Society articles from January 1993

Society archives from January 1993

Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal.
January 1, 1993... Concerning black bondage and slavery, Andrew Hacker says, "Nor are these antecedents buried away in the past. That Americans of African origin once wore the chains of chattels remains alive in the memory of both races and continues to...

In the Spirit of the Earth: Rethinking History and Time.
January 1, 1993... "Nature conserves me, not I it. . ." Herein lies the key idea of Calvin Luther Martin's eloquent and provocative essay on the inverted relationship between modem humankind and the rest of the natural world. Can it be possible for any...

Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation.
January 1, 1993... When Americans think of "minority," they think mostly of blacks. But times are changing. Hispanics-Americans with origins in Latin America--comprise already 9 percent of the population, compared to 12 percent for blacks. Due to large families...

Equality and Partiality.
January 1, 1993... There are two ways to write about equality. One may think long and hard about the many different often incompatible meanings of equality, the desirability of achieving human equality in one form or other. and the impediments to that...

Racism and Justice: The Case for Affirmative Action.
January 1, 1993... There are two ways to write about equality. One may think long and hard about the many different often incompatible meanings of equality, the desirability of achieving human equality in one form or other. and the impediments to that...

Social science and the citizen: costs and benefits of higher education. (the decreasing economic value of an undergraduate degree) (Editorial)
January 1, 1993... Costs and Benefits of Higher Education The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that one in five college graduates in the 1980s had a job that did not require a college degree. Many of these jobs were low-wage, dead-end positions. On...

Intelligence and secrecy: Sovietology redux. (the demise of communism) (Cover Story)
January 1, 1993... Intelligence is not just the story of individual spies land defectors, it is the sum total of our knowledge about political, economic, and military trends in the outside world. It comes from a myriad of sources, some secret, others not. The...

Before the breakdown and after. (a re-examination of Germany's new national identity crisis)
January 1, 1993... The last time I saw the German Democratic Republic in full flower, or rather in blighted bloom, it was in its last summer. It was in those final months before the October crisis and the November crack-up of 1989--ironically, the very months...

Life after death. (understanding the lingering influence of communism)
January 1, 1993... Communist rule, as we know it, has collapsed in most countries, and certainly in those where it had been imposed from outside. Most clearly, it has collapsed in its historic center, the former Soviet Union. The problem we have to face,...

In search of usable pasts. (Poland's effort to overlook its communist history as part of its resurrection of past national identity symbols)
January 1, 1993... One of the first acts of Poland's first post-communist parliament was to declare the Third Polish Republic. Thus, officially, the years after 1939, when the Second Republic ended with the Nazi invasion, disappeared from the nation's record of...

Public enemies. (how the lingering influence of communism contributed to the breakup of Czechoslovakia)
January 1, 1993... Vaclav Havel's resignation in July 1992 closes a chapter--perhaps the most heroic one--in the drama of Eastern Europe's liberation from communism. It shows that the break with Leninism is not necessarily conducive to democratic order and that...

Why communism collapsed in Eastern Europe.
January 1, 1993... Most current problems in Eastern Europe fall into two broad categories. There are the structural, especially economic, problems following from the unprecedented historical move from a state socialist to a market-based or capitalist economic...

Untangling student loans. (how the Federal Family Educational Loan Program works, formerly the Stafford Student Loan Program)
January 1, 1993... Judging from the headlines, abuse is rampant in the Stafford Student Loan Program (renamed Federal Family Educational Loan Program under the Higher Education Amendments of 1992). News stories tell of students who fraudulently obtain loans, of...

The American family transformed. (changes in social structure since the 1960s)
January 1, 1993... The dramatic changes in the American family can The highlighted by comparing its structure and function as it was in 1960 with what it had become in 1990. Until 1960 most Americans shared a common set of beliefs about family life. Family...

Bricolage among the trash cans. (the process of creativity)
January 1, 1993... In the film 8 1/2 Federico Fellini shares with us the confusion of a filmmaker who has lost his Muse. It is a film about making a film when you have no idea what the film is about. The white-clad Muse, portrayed by the wondrous Claudia...

Thorstein Veblen and the place of science. (early 20th century sociologist and economist)
January 1, 1993... The first three decades of the twentieth century witnessed the appearance of the works of three scholars who, each in his way, produced a comprehensive theory of society. The theoretical systems of Max Weber, Vilfredo Pareto, and Thorstein...