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Exploring the Sources of Collective Effervescence: A Multilevel Study

By on January 17, 2019 in Articles

Lasse Suonperä Liebst

Sociological Science, January 17, 2019
10.15195/v6.a2

Abstract
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Collective effervescence is assigned a key role in sociological theorizing on ritual and group processes, yet surprisingly little research has systematically measured the phenomenon and examined its sources. In addressing this research gap, the current article explores and compares several correlates of collective effervescence. The data included questionnaires and geospatial records of spatial setting and movement patterns recorded at a large music festival. Multilevel regression modeling was applied, and the strength of the estimated evidence was assessed with frequentist and Bayesian approaches. Results suggest that collective effervescence is a highly spatially clustered phenomenon that, in particular, is associated with the social-morphological feature of being in a crowd of people. The article discusses the implications of these results for sociological Durkheim scholarship as well as for festival-event studies.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Lasse Suonperä Liebst: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen
E-mail: lsl@soc.ku.dk

Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank the following individuals for their comments and suggestions: Randall Collins, Line Vistisen Liebst, Inge Kryger Pedersen, and Richard Philpot.

  • Citation: Liebst, Lasse Suonperä. 2019. “Exploring the Sources of Collective Effervescence: A Multilevel Study.” Sociological Science 6: 27-42.
  • Received: October 27, 2018
  • Accepted: November 25, 2018
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a2


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Inequality of Educational Opportunity in East and West Germany: Convergence or Continued Differences?

By on January 10, 2019 in Articles

Markus Klein, Katherin Barg, Michael Kühhirt

Sociological Science, January 10, 2019
10.15195/v6.a1

Abstract
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Diversity in education systems, and broader political and economic conditions, are commonly credited with international variation in inequality of educational opportunity (IEO). Comparing East and West Germany before reunification allows us to investigate whether vastly different political, economic, and educational systems led to differences in IEO. Postreunification, East Germany adopted the West’s systems and experienced an economic recession. IEO had been smaller in East Germany than in West Germany but was on an upward trajectory before reunification. After 1990, IEO in East Germany converged to the West German level as a result of decreased IEO in the west and increasing levels in the east. Postreunification convergence suggests that differences in political context and education policy are crucial for IEO.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Markus Klein: School of Education, University of Strathclyde
E-mail: markus.klein@strath.ac.uk

Katherin Barg: Graduate School of Education, University of Exeter
E-mail: k.barg@exeter.ac.uk

Michael Kühhirt: Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Cologne
E-mail: michael.kuehhirt@uni-koeln.de

Acknowledgements: The authors gratefully acknowledge the participants in the German Life History Study (GLHS), the German General Social Survey (GGSS), and the German Microcensus (GMC) for providing their information; the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin for collecting and managing the GLHS data; the GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences for collecting and managing the GGSS data; and the statistical offices of the Länder under the supervision of the Federal Statistical Office for collecting and managing the GMC data. The authors would also like to thank Walter Müller, Andreas Hadjar, and Ian Rivers for their valuable comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript; Julia Däumling for the excellent research assistance; and Matilda Klein for the copyediting. Sole responsibility for any remaining errors lies with the authors.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Klein, Markus, Katherin Barg, and Michael Kühhirt. 2018. “Inequality of Educational Opportunity in East and West Germany: Convergence or Continued Differences?” Sociological Science 6: 1-26.
  • Received: October 15, 2018
  • Accepted: November 21, 2018
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Stephen Morgan
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a1


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Cultural Capital and Educational Inequality: A Counterfactual Analysis

By on December 12, 2018 in Articles

Mads Meier Jæger, Kristian Karlson

Sociological Science, December 12, 2018
10.15195/v5.a33

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We use National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) data and a counterfactual approach to test the macro-level implications of cultural reproduction and cultural mobility theory. Our counterfactual analyses show that the observed socioeconomic gradient in children’s educational attainment in the NLSY79 data would be smaller if cultural capital was more equally distributed between children whose parents are of low socioeconomic status (SES) and those whose parents are of high SES. They also show that hypothetically increasing cultural capital among low-SES parents would lead to a larger reduction in the socioeconomic gradient in educational attainment than reducing it among high-SES parents. These findings are consistent with cultural mobility theory (which argues that low-SES children have a higher return to cultural capital than high-SES children) but not with cultural reproduction theory (which argues that low-SES children have a lower return to cultural capital). Our analysis contributes to existing research by demonstrating that the unequal distribution of cultural capital shapes educational inequality at the macro level.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Mads Meier Jæger: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen
E-mail: mmj@soc.ku.dk

Kristian Karlson: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen
E-mail: kbk@soc.ku.dk

Acknowledgements: We presented this article at the 2015 Research Committee 28 meeting at Tilburg University and at several research seminars at the University of Copenhagen. We thank the participants at these events for their excellent comments. The research leading to the results presented in this article has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) and ERC grant 312906.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Jæger, Mads Meier, and Kristian Karlson. 2018. “Cultural Capital and Educational Inequality: A Counterfactual Analysis.” Sociological Science 5: 775-795.
  • Received: September 5, 2018
  • Accepted: November 7, 2018
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v5.a33


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Hegemonic Gender Norms and the Gender Gap in Achievement: The Case of Asian Americans

By on December 3, 2018 in Articles

Amy Hsin

Sociological Science, December 3, 2018
10.15195/v5.a32

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Many argue that hegemonic gender norms depress boys’ performance and account for the gender gap in achievement. I describe differences in the emergence of the gender gap in academic achievement between white and Asian American youth and explore how the immigrant experience and cultural differences in gender expectations might account for observed differences. For white students, boys are already underperforming girls in kindergarten, with the male disadvantage growing into high school. For Asian Americans, boys perform as well as girls throughout elementary school but begin underperforming relative to girls at the transition to adolescence. Additionally, I show that the Asian American gender gap is larger in schools with stronger male-centric sports cultures and where boys’ underachievement is normalized. I speculate that model-minority stereotypes, the immigrant experience, and standards of masculinity that promote pro-school behaviors in boys act as protective factors in early childhood but wane at the transition to adolescence during a period when the dominant peer culture plays a larger role in shaping gender identities. The study offers evidence that the gender gap in achievement is not an inevitable fact of biology but is shaped by social environment.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Amy Hsin: Department of Sociology, Queens College, City University of New York
E-mail: amy.hsin@qc.cuny.edu

Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank Yu Xie, Kate Choi, Sophia Catsambis, and Lizandra Friedland for commenting on earlier versions of this work. All remaining errors are strictly the responsibility of the author.

  • Citation: Hsin, Amy. 2018. “Hegemonic Gender Norms and the Gender Gap in Achievement: The Case of Asian Americans.” Sociological Science 5: 752-774.
  • Received: July 22, 2018
  • Accepted: October 23, 2018
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
  • DOI: 10.15195/v5.a32


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How States Make Race: New Evidence from Brazil

By on November 26, 2018 in Articles

Stanley R. Bailey, Fabrício M. Fialho, Mara Loveman

Sociological Science, November 26, 2018
10.15195/v5.a31

Abstract
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The Brazilian state recently adopted unprecedented race-targeted affirmative action in government hiring and university admissions. Scholarship would predict the state’s institutionalization of racial categories has “race-making” effects. In this article, we ask whether the Brazilian state’s policy turnabout has affected racial subjectivities on the ground, specifically toward mirroring the categories used by the state. To answer, we conceptualize race as multidimensional and leverage two of its dimensions—lay identification and government classification (via open-ended and closed-ended questions, respectively)—to introduce a new metric of state race-making: a comparison of the extent of alignment between lay and government dimensions across time. Logistic regression on large-sample survey data from before the policy turn (1995) and well after its diffusion (2008) reveals an increased use of state categories as respondents’ lay identification in the direction of matching respondents’ government classification. We conclude that the Brazilian state is making race but not from scratch nor in ways that are fully intended.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Stanley R. Bailey: Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine
E-mail: bailey@uci.edu

Fabrício M. Fialho: Centre de Recherches Internationales, Sciences Po Paris, France
E-mail: fabriciofialho@gmail.com

Mara Loveman: Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
E-mail: mloveman@berkeley.edu

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Bailey, Stanley R., Fabrício M. Fialho, and Mara Loveman. 2018. “How States Make Race: New Evidence from Brazil.” Sociological Science 5: 722-751.
  • Received: September 4, 2018
  • Accepted: September 27, 2018
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Delia Baldassarri
  • DOI: 10.15195/v5.a31


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The Continuing Persistence of Intense Religion in the United States: Rejoinder

By on November 15, 2018 in Articles

Landon Schnabel, Sean Bock

Sociological Science, November 15, 2018
10.15195/v5.a30

Abstract
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In their comment on our article about the persistence of intense religion in the United States, David Voas and Mark Chaves (2018) claimed that “the intensely religious segment of the American population is shrinking.” In this response, we show that intense religion has persisted from the 1970s to the present, with a temporary uptick during the exceptional Reagan years. Voas and Chaves concluded otherwise because their analytical strategy was not sufficiently sensitive to nonlinear patterns. In addition to demonstrating the continuing persistence of intense religion, we also discuss criteria for measuring intense religion over time and the importance of avoiding unfounded assumptions in age–period–cohort analysis. We conclude that aspects of the classic secularization thesis championed by Voas, Chaves, and others are not supported by the data, and we suggest that scholars should look for better ways of thinking about religious change.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Landon Schnabel: Department of Sociology, Indiana University Bloomington
E-mail: lpschnab@indiana.edu

Sean Bock: Department of Sociology, Harvard University
E-mail: seanbock@g.harvard.edu

Acknowledgements: The authors are grateful to Jason Beckfield, Bart Bonikowski, Mike Hout, Brian Powell, Chris Winship, and the editor for exceptional feedback on this response. Direct correspondence to Landon Schnabel, Department of Sociology, Indiana University Bloomington, 702 Ballantine Hall, 1020 E. Kirkwood Ave., Bloomington, IN 47405.

  • Citation: Schnabel, Landon, and Sean Bock. 2018. “The Continuing Persistence of Intense Religion in the United States.” Sociological Science 5: 711-721.
  • Received: October 25, 2018
  • Accepted: October 29, 2018
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen
  • DOI: 10.15195/v5.a30



Even Intense Religiosity Is Declining in the United States: Comment


The Persistent and Exceptional Intensity of American Religion: A Response to Recent Research

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Even Intense Religiosity Is Declining in the United States: Comment

By on November 15, 2018 in Articles

David Voas, Mark Chaves

Sociological Science, November 15, 2018
10.15195/v5.a29

Abstract
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In their 2017 article, “The Persistent and Exceptional Intensity of American Religion: A Response to Recent Research,” Schnabel and Bock claimed that “intense religion . . . is persistent and, in fact, only moderate religion is on the decline in the United States.” In this article, we show that even the intensely religious segment of the American population is indeed shrinking. Schnabel and Bock mistakenly concluded otherwise because their analytical strategy was not sufficiently sensitive to detect very slow change (leading them to miss signs of declining intense religion on the indicators they examined), they examined a limited set of indicators (missing still more signs of declining intense religion), and they paid insufficient attention to cohort differences. Overall, their empirical conclusion that “only moderate religion is on the decline in the United States” is simply false. And their interpretive conclusion that “intense religion in the United States is persistent and exceptional in ways that do not fit the secularization thesis” should be rejected.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

David Voas: Department of Social Science, University College London
E-mail: d.voas@ucl.ac.uk

Mark Chaves: Department of Sociology, Duke University
E-mail: mac58@soc.duke.edu

Acknowledgements: David Voas received funding from the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council via the Research Centre on Micro-Social Change. The authors thank Tom Smith for helping to detail the changes that occurred in the General Social Survey between 2002 and 2004 and Simon Brauer for suggesting the use of a scale measure of intense religiosity.

  • Citation: Voas, David, and Mark Chaves. 2018. “Even Intense Religiosity Is Declining in the United States.” Sociological Science 5: 694-710.
  • Received: August 3, 2018
  • Accepted: September 30, 2018
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Stephen Morgan
  • DOI: 10.15195/v5.a29



The Continuing Persistence of Intense Religion in the United States: Rejoinder


The Persistent and Exceptional Intensity of American Religion: A Response to Recent Research

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Identity Override: How Sexual Orientation Reduces the Rigidity of Racial Boundaries

By on November 7, 2018 in Articles

Adam L. Horowitz, Charles J. Gomez

Sociological Science, November 7, 2018
10.15195/v5.a28

Abstract
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Although most Americans have limited interpersonal relations with different-race others, interracial ties are notably more common among gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) individuals. Departing from the modal explanation of intergroup relations theories, which suggests that individual propensities for between-group interactions are driven by demographic groups’ physical location relative to one another, we show that, beyond propinquity, GLB interraciality is spiked through active identification as GLB. We evaluate full romantic/sexual partnership histories along with friendship network racial compositions for respondents in a large, nationally representative sample. We show that GLBs have a greater likelihood and frequency than heterosexuals of forming multiple types of interracial ties and also that this effect applies only to those who actively identify as GLB and not to those who engage in same-sex relations but do not identify as GLB. This discovery refines theories of intergroup relations, isolating how identification serves as a mediating mechanism that can heighten the propensity for intergroup interaction. We argue that active identification with a group that crosses racial boundaries spurs overriding the rigidity of intergroup borders that otherwise dissuade interpersonal diversity.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Adam L. Horowitz: The Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Tel Aviv University, and Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Stanford University
E-mail: ahorowitz@stanford.edu

Charles J. Gomez: Department of Sociology, Queens College, City University of New York.
E-mail: charles.gomez@qc.cuny.edu

Acknowledgements: The authors would like to acknowledge the valuable feedback provided by Monica McDermott, Michael Rosenfeld, Morris Zelditch, Jr., Tomás Jiménez, and Louis Mittel. Adam Horowitz and Charles Gomez made equivalently consequential contributions to this article, and authorship should be considered equal.

  • Citation: Horowitz, Adam L., and Charles J. Gomez. 2018. “Identity Override: How Sexual Orientation Reduces the Rigidity of Racial Boundaries.” Sociological Science 5: 669-693.
  • Received: July 3, 2018
  • Accepted: August 6, 2018
  • Editors: Mario Small
  • DOI: 10.15195/v5.a28


February 2019

This article has been updated after a reader discovered and brought to the authors’ attention a coding error with a control variable. Add Health codes two responses for declining to report income as 9999998 and 9999996. In the original analyses, these responses were not treated as missing. This authors have corrected the error and rerun the analyses, which are presented in the current version.

The most consequential results of this correction are as follows:

  • The number of respondents in the analytical sample changed from 10,721 to 10,281 (p. 674)
  • The descriptive statistics in Table 1 have changed due to the change in sample size. In addition, due to the recoding of income for some respondents to missing, the descriptive statistics for income at the bottom of the table have changed.
  • The correlations reported in Table 2 have changed.
  • Point estimates for coefficients and standard errors for the models reported in Table 3-6 have changed. These changes generally do not involve changes in statistical significance, and are generally not consequential for the interpretations offered, with the following exceptions:
    • In Table 5, the effect of “GLB” in the “All other race” column is no longer significant at the p<.05 letter. As a result, the text on p. 679 has been changed to say "GLBs are estimated to select four [previously: five] of six friendship network composition categories over “all your race" at significantly higher rates than are heterosexuals."
    • In Table 6, the effect of “Less than High School” in the “Almost all other races” column is no longer statistically significant.

The originally published version of the paper is available here.


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Taxation and Citizen Voice in School District Parcel Tax Elections

By on October 29, 2018 in Articles

Isaac William Martin, Jennifer M. Nations

Sociological Science, October 29, 2018
10.15195/v5.a27

Abstract
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Local taxation produces consequential resource inequalities among public school districts, but little is known about how policy design affects taxpayers’ willingness to pay for schooling. We show that voters are more likely to approve local school taxes if the policy is written to require citizen–state consultation on how the funds are spent. In a sample of 236 California school district elections, the promise of indirect consultation with a citizen advisory board was associated with a 3.7 percentage-point greater share of voters and a probability of passage that was 31 percentage points greater, whereas direct consultation with voters was associated with a 5.7 percentage-point greater share of voters and a probability of passage that was 32 percentage points greater, relative to a proposed tax increase with no consultation. These results provide evidence that citizens may trade increased taxation for increased voice even within an established democracy.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Isaac William Martin: Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego
E-mail: iwmartin@ucsd.edu

Jennifer M. Nations: Scholars Strategy Network
E-mail: jnations@ucsd.edu

Acknowledgements: This research was supported by the Spencer Foundation (award 201800030) and the National Science Foundation (award 1421993). The authors gratefully acknowledge the research assistance of Jane Lilly López and Lauren Olsen; the generosity of Rod Kiewiet, who shared documents from his own collection of school district parcel tax measures; and the constructive feedback of colleagues at the 2017 Meetings of the Sociology of Education Association.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Martin, Isaac W., and Jennifer M. Nations. 2018. “Taxation and Citizen Voice in School District Parcel Tax Elections.” Sociological Science 5: 653-668.
  • Received: August 2, 2018
  • Accepted: September 24, 2018
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Delia Baldassarri
  • DOI: 10.15195/v5.a27


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Poor State, Rich State: Understanding the Variability of Poverty Rates across U.S. States

By on October 3, 2018 in Articles

Jennifer Laird, Zachary Parolin, Jane Waldfogel, Christopher Wimer

Sociological Science, October 3, 2018
10.15195/v5.a26

Abstract
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According to the Supplemental Poverty Measure, state-level poverty rates range from a low of less than 10 percent in Iowa to a high of more than 20 percent in California. We seek to account for these differences using a theoretical framework proposed by Brady, Finnigan, and Hübgen (2017), which emphasizes the prevalence of poverty risk factors as well as poverty penalties associated with each risk factor. We estimate state-specific penalties and prevalences associated with single motherhood, low education, young households, and joblessness. We also consider state variation in the poverty risks associated with living in a black household and a Hispanic immigrant household. Brady et al. (2017) find that country-level differences in poverty rates are more closely tied to penalties than prevalences. Using data from the Current Population Survey, we find that the opposite is true for state-level differences in poverty rates. Although we find that state poverty differences are closely tied to the prevalence of high-risk populations, our results do not suggest that state-level antipoverty policy should be solely focused on changing “risky” behavior. Based on our findings, we conclude that state policies should take into account cost-of-living penalties as well as the state-specific relationship between poverty, prevalences, and penalties.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Jennifer Laird: Department of Sociology, Lehman College
E-mail: jennifer.laird@lehman.cuny.edu

Zachary Parolin: Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp
E-mail: Zachary.Parolin@uantwerpen.be

Jane Waldfogel: School of Social Work, Columbia University
E-mail: j.waldfogel@columbia.edu

Christopher Wimer: School of Social Work, Columbia University
E-mail: cw2727@columbia.edu

Acknowledgements: A draft of this article was presented at the 2017 meeting of the American Sociological Association. We are grateful to David Brady and Jake Rosenfeld for their insights on a prior version of this article. This research is supported by generous funding from The JPB Foundation and the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Laird, Jennifer, Zachary Parolin, Jane Waldfogel, and Christopher Wimer. 2018. “Poor State, Rich State: Understanding the Variability of Poverty Rates across U.S. States.” Sociological Science 5: 628-652.
  • Received: June 17, 2018
  • Accepted: August 21, 2018
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v5.a26


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