Annual Review of Sociology - Volume 13, 1987

Although social scientists have long believed that mechanization degrades skills, they disagree on the meaning and measurement of skills. A dominant view stresses that capitalists simplify skills to increase efficiency and profits; another, that managers deskill jobs to increase control over workers and work organization. Although case studies document the disappearance of many crafts during the industrial transformation of Britain and the United States, they do not show that skills as a whole declined. Recent historical studies reveal that industrialization may have created as many new skills as it destroyed, that early manufacturing used many traditional skills, and that new industrial skills were genuine. They also show that scientific management deskilled workers slightly and that management successfully wrested control of work organization from the traditional crafts. Twentieth-century census data reveal little aggregate compositional change in the skill distribution of major occupations. Short-term studies of individual occupational skills show little or no aggregate change. Finally, case studies of automation suggest that its deskilling effects vary greatly by occupation and industry. Firm conclusions about skill degradation must await time-series analysis of national surveys that measure components of occupational skills in different industries.

Social evaluation—the way that people learn about themselves by comparing themselves with others—is a prosaic, age-old process. Periodic efforts have been made to integrate theories and empirical studies of reference groups, social comparison, equity and justice, and relative deprivation (e.g. Pettigrew 1967). Despite these efforts, research has remained fragmented and continues to be dominated by psychologists. Network imagery, models, and findings run through this literature as far back as the last century and play a central role in contemporary applications of social evaluation to research on social support, class consciousness, and the diffusion of innovations. I argue that the network approach will help to resolve fundamental, unanswered questions about social evaluation first raised in 1950 by Merton and Rossi—specifically, the origins of comparative frameworks and the relation between individual and categorical or group reference points. Such an approach provides an integrative focus for sociological research in this area.

A large number of studies examine the causes and the consequences of crime control at both the micro and macro levels of analysis. This paper focuses on the macro studies. Most macro research on crime control is loosely organized and weakly linked to theoretical perspectives. Studies are reviewed that relate to one of two general sociological perspectives—structural functionalism and conflict; and these perspectives are contrasted with the economic perspective. Empirical studies are employed both to specify more clearly and to evaluate the causal structures and processes implied by the perspectives.

Sociological approaches to industrialization are framed by two major theories: social differentiation, based on classical liberalism and Durkheimian sociology, and uneven development, derived from the critical work of Marx and Weber. Although social differentiation continues to influence general treatments of the subject, uneven development has proven more fruitful in research. Important themes in recent research are reviewed by means of a property space based on epochs and processes of industrialization. A summary of five key research areas describes the important issues in current work and, by way of conclusion, suggests some convergence.

In the post-World War II era the apparent success of Keynesian economic principles in evening out the instabilities of the business cycle stimulated rapid growth in public welfare expenditures in Western capitalist democracies. For social science, welfare state expansion was not a puzzle but a given. When the economic crisis of the 1970s undermined faith in permanent and sustained growth in welfare programs, the new agenda for social theory concentrated upon the conditions that hindered or favored development. Ironically, both neo-Marxists and conservative economists reached the same conclusion: Welfare programs undermined profitability. The first half of this paper traces these theoretical developments, both in relation to internal debates among social scientists and in regard to external social and economic conditions that shaped the context of theorizing about the welfare state.

Underlying the broader debates about the factors influencing welfare state development has been a more specific concern with the exceptionalism of the American welfare state. Here the central agenda has been to explain why the United States was late in developing national welfare programs and why the programs that did arise contained a bifurcated structure that separated benefits for the poor from those available to all citizens as a right. Three explanations have emerged: the failure of organized labor, the legacy of American politics and the dualism of the American economy. This paper critically assesses the theoretical relevance of these arguments and their implications for recent attacks on benefit programs.

Gentrification, the conversion of socially marginal and working-class areas of the central city to middle-class residential use, reflects a movement, that began in the 1960s, of private-market investment capital into downtown districts of major urban centers. Related to a shift in corporate investment and a corresponding expansion of the urban service economy, gentrification was seen more immediately in architectural restoration of deteriorating housing and the clustering of new cultural amenities in the urban core.

Research on gentrification initially concentrated on documenting its extent, tracing it as a process of neighborhood change, and speculating on its consequences for reversing trends of suburbanization and inner-city decline. But a cumulation of 10 years of research findings suggests, instead, that it results in a geographical reshuffling, among neighborhoods and metropolitan areas, of professional, managerial, and technical employees who work in corporate, government, and business services.

Having verified the extent of the phenomenon, empirical research on gentrification has reached a stalemate. Theoretically interesting problems concern the use of historic preservation to constitute a new urban middle class, gentrification and displacement, the economic rationality of the gentrifier's behavior, and the economic restructuring of the central city in which gentrification plays a part.

Broadening the analytic framework beyond demographic factors and neoclassical land use theory is problematic because of serious conceptual and methodological disagreements among neo-Marxist, neo-Weberian, and mainstream analysts. Yet efforts to understand gentrification benefit from the use of economic paradigms by considering such issues as production, consumption, and social reproduction of the urban middle class, as well as the factors that create a supply of gentrifiable housing and demand for it on the part of potential gentrifiers.

An emerging synthesis in the field integrates economic and cultural analysis. The mutual validation and valorization of urban art and real estate markets indicates the importance of the cultural constitution of the higher social strata in an advanced service economy. It also underlines how space and time are used in the social and material constitution of an urban middle class.

The paper summarizes the state of the art of time budget surveys and analyses. It first treats the new methodological developments, than reviews the different fields of utilization of time budget data: mass media contact, demand for cultural and other leisure goods and services, urban planning, consumer behavior, needs of elderly persons and of children, the sexual division of labor, the informal economy and household economics, social accounting, social indicators, quality of life, way of life, social structure. It deals also with the lessons from intertemporal and international comparisons of the results of time budget surveys.

Strategic decision-making processes at the top of organizations are examined. Research is reviewed on types of process movement, on the matters under decision, the problems raised, the interests implicated, the rules of the game, and its outcomes and implementation. Methodology is found to have gone through a conventional sequence of development from the small-scale intensive study to the large-scale extensive study, the latter very recently. Methodology has been catching up with theory, which has long been well developed. There are three main theories, overlapping and complementary—the incrementalism theory, the garbage-can theory, and the dual rationality theory. Five areas for further research are indicated.

Past reviews of American family history, while providing useful information about certain aspects of family life in the past, have inadequately addressed the conceptual framework informing the discipline. This article begins by reviewing four approaches developed by social scientists for studying the family: household composition, generations, family cycle, and life-course. The life-course perspective seems the most promising for a dynamic, complex view of families that links changes in the domestic sphere to wider societal trends and concerns. Using the analytical perspective of the life-course, we then examine significant historiographical contributions in four areas of family life—childbearing, early child development, adolescence, and old age.

Everyday life sociology comprises a broad spectrum of micro perspectives: symbolic interactionism, dramaturgy, phenomenology, ethnomethodology, and existential sociology. We discuss the underlying themes that bind these diverse subfields into a unified approach to the study of social interaction. We outline the historical development of everyday life sociology, indicating the individuals, ideas, and surrounding context that helped to shape this evolving theoretical movement. We then examine three contemporary developments in everyday life sociology that represent significant theoretical, substantive, and methodological advances: existential sociology, the sociology of emotions, and conversation analysis. Within these areas, we outline major themes, review recent literature, and evaluate their contribution to sociology. Everyday life sociology has had influence outside its arena, stimulating grand theorists to create various micro-macro syntheses. We consider these and their relation to the everyday life themes. We conclude by discussing the major critiques and assess the future promise and problems of this perspective.

Recent studies suggest that parenthood may have negative consequences for the psychological well-being of adults. Adults with children at home report that they are less happy and less satisfied with their lives than other groups. They also appear to worry more and to experience higher levels of anxiety and depression. The overall difference between parents and nonparents appears to be small, although it has increased during the past two decades. Differences between parents and nonparents stem from economic and time constraints, which in turn arise from general social trends such as the increase in women’s labor force participation and the increase in marital disruption and single parenthood. We expect these trends to continue in the near future, reducing the desire for children and increasing gender conflict over the division of parental obligations. Parental strain might be alleviated by some form of state-supported childcare or child allowance.

Because the wives of highly paid men participate less in the labor force, the earnings of working wives make the distribution of pretax, money income more equal for families than it might otherwise be. Although there is considerable speculation that future developments in women's labor force participation may foster greater inequality, the empirical results are mixed. To assess the impact of women's labor force participation on the distribution of well-being, future research will need to consider the implications of taxes, job-related expenses, fringe benefits, and the value of homemaker services. Future research would also benefit from linking empirical research to an implicit sociological theory of family income-getting—one that recognizes the motivational structure of household decision-making as well as the changing environment that families face. Rising housing costs, poorer economic prospects of young men, and women's higher wage rates, for example, make wives' paychecks more salient, but family dependence on married women's earnings means secondary earners become a less viable way of coping with unemployment.

Although good theoretical reasons exist for expecting development to be inegalitarian in its early phase, a reverse-U pattern of change in measured inequality might just as easily derive from a statistical composition effect. That such a pattern occurs in reality, however, is far from certain, and all authors agree on governments' ability to keep inequality in check, if they so desire. The effects of redistribution on income and employment do not seem to be appreciable. All empirical studies, including those offering elaborate models of less developed economies, suffer from the inadequacy of historical data, as well as from unresolved problems in definition, methodology, and measurement. Most authors, but not all, would subscribe to the statement that absolute poverty (which should cause more concern than, and should not be confused with, relative inequality) is reduced by economic development.

This is a review of the principal strands of the sociological literature on Spanish-origin groups in the United States. It emphasizes: (a) their labor market characteristics; (b) English acquisition; and (c) political participation and naturalization. We conclude that the label “Hispanic” is itself problematic because of the diversity of the groups included. There are trends toward convergence in political orientations and voting, but there are major divergences in patterns of social and economic adaptation. The rapid increase of new Latin American immigrant communities is likely to add to the diversity characterizing the major Spanish-origin groups already settled in the country.

The growth of welfare state programs inevitably leads to an increase of citizen encounters with bureaucratic agencies. Moreover, theories of the welfare state differ in the extent to which citizenship rights are a central aspect of the explanation of the shape of the welfare state. After reviewing major theories of the expansion of the welfare state, we examine determinants of client encounters. The determinants are framed in a social exchange model that draws upon individual resources and agency and program characteristics. The model predicts differences in power-dependence relations and clientele satisfaction with their encounters. The legitimation and protection of citizenship rights may vary from program to program, may vary over time, and may be differently institutionalized in societies at similar levels of economic development. How rights are linked to citizen obligations is also an historical and sociological issue. The chapter concludes with a discussion of methodological issues in evaluating encounters.

The main interest of this review is in the developments in social mobility research during the last ten years. These can be characterized as the revitalization of the class perspective, intensive comparative (cross-national and cross-temporal) research efforts, and the large-scale application of the log-linear modeling approach. After discussing the basic ideas of mobility studies conducted in an explicit class framework and the developments regarding class concepts, the review summarizes the major results of empirical research as to intergenerational mobility of men and women. These results are yielded within different conceptual frameworks for several industrialized countries. It continues by examining the constituent worklife processes, stressing the effects of different institutional arrangements and of labor market conditions for intragenerational mobility. Finally, a brief summary of the research desiderata still existing in social mobility research closes the review.