摘要:

Sociology as a discipline has recently been confronted with several challenges, including questions of the existence and nature of its intellectual core, the impact of specialization on its integrity, and its relevancy. In this article I examine a relatively new specialty, environmental sociology, which has some unique qualities that make it a useful vehicle for seeking an understanding of and resolution to these disciplinary problems. The problems are seen as surmountable if a sociological perspective is used to understand and address them. Seeking a greater role in addressing societal problems is particularly important, enhancing both disciplinary scholarship and its relevancy.

ISSN:0430-0696    

DOI:10.1093/sf/72.1.1

出版商:The University of North Carolina Press    

年代:1993

数据来源: OUP

摘要:

Using a conception of reciprocal rather than distributive justice, we investigate the fairness of power strategies in exchange networks. We propose that norms of fairness affect the risk of using different strategies, by influencing the probability that they will provoke retaliation or resistance. Using computer-simulated actors to manipulate strategies, we investigate how subjects perceive and respond to their partners' strategies that vary in reciprocity and power base. As predicted, subjects in power-balanced networks judged both reward- and punishment-based power strategies as more unfair than reciprocal strategies, and punishment strategies as more unfair than equally nonreciprocal reward strategies. Punishment strategies provoked more resistance than reward strategies but, unexpectedly, no greater retaliation. Over time, the instrumental effects of the strategies tended to overcome reactions to injustice.

ISSN:0430-0696    

DOI:10.1093/sf/72.1.19

出版商:The University of North Carolina Press    

年代:1993

数据来源: OUP

摘要:

This study examines human capital, social closure, and status composition explanations of gender and racial wage inequality. Using a 1989 survey of North Carolina employees, this study is the first to include measures of job gender and race composition for a general population sample. Human capital explanations account for a trivial proportion of the gender pay gap. Firm-based social closure accounts for about 12% and job-based social closure for about a quarter of the gender pay gap. Most importantly, job gender composition accounts for 55% of the gender pay gap. The race pay gap is more closely tied to human capital differences (31%) and job closure (38%) than to firm closure (2%). The racial composition of the job explains 21% of the black/white wage gap.

ISSN:0430-0696    

DOI:10.1093/sf/72.1.45

出版商:The University of North Carolina Press    

年代:1993

数据来源: OUP

摘要:

This article analyzes differential migration of blacks and whites during the two decades, 1870–80 and 1880–90, to homesteading opportunities in Kansas and Nebraska with reference to two theories of race relations. A “push-pull” migration model is used where the pull of free farmland in Kansas and Nebraska is considered constant so that push factors of migration model the race and class relations of the late nineteenth century United States. Quantitative analysis of census data via weighted least squares regression shows support for both Bonacich's (1972) split labor market and James's (1988) racial state theories of race relations. The economic relations embodied in the postbellum agricultural system were the primary motivation for migrants from the eastern U.S. to the states of Kansas and Nebraska. Political factors also played a role in migrants' actions.

ISSN:0430-0696    

DOI:10.1093/sf/72.1.77

出版商:The University of North Carolina Press    

年代:1993

数据来源: OUP

摘要:

We investigate the residential assimilation of Asian-origin groups in the U.S., paying particular attention to socioeconomic characteristics, immigrant status, and ethnicity. Our primary goal is to disentangle the competing influence of the last two variables. Data from a special tabulation of the 1980 U.S. census (PUMS-F) allow us to express residential outcomes measured in the aggregate as a function of individual characteristics. We restrict our sample to Asian-origin householders and use OLS for our analysis of both pooled and separate group estimates of residential assimilation. Our results support the link between social mobility and spatial mobility in that Asian-origin groups translate their socioeconomic achievements into residential assimilation. Contrary to some interpretations of standard assimilation models, we find that duration of residence in the United States does not have a particularly strong influence on residential assimilation. The effect of immigrant status is overshadowed by that of ethnic group membership, a factor that points to the diversity of experiences and contexts of arrival for Asian Americans.

ISSN:0430-0696    

DOI:10.1093/sf/72.1.93

出版商:The University of North Carolina Press    

年代:1993

数据来源: OUP

摘要:

Although black/white intermarriage was a prominent indicator of race relations in the 1960s and early 1970s, the topic seems to have been low on the academic agenda during the 1980s. Many studies are currently being on done on black/white differences in income, employment, education, and residence, but there is insufficient recent information on intermarriage. To fill in this gap, I examine annual marriage license data for 33 states from 1968 to 1986 to assess how the role of the black/white color line in marriage choice has changed. The analyses generally show that black/white intermarriage has increased rapidly since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the legal ban on intermarriage. I further show that this trend is especially pronounced among black males and that the status characteristics of these marriages have remained traditional in the sense that intermarriage still occurs primarily when the white woman marries up in socioeconomic status. In my conclusion, I offer several interpretations of why the link between status and interracial marriage persists, and discuss what this implies for the nature of racial differentiation in contemporary American society.

ISSN:0430-0696    

DOI:10.1093/sf/72.1.119

出版商:The University of North Carolina Press    

年代:1993

数据来源: OUP

摘要:

Data from over 25,000 respondents of the Annual Housing Survey are used to examine racial differences in the levels and determinants of residential mobility between 1979 and 1980. Gross racial differences in mobility are small, but adjusting for differences in home ownership and other sociodemographic characteristics reveals that, net of these factors, blacks are significantly less likely than nonblacks to change residence in a given year. Both black and nonblack mobility are influenced by life-cycle factors, housing characteristics, and features of the metropolitan area, but there are clear racial differences in the determinants of mobility. Home ownership is less of an impediment to the mobility of blacks than nonblacks, and blacks are less likely to convert neighborhood dissatisfaction into a move. High levels of residential segregation in the metropolitan area create barriers to the mobility of blacks, while large suburban populations and high vacancy rates enhance the mobility prospects of nonblacks.

ISSN:0430-0696    

DOI:10.1093/sf/72.1.147

出版商:The University of North Carolina Press    

年代:1993

数据来源: OUP

摘要:

Two competing hypotheses based on the relationship between living arrangements, social class, and cultural factors are developed. These hypotheses are examined for a sample of unmarried elderly Hispanic females, employing logistic regression techniques with data from the 1980 census. Support is found for the hypothesis that as economic status increases, the impact of cultural factors on living arrangement status diminishes. This result holds for Mexican American and Puerto Rican women but not for Cuban women.

ISSN:0430-0696    

DOI:10.1093/sf/72.1.169

出版商:The University of North Carolina Press    

年代:1993

数据来源: OUP

摘要:

This article compares work values and job rewards in Hungary and the U.S., using data from a recent study of workers in these two countries (the 1989 International Social Survey Program). We argue that individuals' career strategies and attainments are shaped by their nation's structures of employment relations. The results indicate that Hungarians placed greater importance on economic incentives and on having more “leisure” time from their main jobs, time which they can then presumably use to maximize their earnings in second-economy jobs. Workers in the U.S. were more concerned with promotion and advancement opportunities.

ISSN:0430-0696    

DOI:10.1093/sf/72.1.181

出版商:The University of North Carolina Press    

年代:1993

数据来源: OUP

摘要:

Although organizational births now attract considerable scholarly attention, virtually no effort has been made to distinguish conceptually among different kinds of births and to explore the theoretical and empirical implications of these distinctions. I develop two general perspectives in order to examine the causes of two key types of birth — organizational start-ups and entries — in the nineteenth-century life insurance industry of New York. Though the strategic niche perspective is strongly supported by the startups model, the market location framework is well supported by the entries equation. Hence, I show that the determinants of these forms of birth vary systematically, indicating that start-ups and entries (and other birth types) must be distinguished in future research. More generally, I discuss the potential for drawing on the core assumptions of the strategic niche and market location perspectives in order to develop a unified theory of organizational birth types.

ISSN:0430-0696    

DOI:10.1093/sf/72.1.199

出版商:The University of North Carolina Press    

年代:1993

数据来源: OUP