Timothy T. Clydesdale

Toward Understanding the Role of Bible Beliefs and Higher Education in American Attitudes toward Eradicating Poverty, 1964-1996

Several recent studies (Regnerus, Smith, and Sikkink 1998; Wuthnow 1994; Pyle 1993; Hart 1992) report a weak to moderately positive relationship between conservative religion and support for the poor, and numerous studies document an inverse relationship between higher education and the same (e.g., Kluegal and Smith 1986; Jackman and Muha 1984; Bogart and Hutchinson 1978; Alston and Dean 1972; Fichter 1972). While these findings need wider dissemination, they also need further clarification and interpretation, particularly of religion and educations joint role. Based on analyses of the 1984-96 General Social Surveys and the 1964-90 National Election Studies, this article argues: 1) biblical conservatism intensifies expression of concern for the poor, but that expression is importantly shaped by higher education; 2) the experience of gaining a college degree appears to foster a status reinforcing perspective which rejects systemic solutions to poverty and accepts individualistic ones; and 3) the frequent ignorance among many intellectuals about the basic relationships between religious conservatism and attitudes toward eradicating poverty, or between higher education and the same, may be attributable to a nonfalsifiable, salvific faith in education.

Democracy and the New Religious Pluralism Edited by Thomas Banchoff Oxford University Press. 2007. 334 pages.

raises provocative and fascinating new questions for studies of colonialism, some of which point beyond this erudite piece of writing itself and imply new directions for future research. While Steinmetz focuses on the “colonial state field,” to answer the questions he raises about different colonial discourses and their varying “epistemological adequacy” requires us to study broader arrays of colonial discourses in multiple social fields. In other words, scholars of colonialism will be compelled to ask what historical contexts might be conducive to producing modes of crossboundary interactions or new social fields that could foster less racist ethnographies about the colonized and more self-reflexive discourses of the colonizers. In short, The Devil’s Handwriting offers us not only an excellent study of German colonialism but also important new theoretical tools and questions for the sociology of colonialism in general.

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education more relevant to students unlikely to pursue postsecondary education. Further, drawing on “broken windows” theory from criminology, these researchers urge that even minor infractions be promptly addressed so that the authority of discipline is maintained. In addition, the authors would like to see greater discretion used in institutionally supported legal challenges when it comes to public schools. Finally, the authors would recommend that due process for students be limited to infractions involving long-term suspensions and those with a clear political character. The authors are quite concerned about the ramifications these developments have, not only for our nation’s schools, but also for society in general. In fact, they argue that public school failure to adequately socialize young males and to prepare them for the world of work was a significant factor in the increase of the prison population between 1980 and the mid 1990s. They suggest that the perceived failure of schools to effectively socialize the young may lead to “political challenges that threaten its organizational existence” (p. 189). In addition to sociologists of education, faculty concerned with issues of incivility in the contemporary university classroom will resonate to much of what these authors have to say.