Kraig Beyerlein

Social Capital, Too Much of a Good Thing? American Religious Traditions and Community Crime

Using American religious traditions as measures of bonding and bridging social capital in communities, we empirically test how these different forms of social capital affect crime rates in 3,157 U.S. counties in 2000. Our results suggest that the bonding networks evangelical Protestants promote in communities explain why counties with a greater percentage of residents affiliated with this tradition consistently have higher crime rates. Conversely, our results suggest that the bridging networks that mainline Protestants and Catholics foster in communities explain why counties with a greater percentage of residents affiliated with these traditions generally have lower crime rates. This article thus provides empirical corroboration for recent theoretical discussions that focus on how the social capital that groups cultivate in communities need not always benefit communities as a whole.

The National Congregations Study : Background, methods, and selected results

The National Congregations Study (NCS) was conducted in conjunction with the 1998 General Social Survey (GSS). The 1998 GSS asked respondents who attend religious services to name their religious congregation, thus generating a nationally representative sample of religious congregations. Data about these congregations were collected via a one-hour interview with one key informant - a minister, priest, rabbi, or other staff person or leader - from 1236 congregations. Information was gathered about multiple aspects of congregationssocial composition, structure, activities, and programming. This article describes NCS methodology and presents selected univariate results in four areas: denominational ties, size, political activities, and worship practices.

Black Voting During the Civil Rights Movement: A Micro-level Analysis

This article examines why some black Southerners but not others were politically active during the early stages of the civil rights movement. Using a survey of more than 600 black Southerners in 1961, we investigate whether perceptions about opportunity and threat, politicized social capital and individual orientations toward social change shaped voting in the 1960 Presidential election. Perceptions of solidarity in the black community and repression against politically active blacks encourage voting, while the perception of white support for integration does not. Participating in civic and religious organizations and discussing politics with friends and co-workers (but not family members) increase the likelihood of voting. Our findings extend political opportunity and social capital theories in important ways while offering new insights into this historically important case of civic engagement.

A New Picture of Protest The National Study of Protest Events

The National Study of Protest Events (NSPE) employed hypernetwork sampling to generate the first-ever nationally representative sample of protest events. Nearly complete information about various event characteristics was collected from participants in 1,037 unique protests across the United States in 2010 to 2011. The first part of this article reviews extant methodologies in protest-event research and discusses how the NSPE overcomes their recognized limitations. Next, we detail how the NSPE was conducted and present descriptive statistics for a number of important event characteristics. The hypernetwork sample is then compared to newspaper reports of protests. As expected, we find many differences in the types of events these sources capture. At the same time, the overall number and magnitude of the differences are likely to be surprising. By contrast, little variation is observed in how protesters and journalists described features of the same events. NSPE data have many potential applications in the field of contentious politics and social movements, and several possibilities for future research are outlined.

Faith's wager: How religion deters gambling

The relationship between religion and gambling has only rarely been investigated in sociology and related fields. Prior studies have found that religion, broadly defined, deters gambling, with different religious traditions exhibiting varying degrees of deterrence. Our study, a quantitative analysis of a recent representative sample of U.S. adults, theorizes and tests how three different dimensions of religion affect three distinct forms of gambling. Religious tradition and religious service attendance are found to reduce the likelihood of casino gambling and lottery play; while religious salience is the only dimension that constrains online gambling. We argue that these findings reflect variation in the social visibility, time intensity, and broader legitimacy associated with gambling forms, and that this variation is crucial for understanding the deterring effects of faith.

The Migrant Border Crossing Study: A methodological overview of research along the Sonora–Arizona border

Increased border enforcement efforts have redistributed unauthorized Mexican migration to the United States (US) away from traditional points of crossing, such as San Diego and El Paso, and into more remote areas along the US–Mexico border, including southern Arizona. Yet relatively little quantitative scholarly work exists examining Mexican migrants’ crossing, apprehension, and repatriation experiences in southern Arizona. We contend that if scholars truly want to understand the experiences of unauthorized migrants in transit, such migrants should be interviewed either at the border after being removed from the US, or during their trajectories across the border, or both. This paper provides a methodological overview of the Migrant Border Crossing Study (MBCS), a unique data source on Mexican migrants who attempted an unauthorized crossing along the Sonora–Arizona border, were apprehended, and repatriated to Nogales, Sonora in 2007–09. We also discuss substantive and theoretical contributions of the MBCS.

Who Violates The Principles of Political Liberalism?: Religion, Restraint, and the Decision to Reject Same-Sex Marriage

Recent debates in political theory have seen political liberals advocate and defend a doctrine of restraint, according to which citizens may not rely solely on religious reasons when supporting their favored public policies. This debate notwithstanding, very rarely have social scientists assessed the extent to which citizens actually violate this doctrine. This article evaluates the “political decision-making” model of political liberalism. Data from a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults are used to test this model for legalization of same-sex marriage. Our analyses show that while only a very small percentage of U.S. support this policy solely on the basis of their religious convictions, roughly a quarter oppose it for religious reasons alone. Furthermore, we find that higher levels of religious service attendance and importance of religious faith as well as affiliation with evangelical and black Protestantism significantly increase the likelihood of same-sex marriage opposition entirely on religious grounds.

It takes two: A dyadic model of recruitment to civic activity☆

Why are some people, but not others, asked to engage in civic activity? Rather than focus on the personal traits of either potential recruits or recruiters for this initial stage of recruitment, we develop and test a theoretical framework that emphasizes the importance of shared relationships and characteristics between those doing the recruiting and those being recruited. Specifically, the nature of interactions, overlapping community and associational space, status and value homophily, and strength and intimacy are assessed to explain differential recruitment among peoples closest ties. Furthermore, unlike previous studies, we do so across three different forms of civic activity-blood donation, volunteer work, and political activism-allowing us to identify larger patterns in civic solicitation. Results from multilevel analyses of dyads reorganized from ego-centric data of U.S. adults show that while certain personal traits of egos and alters remain significant, attributes of the dyad are equally, if not more, consequential for explaining variation in who gets asked to participate in civic activity. Importantly, while certain dyadic characteristics-such as romantic partnerships-promote recruitment to all three forms of civic activity, the effects of others-such as sex homophily-are unique to specific forms. Broadly speaking, our results indicate that some types of dyadic characteristics are more powerful than others and that there are important differences in how particular dimensions of social connections shape recruitment efforts across the specific activities of donating blood, volunteering time, and engaging in political activism.

Cultural Dilemmas of Progressive Politics: Styles of Engagement among Grassroots Activists.By Stephen Hart. University of Chicago Press, 2001. 292 pp. Cloth,

how gender matters in grassroots political life; and how religion remains a vital resource for democracy. This is a timely book. We are at a point in American political history where the most vital grassroots citizen movements on both left and right are steeped in religious organizations and traditions. Dry Bones Rattling ably reminds a largely secular scholarly community that a renewal of civil society may well come through vehicles of faith.