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Three ASA-NSF Small Grants Awarded for Summer 2002 Round

The American Sociological Association (ASA) is pleased to announce three awards from the summer 2002 review cycle of the Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline (FAD). The Association’s FAD program is jointly funded through a matching grant provided to the ASA by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and administered by the ASA. These awards are designed to provide scholars with seed money for innovative research projects and also for scientific conferences that show promise for advancing research in the discipline. This round of winners includes:

  • Kenneth T. Andrews and Bob Edwards (Harvard University and East Carolina University, respectively), $6,943 for The Structure, Dynamics, and Impacts of Local Environmental Mobilization. Funding will be used for a multi-method study of 300 social movement environmental organizations in North Carolina that operate on a state or local level. The purpose of this study is to close the gap between nationally oriented, U.S. social movement theory and the devolution of political power to the states over the last two decades. Andrews and Edward focus on environmental mobilization because this movement has a complex and diverse movement infrastructure that has gone beyond a middle class, professional constituency. The study emphasizes the effects of political context because the effectiveness of movement strategies is context dependent. In addition, the study also focuses on environmental organizations and their capacities, networks, and strategies. The data to be collected for the study will come from multiple sources including the following: telephone surveys with a representative sample of North Carolina environmental groups, systematic collection of media-reported environmental events and activities, in depth-interviews with 40 selected environmental groups, and a secondary collection of law suits and state legislation. This study will serve as the first phase of a cross-state comparative project.

  • Elizabeth A. Armstrong (Indiana University, Bloomington), $7,000 for Why San Francisco and New York? Explaining Variation in the Emergence of Gay Liberation in American Cities. Funding is for a study to compare the emergence of gay liberation movements in 11 large American cities from 1964-1974 by assessing the relative explanatory power of alternative theories of social movements. These theories include resource mobilization theory and cultural theories of identity politics. Armstrong hypothesizes that movements based on identity are likely to occur in cities characterized by dense interaction, uncertainty, and multiple cultural models. She proposes to collect data on organizations, events, publications, and activists in each of the 11 cities as well as city-level indicators of political and cultural opportunities and population density. Armstrong will use Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), an approach based on the logic of Boolean algebra, to assess how these factors affect outcomes in the 11 cities. The results of this study should provide a building block for further systematic research on the development of gay movements in U.S. cities.

  • Peter Whalley and Peter Meiksins (Loyola University, Chicago, and Cleveland State University, respectively), $6,492 for Designing People. Funding is for a pilot study to analyze design as both a work activity and as the production of material culture. The study will answer questions about work skills, aesthetic claims, and relations between designers and clients. Specifically, Whalley and Meiksins propose to answer a series of questions on central work activities, claims making or legitimating activities, pressures of product and customer demand, evaluation of skills, and the impact of organizational structure. In this pilot study, Whalley and Meiksins will interview 15 designers and their clients concerning work skills, work activities, work relations, production of taste, and how these activities and processes result in the commercial products. To observe similarities and differences, they will compare the answers of industrial, graphic, and interior designers. Interviews will be supplemented with course syllabi, information on credentialing processes, and professional literature for each type of designer. Among the results of this pilot study will be an interview schedule for the next phase of the project.

    Additional information on the FAD program is available on the ASA homepage (www.asanet.org/members/fad.html), or contact Roberta Spalter-Roth (spalter-roth@asanet.org, (202) 383-9005, ext. 317).