Gravity\u27s Rainbow: Modernist Discourse Vineland: Postmodernist Discourse

To locate Gravity\u27s Rainbow as a postmodern text within modernist discourse is probably sort of an odd thing. Obviously, the books\u27 thematic depictions of linguistic colonialism and discourse of control (capitalism), suggest the inscription of power relations into formulations of truth and rationality, and a postmodern analysis of discursive operations and hierarchies. Yet, I want to stress here the ways in which we have been oriented to access and reproduce the text through modernist discourse

Gravity\u27s Rainbow: Modernist Discourse Vineland: Postmodernist Discourse

To locate Gravity\u27s Rainbow as a postmodern text within modernist discourse is probably sort of an odd thing. Obviously, the books\u27 thematic depictions of linguistic colonialism and discourse of control (capitalism), suggest the inscription of power relations into formulations of truth and rationality, and a postmodern analysis of discursive operations and hierarchies. Yet, I want to stress here the ways in which we have been oriented to access and reproduce the text through modernist discourse

"HUMAN CAPITAL" AND REGIONAL DIFFERENCES INDEVELOPMENT: HIGH SCHOOL ENROLLMENT ON JAVA AND BALI

Dari analisis data Susenas 1993 ditemukan bahwa angka partisipasi sekolah di Jawa dan Bali untuk penduduk usia 16-18 tahun adalah sekitar 40 persen, namun variasinya cukup berarti bila memperhatikan perbedaaan antarpropinsi dan perbedaan desa-kota. Dengan asumsi bahwa biaya sekolah lanjutan tidak murah, penulis berhipotesis bahwa latar belakang sosial ekonomi dan variasi antar daerah, terutama school availability, adalah variabel-variabel yang dapat menjelaskan tingkat partisipasisekolah tersebut. Guna membuktikannyadan mendapatkan model yang memadai,penulis menggunakan probit model sebagai teknik analisis. Hasilnya menunjukkan bahwa variabel desa-kota memiliki peranan yang paling berarti, sementara status sosial ekonomi secara keseluruhan juga tidak bisa diabaikan. Berdasarkan hasil tersebut saran yang diajukan antara lain adalah perlunya perhatian terhadap masalah variasi antar wilayah dalam halpembangunan di bidang pendidikan

Residential Segregation and Interracial Friendship in Schools

This article uses social network and spatial data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to examine the effect of racial residential segregation on school friendship segregation in the United States. The use of hierarchical models allows the authors to simultaneously estimate the effects of race, within-school residential segregation, and school diversity on friendship choice using the Add Health data. The authors use these results to predict the decline in friendship segregation that would occur if across- and within-school residential segregation were eliminated in U.S. metropolitan areas. The results suggest that about a third of the level of racial friendship segregation in schools is attributable to residential segregation. Most of this effect is the result of residential segregation across schools rather than within them

Culture Wars and Opinion Polarization: The Case of Abortion

Recent observers have pointed to a growing polarization within the U.S. public over politicized moral issues-the so-called culture wars. DiMaggio, Evans, and Bryson studied trends over the past 25 years in American opinion on a number of critical social issues, finding little evidence of increased polarization; abortion is the primary exception. However, their conclusions are suspect because they treat ordinal or nominal scales as interval data. This article proposes new methods for studying polarization using ordinal data and uses these to model the National Election Study (NES) abortion item. Whereas the analysis of this item by DiMaggio et al. points to increasing polarization of abortion attitudes between 1972 and 1994, this article's analyses of these data offers little support for this conclusion and lends weight to their view that recent concerns over polarization are overstated

Human capital and regional differences in development: high school enrollment on Java and Bali

Intisari Dan analisis data Susenas 1993 ditemukan bahwa angka partisipasi sekolah di Jawa dan Bali untuk penduduk usia 16-18 tahun adalah sekitar 40 persen, namun variasinya cukup berarti bila memperhatikan perbedaaan antarpropinsi dan perbedaan desa-kota. Dengan asumsi bahwa biaya sekolah lanjutan tidak murah, penulis berhipotesis bahwa latar belakang sosial ekonomi dan variasi antar daerah, terutama school availability, adalah variabel-variabel yang dapat menjelaskan tingkat partisipasi sekolah tersebut. Guna membuktikannya dan mendapatkan model yang memadai, penulis menggunakan probit model sebagai telcnik analisis. Hasilnya menunjukkan bahwa variabel desa-kota memiliki peranan yang paling berarti, sementara status sosial ekonomi secara keseluruhan juga tidak bisa diabaikan. Berdasarkan hasil tersebut saran yang diajukan antara lain adalah perlunya perhatian terhadap masalah variasi antar wilayah dalam hal pembangunan di bidang pendidikan. Keywords: penduduk, kepadatan, ilmu-ilmu sosia

Network Sampling with Memory: A Proposal for More Efficient Sampling from Social Networks

Techniques for sampling from networks have grown into an important area of research across several fields. For sociologists, the possibility of sampling from a network is appealing for two reasons: (1) A network sample can yield substantively interesting data about network structures and social interactions, and (2) it is useful in situations where study populations are difficult or impossible to survey with traditional sampling approaches because of the lack of a sampling frame. Despite its appeal, methodological concerns about the precision and accuracy of network-based sampling methods remain. In particular, recent research has shown that sampling from a network using a random walk based approach such as Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) can result in high design effects (DE)—the ratio of the sampling variance to the sampling variance of simple random sampling (SRS). A high design effect means that more cases must be collected to achieve the same level of precision as SRS. In this paper we propose an alternative strategy, Network Sampling with Memory (NSM), which collects network data from respondents in order to reduce design effects and, correspondingly, the number of interviews needed to achieve a given level of statistical power. NSM combines a “List” mode, where all individuals on the revealed network list are sampled with the same cumulative probability, with a “Search” mode, which gives priority to bridge nodes connecting the current sample to unexplored parts of the network. We test the relative efficiency of NSM compared to RDS and SRS on 162 school and university networks from Add Health and Facebook that range in size from 110 to 16,278 nodes. The results show that the average design effect for NSM on these 162 networks is 1.16, which is very close to the efficiency of a simple random sample (DE=1), and 98.5% lower than the average DE we observed for RDS

Sampling migrants from their social networks: The demography and social organization of Chinese migrants in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

The streams of Chinese migration to Africa are growing in tandem with rising Chinese investments and trade flows in and to the African continent. In spite of the high profile of this phenomenon in the media, there are few rich and broad descriptions of Chinese communities in Africa. Reasons for this include the rarity of official statistics on foreign-born populations in African censuses, the absence of predefined sampling frames required to draw representative samples with conventional survey methods and difficulties to reach certain segments of this population. Here, we use a novel network-based approach, Network Sampling with Memory, which overcomes the challenges of sampling ‘hidden’ populations in the absence of a sampling frame, to recruit a sample of recent Chinese immigrants in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and collect information on the demographic characteristics, migration histories and social ties of members of this sample. These data reveal a heterogeneous Chinese community composed of “state-led” migrants who come to Africa to work on projects undertaken by large Chinese state-owned enterprises and “independent” migrants who come on their own accord to engage in various types of business ventures. They offer a rich description of the demographic profile and social organization of this community, highlight key differences between the two categories of migrants and map the structure of the social ties linking them. We highlight needs for future research on inter-group differences in individual motivations for migration, economic activities, migration outcomes, expectations about future residence in Africa, social integration and relations with local communities

Binational Social Networks and Assimilation: A Test of the Importance of Transnationalism

While the concept of transnationalism has gained widespread popularity among scholars as a way to describe immigrants’ long-term maintenance of cross-border ties to their origin communities, critics have argued that the overall proportion of immigrants who engage in transnational behavior is low and that, as a result, transnationalism has little sustained effect on the process of immigrant adaptation and assimilation. In this paper, we argue that a key shortcoming in the current empirical debate on transnationalism is the lack of data on the social networks that connect migrants to each other and to non-migrants in communities of origin. To address this shortcoming, our analysis uses unique bi-national data on the social network connecting an immigrant sending community in Guanajuato, Mexico, to two destination areas in the United States. We test for the effect of respondents’ positions in cross-border networks on their migration intentions and attitudes towards the United States using data on the opinions of their peers, their participation in cross border and local communication networks, and their structural position in the network. The results indicate qualified empirical support for a network-based model of transnationalism; in the U.S. sample we find evidence of network clustering consistent with peer effects, while in the Mexican sample we find evidence of the importance of cross-border communication with friends

Binational Social Networks and Assimilation: A Test of the Importance of Transnationalism

While the concept of transnationalism has gained widespread popularity among scholars as a way to describe immigrants’ long-term maintenance of cross-border ties to their origin communities, critics have argued that the overall proportion of immigrants who engage in transnational behavior is low and that, as a result, transnationalism has little sustained effect on the process of immigrant adaptation and assimilation. In this paper, we argue that a key shortcoming in the current empirical debate on transnationalism is the lack of data on the social networks that connect migrants to each other and to non-migrants in communities of origin. To address this shortcoming, our analysis uses unique bi-national data on the social network connecting an immigrant sending community in Guanajuato, Mexico, to two destination areas in the United States. We test for the effect of respondents’ positions in cross-border networks on their migration intentions and attitudes towards the United States using data on the opinions of their peers, their participation in cross border and local communication networks, and their structural position in the network. The results indicate qualified empirical support for a network-based model of transnationalism; in the U.S. sample we find evidence of network clustering consistent with peer effects, while in the Mexican sample we find evidence of the importance of cross-border communication with friends