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Sociology

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2002

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After The Wizard, What?, Charles Lemert, Audrey Sprenger Feb 2002

After The Wizard, What?, Charles Lemert, Audrey Sprenger

Charles C Lemert

No abstract provided.

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The Person With Alzheimer's Disease : Pathways To Understanding The Experience, Phyllis Harris Dec 2001

The Person With Alzheimer's Disease : Pathways To Understanding The Experience, Phyllis Harris

Phyllis Braudy Harris

No abstract provided.

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Social Capital And Electronic Networks: For Profit Vs. For Community Approaches, John Sullivan, Eugene Borgida, Melinda Jackson, Eric Riedel, Alina Oxendine, Amy Gangl Dec 2001

Social Capital And Electronic Networks: For Profit Vs. For Community Approaches, John Sullivan, Eugene Borgida, Melinda Jackson, Eric Riedel, Alina Oxendine, Amy Gangl

Alina Oxendine

In this article, the authors discuss the implementation of a community electronic network in a rural Minnesota town. The network is intended to help the community keep up with global technological progress by increasing access to the Internet. The current project compares this community approach to electronic networks with an economic, for-profit approach utilized in a nonequivalent control community. Drawing on the theory of social capital, the authors consider the relative impacts of privately oriented social engagement versus publicly oriented political engagement in relation to collective outcomes. The findings to date show that in the presence of a broadly based …

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"I'M Not A Racist, But...": The Moral Quandary Of Race, Lawrence Blum Dec 2001

"I'M Not A Racist, But...": The Moral Quandary Of Race, Lawrence Blum

Lawrence Blum

Not all racial incidents are racist incidents, Lawrence Blum says. "We need a more varied and nuanced moral vocabulary for talking about the arena of race. We should not be faced with a choice of 'racism' or nothing." Use of the word "racism" is pervasive: An article about the NAACP's criticism of television networks for casting too few "minority" actors in lead roles asks, "Is television a racist institution?" A white girl in Virginia says it is racist for her African-American teacher to wear African attire.Blum argues that a growing tendency to castigate as "racism" everything that goes wrong in …

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A Tale Of Two Towns: Assessing The Role Of Political Resources In A Community Electronic Network, John Sullivan, Eugene Borgida, Melinda Jackson, Eric Riedel, Alina Oxendine Dec 2001

A Tale Of Two Towns: Assessing The Role Of Political Resources In A Community Electronic Network, John Sullivan, Eugene Borgida, Melinda Jackson, Eric Riedel, Alina Oxendine

Alina Oxendine

In this study we examine responses to the recent expansion of information technology in two rural Minnesota towns. One of these towns took a cooperative approach to technology access, developing a community electronic network, while the other town relied on a more individualistic, entrepreneurial model. The present study examines citizens' attitudes concerning social, political, and technological issues in these two communities, with the goal of uncovering what kinds of attitudes and resources citizens need to have in order to help support and sustain a community electronic network. Structural equation modeling is used to specify the relationships among individuals' economic, political, …

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Civic Culture Meets The Digital Divide: The Role Of Community Electronic Networks Dec 2001

Civic Culture Meets The Digital Divide: The Role Of Community Electronic Networks

Alina Oxendine

The concept of social capital reflects the norms and social relations embedded in the social structure of societies that enable people to coordinate community action to achieve desired goals. Our research focuses on the role that norms of cooperation and civic and political culture play in addressing the “digital divide” in computer use and Internet access. We review evidence from mail surveys of randomly selected respondents in two rural Minnesota communities as well as qualitative focus group and archival evidence suggesting that the communities have adopted different approaches to technology diffusion. Whether information technology is viewed as a public or …

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The Might Have Been And Could Be Of Religion In Social Theory, Charles C. Lemert Dec 2001

The Might Have Been And Could Be Of Religion In Social Theory, Charles C. Lemert

Charles C Lemert

Religion may well be the most inscrutable surd of social theory, which began late in the 19th century dismissing the subject. Not even the renewal of interest in religion in the 1960s did much to make religion a respectable topic in social theory. It is possible that social theory’s troubles are, in part, due to its refusal to think about religion. Close examination of social theories of Greek religion suggest, for principal example, that religion is perfectly able to thrive alongside the profane provided both are founded on principles of finitude, which in turn may be said to be the …

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