The standard multilevel regressions that are widely used in neighborhood research typically ignore potential between-neighborhood correlations due to underlying spatial processes, and hence they produce inappropriate inferences about neighborhood effects. In contrast, spatial models make estimations and predictions across areas by explicitly modeling the spatial correlations among observations…
The stated goal of Lucas and Szatrowski (this volume, pp. 1–79; hereafter L&S) is to provide a critical evaluation of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), with the objective of discouraging researchers from using the method. However, they fail to provide a meaningful critique. Close inspection reveals not only that they address a shallow caricature of QCA but also that their analysis …
In recent decades, cultural consensus theory (CCT) models have been extensively applied across research domains to explore shared cultural knowledge and beliefs. These models are parameterized in terms of person-specific cognitive parameters such as abilities and guessing biases as well as item difficulties. Although psychometric test theory is also formalized in terms of abilities and item di…
Extreme response style (ERS) and acquiescence response style (ARS) are among the most encountered problems in attitudinal research. The authors investigate whether the response bias caused by these response styles varies with following three aspects of question format: full versus end labeling, numbering answer categories, and bipolar versus agreement response scales. A questionnaire was distri…
Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) appears to offer a systematic means for case-oriented analysis. The method not only offers to provide a standardized procedure for qualitative research but also serves, to some, as an instantiation of deterministic methods. Others, however, contest QCA because of its deterministic lineage. Multiple other issues surrounding QCA, such as its response to meas…
In many situations, data are available at some aggregate level, but one wishes to estimate the individual-level association between a response and an explanatory variable (or variables). Unfortunately, this endeavor is fraught with difficulties because of the ecological level of the data. The only reliable approach for overcoming the inherent identifiability problem associated with the analysis…
In recent years, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) has gained in popularity and has spread beyond its home base of comparative sociology and political science, fields that have traditionally been marked by a strong tradition of case-oriented analysis. With growing popularity and profile comes also greater critical attention, and thus it is not surprising and indeed welcome to have researc…
Accurately measuring attributes in neighborhood environments allows researchers to study the influence of neighborhoods on individual-level outcomes. Researchers working to improve the measurement of neighborhood attributes generally advocate doing so in one of two ways: improving the theoretical relevance of measures and correctly defining the appropriate spatial scale. The data required by t…
We examine the association between perceptions of spouse’s work-to-family conflict, family stressors, and mental health outcomes using data from a sample of 1,348 dual-earning parents from a 2011 national survey of Canadian workers. Based on crossover stress theory and the stress process model, we hypothesize that perceptions of spouse’s work-to-family conflict are associated with family…
Using General Social Survey data, we examine whether any association between job insecurity and well-being is contingent on economic climate (comparing those interviewed in turbulent 2010 vs. prerecessionary 2006), as well as income and gender.We find respondents with higher levels of job insecurity in 2010 reported lower levels of happiness compared to those similarly insecure in 2006. The …
How do marginalized social categories, such as being black and gay, combine with one another in the production of discrimination? While much extant research assumes that combining marginalized social categories results in a ‘‘double disadvantage,’’ I argue that in the case of race and sexual orientation the opposite may be true. This article posits that stereotypes about gay men as …
This study examined interminority attitudes among a large sample (N = 1,987) of two minority groups (of Turkish and Moroccan origin) in the Netherlands. The focus is on their attitudes toward each other, toward a third ethnic minority group, and toward the native majority group. The aim is to simultaneously test theoretical predictions related to group categorization and group identificatio…
Under what conditions will a state repress its citizens? The literature examining human rights violations lacks consensus over exactly how repression and dissent are interrelated. I argue that contradictions have arisen because scholars have not derived expectations consistent with modeling three common assumptions: (1) dissent and repression are causally interrelated (2) states and groups are…
The surge in support for Eurosceptic parties in the 2014 Euroelections is investigated through a case study of Greece, a country which suffered a dramatic dealignment of its party system after the onset of the Eurozone crisis. The extent to which crisis-era developments represent a rupture is assessed by setting the recent rise of party Euroscepticism in its historical context. Eurobarometer…
When taking stock of the now vast literature on Euroscepticism, one cannot but notice the often deeply normative character of much of the academic research on this topic. This article argues that it is as a result of the pro-integration bias in mainstream EC/EU studies that Euroscepticism has been conceptualized as a ‘phenomenon of the periphery’ – be it the periphery of party systems,…
The 2014 European elections demonstrated the scale and success of the EU’s opponents. Radical and populist parties topped the polls in some countries while others gained parliamentary representation for the first time. At the same time, Euroscepticism has entered the mainstream, with an increase of anti-EU rhetoric among government parties and the European Conservative and Reformist group …
With the advent of the Eurozone crisis, Euroscepticism has become increasingly mainstreamed. This is discernible across Europe at the level of public opinion, among political parties and civil society groups, within the EU institutions themselves and in terms of changing and more challenging media discourses. Against the backdrop of the 2014 European elections and a potential referendum on U…
In the nearly quarter century since the collapse of communism, a great many outcomes in East Europe and the former Soviet Union, from patterns of democratic consolidation to state–society relations, have been attributed to legacies of the past. Yet despite the common goal of understanding the influence of the past, there is little consensus on how to conceptualize historical legacies. Thr…
As the theoretical rationale (and funding opportunities!) for considering Eastern Europe as a distinct region diminish as we move farther away from the momentous events of 1989, the value of including East-Central European countries in comparative studies has only increased. This article outlines how comparative studies of political behavior involving East-Central European countries have ev…
Levels of both religiosity and of religious influence on public policy vary enormously across the countries of post-communist East Central Europe. This variation poses a challenge to existing explanations, which have focused on religious competition and alliances with political parties to explain religious participation and policy influence, respectively. The legacy of religious nationalism…
This essay outlines theoretical visions or paradigms that have underpinned empirical and historical work on the great transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. Such paradigms shaped “sociological imaginations” and analytical lenses through which scholars generated important questions and developed their research interests and projects. The study of post-communism was influenced by t…
This paper integrates the US civil sphere, European media as practice, and social psychological literatures to demonstrate how people construct their own civil purity and become pure. It uses indepth interview data to uncover a language of civil purity that people draw on to construct their own belonging in civil society. It argues that some people create an imagined public-at-large that the…
This interview with Trevor Pinch, one of the most significant scholars in contemporary Science and Technology Studies (STS), reconstructs his career from the second half of the 1970s onwards, emphasizing the various points of contact and differences between social studies of science and technology, and several different approaches and authors in cultural sociology, cultural studies and cult…
The article introduces and comments upon the themes developed in the interview with the sociologist of science and technology Trevor Pinch in this issue of Cultural Sociology. The paper outlines the trajectory of his work since the late 1970s, from the birth of Science and Technology Studies (STS), until his current interest in the relationship between music, technologies, and society. The …
Today’s complex film world seems to upset the dual structure corresponding with Bourdieu’s categorization of ‘restricted’ and ‘large-scale’ fields of cultural production. This article examines how movies in French, Dutch, American and British film fields are classified in terms of material practices and symbolic affordances. It explores how popular, professional, and critical re…
In recent years, sociology in Britain – and in national contexts influenced by British sociology – has been diagnosed by various parties as suffering from a wide range of ailments. These forms of selfcriticism become ever more acute in terms of their potential effects as huge transformations in university funding regimes are brought to bear on the social sciences. But none of these criti…
When asked to write a review about multiple books within the sociology of gender published since 2000, I quickly chose global variations in gender inequalities, an important contemporary topic. Yet in trying to create a list of volumes to include, I realized this was not simply a matter of walking over to my bookshelves and choosing my favorite books, because my own interest in this topic is sh…
Scholars have been shifting their attention from explaining the rise and fall of social movements to addressing their influence on political and other institutions. And why not? Social movements’ bids to effect social change are why people join them, and why scholars first studied them. Possibilities for analysis abound. Movements target many institutions—mainly states, but also the news me…