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An Introduction to Sociology
Analysis of the Social World
Edited by Mary Blair-Loy
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AN INTRODUCTION TO
SOCIOLOGY
ANALYSIS OF THE SOCIAL WORLD
Edited by Mary Blair-Loy
University of California, San Diego
From The Social Issues Collection™
A Routledge/University Readers Custom Library for Teaching
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CONTENTS
OVERVIEW:
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL STRUCTURES SHAPE LIFE CHANCES
Introduction:
Analyzing the Social and Cultural
Structures That Shape Our Lives
1
3
Mary Blair-Loy
Freshman Women at Duke University
Battle “Effortless Perfection”*
7
Maura Jane Farrelly
The NFL’s in Denial About Depression:
While the League Parties On, Some of Its Players
Are Secretly Hurting*
11
Dave Zirin
SECTION ONE:
CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
Introduction:
Analytical Lenses From the Classics: Durkheim, Weber, Marx
13
15
Mary Blair-Loy
Egoistic Suicide
19
Emile Durkheim
The Spirit of Capitalism
29
Max Weber
The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx
43
Class, Status, Party
53
Max Weber
SECTION TWO:
SOCIAL CLASS
Introduction:
Social Class
67
69
Mary Blair-Loy
The American Dream of Meritocracy
73
Heather Beth Johnson
Social Reproduction In Theoretical Perspective
87
Jay MacLeod
The Forms of Capital
93
Pierre Bourdieu
Getting Ahead or Losing Ground:
Economic Mobility In America
107
Julia B. Isaacs, Isabel V. Sawhill, and Ron Haskins
The Moral Underground:
How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy
111
Lisa Dodson
Unequal Childhoods:
Class, Race, and Family Life
127
Annette Lareau
SECTION THREE:
RACE, ETHNICITY, AND IMMIGRATION
149
Introduction:
Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration
151
Mary Blair-Loy
A Constructionist Approach
Stephen E. Cornell and Douglas Hartmann
153
A Portrait of Change:
Nation’s Many Faces in Extended First Family*
179
Jodi Kantor
The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans
185
Claire Jean Kim
Parents’ Aspirations and Investment:
The Role of Social Class in the Educational Experiences
of 1.5- and Second-Generation Chinese Americans
207
Vivian Louie
Still Separate, Still Unequal:
America’s Educational Apartheid
243
Jonathan Kozol
Equity and Empathy:
Toward Racial and Educational Achievement
in the Obama Era
263
Prudence L. Carter
Ambivalent Reception:
Mass Public Responses to the “New” Latino
Immigration to the United States
273
Wayne A. Cornelius
Immigration:
Wages, Education, and Mobility
295
Ron Haskins
The Wall That Keeps Illegal Workers In*
309
Douglas S. Massey
A Generation Gap Over Immigration*
311
Damien Cave
Unconscious Bias in Faculty and Leadership Recruitment:
A Literature Review
April Corrice
315
SECTION FOUR:
GENDER
Introduction:
Gender
321
323
Mary Blair-Loy
Human Beings:
An Engendered Species
325
Michael S. Kimmel
An Overview of Sex Inequality at Work
343
Irene Padavic and Barbara Reskin
Competing Devotions
361
Mary Blair-Loy
Just One of the Guys?
How Transmen Make Gender Visible at Work
373
Kristen Schilt
Intimate Fatherhood:
Exploring Attitudes
397
Esther Dermott
Now, Dad Feels as Stressed as Mom*
407
Tara Parker-Pope
Money, Housework, Sex, and Conflict:
Same-Sex Couples in Civil Unions,
Those Not in Civil Unions, and
Heterosexual Married Siblings
Sondra E. Solomon, Esther D. Rothblum, and Kimberly F. Balsam
411
SECTION FIVE:
INTERSECTIONS OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY,
CLASS, AND RACE/ETHNICITY IN COLLEGE LIFE
433
Introduction:
Intersections of Gender and Sexuality, Class,
and Race/Ethnicity in College Life
435
Mary Blair-Loy
Trading on Heterosexuality:
College Women’s Gender
Strategies and Homophobia
437
Laura Hamilton
Getting Off and Getting Intimate:
How Normative Institutional Arrangements
Structure Black and White Fraternity Men’s
Approaches Toward Women
459
Rashawn Ray and Jason A. Rosow
Overlooked Illegal Markets:
Dealing Dope, College Style
483
Rafik A. Mohamed and Erik D. Fritsvold
*
Asterisks designate timely newspaper articles that illustrate sociology in everyday life. The non-asterisked
readings are scholarly pieces.
OVERVIEW
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL
STRUCTURES SHAPE LIFE
CHANCES
INTRODUCTION
ANALYZING THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL
STRUCTURES THAT SHAPE OUR LIVES
Mary Blair-Loy
ecause sociology may be a new discipline to many college students, I first specify what it
is not. It is not a collection of personal anecdotes. It is not a political platform. Sociology
is the social scientific study of society. It focuses primarily on social groups, which in turn
come to influence the lives of individual people. In contrast, psychology focuses primarily on
individual behavior, which is affected by brain function and the environment.1
Sociology analyzes how people’s cultural beliefs, assumptions, habits, and actions are constructed, enabled, and constrained by social factors. Of course we as individuals have some power
to direct our lives. However, our personal control over our destiny is less than we might think. Our
opportunities to create or maintain a high quality of life—our life chances2—are largely shaped
by social institutions and cultural viewpoints. These social factors do not completely determine
our life chances, but they make certain outcomes more probable than others. Moreover, the
significance of characteristics that we may think of as personal or biological, such as our ethnicity,
race, or gender, are to a great extent assigned to us by social groups.
In more abstract language, social structures and cultural structures shape life chances and
identities.3 Social structures are durable patterns of relationships and behavior that last longer than
the participation of particular individuals. Examples include economic systems (such as capitalism),
B
1 “Careers in Psychology: What Psychology Is.” American Psychological Association website. http://www.apa.org/careers/
resources/guides/careers.aspx. Accessed June 1, 2010.
2 Max Weber is a late 19th-/early 20th-century social scientist and one of the founders of sociology. Weber discusses “life
chances” in the essay “Class, Status, Party” in this volume.
3 This formulation is influenced by Max Weber (this volume) and William H. Sewell, Jr. 1992. “A Theory of Structure:
Duality, Agency, and Transformation.” American Journal of Sociology 98: 1–29. For a fuller exposition, see Mary Blair-Loy.
2003. Competing Devotions: Career and Family among Women Executives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chap.
6.
Introduction | 3
4 | AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY
institutions (such as religion, the family, and the workplace), and social networks (e.g., sororities,
business associates, and village neighbors immigrating to a city in a new country). Cultural structures are patterns of broadly shared ideas and values that are at least partly internalized. Cultural
structures with wide acceptance and impact may also be called ideologies. (The term ideology does
not mean that the beliefs are necessarily false or true.) These ideas and values may be fairly explicit.
Yet cultural structures are often so taken-for-granted that we do not realize we are influenced by
them unless we encounter a radically different worldview.
Cultural structures interpret and justify social structures. In the real world, these structures
are closely linked. For example, the social structure of capitalism (the pattern of relationships and
behavior, in which firm owners and managers are required by shareholders to maximize the profit
they extract from their workers) is always accompanied by a cultural ideology that justifies it. This
Anthology will introduce you to cultural structures that give meaning to capitalistic workplaces,
including the Protestant work ethic, the work devotion schema, and the idea that each person rises
or falls by his or her individual merit (the American Dream).4 These ideologies are so taken-forgranted and unquestioned by so many of us that they are hidden in plain view.
Social structures give power and durability to cultural structures. First, social structures do
so by making cultural structures seem inevitable and unquestionable. Second, even if people do
develop a creative critique or new way of seeing the world, this vision is unlikely to be influential
without the support of alternative social structures.
Although social and cultural structures are linked in everyday life, this Anthology encourages
you to distinguish them analytically, for study. For example, by abstractly separating capitalism
into a set of social structures (patterns of behavior, such as how employers pay workers) and the
cultural structures that justify this practice, we can better understand how capitalism works, how
it affects each of us, and how we choose to deal with it.
The Anthology begins with two news articles. They are not sociological studies and do not
use the terms social and cultural structures. They do provide great examples of these structures.
Farrelly’s reports on how Duke University women students feel a pressure for effortless perfection.
This cultural structure requires that Duke undergraduate women be academically competitive
while conforming to feminine ideals about dress and body type. Moreover, they are expected to
achieve all this with no visible effort. Then, sportswriter Dave Zirin discusses how an ideology
of invincible masculinity stigmatizes mental health problems among professional football players.
Read more to discern how these ideologies interact with social structures with serious consequences
for life chances. In Section 4, we will read sociological research on these cultural structures, which
scholars have named “emphasized femininity” and “hegemonic masculinity.”
Sociologists have studied every facet of society, including education, the family, the workplace,
religion, crime, politics, social movements, gender, race and ethnicity, the economy, the environment, music, food, media, and sexuality. This Anthology does not offer a taste of every topic.
4 Max Weber, “The Spirit of Capitalism”; Mary Blair-Loy, Competing Devotions; and Johnson, “The American Dream of
Meritocracy,” all in this volume.
INTRODUCTION | 5
Instead, it presents a set of readings carefully selected to help you craft your own analytical perspective on society. Most readings are pieces of original scholarship. The Anthology also includes three
of the finest topical overviews written for college students as well as recent news articles illustrating
sociology in everyday life.
We begin with some classical writings from sociology’s founders. We will then study how
contemporary life chances in the United States are shaped by the dimensions of social class, race,
ethnicity, nationality, and gender. The final section assesses how these dimensions come together
in college life.
The readings in this volume will help you learn to discern social and cultural structures throughout society, which are often hidden. By becoming aware of structural constraints in your own life
and the lives of others, you will become more empowered to change them.
Sociology is as scientific and systematic as complex human communities allow. Sociologists
may write conceptual essays or they may use defensible research methods to collect, analyze, and
interpret evidence. This evidence may be nationally representative sample surveys, interviews of
carefully selected groups, or cultural objects (e.g., newspaper articles, song lyrics). Some sociologists
use statistical techniques, while others analyze themes in qualitative data. Some sociologists assess
whether the data support hypotheses, which are proposed explanations of probable relationships
between factors based on previous studies. Others explore data for new relationships that have not
been previously studied and then try to confirm their findings with new data. Many try to place
their findings within a broader theory or explanatory framework. All sociological findings are fair
game for critique, re-analysis, and revision. I encourage you to read every sociological study in this
Anthology with a critical eye.
SECTION ONE
CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
INTRODUCTION
ANALYTICAL LENSES FROM THE CLASSICS:
DURKHEIM, WEBER, MARX
Mary Blair-Loy
his section introduces classic texts by the founders of sociology: Emile Durkheim
(1858–1917), Max Weber (1864–1920), and Karl Marx (1818–1883). These European
writings from over a century ago use a style that is somewhat unfamiliar to us today. But
each author is intensely engaged with the issues raised by the massive industrialization of their
day: politics, religion, community, understanding one’s life purpose, the birth and possible death
of capitalism, and the sources of power. Each author has an argument about how social structures
and cultural structures create social change and influence life chances.
The first reading is a selection from one of the very first sociological monographs, Suicide, by
Emile Durkheim (published in 1897). Here, Durkheim argues that the social structure of religious
groups and family life can shape life chances, literally.
Durkheim used what was then an innovative research design: He used statistics to analyze
government data on suicide rates in Europe. He hypothesized that suicide rates would be higher
among some groups than others. (The overall risk is very low, and to assess the risk for a particular
individual, psychological data would be needed.) Durkheim found consistent patterns in the data
that supported his hypotheses. For example, he found that people who were more integrated in
a coherent social group (e.g., married parents, Catholics) had a lower risk of one type of suicide
(egoistic suicide) than those who were less socially integrated (e.g., single men, Protestants).
In 19th-century Europe, why would Catholics have lower suicide rates than Protestants?
Durkheim maintained that it is not the cultural structures of religious doctrine that mattered
directly. Both groups had doctrine prohibiting suicide. And Jews, whose doctrine lacked this
prohibition, had the lowest suicide rates of all. Instead, Durkheim argued that religion protects
T
Introduction to Section One | 15
16 | AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY
against suicide because its social structures—its community activities, festivals, and neighborhoods—provide a cohesive social life that support members during difficult times. Protestant
churches had a less intense community life than Catholic churches and therefore offered less protection. Anti-Semitism and segregation in 19th-century Europe created the most intense collective
life among Jews, which offered the strongest bulwark against suicide. Although later scholars have
argued with some of Durkheim’s findings and interpretations, this book remains groundbreaking
in its approach.
The next reading is a portion of Max Weber’s famous book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism, first published in 1904. Weber investigates how capitalism flourished first in England
and the American colonies. He argues that many of the social structural preconditions (such as
international trade and credible currency) necessary for capitalism to develop were present in many
places. But England and the American colonies had also embraced a particular cultural structure,
the Protestant ethic, which brought capitalism to full fruition. The Protestant ethic, based in
Puritanism, preached that one dedicate one’s life to continuous, careful work in a calling or vocation to serve God and society. The Puritans hoped that success at one’s calling might be a sign
of God’s favor for them in the hereafter. Therefore, they were motivated to work intensively and
reinvest their profits. Eventually, this work ethic led to accumulated wealth, a religious rationale
to exploit their employees, and the birth of capitalism. Weber argued that even after the religious
meanings of vocation had faded, people continued to feel compelled to work hard in the service
of capitalist reinvestment.
The Protestant ethic has evolved into nonreligious cultural structures that continue to be widely
shared in contemporary U.S. society. This ethic encouraged a belief in individual success based
on one’s own virtue, which evolved into the meritocracy ideology embraced by most Americans
(Johnson, Section 2 of this volume) yet criticized by some managers as inhumane (Dodson, Section
2). And the “work devotion schema” as a source of meaning and purpose for executives today is
analyzed by Mary Blair-Loy (Section 4).
In the next set of readings, Karl Marx (in a portion of The Communist Manifesto from 1848) and
Max Weber (in “Class, Status, Party”) make contrasting arguments about how social and cultural
structures shape life chances. Marx maintained that economic class, specifically whether one owns
the means of production,1 determines life chances. The owners of the means of production exploit
workers and maintain power over them. Marx argued that owners paid workers the minimum for
survival while keeping the rest of the value of the workers’ productive labor for their own income
and for capital investment.
1 For Marx, the mode of production is a historically specific economic system (e.g., feudalism, capitalism, socialism)
composed of the means of wealth production (e.g., land for feudalism, factories and capital for capitalism) and the relations
of production (e.g., relationships of power and control that landlords had over serfs or that capitalist owners have over
workers).
INTRODUCTION TO SECTION ONE | 17
Moreover, the economic mode of production is a social structure that conveniently creates
cultural structures to justify it. In contrast to Weber’s Protestant Ethic argument that cultural
ideologies can have a distinct causal influence on the economy, Marx maintained that cultural
ideas derived from the mode of production and were manipulated by the economic upper class to
serve their interests.
For example, under feudalism, the lords owned the means of producing wealth (land) and
maintained power over the serfs (tenant farmers tied to the land) by invoking cultural structures
such as the doctrine that the king and his lords were appointed by God to rule and protect their
serfs. Economic development led to capitalism and the ascendancy of the bourgeois merchants,
who owned the new means of production (factories and firms). The bourgeoisie destroyed the
cultural structures that had justified feudalism, and it accumulated profit, wealth, and power at the
expense of the exploited wage laborers (proletariat).
Marx argued that every mode of production contains seeds of its own destruction. He expected
that economic development and the boom and bust cycles of capitalism would lead to large communities of workers recognizing their common interests and organizing into a self-conscious class
to overthrow the bourgeoisie.
In “Class, Status, Party,” Weber argues that many sources of social power determine life chances.
He agrees with Marx that economic class is an important one. Yet Weber sees a more complex
range of class groups, based on the market value of what owners can sell (commodities) or the
skills the workers can offer. Moreover, Weber recognizes social status and political leadership as
additional resources for power. Finally, Weber is skeptical of the argument of a “talented author”
(Marx) that the working class will inevitably organize for massive change. Weber cautions that the
market system prevents many workers from recognizing their common interests and their real class
enemies.
SECTION TWO
SOCIAL CLASS
INTRODUCTION
SOCIAL CLASS
Mary Blair-Loy
What Is Social Class?
cholars use the term social class in different ways. The previous section introduced Marx’s
argument that class membership is based on whether one owns the means of production
and that owners and workers are locked in an unequal relationship of power and exploitation. Weber emphasized that alongside economic class, social status and political leadership are
power resources that shape life chances. Further, Weber recognized several gradations within the
broad economic class categories of owners and workers.
Contemporary sociologists apply insights from Marx, Weber, and Pierre Bourdieu (discussed
below) to the occupations in the United States today. It is common to distinguish among those
with the most power (owners and top managers of the means of production), professionals (who
provide paid expertise to the owners), the lower-middle and working classes (who do mid-level
service and manufacturing jobs), and the lower class (whose wages are too low to make ends meet).
One recent study1 divided Americans into four classes based on family income. (Family income
may be from more than one worker.) Lower-income or poor families are those in the bottom 30
percent of the income ladder in the United States, who earn a median of $19,000 a year and less
than $35,000. Working- and middle-class families are the 50 percent of American families who
make a median of $64,000 (with a range of $35,000 to $110,000 a year). The professional and
managerial class earns family income in the top 20 percent of all Americans (minimum $110,000,
S
1 Joan Williams and Heather Boushey. 2010. The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict: The Poor, the Professionals, and
the Missing Middle. WorkLife Law, UC Hastings College of the Law, San Francisco and Center for American Progress,
Washington, DC. http://www.worklifelaw.org/pubs/ThreeFacesofWork-FamilyConflict.pdf. Accessed June 1, 2010.
Introduction to Section Two | 69
70 | AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY
median of $148,000). In the aggregate, the lower-income and the working and middle classes earn
significantly less than they did in the 1970s; the professional and managerial class makes more.
Income and wealth inequality have sharply increased in the United States since the 1970s.
Inequality is now as high as it was in the roaring 1920s, before the Great Depression. If we place
the entire population of U.S. families on a ladder, from highest to lowest earning, we find that the
3,000 richest families at the tip top .01 percent of the ladder have 300 times the income of the
average family and control almost as much income as the 20 million poorest families. Further,
the wages of the average nonsupervisory worker (adjusted for inflation) are lower now than they
were in 1970, while CEO income has skyrocketed from less than 30 times to almost 300 times
that average wage.2
Class Mobility or the Reproduction of Inequality?
Once we have decided how to divide up the population into different social classes, we can ask
how common it is for children to rise above the social class of their parents. This section presents
different perspectives on this question and then provides a summary of recent U.S. data for you to
draw your own conclusions.
First, Heather Beth Johnson discusses the meritocracy ideology, also called the American
Dream. This is a widespread cultural structure or belief that America offers great opportunities for
upward mobility for those who are motivated to work hard and take individual responsibility for
their success. Education is assumed to be the pathway to upward mobility that is available to all.
Moreover, it is widely held that America is the land of opportunity offering more upward mobility
than in Europe. In “a meritocracy, people get ahead or behind based on what they earn and
deserve, rather than what circumstances there were born into” (Johnson, p. 101, this volume).3
Next, the section introduces the influential French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002).
Drawing on Marx and Weber, Bourdieu sees social class as based upon the resources of economic
capital, social capital (networks and connections), and cultural capital (mental tools acquired in
childhood that allow one to appropriate new cultural knowledge and gain academic credentials).
In contrast to the meritocracy ideology, which sees education as a path to upward mobility for
all, Bourdieu maintains that education helps perpetuate class membership across generations. He
argues that the children most likely to be successful in getting prestigious academic credentials are
those who have already received from their parents the cultural capital most valorized (valued) by
the middle and upper classes. These academic credentials are then converted into high economic
capital for them as adults. Bourdieu also argues that objective class conditions create one’s habitus
2 These statistics come from Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman’s summaries of a body of research and statistics
on this topic. See Krugman, Paul. 2002. “For Richer.” New York Times Magazine. October 20. Krugman, Paul. 2006. “The
Great Wealth Transfer.” Rolling Stone magazine. November 30.
3 This perspective is similar to functionalism, the view that society is functional and fair in rewarding resources to those
who provide the most value to society.
INTRODUCTION TO SECTION TWO | 71
(the subjective experiences, unconscious perceptions, aspirations, and preferences of class members). Bourdieu’s writing style is challenging; the selection from Jay MacLeod’s book helps explain
some of the concepts.
The next reading is a brief overview of a report by the nonpartisan Economic Mobility Project
on statistics about upward and downward mobility in the United States.4 What findings and
for which groups are most consistent with the meritocracy ideology? Which findings are more
consistent with Bourdieu’s argument about the reproduction of class status across generations?
How much upward mobility does the United States offer compared to other advanced economies?
The last two readings are fascinating studies, based on in-depth interviews, of how social class
inequality shapes work experiences and family life. Lisa Dodson’s book reveals that many middleclass supervisors blame their subordinates for having a deficient work ethic. Yet other supervisors
see a moral dilemma: their subordinates’ wages are too low for them to ensure their families are
cared for while consistently obeying workplace rules about things like punctuality and not making
personal phone calls. These supervisors risk their own jobs to assist subordinates. For example,
Dodson interviewed restaurant managers who quietly inflated workers’ hours in order to augment
paychecks and allowed workers’ children to eat without cost while waiting in the restaurant for
their parents.
Finally, Annette Lareau immerses herself in the lives of working- and middle-class families to
see how parents unconsciously inculcate different types of habits, competencies, values, and skills
in their children. Working-class parents are more likely to raise their children with independent,
“long stretches of leisure time, child-initiated play, … and daily interactions with kin” (Lareau, pp.
157, this volume). In contrast, middle-class parents cultivate their children with “a steady diet of
adult organized activities” that teach particular skills, habits, and a sense of entitlement. Lareau’s
interviews with parents and kids bring Bourdieu’s theory of capital and habitus to life.
4 For the full report, go to http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/PEW_EMP_GETTING_AHEAD_FULL.pdf.
Accessed June 1, 2010.