Pub Date : 2022-10-27DOI: 10.1177/00031224221131478
P. Fink
Rule evasion by companies is a major driver of change in contemporary market societies. Recent research holds that periods of market instability offer opportunities to bring rule evasion under control because crises expose hidden market practices. Based on original archival evidence from the financial crisis of 1974, this article shows that rule evasion is disclosed not automatically, but strategically and selectively. To explain the ensuing dynamics, the article develops a Goffmanian framework in which regulators learn of a crisis of rule evasion backstage (in their interactions with companies) but use a conventional definition of the situation frontstage (in their presentations to the public). In an as yet unrecognized outcome, the regulators may find themselves caught between frontstage and backstage: their communications to the public limit their room for maneuver against the companies backstage, forcing them to repurpose their extant crisis-management tools. Because regulators publicly pretend to stay within their mandate, this form of crisis response renders re-regulation of rule evasion less likely. The finding contributes a new explanation for a central puzzle in the burgeoning sociology of crises: why periods of instability so rarely lead to change.
{"title":"Caught between Frontstage and Backstage: The Failure of the Federal Reserve to Halt Rule Evasion in the Financial Crisis of 1974","authors":"P. Fink","doi":"10.1177/00031224221131478","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224221131478","url":null,"abstract":"Rule evasion by companies is a major driver of change in contemporary market societies. Recent research holds that periods of market instability offer opportunities to bring rule evasion under control because crises expose hidden market practices. Based on original archival evidence from the financial crisis of 1974, this article shows that rule evasion is disclosed not automatically, but strategically and selectively. To explain the ensuing dynamics, the article develops a Goffmanian framework in which regulators learn of a crisis of rule evasion backstage (in their interactions with companies) but use a conventional definition of the situation frontstage (in their presentations to the public). In an as yet unrecognized outcome, the regulators may find themselves caught between frontstage and backstage: their communications to the public limit their room for maneuver against the companies backstage, forcing them to repurpose their extant crisis-management tools. Because regulators publicly pretend to stay within their mandate, this form of crisis response renders re-regulation of rule evasion less likely. The finding contributes a new explanation for a central puzzle in the burgeoning sociology of crises: why periods of instability so rarely lead to change.","PeriodicalId":48461,"journal":{"name":"American Sociological Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47547028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-26DOI: 10.1177/00031224221125937
H. Greve, H. Rao, P. Vicinanza, Echo Yan Zhou
Conspiracies are consequential and social, yet online conspiracy groups that consist of individuals (and bots) seeking to explain events or a system have been neglected in sociology. We extract conspiracy talk about the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter and use the biterm topic model (BTM) to provide a descriptive baseline for the discursive and social structure of online conspiracy groups. We find that individuals enter these communities through a gateway conspiracy theory before proceeding to extreme theories, and humans adopt more diverse conspiracy theories than do bots. Event-history analyses show that individuals tweet new conspiracy theories, and tweet inconsistent theories simultaneously, when they face a threat posed by a rising COVID-19 case rate and receive attention from others via retweets. By contrast, bots are less responsive to rising case rates, but they are more consistent, as they mainly tweet about how COVID-19 was deliberately created by sinister agents. These findings suggest human beings are bricoleurs who use conspiracy theories to make sense of COVID-19, whereas bots are designed to create moral panic. Our findings suggest that conspiracy talk by individuals is defensive in nature, whereas bots engage in offense.
{"title":"Online Conspiracy Groups: Micro-Bloggers, Bots, and Coronavirus Conspiracy Talk on Twitter","authors":"H. Greve, H. Rao, P. Vicinanza, Echo Yan Zhou","doi":"10.1177/00031224221125937","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224221125937","url":null,"abstract":"Conspiracies are consequential and social, yet online conspiracy groups that consist of individuals (and bots) seeking to explain events or a system have been neglected in sociology. We extract conspiracy talk about the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter and use the biterm topic model (BTM) to provide a descriptive baseline for the discursive and social structure of online conspiracy groups. We find that individuals enter these communities through a gateway conspiracy theory before proceeding to extreme theories, and humans adopt more diverse conspiracy theories than do bots. Event-history analyses show that individuals tweet new conspiracy theories, and tweet inconsistent theories simultaneously, when they face a threat posed by a rising COVID-19 case rate and receive attention from others via retweets. By contrast, bots are less responsive to rising case rates, but they are more consistent, as they mainly tweet about how COVID-19 was deliberately created by sinister agents. These findings suggest human beings are bricoleurs who use conspiracy theories to make sense of COVID-19, whereas bots are designed to create moral panic. Our findings suggest that conspiracy talk by individuals is defensive in nature, whereas bots engage in offense.","PeriodicalId":48461,"journal":{"name":"American Sociological Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45274706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-24DOI: 10.1177/00031224221123030
Di Zhou
Why do certain ideas catch on? What makes some ideas more powerful than others? Using a novel dataset that traces Chinese netizens’ discussion of U.S. politics on an online forum, this study examines key predictors of cultural power—novelty, emotion, status, and linguistic features—using an innovative diachronic word-embedding method. The study finds a curvilinear relationship between novelty and resonance, as well as a positive relationship between status and cultural power. Contrary to theoretical expectations, moderate emotions, whether positive or negative, are found to be more effective in evoking resonance than more intense emotions, possibly due to the mediating effect of the forum’s “group style.” Thus, it appears that although extreme sentiments toward the United States may exist, they are not likely to be resonant, at least among more educated Chinese netizens. The study also finds significant effects of linguistic features, such as lexical diversity and the use of English in Chinese discussions. This suggests a Bourdieusian “cultural capital signaling and selection” path to cultural power, which has not been considered in most studies of resonance.
{"title":"The Elements of Cultural Power: Novelty, Emotion, Status, and Cultural Capital","authors":"Di Zhou","doi":"10.1177/00031224221123030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224221123030","url":null,"abstract":"Why do certain ideas catch on? What makes some ideas more powerful than others? Using a novel dataset that traces Chinese netizens’ discussion of U.S. politics on an online forum, this study examines key predictors of cultural power—novelty, emotion, status, and linguistic features—using an innovative diachronic word-embedding method. The study finds a curvilinear relationship between novelty and resonance, as well as a positive relationship between status and cultural power. Contrary to theoretical expectations, moderate emotions, whether positive or negative, are found to be more effective in evoking resonance than more intense emotions, possibly due to the mediating effect of the forum’s “group style.” Thus, it appears that although extreme sentiments toward the United States may exist, they are not likely to be resonant, at least among more educated Chinese netizens. The study also finds significant effects of linguistic features, such as lexical diversity and the use of English in Chinese discussions. This suggests a Bourdieusian “cultural capital signaling and selection” path to cultural power, which has not been considered in most studies of resonance.","PeriodicalId":48461,"journal":{"name":"American Sociological Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47818166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-24DOI: 10.1177/00031224221121294
Maria-Fátima Santos
Incarceration has become naturalized as a primary mode of punishment within the penal systems of modern states across the globe. This study examines how states develop the capacity to execute incarceration as a routine state function. I argue that rationalization and bureaucratization are key for transforming carceral enclosures into a naturalized feature of states’ routine exercise of coercion. I develop this argument through analysis of a dynamic case of carceral modernization in the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo (2003 to 2014). I analyze the significance of coordinated violence and performative strategies for rulers to extend administrative capacity to incarceration and transform confinement into a legitimate and legitimizing instrument of state power. Findings demonstrate how coercive practices and other modes of violence that state authorities come to narrate as illegitimate are not antithetical to modernization. Rather, they become constitutive of the very process of consolidating and legitimizing rational-legal modes of administration that routinely exercise violence while more effectively being misrecognized as such. By extending inquiry to how states develop the administrative capacity to exercise penal power, this analysis makes several contributions to the political sociology of punishment and theories of state-building.
{"title":"Modernizing Leviathan: Carceral Reform and the Struggle for Legitimacy in Brazil’s Espírito Santo State","authors":"Maria-Fátima Santos","doi":"10.1177/00031224221121294","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224221121294","url":null,"abstract":"Incarceration has become naturalized as a primary mode of punishment within the penal systems of modern states across the globe. This study examines how states develop the capacity to execute incarceration as a routine state function. I argue that rationalization and bureaucratization are key for transforming carceral enclosures into a naturalized feature of states’ routine exercise of coercion. I develop this argument through analysis of a dynamic case of carceral modernization in the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo (2003 to 2014). I analyze the significance of coordinated violence and performative strategies for rulers to extend administrative capacity to incarceration and transform confinement into a legitimate and legitimizing instrument of state power. Findings demonstrate how coercive practices and other modes of violence that state authorities come to narrate as illegitimate are not antithetical to modernization. Rather, they become constitutive of the very process of consolidating and legitimizing rational-legal modes of administration that routinely exercise violence while more effectively being misrecognized as such. By extending inquiry to how states develop the administrative capacity to exercise penal power, this analysis makes several contributions to the political sociology of punishment and theories of state-building.","PeriodicalId":48461,"journal":{"name":"American Sociological Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47293657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-21DOI: 10.1177/00031224221122889
Emilio J. Castilla, Ethan J. Poskanzer
When screening candidates, organizations often give preference to certain applicants on the basis of their familial ties. This “legacy preference,” particularly widespread in college admissions, has been criticized for contributing to inequality and class reproduction. Despite this, studies continue to report that legacies are persistently admitted at higher rates than non-legacies. In this article, we develop a theoretical framework of three distinct sense-making strategies at play when decision-makers screen applicants into their organizations—the meritocratic, material, and diversity logics. We then apply this framework to investigate how legacy preferences either support or undermine each organizational logic using comprehensive data on the population of applicants seeking admission into one elite U.S. college. We find strong support for the material logic at the cost of the other two organizational logics: legacies make better alumni after graduation and have wealthier parents who are materially-positioned to be more generous donors than non-legacy parents. Contrary to the meritocratic logic, we find that legacies are neither more qualified applicants nor better students academically. From a diversity standpoint, legacies are less racially diverse than non-legacies. We conclude with a discussion of our study’s implications for understanding the role of family relationships and nepotism in today’s organizational selection processes.
{"title":"Through the Front Door: Why Do Organizations (Still) Prefer Legacy Applicants?","authors":"Emilio J. Castilla, Ethan J. Poskanzer","doi":"10.1177/00031224221122889","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224221122889","url":null,"abstract":"When screening candidates, organizations often give preference to certain applicants on the basis of their familial ties. This “legacy preference,” particularly widespread in college admissions, has been criticized for contributing to inequality and class reproduction. Despite this, studies continue to report that legacies are persistently admitted at higher rates than non-legacies. In this article, we develop a theoretical framework of three distinct sense-making strategies at play when decision-makers screen applicants into their organizations—the meritocratic, material, and diversity logics. We then apply this framework to investigate how legacy preferences either support or undermine each organizational logic using comprehensive data on the population of applicants seeking admission into one elite U.S. college. We find strong support for the material logic at the cost of the other two organizational logics: legacies make better alumni after graduation and have wealthier parents who are materially-positioned to be more generous donors than non-legacy parents. Contrary to the meritocratic logic, we find that legacies are neither more qualified applicants nor better students academically. From a diversity standpoint, legacies are less racially diverse than non-legacies. We conclude with a discussion of our study’s implications for understanding the role of family relationships and nepotism in today’s organizational selection processes.","PeriodicalId":48461,"journal":{"name":"American Sociological Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43879433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.1177/00031224221119803
Wendy D. Roth, P. Solís, C. Sue
A core sociological claim is that race is a social construction; an important illustration of this is how racial classifications are influenced by people’s socioeconomic status. In both Latin America and the United States, someone with higher SES is more likely to be classified as White than others of similar appearance, a pattern epitomized by the expression “money whitens.” However, recent studies of the effect of SES on racial classifications show inconsistent results, sometimes depending on the measures used. We develop a broad theorization of societies as having multiple racialized hierarchies with different socioeconomic escalators potentially bringing people to higher-status locations in each one. Yet racialized hierarchies differ across societies, and some non-White classifications may reflect a process of upward movement while others may not. We assess this process in Mexico using the 2019 Project on Ethnic-Racial Discrimination in Mexico, a nationally-representative survey including highly accurate digital skin-color ratings, perceived skin-color assessments, and ethnoracial classifications by respondents and interviewers. We find that having higher education increases respondents’ self-classification as Mestizo. Yet those with greater wealth are “whitened” by interviewers. Simultaneously, respondents and interviewers “lighten” respondents with greater wealth. We argue that SES can differentially affect mobility in different racialized hierarchies, showing how race is constructed partly by other social constructs like class.
{"title":"Beyond Money Whitening: Racialized Hierarchies and Socioeconomic Escalators in Mexico","authors":"Wendy D. Roth, P. Solís, C. Sue","doi":"10.1177/00031224221119803","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224221119803","url":null,"abstract":"A core sociological claim is that race is a social construction; an important illustration of this is how racial classifications are influenced by people’s socioeconomic status. In both Latin America and the United States, someone with higher SES is more likely to be classified as White than others of similar appearance, a pattern epitomized by the expression “money whitens.” However, recent studies of the effect of SES on racial classifications show inconsistent results, sometimes depending on the measures used. We develop a broad theorization of societies as having multiple racialized hierarchies with different socioeconomic escalators potentially bringing people to higher-status locations in each one. Yet racialized hierarchies differ across societies, and some non-White classifications may reflect a process of upward movement while others may not. We assess this process in Mexico using the 2019 Project on Ethnic-Racial Discrimination in Mexico, a nationally-representative survey including highly accurate digital skin-color ratings, perceived skin-color assessments, and ethnoracial classifications by respondents and interviewers. We find that having higher education increases respondents’ self-classification as Mestizo. Yet those with greater wealth are “whitened” by interviewers. Simultaneously, respondents and interviewers “lighten” respondents with greater wealth. We argue that SES can differentially affect mobility in different racialized hierarchies, showing how race is constructed partly by other social constructs like class.","PeriodicalId":48461,"journal":{"name":"American Sociological Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49520367","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-22DOI: 10.1177/00031224221116145
A. DiMario
Studies of poverty governance typically emphasize the punitive subjugation or paternalistic disciplining of the poor. Much work combines elements of these approaches, and recent studies depict relations between institutions as premised on collaboration or burden shuffling. Despite the precarity of poor people’s existence, the role of life itself in governance is conspicuously absent in this literature. Using an ethnographic case study of a syringe exchange program serving unhoused people who inject drugs in Los Angeles, this article theorizes palliative governance to describe forms of regulation that neither punish nor parent, but simply try to keep very poor subjects alive through a series of stopgap measures. Rather than collaborate or burden shuffle, exchange workers supplement, contest, and co-opt other governing institutions. An analysis of palliative governance broadens our understanding of how institutions interact with subjects and each other, while revealing the paradoxical ways states both expose and protect bare life.
{"title":"To Punish, Parent, or Palliate: Governing Urban Poverty through Institutional Failure","authors":"A. DiMario","doi":"10.1177/00031224221116145","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224221116145","url":null,"abstract":"Studies of poverty governance typically emphasize the punitive subjugation or paternalistic disciplining of the poor. Much work combines elements of these approaches, and recent studies depict relations between institutions as premised on collaboration or burden shuffling. Despite the precarity of poor people’s existence, the role of life itself in governance is conspicuously absent in this literature. Using an ethnographic case study of a syringe exchange program serving unhoused people who inject drugs in Los Angeles, this article theorizes palliative governance to describe forms of regulation that neither punish nor parent, but simply try to keep very poor subjects alive through a series of stopgap measures. Rather than collaborate or burden shuffle, exchange workers supplement, contest, and co-opt other governing institutions. An analysis of palliative governance broadens our understanding of how institutions interact with subjects and each other, while revealing the paradoxical ways states both expose and protect bare life.","PeriodicalId":48461,"journal":{"name":"American Sociological Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.1,"publicationDate":"2022-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45403822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-22DOI: 10.1177/00031224221112902
A. Ureña
Objects of risk mitigation are typically viewed as neutral items that limit exposure to an established hazard. However, people may refuse to adopt such tools, even when they feel vulnerable. This article explores how people assess their personal risk and mitigation options by examining PrEP use for HIV prevention. Drawing on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 40 Black and Latino gay, bisexual, and queer men, I argue PrEP uptake is a socially contextualized decision influenced by relational concerns. I develop the concept of relational inoculation, wherein individuals enact a sense of protection against harm through relational work. As individuals consider PrEP, they also contemplate how it may bolster or undermine intimacy they value for reducing interpersonal HIV exposure, as well as dispelling stigmatized notions of riskiness held by their intersecting ethno-racial and sexual minority communities. I develop testable propositions about how respondents’ HIV risk assessments and PrEP use are enmeshed in a societal context of surveillance, in ongoing relations with intimate partners and socially significant others, and in navigation of community belonging within this milieu of risk. This article contributes to sociological research at the nexus of race, sexuality, and health, and offers health policy insight.
{"title":"Relational Risk: How Relationships Shape Personal Assessments of Risk and Mitigation","authors":"A. Ureña","doi":"10.1177/00031224221112902","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224221112902","url":null,"abstract":"Objects of risk mitigation are typically viewed as neutral items that limit exposure to an established hazard. However, people may refuse to adopt such tools, even when they feel vulnerable. This article explores how people assess their personal risk and mitigation options by examining PrEP use for HIV prevention. Drawing on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 40 Black and Latino gay, bisexual, and queer men, I argue PrEP uptake is a socially contextualized decision influenced by relational concerns. I develop the concept of relational inoculation, wherein individuals enact a sense of protection against harm through relational work. As individuals consider PrEP, they also contemplate how it may bolster or undermine intimacy they value for reducing interpersonal HIV exposure, as well as dispelling stigmatized notions of riskiness held by their intersecting ethno-racial and sexual minority communities. I develop testable propositions about how respondents’ HIV risk assessments and PrEP use are enmeshed in a societal context of surveillance, in ongoing relations with intimate partners and socially significant others, and in navigation of community belonging within this milieu of risk. This article contributes to sociological research at the nexus of race, sexuality, and health, and offers health policy insight.","PeriodicalId":48461,"journal":{"name":"American Sociological Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.1,"publicationDate":"2022-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49462402","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-20DOI: 10.1177/00031224221108196
J. Kucinskas, Evan Stewart
Churches have long been sites of local charity work as well as national political movements. What happens when people engage in more individualistic forms of spirituality, like mindfulness meditation or yoga, rather than participate in religious communities? Might the rise of individualized forms of spirituality lead to a decline in political engagement? Or, among people averse to religion, might spiritual practice operate as a substitute, and potentially contribute to political engagement? Drawing on burgeoning theory of religion and spirituality as socially-situated boundary objects, we use data from the 2020 National Religion and Spirituality Survey to examine the relationship between self-reported spiritual and religious practices and political engagement. First, we investigate whether study participants distinguish spiritual and religious practice as distinct concepts through factor analysis. Next, we use those results to examine the association between these practices and reports of political behavior. We find a consistent, positive relationship between spiritual practice and political engagement of comparable magnitude to that of religious practices. Notably, during an era of heightened political polarization around religious engagement, political progressives, respondents of color, and members of the LGBT community are more likely to report spiritual rather than religious practices. This points us to a theory of spiritual practice as a substitute for religious engagement among groups alienated from religious institutions, with the former capable of fostering similar proclivities for political action as the latter. Our results suggest critiques of a “selfish” spirituality have been overblown.
{"title":"Selfish or Substituting Spirituality? Clarifying the Relationship between Spiritual Practice and Political Engagement","authors":"J. Kucinskas, Evan Stewart","doi":"10.1177/00031224221108196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224221108196","url":null,"abstract":"Churches have long been sites of local charity work as well as national political movements. What happens when people engage in more individualistic forms of spirituality, like mindfulness meditation or yoga, rather than participate in religious communities? Might the rise of individualized forms of spirituality lead to a decline in political engagement? Or, among people averse to religion, might spiritual practice operate as a substitute, and potentially contribute to political engagement? Drawing on burgeoning theory of religion and spirituality as socially-situated boundary objects, we use data from the 2020 National Religion and Spirituality Survey to examine the relationship between self-reported spiritual and religious practices and political engagement. First, we investigate whether study participants distinguish spiritual and religious practice as distinct concepts through factor analysis. Next, we use those results to examine the association between these practices and reports of political behavior. We find a consistent, positive relationship between spiritual practice and political engagement of comparable magnitude to that of religious practices. Notably, during an era of heightened political polarization around religious engagement, political progressives, respondents of color, and members of the LGBT community are more likely to report spiritual rather than religious practices. This points us to a theory of spiritual practice as a substitute for religious engagement among groups alienated from religious institutions, with the former capable of fostering similar proclivities for political action as the latter. Our results suggest critiques of a “selfish” spirituality have been overblown.","PeriodicalId":48461,"journal":{"name":"American Sociological Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49602139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-17DOI: 10.1177/00031224221110535
Stephanie Bonnes
This article draws on in-depth interviews with 50 U.S. servicewomen to advance sociological understandings of gender, femininity, and harassment. Recognizing that women are targeted with harassment throughout their military careers, I analyze specific episodes of harassment to examine organizational and interactional meanings and the power dynamics embedded in these instances. This article explains why servicemen escalate harassment toward women who are pregnant or who enter heterosexual relationships. In a militarized context that already denigrates femininity, I argue that men impose gendered and sexualized meanings on women’s life-course events to limit women’s organizational inclusion. These events, such as pregnancy and engagement or marriage to a heterosexual partner, serve as “femininity anchors” that tether women to femininity within a hyper-masculine environment. Femininity anchors present serious interactional and individual consequences for women as they attempt to navigate the gendered terrain of the U.S. military. Aside from eliciting moments of elevated sexual and nonsexual harassment, femininity anchors restrict women’s acceptance as real servicemembers and negatively affect their military careers. In highlighting the negative treatment women receive due to femininity anchors, I demonstrate how the specific ways gender is embedded in an organization shapes patterns of harassment and exclusion.
{"title":"Femininity Anchors: Heterosexual Relationships and Pregnancy as Sites of Harassment for U.S. Servicewomen","authors":"Stephanie Bonnes","doi":"10.1177/00031224221110535","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224221110535","url":null,"abstract":"This article draws on in-depth interviews with 50 U.S. servicewomen to advance sociological understandings of gender, femininity, and harassment. Recognizing that women are targeted with harassment throughout their military careers, I analyze specific episodes of harassment to examine organizational and interactional meanings and the power dynamics embedded in these instances. This article explains why servicemen escalate harassment toward women who are pregnant or who enter heterosexual relationships. In a militarized context that already denigrates femininity, I argue that men impose gendered and sexualized meanings on women’s life-course events to limit women’s organizational inclusion. These events, such as pregnancy and engagement or marriage to a heterosexual partner, serve as “femininity anchors” that tether women to femininity within a hyper-masculine environment. Femininity anchors present serious interactional and individual consequences for women as they attempt to navigate the gendered terrain of the U.S. military. Aside from eliciting moments of elevated sexual and nonsexual harassment, femininity anchors restrict women’s acceptance as real servicemembers and negatively affect their military careers. In highlighting the negative treatment women receive due to femininity anchors, I demonstrate how the specific ways gender is embedded in an organization shapes patterns of harassment and exclusion.","PeriodicalId":48461,"journal":{"name":"American Sociological Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43695678","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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