American Sociological Review 74(6)

Culture and Mobilization: Tactical Repertoires, Same-Sex Weddings, and the Impact on Gay Activism
Verta Taylor, Katrina Kimport, Nella Van Dyke, and Ellen Ann Andersen

Social movement scholars have long been skeptical of culture's impact on political change, perhaps for good reason, since little empirical research explicitly addresses this question. This article fills the void by examining the dynamics and the impact of the month-long 2004 same-sex wedding protest in San Francisco. We integrate insights of contentious politics approaches with social constructionist conceptions and identify three core features of cultural repertoires: contestation, intentionality, and collective identity. Our analyses, which draw on rich qualitative and quantitative data from interviews with participants and movement leaders and a random survey of participants, highlight these dimensions of cultural repertoires as well as the impact that the same-sex wedding protest had on subsequent activism. Same-sex weddings, as our multimethod analyses show, were an intentional episode of claim-making, with participants arriving with a history of activism in a variety of other social movements. Moreover, relative to the question of impact, the initial protest sparked other forms of political action that ignited a statewide campaign for marriage equality in California. Our results offer powerful evidence that culture can be consequential not only internally, with implications for participant solidarity and identity, but for political change and further action as well. We conclude by discussing the specifics of our case and the broader implications for social movement scholars.

Voting to Ban Same-Sex Marriage: Interests, Values, and Communities
Rory McVeigh and D. Diaz Maria-Elena

From 2000 through 2008, initiatives proposing to ban same-sex marriage were on the ballot in 28 states. Although same-sex marriage opponents scored lopsided victories in most cases, voting outcomes varied substantially at the county level. This article examines sources of that variation and argues that opposition to same-sex marriage should be strong in communities characterized by the predominance of traditional gender roles and family structure. Perhaps more interestingly, the analysis also shows that the effects of traditional family structure and gender roles are especially strong in counties characterized by weak community cohesion, as indicated by residential instability, low rates of home ownership, and high crime rates.

Hispanics and Organized Labor in the United States, 1973 to 2007
Jake Rosenfeld and Meredith Kleykamp

Prior research finds that minority populations in the United States secure union employment as part of the process of economic incorporation. Yet little work systematically tests whether this pattern holds for the nation's largest minority, Hispanics, during recent decades of union decline. After juxtaposing traditional labor market position theories of unionization with solidaristic accounts, we use 1973 to 2007 Current Population Survey (CPS) data to provide the most comprehensive analysis of Hispanics and organized labor in the United States to date. We disaggregate the Hispanic population by citizenship, nationality, and time since arrival to uncover subpopulation differences in the odds of union membership. Additional analyses take advantage of the CPS structure to target individuals who join a union, allowing us to test whether organized labor's much-publicized efforts to incorporate recent immigrants have resulted in detectable gains. Consistent with solidaristic accounts of labor organization, results suggest that certain Hispanic subpopulations—especially those born in the United States and immigrants who have secured citizenship—have higher unionization odds and join unions at higher rates than do U.S.-born whites, even after controlling for traditional positional accounts of labor organization. However, the large substantive effects of positional variables, such as sector, occupation, and firm size, indicate that organized labor's revival depends on more than any one group's capacity for collective action.

Movements, Aesthetics, and Markets in Literary Change: Making the American Labor Problem Novel
Larry Isaac

One path to cultural innovation in artistic and literary fields is differentiation of a genre into new subgenres. But what are the dynamics at work in such a process? This article addresses that question by identifying and explaining the emergence and trajectory of a new fiction subgenre—the American labor problem novel—during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. I make a theoretical case for the intersection of social movement fields and cultural production fields showing, through a historical sociological analysis, that this subgenre was the joint product of: (1) a shift in literary aesthetic practice resulting from the rise of realism, (2) the subgenre's dialogical character, (3) collective contention surrounding the rise of labor movement militancy, and (4) the exigencies of literary and popular culture markets. The historical conjuncture of these processes contributed to a repository of cultural constructions of class in storied form, as novelists sought to both entertain and educate readers about the emerging realities of class-contentious industrial society. This study demonstrates the fruitfulness of merging sociology of culture theory and social movement outcome perspectives when analyzing cultural change.

When Work Interferes with Life: Work-Nonwork Interference and the Influence of Work-Related Demands and Resources
Scott Schieman, Paul Glavin, and Melissa A. Milkie

Using data from a 2005 survey of U.S. workers, we find that a high percentage of employed men and women report that work interferes with nonwork life. This research offers three main contributions: (1) we document the social distribution of work-nonwork interference across social statuses and dimensions of stratification; (2) we develop a conceptual framework that specifies the influence of a comprehensive set of work resources and demands on interference and their contributions to its social distribution; and (3) we advance a "stress of higher status" perspective to understand the paradoxical influence of some work conditions on work-nonwork interference. Findings generally support both the demands hypothesis and the stress of higher status hypothesis, with patterns from both factors contributing substantially to the social distribution of work-nonwork interference. This article refines and elaborates the job demands-resources model with insights from border theory.

Gender Differences in Sleep Disruption among Retail Food Workers
David J. Maume, Rachel A. Sebastian, and Anthony R. Bardo

As women pursue careers while retaining primary responsibility for family life, discretionary time is an emerging arena of gender inequality in contemporary life. This study examines gender inequality in waking role obligations and the implications for differences in sleep disruption. Drawing on a sample of 583 retail food workers, who regularly worked nights and rotating schedules, we find in our multivariate modeling that women experience significantly more sleep disruption than do men. A decomposition analysis shows that almost one-half of the gender gap in sleep disruption is accounted for by gender differences in health status and various dimensions of work-family context. By implication, the remainder of the gender gap in sleep disruption is attributable to differences in responsibility for work-family obligations. Given the need for more research on how work-family conflict affects health and well-being, further research on sleep patterns is warranted.

American Sociological Review, December 2009: Volume 74, Issue 6

Theory and Society 39(2)

Nation-states as empires, empires as nation-states: two principles, one practice?
Krishan Kumar

Classification conundrums: categorizing chimeras and enacting species preservation
Carrie Friese

Marx, formal subsumption and the law
Marc W. Steinberg

Educate or serve: the paradox of “professional service” and the image of the west in legitimacy battles of post-socialist advertising
Zsuzsanna Vargha


Theory and Society, March 2010: Volume 39, Issue 2

Theoretical Criminology 14(1)

Consuming security?: Tools for a sociology of security consumption
Benjamin Goold, Ian Loader, and Angelica Thumala

How does our understanding of private security alter if we treat security consumption as consumption? In this article, we set out the parameters of a project which strives—theoretically and empirically—to do just this. We begin with a reminder that private security necessarily entails acts of buying and selling, and by indicating how the sociology of consumption may illuminate this central—but overlooked—fact about the phenomenon. We then develop a framework for investigating security consumption. This focuses attention on individual acts of shopping; practices of organizational security that individuals indirectly consume; and social and political arrangements that may prompt the consumption of, or themselves be consumed by, security. This way of seeing, we contend, calls for greater comparative enquiry into the conditions under which markets for security commodities flourish or founder, and close analysis of the social meanings and trajectories of different security goods. By way of illustration we focus on four such categories of good—those we term commonplace, failed, novel and securitized. The overarching claim of the article is that the study of private security currently stands in need of greater conceptual and empirical scrutiny of what is going on when ‘security’ is consumed.

Security governance in transition: The compartmentalizing, crowding out and corralling of policing and security in Northern Ireland
Graham Ellison and Mary O'Rawe

The article suggests that while the report of the Independent Commission on Policing (ICP) provides a police reform blueprint for Northern Ireland and elsewhere, it can also be seen as an attempt to engage more elliptically with contemporary debates in security governance vis-a-vis the increasingly fragmented nature of late-modern policing and the role of the state. A decade into the reform process in Northern Ireland and in spite of the networked approach postulated by the ICP, the public police continue to enjoy a pre-eminent place and little evidence exists of any significant weakening of state steering and rowing of security. The discussion proposes a tentative typology explaining the continued colonization of security spaces by the State using constituent attendant processes of compartmentalizing, crowding out and corralling.

'A Sketch of the Neo-Liberal State': A Symposium

Editorial

Neoliberalism’s penal and debtor states: A rejoinder to Loïc Wacquant
John L. Campbell

Neoliberal penality: A brief genealogy
Bernard E. Harcourt

Punishing the Poor—a debate: Some questions on Wacquant’s theorizing the neoliberal state
Margit Mayer

While in broad agreement about the growing importance of workfare and punitive tendencies in contemporary politics, this article raises four questions about Wacquant’s model of a neoliberal state. Besides pointing out the fuzzy definition of the target group of punitive regulation, it questions whether penal containment is generalizable as ‘core’ of the neoliberal state. Third, it critiques the selective treatment of contemporary poverty policies (excluding a variety of, for example, activating, neoliberal policies), built on a skewed view of the transition from a supposedly generous ‘nanny state’ to a strict ‘daddy state’. Fourth, it challenges the claim of ‘overall fitness’ of punitive containment of urban marginality and the absence of agency and contradictions from the model.

Zombie neoliberalism and the ambidextrous state
Jamie Peck

A response to Wacquant
Frances Fox Piven

Comment on Loïc Wacquant’s ‘Theoretical Coda’ to Punishing the Poor
Mariana Valverde

Theoretical Criminology, February 2010: Volume 14, Issue 1

Justice Quarterly 27(2)

Trafficking in Bodily Perfection: Examining the Late-Modern Steroid Marketplace and Its Criminalization
Peter B. Kraska;  Charles R. Bussard; John J. Brent

Illicit steroid and human growth hormone use by professional athletes has received significant media and political attention in the last five years. The resulting political pressure has compelled federal law enforcement to prosecute serious new control initiatives. To date, no academic research inquiring into the nature of this illicit industry exists. This study fills this void through the mixed methods approach—employing both ethnographic field research and quantitative content analysis. The ethnographic data demonstrate a fascinating late-modern trafficking scheme where the central informant established an apartment-based manufacturing operation, converting raw steroid chemical compounds ordered off the Internet into injectable solutions. Content analysis of 186 websites that supply anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) demonstrates that these grounded findings are indicative of a much larger phenomenon. Our final analysis examines the broader theoretical relevance of the ethnographic findings through contextualizing them within macro-structural (supply) and macro-cultural (demand) social forces.

The Necessary Conditions for Retaliation: Toward a Theory of Non-Violent and Violent Forms in Drug Markets
Scott Jacques

Research provides strong support for the theory that drug market participants are often involved in violent retaliation because they lack access to formal mediation. Yet retaliation is not always violent. The existing drug market literature offers few counts, estimates, or stories of non-violent retaliation, and no single theory specifies the variable conditions that determine which form of retaliation occurs. This paper contributes to criminology by drawing on the necessary conditions perspective and qualitative data obtained from drug dealers to provide the conceptual and theoretical foundation for future criminological work, including the development of theories that explain variability in retaliatory forms, research that demonstrates whether any given theory is supported by data, and criminal justice policies that draw on theoretical and empirical knowledge to reduce all forms of drug market retaliation—violent and non-violent.

Understanding Elder Sexual Abuse and the Criminal Justice System's Response: Comparisons to Elder Physical Abuse
Brian K. Payne

A great deal of research has considered the dynamics of sexual assault and the way that sexual assault cases are processed and handled in the criminal justice system. Most of this research has focused on sexual assault cases involving younger victims. Very little criminological research has considered the dynamics of elder sexual abuse. To fill this void, the current study uses a sample of 127 elder sexual abuse cases and 314 elder physical abuse cases to shed some light on the dynamics of elder sexual abuse and the way the justice system processes these cases. Attention is also given to the way that the processing of elder sexual abuse cases can be distinguished from the processing of elder physical abuse cases. Results show that a wide range of elder sexual abuse cases are committed and these cases are processed differently than elder physical abuse cases. Implications are provided.

Women Coming Home: Long-Term Patterns of Recidivism
Beth M. Huebner;  Christina DeJong; Jennifer Cobbina

Drawing on recent scholarship on prisoner reentry and gendered pathways to crime, this research explores how social relationships, incarceration experiences, and community context, and the intersection of these factors with race, influence the occurrence and timing of recidivism. Using a large, modern sample of women released from prison, we find that women who are drug dependent, have less education, or have more extensive criminal histories are more likely to fail on parole and to recidivate more quickly during the eight year follow-up period. We also observe racial variation in the effect of education, drug use, and neighborhood concentrated disadvantage on recidivism. This study highlights the importance of an intra-gender, theoretical understanding of recidivism, and has import for policy aimed at female parolees.

Procedural Justice and Order Maintenance Policing: A Study of Inner-City Young Men’s Perceptions of Police Legitimacy
Jacinta M. Gau; Rod K. Brunson

There is tension between the core tenets of procedural justice and those of order maintenance policing. Research has shown that citizens' perceptions of procedural justice influence their beliefs about police legitimacy, yet at the same time, some order maintenance policing efforts stress frequent stops of vehicles and persons for suspected disorderly behavior. These types of programs can threaten citizens' perceptions of police legitimacy because the targeted offenses are minor and are often not well-defined. Citizens stopped for low-level offenses may view such stops as a form of harassment, as they may not believe they were doing anything to warrant police scrutiny. This paper examines young men's self-described experiences with this style of proactive policing. Study findings highlight that order maintenance policing strategies have negative implications for police legitimacy and crime control efforts via their potential to damage citizens' views of procedural justice.

Further Evidence on the Discriminant Validity of Perceptual Incivilities Measures
Todd Armstrong; Charles Katz

Exploratory factor analysis tested the extent to which measures of incivilities and measures of both crime perceptions and victimization had distinct factor loadings in one- and two-factor models. Confirmatory factor analysis tested the fit of one- and two-factor structural equation models. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis showed that perceptual incivilities measures and victimization reports tended to load on distinct factors, offering evidence of the discriminant validity of perceptual incivilities measures relative to victimization reports. Exploratory and confirmatory analysis of perceived incivilities measures and measures of perceptions of crime provided equivocal results. In exploratory factor analysis, perceived incivilities measures and measures of crime perceptions did not always load on distinct factors and confirmatory factor analysis models did not meet the specified thresholds for good model fit across all fit criteria.

Justice Quarterly, April 2010: Volume 27, Issue 2

American Journal of Sociology 115(3)

Operating Room: Relational Spaces and Microinstitutional Change in Surgery
Katherine C. Kellogg

One of the great paradoxes of institutional change is that even when top managers in organizations provide support for change in response to new regulation, the employees whom new programs are designed to benefit often do not use them. This 15-month ethnographic study of two hospitals responding to new regulation demonstrates that using these programs may require subordinate employees to challenge middle managers with opposing interests. The article argues that relational spaces—areas of isolation, interaction, and inclusion that allow middle-manager reformers and subordinate employees to develop a cross-position collective for change—are critical to the change process. These findings have implications for research on institutional change and social movements.

Invigorating the Content in Social Embeddedness: An Ethnography of Life Insurance Transactions in China
Cheris Shun-ching Chan

Based on more than 14 months’ ethnographic research in China, this article brings in culture and symbolic interactionism to understand the social embeddedness of economic transactions. First, an analytic frame linking tie strengths to defining principles, relational properties, and interactions is constructed and applied to changes in life insurance transactions in China. The data suggest that strong tie transactions were common until the economic gains of the sellers were made public. The author argues that the ethical-affective principle that defines strong ties and the high intensity of trust, affection, and asymmetric obligation that constitute these ties make them a double-edged sword for economic transactions. Instead, ties with midrange or weak strength are more effective because of their relational complementarity (although direct economic exchanges may take place among strong ties under extreme institutional or contingency conditions). The author also reveals that dramaturgical interactions, through which economic actors exercise their agency, are an integral part of embedded transactions.

A Sociological (De)Construction of the Relationship between Status and Quality
Freda B. Lynn, Joel M. Podolny, and Lin Tao

Although many sociologists are strongly wedded to the idea of “social construction,” the contextual factors that influence the magnitude of construction are rarely considered. This article explores the decoupling of an actor’s status from the actor’s underlying quality and examines the factors that influence the magnitude of decoupling. The authors specifically consider the role of quality uncertainty, diffuse status characteristics, and the self-fulfilling prophecy. To analyze the impact of each mechanism on decoupling, they simulate the evolution of thousands of small groups using a dyadic model of status allocation. The authors discuss the results of these simulations and conclude with the implications for future research and the practical management of groups.

Does Your Neighbor’s Income Affect Your Happiness?
Glenn Firebaugh and Matthew B. Schroeder

The relative income or income status hypothesis implies that people should be happier when they live among the poor. Findings on neighborhood effects suggest, however, that living in a poorer neighborhood reduces, not enhances, a person's happiness. Using data from the American National Election Study linked to income data from the U.S. census, the authors find that Americans tend to be happier when they reside in richer neighborhoods (consistent with neighborhood studies) in poorer counties (as predicted by the relative income hypothesis). Thus it appears that individuals in fact are happier when they live among the poor, as long as the poor do not live too close.

Why Do Nominal Characteristics Acquire Status Value? A Minimal Explanation for Status Construction
Noah P. Mark, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and Cecilia L. Ridgeway

Why do beliefs that attach different amounts of status to different categories of people become consensually held by the members of a society? We show that two microlevel mechanisms, in combination, imply a system-level tendency toward consensual status beliefs about a nominal characteristic. (1) Status belief diffusion: a person who has no status belief about a characteristic can acquire a status belief about that characteristic from interacting with one or more people who have that status belief. (2) Status belief loss: a person who has a status belief about a characteristic can lose that belief from interacting with one or more people who have the opposite status belief. These mechanisms imply that opposite status beliefs will tend to be lost at equal rates and will tend to be acquired at rates proportional to their prevalence. Therefore, if a status belief ever becomes more prevalent than its opposite, it will increase in prevalence until every person holds it.

Religious Attendance in Cross-National Perspective: A Multilevel Analysis of 60 Countries
Stijn Ruiter and Frank van Tubergen

Why are some nations more religious than others? This article proposes a multilevel framework in which country differences in religious attendance are explained by contextual, individual, and cross-level interaction effects. Hypotheses from different theories are simultaneously tested with data from 60 nations obtained from the European/World Values Surveys. Multilevel logistic regression analyses show that religious regulation in a country diminishes religious attendance and that there are only small negative effects of people's own education and average educational level of the country. Religious attendance is strongly affected by personal and societal insecurities and by parental and national religious socialization and level of urbanization. These theories explain 75% of the cross-national variation in religious attendance.

American Journal of Sociology, December 2009: Volume 115, Issue 3

British Journal of Criminology 50(2)

The Spectacle of Crime in the 'New' South Africa: A Historical Perspective (1976–2004)
Gail Super

This article is concerned with the spectacle of crime in the ‘new’ South Africa. I offer a sociological explanation for why crime plays such an important role in governance in South Africa. I identify both continuities and shifts between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ techniques of rule, showing how the very construction of crime and controversies about measuring it are constituted by and constitutive of power relations within society. The interconnected themes that I address are the changing relationship between crime and politics as the African National Congress went from being a resistance organization to governing party and the changing relationship between crime and race. The period that my research covers is from 1976 to 2004.

Discipline, Docility and Disparity: A Study of Inequality and Corporal Punishment
Laurie A. Gould and Matthew Pate

Corporal punishment as a sanction for criminal offenders has a long global history. While most North American and European countries have abandoned such methods, corporal punishment is still a mainstay of criminal justice in many parts of the world. Employing a Foucauldian framework, we posit that the distribution of social power plays a determinative role in the retention of corporal punishment practices. Using economic disparity as a proxy for social power, we find that countries with greater relative economic inequality are more likely to employ corporal punishment as a possible sanction against criminal offenders.

Disciplining the Drifter: The Domestication of Travellers in the Netherlands
Marianne van Bochove and Jack Burgers

Recent criminological literature, mainly based on experiences in the United States and the United Kingdom, suggests that Western societies have witnessed a shift from rehabilitation to repression and from inclusion to exclusion. However, in a socio-historical case study of national and local policies dealing with Travellers in the Netherlands—a group regarded as highly deviant—we found that rehabilitation remains the primary aim, albeit that the policy of rehabilitation recently has taken on a much more compulsory character. This policy can be conceived of as a practice of ‘repressive inclusion’. Only detailed and empirical research on policies directed at strategically chosen groups in different institutional settings can decide whether this policy of repressive inclusion is a specific Dutch experience or has a more general application.

Exploring Paradigms of Crime Reduction: An Empirical Longitudinal Study
Keith Soothill, Mogens N. Christoffersen, M. Azhar Hussain, and Brian Francis

Using Danish registers for a 1980 birth cohort of 29,944 males with parental information and following up these cases for 25 years, the study considers four paradigms of crime reduction (parental child rearing, structural factors around adolescence, locality and individual resources). Focusing on offenders with first-time convictions for shoplifting (n = 1,989), for burglary (n = 1,324) and for violence (n = 1,901), all four paradigms made a contribution to risk of first-time offending for all three crimes. The counter-factual analysis indicated that a focus on structural issues within a society may have more widespread benefits, but the assumed causal links need to be further explored. The use of population registers, under controlled conditions, provides an important window on criminal careers.

'The Dragon Breathes Smoke': Cigarette Counterfeiting in the People's Republic of China
Anqi Shen, Georgios A. Antonopoulos, and Klaus Von Lampe

This article aims at providing an account of the social organization of the cigarette counterfeiting business in the People's Republic of China—a business that has been feeding the cigarette black markets around the globe. Specifically, we aim to exhibit the scale and nature of cigarette counterfeiting in mainland China, describe the practices and actors in the different phases of the trade, and examine the role of corruption and violence in the particular business. We argue that cigarette counterfeiting is one of the side effects of China's reform and ‘opening up’ policy, and a feature of the country's economic development process.

A Typology of British Police: Locating the Scottish Municipal Police Model in Its British Context, 1800–35
David G. Barrie

This article represents the first serious attempt to compare Scottish policing with other British municipal police and improvement models between 1800 and 1835. It is concerned with assessing whether the Scottish experience was distinct from other parts of the United Kingdom and the implications of this for British police historiography and typology. It argues that the Scottish model was much closer to English experience than has hitherto been contended, but which, nonetheless, had distinguishing characteristics tailored to meet specific indigenous needs, customs and practices. Any attempt to construct a British police typology must move beyond the institutional confines of accountability and organization and take account of legal, cultural and intellectual structures and influences.

'Any Girl Can Call the Cops, No Problem': The Influence of Gender on Support for the Decision to Report Criminal Victimization within Homeless Communities
Laura Huey and Marianne Quirouette

In this paper, we examine the influence of the ‘anti-snitching code’ on attitudes towards reporting criminal victimization among the homeless. Using research data from a study of criminal victimization, we analyse how gender structures attitudes towards crime reporting, creating what we term a ‘chivalry exception’ to the ‘anti-snitching code’. In essence, the chivalry exception is a form of benevolent sexism that embodies the belief that women are inherently vulnerable and thus in need of greater protection. This exception is rejected by many women, some of whom reject it as symbolic of female vulnerability, whereas others remain fearful of retaliatory violence. These findings have larger implications for future efforts to address failures to report crime by homeless female victims.

Public Confidence in the Police: Testing the Effects of Public Experiences of Police Corruption in Ghana
Justice Tankebe

Nearly every study of police corruption hypothesizes that public experience of police corruption undermines the moral standing of the police. However, scarcely any studies actually test the hypothesis. My aim in this empirical study is to compare the effects of three dimensions of police corruption on perceptions of police trustworthiness, procedural justice and effectiveness. These three dimensions of corruption are personal experience, vicarious experience and subjective evaluations of police anti-corruption measures. The data come from a survey of people living in Accra, Ghana. The findings show that both vicarious experiences of corruption and satisfaction with reform measures explain assessments of police trustworthiness, procedural justice and effectiveness, but that personal experiences of police corruption do not do so.

Why Do The Police Use Deadly Force?: Explaining Police Encounters in Mumbai
Jyoti Belur

This paper attempts to answer the question: why do the police use deadly force in a democratic country? Police shootings in India are better known as encounters, a term that refers to a specific type of police contact—a spontaneous, unplanned ‘shoot-out’ between the police and alleged criminals, in which the criminal is usually killed, with few or no police injuries. The police use of deadly force remains largely unquestioned or unaccountable. This paper explores the wider structural and systemic factors that create conditions in which killing ‘hardened’ criminals seems to be the last resort for the police to gain some control in the fight against crime. Wider cultural and specifically police sub-cultural factors that make police killing of alleged criminals both feasible and acceptable in a democratic country are discussed. Based on a qualitative study of Mumbai police officers’ narratives accounting for use of deadly force, the paper draws upon wider policing literature in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, South Africa and certain Latin American countries to explain why this form of police violence occurs.

Applying the Flashpoints Model of Public Disorder to the 2001 Bradford Riot
David P. Waddington

It is 21 years since the publication of the author's Flashpoints: Studies in Public Disorder. In this book, and in subsequent publications, David Waddington and his colleagues have outlined and refined the so-called Flashpoints Model of Public Disorder, which has underpinned separate analyses of orderly and disorderly crowd events in Britain, Europe, Asia, Australasia, and North and South America. The model has had its critics and detractors—the most recent being Paul Bagguley and Yasmin Hussain, who level several criticisms at the model in their book, Riotous Citizens: Ethnic Conflict in Multicultural Britain, an analysis of the 2001 Bradford riot. This paper not only addresses these criticisms, but uses Bagguley and Hussain's own account as the basis of a re-analysis of the Bradford riot in terms of the flashpoints model.

Reading Difference Differently?: Identity, Epistemology and Prison Ethnography
Coretta Phillips and Rod Earle

Prison ethnographers have tended to downplay the epistemological and methodological dilemmas relating to identity and positionality, which have been more commonly rehearsed in anthropological and sociological ethnographies. This paper explores these issues through a reflexive interrogation of a study of prisoner identities and social relations in two male prisons, with a particular focus on race/ethnicity, class and gender. Drawing from interactions with two prisoners as case studies, it applies Walkerdine et al.’s (2001) psycho-social analytical frame to illustrate how the subjectivities and biographies of researchers are implicated in the dynamics of prison research encounters and analysis. In doing so, it considers the epistemological implications of reflexive practice for interpreting the prison field.

British Journal of Criminology, March 2010: Volume 50, Issue 2

Journal of Criminal Justice 38(1)

Public preferences for rehabilitation versus incarceration of juvenile offenders
Alex R. Piquero, Laurence Steinberg

While juvenile justice policy in the United States has become more punitive in recent years, it remains unclear whether the public actually favors this response in lieu of more rehabilitation-oriented services. Public opinion polling generally shows that the public favors less punitive responses than policymakers often suppose, but significant questions remain about the accuracy of these perceptions generally, and in how they have been assessed in particular. Data from four states (Illinois, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Washington) aimed at assessing public preferences for rehabilitation and incarceration as a response to serious juvenile crime indicated that, for the most part, the public was willing to pay more in taxes for rehabilitation than incarceration.

The relationship among distributive and procedural justice and correctional life satisfaction, burnout, and turnover intent: An exploratory study
Eric G. Lambert, Nancy L. Hogan, Shanhe Jiang, O. Oko Elechi, Barbaranne Benjamin, Angela Morris, John M. Laux, Paula Dupuy

Distributive and procedural justice, two dimensions of organizational justice, have been found to be salient antecedents of many correctional staff attitudes, such as job stress, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment; however, little correctional research has examined their relationships with the life satisfaction, burnout, and turnover intent. Multivariate regression equations were estimated to determine the association of personal characteristics, distributive justice, and procedural justice with the life satisfaction, burnout, and turnover intent of correctional employees based on a survey of 160 staff at a private midwestern maximum security institution. Both distributive and procedural justice had a statistically significant inverse association with burnout and turnover intent, while procedural justice had a significant positive relationship with life satisfaction. Additionally, the results indicated that the association of procedural justice was larger than the association for distributive justice. Similar results were obtained using only responses from correctional officers.

Investigating the effects of peer association and parental influence on adolescent substance use: A study of adolescents in South Korea
Eunyoung Kim, Dae-Hoon Kwak, Minwoo Yun

The central purpose of this study was to examine whether peer influence has a greater impact on adolescent substance use than parental influence. This was a comparative study that examined cross-cultural applicability by applying the established findings and theoretical suggestions, such as social learning theory and social bonding theory in the United States, to a traditionally non-Western social context (South Korea). Although the theories have firmly established their explicability on adolescent delinquency and substance use in U.S. society, there are relatively few empirical studies to establish its generalizability in societies outside the U.S. and even fewer in such traditionally non-Western societies as South Korea. Using a nationwide sample of self-reported data from 3,188 junior high school students, estimations from multivariate analyses were used to compare the relative importance of peer and parental influence on adolescent substance (alcohol and tobacco) use. The findings from the current study supported both social learning theory and social bonding theory, suggesting that both peer and parental influence are significant in predicting the risks of adolescent substance use. Although parental influence was slightly greater than peer factors, the difference was negligible. The limitations, the unique social context of Korean society, and future research implications are then discussed.

Drug courts for DWI offenders? The effectiveness of two hybrid drug courts on DWI offenders
Jeffrey A. Bouffard, Katie A. Richardson, Travis Franklin

The effectiveness of drug courts for illegal drug-involved offenders has been well documented (Belenko, 1998, 2001; Wilson, Mitchell, & MacKenzie, 2006), however, few studies had examined whether they work for repeat “driving while intoxicated” (DWI) or “driving under the influence” (DUI) offenders. The current study examined sixty-six offenders who had completed one of two hybrid DUI/drug courts (compared to eighty-six similar parolees) operating in two small cities in a single midwestern state. Results suggested that among non-DUI offenders, completion of the drug court program reduced recidivism, as might be expected; however, among the subsample of chronic DUI offenders no significant recidivism reduction was noted. These results add to the small, but growing literature suggesting that DUI courts (as they are currently being implemented) may not be an effective way to reduce the occurrence of repeat DUI offenses. Suggestions for DUI court implementation and future research are presented.

Interracial contact and fear of crime
Daniel P. Mears, Eric A. Stewart

Despite a large literature on public views about crime, the racialization of crime, and the contact hypothesis, surprisingly little is known about how interracial friendships may influence Whites’ fear of crime. At the same time, and perhaps because no counterpart stereotype to that of “Blacks as criminals” exists, there has been little exploration of how such contact may influence Blacks’ fear of crime. To address these research gaps, this study built on prior theory and research and used data from an ABC News and Washington Post poll to test competing hypotheses about the effect of interracial contact on Whites’ and Blacks’ fear of crime, respectively. The analyses revealed that close interracial friendships are associated with increased fear of crime among Whites, decreased fear of crime among lower-income Blacks, and increased fear among higher-income Blacks. The implications for theory and research are discussed.

A tale of three cities: Crime and displacement after Hurricane Katrina
Sean P. Varano, Joseph A. Schafer, Jeffrey M. Cancino, Scott H. Decker, Jack R. Greene

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in August 2005, it greatly disrupted both the physical and social structures of that community. One consequence of the hurricane was the displacement of large numbers of New Orleans residents to other cities, including Houston, San Antonio, and Phoenix. There has been media speculation that such a grand-scale population displacement led to increased crime in communities that were recipient of large numbers of displaced New Orleans residents. This study was a case study of three cities with somewhat different experiences with Katrina's diaspora. Time series analysis was used to examine the pre- and post-Katrina trends in six Part I offenses (murder, robbery, aggravated assault, rape, burglary, and auto theft) to assess any impact of such large-scale population shifts on crime in host communities. Contrary to much popular speculation, only modest effects were found on crime. Social disorganization theory was used to frame both the analysis and the interpretation of these results.

The role of race/ethnicity and race relations on public opinion related to the immigration and crime link
George E. Higgins, Shaun L. Gabbidon, Favian Martin

This article examines two hypotheses related to public opinion concerning immigration and crime. Using data from a recent Gallup poll with oversamples of Hispanics and Blacks, the research examined whether race/ethnicity and race relations matter in the public's opinion of the connection between immigration and crime. After a series of models were performed, results of the final model revealed that race relations, gender (specifically, being male), race/ethnicity, and immigrant status are influential in contextualizing public opinion on the topic. The meaning and policy implications of these findings are also reviewed.

Determinants of public confidence in police: An international perspective
Hyunseok Jang, Hee-Jong Joo, Jihong (Solomon) Zhao

Previous studies concerning public confidence in the police had primarily focused on demographic, attitudinal, and contextual factors in the United States. Little research, however, has used country-level variables to explain variations that exist across countries. As a result, this study examined the impact of country-level predictors (e.g., homicide rate and level of democracy) as well as individual-level predictors on public confidence in the police by utilizing data sets collected from three international surveys. Using hierarchical generalized linear modeling (HGLM) for the multinomial dependent variable, this study found a significant and negative relationship between homicide rate and public confidence in the police. People living in a country with a higher homicide rate reported lower levels of confidence in the police. Level of democracy was also found to be positively related to public confidence in the police. Of the individual-level variables, age and education were found to be significant predictors. A positive relationship was also found between political conservatism or personal satisfaction and confidence in the police. In line with attitudinal and contextual predictors, individuals with higher levels of acceptance toward deviant subcultures reported lower levels of confidence in the police. On the other hand, those who were more satisfied with their country's democratic development showed more favorable attitudes toward the police. The findings of this study implied that police organizations should put greater efforts toward the reduction of crime while protecting democratic values within a society.

Rating the prison boss: Examining supervision among prison health care staff
Brett Garland, William McCarty

Health care staff are instrumental in prisons given their roles in aiding security and the growing demand for medical services among prisoners. Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to this prison staff subpopulation. This study examined perceptions of supervision among 424 prison health care staff in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Participants felt that prison supervisors were most effective in clarifying expectations and least effective in giving feedback for performance, involving staff in planning, and extending job autonomy. Using hierarchical linear models (HLM), some unique findings emerged. Efficacy in dealing with inmates was the strongest predictor variable: health care staff who felt more positive and effective with inmates had more favorable feelings toward supervision. Staff working in high- and medium-security prisons had more positive feelings toward supervision than those in minimum security, and younger staff had more favorable attitudes toward supervisors than older staff. The implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.

Are police-reported driving while Black data a valid indicator of the race and ethnicity of the traffic law violators police stop? A negative answer with minor qualifications
Richard J. Lundman

Are police-reported driving while Black data a valid indicator of the race and ethnicity of the drivers police stop? This research answered that question by advancing the first multivariate analysis of race and ethnicity missingness in the traffic stop data reported by Boston police during April and May of 2001. The most important multivariate story the data tell was that race and ethnicity missingness was significantly nonrandom on multiple dimensions, including the second month of data collection, for drivers living in zip codes with above average and average people of color, for drivers living in zip codes with above average and average poor people, and for drivers whose stop ended in a ticket. The results therefore supported a clear answer to a fundamentally important question about the validity of the driving while Black data reported by police. Based upon the present research and with minor qualifications, police-reported driving while Black data were not valid because they underestimated the frequency with which police stop drivers of color.

The impacts of the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University shootings on fear of crime on campus
Robert J. Kaminski, Barbara A. Koons-Witt, Norma Stewart Thompson, Douglas Weiss

There has been a substantial increase in the number of mass shooting incidents on college campuses in the United States in recent years. Although empirical research examined the impacts of secondary school shootings on student fear, there have been no comparable studies of the impacts of campus shootings. This study began to fill this void by examining responses to surveys administered to convenience samples of students enrolled at the University of South Carolina prior to and following the mass shooting incidents on the campuses of Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University. Findings indicated that both shootings were associated with modest increases in various measures of fear. Other findings were that the impacts of the shootings depended on both the type of fear measured (e.g., general fear versus fear of being a victim of specific crimes) and student characteristics such as age, sex, and race.

Determinants of attitudes toward police of Latino immigrants and non-immigrants
Mark E. Correia

Though much attention has been given to the effect of ethnicity on perceptions of the police, few studies had focused on Latino immigrants. Using research conducted in an immigrant rich area, this study examined the possibility that determinants of attitudes toward the police differ across immigrants and non-immigrants. Using several statistical techniques, this article explores the impact of the most commonly used variables (e.g., age, gender, contact with the police) as well as those most associated with immigrants (e.g., language proficiency, religiosity, residential stability). Other variables used to assess various social processes (e.g., social cohesion, informal social control, neighboring and civic behavior) were also included. The findings revealed variations in determinants of attitudes toward the police between immigrants and non-immigrants, and suggest distinct social processes may account for these differences. These findings suggest that both researchers and policymakers must expand their breadth to more fully understand immigrant attitudes toward the police.

Journal of Criminal Justice, January 2010: Volume 38, Issue 1

Social Forces 88(2)

Four on the Family

Taking on the Second Shift: Time Allocations and Time Pressures of U.S. Parents with Preschoolers
Melissa A. Milkie, Sara B. Raley, Suzanne M. Bianchi

The term "second shift" from Hochschild's (1989) classic volume is commonly used by scholars to mean that employed mothers face an unequal load of household labor and thus a "double day" of work. We use two representative samples of contemporary U.S. parents with preschoolers to test how mothers employed fulltime and married to a full-time worker (focal mothers) differ in time allocations and pressures from fathers and from mothers employed parttime or not at all. Results indicate focal mothers' total workloads are greater than fathers' by a week-and-a-half, not an "extra month" per year. Focal mothers have less leisure, but do not experience more onerous types of unpaid work, nor get less sleep than fathers. Focal mothers feel greater time pressures compared with fathers; however, some of these tensions extend to other mothers of young children. Finally, these families may be engaged in fewer quality activities with children compared with families where mothers are not employed fulltime.

Has the Marital Time Cost of Parenting Changed Over Time?
Jeffrey Dew

Qualitative and quantitative research has suggested that married couples handle the increasing demands of intensive parenting norms and work expectations by reducing spousal time (e.g., the time that spouses spend alone with each other). Using nationally representative time-diary data, this study examined whether married individuals with children at home lost more spousal time in the years 1975-2003 than individuals without children at home. The analyses showed that on average married individuals have reduced their spousal time by 50 minutes a day. Contrary to expectations, however, individuals with minor children at home had lower time declines than individuals without children. The strategies that assisted married individuals with children to protect their spousal time differed between weekdays and weekend days.

Education Differences in Intended and Unintended Fertility
Kelly Musick, Paula England, Sarah Edgington, Nicole Kangas

Using a hazards framework and panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979-2004), we analyze the fertility patterns of a recent cohort of white and black women in the United States. We examine how completed fertility varies by women's education, differentiating between intended and unintended births. We find that the education gradient on fertility comes largely from unintended childbearing, and it is not explained by child-bearing desires or opportunity costs, the two most common explanations in previous research. Less-educated women want no more children than the more educated, so this factor explains none of their higher completed fertility. Less-educated women have lower wages, but wages have little of the negative effect on fertility predicted by economic theories of opportunity cost. We propose three other potential mechanisms linking low education and unintended childbearing, focusing on access to contraception and abortion, relational and economic uncertainty, and consistency in the behaviors necessary to avoid unintended pregnancies. Our work highlights the need to incorporate these mechanisms into future research.

Is There a Career Penalty for Mothers' Time Out?: A Comparison of Germany, Sweden and the United States
Silke Aisenbrey, Marie Evertsson, Daniela Grunow

This article focuses on three countries with distinct policies toward motherhood and work: Germany, Sweden and the United States. We analyze the length of mothers' time out of paid work after childbirth and the short-term career consequences for mothers. In the United States, we identify a career punishment even for short timeout periods; long time-out periods increase the risk of a downward move and reduce the chances of an upward move. In Germany, long time-out periods destabilize the career and, the longer the leave, the greater the risk of either an upward or downward move. In Sweden, we find a negative effect of time out on upward moves. Hence, even in "woman-friendly" Sweden, women's career prospects are better if they return to paid work sooner rather than later.

Perspectives on Culture

Knowledge Specialization, Knowledge Brokerage and the Uneven Growth of Technology Domains
Gianluca Carnabuci, Jeroen Bruggeman

Why do certain domains of knowledge grow fast while others grow slowly or stagnate? Two distinct theoretical arguments hold that knowledge growth is enhanced by knowledge specialization and knowledge brokerage. Based on the notion of recombinant knowledge growth, we show that specialization and brokerage are opposing modes of knowledge generation, the difference between them lying in the extent to which homogeneous vs. heterogeneous input ideas get creatively recombined. Accordingly, we investigate how both modes of knowledge generation can enhance the growth of technology domains. To address this question, we develop an argument that reconciles both specialization and brokerage into a dynamic explanation. Our contention is that specializing in an increasingly homogeneous set of input ideas is both more efficient and less risky than brokering knowledge. Nevertheless, specializing implies progressively exhausting available recombinant possibilities, while brokerage creates new ones. Hence, technology domains tend to grow faster when they specialize, but the more specialized they become, the more they need knowledge brokerage to grow. We cast out our argument into five hypotheses that predict how growth rates vary across technology domains.

Culture and Embodied Cognition: Moral Discourses in Internet Support Groups for Overeaters
Gabriel Ignatow

This article argues that a modified version of Bourdieu's habitus concept can generate insights into moral culture and the ways people use culture to make changes in their lives. If revised in light of recent findings from cognitive neuroscience, the habitus allows for the analysis of culture as embodied cognitive structures linking individuals to primary-group discourses. To demonstrate the utility of this conception, I examine the unique abstract language and embodied metaphors used by members of religious and secular overeaters' internet support groups. The religious group used far more cleanliness metaphors, and members who made frequent use of such metaphors remained with the group longer and posted more messages. This effect was not found for either group's abstract language or for the secular group's embodied metaphors. The findings suggest that a cultural influence on social bonding can be shown when culture is operationalized in terms of embodied cognitive schemas that operate within both the habitus and group discourses. Also, traditionally religious moral culture may be more strongly associated with cultural coherence and social bonding than is modernist culture.

How Do Cultural Producers Make Creative Decisions?: Lessons from the Catwalk
Frédéric C. Godart

Faced with high uncertainty, how do producers in the cultural economy make creative decisions? We present a case study of the fashion modeling industry. Using participant observation, interviews and network analysis of the Spring/Summer 2007 Fashion Week collections, we explain how producers select models for fashion shows. While fashion producers conceive of their selection of models as a matter of "taste," or personal preference, we find that their decisions are shaped by information sharing mechanisms in social networks, principally through a mechanism known as "optioning," which enables producers to know each others' preferences and to align themselves with similar status actors. For cultural producers, choices are a matter of strategic status considerations, even as they are expressed as a matter of personal taste.

Listening to Rap: Cultures of Crime, Cultures of Resistance
Julian Tanner, Mark Asbridge, Scot Wortley

This research compares representations of rap music with the self-reported criminal behavior and resistant attitudes of the music's core audience. Our database is a large sample of Toronto high school students (n = 3,393) from which we identify a group of listeners, whose combination of musical likes and dislikes distinguish them as rap univores. We then examine the relationship between their cultural preference for rap music and involvement in a culture of crime and their perceptions of social injustice and inequity. We find that the rap univores, also known as urban music enthusiasts, report significantly more delinquent behavior and stronger feelings of inequity and injustice than listeners with other musical tastes. However, we also find that the nature and strengths of those relationships vary according to the racial identity of different groups within urban music enthusiasts. Black and white subgroups align themselves with resistance representations while Asians do not; whites and Asians report significant involvement in crime and delinquency, while blacks do not. Finally, we discuss our findings in light of research on media effects and audience reception, youth subcultures and post-subcultural analysis, and the sociology of cultural consumption.

Contexts of Violence

Fathers' Rights Groups, Domestic Violence and Political Countermobilization
Jocelyn Elise Crowley

Domestic violence continues to be a serious problem for women in the United States. As a result, the battered women's movement has been tireless in campaigning for greater awareness of the issue, tougher penalties against offenders, and public vigilance against potential batterers, including fathers from dissolving families. In reaction to this stance, a small but vocal countermovement composed of activists in the fathers' rights movement has argued that the BWM is guilty of what I term enemy boundary creep, a perception whereby these men maintain that they have been inappropriately targeted. Using 40 in-depth interviews with fathers' rights activists located across the country, this article details the narrative that these men have composed as to why the BWM is expanding the scope of its enemies, the tactics that the BWM is using in this campaign, and the insidious effects that these efforts are having on fathers across the country. This narrative formulates a boundary-push back response. This analysis thus articulates how an unlikely countermovement can use the accusation of enemy boundary creep by its social movement opponents in an effort to shift the political discourse on a significant public problem.

Collateral Consequences of Violence in Disadvantaged Neighborhoods
David J. Harding

Using data from Add Health, this study investigates the role of neighborhood violence in mediating the effects of neighborhood disadvantage on high school graduation and teenage pregnancy. Results show that neighborhood violence is a strong predictor of both outcomes, net of individual, family, community and school controls. Neighborhood violence accounts for almost half the conditional association between neighborhood disadvantage and high school graduation among males and almost all of the association among females. Violence also accounts for about a fifth of the conditional association between disadvantage and teenage pregnancy among adolescents of both genders. Violence is a critical social characteristic of disadvantaged neighborhoods, one that explains a sizable portion of the effects of growing up in such neighborhoods.

Dividing and Ruling the World?: A Statistical Test of the Effects of Colonialism on Postcolonial Civil Violence
Matthew Lange, Andrew Dawson

To test claims that postcolonial civil violence is a common legacy of colonialism, we create a dataset on the colonial heritage of 160 countries and explore whether a history of colonialism is related to indicators of inter-communal conflict, political rebellion and civil war in the years 1960-1999. The analysis provides evidence against sweeping claims that colonialism is a universal cause of civil violence but finds that some forms of colonialism increase the risk of some forms of civil violence. Specifically, the findings support claims that inter-communal violence is a common legacy of colonialism – especially of British colonialism and colonialism by minor colonial powers – but suggest that a history of colonialism has only a limited impact on political rebellion and civil war.

Comparative Social Mobility

The Differential Valuation of Women's Work: A New Look at the Gender Gap in Lawyers' Incomes
Ronit Dinovitzer, Nancy Reichman, Joyce Sterling

This article seeks to identify the mechanisms underlying the gender wage gap among new lawyers. Relying on nationally representative data to examine the salaries of lawyers working fulltime in private practice, we find a gender gap of about 5 percent. Identifying four mechanisms – work profiles, opportunity paths and structures, credentials, and legal markets – we first estimate how much of the gap stems from the differential valuation of women's endowments; second, we estimate the effects of different endowments for men and women; and third we assess both these possibilities. The analyses indicate that none of these mechanisms can fully account for the gender gap. Experimental studies that indicate women's work is less valued and rewarded than men's suggest new directions for research on gendered compensation.

Occupational Feminization and Pay: Assessing Causal Dynamics Using 1950-2000 U.S. Census Data
Asaf Levanon, Paula England, Paul Allison

Occupations with a greater share of females pay less than those with a lower share, controlling for education and skill. This association is explained by two dominant views: devaluation and queuing. The former views the pay offered in an occupation to affect its female proportion, due to employers' preference for men–a gendered labor queue. The latter argues that the proportion of females in an occupation affects pay, owing to devaluation of work done by women. Only a few past studies used longitudinal data, which is needed to test the theories. We use fixed-effects models, thus controlling for stable characteristics of occupations, and U.S. Census data from 1950 through 2000. We find substantial evidence for the devaluation view, but only scant evidence for the queuing view.

The Impact of Origin and Host Country Schooling on the Economic Performance of Immigrants
Agnieszka Kanas, Frank van Tubergen

This study examines the economic returns to schooling acquired in the country of origin and the country of destination. It uses large-scale survey data on Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese and Antillean immigrants in the Netherlands, which contain direct measures of pre- and post-migration schooling. It is studied whether the returns to origin-country schooling depend on contextual factors: i.e., immigrant group and the region of living. Furthermore, we examine the importance of host-country schooling for labor market outcomes and if these can be partly explained by increasing contacts with natives. Results show that the returns to origin-country schooling are higher for Surinamese and Antillean immigrants (i.e., those originating from former Dutch colonies) than for immigrants from Turkey and Morocco. The returns to origin-country schooling are not affected by ethnic concentration in the region of living. Finally, it appears that the returns to host-country schooling are much larger than to origin-country schooling, and the higher returns to host-country schooling cannot be explained by increased social contacts with natives.

Modernization Theory and Changes Over Time in the Reproduction of Socioeconomic Inequalities in Australia
Gary N. Marks

Modernization theory argues that, as societies industrialize and further develop, the influence of social background and other ascribed characteristics on educational and socioeconomic outcomes declines, while achievement in the education system becomes more important. The purpose of this research is to investigate propositions derived from modernization theory as they apply to Australian society during the second half of the 20th century. Specifically, these are (1. declines in the influence of socioeconomic background on education, occupation and earnings; (2. increases in the occupational and economic returns to education; and (3. decreases in gender inequalities in all three outcomes. These propositions are examined using data from nationally representative surveys conducted from 1965 through 2005. In accordance with modernization theory, it was found that the effects of socioeconomic background on education, occupational attainment and earnings have declined. Gender inequalities in education have been reversed, and the gender gap in earnings has declined. The effect of education on occupational attainment has increased more strongly among men than women. Contrary to expectations from one interpretation of modernization theory, the returns in earnings from education have not increased.

Youth Civic Engagement: A Paper and Commentary

Assessing the Effects of Voluntary Youth Service: The Case of Teach for America
Doug McAdam, Cynthia Brandt

We use survey data from all accepted applicants to Teach for America 1993-98 to assess the longer-term effect of youth service on participants' current civic attitudes and behaviors. While TFA "graduates" score higher than the two comparison groups–"dropouts" and "non-matriculants"–on a broad range of attitudinal items measuring civic commitment, these differences appear to be less a byproduct of the TFA experience than a reflection of current involvement with the TFA organization. Moreover, the attitudinal differences are not reflected in actual civic behavior. Specifically, graduates lag behind non-matriculants in current service activity and generally trail both non-matriculants and drop-outs in self-reported participation in five other forms of civic/ political activity measured in the study. Graduates also vote at lower rates than the other two groups. Finally, fewer graduates report employment in "pro-social" jobs than either non-matriculants or drop-outs. We close by speculating on what mechanisms may help explain variation in the long-term effects of youth service or activist experiences.

Why We Need To Learn More About Youth Civic Engagement
James Youniss

Social Forces, December 2009: Volume 88, Issue 2

Social Psychology Quarterly 73(1)

Openings

Between Elias and Foucault: Discipline, Photography, and the Soviet Childhood
Oksana Sarkisova and Olga Shevchenko

The Contentious Social Interactionism of Charles Tilly
Randall Collins

Two on Morality

Helping Behavior, Dispositional Empathic Concern, and the Principle of Care
Mark Ottoni Wilhelm and René Bekkers

Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent
Satoshi Kanazawa

Two on Race

Do You See What I Am?: How Observers’ Backgrounds Affect Their Perceptions of Multiracial Faces
Melissa R. Herman

Estimating Risk: Stereotype Amplification and the Perceived Risk of Criminal Victimization
Lincoln Quillian and Devah Pager

Social Psychology Quarterly, March 2010: Volume 73, Issue 1

Social Problems 57(1)

Toward a New Abolitionism: Race, Ethnicity, and Social Transformation
Steven E. Barkan

Social Capital and Political Consumerism: A Multilevel Analysis
Lisa A. Neilson, Pamela Paxton

Does social capital-trust and association involvement-predict political consumerism-boycotting and buycotting? Using data from the 2002/2003 European Social Survey we conduct a multilevel logit analysis of 24,854 individuals nested in 228 within-country regions to evaluate whether social capital and political consumerism are positively related at both the individual and regional level. Findings indicate that individuals with greater personal social capital and those who live in regions with higher average levels of social capital are more likely to be political consumers. These results support previous fndings that link social capital with other forms of civic engagement.

Racial Threat and Punitive School Discipline
Kelly Welch, Allison Ann Payne

Tests of the racial threat hypothesis, linking the racial composition of place to various measures of social control, find that where there are greater percentages of blacks, more punitive criminal justice policies are implemented. Just as the criminal justice system continues to get tougher on crime despite stagnant crime rates, it is also clear that schools are becoming harsher toward student misbehavior and delinquency despite decreases in these school-based occurrences. However, only a very limited number of studies have been able to partially explain this trend of intensifying social control in schools. Using a national sample of 294 public schools, the present study is the first to test the racial threat hypothesis within schools to determine if the racial composition of students predicts greater use of punitive controls, regardless of levels of misbehavior and delinquency. Results of multivariate analyses support the racial threat perspective, finding that schools with a larger percentage of black students are not only more likely to use punitive disciplinary responses, but also more likely to use extremely punitive discipline and to implement zero tolerance policies. They also use fewer mild disciplinary practices and restitutive techniques. In addition, racial threat is more influential when school delinquency and disorder are lower.

Elite Status and Social Change: Using Field Analysis to Explain Policy Formation and Implementation
Meghan M. Duffy, Amy J. Binder, John D. Skrentny

Integrating an analysis of fields into studies of social change provides a better understanding of the outcomes achieved by challengers. We demonstrate the value of field analysis through a case study of a social change effort regarding urban land use. An organization led by wealthy and well-connected individuals pressed city government and a powerful for-profit developer to incorporate progressive social goals into a new urban development project. We show how the organization was able to achieve success in the policy formation field but faced significantly more obstacles when trying to enter another field (policy implementation), despite its elite status. Thus, using fields to study the case can bolster scholars' understanding of elite power and status, as well as help explain outcomes. The advantages enjoyed by elites can be field specific rather than universal, and so do not translate automatically into successful challenge results.

Situation or Social Problem: The Infuence of Events on Media Coverage of Homelessness
Rachel Best

Despite a strong interest in media coverage of social problems, sociologists have failed to examine when and why news outlets present issues as problems in need of public action within short time periods. Through content analysis of 475 newspaper articles and negative binomial regression, I show that coverage of homelessness varies in the extent to which it presents homelessness as a social problem. The fact that not all news coverage discusses social problems challenges the claim that social problems necessarily compete for attention in a zero-sum game. I also examine the effects of three types of events (events promoted to the media by their actors and high- and low-profle events not promoted by their actors) on newspapers' likelihood of describing homelessness as a social problem. While previous researchers predicted that events not promoted by their actors would lead to media coverage that challenged the status quo, I fnd that actor-promoted events are much more likely to do so. This fnding highlights the importance of institutionalized action in calling attention to social problems.

The Race of a Criminal Record: How Incarceration Colors Racial Perceptions
Aliya Saperstein, Andrew M. Penner

In the United States, racial disparities in incarceration and their consequences are widely discussed and debated. Previous research suggests that perceptions of crime and the operations of the criminal justice system play an important role in shaping how Americans think about race. This study extends the conversation by exploring whether being incarcerated affects how individuals perceive their own race as well as how they are perceived by others, using unique longitudinal data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Results show that respondents who have been incarcerated are more likely to identify and be seen as black, and less likely to identify and be seen as white, regardless of how they were perceived or identifed previously. This suggests that race is not a fxed characteristic of individuals but is fexible and continually negotiated in everyday interactions.

Poverty, Prosperity, and Place: The Shape of Class Segregation in the Age of Extremes
Rachel E. Dwyer

Rising economic disparities in the United States at the end of the twentieth century make understanding the severity and determinants of residential segregation between the affluent and poor increasingly important. Existing studies are limited, however, by little attention to the spatial configuration of class segregation. Segregation occurs along multiple spatial dimensions-the affluent and poor may be split not only between different neighborhoods, but concentrated over more or less land, more or less centralized, and clustered near or far from other similar neighborhoods. Each dimension affects the amount of contact and shared resources between groups differently, and overlaps between them produce particularly severe social isolation. Theories conflict over the spatial form of class segregation, with the concentric zone model expecting the affluent to be clustered in large-lot developments on the metropolitan fringe and critics proposing alternative spatial forms in a more patchwork pattern. I use U.S. Census summary data for all metropolitan areas in 2000 to test competing theories of the patterns and determinants of the spatial form of affluent-poor segregation using cluster and regression analysis. I identify two dominant spatial forms of affluent-poor segregation in U.S. metropolitan areas in 2000, and find that racial diversity and segregation are key determinants of which spatial form characterizes a metropolitan area. The links between poverty, prosperity, and place were therefore crucially shaped by race as well as economic disparities in the age of extremes.

Does Whitening Happen? Distinguishing between Race and Color Labels in an African-Descended Community in Peru
Tanya Golash-Boza

This article explores how race and color labels are used to describe people in an Afro-Peruvian community. This article is based on analyses of 88 interviews and 18 months of fieldwork in an African-descended community in Peru. The analyses of these data reveal that, if we consider race and color to be conceptually distinct, there is no "mulatto escape hatch," no social or cultural whitening, and no continuum of racial categories in the black Peruvian community under study. This article considers the implications of drawing a conceptual distinction between race and color for research on racial classifications in Latin America.

Social Problems, February 2010: Volume 57, Issue 1