Can economic ties positively influence social relations and actions? If so, how does this influence operate? Microfinance programs, which provide credit through a group-based lending strategy, provide the ideal setting for exploring these questions. This article examines whether structuring socially isolated women into peer-groups for an…

Proposes that a school tracking system can be a good context for studying the effects of stratification on socialization. Tracking is found to have a pronounced influence on the dispersion of I.Q. scores. Concludes with speculations on the relationship of stratification and socialization process. (Author/AM)

Conflict episodes among first-graders were videotaped and analyzed. It appears that the function of social conflict among children is to build their small-group society and its structure: while arguing, children create political alignments, and thereby realize their practical interests within a changing set of social relationships. (KH)

Men's occupational mobility is compared with women's marriage mobility. Major results are that men more frequently inherit their origin statuses through their first jobs while women frequently move both upward and downward through their marriages. (Author/AM)

The main thrust of the work is to explain how it is that the definition and volume of deviance can change in a particular social system independent of the actions of the deviants within the system. (Author/AM)

Relates community structural variables to leadership arrangements, paying special attention to the results obtained when three alternative measures of "reputational" leadership (visibility, legitimacy and centralization) are used in two samples of communities. (Author/AM)

Using empirical evidence from 48 classrooms, argues that structural and organizational factors affect the stability and the formation of ability groups in an elementary classroom, which in turn affect growth in academic achievement. Holds that teachers are often impeded from forming the types of groups most conducive to student learning. (CMG)