Showing papers in "Review of Sociology in 2008"

The Sociology of Discrimination: Racial Discrimination in Employment, Housing, Credit, and Consumer Markets

Abstract: Persistent racial inequality in employment, housing, and a wide range of other social domains has renewed interest in the possible role of discrimination. And yet, unlike in the pre–civil rights era, when racial prejudice and discrimination were overt and widespread, today discrimination is less readily identifiable, posing problems for social scientific conceptualization and measurement. This article reviews the relevant literature on discrimination, with an emphasis on racial discrimination in employment, housing, credit markets, and consumer interactions. We begin by defining discrimination and discussing relevant methods of measurement. We then provide an overview of major findings from studies of discrimination in each of the four domains; and, finally, we turn to a discussion of the individual, organizational, and structural mechanisms that may underlie contemporary forms of discrimination. This discussion seeks to orient readers to some of the key debates in the study of discrimination and to provide a roadmap for those interested in building upon this long and important line of research.

Social Networks and Health

Abstract: People are interconnected, and so their health is interconnected. In recognition of this social fact, there has been growing conceptual and empirical attention over the past decade to the impact of social networks on health. This article reviews prominent findings from this literature. After drawing a distinction between social network studies and social support studies, we explore current research on dyadic and supradyadic network influences on health, highlighting findings from both egocentric and sociocentric analyses. We then discuss the policy implications of this body of work, as well as future research directions. We conclude that the existence of social networks means that people's health is interdependent and that health and health care can transcend the individual in ways that patients, doctors, policy makers, and researchers should care about.

The Second Generation in Western Europe: Education, Unemployment, and Occupational Attainment

Abstract: This paper reviews recent research in ten Western European countries on the educational and labor market outcomes of second-generation minorities. Minorities from less-developed origins appear to be particularly disadvantaged in education, access to the labor market, and occupational attainment. Disadvantages are most evident with test scores early in the school career, but in some countries minorities have higher continuation rates beyond the compulsory leaving age than do majority peers with similar test scores. Entry into the labor market is a particular problem for most minorities, with substantial ethnic penalties with respect to employment in all ten countries. There is a more mixed picture for occupational attainment: In some countries, we find cumulative disadvantages, whereas in others the barriers are greatest on entry into the labor market. We review possible explanations for the differences both between minorities and between countries.

Gender inequalities in education.

Abstract: The terrain of gender inequalities in education has seen much change in recent decades. This article reviews the empirical research and theoretical perspectives on gender inequalities in educational performance and attainment from early childhood to young adulthood. Much of the literature on children and adolescents attends to performance differences between girls and boys. Of course, achievement in elementary and secondary school is linked to the level of education one ultimately attains including high school completion, enrollment in postsecondary education, college completion, and graduate and professional school experiences. We recommend three directions for future research: (a) interdisciplinary efforts to understand gender differences in cognitive development and noncognitive abilities in early childhood, (b) research on the structure and practices of schooling, and (c) analyses of how gender differences might amplify other kinds of inequalities, such as racial, ethnic, class, or nativity inequalities.

Family Structure and the Reproduction of Inequalities

Abstract: Over the past four decades, income inequality has increased and family structures have diversified. We argue that family structure has become an important mechanism for the reproduction of class, race, and gender inequalities. We review studies of income inequality and family structure changes and find a wide range of estimates of the correlation. We discuss how increases in income inequality may lead to increases in single motherhood, particularly among less educated women. Single motherhood in turn decreases intergenerational economic mobility by affecting children's material resources and the parenting they experience. Because of the unequal distribution of family structure by race and the negative effects of single motherhood, family structure changes exacerbate racial inequalities. Gender inequalities also increase as mothers incur more child-related costs and fewer fathers experience family life with children.

Citizenship and Immigration: Multiculturalism, Assimilation, and Challenges to the Nation-State

Abstract: Citizenship encompasses legal status, rights, participation, and belonging. Traditionally anchored in a particular geographic and political community, citizenship evokes notions of national identity, sovereignty, and state control, but these relationships are challenged by the scope and diversity of international migration. This review considers normative and empirical debates over citizenship and bridges an informal divide between European and North American literatures. We focus on citizenship within nation-states by discussing ethnic versus civic citizenship, multiculturalism, and assimilation. Going beyond nation-state boundaries, we also look at transnational, postnational, and dual citizenships. Throughout, we identify methodological and theoretical challenges in this field, noting the need for a more dynamic and comprehensive understanding of the inter-relationships between the dimensions of citizenship and immigration.

Horizontal Stratification in Postsecondary Education: Forms, Explanations, and Implications

Abstract: For the past 20 years, social scientists have devoted increasing attention to the links between type of postsecondary education received and socioeconomic inequalities. Borrowing the terminology of Charles & Bradley (2002), we refer to the forms of these connections as horizontal dimensions of education-based stratification. We review studies of how institutional characteristics (college quality and type) and college experiences (field of specialization, academic performance, and pathway) are related to labor market outcomes. We also discuss research that treats college quality and field of specialization as dependent variables influenced by gender, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Throughout, we assess alternative theoretical explanations for why and how these horizontal aspects of college education play a stratifying role. We also note methodological developments that raise questions about some of the effects. Mirroring the literature, we emphasize how horizontal dimensions of stratification a...

From Mead to a Structural Symbolic Interactionism and Beyond

Abstract: This review discusses the continuing value of and problems in G.H. Mead's contributions to sociology from the standpoint of the contemporary discipline. It argues that the value is considerable and the problems largely avoidable with modifications to Mead's framework; it also offers necessary modifications via structural symbolic interactionism. Permitting the development of testable theories such as identity theory is a major criterion in evaluating a frame, and capacity to bridge to other frames and theories inside and outside sociology is another. The review examines bridges from the structural symbolic interactionist frame and identity theory to other symbolic interactionist theories, to other social psychological frames and theories in sociology, to cognitive social psychology, and to structural sociology.

Sieve, Incubator, Temple, Hub: Empirical and Theoretical Advances in the Sociology of Higher Education

Abstract: Higher education lacks an intellectually coherent sociology; varied research on colleges and universities is dispersed widely throughout the discipline This review initiates a critical integration of this scholarship We argue that sociologists have conceived of higher education systems as sieves for sorting and stratifying populations, incubators for the development of competent social actors, temples for the legitimation of official knowledge, and hubs connecting multiple institutional domains Bringing these lines of scholarship together facilitates new theoretical insights and research questions

Conditional Cash Transfers as Social Policy in Latin America: An Assessment of their Contributions and Limitations*

Abstract: Conditional cash transfer programs have recently spread throughout Latin America, and early findings suggest their potential to overcome poverty and create human capital. This review undertakes an assessment of CCT programs and the conventional theory that has evolved to justify them. It concludes that successes to date are limited, with positive effects on schooling and some aspects of health and nutrition in poor households, but weak effects on alleviating poverty in the short term and uncertain effects on educational aspects of human capital formation and poverty reduction in the long term. In a broader and more comprehensive view of social policy, as opposed to a minimalist focus, the key issue is how to integrate CCT programs with other social programs to overcome traditional patterns of segmentation in Latin America and thereby cultivate citizenship.

Religion and Science: Beyond the Epistemological Conflict Narrative

Abstract: Studies of the relationship between religion and science have traditionally assumed that any conflict that exists is based on epistemology. This assumption is built into the history of Western academic thought, the founding of sociology itself, as well as the common definitions of religion used by social scientists. This assumption has hindered the examination of the relationship between religion and science. We categorize studies of the relationship between science and religion into three groups: the symbolic epistemological conflict studies, the symbolic directional influence studies, and the social-institutional studies. We find that the social-institutional studies, which most closely examine actual public conflicts, do not presume that the conflict is over epistemological claims and offer a more general and fruitful approach to examining the relationship between religion and science.

Broken Down by Race and Gender? Sociological Explanations of New Sources of Earnings Inequality

Abstract: Group gaps research risks irrelevance because new forms of earnings inequality are increasing inequality within groups. This review attempts to stimulate more broad-ranging research on earnings inequality beyond the study of average gender and racial gaps. After reviewing some of the problems with research on average group gaps, I provide a brief review of more recent attempts to transcend traditional group gaps research, and I point to some areas where there is still substantive neglect. The review ends with suggestions for ways to correct these problems and for inequality researchers to reconnect with a commitment to more comprehensive theoretical models that interrogate multiple sources of inequality.

Black/White Differences in School Performance: The Oppositional Culture Explanation

Abstract: The late anthropologist, John Ogbu, developed one of the most theoretically provocative explanations for racial/ethnic differences in school performance: oppositional culture theory. Rather than view racial/ethnic gaps as a product of structural disadvantage alone, the theory emphasizes minority groups’ agency and the way in which they contribute to their own demise by developing a culture in opposition to schooling. This review focuses on the theory's merits for understanding the black/white gap in the United States.

Testing and Social Stratification in American Education

Abstract: We focus on how standardized testing in American education has reflected, reproduced, and transformed social inequalities. We begin by describing inequalities in test score distributions by race/ethnicity, social origins, and gender over time. We then define learning, cognitive ability, and opportunity to learn, each of which influences the results of standardized tests. Next, we offer a brief history of standardized testing's role in American education. We then discuss the relationship between social stratification and measurement issues that arise in the context of standardized testing and the contemporary uses and misuses of standardized testing for diagnostic purposes, accountability, and gatekeeping. We conclude by reflecting on the past, present, and future role of testing in social stratification.

Unconscious Racism: A Concept in Pursuit of a Measure

Abstract: It is common in scientific and popular discussions to claim that unconscious racism is both prevalent and potent in modern societies. We review the theoretical models that posit different forms of unconscious racism and evaluate the empirical evidence for them. Our analysis suggests that people may sometimes lack knowledge of and control over the causes and consequences of their racial biases. However, there is little evidence to support the more provocative claim: that people possess unconscious racist attitudes. Many of the arguments to the contrary rest on strong interpretations of response patterns on implicit attitude measures. Although advances in implicit measurement can improve our understanding of racial bias, at present their use as tools for rooting out unconscious racism is limited. We describe research programs that might move these constructs to firmer scientific footing, and we urge inferential caution until such research programs are carried out.

Access to Civil Justice and Race, Class, and Gender Inequality

Abstract: Access to civil justice is a perspective on the experiences that people have with civil justice events, organizations, or institutions. It focuses on who is able or willing to use civil law and law-like processes and institutions (who has access) and with what results (who receives what kinds of justice). This article reviews what we know about access to civil justice and race, social class, and gender inequality. Three classes of mechanisms through which inequality may be reproduced or exacerbated emerge: the unequal distribution of resources and costs, groups’ distinct subjective orientations to law or to their experiences, and differential institutionalization of group or individual interests. Evidence reveals that civil justice experiences can be an important engine in reproducing inequalities and deserve greater attention from inequality scholars. However, the inequality-conserving picture in part reflects scholars’ past choices about what to study: Much research has focused narrowly on the use of fo...

Gender in African Population Research: The Fertility/Reproductive Health Example

Abstract: We survey the literature on sub-Saharan Africa to identify how gender has factored into explaining fertility levels and behavior. Tracing the development of male role theory, we argue that despite increasing awareness of men's authority, fertility research continues to focus almost exclusively on women and treats gender as a property of individuals instead of as a system of inequality. The mainstream fertility literature generally overlooks the decision-making nexus wherein men's authority seemingly overrides women's preferences. Positing that male authority in the reproductive and sexual arenas is predicated on cultural rights negotiated at marriage—and undergirded by bridewealth payments—we contend that attempts to understand (and change) reproductive behavior will hardly be sustainable without attention to this contextual realm. In that vein, we speculate that efforts to empower women (via increased education, occupational opportunities, microcredit schemes, etc.) may hardly yield sustainable outcomes ...

Methodological Memes and Mores: Toward a Sociology of Social Research

Abstract: A plethora of scholarly research has been conducted on social science: on its organizational and communicative patterns, on the historical development of research standards, and on the diversity of local research practices. But this body of work on the sociology of social research does not hang together in ways that it could, and should, if knowledge is to accumulate. Contributors hail from various fields, subfields, theoretical perspectives, and methodological bents, and there is no extant subfield to join, legitimate, and reinforce their mutual interests. Thus, the aim of this review is not only to summarize themes, identify gaps, and suggest fruitful avenues for future research, but also to serve as a unifying force for scholars interested in studying social science from a sociological perspective. The sociology of social research, far from being a trite exercise in navel-gazing, is critical for the future viability of sociology, for the discipline's legitimacy and autonomy, and for improving social re...

Las Transferencias Monetarias Condicionadas Como Política Social en América Latina. Un Balance: Aportes, Límites y Debates*

Abstract: Recientemente se han diseminado por AL los programas de transferencias monetarias condicionadas (CCT). Rapidamente se han resaltado sus potencialidades para superar la pobreza y acumular capital humano, y se ha promovido su difusion. Asi, se ha formado ya una teoria convencional sobre los programas CCT. Este texto plantea un balance de ellos y discute con esta teoria; concluye que los resultados son limitados: positivos en escolaridad y algunas aspectos de salud y alimentacion de hogares pobres, debiles en la disminucion (ligera) de la pobreza en el corto plazo e inciertos en los impactos en el aspecto educativo del capital humano y en la reduccion de la pobreza en el largo plazo. En una vision amplia e integral de la politica social, en contraposicion a un enfoque minimalista, el debate es como integrar los programas CCT con las instituciones de seguridad social para superar la tradicional segmentacion latinoamericana y para construir ciudadania.

How the Outside Gets In: Modeling Conversational Permeation

Abstract: Conversation is incrementally, progressively produced, subject to constraints that ensure linearity (one person speaks at a time) irrespective of the identities, motives, and conversational resources of those present. And yet conversation is also receptive to influence from—or permeation by—external factors, such as attributes, formal status, and relationships. This review summarizes conversation-analytic work on how talk-in-interaction is produced and then evaluates quantitative research on permeation in terms of the realism of its assumptions. Research on rates is found particularly wanting, although the robustness of its results presents a challenge to the claim that the meaning of an action is inextricably tied to its local-sequential context. More theoretically adequate are modeling approaches that focus on transitions, sequences, and the local determinants of discrete events. However, these also frequently make unwarranted assumptions, such as that we can generalize from people who speak to those wh...

Reproductive Biology, Technology, and Gender Inequality: An Autobiographical Essay

Abstract: Ignorance of biodata is costly in sociology. Gender theorists remain unaware that until the demographic transition, infants were suckled every 15 minutes for two years, less often another two. A nearly continuous cycle of pregnancy and lactation barred women from the activities that brought the most prestige and power until the advent of modern sanitation after 1880. Women entered the public arena in large number only after technology altered the social consequences of human physiology. Yet wives still spend twice as much time in housework and child care as husbands. Data about the effects of both biology and culture on social interaction would enhance studies of ethnocentrism within the household.

Interpretations of ethical consumption

Abstract: During the last few years around a dozen boycotts have been called in Hungary; there are several ecologically and socially aware food-communities directly linking consumers and producers; at the end of 2006 a Fair Trade shop opened in Budapest, and there are product campaigns which accentuate various patriotic themes. All of these initiatives signal the emergence of new attitudes and values, a new type of behavior, that of ethical consumption. Ethical consumption, new kinds of consumer needs are influencing market culture through the creation of various market-niches (see corporate social responsibility); furthermore, the wide-scale spread of ethical consumption can even lead to the transformation of market functions. The modern market is going from a mainly economic space to an area of moral action, a tool of regulation and social participation. As a social movement ethical consumerism can effect political culture and play an important role in public policy aiming towards sustainable development. According to West-European literature as well as to concrete experience ethical consumerism is more and more playing this role, 1 the local appearance of the movement beckons the question: what sort of values and institutions characterize this new consumer culture, and which of these can we encounter in Hungary? The first part of this study deals with the phenomena of ethical consumption: it gives an overview of the literature, explicating the main research themes, and introducing its distinctive, most often examined forms of action. In the second part of the study, out of the interpretational possibilities, I look at ethical consumption as political consumption, as a form of social governance, examining its relevance as a way of public participation. I try to find an answer to the question whether the spread of ethical consumption should be imagined at the demise of classical political institutions, or as complementary to them, and which ethical issues are most likely to mobilize the public. The study is primarily based on data describing Hungarian political participatory culture, as well as an attitude survey of a representative sample. At the end of the study I will briefly refer to the possible causes of differences in ethical consumption attitudes and behaviors.

Regional Institutions and Social Development in Southern Africa

Abstract: Regional institutions increasingly shape economic and political development in Southern Africa. In this review, I discuss the historical background of this region and examine the major regional institutions that address key common concerns of economic development, trade, regional migration, and shared natural resources. I also discuss the challenges for, and to, regional integration, including competition among different regional organizations, poverty, war, political instability, and the developing HIV/AIDS pandemic. This research can be understood as illustrative of general research on regions. In particular, it shows how political leaders have created new sets of institutions to deal with important regional concerns, how regional institutions have affected economic development, and how the development of regional organizations is the outcome of regional politics as well as the interaction of national-level decisions.

Divisions on Europe between elites and citizens

Abstract: In the negative outcomes of the 2000 referenda on the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands, a deep split has arisen between elites and citizens about European integration. This fact, recognised by the elites themselves, is highly challenging from the scientific point of view. How can we explain the fact that such a historically unique, seemingly successful process is pursued enthusiastically by the political, economic and bureaucratic elites, and seen as a model for the world among some social analysts,2 but accompanied by much more sober, sceptical and critical attitudes among the citizens? Is it true that citizens do not recognise the achievements of integration, as the political elites argue? Or is it simply false that integration has brought with it all the blessings that are ascribed to it? This division is highly problematic also from the viewpoint of the legitimacy of the European Union. Even a huge new political community such as the EU is based on feet of clay if it is not supported by a clear majority of citizens. Both its stability and its capacity to act will be seriously undermined if it does not posses an adequate degree of identity, that is, a consensus on its basic characteristics and its ultimate aims.

Corruption, legitimacy and the quality of democracy in Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America

Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between the overall perception of the level of corruption and that of the quality of the ruling regime. Two subsets of political regimes are analysed — the neo-democracies from Latin America (LA) and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The principal thesis advanced here is that corruption affects negatively the quality of neo-democracy. However, the current research tries also to discover the specific mechanism by which this is achieved in practice. It is hypothesised that legitimacy, or, even, the particular way of legitimising the fledgling democracies, is the key. Legitimisation is mainly about the support granted to a specific policy and the regime as a whole. It has been demonstrated that the entire process has an input and output side. It is presumed that, during transition to democracy and its eventual consolidation, on the input side, both the opportunity structures (political institutions, legal tools and different kinds of both formal and informal practices...

Cultural factors blocking the utilization of orthodox medicine: A case study of Warri area in Delta State of Nigeria

Abstract: This study is aimed at determining the cultural factors (beliefs, traditional religious practices, and customs) blocking the utilization of orthodox medicine among peoples of Nigeria represented in this research by natives of Warri area of Delta State in the Niger-Delta region of Nigeria. With the use of multi-stage cluster sampling technique 190 natives sampled, participated in this study. A structured interview schedule containing a 13-item question translated in pidgin English (the lingua franca in the region) was used by ten research assistants who hail from the selected communities to elicit information from both literate and illiterate natives. The chi-square statistic result (χ 2 (8) = 26.83, P <.05) shows that some ethnic beliefs, customs and traditions are very significant cultural factors blocking the use of orthodox medicine. It was recommended that governments at all levels should put in place information, education and communication (IEC) activities in order to encourage appropriate choice of...

Poverty, health and ethnicity: the empirical experiences of researches in northeast-hungary*

Abstract: The results of our empirical researches carried out in North-East Hungarian region is analyzed and compared with national and international experiences. During last decade, we examined social and health status of Gipsy/Roma people living in this region in frame of researches, two of them were proceed at county, others at settlement level. We present our results grouped around three problems, which gives a chance for empirical testing of hypothesis of other researches reflected on this problems. Typical sample’s characteristics of Hajduboszormeny study made feasible to analyze the statements on correlation between underclass situation and ethnicity. Our results proved the statement that the poverty makes ethnical feature but not only Roma can be ranked among underclassed. In our study we deeply analyze coherence of ethnicity and poverty; besides of income poverty we touch the housing poverty, deprivation in wealth and living conditions, and the problems of social-political poverty. The health state was stu...

Elites in European foreign policy-making: Consensus and competition

Abstract: Elite theory up to now has been largely neglected within foreign policy analysis. This paper attempts to apply the concepts of elite theory on European foreign policy-making. Its focus is on elite consensus and competition, not least because such cleavages are particularly evident in this arena, where Member States' decision-makers compete with each other and with the various Brussels institutions, while at the same time speaking the language of cohesion and solidarity. Forms of significant scrutiny for common European diplomacy are less visible. There is a political and informational gap between the national parliamentary processes and the increasingly complex processes of foreign policy coordination. Thus when a crisis arises, national politics and institutions move into the vacant space. The subject of 'European foreign policy' has become immensely popular over the last two decades. The term generally refers to the attempts of the European Union to produce a single foreign policy, represented technically by the Common Foreign and Security Policy (viz. the 'CFSP', deriving from Pillar two of the Maastricht arrangements) but in practice by much cross-pillar activity involving both the Council and the Commission sides of the EU institutions. Some of us prefer to extend the definition to include the tout ensemble of EU and Member State external relations, at the same time acknowledging an even greater looseness of purpose and diplomacy than is represented by the EU's efforts. The literature which this subject has generated is divided more or less equally between the substance of policy and the processes of policy-making. What has not been done, however, is to tackle directly the question of how far those involved in the making of European foreign policy constitute a recognizable elite. Indeed, elites and elite theory have been neglected more generally within Foreign Policy Analysis, and perhaps within Political Science as a whole, since the influential writings of C. Wright Mills (1956), W.L. Guttsman (1965) and Geraint Parry (2005(1969)) in the 1950s and 1960s. This brief paper attempts to suggest how we might begin to think about elites

Analyzing Life-Stories of Women with Facial Disfigurement

Abstract: 疾患や外傷によって顔にひじょうに目につきやすい特徴を持つ人々が、日本に数十万人 いると言われている。本稿では、こうした人々を「異 い 形 けい の人々」と呼ぶ。異形の人々が 日常生活において様々な困難を経験していることは、顔という身体部位の特殊性を考慮し ても想像に難くない。まず、われわれがお互いを認識するのは顔においてである。つまり、 他のどのような身体部位よりも、われわれは顔を「わたし」や「あなた」と同一化してい るのである。また顔は、言語的・非言語的コミュニケーションの媒体の役割をはたしてお り、人と人が共在する場ではいつでも、関心の焦点になる。顔にはこうした重大な社会的 機能があるため、人と人が身体的に居合わせるとき、顔の異形は他のいかなる個人的・ 社会的アイデンティティにもまして、その人に関するもっとも雄弁な情報になりうる。 ところが、異形の人々は日本ではごく最近まで、欧米でも 1980年代まではほとんど研 究対象とされてこなかった。日本よりかなり早い時期に研究が取り組まれるようになった 欧米でも、形成外科手術による外見の改善といった医学的アプローチ以外は軽視されてき た経緯がある。1980年代以降、異形が深刻な心理的問題をもたらし、社会的相互行為に も多大な影響を及ぼしていることが認識されはじめ、心理学的視点による研究が蓄積され てきた。一方、日本では異形の人々の心理的・社会的困難に関する専門的研究はようやく着手 されたばかりであり、セルフヘルプ・グループの活動がそれに先行する結果となった。 ラムズィらによれば、異形に関する従来の心理学研究には、ある発達段階(幼少期、思 春期、成人期など)に注目して、異形の人々がそこで直面する心理的問題を検討するとい う共通点がある[Rumsey & Harcourt 2005]。これまでおもに指摘されてきた心理的問題 は、不安感や羞恥心などの否定的感情、自尊感情への悪影響、対面的相互行為の困難の 3 つに分類することができる。これらの先行研究は、異形の人々が過酷な心理的困難に直面