Dmitri Shalin Interview with Calvin Morrill about Erving Goffman entitled Turns out Goffman Had Been Observing Students the Whole Time and Used the Notes He Had Taken While Observing Their Behavior

This interview with Calvin Morrill, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, was recorded on August 3, 2008, during the ASA meeting in Boston. A group of sociologists assembled in the hallway was reminiscing about Goffman when Calvin Morrill volunteered this story and agreed to have it recorded. After Dmitri Shalin transcribed the interview, Dr. Morrill corrected the transcript and gave his approval for posting the present version in the Erving Goffman Archives.. Breaks in the conversation flow are indicated by ellipses. Supplementary information appears in square brackets. Undecipherable words and unclear passages are identified in the text as “[?]”. The interviewer’s questions are shortened in several places

Rediscovery of the Pallid Shiner, \u3ci\u3eHybopsis amnis\u3c/i\u3e, in the Black River System of Arkansas and Missouri Including Notes on Ecology and Life History

The Pallid Shiner, Hybopsis amnis, is a rare and understudied minnow with little information about its ecology. This species is listed as a Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN) throughout much of its range and is generally considered to be declining. It had not been detected in the Black River system of Missouri and Arkansas in over 75 years, or the state of Missouri in over 60 years. We sampled over 100 sites in the Black River system between 2017 and 2020 to assess temporal trends in fish assemblage structure and to update the status of SGCN species in this drainage. We collected 226 H. amnis at seven different sites in the Black River system. We measured total lengths to estimate age classes and year of spawning. Corresponding habitat and year class data indicate this species may spawn in late winter to early spring and rely on floodplain habitat for spawning and recruitment. The apparent decline of H. amnis in other systems may be a result of reduced floodplain connectivity

Seeing Crime and Punishment Through a Sociological Lens: Contributions, Practices, and the Future

There is a rich intellectual history to the sociological study of crime and punishment that encompasses multiple and interrelated traditions. Some of these traditions trace their roots to the European social theorists of the nineteenth century, particularly Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx. Although only Durkheim and Weber systematically studied law (and only Durkheim actually studied punishment), all three social theorists facilitated the development of sociological research and theory on crime and punishment. Durkheim\u27s Suicide: A Study in Sociology, for example, investigated the relationship between social integration and suicide rates, which, in turn, provided a model of inquiry for multiple generations of sociologists investigating the social causes of crime, delinquency, and social deviance. Similarly, Durkheim\u27s The Division of Labor in Society inspired sociologists to examine the relationship between social structure and the organization of law and punishment. Weber\u27s ideas concerning the rationalization of society and the legitimate bases of legal authority compelled sociologists to think comparatively and brought a historical dimension to sociological inquiry on law and punishment. Marxist sensibilities begat a small, but vibrant, industry of radical criminologists and sociologists of law and punishment who located both the causes and control of crime in the exploitation, injustice, and class conflict inherent in capitalist society

Youth violence: What we know and what we need to know.

School shootings tear the fabric of society. In the wake of a school shooting, parents, pediatricians, policymakers, politicians, and the public search for "the" cause of the shooting. But there is no single cause. The causes of school shootings are extremely complex. After the Sandy Hook Elementary School rampage shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, we wrote a report for the National Science Foundation on what is known and not known about youth violence. This article summarizes and updates that report. After distinguishing violent behavior from aggressive behavior, we describe the prevalence of gun violence in the United States and age-related risks for violence. We delineate important differences between violence in the context of rare rampage school shootings, and much more common urban street violence. Acts of violence are influenced by multiple factors, often acting together. We summarize evidence on some major risk factors and protective factors for youth violence, highlighting individual and contextual factors, which often interact. We consider new quantitative "data mining" procedures that can be used to predict youth violence perpetrated by groups and individuals, recognizing critical issues of privacy and ethical concerns that arise in the prediction of violence. We also discuss implications of the current evidence for reducing youth violence, and we offer suggestions for future research. We conclude by arguing that the prevention of youth violence should be a national priority. (PsycINFO Database Recor

The executive way: conflict management in corporations

Personal and corporate scandals, compensation battles, budget worries, interdepartmental rivalries, personal enmities, and general rancor are among everyday challenges faced by executives. Morrill shows what most influences the way managers handle routine conflicts are the cultures created by their company's organizational structure: whether there is a strong hierarchy, a weak hierarchy, or an absence of any strong central authority. The issues most likely to cause conflict within corporations Morrill identifies as managerial style, competition between departments, and performance evaluations, promotions, and compensatio

Ombuds processes and disputant reconciliation

Effective dispute resolution systems are critical to the functioning of large universities and organizations. However, the design of dispute resolution systems is often inadequate to achieving the stated goals of the system. Analysis of the cases of 45 disputants reveals how the design of a university dispute system and the social context can prevent an ombudsperson from successfully reconciling relationships. This study shows how a dispute system that generally failed to utilize face-to-face meetings or mediation techniques between disputants in a social context of fear and limited social ties was unable to reconcile or preserve working relationships. Analysis from normative pragmatic and social contextual approaches to disputing provides a mechanism for understanding the problems encountered by this ombudsperson and provides a tool for designing more effective dispute resolution systems

In-services and empty threats: The roles of organizational practices and workplace experiences in shaping U.S. educators' understandings of students' rights.

This paper applies theoretical frameworks from organizational sociology and sociolegal studies to examine factors associated with educators' conceptions of students' rights to due process in disciplinary actions. We analyze a unique representative data set of 402 teachers and 200 administrators in U.S. high schools to investigate how educators understand the rights to due process articulated in the Supreme Court case of Goss v. Lopez (1975). We then examine whether individual characteristics and participation in organizational processes are associated with educators' understandings of students' due process rights. Findings suggest that educators' understandings of students' entitlements to due process vary with educators' level of education, experience of school-related legal threats, and participation in district or diocese in-service training programs on students' rights. Results point to organizational climate as a key factor in shaping educators' rights conceptions and the role of law in American schools