Claude S. Fischer

To dwell among friends : personal networks in town and city

An analysis of the influence of urban life on society compares and contrasts personal relationships in large cities with those in small towns.

Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations

The proportion of Americans who reported no religious preference doubled from 7 percent to 14 percent in the 1990s. This dramatic change may have resulted from demographic shifts, increasing religious skepticism, or the mix of politics and religion that characterized the 1990s. One demographic factor is the succession of generations; the percentage of adults who had been raised with no religion increased from 2 percent to 6 percent. Delayed marriage and parenthood also contributed to the increase. Religious skepticism proved to be an unlikely explanation: Most people with no preference hold conventional religious beliefs, despite their alienation from organized religion. In fact, these “unchurched believers” made up most of the increase in the “no religion” preferences. Politics, too, was a significant factor. The increase in “no religion” responses was confined to political moderates and liberals; the religious preferences of political conservatives did not change. This political part of the increase in “nones” can be viewed as a symbolic statement against the Religious Right.

The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life

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Distinguishing the geographic levels and social dimensions of U.S. metropolitan segregation, 1960–2000

In this article, we assess trends in residential segregation in the United States from 1960 to 2000 along several dimensions of race and ethnicity, class, and life cycle and present a method for attributing segregation to nested geographic levels. We measured segregation for metropolitan America using the Theil index, which is additively decomposed into contributions of regional, metropolitan, center city—suburban, place, and tract segregation. This procedure distinguishes whether groups live apart because members cluster in different neighborhoods, communities, metropolitan areas, or regions. Substantively, we found that the segregation of blacks decreased considerably after 1960 largely because neighborhoods became more integrated, but the foreign born became more segregated largely because they concentrated in particular metropolitan areas. Class segregation increased between 1970 and 1990 mainly because the affluent increasingly clustered in specific metropolitan areas and in specific municipalities within metropolitan areas. The unmarried increasingly congregated in center cities. The main purpose of this article is to describe and illustrate this multilevel approach to studying segregation.

Bowling Alone: What's the Score?

Robert Putnam’sBowling Alone(Putnam, 2000 ) is a 10-pin strike, a major contribution to study of social networks and social cohesion. Whether, at the end of the “game,” Putnam will have scored highly enough to win over most spectators, I argue, remains to be decided. After some introductory comments, I focus on two concerns: the coherence of “social capital” as the book’s central concept, and whether there has indeed been a decline in social connections. My attention here is directed to the first three sections of Bowling Alone, the chapters that describe and explain the social changes (pp. 1–284). There are many virtues to Bowling Alone. It is prodigiously bold, addressing key issues within the big question of “Whither America?” While many have speculated about a fraying of America’s social fabric, none have tackled so wide a range of social action, from voting to family meals, in so systematic and empirical a fashion. It is a bravura exhibition of research technique and energy. Careful scouring of the endnotes, which I warmly recommend, only reinforces the impression that one gets from reading the main text. 1 Bowling Aloneis also notable for the accessibility of its prose and its success in bringing important social concerns and quality social research to a wide audience. Bowling Alonehas less obvious virtues, too. It is historically grounded in ways too often uncommon in the behavioral sciences. One illustration pertains to residential mobility. Putnam notes that increasing mobility could not explain a decline in social involvement because mobility has notbeen increasing in the United States (p. 205)—a plain fact too many sociologists do not know. 2 More centrally, Putnam clearly states that he is not describing an eons-long decline in social bonds; he is not claiming a “fall from grace.” Instead, he is describing a relatively recent reversal of social trends. Americans in the 1950s, he contends, were more socially connected than those who came after and those who came before. Sometimes, Putnam is misread on this point. For example Etzioni (2001, p. 224) suggests

On Urban Alienations and Anomie: Powerlessness and Social Isolation

We tested the hypothesis derived from Louis Wirth (1938) that urban life, all else equal, leads to alienation by secondary analysis of three large surveys. We examined two dimensions: powerlessness, operationalized with a sense of personal competence scale, and social isolation, operationalized by scales and items reflecting a distrust of others (and interpretable as a sense of anomie). Results (1) show no association of size of Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area with powerlessness. (2) Felt social isolation (i.e., distrust) was weakly but consistently (r .07) associated. We explore explanations for this relationship and favor one based orn the social composition of the community. Also, we found that knowing ones neighbors was substantially negatively related to community size. This we attribute to the relative unimportance of proximity in the urban setting which reduces neighborhood contacts in favor of trans-local ones.

Ever‐More Rooted Americans

Many scholars attribute contemporary ills to greater “rootlessness” among Americans. Residential mobility may be of some concern because local communities are disordered and vulnerable individuals are at risk when turnover is especially rapid. However, rates of residential mobility actually declined between the 19th and 20th centuries and continued to decline between 1950 and 1999. Analysis of Current Population Surveys shows that: in the population overall, the decline in mobility rates occurred for local moves—rates of cross‐county moves stayed almost constant; Americans across age, race, gender, and class experienced the decline; but certain specific groups experienced either no drop or a slight increase in mobility. The latter seem distinctive in being the most economically marginal.

Urbanism as a Way of Life

Louis Wirths classic description of the social and psychological effects of urbanism is organized into a model for the purpose of reviewing relevant theory and empirical research. Evidence on predicted structural effects (differentiation, formal integration and anomie) and individual effects (sensory overload, role mobility, isolation and deviance) is, at most, mixed. The best-supported predictions are of differentiation and deviance. Alternative models of urban life are explored, and, in the process of the review, research directions are suggested.

Urban-to-Rural Diffusion of Opinions in Contemporary America

Recent studies indicate continuing cultural differences between residents of larger and smaller communities. This paper argues that these differences persist because they are constantly generated anew. Innovations emerge in metropolitan centers and diffuse from them to smaller places, so that there is always a gap between the two. Predictions from this model are evaluated with poll data, covering 20 years, on changing social attitudes. The results are consistent with the predictions. Patterns in the rates of opinion change indicate d hierarchical diffusion model in which early adoption and/or rate of diffusion are positively associated with community size.

Crowding Studies and Urban Life: A Critical Review

Abstract In recent years, a great deal of speculation and research has appeared on the topic of whether population density has serious social psychological consequences. In this article, we review the crowding literature with particular concern for its implications for urban life. First, we examine the extant research and draw two conclusions: that much of the work is methodologically or conceptually limited; and, that density, though perceived as unpleasant, does not appear to have definite and consistent detrimental effects. Second, we consider the theoretical relevance of this literature to urban studies, find it lacking in certain respects, and suggest solutions to the problem of relevance. Finally, we present several theoretical frameworks for guiding future research on the effects of urban density.