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The effort to categorize nature dates at least to Aristotle and is still ongoing. The study of categories is termed "ontology"-a field Whose use in the philosophy' of social science has most recently been revived. Last April 1998, the State University of New York at Buffalo hosted a conference on "Applied Ontology: A Marvin Farber Conference in Law and Institutions in Society." The following papers were selected from the group of papers presented at the conference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information related to a business meeting. The annual AKD business meeting was held on August 31, 1986, at the New York Hilton. Jerry Michel, scholar at the Memphis State University and AKD President presided the meeting. Those present were: Candace Clark, Helen Clarke, Al Clarke, Ken Davidson, David Demo, Marie Fuller, Rose Helper, Mark Butter, Lyn Lofland, Mike Malec, Betty Maynard, Annabelle Motz, Wayne Seelbach, Don Shoemaker, Jim Skipper, Jim Williams, Kenneth Wilson and Donna Darden. In addition to normal items of business, the following announcements and decisions were made at the meeting. The winners of the 1986 paper competition were as follows First prize: Tracey Watson, Skidmore College, Second prize: Jane Melada, Montclair State and third prize: William Axinn, Cornwell. Watson's paper, "Women Athletes and Athletic Women: The Dilemmas and Contradictions of Managing Incongruent Identities," will be published in the journal "Sociological Inquiry." The Council voted to name Dennis Peck, scholar at the University of Alabama-Bitmingham, as new editor of the journal.

This paper is based on a restudy of the 13 New York communities included in the national sample for Brunner's three studies of 140 agricultural villages made in 1924, 1930, and 1936. The paper reports on changes in population 1920&ndash1970, in Dun and Bradstreet business listings 1921&ndash1970, in community boundaries 1936&ndash1974, and in school district boundaries, in 85 community services and facilities and 15 types of voluntary associations 1960&ndash1974, and in industries 1964&ndash1974. The presence of planning and zoning boards in 1974 is noted. All centers were rural by census definition in 1920; 10 still were in 1970. The evidence shows growth and decline, stability and change, depending on the individual community and the time period. Except for a minority of the communities, the evidence suggests that stability and growth prevail over decline. Vitality is generally greater in the noneconomic sectors than in the economic. Differentiation has increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last five decades, immigration has profoundly transformed the population of metropolitan New York, long divided by race and class. The almost-forgotten 'underclass' debate established that New York was the nation's capital of concentrated poverty, which grew significantly worse during the 1970s and 1980s. Though more recent data show that New York has achieved a remarkable turnaround since 1990, most probably associated with immigration, it remains a city of economic extremes and stubbornly high poverty. Concern about where new immigrants—and their children—might fit into this matrix of urban inequality led several leading social scientists to hypothesise that some members of the second generation would be downwardly mobile. To investigate this possibility, in 1999 and 2000, the Immigrant Second Generation in Metropolitan New York (ISGMNY) surveyed 3,415 young people aged 18 to 32 years, from five immigrant and three native-born racial and ethnic backgrounds, about their life trajectories. This paper conducts an analysis of the contextual effects of the neighbourhoods in which respondents grew up on their later experiences in terms of educational attainment and labour market success. Using OLS and HLM modelling, we find small but consistent and theoretically interesting effects. In particular, growing up in a poor neighbourhood has a negative effect on later outcomes, while growing up in a black neighbourhood does not, once poverty is taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the change associated with the department of social science at Columbia University in the 1920s with particular emphasis on the role of Franklin Giddings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To introduce an archival protocol of a ‘Debate about methods in the social sciences, especially the conception of social science method represented by the Institute’, held on 17 January 1941 at the Institute of Social Research in New York, the article focuses on certain conflicts in substance and terms of discourse among members of the Institute, with special emphasis on Franz Neumann’s distinctive approaches, notwithstanding his professed loyalty to Max Horkheimer’s theory. These are seen to arise not only from Neumann’s assignment as bargaining agent for the Institute and his distinctive relations with American colleagues, but also from their different orientations to the conflicted legacies of Weimar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon presented unique teachable moments to engineering educators but with the competing demand to complete the course as designed and as dictated by the tyranny of the syllabus. A questionnaire was administered to undergraduate students enrolled in three professional ethics courses in 2001 and 2002 to ascertain the extent to which their instructors used the events as teachable moments. For comparison, the questionnaire was administered 1 year after the attacks to students enrolled in courses of an academic enrichment program at Duke University and environmental science students at North Carolina Central University. The percentage of courses addressing the events was highest in the Fall 2001 semester, when the attacks occurred, falling in the Spring 2002 semester, but increasing in Fall 2002. Most respondents supported the use of the events as teachable moments even if the syllabus and course outline had to be adjusted. The results indicate that engineering education must be open to opportunities to teach physical science and engineering concepts and to introduce the students to the social sciences and humanities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined whether variations in social ecological conditions in New York City police precincts and divisions have predicted patterns of police misconduct from 1975 to 1996. The study included misconduct cases involving bribery, extortion, excessive force, and other abuses of police authority, as well as certain administrative rule violations. Using a longitudinal framework, the analyses found that dimensions of structural disadvantage and population mobility-drawn from the social disorganization literature—as well as changes in Latino population—drawn from the racial conflict perspective—explained changes in police misconduct over time. Further, most of the variations occurred within, as opposed to between, precincts and divisions over time, strengthening the case for a longitudinal examination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is necessary to reevaluate the role of the Department of Sociology at Columbia University in the years 1929–1950. The impact of Robert M. MacIver, who played a significant role in the exchange between European and American thinkers, is examined, as well as his marginalization. It is argued that in the 1930s it was characteristic that the sociologists in the centers in Chicago and Columbia exchanged their disciplinary functions. It was MacIver's Columbia that took on the role of advocate of humanistic sociology and Mead's and Cooley's heritage. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In social studies of technology, as in many other scientific disciplines, highly persuasive similes are at work: pious stories, seemingly reaped from research, suggesting certain general theoretical insights. Variously adapted, they are handed down: in the process, they acquire almost doctrinal unassailability. One such parable, which has been retold in technology and urban studies for a long time, is the story of Robert Moses' low bridges, preventing the poor and the black of New York from gaining access to Long Island resorts and beaches. The story turns out to be counterfactual, but even if a small myth is disenchanted, it serves a purpose: to resituate positions in the old debate about the control of social processes via buildings and other technical artefacts - or, more generally, about material form and social content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a brief overview of New York Jewish Population Survey methodology and of some demographic findings regarding the New York Jewish population with comparisons to the national Jewish population. Characteristics of New York Jewry are discussed that seem to offer a counterpoint to the current image of U.S. Jewry, which holds that the U.S. Jewish experience is one of continuing erosion over time. A New York effect is also identified and discussed. Policy implications of the study's findings are examined. Some argue that New York is more of an exception than a rule regarding the overall picture of U.S. Jewry. The New York community's sheer size, its larger and more diverse Orthodox population and its longer history as a Jewish population center all suggest that in some fundamental way New York is not America. New York Jewry represents between a third and a quarter of the national Jewish population. By virtue of its size alone the view from New York offers an important corrective to any overgeneralized picture of U.S. Jewry.