September 2005, Volume 84, Number 1

Erin Leahey, University of Arizona

In this paper, I trace the development of statistical significance testing standards in sociology by analyzing data from articles published in two prestigious sociology journals between 1935 and 2000. I focus on the role of two key elements in the diffusion literature, contagion and rationality, as well as the role of institutional factors. I found that statistical significance testing flourished in the 20^th century. Contagion processes and the suitability of significance testing given a study’s data characteristics encourage the diffusion of significance testing, whereas institutional factors such as  department prestige and particular editorships help explain growing popularity of the .05 alpha level and use of the “three-star system” of symbolic codes (i.e., *p < = .05, **p < = .01, ***p < = .001).

The Effects of World Society on Environmental Protection Outcomes

Evan Schofer, University of Minnesota
Ann Hironaka, University of Minnesota

The world environmental regime has encouraged nations to adopt new environmental policies and laws worldwide. But, scholars question the impact on the environment, suggesting that national policies may be ‘decoupled’ from outcomes. We fill a gap in neo-institutional theory by specifying the circumstances in which institutions will affect outcomes – namely, when institutions are: 1) highly structured; 2) when they penetrate actors at multiple levels of the social system; and 3) when they are persistent over time. We explore these ideas using the case of global environmentalism. Longitudinal world-level analyses find that measures of structure, penetration, and persistence are associated with lower levels of environmental degradation, as measured by global CO2 and CFC emissions. Additionally, cross-national analyses find that penetration is associated with improved outcomes. In this case, international institutions have generated substantive social change.

Economic Development Policymaking Down the Global Commodity Chain: Attracting an Auto Industry to Silao, Mexico

Jeffrey S. Rothstein, University of Wisconsin-Madison

This article applies the global commodity chain approach to analyze the way policymakers encouraged an automotive commodity chain to touch down in Silao, Mexico. The article explains that the changing dynamics of the global auto industry have transformed it into an “assembler-driven” commodity chain. It notes how policymakers in the state of Guanajuato employed their understanding of the automotive commodity chain, and Mexico’s role in the North American auto industry to craft a development strategy aimed at attracting General Motors to Silao, and then luring manufacturers in the automaker’s supply chain. This strategy of attracting the lead firm and then working down a producer-driven commodity chain stands in stark contrast to recent development theories prescribing industrial upgrading among firms in buyer-driven commodity chains.

International Migration, Deindustrialization and Union Decline in 16 Affluent OECD Countries, 1962-1997

Cheol-Sung Lee, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

This article, using unbalanced panel data on 16 affluent OECD countries, tests the effects of diverse aspects of globalization and deindustrialization on unionization trends. In contrast to the recent studies focusing on the conditional role of labor market institutions, this study underlines the role of two structural factors in transforming occupational structures and ethnic composition of labor force: deindustrialization and international labor mobility across borders. The results lend substantial credence to my argument that, while deindustrialization has driven dramatic declines in union density by shrinking employment in traditionally highly unionized manufacturing sector, international migration negatively affects unionization by increasing competitions and heterogeneity between low-skilled native and immigrant workers. The empirical findings raise the question of how trade unions can build solidarity between native and immigrant workers.

Privileged Access, Privileged Accounts: Toward a Socially Structured Theory of Resources and Discourses

William R. Freudenburg, University of California-Santa Barbara

Environmental harms involve a “double diversion” – two forms of privilege that deserve greater attention. The first involves disproportionality, or the privileged diversion of rights/resources: Contrary to common assumptions, much environmental damage is not economically “necessary” – instead, it represents privileged access to the environment. It is made possible in part by the second diversion – the diversion of attention, or distraction – largely through taken-for-granted or privileged accounts, which are rarely questioned, even in leftist critiques. Data show that, rather than producing advanced materials, major polluters tend to be inefficient producers of low-value commodities, and rather than being major employers, they can have emissions-to-jobs ratios a thousand times worse than the economy as a whole. Instead of simply focusing on overall/average levels of environmental problems, sociologists also need to examine disproportionalities, analyzing the socially structured nature of environmental and discursive privileges. Doing so can offer important opportunities for insights, not just about nature, but also about the nature of power, and about the power of the naturalized.

Did the Israeli State Engineer Segregation? On the Placement of Jewish Immigrants in Development Towns in the 1950s

Aziza Khazzoom, UCLA

Israel’s “development towns” are known to be comparable to U.S.inner cities in all but one respect: while most agree that Blacks are over-represented in the inner cities because of discrimination, there is still disagreement over how Middle Eastern Jews (Mizrahim) came to be over-represented in the towns relative to European Jews (Ashkenazim). Israeli sociologists are divided between those who see an ethnically disinterested process of state-building – in which the state sent weak immigrants to the towns – and those who see one of ethnic formation – in which the state sent ethnic minorities. Findings from Israel’s 1961 census largely support the latter. The net effect of ethnicity on the likelihood of being placed in a town was large, and among available schemes of ethnic categorization, placement followed those least associated with weakness. Moreover, the interaction between ethnicity and human capital was such that even high status Mizrahim were as likely to be sent to the towns as low status Ashkenazim.

Yes We Can:
Latino Participation in Unconventional Politics

Lisa M. Martinez, Northeastern University

This paper considers participation in unconventional politics and its determinants. In particular, analyses presented below focus on differences in low-risk protest activity among non-Latinos and Latinos of Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban origin. Central to this analysis is an examination of individual and network determinants of unconventional participation, as well as, determinants unique to immigrant populations: citizenship and generation. I find that, contrary to theoretical predictions, Latinos are less likely to protest relative to non-Latinos. There are also significant differences in participation by ethnicity: Latinos of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent are more likely to protest than their Cuban counterparts. Citizenship and generational status also influence the likelihood of political involvement suggesting these are factors that not only shape conventional political behavior but unconventional participation.

The Significance of Color Declines: A Re-Analysis of Skin Tone Differentials in Post-Civil Rights America

Aaron Gullickson, Columbia University

Skin tone variation within the United States’ black population has long been associated with intraracial stratification. Skin tone differentials in socioeconomic status reflect both the inherited privileges of a mulatto elite and contemporary preferences for lighter skin. Three influential studies have claimed that such differentials in educational, occupational and spousal attainment have remained strong in the post-Civil Rights era, based on results from large nationally representative surveys. However, these studies used a period conception of change which ignored the potential for changes across cohorts within the same period. I re-analyze the available data and find significant declines in skin tone differentials for younger cohorts, in terms of educational and labor market outcomes, but not in terms of spousal attainment. These declines begin with cohorts born in the mid-1940s. In addition, there is evidence of period declines of skin tone differentials in occupational attainment in the 1980s. I discuss possible explanations for the declines.

Racial Context, Black Immigration and the U.S. Black/White Health Disparity

Jen'nan Ghazal Read, University of California-Irvine
Michael O. Emerson, Rice University

The United States’ black/white health gap is an important consequence of racial inequality in the United States. The gap is large, shows little signs of declining, and explanations have been limited by lack of theory and data. A new direction that offers potential for theoretical development is a focus on black immigrants, a group that shares the same racial status as U.S.-born blacks but experiences significantly better health. Using new data on the 2000-2002 National Health Interview Surveys, we disaggregate black immigrants by region of birth and develop a thesis that emphasizes the interplay of selectivity and racial context oforigin for understanding health disparities among black Americans, namely that majority white contexts have deleterious health effects. The results indicate that grouping together foreign-born blacks conceals important health differentials among this population. Compared to U.S.-born blacks, black immigrants from minority white (Africa, South America) and racially mixed (West Indies) regions have superior health, while those from majority white (Europe) regions fare no better. A similar gradient exists among black immigrants, with Africans faring the best, followed by South Americans, then West Indians, with European blacks having the poorest health.  Though these findings are not the definitive test of our theory, they are suggestive. They point us to understanding the mechanisms in the United States – racial context – that worsen the health and well being of black Americans, foreign- and native-born alike.

Toward Understanding How Social Capital Mediates the Impact of Mobility on Mexican American Achievement

Robert K. Ream, University of California-Riverside

This study links the social capital literature with research on student mobility to investigate low test score performance among Mexican origin youth. Specifically, it examines whether Mexican Americans learn less in school than non-Latino Whites, in part, because they have limited social capital due to the fact that they are more mobile during their school careers. This study also considers whether different forms of peer social capital, like different kinds of currency, have differential exchange value, and if such differences influence the test-score gap. Findings encourage greater sensitivity to inter- and intra-ethnic distinctions in the socialization process that contribute to group differences in the availability and utility of the resources that inhere in social networks.

Gendered Migrant Social Capital: Evidence from Thailand

Sara R. Curran, Princeton University
Filiz Garip, Princeton University
Chang Y. Chung, Princeton University
Kanchana Tangchonlatip, Mahidol University

Employing longitudinal data from Thailand to replicate studies of cumulative causation, we extend current knowledge by measuring frequency of trips, duration of time away, level of network aggregation (village or household), and sex composition of migrant networks to estimate a model of prospective migration among men and women in Thailand. We find that trips and duration of time away have distinct influences upon migration; that household level migrant networks are more influential than village level migrant networks; that female migrant networks and male migrant networks have different influences upon migration outcomes; and, that migrant social capital influences men and women’s migration differently. Our elaboration provides significant quantitative evidence as to how gender and family variously imbue migration dynamics.

Stratification, School-Work Linkages and Vocational Education

James W. Ainsworth, Georgia State University
Vincent J. Roscigno, Ohio State University

Building on more classical status attainment and reproduction perspectives, this article examines the extent of class, race and gender inequality in high school vocational education, and the consequences for students’ later educational and occupational trajectories. Analyses demonstrate significant class, race and gender disparities in vocational educational placement, even after accounting for prior achievement and educational expectations. The implications of these patterns are striking. Vocational involvement increases the likelihood of dropping out of high school and significantly decreases college attendance. While vocational training does reduce unemployment spells later on, this is less true for non-whites and women, who tend to be placed in service sector vocational training and, consequently, similar jobs. We also denote, at a more general theoretical level, the need to further explore how occupational stratification and concentration may be fostered prior to labor market entry, and by educational institutional processes often assumed to be neutral.

Gender, Time and Inequality: Trends in Women's and Men's Paid Work, Unpaid Work and Free Time

Liana C. Sayer, Ohio State University

This analysis uses nationally representative time diary data from 1965, 1975 and 1998 to examine trends and gender differences in time use. Women continue to do more household labor than men; however, men have substantially increased time in core household activities such as cooking, cleaning and daily child care. Nonetheless, a 30-minute-per-day free-time gap has emerged. Women and men appear to be selectively investing unpaid work time in the tasks that construct family life while spending less time in routine tasks, suggesting that the symbolic meaning of unpaid work may be shifting. At the same time, access to free time has emerged as an arena of time inequality.

Outsourcing the Gender Factory: Living Arrangements and Service Expenditures on Female and Male Tasks

Esther de Ruijter, Utecht University, The Netherlands
Judith Treas, University of California-Irvine
Philip Cohen, University of California-Irvine

Using data from the U.S.Consumer Expenditure Survey 1998, this study analyzes how much money different types of households spend for domestic services on “female” and “male” tasks. We test alternative hypotheses based on economic and sociological theories of gender differentiation. Contrary to arguments that marriage lowers the risk to one partner of specializing in housework, we find no differences in service expenditures between cohabiting and married couples. Consistent with gender production arguments that the household context shapes behavior, single women outspend couples across the board. Single men, however, reveal spending behavior more consistent with gender socialization. Comparing single men and single women points to the gendered nature of the tasks as an important aspect of domestic service expenditures.

Who Can You Turn To? Tie Activation Within Core Business Discussion Networks

Linda A. Renzulli, University of Georgia
Howard Aldrich, University of North Carolina

We examine the connection between personal network characteristics and the activation of ties for access to resources during routine times. We focus on factors affecting business owners’ use of their core network ties to obtain legal, loan, financial and expert advice. Owners rely more on core business ties when their core networks contain a high proportion of men, are very dense, and have high occupational heterogeneity. We conclude with suggestions for future research and implications for other populations in need of routine resources.

Who Values the Obedient Child Now? The Religious Factor in Adult Values for Children, 1986-2002

Brian Starks, Florida State University
Robert V. Robinson, Indiana University

Sociologists have documented a convergence of Protestants and Catholics in their valuation of autonomy and obedience as desirable traits for children from 1958 through 1991. By the 1980s, Alwin (1986) found that variation in such values within Protestants and Catholics was greater than that between them. Analyzing the GSS from 1986 to 2002, we test whether Evangelical Protestants, in a backlash against a climate of moral uncertainty and government intervention into matters of morality, have become more likely to value obedience in children over autonomy, while Catholics, reacting to the Second Vatican Council and to collective upward mobility, have become less likely to do so. We find no change among Catholics (and Mainline Protestants), but a shift toward increasing valuation of obedience over autonomy among Evangelicals who attend church frequently.

Residential Mobility and Adolescent Violence

Dana L. Haynie, Ohio State University
Scott J. South, University at Albany-SUNY

Using two waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examines the impact of recent residential mobility on adolescent violence. A unique focus of our analysis is an examination of the ability of various mechanisms, including parent-child relationships, psychological distress, experiences of victimization, and peer networks, to account for the relationship between residential mobility and violent behavior. We pay particular attention to the ability of adolescent friendship networks, including both their structural characteristics (e.g., size, density, and centrality) and their behavioral composition (e.g., friends’ participation in deviant activities) to transmit the detrimental effects of residential mobility. We find that residentially-mobile adolescents exhibit higher rates of violent behavior compared to non-mobile adolescents. Although most of the impact of residential mobility on adolescent violence remains unexplained by the potential mediators, friends’ involvement in deviance is by far the most important of the mechanisms that we consider.

Familial and Religious Influences on Adolescent Alcohol Use: A Multi-Level Study of Students and School Communities

Thoroddur Bjarnason, University at Albany-SUNY and University of Akureyri, Iceland
Thorolfur Thorlindsson, University of Iceland
Inga D. Sigfusdottir, Centre for Social Research and Analysis, Iceland
Michael R. Welch, University of Notre Dame

A multi-level Durkheimian theory of familial and religious influences on adolescent alcohol use is developed and tested with hierarchical linear modeling of data from Icelandic schools and students. On the individual level, traditional family structure, parental monitoring, parental support, religious participation, and perceptions of divine support and social constraint are associated with less adolescent alcohol use. Individual parents knowing other parents (intergenerational closure) is not associated with less alcohol use among their children, but all students drink less in schools where such intergenerational closure is high. The religiosity of individual parents is not significantly related to their children’s alcohol use, but female students drink significantly less in schools where religious parents are more prevalent. The results are generally consistent with the proposed theoretical model.

What Does Love Mean? Exploring Network Culture in Two Network Settings

King-To Yeung, Rutgers University

Meaning matters in the way people form social ties. Adopting an unconventional analytic technique – the Galois lattice analysis – I show how network researchers can uncover relational meanings using conventional research techniques (i.e., closed-ended network surveys). Galois lattice analysis also inspires new ways of conceptualizing relational meanings in terms of the duality of persons and relationships, that is, how actors’ understandings of each other as persons define the understandings of their relationships with them, and vice versa. The co-constitution of these dualistic meanings thus defines a “network culture.” Comparing two communal settings in which the meaning of “love” is constructed, I demonstrate that different network cultures produce different meaning structures that guide how actors relate to one another, resulting in different degrees of group stability.

Gender Differences in the Prevalence of Same-Sex Sexual Partnering: 1988-2002

Amy C. Butler, University of Iowa

This article proposes that recent normative, economic and legal changes in the United States have made it more likely for American adults, especially women, to select a sex partner of their own sex.Data from the GSS and NHSLS (n = 18,170) were used to examine gender differences in trends in same-sex sexual partnering between 1988 and 2002.The proportion of both men and women who reported having had a same-sex sex partner in the previous year increased over the period, and the increase was greater for women than it was for men.The increase for women was present among both white and black women and was not limited to young adults.Changes in normative climate accounted for the increase in same-sex sexual partnering among men and for a portion of the increase among women.

Unhappily Ever After: Effects of Long-Term Low-Quality Marriages on Well-Being

Daniel N. Hawkins, Pennsylvania State University
Alan Booth, Pennsylvania State University

The present study shows that long-term, low-quality marriages have significant negative effects on overall well-being. We utilize a nationally representative longitudinal study with a multi-item marital quality scale that allows us to track unhappy marriages over a 12-year period and to assess marital happiness along many dimensions. Remaining unhappily married is associated with significantly lower levels of overall happiness, life satisfaction, self-esteem and overall health along with elevated levels of psychological distress compared to remaining otherwise continuously married. There is also some evidence that staying unhappily married is more detrimental than divorcing, as people in low-quality marriages are less happy than individuals who divorce and remarry. They also have lower levels of life satisfaction, self-esteem and overall health than individuals who divorce and remain unmarried. Unhappily married people may have greater odds of improving their well-being by dissolving their low-quality unions as there is no evidence that they are better off in any aspect of overall well-being than those who divorce.

Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing, Marital Prospects and Mate Selection

Zhenchao Qian, Ohio State University
Daniel T. Lichter, Cornell University
Leanna Mellott, Ohio State University

We apply marital search theory to examine whether out-of-wedlock child­bearing affects mate selection patterns among American women. Using 1980-1995 CPS data, we apply probit models with selection to account for potential selection bias due to differences in “marriageability” between women in and not in unions. Compared to those without unmarried births, women with unmarried births are more likely to cohabit than to marry, and they are more likely to have less-educated and older spouses or partners. White women with unmarried births are also more likely than those without to have husbands or partners of another race. Thus, women with unmarried births tend to cohabit and are less “well matched.” These results have important implications for public policy that increasingly regards marriage as a panacea for low-income women.

As Good as it Gets? A Life Course Perspective on Marital Quality

Debra Umberson, University of Texas
Kristi Williams, Ohio State University
Daniel A. Powers, University of Texas
Meichu D. Chen, Tunghai University
Anna M. Campbell, University of Michigan

Marital relationships, like individuals, follow a developmental trajectory over time with ups and downs and gains and losses. We work from a life course perspective and use growth curve analysis to look at trajectories of change in marital quality over time. Although the tendency is for marital quality to decline over time, some groups begin with much higher levels of marital quality than others. Moreover, a number of life course and contextual factors can accelerate or slow this path of change. Our findings point to the importance of considering the multi-dimensionality of time (e.g., age, marital duration, the passage of years) as well as family transitions (e.g., having children, emptying or refilling the nest) in creating the meanings and experiences of marriage over time.

Class Organization and Subjective Well-Being: A Cross-National Analysis

Benjamin Radcliff, University of Notre Dame

I examine labor organization as a determinant of cross-national variation in life satisfaction across the industrial democracies. The evidence strongly suggests not only that unions increase the satisfaction of their own members, but, critically, that the extent to which workers are organized positively contributes to the satisfaction of citizens in general, non-members included. These hypotheses are confirmed using both aggregate-level pooled time serial and individual-level cross-sectional data across a number of countries. These relationships are shown to have an impact that is independent and separable from other economic, political and cultural factors. The implications for the study of subjective well-being per se and of labor organization as a more general social phenomenon within class societies are discussed.

Better Late Than Never? Delayed Enrollment in the High School to College Transition

Robert Bozick, Johns Hopkins University
Stefanie DeLuca, Johns Hopkins University

In this paper, we examine the antecedents and consequences of timing in the transition from high school to college. Using the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88), we find that 16 percent of high school graduates postpone enrollment by  seven months or more after completing high school. Delayers tend to have some common characteristics: they come from families with few socioeconomic resources, they have performed poorly on standardized tests, they have dropped out of school, and they have exited high school with a GED. We find that even after controlling for these academic and socioeconomic characteristics, students who delay postsecondary enrollment have lower odds of bachelor degree completion. Additionally, we find that delayers are more likely than on-time enrollees to attend less than four-year institutions and to transition to other roles such as spouses or parents before entering college. Controlling for institutional context and life course contingencies, however, does not completely explain the negative relationship between delayed enrollment and degree completion.

Childhood Religious Conservatism and Adult Attainment among Black and White Women

Jennifer Glass, University of Iowa
jerry Jacobs, University of Pennsylvania

The resurgence of conservative religious groups over the past several decades raises interesting questions about its effects on women’s life chances. Conservative religious institutions promote a traditional understanding of gender within families. Women's beliefs about appropriate family roles, in turn, influence their preparation for market work and the timing and extent of their labor force participation. Using retrospective data from the National Survey of Households and Families, this paper examines the effect of childhood religious affiliation on American women’s acquisition and use of marketable skills, focusing on women's educational investments, family formation behavior, labor force participation and wage attainment. Results show that childhood religious conservatism is associated with diminished human capital acquisition and earlier family formation for White women with more muted results for Black women.

Immigrant Acculturation, Gender and Health Behavior: A Research Note

Lorena Lopez-Gonzalez, University of Texas at Austin, Veronica C. Aravena, University of Texas at Austin
Robert A. Hummer, University of Texas at Austin

Previous research shows that the health behavior of immigrants is favorable to that of native-born adults in the United States. We utilize pooled data from the 1998-2001 National Health Interview Surveys and multinomial logistic regression techniques to build on this literature and examine the association between acculturation and immigrant smoking and alcohol use. We also examine how acculturation relates to health behaviors by gender. Results indicate that the health behavior of more acculturated immigrant women is less positive than that of less acculturated women. For men, acculturation seems to make little difference for health behavior. Thus, it is important to not only consider how acculturation is related to health, but how the acculturation process differs across population subgroups.

African Social Science Epistemologies

Francis Dodoo, Pennsylvania State University

In the social sciences, sociology is almost unique in its silence on Africa. Political science, economics and anthropology have a much better developed interest in Africa as evidenced by the Social Science Research Council and Ford Foundation supported volume, Africa and the Disciplines (Bates, Mudimbe and O’Barr 1993).¹ In this article we will first try to explain why American sociology has excluded Africa from its vision; second, discuss what sociology as a discipline would likely gain from turning its gaze to Africa; and third, suggest how sociology can facilitate a conversation about Africa both with the American public and among ourselves. A caveat for readers: we are biased in our discussion in the direction of the literatures we know best, that concerning gender, sexuality and reproduction.