Search

This article presents an argument showing that mean differences in I.Q. scores between ethnic or racial groups could be accounted for by nongenetic factors. The authors of this article developed two main lines of argument. In the first two-thirds of the paper, the authors criticized the reasoning leading to results inconsistent with empirically collected data. The authors describe a social allocation model which explains differences between mean I.Q. scores of ethnic groups without resorting to the hypothesis of genetic differences between groups.

The article analyzes the advertisements in certain representative African American newspapers in order to find out whether or not there is need for further research along that line. It was hoped that incidentally some light would be thrown upon the question of the status of the African American's culture in the United States. During the months of January, February, and March 1925, all advertisements in five representative African American newspapers were measured in terms of column inches. Approximately 50,000 column inches of advertising material was thus surveyed. The larger papers emphasize the advertisements that have national appeal at the expense of the local type of advertising. The smaller papers, on the other hand, being unable to command large shares of national advertising, are obliged to work the local field more diligently. Quantitative measurements, however, are merely suggestive indices of the importance to the African American of various kinds of advertisements. Very few of the advertisers of beauty preparations can afford any longer to advertise their products in a conservative way.

This article presents the purpose of this collection of papers featured in the June 1973 issue of "Journal of Social Issues." The status of two racial groups, the Chinese and the Japanese, is to be examined. The study of these Asian Americans should be of particular interest to social scientists since it may bring different insights into majority-minority group relationships. If Asian Americans are model minorities, then it is important to determine how such a status is achieved, why American society has to some degree accepted Asians, and what interferences can be drawn regarding American racism.

This paper describes an exploratory field study carried out to ascertain the pattern of assimilation among East Indian immigrants in California. It was found that the Hindustani immigrants, because of their small numbers and their pattern of living in individual isolation, are prevented from forming their own ethnic communities. In this paper, the term Hindustani refers to immigrants from India and includes Hindu, Sikh, and Moslem immigrants. They constitute one of the smallest Oriental groups in the U.S.— 2,405 in 1940— and are the least known of all ethnic groups in this country. Of the total Hindustani population in the U.S. in 1940, 61.4 percent resided in California. Many have lived there for over thirty years. The majority of California Hindustanis are emigrants from rural villages in the Punjab, with a handful from Gujarat, Bengal, Oudh, and Madras. This study focused on four aspects of Hindustani life— residential pattern, occupational interactions, community life, family and home life.

The paper presents some strong, though limited, empirical generalizations about the effects of cohesiveness on a wide variety of behaviors: cooperation, competition, conformity, productivity, and learning among group members. There is also a more descriptive literature from sociology and anthropology which deals with cohesion and the ethnic organization of current and historic groups. In the paper, findings from these disparate sources are examined. When combined, these diverse sources of research data offer some insights into the internal characteristics of groups which have emerged from poverty. From this perspective the literature permits the prediction of some of the antecedents and consequents of changes in group cohesiveness and ethnic organization among those who are presently poor. Recent changes in the ideology and cohesiveness of poor blacks is used as an illustrative case. The present account includes: a selective discussion of experimental findings on group cohesiveness, some experimental results of the effects of ethnic identity, examples of ethnic and religious organization among current and historic disadvantaged groups (with ethnic cohesiveness among poor blacks used as a current illustration), and some conclusions and predictions.

Previous research has shown that, in an upper-middle-class suburb in a North Central state, Jewish families report more extended familism than do Christian families. The resent paper shows more clearly the association between ethnicity and familism by using three further indices of extended familism and by dividing the Christian respondents into Catholics and Protestants. The three new indices --extensity of kin households present in the metropolitan area, intensity of such Presence, and interaction with those households -- are more significantly associated with ethnicity than was the index used in the previous research --functionality of interaction with households of kin. Generally, the Protestants are the Least familistic of the three ethnic categories. It was hypothesized that occupation and migration are variables that intervene between ethnicity and extended families; the data, however, rule otherwise. It is tentatively concluded, rather, that extended families intervenes between ethnicity and migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on value differences and value consensus by socioeconomic levels in the U.S. The study of values among classes has been concerned chiefly with discovering variations and describing them in a context of differentiation. In a study by one of the authors conducted in a midwestern city, value differences and differences in evaluating occupations were examined. Specifically, socioeconomic status and ethnicity were analyzed for their impact on health knowledge, values, and practices, with emphasis on discovering variations in values, one set consisting of 14 desiderata, the second set consisting of 14 occupations. Each was designed to contain at least one item directly related to health and medicine, with most of the items, however, referring to other institutional spheres. The paper is concerned specifically with analyzing the rankings of desiderata and of occupations in terms of value differences, value consensus, and variations in consensus by socio-economic status. It was hypothesized that differential degrees of consensus would be manifested depending on the nature of the objects. The occupational rankings represent an important status ordering, they are fairly well standardized and represent the kind of public information necessary for operating effectively in American society.

The world population is confronted with the intensification of racial, cultural, religious, and national conflicts. That is, there has been an intensification of intercultural relations of populational groups. Of late years worldwide travel, trade, communication, migration, and especially war and the threat of war have been important in bringing this situation about. Whether there is war or not, one must deal with populations, as, for example, in the governing of Japan and Germany at the present time and negotiations with them previous to the war. The same is true in relation to the USSR. Whether the problem of intergroup relations is discussed on the international level, the national level, the industrial level of management and labor, or the level of a small community, as it shall be done in this paper, the point at issue is that of participation. This paper touches upon the positive values of diverse cultures in a great complex where each sub-population contributes to the total functioning culture.

The assumption of this paper is that the broad objectives of education are the same for all children, but that the special social settings, beyond the control of the school, must determine the channels through which these objectives are reached; and that it is the duty of education to adjust its procedures to the character of these social and cultural problems. There are certain important theoretical considerations regarding the special problem of education of Afro-Americans. So far as this group is regarded as a separate group, the assumption usually follows that the difference is cultural, and that this culture is African at base. The Afro-American in the U.S. has very little if any African cultural heritage. His relation to the U.S. culture has been conditioned vigorously by his historical role in it. The relationship has been very largely a biotic one, and the role that of performing a specialized function now very largely assumed by the machine. The process of acculturation is a slow and uneven one, the rate appearing to be conditioned more by the special environment than by any inherent set of racial traits. This fact has an important bearing upon the problem of Afro-American education. The differences in the environment of Afro-American children vary widely between North and South, and between areas of the South and of the North. The suggestions of this paper are based largely upon the social setting in the states in which there are separate school systems for white and Afro-American children, and where four-fifths of the Afro-American population resides.

The paper reviews sociological work dealing with American Blacks. In the past five decades three themes have largely dominated the work: (1) a description and documentation of Black disadvantage within American life; (2) an attack upon racist notions of Black biological inferiority; and (3) an interpretation of Black disadvantages as derived from White prejudice and discrimination. The work has been largely static and non-processual in character, derived largely from the structure-function model of society. The paper calls for the employment of multiple models and for emphasis upon a dynamic, processual model of social life. The concepts of network and field appear to offer much promise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents summary statistics of immigration into the West Indies, under indenture or government sponsorship, during the period 1834-1918. The sources reveal a few discrepancies, but are sufficiently consistent to permit the construction of a series for each of the ethnic groups introduced. Most of the problems involved in constructing these series centre around the fact that a variety of sources have to be utilised. Immigration figures of East Indians, Portuguese, Chinese, Europeans and others into the several West Indian colonies have been prepared for each calendar year or season, but to conserve space are presented here in summary form. In the case of African immigration it is possible to give their country of origin. The only group of immigrants who were involved in return movements of any consequence are the East Indians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper asks whether mass media rather than being a homogenizing force, is in fact one that promotes differentiation, whether mass media is one for revolutionary change and whether rather than generating a crisis of identity, it aids in generating new identity. In other words, the advent of new communications techniques and patterns particularly television may have proven to have had precisely the contrary effect of that suggested by some of the classical views of the increasing massification of society and social relationships. The emergence of sundry militant minority groups in the 1960s, the black revolutionists, student and anti-war groups, neo-feminists, the poor, the Indians organized as red power with the aid of the electronic mass media implies that the social consequences of the new technologies of communication will profoundly alter the social order but not in the exact way foreseen by most of the contemporary mass society essayists. Although mass media may have a confirmative potential for majority groups, it possesses a transformative function for minority group identities. With future developments of multi-channel cable vision and other individualized media, an accentuation of the process may occur.

The aim of the paper is, to consider the social position of the Anglo-colored in relation to his ethnic group and to the host society. The immigrants take as wives or consorts mostly local working class white women and miscegenation has now produced two generations of British-born colored. For the purpose of this paper they will be called Anglo-coloreds and only Negro and Muslim immigrants will be discussed. Muslim immigrants and their sons are seamen by occupation. Their wives or consorts are mostly white working class women but as the communities increase in numbers and time-depth Anglo-colored Muslim girls become available for marriage. Muslims have their own institutions for religious, social and recreational purposes using as centres for these activities, the Mosque or Zoaia, cafes and boarding houses respectively, with the sheikh and boarding house master performing the roles of primary and secondary leaders of the community. The attitude of the Negro father towards the upbringing of his child differs from that of his Muslim counterpart. Except for his insistence on strict obedience to parental control no attempt is made to train the child to become a carrier of the culture of the Negro community. The British wife or consort occupies a unique position in the community.

This article presents a detailed description of managerial leadership failure within War-On-Poverty Centers. A task-force organization structure is proposed to deal with urban-problem complexities and to capitalize on unique but selective strengths of African American managers. The observations raise some serious questions concerning the viability of the concept of the indigenous community leader. One of the characteristics of the original concept of the War on Poverty was the involvement of the poor themselves in their struggle against poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting with the concept of "middleman minorities" developed by Blalock (1967 79-84), encompassing such groups as the Chinese in Southeast Asia, Jews in Europe, and Indians in East Africa, this paper presents a model which tries to explain the development and persistence of the form. A key variable is the orientation of immigrants towards their place of residence, with sojourning at first, and later a "stranger" orientation affecting the solidarity and economic activity of the ethnic grout. These in turn arouse the hostility of the host society, which perpetuates a reluctance to assimilate completely, or "stranger" status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the manner in which ethnicity has affected the course of American and Canadian party politics. Specifically, the paper tries to demonstrate that although the social processes involved in the migration of large numbers of ethnics have been relatively similar in both societies, the manner in which the social reality of ethnicity has affected the political structures therein has been quite different. Thus, although successive immigrant groups became the chief political resource of the great American urban party machines, they were able to use the existing political structures for their own purposes. Ethnic groups have derived psychological and more tangible benefits, such as public and party office positions, and have strongly affected the foreign and domestic policy positions of the two major parties. In contrast, Canadian party leaden historically have been able to exploit ethnic cleavages, but rarely have had to play the game of ethnic politics in the maimer of their American counterparts. In fact, ethnicity continues to strongly affect American political structures even as it moves into the realm of an index of more important social facts, while Canadian political structures have remained relatively impervious to ethnic groups despite the fact that ethnicity continues to be a factor of major importance in Canadian social organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, which focuses substantively on the demography of the militant segregationist vote in the post-Brown years, uses the state as the principal unit of analysis and seeks to test V.O. Key's argument on an explicitly comparative basis. The significance of the topic extends beyond the question of the applicability of Key's general theory of southern racial politics to elections in 11 different states. The paper has attempted to show that a parsimonious theory of the politics of race, Key's black belt hypothesis, is still highly relevant to an understanding of southern politics. Even if attention is restricted to the size of the black population and urban-rural differences, much can be learned concerning the structure of electoral cleavages. Comparative analysis of the core militant segregationist vote within and between the 11 southern states demonstrated that consistent support for selected militant segregationists in the post-Brown era typically increased along a demographic continuum from large metropolitan centers to rural counties with high black populations. The geographic sectionalism of the segregationist vote was clearly established through maps; and most of the deviant segregationist counties were explained by variables related to the black belt hypothesis.

This article presents information on various papers related to migration. One of the papers discussed is "Venti Anni in Favore dell'Agricoluiura," by G. D'Ascenzio that was published in the December 1964 issue of the periodical "Orientamenti Sociali." The author, basing himself on the agricultural situation in Italy twenty years after the establishment of the Confederazicene Nazionale Coltivatori Diretti, delineates the economic conditions of Italian agriculture, with emphasis on technological progress, social evolution, and psychological, religious and political developments in the field. The most interesting conclusion from a sociological point of view regards the rural migration to urban centers abroad. Notwithstanding the fact that this reduction of the agricultural population is a positive sign of economic advancement, it nonetheless presents various problems of a social, psychological, moral and religious nature. Another paper discussed is "About Reference Group Alienation, Mobility and Acculturation," by G.D. Berreman that was published in a previous issue of the periodical "American Anthropologist." The author submits that many terms and concepts used in the description and analysis of the confrontation of diverse ethnic groups, for example, acculturation, assimilation, mobility, can be used more precisely in light of a deepening of the knowledge of reference groups.

This paper examines the question whether the adjustment of ethnic groups is necessarily through acculturation and increasing conformity, and whether the process will always result in the destruction of the ethnic group as a functioning social subsystem within the larger society. Changes in the behavior of the Mennonite group in Manitoba over a period of seventy years are analyzed as a test case. Ideal types for the parent and host societies are formulated. The early history and recent trends in the Mennonite colonies are described, and Dawson's 1932 conclusions about the acculturation of the Canadian Mennonites are reconsidered. The hypothesis that an ethnic group, particularly a rural group, will necessarily be absorbed by the larger society when forced to adjust itself to the capitalistic economy of the larger society is rejected. It is concluded that adjustment is highly selective, and that, by developing new behavior patterns and institutions unlike those of either the parent or host culture, an ethnic group may be able to prevent assimilation and continue to function as a distinctive social subsystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Rural Sociology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper is an attempt to deal theoretically with the emergence of the "swinging" subculture among otherwise conventional middle Americans, and further to suggest the theoretical implications of the study of "swinging" for an understanding of deviant subcultures. Focusing on the interrelationship between: (1) the marginal status of individuals new to the middle class, (2) the "overdetermined" nature of the sexual experience in American society, and (3) the extent to which certain types of deviance constitute functional alternatives to acceptable behavior, the paper offers a possible explanation for the coexistence of deviant commitments and conventional life styles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The findings of the relatively few studies concerned with subgroup validation of personnel selection procedures (Kirkpatrick, Ewen, Barrett, and Katzell, 1968; Lopez, 1966; Mitchell, Albright, and McMurray, 1968; Ruda and Albright, 1968; Tenopyr, 1967) have been found to fit the relationships described by the model proposed by Bartlett and O'Leary (1969). Since the literature in this area is limited to a few job situations, no definitive statements can be made concerning the degree of pervasiveness of test bias in personnel selection settings. The purpose of this investigation was to compare mean predictor and criterion performance and their relationships for different subgroups in a variety of job situations. Results from two job settings are reported in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is an attempt to describe one kind of social institutions, here called receptors, which handle the problem of creating functioning relations between groups of newcomers in a society and various subgroups within this society during a confrontation between such groups. Such a social institution might be called a regulator, when there exists ah agreement between the interest groups involved, that their goal should be a mutually acceptable situation for both groups. The paper also contains an attempt to describe those ideologies with regard to the reception of newcomers, which are most likely to develop within different kinds of receptors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the relationship between emotional disturbance and discrimination. The idea that frustration, poor parent-child relationships, and extreme deprivation are behind prejudice and discrimination has led to studies of German dictator Adolf Hitler, the Nazis, and other racist groups. Research evidence stemming from studies of the authoritarian personality, rigidity, and other personality variables also lends support to this type of analysis. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the discriminatory behavior of a "normal group" in terms of their relationship to a cohesive, identifiable subculture, and the resultant restriction of their outgroup interactions. It is the author's belief that the insulation of subgroups in the pluralistic society provides a perhaps unwanted, but nevertheless powerful structure that fosters discriminatory behavior against outgroups. The degree of ethnic identification and integration was measured through responses to group membership and participation in ethnic customs and activities. It was assumed that the availability of opportunities for ethnic activities was evidence of a subculture structure.

Medical practice in a city may be viewed as a system resulting from competition between physicians for the more desirable practices and the efforts of patients to obtain the best physicians available. If physicians were guided solely by the financial position of patients and if patients could select their physicians on the basis of their relative technical competence, then a simple economic system would result. Since patients are generally unable to judge practitioners in terms of technical competence, extraneous factors actually determine their choice. Accordingly, the competitive position of a doctor is greatly influenced by his ability to fulfill expectations which are not medically relevant. This implies that the performance of the physician role despite its high status, relatively specific function, and limitation to persons properly trained and legally sanctioned is greatly affected by the doctor's other status positions. In effect, this means that other statuses are factors which affect preferences. This paper considers the effect of ethnic origins of physicians on the practice of medicine.

Although sociological literature reveals scattered references to women as a minority group, comparable in certain respects to racial, ethnic, and national minorities, no systematic investigation has been undertaken as to what extent the term minority group is applicable to women. Yet, it may well be that regarding women as a minority group may be productive of fresh insights that leads for further research. The purpose of this article is to apply to women some portion of that body of sociological theory and methodology customarily used for investigating such minority groups. It may be anticipated that not only will principles already established in the field of intergroup relations contribute to the understanding of women, but that in the process of modifying traditional concepts and theories to fit the special case of women, viewpoints for the fruitful reexamination of other minority groups will emerge. This paper is exploratory in suggesting the enhanced possibilities of fruitful analysis, if women are included in the minority group corpus, particularly with reference to such concepts and techniques as group belongingness, socialization of the minority group child, cultural differences, social distance tests, conflict between class and caste status, race relations cycle, and marginality.

This paper addresses itself to one problem among many within our legal system, i.e., citizen ignorance of the law. By ignorance of the law is meant not only ignorance of specific laws but of the rationale behind the entire legal process. The basic hypothesis of the research described was that if law as a social tool is less effective than it might be, it is in part because many citizens are unaware of how Legal processes may be used for their protection and for the solution of some of their problems. A second hypothesis of the research was that knowledge of the law is not equal for all groups in the population or, stated in another way, some are more ignorant than others. The questionnaire designed to assess attitudes toward and knowledge of the law was developed by these faculty and staff members with the added assistance of a senior law student who helped develop and pretest the instrument. In conclusion the low-income minority groups did no better than chance in answering the 30 questions posed to them about the laws that supposedly affect their lives.

This paper draws attention to some factors which must be taken into account in any attempt to describe adequately the relationship of an ethnic group to the large society. The dynamic nature of such relations makes a rapid, even crude, summary of the ethnic history of the Upper Rio Grande Region the most appropriate approach to the problem. As is well known, the area had been inhabited by several communities of Pueblo Indians before it was conquered and colonized by the Spaniards. Consequently, the originally separate native societies were integrated into a social system which was an extension of the large society of colonial Spain. The intergroup relations were based upon force and domination, but involved also more intimate interactions. First, there was the common need of defense against an external enemy, the Plains Indians. Second, the economy favored exchange and a certain division of labor. Still more crucial was the fact that the Spaniards imposed upon the native folk groups an heteronomous institutional framework which, nevertheless, left them considerable freedom to manage their internal affairs. This institutional framework extended primarily to the political, military, and economic sphere.

The article authors comment on the views of sociologist Christen T. Jonassen on a paper on problem children by the authors. The real difficulty which the authors have encountered in responding to this criticism has been their inability to determine what Jonassen assumed the basic issues to be. His objection to the authors' explanation of the behavior of immigrant groups in terms of adjustive and distributive processes suggests that to him this is the real issue. The alternatives, however, are not clear unless one accepts the notion of the innate superiority of some people over others. It would appear, as suggested both here and in other works, that Jonassen would explain the movement and delinquency of ethnic groups in terms of their Old World culture plus some "personal" or "volitional" elements which he seems to designate as "non-cultural." Jonassen's interest in the effect of Old World culture on rates of delinquents is shared by the authors, but their data are not centered on this problem. The first reason is that most of the boys used in the calculation of rates in this study were born and reared in the U.S., and can be identified with foreign cultures only through their parents.

The article presents the paper is based on five years of field work carried on by undergraduates at Wellesley College, Massacheusets, in connection with a course on American ethnic groups, though use will be made only of the results obtained. The students came in contact with some two or three hundred Armenian-Americans, chiefly of the first and second generation, living in the Boston metropolitan area. Interviews were of some length, ranging from one to five hours. They were chiefly group interviews, with their setting a little more frequently in the home than in the office. For the purpose of qualitative analysis, the home interviews were particularly enlightening, involving as they did informal family interaction around the dinner table. The informants for this study were chosen largely from that section of the ethnic group which has made a more or less successful adjustment to middle class status. Since the interviewers were inexperienced, it seemed best to give them their initial training in informal interviewing and participant observation under conditions which would tax their emerging skill as lightly as possible.

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether, using 1960 census data, differences do exist in occupational and educational attainment for second-generation males of United Kingdom, German, and Italian background, in Northeastern United States. The data are presented with controls for age so that analysis may be made separately for those who were becoming educated and becoming employed in two quite different periods in our nation's social and economic development. Additional data from the 1960 census are presented to view the educational and occupational pattern for the three groups throughout the entire United States, by geographical regions, and for a smaller age category (25 to 34) than that presented in the other tables, in order to determine how typical the Northeast region is of the entire country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to deal directly—in an exploratory fashion—with certain variables which might be considered basic to any verification of the intellectual subsociety hypothesis, focusing primarily upon the ethnic dimension and secondarily upon the class factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that certain types of grouping are associated with radical and gradual types of assimilation and fusion. I will apply the distinction between the corporate and noncorporate group to the processes of ethnic regrouping. This distinction should serve to give a structural focus to studies of ethnic relations and thus will supplement the social psychological approaches. In the concluding section, in which the wider implications of corporateness are discussed, it will be seen that such a distinction will facilitate the comparison of ethnic groups with other types of groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of status crystallization are among the major new ideas which have entered sociological thinking within the past decade. The present paper discusses three methodological problems encountered in this promising tradition of research. First, individuals are taken as the unit of measurement, whereas it seems that the analysis sometimes would call for measurements based on information from at least two or more partners to a single social relationship. Second, the methods used to isolate effects of a position held on an individual dimension fall short of proving that one dimension only, race ethnicity, does not explain almost all the variation in attitudes and the like that are attributed to differences in the extent of crystallization. Finally, the combination of methodological considerations discussed in reference to the first two problems raises questions about the causal relations suggested in this research. Rather than low crystallization leading to political liberalism and withdrawal from social relations, it seems that for certain groups it may lead to the very opposite results.

The article studies the role of organizational structures. The residential neighborhood is the special locale in which individuals attempt to realize such interests as the protection of property values and personal and social deference. The authors tested the paper in the midwest by analyzing the rejection or acceptance of Negroes in a residential neighborhood and on the job. The two situations mentioned involved the same white individuals. The white individuals all lived in a residential neighborhood which had a pattern of strong rejection of Negroes and yet the same individuals participated in a union which strongly accepted Negroes on an equal basis. The study of individual behavior was preceded by an intensive study of the two situations involved, with particular emphasis on their organizational structure.

This paper reports on the matricentric family system as it appears in three different societies: the Caribbean, the Nayar of India and Afro-American families in the United States. The author's purpose is to show the variations in female-centered families by studying their nature and functions among different groups in diverse parts of the world. A suggestion for more conceptual clarity of the matricentric family concept is posed in order to provide more theoretical consistency in its further analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of United States life tables analyzes the process of mortality transition during 1850-1968. Special features of the study are (1) a phase-specific, rather than an age-specific, analysis of mortality and (2) use of measures based on person-years of life (nLx) in phase-intervals, rather than survival rates (nPx) or expectation of life at given ages (ex°). The analysis suggests that the historical transition of mortality in the United States can be described as a three-stage process: an initial stage of slow improvement in life expectancy during 1850-1900, a second stage of rapid improvement during 1900-1950, and a third stage of slower improvement since 1950. Quantitative measures of rapidity of mortality decline in the several phases indicate that they are not identical for all phases and in all stages. The analysis also suggests that there have been rapid changes in the components of overall mortality differentials by sex and race in the United States. The paper draws attention to the need for studies of factors in variations of mortality at ages beyond 50 in the United States population subgroups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an ecological perspective, one aspect of the relationship of social distance and physical distance is analyzed in the three largest cities in Israel. The principal aim of the paper is to examine ethnic (country of origin) residential segregation as an indicator of social patterning within the society. Despite the different demographic, topographical and functional characteristics of the three cities, fairly similar patterns of ethnic segregation are found using the technique of Smallest Space Analysis (SSA-I) to analyze index of dissimilarity matrices. Patterns of ethnic segregation are then related to the SES of sub-quarters to determine the nature of the internal structure of the cities. It is suggested that ethnicity is an important variable in the process of social stratification in urban Israel, at least insofar as ecological relationships are concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Demography (Springer Nature) is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

It has for some time been well understood by social scientists that considerable insight into a society can be gamed through an analysis of its heroes and scapegoats. In turn, a full understanding of the genesis and functions of these two types of figures can be acquired only when one is able to project them against the background of the social situations in which they occur. It is the intent of the paper to examine the advent, characteristics and functions of an outstanding hero and an equally outstanding scapegoat in a peasant community. The acceptance by the Indian of unequal division is not so much a matter of choice as it is a function of conformity to an all-embracing set of traditional norms and patterns. This conformity is reinforced, on the one hand, by considerable ignorance of and indifference to possible alternatives, and, on the other, by a belief in the divine sanction of the status quo. Common to both Ladinos and Indians, but with differential emphases, is the significance of heterosexuality and family life. The normal pattern among the unmarried youth of both groups is to lay considerable stress on frequent heterosexual contact as a mark of virility.

The article presents information on various papers related to migration, published in different journals. One of the papers titled "Group Cohesiveness, Ethnic Organization, and Poverty," gives a selective tour of some experiments and field studies of group cohesiveness, and of the effects of ethnic and religious group cohesiveness and organization in current and historic populations. Another paper "Urban Racial Minorities and Immigrant Groups: Some Economic Comparisons," explains differences in economic performance to six racially distinctive minorities. It is found that the performance of these minorities does not conform well to the immigrant model. The paper titled "A Survey of the Effects of Contact Between European and Maori in the Foveau Strait Region," presents a study of post-contact culture change in a specific part of the South Island between 1773-1850. The contact was due to a mutual interest in trading commodities, it is suggested. In due course, assimilation of economic practices led to a series of coherent changes in the social, technological and economic aspects of the Maori socio-cultural system, which can be documented historically.