Annual Review of Sociology - Volume 12, 1986

A review of the past decade’s research on American associations reveals significant growth in empirical findings across three levels of analysis: the individual member, the organization, and the political system. The social correlates of joining and participation, particularly gender and race differences, and the effect of incentives on individual decisions continued to attract the interest of many researchers. At the organization level, the structure of incentives and the impact of collective decision-making processes received less attention than the social ecology of association growth and differentiation, The advocacy explosion of recent years that brought many new groups and lobbying methods to Washington stimulated much research on associations in the pressure group system. The field of association research as a whole, however, still suffers from a lack of theoretical consensus on the central issues and of means for studying them.

This paper reviews survey research explaining the social patterns of distress. There are four basic patterns: (a) The higher one's social status the lower one's distress; (b) women are more distressed than men; (c) married persons are less distressed than unmarried persons, and; (d) the greater the number of undesirable events in one's life the greater one's distress. The major forms of distress are malaise (such as lethargy, headaches, and trembling hands), anxiety (such as feeling afraid, worried, or irritable), and depression (such as feeling sad, worthless, or hopeless). Sociological theory suggests that alienation, authoritarianism, and inequity produce distress. The research indicates that distress is reduced by control, commitment, support, meaning, normality, flexibility, trust, and equity. The presence or absence of these accounts for the social patterns of distress.

Popular culture studies have until recently been treated as more or less unworthy of serious scholarly attention. But developments in anthropology, history, communication, American studies, and literary criticism have given the study of popular culture new analytic tools and legitimacy. This article reviews some of the more noteworthy contributions to this body of scholarship. Interpretive anthropology by Clifford Geertz, Victor Turner, and others, historical work influenced by the Annales school, studies of mass media, and the work of structuralists and post-structuralists from many disciplines are all discussed. This work, as well as sociological analyses of leisure, art, and mass culture are shown to have provided rich and vital insights into the social power and forms of popular culture.

Role theory concerns one of the most important features of social life, characteristic behavior patterns or roles. It explains roles by presuming that persons are members of social positions and hold expectations for their own behaviors and those of other persons. Its vocabulary and concerns are popular among social scientists and practitioners, and role concepts have generated a lot of research. At least five perspectives may be discriminated in recent work within the field: functional, symbolic interactionist, structural, organizational, and cognitive role theory. Much of role research reflects practical concerns and derived concepts, and research on four such concepts is reviewed: consensus, conformity, role conflict, and role taking. Recent developments suggest both centrifugal and integrative forces within the role field. The former reflect differing perspectival commitments of scholars, confusions and disagreements over use of role concepts, and the fact that role theory is used to analyze various forms of social system. The latter reflect the shared, basic concerns of the field and efforts by role theorists to seek a broad version of the field that will accommodate a wide range of interests.

Although literature on causes and prevention of crime now transcends disciplinary lines, it can still be categorized by the questions addressed. One line of research expands upon questions posed and answers given in the nineteenth century. Another line of research is predicated on a series of criticisms of the nineteenth-century approach, criticisms that appeared in the 1920s and 1930s. This latter line goes well beyond Marxism, offering fundamentally different ways to define and study justice that go beyond conventional political, philosophical, and social scientific debate. The major literature of this sociology of justice is identified and emergent directions indicated.

Comparative social scientists have developed various arguments about the determinants of social policies, especially those connected with twentieth-century “welfare states.” Structure-functionalists argue that the social policies of modern nations necessarily converge due to an underlying logic of industrialism, while neo-Marxists treat such policies as state responses to the social reproduction requirements of advanced capitalism. Yet most students of social policies are more attuned to history and politics. Concentrating on two dozen or fewer industrial capitalist democracies, many scholars have explored the alternative ways in which democratic political processes have helped to create programs and expand social expenditures. For a fuller range of nations past and present, scholars have also asked how ties to the world-economy, patterns of geopolitical competition, and processes of transnational cultural modelling have influenced social policies. Finally, there is now considerable interest in the independent impact of states on social policymaking. States may be sites of autonomous official initiatives, and their institutional structures may help to shape the political processes from which social policies emerge. In turn, social policies, once enacted and implemented, themselves transform politics. Consequently, the study over time of “policy feedbacks” has become one of the most fruitful current areas of research on states and social policies.

This article reviews the emerging sociodemographic literature on the relationships linking children and their families, by focusing on four topics: (a) the short-term implications for children of parents' family behavior, (b) the short-term implications for parents of the number and ages, or spacing, of their children, (c) the long-term implications of childhood family experiences for subsequent adult behavior, and (d) the probable family circumstances of children in the future.

Studies of how parents influence children found (a) that increases in illegitimate fertility and divorce led to a large rise in the proportion of children living in one-parent families, usually with the mother, and in stepfamilies, (b) that children in families maintained by mothers, but not in stepfamilies, experience numerous social, economic, and psychological disadvantages, (c) that, contrary to the popular stereotype, white children in families maintained by mothers are more likely than black children in such families either to be living with or to receive financial assistance from extended family members, and (d) declining fertility and birth cohort size may have led to reductions in the welfare of children compared to the welfare of the elderly during the last 20 years.

Studies of how children influence parents found that the presence of at least one child probably reduced marital satisfaction; the presence of a small number of children, especially preschool children, deters parental divorce; children reduce remarriage probabilities for young mothers, but increase them for older mothers; and at least the first and second child probably reduce family income and savings. Studies of how childhood experiences affect individuals in adulthood find that divorce of one's parents reduces one's own marriage probabilities and increases one's own divorce probabilities; childhood stepfamilies have little effect on adult circumstances; contrary to the popular stereotype, children without siblings are not disadvantaged compared to other children; an increasing number of siblings leads to reduced educational attainments, and increasing educational mobility among men with small or medium numbers of siblings accounts for the increase observed for all men during this century. Recent projections suggest that 50-75% of the 1980 birth cohort may live in a one-parent family during childhood, with a range of 40-70% for whites and a range of 85-95% for blacks.

This article critically reviews the literature on fertility and female labor force behavior in the United States, with particular emphasis on recent quantitative research by economists, demographers, and sociologists. We first examine the empirical evidence regarding the influence on fertility and female employment of certain key variables: the value of female time, husband's income, and relative economic status. Then the issue of whether there is direct causality between fertility and female labor supply is addressed. We review simultaneous equations models and a new approach to the study of causality. Sequential decision-making models are also discussed.

Factors that may mediate the fertility-labor supply nexus are examined. These include childcare arrangements, husband's income, wife's education, and the convenience of employment. Differentials in the relationship between fertility and labor supply among racial and religious groups are noted. The article concludes with a discussion of changes over time in the association between fertility and female employment.

We review recent applications of the “new institutional economics” to a variety of social institutions. The applications use the idea of efficiency to account for the emergence and persistence of institutions such as the family, sharing groups, private property, discrimination, and the norm of reciprocity. Efficiency entails eliminating costly externalities with the least possible transaction costs (i.e. costs involved in negotiating, writing, and enforcing agreements). Our critique of efficiency shows how power relations, goal ambiguity. and the institutional relativism of choice render efficiency problematic. The sociological criterion of reproducibility may be more relevant where these features hold. If efficiency analysis is used, the sociologist should insist that it allow the identification of inefficiencies and that institutional participants welcome suggested improvements in efficiency.

The article contains an overview of theoretical and empirical work carried out by sociologists of religion in the study of new religious movements and the anticult movement since 1978; it pays special attention to the aftereffects of the mass suicide/murder of followers of Jim Jones in Guyana. The different theories as to why people join the movement are discussed-whether they are 'brainwashed,' what influences (pushes and/or pulls) the wider society has on the membership. Mention is made of the role of sociologists themselves as witnesses in court cases and as participant observers at conferences organized by the movements. Bibliographic details are supplied of writings about particular movements, in particular countries, and concerning particular problems (finances, family life, legal issues, conversion, 'deprograrnming,' etc) It is suggested that the differences between the movements are considerably greater than is often recognized and that there is a need for further comparative research and more refined classificatory systems before our theoretical knowledge can develop and be tested satisfactorily. Various changes (such as the demographic variables of an aging membership, the death of charismatic leaders, and the socialization of second-generation membership; changing relationships with the 'host' society; and the growth—or demise—of the movements) provide much more of interest for the sociologist to study in the future.

The author discusses rural community development in the United States by tracing its historical origins, reviewing its status within sociology, contrasting development of the community with development in the community, and reviewing three basic strategies of rural community development: authoritative intervention, client-centered intervention, and radical reform. The author concludes that federal intervention policies have created elaborate and complex interdependencies among state and federal governments, the private sector, and communities, and that rural community development requires a sociology that maps these relationships and provides explanations for changes in them.

Some of the accomplishments and shortcomings of Arab sociology during the last few years are assessed from the perspective of Arab sociologists. This assessment of Arab sociology from the insiders' perspective involves (a) reviewing selected papers presented at one of the most recent Arab sociology conferences, (b) analyzing the results of a survey of 36 Arab sociologists, and (c) describing in detail the major contributions of Arab sociologists and social scientists to the study of Islam, with particular reference to Islamic social movements. Recent socioeconomic changes and political events in the Arab world help explain the rising interest in sociology. Arab sociologists view their discipline as still in process of becoming and in a state of crisis. The sociopolitical and disciplinary aspects of this crisis and the solution suggested to remedy it are described. Arab sociological studies of Islamic social movements have the following features: (a) an emphasis on the diversity, complexity, and historical specificity, of these movements, (b) a recognition of the need for an interdisciplinary approach, (c) a focus on the sociological characteristics of leaders and followers, (d) analyses of the origin of the movements, and (e) an emphasis on the need for a methodology more personal and subjective than the one used in the West. This research, as well as the survey of Arab sociologists, indicates that there is a noticeable trend toward the substantive indigenization of Arab sociology and that Arab sociologists are aware of the need to be innovative and flexible in their selection and use of research methods. These also show that there has been little theoretical indigenization of Arab sociology. This may explain, in part, the sense of crisis felt by Arab sociologists.

This paper describes alternative methods for careful sampling of special populations. It discusses the use of single or multiple lists, even when incomplete, along with supplementary measures using telephone and mail techniques. If the special populations are clustered there are several alternatives for reducing costs substantially. These involve telephone or mail screenings to eliminate zero segments with a single contact, use of two or three contacts to eliminate zero segments if face-to-face screening is required, use of lists to identify nonzero segments, use of combined screening, and reducing the sampling rate in nonzero areas that have low densities.

For some populations the use of network sampling can be very effective. Some populations can be defined by their activities and sampled at locations where they participate. These careful methods should be used if one is trying to generalize to a total special population.