Showing papers in "American Journal of Sociology in 2016"
TL;DR: This article argued that the United States should no longer be considered a counterexample to the rest of the world, for two straightforward empirical reasons: it has recently become clear that American religiosity has been declining for decades and this decline has been produced by the generational patterns underlying religious decline elsewhere in the West.
Abstract: Virtually every discussion of secularization asserts that high levels of religiosity in the United States make it a decisive counterexample to the claim that modern societies are prone to secularization. Focusing on trends rather than levels, the authors maintain that, for two straightforward empirical reasons, the United States should no longer be considered a counterexample. First, it has recently become clear that American religiosity has been declining for decades. Second, this decline has been produced by the generational patterns underlying religious decline elsewhere in the West: each successive cohort is less religious than the preceding one. America is not an exception. These findings change the theoretical import of the United States for debates about secularization.
238 citations
TL;DR: Using an instrumental variable approach, the authors show how border militarization affected the behavior of unauthorized migrants and border outcomes to transform undocumented Mexican migration from a circular flow of male workers going to three states into an 11 million person population of settled families living in 50 states.
Abstract: In this article the authors undertake a systematic analysis of why border enforcement backfired as a strategy of immigration control in the United States. They argue theoretically that border enforcement emerged as a policy response to a moral panic about the perceived threat of Latino immigration to the United States propounded by self-interested bureaucrats, politicians, and pundits who sought to mobilize political and material resources for their own benefit. The end result was a self-perpetuating cycle of rising enforcement and increased apprehensions that resulted in the militarization of the border in a way that was disconnected from the actual size of the undocumented flow. Using an instrumental variable approach, the authors show how border militarization affected the behavior of unauthorized migrants and border outcomes to transform undocumented Mexican migration from a circular flow of male workers going to three states into an 11 million person population of settled families living in 50 states.
217 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a randomized experiment is used to estimate the impact of a private need-based grant program on college persistence and degree completion among students from low-income families attending 13 public universities across Wisconsin.
Abstract: Income inequality in educational attainment is a long-standing concern, and disparities in college completion have grown over time. Need-based financial aid is commonly used to promote equality in college outcomes, but its effectiveness has not been established, and some are calling it into question. A randomized experiment is used to estimate the impact of a private need-based grant program on college persistence and degree completion among students from low-income families attending 13 public universities across Wisconsin. Results indicate that offering students additional grant aid increases the odds of bachelor’s degree attainment over four years, helping to diminish income inequality in higher education.
180 citations
TL;DR: The authors found that more generous family policies, particularly paid time off and child-care subsidies, are associated with smaller disparities in happiness between parents and nonparents, and the policies that augment parental happiness do not reduce the happiness of nonparents.
Abstract: The recent proliferation of studies examining cross-national variation in the association between parenthood and happiness reveal accumulating evidence of lower levels of happiness among parents than nonparents in most advanced industrialized societies. Conceptualizing parenting as a stressor buffered by institutional support, we hypothesize that parental status differences in happiness are smaller in countries providing more resources and support to families. Our analyses of the European Social Surveys (ESS) and International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) reveal considerable variation in the parenthood gap in happiness across countries, with the U.S. showing the largest disadvantage of parenthood. We also find that more generous family policies, particularly paid time off and childcare subsidies, are associated with smaller disparities in happiness between parents and non-parents. Moreover, the policies that augment parental happiness do not reduce the happiness of nonparents. Our results shed light on macro-level causes of emotional processes, with important implications for public policy.
179 citations
TL;DR: A formal model of the pathways through which cultural capital acts to enhance children’s educational and socioeconomic success is developed and provides a behavioral framework for interpreting parental investments in cultural capital.
Abstract: The authors draw on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural reproduction to develop a formal model of the pathways through which cultural capital acts to enhance children’s educational and socioeconomic success. The authors’ approach brings conceptual and empirical clarity to an important area of study. Their model describes how parents transmit cultural capital to their children and how children convert cultural capital into educational success. It also provides a behavioral framework for interpreting parental investments in cultural capital. The authors review results from existing empirical research on the role of cultural capital in education to demonstrate the usefulness of their model for interpretative purposes, and they use National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979—Children and Young Adults survey data to test some of its implications.
127 citations
TL;DR: This article used the O*NET archive of occupation traits to operationalize the concepts of essentialism and vertical inequality more exhaustively than in past research and found that much vertical segregation remains even after the physical, analytic, and interactional forms of essentialisms are controlled.
Abstract: Why is there so much occupational sex segregation in the 21st century? The authors cast light on this question by using the O*NET archive of occupation traits to operationalize the concepts of essentialism and vertical inequality more exhaustively than in past research. When the new model is applied to recent U.S. Census data, the results show that much vertical segregation remains even after the physical, analytic, and interactional forms of essentialism are controlled; that essentialism nonetheless accounts for much more of total segregation than does vertical inequality; that the physical and interactional forms of segregation are especially strong; that the physical form of essentialism is one of the few examples of female-advantaging segregation; and that essentialism takes on a fractal structure that generates much finely detailed segregation at detailed occupational levels. The authors conclude by discussing how essentialist processes partly account for the intransigence of occupational sex segrega...
123 citations
TL;DR: For instance, the authors found that two fatal shootings of police officers by black suspects increased the use of police force against blacks substantially in the days after the shootings, and there was no evidence for an effect of two other police murders by a white and Hispanic suspect.
Abstract: Racial profiling and the disproportionate use of police force are controversial political issues. I argue that racial bias in the use of force increases after relevant events such as the shooting of a police officer by a black suspect. To examine this argument, I design a quasi experiment using data from 3.9 million time and geocoded pedestrian stops in New York City. The findings show that two fatal shootings of police officers by black suspects increased the use of police force against blacks substantially in the days after the shootings. The use of force against whites and Hispanics, however, remained unchanged, and there is no evidence for an effect of two other police murders by a white and Hispanic suspect. Aside from the importance for the debate on racial profiling and police use of force, this research reveals a general set of processes where events create intergroup conflict, foreground stereotypes, and trigger discriminatory responses.
118 citations
TL;DR: The authors examine 529 adolescent friendship networks in English, German, Dutch, and Swedish schools and find that the ethnic composition of school classes relates differently to immigrant and native homophily.
Abstract: Ethnically diverse settings provide opportunities for interethnic friendship but can also increase the preference for same-ethnic friendship. Therefore, same-ethnic friendship preferences, or ethnic homophily, can work at cross-purposes with policy recommendations to diversify ethnic representation in social settings. In order to effectively overcome ethnic segregation, we need to identify those factors within diverse settings that exacerbate the tendency toward ethnic homophily. Using unique data and multiple network analyses, the authors examine 529 adolescent friendship networks in English, German, Dutch, and Swedish schools and find that the ethnic composition of school classes relates differently to immigrant and native homophily. Immigrant homophily disproportionately increases as immigrants see more same-ethnic peers, and friendship density among natives has no effect on this. By contrast, native homophily remains relatively low until natives see dense groups of immigrants. The authors' results suggest that theories of interethnic competition and contact opportunities apply differently to ethnic majority and minority groups.
101 citations
TL;DR: In the early 1900s, U.S. corporations have shared members of their boards of directors, creating a dense interlock network in which nearly every major corporation was connected through short paths and elevating a handful of well-connected directors to an influential inner circle.
Abstract: U.S. corporations have shared members of their boards of directors since the early 1900s, creating a dense interlock network in which nearly every major corporation was connected through short paths and elevating a handful of well-connected directors to an influential “inner circle.” This network remained highly connected throughout the 20th century, serving as a mechanism for the rapid diffusion of information and practices and promoting elite cohesion. Some of the most well-established findings in the sociology of networks sprang from this milieu. In the 2000s, however, board recruiting practices changed: the authors find that well-connected directors became less preferred. As a result, the inner circle disappeared and companies became less connected to each other. Revisiting three classic studies, on the diffusion of corporate policies, on corporate executives’ political unity, and on elite socialization, shows that established understandings of the effects of board interlocks on U.S. corporations, dir...
95 citations
TL;DR: By focusing on the broader sociospatial structure, the contested boundaries hypothesis overcomes the “aspatial” treatment of neighborhoods as isolated areas in research on ethnic diversity.
Abstract: Concerns about neighborhood erosion and conflict in ethnically diverse settings occupy scholars, policy makers, and pundits alike; but the empirical evidence is inconclusive. This article proposes the contested boundaries hypothesis as a refined contextual explanation focused on poorly defined boundaries between ethnic and racial groups. The authors argue that neighborhood conflict is more likely to occur at fuzzy boundaries defined as interstitial or transitional areas sandwiched between two homogeneous communities. Edge detection algorithms from computer vision and image processing allow them to identify these boundaries. Data from 4.7 million time- and geo-coded 311 service requests from New York City support their argument: complaints about neighbors making noise, drinking in public, or blocking the driveway are more frequent at fuzzy boundaries rather than crisp, polarized borders. By focusing on the broader sociospatial structure, the contested boundaries hypothesis overcomes the “aspatial” treatmen...
94 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the enduring alterations in behaviors, practices, and self-image that immigrants' evolving knowledge of and participation in the legalization process facilitate, finding that barriers the state creates, which push immigrants to the legal margins, together with anti-immigrant hostility, create conditions under which immigrants are likely to undertake transformative, lasting changes in their lives.
Abstract: This article examines the enduring alterations in behaviors, practices, and self-image that immigrants’ evolving knowledge of and participation in the legalization process facilitate Relying on close to 200 interviews with immigrants from several national origin groups in Los Angeles and Phoenix, the authors identify transformations that individuals enact in their intimate and in their civic lives as they come in contact with US immigration law en route to and as a result of regularization Findings illustrate the power of the state to control individuals’ activities and mind-sets in ways that are not explicitly formal or bureaucratic The barriers the state creates, which push immigrants to the legal margins, together with anti-immigrant hostility, create conditions under which immigrants are likely to undertake transformative, lasting changes in their lives These transformations reify notions of the deserving immigrant vis-a-vis the law, alter the legalization process for the immigrant population at
TL;DR: Investigation of the association between offender’s skin tone, Afrocentric facial features, and criminal punishment in two Minnesota counties indicates that darker skin tone and Afrofocused facial features are associated with harsher sanctions and that the latter effect is particularly salient for white defendants.
Abstract: Two related lines of research have gained traction in the social sciences during the past three decades. One examines the association between race and punishment, while a second investigates stratification and colorism, defined as discrimination based on skin tone. Yet rarely do scholars examine these issues together. The current study uses new data to investigate the association between offender’s skin tone, Afrocentric facial features, and criminal punishment. More than 850 booking photos of black and white male offenders in two Minnesota counties were coded and then matched to detailed sentencing records. Results indicate that darker skin tone and Afrocentric facial features are associated with harsher sanctions and that the latter effect is particularly salient for white defendants. The findings add to existing work on skin tone and stratification and suggest that future research should consider other aspects of appearance, such as facial features, in the study of punishment and inequality.
TL;DR: It is argued that inmates are subjected to two mutually constitutive racial projects—one institutional and the other microinteractional, which increase (rather than decrease) incidents of intraracial violence and the potential for interracial violence.
Abstract: This article provides a ground-level investigation into the lives of penal inmates, linking the literature on race making and penal management to provide an understanding of racial formation processes in a modern penal institution. Drawing on 135 days of ethnographic data collected as an inmate in a Southern California county jail system, the author argues that inmates are subjected to two mutually constitutive racial projects--one institutional and the other microinteractional. Operating in symbiosis within a narrative of risk management, these racial projects increase (rather than decrease) incidents of intraracial violence and the potential for interracial violence. These findings have implications for understanding the process of racialization and evaluating the effectiveness of penal management strategies.
TL;DR: Aral and Van Alstyne as discussed by the authors proposed the diversity-bandwidth trade-off theory to rationalize the strength of weak ties in ego networks and argued that as ego networks become more struc---
Abstract: “The Strength of Weak Ties” (Granovetter 1973) arguably contains the most influential sociological theory of networks.Granovetter’s subtle, nuanced theory has spawned countless follow-on ideas, many of which are immortalized in the 35,000 manuscripts that cite the original work. Among these are notable theories in their own right, such as Ron Burt’s structural holes theory (Burt 1992), which itself has generated a sizable body of knowledge about the social structure of competition. The central argument of this line of theory is that contacts maintained through weak ties are more likely to be bridges to socially distant network cliques, which provide access to novel information and resources. Novelty is thought to be valuable because of its local scarcity. Those with access to scarce novelty are better brokers, make better decisions, and innovate more effectively, it is argued, by leveraging novel information to solve problems that are intractable given local knowledge. Since this theory was elucidated, the empirical evidence has accumulated both for and against the strength of weak ties. In some cases, weak bridging ties are advantageous (e.g., Hargadon and Sutton 1997; Reagans and Zuckerman 2001; Burt 2004; Rodan and Gallunic 2004); in other cases, however, strong cohesive ties seem to provide more advantage (Coleman 1988; Uzzi 1996, 1997; Hansen 1999; Reagans andMcEvily 2003; Obstfeld 2005; Uzzi and Spiro 2005; Lingo and O’Mahony 2010). In 2011, Marshall Van Alstyne and I proposed the diversity-bandwidth trade-off theory to help rationalize this apparent contradiction (Aral and Van Alstyne 2011). We argued that as ego networks become more struc-
TL;DR: Results indicate that exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods, particularly during adolescence, has a strong negative effect on high school graduation and that this negative effect is more severe for children from poor families.
Abstract: Effects of disadvantaged neighborhoods on child educational outcomes likely depend on a family's economic resources and the timing of neighborhood exposures during the course of child development. This study investigates how timing of exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods during childhood versus adolescence affects high school graduation and whether these effects vary across families with different income levels. It follows 6,137 children in the PSID from childhood through adolescence and overcomes methodological problems associated with the joint endogeneity of neighborhood context and family income by adapting novel counterfactual methods--a structural nested mean model estimated via two-stage regression with residuals--for time-varying treatments and time-varying effect moderators. Results indicate that exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods, particularly during adolescence, has a strong negative effect on high school graduation and that this negative effect is more severe for children from poor families.
TL;DR: Baker et al. as mentioned in this paper examined how people live secular lives and make meaning outside of organized religion, and pointed out that changes to American society have fueled these shifts in the non-religious landscape and examined the diverse and dynamic world of secular Americans.
Abstract: A rapidly growing number of Americans are embracing life outside the bounds of organized religion. Although America has long been viewed as a fervently religious Christian nation, survey data shows that more and more Americans are identifying as \"not religious.\" There are more non-religious Americans than ever before, yet social scientists have not adequately studied or typologized secularities, and the lived reality of secular individuals in America has not been astutely analyzed. American Secularism documents how changes to American society have fueled these shifts in the non-religious landscape and examines the diverse and dynamic world of secular Americans. This volume offers a theoretical framework for understanding secularisms. It explores secular Americans' thought and practice to understand secularisms as worldviews in their own right, not just as negations of religion. Drawing on empirical data, the authors examine how people live secular lives and make meaning outside of organized religion. Joseph O. Baker and Buster G. Smith link secularities to broader issues of social power and organization, providing an empirical and cultural perspective on the secular landscape. In so doing, they demonstrate that shifts in American secularism are reflective of changes in the political meanings of \"religion\" in American culture. American Secularism addresses the contemporary lived reality of secular individuals, outlining forms of secular identity and showing their connection to patterns of family formation, sexuality, and politics, providing scholars of religion with a more comprehensive understanding of worldviews that do not include traditional religion. Data Analyses Appendix Instructor's Guide
TL;DR: The authors define counter-revolutions as collective and reactive efforts to defend the status quo and its varied range of dominant elites against a credible threat to overturn them from below, and identify the distinctive order-producing attributes of elite-protecting counter-revolutionary parties.
Abstract: Counterrevolutions have received far less scholarly attention than revolutions, despite their comparable importance in shaping the modern political world. This article defines counterrevolutions as collective and reactive efforts to defend the status quo and its varied range of dominant elites against a credible threat to overturn them from below. Unlike analysts who see the origins of political order lying in mass-mobilizing revolutionary parties, the authors illuminate the distinctive order-producing attributes of elite-protecting counterrevolutionary parties. A comparative-historical analysis of five former British colonies in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa elaborates the causal mechanisms through which counterrevolutions can produce exceedingly durable, although not invincible, political orders.
TL;DR: Using national representative surveys covering four decades, the authors find a major generational shift, with the first generation experiencing a notable social decline but the second generation having a clear advancement.
Abstract: This article asks whether standard accounts of class reproduction apply among migrants and their descendants as among the majority group, whether there is a process of assimilation across generations toward the overall (British) pattern of class reproduction, whether the trends over time in absolute and relative mobility among the majority population are mirrored among migrants and their descendants, and whether trends in class reproduction are mirrored in trends in ethnic stratification. Using national representative surveys covering four decades, the authors find a major generational shift, with the first generation experiencing a notable social decline but the second generation having a clear advancement. Relative mobility rates among migrants and their descendants are close to those of the majority group and exhibit similar trends over time. Ethnic stratification also appears to be slowly declining, although the persistence of unemployment among the second generation qualifies the optimistic story of ethnic socioeconomic assimilation.
TL;DR: In this article, a comparative study of six newspaper organizations in the three coastal cities of Guangzhou, Beijing, and Shanghai demonstrates the significance of local field environment for critical news reporting, revealing how site-specific field environments can alternately enable or constrain collective resistance in an authoritarian context.
Abstract: This article examines critical news reporting in China as an instance of collective resistance in authoritarian contexts. It draws on field theory to understand why and how news media in certain localities were able to resist political pressure and report critically on important social problems, despite limited media freedom. Through a comparative study of six newspaper organizations in the three coastal cities of Guangzhou, Beijing, and Shanghai, the article demonstrates the significance of local field environment for critical news reporting. The findings reveal how site-specific field environments can alternately enable or constrain collective resistance in an authoritarian context. In localities where the journalist communities were paired with a competitive newspaper market and less unified state agencies, the field environment allowed journalists to produce critical news reports. But when the local political and economic fields were less fragmented and competitive, respectively, the opposite was true.
TL;DR: The authors presented a theoretical framework of how intergroup violence may figure into the activation and maintenance of group categories, boundaries, and identities, as well as the mediating role played by organizations in such processes.
Abstract: This article presents a theoretical framework of how intergroup violence may figure into the activation and maintenance of group categories, boundaries, and identities, as well as the mediating role played by organizations in such processes. The framework’s analytical advantages are demonstrated in an application to southern lynchings. Findings from event- and community-level analyses suggest that “public” lynchings, carried out by larger mobs with ceremonial violence, but not “private” ones, perpetrated by smaller bands without public or ceremonial violence, fed off and into the racial group boundaries, categories, and identities promoted by the southern Democratic Party at the turn of the 20th century and on which the emerging Jim Crow system rested. Highlighting that racialized inequalities cannot be properly understood apart from collective processes of racial group boundary and identity making, the article offers clues to the mechanisms by which past racial domination influences contemporary race rel...
TL;DR: A formal decomposition analysis indicates that changes in the relative size of different social classes had a small dampening effect and that growth in between-class income differences had a large inflationary effect on trends in personal income inequality.
Abstract: This study outlines a theory of social class based on workplace ownership and authority relations, and it investigates the link between social class and growth in personal income inequality since the 1980s. Inequality trends are governed by changes in between-class income differences, changes in the relative size of different classes, and changes in within-class income dispersion. Data from the General Social Survey are used to investigate each of these changes in turn and to evaluate their impact on growth in inequality at the population level. Results indicate that between-class income differences grew by about 60% since the 1980s and that the relative size of different classes remained fairly stable. A formal decomposition analysis indicates that changes in the relative size of different social classes had a small dampening effect and that growth in between-class income differences had a large inflationary effect on trends in personal income inequality.
TL;DR: A looping process that began with geneticization and involved the social effects of genetics research itself transformed the autism population and its genetic makeup.
Abstract: This article builds on Hacking’s framework of “dynamic nominalism” to show how knowledge about biological etiology can interact with the “kinds of people” delineated by diagnostic categories in ways that “loop” or modify both over time. The authors use historical materials to show how “geneticization” played a crucial role in binding together autism as a biosocial community and how evidence from genetics research later made an important contribution to the diagnostic expansion of autism. In the second part of the article, the authors draw on quantitative and qualitative analyses of autism rates over time in several rare conditions that are delineated strictly according to genomic mutations in order to demonstrate that these changes in diagnostic practice helped to both increase autism’s prevalence and create its enormous genetic heterogeneity. Thus, a looping process that began with geneticization and involved the social effects of genetics research itself transformed the autism population and its genetic makeup.
TL;DR: In this paper, the explanatory power of both national and state-level political accounts is evaluated, and it is shown that national-level neoliberal political determinants best explain the extraordinary increase in U.S. income inequality.
Abstract: What factors best explain the U.S. growth in economic stratification since the late 1970s? This research tests the power resource hypothesis with a pooled time-series analysis of income inequality. In a departure from prior research, the explanatory power of both national- and state-level political accounts is evaluated. By analyzing tax statistics, the authors isolate the factors that produce the largest gap in U.S. income distributions. Findings indicate that increases in the political strength of neoliberal national administrations and skill-biased technical change (SBTC) are the most influential determinants—although the SBTC account became much less influential after the 1980s. Other accounts have considerable explanatory power, as the results show that inequality grew after decreases in manufacturing and expansions in minority populations. But these findings show that national-level neoliberal political determinants best explain the extraordinary increase in U.S. income inequality.
TL;DR: This article employed early compulsory schooling laws to approach a causal estimate of the relationship between education and mobility in the context of a large-scale policy change and found that compulsory laws initially reduced relative mobility for the first few cohorts affected by the laws.
Abstract: Existing evidence of educational effects on intergenerational mobility is associational. This study employs early compulsory schooling laws to approach a causal estimate of the relationship between education and mobility in the context of a large-scale policy change. Using IPUMS Linked Representative Samples (linked census data), regression discontinuity models exploit state differences in the timing of compulsory schooling laws to estimate an intent-to-treat effect on intergenerational occupational mobility among white males. Despite increasing equality of attendance, results reveal that compulsory laws initially reduced relative mobility for the first few cohorts affected by the laws. Among later cohorts, who were required to attend the maximum years of school, mobility was similar to prelaw levels. School funding and other data suggest that structural lag could explain this nonlinear relationship. It seems, therefore, that educational expansion inadvertently reduced mobility through institutional inert...
TL;DR: The authors found that more cohesive subgroups in the board interlock network have greater managerial control and showed how cohesive substructures emerge out of local actor-driven mechanisms: (1) directors affiliated with managerialist firms select into dense groups, (2) firms appoint directors from similarly governed firms, and (3) interlocks help s...
Abstract: Corporate governance describes practices that allocate power and control within public corporations, especially between shareholders, the board of directors, and managers. Shareholder value norms have replaced earlier managerialist governance models. Concurrently, cohesion among the managerial corporate elite has declined, further contributing to a declining managerialist governance consensus. This study considers how governance orientations in publicly held corporations are nested within interfirm networks. Drawing on prior theory, the author argues that cohesive substructures among the corporate elite help account for the surprising resilience of managerial control. He finds that more cohesive subgroups in the board interlock network have greater managerial control and shows how cohesive substructures emerge out of local actor-driven mechanisms: (1) directors affiliated with managerialist firms select into dense groups, (2) firms appoint directors from similarly governed firms, and (3) interlocks help s...
TL;DR: The prospective approach introduced here integrates the effects of college on marriage and fertility into the reproduction of educational outcomes and shows that college increases male graduates’ probability of having a child who completes college; for female graduates there is no effect.
Abstract: Conventional analyses of social mobility and status reproduction retrospectively compare an outcome of individuals to a characteristic of their parents. By ignoring the mechanisms of family formation and excluding childless individuals, conventional approaches introduce selection bias into estimates of how characteristics in one generation affect an outcome in the next. The prospective approach introduced here integrates the effects of college on marriage and fertility into the reproduction of educational outcomes. Marginal structural models with inverse probability of treatment weighting are used with data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study to estimate the causal effect of pathways linking graduating from college with having a child who graduates from college. Results show that college increases male graduates' probability of having a child who completes college; for female graduates there is no effect. The gender distinction is largely explained by the negative effects of college on women's likelihood to marry and have children.
TL;DR: It is argued that actors can achieve a moral “sense of one’s place” through a habitus that leverages the material dimensions of place itself, and how nonhuman objects serve as proofs of moral labor, markers of moral boundaries, and reminders of moral values, playing both a facilitating and constraining role in moral life.
Abstract: How do people maintain deeply held moral identities in a seemingly immoral social environment? Cultural sociologists and social psychologists have focused on how individuals cope with contexts that make acting on moral motivations difficult by building supportive networks and embedding themselves in communities of like-minded people. In this article, however, the author argues that actors can achieve a moral “sense of one’s place” through a habitus that leverages the material dimensions of place itself. In particular, he shows how one community of radical environmental activists make affirming moral identities centered on living “naturally” seem like “second nature,” even in a seemingly unnatural and immoral urban environment, by reconfiguring their physical world. The author shows how nonhuman objects serve as proofs of moral labor, markers of moral boundaries, and reminders of moral values, playing both a facilitating and constraining role in moral life.
TL;DR: It is found that token men and token women are equally likely to exhibit a physiological stress response to social exclusion on the basis of gender and combined social-structural and social-interactional components of token women’s workplace climates would be stressors to both men and women workers.
Abstract: Women in male-dominated occupations report negative workplace social climates, whereas most men in female-dominated occupations report positive workplace social climates. Using a laboratory experiment mimicking the negative workplace social climates experienced by these token women, the author examines whether women are more sensitive to negative workplace social climates than men are or if, instead, men and women react similarly. Using salivary cortisol, the author finds that token men and token women are equally likely to exhibit a physiological stress response to social exclusion on the basis of gender. A second experiment shows that token men and token women who are socially included do not exhibit physiological stress response. Findings imply that(1) social exclusion on the basis of gender may be associated with physiological stress response and consequent negative health outcomes and (2) combined social-structural and social-interactional components of token women's workplace climates would be stressors to both men and women workers.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used the case of Chinese law firms to develop an ecological theory of organizational growth following the Chicago school of sociology, arguing that firms coexist and interact in an ecology consisting of other firms in the same industry.
Abstract: In the global legal services market, China has some of the youngest law firms but also some of the largest. In the early 21st century, several Chinese law firms have grown into mega law firms, with thousands of lawyers in a large number of domestic and overseas offices. This study uses the case of Chinese law firms to develop an ecological theory of organizational growth following the Chicago school of sociology. The authors argue that firms coexist and interact in an ecology consisting of other firms in the same industry. These firms occupy different ecological positions and generate various processes of interaction with one another. In their organizational growth, four species of Chinese law firms (global generalists, elite boutiques, local coalitions, and space rentals) have engaged in a variety of ecological processes, including competition, symbiosis, accommodation, assimilation, purification, and proletarianization. By locating firms in a social space and investigating the spatial and processual pat...