Abstract Housing arrangements provide the foundation for social life and interaction in college. However, we know little about how students locate housing opportunities. This study contributes to the literature on housing, search strategies, and class inequality during college by examining how students search for housing. Based on interviews with 40 undergraduate students across three universities, we find that socioeconomically disadvantaged students primarily pursued formal channels in their housing search, including official websites and requests for tours, which limited their options for locating housing. In contrast, socioeconomically advantaged students relied on informal channels to locate and secure housing, such as help from friends, family, and organizations passing down housing, which provided access to off‐campus housing within walking distance of campus. Although socioeconomically advantaged students and students with organizational connections learned about housing search strategies from others in their networks, students who relied on informal channels attributed their housing outcomes to luck. By attributing outcomes like inheriting a house through an organization to serendipity, students underestimated the salience of economic, cultural, and social resources in the housing search. This study adds to existing literature by illuminating the role of divergent housing search strategies in reifying class inequality among undergraduate students during college.

Abstract Although feminist theorizing on Muslim women's agency has come a long way, recent models reflect a one‐dimensional conception of agency that reinvigorates problematic binaries and undermines feminist politics. To address these limitations, the author focuses on the interpersonal arena where agency involves not only doing but also the cultivation and consolidation of relationships. Ethnographic data reveal three key findings: (1) Agency is multidimensional, encompassing both display work and the recruitment of others. (2) When we foreground agency's relational dimensions, binary conceptions fall apart—forms of agency that appear to involve compliance with dominant norms are revealed as also being resistant to an alternate set of norms favored by others. (3) Relational aspects of agency are socially patterned by social structures, such as class, that restrict marginalized actors from activating relationships in service to extension, a capacity to extend the locus of action over time and space. By examining these diverse dimensions of agency, the article underscores the connection between agency, exclusion, and inequality. This analysis not only challenges restrictive binaries within feminist thought but also opens up possibilities for feminist intervention.

Abstract This article is a re‐examination of Russell Jacoby's 1987 classic The Last Intellectuals. In the article I bring the discussion of Jacoby's classic up to date, explaining Jacoby's thesis, and then questioning whether Jacoby was correct in his view that the 1950s generation of intellectuals were the last to address the public.

Abstract Appearances are unequally policed in gendered, racialized, and classist systems of power. Technological affordances, or the actions possible across different technological platforms, shape how these practices transpire online. Affordances can operate in gendered, racialized ways: the same platform capabilities can produce different use patterns depending on social contexts, uniquely reinforcing inequalities. I bridge a gap in sociological research by considering how technological affordances, alongside broader social contexts, shape oppositions, reproductions, or complications of dominant appearance norms. Reddit, a platform divided into standalone communities called subreddits, affords protective anonymity to historically disempowered groups, potentially facilitating resistance toward dominant norms. Paradoxically, Reddit's anonymity can foster toxicity and morally motivated harassment maintaining powerful groups' advantages. How do users on r/instagramreality, a subreddit calling out others' supposedly disingenuous, embodied social media self‐presentations, use Reddit's anonymity to challenge, complicate, or re‐entrench dominant norms of appearance? Applying qualitative content analysis to r/instagramreality posts, I find that while r/instagramreality users directly challenge and indirectly complicate constraining beauty standards, subreddit conversations also uphold norms privileging dominant groups. R/instagramreality assigns default morality to Whiteness, disproportionately criticizes women, and attributes morality through classist stereotypes. This study reveals how online anonymity, embodied self‐presentation, and surveillance coexist and operate across social contexts.

Abstract Trust in political institutions represents a central facet of political legitimacy in a democracy. A vast literature suggests that the local perception of corruption lowers trust in political institutions in different research settings. Building upon this literature, we explore whether the perception of civil service corruption and trust in political institutions are inversely associated in Brazil—a developing country significantly affected by corruption scandals—using nationally representative survey data. We find evidence of this association using ordinary least squares regression models that treat perception of civil service corruption as an exogenous variable while accounting for the impact of other determinants of political trust. However, these results could be affected by endogeneity bias due to simultaneous causation: not only does a higher perception of corruption decrease trust in political institutions, but lower levels of trust in political institutions also increase the perception of corruption. We find that this inverse association is significantly larger when we treat perception of civil service corruption as an endogenous variable using endogenous binary‐variable regression models. Political and civil society leaders in Brazil should continually participate in the development of effective accountability strategies for curbing corruption in order to challenge the vicious circle of corruption and trust.

Abstract Do “environmental shocks lead to the formation of new political coalitions? To answer this question, this study examines how Environmentalists for Full Employment (EFFE), an organization founded to bridge the American labor and environmental movements, mobilized a coalition of labor unions to oppose nuclear power after the Three Mile Island accident. Through an in‐depth analysis of EFFE's activities following the accident, I show how the sense of risk associated with an environmentally shocking event unsettled existing relations within the American labor and environmental movements, allowing new actors to wrest agenda‐setting power away from incumbent movement leaders. Based on this analysis, I argue that inter‐movement brokers are particularly well‐positioned to take advantage of environmental shocks, create novel alliances, and inaugurate contention over movements' agendas. However, as I also show, coalitions born after shocks are highly contingent and face hurdles enduring after the shock loses its salience. These arguments contribute to the literature in social movement theory and environmental sociology by theorizing the political implications of environmental shocks, which are expected to become more important as the climate crisis intensifies.

Abstract Norms promote cooperation and prosocial behavior in groups, and one way in which norms support social order is by regulating concealment. However, systematic evidence on whether a norm of concealment affects the frequency of concealment and the content of what people conceal remains scarce. Using data from two surveys of US adults, we find that the norm of concealment is a moral norm that correlates with counts of concealment, the proportion of behaviors concealed, and membership in unique subgroups of concealers. We also find that the norm of concealment is relatively weak in terms of its character: it is bipolar, conditional, and of moderate intensity, with respondents disagreeing about the nature of the norm. Our findings suggest that individuals who follow a moral norm against concealment withhold less information than others.

Abstract American elites—those in the top one percent of the income and wealth distributions—have enormous economic, political, and social influence. It was once taken for granted that affluent Americans were Mainline Protestants (MPs). However, shifting religious affiliations and demographic changes mirrored in the country's major religious groups suggest that this assumption may no longer hold. Studying elite religion is challenging because no survey data includes both a sample of the affluent and information about respondents' religious affiliations. To fill this gap, this paper synthesizes data from the Survey of Consumer Finances and the General Social Survey to document the religious affiliations of America's elites. Results show that today's one percent includes large numbers of Catholics and religious nones, as well as MPs. There are also notable numbers of Conservative Protestants in elite income and wealth positions, suggesting that SES convergence among Protestants may be occurring.

Abstract Following the racial reckoning of 2020, officials in local governments faced demands for police transformation and antiracist action. Yet a variety of constraints hindered their ability to fundamentally change policing. I examine how city councilors navigated this terrain through the case of a progressive city where officials made commitments to reimagine public safety, followed by reinvestments in police funding. Drawing on video footage from city budget meetings and other public materials, I analyze how state actors explained their decision‐making. I find that local officials expressed shared commitments to enhancing public safety, addressing racism, representing constituents, and making data‐driven decisions. Yet their interpretations of what each of these commitments meant varied. I argue that analyzing such concepts as political boundary objects can reveal emergent divisions among similarly situated actors, map dominant and alternative meanings, and identify salient features of the institutional environment that shape decision‐making. While the majority of city councilors drew on versions of political boundary objects that recentered policing as essential to public safety and positioned organizational diversity as a remedy to racism, a minority pointed to alternative avenues for action.