Tag Archives | Values

Layered Legacies. How Multiple Histories Shaped the Attitudes of Contemporary Europeans

Andreas Wimmer

Sociological Science February 23, 2023
10.15195/v10.a1


This article introduces the concept of multiple, layered, and interacting histories, which opens four new avenues of research. We can ask which types of institutions or events, such as states, religions, or war, are more likely to leave a historical legacy. We can also explore why only certain states, religions, or wars leave legacies. We can compare the consequences of older and newer layers of history, such as of a series of successor states. Finally, these layers may interact with each other by preserving, neutralizing, or amplifying each other’s effects. To illustrate these new research avenues, I use measurements of value orientations as well as generalized trust from the European Social Survey as dependent variables. New data on the history of states as well as the wars fought since 1500 are combined with existing data on the medieval policies of the Church, all coded at the level of 411 European regions. A series of regression models suggests that the political history of states is more consequential for contemporary attitudes than medieval religious policies or wars, that older layers of states can be as impactful as more recent ones, that interactions between layers are frequent, and that modern nation-states are more likely to leave a legacy than other types of polities.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Andreas Wimmer: Department of Sociology, Columbia University
E-mail: andreas.wimmer@columbia.edu

Acknowledgments: I thank Berenike Firestone and Jiyeon Chang for outstanding research assistance in creating the political history data set and for comments on a first draft; Thomas Soehl and Ka U Ng for assembling a merged data set with the ESS variables; Flavien Ganther for guidance on how to describe the statistical models; SangWon Han as well as Jack la Violette for creating the geocoded battlefield data set; and Sidney Hemming for encouraging my use of geological metaphors.

  • Citation: Wimmer, Andreas. 2023. “Layered Legacies. How Multiple Histories Shaped the Attitudes of Contemporary Europeans.” Sociological Science 10:1-46.
  • Received: June 26, 2022
  • Accepted: August 24, 2022
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v10.a1


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The Religious Work Ethic and the Spirit of Patriarchy: Religiosity and the Gender Gap in Working for Its Own Sake, 1977 to 2018

Landon Schnabel, Cyrus Schleifer, Eman Abdelhadi, Samuel L. Perry

Sociological Science March 9, 2022
10.15195/v9.a4


Societal beliefs about women’s work have long been a metric for gender equality, with recent scholarship focusing on trends in these attitudes to assess the progress (or stalling) of the gender revolution. Moving beyond widely critiqued gender attitude questions thought to be the only available items for measuring change over time, this article considers women’s and men’s views toward their own work over the last half century. Traditional gender scripts frame women’s labor force participation as less than ideal, something to do if financially necessary but not because work is intrinsically rewarding. Historically, this gender frame was reinforced by religion. We examine the gender gap in working for its own sake over time and whether and how religious involvement moderates these trends. Overall, the gender gap has declined to the point where it is now virtually nonexistent. However, religious involvement acts as a countervailing influence, bolstering the gap such that frequently attending men and women have not yet converged in their desire to work. Although the most religious Americans have not yet converged, men’s dropping desire to work and women’s rising desire to work are society-wide trends, and even the most religious Americans could be expected to converge at some point in the future. Traditionalist institutions contribute to unevenness in the gender revolution, but preferences cannot explain the persistent society-wide precarity of women’s work: Women now prefer to work for work’s sake at the same rate men do.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Landon Schnabel: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: schnabel@cornell.edu

Cyrus Schleifer: Department of Sociology, University of Oklahoma
E-mail: cyrus.schleifer@ou.edu

Eman Abdelhadi: Department of Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago
E-mail: abdelhadi@uchicago.edu

Samuel L. Perry: Department of Sociology, University of Oklahoma
E-mail: samperry@ou.edu

Acknowledgments: Direct correspondence to Landon Schnabel, Department of Sociology, Cornell University, 323 Uris Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853. Email: schnabel@cornell.edu. The authors would like to thank Paula England, Brian Powell, and participants in the Cornell Center for the Study of Inequality Discussion Group for helpful feedback.

  • Citation: Schnabel, Landon, Cyrus Schleifer, Eman Abdelhadi, and Samuel L. Perry. 2022. “The Religious Work Ethic and the Spirit of Patriarchy: Religiosity and the Gender Gap in Working for Its Own Sake, 1977 to 2018.” Sociological Science 9: 75-101.
  • Received: October 26, 2021
  • Accepted: January 6, 2022
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v9.a4


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