Abstracts of
Articles for the Fall/Winter 2016 Issue
of
Sociation Today
- The Role of
Civil Religion in Choosing a
President
by Donald
Woolley and Ronald Wimberley
This study
attempts to help determine civil
religion’s impact on the choices
Americans make among candidates for
U.S. president. The variables of
interest in this analysis are the
civil religiosity of the respondents
themselves, the respondents’
perceptions of the civil religiosity
of the candidates, and the congruence
between a respondent’s civil religion
and his or her perceived civil
religiosity of each candidate.
Measures representing other religious
and political behaviors and beliefs
that previous studies have associated
with candidate choice are used here as
controls. We find that—along
with liberal-conservative political
ideology and political party
identification—the respondents’
perceptions of each candidate’s civil
religiosity are a significant
predictor of voting preferences, and
are more important than
church-religious beliefs and
behaviors. Furthermore, we find
that when a person perceives one
presidential candidate to be more
civil religious, he or she is very
likely to prefer that candidate
regardless of one’s own level of civil
religiosity. In other words,
people want a president to be civil
religious regardless of whether they
are very civil religious
themselves.
- Support for Gun
Permits of Young Adults: A Cohort
Comparison
by Alexis Yohros, Jessica
Valentin, Dana Rosenfeld and David Gay
This research compares
birth cohort differences in
attitudes towards gun permits across
three birth cohorts in the same age
category. Using the GSS, we are able
to examine whether birth cohorts
from the 1970s (Baby boomers), 1990s
(Generation X), and the 2010s
(Millennials) differ in their
attitudes. That is, have attitudes
changed over time for young adults?
The research delves into the
question of whether they favor or
oppose a law that would require a
person to obtain a police permit
before purchasing a gun. By
looking at attitudes towards gun
permits, we are able to see whether
young adults today support gun
permit control at a higher rate than
the young adults that came before.
We compare gun permit attitudes
between the Baby Boomer, Generation
X, and Millennial cohorts. Overall,
the purpose of this study is to
provide more accurate information
concerning differing attitudes
towards gun permits between the
Millennial cohort, Generation X, and
the Baby Boom cohort when each
cohort was 18 to 33 years old. In
addition, we analyze attitudinal and
sociodemographic determinants of
these outlooks, as well as compare
the impact of these determinants
across cohorts. Results indicate
significant differences, with the
Generation X cohort being most
supportive of gun permit laws.
Specific differences within each
cohort are also addressed.
- The Relationship
between Social Capital and the
Quality of Life: A Case Study
from Iran
by Jahangir
Jahangiri, Saeed Moghadas and Sadegh
Panahinasab
The
authors argue that the concept of
quality of life is a relatively
new concept in social
research. The issue must be
considered also as an aspect of
economic development. Using
questionnaires, it is found that
higher incomes result in a better
perceived quality of life.
Also, the quality of life
increases with with more
involvement in community,
neighborhood and work
environment.
- Paved with Good
Intentions: Individualism and
the Cultural Reproduction of Poverty
and Inequality
by Lawrence M. Eppard
This paper examines the
poverty/inequality ideologies of a
group of undergraduate social work
students in the U.S. The students
are asked about the causes of
poverty and other issues relating to
economic deprivation in the U.S.
What is surprising is that most
students are very conservative and
individualistic in their responses,
tending to believe that the poor are
mostly to blame for their problems
and that the U.S. is a meritocracy.
These findings support previous
research that suggests individualism
is the dominant poverty/inequality
ideology in the U.S., helping to
reproduce poverty and inequality at
levels not seen in many other
wealthy nations. The author provides
an extensive discussion of the
results given him by students who
would normally be expected to be
advocates for the poor and more
sympathetic to more
structurally-oriented
poverty/inequality arguments.
- Framing
Negotiations and Negotiating Frame:
The Case of Vendors and Security
Personnel at Grateful Dead Concerts
by Matthew P. Sheptoski
Encounters
which took place between vendors,
generally Deadheads, who sold goods in
the parking lots of venues at which
the Grateful Dead performed, and
security personnel are analyzed.
Combining Goffman's notion of frame
with Strauss's concept of the
negotiated order, I identify and
describe an 'accommodation frame,'
including the negotiative work
involved in its achievement,
maintenance, and, as occasionally
needed, repair. This negotiated
frame enabled vendors and security
personnel to achieve their purposive
behavior despite their seemingly
incongruous goals: vendors were able
to vend and security personnel were
able to maintain a sense of order and
authority.
- Book Review
of Hillbilly Elegy by J. D.
Vance
by Lawrence M. Eppard
D.
Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy is a
2016 version of a Horatio Alger story
which serves as somewhat of a
Rorschach test for readers. For some,
his book will confirm their
individualistic and/or culture of
poverty assumptions about economic
disadvantage in our country. For
others, reading from a more structural
perspective, Vance's attention to
larger economic forces will resonate.
While Vance highlights
individualistic, subcultural, and
structural explanations of Appalachian
poverty, he clearly prefers
individualistic and culture of poverty
arguments. The likely message that
most readers will take away from Elegy
is that subcultures and the social
structure are not connected and the
white working class has only
themselves to blame for their
problems. This is unfortunate.
©
2017 by Sociation Today
A Member of the EBSCO
Publishing Group
Abstracted in
Sociological Abstracts
Go to Home Page for
more Information
Online
Indexing and Article Search from the
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
Sociation Today
is optimized for the Firefox Browser
This work is licensed
under a
Creative
Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0
International License.
The Editorial Board of Sociation Today
Editorial Board:
Editor:
George H. Conklin,
North Carolina
Central University
Emeritus
Robert Wortham,
Associate Editor,
North Carolina
Central University
Board:
Rebecca Adams,
UNC-Greensboro
Bob Davis,
North Carolina
Agricultural and
Technical State
University
Catherine Harris,
Wake Forest
University
Ella Keller,
Fayetteville
State University
Ken Land,
Duke University
Steve McNamee,
UNC-Wilmington
Miles Simpson,
North Carolina
Central University
William Smith,
N.C. State University
|