Patrick M. Horan

Stratification and power : structures of class, status and command

List of Figures. Preface. 1. Images of Stratification. 2. From Max Weber: a Framework. 3. Class, Property and Market. 4. Status, Community and Prestige. 5. Command, Authority and Elites. 6. Property, Authority and Class Relations. 7. Structures of Social Stratification. 8. The Question of the Working Class. Notes. References. Index.

Industrial Segmentation and Labor Market Discrimination.

The economic segmentation literature suggests two mechanisms by which the inferior position of minority within the socioeconomic structure of industrial capitalism is perpetuated. The first is the differential allocation of minority labor to different segments of the industrial economy, and the second is the differential evaluation of minority credentials within different industrial segments. Using data from the 1976 Current Population Survey we evaluate each of these two mechanisms. We find that while there are significant earnings costs due to the differential allocation of minority labor into the labor-intensive sector of the economy, the dollar costs of the differential evaluation of minority credentials are far greater. This is especially apparent in the capital-intensive sector where the penalties paid by minorities are substantial, especially for white females but also for nonwhites of either sex.

Separate justice: An analysis of race differences in court processes*

We examine the hypothesis that the criminal justice system operates differently for blacks and whites, using a covariance model to test for the existence of differences between racial groups in the effects of social background and procedural factors on criminal court outcomes. Our study employs data from simple random samples of court case records in North Carolina. Four case outcomes at each of two court levels are investigated. Findings suggest that (1) black defendants face different processes than whites at numerous stages of the criminal justice process; (2) the nature of these differences is not uniform across various stages and at different court levels; and (3) when racial differences in processing occur, they are likely to occur at stages prior to final sentencing. Our discussion explores the implications of these findings for the validity of (1) conclusions drawn from earlier research; and (2) traditional theoretical explanations for criminal justice discrimination.

Children's Work and Schooling in the Late Nineteenth-Century Family Economy.

The concept of a family economy plays an important role in theory and research on the social impact of industrialization. Using family-level data from an 1890 survey of workingclass families in the U.S., we analyze the impact of the family economy on the school and work activities of children. Our analysis differentiates the family economy from the local economy and regionalfactors. Four hypotheses derivedfrom family economy theory predict the allocation of childrens time to school and work. Our results lend strong empirical support for all hypotheses. In particular, we found that higher levels of family resources and lower levels of demand on those resources are associated with higher rates of childrens participation in school and lower rates of childrens participation in wage labor. These effects are stable after controls are introduced for family demographic composition, local economy, and region.

Structure and change in occupational mobility: A Markov approach

In the last decade, Markov models have been used to represent the dynamics of intergenerational movement between occupational positions. Yet such applications have typically fallen short of providing a systematic representation of social change as an element of the mobility process. We will argue here that this weakness in the Markov research tradition can be traced to two separate components in that research tradition: (1) the time stationarity assumption of the Markov chain formulation and (2) the “structural change” conception which detines social change as exogenous to the mobility process. McFarland (1970) and Spilerman (1972, 1972b) have argued that the homogeneity assumption of the Markov chain model could be relaxed without losing useful properties of that model. We will make a similar argument for the time stationarity-assumption (the assumption that intergenerational transition probabilities are fixed over time), and in relaxing this assumption we will provide a framework for the application of Markov models of intergenerational mobility to the study of social change. The basic conceptual model underlying the Markov analysis of intergenerational occupational mobility represents occupations as discrete states which are occupied by individuals. The occupational composition of a group of individuals in generation t can thus be represented by a vector Or = (Ort, Oar, . . . . onC) where Oar is the proportion of the group in the ith occupational category at time t. In the Markov model, the occupational composition for generation t + 1 can be represented as:

Causal models of measurement: some problems for theory construction

The use of causal diagrams and interpretations to elaborate the interplay between theory and research has stimulated much interest in the application of theory construction procedures to research practice. However, when applied to efforts to combine structural models and measurement models within a single framework, the application of causal theoretical interpretations can be shown to be flawed in a way that undermines rather than enhances our understanding of the interplay between theory and empirical research. At the heart of the problem is the practice of equating the relationships in the structural model with those in the measurement model through the invocation of “causality” relationships. Abandoning this allows us to avoid the reification of theoretical concepts and provides a basis for understanding multivariate research as a process of theoretical model-building.

Bounded by Culture or Culture Bound

The debate over whether turn-of-the-century immigrants were influenced more by their cultural heritage or by their socioeconomic circumstances when deciding to send their children either to school or to work, serves to illustrate the interplay between theory and evidence in the research process. The authors examine how ethnicity, the local economy, and the family economy affected childrens participation in school and work. Using cost-of-living data from 1888-1890, they find that the effects of ethnicity on childrens school participation were attenuated by local and family economy factors, and in some cases ethnic group coefficients no longer differed significantly from those of Yankees. The significant effects of ethnicity on childrens work participation, however, persisted even when local and family economy factors were taken into consideration.

Lifestyle and Morale in the Southern Rural Aged

Recent theory and research in social gerontology have placed major emphasis on the relationship between activity and morale. Many dimensions and measures of activity have been employed in this research literature. The present research focuses on the lifestyle dimension, following the Maddox (1975) definition of lifestyle as systematic patterns of activity, and attempts to operationalize this concept in a systematic fashion. First, smallest space analysis is applied to data on the activities of a sample of Southern rural aged, identifying two distinct lifestyles. Next, measures of participation in these lifestyles are included as intervening variables in a multivariate causal analysis of the social determinants of individual morale. The results of this analysis suggest that the impact of activity for morale depends on the social organization of activity in the local setting. If so, this organization of activity, or lifestyle dimension, is critical to analyses of the relationship between activity and morale.

Occupational concentration in work establishments

The failure of sociological and economic models premised on individual decision-making to account for persistent patterns of occupational concentration by race and gender has been a matter of considerable recent interest and debate. One response to this debate has been to explore the impact of various organizational dimensions on the social division of labor as experienced by males and females and/or blacks and whites. The importance of the work place as a locus of occupational restrictions has been widely acknowledged, but empirical research on this topic has been limited by the availability of establishment-level data. This paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of occupational concentration by race and gender through analysis of 1980 EEOC data on business establishments. The first phase of analysis examines the importance of the work place for occupational concentration by race and gender and places the EEOC data within the context of the 1980 U.S. economy. The second phase of analysis explores the impact of several organizational characteristics on occupational concentration within work establishments.