Gordon Gauchat - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Gordon Gauchat

Sociological focus, Nov 1, 2008

Abstract Science has become a key social institution in the contemporary United States. Recent hi... more Abstract Science has become a key social institution in the contemporary United States. Recent high profile debates regarding the scientific validity of intelligent design in Pennsylvania and Kansas signal the need for social scientific understanding of people's attitudes toward science in the contemporary United States. Using the 1993 General Social Survey (GSS), this study compares three different explanations of anti-science (i.e., negative attitudes toward science). The first theory suggests that a lack of scientific knowledge engenders anti-science attitudes. The second perspective points toward strong religious faith or evangelical beliefs as the primary impetus of anti-science attitudes. A third approach suggests anti-science attitudes are a result of the social context of individuals. All three explanatory factors contribute to our understanding of anti-science.

Annual Review of Sociology, Jul 31, 2023

The ongoing pandemic and quickening climate crisis make it difficult to overstate the significanc... more The ongoing pandemic and quickening climate crisis make it difficult to overstate the significance of science and science policy to our world. These global catastrophes have laid bare the fragility of science's legitimacy and its dependence on broader cultural understandings and institutional norms. Challenges to science's legitimacy are numerous and daunting in the early twenty-first century but also nothing new. This review interrogates science as culture in our highly fragmented and polarized social environment, and the idea that scientific knowledge and expertise are experiencing a profound and accelerating legitimacy crisis. The challenges are internal and external to the production of scientific knowledge, emphasizing the publicly financed sector in colleges and universities worldwide. Internal threats include fraud, replicability, knowledge diffusion and equability, disciplinary fragmentation, and overproduction. Equally important are the external threats, such as polarization, authoritarianism, religious beliefs, information technology, and economic capital—commanding financial flows to organized science. While sociology is uniquely situated to study these composite issues, it faces sobering challenges and its own scientific legitimacy crisis.

Supplemental material, Gauchat_June_2018_ASR_media_abstracts for The Cultural-Cognitive Mapping o... more Supplemental material, Gauchat_June_2018_ASR_media_abstracts for The Cultural-Cognitive Mapping of Scientific Professions by Gordon Gauchat and Kenneth T. Andrews in American Sociological Review

Public Understanding of Science, 2020

Nature Climate Change, 2018

Those who distrust climate scientists are more likely to be skeptical of climate change and reluc... more Those who distrust climate scientists are more likely to be skeptical of climate change and reluctant to support mitigation policies. Now research shows that scientific interest in early adolescence is associated with increased trust in climate scientists in adulthood irrespective of political ideology.

Climatic Change, 2017

Previous research has examined public perceptions of climate change, including opinions about the... more Previous research has examined public perceptions of climate change, including opinions about the severity of its effects, whether it is human caused, the degree of its exaggeration in the news media, and the level of scientific consensus on the issue. This research has shown that public beliefs about each of these aspects of climate change are politically charged. What remains understudied are the sources of environmental scientists' authority in the broader society and whether perceptions of environmental scientists themselves are polarized. Using data from the General Social Survey's Science and Technology Module, this study fills this gap in knowledge by examining public perceptions of environmental scientists across several dimensions. We develop and formally test a theoretical model of the legitimacy of environmental scientists in the public sphere, as measured by public support for their influence on climate policy. Consistent with other research on public beliefs about climate change, we find that perceptions of environmental scientists are polarized across multiple measures. Moreover, while previous theory and research have emphasized beliefs about scientific consensus on climate change, we find that perceptions of scientists' understanding of the issue and the integrity of their policy advice are each stronger predictors of scientists' legitimacy in the public sphere.

Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 2016

Rich democracies exhibit vast cross-national and historical variation in the socialization of hea... more Rich democracies exhibit vast cross-national and historical variation in the socialization of health care. Yet, cross-national analyses remain relatively rare in the health policy literature, and health care remains relatively neglected in the welfare state literature. We analyze pooled time series models of the public share of total health spending for eighteen rich democracies from 1960 to 2010. Building on path dependency theory, we present a strategy for modeling the relationship between the initial 1960 public share and the current public share. We also examine two contrasting accounts for how the 1960 public share interacts with conventional welfare state predictors: the self-reinforcing hypothesis expecting positive feedbacks and the counteracting hypothesis expecting negative feedbacks. We demonstrate that most of the variation from 1960 to 2010 in the public share can be explained by a country's initial value in 1960. This 1960 value has a large significant effect in mo...

A prominent explanation for U.S. military spending in the three decades following World War II su... more A prominent explanation for U.S. military spending in the three decades following World War II suggests that state managers used military spending as a countercyclical fiscal policy to stabilize the economy. This military Keynesian argument contends that military spending fluctuates in response to a confluence of interests among capitalist firms in the monopoly sector, organized labor, and politicians who seek to ensure their incumbency in office. With the end of the Cold War and the rise of a "new military " era, with its focus on technologically advanced weapons and a small standing army, military Keynesian arguments have fallen out of favor. On the other hand, the enormity of the military budget and the fact that the livelihoods of millions of citizens are still tied to the military sector renews questions about the role of military spending in shaping economic policy. In this article, we revisit the thesis of military Keynesianism during the post-Vietnam era (1977-2004) using state-level data for 49 U.S. states. Our analysis provides new evidence that military Keynesianism is still relevant in this largely peacetime economy. Several implications of these findings are also discussed.

Social Forces, 2015

ABSTRACT I n recent years, professional science organizations in the United States, including the... more ABSTRACT I n recent years, professional science organizations in the United States, including the National Research Council, National Institutes of Health, and National Science Foundation , have expressed concern about waning policy influence, declining government funding, and the growing politicization of science. Given this background, a number of theoretical questions motivate this study. First, what is the political context of scientific authority in the contemporary United States? More specifically, how can we best understand the association between political ideology and public perceptions of science in the current polarized environment? Using data from the National Science Foundation&#39;s Survey of Public Attitudes Toward and Understanding of Science and Technology (2006–2012), this study finds that the American public is culturally and politically divided in its support for the intersection of science and the state. Various models of political and cultural polarization are tested. Overall, ideological challenges to the cultural authority of science cannot be reduced to left-right political polarization or to conservative religious beliefs. Instead, skepticism on the political right is multifold, involving distinct modes of thought and concerns about the institutional ties between science and the state. In 2012, the National Research Council (NRC) released a report titled Using Science as Evidence in Public Policy. The report appealed to social scientists to examine the complex and understudied relationship between scientific knowledge and policy formation. The report also cautioned that the scientific community confronts increased public scrutiny and budgetary pressures. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF) echoed these concerns, highlighting declining policy influence and federal financial support (Morello 2013; Reardon 2013; Wadman 2012; Zhang 2013). Yet, public perceptions of science, especially in relation to the modern state, remain poorly

Sociological Focus, 2008

Gender & Society, 2012

Previous research on gender-based economic inequality has emphasized occupational segregation as ... more Previous research on gender-based economic inequality has emphasized occupational segregation as the leading explanatory factor for the gender wage gap. Yet the globalization of the U.S. economy has affected gender inequality in fundamental ways and potentially diminished the influence of occupational gender segregation. We examine whether occupational gender segregation continues to be the main determinant of gender earnings inequality and to what extent globalization processes have emerged as important determinants of inequality between women’s and men’s earnings. We study factors contributing to the gender earnings ratio as well as the median earnings of men and women for 271 U.S. metropolitan areas. The results indicate that occupational segregation is still the leading determinant of gender earnings inequality, that its effects are only slightly diminished by the presence of globalization, and that various aspects of the global economy independently influence the gender earning...

City & Community, 2011

This article examines the “military metropolis,” an urban community that depends highly on milita... more This article examines the “military metropolis,” an urban community that depends highly on military expenditures in order to sustain economic vitality. We build on past theories of military Keynesianism and employ insights from urban political economy theory to examine the effects of defense contracts and defense personnel spending on five measures of labor market quality (median household income, income inequality, poverty 125 percent, unemployment, and casualization) in 276 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas in the year 2000. Whereas previous studies of military spending have focused primarily on nations and U.S. states, this study examines metropolitan areas. We test three hypotheses about how federal military outlays might influence urban economies: first, the defense–dependency hypothesis suggests that urban areas rely on defense dollars in varying degrees to sustain their economic stability and vitality. Second, the localized effects hypothesis proposes that defense personnel...

Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 2012

This study examines how the dynamics of the global economy, particularly new patterns of capital ... more This study examines how the dynamics of the global economy, particularly new patterns of capital ownership, affect earnings inequality in the 276 US metropolitan areas and how these patterns vary across the USA between the south and non-south. We examine the impact of five measures of globalization (global capital, foreign direct investment, exports, foreign-born non-citizens and foreign-born citizens) and four measures of labour market transformation (deindustrialization, corporate restructuring, bureaucratic burden and casualization) on two distinct dimensions of metropolitan-level earnings inequality: upper-tail and lower-tail inequality. We find significant effects of these nine measures on inequality and important variations in their effects in southern and non-southern metropolitan areas. Copyright 2011, Oxford University Press.

Crisis, Politics and Critical Sociology

This chapter shows that Mead presents the mind in a paradoxical manner, manifesting in the form o... more This chapter shows that Mead presents the mind in a paradoxical manner, manifesting in the form of constraint and openness, or what is termed, "self-regulation" and "self-control". It proposes an expansion of Mead's ideas that incorporates Mills' notion of the "cultural apparatus" and Foucault's notion of "panoptic surveillance". The chapter introduces and develops two new concepts that reflect these additions: the panoptic idol and the cosmetic panopticism. It is divided into two broad sections. The first describes Mead's account of the internal dialogue and its components. The second applies this theory of mind and thinking to contemporary social issues and theoretical quandaries to illustrate the potential for theoretical growth. To summarize, the chapter proposes that the teletechnology amplifies the self-regulating power of institutional authorities in the internal dialogue through the panoptic idol-a media saturated generalized other. Keywords: cosmetic panopticism; internal dialogue; Mead; self-control; self-regulation; teletechnology

Sociological Forum, Mar 10, 2014

We advocate a relational approach to understanding contemporary conservatism in the United States... more We advocate a relational approach to understanding contemporary conservatism in the United States. Our approach suggests that conservatism provides a cultural repertoire for adherents to use in adapting to new or changed political situations. We provide evidence based on public opinion data that conservatism is neither a single, monolithic ideology nor a mere coalition of convenience among disparate interest groups. Instead, conservatism should be understood as an amalgam of overlapping but distinct styles of thought, held together through a cultural identification with conservative identity.

Public Understanding of Science, 2010

Using the National Science Foundation’s 2006 Science Indicators Survey, this study explores three... more Using the National Science Foundation’s 2006 Science Indicators Survey, this study explores three distinct explanations of public attitudes. First, the knowledge–attitudes model refers to a well tested relationship between public knowledge of science and more favorable attitudes toward science. Second, the alienation model hypothesizes that public disassociation with science is a symptom of a general disenchantment with late modernity, mainly, the limitations associated with codified expertise, rational bureaucracy, and institutional authority. A third approach emphasizes the cultural meaning of science: how various public beliefs about “what science is” relate to acceptance or reservations about science. The Science Indicators Survey shows that US adults view science (what it is or should be) in three distinct ways: 1) in terms of having a systematic method, 2) in terms of social location (i.e., takes place in a university or a laboratory), and 3) in terms of knowledge that should ...

American Sociological Review, 2018

Even with widespread interest, public perceptions of science remain understudied and poorly theor... more Even with widespread interest, public perceptions of science remain understudied and poorly theorized by social scientists. A central issue has been the persistent assumption that publics require a base of scientific knowledge for science to have broad cultural meaning. Yet, recent advances in cultural and cognitive sociology point to alternative research programs seeking to identify how publics come to understand complex and uncertain issues, when information is incomplete and asymmetric. We use this approach to analyze data on public perceptions of how scientific different fields are from the 2006 and 2012 National Science Foundation’s Science and Technology Survey. Our multivariate analyses allow us to approximate how mass publics map the social space of scientific professions, while accounting for individuals’ social location and cultural identity (e.g., race, class, gender, age, scientific sophistication, and political ideology). We then focus our attention on public perception...

Sociological Perspectives, 2016

Feminist scholars and activists have endorsed a broad and intersectional political agenda that ad... more Feminist scholars and activists have endorsed a broad and intersectional political agenda that addresses multiple dimensions of inequality, such as gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, and class. We examine whether or not this perspective is also held by self-identified feminists in the general public. Drawing on public opinion polls from 2007 to 2009, we assess self-identified feminists’ attitudes toward a range of social policies. We find that after controlling for sociodemographic factors and political ideology, feminist identity is associated with progressive attitudes on policies related to gender and sexuality (e.g., abortion) as well as policies related to other social justice issues (e.g., immigration, health care). We also find some interactions between feminist identity and gender, age, education, and political ideology, suggesting some heterogeneity in feminists’ political attitudes. Overall, these findings suggest that feminists in the general public support an intersectio...