Showing papers in "Contemporary Sociology in 2011"

The Just City

Abstract: In The New Jim Crow, civil rights lawyer and Ohio State University law professor Michelle Alexander examines the legal and social framework that supports the regime of mass incarceration of black men in the United States. As Alexander carefully recounts, beginning in the early 1980s with President Reagan’s declaration of a ‘‘War on Drugs,’’ a number of policy initiatives, Supreme Court decisions, and vested interests, aided and abetted by political divisiveness and public apathy, coalesced to create the social, legal, and political environment that has supported mass incarceration ever since. Alexander’s analysis reveals disturbing parallels between the racial caste systems of slavery, Jim Crow, and today’s mass incarceration of black men in our country. In the end, however, Alexander shies away from proposing a potentially successful strategy for redressing the dilemma she so carefully depicts. Rather, she ‘‘punts,’’ or ‘‘cops out,’’ as we would have said in earlier eras. Alexander begins her analysis with a brief history of the several hundred years of variously oppressive race relations between whites and blacks in the United States. Quite correctly, Alexander observes that this history may be fruitfully understood as a sequence of renascent forms of social control refashioned to the new tenor of the times. Thus, Alexander traces the history of American political rhetoric in the latter half of the twentieth century where ‘‘law and order’’ comes to constitute code for ‘‘the race problem’’ and a policy of malign neglect toward African Americans is transmuted into an active political strategy devised to develop Republican political dominance in the southern states. Ultimately, as we know, the twin themes of crime and welfare propelled Ronald Reagan into the presidency. Searching for a follow-up initiative to define his early presidency, Reagan settled on increased attention to street crime, especially drug law enforcement. In short, the War on Drugs was not some disembodied social agenda, nor was it driven by public demand, as only two percent of Americans believed crime was an important issue at the time. Rather, as Alexander shows, the War on Drugs was a direct outgrowth of race-based politics and therefore the fact that it has had a disproportionate impact on young black men should come as no surprise. Alexander next turns her attention to the interwoven details of the social, legal, and political fabric that wrap the War on Drugs in supportive garb. As Alexander recites, the War on Drugs is the cornerstone on which the current regime of race-based mass incarceration rests because: (a) convictions for drug offenses are the single most important cause of the explosion in incarceration rates since 1980, and (b) black Americans are disproportionately arrested, convicted, and subjected to lengthy sentences for drug offenses when compared to white Americans, even though drug use rates among white Americans have been consistently shown to be higher than for black Americans. Thus, any practices or policies that support the execution of the War on Drugs support the continuation of our movement toward mass incarceration of an entire category of Americans. Among the many developments Alexander reviews, one may note: changes in Supreme Court doctrine with respect to police stops, warrantless searches, consent searches, and suspicionless police sweeps for drug activity; federal initiatives to offer grants to support narcotics task forces; the development and expansion of modern drug forfeiture laws which permitted state and local law enforcement agencies to keep the vast majority of seized cash and assets in drug raids; and the legislative enactment of mandatory minimum and ‘‘three strikes’’ sentencing schemes, and their ready

Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight Against AIDS

Abstract: Deborah Gould’s volume is a beautifully written account of direct-action AIDS activism in the United States from its emergence in the mid-1980s through its decline in the early 1990s. The story of ACT UP, the central focus of the work, illuminates the complex history of both the AIDS epidemic and the political dynamics of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities at a key moment of transition. Founded during the conservative backlash of the Reagan era and active through the conservative turn in LGBT politics of the early Clinton years (with the prioritization of questions like military service), the group’s confrontational tactics, radical discourse, and political successes prove something of an anomaly. Explaining this anomaly is Gould’s central concern, and in doing so, she offers a compelling argument for the importance of addressing affect and emotion in the study of social movements, providing a carefully nuanced conceptual framework to do so. Positing the need for an “affective ontology,” Gould introduces the notion of emotional habitus as a way to highlight the social dimensions of feeling. Focusing on dynamics both within ACT UP and in the larger society, she traces the affective and emotional undercurrents that permitted the emergence and subsequent decline of contentious AIDS activism. As she explains in the introduction, an emotional habitus operates through a kind of “emotional pedagogy,” beneath the level of consciousness, establishing a “template for what and how to feel,” naturalizing some feelings and inhibiting others (p. 34). Following Pierre Bourdieu, Gould is careful to recognize the stabilizing force of habitus, but the emotional habitus she describes is not static and closed but rife with tensions and in flux. In Part I, for instance, the author analyzes the contradictory emotions that circulated in LGBT communities after the first reported cases of AIDS in the early 1980s, including pride, fear, grief, guilt, shame, a desire for acceptance, and an incipient anger, still too weak in its capacity to mobilize. Against this backdrop, the Supreme Court decision in Bowers v. Hardwick in 1986, which upheld states’ authority to criminalize sodomy in starkly homophobic terms, came as a “moral shock” that fundamentally transformed the emotional habitus of LGBT communities, crystallizing anger at government inaction on AIDS and opening the emotional possibilities for a more contentious politics. Gould presents this constellation of feelings by weaving together interviews, movement documents, public speeches, and reports of the epidemic in both the LGBT and mainstream press. Indeed, her use of evidence is noteworthy not only for its breadth but also for the way she marshals it to reveal what is often difficult to register: repressed emotions, affective states, and foreclosed possibilities of action. She thus contrasts, for example, predominant community and activist responses to the few initial calls for civil disobedience in the early 1980s—discouraging such action, defending the government, and calling on people to reign in their anger—with those following Hardwick, which found a new resonance with the widespread outrage provoked by the case. In the year after Hardwick, activists founded ACT UP. In Parts II and III of the book, Gould traces the “emotional work” performed by these activists, initially finding receptiveness to their demands and disruptive tactics; subsequently, less so. Another key turning point in this story is the election of Bill Clinton, which promised greater social acceptance for gays and lesbians, provided we behave. Indeed, while careful to avoid drawing a direct causal link between particular emotions and specific political tactics, the author elaborates a central tension throughout the book between a contentious, direct-action activism, fueled primarily by anger, and an activism that operates through established political institutions, reflecting (among other feelings) an ambivalent hope for social acceptance and a certain shame about gay/queer difference. Thus mapping a second transformation of the emotional habitus, she documents a growing chorus of political and LGBT community leaders who dismissed ACT UP’s tactics as counterproductive, irrational, juvenile, or outdated. In this inauspicious context,Gouldalso traces how, within the group, an omnipresent though generally unacknowledged grief over the rising death toll of family and friends and a growing despair about the chances of finding a cure | |

Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America

Abstract: The dilemma of domestic work in postapartheid South Africa should not be viewed as an isolated phenomenon of marginal interest to sociologists. The globalization of paid domestic work means that hundreds of thousands of women from poor countries in the global South are living in a form of servitude, as they work for low wages, under abusive conditions in wealthier countries as part of a ‘‘global care chain.’’ In this brilliant study, Shireen Ally demonstrates how these relations of servitude have resisted change in ‘‘the national care chain’’ in contemporary South Africa. Post-apartheid South Africa is a contradictory place. On the one hand there is deepening inequality, poverty and widespread collective violence in the form of xenophobic attacks against foreigners and violent protests about the failure of the local state to deliver substantive social citizenship in the shape of access to housing, jobs, water, electricity and sanitation. On the other hand the new constitution embodies a powerful vision of participatory democracy, new institutions to protect human rights, and the redrafting of apartheid labor legislation included one of the most extensive and expansive efforts anywhere in the world to recognize paid domestic work as a form of employment. These state efforts to modernize and professionalize domestic work as a form of employment were remarkable. Existing labor legislation was extended inter alia to include a landmark national minimum wage, mandatory formal contracts of employment, extensive leave, formal registration, as well as access to unemployment insurance benefits, which Ally points out was a ‘‘world first.’’ However, a central thesis of the book is that the outcome has been disempowering for domestic workers. With analytical depth and sensitivity, Ally demonstrates the persistence of servitude. Paradoxically, the book suggests that domestic workers’ lives have not changed much under democracy and many feel that ‘‘things are worse than before.’’ While they are the beneficiaries of ‘‘an extensive democratic statecraft’’ attempting to turn ‘‘servants’’ into workers with the same rights as other workers, their social position as migrant ‘‘mother-workers,’’ often caring for their employers’ children at the expense of their own, has not been affected. Ally explains this paradox in the tension between the forms of formal power deployed by the post-apartheid state in its efforts to protect these ‘‘vulnerable’’ workers and the forms of informal power generated by the intimate nature of their work. This involves a ‘‘contradictory collision of depersonalizing rights and personalizing intimacy’’ (p. 187). In the absence of state protection under apartheid, South African domestic workers had elaborate ‘‘practices of power’’ rooted in their highly personalized relationships with employers, as a way to control their work. ‘‘In the absence of labor rights defining leave provisions, sitting down every morning with tea and talking to one’s employer about her problems became a way to ensure an extended Christmas vacation’’ (p. 13). These informal mechanisms for negotiating working conditions have continued and demonstrate these women’s creativity and assertiveness. Another paradox Ally identifies in this highly original exploration is that the political inclusion of domestic workers has ironically depoliticized them. Making domestic workers the subjects of rights through their construction as ‘‘vulnerable’’ defined their political status as incapacitated and inert. With the state positioning itself as the representative and protector of domestic workers’ interests, they were demobilized, their unions displaced and weakened and their voices muted. Thus Ally argues that ‘‘the attempt to turn ‘servants’ into workers through liberal democratic rights, rather

Managing the Margins: Gender, Citizenship, and the International Regulation of Precarious Employment

Abstract: Gender inequality remains both a pressing social issue and a fruitful area of social science research. This edited volume seeks to examine gender inequality and the production of well-being in Europe from an interdisciplinary perspective that is perhaps more feminist economics than sociology. The chapters draw on historical and contemporary European examples and offer a somewhat different take (both theoretically and methodologically) on what is usually found in American sociology journals. This book takes a broader view on gender inequalities and the production of wellbeing, with the ‘‘capability approach’’ serving as the theoretical connection between the chapters. The chapters reemphasize that social reproduction is more complex than the production of goods. The various authors also call for and (in the empirical chapters) take into account the socio-political and economic context. An entire chapter is dedicated to the introduction of the capability approach (Chapter Two). But the description of the theory remains lacking amidst numerous references that point the reader towards clarification elsewhere. The authors posit that well-being is an important outcome, and that the production of well-being itself needs to be included in the study of gender inequality (Chapter One), while also demanding that women are not just another vulnerable group (Chapter Four). Chapter Three further challenges conventional notions about the evolution of the ‘‘modern family’’ in the wake of the industrialization process, and argues that the fragility of families is not a novel concept. These theoretical chapters call for a more multidimensional assessment of gender inequality, and remind readers of the importance of the concept and production of well-being. The topics covered in the two empirical parts of the book are very diverse in terms of subject, methodology, and historical time period. The first empirical section ‘‘Gender Care and Work’’ is held together by the challenge to the idea of women as passive victims and in need of assistance. Chapter Five demonstrates widows’ relative economic independence in urban Sweden and Finland from 1890 to 1910, and Chapter Six shows the centrality of female relatives in caring for extended family members in times of crisis. Chapter Seven reaffirms the idea that intergenerational support is not one-sided, and those often thought of as needing care due to older age are also givers of care and other forms of support. The findings from the chapters emphasize the importance of non-monetary transfers outside the market system. The theme of caregiving is readdressed in later chapters which illustrate how home caregiving in Belgium is situated between the public/market divide (Chapter Nine) and the problems of combining market work with caregiving, especially for those in the ‘‘sandwich generation’’ (Chapter Ten). In a seeming departure from studies in the capability approach tradition, Chapter Eight is a more typical time-use study that examines the gender asymmetry in unpaid labor in Italy. The results are not novel as women are found to do more unpaid work, especially in couples with children. The second empirical part of the book focuses on the intra-household allocation of resources. Three of the five chapters in this section center primarily on the nineteenth century, examining consumption patterns in Spain (Chapter 11), gender differences in children’s schooling in Switzerland (Chapter 12), and the differences in the treatment of and opportunities for celibate men and women in the Pyrenees (Chapter 13). These chapters illustrate gender differences, but not in

Margins of Error: A Study of Reliability in Survey Measurement:

Abstract: This important book assesses the level of unreliability—random measurement error—in individual survey items found in general-population surveys, on which much scholarship in sociology and kindred fields depends. Duane Alwin aspires to reduce measurement error at its source by identifying less error-prone methods of constructing and administering surveys. His study contributes to understanding survey quality by showing how reliability varies with item content and instrument design; many findings provide empirical grounding for well-established survey practices, while others suggest that some common data collection protocols may heighten error. The study rests on an original, unique data base of reliability estimates for nearly 500 individual survey items drawn from longitudinal surveys representing well-defined populations. Questions included measure both basic sociodemographic facts and subjective phenomena (beliefs, attitudes, selfperceptions). Alwin coded item properties (number of response alternatives, length), question content (factual or nonfactual), and survey context (inclusion in a topical series or ‘‘battery’’ of related questions, ordinal position within a questionnaire), and then assessed associations between these design features and reliability. As befits a study of data quality, much of Margins of Error justifies the measurement of its dependent variable, item reliability. Three chapters that outline and critique extant approaches to reliability assessment can be read profitably on their own. But the key here is that Alwin seeks reliability measures for single survey items, not composite scales. He stresses the distinction between multiple measures (verbatimreplicated items) and multiple indicators (distinct items related to a common underlying construct). He finds widely-applied ‘‘internal consistency’’ approaches based on classical test score theory (coefficient a) wanting, because they estimate the reliability of multiple-indicator composites rather than individual items, and because such composites need not be ‘‘univocal’’—that is, they combine indicators that often have imperfectly correlated true scores. A particular difficulty is that those methods understate item reliability by classifying stable, but measure-specific, variance in a survey response as erroneous rather than reliable. Alwin argues that cross-sectional designs cannot adequately estimate the reliability of single items, because respondent memory raises correlations among multiple measures or indicators. He advocates longitudinal designs that administer identically worded questions on at least three occasions, suggesting that those measurements be separated by intervals of up to two years to avoid memoryinduced inflation of reliability estimates. When these demanding data requirements are met, suitable analytic methods can distinguish reliability and stability, and incorporate stable item-specific variance within true score variance. Many results substantiate widely-used and -taught guidelines for constructing survey instruments. For example, reliability tends to be higher for factual questions than for items measuring subjective content, for selfreports than for proxy responses about others, and (usually) for shorter questions. In keeping with much recent methodological research on survey data, Alwin invokes cognitive considerations to interpret such associations; he suggests, for instance, that respondents may better comprehend short questions, and more readily access and retrieve information needed to answer factual ones. Of particular note is Alwin’s finding that the widespread survey practice of presenting items in batteries—sets of consecutive questions using the same response format—tends

Timepass: Youth, Class, and the Politics of Waiting in India

Abstract: In The New Jim Crow, civil rights lawyer and Ohio State University law professor Michelle Alexander examines the legal and social framework that supports the regime of mass incarceration of black men in the United States. As Alexander carefully recounts, beginning in the early 1980s with President Reagan’s declaration of a ‘‘War on Drugs,’’ a number of policy initiatives, Supreme Court decisions, and vested interests, aided and abetted by political divisiveness and public apathy, coalesced to create the social, legal, and political environment that has supported mass incarceration ever since. Alexander’s analysis reveals disturbing parallels between the racial caste systems of slavery, Jim Crow, and today’s mass incarceration of black men in our country. In the end, however, Alexander shies away from proposing a potentially successful strategy for redressing the dilemma she so carefully depicts. Rather, she ‘‘punts,’’ or ‘‘cops out,’’ as we would have said in earlier eras. Alexander begins her analysis with a brief history of the several hundred years of variously oppressive race relations between whites and blacks in the United States. Quite correctly, Alexander observes that this history may be fruitfully understood as a sequence of renascent forms of social control refashioned to the new tenor of the times. Thus, Alexander traces the history of American political rhetoric in the latter half of the twentieth century where ‘‘law and order’’ comes to constitute code for ‘‘the race problem’’ and a policy of malign neglect toward African Americans is transmuted into an active political strategy devised to develop Republican political dominance in the southern states. Ultimately, as we know, the twin themes of crime and welfare propelled Ronald Reagan into the presidency. Searching for a follow-up initiative to define his early presidency, Reagan settled on increased attention to street crime, especially drug law enforcement. In short, the War on Drugs was not some disembodied social agenda, nor was it driven by public demand, as only two percent of Americans believed crime was an important issue at the time. Rather, as Alexander shows, the War on Drugs was a direct outgrowth of race-based politics and therefore the fact that it has had a disproportionate impact on young black men should come as no surprise. Alexander next turns her attention to the interwoven details of the social, legal, and political fabric that wrap the War on Drugs in supportive garb. As Alexander recites, the War on Drugs is the cornerstone on which the current regime of race-based mass incarceration rests because: (a) convictions for drug offenses are the single most important cause of the explosion in incarceration rates since 1980, and (b) black Americans are disproportionately arrested, convicted, and subjected to lengthy sentences for drug offenses when compared to white Americans, even though drug use rates among white Americans have been consistently shown to be higher than for black Americans. Thus, any practices or policies that support the execution of the War on Drugs support the continuation of our movement toward mass incarceration of an entire category of Americans. Among the many developments Alexander reviews, one may note: changes in Supreme Court doctrine with respect to police stops, warrantless searches, consent searches, and suspicionless police sweeps for drug activity; federal initiatives to offer grants to support narcotics task forces; the development and expansion of modern drug forfeiture laws which permitted state and local law enforcement agencies to keep the vast majority of seized cash and assets in drug raids; and the legislative enactment of mandatory minimum and ‘‘three strikes’’ sentencing schemes, and their ready

Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth:

Abstract: The Professional Guinea Pig belongs to a social science growth area investigating the pharmaceutical industry in contemporary health care. This literature is united by a prevailing consensus that views the drug industry as the villain du jour in health policy. After focusing on unbridled professional power and the for-profit insurance industry, the critical social gaze is turned to Big Pharma. Consequently, most social scientists see it as their job to expose the scientific manipulation, the chase of profit margins, the dehumanization, the ethical transgressions, and the inequities that flow from drug industry involvement. In engaging prose, Roberto Abadie delivers the expected social science message. Abadie conducted an eighteen-month ethnography of a group of healthy people who made a living as research subjects in Phase One clinical trials in Philadelphia. Most trial participants are African-American and Latino, but Abadie spent time with a group of young, non-Hispanic white anarchists who enrolled in clinical trials. He compares these trial participants with people enrolling in HIV trials. The book examines the motivations, reflections, and practices of professionalized clinical trial participation. What does Abadie make from this data? He highlights the ‘‘commodification’’ (p. 15) of the trial subjects’ bodies in a ‘‘slow torture economy’’ (p. 46). He pays attention to the ‘‘revolt’’ (p. 54) of the professional research subjects when they felt underpaid and threatened to walk out. Instead they received an $800 bonus. He notes the ‘‘resistance of the weak’’ (p. 60), when ‘‘guinea pigs’’ (p. 21) smuggle in forbidden foods or engage in other acts of ‘‘sabotage’’ (p. 61). Abadie also examines the risk-management strategies of the trial subjects: they weigh money against potential long-term effects but tend to believe that drugs wash out of their bodies in a couple of days. He then compares the professional trial participants to those involved in HIV trials and argues that the latter are motivated by deeper existential concerns but, of course, they also have a disease and participate in different kinds of trials. In a final empirical chapter, Abadie examines the professional trial subject’s limited understanding of informed consent procedures, and argues that the drug industry deliberately uses the consent form to obfuscate the commodified relationship with research subjects. Abadie’s book has two glaring weaknesses. First, he brings much rhetorical bluster to his study but the interview quotes and observations do not bear out the core themes of ‘‘alienation’’ (p. 6) and ‘‘exploitation’’ (p. 154). The fascinating empirical puzzle of his study is that anarchists are willing to swallow their principles and vegan diet to take money from this most controversial industry. In the conclusion, Abadie pays attention to the paradox between anarchist politics and pragmatics, but throughout most of the book he tries to rationalize the anarchists’ justifications for the blood money that sustains their lifestyle of leisure. Some of his friends even minimize the trial risk because they assume that strong government oversight protects them from harm! Abadie writes: ‘‘[these] views of governmental regulation are not totally at odds with their radical [anarchist] beliefs’’ (p. 143). Really? Rather than reconcile the dissonance between what anarchists do and belief in theoretical constructs of exploitation, the explanation seems more mundane. People end up in trial after trial by choice or circumstances because it is easy money. Compared to flipping burgers, cleaning toilets, or being homeless, testing pills is extremely attractive. The job stinks, but the money is good. Abadie also wrote the wrong book. While he lived in the anarchist community, he never participated along with his research subjects in the trials. Abadie’s information comes largely from casual conversations

The End of the Revolution: China and the Limits of Modernity:

Abstract: In The New Jim Crow, civil rights lawyer and Ohio State University law professor Michelle Alexander examines the legal and social framework that supports the regime of mass incarceration of black men in the United States. As Alexander carefully recounts, beginning in the early 1980s with President Reagan’s declaration of a ‘‘War on Drugs,’’ a number of policy initiatives, Supreme Court decisions, and vested interests, aided and abetted by political divisiveness and public apathy, coalesced to create the social, legal, and political environment that has supported mass incarceration ever since. Alexander’s analysis reveals disturbing parallels between the racial caste systems of slavery, Jim Crow, and today’s mass incarceration of black men in our country. In the end, however, Alexander shies away from proposing a potentially successful strategy for redressing the dilemma she so carefully depicts. Rather, she ‘‘punts,’’ or ‘‘cops out,’’ as we would have said in earlier eras. Alexander begins her analysis with a brief history of the several hundred years of variously oppressive race relations between whites and blacks in the United States. Quite correctly, Alexander observes that this history may be fruitfully understood as a sequence of renascent forms of social control refashioned to the new tenor of the times. Thus, Alexander traces the history of American political rhetoric in the latter half of the twentieth century where ‘‘law and order’’ comes to constitute code for ‘‘the race problem’’ and a policy of malign neglect toward African Americans is transmuted into an active political strategy devised to develop Republican political dominance in the southern states. Ultimately, as we know, the twin themes of crime and welfare propelled Ronald Reagan into the presidency. Searching for a follow-up initiative to define his early presidency, Reagan settled on increased attention to street crime, especially drug law enforcement. In short, the War on Drugs was not some disembodied social agenda, nor was it driven by public demand, as only two percent of Americans believed crime was an important issue at the time. Rather, as Alexander shows, the War on Drugs was a direct outgrowth of race-based politics and therefore the fact that it has had a disproportionate impact on young black men should come as no surprise. Alexander next turns her attention to the interwoven details of the social, legal, and political fabric that wrap the War on Drugs in supportive garb. As Alexander recites, the War on Drugs is the cornerstone on which the current regime of race-based mass incarceration rests because: (a) convictions for drug offenses are the single most important cause of the explosion in incarceration rates since 1980, and (b) black Americans are disproportionately arrested, convicted, and subjected to lengthy sentences for drug offenses when compared to white Americans, even though drug use rates among white Americans have been consistently shown to be higher than for black Americans. Thus, any practices or policies that support the execution of the War on Drugs support the continuation of our movement toward mass incarceration of an entire category of Americans. Among the many developments Alexander reviews, one may note: changes in Supreme Court doctrine with respect to police stops, warrantless searches, consent searches, and suspicionless police sweeps for drug activity; federal initiatives to offer grants to support narcotics task forces; the development and expansion of modern drug forfeiture laws which permitted state and local law enforcement agencies to keep the vast majority of seized cash and assets in drug raids; and the legislative enactment of mandatory minimum and ‘‘three strikes’’ sentencing schemes, and their ready

Rich Democracies, Poor People: How Politics Explain Poverty:

Abstract: Gender inequality remains both a pressing social issue and a fruitful area of social science research. This edited volume seeks to examine gender inequality and the production of well-being in Europe from an interdisciplinary perspective that is perhaps more feminist economics than sociology. The chapters draw on historical and contemporary European examples and offer a somewhat different take (both theoretically and methodologically) on what is usually found in American sociology journals. This book takes a broader view on gender inequalities and the production of wellbeing, with the ‘‘capability approach’’ serving as the theoretical connection between the chapters. The chapters reemphasize that social reproduction is more complex than the production of goods. The various authors also call for and (in the empirical chapters) take into account the socio-political and economic context. An entire chapter is dedicated to the introduction of the capability approach (Chapter Two). But the description of the theory remains lacking amidst numerous references that point the reader towards clarification elsewhere. The authors posit that well-being is an important outcome, and that the production of well-being itself needs to be included in the study of gender inequality (Chapter One), while also demanding that women are not just another vulnerable group (Chapter Four). Chapter Three further challenges conventional notions about the evolution of the ‘‘modern family’’ in the wake of the industrialization process, and argues that the fragility of families is not a novel concept. These theoretical chapters call for a more multidimensional assessment of gender inequality, and remind readers of the importance of the concept and production of well-being. The topics covered in the two empirical parts of the book are very diverse in terms of subject, methodology, and historical time period. The first empirical section ‘‘Gender Care and Work’’ is held together by the challenge to the idea of women as passive victims and in need of assistance. Chapter Five demonstrates widows’ relative economic independence in urban Sweden and Finland from 1890 to 1910, and Chapter Six shows the centrality of female relatives in caring for extended family members in times of crisis. Chapter Seven reaffirms the idea that intergenerational support is not one-sided, and those often thought of as needing care due to older age are also givers of care and other forms of support. The findings from the chapters emphasize the importance of non-monetary transfers outside the market system. The theme of caregiving is readdressed in later chapters which illustrate how home caregiving in Belgium is situated between the public/market divide (Chapter Nine) and the problems of combining market work with caregiving, especially for those in the ‘‘sandwich generation’’ (Chapter Ten). In a seeming departure from studies in the capability approach tradition, Chapter Eight is a more typical time-use study that examines the gender asymmetry in unpaid labor in Italy. The results are not novel as women are found to do more unpaid work, especially in couples with children. The second empirical part of the book focuses on the intra-household allocation of resources. Three of the five chapters in this section center primarily on the nineteenth century, examining consumption patterns in Spain (Chapter 11), gender differences in children’s schooling in Switzerland (Chapter 12), and the differences in the treatment of and opportunities for celibate men and women in the Pyrenees (Chapter 13). These chapters illustrate gender differences, but not in

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Abstract: In The New Jim Crow, civil rights lawyer and Ohio State University law professor Michelle Alexander examines the legal and social framework that supports the regime of mass incarceration of black men in the United States. As Alexander carefully recounts, beginning in the early 1980s with President Reagan’s declaration of a ‘‘War on Drugs,’’ a number of policy initiatives, Supreme Court decisions, and vested interests, aided and abetted by political divisiveness and public apathy, coalesced to create the social, legal, and political environment that has supported mass incarceration ever since. Alexander’s analysis reveals disturbing parallels between the racial caste systems of slavery, Jim Crow, and today’s mass incarceration of black men in our country. In the end, however, Alexander shies away from proposing a potentially successful strategy for redressing the dilemma she so carefully depicts. Rather, she ‘‘punts,’’ or ‘‘cops out,’’ as we would have said in earlier eras. Alexander begins her analysis with a brief history of the several hundred years of variously oppressive race relations between whites and blacks in the United States. Quite correctly, Alexander observes that this history may be fruitfully understood as a sequence of renascent forms of social control refashioned to the new tenor of the times. Thus, Alexander traces the history of American political rhetoric in the latter half of the twentieth century where ‘‘law and order’’ comes to constitute code for ‘‘the race problem’’ and a policy of malign neglect toward African Americans is transmuted into an active political strategy devised to develop Republican political dominance in the southern states. Ultimately, as we know, the twin themes of crime and welfare propelled Ronald Reagan into the presidency. Searching for a follow-up initiative to define his early presidency, Reagan settled on increased attention to street crime, especially drug law enforcement. In short, the War on Drugs was not some disembodied social agenda, nor was it driven by public demand, as only two percent of Americans believed crime was an important issue at the time. Rather, as Alexander shows, the War on Drugs was a direct outgrowth of race-based politics and therefore the fact that it has had a disproportionate impact on young black men should come as no surprise. Alexander next turns her attention to the interwoven details of the social, legal, and political fabric that wrap the War on Drugs in supportive garb. As Alexander recites, the War on Drugs is the cornerstone on which the current regime of race-based mass incarceration rests because: (a) convictions for drug offenses are the single most important cause of the explosion in incarceration rates since 1980, and (b) black Americans are disproportionately arrested, convicted, and subjected to lengthy sentences for drug offenses when compared to white Americans, even though drug use rates among white Americans have been consistently shown to be higher than for black Americans. Thus, any practices or policies that support the execution of the War on Drugs support the continuation of our movement toward mass incarceration of an entire category of Americans. Among the many developments Alexander reviews, one may note: changes in Supreme Court doctrine with respect to police stops, warrantless searches, consent searches, and suspicionless police sweeps for drug activity; federal initiatives to offer grants to support narcotics task forces; the development and expansion of modern drug forfeiture laws which permitted state and local law enforcement agencies to keep the vast majority of seized cash and assets in drug raids; and the legislative enactment of mandatory minimum and ‘‘three strikes’’ sentencing schemes, and their ready

Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America

Abstract: The Professional Guinea Pig belongs to a social science growth area investigating the pharmaceutical industry in contemporary health care. This literature is united by a prevailing consensus that views the drug industry as the villain du jour in health policy. After focusing on unbridled professional power and the for-profit insurance industry, the critical social gaze is turned to Big Pharma. Consequently, most social scientists see it as their job to expose the scientific manipulation, the chase of profit margins, the dehumanization, the ethical transgressions, and the inequities that flow from drug industry involvement. In engaging prose, Roberto Abadie delivers the expected social science message. Abadie conducted an eighteen-month ethnography of a group of healthy people who made a living as research subjects in Phase One clinical trials in Philadelphia. Most trial participants are African-American and Latino, but Abadie spent time with a group of young, non-Hispanic white anarchists who enrolled in clinical trials. He compares these trial participants with people enrolling in HIV trials. The book examines the motivations, reflections, and practices of professionalized clinical trial participation. What does Abadie make from this data? He highlights the ‘‘commodification’’ (p. 15) of the trial subjects’ bodies in a ‘‘slow torture economy’’ (p. 46). He pays attention to the ‘‘revolt’’ (p. 54) of the professional research subjects when they felt underpaid and threatened to walk out. Instead they received an $800 bonus. He notes the ‘‘resistance of the weak’’ (p. 60), when ‘‘guinea pigs’’ (p. 21) smuggle in forbidden foods or engage in other acts of ‘‘sabotage’’ (p. 61). Abadie also examines the risk-management strategies of the trial subjects: they weigh money against potential long-term effects but tend to believe that drugs wash out of their bodies in a couple of days. He then compares the professional trial participants to those involved in HIV trials and argues that the latter are motivated by deeper existential concerns but, of course, they also have a disease and participate in different kinds of trials. In a final empirical chapter, Abadie examines the professional trial subject’s limited understanding of informed consent procedures, and argues that the drug industry deliberately uses the consent form to obfuscate the commodified relationship with research subjects. Abadie’s book has two glaring weaknesses. First, he brings much rhetorical bluster to his study but the interview quotes and observations do not bear out the core themes of ‘‘alienation’’ (p. 6) and ‘‘exploitation’’ (p. 154). The fascinating empirical puzzle of his study is that anarchists are willing to swallow their principles and vegan diet to take money from this most controversial industry. In the conclusion, Abadie pays attention to the paradox between anarchist politics and pragmatics, but throughout most of the book he tries to rationalize the anarchists’ justifications for the blood money that sustains their lifestyle of leisure. Some of his friends even minimize the trial risk because they assume that strong government oversight protects them from harm! Abadie writes: ‘‘[these] views of governmental regulation are not totally at odds with their radical [anarchist] beliefs’’ (p. 143). Really? Rather than reconcile the dissonance between what anarchists do and belief in theoretical constructs of exploitation, the explanation seems more mundane. People end up in trial after trial by choice or circumstances because it is easy money. Compared to flipping burgers, cleaning toilets, or being homeless, testing pills is extremely attractive. The job stinks, but the money is good. Abadie also wrote the wrong book. While he lived in the anarchist community, he never participated along with his research subjects in the trials. Abadie’s information comes largely from casual conversations

Myth of the Social Volcano: Perceptions of Inequality and Distributive Injustice in Contemporary China

Abstract: In Plural Masculinities, Sofia Aboim engages the changing dynamics of masculinity in the lives of men, and ultimately how the growing plurality of performances impacts the gender order. In emphasizing the existence of a diversity of masculinities, she claims that ‘‘different routes to change’’ (p. 10) can impact the hegemonic standard. She is, in a sense, deconstructing the homogeneous form of hegemonic masculinity to show that change is possible by conveying how ‘‘complicit’’ men produce alternative versions of masculinity based on an individualized experience, as opposed to historical institutionalized beliefs. She utilizes multiple methods from different data sources, which strengthen the claims that the diversity of masculine performances within the ‘‘private’’ sphere are impacted by social and familial changes. While Chapter Four derives from cross-cultural data, the final two chapters (Five and Six) are based on data drawn from men in Portugal, which limits specific application in other cultures, but is extremely useful when discussing change in general. Whether it is factor analysis of cross-cultural quantitative data concerning attitudes of the breadwinner role versus practices of work in the home (Chapter Four) or qualitative interviews with men as they respond to changes in family structures (Chapter Five), Aboim’s findings emphasize how gender expectations are slow to change even as the structure and organization of the family changes. Furthermore in Chapter Six, her qualitative analysis of sexuality and gender roles claims that, over time, expectations are changing about men’s and women’s roles in sexual relations (albeit slowly) which she argues impacts the hegemonic standard. Developing masculinities are hybrid masculinities, offering alternative masculinities that borrow from feminine experiences. The text exhibits that changes in masculine expectations and displays are apparent and they are linked to societal change, which impacts the gender order. Her use of multiple methods offers strong credibility to her claims, as each finding supports the overall idea. Although the interpretation of hybrid masculinities cannot be challenged, it can be debated. Throughout the text, Aboim demonstrates a complete understanding of the field, drawing on a range of theoretical ideas to express an inclusive discussion about the topic of masculinities, often moving beyond masculinity studies, and even feminist theories. In Chapter One, she offers a brief history of the development of the field to establish the context of her argument. The author, however, extends the discussion beyond the gender field, locating it within larger sociological discussions. For example, she reviews discussions of family (Chapter Three) and domination and hegemony (Chapter Two), allowing readers to comprehend the basis of her argument and the theoretical underpinnings that have helped to develop the ideas. This is a great tool for any graduate student who is interested in the field. But Aboim’s extensive theoretical development also appears to be a key limitation in the book. Although all aspects of the theories appear to be applicable to the discussion, the thorough discussion leads a reader to get mired in the theoretical discussions, losing focus on the key points the author is attempting to convey. The author dedicates the entirety of Chapter Three to justify family, or at least the ‘‘private’’ sphere, as an important venue for discussion, setting up the following three chapters. The author engages the discussion of the separation of spheres, which is interesting and thorough, but does not explicitly identify which aspects of it are relevant, nor does she offer examples to help the reader follow the context of the discussion. She relies predominantly on indepth theoretical discussions, which tend to be extremely abstract, making it difficult to

One Country, Two Societies: Rural-Urban Inequality in Contemporary China

Abstract: Gender inequality remains both a pressing social issue and a fruitful area of social science research. This edited volume seeks to examine gender inequality and the production of well-being in Europe from an interdisciplinary perspective that is perhaps more feminist economics than sociology. The chapters draw on historical and contemporary European examples and offer a somewhat different take (both theoretically and methodologically) on what is usually found in American sociology journals. This book takes a broader view on gender inequalities and the production of wellbeing, with the ‘‘capability approach’’ serving as the theoretical connection between the chapters. The chapters reemphasize that social reproduction is more complex than the production of goods. The various authors also call for and (in the empirical chapters) take into account the socio-political and economic context. An entire chapter is dedicated to the introduction of the capability approach (Chapter Two). But the description of the theory remains lacking amidst numerous references that point the reader towards clarification elsewhere. The authors posit that well-being is an important outcome, and that the production of well-being itself needs to be included in the study of gender inequality (Chapter One), while also demanding that women are not just another vulnerable group (Chapter Four). Chapter Three further challenges conventional notions about the evolution of the ‘‘modern family’’ in the wake of the industrialization process, and argues that the fragility of families is not a novel concept. These theoretical chapters call for a more multidimensional assessment of gender inequality, and remind readers of the importance of the concept and production of well-being. The topics covered in the two empirical parts of the book are very diverse in terms of subject, methodology, and historical time period. The first empirical section ‘‘Gender Care and Work’’ is held together by the challenge to the idea of women as passive victims and in need of assistance. Chapter Five demonstrates widows’ relative economic independence in urban Sweden and Finland from 1890 to 1910, and Chapter Six shows the centrality of female relatives in caring for extended family members in times of crisis. Chapter Seven reaffirms the idea that intergenerational support is not one-sided, and those often thought of as needing care due to older age are also givers of care and other forms of support. The findings from the chapters emphasize the importance of non-monetary transfers outside the market system. The theme of caregiving is readdressed in later chapters which illustrate how home caregiving in Belgium is situated between the public/market divide (Chapter Nine) and the problems of combining market work with caregiving, especially for those in the ‘‘sandwich generation’’ (Chapter Ten). In a seeming departure from studies in the capability approach tradition, Chapter Eight is a more typical time-use study that examines the gender asymmetry in unpaid labor in Italy. The results are not novel as women are found to do more unpaid work, especially in couples with children. The second empirical part of the book focuses on the intra-household allocation of resources. Three of the five chapters in this section center primarily on the nineteenth century, examining consumption patterns in Spain (Chapter 11), gender differences in children’s schooling in Switzerland (Chapter 12), and the differences in the treatment of and opportunities for celibate men and women in the Pyrenees (Chapter 13). These chapters illustrate gender differences, but not in

Liberalization’s Children: Gender, Youth, and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India

Abstract: The dilemma of domestic work in postapartheid South Africa should not be viewed as an isolated phenomenon of marginal interest to sociologists. The globalization of paid domestic work means that hundreds of thousands of women from poor countries in the global South are living in a form of servitude, as they work for low wages, under abusive conditions in wealthier countries as part of a ‘‘global care chain.’’ In this brilliant study, Shireen Ally demonstrates how these relations of servitude have resisted change in ‘‘the national care chain’’ in contemporary South Africa. Post-apartheid South Africa is a contradictory place. On the one hand there is deepening inequality, poverty and widespread collective violence in the form of xenophobic attacks against foreigners and violent protests about the failure of the local state to deliver substantive social citizenship in the shape of access to housing, jobs, water, electricity and sanitation. On the other hand the new constitution embodies a powerful vision of participatory democracy, new institutions to protect human rights, and the redrafting of apartheid labor legislation included one of the most extensive and expansive efforts anywhere in the world to recognize paid domestic work as a form of employment. These state efforts to modernize and professionalize domestic work as a form of employment were remarkable. Existing labor legislation was extended inter alia to include a landmark national minimum wage, mandatory formal contracts of employment, extensive leave, formal registration, as well as access to unemployment insurance benefits, which Ally points out was a ‘‘world first.’’ However, a central thesis of the book is that the outcome has been disempowering for domestic workers. With analytical depth and sensitivity, Ally demonstrates the persistence of servitude. Paradoxically, the book suggests that domestic workers’ lives have not changed much under democracy and many feel that ‘‘things are worse than before.’’ While they are the beneficiaries of ‘‘an extensive democratic statecraft’’ attempting to turn ‘‘servants’’ into workers with the same rights as other workers, their social position as migrant ‘‘mother-workers,’’ often caring for their employers’ children at the expense of their own, has not been affected. Ally explains this paradox in the tension between the forms of formal power deployed by the post-apartheid state in its efforts to protect these ‘‘vulnerable’’ workers and the forms of informal power generated by the intimate nature of their work. This involves a ‘‘contradictory collision of depersonalizing rights and personalizing intimacy’’ (p. 187). In the absence of state protection under apartheid, South African domestic workers had elaborate ‘‘practices of power’’ rooted in their highly personalized relationships with employers, as a way to control their work. ‘‘In the absence of labor rights defining leave provisions, sitting down every morning with tea and talking to one’s employer about her problems became a way to ensure an extended Christmas vacation’’ (p. 13). These informal mechanisms for negotiating working conditions have continued and demonstrate these women’s creativity and assertiveness. Another paradox Ally identifies in this highly original exploration is that the political inclusion of domestic workers has ironically depoliticized them. Making domestic workers the subjects of rights through their construction as ‘‘vulnerable’’ defined their political status as incapacitated and inert. With the state positioning itself as the representative and protector of domestic workers’ interests, they were demobilized, their unions displaced and weakened and their voices muted. Thus Ally argues that ‘‘the attempt to turn ‘servants’ into workers through liberal democratic rights, rather

Intimate Labors: Cultures, Technologies, and the Politics of Care

Abstract: The Professional Guinea Pig belongs to a social science growth area investigating the pharmaceutical industry in contemporary health care. This literature is united by a prevailing consensus that views the drug industry as the villain du jour in health policy. After focusing on unbridled professional power and the for-profit insurance industry, the critical social gaze is turned to Big Pharma. Consequently, most social scientists see it as their job to expose the scientific manipulation, the chase of profit margins, the dehumanization, the ethical transgressions, and the inequities that flow from drug industry involvement. In engaging prose, Roberto Abadie delivers the expected social science message. Abadie conducted an eighteen-month ethnography of a group of healthy people who made a living as research subjects in Phase One clinical trials in Philadelphia. Most trial participants are African-American and Latino, but Abadie spent time with a group of young, non-Hispanic white anarchists who enrolled in clinical trials. He compares these trial participants with people enrolling in HIV trials. The book examines the motivations, reflections, and practices of professionalized clinical trial participation. What does Abadie make from this data? He highlights the ‘‘commodification’’ (p. 15) of the trial subjects’ bodies in a ‘‘slow torture economy’’ (p. 46). He pays attention to the ‘‘revolt’’ (p. 54) of the professional research subjects when they felt underpaid and threatened to walk out. Instead they received an $800 bonus. He notes the ‘‘resistance of the weak’’ (p. 60), when ‘‘guinea pigs’’ (p. 21) smuggle in forbidden foods or engage in other acts of ‘‘sabotage’’ (p. 61). Abadie also examines the risk-management strategies of the trial subjects: they weigh money against potential long-term effects but tend to believe that drugs wash out of their bodies in a couple of days. He then compares the professional trial participants to those involved in HIV trials and argues that the latter are motivated by deeper existential concerns but, of course, they also have a disease and participate in different kinds of trials. In a final empirical chapter, Abadie examines the professional trial subject’s limited understanding of informed consent procedures, and argues that the drug industry deliberately uses the consent form to obfuscate the commodified relationship with research subjects. Abadie’s book has two glaring weaknesses. First, he brings much rhetorical bluster to his study but the interview quotes and observations do not bear out the core themes of ‘‘alienation’’ (p. 6) and ‘‘exploitation’’ (p. 154). The fascinating empirical puzzle of his study is that anarchists are willing to swallow their principles and vegan diet to take money from this most controversial industry. In the conclusion, Abadie pays attention to the paradox between anarchist politics and pragmatics, but throughout most of the book he tries to rationalize the anarchists’ justifications for the blood money that sustains their lifestyle of leisure. Some of his friends even minimize the trial risk because they assume that strong government oversight protects them from harm! Abadie writes: ‘‘[these] views of governmental regulation are not totally at odds with their radical [anarchist] beliefs’’ (p. 143). Really? Rather than reconcile the dissonance between what anarchists do and belief in theoretical constructs of exploitation, the explanation seems more mundane. People end up in trial after trial by choice or circumstances because it is easy money. Compared to flipping burgers, cleaning toilets, or being homeless, testing pills is extremely attractive. The job stinks, but the money is good. Abadie also wrote the wrong book. While he lived in the anarchist community, he never participated along with his research subjects in the trials. Abadie’s information comes largely from casual conversations

Dividing the Domestic: Men, Women, and Household Work in Cross-National Perspective:

Abstract: This important book assesses the level of unreliability—random measurement error—in individual survey items found in general-population surveys, on which much scholarship in sociology and kindred fields depends. Duane Alwin aspires to reduce measurement error at its source by identifying less error-prone methods of constructing and administering surveys. His study contributes to understanding survey quality by showing how reliability varies with item content and instrument design; many findings provide empirical grounding for well-established survey practices, while others suggest that some common data collection protocols may heighten error. The study rests on an original, unique data base of reliability estimates for nearly 500 individual survey items drawn from longitudinal surveys representing well-defined populations. Questions included measure both basic sociodemographic facts and subjective phenomena (beliefs, attitudes, selfperceptions). Alwin coded item properties (number of response alternatives, length), question content (factual or nonfactual), and survey context (inclusion in a topical series or ‘‘battery’’ of related questions, ordinal position within a questionnaire), and then assessed associations between these design features and reliability. As befits a study of data quality, much of Margins of Error justifies the measurement of its dependent variable, item reliability. Three chapters that outline and critique extant approaches to reliability assessment can be read profitably on their own. But the key here is that Alwin seeks reliability measures for single survey items, not composite scales. He stresses the distinction between multiple measures (verbatimreplicated items) and multiple indicators (distinct items related to a common underlying construct). He finds widely-applied ‘‘internal consistency’’ approaches based on classical test score theory (coefficient a) wanting, because they estimate the reliability of multiple-indicator composites rather than individual items, and because such composites need not be ‘‘univocal’’—that is, they combine indicators that often have imperfectly correlated true scores. A particular difficulty is that those methods understate item reliability by classifying stable, but measure-specific, variance in a survey response as erroneous rather than reliable. Alwin argues that cross-sectional designs cannot adequately estimate the reliability of single items, because respondent memory raises correlations among multiple measures or indicators. He advocates longitudinal designs that administer identically worded questions on at least three occasions, suggesting that those measurements be separated by intervals of up to two years to avoid memoryinduced inflation of reliability estimates. When these demanding data requirements are met, suitable analytic methods can distinguish reliability and stability, and incorporate stable item-specific variance within true score variance. Many results substantiate widely-used and -taught guidelines for constructing survey instruments. For example, reliability tends to be higher for factual questions than for items measuring subjective content, for selfreports than for proxy responses about others, and (usually) for shorter questions. In keeping with much recent methodological research on survey data, Alwin invokes cognitive considerations to interpret such associations; he suggests, for instance, that respondents may better comprehend short questions, and more readily access and retrieve information needed to answer factual ones. Of particular note is Alwin’s finding that the widespread survey practice of presenting items in batteries—sets of consecutive questions using the same response format—tends

New Blood: Third-Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation:

Abstract: The Professional Guinea Pig belongs to a social science growth area investigating the pharmaceutical industry in contemporary health care. This literature is united by a prevailing consensus that views the drug industry as the villain du jour in health policy. After focusing on unbridled professional power and the for-profit insurance industry, the critical social gaze is turned to Big Pharma. Consequently, most social scientists see it as their job to expose the scientific manipulation, the chase of profit margins, the dehumanization, the ethical transgressions, and the inequities that flow from drug industry involvement. In engaging prose, Roberto Abadie delivers the expected social science message. Abadie conducted an eighteen-month ethnography of a group of healthy people who made a living as research subjects in Phase One clinical trials in Philadelphia. Most trial participants are African-American and Latino, but Abadie spent time with a group of young, non-Hispanic white anarchists who enrolled in clinical trials. He compares these trial participants with people enrolling in HIV trials. The book examines the motivations, reflections, and practices of professionalized clinical trial participation. What does Abadie make from this data? He highlights the ‘‘commodification’’ (p. 15) of the trial subjects’ bodies in a ‘‘slow torture economy’’ (p. 46). He pays attention to the ‘‘revolt’’ (p. 54) of the professional research subjects when they felt underpaid and threatened to walk out. Instead they received an $800 bonus. He notes the ‘‘resistance of the weak’’ (p. 60), when ‘‘guinea pigs’’ (p. 21) smuggle in forbidden foods or engage in other acts of ‘‘sabotage’’ (p. 61). Abadie also examines the risk-management strategies of the trial subjects: they weigh money against potential long-term effects but tend to believe that drugs wash out of their bodies in a couple of days. He then compares the professional trial participants to those involved in HIV trials and argues that the latter are motivated by deeper existential concerns but, of course, they also have a disease and participate in different kinds of trials. In a final empirical chapter, Abadie examines the professional trial subject’s limited understanding of informed consent procedures, and argues that the drug industry deliberately uses the consent form to obfuscate the commodified relationship with research subjects. Abadie’s book has two glaring weaknesses. First, he brings much rhetorical bluster to his study but the interview quotes and observations do not bear out the core themes of ‘‘alienation’’ (p. 6) and ‘‘exploitation’’ (p. 154). The fascinating empirical puzzle of his study is that anarchists are willing to swallow their principles and vegan diet to take money from this most controversial industry. In the conclusion, Abadie pays attention to the paradox between anarchist politics and pragmatics, but throughout most of the book he tries to rationalize the anarchists’ justifications for the blood money that sustains their lifestyle of leisure. Some of his friends even minimize the trial risk because they assume that strong government oversight protects them from harm! Abadie writes: ‘‘[these] views of governmental regulation are not totally at odds with their radical [anarchist] beliefs’’ (p. 143). Really? Rather than reconcile the dissonance between what anarchists do and belief in theoretical constructs of exploitation, the explanation seems more mundane. People end up in trial after trial by choice or circumstances because it is easy money. Compared to flipping burgers, cleaning toilets, or being homeless, testing pills is extremely attractive. The job stinks, but the money is good. Abadie also wrote the wrong book. While he lived in the anarchist community, he never participated along with his research subjects in the trials. Abadie’s information comes largely from casual conversations

Cultures of Servitude: Modernity, Domesticity, and Class in India

Abstract: Gender inequality remains both a pressing social issue and a fruitful area of social science research. This edited volume seeks to examine gender inequality and the production of well-being in Europe from an interdisciplinary perspective that is perhaps more feminist economics than sociology. The chapters draw on historical and contemporary European examples and offer a somewhat different take (both theoretically and methodologically) on what is usually found in American sociology journals. This book takes a broader view on gender inequalities and the production of wellbeing, with the ‘‘capability approach’’ serving as the theoretical connection between the chapters. The chapters reemphasize that social reproduction is more complex than the production of goods. The various authors also call for and (in the empirical chapters) take into account the socio-political and economic context. An entire chapter is dedicated to the introduction of the capability approach (Chapter Two). But the description of the theory remains lacking amidst numerous references that point the reader towards clarification elsewhere. The authors posit that well-being is an important outcome, and that the production of well-being itself needs to be included in the study of gender inequality (Chapter One), while also demanding that women are not just another vulnerable group (Chapter Four). Chapter Three further challenges conventional notions about the evolution of the ‘‘modern family’’ in the wake of the industrialization process, and argues that the fragility of families is not a novel concept. These theoretical chapters call for a more multidimensional assessment of gender inequality, and remind readers of the importance of the concept and production of well-being. The topics covered in the two empirical parts of the book are very diverse in terms of subject, methodology, and historical time period. The first empirical section ‘‘Gender Care and Work’’ is held together by the challenge to the idea of women as passive victims and in need of assistance. Chapter Five demonstrates widows’ relative economic independence in urban Sweden and Finland from 1890 to 1910, and Chapter Six shows the centrality of female relatives in caring for extended family members in times of crisis. Chapter Seven reaffirms the idea that intergenerational support is not one-sided, and those often thought of as needing care due to older age are also givers of care and other forms of support. The findings from the chapters emphasize the importance of non-monetary transfers outside the market system. The theme of caregiving is readdressed in later chapters which illustrate how home caregiving in Belgium is situated between the public/market divide (Chapter Nine) and the problems of combining market work with caregiving, especially for those in the ‘‘sandwich generation’’ (Chapter Ten). In a seeming departure from studies in the capability approach tradition, Chapter Eight is a more typical time-use study that examines the gender asymmetry in unpaid labor in Italy. The results are not novel as women are found to do more unpaid work, especially in couples with children. The second empirical part of the book focuses on the intra-household allocation of resources. Three of the five chapters in this section center primarily on the nineteenth century, examining consumption patterns in Spain (Chapter 11), gender differences in children’s schooling in Switzerland (Chapter 12), and the differences in the treatment of and opportunities for celibate men and women in the Pyrenees (Chapter 13). These chapters illustrate gender differences, but not in

Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market:

Abstract: Two distinct audiences will find much reward in reading Janine R. Wedel’s Shadow Elite. First, those concerned with the extant focus of the book: U.S. political-economic issues and public policy—albeit in a global context—and the trajectories of America’s neoconservatives. It is a vital area of inquiry and one that has considerable commercial appeal in light of the current power shift that has taken place in the United States; a power shift that allows a more objective, retrospective appraisal of the rise of the neoconservatives. Wedel’s central thesis, that the cultures of the Cold War impacted greatly on neoconservatism, surely deserves a critical appraisal. However, a second, perhaps more shadowy audience will be interested in Shadow Elite as a work of anthropology and as an example of the cutting edge of the discipline. The book sits alongside other recent work on neoliberalism and cultural critique by authors such as Aihwa Ong. This review will discuss what the book has to offer as an approach to anthropology in new contexts and areas.

Another Kind of Public Education: Race, Schools, the Media, and Democratic Possibilities

Abstract: Gender inequality remains both a pressing social issue and a fruitful area of social science research. This edited volume seeks to examine gender inequality and the production of well-being in Europe from an interdisciplinary perspective that is perhaps more feminist economics than sociology. The chapters draw on historical and contemporary European examples and offer a somewhat different take (both theoretically and methodologically) on what is usually found in American sociology journals. This book takes a broader view on gender inequalities and the production of wellbeing, with the ‘‘capability approach’’ serving as the theoretical connection between the chapters. The chapters reemphasize that social reproduction is more complex than the production of goods. The various authors also call for and (in the empirical chapters) take into account the socio-political and economic context. An entire chapter is dedicated to the introduction of the capability approach (Chapter Two). But the description of the theory remains lacking amidst numerous references that point the reader towards clarification elsewhere. The authors posit that well-being is an important outcome, and that the production of well-being itself needs to be included in the study of gender inequality (Chapter One), while also demanding that women are not just another vulnerable group (Chapter Four). Chapter Three further challenges conventional notions about the evolution of the ‘‘modern family’’ in the wake of the industrialization process, and argues that the fragility of families is not a novel concept. These theoretical chapters call for a more multidimensional assessment of gender inequality, and remind readers of the importance of the concept and production of well-being. The topics covered in the two empirical parts of the book are very diverse in terms of subject, methodology, and historical time period. The first empirical section ‘‘Gender Care and Work’’ is held together by the challenge to the idea of women as passive victims and in need of assistance. Chapter Five demonstrates widows’ relative economic independence in urban Sweden and Finland from 1890 to 1910, and Chapter Six shows the centrality of female relatives in caring for extended family members in times of crisis. Chapter Seven reaffirms the idea that intergenerational support is not one-sided, and those often thought of as needing care due to older age are also givers of care and other forms of support. The findings from the chapters emphasize the importance of non-monetary transfers outside the market system. The theme of caregiving is readdressed in later chapters which illustrate how home caregiving in Belgium is situated between the public/market divide (Chapter Nine) and the problems of combining market work with caregiving, especially for those in the ‘‘sandwich generation’’ (Chapter Ten). In a seeming departure from studies in the capability approach tradition, Chapter Eight is a more typical time-use study that examines the gender asymmetry in unpaid labor in Italy. The results are not novel as women are found to do more unpaid work, especially in couples with children. The second empirical part of the book focuses on the intra-household allocation of resources. Three of the five chapters in this section center primarily on the nineteenth century, examining consumption patterns in Spain (Chapter 11), gender differences in children’s schooling in Switzerland (Chapter 12), and the differences in the treatment of and opportunities for celibate men and women in the Pyrenees (Chapter 13). These chapters illustrate gender differences, but not in

Brokered Boundaries: Creating Immigrant Identity in Anti-Immigrant Times:

Abstract: The Professional Guinea Pig belongs to a social science growth area investigating the pharmaceutical industry in contemporary health care. This literature is united by a prevailing consensus that views the drug industry as the villain du jour in health policy. After focusing on unbridled professional power and the for-profit insurance industry, the critical social gaze is turned to Big Pharma. Consequently, most social scientists see it as their job to expose the scientific manipulation, the chase of profit margins, the dehumanization, the ethical transgressions, and the inequities that flow from drug industry involvement. In engaging prose, Roberto Abadie delivers the expected social science message. Abadie conducted an eighteen-month ethnography of a group of healthy people who made a living as research subjects in Phase One clinical trials in Philadelphia. Most trial participants are African-American and Latino, but Abadie spent time with a group of young, non-Hispanic white anarchists who enrolled in clinical trials. He compares these trial participants with people enrolling in HIV trials. The book examines the motivations, reflections, and practices of professionalized clinical trial participation. What does Abadie make from this data? He highlights the ‘‘commodification’’ (p. 15) of the trial subjects’ bodies in a ‘‘slow torture economy’’ (p. 46). He pays attention to the ‘‘revolt’’ (p. 54) of the professional research subjects when they felt underpaid and threatened to walk out. Instead they received an $800 bonus. He notes the ‘‘resistance of the weak’’ (p. 60), when ‘‘guinea pigs’’ (p. 21) smuggle in forbidden foods or engage in other acts of ‘‘sabotage’’ (p. 61). Abadie also examines the risk-management strategies of the trial subjects: they weigh money against potential long-term effects but tend to believe that drugs wash out of their bodies in a couple of days. He then compares the professional trial participants to those involved in HIV trials and argues that the latter are motivated by deeper existential concerns but, of course, they also have a disease and participate in different kinds of trials. In a final empirical chapter, Abadie examines the professional trial subject’s limited understanding of informed consent procedures, and argues that the drug industry deliberately uses the consent form to obfuscate the commodified relationship with research subjects. Abadie’s book has two glaring weaknesses. First, he brings much rhetorical bluster to his study but the interview quotes and observations do not bear out the core themes of ‘‘alienation’’ (p. 6) and ‘‘exploitation’’ (p. 154). The fascinating empirical puzzle of his study is that anarchists are willing to swallow their principles and vegan diet to take money from this most controversial industry. In the conclusion, Abadie pays attention to the paradox between anarchist politics and pragmatics, but throughout most of the book he tries to rationalize the anarchists’ justifications for the blood money that sustains their lifestyle of leisure. Some of his friends even minimize the trial risk because they assume that strong government oversight protects them from harm! Abadie writes: ‘‘[these] views of governmental regulation are not totally at odds with their radical [anarchist] beliefs’’ (p. 143). Really? Rather than reconcile the dissonance between what anarchists do and belief in theoretical constructs of exploitation, the explanation seems more mundane. People end up in trial after trial by choice or circumstances because it is easy money. Compared to flipping burgers, cleaning toilets, or being homeless, testing pills is extremely attractive. The job stinks, but the money is good. Abadie also wrote the wrong book. While he lived in the anarchist community, he never participated along with his research subjects in the trials. Abadie’s information comes largely from casual conversations

From Servants to Workers: South African Domestic Workers and the Democratic State

Abstract: The dilemma of domestic work in postapartheid South Africa should not be viewed as an isolated phenomenon of marginal interest to sociologists. The globalization of paid domestic work means that hundreds of thousands of women from poor countries in the global South are living in a form of servitude, as they work for low wages, under abusive conditions in wealthier countries as part of a ‘‘global care chain.’’ In this brilliant study, Shireen Ally demonstrates how these relations of servitude have resisted change in ‘‘the national care chain’’ in contemporary South Africa. Post-apartheid South Africa is a contradictory place. On the one hand there is deepening inequality, poverty and widespread collective violence in the form of xenophobic attacks against foreigners and violent protests about the failure of the local state to deliver substantive social citizenship in the shape of access to housing, jobs, water, electricity and sanitation. On the other hand the new constitution embodies a powerful vision of participatory democracy, new institutions to protect human rights, and the redrafting of apartheid labor legislation included one of the most extensive and expansive efforts anywhere in the world to recognize paid domestic work as a form of employment. These state efforts to modernize and professionalize domestic work as a form of employment were remarkable. Existing labor legislation was extended inter alia to include a landmark national minimum wage, mandatory formal contracts of employment, extensive leave, formal registration, as well as access to unemployment insurance benefits, which Ally points out was a ‘‘world first.’’ However, a central thesis of the book is that the outcome has been disempowering for domestic workers. With analytical depth and sensitivity, Ally demonstrates the persistence of servitude. Paradoxically, the book suggests that domestic workers’ lives have not changed much under democracy and many feel that ‘‘things are worse than before.’’ While they are the beneficiaries of ‘‘an extensive democratic statecraft’’ attempting to turn ‘‘servants’’ into workers with the same rights as other workers, their social position as migrant ‘‘mother-workers,’’ often caring for their employers’ children at the expense of their own, has not been affected. Ally explains this paradox in the tension between the forms of formal power deployed by the post-apartheid state in its efforts to protect these ‘‘vulnerable’’ workers and the forms of informal power generated by the intimate nature of their work. This involves a ‘‘contradictory collision of depersonalizing rights and personalizing intimacy’’ (p. 187). In the absence of state protection under apartheid, South African domestic workers had elaborate ‘‘practices of power’’ rooted in their highly personalized relationships with employers, as a way to control their work. ‘‘In the absence of labor rights defining leave provisions, sitting down every morning with tea and talking to one’s employer about her problems became a way to ensure an extended Christmas vacation’’ (p. 13). These informal mechanisms for negotiating working conditions have continued and demonstrate these women’s creativity and assertiveness. Another paradox Ally identifies in this highly original exploration is that the political inclusion of domestic workers has ironically depoliticized them. Making domestic workers the subjects of rights through their construction as ‘‘vulnerable’’ defined their political status as incapacitated and inert. With the state positioning itself as the representative and protector of domestic workers’ interests, they were demobilized, their unions displaced and weakened and their voices muted. Thus Ally argues that ‘‘the attempt to turn ‘servants’ into workers through liberal democratic rights, rather

American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement’s Hidden Spaces of Hate

Abstract: The dilemma of domestic work in postapartheid South Africa should not be viewed as an isolated phenomenon of marginal interest to sociologists. The globalization of paid domestic work means that hundreds of thousands of women from poor countries in the global South are living in a form of servitude, as they work for low wages, under abusive conditions in wealthier countries as part of a ‘‘global care chain.’’ In this brilliant study, Shireen Ally demonstrates how these relations of servitude have resisted change in ‘‘the national care chain’’ in contemporary South Africa. Post-apartheid South Africa is a contradictory place. On the one hand there is deepening inequality, poverty and widespread collective violence in the form of xenophobic attacks against foreigners and violent protests about the failure of the local state to deliver substantive social citizenship in the shape of access to housing, jobs, water, electricity and sanitation. On the other hand the new constitution embodies a powerful vision of participatory democracy, new institutions to protect human rights, and the redrafting of apartheid labor legislation included one of the most extensive and expansive efforts anywhere in the world to recognize paid domestic work as a form of employment. These state efforts to modernize and professionalize domestic work as a form of employment were remarkable. Existing labor legislation was extended inter alia to include a landmark national minimum wage, mandatory formal contracts of employment, extensive leave, formal registration, as well as access to unemployment insurance benefits, which Ally points out was a ‘‘world first.’’ However, a central thesis of the book is that the outcome has been disempowering for domestic workers. With analytical depth and sensitivity, Ally demonstrates the persistence of servitude. Paradoxically, the book suggests that domestic workers’ lives have not changed much under democracy and many feel that ‘‘things are worse than before.’’ While they are the beneficiaries of ‘‘an extensive democratic statecraft’’ attempting to turn ‘‘servants’’ into workers with the same rights as other workers, their social position as migrant ‘‘mother-workers,’’ often caring for their employers’ children at the expense of their own, has not been affected. Ally explains this paradox in the tension between the forms of formal power deployed by the post-apartheid state in its efforts to protect these ‘‘vulnerable’’ workers and the forms of informal power generated by the intimate nature of their work. This involves a ‘‘contradictory collision of depersonalizing rights and personalizing intimacy’’ (p. 187). In the absence of state protection under apartheid, South African domestic workers had elaborate ‘‘practices of power’’ rooted in their highly personalized relationships with employers, as a way to control their work. ‘‘In the absence of labor rights defining leave provisions, sitting down every morning with tea and talking to one’s employer about her problems became a way to ensure an extended Christmas vacation’’ (p. 13). These informal mechanisms for negotiating working conditions have continued and demonstrate these women’s creativity and assertiveness. Another paradox Ally identifies in this highly original exploration is that the political inclusion of domestic workers has ironically depoliticized them. Making domestic workers the subjects of rights through their construction as ‘‘vulnerable’’ defined their political status as incapacitated and inert. With the state positioning itself as the representative and protector of domestic workers’ interests, they were demobilized, their unions displaced and weakened and their voices muted. Thus Ally argues that ‘‘the attempt to turn ‘servants’ into workers through liberal democratic rights, rather

Marketing Dreams, Manufacturing Heroes: The Transnational Labor Brokering of Filipino Workers

Abstract: This important book assesses the level of unreliability—random measurement error—in individual survey items found in general-population surveys, on which much scholarship in sociology and kindred fields depends. Duane Alwin aspires to reduce measurement error at its source by identifying less error-prone methods of constructing and administering surveys. His study contributes to understanding survey quality by showing how reliability varies with item content and instrument design; many findings provide empirical grounding for well-established survey practices, while others suggest that some common data collection protocols may heighten error. The study rests on an original, unique data base of reliability estimates for nearly 500 individual survey items drawn from longitudinal surveys representing well-defined populations. Questions included measure both basic sociodemographic facts and subjective phenomena (beliefs, attitudes, selfperceptions). Alwin coded item properties (number of response alternatives, length), question content (factual or nonfactual), and survey context (inclusion in a topical series or ‘‘battery’’ of related questions, ordinal position within a questionnaire), and then assessed associations between these design features and reliability. As befits a study of data quality, much of Margins of Error justifies the measurement of its dependent variable, item reliability. Three chapters that outline and critique extant approaches to reliability assessment can be read profitably on their own. But the key here is that Alwin seeks reliability measures for single survey items, not composite scales. He stresses the distinction between multiple measures (verbatimreplicated items) and multiple indicators (distinct items related to a common underlying construct). He finds widely-applied ‘‘internal consistency’’ approaches based on classical test score theory (coefficient a) wanting, because they estimate the reliability of multiple-indicator composites rather than individual items, and because such composites need not be ‘‘univocal’’—that is, they combine indicators that often have imperfectly correlated true scores. A particular difficulty is that those methods understate item reliability by classifying stable, but measure-specific, variance in a survey response as erroneous rather than reliable. Alwin argues that cross-sectional designs cannot adequately estimate the reliability of single items, because respondent memory raises correlations among multiple measures or indicators. He advocates longitudinal designs that administer identically worded questions on at least three occasions, suggesting that those measurements be separated by intervals of up to two years to avoid memoryinduced inflation of reliability estimates. When these demanding data requirements are met, suitable analytic methods can distinguish reliability and stability, and incorporate stable item-specific variance within true score variance. Many results substantiate widely-used and -taught guidelines for constructing survey instruments. For example, reliability tends to be higher for factual questions than for items measuring subjective content, for selfreports than for proxy responses about others, and (usually) for shorter questions. In keeping with much recent methodological research on survey data, Alwin invokes cognitive considerations to interpret such associations; he suggests, for instance, that respondents may better comprehend short questions, and more readily access and retrieve information needed to answer factual ones. Of particular note is Alwin’s finding that the widespread survey practice of presenting items in batteries—sets of consecutive questions using the same response format—tends

Those Who Work, Those Who Don’t: Poverty, Morality, and Family in Rural America

Abstract: This important book assesses the level of unreliability—random measurement error—in individual survey items found in general-population surveys, on which much scholarship in sociology and kindred fields depends. Duane Alwin aspires to reduce measurement error at its source by identifying less error-prone methods of constructing and administering surveys. His study contributes to understanding survey quality by showing how reliability varies with item content and instrument design; many findings provide empirical grounding for well-established survey practices, while others suggest that some common data collection protocols may heighten error. The study rests on an original, unique data base of reliability estimates for nearly 500 individual survey items drawn from longitudinal surveys representing well-defined populations. Questions included measure both basic sociodemographic facts and subjective phenomena (beliefs, attitudes, selfperceptions). Alwin coded item properties (number of response alternatives, length), question content (factual or nonfactual), and survey context (inclusion in a topical series or ‘‘battery’’ of related questions, ordinal position within a questionnaire), and then assessed associations between these design features and reliability. As befits a study of data quality, much of Margins of Error justifies the measurement of its dependent variable, item reliability. Three chapters that outline and critique extant approaches to reliability assessment can be read profitably on their own. But the key here is that Alwin seeks reliability measures for single survey items, not composite scales. He stresses the distinction between multiple measures (verbatimreplicated items) and multiple indicators (distinct items related to a common underlying construct). He finds widely-applied ‘‘internal consistency’’ approaches based on classical test score theory (coefficient a) wanting, because they estimate the reliability of multiple-indicator composites rather than individual items, and because such composites need not be ‘‘univocal’’—that is, they combine indicators that often have imperfectly correlated true scores. A particular difficulty is that those methods understate item reliability by classifying stable, but measure-specific, variance in a survey response as erroneous rather than reliable. Alwin argues that cross-sectional designs cannot adequately estimate the reliability of single items, because respondent memory raises correlations among multiple measures or indicators. He advocates longitudinal designs that administer identically worded questions on at least three occasions, suggesting that those measurements be separated by intervals of up to two years to avoid memoryinduced inflation of reliability estimates. When these demanding data requirements are met, suitable analytic methods can distinguish reliability and stability, and incorporate stable item-specific variance within true score variance. Many results substantiate widely-used and -taught guidelines for constructing survey instruments. For example, reliability tends to be higher for factual questions than for items measuring subjective content, for selfreports than for proxy responses about others, and (usually) for shorter questions. In keeping with much recent methodological research on survey data, Alwin invokes cognitive considerations to interpret such associations; he suggests, for instance, that respondents may better comprehend short questions, and more readily access and retrieve information needed to answer factual ones. Of particular note is Alwin’s finding that the widespread survey practice of presenting items in batteries—sets of consecutive questions using the same response format—tends