by meg on
Jan 17, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Article: Social Desirability Effects and Support for a Female American President Public Opinion Quarterly, Advance Access, published Sept. 21, 2007
Summary:
The authors of this article find that contrary to more conventional public opinion polls, “Roughly 26 percent of the public is ‘angry or upset’ about the prospect of a female president. Moreover, this level of dissatisfaction is constant across several demographic groups.”
Surveyers have worried for decades about the effect of social desirability on survey responses. Previous research has shown that those responding to surveys are likely to be influenced by the desire to conform to social norms, especially in the presence of a researcher. For example, when asked about views on racial integration, a respondent is likely to answer that they are in favor of racial integration regardless of their personal views because it is considered socially unacceptable to espouse segregationist views in modern American society.
In this study, the researchers assessed respondents anger at the thought of a female president while allowing responses to be totally anonymous using something called a “list experiment.” The list experiment divides respondents into two randomly distributed groups; the first is given a list of four items, while the second group is given a list of five items. Since the fifth item on the list is the only significant difference between the two groups, the difference in the means between the two groups is attributed to the fifth item. In this experiment, respondents were asked how many items on the list made them “angry or upset.” The fifth item was “A woman serving as president.”
The results suggest that the 2005 Gallup poll showing that 92 percent of the American public would vote for a woman of their party could be exaggerating American readiness for a First Gentleman.
by ryan on
Jan 17, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Article: Negotiating Borders with Valores del Rancho. Latin American Perspectives, January 2008
Summary: Based on an ethnographic study of second generation Mexican immigrants in the U.S. and who have returned to Mexico, Mary A. Petron argues the immigration experience forces the participants to negotiate class status. Interviewees who returned to Mexico found they did not fit in with the lower class or the middle class. As children of the lower class, immigrants felt that they had learned the culture or values of that class such as hard work, saving money, and a commitment to family. Once they moved back to Mexico, with a middle-class lifestyle and speaking English, they felt disconnected from their poorer compatriots financially as well as disconnected from the middle class in terms of values. They therefore found a “third space” from which to mediate their new status.
by ryan on
Jan 17, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Article: Schwartzman, Luisa Farah. “Does Money Whiten?” American Sociological Review. , December 2007.
Summary: So does money whiten in Brazil? In a word, Schwartzman argues yes. This is for two reasons. First, more educated nonwhite parents are more likely to marry white and less likely to marry nonwhites. Second, more-educated interracial couples label their children white more often than do less-educated interracial couples.
The most interesting aspect of this article in my opinion is the structural buffer the upper-class, and especially the white upper-class, has erected. As the author notes, “By maintaining rigid class boundaries with poor nonwhites (by both marrying within their social class and imposing restraints on upward mobility of nonwhites…), the white elite isolates itself from nonwhites and imposes its standards (and incorporates into its families) the few nonwhites who share their elite status. For the same reason, nonwhites who move up are not able to break the system of racial hierarchy in the long run, because their children are often incorporated into the white group.” 958-9
***It is important to note that, in Brazil, educational attainment is a proxy for socio-economic status as we understand it in the U.S. Therefore, the dependent variable used by Schwartzman is parent education.
by ryan on
Jan 17, 2008 at 11:58 am
Article: Structural Influences on Energy Production in South and East Asia, 1971-2002. Sociological Forum, December 2007
Summary:
A number of competing theories on the environmental consequences of globalization and modernization and environmental degradation have been proposed over the last several decades.
These debates include:
- Neoliberal theories [“economic production is not necessarily as connected to natural resource exploitation as many believe” 534];
- Economic theories i.e. environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis [negative environmental impacts follow an inverted U curve during the modernization process];
- Ecological modernization [less negative environmental impact as modernization ideas are diffused through the institutions of developing countries];
- Neo-Marxist and [modernization drives environmental degradation];
- world-systems theory [wealthy core dominate global economy and utilize a disproportionate share of the world’s natural resources];
- Metabolic rift thesis [urbanization will consistently lead to the expansion of energy production and environmental degradation].
To assess these theories, York utilizes fourteen economies in Asia over twenty years as data in a magical multivariate cross-sectional time-series analysis. He concludes: 1. population growth is a key force driving the expansin of energy production; 2. modernization generally leads to an escalation in energy production; 3. In terms of globalization, the data supports world-systems theories as export intensity and debt service payments lead to higher rates of energy production.; and 4.“Modernization and globalization are key forces driving natural resource exploitation and the environmental problems stemming from them” 551.
by ryan on
Jan 17, 2008 at 11:25 am
Article: Spillover or Spillout? The Global Justice Movement in the United States After 9/11. Mobilization, December 2007
Summary: Global Justice activism declined in the U.S. after 9/11 not because activism was down but because: 1. there was a more repressive atmosphere in the U.S.; 2. a politically inspired linkage between global terrorism and transnational activism of all kinds; and 3. social movement spillout.
Spillout is defined as “the hollowing-out of a social movement when its activists shift their activities to a cognate, but differently structured, movement.” 360.
The authors argue “the shift of activism from global justice to the antiwar movement, which we term ‘social movement spillout,’ is the most important reason for the decline of the former movement.” 371 In fact, “many of the groups who participated in global justice protests eventually reappeared in peace demonstrations, and many others turned their attention into electoral politics.” 371
The idea of spillout is a positive theoretical contribution mapping the shifts of activist energy between movements.
by jon on
Jan 08, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Article: Losing my religion: the social sources of religious decline in early adulthood. Social Forces, June 2007.
Summary: During early adulthood, it’s pretty common for Americans to become less religious. Many blame the college experience: viewing Universities as a hotbed of liberal, secular ideas. However, Uecker, Regnerus and Vaaler find this stereotype doesn’t hold — it’s not the students who go to college that experience the greatest decline in religiosity:
Contrary to expectations, emerging adults that avoid college exhibit the most extensive patterns of religious decline, undermining conventional wisdom about the secularizing effect of higher education.
The authors admit that this may not have always been the case: changes in both the student population as well as college campuses may be responsible for today’s situation:
America’s institutions of higher learning - even secular state universities - instead have an (over)abundant supply of religious and para-church organizations to meet the demands of students, and they often teach tolerance and respect for religion in the classroom.
by jon on
Jan 08, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Article: Celebrity Status. Sociological Theory, December 2007.
Summary: The authors* argue that debates within sociology over class and status,which are usually grounded in the classic debate between Marxian and Weberian views of class, miss out on a distinguishing feature of status in contemporary mass society: celebrity. As they put it:
Compared with other types of status, however, celebrity is status on speed. It confers honor in days, not generations; it decays over time, rather than accumulating; and it demands a constant supply of new recruits, rather than erecting barriers to entry.
*Charles Kurzman, Chelise Anderson, Clinton Key, Youn Ok Lee, Mairead Moloney, Alexis Silver, and Maria W. Van Ryn.