Abstract: Four studies demonstrated both the power of group influence in persuasion and people's blindness to it. Even under conditions of effortful processing, attitudes toward a social policy depended almost exclusively upon the stated position of one's political party. This effect overwhelmed the impact of both the policy's objective content and participants' ideological beliefs (Studies 1-3), and it was driven by a shift in the assumed factual qualities of the policy and in its perceived moral connotations (Study 4). Nevertheless, participants denied having been influenced by their political group, although they believed that other individuals, especially their ideological adversaries, would be so influenced. The underappreciated role of social identity in persuasion is discussed.

Abstract: Robert Kagan asserts that on international issues, "Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus" (p. 3). Picking up on classical gender associations recirculated by John Gray's advice books, this catchphrase projects onto transatlantic relations sexy notions about the supposed differences between men and women. The analogy mobilizes conventional assumptions about the supposed biological determinants of sexual difference in support of what Kagan sees as another essential truth: "The United States and Europe are fundamentally different today" (p. 6). Although Kagan's analysis is in places sophisticated, it relies on narrow, even simplistic, concepts of power, strength, and weakness. While Kagan finds power "the all important question" (p. 3), he considers only military power efficacious. In his supposedly realistic world, neither economic and political pressures, nor cultural influence and ideology (save for ideas about the use of military force) have much impact. Kagan discusses the rise of the Nazis without reference to the Great Depression, which elevated what had remained a minor party during German prosperity. Nor does he mention that until 1939, leaders in the Western democracies appreciated the internal order secured by fascism in Italy and Germany while they worried that another war would spawn communist revolutions. Ignoring such textbook history, Kagan focuses on what he calls the "psychologies of power and weakness": in the inter-war period, "a frightened France" and "the traumatized British" (p. 12) tried "to make a virtue out of weakness" (p. 13). This narrow view of power and motivation fits the book's rhetorical structure: a simplifying, polarized depiction of the post-Cold War era. In this setup, robust Americans act on realism, while less manly Europeans display "fundamental and enduring weakness" (p. 28), military "impotence" (p. 46), and an "anemic" foreign policy (p. 65). Rejecting power, Europeans opt instead for "exuberant idealism" (p. 60) and "more and more shrill..,. attacks on the United States" (p. 100). Kagan stresses Europe's "relative weakness," reiterating the point on almost every page. By depicting Europe's post-1989 decision not to match American spending on advanced weapons as a failure of will that led to "inadequacies" (p. 24), he denigrates non-military power while justifying Washington's actions. "Given a weak Europe ... the United States has no choice but to act unilaterally" (p. 99). Kagan argues that Europeans, sheltered by Washington from the "brutal laws of power politics"(p. 58), are "settling into their postmodern paradise and proselytizing for their doctrines of international law and international institutions" (p. 76). While such "doctrines" appear to the author and to many in Washington as indulgent idealism, to worldly Cold Warriors such as Dean Acheson they appeared as useful adjuncts to American hegemony. Despite the sneer at Europe and at norms of peace and cooperation still held by most Americans, Kagan's ultimate target lies "outside the laws of

Abstract: The paper analyses and explains the appeal of the concepts of profession and professionalism and the increased use of these concepts in different occupational groups, work contexts and social systems. The paper begins with a brief preliminary section on defining the field where it is suggested that a shift of focus is required from a preoccupation with defining `profession' to analysis of the appeal to `professionalism' as a motivator for and facilitator of occupational change. Then the paper examines two past, alternative and contrasting, sociological interpretations of professionalism (as normative value system and as ideology of occupational powers). In the third section the paper argues that, in the 1990s, a third interpretation has developed which includes both normative and ideological elements. Sociologists have returned to the concept of professionalism in attempts to understand occupational and organizational change and the prominence of knowledge work in different social systems and global econo...

Abstract: The paper argues for a new approach to the study of entrepreneurship and a new paradigm as a basis for entrepreneurship education. It also argues that such an approach is unlikely to come from university business schools. It needs an organisational revolution which, however, can be managed within a university as a whole. The paper is divided into two parts. The first explores the political imperative in Europe for development of the 'enterprise culture' and attributes this mainly to pressures for greater international competitiveness. The educational response is then examined and, with the help of a number of recent surveys, some of the key issues pertaining to the development of entrepreneurship education in higher education institutions in the UK and Europe are reviewed. The second part attempts to address the imperative at a more conceptual level. The pursuit of entrepreneurial behaviour is seen as a function of the degree of uncertainty and complexity in the task and broader environment and/or the desire of an individual, in pursuit of an opportunity or problem solution, to create it. It is argued that the key trigger for the growing interest in entrepreneurship is globalization. The way in which this has impacted on the role of the state, the organization of business activity and public services and on individuals to create greater uncertainty and complexity in the environment is explored. This leads to a conclusion that a wide range of stakeholders are being confronted with the need for entrepreneurial behaviour, for example, priests, doctors, teachers, policemen, pensioners and community workers and, indeed, potentially everyone in the community. Entrepreneurship is therefore not solely the prerogative of business. It follows that the traditional focus of entrepreneurship education on business, and new venture management in particular, provides an inadequate basis for response to societal needs. Moreover, the pervasive ideology of the 'heroic' entrepreneur can be seen as a dysfunctional when viewed against the needs of a wider community. The wider notion of 'enterprise' is therefore introduced as a means of moving away from the hitherto narrow paradigm. How this relates to the development of the individual and the design of enterprising organizations is explored. The paper explores the challenge of this broader context by reference to a number of issues central to the globalization debate including: culture, market liberalization, forms of governance and democracy. It then links these with the ontological and epistemological challenge to education. It concludes with discussion as to how this relates to the traditional concept of a university and argues that universities as a whole are in a much better position to respond to the challenge than are business schools.

Abstract: Morten Blekesaune Norwegian Social Research – NOVA, Oslo, Norway Jill Quadagno Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy, Florida State University, USA To be presented at the first annual conference of The Network for European Social Policy Analysis (ESPAnet), Copenhagen November 13-15 2003. To be published in European Sociological Review, vol.19, no.5, December 2003. Abstract The paper investigates public attitudes toward welfare state policies as a result of both situational, i.e. unemployment, and ideological factors, i.e. egalitarian ideology, at both the individual and national level. The dependent variables are public support for the sick and the old as well as for the unemployed as target beneficiaries of welfare state policies. Data from the ISSP-study «Role of government» are analyzed using a multi-level regression technique. Findings indicate that the nation level is important in shaping public attitudes toward welfare state policies in industrialized nations, and that both situational and ideological factors play a role. Apparently, various nations generate different public beliefs about national social problems and about the relationship between individuals, the state and other institutions. Eventually, these understandings and beliefs influence popular attitudes regarding what kind of policies the state should pursue, and who should benefit.

Abstract: Preface Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction Theory, Interdisciplinarity and Critical Discourse Analysis G.Weiss & R.Wodak PART 1: CRITICAL - CRITICAL - CRITICAL Critical Discourse Analysis and the Rhetoric of Critique M.Billig Critical Discourse Analysis and the Development of New Science C.A.M.Gouveia Reflexivity and the Doubles of Modern Man: The Discursive Construction of Anthropological Subject Positions M.W.Jorgensen PART 2: DEBATING AND PRACTISING INTERDISCIPLINARITY The Discourse-Knowledge Interface T.A.van Dijk Critical Discourse Analysis and Evaluative Meaning Interdisciplinarity as a Critical Turn P.Graham Texts and Discourses in the Technologies of Social Organisation J.Lemke Identities in Flux: Arabs and Jews in Israel M.Dascal Political and Somatic Alignment: Habitus, Ideology and Social Practice S.Scollon Voicing the 'Other': Reading and Writing Indigenous Australians J.R.Martin PART 3: FROM THEORY TO SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PRACTICE Activist Sociolinguistics in a Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective P.O'Connor Discourse at Work: When Women Take on the Role of Manager L.Martin-Rojo & C.Gomez Esteban Cross-Cultural Representation of 'Otherness' in Media Discourse C.R.Caldas-Coulthard Interaction Between Visual and Verbal Communication: Changing Patterns in the Printed Media C.Anthonissen Index

Abstract: A neo-Gramscian theoretical framework for corporate political strategy is developed drawing from Gramsci's analysis of the relations among capital, social forces, and the state, and from more contemporary theories. Gramsci's political theory recognizes the centrality of organizations and strategy, directs attention to the organizational, economic, and ideological pillars of power, while illuminating the processes of coalition building, conflict, and accommodation that drive social change. This approach addresses the structure-agency relationship and endogenous dynamics in a way that could enrich institutional theory. The framework suggests a strategic concept of power, which provides space for contestation by subordinate groups in complex dynamic social systems. We apply the framework to analyse the international negotiations to control emissions of greenhouse gases, focusing on the responses of firms in the US and European oil and automobile industries. The neo- Gramscian framework explains some specific features of corporate responses to challenges to their hegemonic position and points to the importance of political struggles within civil society The analysis suggests that the conventional demarcation between market and non-market strategies is untenable, given the embeddedness of markets in contested social and political structures and the political character of strategies directed toward defending and enhancing markets, technologies, corporate autonomy and legitimacy.

Abstract: Many observers doubt the capacity of digital media to change the political game. The rise of a transnational activism that is aimed beyond states and directly at corporations, trade and development regimes offers a fruitful area for understanding how communication practices can help create a new politics. The Internet is implicated in the new global activism far beyond merely reducing the costs of communication, or transcending the geographical and temporal barriers associated with other communication media. Various uses of the Internet and digital media facilitate the loosely structured networks, the weak identity ties, and the patterns of issue and demonstration organizing that define a new global protest politics. Analysis of various cases shows how digital network configurations can facilitate: permanent campaigns; the growth of broad networks despite relatively weak social identity and ideology ties; transformation of individual member organizations and whole networks; and the capacity to communicate...

Abstract: Women's low rate of participation at the highest levels of politics is an enduring problem in gender stratification. Previous cross-national research on women in national legislatures has stressed three explanations for differences in women's political representation: social structure, politics, and ideology. Despite strong theory suggesting the importance of ideology, it has not found support in previous cross- national statistical studies. But ideology has not been as well measured as structural and political factors. In this article, we demonstrate that gender ideology strongly affects the number of women in national legislatures. We do so by introducing a newly available measure of national gender ideology into a cross-national model of women in legislatures. We demonstrate that ideology, when measured more precisely, strongly predicts differences in women's political representation. Despite advances in women's levels of education and participation in the paid economy over the last 20 years (Clark, Ramsbey & Adler 1991; Jacobs 1996), women have made little significant progress with respect to their representation in national politics. In the U.S., women compose 46% of the paid labor force and 55% of tertiary students (United Nations 2000). However, their representation in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate remains 13% and 14%, respectively. The situation is similar in other nations. Currently 182 countries allow women to run for office. Yet women constitute less than 20% of elected representatives in the great majority of these countries. Women's

Abstract: Despite stops, gaps, and reversals, financial reforms advanced worldwide in the last quarter century. Using a new index of financial liberalization, we conclude that influential events shook the status quo, inducing both reforms and reversals, while learning, more so than ideology and country structure, shaped and sustained widespread reforms. Among shocks, a decline in global interest rates and balance of payments crises strengthened reformers; banking crises were associated with reversals, while new governments brought about both reforms and reversals. Learning occurred domestically - initial reforms raised the likelihood of further reforms - and through observing regional reform leaders. Among structural features, greater openness to trade appears to have increased the pace of financial reform.

Abstract: In "Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy," S. M. Amadae tells the remarkable story of how rational choice theory rose from obscurity to become the intellectual bulwark of capitalist democracy. Amadae roots "Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy" in the turbulent post-World War II era, showing how rational choice theory grew out of the RAND Corporation's efforts to develop a "science" of military and policy decisionmaking. But while the first generation of rational choice theorists William Riker, Kenneth Arrow, and James Buchanan were committed to constructing a "scientific" approach to social science research, they were also deeply committed to defending American democracy from its Marxist critics. Amadae reveals not only how the ideological battles of the Cold War shaped their ideas but also how those ideas may today be undermining the very notion of individual liberty they were created to defend."

Abstract: Presenting an impressive model based on a large body of evidence, J. T. Jost, J. Glaser, A.W. Kruglanski, and F. J. Sulloway (2003) proposed that political conservatism uniquely serves epistemic, existential, and ideological needs driven by fears and uncertainties. The authors offer an alternative view based on conceptual considerations, historical events, features of communist ideology and practice, and additional social science research not reviewed by Jost et al. (2003). First, the authors take issue with Jost et al.'s (2003) description of the two core components of political conservatism. Second, they propose that the motives in the model are equally well served by rigid adherence to any extreme ideology regardless of whether it is right wing or left wing.

Abstract: In the late eighteenth century, an array of European political thinkers attacked the very foundations of imperialism, arguing passionately that empire-building was not only unworkable, costly, and dangerous, but manifestly unjust. "Enlightenment Against Empire" is the first book devoted to the anti-imperialist political philosophies of an age often regarded as affirming imperial ambitions. Sankar Muthu argues that thinkers such as Denis Diderot, Immanuel Kant, and Johann Gottfried Herder developed an understanding of humans as inherently cultural agents and therefore necessarily diverse. These thinkers rejected the conception of a culture-free "natural man." They held that moral judgments of superiority or inferiority could be made neither about entire peoples nor about many distinctive cultural institutions and practices.Muthu shows how such arguments enabled the era's anti-imperialists to defend the freedom of non-European peoples to order their own societies. In contrast to those who praise "the Enlightenment" as the triumph of a universal morality and critics who view it as an imperializing ideology that denigrated cultural pluralism, Muthu argues instead that eighteenth-century political thought included multiple Enlightenments. He reveals a distinctive and underappreciated strand of Enlightenment thinking that interweaves commitments to universal moral principles and incommensurable ways of life, and that links the concept of a shared human nature with the idea that humans are fundamentally diverse. Such an intellectual temperament, Muthu contends, can broaden our own perspectives about international justice and the relationship between human unity and diversity.

Abstract: The problem of the future world is the charting, by means of intelligent reason, of a path not simply through the resistances of physical force, but through the vaster and far more intricate jungle of ideas conditioned on unconscious and subconscious reflexes of living things; on blind unreason and often irresistible urges of sensitive matter; of which the concept of race is today one of the most unyielding and threatening. —W. E. B. Du Bois

Abstract: Bilingual education in the United States has been contested and reformulated within varying historical, political, social, and economic contexts. Guided by three interrelated research questions on ideology, policy, and politics, this article examines the various interpretations of the historical forces that have determined language policy in the United States by first briefly discussing the permissive, restrictive, opportunist, and dismissive periods and then focusing on the current challenges to bilingual education. The author argues that changing political, social, and economic forces, rather than any consistent ideology, have shaped the nation's responses to language diversity. He concludes that language ideology in the United States has shifted according to changing historical events, and the absence of a consistent U.S. language ideology has enhanced the role of symbolic politics—the resentment of special treatment for minority groups.

Abstract: This article examines relationships between media content, public opinion, and foreign policy in the United States and the United Kingdom. The investigation proceeds in two stages. First, an agenda-setting analysis demonstrates a strong connection between the salience of foreign affairs in the media and the salience of foreign affairs for the public. Second, two potential effects of varying issue salience on foreign policymaking are examined:(1) issue priming and (2) policymakers’ reactions to issue salience. Analyses rely on a combination of U.S. and U.K. commercial polling data and the American National Election Study. Results point to the importance of mass media and issue salience in the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy. There is a considerable body of work in the United States on both the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy and on the nature of public opinion on foreign affairs. While early research suggested that the effects of public opinion on foreign policy were slight, recent studies indicate that public opinion often has a measurable impact on U.S. foreign policy (e.g., Hartley and Russett 1992; Hill 1998; Sobel 2001; Wlezien 1996). Similarly, while initial studies indicated that public opinion was volatile and incoherent (Almond 1950; Converse 1964; Miller 1967), work since the 1970s supports the conclusion that public opinion on foreign affairs is often stable, sensibly structured, and rational (Caspary 1970; Mueller 1973; Page and Shapiro 1992; Wittkopf 1990). Although we have a reasonable understanding of the nature of public opinion about foreign affairs, we know much less about the sources of this opinion. Holsti’s (1996) chapter on the “Sources of Foreign Policy Attitudes”—emblematic of the majority of enquiries on the matter—focuses on partisanship, ideology, and demographics. These attributes account for a considerable amount of cross-sectional variance in foreign policy attitudes, but they tell us little about how and why these attitudes might change over time.

Abstract: Faced with increasing real-time dislocation of institutionalized practices in empirical studies, it has become clear that neo-institutional theory is still ill-equipped to elucidate strategies of change in institutional fields. In this article, I endorse the claim that neo-institutional theory can both become more strategic and give a richer meaning to the strategy-formation process by integrating issues of ideology, power and agency in a political-cultural rhetoric of legitimation. Using the social movement metaphor to describe institutional change, I study incumbents and challengers as potentially antagonistic social movement organizations (SMOs) that strive to hegemonize entrepreneurship in fields. After having outlined a model linking institutional change to the strategy-formation process, I identify four archetypes of SMOs and strategic propensities, and illustrate the presented propositions about the incumbent SMO-challenger SMO dynamic using the case of emerging Internet challengers in the music in...

Abstract: The notions of active citizenship and community involvement have become increasingly prominent in political discussions and policy practices within Britain in the past 15 years. This is a significant development as the modus operandi of modern liberal democracies has been a representative mode of government in which the wider citizenry has a passive role. This paper contextualizes active citizenship in terms of the interrelationship between civic society and the political realm. The Foucauldian-inspired literature on governmentality has made a concerted attempt to examine such issues. Governmentality regards government, not in the conventional sense as the provenance of centralized institutions, where interest groups and ideologies play their part, but as a complex and ever-changing process that forges ways of thinking about governing with a myriad of practices that proliferate throughout society. Whilst it is informative, it is questioned whether this analytic approach can fully explain and illuminate po...

Abstract: Introduction 1. Preface to a Critique of International Legal Ideology 2. International Law and the 'Liberal Revolution' 3. Limits of the Liberal Revolution I. Low Intensity Democracy 4. Limits of the Liberal Revolution II: Pan-National Democracy 5. International Law and the Project of Cosmopolitan Democracy 6. Afterword: Critical Knowledge

Abstract: FOR ALL THEIR nearly unrivaled influence in the Muslim world today, Islamists face one supreme question: will they be able to rise to the challenges that confront today’s ineffective leaderships and any potential leaders of the future? Islamists are good at identifying and articulating the grievances, but to succeed they must move beyond their present roles if they wish to remain relevant to societies’ needs.

Abstract: Traces the history of eugenics ideology in the United States and its ongoing presence in contemporary life. The Nazis may have given eugenics its negative connotations, but the practice--and the "science" that supports it--is still disturbingly alive in America in anti-immigration initiatives, the quest for a "gay gene, " and theories of collective intelligence. Tracing the historical roots and persistence of eugenics in the United States, Nancy Ordover explores the political and cultural climate that has endowed these campaigns with mass appeal and scientific legitimacy. American Eugenics demonstrates how biological theories of race, gender, and sexuality are crucially linked through a concern with regulating the "unfit." These links emerge in Ordover's examination of three separate but ultimately related American eugenics campaigns: early twentieth-century anti-immigration crusades; medical models and interventions imposed on (and sometimes embraced by) lesbians, gays, transgendered people, and bisexuals; and the compulsory sterilization of poor women and women of color. Throughout, her work reveals how constructed notions of race, gender, sexuality, and nation are put to ideological uses and how "faith in science" can undermine progressive social movements, drawing liberals and conservatives alike into eugenics-based discourse and policies.

Abstract: Considering the communicative and symbolic roles of language in articulating national identity, Yasir Suleiman provides a fresh perspective on nationalism in the Middle East The links between language and nationalism are delineated and he demonstrates how this has been articulated over the past two centuries Straddling the domains of cultural and political nationalism, Suleiman examines the Arab past (looking at the interpretation and reinvention of tradition, and myth-making); the clash between Arab and Turkish cultural nationalism in the 19th and early 20th century; readings of canonical treatises on the topic of Arab cultural nationalism, the major ideological trends linking language to territorial nationalism; and provides a research agenda for the study of language and nationalism in the Arab context This the first full-scale study of this important topic and will be of interest to students of nationalism, Arab and comparative politics, Arabic Studies, history, cultural studies and sociolinguistics

Abstract: Contents:Introduction: Religion, the West, and the History of ReligionsI The West and Religion1. A Central Concept The Mirror of the West Singular Universes Religio and Religion Texts, Corpora, and Hypertext Cosmographical Issues2. A Paprdoxical Subject Religions or Religious Phenomena? History or Histories?3. An Uncertain Anthropological Calling A Nebula of Definitions An Absence of Criteria Imprecise and Shifting Boundaries Arbitrary Typologies A Scattering of Monographs Arbitrary, Narcissistic ObjectivizationII Order and History4. Christianity and the West A Unique History Interiorization and Universalization Autonomy and Imperialism5. Continuities A General Topic A Major Paradigm Exemplary ThesesIII The Genealogy of a Western Science6. The History of Religions in the Nineteenth Century Ubiquitous Prejudices Myths and Science A Science of Its Time7. Three Twentieth-Century Debates The Sociological Explanation "Historians" and Phenomenologists The Invention of Homo religiosusIV From Religions to Cosmographic Formations8. The West, Religion, and Science9. ProlegomenaNotes Index

Abstract: Religious NGOs are important sources of humanitarian aid in Africa, entering where the welfare programs of weakened states fail to provide basic services. As collaborators and critics of African states, religious NGOs occupy an important structural and ideological position. They also, however, illustrate a key irony-how economic development, a symbol of science, progress, and this-worldly material improvement, borrows heavily from other-worldly faith. Through a study of two transnational NGOs in Zimbabwe, this book offers a nuanced depiction of development as both liberatory and limiting. Humanitarian effort is not a hopeless task, but behind the liberatory potential of Christian development lurks the sad irony that change can bring its own disappointments. While rapt attention has been given to the supposed role of NGOs in democratizing Africa, few studies engage with the ground operations. Questioning the assumption that economic development is a move away from religious mysticism toward the scientific promise of progress, the author offers a remarkable account of development that is neither defeatist nor comforting.

Abstract: From a variety of historically grounded perspectives, After the Imperial Turn assesses the fate of the nation as a subject of disciplinary inquiry. In light of the turn toward scholarship focused on imperialism and postcolonialism, this provocative collection investigates whether the nation remains central, adequate, or even possible as an analytical category for studying history. These twenty essays, primarily by historians, exemplify cultural approaches to histories of nationalism and imperialism even as they critically examine the implications of such approaches. While most of the contributors discuss British imperialism and its repercussions, the volume also includes, as counterpoints, essays on the history and historiography of France, Germany, Spain, and the United States. Whether looking at the history of the passport or the teaching of history from a postnational perspective, this collection explores such vexed issues as how historians might resist the seduction of national narratives, what—if anything—might replace the nation’s hegemony, and how even history-writing that interrogates the idea of the nation remains ideologically and methodologically indebted to national narratives. Placing nation-based studies in international and interdisciplinary contexts, After the Imperial Turn points toward ways of writing history and analyzing culture attentive both to the inadequacies and endurance of the nation as an organizing rubric. Contributors. Tony Ballantyne, Antoinette Burton, Ann Curthoys, Augusto Espiritu, Karen Fang, Ian Christopher Fletcher, Robert Gregg, Terri Hasseler, Clement Hawes, Douglas M. Haynes, Kristin Hoganson, Paula Krebs, Lara Kriegel, Radhika Viyas Mongia, Susan Pennybacker, John Plotz, Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Heather Streets, Hsu-Ming Teo, Stuart Ward, Lora Wildenthal, Gary Wilder

Abstract: This study is concerned with transitional gender roles and relations, illuminated through an examination of the status of women in China from the Mao era to the post-Mao era. The study reveals that the socialist state has maintained a high degree of control over gender construction in order to legitimise its historical achievement of revolution and liberation, assuming given gender identities within the official discourse of socialism. Liberation meant creating a fundamentally new and more democratic socialism within a male hegemony. This is derived from the core philosophy Confucianism in which human role relations are cultivated and developed within a male-centred world. Consequently, this discourse opens up an authoritative normalisation process that hinders women's progress in the state, in the household and in organisations. Women's new identity involves aspects of biologically given features, internalisation of the patriarchal family and social relations. Collective relational construction therefore emphasises the feminine/maternal principles of identity, denouncing separation and independence. This phenomenon seems to be pushing the whole of gender politics in China back towards more traditional sex role differences and power imbalances.

Abstract: Sociologists, historians, and other social observers have long considered the secularization of American public life over the past hundred and thirty years to be an inevitable and natural outcome of modernization. This groundbreaking work rejects this view and fundamentally rethinks the historical and theoretical causes of the secularization of American public life between 1870 and 1930. Christian Smith and his team of contributors boldly argue that the declining authority of religion was not the by-product of modernization, but rather the intentional achievement of cultural and intellectual elites, including scientists, academics, and literary intellectuals, seeking to gain control of social institutions and increase their own cultural authority. Writing with vigor and a broad intellectual grasp, the contributors examine power struggles and ideological shifts in various social sectors where the public authority of religion has diminished, in particular education, science, law, and journalism. Together the essays depict a cultural and institutional revolution that is best understood in terms of individual agency, conflicts of interest, resource mobilization, and struggles for authority. Engaging both sociological and historical literature, The Secular Revolution offers a new theoretical framework and original empirical research that will inform our understanding of American society from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. The ramifications of its provocative and cogent thesis will be felt throughout sociology, religious studies, and our general thinking about society for years to come.

Abstract: Gender differences in the dismissing form of adult romantic attachment were investigated as part of the International Sexuality Description Project - a survey study of 17,804 people from 62 cultural regions. Contrary to research findings previously reported in Western cultures, we found that men were not significantly more dismissing than women across all cultural regions. Gender differences in dismissing romantic attachment were evident in most cultures, but were typically only small to moderate in magnitude. Looking across cultures, the degree of gender differentiation in dismissing romantic attachment was predictably associated with sociocultural indicators. Generally, these associations supported evolutionary theories of romantic attachment, with smaller gender differences evident in cultures with high-stress and high-fertility reproductive environments. Social role theories of human sexuality received less support in that more progressive sex-role ideologies and national gender equity indexes were not cross-culturally linked as expected to smaller gender differences in dismissing romantic attachment.