Joseph V. Hickey

Myth, identity, and social interaction: Encountering Santa Claus at the mall

Each year during the Christmas season Santa Claus appears at shopping malls across the country. This qualitative study shows how Santa actors and the public respond to the typification of the Santa myth. Using the dramaturgical approach, the authors examine the meanings that people of various age and gender identities attribute to the mall environment, and how these understandings influence their interactions with Santa. Behaviors are analyzed in age cohorts ranging from infancy to the elderly. Gender strongly influenced peoples interactions with Santa across all age cohorts. Adult behaviors varied widely, but in the presence of children, both males and females promoted the Santa Claus fantasy. In the mall setting, where ones social identity is subject to public scrutiny, interactions with Santa help define, reinforce, and confirm ones sense of self.

Politics and the Emergence of Alhajis Among the Bokkos Fulani

ALHAJI is a religious title used throughout Nigeria and elsewhere to describe persons who have completed the pilgrimage to Mecca.’ According to Islamic theology both the pilgrimage and the title of alhaji are purely religious phenomena. The hajj, as the Fifth pillar of Islam, is the religious duty of every adult Muslim and its fulfillment results in a higher moral standing within the Islamic community. Despite Islamic interpretations of the hajj, a number of authors have suggested that the pilgrimage is motivated by a variety of religious, social, economic and political factors (Hickey 1979). Further, they note that throughout the world there are numerous, even contradictory, understandings about the alhaji role. Interestingly, in the literature on Sub-Saharan African societies, the religious explanations for the hajj are de-emphasized. The majority of authors suggest that among African societies pilgrimages are made

The Academic Elite in SixSocial Science Disciplines: Linkages Among Top-Ranked Graduate Departments

In 1981 the National Academy of Sciences initiated an evaluation by faculty of the quality of doctoral programs in the social sciences. Changing Times listed the top ten percent of all graduate programs in the social sciences based upon a combination of two variables from the National Academy study which the magazine believed constituted the best measures of program quality. Given the subjective nature of the evaluation process which produced these ratings, and the mass medias infatuation with these rankings, this paper examines the top-rated graduate programs in six social science disciplines based upon criteria established in the Changing Times article. It was found that departments in each discipline were substantially linked to each other by hiring each others graduates, and hence, enhancing each others reputations.

Nuclear Weapons, The Persian Gulf War, and The New World Order

Since the end of the Persian Gulf War it has become apparent to us that the war had much to do with nuclear weapons and little to do with evil dictators, oil supplies, or a global desire for justice and freedom for the Kuwaiti people. The almost total disregard of Saddam Hussein who, just a few months ago, was promoted by the Pentagon and mass media as another ‘Hitler’—and the sustained search by United Nations inspectors for nuclear weapons and organisations responsible for supplying them to the Third World—reveal the underlying cause of the conflict. These activities also suggest what President Bush and his allies may have in mind when they use the term ‘The New World Order’. We argue that nuclear weapons were at the heart of the Persian Gulf War—not, as conventional wisdom holds, to remove them from Iraq and the hands of an ‘evil dictator’—but for much larger economic and political purposes that reflect both a centuries-old global stratification system and fundamental changes in that system, signaled by the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons. 19