What does it mean to solve social problems? The concept of causal depth raises a methodological problem for the current account of problem-solving sociology. This is because, if the goal of inquiry is to track resolutions to fundamental social problems (i.e. problems that have never been solved), then the priority ought to be knowledge of how to address their root causes. Because it seems unlikely that all the causal knowledge connected to a problem necessarily tracks its resolution, we need a methodological strategy for orienting research toward root causes. Consequently, causal depth challenges sociological theorists to recognize that problematics—that is, the problem of defining problems—are an integral part of inquiry and methods, just as a general kind of theory is needed to complement or counterbalance middle-range theory. Toward this end, I advocate for a pragmatist recuperation of social theory.
In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court repealed the landmark case of Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Among other states, Texas outlawed abortion, including pills, at any stage of pregnancy with narrow exceptions. I conducted in-depth interviews with 32 undergraduate students (including 18 women, 13 men, and 1 nonbinary participant) from a large, public university in Texas in early 2023, shortly following Dobbs , which meant some students had engaged in sexual activity before and after the statewide ban. I analyze the ways that students discuss their sexual choices in the immediate aftermath of Dobbs , focusing on how they decide: (1) whether or not to have sex, (2) with whom to have sex, and (3) contraceptive choices. Results indicate that many students claimed to adjust how they followed dominant hookup scripts in the wake of the abortion ban, including reportedly increased abstinence, avoidance of sex with cismen, preference for partners with similar abortion views, and increased condom use. Students’ reactions to the ban highlight how gender, sexuality, race, and political beliefs about abortion influence the ways in which students interpret and negotiate sexual scripts.
How do stigma, logistical barriers, and sociodemographic factors encourage or constrain intentions to access healthcare services following sexual assault? Using original survey data from a diverse pool of almost 900 eighteen to twenty-four-year-old women, we explore potential barriers to accessing three types of medical services often sought after a sexual assault: medical treatment, evidence collection for a rape kit, and getting tested for sexually transmitted infections or pregnancy. Findings suggest that both anticipated public stigma (e.g., "I would worry about health care providers judging me."), the internalization of sexual assault stigma (e.g., ". . . people would think something negative about someone like me if they found out about the sexual assault."), and logistical factors (e.g., access to transportation) are barriers to accessing medical services. Additionally, lesbian, gay, or bisexual respondents are less likely to access medical care or have evidence collected than their heterosexual counterparts. This study highlights the importance of reducing the stigma around sexual victimization to increase access to medical care.
This article examines the intersecting experiences of military veterans who have lived in intentional communities (ICs), exploring how both institutional structures impact personal identity and belonging. Drawing from Uncertainty-Reduction Theory's concept of entitativity as well as qualitative data gathered through interviews with 32 individuals who have experienced membership in both groups, we argue that the experience of military service and life in ICs each provides a coherent group identity and structured sense of belonging that can reduce feelings of isolation and self-uncertainty. Veterans in our study reported that the diverse nature of ICs could imitate the structure and sense of belonging found in the military while allowing for greater personal agency and alignment with one's own personal values, instead of the homogenizing values of the military. By comparing these two group experiences, especially in light of America's ongoing loneliness epidemic, we highlight the importance of value alignment and the role of entitativity in shaping how individuals navigate life transitions. Our findings suggest that ICs may hold appeal for veterans seeking to reconstruct meaning and connection in civilian life after service, especially when traditional reintegration pathways prove inadequate.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic spurred a shift toward remote work, the ideal worker norm, centered on constant availability and physical presence, remains deeply entrenched in U.S. culture. This study examines two unresolved questions regarding the ideal worker norm in the post-pandemic context: how support for the ideal worker norm varies across groups with differing levels of decision-making authority (e.g., age, education, sex, and managerial experience), and whether stronger support for this norm is linked to greater flexibility stigma. Drawing on an original survey experiment with a national sample of 1,003 Americans conducted after the pandemic and using insights from status characteristics theory, we find that men and individuals with managerial experience were more likely to endorse the ideal worker norm, while younger workers were less likely to. Contrary to our expectations, education was unrelated to support for the ideal worker norm. Additionally, stronger endorsement of the ideal worker norm was associated with more negative evaluations of employees requesting remote work, who were perceived as less committed and likable, and deserving of less respect and support. These findings suggest that the ideal worker norm continues to fuel flexibility stigma and underscore the role of cultural schemas and status hierarchies in shaping workplace inequality.
This article explores how multiracial adults with white ancestry anticipate being included in whiteness, meaning whether they expect others to perceive them as white in daily situations. Instead of viewing multiraciality as inherently blurring boundaries, the study treats a standard reflected-race question as a way to assess anticipated access to a racial boundary that confers resources. Using data from the Racial Ascription and Assertion in Contextual Experiences Study (RAACES), a factorial vignette survey of 297 U.S.-born multiracial adults, I analyze four white-nonwhite pairs (White-Black, White-Latinx, White-Asian, and White-Native American). Logistic regression and predicted probabilities reveal significant, consistent differences among groups: White-Asian and especially White-Native Americans are much more likely to expect inclusion in whiteness than White-Latinx and White-Black respondents, aligning with a tri-racial hierarchy. Experimental manipulations of setting, racial makeup, familiarity, and partner interaction cause only minor changes in expectations. Within-person analysis shows that about 80 percent of respondents give the same white versus nonwhite answers across different scenarios example work, shopping, and social gatherings. These findings indicate that expectations of access to whiteness function as enduring cognitive schemas closely tied to ancestry rather than highly context-dependent judgments. The study advances understanding of symbolic boundaries, racial cognition, and stratification by showing how racial hierarchy is internalized and maintained through anticipatory classification. It also emphasizes the importance of disaggregating multiracial categories and employing factorial vignette methods to uncover the cognitive foundations of racial inequality.
Financial status-the configuration of a household's income, assets, and debts-shapes economic security, social position, influence, and opportunities for intergenerational transmission of well-being. Yet prior research typically relies on single, summed indicators of income or wealth, overlooking how distinct income sources, asset types, and debt categories combine to locate households within a multidimensional, nonhierarchical financial space. In this study, we use a case-centered clustering approach that identifies how these components coalesce into distinct financial configurations of households. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we identify 10 empirically grounded financial groups that represent multiple, intersecting forms of advantage and constraint. Some households appear affluent yet carry substantial leverage, while others have modest resources but remain relatively insulated from financial risk. By analyzing households as integrated financial cases rather than as net sums of income or wealth, we find that financial well-being and vulnerability are organized in diverse, nonhierarchical patterns. The findings demonstrate the value of studying financial status as a multidimensional construct that underscores the complexity of contemporary economic life.
First-generation college students-that is, those for whom neither parent holds a bachelor's degree-face important challenges that tend to undercut their completion of a 4-year degree, yet they also often engage in proactive behaviors aimed at stabilizing their college experiences. In this article, we interrogate specifically the gendered character of such processes by focusing on (1) potential differences in the vulnerabilities that first-generation women and men report; and (2) whether and/or how the timing, extent, and type of help-seeking they engage in differs when such challenges arise. Our analyses draw on unique and rich semistructured interviews with 61 first-generation college students across 4 years. Our findings, beyond pointing to general academic, social, and financial obstacles, highlight unique gender patterns when it comes to self-reported mental health challenges and family tensions, as well as gender gaps in help-seeking-that is, help-seeking that tends to boost the likelihood of college completion. We elaborate on our most central gender findings in these regards and discuss ways in which these rich over time accounts inform sociological literatures on mobility, inequality, gender, intersectionality, and higher education.
A growing body of scholarship shows that many religions promote binary conceptions of gender; a separate line of scholarship on cisgendered organizations examines how binary conceptions of gender pattern many organizational policies. However, little research to date considers how religion shapes organizations' decisions to maintain cisgendered policies. In this article, we address this gap by analyzing policies toward transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming students at 624 4-year U.S. Christian colleges and universities. Using original data and binary logistic regression, we show that evangelical Protestant colleges and universities are significantly more likely than other Christian colleges and universities to maintain explicitly discriminatory policies toward transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming students. Evangelical Protestant schools are also more likely to lack nondiscrimination policies inclusive of gender identity or gender expression. We argue that these patterns reflect evangelical Protestants' distinctive moral schemas and identities, which in turn shape the unique organizational characteristics of evangelical Protestant colleges and universities themselves. Our findings advance theory by demonstrating how religion can influence organizations' decisions to maintain cisgendered policies. The article also contributes to the development of a conceptual framework for understanding why and how cisgendered policies become institutionalized across other organizational contexts.
Scholars have long documented disparities in students' confidence about achieving their career goals, yet prior research often treats confidence as a function of structural advantage or individual preparation rather than an interpretive assessment of what futures feel attainable. We conceptualize career goal confidence as a judgment shaped by how students understand occupational pathways and the influences that make those pathways more or less legible. Using survey data from 2,080 undergraduates at a broad-access public research university, we examine how career goal confidence varies with the occupational goals students name and the influences they cite as shaping those interests. Although most occupational domains do not differ significantly in confidence once background and academic factors are accounted for, several domains show higher or lower confidence in ways that align with the clarity or opacity of their early career pathways. Confidence is also associated with interpretive resources: students who attribute their goals to mentors, to knowledge of day-to-day work activities, or to perceptions of occupational status report higher confidence than their peers. These findings suggest that career goal confidence reflects how students interpret the structure and meaning of the futures they imagine, highlighting the role of pathway legibility and interpretive access in the college-to-career transition.
Under conditions of legal precarity, the experience of underemployment is not simply a structural misallocation or a psychic strain, as it is often framed, but a lived moral condition. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 28 undocumented Filipino workers whose credentials exceed their job roles, I introduce the practice of virtúing to describe how workers ethically inhabit the constraints of labor mismatch by using culturally intelligible virtues to navigate their underemployment, and in part, to illustrate its explicitly moral dimensions and the moral nature of labor. The results identify three interrelated modes of virtúing. Performative virtúing reflects how workers create provisional forms of protection against exploitation through strategic displays of amenability or deference, which paradoxically also make their labor more exploitable. Conformative virtúing illustrates how workers transform devalued labor into ethically coherent practices by embracing the normative ideals of familial sacrifice or aspirational self-discipline, suggesting that they derive the dignity of their labor not through role alignment but from broader moral commitments. Subversive virtúing arises when workers have exhausted the avenues of action within the confines of their labor and respond by engaging in quiet acts of refusals, protective boundary work, or moral withdrawal as a form of ethical preservation.
Crowdfunding platforms represent a growing yet unequal social safety net for American families. While past research has consistently highlighted poorer donation outcomes for campaigners of color, data limitations have obscured a focus on the role of donor characteristics. Using novel data from a factorial survey in which respondents evaluated fictional crowdfunding campaigns (n = 1,459), this study assesses the extent to which the race of both campaigner and campaign evaluator shapes respondents' reported willingness to donate. Results from the experimental survey indicate a higher willingness to donate to Black beneficiaries, lending insight into the structural inequalities that shape racially disparate outcomes across actual campaigns. Analyses further indicate a heightened willingness to donate among Black evaluators, with this association being significantly stronger among Black respondents evaluating Black campaigners. These findings contribute to our understanding of how characteristics of both crowdfunding beneficiaries and donors, as well as social homophily between the two, shape campaign outcomes.
To explore the relationship between education and youth punishment in Hawai'i, a five-year qualitative study using feminist research methods was conducted between January 2012 and October 2017 in O'ahu, Hawai'i. This study examined the experiences of youth at a high school group-counseling program, teens in a juvenile justice program, and adults who had experiences in the juvenile justice system in Hawai'i. This study explored the multiple processes and consequences of youth punishment, especially for teens who moved between various institutions of control. This research describes the experiences youth had with institutions of control, especially schools and the juvenile justice system, and how instability exposed them to various youth institutions that made it challenging to exit these institutions. Themes found in this study suggest that racialized hierarchies and socioeconomic stratification developed through colonialism continue to have a significant impact on contemporary ideologies and practices of how to control marginalized bodies through present-day systems of punishment.
This ethnographic study examines how the identity of "regular" is constructed, maintained, and sometimes denied at Mulligan's, a small-town, golf-themed bar in the rural Midwest. Using symbolic interactionism and Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and symbolic capital, the research draws from six months of participant observation and unstructured interviews with patrons and staff. The study finds that regular status is achieved through embodied ease, shared memory, and symbolic alignment with the bar's rhythms, rather than simply frequency of attendance. Bartenders shape inclusion through subtle cues like recognition and humor, while newcomers often experience symbolic exclusion. The study concludes that third places like Mulligan's are stratified environments where inclusion depends on affective labor and the ability to be recognized as a person who uses their socio-cultural fluency to reproduce the same socio-cultural experience of the establishment. This research highlights the dynamic and performative nature of belonging in everyday public settings.
Prior research has extensively documented the protective effects of immigrant concentration on crime. However, little is known about how newcomers of distinct nationalities influence crime in the aggregate, particularly over time. This study examines how immigration measures disaggregated by country of origin impact violent and property crime rates and drug-related arrests in Texas counties from 2000 to 2019. Results from a series of fixed-effects linear regression models show no discernible relationship between various nationality measures and violent crime rates. However, increases in the Honduran, Salvadoran, Indian, and overall foreign-born population were associated with within-county decreases in property crime rates, while percent Salvadoran and percent Vietnamese were related to fewer drug arrests. We discuss the implications of these findings for research, theory, and current debates on U.S. immigration policy.
Astrology is a multi-million-dollar industry. Its ubiquity in contemporary social life suggests that astrology may be an important component of Americans’ identity and lived experience. Despite this popularity, scholarly attention to the uses and views of astrology is limited and has largely focused on its relationship with religion and religiosity. Further, little is known about who uses astrology in the United States, how, and why. In this article, we conduct a preliminary analysis of how Americans view and utilize astrology, drawing from survey and interview data with Americans and professional astrologers. Nationally representative quantitative data indicate that women, sexual minorities, and younger adults are each more likely to consult their horoscope, consistent with recent research. Qualitative data suggests that astrology can be a marker of identity, self-understanding, and entertainment for the public, rather than strictly as a facet of religious belief and may occupy a cultural space akin to other “personality” indicators for some. For professional astrologers and their clients, astrology is viewed as part of a complex spirituality and used as a tool for decision-making and self-understanding. We conclude by discussing promising directions for future sociological research on astrology.
The article investigates African American community views on the development of hog-farm-based biogas production in rural North Carolina. In 2023, five focus groups ( N = 51) were conducted in Sampson County, the site of the first large-scale biogas project in North Carolina. The results suggest a prevalence of a “social gap” in the outlook of the residents, that is, they favored biogas as a source of renewable energy in general but opposed its development for their area. A hierarchical-nested analytical model of the “social gap” is developed and compared with the positions of other biogas supporters and detractors in the state. African American community views were closer to anti-biogas advocates, such as environmentalists, in asserting that biogas capture will do little to alleviate the most hazardous impacts of hog farming associated with large-scale manure discharges in surrounding farm areas. However, residents also considered biogas as having a potential for positive economic and environmental impacts, a position that was more in line with the stance of pro-biogas developers and state regulators.
Drawing from in-depth interviews with 35 Black respondents from South Central Los Angeles, a Black and Latinx community, I analyze Black experiences in and of “Brown” space. I find three main themes: absence, rejection, and qualified coexistence. Respondents frequently discussed a noticeable absence of Black people, mourning what South Central simultaneously used to be and could be. Rejection was another central theme, capturing the many ways in which Black respondents experienced anti-Black indignities, while navigating public space in Latinizing South Central. Finally, Black residents also toed the line between narratives of conflict and coexistence by telling stories of what I call “qualified coexistence”—these were stories that detailed a coexistence between Black and Latinx folks that was mired by routine anti-Blackness. These findings advance scholarship across different research areas, include race and space, Black-Latinx relations, and theories of interracial interaction.
Well-being outcomes for workers in the United States have worsened in recent years. However, the role that workers’ experiences with digital technologies may play in this trend is underexplored. Thus, using data from 10 focus groups ( n = 67) and an original survey with workers in the United States ( n = 4,898), we explore the impact of technology on workers’ self-assessments of emotional health and burnout levels. Focus groups revealed that workers perceive technology to be making their work lives more challenging, leading to frustration and burnout. In addition, workers attested that suboptimal working conditions relate to diminished confidence around their technological skills. Regarding quantitative findings, logistic regression models constructed for the survey data demonstrate that compared to salaried workers with a positive relationship to technology, both salaried workers with a negative relationship to technology and hourly paid workers (regardless of their relationship to technology) professed elevated levels of burnout at work. Taken together, we theorize that our results suggest the existence of a “digital dignity divide” in which orientation toward technology matters when it comes to whether workers feel valued and respected at work (and vice versa). In turn, feeling a lack of dignity related to digital technologies at work has an impact on overall emotional well-being.
This study examines the mechanisms and relationships between ethnic and cultural identities and economic outcomes among Kurdish and Turkish migrants from Turkey and their descendants in Germany. It extends migrant adaptation theories by exploring the crucial role of multiple and hybrid identities using a mixed-methods approach. The results highlight differences between migrants and descendants, indicating that economically successful descendants embrace multiple identities, including German identity, more than migrants. In contrast, economically unsuccessful descendants primarily identify as Turkish, whilst migrants more closely align with Kurdish identity. The findings indicate that, contrary to assimilationist approaches, economic success is closely related to the coexistence of source and destination country identities and the flexibility to adjust their relative importance over time. The study identifies human capital, social capital, and engagement within or beyond the ethnic economy, alongside diverse social and business networks, as key mechanisms linking identities to economic outcomes. It concludes that integration policies fostering multiple identities, rather than complete assimilation, are likely to be more effective in improving migrants’ economic success. The study therefore calls for further research into the impact of multiple and hybrid identities on economic outcomes, including the underlying mechanisms.
