"Portes suggests that immigration constitutes an especially appropriate Mertonian 'strategic research site' for economic sociology in that it provides very good opportunities for investigating the embeddedness of economic relationships in social situations....the contributors expand the conventional domain of economic sociology quite literally in both time and space."—Contemporary Sociology

"Alejandro Portes and his splendid band of collaborators make clear that the causes, processes, and consequences of migration vary dramatically from group to group, that a group's history makes a profound difference to its fate in the American economy. They have produced a sinewy book, a book worth arguing with."—Charles Tilly, Columbia University

The Economic Sociology of Immigration forges a dynamic link between the theoretical innovations of economic sociology with the latest empirical findings from immigration research, an area of critical concern as the problems of ethnic poverty and inequality become increasingly profound. Alejandro Portes' lucid overview of sociological approaches to economic phenomena provides the framework for six thoughtful, wide-ranging investigations into ethnic and immigrant labor networks and social resources, entrepreneurship, and cultural assimilation. Mark Granovetter illustrates how small businesses built on the bonds of ethnicity and kinship can, under certain conditions, flourish remarkably well. Bryan R. Roberts demonstrates how immigrant groups' expectations of the duration of their stay influence their propensity toward entrepreneurship. Ivan Light and Carolyn Rosenstein chart how specific metropolitan environments have stimulated or impeded entrepreneurial ventures in five ethnic populations. Saskia Sassen provides a revealing analysis of the unexpectedly flexible and vital labor market networks maintained between immigrants and their native countries, while M. Patricia Fernandez Kelly looks specifically at the black inner city to examine how insular cultural values hinder the acquisition of skills and jobs outside the neighborhood. Alejandro Portes also depicts the difference between the attitudes of American-born youths and those of recent immigrants and its effect on the economic success of immigrant children.

ALEJANDRO PORTES is professor of sociology at Princeton University and faculty associate of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs.

CONTRIBUTORS: Mark Granovetter, M. Patricia Fernández Kelly, Ivan Light, Alejandro Portes, Bryan R. Roberts, Carolyn Rosenstein, and Saskia Sassen.

"To study the life course is a life-long commitment. Where do the ideas that motivate longitudinal research come from? How do indefatigable investigators find the energy and resources to sustain longitudinal studies? The chapters in Looking at Lives reveal the genius, passion, and dedication that lie behind some of the most important longitudinal studies of human development ever conducted."
-Avshalom Caspi, Institute of Psychiatry, London, and University of Wisconsin, Madison

"This book is a watershed event in the scientific study of human development. It demonstrates in singularly compelling ways the precise methodological details that are required to conduct exemplary longitudinal research and that are involved in exploiting for new purposes existing longitudinal data archives."
-Richard M. Lerner, Tufts University

"Looking at Lives is a must-read for all of us involved in landmark longitudinal studies of the twentieth century. Some of the real pioneers in the long-term developmental study of humans are here as authors, describing the important details of their personal involvement in their work as well as the substance of their studies. Among other things, this volume could easily provide core reading for courses in research methods for longitudinal studies."
-Lewis Lipsitt, Brown University

The impact of long-term longitudinal studies on the landscape of 20th century social and behavioral science cannot be overstated. The field of life course studies has grown exponentially since its inception in the 1950s, and now influences methodologies as well as expectations for all academic research. Looking at Lives offers an unprecedented "insider's view" into the intentions, methods, and findings of researchers engaged in some of the twentieth century's landmark studies. In this volume, eminent American scholars—many of them pioneers in longitudinal studies—provide frank and illuminating insights into the difficulties and the unique scientific benefits of mounting studies that track people's lives over a long period of time.

Looking at Lives includes studies from a range of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, and education, which together cover a span of more than fifty years. The contributors pay particular attention to the changing historical, cultural, and scientific context of their work, as well as the theoretical and methodological changes that have occurred in their fields over decades. What emerges is a clear indication of the often unexpected effects these studies have had on public policies and public opinion—especially as they relate to such issues as the connection between poverty and criminal behavior, or the consequences of teen-age pregnancy and drug use for inner-city youth. For example, David Weikart reveals how his long-term research on preschool intervention projects, begun in 1959, permitted him to show how surprisingly effective preschool education can be in improving the lives of disadvantaged children. In another study, John Laub and Robert Sampson build on findings from a groundbreaking study begun by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck in the 1950s to reveal the myriad ways in which juvenile delinquency can predict criminal behavior in adults. And Arland Thornton, Ronald Freedman, and William Axinn employ an intergenerational study of women and their children begun in 1962 to examine the substantial relaxation of social mores for family and individual behavior in the latter decades of the 20th century.

Looking at Lives is full of striking testimony to the importance of long-term, longitudinal studies. As a unique chronicle of the origins and development of longitudinal studies in America, this collection will be an invaluable aid to 21st century investigators who seek to build on the successes and the experiences of the pioneers in life-course studies.

ERIN PHELPS is associate director, Murray Research Center, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.

FRANK F. FURSTENBERG, JR. is the Zellerbach Family Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania.

ANNE COLBY is senior scholar, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

CONTRIBUTORS: Karl L. Alexander, William G. Axinn, Ann F. Brunswick, Beverly D. Cairns, Robert B. Cairns, Greg J. Duncan, Glen H. Elder Jr., Doris Entwisle, Ronald Freedman, Janet Zollinger Giele, John H. Laub, John Modell, Frank L. Mott, Linda Steffel Olson, Robert J. Sampson, Arland Thornton, George E. Vaillant, David P. Weikart, Emmy E. Werner.

Presents a collection of papers by economists theorizing on the roles of altruism and morality versus self-interest in the shaping of human behavior and institutions. Specifically, the authors examine why some persons behave in an altruistic way without any apparent reward, thus defying the economist's model of utility maximization. The chapters are accompanied by commentaries from representatives of other disciplines, including law and philosophy.

EDMUND S. PHELPS is professor of economics at Columbia University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Kenneth J. Arrow, William Baumol, Bruce R. Bolnick, James M. Buchanan, Guido Calabresi, Peter Hammond, Edward F. McClennen, Roland N. McKean, Thomas Nagel, Wilfried Pauwels, Edmund S. Phelps, Amartya K. Sen, Karl Shell, William S. Vickrey, and Burton A. Weisbrod

2009 Noteworthy Book in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics, Princeton University Industrial Relations Section

“Gendered Tradeoffs is an important contribution to an emerging literature that finds paradoxical or unintended consequences of seemingly egalitarian public policies. For instance, after years of lauding the ‘Nordic nirvanas’ for their menu of policies that promote high rates of mothers’ employment—public child care, well-paid and lengthy parental leave, and reduced working hours—scholars now increasingly worry that generous parental leave and part-time work in particular contribute to employer discrimination against women, especially in the private sector, and occupational segregation. Pettit and Hook take this discussion further by examining the trade-offs present across a wide array of countries and policy models. . . . Gendered Tradeoffs represents an important advance in our thinking about the multifaceted intersections of gender, class, and public policy.”
—Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal 

“Becky Pettit and Jennifer L. Hook have asked exactly the right questions, placing this book on the frontier of comparative research on women, work, and social policy. After a generation of researchers assessed the advantageous effects of work-family policies, comparative scholars are now focused on understanding and untangling the possibility of unintended consequences—especially those that might worsen aspects of gender inequality in the labor market. Pettit and Hook conclude that some institutions that enable high levels of women’s employment may, at the same time, reduce the relative quality of that employment. While some of the volume’s conclusions are open to debate, Gendered Tradeoffs propels this crucial line of scholarship forward in leaps and bounds.”
—Janet Gornick, director, Luxembourg Income Study, and professor of political science and sociology, Graduate Center, CUNY 

“Becky Pettit and Jennifer L. Hook’s well-executed study is impressive in scope. They bring together disparate facets of gender inequality which are typically considered separately. The result is an intriguing thesis about tradeoffs between inclusion and equality that deserves wide attention.”
—Jerry A. Jacobs, professor of sociology, University of Pennsylvania

Gender inequality in the workplace persists, even in nations with some of the most progressive laws and generous family support policies. Yet the dimensions on which inequality is measured—levels of women’s employment, number of hours worked, sex segregation by occupations and wages—tell very different stories across industrialized nations. By examining federally guaranteed parental leave, publicly provided child care, and part-time work, and looking across multiple dimensions of inequality, Becky Pettit and Jennifer Hook document the links between specific policies and aggregate outcomes. They disentangle the complex factors, from institutional policies to personal choices, that influence economic inequality.

Gendered Tradeoffs draws on data from twenty-one industrialized nations to compare women’s and men’s economic outcomes across nations, and over time, in search of a deeper understanding of the underpinnings of gender inequality in different labor markets. Pettit and Hook develop the idea that there are tradeoffs between different aspects of gender inequality in the economy and explain how those tradeoffs are shaped by individuals, markets, and states. They argue that each policy or condition should be considered along two axes—whether it promotes women’s inclusion in or exclusion from the labor market and whether it promotes gender equality or inequality among women in the labor market. Some policies advance one objective while undercutting the other.

The volume begins by reflecting on gender inequality in labor markets measured by different indicators. It goes on to develop the idea that there may be tradeoffs inherent among different aspects of inequality and in different policy solutions. These ideas are explored in four empirical chapters on employment, work hours, occupational sex segregation, and the gender wage gap. The penultimate chapter examines whether a similar framework is relevant for understanding inequality among women in the United States and Germany. The book concludes with a thorough discussion of the policies and conditions that underpin gender inequality in the workplace.

The central thesis of Gendered Tradeoffs is that gender inequality in the workplace is generated and reinforced by national policies and conditions. The contours of inequality across and within countries are shaped by specific aspects of social policy that either relieve or concentrate the demands of care giving within households—usually in the hands of women—and at the same time shape workplace expectations. Pettit and Hook make a strong case that equality for women in the workplace depends not on whether women are included in the labor market but on how they are included.

BECKY PETTIT is associate professor of sociology at the University of Washington.

JENNIFER L. HOOK is assistant professor of sociology and faculty associate of the Population Research Institute at Pennsylvania State University.

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

“Divergent Social Worlds should help set the agenda for law enforcement and related social policy as well as criminal justice research for years to come.”
—GREGORY D. SQUIRES, George Washington University

“Divergent Social Worlds is the most important book on urban crime since Shaw and McKay’s pioneering Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas was published over fifty years ago. Spanning more than two decades of research, Ruth Peterson and Lauren Krivo have produced a rigorous and creative analysis of new data from their National Neighborhood Crime Study. This important dataset on neighborhoods within each of ninety-one of the largest cities of the United States allows Peterson and Krivo to craft a structural race theory of neighborhood crime based on racial inequality, residential segregation, and spatial inequality. They empirically show how racial inequities in the housing market produce residential segregation, spatial inequality, and separate social worlds, which, in turn, undermine local social control and thereby foster high rates of criminal violence. This book is must reading for criminologists, students of race, and urban sociologists, and is destined to become a classic.”
—ROSS L. MATSUEDA, University of Washington 

“Reporting on a new and unique data collection, Ruth Peterson and Lauren Krivo show how residential segregation and economic disadvantage combine to divide blacks from whites in American cities. In an important analysis, the authors show how this polarization of city life accounts for much of the inequality in urban violence and the high rates of crime in African American neighborhoods.”
—BRUCE WESTERN, Harvard University

More than half a century after the first Jim Crow laws were dismantled, the majority of urban neighborhoods in the United States remain segregated by race. The degree of social and economic advantage or disadvantage that each community experiences—particularly its crime rate—is most often a reflection of which group is in the majority. As Ruth Peterson and Lauren Krivo note in Divergent Social Worlds, “Race, place, and crime are still inextricably linked in the minds of the public.” This book broadens the scope of single-city, black/white studies by using national data to compare local crime patterns in five racially distinct types of neighborhoods. Peterson and Krivo meticulously demonstrate how residential segregation creates and maintains inequality in neighborhood crime rates.

Based on the authors’ groundbreaking National Neighborhood Crime Study (NNCS), Divergent Social Worlds provides a more complete picture of the social conditions underlying neighborhood crime patterns than has ever before been drawn. The study includes economic, social, and local investment data for nearly nine thousand neighborhoods in eighty-seven cities, and the findings reveal a pattern across neighborhoods of racialized separation among unequal groups. Residential segregation reproduces existing privilege or disadvantage in neighborhoods—such as adequate or inadequate schools, political representation, and local business—increasing the potential for crime and instability in impoverished non-white areas yet providing few opportunities for residents to improve conditions or leave. And the numbers bear this out. Among urban residents, more than two-thirds of all whites, half of all African Americans, and one-third of Latinos live in segregated local neighborhoods. More than 90 percent of white neighborhoods have low poverty, but this is only true for one quarter of black, Latino, and minority areas. Of the five types of neighborhoods studied, African American communities experience violent crime on average at a rate five times that of their white counterparts, with violence rates for Latino, minority, and integrated neighborhoods falling between the two extremes.

Divergent Social Worlds lays to rest the popular misconception that persistently high crime rates in impoverished, non-white neighborhoods are merely the result of individual pathologies or, worse, inherent group criminality. Yet Peterson and Krivo also show that the reality of crime inequality in urban neighborhoods is no less alarming. Separate, the book emphasizes, is inherently unequal. Divergent Social Worlds lays the groundwork for closing the gap—and for next steps among organizers, policymakers, and future researchers.

RUTH D. PETERSON is Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences, professor of sociology, and director of the Criminal Justice Research Center at Ohio State University.

LAUREN J. KRIVO is professor of sociology and criminal justice at Rutgers University.

"The contentious politics of the U.S. census, the data needs of social scientists, and America's changing racial sensibilities all come together in this rich and provocative volume. A remarkable array of contributors lay out the value considerations as well as the technical challenges raised by new modes of classifying races in a society marked by more and more interracial unions. Present dilemmas are put in broad historical perspective. Researchers, teachers, students, and the educated public will all find much of value in The New Race Question."
-Theda Skocpol, Harvard University

"For census 2000, the federal government made a historic decision to allow Americans to count themselves as members of more than one race. In this extraordinarily thorough and penetrating collection of essays, leading scholars explore the origins, implementation, and likely consequences of this crucial policy. An indispensable guide to the changing nature of race and racism in America."
-Gary Gerstle, University of Maryland

"The New Race Question is an indispensable guide for those perplexed by the complex societal and policy ramifications of the U.S. census's acknowledgment of racial mixture in 2000, perhaps the most momentous change in the measurement of race since the Civil War destroyed the equation of a black person who is not free with three-fifths of a white."
-Richard D. Alba, State University of New York at Albany

The change in the way the federal government asked for information about race in the 2000 census marked an important turning point in the way Americans measure race. By allowing respondents to choose more than one racial category for the first time, the Census Bureau challenged strongly held beliefs about the nature and definition of race in our society. The New Race Question is a wide-ranging examination of what we know about racial enumeration, the likely effects of the census change, and possible policy implications for the future.

The growing incidence of interracial marriage and childrearing led to the change in the census race question. Yet this reality conflicts with the need for clear racial categories required by anti-discrimination and voting rights laws and affirmative action policies. How will racial combinations be aggregated under the Census's new race question? Who will decide how a respondent who lists more than one race will be counted? How will the change affect established policies for documenting and redressing discrimination? The New Race Question opens with an exploration of what the attempt to count multiracials has shown in previous censuses and other large surveys. Contributor Reynolds Farley reviews the way in which the census has traditionally measured race, and shows that although the numbers of people choosing more than one race are not high at the national level, they can make a real difference in population totals at the county level. The book then takes up the debate over how the change in measurement will affect national policy in areas that rely on race counts, especially in civil rights law, but also in health, education, and income reporting. How do we relate data on poverty, graduation rates, and disease collected in 2000 to the rates calculated under the old race question? A technical appendix provides a useful manual for bridging old census data to new.

The book concludes with a discussion of the politics of racial enumeration. Hugh Davis Graham examines recent history to ask why some groups were determined to be worthy of special government protections and programs, while others were not. Posing the volume's ultimate question, Jennifer Hochschild asks whether the official recognition of multiracials marks the beginning of the end of federal use of race data, and whether that is a good or a bad thing for society?

The New Race Question brings to light the many ways in which a seemingly small change in surveying and categorizing race can have far reaching effects and expose deep fissures in our society.

JOEL PERLMANN is senior scholar and research professor at the Levy Economics Institute, Bard College.

MARY C. WATERS is professor of sociology, Harvard University.
Copublished with the Levy Economics Institute

A Volume in the RSF Census Series
 

"[N]ot only makes interesting reading, but also brings some clarifying historical insights to the immigration debate."
-Industrial and Labor Relations Review

"Will today's Mexican immigrants and their children follow the paths of the Italians and Poles of a century ago in moving up the economic ladder? Joel Perlmann's carefully drawn analysis tackles this much-debated question through a detailed and thoughtfully argued comparison of the Mexican second generation of today and the European second generation of the past. This insightful and stimulating book under scores the great value of past-present comparisons for understanding the trajectories of contemporary immigrants and their children."
-NANCY FONER, Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York 

"Italians Then, Mexicans Now is essential reading for anyone who hopes to make sense of the prospects of today's immigrants and their children, especially for groups like the Mexicans that are trapped in low-wage labor."
-RICHARD ALBA, Distinguished Professor, State University of New York, Albany

According to the American dream, hard work and a good education can lift people from poverty to success in the "land of opportunity." The unskilled immigrants who came to the United States from southern, central, and eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries largely realized that vision. Within a few generations, their descendants rose to the middle class and beyond. But can today’s unskilled immigrant arrivals—especially Mexicans, the nation's most numerous immigrant group—expect to achieve the same for their descendants? Social scientists disagree on this question, basing their arguments primarily on how well contemporary arrivals are faring. In Italians Then, Mexicans Now, Joel Perlmann uses the latest immigration data as well as 100 years of historical census data to compare the progress of unskilled immigrants and their American-born children both then and now.

The crucial difference between the immigrant experience a hundred years ago and today is that relatively well-paid jobs were plentiful for workers with little education a hundred years ago, while today's immigrants arrive in an increasingly unequal America. Perlmann finds that while this change over time is real, its impact has not been as strong as many scholars have argued. In particular, these changes have not been great enough to force today’s Mexican second generation into an inner-city "underclass." Perlmann emphasizes that high school dropout rates among second-generation Mexicans are alarmingly high, and are likely to have a strong impact on the group’s well-being. Yet despite their high dropout rates, Mexican Americans earn at least as much as African Americans, and they fare better on social measures such as unwed childbearing and incarceration, which often lead to economic hardship. Perlmann concludes that inter-generational progress, though likely to be slower than it was for the European immigrants a century ago, is a reality, and could be enhanced if policy interventions are taken to boost high school graduation rates for Mexican children.

Rich with historical data, Italians Then, Mexicans Now persuasively argues that today’s Mexican immigrants are making slow but steady socio-economic progress and may one day reach parity with earlier immigrant groups who moved up into the heart of the American middle class.

JOEL PERLMANN is senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College and the Levy Institute Research Professor at the college.

Copublished with the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College

"The story is set in the thick forests of the Pacific Northwest, but the lessons about worker participation in decision-making and ownership are universal. Pencavel's rigorous, relevant, and engaging analysis will enrich tremendously our understanding of employee involvement at the workplace. This little book, rich in theory, history, and data, is not to be missed."
-Avner Ben-Ner, University of Minnesota

"Worker Participation is the most comprehensive and careful theoretical and empirical treatment to date of the issues relating to employee ownership of companies. Readers interested in polemics will have to look elsewhere. Although Pencavel clearly tells readers his own biases, he very carefully separates them from his dispassionate analyses of worker participation in corporate ownership and governance. Written in a style that is easily accessible to a general audience, the book builds on over a decade's research by Pencavel and his collaborators. Worker Participation is a book that I would be very proud to have been able to call my own."
-Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Cornell University

"Worker Participation is a fascinating mixture of economic and historical analysis of how cooperatives work in a near-ideal situation for worker participation. Biologists often search for the ideal "model"-fruitflies, yeast, ants-to understand general processes, but economists rarely do. Pencavel's analysis shows the power of such a procedure. He gives convincing support for the general model of worker-owned enterprises as income maximizers for members in the Northwest plywood sector, both in the statistics and case analysis."
-Richard B. Freeman, Harvard University

Once they accept a job, most Americans have little control over their work environments. In Worker Participation, John Pencavel examines some of those rare workplaces where employees both own and manage the companies they work for: the plywood cooperatives and forest worker cooperatives of the Pacific Northwest. Rather than relying on abstract theories, Pencavel reviews the actual experiences of these two groups of worker co-ops. He focuses on how worker-owned companies perform when compared to more traditional firms and whether companies operate more efficiently when workers determine how they are run. He also looks at the long-term viability of these enterprises and why they are so unusual.

Most businesses are constantly caught in the battle over whether to use the firm's profits to pay labor or to increase capital. Worker cooperatives provide an appealing case study because the interests of labor and capital are aligned. If individuals have a role in setting goals, they should have an added incentive to help meet those goals, and productivity should benefit. On the other hand, observers have long argued that, since any single employee in a co-op reaps only a small benefit from working hard, workers may shirk work, and productivity can flag. Furthermore, co-ops often have difficulty raising capital, since they are constrained by how much money the workers have, and banks are often reluctant to lend them money.

Using some fifteen years of data on forty mills in Washington State, Pencavel examines how worker co-ops really function. He assesses the practical problems of running a workplace where every employee is a boss. He looks at worker productivity, on-the-job injuries and financial risks facing owner-workers. He considers whether co-ops are inherently unstable and if they are plagued by infighting among the many worker-owners.

Although many of the co-ops he studied have closed or been replaced by conventional businesses, Pencavel judges them to have been a success. Despite the risks inherent in such operations, allowing workers to make the decisions that profoundly affect them produces many benefits, including workplace efficiency and increased job security. However, Pencavel concludes, if more Americans are to enjoy such a working arrangement, labor laws will have to be changed, participation encouraged, and a more vigorous public debate about worker participation must take place. This book provides an excellent place to start the discussion.

JOHN PENCAVEL is Levin Professor of Economics, Stanford University.

This casebook documents public reactions to health programs and health situations in sixteen widely differing communities of the world. Some of the studies record successes, others failures. Of interest to anyone concerned with preventive medicine, public health, community betterment, or cultural problems involving peoples of different backgrounds and beliefs.

BENJAMIN D. PAUL is professor of anthropology and director of the program in medicine and behavioral sciences at Stanford University.

"Imprisoning America breaks new ground in our understanding of the impact of mass incarceration on society. By combining theoretical perspectives with data-driven analysis, the volume makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the complex dynamics that have been set in motion by the uniquely American 'experiment' with the use of incarceration."
-MARC MAUER, assistant director, The Sentencing Project

"The penal system now governs the lives and life chances of millions of Americans-not just the young minority men who are its chief targets but also their neighbors, their families, and, above all, their children. Imprisoning America is a major step forward in the effort to trace the deep social and economic impacts of penal policy. Using solidly documented data, careful social science, and dispassionate analysis, the contributors reveal the startling extent of the 'collateral damage' in America's decades-long war against crime. This book's message is an urgent one that citizens and policy-makers need to hear."
-DAVID GARLAND, Arthur T. Vanderbilt Professor of Law and professor of sociology, New York University

"Blending perspectives and insights in unique and comprehensive ways, this volume systematically reveals the unrecognized toll of collateral as well as direct damage mass incarceration has imposed on our nation's social fabric during a quarter century binge of ill-planned penality. This collection of original articles launches a much needed and long overdue research literature with extraordinarily important policy implications for the past, present, and future use of imprisonment in this country."
-JOHN HAGAN, John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and Law, Northwestern University

Over the last thirty years, the U.S. penal population increased from around 300,000 to more than two million, with more than half a million prisoners returning to their home communities each year. What are the social costs to the communities from which this vast incarcerated population comes? And what happens to these communities when former prisoners return as free men and women in need of social and economic support? In Imprisoning America, an interdisciplinary group of leading researchers in economics, criminal justice, psychology, sociology, and social work goes beyond a narrow focus on crime to examine the connections between incarceration and family formation, labor markets, political participation, and community well-being.

The book opens with a consideration of the impact of incarceration on families. Using a national survey of young parents, Bruce Western and colleagues show the enduring corrosive effects of incarceration on marriage and cohabitation, even after a prison sentence has been served. Kathryn Edin, Timothy Nelson, and Rechelle Parnal use in-depth life histories of low-income men in Philadelphia and Charleston, to study how incarceration not only damages but sometimes strengthens relations between fathers and their children. Imprisoning America then turns to how mass incarceration affects local communities and society at large. Christopher Uggen and Jeff Manza use survey data and interviews with thirty former felons to explore the political ramifications of disenfranchising inmates and former felons. Harry Holzer, Stephen Raphael, and Michael Stoll examine how poor labor market opportunities for former prisoners are shaped by employers’ (sometimes unreliable) background checks. Jeremy Travis concludes that corrections policy must extend beyond incarceration to help former prisoners reconnect with their families, communities, and the labor market. He recommends greater collaboration between prison officials and officials in child and family welfare services, educational and job training programs, and mental and public health agencies.

Imprisoning America vividly illustrates that the experience of incarceration itself—and not just the criminal involvement of inmates—negatively affects diverse aspects of social membership. By contributing to the social exclusion of an already marginalized population, mass incarceration may actually increase crime rates, and threaten the public safety it was designed to secure. A rigorous portrayal of the pitfalls of getting tough on crime, Imprisoning America highlights the pressing need for new policies to support ex-prisoners and the families and communities to which they return.

MARY PATTILLO is associate professor of sociology and African-American Studies, Northwestern University.

DAVID WEIMAN is Alena Wels Hirschorn 1958 Professor of Economics, and chair, department of economics, Barnard College.

BRUCE WESTERN is professor of sociology, Princeton University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Kathryn Edin, Harry J. Holzer, Elizabeth I. Johnson, Leonard M. Lopoo, James P. Lynch, Jeff Manza, Sara McLanahan, Timothy J. Nelson, Anne M. Nurse, Rechelle Paranal, Stevel Raphael, William J. Sabol, Michael A. Stoll, Jeremy Travis, Christopher Uggen, Jane Waldfogel.