Annual Review of Sociology - Volume 16, 1990

The literature on altruism in social psychology, and to a lesser degree in sociology, economics, political behavior and sociobiology since the early 1980’s is reviewed. The authors take the position that in all of these areas, there appears to be a “paradigm shift” away from the earlier position that behavior that appears to be altruistic must, under closer scrutiny, be revealed as reflecting egoistic motives. Rather, theory and data now being advanced are more compatible with the view that true altruism—acting with the goal of benefitting another—does exist and is a part of human nature.

Research in social psychology during the 80’s had a decreased emphasis on situational determinants of helping. Rather, it has focussed mainly on the following topics: the existence and nature of the altruistic personality, the debate concerning the nature of the motivation underlying helping behavior, and the nature of the process of the development of altruism in children and adults. During this time there has also been considerable theoretical and empirical work on possible biological bases for altruism, and on the evolutionary processes by which these might have developed. Within economics, politics, and sociology, the issues of behavior in social dilemmas, the provision of public goods, private and corporate philanthropy, and voluntarism (including donation of time, money, and physical parts of the self) are discussed.

Rural areas have a disproportionate share of the US poverty population. Like poor urban communities, the persistence and severity of poverty in rural America can be linked to a limited opportunity structure which is the outcome of both past social and economic development policies and current economic transformation. Many rural communities lack stable employment, opportunities for mobility, investment in the community, and diversity in the economy and other social institutions. They are increasingly socially and spatially isolated and particularly vulnerable to adverse effects from structural economic change. This study reviews research on rural poverty and traces its relationship to its historical roots in social, political, and economic inequality and to current economic restructuring. Relevant sources of information on rural poverty include classic community and regional analyses, studies of rural-urban migration, regional development and underdevelopment, economic restructuring, and labor market analysis.

Selected recent research dealing with change in a variety of roles is reviewed in order to formulate general principles governing role change. Studies of quasichange reveal conditions leading to the abortion of potential role change. Studies of occupational, family, and gender role change reveal the sources of impetus to role change and the conditions facilitating and impeding the implementation of change. A tentative general model for role change is suggested on the basis of the evidence reviewed.

We examine various approaches to explaining ethnic enterprise, using a framework based on three dimensions: an ethnic group's access to opportunities, the characteristics of a group, and emergent strategies. A common theme pervades research on ethnic business: Ethnic groups adapt to the resources made available by their environments, which vary substantially across societies and over time. Four issues emerge as requiring greater attention: the reciprocal relation between ethnicity and entrepreneurship, more careful use of ethnic labels and categories in research, a need for more multigroup, comparative research, and more process-oriented research designs.

Interest in and research on nonprofit organizations and sectors have developed rapidly in recent years. Much of this work by sociologists has focussed on particular subsectors rather than on nonprofits as a class. This review attempts to extract from a large and varied literature a distinctively sociological perspective on nonprofits, which it contrasts to influential work in economics. Two questions—“Why (and where) are there nonprofit organizations” and “What difference does nonprofitness make?”—are addressed at the levels of organization, industry, and firm. Three central conclusions, each with research implications, emerge from this review: (a) The origins and behavior nonprofit organizations reflect institutional factors and state policies as well as the social-choice processes and utility functions emphasized by economists. (b) Understandingth e origins of nonprofit sectors and behavioral differences between nonprofits and for-profit or government organizations requires an industry-level ecological perspective. (c) “Nonprofitness” has no single transhistorical or transnational meaning; nonprofit-sector functions, origins, and behavior reflect specific legal definitions, cultural inheritances, and state policies in different national societies.

Major theory and research in organizational ecology are reviewed, with an emphasis on the organization and population levels of analysis and processes of organizational foundings, mortality, and change. The main approach to organizational foundings examines the roles of density dependence and population dynamics. Six approaches to studying organizational mortality are fitness set theory, liability of newness, density dependence, resource partitioning, liability of smallness, and the effects of founding conditions. Research on organizational change is just beginning to appear in the literature. The convergence between ecological and institutional research is discussed, especially the role of legitimacy in population dynamics, and the effects of institutional variables on vital rates. Some key criticisms of organizational ecology are addressed, and some suggestions for future research are proposed.

This discussion of the theories and methods of telephone surveys begins by considering the theories relevant to understanding mode effects. It analyzes theories related to coverage error, psychological theories of compliance and persuasion relevant to nonresponse error, sociological theories relevant to nonresponse error, and cognitive and social psychological theories relevant to measurement error.

The second part of the chapter discusses results from methodological studies and deals with four kinds of error: coverage error, sampling error, nonresponse error, and measurement error.

The third section of the chapter deals with computer-assisted data collection. The chapter concludes with a summarya nd a short anticipation of the future in telephone survey studies.

Life cycle is among the most widely used concepts in the social sciences. It may be invoked merely to denote temporality. It may be applied metaphorically or heuristically to initiate an analysis. Or it may comprise the core assumptions of a research program in developmental processes. Strictly defined, life cycle refers to maturational and generational processes in natural populations. Alternative conceptions of life cycle, like life span and life course, do not share the same intrinsic reference to generation or reproduction that transcends the single lifetime of the individual. Still these concepts are often used interchangeably. The history, meanings, and uses of these concepts across anthropology, psychology, economics, and sociology are reviewed. Three areas of modern sociology—individual aging, family life cycle, and organizational life cycle—are examined specifically in their treatment of life-cycle concepts. Finally, the implications of alternative usages for the study of populations as opposed to individuals and for the study of stability as opposed to change are considered.

The transition from high school to work creates serious problems for American youths and employers. Since single theories have difficulty conceptualizing the reasons for these problems, this paper reviews four theories that elucidate aspects: segmented labor market theory, human capital theory, signaling theory, and network theory. In addition, this review contrasts the American transition system with the transition systems in Japan, West Germany, and the United Kingdom to reveal practices and theoretical issues which are neither salient nor well studied in the American literature. We extend signaling theory to examine youths' use of signals, employers' use of dubious signals (e.g. age) while ignoring promising ones (e.g. grades), signals which are efficient in the short-term but not in the long-term. We extend network theory to include both personal contacts and institutional linkages. We note the ways poor signals may affect youths' plans and motivation and make them unresponsive to market demands, and the ways institutional networks may affect schooling and work-entry in the United States. Implications for theory, policy, and future research are also considered.

The number of inpatients in US public mental hospitals declined from 559,000 in 1955 to approximately 110,000 at present. Reductions resulted from release or transfer of long-term inpatients and from entrance barriers to new admissions. The timing and pace of deinstitutionalization substantially varied by state, but three quarters of the national reduction followed the expansion of welfare programs in the middle 1960s. The establishment of community care alternatives was highly inadequate, leaving many severely and persistently mentally ill people without essential services. Problems of care were exacerbated by the contraction of welfare programs in the 1980s, which resulted in serious neglect and homelessness. Plagued by underfinancing and fragmentation of care, new strategies in developing mental health care systems include capitation, case-management approaches, and the development of strong local mental health authorities.

In sociohistorical inquiry, no epistemology prevails as a widely accepted account of knowledge. Positivism yet retains its defenders. As alternatives, both structuralist and hermeneutic challenges to science are undermined as foundations of knowledge by their own accounts, yielding the postmodern loss of certitude. Conventionalism, rationalism, and realism have been proposed as “local epistemologies” under the new conditions, and on a broader level, pragmatic and transcendental theories of communication substitute for epistemology classically conceived. As yet, these contending developments do not resolve the crisis of sociohistorical knowledge.

Peasants and proletarians are key actors in the social changes that produced the modern world. The concepts identify different forms of demographic behavior, social organization and political action. The peasant is locally oriented and defensive politically, yet has contributed to revolutionary change. The proletarian looks to association beyond locality and is the basis of modern class politics, but the political impact of the proletariat has varied with time and place. There are many types of peasantry and many types of proletariat. The categories serve usefully in comparative and historical analysis, but the variations in types and in the social and political context in which they act need to be specified. The orientations to action and the life chances that both categories describe need to be modified to take account of current social and economic changes. In many parts of the world, the peasant disappears in face of the modernization of agriculture or survives by combining agricultural work with nonagricultural work or migration. The proletarian also retreats in face of the decline of full-time wage employment in the cities, and the increasing importance of independent and part-time employment. Other forms of identity, based on gender or generation, or community-based ones, such as religion or ethnicity, are reinforced as a basis of political action, particularly in face of the growing significance of the state, not the employer, in determining the life chances of different social groups.

This paper reviews the cultural, demographic, economic, and social sources that have produced a transformation in the institution of marriage over the past century. It describes trends in marriage and remarriage that have altered the life course of children in families. The consequences of growing levels of marital instability for children are described. Particular attention is devoted to the changing parenting system and alterations in the kinship system of children whose parents divorced and remarried. Some problems in interpreting the effects of divorce on children are identified. The paper concludes with a discussion of public policy issues related to divorce and remarriage.

Theory and research on choice and decision-making behavior is reviewed with the intent of identifying the core elements of these behavioral processes. Two distinct theoretical perspectives—“subjective/cognitive” and “behaviorist”—are critically examined and evaluated within the framework of their contribution to sociological theory. We then explore lacunae and ambiguities in the research and theory in the field. Definitional distinctions are drawn between the concepts of choice, decision-making, and problem-solving. Finally, we make a preliminary attempt to synthesize the work in this field, to identify core elements and suggest that the moment of choice can be considered as a microcosm of the social and behavioral forces affecting a given action at both the individual and collective level.

Data on social networks may be gathered for all ties linking elements of a closed population (“complete” network data) or for the sets of ties surrounding sampled individual units (“egocentric” network data). Network data have been obtained via surveys and questionnaires, archives, observation, diaries, electronic traces, and experiments. Most methodological research on data quality concerns surveys and questionnaires. The question of the accuracy with which informants can provide data on their network ties is nontrivial, but survey methods can make some claim to reliability. Unresolved issues include whether to measure perceived social ties or actual exchanges, how to treat temporal elements in the definition of relationships, and whether to seek accurate descriptions or reliable indicators. Continued research on data quality is needed; beyond improved samples and further investigation of the informant accuracy/reliability issue, this should cover common indices of network structure, address the consequences of sampling portions of a network, and examine the robustness of indicators of network structure and position to both random and nonrandom errors of measurement.

Transformations in the composition and locational patterns of the economy have assumed specific forms in cities and in the urban hierarchy. The new service-dominated urbanization, particularly evident in major cities, has distinct consequences for a range of social conditions. Here we focus especially on the characteristics of today's leading industries, the producer services, disproportionately concentrated in major cities; the impact of restructuring on the earnings distribution generally and in major cities in particular, and the impact of urban restructuring on minorities, a population increasingly concentrated in large cities.

A notable feature of the present baby bust in the United States is that substantial proportions of women are delaying much of their childbearing until relatively late in their reproductive lives. One concern about this delayed childbearing is that many women may end up either childless or with fewer children than they desire, owing to reproductive impairment. This paper reviews evidence concerning the decline of reproductive ability with age. The findings can be distilled into two main facts. First, the proportion of women with low reproductive ability increases steadily from age 15 to age 50. Second, this rise is moderate until the mid-30s when it begins to increase mores harply. While the current consensus is that most healthy women in their late thirties have a good prospect of giving birth to a healthy infant, a substantial minority of postponers will end up childless or with fewer children than they desire, due to reproductive impairment as well as to social causes.