Sociology Commons^™

The Dominican Grassroots Movement And The Organized Left, 1978–1986, Emelio Betances

Sociology Faculty Publications

Through their struggles for better services, grassroots movements played a large role in the process of democratization and construction of social citizenship in the Dominican Republic. The modern grassroots movement, especially in relation to the uprising of April 1984, challenged the government's neoliberal policies and opened the way for the emergence of an independent movement that confronted both left-wing parties and organized labor. However, because the gains from expanding social citizenship remained limited in the face of the Dominican state's inability to formulate socio-economic policies, the movements at best posed a worthwhile goal that Dominican society may revisit in the …

Latinos And The Colorline, Clara E. Rodriguez, Nancy Lopez, Grigoris Argeros

Sociology Faculty Publications

This essay reviews the issues and current literature on how “race,” skin color, and/or phenotype operate as stratifying agents among Latinos in the United States. We review the trends and emerging issues in this area with regard to health, housing and segregation, and socioeconomic status (SES), including education and criminal justice.We do so in the context of the Census Bureau’s release of its 2010 Alternative Questionnaire Experiment (AQE) study. This 5-year study focuses on how to best ask the race question. One of the key findings of the study was that including “Hispanic/Latinos” as a race in the combined questionnaire …

Census, Clara E. Rodriguez, Grigoris Argeros

Sociology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Toward An Interpretive Approach To Social Movement Leadership, Michael Decesare

Sociology Faculty Publications

The concept of a leader is one ofthe most fundamental to the study of collective behavior. It is also one of the most poorly theorized, primarily because social movement theorists continue to (1) assume that leaders must be affiliated with an organization and (2) argue over who "counts" as a leader. This paper offers two alternative approaches. I argue, first, that our current conceptualization must be broadened to include individuals who are unaffiliated with an organization. Second, I suggest that rather than debating who qualifies and does not qualify as a movement leader, we would do better to take an …

Latino Racial Reporting In The Us: To Be Or Not To Be, Clara E. Rodriguez, Michael Miyawaki, Grigoris Argeros

Sociology Faculty Publications

This review focuses on how Latinos report their race. This is an area that has recently experienced a major surge of interest in both government and academic circles. This review of the literature examines how and why Latinos report their race on the census, in surveys and in more qualitative studies. It reviews the vibrant and growing scholarly literature relevant to the questions of the placement – by self or others – of Latinos along the US color line, what determines it and how the Census has coped and is coping with it. We begin with a brief review of …

Does Race And National Origin Influence The Hourly Wages That Latino Males Receive?, Clara E. Rodriguez, Grigoris Argeros, Michael Hajime Miyawaki

Sociology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Gossip At Work: Unsanctioned Evaluative Talk In Formal School Meetings, Tim Hallett, Brent D. Harger, Donna Eder

Sociology Faculty Publications

This article uses a form of linguistic ethnography to analyze videotaped recordings of gossip that took place during formal school meetings. By comparing this gossip data against existing models of gossip based on data collected in informal settings, we identify eleven new response classes, including four forms of indirectness that operate to cloak gossip under ambiguity, and seven forms of avoidance that change the trajectory of gossip. In doing so, this article makes three larger contributions. First, it opens a new front in research on organizational politics by providing an empirically grounded, conceptually rich vocabulary for analyzing gossip in formal …

Bell Hooks, Amanda Moras

Sociology Faculty Publications

A brief encyclopedia entry for the feminist theorist bell hooks.

The Catholic Church And Political Mediation In The Dominican Republic: A Comparative Perspective, Emelio Betances

Sociology Faculty Publications

This essay looks at the Catholic Church and political mediation in the Dominican Republic during the 1980's and 1990's. It opens with a review of the Latin American context regarding the transition to democracy, the debt crisis, and the church's response to the new political reality. It draws some comparisons from Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala, where the church played an important role mediating political conflicts. The core of the article concentrates on three parts: the Dominican transition to democracy, the church mediation in the Tripartite Dialogue of the 1980's and early 1990's, and in the general elections of …

Rethinking Clientelism: Demands, Discourses And Practices In Contemporary Brazil, Robert Gay

Sociology Faculty Publications

It has been more than a decade since the Brazilian military relinquished its hold on the electoral process. Effective democratic governance has yet to be established, however. Traditional elites still dominate the scene, political parties remain weak, fragmented and unstable, and public administrations continue to pay lip-service to demands for citizens' rights. The source of these various problems of democratic governance is, by all accounts, the widespread practice of exchanging votes for favours, otherwise known as clientelism. In this essay, I argue that clientelism is an essential and endearing feature of the Brazilian political landscape. I also argue, however, that …

The Dominican Republic-- After The Caudillos, Emelio Betances, Hobard Spalding

Sociology Faculty Publications

The Dominican Republic played a major role in the early history of NACLA, and it is therefore fitting that the country be re-examined in one of NACLA's thirtieth anniversary issues. It was largely in response to the 1965 U.S. invasion and occupation of the island that a group of academics, clergy and radical activists organized a 1966 conference called the North American Congress on Latin America. The "congress" stayed together beyond the conference, and in February, 1967, began publishing the NACLA Newsletter, which evolved into today's NACLA Report on the Americas.

The Formation Of The Dominican Capitalist State And The United States Military Occupation Of 1916-1924, Emelio Betances

Sociology Faculty Publications

The United States policy towards the Caribbean and Central America during the 1980s repeats an interventionist pattern which occurred early in the twentieth century. Then, the United States set up strong national governments which organized export economies and local political power. Today, social and political developments in the region have outgrown the political scheme created at the beginning of the century. Thus, the recurrent United States intrusion in the region to recreate the old political structures. An historico-sociological analysis becomes necessary to place current events in perspective and shed light in understanding the pattern of regional political development.

This study …

Republica Dominicana: Crisis Del Bipartidismo En Las Elecciones De 1990, Emelio Betances

Sociology Faculty Publications

The Dominican Revolutionary Party's inability to fulfill its historic program of political and economic democracy, coupled with a series of struggles within the party group, have opened the way for the historic contest between Joaquin Balaguer and Juan Bosch. The nature of this ideological war was inevitable because, since the U.S. military intervention in 1965, Balaguer and Bosch had represented in the country mixed views on both the economy and politics. While Balaguer's dictatorial governments from 1966 to 1978 are considered the legacy of the United States military intervention in 1965, Bosch is seen as the main nationalist critical of …

(Review) Revolution At The Grassroots: Community Organizations In The Portuguese Revolution, Robert Gay

Sociology Faculty Publications

Reviews the book "Revolution at the Grassroots: Community Organizations in the Portuguese Revolution," by Charles Downs.