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- Volume 25, 1999
Annual Review of Sociology - Volume 25, 1999
Volume 25, 1999
- Review Articles
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LOOKING BACK AT 25 YEARS OF SOCIOLOGY AND THE ANNUAL REVIEW OF SOCIOLOGY
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 1–18More Less▪ AbstractThis essay engages the daunting task of encapsulating and reflecting on the 25 year history of the Annual Review of Sociology. After giving a short account of my own involvement in ARS, I give a brief rendition of what sociology as a field has been during the past quarter century—that is, what was “out there” to be reflected in the pages of ARS. I lay out some statistics on trends in the size, countries, and universities represented, coauthorship patterns, and gender ratios in ARS. These statistics are very informative but contain few surprises. Next I trace and analyze an issue that has commmanded the attention of editors of ARS throughout its history—unity or diversity of sociology as a discipline. Finally I conclude that the ARS does indeed reflect the field in ways that can be documented, but that this process of reflection is subject to many imprecisions generated by the editorial process itself.
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THE SOCIOLOGY OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 19–46More Less▪ AbstractRecent research on entrepreneurship by sociologists has focused on subsectors of the discipline rather than on entrepreneurship as a class. This review draws insights from diverse literatures to develop a sociological perspective on entrepreneurship as a whole. Until recently, the supply-side perspective, which focuses on the individual traits of entrepreneurs, has been the dominant school of research. Newer work from the demand-side perspective has focused on rates, or the context in which entrepreneurship occurs. This review emphasizes this less developed demand-side perspective—in particular, the influence of firms and markets on how, where, and why new enterprises are founded. I take stock of the differences and separation in the two perspectives and argue that sociological frameworks, an embeddedness perspective, institutional and ecological theory, and multilevel models can be used to integrate the two schools and extend their research implications.
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WOMEN'S MOVEMENTS IN THE THIRD WORLD: Identity, Mobilization, and Autonomy
R. Ray, and A. C. KortewegVol. 25 (1999), pp. 47–71More Less▪ AbstractSociology has paid insufficient attention to third world women's movements. In this review, for which we draw upon a variety of interdisciplinary sources, we focus on three questions: the issue of women's interests; the conditions under which women mobilize—particularly the effects of democratization, nationalist, religious, and socialist movements; and the issue of state and organizational autonomy. We argue that the concept of a political opportunity structure inadequately captures the role that states in the third world play in determining the possibilities of third world women's movements. We call for more comparative work with a focus on the local rather than on the macro level. This will help us to better understand both the ways in which women's collective identities and interests are constructed and the ideological and material conditions under which mobilizations actually take place.
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SEXUALITY IN THE WORKPLACE: Organizational Control, Sexual Harassment, and the Pursuit of Pleasure
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 73–93More Less▪ AbstractFlirting, bantering, and other sexual interactions are commonplace in work organizations. Not all of these interactions constitute harassment or assault; consensual sexual relationships, defined as those reflecting positive and autonomous expressions of workers' sexual desire, are also prevalent in the workplace and are the focus of this paper. We begin by reviewing research on the distinction between sexual harassment and sexual consent. Next we examine popular and business literatures on office romance. Finally we discuss sociological research on consensual sexual relationships, including research on mate selection, organizational policy, and workplace culture. We argue that sexual behaviors must be understood in context, as an interplay between organizational control and individual agency.
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WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE US LABOR MOVEMENT? Union Decline and Renewal
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 95–119More Less▪ AbstractFor many years, US trade unions declined in union density, organizing capacity, level of strike activity, and political effectiveness. Labor's decline is variously attributed to demographic factors, inaction by unions themselves, the state and legal system, globalization, neoliberalism, and the employer offensive that ended a labor-capital accord. The AFL-CIO New Voice leadership elected in 1995, headed by John Sweeney, seeks to reverse these trends and transform the labor movement. Innovative organizing, emphasizing the use of rank-and-file intensive tactics, substantially increases union success; variants include union building, immigrant organizing, feminist approaches, and industry-wide non–National Labor Relations Board (or nonboard) organizing. The labor movement must also deal with participatory management or employee involvement programs, while experimenting with new forms, including occupational unionism, community organizing, and strengthened alliances with other social movements.
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OWNERSHIP ORGANIZATION AND FIRM PERFORMANCE
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 121–144More Less▪ AbstractThis essay reviews research on the type and degree of fragmentation of firm ownership with an emphasis on the consequences of ownership organization for firm performance. We use a property rights approach to synthesize sociological, organizational, legal, and economic research that has examined the effect of ownership organization on firm performance. Agency theorists generally assume that shareholders are homogenous and that their influence on firm performance is directly proportional to the percentage of equity they hold. However, empirical research following this approach has failed to produce definitive evidence. Class analysis perspectives interpret these inconclusive results as demonstrating that, regardless of ownership organization, firms are run to serve the capitalist class. An alternative interpretation is that shareholders are not homogeneous but that certain types of shareholders use their formal authority, social influence, and expertise to “capture” property rights and strongly influence firm performance. The influence of different types of owners may depend on industry characteristics, and we review literature pointing to a contingency theory of ownership organization.
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DECLINING VIOLENT CRIME RATES IN THE 1990S: Predicting Crime Booms and Busts
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 145–168More Less▪ AbstractThe United States in the 1990s has experienced the greatest sustained decline in violent crime rates since World War II—even though rates thus far have not fallen as rapidly as they increased during the crime boom of the 1960s and early 1970s. I review a set of exogenous and policy-related explanations for the earlier crime boom and for the crime bust of the 1990s. I argue that our understanding of crime trends is hampered by a lack of longitudinal analysis and by ahistorical approaches. I identify a set of questions, concepts, and research opportunities raised by taking a more comprehensive look at crime waves.
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GENDER AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 169–190More Less▪ AbstractResearch on sexual harassment is still in its infancy. Over the past 20 years, research has moved from prevalence studies to more sophisticated empirical and theoretical analyses of the causes and consequences of sexual harassment. This review provides an overview of the prevalence and measurement of harassment along with some suggestions for developing standard measures of sexual harassment. Researchers are encouraged to include organizational forms of harassment in their measures, along with commonly understood individual forms. The most prominent and promising explanations of harassment are discussed including societal, organizational, and individual level approaches. Of particular promise are approaches incorporating the gendered nature of organizational structures and processes. Research on the responses to and consequences of sexual harassment are also presented. The review ends with a discussion of overlooked areas and directions for future research, including the need for more advanced survey data collection techniques and qualitative research.
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THE GENDER SYSTEM AND INTERACTION
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 191–216More Less▪ AbstractThe gender system includes processes that both define males and females as different in socially significant ways and justify inequality on the basis of that difference. Gender is different from other forms of social inequality in that men and women interact extensively within families and households and in other role relations. This high rate of contact between men and women raises important questions about how interaction creates experiences that confirm, or potentially could undermine, the beliefs about gender difference and inequality that underlie the gender system. Any theory of gender difference and inequality must accommodate three basic findings from research on interaction. (a). People perceive gender differences to be pervasive in interaction. (b). Studies of interaction among peers with equal power and status show few gender differences in behavior. (c). Most interactions between men and women occur in the structural context of roles or status relationships that are unequal. These status and power differences create very real interaction effects, which are often confounded with gender. Beliefs about gender difference combine with structurally unequal relationships to perpetuate status beliefs, leading men and women to recreate the gender system in everyday interaction. Only peer interactions that are not driven by cultural beliefs about the general competence of men and women or interactions in which women are status- or power-advantaged over men are likely to undermine the gender system.
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BRINGING EMOTIONS INTO SOCIAL EXCHANGE THEORY
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 217–244More Less▪ AbstractWe analyze and review how research on emotion and emotional phenomena can elaborate and improve contemporary social exchange theory. After identifying six approaches from the psychology and sociology of emotion, we illustrate how these ideas bear on the context, process, and outcome of exchange in networks and groups. The paper reviews the current state of the field, develops testable hypotheses for empirical study, and provides specific suggestions for developing links between theories of emotion and theories of exchange.
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APHORISMS AND CLICHÉS: The Generation and Dissipation of Conceptual Charisma
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 245–269More Less▪ AbstractThe motivating engines of intellectual life are not true ideas but interesting ones. This article investigates the aphorism, the purest form of an interesting idea that draws the mind onward. It begins by examining the linguistic style of aphorisms, their reconceptions of experience from deceptive surfaces to more fundamental truths, their psychological and social effects on the vanity and status of their creators and conveyers, and the decline of their conceptual charisma into cliché until a surprising modification restarts the aphorism-cliché cycle. The investigation of aphorisms broadens to their intellectual and cultural contexts by examining their expansion into articles and collection into books, the different aspects of a topic revealed by aphoristic perspectives and scientific sequences, and the similarities (and differences) between aphoristic and postmodern ways of knowing. This article ends with a series of aphorisms on the cognitive substance of alluring knowledge, which distinguish some of the components of interesting ideas.
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THE DARK SIDE OF ORGANIZATIONS: Mistake, Misconduct, and Disaster
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 271–305More Less▪ AbstractIn keeping with traditional sociological concerns about order and disorder, this essay addresses the dark side of organizations. To build a theoretical basis for the dark side as an integrated field of study, I review four literatures in order to make core ideas of each available to specialists in the others. Using a Simmelian-based case comparison method of analogical theorizing, I first consider sociological constructs that identify both the generic social form and the generic origin of routine nonconformity: how things go wrong in socially organized settings. Then I examine three types of routine nonconformity with adverse outcomes that harm the public: mistake, misconduct, and disaster produced in and by organizations. Searching for analogies and differences, I find that in common, routine nonconformity, mistake, misconduct, and disaster are systematically produced by the interconnection between environment, organizations, cognition, and choice. These patterns amplify what is known about social structure and have implications for theory, research, and policy.
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FEMINIZATION AND JUVENILIZATION OF POVERTY: Trends, Relative Risks, Causes, and Consequences
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 307–333More Less▪ AbstractThis paper reviews trends in “feminization” and “juvenilization” of poverty showing that the relative risks of poverty increased for women in the 1970s but decreased for working-age women in the early 1980s. Relative risks of poverty increased for children between the 1970s and 1990s particularly in comparison with the elderly. Four factors affect these trends: First, the increase in women's employment and decline in the gender wage gap enhanced the likelihood that women remained above the poverty level. Second, the decline in manufacturing employment and “family wage” jobs for men increased the likelihood that less-educated men (and their families) fell into poverty in the early 1980s. These two factors combined to halt the feminization of poverty among the working-age population. At the same time, a third trend, the increase in “nonmarriage,” elevated the proportion of single parents who were young, never-married mothers and complicated the collection of child support from nonresident fathers. This tended to concentrate poverty in mother-child families. Finally, public transfers of income, especially Social Security, were far more effective in alleviating poverty among the elderly than among children, a factor dramatically increasing the “juvenilization” of poverty after 1970.
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THE DETERMINANTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF WORKPLACE SEX AND RACE COMPOSITION
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 335–361More Less▪ AbstractThis chapter reviews research on the determinants and consequences of race and sex composition of organizations. Determinants include the composition of the qualified labor supply; employers' preferences, including the qualifications they require; the response of majority groups; and an establishment's attractiveness, size, and recruiting methods. The race and sex composition of an establishment affects workers' cross-group contact; stress, satisfaction, and turnover; cohesion; stereotyping; and evaluation. Composition also affects organizations themselves, including their performance, hiring and promotion practices, levels of job segregation, and wages and benefits. Theory-driven research is needed (a) on the causal mechanisms that underlie the relationships between organizational composition and its determinants and consequences and (b) on the form of the relationships between organizational composition and workers outcomes (e.g., cross-group contact, cohesion, turnover, etc). Research is needed on race and ethnic composition, with a special focus on the joint effects of race and sex.
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RECENT DEVELOPMENTS AND CURRENT CONTROVERSIES IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 363–394More Less▪ AbstractThe sociology of religion is experiencing a period of substantial organizational and intellectual growth. Recent theoretical and empirical papers on the sociology of religion appearing in top journals in sociology have generated both interest and controversy. We begin with a selective overview of research on religious beliefs and commitments. Second, we investigate the influence of religion on politics, the family, health and well-being, and on free space and social capital. Finally, we review rational choice theories in the sociology of religion and the controversies surrounding applications of these perspectives.
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CULTURAL CRIMINOLOGY
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 395–418More Less▪ AbstractAs an emergent orientation in sociology, criminology, and criminal justice, cultural criminology explores the convergence of cultural and criminal processes in contemporary social life. Drawing on perspectives from cultural studies, postmodern theory, critical theory, and interactionist sociology, and on ethnographic methodologies and media/textual analysis, this orientation highlights issues of image, meaning, and representation in the interplay of crime and crime control. Specifically, cultural criminology investigates the stylized frameworks and experiential dynamics of illicit subcultures; the symbolic criminalization of popular culture forms; and the mediated construction of crime and crime control issues. In addition, emerging areas of inquiry within cultural criminology include the development of situated media and situated audiences for crime; the media and culture of policing; the links between crime, crime control, and cultural space; and the collectively embodied emotions that shape the meaning of crime.
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IS SOUTH AFRICA DIFFERENT? Sociological Comparisons and Theoretical Contributions from the Land of Apartheid
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 419–440More Less▪ AbstractFor most of the past 50 years, South Africa served as the outlier in sociological discussions of racial inequality: From the late 1940s, when most of the world was moving away from strict racial classification and segregation, apartheid provided social scientists with their most extreme example of the dynamics of racial segregation and exclusion.Yet while apartheid South Africa was unique, social scientists have also used it in comparative studies to explore the underlying dynamics of racial capitalism: Insights from South Africa have offered sociologists new ways to think about migrant labor; the construction of ethnicity; racial exclusion and colonial relationships; relationships between business, white workers and capitalist states; and oppositional social movements. With the end of legal apartheid, South Africa is poised to move into a new position in the annals of social science. From being an outlier, it is increasingly used an an exemplar, in discussions of democratic transitions, development strategies and globalization, and post-colonial transformations. Still to come, perhaps, are comparative studies that draw on insights from other parts of the world to re-examine aspects of South African society that have been left relatively unexplored—ironically including issues around racial identities and changing patterns of race relations as South Africa constructs a new non-racial democracy.
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POLITICS AND INSTITUTIONALISM: Explaining Durability and Change
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 441–466More Less▪ AbstractFrom the complex literatures on “institutionalisms” in political science and sociology, various components of institutional change are identified: mutability, contradiction, multiplicity, containment and diffusion, learning and innovation, and mediation. This exercise results in a number of clear prescriptions for the analysis of politics and institutional change: disaggregate institutions into schemas and resources; decompose institutional durability into processes of reproduction, disruption, and response to disruption; and, above all, appreciate the multiplicity and heterogeneity of the institutions that make up the social world. Recent empirical work on identities, interests, alternatives, and political innovation illustrates how political scientists and sociologists have begun to document the consequences of institutional contradiction and multiplicity and to trace the workings of institutional containment, diffusion, and mediation.
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SOCIAL NETWORKS AND STATUS ATTAINMENT
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 467–487More Less▪ AbstractThis essay traces the development of the research enterprise, known as the social resources theory, which formulated and tested a number of propositions concerning the relationships between embedded resources in social networks and socioeconomic attainment. This enterprise, seen in the light of social capital, has accumulated a substantial body of research literature and supported the proposition that social capital, in terms of both access and mobilization of embedded resources, enhances the chances of attaining better statuses. Further, social capital is contingent on initial positions in the social hierarchies as well as on extensity of social ties. The essay concludes with a discussion of remaining critical issues and future research directions for this research enterprise.
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SOCIOECONOMIC POSITION AND HEALTH: The Independent Contribution of Community Socioeconomic Context1
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 489–516More Less▪ AbstractIs living in a relatively poor community bad for your health; is living in a relatively affluent community good for your health; or is it only your own socioeconomic position that matters to your health no matter where you live? This article (a) presents a conceptual model suggesting the basic pathways that may link community socioeconomic context to individual health, (b) reviews recent research that has examined whether the socioeconomic context of communities impacts the health of individual residents, over and above their own socioeconomic position, (c) discusses conceptual and methodological challenges of current research, and (d) suggests new directions for future research such as the importance of more closely examining how age, race, gender, and individual socioeconomic position may moderate the impact of community socioeconomic context on individual health and mortality.
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A RETROSPECTIVE ON THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT: Political and Intellectual Landmarks
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 517–539More Less▪ AbstractThis review provides an analysis of the political and intellectual contributions made by the modern civil rights movement. It argues that the civil rights movement was able to overthrow the Southern Jim Crow regime because of its successful use of mass nonviolent direct action. Because of its effectiveness and visibility, it served as a model that has been utilized by other movements both domestically and internationally. Prior to the civil rights movement social movement scholars formulated collective behavior and related theories to explain social movement phenomena. These theories argued that movements were spontaneous, non-rational, and unstructured. Resource mobilization and political process theories reconceptualized movements stressing their organized, rational, institutional and political features. The civil rights movement played a key role in generating this paradigmatic shift because of its rich empirical base that led scholars to rethink social movement phenomena.
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ARTISTIC LABOR MARKETS AND CAREERS
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 541–574More Less▪ AbstractArtistic labor markets are puzzling ones. Employment as well as unemployment are increasing simultaneously. Uncertainty acts not only as a substantive condition of innovation and self-achievement, but also as a lure. Learning by doing plays such a decisive role that in many artworlds initial training is an imperfect filtering device. The attractiveness of artistic occupations is high but has to be balanced against the risk of failure and of an unsuccessful professionalization that turns ideally non-routine jobs into ordinary or ephemeral undertakings. Earnings distributions are extremely skewed. Risk has to be managed, mainly through flexibility and cost reducing means at the organizational level and through multiple job holding at the individual level. Job rationing and an excess supply of artists seem to be structural traits associated with the emergence and the expansion of a free market organization of the arts.
Reviewing research done not only by sociologists, but also by economists, historians and geographers, our chapter focuses on four main issues: the status of employment and career patterns, the rationales of occupational choice, occupational risk diversification, and the oversupply of artists.
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PERSPECTIVES ON TECHNOLOGY AND WORK ORGANIZATION
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 575–596More Less▪ AbstractThis chapter summarizes and synthesizes some major perspectives on the relationship between technology and the nature of work. Given the complexity of technology and its impacts, the chapter elucidates different perspectives on this topic rather than summaries of detailed findings in a particular area of technology. The central thesis of the chapter is a follows: Technology's impact on work is contingent on a broad set of factors, including the reasons for its introduction, management philosophy, the labor-management contract, the degree of a shared agreement about technology and work organization, and the process of technology development and implementation. How this is viewed varies with different theoretical paradigms. Looking through a variety of paradigms provides a richer view of the phenomenon, though integrating these perspectives remains problematic. Historically, technology was treated as a deterministic causal force with predictable impacts. More recently there is a recognition of the complexity of technology and its relationship to work which is both bi-directional and dependent on a number of contingent factors. One set of factors integral to the “impact” of technology is the dynamics of the change process and in fact the change process and “outcomes” are inextricably linked. We conclude that the social reality of technology implementation is highly complex. Very different technologies are brought into very different social settings for very different reasons, often with completely opposite effects and thus complex theories that recognize the emergent and socially constructed nature of technology are needed.
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ORGANIZATIONAL INNOVATION AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 597–622More Less▪ AbstractThree ideas—a complex division of labor, an organic structure, and a high-risk strategy—provoke consistent findings relative to organizational innovation. Of these three ideas, the complexity of the division of labor is most important because it taps the organizational learning, problem-solving, and creativity capacities of the organization. The importance of a complex division of labor has been underappreciated because of the various ways in which it has been measured, which in turn reflect the macroinstitutional arrangements of the educational system within a society. These ideas can be extended to the study of interorganizational relationships and the theories of organizational change. Integrating these theories would provide a general organizational theory of evolution within the context of knowledge societies.
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INEQUALITY IN EARNINGS AT THE CLOSE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 623–657More Less▪ AbstractMedian income in the United States has fallen and the distribution of income has grown markedly more unequal over the past three decades, reversing a general pattern of earnings growth and equalization dating back to 1929. Median trends were not the same for all groups—women's earnings generally increased—but the growth in earnings inequality has been experienced by all groups. Even white men employed full-time, year-round—traditionally the most privileged and secure group—could not escape wage stagnation and polarization. These patterns suggest research questions that go beyond conventional sociological interest in racial and gender wage gaps, refocusing attention on more general changes in labor market dynamics. The debates over the origins of the rise in US inequality cover a wide range of issues that can be roughly grouped into four categories: the changing demographics of the labor force, the impact of economic restructuring, the role of political context and institutions, and the dynamics of globalization. We review the empirical literature here, and challenge the field of sociology to reconstruct its research agenda on stratification and inequality.
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THE ESTIMATION OF CAUSAL EFFECTS FROM OBSERVATIONAL DATA
Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 659–706More Less▪ AbstractWhen experimental designs are infeasible, researchers must resort to the use of observational data from surveys, censuses, and administrative records. Because assignment to the independent variables of observational data is usually nonrandom, the challenge of estimating causal effects with observational data can be formidable. In this chapter, we review the large literature produced primarily by statisticians and econometricians in the past two decades on the estimation of causal effects from observational data. We first review the now widely accepted counterfactual framework for the modeling of causal effects. After examining estimators, both old and new, that can be used to estimate causal effects from cross-sectional data, we present estimators that exploit the additional information furnished by longitudinal data. Because of the size and technical nature of the literature, we cannot offer a fully detailed and comprehensive presentation. Instead, we present only the main features of methods that are accessible and potentially of use to quantitatively oriented sociologists.
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Previous Volumes
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Volume 49 (2023)
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Volume 48 (2022)
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Volume 47 (2021)
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Volume 46 (2020)
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Volume 45 (2019)
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Volume 44 (2018)
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Volume 43 (2017)
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Volume 42 (2016)
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Volume 41 (2015)
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Volume 40 (2014)
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Volume 39 (2013)
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Volume 38 (2012)
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Volume 37 (2011)
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Volume 36 (2010)
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Volume 35 (2009)
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Volume 34 (2008)
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Volume 33 (2007)
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Volume 32 (2006)
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Volume 31 (2005)
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Volume 30 (2004)
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Volume 29 (2003)
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Volume 28 (2002)
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Volume 27 (2001)
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Volume 26 (2000)
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Volume 25 (1999)
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Volume 24 (1998)
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Volume 23 (1997)
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Volume 22 (1996)
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Volume 21 (1995)
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Volume 20 (1994)
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Volume 19 (1993)
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Volume 18 (1992)
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Volume 17 (1991)
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Volume 16 (1990)
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Volume 15 (1989)
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Volume 14 (1988)
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Volume 13 (1987)
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Volume 12 (1986)
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Volume 11 (1985)
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Volume 10 (1984)
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Volume 9 (1983)
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Volume 8 (1982)
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Volume 7 (1981)
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Volume 6 (1980)
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Volume 5 (1979)
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Volume 4 (1978)
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Volume 3 (1977)
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Volume 2 (1976)
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Volume 1 (1975)
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Volume 0 (1932)