How biology became social,and what it means for social theory

In this paper I first offer a systematic outline of a series of conceptual novelties in the life‐sciences that have favoured, over the last three decades, the emergence of a more social view of biology. I focus in particular on three areas of investigation: (1) technical changes in evolutionary literature that have provoked a rethinking of the possibility of altruism, morality and prosocial behaviours in evolution; (2) changes in neuroscience, from an understanding of the brain as an isolated data processor to the ultrasocial and multiply connected social brain of contemporary neuroscience; and (3) changes in molecular biology, from the view of the gene as an autonomous master of development to the ‘reactive genome’ of the new emerging field of molecular epigenetics. In the second section I reflect on the possible implications for the social sciences of this novel biosocial terrain and argue that the postgenomic language of extended epigenetic inheritance and blurring of the nature/nurture boundaries will be as provocative for neo‐Darwinism as it is for the social sciences as we have known them. Signs of a new biosocial language are emerging in several social‐science disciplines and this may represent an exciting theoretical novelty for twenty‐first social theory.     

Regulator Attitudes and the Environmental Race to the Bottom Argument

Concerns that interstate economic competition will lead statesto relax their environmental regulation, potentially resultingin a race to the bottom, remain commonplace in both academicand public policy debates about state environmental policy.Most of the existing empirical work examining the race to thebottom argument tests the behavioral predictions of the argument.In this article, I focus on the attitudinal predictions. Specifically,I examine whether state regulators express beliefs consistentwith what we would expect to observe if a race to the bottomdynamic operates within state regulatory decision making. Studyingdata from the State Environmental Managers Survey, I find thatstate regulators are sensitive to the effects that their regulatorydecisions have on industry investment decisions and that theiragencies are influenced by the regulatory decision making ofeconomic competitor states.     

Wrangling with the Black monster: young Black mixed‐race men and masculinities

In recent times there has been a proliferation of scholarship exploring ‘mixedness’ and mixed‐race people. This is evidenced by the emergence of Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) as a distinct field of academic inquiry. However, despite the growth of CMRS, there remains a scarcity of scholarship that considers mixed‐race experiences from a disaggregated, intersectional perspective. Where CMRS has been attentive to the intersection of gender, the focus has largely been on women and femininity. By way of a response, in this article I draw upon data from semi‐structured interviews with Black mixed‐race men in the UK and the US in order to explore how Black mixed‐race men negotiate their raced and gendered identities, particularly in the context of schooling. Drawing upon George Yancy’s (2017) theorizations of the Black monster, I argue that a sense of double consciousness (and even multiple consciousness) means Black mixed‐race men are acutely aware of how the white gaze threatens to fragment and erase them. Yet rather than being passive victims of racism, I show that, through hybridity, the imposition of the Black monster stereotype is something that Black mixed‐race men are able to resist, modify and manipulate for their own ends.     

Chance and societal change

This article advances a theory of societal change I am developing: rather than the usual pseudo‐evolutionary view which presents each phase of societal change as supplanting its predecessor, I argue that societal change is accumulative in character and that in this process of accumulation chance may play a part. In the first part of the article, using the historically important example of the British rise to paramountcy in Gujarat (now a state in northern India) as a case study, I show that the interventions of chance in this historical episode is undeniable. In the second part, I examine the contemporaneous reactions of historians and others to the British rise to paramountcy and their suppression of chance, then I examine key reasons why chance became obscured in sociological writings and in most present‐day evolutionary biological studies of human behaviour. I argue that there is no single, uniform essence of chanciness, that chance events bear a family resemblance, and that the Gujarati case study permits the identification of several sibling forms, two of which are theoretically illuminated, with some qualifications, by the writings of Raymond Boudon and Jared Diamond. I conclude that while there is more theoretical work required to distinguish and accommodate other forms of chance, nonetheless, it is time chance was rehabilitated because its readmittance into the disciplinary fold will not exclude sociological explanations, but it will help to avoid the unsavoury consequences of neglecting the topic whose exclusion is both empirically and theoretically unjustified.     

Untangling Inequalities: Gender,Race, and Socioeconomic Differences in Depression1

In their important paper, Link and Phelan (1995) argue that socioeconomic status is a fundamental cause of variation in well‐being and that the social resources associated with socioeconomic status constitute the fundamental cause of variation in well‐being. In this article, I elaborate on the fundamental cause perspective in three respects: by suggesting an expansion of the definition of resources, by examining how race and gender influence variation in the relationship between resources and mental health, and by developing a model of the relationship between social class, race, and gender that takes account of the potential asymmetry in the influence of resources across race and gender. Using the 2003 National Health Interview Survey and ordinary least squares regression, I find that black and white men are significantly less depressed than black and white women. However, women accrue greater mental health advantage from marriage, home ownership, and education. African‐American men experience less depression as a result of being unmarried and non‐Hispanic white women experience less benefit from full‐time employment, relative to African‐American women and men. Results are discussed in terms of implications for future research on race, class, and gender differences in health.     

“There are Two People at Work that I'm Fairly Certain are Black”: Uncertainty and Deliberative Thinking in Blind Race Attribution

Geneticists, biologists, social scientists, and humanist scholars have powerfully critiqued race as a stable set of biological categories. Despite this, in everyday life, race is consistently assumed to be visually available in physical features. Racial categories also continue to be used in scientific and social scientific research as if they were self‐evident and real. In this study, I examine the role of visual perception in the construction of racial categories and their recalcitrance in everyday thought and interaction. My observations are based on in‐depth interviews with 25 blind people, which highlight the unique features of their nonvisual, non‐appearance‐based experiences of race.     

When class is colorblind: A race‐conscious model for cultural capital research in education

Sociologists of education frequently draw on the cultural capital framework to explore the ways in which educational institutions perpetuate inequality in schools and the larger society. However, these studies adhere to a white centered “class‐based master‐narrative,” to legitimize and perpetuate the assumption that racial differences are secondary manifestations of class‐based structures. The class‐based master‐narrative elevates a one‐dimensional view of inequality as rooted primarily in class‐based stratification and downplays the fact that the economic elites who inhabit these dominant social positions are predominantly white. In this essay, I propose a race‐conscious framework to challenge the colorblind assumptions and deficit perspectives inherent to the cultural capital framework. The race‐conscious model (a) focuses on how racial stratification impacts the cultivation, transmission, and activation of cultural capital on the individual and institutional levels and (b) highlights the harmful impact of the lack of racial literacy that is inherent to the white habitus.     

Moving beyond class: A critical review of labor‐environmental conflicts from the global south

Popularly referred to as the “Blue‐Green conflicts,” the tensions between labor and environmental movements have received extensive scholarly attention as it exposes the trade‐off between the economy and the environment. The jobs versus the environment trade‐off has been a focal point of tension in the relationship between trade‐unions and green movements across the globe. In this article, I critically review the existing literature on labor and environmental conflicts from a Global South standpoint. The review exposes how the extant literature on labor‐environmental relations almost exclusively focuses on cases and settings in the Global North, thereby centering the process of inquiry entirely around western social contexts and movements. In this article, I demonstrate why the conception of environmentalism as a middle‐class phenomenon within the extant literature is problematic as; (a) it fails to consider the poor and working‐class environmental movements in countries in the Global South, and (b) it completely overlooks the environmental justice movements and other working‐class environmental movements in the Global North itself. The review highlights the need to bring postcolonial movements and settings to the center of sociological analysis to decolonize the research on social movements.     

Race, Gender, and the Black Women's Standpoint

Hill Collins (1997, 1998, 2000) argues that because of their position within the intersecting hierarchies of race, gender, and class, black women as a group possess a “unique angle of vision” on the social world. Rooted in the everyday experiences of black women, the “black women’s standpoint” is marked by an intersectional understanding of oppression and a “legacy of struggle” against such oppression. In this article, I employ quantitative analyses of data from the National Survey of Black Americans (1992) and the National Black Feminist Study (2004–2005) to investigate the black women’s standpoint. I ask: “Do black women as a group tend toward the black women’s standpoint that Hill Collins describes?” and “Do black women embrace this perspective more than black men?” Results from numerous χ² and logistic regression analyses suggest that, within the black community, gender is not a significant predictor of the standpoint that Hill Collins describes, with black men and black women being equally likely to embrace many of the core ideas associated with the black women’s standpoint. I conclude by discussing the implications of this finding for gender and race‐based standpoint theory.     

How manufacturing industries connect cities across the world: extending research on ‘multiple globalizations’

In this article, I concentrate on a macro‐level analysis of inter‐urban linkages in a ‘world city network’. Empirical research on the formation of a world city network has mostly concentrated on global service providers. Yet, globally operating manufacturing firms also choose distinct urban regions throughout the world as locational anchoring points. In this article, using social network analysis, I present the first global‐scale analysis of how manufacturing firms connected cities across the world (in 2010). To detect the differing ‘sectoral profiles’ and nodal centralities of cities functioning as geographical hubs of transnational production networks, it is necessary to analyse the network structure of distinct industrial subsectors within the global urban system. The data collected for analysis cover 120 top global firms from three manufacturing subsectors, of which two are analysed in more detail than the third. I then compare the nodal centralities of cities included in these subsectors' global networks with the GaWC research on the producer services sector that has been at the centre of previous analyses of the world city network. The comparison reveals the cities' differing positioning within ‘multiple globalizations’. The aim of the article is to extend research on world city networks.     

Retrieving the religion in racialization: A critical review

Scholars across disciplines have argued that race and religion are co‐constituted in part because of their historical relationship. The concept of racialization, particularly as it is housed in racial formation theory, is the way that most empirical research in sociology has approached analysis of this co‐constitution. Such analysis however is often at the expense of empirically accounting for the historical relationship between race and religion. In this article, I argue for stronger empirical consideration of this historical relationship in research on racialization. I discuss what is at stake in deeper empirical analysis and what scholars gain by using religion as a starting point to understand racialization today.     

Cross‐Movement Coalition Formation: Bridging the Labor‐Environment Divide*

Relations between the labor and environmental movements exist within a complex web of clashing interests, electoral politics, and attempts to form enduring blue‐green coalitions. Unions and other labor organizations are often portrayed as solely interested in economic growth. Environmental organizations are often seen as solely interested in preserving the natural world at the expense of economic growth, thus creating a direct conflict between the interests of labor and environmental organizations. Despite these perceived differences, efforts to bridge the divide between the two movements are increasingly common. This article examines the formation of a collective identity shared by workers and environmentalists participating in the coalition. I develop this argument through an ethnographic analysis of the formation of a blue‐green coalition, the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow, using in‐depth interviews, observations, and content analyses. I demonstrate how coalition leaders and bridge brokers work to bridge and consolidate the identities of labor and environmental groups to campaign for environmental health regulatory changes in Massachusetts.     

Miracles of love: The use of metaphor in egg donor ads1

In recent years, the appearance of egg donor advertisements in American college newspapers, sometimes offering five‐ and six‐figure fees to ‘genetically gifted’ donors, has given rise to critical comment on both sides of the Atlantic, and has caused some to fear that the use of these procedures will eventually result in the creation of ‘designer babies’ with preselected genetic qualities. Whether such fears will be realized depends, to a great extent, upon how both the participants themselves and society as a whole come to view and understand these procedures. This article explores emerging images of assisted reproduction through an analysis of the use of metaphor in egg donor ads that appeared in the student newspaper of the University of California, Los Angeles. I argue that the attitudes displayed in these ads result from a mapping of existing cultural stereotypes associated with biological parenthood, including the role of childbearing in marriage and ‘coupledom’, onto the assisted‐reproduction process, and that these metaphors are used precisely because they construct this cultural model and adapt it to the new reality of the assisted‐conception experience.     

Beyond hookup culture: Current trends in the study of college student sex and where to next

A prominent body of sexuality research on college‐enrolled students in the twenty‐first century focuses on “hookup” culture, marked by the prevalence of sexual encounters between students with no expectation for a relationship to develop. This article will review and respond to current themes in the literature on hookup culture on college campuses. I argue that this literature privileges the White, middle‐class heterosexual experience, although less is known about how students who cannot or choose not to participate in this culture experience sexual relationships on college campuses. I place studies of hookup culture in conversation with those attentive to the effects of race, class, gender, and sexuality on access to, and experience of, hookup culture. I conclude with suggestions for future research, to include a renewed interest in sexual relationships forged outside of hookup cultures.     

Not to Be Hungry Is Not Enough: An Insight Into Contours of Inclusion and Exclusion in Affluent Western Societies

In its view of the contemporary world, social theory—and particularly its postmodern trends and proponents—attributes a dominant role to the realm of consumption and consumerism in shaping both individual lifeworlds and the system of social hierarchies as a whole. In this article, building on the case of middle‐aged to late‐middle‐aged post–Soviet Jewish immigrants in contemporary Germany and illuminating a particular condition that I call “condemned to consume,” I seek to reexamine this tendency to celebrate consumption and consumerism while downplaying and marginalizing realm of work and employment. I interconnect this examination with questions regarding the distribution of resources and the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. Drawing on the “condemned to consume” condition, I seek to claim that in affluent Western societies, which are able to provide relative material well‐being or at least subsistence even to those at the margins, the main contours of inclusion and exclusion are not grounded primarily in one's ability to enter the realm of consumption but, rather, in one's ability to participate equally in the realm of work and employment. I underscore this idea by connecting lack of regular, meaningful employment with the concept of exclusive inclusion.     

Researching Race: Identifying a Social Construction through Qualitative Methods and an Interactionist Perspective

Although much of the sociological community now views race as a social construction, empirical research does not always identify it in this way. Many practices of designating a research participant's race approach this process uncritically, implicitly framing race as uncomplicated. Although this is more common in survey‐based work, in this article I explore the tendencies and difficulties of studying race using qualitative methods. I discuss two prevalent but potentially problematic ways of “operationalizing” race in qualitative methodology, and then elaborate on the difficulties of identifying race in practice, using examples from my own ethnographic research. I suggest that symbolic interactionism provides a unique perspective from which to express race as socially situated, as long as this process is approached reflectively.     

Freedom ossified or economic crisis? A comment on Holger Henke

This article contends with the view that the political crisis in some Anglophone Caribbean countries—primarily Jamaica—can be understood as arising from the black middle‐class leadership's use of race and nationalism to obscure class issues. It argues that the race and national issues were and are legitimate class issues and that it is theoretically and practically a mistake to counterpose the two. The black middle class achieved important victories against colonialism and racism but now is faced with global economic and political forces for which it is ill‐equipped to address. The political crisis that it faces is more a result of these global forces than it is of the internal weakness of this class.     

Same‐Race Friendships and School Attachment: Demonstrating the Interaction Between Personal Network and School Composition1

Previous research has demonstrated that students are strongly attached to school when many same‐race peers are present. This study extends the literature by considering students’ immediate social environment at school—egocentric friendship networks. I hypothesized that same‐race friendships contribute to school attachment by increasing the amount of support that students receive for their racial backgrounds in direct interactions. Further, the association between same‐race friendships and school attachment should be stronger when the school includes many same‐race peers because the organizational condition increases the ability of same‐race friendships to connect students to the major components of school‐wide networks and reduces perceived racial contrast between friends and nonfriend peers. Statistical analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) provided some support for these hypotheses, but white, black, Hispanic, and Asian students showed somewhat different patterns, suggesting group differences in how students develop and view same‐race friendships. The study highlights the importance of individual agency in navigating the multileveled social environment as well as the ability of organizational contexts to shift emotional consequences of personal relationships.     

Renegotiating religious transnationalism: fractures in transnational Chinese evangelicalism

In this article, I question to what extent future generations of immigrants will engage in practices of religious transnationalism through their ethnic institutions. I examine how leaders of the next generation of English‐speaking Chinese Canadian evangelicals made sense of their participation in the Chinese Coordination Centre of World Evangelism, a movement that rallies behind both a pan‐Chinese identity and the belief that the Chinese have a special role in evangelizing the world. I argue that the call to religious mobilization grounded in Chinese ethnicity stands on tenuous ground and propose that linguistic, geographical, generational and ideological fractures may diminish the participation of future generations of the Chinese diaspora in ethnically‐based transnational religious organizations. I conclude that these developments would push ‘negotiated transnational religious networks’ into a state of ‘renegotiation'.