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With a sample of over 250 films released in the U.S. from 2000 to 2014, and with the benefit of over fifty years of feminist film theorizing on the issue of the characterization of women in both Ho...

The desire to make a difference in the world, to receive the esteem and approval of others, and to be attractive to others for the person one is, is a basic human longing. The fate of such desire over the course of life is a subject that has largely been relegated to studies of changing patterns of sexual activity with advancing age. The broader topic of the human desire to remain actively engaged in the world has yet to be fully developed and incorporated within sociological theories of aging. We know little of the variables that affect the workings of desire and the circumstances under which desire is more or less likely to be manifest. Due to its reluctance to bridge the disciplinary boundaries that separate structural and social psychological approaches to theorizing age, sociologists of aging and the life course have rarely considered the ways in which human desire for recognition, love, and influence affect behavior at various points in the life course. In this paper, I address the problem of the social breakdown syndrome that is thought to bring about an atrophy in the skills and talents of those in old age. With concepts drawn from the dramaturgical literature in sociology, I argue that those who continue to benefit from the emotional energy that derives from satisfying and productive social interactions will age in ways that cannot be explained by existing sociological theories of aging.

Sociology has always been charactereized by a joint interest in social structures and individual lives as well as in their interaction. Social gerontology, however, has developed in a lopsided manner with disproportionate attention focused on individual attitudes and behavior. The principal sociological theory of aging, the age stratification model (ASM), has failed to provide an adequate structuralist counterpoint to the prevailing reductionism in social gerontology. The problem with the ASM lies in its preoccupation with a functionalist understanding of structure that is grounded in the concept of role. Because of its view of structure as a framework of social roles, the ASM neglects the realm of autonomous individual activity and the corresponding dialectics between social action and social structures. To remedy this neglect of micro-macro linkage in the ASM, Seve's concept of use-time is presented as the basis of an alternative theory of aging and age relations.

This article examines the issue of the connectedness of military leaders with civil society through an analysis of the political beliefs and identification of a sample of U.S. Army general officers. As part of a larger study of the military profession, a sample of 62 Army generals was asked about their political views, party affiliation, and other issues that would indicate their more general political world view. Unlike previous studies that have relied primarily upon questionnaires, this one follows a more qualitative approach. Using a semistructured interviewing technique, it was possible to obtain a more complete understanding of the extent to which the political and social philosophy of the Army's senior leadership diverges from that of the wider society. Based upon this elaboration of their political viewpoints, the hypothesis that these officers are disconnected from mainstream American society must be rejected. The article offers a far more sanguine view of the future of civil-military relations in this society than that which has emerged recently in the professional literature.

We focus on the changing understanding of romance in contemporary American society. Through an analysis of romantic comedies and dramas produced in Hollywood between 1930 and the present, we demonstrate how the decline of the romantic drama is due to significant social and cultural change, the most important of which is the weakening of norms governing the choice of romantic partners. The romantic comedy, however, has more than compensated for the decline in dramas, with the decade of the 1990s seeing more romantic films produced than in any previous time in the history of filmmaking. Although the contemporary romantic comedy almost invariably reinforces the most conservative tendencies in our culture, we argue that these films nonetheless work effectively to reinforce a usable cultural script governing romantic behavior. By depicting ideal culture as a real possibility, the romantic comedy nurtures the utopian wish of “slipping one over on modernity.”

This article examines the accounts given by U.S. Army general officers explaining their success. Based on interviews with sixty-two generals, I describe the ways in which these officers—whose profession renounces careerism and self-aggrandizement—fashion explanations of their success (and the success of their colleagues) as being due to selfless service. Even as they have reached the zenith of success in their field, these men and women are not free to admit to personal ambition or to a desire for promotion. Their accounts of their success emphasize their good fortune, hard work, and love of the service. Eschewing personal ambition, they cite as their primary responsibility the well-being of the soldiers under their command. When asked directly about their extraordinarily successful careers, they almost uniformly acknowledge their willingness to accept the “hard jobs” the organization has asked them to assume. When asked about ambition, they routinely distinguish between good and bad ambition, a distinction that aligns almost perfectly with that between unit and self. Although they are warriors, specialists in the art of war, this is a group that is also practiced in modesty. I think I've had good ambition. (Division Commander, Interview #53)

The gap between the ideal and the real in case method teaching raises several questions for its practice. The author explores these questions and offers answers based on his case method teaching experience. Specifically, he discusses how to select cases, how to help students prepare for good discussions, how to get students to talk, what the instructor should be doing, what should happen at the end of class, and how to know what the students are learning. He also offers advice for beginning case method teachers.

This article reconsiders the question of the crisis of social psychology. I argue here that there is a crisis in social psychology but it is not one of a growing separation between the discipline’s psychological and sociological wings. Instead, the crisis is the result of structural transformation and associated cultural shift. It involves the gradual displacement of an earlier concept of the strong, autonomous ego by the postmodern production of the imaginary self. The self in the unfolding era of postmodernism increasingly resembles a composite of commercially produced images rather than a self-directed ego. The displacement of the self-concept by the self-image produced what has been a vaguely apperceived but, as yet, not adequately conceptualized, crisis in social psychology. I conclude with an argument on behalf of a personality and social structure approach to social psychology as the only form of social psychology conceptually able to deal with the real crisis within social psychology, that is, the erosion of the self.

Since the appearance in the mid-1970s of Riegel’s dialectical theory of human development, there has been a convergence between psychological theories of human development and sociological theories of

Are film reviewers “critical” intellectuals? To answer this question, I compare the estimations of the “best” films of 1997 provided by three groups of film audiences (film critics; the public; and the Hollywood film industry) with particular attention paid to the preferences of the critics themselves in order to identify the basis, or theory, underlying their aesthetic judgments. The analysis demonstrates that critical film reviews in the tradition of the Frankfurt theorists continue to be written and continue to provide helpful and important insights into the intersection of art, commerce, and the ideological and utopian understandings embedded in these films.

The concept of subculture has long been used routinely in sociology despite many criticisms about the contradictory manner in which it has been defined and applied. One particular problem concerns the untenable distinction often made by sociologists between subcultures and countercultures; another is the implicit characterization of subcultures as either deviant, marginalized groups or heroic resisters against the hegemonic culture of global capitalism. In this paper, we attempt to demonstrate a method of teaching the concept of subculture to undergraduate sociology students that would remedy these two difficulties. We do this by offering working definitions of several terms, including common culture, subculture, idioculture, and social world. We conclude the paper by developing a classroom exercise to help students grasp the main differences between these various terms.

This article discusses the difficulties inherent in teaching a sociology course through use of feature-length film. Despite these difficulties, I argue that contemporary Hollywood movies are useful tools to illustrate some of our discipline's central concepts and to serve as an exercise in the application of the sociological imagination. Films, however, come prepackaged with a particular worldview or theoretical perspective. Thus, they require the sociologist to consider the theory-laden nature of movies as part of the analysis of social life that they depict. In order to do this, I analyze three groups of movies through the use of sociological concepts such as Griswold's cultural diamond and Jameson's ideology/utopia distinction

This paper reexamines the proposition that old people lose prestige with societal modernization. I argue that while the basic notion of a decline in the relative position of old people with industrialization is supportable the focus on industrialization or modernization is restrictive and misleading. It is the interaction between historically variable exchange rates and individual possession of valued resources that determines the ability of an age-group member to participate in satisfying and profitable social exchange. The differential allocation of valued resources across age strata establishes an age-relevent exchange rate for that particular period. The rate favors the aged in agrarian societies because of their control over land and disfavors the superannuated in industrial societies because of their exclusion from labor markets. As a result, old people in modern society incur greater costs to achieve comparable levels of reward (prestige and privilege) as their age-mates in non-modern soci...

There has been a notable lack of articulation between mainstream sociological theory and the work of social gerontologists. This paper suggests four reasons for this, and reviews the basic assumptions and applications to gerontology of two well-established frameworks in sociological theory: structural-functionalism and exchange. With more rigorous and systematic integration of gerontological data with social and social psychological theory, more comprehensive explanations of life course phenomena would result. Moreover, the age variable would be considered by other sociologists as less of a control and more of a relevant variable in its own right.

The present paper reexamines the modernization hypothesis, focusing principally on the issues of whether and why the relative status and prestige of old people is lower in late 20th century industrial societies than it was during the preceding century. It is argued that the status of most old people, whether considered in absolute or relative terms, is indeed higher now than earlier. No longer bound by the usual norms of reciprocity governing social interaction, old people benefit by a renascence of the norm of beneficence. The very old, in other words, receive more than they are owed under the norm of reciprocity. For the young-old, however, the norm of reciprocity continues in effect. Because of this, and the tightening in eligibility criteria for programs of social support, the position of the young-old is less a function of age than it is of social class.

Generational analyses have tended to focus on youth movements and ideologies, in keeping with the Mannheim emphasis on new generations. Age-group political consciousness among the elderly may be an emergent feature of the current political scene; thus, it is useful to examine the generational aspects of a political movement among the elderly as well. This paper presents a model of the factors contributing to the development of socio-political movements. It appears that an aged social movement will not develop unless age-group political consciousness among the elderly is manifest. The prospects of the emergence of that political consciousness and a social movement of the aged are discussed, with attention to precursors of these political expressions in the current generation of older people.

It is sometimes argued that a tacit contract exists between the generations in industrial society that requires that the present structure of Social Security benefits not be altered in any way that would serve to diminish the present benefit levels. The demands of social justice, it is thought, require that Western societies maintain their commitments to Social Security programs, especially to those programs of the type administered in the United States. This paper examines questions of justice pertaining to the aged in contemporary society. It is argued here that the demands of justice pertain not only to the satisfaction of basic needs for subsistence but also to the satisfaction of the need for self-realization. The commitment of capitalist nations like the U.S. to social justice for the aged is analyzed using a theory of justice that is based on Durkheim's political writings on corporatism and the “solidarist” theory of the Catholic social movement. The corporatist theory of justice would require that public pension systems like Social Security be revised to provide more adequately for the social needs of the working-class aged.

It has been argued previously that, due to industrial development and the related ideology of modernity, old people in contemporary society are less able to negotiate favorable or, even, equitable exchange rates. This structural analysis, however, leaves unanswered important issues concerning the "working out" of the terms of the exchange agreement. The focus of this paper is the negotiation and maintenance of exchange relationships. How, for example, does the individual old person and his or her exchange partner(s) decide such issues as the relative "social worth" of the partners, the resources each possesses and is willing to exchange, the value of the resources to be exchanged, or the rate at which resources are to be exchanged. While such terms may occasionally be submitted in written form for the approval of each partner, in most cases such issues are resolved in a much more informal manner. Approval or consent to an exchange agreement is generally reached through a process of informal negotiation which is commonly referred to as conversation. Because of the lack of any obvious or generally accepted conversion table (by which resources are converted in standardized units of power), the mere possession of a power resource is insufficient, in most cases, to obtain an automatic share of privilege. Rather, the resource must be entered into the exchange negotiation in orderfor the individual's claim to be accepted as legitimate. Talk is the means by which potential power is converted into power-in-use.

This is a case study of the Employed Girls Society, a voluntary association which was organized in 1929 as a training vehicle for young working women and which functions today as an old age support system. A vestige of the past, the EGS is also an omen of the future; current demographic and economic trends portend a time when clubs like the EGS will be required, more and more, to meet the needs of a burgeoning aged population.

After a brief review of the major concepts and propositions of the social-psychological theory of exchange, a view of aging as exchange is developed. Drawing upon the previous work of Blau and Emerson, problems of aging are seen as problems of decreasing power resources. Because power resources decline with increased age, older persons become increasingly unable to enter into balanced exchange relations with other groups with whom they are in interactions. From this view, the process of disengagement is the result of a series of exchange relations in which the relative power of the aged vis-a-vis their exchange partner increasingly deteriorates. An imbalanced exchange ratio consequently results in which the aged are forced to exchange compliance--the most costly of all generalized reinforcers--for their continued sustenance. The retirement phenomenon is specified as illustrative of the aging as exchange process.

The focus of this paper is the intersection of age and class, and the conceptual problems that emerge when thinking simultaneously of age and class relations. Previous efforts to frame age relations within the context of class stratification have been incomplete due to a failure to grasp the underlying continuity in the inequality produced by age and class location. Inequality is common to both age and class stratification as both age strata and social classes differ in their possession of valued resources and access to the means of acquiring these resources. Old people, for example, are disadvantaged in intergenerational relations because of their exclusion from labor markets. Aging brings with it a decline in other power resources, thus further eroding the probability that cross-age social interaction will benefit each partner equally.

This paper inquires into the special problems of teaching undergraduate sociology in the last decades of the twentieth century. A major tenet of the argument is that sociology instructors, while facing with their colleagues in other departments a common set of pedagogical concerns, must also confront a distinct, perhaps unique, set of problems that results from the very nature of sociology and, to a lesser extent, from its uncertain status within the university curriculum. Sociology has been from its inception, an “oppositional science.” The critical nature of sociology renders the evaluation of teaching effectiveness particularly difficult. For this reason, I argue that the use of students’ratings as the single, or central, measure of teaching effectiveness may actually decrease the quality of classroom instructors rather than to produce the presumed intended result of increasing it.

The focus of this paper is two fold: 1. conceptual and methodological problems underlying the life-span sociology literature that heretofore have not been discussed; and 2. application of the generational analysis model to the question of life cycle change in personal values. Specifically, we address the issues of whether (1) value change over the life course is a result of period shifts or individual maturation and (2) differences in values among age strata are a function of cohort experience or individual maturation (aging). Utilizing data from the Detroit Area Studies, four measures of values were constructed. The analyses shows that on only one of the four dependent measures was aging directly implicated in the findings. However, cohort differences and period effects were found to have a significant effect on the distribution of several of the value indices. The data are consistent with Mannheim's observation that older cohorts are affected by social change although the relative degree of observed change is much greater among the young [1].

Using data from a national sample, the hypothesis that frequency of contact with blacks is associated with less antipathy toward blacks was tested. With multiple regression techniques, it was found that residential proximity has a negative effect on prejudice, thus supporting Allport's "contact hypothesis." The major finding of the study, however, was that contact did not uniformly affect prejudice for respondents of all ages but interacted with age to produce variable changes depending on region and education level. The author concludes that, while prejudice is higher among older cohorts, this is due in large part to differing patterns of socialization and to the lesser contact with blacks among older whites.

Data from a comparative study of 5,450 young males in six developing nations were used to investigate the association between modernization or modernity and negative attitudes toward aging. The findings question the frequent assertion that "modernity" (the exposure of individuals in developing nations to industrial technology and urban social experience) results in negative perceptions of aging and diminished value attributed to the aged. The data do provide support for the hypothesis that "modernization" (societal development) is related to negative perceptions of aging. Results suggest the necessity of differentiating between "modernization" and "modernity" as levels of analysis and of avoiding value-laden assumptions concerning advantages of either traditional or industrial social settings with respect to the position of elders.