Prior studies have shown that neighborhood disadvantage and disorder are associated with birth outcomes. This study examined preconception diet and physical activity level, as well as body mass index, as mediators of the association between neighborhood conditions and birthweight. Secondary data analyses were conducted using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). The final analytic sample consisted of 523 adolescent and young adult mothers giving singleton live births between 1997 and 1998. In contrast to previous research, we found that neighborhood characteristics were unrelated to birthweight. Consistent with prior studies, compared to those who were White, on average, Blacks had birthweights that were 163.25 grams lighter. In addition, compared to mothers who were married or living with a partner, mothers who did not have a partner at the time of birth, on average, had offspring that were 127.20 grams lighter. No evidence was found for the mediation hypotheses as there were no associations between neighborhood characteristics and preconception diet or physical activity or between these behavioral variables and birthweight. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study examining diet and physical activity as possible behavioral pathways between the neighborhood context and birthweight.
There is an unequal distribution of resources for higher education and research in the world, and the number of aid actors that focus on improving the research capacity of low-income countries has increased since the 1990’s. Many aid actors have explicit ambitions of escaping a colonialist heritage as well as abandoning the linear view of science and technology development, but there is debate concerning whether this is being achieved. What methods of aiding research are there, and how is the link between research capacity and development portrayed? This paper is mainly based on previous research and discusses some of the dilemmas that the literature raises. It also illustrates some of these dilemmas by discussing the case of the Secretariat for Research Cooperation (Sarec), which in 1975 was one of the first bilateral aid agencies to engage in research aid.
The decision to undertake study in a foreign land is accompanied by risk. Influenced by Beck‘s notion of the risk society and underpinned by recent work concerning international student security, the views of university staff in Australia are presented to further understanding of the importance of preparing for an international education. The preparation period is considered to extend from pre-departure in the students‘ country of origin, through to arrival in the host country and orientation at their chosen education institution. It is argued that a lack of preparation may increase risk and that international student security is associated with knowledge and preparedness that assists the maintenance of student agency in the host country.
Urbanization and education have brought numerous changes in societies around the world. One change is the contact of different groups, often with an attendant increase in intergroup marriage. In this paper we examine the intergroup intermarriage in Brazil in the context of changing urbanization and education. While intergroup marriage has been intensively examined in the United States, the topic has received less attention in Brazil. We use census data from 1991 and 2000, and national survey data from 2001 and 2008 to examine factors predicting intergroup marriage and the trends in intergroup marriage in Brazil. The results show higher rates of intermarriage in urban than in rural areas. Intermarriage is less common among the most educated people. While the rates of intermarriage are increasing substantially, the rates of change are diffuse across urban and rural areas, regions and education groups.
The term ―Cyberimmersion‖ refers to the central role that the Internet and electronic communications now play in the lives of individuals born after 1980 in the First World. Cyberimmersion has transformed everything about bullying and harassment between youth in the First World. It has also transformed the information landscape, although confusion about the scope and nature of this transformation is common. User-generated content has opened the door to a vast ―spillage‖ of information, both damaging and promising. Younger users evidence a high comfort level with technology but many remain naive in the areas of electronic security, privacy, and information exposure. This report details research findings from the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center on the frequency and nature of online interactions between college students, some of which encompass bullying and harassing behaviors and others of which deal with information sharing and exposure.
This article probes the role of two potential dynamic influences on the occurrence of violence against refugees in Germany throughout the years 2015 and 2016. First, it tests whether three kinds of threatening events spark anti-refugee violence: (i) violence or crime committed by refugees, (ii) police raids against Islamic fundamentalists, (iii) terrorist attacks and warnings in Germany and terrorist attacks in neighbouring countries. Second, it investigates whether such violence is mobilized through public statements by politicians of anti-immigration parties. Our results suggest that such negative public cueing indeed boosts the probability of attacks. Yet, these statements also seem to be prompted in part by preceding threatening events. Among these threatening events, terrorist attacks in neighbouring countries, which included particularly severe and strongly mediatized events, exert a robust influence on violence against refugees. Altogether, having examined the 2 years with the largest influx of asylum seekers in modern German history, the analysis underscores the importance of situational influences for explaining the occurrence of attacks against refugees.
This article argues that bringing a transnational perspective of justice to national legal systems is a central dynamic of globalization that potentially provides resources for defending and advancing human rights from below. It explains how social movements create and appropriate legal mechanisms for generating new transnational political opportunities. It presents three campaigns waged by the Free Burma Movement, each of which highlights a different dimension - legislative, administrative, and judicial - of the processes through which rules and institutional arrangements are produced to enable and constrain global markets, to illustrate how they become embedded in politics, law, and morality. It is through these legislative, administrative, and judicial dimensions of state action, and at multiple spatial levels of state action (municipal, regional, and federal) that the United States exercises pressure - transnational, as opposed to international, pressure - on the transnational corporations that buttress the power of the Burmese (Myanmar) Government. The final section of this paper challenges Keck and Sikkink's boomerang pattern of international pressure that states exert on other blocking states (sometimes mediated through intergovernmental organizations), suggesting that it provides insufficient conceptual space for examining interactions between markets and society. Corporations and market relations do not appear in Keck and Sikkink's conceptual model of how transnational social movements or transnational advocacy networks exert pressure for changing the human rights conditions that motivated their action. Yet, as we see in the case of the Free Burma movement, the trade relations between states and transnational corporations constitute a different kind of target that requires a different kind of pressure for affecting social change than that presumed by Keck and Sikkink's model.
The media imperialism thesis is the most widespread systemic account of cultural globalization. In this paper, I argue that the media imperialism approach, as a global version of mass culture theory, shares with it many of its analytical and empirical limitations. While ethnographic approaches in global media studies provide a useful perspective from which to correct some of the empirical flaws of the media imperialism paradigm they are unable to produce an alternative account of equal analytic and systemic scope. I attempt to remedy this situation by proposing a ―sociostructural‖ approach to theorizing the process of cultural globalization which is both consistent with recent research in the sociology of taste and in line with the empirical evidence on transnational patterns of cultural flows and culture consumption. This approach takes seriously the changing macro-structural context of cultural recap-tion across developed and developing societies in late modernity as well as the irreducibly relational and sources of the demand for symbolic goods. I close by comparing the theoretical and empirical implications of this approach with competing macro-level perspectives in the anthropology of globalization.
The two dimensions of the state in transition under the influence of globalization are changes in the welfare state and changes in the nation-state. And both dimensions of the state are closely linked to higher education, especially to its elite segment, the institution of the university: which — in Europe — has been mostly state-funded as part of the well-developed post-war Keynesian welfare state apparatus, and which has been closely related to the modern construct of the nation-state. We are developing here the theme of the modern contract between the nation-state and the university and trying to see how the processes of globalization — via affecting the state — affect the public sector in general, and public universities in particular. Global pressures on both institutions are discussed, following a historical detour showing the modern link between them. The discussion of the global transformations of the public sector is then followed by tentative conclusions.
Texans are often presented as self-righteousness, simpleminded, and big-mouthed individualists. Despite this individualist stance, by believing in law and order they are supposed to have their own way of authoritativeness. Operationalizing the love for authority, it is demonstrated empirically that these prevalent stereotypes about Texans are unfounded. There are two reasons for the prevalence of stereotypes about Texans. As part of the US Zeitgeist, stereotypes about Texans are politically correct and, therefore, largely unchallenged. Building identity and pride, these stereotypes are often accepted by the stereotyped. This acceptance creates a persuasive two-edged stereotyping process.
This paper traces the contemporary changes in various aspects of Indian family life and highlights the connection between the changing gender roles of women and family decision-making. The paper demonstrates that the occupational and domestic choices the women make are influenced by a number of personal and familial considerations especially women's centrality to family and child rearing and the traditional cultural values that reinforce this. The paper provides a very useful adjunct to the existing sociological literature and provides a comparative research based analysis of family life and family living in India. The theoretical arguments provide a general theorisation of family power dynamics and indicate that couples are more inclined to negotiate an arrangement that works for them rather than blindly follow tradition. But despite this change most women still find themselves locked into the role of secondary bread winner.
This paper studies academic careers and career-making activities with respect to their main aspects and general pathways. First is an examination of all the requirements an academician has to fulfill in his or her career-making process. Second comes an investigation of all the elements an academician has to develop and build in his or her career structure. The third part focuses on the consequence career-making has for individuals as well as the social system. In light of the analysis presented in the paper, career-making is neither an individual undertaking that builds upon personal willingness, diligence, and initiatives, nor a private pursuit that engenders an autobiography of specialties, positions, honors, tenure, and pride. Instead, it is a social production that serves the dominant authority in established institutions. It creates and reinforces social dominance and ideological hegemony that in the end will overwhelm and overshadow all career-making individuals and their initiatives.
This article examines Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of the economy and his most recent politically engaged interventions on ‘globalisation’. Many scholars regard these as not being in the same academic league as his classic studies on taste, academia, and state elites, etc., and, instead, dismiss them as a private matter or even, as the spleen of Pierre Bourdieu, the individual. The paper questions this disjunction of the ‘academic’ and ‘politically engaged’ sides of Pierre Bourdieu’s work. First, it argues that his most recent interventions against a neo-liberal globalisation were the logical result of a particular definition of intellectual practice that had been outlined before in his sociology of the intellectual field. It then demonstrates that Bourdieu’s economic sociology and critique of contemporary capitalism does not only not contradict his earlier research, but that it provides valuable and original insights into the current transformation of the political economy of the advanced capitalist countries. The paper concludes with the suggestion of strengthening the theoretical foundation of Bourdieu’s analysis of contemporary capitalism by relating it to and making it compatible with alternative approaches in the tradition of critical political economy. (Less)
This investigation raises a critical question in the sociology of knowledge: How does a dramatic event affect the development of a previously neglected social science research topic? A working hypothesis suggested the reactive nature of our discipline: After-the-fact enthusiasm about a publicly dramatized event. The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington heightened awareness about apparent lack of terrorism theory and research in sociology. A preliminary literature search through a dozen major American sociological journals and an equal number of textbooks dating back to 1995, supported this impression. The search was subsequently expanded to compare pre- and post-9/11 (end of 2003) American sociological output on terrorism with similar output reported in non-American sociological as well as other social science journals. The British output surpassed the American output in the pre-9/11 period. But a reverse trend is visible in the post'9/11 period. Despite an overall post-9/11 surge in terrorism research, there is little evidence as yet of any emerging social science research centers, or that of a systematic body of theory, on this topic.
This paper analyzes the Research and Development (R&D) practices in Korea. R&D practices tend to bear the marks of influences of local cultural and institutional contexts. The paper examines the institutionalization of the Engineering Research Center (ERC) and Science Research Center (SRC) which were modeled after the R&D institutions in the United States. Focusing on the programs of Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) which provides support to enhance research capabilities of the universities, this paper evaluates the national innovation system in Korea. The paper traces the evolution of R&D systems in Korea which began with the promotion of heavy and chemical industries in the 1970s. KOSEF was established in 1977. In the 1980s, technological innovation was stressed in order for Korean industries to gain in international competitiveness and since 1989 basic research has been strengthened. The ERC/SRC program was planned by Korean scientists in National Science Foundation (NSF) to stimulate domestic technological capability as well as to boost international competitiveness. However, in the Korean context, SRC became differentiated from ERC, interdisciplinary approach also stumbled due to cultural factors and collaborative research among many universities also often met with difficulties.
This paper summarizes the rise of India's software industry, providing a perspective of the different roles that the different institutions (universities, government and companies) played during the different periods of the industry's growth. The current state of the industry and the challenges facing it are assessed, along with the prospective growth paths that can be taken. The industry is upgrading its capabilities across a spectrum of work and software sectors, but it is much harder to upgrade into different technological trajectories such as getting into own-brand software products.
