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Theorists of class conflict have debated the nature of the relationship between economic development and the incidence of strikes. The liberal perspective contends that such developments as the growth in size of corporations and the separation of ownership from control enable modern management to institutionalize industrial conflict in the form of collective bargaining. In contrast, writers in the radical perspective argue that conflict will increase in late industrialization owing to such forces as the bipolarization of classes and an increase in union strength. The present paper tests these structuralist theories by using data from a sampling of seventy-one nations representing a wide range in economic development. A polynomial regression analysis indicates that strike volume, a chief measure of overall strike activity, follows a parabolic curve—increasing until a GNP per capita of about $4,700 is reached and then declining. No support is found for the radical thesis of an upswing in strike activity at high levels of economic development. The findings on control variables indicate that the inflation rate and mass-media development have significantly positive effects on strike activity. Finally, a democratic political climate tends to lower strike volume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the growing number of analysts who employ the world system perspective on national development, theoretical disagreements have evolved which may only be settled by examination of available data. Using an adaptation of the network metaphor, this paper blockmodels the world trade system in order (1) to demonstrate a single mode of international exchange in the world system instead of the competing capitalist and communist modes proposed by some, and (2) to illustrate the unique position of the middle level of nations in a three tier world system—a position sometimes denied. Implications for the competing world system theories and world development itself are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic role of the black wife in contrast to her husband's weak economic position Is a key assumption in Moynihan's thesis of a black matriarchy. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of women, aged 30 to 44, in 1967, this paper examines the factors affecting the wife's contribution to the family income for both black and white families where the husband's income is below the median of all male-headed families. The results suggest that black wives and white wives respond similarly with respect to their overall contribution, the demand for female labor, and the effect of children. There is no support, moreover, for Moynihan's assumption that black wives are compensating for their husband's weak economic position. It appears, however, that the definition of the provider may differ among black families and white families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning with Ogburn, the place of economic factors within the modem conjugal unit has been minimized. It has been argued that the major dimension of the current nuclear unit is the affective, the emotional, the expressive. The very term "marital adjustment" connotes that external constraints are less vital than the "ability" of the couple to "work out" interpersonal problems. The observers leaped from the data-the decrease of joint economic participation between husbands and wives-to the inference that modern marriage coheres or collapses almost solely on the basis of affective elements. Parsons has recently restated and expanded this position by asserting that "it is of course a commonplace that the [my italics] American family is predominantly … an urban middle-class family … there has emerged a remarkably uniform, basic type of family." For Parsons, this "uniform family" rests chiefly on personality variables which he analyzes in a psychoanalytic context. It may be that except at the most general structural level, Parsons' "uniform family" may be as unfortunate a term as was his "isolated family" of a decade ago. For it is also possible to leap from the data to the alternative hypothesis that economic factors still play a vital role within the conjugal family albeit in a differentiated form. Is it not strange to realize that an inherent feature of modern society is complexity, specialization, and differentiation, and that this can be seen in every part of society-every part, that is, except the conjugal family system? Here we are told that there is "remarkable" homogeneity based on the "indispensable function" of expressive gratifications. It seems just as simple and perhaps more logical to assume the opposite, viz., that increasing societal complexity should be related to a more complex family system. In any event, given the ever increasing complexity of our society, the burden of proof is on those who argue that the conjugal family is going the other way occupations of the last century. Yet while agricultural occupations were supposedly inextricable from the family, the impact of modern occupations is largely ignored and thus unexplored.Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to set forth a conceptual schema which indicates that there is significant differentiation among types of conjugal families, and that this differentiation is based on differing relationships to the occupational structure. First, we will outline the five sets of variables within our schema; second, we will attempt to present a rationale for these particular kinds of variables; and finally, we will try to link them in ways that meaningfully demonstrate differentiation between conjugal families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently released prisoners in the United States are increasingly facing the burden of financial debt associated with correctional supervision, yet little research has pursued how—theoretically or empirically—the burden of debt might affect life after prison. To address this gap, we employ life course and strain perspectives and path analysis to examine the impact of child support debt on employment and recidivism, using longitudinal data from an evaluation of a prisoner reentry program known as the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative. Results indicate that having more debt has no effect on recidivism; however, more debt was significantly associated with a decrease in later legitimate employment. Implications for community reintegration and justice processing are discussed within the framework of past and emerging work on legal financial obligations, employment, and desistance from crime after prison. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this analysis, we revisit the arguments made in our 2007 book, Post-Industrial Peasants: The Illusion of Middle Class Prosperity, and foreshadow our arguments in our forthcoming book, Middle Class Meltdown in America: Causes, Consequences and Remedies (2014, Routledge). The plight of the American middle class has been growing steadily since the early 1980s, and has been compounded further by the recession of 2008-2009 and its aftermath. We extend our prior work by examining the particular effects of long-term middle-class decline and the recent recession on Americans over 55 years old. Our retirement savings simulation presents in stark terms the cumulative disadvantage of working in unsteady jobs with stagnant wages over the course of a late-20th- and early 21st-century work career. In our discussion, we suggest that one cultural adaptation to the retirement savings crisis is the denial of the realities of aging and the suggestion that most age-related problems are temporary and fixable. In short, we suspect that one reason '60 is the new 30' is because few Americans can afford to be 60. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labor market changes complicate the analysis of black women's status relative to white women because education, occupational attainment, and race-gender are now less predictive of earnings. Low-wage black women's relative status has improved somewhat from 1970 to 2000, contrary to the well-documented decrease in relative status reported for all black women wage earners since 1980, but their dramatic occupational upgrading was not responsible for the trend. White-collar occupational positions formerly responsible for white women's relative earnings advantage no longer deliver that reward, as restructuring has produced a proliferation of bad jobs across occupational groups. This study argues that increasing exposure to precarious work is crucial to understanding changes in low-wage black women's relative economic status since 1970. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how homeowners threatened with foreclosure attribute responsibility for their troubles and manage the stigma of mortgage default. In light of widespread home loss, at-risk owners develop an understanding of the crisis as a collective experience and yet still experience stigma and employ identity management techniques to construct themselves as responsible homeowners. Based on interviews and fieldwork, this article explores the tension between collective and individual responsibility and the implications of this attribution for identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an era of increased access to credit, it becomes increasingly important to understand the consequences of taking on unsecured consumer debt. We argue that credit can have both positive and negative consequences resulting from its ability to smooth life transitions and difficulties but that this occurs simultaneously with increased financial risks and stress resulting from carrying unsecured debt. We find that those in the middle of the income distribution suffer the greatest disruptions to mental health from carrying debt. Affluent borrowers are relatively unmoved by debt, suggesting the use of short-term debt as a convenience strategy for the financially well heeled. The least advantaged borrowers also suffer emotionally less from debt, possibly because securing spendable funds for necessities remains their most pressing concern. The onset of the Great Recession, however, produced increased emotional distress for all classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the interplay of homophily (similarity breeds connection) at two levels in international trade-dyadic similarity (geographic, political, and cultural proximity) and systemic similarity (structural equivalence and world-system status). First, there is a substitution effect between dyadic homophily and systemic homophily from structural equivalence. Both types of homophily generate favorable social structure that facilitates international trade. The existence of structural equivalence lessens the dependence of bilateral trade on dyadic homophily. Second, there is a stratification effect of world-system status on dyadic homophily. Geographic homophily matters the most for bilateral trade between two noncore countries, while political and cultural homophily is the most influential for trade between a core country and a noncore country. These two findings have important implications. The substitution effect of structural equivalence prevents international trade from complete fragmentation along geographic, political, and cultural lines, while the stratification effect of world-system status reveals unequal capacity across countries to overcome the structural constraints imposed by dyadic homophily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from one urban school district is analyzed to examine equity-based arguments about school choice as they pertain to intradistrict transfer policies. We specifically examine which factors influence the propensity for parents to participate in choice, and how choice schools differ from the schools that students are zoned to attend. We find that advantaged and disadvantaged parents make similar choices in that they are both likely to choose more affluent schools with better academic records than the schools they are zoned to attend. However, these choices operate in different spheres, as advantaged parents choose the most affluent schools with the best academic records, and disadvantaged parents choose away from the least affluent schools with the worst academic records to schools that are slightly better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using 1 9S0 PUMS data for Miami Cuban and Bay Area Chinese immigrant males, this study operational lies and tests three theories about the earnings of employees in ethnic economics. The results consistently show chat the allocation of financial rewards in the ethnic economy closely resembles that found elsewhere. Although this finding merits more extensive confirmation in primary data, it implies that ethnic economy theories contribute little to the understanding of contemporary ethnic inequality within the working class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a reinterpretation of Oliver Williamson's transaction-cost efficiency approach to economic organizations. Asserted transaction-cost minimizations are found to be based on the exercise of social control power within hierarchical governance structures. Analysis of transaction-cost economics' "justification" of hierarchical employment relations shows the tenuous nature of Williamson's noncoercive conceptualization of control. His "rationale" for integrated firms, based on his assessment of the control efficiency properties of intrafirm governance structures, is also shown to be problematic. Finally, a network exchange framework is presented as an alternative approach for analyzing economic organizations. This framework builds upon, and moves beyond, insights developed in the "Markets and Hierarchies" story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists have tended to neglect vindication, the process by which deviant behavior becomes redefined as respectable or legitimate. The few studies emphasize the importance of moral persuasion in bringing about vindication. Tobacco's early history suggests that economic interests can also play an important role. In the early seventeenth century, Europeans viewed tobacco as a deviant drug; but in spite of continued moral opposition, it was vindicated by the end of the century because powerful persons and agencies discovered that supporting the trans-Atlantic tobacco trade was in their economic interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Conceptual model employed in the investigation is a "partial social system model."¹ It is partial in the sense that it focuses only upon the community subsystem level of analysis and, on this level, deals only with the economic, political, and formal control subsystems. This mode of conceptualization, developed by Parsons and his associates and by others, Homans and Loomis, and applied to the community by Warren and by Sanders, treats the community as composed of several interdependent subsystems. The structure and functioning of the community system is treated as being dependent upon the interaction among its subsystems and ultimately, of course, upon the interaction among persons occupying positions in the subsystems. In addition to the interaction among its component subsystems, the structure and functioning of the community is also dependent upon more macroscopic systems, e.g., the county, state, and nation, in which the community is itself merely a component subsystem. This dual perspective is taken into account by the task-performance, system-maintenance distinction recognized in the functioning of a social system. Task-performance activities deal with the relationship among community subsystems and extracommtmity systems along a vertical dimension. System-maintenance activities deal with the relationships of the different community subsystems to each other on the local level along a horizontal dimension. The major emphasis of the model is on the horizontal systemmaintenance activities of the economic, political, and formal control subsystems. The goal of such activities, by definition, is the maintenance of equilibrium. Equilibrium, defined in the Parsonian sense, is a relational state in which the units of a community system are related to one another in such a way that relative to its environment the system maintains certain constancies of pattern, whether this constancy be static or moving. Moving equilibrium is further defined as an orderly process of change in the community system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article replies to Maines' comments on negotiated order theory. Emphasis is given on the strengths of the perspective and the contributions it has on organizational theory. It is not contended that the perspective ignored structural constraints. There are attempts to indicate how neo-Marxian thought, critical theory and a heightened appreciation of the political economy might clarify and modify certain dimensions of negotiated order theory as it has been applied to the field of health care. Considerable attention is given to the historical development of negotiated order theory and symbolic interactionism.