September 2004, Volume 83: Number 1

Unions, Solidarity, and Striking

Marc Dixon, Ohio State University
Vincent J. Roscigno, Ohio State University
Randy Hodson, Ohio State University

Organizational resources and group solidarity are central foci in literature on social movements generally and worker insurgency specifically. Research, however, seldom deals with both simultaneously and their potential interrelations. In this article, we examine the complex relationships between union organization and worker solidarity relative to strike action. We draw on a data set of 133 content-coded workplace ethnographies and use a combination of qualitative comparative analysis and more standard statistical techniques. Consistent with expectations, results suggest union presence and worker solidarity, in and of themselves, have little meaningful association with strikes. Rather, it is their co-presence that bolsters strike likelihood. Conversely, a lack of union presence in combination with a lack of collective mobilization history diminishes overall strike potential. We conclude by discussing the implications of our argument and findings for more eneral social movement perspectives as well as prior work dealing specifically with unions, solidarity, and collective resistance.

What I Need and What the Poor Deserve: Analyzing the Gap between the Minimum Income Needed for Oneself and the View of an Adequate Norm for Social Assistance

Bjorn Hallerod, Umeå University

In this article, people's assessment of an adequate poverty line is contrasted against the minimum income they can accept for themselves. The analyses are related to theoretical assumptions about adaptation of preferences, risk exposure, and welfare-state attitudes. It is shown that adaptation of preference increases the "evaluation gap" between the two measures. Risk exposure generally does not lead to a more generous evaluation of the poverty line or to a narrower evaluation gap. Positive sentiments toward redistribution are connected with a generous assessment of the poverty line and a small evaluation gap. Those who believe that welfare benefits are misused have a restrictive view of both the poverty line and the minimum income they can accept for themselves.

Elites, Masses, and Media Blacklists: The Dixie Chicks Controversy

 Gabriel Rossman, Princeton University

Several studies have shown the influence of ownership on media content in routine contexts, but none has quantitatively tested it in the context of a crisis. Recently the country musicians the Dixie Chicks were blacklisted from the radio for criticizing the president in wartime. I use this event to test the role of media ownership in a crisis. Through analyzing airplay from a national sample of radio stations, this paper finds that contrary to prominent allegations grounded in the political economy tradition of media sociology, this backlash did not come from owners of large chains. Rather, I find that opposition to the Dixie Chicks represents grassroots conservative sentiment, which may be exacerbated by the ideological connotations of country music or tempered by tolerance for dissent.

Explaining the Upswing in Direct Investment: A Test of Mainstream and Heterodox Theories of Globalization

Arthur S. Alderson, Indiana University

The internationalization of production has played an integral role in the process of globalization. Using data on direct investment outflow from 18 OECD nations and dynamic panel data methods, I explore various accounts of the recent upswing in direct investment outflow. I test a model that is informed by mainstream theories of international production and by heterodox theories of globalization. Consistent with mainstream theories, the results indicate that direct investment is affected by factors such as skill intensity and population. Support is also found for arguments that link direct investment to social democratic government, strike intensity, and union density. Contrary to the popular wisdom on globalization, the size of the social wage and de-commodification are found to be negatively related to direct investment outflow.

Ready-to-Wear Development? Foreign Investment, Technology Transfer, and Learning by Watching in the Apparel Trade

Andew Schrank, Yale University

The commodity-chain approach to economic development has inspired a growing literature on the apparel trade. While advocates of the approach hold that North American apparel firms are transferring skill and technology to Mexico and are thereby encouraging "export upgrading" south of the border, I illuminate a parallel process of skill and technology transfer in the Caribbean Basin and thereby (1) underscore the generality of the commodity-chain approach to supply-chain integration and (2) call the benefits of integration into question. I maintain that the returns to skill and technology transfer are inversely related to the extent of skill and technology transfer and explore the inherent tension between the generality of the commodity-chain approach and the accuracy of its predictions.

Postindustrialization and Environmental Quality: An Emprical Analysis of the Environmental State

Dana Fisher, Columbia University
William R. Freudenburg, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Existing sociological analyses express differing expectations about state control over economic actors and the political feasibility of environmental regulation. Recent literature on the environmental state sees environmental protection as becoming a basic responsibility of postindustrial states, with economic actors no longer having the autonomy they once enjoyed. In contrast, much of the work in environmental sociology expects commitments to environmental state responsibilities to be largely symbolic. Scholars working from this perspective tend to see environmental damage as proportionate to economic prosperity. To assess the differing expectations, we analyze actual environmental performance among the most prosperous nation-states focusing on national-level emissions of carbon dioxide. The strongest predictors of emissions are found to be measures of ecological efficiency, which tend to be associated with potentially less symbolic policy decisions. For the future, there is a need to move beyond broad assertions, devoting greater attention to the conditions under which states are more or less likely to impose constraints on economic actors.

Do Facilities with Distant Headquarters Pollute More? How Civic Engagement Conditions the Environmental Performance of Absentee Managed Plants

Don Grant,University of Arizona
Andrew W. Jones, University of Vermont
Mary Nell Trautner, University of Arizona

Scholars agree that due to advances in transportation and communication technologies, firms can extend their reach and more easily externalize their pollution by setting up plants in far-flung, less regulated areas. They also concur that absentee managed plants or facilities with remote headquarters are rapidly becoming the modal type of industrial organization. However, they have yet to examine the environmental performance of these plants and how their propensity to pollute is conditioned by the types of communities that harbor them. This reflects a more general failure on the part of social scientists to study the impact that different organizational forms have on the physical environment. Using the EPA's newly published 2000 Toxics Release Inventory, we test the direct and interactive effects of absentee management on the environmental performance of chemical plants in the U.S. Findings reveal that absentee managed plants emit more toxins, on average, than other plants. However, when we take into account the amount of chemicals that plants have on-site and other factors that influence facilities' emissions, we discover that the environmental performance of absentee managed plants is no worse than that of other plants. Whether plants with distant headquarters emit more toxins largely depends on the presence of local institutions that facilitate civic engagement. When embedded in communities with more associations, churches, and "third places," absentee managed plants emit significantly fewer toxins.

Cross-National Differences in the Expansion of Science, 1970–1990

Evan Schofer, University of Minnesota

Why has science expanded more in some nations rather than others? The few studies addressing this issue have attributed variation in science to differences in economic development and religion. This article discusses additional explanations, including the impact of domestic political structure, colonialism, and world-system dependency. Also, developing a neo-institutional line of research, I argue that scientific institutions spread to non-Western nations via international organizations (e.g., the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), which encouraged the widespread adoption of taken-for-granted governmental policies. Cross-sectional and panel regression models of national science infrastructure in the contemporary period are used to evaluate theories. Results show that domestic
economic development is associated with the expansion of science, consistent with previous research. Results also find that science expands faster in nations linked to international organizations of the "world polity", consistent with neo-institutional theory. Finally, Protestantism and a history of British and French colonialism appear to have had an impact in the past but do not explain growth of science from 1970 to 1990. Other factors have little effect on the expansion of science.

Ideology, Social Threat, and the Death Sentence: Capital Sentences across Time and Space

David Jacobs, Ohio State University
Jason T. Carmichael, Ohio State University

Capital punishment is the most severe criminal penalty, yet we know little about the factors that produce jurisdictional differences in the use of the death sentence. Political explanations emphasize conservative values and the strength of more conservative political parties. Threat accounts suggest that this sentence will be more likely in jurisdictions with larger minority populations. After controlling for many explanations using two-equation count models, the results show that larger numbers of death sentences are probable in states with greater membership in conservative
churches and in states with higher violent crime rates. The findings suggest that political conservatism, a stronger Republican party, and racial threat explain whether a state ever used the death sentence, but these hypotheses do not account for the number of death sentences beyond one. By highlighting the explanatory power of public ideologies, these findings support political explanations for the harshest criminal punishment.

A Critical Mass Model of Bilingualism among U.S.-Born Hispanics

April Linton, University of California, San Diego

The overarching question in this article is: What contextual and individual-level factors influence the decision to maintain Spanish, or see to it that one's children learn and maintain it? I first model the configuration of area-specific circumstances that influence the degree to which Spanish-English bilingualism (as opposed to English monolingualism) is viable or desirable in a particular metro area. When contextual incentives for bilingualism are included in individual-level models, context — especially bilinguals' status and Hispanics' political influence — greatly influences the odds of bilingualism among native-born Hispanic adults. In addition to other macrolevel factors, there is evidence for a critical mass effect. People are more likely to maintain bilingualism when lots of others around them are doing the same thing.

Friendship Networks of Mobile Adolescents

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

Data from almost 13,000 respondents to the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) are used to examine the impact of residential and school mobility on the structure of adolescents' friendship networks and the degree to which parents know their children's friends and the parents of those friends. Recent movers or school changers tend to have small, dense networks, and to occupy less central and less prestigious positions in their networks, and the parents of mobile adolescents are less knowledgeable about members of their children's networks. These effects appear to persist for several years. The level of mobility in the school often has an independent impact on the character of adolescents' friendship networks; students in high-mobility schools have smaller networks and receive comparatively few friendship nominations, and their parents are less likely to know their children's friends and those friends' parents. The negative impact of individual mobility on some dimensions of adolescents' friendship networks is attenuated by high levels of mobility in the adolescents' schools. The impact of mobility on some network characteristics is especially pronounced among older adolescents and among girls.

Strangers in the Halls: Isolation and Delinquency in School Networks

Derek Kreager, University of Washington

Although criminologists have long recognized the strong correlation between a person's delinquency and the delinquency of his or her friends, the mechanisms underlying this relationship remain elusive. The current study adds to research on peers and delinquency by exploring the behaviors of adolescents isolated from school friendship networks. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) allow me to identify an isolated population and test theoretically derived hypotheses. Results suggest that low peer attachment in and of itself fails to increase future delinquency. However, isolation in conjunction with problematic peer encounters at school was found to significantly increase delinquency and delinquent peer associations. The theoretical implications of this interaction are discussed.