This paper examines the dynamic implications of social networks for the labour market outcomes of refugees resettled in the U.S. A theoretical model of job information transmission shows that the ...relationship between social network size and labour market outcomes is heterogeneous and depends on the vintage of network members: an increase in network size can negatively impact some cohorts in a network while benefiting others. To test this prediction, I use new data on political refugees resettled in the U.S. and exploit the fact that these refugees are distributed across cities by a resettlement agency, precluding individuals from sorting. The results indicate that an increase in the number of social network members resettled in the same year or one year prior to a new arrival leads to a deterioration of outcomes, while a greater number of tenured network members improves the probability of employment and raises the hourly wage.
Social networks are an important mechanism for diffusing information when institutions are missing, but there may be distributional consequences from targeting only central nodes in a network. After ...implementing a social network census, one of three village-level treatments determined which treated nodes in the village received information about composting: random assignment, nodes with the highest degree, or nodes with high betweenness. We then look at how information diffuses through the network. We find information diffusion declines with social distance, suggesting frictions in the diffusion of information. Aggregate knowledge about the technology did not differ across targeting strategies, but targeting nodes using betweenness measures in village-level networks excludes less-connected nodes from new information. Women farmers are less likely to receive information when betweenness centrality is used in targeting, suggesting there are important gender differences, not only in the relationship between social distance and diffusion, but also in the social learning process.
•Social networks are an important mechanism for diffusing information.•There may be distributional consequences from targeting central nodes.•Diffusion declines with social distance.•Targeting ‘influential’ nodes excludes less-connected nodes, particularly women.•This is not only due to gender differences in social distance to influential nodes.
Exploiting a randomized natural experiment in India, we show that female leadership influences adolescent girls' career aspirations and educational attainment. A1993 law reserved leadership positions ...for women in randomly selected village councils. Using 8453 surveys of adolescents aged 11 to 15 and their parents in 495 villages, we found that, relative to villages in which such positions were never reserved, the gender gap in aspirations closed by 20% in parents and 32% in adolescents in villages assigned a female leader for two election cycles. The gender gap in adolescent educational attainment was erased, and girls spent less time on household chores. We found no evidence of changes in young women's labor market opportunities, which suggests that the impact of women leaders primarily reflects a role model effect.
In this paper I focus on designations of 'our culture and heritage' that defend practices and symbols of religious majorities. I consider the entanglement of nationalist narratives, secularity and ...the 'us' in the claims of social actors and public discussions about culture and heritage. What is understood as being religious and what is culture/heritage is dependent on the social actors involved, their position in society and the interpretive frameworks available to them. I consider the following questions: How are culture and heritage used in legal and public discourse to justify the continued presence of such symbols and practices in Christian majority countries in the West? What are the religious histories implicated in this process? Who is imagined to be included when crosses and prayers are staked out as 'our culture and heritage'? What is the relationship between culture and heritage and national imaginaries? Ultimately, as religious majorities see their numbers dwindle and power relations shift, the attempt to imbricate religious practices and beliefs in public spaces and rituals is quite possibly a translation of the religious to the secular.
The religious landscape in Canada has shifted dramatically during the past 50 years, from a country whose population and social institutions were inextricably entangled with Christianity to one which ...has an increasing number of people who do not identify with a religion at all. Citizenship in this context has shifted from a nation whose imaginary was predominantly Christian, with diversity conceptualized in rather limited ways to one characterized by (non)religious diversity and a multicultural reality. Yet, there are growing pains as majoritarian religion confronts a changing power dynamic and the new diversity. These growing pains have potentially negative implications for education. This article considers the new diversity, the articulation of religious symbols and practices as culture, and the implications of these for citizenship and living well together.
Religion in the public sphere Lefebvre, Solange; Beaman, Lori G
Religion in the public sphere,
2014, 20140321, 2014, 2014-03-21
eBook
With this edited collection, Solange Lefebvre and Lori G. Beaman bring together a series of case studies of religious groups and practices from all across Canada that re-examine and question the ...classic distinction between the public and private spheres.
This article reflects on the question of how culture and religion enter legal cases and public debates about the place of majoritarian religious symbols in diverse societies that have some democratic ...will to inclusion. In the context of the new diversity, the article considers how the articulation of “our culture and heritage” as a strategy for preserving “formerly” religious symbols and practices in public spaces excludes particular groups from the narrative of who “we” are as a nation. The reader is invited to consider how challenges to such symbols and practices might be articulated as a challenge to privilege and power and that a refusal to acknowledge those power relations puts the reputation of democracy and human rights at risk.
The notion of enchantment has been largely imagined as relating to religion, broadly defined, including magic, sorcery, and the transcendental. The idea that the world has largely become disenchanted ...has been associated with science, modernity, and rationality, among other things. Along with others such as William E. Connolly, Jason ?. Josephson-Storm, and Jane Bennett, I challenge the dominant configuration and narrative of (dis)enchantment. Building on their work, I argue that a reclaimed notion of enchantment is pivotal for the reconceptualization of human/non-human animal relations and sustainable life on earth.
How is the work of sea turtle rescue volunteers framed by their understanding of themselves and the world/cosmos? This article explores how sea turtle rescue volunteers negotiate their connection ...with these nonhuman animals, and how they understand their relationship to other people who also work on sea turtle conservation. Results show that those who are involved in sea turtle conservation emphasize a sense of cooperation and interdependence between specks, and focus on similarities rather than differences across life forms, including with other human beings. Moreover, for those who identify as nonreligious, sea turtle rescue as a site of research offers insight into an emerging way of engaging with and conceptualizing the world that sociologists of religion are uniquely positioned to describe, measure, and understand. Examining such sites of action and activism contributes to a deeper understanding of the contours of both religion and nonreligion and their relationship to each other.
This article considers the turn to culture and heritage as a strategy for the preservation of majoritarian religious practices, including the implications of such a strategy for nonreligious people. ...This turn has been observed in analyses of court cases in which religious or cultural nature of symbols and practices has been negotiated. Drawing from previous scholarship regarding the turn, this article pays special attention to Finland by examining if and how cultural justification of symbols and practices takes place. We suggest that the shift to culture applies to Finland, although in international comparison Finnish instances are more prominent in public (media) discourses that refer to laws and legal experts than in court cases. We also argue that one of the consequences of this international development is that it becomes increasingly difficult for nonreligious people and also members of religious minorities to feel part of ‘us’ in a situation where justification by referring to ‘our culture and heritage’ is one of the strategies to define who and what belongs to ‘us’.
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