Wesley Shrum
Biographic Data
| ID | 3633218 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Wesley Shrum |
| GIVEN NAMES | Wesley |
| FAMILY NAME | Shrum |
| SIGNATURE | SHRUM W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Louisiana State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5040-6584 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 73 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 435 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 73 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Cyberbullying victimization, media usage habits, and social health among Chinese university students
Using cross-sectional face-to-face survey data collected in 2018 from 234 Chinese university students, this study examines how social health and media use relate to cyberbullying victimization, focusing on the moderating effects of social media use and face loss (i.e., perceived damage to one’s public self-image). Our approach is based in routine activity theory, which emphasizes that victimization occurs when motivated offenders encounter suitab…
Why Should I Be Scared?” Epidemic Uncertainties and Risk Construction in Emerging Infectious Disease Epidemics
The onset of emerging infectious disease epidemics is marked by uncertainties regarding the nature of the causative pathogen, mode of transmission, and preventive measures among other factors. While scientists are developing knowledge on these subjects, people must adapt to these uncertainties. We explore risk construction in the epidemic context by conceptualizing risk as a knowledge construct and identifying the constitutive elements that influ…
Tough Ties and Rough Networks
Reciprocity and negativity in social relationships are fundamental topics of social research rarely examined in sub‐Saharan Africa. Since the number and quality of relationships is associated with individual outcomes, these ties are particularly important in impoverished areas. We conducted a multi‐method study of the conditions associated with problematic networks and difficult people, including face‐to‐face surveys in Agbogbloshie (Accra, Ghana…
Paradox of precaution
Objective We consider the primary sources of COVID‐19 infection, the main precautionary actions taken, and common understandings of their difficulty and necessity in order to understand why it has been difficult to control the pandemic. Methods Online data collected in all 50 states during the Delta wave of the pandemic ( n = 10,022) are used to examine how infection occurs and evaluate 32 precautionary actions. Results The most common source of …
Going virtual
In the context of the 2020 world pandemic of COVID-19, many professional and scientific associations have had to change the way that they gather and reorganize their scholarly conferences. For many of them, conferences are a main source of income and important occasions for business meetings and managerial decisions. Yet, with trips and face-to-face encounters banned, the opportunity arrived for going virtual and developing human and technical ca…
Internet Use and Mental Health in Africa and India
Prior research has shown that mental health in urban slums is associated with the a share number of older individuals in personal networks. This presentation will examine the extent to which that association is mediated through Internet and social media use. We conducted face to face interviews with residents (minimum 18 years) in two high density, low income areas of Accra (West Africa) and Trivandrum (Kerala, India), where local teams have cond…
Politics and trust in Ebola vaccine trials
Vaccine trials for infectious diseases take place in a milieu of trust in which scientists, regulatory institutions, and volunteers trust each other to play traditional roles. This milieu of trust emerges from a combination of preexisting linkages embedded in the local and national political context. Using the case of failed vaccine trials in Hohoe, Ghana, we explore this milieu of trust by employing the concept of tandems of trust and control, w…
Who’s afraid of Ebola? Epidemic fires and locative fears in the Information Age
Epidemics have traditionally been viewed as the widespread occurrence of infectious disease within a community, or a sudden increase above what is typical. But modern epidemics are both more and less than the diffusion of viral entities. We argue that epidemics are 'fire objects', using a term coined by Law and Singleton: They generate locative fears through encounters that focus attention on entities that are unknown or imprecisely known, transf…
Bounded Solidarity and Mobile Technology
We examine whether the widespread adoption of mobile technology is associated with changes in core social networks over the main decade of mobile diffusion in India. We focus primarily on network size, as well as the type and location of relationships. Grounded in interaction ritual theory, Ling’s bounded solidarity thesis suggests that mobile communication may reconfigure social bonds, leading to a focus on family and friends over workmates and …
When Family Replaced Friendship
Mobile devices have spread throughout the developing world at a rate unparalleled by other communications technologies. Yet surprisingly, little is known about their impact on social networks. This study analyzes three waves of pooled survey data in Nairobi (2002, 2007, 2013). We focus on the size, composition, and location of important personal relationships—that is, “core networks.” Networks of close ties have nearly doubled for urban Kenyans, …
Video Ethnography in Practice
Video Ethnography in Practice is a brief guide for students in the social disciplines who are required to produce an ethnographic video, the most significant new methodological technique in 21st century social analysis. The authors, both accomplished videographers, cover the basic techniques of creating a video that documents human culture and behavior with true stories of the process of videography throughout. This text shows how new technologie…
Has the Internet Reduced Friendship? Scientific Relationships in Ghana, Kenya, and India, 1994-2010
Has the Internet changed the pattern of social relations? More specifically, have social relations undergone any systematic change during the recent widespread diffusion of new communications technology? This question is addressed using a unique longitudinal survey that bookends the entire period of Internet diffusion in two African nations and one Indian state. We analyze data on nine professional linkages reported by a population of agricultura…
Access to ICT and Research Output of Agriculture Researchers in Kenya
Agricultural researchers work at universities and research institutes. This paper examines how institutional context has affected Kenyan agricultural scientists’ professional lives along several dimensions: Access and use of emerging ICT technologies, professional activities, and scholarly output. It draws upon a unique longitudinal data set in which scientists were interviewed in 2001, 2005, and 2010. The data allow us to follow changes in techn…
Science and Development
Development Aid
Visionary” Sociology
What caused the flood? Controversy and closure in the Hurricane Katrina disaster
Causal attribution for one of the largest disasters in American history has undergone three major shifts. From August 2005 through November 2009, the principal explanation of the flooding of New Orleans was characterized by three distinguishable phases - reactive, organizational, and legal - as the catastrophic events of Hurricane Katrina were ascribed to natural, geotechnical, and environmental causes. From a monstrous storm, to failed levees, a…
Is Internet Use Associated With Reporting Fewer Problems in Collaboration
In the developing world, many advocate the benefits of collaboration as the primary driver of research productivity. One of the crucial conditions that support, and help overcome problems in, distributed work is consistent access and use of Internet technologies. But it is argued that the collaborative benefits of Internet technologies are not symmetrically distributed worldwide, perhaps a result of neo-dependency relationships between the South …
Gender, ICTs, and Productivity in Low-Income Countries
This essay presents the first analysis of gender differences in productivity using panel data on scientists in low-income countries. About 540 researchers in Ghana, Kenya, and Kerala (India) were studied using the same survey instrument in 2001 and 2005. Results indicate very few gender disparities in outcomes at either period of the study with one exception: productivity in international journals. The authors show that substantial gains in acces…
Isolated in A Technologically Connected World
Using panel data gathered across two waves (2001 and 2005) from researchers in Ghana, Kenya, and Kerala, India, we examine three questions: (1) To what extent do gender differences exist in the core professional networks of scientists in low-income areas? (2) How do gender differences shift over time? (3) Does use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) mediate the relationship between gender and core network composition? Our results…
Are mobile phones changing social networks? A longitudinal study of core networks in Kerala
Mobile telephony has diffused more rapidly than any Indian technology in recent memory, yet systematic studies of its impact are rare, focusing on technological rather than social change. We employ network surveys of separate groups of Kerala residents in 2002 and again in 2007 to examine recent shifts in mobile usage patterns and social relationships. Results show (1) near saturation of mobiles among both the professionals and nonprofessionals s…
The Gender Digital Divide in the Research Sectors of Ghana, Kenya, and Kerala
This article uses panel data gathered in 2001 and 2005 to assess the gendered digital divide among researchers employed in three developing countries: Ghana, Kenya, and India (the state of Kerala). We move the digital divide discussion from an early focus on differentials in adoption and access to an assessment of use as measured by the diversity and intensity of Internet and e-mail activity. Using both bivariate and multivariate analyses, our re…
Patterns of Visitation
Watching YouTube
Mobile phones and core network growth in Kenya
Friendship in School
This article analyzes the development of racial and gender homophily in a population of 2,135 schoolchildren, grades 3-12, in all public schools in a biracial Southern community. Sociometric friendship nominations were used to examine changes in racial and gender segregation and preference. The results suggest that for these major status variables, the relationship between homophily and grade is curvilinear, first increasing because of increments…
Critics and Publics
That critics mediate the relationship between artworks and publics has often been suggested but never adequately tested. Cultural capital arguments lead to the expectation that the mediation process operates differently for highbrow and popular genres, while the idea of cultural convergence does not predict such an effect. Data on 624 shows and 1,204 primary reviews from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe are used to investigate the relationship betwe…
Social Structure During the School Years
Most studies of the development of peer relations focus on the distinction between group members and nonmembers, while theoretical accounts of social structure emphasize the importance of liaisons, the locus of weak ties. Liaisons, with less integrated friendship networks, are crucial to the permeability of social systems. Using data on 2,299 children, grades three through twelve, in a community school system, we show that the proportion of group…
Collaboration Paradox
We examine the ways in which the research process differs in developed and developing areas by focusing on two questions. First, is collaboration associated with productivity? Second, is access to the Internet (specifically use of email) associated with reduced problems of collaboration? Recent analyses by Lee & Bozeman (2005) and Walsh & Maloney (2003) suggest affirmative answers to these questions for US scientists. Based on a comparative analy…
Trust, Conflict and Performance in Scientific Collaborations
Social studies of science have ascribed a central rôle to trust in the constitution of knowledge, yet there are few studies of its operation in the large, interorganizational structures increasingly required for scientific work. We begin an examination of 53 collaborations in physics and related sciences with two unexpected findings: (1) trust is no higher in projects formed through pre-existing relationships than those without such ties; and (2)…
Critics, Ratings, and Society
Reagency of the Internet, or, How I Became a Guest for Science
This essay is a call for research on the role of information and communication technology in distant lands. I address the globalization of science as a process by replacing the concept of development with the idea of reagency, a process of redirection involving a contingent reaction between identities. I focus on the Guest, an identity that assumes particular importance in relation to Hosts in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Following recent wor…
Serious Crime in Urban Neighborhoods
Most studies of the relationship between race and crime employ data aggregated at the city or SMSA level to show that high proportions of Blacks indicate high levels of crime. However, theoretical accounts of underlying criminogenic processes do not imply an effect for race, but rather involve explicit or implicit reference to the neighborhood as the unit of analysis. We combine 1990 census data with arrest records for 1989–1991 to generate compl…
Ritual Disrobement at Mardi Gras
Journal Article Ritual Disrobement at Mardi Gras: Ceremonial Exchange and Moral Order Get access Wesley Shrum, Wesley Shrum Louisiana State University Direct correspondence to Wesley Shrum, Department of Sociology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar John Kilburn John Kilburn Louisiana State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic …
Reputational Status of Organizations in Technical Systems
An important, but relatively neglected, aspect of social stratification in modern societies is the reputational status associated with complex organizations in interdependent organizational fields. In this study, social factors influencing the reputational status of research organizations in large-scale, cognitively diverse, multisectoral "technical systems" are examined. Data are drawn from interviews with personnel from a national U.S. sample o…
Are mobile phones changing social networks? A longitudinal study of core networks in Kerala
Mobile telephony has diffused more rapidly than any Indian technology in recent memory, yet systematic studies of its impact are rare, focusing on technological rather than social change. We employ network surveys of separate groups of Kerala residents in 2002 and again in 2007 to examine recent shifts in mobile usage patterns and social relationships. Results show (1) near saturation of mobiles among both the professionals and nonprofessionals s…
Gender and Science in Development
Why do women have more difficulty pursuing research careers than men? Although this topic has been extensively investigated in industrialized countries, prior studies provide little comparative evidence from less-developed areas. Based on a survey of 293 scientists in Ghana, Kenya, and the Indian state of Kerala, this article examines gender differences on a variety of individual, social, and organizational dimensions. The results show small or n…
Science and Story in Development
Given the importance of social location to research practice, a particularly compelling problem for social studies of science is how research activities emerge in a new sector. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in less-developed countries (LDCs) are initiating research, often in a style of `alternative' agriculture. I account for this development using concepts from semiotic and structural network approaches. While many studies stress linkage…
Accountability and Inaction
From the late 1980s, research on NGOs had a normative focus and was vulnerable to changing donor preoccupations. This article contributes a new conceptual approach, analysing the practices through which relationships and resources are translated into programmes and projects. The theoretical justification for this move combines the new ethnography of development practice with a re-agency approach to transactions across time and space. The study is…
Scientific Specialties and Technical Systems
Recent arguments criticizing the concept of a scientific specialty point to the need for the inclusion of nonscientists and nonacademic research in studies of the research process. The notion of a `technical system' is introduced as a concept which addresses the embeddedness of contemporary science in a matrix of other institutions. Technical systems are centrally-administered networks of actors oriented to the solution of sets of related technol…
Watching YouTube
Status Incongruence among Boundary Spanners
The exchange of resources and perceptions of conflict among professional planners is examined as a function of the relation between their structural positions. Analysis of dyadic relations at federal, regional, state, county, and municipal levels of government revealed that structural features interact to produce characteristic exchange flows, and the exchange of resources among these professionals affects perceptions of conflict. Professionals a…
Visionary” Sociology
Fringe and Fortune
List of IllustrationsList of TablesPrefaceIntroduction: A Critic's New Clothes3Ch. 1Cultural Mediation and the Status Bargain25Ch. 2Critics in the Performing Arts42Ch. 3Development of the Festival Fringe63Ch. 4Festivals and the Modern Fringe83Ch. 5Myth of the Fringe109Ch. 6Do Critics Matter?125Ch. 7Critical Evaluation144Ch. 8Do Performers Listen?165Ch. 9Beyond Formal Evaluation181Ch. 10Discourse and Hierarchy193Epilogue213Appendix A: Review Genre…
What caused the flood? Controversy and closure in the Hurricane Katrina disaster
Causal attribution for one of the largest disasters in American history has undergone three major shifts. From August 2005 through November 2009, the principal explanation of the flooding of New Orleans was characterized by three distinguishable phases - reactive, organizational, and legal - as the catastrophic events of Hurricane Katrina were ascribed to natural, geotechnical, and environmental causes. From a monstrous storm, to failed levees, a…
Knowledge Workers as a 'New Class
Recent discussions of American political and occupational structure have suggested that knowledge workers have become a structurally and ideologically cohesive 'new class' due to rising levels of education, rising numbers of knowledge-intensive occupations, and the growing role of government in supporting education and in providing positions for knowledge workers. Discussions advanced by neoconservatives regard professional-technical workers as t…
Circumvention and Social Change
This essay draws on ten years of work in south India to develop an interpretation of empowerment based on the concept of circumvention. In light of the physical and social restrictions placed on many Indian women, a case for the positive impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on gender equality is difficult to build. We show how women professionals use the Internet to circumvent gender codes that govern behavior, particularly…
Hurricane Stories, from Within
Before Hurricane Katrina, I remember saying it was the busiest semester of my life, that our video ethnography group was working at a 'near death' pace, and that my office looked like a 'hurricane hit it'. Three months later, none of that was so important. And other metaphors are better for describ ing work and disorganization. The hurricane itself was a mild affair for me, working on a computer in Lake Charles, four hours from New Orleans and tw…
Institutional Collaboration in Science
An increase in the scale of modern science is associated with the proliferation of a new kind of research formation: collaborations involving teams of researchers from several organizations. Historical and sociological studies indicate substantial variation in such formations, but no general classification scheme exists. The authors provide the outline of a scheme through a systematic analysis of multi-institutional collaborations that span a var…
Religion and Marital Instability
Religion and Marital Instability
Knowledge Workers as a 'New Class
Recent discussions of American political and occupational structure have suggested that knowledge workers have become a structurally and ideologically cohesive 'new class' due to rising levels of education, rising numbers of knowledge-intensive occupations, and the growing role of government in supporting education and in providing positions for knowledge workers. Discussions advanced by neoconservatives regard professional-technical workers as t…
Scientific Specialties and Technical Systems
Recent arguments criticizing the concept of a scientific specialty point to the need for the inclusion of nonscientists and nonacademic research in studies of the research process. The notion of a `technical system' is introduced as a concept which addresses the embeddedness of contemporary science in a matrix of other institutions. Technical systems are centrally-administered networks of actors oriented to the solution of sets of related technol…
The organizational context of public interest science
The Organization of Technology in Advanced Industrial Society
Technical systems—large-scale, centrally coordinated technological enterprises—have emerged as a new mode of technological organization in advanced industrial societies. Recent scholarship points to the existence of two primary types of system based on whether the technology under development involves “collective” or “private” goods. It is hypothesized that these types differ in network structure and in the determinants of technical innovation. A…
Are 'Science' and 'Technology' Necessary
Contemporary views on the nature of science and technology describe them as symmetrically interdependent subcultures, in contrast to the older view of technology as applied science. On closer inspection, however, these accounts provide two distinct descriptions. The first, that of 'distinct subcultures,' sees science and technology as distinguishable based on their products, sectoral locations, or objectives. The second, that of a 'holistic resea…
Organized Technology
Social Structure During the School Years
Most studies of the development of peer relations focus on the distinction between group members and nonmembers, while theoretical accounts of social structure emphasize the importance of liaisons, the locus of weak ties. Liaisons, with less integrated friendship networks, are crucial to the permeability of social systems. Using data on 2,299 children, grades three through twelve, in a community school system, we show that the proportion of group…
Organized Technology
Chemicals and Society
The Labyrinth of Science Science in Action
Friendship in School
This article analyzes the development of racial and gender homophily in a population of 2,135 schoolchildren, grades 3-12, in all public schools in a biracial Southern community. Sociometric friendship nominations were used to examine changes in racial and gender segregation and preference. The results suggest that for these major status variables, the relationship between homophily and grade is curvilinear, first increasing because of increments…
Reputational Status of Organizations in Technical Systems
An important, but relatively neglected, aspect of social stratification in modern societies is the reputational status associated with complex organizations in interdependent organizational fields. In this study, social factors influencing the reputational status of research organizations in large-scale, cognitively diverse, multisectoral "technical systems" are examined. Data are drawn from interviews with personnel from a national U.S. sample o…
Organized Technology
Organized Technology is a first step in meeting this challenge. The book is based on an intensive study of radioactive waste and solar cell research, two large-scale technical systems important to U.S. energy policy. Historical and organizational analyses are combined with results from interviews with a national sample of scientists, engineers, managers, policymakers, and public-interest advocates in a new approach to technology analysis
Status Incongruence among Boundary Spanners
The exchange of resources and perceptions of conflict among professional planners is examined as a function of the relation between their structural positions. Analysis of dyadic relations at federal, regional, state, county, and municipal levels of government revealed that structural features interact to produce characteristic exchange flows, and the exchange of resources among these professionals affects perceptions of conflict. Professionals a…
Critics and Publics
That critics mediate the relationship between artworks and publics has often been suggested but never adequately tested. Cultural capital arguments lead to the expectation that the mediation process operates differently for highbrow and popular genres, while the idea of cultural convergence does not predict such an effect. Data on 624 shows and 1,204 primary reviews from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe are used to investigate the relationship betwe…
Goals in Space
Science, Technology, and Society in the Third World
This reference source lists and summarizes nearly one thousand English-language articles and books published from the late 1970s to the early 1990s that treat the subject of science and technology in developing countries. These are organized by major topics, including appropriate technology, agriculture, technology transfer, innovation diffusion, environment and health, economics, education, research and development, politics, distribution of ben…
Ritual Disrobement at Mardi Gras
Journal Article Ritual Disrobement at Mardi Gras: Ceremonial Exchange and Moral Order Get access Wesley Shrum, Wesley Shrum Louisiana State University Direct correspondence to Wesley Shrum, Department of Sociology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar John Kilburn John Kilburn Louisiana State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic …
Fringe and Fortune
List of IllustrationsList of TablesPrefaceIntroduction: A Critic's New Clothes3Ch. 1Cultural Mediation and the Status Bargain25Ch. 2Critics in the Performing Arts42Ch. 3Development of the Festival Fringe63Ch. 4Festivals and the Modern Fringe83Ch. 5Myth of the Fringe109Ch. 6Do Critics Matter?125Ch. 7Critical Evaluation144Ch. 8Do Performers Listen?165Ch. 9Beyond Formal Evaluation181Ch. 10Discourse and Hierarchy193Epilogue213Appendix A: Review Genre…
Fringe and Fortune
Private and Collective Protection in Urban Areas
The authors examine security as a multidimensional issue with private and collective aspects. Decisions to provide security occur within the household, the community, and the municipality. Considering the determinants of private avoidance and protective security measures as well as collective neighborhood and municipal measures, the authors examine the potential for trade-offs among forms of security by asking whether these forms are complementar…
Institutional Collaboration in Science
An increase in the scale of modern science is associated with the proliferation of a new kind of research formation: collaborations involving teams of researchers from several organizations. Historical and sociological studies indicate substantial variation in such formations, but no general classification scheme exists. The authors provide the outline of a scheme through a systematic analysis of multi-institutional collaborations that span a var…
Are Scientists in Developing Countries Isolated
Most scholars and development experts assume that scientists in developing countries are isolated, although some posit that they are part of a global scientific community. This paper seeks to determine the size of professional networks for scientists in less developed countries (LDC) as well as the distribution of their ties across organisational contexts and locations. Professional contact networks of scientists in Africa and Asia were determine…
Science and Story in Development
Given the importance of social location to research practice, a particularly compelling problem for social studies of science is how research activities emerge in a new sector. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in less-developed countries (LDCs) are initiating research, often in a style of `alternative' agriculture. I account for this development using concepts from semiotic and structural network approaches. While many studies stress linkage…
Sociology (53 works) · Political science (44 works) · Computer Science (29 works) · Social science (25 works) · Geography (22 works) · Economics (20 works) · Engineering (19 works) · Public relations (19 works) · Economic growth (17 works) · Business (15 works)