Beyond cultural competence: language access and Latino civil rights

Social services remain largely unresponsive to the values and needs of Latino families, who often need Spanish-language services. This article discusses access to linguistically appropriate services, not just as a culturally competent practice, but also as a civil rights issue. Spanish speakers have protection from discrimination in federally funded human services under Title VI of the Civil Rights Law of 1964. The article discusses implications for all aspects of private and public child welfare, including investigations, foster care, family preservation, adoption, and quality assurance.     

Hispanic rioting during the civil rights era

The 1960s' U.S. black riots have received detailed systematic study at virtually all levels of analysis (individual, event, temporal, group, neighborhood, city, SMSA, state, and national). Although there are many impressionistic accounts of particular nonblack riots during this era, no systematic study of nonblack violence has heretofore been conducted. This article aims to reduce this gap in our knowledge. It is the first to present comprehensive data on nonblack rioting for the tumultuous 1960s and early 1970s. The analyses of these data focus upon the fruitfulness of applying models developed to explain the black riots, at the city and event levels of analysis, to their nonblack counterparts. The community-level model proves useful. Of particular importance are the effects of family income inequality and of local police force size.     

Public relations and business responses to the civil rights movement

During the 1950s and 1960s, U.S. civil rights protesters targeted businesses with demands for service, jobs, and equality. Employing historical method, this study considers the role of public relations by examining magazine, newspaper, and public relations trade press coverage of business responses to the civil rights movement. The analysis shows that, although all five motivations for the adoption of the formal public relations function—profit, legitimacy, recruitment, agitation, and advocacy—were present, business was slow to respond; that riots and concerns about corporate image drove business to take a public stand; and that professional public relations participation appeared to be minimal even as it was cited in press stories as a reason for the failure of many business initiatives. In addition, the analysis demonstrates the existence of a sixth motivation: fear.     

Politics beyond identity: reconsidering the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland

The Northern Irish civil rights movement, like other minority or subaltern struggles, has been interpreted in terms of the national minority’s struggle for state recognition. Such frameworks emphasise the importance of identity in political conflict and tend to assume the state as guarantor of the recognition of identity. The difficulty here is that political possibilities that exceed the terms of identity and the state are obscured. Moreover, the interpretation of the Northern Irish conflict in these terms forms part of the consociational approach to conflict resolution which operates as normative underpinning to the post-conflict state. This article provides an alternative interpretation of the political significance of the civil rights movement. Rather than assuming the analytical usefulness and political significance of identity, I seek to trace the tension between identity and disidentification within the movement, drawing attention to the ways in which activists were aware of, and sought to respond to, the dangers of identity politics.     

Extended review: classical sociology and its legacy

Book reviewed in this article: Max Weber, a skeleton key Randall Collins, Sage, Beverly Hills Weberian Sociological Theory Randall Collins, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Society David Frisby and Derek Sayer, Ellis Horwood, Chichester, and Tavistock, London Reason and Freedom in Sociological Thought Frank Hearn, Allen & Unwin, Boston Weber and the Marxist World Johannes Weiss, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London and New York     

Policing, collective action and social movement theory: the case of the Northern Ireland civil rights campaign

In this paper we examine the relationship between social movements and the police through an analysis of the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) which emerged in the late 1960s in Northern Ireland. Following della Porta (1995) and Melucci (1996) we argue that the way in which episodes of collective action are policed can affect profoundly both levels of mobilization and the orientation of social movements. We also submit that the symbolic and representational dimensions of policing can be a significant trigger in the stimulation of identification processes and collective action. The paper concludes by questioning some of the assumptions contained within social movement theory, and their applicability to divided societies such as Northern Ireland.     

Citizenship beyond politics: the importance of political,civil and social rights and responsibilities among women and men1

Previous research has suggested that men are more engaged as citizens than are women. Yet, little is known about gender cleavages across a variety of citizenship norms. To what extent do men and women define citizenship differently? To address that question, this study examines the importance men and women assign various citizenship rights and responsibilities using 2004 ISSP data from 18 Western, industrialized nations. Using a disaggregated approach to understanding definitions of citizenship, we examine political, civil, and social rights and responsibilities. After controlling for a variety of demographic and attitudinal influences, we find that men and women are not different in their views regarding the importance of political responsibilities. However, women do view political rights as significantly more important than do men. Further, in comparison to men, women view both civil and social responsibilities and rights domains as significantly more important.     

Disability-policy models in European welfare regimes: comparing the distribution of social protection,labour-market integration and civil rights

This paper examines different models of disability policy in European welfare regimes on the basis of secondary data. OECD data measuring social protection and labour-market integration is complemented with an index which measures the outcomes of disability civil rights. Eurobarometer data is used to construct the index. The country modelling by cluster analysis indicates that an encompassing model of disability policy is mainly prevalent in Nordic countries. An activating and rehabilitating disability-policy model is predominant mainly in Central European countries, and there is evidence for a distinct Eastern European model characterized by relatively few guaranteed civil rights for disabled people. Furthermore, the Southern European model, which indicates a preference for social protection rather than activation and rehabilitation, includes countries which normally have diverse welfare traditions.     

Medical ethics and the civil rights movement. Why informed consent is too little, too late.

Medical ethics is viewed as one phase of the human rights movement begun by blacks in the 1950s and then continued by feminists, consumerists, and bioethicists.     

Institutions and the adoption of rights: political and property rights in Colombia

Citizenship rights are the result of specific political bargains between different collective actors and state authorities (Tilly Theory and Society 26(34):599–602, 1997). The political bargains for rights are encoded in institutions, and these institutions develop independently from each other and take organizational characteristics that make certain rights easier to adopt than others. I argue that these institutions vary along two dimensions that affect the extent to which states can adopt rights successfully: one dimension is distributional and the second is the depth or extension of the rules that frame a given right. This article focuses on the institutional differences between property rights, especially land property, and political rights, and on the consequences of those differences on their adoption. I then illustrate my argument with examples from Colombia since 1980.     

Disability rights in practice: the relationship between human rights and social rights in contemporary social care

Using the contemporary arena of social care as an example, this article challenges the either/or dichotomy set up by some disability writers and activists between the favoured civil and human rights on the one hand and discredited social rights on the other. Rather, the article concludes, claims to these differing types of right are mutually reinforcing and can be mobilised strategically in disabled people's struggles for greater social justice. In particular, there is the potential for expanding disabled people's social rights to both direct services and direct payments by enforcing the positive obligations on public authorities conferred by human rights legislation and challenging rationing regimes.