bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Flow of Christian Images from the Shanghai Jesuits to the Paris Foreign Missions in Japan: Imitation, Alteration, and Returning to the Roots
Authors: Guo Nanyan
Published: August 2023

The Jesuit Adolphe Vasseur created more than 160 woodblock prints at the orphanage of T’ou-se-we in Shanghai, China, combining Western images of biblical stories with traditional Chinese styles and symbols, aiming to help familiarize the Chinese people with Christian concepts. Vasseur’s images were adopted and transformed through lithographic publications and woodblock prints by the Paris Foreign Missions (mep) in Japan from the 1860s to the 1870s under Fr. Marc Marie de Rotz (1840–1914). Focusing on ten woodblock prints, often referred to as the “De Rotz Prints,” which were made based on Vasseur’s images and altered by adding Japanese symbols, this paper will show how Vasseur’s images were modified from a Chinese to Japanese context, primarily by adapting to the situation of Japanese Christians, who were emerging from more than two centuries of persecution and underground worship. This article is part of the special issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies, “Jesuits in Modern Far East,” guest edited by Steven Pieragastini.
Converting Zi-ka-wei: Angelo A. Zottoli, S.J. (Chao Deli 晁德蒞, 1826–1902) and His Mission in Shanghai
Authors: De Caro Antonio
Published: August 2023

When the Jesuits returned to China in the nineteenth century, the mission and surrounding community at Xujiahui (Zikawei), near Shanghai, was an important intellectual and administrative center. Among the foreign Jesuits present at Xujiahui, a fixture for many years, was the Italian Angelo Zottoli, an educator, administrator, and translator for the mission. From his arrival in Shanghai in 1848 until he died in 1902, Zottoli was an essential figure in the cross-cultural dialogue between Chinese Catholics and foreign missionaries. Though far from a firebrand, Zottoli greatly admired Chinese culture and generally took an “accommodationist” approach, which clashed with the attitudes of other Jesuits in Shanghai. At the same time, he supported papal pronouncements on Chinese Rites, which provided strict limits to accommodation. Overall, then, he represents the difficulties Jesuits faced in reconciling the history of the church in China and their own attitudes (such as Eurocentricity) with Chinese culture. This article is part of the special issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies, “Jesuits in Modern Far East,” guest edited by Steven Pieragastini.
Tropical Pacific Quasi-Decadal Variability Suppressed by Submesoscale Eddies
Authors: Qu Yushan , Wang Shengpeng , Jing Zhao , Zhang Yu , Wang Hong , Wu Lixin
Published: August 2023

Tropical Pacific quasi-decadal (TPQD) climate variability is characterized by quasi-decadal sea surface temperature (SST) variations in the central Pacific (CP). This low-frequency climate variability is suggested to influence extreme regional weather and substantially impact global climate patterns and associated socioeconomics through teleconnections. Previous studies mostly attributed the TPQD climate variability to basin-scale air–sea coupling processes. However, due to the coarse resolution of the majority of the observations and climate models, the role of subbasin-scale processes in modulating the TPQD climate variability is still unclear. Using a long-term high-resolution global climate model, we find that energetic small-scale motions with horizontal scales from tens to hundreds of kilometers (loosely referred to as equatorial submesoscale eddies) act as an important damping effect to retard the TPQD variability. During the positive TPQD events, compound increasing precipitation and warming SST in the equatorial Pacific intensifies the upper ocean stratification and weakens the temperature fronts along the Pacific cold tongue. This suppresses submesoscale eddy growth as well as their associated upward vertical heat transport by inhibiting baroclinic instability (BCI) and frontogenesis; conversely, during the negative TPQD events, the opposite is true. Using a series of coupled global climate models that participated in phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project with different oceanic resolutions, we show that the amplitude of the TPQD variability becomes smaller as the oceanic resolution becomes finer, providing evidence for the impacts of submesoscale eddies on damping the TPQD variability. Our study suggests that explicitly simulating equatorial submesoscale eddies is necessary for gaining a more robust understanding of low-frequency tropical climate variability.

Significance Statement

Submesoscale ocean eddies inhibit the development of quasi-decadal climate variability in the equatorial central Pacific, according to a high-resolution global climate simulation.
Atmospheric Circulation Anomalies and Key Physical Processes behind Two Categories of Anomalous Eurasian Spring Snowmelt
Authors: Sun Yue , Chen Haishan
Published: August 2023

Eurasian spring snowmelt plays an important role in the subsequent climate and hydrological cycle, however, the understanding of snowmelt itself and its causes remains insufficient. This study explored the basic characteristics of spring snowmelt in the eastern Europe–western Siberia (EEWS) region by classifying snowmelt anomalies into two categories based on the different factors that dominate spring snowmelt, and then investigated the associated atmospheric circulation anomalies and local physical processes. The first category of anomalous snowmelt (category 1) is controlled by both the initial snow mass and the later snowmelt process, while the second category of anomalous snowmelt (category 2) is mainly linked to the later snowmelt process. Specifically, category 1 is characterized by an anomalous trough in EEWS in winter, where water vapor transported and converged, accompanied by anomalous upward motion, which promotes snowfall and snow accumulation, providing initial conditions conducive to snowmelt. In April, this region is controlled by an anomalous ridge, with significant warm advection anomalies and subsidence promoting surface warming, thereby accelerating snow melting. In contrast, the winter circulation anomalies are insignificant in category 2, while the anomalous ridge in April is stronger than in category 1, accompanied by more intense snowmelt processes. In addition, from the surface energy balance perspective, atmospheric downward sensible heat transport is an important factor influencing the anomalous snowmelt in category 1, while shortwave radiation plays a secondary role. Conversely, the snowmelt in category 2 is dominated by shortwave radiation forcing, but the sensible heat effect is slightly weaker.

Significance Statement

Eurasian spring snowmelt significantly impacts the subsequent climate and hydrological cycle, but the understanding of snowmelt itself and its causes is still inadequate. The purpose of this study is to explore the monthly evolution of atmospheric circulation associated with anomalous snowmelt and its local physical processes associated by categorizing them based on snowmelt characteristics. Category 1 is jointly affected by winter snow accumulation and later warming, while category 2 is dominated by strong snowmelt process in late spring. These two categories are accompanied by different winter and spring circulation configurations. Our results provide a basis for further investigation of snowmelt precursor signals.
The Hidden Abode: Sociology as Analysis of the Unexpected
Authors: Portes Alejandro
Published: August 2023

Purposive social action has provided the bedrock for theoretical developments and model building in several social sciences. Since its beginnings, however, sociology has harbored, a “contrarian” vocation based on examining the unrecognized, unintended, and emergent consequences of goal-oriented activity. I present several examples of the sociological practice of bashing myths based on the logic of purposive action and offer a typology of alternative goals, means, and outcomes illustrated by both classic sociological writings and contemporary research. The multiple contingencies documented by sociologists in the past cautions against attempts to build institutions or implement programs grounded on grand blueprints. The cautionary tale supported by sociological analysis of concealed goals, shifts in mid-course, and unexpected effects does not lead, however, to the conclusion that scientific prediction and practical intervention are futile endeavors. It leads instead to an emphasis on the dialectics of social life, and on the need to take into account the definitions of the situation of relevant actors. I offer some illustrations of successful mid-range theories that are based on the analysis of dilemmas in social processes and the importance of sensitivity to the unexpected in the implementation of programmatic interventions.
Politics and Life Chances in a State Socialist Regime: Dual Career Paths into the Urban Chinese Elite, 1949 to 1996
Authors: Walder Andrew G. , Li Bobai , Treiman Donald J.
Published: August 2023

Recent research on career mobility under communism suggests that party membership and education may have had different effects in administrative and professional careers. Using life history data from a nationally representative 1996 survey of urban Chinese adults, we subject this finding to more stringent tests and find even stronger contrasts between career paths. Only recently has college education improved a high school graduate's odds of becoming an elite administrator, while it has always been a virtual prerequisite for a professional position. On the other hand, party membership, always a prerequisite for top administrative posts, has never improved the odds of becoming an elite professional. We also find that professionals rarely become administrators, and vice versa. Differences between career paths have evolved over the decades, but they remain sharp. Thus, China has a hybrid mobility regime in which the loyalty principles of a political machine are combined with, and segregated from, the meritocratic standards of modern professions. Recent changes may reflect a return to generic state socialist practices rejected in the Mao years rather than the influence of an emerging market economy.
Why Not Ascription? Organizations’ Employment of Male and Female Managers
Authors: Reskin Barbara F. , McBrier Debra Branch
Published: August 2023

We examine the effects of organizations’ employment practices on sex-based ascription in managerial jobs. Given men's initial preponderance in management, we argue that inertia, sex labels, and power dynamics predispose organizations to use sex-based ascription when staffing managerial jobs, but that personnel practices can invite or curtail ascription. Our results—based on data from a national probability sample of 516 work organizations—show that specific personnel practices affect the sexual division of managerial labor. Net of controls for the composition of the labor supply, open recruitment methods are associated with women holding a greater share of management jobs, while recruitment through informal networks increases men's share. Formalizing personnel practices reduces men's share of management jobs, especially in large establishments, presumably because formalization checks ascription in job assignments, evaluation, and factors that affect attrition. Thus, through their personnel practices, establishments license or limit ascription.
Partisan Governance, Women's Employment, and the Social Democratic Service State
Authors: Huber Evelyne , Stephens John D.
Published: August 2023

The causes of the expansion and cross-national variation in the provision of welfare state goods and services are examined. Social democratic governance is by far the most important determinant of the public delivery of services and is one of the most important determinants of the public funding of the provision of welfare state goods and services. Christian democratic governance is an important determinant of public funding of services, but is not related to public delivery. State structure is also an important determinant. Women's labor force participation is an important determinant of the expansion of public social welfare services net of other social, political, and historical factors. The analysis also shows an interactive effect of women's labor force participation and social democratic governance on public delivery of welfare state services. We conclude that public delivery of a wide range of welfare state services is the most distinctive feature of the social democratic welfare state and that this feature is a product of the direct and interactive effects of social democracy and women's mobilization.
Biological Limits of Gender Construction
Authors: Udry J. Richard
Published: August 2023

A biosocial theory of gender is constructed on both the macro and micro levels. A micro-model of within-sex differences among females integrates the biological model current in primatology with the prevailing social science model. It shows how sex differences in hormone experience from gestation to adulthood shape gendered behavior (that is, behavior that differs by sex). On the macro level, this model also illustrates how socialization and environment shape gendered behavior. It then demonstrates how hormone experiences can facilitate or dampen the effects of socialization and environment on gendered behavior. Data are from a sample of women who were studied from before they were born to the end of their third decade. I speculate about the constraints placed by biology on the social reconstruction of gender.
Is Biology Destiny? Birth Weight and Life Chances
Authors: Conley Dalton , Bennett Neil G.
Published: August 2023

Two key questions are addressed regarding the intersection of socioeconomic status, biology, and low birth weight over the life course. First, do the income and other socioeconomic conditions of a mother during her pregnancy affect her chances of having a low-birth-weight infant net of her own birth weight, that of the father, and other family-related, unobserved factors? Second, does an individual's birth weight status affect his or her adult life chances net of socioeconomic status? These questions have implications for the way we conceive of the relationship between socioeconomic status and health over the life course, specifically in sorting out causal directionality. We use intergenerational data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, for the years 1968 through 1992. Results of sibling comparisons (family-fixed-effects models) demonstrate that maternal income does not appear to have a significant impact on birth weight. However, low birth weight results in lower educational attainment net of other factors. These findings suggest that, when considered across generations, causality may not be as straightforward as implied by cross-sectional or unigenerational longitudinal studies.
Work as a Turning Point in the Life Course of Criminals: A Duration Model of Age, Employment, and Recidivism
Authors: Uggen Christopher
Published: August 2023

Sociologists have increasingly emphasized “turningpoints” in explaining behavioral change over the life course. Is work a turning point in the life course of criminal offenders? If criminals are provided with jobs, are they likely to stop committing crimes? Prior research is inconclusive because work effects have been biased by selectivity and obscured by the interaction of age and employment. This study yields more refined estimates by specifying event history models to analyze assignment to, eligibility for, and current participation in a national work experiment for criminal offenders. Age is found to interact with employment to affect the rate of self-reported recidivism: Those aged 27 or older are less likely to report crime and arrest when provided with marginal employment opportunities than when such opportunities are not provided. Among young participants, those in their teens and early twenties, the experimental job treatment had little effect on crime. Work thus appears to be a turning point for older, but not younger, offenders.
Leveraging the State: Private Money and the Development of Public Education for Blacks
Authors: Strong David , Walters Pamela Barnhouse , Driscoll Brian , Rosenberg Scott
Published: August 2023

This study analyses African Americans’ success in getting the state to improve access to a basic social right—the right to a public education—in the late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century South. During this period, Southern blacks were deprived of the right to vote and many of their civil rights. We find that the loss of political and civil rights influenced the means that blacks could use to affect policy, and it limited the policy objectives they could achieve; but it did not render them unable to affect policy. After disfranchisement, black communities, in an alliance with Northern philanthropists, modified and vastly extended a strategy we call “leveraging the state “—a strategy that had been used successfully by both black communities and white communities in the nineteenth century to increase access to public elementary education. This strategy involved using private funds in combination with partial public funding to directly establish new public schools and then negotiating a state commitment to ongoing support of the new public schools. Such a strategy cannot secure political or civil rights, but it can and did secure social rights—although at a high financial price for the challengers and their allies.
Revenge as Sanction and Solidarity Display: An Analysis of Vendettas in Nineteenth-Century Corsica
Authors: Gould Roger V.
Published: August 2023

Discussions of violence observe that dispute resolution in stateless societies often involves vengeance and collective responsibility for harm. These patterns are typically attributed to a distinctive cultural world-view emphasizing collectivism. Collective hostility is also a common theme in studies of stateless domains within industrial societies, where it is seen as a social pathology. Yet vengeance can also be understood as a purposeful sanction against collective aggression, rather than as a culturally prescribed response to aggression in general. Court records from Corsica are used to assess the rate at which murder was avenged, the determinants of revenge, and patterns in the kin relationships involved. Vengeance was rare and typically occurred when the original incident involved collaboration or violence against nondisputants. Vengeance rarely extended beyond the nuclear family. When it did, correspondingly distant kin of the original victim acted as avengers. Moreover, selection of vengeance targets was based on specific acts of solidarity, not on abstract collective responsibility. Accordingly, acts of revenge were calibrated to demonstrate that the aggrieved family's cohesiveness equalled that displayed by the offender's group. Viewed in this way, vendettas are highly strategic yet altruistic acts—calling into question the conventional notion that rational action is selfish.
Job Relocation and the Racial Gap in Unemployment in Detroit and Chicago, 1980 to 1990
Authors: Mouw Ted
Published: August 2023

The spatial mismatch hypothesis argues that residential segregation and job decentralization combine to adversely affect the employment opportunities of minorities. While employment is increasingly located outside of central cities, residential segregation prevents minorities from moving closer to suburban jobs. Although this hypothesis has intuitive appeal, there is little consensus regarding its empirical validity. This study (1) constructs detailed geographic measures of changes in employment opportunities, (2) estimates a fixed-effects model of changes in the unemployment rate over time, and (3) accounts for spatial correlation in the error term. Neighborhood-level employment data from 1980 and 1990 are used to measure changes in the distance to jobs from census tracts in the Detroit and Chicago metropolitan areas. In both cities, the decentralization of employment and the loss of manufacturing jobs resulted in substantial changes in the spatial distribution of employment. The empirical results indicate that a decline in the spatial proximity to employment is associated with an increase in the unemployment rate for blacks.
Surviving Closure: Post-Rejection Adaptation and Plurality in Science
Authors: Collins H. M.
Published: August 2023

Can the procedures and institutions of modern science support more than one version of reality? The early science of gravitational wave detection adapted and survived for a quarter of a century after its findings ceased to be accepted by the majority of the scientific community. Two mutually exclusive approaches to the same physical phenomenon, spawned by the same community, were initially supported by the same institutions and later by only marginally different institutions. The case reveals, then, a surprising plurality within physics, that stretches from publication policies to funding sources. The survival history of what will be called “high visibility gravitational radiation” (HighVGR) research is compared with that of other “rejected sciences” that experienced what might be called “life after death.” It is suggested that “core-groups” in physics allow a large degree of license within the formal institutions because their informal controls make sure that rejected science does no harm to progress in the mainstream. When informal controls break down, however, formal controls take over. Analysis of the formal, readily visible face of science reveals little of what is happening in the, often crucial, informal networks.
Media and Mobilization: The Case of Radio and Southern Textile Worker Insurgency, 1929 TO 1934
Authors: Roscigno Vincent J. , Danaher William F.
Published: August 2023

Collective action rests, in part, on group identity and political opportunity. Just how group identity is manifested and perceptions of political opportunity are altered, however, remain unclear, particularly in the case of a geographically dispersed population. An often overlooked mechanism is media technology. This article analyzes an important yet underexamined instance of worker mobilization in the United States: the southern textile strike campaigns of 1929 to 1934 during which more than 400,000 workers walked off their jobs. Using historical data on textile manufacturing concentration and strike activity, FCC data on radio station foundings, and analyses of political content and song lyrics, the authors show that the geographic proximity of radio stations to the “textile belt” and the messages aired shaped workers’ sense of collective experience and political opportunity: Walk-outs and strike spillover across mill towns resulted. The implications of the analyses for social movement theory generally, and for the understanding of how media can enable or constrain collective struggle, are discussed.
How Movements Win: Gendered Opportunity Structures and U.S. Women's Suffrage Movements, 1866 to 1919
Authors: McCammon Holly J. , Campbell Karen E. , Granberg Ellen M. , Mowery Christine
Published: August 2023

State women's suffrage movements are investigated to illuminate the circumstances in which social movements bring about political change. In 29 states, suffragists were able to win significant voting rights prior to passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. In addition to resource mobilization, cultural framing, and political opportunity structures, the authors theorize that gendered opportunities also fostered the successes of the movements. An event history analysis provides evidence that gendered opportunity structures helped to bring about the political successes of the suffragists. Results suggest the need for a broader understanding of opportunity structure than one rooted simply in formal political opportunities.
Studying Status: An Integrated Framework
Authors: Jasso Guillermina
Published: August 2023

This paper reports development of an integrated framework for studying status. The framework provides models and methods for addressing long-standing, unresolved issues, such as (1) the emergence of status, (2) distinguishing between the status of individuals and the status of characteristics, and (3) measuring and understanding the status gap between subgroups (between men and women, or between races). The framework, which covers both small groups and large societies, and both task and nontask groups, utilizes ideas and insights from several literatures to identify three types of status, linked in precise ways to two kinds of personal characteristics (quantitative and qualitative). The three types of status are mathematically specified, and initial theoretical development is presented for all three, including, for each, formulation of measures, derivation of testable implications, and analysis of how to change status and the status structure. Testable implications cover such phenomena as status differences between group members, status gaps between subgroups, overall status inequality, and status gains and losses from discrimination - all under varying conditions, including the number and intercorrelation of status-conferring personal characteristics and the proportions in the subgroups. The new status theory also identifies two mechanisms involved in the phenomenon of “internalized oppression. “ The framework thus opens many avenues for future work, both theoretical work, deriving more and sharper implications, and empirical work, testing the implications and using the new measures for the status of persons and the status of characteristics to assess key status phenomena in surveys and experiments.
The Wage Penalty for Motherhood
Authors: Budig Michelle J. , England Paula
Published: August 2023

Motherhood is associated with lower hourly pay, but the causes of this are not well understood. Mothers may earn less than other women because having children causes them to (1) lose job experience, (2) be less productive at work, (3) trade off higher wages for mother-friendly jobs, or (4) be discriminated against by employers. Or the relationship may be spurious rather than causal—women with lower earning potential may have children at relatively higher rates. The authors use data from the 1982–1993 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth with fixed-effects models to examine the wage penalty for motherhood. Results show a wage penalty of 7 percent per child. Penalties are larger for married women than for unmarried women. Women with (more) children have fewer years of job experience, and after controlling for experience a penalty of 5 percent per child remains. “Mother-friendly” characteristics of the jobs held by mothers explain little of the penalty beyond the tendency of more mothers than non-mothers to work part-time. The portion of the motherhood penalty unexplained probably results from the effect of motherhood on productivity and/or from discrimination by employers against mothers. While the benefits of mothering diffuse widely—to the employers, neighbors, friends, spouses, and children of the adults who received the mothering—the costs of child rearing are borne disproportionately by mothers.
Social Citizenship and a Reconstructed Tocqueville
Authors: Goldberg Chad Alan
Published: August 2023

The implications of Alexis de Tocqueville's theory of democracy for current debates about social citizenship and the welfare state are explored. Systematizing accounts of Tocqueville's views on public relief have been one-sided and have facilitated efforts by the New Right to appropriate his legacy to justify New Right policies. A closer reading of Tocqueville, attentive to both his marginal and more central works, reveals good reasons for opposing the reforms that critics of public assistance have proposed in Tocqueville's time and in our own. The historicist view that Tocqueville's social and economic thought was incoherent, backward-looking, and increasingly irrelevant following capitalist industrialization is also criticized. While Tocqueville's theory of democracy requires revision in important respects, its potential has not been exhausted. In fact, a reconstruction of Tocqueville's theory of democracy goes well beyond the discourse of the New Right, pointing instead to the possibility of reforming the welfare state in a creative and innovative way through social policies that are enabling rather than tutelary, universalistic rather than targeted, preventive rather than compensatory, and associative rather than atomizing.
Uncertainty, Risk, and Trust: Russian and American Credit Card Markets Compared
Authors: Guseva Alya , Rona-Tas Akos
Published: August 2023

The strategies that Russian and American banks use to evaluate the creditworthiness of prospective credit card holders are compared. Drawing on Knight's theory of risk and uncertainty, the authors argue that uncertainty, inherent in any credit transaction, can only be reduced to measurable risk if there are institutions that create stability over time, categorize events properly, and allow for verification and accumulation of information. In the United States, the gradual evolution of institutions underpinning rational calculation permits the transformation of uncertainty into risk. In Russia, however, such institutions are absent, and a great degree of uncertainty prevails in consumer credit. Using data from original fieldwork in Moscow, this study demonstrates that when actors face uncertainty and are unable to calculate risk, they rely on trust. Russian banks use and extend their existing social ties, or in some cases build new ties. They also exploit cardholders’ own networks, unrelated to the bank, to increase their accountability through anchoring. These strategies, however, keep the market embedded, limited in size, and uninsurable. The authors conclude that calculation of probabilities (and economic rationality in its formal sense) is not an innate human ability but a social capacity that exists courtesy of institutional arrangements.
Getting Deals Done: The Use of Social Networks in Bank Decision-Making
Authors: Mizruchi Mark S. , Stearns Linda Brewster
Published: August 2023

Economic actors confront various forms of uncertainty making decisions, and how they deal with these obstacles may affect their success in accomplishing their goals. This study examines the means by which relationship managers in a major commercial bank attempt to close transactions with their corporate customers. It is hypothesized that under conditions of high uncertainty, bankers will rely on colleagues with whom they are strongly tied for advice on and support of their deals. Drawing on recent network theory, it is also hypothesized that transactions in which bankers use relatively sparse approval networks are more likely to successfully close than are transactions involving dense approval networks. Both hypotheses are supported. Bankers are faced with a strategic paradox: Their tendency to rely on those they trust in dealing with uncertainty creates conditions that render deals less likely to be closed successfully. This paradox represents an example of unanticipated consequences of purposive social action.
Organizational Growth and Ecological Constraints: The Growth of Social Movements in Sweden, 1881 to 1940
Authors: Sandell Rickard
Published: August 2023

Based on the theoretical framework of organizational ecology, it is suggested that social movement organizations are inert structures that rarely exceed their initial size. The ecological concept of organizational growth is tested using membership data for Sweden from 1881 to 1940 for virtually all local social movement organizations (29,193 organizations) in three major social movements: the temperance, free church, and trade union movements. Findings show that the organizations in two of the movements have average growth trajectories approximating zero. The ecological argument is then expanded to include information on the movements’ organizational niches and intra- and intermovement density development. After controlling for the local organization's initial size, findings reveal that the remaining variation in aggregate membership is more likely to depend on population and niche dynamics (which organizational ecologists focus on) than on the capacity of the movement's local organizations to expand. These findings are consistent for all three Swedish movements. The ecological argument and the findings presented here are contrary to almost all research on social movements, which takes for granted that social movement organizations are necessarily capable of individual growth.
America's Liberalization in Attitudes toward Homosexuality, 1973 TO 1998
Authors: Loftus Jeni
Published: August 2023

Using General Social Survey data from 1973 to 1998, changing American attitudes toward homosexuality are examined. Two hypotheses are tested: (1) Can changes in attitudes be accounted for by the changing demographics of the population? (2) Are changing attitudes toward homosexuality embedded within larger cultural ideological shifts? The data indicate that Americans distinguish between the morality of homosexuality and the civil liberties of homosexuals. Americans became increasingly negative regarding the morality of homosexuality through 1990, but since then their attitudes have become increasingly liberal. The same 25–year period witnessed a steady decline in Americans’ willingness to restrict the civil liberties of homosexuals. Changes in American demographics—particularly increasing educational levels—and changing cultural ideological beliefs can account for only about one-half of the change over time in attitudes toward homosexuality. Several theories are put forth to explain these patterns of change and the distinction made between morality and civil liberties.
Nations of Joiners: Explaining Voluntary Association Membership in Democratic Societies
Authors: Curtis James E. , Baer Douglas E. , Grabb Edward G.
Published: August 2023

Levels of voluntary association membership for 33 democratic countries are compared using data from surveys of nationally representative samples of adults from the 1990s. Four explanations of national differences in association involvement are identified and tested: economic development, religious composition, type of polity, and years of continuous democracy. The analyses consider total and working association memberships, both including and excluding unions and religious associations. Americans volunteer at rates above the average for all nations on each measure, but they are often matched and surpassed by those of several other countries, notably the Netherlands, Canada, and a number of Nordic nations, including Iceland, Sweden, and Norway. Hierarchical linear models show that voluntarism tends to be particularly high in nations that have: (1) multidenominational Christian or predominantly Protestant religious compositions, (2) prolonged and continuous experience with democratic institutions, (3) social democratic or liberal democratic political systems, and (4) high levels of economic development. With some exceptions for working memberships, these factors, both separately and in combination, are clearly important predictors of cross-national variation in voluntary association membership.
Changing the Subject: Gender, Status, and the Dynamics of Topic Change
Authors: Okamoto Dina G. , Smith-Lovin Lynn
Published: August 2023

Social scientists have devoted a great deal of attention to how much people talk, but have paid little attention to what they talk about. Research in the tradition of conversation analysis suggests that transitions between topics of conversation are accomplished in a systematic, structured way, and that social status can affect whose topics are developed and whose are lost. The authors use insights from conversation analysis to develop a systematic coding system for identifying topic shifts in task-oriented discussions. Hypotheses from the literature on group processes predict who will suggest topic changes in a task-oriented group and whose topics will be lost. Event history methods model the dynamics of topic change in two data sets: a study of six-person laboratory task groups and a replication study of dyads. Topic changes in these task-oriented discussions are more sensitive to status structures that develop within the conversation than to a relatively weak status characteristic like gender. Some of the sequential mechanisms that conversation analysts have studied in the context of less structured, more wide ranging talk may be generalizable to this more constrained conversational environment.
Youth Violence and the End of Adolescence
Authors: Hagan John , Foster Holly
Published: August 2023

American youth experience high levels of violence, and increasingly the U.S. public policy response is to punish young perpetrators of violence through waivers and transfers from juvenile to adult courts. Adolescence is a time of expanding vulnerabilities and exposures to violence that can be self-destructive as well as destructive of others. Such violence can involve intimate relationships or strangers, and in addition to being perpetrators or victims, youth are often bystanders and witnesses to violence. The authors hypothesize that the life-course consequences of experiences with violence, especially violence in intimate adolescent relationships, include more than contemporaneous health risks, leading also to subsequent depression and premature exits from adolescence to adulthood. An analysis of panel data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health indicates that violence in intimate adolescent relationships results in depressed feelings, running away from home, serious thoughts about suicide, dropping out of school, and teenage pregnancy. Among adolescent females, violence in intimate relationships is especially likely to lead to depression, and exposure to violence on the street combines with violence by intimate partners to result in especially high risks of pregnancy. Future work should consider how exposure to violence and premature exits to adulthood negatively affect adult life outcomes.
Commemorating a Difficult Past: Yitzhak Rabin's Memorials
Authors: Vinitzky-Seroussi Vered
Published: August 2023

While the literature on collective memory suggests that a multivocal type of commemoration will be constructed in response to a difficult past, Yitzhak Rabin's commemorations provide a case study of a different type of commemoration of challenging events: a fragmented commemoration. A fragmented commemoration consists of multiple times and spaces in which different discourses of the past are aimed at disparate audiences. The author offers a theoretical model within which the emergence of both types of commemoration (multivocal and fragmented) can be understood and analyzed. The model consists of three dimensions: (1) the political culture of the commemorating society, (2) the relevance of past to present, and (3) the power of agents of memory. Explanatory models consisting of a dynamic interplay of agents, cultures, and structures prove valuable as a basis for the study of various sorts of cultural productions in general and commemorative types in particular.
Becoming a Pragmatist Philosopher: Status, Self-Concept, and Intellectual Choice
Authors: Gross Neil
Published: August 2023

What social factors influence intellectuals’ decisions to affiliate with one intellectual tradition over another? In recent years, many sociologists of ideas have viewed intellectual choice as based on the quest for status within the intellectual field. However, the “ self-narratives “ that thinkers construct to understand who they are as intellectuals are not usually reducible to considerations of status, and the desire to do work resonant with any salient aspect of one's “intellectual self-concept” may influence the intellectual choices one makes. This issue is explored empirically by examining the case of philosophers who have affiliated themselves with the tradition of classical American pragmatism. Data come from interviews and from a nationally representative survey of U.S. philosophers. Results show that the choice to become a pragmatist is best explained by invoking both theories of status-based choice and the theory of intellectual self-concept. Implications for future research are considered.
Cultural Transmission, Disproportionate Prior Exposure, and the Evolution of Cooperation
Authors: Mark Noah P.
Published: August 2023

Why is human cooperation so prevalent? This paper identifies one potential reason for the prevalence of cooperation in human populations. People acquire social behaviors—cooperative or exploitative—from other people through cultural transmission. There is a previously unrecognized characteristic of cultural transmission—disproportionate prior exposure—that creates an evolutionary force toward cooperation: individuals who have acquired a cooperative or exploitative behavior through cultural transmission tend disproportionately to have been targets of that behavior prior to acquiring it. Thus, individuals who have acquired cooperative behavior through cultural transmission have disproportionately benefited from the cooperative behavior of others, while individuals who have acquired exploitative behavior through cultural transmission have disproportionately been hurt by the exploitative behavior of others. Because the benefits of being a target of cooperative behavior tend to make a person more influential as a behavioral model (i.e., tend to increase that person's cultural fitness), the disproportionate prior exposure inherent in cultural transmission creates an evolutionary force toward cooperation. A simple formal analysis reveals an evolutionary force toward cooperation under a minimal set of conditions previously believed to make the evolution of cooperation impossible—one-shot prisoner's dilemmas with no option to exit played between strangers in a large, randomly mixing population. Attention to this evolutionary force is likely to advance our understanding of the prevalence of cooperation.
Race, Regional Origin, and Residence in Northern Cities at the Beginning of the Great Migration
Authors: Tolnay Stewart E. , Crowder Kyle D. , Adelman Robert M.
Published: August 2023

Southern blacks and whites began moving to northern and western cities in large numbers during the second decade of the twentieth century. City-level and ward-level data for 103 northern and western cities are used, along with the 1920 Public Use Microdata Sample, to investigate variation in neighborhood characteristics by race and migration history in 1920. The results of multi-level analyses reveal sharp differences between blacks and whites in the racial composition and quality of residential neighborhoods, even after controlling for a variety of sociodemographic characteristics. Regional origin also affects neighborhood outcomes, primarily because of the racial differences in the urban locations of southern migrants. Black migrants experienced a relative residential disadvantage because of their greater concentration in cities that constrained their residential opportunities. In contrast, white migrants selected destinations that enhanced their locational attainment. These findings highlight the importance of the larger social and economic context in the structuring of group differences in residential outcomes and point to the need for additional research into the selection of destinations by the participants in the Great Migration.
Political Competition and Violence in Mexico: Hierarchical Social Control in Local Patronage Structures
Authors: Villarreal Andres
Published: August 2023

Many countries that have recently undergone transitions to democracy have experienced increases in violent crime. Yet sociological theories have generally failed to consider the impact of political factors on crime. The author examines the relation between greater electoral competition and homicide at the subnational level in a country undergoing an uneven transition to democracy. In societies characterized by the presence of patronage networks, social and political changes that undermine the source of unequal exchange between actors at different levels in the social hierarchy result in a temporary loss of social control and an increase in crime. The relation between electoral competition and homicide is tested using electoral results from a sample of 1,800 Mexican municipalities. Greater electoral competition is associated with higher homicide rates across municipalities and over time, even after controlling for standard correlates of violent crime. Consistent with the hypothesis that the increase is due to the disruption of patronage networks, this association is present only in rural areas where patron-client relations are more common.
Emerging Parental Gender Indifference? Sex Composition of Children and the Third Birth
Authors: Pollard Michael S. , Morgan S. Philip
Published: August 2023

For much of the twentieth century, parents in the United States with two children of the same sex were more likely to have a third child than were parents with one son and one daughter, that is, there was an effect of the sex of previous children on the occurrence of a third birth. Using multiple cycles of the Current Population Survey and National Survey of Family Growth, the authors examine the strength of this effect on both fertility behavior and intentions over multiple decades. Changes in the societal gender system are expected to weaken this pronatalist effect in recent periods. Consistent with this expectation, there has been some attenuation of the effect of sex composition of previous children on the third birth, suggesting declining salience of children's gender for parents.
Why Teamwork Fails: Obstacles to Workplace Change in Four Manufacturing Plants
Authors: Vallas Steven P.
Published: August 2023

Using data from a comparative, multisite ethnography, this paper identifies some of the social and organizational conditions that limited the impact of workplace transformation at four manufacturing plants during the 1990s. Although these plants adopted an array of new work practices, most achieved only limited gains and were generally unable to transcend the traditional boundary between salaried and hourly employees. A key reason lay in the managerial orientation toward production that was brought to bear on the process of workplace change. This orientation, which placed substantial emphasis on scientific and technical rationality, limited the firm's ability to provide an overarching normative or moral framework within which workplace change might unfold, leaving team systems vulnerable to anomic tendencies, to status distinctions among hourly employees, and to other sources of instability. The predominance of a technical, expert-centered orientation toward production also introduced salient contradictions into the new work regimes, pitting a logic of standardization against managerial efforts to cultivate a logic of participation. These findings suggest that successful implementation of workplace change may depend on the ability of corporate executives to demonstrate the very capacity for flexibility that they often demand of their hourly employees.
Long-Term Changes in the Character of the Sociological Discipline: A Short Note on the Length of Titles of Articles Submitted to the American Sociological Review during the year 2002
Authors: Becker Howard S.
Published: August 2023

Having often struggled during our years as ASR Editors to adjust the number of words in article titles to fit the space limitations of ASR's page design, we have been struck by the sheer length of many of the titles that we see. To gain perspective on this matter, we furnished Howard S. Becker, the longest-serving member of our Editorial Board, with some relevant data on ASR manuscript titles and invited him to write the following editorial. — Eds.