Introduces the role of law and government in consumer protection in Japan. Suggests that recognition of cultural differences between U.S. and Japanese societies can provide insights that will stimulate the U.S. consumer movement to confront the anticonsumer structures in Japan while respecting their internal values. (Author/JOW)

Describes three conceptual models that have been used to explain the relationship between cultural factors and the counseling process. Offers a fourth model of conceptualizing the role of ethnicity or class in the counseling process. An example of how the model can be used as a guide for school counselors is also given. (CH)

Encourages counselors and other human development professionals to provide human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) prevention programing that is sensitive to social and cultural contexts of groups being addressed. Focuses on women, gay and bisexual men, African Americans, and Latinos. Provides necessary…

Presents an overview of the sociocultural differences between U.S. and Asian Indian cultures, the implications of those differences, and suggestions for counseling techniques and approaches for working with Asian Indian immigrants. Discusses immigration pattern and history of Asian Indians, looks at cultural orientation of Asian Indians, and…

Discusses recent books and articles on social class in the United States. Notes how U.S. citizens are lulled, first, into accepting the notion of classlessness and, then, into an Us-versus-Them stance that pits teachers against an ostensibly stupid and surly, albeit ill-defined, group of "others." (SR)

Notes that it has not been easy to find a discourse to address the ways that unexamined attitudes about race, class, language, and gender perpetuate failure in schools. Describes briefly the work of the Committee on English Education's Commission on Teacher Education for Teachers of Urban, Rural, and Suburban Students of Color and the attempts to…

Suggests that an examination of rhetorical practices at the local bar is instructive: (1) the barroom is predictably different from the university writing classroom; and (2) the barroom is surprisingly similar to the university writing classroom. Shows that the rhetoric that is valued most highly in today's writing classroom operates differently…

The existence of social differences in educational achievement as a social fact presents the sociology of education with a challenge to which it has responded with indifferent success. It is argued that contemporary explanations that dismiss the existence and relevance of differences in cognitive performance arising as a consequence of class…

The social class differences impact students' engagement with literacy practices in the classrooms. Teachers must hear and validate stories of poverty to gain class-specific understanding.

This paper attempts to explicate and locate the concept of 'cultural capital' in terms of Pierre Bourdieu's more general theory of the forms of capital and their transubstantiations. It examines the manner in which the relationship between the economic field, and its relations of inequality and power, and the cultural field involves a process of…

The author and her mentor, Loudell Snow, were standing in the anthropology department's shabby little lounge, discussing the merits of French wine. Lou was teasing her for being partial to French wine since she is French American. "Hey, I thought that you're an American Indian, but now you are saying you are French? Make up your mind!" Lou and the…

Africa produces imaginative and authentic literature whose texture makes it impossible to think of Africans as statistics. African writers, however have to struggle to get recognized in America due to their culture and other racial and social differences, hence suggesting that efforts should be made to give authentic African literature its due.

A violent conflict between Maoist insurgents and the national government has engulfed Nepal for most of the last decade, a situation that has been complicated by deep-seated instability at the highest levels of the government itself. Even with the declaration of a ceasefire in 2006, violence endures in pockets of lawless banditry and unrest at the…

This study investigates whether childhood health acts as a mechanism through which socioeconomic status is transferred across generations. The study uses data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to track siblings and to estimate fixed-effects models that account for unobserved heterogeneity at the family level. The results demonstrate that…

This study investigated reciprocity in parent-adolescent interactions among 102 families from lower or higher socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Negative behaviors between parents and adolescents were more reciprocal (strongly correlated) in higher SES than lower SES families, and this reciprocity correlated with higher family relationship…