Son of joe: Continuity and change among white working class adolescents

The present article focuses upon the much-neglected topic of white working class youth — the children of another other America. Based upon the available literature as well as upon a recent program of ethnographic research, the institutional settings — community, family, school — within which working class youth grow up are examined with particular emphasis on their climate and values. Attention is paid to the heterogeneity contained within this segment of the population pointing to four distinct types: collegians, greasers, hippies, and those encapsulated in family life. The article points to factors that promote a potential increase in residential social class homogeneity that, in turn, promotes class values, social and personal expectations, and modal relationships that increasingly diverge from the norms of an urban-industrial middle class society and that in considerable measure either contribute to a growing conservative alienation from the larger society or make adjustments to that society more problematic for its youth. The emergent picture of white working youth in part resembles that of youth in general, but in a more significant measure is much different from that found in either higher or lower social strata.This research was supported by USPHS-NIH Contract 70-511 and USPHS-NICHD Grant No. 04156.Received Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago. Research interests include post childhood socialization, social change and deviance, and urban social studies.Received Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago. Main research interest is social change and deviance.Candidate for Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University. Main research interests are social stratification, youth, and social change in an industrial society.     

Does Gender Modify the Effects of Race–ethnicity on Criminal Sanctioning? Sentences for Male and Female White, Black, and Hispanic Defendants

Using data from large urban courts for the years 1990–1996 and drawing from the “focal concerns” framework on case-process decision making, we examine the main and interactive effects of gender and race–ethnicity on sentence outcomes. The main focus of the present study is whether the effects of race–ethnicity (and gender) on sentence outcomes are similar or different across gender (and racial–ethnic) groups. Consistent with the findings of prior research, we find that female defendants receive more lenient sentences than male defendants and that black and Hispanic defendants receive less favorable treatment than white defendants. However, these main effects are strongly dependent on whether the sample is partitioned by gender or race–ethnicity. We find that race–ethnicity influences male but not female sentences. Conversely, gender strongly influences sentencing across all racial–ethnic groups. These findings are at odds with the traditional view that leniency in court sanctioning typically by-passes “women of color.” Instead, it appears that black and Hispanic female defendants actually benefit more from their “female” status than would be expected all else equal.

Public Policy in the Passive-Aggressive State: Health Care Reform in Bosnia-Hercegovina 1995–2001

This article uses Bosnia and Hercegovina as a prototype of an emerging subset of weak states, the passive-aggressive state. Appearing as the result of agreements ending civil strife, the general characteristics of the passive-aggressive state include complex power-sharing arrangements at the centre and local institutions that are designed for capture by parties to the conflict, which in turn creates a weak and segmented civil society. As a result, only the international community can devise and financially support policy reform, but it must rely on the state to implement the reform. Dependent on international support for its own survival, the centre rhetorically embraces reform while local institutions engage in passive resistance to block it. This article uses three examples of health care reform in Bosnia to illustrate the difficulties of reform in these types of states. The paper concludes with observations on how strengthening the powers of the central government and reorienting international aid towards civil society might alleviate some of the structural problems of passive-aggressive states.

passive-aggressive: Of, relating to, or having a personality disorder characterised by habitual passive resistance to demands for adequate performance in occupational or social situations, as by procrastination, stubbornness, sullenness, and inefficiency (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition).