Rurality and Income Inequality in the United States, 1975–2015

Recent events have focused attention on the perceived widening of the economic divide between urban and rural areas, and on the continued rise of national income inequality. We demonstrate that, in fact, the average income gap between urban (metropolitan) and rural (nonmetropolitan) households has not risen over the past 40 years, and makes virtually no contribution to national income inequality. Rising national inequality is driven by rising inequality within both urban and rural America, not by an urban/rural divergence. As is well known, the growing dispersion of household money income is partly driven by rising wage inequality, particularly in urban areas. Less well recognized is the role played by other income sources. We show that a decline in the progressivity of the distribution of social security payments and cash transfers, and an increase in the regressivity of the distribution of retirement incomes, have jointly made a comparably large contribution to rising income inequality. At the same time, the share of income from self-employment has declined, particularly in rural America, and because self-employment income is very unequally distributed, its diminution has retarded the growth of rural inequality. In 2014–15, however, rural inequality increased, cutting the urban/rural inequality gap in half.     

Archival Work as Qualitative Sociology

Qualitative Sociology -     

Infant screen exposure links to toddlers' inhibition,but not other EF constructs: A propensity score study

Technology is pervasive in homes of families with young children, despite evidence for negative associations between infant exposure to screen‐based media and cognitive development that has led the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to discourage parents from exposing children under the age of 18 months to any kind of screen time (AAP, 2016). Here, we apply a propensity score matching approach to estimate relations between electronic screen‐based media use in infancy and executive function in early toddlerhood. In an international sample of 416 firstborn infants, parental report of regular exposure to screen‐based media at 4 months predicted poorer performance on a test of inhibition at 14 months, but was unrelated to either cognitive flexibility or working memory at 14 months. Results of this study are therefore consistent with the view that early exposure to screen‐based media adversely affects the development of executive function.     

Homosexuality,Religion, and the Family: The Effects of Religion on Americans’ Appraisals of the Parenting Abilities of Same-Sex Couples

Although a growing body of research focuses on Americans’ attitudes toward same-sex couples as parents, very few include measures of religion, and those that do fail to capture its multidimensional nature. Furthermore, many past studies relied on convenience samples of college students, or samples gathered outside the United States. Multivariate analyses of the 2012 General Social Survey—a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States—reveal that a slim majority of Americans still do not believe same-sex couples can parent as well as male-female couples, and the religious beliefs, behaviors, and affiliations of Americans are significantly and at times differentially associated with appraisals of same-sex couples’ parenting abilities. It appears that although religion is generally associated with more negative appraisals of the parenting abilities of same-sex couples, it is not uniformly so. Americans’ immediate religious and cultural context can shape their appraisals of homosexuality in diverse ways.     

Computer‐Mediated Communication in Intimate Relationships: Associations of Boundary Crossing,Intrusion, Relationship Satisfaction,and Partner Responsiveness

This study examined the impact of technology on couples in committed relationships through the lens of the couple and technology framework. Specifically, we used data from 6,756 European couples to examine associations between online boundary crossing, online intrusion, relationship satisfaction, and partner responsiveness. The results suggest that participants’ reports of online boundary crossing were linked with lower relationship satisfaction and partner responsiveness. Also, lower relationship satisfaction and partner responsiveness were associated with increased online boundary crossing. The results suggest that men, but not women, who reported greater acceptability for online boundary crossing were more likely to have partners who reported lower relationship satisfaction in their relationships. Implications for clinicians, relationship educators, and researchers are discussed.     

Advertising morality: maintaining moral worth in a stigmatized profession

Although a great deal of literature has looked at how individuals respond to stigma, far less has been written about how professional groups address challenges to their self-perception as abiding by clear moral standards. In this paper, we ask how professional group members maintain a positive self-perception in the face of moral stigma. Drawing on pragmatic and cultural sociology, we claim that professional communities hold narratives that link various aspects of the work their members perform with specific understanding of the common good. These narratives allow professionals to maintain a shared view of their work as benefitting society and to perceive themselves as moral individuals. As a case study, we focus on the advertising industry, which has long been stigmatized as complicit in exploitative capitalist mechanisms and cultural degradation. We draw on nine total months of fieldwork and seventy-four interviews across three US advertising agencies. We find that advertising practitioners use narratives to present their work as contributing to the common good, depicting themselves as moral individuals who care about others in the process. We analyze three prevalent narratives: the account-driven narrative, which links moral virtue to caring for clients; the creative-driven narrative, which ties caring to the production of meaningful advertisements; and the strategic-driven narrative, which sees caring in finding meaningful relationships for consumers and brands.     

Piloting different approaches to personalised offender management in the English criminal justice system

Various approaches to personalisation are well-established in the UK social care sector and are now starting to ‘travel’ to other sectors. In this paper we report findings from an evaluation of a pilot to test elements of personalisation in the management of offenders in probation services within the English criminal justice system. Following a review of evidence from social care, three different approaches to personalised-practice were developed and tested on a small-scale in three separate sites. The evaluation finds that all three approaches were implemented reasonably successfully, but challenges were identified including that personalised approaches are more time-consuming, that staff need support to exercise professional discretion and that balancing greater choice with managing criminogenic risk requires new ways of conceptualising the relationship between case manager and service user. Overall, ‘deeper’ approaches to personalisation, such as co-production, will take time to emerge. This paper makes two important contributions to the debate on personalisation in public services. First, it addresses the question of how transferable the concept of personalisation is from the social care sector to other sectors in the UK, in this case the criminal justice system. Secondly, it outlines a methodology for developing and evaluating personalisation pilots, prior to a wider roll-out.     

The Influence of Career Planning on Career Thoughts in STEM‐Interested Undergraduates

Undergraduate career planning courses have shown efficacy in decreasing students’ negative career thoughts; however, universities have minimally applied these courses to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) populations. This study compared the influence of a STEM‐focused career planning course for undecided STEM students with a seminar course for decided STEM majors. An analysis of covariance with covariate adjustment revealed that undecided career planning students had lower adjusted mean scores on a measure of negative career thinking than the decided STEM majors after the first semester of college. The results provide support for the efficacy of STEM‐focused career planning courses and measuring negative career thoughts with STEM undergraduates.     

Capturing hearts and minds: The influence of relational identification with the leader on followers' mobilization and cardiovascular reactivity

The influence of relational identification (RI) on leadership processes and the effects of social identity leadership on followers' responses to stress have received scant theoretical and research attention. The present research advances theoretical understanding by testing the assertion that high RI with the leader drives follower mobilization of effort and psychophysiological responses to stress. Two experimental scenario studies (Study 1 and Study 2) support the hypothesis that being led by an individual with whom followers perceive high RI increases follower intentional mobilization. Study 2 additionally showed that high (vs. low) RI increases follower resource appraisals and cognitive task performance. A laboratory experiment (Study 3) assessing cardiovascular (CV) reactivity showed that, compared to neutral (i.e., non-affiliated) leadership, being led by an individual with whom participants felt low RI elicited a maladaptive (i.e., threat) response to a pressurized task. In addition, relative to the low RI and neutral conditions, high RI with the leader did not engender greater challenge or threat reactivity. In conclusion, advancing social identity leadership and challenge and threat theory, findings suggest that leaders should be mindful of the deleterious effects (i.e., reduced mobilization and greater threat state) of low RI to optimize follower mobilization of effort and psychophysiological responses to stress.     

‘Je suis socialiste et quinziste’: rugby,wine and socialism in the Aude since 1976

In the Languedoc, the intersections between rugby, wine and socialism give telling insights into the value and significance of regional identity. At the end of the 1970s, the Languedoc's wine industry and rugby were facing up to the challenges of modernisation; the responses which emerged drew upon the principles of regional identity drawn from the ‘banal nationalism’ of wine-drinking, left-voting rugby players in local administrations and at the head of powerful trade unions. The cross-over between board-room and locker-room helped to accent regional responses to change and modernization, ensuring that regional heritage remained potent and ready to be communicated.