Brian K. Gran

Complexity, Generality, and Qualitative Comparative Analysis

Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) offers researchers the opportunity to combine the intensiveness of case-oriented research strategies and the extensiveness of variable-oriented approaches in a single framework. QCA is specifically designed for a moderate number of cases, too few for variable-oriented research designs and too many for in-depth, case-oriented analysis. To illustrate QCAs applicability to moderate-sized data sets, we analyze data on forty-one villages in southern India reported in Robert Wades (1988) comparative study of villagewide collective action, Village Republics. Using QCA, we show that Wades explanation of village-wide collective action is incomplete. We complement his strictly ecological explanation with a sociological perspective and show that intervillage competition is an important condition for villagewide collective action.

Comparing Children's Rights: Introducing the Children's Rights Index

Childrens rights continue to be subject of international debates. Moving past these debates can be facilitated with an international measure of childrens rights. This article introduces the Childrens Rights Index, an international measure of childrens rights for over 190 countries. The Childrens Rights Index consists of two civil rights, two political rights, two social rights, and two economic rights. This article presents country scores on the Childrens Rights Index, then examines whether childrens rights vary by region and other differences, such as country wealth. It is hoped that the Childrens Rights Index will provide evidence on childrens rights important to the work of governments and nongovernmental organizations, as well as scholars and others concerned about childrens welfare.

The Office of the Children’s Ombudsperson: Children’s Rights and Social-Policy Innovation

Abstract A potential key to the future of childrens rights is the ombudsperson. In 1981, Norway became the first government to establish an office of a childrens ombudsperson, which has statutory powers to protect children and enforce their rights. This paper represents the first cross-national analysis of the offices of childrens ombudsperson. We employ Qualitative Comparative Analysis, which is based on Boolean algebra, to examine explanations why a national office of childrens ombudsperson has or has not been established in 193 countries up to the year 2000. Our research suggests social policy innovation responds to need and is contingent on country wealth, but is mediated by either strong political rights or subscription to international treaties. This work indicates future research should consider subsequent establishment of offices of childrens ombudsperson and the rights of children an ombudsperson seeks to enforce.

A Second Opinion: Rethinking the Public-Private Dichotomy for Health Insurance

Does the public-private dichotomy effectively describe health insurance systems in the advanced industrialized democracies? Is the boundary separating the public and private sectors accurate for studies of social policy formation and cutback? This article has three goals. The first is to discuss reasons for reconsidering the public-private dichotomy, as it applies to health insurance systems. The second is to offer a reconceptualization of the public-private demarcation useful for analyses of health insurance systems; the author presents four sectors that may illuminate patterns of health insurance for different OECD countries: the social, individual, public, and market sectors. The third goal is to present results using a new methodological approach useful for studying complex social phenomena: the fuzzy-set approach, which allows researchers to treat social phenomena as partially belonging to more than one category. This approach is employed to demonstrate that health insurance provision rarely is solely public or private, but is formed by a combination of sectors. Underlying these three goals is the contention that comparative and historical sociological researchers can offer innovative approaches to the study of health insurance and the interests served by public and nonpublic health insurance programs through reconceiving the public-private dichotomy.

Children’s Rights and International Development: Lessons and Challenges from the Field

Perhaps it is the C. Wright Mills legacy, run through forty-some years of my teaching Introduction to Sociology, contrasting ‘‘troubles’’ with ‘‘issues,’’ biography with history, but I find myself particularly intrigued when a sociologist turns to (auto)biography. And not just any sociologist. This is Peter Berger who, along with Thomas Luckmann, changed my life and made me who I am— or at least let me understand who I am. I took my undergraduate theory class in the summer of my freshman year. And after reading Berger’s biography, I was shocked to learn that was just three years after Berger and Luckmann published The Social Construction of Reality. I still own that book; it is one of the few ‘‘theory’’ books that made the cut when I downsized my library to an apartment from a big house. That copy of The Social Construction of Reality, with its highlighting, underlining, exclamation points and scribbles all over the margins, is the document of my birth as a sociologist. So this is the most intimidating book review I have ever faced. I know just about nothing about the sociology of religion, nothing about many of the areas in which Berger has worked and published. I am, as almost anyone would be, impressed with his long list of books, the many areas in which he has worked and contributed, all around the world. A review of his work requires a group effort, just the kind of research group he himself has been so successful at convening. Berger’s tone, the engaging humor, reminds me of one of my elderly uncles. He describes his arrival at the New School to learn sociology as a kind of accident, not realizing how totally marginal it was to mainstream American sociology, offering us the old Jewish joke about the Chinese waiter speaking Yiddish. When a customer is surprised, the owner hushes him: ‘‘He thinks he’s learning English!’’ And we’re off—I am listening to one of my beloved uncles. As he recounts his extraordinarily productive life, I am sometimes in awe, but much as with my uncles, sometimes wincing with embarrassment. This is, as titled, a book of Berger’s adventures as a sociologist, not an autobiography of his life in full. A first marriage comes and goes in a sentence—his children do the same. Brigitte Berger, his wife, does show up now and again throughout the book, but his family life is dismissed with this reference to his early years at the Hartford Seminary Foundation: ‘‘The Hartford years were biographically important both personally and intellectually. I started life with Brigitte, and our two sons were born there.’’ He continues with a sentence or two on her writing, and his own leaving behind of neoorthodox theology and coming to ‘‘liberal Lutheranism’’ (p. 77). Berger spends some time explaining that his religious life is a very important part of who he is, but separate from his life as a sociologist, using as one of many Jewish references (those of us who did not follow his work in the sociology of religion can be forgiven for having thought he was Jewish): a Weberian notion of kosher cooking, keeping fleshy science separate from milky religion. I can respect and appreciate that, both the separation and the places where the separation utterly falls apart. What is most interesting is that it really does not even occur to him that other parts of his life/identity may be worth attending to in his intellectual development. He is, after all, a white man—and I gather that that identity and its privilege do not strike him as noteworthy. Berger was one of the gods of my life, but like many others, he crashes when feminism comes in. His tales of ‘‘militant feminists’’ in a chapter (wince) called ‘‘Politically Incorrect Excursions’’ all but breaks my heart. Militant? As one of my friends asked when

Charitable choice policy and abused children: the benefits and harms of going beyond the public‐private dichotomy

Charitable Choice Policy, the heart of President Bush’s Faith‐Based Initiative, is the direct government funding of religious organizations for the purpose of carrying out government programs. The Bush presidential administration has called for the application of Charitable Choice Policy to all kinds of social services. Advocates for child‐abuse victims contend that the Bush Charitable Choice Policy would further dismantle essential social services provided to abused children. Others have argued Charitable Choice Policy is unconstitutional because it crosses the boundary separating church and state. Rather than drastically altering the US social‐policy landscape, this paper demonstrates that the Bush Charitable Choice Policy already is in place for childabuse services across many of the fifty states. One reason this phenomenon is ignored is due to the reliance on the public‐private dichotomy for studying social policies and services. This paper contends that relying on the public‐private dichotomy leads researchers to overlook important configurations of actors and institutions that provide services to abused children. It offers an alternate framework to the public‐private dichotomy useful for the analysis of social policy in general and, in particular, Charitable Choice Policy affecting services to abused children. Employing a new methodological approach, fuzzy‐sets analysis, demonstrates the degree to which social services for abused children match ideal types. It suggests relationships between religious organizations and governments are essential to the provision of services to abused children in the United States. Given the direction in which the Bush Charitable Choice Policy will push social‐policy programs, scholars should ask whether abused children will be placed in circumstances that other social groups will not and why.

Handbook of Sociology and Human Rights

David L. Brunsma, Keri Iyall Smith, and Brian K. Gran

Children for sale? The blurred boundary between intercountry adoption and sale of children in the United States

Purpose – Intercountry adoptions (hereafter ICAs) in the USA are a form of sale of children. According to international policy, sale of children is an illicit social practice that involves improper financial gains by at least one party. Sale of children is a threat to legitimate ICA. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the policy and practice of ICAs in the USA, including pricing arrangements, demonstrate that US ICAs, which can have humanitarian aims and be legitimate forms of family development, comprise sale of children. Design/methodology/approach – Internet searches and e-mail inquiries were used to obtain ICA cost data for a randomised sample of 10 per cent of the agencies in the USA that facilitate ICAs. Findings – Cost information was obtained from only 25 per cent of the sample, suggesting lack of transparency in and available information about monetary costs of US ICAs. A range of US

A child’s right to enjoy benefits of scientific progress and its applications

12,000 to

Conclusion: Revisiting the Public-Private Dichotomy

40,000 suggests that US ICAs are expensive and costs vary. Large, undisclosed fees in the form of ...