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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]

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]

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]

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]

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]