CONGRATULATIONS TO IU SOCIOLOGY FACULTY AND GRADUATE STUDENTS FOR THE FOLLOWING 2009 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCATION AWARDS
Sheldon Stryker has won the W.E.B. DuBois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association. The W.E.B. DuBois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award honors scholars who have shown outstanding commitment to the profession of sociology and whose cumulative work has contributed in important ways to the advancement of the discipline. The body of lifetime work may include theoretical and/or methodological contributions. The award selection committee is particularly interested in work that substantially reorients the field in general or in a particular sub field.
Steve Benard, along with co-authors Shelley Correll and In Paik, have been awarded this year’s Roger Gould Prize for the most outstanding article published in American Journal of Sociology for their 2007 article “Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?” Earlier this year, this article was also awarded this year’s Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for outstanding research on work and family.
Abstract
Survey research finds that mothers suffer a substantial wage penalty, although the causal mechanism producing it remains elusive. The authors employed a laboratory experiment to evaluate the hypothesis that status-based discrimination plays an important role and an audit study of actual employers to assess its real-world implications. In both studies, participants evaluated application materials for a pair of same-gender equally qualified job candidates who differed on parental status. The laboratory experiment found that mothers were penalized on a host of measures, including perceived competence and recommended starting salary. Men were not penalized for, and sometimes benefited from, being a parent. The audit study showed that actual employers discriminate against mothers, but not against fathers.
Danielle Fettes, IU Ph.D., now at University of California-San Diego, won the 2009 Louise Johnson Scholar Award from the Medical Sociology Section for her graduate student paper, “Adolescent Social Networks and Mental Health Service Utilization: First Steps, Growing Pains, and Promising Directions.”
Ho-fung Hung has won multiple awards for his 2008 American Sociological Review article “Agricultural Revolution and Elite Reproduction”
• 2009 Best Article Award from the Section on Political Sociology
• Co-winner of the 2009 Best Paper Award from the Section on Asia and Asian America
• Honorable Mention for the 2009 Best Article Award of the Section on Comparative and Historical Sociology
Abstract
Recent actor-centric theory about the historical rise of capitalism emphasizes the role of the autonomous agrarian elite in fostering a sustained agricultural revolution. This revolution generated ample agrarian surplus, in the form of rural elite's elevated income, to fuel a capitalist-industrial takeoff in late-eighteenth-century England. The nontransition to capitalism in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century China, despite the vast surplus generated in its advanced agrarian sector, shows that high agricultural productivity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a capitalist takeoff. By comparing Qing China with eighteenth-century England, where capitalist industrialization erupted spontaneously, and nineteenth-century Japan, where capitalist industrialization succeeded under intensive state sponsorship, this article argues that a strong urban entrepreneurial elite, capable of centralizing the agrarian surplus and investing it in productive industrial innovation, were as important as the existence of the surplus itself in fomenting capitalist transition. The reproduction of the elite in eighteenth-century China was constrained, not by the anticommercial "oriental despotic" state as presumed in earlier literature, but by the state's paternalist disposition in managing urban class conflict. Capitalist-industrial development in China was further impeded in the nineteenth century, when a nexus of local predatory-military elite emerged in response to millenarian uprisings and wasted most of the agrarian surplus in their accumulation of means of violence. The negative case of China helps us advance the actor-centric model of capitalist transition by bringing urban entrepreneurs and class politics back in.
Ethan Michelson was named co-winner of the 2009 Best Paper Award from the Section on Asia and Asian America for his paper “Lawyers, Political Embeddedness, and Institutional Continuity in China's Transition from Socialism” published in 2007 in American Journal of Sociology.
Abstract
This article uses the case of Chinese lawyers, their professional troubles, and their coping strategies to build on and develop the concept of political embeddedness. Data from a first-of-its-kind 25-city survey suggest that political embeddedness, defined broadly as bureaucratic, instrumental, or affective ties to the state and its actors, helps Chinese lawyers survive their everyday difficulties, such as routine administrative interference, official rent seeking, and police harassment and intimidation. The article draws the ironic conclusion that legal practice in China reveals at least as much about the enduring salience of socialist institutions as it does about incipient capitalist and “rule of law” institutions. Lawyers’ dependence on state actors both inside and outside the judicial system preserves the value of political connections inside the very institutions that some sociologists have argued are responsible for obviating the need for such guanxi.
Ethan Michelson has also been awarded the 2008 Gordon White Prize for the most original article or research report published in The China Quarterly for his 2008 China Quarterly article “Justice from Above or Below? Popular Strategies for Resolving Grievances in Rural China.”
Abstract
Research on rural conflict in China suggests that village leaders are sources of trouble and obstacles to justice and that aggrieved villagers have more trust in and receive more satisfactory redress from higher-level solutions than from local solutions. In contrast to this account of ‘‘justice from above,’’ evidence presented in this article from a 2002 survey of almost 3,000 households supports an alternative theory of ‘‘justice from below.’’ According to this latter theory, the social costs associated with appealing to higher authorities, including the legal system, for help with local disputes tend both to discourage the escalation of disputes and to produce relatively disappointing experiences and outcomes when such routes are taken. Survey respondents indicated that local solutions, often with the involvement of village leaders, were far more desirable and effective than higher-level solutions.
Brea Perry, IU Ph.D., now at University of Kentucky, has received honors from two sections for her dissertation, entitled "The Ripple Effect: Changes in Social Structural Location and Social Network Dynamics in Mental Illness."
• Best Dissertation Award from the Mental Health Section
• Honorable mention for the Roberta G. Simmons Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Medical Sociology Section
Abstract
Social networks are dynamic in nature, characterized by ebbs and flows in the level and quality of interaction that correspond to important changes in the lives of individuals. Disruptive events and transitions have been theorized to restrict access to existing network ties and provide opportunities for new associations and alter network structure, altering network structure, function, and content in meaningful ways. The main objective of this research is to capture the interplay between the dramatically changing circumstances in individuals' lives, the activation of social resources, and the evolution of networks. Plainly, the central question is 'how and why do social networks evolve in response to disruption and uncertainty?' This research is fundamentally about how crisis requires people to rethink and respond to changes in their social interaction patterns, and reorganize personal social networks challenged by escalating needs, changes in social location, and the stigma attached to mental illness. Using the Indianapolis Network Mental Health Study (INMHS), I follow the social network experiences of 171 "first-timers," that is, individuals making their first major contact with the largest public and private treatment centers in the city.
Data reveal that crisis reverberates through the social network, initiating significant changes in network size, functionality, and level of membership turnover. When we experience crisis, support needs increase, in turn shaping interactions in ways that have important implications for the stability of social networks. Moreover, crisis in one life domain tends to lead to disruptive transitions in other domains, as well. Seldom considered, but of great consequence for "first-timers," are changes in social structural location, including residential and relationship instability, jeopardize existing ties and exacerbate the level of disruption in social ties. Network disruption then affects how networks function, as new social ties do not easily replace longstanding friends and family.
In short, traumatic events, like illness, in the lives of individuals set into motion a ripple effect that has pervasive consequences for social life. In sum, this research addresses the classic sociological tension between structure and agency. That is, it illustrates that individuals are not unobtrusive observers of social network instability or passive recipients of network resources. Rather, individuals early in their experiences with mental health treatment are often active and occasionally strategic agents who shape and maintain their social networks in ways that help them meet their needs and cope with uncertainty and crisis. However, people's ability to construct their networks and mobilize resources is constrained by structural factors, often out of their control, including disruptive events that force transitions into and out of the different social roles, statuses, and group memberships that accompany mental illness.
Bernice Pescosolido and Brian Powell have been awarded the first Carla B. Howery Award for Developing Teacher-Scholars from the Section on Teaching and Learning.
The Carla B. Howery Award for Developing Teacher-Scholars recognizes that one of the most important ways to contribute to teaching sociology is through training and mentoring future teacher-scholars. Teacher-scholars use the scholarly literature in their own teaching and contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning by publicly documenting teaching activities. This award is given annually to an individual who has made significant contributions to teaching sociology through mentoring and training of graduate students to teach sociology and contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning.
Bernice Pescosolido, Brea Perry, J. Scott Long, Jack K. Martin, John I. Nurnberger and Victor Hesselbrock have been awarded 2009 Freidson Award from the Medical Sociology Section for their 2008 American Journal of Sociology paper “Under the Influence of Genetics: How Transdisciplinarity Leads Us to Rethink Social Pathways to Illness.”
Abstract
This article describes both sociological and genetic theories of illness causation and derives propositions expected under each and under a transdisciplinary theoretical frame. The authors draw propositions from three theories—fundamental causes, social stress processes, and social safety net theories—and tailor hypotheses to the case of alcohol dependence. Analyses of a later wave of the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism reveal a complex interplay of the GABRA2 gene with social structural factors to produce cases meeting DSM/ICD diagnoses. Only modest evidence suggests that genetic influence works through social conditions and experiences. Further, women are largely unaffected in their risk for alcohol dependence by allele status at this candidate gene; family support attenuates genetic influence; and childhood deprivation exacerbates genetic predispositions. These findings highlight the essential intradisciplinary tension in the role of proximal and distal influences in social processes and point to the promise of focusing directly on dynamic, networked sequences that produce different pathways to health and illness.
Rashawn Ray, along with co-author Jason A. Rosow, has been awarded the Blackwell Graduate Student Paper award from the Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities for his paper: “Getting Off and Getting Intimate: How Normative Institutional Arrangements Structure Black and White Fraternity Men’s Approaches Toward Women” published in 2008 in Men and Masculinities.
Abstract
Social scientists implicate high-status men as sexually objectifying women. Yet, few have investigated these men’s perceptions and accounts of their own experiences. Racial variation in gender relations in college has also received little scholarly attention. Analyzing 30 in-depth, individual interviews and surveys and two focus group interviews from Black and White men at a large university, we find racial differences in approaches toward women. More specifically, Black men exhibit more romantic approaches, whereas White men exhibit more sexual approaches. However, these differences are not solely related to race. Instead, "normative institutional arrangements" (e.g., community size and living arrangements) structure these approaches. We discuss the broader theoretical mechanisms regarding masculine performances, gender attitudes and behaviors, and race. In doing so, this study highlights the importance of "normative institutional arrangements" for understanding how the performances of masculinities are legitimized across racial-and status-group categories of men.
Brian Steensland has been awarded the following 2 outstanding book awards for The Failed Welfare Revolution: America's Struggle over Guaranteed Income Policy
• 2009 Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book from the ASA’s Sociology of Culture Section
• 2009 Best Book Award from ASA’s Political Sociology Section
Abstract
Today the United States has one of the highest poverty rates among the world's rich industrial democracies. The Failed Welfare Revolution shows us that things might have turned out differently. During the 1960s and 1970s, policymakers in three presidential administrations tried to replace the nation's existing welfare system with a revolutionary program to guarantee Americans basic economic security. Surprisingly from today's vantage point, guaranteed income plans received broad bipartisan support in the 1960s. One proposal, President Nixon's Family Assistance Plan, nearly passed into law in the 1970s, and President Carter advanced a similar bill a few years later. The failure of these proposals marked the federal government's last direct effort to alleviate poverty among the least advantaged and, ironically, sowed the seeds of conservative welfare reform strategies under President Reagan and beyond.
This episode has largely vanished from America's collective memory. Here, Brian Steensland tells the whole story for the first time--from why such an unlikely policy idea first developed to the factors that sealed its fate. His account, based on extensive original research in presidential archives, draws on mainstream social science perspectives that emphasize the influence of powerful stakeholder groups and policymaking institutions. But Steensland also shows that some of the most potent obstacles to guaranteed income plans were cultural. Most centrally, by challenging Americans' longstanding distinction between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, the plans threatened the nation's cultural, political, and economic status quo.
