Current Table of Contents

• Contributors
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page i-ii, September 2008. <br/>
• Localism and the Limits of Political Brokerage: Evidence from Revolutionary Vermont
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 287-331, September 2008. <br/> Previous research argues that political brokers between rival factions play a critical role in state centralization because they help national state builders to undermine local autonomy. In contrast, this article demonstrates how coordinator elites who forge relationships within communal networks act as a counterweight to more cosmopolitan brokers, representing local interests. Evidence from new archival data on credit networks and political mobilization in Revolutionary Vermont shows that such local powerholders used their strategic position in economic networks to gain influential political offices. Moreover, coordinators strengthened local political factions that linked to national politics without eroding the interests of local communities.
• Putting Social Context into Text: The Semiotics of E‐mail Interaction
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 332-370, September 2008. <br/> E‐mail excludes the multiple nonlinguistic cues and gestures that facilitate face‐to‐face communication. How, then, should interaction in a text‐based context be understood? The authors analyze the problems and solutions experienced by a research panel that communicated over e‐mail and face‐to‐face for 18 months, evaluating both kinds of exchanges alongside survey and interview data. Semiotic and linguistic theory is used to expose essential properties associated with the successful communication of meaning in each context. The authors find that e‐mail requires the cultivation of new techniques for specifically conveying the “pragmatic information” that connects the meaning of words to their users. Such information is assigned in e‐mail through the use of what are termed emphatic, referential, and characterizing semiotic tactics. These tactics are also evident in sustained online interactions studied by other researchers. This theoretical vocabulary represents an alternative to the dominant sociological characterization of e‐mail as an inferior substitute for face‐to‐face interaction.
• Dynamics of Networks if Everyone Strives for Structural Holes
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 371-407, September 2008. <br/> When entrepreneurs enter structural holes in networks, they can exploit the related benefits. Evidence for these benefits has steadily accumulated. The authors ask whether those who strive for such structural advantages can maintain them if others follow their example. Burt speculates that they cannot, but a formal demonstration of this speculation is lacking. Using a game theoretic model of network formation, the authors characterize the networks that emerge when everyone strives for structural holes. They find that the predominant stable networks distribute benefits evenly, confirming that no one is able to maintain a structural advantage in the long run.
• Partisans without Constraint: Political Polarization and Trends in American Public Opinion
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 408-446, September 2008. <br/> Public opinion polarization is here conceived as a process of alignment along multiple lines of potential disagreement and measured as growing constraint in individuals' preferences. Using NES data from 1972 to 2004, the authors model trends in issue partisanship—the correlation of issue attitudes with party identification—and issue alignment—the correlation between pairs of issues—and find a substantive increase in issue partisanship, but little evidence of issue alignment. The findings suggest that opinion changes correspond more to a resorting of party labels among voters than to greater constraint on issue attitudes: since parties are more polarized, they are now better at sorting individuals along ideological lines. Levels of constraint vary across population subgroups: strong partisans and wealthier and politically sophisticated voters have grown more coherent in their beliefs. The authors discuss the consequences of partisan realignment and group sorting on the political process and potential deviations from the classic pluralistic account of American politics.
• Off‐Scheduling within Dual‐Earner Couples: An Unequal and Negative Externality for Family Time
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 447-490, September 2008. <br/> Using couples' time‐diary data from two French time‐use surveys (1986, 1999), this article explores the extent to which off‐scheduling within dual‐earner couples is an unequal and negative externality for family time. An empirical typology of family workdays is built using a variant of optimal matching, and three kinds of family time are taken into account: conjugal time, father‐ and mother‐child time, and parents‐child time. The results indicate that off‐scheduling is an unintentional by‐product of employers’ economic interests and that, since it reduces conjugal and parents‐child time but fails to foster temporal complementarity between parents, it is a negative factor for family solidarity.
• Less Crime, More Punishment
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 491-527, September 2008. <br/> Recasting Durkheim’s “community of saints” thesis, the authors argue that the severity of punishment is predicted in part by the prevalence of the deviant behavior of which the deviant stands accused. Although there is some curvilinearity at low levels of prevalence, the relationship is generally negative. Thus, all else equal, where a particular crime is frequent, any punishment applied to it is likely to be mild; conversely, where a crime is infrequent, its punishment ought to be severe. Using hierarchical regression models, the authors support this hypothesis with 1988 homicide conviction and imprisonment decisions in 32 U.S. counties.
• Book Review: Paper Families: Identity, Immigration Administration, and Chinese Exclusion by Estelle T. Lau
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 528-530, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: Exotic Commodities: Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China by Frank Dikotter
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 530-532, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels by Rachel Sherman
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 533-535, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: Working‐Class White: The Making and Unmaking of Race Relations by Monica McDermott
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 535-537, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: Redress for Historical Injustices in the United States: On Reparations for Slavery, Jim Crow, and Their Legacies, edited by Michael T. Martin and Marilyn Yaquinto
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 537-539, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: Betrayals: The Unpredictability of Human Relations by Gabriella Turnaturi
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 540-541, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers by Mark D. Regnerus
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 542-544, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: Children at Play: An American History by Howard Chudacoff
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 544-546, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: Generative Social Science: Studies in Agent‐Based Computational Modeling by Joshua M. Epstein
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 546-549, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: Chutes and Ladders: Navigating the Low‐Wage Labor Market by Katherine S. Newman
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 549-551, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: Janitors, Street Vendors, and Activists: The Lives of Mexican Immigrants in Silicon Valley by Christian Zlolniski
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 551-553, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement by Ruth Milkman
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 553-555, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: Transforming the City: Community Organizing and the Challenge of Political Change, edited by Marion Orr
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 555-558, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: Unruly Immigrants: Rights, Activism, and Transnational South Asian Politics in the United States by Monisha Das Gupta
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 558-559, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: Beyond Belief: India and the Politics of Postcolonial Nationalism by Srirupa Roy
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 560-562, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: Law and Disorder in the Postcolony, edited by Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 562-564, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: Conflict and Peace Building in Divided Societies by Anthony Oberschall
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 564-566, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: State Repression and the Domestic Democratic Peace by Christian Davenport
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 566-568, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: After the Fall of the Wall: Life Courses in the Transformation of East Germany, edited by Martin Diewald, Anne Goedicke, and Karl Ulrich Mayer
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 568-570, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: Deadly Worlds: The Emotional Costs of Globalization by Charles Lemert and Anthony Elliott
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 570-572, September 2008. <br/>
• Book Review: AIDS and the Ecology of Poverty by Eileen Stillwaggon
  American Journal of Sociology, Volume 114, Issue 2, Page 573-575, September 2008. <br/>