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Papachristos, A.V., Hureau, D.M., and Braga, A.A. (2013). The corner and the crew: The influence of geography and social networks on gang violence. American Sociological Review, 78(3). 417-447.

Nearly a century of empirical research examines how neighborhood properties influence a host of phenomena such as crime, poverty, health, civic engagement, immigration, and economic inequality. Theoretically bundled within these neighborhood effects are institutions’ and actors’ social networks that are the foundation of other neighborhood-level processes such as social control, mobilization, and cultural assimilation. Yet, despite such long-standing theoretical links between neighborhoods and social networks, empirical research rarely considers or measures dimensions of geography and social network mechanisms simultaneously. The present study seeks to fill this gap by analyzing how both geography and social networks influence an important social problem in urban America: gang violence. Using detailed data on fatal and non-fatal shootings, we examine effects of geographic proximity, organizational memory, and additional group processes (e.g., reciprocity, transitivity, and status seeking) on gang violence in Chicago and Boston. Results show adjacency of gang turf and prior conflict between gangs are strong predictors of subsequent gang violence. Furthermore, important network processes, including reciprocity and status seeking, also contribute to observed patterns of gang violence. In fact, we find that these spatial and network processes mediate racial effects, suggesting the primacy of place and the group in generating gang violence.

Irwin, S. (2013). Qualitative secondary data analysis: Ethics, epistemology and context. Progress in Development Studies, 13(4). 295-306.
There has been a significant growth in the infrastructure for archiving and sharing qualitative data, facilitating reuse and secondary analysis. The article explores some issues relating to ethics and epistemology in the conduct of qualitative secondary analysis. It also offers a critical discussion of the importance of engaging with the situatedness and contextually embedded nature of data, and ways in which contexts (including research designs and disciplinary and methodological assumptions) are themselves embedded in primary data. I illustrate some strategies for addressing these matters with reference to analyses of two different areas, drawing on research conducted as part of ESRC Timescapes, and highlight some issues for development research.

Fallon, K.M., Swiss, L., and Viterna, J. (2012). Resolving the democracy paradox: Democratization and women’s legislative representation in developing nations, 1975 to 2009. American Sociological Review, 77(3), 380-408.
Increasing levels of democratic freedoms should, in theory, improve women’s access to political positions. Yet studies demonstrate that democracy does little to improve women’s legislative representation. To resolve this paradox, we investigate how variations in the democratization process—including pre-transition legacies, historical experiences with elections, the global context of transition, and post-transition democratic freedoms and quotas—affect women’s representation in developing nations. We find that democratization’s effect is curvilinear. Women in non-democratic regimes often have high levels of legislative representation but little real political power. When democratization occurs, women’s representation initially drops, but with increasing democratic freedoms and additional elections, it increases again. The historical context of transition further moderates these effects. Prior to 1995, women’s representation increased most rapidly in countries transitioning from civil strife—but only when accompanied by gender quotas. After 1995 and the Beijing Conference on Women, the effectiveness of quotas becomes more universal, with the exception of post-communist countries. In these nations, quotas continue to do little to improve women’s representation. Our results, based on pooled time series analysis from 1975 to 2009, demonstrate that it is not democracy—as measured by a nation’s level of democratic freedoms at a particular moment in time—but rather the democratization process that matters for women’s legislative representation.

Bell, J.M. and Hartmann, D. (2007). Diversity in everyday discourse: The cultural ambiguities and consequences of "happy talk". American Sociological Review, 72(6). 895-914.
Few words in the current American lexicon are as ubiquitous and ostensibly uplifting as diversity. The actual meanings and functions of the term, however, are difficult to pinpoint. In this article we use in-depth interviews conducted in four major metropolitan areas to explore popular conceptions of diversity. Although most Americans respond positively at first, our interviews reveal that their actual understandings are undeveloped and often contradictory. We highlight tensions between idealized conceptions and complicated realities of difference in social life, as well as the challenge of balancing group-based commitments against traditional individualist values. Respondents, we find, define diversity in abstract, universal terms even though most of their concrete references and experiences involve interactions with racial others. Even the most articulate and politically engaged respondents find it difficult to talk about inequality in the context of a conversation focused on diversity. Informed by critical theory, we situate these findings in the context of unseen privileges and normative presumptions of whiteness in mainstream U.S. culture. We use these findings and interpretations to elaborate on theories of the intersection of racism and colorblindness in the new millennium.

Griffin, L.J. and Bollen, K.A. (2009). What do these memories do? Civil rights remembrance and racial attitudes. American Sociological Review, 74(4). 594-614.
Scholarly inquiry into collective memory has fostered a host of innovative questions, perspectives, and interpretations about how individuals and communities are both constituted by the past and mobilize it for present-day projects. Race is one of the more important current issues demonstrating how the presence of the past is both potent and sorrowful in the United States. It is therefore critical to examine how memories of racial oppression, conflict, and reconstruction shape race relations. Studies of race relations, however, generally ignore collective memory’s role in shaping racial norms and attitudes. This article uses the 1993 General Social Survey to address the silences in the collective memory and race relations literatures by examining how Americans’ recollections of the civil rights movement influence their racial attitudes and racial policy preferences. Although we find that Americans’ opinions about government programs targeting African Americans are unrelated to civil rights memory, respondents who spontaneously recalled the civil rights struggle and its victories as an especially important historical event generally expressed more racially liberal opinions than did those with different memories. Our findings both support the basic presupposition of collective memory studies—memory matters—and point to a fruitful innovation in the study of racial attitudes.

Encyclopedia Articles

“Secondary Analysis of Qualitative Data.” Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods. (2004): 1107.
Also called qualitative secondary analysis, secondary analysis of qualitative data is the reexamination of one or more existing qualitatively derived data sets in order to pursue research questions that are distinct from those of the original inquiries. Because qualitative inquiries often involve intensive data collection using methods such as semistructured interviews, participant observation, and fieldwork approaches, they typically create data sets that contain a wealth of information beyond that which can be included in a primary research report. Furthermore, with the fullness of time, new questions often arise for which existing data sets may be an efficient and appropriate source of grounded knowledge.

“Comparative Research.” Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods. (2004): 152-154.
The major aim of comparative research is to identify similarities and differences between social entities. Comparative research seeks to compare and contrast nations, cultures, societies, and institutions. Scholars differ on their use of the terminology: To some, comparative research is strictly limited to comparing two or more nations (also known as “crossnational research”), but other scholars prefer to widen the scope to include comparison of many different types of social and/or cultural entities. Yet other scholars use the term to encompass comparisons of subcultures or other social substrata either within or across nation-states or other cultural and social boundaries.