all this turmoil and troubles a curious co-alition between Fundamentalist Christianity and Trans-National Capital has emerged to challenge the leftist-liberalish programs of democrats and 'moderate' republicans. Liberal Democrats are in real trouble; the advent of Communitarianism is not likely to get great support from those hurt by class and/or cultural warfare...it suggests peace, accomodation, social justice and, true enough, tends to freeze exisitng inequalities. Conclusion to Part II. All this sounds hopeless; the global trends are not likely to stop because it is inconvenient to Americans. The marketing of sacred supplies is not likely to stop as long as it is so very profitable...the demand for social justice is not likely to go away...that is a long, long term historical process. The flight of capital to less costly labor markets is not likely to stop. The demand for respect for religious sensibilities is not likely to end any time. What is to be done?? I'll give you four or five alternatives which I see lumbering toward Bethlehem to be born...in Part III, next week. Keep the faith, T. R. Young T.R.YOUNG@CMICH.EDU From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Fri Jul 14 07:55:48 1995 (PMDF V4.3-10 #10451) id <01HSUVVOAAG0QOA5WL@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU>; Fri, 14 Jul 1995 10:49:48 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 10:49:48 -0500 (EST) From: SCOTT BLAKE Subject: Nuclear Testing Petition (long) To: rockers@medisg.stanford.edu, socgrad@UCSD.EDU > #### ##### #### ##### > # # # # # # > #### # # # # # > # # # # ##### > # # # # # # > #### # #### # > > # # # # #### # ###### ## ##### > ## # # # # # # # # # # # > # # # # # # # ##### # # # # > # # # # # # # # ###### ##### > # ## # # # # # # # # # # > # # #### #### ###### ###### # # # # > > ##### ###### #### ##### #### # > # # # # # # > # ##### #### # #### # > # # # # # > # # # # # # # # > # ###### #### # #### # > > >1 SHIMIZU Seishi Physics,University of Tokyo,Japan >2 Yuichi Nishihara Physics,University of Tokyo,Japan >3 Hirohisa TANIGUCHI Physics,University of Tokyo,Japan >4 Takashi Tomoeda Physics,University of Tokyo,Japan >5 Tomoki KOBAYASHI Physics,University of Tokyo,Japan >6 Munehito ARAI Physics,University of Tokyo,Japan >7 Akira Okazaki Physics,University of Tokyo,Japan >8 Atsushi Matsumura Physics, Tohoku University, Japan >9 Kouta Yamamoto Chemistry,Tohoku University,Japan >10 Yasushi UJIOKA Degremont S.A., France >11 Toru Hara Universite de Paris Sud, France >12 Rene Bakker CEA - Sacley, France >13 David Garzella Universite de Paris Sud, France >14 Henk Blok Vrije Universiteit/NIKHEF, Amsterdam >15 Igor Passchier NIKHEF, Amsterdam >16 Ard van Sighem NIKHEF, Amsterdam >17 Johan Noordhoek KOL Leiden >18 C.M.C.M. van Woerkens Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory, Leiden >19 Annemarie Borst, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam >20 Gijs Nelemans Universiteit Utrecht >21 Susanne Buiter Universiteit Utrecht >22 Yvo Kok Paleomagnetic Lab., Utrecht >23 Thom Pick Paleomagnetic Lab., Utrecht University >24 Dagmar Olbertz Universiteit Utrecht >25 Eleonore Stutzmann Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, France >26 Nicole Girardin Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, France >27 Francois Girardin Ecole Nat. Sup. des Telecommunications,France >28 Axel Manthey Comnets RWTHJ Aachen, Germany >29 Frank Brockners LfBS RWTH Aachen, Germany >30 Marcus Dormanns LfBS RWTH Aachen, Germany >31 Uwe Meier Universitaet Karlsruhe, Germany >32 Hermann Hild Universit"at Karlsruhe, Germany >33 Roman Matzke Dresdner International Research Institute, FFM, Germany >34 Achim Schneider Dept of Computer Science, Uni of Auckland, NZ >35 Norbert Reithinger German Research Center for AI, Saarbruecken, Germany >36 Jan Alexandersson German Research Center for AI, Saarbruecken, Germany >37 Toine Andernach University of Twente, The Netherlands >38 Wim Van Loo University of Ghent, Belgium >39 Dirk Noel CONTRAGRAM, University of Gent, Belgium >40 Patricia Ward University of Technology, Sydney, Australia >41 Philip Kilby CSIRO/DIT Canberra, Australia >42 Keiran Thompson Australian National University, Canberra, Australia >43 Kim Vella Australian National University, Canberra, Australia >44 Rona Nadile Australian National University, Canberra, Australia >45 Frank Castles Australian National University, Canberra, Australia >46 Bernard Ebbinghaus University of Mannheim, Germany >47 Scott Blake Brandeis University, Massachusetts, USA > > Dear Madams, dear Sirs, > > This is a chain letter to urge the French > Government to stop nuclear tests. > If you agree with us, please add your name to the list above, > and send copies to your friends. > We will add up the lists that had come back to us, and send it > to the French Government. > > The sentements expressed are understood to be personal, and not > necessarily those of your employer. > > If you happen to be the hundredth,two hundredth, three hundredth, > and so on, on the list, please send a copy of the mail back to the > addresses below, so that we can keep track of this project. If you have > any comment please send mails to us. And also, > if you are multi-lingual and have friends who may not understand > English, please translate this message and add it to the end of the mail. > Thank you very much. > >******* addresses of the organizers > shimizu@femto.phys.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp > keshi@uticeaix1.icepp.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp <- please use this address >******* From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Fri Jul 14 10:04:19 1995 From: blovitts@nsf.gov Date: Fri, 14 Jul 95 13:00:02 EST To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Subject: Society Sinks to a New Low What's wrong with this picture??? Below is a copy of a letter that I sent to the News Director of my local television station concerning, what to me, is a perverse social innovation, -- a large TV screen showing cartoons at the edge of a municipal swimming pool -- that the station covered and promoted. Worse yet, the newscasters were excited at the prospect that other swimming pools through out the country would adopt the innovation. DON'T LET IT HAPPEN IN YOUR AREA! Enjoy -- or maybe cry ... Of course, if you disagree, or even if you agree, you could pay a visit to it if you are coming out to ASA in August. Barbara -------- I am writing to express serious concern both over your coverage of the opening of the "Dive-In Cartoons" at a Rockville pool, which you aired more than once, and the insipid editorializing on the part of your newscasters which followed. What I saw portrayed in that news story was a massive TV screen framed by advertising, kids floating around passively in inner tubes, and parents sitting by passively along the pool side, all watching cartoons which tend to be violent and reinforce gender-role stereotypes -- and your newscasters unreflectively babbling about what a wonderful thing this new innovation was. >From my perspective, this is hardly a wonderful thing. The swimming pool has been transformed from a center of active and vigorous exercise and play and interpersonal interaction between both children and parents to a passive, interpersonally isolating situation which reflects and reinforces the ills of American society. American children already spend far too much of their time passively watching vapid shows on television with no redeeming social or intellectual value. Far too many American children are overweight and don't get enough exercise, and with the rise of video games, far too many children spend too much of their time interacting with technology instead of with other children and their parents. The "Dive-In Cartoon Pool" only fosters and reinforces these negative behaviors and values in a setting which once promoted the opposite. Although I may be in the minority, my philosophy of the media is that the media should rise above the level of society not sink below it. Your promotion of this "recreation center," -- and your newscasters did promote it --only served to drag society further down. I hope in the future that you, and your newscasters, will think more deeply about the values you are promoting when you air and taut such "innovations," especially as they concern children. ------ Anyone else share my visceral reaction? From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Fri Jul 14 13:25:55 1995 Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 15:24:12 -0500 (CDT) From: nick mcree Subject: Re: Cartoons at the Swimming Pool To: socgrad My feeling after learing about the "cartoons at the swimming pool" situation is rather benign, I'm afraid. Granted, it does not sound like it would be a very fun place to take a swim. But quite frankly I am having trouble sympathizing with the degree of invective Barbara leveled at the TV station. -------------------------------- Nick McRee Department of Sociology 336 Burdine Hall The University of Texas--Austin Austin, Texas 78712-1088 From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Fri Jul 14 15:09:43 1995 14 Jul 95 18:08:20 +1100 From: "morten g. ender" Organization: University of Maryland,College Park To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 18:08:06 EDT Subject: Re: Cartoons at the Swimming Pool since i'm a swimmer, i'd like to see cartoons projected on the bottom of the pool, maybe even court tv... :-) ...this isn't the first attempt to use public swimming pools as a form of social control...a few summers back, the city of miami, fl was praised for socially controlling the inner city youth population by keeping the local pools open 'til midnight, the media coverage suggested it was keeping the "delinquent youth off the streets" morten ^ From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Fri Jul 14 21:35:22 1995 From: IRWIN@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU (PMDF V4.3-10 #10451) id <01HSVODL3DWWQOADFE@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU>; Sat, 15 Jul 1995 00:33:10 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 15 Jul 1995 00:33:10 -0500 (EST) Subject: Poisoning recreation To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Bravo, Barbara! I'm with you one hundred percent. Your letter is eloquent and right on the mark about the perverse craziness of ruining vigorous exercise by introducing what may be our most pernicious drug, passivity and violence- inducing TV. (That it can promote two apparently opposite negative phenomena is one of the "beauties" of TV.) I'm dismayed that the first two responses I've seen to your posting are so lackadaisical. Congratulations on taking action. Maybe this blight can be nipped in the bud. (Not that I see TV as totally negative. I use it maybe twice a week to con- vert my energetic, imaginative three-year-old to a hypnotized vegetable for as long as it takes to get clothes on him, on days when he's got too much fresh energy to sit still and cooperate. I could say a little more that's positive about TV when it plays a small part in a much larger context, but that's beside the point here.) Bob Irwin, Brandeis University From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Fri Jul 14 23:07:02 1995 From: XCHUFF@CCVAX.FULLERTON.EDU Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 23:04:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: Poisoning recreation? To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU I would be the last to argue that television has not taken a turn for the worse over the past decade, but I am not sure that I agree with those who are making it out to be our "most pernicious drug". I do not have children, but when I do I will promote an active lifestyle for them and closely monitor the content of what they watch and how much time they spend in front of the television. It could be argued that reading books is promoting children to be unactive and that many children's books promote violence as well as sex role stereotyping (pull out your old childhood books... Jack and the Beanstalk, any Disney book, Mother Goose). Some, if not most, of the blame must be put on the parents that allow themselves to use television or computers as "babysitters". I have yet to see people getting upset when children are found at the library enjoying a good book. Is it the television or the parents that allow their children to sit glued to the TV that is the real problem, or some mixture of the two? Todd Huff- Cal. State Fullerton From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sat Jul 15 00:24:26 1995 Date: Sat, 15 Jul 1995 00:22:09 -0700 To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU From: vigil@mail.sdsu.edu (Surfer Joe) Subject: Splash down Well, hello everybody... I am new to this listserv. After several months of playing around with the Internet, I've decieded it's time to see if I can really use it as a resource within my choosen major / career. I've monitored the posts for a couple weeks now, and gosh darnit, I feel it's time to contribute something. I don't know what yet, but that's not important now. Does anybody read alt.sci.sociology? It is the only sociology related newsgroup I could find. I understand the sci.sociology group recently met its demise. How about the PSL, the Progressive Sociologsts' Listserv? Do you read that? Anyways, just dropping a line. C-ya. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/__/_/_/ Hi there! from Sandy Eggo, California, USA _/ The weather is here, I wish you were beautiful - Jimmy Buffett _/ _/ If God dwells inside us like some people say, I sure hope _/ he likes enchiladas, because that's what he's getting ! _/ _/ It's sad a family can be torn apart by something as simple _/ as a pack of wild dogs. - Jack Handey _/ _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/__/ From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sat Jul 15 11:16:00 1995 From: "Paul, Chris (GR) SOCIO" To: Socgrad list Subject: Re: "Dive-in Movies" Date: Sat, 15 Jul 95 11:06:00 PDT Encoding: 18 TEXT The idea of "dive-in movies" is not all that new. As an undergrad, I worked as a lifeguard at UCLA and, in fact, we held several "dive-in" movies. Of course, it wasn't cartoons, it was feature films. Also, it wasn't a regularly scheduled daily event consuming regular swim hours, but was a specially scheduled event, arranged for the "Bruin Kids" day camp groups at UCLA after hours... The point, then... In moderation, given the fact that video entertainment will be sought, floating around in a pool is more active than sitting on the couch at home, is more social than a drive-in, and is a nice change of pace. In excess, like all rediculous mind-consuming entertainment, it is as reprehensible as others have suggested. It is my guess that the newscasters in question still deserve some reproach, as I wouldn't be surprised if the case in question was, in reality, quite similar to the arrangement at UCLA. Christopher Paul UCLA From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sat Jul 15 15:42:04 1995 Date: Sat, 15 Jul 1995 17:38:57 -0500 (CDT) From: nick mcree Subject: swimming pool madness To: socgrad As long as we are wearing the badge of (snicker) guardians of "appropriate" leisure activities for citizens, maybe we socgradders should express outrage at an additional disturbing change in recreation and fitness activity: Many people, as they furiously pump away on Stairmasters or exercise bikes, stare impassively at the array of digital lights on the displays. This is outrageous. The "species-being" of untold millions is being eroded as innocent people stare slack-jawed at a computer simulation of how many hills one has climbed. And it is the fault of the makers of exercise machines, most certainly. Those damn captains of industry sit in their comfy offices and think of how next they can stupify exercise fanatics. If they *all* make machines with computer simulations, what choice does the unprotected consumer have? Maybe someone would be willing to circulate a petition. We could challenge the makers of exercise machines to do away with the stultifying computer displays, and instead provide engaging reading material that would awaken the populace from their slumber. Like some sociology primers, perhaps. I would start the petition, but unfortunately I am too busy railing about other injustices... -------------------------------- Nick McRee Department of Sociology 336 Burdine Hall The University of Texas--Austin Austin, Texas 78712-1088 From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sat Jul 15 18:22:12 1995 Date: Sat, 15 Jul 1995 20:17:47 -0500 (CDT) From: Brent Myer To: nick mcree Subject: Re: swimming pool madness On Sat, 15 Jul 1995, nick mcree wrote: > As long as we are wearing the badge of (snicker) guardians of > "appropriate" leisure activities for citizens, maybe we socgradders > should express outrage at an additional disturbing change in recreation > and fitness activity: [snip] > Many people, as they furiously pump away on Stairmasters or exercise > bikes, stare impassively at the array of digital lights on the displays. > This is outrageous. The "species-being" of untold millions is being > eroded as innocent people stare slack-jawed at a computer simulation of > how many hills one has climbed. > And it is the fault of the makers of exercise machines, most certainly. > Those damn captains of industry sit in their comfy offices and think of how > next they can stupify exercise fanatics. If they *all* make machines > with computer simulations, what choice does the unprotected consumer > have? I have to admit that i do not frequent such places, but i have been to many as a guest. From what i saw, the folks certainly were not idly gazing at their machine, but actively eyeing both themselves in the mirrors, and the other stout people around them. These types of machines in general are not found in the blood and sweat shops that hardened athletes attend, but serve as a social gathering for middle to upper-class health conscious individuals. The captains of industry are serving their desire for cool toys, the place that furnishes these toys certainly makes it a comfortable arena for socializing; many include bars (health) and nice fluffy couches to loung around on. The question of choice here, for the individual is easy, one can go there, or not. But i can hardly see how this technology is any more gross than laying on a bench press and staring at a yellow tiled ceiling. But... i don't see everything :) > Maybe someone would be willing to circulate a petition. We could > challenge the makers of exercise machines to do away with the stultifying > computer displays, and instead provide engaging reading material that would > awaken the populace from their slumber. Like some sociology primers, > perhaps. heheh i really hope this was a joke. Its amazing how many people hate sociology, and especially books written by sociologists. The sad part (sad from our perspective) is that these people who hate it so much actually have taken soc. classes. I guess if one would want to drive people out of the health clubs and into outdoor activities, it would be a wonderful idea; even subversive, in that it would bounce those captains out of their downy chairs! :) with respect, Brent From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sun Jul 16 07:37:06 1995 Date: Sun, 16 Jul 95 08:56:05 EDT From: "T R. Young" <34LPF6T@CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU> Organization: Central Michigan University Subject: Emancipatory Knowledge To: GRADUATE STUDENTS IN SOCIOLOGY Jurgen Habermas identifies three generic forms of knowledge every competant social science should provide: 1) positive knowledge about the forms and nature of social organization at hand, 2) hermeneutic knowledge...knowledge about intersubjective understanding, its tactics and obstacles, and 3) emancipatory knowledge...knowledge about forms of social organization in other societies and/or knowledge about things which have never existed but yet, with genius, wisdom and labor might serve the human project. In Part III of this mini-series, I would like to suggest/offer some ideas which might be helpful to the third form of knowledge. FIVE FUTURES: In Part I of this series, I put forward a critique of those who 'read' contemporary American society as 'fascist' using a posting on PSN by J.Julian as a grounding for the critique. In Part II, I gave a brief history of the USA as context for the class and cultural wars now besetting our country. In this part, I would like to venture into the uncertain ground of futurology. I will organize in four very bried sub-sections which should give a wide variety of grad students in the social sciences a framework for organizing/thinking about how their own work might fit into the knowledge process [and emancipatory sociology] as we go into the 21st century... A. Personal Futures: B. Communal/Urban Futures: C. National Futures: D. Global Futures: A. Personal Futures: The long term trend is hopeful; across the centuries, there has been a steady improvement in both quantity of life variable and in quality of life variables. Infant mortality rates and longevity rates are good measures of both quantity and quality of life measures. Yet there is a great disparity among the peoples and countries of the world...and in many places, the immiseration thesis of Marx continues to be all too valid...inequality is increasing in the USA, between rich and poor capitalist/feudal countries as well as within these countries. With inequality, there comes a lot of crime, disease, repression and, too often, pre-theoretic rebellion and resistence. The status of women is, again very mixed...in the 'developed' countries, a good many women have found greater opportunity for their rare genius and encompassing wisdom. Many not. The same is true for Afro-Americans. Things are bad and getting worse for a lot of women in the 3rd world; they tend to bear the brunt of inequality, exploitation and ethnic antagonisms. Still Mina Caulfield, an anthropologist, has noted that 3rd world women construct 'cultures of resistence' to such oppressions. In the developed countries, the lot of children has vastly improved compared to their lot just 100 years ago...still too many suffer too much from the hands of adults; too much not so benign neglect by more. The future of most peoples, as private persons, depends in large part to the sort of society into which they are born and within which they must, preforce, live out their lives...this is especially true in un- democratic societies. There are several futures ahead for most kids in the USA: 1) For many middle class kids, a good education, well paid jobs, marriage, decent housing, adequate health care and retirement with dignity is most likely. I would guess that about 30% of our children can look forward to this future...barring wars and/or personal tragedy. 2) For most working class kids, education, jobs, gender relations and retirement are most uncertain and becoming more so as the globalization [see Part II] works itself out...I would guess that some 40% of the current generation will find itself hard-pressed to find fulfillment of the 'American Dream.' Much harder than the better situated middle class children. 3) The future of the children in the underclass and those living at the margins of the economy are not hopeful at all...most will find jobs in the service sector...low paying jobs without job security, health care or pensions...this is the fastest growing sector of the economy as capital is relocated to more 'friendly' cities, states, and nations. 4) In all this, it is well to remember that moral development and/or religious education has a very short reach...it is hard to be moral in an immoral/amoral social context...a few people can transcend the degrading social conditions in which they find themselves but morality is a collective endeavour; morality is located as much in the social institutions as in the psyche of upper, middle and lower class peoples. 5) Various forms of crime continue to be a pre-theoretic solution to the problems of marginalization for white adult males as for minority children...gender violence and family violence are endemic; organized crime attracts some small percentage of underclass kids, Black and White, into its labor market. White collar crime continues to guar- antee adequate income for middle class life-styles. Corporate crime increases as profits decrease and costs increase; as more and more third world competitors take more and more retail markets away with abominable working conditions/pollution practices for local workers. There are both micro-communal and macro-societal processes at work to meliorate such futures. B. Communal/Urban futures. The great cities of the world were founded some 4000 years ago as hydaulic societies produced enough surplus food to support an ever increasing division of labor and extension of the labor process; new crafts and whole industries continue to develope and to be located in urban areas. Of late, in the USA, the city has been in great distress; the center rots from both tax policies and profit policies of the state and the landlord class. In the past 30 years, capital flight has gutted entire cities. The education system has bifurcated and bifurcated again to produce great inequality and great problems in the inner city. The health care system has done the same; a very sophisticated therapy technology available to some 40/50% of the population and a very stressed public health service for the rest...inner city hospitals are staffed by doctors and nurses drawn from the 3rd world leaving those peoples bereft. Corporate chains provide excellent health care for those who can afford it. Housing continues to deteriorate in the inner cities of America...yet there are models to emulate. Toronto has a city council whose policies have managed to avoid most of the problems of its American cousins...more on that later. The great social movements of the 60's which promised improvement in both quality of life and quantity of life factors for both rural and urban Americans were dismantled by successive Republican administrations...first the Nixon then the Reagan administration was successful in destabilizing the women's movement, the civil rights movement and the labor movement...they had unsolicited help from assassins who 'took out' civil rights leaders: MLKing, Medger Evers, Malcolm X...the FBI tried to discredit leading feminists. Reagan took on the unions and, with the help of Congress and crooked union leaders crippled the labor movement. Still, at the communal level, there is much to watch and perchance to join. New Age religion provides personal dramas of the Holy most appealing a many, many women and some men. Self help books and programs abound. Local groups provide support and sustenance for the homeless and for battered women. Religious sensibility still informs a lot of mercy, compassion and concrete help even if the public welfare system is mean-spirited, miserly and under attack by the conservative Right. [Who, I might add, had advantages of the G.I. Bill, low cost home loans, federal grants and loans to go to college as well as subsidies for their airports, ranches, farms, and business. C. National Futures: Here I see five generic futures ahead for the 160 or so countries which have survived the exigencies of war, colonialism and imperialism: 1. Genteel social democracy. England provides the proto-type for this future...as do all the former colonial powers; France Italy, Greece and Spain. A strong labor movement, a tradition of social justice and civility means an adequate if not grand future for most citizens. 2. Unfriendly Fascism. It may be the case that the days of jack-booted thugs who come in the night; of murder squads sent by a keep military/police; of death camps and gulags...it might be that this kind of fascism will not again be seen...yet, there is much in Latin America and Africa which fits all too well, this solution to the problems of globalization/inequality. It serves well an upper class and some elements of the petite bourgeoisie who support it...but workers, women, migrants and dissidents are victim of what Marcuse calls 'surplus repression.' 3. Friendly, high tech fascism. Those of you who visit and study American malls see the archetype of such political forms...those of you who watch Singapore have a more encompassing type to study. Crime and punishment give way to high tech solutions to 'deviancy.' Computers 'watch' employees for productivity and for unwanted thoughts, words, conversations while at work. Psychiatrists and pharmaceuticals 'manage' difficult persons. Street crime is con- tained by polite enough private police and electronic monitors within the mall. Physics, chemistry, psychology and sociology join to maintain an artificial peace. 4. The Soylent Green Solution...bifurcations in class, status and power are managed by fortified enclaves for the 30-40% of the population who 'succeed.' The rest are left to their own devices with a reactive police system to deal with the more outrageous and/or egregious cases which are highlighted by mass media...as much to entertain and divert and to seek justice and domestic tranquility. Descriptions of the Solent Green Solution are often encountered; My students at Virginia Tech asked me to do a movie lab on 'New Jack City' as exemplar of the SGS. 5. Democratic socialism...there are many varieties of democratic socialism in the literature an a few close parallels to study and to watch...Sweden and Denmark are social democracies which extract surplus value to provide a fairly generous and not at all mean-spirited safety net...free health care, housing subsidies, free education, job training/retraining, adequate pensions and a wide variety of cultural amenities are supported including the arts. Lane Kenworthy at Wisconsin and John Roemer in California are talking about market socialism...sounds promising to me but a lot of my colleagues on the left froth at the mouth as the mere mention. Still, one should know and think about it. There are a lot of ESOPs and EOPs in which workers own and operate the shops, mills, factories, banks, restaurants and stores in which they work...the Mondragon movement in Portugal and Spain as well as Italy bear watching/study. It is said that the best run cities in Italy are those in which the communist party are in power. Kerala state in India should be investigated by those of you interested in democratic socialism I rather expect some surprising forms of democratics socialism will come out of the turmoil in Central Europe...Serbia/Bosnia now get all the media attention but my good friend and long time colleague, Garth Massey at U/Wyoming, just returning from Budapest where he was Fullbright Research Scholar, reports that some communities and some industries are putting together more friendly forms of socialism than were found in the old Soviet empire... Well team, I've been on the computer far too long...my union rules require me to stop and have my morning coffee. This mini-series is sponsored in part by the Red Feather Institute for Advanced Studies in Sociology, by the Sociology Department of Central Michigan University and by the socgrad network. T.R. Young T.R.YOUNG@CMICH.EDU From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sun Jul 16 13:05:04 1995 by KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU (PMDF V4.3-11 #9008) id <01HSXXDG80348X1UGA@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU>; Sun, 16 Jul 1995 15:02:59 -0500 (CDT) Date: Sun, 16 Jul 1995 15:02:59 -0500 (CDT) Date-warning: Date header was inserted by KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU From: 1k1mgm@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU (Christopher Gunn) Subject: Re: Splash down To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU vigil@mail.sdsu.edu (Surfer Joe) wrote: >Does anybody read alt.sci.sociology? It is the only sociology related >newsgroup I could find. I understand the sci.sociology group recently met >its demise. How about the PSL, the Progressive Sociologsts' Listserv? Do you >read that? Nope, nobody reads alt.sci.sociology. There are three or four sociology- related posts per week (and, actually, there seem to be a few sociologists who read and, occasionally, post), but about 80% of the traffic seems to be there either by outright mistake or through misconception of the nature of sociology. Not a happening group, sad to say. I suggested on this mail list quite a few months ago that Socgrad be bidirectionally gated to either alt.sci.sociology or a new Usenet group--analogous to bit.listserv.psycgrad--but there was zero positive interest and some opposition. Of course, I volunteered neither expertise nor resources to set up a gateway, so I'm not in much of a position to be critical. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a real sci.sociology newsgroup. A rogue group of that name may have been created and then cancelled, something like that. There *should* be a real one, but given the weakness of alt.sci.sociology, it isn't likely to happen. PSN (which is the name, not PSL) is fairly active, enough so that it was recently split into moderated and unmoderated branches. (Although, frankly, I think the presence of a couple of provocational, 'you left- wingers suck' participants, rather than traffic volume, was the real reason for the imposition of moderation. It was/is not, in my opinion anyway, a high-traffic mail list.) I'm certainly disappointed by the relative lack of Internet presence of sociologists, at least as measured relative to psychologists and anthropologists. However, this gap is most acute on Usenet, for some reason. On listservs and WWW, there are more sociology resources. For example, check out http://www.carleton.ca/~cmckie/research2.html for WWW leads (although sociology is still a tag-end discipline in this collection of URLs). Hope you've started a discussion that might lead to some improvements of this situation.... Christopher Gunn Molecular Graphics and Modeling Laboratory 1k1mgm@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu University of Kansas Phone: 913-864-4428 or -4495 Malott Hall Lawrence, KS 66045 From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sun Jul 16 20:19:32 1995 Date: Sun, 16 Jul 1995 22:15:41 -0500 (CDT) From: nick mcree Subject: Re: swimming pool madness To: Brent Myer Brent: You were right on the money... my post concerning the stultifying effect of digital displays on exercise equipment was supposed to be a "joke." I was a little surprised at the outrage some have vented at the so-called trend of TVs at aquatic centers. Lots to be concerned about in this world, and that problem ranks *really* low on the significance scale for me. I thought some light-hearted hyperbole was a good way to make that point. -------------------------------- Nick McRee Department of Sociology 336 Burdine Hall The University of Texas--Austin Austin, Texas 78712-1088 From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Mon Jul 17 19:21:58 1995 Date: Mon, 17 Jul 95 21:14 EST To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU From: UHOBBIT@irishmvs.cc.nd.edu Subject: Cite requests I am in need of a few good books on the following subjects: 1. Writing dissertation proposals 2. Constructing Curriculum Vitae 3. Writing the dissertation 4. Social Science measurements (scales used, variables used, etc.) Any possibilities would be greatly appreciated. Dave brunsma University of Notre Dame From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Mon Jul 17 19:54:18 1995 From: FRANCES@PPRI-NW.TAMU.EDU To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 21:52:50 CST6CDT Subject: ASA meetings X-pmrqc: 1 The ASA meetings will be in D.C. from August 19-23. There is a Theory program on the 18th. Is anyone from this listserv going to be there? I will be interested in meeting others. Does anyone have any comments, suggestions, advice, etc. on making the most of the meetings or even of just being in D.C.? Frances LeAnne Haynes "An Aggie from Muskogee" Easy does it, But do it! From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Tue Jul 18 08:20:31 1995 Date: Tue, 18 Jul 95 10:59:15 EDT From: Marni Hancock Organization: Emory University - Atlanta, Georgia, USA Subject: HELP, OF A PERSONAL NATURE To: SOCGRAD@UCSD.EDU Hello, colleagues. I am posting this to the two lists where I think I can get the best advice--my apologies for thost for whom this means getting two copies. I have been involuntarily "withdrawn" from my graduate program in Soc at Emory for being unable to write a satisfactory theory construction paper. This has been a tremendous blow although not unexpected (there have been warnings for more than a year). Part of the problem is mine in that I find it difficult to "do" theory. Much of it is a social/ instructional problem in that all students at Emory are expected to become involved in a mentored relationship with one or more faculty. Apparently this is where most of my colleagues have acquired their skill in writing theory (along with having strong bases in Soc prior to admission to grad school)--as a non-traditional student with many outside problems and interests, this was not my fate. Again, part of the problem is me--at 48 I am older than more than half of the faculty at Emory (and at most schools), and I have long been aware of some deficiencies I have as a student. Nevertheless, I now need to plan for my future. After 5 years of pursuing a PhD I am leaving Emory with a transcript with one C in theory construction and the remaining grades Bs and As. What do I do next? I am aware of these options- 1. Try to transfer to another PhD program at Emory (I am also exploring fighting the faculty position) and I am meeting with the dean of the college Thursday. 2. Apply to another college/university. There is a predominantly black institution here in Atlanta that has been recommended. It would seem that, since I'm predominantly caucasion, this program might provide social and intellectual training I would never otherwise receive. 3. Drop the whole mess and quit trying--go back to academia at the community college or state college level and teach nursing again as I did prior to this foray into academia. 4. Make a shift into the practice area in nursing and focus on adminis- ration (where the money is). I would appreciate any responses on any aspect of this post. I hope this request for aid is not offensive to anyone--and I will gladly receive public or private responses. Thanks in advance for your thoughts and advice. Marni Hancock socaw059@emuvm1.cc.emory.edu (for private responses, please note that the first circular character in my address is alphabetic and the second (the 0) is numeric.) From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Tue Jul 18 11:30:04 1995 18 Jul 95 14:23:57 +1100 From: "morten g. ender" Organization: University of Maryland,College Park To: UHOBBIT@irishmvs.cc.nd.edu, socgrad@UCSD.EDU Date: Tue, 18 Jul 1995 14:23:43 EDT Subject: Re: Cite requests >I am in need of a few good books on the following subjects: >1. Writing dissertation proposals rudestrum and newton_surviving the dissertation: a comprehensive guide to content and process_ (1992) sage >2. Constructing Curriculum Vitae obtain copies from your local faculty >3. Writing the dissertation rudestrum and newton again >4. Social Science measurements (scales used, variables used, etc.) >Any possibilities would be greatly appreciated. miller (1991) _handbook of research design and social measurement_ sage morten ^ From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Tue Jul 18 11:31:26 1995 Date: Tue, 18 Jul 95 14:24:39 EDT From: Marni Hancock Organization: Emory University - Atlanta, Georgia, USA Subject: THANKS To: SOCGRAD@UCSD.EDU To one and all! What supportive folks out there. I sent my original post this morning and have gotten 6 or 7 responses already. Thanks. I will respond individually to those who have written. I'm anticipating with pleasure receiving at least a few more comments. Marni Hancock socaw059@emuvm1.cc.emory.edu From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Tue Jul 18 12:07:05 1995 From: BREKHUS@zodiac.rutgers.edu Date: Tue, 18 Jul 1995 15:02:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: TV Nation Returns (Michael Moore on FOX) To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Socgradders, My apologies to those who've already heard this on other lists I posted to. Just wanted to let people know that Michael Moore (of Roger and Me fame) returns to the air with his series TV Nation this Friday at 8PM on Fox. If you want to see progressive muckraking with a sense of humor, this show is worth checking out. Wayne Brekhus--Rutgers From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Wed Jul 19 10:44:09 1995 Date: Wed, 19 Jul 1995 13:41:08 -0400 From: James Cassell To: Sociology Graduate Student Discussion Subject: QUERY>Harassment (fwd) Thought someone out there might be able to help Linda Schechinger . Please send any info to her--I'm merely forwarding this from doc-talk. 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: Sun, 16 Jul 1995 12:28:07 -0700 From: owner-doc-talk@netcom.com To: doc-talk@netcom.com Subject: QUERY>Harassment =============================================================================== DEAR DOC-TALK =============================================================================== From: Linda Schechinger I have been asked to write a short article on academic harassment for a graduate student survival guide. I am familiar with some types of harassment and how people have dealt with them, but I would like to find out experiences that other people have encountered, how they responded and what the results were. If you could send me a short description of what happened and how it was handled it would be greatly appreciated. I am at the University of California Irvine, in the physical sciences. I therefore know more about the types of harassment encountered in the physical sciences and would particularly appreciate input from other disciplines. Thanks. =============================================================================== Doc-Talk sponsored by Assn for Support of Graduate Students: asgs@netcom.com =============================================================================== From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Wed Jul 19 13:14:33 1995 Date: Wed, 19 Jul 1995 16:05:29 -0400 (EDT) From: thomas conroy Subject: looking for media references To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU I will be teaching a course in sociology of mass media this fall. I'd greatly appreciate any references anyone might have for books/articles that make use of a social constructionist perspective on media. Thanks. Tom Conroy Boston University conroyt@acs.bu.edu From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Wed Jul 19 14:26:49 1995 From: aryave@dhvx20.csudh.edu Date: Wed, 19 Jul 1995 14:25:32 PST To: SOCGRAD@UCSD.EDU Subject: SUBSCRIBE PLEASE SUBSCRIBE From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Thu Jul 20 13:38:39 1995 20 Jul 95 16:36:09 +1100 From: "morten g. ender" Organization: University of Maryland,College Park To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Date: Thu, 20 Jul 1995 16:35:54 EDT Subject: Re: looking for media references >I will be teaching a course in sociology of mass media this fall. I'd >greatly appreciate any references anyone might have for >books/articles that make use of a social constructionist perspective >on media. Thanks. >Tom Conroy >Boston University >conroyt@acs.bu.edu kellner, d (1991) _the persian gulf tv war_ meyrowitz, j (1986) _no sense of place: the impact of electronic media on behavior_ taylor, m c and saarinen, e (1994) _imagologies: media philosophy_ good stuff...please share your list when complete... morten ^ From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Thu Jul 20 17:04:19 1995 Date: Thu, 20 Jul 95 16:51 EST To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU From: UHOBBIT@irishmvs.cc.nd.edu Subject: concept: "intimidation" Hi. I am in need of a sociological, psychological, or social- psychological definition (or operationalization) of the concept of "intimidation". Any literature or theretical orientations that might help ould be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Dave Brunsma University of Notre Dame From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Thu Jul 20 17:04:21 1995 From: "Stein, Jill (G) SOCIO" To: "Stein, Jill SOCIO" , "Stein, Jill BOL" , "Stack, Kelly OAC" , socgrad UCSD , "Smith, Marc A. (GRAD) SOCIO" , "Schulman, Linda SOCIO" , "Roth, Benita (GRAD) SOCIO" To: "Ronkowski, Shirley ucsb" , "Rodes, David CCIIP" , Rocklist kent , Road Angel Samuel Random Smith , "Rivera, Eric (G) SOCIO" , "Rabow, Jerome SOCIO" To: "Price, Paul (UW) WIS" , "Porter, Cary Dean of Students" , popcult bc ca , "Pollner, Melvin SOCIO" , "Parker, Rachel VT" , "Pappy, George EE" To: Music list of Lists MLoL , "mailserv (popcult) bc,ca" Subject: new address/test Date: Thu, 20 Jul 95 16:51:00 PDT Encoding: 5 TEXT Please note new e-mail address for Jill Stein: jstein@ucla.edu Thank you. From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sat Jul 22 08:58:35 1995 Date: Sat, 22 Jul 1995 11:51:02 -0400 From: James Cassell To: Social Science Data List Subject: AERA Grants Program (fwd) 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: Fri, 21 Jul 1995 09:22:51 MST From: Gene Glass Subject: AERA Grants Program ********************************************************* AERA GRANTS PROGRAM: Enhancement of Education Statistics, Mathematics, and Science Education, and the Educational Research Infrastructure CALL FOR APPLICATIONS The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) have jointly funded a training and research program administered by the American Educational Research Association (AERA). The program has two goals: (a) to strengthen communications between the U.S. educational research community and government researchers, and (b) to enhance the capability of the U.S. research community to use large-scale data bases to conduct studies that are relevant to educational policy and practice. Minority researchers are strongly encouraged to apply to the programs outlined below. ********************************************************** AERA FELLOWS PROGRAM This program places senior scholars (tenured or at least 7 years past the doctorate) for up to 1 year at NCES and NSF to serve as resources for agency planning and staff development (including provision of seminars) while conducting independent research related to the agency's mission. More specifically, the goals of the program are to (a) provide an opportunity for scholars to conduct research on the policy issues and practical problems that shape NCES and NSF missions, (b) help the agency's professional staff to gain exposure to outside expertise, and (c) foster productive relationships among the educational research, statistical, and scientific communities with researchers at NCES and NSF through collaborative efforts to understand problems of education policy and practice. Fellows should be able to relocate to Washington, DC. One Fellow will be selected for each agency for up to a year. This is an excellent opportunity for sabbatical leaves. The nature of the commitment and the amount of the award will be negotiated between the successful applicant and AERA. Fellows will be expected to submit a final report that would be of a quality and in a format suitable for publication in the Educational Researcher or other scholarly journal. AERA Fellows at NCES: The AERA Fellows at NCES will conduct staff seminars and provide support for NCES staff in areas such as survey design, creation of education indicators, or survey research on policy-related issues, as well as conduct independent research on a topic of interest to NCES. Important areas of research include, but are not limited to: (a) teacher education, (b) early childhood education, (c) state education research and statistics, (d) adult assessment, or (e) international comparisons of educational systems and performance. AERA Fellows may also conduct seminars in their area of expertise for NCES researchers. Leigh Burstein Fellows at NSF: The AERA Fellows at NSF, named in honor of the late Leigh Burstein, will serve as colleagues at NSF while conducting independent research and planning in the areas of policy research, program evaluation and dissemination. The Fellow may conduct seminars to broaden the perspectives of NSF's scientists and staff on policy and practice issues surrounding the evaluation and dissemination mandates of the agency. APPLICATION: All applications should include an AERA Grants Program cover page; a letter of application, including a proposed research project to be carried out while in residency at the agency, financial requirements, and proposed dates of the fellowship; a current curriculum vitae; and the names, addresses, and phone numbers of three references. See below for application deadlines and submission procedures. A separate flier is available for this program. ********************************************************** RESEARCH FELLOWS PROGRAM This program provides opportunities for advanced graduate students or recent doctorates (up to 7 years past the doctorate) to work at NSF or NCES to focus on policy-related research. Research Fellows will work on a daily basis with the agency's professional staff to become familiar with the agency's programs and relevant data bases. Each Research Fellow will undertake an independent research project related to the agency's mission, and at the conclusion of the 9-month Fellowship submit a final report that is suitable for publication in a scholarly journal. Fellows are expected to relocate to the Washington, DC area for the duration of the fellowship. Based on experience and academic background, stipends averaging $32,000 will be provided for the 9-month fellowship in residency at the agency. Fellows will also receive $1,000 in travel funds. NCES Research Fellows: The NCES Fellows will conduct independent research while working with the agency's professional staff. Research Fellows will become familiar with the NCES data bases and will work on the design, analysis, interpretation, and reporting of their own research project. NSF Research Fellows: The NSF Fellows will work within the programs of the Education and Human Resources (EHR) directorate. Fellows will conduct research relevant to federal legislation on NSF mathematics and science programs or concerning the timely dissemination of mathematics and science education materials. APPLICATION: All applications should include an AERA Grants Program cover page; a letter describing the proposed research project to be carried out while in residency and how the fellowship will contribute to the applicant's scholarly development and career goals. Applicants must also provide a curriculum vitae and two letters of reference. See below for application deadlines and submission procedures. A separate flier is available for this program. ********************************************************** RESEARCH GRANTS PROGRAM AERA invites educational policy-related research proposals using NCES, NSF, and other large-scale, national data bases. Research Grants are available for faculty and postdoctoral researchers. Awards range from up to $15,000 for 1-year projects, to a maximum of $25,000 for 2-year projects. In accordance with AERA's agreement with the funding agencies, institutions may not charge indirect costs on these awards. Grantees' final reports should be of a quality and in a format suitable for publication in a scholarly journal. NCES Related Grants: Topics may cover a wide range of policy-related issues including but not limited to: (a) school persistence and career entry; (b) teachers and teaching, including supply, quality, and demand; (c) policies and practices related to achievement; (d) policies and practices that influence student and parental attitudes; (e) contextual factors (individual, curricular, and school related) in education; (f) education in middle schools; (g) educational participation and persistence (kindergarten through graduate school); (h) early childhood education; (i) US education in an international context; (j) school finance; and (k) the quality of educational institutions. Data bases available for analysis include but are not limited to: (a) Schools and Staffing Survey, (b) National Educational Longitudinal Survey of 1988, (c) High School & Beyond, (d) National Assessment of Educational Progress, (e) National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education, (f) Longitudinal Survey of American Youth, (g) National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey, (h) National Survey of Postsecondary Faculty, (i) National Household Education Survey, (j) Common Core of Data, and (k) Current Population Survey. NSF Related Grants: Research projects should relate to mathematics or science education in one of the following divisions within NSF's Education and Human Resources directorate: (a) research career development; (b) teacher preparation and enhancement; (c) materials (curriculum) development, research and informal science education; (d) undergraduate science, engineering, and mathematics education; and (e) studies of evaluation and dissemination. In addition, research projects in the area of the supply (pipeline) of students taking mathematics and science courses from K-12 are encouraged. APPLICATION: Applications should include a proposal of not more than 7 single-spaced pages, including a well-framed policy issue that can be informed by data available in the national data bases, a description of the policy issue and its importance, relevant research/policy literature, a description of methods (data set, sample, variables, and analytic techniques), and importance of findings to the policy issue. A proposed budget and curriculum vitae for the principal investigator(s) should also be submitted. Evaluation criteria include the importance of the proposed policy issue, the design and proposed statistical analysis of the study, and relevant experience and research record of the applicant. See below for application deadlines and submission procedures. A separate flier is available for this program. ********************************************************** DISSERTATION GRANTS Dissertation Grants for advanced graduate students are similar to Research Grants in scope and purpose (see above). The award for Dissertation Grants is up to $10,000 for a 1-year project, with a maximum of $20,000 for a 2- year project. In accordance with AERA's agreement with the funding agencies, institutions may not charge indirect costs on these awards. Dissertation grantees' final reports may either be an article of a quality and in a format suitable for publication in a scholarly journal, or a copy of the dissertation. APPLICATION: Applications for Dissertation Grants should include all of the required materials for a Research Grant application, plus a letter of support from the applicant's faculty dissertation advisor. Dissertation Grant research proposals should be four (4) pages in length rather than the seven pages required for Research Grants. See below for application submission procedures. A separate flier is available for this program. ********************************************************** INSTITUTE ON STATISTICAL ANALYSIS FOR EDUCATION POLICY Co-Directors: John Dossey and William Schmidt Faculty: TBA Dates and Location: Tentatively April 12-14, 1996, New York, New York (following AERA's Annual Meeting) A select group of scholars will participate in a 3-day Institute in conjunction with the AERA Annual Meeting. The Institute contains three components. The first component addresses current issues of policy and practice for which the focal data base is relevant. The second develops knowledge and skills in the use of NCES' and NSF's data sets, with focus on a different data base each year. The third component provides the methodological training appropriate to analysis of large-scale, often longitudinal, data sets pertinent to mathematics and science education. The Institute will address a range of policy issues and relevant data sets, (e.g., High School and Beyond, National Educational Longitudinal Survey 1988, National Assessment of Educational Progress). The focal data set for 1996 Institute will be the National Household Education Survey (NHES). Participant Grants: Those applicants selected for participation will receive support covering the Institute's fees, housing, and per diem at the current government rate for the period of attendance. Requests for travel reimbursement cannot be honored except in extraordinary circumstances; participation assumes that participants will be attending the AERA Annual Meeting. APPLICATION: Applications should include a curriculum vitae and addresses (including phone numbers) of three references. The covering letter should briefly state how the applicant would benefit from the Institute. Priority will be given to those applicants with scholarly activity in issues of policy and practice using quantitative approaches, who are committed to using NCES and/or NSF data sets. Advanced graduate students and scholars with recent doctorates are especially encouraged to apply. Applications may be submitted by teams of researchers, (e.g., faculty and graduate student, 2 faculty members, or 2 graduate students--maximum of 2 applicants per team; applications sent as a package). Applications must be received by January 5, 1995. See below for application submission procedures. A separate flier is available for this program. ********************************************************** EVALUATION AND DISSEMINATION PROGRAM The goal of the program is to increase the pool of well- trained evaluators and disseminators who pursue a career in evaluation or dissemination of mathematics- and science-education programs. The program is currently being revised into an institutional competition for funding to enhance and/or build evaluation and dissemination programs and support graduate students working in evaluation and dissemination. Interested researchers should contact Jeanie Murdock (see below) in Winter 1996 for further information on the revised program. ********************************************************** APPLICATION SUBMISSION FOR ALL COMPONENTS: Applications may be submitted at any time throughout the calendar year (with the exception of the Institute on Statistical Analysis for Education Policy, deadline for this component is January 5, 1996). Proposals will be reviewed three times a year, in January, April, and September. Proposals must be received by January 5 to be reviewed in January, received by March 15 to be reviewed in April, or received by September 1 to be reviewed in September. For additional information and cover sheets for proposals contact: Ms. Jeanie Murdock AERA Grants Program Graduate School of Education University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9490 Phone: 805-893-8568 Email: aera@edstar.gse.ucsb.edu. All awards are contingent upon AERA's receiving continued federal funding. -------**********======================================**********-------- Gene V Glass glass@asu.edu College of Education gvg@asu.edu Arizona State University 602-965-2692 Box 872411 Tempe, AZ 85287-2411 World Wide Web Home Page http://olam.ed.asu.edu/ From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Sun Jul 23 18:58:53 1995 Date: Sun, 23 Jul 1995 20:55:57 -0500 (CDT) From: "Scott M. Lynch" To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Subject: unsubscribe unsubscribe me please, i'm moving From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Thu Jul 27 06:53:55 1995 Date: Thu, 27 Jul 1995 08:49:27 -0500 (CDT) From: Mary Burbach Subject: essay To: socgrad Hello Socgradders! I found this anonymous essay the other day and I think it's interesting. I'd like to know what those of you who are around think of it. Maybe we could get a discussion going again....? Thanks. Mary I'm a jew. I'm a white, male, american jew. You know, i try to adhere to the imperative of feeling allegiance to no group more particular and exclusive than humanity itself (and, better yet, to no group even as particular as that!), but i have to admit that sometimes i'm tempted to indulge in pettier pride. We, as a people (meaning "we jews"), have given the world many great souls, from comedians to messiahs, from the founder of psychoanalysis to the founder of Relativity. And i'm tempted to be proud of us as a people. But pride is the one thing in which we cannot afford to indulge. For it is when a people become too proud that they become blind oppressors. The israelis are proud -so proud!- though they treat an indigenous and occupied people as second-class citizens in their own land. The germans were proud, in the 1930s, when they sought to impose their will on the world, and, in the 1930s -early in the 1930s- they still had reason to be. The french were proud when, at the end of the 18th century, they sought to impose their will on all of Europe and, in many ways, they had reason to be. The americans were proud in the 19th century when they virtually exterminated a race -the natives who had inhabited the land they conquered- and they too had had reason to be. But for all four, and for many others, those reasons for pride disintegrated almost as soon as the pride itself was felt. Don't get me wrong: this is by no means a diatribe against jews, or against any other particular group. It is a diatribe against the kind of pride that divides us one against the other, the kind of pride that can justify any injustice by naming it "defense," or, even more insidiously, "righteousness." The kind of pride that deludes its bearers into believing that the fate of some is more important than the fate of all. And it is a message to you. For, you should know, you exercise power in the world. You certainly benefit, and perhaps suffer as well, from the consequences of past injustices. The material you now consume, and the services you now enjoy, are the ill-begotten gains of a long history of exploitation. But, once again, don't get me wrong: I do not suggest that you cease to consume or that you cease to enjoy. Oh, no! I suggest that you laugh heartily, and with deep and rippling pleasure! For life is a wonderful gift, and you have the good fortune to have been granted the privilege not only of living it, but of living it with opportunity strewn at your feet! I hope you use that opportunity well; either to surround yourself with simple luxury and symbols of status, or to exercise your wisdom, creativity, and compassion: To exercise your power. For, you should know, that when you are a member of a group that represents perhaps four percent of the world's population, and consumes somewhere around twenty percent of the world's available resources, you are enjoying from the start a certain disproportionate advantage. And if, by chance, you are among the advantaged within that group of the advantaged, well, what good fortune to have been born where and when you were! And if you hear yourself complaining of what misfortune you now must bear; if you hear yourself at war with those from whom you legally steal -or even with those whom you believe have legally stolen from you- then I hope that you feel a deep and biting shame. For if it is understandable to want more and to want better, it is unforgivable and unconscionable to forget that there are others of as much value and with more need who feel the same. Life is not a zero-sum struggle in which the gain of some must come through the loss of others. Though competition has proven to be a vital force in civilization as well as in nature, it is through the evolution of cooperation that all creatures now thrive. Life's possibilities are brightest, and the future most promising, when we realize that we are engaged in a collective enterprise. The more broadly we identify the community of which we are a part; the more we stretch our compassion and imagination to make the unfamiliar familiar, and the distant near; the more able we are to achieve realities scoffed at by cynics and treasured by dreamers. The Buddhist concept of nirvana represents the extreme accomplishment of this very aspiration. But if we are afraid to reach for nirvana, we can at least dare to reach just a little farther every day. Surrender, in every war of "us" against "them," and seek terms with which we all can live. For only when we pledge allegiance to all with whom our fate is truly shared, will we have reason to be truly proud. From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Thu Jul 27 11:46:31 1995 Date: Thu, 27 Jul 95 13:33 CDT From: "Brenda S. Fergen" Subject: Chilly Academic Climate To: socgrad Dear Socgrad Readers, I've requested your assistance before and received some very helpful suggestions. I hope that some of you can provide me with some new information. I am currently working on a report for my office on the chilly academic climate for women and minorities at KSU. Several people in our office developed an instrument based on Hall and Sandler's publications (1982, 1984, 1986) and collected data a couple of years ago. I have been trying to find some research/publications which focus on minority and international student experiences in the college classroom. I have followed up on quite a few articles and books which looked promising but didn't look at faculty/student interactions or advisor/student interactions. Can anyone suggest references which might be useful? Thanks in advance for your assistance. You can post to Socgrad or respond directly to me. Brenda Fergen From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Thu Jul 27 12:14:06 1995 Date: Thu, 27 Jul 1995 15:11:01 -0400 From: James Cassell To: Sociology Graduate Student Discussion Subject: SAPOR Student Paper Competition (fwd) FYI ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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: Thu, 27 Jul 1995 14:53:14 -0400 From: Gaddy, Gary Subject: SAPOR Student Paper Competition Win Money! Find Fame! Pad Your Vita! Enter the Southern Association for Public Opinion Research Student Paper Competition! Students submit your papers dealing with social science or public opinion research, including works on theory, methods or specific substantive issues. Any student paper, including that derived from work on theses or dissertations, is eligible. Papers co-authored with faculty or other non-students are not. Papers generally should be of article length, that is, 20-25 pages. A prize of $250 will be awarded for the winning paper. The winning paper and honorable mention papers will be invited for presentation at the SAPOR annual conference on October 5-6, 1995 in Raleigh, N.C. Send four copies of paper, by August 31, 1995 to: Gary D. Gaddy, IRSS, Hall, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3355. For more info contact Dr. Gaddy at (919) 962-0516, or via e-mail at gaddy.irss@mhs.unc.edu. Please pass this along to potentially interested students. From list-relay@UCSD.EDU Mon Jul 31 05:42:45 1995 Date: Mon, 31 Jul 95 07:36:40 EDT From: "T R. Young" <34LPF6T@CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU> Organization: Central Michigan University Subject: The Sociological Imagination To: GRADUATE STUDENTS IN SOCIOLOGY No. 29 in a mini-series for graduate students in sociology sponsored by the Red Feather Institute and bought to you by courtesy of the sociology department at Central Michigan University and the facilities of the socgrad network. For those of you who will be teaching an Intro course or a social problems course this semester as part of your grad program, I thought I would set forth the basic guides by which a new student could know how and when to use the sociological imagination to sort out the complex behavior which s/he sees all around her/him everyday. The title of the mini-lecture comes from, of course, the most excellent article by C. Wright Mills...a rare texan. I'll start with his three pointers and add a few of my own which may help you inspire and intrigue your students with this most wondrous discipline we call sociology. A. Personal troubles and Public Issues. Mills says that one can understand whether personal troubles stem from the sociology of it all when: 1. a significant portion of a population is affected by the trouble at hand...for example, if 2,3,5% of the population is unemployed, it well may be that personal problems are at work: health, attitude, family troubles or disability. If, however, 10, 15, 20% or more are out of work then one looks to the sociology/economy to understand why this happens. 2. there is variation in the incidence of the problem as between classes. The idea here is that if the problem in question is to be found in genes, germs or genius, then the rich should have no special immunity. 3. Mills goes on to state that, often the rich can insulate themselves from the problems they create in the first place. Mills concludes by saying one must be wary about theories/explanations which too much honor: 1. middle-class, small town ways of life 2. rural principles of stability and order 3. progressive slogans about 'cultural lag' and 'social progress.' B. In an are for a reader edited by Levon Chorbajian, I expanded Mills guidelines by adding a few of my own pointers: 1. Variation over time; if social behavior changes dramatically over 3, 5, 15, 50 years, then some pretty powerful structural changes are under way...the reasoning is that genetics and physiology/psychology changes very, very slowly and some say, has not changed much in the past 10,000 years. 2. The people involved: if at time one, the people invovled were competant, well organized individuals who, at time two, become incompetant, criminal, violent, racist or unruly, then one must look to the social factors at hand to explain the change. 3. Cycles of good and bad times: almost certainly there is some political economy at work if one can detect cyclical patterns in employment, poverty, crime or teen age pregnancy. Brian Berry, UTexas at Dallas found evidence of nonlinear flucuations in both kondratieff cycles and Kutznet cycles. The kondratieff come along about every 30-50 years. In the USA, we saw such cycles in 1840, 1870, 1890, 1930 and may now be on the down side of such a cycle. Steve Box, in England, studies a whole series of patterns in property crime and found that most agreed that this kind of crime increased on the down side of a k-wave. Students should know that spouse battering, street crime and racial violence may well be driven, in part, by such waves. I'll give you a special mini-lecture on how these waves originate soon. Kutznets waves come along about evey 15 years; then there are mini-waves of 2-5 year duration...all sweep up the people on a vast ebb and flow of troubles and successes. 4. Variation over cultures: cross cultural comparisons are most useful tools to pry out the social sources of personal troubles. If teen-age pregnancy is low in Sweden, France, England than in the USA while sexual activity is higher and begins earlier than in the USA, then you can be pretty sure that Europeans are doing something for their teenagers that Americans are not...as a matter of fact, European kids get more sexual ed, better access to birth control devices and less anger when they act on their sexuality. Then too, crime rates vary dramatically across cultures; Detroit had, in 1989, more murders than all of Canada. Toronto, about the same size as Detroit had, as I recall, 8 murders that year. 5. Migrations signal social problems unresolved by social policy or, indeed, produced by social policy. To be sure, people migrate for personal reasons, health, to reunite families, to enjoy different climate, as well as for geographical preferences. But when 1/4 of the population of El Salvador move to California, you can be pretty sure that some strong social factor is at work. As it turns out, some 16 families run El Salvador and have the military at their beck and call to put down labor demands for for living wages or citizen demands for social justice. 6. Growth of Control Institutions: when a society has a building boom in jails, prisons, asylums or orphanages, one can be pretty sure that there are basic distortions in the sociology of it all. 7. Increase in underground structures. Not all underground structures are filled with nuts, sluts and preverts...many are filled with those tossed and tormented by class, racism, and gender violence. Ask the students to look for underground churches, underground markets, underground schools and underground support systems in the city/school/state where they live and work. One of my students who worked at General Motors came back with a whole basket full of such underground structures....have your students read Goffman on the underground structures in total institutions and have them take a look at mass classes in your university to see if they can find them...should be fun... 8. Pre-theoretical rebellion and resistence. When things go wrong with the sociology of it all and people cannot change things, cannot migrate, cannot build parallel or underground structures they often do dumb things to their own person or to others. Some smoke too much funny stuff; some jab their bodies in strange places with odd condiments; some hit and curse innocents and look for scape-goats to sacrifice. Some engage in vandalism and some join groups which promise salvation/solution out of time and place. Young women take too many pills while young men point a pistol at themselves now and again...I forbid my students from committing suicide until I talk with them. 9. Emotions are dead give away to social sources of both good and bad times...laughter, delight, antic joy, fooling around in high spirits and just good fun all signal a well designes social life. Jealousy, envy, anger, hate, over-weening pride and arrogant or bitter use of symbols all bespeak an unhappy social life world. 10. Drop-out rates are good indicators of social ills. Divorce rates may signal a change point in gender relations. In schools, high drop out rates mean that both students and teachers are working in inimical conditions...the learning and the teaching should be fun and should engross one with all one's heart, soul and mind; if people turn away from the learning, then the administration has a lot to answer for. Suicide is the ultimate drop out; if a society has a lot of kids bowing out...then 'tis better to blame the society than the kids...the beautiful and lovely children. Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it this way: Hear the children, O my Sister The Children are crying The Children are crying, O my Sister. They are crying in the playtime of others O my Sister. 11. Above the Law. As Mills said, if the rich and powerful and well connected are beyond the touch of law and justice then 'tis time for some social action...theoretically informed by good sociology, good politics, good economics and good religions. Do feel free to print as many copies of this as you might like for your students and, when you have a problem in class or in the lecture you might need help on, just drop me a line, since you, as did the clerk in Chaucer's Canterbury tales, wold gladly lern and gladly teche. T.R. Young T.R.YOUNG@CMICH.EDU