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What are the social factors shaping musical repertoires? This paper analyzes repertoires as social relations among performers, refracted through factors such as the organization of industry, genres, race, and gender. Using data from American popular music recordings, performers and songs are treated as a two-mode network and repertoire communities are operationalized as bicliques. The production of culture perspective, the sociology of genres, and theories of race and gender imply hypotheses that are tested diachronically. Analysis finds support for the first two, with genres becoming the strongest basis of repertoire community membership while race and gender are surprisingly weak. Importantly, these factors worked in tandem as reflexive mechanisms for each other. The repertoire community system documents the rise of genre as the primary means of categorizing American popular music in the early twentieth century and mediated the effect of other factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The empirical literature on social movement framing has largely neglected the processes by which frames are made. This paper addresses this lacuna through a study of the Congress of Industrial Organizations' (CIO) embrace of "free enterprise" in its postwar program in the 1940s. Conventional accounts present the CIO's use of consensual language in this period as a reflection of the labor federation's rightward ideological drift, but a close examination of the processes involved in the construction of the "free enterprise" frames reveals a more complicated story. Drawing from archival research, I show that free enterprise was viewed with suspicion and antipathy within the organization, which is reflected in early drafts of the program literature. I also demonstrate that the decision to ultimately embrace "free enterprise" was rooted in a defensive strategy, one that was shaped in part by the leadership's perception of American political culture at the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies how ordinary people in Switzerland represent and engage with environmental issues in daily practices. Bringing together conceptual developments in cultural sociology and social practice theory, the paper argues that cultural repertoires strongly shape how representations and forms of engagement play out. It identifies two main repertoires of social and environmental change: adaptation and transformation. The adaptation repertoire is reformist and aligned with individualism and the capitalist growth-paradigm; the transformation repertoire consists of a critique of the market society and calls for systemic change. Using qualitative in-depth interviews and a random survey of residents of Western Switzerland, the analyses show that most people's representations and engagements with environmental issues relate to the dominant repertoire of adaptation, which appears to be very compatible with existing social practices. Although people hint at limits to the adaptation repertoire, only very few of our study participants relate to the transformative repertoire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While millennials are culturally homogenized as a unitary group, scholarly work has examined the complex historical, economic, and social challenges that shape millennials' heterogeneity. This paper draws on three studies to build on this work, showing how millennials experience and enact social change across different spaces: beauty politics and the natural hair movement, black men shaping new masculinities at work and home, and undocumented students navigating institutions of higher education. We show how different groups of millennials bridge and forge new communities, generate hybridized identities that challenge fixed conceptions of identity, and develop new mechanisms for changing the world around them. From findings that highlight the complexity of intra-group and intra-generational experience, we argue for a multidimensional theory of millennials and social change that links contexts, intersectionality, and generational transmission. Such a framework offers a more systematic way to conceptualize variation as it shapes contentious politics and social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part of listening to popular music is complaining about it: Why is mainstream music so dreadful? . . . so repetitive? . . . and so the argument goes. Popular culture producers argue that they do not force-feed the public or “dupe” listeners into liking awful music. They are simply giving consumers what they want, or they are trying to figure out what consumers want. This paper explores the issue while focusing on gender and popular culture, by asking whether popular music producers and listeners agree or disagree regarding the types of artistic representations that are valuable. I find they do not, especially when it comes to female music listeners and female artist types. According to the production of culture perspective, demands of production and pursuit of market share usurp accommodating listeners, which includes overemphasis on gender stereotypes that are less popular with female consumers. Discussion includes suggestions as to why certain gendered patterns emerge in popular culture production and consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how neighborhood cultural context shapes academic achievement. Drawing on contemporary conceptualization of culture and recent evidence of the importance of neighborhood cultural context, I hypothesize that students from disadvantaged neighborhoods will display more cultural heterogeneity, or variability in cultural orientations, operationalized here as self-efficacy. In addition, I hypothesize that neighborhood cultural heterogeneity will have negative effects on academic achievement, particularly for those students with high individual self-efficacy. Results from multilevel models using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS) support my hypotheses. Results indicate that students exposed to greater cultural heterogeneity are less able to translate high self-efficacy into better achievement, and suggest that exposure to increased cultural heterogeneity is one reason why students residing in disadvantaged neighborhoods underperform in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State autonomy is often viewed as the result of the culture, ideological coherence, or class background of the state bureaucracies, and of institutional characteristics that ensure state effectiveness. This view has several problems: it assumes what has to be explained, makes it difficult to understand changes in state autonomy, and tends to make autonomy the characteristic of strong, core states. This paper calls for a new approach to study state autonomy, one in which power is a characteristic of a relationship, not of actors or organizations (Emerson 1962), and uses this approach to examine changes in state-class relationships based on taxation during the mid 1930s in Bolivia. The paper then argues that state autonomy depends on the relative costs of state policies and on the availability of political allies to the state vis-a-vis the opposing economic elite. This approach allows us to specify the power dependence of the state on a given class, the conditions under which that relative dependence changes in favor of the state, and is applicable to both weak and strong states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This manuscript examines how a shared sociospatial or "rural" identity may uniquely facilitate mental health care delivery. In particular, we consider the significant but largely unexplored role that domestic violence center staff, whom we term "Reputational Provider-Experts" or RPEs, play in addressing the mental health needs of rural women who have experienced intimate partner violence. Using data collected through semi-structured individual and focus group interviews with RPEs across 12 counties and four tribal reservations in northern Wisconsin (N = 15), we detail the sociospatial commonalities that enable RPEs to provide trusted, sustained mental health support to rural women. Because these advocates are rural community members whose approach implicitly appeals to local norms and values, we argue that they represent rurally concordant providers. In this way, rurality emerges as a meaningful and novel form of patient-provider concordance, one with critical relevance to addressing the rural mental health crisis in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I use the 2018 Guns in American Life Survey (GALS) to investigate the relationship between feminist identity, gun ownership, gun carrying, and women's empowerment. Notably, while identifying as a feminist lessens the likelihood that a woman will own a gun, of women who own handguns, feminists are more likely to carry their guns all or most of the time. Past victimization is associated with ownership and carrying, confirming genuine concern by women about their safety. Finally, findings reveal that women are more empowered by guns than are men and the relationship is moderated by age. Results are discussed in light of the current American gun culture focused on self-defense and a carry mindset that some women develop as feminist culture in action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research portrays the gun violence prevention (GVP) movement as predominantly white, dominated by national Washington DC-based policy organizations and recently by white middle-class women seeking stronger gun regulations, overlooking organizing by people in racially oppressed communities. In contrast, we extend the multi-institutional politics approach to social movements to understand how interlocking political, institutional, and cultural systems of domination shape GVP efforts across communities. We develop the concept multisystem logic to analyze the public communications of 10 GVP groups in Connecticut from 2013 to 2018. We identify an intervention logic seeking to interrupt or prevent community gun violence and a gun reform logic promoting change in laws and policies. For gun scholars, our approach makes clear that the GVP movement is not solely focused on policy change but on social change more broadly. We suggest the applicability of our model to a range of social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With information on all U.S. denominations of nontrivial sizes, this paper examines various spatial and temporal prcesses underlying religious expansion between 1900 and 1930, Simmel's provocative and complex essay, "Soziologie des Raumes" (1903) poses the central paradox that religion is both faith--cultural constellations of beliefs--and church--social associations that are spatially situated. This distinction helps to clarify differences among denominations with regard to the extent to which they exert strong demands on their members, and leads to predictions about variation in denominational growth rates, in spatial dynamics, and in the extent to which denominations accommodate to contextual heterodoxy (diversity) or not. In these terms, we re-examine the debate about whether adherence rates increase in competitive markets (under conditions of diversity) or under monopoly conditions (under conditions of little diversity). We finally suggest that Simmel's theoretical emphasis on spatial and temporal dynamics has relevance for understanding the nature of mobilization efforts of various kinds, not only by religious groups, but also by those that organize social and political movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The great body of recent work on international migration has generally considered immigration as a permanent movement and explored the phenomenon from either a micro or macro perspective. Transnationalism offers a new model that integrates these dichotomized views. This paper uses the perspective of transnationalism to explore the motives of Israeli immigrants in the U.S. Integrating insights from both micro and world systems perspectives, findings emphasize the importance of personal and macro-level networks as well as Israelis' international culture and experience as both facilitating and giving meaning to their presence in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives an account of the cultural background to, and the social forms of theory production that shape the characteristic quality of American and the three most influential European social theory traditions: British, French, and German. After an analysis of Americanization after World War II, the prospects for the revitalization of European social theory and its improved position in world sociology are discussed. In this process, the unique contributions to sociology of British, French, and German social theory are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay focuses on the diversity of Latinx millennials. As sociologists, each one of us has conducted primary research on particular segments of Latinx millennials, and we draw on our respective research to identify enduring, ongoing issues confronting Latinx young people, analyzing and comparing what we see today with experiences of Latinx young people in the past. Along the way, we review scholarship on Latinx millennials, and we conclude by suggesting critical avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We can witness profoundly diverse interactions between society and nature on a daily basis - what [1] has succinctly termed "socio-natures." Environmental sociology has well-developed materialist explanations of socio-natures, but how can we explain social action and inaction in response to ecological issues and subjects? Most people feel that nature is important in a broad, general way ([2]), but why and how do some individuals and groups (like the Fridays For Future followers) feel compelled to "save" nature through social action? While birders feel a powerful connection to nature and birds, engage in environmental activism, implement pro-environmental practices to reduce the carbon footprint in their everyday lives, and even adopt an ecological worldview, many do not identify as environmental activists - or even environmentalists!. [Extracted from the article]

The Republic of Turkey provides an opportunity to examine how aspects of national culture can foster sentiments contrary to environmental mobilization. Two deeply rooted cultural values embedded at the founding of the Turkish Republic, a commitment to developmentalism and a strong suspicion of foreign interference, have served to undermine the Turkish environmental movement. Calls for environmental protection are perceived by many as foreign-inspired efforts to inhibit economic development and keep Turkey subservient to more developed nations. In addition, the Turkish case reveals how cultural division can divert attention from issues such as environmental protection. The country is characterized by sharp social boundaries between secularists and more conservative Islamists. This profound cultural divide taints all attempts at issue-based mobilization, including that around environmental protection. An analysis of interview data from 50 environmental movement leaders and government officials demonstrates how deeply held cultural values and social division serve to undermine environmental mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent evidence of an association between status and eco-friendly practices invites examination of environmental concern across social class. Analyzing interview data from 64 socioeconomically diverse residents of Washington state, we observe variation in orientation to the environment across social class. High-status participants embody an eco-habitus—a sense that being "green" is good and also achievable. Lower-status participants express "eco-powerlessness"—fear and uncertainty in the face of environmental issues and a sense that one's daily actions have little bearing on broader issues. We suggest that, among our participants, existing measures of environmental concern capture variation in their alignment with high-status preferences for environmental actions and in self-evaluations of their role in mitigating environmental problems. Our research contributes to a more culturally nuanced understanding of environmental concern by using qualitative data to explicate the association between social class and perceived self-efficacy to enact socioecological change in an era of consumer-based solutions to ecological crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent leadership initiatives encourage children, particularly girls, to defy gender stereotypes. Yet, those creating and participating in these initiatives, like all members of our culture, have their own gender biases, have received gender socialization, and live in a society where the masculine is more valued than the feminine. We conducted participant observation of two gender-segregated leadership summer camps to examine how camp counselors and directors teach leadership to boys and girls. We find counselors unintentionally reinforce gender stereotypes and promote gender-typical behavior while attempting to break down these same stereotypes and behavioral expectations. We argue the gender-segregated environment leads to a problematic "separate but equal" approach to thinking about leadership that advances the individual abilities of boys and girls but does less to decrease gender disparities in emotional development, physical competition, or leadership styles. This research contributes to our understanding of how well-intentioned organizations and authorities, seeking to minimize gender disparities and develop strong leaders, unwittingly reproduce gender differences and perpetuate gender inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has described a nearly monolithic culture of control that shapes the disciplinary practices and experiences of youth in urban schools. However, existing research does not adequately account for the diverse actions of school-based adults in relation to school discipline. Drawing on four years of fieldwork in violence prevention programs implemented in classrooms throughout Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), this study explores how program facilitators create and sustain a cultural frame of empowerment within the context of the culture of control. As the findings reveal, facilitators narrowed and refined empowerment, emphasizing student anonymity and leveling classroom authority. This enactment of empowerment temporarily subverted disciplinary and punitive mechanisms in ways that meaningfully impacted individuals. This article applies the theoretical framework of cultural heterogeneity to educational contexts, arguing that while schools are sites of an overarching culture of control, school-based adults enact multiple, often conflicting cultural frames. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colorblindness is often conceptualized as a set of deeply held but unrecognized ideological tenets. However, we believe that colorblindness has also now become an explicit cultural discourse involving self-conscious claims and specific convictions. To illustrate this point—which has both conceptual and empirical implications—we introduce the notion of colorblindness as identity. We define this concept as subjectively meaningful, self-asserted identification with colorblindness. We use data from a nationally representative survey to explore the social determinants of colorblind identification and assess its relationship to both colorblind ideologies and standard attitudinal measures. We find that a relatively large percentage of Americans across racial lines identify as colorblind. Furthermore, such identification is connected to racial ideologies but not all tenets of colorblind racism. For white Americans, colorblind identification is associated with decreased perceptions of social distance, but not support for policies designed to ameliorate the effects of racial discrimination. We conclude that colorblind identification is a unique social phenomenon, connected to views on race but not always in the ways that existing research would predict. We also suggest directions for further exploration of the depth of colorblindness as an identity form and implications for theorizing colorblind discourse more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]