Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: During the Weimar Republic, a group of young Social Democrats developed an ideology that combined elements of both National Socialism and militant anti-Fascism. This "Junge Rechte" ("Young Right") attempted simultaneously both to reform social democratic thought and politics by modifying them in accordance with nationalist, authoritarian, and anti-rationalist tendencies and to combat National Socialism. While advocating a militant strategy against the Nazis and assuming leading positions in the anti-Nazi underground, these Social Democrats also shared the basic convictions of neo-conservative, fascist and even national socialist ideologies. The proposed paper will investigate this contradiction by analyzing the ideology of the Junge Rechte in relationship to the development of socialist and nationalist thought in Germany. It questions the conventional historiographical interpretation that the group’s ideas offered a last chance to safeguard democracy and that it was a forerunner of the post-war modernization of German Social Democracy. Instead, this paper argues that the Junge Rechte must be interpreted as the product of the intellectual crisis in early and mid-twentieth-century Europe. Despite their conviction that they were defending democracy and fighting against National Socialism, the Junge Rechte actually helped pave way for the destruction of liberal political thought and democracy in Germany. The group’s ideology suggests that liberalism and democracy were not only threatened by radicalism from outside the constitutional consensus of the Weimar Republic, but also jeopardized from within. It thus illustrates the ambiguity and fragility of democratic traditions and of the ideas of the Enlightenment.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: Social learning theory is an established general theory of criminal, deviant, and conforming behavior that finds substantial empirical support. Although the theory provides insight into the processes that influence criminal behavior, the theory does not speak to the environments that produce such behavior—the domain of structural theories. Akers has suggested that social learning theory accounts for differences in crime rates through its mediation of structural effects on individual criminal behavior. He postulated that social structure acts as the distal cause of crime, affecting an individual’s exposure to norm and norm-violating contingencies through the social learning process. Although the integrated cross-level social structure-social learning theory has received empirical attention, criminologists have not adequately tested the model. The present research contributes to the theoretical body of literature through its more complete measurement of the macrosocial correlates and theoretically defined structural causes dimensions posited by Akers. The present study tests social structure-social learning hypotheses on data obtained from a sample of high school students that was merged with U.S. Census block group data (N=1062). Although finding a relationship between social structure and social learning, the study finds no support for Akers’ use of the mediation descriptor. Instead, the present research finds support for several moderator hypotheses, concluding that the social structure-social learning statement requires modification.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Current research on trust suggests that African Americans are the least trusting of others in general (social trust) and of political institutions (political trust) than any other racial group. Generally, it is assumed that this racial group’s historical experience with discrimination in the United States explains lower levels of trust. However, scant research has been done to test empirically this political phenomenon. This paper proposes a return to the study of political socialization in order to explain this phenomenon. The paper argues that lower levels of political trust are explained by African Americans’ racial socialization experiences, which determine perceptions of trust in race-specific others (racial trust) and eventual perceptions of racial actors within the context of political institutions (parties and local and national governments). As a consequence, racial socialization is a source of political socialization. Although survey data are limited that contain measures for these types of socializations within one dataset, the paper proposes the development of such a survey. The paper also argues that racial trust and political trust are learned as an outgrowth of these socializations. Thus, data analysis on political trust is generated from the 2000 Social Capital Benchmark Survey in order to test the covariation between racial and political trusts. Preliminary results from the Benchmark Survey suggest that racial trust has a minimal effect on political trust and that race affects trust in other ways that may be indicative of how people think about relating to others with different racial backgrounds. There is support, however, for the impact that discrimination experiences have on trust in government. The evidence from the survey may point to the complex way race operates in political trust. Hence, further research on racial socialization, political socialization, and political trust may uncover how racial and political perspectives are learned via socialization experiences that are transmitted generationally and that are externalized via political behavior.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: It is often not clear whether “social capital” is used to explain the presence of a social structure or the operation of a social process, or whether the resource at play is tangible or intangible. Although social capital as a theoretical concept may carry considerable potential for explanation and understanding in sociology, it is still in its early stage of formulation and needs to be developed further. This paper examines how the effects of social capital depend on the network structure from which the capital emerges. I argue that, depending on the context in which networks form, social capital is more or less powerful in determining migratory outcomes. I use special network data collected in four communities in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico (two rural villages, a town, and a city) to examine how social context – in this case community size – affects the structure and organization of social networks and the way networks, in turn, operate to produce social capital. My results suggest characteristic interrelationships between social context, social structure, and social capital and that migration theorists, therefore, must pay greater attention to network structure when attempting to understand how social capital is created and diffused and when modeling its effects.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Previous comparative welfare state research has often suggested that the degree of labor power and the elderly population in society strongly influences how much the government spends on health, education and social security and welfare programs. However, these studies do not deal with whether labor employees or the elderly really have preferences for types or degrees of social spending. Contrary to these previous studies, I demonstrate that those who are more involved in society are less likely to support social spending increases – including people involved with religious organizations, professional organizations and labor unions. I also show that younger people are more likely to support greater social protection, people that are more highly educated are less likely to support social spending increases, and people with higher incomes are less likely to support social spending increases. These results are upheld through two waves of the World Values survey and cross nationally, which suggests that future research should focus more on the age demographic, education and income gaps in society if we hope to advance our understanding of the domestic factors that increase the pressure that governments face for greater redistribution.