Robert Gramling
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 88675 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Robert Gramling |
| NOMBRES | Robert |
| APELLIDO | Gramling |
| FIRMA | GRAMLING R |
| AFILIACIONES | Southwestern University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8250-5154 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 42 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 510 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 42 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1986 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2013 |
| ÍNDICE H | 13 |
The Growth Machine and the Everglades
We propose four ways that the urban growth machine theoretical perspective can be expanded for social scientists whose focus is not necessarily urban. First, we believe the thesis is useful for analysis at larger and smaller geographic scales than the city. Second, once focused on a goal and set in motion the growth machines have inertia. This leads to continuity over time and also leaves records which are useful in analyzing how particular outco…
A Century of Macondo
Since the discovery of oil well drilling, energy policy (particularly offshore petroleum policy over the past three decades) has led the United States, and indeed the industrialized world, into a cycle of dependency, profit, and risk taking that made a Macondo-like blowout likely, if not inevitable. This article examines the broad political, economic, technological, and environmental contexts surrounding the growth and development of both our abi…
Bill Freudenburg as a colleague
Obsolete and Irreversible
While “economic development” projects have long been proposed and supported by local growth machine elites, technological change has affected the social desirability of large projects in three ways. First, large development projects—we examine water transportation—have grown in size, meaning that backers often seek public funding. With increased size and the need for external funding, many years or decades can elapse by the time a project can be …
Social isolation, C-reactive protein, and coronary heart disease mortality among community-dwelling adults
Is the association between optimistic cardiovascular risk perceptions and lower rates of cardiovascular disease mortality explained by biomarkers of systemic inflammation or endothelial function? A ca…
BACKGROUND: More optimistic perceptions of cardiovascular disease risk are associated with substantively lower rates of cardiovascular death among men. It remains unknown whether this association represents causality (i.e. perception leads to actions/conditions that influence cardiovascular disease occurrence) or residual confounding by unmeasured factors that associate with risk perceptions and with physiological processes that promote cardiovas…
Disproportionality and Disaster
Objectives. Although many observers have interpreted Hurricane Katrina's damage to New Orleans as a case of nature striking humans, we draw on the sociological concept of the growth machine to show that much of the damage resulted instead from what humans had done to nature—in the name but not the reality of “economic development.” Methods. We triangulate findings from multiple qualitative techniques, including first‐hand fieldwork, interviews, a…
Scientific Certainty Argumentation Methods (SCAMs)
At least since the time of Popper, scientists have understood that science provides falsification, but not 'proof.' In the world of environmental and technological controversies, however, many observers continue to call precisely for 'proof,' often under the guise of 'scientific certainty.' Closer examination of real-world disputes suggests that such calls may reflect not just a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of science, but a clever …
Prevalence of multiple chronic disease risk factors
Scientific Expertise and Natural Resource Decisions
Social scientists should seek greater involvement in interdisciplinary scientific committees, which often play important roles in natural resource management. In addition to our acknowledged areas of expertise, we have the ability to educate other disciplines about social sciences and, importantly, also about the realities of biophysical science input into policy processes. Two examples are worth noting. First, the asymmetry of scientific challen…
Linked to what? Economic linkages in an extractive economy
There are two main ways in which resource extraction can lead to prosperity for extractive regions. The first involves temporally delimited benefits—those that can only exist so long as extraction is taking place—while the second involves the potential for benefits that will endure beyond the period of extractive operations. As the scale of extraction has increased over time there has been a dramatic reduction in the potential duration of tempora…
The game of poaching
This article examines the meaning and purpose of poaching from the perspectives of poachers and game wardens. Our technique was to let the responses speak for themselves, presenting the convergence of poacher and game warden in the real world, and then to offer both summarization and interpretation. This research uses data from interviews with 41 poachers and 32 game wardens. Its focus is to both describe and explain the activities of poachers. W…
Resource extraction and fluctuations in poverty
The existence and persistence of poverty across economic cycles associated with the development of natural resources has long been noted in the literature. Most of the attempts to explain poverty, however, have relied on relatively static models. This case study shows how poverty itself, as well as causal factors, changed during one of the better documented resource developmental cycles and suggests that more than one theoretical orientation may …
Oil on the Edge
Communities, Policy and Chronic Technological Disasters
This article argues that chronic technological disasters are best viewed as processes rather than as events. Chronic technological disasters are embedded in a variety of decisions and policies that regulate, or fail to regulate, the process that results in what comes to be defined, through social processes, as a technological disaster. We present the argument for examining chronic technological disasters as policy processes and examine stages of …
Crude, Coppertone ® , and the coast
Southern Louisiana and southern Florida are characterized by the two most extensive coastal wetlands in the continental United States. These immense, seemingly hostile, and similar environments have experienced two very different directions of regional development. Louisiana developed much earlier, focusing initially on the extraction of renewable resources from the coastal marsh. Later, by the 1920s, the discovery of oil and gas led to the rapid…
Crossing the next divide
Oil on the Edge
Technological change, resource management, and conflict
The largest shrimp industry in the United States exists in, and offshore of, the coastal marshes of Louisiana, which constitute the richest and most important coastal nursery for marine life in North America. After a brief background on the geological, geographical, and biological processes that act upon this environment, and the recent impacts of human activities, this paper describes the pressures on commercial shrimping in Louisiana and adjace…
Environmental sociology
This paper briefly outlines the origins and contributions of environmental sociology to date, going on to propose ways in which the existing research can be used as a foundation for a new generation of research into the 21st century. It argues that environmental sociologists need to avoid the omphaloskepsis that sometimes afflicts other fields of sociology, but that there is a real opportunity to do so. Three options appear particularly promising…
Beyond the nature/society divide
Oil in Troubled Waters
Natural resources and rural poverty
The review by Humphrey et al. (1993) is arguably the most important effort to date to advance our understanding of poverty in resource‐dependent communities—one that is likely to be remembered as pivotal, not just because it brings together four highly diverse theoretical perspectives, but because its clarity will facilitate the recognition of important gaps and of the need for empirical testing. All four of the perspectives appear to have import…
Oil in Troubled Waters
Bureaucratic Slippage and Failures of Agency Vigilance
This paper focuses on bureaucratic slippage—the tendency for broad policies to be altered through successive reinterpretation, such that the ultimate implementation may bear little resemblance to legislated or other broad statements of policy intent. It is well known that policy enforcement can be constrained by funding limitations, or by the fact that an apparently strong statement of intent can be coupled with a level of funding that is too low…
Beyond the nature/society divide
Opportunity-Threat, Development, and Adaptation
Partly because of the field's efforts to deal first with the kinds of impacts that have been the most obvious and pressing, the traditional focus of social impact assessment has been on the impacts taking place during the most intensive phases of developmental activity. Recently it has become increasingly clear that a number of predictable, significant impacts take place both before and after the periods of most intense activity; these impacts ar…
A Closer Look at 'Local Control
Particularly when discussing the effects of large-scale industrial projects, the existing community literature exhibits a curious duality about relationships between local communities and outside forces. While explicitly noting the external origins of large-scale industrial projects, the literature shifts to a focus on local planning when discussing the management of any resultant disruptions. Little attention is devoted to the possibility that t…
Scientific Certainty Argumentation Methods (SCAMs)
At least since the time of Popper, scientists have understood that science provides falsification, but not 'proof.' In the world of environmental and technological controversies, however, many observers continue to call precisely for 'proof,' often under the guise of 'scientific certainty.' Closer examination of real-world disputes suggests that such calls may reflect not just a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of science, but a clever …
Natural resources and rural poverty
The review by Humphrey et al. (1993) is arguably the most important effort to date to advance our understanding of poverty in resource‐dependent communities—one that is likely to be remembered as pivotal, not just because it brings together four highly diverse theoretical perspectives, but because its clarity will facilitate the recognition of important gaps and of the need for empirical testing. All four of the perspectives appear to have import…
The game of poaching
This article examines the meaning and purpose of poaching from the perspectives of poachers and game wardens. Our technique was to let the responses speak for themselves, presenting the convergence of poacher and game warden in the real world, and then to offer both summarization and interpretation. This research uses data from interviews with 41 poachers and 32 game wardens. Its focus is to both describe and explain the activities of poachers. W…
Social isolation, C-reactive protein, and coronary heart disease mortality among community-dwelling adults
Socioenvironmental factors and development policy
Linked to what? Economic linkages in an extractive economy
There are two main ways in which resource extraction can lead to prosperity for extractive regions. The first involves temporally delimited benefits—those that can only exist so long as extraction is taking place—while the second involves the potential for benefits that will endure beyond the period of extractive operations. As the scale of extraction has increased over time there has been a dramatic reduction in the potential duration of tempora…
Community Impacts of Technological Change
Although sociologists have made advances in understanding the community-level impacts of technological and environmental change, attention to date has focused almost exclusively on the relatively brief development stage of construction and rapid expansion. Significant social changes can also take place both before and after the phases of the most intense physical activities (construction, production, expansion), and pathways of influence can be s…
Bureaucratic Slippage and Failures of Agency Vigilance
This paper focuses on bureaucratic slippage—the tendency for broad policies to be altered through successive reinterpretation, such that the ultimate implementation may bear little resemblance to legislated or other broad statements of policy intent. It is well known that policy enforcement can be constrained by funding limitations, or by the fact that an apparently strong statement of intent can be coupled with a level of funding that is too low…
Returning home
Crude, Coppertone ® , and the coast
Southern Louisiana and southern Florida are characterized by the two most extensive coastal wetlands in the continental United States. These immense, seemingly hostile, and similar environments have experienced two very different directions of regional development. Louisiana developed much earlier, focusing initially on the extraction of renewable resources from the coastal marsh. Later, by the 1920s, the discovery of oil and gas led to the rapid…
Exploiting stigma
The Emergence of Environmental Sociology
Human beings have a dualistic relationship with the environment, being subject to physical and biological limits and yet being unique in the capacity for culture and symbolic communication. Sociology reflects this context and adds another dualism, drawing heavily from the concepts and perspectives of biological ecology, but reacting almost violently against “reductionism” of any sort, specifically including social Darwinism and environmental dete…
Communities, Policy and Chronic Technological Disasters
This article argues that chronic technological disasters are best viewed as processes rather than as events. Chronic technological disasters are embedded in a variety of decisions and policies that regulate, or fail to regulate, the process that results in what comes to be defined, through social processes, as a technological disaster. We present the argument for examining chronic technological disasters as policy processes and examine stages of …
Concentrated Work Scheduling
Utilizing time and space as active elements in human interaction, this article examines an emerging occupational phenomenon, concentrated work scheduling, which is often coupled with long-distance commuting. The analysis concentrates on the way in which this particular time/space management strategy enables and constrains work related activities for individuals, corporations and planning agencies
The Growth Machine and the Everglades
We propose four ways that the urban growth machine theoretical perspective can be expanded for social scientists whose focus is not necessarily urban. First, we believe the thesis is useful for analysis at larger and smaller geographic scales than the city. Second, once focused on a goal and set in motion the growth machines have inertia. This leads to continuity over time and also leaves records which are useful in analyzing how particular outco…
Crossing the next divide
Obsolete and Irreversible
While “economic development” projects have long been proposed and supported by local growth machine elites, technological change has affected the social desirability of large projects in three ways. First, large development projects—we examine water transportation—have grown in size, meaning that backers often seek public funding. With increased size and the need for external funding, many years or decades can elapse by the time a project can be …
Environmental sociology
This paper briefly outlines the origins and contributions of environmental sociology to date, going on to propose ways in which the existing research can be used as a foundation for a new generation of research into the 21st century. It argues that environmental sociologists need to avoid the omphaloskepsis that sometimes afflicts other fields of sociology, but that there is a real opportunity to do so. Three options appear particularly promising…
Crime and economic activity
This paper examines the relationship between unemployment, median income, and the seven F.B.I. Index crimes. The analysis lends support to the contention that opportunity is a stronger motivator of criminal activity than is deprivation. The paper also calls into question the propriety of official unemployment rates as indicators of economic deprivation, at least at the state level. Thus, economic deprivation cannot be ruled out as a causal elemen…
Work Scheduling and Family Interaction
This article offers an expansion of the construction of reality paradigm as proposed by Berger and Kellner (1964) as an appropriate theoretical perspective for the examination of the link between work scheduling and family interaction. The argument is that not only does this perspective allow an examination across a continuum of family member absences, but that this perspective is applicable across the family life cycle, and with increasingly evi…
Disproportionality and Disaster
Objectives. Although many observers have interpreted Hurricane Katrina's damage to New Orleans as a case of nature striking humans, we draw on the sociological concept of the growth machine to show that much of the damage resulted instead from what humans had done to nature—in the name but not the reality of “economic development.” Methods. We triangulate findings from multiple qualitative techniques, including first‐hand fieldwork, interviews, a…
Scientific Expertise and Natural Resource Decisions
Social scientists should seek greater involvement in interdisciplinary scientific committees, which often play important roles in natural resource management. In addition to our acknowledged areas of expertise, we have the ability to educate other disciplines about social sciences and, importantly, also about the realities of biophysical science input into policy processes. Two examples are worth noting. First, the asymmetry of scientific challen…
Expanding a typology of the dimensions of marked relationships
This paper expands a typology of underlying elements that influence the role of the stigmatized individual in interpersonal relations. The six dimensions of Jones et al. (1984)—concealability, course, disruptiveness, aesthetic qualities, origin, and peril—are expanded and altered to include the stigmatized individual as a more active actor in the labeling process. Two additional dimensions are added: exploitability and historical precedent, and o…
Exploiting stigma
Work Scheduling and Family Interaction
This article offers an expansion of the construction of reality paradigm as proposed by Berger and Kellner (1964) as an appropriate theoretical perspective for the examination of the link between work scheduling and family interaction. The argument is that not only does this perspective allow an examination across a continuum of family member absences, but that this perspective is applicable across the family life cycle, and with increasingly evi…
Crime and economic activity
This paper examines the relationship between unemployment, median income, and the seven F.B.I. Index crimes. The analysis lends support to the contention that opportunity is a stronger motivator of criminal activity than is deprivation. The paper also calls into question the propriety of official unemployment rates as indicators of economic deprivation, at least at the state level. Thus, economic deprivation cannot be ruled out as a causal elemen…
The Emergence of Environmental Sociology
Human beings have a dualistic relationship with the environment, being subject to physical and biological limits and yet being unique in the capacity for culture and symbolic communication. Sociology reflects this context and adds another dualism, drawing heavily from the concepts and perspectives of biological ecology, but reacting almost violently against “reductionism” of any sort, specifically including social Darwinism and environmental dete…
Concentrated Work Scheduling
Utilizing time and space as active elements in human interaction, this article examines an emerging occupational phenomenon, concentrated work scheduling, which is often coupled with long-distance commuting. The analysis concentrates on the way in which this particular time/space management strategy enables and constrains work related activities for individuals, corporations and planning agencies
Returning home
A Multiple Perspective Approach to Using Micro Theory
This paper examines attempts to synthesize three micro-level sociological theories, namely symbolic interaction, exchange theory, and the construction of social reality. The author argues that although these perspectives are not based on totally incompatable assumptions, previous attempts to synthesize have not been useful in directing the course of research. An alternative to theoretical synthesis, using multiple perspectives, is suggested, and …
A Closer Look at 'Local Control
Particularly when discussing the effects of large-scale industrial projects, the existing community literature exhibits a curious duality about relationships between local communities and outside forces. While explicitly noting the external origins of large-scale industrial projects, the literature shifts to a focus on local planning when discussing the management of any resultant disruptions. Little attention is devoted to the possibility that t…
An Empirical Examination of Two Models of Cultural Causation
The traditional macroscopic model of cultural causation advanced by Weber and modified by Parsons assumes that values provide onentation for human action. Thus, values are conceptualized as the intervening link between culture and behavior and in general, are viewed as predictive of human action. As an a/tentative model, Swidler asserts that cultures provide actors with a limited array of behavioral options. Because this array is finite and indic…
Asking Threatening Questions and Situational Framing
Although surveys are extensively used in sociology, there has been a relative neglect of the effect of task definition upon results obtained. The present article examines the effects of one such task variable, length and specificity of the cue, on response sets concerning the frequency and quantity of alcohol consumed. In one survey format, respondents were asked to report the average number of days drinking per month, and the average number of d…
Organizational Change in the Roman Catholic Church
Community Impacts of Technological Change
Although sociologists have made advances in understanding the community-level impacts of technological and environmental change, attention to date has focused almost exclusively on the relatively brief development stage of construction and rapid expansion. Significant social changes can also take place both before and after the phases of the most intense physical activities (construction, production, expansion), and pathways of influence can be s…
Opportunity-Threat, Development, and Adaptation
Partly because of the field's efforts to deal first with the kinds of impacts that have been the most obvious and pressing, the traditional focus of social impact assessment has been on the impacts taking place during the most intensive phases of developmental activity. Recently it has become increasingly clear that a number of predictable, significant impacts take place both before and after the periods of most intense activity; these impacts ar…
Legal drinking age and alcohol consumption
Utilizing samples from two states, one where the legal age for the possession and consumption of alcohol was 18 (Louisiana) and one where the legal age was 21 (North Carolina), we examine the assumption that restricting access to alcohol results in lower alcohol consumption rates for the target population (age 18–20). We find little support for this assumption, but considerable evidence that restrictive legislation drives younger drinkers undergr…
Socioenvironmental factors and development policy
The Differential Effects of the Minimum Drinking Age Law
This research is based on a comparison of the effects of a 21-minimum-age drinking law. Using two self-report samples of college students, one from a state where the minimum drinking age is 21 (N= 249) and another from a state where the minimum drinking age is 18 (N= 330), drinking behavior patterns are compared in terms of frequency, quantity, and location of consumption. The data suggest that the 21-minimum-age drinking law deters drinking in c…
Natural resources and rural poverty
The review by Humphrey et al. (1993) is arguably the most important effort to date to advance our understanding of poverty in resource‐dependent communities—one that is likely to be remembered as pivotal, not just because it brings together four highly diverse theoretical perspectives, but because its clarity will facilitate the recognition of important gaps and of the need for empirical testing. All four of the perspectives appear to have import…
Oil in Troubled Waters
Bureaucratic Slippage and Failures of Agency Vigilance
This paper focuses on bureaucratic slippage—the tendency for broad policies to be altered through successive reinterpretation, such that the ultimate implementation may bear little resemblance to legislated or other broad statements of policy intent. It is well known that policy enforcement can be constrained by funding limitations, or by the fact that an apparently strong statement of intent can be coupled with a level of funding that is too low…
Beyond the nature/society divide
Oil in Troubled Waters
Crude, Coppertone ® , and the coast
Southern Louisiana and southern Florida are characterized by the two most extensive coastal wetlands in the continental United States. These immense, seemingly hostile, and similar environments have experienced two very different directions of regional development. Louisiana developed much earlier, focusing initially on the extraction of renewable resources from the coastal marsh. Later, by the 1920s, the discovery of oil and gas led to the rapid…
Crossing the next divide
Oil on the Edge
Political science (24 obras) · Sociology (23 obras) · Economics (20 obras) · Law (18 obras) · Engineering (13 obras) · Computer Science (12 obras) · Psychology (12 obras) · Epistemology (10 obras) · Business (9 obras) · Politics (9 obras)