Sociologists have long been interested in pluralistic ignorance—situations where a majority of individuals assume that most of their peers think differently than themselves when, in fact, their attitudes are similar. Recently, sociologists have suggested that pluralistic ignorance is especially likely to occur when peers are gathered together and may explain why group members often refrain from discussing their ultimate concerns with each other. However, researchers have not indicated what factors besides physical proximity might create pluralistic ignorance. Nor have they employed methods that can specify how causal factors combine to produce multiple routes to pluralistic ignorance. To remedy this situation, this article suggests several factors that may make others' opinions more or less transparent. It also proposes an analytical strategy that can identify which combinations of these factors are associated with misperceptions and illustrates how it might be applied. Implications of this study for future research are discussed.
At the same time many religious organizations are apparently becoming more internally secularized, other nonreligious organizations appear to be going through a countervailing process of "sacralization" (Demerath). This study explores this development through a case study of a state university hospital that attempted to created a more "holistic" corporate culture. Extending research on the declining scope of religious authority (Chaves) and professional systems (Abbott), this study suggests that secular settings may be fertile ground for craft versions of religious authority to develop. Implications of the latter during an age when authority structures and caring tasks in general are being downsized and devolved are discussed.If it came down to us and the guys who change the light bulbs, you know administration would let us go.-Director of Chaplain ServicesThe other chaplains may not want to admit this, but nurses can do many of the same things they do.-Chaplain Intern and Former NurseBoundaries between professional jurisdictions tend to disappear in worksites, particularly in overworked worksites.There results a form of knowledge transfer that can be called workplace assimilation. Subordinate professionals, nonprofessionals, and members of related, equal professions learn on the job a craft version of a given profession's knowledge system. -Andrew Abbott, The System of ProfessionsIn recent years, several scholars have suggested that secularization is best understood not as declining religion, but the declining scope of religious authority (Dobbelaere 1988;Chaves 1994;Yamane 1997). Focusing on religious authority, they argue, gets at the social-as opposed to individual-significance of religion and therefore is more sociologically relevant. It is also consistent with recent sociological theorizing about how professions compete for jurisdiction over certain functions (Abbott 1988).This reformulation of classical secularization theory is very promising and offers an empirical handle on one of the most elusive concepts within the secularization literature-internal secularization. Luckmann (1967) introduced this concept to suggest how organizations are increasingly shaped by secular values (see also Berger 1969), but failed to specify how internal secularization might actually be studied. This shortcoming can be remedied, according to this new approach, by examining how much power religious elites exert within religious organizations. In fact, what Yamane (1997) and others call a neosecularization paradigm has already inspired an impressive
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