Deals in comprehensive fashion with a diverse array of objective and subjective social indicators and shows how these indicators can be used, potentially, to inform and perhaps guide social policy. Written with clarity and authority, it will be of paramount interest to those concerned with the interpretation and analysis of social indicators and to those interested in their use. For the former, it serves as an illuminating introduction to some of the analytical tasks that lie ahead in the study of social indicators. For the latter, it provides a solid foundation upon which future policy analysis may be based.

KENNETH C. LAND is associate professor of sociology at the University of Illinois, Urbana.

SEYMOUR SPILERMAN is professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

CONTRIBUTORS:  James S. Coleman,  James A. Davis, Beverly Duncan,  Otis Dudley Duncan,  Mark Evers,  David L. Featherman,  Robert M. Hauser,  Kenneth C. Land,  Judah Matras,  David D. McFarland,  Aage B. Sorenson,  Seymour Spilerman,  Arthur L. Stinchcombe,  Richard Stone,  Kermit Terrell,  Donald J. Treiman, James C. Wendt, H.H. Winsborough.  

"Anyone who wants to gain an authoritative understanding of what race and ethnicity mean in the contemporary United States should read this book. The facts are here, along with some theoretical perspectives that will help us to interpret them. A recurrent theme of the essays is that racism has not died and been replaced by genuine color-blindness, as some recently have claimed, but has taken on insidious new forms. The authors demonstrate statistically and in other ways that 'structural' or 'systemic' inequality based on race or color has not only persisted but in some respects gotten worse in the last two or three decades. The issues raised by the distinguished sociologists and other scholars who have contributed to this volume require the urgent attention of all Americans who aspire to create a more just and equal society."
-GEORGE M. FREDRICKSON, Edgar E. Robinson Professor of History Emeritus, Stanford University

"A collection of remarkably well-integrated research articles and theoretical essays on how the meanings, uses, and practices of race are constantly evolving. Highly recommended."
-TROY DUSTER, professor of sociology, New York University, and president, American Sociological Association

The legal institutions of overt racism in the United States have been eliminated, but social surveys and investigations of social institutions confirm the continuing significance of race and the enduring presence of negative racial attitudes. This shift from codified and explicit racism to more subtle forms comes at a time when the very boundaries of race and ethnicity are being reshaped by immigration and a rising recognition that old systems of racial classification inadequately capture a diverse America. In The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity, editors Maria Krysan and Amanda Lewis bring together leading scholars of racial dynamics to study the evolution of America’s racial problem and its consequences for race relations in the future.

The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity opens by attempting to answer a puzzling question: how is it that so many whites think racism is no longer a problem but so many nonwhites disagree? Sociologist Lawrence Bobo contends that whites exhibit what he calls “laissez faire racism,” which ignores historical and structural contributions to racial inequality and does nothing to remedy the injustices of the status quo. Tyrone Forman makes a similar case in his chapter, contending that an emphasis on “color blindness” allows whites to be comforted by the idea that all races are on a level playing field, while not recognizing the advantages they themselves have reaped from years of inequality. The book then moves to a discussion of the new ways that Americans view race. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Karen Glover argue that the United States is moving from a black-white divide to a tripartite system, where certain light-skinned, non-threatening minority groups are considered “honorary whites.” The book’s final section reexamines the theoretical underpinnings of scholarship on race and ethnicity. Joe Feagin argues that research on racism focuses too heavily on how racial boundaries are formed and needs to concentrate more on how those boundaries are used to maintain privileges for certain groups at the expense of others. Manning Marable contends that racism should be addressed at an institutional level to see the prevalence of “structural racism”—deeply entrenched patterns of inequality that are coded by race and justified by stereotypes.

The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity provides an in-depth view of racism in modern America, which may be less conspicuous but not necessarily less destructive than its predecessor, Jim Crow. The book’s rich analysis and theoretical insight shed light on how, despite many efforts to end America’s historic racial problem, it has evolved and persisted into the 21st century.
 

MARIA KRYSAN is associate professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology. She is a fellow at the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, University of Illinois, Chicago.

AMANDA E. LEWIS is assistant professor in the Departments of Sociology and African American Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago. She is a fellow at the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, University of Illinois, Chicago.

CONTRIBUTORS: Lawrence D. Bobo, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Sharon M. Collins, Korie Edwards, Reynolds Farley, Joe R. Feagin, Tyrone A. Forman, Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Karen S. Glover, Nakisha Harris, Maria Krysan, Amanda E. Lewis, Manning Marable, Charles W. Mills, and Geoff Ward.

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

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

Declining participation in labor unions, the movement toward a service-based economy, and increased globalization have cast doubt on the extent to which welfare states can continue to stem inequality in market economies over the long-term. Does the new economy render existing models of social assistance obsolete? Do traditional welfare states hamper economic and employment growth, thereby worsening the plight of the poor? Lane Kenworthy offers a rigorous empirical analysis of these questions in Egalitarian Capitalism. The book examines 16 industrialized countries in North America, Western Europe, and Scandinavia—each with different approaches to assisting the poor—to see how successful each has been in developing its economy and curbing inequality over the past twenty years.

Kenworthy finds that inequality grew in almost all of these countries, from the most progressive to the least. Using simple but powerful statistical tests, he assesses the theory that inequality is necessary to improve economic growth and reduce poverty. He finds no necessary trade-off between equality and economic growth but discovers some evidence that high minimum wages dampen employment growth in private sector services. Kenworthy suggests that without greater private sector employment, public supports may be unable to adequately sustain living standards for the poor. An equitable growth strategy necessitates a balance of policy options: Creating jobs is aided by loose employment regulation, low payroll taxes, and, in some cases, lower real wages for workers at the bottom of the income spectrum. However, high employment is also facilitated by a system that “makes work pay” with earnings subsidies, workplace flexibilities, financial support for those who are between jobs or unable to work, and universal health and child care coverage. Kenworthy suggests that these strategies, though generally presented as mutually exclusive, could be effectively combined to create a robust, fair economy.

Egalitarian Capitalism addresses fundamental questions of national policy with rigorous scholarship and a clarity that makes it accessible to any reader interested in the alleged trade-off between social equity and market efficiency. The book analyzes the viability of traditional welfare regimes and offers sustainable options that can promote egalitarian societies without hampering economic progress.

LANE KENWORTHY is assistant professor of sociology at Emory University.

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

"Outlines a promising approach to egalitarianism for the early years of the twenty-first century."
-Journal of Economic Literature

"[T]his is serious, first-rate sociology in which the author's commitments, rather than clouding the analysis, clear the way forward for partisans of all stripe."
-American Journal of Sociology

"This book tackles the big question that has forever haunted the social sciences: can capitalism continue to thrive if made more equal? Egalitarian Capitalism concludes optimistically that efficiency and equality can be reconciled but this, Lane Kenworthy adds, depends on maximum employment. The social science debate has mainly been a war of words and theory. Kenworthy breaks new ground with his hard-nosed empirical scrutiny and unusual analytical rigor. Egalitarian Capitalism is the new yardstick against which we shall gauge good comparative macro analysis, and Kenworthy will, I believe, find himself on center stage in political economy debates for time to come."
-GØSTA ESPING-ANDERSEN, professor of sociology and university dean, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona

"Egalitarian Capitalism makes a strong sociological contribution to the burgeoning debate about the diverging economic paths of the United States and Western Europe. The book will be an important source for researchers with interests in comparative patterns of inequality in the fields of economics, political science, and policy analysis"
-BRUCE WESTERN, professor of sociology, Princeton University

"In this timely and important contribution, Lane Kenworthy explores the relationship between inequality, economic growth, and employment in advanced industrial democracies. Based on extensive analysis of data on wage dispersion and household pre- and posttax transfer inequality, he argues convincingly that there is no evidence that inequality contributes to growth, and little evidence that inequality promotes employment creation, contrary to the claims of conservative politicians and mainstream economists. ... Students of comparative social policy and comparative political economy as well as policy analysts will find this work essential reading."
-JOHN D. STEPHENS, Lenski Professor of Political Science and Sociology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Declining participation in labor unions, the movement toward a service-based economy, and increased globalization have cast doubt on the extent to which welfare states can continue to stem inequality in market economies over the long-term. Does the new economy render existing models of social assistance obsolete? Do traditional welfare states hamper economic and employment growth, thereby worsening the plight of the poor? Lane Kenworthy offers a rigorous empirical analysis of these questions in Egalitarian Capitalism. The book examines sixteen industrialized countries in North America, Western Europe, and Scandinavia—each with different approaches to assisting the poor—to see how successful each has been in developing its economy and curbing inequality over the past twenty years.

Kenworthy finds that inequality grew in almost all of these countries, from the most progressive to the least. Using simple but powerful statistical tests, he assesses the theory that inequality is necessary to improve economic growth and reduce poverty. He finds no necessary trade-off between equality and economic growth but discovers some evidence that high minimum wages dampen employment growth in private sector services. Kenworthy suggests that without greater private sector employment, public supports may be unable to adequately sustain living standards for the poor. An equitable growth strategy necessitates a balance of policy options: Creating jobs is aided by loose employment regulation, low payroll taxes, and, in some cases, lower real wages for workers at the bottom of the income spectrum. However, high employment is also facilitated by a system that “makes work pay” with earnings subsidies, workplace flexibilities, financial support for those who are between jobs or unable to work, and universal health and child care coverage. Kenworthy suggests that these strategies, though generally presented as mutually exclusive, could be effectively combined to create a robust, fair economy.

Egalitarian Capitalism addresses fundamental questions of national policy with rigorous scholarship and a clarity that makes it accessible to any reader interested in the alleged trade-off between social equity and market efficiency. The book analyzes the viability of traditional welfare regimes and offers sustainable options that can promote egalitarian societies without hampering economic progress.

LANE KENWORTHY is assistant professor of sociology at Emory University.

Winner of the 2010 Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association

Winner of the 2009 Thomas and Znaniecki Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association

Winner of the 2009 Mirra Komarovsky Award from the Eastern Sociological Society

The United States is an immigrant nation—nowhere is the truth of this statement more evident than in its major cities. Immigrants and their children comprise nearly three-fifths of New York City’s population and even more of Miami and Los Angeles. But the United States is also a nation with entrenched racial divisions that are being complicated by the arrival of newcomers. While immigrant parents may often fear that their children will “disappear” into American mainstream society, leaving behind their ethnic ties, many experts fear that they won’t—evolving instead into a permanent unassimilated and underemployed underclass. Inheriting the City confronts these fears with evidence, reporting the results of a major study examining the social, cultural, political, and economic lives of today’s second generation in metropolitan New York, and showing how they fare relative to their first-generation parents and native-stock counterparts.

Focused on New York but providing lessons for metropolitan areas across the country, Inheriting the City is a comprehensive analysis of how mass immigration is transforming life in America’s largest metropolitan area. The authors studied the young adult offspring of West Indian, Chinese, Dominican, South American, and Russian Jewish immigrants and compared them to blacks, whites, and Puerto Ricans with native-born parents. They find that today’s second generation is generally faring better than their parents, with Chinese and Russian Jewish young adults achieving the greatest education and economic advancement, beyond their first-generation parents and even beyond their native-white peers. Every second-generation group is doing at least marginally—and, in many cases, significantly—better than natives of the same racial group across several domains of life. Economically, each second-generation group earns as much or more than its native-born comparison group, especially African Americans and Puerto Ricans, who experience the most persistent disadvantage. Inheriting the City shows the children of immigrants can often take advantage of policies and programs that were designed for native-born minorities in the wake of the civil rights era. Indeed, the ability to choose elements from both immigrant and native-born cultures has produced, the authors argue, a second-generation advantage that catalyzes both upward mobility and an evolution of mainstream American culture.

Inheriting the City leads the chorus of recent research indicating that we need not fear an immigrant underclass. Although racial discrimination and economic exclusion persist to varying degrees across all the groups studied, this absorbing book shows that the new generation is also beginning to ease the intransigence of U.S. racial categories. Adapting elements from their parents’ cultures as well as from their native-born peers, the children of immigrants are not only transforming the American city but also what it means to be American.

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

JOHN H. MOLLENKOPF is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

MARY C. WATERS is M. E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University.

JENNIFER HOLDAWAY is a program director at the Social Science Research Council.

"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

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.