Seeing Sexuality

Author(s):  
Stephen M. Engel

This chapter lays out the parameters of one developmental approach to sexuality politics in the United States. Whereas much scholarship in LGBTQ politics has focused on public opinion, interest groups, and social movement behavior, this chapter focuses on citizenship as the primary unit of analysis since citizenship, as it connotes a relationship between the individual and the state in which the latter acknowledges the former to fall within its responsibility to regulate and protect, brings the connection between state development and sexual identity to the fore. State institutions have recognized the LGBTQ citizen in distinct ways, often simultaneously, creating frictions among multiple regulatory orders and laws and creating additional opportunity and motivation for social change. The chapter details five such modalities of state recognition and regulation suggesting that the nature of sexual citizenship is contingent on the particular order of authority with which the LGBTQ individual engages.

1974 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harvey F. Kline

The use of “group” as a unit of analysis has a long tradition in political science. Some proponents of this approach (Bentley, 1908; Hagan, 1966) define group in such a broad way as to simplify the study of politics little if any. An empirically more useful approach to the study of groups is that pursued by David Truman (1955), who concentrates his attention on interest groups. Although he never states that all of the politics of the United States can be understood through the study of interest groups, it is clear that Truman considers the study of such groups to be a central aspect and, in effect, hypothesizes that such would be the case in any political system. Whether this is in fact the case can be tested by cross-national studies. In one such study, Joseph La Palombara (1960) concluded that the important aspects of Italian politics are not explained satisfactorily by studying organized interest groups. This is in direct contradiction to Truman's implicit hypothesis, which would be refuted if numerous studies in other political systems concluded as La Palombara's did.


2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 1031-1039 ◽  
Author(s):  
William C Cockerham

This paper examines recent trends in theory in health sociology in the United States and finds that the use of theory is flourishing. The central thesis is that the field has reached a mature state and is in the early stage of a paradigm shift away from a past focus on methodological individualism (in which the individual is the primary unit of analysis) toward a growing utilization of theories with a structural orientation This outcome is materially aided by research methods (e.g. hierarchal linear modeling, biomarkers) providing measures of structural effects on the health of the individual that were often absent or underdeveloped in the past. Structure needs to be accounted for in any social endeavor and contemporary medical sociology appears to be doing precisely that as part of the next stage of its evolution. The recent contributions to theory in the sociology of health discussed in this paper are fundamental cause, medicalization, social capital, neighborhood disadvantage, and health lifestyle theories.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Pierson ◽  
Eric Schickler

We present a “developmental” approach to understanding why rising polarization in the United States has not been self-correcting but instead continues to intensify. Under specified conditions, initial increases in polarization may change the meso-environment, including such features as state parties, the structure of media, and the configuration of interest groups. These shifts can in turn influence other aspects of politics, leading to a further intensification of polarization. This analysis has four important benefits: ( a) It directs our attention to the meso-institutional environment of the American polity; ( b) it clarifies the features of the polity that have traditionally limited the extent and duration of polarization, and the reasons why their contemporary impact may be attenuated; ( c) it helps us analyze asymmetrical, or party-specific, aspects of polarization; and ( d) it provides an analytic foundation that connects discussions of American politics to the comparative politics literature on democratic backsliding.


2015 ◽  
Vol 36-37 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-183
Author(s):  
Paul Taylor

John Rae, a Scottish antiquarian collector and spirit merchant, played a highly prominent role in the local natural history societies and exhibitions of nineteenth-century Aberdeen. While he modestly described his collection of archaeological lithics and other artefacts, principally drawn from Aberdeenshire but including some items from as far afield as the United States, as a mere ‘routh o’ auld nick-nackets' (abundance of old knick-knacks), a contemporary singled it out as ‘the best known in private hands' (Daily Free Press 4/5/91). After Rae's death, Glasgow Museums, National Museums Scotland, the University of Aberdeen Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, as well as numerous individual private collectors, purchased items from the collection. Making use of historical and archive materials to explore the individual biography of Rae and his collection, this article examines how Rae's collecting and other antiquarian activities represent and mirror wider developments in both the ‘amateur’ antiquarianism carried out by Rae and his fellow collectors for reasons of self-improvement and moral education, and the ‘professional’ antiquarianism of the museums which purchased his artefacts. Considered in its wider nineteenth-century context, this is a representative case study of the early development of archaeology in the wider intellectual, scientific and social context of the era.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Shubha Kamala Prasad ◽  
Filip Savatic

Why do some immigrant diasporas in the United States (U.S.) establish foreign policy interest groups while others do not? While scholars have demonstrated that diasporic interest groups often successfully influence U.S. foreign policy, we take a step back to ask why only certain diasporas attempt to do so in the first place. We argue that two factors increase the likelihood of diaspora mobilization: a community’s experience with democratic governance and conflict in its country of origin. We posit that these conditions make it more likely that political entrepreneurs emerge to serve as catalysts for top-down mobilization. To test our hypotheses, we collect and analyze novel data on diasporic interest groups as well as the characteristics of their respective countries of origin. In turn, we conduct the first in-depth case studies of the historical and contemporary Indian-American lobbies, using original archival and interview evidence.


1980 ◽  
Vol 1 (8) ◽  
pp. 3-6
Author(s):  
George J. Annas

In an extraordinary and highly controversial 5-4 decision, the United States Supreme Court decided on June 30, 1980, that the United States Constitution does not require either the federal government or the individual states to fund medically necessary abortions for poor women who qualify for Medicaid.At issue in this case is the constitutionality of the Hyde Amendment. The applicable 1980 version provides:|N]one of the funds provided by this joint resolution shall be used to perform abortions except where the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term; or except for such medical procedures necessary for the victims of rape or incest when such rape or incest has been reported promptly to a law enforcement agency or public health service, (emphasis supplied)


2020 ◽  
pp. 000313482096005
Author(s):  
Michael Sarap ◽  
Julie Conyers ◽  
Crystal Cunningham ◽  
Adam Deutchman ◽  
Glenn Levine ◽  
...  

Rural surgeons from disparate areas of the United States report on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in their communities as the virus has spread across the country. The pandemic has brought significant changes to the professional, economic, and social lives of the individual surgeons and their communities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 96 (2) ◽  
pp. 419-437
Author(s):  
Xiangfeng Yang

Abstract Ample evidence exists that China was caught off guard by the Trump administration's onslaught of punishing acts—the trade war being a prime, but far from the only, example. This article, in addition to contextualizing their earlier optimism about the relations with the United States under President Trump, examines why Chinese leaders and analysts were surprised by the turn of events. It argues that three main factors contributed to the lapse of judgment. First, Chinese officials and analysts grossly misunderstood Donald Trump the individual. By overemphasizing his pragmatism while downplaying his unpredictability, they ended up underprepared for the policies he unleashed. Second, some ingrained Chinese beliefs, manifested in the analogies of the pendulum swing and the ‘bickering couple’, as well as the narrative of the ‘ballast’, lulled officials and scholars into undue optimism about the stability of the broader relationship. Third, analytical and methodological problems as well as political considerations prevented them from fully grasping the strategic shift against China in the US.


1995 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debora Kamrat-Lang

The ArgumentAmerican eugenics developed out of a cultural tradition independent of medicine. However, the eugenicist Harry Hamilton Laughlin and some legal experts involved in eugenic practice in the United States used medical language in discussing and evaluating enforced eugenic sterilizations. They built on medicine as a model for healing, while at the same time playing down medicine's concern with its traditional client: the individual patient. Laughlin's attitude toward medicine was ambivalent because he wanted expert eugenicists, rather than medical experts, to control eugenic practice. In contrast, legal experts saw eugenics as an integral part of medicine, though one expert challenged basing the judicial system on eugenically minded medicine. All in all, the medicalization of American eugenics involved expanding the scope of medicine to include the mutilation of individuals for the benefit of society. The judicial system was medicalized in that an expanded medicine became the basis of legislation in the thirty states that permitted eugenic sterilizations


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 51 (6) ◽  
pp. 1095-1099
Author(s):  
Charles U. Lowe ◽  
Gilbert B. Forbes ◽  
Stanley Garn ◽  
George M. Owen ◽  
Nathan J. Smith ◽  
...  

In 1967 the 90th Congress of the United States attached an amendment to the Partnership for Health Act requiring the Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to undertake a survey of "the incidence and location of serious hunger and malnutrition–in the United States." In response to the legislative mandate the Ten-State Nutrition Survey was conducted during the years 1968 through 1970. The sample was selected from urban and rural families living in the following ten states: New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, California, Washington, Kentucky, West Virginia, Louisiana, Texas, and South Carolina. The families selected were those living in some of the census enumeration districts that made up the lowest economic quartiles of their respective states at the time of the 1960 census. During the eight years after the 1960 census the social and economic characteristics found in some of the individual enumeration districts had changed, so that there was a significant numer of families in the surveys with incomes well above the lowest income quartile. Thus, it was possible in analyzing results to make some comparisons on an economic basis. Thirty thousand families were identified in the selection process; 23,846 of these participated in the survey. Data regarding more than 80,000 individuals were obtained through interviews and 40,847 of these individuals were examined. The survey included the following: extensive demographic information on each of the participating families; information regarding food utilization of the family; a 24-hour dietary recall for infants up to 36 months of age, children 10 to 16 years of age, pregnant and lactating women, and individuals over 60 years of age.


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