Credit, Debt, and Inequality Dwyer, Rachel E
Annual review of sociology,
07/2018, Letnik:
44, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Increasing access to diverse types of credit and spreading indebtedness across many social groups were significant economic developments of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, with ...implications for social inequality and insecurity. This review evaluates the role of credit and debt in social inequality in the United States. Credit and debt shape inequalities along multiple pathways, in defining social inclusion and exclusion, directing life chances, and facilitating oppression. On the basis of this review, I conclude that building on the progress made in prior research calls for a relational approach to understanding credit, debt, and inequality that includes a focus on the powerful actors that benefit from a political economy increasingly dependent on credit and debt to distribute, regulate, and control social resources. I close by identifying outstanding questions that need to be answered in order to move forward our understanding of economic inequality and insecurity, as well as for social policy and the prospects for collective action.
The athenian nation Cohen, Edward E
2000., 20090110, 2009, 2000, 2000-01-01
eBook
Challenging the modern assumption that ancient Athens is best understood as a polis, Edward Cohen boldly recasts our understanding of Athenian political and social life. Cohen demonstrates that ...ancient sources referred to Athens not only as a polis, but also as a "nation" (ethnos), and that Athens did encompass the characteristics now used to identify a "nation." He argues that in Athens economic, religious, sexual, and social dimensions were no less significant than political and juridical considerations, and accordingly rejects prevailing scholarship's equation of Athens with its male citizen body. In fact, Cohen shows that the categories of "citizen" and "noncitizen" were much more fluid than is often assumed, and that some noncitizens exercised considerable power. He explores such subjects as the economic importance of businesswomen and wealthy slaves; the authority exercised by enslaved public functionaries; the practical egalitarianism of erotic relations and the broad and meaningful protections against sexual abuse of both free persons and slaves, and especially of children; the wide involvement of all sectors of the population in significant religious and local activities. All this emerges from the use of fresh legal, economic, and archaeological evidence and analysis that reveal the social complexity of Athens, and the demographic and geographic factors giving rise to personal anonymity and limiting personal contacts--leading to the creation of an "imagined community" with a mutually conceptualized identity, a unified economy, and national "myths" set in historical fabrication.
The study of social inequality and stratification (e.g., ethnoracial and gender) has long been at the core of sociology and the social sciences. In this article, I argue that certain tendencies have ...become entrenched in our dominant paradigm that leave many researchers pursuing coarse-grained analyses of how difference relates to inequality. Centrally, despite the importance of categories and categorization for how researchers study social inequality, contemporary (as opposed to classical) theories of categories are poorly integrated into conventional research. I contend that the widespread and often unquestioned use of state categories as categories of analysis reinforces these tendencies. Using research on colorism as an inspiration, I highlight several components of what I call the infracategorical model of inequality, which urges researchers to disaggregate difference by shifting our focus from membership in (nominal) categories to the cues of categories, membership in subcategories, and perceived typicality.
To assess how the transition from state socialism to a market economy has impacted the social stratification order in China, some prior studies have debated whether the economic privileges of the ...political redistributors have declined relative to the emerging market elites, while others have examined the coevolution between the two in urban institutional contexts. This study provides new insights into how political capital influences economic inequalities in contemporary rural China by revisiting informal social institutions. Drawing upon a unique nationally representative household survey and using surname sharing with the village cadres to infer shared lineage membership, we find that lineage-based political ties help rural Chinese households to materialize income as well as asset advantages over fellow villagers bereft of such ties. Furthermore, the economic privileges of political connections are larger in villages with lineage groups than those without, and larger for villages of more frequent kin interactions than those of less frequent kin interactions. Our results extend prior findings on the coevolution between political and market elites by going beyond formal institutions and examining grassroots-level evidence in contemporary rural communities.
Endogenous selection bias is a central problem for causal inference. Recognizing the problem, however, can be difficult in practice. This article introduces a purely graphical way of characterizing ...endogenous selection bias and of understanding its consequences (Hernán et al. 2004). We use causal graphs (direct acyclic graphs, or DAGs) to highlight that endogenous selection bias stems from conditioning (e.g., controlling, stratifying, or selecting) on a so-called collider variable, i.e., a variable that is itself caused by two other variables, one that is (or is associated with) the treatment and another that is (or is associated with) the outcome. Endogenous selection bias can result from direct conditioning on the outcome variable, a post-outcome variable, a post-treatment variable, and even a pre-treatment variable. We highlight the difference between endogenous selection bias, common-cause confounding, and overcontrol bias and discuss numerous examples from social stratification, cultural sociology, social network analysis, political sociology, social demography, and the sociology of education.
Research Summary
We integrate insights from upper echelon theory and the literature on innovation and multinational corporations (MNCs) to develop a framework explaining when and why nationality ...diversity in top management teams (TMTs) affects corporate entrepreneurship—as evidenced by diversity in global knowledge sourcing—and through this innovation performance in MNCs. In a panel of 165 manufacturing MNCs based in 20 countries, we confirm that the positive effects of TMT nationality diversity on corporate entrepreneurship and innovation are only unleashed in TMTs with low social stratification and in MNCs located in home countries that are low in national power distance. Our study contributes to opening up the black box of the upper echelon's strategic role in spurring entrepreneurship and innovation in MNCs embedded in different cultures.
Managerial Summary
The internationalization of TMTs in MNCs has been increasing in response to the globalization of markets and sources of knowledge. In this study, we examine under what circumstances MNCs that have TMTs comprised of executives with diverse nationalities exhibit stronger innovation performance. Analysis of leading corporations from 20 countries over a period of 10 years reveals that MNCs with diverse TMTs engage more in corporate entrepreneurship and subsequently see increased innovation performance—but only when these TMTs are operating in environments characterized by equal distribution of power and low hierarchy. The findings underscore the important role of corporate headquarters and TMT composition in the strategic management of modern MNCs.
Fundamental cause theory (FCT) was originally proposed to explain how socioeconomic inequalities in health emerged and persisted over time. The concept was that higher socioeconomic status helped ...some people to avoid risks and adopt protective strategies using flexible resources: knowledge, money, power, prestige, and beneficial social connections. As a sociological theory, FCT addressed this issue by calling on social stratification, stigma, and racism as they affected medical treatments and health outcomes. The last comprehensive review was completed a decade ago. Since then, FCT has been tested, and new applications have extended central features. The current review consolidates key foci in the literature in order to guide future research in the field. Notable themes emerged around types of resources and their usage, approaches used to test the theory, and novel extensions. We conclude that after 25 years of use, there remain crucial questions to be addressed.
Social Support in America Verdery, Ashton; Campbell, Colin
Social forces,
12/2019, Letnik:
98, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Social networks of family and friends are key resources that individuals turn to in times of need. When family and friends can provide assistance, they constitute a form of social capital that ...individuals may draw on for social support. Although a large body of research has examined the use of social support in its own right and as a predictor or moderator of other outcomes, few studies have explored differentials in access to social support for the general population or how these access levels have changed over time. There are many open questions. Is access to social support broadly distributed in the population or does it differ by demographic subgroups? Have levels of access remained constant? We compare levels of access to social support through both family and friends across population subgroups and describe the changing contours of access to it in the general population. Using repeated cross-sectional measurements that we compile from nearly two decades of surveys conducted as part of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, we expand on a literature that has, to date, focused almost exclusively on the use of social support as a predictor of other outcomes using non-representative data. This article presents, to our knowledge, the first nationally representative study of stratification and trends in access to social support for individuals in the United States.
Examining interactions between numerous interlocking social identities and the systems of oppression and privilege that shape them is central to health inequalities research. Multilevel models are an ...alternative and novel approach to examining health inequalities at the intersection of multiple social identities. This approach draws attention to the heterogeneity within and between intersectional social strata by partitioning the total variance across two levels.
Utilizing a familiar empirical example from social epidemiology—body mass index among U.S. adults (N = 32,788)—we compare the application of multilevel models to the conventional fixed effects approach to studying high-dimension interactions. Researchers are often confronted with the need to explore numerous interactions of identities and social processes. We explore the interactions of five dimensions of social identity and position—gender, race/ethnicity, income, education, and age—for a total of 384 unique intersectional social strata.
We find that the multilevel approach provides advantages over conventional models, including scalability for higher dimensions, adjustment for sample size of social strata, model parsimony, and ease of interpretation.
Considerable variation is attributable to the within-strata level, indicating the low discriminatory accuracy of these intersectional identities and the high within-strata heterogeneity of risk that remains unexplained. Multilevel modeling is an innovative and valuable tool for evaluating the intersectionality of health inequalities.
•Multilevel models are a novel approach to studying intersectionality.•Multilevel models of high-dimension interactions have methodological advantages.•This approach enables exploration of intersectionality for all social strata.•We compare multilevel and conventional approaches empirically and with simulations.•We situate this method within epidemiologic debates and intersectional theory.
Although trends in the racial segregation of schools are well documented, less is known about trends in income segregation. We use multiple data sources to document trends in income segregation ...between schools and school districts. Between-district income segregation of families with children enrolled in public school increased by over 15% from 1990 to 2010. Within large districts, between-school segregation of students who are eligible and ineligible for free lunch increased by over 40% from 1991 to 2012. Consistent with research on neighborhood segregation, we find that rising income inequality contributed to the rise in income segregation between schools and districts during this period. The rise in income segregation between both schools and districts may have implications for inequality in students' access to resources that bear on academic achievement.
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