Annual Review of Sociology - Volume 20, 1994

The question of how to incorporate women in class analysis and stratification research has been the topic of heated controversy in recent decades. Much of the debate has been about the conventional approach to research on social mobility and class analysis that assumes the family to be the unit of stratification and the family’s class position to be determined independently of women’s work position. Those defending the conventional view can show that research on the empirical validity of the conventional view provides partial support for it, and that its use in previous empirical research probably has not resulted in serious misrepresentations. In this article, I review the literature on these issues. I summarize the criticism and defense of the conventional view and review research that examines its empirical adequacy. This is followed by a discussion of alternative approaches to the determination of the family’s class position.

Oppositions and deadly conflicts among ethnic collectivities are important around the word. Ethnies (our term for ethnic groups) also strongly affect interstate relations. Both interethnic and ethnic-state conflicts tend to be severe, protracted, and intractable. At the extremes, the stakes are total: survival versus genocide

Competition and rivalry for individualized economic and political goods are important, but the most intense conflicts are to be expected when the stakes are collective goods, including categorical claims to prestige and political authority.

States are major actors in creating, accentuating, or diminishing ethnic identities. States are both arenas of rivalry and conflict and resources for ethnic mobilization and counter-mobilization.

Because both ethnies and states are diverse, careful specification is required for fruitful analysis. The same dictum applies for the diverse types of oppositions and of conflicts.

Ethnic conflicts arise from complex combinations of ethnic strength, class, inequality, political opportunity, mobilization resources, interdependence, and international interventions. Frequent but nonviolent protests, for example, are most likely by organized collectivities with substantial resources, operating in relatively open political systems. International aid to parties in domestic conflicts appears to prolong and intensify ethnic struggles.

Research in this field contends with many difficulties, and one-sided theories do not fare well. Yet abundant descriptive materials are available, statistical techniques are improving, conceptual clarification continues, and substantive knowledge does accumulate. Accordingly, there is hope for better understanding of some of the most destructive and tragic conflicts of our times.

This review pulls together research on home leaving, home returning, parent-child coresidence, and the launching process and integrates it with theoretical perspectives related to the life course. Material is included from Australia, Canada, and Britain as well as the United States. Because the nuclear family form specifies that children leave the parental home when they marry and few married persons live with their parents, the focus is on relationships between unmarried children and their parents. The review concentrates on the young adult years while recognizing coresidence experiences over the life course. The nature of the link between residence patterns, family relationships, and dependence is an empirical question that, for the most part, has not been answered.

In this paper we review the empirical legacy that developed out of the theoretical and methodological agendas of class analysis and comparative methods of the 1970s and 1980s. Our review is restricted to studies that examine the variants in the class structures of the developed capitalist democracies. The paper is organized into four main sections. In part one, we examine variations in the organization of capital; part two takes up the still little-studied resurgence of the petite bourgeoisie and small capital; in part three, we review studies that have examined national variations in the size and composition of the new middle class; and part four reviews the postindustrial and gendered nature of the working class. Our conclusion highlights important labor market developments of the 1980s that have largely been missed by conventional class models and commentosn their significance for the future of empirical research in class analysis.

There is a growing realization in academic and policy circles that the double transition to democracy and the market may not be as simple or as easy as first imagined. Beginning with a discussion of the relationship between economic policy and regime type, this review emphasizes the problems associated with the uncertainty of the double transformation. It then suggests three mechanisms discussed in the literature as contributing to a more stable transition. Some authors have emphasized the importance of social and political contracts. Others contend that the transition must be imposed by the domination of a class or the state. A third group has focused on the rise of a new civil society and the need for some form of trust between the various groups. The review concludes with a call for more field level research and a greater emphasis on perceptions and expectations of change.

Social problems may fruitfully be looked at as constructed phenomena, that is, what constitutes a problem is the concern that segments of the public feel about a given condition. From the constructionist perspective, that concern need not bear a close relationship with the concrete harm or damage that the condition poses or causes. At times, substantial numbers of the members of societies are subject to intense feelings of concern about a given threat which a sober assessment of the evidence suggests is either nonexistent or considerably less than would be expected from the concrete harm posed by the threat. Such over-heated periods of intense concern are typically short-lived. In such periods, which sociologists refer to as “moral panics,” the agents responsible for the threat—“folk devils”—are stereotyped and classified as deviants. What accounts for these outbreaks or episodes of moral panics? Three theories have been proposed: grassroots, elite-engineered, and interest group theories. Moral panics are unlike fads; though both tend to be relatively short-lived, moral panics always leave an informal, and often an institutional, legacy.

Sociologists have always recognized the “double function” of religion in the legitimation of power and privilege and in protest and opposition, but theories of secularization and modernization predicted the declining significance of religion in contemporary public life. We review new approaches to religious activism and legitimation efforts in the United States and in the world-system that stress the interrelatedness of religion and politics. Then we evaluate the contributions of new theories of social movements and culture, Marxism, and feminism to new conceptualizations of the relationships among religious struggles, inequality, and political order today.

There is considerable controversy over the causes of the completed fertility transitions that occurred in most industrial countries from 1870 to 1930 and the “new” fertility transitions that are currently underway in the developing world. New data and empirical analyses of both historical and contemporary fertility declines have weakened the standard theory of the demographic transition, but none of the plethora of new theories of fertility change have emerged as hegemonie or as alternative guides to empirical research. The vast body of empirical evidence on the origins, speed, and correlates of fertility declines in different historical and geographical settings shows more diversity than a simple theory of fertility change would predict. The challenge for the field is to develop a common theoretical framework that will accommodate the diversity of historical paths from high to low fertility.

This paper examines changes in marriage as an institution for rearing children in the United States. It reviews the effects of marital instability and living arrangements on children's welfare, and focuses on how children's economic, emotional, and social needs are met when parents separate. The review shows that changes in marriage and childrearing have different consequences for women and men. For women, marriage and parenthood are distinct institutions. Women provide for children's needs, whether or not the women are married to their children's fathers. For men, marriage defines responsibilities to children. At divorce, men typically disengage from their biological children. When men remarry they may acquire new children whom they help to support. The review describes the effects on children of divorced mothers' and fathers' varying commitments to childrearing. It considers the difficulties that divorced parents experience when they try to continue to share responsibilities for children after separation, and it suggests avenues for future research.

Sociobiology is the study of the biological bases of behavior in the context of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. This review organizes the contribution of sociobiology to the understanding of human behavior around a small number of major theoretical articulations. These include identification of the gene as the basic unit of selection: the concept of inclusive fitness and the role of relatedness: models of reciprocal altruism and the concept of evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS): and the theory of optimal reproductive investment. Sociobiological and evolutionary thinking is expected to affect sociology in a number of areas including sex and gender roles: the theory of collective action: and the elaboration of a richer and more complex model of human nature.

The new sociology of knowledge examines how kinds of social organization make whole orderings of knowledge possible, rather than focussing on the differing social locations and interests of individuals or groups. The review begins with the effects on knowledge of the media through which it is preserved, organized, and transmitted. We then analyze collective memory, examining social conditions that shape how knowledge is transmitted through time. The review then examines how patterns of authority located in organizations shape both the content and structure of knowledge, looking at how authority affects the scope, generality, and authoritativeness of knowledge. We then review recent work on how social power, particularly that embodied in institutional practices, shapes knowledge. We examine how knowledge reinforces social hierarchies and how the boundaries and categories of systems of knowledge are constituted. Looking at power, gender, and knowledge, we discuss new versions of the standpoint theories that characterized the traditional sociology of knowledge. Finally, we briefly review recent work on informal knowledge.

This paper reviews recent developments in the application of multilevel models to substantive problems in sociology. There is no single multilevel model in sociology, but rather a set of more or less closely related approaches for exploring the link between the macro and micro levels of social phenomena. Methodological developments of the last ten years are discussed and contrasted with older methods. Illustrative examples of how multilevel analysis has contributed to sociological knowledge are provided for several areas of the discipline, including demography, education, stratification, and criminology. Cautions in the use of these models for empirical research are discussed, along with possible further developments.

This paper discusses five themes related to the formation and functioning of stepfamilies. The first section examines how demographic trends, particularly changing marriage and remarriage rates and rising levels of cohabitation, are affecting post-marital family arrangements. The second section looks at the creation of new forms of kinship associated with remarriage and cohabitation. The third and fourth parts of the paper explore issues related to the social organization of stepfamilies and the consequences for children. The final section of the paper takes up the question of whether and why remarried persons are at higher risk of divorce. We discuss some implications of research for public policy and current theoretical debates about the status of the American family.

While social theory and legal theory were once closely intertwined, contemporary American sociology pays scant attention to recent developments in legal theory. But the problems that legal theory currently wrestles with are very similar to those with which sociology is now centrally concerned. This essay reviews major schools of thought in contemporary legal theory to introduce sociologists to some potentially useful literatures on the meaning of rationality; on critical theory; on the importance of gender, race, and class in understanding social institutions; on the interpretive turn; on the relationship between structure and agency; and on the revival of pragmatism.

Sociologists have begun to explore the gains for theory and research that might be achieved by artificial intelligence technology: symbolic processors, expert systems, neural networks, genetic algorithms, and classifier systems. The first major accomplishments of artificial social intelligence (ASI) have been in the realm of theory, where these techniques have inspired new theories as well as helping to render existing theories more rigorous. Two application areas for which ASI holds great promise are the sociological analysis of written texts and data retrieval from the forthcoming Global Information Infrastructure. ASI has already been applied to some kinds of statistical analysis, but how competitive it will be with more conventional techniques remains unclear. To take advantage of the opportunities offered by ASI, sociologists will have to become more computer literate and will have to reconsider the place of programming and computer science in the sociological curriculum. ASI may be a revolutionary approach with the potential to rescue sociology from the doldrums into which some observers believe it has fallen.

This review explores historical changes in generational relations in American society as they affect adaptation to the later years of life. Following a life course perspective, the review examines changes in the timing of life transitions, in family relations, and in generational and kin assistance and their impact on support in old age. In doing so, it demonstrates the significance of a historical and life course approach to the understanding of generational relations over time. Dispelling prevailing myths about coresidence and generational assistance in the past, the review discusses the circumstances under which nuclear household arrangements were modified and explores patterns of assistance inside and outside the household. It links demographic changes in the timing of life course transitions with patterns of supports to aging parents in the context of changing reciprocities among kin. By comparing two cohorts of adult children in an American community in terms of their supports to aging parents, as well as their attitudes toward generational assistance, the review identifies historical changes in the relations between generations in the larger context of family relations and kin assistance.