Word: sociologists
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...took on many shadings, but the essential intent was to minimize friction during passage through an often abrasive society. To be nice, by some gentile measure, was more than a question of etiquette. It was a "sacred canon," Silberman says. Service to that canon became, in the words of Sociologist John Murray Cuddihy, "the ordeal of civility." Of all the problems faced by Jews since their earliest days in America--and Silberman covers most of them--the endless struggle over identity seems most fraught with anguish. Early arrivals in the new country found a society more tolerant than...
...transition points." Yet the rate of change has leveled off, and Norton thinks the U.S. is entering a period of relative stability. Other experts, noting such diverse signs as a rise in patriotism, improvement in aptitude-test scores and disenchantment with sexual promiscuity, tend to agree. Says Sociologist Amitai Etzioni of George Washington University: "People are tired of experimentation. This is the beginning of an age of reconstruction." --By David Beckwith. Reported by Patricia Delaney/Washington
...consumers so willing to become walking billboards? "Wearing these items is a way of broadcasting your preferences to the world," says Ellen Auster, a sociologist at Columbia University's business school. Many people want to assert something about their life-style, as in the case of young adults proclaiming their newfound privilege of drinking beer. Others want to reveal some hidden part of their personality. Says Auster: "The yuppie wears a Harley-Davidson shirt because it triggers a side of him that is most of the time suppressed...
That finding will not, of course, reassure the most hyperthyroid of press critics. They should be more worried about an article in the Columbia Journalism Review. In it, Columbia Sociologist Herbert J. Gans analyzes the original attack on press bias, known as the Rothman-Lichters survey, and finds that it was biased in ways that "depart from scientific practice." Journalists were shown a set of statements--some of them admittedly oversimplified--and asked if they agreed or disagreed. Their responses to individual statements not of their own phrasing were then, says Gans, treated "as strongly felt opinions...
...evident in cities like Shanghai and Beijing is a prize continually being yanked out of reach. Economic reforms have reduced the entitlements to a steady job and basic health care that were enjoyed by earlier generations. "Life in China is much more uncertain now," says Li Yinhe, a sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. "Economic instability can cause social instability...