Judith R. Blau

The Cost of Inequality: Metropolitan Structure and Violent Crime

The hypothesis tested is that variations in rates of urban criminal violence largely result from differences in racial inequality in socioeconomic conditions. Data on the 125 largest American metropolitan areas (SMSAs) are used to ascertain whether this hypothesis can account for three correlates of violent crime differently interpreted in the literature. Criminal violence is positively related to location in the South, which has been interpreted as the result of the Southern tradition of violence. It is positively related to the proportion of blacks in an SMSA, which has been interpreted as reflecting a subculture of violence in ghettos. And it is positively related to poverty, which has been interpreted as the emphasis on toughness and excitement in the culture of poverty. The analysis reveals that socioeconomic inequality between races, as well as economic inequality generally, increases rates of criminal violence, but once economic inequalities are controlled poverty no longer influences these rates, neither does Southern location, and the proportion of blacks in the population hardly does. These results imply that if there is a culture of violence, its roots are pronounced economic inequalities, especially if associated with ascribed position.

Ideas, Complexity, and Innovation.

A version of this paper was read at the 1978 meetings of the International Sociological Association in Uppsala, Sweden. The Research Foundation of the City University of New York provided funds for the research. The authors acknowledge suggestions made by John Hammond and especially want to thank Hilary Silver for her help with the computer analysis. We are indebted to the ASQ reviewers, whose detailed criticisms on earlier drafts were extremely valuable.

Empowering Nets of Participation.

To test the implications of field work in a psychiatric hospital for children, this study focuses on the effects of network properties of organizational units, personal network position, and other individual attributes, on individual power. The contextual analysis is carried out by two linked regression equations, one at the individual and one at the contextual level, a procedure that has methodological advantages over a single regression model. The results suggest that sheer complexity can undermine inequalities among bureaucratic units and occupational groups, and that organizational democracy is fostered when complex role relations promote extensive interunit communication. Specifically, we find that a main mechanism that endows individuals with power is found in the local domains of participation, i.e., the organizational units of which they are members, and that the capacity of such a unit to empower its members depends on its integration in organization-wide communication networks. The basis of this integration is conceived as overlapping circles of weak ties that inhibit segmentation along occupational or organizational lines and sustain wide participation by rewarding those who participate.

Religious Pluralism and Church Membership: A Spatial Diffusion Model

Recent empirical research on the effect of religious pluralism on church membership in the United States has produced contradictoryfindings. One study reported that religious pluralism had a positive effect on the prevalence of church membership, whereas another study reported a negative effect. Using county-level census datafor 1910, 1920, and 1930, wefind that religious diversity generally retards church membership. We also extend research on this topic. We introduce a measure that summarizes the effect of church adherence in surrounding counties on church adherence in a particular county. Examining the effects of a variety of social and economic conditions on church membership, we find that, in the early decades of this century, church participation was high in counties for which there are indications of social deprivation and marginality. Ethnic and religious diversity retard church membership and the positive impact of religious adherence elsewhere on a particular countys religious participation declines over time.

Staying Back and Dropping Out: The Relationship Between Grade Retention and School Dropout

Students who repeat a grade prior to high school have a higher risk of dropping out of high school than do students who are continuously promoted. This study tested whether standard theories of dropout—including the participation-identification model and the social capital model—explain this link. Although the presence of variables, including academic achievement and disciplinary problems, reduces the higher probability of retained students dropping out, existing models of dropping out do not adequately explain the markedly higher probability of dropping out for retained students. Regression decomposition reveals differences between promoted and retained students in the importance of resources and illustrates that various resources hold different levels of importance for white, black, and Latino students.

Individual and Contextual Effects on Stress and Job Satisfaction: A Study of Prison Staff

In a study of personnel who work in ten New York State prisons, we examine the extent to which stress and job satisfaction are influenced by both individual and organizational-level characteristics. Some findings of the research fail to support commonly held assumptions, such as the one that guard work is inherently more stressful than that of other prison staff. We also find, contrary to many studies, that marriage is positively related to stress, which suggests that marital ties fail to function as a support system for individuals who work in isolated institutions. Results for religion lend additional support to this conclusion. Nonwhite personnel, we find, fare significantly better than whites. Our results concerning the contextual effects of facilities indicate the overriding importance of social control in prison life: Job satisfaction of staff depends on the discipline and control they exercise over inmates, and the authority that prison officials exercise over them. The irony of these conclusions is what best serves prison staff has different implications for prison inmates.

Diverse trajectories of cocaine use through early adulthood among rebellious and socially conforming youth

This paper tests predictions of continuity and change in antisocial behavior over time as derived from population heterogeneity and life-course perspectives. These predictions are assessed with respect to a rarely studied form of delinquent/criminal behavior, cocaine use during the late-teenage and young adult years. We first examine the extent to which differential propensities toward antisocial behavior can be detected in a nationally representative sample of youth aged 14-16 in 1979. Based on self-reported delinquent and criminal activities in late adolescense, traditional cross-sectional latent-class analysis identifies three groups of antisocial/rebellious respondents and a group of non-offenders. We then follow these groups into early adulthood, examining age trajectories of cocaine usage between 1984 and 1998. Latent-class trajectory models identify clusters of respondents who show similar age trajectories of cocaine use over time and provide parameter estimates that predict membership in those clusters. In support of the population heterogeneity perspective, we find that antisocial/rebellious youth have higher probabilities of cocaine use throughout early adulthood than non-of-fending youth. There is, however, much variation in drug use patterns among the groups as they aged. In support of a life-course perspective, we find that social ties to schools, families, religion, and the labor market help differentiate youth who refrain from, maintain, or desist from using cocaine through early adulthood.

Social Inequality and the Arts

Inferences from the historical literature on art are tested in a quantitative comparison of the 125 largest American metropolitan places. Art is measured by the proportion in artistic occupations, whether they involve classical, popular, or commercial art. Economic inequality apparently promotes art, but perhaps no longer primarily through patronage but rather throung the need for affluence to consume art and, particularly, through the diverse demand for art engendered by great differences in economic class. Inequality in education, however, is inversely related to the number of artists, which suggest that art flourishes in cities where most people are well educated and have cultural orientations that, though diverse, compose fairly large taste subcultures. This interpretation is supported by the finding that the existence of large occupational groups in a metropolis is positively related to artistic activities. Inequality in overall social status (SEI) encourages performing but discourages nonperforming arts, probably because performing artists have to be located where affluent audiences can support operas and rock concerts and other performing institutions, whereas othe artists do not.

The expansion of religious affiliation: An explanation of the growth of church participation in the United States 1850–1930☆

Abstract This paper focuses on the period in U.S. history that experienced the most rapid rate of increase of church membership—the decades between 1850 and 1930—in order to explain synchronic and diachronic variation in those rates. Using pooled cross-sectional time series analysis, different predictions are derived and tested from theories of secularization/social control, comparative disadvantage, resource mobilization, and pluralism. The effects of spatial diffusion and the momentum of religious tradition also are estimated. Our conclusion is that religious monopoly—not diversity—fuels religious expansion. This finding is bolstered by the complementary result that ethnic homogeneity is also conducive to religious expansion. Together these results highlight the importance for mobilization of religious and ethnocultural dominance in a particular niche.

Ethnocultural cleavages and the growth of church membership in the United States, 1860–1930

Recent research on the expansion of overall church membership in the United States has led to conflicting conclusions as to whether religious diversity or monopoly increases participation. This investigation helps resolve the debate by distinguishing among different religious traditions. It is hypothesized that differences in participation can be traced to racial, ethnic, and doctrinal divisions, and moreover, that these divisions also provide the contingent conditions under which competition or monopoly effects operate. Using pooled cross-sectional time series, comparisons center on Catholics, Baptists, and Mainline denominations. Separate analyses are presented for white and black Baptists, and for the Northern Baptist Convention that emerged in the early 20th century as a relatively liberal Baptist denomination. The results suggest that ecumenical and liberal religious traditions did accompany religious diversity, but membership in such churches grew very slowly. In contrast, groups that faced discrimination as well as those that shielded themselves from progressive currents of modernism sustained high rates of growth. Their monopoly situations are evident in the low religious diversity of counties in which they grew (as well as by low ethnic or racial diversity) and by their increasing spatial concentration over time.