American Journal of Sociology（AJS）
Volume 115, Number 6, May 2010, pp. 1671-2000
Masthead
V Contributors
P1671
Compensation Benchmarking, Leapfrogs, and the Surge in Executive Pay1
Thomas A. DiPrete and Gregory M. Eirich
Columbia University
Matthew Pittinsky
Arizona State University
Abstract: Scholars frequently argue whether the sharp rise in chief executive officer (CEO) pay in recent years is “efficient” or is a consequence of “rent extraction” because of the failure of corporate governance in individual firms. This article argues that governance failure must be conceptualized at the market rather than the firm level because excessive pay increases for even relatively few CEOs a year spread to other firms through the cognitively and rhetorically constructed compensation networks of “peer groups,” which are used in the benchmarking process to negotiate the compensation of CEOs. Counterfactual simulation based on Standard and Poor’s ExecuComp data demonstrates that the effects of CEO “leapfrogging” potentially explain a considerable fraction of the overall upward movement of executive compensation since the early 1990s.
P1713
Toward a Historical Sociology of Social Situations
David Diehl and
Daniel McFarland
Stanford University
Abstract: In recent years there has been a growing call to historicize sociology by paying more attention to the contextual importance of time and place as well as to issues of process and contingency. Meeting this goal requires bringing historical sociology and interactionism into greater conversation via a historical theory of social situations. Toward this end, the authors of this article draw on Erving Goffman's work in Frame Analysis to conceptualize experience in social situations as grounded in multilayered cognitive frames and to demonstrate how such a framework helps illuminate historical changes in situated interaction.
P1752
Drawing Blood from Stones: Legal Debt and Social Inequality in the Contemporary United States
Alexes Harris,
Heather Evans, and
Katherine Beckett
University of Washington
Abstract: The expansion of the U.S. penal system has important consequences for poverty and inequality, yet little is known about the imposition of monetary sanctions. This study analyzes national and state-level court data to assess their imposition and interview data to identify their social and legal consequences. Findings indicate that monetary sanctions are imposed on a substantial majority of the millions of people convicted of crimes in the United States annually and that legal debt is substantial relative to expected earnings. This indebtedness reproduces disadvantage by reducing family income, by limiting access to opportunities and resources, and by increasing the likelihood of ongoing criminal justice involvement.
P1800
Cultural Objects as Objects: Materiality, Urban Space, and the Interpretation of AIDS Campaigns in Accra, Ghana
Terence E. McDonnell
Vanderbilt University
Abstract: AIDS media lead unexpected lives once distributed through urban space: billboards fade, posters go missing, bumper stickers travel to other cities. The materiality of AIDS campaign objects and of the urban settings in which they are displayed structures how the public interprets their messages. Ethnographic observation of AIDS media in situ and interview data reveal how the materiality of objects and places shapes the availability of AIDS knowledge in Accra, Ghana. Significantly for AIDS organizations, these material conditions often systematically obstruct access to AIDS knowledge for particular groups. Attending to materiality rethinks how scholars assess the cultural power of media.
P1853
A Signal Juncture: The Detroit Newspaper Strike and Post-Accord Labor Relations in the United States
Chris Rhomberg
Fordham University
Abstract: This essay uses a deviant case analysis of the 1995–2000 Detroit newspaper strike to critique and revise theories of strike activity. As the formal institutions regulating industrial relations in the United States have declined, workplace struggles have expanded or reentered into other arenas of the state and civil society. In addition, the essay develops the methodological concept of a “signal juncture,” that is, moments of conflict that reveal a “collision” of underlying developmental paths. Unlike the more familiar concept of the critical juncture, a signal juncture reveals ongoing structural tensions and conflicting actors within otherwise continuous trends.
Book Reviews
P1895
Righteous Dopefiend by Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg
Douglas Harper
P1897
Making Our Way through the World: Human Reflexivity and Social Mobility by Margaret S. Archer
Alan Cicourel
P1901
Alexis de Tocqueville: The First Social Scientist by Jon Elster
Richard Swedberg
P1903
Radical Ambition: C. Wright Mills, the Left, and American Social Thought by Daniel Geary
Neil McLaughlin
P1960
Abraham Lincoln in the Post‐Heroic Era: History and Memory in Late Twentieth‐Century America by Barry Schwartz
Jeffrey K. Olick
P1908
How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment by Michèle Lamont
Andrew Pickering
P1910
Violence: A Micro‐sociological Theory by Randall Collins
Michael Kimmel
P1913
Bankrupt: Global Lawmaking and Systemic Financial Crisis by Terence C. Halliday and Bruce G. Carruthers
Peter Evans
P1915
Corporate Power in Global Agrifood Governance, edited by Jennifer Clapp and Doris Fuchs
Philip H. Howard
P1917
bserving Bioethics by Renée C. Fox and Judith P. Swazey
Alan Petersen
P1919
Smart Governance: Governing the Global Knowledge Society by Helmut Willke
Alberto Martinelli
P1922
Rise of the Red Engineers: The Cultural Revolution and the Origins of China’s New Class by Joel Andreas
Johanna Bockman
P1924
Deliverance and Submission: Evangelical Women and the Negotiation of Patriarchy in South Korea by Kelly H. Chong
Brenda E. Brasher
P1926
Boundless Faith: The Global Outreach of American Churches by Robert Wuthnow
John Boli
P1928
Religion, Class Coalitions, and Welfare States, edited by Kees van Kersbergen and Philip Manow
Jason Beckfield
P1931
Gendered Trajectories: Women, Work, and Social Change in Japan and Taiwan by Wei‐hsin Yu
Deborah Carr
P1933
Cosmopolitan Anxieties: Turkish Challenges to Citizenship and Belonging in Germany by Ruth Mandel
Schirin Amir‐Moazami
P1936
A Nation of Emigrants: How Mexico Manages Its Migration by David Fitzgerald
Anna C. Korteweg
P1938
The Foundations of Ethnic Politics: Separatism of States and Nations in Eurasia and the World by Henry E. Hale
Steven Pfaff
P1940
Lineages of Despotism and Development: British Colonialism and State Power by Matthew Lange
Julian Go
P1943
Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule, 1917–1967 by Ilana Feldman
Nina Eliasoph
P1945
The New Welfare Bureaucrats: Entanglements of Race, Class, and Policy Reform by Celeste Watkins‐Hayes
Vicki Smith
P1947
Blue‐Chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class by Karyn R. Lacy
Kathryn M. Neckerman
P1950
Cracks in the Pavement: Social Change and Resilience in Poor Neighborhoods by Martín Sánchez‐Jankowski
Jack Katz
P1953
Contentious Performances by Charles Tilly
Charles C. Ragin
P1958
The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: Right‐Wing Movements and National Politics by Rory McVeigh
Nella Van Dyke
P1960
Republic of Drivers: A Cultural History of Automobility in America by Cotten Seiler
James M. Jasper
P1962
Caught in Play: How Entertainment Works on You by Peter G. Stromberg
Thomas Henricks
P1964
Eros and Civilization by Herbert Marcuse
Barbara Celarent
P1957
Acknowledgments to Referees
P1981
Contents of Volume 115
P1988
Book Reviewers for Volume 115