Showing papers in "American Sociological Review in 2006"
TL;DR: In 2004, the General Social Survey (GSS) collected the first nationally representative data on the confidants with whom Americans discuss important matters as mentioned in this paper, and the authors replicated those questions to assess social change in core network structures.
Abstract: Have the core discussion networks of Americans changed in the past two decades? In 1985, the General Social Survey (GSS) collected the first nationally representative data on the confidants with whom Americans discuss important matters. In the 2004 GSS the authors replicated those questions to assess social change in core network structures. Discussion networks are smaller in 2004 than in 1985. The number of people saying there is no one with whom they discuss important matters nearly tripled. The mean network size decreases by about a third (one confidant), from 2.94 in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004. The modal respondent now reports having no confidant; the modal respondent in 1985 had three confidants. Both kin and non-kin confidants were lost in the past two decades, but the greater decrease of non-kin ties leads to more confidant networks centered on spouses and parents, with fewer contacts through voluntary associations and neighborhoods. Most people have densely interconnected confidants similar to them. Som...
1,555 citations
TL;DR: Employers have experimented with three broad approaches to promoting diversity: organizational responsibility for diversity, moderate managerial bi-partitioning, and diversity education as discussed by the authors. But none of these approaches have been widely accepted.
Abstract: Employers have experimented with three broad approaches to promoting diversity. Some programs are designed to establish organizational responsibility for diversity, others to moderate managerial bi...
1,234 citations
TL;DR: In a few short decades, the gender gap in college completion has reversed from favoring men to favoring women as mentioned in this paper, which is the first to assess broadly the causes of the growing female empowerment.
Abstract: In a few short decades, the gender gap in college completion has reversed from favoring men to favoring women. This study, which is the first to assess broadly the causes of the growing female adva...
840 citations
TL;DR: This article examined change over time in sentiments toward outgroup populations in European societies and found that anti-foreigner sentiment was steep in the early period (between 1988 and 1994), then leveled off after that.
Abstract: The study examines change over time in sentiments toward out-group populations in European societies. For this purpose data were compiled from four waves of the Eurobarometer surveys for 12 countries that provided detailed and comparable information on attitudes toward foreigners between 1988 and 2000. A series of multilevel hierarchical linear models were estimated to examine change in the effects of individual- and country-level sources of threat on anti-foreigner sentiment. The analysis shows a substantial rise in antiforeigner sentiment between 1988 and 2000 in all 12 countries. The rise in anti-foreigner sentiment was steep in the early period (between 1988 and 1994), then leveled off after that. Although anti-foreigner sentiment tends to be more pronounced in places with a large proportion of foreign populations and where economic conditions are less prosperous, the effects of both factors on anti-foreigner sentiment have not changed over time. The analysis also shows that anti-foreigner sentiment i...
716 citations
TL;DR: By situating men within the country and time period in which they live, social scientists are better able to understand men's housework and child care behaviors as mentioned in this paper, and propose that national c...
Abstract: By situating men within the country and time period in which they live, social scientists are better able to understand men's housework and child care behaviors. The author proposes that national c...
669 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined the limits of Americans' acceptance of atheists and found that atheists are less likely to be accepted, publicly and privately, than any others from a long list of ethnic, religious, and other minority groups.
Abstract: Despite the declining salience of divisions among religious groups, the boundary between believers and nonbelievers in America remains strong. This article examines the limits of Americans' acceptance of atheists. Using new national survey data, it shows atheists are less likely to be accepted, publicly and privately, than any others from a long list of ethnic, religious, and other minority groups. This distrust of atheists is driven by religious predictors, social location, and broader value orientations. It is rooted in moral and symbolic, rather than ethnic or material, grounds. We demonstrate that increasing acceptance of religious diversity does not extend to the nonreligious, and present a theoretical framework for understanding the role of religious belief in providing a moral basis for cultural membership and solidarity in an otherwise highly diverse society.
591 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that general involvement in extracurricular activities is important, but that involvement in youth voluntary associations concerning community service, representation, speaking in public forums, and generating a communal identity most encourage future political participation.
Abstract: Do the voluntary activities of youth increase political engagement in adulthood? Political participation is typically characterized by inertia: reproduced within families, highly correlated with social class, and largely stable after the onset of adulthood. This research illustrates an element of political socialization that occurs just before the transition into full citizenship, that mimics adult civic life, and that can be available regardless of family advantage. The authors use two longitudinal national datasets to identify the kinds of voluntary associations that encourage members to be more politically active later in life. They find that general involvement in extracurricular activities is important, but that in particular, involvement in youth voluntary associations concerning community service, representation, speaking in public forums, and generating a communal identity most encourage future political participation. The authors find these effects net of self-selection and causal factors traditionally characterized in political socialization research. The influence of youth voluntary associations on future political activity is nontrivial and has implications for both democratic education and election outcomes.
483 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the relationship between different forms of cultural taste and the density of social contacts across alternative types of network relations classified by average tie strength and found that high-brow culture taste will be less likely to be converted into social capital beyond immediate strong-tie circles due to its more restricted, “assetspecific” nature.
Abstract: This article examines the relationship between different forms of cultural taste and the density of social contacts across alternative types of network relations classified by average tie strength. The author builds on Bourdieu's ([1986] 2001) classic statement on the “forms of capital” (economic, social, and cultural) and the conversion dynamics among them, and on DiMaggio's (1987) connection between cultural tastes and sociability. He hypothesizes that (1) in addition to cultural tastes being determined by network relations, cultural tastes are used to form and sustain those networks. Furthermore he expects that (2) highbrow culture taste will be less likely to be converted into social capital beyond immediate strong-tie circles due to its more restricted, “assetspecific” nature. Because of its generalized appeal, taste for popular culture will be more likely to be associated with weak-tie network density. The results broadly support these hypotheses: a model that specifies an effect of culture on netwo...
465 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the impact of the national religious context on volunteering and found that frequent churchgoers are more active in volunteer work and a devout national context has an additional positive effect.
Abstract: To what extent does the national religious context affect volunteering? Does a religious environment affect the relation between religiosity and volunteering? To answer these questions, this study specifies individual level, contextual level, and cross-level interaction hypotheses. The authors test the hypotheses by simultaneously studying the impact of religiosity of individuals, the national religious context, and their interplay on volunteering while controlling for possible confounding factors both at individual and contextual levels. Based on multilevel analyses on data from 53 countries, frequent churchgoers are more active in volunteer work and a devout national context has an additional positive effect. However, the difference between secular and religious people is substantially smaller in devout countries than in secular countries. Church attendance is hardly relevant for volunteering in devout countries. Furthermore, religious volunteering has a strong spillover effect, implying that religious citizens also volunteer more for secular organizations. This spillover effect is stronger for Catholics than for Protestants, non-Christians and nonreligious individuals.
427 citations
TL;DR: This article used panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) for a comparative analysis of workers' post-unemployment earnings trajectories in the United States and 12 Western European countries.
Abstract: This article uses panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) for a comparative analysis of workers' post-unemployment earnings trajectories in the United States and 12 Western European countries. Across the study sample of industrialized countries, results of difference-in-difference propensity score matching show post-unemployment earnings losses to be largely permanent and particularly significant for high-wage and older workers as well as for women. The analyses also show that negative effects of unemployment on workers' subsequent earnings are mitigated through either generous unemployment benefit systems or strict labor market regulation. These effects stem partly from favorable behavioral responses that prevent downward occupational and industrial mobility and partly from changes in the overall structure of labor markets favoring the transferability of worker skills between jobs. These positive effects materialize despite t...
383 citations
TL;DR: One tradition in sociology suggests American exceptionalism, while another argues for convergence across countries in the world as mentioned in this paper. But are American attitudes toward economic inequality different from those in other countries?
Abstract: Are American attitudes toward economic inequality different from those in other countries? One tradition in sociology suggests American “exceptionalism,” while another argues for convergence across...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors use a subjective utility approach and specify experiential learning models of the formation of risk perceptions and rational choice models of theft and violence, using panel data on high risk youth from the Denver Youth Survey.
Abstract: This article examines criminal behavior from a rational choice perspective, the set of behavioral principles underlying our legal institution. The authors use a subjective utility approach and specify experiential learning models of the formation of risk perceptions and rational choice models of theft and violence. They estimate the models using panel data on high risk youth from the Denver Youth Survey. Using random effects Tobit models of perceived risk and negative binomial models of counts of criminal acts, the authors find support for a rational choice model. Perceived risk follows a Bayesian updating model in which current risk perceptions are a function of prior risk perceptions plus new information based on experience with crime and arrest and observations of peers. Theft and violence are a function of the perceived risk of arrest, subjective psychic rewards (including excitement and social status), and perceived opportunities.
TL;DR: The authors examines why the Stonewall riots became central to gay collective memory while other events did not, through a comparative-historical analysis of the riots and four events that occurred after them.
Abstract: This article examines why the Stonewall riots became central to gay collective memory while other events did not. It does so through a comparative-historical analysis of Stonewall and four events s...
TL;DR: It is common for scholars interested in race and poverty to invoke a lack of access to job networks as one of the reasons that African Americans and Hispanics face difficulties in the labor market as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: It is common for scholars interested in race and poverty to invoke a lack of access to job networks as one of the reasons that African Americans and Hispanics face difficulties in the labor market....
TL;DR: This paper found that cross-national differences in the level of policy preferences help to account for a portion of the differences among social, Christian, and liberal welfare state regimes in developed democracies.
Abstract: Do mass policy preferences influence the policy output of welfare states in developed democracies? This is an important issue for welfare state theory and research, and this article presents an analysis that builds from analytical innovations developed in the emerging literature on linkages between mass opinion and public policy. The authors analyze a new dataset combining a measure of social policy preferences with data on welfare state spending, alongside controls for established causal factors behind social policy-making. The analysis provides evidence that policy preferences exert a significant influence over welfare state output. Guided also by statistical tests for endogeneity, the authors find that cross-national differences in the level of policy preferences help to account for a portion of the differences among social, Christian, and liberal welfare state regimes. The results have implications for developing fruitful connections between welfare state scholarship, comparative opinion research, and recent opinion/policy studies.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors developed a symbolic interactionist perspective to examine the experiences of adolescent boys and girls in the context of the romantic dyad, focusing on the nature of communication, emotion, and influence within adolescent dating relationships.
Abstract: Many studies of the adolescent period have focused on peer interactions and relationships, but less is known about the character of adolescents' early dating experiences. Researchers have recently explored girls' views of romance and sexuality, but studies of boys' perspectives are noticeably lacking. Theorizing in this area leads to the expectation that as adolescents cross over into heterosexual territory, boys will do so, on average, with greater confidence, while being relatively less engaged emotionally (i.e., the notion that boys want sex, girls want romance), and ultimately emerging as the more powerful actors within the relationship. This article develops a symbolic interactionist perspective to examine the experiences of adolescent boys and girls in the context of the romantic dyad. It focuses on the nature of communication, emotion, and influence within adolescent dating relationships. Findings based on structured interviews with over 1,300 adolescents provide a strong contrast to existing portr...
TL;DR: For example, this article analyzed the impact of race, ethnicity, or sex on employment discrimination and segregation in the United States under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which made employment discrimination illegal.
Abstract: Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act made employment discrimination and segregation on the basis of race, ethnicity, or sex illegal in the United States. Previous research based on analyses of ag...
TL;DR: The wave of sit-ins that swept through the American South in the spring of 1960 transformed the struggle for racial equality as discussed by the authors, and this episode is widely cited in the literature on social movements.
Abstract: The wave of sit-ins that swept through the American South in the spring of 1960 transformed the struggle for racial equality This episode is widely cited in the literature on social movements, but
TL;DR: In this article, a sociological perspective on the rhetorical conditions for good public deliberation is developed, which is a topic of longstanding interest to scholars of the public sphere, and the authors appraise this argument by way of a systematic comparison of personal storytelling and reason-giving, and conclude that storytelling helped deliberators to identify their own preferences, demonstrate their appreciation of competing pref...
Abstract: This article develops a sociological perspective on the rhetorical conditions for good public deliberation, a topic of longstanding interest to scholars of the public sphere. The authors argue that the capacity of reason-giving, storytelling, and other rhetorical genres to foster deliberation depends on social conventions of the genre's use and popular beliefs about its credibility relative to other genres. Such beliefs are structured but contingently so: concerns about the generalizability of personal stories or the abstraction of logical arguments come into play on some occasions and not others. The authors appraise this argument by way of a systematic comparison of personal storytelling and reason-giving in public deliberation, the first such empirical study. Drawing upon an analysis of 1,415 claims made by 263 people in 12 discussion groups, the authors show that ordinary conventions of storytelling helped deliberators to identify their own preferences, demonstrate their appreciation of competing pref...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors ask how women's political representation, once considered unacceptable by politicians and their publics, is now actively encouraged by powerful international actors, and they ask how th...
Abstract: Women's political representation, once considered unacceptable by politicians and their publics, is now actively encouraged by powerful international actors. In this article, the authors ask how th...
TL;DR: For instance, the authors argued that regional economic integration should raise income inequality, as workers are exposed to international competition and labor unions are weakened, and that political integration should drive welfare state retrenchment in market-oriented regional polities as states adopt liberal policies in a context of fiscal austerity.
Abstract: Globalization has attained a prominent place on the sociological agenda, and stratification scholars have implicated globalization in the increased income inequality observed in many advanced capitalist countries. But sociologists have given much less attention to a different yet increasingly prevalent form of internationalization: regional integration. Regional integration, or the construction of international economy and polity within negotiated regions, should matter for income inequality. Regional economic integration should raise income inequality, as workers are exposed to international competition and labor unions are weakened. Regional political integration should also raise income inequality, but through a different mechanism: political integration should drive welfare state retrenchment in market-oriented regional polities as states adopt liberal policies in a context of fiscal austerity. Evidence from random-effects and fixedeffects models of income inequality in Western Europe supports these a...
TL;DR: The authors examined the impact of neighborhood structural disadvantage on heat wave mortality and consider three possible intervening mechanisms: social network interaction, collective efficacy, and commercial conditions, and found that neighborhood affluence was negatively associated with heat-wave mortality.
Abstract: The authors draw on Klinenberg's (2002) ethnography and recent neighborhood theory to explain community-level variation in mortality during the July 1995 Chicago heat wave. They examine the impact of neighborhood structural disadvantage on heat wave mortality and consider three possible intervening mechanisms: social network interaction, collective efficacy, and commercial conditions. Combining Census and mortality data with the 1995 Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods Community Survey and Systematic Social Observation, the authors estimate hierarchical Poisson models of death rates both during the 1995 heat wave and comparable, temporally proximate July weeks (1990-94, 1996). They find that neighborhood affluence was negatively associated with heat wave mortality. Consistent with Klinenberg's ethnographic study of the Chicago heat wave, commercial decline was positively associated with heat wave mortality and explains the affluence effect. Where commercial decline was low, neighborhoods...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors presented the first pooled time series analysis of the impact that politics and policy have on inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean, and found that strong record of democracy and a left-leaning legislative partisan balance are associated with lower levels of inequality, as are social security and welfare spending under democratic regimes.
Abstract: This article presents the first pooled time series analysis of the impact that politics and policy have on inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean. The authors build on models consisting of sociological and economic variables, adding the strength of the democratic tradition, long-term legislative partisan political power distribution, and social spending to explain variation in inequality. They analyze an unbalanced pooled time series data set for income distribution in 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries from 1970 to 2000. They show that the political variables add explanatory power. A strong record of democracy and a left-leaning legislative partisan balance are associated with lower levels of inequality, as are social security and welfare spending under democratic regimes. Thus, they replicate some and modify other well-established findings from studies of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries in the very different context of Latin America and the Caribbean....
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors introduce a new data set that records the outbreak of war in fixed geographic territories from 1816 to 2001, independent of the political entity in control of a territory.
Abstract: The existing quantitative literature on war takes the independent nation-state as the self-evident unit of analysis and largely excludes other political types from consideration. In contrast, the authors argue that the change in the institutional form of states is itself a major cause for war. The rise of empires and the global spread of the nation-state are the most important institutional transformations in the modern age. To test this hypothesis, the authors introduce a new data set that records the outbreak of war in fixed geographic territories from 1816 to 2001, independent of the political entity in control of a territory. Analysis of this data set demonstrates that wars are much more likely during and because of these two transformations. For the transformation to the modern nation-state, the authors confirm this hypothesis further with logit regressions that control for variables that have been robustly significant in previous research. The results provide support for the main mechanisms that exp...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors proposed a new method for assessing economic disadvantage during childhood that simultaneously captures children's overall levels of exposure to economic disadvantage as well as the timing and sequencing of their exposure.
Abstract: Recent research suggests that child well-being and subsequent status attainment are influenced not only by the duration of exposure to economic disadvantage during childhood, but also by the timing and sequencing of exposure. Unfortunately, traditional measures of children's economic deprivation typically fail to differentiate between exposures to disadvantage at different stages in childhood and largely ignore how economic circumstances change over time. In this article, the authors propose a new method for assessing economic disadvantage during childhood that simultaneously captures children's overall levels of exposure to economic disadvantage as well as the timing and sequencing of their exposure. This new method uses finite mixture modeling to classify children into a limited number of classes with similar histories of exposure to economic disadvantage. With this new methodology, it is possible both to assess how family characteristics affect patterns of exposure to disadvantage and to directly test ...
TL;DR: The concept of street efficacy, defined as the perceived ability to avoid violent confrontations and to be safe in one's neighborhood, is proposed as a mechanism connecting aspects of adolescents'''imposed' environments to the choices they make in creating their own'selected' environments that minimize the potential for violent confrontation as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The concept of street efficacy, defined as the perceived ability to avoid violent confrontations and to be safe in one's neighborhood, is proposed as a mechanism connecting aspects of adolescents'“imposed” environments to the choices they make in creating their own “selected” environments that minimize the potential for violent confrontations. Empirical models using data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods suggest that street efficacy is substantially influenced by various aspects of the social context surrounding adolescents. Adolescents who live in neighborhoods with concentrated disadvantage and low collective efficacy, respectively, are found to have less confidence in their ability to avoid violence after controlling for an extensive set of individual- and family-level factors. Exposure to violence also reduces street efficacy, although it does not explain the association between collective efficacy and individual street efficacy. Adolescents' confidence in their ability to...
TL;DR: The role that Islam plays in the economic circumstances and development of Muslim nations has been the subject of intense debate among Muslims and non-Muslims alike as mentioned in this paper, and scholars, such as Edward Said, have denounced such thinking as Orientalist essentialism that ignores the internal dynamics and plurality of Islam.
Abstract: The role that Islam plays in the economic circumstances and development of Muslim nations has been the subject of intense debate among Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Western critics of Islam or “Islamic civilization,” such as Bernard Lewis (1990) and Samuel Huntington (1993), have decried its economic irrationality, incompatibility with democracy, and failure to separate religion and state, while scholars, such as Edward Said (2001: 11), have denounced such thinking as Orientalist essentialism that ignores “the internal dynamics and plurality” of Muslim nations. The debate is not just academic. Today, there are over 1.3 billion Muslims in the world and more than 50 predominantly Muslim nations. Some of the governments of these nations are meeting their citizens’ economic needs, while many others are unable or unwilling to address these needs.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the extent to which the effects of interfirm networks on the behavior of firms are historically contingent, focusing on the level of debt financing among approximately 140 large U.S. corporations over a 22-year period.
Abstract: Economic and organizational sociologists have increasingly demonstrated that the actions of individuals and firms are affected by the social networks within which they are embedded. In recent years scholars have begun to recognize that the effects of these social networks may vary across populations or types of relations. This article examines the extent to which the effects of interfirm networks on the behavior of firms are historically contingent. Focusing on the level of debt financing among approximately 140 large U.S. corporations over a 22-year period, the authors show that the extent to which the firms' use of debt was influenced by those with which they were tied through director interlocks declined over time. The authors argue that this decline in the network effect reflected a shift in the institutional environment within which the firms operated, and that it was driven by three processes: the professionalization of the finance function within the firm, the internalization of financial decision-...
TL;DR: When applied to a large sample of Indonesian women and their families, models of intergenerational effects show that the effects of women's educational attainment on the educational attainments of the next generation are positive, but these models are partially offset at the population level by a reduction in the overall number of children.
Abstract: The effect of the socioeconomic characteristics in one generation on the socioeconomic achievement of the next generation is the central concern of social stratification research. Researchers typically address this issue by analyzing the associations between the characteristics of parents and offspring. This approach, however, focuses on observed parent-offspring pairs and ignores that changes in the socioeconomic characteristics of one generation may alter the numbers and types of intergenerational family relationships created in the next one. Models of intergenerational effects that include marriage and fertility as well as the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status yield a richer account of intergenerational effects at both the family and population levels. When applied to a large sample of Indonesian women and their families, these models show that the effects of women's educational attainment on the educational attainments of the next generation are positive. However, the beneficial effects of increases in women's schooling on the educational attainment of their children are partially offset at the population level by a reduction in the overall number of children that a more educated population of women bears and enhanced by the more favorable marriage partners of better educated women.
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TL;DR: For example, the authors found that whites married to whites suffer a large and enduring widowhood effect, while blacks married to blacks do not suffer a detectable widowhood, possibly because they manage to extend the survival advantage of marriage into widowhood.
Abstract: The health effects of marital status are frequently cited in the current debate on marriage promotion, but little is known about how marital health effects vary across groups. This article assembles the largest properly longitudinal and nationally representative dataset of elderly married couples in the United States (N = 410,272 couples) and provides strong evidence that the "widowhood effect"—how the death of a spouse increases the mortality of the survivor—varies substantially by race. The authors find that whites married to whites suffer a large and enduring widowhood effect. By contrast, blacks married to blacks do not suffer a detectable widowhood effect, possibly because they manage to extend the survival advantage of marriage into widowhood. For racially intermarried men, wife's race appears to dominate the size and presence of the widowhood effect entirely, regardless of husband's own race. These results likely arise from differences in the marital cultures and marital contexts of black and white couples. More generally, these results demonstrate that the health effects of social ties depend on the individual attributes of the actors they connect.