Gunning Down the Fog: A Test of the Unintelligibility and Illiteracy Hypotheses

Sociologists have often been criticized for their inability to make themselves understood. Talcott Parsons, in particular, has been singled out for his alleged incomprehensibility. As a consequence, his name has achieved legendary stature for more than his theoretical contributions. The present inquiry examines Parsons' writing style using the Gunning fog index of readability, finding that Parsons was indeed unintelligible as a writer. Moreover, it was discovered, serendipitously, that a postive feedback loop was operating (i.e., with one exception, Parsons became more unintelligible with each new book)

Religious Homogamy and Marital Happiness

Data from a representative sample of 1,070 married Protestants and Catholics were used to examine the relationship between religious homogamy and marital happiness. Although couples may vary in the extent to which they share religious views (e.g., beliefs, values), previous research has treated religious homogamy as a dichotomy; a couple is either homogamous or it is not. A partial explanation for this is that few studies have gone beyond the broad divisions of Protestant, Catholic, and Jew. In the present study religious bodies were classified on the basis of doctrine and ritual, yielding six categories: Baptist, Calvinist, Catholic, fundamentalist, Lutheran, and Methodist. These categories were then used to develop a measure of estimated “religious distance” or degrees of heterogamy. This measure was used to test the hypothesis that the larger the religious distance or disparity, the greater the likelihood of unhappiness with the marriage. The hypothesis was supported by the data

Multiple Dimensions of the Moral Majority Platform: Shifting Interest Group Coalitions

The issues raised by the New Political Right and the Moral Majority have overlapped in recent political history. Researchers have assumed that a single additive scale across conservative issues can identify the base of support for the Moral Majority as an organization. We examine general support for the Moral Majority separately from support for six specific issues: teaching creationism, voluntary public school prayer, military defense spending, gun control, pornography and abortion. Data are from a 1982 random sample of adult respondents from Nebraska (N = 1907). Overall, support for the Moral Majority organization is low. Discriminant analysis identifies fundamentalist and evangelical religious affiliation and Biblical literalism as independent predictors of support for the Moral Majority per se. Education increases knowledge of the organization, but does not influence support for it. Respondents with high income levels are more likely to support the Moral Majority organization. These findings contradict theories of both status politics and cultural fundamentalism. Support for the six specific platform items also varies considerably and is affected by religious conservatism and, independently, by other attitudinal and demographic indicators including age, sex, income, rural residence, education and perception of declining economic conditions. These patterns do not entirely fit the predictions of status politics or cultural fundamentalism theories. Rather, they provide evidence that distinct coalitions form on specific issues. Our conclusion is that a simple additive index of support for the Moral Majority masks these differences and oversimplifies complex patterns of coalitions in the religio-political arena

The Civilizing Process and Its Discontents: Suicide and Crimes against Persons in France, 1825–1830

A spatial analysis of data for French départements assembled in the 1830s by André-Michel Guerry and Adolphe d’Angeville examines the impacts of modernization and resistance to governmental “Frenchification” policies on measures of violence and its direction. In the context of Unnithan et al.’s integrated model of suicide and homicide, high suicide rates in the northern core and a predilection for violence against others in the southern periphery may be consistently interpreted in terms of theories of the civilizing process and internal colonialism. Alternative explanations of southern violence in 19th-century France are explored and rejected, and additional theoretical applications are suggested

Social Science, Social Policy, and Lethal Violence: Looking for Upstream Solutions

18 pagesIt is the contention of this article that sociologists should be more involved in social policy discussions because of their deep concern and extensive knowledge about policy-related issues and their broad theoretical and methodological traditions. Recent work by Stockard and O’Brien on changing age distributions in lethal violence is used to illustrate that policy recommendations based on sociological research would be more universalistic and effective than current approaches. If greater involvement in policy discussions were to occur, it would be important to pursue multidisciplinary work, use a nonpartisan approach, increase involvement in meta-analyses and field experiments, and develop collective and systematic ways of translating findings into policy actions