J. Barry Or Joseph Barry Gurdin

This is the first part of my article dealing with the Social Sciences, the Law, Media, First and Other Peoples that is being published by The Forensic Social Scientist.

On January 28-29, 2016, at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, the Canadian Studies Program sponsored a conference, “Fossil Fuels and Radical Sovereignties: Boardrooms, Blockades, and Jurisdictional Struggles over Oil and Gas Development in ‘North America,’” that dealt with major current issues relating to the law and the environm...

In this corner, we spotlight forensic social scientists such as J. Barry Gurdin, Ph.D.: J. (Joseph) Barry Gurdin, Ph.D., is the founder and director of To Love and to Work: An Agency for Change. Besides having taught sociology, anthropology, psychology, and political science on the college and university levels in Canada, Sweden, and the USA, Dr. G...

African American young women exhibit higher risk for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS, compared with European American women, and this is particularly true for African American women living in low-income contexts. We used rigorous qualitative methods, that is, domain analysis, including free listing (n = 20), similarity assessmen...

Joseph Barry Gurdin takes several scenes from his novel, Border of Lilies and Maples, and explains how they could be staged as acts in a play.

This book review evaluates Gordon Scott and R. S. Rose's critical biography of the life of Johnny de Graaf, a very important double agent, who was born and was socialized in Germany, educated in the military branch of Soviet intelligence in the USSR and secretly was recruited by British intelligence after turning against Communism. Johnny ferreted...

Evidence-Based HIV, STI, and Pregnancy Prevention Interventions

It is 1968. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated, and then Robert F. Kennedy. If Henry Green graduates a year early, will he be granted the usual four-year deferment from the draft if he goes to graduate school?Should he serve in the Armed Forces of the United States of America or express his opposition to the war in Vietnam by resisting inducti...

This newspaper article summarizes a small part of a contract the applied sociologist and anthropologist, J. Barry Gurdin, had to undertake participant observation and write an ethnography of a group primarily of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union to the Bay Area of the USA. This particular segment focuses on an event that celebrated the music...

Amitié/Friendship: An Investigation into Cross-Cultural Styles in Canada and the United States

This book review critically evaluates the theories and interventions of a child psychologist who identified antisocial behavior in children who had committed serious crimes and therapeutically intervened with them in an Ontario, Canadian facility.

Drawing on participant observations and interventions while counseling 160 heroin addicts over a two-year period, the author explores the possibilities and limitations of using sociology to counter his clients' addictions to hero and other drugs. Important historical changes have brought about new conflicting viewpoints within the methadone mainten...

Qualitatively summarizing a longer piece of research also based on quantitative methods, the author analyzes small group, videotaped discussions of friendship in which graduate and undergraduate students participated. Through these sessions the therapeutic and educational values of discussion groups on "closest friendship" are evaluated. In these g...

Both theoretical discussions and research presentations often minimize the practical difficulties in establishing a sample frame for a population called deviant. Classical experimental design is frequently recommended, even though this methodology is poorly suited for populations whose personal, situational, and material attributes are subject to r...

The difficulties of obtaining classical experimental and control groups when sampling populations called deviant often lead researchers to analyze data from index and comparison groups (for example, drug users and non-users, respectively). When one is dealing with such samples, classical hypothesis testing and its associated inferential statistics...

The difficulties of obtaining classical experimental and control groups when sampling populations called deviant often lead researchers to analyze data from index and comparison groups (for example, drug users and non-users, respectively). When one is dealing with such samples, classical hypothesis testing and its associated inferential statistics...

In rediscovering clinical sociology, the therapeutic aspects of some former investi gations offriendship become evident. Moreover, sociologists and other scholars have long noted that the relationship of friendship contributes to mental health. Con sequently, they have developed various interventions to promote friendship, from describing and quant...

Clinical Sociology in France and Quebec: A Primer and Commentary, Part I.

Not all applied sociologists should be "uppies," urban professionals who charge a fee for every service. If democratic institutions are to endure, citizens must demonstrate some community responsibilities, in part through non-remunerated services, particularly to the politically-weaker segments of society, and to challenging dysfunctional cultural...

The Structure of Social Values

Some of My Best Friends Are ...: The Relationship of Ethnicity to Close Friendship.

Naturalistic Categories of Ethnic Identity in Quebec

A film review of Bien des mots ont changé les franco-américains de la nouvelle angleterre

A book review of David Schroder's Engagement in the Mirror.

This is an urban ethnography based on participant observation of two different homes for retired citizens in Greater Stockholm. Dialectical argument is used to illuminate the modes of daily culture in the formal structure of these two Swedish residences for retired citizens.