Advanced Industrial Societies Research Articles

Changing Patterns of Income Inequality in U.S. Counties, 1970–2000

The upswing in economic inequality that has affected a number of advanced industrial societies in the late 20th century has been particularly conspicuous in the United States. The authors explore its causes using data on the distribution of family income in 3,098 U.S. counties in 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000. The authors build a model of within-county income inequality that assumes that distribution processes involving labor market and sociodemographic variables operate primarily at the county level and those involving the political and institutional context operate primarily at the state level. Multilevel methods are used to distinguish county cross-sectional, state cross-sectional, and longitudinal effects on inequality. The authors find that, when features of the state-level institutional and political context are associated with inequality, these effects are larger longitudinally than cross-sectionally. A range of other factors, including economic development, labor force changes, shifts in the racial/ethnic and gender composition of the labor force, educational expansion, and urbanization are found to have comparatively large effects, both longitudinally and cross-sectionally.

Indulging Our Gendered Selves? Sex Segregation by Field of Study in 44 Countries

Data from 44 societies are used to explore sex segregation by field of study. Contrary to accounts linking socioeconomic modernization to a "degendering" of public-sphere institutions, sex typing of curricular fields is stronger in more economically developed contexts. The authors argue that two cultural forces combine in advanced industrial societies to create a new sort of sex segregation regime. The first is gender-essentialist ideology, which has proven to be extremely resilient even in the most liberal-egalitarian of contexts; the second is self-expressive value systems, which create opportunities and incentives for the expression of "gendered selves." Multivariate analyses suggest that structural features of postindustrial labor markets and modern educational systems support the cultivation, realization, and display of gender-specific curricular affinities.

Reality and technology

Is it possible to have a wide and deep theory of technology? Commodification provides a helpful clue. It refers to the width of the economy and suggests incisive criticism. Although it is economically precise, its moral and cultural force needs explication. In that sense it refers to the detachment of a thing or practice from its context of engagement with a time, a place, and a community. Engagement is replaced by a technological machinery. The conjunction of commodity and machinery sheds light on consumption and labour and on the discontents of life in an advanced industrial society. It also suggests a disjunctive view of the future--still more commodification or a recovery of engagement.

Die Finanzmärkte und die Mittelschichten: der kollektive Buddenbrooks-Effekt

The article views the current financial crisis from the background of long term structural socio-economic changes in advanced industrial societies. Central points are the rise of the middle classes during the second half of the 20th century, the accumulation of financial wealth in the middle classes in combination with a continuing high and even increasing concentration of financial assets at the level of the top rich, and the advance of pension and investment funds as a new type of collective actors at global financial markets. These changes go parallel with an economic development which is characterized by increasing instability, declining growth rates and financial crises. The paper tries to clarify the interconnections between these phenomena in the framework of a multi-level analysis which culminates in the model of a “collective Buddenbrooks-effect”: A structural upward mobility of society will lead to an increasing imbalance at capital markets, since on the one hand the volume of financial assets searching for profitable investment will rise, whereas on the other hand the social reservoir of solvent debtors and promising investment opportunities will decline. Therefore, advanced industrial economies are characterized by a bias towards capital export and excessive financial liquidity, with the well known consequences of low economic growth rates and the danger of speculative bubbles at the global capital markets. The middle classes who originally benefitted from the post-war prosperity, are negatively affected too. The author argues that the current crisis cannot be understood sufficiently without taking account of these structural socio-economic backgrounds.

Transformations of the state. From monopolist to manager of political authority

There is a pervasive trend towards a denationalization of authority in advanced industrial societies. Government is no longer the exclusive business of the state but involves an increasing range of international institutions and private agents. It is often assumed in academic and political discourse that the internationalization and privatization of government weakens the state and may lead to its eventual demise. This assumption is wrong. As we show in our paper, the denationalization of authority does not make the state redundant but remains fundamentally dependent on it. However, the role and missions of the state change. Slowly, incrementally, and not without reverses, the state transforms from sovereign monopolist of political authority to key integrator of partly privatized and internationalized authority relations. The state no longer has an exclusive claim to authority but initiates, coordinates and synthesizes the authority of a diverse set of international and private actors.

Societal development and the shifting influence of the genome on status attainment

This paper builds on consensus areas within the study of societal development to theorize variation in the strength of genetic influence on status across primary societal types. Its thesis is developed by first constructing a general model of the genome → status relationship positing the strength of genetic influence on status attainment to be a function of specific structural elements of the society. The model is supported by two primary premises: (a) as inequality levels increase, the characteristics and abilities intrinsically useful in status attainment are increasingly influenced by individuals’ social backgrounds and decreasingly determined by their genomes; (b) as social closure and inequality increase, the utility of these characteristics and abilities to status attainment is diminished. After the model is elaborated, it is applied to assess the relative strength of genome → status relationship for each of the major phases of societal development. The results indicate that genetic influence on status attainment has followed a reverse ‘J’ curve, with the genome → status relationship being relatively strong among hunter-gatherers, sharply declining among horticultural and agrarian groups, and then moderately increasing among advanced industrial societies.

Theorizing business power in the semiperiphery: Mexico 1970-2000

This study explains why the power of neoliberal business over the Mexican state increased during the last three decades of the twentieth century. It identifies three sources of increased neoliberal business power that occurred in conjunction with neoliberal reforms: (1) active mobilization by neoliberal business, (2) increased access to the state by neoliberal business, and (3) increased economic power of neoliberal business. It thereby contributes additional evidence that counters the view of Mexico’s state neoliberalizers as acting autonomously from business. It further outlines two conditions that were instrumental in bringing about the increased power of neoliberal business: the onset of economic crisis in the 1970s, and a shift in foreign capital preferences in Mexico. The analysis demonstrates how Mexico’s sources and conditions of business power differed from those in advanced industrial societies, and outlines why the Mexican case may be a good starting point for devising a historically-contingent theory of business power in the semiperiphery.

Life sciences must focus on the poor

Following Serageldin, the members of EAGLES believe that the solution to the great world problems 'requires our joint commitment as scientists to work for the benefit of the entire human family, not just the privileged minority who are lucky enough to live in the most advanced industrial societies. These tasks are enormous. But the longest journey starts with a single step. So let us start. If not us, who? If not now, when?' Now is the time for European life sciences to focus their attention on the most pressing problems facing humanity today and accept the fact that these problems are not in Europe.

Transnationalism, Active Citizenship, and Belonging in Canada

Transnational identities, practices, and institutions are not really and have likely existed in some form over the past few hundred years and perhaps back to the peace of Westphalia in the mid iooos. While the technological transformations in previous centuries facilitated transnationalism, such as trans-oceanic steamships and the telegraph, it has only been recently that the cost of bridging long geographic distances has been cut dramatically.1 As a result what is is the emergence of transnationalism on a mass scale. Technological conditions for earlier immigrants did not make transnational practices rapid or easy but now they have and this has only been a relatively recent and phenomenon.2 This has had an affect on the types of communities with which individuals and institutions identify and in which they participate. Economic globalization over the past several decades has led to the rise of a global economy with a plethora of transnational and multinational corporations. Following this economic globalization has been a cultural globalization that includes an ethnoscape with an increasing multitude of diasporic and transnational communities. As many people in these communities engage in transnational identities and practices, questions arise as to their rights and responsibilities of citizenship within a particular nation. Further, with criticisms of multiculturalism becoming more prevalent in recent years-particularly in the post 9/11 era-including the Madrid train bombings of 2004, the London bombings of 2005, and the Canadian suspected terrorism case of 2006-the darker side of transnational practices has been prominent in public discourse. This discourse is based on the perception that multiculturalism is not working and, along with transnational practices, leads to fragmentation and segregation rather than the integration of diverse racial, ethnic, and religious groups. The argument is made that multiculturalism and transnationalism make social cohesion in Canadian society difficult if not impossible to achieve. More specifically, those engaged in transnational identities and practices are viewed as practicing a thin citizenship with limited active citizenship engagement within Canada and minimal shared values, cultural identity, and sense of belonging to Canada. This article begins with a discussion of how transnationalism and active citizenship are conceptualized. It then examines how these two processes are allegedly divergent and contradictory. This is followed by an empirical investigation of these allegations comprising three research questions. I outline the methodology used to answer the questions, how the key variables of transnationalism are measured, and present the findings.CONCEPTUALIZING TRANSNATIONALISMWhile the introduction and popularization of the term transnationalism emerged in the social sciences over the past decade and a half, sociologist Anthony Richmond coined a somewhat similar term-transilience-in 1969- Transilience referred to the exchanges of skilled and highly qualified migrants between advanced industrial societies. The migrants themselves were referred to as transilients; he predicted they would become numerically more important in the future. These terms were used in his writings up to the mid-1990s and by that time Richmond was using the term more broadly to apply to a wide range of movers whose permanence in one locale was neither expected nor necessary.3 Transilients do not necessarily assimilate, acculturate, or integrate fully into the receiving society but rather maintain close ties with family and friends; are aware of changing economic, political, and social conditions in their former country and elsewhere; and have high rates of remigration and return. As such, the concept of transilience can be considered the forerunner to contemporary notions of transnationalism.With the publication of Nina Glick Schiller's, Linda Basch's, and Christina Blanc-Szantoris books Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration in 1992, and Nations Unbound in 1994, the transnationalism paradigm emerged as a new perspective to characterize processes of immigrant settlement, adaptation, and integration, particularly in Britain and the United States. …

Meaningful Work and Personal/Social Well-Being Organizational Communication Engages the Meanings of Work

This chapter argues for a broadening of organizational communication scholarship through the consideration of meanings of work including meaningful work. First, we define meaningful work especially within the frame of a broader examination of meanings of work. Along the way, we consider the concept of meaningful work within a constellation of terms that includes job enrichment, work-life balance, career path, leisure, life satisfaction, and so forth. Second, we consider the historical-cultural contexts for our understanding of meaningful work. Here we treat both synchronic and diachronic perspectives on the meaning of work and bring into view matters of difference, such as race, nationality, gender, and class, particularly to the extent that the extant literature treats these dimensions. Third, we consider contemporary discourses in and around workplaces concerning meaningful work—especially in advanced industrial societies. In particular, we interpret recent trends in work and workplace restructuring and how stakeholders discuss them in various parts of

The Federal Case for School-Based Mental Health Services and Supports

Provision of health care in schools is a logical component of an advanced industrial society; however, health care providers have struggled to make universal school health and mental health a reality. Despite the President_s New Freedom Commission Report that stressed the need for school-based mental health in the context of a wider public health agenda, school mental health services and supports continue to be fragmented. Instead of riding a wave of new resources, knowledge, and a quality focus, the school-based mental health movement struggles to answer basic questions about identity. Is school mental health the provision of services similar to those found in a community mental health center? Is it psychosocial services? Or is it a cluster of prevention strategies that engage the entire school? These questions remain largely unanswered. Federal and state health policy is not only a necessary component of any strategy to advance mental health for children and youth but also requires consideration of issues central to the identity of school-based programs: what is at stake, how services are integrated, and who pays.

Rightful Resistance in Rural China

Rightful Resistance in Rural China. By Kevin J. O'Brien and Lianjiang Li. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 200 pages. 24.99 paper.Studies of contemporary China move between two poles of presentation—richly detailed analyses of phenomena that seem specific to China and more sweeping panaromas that leap to broad generalities without always marking their steps forward clearly. Kevin J. O'Brien and Lianjiang Li offer an insightful study of collective action in contemporary China that successfully steers a course between the typical extremes. Their work is solidly anchored in years of research in the Chinese countryside, where they have conducted interviews and administered surveys, and about which they have read government documents and the press. This work also takes into account the growing amount of scholarship being produced by the Chinese themselves. And most helpful to their efforts of explaining Chinese cases to a broader audience, their analysis consistently engages the literature on collective action conceptualized principally out of studies of advanced industrial societies and the histories of those societies.

The Rise of the Insecure Professionals

The role of professions in the development of advanced industrial societies has long been recognized – for example, by Harold Perkin. However, the focus has been on the higher professions. Other professions have usually been dealt with as imperfect variants, with Etzioni, typically, referring to nurses, schoolteachers, and social workers as “semi-professions”. However, by conceptualizing such professions as social formations in their own right, as ladders of social mobility, and in terms of their permanent social and professional insecurity, it is possible to create a different picture both of their internal dynamics and broader influence. Members of such groups fostered types of social and political activity that became a recognisable feature of developed societies. Moreover, an appreciation of the distinctive ideational and professional contribution of insecure professions can offer a perspective on a number of the major concerns of social historians. The argument is illustrated by reference to the development of such professions mainly in England and Scotland.

Social Democracy Constrained: Indirect Taxation in Industrialized Democracies

The determinants of the welfare state have received a great deal of attention in the comparative political economy literature. An analysis of the role that indirect taxation plays in the politics of advanced industrial societies is, however, missing. This article demonstrates that a full understanding of the links between redistribution, social democracy and corporatism is impossible without a closer look at indirect taxation. Conventional wisdom is questioned and it is shown that social democratic governments in corporatist environments find themselves in a paradoxical situation. They need to support the welfare state by relying upon a fundamentally regressive policy instrument: indirect taxation. It is also shown that social democratic governments can minimize the use of consumption taxes as part of their redistributive strategy only in non-corporatist settings. In exploring these issues, this article illuminates alternative routes for the pursuit of equality in a context of declining corporatist arrangements.

Workers, worries and welfare states: Social protection and job insecurity in 15 OECD countries

Abstract. This article examines a model of the domestic political economy of subjective employment insecurity in advanced industrial societies. Based on data on people's attitudes toward their job as well as levels of and kinds of social protection collected in 15 OECD countries, it shows that there are distinct manifestations of job insecurity that are affected differently by distinct aspects of social protection programs. While the analysis shows that social protection measures reduce employment insecurity, it also reveals that overall levels welfare state generosity do not have any systematic effect on whether workers feel secure. The article's findings suggest the need to decompose the different components of employment insecurity as well as disaggregate national systems of social protection when examining the impact of welfare states on job insecurity.

The Metropolitan Habitus: Its Manifestations, Locations, and Consumption Profiles

Geographers and sociologists have recognised the emergence of new variants of the middle-class neighbourhood characterised by a strong focus on the development of human capital, a high level of connectedness to global networks, and a strong sense of identity based on aesthetics and taste. Such neighbourhoods are typically associated with the inner areas of ‘metropolitan’ centres and, according to Bourdieu, are manifestations of ‘milieux’ in which residents increasingly use taste as a basis for the ascription and enjoyment of status by way of contrast to residents in neighbourhoods in ‘suburban’, ‘provincial’, and ‘small-town’ settings where status continues to derive primarily from occupation and/or the ownership of key consumer products. This paper explores the extent to which qualitative evidence for the existence of these different milieux can be supported by quantitative evidence, using classifications of residential neighbourhoods originally developed by commercial organisations to assist marketers target the promotion of consumer products. The paper uses a study by Peter Hall, which locates urban centres in England and Wales on a central place hierarchy, to differentiate those types of middle-class neighbourhood whose location is characteristically inner metropolitan from those principally associated with suburban and/or small-town locations. These types of neighbourhood are then contrasted in terms of their residents' role within the urban system, in terms of their spatial distribution, and in terms of their consumption of products and media. Results from similar classification schemes developed in other countries are used to evaluate the extent to which these types of metropolitan habitus are characteristic of other advanced industrial societies.

Place, Class and Local Circuits of Reproduction: Exploring the Social Geography of Middle-class Childcare in London

In a recent revival of the older tradition of community studies, sociologists and geographers have begun to address the changing nature of attachment to locality in contemporary cities in advanced industrial societies. Challenging older definitions of attachment to place, a new form of communal attachment has recently been identified, termed 'elective belonging'. This sense of place is particularly important among the middle classes and is, it is argued, closely associated with the growing significance of reproduction, especially access to schooling, as a key part of the reasons for choosing to live in a particular urban neighbourhood. Sociologists of education have also argued that school choice is important. A recent paper has suggested that pre-school childcare also figures in locational choices and in urban differentiation, leading to different traditions of caring/mothering in different neighbourhoods in London. This paper critically assesses these arguments about school and childcare choices and the associated development of place-based middle-class cultures. Based on an empirical study in three London neighbourhoods, it explores the extent to which occupational position and sector of employment-class-based factors-as well as place-based factors continue to play a key role in the types of opportunities and choices that middle-class households make about childcare.

18. Ronald Inglehart. 1971. “The Silent Revolution in Europe: Intergenerational Change in Post-industrial Societies.” American Political Science Review 65 (December): 991–1017. Cited 282 times

”The Silent Revolution in Europe” was the first presentation of the intergenerational value change hypothesis. It argued that the publics of postindustrial societies are shifting from giving top priority to “Materialist” goals such as economic and physical security to placing increasingly strong emphasis on self-expression and the quality of life. Throughout history, survival has been insecure for most people, forcing them to give top priority to survival needs. But in advanced industrial societies, the economic miracles of the postwar era and the emergence of the welfare state gave rise to conditions under which much of the postwar generation grew up taking survival for granted; they give increasingly high priority to “Postmaterialist” values such as belonging, self-expression, and free choice. Because people's basic values do not change overnight, those who experienced the insecurity of World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II would continue to emphasize Materialist values, but we would expect to find an intergenerational shift toward Postmaterialist values.

8. Nathaniel Beck and Jonathan N. Katz. 1995. “What to Do (and Not to Do) with Time-Series Cross-Section Data.” American Political Science Review 89 (September): 634–47 Cited 398 times.

Much as we would like to believe that the high citation count for this article is due to the brilliance and clarity of our argument, it is more likely that the count is due to our being in the right place (that is, the right part of the discipline) at the right time. In the 1960s and 1970s, serious quantitative analysis was used primarily in the study of American politics. But since the 1980s it has spread to the study of both comparative politics and international relations. In comparative politics we see in the 20 most cited Review articles Hibbs's (1977) and Cameron's (1978) quantitative analyses of the political economy of advanced industrial societies; in international relations we see Maoz and Russett's (1993) analysis of the democratic peace; and these studies have been followed by myriad others. Our article contributed to the methodology for analyzing what has become the principal type of data used in the study of comparative politics; a related article (Beck, Katz, and Tucker 1998), which has also had a good citation history, dealt with analyzing this type of data with a binary dependent variable, data heavily used in conflict studies similar to that of Maoz and Russett's. Thus the citations to our methodological discussions reflect the huge amount of work now being done in the quantitative analysis of both comparative politics and international relations.

Gendering the Varieties of Capitalism. A Study of Occupational Segregation by Sex in Advanced Industrial Societies

This article explores the unintended gendered consequences of employment protection and vocational training systems. It develops a micrologic of skill investment by workers and employers to identify the mechanism by which specific skills become disadvantageous for women. The central claim of the article is that institutions that encourage male investment in specific skills exacerbate occupational sex segregation. The article finds that coordinated market economies, because of their robust institutional protection of male skill investments, are generally more sex segregating than are liberal market economies. The empirical section provides cross-sectional analyses of advanced industrial countries.