How has sociology evolved over the last 40 years? In this paper, we examine networks built on thousands of sociology-relevant papers to map sociology's position in the wider social sciences and identify changes in the most prominent research fronts in the discipline. We find first that sociology seems to have traded centrality in the field of social sciences for internal cohesion: sociology is central, but not nearly as well bounded as neighboring disciplines such as economics or law. Internally, sociology appears to have moved away from research topics associated with fundamental social processes and toward social-problems research. We end by discussing strategies for extending this work to wider science production networks.
Over the past 25 years, since the publication of Omi & Winant's Racial Formation in the United States, the statement that race is socially constructed has become a truism in sociological circles. Yet many struggle to describe exactly what the claim means. This review brings together empirical literature on the social construction of race from different levels of analysis to highlight the variety of approaches to studying racial formation processes. For example, macro-level scholarship often focuses on the creation of racial categories, micro-level studies examine who comes to occupy these categories, and meso-level research captures the effects of institutional and social context. Each of these levels of analysis has yielded important contributions to our understanding of the social construction of race, yet there is little conversation across boundaries. Scholarship that bridges methodological and disciplinary divides is needed to continue to advance the racial formation perspective and demonstrate its broader relevance.
The authors present a straightforward method for assessing symmetry and asymmetry in the effect of an independent variable, on the basis of its direction of change, on a dependent variable in statistical models and provide two different empirical illustrations: (1) the effect of economic change on electricity production in nations and (2) the effect of change in income on wealth accumulation among individuals. In so doing, the authors also demonstrate specific ways to illustrate and interpret asymmetrical effects. Finally, the authors note a variety of theoretical reasons to expect asymmetry and suggest areas in which it may be observed.
Data collection using the life event calendar method is growing, but reliability is not well established. We examine test-retest reliability of monthly self-reports of criminal behavior collected using a life event calendar from a random sample of minimum and medium security prisoners. Tabular analysis indicates substantial agreement between self-reports of drug dealing, property, and violent crime during a baseline interview (test) and a follow-up (retest) approximately three weeks later. Hierarchical analysis reveals that criminal activity reported during the initial test is strongly associated with responses given in the retest, and that the relationship varies only by the lag in days between the initial interview and the retest. Analysis of validity reveals that self-reported incarceration history is strongly predictive of official incarceration history although we were unable to address whether subjects could correctly identify the months they were incarcerated. African Americans and older subjects provide more valid responses but in practical terms the differences in validity are not large.
Research on race stratification and employment usually implies discrimination as a key mechanism in race stratification, although few if any analyses bring attitudes, employee-employer interpretations, and established discriminatory behavior into a singular analysis. In this article, the authors do so and offer a relational account of how discrimination operates, drawing on a large sample of verified racial discrimination cases. Building on racial stratification literature and theory on “color-blind” racism, the analyses focus on employee and employer interpretations and then use dyadic analyses coupled with qualitative case immersion to shed light on the relational nature of discrimination and how employers justify such conduct. Findings highlight significant interpersonal disjunctures in descriptions of common events as well as the ways in which employers evoke broad organizational and societal ideals of meritocracy— ideals that often fall by the wayside in concrete decision-making pertaining to and in evaluation of minority employees.
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