Crime & Delinquency 59(3)

Crime & Delinquency, April 2013: Volume 59, Issue 3

Guns and Trafficking in Crack-Cocaine and Other Drug Markets
Richard B. Felson and Luke Bonkiewicz

This article examines the relationship between gun possession and the nature of an offender’s involvement in drug markets. The analyses are based on data obtained from drug offenders who participated in the 1997 Survey of Inmates of State and Federal Correctional Facilities. The authors find that participants in crack-cocaine markets are more likely to possess guns than participants in powdered-cocaine, opiate, and marijuana markets, particularly if they are street-level crack dealers. However, participants in barbiturates and amphetamine markets also have high rates of gun possession. The authors also find relatively high levels of gun possession among traffickers who handle stashes of moderately large market value, who have central roles in the trade, and who are members of drug organizations. Finally, offenders who are young, female, African American, and from lower economic status are more likely to traffic in crack cocaine than in other drugs.

Neighborhood Context and Police Vigor: A Multilevel Analysis
James J. Sobol, Yuning Wu, and Ivan Y. Sun

This study provides a partial test of Klinger’s ecological theory of police behavior using hierarchical linear modeling on 1,677 suspects who had encounters with police within 24 beats. The current study used data from four sources originally collected by the Project on Policing Neighborhoods (POPN), including systematic social observation, in-person interviews with officers, census data, and police crime records. It investigates the effects of neighborhood violent crime rates and concentrated disadvantage on officer vigor, controlling for individual-level officer characteristics and situational factors. The analyses reveal that police vigor was significantly shaped by beat-level crime rates, with high–crime rate neighborhoods experiencing higher levels of police vigor in handling suspects. The findings are not consistent with the ecological propositions set forth by Klinger. Implications of these findings and suggestions for future research and theoretical development are discussed.

The Impact of Drivers’ Race, Gender, and Age During Traffic Stops: Assessing Interaction Terms and the Social Conditioning Model
Rob Tillyer and Robin S. Engel

Recent research has demonstrated that minority drivers receive disparate traffic stop outcomes compared with similarly situated White drivers. This research, however, is often not grounded within a theoretical framework and fails to examine specific combinations of driver demographics. This study addresses those shortcomings by examining research questions based on the social conditioning model and investigating the relationship between specific combinations of drivers’ race/ethnicity, gender, and age, and traffic stop outcomes. Using alternative measures of stop outcomes and robust official traffic stop data collected from a state law enforcement agency, the results demonstrate that warnings and citations, but not arrests, are differentially issued to young, Black male drivers. The findings also confirm the influence of legal factors on police decision making during traffic stops. Research and policy implications are discussed.

Race, Pre- and Postdetention, and Juvenile Justice Decision Making
Michael J. Leiber

A detailed examination was conducted of the factors associated with pre- and postadjudication secure detention, including secure detention as a dispositional sentence and the effects of secure detention on decision making that further contribute to cumulative disadvantage for African Americans. The research was based on interpretations of the symbolic threat thesis, with emphasis on the stereotyping of African Americans as threatening, delinquent, and/or in need of confinement, to study decision making in one juvenile court jurisdiction. The results reveal that legal factors were most often predictors of each type of secure detention and decision making at other stages, but so too was race individually and in combination with legal and extralegal considerations and indirectly through secure detention. The relationships, however, did not always result in disadvantageous outcomes.

A Comparison of Robbers’ Use of Physical Coercion in Commercial and Street Robberies
John D. McCluskey

The face-to-face confrontation involved in the crime of robbery renders vast amounts of financial, physical, and psychological injury in the United States. This study developed hypotheses from existing literature regarding salient situational factors associated with the prevalence of overt physical coercion during commercial and street robberies. The study examined the effect of situational and personal characteristics on robbers’ use of coercion, with data coded from police reports of 1,281 street and commercial robberies in one precinct of Detroit, Michigan, between 2000 and 2003. The research results are relatively consistent with findings from the literature on robbery in the last 40 years: Street robberies involve a greater prevalence of physical force than do commercial robberies; guns reduce the likelihood of physical force; and victim resistance increases physical force. Additionally, characteristics of victims and offenders play a secondary role in predicting whether physical coercion is brought to bear on the victims of robbery.

A Multivariate Analysis of the Sociodemographic Predictors of Methamphetamine Production and Use
Todd A. Armstrong and Gaylene S. Armstrong

To date, research testing the community characteristics associated with methamphetamine production and use has found that the community-level sociodemographic predictors of methamphetamine production and use vary from those of drug use in general. In this study, the authors furthered the research in this area using data from all 102 counties in Illinois. These data included measures of sociodemographic characteristics taken from the U.S. census, measures of methamphetamine production and use, and a measure of arrests for controlled-substance violations. Negative binomial regression models showed that poverty and the racial and ethnic compositions of communities were the strongest and most consistent predictors of the authors’ methamphetamine measures. The results also showed that the sociodemographic characteristics associated with methamphetamine measures were different in important ways from those associated with arrests for controlled-substance violations.

Testing the Link Between Child Maltreatment and Family Violence Among Police Officers
Egbert Zavala

The purpose of this study is to document the relationship between physical abuse during childhood and family violence among a group of police officers from the Baltimore Police Department in the United States. Analyzing data from the Police and Domestic Violence in Police Families in Baltimore, Maryland, 1997-1999, this study found a positive relationship between physical abuse and family violence toward spouses and children. Specifically, this study found that police officers who indicated that their parents where physical with them were more likely to report being physical with their spouse and children. They were also more likely to report yelling or shouting toward family members. This study shows a positive relationship between physical abuse and involvement in family violence, and increases our knowledge regarding the cycle of violence in police families. This study points to the need for better recognition of physical abuse and the negative consequences children are likely to endure.

Theory and Society 42(2)

Theory and Society, March 2013; Volume 42, Issue 2

From social control to financial economics: the linked ecologies of economics and business in twentieth century America
Marion Fourcade and Rakesh Khurana

This article draws on historical material to examine the co-evolution of economic science and business education over the course of the twentieth century, showing that fields evolve not only through internal struggles but also through struggles taking place in adjacent fields. More specifically, we argue that the scientific strategies of business schools played an essential—if largely invisible and poorly understood—role in major transformations in the organization and substantive direction of social-scientific knowledge, and specifically economic knowledge, in twentieth century America. We use the Wharton School as an illustration of the earliest trends and dilemmas (ca. 1900–1930), when business schools found themselves caught between their business connections and their striving for moral legitimacy in higher education. Next, we look at the creation of the Carnegie Tech Graduate School of Industrial Administration after World War II. This episode illustrates the increasingly successful claims of social scientists, backed by philanthropic foundations, on business education and the growing appeal of “scientific” approaches to decision-making and management. Finally, we argue that the rise of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago from the 1960s onwards (and its closely related cousin at the University of Rochester) marks the decisive ascendancy of economics, and particularly financial economics, in business education over the other behavioral disciplines. We document the key role of these institutions in diffusing “Chicago-style” economic approaches—offering support for deregulatory policies and popularizing narrowly financial understandings of the firm—that sociologists have described as characteristic of the modern neo liberal regime.

Security a la Mexicana: on the particularities of security governance in México’s War on Crime
Keith Guzik

Social scientists from different fields have identified security as a future-oriented mode of governance designed to preserve the social order from diverse types of global risk through international cooperation, militarization and privatization of the state security apparatus, surveillance technologies, community policing, and stigmatization of identities and behaviors deemed dangerous. This literature has largely been limited to English-speaking countries in the Global North, however, that are relatively “secure.”. To understand how security operates in a different context, this article focuses on the current War on Crime in México using newspaper and magazine articles, government documents, and extant academic research. In México, it is argued, the basic elements of security governance (international cooperation, militarized police, surveillance technologies, law, etc.) are present, but in modified form. Rather than focusing on external risks that could develop into future threats, security in México is turned inward against traditional forms of national economic, political, and cultural life thought to produce harm in the present. This, in turn, underscores security’s unique purpose in the country, which is not to preserve the prevailing social order, but to transform an emergent social order that through globalization has come to threaten the state’s legitimacy. These observations suggest an international divide in the operation of security that leaves those most vulnerable in the Global South to bear the greatest costs.

The true citizens of the city of God: the cult of saints, the Catholic social order, and the urban Reformation in Germany
Steven Pfaff

Historical scholarship suggests that a robust cult of the saints may have helped some European regions to resist inroads by Protestantism. Based on a neo-Durkheimian theory of rituals and social order, I propose that locally based cults of the saints that included public veneration lowered the odds that Protestantism would displace Catholicism in sixteenth-century German cities. To evaluate this proposition, I first turn to historical and theoretical reflection on the role of the cult of the saints in late medieval history. I then test the hypothesis with a data set of sixteenth-century German cities. Statistical analysis provides additional support for the ritual and social order thesis because even when several important variables identified by materialist accounts of the Reformation in the social scientific literature the presence of shrines as an indicator for the cult of the saints remains large and significant. Although large-scale social change is usually assumed to have politico-economic sources, this analysis suggests that cultural factors may be of equal or greater importance.

Journal of Marriage and Family 75(2)

Journal of Marriage and Family, April 2013: Volume 75, Issue 2

Brief Reports

Policymakers' Use of Social Science Research: Looking Within and Across Policy Actors
Karen Bogenschneider, Olivia M. Little and Kristen Johnson

Attitudes Toward Divorce, Commitment, and Divorce Proneness in First Marriages and Remarriages
Sarah W. Whitton, Scott M. Stanley, Howard J. Markman and Christine A. Johnson

Effect of Husbands' Employment Status on Their Wives' Subjective Well-being in Korea
Myoung-Hee Kim and Young Kyung Do

Intimate Partner Violence

The Continuation of Intimate Partner Violence From Adolescence to Young Adulthood
Ming Cui, Koji Ueno, Mellissa Gordon and Frank D. Fincham

Why Do We Fail to Ask “Why” About Gender and Intimate Partner Violence?
Kristin L. Anderson

What Comes Before Why: Specifying the Phenomenon of Intimate Partner Violence
Frank D. Fincham, Ming Cui, Mellissa Gordon and Koji Ueno

Genetic Moderation of the Impact of Parenting on Hostility Toward Romantic Partners
Ronald L. Simons, Leslie Gordon Simons, Man-Kit Lei, Steven R. H. Beach, Gene H. Brody, Frederick X. Gibbons and Robert A. Philibert

Marital History, Wealth, and Health

Marriage, Marital History, and Black – White Wealth Differentials Among Older Women
Fenaba R. Addo and Daniel T. Lichter

I've Got You Under My Skin: Marital Biography and Biological Risk
Michael J. McFarland, Mark D. Hayward and Dustin Brown

Grandparent Child Care

Motivations for Providing and Utilizing Child Care by Grandmothers in South Korea
Jaerim Lee and Jean W. Bauer

Child Care and Child Births: The Role of Grandparents in the Netherlands
Fleur Thomese and Aart C. Liefbroer

Of General Interest

Cohabitation in Spain: No Longer a Marginal Path to Family Formation
Marta Dominguez-Folgueras and Teresa Castro-Martin

“Life Still Isn't Fair”: Parental Differential Treatment of Young Adult Siblings
Alexander C. Jensen, Shawn D. Whiteman, Karen L. Fingerman and Kira S. Birditt

Schemas of Marital Change: From Arranged Marriages to Eloping for Love
Keera Allendorf

Can Family Relationships Explain the Race Paradox in Mental Health?
Dawne M. Mouzon

Poverty at a Racial Crossroads: Poverty Among Multiracial Children of Single Mothers
Jenifer L. Bratter and Sarah Damaske

Perceived Economic Uncertainty and Fertility: Evidence From a Labor Market Reform
Barbara Hofmann and Katrin Hohmeyer

Social Psychology Quarterly 76(1)

Social Psychology Quarterly, March 2013: Volume 76, Issue 1

Doing Ideology Amid a Crisis: Collective Actions and Discourses of the Chinese Falun Gong Movement
Cheris Shun-ching Chan

A Refinement of Collaborative Circles Theory: Resource Mobilization and Innovation in an Emerging Sport
Ugo Corte

Modeling Interactions in Small Groups
David R. Heise

Behavioral Consequences of Embeddedness: Effects of the Underlying Forms of Exchange
Linda D. Molm, David Melamed, and Monica M. Whitham

Crime & Delinquency 59(2)

Crime & Delinquency, March 2013: Volume 59, Issue 2

Disaggregating the Relationship Between Schools and Crime: A Spatial Analysis
Rebecca K. Murray and Marc L. Swatt

Although an extensive literature exists on crime in schools, surprisingly few studies have examined crime within the vicinity of schools. Schools, like other urban facilities, can generate crime by providing youth opportunities to congregate with little supervision, particularly before and after school hours. Some noteworthy studies have demonstrated that crime is more likely around schools, but the distinctive patterns based on school, time, and spatial contexts have not been fully addressed. The current study examines the differential crime generating potential of schools by type (public/private) and by level (elementary, middle, and high school), taking into account both spatial and temporal indicators. The authors employ a unique methodology for spatial modeling using the matrix exponential spatial expansion. Results indicate that there are distinct patterns of crime associated with schools, which suggests that disaggregating schools is important for understanding spatial patterns of crime.

Disentangling the Effects of Violent Victimization, Violent Behavior, and Gun Carrying for Minority Inner-City Youth Living in Extreme Poverty
Richard Spano and John Bolland

Two waves of longitudinal data were used to examine the sequencing between violent victimization, violent behavior, and gun carrying in a high-poverty sample of African American youth. Multivariate logistic regression results indicated that violent victimization T1 and violent behavior T1 increased the likelihood of initiation of gun carrying T2 when examined separately (by 132% and 91%, respectively). However, only violent victimization T1 was a significant predictor of initiation of gun carrying T2 after controlling for violent behavior T1. More nuanced analyses uncovered no significant difference in the likelihood of initiating gun carrying when comparing offensive versus defensive gun carriers. The theoretical and policy implications of these findings are also discussed.

Security at the Expense of Liberty: A Test of Predictions Deriving From the Culture of Control Thesis
Justin T. Pickett, Daniel P. Mears, Eric A. Stewart, and Marc Gertz

In The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society, David Garland linked contemporary crime control policies and welfare reforms to a cultural formation that he termed the “crime complex of late modernity.” According to Garland, once established, the crime complex exerts a contemporaneous effect on public views about both criminal justice and the welfare state, increasing popular support for security measures as well as more restrictive public assistance policies. Although Garland’s thesis has featured prominently in scholarship on crime and punishment, few empirical studies have tested the specific predictions that underlie his arguments. To address this research gap, this study uses public opinion data to assess the extent to which key dimensions of the crime complex are associated with public views about criminal justice policies and welfare reforms that emphasize security and control. The results support several of the theoretical underpinnings of Garland’s thesis. The authors discuss the implications of the findings for theory, research, and policy.

Joint Utility of Event-Dependent and Environmental Crime Analysis Techniques for Violent Crime Forecasting
Joel M. Caplan, Leslie W. Kennedy, and Eric L. Piza

Violent crime incidents occurring in Irvington, New Jersey, in 2007 and 2008 are used to assess the joint analytical capabilities of point pattern analysis, hotspot mapping, near-repeat analysis, and risk terrain modeling. One approach to crime analysis suggests that the best way to predict future crime occurrence is to use past behavior, such as actual incidents or collections of incidents, as indicators of future behavior. An alternative approach is to consider the environment in which crimes occur and identify features of the landscape that would be conducive to crime. Thanks to advances in geographic information system technology and federally funded (free) software applications such as CrimeStat III or the Near Repeat Calculator, these methods have recently been made more accessible to “average” users. This study explores the information products that each method offers for the purposes of place-based violent crime forecasting and resource allocation. Findings help to answer questions about where, when, and why violent crimes occur in a jurisdiction. Ways in which event-dependent and environmental crime analysis techniques can be utilized as complementary instruments in a crime analyst’s tool kit are discussed in detail.

Guns and Fear: A One-Way Street?
Will Hauser and Gary Kleck

Surveys show that more than one half of gun owners report owning their firearm for self-protection. Although research has examined the effect of fear of crime on gun ownership, the issue of reciprocity and temporal order has been largely ignored. Furthermore, the effect of firearm acquisition and relinquishment on fear has not been evaluated empirically. We hypothesize that the relationship between fear and gun ownership is reciprocal. As James Wright and Peter Rossi noted, it may be that “the initially most fearful may arm themselves and then feel psychologically safer because of it.” Using two-wave panel data, we found, as expected, that higher fear among nonowners encourages them to become gun owners, but lower fear among gun owners does not encourage gun relinquishment. We also found that gun acquisition does not reduce fear, but relinquishment increases fear, suggesting the relationship between guns and fear may be asymmetrical.

Schools, Neighborhood Risk Factors, and Crime
Dale Willits, Lisa Broidy, and Kristine Denman

Prior research has identified a link between schools (particularly high schools) and neighborhood crime rates. However, it remains unclear whether the relationship between schools and crime is a reflection of other criminogenic dynamics at the neighborhood level or whether schools influence neighborhood crime patterns independently of other established structural predictors. We address this question by investigating the relationship between schools and serious crime at the block group level while controlling for the potentially criminogenic effects of neighborhood instability and structural disadvantage. We find that, net of other structural correlates, neighborhoods with high schools and middle schools experience more violent, property, and narcotics crimes than those without middle or high schools. Conversely, neighborhoods with elementary schools exhibit less property crime than those not containing elementary schools. These results, which are consistent with prior research and with explanations derived from the routine activities and social disorganization perspectives, suggest some strategies for police deployment and community involvement to control crime.

Critical Criminology 21(1)

Critical Criminology, March 2013: Volume 21, Issue 1

Are We Human? Edgework in Defiance of the Mundane and Measurable
Deborah Landry

Edgework can be a useful heuristic tool in producing counter-statements about Orthodox Criminology, where the measurable has arguably become more important than the meaningful. This paper focuses on the embodied experiential nexus of culture and crime in which criminology is taught, administered, and investigated. The Burkean framework of Dramatism is used to reveal how collective creative productions by students can provide insight into the political context of the contemporary criminology classroom. Through an analysis of instant ethnographies penned by participants of a flash mob I illustrate how the role of autonomy and responsibility are not resources that students readily draw upon to understand themselves in relation to the production of knowledge and social change. These observations support some of the concerns raised by Cultural Criminologist about the rise of administrative criminology. In the spirit of detournement, I argue that one way to facilitate student engagement with knowledge production differently is to invite them to experience moments of embodied transgressions.

Regulating CCTV?: We Can’t Solve Problems by Using the Same Kind of Thinking We Used When We Created Them
Heather May Morgan

This paper considers the lack of a universal CCTV policy across the United Kingdom and Europe and how this apparent omission is being addressed in the context of increased surveillance, and the omnipresence of CCTV in particular. Special attention is paid to the role of academics within the apparently long, drawn-out process of a current move from fragmented to collective regulation. What it seems exists is individual, independent policy that implicates wider legislation. What it seems is desired is a more comprehensive and codified decree. Starting with the issues that underpin CCTV and surveillance in general, this paper acknowledges the opposing arguments that CCTV can be helpful to policing as those that demonstrate how well it can facilitate a means of social control. The paper moves to consider the possibility of a ‘surveillance policy’ applicable and effective for CCTV’s balanced regulation, and discusses the means by which this might be realised, paying special attention to who is involved and to what extent, especially where this involves academic input. Academic input to date is problematized on one hand on account of its arguably narrow scope (source/personnel) and the trends yet ostensible wavering it entails on the other. Therefore, the author’s reservations around the place of academics in the process, especially because they appear to be key to developments, whilst variously demonstrating both influential flippancy and seriousness, lead to the conclusion that there is difficulty with trying to solve the ‘problem’ with the same thinking that created it.

Bourdieu and Foucault: A Conceptual Integration Toward an Empirical Sociology of Prisons
Jennifer A. Schlosser

Although the similarities between them are under analyzed, Pierre Bourdieu’s and Michel Foucault’s theories of culture and power are interrelated in some compelling ways. Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977) and Discipline and Punish (1979) are two of the most influential contributions in post-structural and postmodern theory. Yet, far more attention is paid to Foucault’s contributions in criminology than to Bourdieu’s. This essay brings together the work of these influential theorists to argue for a critical examination of the sociology of prisons. Bourdieu’s concepts of: (1) habitus, (2) ethos, (3) doxa, and (4) the theory of practice are related to Foucault’s ideas about (1) discipline, (2) docile bodies, (3) panopticism, and (4) history of the present by comparing specific examples from the original works. Then, the combination of those primary concepts is used to address specific methodological concerns researchers should consider when doing empirical research in prison.

The Race to Punish in American Schools: Class and Race Predictors of Punitive School-Crime Control
Katherine Irwin, Janet Davidson, Amanda Hall-Sanchez

Despite the general agreement that US schools have become increasingly punitive since the 1980s, researchers are uncertain about what types of schools use tough-on-crime measures. Some assert that punitive control is concentrated in poor, predominantly ethnic minority schools. Governing-through-crime scholars argue that US schools with mostly middle-class and white students are also punitive, but in less harsh ways using soft surveillance techniques. Relying on data from large, stratified samples of middle and secondary US public schools, we found that high rates of ethnic minority enrollment predicted heavy reliance on law enforcement and security personnel. As rates of student poverty increased, use of soft surveillance techniques as well as reporting students to the police significantly increased. Implications for governing-through-crime, racial control, and reproduction of inequalities theories are discussed.

Suburbia’s “Crime Experts”: The Neo-Conservatism of Control Theory and the Ethos of Crime
Guido Giacomo Preparata

This essay tackles the relationship between morality and crime by way of the debate surrounding Travis Hirschi’s double contribution to so-called “control theory,” first as “social bonding theory,” and subsequently as a “general theory” of crime. The assessment conducted herein construes the first version of “control” as an expression of patriotism, and its late formulation, on account of its emphasis on varying individual levels of self-mastery, as an implicit reaffirmation of the inevitability of class division. Over the years, the fixation with “self-control” has become a rubric for the suburban anxieties of an upper-middle class surrounded by expanding (ghetto) poverty and plagued by familial dysfunction and the alienation of its own offspring. In the final analysis, these reflections form the basis for a general reformulation, inspired by the sociology of Thorstein Veblen, of the relationship between class and crime and condign punishment by leveraging the notion of ethos (a common mindset peculiar to each class), and proving thereby that crime is systematically determined by this very mindset, which is the spiritual complement to class formation, rather than by the conventionally classless categories of rational self-interest or idiosyncratic proneness to violence.

Giuliani in Izmir: Restructuring of the Izmir Public Order Police and Criminalization of the Urban Poor
Zeynep Gönen

This paper examines the recent restructuring of the Izmir Public Order Police, launched in 2006 to address the rise in urban crime in Izmir, Turkey. Transforming itself into a professionalized and effective organization against ‘criminals’ and claiming to institute a proactive policing strategy, the Izmir police have expanded their control over the urban space, while specifically targeting the poor segments and populations in the city, and carefully distinguishing them from the ‘respectable’ and ‘innocent’ citizens. The paper details the elements of the new policing in Izmir and demonstrates that it has rested on profiling and criminalization of the ethno-racially differentiated urban poor populations, especially Kurdish migrants. The new policing in Izmir, the paper argues, is not an isolated case but an example of the neoliberal transformations around the globe, where regulation and management of urban poor populations are increasingly relegated to the penal rather than the social state.

Young Adult Offending: Intersectionality of Gender and Race
Kerryn E. Bell

It is an accepted criminological fact that gender and race affect involvement in crime. What has been examined less frequently is the effect of intersectionality of gender and race across the early life course. This research uses Delinquency in a Birth Cohort II: Philadelphia, 1958 to examine the longer term effects on crime of intersectionality during the adolescent and young adult portions of the life course. Findings indicate that intersectionality of gender and race is fundamental for young adults. It is argued that multiracial feminism can best explain why intersectionality must be taken into consideration when looking at offending across the early life course.

Progress or More of the Same? Electronic Monitoring and Parole in the Age of Mass Incarceration
James Kilgore

Often billed as an “alternative to incarceration”, electronic monitoring (EM) is widely trumpeted as a key method of reducing incarceration costs while maintaining public safety. However, little research has been done which closely examines EM in the historical context of mass incarceration and the paradigm of punishment. This article focuses on the use of EM in parole in that broader context. Through research into the legal and policy frameworks for EM as well as via personal interviews with people who have been on EM while on parole, the author concludes that the present EM practice reinforces the dominant punishment paradigm and places major obstacles in the way of the successful re-entry for people returning from prison. He concludes with some concrete recommendations about changes in law, policy and implementation guidelines that would allow EM to operate in an environment more conducive to rehabilitation.

Social Forces 91(3)

Social Forces, March 2013: Volume 91, Issue 3

Stratification

The Time Divide in Cross-National Perspective: The Work Week, Education and Institutions That Matter
Peter Frase, Janet C. Gornick

Prior empirical studies have found that American workers report longer hours than do workers in other highly industrialized countries, and that the highly educated report the longest hours relative to other educational levels. This paper analyzes disparities in working hours by education levels in 17 high- and middle-income countries to assess whether this finding holds cross-nationally, for both men and women. In contrast to many prior studies of working time, we use a measure of weekly rather than annual hours worked, which we argue provides a better window on the discretionary time available to individuals and households. We find that the within-country gradient in average hours by education is not uniform: higher income countries are more likely to show the U.S. pattern, and middle-income countries show the reverse pattern, with the less educated reporting longer hours. We conclude by assessing some possible macrolevel explanations for this variation, including per capita gross domestic product, tax rates, unionization, country-level regulations, earnings inequality, and the regulation of weekly work hours.

All Work and No Pay: Violations of Employment and Labor Laws in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City
Annette Bernhardt, Michael W. Spiller, Diana Polson

Despite three decades of scholarship on economic restructuring in the United States, employers’ violations of minimum wage, overtime and other workplace laws remain understudied. This article begins to fill the gap by presenting evidence from a large-scale, original worker survey that draws on recent advances in sampling methodology to reach vulnerable workers. Our findings suggest that in America’s three largest cities, violations of employment and labor laws are pervasive across low-wage industries and occupations, affecting a wide range of workers. But while worker characteristics are correlated with violations, job and employer characteristics play the stronger role, including industry, occupation and measures of informality and nonstandard work. We therefore propose a framework in which employers’ noncompliance with labor regulations is one axis of a competitive strategy based on labor cost reduction, contributing to the reorganization of work and production in the 21st century labor market.

Employment and Earnings in High-Tech Ethnic Niches
Jennifer C. Lee

The increase in high-skilled immigrants to the United States coincided with the expansion of the high-technology sector, and now a large share of Asian immigrants concentrate in high-tech industries. Despite much research on the relationship between ethnic concentration and labor market outcomes, the association between ethnic niche employment and earnings within the high-technology sector of the labor market has yet to be examined. This study compares the relationship between employment in ethnic niches and earnings within high- and low-tech industries among Asian immigrants. In low-technology industries, ethnic niches are generally associated with lower earnings compared with non-niches, but in high-technology industries, employment in an ethnic niche is associated with higher earnings. These patterns vary by gender and ethnic group. This association is partly explained by the industries that comprise ethnic niches, as non-Hispanic white immigrants also experience some of the same advantages and disadvantages.

Economic Sociology

Is Deindustrialization Causing High Unemployment in Affluent Countries?: Evidence from 16 OECD Countries, 1970–2003
Christopher Kollmeyer, Florian Pichler

This study assesses the possibility that deindustrialization has been contributing to the persistently high unemployment rates experienced by most affluent countries since the mid-1970s. Combining insights from Lilien’s (1982) “sectoral shift” thesis and the literature on deindustrialization, the authors assert that the decades-long contraction of the manufacturing sector has been a significant source of high unemployment in affluent countries. This assertion is tested against the literature’s existing explanations for unemployment using data from 16 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries over a recent 34-year period. Two-way, fixed-effects regression models suggest that deindustrialization has not only contributed to unemployment in these countries, but that it has been one of the more important causes of this phenomenon. These findings are robust across various model specifications and estimating strategies. The study concludes by suggesting further ways to investigate this important topic.

Eat, Drink, Man, Woman: Gender, Income Share and Household Expenditure in South Africa
Elizabeth Gummerson, Daniel Schneider

This study examines how gendered household bargaining occurs in non-nuclear family households. We employ two South African data sets and use linear regression and household fixed effects to investigate the relationship between women’s income shares and household expenditures. In married couple households, when women garner larger shares of income, spending on food is higher and spending on alcohol is lower. However, the relationship between women’s income shares and expenditures attenuates with additional adults in the household. We find that in households with multiple adults, men and women bargain in gender groups to realize gendered preferences for expenditures. Future work should consider household members outside of the married dyad when modeling bargaining processes.

Political Sociology

Who Gets Designated a Terrorist and Why?
Colin J. Beck, Emily Miner

This study examines formal terrorism designations by governments through the lens of organization studies research on categorization processes. It is argued that designations hinge on markers from the organizational profile of a militant group. Using cross-sectional data on militant organizations and designations by the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, multivariate analyses find that listed organizations do not merely have a track record of violence against a government’s citizens, but also tend to target aviation and have an Islamic ideological basis. Mixed support for geopolitical factors is found, but imageries of hegemonic interest are not confirmed. Secondary analyses suggest that newer images of terrorism may replace older ones in classification schemes but further research is needed to know whether this is because of policy adaptation or the effect of spectacular events like September 11th.

Discursive Obstruction and Elite Opposition to Environmental Activism in the Czech Republic
Thomas E. Shriver, Alison E. Adams, Sherry Cable

Extant research on social movements has highlighted activists’ discursive tactics to challenge the state, yet little analytical attention focuses on elite efforts to dominate the discourse arena through the deployment of oppositional frames. This paper analyzes elite oppositional framing surrounding the placement of a highway bypass in the Czech Republic. Our research examines how democratic states deploy oppositional frames and enlist elite countermovement support for their efforts to obstruct challenges. Using a range of data sources, we delineate the mechanisms used by these elite actors to vilify and stigmatize environmental activists, paving the way for more violent forms of public harassment. The concept we initiate, discursive obstruction, adds the critical dimension of power relations to analyses of both framing processes and discursive opportunity structures. We conclude by discussing the implications of our results for social movement research.

Civic and Political Participation

Union Membership and Political Participation in the United States
Jasmine Kerrissey, Evan Schofer

This article examines the effect of union membership on civic and political participation in the late 20th century in the United States. We discuss why and how unions seek to mobilize their members and where mobilization is channeled. We argue that union membership affects electoral and collective action outcomes and will be larger for low socioeconomic status individuals. Statistical analyses find that union membership is associated with many forms of political activity, including voting, protesting, association membership, and others. Union effects are larger for less educated individuals, a group that otherwise exhibits low levels of participation. Union membership is not associated with outcomes distant from union political agendas, such as general volunteering and charitable giving, suggesting that unions generate political capital rather than generalized social capital.

Are Homeowners Better Citizens?: Homeownership and Community Participation in the United States
Brian J. McCabe

Proponents of homeownership policies often argue that homeowners participate more actively in community life and civic affairs than renters. Although research suggests higher rates of participation among homeowners, the underlying mechanisms driving this relationship are unclear. On one hand, the locally dependent financial investments homeowners make in their communities could lead them to participate as a means of protecting their principal investment. On the other hand, home-ownership could stimulate participation by increasing residential stability, enabling households to overcome the institutional barriers and to develop the social networks that drive community participation. The failure to differentiate between these pathways muddies our understanding of how homeownership matters for community life. Drawing on the November supplement of the Current Population Survey, this article investigates whether homeowners are more likely to vote in local elections, participate in neighborhood groups and join civic associations. A falsification strategy compares these outcomes to a set of placebo measures to address concerns that the findings are driven by selection. The research identifies an independent role for residential stability and locally dependent financial investments in explaining why homeowners participate in their communities.

Race

W. E. B. Du Bois: Reform, Will, and the Veil
Lynn England, W. Keith Warner

While W. E. B. Du Bois is widely recognized for his contributions to the sociology of race, his contributions to the foundations of sociology are largely ignored. His sociology is based on African American reformism, a version of pragmatism, and a contingent historicism. The basic view of sociology is one that emphasizes the role of chance and will as opposed to law and certainty. He called sociology “the science of free will.” His view of society is one that focuses on the historical contingency of the structure of society, the malleability of society, and the fundamental feature of American society: a society built around the “color line” or “veil.” This view of society is not merely an interesting historical anomaly, but has significant implications for the understanding of and development of contemporary sociology.

Public Sector Transformation, Racial Inequality and Downward Occupational Mobility
George Wilson, Vincent J. Roscigno, Matt L. Huffman

“New governance” reforms entailing shifts toward privatization have permeated the public sector over the last decade, possibly affecting workplace-based attainments. We examine the consequences of this reform for African American men, who during the civil rights era reached relative parity with whites. We analyze race-based inequities on one socioeconomic outcome–downward occupational mobility–among professionals, managers and executives. Results from a Panel Study of Income Dynamics sample indicate that the “new government business model,” characterized by increased employer discretion has disproportionately disadvantaged African Americans. Narrower racial gaps in the incidence, determinants and timing of downward mobility found in the public sector, relative to the private sector, during the pre-reform period (1985–90) eroded during the reform period (2002–07) because of widening racial gaps in the public sector.

Health

Childhood (Mis)fortune, Educational Attainment, and Adult Health: Contingent Benefits of a College Degree?
Markus H. Schafer, Lindsay R. Wilkinson, Kenneth F. Ferraro

College-educated adults are healthier than other people in the United States, but selection bias complicates our understanding of how education influences health. This article focuses on the possibility that the health benefits of college may vary according to childhood (mis)fortune and people’s propensity to attain a college degree in the first place. Several perspectives from life course sociology offer competing hypotheses as to whether the most or the least advantaged see the greatest return of a college education. The authors use a national survey of middle-age American adults to assess risk of two cardiovascular health problems and mortality. Results from propensity score and hierarchical regression analysis indicate that the protective effect of college attainment is indeed heterogeneous. Further, the greatest returns are among those least likely to experience this life course transition (i.e., compensatory leveling). Explanations for this selection effect are offered, along with several directions for future research on the health benefits of completing college.

The Social Consequences of Postcommunist Structural Change: An Analysis of Suicide Trends in Eastern Europe
Yuka Minagawa

Guided by Durkheim’s classic theory of suicide, this article examines suicide trends and determinants in Eastern European countries for the period of 1989–2006, with particular attention given to the association between postcommunist social change and suicide mortality. I find that countries characterized by more drastic structural change experienced increased suicide rates during the period immediately after the fall of communism. Yet continued reforms were associated with reductions in suicide in more recent years. Further, I observe large gender differences in suicide patterns. Male suicide rates are consistently and strongly related to structural change, while female rates remain almost unaffected. By directly and statistically substantiating the relationship between postcommunist transition and suicide death rates, this study provides a more thorough and textured account of the social consequences of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.

Experimental Research

Do Descriptive Norms Solve Social Dilemmas?: Conformity and Contributions in Collective Action Groups
Kyle Irwin, Brent Simpson

Collective action researchers have focused on injunctive norms that specify approved behavior as a panacea for collective action problems. We investigate whether descriptive norms (similar behavior) can also solve these problems. We argue that descriptive norms generate social identification, which then sustains conformity to expectations. Consequently, descriptive norms can characterize both cooperation and noncooperation, such that cooperative norms sustain successful collective action while noncooperative norms result in collective action failure. Results from two laboratory experiments supported the hypothesis that descriptive norms can sustain collective action success and failure. Further, while normative non-cooperation eroded cooperation for high contributors, normative cooperation had little affect on low contributors. This asymmetry points to a paradox: because they promote group identification, noncooperative descriptive norms can be self-sustaining, with deleterious outcomes.

Status, Numbers and Influence
David Melamed, Scott V. Savage

We develop a theoretical model of social influence in n-person groups. We argue that disagreement between group members introduces uncertainty into the social situation, and this uncertainty motivates people to use status characteristics to evaluate the merits of a particular opinion. Our model takes the numerical distribution of opinions and the relative status of the opinion holders as factors that contribute to social influence, such that the effect of status becomes stronger as uncertainty about a particular position rises due to the distribution of opinions in the group. Our theoretical model implies three hypotheses, which we empirically evaluate with data from a controlled laboratory experiment. The results support the theoretical model. We conclude with limitations, implications and several directions for future research.