Daniel J. Myers

Feminist Attitudes and Support for Gender Equality: Opinion Change in Women and Men, 1974–1998

This article examines attitudes related to feminism and gender equality by evaluating the trends in, and determinants of, women and mens attitudes from 1974 to 1998. Past accounts suggest two clusters of explanations based on interests and exposure. Using these, we examine opinions on abortion, sexual behavior, public sphere gender roles, and family responsibilities. We find that attitudes have continued to liberalize and converge with the exception of abortion attitudes. The determinants of feminist opinion vary across domains, but have been largely stable. While not identical, the predictors of men and womens opinions are similar. The results suggest the need for more attention to the mechanisms underlying the production of feminist opinions and theoretical integration of both interests and exposure in a dynamic process.

How events enter the public sphere : Conflict, location, and sponsorship in local newspaper coverage of public events

Protest events occur against the backdrop of public life. Of 382 public events in police records for one year in a small U.S. city, 45% convey a message, 14% involve social conflict, and 13% are standard protest event forms. Local newspapers covered 32% of all events, favoring events that were large, involved conflict, were sponsored by business groups, and occurred in central locations. The more liberal paper also favored rallies and events sponsored by national social movement organizations (SMOs) or recreational groups. Discussion centers on the ways these factors shape the content of the public sphere.

All the rioting that's fit to print: Selection effects in national newspaper coverage of civil disorders, 1968-1969

This study examined selection effects in newspaper reports about civil disorders in the late 1960s. A comprehensive set of events recorded in newspapers across the United States was compared with the subsets of these events recorded in two national newspapers often used to construct collective event data bases-the New York Times and the Washington Post. The results demonstrate that fewer than half of all disorders are covered in these two newspapers combined, and that those reported are selected on the basis of event intensity, distance, event density, city population size, type of actor, and day of the week. To demonstrate the effects of these selection patterns on substantive analysis of civil disorder, the authors replicated earlier studies using all reported events, and then repeated the analyses using only the events reported in the Times and the Post. This procedure showed some substantial differences in results. The implications of these findings for event analyses and for substantive understandings of media selection are discussed.

Corn, Klansmen, and Coolidge: Structure and Framing in Social Movements

This article examines how structural conditions and social movement frames interact to influence mobilization and political consequences of social movements. Mobilization efforts benefit when movement framing is congruent with local structural conditions. This mobilization, in turn, produces political leverage for the movement through its capacity to deliver support of its members and adherents. Its political advantage may be offset, however, if another of its key framing activities, the construction of collective identity boundaries, alienates the broader population and stimulates a backlash. Such backlash is also intimately connected to structural conditions because its potential is a function of the characteristics of the local population — specifically, the proportion of the population alienated by the movements boundary construction. We apply these arguments to the case of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and show that while the Klans diagnostic and prognostic framing may have resonated structurally and facilitated the Klans mobilization efforts, its exclusionary boundaries frustrated its attempts to secure broader political gains.

The opposing forces diffusion model: the initiation and repression of collective violence

This paper re-evaluates a classic deterministic model of collective violence diffusion and demonstrates a series of shortcomings in it. In response, a new model, the opposing forces diffusion model, is introduced. The opposing forces model treats observed event cycles as the result of two underlying logistic diffusion processes, one for provocation of events and one for repression. The result is a model that is more flexible, more straightforwardly interpreted, and considerably more accurate than its predecessors. Furthermore, because the new model treats provocation and repression as two distinct processes, they can be disentangled and subjected to lower-level scrutiny.

Police and riots, 1967-1969

This article investigates the role of policing in both the genesis and development of racial rioting. In particular, the authors focus on several riots that occurred in two cities, Boston and San Francisco, which experienced different overall levels of rioting during the peak period of racial violence in thelate1960s. The amount and type of rioting that occurred in each city is consistent with the paradoxical yet frequent pattern in which direct repression, particularly when characterized by excessive or selective use of force, fails to subdue rioting and often escalates conflict. Despite this consistency, however, there are substantial differences between the two cities concerning the amount and severity of rioting that occurred. These differences are connected to variation in three primary characteristics of the civil authorities in the two cities: (a) police preparedness and training, (b) racial polarization in attitudes toward the police, and (c) underlying police-community relations. Implications are then discussed for further research on racial rioting and for policing practices.

Interfacing Catholic Social Meanings, Sociology, Self, and Pedagogical Practices

Follow this and additional works at: http://journals.stmarys-ca.edu/epiche Part of the Adult and Continuing Education and Teaching Commons, Civic and Community Engagement Commons, Community-based Learning Commons, Community-based Research Commons, Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons, Educational Administration and Supervision Commons, Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons, Educational Leadership Commons, Educational Methods Commons, Higher Education Commons, Higher Education and Teaching Commons, Leadership Studies Commons, Liberal Studies Commons, Service Learning Commons, Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education Commons, and the Student Counseling and Personnel Services Commons

North Central Sociological Association 2012 Ruth and John Useem Plenary Address. Political Renewal: Occupations, Springs, and Tea Parties

Novelty is paramount in the development of sociological theory—so much so that sometimes novelty is attributed even when it does not really exist. The study of social movements is hardly exempt from this problem and at times the craving for newness can become palpable. Despite that desire, however, some have concluded that things really have not changed much over a score of years—at least in terms of the implications for theory—but now, we think the time has finally come. Three recent mobilizations have provided us with something new into which we can sink our collective teeth. The Tea Party, the Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street represent changes in the motivations and tactics driving social and political change that can renew the study of protest and collective political influence. These three bursts of political behavior reveal important edges of social movement study even as they exhibit roots in the now classic ideas in the field.

Reforming General Education and Diffusing Reform

The challenges facing educational systems, and those conducting research with the intent to improve them, are many. This essay though, is limited to two problems that cross many levels of education and bookend educational research. The first is the foundational input to the understanding and practice of education (and thus of educational research as well), namely, how we define the core purpose of general education. The second problem is concerned not with inputs, but the output and impact of our research—how it comes to be consumed (or more likely not consumed) by practitioners of the art of teaching.