bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Diachronic Analysis of Cause-of-Death Terminology
Authors: Padiak Janet
Published: February 2016

Outmoded terminology, inconsistent usage of terms, and lack of specificity are routinely encountered in death records, making integration of past causes of death difficult. This article summarizes problems encountered during large-scale analysis of nineteenth-century causes of morbidity and mortality. Tuberculosis is likely the most problematic cause of death that is routinely encountered; the different manifestations of this disease, depending on which part of the body it infects, mean that it can have quite diverse pathologies, each accorded a separate term. Following this terminology, changes in tuberculosis among soldiers in the British army from 1830 to 1913 are investigated. Morbidity shows a large contribution by scrofula to the total tubercular diseases from 1830 to 1870. Phthisis, the pulmonary form of tuberculosis, dominates mortality.
Introduction
Authors: McCants Anne
Published: February 2016

One of the most vexing social debates of the late twentieth century in the industrialized West has centered on the complex of questions regarding the paid participation of women in the labor force. Which women engage in paid work, and for what reasons? For how many hours in a week, or weeks in a year, do they work for wages? What kind of work is it appropriate for women to do or, as some would ask, are they even capable of performing? How should the compensation for that work be established or evaluated? Joyce Burnette–s book Gender, Work, and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain is an important contribution to the growing body of scholarship that seeks historical answers to these questions. In this roundtable discussion three historians and two economists respond both to Burnette’s book and to the larger scholarly debates about the nature of women’s work in the past. The themes that have most piqued the interest of these respondents lie primarily along three lines: the problem of evaluating the relative strength of male and female labor, and the importance of strength to wage setting; the struggle to properly define power relationships, either between men and women in the household or workplace or between owners of capital and sellers of labor; and the problem of the thinness or thickness of markets or, more specifically, the problem of limited female mobility.
Strength and Power in the Industrial Revolution
Authors: Goldin Claudia
Published: February 2016

Joyce Burnette's (2008) book investigates why women earned lower wages and had different occupations than men during the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Of more relevance in the present is why women often have lower earnings than and work in different occupations from men today. The answers from the past and present have some similarity, but the differences are considerably greater. The world of “brawn” jobs was transformed by technological change and sectoral shifts into a world of “brain” jobs. I will first address the question posed in the book and will end with that concerning today.
The Gender Gap in Wages
Authors: Humphries Jane
Published: February 2016

Explanations of the gender pay gap and related labor market segregation remain fiercely debated. On the one side are those economic historians who take a primarily neoclassical view, in which competition among workers and employers eliminates wage differences that do not reflect productivity and occupational segregation that is not the outcome of choice. Persistent discrimination must reflect anticompetitive institutions, for instance, trade unions. A corollary of the neoclassical perspective is that markets are liberating, freeing agents, including women, from cultural stereotypes and ensuring that they get paid what they are worth, although of course this need not imply wage equality if there are gender differences in productivity. On the other side are those cultural historians who interpret wage differences as reflecting custom and, as far as women are concerned, the cultural deprecation of women's work, while occupational segregation represents gender stereotypes of fit work for women. In this view, socially and culturally constructed gender identities can influence market outcomes, producing discrimination in wages and work that persists even in the face of competitive forces.
Rail Transport, Agrarian Crisis, and the Restructuring of Agriculture
Authors: Schwartz Robert M.
Published: February 2016

During the late nineteenth century the transport revolution and growing agricultural output, especially in North America, engendered an agrarian crisis (1878–96) when intensifying international competition in foodstuffs led to dramatic price declines, particularly in wheat and other cereals. This comparative study of the process in Britain and France examines regional and local patterns of rural change in relation to the expansion of railways, the agrarian crisis, and the responses to the crisis by the governments and farmers of the two countries. Using spatial statistics and geographically weighted regression (GWR) to identify spatially varying relationships, it offers a new approach and results. Case studies of Dorset County in England and the Allier Department in France show that railways facilitated the shift from cereal production to livestock and dairy farming during the era of agrarian crisis. In Dorset the analysis using GWR provides an explanation for patterns of the agricultural depression that a pioneering article identified but could not explain and thus illustrates the promise of blending narrative and spatial history. Further, it argues that in France railway expansion and the construction of a secondary network reduced regional disparities in rail service and likely in agricultural productivity, too. More broadly, it concludes that the differing political economies of Britain and France led to different trade and railway policies during the crisis and to different agrarian outcomes in which agricultural productivity declined in Britain and improved in France.
The Public Sphere in the Field of Power
Authors: Calhoun Craig
Published: February 2016

In this article I ask (1) whether the ways in which the early bourgeois public sphere was structured—precisely by exclusion—are instructive for considering its later development, (2) how a consideration of the social foundations of public life calls into question abstract formulations of it as an escape from social determination into a realm of discursive reason, (3) to what extent “counterpublics” may offer useful accommodations to failures of larger public spheres without necessarily becoming completely attractive alternatives, and (4) to what extent considering the organization of the public sphere as a field might prove helpful in analyzing differentiated publics, rather than thinking of them simply as parallel but each based on discrete conditions. These considerations are informed by an account of the way that the public sphere developed as a concrete ideal and an object of struggle in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Britain.
Pragmatic Sociology and the Public Sphere
Authors: Abbott Andrew
Published: February 2016

This article examines the public sphere in early-twentieth-century America via a study of Charles Richmond Henderson, Chicago reformer and sociology professor. It discusses Henderson’s broad visibility, from religious and university venues, through the club and voluntary association world, and into the professions and government. It examines the relations between this archipelago of reform venues and the intimate sphere of family and religion as well as the separation of the world of Protestant reform from both the Catholic and the immigrant publics. Finally, it examines Henderson’s own experience of his public role, showing how his religious understanding yoked objectivity and advocacy into a single concept of reform knowledge-driven reform.
Anti-Irish Job Discrimination circa 1880
Authors: Eckard E. Woodrow
Published: February 2016

Historians have generally presumed that Irish immigrants in the late nineteenth century suffered from ethnic job discrimination. However, empirical scholarship reports conflicting evidence. The present article presents new evidence on the issue based on data from Major League Baseball circa 1880. These data are unique in that “firms” (teams) and individual “employees” (players) can be identified along with “job assignments” (positions played) and “performance” (e.g., batting averages). Linking the players' names with U.S. census enumeration records allows relatively accurate identification of ethnicity. I test various hypotheses derived from Gary S. Becker's economic theory of discrimination. The main results are that Irish players outperformed non-Irish players both on average and at the margin, were (generally) relegated to less central positions in the field, were more often required to fill in at nonregular positions, and were less likely to be hired as managers. In addition, the proportion of Irish on ball clubs and in their host cities was positively correlated, and team win percentage had a (weak) positive correlation with the team's proportion of Irish. Overall, the results generally support anti-Irish discrimination against skilled workers in this highly visible, albeit small, “industry.”
Resisting Redemption
Authors: Hogan Richard
Published: February 2016

Analysis of the Republican Party popular vote in Georgia county congressional elections of 1876 suggests that Charles Tilly's (1978) model of interest-based collective action would be useful if embedded in the dynamic model of political processes and mechanisms that Tilly (2007) proposes. Specifically, class (petit bourgeois), status (black), and party (liberal Republican) interests explain 25 percent of the variance in the election returns. Adding a racial-change variable increases the explained variance to 32 percent but fails to distinguish the yeoman and freedman constituencies and the process through which the Democratic Redeemers divided and conquered the opposition in the process of “de-democratization” (ibid.). By embedding the structural analysis in the analysis of process (quantitatively and qualitatively), we can appreciate how yeoman and freedman constituencies experienced contract/convict labor differently and expressed opposition to Redeemers in qualitatively different ways, ultimately facilitating divide-and-conquer efforts.
Lotta Lemmata
Authors: Coelho Philip R. P. , McClure James E.
Published: February 2016

We quantify the increasing use of complex mathematics and show that the increase is unique to economics in the social sciences. Donald F. Gordon hypothesized that mathematics in economics would most likely be useful in manipulating long chains of relationships, precisely in the instances where the theory was least likely to be valid. Time bedevils long chains of economic reasoning, because the ceteris paribus assumption requires the stability of all links. We find that the rate of hypothesis testing in articles citing mathematically complex articles is less than 2 percent and summarize a variety of tests and other evidence that supports Gordon’s hypothesis. A major factor in the rise in mathematical complexity may be the decline in comments, replies, and rejoinders debating earlier publications; the decline has been rapid, as editors have become increasingly “hostile” toward perspectives other than the ones they have previously published. We conclude by emphasizing that (1) prominent journals in economics are devoting more space to mathematically complex articles despite their inconsequential operational harvest; (2) the “appropriate” balance between mathematical complexity and operationalism, as well as the relative merits of “stylized facts” versus observational reality, should be considered in editorial decision making; and, finally, (3) the academic debate that addresses empirical replication and verification, the appropriateness of model formulation, and the crucial matters of history and circumstance, which are the measures of all research in the social sciences, is vital.
Economic History in Departments of Economics
Authors: Mitch David
Published: February 2016

Since the emergence of distinctive social science disciplines in American universities in the late nineteenth century, there have been recurring tensions over whether history should be practiced within or pursued separately from particular social science disciplines. This study considers this issue for the case of economic history in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. Economic history was active as an inter-disciplinary field throughout the twentieth century, and it had a substantial presence throughout the twentieth century at Chicago, in one of the world’s leading economics departments. This study focuses on how economic historians and economists at Chicago have conceived of the relationship between economic history and economics over the past century. It argues that a key set of tensions has been, on the one hand, developing a conception of the economy that is subject to historical forces yet, on the other hand, allowing adequate scope for employing the tools of economics.
Introduction to Historical GIS and the Study of Urban History
Authors: DeBats Donald A. , Gregory Ian N.
Published: February 2016

Over the past decade or so geographic information systems (GIS) methodology has become an accepted tool in historical research (Gregory and Ell 2007; Knowles 2008). Although often regarded as a mapping tool, GIS is perhaps better thought of as a type of database. What makes a GIS database unique is that a location is stored for each item of data, with this location taking any of a variety of forms: a point, a line, a polygon representing an area or zone, or, in the case of a raster system, a pixel. GIS can then present instantly on the screen a map showing the distribution of any variable or combination of variables in any of the chosen locational formats. This electronic display of information becomes an analytic tool, allowing the refinement of research questions, with answers displayed instantly: GIS creates a display of information once visible only in paper form, drawn slowly and expensively first by cartographers and then by vector plotters. GIS and its associated tools transform mapping into a dynamic exploratory process.
Did Segregation Increase as the City Expanded?
Authors: Gilliland Jason A. , Olson Sherry H. , Gauvreau Danielle
Published: February 2016

Montreal in 1881 was highly segregated along four distinct social dimensions: language, religion, socioeconomic status, and sector of employment. By 1901 the population had doubled, and we examine changes in residential distributions over the two decades. Despite the increased integration of certain groups, segregation remains high, and multiple dimensions are still discernible. In addition to long-established communities of French Canadians, Irish Catholics, and Anglo-Protestants, we see new streams of immigrants occupying their own patches in the urban fabric. To make meaningful observations of sociospatial changes over two decades, we used a geographic information system (GIS) to situate individual census households with spatial precision on 1 of 12,000 lots in 1881 and 30,000 in 1901, so that we could reaggregate them into meaningful districts of different scales and districts with identical boundaries for both years of observation, thereby overcoming the major methodological problems hindering previous comparative analyses. Coupling well-established statistical indexes of segregation and diversity in a GIS framework lends new analytic power to grasp the scale of phenomena and inquire into behavioral choices of nineteenth-century households. The empirical evidence shows how both concentration and diversity were built into the urban fabric. This study also offers methodological cues for comparative studies in other places and periods.
Political Consequences of Spatial Organization
Authors: DeBats Donald A.
Published: February 2016

The unique feature of geographic information systems (GIS) and other forms of historical data visualization is the capacity to hold and display large amounts of data associated with spatial reference points. This software can display all data for a given point, a single variable for all points, or, most important, any combination of variables across all reference points. In doing so, these systems bring to the screen instantly and cheaply a display of information once visible only in paper form, drawn slowly and expensively, first by cartographers and then by vector plotters. This project deploys GIS to help us understand the intersection of social and political life in nineteenth-century Alexandria, Virginia, and Newport, Kentucky—medium-sized cities with populations under 20,000. Commercial Alexandria, with a race-based labor system, and industrial Newport, with an immigrant labor system, present an analytically useful mix of commonalities and differences.
Suited for Service
Authors: Branch Enobong Hannah , Wooten Melissa E.
Published: February 2016

From the early 1800s through the 1920s the image of the ideal domestic servant varied dramatically—native white women, European immigrant women, and black women. However, at all times the racial/ethnic identity of the domestic servant played a critical role. The transition from the casualness of “help” to the formality of the “domestic servant” relationship marked the historical moment in which a subordinate racial identity became a precondition of servanthood. The semantic change from help or hired girl to domestic servant reflected a more fundamental change in the nature, organization, and expectation of the work role. Using a comparative-historical approach, we provide a sociological analysis of how shifting labor patterns and societal demands led to the decline of help, the rise of domestic service, and the centrality of a racialized identity to the performance of household work during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Transitions in Gender Ratios among International Migrants, 1820–1930
Authors: Gabaccia Donna , Zanoni Elizabeth
Published: February 2016

This article uses international migration flow (entry and exit) data as compiled by Walter Willcox and Imre Ferenczi (1970 [1929]) for the years between 1820 and 1924 to discuss the timing and cause of a transition in gender ratios—from male-dominated to gender-balanced—among international migrants. The article compares gender ratios for international migrants at the national, regional, and global levels and identifies when and how migration patterns to the United States resembled those to other parts of the world. Historical variations in gender ratios were considerable enough to render problematic the frequently used label “male-dominated” when applied to past migrations. The article discusses past cases of gender-balanced and female-predominant migrations and proposes an alternative typology for distinguishing among differently gendered international migrations. While some scholarly and popular sources depict the feminization of international migration as a recent phenomenon, historical data suggest that the convergence toward gender-balanced migrations began in the first half of the twentieth century. The article concludes by addressing contemporary debates over globalization and migration and cautions scholars against equating increased female mobility with egalitarian gender relations.
“Money Is Not Everything and That’s the Bottom Line”
Authors: Leinonen Johanna
Published: February 2016

This article highlights and fills gaps in research on migrant elites, traditionally defined as highly educated or professional migrants. The research on elite migrants has often suffered from methodological individualism: elite migrants are depicted as male professionals who shuttle from one work assignment or country to another, unrestricted by family relationships or national borders. My research shows the important role of marriage and family ties in life decisions of elite migrants, who in migration statistics and scholarly discussions appear merely as professionals, highly educated persons, or students. I also contribute to the recent literature that challenges the common assumption that migration is a unidirectional movement from one place to another initiated by a single motive, work or family. My research shows that in reality, for both women and men, multiple motives and multidirectional movements are often involved. Furthermore, my research highlights how elite migrants’ high social status does not necessarily guarantee privileged treatment by the host society or that elite migrants feel a part of the society in which they live. I use international marriages between Finns and Americans in Finland and the United States as a case study. I base my analysis on the 74 interviews that I conducted with American migrants and their Finnish spouses living in the capital region of Finland, in or near Helsinki, and with Finnish migrants married to US citizens and living in the state of Minnesota. In addition, I use responses to an online survey of American-born people who were living in Finland in 2008. I received 106 responses to the survey.
Explaining Pathways to Armed Activism in the Provisional Irish Republican Army, 1969–1972
Authors: Bosi Lorenzo
Published: February 2016

In this article three pathways into armed activism are identified among those who joined the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) in Northern Ireland between 1969 and 1972. The accounts of former volunteers generally suggest that for those who were already involved in the Republican movement before 1969, a trajectory of mobilization emerged because of the long-standing counterhegemonic consciousness present in their homes, which in turn strongly influenced them as committed Republican militants. For those who joined after 1969 and had previously been involved in other political activities, mobilization was a result of a particular transformative event that triggered the belief that armed struggle was the only approach capable of bringing change in the new sociopolitical situation of the time. For the majority, that is, those who joined after 1969 at a very young age without any previous involvement in organized networks of activism, it began as a more abruptly acquired sense of obligation to defend their own community and retaliate against the Northern Ireland establishment, the Loyalists, and the British army. Overall, the accounts of former volunteers generally suggest that Republican volunteers were fighting first and foremost to reclaim dignity, build honor, and instill a sense of pride in themselves and their community through armed activism. In these terms, the choice of joining the PIRA was justified not as a mere reproduction of an ideological alignment to the traditional Republican aim of achieving Irish reunification but as part of a recognition struggle. At an analytic level, this article illustrates the utility of a multimechanisms interpretative framework. And it contributes to broadening the empirical basis by presenting and analyzing a series of 25 semistructured interviews with former PIRA volunteers.
Political Radicalization and Political Violence in Palestine (1920–1948), Ireland (1850–1921), and Cyprus (1914–1959)
Authors: Demetriou Chares
Published: February 2016

The connection between political radicalization and political violence is often thought to follow “organic stages.” That is, radicalization is considered to be a progression leading to violence, after which time radicalization and violence evolve together dialectically. This ideal-typical process does correspond to historical evidence, and this article presents such evidence from the political contention in Palestine during the Mandate period. However, other historical evidence points to deviations from this ideal type. Evidence from political contention in pre-1921 Ireland and in pre-1960 Cyprus suggests two forms of such deviations. Irish history suggests that violence may be effectively introduced by political forces that at an earlier stage had not been part of the process of political contention at large; Cypriot history suggests that violence may be introduced through forces that were autonomous from the ongoing process of political contention even though organizationally part of it. The historical comparison at hand, furthermore, points to the increased role of historical contingency in the instances where the relation between political radicalization and political violence deviates from the ideal-typical form.
The End of “Historical-Ideological Bedazzlement”
Authors: Tokić Mate Nikola
Published: February 2016

Of the myriad terrorist organizations that emerged in the late 1960s and the 1970s, those supporting the destruction of socialist Yugoslavia and the establishment of an independent Croatia were among the most active. This article explores the geopolitical context behind the radicalization of certain segments of the émigré Croatian population in the three decades following World War II and the processes that led them to adopt terrorism as an acceptable form of political expression. Specifically, it examines how changes in the realities of the Cold War political landscape during the 1960s and 1970s directly shaped the strategies of Croatian separatist groups outside Yugoslavia. These developments led Croatian radicals to cultivate a culture of abandonment, betrayal, and persecution, in which the Croats were portrayed as a nation of victims without allies. This helped precipitate a radicalization of the separatist movement, as many within the Croatian diaspora were increasingly convinced that only “self-initiated action”—that is, political violence and terrorism—could hasten the establishment of an independent Croatian state. Difficulties in dealing with the realities of Cold War international politics also led to the emergence of significant cleavages and conflicts within the émigré separatist movement, which further helped frame the processes of strategic thinking among radical activists. Drawing evidence from state archives and the political writings of radical émigré Croatian separatist organizations, the article traces the trajectory of radical Croatian separatists from staunch supporters of the West to desperate and disillusioned advocates of realpolitik thinking.
Studying Urban Space and Literary Representations Using GIS
Authors: Alves Daniel , Queiroz Ana Isabel
Published: February 2016

This article proposes a methodology to address the urban evolutionary process, demonstrating how it is reflected in literature. It focuses on “literary space,” presented as a territory defined by the period setting or as evoked by the characters, which can be georeferenced and drawn on a map. It identifies the different locations of literary space in relation to urban development and the economic, political, and social context of the city. We suggest a new approach for mapping a relatively comprehensive body of literature by combining literary criticism, urban history, and geographic information systems (GIS). The home-range concept, used in animal ecology, has been adapted to reveal the size and location of literary space. This interdisciplinary methodology is applied in a case study to nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels involving the city of Lisbon. The developing concepts of cumulative literary space and common literary space introduce size calculations in addition to location and structure, previously developed by other researchers. Sequential and overlapping analyses of literary space throughout time have the advantage of presenting comparable and repeatable results for other researchers using a different body of literary works or studying another city. Results show how city changes shaped perceptions of the urban space as it was lived and experienced. A small core area, correspondent to a part of the city center, persists as literary space in all the novels analyzed. Furthermore, the literary space does not match the urban evolution. There is a time lag for embedding new urbanized areas in the imagined literary scenario.
Not Simply Black and White
Authors: Dale Elizabeth
Published: February 2016

On 6 February 1888, Mathias Busch was arrested in Chicago for the murder of his wife, Katherine. About four that afternoon, Busch, a beer peddler, walked in to the kitchen of their home, picked up a butcher knife, and, after repeatedly slashing at his wife, cut her throat. Several people were in and about the house at the time; some grabbed and restrained Busch until the police arrived.

Busch's crime made the front pages of Chicago's evening papers the day of the murder, and coverage continued until his trial in April. City papers competed to condemn both crime and criminal; one local socialist paper, theChicago Labor Enquirer, offered the most novel interpretation of the crime, arguing that those who scabbed( as Busch apparently had in a recent strike) could be expected to murder their wives.
Estimating the Accuracy of Historic Homicide Rates
Authors: Monkkonen Eric H.
Published: February 2016

Even though it declined in the last decade of the twentieth century, homicide remains anAmerican problem of extraordinary importance. Yet our empirical knowledge is remarkably shortsighted. Simply put, most researchers focus on the past decade or two—usually for reasons having to do with convenience, not theory—and ignore the longer term. However, recent work has shown that past lethality is inherently recoverable, and that there is every reason to expect that comparable homicide rates across time and place should be used to set current research in context (Gurr 1981; Johnson and Monkkonen 1996; Ylkiangas forthcoming; Eisner 2000).This paper builds on some of my recent research and responds to the challenge of a recent paper by Douglas Eckberg (1998), who has shown that not only can we recover the past, but that we can even estimate missing data counts.
Getting away with Murder?
Authors: Emmerichs Mary Beth
Published: February 2016

The contentions in this paper arose tangentially from a study of London coroners I began in the summer of 1998. I had intended to examine the verdicts from nineteenth-century coroners’ courts in order to assess the differences in verdicts that might arise depending on whether the coroner was a doctor, a lawyer, or neither. Was a physician more likely to detect murder as a cause of death than a lawyer or a “civilian?” Instead, as I read hundreds of inquest reports and explored the history of the coroners’ courts, I began to realize that no matter who the coroners were, it was rare for any of them to bring in a verdict of “wilful murder,” even in cases that seemed very suspicious to me.
Child Murder in New England
Authors: Roth Randolph
Published: February 2016

Historians often despair of their ability to write histories of child murder, because the crime was easy to commit and conceal. Even today, coroners can determine only in rare instances whether a deceased infant or newborn was suffocated or died of natural causes (Knight 1996: 441–44, 345–60). No reliable test can determine, once decomposition has begun, whether a deceased newborn ever took a breath; and suffocation, unlike strangulation, leaves no physical marks, unless excessive pressure is applied to the face or lips. A murderer needed but a few moments to smother a child and could claim that the child was stillborn, had been accidentally overlain, or had died from natural causes. Unwanted pregnancies could be kept from public notice with the help of family or friends, especially pregnancies that came to term in late winter or early spring, when expectant mothers could live quietly out of the public eye or stay wrapped in heavy clothing. In New England, a large proportion of suspected neonaticides—nearly a quarter—occurred in April or early May, “mud season” in the Yankee vernacular,when people emerged from their long winter “hibernation.”
Familiar Strangers
Authors: Baskerville Peter
Published: February 2016

Much has been written about boarding and lodging in late-nineteenthcentury North America. Modell and Hareven 1977 provides a benchmark study of boarding in East Coast urban centers in the United States. For Canada, Medjuck 1980; Katz 1975; Katz et al. 1982; Harney 1978; Bradbury 1984, 1993; and Harris 1992, 1994, and 1996 shed light on aspects of boarding in various Canadian urban communities from the 1850s to the 1950s. In general these studies emphasize the importance of family cycles and economic circumstance for an understanding of the boarding process (see also Robinson 1993; Shergold 1982). Some point to the similarity in social and class background of boarders and boardinghouse keepers (Harney 1978;Medjuck 1980; Modell and Hareven 1977; Harris 1992). Literature on boardinghouse keeping has focused generally, however, on the economic rather than the social or cultural importance of boarding. Even when cultural implications are explored, the unit of analysis is that of community or region or, as in the literature on the acculturation of newcomers, on sojourners and immigrants only
Sociohistorical and Demographic Perspectives on U.S. Remarriage in 1910
Authors: Elman Cheryl , London Andrew S.
Published: February 2016

Many scholars have noted the theoretical importance of remarriage in twentieth-century American life (Burch 1995; Cherlin 1998; Furstenberg 1980; Glick 1980; Thornton 1977; Uhlenberg and Chew 1986), yet few historical studies have examined remarriage in the United States empirically. This gap in the literature is noteworthy for two reasons. First, the turn of the twentieth century seems to have marked a crossover in the remarriage transition of the United States, reflecting changes in the pool of persons eligible to remarry. This transition was characterized by decreases in remarriage resulting from declines inmortality and probability of widow(er)hood, followed by increases in remarriage resulting from higher divorce rates. The crossover in the transition was likely to have occurred when the pool of eligibles was at or near its nadir. Second, there is ongoing debate about the implications of remarriage for families and individuals (Booth and Dunn 1994), and about the impacts of remarriage on family functions (Cherlin 1978; Cherlin and Furstenberg 1994). In the light of these considerations, we believe it is important to examine remarriage and its consequences in the United States at the turn of the century so that we may better understand the ways that remarriage influences family life and shapes the life course of persons within families (see London and Elman 2001).
Sociability and Gendered Spheres
Authors: Macdonald Cameron Lynne , Hansen Karen V.
Published: February 2016

In her diary entry of 24 December 1862, Harriet Anne Severance, a domestic worker, detailed the activity surrounding the seasonal slaughter of hogs: “ It has been grease, grease all day, the hog is most taken care of. Henry,Meroa & I got started forMr. Henry’s this afternoon,Wells came after Henry overtook us at Uncle Chester’s, took him home with him, & Meroa and I went on had a good visit, & we have been to Mr. Child’s this evening.” While her day was unusually busy, it was not unusual in the way that it intertwined the lives of many people, men and women included.
Informers and Their Social Networks in Eighteenth-Century London
Authors: Warner Jessica , Ivis Frank
Published: February 2016

The informer’s particular contribution was to pollute the public well, to poison social life in general, to destroy the very possibility of a community; for the informer operates on the principle of betrayal and a community survives on the principle of trust. (Navasky 1981)

An intervention that rewards informers creates enormous stresses within the community that it targets, forcing each of its members to choose among three possible careers or alliances: solidarity with the larger community, collaboration with other informers, and membership in neither group (this last career is reserved for informers whowork on their own).
Aid to Sharecroppers
Authors: Southworth Caleb
Published: February 2016

When social scientists enumerate the reasons behind the vast expansion of the U.S. welfare state during the New Deal, they commonly cite pressure from unemployed workers, the Keynesian ideology of Roosevelt's policy advisors, and the political compromise between southern congressionalDixiecrats and northern Democrats which enabled the programs that extended relief to the needy (Schlesinger 1958; Conkin 1967: chap. 3; Alston and Ferrie 1985; Goldfield 1989; Kimeldorf and Stepan-Norris 1992; Alston and Ferrie 1993; Quadagno 1994: 20–22; Fleck 1999a).While it is uncontroversial that the working class played some part in the formation of New Deal policy, it would seem that American farmers, particularly the mostly black southern tenantry, had little or no direct role in the distribution of federal relief.
Fear and Loathing in Paris
Authors: Cowans Jon
Published: February 2016

In 1978, some 40 years after the practice of opinion polling first arrived in France, the country’s newspapers and magazines informed their readers that 76% of the French approved of Charles de Gaulle’s role in World War II, that 77% did not consider the pope’s moral instructions binding, that 83% never participated in winter sports, and that 36% thought Michel Rocard would be a good finance minister. Anyone who could not remember those findings for long might be forgiven, for they were but drops in an ocean of polling data, a tidal wave of information that swept over France each year. For many, this onslaught of polling data is deeply disturbing, given their belief that opinion polls have undermined elected representatives’ ability to use their judgment in making political decisions and have silenced other, more authentic expressions of popular opinion (for example, see Champagne 1990). Even those who welcomedles sondages d’opinionas a new means of bringing the people’s voice into arenas of power might still have felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of them published in France by that time–well over 500 in a typical year, according to one 1984 estimate–and many began to characterize the country’s apparently insatiable appetite for polls assondomanie, or “poll mania” ( Jaffré 1985). Perhaps it was only to be expected that France, one of the pioneers in the creation of modern democracy, would be among the countriesmost interested in using polls to proclaim the will of the people to the humble and the powerful alike.
Downtown, Uptown, Out of Town
Authors: Borchert James , Borchert Susan
Published: February 2016

In a recentNew York Timesarticle, Robert Sharoff reported on “a throwback to the early years of the 20th century when wealthy Chicago families tended to live in such close-in neighborhoods as Prairie Avenue and theGold Coast.” For the past five years, wealthy Chicagoans have been constructing “palatial residences of at least 6,000 square feet” in the Lincoln Park neighborhood a mile and one-half north of the Loop (Sharoff 2000: 36). This “return” of the well-to-do to the city contradicts traditional urban theories on elite residential patterns; the preponderance of these theories projects the upper class universally and continuously seeking the metropolitan fringe for new homes, more and open land, and/or lower density (Burgess 1925; Hoyt 1939; Alonso 1964; Adams 1987; Downs 1981; Luger 1996; Lowry 1960; Hartshorn and Muller 1989; and Knox 1994).These theories, as well as the notion of the recent return of the upper class to the city, mask a long history of continuing elite residence within some cities as well as considerable diversity in upper-class residence patterns and landscapes among cities.
Beyond Designed Capture
Authors: Welsh Michael M.
Published: February 2016

There is a conventional wisdom about the origin of public range management in the American west that draws most of its evidence logically, but nevertheless circumstantially, from decades of subsequent policy. It is shared by advocates across the political spectrum, from conservative elected officials and ranchers to radical environmentalists. That conventional wisdom distracts the many individuals who have attempted to understand range policy, and it hampers recent attempts at range policy reform. Narrowly, the conventional wisdom concludes that the institutionalized management privilege of cattle ranchersover all other users—thecaptureof range management—was according to the design of the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934. In so concluding, the conventional wisdom contributes to the more general idea that forces are at work to make the colonization of a policy area by a particular interest the inevitable result of politics in a liberal democracy.
Financing a Second Era of Internal Improvements
Authors: Higgens-Evenson R. Rudy
Published: February 2016

The year was 1915, and Edwin R. A. Seligman had a problem.He was not preoccupied with the battle for woman suffrage, which women would win in his state of New York just two years later. Nor was he immediately concerned with the war in Europe, which would soon involve the United States. Nor yet was he worried about hordes of immigrants, the labor question, or the regulation of big business. Those larger issues in the political history of the Progressive Era concerned him, but his immediate problem was both far more mundane and far more fundamental: How could the State of New York keep paying its bills?
The End of Midterm Decline?
Authors: Renda Lex
Published: February 2016

Variations in the loss of seats in the House of Representatives by the president's party in midterm elections between 1854 and 1998 are analyzed from a historical perspective. Whereas in the latter three-fourths of the nineteenth century the president's party lost, on average, 22% of its share of House seats, in the twentieth century the average loss was 13%. Using district-level data, the author attributes the problematization of “midterm decline” to the growing power of incumbency (a consequence of the development of the Australian ballot), the decline in the number of partisanly competitive districts in open-seat elections, and the limitation, since 1912, of the size of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Explaining Equalization
Authors: Svensson Lars
Published: February 2016

This article describes and explains the movement of female relative wages in Sweden from 1920 to 1995. During this period the aggregate gender wage gap shrunk from 41 to 15%. The bulk of the change took place in two periods: 1920 to 1940 and 1960 to 1980. With regard to determining factors, the analysis distinguishes between the period before 1960, when the rise in the female relative wage was the result of employment shifts, and after 1960, when wage structure change was the prime determinant. In the interwar period, women moved from low-paid to better-paid jobs, notably in trade and commerce and public services, as legal and administrative reforms opened up the public sector to women and educational reforms raised the educational level of the female labor force. The most rapid change in the gender wage gap occurred at a time when the solidaristic wage policy doctrine was embraced by the blue-collar trade unions and formed the basis of claims in wage negotiations. This study suggests, however, that excess demand for female labor rather than egalitarian ambitions of strong trade unions was the decisive factor behind the rapid reduction of the gender gap. Likewise, supply and demand shifts may well explain why the female relative wage stagnated from the late 1970s. These observations add up to the somewhat unorthodox conclusion that institutions were of primary importance for female relative wage development in the interwar period, while market forces played the leading role after 1960.
Embedding the Colonial State
Authors: Lange Matthew
Published: February 2016

This article explains Mauritius’s exceptional state building and development during late colonialism as the product of a conjuncture of two separately determined historical processes. The first causal chain involves the creation of a bureaucratic state, which was built over two centuries of French and British colonial rule. The second main causal path concerns the development of a society with dense associational ties. This process was set into motion by land distribution that occurred in the late nineteenth century and resulted in the emergence of several villages of small landholders. The essay argues that a prolonged period of labor riots beginning in the late 1930s and the more interventionist policy of the British government after World War II combined to initiate a “critical-juncture period” that increased relations between state and societal actors. This increased embeddedness made possible state-society synergy, which promoted broad-based development by engaging and strengthening both state institutions and societal associations, thereby endowing Mauritius with the institutions necessary for broad-based development after colonial independence as well.
Stephen Skowronek’s Building a New American State and the Origins of American Political Development
Authors: Zelizer Julian E.
Published: February 2016

This roundtable celebrates the twentieth anniversary of Stephen Skowronek’s Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (1982). Skowronek’s book introduced scholars to the emerging field of historical institutionalism, offering an interdisciplinary approach to analyzing government and public policy. Tackling three different policy areas, the book offered a pathbreaking examination of institutional development and a treatment of political actors that moved beyond standard accounts of elites who responded only to societal or corporate demands. Building a New American State demonstrated how politics could be understood only historically, since current conditions were layered over preexisting institutions. Through this book, Skowronek became one of those rare authors able to influence scholarship in several academic fields. The theoretical and substantive insights of his book influenced the first and second generations of scholars who built the field of American Political Development, using historical data to examine how institutions structured politics over long periods of time and how policies reconfigured politics. This roundtable explores how this classic book affected the study of government in the disciplines of political science, history, and sociology. The authors discuss ways each discipline developed a distinct version of American Political Development. The roundtable also explores how the interdisciplinary project of historical institutionalism has evolved since the early 1980s and new directions in which the field might go.
Rereading Skowronek
Authors: Clemens Elisabeth S.
Published: February 2016

Although American Political Development is one of the more sociological corners of political science, for the most part sociologists have not been attuned to its contributions. Even among historical sociologists, the central conversations have been motivated by classic questions about transitions to capitalism and revolution in Europe rather than by puzzles of American exceptionalism.Much of political sociology has focused on individual voting behavior and public opinion; social movements research focuses heavily on the most recent decades in American history. Consequently, a review of the impact of Stephen Skowronek’sBuilding a New American Statewithin sociology reveals a sharply delimited set of direct influences beyond the research already well known to scholars in American Political Development, largely the work of Theda Skocpol (1992) and her many students and collaborators (e.g., Orloff and Skocpol 1984). A rereading, by contrast, highlights the importance of the book for contemporary discussions of the forms and processes of institutional change.