The Annals Of The American Academy Of Political Social Science

Culture has returned to the poverty research agenda. Over the past decade, sociologists, demographers, and even economists have begun asking questions about the role of culture in many aspects of poverty, at times even explaining the behavior of low-income populations in reference to cultural factors. Unlike their predecessors, contemporary researchers rarely claim that culture will sustain itself for multiple generations regardless of structural changes, and they almost never use the term "pathology," which implied in an earlier era that people would cease to be poor if they changed their culture. The new generation of scholars conceives of culture in substantially different ways. In this latest issue of the ANNALS, readers are treated to thought-provoking articles that attempt to bridge the gap between poverty and culture scholarship, highlighting new trends in poverty research. This volume is vital reading, not only for sociologists but also for researchers across the social sciences as a whole.

Politics seems ever-present when it comes to scientific topics and associated technologies, at least in the contemporary United States. It is perhaps most salient in the case of climate change, but climate change is just one of many examples where politics and science intermingle: other instances include debates over evolution, stem cell research, the use of vaccines, fracking, nuclear power, and many others. This multidisciplinary volume brings together top notch scholars working in the social scientific tradition who are studying the “politics of science.” Contributions explore three themes: the way in which politically relevant values and identities influence (1) the communication of scientific knowledge and (2) its reception by the public, as well as (3) the interplay of political values and scientific beliefs (and behaviors) among knowledge elites. The volume’s contributors represent a range of fields, including political science, communication, psychology, public health, law, and philosophy.

Revisiting the Politics of Consumption (The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Series

Publishing the 600th volume of The Annals provides the perfect opportunity to celebrate the achievements of the social sciences, review past and current challenges, and look toward future possibilities that await scholars, practitioners, and policymakers alike in using the social sciences to help improve the quality of human life and advance the public good. Certainly, The Annals and its parent organization, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, have changed over the 115 years. So too have disciplines and fields of study within the social sciences. Yet the hope to "enlighten public opinion and inform public policy" has remained constant, even as the Academy and the social sciences have pursed both a "science project" and "national political project," occasionally in tandem and, at other times, separately. This special issue is dedicated to reflecting on how selected disciplines and fields of study have promoted their use and usefulness in advancing and informing public policy. With an impressive array of experts in their respective fields, this volume examines how anthropology, behavioral genetics, criminology, economics, international relations, sociology, psychology, and political science have advanced or strayed from that agenda. Much more than a historical overview, the articles here provide honest and at times, provocative assessments of the development of the social sciences and their impact on public policies and the publics they study. Social scientists, practitioners, and policymakers willing to advance the use and usefulness of the social sciences will upon the lesions of this volume for many years to come.

This volume brings together a broad range of disciplinary approaches - including contributions from demographers, economists, epidemiologists, historians, molecular and biological anthropologists, political scientists, and sociologists - to advance the science of "legacies" research. The contributions assembled here take a broader view of the ways in which we conceptualize and measure racial violence and the possibilites for effective intervention by bringing quantitative and qualitative insights to bear on salient patterns of historical violence, the contemporary outcomes they are posited to impact, and the intervening mechanisms through which they operate.

Barack Obama's election as the forty-fourth president of the United States reinvigorated discussions of race, ideology and inequality in America. This debate occurs in an era when scholarly attention on the intersections in these key areas has been growing in tandem with the expanding racial and ethnic diversity of American society. To broaden our understanding of these complex convergences, this volume of the ANNALS continues the discussion by showcasing a set of cutting-edge papers by leading scholars of race and inequality, with special focus on racial attitudes and stratification beliefs research. Utilizing a mix of methodological and theoretical approaches, the contributors highlight four primary themes: (1) intersections of race, inequality, and ideology in specific institutional domains (e.g., crime, religion, work, immigration/national inclusion); (2) the meaning, measurement, and implications of "racial resentment"; (3) the role of social context and stereotypes in shaping racial (and non-racial) policy support; and (4) the operation of racial prejudice and stratification ideology in the context of Obama's presidency. This volume will appeal to a multidisciplinary scholarly audience, including policy-makers interested in current public opinion regarding the American occupational structure and its associated inequalities.

This volume of The ANNALS outlines the infrastructures that will need to be built to make sure data providers and empirical researchers can best serve national policy needs. The volume is organized around three topics: privacy and confidentiality, data providers, and comprehensive strategies.

"Book department": pages 101-142. Includes index.