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Two opposing forces reshaped knowledge networks in mature industrial (a.k.a., 'rust belt') communities during the 1980s and 1990s. On the one hand, large industrial companies which stood at these places' economic social and intellectual cores restructured their innovation processes by reaching out beyond parochial boundaries of home localities to tap into global knowledge flows. But for the communities they inhabited, these actions posed a threat. Already stung by massive job losses, community leaders developed strategiesâ?”often linked to local universitiesâ?”intended to maintain and reinvigorate local processes of knowledge capture and exploitation. This paper examines university strategies for engaging local industry in two well matched places that were subject to these forces simultaneously: Akron, Ohio and Rochester, New York. Drawing on both historical matched-pair comparisons and a network analysis of co-authored scientific patents and publications, this paper explores how local economic development policies have shaped the divergent trajectories of knowledge networks and how this has shaped the possibilities for post-industrial economic change. The results suggest that an approach focused on building communityâ?”and network tiesâ?”among remaining actors produces better results that an approach centered on universities' attempting to fill the void left by exiting firms with their own research output. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the biography my grandfather, Joe Sharcot, who grew up a poor child of Russian Jewish immigrants in Rochester, New York to explore the relationship between racial biography and masculinity. Joe Sharcot channeled a burning desire to escape the ghetto into football and eventually won a "scholarship" to the University of Illinois. The angry kid from Rochester's Jewish ghetto left Illinois as Joseph Sharcot, a businessman who lived the rest of his life in "integrated" middle-class suburbs. The anger and competitiveness that won Joe Sharcot a Big Ten football "scholarship" and launched a lucrative business career never left him. Weekends when grandpa watched football on television, the house emptied out. Screaming at the television could escalate into much worse and no one tempted his wrath when a favored team lost. Joe Sharcot exemplifies what I call "fortified masculinity" - an identity available, primarily, to white, heterosexual men that carried privileges and costs. Fortified masculinity integrated ethnic white men into the capitalist state so that contradiction at the level of political economy became confusion and feelings of inadequacy for the individual. Biographical analysis makes macro-level relations of power visible as they become inscribed upon and embodied within the individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus will be my experience of working with journalists at a lifestyle publication to produce two "stories" about sexual attitudes and behaviors in Rochester, New York. I will discuss differences and commonalities in the approaches of lifestyle journalists and sociologists to "getting the story," wjtb an emphasis on the rapid-fire, largely computer-mediated, negotiations among us about the construction of the on-line survey and the meanings of the survey results. The presentation will include copies of the stories and the on-line survey. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]