Ronald J Berger
Biographic Data
| ID | 170423 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ronald J Berger |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ronald J |
| FAMILY NAME | Berger |
| SIGNATURE | BERGER R J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Whitewater |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 164 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Fascism, American Style
Disability and Life History Research
In this article the author shares his experience doing life history research with people with disabilities. Berger begins with a brief explanation of how his biographical trajectory brought him to an interest in disability. He then considers the tradition of emancipatory disability research in the context of qualitative inquiry more generally, then his research with Melvin Juette and the world of wheelchair basketball, and last his work with Jon …
Crime, Justice, and Society
Academic Freedom and Its Discontents
In this essay, the author recounts his experience with a student complaint that reached an influential Republican legislator and raises questions about academic freedom in an era of right-wing political activism. The context of the complaint was a course on white-collar crime in which the author raised issues about the nature of economic and political power that the student found objectionable. Although the complaint was dismissed, its aim was to…
Embodiment and Social Difference
Travels with Jon and Sarah
This essay describes the first author's personal and professional journey to and through the Eighth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. The story is told in Ron Berger's voice but is written in the context of his friendship and professional collaboration with Jon Feucht, who uses a computerized augmentative communication device to speak. From the very beginning, the authors anticipated that their experiences at the Congress would conta…
Thank You for Your Words
This article recounts the authors' experiences at the Authentic Voices of America summer camp for severely disabled youths who are learning to become more proficient at using computerized communication devices to speak. The five-day camp was founded by Jon Feucht, who also uses a device and continues to serve as its director. In the summer of 2011, Feucht invited sociologist Ron Berger to attend the camp as part of a collaborative research projec…
Crime, Justice, and Society
Disability and the Dedicated Wheelchair Athlete
The "supercrip" athlete is often derided as a figure that is antithetical to the interests of people with disabilities. But few researchers have questioned the assumptions of this complaint or examined it empirically. In this article I problematize the supercrip critique and argue for a more nuanced view of dedicated disabled athletes as offering both a disempowering and an empowering experience for people with disabilities. I report on the resul…
Agency, Structure, and The Transition to Disability
If life history research is ever to truly fulfill the promise of the sociological imagination, it will need to engage insights from agency-structure theory that have hitherto been neglected. Relatively few life history researchers have explicitly interpreted their subject matter in terms of agency-structure theory, and those who do rarely go beyond Giddens' initial formulation to incorporate more recent theoretical developments. This article atte…
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
To Be or Not to Be
In this essay I recount my engagement with my father's experience of the Holocaust and its impact on my professional career and way of thinking about the world. The voices of survivors like my father are no longer silenced and marginalized as they once were, but the legacy of the trauma they endured remains in dispute. As such, I consider questions of Jewish identity and continuity in the postwar era as well as controversies about Israel's role i…
Crime, Justice, and Society
Storytelling Sociology
The Narrative Turn in Social Inquiry. Family and Place. Introduction. Searching for Yellowstone N.K. Denzin. Twin Towers N. Olivencia. Remembering George Washington on the Rio Grande A.J. Trevino. My Ain Folk: Scottish Oral History and the Sociological Imagination J.H.Faley. Everyone Else: Becoming Jewish T. Platt. Walking with Lao Tzu at Auschwitz D. Clinton. The Body. Introduction. Becoming Quasimodo: The Shaping of a Life W.E. Powell. No Body …
Memory Perceived
Journal Article Memory Perceived: Recalling the Holocaust Get access Ronald J. Berger Ronald J. Berger Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 18, Issue 2, Fall 2004, Pages 304–306, https://doi.org/10.1093/hgs/dch070 Published: 01 January 2004
Fathoming the Holocaust
Journal Article Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach, Ronald J. Berger. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2002, 238 pp.; $53.95 (cloth), $22.95 (paper) Get access Marilyn F. Nefsky Marilyn F. Nefsky University of Lethbridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 65, Issue 1, Spring 2004, Pages 88–89, https://doi.org/10.2307/3712510 Published: 01 March 2004
Pushing Forward
Wheelchair basketball offers an ethnographic space through which this article connects a familial story of survival to the author's evolving engagement with disability. The author has been looking for role models, for people who might offer guidance to help his family cope with his daughter's disability. The story of Melvin Juette, a Chicago gang member turned world-class wheelchair athlete, was the inspiration for embarking on a research project…
It Ain't Necessarily So
Fathoming the Holocaust
This volume on the explains the Final Solution to the from the perspective of social problems construction. It covers the origins and implementation of the genocidal strategy of National Socialism, the wartime reaction to it and the postwar collective memory of the genocide. Fathoming the Holocaust opens by reviewing how historians have studied the subject, considering several avenues of sociological analysis and introducing the approach the auth…
Fathoming the Holocaust
Rape And Society
Feminist Foundations For The Study Of Rape And Society * Rape Poem Marge Piercy. * The Trauma of Rape: The Case of Ms. X Diana E.H. Russell. * The Social Context of Rape: Sexual Scripts and Motivation Stevi Jackson. * Sex and Violence: A Perspective Catharine A. MacKinnon. * Hidden Rape: Sexual Aggression and Victimization in a National Sample of Students in Higher Education Mary P. Koss. Why Men Rape * Jay: An Armchair Rapist Timothy Beneke. * R…
Agency, Structure, and Jewish Survival of the Holocaust
L'A. presente l'analyse de la biographie de deux freres juifs qui ont survecu a l'Holocauste. Il cherche a elaborer une sociologie des survivants et s'efforce de resoudre un des problemes les plus delicats de la theorie sociologique : celui de la relation entre l'autonomie individuelle et la structure sociale. Il s'attache a construire une theorie qui permette de rendre compte de cette relation. Il evalue les approches purement psychologique de c…
The Sociology of Juvenile Delinquency
The 'Banality of Evil' Reframed
Research on the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews has arguably been dominated by historians. Yet many historians remain confounded by the Holocaust's major paradox: the “banality of evil” that occurred during the Nazi regime. In this article I argue that understanding of the “banality of evil” paradox can be advanced by reframing previously unsynthesized research in terms of a constructionist theory of social problems. I view the “Jewish problem” a…
Porn
Disability and the Dedicated Wheelchair Athlete
The "supercrip" athlete is often derided as a figure that is antithetical to the interests of people with disabilities. But few researchers have questioned the assumptions of this complaint or examined it empirically. In this article I problematize the supercrip critique and argue for a more nuanced view of dedicated disabled athletes as offering both a disempowering and an empowering experience for people with disabilities. I report on the resul…
Competing Perspectives on Cross-National Crime
Cross-national studies of crime are dominated by a Durkheimian-Modernization theoretical perspective. We evaluate this perspective and present two alternatives, the Marxian-World System and Ecological-Opportunity perspectives. Each is for its theory of social change, causal explanation of criminal behavior, conceptualization of law and crime rates, and view of the relation between collective political behavior and crime. The empirical evidence is…
The Dimensions of Rape Reform Legislation
Largely as a result of the feminist movement, most states have passed some form of rape reform legislation. Most rape law research has attempted to ascertain whether the reformed laws have achieved specific instrumental goals. In contrast, this paper emphasizes rape law reform as a symbolic indicator of women's contemporary social status. We believe there is a need for a greater appreciation of the diversity of rape law reform across the country …
Agency, Structure, and Jewish Survival of the Holocaust
L'A. presente l'analyse de la biographie de deux freres juifs qui ont survecu a l'Holocauste. Il cherche a elaborer une sociologie des survivants et s'efforce de resoudre un des problemes les plus delicats de la theorie sociologique : celui de la relation entre l'autonomie individuelle et la structure sociale. Il s'attache a construire une theorie qui permette de rendre compte de cette relation. Il evalue les approches purement psychologique de c…
Pushing Forward
Wheelchair basketball offers an ethnographic space through which this article connects a familial story of survival to the author's evolving engagement with disability. The author has been looking for role models, for people who might offer guidance to help his family cope with his daughter's disability. The story of Melvin Juette, a Chicago gang member turned world-class wheelchair athlete, was the inspiration for embarking on a research project…
Agency, Structure, and The Transition to Disability
If life history research is ever to truly fulfill the promise of the sociological imagination, it will need to engage insights from agency-structure theory that have hitherto been neglected. Relatively few life history researchers have explicitly interpreted their subject matter in terms of agency-structure theory, and those who do rarely go beyond Giddens' initial formulation to incorporate more recent theoretical developments. This article atte…
The Feminist Self-Defense Movement
This article discusses feminist self-defense as a victim-prevention strategy, describes the nature and scope of the self-defense movement, examines a case history of a women's self-defense organization, and analyzes the mobilization and organizational dilemmas that confronted that organization. We compare self-defense services with victim services to help explain the development of the women's self-defense movement, and in particular, its feminis…
Conflicting Ideologies and the Politics of Pornography
This article analyzes positions on pornography using Q-methodology. Eighty-five respondents sorted a sample of 86 opinion statements on definitions of pornography, personal reactions to it, its causes and effects, and social policy recommendations. Factor analysis was used to identify clusters of individuals in the United States who share common subjectively defined points of view on pornography. The three patterns of responses that emerged from …
It Ain't Necessarily So
Teaching the Sociology of Law
graduate courses relevant to understanding the role of law in society, particularly the relationship between legal reform and social change. The study of law became an interdisciplinary social science, no longer the exclusive province of lawyers and political scientists.' The publication of Edwin Schur's Law and Society: A Sociological View (1968) and other texts helped to define the parameters of a more distinctly sociological contribution to th…
Fascism, American Style
The 'Banality of Evil' Reframed
Research on the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews has arguably been dominated by historians. Yet many historians remain confounded by the Holocaust's major paradox: the “banality of evil” that occurred during the Nazi regime. In this article I argue that understanding of the “banality of evil” paradox can be advanced by reframing previously unsynthesized research in terms of a constructionist theory of social problems. I view the “Jewish problem” a…
Ideological Contours of the Contemporary Pornography Debate
Ronald J. Berger, Patricia Searles, Charles E. Cottle, Ideological Contours of the Contemporary Pornography Debate: Divisions and Alliances, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2/3, Spirituality, Values, and Ethics (1990), pp. 30-38
Community Organization Approaches to the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency
This paper examines juvenile delinquency prevention programs which implement large-scale intervention and social change strategies. A typology of community organization practice is used to analyze the assumptions, objectives, and methods underlying these approaches. Three models of community organization-- locality development, social planning, and social action--are used to evaluate three exemplary delinquency prevention programs: the Chicago Ar…
Crime and Deviance in America
Community Organization Approaches to the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency
This paper examines juvenile delinquency prevention programs which implement large-scale intervention and social change strategies. A typology of community organization practice is used to analyze the assumptions, objectives, and methods underlying these approaches. Three models of community organization-- locality development, social planning, and social action--are used to evaluate three exemplary delinquency prevention programs: the Chicago Ar…
The Feminist Self-Defense Movement
This article discusses feminist self-defense as a victim-prevention strategy, describes the nature and scope of the self-defense movement, examines a case history of a women's self-defense organization, and analyzes the mobilization and organizational dilemmas that confronted that organization. We compare self-defense services with victim services to help explain the development of the women's self-defense movement, and in particular, its feminis…
The Dimensions of Rape Reform Legislation
Largely as a result of the feminist movement, most states have passed some form of rape reform legislation. Most rape law research has attempted to ascertain whether the reformed laws have achieved specific instrumental goals. In contrast, this paper emphasizes rape law reform as a symbolic indicator of women's contemporary social status. We believe there is a need for a greater appreciation of the diversity of rape law reform across the country …
Competing Perspectives on Cross-National Crime
Cross-national studies of crime are dominated by a Durkheimian-Modernization theoretical perspective. We evaluate this perspective and present two alternatives, the Marxian-World System and Ecological-Opportunity perspectives. Each is for its theory of social change, causal explanation of criminal behavior, conceptualization of law and crime rates, and view of the relation between collective political behavior and crime. The empirical evidence is…
Female delinquency in the emancipation era
Teaching the Sociology of Law
graduate courses relevant to understanding the role of law in society, particularly the relationship between legal reform and social change. The study of law became an interdisciplinary social science, no longer the exclusive province of lawyers and political scientists.' The publication of Edwin Schur's Law and Society: A Sociological View (1968) and other texts helped to define the parameters of a more distinctly sociological contribution to th…
Conflicting Ideologies and the Politics of Pornography
This article analyzes positions on pornography using Q-methodology. Eighty-five respondents sorted a sample of 86 opinion statements on definitions of pornography, personal reactions to it, its causes and effects, and social policy recommendations. Factor analysis was used to identify clusters of individuals in the United States who share common subjectively defined points of view on pornography. The three patterns of responses that emerged from …
Ideological Contours of the Contemporary Pornography Debate
Ronald J. Berger, Patricia Searles, Charles E. Cottle, Ideological Contours of the Contemporary Pornography Debate: Divisions and Alliances, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2/3, Spirituality, Values, and Ethics (1990), pp. 30-38
Porn
The Sociology of Juvenile Delinquency
The 'Banality of Evil' Reframed
Research on the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews has arguably been dominated by historians. Yet many historians remain confounded by the Holocaust's major paradox: the “banality of evil” that occurred during the Nazi regime. In this article I argue that understanding of the “banality of evil” paradox can be advanced by reframing previously unsynthesized research in terms of a constructionist theory of social problems. I view the “Jewish problem” a…
Rape And Society
Feminist Foundations For The Study Of Rape And Society * Rape Poem Marge Piercy. * The Trauma of Rape: The Case of Ms. X Diana E.H. Russell. * The Social Context of Rape: Sexual Scripts and Motivation Stevi Jackson. * Sex and Violence: A Perspective Catharine A. MacKinnon. * Hidden Rape: Sexual Aggression and Victimization in a National Sample of Students in Higher Education Mary P. Koss. Why Men Rape * Jay: An Armchair Rapist Timothy Beneke. * R…
Agency, Structure, and Jewish Survival of the Holocaust
L'A. presente l'analyse de la biographie de deux freres juifs qui ont survecu a l'Holocauste. Il cherche a elaborer une sociologie des survivants et s'efforce de resoudre un des problemes les plus delicats de la theorie sociologique : celui de la relation entre l'autonomie individuelle et la structure sociale. Il s'attache a construire une theorie qui permette de rendre compte de cette relation. Il evalue les approches purement psychologique de c…
It Ain't Necessarily So
Fathoming the Holocaust
This volume on the explains the Final Solution to the from the perspective of social problems construction. It covers the origins and implementation of the genocidal strategy of National Socialism, the wartime reaction to it and the postwar collective memory of the genocide. Fathoming the Holocaust opens by reviewing how historians have studied the subject, considering several avenues of sociological analysis and introducing the approach the auth…
Fathoming the Holocaust
Storytelling Sociology
The Narrative Turn in Social Inquiry. Family and Place. Introduction. Searching for Yellowstone N.K. Denzin. Twin Towers N. Olivencia. Remembering George Washington on the Rio Grande A.J. Trevino. My Ain Folk: Scottish Oral History and the Sociological Imagination J.H.Faley. Everyone Else: Becoming Jewish T. Platt. Walking with Lao Tzu at Auschwitz D. Clinton. The Body. Introduction. Becoming Quasimodo: The Shaping of a Life W.E. Powell. No Body …
Memory Perceived
Journal Article Memory Perceived: Recalling the Holocaust Get access Ronald J. Berger Ronald J. Berger Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 18, Issue 2, Fall 2004, Pages 304–306, https://doi.org/10.1093/hgs/dch070 Published: 01 January 2004
Fathoming the Holocaust
Journal Article Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach, Ronald J. Berger. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2002, 238 pp.; $53.95 (cloth), $22.95 (paper) Get access Marilyn F. Nefsky Marilyn F. Nefsky University of Lethbridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 65, Issue 1, Spring 2004, Pages 88–89, https://doi.org/10.2307/3712510 Published: 01 March 2004
Pushing Forward
Wheelchair basketball offers an ethnographic space through which this article connects a familial story of survival to the author's evolving engagement with disability. The author has been looking for role models, for people who might offer guidance to help his family cope with his daughter's disability. The story of Melvin Juette, a Chicago gang member turned world-class wheelchair athlete, was the inspiration for embarking on a research project…
Crime, Justice, and Society
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
To Be or Not to Be
In this essay I recount my engagement with my father's experience of the Holocaust and its impact on my professional career and way of thinking about the world. The voices of survivors like my father are no longer silenced and marginalized as they once were, but the legacy of the trauma they endured remains in dispute. As such, I consider questions of Jewish identity and continuity in the postwar era as well as controversies about Israel's role i…
Disability and the Dedicated Wheelchair Athlete
The "supercrip" athlete is often derided as a figure that is antithetical to the interests of people with disabilities. But few researchers have questioned the assumptions of this complaint or examined it empirically. In this article I problematize the supercrip critique and argue for a more nuanced view of dedicated disabled athletes as offering both a disempowering and an empowering experience for people with disabilities. I report on the resul…
Sociology (30 works) · Political science (23 works) · Law (19 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Criminology (12 works) · Social science (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Art (9 works) · History (9 works) · The Holocaust (9 works)