Showing papers in "American Journal of Sociology in 1993"
TL;DR: The concept of social embeddings has also been used in economic sociology as mentioned in this paper, where the authors explore the different forms in which social structures affect economic action and their consequences, positive and negative, highlighted.
Abstract: This article contributes to the reemerging field of economic sociology by (1) delving into its classic roots to refine current concepts and (2) using examples from the immigration literature to explore the different forms in which social structures affect economic action. The concept of social "embeddedness" provides a suitable theoretical umbrella, although in analyzing its specific manifestations, the article focuses on the concept of social capital. The various mechanisms through which social structures affect economic action are identified and categorized and their consequences, positive and negative, highlighted. The propositions that summarize the different parts of the discussion attempt to move these concepts beyond sensitizing generalities to hypothesis-like statements that can guide future research. Recent work in economic sociology represents one of the most exciting developments in the field insofar as it promises to vindicate the heritage of Max Weber in the analysis of economic life and, by the same token, to rescue this vast area from the exclusive sway of the neoclassical perspective. Spearheaded by Mark Granovetter's (1985) critique of a pure "market" approach to economic action, the sociological perspective has been reinforced by the introduction and subsequent use of the concepts of "social capital" (Bourdieu 1979; Bourdieu, Newman, and Wocquant
3,260Â citations
TL;DR: In this article, the significance of status processes for generating and reproducing hierarchy among producers in a market is explored, and a conception of a market as a status order in which each producer is a member of a hierarchy is developed.
Abstract: This article explores the significance of status processes for generating and reproducing hierarchy among producers in a market. It develops a conception of a market as a status order in which each...
2,124Â citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the effects of neighborhood characteristics on the development of children and adolescents are estimated, using two data sets, each of which contains information gathered about individual children and the families and neighborhoods in which they reside.
Abstract: The effects of neighborhood characteristics on the development of children and adolescents are estimated, using two data sets, each of which contains information gathered about individual children and the families and neighborhoods in which they reside. There are reasonably powerful neighborhood effects-particularly effects of the presence of affluent neighbors-on Childhood IQ, teenage births, and school-leaving, even after the differences in the socioeconomic characteristics of families are adjusted for. The study finds that white teenagers benefit more from the presence of affluent neighbors than do black teenagers.
1,682Â citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze the centralization of political parties and elite networks that underlay the birth of the Renaissance state in Florence and argue that to understand state formation one must penetrate beneath the veneer of formal institutions, groups, and goals down to the relational substrata of peoples' actual lives.
Abstract: We analyze the centralization of political parties and elite networks that underlay the birth of the Renaissance state in Florence. Class revolt and fisical crisis were the ultimate causes of elite consolidation, but Medicean political control was produced by means of network disjunctures within the elite, which the Medici alone spanned. Cosimo de' Medici's multivocal identity as sphinx harnessed the power available in these network holes and resolved the contradiction between judge and boss inherent in all organizations. Methodologically, we argue that to understand state formation one must penetrate beneath the veneer of formal institutions, groups, and goals down to the relational substrata of peoples' actual lives. Ambiguity and heterogeneity, not planning and self- interest, are the raw materials of which powerful states and persons are constructed.
1,483Â citations
TL;DR: The authors argues that organized religion thrives in the United States in an open market system, an observation anomalous to the older paradigm's monopoly concept and argues that U.S. religious institutions are constitutively pluralistic, structurally adaptable, and empowering.
Abstract: This article reviews recent literature on U.S. religious institutions and argues that a new paradigm is emerging in that field, the crux of which is that organized religion thrives in the United States in an open market system, an observation anomalous to the older paradigm's monopoly concept. The article has six sections: first, a brief survey of the paradigm crisis; second, a development of the concept of an open market in the historiography and sociology of U.S. religion; third, fourth, and fifth, arguments that U.S. religious institutions are constitutively pluralistic, structurally adaptable, and empowering; sixth, a consideration of recent religious individualism in the light of the new paradigm. A conclusion sketches some research implications.
1,045Â citations
TL;DR: This article examined the role of social ties in mediating individual recruitment to the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project and found that individuals are embedded in many relationships that may expose the individual to conflicting pressures.
Abstract: Much empirical work in the social-movements literature has focused on the role of social ties in movement recruitment. Yet these studies have been plagued by a troubling theoretical and empirical imprecision. This imprecision stems from three sources. First, these studies are generally silent on the basic sociological dynamics that account for the reported findings. Second, movement scholars have generally failed to specify and test the precise dimensions of social ties that seem to account for their effects. Finally, most studies fail to acknowledge that individuals are embedded in many relationships that may expose the individual to conflicting pressures. This article seeks to address these shortcomings by means of an elaborated model of recruitment that is then used as a basis for examining the role of social ties in mediating individual recruitment to the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project.
982Â citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors take imoprtant stepts toward resolving inconsistencies and contradictins in the literature on the determinants of welfare state effort with the use of pooled information.
Abstract: The literature on the determinants of welfare state effort displays many inconsistencies and contradictins. This article takes imoprtant stepts toward resolving these issues with the use of pooled ...
923Â citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a view of science as a field of emergent human and material agency reciprocally engaged by means of a dialectic of resistence and accommodation is presented, and a constructive clarification of the issues is provided.
Abstract: Some difficult but important issues have arisen in recent social studies of science concerning temporally emergent phenomena and the decetering of the human subject in scientific practice. This essay seeks a constructive clarification of the issues, and links them together, by delineating and exemplifying a view of science as a field of emergent human and material agency reciprocally engaged by means of a dialectic of resistence and accommodation-the mangle.
646Â citations
TL;DR: In this article, a novel method for location analysis at the individual level is used to analyze the determinants of proximity to non-Hispanic whites separately for Asians, blacks, Hispanics, and for non- Hispanic whites themselves.
Abstract: A novel method for location analysis at the individual level is used to analyze the determinants of proximity to non-Hispanic whites separately for Asians, blacks, Hispanics, and for non-Hispanic whites themselves. The resulting regression analyses, for which the percentage of non-Hispanic whites in a community serves as the dependent variable, reveal how the familiar P* segregation measure is generated through locational patterns that map racial/ethnic-group members with specific personal and household characteristics into communities with specific mojority-group proportions. The analyses are developed from two complementary theoretical models- spatial assimilation and place stratification-and applied to the suburban communities of the nation's largest metropolitan region, surrounding New York City, as of 1980. Consistent with the place-stratification model, proximity to non-Hispanic whites is very different for members of the white and black groups and little affected by their individual characteristics...
550Â citations
TL;DR: This paper found evidence that a systematic latent structure of intergenerational exchange characterizes the giving and receiving of support and found that one half of American adults do not routinely engage in giving or receiving relationships with their parents and only about one in 10 are engaged in extensive exchange relationships.
Abstract: Intergenerational support is analyzed using data from the National Survey of Families and Households. The authors find evidence that a systematic latent structure of intergenerational exchange characterizes the giving and receiving of support. Overall, one-half of Americans do not routinely engage in giving or receiving relationships with their parents and only about one in 10 are engaged in extensive exchange relationships. Parents are assisted more often in situations of poor health, and more often receive assistance when they have young children. Assistance in time of need is not uniform and is rarely extensive. Intergenerational assistance is constrained by family structure and the needs and resources of each generation. African-Americans are consistently less likely than whites to be involved in intergenerational assistance. In each generation, men receive as much altruistic support as women; higher levels of giving and receiving of aid among American women are due to their greater involvement in exc...
524Â citations
TL;DR: In this paper, retrospective event-history data from 279 organizations suggest that federal Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) law was the force behind the spread of formal promotion mechanisms after 1964, highlighting the way in which American public policy, with its broad outcome-oriented guidelines for organizations, stimulates managers to experiment with compliance mechanisms with and eye to judicial sanction.
Abstract: Internal labor markets have been explained with efficiency and control arguments; however, retrospective event-history data from 279 organizations suggest that federal Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) law was the force behind the spread of formal promotion mechanisms after 1964. The findings highlight the way in which American public policy, with its broad outcome-oriented guidelines for organizations, stimulates managers to experiment with compliance mechanisms with and eye to judicial sanction. In response to EEO legislation and case law, personnel managers devised and diffused employment practices that treat all classes of workers as ambitious and achievement oriented in the process of formalizing and rationalizing promotion decisions.
TL;DR: The authors developed a class of diffusion models that incorporate spatial and temporal heterogeneity by turning to the individual level within an event-history framework, allowing the analyst to represent social structural relations thought to channel diffusion, and to model decay in the influence of events over time.
Abstract: Standard models of diffusion assume spatial and temporal homogeneity. This article develops a class of diffusion models that nicorporate spatial and temporal heterogeneity by turning to the individual level within an event-history framework. These models permit the analyst to represent social structural relations thought to channel diffusion, and to model decay in the influence of events over time. Heterogeneous diffusion models are applied to a reanalysis of data reported in Coleman, Katz, and Menzel's classic diffusion study. Network centrality and local structures of influence based on cohesive relations and structural equivalence are all shown to channel the diffusion of tetracycline.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors introduce the concept of organizational repertoires to explain how challenging movements do produce institutional change, and show that groups marginalized by existing political institutions have an incentive to develop alternative models of organization.
Abstract: Although social movements are often presumed to cause change, the dominant theoretical accounts lead to the opposite conclusion. To explain how challenging movements do produce institutional change, this article introduces the concept of organizational repertoires. Groups marginalized by existing political institutions have an incentive to develop alternative models of organization. These alternative models, in turn, are more likely to be adopted by other political actors to the extent that they embody familiar, but previously nonpolitical, forms of organization. This argument is illustrated with an analysis of political innovation by women's groups in the United States at the trun of the century.
TL;DR: This paper used event-structure analysis to build replicable and generalizable causal interpretations of events, using a lynching that took place in Mississippi in 1930 as a case study to demonstrate the importance of temporality to analysis and explanation.
Abstract: Recent developments in historical sociology emphasize the centrality of temporality to analysis and explanation. Narrative uses temporal order to organize information about events and to foster their understanding but is insufficiently systematic to substitute for sociological explanation. This article illustrates a new interpretative heuristic for the computer- assisted analysis of qualitative narrative sequences, "event-structure analysis,"that infuses narrative with greater rigor and explicitness. Through the analysis of a lynching that took place in Mississippi in 1930, this article shows how event-structure analysis can be used to build replicable and generalizable causal interpretations of events.
TL;DR: The authors examined the relationship between work and welfare in poor, female-headed families by tracing the process through wich single mothers work their way off welfare, and found substantial labor market activity among single mothers on welfare not previously found in studies of welfare dynamics analyzing anual data.
Abstract: This article examines the relationship between work and welfare in poor, female-headed families by tracing the process through wich single mothers work their way off welfare. Analysis is based on montly data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) for the years 1984-86. The results reveal substantial labor market activity among single mothers on welfare not previously found in studies of welfare dynamics analyzing anual data. A majority of women work while they are on welfare, and more than two-thirds of welfare exist occur through work. Human capital investments are key determinants of welfare exits through work, while a large family size impedes particularly rapid job exits from welfare.
TL;DR: In this paper, a social causation explanation for the association between SES and depression/distress was proposed, which links SES, occupational direction, control, and planning (DCP), personality factors, and depression /distress in a causal sequence.
Abstract: This article proposes a social causation explanation for the association between SES and depression/distress. The model links SES, occupational direction, control, and planning (DCP), personality factors, and depression/distress in a causal sequence. The data to test the social causation model against alternative, social selection models are derived from samples of psychiatric patients and community residents in Washington Heights, New York City. The key factor of DCP is operationalized using ratings from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. The results support the social causation model and cannot be accounted for by several tests derived from social selection models. Thus the results increase the plausibility of the social causation model and suggest the need for further research on the links between occupational conditions and mental disorder.
TL;DR: The authors found that there is broad agreement on the legitimate pay of low-status, ordinary jobs, agreement that high status, elite occupations should be paid more than the minimum, but disagreement over how much more they should get.
Abstract: Comprehensive data on public beliefs about the legitimacy of income inequality gathered from large, representative national sample surveys in nine nations conducted by the International Social Survey Programme show: (1) broad agreement on the legitimate pay of low-status, ordinary jobs, (2) agreement that high-status, elite occupations should be paid more than the minimum, but (3) disagreement over how much more they should get. This disagreement is linked to politics and social structure, with older, high SES, politically conservative respondents preferring markedly higher pay for elite occupations, but usually not preferring lower pay for ordinary jobs.
TL;DR: In this article, explanations of welfare effort in affluent postwar democracies are partially integrated within a "political resource" framework, and the authors test these models with pooled time-series data for 1960-82 and find that state revenue expansion, economic growth, and inflation buoy welfre expansion.
Abstract: Explanations of welfare effort in affluent postwar democracies are partially integrated within a "political resource" framework. Political resource models of welfare effort fare well when tested with pooled time-series data for 1960-82. Use of governmental authority by the left, use of disruption by the working class and the petty burgeois, and use of lobbying, voting, and/or entitlement rights by the elderly and the unemployed constitute means of political action. Among more diffusely available "infraresources," state revenue expansion, economic growth, and inflation appear to buoy welfre expansion, as do left corporatism and "bureaucratic paternalism." Some mediating effects of economic epoch and state structure are explored.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the rate of rule founding and rule change in a university organization in its 100-year history and found that rules are path dependent, sensitive to agenda setting, and adaptive to governmental constraints.
Abstract: This article examines the rate of rule founding and the rate of rule change in a university organization in its 100-year history. Organizational learning and institutional theories are used as research guidelines to explore the effects of path dependency, attention allocation, governmental intervention, and historical context on the evolution of organizational rules. The findings suggest that rule founding and rule change follow two distinctive processes. The former largely reflects an organizational response to external crisis and shocks, while the latter is strongly regulated by an internal learning process. Once rules are established, they are path dependent, sensitive to agenda setting, and adaptive to governmental constraints. There is also evidence that rules are institutionalized over time.
TL;DR: This article argued that a third factor was also critical in early modern state formation: a disciplinary revolution unleashed by ascetic Protestant movements, and explored the importance of disciplinary revolutions for the formation of two types of states (constitutional republics and military-bureaucratic monarchies).
Abstract: Current theories explain state structure and strength in terms of differences in socioeconomic and administrative development. Here, it is argued that a third factor was also critical in early modern state formation: a disciplinary revolution unleashed by ascetic Protestant movements. The essay critiques Foucalt's and Elias's theories of social disciplinization, explores the importance of disciplinary revolutions for the formation of two types of states (constitutional republics and military-bureaucratic monarchies), and seeks to identify and correct deficiencies in the neo-Marxist and institutionalist theories of the state.
TL;DR: The authors found that African-American households were less likely to be nuclear and more likely to head by women compared with those of native whites, and women were much more likely than white women to have surviving children who were not living with them at the time of the census.
Abstract: Using recently available data drawn from the 1910 census manuscripts, this article documents sharp racial differences in family and household structure at the turn of the century. Compared with those of native whites, African-American households were less likely to be nuclear and more likely to be headed by women. Further, African-American women were much more likely than white women to have surviving children who were not living with them at the time of the census. Because such historical differences parallel contemporary ones, the authors call for greater attention to persistent structural, cultural, and demographic factors that affect racial different in family structure.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors developed descriptions of organizing and role enactment during the emergency periods of disasters from archival materials on 257 key participants in 106 organized responses, and modeled three unique dimensions of role enactment empirically: status-role nexus, role links, and role performance.
Abstract: Descriptions of organizing and role enactment during the emergency periods of disasters are developed from archival materials on 257 key participants in 106 organized responses. Organizing is measured as a continuum of formal organizing to collective behavior. Three unique dimensions of role enactment are isolated empirically: status-role nexus, role links, and role performance. The three dimensions are modeled in terms if the structural form and type of organizing within which role enactment occurs as well as a series of other structural and individual correlates. Findings from the modeling codify the disaster research legacy as it contributes to sociological theory.
TL;DR: This article showed that workers from close-knit occupational groups participated at lower rates than those in weakly organized trades in the Paris Commune, and that Parisian workers were mobilized for insurgency through neighborhood networks, not through their membership in craft groups.
Abstract: Sociologists and historians generally agree that working-class protest in 19th-century France relied on the close-knit networks and corporate solidarity of artisanal trades. But urban uprisings invariably mobilized workers from a broad range of trades, a fact which some scholars have interpreted as evidence of growing class consciousness among French workers. This article shows that social organization within trade groups cannot account for insurgency in the Paris Commune: workers from close-knit occupational groups participated at lower rates than those in weakly organized trades. The reason was that Parisian workers were mobilized for insurgency through neighborhood networks, not through their membership in craft groups. The disappearance of trade boundaries during insurrections did not, therefore, reflect the emergence of class unity, but rather a shift from trade to neighborhood as the organizational framework for the mobilization of protest.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze internal secularization as the outcome of intraorganizational conflics between elites of two parallel stuctures within denominations: religious authority and agencies, and find that generally, religious authority has decreasing control over denominations' organizational resources.
Abstract: Internal secularization is reconceptualized as religious authority's declining scope within religious organizations. It is analyzed as the outcome of intraorganizational conflics between elites of two parallel stuctures within denominations: religious authority and agencies. Using longitudinal data collected from 83 Protestant denominations, this article finds that, generally, religious authority has decreasing control over denominations' organizational resources. But internal secularization is neither complete nor irreversible. Drawing on organizational and social movement theory, this article connects variation in internal secularization primarily to variation in the extent to which both religious authority and agencies are centralized. Recently resurgent religious authority is discussed.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a refined specification of Cohen and Machalek's general evolutionary ecological theory of expropriative crime and results of tests employing two complementary approaches: (1) the development of a game-theoretic model that mathematically tests the logical adequacy of the theory's fundamental assumptions and (2) the conduct of computer simulation experiments to analyze the model's behavior and test its consistency with novel hypotheses suggested by the theory.
Abstract: This article presents a refined specification of Cohen and Machalek's general evolutionary ecological theory of expropriative crime and results of tests employing two complementary approaches: (1) the development of a game-theoretic model that mathematically tests the logical adequacy of the theory's fundamental assumptions and (2) the conduct of computer simulation experiments to analyze the model's behavior and test its consistency with novel hypotheses suggested by the theory. Mathematical analysis indicates that the assumptions are logically consistent. Experiments generally confirm the theory's hypotheses, but indicate that several modifications are necessary. Additional theoretical insights obtained from the simulation experiments are also discussed.
TL;DR: This paper showed that negative fertility differentials are consistent with falling, rising, or constant IQ distributions, under a wide variety of conditions, a constant pattern of fertility differential will produce an unchanging, equilibrium distribution of IQ scores in the population.
Abstract: A recurrent fear during the past century is that the mean IQ level of populations will decline because persons with lower IQ scores have above-average fertility. Most microlevel data demonstrate such fertility differentials, but population IQ levels have risen rather than fallen. In this article, a simple two-sex model shows that negative fertility differentials are consistent with falling, rising, or constant IQ distributions. Under a wide variety of conditions, a constant pattern of fertility differentials will produce an unchanging, equilibrium distribution of IQ scores in the population. What matters for IQ trends is how the IQ distribution in one generation relates to the equilibrium distribution implied by that generation's fertility differentials. Intuition fails in this important area because it does not account for the macro structure within which micro results must be interpreted.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the different types of military interventions (plots, attempts, and successful seizures) and comparison of the immediate independence period with the 1970s show the major sources of coups to be ethnic antagonisms stemming from cultural plurality and political competition, and the presence of strong militaries with factionalized officer corps.
Abstract: Why has postcolonial Africa been so vulnerable to military coups? Examination of the different types of military interventions (plots, attempts, and successful seizures) and comparison of the immediate independence period with the 1970s show the major sources of coups to be ethnic antagonisms stemming from cultural plurality and political competition, and the presence of strong militaries with factionalized officer corps. There is no evidence for a political "overload" due to rising mass participation, but politically factionalized regimes were more vulnerable to coups. During the 1970s, export dependence created political turmoil, which led to plotting, but foreign capital penetration, by strengthening states, deterred coups. Military coups are largely driven by elite rivalries inside the military and the civilian government. Stable civilian rule would require and elite pact to regulate political competition within multiethnic states.
TL;DR: The reception of James Coleman's monumental recent work Foundations of Social Theory has to date been narrowly technical in scope as discussed by the authors, and this article seeks to redress this by offering a broader, philosophical reading of Coleman's work, one that brings out the full breadth of his intentions.
Abstract: The reception of James Coleman's monumental recent work Foundations of Social Theory has to date been narrowly technical in scope. This article seeks to redress this by offering a broader, philosophical reading of Coleman's work, one that brings out the full breadth of his intentions. It considers his account of the failigs of comtemporary political and moral philosophy and his own theory of rights, the self, and corporate structures in society. It goes on to discuss the limits of a comprehensive rational choice theory and the viability of Coleman's aspiration to found a positive social theory that can be at the heart of reflections on institutional reform and policy-making.
TL;DR: In the last generation, social scientists have made great advances in understanding the forces behind the welfare state or public social spending and provision as mentioned in this paper, and have explored many empirical settings to derive and appraise arguments about public social provision.
Abstract: In the last generation, social scientists have made great advances in understanding the forces behind the welfare state-or public social spending and provision. Scholars have asked why those aided by the state get what they do in the ways that they do for a number of circumstances affecting income and life chances. Typically, the object of study has been the state's efforts through spending or services to ameliorate routine and foreseeable predicaments that threaten income, such as those caused by old age, unemployment, ill health, disability, and industrial accidents. Often scholars have widened the focus to include programs aiding persons with family obligations and citizens having served in the military. Sometimes housing, nutritional, and educational needs have been included, expanding the definition of the welfare state to encompass almost all domestic public spending. Researchers have explored many empirical settings to derive and appraise arguments about public social provision. Influential early work (e.g., Marshall 1963; Titmuss 1958; Peacock and Wiseman 1961) focused on post-World War II Britain's adoption of comprehensive public social provision and the term the "welfare state." These studies argued that the inevitable expansion of citizen rights or, alternatively, social solidarities forged in war promoted public social provision. Soon, however, social scientists began quantitative, cross-sectional studies of all the countries of the post-World War II world (e.g., Cutright 1965; Wilensky 1975) and typically found that socioeconomic "modernization," notably industrialization and the aging of the population, underlay social spending progress. In addition, U.S. states were used as laboratories to test propositions about social policy-mainly whether economic modernization or