Social Problems 56(4)

Bend to Avoid Breaking: Job Loss, Gender Norms, and Family Stability in Rural America
Jennifer Sherman

Using ethnographic and interview data, this article explores how labor market transformations affect gender norms and family life in a rural community that has historically been tied to a single industry. It argues that the gender strategies pursued by couples heavily impact their relationships and families. Flexibility with regard to gender norms is key to creating stable relationships in a context of labor market change that threatens the existing gender order. For couples that are tied rigidly to traditional breadwinner/homemaker gender roles, men's inabilities to be the sole providers create marital and family tensions. On the other hand, couples in which men are able to refocus their conceptions of masculinity on more attainable goals such as active parenting experience less strife and more satisfaction. The research finds that rural men are more flexible with regard to masculine identity than found by previous scholars, particularly with regard to conceptions of fatherhood. The article explores in depth the processes and discourses that facilitate flexible gender identities in this conservative rural community.

The Economy, Military, and Ecologically Unequal Exchange Relationships in Comparative Perspective: A Panel Study of the Ecological Footprints of Nations, 1975–2000
Andrew K. Jorgenson and Brett Clark

The authors employ multiple theories within a political economy framework to examine the structural predictors of the per capita ecological footprints of nations. Engaged theories include ecological modernization, treadmill of production, treadmill of destruction, and ecologically unequal exchange. Results of cross-national panel regression models indicate that the treadmill of production in the context of economic development increases per capita footprints, which contradicts general claims of ecological modernization theory. Similarly, the treadmill of destruction in the mode of military expenditures per soldier positively affects per capita footprints. Those with relatively higher levels of exports sent to economically developed and militarily powerful nations experience suppressed consumption levels, and these effects are especially pronounced and increasingly so for less-developed countries, many of which consume resources well below globally sustainable thresholds. The latter sets of findings support key elements of ecologically unequal exchange theory. Ultimately, this research suggests that a political economy framework that considers domestic attributes and structural relationships in particular contexts is quite useful for understanding the consumption-based environmental harms of nations.

Alliance Building across Social Movements: Bridging Difference in a Peace and Justice Coalition
Thomas D. Beamish and Amy J. Luebbers

Alliance building across social movement groups is an important aspect of social movement dynamics, contributing to their viability and capacity to promote social change. Yet, with few exceptions, cross-movement coalitions have received little sustained theoretical or empirical attention. This article contributes to an understanding of cross-movement coalition building through the examination of a successful case of alliance: a coalition of environmental justice and peace and anti-weapons proliferation groups to stop a federally funded U.S. biodefense laboratory from being built and operated in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Cross-movement collaboration was challenged by tensions arising from differences in positionality. Positional differences reflect status distinctions such as race, class, gender, and place and the differential experiences and expectations that result. Nonetheless, this coalition was able to resolve positional tensions and, as a result, remained a viable protest vehicle. We found this was accomplished through a cross-movement bridging process that involved (1) cause affirmation, (2) strategic deployment, (3) exclusion, and (4) co-development of cross-movement commitments. We extend existent accounts of cross-movement coalition by providing both a culturally founded and fine-grained account of coalition work in the maintenance of alliance relations. The article and its conclusions also address the broader implications of understanding successful trans-positional cross-movement alliances. Keywords: social movements, coalitions, environmental justice, peace movement, microdynamics.

Racial Blind Spots: Black-White-Latino Differences in Community Knowledge
Maria Krysan and Michael D. M. Bader

This article explores racial/ethnic differences in community knowledge as a contributing mechanism through which residential segregation in U.S. cities is perpetuated. If whites, blacks, and Latinos are familiar with different communities, and that familiarity is influenced by community racial/ethnic composition, then these "blind spots" may constitute one barrier to integrative mobility. We address three questions: (1) Do blacks, whites, and Latinos have different community blind spots?; (2) Do blacks, whites, and Latinos of the same social, economic, and geographic backgrounds still have different blind spots?; and (3) Do the racial/ethnic characteristics of the community predict a racial/ethnic difference in blind spots, net of the respondent's and the community's other characteristics? Employing logistic regression and hierarchical linear models with data from the 2004–2005 Chicago Area Study, we explore how whites, blacks, and Latinos differ in their knowledge of actual communities in the Chicago metropolitan area and whether differences persist after controlling for social class characteristics. Results show strong evidence that community knowledge is shaped by race—both of the resident and of the target community. Policy implications of the results are discussed.

Religion and Spirituality: A Barrier and a Bridge in the Everyday Professional Work of Pediatric Physicians
Wendy Cadge, Elaine Howard Ecklund, and Nicholas Short

We investigate how 30 pediatricians and pediatric oncologists who practice and teach at elite medical centers determine whether religion and spirituality are relevant to what Andrew Abbot (1988) calls their professional "jurisdictions." Through in-depth interviews we focus on their everyday interactions with patients and families. We ask: (1) How do they gather information about religion and spirituality and determine when that information is relevant to their professional work? (2) Do they perceive religion and spirituality to be a barrier or a bridge to medical care as they do what Thomas Gieryn (1983) calls "boundary work"? We find that pediatric oncologists more than pediatricians see religion and spirituality as relevant to their professional work, though still largely outside their professional jurisdiction. It is most relevant when families are making medical decisions and in end of life situations. Physicians tend to view religion and spirituality functionally, describing impermeable boundaries in medical decision making situations and more permeable boundaries at the end of life. Physicians view religion and spirituality as a barrier when it impedes medical recommendations and as a bridge when it helps families answer questions medicine inherently cannot. Such findings have implications for a wide range of professionals as they negotiate their jurisdictions, particularly around religion and spirituality, in everyday practice.

"What are You?": Explaining Identity as a Goal of the Multiracial Hapa Movement
Mary Bernstein and Marcie De la Cruz

This article uses the Hapa movement as a case study in order to provide a framework for understanding identity as a goal of social movements and to expand on a theoretical understanding of multiracial social movements. In contrast to current understandings of identity-based movements, this article argues that the Hapa movement seeks simultaneously to deconstruct traditional notions of (mono)racial identities and to secure recognition for a multiracial "Hapa" identity. Movements that have identity as a goal are motivated by activists' understandings of how categories are constituted and how those categories, codes, and ways of thinking serve as axes of regulation and domination. The Hapa movement simultaneously challenges (mono)racial categories at both the institutional level through targeting the state and at the micro level through challenging the quotidian enactment of race and promulgating a Hapa identity. Activism by mixed-race individuals and organizations constitutes an important challenge to power that has significant implications for racial categorization and classification in contemporary American society.

The Structure of Material Hardship in U.S. Households: An Examination of the Coherence behind Common Measures of Well-Being
Colleen Heflin, John Sandberg, and Patrick Rafail

Motivated by the growing interest in and the usage of measures of material hardship, together with the lack of a comprehensive theoretical understanding of the how indicators of material hardship relate to one another, we develop and test five conceptual models of the structural coherence of material hardship. While many previous analyses have relied on a unidimensional model of hardship, we argue that this is not conceptually and empirically sufficient. Instead, we compare the standard unidimensional account of hardship to a model that contrasts hardship related to physical necessities and hardship in less critical areas, two models contrasting hardships due to short-term constraints and those with longer time horizons, and finally, a model that posits each nominal type of hardship is best represented by its own latent construct. Using nationally representative data from the 2001 and 2004 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) (U.S. Census Bureau 2001, 2004), we estimate confirmatory factor analyses, which suggest that a model of hardship that separates different dimensions—health, food, bill paying, and housing hardship—fits this data better than any of the other conceptual models tested. This finding suggests strongly that the four aspects of material hardship modeled here, though obviously associated, are best understood as arising from processes and structures that are not identical. We discuss implications of our findings for both the research community and policy makers in the conclusion.

Social Problems, November 2009: Volume 56, Issue 4