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Background: Choice is a key part of the culture of the United States. Americans believe deeply in the personal and social usefulness of being able to make many choices. Hence, all sorts of efforts have been made to increase students' options, whether by creating many different kinds of schools and colleges, offering a great array of majors and degree programs, or allowing multiple modes of attending higher education. However, this proliferation of choices reproduces social inequality in two crucial ways. First, the provision of many options produces social inequality: people often make choices that do not serve their interests as well as they might wish, particularly if they are faced with many options and do not have adequate information. Second, the provision of many choices legitimates social inequality: the more one thinks in terms of choices in the context of a highly individualistic culture such as that of the United States, the easier it is for dominant groups to blame nondominants as creating their own troubles through feckless choices. Purpose: This paper focuses on one particularly important realm of choice—higher education—because it has come to play a central role in the transmission and legitimation of social inequality. Four higher education choices are of particular interest: whether to enter higher education, which college to attend, what major to choose, and what modality to attend college (for example, part time versus full time or in person versus online). Analyzing this choice-making process, the paper focuses on the impact of inequitable access to high-quality information. Beyond analyzing how choice proliferation and information inequity join to produce and legitimate educational inequality, the paper lays out detailed recommendations for what can be done to reduce this inegalitarian impact. Research Design: The paper draws on a wide variety of social science literatures including sociology of education, critical race theory, behavioral economics, and cognitive and social psychology. More particularly, the paper synthesizes sociology of education research inspired by Pierre Bourdieu and work drawing on critical race theory. Although there are major tensions between these two bodies of work, they can be fruitfully combined to both illuminate and overcome the ways information inequity produces and legitimates educational inequality. Recommendations: To reduce the role of information inequity in producing and legitimating educational inequality, the paper recommends four strands of change. One strand involves providing high-quality information more equitably through restructured and much more pervasive school counseling and other forms of information provision during middle school, high school, and higher education. A crucial component of this more equitable information provision is drawing on the community cultural wealth of nondominant communities. Second, it is important to design an "architecture of choice" that simplifies choice making and nudges students toward better choices by such means as simplifying the financial aid process, improving credit articulation for community college transfer students, and building guided pathways through college. A third strand involves reducing the harms of suboptimal choices by creating the means to monitor student progress and intervene when students might or actually do go off course. Finally, because suboptimal choices will still occur, it is important to enlighten student choosers and their observers about how choice making under conditions of information inequity produces and legitimates social inequality and to empower them to combat that stratified and stratifying process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the changing nature of congregations in the United States in a post-pandemic era, presenting a sociological analysis of crisis and opportunity. Drawing on insights from the expansive, five-year study – Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations (EPIC) – the author focuses on the relationship between technology, innovation, optimism, and congregational life. The study asks how congregations can adapt and advance in the rapidly changing (digital) world, with its embrace of new internet technologies that have profoundly disrupted the “normal” ways of doing religion. The framework for understanding change draws on Scott Galloway’s twin theses that the pandemic has (1) acted as an accelerant to existing trends, both positive and negative, and (2) that the more disruptive the crisis, the greater the potential opportunity. Implications from the research not only for religious communities, but also educators, administrators, and leaders from various industries are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The main purpose of this paper is to provide a biographical sketch of the late Hans L. Zetterberg and a historical background to a translation of an essay based on a lecture given by Zetterberg in Stockholm in 1995. In it, he recounts his time at the Department of Sociology at Columbia University in the years 1953–1964. This essay is full of insights into an inspiring and formative period for Zetterberg in the United States, particularly in the stimulating milieu that was Columbia, at this time the center of American sociology led by Robert K. Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld. In the introduction to this translated essay, I give a brief overview of the establishment of sociology as a discipline in Sweden, and the transfer of knowledge between the United States and Sweden (and Europe, more broadly), embodied in Hans Zetterberg. In the post-WWII years, American sociology, which had a strong positivistic imprint, played an important role in shaping the beginnings of Swedish sociology. However, the transfer of knowledge went both ways, with Zetterberg, a semi-central and often neglected figure, being both a significant contributor to sociology at Columbia in its period of greatest prominence, and in his native Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction to the Yearbook provides an overview of the global context of school choice policies and practices, trends in research and reform, and extant knowledge about research on school choice that draw upon the sociology of education. The article also highlights the contributions of the papers included in the Yearbook. The co-editors explain how the studies engage, complement, and extend existing streams of literature by bringing together a collection of contemporary sociological studies from the United States and other countries that illuminate understudied aspects of school choice reform policies, practices, and politics from across the globe. The Yearbook aims to raise the international profile of sociological research on school choice, and document how school choice policies and programs can be understood through a sociological lens, with a focus on how stakeholders perceive, experience, and respond to these reforms in local settings. This Yearbook also offers directions for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the serial killer Ronald Dominique. Ronald killed at least 23 men in southeast Louisiana between 1997 and 2006. The author of this paper served as a mitigation investigator/expert on his case and has worked in over 300 criminal cases since 1988, most of which were capital murder, but also include second degree murder, manslaughter, armed robbery, rape, and habitual offender hearings. In his capacity as a mitigation investigator he interviewed Ronald multiple times and his friends and family on several occasions. This author examines Ronald's victims; the acts which killed them; Ronald's life; and how others saw him. The literature on serial killers is discussed and applied to Ronald crimes and his life. Ronald was gay and his victims were either gay or hustlers who were willing to have sex with gay men for money. Using several theories, the author discusses explanations for serial murder. Implications for police investigators are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on a citation-context analysis of journal articles from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Examining publications from the sociology of health and medicine, the study draws a number of conclusions about the state of sociology, inter-country relationships between knowledge workers, and national systems of sociological knowledge production. It finds that core–periphery relations define significant features of sociological work, impacting on citation patterns, inter-country collaboration and the selection of reference materials. Core–periphery relations are also found to influence the sociological production of knowledge across the Australian university sector. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite the ubiquity of "social capital" in sociological research, this measure has broadly been conceptualized as both an individual and collective level measure. We explore the link between these two levels within the United States using recently constructed scales of state- and county-level social capital linked to the geocoded 2000–2018 General Social Survey. Collective social capital is associated with greater individual-level trust and voting. However, heterogeneity analysis reveals substantial differences by race/ethnicity, education, sex, and marital status. Moreover, there is heterogeneity for individual-level confidence in institutions and social interaction frequency, despite no overall relationship between those outcomes and collective social capital. Only some of our results align with existing dimensions of stratification, showing the importance of being clear about the operationalization and level of social capital being studied and highlighting how the "advantages" of collective social capital may not extend broadly to all the members of the collective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of American architecture includes many examples of activists and reformers who sought to make the profession more inclusive, just, and socially engaged. This article provides a review of the academic literature discussing the efforts of such architects in order to identify historic trends in the study of activist architects in the United States—this paper's focus. After an initial period of growth and consolidation in the profession, contemporary forms of social engagement emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Subsequent decades have seen many of these efforts continue, or be revived, alongside increased academic interest in these same efforts. The article then reviews three areas of sociological research pertinent to the scholarship on socially engaged design. These focus on institutional change within the profession, the "logics" that guide architectural work, and the relationship between the profession and the academy. This article explores these institutional perspectives for their potential to complement frameworks for analyzing dissent in design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews sociological research on antiracism and suggests new directions for the field. Current research indicates although White antiracism constitutes attempts to negotiate privilege, it fails to divest from the systems of power that maintain the current balance of privilege in favor of White supremacy. In contrast, the antiracism of people of color provides some insight into attempts to secure liberation, a complete break from White supremacist power structures. I argue DuBois, Black Feminist Thought, and postcolonial sociology inform a sociology of antiracism that centers people of color rather than Whiteness. To illustrate the nuance of antiracism by people of color, I centered my study on Black antiracism. From this perspective, antiracism emerges as the set of practices that Blacks enact in everyday life to mitigate and confront hegemonic racialization. I suggest that one construct of hegemonic whiteness meant to uphold dominant racial ideology that produces emphasized blackness that facilitates symbolic and physical violence toward Blacks. Although emphasized blackness produces and reinforces constraints on Black antiracism, oppositional blackness exemplifies an ultimate form of antiracism in which Black bodies act as agents of social change through liberatory projects such as marronage and counterhegemonic knowledge production. I conclude this article with a case study of the Windward Maroons of Jamaica to illustrate oppositional blackness as the dynamics of resistance and empowerment that emerge to confront hegemonic whiteness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The American Dream is among the United States' most recognizable and revered symbols of our national heritage. Celebrated in popular culture, this statement of national purpose has been analyzed by commentators across the broad range of humanistic and scholarly disciplines, including American sociology. While sociology has developed a lengthy history of studies dedicated to 'the American way of life' and - to a lesser degree - the role of the American Dream in society, the work of sociologists from earlier eras arguably over-shadows many of the efforts undertaken since the millennium. The present paper argues that sociology is especially well suited to investigations and analyses of the role and impact of the American Dream and urges a re-dedication of sociological efforts to chart its meaning and influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While social scientists have long studied secrecy as a cultural practice, theologians have neglected it as an ecclesial practice. This article examines "segmented secrecy" as an ecclesial practice, that is, secrets kept or divulged in different social networks in a segmented manner. That secrecy is examined in the lives of gay priests in Roman Catholic ecclesial settings in the United States. After a brief sociological analysis of secrecy, the theological analysis reckons first with the ethics of segmented secrecy, arguing for segmented secrecy as a "burdened" form of the virtue of honesty. Next it turns to segmented secrecy as an ecclesial practice, a provisional way of securing protection for marginal persons amidst the larger eschatological protect of the church in the world, despite some moral hazards involved. Zusammenfassung: Geheimhaltung ist eine kulturelle Praxis, wie die Soziologie seit langem weiß. Die Theologie hingegen hat es bislang versäumt, das Geheimhalten von Informationen auch als eine kirchliche Praxis zu betrachten. Der vorliegende Aufsatz untersucht die „segmentierte Geheimhaltung" als eine gebrochene Form von Aufrichtigkeit. Er tut dies am Beispiel homosexueller Prieser in der römisch-katholischen Kirche in den USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are disagreements about, and contradictory indications of, the state of qualitative inquiry as a global endeavor. The article argues that these disagreements rather miss the point. The issue is not whether or not qualitative approaches to social research are developing across disciplines and continuing to receive funding, but rather to what purposes are qualitative methods being put? What research agendas are being pursued, and who sets them? The article illustrates these issues with respect to the effects of research selectivity and concentration in the United Kingdom and argues that qualitative research should continue to develop as an intellectual resource for the community rather than as a technical service to government. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Case studies form a vital part of sociological inquiry. Despite their important strengths, they often fail to pursue issues of external validity or replication, an important direction for social science generally. In this article, I begin with the premise that at least some case studies can and should contribute to a growing body of research within sociology aimed at replication and promoting external validity. I first discuss how qualitative case studies have handled issues of external validity in the past. Then I outline three dimensions of external validity that are particularly relevant for sociological research: the degree to which qualitative case study findings generalize or replicate to: (1) a larger population, (2) across social contexts, and (3) over time. I set my overall arguments within the larger literature of case studies in sociology but focus specifically on case studies dealing with school desegregation and resegregation. I show the current challenges in pursuing external validity using a set of case studies investigating school desegregation and resegregation in the United States. I argue that quantitative methods can assist in providing evidence regarding the generalizability of individual case studies. I conclude by noting the limitations to such an approach, which signal some of the challenges our discipline faces when pursuing the external validity of case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atheoretical formulation derived from the cumulative advantage literature, that intergenerational educational mobility has enduring life-course income effects above and beyond individuals' education, is empirically tested. This formulation contrasts sharply with both the human capital model, which does not consider parental education as a determinant of children's income, and the sociological research on social mobility, which mostly relies on a snapshot view to study the economic consequences of educational mobility. To test this theory, we use NLSY79 survey data (with Panel Study of Income Dynamics data serving for robustness checks). We apply growth models to the data to estimate if and how the different intergenerational educational mobility groups that are produced by the intersection of parental and respondent education shape life-course income trajectories. Results provide evidence in support of the argument that the intersection of parental and respondent education bears important long-term income consequences, mainly for men. These results, moreover, do not vary by race. We discuss the theoretical and policy implications of our results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies reveal that Black women are the least likely to be selected or matched on dating/hookup apps, followed closely behind by Black men. Our study seeks to better understand how, when asked to confront their preferences, white heterosexual college-aged students justify their racial tastes on the popular dating app, Tinder. Drawing on data from 137 peer-to-peer interviews with students at two large universities in the southeastern United States, our findings reveal that heterosexual white interviewees justified their reasons for swiping left (i.e. rejecting) on Black potential matches in multiple ways. Where a small handful responded using overtly racist language, the overwhelming majority embedded their responses in colorblind racist rhetoric that drew upon language couched in cultural incompatibility, relied on stereotypes and generalizations that often conflated race with social class, and attributed their racial preferences to family values and regional demographic restrictions. Situating our findings within the "white racial frame" and sociological scholarship on new racism, we argue that white respondents' evasion of honest racial language in their responses perpetuates ideologies of colorblind racism. Additionally, our findings contribute to how sexual and colorblind racism is reinvented and perpetuated in online spaces through the dissemination of neoliberal discourses around personal preference that both disguise and normalize racism in internet dating. We discuss the implications of our findings for sociological research on race, gender, and intimate marketplaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent sociological research has focused attention on formal instances of retrospective cultural consecration in the United States. In the fields of film, sport, and popular music, this has largely involved comparing the effects of various forms of cultural legitimacy on the odds of retrospective consecration. Such studies have used the three "competing" principles of cultural legitimacy identified by Bourdieu (1983)—specific, bourgeois, and popular—as predictors of consecration. Although Bourdieu (1983) refers to these as "competing" forms of cultural legitimacy, elsewhere he describes consecration as the collective product of "all the agents involved in the field of production." Based on 3,234 popular music albums released from 2000 through 2007, we analyze factors associated with immediate, intermediate, and retrospective forms of consecration to explore the extent to which such forms of legitimacy compete and converge over time. Our findings suggest that rites of consecration can serve to reveal conflicts as well as build consensus regarding the reputations of artists and their works. The increasing consensus surrounding consecrated albums is particularly striking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental sociology and the sociology of natural resources have become two established research areas in the United States with distinct institutional origins, research themes, and theoretical roots, as well as associated professional networks, journals, and conferences. Existing discussions of the relationships between the two subdisciplines are largely based on personal reflections and exploratory analyses. However, there is still not a clear understanding of the overall picture of interdisciplinary sociological research on human–nature interactions. In this study we conduct a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 8027 articles published in 30 selected academic journals during 1985–2017. Findings of this research provide a more complete view of the intellectual landscape of environmental and resource sociology. Overall, the study produces an empirically-based characterization of environmental sociology and the sociology of natural resources in terms of coauthorship and citation networks, and highlights the need for more sustained synthesis across different knowledge domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mid‐twentieth century "collective behavior" school asserted that (1) collective behavior—the actions of crowds, movements, and other gatherings—had distinct dynamics; (2) such action was often "nonrational," or not governed by cost‐benefit calculation; and (3) collective behavior could pose a threat to liberal democracy because of these features. While this tradition fell out of scholarly favor, the 2016 election has given us empirical reasons to revisit some elements of collective behavior approaches. We argue for three key orienting concerns, drawn from this tradition, to understand the current political era. First is a focus on authoritarianism and populism, particularly among those who feel disaffected and isolated from political institutions, pared of psychologistic determinism and geared more sensitively to their manifestations as a political style. Second is a focus on racialized resentment, strain, and perceptions of status decline, especially in how such feelings are activated when people are confronted with disruptions to their lives. Third is an analysis of "emergent norms" and the extent to which political actors produce normative understandings of contextually appropriate action that are distinct from traditional political behavior. We elaborate on these themes, apply them to examples from current politics, and suggest ways to incorporate them into contemporary sociological research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As China and the United States have a great impact on Japan, Japanese attitudes toward China and the United States have been the focus of debate. This study uses nationally representative longitudinal data from Japan to investigate how the economic and political threats are relevant to Japanese attitudes toward China and the United States. Empirical analyses find that: first, socioeconomic status (SES) is significantly associated with individuals' attitudes toward the United States but not China. Second, individuals' perceptions of Japan's economic situation influence their attitudes toward China and the United States; that is, an optimistic assessment of Japan's economy increases the Japanese people's positive attitudes toward both China and the United States. Finally, the political threats have contrasting effects on Japanese attitudes toward China and the United States. Concerns over political threats increase Japan's favorable attitudes toward the United States while deteriorating the positive attitudes toward China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building ethnographic knowledge is a tacit epistemic process involving two steps: narrowing down the framework through which ethnographers hold constant empirical units as social relationships of the same kind, and paring down the boundaries of time and space to contextualize the data as levels of analysis. This article explicates the workings of and relationships between these hermeneutic and phenomenological processes as the underlying architecture of ethnographic knowledge. It shows that narrowing down data and contexts is fundamental to moving beyond the substantive contribution to the development of sociological cases. In this regard, case development is paradoxical: Narrowing down is necessary for generalizing up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop and test the idea that public appreciation for authentic lowbrow culture affords an effective way for certain elites to address feelings of authenticity-insecurity arising from "high status denigration" (Hahl and Zuckerman 2014). This argument, which builds on recent sociological research on the "search for authenticity" (e.g., Grazian 2005) and on Bourdieu's (1993) notion of artistic "disinterestedness," is validated through experiments with U.S. subjects in the context of "outsider" art (Fine 2004). The first study demonstrates that preference for lowbrow culture perceived to be authentic is higher when individuals feel insecure in their authenticity because they attained status in a context where extrinsic incentives are salient. The second study demonstrates that audiences perceive the members of erstwhile denigrated high-status categories to be more authentic if they consume lowbrow culture, but only if the cultural producer is perceived as authentic. We conclude by noting how this "authenticity-by-appreciation" effect might be complementary to distinction-seeking as a motivation for elite cultural omnivorousness, and we draw broader implications for when and why particular forms of culture are in demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on her analysis of published tables from US homemakers' 1924-32 weeklong time use diaries collected by the US Department of Agriculture, Vanek (1974) concluded that housework time had not declined over the previous halfcentury-- despite the diffusion of many "time-saving" home technologies. Although frequently challenged, this claim still survives in parts of the sociological literature; we use newly available evidence to refute it. Analysis of the original USDA diaries (many of which have now been recovered from the US National Archives), alongside more recent diary microdata from the American Heritage Time Use Study, reveals a pair of clear and contrary trends: a continuing decline in women's core housework (cooking and cleaning), partially offset by an increase of time in childcare and shopping. Names and addresses attached to the original diaries allow the identification of more than 93 percent of the USDA diarists in one or both of the 1920 and 1930 US Federal Censuses. Analysis (Oaxaca decomposition) of the household- and individual-level information from this source shows that most of the historical time shifts result not from changes in family demography or women's growing attachment to paid work over this period but from "behavioral" change, reflecting in part the spread of labor-saving domestic technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Class mobility and racial fluidity: New research from the journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the sustained sociological relevance of US daytime soap operas, a seemingly dead or dying generic form that continues to influence the entertainment landscape as well as media scholars from across the academy. The essay begins by examining soaps' longstanding resonance with three-core sociological concerns: identity, community or sociality, and cultural legitimacy. It then discusses scholarly research opportunities associated with the recent decline of the genre and concludes by examining current debates in soap opera scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'marriageability of men' is an argument used in sociological research to understand demographic changes in marriage and to analyze social dynamics associated with gender, race, class, family, the workplace, incarceration, and more. While some are marrying later and others are foregoing marriage altogether, a lack of marriageable men is often part of the argument concerning new patterns of family formation in the United States. Research mobilizing the marriageability of men hypothesis spans a great deal of subfields of sociological research, not all in conversation with one another - and not all explicitly making use of the term. This article collects these diverse strands of thought and presents an argument for how and why men are less marriageable, what this means, and why it means different things for different groups of men and women. Racialized and classed conceptions of masculinity create different kinds of struggles for different groups of men and work against their marriageability for different reasons. We discuss the impact of incarceration, new struggles in a service economy, and shifts in women's perceptions and expectations of what qualifies men as 'marriageable.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical binaries constrain Turner's narrative, American Sociology: From Pre-Disciplinary to Post-Normal. The identification of mid-20th century American sociology as a gold standard for judging predisciplinary and post-normal sociology paints the epistemological challenges of the 1960s and 1970s in an unnecessarily negative light. The conflation of feminization with feminism reduces the contributions of Sociologists for Women in Society and collapses them into a narrative about a generational struggle between men. The focus on the elite-mass dynamics of academic labor markets misses the vibrancy of the broader disciplinary project of contemporary sociology. The prospects for 21st century sociology are more positive than Turner imagines. Rather than a scientific failure with a damaged brand, 21st century sociology offers a more reflexive and culturally nuanced form of sociology appropriate for the deeply unequal, global and mediatized social world we inhabit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 20 years, sociological research on LGBTQ people and communities has disproportionately studied coastal regions and big cities in the United States. Scholars pay the most attention to queer urban life in "great cities" like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago and understudy lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) life in the South, rural and suburban areas, and ordinary cities. This research ignores demographic evidence about where LGBTQ people live in the United States. I argue that these geographical choices—born out of convenience or theoretical purpose—shape the approach to studying queer life and the unintentional reproduction of a middle‐class, cosmopolitan universal gay subject. I chart a future path for sociology research on LGBTQ life that accounts for geography and moves beyond metronormativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]