Pub Date : 2023-07-22DOI: 10.1177/00207152231187196
Pál Susánszky, Bernhard Kittel, Á. Kopper
During the COVID-19 pandemic, some governments took measures to restrict political liberties, claiming that these restrictions were necessary to contain the spread of the virus. In this study, we scrutinize differences in citizens’ willingness to accept three types of political restrictions: restricting the media, banning protests, and introducing extensive state surveillance. We focus on two European countries: Austria and Hungary. While we find that perceived health threats, political values, ideological orientation, and political trust are important predictors of accepting political restrictions, we also find that citizens differ in their willingness to support the three types of restrictions depending on whether the given measure affects them directly. We also find differences between Austria and Hungary concerning the way political trust and political values affect the acceptance of restrictions, which may be rooted in the larger polarization of Hungarian society. Furthermore, we observe that perceived health threats, political values, ideological orientation, and political trust are important predictors of accepting political restrictions.
{"title":"Acceptance of political restrictions and societal polarization during the COVID-19 pandemic: A comparative study of Austria and Hungary","authors":"Pál Susánszky, Bernhard Kittel, Á. Kopper","doi":"10.1177/00207152231187196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231187196","url":null,"abstract":"During the COVID-19 pandemic, some governments took measures to restrict political liberties, claiming that these restrictions were necessary to contain the spread of the virus. In this study, we scrutinize differences in citizens’ willingness to accept three types of political restrictions: restricting the media, banning protests, and introducing extensive state surveillance. We focus on two European countries: Austria and Hungary. While we find that perceived health threats, political values, ideological orientation, and political trust are important predictors of accepting political restrictions, we also find that citizens differ in their willingness to support the three types of restrictions depending on whether the given measure affects them directly. We also find differences between Austria and Hungary concerning the way political trust and political values affect the acceptance of restrictions, which may be rooted in the larger polarization of Hungarian society. Furthermore, we observe that perceived health threats, political values, ideological orientation, and political trust are important predictors of accepting political restrictions.","PeriodicalId":51601,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Comparative Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42823633","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-21DOI: 10.1177/00207152231187047
Anthony Roberts, Emma Casey, Baylee Hodges
Prior studies on emerging economies contend that increasing returns to human capital has contributed to the growth of wage inequality over the last few decades. However, this explanation fails to account for an important dynamic of contemporary wage inequality: the growth of top labor incomes. Research on advanced economies show the emergence of a wage premium in the financial sector increased top labor incomes, but studies have yet to investigate whether a financial wage premium is contributing to the growth of top labor incomes in emerging economies. The present study addresses this theoretical and empirical gap by conceptualizing and measuring the financial wage premium across the distributions of labor income in the most important subset of emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC). Drawing on harmonized labor force data from the Luxembourg Income Study, we utilize unconditional quantile regression modeling and treatment effect estimation to examine the financial wage premium across the distributions of labor income in the BRIC before and after the Great Recession. Consistent with studies on advanced economies, we find a substantial wage premium among top earners in the financial sectors of the BRIC, which has grew in the post-recession period. However, we find significant variation in size and growth of the financial wage premium because of the variegated nature of financialization across the BRIC. We conclude by suggesting that subsequent studies should explore the heterogeneous effects of subordinate and state financialization on wage dynamics in emerging economies.
{"title":"Financialization and top incomes in emerging economies: A comparative distributional analysis of the financial wage premium in the BRIC","authors":"Anthony Roberts, Emma Casey, Baylee Hodges","doi":"10.1177/00207152231187047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231187047","url":null,"abstract":"Prior studies on emerging economies contend that increasing returns to human capital has contributed to the growth of wage inequality over the last few decades. However, this explanation fails to account for an important dynamic of contemporary wage inequality: the growth of top labor incomes. Research on advanced economies show the emergence of a wage premium in the financial sector increased top labor incomes, but studies have yet to investigate whether a financial wage premium is contributing to the growth of top labor incomes in emerging economies. The present study addresses this theoretical and empirical gap by conceptualizing and measuring the financial wage premium across the distributions of labor income in the most important subset of emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC). Drawing on harmonized labor force data from the Luxembourg Income Study, we utilize unconditional quantile regression modeling and treatment effect estimation to examine the financial wage premium across the distributions of labor income in the BRIC before and after the Great Recession. Consistent with studies on advanced economies, we find a substantial wage premium among top earners in the financial sectors of the BRIC, which has grew in the post-recession period. However, we find significant variation in size and growth of the financial wage premium because of the variegated nature of financialization across the BRIC. We conclude by suggesting that subsequent studies should explore the heterogeneous effects of subordinate and state financialization on wage dynamics in emerging economies.","PeriodicalId":51601,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Comparative Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47176868","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-21DOI: 10.1177/00207152231188316
O. Lavrinenko
Women’s International Non-Governmental Organizations (WINGOs) are a major force in spreading world culture at the national level. At the same time, women’s political empowerment is one of the spaces in which world culture manifests itself. WINGOs, often in conjunction with emancipative values, may potentially have an impact on a country’s level of women’s political empowerment. However, scholars rarely integrate them into theory and empirical tests. Using the world culture approach as the larger frame, I build this framework and test it. Specifically, Hypothesis 1 tests whether there is a potential positive association between women’s political empowerment and the number of WINGO ties. Hypothesis 2 examines the potential interaction between emancipative values and WINGOs. Employing mixed-effects linear regression on the aggregated World Values Survey/European Values Survey (WVS/EVS) dataset and administrative data, I observe that WINGOs and emancipative values have separate effects on women’s political empowerment. However, there is no significant evidence that emancipative values interact with WINGOs.
{"title":"WINGOs as conduits of world culture, their relationships with emancipative values, and women’s political empowerment worldwide, 1981–2020","authors":"O. Lavrinenko","doi":"10.1177/00207152231188316","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231188316","url":null,"abstract":"Women’s International Non-Governmental Organizations (WINGOs) are a major force in spreading world culture at the national level. At the same time, women’s political empowerment is one of the spaces in which world culture manifests itself. WINGOs, often in conjunction with emancipative values, may potentially have an impact on a country’s level of women’s political empowerment. However, scholars rarely integrate them into theory and empirical tests. Using the world culture approach as the larger frame, I build this framework and test it. Specifically, Hypothesis 1 tests whether there is a potential positive association between women’s political empowerment and the number of WINGO ties. Hypothesis 2 examines the potential interaction between emancipative values and WINGOs. Employing mixed-effects linear regression on the aggregated World Values Survey/European Values Survey (WVS/EVS) dataset and administrative data, I observe that WINGOs and emancipative values have separate effects on women’s political empowerment. However, there is no significant evidence that emancipative values interact with WINGOs.","PeriodicalId":51601,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Comparative Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43201767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-19DOI: 10.1177/00207152231185282
T. Sakamoto
Social investment (SI) policies have been implemented by governments of affluent countries in hopes of safeguarding against new social risks and mitigating social exclusion by encouraging employment and making it easier for parents to balance work and family. Governments hope that human capital investment (education and job training) will better prepare workers for jobs, promote their employment and social inclusion, and reduce poverty. This article investigates whether SI policies contribute to lower poverty and inequality by analyzing data from 18 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries between 1980 and 2013. The analysis finds, first, that SI policies (education and active labor market policy (ALMP)) alone may be less effective in generating lower poverty and inequality without redistribution, but when accompanied and supported by redistribution, SI policies are more effective in creating lower poverty and inequality. I propose the explanation that SI policies create lower-income poverty and inequality by creating individuals and households that can be salvaged and lifted out of poverty with redistribution, because SI policies help improve their skills and knowledge and employability, although they may be not quite able to escape poverty or low income without redistribution. As partial evidence, I present the result that education is associated with a lower poverty gap in market income. The analysis also finds that education and ALMP produce lower poverty and/or inequality in interaction with social market economies that redistribute more, and that augments the equalizing effects of education and ALMP. The results, thus, suggest the complementary roles of SI policies and redistribution.
{"title":"Poverty, inequality, and redistribution: An analysis of the equalizing effects of social investment policy","authors":"T. Sakamoto","doi":"10.1177/00207152231185282","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231185282","url":null,"abstract":"Social investment (SI) policies have been implemented by governments of affluent countries in hopes of safeguarding against new social risks and mitigating social exclusion by encouraging employment and making it easier for parents to balance work and family. Governments hope that human capital investment (education and job training) will better prepare workers for jobs, promote their employment and social inclusion, and reduce poverty. This article investigates whether SI policies contribute to lower poverty and inequality by analyzing data from 18 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries between 1980 and 2013. The analysis finds, first, that SI policies (education and active labor market policy (ALMP)) alone may be less effective in generating lower poverty and inequality without redistribution, but when accompanied and supported by redistribution, SI policies are more effective in creating lower poverty and inequality. I propose the explanation that SI policies create lower-income poverty and inequality by creating individuals and households that can be salvaged and lifted out of poverty with redistribution, because SI policies help improve their skills and knowledge and employability, although they may be not quite able to escape poverty or low income without redistribution. As partial evidence, I present the result that education is associated with a lower poverty gap in market income. The analysis also finds that education and ALMP produce lower poverty and/or inequality in interaction with social market economies that redistribute more, and that augments the equalizing effects of education and ALMP. The results, thus, suggest the complementary roles of SI policies and redistribution.","PeriodicalId":51601,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Comparative Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46695419","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-07DOI: 10.1177/00207152231183615
M. Bahna, Paula Ivanková
Perceptions of social structure typically only change gradually and their connection to economic development seems to be indirect at best. Times of rapid socioeconomic transformations such as the transition of state-socialist economies to market economy or the disintegration of a common state might witness more notable changes. Using data from four rounds of the ISSP Social Inequality module, we model how people see their position and the structure of their society on the example of the two ex-Czechoslovak countries. Both post-communist societies share the beginning of the transition to a free market economy in 1989 but are divided by starkly contrasting impacts of the transition on their labor market. We show that views on social structure in the ex-Czechoslovak countries diverge over time with Slovaks more frequently describing their society as highly unequal and seeing their position as lower in the social structure. We find support for the assumption that experiences with unemployment lower subjective social position and can be used to explain lower positioning of respondents in the Slovak sample. With regard to views on social structure, we find no clear connection to unemployment experiences. The chronically high unemployment levels in Slovakia therefore do not explain the higher tendency of Slovaks to see their society as highly polarized. Contrary to subjective social position, views on the overall social structure are most likely shaped by factors beyond immediate personal experience with economic insecurity.
{"title":"Explaining diverging views on social structure in ex-Czechoslovakia: Does unemployment experience make subjective perceptions more pessimistic?","authors":"M. Bahna, Paula Ivanková","doi":"10.1177/00207152231183615","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231183615","url":null,"abstract":"Perceptions of social structure typically only change gradually and their connection to economic development seems to be indirect at best. Times of rapid socioeconomic transformations such as the transition of state-socialist economies to market economy or the disintegration of a common state might witness more notable changes. Using data from four rounds of the ISSP Social Inequality module, we model how people see their position and the structure of their society on the example of the two ex-Czechoslovak countries. Both post-communist societies share the beginning of the transition to a free market economy in 1989 but are divided by starkly contrasting impacts of the transition on their labor market. We show that views on social structure in the ex-Czechoslovak countries diverge over time with Slovaks more frequently describing their society as highly unequal and seeing their position as lower in the social structure. We find support for the assumption that experiences with unemployment lower subjective social position and can be used to explain lower positioning of respondents in the Slovak sample. With regard to views on social structure, we find no clear connection to unemployment experiences. The chronically high unemployment levels in Slovakia therefore do not explain the higher tendency of Slovaks to see their society as highly polarized. Contrary to subjective social position, views on the overall social structure are most likely shaped by factors beyond immediate personal experience with economic insecurity.","PeriodicalId":51601,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Comparative Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42381300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-03DOI: 10.1177/00207152231184093
Joshua D. Hendrick
well limitations and future challenges for World-System Analysis. Among others, it should be mentioned, World Systems needs to integrate race, gender, and sexuality—the former advanced, the latter two almost null—while explaining the formation and reproduction of historical capitalism. Second, the macro bias of World Systems would benefit by providing a greater focus at the microlevel—objects and people—dynamics in the embedded systemic relations and the global chains of production (and power). And third, World Systems should push the dialogue—rather than the essentialist separation and romanticization and/or demonization—of the critical traditions of modernity with emerging subaltern knowledge (Western and non-Western), while approaching to them as contradictory, limited, and mutually constituted intellectual constellations.
{"title":"Book review: Joachim J. Savelsberg, Knowing about Genocide: Armenian Suffering and Epistemic Struggles","authors":"Joshua D. Hendrick","doi":"10.1177/00207152231184093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231184093","url":null,"abstract":"well limitations and future challenges for World-System Analysis. Among others, it should be mentioned, World Systems needs to integrate race, gender, and sexuality—the former advanced, the latter two almost null—while explaining the formation and reproduction of historical capitalism. Second, the macro bias of World Systems would benefit by providing a greater focus at the microlevel—objects and people—dynamics in the embedded systemic relations and the global chains of production (and power). And third, World Systems should push the dialogue—rather than the essentialist separation and romanticization and/or demonization—of the critical traditions of modernity with emerging subaltern knowledge (Western and non-Western), while approaching to them as contradictory, limited, and mutually constituted intellectual constellations.","PeriodicalId":51601,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Comparative Sociology","volume":"64 1","pages":"426 - 430"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47341546","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-30DOI: 10.1177/00207152231184080
K. M. Byrd
Recent media attention ranging from documentaries and popular cooking competitions as well as the evolving diversity within the James Beard awards have highlighted the role of soul food, African American culinary history and traditions, and the need to preserve and uplift this knowledge for future generations. Even the newly created cooking competitions such as Soul Food that features a cast of all Black chefs and judges (the first of its kind) underscores the uniqueness and historical importance of soul food in modern foodways. Yet soul food remains a heavily critiqued scapegoat, blamed for the health ills of poor Black Southerners who are seen as unable or unwilling to leave these traditions in the past in favor of healthy food that fits in modern society. Getting Something to Eat in Jackson challenges such perspectives, and many others, by clarifying what role traditional foodways play for African Americans across class boundaries who call Jackson, Mississippi home. Ewoodzie presents four distinct class-based experiences of African American men and women around food in Jackson, Mississippi. The first one focuses on the experiences of homeless men who are forced to structure their days around the hours of local soup kitchens and homeless shelters. These men are afforded little agency around what foods appear on their plate, and the process of obtaining food whether at soup kitchens or shelters is highly structured and surveilled with harsh penalties of expulsion for those who do not conform to the rules or are perceived as causing problems. The second one focuses on the food choices of a poor Black female headed family who balance job hunting, housing, and food insecurity, with the need to feed themselves in this constantly constraining environment. In this context, the need to provide food for the family is not a singular issue of what to eat or when, instead it is the complex relationship between transportation, day care, housing, and employment all of which coalesce to make hunger and food scarcity a part of daily life for this family and its young children. Although soul food is a distinct memory within this class category, the daily reality is far removed for these children whose mothers and grandparents remember soul food as part of their foodways growing up. The third one shifts to a Black middle-class family who works together at the barbecue restaurant they own. For this family, food is an ever-present aspect of daily life as they attempt and ultimately fail to make their restaurant profitable. While at home, the teenage daughter shoulders most of the responsibility for preparing dinner and continues to educate herself on the food industry and what it means to develop a food consciousness in the modern South. It is also within this class context that we see the constraints of racial segregation that place healthy foods in upper class almost exclusively White neighborhoods, and leave restaurants and consumers in less 1184080 COS0010.117
{"title":"Book review: Joseph C. Ewoodzie Jr, Getting Something to Eat in Jackson: Race, Class, and Food in the American South","authors":"K. M. Byrd","doi":"10.1177/00207152231184080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231184080","url":null,"abstract":"Recent media attention ranging from documentaries and popular cooking competitions as well as the evolving diversity within the James Beard awards have highlighted the role of soul food, African American culinary history and traditions, and the need to preserve and uplift this knowledge for future generations. Even the newly created cooking competitions such as Soul Food that features a cast of all Black chefs and judges (the first of its kind) underscores the uniqueness and historical importance of soul food in modern foodways. Yet soul food remains a heavily critiqued scapegoat, blamed for the health ills of poor Black Southerners who are seen as unable or unwilling to leave these traditions in the past in favor of healthy food that fits in modern society. Getting Something to Eat in Jackson challenges such perspectives, and many others, by clarifying what role traditional foodways play for African Americans across class boundaries who call Jackson, Mississippi home. Ewoodzie presents four distinct class-based experiences of African American men and women around food in Jackson, Mississippi. The first one focuses on the experiences of homeless men who are forced to structure their days around the hours of local soup kitchens and homeless shelters. These men are afforded little agency around what foods appear on their plate, and the process of obtaining food whether at soup kitchens or shelters is highly structured and surveilled with harsh penalties of expulsion for those who do not conform to the rules or are perceived as causing problems. The second one focuses on the food choices of a poor Black female headed family who balance job hunting, housing, and food insecurity, with the need to feed themselves in this constantly constraining environment. In this context, the need to provide food for the family is not a singular issue of what to eat or when, instead it is the complex relationship between transportation, day care, housing, and employment all of which coalesce to make hunger and food scarcity a part of daily life for this family and its young children. Although soul food is a distinct memory within this class category, the daily reality is far removed for these children whose mothers and grandparents remember soul food as part of their foodways growing up. The third one shifts to a Black middle-class family who works together at the barbecue restaurant they own. For this family, food is an ever-present aspect of daily life as they attempt and ultimately fail to make their restaurant profitable. While at home, the teenage daughter shoulders most of the responsibility for preparing dinner and continues to educate herself on the food industry and what it means to develop a food consciousness in the modern South. It is also within this class context that we see the constraints of racial segregation that place healthy foods in upper class almost exclusively White neighborhoods, and leave restaurants and consumers in less 1184080 COS0010.117","PeriodicalId":51601,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Comparative Sociology","volume":"64 1","pages":"422 - 423"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44095739","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-30DOI: 10.1177/00207152231184082
L. Márquez
economically advantaged neighborhoods to struggle both financially as business owners and with the constraints of seeking healthy food that is only accessible by car and extensive drives to a different side of the city. The fourth set of experiences focuses on a group of upper-class Black business women and men who have the disposable income to seek out fine dining restaurants, but are not always welcomed in these elite dining environments regardless of their income. Within this group, hunger because of money scarcity is not an issue, but hunger still arises in the context of time scarcity as work schedules are a dominant force that limits the time for food during the day. It is within this context that the modern Southern restaurant offers traditional soul food dishes sourced from local farms and presented as fine dining cuisine. Although all four of these class groupings have distinct experiences around food, one of the main questions underpinning the book is the role of soul food in the modern South. Soul food is labeled as the source of poor health among present day African Americans. Historical food habits continue to shape understandings of what foods are good and bad, desirable or not. It is in this context that soul food is viewed as a historical touchstone for African Americans and also a present day plague on overall health and wellness. Yet, as Ewoodzie argues, this is an oversimplified, if not completely erroneous view of the foodways and decision-making process of modern day African Americans across class lines in Jackson, Mississippi. While it is true that historically soul foods were a staple of Southern foodways, the South is not, nor has it ever been a static or homogeneous entity. The modern South, the one inhabited by the men and women who stories are highlighted in this book, is not the same South characterized by home gardens and canning traditions, although for some families those habits still exist, the reality is more structured by affordability and convenience reflecting contemporary poverty. Not simply meaning starvation, hunger is joined by the quick and affordable promise of empty calorie foods, that while satisfying hunger can lead to other health crisis such as obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure. The reality of soul food in the modern South is that even when families have the historical memory of these foods, they are hindered in recreating these food traditions in their daily lives, and subsequent generations are even further removed from these soul food traditions. A more nuanced understanding of the constraining factors that surround daily food decisions from transportation and child care, to affordability and a developing food consciousness in a society that does not equally distribute healthy food is needed to understand what it means to create foodways in a society that remains structured by race and class, albeit in ways that are not static. Without considering such nuances of culture, structure, and a
{"title":"Book review: Eric Mielants and Katsiaryna Salavei Bardos (eds), Economic Cycles and Social Movements: Past, Present and Future","authors":"L. Márquez","doi":"10.1177/00207152231184082","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231184082","url":null,"abstract":"economically advantaged neighborhoods to struggle both financially as business owners and with the constraints of seeking healthy food that is only accessible by car and extensive drives to a different side of the city. The fourth set of experiences focuses on a group of upper-class Black business women and men who have the disposable income to seek out fine dining restaurants, but are not always welcomed in these elite dining environments regardless of their income. Within this group, hunger because of money scarcity is not an issue, but hunger still arises in the context of time scarcity as work schedules are a dominant force that limits the time for food during the day. It is within this context that the modern Southern restaurant offers traditional soul food dishes sourced from local farms and presented as fine dining cuisine. Although all four of these class groupings have distinct experiences around food, one of the main questions underpinning the book is the role of soul food in the modern South. Soul food is labeled as the source of poor health among present day African Americans. Historical food habits continue to shape understandings of what foods are good and bad, desirable or not. It is in this context that soul food is viewed as a historical touchstone for African Americans and also a present day plague on overall health and wellness. Yet, as Ewoodzie argues, this is an oversimplified, if not completely erroneous view of the foodways and decision-making process of modern day African Americans across class lines in Jackson, Mississippi. While it is true that historically soul foods were a staple of Southern foodways, the South is not, nor has it ever been a static or homogeneous entity. The modern South, the one inhabited by the men and women who stories are highlighted in this book, is not the same South characterized by home gardens and canning traditions, although for some families those habits still exist, the reality is more structured by affordability and convenience reflecting contemporary poverty. Not simply meaning starvation, hunger is joined by the quick and affordable promise of empty calorie foods, that while satisfying hunger can lead to other health crisis such as obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure. The reality of soul food in the modern South is that even when families have the historical memory of these foods, they are hindered in recreating these food traditions in their daily lives, and subsequent generations are even further removed from these soul food traditions. A more nuanced understanding of the constraining factors that surround daily food decisions from transportation and child care, to affordability and a developing food consciousness in a society that does not equally distribute healthy food is needed to understand what it means to create foodways in a society that remains structured by race and class, albeit in ways that are not static. Without considering such nuances of culture, structure, and a","PeriodicalId":51601,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Comparative Sociology","volume":"64 1","pages":"423 - 426"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46322079","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-29DOI: 10.1177/00207152231184094
R. Leidner
The strengths of this study include its effective employment of symbolic interactionist theory to explain how knowledge exists under contest and how facts contribute little to the production and reproduction of collective memory. If this book has any faults, it is in Savelsberg’s treatment of Turkish political and social history, which is sparsely developed at best. Considering the topic, the book also fails to address the processes and machinations of nations and nationalism in the modern era, or any real comparison to other murderous ethnic cleansing events in modern history. Indeed, a chapter or two comparing different carrier groups of collective memory in different genocidal contexts (e.g. Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, etc.) would achieve much to strengthen the author’s central argument. Notwithstanding, this is an excellent study that should be of interest to cultural and political sociologists alike and would be useful in both upper division undergraduate courses and graduate courses focusing on the sociology of memory, war and conflict, and the sociology of knowledge.
{"title":"Book review: Eli Revelle Yano Wilson, Front of the House, Back of the House: Race and Inequality in the Lives of Restaurant Workers","authors":"R. Leidner","doi":"10.1177/00207152231184094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231184094","url":null,"abstract":"The strengths of this study include its effective employment of symbolic interactionist theory to explain how knowledge exists under contest and how facts contribute little to the production and reproduction of collective memory. If this book has any faults, it is in Savelsberg’s treatment of Turkish political and social history, which is sparsely developed at best. Considering the topic, the book also fails to address the processes and machinations of nations and nationalism in the modern era, or any real comparison to other murderous ethnic cleansing events in modern history. Indeed, a chapter or two comparing different carrier groups of collective memory in different genocidal contexts (e.g. Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, etc.) would achieve much to strengthen the author’s central argument. Notwithstanding, this is an excellent study that should be of interest to cultural and political sociologists alike and would be useful in both upper division undergraduate courses and graduate courses focusing on the sociology of memory, war and conflict, and the sociology of knowledge.","PeriodicalId":51601,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Comparative Sociology","volume":"64 1","pages":"430 - 432"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44866903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"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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