Law & Society Review 46(3)

Law & Society Review, September 2012: Volume 46, Issue 3

How Dispute Resolution System Design Matters: An Organizational Analysis of Dispute Resolution Structures and Consumer Lemon Laws
Shauhin A. Talesh

This study demonstrates how the structure of dispute resolution shapes the extent to which managerial and business values influence the meaning and implementation of consumer protection law, and consequently, the extent to which repeat players are advantaged. My analysis draws from, links, and contributes to two literatures that examine the relationship between organizational governance structures and law: neo-institutional studies of law and organizations and socio-legal studies of repeat players' advantages in disputing. Specifically, I compare an instance where powerful state consumer protection laws are resolved in private dispute resolution forums funded by automobile manufacturers but operated by independent third-party organizations (California) with one where consumer disputes are resolved in public alternative dispute resolution processes run and administered by the state (Vermont). Through in-depth interviews and participant observation in the training programs that dispute resolution arbitrators undergo in each state, I show how different dispute resolution structures operating in California and Vermont give different meanings to substantially similar lemon laws. Although my data do not allow me to establish a causal relationship, they strongly suggest that the form of the dispute resolution structure, and how business and state actors construct the meaning of lemon laws through these structures, have critical implications for the effectiveness of consumer protection laws for consumers.

Judges, Litigants, and the Design of Courts
Paul Brace, Jeff Yates and Brent D. Boyea

Two important perspectives on courts highlight fundamentally different elements of adjudication and yield distinct predictions about judicial outcomes. The Attitudinal Model of judicial voting posits judge ideology as a strong predictor of court outcomes. Alternatively, the Law and Economics perspective focuses on the settlement behavior of litigants and reasons that while judges may vote ideologically, litigants adapt to these ideological proclivities, nullifying the effect of judge ideology. This analysis focuses on reconciling expectations about the effects of judge ideology and litigant strategies by examining their contingent nature and the conditioning effects of institutional design. The analysis examines state supreme courts from 1995–1998 to identify empirical evidence supporting both perspectives. While some state supreme courts have discretionary dockets allowing judges greater opportunities to exercise their ideology, others lack discretionary docket control, making dockets and outcomes largely litigant driven. Support for each perspective largely hinges on this fundamental feature of institutional design.

Legal Opportunity Structures and the Paradox of Legal Mobilization by the Environmental Movement in the UK
Lisa Vanhala

This article examines the strategic legal activity of the environmental movement in the United Kingdom over the past twenty years. Environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have increasingly turned to the courts in pursuit of their policy goals, despite significant losses on substantive legal issues, difficulties gaining standing and high costs awarded against them under the “loser pays” system. This presents a puzzle: why does the movement continue to pursue legal action in the face of what activists claim is a hostile legal opportunity structure (LOS)? This study explores this seeming paradox using a single-country, cross-temporal comparative approach, an original dataset of legal cases taken by NGOs as well as qualitative case studies of strategic litigation. It highlights the agency the movement exhibits within opportunity structures and suggests that NGOs that use litigation are able to highlight the failings of the existing system and improve future access to justice for themselves and other groups.

Choice, Discrimination, and the Motherhood Penalty
Tamar Kricheli-Katz

Recent studies have documented substantial penalties associated with motherhood and suggest that discrimination plays an important role in producing them. In this article, I argue that the degree to which motherhood is conceptualized as a choice affects the penalties associated with making this choice. Two methods are employed to evaluate this argument. The first method is an analysis of state differences in the wage penalties for motherhood, in which hierarchical linear modeling is used with data from the 1988–2004 Current Population Survey. The second method is a hiring experiment in a highly controlled setting. The wage analysis shows that, net of the usual individual and state-level factors that affect wages, mothers are penalized more in states where motherhood is perceived to be a woman's choice. The hiring experiment distinguishes between productivity-based and discrimination-based explanations for the penalty and provides strong evidence for a causal relationship between perceptions of choice and discrimination against mothers.

“I'll Make Them Shoot Me”: Accounts of Death Row Prisoners Advocating for Execution
Meredith Martin Rountree

About 11% of death-sentenced prisoners executed in the United States hastened executions by abandoning their appeals. How do these prisoners persuade courts to allow them to abandon their appeals? Further, how do legal structures and processes organize these explanations, and what do they conceal? An analysis of Texas cases suggests that prisoners marshal explanations for their desires to hasten execution that echo prevailing cultural beliefs about punishment and the death penalty. The coherence of these accounts is amplified by a non-adversarial, unreliable legal process. This article contributes to our understanding of legal narratives, and expands their analysis to include not only hegemonic stories and legal rules, but also the legal process that generates them.

No Country for Made Men: The Decline of the Mafia in Post-Soviet Georgia
Gavin Slade

This article studies the decline of a long-standing mafia known as thieves-in-law in the post-Soviet republic of Georgia. In 2005 an anti-mafia campaign began which employed laws directly targeting the thieves-in-law. Within a year, all Georgia's thieves-in-law were in prison or had fled the country. This article looks at the success of the policy by investigating how Georgia's volatile socio-economic environment in the 1990s affected the resilience of the thieves-in-law to state attack. The article presents data showing that the chaos of this period impacted on the ability of thieves-in-law to coordinate activities, regulate recruitment, and protect their main collective resource—their elite criminal status. Due to this, the reputation of the thieves-in-law as a mafia drastically declined creating vulnerability. The article adds to the literature on resilience in criminal networks and the study of organized crime in the post-Soviet space.

British Journal of Criminology 52(5)

British Journal of Criminology, September 2012: Volume 52, Issue 5

Effects of Employment and Unemployment on Serious Offending in a High-Risk Sample of Men and Women from Ages 18 to 32 in the Netherlands
Janna Verbruggen, Arjan A. J. Blokland, and Victor R. van der Geest

Using longitudinal data on the criminal careers of a group of high-risk men and women (N = 540) who were institutionalized in a Dutch juvenile justice institution in the nineties, this article addresses the effects of (un)employment on crime. Results show that, for both men and women, employment rates are below average and stability in employment is low. Nevertheless, random effects models consistently show employment to reduce the estimated number of convictions for both men and women. Employment duration has an additional effect on crime, but only for men. Unemployment duration increases the estimated number of convictions for women, while slightly decreasing them for men.

Intoxication and Homicide: A Context-Specific Approach
Caroline Miles

This article presents a context-specific analysis of intoxication and homicide. Substantial proportions of homicides involve alcohol and/or drug intoxication, yet this remains an under-researched phenomenon in the United Kingdom. The article draws upon ESRC-funded research incorporating three sources of data: Homicide Index data for 1995–2005; police homicide files; and interviews with convicted homicide offenders. This dataset provides a unique insight into this complex phenomenon and demonstrates the value of integrating multiple sources of data. The findings highlight under-reporting of intoxication-related homicide in official statistics and indicate that intoxication in isolation is insufficient in explaining the co-occurrence of alcohol, drugs and homicide. Intoxication appears to interact with the immediate and background context of events to produce a lethal outcome.

Probation in Romania: Archaeology of a Partnership
Ioan Durnescu and Kevin Haines

The intention of this paper is to contribute to the international debate on penal policy transfer by describing the development of a probation service in Romania following the policy transfer schema developed by Dolowitz and Marsh (1996). Both authors of this article played a role in the establishment of probation in Romania and this article provides an ‘inside story’. Our conclusion is that both the debate and practices of policy transfer have been too simplistic to capture the dynamic and complex nature of international policy transfer and, indeed, that the notion of policy transfer itself is ill conceived. We demonstrate how partnership, when applied to international penal policy and practice developments, provides a potentially useful model.

Financial Channels of Money Laundering in Spain
Armando Fernández Steinko

This is the first instalment of the results from an empirical research project on money laundering in Spain. The research is based on the analysis of the court documents referring to 367 cases judged between 1995 and 2011. The numerous data obtained are contrasted with the quantitative and qualitative hypotheses published in the official papers of international institutions dedicated to fight money laundering. These hypotheses have been the basis for the development of the legal principles for the implementation of anti-laundering laws worldwide. The main conclusions of the research shed some light on the economic, financial and business-related movements of illegal money and amply refute those hypotheses. At the same time, these conclusions should invite the international community to reflect on the position presently held by the empirical knowledge about criminal realities in the process of working out legal initiatives to fight them.

Dangerous Instruments?: Constructing Risk and Culpable Drivers through the Criminalization of Negligence
Andrei Poama

Qualifying the automobile as a dangerous instrument is linked to the ‘responsibilization’ and the criminalization of individual negligent drivers in the United States. One case—State v. Fitzgerald (1978)—is selected to illustrate this particular process. The use of the dangerous instrument argument lowers the threshold of criminal liability from gross to ordinary negligence and offers judicial ground to increase the degree of culpability for negligent homicide. My argument is twofold. First, I claim that the criminalization of negligent driving points to a process whereby the motor vehicle and the negligent driver co-constitute one another. Second, I contend that criminalizing negligent driving is related to the emergence of a specific class of risks: circumstantial risks. I conclude by pushing for a Tardian turn in criminology.

Ambiguities in Criminalizing Cartels: A Political Economy
Fiona Haines and Caron Beaton-Wells

Criminalizing the harms of the powerful has considerable appeal for those who desire a more tractable, ethical and sustainable business sector. Yet, attempts to both establish criminal offences and to enforce them once they are enacted often face perennial challenges. These challenges are a product of the ambiguities—economic, moral and legal—associated with the conduct sought to be criminalized, in this case cartels, and with the character of the criminal law itself. Following Aubert, we argue that exploring these ambiguities reveals critical social and economic shifts in society. Further, these shifts pose significant challenges to the legitimacy of incumbent governments. The paper makes these arguments drawing on the recent reform criminalizing cartel conduct in Australia, teasing apart the multiple ambiguities involved and, in particular, how they map the shift in the Australian Labor Party’s policies away from welfare providing security to citizens to an embrace of market competition.

Economic Rationalities of Governance and Ambiguity in the Criminalization of Cartels
Christine Parker

In July 2009, Australia introduced criminal offences and jail for collusive conduct (price fixing, output restriction, market allocation and bid rigging) in markets. The substance of the justification for criminalization of cartel conduct is ‘blindly’ economic. It does not spring from a sense of moral or political outrage at collusion in the market. Rather, it is justified on the basis of effective regulatory technique, the need to deter economically harmful behaviour. This paper examines the rationality of anti-cartel law from the point of view of the ‘legal consciousness’ of 25 business people who have faced enforcement action for cartel conduct. Their justifications for their own behaviour in light of the law tell us about how they believe the law can be legitimated. This is compared with policy and scholarly rationales for criminal anti-cartel law. The paper finds that, among business people who have been made subject to the anti-cartel law, there are similar differences and ambiguities about the rationale for criminal anti-cartel law, and the very meaning of acting economically, as there are among scholars and policy elites. This pinpoints one place of instability in the legitimacy of economic rationalities of regulation and governance in action.

Communication and Social Regulation: The Criminalization of Work-Related Death
Paul Almond and Sarah Colover

This paper addresses the movement towards criminalization as a tool for the regulation of work-related deaths in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the last 20 years. This can be seen as reflecting dissatisfaction with the relevant law, although it is best understood in symbolic terms as a response to a disjunction between the instrumental nature and communicative aspirations of regulatory law. This paper uses empirical data gathered from interviews with members of the public to explore the role that such an offence might play. The findings demonstrate that the failures of regulatory law give rise to a desire for criminalization as a means of framing work-related safety events in normative terms.

Critical Criminology 20(3)

Critical Criminology, September: Volume 20, Issue 3

Reentry to What? Theorizing Prisoner Reentry in the Jobless Future
Michael Hallett

Political Elites, “Broken Windows”, and the Commodification of Urban Space
Ronald Kramer

This article seeks to uncover the reasons for acceptance of the “broken windows” hypothesis amongst New York City’s political elite. Previous critical approaches have generally sought to challenge broken windows by showing that it is empirically suspect. While such approaches are indispensable, they tend to avoid addressing the problem of why, despite its lack of empirical support, political elites continually endorse the broken windows hypothesis as if it were an indisputable, scientifically established truth. In order to address this problem and extend the critical literature, I utilize an interpretive approach based on political memos, press releases, and other political documents from the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations. Through an analysis of the official response to graffiti, unruly individuals and noise, I argue that broken windows is embraced by political elites insofar as it serves the interests of growth machines, which essentially seek to commodify and exploit urban spaces.

Criminogenic Cyber-Capitalism: Paul Virilio, Simulation, and the Global Financial Crisis
Eric Wilson

This essay is a manifesto expounding the relevance of the critical theory of Paul Virilio to critical criminology. I interpret the global credit crisis as a criminogenic ‘event’, explicable in terms of Virilio’s theory of speed-politics. The trans-national space(s) of globalization are inherently criminogenic. ‘Power crime’ is the criminogenic ‘substance’ of global capitalism. Globalization—intensity, extensity, velocity, and impact—equates with cyber-capitalism, which ensures the operational primacy of simulation. Simulation, the fast moving manipulation of post-reality, causes the ‘disappearance of the real’, which underlines the epistemological crisis that attenuates global economic catastrophe. Simulation equates with the ‘logistics of perception’, which manifests itself through both pure war and speed-politics. Simulation and power crime merge on the level of the criminogenic manipulation of reality, resulting in the ‘accident’ of the global credit crisis. Power crime is the criminogenic medium through which the periodic crises of global capitalism will now occur.

Tough-on-Crime Tolerance: The Cultural Criminalization of Bigotry in the Post-Civil Rights Era
Clara S. Lewis

This article extends critical scholarship on the problem of hate crimes in the U.S. into the field of cultural criminology. Highlighting the role cultural production plays in reinforcing identity-based social harms, this study analyzes the cultural construction of the figure of the white hate crimes perpetrator, or “the hater.” The article integrates findings from a comprehensive discourse analysis of major U.S. news sources from 1986 to 2010 with insights from the fields of whiteness studies and critical criminology. The study first finds that the figure of the hater embodies modern day bigotry through terse stereotypes about white poverty, masculinity, hate group membership, and criminality. It then argues that these widely distributed discursive performances create rhetorical opportunities to define bigotry as an individualized problem with law enforcement remedies and to further normalize extreme hate crimes cases. Ultimately, a new theoretical construct, “post-difference ideology,” is mobilized to challenge the hater’s prescribed role as folk devil.

Unmasking Deviance: The Visual Construction of Asylum Seekers and Refugees in English National Newspapers
James Banks

This paper explores the visual representation of asylum seekers and refugees delineating how English newspaper imagery constructs such groups as deviant and dangerous. A qualitative visual analysis of nine of the major national newspapers demonstrates how mediated images of asylum seekers focus upon three distinct ‘visual scenarios’ in the discovery of deviance, which collectively demonstrate how the social portrayal of the criminal immigrant fuses the otherness of the stranger with the otherness of the deviant. First, the faceless and de-identified stranger enables the construction of a panoply of feared subjects. Second, stigma is implicitly illustrated, deviance obliquely intimated and ‘spoiled identities’ constructed. Third, the mask is removed, the asylum seeker is identified and their deviant status confirmed. Such a process is reinvented, repeated and reworked in news stories, with deviance becoming increasingly engrained and entrenched in the image of the asylum seeker. This paper details how the repetition of specific visual scenarios in newspaper reporting contribute to the construction of ‘noisy’ panics about asylum seekers and asylum seeking. Moreover, it argues that such imagery is key to the construction of asylum as an issue of security, which necessitates a policy approach that is exclusionary in nature.

Moving Images Through an Assemblage: Police, Visual Information, and Resistance
Blair Wilkinson & Randy Lippert

Through interviews with police and document analysis this article examines the movement of video surveillance images from source to police to the courts in order to assess and refine the surveillant assemblage concept. Using this concept, the case study reveals asymmetrical criminalization processes involving movement of this visual information. The study finds that most video surveillance images transferred to police come from private sources as a consequence of function creep and that their movement epitomizes creation of criminalized ‘data-doubles’. However, the article argues that this criminalizing movement through the police is revealed as less than a seamless process; it is dependent on human labour and encounters forms of resistance along the way that include increased police workload and technological limitations.

Ex-Offenders and Educational Equal Access: Doctoral Programs in Criminology and Criminal Justice
David Patrick Connor & Richard Tewksbury

Utilizing data from university websites, this exploratory study examined criminology and criminal justice doctoral program admission requirements, while focusing on identifying barriers and challenges unique to applicants with criminal records. Findings reveal that all doctoral programs in criminology and criminal justice expect applicants to complete the GRE, submit recommendation letters, and provide personal statements. The majority of programs also specify minimum grade point averages necessary for admission, while just over one-half request academic writing samples. Further, data show that many academic institutions housing criminology and criminal justice doctoral programs make deliberate efforts to identify ex-offender applicants, particularly sex offenders. Limitations and directions for future research concerning equal and equitable educational access for ex-offenders are discussed.

American Journal of Sociology 118(1)

American Journal of Sociology, July 2012: Volume 118, Issue 1

Are the Economy and the Environment Decoupling? A Comparative International Study, 1960–2005
Andrew K. Jorgenson and Brett Clark

Ecological modernization theory posits that even though economic development harms the environment, the magnitude of the harmful link decreases over the course of development. In contrast, the treadmill of production theory argues that the strong relationship between environmental harms and economic development will remain constant or possibly increase through time. To evaluate these competing propositions, interactions between economic development and time are used in cross-national panel analyses of three measures of carbon dioxide emissions. The results vary across the three outcomes as well as between developed and less developed countries, providing mixed support for both theoretical perspectives. The authors conclude by discussing how both theories could benefit from engaging contemporary research concerning changes within the transnational organization of production and the structure of international trade and how these global shifts influence environment/economic development relationships.

The Flexible Unity of Economics
Michael J. Reay

In an increasingly knowledge-based global environment, American-style economics may be an especially important form of expertise to understand. Existing studies of the discipline present something of a paradox, however, as some suggest that economic discourse is a logically unified and powerful promarket ideology, while others indicate that in practice it is quite fragmented and constrained. A series of 52 interviews with economists working in various jobs is used to reveal a possible way out of this paradox by highlighting three basic features of economic expertise: cognitive and practical framing via a “core” of relatively simple ideas and techniques, great flexibility in results due to various available “subframes,” and dependence of the selection of subframes on local institutional contexts. These underlying features potentially explain how the unified academic discourse of economics produces a variety of outcomes and maybe even plays a range of quite different social roles in different situations.

Eviction and the Reproduction of Urban Poverty
Matthew Desmond

Combining statistical and ethnographic analyses, this article explores the prevalence and ramifications of eviction in the lives of the urban poor. A quantitative analysis of administrative and survey data finds that eviction is commonplace in inner-city black neighborhoods and that women from those neighborhoods are evicted at significantly higher rates than men. A qualitative analysis of ethnographic data based on fieldwork among evicted tenants and their landlords reveals multiple mechanisms propelling this discrepancy. In poor black neighborhoods, eviction is to women what incarceration is to men: a typical but severely consequential occurrence contributing to the reproduction of urban poverty.

Social Network Dynamics and Biographical Disruption: The Case of “First-Timers” with Mental Illness
Brea L. Perry and Bernice A. Pescosolido

This study examines how dynamics surrounding biographical disruptions compare to more routine fluctuations in personal social networks. Using data from the Indianapolis Network Mental Health Study, the authors track changes in patients’ social networks over three years and compare them to a representative sample of persons with no self-reported mental illness. Overall, individuals at the onset of treatment report larger and more broadly functional social networks than individuals in the population at large. However, the number of network ties among the latter increases over time, whereas network size decreases slightly among people using mental health services. As individuals progress through treatment, less broadly supportive ties drop out of extended networks, but a core safety net remains relatively intact. The findings in this case provide evidence that social network dynamics reflect changing needs and resources: persons labeled with psychiatric disorders learn to manage illness, with functionality driving social interaction in times of biographical disruption.

Struggling over the Boundaries of Belonging: A Formal Model of Nation Building, Ethnic Closure, and Populism
Clemens Kroneberg and Andreas Wimmer

This article explores the conditions under which political modernization leads to nation building, to the politicization of ethnic cleavages, or to populism by modeling these three outcomes as more or less encompassing exchange relationships between state elites, counterelites, and the population. Actors seek coalitions that grant them the most advantageous exchange of taxation against public goods and of military support against political participation. Modeling historical data on the distribution of these resources in France and the Ottoman Empire from 1500 to 1900 shows that nation building results from strong state centralization and well-established civil societies; ethnic closure, from weak state capacity and civil societies; and populism, from medium centralization and weak civil societies. The results are consistent with French and Ottoman political histories of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Social Forces 90(4)

Social Forces, June 2012: Volume 90, Issue 4

Social Movements

Subnational Opposition to Globalization
Paul Almeida

Using a unique dataset on the geographic distribution of reported protest events from local sources, the study explains the variation in community-level mobilization in response to neoliberal reforms in two countries in the global periphery. Building on insights from macro, cross-national studies of protests related to market reforms, this article highlights local structural conditions that more likely generate popular contention in poorer countries. Count regression models show that localities with greater levels of state and community infrastructure (highways, administrative offices, universities, NGOs and local chapters of oppositional parties) were associated with heightened collective action opposing the privatization of health care and public utilities. These state and community infrastructures were shaped by national contexts in the era of state-led development preceding the current epoch of accelerated globalization.

Political Reform and the Historical Trajectories of U.S. Social Movements in the Twentieth Century
Edwin Amenta, Neal Caren, James E. Stobaugh

We propose a political reform theory, a political and historical institutionalist argument that holds that shifts in political structures, partisan regimes and policy greatly influence movements. We appraise this argument, along with resource mobilization, political opportunity and media alternatives, by analyzing 600,000 articles in the New York Times and Washington Post that mention national U.S. social movement organizations (SMOs) in the largest 34 SMO industries across the twentieth century. We provide multivariate analyses of industry-level article mentions of SMOs and detailed analyses of the historical trajectories of coverage across the century. Although we find some support for major theories of movements and media influences, the political reform theory is strongly supported and outperforms standard political opportunity models. We conclude with suggestions to synthesize theories and for research on movement and media outcomes.

Economic Inequality

Lawyers' Lines of Work: Specialization's Role in the Income Determination Process
Erin Leahey, Laura A. Hunter

Income inequality has been increasing in the United States, and intraoccupational processes are partly responsible (Kim and Sakamoto 2008; Mouw and Kalleberg 2010). To date, scholars have focused on suboccupational divisions, such as specialty areas, to understand why some members of an occupation earn more than others. In this article we theorize, operationalize, and assess the economic effect of another way in which members of the same profession can be distinguished: by the extent to which they specialize. Using two large secondary datasets on lawyers in the United States, we find that lawyers who specialize earn more. This effect arises partly through two mechanisms—individual productivity and firm size—and depends upon specialty area prestige: lawyers in low-prestige areas actually benefit more from specializing.

Debt and Graduation from American Universities
Rachel E. Dwyer, Laura McCloud, Randy Hodson

The goal of "college-for-all" in the United States has been pursued in an environment of rising tuition, stagnant grant aid and already strapped family budgets with the gap filled by college loans. College students are thus facing increasing levels of debt as they seek to develop their human capital and improve their career options. Debt is a useful resource for making needed investments. It is unique as a resource, however, because it must be repaid and can thus also increase vulnerabilities and limit options. We find that lower levels of educational debt do support college completion. However, additional educational debt beyond about $10,000 actually reduces the likelihood of college completion compared to lower levels of debt as the burden of repayment looms. Graduation likelihoods for students from the bottom 75% of the income distribution at public universities are especially influenced by debt. The article considers how the macro-level changes in financing societal functions influence the individual-level risks and vulnerabilities of life in a debt-based society.

Do Survey Data Estimate Earnings Inequality Correctly?: Measurement Errors Among Black and White Male Workers
ChangHwan Kim, Christopher R. Tamborini

Few studies have considered how earnings inequality estimates may be affected by measurement error in self-reported earnings in surveys. Utilizing restricted-use data that links workers in the Survey of Income and Program Participation with their W-2 earnings records, we examine the effect of measurement error on estimates of racial earnings inequality. Results show that varying levels of mean-reverting error causes underestimation of earnings inequality. Notably, mean reversion is steeper for Black men than for White men, bringing about substantial downward bias in the estimated earnings gaps between Whites and Blacks at lower percentiles as well as large underestimation of within-racial group inequality for Black men. Together, our results call attention to the potential distortions generated by systematic measurement error on economic inequality estimates.

Voluntary Association Membership and Social Cleavages: A Micro-Macro Link in Generalized Trust
Chan-ung Park, S.V. Subramanian

Generalized trust varies across individuals and countries. Past studies on trust have demonstrated that voluntary association membership, inequality and ethnic homogeneity at country level are important. However, those studies examined either individual-level or country-level factors separately. In this paper, we conceptualized the emergence of generalized trust as a multilevel process in which the effects of individual-level attributes are influenced by social contexts. Using a multilevel modeling approach on World Values Survey in 48 countries, we estimated a cross-level interaction between voluntary association membership at individual level and income inequality and ethnic homogeneity as two types of social cleavages at country level. We found that the positive effect of voluntary association membership decreases with the level of income inequality.

Social Networks and Social Capital

Aggression, Exclusivity, and Status Attainment in Interpersonal Networks
Robert Faris

This paper engages two core ideas: first, that status mobility is facilitated through connectivity, or having a large number of ties to others, as suggested by theories of social capital and social networks; and second, that aggression is an expressive or irrational reaction to frustrations, humiliations, or social pathologies. In contrast, I argue that in certain contexts, both of these propositions are reversed: status is attained through selective bridging rather than high network connectivity, and aggression is instrumental for social climbing, particularly when it is directed toward high status, aggressive, or socially close targets. The argument is expected to hold only in contexts that are small (in terms of the number of participants), bounded (in terms of the ease and frequency with which they are entered and exited), and flat (in terms of formal hierarchy). Data from a longitudinal survey of adolescents combined with information from their high school yearbooks provide a unique opportunity to test these propositions, which are supported. High connectivity decreases the likelihood of attaining high status, while selective bridging increases it. Status is further enhanced by reputational, as opposed to physical, aggression, and decreased by victimization. Moreover, aggression toward aggressive, high status, or socially close peers provide additional status boosts. These effects hold regardless of the extent to which status is desired.

What's in a Relationship?: An Examination of Social Capital, Race and Class in Mentoring Relationships
S. Michael Gaddis

After 25 years of intense scrutiny, social capital remains an important yet highly debated concept in social science research. This research uses data from youth and mentors in several chapters of Big Brothers/Big Sisters to assess the importance of different mentoring relationship characteristics in creating positive outcomes among youths. The literature on social capital suggests that key characteristics are: (1. the amount of time spent between individuals, (2. racial similarity, (3. level of trust, (4. social class difference, and (5. intergenerational closure. I examine the effects of these social capital measures on academic and deviant behavioral outcomes and run models using propensity score weights to address selection bias. The results indicate that both the amount of time spent in a relationship and the level of trust consistently have positive effects for youths. Counter to what some theory suggests, race-matching and closure between parent and mentor have limited effects, and social class difference between individuals has no significant effect on any of the examined outcomes. These findings have important implications for future work on social capital and adolescent relationships in general.

Homophily Through Nonreciprocity: Results of an Experiment
David R. Schaefer

This study outlines a new explanation for homophily in social networks that is neither intended nor imposed by constraints on partner choices. Rather, homophily is an endogenous product of the emergent exchange process, in which actors seek high-value partners who reciprocate their gestures. Whereas all actors initially direct exchange toward higher value partners, the gestures of lower value actors are more likely to go unreciprocated. This imbalance drives lower value actors to seek new partners, who end up being others who are also lower value. The consequence is homophily on value despite no such preference. I draw upon social exchange theory to articulate how this process unfolds in a newly forming network. A laboratory experiment tests hypotheses about how exchange patterns change over time. Findings reveal that shifts in participants' behavior over time were consistent with a concern for reciprocity, resulting in increasing levels of homophily in the network.

Family

Maternity Leave in Turbulent Times: Effects on Labor Market Transitions and Fertility in Russia, 1985-2000
Theodore P. Gerber, Brienna Perelli-Harris

Maternity leave policies are designed to ease the tension between women's employment and fertility, but whether they actually play such a role remains unclear. We analyze the individual-level effects of maternity leave on employment outcomes and on second conception rates among Russian first-time mothers from 1985-2000 using retrospective job and fertility histories from the Survey of Stratification and Migration Dynamics in Russia. During this period Russia experienced tremendous economic and political turbulence, which many observers believed would undermine policies like maternity leave and otherwise adversely affect the situation of women. Nevertheless, we find that maternity leave helped women maintain a foothold in the labor market, even during the more turbulent post-transition period. Also, women who took extended leave (6-36 months) in connection with a first birth had elevated rates of second conceptions after they returned to the workforce.

More Careful or Less Marriageable?: Parental Divorce, Spouse Selection and Entry into Marriage
Jani Erola, Juho Härkönen, Jaap Dronkers

Despite the large literature on the long-term effects of parental divorce, few studies have analyzed the effects of parental divorce on spouse selection behavior. However, the characteristics of one's spouse can have important effects on economic well-being and on marital success. We use discrete-time, event-history data from Finnish population registers to study the effects of parental divorce on entry into marriage with spouses who have different educational qualifications (both absolute and relative to one's own education), using conditional multinomial logistic regression models. The results show that Finnish children of divorce have lower rates of marriage than those from intact families. In particular, children of divorce have a lower likelihood of marrying spouses with secondary education or more, and especially low rates of marrying someone with a tertiary degree. The latter gap is smaller among those with tertiary education, as a result of the higher rates of homogamous marriage among the children of divorce with high education. Our findings suggest that children of divorce carry with them traits and behaviors that make them less marriageable candidates in the marriage market. We discuss the possible implications of these findings.

Support for Homosexuals' Civil Liberties: The Influence of Familial Gender Role Attitudes Across Religious Denominations
Kristin Kenneavy

Religious denominations vary in both their approach to the roles that men and women play in familial contexts, as well as their approach to homosexuality. This research investigates whether gender attitudes, informed by religious tradition, predict a person's support for civil liberties extended to gays and lesbians. Using data from the 1996 and 2006 waves of the General Social Survey, structural equation models are employed to relate the concepts. Traditional gender role attitudes and support for homosexuals' civil liberties are found to negatively co-vary over time. Denominational differences in attitudes toward gender and support for homosexuals' civil liberties are evident in 1996 and generally conform to an exclusivist-inclusivist continuum, but in 2006, differences are noticeably absent, suggesting that there has been a decline in the explanatory power of denominational affiliation during this decade.

Deviance

Placing Deviance in a Legal and Local Context: A Multilevel Analysis of Cigarette Use in the European Union
Mike Vuolo

Though it has produced a high-quality body of research, the study of substance use has remained highly individualized in its focus. This paper adds further sociological understanding to that research. Using hierarchical models, the following explores how institutional and criminological theories can be incorporated into substance use research by examining cigarette smoking at 3 levels of variation. Two main findings emerge. First, national legal context plays a role in understanding individual-level probabilities of substance use, even after controlling for individual and local characteristics. For example, lower probabilities of smoking occur where there are smoking bans and minimum purchase ages. Second, the effects of local context, such as unemployment and the percentage of young people, exhibit significant effects on individual-level cigarette use.

Punishment and Welfare: Paternal Incarceration and Families' Receipt of Public Assistance
Naomi F. Sugie

The United States criminal justice and welfare systems are two important government institutions in the lives of the poor. Despite many theoretical discussions about their relationship, their operation at the level of offenders and families remains poorly understood. This paper utilizes Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing data to examine how recent paternal incarceration is associated with families' receipt of TANF, food stamps, and Medicaid/SCHIP. Results robust to multiple tests find that incarceration is not related to subsequent TANF receipt but is significantly associated with increased receipt of food stamps and Medicaid/SCHIP. The findings suggest that greater government involvement among poor families is an unexpected consequence of mass imprisonment; however, increased participation does not include TANF - the cash assistance program of most concern to theorists.

Book Review Essay

Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (review)
Samuel R. Lucas

Journal of Quantitative Criminology 28(3)

Journal of Quantitative Criminology, September 2012: Volume 28, Issue 3

Seasonal Cycles in Crime, and Their Variability
David McDowall, Colin Loftin & Matthew Pate

Seasonal crime patterns have been a topic of sustained criminological research for more than a century. Results in the area are often conflicting, however, and no firm consensus exists on many points. The current study uses a long time series and a large areal sample to obtain more detailed seasonality estimates than have been available in the past. The findings show that all major crime rates exhibit seasonal behavior, and that most follow similar cycles. The existence of seasonal patterns is not explainable by monthly temperature differences between areas, but seasonality and temperature variations do interact with each other. These findings imply that seasonal fluctuations have both environmental and social components, which can combine to create different patterns from one location to another.

Neighborhood Cultural Heterogeneity and Adolescent Violence
Mark T. Berg, Eric A. Stewart, Rod K. Brunson & Ronald L. Simons

A small number of scholars have attempted to reorient current thinking about the way cultural effects operate in poor neighborhoods. Scholars argue that socioeconomic disadvantage fosters heterogeneity in cultural models. Moreover, cultural heterogeneity theoretically plays an important role in shaping adolescent decision-making in poor neighborhoods, including decisions related to violent behavior. We test these assumptions using multilevel data comprised of a sample of African-American adolescents. Our findings lend support to these arguments. In particular, the results suggested that neighborhood structural disadvantage increases the degree of disagreement or heterogeneity regarding the inappropriateness of violence. Further, exposure to cultural heterogeneity increased adolescents’ involvement in violent behavior and had a moderating influence on the link between individual frames and adolescent violent behavior.

Is Plea Bargaining in the “Shadow of the Trial” a Mirage?
Shawn D. Bushway & Allison D. Redlich

It has been well established that a “plea discount” or “trial penalty” exists, such that defendants who plead guilty receive significant sentencing discounts relative to what they would receive if convicted at trial. Theorists argue that the exact value of this plea discount is determined by bargaining “in the shadow of a trial,” meaning that plea decision-making is premised on the perceived probable outcome of a trial. In trials, the strength of the evidence against defendants greatly impacts the probability of conviction. In the present study, we estimate the probability of conviction at the individual level for those who pled guilty. We find that, contrary to the shadow of the trial model, evidentiary factors either do not impact or negatively impact the probability of conviction, which stands in stark contrast to the impact evidence has at trials. These findings suggest that plea bargain decision-making may not occur in the shadow of the trial.

Non-Response Bias with a Web-Based Survey of College Students: Differences from a Classroom Survey About Carrying Concealed Handguns
William Wells, Michael R. Cavanaugh, Jeffrey A. Bouffard & Matt R. Nobles

Internet-based and e-mail surveys represent viable administrative methods for efficiently collecting data. These methods appear to be particularly well-suited for studying college student populations, a group that has gained attention from criminologists interested in testing theories. An important concern with administering surveys with the Internet and via e-mail is that of non-response bias. Despite the appeal of online surveys, nonresponse bias associated with these methods has not been sufficiently investigated. The study described here estimates nonresponse bias associated with a web-administered survey that measured opinions about changing concealed handgun carrying laws on college campuses, items likely to elicit polarizing opinions. Results show important substantive differences between web-administered and in-class versions of the survey. Students who responded to the web survey expressed more extreme opinions and behavioral responses to a proposed policy that would allow concealed handgun carrying on campus. Survey researchers who utilize web-based administrative methods should consider using multiple sources of leverage when soliciting participation and must carefully evaluate sample representativeness.

Genetic and Environmental Overlap between Low Self-Control and Delinquency
Danielle Boisvert, John Paul Wright, Valerie Knopik & Jamie Vaske

Low self-control has emerged as a consistent and strong predictor of antisocial and delinquent behaviors. Using the twin subsample of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), genetic analyses were conducted to examine the genetic and environmental contributions to low self-control and offending as well as to their relationship with one another. The results revealed that low self-control and criminal behaviors are influenced by genetic and nonshared environmental factors with the effects of shared environmental factors being negligible. In addition, the co-variation between low self-control and criminal behaviors appears to be largely due to common genetic and nonshared environmental factors operating on both phenotypes. The implications of these findings on the current understanding of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime are discussed.

Exploratory Space–Time Analysis of Burglary Patterns
Sergio J. Rey, Elizabeth A. Mack & Julia Koschinsky

This paper introduces two new methods for the exploratory analysis of the spatial and temporal dynamics of residential burglary patterns. The first is a conditional spatial Markov chain which considers the extent to which a location’s probability of experiencing a residential burglary in a future period is related to the prevalence of residential burglaries in its surrounding neighborhood in an initial period. The second measure extends this conditional perspective to examine the joint evolution of residential burglary in a location and its surrounding neighborhood. These methods are applied to a case study of residential burglary patterns in Mesa, Arizona over the period October 2005 through December 2009. Strong patterns of spatial clustering of burglary activity are present in each year, and this clustering is found to have an important influence on both the conditional and joint evolution of burglary activity across space and time.

Scaling Criminal Offending
Gary Sweeten

This paper reviews a century of research on creating theoretically meaningful and empirically useful scales of criminal offending and illustrates their strengths and weaknesses. The history of scaling criminal offending is traced in a detailed literature review focusing on the issues of seriousness, unidimensionality, frequency, and additivity of offending. Modern practice in scaling criminal offending is measured using a survey of 130 articles published in five leading criminology journals over a two-year period that included a scale of individual offending as either an independent or dependent variable. Six scaling methods commonly used in contemporary criminological research are demonstrated and assessed using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979: dichotomous, frequency, weighted frequency, variety, summed category, and item response theory ‘theta’. The discipline of criminology has seen numerous scaling techniques introduced and forgotten. While no clearly superior method dominates the field today, the most commonly used scaling techniques are dichotomous and frequency scales, both of which are fraught with methodological pitfalls including sensitivity to the least serious offenses. Variety scales are the preferred criminal offending scale because they are relatively easy to construct, possess high reliability and validity, and are not compromised by high frequency non-serious crime types.

Theory and Society 41(5)

Theory and Society, September 2012: Volume 41, Issue 5

On the public commitment of intellectuals in late socialist China
Maurizio Marinelli

This article investigates the intense debate on the figure of “Chinese public intellectuals,” which has gained increasing importance, both inside and outside Mainland China, during the last decade. The climax was reached in the year 2004, when the debate on the search for and against a role for the “public intellectuals” became the litmus test of the intellectual intersections between the State actors and the public. Through a close reading of the crucial documents, this article critically engages with the terminology and the interpretive paradigms employed. Thus the article highlights the contribution of the scholars examined to a dialogue on the role of critical thinking within China as well as globally. In fact, the exploration of the diversity of contemporary Chinese thought on the topic of “public intellectuals” can be inscribed within the framework of the following questions: How is the social category of “public intellectuals” used and why? And, ultimately, what does it really means to be an intellectual for the public in China today? In this sense, the article sheds light on the indigenous and foreign understandings of “public” and “intellectual.”

Bourdieu, International Relations, and European security
Trine Villumsen Berling

This article takes the failure to grasp fully the paradigmatic case of European security after the Cold War as an example of how International Relations (IR) would benefit from reformulating not only its empirical research questions but also several of its central conceptual building blocks with the aid of Bourdieusian sociology. The separation between theory and practice and the overemphasis on military power and state actors blind IR from seeing the power struggles that reshaped European security. Instead, a Bourdieusian reformulation adds new types of agency, focuses on the social production of forms of power, and stresses the processual rather than the substantive character of social reality.

Unraveling the enigma of Indira Gandhi’s rise in Indian politics: a woman leader’s quest for political legitimacy
Sourabh Singh

This article employs Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic capital to explain how Indira Gandhi gained legitimacy in Indian politics. It reveals that, in spite of having belonged to the politically illustrious Nehru family, Gandhi suffered numerous indignities as a minister in the immediate post-Nehruvian period because the incumbent political elite at the time, the Syndicate, devalued the symbolic value of her family-name-based-capital of mass popularity. In the meantime, changes in the clientelistic relations between the landed and landless caste groups had created conditions for the failure of the Syndicate’s claim that their capital of popularity among politicians was the symbolic capital of the Indian political field. Aware of social changes taking place in the countryside, Gandhi took advantage of her access to the symbolic power of the state offices to classify the landless caste groups as garib (poor) in order to defeat the Syndicate electorally. Having established her capital of popularity among the masses as the symbolic capital of the Indian political field, she cemented its status by using her control over ruling party leaders’ access to state offices and simultaneously creating a new classification of a competent leader in the ruling party. This study contributes to the existing studies of leadership, especially leadership by women, and the legitimacy-gaining process by revealing the role of contest among the elite over the meaning of symbolic capital in creating or destroying their respective authority.

Mobilizing ethnic competition
David Cunningham

Ethnic competition theory provides a powerful explanation for ethnic conflict, by demonstrating how variation in ethnic mobilization relates to intergroup struggles over scarce resources. However, the tendency to capture such relationships at the aggregate level, through macro-level proxies of intergroup competition, offers little insight into the processes through which ethnic grievances mobilize into contentious action. This article integrates insights from the social movements literature to address how competitive contexts crystallize into broader conflicts. Drawing on data from the civil rights-era Ku Klux Klan—perhaps the quintessential case of contentious ethnic organization in the United States—the analysis focuses on the ways in which meso-level arrangements mediate the relationship between overarching competitive contexts and ethnic conflict. Results of a paired comparative analysis of KKK mobilization in Greensboro and Charlotte demonstrate that social and spatial relations within each city shaped the contours of perceived competition and subsequent ethnic organization in ways that were not always predictable through observation of conventional proxies of competition.

Theoretical Criminology 16(3)

Theoretical Criminology, August 2012: Volume 16, Issue 3

When punishment and philanthropy mix: Voluntary organizations and the governance of the domestic violence offender
Rashmee Singh

This article examines the administration of community based punishment in Toronto’s specialized domestic violence courts. Voluntary organizations play an integral role in the Ontario government’s strategy to manage domestic violence. Currently, an array of ‘mainstream’ and ‘ethno-specific’ community agencies operate as quasi-criminal justice organizations to rehabilitate and supervise court mandated offenders. Despite their categorization however, both types of organizations largely cater to the same demographics. The discussion explores the techniques of governance service providers deploy when counseling their clientele. The emergence of two differing regimes of power, one emphasizing care and the other discipline, along the mythological categories of the ‘mainstream’ and ‘ethno-specific’ illuminate the constitutive effects of organizational habits on the delivery of punishment.

Ornery alligators and soap on a rope: Texas prosecutors and punishment reform in the Lone Star State
Michael C. Campbell

This article presents historical data on changes in punishment policy in Texas, examining how Texas’s prosecutors played an important role in shaping law and policy. This article helps parcel out the relative influence of various factors in driving more punitive policies by examining an unsettled period of legal and policy change when some state leaders were pushing back against the growing tide of prison expansion. Ultimately this period resulted in a new penal code that retained most of the harshest punishments for offenders, and created an additional layer of prison facilities to manage lower-level offenders. My findings emphasize how these legal changes reflected conflict between state and local government. It also suggests that important contextual factors deeply embedded in Texas’s history helped establish conditions more likely to lead to mass incarceration. These findings suggest that ‘top–down’ and ‘bottom–up’ theoretical accounts of punishment might omit important intervening institutional factors.

History, criminology and the ‘use’ of the past
Paul Lawrence

This article considers why, despite an apparent congruence of subject matter and methodologies, the disciplines of sociological criminology and criminal justice history are not more closely aligned. It contends that intellectual traffic between the two fields is not usually limited by institutional barriers, nor is it a legacy of the disciplinary antipathy which existed between history and sociology in Britain during the mid-twentieth century. Rather, it is due to the different ‘purposes’ with which sociological criminologists and criminal justice historians imbue their work and to the differing disciplinary perceptions of the relationship between the past, present and future which result from this. These different ‘purposes’ are traced via a consideration of the paths of development of the two disciplines from the 1940s. The article concludes by proposing an arena for future collaboration between criminal justice historians and sociological criminologists.

I do what I’m told, sort of: Reformed subjects, unruly citizens, and parole
Robert Werth

Although parole and the processes of prisoner reentry have received considerable attention, how individuals on parole respond to the State’s efforts to regulate their conduct and govern their personhood remains under theorized. Drawing from ethnographic research with individuals on parole, this article examines how parolees navigate the social control inherent in this penal practice. Parole entails both productive and repressive power; responsibilizing and de-responsibilizing elements. The parole agency’s efforts to govern up-close—through supervision and regulation of everyday conduct—are frequently met with subversion, resistance, and hostility, while efforts to govern-at-a-distance are more productive. In general paroled subjects reproduce the injunction to transform their lives, becoming committed to ‘going straight’, ethical reformation, and responsible citizenship. This ‘reformed subjectivity’ guides how individuals enact parole, but does not reflect subjection or their full acquiescence to penal power. Rather, by engaging selectively with the rules, they render their conditions of parole malleable. These individuals on parole are committed to going straight but doing so, as much as possible, on their own terms. In this way, the reformed subjectivities they display both reflect and resist penal power.

Post-welfarist risk managers? Risk, crime prevention and the responsibilization of community-based organizations
Tim Goddard

Numerous scholars have observed that neo-liberal rationalities have resulted in the replacement of interventionist State-run welfare initiatives with community-based risk managing schemes in a process called responsibilization. These risk management policies have become influential in the domain of crime prevention and in the shaping of the future conduct of the ‘at-risk’ youth. This article details, ethnographically, the goals and activities of 10 responsibilized community-based organizations and the conceptualization of ‘risk’ by practitioners from these organizations. The findings suggest that social abandonment and surveillance-centered risk management schemes co-exist with welfarist notions. The findings have implications about whether crime prevention is as post-welfarist as some theorists maintain.

Criminology & Public Policy 11(3)

Criminology & Public Policy, August 2012: Volume 11, Issue 3

Fugitive Safe Surrender Program

Editorial Introduction

Fugitive Safe Surrender
John S. Goldkamp

Research Article

Fugitive Safe Surrender
Daniel J. Flannery and Jeff M. Kretschmar

Policy Essay

Fugitives, Outlaws, and the Lessons of Safe Surrender
Alexander Tabarrok

Focusing on the Individual in Warrant-Clearing Efforts
Meagan Cahill

Delinquency Prevention

Editorial Introduction

Evidence-Based Practice and Juvenile Justice
Donna M. Bishop

Research Article

Promoting Evidence-Based Practice in Delinquency Prevention at the State Level
Peter W. Greenwood and Brandon C. Welsh

Policy Essay

A Broader View of Evidence-Based Programs Reveals More Options for State Juvenile Justice Systems
Mark W. Lipsey and James C. Howell

Building Evidence for Evidence-Based Policy Making
Kenneth A. Dodge and Adam D. Mandel

Impacts Of Executions On Homicides

Editorial Introduction

Deterrence and the Death Penalty
Sonja E. Siennick

Research Article

The Differential Short-Term Impacts of Executions on Felony and Non-Felony Homicides
Kenneth C. Land, Raymond H. C. Teske Jr. and Hui Zheng

Policy Essay

Can Executions Have a Short-Term Deterrence Effect on Non-Felony Homicides?
Randi Hjalmarsson

The Death Penalty in Texas
Michael L. Radelet

The Texas Deterrence Muddle
Jeffrey Fagan, Amanda Geller and Franklin E. Zimring

American Sociological Review 77(4)

American Sociological Review, August 2012; Volume 77, Issue 4

Constructing Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty
Jennifer M. Silva

Past research in both the transitions to adulthood literature and cultural sociology more broadly suggests that the working class relies on traditional cultural models in their construction of identity. In the contemporary post-industrial world, however, traditional life pathways are now much less available to working-class men and women. I draw on 93 interviews with black and white working-class young people in their 20s to 30s and ask, in an era of increasing uncertainty, where traditional markers of adulthood have become tenuous, what kinds of cultural models do working-class young people employ to validate their adult identities? In contrast to previous studies of working-class identity, I found that respondents embraced a model of therapeutic selfhood—that is, an inwardly directed self preoccupied with its own psychic development. I demonstrate that the therapeutic narrative allows working-class men and women to redefine competent adulthood in terms of overcoming a painful family past. Respondents required a witness to validate their performances of adulthood, however, and the inability to find one left many lost in transition.

Searching for a Mate: The Rise of the Internet as a Social Intermediary
Michael J. Rosenfeld and Reuben J. Thomas

This article explores how the efficiency of Internet search is changing the way Americans find romantic partners. We use a new data source, the How Couples Meet and Stay Together survey. Results show that for 60 years, family and grade school have been steadily declining in their influence over the dating market. In the past 15 years, the rise of the Internet has partly displaced not only family and school, but also neighborhood, friends, and the workplace as venues for meeting partners. The Internet increasingly allows Americans to meet and form relationships with perfect strangers, that is, people with whom they had no previous social tie. Individuals who face a thin market for potential partners, such as gays, lesbians, and middle-aged heterosexuals, are especially likely to meet partners online. One result of the increasing importance of the Internet in meeting partners is that adults with Internet access at home are substantially more likely to have partners, even after controlling for other factors. Partnership rate has increased during the Internet era (consistent with Internet efficiency of search) for same-sex couples, but the heterosexual partnership rate has been flat.

Educational Differences in U.S. Adult Mortality: A Cohort Perspective
Ryan K. Masters, Robert A. Hummer, and Daniel A. Powers

We use hierarchical cross-classified random-effects models to simultaneously measure age, period, and cohort patterns of mortality risk between 1986 and 2006 for non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black men and women with less than a high school education, a high school education, and more than a high school education. We examine all-cause mortality risk and mortality risk from heart disease, lung cancer, and unpreventable cancers. Findings reveal that temporal reductions in black and white men’s and women’s mortality rates were driven entirely by cohort changes in mortality. Findings also demonstrate that disparate cohort effects between education groups widened the education gap in all-cause mortality risk and mortality risk from heart disease and lung cancer across this time period. Educational disparities in mortality risk from unpreventable cancers, however, did not change. This research uncovers widening educational differences in adult mortality and demonstrates that a cohort perspective provides valuable insights for understanding recent temporal changes in U.S. mortality risk.

Social Movements, Risk Perceptions, and Economic Outcomes: The Effect of Primary and Secondary Stakeholder Activism on Firms’ Perceived Environmental Risk and Financial Performance
Ion Bogdan Vasi and Brayden G. King

Although risk assessments are critical inputs to economic and organizational decision-making, we lack a good understanding of the social and political causes of shifts in risk perceptions and the consequences of those changes. This article uses social movement theory to explain the effect of environmental activism on corporations’ perceived environmental risk and actual financial performance. We define environmental risk as audiences’ perceptions that a firm’s practices or policies will lead to greater potential for an environmental failure or crisis that would expose it to financial decline. Using data on environmental activism targeting U.S. firms between 2004 and 2008, we examine variation in the effectiveness of secondary and primary stakeholder activism in shaping perceptions about environmental risk. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that primary stakeholder activism against a firm affects its perceived environmental risk, which subsequently has a negative effect on the firm’s financial performance.

Moving Beyond Deterrence: The Effectiveness of Raising the Expected Utility of Abstaining from Terrorism in Israel
Laura Dugan and Erica Chenoweth

Rational choice approaches to reducing terrorist violence would suggest raising the costs of terrorism through punishment, thereby reducing the overall expected utility of terrorism. In this article, we argue that states should also consider raising the expected utility of abstaining from terrorism through rewards. We test effects of repressive (or punishing) and conciliatory (or rewarding) actions on terrorist behavior using the newly developed GATE-Israel dataset, which identifies events by Israeli state actors toward Palestinian targets on a full range of counterterrorism tactics and policies from 1987 to 2004. Results show that repressive actions are either unrelated to terror or related to subsequent increases in terror, and conciliatory actions are generally related to decreases in terror, depending on the tactical period. Findings also reveal the importance of understanding the role of terrorists’ constituencies for reducing violence.

Sexual Harassment, Workplace Authority, and the Paradox of Power
Heather McLaughlin, Christopher Uggen, and Amy Blackstone

Power is at the core of feminist theories of sexual harassment, although it has rarely been measured directly in terms of workplace authority. Popular characterizations portray male supervisors harassing female subordinates, but power-threat theories suggest that women in authority may be more frequent targets. This article analyzes longitudinal survey data and qualitative interviews from the Youth Development Study to test this idea and to delineate why and how supervisory authority, gender nonconformity, and workplace sex ratios affect harassment. Relative to nonsupervisors, female supervisors are more likely to report harassing behaviors and to define their experiences as sexual harassment. Sexual harassment can serve as an equalizer against women in power, motivated more by control and domination than by sexual desire. Interviews point to social isolation as a mechanism linking harassment to gender nonconformity and women’s authority, particularly in male-dominated work settings.

Racial Discrimination, Ethnic-Racial Socialization, and Crime: A Micro-sociological Model of Risk and Resilience
Callie Harbin Burt, Ronald L. Simons, and Frederick X. Gibbons

Dominant theoretical explanations of racial disparities in criminal offending overlook a key risk factor associated with race: interpersonal racial discrimination. Building on recent studies that analyze race and crime at the micro-level, we specify a social psychological model linking personal experiences with racial discrimination to an increased risk of offending. We add to this model a consideration of an adaptive facet of African American culture: ethnic-racial socialization, and explore whether two forms—cultural socialization and preparation for bias—provide resilience to the criminogenic effects of interpersonal racial discrimination. Using panel data from several hundred African American male youth from the Family and Community Health Study, we find that racial discrimination is positively associated with increased crime in large part by augmenting depression, hostile views of relationships, and disengagement from conventional norms. Results also indicate that preparation for bias significantly reduces the effects of discrimination on crime, primarily by reducing the effects of these social psychological mediators on offending. Cultural socialization has a less influential but beneficial effect. Finally, we show that the more general parenting context within which preparation for bias takes place influences its protective effects.

Social Problems 59(3)

Social Problems, August 2012: Volume 59, Issue 3

Street Gang Recruitment: Signaling, Screening, and Selection
James A. Densley

By applying signaling theory to the strategies gangs and their prospective members adopt during the recruitment process, this article addresses one of the most crucial unanswered questions in the literature on street gangs: why, in any given pool of individuals with similar sociological profiles and motivations, do only some gain entry into gangs? Based upon two years of ethnographic fieldwork with gang members in London, UK, this article argues that gangs face a primary trust dilemma in their uncertainty over the quality of recruits. Given that none of the desirable trust-warranting properties for gang membership can be readily discovered from observation, gangs look for observable signs correlated with these properties. Gangs then face a secondary trust dilemma in their uncertainty over the reliability of signs because certain agents (e.g., police informants, rival gang members, and adventure seekers) might mimic them. Thus, gangs look for signs that are too costly for mimics to fake but affordable for the genuine article. This article thus demonstrates how gangs overcome their informational handicap ex ante by screening and selecting among prospective members based on “hard-to-fake” signals.

Organizational Frames for Professional Claims: Private Military Corporations and the Rise of the Military Paraprofessional
Katherine E. McCoy

Corporations, nongovernmental organizations, and other organizational forms are major players in the social world. Recently, sociological scholarship on organizations has converged with research on the professions to discuss the ways in which professions are shaped or influenced by different organizational forms. In this article, I borrow from the notion of framing within social movement research to argue that organizational forms frame the bids of aspiring professionals. More specifically, I argue that certain organizational forms—such as that of the modern corporation—can aid would-be professionals in making their claims for professional recognition. Organizations do this, I argue, by providing aspiring professionals with a ready-made setting, rationale, and guarantees that make the newcomers more easily recognizable as professionals to outside audiences. I explore this argument by examining how the corporate form has facilitated private military contractors in their attempts to legitimate and develop this highly controversial new industry. The data are drawn from my interviews with private military contractors, state officials, and other interested parties surrounding private military corporations, as well as from archival data that detail the rise of the private military industry.

Acculturation and Self-Rated Health among Latino and Asian Immigrants to the United States
Rachel Tolbert Kimbro, Bridget K. Gorman and Ariela Schachter

The ways in which immigrant health profiles change with shifts in acculturation is of increasing interest to scholars and policy makers in the United States, but little is known about the mechanisms that may link acculturation and self-rated health, particularly for Asians. Utilizing the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS) and its data on foreign-born Latinos (N = 1,199) and Asians (N = 1,323) (Pennell et al. 2004), we investigate and compare the associations between acculturation and self-rated health for immigrants to the United States from six major ethnic subgroups (Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Mexican, Cuban, and Puerto Rican). Using comprehensive measures of acculturation, we demonstrate that across ethnic groups, and despite the widely varying contexts of the sending countries and receiving communities, native-language dominance is associated with worse self-rated health relative to bilingualism, and measures of lower acculturation—coethnic ties and remittances—are associated with better self-rated health; and moreover, these associations are only partially mediated by socioeconomic status, and not mediated by acculturative stress, discrimination, social support, or health behaviors. We speculate that immigrants who maintain a native language while also acquiring English, as has been shown for other immigrant outcomes, attain a bicultural fluency, which also enables good health. Surprisingly, we do not find strong associations between duration of time in the United States or age at migration—measures frequently used to proxy acculturation—with self-rated health. Our findings illustrate the complexity of measuring acculturation and its influence on health for immigrants.

The Geography of Exclusion: Race, Segregation, and Concentrated Poverty
Daniel T. Lichter, Domenico Parisi and Michael C. Taquino

The late 2000s Great Recession brought rising neighborhood poverty in the midst of affluence, and the reemergence of a racial and ethnic “underclass” living in inner-city neighborhoods. Our approach redirects attention to a level of geography—cities, suburbs, and small rural towns—where local political and economic decisions effectively exclude the poor and minority populations. It uses newly released poverty data from the 2005–2009 American Community Survey to provide evidence of changing macro patterns of spatially concentrated poverty. We show that roughly one in four U.S. places had poverty rates exceeding 20 percent in 2005 through 2009, up 31 percent since 2000. Roughly 30 percent of America's poor reside in poor places, and concentrated poverty is especially high among poor African Americans. Overall increases in place-based poverty nonetheless were muted over the decade by declines in concentrated poverty among poor Hispanics (a pattern that reflects spatial diffusion to new destinations). We also show that America's poor were sorted unevenly from place-to-place within local labor markets (i.e., counties); poor-nonpoor segregation rates between places increased from 12.6 to 18.4 between 1990 and the 2005–2009 period. Segregation was especially high among disadvantaged blacks and Hispanics. Our empirical results make a case for more scholarly attention on newly emerging patterns of concentrated poverty at the place level.

Tokenism, Organizational Segregation, and Coworker Relations in Law Firms
Jean E. Wallace and Fiona M. Kay

Although occupational segregation by sex has declined in recent decades with the rising numbers of women entering traditionally male occupations (e.g., law and medicine), the achievement of women within male-dominated occupations continues to lag behind that of their male colleagues. In this article, we draw on theories of proportional rarity, expectations states, and social support as three dimensions that provide a structural understanding of tokenism. We examine tokenism in the legal profession through: (1) organizational context in terms of gender composition and gender ratios at upper echelons of the organizational hierarchy; (2) status characteristics of the minority and dominant groups; and (3) the content of communications (emotional and informational support) that women receive from their colleagues. These communications may act to integrate, or conversely, through their absence, exclude women and heighten boundaries to women's career advancement within the traditionally male profession of law. We used questionnaire data collected from a sample of 740 married lawyers working in law firms to examine these aspects of tokenism. The results reveal that women's rising representation in law firms leads to enhanced communication through informational and emotional support, benefiting both men and women lawyers. Yet, a more gender balanced organizational context, in terms of gender composition, does little to shift the expectation states associated with women lawyers and the professional disadvantage women face when they have family responsibilities.

The Unequal Weight of Discrimination: Gender, Body Size, and Income Inequality
Katherine Mason

At present, most work examining the well-documented relationship between social inequality and body size treats fatness as an effect, caused either by some factor that determines weight and social class simultaneously, or by social class itself. However, the relationship between weight and social inequality is more complex than these explanations suggest. Recent studies by John Cawley (2004) and Charles Baum and William Ford (2004) suggest that fatness is often a contributor to inequality, not merely an effect. This article examines the causes of income inequalities between obese and nonobese workers, focusing on how gender interacts with body size to determine the size and duration of those inequalities. Drawing on data from the 1997–2008 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97), I introduce a positive test for discrimination, which provides a methodological advantage over previous research in this area. I then pose two questions: first, is anti-obesity discrimination to blame for income inequalities between obese and nonobese workers? Second, do women and men's experiences of those inequalities differ? The results indicate that very obese men do face one form of discrimination—statistical discrimination—but that they can overcome initial disadvantages with time. In contrast, obese women's income disadvantages persist over time, suggesting the presence of prejudicial discrimination. In combination with previous studies illustrating how fat women are disadvantaged in educational attainment and marriage outcomes—two important means of accessing economic resources—this research shows one mechanism by which weight, particularly in combination with gender, is a major vector of U.S. inequality.