Winner of the 2010 Best Book Award from the Political Economy of World Systems Section of the American Sociological Association

“‘As they develop, national economies first become more unequal and then more equal. China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil, and many more will eventually catch up with western production and income standards, and will each become as equal as today’s high-income and low-inequality countries. So the distribution of income between all the world’s people will become much more equal than it is today, thanks to the growth of global markets.’ If you are inclined to believe these and related propositions—and the supporting body of globalization theory, modernization theory, new-liberal economics, and the policy prescriptions known as the Washington Consensus— you should read Unveiling Inequality. By taking the whole world rather than the national economy as the unit of analysis the book reaches conclusions about why some areas are prosperous and some poor, some fairly equal and others very unequal, which make the standard beliefs about these things seem about as plausible as the signs of the zodiac to astronomers.”
—ROBERT WADE, professor of political economy and development, London School of Economics 

“Unveiling Inequality is an important book. For students and teachers, it provides a concise overview of the status of global inequality and the various accounts of and explanations for it. For scholars, the proposed integration of between and within-country inequality offers a novel research agenda. The suggestion that citizenship is the basis for the new global hierarchy should be part of any policy debate on immigration.”
—MIGUEL CENTENO, professor of sociology and international affairs, Princeton University

Despite the vast expansion of global markets during the last half of the twentieth century, social science still most often examines and measures inequality and social mobility within individual nations rather than across national boundaries. Every country has both rich and poor populations making demands—via institutions, political processes, or even conflict—on how their resources will be distributed. But shifts in inequality in one country can precipitate accompanying shifts in another. Unveiling Inequality authors Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz and Timothy Patrick Moran make the case that within-country analyses alone have not adequately illuminated our understanding of global stratification. The authors present a comprehensive new framework that moves beyond national boundaries to analyze economic inequality and social mobility on a global scale and from a historical perspective.

Assembling data on patterns of inequality in more than ninety-six countries, Unveiling Inequality reframes the relationship between globalization and inequality within and between nations. Korzeniewicz and Moran first examine two different historical patterns—“High Inequality Equilibrium” and “Low Inequality Equilibrium”—and question whether increasing equality, democracy, and economic growth are inextricably linked as nations modernize. Inequality is best understood as a complex set of relational interactions that unfold globally over time. So the same institutional mechanisms that have historically reduced inequality within some nations have also often accentuated the selective exclusion of populations from poorer countries and enhanced high inequality equilibrium between nations. National identity and citizenship are the fundamental contemporary bases of stratification and inequality in the world, the authors conclude. Drawing on these insights, the book recasts patterns of mobility within global stratification. The authors detail the three principal paths available for social mobility from a global perspective: within-country mobility, mobility through national economic growth, and mobility through migration.

Korzeniewicz and Moran provide strong evidence that the nation where we are born is the single greatest deter-mining factor of how we will live. Too much sociological literature on inequality focuses on the plight of “have-nots” in wealthy nations who have more opportunity for social mobility than even the average individual in nations perennially at the bottom of the wealth distribution scale. Unveiling Inequality represents a major paradigm shift in thinking about social inequality and a clarion call to reorient discussions of economic justice in world-historical global terms.

ROBERTO PATRICIO KORZENIEWICZ is professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and profesor titular at the Escuela de Política y Gobierno of the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (Argentina).

TIMOTHY PATRICK MORAN is associate professor of sociology and director of Graduate Studies at State University of New York-Stony Brook

"Becoming New Yorkers reveals the multi-faceted lives of the second generation and the truth about the fluidity of identity. Indeed, becoming a New Yorker is a quintessential American experience that resonates astonishingly well with those of immigrant parentage who grow up in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Houston, and elsewhere in the United States."
-MIN ZHOU, professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles

"Understanding how new New Yorkers become New Yorkers has been a complex matter for social scientists since the publication of the seminal Beyond the Melting Pot. Succeeding waves of immigrants have faced the challenges of accommodating to a new culture and language, while utilizing social mediators such as public education systems and political and social organizations. The results are as varied as the individual stories of immigrants themselves. The ethnographies detailed in Becoming New Yorkers offer a rich guide to linguistic, social, and economic adaptation by the foreign-born and second-generation children of immigrants in New York City."
-FERNANDO FERRER, former Bronx Borough President, New York City

More than half of New Yorkers under the age of eighteen are the children of immigrants. This second generation shares with previous waves of immigrant youth the experience of attempting to reconcile their cultural heritage with American society. In Becoming New Yorkers, noted social scientists Philip Kasinitz, John Mollenkopf, and Mary Waters bring together in-depth ethnographies of some of New York’s largest immigrant populations to assess the experience of the new second generation and to explore the ways in which they are changing the fabric of American culture.

Becoming New Yorkers looks at the experience of specific immigrant groups, with regard to education, jobs, and community life. Exploring immigrant education, Nancy López shows how teachers’ low expectations of Dominican males often translate into lower graduation rates for boys than for girls. In the labor market, Dae Young Kim finds that Koreans, young and old alike, believe the second generation should use the opportunities provided by their parents’ small business success to pursue less arduous, more rewarding work than their parents. Analyzing civic life, Amy Forester profiles how the high-ranking members of a predominantly black labor union, who came of age fighting for civil rights in the 1960s, adjust to an increasingly large Caribbean membership that sees the leaders not as pioneers but as the old-guard establishment. In a revealing look at how the second-generation views itself, Sherry Ann Butterfield and Aviva Zeltzer-Zubida point out that black West Indian and Russian Jewish immigrants often must choose whether to identify themselves alongside those with similar skin color or to differentiate themselves from both native blacks and whites based on their unique heritage. Like many other groups studied here, these two groups experience race as a fluid, situational category that matters in some contexts but is irrelevant in others.

As immigrants move out of gateway cities and into the rest of the country, America will increasingly look like the multicultural society vividly described in Becoming New Yorkers. This insightful work paints a vibrant picture of the experience of second generation Americans as they adjust to American society and help to shape its future.

PHILIP KASINITZ is professor of sociology at the Graduate Center and Hunter College of the City University of New York.

JOHN H. MOLLENKOPF is distinguished professor of political science and sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

MARY C. WATERS is Harvard College Professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at Harvard University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Sherri-Ann P. Butterfield, Amy Foerster, Philip Kasinitz, Dae Young Kim, Karen Chai Kim, Sara S. Lee, Nancy Lopez, Vivian Louie, Victoria Malkin, Nicole P. Marwell, John H. Mollenkopf, Alex Trillo, Natasha Warikoo, Mary C. Waters, and Aviva Zeltzer-Zubida

The nature of well-being is one of the most enduring and elusive subjects of human inquiry. Well-Being draws upon the latest scientific research to transform our understanding of this ancient question. With contributions from leading authorities in psychology, social psychology, and neuroscience, this volume presents the definitive account of current scientific efforts to understand human pleasure and pain, contentment and despair.

The distinguished contributors to this volume combine a rigorous analysis of human sensations, emotions, and moods with a broad assessment of the many factors, from heredity to nationality, that bear on our well-being. Using the tools of experimental science, the contributors confront the puzzles of human likes and dislikes. Why do we grow accustomed and desensitized to changes in our lives, both good and bad? Does our happiness reflect the circumstances of our lives or is it determined by our temperament and personality? Why do humans acquire tastes for sensations that are initially painful or unpleasant? By examining the roots of our everyday likes and dislikes, the book also sheds light on some of the more extreme examples of attraction and aversion, such as addiction and depression.

Among its wide ranging inquiries, Well-Being examines systematic differences in moods and behaviors between genders, explaining why women suffer higher rates of depression and anxiety than men, but are also more inclined to express positive emotions. The book also makes international comparisons, finding that some countries' populations report higher levels of happiness than others. The contributors deploy an array of methods, from the surveys and questionnaires of social science to psychological and physiological experiments, to develop a comprehensive new approach to the study of well-being. They show how the sensory pleasures of the body can tells us something about the higher pleasures of the mind and even how the effectiveness of our immune system can depend upon the health of our social relationships.

DANIEL KAHNEMAN is Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and professor of public affairs at Princeton University.

ED DIENER is professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

NORBERT SCHWARZ is professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and senior research scientist at the Survey Research Center and the Research Center for Group Dynamics of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.

CONTRIBUTORS:  Michael Argyle, Jorge Armony, Howard Berenbaum, Kent Berridge, Ian A. Brodkin,  John T. Cacioppo, Nancy Cantor.  Anuradha F. Chawla, Martin W. DeVries, Aric Eich,  Shane Frederick, Barabara L. Fredrickson,  Nico H. Frijda,  PPaul Frijters,  Jose Gomez, Heidi Grant,  E. Tory Higgins,  Bartley G. Hoebel,  Tiffany A. Ito, Micheal Kubovy,  Randy J. Larsen,  Huynh-Nhu Le,  Joseph LeDoux,  George Loewenstein,  Richard E. Lucas,  Gregory P. Mark,  William N. Morris,  David G. Myers,  Susan Nolen-Hoeksema,  Christopher Peterson,  Emmanuel N. Pothos,  Pedro V. Rada,  Chitra Raghavan,  John L. Reeves,  Paul Rozin,  Cheryl L. Rustig,  Catherine A. Sanderson,  Robert M. Sapolsky, David Schkade,  James Shah,  Saul Shiffman, Peter Shizgal,  Arthur A. Stone,  Fritz Strack,  Eunkook Mark Suh,  Bernard M. S. van Praag,  Laura Vernon,  Peter Warr.   

A Volume in the American Sociological Association’s Rose Series in Sociology

Winner of the 2002 Outstanding Scholarship Award from the Crime and Delinquency Section of the Society for the Study of Social Problems

"As someone who has spent considerable time fighting and raising awareness of hate crimes, I am extremely impressed with this book's insightful analysis. It is exceptionally compelling work for those interested in understanding the intersection of civil rights, violence, and public policy. It's a must read for those who want to combat hate crime."
-U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California)

"In this fascinating and important book, Valerie Jenness and Ryken Grattet show how social movement organizations, interest groups, and policy experts came to think that crimes motivated by hatred of social groups should be considered a special type of crime; how they managed to win media attention for this newly defined type of crime; how they convinced Congress and many state legislatures to accept their view and to enact hate crimes laws; how interpretations of hate crime laws by the courts and the police affect enforcement; and the impact hate crime laws are likely to have on American society. Making Hate a Crime is a well-written analysis of an important chapter in American politics, and will be of great interest to a wide audience concerned about hate crimes."
-Paul Burstein, University of Washington

"In their insightful new work, Jenness and Grattet effectively analyze the development of hate crime laws. How are we to explain the institutionalization of hate crime legislation? Was it a result of a rising tide of hate violence or simply the influence of interest group politics? This book presents a convincing case that it was neither. There are important sociological lessons to be learned from the pages of Making Hate a Crime."
-Jack Levin, Northeastern University

Violence motivated by racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and homophobia weaves a tragic pattern throughout American history. Fueled by recent high-profile cases, hate crimes have achieved an unprecedented visibility. Only in the past twenty years, however, has this kind of violence—itself as old as humankind—been specifically categorized and labeled as hate crime. Making Hate a Crime is the first book to trace the emergence and development of hate crime as a concept, illustrating how it has become institutionalized as a social fact and analyzing its policy implications.

In Making Hate a Crime Valerie Jenness and Ryken Grattet show how the concept of hate crime emerged and evolved over time, as it traversed the arenas of American politics, legislatures, courts, and law enforcement. In the process, violence against people of color, immigrants, Jews, gays and lesbians, women, and persons with disabilities has come to be understood as hate crime, while violence against other vulnerable victims-octogenarians, union members, the elderly, and police officers, for example-has not. The authors reveal the crucial role social movements played in the early formulation of hate crime policy, as well as the way state and federal politicians defined the content of hate crime statutes, how judges determined the constitutional validity of those statutes, and how law enforcement has begun to distinguish between hate crime and other crime. Hate crime took on different meanings as it moved from social movement concept to law enforcement practice. As a result, it not only acquired a deeper jurisprudential foundation but its scope of application has been restricted in some ways and broadened in others. Making Hate a Crime reveals how our current understanding of hate crime is a mix of political and legal interpretations at work in the American policymaking process. Jenness and Grattet provide an insightful examination of the birth of a new category in criminal justice: hate crime. Their findings have implications for emerging social problems such as school violence, television-induced violence, elder-abuse, as well as older ones like drunk driving, stalking, and sexual harassment. Making Hate a Crime presents a fresh perspective on how social problems and the policies devised in response develop over time.

VALERIE JENNESS is associate professor and chair of criminology, law, and society, as well as associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine.

RYKEN GRATTET is associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis.

This unique comparative study looks at efforts to regulate carcinogenic chemicals in several Western democracies, including the United States, and finds marked national differences in how conflicting scientific interpretations and competing political interests are resolved. Whether risk issues are referred to expert committees without public debate or debated openly in a variety of forums, patterns of interaction among experts, policy makers, and the public reflect fundamental features of each country's political culture.

"A provocative argument....Poses interesting questions for the sociology of science, especially science produced for public debate."—Contemporary Sociology

SHEILA JASANOFF is Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

A Volume in the the Russell Sage Foundation's Social Science Frontiers Series

How are we, as members of a society, informed of conditions that affect our social welfare? How does the government register the impact of its actions on its citizens? The turbulent 1930s saw the emergence of sample survey research as an increasingly valuable technique of social inquiry. Perhaps no one championed this nascent discipline as vigorously as Herbert Hyman, one of those pioneering investigators whose talents were so closely associated with the rapid growth of survey research that their professional careers and reputations became virtually indistinguishable from the field itself.

Hyman’s personal account is a remarkable contribution to the history and sociology of social research. His experiences with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Office of War Information, the U.S. Bombing Surveys of Germany and Japan, the National Opinion Research Center, and the Bureau of Applied Social Research are all documented with fascinating insight into the critical events and prominent individuals that shaped the field of survey research between the late 1930s and the late 1950s.

The late HERBERT H. HYMAN retired from Wesleyan University in 1983 as Professor of Sociology Emeritus.

HUBERT O'GORMAN was, until his untimely death, professor of sociology at the same university.

ELEANOR SINGER is senior research scholar at the Center for the Social Sciences at Columbia University.

A Volume in the American Sociological Association’s Rose Series in Sociology

"In Ethnic Origins Jeremy Hein offers important insights into the ways in which two groups of Southeast Asian refugees to the United States-the animist Hmong, a distinct minority community in Laos, and the Buddhist Khmer, members of the Cambodian majority-become ethnic Americans. This many faceted study of adaptation and acculturation and the varied courses these two very different cultural groups follow is at once an informative, critical, and evocative examination of the backgrounds and experiences of what Hein calls some inconspicuous people living in 'some obscure places.' It is something more as well. Ethnic Origins is a fine example of the use of multiple methods of data-gathering-historical and archival research, structured surveys, focused interviews, and peer-group conversations, and a model of concise and compelling investigative reporting."
-PETER I. ROSE, Smith College

"In this meticulously researched and well-written book, Professor Hein offers a much-needed analysis of the impact of ethnic cultures on the experience of contemporary immigrants. His comparative methodology offers a powerful lens on these issues. Ethnic Origins is essential reading for those who are interested in the complex impact of history, culture, and structural location on the adaptation of immigrants."
-NAZLI KIBRIA, Boston University

"This impressive, in-depth study of Hmong and Cambodian refugees and immigrants in the United States is com parative in several senses of that word. Jeremy Hein examines the similarities and differences between the two groups by looking at their 'ethnic origins'-a shorthand moniker for their homeland histories, politics, social struc tures, and cultures-as well as the impact of locational characteristics on their patterns of adaptation. By analyz ing two large cities and two smaller towns, Hein concludes that the differences in locational characteristics have a lesser impact than ethnic origins. The book also sheds new light on how ethnic origins help filter the Hmong and Cambodian interactions with other peoples of color (especially African Americans and Asian Americans) and with European Americans. Most notably, Hein succinctly compares his own complex theoretical framework with those used by other social scientists. I know of no other studies that analyze key issues at both the theoretical and public-policy levels so systematically. A truly laudable achievement, this book encourages us to see race, ethnicity, and contemporary immigration into the United States in fresh and multidimensional ways."
-SUCHENG CHAN, University of California, Santa Barbara

"Ethnic Origins is an ambitious and original study of Cambodian and Hmong refugees in four midwestern loca tions that highlights the impact of distinctive ethnic origins-homeland histories, cultures, and politics-as well as the nature of place of settlement on the immigrant experience. The book is full of interesting material and contributes to our understanding of a host of topics in the immigration field, including the formation of pan-ethnic identities and the kind of welcome immigrants receive in small town white America as compared to large and diverse urban centers."
-NANCY FONER, Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York

Immigration studies have increasingly focused on how immigrant adaptation to their new homelands is influenced by the social structures in the sending society, particularly its economy. Less scholarly research has focused on the ways that the cultural make-up of immigrant homelands influences their adaptation to life in a new country. In Ethnic Origins, Jeremy Hein investigates the role of religion, family, and other cultural factors on immigrant incorporation into American society by comparing the experiences of two little-known immigrant groups living in four different American cities not commonly regarded as immigrant gateways.

Ethnic Origins provides an in-depth look at Hmong and Khmer refugees—people who left Asia as a result of failed U.S. foreign policy in their countries. These groups share low socio-economic status, but are vastly different in their norms, values, and histories. Hein compares their experience in two small towns—Rochester, Minnesota and Eau Claire, Wisconsin—and in two big cities—Chicago and Milwaukee—and examines how each group adjusted to these different settings. The two groups encountered both community hospitality and narrow-minded hatred in the small towns, contrasting sharply with the cold anonymity of the urban pecking order in the larger cities. Hein finds that for each group, their ethnic background was more important in shaping adaptation patterns than the place in which they settled. Hein shows how, in both the cities and towns, the Hmong’s sharply drawn ethnic boundaries and minority status in their native land left them with less affinity for U.S. citizenship or “Asian American” panethnicity than the Khmer, whose ethnic boundary is more porous. Their differing ethnic backgrounds also influenced their reactions to prejudice and discrimination. The Hmong, with a strong group identity, perceived greater social inequality and supported collective political action to redress wrongs more than the individualistic Khmer, who tended to view personal hardship as a solitary misfortune, rather than part of a larger-scale injustice.

Examining two unique immigrant groups in communities where immigrants have not traditionally settled, Ethnic Origins vividly illustrates the factors that shape immigrants’ response to American society and suggests a need to refine prevailing theories of immigration. Hein’s book is at once a novel look at a little-known segment of America’s melting pot and a significant contribution to research on Asian immigration to the United States.

JEREMY HEIN is professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire.

“The Social Organization of Schooling should be required reading for current researchers and policy makers struggling to understand and improve public school performance. The book makes a significant contribution to contemporary educational scholarship by reasserting the primacy of organizational analysis in the examination of both the strengths and limitations of schools as institutions.”
—RICHARD ARUM, professor of sociology and director of educational research, New York University 

“The Social Organization of Schooling takes seriously the claim that schools are best understood as operating within a social context. Whether focusing on the dynamics of the classroom or how educational institutions change, the contributors to this book highlight important contextual conditions. The result is a theoretically rich way of thinking about current and changing conditions of schools.”
—DOUGLAS B. DOWNEY, associate professor of sociology, Ohio State University

Schools are complex social settings where students, teachers, administrators, and parents interact to shape a child’s educational experience. Any effort to improve educational outcomes for America’s children requires a dynamic understanding of the environments in which children learn. In The Social Organization of Schooling, editors Larry Hedges and Barbara Schneider assemble researchers from the fields of education, organizational theory, and sociology to provide a new framework for understanding and analyzing America’s schools and the many challenges they face.

The Social Organization of Schooling closely examines the varied components that make up a school’s social environment. Contributors Adam Gamoran, Ramona Gunter, and Tona Williams focus on the social organization of teaching. Using intensive case studies, they show how positive professional relations among teachers contribute to greater collaboration, the dissemination of effective teaching practices, and ultimately, a better learning environment for children. Children learn more from better teachers, but those best equipped to teach often opt for professions with higher social stature, such as law or medicine. In his chapter, Robert Dreeben calls for the establishment of universal principles and practices to define good teaching, arguing that such standards are necessary to legitimize teaching as a high status profession. The Social Organization of Schooling also looks at how social norms in schools are shaped and reinforced by interactions among teachers and students. Sociologist Maureen Hallinan shows that students who are challenged intellectually and accepted socially are more likely to embrace school norms and accept responsibility for their own actions. Using classroom observations, surveys, and school records, Daniel McFarland finds that group-based classroom activities are effective tools in promoting both social and scholastic development in adolescents. The Social Organization of Schooling also addresses educational reforms and the way they affect a school’s social structures. Examining how testing policies affect children’s opportunities to learn, Chandra Muller and Kathryn Schiller find that policies which increased school accountability boosted student enrollment in math courses, reflecting a shift in the school culture towards higher standards.

Employing a variety of analytical methods, The Social Organization of Schooling provides a sound understanding of the social mechanisms at work in our educational system. This important volume brings a fresh perspective to the many ongoing debates in education policy and is essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of America’s children.

LARRY V. HEDGES is Stella M. Rowley Professor of Education, Psychology, and Sociology in the Harris School at the University of Chicago.

BARBARA SCHNEIDER is professor of sociology and human development and codirector of the Alfred P. Sloan Center on Parents, Children, and Work at the University of Chicago.

CONTRIBUTORS: Charles E. Bidwell, Robert Dreeban,  Kenneth A. Frank,  Adam Gamoran,  Ramona Gunter,   Maureen T. Hallinan, Lori Diane Hill, Richard M. Ingersoll,  Susan Moore Johnson,  Daniel A. McFarland,  Chandra Muller,  Robert A. Petrin,  Catherine Riegle-Crumb, Kathryn S. Schiller, W. Richard Scott,  Christopher B. Swanson,  Tona Williams, Yong Zhao.