Showing papers in "American Journal of Sociology in 1985"

Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness

Abstract: How behavior and institutions are affected by social relations is one of the classic questions of social theory. This paper concerns the extent to which economic action is embedded in structures of social relations, in modern industrial society. Although the usual neoclasical accounts provide an "undersocialized" or atomized-actor explanation of such action, reformist economists who attempt to bring social structure back in do so in the "oversocialized" way criticized by Dennis Wrong. Under-and oversocialized accounts are paradoxically similar in their neglect of ongoing structures of social relations, and a sophisticated account of economic action must consider its embeddedness in such structures. The argument in illustrated by a critique of Oliver Williamson's "markets and hierarchies" research program.

Cultural Capital, Educational Attainment, and Marital Selection

Abstract: Although Weber distinguished sharply between "class" (an individual's market position) and "status" (participation in a collectivity bound together by a shared status culture), only measures of the former have been included in most empirical analyses of the stratification process. In this article a measure of status-culture participation (or cultural capital) is developed from the responses of men and women interviewed in 1960 by Project Talent. Questions tapped a range of high-cultural interests and activities. Analyses of data from a follow-up study 11 years later show significant effects of cultural capital (with appropriate controls) on educational attainment, college attendence, college completion, graduate attendance, and marital selection for both men and women.

The Impact of Social Status, Family Structure, and Neighborhood on the Fertility of Black Adolescents

Abstract: Black teenagers living in metropolitan areas of the United States initiate sexual intercourse at earlier ages than other teenagers and have higher rates of premarital pregnancy. Ethnographic studies of black families have claimed that economic uncertainties cause young blacks to delay marriage, while many young women achieve adulthood through premarital parenthood. It is also probable that girls who grow up in a female-headed family or who see their sisters become teenage parents are more likely to accept single-parenthood as a way to achieve adult status. These studies have suggested that ghetto neighborhoods are characterized by loosely defined and enforced norms of sexual behavior and age and sex compositions conducive to juvenile deviance. These features of ghetto life make it difficult for parents to regulate successfully their children's behaviors. As a consequence, residents of ghetto neighborhoods are expected to initiate sexual intercourse at earlier ages and to have higher rates of accidental premarital pregnancy than other teens. These hypotheses have received limited support in previous demographic research on teenage fertility. In this paper, these ethnographic explanations of the fertility behaviors of black adolescents are tested, using data from a random sample of more than 1,000 black females aged 13-19 who lived in the city of Chicago in 1979. This analysis improves on previous demographic research by both measuring the total effects of these variables on fertility and decomposing them into components due to effects on rates of initial sexual

A Theory of the Critical Mass. I. Interdependence, Group Heterogeneity, and the Production of Collective Action

Abstract: Collective action usually depends on a "critical mass" that behaves differently from typical group members. Sometimes the critical mass provides some level of the good for others who do nothing, wh...

Concentration and Specialization: Dynamics of Niche Width in Populations of Organizations

Abstract: This paper departs from the common practice of focusing on large, generalist organizations and shows that new organizational insights are obtined by adopting a broader, ecological perspective. The ...

Family Structure and the Reproduction of Poverty

Abstract: Recent analysts have argued that the female-headed family is responsible for the growth of an "underclass" in America. This study uses longitudinal data taken from the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics to address the questions whether and why offspring in female-headed households are more likely to experience persistent poverty in adulthood. Four hypotheses regarding the effect of a father's absence are tested: the "no-effects" hypothesis, the "economic-deprivation" hypothesis, the "father-absence" hypothesis, and the "family-stress" hypothesis. Separate analyses are presented for blacks and whites. The findings indicate that growing up in a female-headed family increases the risk of poverty, but not because of father absence per se. Among whites, economic deprivation and the stress associated with recent family disruption account for nearly all the negative effects of family structure on offsprings' attainment, whereas among blacks the results are more mixed. During the past few years, researchers and policymakers alike have expressed a growing concern over the instability of the American family and the disorganization of community life. Concern for the family has focused on such issues as the increase in divorce, the rise in illegitimate births, and the subsequent growth of female-headed families. Evidence of broader disorganization is found in high levels of crime and drug abuse, in unemployment among large segments of minority youth, and more generally in what is characterized as the emergence of an "underclass" in America (Auletta 1981).

Self-Labeling Processes in Mental Illness: The Role of Emotional Deviance

Abstract: Thomas Scheff's labeling approach to mental illness is based on reactions of other to "residual rule-breaking." This article develops a theory of self-labeling processes to account for the unexplained phenomenon of voluntary treatment seeking. By taking the role of the generalized other, individual can assess the meaning of their impulses and actions. When individuals observe themselves frequently or persistently breaking "residual rules," they attribute disturbance to themselves and may seek professional help. Drawing from Hochschild and Pugliesi, the article reconceptualized " residual rule-breaking" as violations of feeling or expression norms. When individuals are unable to manage or transform deviant feelings, self-attributions of disturbance should result. The conditions under which feeling management attempts are likely to fail and result in self-attributions of disturbance are outlined in the context of a more general theory of emotional processes. Some conditions under which labeling by others ma...

The Class Structure of Gender and Delinquency: Toward a Power-Control Theory of Common Delinquent Behavior

Abstract: Though seldom considered together, class and gender are among the most frequently analyzed correlates of delinquency today. This paper formulates and test a neo-Marxian, class-based, power control theory of gender and delinquency. Using this theory and a prediction made by Bonger more than a half-century ago, the article demonstrates that the relationship between gender and common forms of delinquency declines with each step down the class structure. Furthermore, where this relationship is strongest, it can be statistically removed by taking theoretically predicted variables into account. A power-control theory does much to specify and explain the class structure of gender and delinquency, and in doing so it demonstrates the social bases of this relationship.

On the Resolution of Role Incompatibility: A Life Event History Analysis of Family Roles and Marijuana Use

Abstract: Event history analyses are applied to life and drung histories to specify the casual sequences that underlie the associations between marijuana use and family roles observed in cross-sectional data: inverse relationships with marriage and being a parent; positive relationships with separation/divorce. Role selection and role socialization account for these relationships, and both processes contribute to the resolution of potential incompatibilities between family roles and marijuana use. Role selection effects of marijuana use are reflected in postponement of marriage and parenthood and increased risk of marital dissolution. Socialization effects of family roles on marijuana use are reflected in the reduced risk of marijuana initiation after marriage among women and the increased rate of stopping marijuana use after marriage among women and after parenthood among men. Anticipatory socialization is reflected in an increased propensity to stop marijuana use before marriage among men and women and before par...

Age, Crime, and Social Explanation

Abstract: Hirschi and Gottfredson have recently argued that proposed sociological explanations of the observed relationship between age and crime are in error This present article contends that their arguments rest on faulty logic and on misstatements of the empirical evidence currently available

Marital disruption: structural and temporal dimensions.

Abstract: Relying heavily on Ryder's (1965) argument concerning the central role of cohorts in social change and on Elder's (1978) work on life cycles, this paper integrates the disparate threads of the current marital disruption literature and provides an integrated framework for subsequent analysis. We focus on the study of intracohort life cycle development and comparative cohort careers. Our framework incorporates both elements simultaneously. Using 1980 Current Population Survey data and conditional logit analysis, this framework allows us to make refined statements about which marriage cohorts are most affected by given variables and where within the cohort's life cycle they act. For instance, we show that both the timing of the marriage and maritally conceived births affect the likelihood of disruption in all cohorts and at all marital durations observed. In contrast, the wife's level of education and a premarital birth affect the likelihood of marital disruption only at early marital durations. Such variabl...

Social Movements and Network Analysis: A Case Study of Nineteenth-Century Women's Reform in New York State

Abstract: This article examines organizational affiliations of 19th-century women reform leaders in New York State as a case study of relations among social movements. Network analysis techniques are used for the construction of matrices that (1) map the interconnections between organizations, (2) measure the intensity and directionality of those interconnections, (3) illuminate clusters of proximate organizations, and (4) identify groups central to the clusters. The matrices show the primacy of suffrage and women's rights to reform activity during the period under study (1840-1914). Peak analysis finds important clusters of relations organized around the Women's Trade Union League,Garrisonian abolitionism, and Sorosis. Finally, directional analysis shows that women's organizing efforts can be divided into three distinct periods of activity between 1840 and 1914, with significant changes in the relations among organizations from period to period. The conclusion discusses the theoretical implications of these findings.

Do Sociological Theories Grow

Abstract: Although many observers assume that theoretical progress in sociology has been minimal, there in fact has been considerable growth. Most of the evidence, however, is hidden because sociologists generally (1) fail to differentiate kinds of theoretical activity, (2) focus almost exclusively on growth by means of increasing empirical support, and (3) ignore the variety of theoretical contexts within which growth can occur. Distinguishing among orienting strategies (i.e., metatheoretical frameworks), unit theories (individual theoretical arguments), and theoretical research programs (sets of interrelated theories) helps overcome these obstacles. A focus on programs reveals five types of relations among theories. Three types represent basic forms of theoretical growth; the other two are more specialized forms which usually emerge only in the context of programs based on one of the three basic types. These ideas are first explicated and then applied to several cases of ongoing theoretical activity in sociology. Such cases provide models or exemplars (in the Kuhnian sense) of theoretical growth. Detailed analysis of these exemplars should promote significant growth in other branches of sociology.

Changing Attitudes Toward Separation and Divorce: Causes and Consequences

Abstract: This paper addresses several issues concerning separation and divorce attitudes and attitude change, using data from an intergenerational panel study of mothers and their children. A definite trend toward approval of marital dissolution is observed between 1962 and 1980. A theoretical model of the determinants of attitudes shows that affiliation with Catholicism or fundamentalist Protestantism tends to reduce approval of marital dissolution, but that between 1962 and 1980 the effect of Catholicism declined and the effect of fundamentalist religion increased. Church attendance also has an important traditional influence on marital dissolution attitudes. Older women had the most approving attitudes in 1962, but they experienced the smallest subsequent change. Age at marriage is also negatively related to approval of marital dissolution. Attitudes toward marital dissolution are shown to have little influence on subsequent marital dissolution, whereas a marital dissolution influences attitudes significantly. ...

Nonverbal Cues and Status: An Expectation States Approach

Abstract: Recent findings relating nonverbal cues to face-to-face status have not been placed within a general theoretical account so that they can be understood in relation to other factors in the status process. To address this problem, we organized recent results into two empirical generalizations about status and nonverbal task cues and offered an initial proposition to account for them in terms of expectation states theory. In an experimental test of the proposition that the task cue level of one actor in relation to that of another is a direct function of one person's expectation advantage relative to the other's, we found that subjects' verbal latency and initial gaze (two task cues) varied with the expectation advantage created by differences in the tatus characteristics of sex.

Review Essay: Overboard with Myth and Symbols

Abstract: John Meyer and Richard Scott are two of our leading organizational theorists, and Organizational Environments, a collection of previously published articles and unpublished working and conference papers confirms their importance. Four of the chapters are of considerable significance; a few are incidental, and some are quite poor. I will put their work in context, highlight its significance, and raise some troublesome issues. In the early 1970s Elizabeth Cohen and Terrence Deal of the Stanford School of Education and John Meyer and W. Richard Scott of the Stanford Department of Sociology carried out a large survey of superintendents, principals, and teachers in San Francisco school districts. The initial reports indicated that something was amiss in these organizations. Reforms were announced with enthusiasm and then evaporated. Rules and requirements filled the file cabinets, but teachers taught as they pleased and neither principals nor superintendents took much notice. State and federal money flowed in and elaborate reports went forth suggesting compliance, but little seemed to change in the classrooms. Studies of child-teacher interactions in the classroom suggested that they were unaffected by the next classroom, the principal, the district, the outside funds, and the teacher training institutions. Rationalistic theories of organizations were clearly inappropriate in this setting. These theories would never predict such loose coupling in a hierarchical system, but also irrelevant were existing notions of informal organization, open systems, the environment, human relations models, and so on. This book represents an effort to interpret these anomalies for schools and to extend the analysis to sectors of society in general. Though the chapters are very uneven and half of the material has appeared elsewhere, this is clearly an important work. Scott puts it best in chapter 7. After abandoning closed systems models, he states, we theorists went on to interorganizational relationships but only from the point of view of the

Depression and Marital Power: An Equity Model

Abstract: Sociological research consistently finds a negative association between depression and social power. A straightforward extrapolation suggests that, other things being equal, a married person is least depressed if he or she completely dominates in the marriage. How ever, marriage is a close, long-term relationship in which the psychological benefits of personal control may be limited by a need for reciprocity and mutual control. In this article, an equity model of the relationship between depression and marital power is developed and tested, using data from a national, random sample of married couples. The results show that each spouse is least depressed if marital power is shared to some extent. There is a U-shaped relationship between depression and marital power. However, the husband's depression is lowest only if he has more marital power than is associated with his wife's lowest depression, and vice versa. The higher the husband's earnings, the greater the amount of his marital power that is associate...

Class Reproduction Among Men and Women in France: Reproduction Theory on Its Home Ground

Abstract: Through an analysis of a large survey of employment men and women in France, this article shows that French reproduction theory has overstated the role of education in reproducing class advantage from generation to generation. Among men, reproduction of control over labor power (i.e., managerial/supervisory positions) is primarily direct instead of indirect through education. At the same time, education plays no role in reproducing ownership of businesses (i.e., capitalist and petty bourgeois positions), and there is little tendency for capitalist or petty bourgeois fathers to convert their economic capital into the educational capital for their sons so that the sons can secure managerial positions. Education serves less as a reproducer of class advantage than as a vehicle of mobility into managerial positions. Although reproduction theory has tended to ignore gender differences in class reproduction , these are found to be substantial. In the reproduction of ownership, women are less likely than men to i...

Hegemony and Mass Culture: A Semiotic Approach'

Abstract: The analysis of mass culture involves a three-way relationship among cultural objects, their industrial producers, and social groups of users (i.e., the mass audience). Approaches to mass culture neglect the interrelationships between these separate analytical levels. This article brings out this three-way relationship in its full dialectical complexity by applying a semiotic approach to meaning as it is created, communicated, and ideologically managed. The semiotic approach is contrasted with Marxian hegemony theory. Because cultural objects mean different things to different social groups, only semiotic analysis fully specifies the multiplicity of meanings involved in mass culture. The semiotic model views meaning as being exchanged in three separate and qualitatively different stages. Its application results in the proposal for a different kind of textual analysis than that used by contemporary mass culture analysts and in the observation that users of mass culture are more active and creative than previously supposed.

Exchange, Structure, and Symmetry in Occupational Mobility

Abstract: Previous attempts to related the traditional concepts of exchange and structural mobility to parameters of the log linear model have been flawed. This article reformulated these concepts; introduces a new, more general conceptual distinction between reciprocated and unreciprocated mobility; and matches the concepts of structure and exchange to parameters of the model of quasi symmetry (QS). Specifically, if exchange or reciprocated mobility is defined as that part of the mobility process that results from equal flows between pairs of occupational categories, and if structural mobility is defined as an effect of marginal heterogeneity that operates uniformly on origins, then (if QS or any special case of QS holds) there is a correspondence between the parameter of the model and the concepts of structure and exchange. Furthermore, this correspondence can be used to develop meaningful parametric (as opposed to ad hoc) indexes of structural mobility. However, if QS fails to hold, there is at best a partial co...

Multilevel Effects of Socioeconomic Development and Family Planning Programs on Children Ever Born

Abstract: This article describes an approach to an explanation of fertility that is sensitive to the dependence of the behavior of individuals or couples on social context and sets forth hypotheses about micro and macro determinants of children ever born (CEB). Data from 15 World Fertility Survey countries are used in a multilevel test of these hypotheses. The findings are that per capita GNP and family planning program effort affect not only country-specific average levels of CEB, but also the direction and magnitudes of the within country effects of two micro socioeconomic variables on CEB. These findings, which are largely consistent with the hypotheses, illustrate the utility of a multilevel approach.

Fraternal Resemblance in Educational Attainment and Occupational Status

Abstract: This article develops simple structural equation models of the regression of occupational status on schooling in a sample of 518 Wisconsin high school graduates and their brothers. The models correct for response variability and incorporate a family variance component structure. Methodological complications follow from the facts that the sample consists of sibling pairs; that members of a cohort of high school graduates, rather than their families, are the sampling units; and that the primary respondents are informants about some of the characteristics of their brothers. The regression of occupational status on educational attainment is relatively insensitive both to response variability and to the specification of common family factors. Family membership accounts for about half the variance in schooling and more than one-third of the variance in occupational standing, but there is little evidence that failure to control family background leads to upward bias in estimates of the effect of schooling on occ...

Occupational Conditions and Psychological Functioning in Japan

Abstract: This paper compares the occupational conditions of workers in Japan and the United States and tests whether the reciprocal effects of occupational conditions and psychological functioning in Japan are similar to those found in the United States. The comparisons of occupational conditions reveal a tendency for work in Japan to be done in a way in which consensus is promoted and individual responsibility avoided. The central result of the analysis of the reciprocal effects of occupational conditions and psychological functioning is the generalization to Japan of American findings on the effects of occupational self-direction. In Japan, as in the United States, occupational self-direction leads to ideational flexibility and self-directed orientation to self and society. Other results center on the more extensive relationship in Japan between position in the work organization and psychological functioning. The pervasiveness of this relationship provides evidence for those who emphasize the importance of the o...

Structural Constraints on Interpersonal Relations: A Test of Blau's Macrosociological Theory

Abstract: Blau's macrostructural theory focuses on explanation of rates of social contacts between people with different social characteristics. The theory is composed of two analytically distinct categories of social structure. One category is distributional; that is, it refers to properties that emerger from size distributions of social characteristics. The other is a social network approach to social interactions. This article uses Fischer's data collected from 1,050 respondents living in 50 northern California localities to examine hypotheses derived from Blau's theory. The findings suggest that social structure constrains choice: ethnic and religious heterogeneity encourage interethnic and interreligious social interactions despite the negative effects of in-group preferences on such interactions.

Continuity of Learning-Generalization: The Effect of Job on Men's Intellective Process in the United States and Poland'

Abstract: Data from both the United States and Poland show that the effect of occupational self-direction on intellective process is similar for younger, middle-aged, and older workers. Multiple-regression analyses of cross-sectional data consistently indicate that the job conditions determinative of occupational self-direction, the substantive complexity of work in particular, have as great an effect on the ideational flexibility and authoritarian conservatism of older as on those of younger and middle-aged workers in both countries. Longitudinal analyses of U.S. data demonstrate that the reciprocal effects of the substantive complexity of work and intellective process are as great for older as for younger workers. All the evidence supports the conclusion that job conditions continue to affect, and be affected by, intellective process with undiminished force throughout adult life.

Social Mobility in Great Britain and the United States

Abstract: Numerous discussions and some previous research have suggested that the United States and Great Britain should differ in their patterns of social mobility, with Great Britain exhibiting more intergenerational continuity of social position. Some have questioned this view, however, and have offered a different hypothesis. As offered by Featherman, Jones, and Hauser, the counterhypothesis is that differences among Western industrial societies are due to historical patterns of change that affect marginal distributions but that the patterns of fluidity in these societies are the same, once marginal distribution differences are taken into account. The present analysis, using data from the Occupational Change in a Generation Survey II and the Oxford Social Mobility Study, indicates that there is considerably more overall intergenerational and career mobility in the United States but that the major differences between the two societies are due to shifts in the distributions of kinds of occupations. Analysis of the patterns of fluidity, once the differences in marginal distributions are taken into account, shows very minor differences between the two societies. The common mobility regimes found in the two societies involve considerable intergenerational and career continuity of position and little long distance mobility. They also involve class effects in that there are strong links within farming and professional occupations, and entrepreneurial occupations are more strongly linked to each other than with nonentrepreneurial ones. The analysis thus provides support for Featherman, Jones, and Hauser's hypothesis. Most discussions of the British and American social mobility systems suggest that there are (or should be) significant differences between the two. Lipset's (1963) analysis of value orientations makes the point that

Social Inequality and the Arts

Abstract: Inferences from the historical literature on art are tested in a quantitative comparison of the 125 largest American metropolitan places. Art is measured by the proportion in artistic occupations, whether they involve classical, popular, or commercial art. Economic inequality apparently promotes art, but perhaps no longer primarily through patronage but rather throung the need for affluence to consume art and, particularly, through the diverse demand for art engendered by great differences in economic class. Inequality in education, however, is inversely related to the number of artists, which suggest that art flourishes in cities where most people are well educated and have cultural orientations that, though diverse, compose fairly large taste subcultures. This interpretation is supported by the finding that the existence of large occupational groups in a metropolis is positively related to artistic activities. Inequality in overall social status (SEI) encourages performing but discourages nonperforming ...

The Global Context of Metropolitan Growth: Houston and the Oil Industry

Abstract: This paper examines in empirical detail the growth and development of Houston, the "capital of the Sunbelt," against the background of the changes in its economic and social base since the late 1800s. Houston's century-long sustained growth, unique centrality in Sunblet expansion and in the world oil market, and commitment to an accentuated free enterprise philosophy make it an important urban case study in assessing the explanatory utility of mainstream and power-conflict theories of urban development, particularly those theories aimed at explaining the rise of Sunbelt cities. The global context of urban growth is accented in this analysis.

Gender and Opportunity in the Federal Bureaucracy

Abstract: This article tests Rosabeth Kanter's hypotheses that (a) promotion opportunity in organizations is related to several adaptive attitudes and bahaviors, (b) women have less promotion opportunity, (c) women are more likely to display the adaptations, and (d) when opportunity is controlled these gender differences are eliminated, using data from 897 employees in six offices of a government agency. Low opportunity was moderately related to bitter dissatisfaction concerning the promotion system and weakly related as predicted to four of eight remaining measures of these adaptations. Although gender was strongly related to occupational level, the segregation of women in lower-level career ladders was accompanied by roghly equal promotion opportunities for both sexes within the career ladders in which they were concentrated. Gender was moderately related to desire for security and interpersonal support at work, but is was related only weakly to four of the remaining measures of adaptations and related to two of ...