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Since Donald Trump's political campaign, Americans have appeared increasingly divided over public opinion issues and U.S. policies with the media seemingly reflecting these divisions. One of Trump's early initiatives was the "Muslim ban," which restricted visitors from seven Muslim‐majority countries. Focusing on the portrayal of Muslims in over 900 hand‐coded articles, our study uses multilevel modeling techniques to examine how newspapers changed their frames and claimsmakers in discussions about Muslims before and after Trump was elected. After the election, newspapers were more likely to include government claimsmakers and an immigration frame and were less likely to mention a radical terrorist leader or portray Muslims as violent. Trump's election and the ban may have ushered in a more sympathetic view of Muslims with more articles focused on them as victims of violence and negative expressions. Across counties, states, and newspapers and between the national versus local presses, we find almost no significant differences in how Muslims were portrayed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ASMR (“Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response”) is commonly defined as an emotional experience of a tingling sensation in the head and neck. It is said to be triggered by certain auditory, visual, interpersonal, tactile, and often socially intimate stimuli. A great many people around the world reportedly experience ASMR regularly. However, it was not before the year 2007 that the phenomenon has been publicly noticed. Since then, ASMR has become a persistent globalized phenomenon receiving enormous attention. But sociology has remained silent about the phenomenon. Therefore, this paper aims at bringing ASMR to the attention of sociology. ASMR constitutes a unique case of the social construction of a new emotion within the past 15 years or so. The paper offers a first attempt to grasp ASMR sociologically by looking at situational triggers, physiological sensations, the cultural labelling, and the problem of expressive gestures. The paper also identifies several areas of sociology for which ASMR has relevance and outlines potential research avenues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigrants need to constantly manage their legal status while straddling uncertain life circumstances and shifting policies. U.S. immigrant policies treat immigrants based on U.S. internal and international political needs. This practice is only further heightened during a global crisis such as the recent COVID‐19 pandemic. Immigrants' existing citizenship contributes to the constraints they experience. Using Chinese international students studying in graduate programs as an example, this paper studies the dual liminality highly skilled immigrants experience in sustaining their legal status and developing their careers. Adopting a life course perspective, this paper reveals that liminal legality constrains immigrants' career choices as they transition from students to full‐time professionals. Acquiring legal status takes precedence over their career goals. They may forfeit career opportunities to secure legal status. Moreover, their Chinese citizenship hinders their career advancement. In recent years, United States–China rivalry in international politics and intellectual competition has intensified. Combined with a racialized construction of U.S. citizenship, highly skilled Chinese immigrants experience a heightened sense of vulnerability vis‐a‐vis institutional scrutiny and mistreatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary focus of this paper is twofold: to demarcate the epistemic erasure of societal knowledge and narratives of Asian Americans as braided with other forms of anti‐Asian racism by tracing its historical roots in orientalism, colonialism, and imperialism; and to redress such erasure by foregrounding transnational perspectives and Asian American Critical Race Theory (AsianCrit). By attending to historical and ongoing experiences of migration and racialization, this paper highlights the transculturality of Asian American histories, epistemologies, and communities, along with the multi‐stranded connections that they share with diasporic Asians in other countries. It expands the dominant framing of racialized minorities in the United States that indexes and limits their experiences within the geopolitical boundaries of the nation‐state. By situating Asian Americans within critical historical and transnational contexts, this paper generates a fuller and more complex understanding of the past and present conditions of Asian Americans and anti‐Asian racism. It also deliberately highlights the agency of Asian American youth and their strategies in contesting anti‐Asian racism in schools and society at large. By amplifying Asian American youth voices and agency, this paper not only affirms their wealth of transnational funds of knowledge but also offers crucial interventions challenging the curricular violence that continues to marginalize and misrepresent Asian Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conceptual paper reviews four dimensions of the climate change (CC) debate concerning perception, framing, and political and economic dimensions of CC. It attempts to address the question posed by sociological research as to what can be done to reduce the social forces driving CC. In doing so, it attempts to uncover mechanisms that delay or prevent the social change required to combat CC. Such mechanisms call into question the Ecological Modernization Theory's assumption that modern societies embrace environmental sustainability with no radical intervention to change the social, political, and economic order. It specifically considers how the representation of CC as a distant phenomenon, in both temporal and physical terms, might contribute to social disengagement. A reflection on the interdependencies among science, political economy, media, and individual perceptions guides this paper. All these social forces also shape the CC discourse in diverse ways according to the evolution of the phenomenon over time (in scientific, but also in political and economic terms) and in relation to its spatial dimension (global/national/local). The variety of climate discourses contributes to increasing political uncertainty; however, this is not the only factor that generates confusion around the CC. Multiple and contrasting information might trigger a "blaming/empowering game" that works at various levels. This mechanism simultaneously promotes the necessity for sustainable development and perpetuates "business as usual‐oriented" practices. Implementing sustainable development is therefore constantly undermined by a difficulty in identifying "heroes" and "devils" in the context of CC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rich body of literature has studied variances in motherhood wage penalties. Yet studies have not explored American rural–nonrural differences in this phenomenon. The spatial differences in women's experiences deserve exploration. Based on prior studies, rural mothers may experience greater wage penalties than nonrural mothers because of their high marriage rates, low educational levels, and the traditional gender attitudes and norms in rural communities. However, they may experience smaller penalties because rural job structures lack diversity and jobs there tend to be low‐paid. This paper uses fixed‐effects models to examine the rural–nonrural differences in motherhood wage penalties, with data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79). The results show that although rural women reported lower education levels and higher marriage rates than nonrural women, they experienced smaller motherhood wage penalties than nonrural women partially because they were more likely to work in low‐paid occupations and industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a 2020 U.S. survey, more Asian Indians than Chinese indicated that they were worried about post‐Covid‐19 hate crimes. Yet, post‐Covid violence against people of Asian background has been viewed as being directed against "Chinese‐looking" individuals. This is just one example of how South Asians are overlooked in discourses about Asian Americans. This theoretical paper provides an expansion of the racial formation framework to explain this exclusion. We demonstrate how global factors, including the foreign engagements of the United States shaped the development of the Asian American group and category, and why, even though Asian Americans can be brown, yellow, white, or black, an East Asian phenotype is viewed as denoting an "Asian" body in the United States. We also discuss how the racialization of religion shapes anti‐South Asian racism, a factor largely ignored in the literature on racial formation and Asian Americans. We end by calling for the inclusion of South Asians in Asian American literature to challenge many of the reigning paradigms regarding Asian America and anti‐Asian racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social and geopolitical disruptions triggered by the COVID‐19 crisis have raised crucial questions about the shifting meaning of race, citizenship, and nationality for transborder migrants amidst receding globalization, hardening borders, and geopolitical tensions. The aim of this paper is to examine the ways in which Chinese international students have viewed and negotiated their ambiguous racial and ethnonational position between nations during the global pandemic. Drawing on 16 student interviews at one upstate New York campus between 2019 and 2021, we argue that Chinese international students have occupied a liminal space between nations that shapes their understanding of race and racism through a distinctly geopolitical lens. Double‐edged exclusion and discrimination from both the US and China during the global pandemic have heightened their sense of social dislocation and withdrawal from nationalist politics in both countries. In the process, they have not so much surrendered the cosmopolitan ideals that motivated their migration but rather, reimagined them while maintaining a delicate balance between global cosmopolitan ideals and ethnonationalist loyalties. Our findings provide insights into the future political trajectory of Chinese transborder migrants amid tense US–China relations and help to explain the contradictions of diasporic Chinese worldviews on current affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the emerging field of men, masculinities, and disasters by drawing on narratives of men's accounts of the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake, including how stories of the earthquake intersect with experiences and understandings of extreme weather and climate change. A qualitative methodology was employed, and semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 19 men who experienced the 7.8 magnitude earthquake. This article offers an examination of the complexity of disaster experiences and recovery, as well as how people make sense of hazards and risks. We argue that ongoing exposure to climate hazards informed participant's responses to other infrequent natural hazard events, such as the Kaikōura earthquake. The research identified that men construct their own understandings and responses to natural hazards through a hierarchy of risk perception and probability based on personal experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings of qualitative analysis of female professors' views about the role of their parents' attitudes and family backgrounds in shaping their access to and participation in university education in Pakistan. Structural barriers in the form of lack of education, in particular, high education facilities and opportunities were linked to disadvantaged rural places of residence and geographical inequities, whereas parental values of believing in the importance of gaining professional education were commonly highlighted across the sample. Similarly, the family culture of encouraging and supporting children's education, and parental role in overcoming barriers in gaining access to university education were more likely reported than traditional gender role beliefs and gendered practices. Additionally, parents' positive and reinforcing attitudes toward their daughters' education played a mediating role in shaping study participants' academic dispositions and agencies that lead to their academic and career success. The analysis revealed that parents' positive educational values, encouraging attitudes, and supportive behaviors for their daughters were embedded in parents' personal histories and experiences of deprived status in education and occupational attainments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists define power as one party's capacity to influence another's action. Thus, power is a relational property of interpersonal interaction. However, its dynamics embed within institutions such as the church and the state. This paper explores power dynamics using a case study of the conflict between an Old Order Amish church and the civil law of Ohio. The church excommunicated a member for violating community rules. The member countered by suing the church in state court. We trace power within and across these spheres of influence, showing how each party defined the situation according to institutional vectors of power. While one might expect the state to possess greater power in this situation, we demonstrate that ultimately neither party had total power, and both lost to some extent. This case study identifies the importance of viewing power as interactional, dynamic, and contextual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health and latent class analysis to assess the extent to which individuals integrate guns into broader health lifestyles. We also examine how these new health lifestyles differ for men and women. While men integrate guns with a variety of risk‐taking behaviors, including smoking, heavy drinking, risky sexual behavior, and fast‐food consumption, women do not. Our results are consistent with a gendered theory of gun ownership and health lifestyles. On the one hand, some men may use guns and other risky health behaviors to project hegemonic masculinity. On the other hand, some women may avoid guns and other elements of risky lifestyles to signify normative femininity. It is important for sociologists and public health scholars to focus more on how and why men are more likely to integrate guns into generally unhealthy lifestyles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of climate change are both acute and chronic, leaving many communities in a perpetual state of uncertainty. For others, there is no such uncertainty—their communities will soon be uninhabitable. Some levels of government have begun to recognize and slowly respond to communities facing the possibilities of relocation. This paper considers the impact of transdisciplinary thinking and collaborative moments in the planning phase of one of the few community‐scale managed retreat attempts in the United States. In January 2016, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded the state of Louisiana $48.3 million to plan, design, and implement a structured and scalable resettlement with former and current residents of Isle de Jean Charles. The paper uses data from surveys and interviews with the practitioner team, fieldnotes, review of published reports, and a sample of more than 400 media accounts. Our analysis highlights how developing a transdisciplinary process may render a new understanding to the tasks and meanings of planning resettlements in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While objective class dynamics have received much attention in South Africa, less is known about the subjective social positions individuals place themselves in. For example, in a highly unequal society like South Africa, some individuals would overestimate (inflate) or underestimate (deflate) their social position compared to their objective class position. This paper aims to provide further information on status inconsistency in South Africa by assessing some of the socioeconomic determinants of bias perceptions. Using International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) data and a multinomial probit model, the results show that education and race play a significant role in influencing the biased perceptions of individuals in South Africa. For example, individuals with higher education levels have a stronger tendency to deflate their social position, while Coloreds, Indians/Asians, and whites tend to inflate their social positions more than Africans. The results indicate the vital role of race and education in determining status inconsistencies in a society that is still suffering from high levels of racial and education inequality due to the lingering legacy of apartheid. The results provide a better understanding to policymakers and government on the dynamics behind social status perceptions in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of scholarship highlights the merits of fusing green criminology and environmental justice frameworks to better understand intersections among carceral systems, race‐ and class‐based stratification, and environmental harm. This paper explores how correctional institutions (CIs) with known histories of federal environmental law violations compare against other previously established environmentally harmful facilities and land uses. In this article, we ask: are prisons and other CIs that have violated federal environmental laws located proximate to areas where there is evidence of existing high‐pollution facilities? Relatedly, are CIs that have established noncompliant histories with federal environmental laws located in similarly marginalized and disadvantaged communities compared to other traditionally defined sites of environmental injustice and harm? To answer these questions, we utilize data from the EPA's Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database. Our findings provide evidence that, within our sample of facilities that have recorded noncompliance with federal environmental laws, CIs are significantly more likely to be located proximate to Superfund sites than most of the other facility types/land uses and more likely to be located in communities with racially minoritized populations. Our findings have important implications for further research on carceral systems and environmental justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a content analysis of church sermons in terms of social class distinctions in the memberships of two Southern Baptist churches. The major finding is that there is a relationship between social class and sermon content. The data for this analysis were obtained by the transcription of forty Sunday morning sermons. The results are interpreted as suggesting that lower class church members search for consolation while upper class congregations search for justification for and continuation of their elevated social status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the dynamics of Bazoorns, a "restaurant" in which powers gender, and sexuality come together to color relations between the three major "players" involved: waitresses, managers, and customers- Job-based power relations and inequities, gender roles, implicit and explicit sexual roles, and sexual harassment are all "at work" in such a workplace. But definitions of power, gender roles, sexual identities, and harassment are in constant flux with each interaction among the players inside the Bazooms world. The women who work at Bazooms-the "Bazooms girls"-are disadvantaged iii these interactions, but they are not helpless. Dynamics within the restaurant are constantly being negotiated and altered (within constraints) as these women exercise agency in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of precarious employment coupled with declining social safety nets has increased economic insecurity among many households, leaving them without key resources to weather financial hardships like those brought on by the COVID‐19 pandemic. This has been especially true for people whose disabilities, health statuses, and already precarious economic situations have made them extra vulnerable. We combine survey (N = 1,027) and interview (N = 50) data for Canadians with disabilities and chronic health conditions to explore how mobilizing four types of institutional supports connected to labor markets, financial markets, family, and government influenced perceptions of current and future insecurity during crisis. Because employment income was only available to about half of our respondents, many relied on a combination of savings, family supports, and government programs to make up the difference. This paper demonstrates how marginalized groups make use of different supports within liberal welfare states during times of crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Market transition theory implies that increased market competition generates incentives for allocating job resources based on educational credentials and marketable skills, in contrast with traditional patronage systems that allocate employment opportunities through network membership. Yet despite the breakdown of patronage systems, further development of market institutions result in greater uncertainty, job precarity, and competition, which may promote referral hiring and diffusion of job information through social networks. This paper explores the relationship between marketization and access to employment opportunities through social networks (specifically the receipt of unsolicited job leads). Data from the Social Capital China Survey suggest that growing marketization across provinces is positively associated with receipt of unsolicited job leads. In particular, private sector development, factor market development, and legal intermediary proliferation are significantly and positively associated with an individual's chance of receiving unsolicited job leads. The findings help clarify the mechanisms through which marketization facilitates informal exchange of job information, advancing scholarship on how concrete institutional conditions shape the significance of social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I clarify some components and expand a few underdeveloped ideas of the racialized social system approach to racial stratification. I divide the paper into three parts. In the first section, I explore the limitations of the figure of "the racist." In the second part, I examine the problem of change. In the third part, which is the core of the paper, I discuss what makes "systemic racism" systemic. My main contention in this article is that the "systemic" in "systemic racism" means that we all participate in the reproduction of the racialized order. Furthermore, this reproduction depends fundamentally on behavior and actions that are normative, habituated, and often unconscious. Hence, systemic racism is the product of the behavior and practices of regular White folks rather than the "racists." In the conclusion, I discuss the implications of my claims for further theory‐building, research, and the struggle for racial justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because Japanese Americans are among the oldest Asian American groups, they would be expected to have a high level of panethnicity since they apparently have much in common with other U.S.‐born Asian Americans. However, most Japanese Americans interviewed for this paper did not identify panethnically with their Asian co‐ethnics, but felt separate and distinct as Japanese Americans. Research on panethnicity has not sufficiently examined why some Asian Americans are not panethnic. Although Japanese Americans are homogeneously racialized as "Asians," they also resist their panethnic racialization by insisting on their distinct identity as Japanese descendants. They also continue to experience cultural and generational differences with other Asian Americans. In addition, even third and fourth generation Japanese Americans are not immune to the interethnic prejudices, hostilities, and homeland tensions that continue to simmer among different groups of Asian Americans. Finally, my interviewees were not interested in panethnic activism because they apparently no longer had compelling experiences of racial injustice and socioeconomic marginalization. Nonetheless, national‐origins ethnicity and panethnicity should not be regarded as mutually exclusive opposites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars can rarely make causal claims about migration probabilities and outcomes. Leveraging a natural experiment based on the randomness of offspring sex, this paper uses the German SOEP Migration Sample to examine the effect of having a first‐born son or daughter on parents' likelihood to migrate and integrate. It shows that (non‐Christian) parents of sons are more likely to migrate to Germany, but parents of daughters fare better after migration in terms of language acquisition, feeling at home and overall satisfied with their lives. The first finding is explained through gendered differences in parental investment, risk aversion, and household decision‐making. The second finding is explained through girls' greater ability to act as brokers between their parents and the host society. For migration scholarship, the study provides a rare causal argument about family migration. For research on offspring sex effects, it provides further evidence of a socialization from child to parent, expands the possibility of offspring sex effects from parental attitudes to behaviors, and cautions against assuming that offspring sex is random in all populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soon after the Covid19 pandemic hit, sports were halted, resulting in a natural hiatus ripe for collective memory practices. For basketball culture, this remembrance predominantly took the form of nostalgia, mostly for the 1990s and the Michael Jordan era through ESPN's series The Last Dance; when professional men's basketball is considered to have been better. In this paper, we ask what this perceptional superiority signifies. We find that the nostalgic story of '90s NBA, told by fans and media pundits, has three characteristics. First, the game was tougher, competitive, not amicable, less globalized, hence, more masculine. Second, team loyalty mattered more in the past and hence players stayed with a sole team, as they tried to defeat worthy rivals. Third, the sport was apolitical. We argue that this sporting nostalgia, which intersects with dominant ideas about masculinity, competition, celebrity, and American society's "apolitical" relationship to sport, is used as a cultural corrective to police the actions of current Black NBA players on and off the court. Through the juxtaposition of lead characters of Michael Jordan and Lebron James, nostalgia is used as a racialized symbolic boundary marker to reinforce and produce the "right" professional Black athlete deserving of public adoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political institutions in the United States have become increasingly polarized. This paper asks how gender has been part of party polarization's institutionalization and what consequences gender has on relations of power in increasingly divisive legislative work. Drawing on interviews with 21 New Hampshire state representatives and archival legislative and committee leadership records, I analyze the process and changing meanings of partisanship in the everyday work of the legislature. As this state's moderate conservative caucus disbanded and the Republican Party lost its long‐standing control, more divisive Republican alliances masculinized legislative politics as combative. Meanwhile, the newly competitive Democratic Party began to actively showcase women as party and committee leaders. State representatives' accounts demonstrate the gendered meanings and consequences of party polarization in the legislative workplace beyond what is captured by traditional measures of ideological polarization. These findings show how gender polarization produces new forms of institutionalized political inequalities in the hierarchical legislative workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to understand the multiple meanings ascribed to the hijab as a "situated, embodied practice" understood with a "translocational lens." Using data from thirty‐four Muslim women college students in the United States, we argue there are multiple meanings ascribed to the "headscarf." Muslim college women described the veil with discourses surrounding the hijab being a religious requirement, a symbol of identity, and representative of diverse feminist positions. These negotiations were motivated and informed by their various translocational positions that highlight the role of structured inequities surrounding nationality, ethnicity, and race shaping their understandings and choice to veil or not. Thus, a situated, embodied and intersectional lens of the hijab provides nuance and a deeper understanding to the meanings and practices associated with the hijab for Muslim college women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the morning of April 24, 2013, Rana Plaza, an eight‐story building housing five garment factories collapsed killing 1,129 workers and injuring 2,500. It quickly emerged that U.S.‐ and European‐based retailers were sourcing items produced at Rana Plaza. This paper takes the Rana Plaza collapse as a case study of how media discourse constructs ideas about corporate deviance, responsibility, and risk management in the global supply chain. Guided by the crime news frame and global risk governance, newspaper articles from the U.S. and Bangladesh are used for a content analysis. This paper expands the literature of corporate crime and global risk governance to include the fast fashion industry. We find little evidence that either country discusses Rana Plaza as corporate deviance or the criminal condemnation of corporations. We find evidence that global risk governance is nationalized, as U.S. papers shift blame away from U.S. corporations and onto Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the social‐psychological processes of social comparison and relative deprivation with regard to race, gender, and their intersections in STEM higher education through the narratives of 33 Black respondents who described their experiences within engineering and computer science doctoral programs. I use social comparison and relative deprivation, a subsidiary theory of social comparison, as guiding theoretical frameworks. Since the intersections of race and gender are salient, I also incorporate an intersectional framework as an analytical tool. Through data derived from semi‐structured interviews, I find that, when describing graduate‐school experiences, Black engineering and computer science respondents use social comparisons with regard to race, gender, and their intersections to juxtapose their experiences with those of their peers. Participants described feeling relatively deprived due to inequities resulting from racism and/or sexism and primarily felt that STEM privileged students that were Asian men. Nevertheless, Black men described downward social comparisons with their Black female counterparts, recognizing the sexist culture of STEM. Overall, however, social comparison processes led Black respondents to identify inequities within their Ph.D. programs in engineering and computer science that made them feel as though STEM was not intended for them, but, rather, for their Asian and white male peers who are positioned as belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supportive family members appear to be an important source of compassion and allyship for their transgender loved ones, and yet there is little research on the family members themselves. With growing recognition, researchers are increasingly focusing on these perspectives, yet there remains a dearth of literature that incorporates the perspectives of people with transgender parents. In this paper, I use 20 in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews to assess the empathetic self‐constructions of participants as they describe their love and support for their transgender parent, while examining potential dangers of support that is underpinned by traditional norms related to gender, sexuality, and family. I introduce cisnormative empathy to identify this phenomenon, acknowledging the importance of empathy as a precursor to support and acceptance, while exploring how empathetic self‐constructions combined with actions underpinned by cisnormativity may be counterproductive to the needs of transgender loved ones and the transgender community as a whole. I suggest that additional supports for transgender people's loved ones are needed to help explore complicated emotions while also challenging cisnormative ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing scholarly evidence that financialization has contributed to rising income inequality, especially by concentrating income among the affluent and rich. There is less empirical research examining who is losing out to the affluent. This paper fills this gap by examining how three measures of financialization (finance, insurance, and real estate or FIRE employment; credit expansion; and financial crises) affect upper‐tail (measured as the ratio between the 90th and 50th income percentiles) and lower‐tail (measured as the ratio between the 50th and 10th income percentiles) income inequality. Using concepts from economic sociology and the social stratification literature, I develop a perspective that links financialization to income inequality by creating more unequal market incomes while simultaneously reducing redistribution and social transfers. I analyze disposable household income data (after taxes and transfers) from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) and other public sources like the OECD from 16 affluent nations between the years 1981 and 2011, and I use an unbalanced panel design due to LIS data coverage. I find that the relative incomes of both the middle class and the poor are hurt by financialization (strongest evidence tied to FIRE employment); however, relative incomes of the poor are especially sensitive to financialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses ethnographic methods to explore how peer support and community involvement influence the mental health and well‐being of transgender (or, trans) people in the southeastern United States. The study builds on existing research that suggests that trans community involvement and peer support among trans people enhance mental health experiences and moderate the effects of stigma and discrimination on health outcomes. Through qualitative analysis of 158 hours of participant observation and 33 in‐depth interviews with members of a trans community organization in the U.S. Southeast, this paper identifies three key processes through which peer support and community involvement enhance the mental health and well‐being of trans people: (1) the normalization of trans identities and experiences; (2) the creation of a social support network; and (3) the empowerment of trans people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2012, the outstanding student loan balance in the United States surpassed $1 trillion, and between 2005 and 2012, the student loan delinquency rate increased by 77 percent. Simultaneously, by the end of the 2005–2012 time period, the total suicide rate in the United States reached the highest levels in more than a decade. To investigate the recent trends in student loans and suicide, this paper examined the association between state‐level student loan debt, student loan delinquency, and total, age‐, and sex‐specific suicide rates. The study used a hybrid (decompositional) longitudinal regression approach to examine the relationship between student loan debt, delinquency, and suicide rates during the 2005–2012 time period. The results showed student loan delinquency had a positive and significant effect on several of the suicide rates examined within states but had no effect on suicide rates between states net of controls. The results also showed student loan debt had a significant and negative association with suicide for people ages 20–24 and 25–34. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies of workplace inequality have examined why workplace gender segregation still exists and how gender segregation affects workplaces (Cohen, Huffman, and Knauer 2009 Work and Occupations 36(4):318; Huffman, Cohen, and Pearlman 2010 Administrative Science Quarterly 55(2):255). Yet, fewer studies have examined how space might affect gender segregation. In this paper, we investigate two types of space, normative space and industrial space, and their influence on gender workplace segregation within geographic space. We use data from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and mixed models to examine how normative and industrial spaces affect workplaces within geographic space. We find that both measures of normative and industrial space predict differing levels of gender segregation within geographic spaces (measured via commuting zones). In addition, the effects normative space (women's share of the labor force) has on gender segregation are mediated by industrial restructuring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special section on children's health and well-being is an outgrowth of the 2010 International Sociological Association's (ISA) World Congress in Gothenburg, Sweden. Within the Congress, the Research Committee 53, Sociology of Childhood, organized a panel focused on the health and well-being of children. Together, this collection makes two distinct contributions: first in terms of considering children's health disparities as an area of concern within sociology, and second by considering children's health as a factor that shapes other areas of children's well-being. In addition, these papers offer novel empirical research on children's health and varied methodological and theoretical orientations. Each paper also makes contributions to social policy, first in the area of infant health affecting later educational outcomes, second in the area of family structure and children's health, and additionally in understanding type 2 diabetes for children at the individual and structural levels. Finally, these studies highlight the interplay-between the individuals' health on the one hand and structure and culture on the other-as children's life chances are shaped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most treatments of social justice, little consideration is given to spatial concerns. However, it is increasingly evident that spatial or territorial factors play a major role in determining life chances and in helping to deliver social inclusion. This paper considers the key theoretical issues that underpin the spatial dimension of social justice. From this, the paper progresses to examining the factors that have influenced the introduction of sociospatial development as a component part of the adoption of the sustainable development paradigm. Illustrations are provided of the outcome of this new model including the construction of the European Spatial Development Perspective and the introduction of Community Planning in Scotland. A final section looks forward to the wider adoption of a sociospatial approach to policy development and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we are studying social identities within a cross-national framework as they are reflected in values regarding social institutions. We compare value items to infer similarities and differences between Japan and the US, but more importantly we analyze value configurations, using factor analysis, as an expression of underlying cultural expectations. We also argue that the way values are transmitted further defines the distinctive cultural basis of social identities. Using a unique data set, The Generations Survey, we propose to contribute theoretically and methodologically to understanding the role of culture in postmodern societies. Our research, based on identical national surveys collected in 1995, provides a systematic way to compare values in two countries. The research builds on and specifies existing ethnographic case studies and in-depth interviews around a variety of themes that shape social identities such as the link between family and work expectations, the role of ethical values in business, the importance of national identification, and the meaning of community involvement. The paper concludes by suggesting that despite homogenizing trends and surface similarities, cultural distinctiveness persists in the ways values cluster and is transmitted in the family, shaping the social identities of Japanese and US respondents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the stratification among African American women by skin color on indices such as education, income, and spousal status. How racial and colonial ideologies situate whiteness and blackness as symbolic representations in relation to one another and the subsequent systems of discrimination that develop from those ideologies is the crux of the theoretical argument in this paper. Infusing the concept of constructed notions of beauty into this racial paradigm further elaborates this process for African American women. I hypothesized that light-skinned women would have higher educational attainment, higher personal incomes and would be more likely to many high-status husbands than would darker-skinned women. Even when controlling for background variables, all three of the hypotheses are confirmed and the significance of skin color, particularly the privileging of lightness, is demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major theme in social theory concerns the transformation of social relationships in small communities as a result of modernization. This paper examines changing social relations in some small towns in southeastern Pennsylvania. For several hundred years, the residents of these towns have continuously developed institutions to preserve their local identity and maintain personal relations at the same time that they are incorporated into larger, regional social systems. The same local institutions and relations, however, are replicated in each small town, suggesting that local and particular interests are expressed through regional institutions. Although focused on a few small towns in one region of the United States, this paper examines the local expression of processes which are global. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, there is little empirical evidence directly linking a firm's short-term behavior to its top management's career path. This paper attempts to address this gap by examining to what extent firms with Chief Executive Officers who have more professional-type career paths invest less in medium- and long-term corporate strategies. The paper is organized to: (1) briefly examine the general question of why CEOs' characteristics affect corporate outcomes; (2) explore the relation between CEOs' latent identities as professionals/experts or company men and women and the temporal character of their strategic-planning decisions; (3) develop specific hypotheses as to the effect the functional and industry specializations of CEOs have on their firms' capital expenditures and R&D spending; and (4) test the hypotheses using regression analysis on data covering four manufacturing industries in 1989. A general consensus exists that if United States is to remain globally competitive, large investments in research and development are needed. The responsibility for much of this investment will fall on the firm. Several researchers have found that such firm traits as acquisition activity, debt, and stock ownership structure determine how much a firm spends on R&D.

This paper examines a central issue in organizational research and addresses a core theoretical problem in historical and political sociology: The conditions under which social actors that share economic interests mobilize, and their capacity to alter dimensions of the social structure that impinge on those interests. The social actors of concern here are capitalist class fractions and state managers. The capital dependence perspective elaborated here suggests that when the institutional environment no longer ensures an adequate rate of capital accumulation, capitalists mobilize to restructure their environment. The specific focus is on how capitalists and state managers experimented with state business policy to change the politico-legal dimension of corporations' institutional environment in the 1970s and 1980s, and how the new business policy was a response to existing constraints on capital accumulation and a perceived solution to those constraints. The first part of this paper develops a theoretical framework that places the modem corporation in its historical and institutional context. The second part examines changes in state business policy in the 1980s that affect the corporate form. The third part identifies crucial characteristics of the emerging subsidiary form. The fourth part examines empirical data on the corporate form and presents several propositions to guide future research on why corporations are changing their form.

This paper discusses the concept Spacetime in the context of some traditional notions of space and time in sociological and anthropological literature. The paper argues that the concept of spacetime, together with other post-Newtonian insights, can provide a useful metaphor with which to interpret societal phenomena. The paper concludes by illustrating the argument with a brief review of the ethnohistory of a Caribbean territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the interactional underpinnings of social scientific research. Based on a detailed examination of a two-hour research interview it describes aspects of the conversational practices through which social scientific knowledge is generated. Put critiques of interview research have been somewhat unilateral in their focus, typically examining how researchers impose understandings on their subjects' reports. This paper moves beyond the unilateral focus to describe how researcher and subjects interact to mutually develop procedures for doing the actual research and collaboratively assemble their product. The analysis treats evaluative knowledge as a locally managed, interactional achievement. It stresses the practical, the situ character of how knowledge is co-produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to illuminate how social movements collectively construct and communicate power. Drawing on insights from dramaturgy as well as from field research of several movements, the article demonstrates how social movements are dramas routinely concerned with challenging or sustaining interpretations of power relations. Four dramatic techniques associated with such communicative processes are identified and elaborated: scripting, staging, performing and interpreting. It is suggested that movement outcomes hinge in part upon how well activists employ these techniques and manage various emergent contingencies and tensions. The paper concludes with a discussion of several sets of theoretical arid empirical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the theoretical and policy significance of one of Robert Merton's most influential contributions to modern sociology, the anomie or ‘strain’ theory of deviant behavior. The enduring theoretical significance of strain theory lies in its sociological completeness. Strain theory preserves the interconnection between culture and social structure which is neglected or defined away by cultural and control theories of deviance. In its emphasis on socially structured contradictions in the relations of consumption, strain theory is also broadly consistent with and complements more conflict-oriented theories of crime and deviance. A major weakness of Merton's argument is its failure to clearly distinguish the etiological significance of the distribution of opportunities (mobility) and the distribution of outcomes (equality), which has led to misinterpretations of the policy implications of strain theory. Ironically, these problems are revealed through a kind of self-criticism that applies the basic tools of Mertonian functional analysis to strain theory. The paper concludes that, ambiguities notwithstanding, for purposes of theoretical integration and substantive insight, strain theory remains an important sociological perspective on deviance, especially when set in the context of Merton's broader sociological legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two developments in social theory, one somewhat older than the other, are raising a similar set of concerns. One, the older, is the critique of positivism as a model for social understanding, and in its most exemplary form provides the underpinnings for the trenchant criticism that has conic out of the Frankfurt School. The second, the more recent, comes out of Women's Studies and, like the critical theory of Jurgen Habermas and his predecessors, speaks to the need to understand human beings based on methods other than empiricism. I should like to propose the joining in dialogue of the two, for while I set them as having much in common, I recognize a carefully considered set of arguments coming out of the Frankfurt School, arguments which could enhance the very understanding of the world of women that feminist scholarship has as its objective. After explicating some key arguments out of Alfred Schutz the paper indicates where the Frankfurt School parts ways with the phenomenological tradition. Of particular import is Habermas' "emancipatory interest." Certain recent writings in feminist theory are looked at for the kind of attack they make on scientisrn and for the rationale behind their call for a turn to the phenomenological or hermeneutic method. I he paper then raises concerns about (1) the importance of understanding the historical debates on positivism; (2) the danger of conflating intuition and herrneneutics; and (3) the suggestions that women may occupy a privileged standpoint from which to interpret the social world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the origins of the functionalist perspective as it was used by American social scientists to explain social inequality during the first four decades of the twentieth century. The author then argues against the assumption that the basis for development of the perspective is found in the work of Parsons and his students who applied Parsons' general framework to studies of social inequality in complex industrial society. Instead, it is suggested that the research of social anthropologists, such as Robert and Helen Lynd and W. Lloyd Warner, was equally important to the development of the functionalist perspective. The author further argues that early twentieth-century British social anthropology, with its strong ties to Durkheimian functionalism, greatly influenced the direction of studies on social inequality. The paper concludes with a discussion of the intellectual ancestries between these theoretical pioneers and Parsonians and offers an explanation why Parsons' work dominated sociology during a critical period of the discipline's development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of agency is central to several important debates in contemporary sociology. Unfortunately, discussions of agency can become embroiled with issues related to free will and determinism. George Herbert Mead developed an approach to agency that avoids unsolvable metaphysical problems about free will and determinism. This paper presents Mead's work relevant to agency, revealing both Mead's method and the details of his theory. First, it shows how Mead followed the basic methods of behavioristic psychology, which require that abstract philosophical and psychological concepts are defined in terms of the actual behaviors involved. A strict focus on behavior helps in avoiding metaphysical impasses when dealing with such complex issues as decision making and choice. Second, the paper presents an overview of Mead's specific theories about awareness, meaning, decision making, choice, creativity, and social responsibility, showing how he analyzed these concepts in terms of the central nervous system, language, inner conversation, taking the role of others, reflective intelligence, the ‘I’ and the ‘me,’ and related concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an historical survey of problems arising in German mathematics during the rise and rule of National Socialism. Underlying this effort is the goal of developing a theoretical understanding of the social history of scientific disciplines in modern societies. The first part of the paper gives a brief description of the social system of mathematics and the characteristics of National Socialism. Second, an analysis of the background and structure of the attempt to construct a ‘German’ mathematics related to Nazi-ideology is given. This appears as an anti-modernist movement prompted by the rise of mathematical formalism. The basic relations between mathematical and political thought are analyzed and the reasons for the failure of the ‘German’ movement discussed. The third section examines the integration of mathematics into Nazi-German society, focusing on the twin processes of adaptation and resistance by professional societies. It is argued that social differentiation within the system of mathematics, as well as its modern cognitive and social universality, were preconditions of adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the debate between Gadamer and Habermas concerning the relationship between hermeneutics and critical theory. Formulating the hermeneutical circle in terms of relationship between understanding and interpretation, this paper examines three positions on the circle held by positivism, critical theory and hermeneutics, respectively. A commitment to method and procedure on the part of Habermas is offered as the basis for critical theory's limited acceptance of the hermeneutical circle. This is shown through an analysis of Knowledge and Human Interests as indicative of Habermas's implicit objectivism and his methodical, as opposed to hermeneutical, model of reasoning for social inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moderate social movement organizations (SMOs) often denounce radical SMOs for statements and actions that threaten to alienate potential sources of external support. This paper analyzes the development of such interorganizational hostility in the Southern civil rights movement over the issues of Communist participation, the Vietnam War, and black power. In demonstrating how the moderate SMOs' perceived need for external support aggravated divisions over these issues, this paper calls attention to a major source of intelorganizational hostility in the movement that previous work has overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that interpretive sociology should review its model of consciousness in the light of the new feminist scholarship on women's experience of self and society. The thesis of the paper is that there is a fundamental conflict in women's consciousness between meaning systems inherited from the culture and those that are acquired through lived experience. This paper demonstrates that interpretive sociology's model of consciousness does not account for the conflicts posed by the feminist perspective and suggests future issues for research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]