Sociology Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2804
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Item Interaction Patterns in the Neighborhood Tavern(1971) Bissonette, Raymond Peter; Lejins, Peter P.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)This study was undertaken in order to develop a systematic description and analysis of the social reality of the public drinking establishment with special reference to the neighborhood workingman's tavern. The perspective adopted was a focus on the non-pathological aspects of behavior associated with the consumption of beverage alcohol. Underlying this point of departure was the recognition that most research on drinking behavior is related to alcoholism but most drinking is not. The study had two purposes: first to attempt a descriptive analysis of social interaction in the tavern setting by translating observed behavior into relatively standard sociological concepts of norm, role, ecology, and communication. Beyond the descriptive purpose of this approach was the expectation that the organization of observations into such a conceptual scheme would enhance the scientific utility of the effort by providing for assimilability and comparability of the data with other research and theory. The second purpose was to test a new theoretical focus for its adequacy as an explanatory model. The focus is on behavior in public and semi-public places - an area falling some where between group studies on the one hand and studies of collective behavior on the other. The major component of this theoretical framework is the mechanism of involvement allocation which refers to the ways in which actors regulate the duration and intensity of their involvement in interpersonal interaction. As was anticipated much of what is unique to sociability in the tavern setting was explainable in terms of involvement allocation. Principally responsible for this is the fact that a tavern, regardless of its official definition, has the dual functions of dispensary and social event. Although the tavern is a prototypic case for involvement allocation it was concluded that this explanatory model might have wide application in interpersonal and intergroup behavior. The data were collected over a three year period by means of participant observation in a wide variety of settings. The core data represent observations taken over a two year period in four selected neighborhood taverns. The synchronic observation of these case taverns were then supplemented by spot observations taken in over one hundred other establishments. The third source of data was the published findings of similar and related studies. The contrast and comparison provided by these additional data aid considerably in verifying the raw data and their interpretation - an inherent problem in this kind of approach. The findings demonstrate that the social reality of the tavern setting consists in patterned behavior amenable to systematic description and analysis. Drinking is a never-present variable but rarely an exclusive preoccupation. A more fruitful approach in understanding the role of drinking in such a setting is to focus on its social rather than physiological consequences. As a part of the definition of the tavern, drinking is always an accepted major involvement and as such affords the individual considerable flexibility in his involvement in the social activities occurring simultaneously. Throughout the study much of what is characteristic of tavern behavior is explained in terms of the involvement allocation options offered by the tavern's dual function as dispensary and social event.Item Riots as Disasters: An Exploratory Case Study of Selected Aspects of the Civil Disturbance in Washington, D.C., April, 1968(1973) Sedlack, Richard Guy; Janes, Robert W.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)Following some of the more recent sociological literature which has been critical of research into riots, the topic of this thesis addresses itself to a hitherto neglected aspect of riots. It is an initial exploratory effort into the ecological dimensions of official statistics, utilizing the relevant temporal and spatial conceptualizations suggested by the sociological disaster literature. The data sources were the offense and arrest records of the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department and the fire data on the Daily Communication Log of the District of Columbia Fire Department. The offense and fire data were treated as partial indicators of the situation reported to the police with the arrest data as partial indicators of the response made by the police to the riot. The data were conceptually organized along three dimensions. First, the type of criminal violation was classified into six general categories: crimes against persons, crimes against property, traffic violations, crimes without victims, crimes related to fires, and miscellaneous crimes. For a more detailed analysis, the total crimes falling into any one of these general categories were subclassified into more detailed subcategories within each general category. Second, the spatial dimension was trichotomized into three locational specifications: the riot areas of major destruction, the corridor areas of sporadic destruction, and the non-riot areas of minimal or no riot destruction. Third, the temporal dimension was dichotomized into the total riot period of organized response and a representative normal time period, so that the latter could serve as a benchmark against which to compare the former. Two specific questions were posited: what degree of difference existed between the defined riot period and the representative normal time period in terms of crimes and spatial location as reflected by the official statistics and what kinds of differences were evident. Three specific hypotheses were evaluated: (1) the offense and fire data hypothesis which suggested that the degree of association between the offenses reported and the selected riot-normal time period varies directly with the degree of concentrated riot damage, (2) the arrest data hypothesis which suggested that the degree of association between the police's response and the selected riot-normal time period varies directly with the degree of concentrated riot damage, and (3) the comparative hypothesis which suggested that the degree of association between the police's response and the selected riot-normal time period is less than the degree of association between the offenses reported and the selected riot-normal time period . Utilizing the lambda proportionate reduction in error statistic, the data were inconclusive relative to the first hypothesis and generally failed to support the second and third hypotheses, although the magnitude of the data indicated that there were some differences. The nature of the differences indicated that the incidence of fires and burglary violations increased substantially, while larceny, false fire alarm reports, and the degree of violence in crimes against persons decreased in the reported offenses during the riot. The police response was dominated by arrests for disorderly conduct and curfew violations with burglary arrests ranking second. While there were decreases in larceny and traffic arrests, the latter were still substantially represented during the riot and no meaningful numbers of arson arrests were made. Further, it was concluded that substantial numbers of offenses reported and arrests made occurred in the non-riot areas. It was concluded that the disaster literature provided relevant conceptualizations for the analysis of the spatial and temporal dimensions of riots, that further analysis of these dimensions is warranted, and that other dimensions of the disaster approach appear to be useful when applied to riots.