bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Not by Productivity Alone: How Visibility and Specialization Contribute to Academic Earnings
Authors: Leahey Erin
Published: January 2010

The popular adage “publish or perish” has long defined individual career strategies as well as scholarly investigations of earnings inequality in academe, as researchers have relied heavily on research productivity to explain earnings inequality among faculty members. Academia, however, has changed dramatically in the last few decades: it has become larger and more demographically diverse, and fears of overspecialization prompt calls for interdisciplinary approaches. In this new environment, other factors, in addition to productivity, are likely relevant to our understanding of earnings differentials. In this article, I assess whether two additional factors—visibility and the extent of research specialization—contribute to men's earning advantage. Using probability samples of tenure-track academics in two disciplines, a variety of data sources, and innovative measures, I find that both factors are highly relevant to the process by which earnings are determined. Women earn less than men largely because they specialize less. Lower levels of specialization hinder productivity, productivity enhances visibility, and visibility has a direct, positive, and significant effect on salary. I discuss the practical implications of these findings and lay the foundation for a broader theory of the role of research specialization in work processes.
Labor Unions and Good Governance: A Cross-National, Comparative Analysis
Authors: Lee Cheol-Sung
Published: January 2010

Using network-based measures of unions' centrality among civic associations, this article builds and tests a theoretical framework that highlights labor unions' central role in enhancing governance. I first construct three measures to capture the connectedness and power of representative voluntary civic associations, membership density, degree centrality (comemberships), and power centrality, based on the affiliation network matrices for 54 countries, using the latest World Values Survey. I then test the key argument that unions' power centrality has significant positive effects on governance, controlling for general socioeconomic and international factors. The findings from standard statistical analyses, as well as from comparative case studies of affiliation networks, support my claims that union-centered or union-linked civic mobilization achieves a balance of class power not only in civil society, but also within state institutions, strengthening reformist parties and policy makers. This article also suggests that this power shift in the state power structure leads to better governance. I highlight the role of labor-based organizations in making governments effective and responsible, and I bring the bottom-up process of civic mobilization and social accountability back into the discussion of social capital and governance.
Religious Persecution in Cross-National Context: Clashing Civilizations or Regulated Religious Economies?
Authors: Grim Brian J. , Finke Roger
Published: January 2010

Despite the high visibility of religiously charged international social conflicts, the unique role of religion often is overlooked in social science research and theory. Some studies ignore religion, others conflate religion with other identities. Virtually all lack adequate data. We respond to these deficiencies by testing a theory-driven model of a particular form of social conflict, religious persecution. We investigate the proposition that religious regulation leads to religious persecution. Using measures coded from the 2003 International Religious Freedom Reports, we consider how both social regulation and government regulation of religion in 143 countries affect the level of religious persecution. We also consider and test competing hypotheses, particularly Huntington's clash-of-civilizations thesis. We find strong support for the religious economies arguments and only limited support for the clash-of-civilizations thesis and other competing arguments.
Block, Tract, and Levels of Aggregation: Neighborhood Structure and Crime and Disorder as a Case in Point
Authors: Hipp John R.
Published: January 2010

This article highlights the importance of considering the proper level of aggregation when estimating neighborhood effects. Using a unique nonrural subsample from a large national survey (the American Housing Survey) at three time points that allows placing respondents in blocks and census tracts, this study tests the appropriate level of aggregation of the structural characteristics hypothesized to affect block-level perceptions of crime and disorder. I find that structural characteristics differ in their effects based on the level of aggregation employed. While the effects of racial/ethnic heterogeneity are fairly robust to the geographical level of aggregation, the stronger effects, when measured at the level of the surrounding census tract, suggest more dispersed networks are important for perceived crime and disorder. In contrast, economic resources only show a localized effect when aggregating to the block-level and differ based on the outcome; higher average income reduces disorder but increases crime, most likely by increasing the number of attractive targets. Additionally, the presence of broken households has a localized effect for social disorder but a more diffuse effect for perceived crime. These findings suggest the need for neighborhood studies of crime rates, as well as the broader neighborhood effects literature, to consider the mechanisms involved when aggregating various structural characteristics.
Working for the Woman? Female Managers and the Gender Wage Gap
Authors: Cohen Philip N. , Huffman Matt L.
Published: January 2010

Most previous research on gender inequality and management has been concerned with the question of access to managerial jobs and the “glass ceiling.” We offer the first largescale analysis that turns this question around, asking whether the gender characteristics of managers-specifically, the gender composition and relative status of female managers-affect inequality for the nonmanagerial workers beneath them. Results from three-level hierarchical linear models, estimated on a unique nested data set drawn from the 2000 Census, suggest that greater representation of women in management does narrow the gender wage gap. Model predictions show, however, that the presence of high-status female managers has a much larger impact on gender wage inequality. We conclude that the promotion of women into management positions may benefit all women, but only if female managers reach relatively high-status positions.
Movement Framing and Discursive Opportunity Structures: The Political Successes of the U.S. Women's Jury Movements
Authors: McCammon Holly J. , Muse Courtney Sanders , Newman Harmony D. , Terrell Teresa M.
Published: January 2010

Collective actors typically attempt to bring about a change in law or policy by employing discursive tactics designed to convince key political decision-makers to alter policy, yet few systematic studies of the effects of social movement framing on political outcomes exist. We theorize that the cultural context in which framing takes place moderates the success of movement framing in winning changes in policy. We examine the efforts of organized women, during roughly the first half of the twentieth century, to convince lawmakers to broaden jury laws to give women the opportunity to sit on juries. To examine the combined effect of framing and the discursive opportunities provided by hegemonic legal principles, traditional gender beliefs, gendered political opportunities, opposition framing, and wartime, we use logistic regression. The findings provide substantial evidence that framing's influence is moderated by discursive elements in the broader context. Our results suggest that investigations of how citizen groups influence law and policy must take into account framing's important role and the ways in which the cultural context conditions framing's influence.
The Implications of Racial Misclassification by Observers
Authors: Campbell Mary E. , Troyer Lisa
Published: January 2010

We hypothesize that individuals who self-identify with one racial group but are routinely perceived by observers as “looking like” another racial group may experience negative outcomes associated with this stressful situation. Since American Indians experience very high rates of misclassification, we use them as our case in point. Drawing from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, our analyses compare young American Indian adults who are perceived as another race by an observer to those who are correctly classified, using several indicators of psychological distress: depression, suicidal thoughts, use of psychological counseling services, suicide attempts, and fatalism. We also investigate differences in racial attitudes and behaviors, such as belonging to an ethnic solidarity organization or believing it is important to have a committed relationship with someone of the same race. The evidence suggests that, onthe whole, misclassified American Indians have higher rates of psychological distress. We conclude by discussing our findings and their wider implications, especially in the context of an increasingly heterogeneous and multiracial society.
Corporate Demography and Income Inequality
Authors: Sorensen Jesper B. , Sorenson Olav
Published: January 2010

We examine the relationship between income inequality and corporate demography in regional labor markets and specify two mechanisms through which the number and diversity of employers in a labor market affect wage dispersion. Vertical differentiation, or variation in the ability of organizations of a particular kind to benefit from labor inputs, amplifies inequality through quality sorting, as the most productive employees in a particular domain pair with the most productive employers. Increasing horizontal differentiation—variation in the kinds of organizations—reduces inequality as individuals can more easily find firms interested in their distinctive attributes and talents. Our analysis of Danish census data provides support for each thesis. Increased numbers of organizations operating within an industry in a region, a proxy for vertical differentiation, increases wage dispersion in that industry-region. Variation in wages, however, declines with increased horizontal differentiation among employers; this is measured by the diversity of industries offering employment within a region and the variance in firm sizes in an industry-region.
Dynamics of Political Polarization
Authors: Baldassarri Delia , Bearman Peter
Published: January 2010

This article accounts for two puzzling paradoxes. The first paradox is the simultaneous absence and presence of attitude polarization—the fact that global attitude polarization is relatively rare, even though pundits describe it as common. The second paradox is the simultaneous presence and absence of social polarization—the fact that while individuals experience attitude homogeneity in their interpersonal networks, their networks are characterized by attitude heterogeneity. These paradoxes give rise to numerous scholarly arguments. By developing a formal model of interpersonal influence over attitudes in a context where individuals hold simultaneous positions on multiple issues, we show why these arguments are not mutually exclusive and how they meaningfully refer to the same social setting. The results from this model provide a single parsimonious account for both paradoxes. The framework we develop may be generalized to a wider array of problems, including classic problems in collective action.
Population Aging, Intracohort Aging, and Sociopolitical Attitudes
Authors: Danigelis Nicholas L. , Hardy Melissa , Cutler Stephen J.
Published: January 2010

Prevailing stereotypes of older people hold that their attitudes are inflexible or that aging tends to promote increasing conservatism in sociopolitical outlook. In spite of mounting scientific evidence demonstrating that learning, adaptation, and reassessment are behaviors in which older people can and do engage, the stereotype persists. We use U.S. General Social Survey data from 25 surveys between 1972 and 2004 to formally assess the magnitude and direction of changes in attitudes that occur within cohorts at different stages of the life course. We decompose changes in sociopolitical attitudes into the proportions attributable to cohort succession and intracohort aging for three categories of items: attitudes toward historically subordinate groups, civil liberties, and privacy. We find that significant intracohort change in attitudes occurs in cohorts-inlater- stages (age 60 and older) as well as cohorts-in-earlier-stages (ages 18 to 39), that the change for cohorts-in-later-stages is frequently greater than that for cohorts-inearlier-stages, and that the direction of change is most often toward increased tolerance rather than increased conservatism. These findings are discussed within the context of population aging and development.
Structure, Culture, and Community: The Search for Belonging in 50 Urban Communes
Authors: Vaisey Stephen
Published: January 2010

Driven by the popularity of social capital theories, the concept of community is enjoying a renaissance in sociology. Yet much research in this area relies on exclusively “structural” thinking, attributing group identification to mechanisms such as the arrangement of physical space, power relations, or high investment requirements. Often neglected is a strand of theory that attributes gemeinschaft to shared moral order and culture. Using data from the Urban Communes Project, this article directly tests the influence of both structural and cultural mechanisms in producing the experience of community. Although the results show that both structural and cultural mechanisms are positively correlated with gemeinschaft, they also confirm the existence of shared moral order as the most likely proximate mechanism for creating community in these groups. Analyses using fuzzy-set techniques illustrate how culture and structure combine to sustain-or inhibit-the experience of community.
Diversity in Everyday Discourse: The Cultural Ambiguities and Consequences of “Happy Talk”
Authors: Bell Joyce M. , Hartmann Douglas
Published: January 2010

Few words in the current American lexicon are as ubiquitous and ostensibly uplifting as diversity. The actual meanings and functions of the term, however, are difficult to pinpoint. In this article we use in-depth interviews conducted in four major metropolitan areas to explore popular conceptions of diversity. Although most Americans respond positively at first, our interviews reveal that their actual understandings are undeveloped and often contradictory. We highlight tensions between idealized conceptions and complicated realities of difference in social life, as well as the challenge of balancing group-based commitments against traditional individualist values. Respondents, we find, define diversity in abstract, universal terms even though most of their concrete references and experiences involve interactions with racial others. Even the most articulate and politically engaged respondents find it difficult to talk about inequality in the context of a conversation focused on diversity. Informed by critical theory, we situate these findings in the context of unseen privileges and normative presumptions of whiteness in mainstream U.S. culture. We use these findings and interpretations to elaborate on theories of the intersection of racism and colorblindness in the new millennium.
How Puerto Rico Became White: Boundary Dynamics and Intercensus Racial Reclassification
Authors: Loveman Mara , Muniz Jeronimo O.
Published: January 2010

According to official census results, the Puerto Rican population became significantly whiter in the first half of the twentieth century. Social scientists have long speculated about the source of this trend, but until now, available data did not permit competing hypotheses of Puerto Rico's whitening to be evaluated empirically. This article revisits the question of how Puerto Rico whitened using newly available Public Use Micro-Samples from the 1910 and 1920 U.S. Censuses of Puerto Rico. Demographic analysis reveals that racial reclassification between censuses generated a “surplus” of nearly 100,000 whites in the 1920 enumerated population. Previous studies of intercensus change in the racial composition of populations have demonstrated that racial reclassification occurs. Going beyond previous studies, we investigate empirically the underlying social mechanisms that fueled change in categorical membership. Reclassification between censuses may reflect the movement of individuals across racial boundaries (boundary crossing), the movement of racial boundaries across individuals (boundary shifting), or both of these boundary dynamics simultaneously. Operationalization of these conceptually distinct boundary dynamics shows that Puerto Rico whitened in the second decade of the twentieth century primarily through boundary shifting-an expansion of the social definition of whiteness itself. Our analysis helps advance general sociological understanding of how symbolic boundaries change.
Does Money Whiten? Intergenerational Changes in Racial Classification in Brazil
Authors: Schwartzman Luisa Farah
Published: January 2010

The idea that “money whitens” is a classic topic in the sociological literature on race in Brazil. This article estimates the extent to which socioeconomic status translates into racial boundary-crossing (“whitening” and “darkening”) across generations. I do so by highlighting specifically how parents' racial classification of their children varies by status (i.e., parents' own educational levels). Results from a national household survey (PNAD 2005) show that highly educated nonwhite parents are more likely to classify their children as white than are comparable less-educated nonwhite parents. This happens because (1) more-educated nonwhite parents are more likely to marry whites and less likely to marry nonwhites and (2) more-educated interracial couples label their children white more often than do less-educated interracial couples. Comparisons with 1996 data suggest that recent shifts in racial politics have offset the whitening effects of college education for nonwhite men with white wives. The results allow us to better understand the nature of racial boundaries in Brazil and lead us to reexamine the relationship between race and the inheritance of socioeconomic advantage.
Nonresident Father Involvement and Adolescent Well-Being: Father Effects or Child Effects?
Authors: Hawkins Daniel N. , Amato Paul R. , King Valarie
Published: January 2010

Is active fathering by nonresident fathers a cause or a consequence of adolescent wellbeing? Past studies of nonresident father involvement assume a father effects model in which active parenting by fathers improves adolescent adjustment. A child effects model, in which fathers respond to levels of well-being among their adolescent offspring by becoming more or less involved parents, could also account for the positive association between active fathering and adolescent adjustment. We use nationally representative data from the 1995 and 1996 waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to estimate the cross-lagged associations between nonresident father involvement and the externalizing problems, internalizing problems, and academic achievement of 3,394 adolescents. Contrary to assumptions from a socialization perspective and findings from past research on nonresident fathers, our results do not support a father effects model. Our data are more consistent with a child effects model in which levels of adolescent well-being cause, rather than result from, levels of nonresident father involvement.
Beyond the Industrial Paradigm: Market-Embedded Labor and the Gender Organization of Global Service Work in China
Authors: Otis Eileen M.
Published: January 2010

Despite the international growth of the service sector, an industrial paradigm defines the study of global labor. This is because analyses of service work typically focus on firms in the United States, while studies of global labor concentrate on manufacturing. I develop a framework for analysis of global service work by comparing ethnographic cases of labor in two global, luxury hotels in China. Each hotel is linked to the same U.S.-based global corporation, and both employ the same organizational template and recruit sameaged female workers. At the first hotel, workers silently cater to the preferences of guests, using recorded customer preference data and enacting imported feminized practices, a labor regime I call virtual personalism. At the second hotel, workers promote hotel products, displaying expertise to distinguish themselves from sex workers who frequent the hotel, a labor regime I call virtuous professionalism. Why do distinctly gendered labor practices emerge in the two settings? To explain the divergent regimes of labor, I show that firms institutionalize localized consumer status struggles through the gendered organization of interactive labor. Workers' interactive strategies and local workplace legacies mediate the forms institutionalism takes. I call the entwining of consumer markets and labor practices “market-embedded labor.”
The Configuration of Symbolic Boundaries against Immigrants in Europe
Authors: Bail Christopher A.
Published: January 2010

Recent studies report significant cross-national variation in the conceptual distinctions or “symbolic boundaries” used by majority groups to construct notions of “us” and “them.” Because this literature compares only a handful of countries, the macro-level forces by which certain symbolic boundaries become more salient than others remain poorly understood. This article provides the first panorama of these processes by comparing the relative salience or “configuration” of multiple symbolic boundaries in 21 European countries. I use fuzzy-set analyses of data from the 2003 European Social Survey to create a typology of symbolic boundary configurations. The results indicate that the symbolic boundaries deployed by the general public do not correspond to the official “philosophies of integration” emphasized in the literature. Moreover, the data suggest previous comparisons have focused too heavily on Western Europe, overlooking important variation in other regions of Europe where immigration began more recently. I generate hypotheses to explain this newfound variation using demographic, socioeconomic, institutional, and historical data from quantitative and qualitative sources. The article concludes with examples of how these hypotheses can be combined by future studies toward a theory of “boundary-work.”
Evangelicals in the Power Elite: Elite Cohesion Advancing a Movement
Authors: Lindsay D. Michael
Published: January 2010

Social scientists typically examine social movements as grassroots phenomena, yet public leaders and elite actors also play important roles. This article examines their role in one contemporary social movement, American evangelicalism. Through semistructured interviews with 360 elite informants, as well as archival and ethnographic research, I explore the mechanisms through which leaders have sought to advance evangelicalism between 1976 and 2006. These public leaders founded organizations, formed networks, exercised convening power, and drew on formal and informal positions of authority to achieve movement goals. Results suggest that salient religious identity and cohesive networks have played important roles in shaping the goals and ambitions of leaders within the evangelical movement. Structural coincidence provided by governance structures at evangelical organizations, as well as evangelical programs directed toward elite constituents, have facilitated the formation of overlapping networks across social sectors. Institutional inertia and internal factions, however, have been countervailing forces. This empirical study demonstrates the persistence of institutional differentiation among America's leadership cohort, but it also points to a religious identity that can provide vital, cross-domain cohesion within the structure of elite power.
Religion and the Construction of Civic Identity
Authors: Lichterman Paul
Published: January 2010

Studies of religion's public roles typically concern the ways in which religious frameworks justify opinions and actions. This article draws from participant-observation research to show how people also use religion to define the boundaries of group identities and relationships. Importantly, people do this in situation-specific ways that we cannot predict from people's religious reasons for public actions. Evidence comes from two religiously-based organizations sponsored by the same local religious coalition, studied during 1998 to 2000 in a midsized U.S. city. One group is an alliance of lay people representing different churches, who organized volunteering and community development projects with a low-income minority neighborhood. The other is an alliance of clergy, representing different churches, that organized public events against racism. In each case, group members used religious terms to argue sharply over civic identity despite sharing the same religious reasons for their goals. Resolving the disputes required redefining or reemphasizing the boundaries of collective identity. The dynamics highlighted in my analyses provide new ways of understanding how people use religion to include or exclude others in civic relationships. Even more broadly, they reveal how religion can enhance or impede collaboration across social status and religious divides.
Divided We Stand, United We Fall: Religious Pluralism, Giving, and Volunteering
Authors: Borgonovi Francesca
Published: January 2010

This article examines to what extent religious context influences giving to, and volunteering for, religious causes—both directly and through increased attendance at religious services—and whether it has unintended spillover effects on giving and volunteering for secular purposes. Results from individuals living in a sample of counties in the United States indicate that a high level of religious pluralism is not associated with an increase in the probability that individuals will attend religious services regularly. Religious pluralism is, however, directly and positively associated with religious volunteering, while the association is not statistically significant for giving. Increases in religious volunteering associated with a high level of religious pluralism do not displace secular volunteering. There is no minority effect: individuals are equally likely to give to, and volunteer for, religious and secular causes whether they live in counties where their religious group represents the majority or the minority of the total population of religious adherents. As the proportion of the population in a county who is religious increases, so does the probability that any one individual will give to, and volunteer for, religious causes. I do not, however, find a relationship between the devoutness of a religious community and an individual's propensity to give to, and volunteer for, secular causes.
The Rise of Intra-Occupational Wage Inequality in the United States, 1983 to 2002
Authors: Kim ChangHwan , Sakamoto Arthur
Published: January 2010

Wage inequality has increased dramatically in the United States since the 1980s. This article investigates the relationship between this trend and occupational structure measured at the three-digit level. Using the Current Population Survey from 1983 to 2002, we find that the direct association between occupations and wage inequality declined over this period as within-occupational inequality grew faster than betweenoccupational inequality. We estimate multilevel growth models using detailed occupational categories as the unit of analysis to assess how the characteristics of occupations affect changes in mean wages and levels of wage inequality across this time period. The results indicate that changes in mean wages across occupations vary depending on the characteristics of individuals in those occupations and that intraoccupational inequality is difficult to predict using conventional labor force data. These findings seem largely inconsistent with the common sociological view of occupation as the most fundamental feature of the labor market. Correspondingly, a more comprehensive approach—one that incorporates the effects of organizational variables and market processes on rising wage inequality in the New Economy—is warranted.
Social Inequalities in Happiness in the United States, 1972 to 2004: An Age-Period-Cohort Analysis
Authors: Yang Yang
Published: January 2010

This study conducts a systematic age, period, and cohort analysis that provides new evidence of the dynamics of, and heterogeneity in, subjective well-being across the life course and over time in the United States. I use recently developed methodologies of hierarchical age-period-cohort models, and the longest available population data series on happiness from the General Social Survey, 1972 to 2004. I find distinct life-course patterns, time trends, and birth cohort changes in happiness. The age effects are strong and indicate increases in happiness over the life course. Period effects show first decreasing and then increasing trends in happiness. Baby-boomer cohorts report lower levels of happiness, suggesting the influence of early life conditions and formative experiences. I also find substantial life-course and period variations in social disparities in happiness. The results show convergences in sex, race, and educational gaps in happiness with age, which can largely be attributed to differential exposure to various social conditions important to happiness, such as marital status and health. Sex and race inequalities in happiness declined in the long term over the past 30 years. During the most recent decade, however, the net sex difference disappeared while the racial gap in happiness remained substantial.
Make Money Surfing the Web? The Impact of Internet Use on the Earnings of U.S. Workers
Authors: DiMaggio Paul , Bonikowski Bart
Published: January 2010

Much research on the “digital divide” presumes that adults who do not use the Internet are economically disadvantaged, yet little research has tested this premise. After discussing several mechanisms that might produce differences in earnings growth between workers who do and do not use the Internet, we use data from the Current Population Survey to examine the impact of Internet use on changes in earnings over 13-month intervals at the end of the “Internet boom.” Our analyses reveal robustly significant positive associations between Web use and earnings growth, indicating that some skills and behaviors associated with Internet use were rewarded by the labor market. Consistent with human-capital theory, current use at work had the strongest effect on earnings. In contrast to economic theory (which has led economists to focus exclusively on effects of contemporaneous workplace technology use), workers who used the Internet only at home also did better, suggesting that users may have benefited from superior access to job information or from signaling effects of using a fashionable technology. The positive association between computer use and earnings appears to reflect the effect of Internet use, rather than use of computers for offline tasks. These results suggest that inequality in access to and mastery of technology is a valid concern for students of social stratification.
Gender and the Education-Employment Paradox in Ethnic and Religious Contexts: The Case of Arab Americans
Authors: Read Jen'nan Ghazal , Oselin Sharon
Published: January 2010

Education is weakly related to employment for some groups of U.S. women. As such, it may be less of a resource for reducing gender inequality than commonly believed. Drawing on ethnographic field notes and in-depth interviews with Arab Americans, we recast the motivations and consequences of female education in terms of cultural schemas and resources and then analyze the processes that underlie the education-employment link in ethnic and religious contexts. Arab American women are a particularly useful case study because they have higher educational attainments but lower employment rates than most other groups of U.S. women. Our findings shed light on this paradox. Arab Americans universally support female education as a resource, not for economic mobility, but to ensure the proper socialization of children, solidarity of the family, and ultimately the maintenance of ethnic and religious identity. Contrary to the widely held assumption that female education will equalize gender power dynamics, our results highlight how and when women's education may reproduce patriarchal gender relations. This is the case in religious and ethnic contexts where women forgo market opportunities to fulfill familial responsibilities, and where parents and children view female education as a collective family resource—a resource to be invested in the home rather than in the market.
Gendered Power Relations among Women: A Study of Household Decision Making in Black, Lesbian Stepfamilies
Authors: Moore Mignon R.
Published: January 2010

Same-sex partners' familial expectations, including the division of household labor, are not well-understood in the existing research—research that largely references the experiences of white, middle- and upper-income lesbians who develop relationships with egalitarian goals. This article uses qualitative and survey research methods to evaluate the common view that two elements of feminist egalitarian ideology—economic independence and the equal distribution of housework and childrearing—are the defining features of lesbian-headed households. Analyses of 32 black women in lesbian stepfamilies suggest that partners share the providing role but biological mothers undertake significantly more household chores. More chore responsibility is used as a trade-off for greater authority over other aspects of household organization, including family finances and childrearing. The biological mother's control in a family is largely a function of her legal tie to a child and greater perceived responsibility for the child's well-being. Notably, this pattern persists even when she earns less than her mate. Without the gender structure of male privilege or the material advantage of high income, these families associate control over household labor with greater relationship power. These findings, while derived from analyses of a unique population, hold implications for broader conceptions of gender and power within families, the bases of interactional power, and the internal manifestations of power across various family and couple types.
The Social Production of Toxic Uncertainty
Authors: Auyero Javier , Swistun Debora
Published: January 2010

Based on both archival research and two and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork in an Argentine shantytown with high levels of air, water, and ground contamination, this article examines the social production of environmental uncertainty. First, we dissect residents' perceptions of contamination, finding widespread doubts and mistakes about the polluted habitat. Second, we provide a sociologically informed account of uncertainty and the erroneous perceptions that underlie it. Along with inherent ambiguity surrounding toxic contamination, the generalized confusion about sources and effects of pollution is the result of two factors: (1) the “relational anchoring” of risk perceptions and (2) the “labor of confusion” generated by powerful outside actors. We derive two implications from this ethnographic case study: (1) Cognitive psychology and organizational sociology can travel beyond the boundaries of self-bounded communities and laboratory settings to understand and explain the collective production and reproduction of ignorance, uncertainty, and error. (2) Research on inequality and marginality in general, and in Latin America in particular, should pay close attention to the contaminated spaces where the urban poor live.
Risk Society and Contested Illness: The Case of Nuclear Weapons Workers
Authors: Cable Sherry , Shriver Thomas E. , Mix Tamara L.
Published: January 2010

Wealth production within a “risk society” typically depends on production technologies that expose citizens to dangerous substances. Knowledge of such exposure is, more often than not, hidden from the public. Empirical analyses show that citizens' claims of illnesses caused by risky exposures are frequently contested by the institutions that select production technologies and control information: the government, corporations, and physicians. In this article, we use the risk society thesis as a framework for addressing gaps in the environmental illness literature—specifically, the basis for authorities' contestations of illness claims for which the exposure–illness link is scientifically confirmed. Using case methods, including in-depth interviews with 124 citizens, analyses center on the contested illness claims of nuclear weapons workers at the federal Oak Ridge Nuclear Reservation. Results highlight how institutional and organizational resources provided authorities with tactical leverage, and allowed them to manufacture an ambiguous climate for public discourse. This discourse focused on the exposure—illness link for a particular individual and their specific symptoms rather than the established exposure—illness links in general. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for analyses of environmental exposure specifically, but also the seemingly contradictory tension between the risk society's need to restrict information to experts and democracy's need for open discourse.
Mediation in Multiple Networks: Elite Mobilization before the English Civil War
Authors: Hillmann Henning
Published: January 2010

Navigating political action typically requires coalition building across different interest groups. Because members represent divergent interests and are embedded in different networks, however, alliance formation is difficult. In this article, I consider how elites rely on political brokerage to overcome these divisions and form successful coalitions, with successful organization of the parliamentary opposition to the king before the English Civil War as a case in point. Supporting quantitative evidence comes from rich network data on the business, kinship, and political affiliations among 346 political and mercantile elites. Rather than the mere presence of mediator positions, I argue that effective brokerage of mobilizing alliances between interest groups requires political mediators who are equally affiliated with these diverse networks. Successful brokerage is conditional on both their structural position between groups and the diversity of ties that compose their personal networks. The results demonstrate that new merchant elites who were engaged in the American colonial trades acted as political mediators and facilitated the formation of a parliamentary opposition strong enough to defeat the royalist forces in London.
Corporate Restructuring and Sex Differences in Managerial Promotion
Authors: Dencker John C.
Published: January 2010

Women have made significant inroads into management in recent decades, yet remain underrepresented in leadership positions in large firms. In this article, I assess the critical but seldom analyzed role that widespread corporate restructuring may play in generating these inequalities. I build on social-cognitive research and the opportunity structure for discrimination framework to develop contrasting predictions of the effects from two forms of restructuring—reductions in force and reorganization of human resource management systems—on sex differences in managerial promotion. Analyses of longitudinal personnel records from a Fortune 500 manufacturing firm-a firm that restructured multiple times over the period examined–are consistent with the opportunity structure for discrimination framework and suggest that the firm responded to gender equity pressures to promote women when afforded the opportunity to do so. Women's promotion rates were higher than men's during restructuring, relative to previous years, with a greater difference at higher-status job levels. Importantly, however, few women transitioned into upper management positions in the firm during the restructuring period because (1) reductions in force slowed promotion rates for all managers, (2) women began their careers in lower-status jobs to begin with, relative to men, and (3) women's promotion advantages were often short-lived. I conclude by discussing implications of my findings for research on organizational dynamics and gender inequality.
Ethnic and Gender Satisfaction in the Military: The Effect of a Meritocratic Institution
Authors: Lundquist Jennifer Hickes
Published: January 2010

This article reevaluates traditional racial and gender disparities in the work satisfaction literature by examining the U.S. military: an institution that has ameliorated many racial inequalities while exacerbating gender conflict. The military departs from civilian society in some analytically useful ways, making it a unique, though underutilized, setting for examining inequality. Using data from the Pentagon's 1999 Survey of Active Duty Personnel (SADP), results suggest that black males and females, Latino males and females, and white females all experience greater perceived benefits to military service than do white males along several dimensions of self-assessed job satisfaction and quality of life. Perceptions of advantage relative to civilian reference group comparisons largely explain these findings. I conclude by discussing how the structure of organizations can be powerful enough to reverse differences in relative satisfaction among key status groups.
The Integration of Genetic Propensities into Social-Control Models of Delinquency and Violence among Male Youths
Authors: Guo Guang , Roettger Michael E. , Cai Tianji
Published: January 2010

This study, drawing on approximately 1,100 males from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, demonstrates the importance of genetics, and genetic-environmental interactions, for understanding adolescent delinquency and violence. Our analyses show that three genetic polymorphisms—specifically, the 30-bp promoter-region variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) in MAOA, the 40-bp VNTR in DAT1, and the Taq1 polymorphism in DRD2—are significant predictors of serious and violent delinquency when added to a social-control model of delinquency. Importantly, findings also show that the genetic effects of DRD2 and MAOA are conditional and interact with family processes, school processes, and friendship networks. These results, which are among the first that link molecular genetic variants to delinquency, significantly expand our understanding of delinquent and violent behavior, and they highlight the need to simultaneously consider their social and genetic origins.
Agricultural Revolution and Elite Reproduction in Qing China: The Transition to Capitalism Debate Revisited
Authors: Hung Ho-fung
Published: January 2010

Recent actor-centric theory about the historical rise of capitalism emphasizes the role of the autonomous agrarian elite in fostering a sustained agricultural revolution. This revolution generated ample agrarian surplus, in the form of rural elite's elevated income, to fuel a capitalist-industrial takeoff in late-eighteenth-century England. The nontransition to capitalism in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century China, despite the vast surplus generated in its advanced agrarian sector, shows that high agricultural productivity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a capitalist takeoff. By comparing Qing China with eighteenth-century England, where capitalist industrialization erupted spontaneously, and nineteenth-century Japan, where capitalist industrialization succeeded under intensive state sponsorship, this article argues that a strong urban entrepreneurial elite, capable of centralizing the agrarian surplus and investing it in productive industrial innovation, were as important as the existence of the surplus itself in fomenting capitalist transition. The reproduction of the elite in eighteenth-century China was constrained, not by the anticommercial “oriental despotic” state as presumed in earlier literature, but by the state's paternalist disposition in managing urban class conflict. Capitalist-industrial development in China was further impeded in the nineteenth century, when a nexus of local predatory-military elite emerged in response to millenarian uprisings and wasted most of the agrarian surplus in their accumulation of means of violence. The negative case of China helps us advance the actor-centric model of capitalist transition by bringing urban entrepreneurs and class politics back in.
The Colonial State as a Social Field: Ethnographic Capital and Native Policy in the German Overseas Empire before 1914
Authors: Steinmetz George
Published: January 2010

What led modern colonizers to treat their subject populations in radically differing ways, ranging from genocide to efforts to “salvage” precolonial cultures? In Southwest Africa, Germany massacred the Ovaherero and Witbooi; in Samoa, Germany pursued a program of cultural retraditionalization; and in the Chinese leasehold colony of Qingdao/Kiaochow, the Germans moved from policies of racialized segregation to a respectful civilizational exchange. Bourdieu is not generally seen as a theorist of empire, despite the partial genesis of his lifelong research program in the late colonial crucible of French Algeria (Bourdieu 1958; Yacine 2004). Nonetheless, Bourdieu's theoretical work—most notably his conceptions of field and capital—helps solve the main riddle of the colonial state. Different European social groups competed inside the colonial state field for a specific form of symbolic capital: ethnographic capital. This involved exhibiting an alleged talent for judging the culture and character of the colonized, a gift for understanding “the natives.” Competitive dynamics among the colonial rulers decisively shaped the ongoing production of native policies. Policy formation was also influenced by geopolitical and economic interests, responses by the colonized, and the metropolitan government's final authority in appointing and dismissing colonial officials. The effects of these additional mechanisms were typically mediated by the internal dynamics of the semi-autonomous colonial state.
Democratization, Women's Movements, and Gender-Equitable States: A Framework for Comparison
Authors: Viterna Jocelyn , Fallon Kathleen M.
Published: January 2010

There is a rich collection of case studies examining the relationship between democratization, women's movements, and gendered state outcomes, but the variation across cases is still poorly understood. In response, this article develops a theoreticallygrounded comparative framework to evaluate and explain cross-national variations in the gendered outcomes of democratic transitions. The framework highlights four theoretical factors—the context of the transition, the legacy of women's previous mobilizations, political parties, and international influences—that together shape the political openings and ideologies available to women's movements in transitional states. Applying the framework to four test cases, we conclude that women's movements are most effective at targeting democratizing states when transitions are complete, when women's movements develop cohesive coalitions, when the ideology behind the transition (rather than the ideology of the winning regime) aligns easily with feminist frames, and when women's past activism legitimates present-day feminist demands. These findings challenge current conceptualizations of how democratic transitions affect gender in state institutions and provide a comparative framework for evaluating variation across additional cases.