Showing papers in "American Sociological Review in 2008"

The Social Connectedness of Older Adults: A National Profile*

Abstract: For decades, scholars have wrestled with the notion that old age is characterized by social isolation. However, there has been no systematic, nationally representative evaluation of this possibility in terms of social network connectedness. In this paper, the authors develop a profile of older adults' social integration with respect to nine dimensions of connectedness to interpersonal networks and voluntary associations. The authors use new data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), a population-based study of non-institutionalized older Americans aged 57-85 conducted in 2005-2006. Findings suggest that among older adults, age is negatively related to network size, closeness to network members, and number of non-primary-group ties. On the other hand, age is positively related to frequency of socializing with neighbors, religious participation, and volunteering. In addition, it has a U-shaped relationship with volume of contact with network members. These findings are inconsistent with the notion that old age has a universal negative influence on social connectedness. Instead, life course factors have divergent consequences for different forms of social connectedness. Some later life transitions, like retirement and bereavement, may prompt greater connectedness. The authors close by urging increased dialogue between social gerontological and social network research.

Social Inequalities in Happiness in the United States, 1972 to 2004: An Age-Period-Cohort Analysis

Abstract: This study conducts a systematic age, period, and cohort analysis that provides new evidence of the dynamics of, and heterogeneity in, subjective well-being across the life course and over time in the United States. I use recently developed methodologies of hierarchical age-period-cohort models, and the longest available population data series on happiness from the General Social Survey, 1972 to 2004. I find distinct life-course patterns, time trends, and birth cohort changes in happiness. The age effects are strong and indicate increases in happiness over the life course. Period effects show first decreasing and then increasing trends in happiness. Baby-boomer cohorts report lower levels of happiness, suggesting the influence of early life conditions and formative experiences. I also find substantial life-course and period variations in social disparities in happiness. The results show convergences in sex, race, and educational gaps in happiness with age, which can largely be attributed to differential exposure to various social conditions important to happiness, such as marital status and health. Sex and race inequalities in happiness declined in the long term over the past 30 years. During the most recent decade, however, the net sex difference disappeared while the racial gap in happiness remained substantial.

Getting Counted: Markets, Media, and Reality:

Abstract: Firms that do not fit into established business categories tend to be overlooked, but new markets often form around these “misfits.” Because being seen as part of a growing population makes new populations seem real, counting them is important to mainstreaming new markets. Yet, if firms outside the mainstream are overlooked, how can they be counted? Extending the embeddedness perspective to social cognition about markets, this research exposes the media's central role in market formation. Using a new method for extracting data about market networks from media coverage, this study demonstrates that early entrants benefit from inviting coverage that makes a few-but not too many-links to other entrants, thus helping audiences perceive an emerging category. As the market matures, however, references to rivals become unhelpful. These findings illustrate the value of a linguistic turn to empirical studies of meaning construction and the reification of social structure.

The Configuration of Symbolic Boundaries against Immigrants in Europe

Abstract: Recent studies report significant cross-national variation in the conceptual distinctions or “symbolic boundaries” used by majority groups to construct notions of “us” and “them” Because this literature compares only a handful of countries, the macro-level forces by which certain symbolic boundaries become more salient than others remain poorly understood This article provides the first panorama of these processes by comparing the relative salience or “configuration” of multiple symbolic boundaries in 21 European countries I use fuzzy-set analyses of data from the 2003 European Social Survey to create a typology of symbolic boundary configurations The results indicate that the symbolic boundaries deployed by the general public do not correspond to the official “philosophies of integration” emphasized in the literature Moreover, the data suggest previous comparisons have focused too heavily on Western Europe, overlooking important variation in other regions of Europe where immigration began more recen

Beyond the Census Tract: Patterns and Determinants of Racial Segregation at Multiple Geographic Scales.

Abstract: The census tract—based residential segregation literature rests on problematic assumptions about geographic scale and proximity. We pursue a new tract-free approach that combines explicitly spatial...

Embeddedness and Identity : How Immigrants Turn Grievances into Action

Abstract: The social and political integration of Muslim immigrants into Western societies is among the most pressing problems of today. Research documents how immigrant communities are increasingly under pressure to assimilate to their “host” societies in the face of significant discrimination. In this article, we bring together two literatures—that on immigrants and that on social movement participation—to explore whether Muslim immigrants respond to their societal situation by engaging in collective political action. Although neither literature has given much attention to immigrant collective action, they do provide predictive leverage relative to the influence of grievances, efficacy, identity, emotions, and embeddedness in civil society networks. Our analyses are comprised of three separate but identical studies: a study of Turkish (N = 126) and Moroccan immigrants (N = 80) in the Netherlands and a study of Turkish immigrants (N = 100) in New York. Results suggest that social psychological mechanisms known to ...

Classification as Culture: Types and Trajectories of Music Genres

Abstract: Questions of symbolic classification have been central to sociology since its earliest days, given the relevance of distinctions for both affiliation and conflict. Music and its genres are no exception, organizing people and songs within a system of symbolic classification. Numerous studies chronicle the history of specific genres of music, but none document recurrent processes of development and change across musics. In this article, we analyze 60 musics in the United States, delineating between 12 social, organizational, and symbolic attributes. We find four distinct genre types—Avant-garde, Scene-based, Industry-based, and Traditionalist. We also find that these genre types combine to form three distinct trajectories. Two-thirds originate in an Avant-garde genre, and the rest originate as a scene or, to our surprise, in an Industry-based genre. We conclude by discussing a number of questions raised by our findings, including the implications for understanding symbolic classification in fields other tha...

Immigrant Children's Educational Achievement in Western Countries: Origin, Destination, and Community Effects on Mathematical Performance

Abstract: This article explores the extent to which macro-level characteristics of destination countries, origin countries, and immigrant communities help explain differences in immigrant children's educatio...

Social Movements and Organizational Form: Cooperative Alternatives to Corporations in the American Insurance, Dairy, and Grain Industries

Abstract: How do social movements promote diversity and alternative organizational forms? We address this question by analyzing how cooperative enterprise was affected by the Grange—a leading anticorporate movement in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. State-level analyses across three industries yield three findings. First, the Grange had positive effects on cooperatives and mutuals during the nineteenth-century populist struggles over corporate capitalism. Second, these effects were stronger where corporations counter-mobilized to block challengers' political efforts. Grangers pursued economic organization as an alternative to politics and in response to blocked political access. Third, the Grange continued to foster cooperatives even as populist revolts waned. It did so, however, by buffering cooperatives from problems of group heterogeneity and population change, rendering them less dependent on supportive communities and specific economic conditions. These findings advance research at the movements/organizations interface by documenting movement effects and by isolating different causal pathways through which mobilization, counter- mobilization, and political opportunity shape economic organization. The results also provide economic sociology with new evidence on how social structure moderates economic forces, and help revise institutional analyses of American capitalism by showing how cooperatives emerged as significant, rather than aberrant, elements of the U.S. economy.

Changing Relationships between Education and Fertility: A Study of Women and Men Born 1940 to 1964

Abstract: Education and fertility (including childrearing) are foundational processes in societal metabolism, and the relationship between them can have profound, long-term effects on a variety of institutions, including the labor market, the family (especially care for the elderly), and educational institutions themselves. In postindustrial countries, conventional wisdom holds that there is a strong inverse relationship between education and completed fertility, but this has not been carefully examined in recent decades, and the topic has been almost completely neglected for men. In this article, we address these core questions and relations, drawing on the Norwegian population registers for cohorts born 1940 to 1964. Among women, the relationship between completed fertility and educational level attained at age 39 has become substantially less negative. In all cohorts, better-educated women have later first births and remain childless more often than do the less educated. The negative effect of education on highe...

Social exchange and micro social order

Abstract: This study uses an affect theory of social exchange (Lawler 2001) to investigate how and when network structures generate “micro social orders.” Micro social order entails recurrent interactions, e...

Inequality among American Families with Children, 1975 to 2005

Abstract: From 1975 to 2005, the variance in incomes of American families with children increased by two-thirds. In attempting to explain this trend, labor market studies emphasize the rising pay of college graduates, while demographers typically highlight the implications of family structural changes across time. In this article, we join these lines of research by conceiving of income inequality as the joint product of the distribution of earnings in the labor market and the pooling of incomes in families. We develop this framework with a decomposition of family income inequality using annual data from the March Current Population Survey. Our analysis shows that disparities in education and single parenthood contributed to income inequality, but rising educational attainment and women's employment offset these effects. Most of the increase in family income inequality was due to increasing within-group inequality, which was widely shared across family types and levels of schooling.

The Colonial State as a Social Field: Ethnographic Capital and Native Policy in the German Overseas Empire before 1914

Abstract: What led modern colonizers to treat their subject populations in radically differing ways, ranging from genocide to efforts to "salvage" precolonial cultures? In Southwest Africa, Germany massacred the Ovaherero and Witbooi; in Samoa, Germany pursued a program of cultural retraditionalization; and in the Chinese leasehold colony of Qingdao/Kiaochow, the Germans moved from policies of racialized segregation to a respectful civilizational exchange. Bourdieu is not generally seen as a theorist of empire, despite the partial genesis of his lifelong research program in the late colonial crucible of French Algeria (Bourdieu 1958; Yacine 2004). Nonetheless, Bourdieu's theoretical work—most notably his conceptions of field and capital—helps solve the main riddle of the colonial state. Different European social groups competed inside the colonial state field for a specific form of symbolic capital: ethnographic capital. This involved exhibiting an alleged talent for judging the culture and character of the colonized, a gift for understanding "the natives." Competitive dynamics among the colonial rulers decisively shaped the ongoing production of native policies. Policy formation was also influenced by geopolitical and economic interests, responses by the colonized, and the metropolitan government's final authority in appointing and dismissing colonial officials. The effects of these additional mechanisms were typically mediated by the internal dynamics of the semi-autonomous colonial state.

Make Money Surfing the Web? The Impact of Internet Use on the Earnings of U.S. Workers

Abstract: Much research on the “digital divide” presumes that adults who do not use the Internet are economically disadvantaged, yet little research has tested this premise. After discussing several mechanisms that might produce differences in earnings growth between workers who do and do not use the Internet, we use data from the Current Population Survey to examine the impact of Internet use on changes in earnings over 13-month intervals at the end of the “Internet boom.” Our analyses reveal robustly significant positive associations between Web use and earnings growth, indicating that some skills and behaviors associated with Internet use were rewarded by the labor market. Consistent with human-capital theory, current use at work had the strongest effect on earnings. In contrast to economic theory (which has led economists to focus exclusively on effects of contemporaneous workplace technology use), workers who used the Internet only at home also did better, suggesting that users may have benefited from superior...

Managing “Spoiled” National Identity: War, Tourism, and Memory in Croatia

Abstract: Approaching the public representation of a “difficult past” as a macro-level impression management dilemma, this article addresses how states manage reputation-damaging elements of their histories on global stages. Through an empirical case study, I examine how the Croatian government has represented the country to international audiences via tourism after the wars of Yugoslav secession. Challenging assumptions that contentious historical moments will be commemorated, I find that the state has managed Croatia's “difficult” recent past through covering and cultural reframing rather than public acknowledgment. The country has omitted the war from representations of national history and repositioned Croatia as identical in history and culture to its Western European neighbors. I draw from Goffman's work on stigma to explain the Croatian case and to develop a broader theoretical framework for understanding the conditions under which public recognition of reputation-damaging events is likely not to occur. I co...

Gendered Power Relations among Women: A Study of Household Decision Making in Black, Lesbian Stepfamilies:

Abstract: Same-sex partners 'familial expectations, including the division of household labor, are not well-understood in the existing research?research that largely references the experiences of white, middle- and upper-income lesbians who develop relationships with egalitarian goals. This article uses qualitative and survey research methods to evaluate the common view that two elements of feminist egalitarian ideology?economic independence and the equal distribution of housework and childrearing?are the defining features of lesbian-headed households. Analyses of 32 black women in lesbian stepfamilies suggest that partners share the providing role but biological mothers undertake significantly more household chores. More chore responsibility is used as a trade-off for greater authority over other aspects of household organization, including family finances and childrearing. The biological mothers control in a family is largely a function of her legal tie to a child and greater perceived responsibility for the child's well-being. Notably, this pattern persists even when she earns less than her mate. Without the gender structure of male privilege or the material advantage of high income, these families associate control over household labor with greater relationship power. These findings, while derived from analyses of a unique population, hold implications for broader conceptions of gender and power within families, the bases of interactional power, and the internal manifestations of power across various family and couple types.

Opting Out? Cohort Differences in Professional Women's Employment Rates from 1960 to 2005

Abstract: Over the past 50 years, women's roles have changed dramatically—a reality captured by substantial increases in employment and reductions in fertility. Yet, the social organization of work and family life has not changed much, leading to pervasive work-family conflict. Observing these strains, some scholars wonder whether U.S. women's high employment levels are sustainable. Women's employment in professional and managerial occupations—the core of the analyses offered in this article—merits particular interest because of the material and symbolic implications for gender equality. In a cohort analysis of working-age women born between 1906 and 1975, I show that employment levels among college-educated women in professional and managerial occupations have increased across cohorts. Full-time, year-round employment rates continue to rise across cohorts, even among women in historically male professions and mothers of young children. Although labor force participation rates have stopped rising, they have stalled...

The Integration of Genetic Propensities into Social-Control Models of Delinquency and Violence among Male Youths

Abstract: This study, drawing on approximately 1,100 males from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, demonstrates the importance of genetics, and genetic‐environmental interactions, for understanding adolescent delinquency and violence. Our analyses show that three genetic polymorphisms—specifically, the 30-bp promoter-region variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) in MAOA, the 40-bp VNTR in DAT1, and the Taq1 polymorphism in DRD2—are significant predictors of serious and violent delinquency when added to a social-control model of delinquency. Importantly, findings also show that the genetic effects of DRD2 and MAOA are conditional and interact with family processes, school processes, and friendship networks. These results, which are among the first that link molecular genetic variants to delinquency, significantly expand our understanding of delinquent and violent behavior, and they highlight the need to simultaneously consider their social and genetic origins.

Stability and Change in Family Structure and Maternal Health Trajectories.

Abstract: Recent increases in births to unmarried parents, and the instability surrounding these relationships, have raised concerns about the possible health effects associated with changes in family structure Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study (N = 2,448), this article examines trajectories of maternal mental and physical health We specifically focus on mothers' transitions into and out of residential relationships with a child's biological father during the first five years after birth We find that continuously married mothers are in better mental and physical health than unmarried mothers one year after birth, but the disparity does not increase over time This finding provides little support for the resource model Consistent with the crisis model, exiting a marital or cohabiting union increases mental health problems and decreases self-rated health These effects appear to be relatively short-lived, though, and they are stronger for mental health than for self-rated health The results also suggest that union dissolution may be selective of less healthy mothers, whereas union formation does not appear to be selective of healthier mothers

Spatial Dynamics of White Flight : The Effects of Local and Extralocal Racial Conditions on Neighborhood Out-Migration

Abstract: Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and three U.S. censuses, we examine how the composition of extralocal areas—areas surrounding a householder's neighborhood of residence—shapes the likelihood that Whites will move out of their neighborhoods. Net of local neighborhood conditions and other predictors of residential mobility, high concentrations of minorities in surrounding neighborhoods reduce the likelihood that Whites will move, presumably by reducing the attractiveness of nearby residential alternatives. Notably, this effect also suppresses the influence of the racial composition of the immediate neighborhood on White out-migration. Recent growth in the size of an extralocal minority population increases the likelihood of White outmigration and accounts for much of the influence previously attributed to racial changes in the local neighborhood. High levels of minority concentration in surrounding neighborhoods also exacerbate the positive effect of local minority concentration on White o...

The Social Production of Toxic Uncertainty

Abstract: Based on both archival research and two and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork in an Argentine shantytown with high levels of air, water, and ground contamination, this article examines the social production of environmental uncertainty First, we dissect residents' perceptions of contamination, finding widespread doubts and mistakes about the polluted habitat Second, we provide a sociologically informed account of uncertainty and the erroneous perceptions that underlie it Along with inherent ambiguity surrounding toxic contamination, the generalized confusion about sources and effects of pollution is the result of two factors: (1) the “relational anchoring” of risk perceptions and (2) the “labor of confusion” generated by powerful outside actors We derive two implications from this ethnographic case study: (1) Cognitive psychology and organizational sociology can travel beyond the boundaries of self-bounded communities and laboratory settings to understand and explain the collective production and

Job Mobility and Wage Trajectories for Men and Women in the United States

Abstract: Young American workers typically change employers many times in the course of establishing their careers. This article examines the consequences of this mobility for wage inequalities between and among men and women. Using multilevel modeling and data from the 1979 to 2002 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), I disentangle the various ways in which mobility shapes the trajectories of wage growth. Findings caution against accepting the adequacy of prevalent economic models of mobility—models that tend to isolate individual workers'moves from broader patterns of work history and that treat mobility as a decontextualized individual choice. Although workers who frequently switch employers generally end up earning less than their more-stable counterparts, the type, timing, and relative level of changes strongly affect the ultimate wage differential. Differences in the degree of men's and women's labor-force attachment and family circumstances are also influential. Workers who are l...

Cultural globalization and arts journalism: the international orientation of arts and culture coverage in Dutch, French, German, and U.S. newspapers, 1955 to 2005

Abstract: This article charts key developments and cross-national variations in the coverage of foreign culture (i.e., classical and popular music, dance, film, literature, theater, television, and visual arts) in Dutch, French, German, and U.S. elite newspapers between 1955 and 2005. Such coverage signals the awareness of foreign culture among national elites and the degree and direction of "globalization from within." Using content analysis, we examine the degree, direction, and diversity of the international orientation of arts journalism for each country and cultural genre. Results denote how international arts and culture coverage has increased in Europe but not in the United States. Moreover, the centrality of a country in the cultural "world-system" offers a better explanation for cross-national differences in international orientation than do other country-level characteristics, such as size and cultural policy framework. Recorded and performance-based genres differ markedly in their levels of internationalization, but the effect of other genre-level characteristics, such as language dependency and capital intensiveness, is not clear. In each country, international coverage remains concentrated on a few countries, of which the United States has become the most prominent. Although the global diversity of coverage has increased, non-Western countries are still underrepresented.

The Rise of Intra-Occupational Wage Inequality in the United States, 1983 to 2002

Abstract: Wage inequality has increased dramatically in the United States since the 1980s. This article investigates the relationship between this trend and occupational structure measured at the three-digit level. Using the Current Population Survey from 1983 to 2002, we find that the direct association between occupations and wage inequality declined over this period as within-occupational inequality grew faster than betweenoccupational inequality. We estimate multilevel growth models using detailed occupational categories as the unit of analysis to assess how the characteristics of occupations affect changes in mean wages and levels of wage inequality across this time period. The results indicate that changes in mean wages across occupations vary depending on the characteristics of individuals in those occupations and that intraoccupational inequality is difficult to predict using conventional labor force data. These findings seem largely inconsistent with the common sociological view of occupation as the most fundamental feature of the labor market. Correspondingly, a more comprehensive approach—one that incorporates the effects of organizational variables and market processes on rising wage inequality in the New Economy—is warranted.

Hispanic Segregation in Metropolitan America: Exploring the Multiple Forms of Spatial Assimilation

Abstract: This article investigates patterns of spatial assimilation of Hispanics in U.S. metropolitan areas. Using restricted-use data from the 2000 Census, we calculate Hispanics' levels of residential segregation by race and nativity and then estimate multivariate models to examine the association of group characteristics with these patterns. To obtain a more nuanced view of spatial assimilation, we use alternative reference groups in the segregation calculations-Anglos, African Americans, and Hispanics not of the same race. We find that Hispanics experience multiple and concurrent forms of spatial assimilation across generations: U.S.-born White, Black, and other-race Hispanics tend to be less segregated from Anglos, African Americans, and U.S.-born Hispanics not of the same race than are the foreign-born of the respective groups. We find some exceptions, suggesting that race continues to influence segregation despite the general strength of assimilation-related factors: Black Hispanics display high levels of s...

Democratization, Women's Movements, and Gender-Equitable States: A Framework for Comparison

Abstract: There is a rich collection of case studies examining the relationship between democratization, women's movements, and gendered state outcomes, but the variation across cases is still poorly underst...

The Collective Dynamics of Racial Dehumanization and Genocidal Victimization in Darfur

Abstract: Sociologists empirically and theoretically neglect genocide. In this article, our critical collective framing perspective begins by focusing on state origins of race-based ideology in the mobilizat...

Religion and the Construction of Civic Identity

Abstract: Studies of religion's public roles typically concern the ways in which religious frameworks justify opinions and actions. This article draws from participant-observation research to show how people also use religion to define the boundaries of group identities and relationships. Importantly, people do this in situation-specific ways that we cannot predict from people's religious reasons for public actions. Evidence comes from two religiously-based organizations sponsored by the same local religious coalition, studied during 1998 to 2000 in a midsized U.S. city. One group is an alliance of lay people representing different churches, who organized volunteering and community development projects with a low-income minority neighborhood. The other is an alliance of clergy, representing different churches, that organized public events against racism. In each case, group members used religious terms to argue sharply over civic identity despite sharing the same religious reasons for their goals. Resolving the dis...

Social Control and Youth Suicidality: Situating Durkheim's Ideas in a Multilevel Framework:

Abstract: Although the suicide rate among U.S. youth between the ages of 10 to 24 dramatically increased during the past 50 years, little research has examined this outcome within larger social contexts of the adolescent environment. Relying on Durkheim's theory of social integration, we examine the effect of individual- and structural-level social integration on adolescents' suicidality. Using a sample of 6,369 respondents within 314 neighborhoods, we examine the assumptions that high levels of religious, familial, neighborhood, and school integration are associated with fewer suicide attempts among youths. We find support for the traditional Durkheimian assumptions; specifically, the proportion of religiously conservative residents in a neighborhood reduces youths' risk of attempting suicide, as do individual-level controls of school and parental attachment. Moreover, we find evidence for a cross-level interaction between depression and neighborhood level of religiosity. Depression increases youths' risk of attem...

Divided We Stand, United We Fall: Religious Pluralism, Giving, and Volunteering.

Abstract: This article examines to what extent religious context influences giving to, and volunteering for, religious causes—both directly and through increased attendance at religious services—and whether ...