Current Table of Contents

• Masthead
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, September 2009. <br/>
• Contributors
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page v-vi, September 2009. <br/>
• Pathways to Meaning: A New Approach to Studying Emotions at Work
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 327-364, September 2009. <br/> Research on the emotional consequences of interactive service work remains inconclusive in large part because scholars have not analyzed the mechanisms that lead frontline employees to adopt the meanings disseminated by their employers. The authors argue that the theoretical framework best suited for remedying this situation is the negotiated order perspective. It suggests that whether employees adopt a corporate‐sanctioned meaning, and with what emotional effect, depends on the conjunction of several social conditions. The authors also propose a novel analytical strategy that can identify these conditional pathways and formalize the combinatorial logic of the negotiated order perspective: fuzzy‐set techniques. To illustrate the utility of this approach, the article examines a university hospital that has tried to create a more meaningful and emotionally rewarding work environment for its nursing staff. Consistent with expectations, findings show that employees can embrace the same corporate‐sanctioned meaning under different sets of conditions and with different emotional consequences.
• The Puzzle of Korean Christianity: Geopolitical Networks and Religious Conversion in Early Twentieth‐Century East Asia
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 365-404, September 2009. <br/> This article uses the puzzle of Christian success in Korea to develop a model for understanding religious diffusion beyond national borders. The authors argue that the microlevel network explanations that dominate the research on conversion cannot by themselves account for the unusual success of Protestantism in Korea. Instead, events in East Asia in macrolevel, geopolitical networks provoked nationalist rituals that altered the stakes of conversion to either promote or retard conversion network growth. At the turn of the 20th century, unequal treaties both opened this region to missionaries and provoked nationalist rituals. In China and Japan, these rituals generated patriotic identities by attacking Christianity, and network growth slowed or reversed. In Korea, Christianity became compatible with these rituals, and conversion networks grew. This example highlights the greater explanatory power of nested networks for understanding international religious diffusion, relative to microlevel accounts alone.
• Origins of Homophily in an Evolving Social Network
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 405-450, September 2009. <br/> The authors investigate the origins of homophily in a large university community, using network data in which interactions, attributes, and affiliations are all recorded over time. The analysis indicates that highly similar pairs do show greater than average propensity to form new ties; however, it also finds that tie formation is heavily biased by triadic closure and focal closure, which effectively constrain the opportunities among which individuals may select. In the case of triadic closure, moreover, selection to “friend of a friend” status is determined by an analogous combination of individual preference and structural proximity. The authors conclude that the dynamic interplay of choice homophily and induced homophily, compounded over many “generations” of biased selection of similar individuals to structurally proximate positions, can amplify even a modest preference for similar others, via a cumulative advantage–like process, to produce striking patterns of observed homophily.
• The False Enforcement of Unpopular Norms
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 451-490, September 2009. <br/> Prevailing theory assumes that people enforce norms in order to pressure others to act in ways that they approve. Yet there are numerous examples of “unpopular norms” in which people compel each other to do things that they privately disapprove. While peer sanctioning suggests a ready explanation for why people conform to unpopular norms, it is harder to understand why they would enforce a norm they privately oppose. The authors argue that people enforce unpopular norms to show that they have complied out of genuine conviction and not because of social pressure. They use laboratory experiments to demonstrate this “false enforcement” in the context of a wine tasting and an academic text evaluation. Both studies find that participants who conformed to a norm due to social pressure then falsely enforced the norm by publicly criticizing a lone deviant. A third study shows that enforcement of a norm effectively signals the enforcer’s genuine support for the norm. These results demonstrate the potential for a vicious cycle in which perceived pressures to conform to and falsely enforce an unpopular norm reinforce one another.
• Repression and Solidary Cultures of Resistance: Irish Political Prisoners on Protest
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 491-526, September 2009. <br/> Social activists and especially insurgents have created solidary cultures of resistance in conditions of high risk and repression. One such instance is an episode of contention by Irish political prisoners in the late 1970s. The “blanketmen” appropriated and then built a solidary culture within spaces that had been under official control. Their ability to maintain such a collective response was enhanced by an intensifying cycle of protest and violent reprisal, including extreme stripping of their material environment, in which the prisoners gained considerable initiative. This study uses interviews and contemporary writings by prisoners, prison authorities, visitors, and movement activists to examine how the dynamic of protest and repression transformed insurgent prison culture—through material, emotional, and perceptive changes—and the importance of leadership in the transformation. Special attention is given to prisoner activities in appropriated spaces that reinforced the culture of resistance: promoting the Irish language, cultural production, and the production of propaganda.
• Does Race Matter in Neighborhood Preferences? Results from a Video Experiment
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 527-559, September 2009. <br/> Persistent racial residential segregation is often seen as the result of preferences: whites prefer to live with whites while blacks wish to live near many other blacks. Are these neighborhood preferences color‐blind or race conscious? Does neighborhood racial composition have a net influence upon preferences, or is race a proxy for social class? This article tests the racial proxy hypothesis using an innovative experiment that isolates the net effects of race and social class, followed by an analysis of the social psychological factors associated with residential preferences. The authors find that net of social class, the race of a neighborhood’s residents significantly influenced how it was rated. Whites said the all‐white neighborhoods were most desirable. The independent effect of racial composition was smaller among blacks, who identified the racially mixed neighborhood as most desirable. Further, whites who held negative stereotypes about African‐Americans and the neighborhoods where they live were significantly influenced by neighborhood racial composition. None of the proposed social psychological factors conditioned African‐Americans' sensitivity to neighborhood racial composition.
• Book Review: Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject by Sherry Ortner
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 560-563, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Taking Charge: Native American Self‐Determination and Federal Indian Policy, 1975–1993 by George Pierre Castile
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 563-565, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776–1941 by Rebecca M. McLennan
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 565-567, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Logics of Organizational Theory: Audiences, Codes and Ecologies by Michael T. Hannan, László Pólos, and Glenn R. Carroll
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 567-569, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Rethinking Expertise by Harry Collins and Robert Evans
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 569-571, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: The Philosophy of Expertise, edited by Evan Selinger and Robert P. Crease
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 571-573, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Selective Remembrances: Archaeology in the Construction, Commemoration, and Consecration of National Pasts, edited by Philip L. Kohl, Mara Kozelsky, and Nachman Ben‐Yehuda
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 573-575, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Unsettling Accounts: Neither Truth nor Reconciliation in Confessions of State Violence by Leigh A. Payne
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 576-578, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: The Path of the Devil: Early Modern Witch Hunts by Gary F. Jensen
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 578-580, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Brutes in Suits: Male Sensibility in America, 1890–1920 by John Pettegrew
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 580-582, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation by Anna Marie Smith
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 582-584, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Taking Charge of Breast Cancer by Julia A. Ericksen
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 584-586, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: The Vaccinators: Smallpox, Medical Knowledge, and the “Opening” of Japan by Ann Jannetta
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 586-588, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Site Fights: Divisive Facilities and Civil Society in Japan and the West by Daniel P. Aldrich
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 589-591, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Remaking U.S. Trade Policy: From Protectionism to Globalization by Nitsan Chorev
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 591-593, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Emergent Economies, Divergent Paths: Economic Organization and International Trade in South Korea and Taiwan by Robert C. Feenstra and Gary G. Hamilton
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 593-595, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Boundaries and Categories: Rising Inequality in Post‐socialist Urban China by Wang Feng
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 596-597, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Textures of Struggle: The Emergence of Resistance among Garment Workers in Thailand by Piya Pangsapa
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 597-599, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Global Markets and Local Crafts: Thailand and Costa Rica Compared by Frederick F. Wherry
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 600-602, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Privatizing China: Socialism from Afar, edited by Li Zhang and Aihwa Ong
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 602-604, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: The Making of Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea by Namhee Lee
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 604-606, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Protest Politics in Germany: Movements on the Left and Right since the 1960s by Roger Karapin
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 606-608, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Protest and Opportunities: The Politics of Outcomes of Social Movements by Felix Kolb
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 608-611, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Bazaar and State in Iran: The Politics of the Tehran Marketplace by Arang Keshavarzian
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 611-613, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: The Arts of Democracy: Art, Public Culture, and the State, edited by Casey Nelson Blake
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 613-616, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Faithful to Fenway: Believing in Boston, Baseball, and America’s Most Beloved Ballpark by Michael Ian Borer
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 616-618, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Public Pulpits: Methodists and Mainline Churches in the Moral Argument of Public Life by Steven M. Tipton
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 618-620, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: The Megachurch and the Mainline: Remaking Religious Tradition in the Twenty‐first Century by Stephen Ellingson
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 620-622, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: The Everyday Lives of Young Children: Culture, Class and Child Rearing in Diverse Societies by Jonathan Tudge
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 623-624, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Homegirls: Language and Cultural Practice among Latina Youth Gangs by Norma Mendoza‐Denton
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 625-627, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Making a Non‐white America: Californians Coloring outside Ethnic Lines, 1925–1955 by Allison Varzally
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 628-630, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Making Multiracials: State, Family, and Market in the Redrawing of the Color Line by Kimberly McClain DaCosta
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 630-631, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Caribbean Journeys: An Ethnography of Migration and Home in Three Family Networks by Karen Fog Olwig
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 632-634, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Citizenship across Borders: The Political Transnationalism of El Migrante by Michael Peter Smith and Matt Bakker
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 634-636, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Eurostars and Eurocities: Free Movement and Mobility in an Integrating Europe by Adrian Favell
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 636-638, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Geography of Hope: Exile, the Enlightenment, Disassimilation by Pierre Birnbaum
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 638-640, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Postcolonial Disorders edited by Mary‐Jo DelVecchio Good, Sandra Teresa Hyde, Sarah Pinto, and Byron J. Good
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 641-643, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: La favela d’un siècle à l’autre by Licia Valladares
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 643-645, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory by Axel Honneth
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 645-647, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: From Origin to Destination: Trends and Mechanisms in Social Stratification Research, edited by Stefani Scherer, Reinhard Pollak, Gunnar Otte, and Markus Gangl
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 647-649, September 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Walden; or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 115, Issue 2, Page 649-655, September 2009. <br/>