Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The rise of the radical right is open to multiple interpretations. The question addressed in this paper is whether many of these parties have fostered an enduring social base among core voters and, if so, which social sectors are most likely to support them. Part I discusses the alternative theoretical frameworks provided by the classic accounts of the 1950s and 1960s, the ‘new social cleavage’ thesis common during the last decade, and the theory of partisan dealignment. The chapter then compares evidence to analyze rival hypotheses about the social basis of the radical right vote across fifteen nations, using data drawn from the European Social Survey, 2002 and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, 1996-2001. Part II focuses upon the role of socioeconomic indicators, while Part III considers the enduring gender gap and patterns of generational support. The conclusion considers the implications of these results for understanding the basis of radical right popularity, and for the stability and longevity of these parties.

This paper is drawn from Chapter 6 of Radical Right: Parties and Electoral Competition, a new book by the author forthcoming with Cambridge University Press (2005).

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Many scholars accept Ruth Benedict’s concept of Japan as a shame-based society and the United States as a distinctly guilt-based one, as argued in her highly cited work, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. More recent empirical studies suggest that this clear demarcation between shame- and guilt-based societies is not necessarily the case today. We perform an exegesis of her work, and summarize it into an ideal typology of guilt and shame-based societies. We use this typological summary to set up a testable set of falsifiable predictions. The affect control theory model simulator, JavaInteract, provides a mechanism for rigorously sorting out the kinds of role-identities, behaviors, settings, and events that actually lead to feelings of shame and guilt in each culture. The fundamental principles underlying affect control theory suggest much more complex causation of displays of guilt and shame than Benedict or more recent researchers indicate, but our results are consistent with the growing, empirical cross-cultural literature suggesting the power of collectivistic Asian and individualistic Western norms for leading to different emotional displays and event outcomes. We demonstrate that Japanese emotion norms lead to very different interactional outcomes than for Americans. Japanese emotion norms are stratified by sex and age, leading to very different emotional work compared to Americans when the emotion norms are breeched in ways not anticipated by Benedict.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper contributes to the literature on cultural omnivorousness by introducing a new but related dimension of leisure consumption. While measures of omnivorousness have been based theoretically on the breadth of cultural tastes we present a phenomenon that we refer to as voraciousness. Voraciousness reflects a 'quantitative' dimension of leisure consumption based not only upon the breadth of cultural tastes but upon the extent of participation in out-of-home leisure activities. What makes voraciousness interesting is that it can be theoretically interpreted in relation to the changing pace of work and leisure in late modernity, to notions of cultural repertoires, and to the 'insatiable' quality of contemporary consumption.
In analyses of British time-use data voraciousness was found to share many of the same relationships found in the analysis of omnivorousness, for example, to educational qualifications, job social status, age, and gender. More importantly, it is shown to persist over time irrespective of individuals’ time and money resources

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Investigation of social networks is developed in two new directions theoretically. The first is the use of a formal choice-theoretic model to analyze of the consequences of network closure and structural holes on both group and individual outcomes. The second is the investigation of how cultural differences in social norms can affect outcomes under conditions in which network ties are endogenous. It is found that network closure has positive consequences for overall group welfare where members would otherwise have exit options that render sanctions against shirking ineffective. On the other hand, where closure is incomplete, a group member who has outside ties will receive higher benefits than members whose network is restricted to the group. In conditions where network ties are endogenous, it is noted that closure can be induced by a social norm that dictates against cooperation with any group member who develops or fails to dissolve a tie outside the group. It is arg ued that such a norm exists in many East Asian business environments, and that this helps to explain both the high level of solidarity and the relative egalitarianism in compensation found in such environments.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper offers a substantive discussion of the multiple levels of analysis involved in macro-sociological explanation. In so doing it also criticizes the renewed emphasis on individualistic explanation found in much contemporary sociological theory. For illustrative material it returns to intellectual uses of Weber's “Protestant Ethic thesis,” showing how an artificial version has been employed as a kind of proof text for an alleged scientific necessity of individualist explanation. The core of the article reconstructs the discussion of Protestantism and capitalism in an explicitly multi-level way, differentiating possible individual-level, social-organizational, and institutional linkages. We show that the causal processes involved are independent ones, with the more structural forms neither plausibly reducible to individual-level ones nor realistically attainable via individual-level reasoning. We argue more generally that methodological and theoretical individualisms typically conflate issues of explanation with issues having to do with the ontological microfoundations of social life. This persistent intellectual conflation seems to have cultural sources, specifically the extraordinary cognitive and normative standing of individualism in contemporary folk and policy models of society.