American Sociological Review 79(4)

American Sociological Review, August 2014: Volume 79, Issue 4

Beauty and Status: The Illusion of Exchange in Partner Selection?
Elizabeth Aura McClintock

Scholars have long been interested in exchange and matching (assortative mating) in romantic partner selection. But many analyses of exchange, particularly those that examine beauty and socioeconomic status, fail to control for partners’ tendency to match each other on these traits. Because desirable traits in mates are positively correlated between partners and within individuals, ignoring matching may exaggerate evidence of cross-trait beauty-status exchange. Moreover, many prior analyses assume a gendered exchange in which women trade beauty for men’s status, without testing whether men might use handsomeness to attract higher-status women. Nor have prior analyses fully investigated how the prevalence of beauty-status exchange varies between different types of couples. I use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health Romantic Pair Sample, a large (N = 1,507), nationally representative probability sample of dating, cohabiting, and married couples, to investigate how often romantic partners exchange physical attractiveness and socioeconomic status, net of matching on these traits. I find that controlling for matching eliminates nearly all evidence of beauty-status exchange. The discussion focuses on the contexts in which beauty-status exchange is most likely and on implications these results have for market-based and sociobiological theories of partner selection.

The Reversal of the Gender Gap in Education and Trends in Marital Dissolution
Christine R. Schwartz and Hongyun Han

The reversal of the gender gap in education has potentially far-reaching consequences for marriage markets, family formation, and relationship outcomes. One possible consequence is the growing number of marriages in which wives have more education than their husbands. Past research shows that this type of union is at higher risk of dissolution. Using data on marriages formed between 1950 and 2004 in the United States, we evaluate whether this association has persisted as the prevalence of this relationship type has increased. Our results show a large shift in the association between spouses’ relative education and marital dissolution. Specifically, marriages in which wives have the educational advantage were once more likely to dissolve, but this association has disappeared in more recent marriage cohorts. Another key finding is that the relative stability of marriages between educational equals has increased. These results are consistent with a shift away from rigid gender specialization toward more flexible, egalitarian partnerships, and they provide an important counterpoint to claims that progress toward gender equality in heterosexual relationships has stalled.

Educational Segregation, Tea Party Organizations, and Battles over Distributive Justice
Rory McVeigh, Kraig Beyerlein, Burrel Vann, Jr., and Priyamvada Trivedi

Competing visions of who is deserving of rewards and privileges, and different understandings of the fairness of reward allocation processes, are at the heart of political conflict. Indeed, social movement scholars generally agree that a key component of most, if not all, social movements is a shared belief that existing conditions are unfair and subject to change (Gamson 1992; McAdam 1982; Snow et al. 1986; Turner and Killian 1987). In this article we consider the role that residential segregation by education level plays in shaping perceptions of distributive justice and, in turn, providing a context conducive to conservative political mobilization. We apply these ideas in an analysis of Tea Party activism and show that educational segregation is a strong predictor of the number of Tea Party organizations in U.S. counties. In a complementary analysis, we find that individuals with a bachelor’s degree are more likely than people who do not have any college education to support the Tea Party; this relationship is strongest in counties with higher levels of educational segregation.

Shaming the Corporation: The Social Production of Targets and the Anti-Sweatshop Movement
Tim Bartley and Curtis Child

As social movements co-evolve with changes in states and markets, it is crucial to examine how they make particular kinds of actors into focal points for the expression of grievances and the demand for rights. But researchers often bracket the question of why some kinds of organizations are more likely than others to become targets of social movement pressure. We theorize the “social production of targets” by social movements, rejecting a simple “reflection” model to focus on configurations of power and vulnerability that shape repertoires of contention. Empirically, we extend structural accounts of global commodity chains and cultural accounts of markets to analyze the production of targets in the case of the anti-sweatshop movement of the 1990s. Using a longitudinal, firm-level dataset and unique data on anti-sweatshop activism, we identify factors that attracted social movement pressure to particular companies. Firms’ power and positions strongly shaped their likelihood of becoming targets of anti-sweatshop activism. But the likelihood of being a target also depended on the cultural organization of markets, which made some firms more “shamable” than others. Contrary to suggestions of an anti-globalization backlash, globalization on its own, and related predictions about protectionism, cannot explain the pattern of activism.

Resource Partitioning and the Organizational Dynamics of “Fringe Banking”
Giacomo Negro, Fabiana Visentin, and Anand Swaminathan

We examine the emergence and proliferation of payday lenders, fringe businesses that provide small short-term, but high-cost loans. We link the organizational dynamics of these businesses to two trends in consumer lending in the United States: the continuing consolidation of mainstream financial institutions; and the expansion of such institutions in the provision of financial services regarded as similar to payday loans. We explain the coexistence in mature industries of large-scale organizations in the market center and smaller specialists in the periphery by testing and extending the organizational model of resource partitioning. Our focus is on two under-examined aspects of the model: the dynamic underlying the partitioning process, and the conditions under which the market remains partitioned. The empirical analysis covers payday lenders, banks, and credit unions operating in Wisconsin between 1994 and 2008.

The Role of Bridging Cultural Practices in Racially and Socioeconomically Diverse Civic Organizations
Ruth Braunstein, Brad R. Fulton, and Richard L. Wood

Organizations can benefit from being internally diverse, but they may also face significant challenges arising from such diversity. Potential benefits include increased organizational innovation, legitimacy, and strategic capacity; challenges include threats to organizational stability, efficacy, and survival. In this article, we analyze the dynamics of internal diversity within a field of politically oriented civic organizations. We find that “bridging cultural practices” serve as a key mechanism through which racially and socioeconomically diverse organizations navigate challenges generated by internal differences. Drawing on data from extended ethnographic fieldwork within one local faith-based community organizing coalition, we describe how particular prayer practices are used to bridge differences within group settings marked by diversity. Furthermore, using data from a national study of all faith-based community organizing coalitions in the United States, we find that a coalition’s prayer practices are associated with its objective level of racial and socioeconomic diversity and its subjective perception of challenges arising from such diversity. Our multi-method analysis supports the argument that diverse coalitions use bridging prayer practices to navigate organizational challenges arising from racial and socioeconomic diversity, and we argue that bridging cultural practices may play a similar role within other kinds of diverse organizations.

Divergent Pathways of Gentrification: Racial Inequality and the Social Order of Renewal in Chicago Neighborhoods
Jackelyn Hwang and Robert J. Sampson

Gentrification has inspired considerable debate, but direct examination of its uneven evolution across time and space is rare. We address this gap by developing a conceptual framework on the social pathways of gentrification and introducing a method of systematic social observation using Google Street View to detect visible cues of neighborhood change. We argue that a durable racial hierarchy governs residential selection and, in turn, gentrifying neighborhoods. Integrating census data, police records, prior street-level observations, community surveys, proximity to amenities, and city budget data on capital investments, we find that the pace of gentrification in Chicago from 2007 to 2009 was negatively associated with the concentration of blacks and Latinos in neighborhoods that either showed signs of gentrification or were adjacent and still disinvested in 1995. Racial composition has a threshold effect, however, attenuating gentrification when the share of blacks in a neighborhood is greater than 40 percent. Consistent with theories of neighborhood stigma, we also find that collective perceptions of disorder, which are higher in poor minority neighborhoods, deter gentrification, while observed disorder does not. These results help explain the reproduction of neighborhood racial inequality amid urban transformation.

Union Strength, Neoliberalism, and Inequality: Contingent Political Analyses of U.S. Income Differences since 1950
David Jacobs and Lindsey Myers

Do historically contingent political accounts help explain the growth in family income inequality in the United States? We use time-series regressions based on 60 years to detect such relationships by assessing interactive associations between the neoliberal departure coincident with Ronald Reagan’s election and the acceleration in inequality that began soon after Reagan took office. We find evidence for this and for a second contingent relationship: stronger unions could successfully resist policies that enhanced economic inequality only before Reagan’s presidency and before the neoliberal anti-union administrations from both parties that followed Reagan. Politically inspired reductions in union membership, and labor’s diminished political opportunities during and after Reagan’s presidency, meant unions no longer could slow the growth in U.S. inequality. Coefficients on these two historically contingent interactions remain significant after many additional determinants are held constant. These findings indicate that political determinants should not be neglected when researchers investigate the determinants of U.S. inequality.

Ethnic Identification and Its Consequences for Measuring Inequality in Mexico
Andrés Villarreal

This article examines ethnic boundary crossing and its effects on estimates of ethnic disparities in children’s outcomes in the context of Mexico, a country with the largest indigenous population in the Western hemisphere. The boundary that separates the indigenous and non-indigenous population is extremely fluid, as it is based on characteristics that can easily change within a generation, such as language use, cultural practices, and a subjective sense of belonging. Using data from the Mexican Census, I examine the ethnic classification of children of indigenous parents. I find that movement across the ethnic boundary depends on which of the two criteria currently recognized by the Mexican Census is used. Children of indigenous parents are much less likely to be classified as indigenous according to language proficiency, especially when their parents have higher levels of education. By contrast, when proxy self-identification is used as a criterion, children of indigenous parents are more likely to be classified as indigenous, and greater parental education results in higher odds that children will be classified as indigenous. The shift in children’s indigenous classification with parental education strongly affects estimates of educational disparities between indigenous and non-indigenous children.

Comment and Reply

The Making of Higher Education Inequality: How Do Mechanisms and Pathways Depend on Competition?
Tony Tam and Jin Jiang

We extend the theoretical contributions of Alon (2009) by proposing and testing two hypotheses about the context dependence of inequality of educational opportunity (IEO). Alon offers a model of IEO that incorporates class adaptation and organizational exclusion as two test-score-based mechanisms that perpetuate class inequality. She hypothesizes that the changing level of IEO depends on trends in competition. Through a secondary analysis of Alon’s numerical results, we clarify her results and demonstrate that the causal structure of IEO (e.g., the explanatory roles of adaptation and exclusion) depends on trends in competition and college selectivity. Additionally, changes in competition for college admission from 1972 to 1992 had little to do with enrollment rates, but appear to be driven largely by changes in college wage premiums.

Continuing to Build a Theory of Inequality in Higher Education: Claims, Evidence, and Future Directions
Sigal Alon

American Journal of Sociology 119(6)

American Journal of Sociology, May 2014: Volume 119, Issue 6

Classification and Coercion: The Destruction of Piracy in the English Maritime System
Matthew Norton

The article argues that coordinated state action depends not just on organizational forms and institutions but also on “cultural infrastructures,” systems of state meaning making. Cultural infrastructures are potentially consequential sites for explaining processes of state formation. The article develops this argument through an analysis of the production of coercive power against piracy in the early modern English empire. It analyzes the cultural dynamics involved in the transformation of piracy from an ambiguous legal category to a violently enforced social boundary, focusing on the interplay of codes, interpretive institutions, and social performances. Violence directed against the pirates in the 1710s and 1720s turned on an earlier, contentious period of state formation focused on the cultural infrastructures that made the authoritative classification of piracy possible.

Contradictions in the Commodification of Hospital Care
Adam D. Reich

The “moralized markets” school within economic sociology has convincingly demonstrated variation in the relationship between economic activity and moral values. Yet this scholarship has not sufficiently explored either the causes of this variation or the consequences of this variation for organizational practice. By examining different moral-market understandings and practices in the context of a single market-based organizational field, this article highlights the contradictory character of processes of commodification, as different historically institutionalized ideas conflict, in different ways, with the market logic that increasingly organizes the field as a whole. The article examines the contradictory commodification of hospital care in three hospitals within one Northern California community.

Moving beyond Stylized Economic Network Models: The Hybrid World of the Indian Firm Ownership Network
Dalhia Mani and James Moody

A central theme of economic sociology has been to highlight the complexity and diversity of real world markets, but many network models of economic social structure ignore this feature and rely instead on stylized one-dimensional characterizations. Here, the authors return to the basic insight of structural diversity in economic sociology. Using the Indian interorganizational ownership network as their case, they discover a composite—or “hybrid”—model of economic networks that combines elements of prior stylized models. The network contains a disconnected periphery conforming closely to a “transactional” model; a semiperiphery characterized by small, dense clusters with sporadic links, as predicted in “small world” models; and finally a nested core composed of clusters connected via multiple independent paths. The authors then show how a firm’s position within the mesolevel structure is associated with demographic features such as age and industry and differences in the extent to which firms engage in multiplex and high-value exchanges.

The Missing Link in the Diffusion of Protest: Asking Others
Stefaan Walgrave and Ruud Wouters

Mobilization for protest is a process of diffusion in interpersonal networks. Extant work has found that being asked by people one knows is a key determinant of participation, but the flip side—asking others—has been neglected. The authors examine which prospective participants are most likely to ask others to participate and whom they ask. Drawing on a new and unusual data set including evidence on more than 7,000 participants in 48 demonstrations across Europe, the authors find that activists who are committed to the demonstration’s cause (willing to recruit others) and who are part of participation-friendly networks (able to recruit others) are the most active recruiters. Asking others is dependent on being asked: participants tend to recruit people similar to those who have recruited them and, most importantly, participants who are recruited via strong ties are less active recruiters themselves.

Fewer and Better Children: Race, Class, Religion, and Birth Control Reform in America
Melissa J. Wilde and Sabrina Danielsen

In the early 20th century, contraceptives were illegal and, for many, especially religious groups, taboo. But, in the span of just two years, between 1929 and 1931, many of the United States’ most prominent religious groups pronounced contraceptives to be moral and began advocating for the laws restricting them to be repealed. Met with everything from support, to silence, to outright condemnation by other religious groups, these pronouncements and the debates they caused divided the American religious field by an issue of sex and gender for the first time. This article explains why America’s religious groups took the positions they did at this crucial moment in history. In doing so, it demonstrates that the politics of sex and gender that divide American religion today is deeply rooted in century-old inequalities of race and class.

Social Problems 61(3)

Social Problems, August 2014: Volume 61, Issue 3

Binational Social Networks and Assimilation: A Test of the Importance of Transnationalism
Ted Mouw, Sergio Chavez, Heather Edelblute and Ashton Verdery

While the concept of transnationalism has gained widespread popularity among scholars as a way to describe immigrants' long-term maintenance of cross-border ties to their origin communities, critics have argued that the overall proportion of immigrants who engage in transnational behavior is low and that, as a result, transnationalism has little sustained effect on the process of immigrant adaptation and assimilation. In this article, we argue that a key shortcoming in the current empirical debate on transnationalism is the lack of data on the social networks that connect migrants to each other and to nonmigrants in communities of origin. To address this shortcoming, our analysis uses unique binational data on the social network connecting an immigrant sending community in Guanajuato, Mexico, to two destination areas in the United States. We test for the effect of respondents' positions in cross-border networks on their migration intentions and attitudes towards the United States using data on the opinions of their peers, their participation in cross-border and local communication networks, and their structural position in the network. The results indicate qualified empirical support for a network-based model of transnationalism; in the U.S. sample we find evidence of network clustering consistent with peer effects, while in the Mexican sample we find evidence of the importance of cross-border communication with friends.

Biopolitical Citizenship in the Immigration Adjudication Process
Sarah Morando Lakhani and Stefan Timmermans

We apply the concept of “biopolitical citizenship” to show how and with what consequences biology and medicine are mobilized as political techniques in the legal immigration procedures of permanent residency acquisition and family reunification. Medical examinations and DNA testing are employed by the U.S. state as objective sorting criteria in the immigration legal process. Based on qualitative examination of immigrants' and their attorneys' participation in the legalization process, we demonstrate how these biological screening mechanisms create added uncertainty and problems that disproportionately affect particular people. In this context, aspiring citizens undergo biological evaluations that appear transparent, objective, and democratic. However, because of how evaluations are structured, they actually lower the chances of certain individuals to succeed in their citizenship endeavors.

Migration, Social Organization, and the Sexual Partners of Mexican Men
Emilio A. Parrado and Chenoa A. Flippen

We build on recent developments in social organization theory to examine the sexual partnering of Mexican men in a new area of immigrant destination. We elaborate on two levels of contextual influence: (1) how differences in social capital between sending and receiving communities affect partner formation and (2) how neighborhood social cohesion influences immigrants' behavior. Data come from an original survey conducted in Durham, North Carolina, and migrant sending communities in Mexico. We show dramatic differences in sexual partnering between Mexico and the United States, which are directly linked to lack of social networks and familial support. Neighborhood-level social cohesion in part counteracts those effects. The role of social capital and neighborhoods, however, is highly gendered. The presence of women is a critical dimension of the social organization of immigrant communities and its effect extends beyond mere partner availability.

Does Segregation Create Winners and Losers? Residential Segregation and Inequality in Educational Attainment
Lincoln Quillian

This article examines the effects of residential segregation on the basis of poverty status and race for high school and college completion. Segregation effects are estimated by contrasting educational outcomes among persons raised in metropolitan areas with varying levels of segregation. This metropolitan-level approach provides two advantages in evaluating segregation effects over neighborhood effects studies: it incorporates effects of residential segregation outside of the affected individuals' neighborhoods of residence and it allows evaluation of gains and losses across groups from segregation. Data are drawn from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the decennial censuses. Poor–nonpoor segregation is associated with lower rates of high school graduation among adolescents from poor backgrounds, but has no effect on rates of graduation for students from nonpoor backgrounds. Black–white segregation is associated with lower rates of high school graduation and college graduation for black students, but has no effect on graduation rates for white students. Use of proximity-adjusted segregation measures or instrumental variable estimation gives similar results. The results suggest that residential segregation harms the educational attainment of disadvantaged groups without increasing the educational attainment of advantaged groups.

Emerging Forms of Racial Inequality in Homeownership Exit, 1968–2009
Gregory Sharp and Matthew Hall

Because homeownership continues to be a key mechanism underlying racial inequality in America, recent developments that led to the foreclosure crisis bring to the forefront issues concerning minority homeowners' ability to sustain ownership. This article uses longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine racial differences in the likelihood of homeownership exit over the last four decades. We find that black homeowners are at a significantly higher risk of transitioning to renter status than are white homeowners, even after accounting for life-course, socioeconomic, and housing characteristics, and the selection into homeownership. Most importantly, we show that the racial gap in ownership exit has widened substantially over time, especially among owners who purchased their homes in the 1990s or later. These findings are consistent with arguments that the nature of racial stratification in U.S. housing markets has shifted over time from overt market exclusion to market exploitation.

A Generation Indebted: Young Adult Debt across Three Cohorts
Jason N. Houle

In this study, I examine how young adult indebtedness has changed across three cohorts of young adults in the 1970s, 1980s, and 2000s. I pool data from four National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth cohorts—the NLS-M 1966, NLS-W 1968, NLSY 1979, and NLSY 1997. I have three key findings. First, debt burdens (debt relative to economic resources) have increased substantially across the three cohorts of study. Despite the fact that the most recent cohort of young adults are earlier along in their debt accrual career and have yet to hit many of the major adult milestones that often lead to debt, they are burdened with more debt than previous cohorts of young adults who achieved these milestones earlier. Second, young adult debt portfolios have shifted towards noncollateralized (unsecured) and student loan debt over time, the latter replacing home mortgage debt as the primary form of wealth-building debt among young adults. Third, cohort changes in debt have occurred unequally across social class lines. Young adults from lower social class backgrounds have disproportionately taken on more unsecured debt over time, relative to their more advantaged counterparts. The growth in debt burden across cohorts, however, has been most pronounced among college-educated young adults.

Reproducing Stories: Strategic Narratives of Teen Pregnancy and Motherhood
Christie A. Barcelos and Aline C. Gubrium

Pregnant and parenting young women are simultaneously silenced and overrepresented by raced and classed social narratives on adolescent childbearing in the United States. These narratives posit teen childbearing as an unequivocal social, health, and economic problem, although some scholars and policy makers construct alternative narratives that focus on inequalities and propose different perspectives on causes and consequences. Narrative inquiry that analyzes how stories are produced and utilized can enable a more nuanced approach to complex social problems. We conducted 19 individual, in-depth, and semistructured interviews with young mothers ages 16 to 21 who attend a community-based alternative education program in a low-income northeastern city. Interviews were analyzed using thematic narrative techniques. The young mothers we interviewed used a process of strategic negotiation to distance themselves from prevailing social and cultural stories about the problem of teen motherhood. Participants demonstrated this strategic process through their attempts to assuage stigma and construct unproblematic identities. Young mothers reproduced and reinterpreted a variety of circulating narratives on teen childbearing. They reproduced dominant narratives through pathology, missed adolescence, and redemption stories, and reinterpreted dominant narratives through stories of stratified reproduction, sexual health education, and stigmatization and surveillance. Our participants' narratives illustrate the need to think broadly about the meanings of early pregnancy and motherhood in terms of how they play out in research and policymaking. We call for a discursive shift in ways of knowing about and doing research and policy surrounding teen childbearing.

Moral Outpouring: Shock and Generosity in the Aftermath of the BP Oil Spill
Justin Farrell

The 2010 BP oil spill is the largest human-caused disaster in U.S. history. Using nationally representative panel data measured before, during, and after the spill I find that rather than giving time and money to actual relief efforts, Americans responded primarily through dramatic increases in time and money given for environmental causes. This expands current understandings about how and why Americans respond to large-scale catastrophe. I argue that this phenomenon can be made sense of theoretically by focusing on the cultural context of “moral shock” precipitated by historic environmental harm and corporate negligence, both of which were amplified in the wake of the spill by national media. This heightened emotional climate interacted with Americans' empathetic identities, practices and habits, politics, and culture to produce different pathways to philanthropic engagement. Consistent with this argument, the results show that all four of these factors mattered for predicting generous behavior in this case, but did so at different points in time. I close by outlining the substantive and theoretical implications of my argument.

Crime & Delinquency 60(5)

Crime & Delinquency, August 2014: Volume 60, Issue 5

Using Cognitive Interviewing to Explore Causes for Racial Differences on the MAYSI-2
Henrika McCoy

Prior research indicated that African American and Caucasian youth respond differently to items on the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument–Version 2 (MAYSI-2), a mental health screening tool used nationwide in juvenile justice systems, thus possibly affecting mental health need identification. To explore the cause for the differences, cognitive interviews were conducted with eight African American and eight Caucasian male juvenile detainees, aged 12 to 16 years, from two Midwestern detention facilities. Results indicate differences in how both groups interpreted certain mental health symptoms and the dimension of time. Both groups also similarly misinterpreted and were suspicious of some items. To address these issues, the MAYSI-2 could benefit from further examination and development.

Organizational Failure and the Disbanding of Local Police Agencies
William R. King

Police organizations are a ubiquitous aspect of the landscape of criminal justice in the United States. Yet, little attention has been paid to the failure of police agencies and the consequences of such failure. This article uses structural contingency theory and organizational institutional theory to explore why 31 police agencies were disbanded during the 1990s. The findings indicate that agencies disband because they face significant environmental changes in their contingency and institutional environments. Contingency reasons for disbanding are mostly related to budgetary constraints. Institutional reasons usually involve agencies that engage in behaviors that violate the expectations of powerful sovereigns. Overall, police agencies disband because they cannot adapt to changes in their contingency and institutional environments or they change in inappropriate ways, and their small organizational size does not provide a sufficient buffer against external intrusion from the institutional environment, which results in disbanding.

Indeterminate and Determinate Sentencing Models: A State-Specific Analysis of Their Effects on Recidivism
Yan Zhang, Lening Zhang, and Michael S. Vaughn

This article compares the effects of indeterminate and determinate sentencing models on recidivism using a measure of parole board discretionary release and mandatory parole release under each sentencing model. Data collected from Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1994: United States are used to conduct a state-specific comparison of the two release programs in six mixed-sentencing states. The results indicate that the effects of different sentencing models significantly vary across the six states. Whereas mandatory parole release was more likely to have a deterrent effect on recidivism in Maryland and Virginia, parole board discretionary release was more effective in New York and North Carolina. Release programs in Oregon and Texas showed no significant differences in their effects on recidivism.

Do More Police Lead to More Crime Deterrence?
Gary Kleck and J. C. Barnes

Does increasing police strength deter more crime? Some studies have found apparent negative effects of police manpower levels on crime rates, and the most common explanation of such findings is that greater police strength increases perceptions of arrest risk, thus reducing crime via general deterrence mechanisms. The authors directly tested this hypothesis by estimating the association between survey respondents’ perceptions of arrest risk and the level of police strength prevailing in the counties where they live. No relationship between the number of police officers per capita and perceptions of the risk of arrest was found, suggesting that increases in police manpower will not increase general deterrent effects and decreases will not reduce these effects. The authors also considered the possibility that police manpower levels influence the number of criminals incarcerated, and thus affect crime rates via the incapacitative effects of incarceration, but concluded that such an effect is unlikely. These findings point to a need to reconsider previous interpretations of findings as supportive of a deterrent effect of increased police manpower on crime rates.

Placing the Neighborhood Accessibility–Burglary Link in Social-Structural Context
Jeffrey T. Ward, Matt R. Nobles, Tasha J. Youstin, and Carrie L. Cook

Foundational research on the link between neighborhood accessibility and burglary has consistently shown a positive association. However, recent research has found that less accessible neighborhoods have higher burglary rates. Geographically referenced data from 401 neighborhoods in Jacksonville, Florida, are used to determine whether these inconsistencies can be explained by a conditioning effect of neighborhood social-structural context. Results from spatially lagged regression models indicate that neighborhood accessibility fails to have a direct effect on burglary rates after social-structural variables are controlled; rather, the effect of neighborhood accessibility on burglary rates is conditioned by the level of concentrated disadvantage of the neighborhood. Two potential explanations for the empirical findings are offered, and implications of the results for “designing out” crime are discussed.

Violent Video Games, Catharsis Seeking, Bullying, and Delinquency: A Multivariate Analysis of Effects
Christopher J. Ferguson, Cheryl K. Olson, Lawrence A. Kutner, and Dorothy E. Warner

The effects of violent video game exposure on youth aggression remain an issue of significant controversy and debate. It is not yet clear whether violent video games uniquely contribute to long-term youth aggression or whether any relationship is better explained through third variables such as aggressive personality or family environment. The current study examines the influence of violent video game exposure on delinquency and bullying behavior in 1,254 seventh- and eighth-grade students. Variables such as parental involvement, trait aggression, stress, participation in extracurricular activities, and family/peer support were also considered. Results indicated that delinquent and bullying behavior were predicted by the child’s trait aggression and stress level. Violent video game exposure was not found to be predictive of delinquency or bullying, nor was level of parental involvement. These results question the commonly held belief that violent video games are related to youth delinquency and bullying.

The Criminal Victimization–Depression Sequela: Examining the Effects of Violent Victimization on Depression With a Longitudinal Propensity Score Design
Andy Hochstetler, Matt DeLisi, Gloria Jones-Johnson, and W. Roy Johnson

Drawing on three waves of survey data, the authors examined the effects of criminal victimization on depression. First, the authors developed a structural equation model to determine whether criminal victimization predictsdepression. Second, recognizing that victimization is contingent on background factors, they tested whether victimization, conceptualized as an assigned treatment, has significant effects on depression, using inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW). In structural equation modeling equations, victimization predicts initial levels of depression and change in depression across waves. In the IPTW regression models, victimization had significant effects on levels of depression. There is considerable evidence to suggest that victimization influences depression, and investigators must be cautious when examining the temporal and selection issues surrounding the effects.

Theoretical Criminology 18(3)

Theoretical Criminology, August 2014: Volume 18, Issue 3

Private security regimes: Conceptualizing the forces that shape the private delivery of security
Benoit Dupont

There is as much diversity within the private security industry as there are differences between public and private security providers. Whereas comparisons of the two modes of delivery have kept criminologists and economists fairly busy over the years, internal variations have not attracted the same level of interest. In the current environment, binary classifications such as the public/private security dichotomy might be too generic to capture the broad spectrum of unique security arrangements being adopted by various organizations. The aim of this article is therefore to offer an alternative conceptual framework that can account for the broad range of mechanisms responsible for the diversity of private security arrangements observed in late modern societies. The term ‘security regime’ defines the convergence of internal forces and environmental constraints that determine the conditions under which security is produced and exchanged by an organization. The four key dimensions (focus, risks, utility and constraints) that characterize a specific security regime were identified from interviews conducted with more than 50 security managers. The security regime approach should expand our knowledge of the various causes that facilitate, empower or hinder public–private relationships.

Policing ‘sexting’: Responsibilization, respectability and sexual subjectivity in child protection/crime prevention responses to teenagers’ digital sexual expression
Lara Karaian

This article examines the motivations, techniques and potential consequences of the governance of teenage sexting. I examine the over-representation of white, middle-class, heterosexual, female sexters, and abstinence from sexting discourses in the ‘Respect Yourself’ child protection/crime prevention initiative. This campaign, I suggest, exploits slut shaming in an effort to responsibilize teenage girls for preventing the purported harms that may flow from sexting—including humiliation, sexual violations and criminalization—for both themselves and their peers. I examine this responsibilization effort through the lens of critical whiteness, queer, girlhood/young feminist and porn studies’ theorizations of the politics of sexual respectability and sexual subjectification and argue that this campaign simultaneously: reveals anxieties about the decline of the moral authority of the white, middle-class, heterosexual nuclear family; constitutes certain teenage girls’ unintelligibility as sexual subjects; and, undermines teenage girls’ ability to challenge a normative sexual order in which they are often blamed extra/legally for their sexual victimization.

Green crime and victimization: Tensions between social and environmental justice
Pamela Ann Davies

In 2011, Rio Tinto Alcan, one of the world’s largest producers of aluminium, announced the closure of the smelter at Lynemouth, Northumberland, north-east England. The plant, a major local employer, finally closed in March 2013. This article examines global concerns about environmental emission standards and the costs of compliance. This plant’s closure is a success in green terms. However, where closure is officially considered a compliance option, costs to deprived communities are high. From a (green) victimological perspective, the article contemplates the hidden costs of closure on already deprived local and regional communities. The discussion focuses on how green crime and green compliance creates victimization and reflects on the moral and ethical challenges this presents for a green criminology.

The quantitative–qualitative divide in criminology: A theory of ideas’ importance, attractiveness, and publication
Scott Jacques

Qualitative research is published in criminology journals at a frequency far smaller than that of quantitative research. The question is ‘Why?’ After reviewing existing theories of the discrepancy, this article draws on the paradigm of Blackian sociology, Jacques and colleagues’ theory of method, and Black’s theory of ideas to propose a new theory: compared to quantitative research-based ideas, qualitative ones are evaluated as less important—and therefore published less often in journals—because they place the subject closer in cultural distance to the source and audience, though for that same reason they are also evaluated as being more attractive. Implications for criminology are discussed.

States, subjects and sovereign power: Lessons from global gun cultures
Jennifer D Carlson

This article examines demand for guns for personal protection in the USA, South Africa, and India. To make sense of pro-gun sentiment across these different contexts, I argue that gun owners and carriers who arm themselves for personal protection represent a particular kind of ‘responsibilized’ subject. Drawing on Foucault’s analysis of sovereign power and governmentality, I develop a theory of the ‘sovereign subject’. This is a political rationality marked by private individuals’ capacity and desire to perform sovereign functions that the state has typically monopolized, specifically the exercise of legitimate, lethal violence. I conclude the article by suggesting four characteristics (historically precarious state monopoly on sovereign power; legality of civilian use of guns; preponderance of criminal guns; and US influence) that may encourage demand for guns in high-crime societies.

Advancing emotionally intelligent justice within public life and popular culture
Nick Flynn

Based on the understanding that traditional forms of justice are characterized by ‘affective authoritarianism’, Lawrence W Sherman has argued that a new system of emotionally intelligent justice is needed to nurture the expression of positive, beneficial emotions; and to control negative, detrimental ones. The policy approach advocated to advance this progressive agenda of penal reform involves critical theory, institutional innovation and empirical research focused primarily on the alternative paradigm of restorative justice. Irrespective of the ‘truth’ or ‘fairness’ of emotionally intelligent justice, this article argues that, because emotions are constructed through socio-cultural circumstances and are integral to ethical judgements which legitimize traditional forms of justice in contemporary public life, managing emotions in criminal justice settings requires reform that is not only critical and experimental, but also public and popular.

Workplace violence: Extending the boundaries of criminology
Emily Schindeler

There is a growing body of research concerned with the prevalence, antecedents and impacts of interpersonal workplace violence which causes significant psycho-social injuries. Contributions have been made by sociologists, psychologists, organizational behaviourists and management functionalists. However there has been a paucity of attention by criminological theorists or empiricists despite the well-documented costs for victims, bystanders, employers and the public purse. Drawing from key themes within existing literature, this article applies constructive criminology principles and normalization theory to extend the understanding of interpersonal violence within the workplace and challenges to prevention. This is not an argument for greater application of criminal law but rather an argument that such violence and consequent psycho-social injuries be recognized as a source of victimization and a matter of justice.

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 51(5)

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, August 2014: Volume 51, Issue 5

Out of Place: Racial Stereotypes and the Ecology of Frisks and Searches Following Traffic Stops
Leo Carroll and M. Lilliana Gonzalez

Objectives: Test hypotheses drawn from Smith and Alpert’s social conditioning theory that explains biased policing as the result of implicit racial stereotypes. Distinguishing between frisks and searches, we hypothesize that (1) Black drivers are more likely than White drivers to be frisked and searched; (2) racial disparity is greater in frisks than searches; (3) racial disparity in frisks, but not searches, is conditional upon the racial composition of the community; and (4) that drivers’ race is not related to the productivity of searches. Methods: Data are all traffic stops made by the Rhode Island State Police in 2006, exclusive of those in which a search was mandatory. Multinomial and binary logistic regressions are employed to estimate models of frisks, searches, search productivity, and to test the conditional effect of community context. Results: Each of the four hypotheses is supported. Conclusion: Biased policing is largely the product of implicit stereotypes that are activated in contexts in which Black drivers appear out of place and in police actions that require quick decisions providing little time to monitor cognitions. This insight has important implications for police training. Because of limitations in this study, additional research that distinguishes frisks and searches is needed.

Contact and Compromise: Explaining Support for Conciliatory Measures in the Context of Violent Intergroup Conflict
Justin T. Pickett, Thomas Baker, Christi Metcalfe, Marc Gertz, and Rose Bellandi

Objectives: Informed by intergroup contact theory, this study explores the relationships between intergroup contact, perceived out-group threat, and support for conciliatory solutions to the violent conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinians in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Methods: Regression and structural equation models analyze public opinion data collected in Israel in 2011 and 2012. The analyses assess whether quantity and quality of Israeli Jews’ contact with Israeli Arabs in day-to-day encounters are associated with their support for conciliatory policies. Results: The quality, but not the quantity, of contact is associated with lower levels of perceived Palestinian threat and, in turn, with increased support for compromise. Conclusion: The current study provides initial evidence that everyday interactions with Israeli Arabs, when they occur under optimal conditions, may have the potential to reduce Israeli Jews’ perceptions of Palestinian threat and, in turn, increase their support for compromise.

The Role of Affect in Intended Rule Breaking: Extending the Rational Choice Perspective
Amy Sariti Kamerdze, Tom Loughran, Ray Paternoster, and Tracy Sohoni

Objectives: Through a mood induction procedure, we prime positive, negative, or a neutral affective state and examine its effect on intentions to cheat on an exam and drinking and driving. Method: University students served as subjects for the study. They were provided with a questionnaire that randomized a mood induction procedure. Respondents were asked to recall (1) a recent positive event or experience, (2) a recent negative event or experience, or (3) their favorite books. They then completed a questionnaire that asked about their current mood state and got their responses to two hypothetical crime scenarios—cheating on an exam and drinking and driving. They were also asked questions pertaining to perceived risk, their decision-making style, impulsivity, and confidence. Results: We found that those experiencing an intense positive mood state were generally less likely to report that they would cheat or drive drunk relative to the negative and neutral state. However, we found little support for the suggested mediating causal mechanisms. Conclusions: Affective states milder than emotions are related to intentions to commit acts that are in the long-term harmful and go against self-interest. The relationship between affect states and criminal decision making can benefit from additional research.

Police Charging Practices for Incidents of Intimate Partner Violence in Canada
Myrna Dawson and Tina Hotton

Objectives: To examine police charging practices in case of intimate partner violence (IPV) in Canada. Methods: In this national level study, we explore police charging in cases of IPV using data from the 2008 Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) survey. Using logistic regression, we examine the impact of several key legal and extralegal factors on the police charging decisions. Results: Analysis shows that, while the majority of cases were cleared by charge, the proportion of cases in which police recommended a charge varied across the country. Further, the majority of legal and extralegal variables examined were significantly associated with the police decision to lay a charge across the jurisdictions examined, including the presence of victim injury, multiple victims, offence type as well as gender of the victim and the victim–accused relationship. Conclusion: Study findings indicate that future research on police charging in cases of IPV require more precise examinations of the role played by gender and the type of relationship as well as an investigation of the community context in which police decisions are made.

Copper Cable Theft: Revisiting the Price–Theft Hypothesis
Aiden Sidebottom, Matt Ashby, and Shane D. Johnson

Objectives: To test the commonly espoused but little examined hypothesis that fluctuations in the price of metal are associated with changes in the volume of metal theft. Specifically, we analyze the relationship between the price of copper and the number of police recorded “live” copper cable thefts from the British railway network (2006 to 2012). Method: Time-series analysis was performed using 76 months of data to determine the association between mean copper price and police recorded “live” copper cable theft. Two rival hypotheses, that changes in the theft of copper cabling reflect changes in the theft of railway property more generally (or the reporting thereof) or variations in the rate of unemployment, were also tested. Results: We find support for the price–theft hypothesis: Changes in the price of copper were positively associated with variations in the volume of “live” copper cable theft. A downward trend in copper cable theft in recent years is also observed, although the mechanism/mechanisms underpinning this pattern is unclear. Conclusion: The theft of “live” copper cable is associated with fluctuations in copper price. As such, it differs substantially from the “crime drop” typically noted for most types of crime providing further support for the price–theft hypothesis.

Journal of Marriage and Family 76(4)

Journal of Marriage and Family, August 2014: Volume 76, Issue 4

Work and Family

Young Women's Job Mobility: The Influence of Motherhood Status and Education
Jessica Looze

Weekend Work and Leisure Time With Family and Friends: Who Misses Out?
Lyn Craig and Judith E. Brown

His and Hers: Economic Factors and Relationship Quality in Germany
Jessica Halliday Hardie, Claudia Geist and Amy Lucas

Parenting

Have Authoritarian Parenting Practices and Roles Changed in the Last 50 Years?
Tatiana Alina Trifan, Håkan Stattin and Lauree Tilton-Weaver

Parents' Relationship Quality and Children's Behavior in Stable Married and Cohabiting Families
Julia S. Goldberg and Marcia J. Carlson

Parenting in Relation to School Dropout Through Student Engagement: A Longitudinal Study
Kristjana S. Blondal and Sigrun Adalbjarnardottir

Dynamic Family System Trajectories From Pregnancy to Child's First Year
Jallu Lindblom, Marjo Flykt, Asko Tolvanen, Mervi Vӓnskӓ, Aila Tiitinen, Maija Tulppala and Raija-Leena Punamӓki

Of General Interest

Can Johnson's Typology of Adult Partner Violence Apply to Teen Dating Violence?
Janine M. Zweig, Jennifer Yahner, Meredith Dank and Pamela Lachman

Trends in Cohabitation Outcomes: Compositional Changes and Engagement Among Never-Married Young Adults
Karen Benjamin Guzzo

Single Motherhood, Living Arrangements, and Time With Children in Japan
James M. Raymo, Hyunjoon Park, Miho Iwasawa and Yanfei Zhou

Nonresident Father Involvement With Children and Divorced Women's Likelihood of Remarriage
Catherine B. McNamee, Paul Amato and Valarie King

Reconfigured Reciprocity: How Aging Taiwanese Immigrants Transform Cultural Logics of Elder Care
Ken Chih-Yan Sun