Industrial Pollution, Social Trust, and Civic Engagement: A Nationwide Study of the Socioenvironmental Nature of Social Capital

I conduct a nationwide investigation of the relationship that toxic industrial pollution and the facilities that produce it have with trust and civic engagement within communities. Data on pollution exposure come from the Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators Geographic Microdata (RSEI-GM) and Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data sets for the years 1995 to 1999. Data on trust and civic engagement come from the 2000 restricted-access Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (SCCBS). Statistical analyses provide strong support for Freudenburg and Jones’ conceptualization of corrosive communities and indicate that exposures to more toxic air pollution associate negatively with various measures of trust, and that increased numbers of TRI facilities associate negatively with various measures of civic engagement. The implication is that exposure to toxic industrial air pollution and the facilities that produce it not only adversely affect the physical health of nearby communities, but also their social well-being and underlying capacities for collective action.

American Medical Sociology and Health Problems in the Global South

COVID-19 has focused global attention on disease spread across borders. But how has research on infectious and noncommunicable disease figured into the sociological imagination historically, and to what degree has American medical sociology examined health problems beyond U.S. borders? Our 35-year content analysis of 2,588 presentations in the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) Section on Medical Sociology and 922 articles within the section’s official journal finds less than 15 percent of total research examined contexts outside the United States. Research on three infectious diseases in the top eight causes of death in low-income countries (diarrheal disease, malaria, and tuberculosis [TB]) and emerging diseases—Ebola, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)—was nearly absent, as was research on major noncommunicable diseases. Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) received much more focus, although world regions hit hardest received scant attention. Interviews suggest a number of factors shape geographic foci of research, but this epistemic parochialism may ultimately impoverish sociological understanding of illness and disease.

How Does Actual Inequality Shape People’s Perceptions of Inequality? A Class Perspective

While some scholars suggest that awareness of income inequality is strongest when the actual level of inequality is high, others find that individuals’ awareness of income inequality is largely unresponsive to actual inequality. In this article, we argue that individuals in different social class positions often respond to the actual levels of income inequality distinctively, and therefore a class perspective is essential in understanding how actual inequality and people’s perceptions of it are associated. Using data from the social inequality modules of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP, 1992, 1999, and 2009) as well as the World Income Inequality Database ( https://www.wider.unu.edu/ ) and the World Inequality Database ( https://wid.world/ ), we consider how actual inequality interacts with social class to shape people’s perceptions of income inequality across 64 country-years between 1992 and 2009. We find that overall, perceptions of inequality are higher among the working class and lower among salariats. However, cross-nationally and over time, as the actual level of inequality increases, working classes become less critical toward inequality, whereas salariats become more critical. The actual level of inequality itself has no impact on people’s discontent toward it. This creates a counterbalancing effect that obscures the aggregate relationship between rising inequality and people’s perceptions of it.

Family Structure, Gender, and Wages in STEM Work

Drawing upon work effort and gendered organizations perspectives and using data from the Current Population Survey, we examine how family structure types (i.e., combinations of marital and parental statuses) shape within- and between-gender variation in the earnings of highlyeducated men and women working in STEM and non-STEM occupations. We find that STEM and non-STEM women earn premia for marriage and for motherhood if they are married, with higher family-related premia for STEM women. Analysis of married men and women by specific STEM category reveals the largest parenthood premium is for women in engineering. Yet, STEM men and non-STEM men generally earn more than their counterpart women, with the largest between-gender wage difference for married parents in non-STEM occupations. Taken together, these findings provide a mixed picture of movement towards gender equality in work organizations.

Voting Intersections: Race, Class, and Participation in Presidential Elections in the United States 2008–2016

Intersectional analyses are increasingly common in sociology; however, analyses of voting tend to focus on only race, class, or gender, using the others as control variables. We assess whether and how race, class, and gender intersect to produce distinct patterns of voter engagement in presidential elections 2008–2016. Per existing research, we find income strongly predicts White voting. However, the class gap in voting is not statistically significant among Black voters. In contrast to common characterizations of Black people as politically disengaged, lower income Black citizens are more likely to vote than their White counterparts. Moreover, the lowest earning Black women vote at dramatically higher rates than any other race-gender combination in this income group. These findings call into question the perceived universality of the income gap in voting and widespread claims that more resources directly facilitate voting. They also have implications for our understanding of political participation, social inequality, and democratic citizenship.

The Correlates of Panethnic Identification: Assessing Similarities and Differences among Latinos and Asians in the United States

Latinos and Asian-Americans constitute the largest recent immigrant groups in the United States. Upon arrival, immigrants from these groups generally identify with their national origin despite being categorized as “Asian” or “Latino” for state enumeration. While both are racialized and excluded from mainstream identities, they differ in their internal linguistic and religious diversities, socioeconomic status, and immigration experiences. Sociologists theorized that Asian-American panethnicity is based on structural commonalities while Latino panethnicity is built upon cultural commonalities. We elaborate the theoretical understanding of contexts associated with this identification and find alternative underpinnings that shape both groups’ panethnic identification. We find generation since immigration is a common basis for elevated likelihood of panethnic identification for both groups. However, among Asian-Americans, we find English proficiency and age increase people’s odds of identifying with a panethnic identity over a national origin term, whereas for Latinos, political affiliation and religiosity increase these odds.

Sources of Mattering for Women and Men: Gender Differences and Similarities in Feelings of Social Significance

Social mattering refers to an individual’s perceived sense of significance in the world and is a key aspect of overall mental health. Using data from a representative survey of adult Americans, we test the extent to which societal-level status, community engagement, group memberships, and interpersonal attachments affect men’s and women’s sense of mattering. We find that women gain social significance to the extent that they feel attached to others interpersonally, in terms of romantic relationships, parenthood, friendships, and closeness to family. Men’s sense of mattering is significantly influenced by broader social factors, like their strength of attachment to the Republican Party, their social media use, and their ability to donate money to the community. These differences suggests that gender norms lead men to also seek significance from the broader community and through group memberships while women rely mainly on their close social ties to feel like they matter.

The Cogs and Wheels of Authenticity: How Descriptive and Evaluative Beliefs Explain the Unequal Appreciation of Authentic Products

In times of cultural omnivorousness, authentic products are highly valued by high-status consumers. The article scrutinizes the social and individual preconditions for attributing hedonic and economic value to authentic products. Taking the concept of cultural capital as a starting point, it argues that cues indicating a product’s authenticity affect taste and price evaluations only if individuals perceive authenticity cues correctly (descriptive beliefs) and regard authenticity as an important product feature (evaluative beliefs). This interplay of descriptive and evaluative beliefs explains the appreciation of authentic products. The model is tested by combining an experimental tasting of apple juice samples with a survey. We find that cues of authenticity causally influence the hedonic evaluation of products only for consumers with both strong descriptive and evaluative beliefs. Attribution of economic value depends on descriptive beliefs only. In addition, such beliefs are socially structured: descriptive beliefs correlate with higher formal education, whereas evaluative beliefs covary with highbrow cultural practices.

“Longer than I Would’ve Originally Liked and Originally Thought”: Postsecondary Debt and Marriage Plans for Young Adults Coming of Age in the Great Recession

While student loans play a large role in the financing of higher education, there has been relatively little qualitative work on how young adults understand their debt burdens and the debt’s perceived future impact. We examine this topic utilizing a sample of 105 young people from working-, middle-, and upper middle-class backgrounds who experienced young adulthood during the Great Recession. While most respondents are accepting of debt at the time of postsecondary enrollment, their inability to meet the demands of their debt leads to frustration and anxiety. Further, many respondents are concerned that this debt will impact their ability to support themselves and transition into the role of a marital partner, although this varies across social class backgrounds and debt levels. We argue that this debt, and its corresponding repercussions, are likely to contribute to the continued bifurcation of family life in the United States.