John L. Hammond

Two Sources of Error in Ecological Correlations

The discrepancy between individual and ecological correlations has often been noted, but its sources have not been understood. The discrepancy can arise from two quite distinct sources, both of which can be explained sociologically. The two sources have opposite implications for the possibility of inference to individual relationships from aggregate data. When individuals are grouped into neighborhoods on the basis of their homogeneity on an independent variable, the ecological correlation will necessarily be larger than the individual correlation; but the regression equation of the aggregate variables provides an unbiased estimate of the individual regression. Aggregation bias arises when the independent variable has a contextual effect, or when individuals are grouped into neighborhoods on the basis of their similarity on the dependent variable. If aggregation bias is present, no inference about the individual relationship can be drawn from aggregate data. An investigators knowledge of the social processes operating in the situation he is examining will often enable him to estimate whether his data incorporate aggregation bias; if they do not, he can draw inferences about the individual relationship from aggregate data.

Fighting to learn : popular education and guerrilla war in El Salvador

Popular education played an important role in the 12-year guerilla war against the Salvadorian government. This study recounts the experiences of 100 Salvadorian students and teachers, examining the Christian base of popular education and moving on to show how education was a political practice.

Net cred: evaluating the internet as a research source

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show how web sites can be a valuable research source for students if approached with due caution.Design/methodology/approach – This article is the product of collaboration between a sociology professor and a librarian. The authors discuss the nature of their collaboration and present their views on web evaluation in the context of an extensive literature review.Findings – Reputable print sources have numerous mechanisms to help ensure reliability: proven authors and editors, track record, and (sometimes) peer review. Obviously, the vast majority of web sites lack these features. Accordingly, the paper offers a critical look at the standard criteria of web evaluation with illustrations from two sites, one credible, one not.Originality/value – Healthy skepticism regarding the internet is urged. It is suggested that web evaluation has costs and benefits. The chief benefit of careful web site evaluation is that the process makes it more likely than otherwise that one ...

Land Occupations, Violence, and the Politics of Agrarian Reform in Brazil

Landless farmworkers in Brazil typically occupy land that is legally eligible for expropriation, but the state normally does not expropriate until a land occupation forces the hand of authorities. Landowners and local authorities in the Brazilian countryside frequently respond to occupations with violent repression. Their action reflects the hybrid character of the Brazilian state, modern and rational in cities and at the federal level but, in many rural areas, still clientelistic and marked by nonlegitimate violence. Land occupiers, landowners, and authorities jointly enact a repertoire of collective action that corresponds to the backward character of the state in those areas. The action of the land occupiers, however, is legitimated by the claim of civil disobedience while the efforts to repress them cannot lay claim to legitimacy on that basis.

Building popular power : workers' and neighborhood movements in the Portuguese Revolution

Portugals 1974 military coup brought down the longest established fascist regime in the history of the world and the only remaining colonial empire, and set loose a tremendous political upsurge by ordinary Portuguese citizens. People who had never discussed politics above a whisper shouted and debated their dreams. As they seized control of factories and neighborhoods, they took control of their lives.

New Approaches to Aggregate Electoral Data

New Approaches to Aggregate Electoral Data Aggregate data analysis is a necessary tool for the study of electoral behavior. Most of our knowledge of electoral behavior is derived from survey data, but reliable surveys exist only for the most recent elections, only for some countries, and, with rare exceptions, only for national elections. Election statistics, however, have been officially collected for longer periods, for more areas, and for smaller political units. There are many elections which can be studied only on the basis of these statistics. Moreover, the study of past electoral behavior makes it possible to determine the range of applicability of general propositions about voting behavior. Propositions which have been found to be valid for the electorate in the mid-twentieth century should be tested on past electorates as well.1

Revival Religion and Antislavery Politics

Theories to explain empirical relationships between religion and political behavior (or other secular behavior) have generally asserted either that such relationships are spurious, explained by variations between religious groups in socioeconomic status, or that they are due to group identification with a religious community rather than a theology. The proposition that religious belief directly affects political attitudes and behavior is here tested with respect to revivals and antislavery voting in nineteenth-century Ohio. It has been claimed that revivals preached a new doctrine which demanded active opposition to slavery. The claim that revivalism had a direct, nonspurious effect on antislavery voting is tested in a multiple regression model which incorporates variables representing social structure, ethnicity, denominational membership, and prior political tradition. The effect of revivalism is strong despite all controls, the revivals transformed the religious orientations of those who experienced them, and this transformation affected their voting behavior.

Indigenous Community Justice in the Bolivian Constitution of 2009

The Bolivian constitution, debated in a Constituent Assembly in 2006 and 2007 called by the countrys first indigenous president, Evo Morales, was adopted in a referendum in 2009. Among many other important provisions recognizing the countrys majority indigenous population, it legitimizes the practice of indigenous community justice. Indigenous justice differs in important ways from the national justice system and from the international human rights regime but it expresses a legitimate assertion by the countrys indigenous peoples of their cultural integrity.

Popular Education as Community Organizing in El Salvador

Popular education played a major role in the 12-year war waged by the Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front-FMLN) in El Salvador. One of the most sustained experiences of popular education anywhere occurred in FMLNcontrolled zones. Most combatants and civilians were peasants, and few had had much opportunity for schooling in the communities where they grew up. Using the methods of popular education, the insurgent movement strove to fill the gap and provide them the education they had never had. Educacion popular means education of, by, and for the people-organized by people in their own community, outside of the control of the official education system. Communities organized popular education in FMLNcontrolled and contested zones and also in cities and relatively peaceful rural areas. Popular schools lacked the most basic supplies-books, notebooks, and pencils, not to speak of buildings and desks. The teachers themselves were poorly educated-many had only a year or two of formal schoolingand had to improvise as they went along. The war constantly interrupted their work, not only when combat fell nearby but when organizing and defense demanded priority over holding classes. But the setting of education in poor communities and in a war zone also created an opportunity. The will to teach and learn grew out of the commitment to struggle together for economic justice and dignity. Popular education was always a political and organizational process as much as an educational process. It created a focus for organizing, provided trained personnel to carry out political tasks, and put into practice

Immigration Control as a (False) Security Measure

US immigration policy as defined during the administration of George W. Bush was the result of a moral panic against two categories of immigrants: Latin Americans who cross the Mexican border clandestinely in search of work and Muslims and Arabs whom the administration defines as potential terrorists. The policy harms both groups and threatens national security. Antiterrorist measures are counterproductive because they create sympathy to terrorism in law-abiding Muslim and Arab immigrants; border control measures are counterproductive because, far from deterring illegal immigration, they encourage longer stays, family migration, and dispersion throughout the USA, and endanger the lives of those entering the country through inaccessible and dangerous border areas.