Dennis J Downey
Biographic Data
| ID | 139889 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dennis J Downey |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dennis J |
| FAMILY NAME | Downey |
| SIGNATURE | DOWNEY D J |
| AFFILIATIONS | California State University, Channel Islands |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9842-9427 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 51 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Cultivating Quantitative Literacy in the Introductory Course
We report on a cross-disciplinary collaboration between sociology and mathematics education to more effectively cultivate quantitative literacy (QL) in the introductory sociology course. Focusing on an instructional unit presenting the Gini coefficient (the most commonly used summary measure of income inequality), we engaged in iterative cycles of presentation, assessment, and redesign across four semester-long courses. Assessments were guided by…
Polarization and Persuasion
Our divided democracy-characterized by partisan polarization and moralized opposition-presents significant challenges to sociologists who would use our discipline to create a more just society. I focus here on the strategic role of, and need for, deeper engagement across the political divide. I review current research on polarization-increasingly focused on attitudinal consolidation and partisan identity-to emphasize challenges to and opportuniti…
Navigating the Process of Curriculum Redesign in Sociology
The American Sociological Association has produced a wide range of reports and materials addressing curricular best practices. Collectively, those materials are an invaluable resource for guiding revisions of the sociology major, but they do not address processes for implementing such revisions. In this conversation piece, we describe the steps by which our department implemented a thorough curricular redesign—a process nearing completion after f…
The Ethnography Initiative in the Pacific Sociological Association
Between Scylla and Charybdis
Metropolitan Reconfiguration and Contemporary Zones of Transition
In classic urban sociology, the zone of transition was an expression of the spatial logic of the industrial city, and a site of particular conflict within it. In the near-century since its introduction, metropolitan areas have been fundamentally reconfigured by processes such as suburban expansion, demographic diversification, and economic transformation. We explain how those reconfigurations have generated new zones of transition, based on a new…
Body image in belly dance
This research presents survey data from a sample of 103 belly dancers in Salt Lake City, Utah, addressing issues of body image and gender identity. While research on various forms of dance has emphasized unhealthy body image influences, belly dance offers a counter-example, indicating broad and inclusive body image norms, lack of pressure for body image conformity, and high levels of body satisfaction among dancers. Data also indicate that those …
Institutional Activism and Community Building
Since its creation in 1971, the Orange County Human Relations Commission (OCHRC) has established itself as a central actor in addressing issues of diversity and social justice in Orange County, California, a region with a growing Muslim population approaching 200,000. Following the events of 9/11, the OCHRC organized a programmatic response linked to broader community-building initiatives that sought to promote inclusion of Muslim Americans into …
The Status of Sociology within the Academy
Making Multiculturalism
Elaborating Consensus
This research addresses the field of intergroup relations during World War II and immediately thereafter as a case study of a noncontentious (or consensus-oriented) social movement. It examines patterns of strategic activities and strategic rationales, drawing from Lofland's (1989; 1993) research mapping the 1980s peace movement. Analyses utilize a unique data source describing programmatic activities for 353 independent organizations from a dire…
The Role of Leadership and Strategy in Navigating Political Incorporation
Political incorporation represents an important and complex trajectory for social movements. Whether that trajectory leads to favorable substantive outcomes or merely to formalistic representation within the polity depends in part on the strategic decisions made by leaders. We have few frameworks, however, for understanding their role in navigating incorporation. This research presents a "niche definition" framework emphasizing strategic differen…
Attitudinal Polarization and Trimodal Distributions
Objective . We present trimodality as a distributional pattern that is relevant to conceptual issues of attitudinal polarization but fits nowhere along the modality‐bimodality continuum. Methods . We use simulated univariate distributions and distributions taken from the 1994 General Social Survey to investigate how commonly used measures track (or fail to track) noteworthy shifts in the distributions. Results . The kurtosis and variance are larg…
Situating Social Attitudes toward Cultural Pluralism
This research situates attitudes toward cultural pluralism between two bodies of research on socio-political conflicts with a symbolic emphasis: one addressing the culture wars and the other addressing contemporary racial attitudes. Analysis uses data from the 1994 General Social Survey (GSS) “multicultural module” to test a range of discrete claims emerging from each perspective in several thematic areas: attitudinal distribution/polarization; p…
From Americanization to Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism has been a central concept in conflicts over race/ethnic relations for more than a decade, yet the debates that it ignited offer little systematic understanding of its origins and meaning. This research seeks to clarify those issues through an analysis of multiculturalism, and cultural diversity more broadly, from a symbolic and historical perspective. Symbolic analysis of multiculturalism focuses on its multivalence-an essential…
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Diversity breadth requirements, also known as multicultural requirements, are fast becoming an integral part of undergraduate education in American universities. This newly created requirement imposes a number of demands on comparative multicultural courses, including courses on sociology of race and ethnicity. In this essay we identify the challenges to curriculum development posed by the sociology of race and ethnicity as a specific example of …
Attitudinal Polarization and Trimodal Distributions
Objective . We present trimodality as a distributional pattern that is relevant to conceptual issues of attitudinal polarization but fits nowhere along the modality‐bimodality continuum. Methods . We use simulated univariate distributions and distributions taken from the 1994 General Social Survey to investigate how commonly used measures track (or fail to track) noteworthy shifts in the distributions. Results . The kurtosis and variance are larg…
From Americanization to Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism has been a central concept in conflicts over race/ethnic relations for more than a decade, yet the debates that it ignited offer little systematic understanding of its origins and meaning. This research seeks to clarify those issues through an analysis of multiculturalism, and cultural diversity more broadly, from a symbolic and historical perspective. Symbolic analysis of multiculturalism focuses on its multivalence-an essential…
Elaborating Consensus
This research addresses the field of intergroup relations during World War II and immediately thereafter as a case study of a noncontentious (or consensus-oriented) social movement. It examines patterns of strategic activities and strategic rationales, drawing from Lofland's (1989; 1993) research mapping the 1980s peace movement. Analyses utilize a unique data source describing programmatic activities for 353 independent organizations from a dire…
Polarization and Persuasion
Our divided democracy-characterized by partisan polarization and moralized opposition-presents significant challenges to sociologists who would use our discipline to create a more just society. I focus here on the strategic role of, and need for, deeper engagement across the political divide. I review current research on polarization-increasingly focused on attitudinal consolidation and partisan identity-to emphasize challenges to and opportuniti…
Between Scylla and Charybdis
Body image in belly dance
This research presents survey data from a sample of 103 belly dancers in Salt Lake City, Utah, addressing issues of body image and gender identity. While research on various forms of dance has emphasized unhealthy body image influences, belly dance offers a counter-example, indicating broad and inclusive body image norms, lack of pressure for body image conformity, and high levels of body satisfaction among dancers. Data also indicate that those …
The Status of Sociology within the Academy
Making Multiculturalism
Situating Social Attitudes toward Cultural Pluralism
This research situates attitudes toward cultural pluralism between two bodies of research on socio-political conflicts with a symbolic emphasis: one addressing the culture wars and the other addressing contemporary racial attitudes. Analysis uses data from the 1994 General Social Survey (GSS) “multicultural module” to test a range of discrete claims emerging from each perspective in several thematic areas: attitudinal distribution/polarization; p…
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Diversity breadth requirements, also known as multicultural requirements, are fast becoming an integral part of undergraduate education in American universities. This newly created requirement imposes a number of demands on comparative multicultural courses, including courses on sociology of race and ethnicity. In this essay we identify the challenges to curriculum development posed by the sociology of race and ethnicity as a specific example of …
Cultivating Quantitative Literacy in the Introductory Course
We report on a cross-disciplinary collaboration between sociology and mathematics education to more effectively cultivate quantitative literacy (QL) in the introductory sociology course. Focusing on an instructional unit presenting the Gini coefficient (the most commonly used summary measure of income inequality), we engaged in iterative cycles of presentation, assessment, and redesign across four semester-long courses. Assessments were guided by…
Navigating the Process of Curriculum Redesign in Sociology
The American Sociological Association has produced a wide range of reports and materials addressing curricular best practices. Collectively, those materials are an invaluable resource for guiding revisions of the sociology major, but they do not address processes for implementing such revisions. In this conversation piece, we describe the steps by which our department implemented a thorough curricular redesign—a process nearing completion after f…
Metropolitan Reconfiguration and Contemporary Zones of Transition
In classic urban sociology, the zone of transition was an expression of the spatial logic of the industrial city, and a site of particular conflict within it. In the near-century since its introduction, metropolitan areas have been fundamentally reconfigured by processes such as suburban expansion, demographic diversification, and economic transformation. We explain how those reconfigurations have generated new zones of transition, based on a new…
Institutional Activism and Community Building
Since its creation in 1971, the Orange County Human Relations Commission (OCHRC) has established itself as a central actor in addressing issues of diversity and social justice in Orange County, California, a region with a growing Muslim population approaching 200,000. Following the events of 9/11, the OCHRC organized a programmatic response linked to broader community-building initiatives that sought to promote inclusion of Muslim Americans into …
The Role of Leadership and Strategy in Navigating Political Incorporation
Political incorporation represents an important and complex trajectory for social movements. Whether that trajectory leads to favorable substantive outcomes or merely to formalistic representation within the polity depends in part on the strategic decisions made by leaders. We have few frameworks, however, for understanding their role in navigating incorporation. This research presents a "niche definition" framework emphasizing strategic differen…
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Diversity breadth requirements, also known as multicultural requirements, are fast becoming an integral part of undergraduate education in American universities. This newly created requirement imposes a number of demands on comparative multicultural courses, including courses on sociology of race and ethnicity. In this essay we identify the challenges to curriculum development posed by the sociology of race and ethnicity as a specific example of …
From Americanization to Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism has been a central concept in conflicts over race/ethnic relations for more than a decade, yet the debates that it ignited offer little systematic understanding of its origins and meaning. This research seeks to clarify those issues through an analysis of multiculturalism, and cultural diversity more broadly, from a symbolic and historical perspective. Symbolic analysis of multiculturalism focuses on its multivalence-an essential…
Situating Social Attitudes toward Cultural Pluralism
This research situates attitudes toward cultural pluralism between two bodies of research on socio-political conflicts with a symbolic emphasis: one addressing the culture wars and the other addressing contemporary racial attitudes. Analysis uses data from the 1994 General Social Survey (GSS) “multicultural module” to test a range of discrete claims emerging from each perspective in several thematic areas: attitudinal distribution/polarization; p…
Attitudinal Polarization and Trimodal Distributions
Objective . We present trimodality as a distributional pattern that is relevant to conceptual issues of attitudinal polarization but fits nowhere along the modality‐bimodality continuum. Methods . We use simulated univariate distributions and distributions taken from the 1994 General Social Survey to investigate how commonly used measures track (or fail to track) noteworthy shifts in the distributions. Results . The kurtosis and variance are larg…
Making Multiculturalism
Elaborating Consensus
This research addresses the field of intergroup relations during World War II and immediately thereafter as a case study of a noncontentious (or consensus-oriented) social movement. It examines patterns of strategic activities and strategic rationales, drawing from Lofland's (1989; 1993) research mapping the 1980s peace movement. Analyses utilize a unique data source describing programmatic activities for 353 independent organizations from a dire…
The Role of Leadership and Strategy in Navigating Political Incorporation
Political incorporation represents an important and complex trajectory for social movements. Whether that trajectory leads to favorable substantive outcomes or merely to formalistic representation within the polity depends in part on the strategic decisions made by leaders. We have few frameworks, however, for understanding their role in navigating incorporation. This research presents a "niche definition" framework emphasizing strategic differen…
The Status of Sociology within the Academy
Institutional Activism and Community Building
Since its creation in 1971, the Orange County Human Relations Commission (OCHRC) has established itself as a central actor in addressing issues of diversity and social justice in Orange County, California, a region with a growing Muslim population approaching 200,000. Following the events of 9/11, the OCHRC organized a programmatic response linked to broader community-building initiatives that sought to promote inclusion of Muslim Americans into …
Body image in belly dance
This research presents survey data from a sample of 103 belly dancers in Salt Lake City, Utah, addressing issues of body image and gender identity. While research on various forms of dance has emphasized unhealthy body image influences, belly dance offers a counter-example, indicating broad and inclusive body image norms, lack of pressure for body image conformity, and high levels of body satisfaction among dancers. Data also indicate that those …
Metropolitan Reconfiguration and Contemporary Zones of Transition
In classic urban sociology, the zone of transition was an expression of the spatial logic of the industrial city, and a site of particular conflict within it. In the near-century since its introduction, metropolitan areas have been fundamentally reconfigured by processes such as suburban expansion, demographic diversification, and economic transformation. We explain how those reconfigurations have generated new zones of transition, based on a new…
Between Scylla and Charybdis
The Ethnography Initiative in the Pacific Sociological Association
Navigating the Process of Curriculum Redesign in Sociology
The American Sociological Association has produced a wide range of reports and materials addressing curricular best practices. Collectively, those materials are an invaluable resource for guiding revisions of the sociology major, but they do not address processes for implementing such revisions. In this conversation piece, we describe the steps by which our department implemented a thorough curricular redesign—a process nearing completion after f…
Polarization and Persuasion
Our divided democracy-characterized by partisan polarization and moralized opposition-presents significant challenges to sociologists who would use our discipline to create a more just society. I focus here on the strategic role of, and need for, deeper engagement across the political divide. I review current research on polarization-increasingly focused on attitudinal consolidation and partisan identity-to emphasize challenges to and opportuniti…
Cultivating Quantitative Literacy in the Introductory Course
We report on a cross-disciplinary collaboration between sociology and mathematics education to more effectively cultivate quantitative literacy (QL) in the introductory sociology course. Focusing on an instructional unit presenting the Gini coefficient (the most commonly used summary measure of income inequality), we engaged in iterative cycles of presentation, assessment, and redesign across four semester-long courses. Assessments were guided by…
Sociology (14 works) · Political science (11 works) · Law (8 works) · Politics (6 works) · Anthropology (5 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Social science (5 works) · Gender Studies (4 works) · Multiculturalism (4 works)