Current Table of Contents

• Unconscious Racism: A Concept in Pursuit of a Measure
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. It is common in scientific and popular discussions to claim that unconscious racism is both prevalent and potent in modern societies. We review the theoretical models that posit different forms of unconscious racism and evaluate the empirical evidence ...
• Citizenship and Immigration: Multiculturalism, Assimilation, and Challenges to the Nation-State
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. Citizenship encompasses legal status, rights, participation, and belonging. Traditionally anchored in a particular geographic and political community, citizenship evokes notions of national identity, sovereignty, and state control, but these ...
• Gender Inequalities in Education
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. The terrain of gender inequalities in education has seen much change in recent decades. This article reviews the empirical research and theoretical perspectives on gender inequalities in educational performance and attainment from early childhood to ...
• Gender in African Population Research: The Fertility/Reproductive Health Example
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. We survey the literature on sub-Saharan Africa to identify how gender has factored into explaining fertility levels and behavior. Tracing the development of male role theory, we argue that despite increasing awareness of men’s authority, fertility ...
• Black/White Differences in School Performance: The Oppositional Culture Explanation
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. The late anthropologist, John Ogbu, developed one of the most theoretically provocative explanations for racial/ethnic differences in school performance: oppositional culture theory. Rather than view racial/ethnic gaps as a product of structural ...
• Religion and Science: Beyond the Epistemological Conflict Narrative
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. Studies of the relationship between religion and science have traditionally assumed that any conflict that exists is based on epistemology. This assumption is built into the history of Western academic thought, the founding of sociology itself, as well ...
• Horizontal Stratification in Postsecondary Education: Forms, Explanations, and Implications
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. For the past 20 years, social scientists have devoted increasing attention to the links between type of postsecondary education received and socioeconomic inequalities. Borrowing the terminology of Charles & Bradley (2002), we refer to the forms of these ...
• How the Outside Gets In: Modeling Conversational Permeation
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. Conversation is incrementally, progressively produced, subject to constraints that ensure linearity (one person speaks at a time) irrespective of the identities, motives, and conversational resources of those present. And yet conversation is also ...
• After Secularization?
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. The study of secularization appears to be entering a new phase. Supplyside theories that focus exclusively on religious participation and membership seem too one-dimensional. But classical theories of secularization contain generalized and teleological ...
• Testing and Social Stratification in American Education
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. We focus on how standardized testing in American education has reflected, reproduced, and transformed social inequalities. We begin by describing inequalities in test score distributions by race/ethnicity, social origins, and gender over time. We then ...
• The Second Generation in Western Europe: Education, Unemployment, and Occupational Attainment
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. This paper reviews recent research in ten Western European countries on the educational and labor market outcomes of second-generation minorities. Minorities from less-developed origins appear to be particularly disadvantaged in education, access to the ...
• Reproductive Biology, Technology, and Gender Inequality: An Autobiographical Essay
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. Ignorance of biodata is costly in sociology. Gender theorists remain unaware that until the demographic transition, infants were suckled every 15 minutes for two years, less often another two. A nearly continuous cycle of pregnancy and lactation barred ...
• Methodological Memes and Mores: Toward a Sociology of Social Research
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. A plethora of scholarly research has been conducted on social science: on its organizational and communicative patterns, on the historical development of research standards, and on the diversity of local research practices. But this body of work on the ...
• Broken Down by Race and Gender? Sociological Explanations of New Sources of Earnings Inequality
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. Group gaps research risks irrelevance because new forms of earnings inequality are increasing inequality within groups. This review attempts to stimulate more broad-ranging research on earnings inequality beyond the study of average gender and racial ...
• Regional Institutions and Social Development in Southern Africa
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. Regional institutions increasingly shape economic and political development in Southern Africa. In this review, I discuss the historical background of this region and examine the major regional institutions that address key common concerns of economic ...
• Family Structure and the Reproduction of Inequalities
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. Over the past four decades, income inequality has increased and family structures have diversified. We argue that family structure has become an important mechanism for the reproduction of class, race, and gender inequalities. We review studies of income ...
• The Sociology of Discrimination: Racial Discrimination in Employment, Housing, Credit, and Consumer Markets
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. Persistent racial inequality in employment, housing, and a wide range of other social domains has renewed interest in the possible role of discrimination. And yet, unlike in the pre-civil rights era, when racial prejudice and discrimination were overt ...
• Access to Civil Justice and Race, Class, and Gender Inequality
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. Access to civil justice is a perspective on the experiences that people have with civil justice events, organizations, or institutions. It focuses on who is able or willing to use civil law and law-like processes and institutions (who has access) and ...
• Social Networks and Health
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. People are interconnected, and so their health is interconnected. In recognition of this social fact, there has been growing conceptual and empirical attention over the past decade to the impact of social networks on health. This article reviews ...
• Sieve, Incubator, Temple, Hub: Empirical and Theoretical Advances in the Sociology of Higher Education
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. Higher education lacks an intellectually coherent sociology; varied research on colleges and universities is dispersed widely throughout the discipline. This review initiates a critical integration of this scholarship. We argue that sociologists have ...
• Conditional Cash Transfers as Social Policy in Latin America: An Assessment of their Contributions and Limitations
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. Conditional cash transfer program have recently spread throughout Latin America and early findings suggest their potential to overcome poverty and create human capital. This review undertakes an assessment of CCT programs and the conventional theory that ...
• From Mead to a Structural Symbolic Interactionism—and Beyond
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 34, August 2008. This essay discusses the continuing value of and problems in G. H. Mead's contributions to sociology from the standpoint of the contemporary discipline. It argues that the value is considerable and the problems largely avoidable with modifications to ...
• Statistical Magic and/or Statistical Serendipity: An Age of Progress in the Analysis of Categorical Data
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 1-19, 11 August 2007. AbstractThis essay describes in simple terms some of the major concepts of categorical data analysis (CDA) that have been and will continue to be useful in the analysis of sociological data, examples of which include data in the area of social ...
• Bourdieu in American Sociology, 1980–2004
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 21-41, 11 August 2007. AbstractThis article traces the transatlantic diffusion of Pierre Bourdieu's ideas into American sociology. We find that rather than being received as abstract theory, Bourdieu has been actively put to use to generate new empirical research. In addition, ...
• Human Motivation and Social Cooperation: Experimental and Analytical Foundations
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 43-64, 11 August 2007. AbstractSince Durkheim, sociological explanations of social cooperation have emphasized the internalization of values that induce norm compliance. Since Adam Smith, economic explanations of social cooperation have emphasized incentives that induce selfish ...
• The Niche as a Theoretical Tool
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 65-84, 11 August 2007. AbstractFor several decades, the concept of the niche has enriched sociological theory. The niche represents the position or function of an entity, such as an organization or population of organizations, within a larger community environment. Using the ...
• Production Regimes and the Quality of Employment in Europe
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 85-104, 11 August 2007. AbstractProduction regime theory has been one of the most innovative and influential recent contributions to neo-institutional debates about the varieties of capitalism. This review takes issue with its claim that there are major differences in the ...
• The Sociology of Markets
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 105-128, 11 August 2007. AbstractThe sociology of markets has been one of the most vibrant fields in sociology in the past 25 years. There is a great deal of agreement that markets are social structures characterized by extensive social relationships between firms, workers, ...
• Transnational Migration Studies: Past Developments and Future Trends
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 129-156, 11 August 2007. AbstractThe past two decades have witnessed a sea change in migration scholarship. Most scholars now recognize that many contemporary migrants and their predecessors maintain various kinds of ties to their homelands at the same time that they are ...
• Control Theories in Sociology
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 157-174, 11 August 2007. AbstractSociologists use negative feedback loop systems to explain identity processes, interpersonal behavior, crowd behavior, organizational behavior, social relationships, and the behavior of political systems. Control system models help us to ...
• Military Service in the Life Course
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 175-196, 11 August 2007. AbstractWe review research published in the past 15 years that explores the relationship between military service and the life course, focusing on criminal careers, marital status, lifelong health, and socioeconomic attainment. Throughout the review, we ...
• School Reform 2007: Transforming Education into a Scientific Enterprise
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 197-217, 11 August 2007. AbstractThe article begins with a brief review of prior school reform movements and how and why they are different from today. Unlike past reform movements, school reform efforts are now focused on two key ideas: performance and scientific evidence. ...
• Embeddedness and the Intellectual Projects of Economic Sociology
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 219-240, 11 August 2007. AbstractIn this review, we explore how the concept of embeddedness has shaped—and been shaped by—the evolution of the subfield of economic sociology. Although embeddedness is often taken as a conceptual umbrella for a single, if eclectic, approach to the ...
• The Sociology of the Radical Right
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 241-262, 11 August 2007. AbstractDuring the past two decades, the radical right has reemerged as an electoral force in Western Europe, as well as in other stable democracies such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Aside from discussing the ideology of this party family and ...
• Gender in Politics
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 263-284, 11 August 2007. AbstractWomen's political participation and representation vary dramatically within and between countries. We selectively review the literature on gender in politics, focusing on women's formal political participation. We discuss both traditional ...
• Moral Views of Market Society
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 285-311, 11 August 2007. AbstractUpon what kind of moral order does capitalism rest? Conversely, does the market give rise to a distinctive set of beliefs, habits, and social bonds? These questions are certainly as old as social science itself. In this review, we evaluate how ...
• The Consequences of Economic Globalization for Affluent Democracies
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 313-334, 11 August 2007. AbstractIn recent decades, economic globalization has grown significantly in affluent democracies. Taking this as a point of departure, we review social science research on the consequences of economic globalization for the state, the economy, and civil ...
• Inequality: Causes and Consequences
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 335-357, 11 August 2007. AbstractThe increase in economic disparities over the past 30 years has prompted extensive research on the causes and consequences of inequality both in the United States and, more recently, globally. This review provides an update of research on the ...
• Immigration and Religion
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 359-379, 11 August 2007. AbstractThis review synthesizes research about religion in the lives of post-1965 immigrants to the United States. Such research consists primarily of case studies, published since 1990, focused on individual religious organizations started and attended ...
• Hispanic Families: Stability and Change
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 381-405, 11 August 2007. AbstractSpurred in part by the rapid growth of the Hispanic population, considerable progress has been made over the past several decades in documenting the family behavior of Hispanics. Scholars increasingly recognize the importance of disaggregating the ...
• Lost and Found: The Sociological Ambivalence Toward Childhood
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 407-428, 11 August 2007. AbstractRecent social scientific research on childhood is oddly ambivalent. Despite much theoretically creative and empirically innovative work, the sociology of childhood, as a subfield, is often uncomfortable with its own object of inquiry. I identify ...
• The Making of the Black Family: Race and Class in Qualitative Studies in the Twentieth Century
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 429-448, 11 August 2007. AbstractThis article reviews the history of qualitative research on the black family during the twentieth century. Most qualitative studies on black family life focused on social class differences among blacks and between blacks and whites until the mid-...
• The Global Diffusion of Public Policies: Social Construction, Coercion, Competition, or Learning?
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 449-472, 11 August 2007. AbstractSocial scientists have sketched four distinct theories to explain a phenomenon that appears to have ramped up in recent years, the diffusion of policies across countries. Constructivists trace policy norms to expert epistemic communities and ...
• Workforce Diversity and Inequality: Power, Status, and Numbers
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 473-501, 11 August 2007. AbstractWorkforce diversity refers to the composition of work units in terms of the cultural or demographic characteristics that are salient and symbolically meaningful in the relationships among group members. Although generally thought of as the purview ...
• From the Margins to the Mainstream? Disaster Research at the Crossroads
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 503-525, 11 August 2007. AbstractThe sociology of disasters has developed in ways that have weakened its ties with mainstream sociology. It has remained remarkably resistant to changes in the broader sociological landscape, and its strong applied focus has been a barrier to ...
• Toward a Historicized Sociology: Theorizing Events, Processes, and Emergence
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 527-549, 11 August 2007. AbstractSince the 1970s, historical sociology in the United States has been constituted by a configuration of substantive questions, a theoretical vocabulary anchored in concepts of economic interest and rationalization, and a methodological commitment to ...
• Old Inequalities, New Disease: HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa
  Annual Review of Sociology Volume 33, Page 551-577, 11 August 2007. AbstractIt is especially the social aspects of the disease that make HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa different—and worse—than HIV/AIDS in the United States or Europe. By making Africans more vulnerable to economic and sexual exploitation, poverty first ...