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Contemporary United States (contemporary + united_states)
Selected AbstractsAscription, Choice, and the Construction of Religious Identities in the Contemporary United StatesJOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 1 2006WENDY CADGE Within the past 15 years, sociological studies of religion have emphasized the chosen, achieved nature of religious identities and have deemphasized ascription or tribalism as the basis of Americans' construction of religious selves. The accounts many people develop in narrating their religious life experiences, however, often combine notions of ascription and achievement in ways scholars have not clearly conceptualized. This article develops an approach to religious identity that shows how, rather than being treated as a dichotomy, the concepts of ascription and achievement are integrated in nuanced ways in the narratives of religious identity told by first-generation immigrant Thai Buddhists and third-generation Jews, two groups with strong inherited religious identities. The comparison between Jews and Buddhists shows how members of both groups blend the concepts of ascription and achievement in similar and different ways, particularly around practice, regardless of their participation in religious organizations. [source] The Panel Study on American Religion and Ethnicity: Background, Methods, and Selected ResultsJOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 1 2010Michael O. Emerson Surveying 2,610 respondents, the Panel Study of American Religion and Ethnicity is a nationally representative in-home survey of the noninstitutionalized U.S. adult population. The survey is designed to (a) focus primarily on religion and spirituality (with over 200 questions on these topics), (b) include multiple other modules (such as health, family relationships, and social ties), (c) oversample African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics, and (d) follow the same respondents over time. We describe the main design features of the survey, present some characteristics of the sample, and provide basic findings. It is our hope that these data will foster more research and contribute to a better understanding of the role and meaning of religion in the contemporary United States. [source] The Ironies of Helping: Social Interventions and Executable SubjectsLAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 2 2009Kerry Dunn Law and society scholars have theorized about the link between capital punishment and the hegemony of individualism, but few offer empirical investigations to illustrate how individualism makes capital punishment possible (and vice versa) in the contemporary United States. In order to fill this gap, we analyze the legal and human service records that were compiled in the construction of one executable subject, Daniel Farnsworth. Using a critical discourse approach, we look at what was said and not said about Daniel in the records created by various helping agencies. In our analysis, we demonstrate how the helping agencies involved in Daniel's life repeatedly relied on an individuating psychological paradigm that led them to produce decontextualized catalogs of his actions and characteristics. Next, we illustrate how these pathologizing accounts were, ironically, later invoked in court in the name of preserving his life. Finally, we explain how "helping" discourses, along with the rules that regulate capital defense practice, straightjacket defense attorneys into reinforcing individualism in this context. [source] Shamanism and San Pedro through Time: Some Notes on the Archaeology, History, and Continued Use of an Entheogen in Northern PeruANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS, Issue 1 2010BONNIE GLASS-COFFIN ABSTRACT This paper discusses archaeological, historical, and contemporary ethnographic evidence for the use of the San Pedro cactus in northern Peru as a vehicle for traveling between worlds and for imparting the "vista" (magical sight) necessary for shamanic healers to divine the cause of their patients' ailments. Using iconographic, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic evidence for the uninterrupted use of this sacred plant as a means of access to the Divine and as a tool for healing, it describes the relationship between San Pedro, ancestor worship, water/fertility cults and also the common symbolic associations between San Pedro and wind-spirits. It closes by suggesting that the more than 2000 year time-depth of using this plant as a means for accessing the realms of Spirit and as a tool for healing should serve to challenge the unfortunate tendency in the contemporary United States to consider this plant as a "recreational drug." [source] The Geography of Homelessness in American Communities: Concentration or Dispersion?CITY & COMMUNITY, Issue 1 2004Barrett A. Lee Few recent studies of homelessness have focused on the distribution of the phenomenon across different types of community contexts. Nevertheless, claims are often made about the decline of urban skid rows and the increasing spatial ubiquity of the homeless population. Motivated by these claims, our research analyzes 1990 Census S-night data at multiple geographic levels to determine whether homeless people remain locationally concentrated or have become more dispersed in the contemporary United States. Data from the 2000 Census, though limited in scope, are briefly examined as well. We find that the "visible" homeless are overrepresented in metropolitan and urban portions of the nation, in central cities of metropolitan areas, and in a minority of neighborhoods within these areas. Such an uneven distribution, which favors the concentration over the dispersion perspective, often takes a polynucleated form in large cities. Forces shaping the geography of homelessness are discussed, as are the policy implications and methodological caveats associated with our results. [source] | ||||||||||