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After Civil Rights: Racial Realism in the New American Workplace

John D. Skrentny

What role should racial difference play in the American workplace? As a nation, we rely on civil rights law to address this question, and the monumental Civil Rights Act of 1964 seemingly answered ... More

What role should racial difference play in the American workplace? As a nation, we rely on civil rights law to address this question, and the monumental Civil Rights Act of 1964 seemingly answered it: race must not be a factor in workplace decisions. This book contends that after decades of mass immigration, many employers, Democratic and Republican political leaders, and advocates have adopted a new strategy to manage race and work. Race is now relevant not only in negative cases of discrimination, but in more positive ways as well. In today's workplace, employers routinely practice “racial realism,” where they view race as real—as a job qualification. Many believe employee racial differences, and sometimes immigrant status, correspond to unique abilities or evoke desirable reactions from clients or citizens. They also see racial diversity as a way to increase workplace dynamism. The problem is that when employers see race as useful for organizational effectiveness, they are often in violation of civil rights law. This book examines this emerging strategy in a wide range of employment situations, including the low-skilled sector, professional and white-collar jobs, and entertainment and media. The book urges us to acknowledge the racial realism already occurring, and lays out a series of reforms that, if enacted, would bring the law and lived experience more in line, yet still remain respectful of the need to protect the civil rights of all workers.Less

The Art of Social Theory

Richard Swedberg

In the social sciences today, students are taught theory by reading and analyzing the works of Karl Marx, Max Weber, and other foundational figures of the discipline. What they rarely learn, however, ... More

In the social sciences today, students are taught theory by reading and analyzing the works of Karl Marx, Max Weber, and other foundational figures of the discipline. What they rarely learn, however, is how to actually theorize. This book is a practical guide to doing just that. This user manual for social theorists explains how theorizing occurs in what the book calls the context of discovery, a process in which the researcher gathers preliminary data and thinks creatively about it using tools such as metaphor, analogy, and typology. The book guides readers through each step of the theorist's art, from observation and naming to concept formation and explanation. To theorize well, you also need a sound knowledge of existing social theory. The book introduces readers to the most important theories and concepts, and discusses how to go about mastering them. If you can think, you can also learn to theorize. This book shows you how. The book features helpful examples throughout, and also provides practical exercises that enable readers to learn through doing.Less

Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music

Jennifer C. Lena

Why do some music styles gain mass popularity while others thrive in small niches? This book explores this question and reveals the attributes that together explain the growth of twentieth-century ... More

Why do some music styles gain mass popularity while others thrive in small niches? This book explores this question and reveals the attributes that together explain the growth of twentieth-century American popular music. Drawing on a vast array of examples from sixty musical styles—ranging from rap and bluegrass to death metal and South Texas polka, and including several created outside the United States—the book uncovers the shared grammar that allows us to understand the cultural language and evolution of popular music. The book discovers four dominant forms—avant-garde, scene-based, industry-based, and traditionalist—and two dominant trajectories that describe how American pop music genres develop. Outside the United States there exists a fifth form: the government-purposed genre, which the book examines in the music of China, Serbia, Nigeria, and Chile. Offering a rare analysis of how music communities operate, the book looks at the shared obstacles and opportunities creative people face and reveals the ways in which people collaborate around ideas, artworks, individuals, and organizations that support their work.Less

The Battle for Yellowstone: Morality and the Sacred Roots of Environmental Conflict

Justin Farrell

Yellowstone holds a special place in America's heart. As the world's first national park, it is globally recognized as the crown jewel of modern environmental preservation. But the park and its ... More

Yellowstone holds a special place in America's heart. As the world's first national park, it is globally recognized as the crown jewel of modern environmental preservation. But the park and its surrounding regions have recently become a lightning rod for environmental conflict, plagued by intense and intractable political struggles among the federal government, National Park Service, environmentalists, industry, local residents, and elected officials. This book asks why it is that, with the flood of expert scientific, economic, and legal efforts to resolve disagreements over Yellowstone, there is no improvement? Why do even seemingly minor issues erupt into impassioned disputes? What can Yellowstone teach us about the worsening environmental conflicts worldwide? The book argues that the battle for Yellowstone has deep moral, cultural, and spiritual roots that until now have been obscured by the supposedly rational and technical nature of the conflict. Tracing in detail the moral causes and consequences of large-scale social change in the American West, the book describes how a “new-west” social order has emerged that has devalued traditional American beliefs about manifest destiny and rugged individualism, and how morality and spirituality have influenced the most polarizing and techno-centric conflicts in Yellowstone's history. The book shows how the unprecedented conflict over Yellowstone is not all about science, law, or economic interests, but more surprisingly, is about cultural upheaval and the construction of new moral and spiritual boundaries in the American West.Less

Becoming Black Political Subjects: Movements and Ethno-Racial Rights in Colombia and Brazil

Tianna S. Paschel

After decades of denying racism and underplaying cultural diversity, Latin American states began adopting transformative ethno-racial legislation in the late 1980s. In addition to symbolic ... More

After decades of denying racism and underplaying cultural diversity, Latin American states began adopting transformative ethno-racial legislation in the late 1980s. In addition to symbolic recognition of indigenous peoples and black populations, governments in the region created a more pluralistic model of citizenship and made significant reforms in the areas of land, health, education, and development policy. This book explores this shift from color blindness to ethno-racial legislation in two of the most important cases in the region: Colombia and Brazil. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, the book shows how, over a short period, black movements and their claims went from being marginalized to become institutionalized into the law, state bureaucracies, and mainstream politics. The strategic actions of a small group of black activists—working in the context of domestic unrest and the international community's growing interest in ethno-racial issues—successfully brought about change. The book also examines the consequences of these reforms, including the institutionalization of certain ideas of blackness, the reconfiguration of black movement organizations, and the unmaking of black rights in the face of reactionary movements. This book offers important insights into the changing landscape of race and Latin American politics and provokes readers to adopt a more transnational and flexible understanding of social movements.Less

Becoming Right: How Campuses Shape Young Conservatives

Amy J. Binder and Kate Wood

The last two decades have seen historians and political scientists extensively study the rise of conservatism. An addition to that literature, this book offers an analysis of the state of college ... More

The last two decades have seen historians and political scientists extensively study the rise of conservatism. An addition to that literature, this book offers an analysis of the state of college conservatism and explains the factors that shape the student and the citizen. Conservative pundits allege that the pervasive liberalism of America's colleges and universities has detrimental effects on undergraduates, most particularly right-leaning ones. Yet not enough attention has actually been paid to young conservatives to test these claims—until now. This book explores who conservative students are, and how their beliefs and political activism relate to their university experiences. It shows that the diverse conservative movement evolving among today's college students holds important implications for the direction of American politics.Less

Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking

Michael Keevak

In their earliest encounters with Asia, Europeans almost uniformly characterized the people of China and Japan as white. This was a means of describing their wealth and sophistication, their ... More

In their earliest encounters with Asia, Europeans almost uniformly characterized the people of China and Japan as white. This was a means of describing their wealth and sophistication, their willingness to trade with the West, and their presumed capacity to become Christianized. But by the end of the seventeenth century the category of whiteness was reserved for Europeans only. When and how did Asians become “yellow” in the Western imagination? Looking at the history of racial thinking, this book explores the notion of yellowness and shows that this label originated in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scientific discourses on race. From the walls of an ancient Egyptian tomb, which depicted people of varying skin tones including yellow, to the phrase “yellow peril” at the beginning of the twentieth century in Europe and America, the book follows the development of perceptions about race and human difference. It indicates that the conceptual relationship between East Asians and yellow skin did not begin in Chinese culture or Western readings of East Asian cultural symbols, but in anthropological and medical records that described variations in skin color. Eighteenth-century taxonomers such as Carl Linnaeus, as well as Victorian scientists and early anthropologists, assigned colors to all racial groups, and once East Asians were lumped with members of the Mongolian race, they began to be considered yellow. Demonstrating how a racial distinction took root in Europe and traveled internationally, the book weaves together multiple narratives to tell the complex history of a problematic term.Less

Between Slavery and Capitalism: The Legacy of Emancipation in the American South

Martin Ruef

At the center of the upheavals brought by emancipation in the American South was the economic and social transition from slavery to modern capitalism. This book examines how this institutional change ... More

At the center of the upheavals brought by emancipation in the American South was the economic and social transition from slavery to modern capitalism. This book examines how this institutional change affected individuals, organizations, and communities in the late nineteenth century, as blacks and whites alike learned to navigate the shoals between two different economic worlds. In the aftermath of the Civil War, uncertainty was a pervasive feature of life in the South, affecting the economic behavior and social status of former slaves, Freedmen's Bureau agents, planters, merchants, and politicians, among others. Emancipation brought fundamental questions: How should emancipated slaves be reimbursed in wage contracts? What occupations and class positions would be open to blacks and whites? What forms of agricultural tenure could persist? And what paths to economic growth would be viable? To understand the escalating uncertainty of the postbellum era, the book draws on a wide range of qualitative and quantitative data, including several thousand interviews with former slaves, letters, labor contracts, memoirs, survey responses, census records, and credit reports. The book identifies profound changes between the economic institutions of the Old and New South and sheds new light on how the legacy of emancipation continues to affect political discourse and race and class relations today.Less

Beyond the Beat: Musicians Building Community in Nashville

Daniel B. Cornfield

At a time when the bulwarks of the music industry are collapsing, what does it mean to be a successful musician and artist? How might contemporary musicians sustain their artistic communities? Based ... More

At a time when the bulwarks of the music industry are collapsing, what does it mean to be a successful musician and artist? How might contemporary musicians sustain their artistic communities? Based on interviews with over seventy-five popular-music professionals in Nashville, this book looks at artist activists—those visionaries who create inclusive artist communities in today's individualistic and entrepreneurial art world. Using Nashville as a model, the book develops a theory of artist activism—the ways that artist peers strengthen and build diverse artist communities. The book discusses how genre-diversifying artist activists have arisen throughout the late twentieth-century musician migration to Nashville, a city that boasts the highest concentration of music jobs in the United States. Music City is now home to diverse recording artists—including Jack White, El Movimiento, the Black Keys, and Paramore. The book identifies three types of artist activists: the artist-producer who produces and distributes his or her own and others' work while mentoring early-career artists, the social entrepreneur who maintains social spaces for artist networking, and arts trade union reformers who are revamping collective bargaining and union functions. Throughout, the book examines enterprising musicians both known and less recognized. It links individual and collective actions taken by artist activists to their orientations toward success, audience, and risk and to their original inspirations for embarking on music careers. The book offers a new model of artistic success based on innovating creative institutions to benefit the society at large.Less

The Bounds of Reason: Game Theory and the Unification of the Behavioral Sciences

Herbert Gintis

Game theory is central to understanding human behavior and relevant to all of the behavioral sciences—from biology and economics, to anthropology and political science. However, as this book ... More

Game theory is central to understanding human behavior and relevant to all of the behavioral sciences—from biology and economics, to anthropology and political science. However, as this book demonstrates, game theory alone cannot fully explain human behavior and should instead complement other key concepts championed by the behavioral disciplines. The book shows that just as game theory without broader social theory is merely technical bravado, so social theory without game theory is a hindered enterprise. The book is a combination of a text book on game theory and a plea to use behavioral game theory as a unifying tool in all behavioral sciences. This edition has been thoroughly revised and updated. Reinvigorating game theory, the book offers innovative thinking for the behavioral sciences.Less

Christian Globalism at Home: Child Sponsorship in the United States

Hillary Kaell

Child sponsorship emerged from nineteenth-century Protestant missions to become one of today's most profitable private fundraising tools in organizations including World Vision, Compassion ... More

Child sponsorship emerged from nineteenth-century Protestant missions to become one of today's most profitable private fundraising tools in organizations including World Vision, Compassion International, and ChildFund. Investigating two centuries of sponsorship and its related practices in American living rooms, churches, and shopping malls, this book reveals the myriad ways that Christians who don't travel outside of the United States cultivate global sensibilities. The book traces the movement of money, letters, and images, along with a wide array of sponsorship's lesser-known embodied and aesthetic techniques, such as playacting, hymn singing, eating, and fasting. It shows how, through this process, U.S. Christians attempt to hone globalism of a particular sort by oscillating between the sensory experiences of a God's eye view and the intimacy of human relatedness. These global aspirations are buoyed by grand hopes and subject to intractable limitations, since they so often rely on the inequities they claim to redress. Based on extensive interviews, archival research, and fieldwork, the book explores how U.S. Christians imagine and experience the world without ever leaving home.Less

Citizenship 2.0: Dual Nationality as a Global Asset

Yossi Harpaz

This book focuses on an important yet overlooked dimension of globalization: the steady rise in the legitimacy and prevalence of dual citizenship. Demand for dual citizenship is particularly high in ... More

This book focuses on an important yet overlooked dimension of globalization: the steady rise in the legitimacy and prevalence of dual citizenship. Demand for dual citizenship is particularly high in Latin America and Eastern Europe, where more than three million people have obtained a second citizenship from EU countries or the United States. Most citizenship seekers acquire EU citizenship by drawing on their ancestry or ethnic origin; others secure U.S. citizenship for their children by strategically planning their place of birth. Their aim is to gain a second, compensatory citizenship that would provide superior travel freedom, broader opportunities, an insurance policy, and even a status symbol. The book analyzes three cases: Israelis who acquire citizenship from European-origin countries such as Germany or Poland; Hungarian-speaking citizens of Serbia who obtain a second citizenship from Hungary (and, through it, EU citizenship); and Mexicans who give birth in the United States to secure American citizenship for their children. The book reveals the growth of instrumental attitudes toward citizenship: individuals worldwide increasingly view nationality as rank within a global hierarchy rather than as a sanctified symbol of a unique national identity.Less

Climbing Mount Laurel: The Struggle for Affordable Housing and Social Mobility in an American Suburb

Douglas S. Massey, Len Albright, Rebecca Casciano, Elizabeth Derickson, and David N. Kinsey

Under the New Jersey State Constitution as interpreted by the State Supreme Court in 1975 and 1983, municipalities are required to use their zoning authority to create realistic opportunities for a ... More

Under the New Jersey State Constitution as interpreted by the State Supreme Court in 1975 and 1983, municipalities are required to use their zoning authority to create realistic opportunities for a fair share of affordable housing for low- and moderate-income households. Mount Laurel was the town at the center of the court decisions. As a result, Mount Laurel has become synonymous with the debate over affordable housing policy designed to create economically integrated communities. What was the impact of the Mount Laurel decision on those most affected by it? What does the case tell us about economic inequality? This book undertakes a systematic evaluation of the Ethel Lawrence Homes—a housing development produced as a result of the Mount Laurel decision. The book assesses the consequences for the surrounding neighborhoods and their inhabitants, the township of Mount Laurel, and the residents of the Ethel Lawrence Homes. Their analysis reveals what social scientists call neighborhood effects—the notion that neighborhoods can shape the life trajectories of their inhabitants. The book proves that the building of affordable housing projects is an efficacious, cost-effective approach to integration and improving the lives of the poor, with reasonable cost and no drawbacks for the community at large.Less

Contested Tastes: Foie Gras and the Politics of Food

Michaela DeSoucey

Who cares about foie gras? As it turns out, many do. In the last decade, this French delicacy—the fattened liver of ducks or geese that have been force-fed through a tube—has been at the center of ... More

Who cares about foie gras? As it turns out, many do. In the last decade, this French delicacy—the fattened liver of ducks or geese that have been force-fed through a tube—has been at the center of contentious battles between animal rights activists, artisanal farmers, industry groups, politicians, chefs, and foodies. This book takes the reader to farms, restaurants, protests, and political hearings in both the United States and France to reveal why people care so passionately about foie gras. Bringing together fieldwork, interviews, and materials from archives and the media on both sides of the Atlantic, the book offers a compelling look at the moral arguments and provocative actions of pro- and anti-foie gras forces. It combines personal stories with fair-minded analysis of the social contexts within which foie gras is loved and loathed. From the barns of rural southwest France and the headquarters of the European Union in Brussels, to exclusive New York City kitchens and the government offices of Chicago, the book demonstrates that the debates over foie gras involve heated and controversial politics. The book draws attention to the cultural dynamics of markets, the multivocal nature of “gastropolitics,” and the complexities of what it means to identify as a “moral” eater in today's food world. Investigating the causes and consequences of the foie gras wars, the book illuminates the social significance of food and taste in the twenty-first century.Less

Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy

Viviana A. Zelizer

Over the past three decades, economic sociology has been revealing how culture shapes economic life even while economic facts affect social relationships. This work has transformed the field into a ... More

Over the past three decades, economic sociology has been revealing how culture shapes economic life even while economic facts affect social relationships. This work has transformed the field into a flourishing and increasingly influential discipline. This book shows how shared cultural understandings and interpersonal relations shape everyday economic activities. Far from being simple responses to narrow individual incentives and preferences, economic actions emerge, persist, and are transformed by our relations to others. Distilling three decades of research, the book offers a distinctive vision of economic activity that brings out the hidden meanings and social actions behind the supposedly impersonal worlds of production, consumption, and asset transfer. The book's scope ranges broadly from life insurance marketing, corporate ethics, household budgets, and migrant remittances to caring labor, workplace romance, baby markets, and payments for sex. These examples demonstrate an alternative approach to explaining how we manage economic activity—as well as a different way of understanding why conventional economic theory has proved incapable of predicting or responding to recent economic crises. The book provides an important perspective on the recent past and possible futures of a growing field.Less

The Emergence of Organizations and Markets

John F. Padgett and Walter W. Powell

The social sciences have sophisticated models of choice and equilibrium but little understanding of the emergence of novelty. Where do new alternatives, new organizational forms, and new types of ... More

The social sciences have sophisticated models of choice and equilibrium but little understanding of the emergence of novelty. Where do new alternatives, new organizational forms, and new types of people come from? Combining biochemical insights about the origin of life with innovative and historically oriented social network analyses, this book develops a theory about the emergence of organizational, market, and biographical novelty from the coevolution of multiple social networks. The book demonstrates that novelty arises from spillovers across intertwined networks in different domains. In the short run actors make relations, but in the long run relations make actors. This theory of novelty emerging from intersecting production and biographical flows is developed through formal deductive modeling and through a wide range of original historical case studies. The book builds on the biochemical concept of autocatalysis—the chemical definition of life—and then extends this autocatalytic reasoning to social processes of production and communication. The chapters analyze a wide range of cases of emergence. They look at the emergence of organizational novelty in early capitalism and state formation; they examine the transformation of communism; and they analyze with detailed network data contemporary science-based capitalism: the biotechnology industry, regional high-tech clusters, and the open source community.Less

The Essential Hirschman

Albert O. Hirschman

Jeremy Adelman (ed.)

This book brings together some of the finest essays in the social sciences, written by one of the twentieth century's most influential and provocative thinkers. The author was a master essayist, one ... More

This book brings together some of the finest essays in the social sciences, written by one of the twentieth century's most influential and provocative thinkers. The author was a master essayist, one who possessed the rare ability to blend the precision of economics with the elegance of literary imagination. In an age in which our academic disciplines require ever-greater specialization and narrowness, it is rare to encounter an intellectual who can transform how we think about inequality by writing about traffic, or who can slip in a quote from Flaubert to reveal something surprising about taxes. The essays gathered here span an astonishing range of topics and perspectives, including industrialization in Latin America, imagining reform as more than repair, the relationship between imagination and leadership, routine thinking and the marketplace, and the ways our arguments affect democratic life. Throughout, we find humor, unforgettable metaphors, brilliant analysis, and elegance of style that give the author such a singular voice. Featuring an introduction that places each of these essays in context as well as an insightful afterword, this book is the ideal introduction to the author for a new generation of readers and a must-have collection for anyone seeking his most important writings in one book.Less

Ethics in an Age of Terror and Genocide: Identity and Moral Choice

Kristen Renwick Monroe

What causes genocide? Why do some stand by, doing nothing, while others risk their lives to help the persecuted? This book analyzes riveting interviews with bystanders, Nazi supporters, and rescuers ... More

What causes genocide? Why do some stand by, doing nothing, while others risk their lives to help the persecuted? This book analyzes riveting interviews with bystanders, Nazi supporters, and rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust to lay bare critical psychological forces operating during genocide. The book's examination of these moving—and disturbing—interviews underscores the significance of identity for moral choice. The book finds that self-image and identity—especially the sense of self in relation to others—determine and delineate our choice options, not just morally but cognitively. It introduces the concept of moral salience to explain how we establish a critical psychological relationship with others, classifying individuals in need as “people just like us” or reducing them to strangers perceived as different, threatening, or even beyond the boundaries of our concern. The book explicates the psychological dehumanization that is a prerequisite for genocide and uses knowledge of human behavior during the Holocaust to develop a broader theory of moral choice, one applicable to other forms of ethnic, religious, racial, and sectarian prejudice, aggression, and violence. It suggests that identity is more fundamental than reasoning in our treatment of others.Less

The Extreme Gone Mainstream: Commercialization and Far Right Youth Culture in Germany

Cynthia Miller-Idriss

Far right politics and extremist violence are on the rise across Europe, prompting scholars and policymakers to question why extremism has become so appealing to so many people. This book examines ... More

Far right politics and extremist violence are on the rise across Europe, prompting scholars and policymakers to question why extremism has become so appealing to so many people. This book examines how far right ideologies have entered mainstream German culture through commercialized products and clothing laced with extremist, anti-Semitic, racist, and nationalist coded symbols and references. Required reading for anyone concerned about the global resurgence of the far right, the book shows how these new brands desensitize consumers to extremist ideas, dehumanize victims, and are virtually indistinguishable from other popular clothing.Less

A Fraught Embrace: The Romance and Reality of AIDS Altruism in Africa

Ann Swidler and Susan Cotts Watkins

In the wake of the AIDS pandemic, legions of organizations and compassionate individuals descended on Africa from faraway places to offer their help and save lives. This book shows how the dreams of ... More

In the wake of the AIDS pandemic, legions of organizations and compassionate individuals descended on Africa from faraway places to offer their help and save lives. This book shows how the dreams of these altruists became entangled with complex institutional and human relationships. The book describes the often mismatched expectations and fantasies of those who seek to help, of the villagers who desperately seek help, and of the brokers on whom both Western altruists and impoverished villagers must rely. Based on years of fieldwork in the heavily AIDS-affected country of Malawi, this book digs into the sprawling AIDS enterprise and unravels the paradoxes of AIDS policy and practice. All who want to do good—from idealistic volunteers to world-weary development professionals—depend on brokers as guides, fixers, and cultural translators. These irreplaceable but frequently unseen local middlemen are the human connection between altruists' dreams and the realities of global philanthropy. Personal stories, public scandals, and intersecting, sometimes clashing fantasies bring the lofty intentions of AIDS altruism firmly down to earth. The book ultimately argues that altruists could accomplish more good, not by seeking to transform African lives but by helping Africans achieve their own goals. It unveils the tangled relations of those involved in the collective struggle to contain an epidemic.Less