Showing papers in "Contemporary Sociology in 2007"

Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice:

Abstract: ity between and within each country, the former allows the rich in both poor and rich countries to “intermingle” in the calculation of global inequality, which is then fully decomposable into the between and within country components. What the survey data show is that global inequality first increased between 1988 and 1993 and then decreased from 1993 to 1998, reflecting the stagnation of poor rural areas of China and India in the first period, and the slight catching up of poor rural areas in the second period. Furthermore, Milanovic shows that previous attempts at capturing this type of inequality reach conflicting conclusions regarding the trend, which in turn reflect different assumptions and data sources, most of which bias the calculated results downward. The final section discusses the future of global inequality, and what can be done to redress it. Where previous studies express confidence in a declining global inequality trend, Milanovic is less confident, suggesting that we can be certain only that inequality is high. Furthermore, since the trend depends heavily on the performance of one country— China, predictions about future trends are speculative at best. Milanovic is certain about two things. First, global inequality is immoral. Second, redistribution is possible and would be both moral and efficient to the development of humanity as a whole.

The Purchase of Intimacy

Abstract: pointed with the general lack of reflexivity and contextualization. Reading these “voices” as constructed by the researchers, I felt that the gerontologist had much to learn about methodology from the poststructural feminist. But despite these nits and picks, the book convinced me. Age matters. This is a good book. Not only does it show the gaps in feminist thinking, it offers ways of filling that gap. One of the ways is for us to leave our own fear or disgust or denial of growing old in a culture that does not value aging. Given that many of us “second-wave” feminists will soon be leaving the surety of “middle-age” and moving into old-age (if we are lucky), I can only hope (and expect, actually) that the “personal is political” mantra that has propelled many of us to write and research our own lives will carry us into our next age location. Toni M. Calasanti and Kathleen F. Slevin have given us a road-map. We should carry it with us. We should teach it.

An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets:

Abstract: economic effects of FDI flows to countries in the global South. Though the book alludes to Southern unionists and other laymen criticizing Northern FDI for crowding out domestic investment and fostering unemployment and inequality, no reference whatsoever is made to the empirical work of scholars such as Jeffrey Kentor, William Dixon, and Terry Boswell, whose articles in the American Journal of Sociology and the American Sociological Review corroborate these criticisms. Southern fears of growth-reducing FDI effects are reduced in Guillén’s study to a simple image problem, to be solved by more efficient public relations efforts on the part of the multinationals. In fact, Guillén claims, “Spanish multinationals .|.|. are moving in the right direction, namely .|.|. beefing up their public-relations image throughout the region as long-term investors and philanthropists committed to the host country’s development” (p. 173).

Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval TradeInstitutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade, by GreifAvner. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 526 pp. $34.99 paper. ISBN: 0521671345.

Abstract: A drawback of the Handbook’s emphasis on introducing disparate groups of researchers to one another is that these groups sometimes seem to be talking past each other. The editors do not attempt to develop an overarching framework that would “make sense” of the work and family field by locating different topics and perspectives within a coherent whole. The reader is left to puzzle out how research on the determinants of government policies relates to work on the intra-psychic processes generating individual stress, how cultural interpretation of employers’ use of family metaphors fits with investigation of quantitative variation in work schedules over the life course, and how rigorous positivist methodologies mesh with a clear normative commitment to increasing work-family integration for both men and women. But perhaps it is too early in the game to ask for this kind of coherence. By the time of the next edition of the Handbook, the work-family field may have matured sufficiently to allow a clearer mapping of the terrain. In the meantime, the Handbook represents a rich and valuable collection that will be important for any scholar whose research and teaching focuses on work, family, or the links between the two.

Structuration TheoryStructuration Theory, by StonesRob. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 225 pp. $28.95 paper. ISBN: 0333793781.

Abstract: “intellectual Renaissance,” his lazy scholarship and failure to develop original perspectives or analyses does not contribute to advancing our understanding of post-World War II theory, culture, and society. In Part II, “Two Traps and Three Values,” Gitlin’s agenda clearly comes to the fore in a polemic against theory, postmodernism, and cultural studies. Gitlin is put off by what the “academic left in particular has nourished .|.|. [as] ‘theory’: a body of writing (one can scarcely say its content consists of propositions) that is, in the main, distracting, vague, self-referential, and wrong-headed” (p. 68). As an example: “Michel Foucault became a rock star of theory in the United States precisely because he demoted knowledge to a reflex of power, merely the denominator of the couplet ‘power/knowledge,’ yet his preoccupation was with the knowledge side, not actual social structures. His famous illustration of the power of ‘theory’ was built on Jeremy Bentham’s design of an ideal prison, the Panopticon—a model never built” (p. 69). In fact, in a dazzling array of texts with different methodologies and problematics, Foucault explored relations between power, knowledge, institutions, discourses, and practices and cannot be reduced to linguistic idealism as Gitlin suggests. Also, Foucault’s analysis of the Panopticon illustrates a shift from one regime of punishment to another and is not a metaphor for the power of theory as Gitlin claims, and in fact shows Foucault’s strong emphasis on social institutions and analysis. In the next few chapters, Gitlin continues his polemic against the academic left, theory, and contemporary culture. His method is to take some academic trend like theory or cultural studies that he sets up in an ideal type model and then attacks. But as with his failed attempt to dismiss Foucault and theory, he often misrepresents his object of critique and exhibits a kind of pop sociology of the sort he himself criticizes (p. 41), rather than offering rigorous and illuminating analysis grounded in current scholarship. Gitlin is not much better at cultural studies, opening his polemic with the admonition that anyone practicing cultural studies should know to situate their work in the context in which it emerges, querying: “why should cultural studies refuse to see itself through the same lens?” (p. 87) In fact, most of the major figures in British, North American, and global cultural studies discuss the origins of and debates within cultural studies, and situate their work within this context. There are, by now, stacks of books and journal articles on the development of different traditions of cultural studies, divisions and debates within the field, and differing models and methods that exhibit, contra Gitlin, a high degree of methodological reflection and contextualization, as well as intense polemics within the field. It seems Gitlin has encountered some annoying and superficial examples of theory, postmodernism, and cultural studies which so outraged him that he dismisses entire fields because some within, say, cultural studies fall prey to jargon, an affirmative populism, or do trivial work. To be sure, one can find examples of shoddy scholarship in any field or tradition, but Gitlin identifies his targets of polemic tout court with lapses and mediocrity. But by generalizing from the worst tendencies, he provides caricatures and easy straw targets that he can mightily demolish. Thus Gitlin’s polemic against the academic left is highly problematical.

Immigrants at the Margins: Law, Race, and Exclusion in Southern Europe

Abstract: Italy is one of the iconic migrant-sending countries to North America and the rest of Europe; Spanish immigrants also fanned out across the Americas and Europe. For over a century, marginalized Southern Europeans took the jobs others were unable or unwilling to take. Yet, these former countries of mass emigration have, in a couple of short decades, become gateways for hundreds of thousands of mostly African and Latin American immigrants to other European Union destinations and, increasingly, the final destination. In the context of a declining native birthrate, this has largely been engineered by countries that, in spite of high unemployment, have critical shortages in some work sectors. Yet, it’s very similar of Aristide Zolberg’s famous observation that “immigrant workers are wanted, but not welcome.” The challenge for Italy and Spain, like nearly all countries with high levels of low-skilled immigrant labor, is to simultaneously keep the employers supplied with cheap labor (through highly selective law enforcement and policy loopholes) while attempting to dampen the inevitable backlash against foreign immigrant workers. But what if the very policies—inscribed in law—that attract them virtually ensure their continued marginalization and even criminalization? This is Kitty Calavita’s forceful central argument as she examines a paradox: Italy and Spain’s efforts at immigrant integration are not simply lip service, even pursued by some otherwise anti-immigration politicians, and yet these efforts are doomed to failure due to the “economics of [othering].”

Globalization and the Race for Resources

Abstract: ontological claims would otherwise surely have repudiated. The study concludes with a chapter on Simmel, for whom symbolic forms and sociological interpretation were serious issues. The author rehearses some of the familiar discussion of processes and forms of sociation (Vergesellschaftung), but unfortunately avoids pursuing the crucial distinction in Simmel’s work between forms of experiencing (Erleben in his vocabulary) and forms of interaction (the consequential concept of Wechselwirkung). Wanderer focuses essentially on the former, but it is actually the latter that has had such far-reaching and continuing reverberations in the social sciences, serving to qualify the view that Simmel had no more than a “formal” sociology. The revived interest in a modern Simmel has shown that there is indeed much more to Simmelian sociology than formalism. Of all these thinkers, it was Simmel who was both a sociologist and a philosopher, a bridge between the two camps. He did indeed correspond with Husserl, as Wanderer mentions, a record published in 2005 in the Georg Simmel Gesamtausgabe, volume 22. But whether the relationship appears promising may depend on how one reads his most interesting letter, a series of recommendations to Husserl in the spring of 1907 for sightseeing in and around Florence, which Simmel strikingly calls “the home of my soul, in so far as any of us have a home at all” (GSG, vol. 22, p. 570). If philosophy is really homesickness, then what is sociology? For the interpretative approach to social life, the answer would surely be the path to finding our way home. GLOBAL DYNAMICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels

Abstract: The book compresses Zaloom’s ethnographic work to 110 pages, providing at times, a less detailed portrait than may be warranted. As a result, the book does not offer the most compelling evidence to back up some of the characterizations. For example, Zaloom writes about how traders watch one another (pp. 98–99), but relies primarily on a quote from an interview rather than illustrative observations. While I have no doubt that her characterization is correct given her detailed ethnographic work. However, I would prefer greater incorporation of this evidence, which may allow readers to glean greater insight into the processes of trading. Sections of the book drawing on historical evidence are less compelling than the parts drawing on Zaloom’s ethnography. A chapter on the architecture of the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) does not offer the same details about social processes that one finds in the more ethnographic sections of the book. The discussion about the CBOT’s decision about building design pales in comparison to later analyses of the contentious CBOT election concerning electronic trading and the design of the electronic dealing room in London. In these latter sections, Zaloom uses a greater array of evidence to illuminate the struggles, successes, and failures in projects of economic engineering. In its theoretical framing, the book engages much of the recent literature in the sociology of financial markets. Written in an accessible style, most of this theoretical discussion is confined to footnotes, although later chapters (adapted from previous publications) present a theoretical framework at the beginning of the chapter. The main theoretical contribution of the book comes in the concluding chapter in which Zaloom provides an integration of her previous analyses, labeling the repeated attempts to rationalize the market through “practical experiments.” Although this synthesis cannot do justice to the contested aspects of workplace control that Zaloom’s ethnography presents, this chapter provides a nice overview of how designers and managers attempt to make and present space, social selves, and technology in order to create more rational financial markets. Out of the Pits should appeal to readers inside and outside academia with interests in financial markets and the particular workplaces that enable these markets to operate. Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels, by Rachel Sherman. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007. 373pp. $21.95 paper. ISBN: 9780520247826.

Biosociology of Dominance and Deference

Abstract: ment in his closing chapter, the problem remains—the chapters that look backward toward old debates about nature and nurture provide, at best, more and more precise estimates of distinctions that are less and less regarded as essential to our understanding, estimable by our methods, or even independently existent in our world. In sum, I eagerly anticipated the arrival of Unequal Chances. Yet, upon reading I find the volume distractedly focused on the narrow question that animated the preceding century and given the editors’ earlier, classic contributions, surprisingly inattentive to a possible role for politics in determining family background effects. For this reason I find the explanations of the level of intergenerational transmission woefully inadequate. At the same time, the volume contains several chapters that usefully re-estimate the contemporary level of intergenerational transmission of economic status while conveying key methodological and theoretical developments that have improved our understanding. Because these advances and the facts they reveal may be indispensable for a consensus explanation of the phenomenon to emerge, I unhesitatingly recommend the work.

Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination

Abstract: space of finite, inexpansible status. Thus, advancing a new moral vocabulary inevitably implies working to delegitimize another. Acknowledging this zero-sum dynamic is helpful for understanding why some cultural differences necessarily lead to conflict. This idea has broad implications for thinking about cultural conflict. The book ends with a short conclusion. Emerging Moral Vocabularies is a good book that could have been better. Its primary fault is a lack of engagement with sociological literatures that speak precisely to the problem that Lowe wants to address. Abbott’s work on professional ecologies (and John Evans’s extension of it to the bioethics debate) is formally very similar to Lowe’s model. Boltanksi and Thévenot’s work on “repertoires of justification” and the neo-institutionalists’ emphasis on legitimacy processes (among others) seem like vital points of reference for thinking about ideological ecologies. Engaging these thinkers would have added breadth to the book’s target audience, depth to its argument, and (presumably) generated new insights into the movements in question. Similarly, the author hints at the work of Lamont and Swidler on cultural repertoires in some tantalizing ways, but never really puts these connections to good use. For instance, one idea that Lowe considers briefly, but that I would like to have seen more fully explored, is that the “moral toolkit” is a more internalized, more emotionally salient subset of the “cultural toolkit.” After all, despite his choice of words, Lowe makes clear that moral vocabularies are more than just words we use; in some cases, they have the power to shape entire lives. In the end, however, these weaknesses might have more to do with the fragmented structure of the field than with any failing on the author’s part. For scholars who are interested in bridging the field’s structural holes, this book has much value. Cultural sociologists who want to understand better the struggles that produce shared meaning and social movement scholars who want to think about the broader cultural impact of the movements they study should take a look. POPULATION, COMMUNITIES, AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Transnational Adoption: A Cultural Economy of Race, Gender, and KinshipTransnational Adoption: A Cultural Economy of Race, Gender, and Kinship, by DorowSara K.. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2006. 331 pp. $23.00 paper. ISBN: 0814719724.

Abstract: child from the perils of the outside world— both historically paternal obligations. Further, Wayne’s stay-at-home status is supported by friends and families whereas Carl is “teased” by his friends for being under his wife’s thumb. But, Carl also challenges his friends’ implication that doing laundry makes him less of a man. Tichenor skillfully lays bare how interactional processes within the marital dyad reproduce the gender structure, but the reader is left wanting more about interactional processes among friends and families that might reproduce or destabilize gender. One limitation of the text is that these couples aren’t questioning or trying to destabilize conventional gender relations but instead, actively shoring them up. An interesting comparison group would have been “fair” couples. Literature that has examined fair families indicates that there are multiple paths to equality, and the wife having greater earnings is not a necessary precondition. Another limitation stems from Tichenor’s conceptualization of an equal marriage. She argues that the gender revolution will be kick-started when women can use money to “call the shots,” just like men. But does equality mean that wives with greater relative resources should be granted breadwinner prerogatives? Or does it mean that neither partner should have greater power? Degendered marriages are more likely to become commonplace when the myriad bases of male privilege in marriage are attacked head on, rather than when women are able to become the dominant partner. One roadblock on the road to gender nirvana has been prescriptions calling for women to act more like men. Perhaps a more promising path would be demanding that husbands ask not what their marriage has done for them lately, but instead what they can do for their marriages. Transnational Adoption: A Cultural Economy of Race, Gender, and Kinship, by Sara K. Dorow. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2006. 331 pp. $23.00 paper. ISBN: 0814719724.

Holding Your Square: Masculinities, Streetlife, and Violence

Abstract: socialization contexts have the best chance of promoting successful youth development. Like all works, the book has its weaknesses, but in this case these might be better called “frustrations.” In my view, the two research sites are a blessing and a curse. Using more than one site offers greater confidence in our ability to make generalizations and simultaneously can help pinpoint unique aspects of social context in developmental processes. Indeed, while many of the main findings presented here are consistent across sites, there are some distinct differences between Denver and Chicago. But are the different findings due to the contextual differences in the two cities? The result of varying measures of key variables in each site? Or, as most likely, the result of different sampling methodologies used in each city? (In Denver, a representative sampling of neighborhoods was utilized and in Chicago, the sample was restricted to predominantly African-American neighborhoods with relatively high and low poverty.) The answer is crucial, but is not clear here. A more coherent message would also be beneficial. In several instances it appears that there are so many contingencies operating that it is hard to make sense of anything. As but one example, the authors write, “A good family has a positive effect on youth development that is essentially the same in a good or bad neighborhood and, depending upon the success outcome, accounts for 9–56 percent of the variance in our full models” (p. 284). Criminologists may be surprised to learn that “neighborhood Disadvantage/Poverty and criminal behavior are not related in Denver and only weakly related in Chicago” (p. 291). The authors argue that their reliance on self-report data rather than official arrest rates accounts for this finding. This result though is contrary to a wide of body of research and more attention is warranted, especially given the fact that rates of self-reported delinquency were substantially higher in Denver compared with Chicago (p. 83). At the very least, one needs to assess whether this finding holds for serious crimes across various subgroups in the population. Furthermore, I would like to see more attention placed on ethnicity and immigration, concentrated affluence, and agency and choice. I was surprised to read that “Much of the unexplained variance, particularly at the individual level of analysis should properly be attributed to personal choice” (p. 275). This begs for further discussion. But perhaps most of all, I would like to have heard more of the narratives from the kids themselves who were successful in bad neighborhoods. Why did they think were successful, despite the perceived odds? One of the goals of research is to debunk myths and challenge conventional wisdom. An important takeaway message from this study is that many youth growing up in poor, disadvantaged neighborhoods are successfully completing the demanding tasks of adolescence. Poverty and disadvantage do not inevitably lead to a life of crime and pathology. As Elliott and his colleagues conclude, they have learned much and there is much still to be learned. I look forward to learning more from this impressive group of scholars and I recommend this book to anyone who is committed to understanding whether, how, and why neighborhoods matter.

Navigating Interracial Borders: Black-White Couples and Their Social Worlds

Abstract: formation to empirical research will require further ingenious data assembly and analysis. These challenges will likely keep Svallfors and other analysts busy developing innovative new analyses for some time to come. A second issue relates to the precise national-level (or meta-individual level) mechanism at work in theories of institutional feedback/contextual effects. In the cases of Sweden and the United States, an impressive set of literatures identify a variety of country-level sources of influence. These would include partisan governance legacies, welfare policymaking, electoral system rules and constitutional structure, and labor movement or business organization influences. Once thematic insights concerning country/contextual factors behind preferences are granted, a key question concerns the respective impacts of such factors. Of similar importance is the degree of temporal lag in which contextual factors are said to shape class effects or preferences. This issue has yet to be addressed by historical institutionalists, yet it matters considerably whether “feedback” from public policies or other country-level processes occurs with no lag (as in most versions of economic theory) or with considerable lag (as in some collective memory accounts). It is a virtue of The Moral Economy of Class that it enables a glimpse into new directions in scholarship on class analysis and comparative opinion research. For researchers within these traditions, Svallfors’s book will be a valuable resource to take seriously the challenges of understanding the national and multilevel processes that link class to individual-level behavior and attitudes. Comparativists will find compelling the complexity and patterning of differences in attitudes carefully documented by Svallfors. Finally, theorists of political economy will be pleased by this attempt to begin incorporating more closely into survey research the richness of institutional concepts and country-level processes. Navigating Interracial Borders: Black-White Couples and Their Social Worlds, by Erica Chito Childs. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005. 248 pp. $23.95 paper. ISBN: 0813535867.

Emergent Economies, Divergent Paths: Economic Organization and International Trade in South Korea and Taiwan

Abstract: struction and organization of healthcare work, and Allen and Pilnick’s introduction makes a strong claim for the fruitfulness of reading across sociological studies that make use of diverse research methods. The work itself is organized around three central themes: (1) the integration of macro, meso, and micro analyses to understand healthcare work as both socially organized and socially experienced; (2) understanding the role of technological developments and the effects of the standardization of healthcare practices; and (3) the potential implications of shifting responsibilities within the practice of healthcare. The work successfully manages each of these themes but places particular emphasis on the capacity of the first theme for illuminating the multiple, often overlapping and interconnected dimensions of this type of work. The chapter by Susan Murray and Mary Ann Elston is an insightful piece that takes the current practices of Chilean obstetricians as a case study through which to view the effects of the government restructuring and the increased privatization of healthcare. Murray and Elston draw a correlation between these developments and an increase in the caesarean-section rate in Chile, claiming that the shrinkage of the funding of the public healthcare sector forced doctors to develop private practices within which they face increased pressure to provide personalized care to clients. This pressure resulted in increasingly technologized birthing practices that place emphasis on the efficient use of the doctor’s time and predictability of the birth. In a separate chapter, Claire Stacey argues that the growth of the home health industry in the United States has resulted in an uneasy reliance on homecare workers. Stacey uses interviews with home-care aides, which are the subject of her ethnographic study, to suggest that both the state and the medical profession have an ambivalent relationship to the practices of home-care workers. As both the state and the medical profession resist the full incorporation of these workers, the experience of home care, much of which consists of the emotional labor of companionship, is not only unacknowledged and unregulated but often places the home-care worker in a state of responsibility where the boundaries of the work remain unclear and potentially dangerous for both the worker and the client. In articles such as these, The Social Organisation of Healthcare does much to argue that the nature of healthcare is highly dependent on the confluence of macro, meso, and micro forces, which influence its organization and the experience of work within the field. At the same time, the book argues that healthcare is acted out through the social interactions of individuals and, as such, the study of the field of healthcare bears importance to anyone who may at some point in their life require care—in short, all of us. Still, while the book should find an audience beyond the realm of sociology, this book provides an important contribution to the sociology of work and organizations as well as medical sociology and the sociology of care. It will also be useful to political sociologists who are interested in the relationship between the state, citizenship, and social rights. On a final note, this collection also presents a useful text for the study of sociological methods, as the works contained in this volume illustrate a range of methodological approaches to the study of healthcare work.

People of the Dream: Multiracial Congregations in the United States

Abstract: People of the Dream is arguably the most complete examination to date of an important but thin slice of religious life in the United States—multiracial congregations and the people who attend and lead them. Sociologist Michael Emerson is the principal investigator and author, and Rodney Woo, as co-author, provides extensive reflections on his experience as pastor of Houston’s multiracial Wilcrest Baptist Church, the book’s primary case study. By employing a variety of research methods, including a national telephone survey, written surveys, and ethnographies of 30 congregations throughout the U.S., Emerson’s research is both convincing and engaging. The book’s chief strengths are its scope, its originality, and its ability to captivate. Ambitious in scope, the book tackles a number of important, previously unanswered questions about multiracial congregations, defined as congregations “in which no one racial group comprises 80% or more of the people” (p. 35). Among these are: How prevalent are multiracial congregations in the U.S.? How are they formed and sustained? What characterizes the people who attend and lead them? Under what conditions do these congregations improve race relations and reduce inequalities? By systematically answering these questions, the book offers valuable insights to social scientists and helpful suggestions to religious leaders. People of the Dream is also original. Among its technical innovations is Emerson’s use of general heterogeneity index and the index of dissimilarity, measures commonly used to study racial segregation in cities and neighborhoods, to explore segregation in congregations. Emerson discovers that more than 90% of U.S. congregations are racially homogeneous, and that their levels of segregation, appropriately labeled “hyper-segregation,” surpass those of both neighborhoods and public schools. Among other useful innovations is Emerson’s concept of “Mixed American Culture (or MAC) congregations.” MAC congregations, unlike other types of multicultural congregations, have significant percentages of both blacks and whites, the two cultures indigenous to the U.S. Because these two cultures have been historically defined in opposition to each other, Emerson argues that MAC congregations are more prone to conflict and to “intractable differences in interpretation” than are non-MAC congregations (e.g., congregations comprised of one indigenous American culture and recent immigrants) (pp. 133–139). On par with the book’s substance is its form. Emerson moves easily between matterof-fact presentations of statistical findings and inspiring tales of multiracial churches that have successfully bridged the racial divide. By skillfully weaving the stories of these churches throughout his presentation, Emerson creates both intrigue and suspense. Early in the book, for instance, Emerson describes the stakes involved, and the emotions raised, by a decision faced by Wilcrest’s congregation in 1990: whether to move the church, whose mostly white, middle-class membership was dwindling, out of its increasingly racially diverse surroundings to a more affluent white neighborhood. Emerson’s prose takes readers right to the scene, where they anxiously await the result of the congregational vote. Instead of immediately satisfying the desire, however, he leaves them with a cliff-hanger, forcing them to read further to learn the outcome. Despite all of its strengths, People of the Dream does have some weaknesses. One is its almost exclusive focus on Christian congregations. The historical overview in chapter 1 is exclusively Christian and primarily Protestant, a bias evident in his neglect to mention any of the Catholic movements of interracial fellowship (e.g., the National Catholic Council for Interracial Justice) in his description of such movements among Christians. In addition, the surveys used to collect

Militants and Citizens: The Politics of Participatory Democracy in Porto Alegre:

Abstract: foundation for the critical examination of David Dinkins’s tenure as mayor that follows. Thompson astutely describes how, as social and political contexts shifted nationally, so too did the ways African-American mayors campaigned and governed. When the first cohort of “civil rights” black mayors, as Thompson labels them, took office during the late sixties through the mid seventies, the symbolic importance of their racial background was a part of their campaign appeal to African-American constituencies. Once in office, they tackled such community issues as the reining in of predominantly white police departments, which many of their AfricanAmerican constituencies found oppressive. By the time the second cohort of black mayors, the “technocratic mayors,” took office in the early eighties, there had been a marked shift away from this approach. Instead, they focused on illustrating their capabilities as managers who could oversee urban governmental structures. According to Thompson, this shift occurred for two reasons. First, the continuing structural problems of many American cities (capital flight, entrenched urban poverty, and increased crime rates) undermined black mayors’ abilities to build confidence with city residents that they could lead effectively. Second, the racially polarized contexts in which many of the first wave of black mayors came into office, plus the steady decrease in the city’s economic vitality emboldened detractors to charge that black mayors were more focused on mobilizing their black constituency for re-election than on improving the city for all. Determined not to be vulnerable to such charges, “technocratic mayors” constructed appeals that de-emphasized race. However, Thompson clearly illustrates here and in the second half of the book that race continues to be the proverbial thorn in the lion’s paw for black mayors. Some readers may have concerns about Thompson’s objectivity in his examination of his former boss’s performance in the book’s second half. However, Thompson successfully manages to be both evenhanded in his praise of Dinkins’s achievements and incisive in his critique of Dinkins’s shortcomings. As a shining hallmark of black politics in New York, Dinkins’s election proved to be ephemeral when four years later he was ousted by Rudolph Giuliani, the same opponent he narrowly defeated in the first election. Detailing the missteps, miscalculations, and misfortunes that ultimately undermined Dinkins’s chance of winning re-election, Thompson illustrates how Dinkins’s downplaying race was central to his defeat. In one stunning example, the racial conflict in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn between Jews and African Americans put Dinkins in a no-win situation. Blacks felt Dinkins was trying too hard to maintain his crossover appeal to white New Yorkers, Jews felt Dinkins betrayed them by siding too much with the black residents, white liberals lost faith in Dinkins’s ability to keep the racial peace, and to the police, Giuliani, and the conservative law and order white voting blocs, Crown Heights was another example of Dinkins’s softness on black crime and inability to stop the city’s seemingly downward spiral. Thompson aptly points out how Dinkins and his administration’s unwillingness to talk openly about the racial climate in the city resulted in widespread alienation from his base supporters, giving Giuliani an opening to mobilize his followers using race in his campaign appeals. Overall, I found Thompson’s argument persuasive and engaging. Double Trouble makes a fine contribution to the scholarly literature on black and urban politics and is a must read for all those who have a concern for the practicing of true democracy in our nation’s urban politics.

Ethnic Origins: The Adaptation of Cambodian and Hmong Refugees in Four American Cities:

Abstract: too briefly mentioned in this work. Finally, I would make a broader case that this book should be read more widely in sociology to remind us all that the taken-for-granted separation of categories of nature and culture (or society) were produced during particular periods of empire and colonial expansion. Cruikshank’s beautifully crafted volume is a call to consider more carefully what it means to be modern and what our role as modern social analysts might be.

In the Game: Gay Athletes and the Cult of Masculinity

Abstract: communities of existing wealth via foreclosure. Racial profiling in the property insurance market’s assessment of risk—which serves to maintain racial barriers to favorable mortgage rates and homeownership— emerges as yet another frontier of current scholarship that urgently demands greater attention. In both of these areas, the book makes a compelling case for further study but stops short of a detailed and systematic analysis of the prevalence, mechanisms, and effects of these trends. Students of urban inequality would do well to follow Squires and Kubrin’s lead by directing attention to changes in the financial services industry that promote predatory lending and sanction racial profiling in property insurance, as well as to policy efforts to curb these disturbing trends. Its significant empirical contributions notwithstanding, Privileged Places succeeds most unequivocally in setting a new financeand policy-oriented agenda for researchers seeking to understand persistent urban inequalities and the conditions that maintain the place-race nexus shaping opportunity in the United States.