Recent trends in the process of stratification

Using the 14 annual cross-sections from the General Social Survey, we specify a "basic model" of attainment and describe the year-by-year fluctuations in its parameters. The results are partially consistent with theories describing the gradual growth of universalistic patterns of stratification and mobility. Under a linear model of educational achievement, we find that the direct effects of race are weakening and the returns to class-based advantages are declining in tandem. The contours of the socioeconomic "gender gap" are also changing in important ways, with the male intercept declining at a rapid pace and the female term registering small and insignificant year-by-year gains. At the same time, the returns to experience and schooling are increasing for men, whereas the corresponding returns for women have remained stable over the 15-year period. This pattern of interaction effects implies that the size of the gender gap varies over time and across different population groups.     

Capital accumulation,endogenous population growth,and Easterlin cycles

In this paper we attempt to explain the occurrence of population cycles in industrialised economies where the birth rate depends on the difference between the actual and the expected consumption rate. This model of an endogenously growing population brings together Easterlin's idea of an adapting aspiration level with the neoclassical optimal growth paradigm. It is shown that in this highly aggregated demo-economic system (i.e., without inclusion of the age structure of a population) swings both in the economic and demographic variables may exist. The reason behind this strange optimal behaviour is identified to be an intertemporal substitution effect between current and future levels of consumption.We wish to thank A. Novak for helpful assistance and an anonymous referee for useful comments. Financial support by the Austrian Science Foundation under contract No. P6601 is acknowledged.     

Reconceptualizing migration as a household phenomenon: outmigration from New York City by race and Hispanic origin

"This paper proposes a conceptual framework for analyzing migration as a household event and presents two public use microdata applications of this approach for out-migrants from New York City. The distribution of single- and multi-origin households by race and Hispanic origin permits a more rigorous analysis of household migration differentials....and the disaggregation of household members by migration status provides insight into the household outcomes of the migration process...." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

Macroeconomic impacts of worker remittances on Arab world labor exporting countries

The author discusses the effect of remittances from workers in oil-producing states in the Arab world on macroeconomic development patterns in non-oil-producing regions. Consideration is given to the impact of remittances on consumption and domestic growth and their interrelationships with foreign exchange. (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

Reconciling commodities and personal relations in industrial society

Conclusions I began this article with Colin Campbell's lament about the productionist bias in sociology and the related point that most sociologists concerned with consumption have ignored private meanings and small-scale structures in favor of public meanings and large-scale structures. This article calls attention to and builds on an emerging alternative approach to what happens after production, using an understanding of the social nature of objects that springs from Marcel Mauss's distinction between gifts and commodities.Mauss's model directs attention to the conflict in industrial societies between the two realms of commodity exchange and gift exchange, which I have cast as the conflict between the world of work and the world of family, and as the contrast between commodities and possessions. Thus, the model directs attention to the fact that objects are not simply transformed in production and displayed in consumption. However important these facts may be for understanding objects and society, they do not exhaust the important ways that people experience, use, and think about the objects that surround them. In particular, Mauss's model throws into relief the problematic nature of the objects that surround us and that we use in our social relations. And in doing so it directs attention to the ways that people try to reconstruct and redefine those objects by transforming them into personal possessions. This transformation makes objects acquired as commodities suitable for gift transactions, and hence suitable for the key task of recreating social relationships and social identities, the task of creating, not merely defining, who we are and how we are related to each other.Although the Maussian model addresses many of the links between people in the worlds of work and the home, and many of the ways that objects are part of these links, I am concerned here primarily with the ways that people can appropriate commodities in the process of purchase: shopping. This concern with shopping points out the social significance of retail trade, which I take to include advertising and shopping. This is not simply a passive conduit between production and consumption. Instead, it is an important point at which objects begin to leave the realm of work, commodities, and commodity relations and enter the realm of home, possessions, and gift relations. Shopping is an ubiquitous activity in industrial society and one that is highly significant culturally: we spend vast amounts of time, energy, money, and attention on it. Doubtless part of the reason for this is utilitarian, for we need to buy to live, but it would be foolish to reduce the significance of shopping to some combination of the need of individuals to acquire in order to survive and the need of companies to generate demand in order to profit. Thus, retail trade needs to be seen as well as a set of relations and transactions between seller and buyer that define and are defined by the objects and services involved, their history, and their future. My focus on purchasing food in supermarkets has the advantage of throwing into relief the problem of appropriation, because of the impersonality of object and social relations in large, self-service supermarkets. However, the very extremity of this example can create a false impression. As I noted, in other forms of shopping the social relations between buyer and seller, like the social identity of objects, can be more personal. This personality can be real, as when buyer and seller know each other or where the object is hand-made or even unique. Alternatively, it can be more purely symbolic, as when the selling company touts itself or its employees as friendly and caring or where the manufacturer advertises the personal nature of its commodities. In some cases, indeed, the manufacturing or trading company can present itself in such a way that the company itself becomes the person with whom the purchaser transacts. In addition, because of the focus on the appropriation of commodities in purchasing, I have touched only briefly on production and the world of work more generally. As does life at home, so life at work involves the transaction of objects and labor. Relations at work, then, will shape and be shaped by the nature of what is transacted. Co-workers who transact things that are more clearly stamped with their own identity, as among service workers and craft producers, will likely have more personal relations with fellow workers than will those who transact things that are themselves relatively impersonal, as in assembly-line production. This variability in the objects and relations at work suggests that people will have diverse understandings of work, and hence of manufactured objects more generally, which will affect the need they feel to appropriate commodities. In all, though, the point of this article is simple. People use objects to create and recreate personal social identities and relationships, and in industrial capitalist societies these objects are likely to be produced and purchased as commodities and understood as manufactures in Miller's sense. Our experience with and understanding of the production and sale of objects will affect the way we use them in transactions that create and recreate social identity and relationship, and will affect our understanding of the social identities and relationships that are created and recreated. Thus, the objects that people use in social relationships mediate between realms of economy and society, between the public realms where those objects are produced and distributed, and the private realms where those objects are transacted as part of social reproduction. The fact of this mediation and its effects on people's understanding of objects and social relations deserve careful attention.

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Telling lies in everyday life: Motivational and organizational consequences of sequential preferences

This study of a collection of self-observed lies told in everyday interactions indicated that all informants lied; that lying was, generally, an easy and spontaneous activity; and that our varied informants told lies in much the same manner and for the same reasons. The analysis of the general features of the interactions in which lies were embedded showed that many lies are the consequence of a preference system that promotes acceptance and hides rejection in the sequential organization of interaction. The lies found in pre-acceptance and pre-rejection sequences indicate that both parties contrive for acceptance. The negative cases of lies told in rejection of deprecating assessments suggest a broader theoretical template that encompasses the lies told for acceptance as a subset of the interactional preference for social solidarity. In contrast to the view that telling lies undermines social cohesion by interfering with trust, this study indicates that many lies are told to affirm affiliation.     

Tearoom trade: A research update

Conclusion Like many studies of covert deviance, this paper is based upon a captive sample of persons who have come to the attention of law enforcement agencies. The existence of Laud Humphreys' research, however, makes possible a comparison of police generated data with data obtained through observations and interviews with unapprehended offenders. Because police observations were so detailed, a rare opportunity to replicate a qualitative study presented itself. This research largely substantiates the picture drawn by Humphreys in his classic study,Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places. Consistent with his observations, most tearoom participants (a) communicate through non-verbal gestures and seldom speak, (b) do not associate outside the tearoom or attempt to learn one another's identity or exchange biographical information, (c) do not use force or coercion or attempt to involve youths or children, (d) are primarily heterosexual and married, (e) depart separately with the insertor leaving first, (f) commit their sex acts out of sight of the entrance and accidental exposure, (g) do not undress or engage in anal sex, (h) break off sexual contact when someone enters the washroom, (i) rarely approach straight men, (j) read and write sexually explicit homosexual graffiti, and (k) linger inside and outside the washroom for someone to appear. In addition, (1) fellatio is generally not reciprocated and fellators are usually older men; (m) most offenders are neat in appearance; (n) some engage in series and simultaneous encounters; (o) encounters are brief, usually not exceeding twenty minutes; and (p) few have criminal records with the exception of those previously convicted of similar offenses.The behavior of players reveals remarkable consistency over time, from community to community, and across national boundaries. Many men, the majority of them married and primarily heterosexual, continue to visit out-of-the-way public washrooms in search of fast, impersonal, and exciting sex despite the risk to family, friends, job, and reputation. Although shopping malls have usurped public parks as the favorite locale of tearoom participants, the basic rules of the game and profile of the players—as Humphreys contends—remain the same over time and place.     

Neutralizing marginally deviant behavior: Bingo players and superstition

Bingo is one of the most popular and most accepted forms of gambling in the United States today. Yet, despite its popularity, many bingo players are not completely comfortable with the moral rightness of their actions. This participant observation and interview study spanning a 5 year period shows how bingo players use superstitious strategies, such as feelings, hunches and psi, attitudes, and luck to neutralize their marginally deviant behaviors.     

Smart money

Rick was an ambitious entrepreneur beginning the first of several businesses at age 16. He amassed a fortune by age 35. Between the ages of 42 and 50, his gambling rampage liquidated his assets, he lost his business and license to practice in his field, and he ended up in debt of over $1 million. Today at age 53 he is starting a new career in counseling and working with compulsive gamblers.