Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: World historical studies of global politics should study human interaction networks over very long periods of time (since the Paleolithic) and the interactions between the human systems and biological and geological systems in order to comprehend and explain the patterned changes of the past and the possible futures for humanity. World-systems are whole important human interaction networks including relations among polities, trade and communications networks. Human social evolution is about the rise of larger and more hierarchical and more complex societies and the growth and intensification of long-distance interaction networks. This paper describes a research project on the growth/decline phases of cities and states since the Iron Age in order to comprehend the possibilities for future global state formation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The relationship between upward mobility and impoverished places is a tenuous one. Few individuals are able to avoid the effects of unstable home life, ineffective schooling, violence and other deleterious conditions on later outcomes. Yet, in this paper I attempt to conceptualize a model that accounts for the mechanisms necessary to be upwardly mobile for those few who “escape”. For the urban poor, resources (if any) are most readily found among local sources like friends and family. This works to anchor individuals to place. To obtain mobility, however, individuals must establish resources that are both outside the walls of the community and are capable of “bridging” to better resources than locally available. Counter to some modern conceptions of local social capital and self-efficacy, this process may often be associated with severing local ties-rather than strengthening them-and disidentifing with place. Application to the PHDCN is briefly discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In searching for causes of exceptional advancement by disadvantaged immigrants’ children, this paper combines social mobility and life course perspectives to examine the social positions of a cohort of young adults aged 26-27 in 2000. This paper traces the structural and relational attributes of the high schools the youth attended. Drawing on theories from sociology of education, hypotheses are derived and tested with four waves of data from NELS. Three major findings include: (1) important patterns of students’ high school experience by disadvantaged status based on nationally representative data; (2) certain school structural and relational attributes that significantly influence students' social position at young adulthood; and (3) no weaker effects on young adult outcomes of the identified school variables for disadvantaged students than for their counterparts. These conclusions from the general population can be applied to specific immigrant groups. The five cases described in the paper are exceptionally successful and upwardly mobile partly because of having at least two favorable school conditions.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper utilizes studies in occupational sex segregation and job mobility to explore how the allocation process generates gender inequality in the labor market. Two important claims should accompany any investigation into the impact of occupational sex segregation on the gender gap in attainment: first, that female occupations offer limited opportunities for upward career advancement, and second, that mobility across established gender boundaries (e.g., the movement of women into male occupations) has clear consequences for job rewards. In order to investigate these claims, this study analyzes job history data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, and estimates models that predict the effects of sex-type job mobility on upward mobility rates. The findings of this analysis support the two claims: job shifts within female occupations are likely to decrease the opportunity for upward mobility, resulting in a relative wage penalty. Also, male movement into female occupations tends to decrease men’s rate of upward mobility, while female movement into male occupations is likely to increase women’s rate of upward mobility. These results support structural claims on the sex segmentation of the labor market, as well as the argument for gendered valuation of occupations suggested by comparable worth movement.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In the two decades since Barry Posen published his landmark work on military doctrine, four schools of thought have emerged on the subject of military change. The four schools focus respectively on realist structural incentives, the role of civilian intervention in military planning, bureaucratic politics, and organisational culture. They posit a variety of causal relationships between various actors in defence institutions. What all four schools have in common, however, is a top-down orientation. Each in its own way posits a dynamic of military change that begins with the senior defence elite and works its way down through subordinate echelons to reach those who actually conduct military operations. Emerging constructivist methodologies allow this top-down assumption to be challenged by uncovering the roles played by actors at lower echelons of defence institutions. This paper utilizes a constructivist methodology borrowed from the literature on social construction of technological systems to examine two cases of military change, the interwar German development of combined arms tactics and the post-Cold War investment in information technology by the US Army. The author's analysis suggests that a bottom-up perspective has much to offer the community of scholars studying change in military institutions.