Examined social factors associated with changes in two forms of adolescent deviance, substance use and delinquency using a model that combines social control and differential association perspectives. Results for approximately 2,000 high school students support the model and show that strong bonds to family, school, and community protect…

Scholars have argued that the Internet could bring about the realization of an electronic global village, with no race, gender, infirmities, or the social problems that often accompany these physical indicators of difference. In this study, we explored this issue by conducting content and discourse analyses of online conversations about race and…

The Brazilian Ministry of the Environment, directed by the Minister Marina Silva, recently awarded by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) with the "World Champion" prize. The four courses of the agency's direction are: (1) To enhance the National System of the Environment (SISNAMA); (2) To "mainstream" the…

Studying imagery, irrespective of the kind, must focus equally upon its aesthetic attractiveness, its sensory lures, and its oftentimes dubious social ideology. The terms "aesthetic" and "ideology" are addressed as problematic and are defined in current, ordinary language terms: aesthetics as visual appearances and their effects and ideology as a…

This study aims to explore the relationship between perceived neighborhood social disorder and attitudes toward reporting domestic violence against women. Data from a national representative sample (N = 14,994) of Spaniards 18 years old and older were used. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that perceived neighborhood social…

The first author recruited parent-adolescent dyads (N = 192) into after-school prevention education groups at middle schools in southeast Texas. This author placed participants in either (1) an Interactive Program (IP) in which they role-played, practiced resistance skills, and held parent-child discussions or (2) an Attention Control Program…

One challenge for composition instructors is to determine exactly, or even approximately, what objects and rituals must be observed for students' words to fall with the "true." Another is to successfully communicate these objects and rituals to their students through the various techniques of discipline. The arbitrary nature of…

Three papers were presented at three different conferences from 1990 to 1992: "New Ways of Meaning: A Challenge to Applied Linguistics,""The Act of Meaning," and "Language in a Changing World." Because each paper addressed a different audience, each addresses the topic of meaning and change from a different approach. The first paper summarizes the…

This paper explores "political kitsch," a propaganda that incorporates familiar and easily understood art forms to shape the direction of public policy. Kitsch differs from art in that it is a powerful political construction designed to colonize the receiver's consciousness. It reassures and comforts the receiver through the exploitation…

An overview is presented of select research performed under a project entitled "Education, Delinquency Prevention, and the Search for Youth Policy: An Historical Inquiry." This overview contains two discrete essays that synthesize the main findings of seven key writers in the field of juvenile delinquency between 1900 and 1930 and…

This article examines the delinquency literature to determine how factors identified as influencing delinquency actually operate among Hispanics. In light of the fact that Hispanic youth with similar socioeconomic levels to Blacks engage in delinquency at lower rates than Blacks, the article also tries to explain how Hispanic adolescents living in…

Designed for use as supplementary instructional material in a cultural anthropology course, this learning module introduces the student to cultural molding, the idea that most human behavior can be traced to enculturation and exposure rather than to a socio-biological explanation of human behavior. Following a brief description of socialization,…

Formulates a middle-level theory that explains the process by which rhetroic is epistemic, using Foucault's notion of the discursive formation as a starting point. Discusses five theoretical units derived from Foucault--discursive practices, rules, roles, power, and knowledge--and relationships among them. Analyzes Disneyland, using Foucault's…

Examined the use of compliance-gaining strategies among a group of environmentalists. Results indicated that prosocial strategies were used more often than anti-social strategies across all situations. (SRT)

Draws upon recent fieldwork in a Catholic junior high school to focus on the ritualized behavior of the "class clown," who resists instruction. Calls upon resistance theorists to strive for more conceptual precision in their articulation of the symbolic dimension of transgressive student behavior by utilizing a more multidisciplinary…