American Journal of Sociology 115(5)

Theorizing the Restlessness of Events

Robin Wagner-Pacifici

This article offers a theoretical and methodological system for a sociological analysis of the restless nature of historical events. This system, political semiosis, is able to identify and assess the performative speech acts, the demonstrative orientational specifications, and the mimetic representations required to advance historical transformations. The features of political semiosis structure the flow of historical events by managing the specific media and generic forms that are the vehicles through which events take shape. Political semiosis provides a method for analyzing both the circulation and the materialization of events. The exemplary case of September 11 illuminates this approach's capabilities.

Social Influence and the Autism Epidemic

Ka-Yuet Liu, Marissa King, and Peter S. Bearman

Despite a plethora of studies, we do not know why autism incidence has increased rapidly over the past two decades. Using California data, this study shows that children living very close to a child previously diagnosed with autism are more likely to be diagnosed with autism. An underlying social influence mechanism involving information diffusion drives this result, contributing to 16% of the increase in prevalence over 2000–2005. We eliminate competing explanations (i.e., residential sorting, environmental toxicants, and viral transmission) through seven tests and show that information diffusion simultaneously contributed to the increased prevalence, spatial clustering, and decreasing age of diagnosis.

Migrants’ Competing Commitments: Sexual Partners in Urban Africa and Remittances to the Rural Origin

Nancy Luke

Migrants form nonfamilial ties in urban destinations, which could compete with origin families for a share of remittances. A framework of competing commitment predicts that new relationships affect remittances depending on the extent to which they substitute for the benefits provided by origin families. Analyses of data from urban migrants in Kenya show that serious nonmarital sexual partners substitute for psychosocial support from the rural family and that material transfers migrants give to these partners significantly reduce remittances. The findings have implications for the ways scholars conceive of competition, the nature of exchange, and substitution of support across intimate relationships.

Gender Inequality in the Welfare State: Sex Segregation in Housework, 1965–2003

Jennifer L. Hook

National context may influence sex segregation of household tasks through both pragmatic decision making and the normative context in which decision making is embedded. This study utilizes 36 time use surveys from 19 countries (spanning 1965–2003) combined with original national-level data in multilevel models to examine household task segregation. Analyses reveal that men do less and women do more time-inflexible housework in nations where work hours and parental leave are long. Women do less of this work where there is more public child care and men are eligible to take parental leave. National context affects the character of gender inequality in the home through individual- and national-level pathways.

Earnings Inequality and the Changing Association between Spouses’ Earnings

Christine R. Schwartz

Increases in the association between spouses' earnings have the potential to increase inequality as marriages increasingly consist of two high-earning or two low-earning partners. This article uses log-linear models and data from the March Current Population Survey to describe trends in the association between spouses' earnings and estimate their contribution to growing earnings inequality among married couples from 1967 to 2005. The results indicate that increases in earnings inequality would have been about 25%–30% lower than observed in the absence of changes in the association, depending on the inequality measure used. Three components of these changes and how they vary across the earnings distribution are explored.

Panethnicity, Ethnic Diversity, and Residential Segregation

Ann H. Kim and Michael J. White

The theoretical and empirical implications of the structural basis of panethnicity and of the layering of ethnic boundaries in residential patterns are considered while simultaneously evaluating the “panethnic hypothesis,” the extent to which homogeneity within panethnic categories can be assumed. Results show a panethnic effect—greater residential proximity within panethnic boundaries than between, net of ethnic group size and metropolitan area—that is dependent on immigration. A lower degree of social distance between panethnic subgroups is observed for blacks, whites, and Latinos, and less for Asians, yet ethnonational groups continue to maintain some degree of distinctiveness within a racialized context.

American Journal of Sociology, March 2010: Volume 115, Issue 5