- Home
- A-Z Publications
- Annual Review of Sociology
- Previous Issues
- Volume 46, 2020
Annual Review of Sociology - Volume 46, 2020
Volume 46, 2020
-
-
My Life in Words and Numbers
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 1–17More LessGeorge Orwell reportedly said that “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.” I've done my best to eliminate any disgraceful episodes from the following account, thereby compromising its trustworthiness. What's left is a record of someone lucky enough to (a) find a career as a demographer that was ideally suited to his affinity for writing and math and (b) find institutions and individuals who vigorously and uncompromisingly supported the search for a better understanding of our social world. I can only hope that I have been equally supportive of students, colleagues, and institutions whose pathways I have crossed.
-
-
-
Of Modernity and Public Sociology: Reflections on a Career So Far
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 19–35More LessMy research so far has followed an interest in the classic concern about the social consequences of modernization, which led me to study urbanism, personal networks, the history of technology, and most extensively, American social history. A commitment to public sociology led me to a book on inequality, Contexts magazine, contributions to general media, a blog, and badgering sociologists about their writing. Some consistent themes include trying to address big questions with middle-range empirical work, focusing on ordinary lives and living, insisting on rigorous evidence whatever the method, and communicating with as wide an audience as lucidly as possible. The article closes with a few lessons learned.
-
-
-
Advances in the Science of Asking Questions
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 37–60More LessIn recent decades, research about survey questions has emphasized decision-based approaches. Current research focuses on identifying and systematizing characteristics of questions that are key in researchers’ decisions. We describe important classes of decisions and question characteristics: topic, type of question (e.g., event or behavior, evaluation or judgment), response dimension (e.g., occurrence, frequency, intensity), conceptualization and operationalization of the target object (e.g., how to label the object being asked about and the response dimension), question structure (e.g., use of a filter question, placement in a battery), question form or response format (e.g., yes–no, selection from ordered categories, choice from a list, discrete value), response categories, question wording, and question implementation. We use the framework of question characteristics to summarize key results in active research areas and provide practical recommendations. Progress depends on recognizing how question characteristics co-occur, using a variety of methods and appropriate models, and implementing study designs with strong criteria.
-
-
-
Computational Social Science and Sociology
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 61–81More LessThe integration of social science with computer science and engineering fields has produced a new area of study: computational social science. This field applies computational methods to novel sources of digital data such as social media, administrative records, and historical archives to develop theories of human behavior. We review the evolution of this field within sociology via bibliometric analysis and in-depth analysis of the following subfields where this new work is appearing most rapidly: (a) social network analysis and group formation; (b) collective behavior and political sociology; (c) the sociology of knowledge; (d) cultural sociology, social psychology, and emotions; (e) the production of culture; (f) economic sociology and organizations; and (g) demography and population studies. Our review reveals that sociologists are not only at the center of cutting-edge research that addresses longstanding questions about human behavior but also developing new lines of inquiry about digital spaces as well. We conclude by discussing challenging new obstacles in the field, calling for increased attention to sociological theory, and identifying new areas where computational social science might be further integrated into mainstream sociology.
-
-
-
The Longitudinal Revolution: Sociological Research at the 50-Year Milestone of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 83–108More LessThe US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2018. Initially designed to assess the nation's progress in combatting poverty, PSID's scope broadened quickly to a variety of topics and fields of inquiry. To date, sociologists are the second-most frequent users of PSID data after economists. Here, we describe the ways in which PSID's history reflects shifts in social science scholarship and funding priorities over half a century; take stock of the most important sociological breakthroughs it facilitated, in particular those relying on the longitudinal structure of the data; and critically assess the unique advantages and limitations of PSID and surveys like it for today's sociological scholarship.
-
-
-
Tracking US Social Change Over a Half-Century: The General Social Survey at Fifty
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 109–134More LessIn the five decades since its inception in 1971, the General Social Survey (GSS) project has prospectively recorded the current characteristics, backgrounds, behaviors, and attitudes of representative cross sections of American adults covering more than two generations and more than a century of birth cohorts. A foundational resource for contemporary social science, the data it produces and disseminates enable social scientists to develop broad and deep understandings into the changing fabric of US society, and aid legions of instructors and students in teaching and learning. It facilitates internationally comparative survey research and places the United States in the context of other societies through the International Social Survey Program, which it cofounded. This article first recounts the GSS's origins, design, and development. It then surveys contributions based on GSS data to studies of stratification and inequality, religion, sociopolitical trends, intergroup relations, social capital and social networks, health and well-being, culture, and methodology.
-
-
-
Climate Change and Society
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 135–158More LessClimate change is one of the greatest ecological and social challenges of the twenty-first century. Sociologists have made important contributions to our knowledge of the human drivers of contemporary climate change, including better understanding of the effects of social structure and political economy on national greenhouse gas emissions, the interplay of power and politics in the corporate sector and in policy systems, and the factors that influence individual actions by citizens and consumers. Sociology is also poised to make important contributions to the study of climate justice across multiple lines of stratification, including race, class, gender, indigenous identity, sexuality and queerness, and disability, and to articulate the effects of climate change on our relationship to nonhuman species. To realize its potential to contribute to the societal discourse on climate change, sociology must become theoretically integrated, engage with other disciplines, and remain concerned with issues related to environmental and climate inequalities.
-
-
-
Social Networks and Cognition
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 159–174More LessSocial network analysis, now often thought of simply as network science, has penetrated nearly every scientific and many scholarly fields and has become an indispensable resource. Yet, social networks are special by virtue of being specifically social, and our growing understanding of the brain is affecting our understanding of how social networks form, mature, and are exploited by their members. We discuss the expanding research on how the brain manages social information, how this information is heuristically processed, and how network cognitions are affected by situation and circumstance. In the process, we argue that the cognitive turn in social networks exemplifies the modern conception of the brain as fundamentally reprogrammable by experience and circumstance. Far from social networks being dependent upon the brain, we anticipate a modern view in which cognition and social networks coconstitute each other.
-
-
-
The Comparative Politics of Collective Memory
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 175–194More LessThis article examines the theoretical and empirical contributions of the interdisciplinary field of memory studies for a comparative sociology of collective memory and politics. We identify three major empirical foci that have structured the scholarship: the role of collective memory in the creation, legitimation, and maintenance of national identities and nation-states; political reckoning with the memory of difficult and violent pasts; and the ongoing transnationalization of collective memory. We conclude with suggestions for future research on the politics of memory given the rise of populism and so-called fake news.
-
-
-
Why Sociology Matters to Race and Biosocial Science
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 195–214More LessRecent developments in genetics and neuroscience have led to increasing interest in biosocial approaches to social life. While today's biosocial paradigms seek to examine more fully the inextricable relationships between the biological and the social, they have also renewed concerns about the scientific study of race. Our review describes the innovative ways sociologists have designed biosocial models to capture embodied impacts of racism, but also analyzes the potential for these models normatively to reinforce existing racial inequities. First, we examine how concepts and measurements of difference in the postgenomic era have affected scientific knowledges and social practices of racial identity. Next, we assess sociological investigations of racial inequality in the biosocial era, including the implications of the biological disciplines’ move to embrace the social. We conclude with a discussion of the growing interest in social algorithms and their potential to embed past racial injustices in their predictions of the future.
-
-
-
Employer Decision Making
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 215–232More LessThe decisions employers make are of critical importance to sociological understandings of labor market stratification. While contemporary research documents employment outcomes with ever-growing precision, far less work examines how employers actually make decisions. In this article, I review research on the process of employer decision making, focusing on how employers evaluate, compare, and select workers in personnel decisions. I begin by summarizing the most prevalent theories of employer decision making in sociology, grouping them into competency-based, status-based, and social closure–based approaches. A common thread underlying much of this work is the assumption that employers are utility maximizers who base decisions on systematic, even if flawed, cognitive calculations of worker skill and workforce productivity. I then turn to recent research from sociology and beyond that challenges this notion and highlights the importance of understanding how employers themselves—their emotions, identities, and environments—affect decisions. I conclude by suggesting directions for future research.
-
-
-
Organizations and the Governance of Urban Poverty
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 233–250More LessMany recent sociological studies of urban poverty have drawn inspiration from the Chicago School model of social disorganization. Studies of urban poverty and formal organizations have been profoundly shaped by this theoretical perspective, casting organizations as components of neighborhoods and thus relevant for study as potential contributors to neighborhood social control. We argue that this approach obscures many ways in which formal organizations are involved in the production and management of urban poverty. In order to take advantage of the many insights offered by sociological studies of organizations, we propose that students of urban poverty expand their theoretical perspective on formal organizations. We develop such an approach, an amalgamation of key concepts from two existing theoretical frameworks rarely discussed in urban poverty studies: urban governance and strategic action fields. This perspective offers new directions for research on urban poverty and urges greater integration with related studies from political science and geography.
-
-
-
Relational Work in the Economy
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 251–272More LessIn her groundbreaking scholarship on intimacy and economy, Viviana Zelizer coined the concept of relational work, or efforts in matching social relations with economic transactions and media of exchange. This article reviews the conceptual advances and empirical applications of relational work over the past two decades. I first trace the origins of the concept and discuss how it is distinct from the idea of embeddedness. I then identify variants of relational work proposed in economic sociology, including relational accounting, obfuscated exchange, clarifying and blurring practices, and emotions and power in relational work. The second part of the review discusses research on relational work in five areas: earmarking money, walking the terrain of morally problematic exchange, configuring social relations through economic activity, using social relations to negotiate economic interactions, and scaling up to relational work of organizations and institutions. I end by proposing areas of future research to examine the determinants and consequences of relational work for (dis)trust, (in)equality, and relational (mis)matches.
-
-
-
What Do Platforms Do? Understanding the Gig Economy
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 273–294More LessThe rapid growth of the platform economy has provoked scholarly discussion of its consequences for the nature of work and employment. We identify four major themes in the literature on platform work and the underlying metaphors associated with each. Platforms are seen as entrepreneurial incubators, digital cages, accelerants of precarity, and chameleons adapting to their environments. Each of these devices has limitations, which leads us to introduce an alternative image of platforms: as permissive potentates that externalize responsibility and control over economic transactions while still exercising concentrated power. As a consequence, platforms represent a distinct type of governance mechanism, different from markets, hierarchies, or networks, and therefore pose a unique set of problems for regulators, workers, and their competitors in the conventional economy. Reflecting the instability of the platform structure, struggles over regulatory regimes are dynamic and difficult to predict, but they are sure to gain in prominence as the platform economy grows.
-
-
-
Black Immigrants and the Changing Portrait of Black America
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 295–313More LessI review the literature on the social integration of black immigrants residing in the United States between 1910 and 2018, with the goal of highlighting how the growth of the black immigrant population has complicated the scholarly understanding of the causes and consequences of both intraracial disparities among blacks and disparities between blacks and whites in the United States. The article comprises three substantive sections. First, I examine the changing birth-country composition of the black immigrant population that arrived in the United States from 1900 to 1930 and review the literature on the social integration of black immigrants during the early twentieth century. Second, I review the literature that demonstrates how selective migration and disparate pre-1965 histories have shaped contemporary disparities between black immigrants and black Americans. Third, I discuss the implications of black immigration for understanding the evolution of racial disparities in the twenty-first century.
-
-
-
Immigrant Selectivity Effects on Health, Labor Market, and Educational Outcomes
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 315–334More LessOver the past two decades, a growing body of research has focused on immigrant selectivity and its effects on immigrant health, immigrant labor market outcomes, and children of immigrants’ educational outcomes. This review provides a theoretical overview of immigrant selectivity and its effects, and critically examines research on the effects of immigrant selectivity. Existing research suggests that positive immigrant selectivity helps explain paradoxical patterns of success among immigrants and their children in health, the labor market, and education. However, future research is needed that uses more rigorous research designs and measures, links immigrant selectivity and outcomes across domains, identifies the mechanisms through which immigrant selectivity matters, and considers different types of immigrant selectivity. I conclude by highlighting promising new studies along these lines and argue that immigrant selectivity is a central part of the process through which immigration contributes to inequality.
-
-
-
Multiracial Categorization, Identity, and Policy in (Mixed) Racial Formations
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 335–353More LessThis article examines recent developments in the literature on multiracial categorization, policy, and identity—one that has grown as data on multiracial populations have become widely available, particularly in the United States since the enumeration of multiple race responses was instituted in Census 2000. Significant new research takes advantage of the data generated by the Census providing new insights to questions and claims about the meanings of mixedness and racial boundaries in the United States that were largely speculative even a decade ago. Though this review focuses primarily on issues related to how state enumeration of mixed race populations reflects and engenders particular identity and group configurations, I also discuss emerging research on interracial intimacy—intermarriage and interracial births—the phenomena from which contemporary attention to multiracial categorization and identity arise. An increasingly internationalist discussion is challenging long-held interpretations of the meaning of intermarriage and multiracial identification for understanding emergent racial formations.
-
-
-
Race/Ethnicity over Fifty Years of Structural Differentiation in K–12 Schooling: Period-Specific and Life-Course Perspectives
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 355–378More LessIn the United States, equally performing students of different racial/ethnic groups may have different prospects for enrollment in rigorous curricular positions. Over time, the processes and operation of curricular systems have changed, and those changes may matter for the existence of racial/ethnic differences in access. We first outline dimensions that distinguish forms of in-school structural differentiation. We then use those dimensions to describe in-school structural differentiation at different points in time in the United States. Next, the time-period-specific evidence on racial/ethnic inequality is outlined, thus embedding findings in historical time. Finally, we array findings on racial/ethnic inequality into life-course trajectories for studied cohorts, revealing that different cohorts may have documented differences in their experience with respect to race and curricular placement.
-
-
-
The Impact of Inequality on Intergenerational Mobility
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 379–398More LessThe extent and causes of trends and cross-national variation in social class and occupational status mobility have been major topics of sociological research for decades. This topic has acquired renewed salience as inequality in many industrialized countries has increased and as improvements in data and estimation methods have stimulated increased scrutiny of intergenerational earnings or income mobility as well. The more recent focus on earnings or income mobility largely comes from economists, though sociologists and interdisciplinary teams have made increasingly important contributions. Compelling evidence supports the hypothesis that inequality trends are generating trends in absolute earnings mobility. Evidence about the impact of inequality on relative mobility is less clear, partly because within-country relative mobility trends are weak, partly because between-country differences in relative mobility likely have multiple causes, and partly because the rough stability in relative mobility could arise from offsetting forces. Efforts to exploit local variation in inequality and mobility have added important insights, as have studies that focus attention on mechanisms. The question of how inequality affects mobility cannot be answered definitively without a solid understanding of the multiple pathways that link a country's economic and institutional structure to its pattern of social mobility.
-
-
-
Transnational Professionals
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 399–417More LessThis review answers recent calls to consider the transformative role of transnational professionals in contemporary globalization. It departs from the dominant perspective, which views professions as constrained by states’ geographical boundaries and by organizations such as nationally based professional associations. Transnational professionals have particular characteristics: they combine high-level abstract knowledge, high mobility across national and organizational settings, social and cultural capital, and distributed agency to shape global practices. Over the past two decades, a vibrant research stream has emerged on these professionals and their boundary-crossing work, raising new questions about agency, territoriality, and power. We examine transnational professionals across a range of occupations and sectors, as well as world regions, extracting the implications for sociological theory and methods. We outline a scholarly agenda highlighting the opportunity structures and likely trajectories for those who locate themselves in transnational professional spaces, suggesting how they can be investigated in future research.
-
-
-
Class Position and Political Opinion in Rich Democracies
Arvid Lindh, and Leslie McCallVol. 46 (2020), pp. 419–441More LessIn many high-income countries today, scholarly interest in the politics of class has coincided with growing economic inequality, rising support for nonmainstream political parties and candidates, and increasing flows of immigration. We review social science research on the views of different class segments vis-à-vis economic, political, and sociocultural issues, finding greater scholarly attention to the interdependence of economic, social, and political concerns and preferences than arguably was the case even a few years ago. Our main aim is to synthesize and critically evaluate this rapidly expanding literature, but we also provide empirical data on class differences and similarities in political opinion across 18 countries, and we pinpoint several areas of research that are in need of further empirical, methodological, and theoretical inquiry.
-
-
-
Contemporary Social Movements in a Hybrid Media Environment
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 443–465More LessMedia are central to the dynamics of protest and social movements. Contemporary social movements face a shifting environment composed of new media technologies and platforms that enable new identities, organizational forms, and practices. We review recent research focusing on the ways in which movements shape and are shaped by the media environment and the ways in which changes in the media environment have reshaped participation, mobilization, and impacts of activism. We conclude with the following recommendations for scholarship in this burgeoning area: move toward a broader conception of media in movements; expand engagement with scholarship in neighboring disciplines that study politics, media, and communication; develop new methodological and analytical skills for emerging forms of media; and investigate the ways in which media are enhancing, altering, or undermining the ability of movements to mobilize support, shape broader identities and attitudes, and secure new advantages from targets and authorities.
-
-
-
Norms: An Integrated Framework
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 467–487More LessNorms are a foundational concept in sociology. Following a period of skepticism about norms as overly deterministic and as paying too little attention to social conflict, inequalities, and agency, the past 20 years have seen a proliferation of norms research across the social sciences. Here we focus on the burgeoning research in sociology to answer questions about where norms come from, why people enforce them, and how they are applied. To do so, we rely on three key theoretical approaches in the literature—consequentialist, relational, and agentic. As we apply these approaches, we explore their implications for what are arguably the two most fundamental issues in sociology—social order and inequality. We conclude by synthesizing and building on existing norms research to produce an integrated theoretical framework that can shed light on aspects of norms that are currently not well understood—in particular, their change and erosion.
-
-
-
The Sociology of Creativity: Elements, Structures, and Audiences
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 489–510More LessThis review integrates diverse characterizations of creativity from a sociological perspective with the goal of reinvigorating discussion of the sociology of creativity. We start by exploring relevant works of classical social theory to uncover key assumptions and principles, which are used as a theoretical basis for our proposed definition of creativity: an intentional configuration of cultural and material elements that is unexpected for a given audience. Our argument is enriched by locating creativity vis-à-vis related concepts—such as originality, knowledge, innovation, atypicality, and consecration—and across neighboring disciplines. Underlying the discussion are antecedents (structure, institutions, and context) and consequences (audiences, perception, and evaluation), which are treated separately. We end our review by speculating on ways in which sociologists can take the discussion of creativity forward.
-
-
-
Migration Patterns in East and Southeast Asia: Causes and Consequences
Eric Fong, and Kumiko ShibuyaVol. 46 (2020), pp. 511–531More LessOur review starts by considering the regional development of East and Southeast Asia. We then address major trends related to international migration within the region. First, we focus on labor migration, which has been a dominant type of migration in the region in the last four decades. We highlight consequences such as development in the destination area, remittances, and children who are left behind. Second, we highlight recent developments in research related to migrant domestic helpers. In this review, we argue that most studies about migrants in East and Southeast Asia are descriptive in nature, because limited data are available for detailed analysis. Consequently, there has been little opportunity or effort to theorize the migration patterns in the region. Our review suggests the need to move beyond case studies and descriptive reports and to step up efforts to make theoretical contributions to international migration in East and Southeast Asia.
-
-
-
Return Migration Around the World: An Integrated Agenda for Future Research
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 533–552More LessCurrently, two distinct bodies of scholarship address the increased volume and diversity of global return migration since the mid-1990s. The economic sociology of return, which assumes that return is voluntary, investigates how time living and working abroad affects returnees’ labor market opportunities and the resulting implications for economic development. A second scholarship, the political sociology of return, recognizing the increasing role of both emigration and immigration states in controlling and managing migration, examines how state and institutional actors in countries of origin shape the reintegration experiences of deportees, rejected asylum seekers, and nonadmitted migrants forced home. We review these literatures independently, examining their research questions, methodologies, and findings, while also noting limitations and areas where additional research is needed. We then engage these literatures to provide an integrated path forward for researching and theorizing return migration—a synergized resource mobilization framework.
-
-
-
Sociology, Genetics, and the Coming of Age of Sociogenomics
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 553–581More LessRecent years have seen the birth of sociogenomics via the infusion of molecular genetic data. We chronicle the history of genetics, focusing particularly on post-2005 genome-wide association studies, the post-2015 big data era, and the emergence of polygenic scores. We argue that understanding polygenic scores, including their genetic correlations with each other, causation, and underlying biological architecture, is vital. We show how genetics can be introduced to understand a myriad of topics such as fertility, educational attainment, intergenerational social mobility, well-being, addiction, risky behavior, and longevity. Although models of gene-environment interaction and correlation mirror agency and structure models in sociology, genetics is yet to be fully discovered by this discipline. We conclude with a critical reflection on the lack of diversity, nonrepresentative samples, precision policy applications, ethics, and genetic determinism. We argue that sociogenomics can speak to long-standing sociological questions and that sociologists can offer innovative theoretical, measurement, and methodological innovations to genetic research.
-
-
-
Technologies and Health Inequities
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 583–602More LessHealth technologies aim to improve individual and population health, but they may also exacerbate health disparities. Focusing on the specific design features of technologies, their availability, and their use, we present a conceptual framework to examine how health technologies may benefit some groups more than others by combining the theory of fundamental causes with a technology-in-practice approach. We examine three classes of technologies that have been associated with health inequities: once-advanced technologies such as kidney dialysis and transplantation for end-stage renal disease, which have been plagued by issues of scarcity and fair distribution, generating racial disparities; the highly anticipated precision medicine promising to change the focus from population to individualized medicine; and digital technologies, which may herald a democratization of health care.
-
-
-
Cities of the Global South
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 603–622More LessThis article considers the conundrums entailed in maintaining the notions of “city” and “Global South” in an era where urbanization is no longer epitomized by the city form and where the Global South as a distinctive geopolitical entity has largely been fractured into a multiplicity of domains and histories. Nevertheless, the compositions of contemporary urbanization processes engineer an urban world that is largely deterritorialized in terms of geographical and socio-technical specificity but simultaneously necessitates heterogeneous articulations across territories that open up spaces for the reiteration of many Souths. These potentially continue a long trajectory of solidarities and singularities among postcolonial urbanities. The article details the ways contemporary urbanization processes are composed via a heterogeneity of flows and corridors, while they are simultaneously reterritorialized through the elaboration of popular economies that express a partial disjuncture with capital-central logics of urbanization and the concretization of urbanization potentials embodied by long histories of struggle.
-
-
-
Urban Mobility and Activity Space
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 623–648More LessRecent theoretical and methodological advances in urban sociology, including spatially located data, provide new opportunities to consider the joint influence of mobility and place in urban social life. This review defines the concept of activity space, describes its origins in urban sociology, and examines the extent to which activity space approaches advance sociological research in four substantive domains—spatial inequality and segregation, social connectedness and engagement, crime and offending patterns, and health and health-related behavior. It next describes the evolution of methods for location tracking and new approaches that hold promise for maximizing urban mobility and activity space contributions. It then discusses how location data may be augmented to enhance our sociological understanding of the structure, meaning, and implications of the places people visit or traverse in daily life. We close with new directions for activity space research, emphasizing how such work could enable comparative contextual research.
-
-
-
Sociology and the Climate Crisis
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 649–669More LessWhat would it mean for sociology to make climate change a core disciplinary concern? This article reviews research on a selection of trends brought on by the climate crisis: (a) compounding and cumulative disasters, infrastructure breakdown, and adaptation; (b) intensifying migration and shifting patterns of settlement; and (c) transformations in consumption, labor, and energy. While climate change's far-reaching implications remain peripheral to the discipline at large, sociologists studying these trends increasingly understand the crisis as a central problem for the study of social life. We show how sociologists can shed light on core problems emerging from and contributing to the crisis, and also reveal the conditions that make necessary social and cultural transformations more likely. Throughout, we illuminate how sociology can help chart a path out of the climate crisis by identifying alternatives to the high-carbon, low-equity social structures that organize the modern world. Finally, we identify possibilities for scholars who do not see themselves as “environmental sociologists” to contribute meaningful research on the climate crisis, and we encourage them to do so while we can make a difference.
-
-
-
The Social Consequences of Disasters: Individual and Community Change
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 671–691More LessWe review findings from the last decade of research on the effects of disasters, concentrating on three important themes: the differences between the recovery of places versus people, the need to differentiate between short- and long-term recovery trajectories, and the changing role of government and how it has exacerbated inequality in recovery and engendered feedback loops that create greater vulnerability. We reflect the focus of the majority of sociological studies on disasters by concentrating our review on studies in the United States, but we also include studies on disasters throughout the world if they contribute to our empirical and theoretical understanding of disasters and their impacts. We end with a discussion of the inevitability of more severe disasters as climate change progresses and call on social scientists to develop new concepts and to use new methods to study these developments.
-
-
-
Violence in Latin America: An Overview of Research and Issues
Vol. 46 (2020), pp. 693–706More LessIn this review of violence in Latin America, I have attempted to organize the region's scholarly literature around the most influential and leading research issues. Three main lines of research have materialized from this overview. First, one line of research is concerned with the difference between the old patterns of violence and the so-called new violence. Second, a line of research focuses on the state's responses to violence. Third, a similar, although much broader, line of research focuses on the public's responses to violence. The article describes a number of paradoxes and paradigms around the study of violence in the region. Further work toward organization and synthesis of research and issues in the region is necessary.
-
Previous Volumes
-
Volume 49 (2023)
-
Volume 48 (2022)
-
Volume 47 (2021)
-
Volume 46 (2020)
-
Volume 45 (2019)
-
Volume 44 (2018)
-
Volume 43 (2017)
-
Volume 42 (2016)
-
Volume 41 (2015)
-
Volume 40 (2014)
-
Volume 39 (2013)
-
Volume 38 (2012)
-
Volume 37 (2011)
-
Volume 36 (2010)
-
Volume 35 (2009)
-
Volume 34 (2008)
-
Volume 33 (2007)
-
Volume 32 (2006)
-
Volume 31 (2005)
-
Volume 30 (2004)
-
Volume 29 (2003)
-
Volume 28 (2002)
-
Volume 27 (2001)
-
Volume 26 (2000)
-
Volume 25 (1999)
-
Volume 24 (1998)
-
Volume 23 (1997)
-
Volume 22 (1996)
-
Volume 21 (1995)
-
Volume 20 (1994)
-
Volume 19 (1993)
-
Volume 18 (1992)
-
Volume 17 (1991)
-
Volume 16 (1990)
-
Volume 15 (1989)
-
Volume 14 (1988)
-
Volume 13 (1987)
-
Volume 12 (1986)
-
Volume 11 (1985)
-
Volume 10 (1984)
-
Volume 9 (1983)
-
Volume 8 (1982)
-
Volume 7 (1981)
-
Volume 6 (1980)
-
Volume 5 (1979)
-
Volume 4 (1978)
-
Volume 3 (1977)
-
Volume 2 (1976)
-
Volume 1 (1975)
-
Volume 0 (1932)