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Publications (73)
This study explores the extent to which the spate of church burnings that occurred throughout the South during the 1990s may have been influenced by local religious ecologies, diverse forms of civic engagement, and broader community support for racial animus that we call local hate cultures (e.g., prior hate crime incidents, hate group presence). W...
The proper operationalization of urban and rural is extremely important to our understanding of the impacts of specific ecological context on human behavior. However, even with the ever-improving definitional advancements, our understanding of these community-level concepts, in regards to a comprehensive geographic space, is still somewhat unsatisf...
Introduction: Chapter 1. Recapturing Spatial Approaches to Social Science Problems: Frank M. Howell, Jeremy R. Porter and Stephen Mathews.- Part I. Theory, Concept, and Measures: Chapter 2. Challenges of Spatial Thinking: John R. Logan, Brown University.- Chapter 3. Extending the Boundaries of Place: Carlos Siordia and Stephen A. Matthews.- Chapter...
The goal of this book is to advance thinking in the specialty of spatial demography through enhancing middle range theory. This concluding chapter revisits each of the preceding chapters with a focus on their contribution to our overall goal of drawing attention to the application of middle range theory in the area of spatial demography. Following...
A significant theme in demographic studies has been the population redistribution patterns among metropolitan centers, non-metropolitan areas surrounding them, and the so-called hinterlands beyond. Virtually all of this research has used the traditional metropolitan vs. non-metropolitan classification scheme. However, this classification system has...
In Geographical Sociology, Porter and Howell (2012) describe a minimal set of criteria that a spatial informed analysis should contain. Specifically they argued that spatial analysis should be spatial in …
Adolescent obesity has increased threefold in the U.S. during the last three decades. While this trend is well-known, relatively little is known about differences in obesity across the rural-urban continuum. This research addresses that gap by testing for such a relationship across time while accounting for variations in familial socioeconomic stat...
Brown v. Board of Education is considered a crowning achievement of racial equality yet, to date, there remains marked racial segregation in U.S. public schools. One explanation for continuing segregation lies in the reproduction of racialized institutions initially designed to preserve the color line. In this article, we examine the persistence of...
Much of the environmental sociology literature calls for economic development to lead to environmental destruction, but growing bodies of work on "ecological modernization" and "environmental Kuznets curves" (EKCs) argue that, beyond a certain point, socioeconomic development can lead to environmental improvement. A third hypothesis (Boyce) argues...
Ecological footprint analysis has become a popular method for exposing excess appropriation of limited biophysical resources on a global scale. Here we test the thesis that these discrepancies are both among countries and within the sub-regions of a country. We use U.S. county-level human footprint estimates, consumer expenditure information, and l...
Biomass is one alternative energy source that is currently being investigated to combat the growing U.S. dependence on foreign oil. In this study, we explore where traditional farming practices and metropolitan influence will compete for land use against farmland located in optimal biomass crop production zones. To date, no consideration of the imp...
In this chapter we focus on a few of the primary spatial concepts that link individuals and their aggregates to one another in space. We also introduce some of the popular statistical methods for taking these spatial relationships into account in sociological research. Here we move beyond the description of relationships to a discussion of geo-soci...
While the likes of Von Thunen and Christaller laid the groundwork for what would eventually develop into an important spatial theory within the social sciences, they were primarily concerned with economics and therefore tended to look past the role of non-economic social relationships. Around the same time, social scientists began building similar...
In this chapter we will provide examples of data that has been linked to GIS or appended to ecological characteristics and undertake the analyses previously introduced. Here we present an example of the relationship between poverty, stress levels, and self-rated health within a hierarchical linear model (HLM) context. In this analysis we show that...
Human ecology is largely interested in the social organization of populations and the effects of environment and larger social structure on individuals within a given macro context. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, sociologists have become enamored with the effects of the environment through the application of statistical methods which t...
A number of location-specific spatial theories of human and societal organization have developed over the past century. Theories of location and population organization have long been formally documented, complete with supporting empirical facts and well-developed theoretical propositions from a number of related disciplines. In some of the earlies...
This chapter illustrates how geographic information systems (GIS) can complement micro-level survey research data. We provide several examples of the use of spatial technology in surveys, introduce some GIS terminology needed by survey researchers, and discuss issues in linking contextual and survey data using GIS methods. We identify some key barr...
In the past two decades, much more attention has been given the effects of social context and ecology concerning many of the core interests in sociological research. Spearheading this recent interest is the technological advancement in computational power and sophistication that is now widely available to most researchers. However, as the ability t...
Increased attention has been given to the relationship between geographic context and the ecological settings in which social process related to groups and individuals occur. This emphasis has been inherently geographic in focus. However, while the spatially-centered methodological tools for such analyses are relatively new in their development, sp...
This final chapter of the book ties together the historically rich developments in spatial thinking to contemporary spatially-centered analytic methods. As the preceding chapters have described, the history of ecological analysis in the field of sociology is one that goes back over a century. It is arguably also the core foundation from which Ameri...
The discipline of Sociology has a rich history of including spatial context in the analysis of social issues. Much of this history has revolved around the development and application of spatial theory aimed at understanding the geographic distribution of social problems, the organization of communities, and the relationship between society and the...
The study of civic activity has become a central focus for many social scientists over the past decade, generating considerable research and debate. Previous studies have largely overlooked the role of youth socialization into civic life, most notably in the settings of home and school. Further, differences along gender lines in civic capacity have...
The recent and projected status of energy production and consumption in the United States, resulting in substantial dependencies upon foreign oil, has continued to provide pressure on domestic energy security. All told, bio-energy systems, and biomass crop production in particular, will be important elements of national security, economic vitality,...
Abstract In recent years, church burnings in the South have attracted a great deal of attention. Many commentators have charged that they are a product of strained race relations throughout the South, and particularly of severe racial tensions in Southern rural areas. In this study we evaluate these claims. We begin by mapping the spatial coordinat...
Please click here to download the map associated with this article.The recent and projected status of energy production and consumption in the U.S., resulting in substantial dependencies upon foreign oil, has continued to provide pressure on domestic energy security. All told, bio-energy systems, and biomass crop production in particular, will be i...
In recent decades, population dynamics, have made definitions of what localities are rural or urban somewhat unclear. The
vast majority of demographic work has simply used metropolitan classifications with various forms of a non-metropolitan residual
(e.g., adjacent to metro versus non-adjacent). The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) periodical...
Nonrecursive models which have been used to assess the potentially reciprocal relationship between fear of crime and handgun ownership may suffer on two accounts: (a) the use of “weak” instrumental variables: and (b) the measurement of household (versus personal) handgun ownership. Data from the 1980 NORC General Social Survey are used in this stud...
For the past decade, the study of social capital and civic involvement has been of primary importance to sociologists and other social scientists. Concern over perceived declines in civic participation has troubled many, since such participation has been linked to a variety of positive outcomes both for the individual and the broader social groups...
It has been well documented that women tend to work closer to home than men. One interpretation of this finding has been that women face more spatially constrained labor markets than men, and these constraints are thought to be a factor in the gender gap in earnings. A recent study of Tel Aviv, Israel, by Moshe Semyonov and Noah Lewin-Epstein (1991...
Abstract Metropolitan encroachment into surrounding countrysides has had noticeable consequences on American agriculture. This research examines gross farm sales in five categories of crops and five categories of livestock and poultry by county proximity to metropolitan areas. A seven-category classification of counties was derived from the 1983 an...
In recent years, church burnings in the South have attracted a great deal of attention. Many commentators have charged that they are a product of strained race relations throughout the South, and particularly of severe racial tensions in Southern rural areas. In this study we evaluate these claims. We begin by mapping the spatial coordinates of rec...
The recent growth and restructuring of the swine industry in the state of Mississippi has raised various environmental and socioeconomic concerns. We spatially examined the location and attributes of 67 industrial hog operations to determine if African American and low-income communities have a high prevalence of industrial hog operations located n...
The 1996 Welfare Reform Act (PRWORA) institutes a maximum sixty-month "life-time" benefit window for TANF block-grant recipients, involving TANF beneficiaries actually finding paid employment somewhere in the extant labor force. We believe that this welfare-to-work transition constitutes the most important element of the welfare reform initiative a...
This report reviews the research on rural differentiation and the history of major federal rural development policy initiatives to compensate for social deficits experienced by rural residents. We empirically examine the extent and process by which rural origins may affect socioeconomic attainments in adulthood and how these "costs" may have change...
The linkages among several popular theories in the delinquency literature—social disorganization, strain, and social control theory—as well as their effects on delinquent behavior are investigated in this study. Social disorganization has been primarily studied with aggregate‐level data in prior work, and we note certain theoretical and empirical i...
The linkages among several popular theories in the delinquency literature-social disorganization, strain, and social control theory-as well as their effects on delinquent behavior are investigated in this study. Social disorganization has been primarily studied with aggregate-level data in prior work, and we note certain theoretical and empirical i...
Abstract Multiple indicators of the structure of agriculture were extracted from the U.S. Census of Agriculture for the years 1982, 1987, and 1992, and used to extend previous work by Wimberley (1987). Exploratory factor analysis results for each year yielded three dimensions of agri-structure: corporate-commercial, farming-firm, and small-farm. Fa...
In this study, we describe and partially explain patterns of network participation among family, friends, and others by focusing on social network usage during periods of stress. Using a national sample of adults (the National Opinion Research Center's General Social Surveys), we describe patterns of whom individuals would turn to for assistance du...
Popular sport culture, conventional social wisdom and promotional ideology by athletic associations suggest that participation in high school varsity sports programs has positive effects on prosocial personality traits (i.e., sport “builds character”). While it is an open ended process to specify which facets of personality are affected during the...
We use LISREL to assess the measurement properties of a unidimensional indicator of subjective marital solidarity based on four questionnaire items. A rigorously assessed measure containing more than one, yet relatively few items, is solely needed for research on marriage; such a measure can combine high reliability with low cost. Using 1971 and 19...
There is a significant investment by schools and local communities in the athletic programs offered by secondary schools. A growing issue is, to what extent does the functioning of these sports programs coincide with the formal academic goals of the school? Using a structural equations model, we examine one theme within this major issue by estimati...
The parallel developments of sophisticated voice and data telephone technology and relatively low-cost microcomputers have created a situation in 1986 by which "knowledge workers," like the evaluation research community, can engage in large-scale tele communication on a nationwide scale. How the social organization of information and interpersonal...
This study tests the degree to which previous sport involvement (PSI) and attitudes toward PSI (APSI) influence present attitudes toward running (ARUN) and commitment to and skill in running. A questionnaire measuring these variables was mailed to a random sample of 210 participants drawn from a local 5-mile race; it was returned by 103 males (60%)...
Recent work using a dual-economy approach to labor markets has documented heterogeneities in descriptive profiles of workers and returns to human capital by core-periphery sector of the economy. However, an important need that has gone relatively uninformed is an understanding of movement across sectors of the economy as a dimension of individual c...
This research summary expands previous studies of the consequences of interscholastic athletic participation for socioeconomic attainment. Data from five southern states were used for applying multiple regression techniques to estimate athletic participation effects. The findings suggest that white males receive substantial payoffs from athletic pa...
Many writers implicate perceptions of the opportunity structure in the labor market as essential components of the formation, stability, and enactment of socioeconomic achievement attitudes. These perceptions of opportunity are thought to be observed structural constraints and reflective of more than just pure motivation. Previous attempts at measu...
It has been reported that participation in high school athletics has a positive effect on education, occupational status attainment, and earnings. (Otto and Alwin, 1977; Howell and Picou, 1983). The findings regarding the economical benefits of sport participation have emerged from two regional panel studies and need to be examined for generalizabi...
The model examines the process through which residential origin influences adulthood residence as well as the temporal relationship between residential preferences and location. The results present a plausible life-course explanation of the observation based on cross-sectional surveys of adults that the modal residential preference is current size...
The transition to adult roles usually occurs within a normative age span. By focusing on preadolescence to late adolescence using 2-wave panel data, this research seeks to develop a more informed picture of how "early" exit from the student role and "early" entry into the adult role of parent or spouse reflect factors operating prior to adolescence...
Using a two-wave panel design, this study examines antecedents and short-term consequences of teenage marriage, parenting, and school-leaving. The findings show that while these three role transitions are not greatly related to social origins, academic ability, or performance, dropping-out is more highly linked than the other two. The organization...
The recent radical critique of schooling in capitalist America by Bowles and Gintis argues that a straightforward "correspondence" exists between the social relations experienced at home and at school. The correspondence principle defines, among other things, a significant intergenerational reproduction of consciousness and socialized inequality vi...
Educational "plans" are often interpreted as simultaneously referencing both attitudinal and motivational domains, such as is illustrated in the status attainment literature through the term "ambition." Recent work finds this presumption suspect, calling into question social psychological contributions to the understanding of the socioeconomic atta...
A summary of the 1966-1979 Southern Youth Study (SYS), a 4-wave longitudinal research project intended to produce information on career development and decision-making processes and influences of rural southern youth from economically-disadvantaged counties, presents data collection procedures, an overview of instruments and variables, descriptions...
Using two panel studies which collectively covered the preadolescent-to-young adulthood period in the life cycle, the study focused on the issues of level of aspiration formation, stability, and race-sex subgroup invariance. The panel studies collected data from youths from (1) rural areas with towns of 2,500 or less and urban areas with cities of...
The ascriptive properties of race and sex in structuring the formation of status aspirations have recently been analyzed and typically reveal that socialization models do not "work" for blacks as compared to whites. A recent interpretation, termed here the "race convergence" hypothesis, suggests that gross SES differentials between races found in m...
Little research has been done on the vocational mobility of physically disabled students (Overs, R. In J. S. Picou and R. E. Campbell (Eds.), Career behavior of special groups. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill, pp. 177–198). A subset of data from a larger investigation on the achievement processes of youth was analyzed in two phases to describe d...
Recent findings from the Department of Labor's National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS) show that level of occupational knowledge is stronglv influenced bv both social origin and certain family- and school-related factors. Additionally, the pre liminary NLS findmgs suggest that occupational knowledge makes a significant and independent contribution to e...
A causal model of indicators was derived from Ginzberg, Ginsburg, Axelrad, and Herma's developmental framework of occupational choice. This theoretical perspective suggests that high school age adolescents' “fantasy” choices are diverted into more “realistic” anticipations mainly through awareness of the work world and work roles and perceived “rea...
In order to assess attitude stability or change and the conceptual framework of Kerckhoff's thesis (1976) that occupational aspirations are specifically affected by "observed structural constraints", data derived from the Southern Youth Study (a male subset from the Alabama, Texas, and Georgia panel comprised of 221 whites and 146 nonwhites, 94% of...
ase II suggested that net migration rates in the 1970s and 1980s were jointly determined by economic and noneconomic factors. In Phase III, it was found that net migration and employment growth were dependent upon each other, from 1975 to 1992, both on the state level and the county level. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My sincere appreciation is extended to D...