Annual Review of Sociology - Volume 39, 2013

Este artículo revisa los hallazgos y discusiones antropológicas y sociológicas de investigaciones recientes en torno a los impactos que puede haber acarreado la migración internacional en las dinámicas familiares de los hogares—campesinos e indígenas—en las comunidades de origen en México. Como uno de los cambios mayores tiene que ver con la intensificación de la migración femenina pero también con la situación de las mujeres que se quedan, el artículo hace hincapié, aunque no únicamente, en la situación de las mujeres desde una perspectiva de género.

Charles Tilly (1929–2008) was a pioneer in joining sociology and history. Throughout his career, he was especially concerned with the ways in which ordinary people made political claims, and how this was shaped by transformations in the state and in capitalism. Most often seen as a structuralist, Tilly was nevertheless deeply concerned with how to understand actors. This article traces Tilly's work from early research on French contention through his later, synthetic work on mechanisms and regimes to show how Tilly's understanding of actors, agency, culture, and social construction developed. Further, we show how this development went hand in hand with Tilly's development of distinctive methodological approaches to historical and sociological data.

In light of an increasing interest in experimental work, we provide a review of some of the general issues involved in the design of experiments and illustrate their relevance to sociology and to other areas of social science of interest to sociologists. We provide both an introduction to the principles of experimental design and examples of influential applications of design for different types of social science research. Our aim is twofold: to provide a foundation in the principles of design that may be useful to those planning experiments and to provide a critical overview of the range of applications of experimental design across the social sciences.

Sociology was once integral to the scientific study of morality, but its explicit focus has waned over the past half-century. This article calls for greater sociological engagement in order to speak to the resurgence of the study of morality in cognate fields. We identify important treatments of morality, some of which are not explicitly so, and identify those treatments that build a distinctly sociological focus on morality: room for culturally divergent understandings of its content, a focus on antecedent social factors that shape it, and a concern with ecologically valid explorations of its social importance.

This article reviews social scientific research on the occurrence of genocide and mass killing, focusing on the underlying, contributing processes. Relevant studies are grouped by their primary analytic focus: (a) macro-level state and institutional processes, (b) political elites and policy decisions, (c) nonelite perpetrator motivation and participation, (d) social construction of victim group identity, and (e) local and regional variation within larger episodes. We also discuss issues relating to the conceptualization and definition of genocide, the utilization of different sources of data, methodological tendencies, and general analytic trends. Although recent studies show a promising move toward greater analytic disaggregation and engagement with various causal processes and outcomes at the meso and micro levels, genocide scholars must broaden their theoretical engagement with parallel fields of inquiry, continue to be creative in locating original data sources, and account for both positive and negative cases.

Sociology frequently presumes interest-oriented action but deconstructs interests. Here, we argue for more inquiry into the social conditions under which interest-oriented action is generated. We analyze how interest-oriented action is understood in classical sociology, rational choice theory, social exchange theory, and cultural sociology. These perspectives vary in the extent to which interests are an explanatory principle, how interests are considered, and how emergent social formations are explained. However, they share an implicit recognition that the question of when interest-oriented action emerges needs more attention. Rather than naturalizing interest-oriented action, or investigating how interests are constructed, the most productive direction for future sociological research on interests is to specify better when action oriented to interests becomes normative.

The article examines the relations among illicit drugs, violence, and the state, focusing on why certain drugs are prohibited whereas others are not. The moral concerns underlying prohibition and the stereotyping of drug users along racial and class lines historically and in the present are reviewed. One conclusion is that modern states use drug prohibition as a way of defining the moral and social boundaries of exclusion and inclusion. In this definition, medical treatment and public health considerations play an auxiliary role. Other conclusions are the inflexibility of the international drug control regime and the need to consider experiments in drug legalization. Inflexibility, economic globalization, and worldwide drug trafficking have perverse consequences, which vary with the institutional capacity of states. The rise of incarceration and other forms of violence are particularly evident in economically and socially marginal communities and where the authority of states is weakened by internal corruption and external conflict.

This article reviews and evaluates recent comparative social science scholarship on healthcare systems. We focus on four of the strongest themes in current research: (a) the development of typologies of healthcare systems, (b) assessment of convergence among healthcare systems, (c) problematization of the shifting boundaries of healthcare systems, and (d) the relationship between healthcare systems and social inequalities. Our discussion seeks to highlight the central debates that animate current scholarship and identify unresolved questions and new opportunities for research. We also identify five currents in contemporary sociology that have not been incorporated as deeply as they might into research on healthcare systems. These five missed turns include emphases on social relations, culture, postnational theory, institutions, and causal mechanisms. We conclude by highlighting some key challenges for comparative research on healthcare systems.

This article reviews cross-national research on multicultural policies in relation to immigrants in the main European and Anglo-Saxon immigrant-receiving countries. It compares the policies themselves and reviews studies that evaluate their outcomes. The size of immigrant populations as well as their composition in terms of countries of origin, religion, and human capital are key to understanding why multiculturalism has fallen further from grace in Europe than in the classical immigrant-receiving countries of the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In addition, religious rights are identified as the main source of controversy regarding multicultural rights; that Muslims make up a larger proportion of immigrants to Europe explains in part the more critical evaluation that multicultural policies receive there. The reviewed studies reveal a mixed picture regarding outcomes of multicultural policies, with little effect on socioeconomic integration, some positive effects on political integration, and negative impacts on sociocultural integration.

In this article, we synthesize and analyze sociological understanding of fashion, with the main part of the review devoted to classical and recent sociological work. To further the development of this largely interdisciplinary field, we also highlight the key points of research in other disciplines. We define fashion as an unplanned process of recurrent change against a backdrop of order in the public realm. We clarify this definition after tracing fashion's origins and history. As a social phenomenon, fashion has been culturally and economically significant since the dawn of Modernity and has increased in importance with the emergence of mass markets, in terms of both production and consumption. Most research on this topic is concerned with dress, but we argue that there are no domain restrictions that should constrain fashion theories. We identify venues around which sociologists could develop further research in this field.

Scholarly work on the nexus of religion, nationalism, and violence is currently fragmented along disciplinary and theoretical lines. In sociology, history, and anthropology, a macro-culturalist approach reigns; in political science, economics, and international relations, a micro-rationalist approach is dominant. Recent attempts at a synthesis ignore religion or fold it into ethnicity. A coherent synthesis capable of adequately accounting for religious-nationalist violence must not only integrate micro and macro, cultural and strategic approaches; it must also include a meso level of elite conflict and boundary maintenance and treat the religious field as potentially autonomous from the cultural field.

We review the bourgeoning literature on multiracial religious organizations. Although scholars have paid attention to racial integration in congregations since the 1940s, only recently has there been a concerted focus on this topic. This article—having reviewed the state of the field—argues that research on this topic must engage in three vital labors: explore more theory building or theory extension, interact with the broader field of sociology, and explicate how religious racial diversity contributes to or dismantles systems of social stratification. We discuss possible paths and approaches for future research on race, religion, and integration.

Environmental sociology has become a mature field within the discipline of sociology. We consider several of the key theories that define the core and boundaries of the field, calling attention to debates and unresolved questions. We contend that two of the defining features of this field are (a) attention to the inseparability of human and nonhuman natures and (b) attention to the role that power and social inequality play in shaping human/nonhuman interactions. These two characteristics of environmental sociology also reveal strong links between this field and the broader discipline, in light of recent reexaminations of classical sociological writings. We conclude with a consideration of new directions environmental sociologists might take toward building an even more robust, interdisciplinary, and critical area of study.

What mechanisms account for the long-run differences in economic development across historical settings? Current scholarship has renewed the argument that institutions are essential for promoting market transactions, industrialization, trade, and economic growth. In particular, recent work in economic history offers valuable empirical and theoretical insights into the development of market-supporting institutions, their long-term consequences, and their relationship to state-building. The purpose of this review is to bring contributions in economic history to the attention of sociologists interested in the evolution of economic institutions. Drawing on salient historical cases, the article contrasts formal market-supporting institutions that are provided by the state with settings where such public provision fails and private-order institutions based on reputation effects within informal social networks offer an alternative. Moving beyond mere existence proofs that institutions matter, the review then discusses recent advances in understanding the precise mechanisms responsible for the persistent effects of institutions on economic development.

Demographic changes in who becomes a parent, how many children parents have, and the marital statuses of parents and children affect the extent to which parents and adult children provide for each other later in life. We describe these demographic changes and their implications for the help parents and children give each other throughout their adult years. The changing demography of US families has increased both generations' need for family assistance among those already disadvantaged and has exacerbated differences between the socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged in the availability of kin support. Variations in the marital histories of parents and children also contribute to a divergence between mother-child and father-child relationships in later life. The churning of couple relationships in both generations blurs the boundaries between who is in the family and who is not, threatening the effectiveness of the family safety net among those who may need it the most.

Beginning with the last review of gender and crime that appeared in the Annual Review of Sociology (1996), I examine the developments in the more traditional approaches to this subject (the gender ratio problem and the problem of theoretical generalization), life course research, and feminist research (gendered pathways, gendered crime, and gendered lives). This review highlights important insights that have emerged in this work on gender and crime, and it considers how this work might be further enriched by drawing on sociological theories that can address how gendered lives shape the impetus and opportunities for offending. This includes work on the context of offending, the learning and expression of emotions, and identity theory.

White-collar crime is one of the least understood and arguably most consequential of all crime types. This review highlights and assesses recent (primarily during the past decade) contributions to white-collar crime theory (with special emphasis on critical, choice, and organizational theories of offending), new evidence regarding the sentencing and punishment of white-collar offenders, and controversies surrounding crime prevention and control policies. Several promising new directions for white-collar crime research are identified, as are methodological and data deficiencies that limit progress.

Epigenetics is a burgeoning area of biomedical research into the mechanisms by which genes are regulated—how the activity of producing proteins is controlled. Although molecular epigenetic research is highly biochemical, it is of interest to sociologists because some epigenetic changes are environmentally mediated and can persist across the life span or into further generations. Environmental epigenetic research tracks mechanisms by which social forces—from pollution to nutrition to mothering to traumatic experience—become molecularly embodied, affect gene expression, and induce durable changes in behavior and health. We begin with an introduction to the science of environmental epigenetics focused on articulating the logic of experimentation and explanation in this field. Turning to sociologists' key interests, we review the growing literature on epigenetics of socioeconomic status. Finally, we consider how epigenetics offers opportunities and challenges for sociological research on both empirical and theoretical grounds.

Over the past 25 years, since the publication of Omi & Winant's Racial Formation in the United States, the statement that race is socially constructed has become a truism in sociological circles. Yet many struggle to describe exactly what the claim means. This review brings together empirical literature on the social construction of race from different levels of analysis to highlight the variety of approaches to studying racial formation processes. For example, macro-level scholarship often focuses on the creation of racial categories, micro-level studies examine who comes to occupy these categories, and meso-level research captures the effects of institutional and social context. Each of these levels of analysis has yielded important contributions to our understanding of the social construction of race, yet there is little conversation across boundaries. Scholarship that bridges methodological and disciplinary divides is needed to continue to advance the racial formation perspective and demonstrate its broader relevance.

This review surveys the sociological work on race and sport over the past 50 years. It begins by outlining the importance of C.L.R. James's book Beyond a Boundary as a foundational text for the critical sociology of race and sport. Two paradigms of research on race and sport are sketched: the critical and the functionalist-evolutionary. The article then reviews the major contributions to the study of race and sport from three areas, namely mainstream American sociology, the sociology of race, and the sociology of sport, focusing primarily on the research published since 2000. The article concludes by looking at future directions of work in the field, suggesting that although sport remains marginal to mainstream American sociology and the insights of scholars such as James remain overlooked, the best work on race and sport will continue to emerge from the subfield of sport studies.