Social Closure Research Articles

A comparative study of the influence of collective efficacy on substance use among adolescent students in Philadelphia, Toronto, and Montreal

The purpose of this study was to describe the differences in illegal adolescent substance use among representative samples of secondary school students in Philadelphia (N = 712), Toronto (N = 983), and Montreal (N = 824) and apply a novel theoretical perspective. Collective efficacy is a widely cited criminological theory that has not been applied to minor forms of delinquency such as underage alcohol use and cannabis use. We examined the influence of four measures of collective efficacy on substance use among students aged 14–17 years in these three cities. We found that adolescents in Montreal consistently reported higher prevalence of alcohol and cannabis use than those in either Toronto or Philadelphia, and these differences remained significant after controlling for compositional differences. We also found that collective efficacy has some theoretical and empirical merit in all three cities surveyed, as the component of neighborhood closure was associated consistently with adolescent substance use involving alcohol and cannabis. However, the other collective efficacy measures of social cohesion, parental closure, and child control were not significantly related to these forms of adolescent substance use and showed some interaction effects by site. Future research is needed to better understand the value of collective efficacy in explaining adolescent substance use, and should be applied to more serious forms of drug use and drug selling.

Discrimination, Complexity, and the Public/Private Sector Question

Does employment discrimination vary in degree or character across public and private labor market sectors? Prior research cannot fully address this question because it typically relies on one dimension of discrimination—estimates of wage gaps. This study extends the literature by analyzing 11,528 legally verified cases of race and sex discrimination from the Ohio Civil Rights Commission (1986-2003). Quantitative analyses demonstrate that aggregate rates of verified discrimination vary little by sector, yet there are elevated rates of public sector promotion discrimination and elevated rates of private sector firing discrimination. In-depth qualitative analyses show that specific sectoral processes contribute to these aggregate patterns. In the public sector, limited accountability for promotion decisions allows managers to devalue seniority, augment “soft skills,” and sabotage multiple stages of formalized proceedings. Moreover, the very devices intended to curb discriminatory promotion may inadvertently multiply the stages for bias to enter decisions. In the private sector, managers exploit the latitude afforded by the employment-at-will doctrine to differentially terminate workers, sometimes justifying their actions as cost saving in a competitive market. The author argues that these processes are in line with statistical discrimination and social closure theories and concludes by discussing their implications for understandings of workplace inequality.

A Weberian approach to citizenship in a divided community

In the British Isles, traditional accounts surrounding the concept of citizenship usually develop along liberal or neo-liberal pathways. That is to say the study of citizenship in these Isles derives from the work of the late T.H. Marshall. While the importance of his work deserves its time-honoured acknowledgement in the literature, various writers such as Giddens, Heater, and Turner have taken issue with his argument that citizenship rights were handed down or that they ‘re-evolved’ over the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, their main differences with Marshall are not along theoretical lines but rather the applicability, or otherwise, of his model to other societies. Roger Brubaker points out that the nation state is the final arbiter of who is, or is not, a citizen which in the modern world is an act of social closure. This paper will discuss the efficacy of a sociological approach, based on social closure theory, as a means of understanding the struggle that has accompanied the granting of citizenship rights. Northern Ireland will be used as a case study to assess the effectiveness of social closure theory as a sociological explanation for the expansion of citizenship rights in a divided community.

Von Chancen und Statuskämpfen

The authors explore how education policies of increased individual and institutional competition affect class relations. They assume that especially the middle classes, whose strategies of social closure and social mobility are mainly based on education, react with intensified and extended private educational investments. Contrary to what the dominant political discourse suggests, this dynamic would even reinforce existing class boundaries. To substantiate their assumption, the authors analyse recent changes in the educational institutions and the employment system. Moreover, they study recent social and discursive conflicts on educational reforms and their legitimacy.

The Social Transformation of American Medical Education: Class, Status, and Party Influences on Occupational Closure, 1902–1919

Applying Weber's theorizing on action and stratification, this study examines whether the early 20th-century extinction of half of the medical schools in the United States resulted from actions intended to serve class, status, and party interests by achieving social closure. Analyses reveal closure intentions in the school ratings assigned by the American Medical Association, although not in the recommendations in the 1910 Carnegie-sponsored Flexner report. In contrast to claims that schools failed largely because of economic exigencies, analyses indicate that failures were influenced by the AMA's and Flexner's assessments, as well as by state regulatory regimes and school characteristics.

A Relational Approach to Durable Poverty, Inequality and Power

The article argues for what can be called a ‘relational’ approach to poverty: one that first views persistent poverty as the consequence of historically developed economic and political relations, and second, that emphasises poverty and inequality as an effect of social categorisation and identity, drawing in particular on the experience of adivasis (‘tribals’) and dalits (‘untouchables’) subordinated in Indian society. The approach follows Charles Tilly's Durable Inequality in combining Marxian ideas of exploitation and dispossession with Weberian notions of social closure. The article then draws on the work of Steven Lukes, Pierre Bourdieu and Arjun Appadurai to argue for the need to incorporate a multidimensional conception of power; including not only power as the direct assertion of will but also ‘agenda-setting power’ that sets the terms in which poverty becomes (or fails to become) politicised, and closely related to power as political representation. This sets the basis for discussion of the politics of poverty and exclusion.

Towards Transnational Studies: World Theories, Transnationalisation and Changing Institutions

A transnational studies perspective should be able to deal with both new social formations sui generis, such as transnational social spaces, and how ‘old’ national, international and local institutions acquire ‘new’ meanings and functions in the process of cross-border transactions. There is now a voluminous literature dealing with the emergence and above all the forms of transnational activities of migrants and the attendant consequences for the social integration of immigrants. If transnational ties and formations are consequential for social change and perhaps even social transformation, we also need to find indications about changing institutions in the national, international and local realms of transnational spaces. From this perspective we need not only to look at various transnational ties and formations across the borders of national states, but also at the repercussions for national and local institutions. In order to address this problem, the paper argues that both the concept of transnationalisation—including transnational social spaces—and world approaches, such as world systems and world polity theories, could be useful lenses to describe different aspects of transnational processes and boundaries. Second, transnational studies needs to engage both world theories and a transnational optic to ask about the social mechanisms by which transnational processes affect institutional change: path-dependency on a systemic or macro level, social closure, opportunity hoarding and brokerage on a collective or meso level, and symbolic recognition on a cognitive or micro level.

Race and Trust

This review considers that aspect of the voluminous trust literature that deals with race. After discussing the social conditions within which trust becomes relevant and outlining the distinctive contours of the three most common conceptualizations of trust—generalized, particularized, and strategic—I elaborate on the extent and nature of ethnoracial trust differences and provide an overview of the explanations for these differences. Ethnoracial differences in generalized trust are attributed to historical and contemporary discrimination, neighborhood context, and ethnoracial socialization. The consequences for the radius-of-trust problem are discussed with regard to particularized trust. And ethnoracial differences in strategic trust are located in structures of trustworthiness—such as social closure—and reputational concerns. I end the review with a brief discussion of social and economic consequences for trust gaps.

Power and the Durability of Poverty: A Critical Exploration of the Links between Culture, Marginality and Chronic Poverty

Building on approaches that adopt what might be called a ‘relational’ approach to poverty, and using recurring case-studies from India, this paper examines poverty as an outcome of the historical and contemporary dynamics of capitalism – including processes of accumulation, dispossession, differentiation and exploitation; but equally, considers the social mechanisms, categories and identities which perpetuate inequality and facilitate relations of exploitation. The paper adopts an approach (drawing on Charles Tilly) that combines an examination of exploitation with Weberian ideas of social closure. In this way, the paper aims to show that ‘adverse incorporation’ and ‘social exclusion’ are not alternative or competing frameworks: the excluded are simultaneously dominated and excluded.A second aim is to integrate a multi-dimensional understanding of power – as domination, patronage, and political representation – into the analysis of poverty, drawing on the work of Steven Lukes, Pierre Bourdieu, and Arjun Appadurai; and a third aim is to see how incorporating power can help analyse different approaches to poverty reduction ranging from anti-poverty programmes and political decentralisation to mainstream party political processes.In developing the argument the paper focuses on the interlocking circumstances of chronically poor cultivators living in deforested uplands, indebted migrant casual labourers on the urban fringes, and the social identities of adivasis and dalits (‘tribals’ and ‘untouchables’) subordinated in Indian society. This both highlights particular spatial and social inequalities in India, and reflects on the cultural construction of power; its effects on material well-being and agency, and on the opportunities and constraints in struggles for political representation.

“Where the Danger Lies”: Race, Gender, and Chinese and Japanese Exclusion in the United States, 1870-19241

Race too often is used as the explanatory variable for understanding immigration exclusion, marginalizing the significance of race making, ethnic differentiation, and gender construction in particular. This article explores these processes by examining exclusionary policies implemented against Chinese and Japanese immigrants from the mid- 1870s to 1924, the year the National Origins Act was passed. Politicians, intellectuals, and moral reformers used a gendered logic - the construction of idealized gender norms, roles, and sexual propriety and the attachment of these meanings to male and female bodies - to distinguish Japanese immigrants from the Chinese immigrants they followed, allowing for ethnic differentiation and dissimilar policies. The convergence toward exclusion rested on a racialized logic - the construction and attachment of inferior status and meanings to immigrant groups through discourse, formal and informal categorization, or social closure - which claimed that the Japanese were unassimilable and racially undesirable like the Chinese. Exclusionists focused on the immigrant women, decrying their sexual and gender impropriety as evidence of the groups' threats to the sanctity of white families, which imperiled the nation. Gender and race both mattered in these logics and their meanings were constructed as their salience interconnected.

Social closure and the incorporation of the Society of Accountants in Edinburgh in 1854

The incorporation of the Society of Accountants in Edinburgh in 1854 has been researched from different perspectives without attention to the overall occupational grouping to which the founders belonged. The existence of this larger community of accountants raises the question of whether the foundation involved social closure. The purpose of the paper is to pose and respond to this question by explaining social closure, examining the Society's foundational process for signs of possible exclusion, and observing founders and non-founders to identify differences in characteristics that provide possible explanations for exclusion. Archival evidence of the foundational process and differences in characteristics is consistent with the possibility of social closure without precluding other explanations for the founder and non-founder groupings. The evidence also raises the question of whether the foundation of the Society is completely explained by the external pressures associated with a potential loss of court-related appointments. The findings in the paper are sufficient to encourage further research of social closure in other associational foundations in the early history of modern public accountancy.

“When I'm Doing a Dinner Party I Don't Go for the Tesco Cheeses”

The purpose of this article is to explore how friendships are “done” through processes of eating together formally within the British context, paying attention to how taste is displayed through food. Existing research on food consumption and social differentiation has in the main concentrated on eating out, but there is little research on entertaining inside the home. Based on qualitative interviews with middle class couples at different stages of life in the north of England, we use one example of home entertaining—the dinner party—to analyze how middle class social networks are maintained and extended. For these families, friendship is performed through shared class boundary making, drawing of distinctions and social closure. Using a Bourdieusian theoretical framework, we indicate how home entertaining facilitates the conversion of social networks into cultural capital to maintain class privilege.

From Higher Education to Work: Public and Professional Sector Employment in Germany and Britain

Comparative analysis of the transition from higher education to work often focuses on cross-national variations of higher education systems to explain country-specific mobility patterns of higher education graduates. The structure of graduate labour markets, however, has received less attention, despite differences across countries. Variations in the structure of public services and the professions are particularly pronounced. This article, therefore, analyses graduate employment patterns in professional and public sector jobs. It develops an explanatory framework based on the concept of internal labour markets and asks whether country-specific degrees of social closure in the public and professional sector influence individual transitions from higher education to work. To answer this question, the study looks at two countries that vary strongly in their institutional organisation of public and professional services – namely, Britain and Germany. Empirically, the transition to public and professional sector employment is studied, as well as between-sector career mobility of higher education graduates. Results indicate that public and professional sector employment is more common in Germany, while further career mobility between these sectors is higher in Britain.

Estimating the Effects of Students’ Social Networks: Does Attending a Norm-Enforcing School Pay Off?

In an attempt to forge tighter social relations, small school reformers advocate school designs intended to create smaller, more trusting, and more collaborative settings. These efforts to enhance students’ social capital in the form of social closure are ultimately tied to improving academic outcomes. Using data derived from ELS: 2002, this study employs propensity scores in the context of multilevel models to estimate the effects of a specific school-level variant of social closure, referred to as a norm-enforcing school, on students’ mathematics achievement. Results estimate that attending a norm-enforcing school has no effect on 12th-grade mathematics achievement. This result questions the presumed benefits of social capital and its emphasis on norm-enforcement and social control. Policy implications are discussed in light of contemporary urban school reform initiatives that focus on reductions in school size.

Workplace incivilities: the role of interest conflicts, social closure and organizational chaos

Workplace incivility — that is, negative relational dimensions of employment with consequences for worker integrity and dignity — affects millions every year. In this article, the ‘organizational misbehaviour’ and ‘workplace chaos’ literatures offer building blocks for a conception wherein workplace incivility is viewed as emanating from the joint and sometimes interconnected influence of organizational processes and status-based social closure. The resulting multi-method analyses draw on coded information on incivility, organizational context, and relational and status dynamics from a large population of organizational ethnographies (N=204). Analyses reveal that all forms of incivility except sexual harassment are rooted in organizational chaos. Qualitative re-immersion into these ethnographic accounts provides further insights into how conflicts endemic to paid employment and broader social closure projects surrounding class, race, and gender play a role as well, albeit often in distinct ways.

Marrying out of the lower classes in nineteenth-century Belgium

ABSTRACTIn this article we address one of the most prominent questions in historical sociology: did economic modernization in the nineteenth century lead to societal openness? In an attempt to answer the question we examine the chances for lower-class grooms of marrying upwardly in five Belgian cities (Aalst, Leuven, Ghent, Verviers, and Liège). Our findings show that there is no support for a meritocracy hypothesis. The chances of marrying out of the lower classes did not increase, in either absolute or relative terms. Social closure strategies were efficient in that they apparently prevented upward marital mobility for lower-class grooms. As these findings were measured in a highly advanced economic context, this study casts strong doubts on the relationship between economic modernization, meritocracy, and marital mobility, at least for the nineteenth century.

Network Dynamics of the Dutch Business Elite

This article investigates the cohesion of the Dutch business elite during the 20th century. First it considers the old boys’ network, where social cohesion builds on shared family and educational background. Second, the board-meeting network of corporate directors in the Netherlands is analysed as an expression of the cohesion of the corporate elite. Unlike most studies on interlocking directorates, this article focuses on the interpersonal perspective of the network instead of the intercorporate perspective. The study finds that social cohesion declined between 1976 and 2001. The meeting network of the Dutch corporate elite has become the realm of brokers rather than a device of social cohesion and social closure. It no longer serves the purpose of creating trust among the corporate elite. As a result, norms of corporate governance have become blurred.

Book Reviews: Out of Order: The Political Imprisonment of Women in Northern Ireland 1972–1998, Science, Culture, and Modern State Formation, Nations, States and Violence, Belfast: Segregation, Violence and the City, Religion, Identity and Politics in Northern Ireland. Boundaries of Belonging and Belief, Doing Things with Things: The Design and Use of Everyday Objects, of States, Rights and Social Closure: Governing

Book Reviews: Out of Order: The Political Imprisonment of Women in Northern Ireland 1972–1998, Science, Culture, and Modern State Formation, Nations, States and Violence, Belfast: Segregation, Violence and the City, Religion, Identity and Politics in Northern Ireland. Boundaries of Belonging and Belief, Doing Things with Things: The Design and Use of Everyday Objects, of States, Rights and Social Closure: Governing

Legitimacy, expertise and closure in the Romanian accountant’s professional project, 1900—16

This study examines accounting’s professional project in Romania during the period 1900 to 1916. In the early twentieth century, as accounting practices in Romania were not regulated, access to the profession was liberal and therefore accountants represented a wide heterogeneous social category. Gradually, however, an elite group emerged, formed by the alumni of the schools of commerce. The alumni reacted with a reasoning of social closure and collective mobility within Romanian society, which subsequently led to the establishment of a centralized association (the Romanian Body of Alumni) that attempted to monopolize the accountancy field. The journal of the alumni played a fundamental role: it was a vehicle that called for professionalization and a device for legitimization. The first decisive step, namely the establishment of the Romanian Body of Accountants in 1915, was due to a separate initiative led by a dissident faction of the Romanian Body of Alumni.

The Group-lending Model and Social Closure: Microcredit, Exclusion, and Health in Bangladesh

According to social exclusion theory, health risks are positively associated with involuntary social, economic, political and cultural exclusion from society. In this paper, a social exclusion framework has been used, and available literature on microcredit in Bangladesh has been reviewed to explore the available evidence on associations among microcredit, exclusion, and health outcomes. The paper addresses the question of whether participation in group-lending reduces health inequities through promoting social inclusion. The group-lending model of microcredit is a development intervention in which small-scale credit for income-generation activities is provided to groups of individuals who do not have material collateral. The paper outlines four pathways through which microcredit can affect health status: financing care in the event of health emergencies; financing health inputs such as improved nutrition; as a platform for health education; and by increasing social capital through group meetings and mutual support. For many participants, the group-lending model of microcredit can mitigate exclusionary processes and lead to improvements in health for some; for others, it can worsen exclusionary processes which contribute to health disadvantage.