June 2004, Volume 82: Number 4

Gender As Social Institution

Patricia Yancey Martin

Patricia Martin's 2003 Southern Sociological Society presidential address encourages sociologists to study gender as a social institution. Noting that scholars apply the institution concept to highly disparate phenomena, she reviews its history in twentieth century sociology. Her analysis reveals that the most common meaning assigned to social institution is endurance (or persistence over time) while contemporary uses highlight practices, conflict, identity, power, and change. Martin identifies twelve criteria for deciding whether any phenomenon is a social institution. She concludes that treating gender as an institution will improve gender scholarship and social theory generally, increase awareness of gender's profound sociality, offer a means of linking diverse theoretical and empirical work, and make gender's invisible dynamics and complex intersections with other institutions more apparent and subject to critical analysis and change.

Crimes of Opportunity or Crimes of Emotion? Testing Two Explanations of Seasonal Change in Crime

John R. Hipp, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Daniel J. Bauer, North Carolina State University
Patrick J. Curran, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Kenneth A. Bollen, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

While past research has suggested possible seasonal trends in crime rates, this study employs a novel methodology that directly models these changes and predicts them with explanatory variables. Using a nonlinear latent curve model, seasonal fluctuations in crime rates are modeled for a large number of communities in the United States over a three-year period with a focus on testing the theoretical predictions of two key explanations for seasonal changes in crime rates: the temperature/aggression and routine activities theories. Using data from 8,460 police units in the United States over the 1990 to 1992 period, we found that property crime rates are primarily driven by pleasant weather, consistent with the routine activities theory. Violent crime exhibited evidence in support of both theories.

Concentration and Diversity Revisited: Production Logics and the U.S. Mainstream Recording Market, 1940-1990

Timothy J. Dowd, Emory University

What shapes the diversity of media markets? A literature on the U.S. recording industry offers competing accounts. The "cyclical" account stresses the negative effect of market concentration, where high concentration dampens diversity. The "open system" account stresses a mitigated effect, where the logic of decentralized production reduces concentration's negative effect. However, both accounts contain notable gaps. This paper fills these gaps and consequently advances this literature. Most notably, it adjudicates these accounts by analyzing time series data on two "carriers" of diversity: performing acts and recording firms. When decentralized production is low, as in the 1940s, high concentration reduces the number of new performers and new firms. When decentralized production grows more pronounced, as in the 1980s, concentration's negative effect is reduced and eventually eliminated.

Institutional Dynamics and Dangerous Classes: Reading, Writing, and Arrest in Nineteenth-Century France

A. R. Gillis, University of Toronto

This research shows that the rise of public education in nineteenth-century France was associated with a declining rate of serious crime in the general population. The study finds that although a moral curriculum and the discipline of the classroom were intended to produce conformity, it was actually literacy that was consistently associated with declining rates of both serious crime crimes of violence and property offenses. In the case of violence, the impact seems to have been direct, consistent with civilization and control theories. However, in the case of major property offenses, occupation is an intervening variable, consistent with Merton's "Social Structure and Anomie." At a lower level of analysis, as literacy grew in the general population, the rate of crime simultaneously increased in the sub-population which remained largely illiterate. In this respect, the rise of public education and literacy may have inadvertently given substance to the idea of a "dangerous class" in 19th-century France, which foreshadowed Wilson's "truly disadvantaged" class in the inner cities of contemporary America. The analysis focuses on primary and secondary education, literacy, and crime in France, 1852-1913, using time-series analyses (ARIMA).

Disaster, Litigation and the Corrosive Community

J. Steven Picou, University of South Alabama
Brent K. Marshall, University of Central Florida
Duane A. Gill, Mississippi State University

Disaster researchers have debated the utility of distinguishing "natural" from "technological" catastrophes. We suggest that litigation serves as a source of chronic stress for victims of human-caused disasters involved in court deliberations for damages. Data from the Exxon Valdez oil spill are used to evaluate a social structural model of disaster impacts three and one-half years after the event. Results suggest that the status of litigant and litigation stress serve as prominent sources of perceived community damage and event-related psychological stress. We conclude that litigation is a critical characteristic of technological disasters that precludes timely community recovery and promotes chronic social and psychological impacts. Suggestions for alternatives to litigation are provided.

Unequal Returns to Housing Investments? A Study of Real Housing Appreciation among Black, White, and Hispanic Households

Chenoa Flippen, Duke University

This paper assesses whether housing in predominantly minority and integrated neighborhoods appreciates more slowly than comparable housing in predominantly white communities, and if so, the extent to which inequality is due to neighborhood racial composition per se rather than nonracial socioeconomic and housing structure factors. I take a dynamic approach to the issue of housing appreciation, considering both racial, ethnic, and poverty composition at purchase and change in those characteristics over time. I examine differences in real housing appreciation across black, white, and Hispanic households by applying a hedonic price analysis to data from the Health and Retirement Study, combined with data from the 1970, 1980, and 1990 Census. While much of neighborhood appreciation inequality is explained by nonracial (particularly socioeconomic) factors, minority composition continues to exert a significant effect on appreciation even net of these considerations, particularly in highly segregated communities and those that experience large increases in black representation. Unequal housing appreciation has a large negative impact on the overall wealth holdings of mature minority households, and has important implications for racial and ethnic stratification.

Power, Identity, and Collective Action in Social Exchange

Brent Simpson, University of South Carolina
Michael W. Macy, Cornell University

Power, Identity, and Collective Action in Social Exchange Our research aims to bring collective action back into the study of structural determinants of power in social exchange. Previous research has focused primarily on the bargaining power of actors whose locations in exchange networks confer differential risks of exclusion. We argue that structural position affects not only bargaining power but also the ability of low-power actors to organize against unequal bargaining power. We hypothesize that collective action among low-power actors is facilitated by identification with others who are structurally disadvantaged. We test two identity-theoretic expected utility models that specify how actors in a mixed-motive coalition game might take into account the payoffs to others in structurally equivalent positions. In the "utilitarian" model, actors maximize the "greatest good to the greatest number." In the "collectivist" model, actors also seek to minimize in-group inequality. Results show some support for the utilitarian model among female participants and strong support for the collectivist model among both males and females. We speculate about causes of gender differences and identify directions for future exchange-theoretic research on social identity and socially embedded collective action.

Conceptualizing Political Opportunity

David S. Meyer, University of California-Irvine
Debra C. Minkoff, University of Washington

This paper reviews central problems in political opportunity theory and explores the implications of adopting different conceptualizations of political opportunities for explaining the emergence, development, and influence of protest movements. Results from multivariate analyses of civil rights protest, organizational formation, and policy outcomes indicate significant variation depending on (1) whether the political opportunity structure is conceptualized broadly or narrowly; (2) the dependent variable concerned; and (3) the underlying assumptions about the mechanisms through which opportunities translate into action. We argue that these apparent contradictions can best be understood by adopting a broader understanding of protest and the political process, and that theory development requires more careful and more explicit-although not necessarily more uniform-conceptualization and specification of political opportunity variables and models.

Institutional Environments and Scholarly Work: American Criminology, 1951-1993

Joachim J. Savelsberg, University of Minnesota
Lara L. Cleveland, University of Minnesota
Ryan D. King, University of Minnesota

Neo-institutional theses are examined for the constitution of criminological knowledge during the transformation of penal regimes and the accompanying emergence of a specialized field of criminology. Effects of this reorganization, historic time, and research funding on scholarly journal publications are examined. Results are based on a content analysis of 1,612 articles published in leading journals between 1951 and 1993. Multivariate analyses support neo-institutional ideas, as topical and theoretical foci are associated with themes suggested by the policy sector. The replication of the policy sector in academic organization tightens this association. Further, articles based on political funding are more likely to engage new preoccupations of the political sector. Theoretical conclusions drawn in the articles under study, however, are independent of institutional factors.

Intergenerational Religious Dynamics and Adolescent Delinquency

Lisa D. Pearce, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Dana L. Haynie, The Ohio State University

Integrating theories about religious influence, religious homogamy, and delinquency, this study examines religion's potential for both reducing and facilitating adolescent delinquency. Analyses of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, show that the more religious mothers and their adolescent children are, the less often the children are delinquent; however, the effect of one's religiosity depends on the other. When either a mother or child is very religious and the other is not, the child's delinquency increases. Thus, religion can be cohesive when shared among family members, but when unshared, higher adolescent delinquency results. These findings shed light on how family religious dynamics shape well-being and more generally emphasize that the influence of religiosity depends on the social context in which it is experienced.

To Help or To Harm? Food Stamp Receipt and Mortality Risk Prior to the 1996 Welfare Reform Act

Patrick M. Krueger, University of Colorado, Boulder
Richard G. Rogers, University of Colorado, Boulder
Cristobal Ridao-Cano, The World Bank, Washington D.C.
Robert A. Hummer, University of Texas, Austin

We use data from the National Health Interview Survey-Family Resources Supplement to examine the relationship between Food Stamp receipt and prospective adult mortality, among eligible households. We specify a switching probit model to adjust for observed and unobserved factors that correlate with selection into the Food Stamp Program and mortality, and to estimate mortality under counterfactual conditions that we do not observe. The average individual, based on observed characteristics, has higher mortality when participating than when not participating. But due to unobserved differences between participants and nonparticipants, those who self-select into participation experience lower mortality than if they did not participate. Our findings suggest that Food Stamps provide an important safety net that protects the health of those who are most likely to participate.