William L. Flinn

The Politics of Environmental Concern The Impacts of Party Identification and Political Ideology on Environmental Attitudes

The literature on the political context of the environmental movement entertains the competing hypotheses that environmentalism either transcends or embodies the traditional left-right cleavages in American society. Findings from a statewide survey in Wisconsin indicate substantial relationships between sociopolitical ideologies and support for environmental reform. These relationships were most pronounced among the college-educated stratum. Liberalism vis-h-vis laissez-faire politics was the political ideology variable most closely related to environmental concern. This reflects the obvious empirical reality that the environmental movement has been primarily concerned with controlling private natural resource decision-making. Nevertheless, there is a substantial correlation between welfare-state liberalism and environmental concern which seems important due to the tendency of environmental reforms to have inegalitarian consequences. In spite of major associations between political ideology and environmental attitudes, Republicans and Democrats did not differ greatly in environmental concern. Implications of the findings for the future politics of environmental policy quality In the United States are discussed.

Sources of Working Class Consciousness

Abstract This study, intended largely as a replication of the research reported by John C. Leggett in his Class, Race, and Labor, is a methodological contribution to the measurement of class consciousness among American workers, and an analysis of the independent variables that explain variation in the class consciousness measure. The data for this research were collected during 1974 in a statewide Wisconsin sample. A conceptual analysis of class consciousness suggests four major levels of that consciousness: class identification, class action, militant egalitarianism, and capitalist change orientation. Attitudinal measures of these levels or stages of class consciousness are discussed and then combined into a Likert scale for purposes of empirical analysis. We then examine the gross and net effects of a variety of variables assumed to be causally related to working class consciousness: union membership, generation, skill level, family income, and size of place of residence. Methodological caveats regardi...

Sociological Aspects of Farm Size: Ideological and Social Consequences of Scale in Agriculture

The issues of farm size and the wide range of institutional arrangements relating to the scale of agricultural production are among the most interesting areas of interchange between agricultural economists and their colleagues in rural sociology and associated disciplines. The renewal of debate over the structure of agriculture during the past decade raises such broad questions about alternative futures for agricultural organization in this society that representatives from no single discipline-agricultural economics, rural sociology, for example-can provide all the necessary guidance. The purpose of this paper will be to take some necessary interdisciplinary steps by setting forth several sociological observations on the issues of scale and structure of agriculture which are informed by agricultural economics research. The first portion of the paper discusses a number of ideological and value aspects of farm size. The second section consists of an abbreviated summary of research on the social consequences of farm size and mechanization for farm families, nonfarm people, and rural communities, while the final section advances several observations about political-economic aspects of farm size and their implications for the debate over agricultural structure.