( SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL)

Volume 46/ Number 4 / December 1992 • 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158

On Culture, Health, and Human Development Emerging perspectives

by Frank Kessel*

Recent research in anthropology and other social sciences calls for a reexamination of fundamental assumptions concerning health, mental health, and individual development. Health phenomena that have long been regarded as natural manifestations of universal biological processes are now understood to be-to a significant degree-locally variable, culturally mediated, socially situated, historically contingent, politically conditioned, and differentiated by gender and age. The value of this perspective has been demonstrated in diverse contexts, but it has not yet been integrated into mainstream research in medicine, psychiatry, and child and adult develop­ment. Its potentials as an arena for multidisciplinary social research, and for redefining and suggesting new approaches to urgent human problems, have only begun to be realized. Such realization would consti­tute an intellectual revolution.

Background

Established in mid-l99 1 , the SSRC's Committee on Culture, Health, and Human Development is an international, interdisciplinary network of scholars' whose chief concern is to bring comparative cross­cultural and contextual perspectives to bear on our understanding of major issues in the nexus of health

and rationale arise out of two primary sets of circumstances.

In the first instance, the large social changes-not to say, dislocations-of our time lend urgency to the cultural perspective on matters of health and human development. Ethnic nationalism and conflict have made research on ethnic identity and behavior imperative. Forced uprooting, increasing numbers of refugees, and domestic and international migrations are changing the demographic basis of health and placing great pressure on health care, disability, and welfare systems. In addition, the changing ethnic and

• Frank Kessel , a psycbologi t , serves as staff to the Committee on Culture, Health, and Human Development. This article is primarily the product of the committee members' collective deliberations and individu­ally composed prose. Naturally any errors, even if only of emphasis , are not theirs.

I Arthur Kleinman and Robert leVine, Harvard University, Cochairs; Ronald Angel, University of Texas, Austin; Veena Das, University of Delhi (India); Julio Frenlc, National In titute of Public Health (Cuer­navaca, Mexico); Atwood Gaines, Case We tern Reserve University; Jacqueline Goodnow, Macquarie University (Sydney); Margaret Lock, McGill University; Hazel MarIws, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Peggy Miller, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Richard Shweder, University of Chicago; and Carol Worthman, Emory University.

• CONTENTS OF TIllS ISSUE • On Culture, Health, and Human

Development: Emerging Perspectives. Frank K~ss~1 6S

Studying Inequality in American Cities, Alic~ O'Connor 73

Pattern in the Scholarly Use of Quotations, David L. Sills and RoMrr K. M~rton 7S

Current Activities at the Council Comprehending State

Sovereignty 77

Southeast Asian Literature In titute 77

Urban Undercl Committee Conferences 78

New Staff Appointment 79 David L. Sills Receives

ASA Award 79 Recent Council Publications 80

and human development. The committee's mandate 'I~r-----------------~

~bftC 65

immigrant realities in North America are reawakening interest in the relation hip of ethnicity to physical and mental health, and human development, a relationship that has to this point been relatively neglected. And the collap e of Communism, together with the globalization of health problems, markets, and popular culture, could result in new and ustained attention to large North-South disparities over resources and life chances. Yet these major socio­political changes have not been matched by an appropriate, culturally informed globablization of the health and ocial ciences.

The second aspect of the committee' rationale arises out of the growing recognition that extant biomedical models and research-as productive as they have been in everal directions-are limited in their capacity to generate knowledge to help addre s these sociopolitical change and challenges. In particular, the deepening evidence for variation and pluralism in pattern of health, illness, and develop­ment underscores the committee's mandate. Societal contexts matter, often greatly, in determining what is normal and what facilitates and ob tructs human flourishing. Anthropological and other comparative cro -cultural studies thus offer a potentially produc­tive perspective on assumptions in biomedicine, public health, psychiatry, and p ychology about what are, and are not, universal aspects of human experi­ences and condition over the life course. And that perspective signals an alternative set of research questions as well as a different approach to policie and practices relating to health and human develop­ment.2

Against this background the committee is develop­ing a series of interlinked programs, projects, and seminars that will eek to internationalize and to create indigenously informed theory and research by involving senior and younger researchers from both the North and South.3 More specifically, the commit­tee's goals are these:

(1) To combine health with human development in an integrated framework to explore in detail whether

1 Part of the broader intellectual, sociopolitical, and even rbetorical context for the committee's work comes from the fact that thi i the declared "Decade of the Brain" and the Human Genome Project, and that uch efforts receive so much media/pre attention.

J Recognizing that material needs (acce to archive and data base via electronic and more ttaditional library means) are central to any efforts at internationalization, the committee hope to have on hand resources to addre uch needs for at least some of its pecific projects.

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and how model and proce ses drawn from one domain can yield a new understanding in the other. As a corollary, the goal is to undertake conceptual and empirical work where multiplicity and varia­tion - in the con ideration of what is and is not "normal," what is and is not a "problem" or a "risk" -are een and understood as intrin ic to both health and human development and to interventions of all kinds.

(2) To trengthen the theoretical foundations of research in the e domains by bringing to bear a deep and detailed conception of culture that can be explicitly integrated with existing bio ocial points of view. As a corollary, through comparative research in and across a variety of local biosocial contexts, the final goal is cumulative knowledge and generalized principles. 4

(3) To strengthen the methodological foundations of re earch at the boundary of the health and social sciences by exploring creative ways of combining qualitative and quantitative methods. As a corollary, the committee seeks to demonstrate-among other things - that ethnographic case studies can produce knowledge that complements survey research and epidemiologic data. Thus the committee plan to address these conceptual and methodologic concern primarily, though not exclusively, via a series of comparative ethnographic studies of cross-cultural locales and regions, along with ethnic and racial communities in the United States . .5

4 In other words, while the tarting umption and focus for research is local variation, the committee cenainly regards itself pursuing cumulative knowledge. It seeks, then, to overcome the mi placed dichotomy between the local and the universa1, between relativi m and universa1i m. (See footnote 20.) This view represents one of the commit­tee's core umptions or "thematic commitments," a term borrowed from Gerald Holton who, in his studies in the history of science, has revealed "the extent to which, on cenain critical occasions, the imagina­tion of a scientist may be guided by his, pemaps implicit, fidelity to one or more th~matQ . . . . The deep attachment of some scienti ts to uch themata may well be one of the chief sources of innovative energy." (The Sci~"'ific Imagination: Case Studi~s . Cambridge University Pres , 1978.) Perhaps the most over-arching of the committee's commitments is to scholarship and study that are reflexively critical in two complementary senses: ftrst, regarding as problematic (i.e., open to constructive scrutiny) exi ting methods, categories and, most genera1ly, disciplines- -pre5ently-constituted; and second, examining the sociopolitical dimensions of health and human development, including the sociopolitical dimensions of their scientific and practical treatment. (See Atwood Gline , "From DSM-I to m-R; Voices of Self, M tery and the Other: A Cultural Constructivist Reading of U.S. Psychiatric CI ification." Social Science and M~dicin~, 35: 3-24, 1992; Arthur Kleinman, "What i Specific to Western Medicine?" In w. F. Bynum and R., Porter, cds., Enqcw~dia of the History of M~dicine, Routledge, 1992.)

, A by-no-means-secondary goal of the committee is to convey its

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Programs, Projects, and Seminars

Since its inception the committee has engaged in a process aimed at creating a shared framework of substantive issues and programmatic activities within which these goals can be pursued.6 The following account of the conceptual framework that has emerged should give a sen e of how the committee presently envisages pursuing its objectives. The framework is comprised of two major programs and their associated projects, together with a series of seminars aimed at overarching issues (and hence serving as one important mechanism for integrating work across the committee).

Program I: Health, Suffering, and Social Transformations

This program arises out of the perhaps self-evident view that major social transformations (i.e., rapid political and economic change; voluntary and involuntary migration; racial and ethnic contact, competition, or violence) have profound conse­quences for health. Further, the same transformations may have different impacts in different regions or locales (e.g., Mexico versus Poland) and on different groups, (e.g., women versus men).

Essentially the program seeks a better delineation of the social processes that mediate positive health changes (such as improving infant and maternal health, or decreasing rates of chronic disease and substance abuse) in the face of often rapid and disorderly social, political, and economic change, and that "successfully" transform health problems and health care approaches over time. Comparative ethnographic case studies will provide a basis for

ideas and findings to agents and agencies responsible for health and development programs. e pecially in the Third World. It is also worth noting that. in several respects. this committee's foci and concerns complement. and build upon. not only other current SSRC committees (e.g .• Research on the Urban Underclass) but also others in the past. Among the latter; Social and Affective Development During Childhood. 1976-8S (lrems. 34 (2): 3l-3S. June 1980); Life-Course Perspectives on Human Development. 19TI-87 (Items. 3S (4): 73. December 1981); Biosocial Perspective on Parent Behavior and Offspring Development. 19~91 (Items. 37 (213): S7. September 1983; 38 (213): 41-43. Septem­ber 1984). See also Robert leVine. "Adulthood and Aging in eros -Cultural Perspective" (Items. 31132 (411):I-S. March 1978).

6 As is the case for many SSRC committees. e pecially those with an initially broad mandate. this is an interestingly and appropriately delicate proce involving. for example. ·the need to establish group norms and ways of worlcing that help bridge quite diverse disciplinary frameworks and languages.

DECEMBER 1992

conducting evaluations of po itive and negative examples of community efforts to cope with social change and its health consequences in poor societies of the South to start with, and later among impover­ished, inner-city ethnic communities in North America.7 Studying positive and negative case examples in order to determine the ingredients of succe sful community re ponses is clearly a logical way to establish the basis for social and public health interventions, and for evaluating their effects. Yet this crucial database does not at present exist.

• Project 1 (Program I), Health Consequences of Migration (Regional and International) and Refugee Status. focuses on a single cluster of social and environmental transformations in North and Central America. The project plans to develop empirical studies of rural-urban migration in Mexico and migration among Mexican-Americans in the United States. These studies will describe the physical and mental health consequences of the social transforma­tions experienced by migrants and refugees under the pressure of widespread economic change, with the goal of understanding why certain categories of migrant laborers are especially vulnerable to health and mental health problems and why others seem more resilient. Again, the emphasis is on developing comparisons of actual local cultural patterns that seem to differentiate vulnerability from resilience, that is, "social mediators" such as the role of relatives, the quality of the husband-wife relationship, the relative degree of traditionalism and acculturation. The broad hypothesis is that the breakdown of everyday moral practices in the new social contexts (vis-A-vis those that operated in the communities of origin) may be an especially significant factor.

• In Project 2 (Program I), The Cultural Mediation of Suffering, the focus is directly on the new range of problems in international health that stem from sources as different as ethnic conflict, political disintegration, and chronic hunger and poverty. International health has proceeded by applying the traditional medical model to these disparate behaviors and experiences. But there are substantial questions about whether such "medicalization" is the most useful way to construct this new area of health problems as a focus for public policy and programs. The standard social welfare and disability approaches

7 Julio Frenlc et al .• "Elements for a Theory of the Health Transition." Health Transition Review. 1:21-38. 1991.

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seem even more limited. The committee thus proposes to reexamine these areas through an interdisciplinary analysis of the sources, conse­quences, and forms of "social suffering. "8 In the context of comparative case studies, the project will seek to detennine the similarities and differences between diseases, mental health problems, and social forms of human distress and misery.

The development of a contextually defined, cultural model of social suffering could have immediate effects in reorganizing the public policy debate and in searching for ways to intervene in settings that have multiple problems. Such a model can include biomedical and mental health approaches, and at the very least would be complementary to them.9 But by redefining experience as an interpersonal process, the focus for intervention changes from the individual, which is frequently impractical in developing societies, to a family or network or community, a focus that is more likely to be both culturally acceptable and socially feasible in developing societies.

• Project 3, (Program I) Living and Dying by Violence, addres es the variations in the forms of violence encountered in the contemporary world and the health and developmental impacts of living and growing up amid prevalent violence. The project will consider the relationships between different kinds of violence in different settings. For example, in communities where lives are framed by chronic violence resulting from the u e of terror by the state or criminal gangs, does the institution of the family act as a buffer for the individual or does it also become steeped in violence?

Although there has been great concern with violence at the level of public policy and in the social science literature, the heterogeneity of the phenomena covered under the label of "violence" makes it

• Veena Das, "Moral Orientations to Suffering: Legitimation, Power, and Healing." In Lincoln Chen, Arthur Kleinman, and Nonna Ware, cds., Health and Social Change (in preparation); Arthur Kleinman and Joan Kleinman, " Suffering and its Profe ional Transfonnation: Toward an Ethnography of Interpersonal Experience." Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, IS:27S-302, 1991.

9 How biomedical , scientific discourse becomes eome bed- sometimes 10 the good, sometime not-in the experience of suffering in different culture is sufficiently central to the committee's concern that an additional ( ub)project is being contemplated on "Technology and the Rationalization of Suffering." See Margaret Lock, " New Japanese Mythologie : Faltering Discipline and the Ailing Housewife." Alnerican Ethnologist, IS :43-{)I , 1988.

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difficult to arrive at an informative analytical framework. 10 The frrst attempt of the project, then, will be to arrive at a mapping of the forms of violence which provide the social context in which large populations in the world-including segments of U.S. society-are compelled to live. Then the project will consider whether the norms through which the "normal life cycle" is defined vary in these social contexts. How do different categories of people living with violence come to defme what is at stake in the way they conduct their lives? Can we discern concerns that are universal even as we do justice to the immense variations in the local worlds that we describe? Are human concerns about violence translatable from one culture or sub-culture (e.g. Los Angeles) to another (e.g., Lebanon)? And finally, are our norms of health, well-being, and the normal course of human development capable of taking into account variations in what is at stake for individuals and communities? The basic premise is that such attempts to understand the local worlds of individuals and communities whose lives may be framed or destroyed by violence could have an important bearing on disciplinary definitions of the normal and pathological.

Program n: Cultural Constructions Of Human Development - Theories And Practices

One major impetus, and focus, for the committee's work is the emergence of a new interdisciplinary approach to the examination of ethnic and cultural sources of psychological diversity in self-organization, emotional and somatic functioning, moral evaluation, and cognitive functioning. Most generally, this represents a new approach to the comparative study of the way culture and mind construct each other.1l The overall aim of Program n is to understand why so many apparently straightforward questions about human psychological functioning over the life span (e.g., Are there basic emotions? Under what condi­tions does learning take place?) have not resulted in consensual answers among qualified scientists, and

10 Veena Das, ed., Mirrors of Violence. Delhi: Oxford University Pre , 1990.

II Richard Shweder, " Cultural Psychology: What Is It?" In James Stigler, Richard Shweder, and Gilbert Herdt, cds. , Cultural Psychology: Essays on Comparalive Human Development. University of Chicago Pres , 1990; "Cultural Psychology: Who Needs It?" Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 44, 1993 (in pre s).

VOLUME 46, NUMBER 4

why 0 many generalization about the p ychological functioning of one particular population (e.g., the contemporary secularized We tern urban, white, middle class) have not traveled well across historical, ociocultural, institutional, and social class lines.

The working hypothesis that might explain these di agreements and anomalie is tied to the construct of culture and the idea of cultural diversity, where culture is taken to be that set of everyday, taken-for-granted meanings that order a local social world, orienting children and parents to what is at stake in interpersonal experience and even to their own personal experience of emotions, cognitions, and behavior. In this view, cultural meanings organize proce ses of attention, perception, interpretation, and action; and they are incorporated locally into the proce ses of child development-that is, "enculturation" -and thereby come to affect psychological processe as much as habitual behavior. Yet cultural meanings are not uniform within a community. The experiences and actions of men and women, workers and professional , the rich and the poor, the religious and the secular, are based upon potentially different knowledge and moral systems. Individuals negotiate their ways throughout the life course as they understand it, ometirnes conte ting public meanings and values.

• The empirical starting point for Project 1 (Program m, Cultural Psychology: The Development of Self, Emotion, Morality, and Cognition, is newly emerging data that reveal ystematic differences among (sub)populations acro a variety of p ycho­logical functions, e.g., moral evaluation, processe of school-based as well as of "everyday" learning, and the organization of somatic and emotional respon es to distress. The committee's particular interest in these new data is twofold: First, what is the develop­mental course of such differences? And second, specifically how do they relate to gender, ethnicity, and race, and to within-community ettings such as neighborhoods and villages? From a conceptual and methodological standpoint, such differences call for systematic comparative, ethnographic study and explication in terms of local systems of meaning, value, and practice. Seeking to understand, in specific, comparative detail, how local systems have such influence, often under "contested" circum­stances, is the appropriate and important next step. 12

11 One necessary element in such an enterprise i the analysis of emerging reconceptualizations of the ways in which "enculturation"

DECEMBER 1992

While the particular foci, and forms, of thi project's work remain to be decided, several aspects of its agenda can be indicated here. Regarding the study of emotional functioning, the project agenda can be defmed by several questions. For example, what particular emotional meanings are constructed or brought "on-line" in different ethnic groups and social classes and in different regions of the world? To what extent is the experience of various tates of the world (e.g., "10 ,"" tatu degradation," "taboo violation") emotionalized (e.g., as adne ,anger, or gUilt) rather than omatized (e.g., as tiredness, che t pain, or appetite 10 ) in different groups, and places?13 Regarding the study of self and moral functioning, the agenda focu es on the specific parameters of variation in elf and moral functioning acro s ethnic, class, gender, and cultural group. Many of these need to be investigated, including, for example, the following: the degree to which individu­ali m and personal autonomy are seen as a virtue and a project for active ocialization and self-esteem; and the difference between independent (egocentric) and interdependent (sociocentric) conceptions of self. 14

The e issues, in tum, can be related to the que tion of how different phases of the life cycle (e.g., "old age" or "midlife") are conceived of in different culture and subcultures, in particular the extent to which developmental tasks and transitions are given meaning and value in more or Ie s independent individual, and more or les interdependent collec­tive, terms. IS More generally, regarding the tudy of development, the agenda of this project can be stated in terms of understanding how interpersonal relations from infancy on - including i ues of attachment and ocial and moral development-are embedded and

expre ed in the context of particular (sub)cultural

occurs. A cardinal feature of the view, drawn from different disci­plines, i their emphasi on the active, reciprocal , " transactional" character of the proce . See Jacqueline Goodnow, "The Socialization of Cognition: What' s Involved?" In Jame Stigler, et aI., eds., Cultural Psychology: Essays on Comparative Human Cognition . University of Chicago Pres , 1990; "U ing Sociology to Extend Psychological Accounts of Cognitive Development." Human Develop~nt, 33:81-107,1990.

13 Ronald Angel and Ellen Idler, "Somatization and Hypochondri i : Sociocultural Factors in Subjective Experience." Research in Community and Mental Health, 7:71-93, 1992.

14 Hazel Marku and Shinobu Kitayama, "Culture and the Self: Implications for Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation." Psychological Review, 98:224-253, 1991.

IS Margaret Lock, "Life-Cycle Transitions." Encyclopedia of Human Biology (Volume 4). Academic Pre ,1991.

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beliefs and practice, for example, narrative ex­change between children and parents or teachers.l6

• In Project 2 (Program D), Cultural Biology, the committee will explore the interactions of biology, culture, and society in producing diverse life cycles or life cour es. As mentioned above, the univer aliz­ing biomedical approach appears to have reached limits of u efulne s as health care expands acro s the globe and encounters marked variation in nonnal function, patterns of ri k, health-related behavior, cultural understandings, and environmental demands. Such circum tances make a concept of "cultural biology" appropriate, even nece sary.

This concept basically draws on biological and sociocultural evidence that the two domains are closely enme hed, and may be eparated only as an ab traction. Worldwide changes in the maturation rate of children are a prominent case in point. The pace of child growth and development is known to be clo ely linked to environmental "quality," and rapid socioeconomic tran fonnation have been paralleled by rapid acceleration in phy ical maturation. Environ­mental "quality" is, in turn, compo ed of patterns of nutrition, health, work load, and tre s that are strongly affected by ociocultural factors. Maturation rate, in tum, affects health care, education, and ocialization needs of young people that must be

addre sed by ociety. Thu ,even 0 "biological" an issue as child growth turns out to be an e entially bio ocial, biocultural phenomenon. 17

The work of the committee in thi area thu aims to sub tantiate and refine the emerging insight that biology and culture are mutually constitutive domains, and to pursue its implications for re earch and public policy. While the committee has yet to finalize specific foci for' this project, everal major issues are under di cu sion. One is the neglected question of how the changing rates of maturation caused by social tran fonnations interact with concomitant changes in ocialization practices, especially schooling. To focu this large question, one strong po sibility is to examine adolescent

16 Peggy Miller et aI., "Narrative Practices and the Social Construction of Self in Childhood." A1Mrican Ethnologist, 17:292-311, 1990.

17 Roben leVine, "Enculturation: A Biosociai Perspective on the Development of Self." In D. Cicchetti and M. Beeghly, cds., 77a~ &/f in Transition: Infancy to Childhood. University of Chicago Pre ,1990; Carol Worthman, "Bio-Cultural Interactions in Human Development." [n M. E. Perei and L. A. Fairbanks ed ., Juv~nil~ Primat~s: Lif~ History, Dev~lop~nI and B~havior, Oxford University Pre (in pre ).

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tran ition as bio ocial proce ,cultural construction, and social problem in diverse contemporary ocieties, including U.S. subcultures. 18 Another question concerns the bio ocial proce se that foster individual differences through construction of particular worlds in which individuals grow up. Sex-differentiated parental care and ocialization-predicated, in part, on parental "ethnotheorie "19-provide a ubiquitous opportunity for understanding the ways in which developmental pathway can be created within populations.

Whatever specific focus the committee come to give both the cultural biology and cultural p ychology projects, it is easy to envisage the broader implica­tion and application of thi program's guiding concepts and related re earch. As a prime example, comparative understanding of local variability in parental perception , belief , and practices regarding their offspring's health and development would provide a detailed perspective pre ently lacking in many international family planning and health care programs-regarding matters as particular as pattern of infant feeding, and hence mortality, and as broad as the unanticipated con equence for adole cent maturation of public health and other ocial change .

Seminar Series

In addition to its larger thematic program and their specific research projects, the committee will conduct a series of seminars on topic , both sub tantive and methodological, that pan programs and project and that give opportunities for cro -fertilization and data-sharing acro s all parts of the enterpri e. Two such eminars are being organized for the coming year.

• Seminar I, Pluralism and Standards of Compe­tence and Well-Being. Since the efforts of the committee are aimed, in part, at as isting in the development of a new, Ie parochial and culture­bound cience of health and human development, the is ue of diversity and its interpretation need to be

II Margaret Lock, "flawed Jewels and National Dis/Order: Narrative on Adolescent Di sent in Japan." ~ Journal of Psychohistory, 18: S07-S30, 1991. Carol Worthman, "Adolescents and the Embodiment of Culture." Presented to the Society for Psychological Anthropology Meeting, Chicago, October 1991.

19 Jacqueline Goodnow and Andrew Collin , Dev~lop~nI According to Par~nlS: 77a~ Natur~, Sourc~$, and Cons~qu~nc~s of Par~nls' Id~as .

Lawrence Erlbaum Associate, 1990.

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addressed directly. It is, in fact, the "plurali tic" premi e of the committee that there may be no ingle tandard population for re earch, which can then be

treated a the normative tandard for evaluating the competence and well-being of all human group . Thi i e pecially important given the emerging multicul­tural topography of contemporary American ociety, where there i no longer a clear moral con en u about uch que tions as whether children hould leep in the same beds with parent , and how physical puni hment hould be u ed in character development; about the characteristic of a "normal" family life; about the naming of omatic events (including illne ) or the role of ordeal , hard hip ,and uffering in the promotion of personal growth.

Diversity in normative beliefs and practice relevant to health behavior and human development outcome i thu at the heart of the committee' intellectual agenda.20 In order to further thi agenda the eminar-involving anthropologi ts, p ycholo­gists, and philo opher , among others-will initially conceptually crutinize various model of diversity. It will then undertake an analy is in which health and human development practice judged deficient or immoral in the subculture of re earchers are re­examined with an eye to the po sible valued end they promote in the context of other cultures or ubculture . The overall aim is to document and

explain multiple states of human fIouri hing and personal well-being in context.

• Seminar 2, Narratives and Numbers and the Social Construction of Science. In the ocial ciences erious discu sion of the relationship of qualitative

and quantitative re earch has, of course, persistently recurred. The question of which approach is the more appropriate to understanding human behavior and experience and ocial life frequently take the form of an antithe is: narratives or numbers. But the need for considering both forms of evidence, in productive combination, is now being recognized in a variety of di ciplines, from behavioral medicine, p ychiatric epidemiology and public health, through cognitive and developmental psychology, to hi tory, anthropol­ogy, sociology, and political science. The most

1O The broad i ue of how to reconcile the presence. and tudy. of human variety with our (pre ume(7) common humanity i clearly central to thi seminar. Here it i worth noting that. for the committee. the tudy of variety in psychological functioning doe not imply or entail a denial of pos ible universa1s. "Universali m without uniformity" might be the most meaningful way to frame the committee's point of view.

DECEMBER 1992

obviou in tance is in the u e of ca e tudie , which are analyzed as qualitative in tance of phenomena by orne di cipline (e.g., hi tory, clinical p ychiatry,

anthropology) and as quantitative material by others (e.g., epidemiology, ociology).

Beyond academic concerns, pragmatic i sue underline the importance of tackling the numbers­narrative divide. Much ocial policy and governmen­tal planning has foundered on di paritie between quantitative modeling (pre criptive policymaking) and "on-the-ground" re ults, most striking perhap in "third world" etting . Often re pon ible for this di parity are p ychological and ocial microproce e arising from meaning and value that are only acces ible, in depth, qualitatively. As one instance, population policy and family planning have repeat­edly run up again t locally diverse ocial dynamic that hape individual choice and action and re ult in unexpected outcome . The e experience heighten the demand for new analytic frameworks that incorporate a con tructive critique of the dichotomy between numbers and narrative (and, mo t broadly, rai e the i ue of the place of " cientific" di course in planning and policymaking).

At this juncture, then, it seems productive to proactively press toward pecific arenas in which a synthe i might be effected. Thi the committee plans to do-in collaboration with seminar participants drawn from ociology, psychology, epidemiology! biostatistics, and philo ophy of science, among others-by specifying questions regarding health and human development that could benefit from a numbers-and-narrative approach, and by eeking to identify or create the conceptual and methodological means to achieve synthesis, or at least complementar­ity, for tho e target que tions. 21

The Future

Having created an admittedly ambitious and broad blueprint of activitie , the committee i now engaged

2. The pertinent work of the SSRC's Committee for Research on the Urban Undercl will doubtle provide valuable ignposts along thi path. See aI Vincent Crapanzano. et a1 •• "Personal Testimony: Narra­tive of the Self in the Social Science and the Humanitie ." II~ms .

4O(2):2S-30. June 1986; Kenneth Prewitt. "Counting and Accountability: Numbers. the Social Sciences. and Democracy." Annual Report of the Pre ident. SSRC Annual R~porl. 1982-83. pp. 13-27; David Szanton. "The Humanitie and the Social Sciences: A Symposium." II~ms. 34(4):54-57. December 1980.

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in planning a eries of workshop , conferences and eminars for 1993. The e are intended as the es ential

bridge between the above framework of commitment and concerns and particular, medium-term projects of research (although the next year' essions will, it is hoped, also result in papers and publications valuable in their own right). Whether, in the longer term, and

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in concert with other cholars, the work of the committee does indeed help move at least egments of the ocial science into more varied and culturally textured terrain - whether we will all have good cau e to celebrate an "intellectual revolution" -is, though ubject to plural progno tications, naturally beyond

anyone' ken, culturally con tructed or otherwi e. •

VOLUME 46, NUMBER 4

Studying Inequality in American Cities by Alice O'Connor*

Inequality has become both more severe and more visible in American cities over the past decade. A dramatically illustrated by recent incidents of rebellion and civil unrest in Los Angeles, New York and other major cities, urban inequality is deeply embedded in the economy, geography, and racial and ethnic group relations of the inner cities. In work stemming from the activities of the Committee for Re earch on the Urban Underclass, the Council is currently involved in a collaborative re earch project to document and analyze how labor markets, residential patterns, and racial attitudes contribute to race and class polarization in metropolitan areas across the country.

The Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality is designed to investigate the interrelationships among labor market dynamics, residential segregation, and racial attitudes through linked employer and hou e­hold surveys in the Detroit, Los Angeles, Boston, and Atlanta metropolitan areas. With principal funding from the Russell Sage and Ford foundations, teams of researchers located at the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, the Univer ity of California, Los Angeles, Boston University and a consortium of scholars from the Atlanta area are working together to develop and conduct core household and employer surveys in their re pective metropolitan areas during 1992-93. An additional component, funded by the Russell Sage, Ford and Rockefeller foundations, involves researchers from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and the University of Chicago in face-to-face interviews with employers in all of the metropolitan areas .

Three components

More specifically, original data will be collected for the study in three major components:

(1) A survey of white, African American, Asian, and Latino households including questions on labor market experience, residential location decisions and

• Alice O'Connor, a hi torian , is a program director (with Manha A. Gephart) of the Committee for Research on the Urban Underclas .

DECEMBER 1992

experiences, and racial attitudes. A follow-up telephone survey focusing on job history, search behavior and resources, and other a pects of labor market experience, will be admini tered to a sub­sample of young adults in the hou ehold .

(2) A telephone survey of employers to obtain information about recruitment, hiring and promotion practices, types of skills required, firm location decisions, and other is ue of importance to the structure of job opportunities. A portion of the employer ample in each city will be drawn directly from the household urvey.

(3) A erie of open-ended, face-to-face interviews with a ub et of the e employer to explore their hiring practice and experiences, racial and gender attitudes, perceptions of the labor market, and how the e influence their policie and deci ion-making with regard to recruitment, location, and other factors relevant to labor market opportunitie .

Each of the e components will yield important data in its own right. By coordinating the three and integrating information from existing contextual source , the investigators expect to gain a unique, multi-dimensional view of the dynamic of urban ineqUality. Furthermore, as citie with varying experience of indu trial restructuring, and very different racial and ethnic compo itions, Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, and Lo Angeles offer excellent opportunitie for comparative analysi . The urvey amples are al 0 constructed to allow comparative

analysis along the lines of race, clas , and gender within and across the four citie .

Origin of the project

The multi-city project grew out of an initial collaboration between re earchers at the Univer ity of Michigan and UCLA to conduct a revi ed and expanded version of the 1976 Detroit Area Study (DAS), which focu ed on the causes of racial egregation by exploring the relative importance of

economic tatus, racial attitudes, knowledge of housing markets, and preferences of re idents. The findings from that study underscored the importance of white re istance to residential integration in explaining patterns of racial segregation. The objective of the MichiganlUCLA collaboration was to build on the original DAS to learn more about labor market as well as residential disparities, while al 0

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providing re earch training opportunities for graduate students at both in titutions.

With sponsorship from the Council's Committee for Research on the Urban Underclass, a planning conference was held in June 1991 to solicit advice from scholars engaged in research on labor markets, residential segregation, and racial attitudes. Among the participants were researchers who had recently conducted employer surveys, as well as scholars who were intere ted in conducting similar studies in other cities. As a result of this and sub equent planning meetings, interdi ciplinary research teams from several citie began to work as a network to plan the linked employerlhou ehold surveys that form the core of the multi-city tudy.

The surveys are being conducted in stage , beginning with Detroit in spring 1992. Other citie will follow in early 1993.

Among the key que tions informing the multi-city study research design are a series of explanation for disparities in labor market outcomes that have been generated by re earch on the urban underclass. Much of that research has focused on why low-income minorities-and specifically African American men-are di advantaged in the labor market. To what extent can thi be explained by a skill or spatial "mismatch" between minority applicants and potential employers? How has the hape of indu trial restructuring affected low-income minorities in different cities? How have employer practices, attitude , and perception affected job opportunities for minorities and women? What are the different "social re ources," such as job networks, that different group bring to the job earch? The multi-city study is designed to generate data that will help an wer the e que tions, and to permit compari-ons across race, gender, and class line.

In a broader ense, the multi-city study i de igned to move beyond one-dimensional explanations to the interaction among a variety of proce se that contrib­ute to disadvantage. The surveys al 0 feature innovative approaches to asking about uch i sue as job search behavior, residential preferences, inter­ethnic attitudes, race, and gender-based tereotypes. Moreover, due to the complementary de ign of the survey and face-to-face interview questions, the re earchers will be able to combine a variety of data source in an wering these questions.

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Role of the SSRC

Among the notable features of the multi-city study is the role the Council has played in its development. Since the outset, the Council has been closely involved in the re earch planning, recruitment, and coordination among the various research teams; it has acted as a liaison with foundations, and has organized an interdi ciplinary advisory committee to provide guidance and over ight through each stage of the research and analy is.· Throughout this proce s, staff has made a conscious effort to tap networks estab­lished as a re ult of the urban undercla program, and to ensure diversity in the race and gender as well as the disciplinary make-up of the cholars involved. In addition, the project has been con ciously set up to create re earch and training opportunitie for graduate tudent and younger cholars, who will be involved

not only in initial data-gathering and analy i , but al 0 in ongoing work with the rich data resources created by the study. To encourage u e of the survey data among young cholars, a workshop will be held during 1994, for which minoritie , women, and scholars from historically black colleges and universi­tie will be pecially recruited.

Among the product envisioned from the project are monographs, jointly-authored papers, conference , and po ibly an edited volume on new patterns of urban inequality and their policy implication . In addition to the cro -city analysis, each research team intends to produce city-specific studies focu ing on local concern . In planning the e and other products, the re earcher will pay clo e attention to the policy implications of their research, and will augment their di emination efforts to include briefing with tate and federal policymakers, community group, and a wide variety of local and national organizations with a concern for strengthening urban programs and policie . •

• Advisory Committee, Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality: Robin­son Holli ter, Chair, Swarthmore College; Jorge Olapa, University of Tex ,Austin; Mary Jackman, University of California, Davi ; Arne Kalleberg, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hili; FranIc Levy, Massacbusetts Institute of Technology; Seymour Sudman, University of D1i~i , Urbana-Cbampaign; Franklin Wil n, University of Wisconsin, Macllson.

VOLUME 46, NUMBER 4

Patterns in the Scholarly Use of Quotations by David L. Sills and Robert K. Merton*

In the course of preparing a revised introduction to the ju t-published paperback edition of Social Science Quotations,l we were reminded of our intere t in the work of a number of scholars who have taken the frequency and nature of quotations in ociety as objects of study in them elves. Some authors have de cribed tribal societies in which elders are entitled to quote ancient lore verbatim as a method of teaching the young and asserting their own authority. Others have noted di ciplinary differences in the use of quotations: the histonan J.H. Hexter, for example, has remarked that quotation is a luxury for physicists but "a necessity for historians, indispensable to historiography."2 And still others have argued for or against the u e of quotations on more or less principled reasons. "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know," the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emer on wrote in his jouroal,3 while the historian Vartan Gregorian, defending his extensive u e of quotations in a lecture, explained that "they ay it better than 1 do."4 The German literary and social critic Walter Benjamin was ob es ed with quotations and spent years collecting them; his ambivalence has been expre sed in a metaphor:

Walter Benjamin once dreamed of hiding behind a phalanx of quotations which, like highwaymen, would ambu h the pas ing reader and rob him of hi convictions.'

• David L. Sill , a sociologi t, i an executive associate emeritu of the Council and the editor of the lnt~rnatiofUll Encyclo~dia of /h~ Social Sci~nus. Robert K. Merton, also a sociologi t, i University Profe sor Emeritus at Columbia University and the author of-among many other books-On tM Should~rs of Giants, a cl ic hi tory of a single quota­

tion. • Social Sci~nc~ Quotations, a Council publication edited by Me rs.

Sills and Merton, was flfSt publi bed by the Macmillan Company in 1991 as Volume 19 of the lnt~rna/iofUll Enc}'clo~dia of tM Social Sci~nc~s .

The paperback trade edition was publi bed by Macmillan in October

1992. 1 J.H. Hexter. " Hi toriogtaphy: The Rhetoric of Hi tory." In volume 6

of the lnt~rnatiofUll EnC}'Clo~dia of /h~ Social Sci~nus. New York: Macmillan and Free Pre ,1968. p. 385.

3 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson in His Journals. Selected and edited by Joel Porte. Harvard University Pre ,1982. p. 401.

• Quoted in Th~ P~nTlS}'lvania Galtn~ [University of Penn ylvaniaj, November 1986, p. 18.

S In A.K. Ramanujan, " I There an Indian Way of Thinking? An

DECEMBER 1992

Here are orne illustrations suggesting how quotations intersect with the world of both scientific and literary cholarship; how they serve as in tru­ments for the intergenerational tran mission of knowledge; and how they are both u ed and misu ed in scholarly writing.6

Echoes

Echoes are sub equent uses of phrase , either deliberate or unintentional, acknowledged or unac­knowledged. Some become cultural heirlooms, pas ed from generation to generation.

Quotation: "The historian's one task is to tell the thing as it happened" (Lucian 2nd century). Echoes: (1) "This [hi tory] wants only to how what actually happened [wie es eigentlich gewesen]" (Leopold von Ranke 1824). (2) "[The hi torlan] may earch for, but he cannot find, the 'objective truth' of history, or write it, 'as it actually was' " (Charles A. Beard 1935).

Quotation: "Politic is fate" (Napoleon 1808). Echoes: (1) "One might say here, varying a well­known aying of the great Napoleon: 'Anatomy is de tiny' " (Freud 1912). (2) "Am 1 saying ... that 'anatomy is de tiny'? Yes" (Erik H. Erik on 1968).

Quotation: "One need not be a Cae ar truly to understand Cae ar." (Georg Simmel 1905). Echoes: (1) "As is often aid, "one need not be Cae ar to understand Cae ar" (Max Weber 1913). (2) "I can understand the acts and motive of Cae ar as well as of the cave-man" (Alfred Schutz 1942-1967).

Quotation: "Politics are a mooth file, which cuts gradually" (Montesquieu 1748). Echo: "Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards" (Max Weber 1919) .

Quotation: "The survival of the fitte t ... is that which Mr. Darwin has called 'natural election'" (Herbert Spencer 1864-1867). Echoes: (1) "The expres ion often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fitte t is more accurate" (Darwin [1859] 1869). (2) "The Principle of the Survival of the Fittest could be regarded as one vast generalisa­tion of the Ricardian economics" (Keynes 1926).

Informal Essay." In Milton Singer. editor, Nucl~ar Policy. Cul/ur~ and History. Center for International Studie • University of Chicago, 1988. p.

163. 6 The source of the quotation used in this article may be found in

either edition of Social Sci~nc~ Quo/ations.

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(3) "A few [fonns of legal action] are till-born, orne are terile, other live to ee their children and

children' children in high place . The truggle for life i keen among them and only the fitte t urvive" (Pollock & Maitland 1895). (4) "While the law [of competition] may be ometime hard for the individ­ual, it i be t for the race, becau e it in ure the urvival of the fitte t" (Andrew Carnegie 1899).

Parodies

Quotation: Herbert Spencer defined evolution a a proce in which "matter pas e from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity" (1862). Parody: Evolution is "a change from a no-howi h untalkaboutable all­alikene to a omehowi h and in general talk­aboutable not-all-alikene "(William Jame 1880).

Quotation: "What we cannot peak about we mu t pas over in ilence" (Wittgen tein 1921). Parody: "That which one would in inuate, thereof one mu t peak" (Erne t Gellner 1959).

Reversals

Quotation: "The more thing change, the more they remain the ame" (Alphon e Karr 1849). Reversal: "The more thing remain the ame, the more they change" (Paul F. Lazarsfeld 1962; Gregory Bate on 1972; Michael Silver tein 1979).

Quotation: "Nece ity i the mother of invention" (Plato). Reversal: "Invention i the mother of nece ity" (Thorstein Veblen 1914).

76\ITEMS

Obliteration by incorporation

Thi i a pattern of quotation in which a phra e has become 0 fully incorporated into canonical knowl­edge that the ource is generally not cited; that i , it i obliterated.'

Quotations: (1) "Knowledge i power" (Franci Bacon 1597). (2) "Climate of opinions" (10 eph Glanvill 1661). (3) "A government of laws and not of men" (John Adam 1774). (4) "Politic is the art of the po ible n (Otto von Bi marck 1867).

Misattribution

Quotations: (1) [Ockham' Razor] "What can be accounted for by fewer a urnption is explained in vain by more." (Often u ed by William of Ockham, but there i no evidence that he formulated it.) (2) [Gre ham' Law] "Bad money drive out good money." (Attributed to Thomas Gre ham, but there i no upporting evidence.) (3) "The be t government i that which govern lea t." (Variou ly attributed to Jefferson, Paine, Thoreau, and John Louis Sullivan.) (4) "There are three kind of lie : lies, damned lies, and tati tic ." (Mark Twain attributed thi to Oi raeli, but there i no evidence that Oi raeli ever made this tatement.) •

7 On the panern of "Obliteration by Incorporation (OBO." see Robert K. Merton. Social11r~ory and Social Strllctur~ . New York: Free Pre • 1968. pp. 27-29. 35-38; Robert K. Merton. "Foreword." in Eugene Garfield. Citation Ind~xing . New York: John Wiley. 1979. pp. 9-10; and Eugene Garfield. "The Obliteration Phenomenon in Science-and the Advantage of Being Obliterated!" Curr~nt Cont~nts. (5)12:5-7. December 22. 1975.

VOLUME 46. NUMBER 4

Current Activities at the Council

Comprehending State Sovereignty

The transnational and compara­tive research project on "Compre­hending State Sovereignty" held its first workshop on July 24-28, 1992 in Silverdale, Washington. The purpose of the workshop was to explore the meaning of sovereignty from an international relations and an area studies orientation. The workshop brought together junior scholars who are studying the issue of sovereignty from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including political science, geography, and historical sociology. Participants agreed to decouple notions of sovereignty from notions of statehood, although they recognized that many writers blur the distinction between the two and that in the speciftc historical context of Western Europe, sovereignty and statehood tend to be considered as fully coincident. Much of the discussion centered around theoretical issues, such as how we know whether an entity is sovereign, where sovereignty resides, and the nature of overeignty as a "social con­

struct." Although the participants represented a number of different methodological tendencies in the social sciences, the discussion helped to bridge these theoretical differences and provided a common ground for a substantive dialogue.

Workshop participants also considered a wide range of real-world cases which po e sharp questions for the blanket use of

DECEMBER 1992

the term to connote political authority in the international sphere. Detailed references were made to the former German Democratic Republic , Pan­Arabism in the Middle East, U.S. federalism in the period before 1860, and a number of other historical cases that help to highlight some of the ambiguities surrounding the concept of sovereignty. Several of the scholars were interested in detennining whether there is an alternative to sovereignty that can be imagined or constructed in the post-Cold War global environ­ment. Others sought to link questions of sovereignty to questions of social inequality and political coercion within the world-system.

Members of the project are currently preparing papers that will be discussed at a follow-up workshop to be held in the spring of 1993. Participants in the project include Thomas J. Biersteker, Brown University (senior advisor); Janice Thomson, University of Washington (co-coordinator); Cynthia Weber, Purdue University (co-coordina­tor); Michael Barnett, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Daniel Deudney, University of Pennsyl­vania; Roxanne Doty, Arizona State University; Naeem Inayatul­lab, Syracuse University; Alexander Murphy, University of Oregon; Ethan Nadelmann, Princeton University; David Strang, Cornell University; and Alexander Wendt, Yale Univer­sity. Kenton W. Worcester and Lori Helene Gronich of the Council served as staff.

Southeast Asian Literatures Institute

The modern literatures of Southeast Asia were the subject of a six-week summer institute organized by the Joint Committee on Southeast Asia and the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies of the University of Michigan. The institute, which was held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor from June 15-July 24, 1992, was conceived as the first step in a larger project intended to stimulate scholarship on neglected Southea t Asian humanities. Major funding was provided by the National Endow­ment for the Humanities, with additional funding from the Ford Foundation's Southeast Asia Program.

Institute faculty included nine scholars from Southeast Asia, Europe, and the United States. Participants included twenty-two scholars from North American colleges and universities, and four scholars from Southeast Asian institutions. Diverse interests and disciplines were represented, including anthropology, history, linguistics, political science, and economics, as well as literature, making for an unusually stimulat­ing mix of intellectual interests. All faculty members participated in the entire institute, enhancing perspectives acro s the region.

The institute focu ed on four countries of the region from which work in English translation is most available: Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. For each country, modern novels, short stories,

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poem , and plays were read and analyzed from a variety of perspective , in order to give in titute participants familiarity not only with the literary work themselve but al 0 their hi tory, production, and reception. The problem of tran lation wa a central theme, dealt with in a pecial et of clas e and

workshop led by Alton Becker of the University of Michigan. Other faculty included Hendrik Maier (State University of Leiden) and Ariel Heryanto (Satya Wacana University, Indone ia); Chetana Nagavajara (Silpakorn Univer ity, Thailand) and Su an Kepner (University of California, Berkeley); Nha Trang Pen inger (Friend World College, Japan) and Keith Taylor (Cornell Univer ity); Doreen Fernandez (Ateneo de Manila Univer ity, Philippine ) and Re il Mojare (University of San Carlo , Philippines). Nancy Florida (University of Michigan) erved as institute director.

The mo t immediate in titute outcome will be a collection of annotated yllabi for teaching the modem literatures of Indone ia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines, which hould be available from the SSRC in 1993. A book of e ays by in titute faculty members is al 0 planned, as i a collection of hort torie by women that extend to everal other countries in Southea t A ia. The Joint Committee on Southeast Asia hope that additional publication , conference panel , new tran lations, and reinvigo­rated teaching will contribute to the eriou tudy of these exciting but till largely inacce ible, often unknown, literature .

78\ITEM

Urban Underclass Committee Conferences

With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Committee for Re earch on the Urban Undercla held a confer­ence on June 8-10, 1992 at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, entitled "The Urban Underclas : Perspective from the Social Science ." Cochaired by J. Lawrence Aber,· Barnard College and Columbia Univer ity, and Sheldon Danziger,· Univer ity of Michigan, the conference provided a multi-di ciplinary group of cholars with the opportunity to di cu many aspects of persi tent and concen­trated urban poverty.

Scholars were asked to write review papers on the tudie produced by the committee' working group , which focu on four major area : the hi torical origins of the urban underclas ; labor market re earch; communi­ties, neighborhood , family proce e and individual develop­ment; and the social ecology of crime and drug . The e reviewers were instructed to critically review the existing re earch, use the materials as a pringboard for their own thoughts about the possibilities for new approache , and fmally, to comment on the "underclas " concept.

The review papers were pre ented in five thematic e sions over a two-day period.

The conference ended with a final ession that included comments

by Angela Blackwell, Urban Strategie Council in Oakland; Ruth Mas inga,· Casey Family

• Members of the Committee for Research on the Undcn:1

Program, Seattle; Lawrence Mead, New York University; Lee Rainwater, Harvard University; and William Julius Wil on,· University of Chicago. They di cu ed the broad conceptual i ue rai ed throughout the five e ion, asses ed various

theoretical frameworks for understanding persistent urban poverty, and rai ed .question about the connection between re earch and policy.

A major re ult of the confer­ence wa the recognition that poverty re earch must be more clo ely related to policy initia­tive , and that this might call for new way of organizing re earch. For example, policy experts need to be brought into the re earch network earlier on, in order to inform the que tions that re-earchers a k and the direction

that poverty re earch takes. The Committee for Re earch on the Urban Underclass is currently planning a conference, to be held ometime next year, that will

focu directly on policy is ues. The committee also held its

third annual Undergraduate Re earch Fellows Conference on September 17-19, 1992 at Long I land University (Brooklyn Campu ). The conference was chaired by Jan Ro enberg (Department of Sociology, LIU), a 1990 and 1992 recipient of the undergraduate re earch award. Centered on mentoring and training undergraduates for future careers in the ocial sciences, the program has funded approxi­mately 75 undergraduates over the last three years.

The objective of the conference wa to give students the opportu­nity to hare their re earch with their peers and to engage in

VOLUME 46, NUMBER 4

networking with faculty and students from allover the United States.

The keynote address, "Nurtur­ing Young Black Males: Chal­lenges to Agencies, Programs and Social Policy," was delivered by Ronald Mincy, The Urban Institute, Washington, D.C. Four thematic se sions, each compri ed of a poster pre entation and roundtable discussion, covered a wide range of issues dealing with persistent urban poverty, includ­ing homelessness, community development, the role of the family, and policy strategies.

Debate centered around a number of theoretical que tions: Does the language of the underclass debate help or hinder our understanding of the realities of urban poverty? What are the responsibilities of the re earcher to the population being re­searched, to social cience research in general, and to the realm of policy? How do behavioral and structural interpre­tations of the underclass interact with one another?

Overall, the conference provided the e future social scientists with a clearer vi ion of the work ahead in the field of urban poverty.

DECEMBER 1992

New Staff Appointment

Sheila A. Smith has recently joined the Council as program officer for the Abe Fellowship Program, which provides support for research on global issue affecting Japan and the United States. Ms. Smith conducted her doctoral dis ertation research on Japane e security policy and was a vi iting research fellow at the Institute of Interdi ciplinary Social Science at the Univer ity of Tokyo.

M . Smith's research focu es on Japan' ecurity policy, and examine the influence of the Cold War on the development of the po twar Japane e military. While in Japan, Ms. Smith was a re earch fellow at the Re earch Institute on Peace and Security and at the Japan Institute of International Affairs. She expect to receive her Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Columbia University in the pring of 1993. Ms. Smith received her M.A. (1986) and M.Phil. (1988) in political cience, as well as her B.A. (1984), with a double major in political cience and East A ian Languages and Culture, from Columbia Univer ity.

Her re earch intere ts include international relations, interna-

tional security issues, and contemporary Japan. Ms. Smith has worked for the SSRC on the Abe Fellowship program on a part-time basis since the pro­gram's inception in 1991.

David L. Sills Receives ASA Award

The American Sociological A sociation's Section on Environ­ment and Technology presented the following award to David L. Sills, executive associate emeritus of the Council, in August 1992:

Award for Distinguished Contribution, 1992, presented to David L. Sills: In recognition of his effort to create and su tain intellectual and political legiti­macy in a variety of foundations and professional as ociations for erious environmental cholarship

by sociologi ts. In addition to his own ynthe is about environmen­tal movements, his coordination of social science work on the accident at Three Mile Island offered unique insight into the nuclear indu try and related energy facilitie . It al 0 encour­aged further activitie by social scienti t in energy policy arenas previou ly dominated by engi­neers and economi ts.

-Allan Schnaiberg, Chair

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Recent Council Publications

The European Experience of Declining Fertility: A Quiet Revolution, 18S~1970, edited by John R. Gillis, Loui e A. Tilly, and David Levine. Spon­sored by the Joint Committee on We tern Europe, with support from the Council of European Studie , the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1992. 338 pages.

Fertility is often een as a "natural" phenomena, and fertility decline is generally taken for granted as an unexamined feature of modem ociety, requiring no further explanation. Although fertility rates declined dramatically across Europe during the econd half of the nineteenth century, historians and social scientists have paid little attention to the causes or consequence of this "quiet revolution." Yet few change have affected so many people' lives so fundamentally. Fertility decline not only altered private life, but it had an immen e impact on European politics and society.

The e ays collected in this volume explore how ordinary Europeans experienced falling fertility, how family limitation practices entered their live , and what effect gender, clas , and age relations had on their choices about when and how to top having larger numbers of children. The authors, drawn from a variety of scholarly disciplines, approach the subject with a range of methodologie

8O\ ITEMS

that highlight the impact of fertility decline on per onal and familial life as well as on patterns of migration, economic growth, public policy, military conflict, and working-clas militancy. Drawing on case studies of England, Germany, Italy, and France, the authors how that, while Europe's fall in fertility was universal, it was by no means uniform in cau e or effect.

The authors also critically evaluate the contribution of demographers, who have carefully measured changes in population growth but who have tended to base their analy e on inferences from statistical correlation . This has meant that the intentional foundations of human behavior has been neglected in favor of explanations grounded in broad, transnational and tran cultural constructs uch as indu trializa­tion, urbanization, and modern­ization. One of the important features of this volume is that it adds a vital human dimen ion to the statistics of population change.

With this volume the editors hope to open up new area for scholarly re earch-the integra­tion of demographic change and historical analysis. As they acknowledge in their introduction, many dimensions of fertility decline are not directly addressed in their volume, such as the relation hip of fertility to developments in medicine, to changing conceptions of the body, or to the history of housing. At the same time, the very range of issues that are brought into focus in this collection help to under-

score the central importance of fertility to wider social, eco­nomic, and political trends.

John R. Gillis is professor of history at Rutgers University. Louise A. Tilly is profes or of history and sociology, and chair of the Committee on Historical Studies, at the New School for Social Re earch. David Levine is a profe or of history at the Ontario Institute for Studie in Education.

Urban Underclass Database, compiled by John D. Kasarda. A con olidated public use databa e of the nation ' s 100 large t citie . Spon ored by the Committee for Re earch on the Urban Under­class. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, Kenan In titute of Private Enterprise, 1992. Available in machine-readable format for mM mainframe, V AX and PC users; data format is SAS.

The Urban Underclass Database is a panel study with data over a 30-year period, and contain ome 5,800 economic, social, demo­graphic, crime, and health indicators for metropolitan central cities and their poverty sub-areas.

The variables have been drawn or computed from 28 different ource including the Bureau of

the Censu , the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Center for Health Stati tics, the Department of Hou ing and Urban Development, and the Centers for Disease Control, as well as from cholarly reports.

VOLUME 46, NUMBER 4

The database is designed to provide scholars with infonnation on issues central to underclass research, and includes key indicators on changes in labor market opportunities, patterns of residential segregation, household composition, degree of poverty concentration, health status, crime, and homelessness over

recent decades. The study also contains a large number of measures for poverty sub-areas in 1960, 1970, and 1980, and for underclass areas in 1970 and 1980. The sub-area files will be updated as 1990 census tract data are released.

Scholars and policy makers will find the database valuable for

research, policy analysis, program planning, and teaching about the changing state of America's largest cities and their residents.

John D. Kasarda, a sociologist, is director of the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Census Bureau's 1993 Annual Research Conference

The Cen u Bureau's 1993 Annual Research Conference (ARC 1993) will be held March 21- 24, 1993, at the Doubletree Hotel in Arlington, Virginia, half a mile from National Airport and three blocks from Metro. ARC 1993 will comprise a mix of topic ucb as de ign of urvey que tionnaire , quality measurement for automated urveys, effects of automation on the urvey workforce, e timation technique for mall ubdomains, behavioral researcb on contextual effects, modeling social and economic pbenomena, nonre ponse in urveys and cen uses, coverage i ue in cen use and surveys, researcb i ue for year 2000 cen u planning, and more. Contact Maxine Anderson-Brown, Conference Coordinator, U.S. Bureau of the Cen us, Washington, D.C. 20233-0001

DECEMBER 1992 ITEMS/ Sl

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

60S 1lIIRD AVENUE. NEW YORK. NY 101S8

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TM COlUlCil was incorporated in the State 0/ Illinois. lHcember 27. 1924. for the purpose 0/ advancing research in the social sciences. NongoveT7IIMntal and interdisciplinory in noture. the COlUlCil appoints comminees 0/ scholars which seek to achieve the COIUlCil'S purpose through the generation of new ideas and the training 0/ scholars. TM activities 0/ the COlUlCil are supported primarily by grants from private /olUldolions and goveT7IIMnt agencies.

Directors. 1991-92: PAUL B. BALTES. Max Planck Institute for Human Development and EdUCltion (Berlin); LAWRENCE D. BolO. University of California. Los Angeles; ROBERT M. CoEN. Northwestern University; DAVID L. FEATHERNAN. Social Science Research Council; ALBERT fisHLOW. University of California. Berkeley; BAUoUA HEv s. New York University; NAOAVO HOMMA. Tokyo Woman's Ouistian University; DAVID MAONUSSO • Stockholm University; EMILV MAtnN. 1be Johns Hopkins University; JOEL SHEU.£a. University of Texas. Austin; BtaTON H. SINOER. Yale University; MAtTA TtENDA. University of Chicago; DAVID W AID. University of Wisconsin. Madison; ROBERT B. ZAJONC. University of Michigan.

Officers and Staff: DAVID L. FEATHERMAN. President; STAN LEV J. HEOINIOTHAM. Vice President; RONALO J. PELECIt. Vice President/or Finonce; GLOIUA KmCHHI!lMER. Editor; DoIUE SINOCCHI. Human Resources Director; BAUoUA A. BIANCO. SUSAN BaoNSON. Muv·LEA Cox. CUV FLuER. MAtTHA A. GEPHUT. LoIU HELENE GRON1CH. EIUC HEasHBEItO. STEVEN HEVDEMANN. FUNK KEssEL. MIMI M. KIM. DAVID C. MAJOR. Ftux V. MATOS RODJttOUEZ. MAtv BVRNE McDoNNELL. JOHN H. MOLLENKOPF. AuCE O·CoNNOR. WLODZlMlEltZ OoAsA. ELLEN PEltEcMAN. SHEILA A. SMITH. M. PltJSClLLA STONE. TOBY AuCE VOUCMAN. KENTON W. WORCESTER.

1be Social Science Research Council supports the prognm of the Commi ioo 011 Preservatioo and Access and is represented 011 the National Advisory Council on Preservation. 1be paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Informatioo Sciences-Pennanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1984. 1be infinity symbol placed in a circle indicates compliance with this standard.

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VOLUME 46, NUMBER 4