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- Her Lips Are Sealed: Effects of Negative Feedback on Women’s
Participation in Online Political Discussions
Authors: Zhaodi Chen, Junghun Han
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Research shows that women engage less in online political discussions than men, but it remains unclear under what conditions this gender difference intensifies. Using a unique survey experiment with a demographically representative sample of 1,032 individuals, the authors examine how negative feedback mechanisms, a critical aspect of the online environment, affect men’s and women’s intention to participate in these discussions. The authors focus on two feedback mechanisms: dislike and deletion. The findings suggest that dislike does not discourage women from participating in online political discussions. However, women show significantly lower participation intentions when their posts risk deletion. In contrast, men’s participation intentions are not deterred by either feedback mechanism. These findings suggest that context-specific feedback mechanisms are important in understanding the gender gap in online political participation, emphasizing women’s sensitivity to online environments where their contributions might be erased.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-08-24T12:15:29Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241271723
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Has Immigration Slowed Down Secularization in Germany' Empirical
Evidence From 2014 to 2021
Authors: Jan-Philip Steinmann
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
The aim of this data visualization is to answer the question of whether immigration has acted as a counter-secularization force in Germany in recent years. The hypothesis is based on the tendency of first- and second-generation immigrants to exhibit higher levels of religiosity compared with the host populations. Simulation analysis involving more than 15,000 respondents of data from the 2014 to 2021 German General Social Survey indicates that the increase in the immigrant population during this period does not emerge as a substantial counterforce to religious decline in both eastern and western Germany. An effective slowdown of secularization in Germany would have required a more substantial increase in immigration, a notably higher level of religious engagement among new arrivals and their descendants than was observed, and a reduced pace of secularization among them.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-08-16T07:31:41Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241271687
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Corrigendum to “Visualizing Daily Time Use on Housework in Canada:
Persistence and Patterns”
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-08-13T10:02:47Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241264158
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Intergenerational Educational (Im)mobility Among Those Born in the United
States, 1940 to 1990
Authors: Wesley Jeffrey
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
This visualization highlights patterns of intergenerational educational immobility across five birth cohorts in the United States. Namely, a strong link is observed between parent and offspring educational attainment that has remained largely stable over the years. The author discusses the challenges of achieving equality of educational opportunity in the United States in light of the relative nature of educational credentials.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-08-12T10:56:18Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241271717
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Residential Mobility, Housing Costs, and Relationships among Neighbors
Authors: Kevin Beck
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Drawing on the California Health Interview Survey, I test the hypothesis that cost-related movers—renters who recently moved due to unaffordable housing costs—are less likely to trust their neighbors and count on them for support than renters who recently moved for other housing-related reasons and renters who did not recently move. I find that, on average, trust and support are lower among cost-related movers. My findings suggest that cost-related movers might be less trusting because they tend to be more wary of strangers, which could include their neighbors. They further suggest that cost-related movers might be less likely to have neighbors they can count on for support because they are more likely to perceive their neighborhoods as unsafe. The findings contribute to the scholarship on residential mobility by demonstrating that beyond the frequency with which renters move, the types of moves they experience may also shape their local relationships.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-08-12T10:52:18Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241266768
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Trajectories of U.S. Parents’ Remote Work during the COVID-19
Pandemic
Authors: Richard J. Petts, Daniel L. Carlson
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
The COVID-19 pandemic had numerous consequences for work and family, but one of the most important was the substantial increase in remote work. Despite interest in changes to remote work and questions about whether the new environment of remote work will persist long-term, we know little about variation in workers’ experiences with remote work since the beginning of the pandemic. In this data visualization, we use longitudinal data on U.S. working parents from 2020–2023 and group-based trajectory models to illustrate varying patterns of remote work for partnered parents. The heterogeneity of parents’ experiences with remote work throughout the pandemic reveals important nuances not previously identified in tracking polls and highlights important gender differences that likely had implications for mothers’ and fathers’ well-being and gender equality.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-08-12T10:48:49Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241266764
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Power in the Court: Legal Argumentation and the Hierarchy of Credibility
in Eviction Hearings
Authors: Caroline Hanley, Kathryn Howell, Benjamin Teresa
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Existing research shows that tenants are disadvantaged in eviction proceedings, but studies have provided an incomplete account of the way court procedures and practices work together to produce systematic disadvantage. We draw on legal aid attorneys’ accounts of eviction hearings—particularly how courts establish whether and how much rent is owed—to show how hearings routinely result in judgments in favor of plaintiffs even when tenants have a legal defense. We argue that there is a hierarchy of credibility in how courts evaluate landlords’ claims for possession of a rental property due to nonpayment of rent. In demonstrating the way legal claims are embedded within and shaped by wider courthouse practices, the study highlights the importance of legal representation for tenants facing eviction and suggests that courts play a role in the maintenance of exploitative rental markets by failing to penalize landlords for inaccurate charges.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-08-12T10:41:41Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241266510
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Attitudes toward Women’s Layoffs during Recessions: Evidence from
Chinese Firms
Authors: Anson Au
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Sociological research has identified persistent disadvantages that face women in hiring and promotion opportunities in firms. This article extends this research on gender inequality to examining firm preferences for women’s layoffs when faced with the prospect of an economic recession. Drawing on nationally representative microdata on workers in China, this article reveals that these preferences differ by firm type. Men in state firms report significantly higher odds of preferring to lay off women first, but this effect is even stronger in private firms. As symbols of economic stability, state firms are prohibited from conducting layoffs, creating insulated organizational cultures with traditional gender role beliefs that are resistant to change. Meanwhile, private firms are governed by a firm logic of profit maximization that creates more precarity among workers and compels them, men and even women, to embrace layoffs of fellow women workers to protect themselves.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-08-07T06:09:47Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241266733
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Pandemic Pathways: College Graduates Stalling, Regressing, and Pivoting
during COVID-19
Authors: Meika Loe
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
This study focuses on young adults as they navigated work, relationships, and health disruptions during 21 months of “amplified uncertainty” in the United States. Using a longitudinal approach, I interviewed 20 diverse college graduates from seven selective four-year universities across the United States three times over the course of the pandemic to understand change over time in approaches to work, health, and relationships. Study participants were beginning a major life transition when COVID lockdowns began in March 2020. Although most anticipated uncertainty in this transition period, they were unprepared for disruptions precipitated by a massive global health scare. In the context of COVID, many of the graduates found themselves stalling, regressing, pivoting, reflecting, and ultimately, following new and revised pathways to adulthood. The end result is a rescripting of adulthood with new developmental milestones: self-reflection, openness to uncertainty, and intentionality regarding health and well-being.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-08-03T06:43:00Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241266500
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Completed U.S. Fertility by Sex, Cohort, and Education Level
Authors: Ansgar Hudde, Philip N. Cohen
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
This visualization shows the relationship between completed fertility and education across five decades of cohorts in the United States using data from the General Social Survey. Across these cohorts, the educational gradient of fewer children for those with more education is stronger for women than for men. The gradient has become less steep across cohorts as the gap between people with medium and high levels of education has narrowed. Those without high school degrees have the highest fertility rates at all times, but this group represents a decreasing share of the population as educational levels rise over time. Thus, the educational gradient in completed fertility persists but has become less important for overall fertility patterns.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-08-02T11:52:15Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241261610
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Corrigendum to “Feminism and Support for the Transgender Movement in
Britain”
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-08-01T01:41:16Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241252378
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- The Gendered Language of Financial Advice: Finfluencers, Framing, and
Subconscious Preferences
Authors: Ambreen Tour Ben-Shmuel, Adam Hayes, Vanessa Drach
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
As financial advice migrates online, “finfluencers” are democratizing access to financial knowledge, challenging the historically male-dominated advisory landscape. This mixed-methods study explores how gender shapes the creation and consumption of finfluencer content. Qualitative analysis reveals gendered advice patterns: Men emphasize quantitative aspects, whereas women incorporate narratives and personal stories. Experimental surveys uncover subconscious same-gender preferences in advice receptivity, contrasting with stated desires for gender-neutral guidance. These implicit affinities persist even when advice content is anonymized and gender-balanced. Paradoxically, finfluencers introduce diverse voices and challenge traditional norms yet also subtly cater to gendered perspectives. The research highlights the complex role of gender in the digital financial advice market, where expanding inclusivity coexists with enduring biases. Findings offer insights for developing more equitable and empowering financial education in the digital age while revealing the subconscious factors shaping the emerging finfluencer discourse.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-07-31T06:17:31Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241267131
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Where Income Becomes Wealth: How Redistribution Moderates the Association
between Income and Wealth
Authors: Manuel Schechtl, Nora Waitkus
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
The authors study the role of redistributive policy in comparative research on the determinants of wealth. The authors argue that public redistribution affects the level of net wealth by moderating the household-level association of income and wealth. Drawing on microdata for 14 countries from the Luxembourg Wealth Study, and spending and revenue data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the authors use ordinary least squares models with country fixed effects. The authors find a positive moderation effect of social spending and a negative moderation effect of income taxation. Higher and lower labor incomes translate into higher and lower levels of wealth where income taxation is lower or social spending is higher. The authors complement these findings with panel information from the United States, providing further evidence supporting the cross-national results. In summary, public redistribution partially accounts for differences in the association of income and wealth across countries. The authors urge future research on the correlation of income and wealth to take public redistribution into account.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-07-31T06:13:24Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241261599
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Artificial Intelligence Policymaking: An Agenda for Sociological Research
Authors: Tina Law, Leslie McCall
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Sociological research on artificial intelligence (AI) is flourishing: sociologists of inequality are examining new and concerning effects of AI on American society, and computational sociologists are developing novel ways to use AI in research. The authors advocate for a third form of sociological engagement with AI: research on how AI can be publicly governed to advance equity in American society. The authors orient sociologists to the rapidly evolving AI policy landscape by defining AI and by contrasting two leading approaches to AI governance: a safety-based and an equity-based approach. The authors argue that the safety-based approach is the predominant one but is inadequate. They suggest that sociologists can shift AI policymaking to prioritize equity by examining corporate political power in AI policy debates and by organizing research around four sociological questions centered on equity and public engagement. The authors conclude with recommendations for supporting and coordinating policy-oriented research on AI in sociology.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-07-31T06:11:56Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241261596
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- How Do Real Estate Actors Advertise in Mixed-Income Neighborhoods' The
Importance of Home Security
Authors: Mahesh Somashekhar, Chris Hess, Ian Kennedy, Kyle Crowder
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Throughout its history, the real estate industry has emphasized privacy and exclusion in housing advertisements, helping entrench patterns of residential segregation in the process. Recently, however, some forms of neighborhood-level social diversity are becoming more common, as indicated by the growing number of neighborhoods that are mixed-income. Does the proliferation of income-diverse neighborhoods suggest that advertisers are curtailing their exclusionary rhetoric when marketing homes in mixed-income communities' To answer this question, this study analyzes over one million Craigslist rental listings posted in the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas in July and August of 2019. Findings show that real estate advertisers continue to rely on rhetorical strategies that likely reinforce, if not encourage, privacy and exclusion in mixed-income neighborhoods. Specifically, rental advertisements in mixed-income neighborhoods were disproportionately likely to mention that the advertised unit came with a home security device, a rhetorical tool likely aimed at calming homeseekers’ apprehension toward living in an income-diverse neighborhood. This finding suggests that scholars have underexamined the strategies that real estate actors use to persuade homeseekers to live in diverse neighborhoods. Furthermore, the security rhetoric prevalent in income-diverse neighborhoods may encourage homeseekers’ fears of mixed-income settings and impede cross-class social integration.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-07-31T06:10:17Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241260253
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Implicit Nationalism: The Missing Link in the Study of Nationalist
Attitudes'
Authors: Filip Olsson
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
By combining research on banal and unconscious nationalism with cognitive psychology, this article outlines a novel framework for so-called “implicit nationalism.” In the first part of the article, I detail how different events, symbols, and discourses affect nationalist attitudes and sentiments beyond conscious awareness and control. I argue that certain events and symbols affect implicit—but not necessarily explicit—nationalism by changing the accessibility of implicit nationalist associations. In the second part of the article, I use this framework to analyze the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The study consists of a natural experiment, including respondents from Germany, Brazil, and the United Kingdom. Winning the World Cup increased implicit nationalism in Germany, and losing decreased implicit nationalism in Brazil and the United Kingdom. Importantly, winning and losing had no corresponding effect on explicit nationalism in any country. The article concludes by discussing the implications for research on nationalism and implicit cognitions.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-07-30T05:57:59Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241258396
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Unequal Exposure to Occupational Stress across the Life Course: The
Intersection of Race/Ethnicity and Gender
Authors: Mara Getz Sheftel, Noreen Goldman, Anne R. Pebley, Boriana Pratt, Sung S. Park
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Work, a segregated social context in the United States, may be an important source of differential exposure to stress by race/ethnicity, but existing research does not systematically describe variation in exposure to occupational stress by race/ethnicity. Using work history data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study and occupational-level measures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Occupational Information Network, the authors document the extent to which the race/ethnicity and gender composition of occupational categories varies by level of occupational strain and how life-course exposure to occupational strain differs by race/ethnicity and gender. Black and Latino workers are overrepresented in high-strain jobs at many ages, compared with other groups. Exposure to job strain across working ages shows more variation in exposure by gender and race/ethnicity groups than static measures. These findings point to potential bias in research using a single, cross-sectional measure of job stress.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-07-30T05:56:33Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241258022
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Who Shapes Environmental Policy' Power and Politics in the Renewable
Portfolio Standards of U.S. States, 1997–2020
Authors: Thomas Haseloff
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Climate change has been a contentious political issue in the United States for many years. Although research at the national level has documented how fossil fuel interests have inhibited the United States from adopting a serious climate policy agenda, the situation among states is more heterogeneous. Using an original data set of 48 U.S. states from 1997 to 2020, I examine how qualitative variations in state energy policies are the product of conflicts between environmental groups, fossil fuel producers, utility providers, and political parties as they vie for power and influence. I show that Democratic party power, higher political spending from environmental organizations, lower investor-owned utility market share, higher publicly owned utility market share, and lower levels of fossil fuel production and political spending lead to more stringent policies. In contrast, weaker policies are more likely in states where the prototypical opponents of climate policy, Republican politicians and oil and gas interests, have greater power.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-07-28T10:15:29Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241266520
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Vulnerability Assemblages: Situating Vulnerability in the Political
Economy of Artificial Intelligence
Authors: Vera Gallistl, Roger von Laufenberg, Katrin Lehner
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
“Vulnerability” is one of the terms recently used to discuss ethical aspects of artificial intelligence (AI). Current discussions on AI vulnerability tend to individualize vulnerability, largely neglecting its political dimensions, which are rooted in systems of inequality and disadvantage. This article draws on data from a multiple-perspective qualitative interview study to explore how notions of vulnerability underpin the development and implementation of AI. Results uncover how AI designers use narratives around missing data on vulnerable populations as justifications for the creation of synthetic data that were artificially manufactured rather than generated by real-world events. Although this was a profitable business model for AI companies, these practices ultimately situated long-term care residents as voiceless in the development of AI. This contribution shows how vulnerability is situated in a political economy of AI, which understands the absence of data on vulnerable groups as a possibility of profit creation rather than a chance of fostering inclusion.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-07-28T10:14:29Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241266514
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Home Price Change and Ethno-racial Residential Segregation: Temporal
Relationships at the Metro Level
Authors: Alex Mikulas, Brenden Beck, Max Besbris
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Although rates of residential racial segregation and home prices are undoubtedly related, the temporal nature of the relationship has rarely been studied. Using fixed effects models in a cross-lagged framework, we examine how prior changes in segregation and home prices at the metro level predict changes in the other. Our findings suggest that increases in home prices predict increasing racial segregation years later, but increases in segregation fail to predict subsequent change in home values. Metros that experience a 1 standard deviation increase in home prices experience an associated 0.25 standard deviation increase in Black-White segregation 10 years later and a 0.18 standard deviation increase 20 years later. No relationship is observed for Hispanic-White segregation. We discuss implications for understanding the economic underpinnings of segregation. Findings also offer insight into future segregation trends and illuminate how changes in the housing market may drive demographic trends more broadly.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-07-28T10:13:00Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241261606
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- “I Had Time to Do My Research, Had Time to Think and Educate Myself”:
Using Information Work for Nonbinary and Genderfluid Identity
Self-Recognition during COVID-19 Isolation
Authors: Amy L. Stone, Alexandra Gallin-Parisi
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, nonbinary and genderfluid adults did information work to discover their gender identities as they explored information on social media, online, and in person. Due to cisnormative restrictions, this information was necessary to identify and validate their gender identity as authentic. During the pandemic, more nonbinary people were able to self-recognize their own gender because there was more time for reflection and more access to nonbinary narratives online, including representations of nonbinary life that defied White, thin, androgynous ideals. By analyzing interviews with 22 U.S. adults who came out as nonbinary during the pandemic, this qualitative study contributes to both the sociological study of nonbinary identity development and to the information science literature on deeply meaningful and profoundly personal information work. This study also contributes to further understanding of why it seems like more nonbinary and genderfluid people “came out” during the height of the pandemic.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-07-27T06:06:29Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241266461
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Pandemic Pathways: An Integrated Approach to Studying the Pandemic’s
Employment Impacts on Paid and Unpaid Care of Children 0 to 11 Years Old
Authors: Pilar Gonalons-Pons, Johanna S. Quinn
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
The pandemic adversely affected the employment of child caregivers, exacerbating already existing inequalities. The authors offer an integrated framework that considers the interdependencies between unpaid and paid child caregiving and the construction of the childcare sector as a devalued and fractionalized group. The authors outline the prepandemic positioning of mothers, childcare teachers, preschool teachers, and primary school teachers. Then, using cross-sectional and panel data from the Current Population Survey, the authors describe how the pandemic affected these four groups of child caregivers’ employment between January 2018 and December 2022. Black, Brown, and non-college-educated mothers were hit particularly hard during the pandemic. Primary school teachers were in a better position prior to the pandemic and fared much better than childcare teachers during it. The authors argue that an integrated framework helps us understand the disparities in the impact of the pandemic between child caregivers as partly a by-product of the fragmented and devalued organization of child caregiving.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-07-27T06:03:00Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241259681
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Organizational Isomorphism during Crisis: Market Practices and U.S. Art
Museums, 2006–2011
Authors: Kangsan Lee, Bruce Carruthers
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
How do organizations respond to extreme environmental challenges' We revisit DiMaggio and Powell and examine the shift in isomorphic behaviors that occur during a crisis, illustrating how shocks result in the use of nontraditional practices. We empirically examine the impact of the 2008 economic crisis on U.S. art museums’ isomorphic referent transitions in the use of market practices before and after the crisis, covering 2006 to 2011. Our findings indicate that museums altered the scope of mimetic isomorphism, and as a result, U.S. art museums sought solutions by shifting reference groups that were structurally (leader vs. peer), physically (geographical region), or organizational (social networks) proximate during the crisis. We elaborate our understanding of isomorphic behavior as a key factor during times of crisis that destabilized institutional environments, both symbolic and resource spaces. This finding can be generalized to other organizational settings beyond art museums.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-07-25T09:37:00Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241258607
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Adolescent Facial Attractiveness and Later Life Morbidity, Cognition, and
Mortality
Authors: John Robert Warren, Gina Rumore
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Are associations between ratings of adolescents’ attractiveness and their adult health, cognitive functioning, and longevity plausibly causal, or are they confounded by factors correlated with judgements about attractiveness' How do these processes differ for women and men' Using data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, the authors estimate the impact of judgements about adolescent facial attractiveness on 35 cognitive, health, and mortality outcomes through age 72. Ratings of adolescent facial attractiveness are predictive of later life outcomes among women, but mainly because ratings of young women’s attractiveness are closely connected with women’s socioeconomic standing and body mass in early life. The same is not true for men. People use different standards to evaluate the attractiveness of women and men; these differences induce largely noncausal associations between ratings of young women’s attractiveness and their cognition, morbidity, and mortality.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-07-23T11:21:08Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241259679
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Start Generating: Harnessing Generative Artificial Intelligence for
Sociological Research
Authors: Thomas Davidson
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
How can generative artificial intelligence (GAI) be used for sociological research' The author explores applications to the study of text and images across multiple domains, including computational, qualitative, and experimental research. Drawing upon recent research and stylized experiments with DALL·E and GPT-4, the author illustrates the potential applications of text-to-text, image-to-text, and text-to-image models for sociological research. Across these areas, GAI can make advanced computational methods more efficient, flexible, and accessible. The author also emphasizes several challenges raised by these technologies, including interpretability, transparency, reliability, reproducibility, ethics, and privacy, as well as the implications of bias and bias mitigation efforts and the trade-offs between proprietary models and open-source alternatives. When used with care, these technologies can help advance many different areas of sociological methodology, complementing and enhancing our existing toolkits.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-07-23T11:07:08Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241259651
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- The Long Haul Home: The Relationship between Commuting Distance, Work
Hours, Work-to-Family Conflict, and Psychological Distress
Authors: Shirin Montazer, Marisa Young
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Our study reevaluates the impact of commuting on mental health, challenging the prevailing view of commuting solely as a job-related demand or stressor that leads to increased mental health problems. Using the 2011 Neighbourhood Effects on Health and Well-Being Study from Toronto, we explore the dual perspectives of commuting distance as a stressful demand versus a potentially beneficial resource among parents of minor children (n = 299). Multivariate results reveal that commuting distance alone is not significantly linked to mental health as measured by psychological distress. However, the nature of commuting—whether it is viewed as a demand or a resource—depends on other factors in parents’ lives. Specifically, our results indicate that an increase in commuting distance exacerbates the negative effects of work hours on psychological distress while simultaneously buffering against the impact of work-to-family conflict on this outcome irrespective of gender.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-07-23T11:00:21Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241258361
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- The Demographic Transition, with Data from Brazil
Authors: Sara Lopus
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
The demographic transition—the process through which declines in mortality precede declines in fertility, leading to a period of population growth and the long-term restructuring of the age composition—holds remarkable power to explain the state of our social world. In this visualization, I employ Brazilian demographic measures dating back to the 1870s to depict the interplay between mortality, fertility, growth rates, dependency ratios, and total population size within a single three-panel figure with a shared time axis. Over the course of nearly two centuries, fertility and mortality differentials contribute to a staggering 18-fold increase in Brazil’s population size and a dramatic rise in the proportion elderly. Although the data are drawn from a single country, Brazil’s patterns of demographic change are representative of those experienced in many other populations. A graph of demographic transition-era population dynamics alongside an understanding of various world regions’ positions along the x-axis can help to answer innumerable questions of great social importance.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-06-24T12:31:24Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241259620
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- When Being a Data Annotator Was Not Yet a Job: The Laboratory Origins of
Dispersible Labor in Computer Vision Research
Authors: Zhuofan Li
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Drawing on a comparative case study of four landmark image datasets that led up to the creation of a new job—data annotators—I examine the laboratory origins of dispersible labor in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. The rise of large-scale datasets cannot be attributed solely to gig platforms that supply already dispersed labor. To transform data annotation from an in-laboratory, expert task to a microtask that can be performed by data annotators without scientific expertise, scientists introduced into and consolidated through the scientific literature and laboratory life of AI research new organizational repertoires of bureaucratic, centralized, algorithmic, and corporate control that each made data annotator’s work more dispersible. By bringing back the organization and control of scientific labor as a missing link between the technical and social dimensions of AI, this study has implications for research on hidden labor, algorithmic biases, and the future of knowledge work.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-06-24T10:12:14Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241259617
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Communities of Style: Artistic Transformation and Social Cohesion in
Hollywood, 1930 to 1999
Authors: Katharina Burgdorf, Mark Wittek, Jürgen Lerner
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
How do social and stylistic relations in cultural fields coevolve under changing contextual conditions' Artistic communities cohere through collaborations and shared stylistic orientations among artists, but little is known about the structure and interplay of these relational processes. The authors contribute to previous studies by conducting a large-scale investigation of social and stylistic networks among Hollywood filmmakers. In particular, the authors examine how the interplay between artists’ collaborations and shared references changed throughout Hollywood’s history. Using data from the Internet Movie Database and applying relational hyperevent models, the authors analyze the coevolution of collaboration and reference networks among 15,553 Hollywood film professionals who participated in 6,800 films between 1930 and 1999. The authors complement prior sociological efforts through a longitudinal perspective on the structure of social and stylistic networks across three meaningful historical periods: before, during, and after Hollywood’s artistic transformation in the 1960s. The findings show that filmmakers are more likely to collaborate if they previously used the same references, but they are less likely to adopt the references of their previous collaborators. In addition, the results highlight that the structure of relational processes in cultural fields varies over time as the contextual conditions for tie formation change.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-06-22T11:52:50Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241257334
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Ethical Dilemmas and Collaborative Resolutions in Machine Learning
Research for Health Care
Authors: Shira Zilberstein
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Drawing on ethnographic, interview, and textual data with researchers creating machine learning solutions for health care, the author explains how researchers justify their projects while grappling with uncertainties about the benefits and harms of machine learning. Researchers differentiate between a hypothesized world of machine learning and a “real” world of clinical practice. Each world relates to distinct frameworks for describing, evaluating, and reconciling uncertainties. In the hypothesized world, impacts are hypothetical. They can be operationalized, controlled, and computed as bias and fairness. In the real world, impacts address patient outcomes in clinical settings. Real impacts are chaotic and uncontrolled and relate to complex issues of equity. To address real-world uncertainties, researchers collaborate closely with clinicians, who explain real-world implications, and participate in data generation projects to improve clinical datasets. Through these collaborations, researchers expand ethical discussions, while delegating moral responsibility to clinicians and medical infrastructure. This preserves the legitimacy of machine learning as a pure, technical domain, while allowing engagement with health care impacts. This article contributes an explanation of the interplay between technical and moral boundaries in shaping ethical dilemmas and responsibilities, and explains the significance of collaboration in artificial intelligence projects for ethical engagement.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-06-20T10:55:00Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241259671
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- The Use of Facial Recognition in Sociological Research: A Comparison of
ClarifAI and Kairos Classifications to Hand-Coded Images
Authors: Crystal E. Peoples, Paige Knudsen, Melany Fuentes
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Sociologists increasingly employ machine learning (ML) to quickly sort, code, classify, and analyze data. With known racial and gender biases in ML algorithms, we urge sociologists to (re)consider the implications of the widespread use of these technologies in our research. To illustrate this point, we use two popular ML algorithms, ClarifAI and Kairos, to code a small sample of sociologists (n = 167) and their coauthors (n = 1,664) and compare their findings to the sociologists’ hand-coded race and gender information. We further explore ML-generated differences by analyzing the extent of racial homophily in these sociologists’ collaboration networks. We find significant differences across the three coding methods that would lead to very different conclusions and future research agendas. We conclude by elaborating on how sociologists might ethically consider the role of ML and its use in the discipline.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-06-20T10:41:19Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241259659
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Who Says Artificial Intelligence Is Stealing Our Jobs'
Authors: Eric Dahlin
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
The author investigates survey respondents’ reports of job displacement due to artificial intelligence (AI) and concerns about AI-related job displacement. Accordingly, the author examines explanations of AI exceptionalism—the view that AI technology is unique and will have different job-related outcomes compared with previous technological advances—and the vulnerability of underprivileged groups. The findings support the AI exceptionalism view, indicating that white-collar occupations and those with technical experience are more likely to be at risk. The study also reveals that concerns about job loss are widespread, but those who are more concerned are more likely to be vulnerable to workplace discrimination, not white-collar employees. The author concludes by emphasizing the need to develop new approaches for understanding AI’s impacts in the labor market.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-06-20T10:34:59Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241259672
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Moral Entrepreneurship and the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in
Digital Psychiatry
Authors: Mira D. Vale
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Researchers who use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools face pressure to pursue “ethical AI,” yet little is known about how researchers enact ethical standards in practice. The author investigates the development of AI ethics using the case of digital psychiatry, a field that uses machine learning to study mental illness and provide mental health care. Drawing on ethnographic research and interviews, the author analyzes how digital psychiatry researchers become “moral entrepreneurs,” actors who wield their social influence to define ethical conduct, through two practices. First, researchers engage in moral discovery, identifying gaps in regulation as opportunities to articulate ethical standards. Second, researchers engage in moral enclosure, specifying a community of people licensed to do moral regulation. With these techniques, digital psychiatry researchers demonstrate ethical innovation is essential to their professional identity. Yet ultimately, the author demonstrates how moral entrepreneurship erects barriers to participation in ethical decision making and constrains the focus of ethical consideration.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-06-20T10:32:09Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241259641
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Intersectional Earnings Inequalities in U.S. Public Sector Workplaces and
the Great Recession
Authors: Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Jasmine Kerrissey, Anthony Rainey, Steven A. Boutcher
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
The authors examine intersectional earnings inequalities in U.S. state and local government workplaces during the Great Recession of 2007 to 2011. Corresponding to closure and exploitation mechanisms as proposed in Relational Inequality Theory, the authors decompose pay gaps into between-workplace and within-workplace segregation components and within-job disparities. Between-workplace closure mechanisms tend to be absent or weak for all comparisons, but within-workplace occupational closure and within-job pay disparities are present for all and quite large for most groups. Within-job earnings inequalities tend to be largest for Black, Hispanic, and Native American women and smallest for Asian and Native American men. During the Great Recession, organizational resources to make claims on shrank, as low-wage job layoffs surged and resources contracted. This resulted in a shrinking of within-workplace and within-job, but rising between-workplace, inequalities.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-06-19T11:36:55Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241257778
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- “Replika Removing Erotic Role-Play Is Like Grand Theft Auto Removing
Guns or Cars”: Reddit Discourse on Artificial Intelligence Chatbots and
Sexual Technologies
Authors: Kenneth R. Hanson, Hannah Bolthouse
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots designed to meet sexual desires are a growing sector in the sextech industry, yet little research on these applications exists. The authors examine a sample of posts and comments from the r/Replika subreddit after the temporary removal by Luka Inc. of erotic role-play from its chatbot Replika in 2023. Analysis of threaded posts (n = 227) and comments suggests that users are critical of barriers to merging sexuality with technology. Users remained steadfast in their assertation that emotional and sexual relationships with AI are crucial to the success of certain AI models. The authors bring attention to the role of AI in people’s sexual selves by analyzing discussions about the temporary removal of erotic role-play among Replika users. This study reveals how users conceptualize the importance of sexuality in AI personalities and their vulnerabilities as chatbot users. The authors also analyze the role of heteromasculine norms and misogyny in this technoculture.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-06-18T12:12:19Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241259627
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Latinx Blue Wave or Religious Red Shift' The Relationship between
Evangelicalism, Church Attendance, and President Trump among Latinx
Americans
Authors: Brandon C. Martinez, Gerardo Martí
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Contrary to expectations of a leftward “blue wave,” there is now a largely unanticipated “red shift” of Latinx-identifying people toward Republican Party candidates. To examine this shift, data from the 2020 Cooperative Election Study, which features a robust sample of Latinx (Hispanic) Americans, are analyzed to study how religion contributes to the discussion of Latinx politics. Multivariate analyses reveal that Latinx Evangelical Protestants voted for President Trump and opposed his removal from office on the grounds of both articles of his first impeachment more so than other religious orientations. A postive correlation between Trump support and church attendance was also found. Both patterns indicate a religious right push for Latinxs. Scholars building on these findings are urged to more consistently distinguish Latinx voters by religious orientation and embeddedness, as they likely will have a significant impact on future political outcomes.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-06-18T11:32:41Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241259673
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Activating Family Safety Nets: Understanding Undergraduates’
Pandemic Housing Transitions
Authors: Elena G. van Stee, Arielle Kuperberg, Joan Maya Mazelis
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Safety nets are typically invisible until tested, and the COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to observe how undergraduates responded to the common challenge of campus closures. Using survey data from two public universities (N = 750), we investigated the factors associated with students’ reports of moving to a parent’s home as a result of the pandemic. Our findings indicate that students’ material needs stemming from loss of housing (if on campus) or employment (if off campus) significantly affected but did not fully explain their housing decisions. Beyond these factors, older students and those living with a romantic partner, sibling, or extended family member were less likely to move in with a parent. These findings build on research documenting class-based differences by demonstrating the importance of life stage and other social ties. Moreover, they highlight how parent-child relationships evolve during the transition to adulthood, influencing decisions to seek support in times of crisis.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-06-18T01:22:11Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241259625
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Political Influencers and Their Social Media Audiences during the 2021
Arizona Audit
Authors: Kyle Rose, Deana A. Rohlinger
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
In this study, the authors explore the role of echo chambers in political polarization through a network and content analysis of 183 political influencer accounts and 3,000 audience accounts on Twitter (now X) around the Arizona audit of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, sampled between July 17 and August 5, 2021. The authors identify five distinct groups of influencers who shared followers, noting differences in the information they post and the followers they attract. The most ideologically diverse audiences belong to popular media organizations and reporters with localized expertise to Arizona, but partisan influencer groups and their audiences are not uniformly like-minded. Interestingly, conservative audiences are spread across multiple influencer groups varying in ideology, from liberal influencers and mainstream news outlets to conservative conspiracy theorists. The findings highlight the need to understand users’ motivations for seeking political information and suggest that the echo chamber issue may be overstated.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-06-17T12:58:15Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241259680
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Corrigendum to “Quality Trumps Quantity: Exploring Relationships between
Job Quality, Job Quantity, and Sleep”
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-06-13T12:08:03Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241252353
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Are Within-Racial Group Inequalities by Skin Color Really Greater Than
Inequalities Between Racial Groups in the United States'
Authors: Mauricio Bucca
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
The author examines the relationship between skin color and educational and labor market outcomes within White, Black, and Hispanic populations in the United States. By analyzing National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 data, the author challenges claims that intraracial inequalities on the basis of skin color match or surpass inequalities among ethnoracial groups. The findings indicate that although a darker skin tone correlates with less favorable outcomes across all ethnoracial groups, disparities along the color continuum within the Black population are less pronounced than those between Blacks and Whites as a whole. For Hispanics, the significance of between- and within-race inequality varies depending on the outcome. These insights remain consistent both in descriptive analysis and after adjusting for socioeconomic origins.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-06-13T12:05:03Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241259656
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- When Femininity Is Irrelevant: Gender Similarities and Racial Differences
in Fatal and Nonfatal Police Violence in California, 2016–2021
Authors: Taylor Domingos, Chris M. Smith
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Research finds racial disparities in the frequency and severity of police violence. Police violence research has not interrogated gender to the same effect. We build on theories of “gender irrelevance” to argue that violent incidents between police and civilians cannot be extricated from masculinity’s relevance. However, in contexts when police respond to women as violent, police render women’s femininity as irrelevant. Using 2016–2021 California URSUS data and supplementary archival examples, we examine gender and race across fatal and nonfatal police violence incidents. We find that women are no more or less likely to experience fatal relative to nonfatal police violence than men of the same racial group when accounting for police perceptions of civilians being armed. We also find racial differences in perceptions of weapons, with lower barriers for fatal violence against Black and Latinx civilians. When women are in high-conflict, violent situations, other statuses become hyper-present beyond women’s femininity.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-06-13T11:57:43Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241258378
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- The Demographic Intersection of Age, Race, and Immigrant Composition in
the United States
Authors: Matthew M. Brooks
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
This visualization illustrates the proportion of U.S. residents at every age between 0 and 80 years who are foreign born and native born. The author uses a robust cross-sectional sample from the 2022 American Community Survey and groups individuals into nine distinct racial and ethnic (i.e., ethnoracial) groups. Following demographic expectations, age-specific immigrant shares of the total population are largest in midlife. However, across different ethnoracial groups the pattern varies greatly. Among Hispanic White individuals, a presumed immigrant-dominant group, there is no age at which the majority of members are foreign born. Alternatively, among non-Hispanic Asians and Pacific Islanders, Hispanics from other races, and multiracial Hispanics, there is a clear divide between majority foreign-born and majority native-born age groups. These results show the strengths of disaggregating the Hispanic population and the need to consider the intersection of age, race, and immigration when formulating social policy.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-06-13T11:45:43Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241259653
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Failing to Mobilize: Prosecutors’ Framing Efforts and Anticorruption
Campaigns
Authors: Luiz Vilaça
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Social movement scholars have demonstrated that activists can increase mobilizing attitudes by articulating collective action frames. However, these studies have left unresolved whether and under which conditions state officials such as prosecutors can effectively use collective action frames to trigger mobilizing attitudes. This study draws on an experiment in Brazil to test the effect of different components of collective action frames articulated by prosecutors: identity, agency, urgency, and injustice frames that highlight the material or immaterial consequences of the issue. Respondents were randomly assigned to watch videos that simulated a press conference in which prosecutors discussed a corruption investigation and called for public support using different frames. Although social movement studies would lead us to expect framing components to effectively trigger mobilizing attitudes, results revealed that none of the frames consistently and significantly affected willingness to mobilize against corruption or support for bills that strengthen or weaken prosecutors’ anticorruption efforts.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-06-13T11:43:24Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241255578
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Income Extraction via the Criminal Legal System: A Community-Level
Perspective
Authors: Sarah K. S. Shannon, Ryan Larson, Ian Kennedy, Kate K. O’Neill, Alexes Harris
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Legal financial obligations (LFOs) are financial penalties imposed by U.S. criminal courts that generate disproportionate negative effects for poor and minoritized individuals and communities. In this visualization, the authors use court administrative data for all criminal cases in Washington and Minnesota from 2010 to 2015 to measure community-level income extraction via LFOs in Seattle and Minneapolis-St. Paul. Unlike previous measures of LFOs at the community level, the authors calculate the proportion of income in a given census tract that is extracted in the form of LFOs. This operationalization makes it possible to ask, given a tract-year’s existing income per capita, what proportion of that income went toward LFOs from cases sentenced. The authors’ maps demonstrate that disadvantaged communities pay a higher share of their income in LFOs compared with more advantaged neighborhoods, perpetuating social control and poverty at the neighborhood level.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-06-10T05:39:58Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241257147
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Visualizing Daily Time Use on Housework in Canada: Persistence and
Patterns
Authors: Kamila Kolpashnikova, Zilin Li, Amélie Quesnel-Vallée
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Housework is a significant part of our daily lives. In this visualization, the authors consider how time spent on housework varies across gender and age throughout the day. Using the nationally representative 2015 Canadian General Social Survey with detailed time diary information, the authors present how women’s and men’s time allocation patterns on housework vary across age groups. The visualization shows that women and older Canadians engaged more in housework. A clear pattern reveals higher engagement during mealtimes, while participation becomes more evenly distributed throughout the day among older adults compared with younger women and men.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-05-31T11:14:42Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241257345
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Antisocial Capital: Community Cohesion and Tax Avoidance among American
Elites
Authors: Doron Shiffer-Sebba, Yossi Harpaz
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Studies of social capital usually emphasize its prosocial, deviance-reducing effects. This article instead explores its negative potential. The authors focus on the relationship between different forms of community-level social capital and tax avoidance by wealthy Americans, using data from the Panama Papers leaks to analyze the residential communities of Americans who engaged in offshore tax avoidance. The analysis demonstrates, first, that communities with more civic organizations are more likely to have tax avoiders. This finding suggests that civic organizations may promote cohesion among wealthy elites, producing insular attitudes and deviance. Second, income inequality correlates with tax avoidance, indicating that highly unequal communities have more insular elites. Finally, more patriotic communities have lower tax avoidance. These findings empirically establish the concept of “negative social capital” and advance the distinction between bridging (or cross-group) social capital, which lowers deviance, and bonding (or within-group) social capital, which is actually associated with greater elite deviance.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-05-31T05:35:14Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241250188
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Politics of Boundary Consolidation: Income Inequality, Ethnonationalism,
and Radical-Right Voting
Authors: Martin Lukk
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Scholars have linked income inequality to the recent success of radical-right parties and movements. Yet research shows that inequality reduces participation among groups likely to support the radical right and promotes support for redistribution, an issue championed by the radical left. This raises questions about why, if at all, inequality matters for radical-right politics. The author reconciles previous arguments by developing a theory that connects these phenomena through the process of boundary consolidation. He argues that inequality generates status threats that prompt exclusionary shifts in national group boundaries. This promotes ethnonationalism, a restrictive conception of national membership and, ultimately, support for the radical right, whose mobilization relies on ethnonationalist appeals. Analyses of time-series cross-sectional data from 38 countries support this theory, revealing that inequality is associated with greater ethnonationalism, with distinct associations by income and ethnicity, and that ethnonationalism strongly predicts radical-right voting. The author thus demonstrates how long-term structural changes are linked to contemporary radical politics and how arguments setting economic and cultural causes of the radical right in opposition are inadequate.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-05-31T03:17:43Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241251714
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Visualizing Jail Incarceration across the Rural-Urban Continuum, 1978 to
2018
Authors: Timothy Ittner
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
In this data visualization, the author depicts four measures of jail incarceration, drawing attention to the growth, variation, and disparities in jail incarceration across the rural-urban continuum in recent decades. Jails are the front door of the criminal legal system and admit millions of people each year. Yet jails have received little attention in sociological research, and existing research tends to focus on large, urban facilities. Here the author analyzes panel data organized at the county-year level to depict variation in four measures of jail incarceration across the rural-urban continuum since 1978. The author finds that jail incarceration rates have tended to increase across the period, but the urban incarceration rate has declined since 2007 as the rural incarceration rate continues to increase. Most people in jail are legally innocent and have not been convicted of a crime, and the Black/white disparity in jail incarceration has decreased over time.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-05-27T11:32:01Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241255582
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Medical Authority, Trans Exceptionalism, and Americans’ Willingness to
Believe Claims of Inadequate Training as Justification for the Denial of
Care to Trans People
Authors: Matthew K. Grace, Long Doan
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Trans people’s gender identity is frequently cited as a source of health care denial, even when it has no bearing on their symptom presentation. A latent belief among health care workers that trans people are fundamentally different from cis people is deeply implicated in the finding that between one fifth and one third of trans people have been denied care because of their gender identity. In this study, the authors use data from a nationally representative survey (n = 2,458) to examine whether Americans believe a doctor who denies care to a trans patient on the basis of claims of inadequate training. The authors find a majority of Americans trust this explanation. These views are more common among Evangelicals and Republicans, whereas Black respondents are less inclined to deem this justification valid. Qualitative analyses reveal that those who accept the doctor’s rationale are more likely to acquiesce to doctors’ medical knowledge, to assert that doctors have professional discretion in making referrals, and to reference complications stemming from the patient’s presumed receipt of gender-affirming care despite the routine nature of their sick visit. These findings indicate that doctors’ enduring cultural authority powerfully intersects with “trans exceptionalism” to inform Americans’ perspectives on the denial of care to trans people.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-05-27T11:30:42Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241253969
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Inactive and Quiescent' Immigrant Collective Action in Comparative
Perspective, 1960 to 1995
Authors: Kim Voss, Steven Lauterwasser, Irene Bloemraad
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Social movement mobilization by and on behalf of immigrants occurs frequently today, but sociologists have been slow to include immigrant collective action in the canon of social movement or immigration scholarship. Is this because, until recently, immigrant protest was minimal or limited in scope' The authors take a macro-comparative approach, recoding the Dynamics of Collective Action dataset to compare proimmigrant collective action with paradigmatic, well-studied movements from 1960 to 1995. The authors find that immigrant collective action was on par with iconic movements, mobilized similar numbers of people, occurred across the United States, engaged in disruptive action, and encompassed a wide range of origins, thus correcting possible misperceptions that immigrants did not engage in contentious action before the 1990s. The authors conclude by advocating for a population at risk focus for studying the emergence of collective action, decentering the borders of collective mobilization, and illuminating the vulnerabilities of legal status.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-05-21T10:34:11Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241249932
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Emotional Support and Mental Health during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Focus
on Gender and Sexual Identities
Authors: Kristen E. Gustafson, Wendy D. Manning, Claire M. Kamp Dush
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Emotional support is essential to health outcomes, especially for marginalized communities. The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic increased the prevalence of mental health issues and thus increased the need for emotional support, particularly for sexual minoritized people. The authors applied minority stress theory and the stress process framework by drawing on a population-based data source of 3,642 respondents, the National Couples’ Health and Time Study, which oversampled sexual minoritized people during the pandemic. The authors examine three sources of emotional support (friends, family, and partners) and their association with three mental health outcomes (depression, anxiety, and loneliness) separately for cisgender men and cisgender women. The authors find that emotional support plays a larger role in the association between sexual identity and mental health for cisgender men than cisgender women. Regardless of gender, bisexual individuals have consistently higher levels of depression, anxiety, and loneliness across all models, and this difference is not attenuated by emotional support.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-05-09T12:25:30Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241247999
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Measuring Gender Status Beliefs
Authors: Bradley Montgomery, Hyomin Park, Leanne Barry Burrill, David Melamed
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
The implicit association test (IAT) is designed to reduce socially desirable responses and capture implicit associations between two social categories. Prior work has used and expanded on the IAT to capture implicit status beliefs, but tests of the specific images and words used to denote status and gender are lacking. Here, the authors (1) identify specific images to best elicit implicit stereotypical gender differentiation, (2) identify specific words to best distinguish relative status, and (3) assess the test-retest reliability of a full and a brief gender status IAT. First, the authors find that images presented in grayscale, rather than images presented in color, best elicit implicit gender categorization. The authors also identify five male and five female images that best elicit implicit stereotypical gender categorization. Second, the findings show that status words and evaluation words load on unique factors (highlighting that the status words are not merely capturing evaluations), and the authors identify five specific words that best distinguish implicit relative status. Third, the authors find that the standard long-form IAT has a more acceptable test-retest reliability than the brief IAT. The authors conclude with suggestions on how to further refine the measure and how it might be applied in research.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-05-08T12:27:00Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241245845
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Practice What You Preach: Complicating the Relationship among Christian
Religious Identity, Abortion Attitudes, and Reported Abortion Experiences
among Canadians
Authors: Lexie Milmine, Tina Fetner
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Abortion providers often report having patients who describe abortion as immoral, even while accessing abortion care. According to these anecdotes, antiabortion identities, frequently depicted as tied to religious identities, are not necessarily reflected in individuals’ lived experiences. Yet social science research and political rhetoric tend to suggest a straightforward connection between religion and antiabortion beliefs and practices. The authors ask, does religion have a greater impact on attitudes toward abortion than on personal decisions to terminate one’s own pregnancy' Using an original survey of Canadian women (n = 1,181), the authors examine religious affiliation and attendance, abortion attitudes, and self-reported abortion experience. Religious affiliation and attendance predict abortion attitudes to a greater extent than they predict abortion behavior. The authors use Burke’s concept of polysemic categories to argue that personal meanings of religious affiliation may be more salient for attitudes toward abortion than for the personal decision to access abortion care.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-05-08T12:23:01Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241245843
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Predation and the Disproportionate Risk of Driver’s License Suspensions
in Economically and Racially Marginalized Communities
Authors: Maureen R. Waller, Peter Rich, Nathan L. Robbins
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Millions of people have their driver’s licenses suspended each year when they do not pay traffic fines or appear in court, with significant and compounding consequences for their lives. The increased use of fines and fees has been likened to a predatory system that exploits the most vulnerable groups to fill state and local budget gaps. States have begun limiting suspensions for unpaid traffic tickets out of economic and racial equity concerns, but many still sanction drivers for failing to appear in court or comply with other regulations. Merging the full universe of New York Department of Motor Vehicles suspension records in 2017 with the American Community Survey at the zip code level, we find that Black, Hispanic, and economically disadvantaged communities were disproportionately impacted by both nonpayment and noncompliance suspensions. Predictive models suggest that reforms ending suspensions for both the failure to appear in traffic court and the failure to pay traffic tickets could substantially reduce these disparities.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-04-29T07:09:17Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241234632
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Does Freedom of Domestic Movement Impact Forest Loss' A Cross-National
Analysis
Authors: Georgi Georgiev, Shahd Alasaly, Shumaila Fatima, Jamie M. Sommer
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
On the one hand, previous research argues that growth in rural populations leads to forest loss from clearing trees to make room for the growing population and their farming needs. On the other hand, research is also concerned with how deforestation drives people out of rural areas, leading to overurbanization. From this work, it is clear that the movement of people has an important relationship to forest loss, but it is less clear what the autonomy of people is in this process. Put differently, more focus has been put on state-level economic and environmental factors than political factors when considering the impact of domestic migration on forest loss. Although there has been substantial work on how political factors, like democracy, impact forest loss, there is less research on how political rights, like freedom of domestic movement, may impact forest loss. To build on this research, we test the impact of freedom of domestic movement and democracy on forest loss from 2001 to 2014 for a sample of 107 low- and middle-income nations. We find support for the idea that having more freedom of movement decreases forest loss in more democratic nations compared to less democratic nations. We also find that both rural and urban population growth, among others, is associated with higher levels of forest loss. Together, our findings suggest that the freedom of domestic movement should be taken into consideration in addition to population growth from actual domestic movement when researching forest loss.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-04-28T05:29:24Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241238673
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Public Awareness of Major Climate Change Reports and Potential Political
Connections
Authors: Cameron T. Whitley
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Climate change will affect all life. Sociologists contribute to major climate change reports and are interested in how people are engaging these documents. Major climate change reports coming from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Climate Assessment are used by scientists, policy makers, and localities to assess climate vulnerability and create climate action plans. Although sociologists have been at the forefront of understanding climate change perception, there is limited understanding about how the public interacts with these reports or whether they are even aware of them. The author uses survey data (n = 1,013) to assess public awareness of these reports. The results suggest that conservative think tanks may be doing a better job at marketing reports to advance their agendas. This is important information as scientists continue to think about how to reach the public to advance mitigation and adaptation efforts and counter climate denialism.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-04-27T11:30:36Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241246395
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Trends in Vaginal Intercourse Experience and Timing among Adolescent Men
in the United States: A Descriptive Analysis by Race/Ethnicity
Authors: Giuseppina Valle Holway, Karin L. Brewster
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Recent reports of declining prevalence of vaginal intercourse (VI) experience among adolescent men are largely silent on differences by race and ethnicity. This visualization illustrates trends by race/ethnicity in VI experience, average age at first VI, and age-specific cumulative probabilities of VI experience for young men, using retrospective data from multiple rounds of the National Survey of Family Growth covering 2006 to 2019. The authors find that although VI engagement is declining universally, the decline is substantially more pronounced among Black men than among their White and Hispanic peers. Although young Black men continue to engage in VI at higher rates and earlier ages, recent trends are narrowing long-standing racial/ethnic differences.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-04-25T07:10:48Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241245841
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- On the Relationship between Telework and Health in Germany: Causal or
Selection Effects'
Authors: Chen-Hao Hsu, Henriette Engelhardt
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Teleworking has become a popular work arrangement in many developed countries. Although there are heated public debates over the benefits of teleworking, empirical evidence on the causal relationship between teleworking and health is still rare. Using panel data from the German BAuA Working Time Survey (2015, 2017, and 2019), the authors investigated the effects of teleworking on health and well-being. The authors applied an innovative research design to underscore different sources of selection. Overall, no concrete evidence was found for the positive effect of teleworking on workers’ self-reported health, quality of sleep, and psychosomatic conditions. The ostensible better health outcomes among teleworkers could be partially explained by the positive selection on both prior levels and prior trajectories of health into teleworking. Moreover, the health impacts of telework were contingent on workers’ gender and parenthood status and the intensity of teleworking. These findings indicate that the positive association between teleworking and health appears to reflect selection bias rather than a causal relationship in Germany before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-04-25T07:05:00Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241245227
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Religious Affiliation and Fertility in Vietnam: Exploring Desire for
Additional Children and Actual Fertility
Authors: Yen Thi Hai Nguyen, Truc Ngoc Hoang Dang, Pataporn Sukontamarn, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
The authors investigate the relationship between reported religious affiliation and fertility among reproductive-age women in Vietnam using the nationally representative 2014 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey. Fertility includes (1) desire for additional children and (2) the hazard of having the next birth on the basis of actual fertility. The results of probit regression and survival analysis show that Christian women have a higher desire for additional children and actual fertility compared with those with no religious affiliation. In contrast, Buddhist affiliation is not significantly associated with both fertility behaviors. In addition to demonstrating the connection between religion and fertility decisions, this study shows that son preference is still prevalent in Vietnam and that both religion and son preference are significant determinants of fertility. The findings have implications for family planning policies.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-04-22T10:13:18Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241244598
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Not All Emissions Are Created Equal: Multidimensionality in Nations’
Greenhouse Gas Emissions and the Affluence/Emissions Nexus
Authors: Xiaorui Huang
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
This study proposes a multidimensional emissions profile (MEP) framework, aiming to analyze how a broad social force systematically and heterogeneously affects four emission components of nations: (1) emissions generated by domestic-oriented supply chain activities, (2) emissions embodied in imports, (3) emissions embodied in exports, and (4) direct emissions of end-user activities. I implement a multiregional input-output approach to operationalize these emission components. Using the MEP framework and dynamic fixed-effects models with the seemingly unrelated regression estimator, I find these four emission components are heterogeneously related to national affluence in high-income nations. As these nations become even wealthier, affluence is gradually decoupled from emissions generated by domestic-oriented supply chain activities and direct end-user emissions, yet it remains strongly coupled with the other two emission components in distinct ways. The findings demonstrate the MEP framework’s utility and contribute a multidimensional perspective to the debate on the economic development–climate change relationship.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-04-13T10:24:56Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241238962
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Visualizing the Emergence of Political Homophobia: Anti-LGBTQ+ and
Anti-Ukrainian Sentiment in Russian Public Opinion
Authors: Asya Tsaturyan
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, escalating a conflict that began in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea. Before the annexation, Russia’s anti-gay propaganda legislation set a precedent for homophobic laws worldwide. Over the past decade, Russia implemented numerous anti-LGBTQ+ laws, including the recent ban on gender reassignment. Through state-controlled media, Russian leadership portrayed both of these efforts as defending the nation against Western influence. So, I ask: Did it work' In this visualization, we see that before the introduction of anti-gay propaganda legislation and the Ukrainian conflict, public opinion data showed no statistically significant correlation between attitudes on the two issues. However, following these events, a positive association emerged between support for anti-gay views and anti-Ukrainian sentiment. These findings shed light on the growth of political homophobia within the Russian context, where gender and sexuality issues have become intertwined with a national security narrative.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-04-05T09:18:52Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241234622
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Social Infrastructure Availability and Suicide Rates among Working-Age
Adults in the United States
Authors: Xue Zhang, Danielle C. Rhubart, Shannon M. Monnat
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Social infrastructure (SI) may buffer against suicide risk by improving social cohesion, social support, and information and resource sharing. The authors use an ecological approach to examine the relationship between county-level SI availability and suicide rates among working-age adults (25–64 years) in the United States, a population among which suicide rates are high, rising, and geographically unequal. Mortality data are from the National Vital Statistics System for 2016 to 2019. SI data are from the National Neighborhood Data Archive for 2013 to 2015 and capture the availability of typically free SI (e.g., libraries, community centers) and commercial SI (e.g., coffee shops, diners, entertainment venues). Results from negative binomial models show that suicide rates are significantly lower in counties with more SI availability, net of county demographic, socioeconomic, and health care factors. This relationship held for both typically free and commercial SI. Policy makers should consider strengthening existing and developing new SI as part of a broader strategy to reduce suicide rates in the United States.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-04-05T09:17:29Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241241034
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- The Status Foundations of Conspiracy Beliefs
Authors: Saverio Roscigno
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Prior survey research has mostly centered on the psychological dispositions and political leanings associated with conspiracy beliefs rather than underlying and potentially consequential status dynamics. Drawing on prior scholarship and recent national survey data, I analyze the social patterning of conspiracy beliefs and their variations by several status attributes. Notably, and rather than the typical assumption that such beliefs are mostly held by those of lower education, my findings point clearly to a bimodal (U-shaped) distribution by socioeconomic status. Specifically, and unique to my results, there exists a cluster of graduate-degree-holding white men who display a penchant for conspiracy beliefs. Further analyses highlight important variation between specific beliefs, with distinctly taboo beliefs being exceptionally popular among those in this highly educated group—a pattern corroborated with additional data sources. I conclude by discussing potential mechanisms and avenues that future sociological work on conspiracy beliefs might consider.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-04-04T10:43:24Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241237654
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- The Collision of Global Scripts with Local Constraints: Education as a
Risk Factor for Unintended Pregnancy
Authors: Emily Smith-Greenaway, Yingyi Lin, Sara Yeatman
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Extensive sociological research concludes that education informs people’s desires for their lives and plays an instrumental role in facilitating the fulfillment of those desires. In this article, we ask if societal barriers can leave the most educated to desire outcomes that are unattainable and thus paradoxically place them at highest risk of unwanted outcomes. We answer this question by analyzing societal variation in the potential for education to facilitate women achieving their lower fertility desires: Are there fertility contexts wherein educated women’s lower fertility desires are distinctly unattainable' Multilevel models analyzing Demographic and Health Survey Program data on women from 50 low- and middle-income countries emphasize the collision of global scripts with local constraints: In low contraceptive contexts, education is associated with higher risk of unintended pregnancy. The results clarify that the potential for education to facilitate the achievement of desires is fraught with contingencies.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-03-29T08:43:38Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241237677
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Race and Cohort Differences in Family Status in the United States
Authors: Misun Lim, Cristina Samper Mejia
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
In this visualization, the authors show changes in family patterns by different race groups across two cohorts. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (born from 1957 to 1965) and 1997 (born from 1980 to 1984), the authors visualize the relationship-parenthood state distributions at each age between 15 and 35 years by race and cohort. The results suggest the rise of cohabiting mothers and the decline of married and divorced mothers among women born from 1980 to 1984. Black women born from 1980 to 1984 were more likely to experience single/childless and single/parent status compared with Black women born from 1957 to 1965. Although with some visible postponement in the recent cohort, white women in both cohorts were more likely to experience married/parent status than other race groups. The decline in married/parent status across the two generations was sharpest among Hispanic women. These descriptive findings highlight the importance of identifying race when discussing changes in family formation and dissolution trends across generations.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-03-27T04:10:53Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241241041
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Growing Uncertainty in Marriage Expectations among U.S. Youth
Authors: Joanna R. Pepin, Philip N. Cohen
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Marriage rates are falling in the United States. The authors ask whether today’s young adults are likely to continue this trend. Using Monitoring the Future Public-Use Cross-Sectional Datasets (1976–2022), this visualization presents U.S. 12th graders’ marriage expectations. It shows declining optimism that they will be “very good” spouses and declining expectations that they will eventually marry. Both trends are prominent in the last 10 years of the survey, and both are more dramatic among young women than among young men. If these trends hold, it may foretell further declines in marriage rates in the coming years.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-03-26T08:18:41Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241241035
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Quality Trumps Quantity: Exploring Relationships between Job Quality, Job
Quantity, and Sleep
Authors: Guo Ya Guo, Senhu Wang
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Despite ample research on the relationship between work and sleep, little is known about the relative importance of each job quality dimension for sleep quality and whether the relationship in contingent on job quantity (i.e., working hours). Drawing on a unified analytic framework of job quality and job quantity, this study aims to investigate the interactive relationship between job quality and job quantity and their impact on sleep quality using the 2015 European Working Conditions Survey. Our findings suggest that whereas working hours have a weak association with sleep quality, job quality has a more significant impact on sleep quality, with different dimensions playing varying roles. Most favorable job characteristics (e.g., low work intensity, good physical environment, high working time quality) are linked to better sleep quality. In contrast, high skill and discretion is associated with poorer sleep quality. Furthermore, the importance of most job quality indices remains even when people work shorter hours, highlighting the continued importance of job quality for well-being in the global trend of a shorter working week.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-03-23T05:01:05Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241234471
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Gentrification and Neighborhood Housing Wealth: How Gentrification
Reproduces the Racial Stratification of Urban Neighborhoods
Authors: Kevin Beck
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Few researchers have considered how gentrification affects inequalities of housing wealth between Black and White neighborhoods. Drawing on the U.S. census and the American Community Survey, I test the hypothesis that home values rise more slowly in gentrifying neighborhoods that are majority Black compared to those that are majority White. I find that home values appreciate more quickly in gentrifying neighborhoods that are majority Black, particularly those that are experiencing significant change in their racial-ethnic composition. The findings further suggest that Black gentrifying neighborhoods experiencing racial transition—a large increase in the proportion of White residents and a large decrease in the proportion of Black residents—experience higher rates of home value appreciation than those not experiencing racial transition. I argue that gentrification reproduces the racial stratification of urban neighborhoods because large increases to housing wealth tend to be coupled with the arrival of the White middle-class.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-03-21T07:38:57Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241234645
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Feminism and Support for the Transgender Movement in Britain
Authors: Michael Biggs
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
To what extent do feminists support the transgender movement' This visualization presents a recent British survey, which asked whether transgender women should be allowed to compete in female sports. Graphs depict how attitudes vary with feminism and age. Overall, feminists are more likely than nonfeminists to favor the rights of trans women, but this association conceals significant differences among generations. For young people, the relationship between feminism and support for transgender women is unequivocally positive. Among older people, by contrast, feminists are polarized. They are more likely than nonfeminists to strongly support trans women but also more likely to strongly oppose them. Whether this polarization is peculiar to Britain, where the transgender movement has met with particularly strong countermobilization, is a question for future research.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-03-19T06:03:47Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241237662
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Trends of the Delay and Variance of Childbirth Timing by Completed Number
of Children
Authors: Ryohei Mogi, Shohei Yoda
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
The timing of childbirth has undergone significant changes in the past decades. However, it may not be feasible for individuals with many children to further delay the timing of each childbirth given the biological constraints on fecundability and social age deadline for childbirth. Thus, the delay in having children and the increasing heterogeneity in its timing may present different trends when analyzed retrospectively by completed number of children. This study investigates the age at childbirth by birth order among women age 40+ in 17 European countries and Canada based on the number of children they have. Our findings show that individuals having more children tend to have each child at earlier ages, with less variation in timing, compared to the counterparts with fewer children. This suggests that changes in the timing of childbirth are more pronounced among individuals having fewer children and less so among those with having more children.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-03-18T12:40:25Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241238142
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- We Got Our Guy!: Populist Attitudes after Populists Gain Power
Authors: Yuchen Luo
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Research on populist attitudes and populist leaders’ narratives has largely overlooked what happens to populist attitudes after a populist is elected, especially among the populist’s supporters. Existing literature points to two possible directions of change. On one hand, if populist attitudes stem from a perceived lack of representation, then we would expect people’s populist attitudes to decrease once their preferred candidate is in power. On the other hand, scholars have observed that populist politicians in power continue to deploy populist rhetoric, suggesting that their supporters’ populist attitudes should stay constant or even increase. In this project, the author focuses on Donald Trump and his supporters to explore this mechanism. Drawing on a national survey conducted around the 2016 and 2020 elections, the author shows that Trump’s supporters saw a significant decrease in populist attitudes after he came into power compared with both other American voters and other Republicans. The author also demonstrates that this decrease in populist attitudes is associated with changes in the level of “feeling represented.” On the basis of these findings, the author argues that populist attitudes are driven by feelings of lack of representation over other mechanisms.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-03-12T05:32:59Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241234638
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Lifestyle Migration and Native Speakerism in Japan: The Case of NOVA
Eikaiwa
Authors: Jesse Ezra Shircliff
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
In this article, the author illustrates how lifestyle migration to Japan is tied to organizational norms of native speakerism and capitalist exploitation. Drawing on 32 interviews and nine months of fieldwork in Tokyo, the author describes how one of the largest foreign conversation schools in Japan (NOVA) has invested in broadcasting whiteness and English skill as traits of authentic native speakers. This process depends on who is viewed as a valuable teacher, but it also depends on migrants who pursue life in Japan through language teaching. Work at NOVA is highly exploitative. Yet because most of the workforce has ulterior motivations, they are willing to exchange substandard work for the privilege of mobility. This case highlights the overlaps between lifestyle migration and native speakerism at the organizational level and how supposedly “win-win” arrangements with labor create an enduring, material setting for the reproduction of ideology.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-03-08T06:07:55Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241233231
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Birth Spacing and Working Mothers’ Within-Organization Career Paths
Authors: Lisa Carlson, Karen Benjamin Guzzo, Hsueh-Sheng Wu
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
The mechanisms behind mothers’ wage penalties remain unclear. In this article, the authors consider the role of birth spacing and changes in employers after a second birth. Using the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and competing risk event history models, the authors investigate how spacing between first and second births influences the likelihood of returning to a pre–second birth employer, changing employers, or remaining outside of the labor force within six months of the second birth. The authors find no differences in the influence of birth spacing on the likelihood of returning to an employer versus changing employers but that shorter birth spacings relate to lower likelihoods of returning to the labor market. There is some evidence that birth spacing and postbirth employment varies by age at first birth, marital status, and occupation. Overall, the results suggest that although birth spacing is relevant for returning postbirth to employment, job changes are unlikely to drive mothers’ wage penalties.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-03-04T12:11:53Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241230845
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- College Is Not the Great Equalizer in Japan
Authors: Sho Fujihara, Hiroshi Ishida
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
This study represents the first systematic account to test the hypothesis of college as the great equalizer in Japan by analyzing the three-way association among class origin, destination, and education. The authors use data from the Social Stratification and Social Mobility surveys and the Japanese Life Course Panel Surveys. By applying the entropy balancing technique, the authors estimate the heterogeneous causal effect of college education on occupational attainment by the father’s occupation. The results indicate that college education does not function as a great equalizer in Japan. There is no clear evidence to suggest that the occupational returns to a college education are greater among those from less advantaged families than those from more advantaged families. The authors argue that the equalizing effect of a college education is not apparent, because of the specific institutional arrangements of the educational system and the labor market in society.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-02-23T09:46:13Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231231225558
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Studying Travel Networks Using Establishment Covisit Networks in Online
Review Data
Authors: Balázs Kovács
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Whenever someone posts an online review of a restaurant, museum, or barbershop, they also leave a trace of where they traveled. The author visualizes travel patterns in 11 North American metropolitan areas using geolocated review data. The data are based on approximately 7 million online Yelp.com reviews posted by 2 million reviewers between 2005 and 2020. First, the author demonstrates how individual travel patterns can be mapped using the review data and discusses the potential applications of such individual-level data. The author then turns to aggregate-level maps, creating establishment covisit networks in which two establishments are linked if multiple reviewers visit both. Maps of establishment covisits reveal various intriguing patterns related to consumption and geography, such as the connections between neighborhoods and the centralization and segregation within a metropolitan area. Establishment covisit maps can also inform researchers about the diffusion of ideas and practices, trends in crime, and gentrification.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-02-19T05:43:00Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241228917
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Polarizing Feedback Loops on Twitter: Congressional Tweets during the 2022
Midterm Elections
Authors: Patrick Rafail, Whitney E. O’Connell, Emma Sager
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Political polarization has proliferated online. Scholars have identified multiple types of polarizing speech, which elicit stronger public reactions on social media platforms. Little research has focused on how social media platforms might hasten growing partisanship among both elites and the public. The authors examine these dynamics using a sample of 134,442 tweets posted by 527 members of Congress in the period surrounding the 2022 midterm elections. Our findings confirm that all types of polarization increase engagement, but party affiliation plays an important role in the process. Polarizing rhetoric from Republicans generally elicits a stronger reaction relative to that from Democrats. The exception is an increase in retweets of issue-based polarization when posted by Democrats. The authors conclude that all politicians are incentivized to adopt a polarizing presence on social media to raise their profiles. The diffusion of polarization may be shaped by partisanship, with the different parties amplifying different types of content.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-02-19T05:40:50Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241228924
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Shifting Tides: The Evolution of Racial Inequality in Higher Education
from the 1980s through the 2010s
Authors: Byeongdon Oh, Ned Tilbrook, Dara Shifrer
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Amid the proliferation of state-level bans on race-based affirmative action in higher education, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on June 29, 2023, dismantled race-conscious college admission policies, intensifying concerns about the persistence and potential increase of racial inequality in higher education. The authors analyze four restricted-use national survey datasets to investigate racial disparities in college attendance outcomes from the 1980s through the 2010s. Although college entrance rates increased for all racial groups, Black and Hispanic youth became increasingly less likely than their White peers to attend four-year selective colleges. In the 2010s cohort, Black and Hispanic youth were 8 and 7 percentage points, respectively, less likely than their White counterparts to secure admission to four-year selective colleges, even after controlling for parents’ income, education, and other family background variables. The findings underscore the urgent need for proactive policy interventions to address the widening racial inequality in attending selective postsecondary institutions.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-02-13T06:56:09Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231231225578
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- The Intersections among Race, Religion, and Science in Explaining Mental
Health Conditions
Authors: Daniel Bolger, Andrea K. Henderson, Bianca Mabute-Louie, Elaine Howard Ecklund
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Racial minority groups in the United States often seek out religious support for mental health struggles. Yet past studies have often overlooked religion as a key explanatory factor shaping racial-ethnic differences in perceptions of mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety. The authors examine whether views of the relationship between religion and science shape agreement with different explanations for mental health conditions. Drawing on a national probability survey collected in 2021 (n = 3,390), the authors find that individuals who draw boundaries between religion and science had higher odds of rejecting biological and social explanations of mental health conditions, whereas individuals who see religion and science as collaborative had higher odds of affirming biological and social explanations. Belief that we trust science too much (and religion not enough) helped explain Black respondents’ support for religious explanations. The findings underscore the importance of beliefs about religion and science in understanding racial-ethnic differences in views of mental health.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-02-08T07:21:16Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231231225543
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Status and Just Gender Pay Gaps: Results of a Vignette Study
Authors: Kinga Wysieńska-Di Carlo, Zbigniew Karpiński
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
The authors present results from a multifactorial survey experiment conducted on a sample of Polish working-age adults querying their evaluations of just pay for men and women. The experiment was designed to investigate whether gender pay gaps are considered fair and to what extent they can be explained by status-based processes. Respondents rated the fairness of the earnings of hypothetical men and women with different ages and parenthood statuses in 21 occupations. The occupations differed in prestige and gender composition. The authors find that perceived just earnings for women are marginally lower than they are for otherwise identical men, regardless of respondents’ characteristics. Just gender pay gaps are largest among incumbents of high-prestige occupations and in male-dominated and gender-balanced occupations. The authors also find that motherhood penalties are not acceptable. In fact, respondents view both men and women with more than two children as deserving of a parenthood bonus.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-02-07T10:49:59Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241227158
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Social Network, Trust, Approval of President Biden, Risk Perception, and
Annual COVID-19 Booster Intention
Authors: Feng Hao, Stephen R. Neely
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
The aim of this study is to understand the American public’s attitudes toward the annual coronavirus disease booster vaccination, administered beginning in the fall of 2023. The authors carried out a national survey in the spring of 2023, with 40 percent of respondents saying that they are “very likely” to receive the regular booster when it becomes available. Several underlying predictors are identified through structural equation modeling analyses. People with more vaccine takers in their social circles, greater trust in others, higher approval of President Biden’s performance, and greater perceived risk of the pandemic are more likely to receive regular boosters. The social network has the most considerable influence, with the largest coefficient size after comparing all standardized coefficients. The effect of trust is enhanced through social networks, and there is a combined effect of President Biden’s approval and risk perception. These findings contribute to the literature and have policy implications for leveraging interventions and optimizing the vaccination campaign.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-02-07T10:47:30Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231231224634
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Cleaning Up the Neighborhood: White Influx and Differential Requests for
Services
Authors: Nima Dahir, Jackelyn Hwang, Ang Yu
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Visible signs of disorder serve as markers of difference across urban space. Sociological theory suggests that variation in collective social control efforts contributes to variation in physical disorder. However, how structural characteristics shape differences in informal social control remains underexplored because of limited data on disorder and social control. Using city service request data and a novel dataset drawing on Google Street View imagery and computer vision methods, the authors examine the neighborhood characteristics associated with propensities to request trash-related services across five large U.S. cities. The authors find that socioeconomically advantaged neighborhoods and those with fewer minority and foreign-born residents have higher propensities. However, an increase in White residents, but not necessarily an increase in high–socioeconomic status residents, is strongly associated with greater propensities. The authors argue that incoming White residents introduce unique dynamics of social control that are not necessarily collective, thereby affecting spatial inequality and power relations within their new neighborhoods.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-02-06T08:43:23Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231231223436
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Social Isolation in America' A 20-Year Snapshot
Authors: Adam R. Roth
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
This visualization provides a snapshot of social isolation in America over a 20-year period. The author leverages data from the American Time Use Survey to estimate the percentage of Americans who report a complete lack of social contact during a single day. Contrary to prior claims, there was no clear evidence of increasing isolation during the 2000s and 2010s. There was, however, a marked increase in the percentage of Americans who were socially isolated during the coronavirus pandemic. Adopting a micro view of social isolation contributes to contemporary debates by highlighting social interactions rather than broad assessments of social integration such as social relationships or group participation. Although these latter concepts are important in their own ways, focusing on social interactions speaks to issues that are often considered synonymous with social integration such as the exchange of support, resources, and feelings of belongingness.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-02-05T09:56:58Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231241228445
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Linking Geographically Mediated Racial Threat and Racial Resentment
Authors: Kevin T. Morris
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
In recent years, the utility of the racial resentment scale for measuring specifically racialized attitudes of white Americans has come into question. This visualization shows that despite these critiques, racial resentment is highest in precisely the parts of the country where geographically mediated threat is most salient: the whitest parts of the least white states. This link between threat and resentment provides a helpful way to think about these two distinct but related theoretical concepts together.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-01-30T09:48:01Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231231225581
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Black Disadvantage or Advantage' Misalignment between State and Popular
Understandings of Blackness in Mexico
Authors: Christina A. Sue, Fernando Riosmena, Edward Telles
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Growing numbers of countries are including ethnoracial questions on their national censuses, spawning new scholarship on the politics of state classification and ethnoracial stratification. However, these literatures have generally not focused on how alignment or misalignment between state and popular conceptualizations of ethnoracial categories affects official measurements, including population size and ethnoracial inequality. The authors leverage a quasi-natural experiment on state-popular alignment in Mexico by drawing on three recent government surveys, which, for the first time in the nation’s history, sought to measure black identification yet defined blackness in divergent ways. The authors find that questions that define blackness in cultural terms (which misalign with popular conceptions of blackness) produce substantially smaller population estimates and considerably less black disadvantage than a noncultural (racial origins) question. This article bridges the literatures on the politics of ethnoracial classification and stratification and produces new empirical and theoretical insights into the study of ethnoracial measurement and inequality.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-01-25T12:17:06Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231231217821
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- “They Need to Go in There”: Criminalized Subjectivity among Formerly
Incarcerated Black Men
Authors: Lucius Couloute
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Black people are overrepresented in the American criminal justice system, yet policy-based criminal justice research has historically ignored the perspectives of criminalized Black people. Using interviews with 27 formerly incarcerated Black men, the author helps address this issue by exploring how carceral experiences produce “criminalized subjectivities.” In particular, when explicitly asked about what they would say to powerful state officials about their contact with the criminal justice system, the Black men in this study described a range of practices and policies they viewed as unfair and contradictory. Interviewees discussed: unequal judicial processes, inhumane prison conditions, postimprisonment barriers to reintegration, and the rigged nature of racialized mass criminalization. The author argues that, taken together, their responses constitute a critical perspective urging structural (rather than individual-level) change, rooted in experiences with invisibilization and criminalization.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-01-25T09:40:54Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231231224630
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Diversity and Dynamics in Care Networks of Older Americans
Authors: Zhiyong Lin
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Despite growing interest in exploring caregiving alternatives beyond traditional models, limited research has focused on the diverse care networks that provide assistance to older adults. The aim of this study is to illuminate the complexity of older adults’ care networks by developing a typology that considers care from various sources. Using latent class analysis on longitudinal data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study, the authors identify five distinct care network types: spousal care, care exclusively from children, care from both children and other sources, self-care with assistive technology, and care exclusively from nonfamily sources. Further analysis, including multinomial logistic regression and latent transition analysis, reveals that when a spouse is available, older adults, particularly older men, are more likely to rely on spousal care. However, in cases in which spouses and/or children are unavailable, older adults are inclined to turn to diverse care networks involving nontraditional caregivers or resort to self-care using assistive technologies. Additionally, declining health conditions are associated with a higher likelihood of receiving care from more varied care networks. This underscores the evolving nature of care arrangements in response to changing family structures and health needs.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-01-25T09:15:18Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231231223906
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Political Polarization and the Dynamics between Actual Income and
Perceived Income Inequality in the United States, 1987 to 2021
Authors: Cary Wu, Kriti Sharma, Edward Haddon, Francesco Duina
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
The rich often perceive lower levels of inequality than the poor. In recent decades, however, notions regarding the equality or inequality of our society have progressively taken on a more political nature. Consequently, people’s perceptions of income inequality may be less associated with their actual income status and more with their political ideology. The authors visualize this “political turn” using data from the U.S. General Social Survey (1987–2021). The analysis shows that historically actual income and perceived inequality had an inverse relationship, independent of political alignment. Yet since 2000, this has changed: whereas Republicans show a deepening inverse correlation after some attenuation in prior years, Democrats reverse it. With this said, we see an increase in overall concern about inequality among those who identify strongly with either Democratic or Republican ideologies, but importantly the biggest increase is among those in the Democratic group. This invites reflections on the nature of the “political turn.”
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-01-20T08:21:24Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231231225580
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Changes in Americans’ Views on Who Should Provide and Pay for Assistance
to Older Adults with Activity Limitations, 2012 to 2022
Authors: Sarah E. Patterson, Adriana M. Reyes
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
An aging U.S. population means more older adults in need of care over time. Although government programs that supply financial support for older adults receive high levels of backing, social norms dictate that when it comes to care, families should be held responsible. Although families do provide most of the care older adults receive, it can often be in balance with more formal provisions such as paid care. However, there is a divide between what older people themselves feel is best compared with other groups. The authors ask, What are American attitudes toward the provision of elder care and payment for such care, how have these attitudes changed in the past decade, and are there differences by age' The authors use cross-sectional data from the 2012 and 2022 General Social Survey and find that younger adults were more likely to support government provision and payment for elder care over time.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-01-18T04:04:39Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231231225574
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Who Represents Asian American in Mainstream Newspapers
Authors: Hao Lin
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
Who counts as Asian Americans' Previous research with survey data shows that South Asian Americans are less likely to be recognized as Asian Americans compared with East Asian Americans. Using a national news dataset, this visualization presents annual trends in the mentions of three subethnicities (East Asian, South Asian, and Southeast Asian) when discussing Asian Americans from 1977 to 2022. East Asians are the most likely to be mentioned when discussing Asian Americans compared with South Asians and Southeast Asians. The patterns are consistent over time. This suggests that such disparity among Asian subethnic groups is institutionalized in news media.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-01-17T07:29:28Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231231225152
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Framing Welfare Expansion: Citizenship, Collective Memory, and Fiscal
Dilemmas in Mexico and Peru
Authors: Daniela Campos Ugaz
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
One of the most significant innovations in welfare policies in the past three decades has been the adoption of conditional cash transfers in dozens of countries in the Global South. The policies are puzzling, as they deviate from contributory social policy that privileges formal workers and were implemented during democratization and Washington Consensus reforms. How did policy makers justify welfare expansion' The author conducts an analysis of the parliamentary debates that resulted in the implementation of these programs in Mexico (1997) and Peru (2005). By examining the policy makers’ reasoning behind these programs, the author aims to explore the relationship between new forms of social rights and citizenship. The findings show that state actors mobilized narratives of nation-building to justify the historical debt to specific segments of the population, shared an ambivalence regarding the meaning of cash transfers between entitlements or investments, and acknowledged the precarity of the funding scheme.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-01-10T01:23:21Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231231222117
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
- Visualizing Concentrations of Couples and Same-Sex Couples across U.S.
Counties
Authors: Francesca A. Marino, Krista K. Westrick-Payne, Wendy D. Manning, Susan L. Brown
Abstract: Socius, Volume 10, Issue , January-December 2024.
The 2020 decennial census provides a unique opportunity to directly count same-sex couples using a revised household roster, and its recently released Demographic and Housing Characteristics File offers county-level data on the concentration of same-sex couples. As county-level data can unveil more nuanced geographic patterns than state-level data, the authors examine within-state variation using two maps of county-level quartiles to compare the percentages of individuals in unions among the population and same-sex unions among all unions. The findings reveal that concentrations of same-sex couples are not necessarily driven by the percentages of individuals in unions. These patterns suggest that the social location of same-sex couples is not determined solely by the area’s couple configuration but by other factors. To help illuminate these factors, future research should explore whether the counties with high shares of couples but low shares of same-sex couples are also areas where inclusivity tends to be lagging.
Citation: Socius
PubDate: 2024-01-08T01:00:41Z
DOI: 10.1177/23780231231222772
Issue No: Vol. 10 (2024)
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