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ANNUAL
REVIEWS Further Partiality of Memberships
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Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2010.36:159-181. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

Graduate School of Business and Sociology Department, Stanford University, Stanford,


California 94305; email: hannan_michael@gsb.stanford.edu
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Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2010. 36:159–81 Key Words


First published online as a Review in Advance on grade of membership, contrast, niche width
April 20, 2010

The Annual Review of Sociology is online at Abstract


soc.annualreviews.org
Recent theory and research have reconceptualized categories in markets
This article’s doi: and in other settings as part of the languages developed to characterize
10.1146/annurev-soc-021610-092336
roles in a producer-audience interface. An important development in
Copyright  c 2010 by Annual Reviews. this work is the characterization of memberships in producer categories
All rights reserved
and in audiences as potentially partial. Producers often are regarded as
0360-0572/10/0811-0159$20.00 members in a category to varying degrees, and audience members share
to varying degrees in consensus about the applicability and meanings
of category labels. Such partiality gives rise to fuzziness in boundaries,
which has implications for the emergence and persistence of categories.
A fast-developing literature has explored these implications empirically.

159
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INTRODUCTION Sahara (which, to varying degrees, all lack the


defining properties of statehood, sovereign
Sociological theory and research treat processes control of their territories, and international
applying to categories of agents, relations, and recognition).
events. Depending on the context, relevant As I describe below, sociological researchers
agent categories might include state, ethnic invariably sweep partiality from the picture by
group, social movement, organization, or natu- design. If the world being analyzed is nearly
ral person; categories of relations might include crisp (has minimal partiality), then this practice
alliance, patronage, or kinship; and event cate- makes little difference for substantive conclu-
gories might include initiating a war or food sions. Sometimes, social worlds crystallize in
riot, claiming an identity, or entering employ- crisp configurations such as the well-ordered
ment. We tend to think about the particular jurisdictions of the system of medieval craft
substantive content but lose sight of the fact guilds. But such cases are more the exception
that the arguments and evidence apply to cate- than the rule. Sociologists usually study worlds
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2010.36:159-181. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

gories. Why does this matter? in flux, with categories that emerge, transmute,
Extensive research reveals that folk cate- and decay. Category boundaries are anything
gories lack the crisp boundaries expected of but crisp under such conditions, and sweeping
scientific concepts (see below). People gener- partiality out of the picture can surely distort
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ally build and use categories with vague bound- analysis.


aries. The vagueness results from judgments The social sciences lack developed concep-
that some agents, ties, or events fit only par- tual and methodological tools for dealing with
tially in a category. partiality of category memberships. This re-
An obvious objection is that researchers use view argues for attention to these issues, and
analytic—not folk—categories. Analytic cate- it suggests that taking partiality seriously opens
gories (concepts) are constructed to have clear exciting lines of inquiry.
definitions and to spell out the necessary and For specificity, I concentrate on issues of
sufficient conditions for membership in the cat- partiality as they apply to categories in mar-
egory. Even so, two issues remain problematic kets. Although existing theories and empirical
in sociological research. The first is that much studies treat producer categories as crisp, some
sociological analysis wants to reflect the sub- recent empirical studies reveal that many pro-
jective understandings of the individual agents, ducers (and products) do not fit fully into the
which leads analysts to keep their concepts close categories used by members of relevant audi-
to folk categories. This is reflected in the choice ences. Put differently, social agents often per-
of labels for the concepts, as in the examples ceive memberships in categories as being partial
given above. Indeed, the defining properties of for at least some category members.
relations or events often include claims to mem- Consider the implications of partiality
bership in the category (claims to statehood, facing a researcher who wants to compile data
for example) or recognition as a member by on universities and wants to reflect conven-
other category members (e.g., recognition by tional understandings of relevant audiences.
other states). The second problem concerns the Full-fledged members such as the University
sometimes widespread existence of entities that of Michigan and Harvard University surely
bear some but not all of the defining character- must be included. Many other organizations
istics of the concept. That is, social categories that bear the name university do not fit fully
often have partial members. In the case of states, the prevailing conceptions of the category. For
for instance, current problematic cases include instance, the National University of Health
Abkhazia, Eritrea, Kosovo, North and South Sciences (Lombard, IL) offers chiropractic
Ossetia, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, the Turkish degrees and “the complementary and alter-
Republic of Northern Cyprus, and Western native medical healing arts,” and Maharishi

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University of Management (Iowa) employs Empirical research on categories has lacked


a “consciousness-based” system of education a way to deal with fuzzy boundaries systemat-
featuring transcendental meditation. The ically. The best quantitative research compiles
National Defense University (which includes data on the membership of a category (a
the National War College) offers training in population) or enumerates events by applying
national security. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical specific coding rules to candidate entities or
University claims to be the world’s only events. For instance, Tilly shaped the work of a
accredited aviation-oriented university. The generation of social movement scholars by pro-
University of South Africa and Britain’s Open mulgating precise coding rules for collecting
University offer only distance learning and data on events of contentious collective action
do not appear to house any research. Indeed, (beginning with Tilly & Rule 1965); Carroll &
the Open University’s own Web site asks, “Is Hannan (2000) recount the coding rules used
the Open University a ‘real’ university? The in implementing the population approach in
Open University was the first institution to the study of organizations. The rules proposed
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2010.36:159-181. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

break the insidious link between exclusivity in these cases are crisp—they result in a yes or
and excellence. It is a University founded on an no answer for each candidate. Such inclusion
ideal and, like all revolutionary ideas, attracted rules are binary: If the answer is yes, then the
hostility and criticism.” researcher regards the entity or event as a full-
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For-profit entities such as the University fledged instance of the concept; if the answer
of Phoenix and DeVry University strain is otherwise, the researcher drops the entity or
the category on other dimensions. At the event from further consideration. Anyone who
absurd extreme, we have organizations such has done such research realizes that the use of
as McDonald’s Corp.’s Hamburger Univer- crisp rules often leads to situations in which
sity, a corporate training center. Trying to some included entities, relations, or events are
decide which entities to include in a study of much more similar to excluded ones than to the
universities reveals that the category has fuzzy more prototypical instances of the category.
boundaries. I contend that no crisp inclusion Confronting the implications of partiality is
rule will be satisfactory. a major theme in a recent effort to integrate
Another example is the category circus. The theory fragments in organizational sociology
definition on Wikipedia on July 6, 2005, nicely (Hannan et al. 2007). After repeated failed at-
captured the fuzzy nature of this category in the tempts to argue the problem away, my collab-
contemporary world: orators and I concluded that fuzziness must be
addressed head-on. This seemed especially im-
A circus is usually a traveling show that in- portant given the current interest in explaining
cludes acrobats, animal trainers (though this the emergence of categories and forms (Ruef
is being phased out with the influence of ani- 2000, McKendrick & Carroll 2001, Rao et al.
mal rights groups), clowns and other novelty 2003, Hannan & Hsu 2005, Pontikes 2008,
acts. However, there are circuses today with a Perretti et al. 2008, Ruef & Patterson 2009).
permanent venue that do not travel, and some Treating category boundaries as fuzzy—due
circuses do not have animal acts at all. to partiality in memberships—is a drastic step.
As I describe below, this kind of reformulation
This is not, of course, a proper definition. Sub- complicates theoretical analysis because rea-
sequent revisions of this entry in Wikipedia soning about fuzzy objects is awkward at best.
swept away the fuzziness by dropping reference My collaborators and I (Hannan et al. 2007)
to the discrepant cases, and such changes seem make a sharp distinction between the concep-
to be the natural tendency in making defini- tions and languages used by the members of the
tions. But claiming that a folk concept is crisp worlds that the theories treat (the object lan-
does not make it so. guage) and the language used for building the

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theory (a meta-language). We argue that the primitive, atomic term. In this respect, it follows
former should allow partiality but that the lat- a tradition of several thousand years in Western
ter should be crisp. This means, as I note above, thought (the classic view), which posits that
that we do not adopt a fuzzy logic that would concepts lack internal structure (are atomic).
allow propositions to have truth values lying in Frege’s (1893, 1903) groundbreaking for-
the [0,1] interval. In this sense, this line of the- malization of predicate logic began with a foun-
ory uses fuzziness in a very different way than dation built on standard set theory. His formu-
does sociological methodological work inspired lation linked concepts with sets and followed
by Ragin (2000). the classic view on concepts. The essence of this
Colleagues have been especially troubled by approach is the presupposition that meaning is
the implications of admitting fuzziness for the given by extension. The extension of a concept
conduct of empirical research on producers. is the set of objects in the universe of discourse
They wonder whether researchers could devise that makes true the statement “this object
systematic means of measuring grades of mem- is an instance of the concept.” Knowing the
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berships in categories (GoMs, discussed further membership of this set—the extension of the
below), and they point out that a failure on this concept—is tantamount to understanding
point would block empirical testing of implica- the concept, according to the Fregian tradition.
tions of the new theory. (For this reason, logics in this tradition—such
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I argue here that current empirical research as the standard predicate logic of mathematics
ought to allay this worry. After describing the and science—are called extensional logics.)
new theory, I review a set of empirical projects Frege’s (1903, p. 139) dictum “the concept
that undertake the first steps in dealing sys- must have a sharp boundary” sought to preserve
tematically with graded membership in pro- the logicians’ law of the excluded middle (that
ducer categories. These studies show not only truth functions can take only two values: true
that partiality can be examined empirically, but and false). Expressing concepts as classical sets
also that attention to degrees of fuzziness of fits this requirement because a set is defined as a
categories yields new and unexpected insights. collection of objects for which a given property
This new perspective appears to be especially is true. Partial memberships in sets are excluded
well suited for representing legitimation, iden- by definition.
tity, and authenticity—especially when com- The classical view of concepts came under
bined with a modal language for expressing attack first in philosophy and then in cognitive
what agents perceive, take for granted, and be- psychology. The leading figure on the philoso-
lieve (Hannan et al. 2007, Hsu et al. 2009b, phy side was Ludwig Wittgenstein. In the mid-
Pólos et al. 2010). dle of his career, Wittgenstein (1953) repudi-
ated his own influential work in logic and that
of Frege and Russell by abandoning the classi-
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES cal view on concepts. His analysis of the social
The recent upsurge of sociologists’ interest use of natural language concluded that ordinary
in market categories’ shapes was stimulated concepts do not satisfy the classical require-
largely by Zuckerman’s (1999) powerful ments but instead reflect family resemblances.
demonstration of the force of categories in We can get the flavor of his argument by quot-
structuring financial markets. His research ing his famous analysis of the concept “game.”
(and the considerable body of work that it
stimulated) deals with stable situations in which Consider for example the proceedings that
categories have a taken-for-granted character. we call “games.” I mean board-games, card-
This research follows a convention in socio- games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so
logical work on such topics as art genres and on. What is common to them all?—Don’t
organizational forms in treating “category” as a say: “There must be something common, or

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they would not be called ‘games’”—but look see D’Andrade 1995, Laurence & Margolis
and see whether there is anything common to 1999, Murphy 2002). Although contemporary
all.—For if you look at them you will not see researchers still disagree about the cognitive
something that is common to all, but simi- coding of categories, they agree broadly that
larities, relationships, and a whole series of concepts do not fit the classical picture.
them at that. . . . And we can go through the This work caused deep rethinking of the
many, many other groups of games in the same nature of concepts. One way of adapting to
way; you can see how similarities crop up and these empirical findings is to change the foun-
disappear. . . . dational set theory. In the standard theory, a set
And the result of this examination is: we see is characterized fully by its characteristic func-
a complicated network of similarities over- tion, a mapping from elements of a universe
lapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall of discourse to either zero or one. Therefore,
similarities, sometimes similarities of detail. set membership is binary: An element is either
I can think of no better expression to charac- (fully) a member of a set or it is not a member
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terize these similarities than “family resem- at all.


blances”; for the various resemblances be- In contrast, fuzzy set theory allows set
tween members of a family: build, features, membership to be partial, a matter of degree.
color of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. over- The parallel to the characteristic function of
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lap and criss-cross in the same way.—And I a crisp set in fuzzy set theory is the grade-of-
shall say: “games” form a family. . . . membership (GoM) function, a mapping of the
One might say that the concept “game” is a elements of the universe of discourse to the
concept with blurred edges.—“But is a blurred [0,1] interval. The GoM function for the fuzzy
concept a concept at all?”—Is an indistinct set A, typically denoted as μA (x):U → [0, 1],
photograph a picture of a person at all? Is it tells to what extent the entity x possesses the
even always an advantage to replace an indis- membership-defining property A. A fuzzy set is
tinct picture by a sharp one? Isn’t the indistinct defined as a set of ordered pairs whose first ele-
one often exactly what we need? (Wittgenstein ment is an element of the universe of discourse
1953, Aphorisms 66, 67, and 71) and whose second element is its GoM in the set:
A = {x, μA (x)}, x ∈ U.
Subsequent psychological research sup- Fuzzy sets can have vague boundaries ow-
ported Wittgenstein’s view. Rosch (1973, 1975) ing to the presence of entities with small, but
examined the relationships of subconcepts to positive, GoMs. Thus, it was natural to use
concepts in a series of famous studies. Subjects graded typicality to represent vagueness of con-
were asked to tell, for instance, how typical were cept boundaries, as Rosch and others did in the
certain types of fruits (e.g., apples, watermelons, 1970s (Rosch et al. 1976).
olives) of the category “fruit.” Subjects gener- Powerful and important objections have
ally report great differences in typicality among been directed at this strategy. So at this point I
instances such as these, and they generally agree digress from sociological arguments to sketch a
strongly about the degrees of typicality: Apples controversy in cognitive science and linguistics
and oranges are regarded as very typical, water- that bears on strategies for sociological analy-
melons and pineapples as only moderately typi- sis of these issues. The initial enthusiasm for
cal, and olives as very atypical. Rosch & Mervis following Rosch in building a theory of con-
(1975) claimed that these replicable patterns of cepts on fuzzy set theory was deflated by a se-
graded typicality reveal that concepts involve ries of papers that argued that concepts with
family resemblances. fuzzy boundaries do not yield patterns that
Several major lines of work in cognitive fit a basic property expected of a language:
psychology and cognitive anthropology have productivity. This is the idea that competent
investigated these issues (for useful overviews, speakers of a language can understand new

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(not-yet-uttered) sentences. Productivity arises concept and vagueness of concept boundaries.


from compositionality, the idea (first formal- This theoretical move was motivated largely by
ized by Frege) that the meaning of a sentence or a concern with preserving compositionality. I
phrase ought to depend only on the meanings of think that this reaction went too far. Social cat-
its component parts and on the structure of the egories constructed by audiences appear to in-
composition. volve both typicality judgments and vagueness
Fuzzy representations of concepts can fail to (or fuzziness) in category boundaries (Hampton
conform to the principle of compositionality, as 2007 makes a similar argument). My reading of
Osherson & Smith (1981, 1982) demonstrated the evidence suggests that agents often detect
in an influential pair of papers. Suppose that shades of difference and decide that some ob-
dogs and cats are typical pets, and trout and jects fit comfortably in a category, some do not
salmon are typical fish. What can we assume fit at all, and others fit to a greater or lesser de-
about “pet fish”? It turns out that the typical gree. This is not to say that arguments should
pet fish (a guppy or goldfish) is both an atypi- be fuzzy, but rather that sociological analy-
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cal pet and an atypical fish, which causes trou- sis should address the implications of the ten-
ble if graded membership is used to represent dency for social actors to recognize partiality of
typicality. The definition of the intersection of memberships.
a pair of fuzzy sets is a fuzzy set whose GoM
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function is the smaller of the GoMs in the pair


of sets. The guppy and goldfish are problem- CONCEPTS AND CATEGORIES
atic because they have high typicality as pet fish Current sociological analysis of categories fo-
(the intersection) and low typicality in each of cuses on a role structure built on the distinc-
the component sets. tion between producers and the audience for
Perhaps this objection is not as devastating what gets produced. My collaborators and I add
as it seems for the typicality perspective in the a specification of the language that the partic-
case of sociological analysis. Noun-noun com- ipants use to make sense of the role structure
binations, such as pet fish, allow wide scope for (Hannan et al. 2007). Such languages must con-
creativity in interpretation (Costello & Keane tain at least a set of proper names and labels for
2000). Some linguists argue that convergence sets.1 So the first step in unpacking the category
in interpretations depends upon pragmatics, concept is to specify the nature of labeling.
on how the expressions get used. Moreover,
members of societies that lack the practice of
keeping fish as pets would not be expected to Labels
know that a guppy is a prototypical pet fish. The basic idea is that audience members assign
In examples closer to those of this review, a set of labels to objects (producers/products
those unfamiliar with various forms of financial here). More abstractly, a label function asso-
institutions would likely have difficulty coming ciates labels and names with objects (individu-
up with interpretations of such forms of fi- als or sets). Because an audience member might
nancial organization as building society, credit apply more than one label to an object (e.g., a
union, hedge fund, and venture capital or such proper name and one or more cluster/category
forms of protest as food riot, hunger strike, labels), a useful approach specifies the label
or email flood (see Werning et al. 2005a,b for function as mapping to the power set (the set
a variety of perspectives on the philosophical
and empirical status of compositionality).
Nonetheless, the Osherson-Smith critique
1
has led most cognitive psychologists to dis- The characteristic (atomic) sentences of these languages tell
that an entity in some subset associated with the label pos-
tinguish sharply between the existence of an sesses or does not possess a certain feature value at a point in
internal structure of graded typicality for a time.

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of all subsets of a set) of the set of labels and intensional consensus makes communica-
available to that agent. tion difficult and likely thwarts the emergence
Frege’s notion of the extension of a classi- of a category.
cal concept can be extended to fuzzy situations. A formal representation of fuzziness in the
This involves positing that audience members audience begins by considering audience mem-
view the application of labels to objects as war- bers’ typicality in an extensional consensus
ranted to varying degrees, depending on the about a label. An audience member’s fuzzy ex-
particulars of the case. The formal statement tension of a label is the set of ordered pairs
of this idea uses the GoM function μe(l) (x, y, t), whose first element is an object in the universe
which tells the degree to which the object (x) of discourse and whose second element is the
belongs in the extension of a label (l ) for an audience member’s probability of assigning the
audience member ( y) at a time point (t). label to that object (over occasions). An audi-
GoMs cannot generally be given a proba- ence member’s typicality as a member of the
bilistic interpretation because they can fail to audience for the label is the degree to which
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satisfy the requirement that a probability mea- her extension of a label agrees with those of
sure must sum to one over a set of disjoint and other audience members. The basic idea for
mutually exclusive events. For example, noth- constructing this function begins by compar-
ing prevents an audience member from decid- ing the fuzzy extensions for all pairs of audience
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ing that a particular producer has a GoM of members and summing maximum symmetric
0.6 as a bank and 0.6 as an insurance com- set differences. Agreement is high when these
pany. However, a probabilistic interpretation summed differences are small. In other words,
does appear to be warranted in the case of la- the strength of an extensional consensus in an
beling. Consider the set of situations that de- audience should be proportional to the average
mand that an audience member apply a label to typicality of the members.
a particular producer, e.g., a conversation with
other audience members. If an agent assigns to
a producer a very high GoM in a label, then she Meanings
will likely include it in a list of the bearers of One reason that agents disagree about label as-
the label. Hampton (2007) provides motivation signments is that they fail to agree about what
for this view: the label means. Cognitive scientists have use-
fully represented meanings as schemata: pat-
What people may be estimating when giving a terns of feature values. A schema for a label
judgment of degree of membership . . . is how is a pattern of the values of relevant features,
comfortable they would feel using the term that is, a subset of the Cartesian product of
in a certain way or context, and this sense of the ranges of these features. (Schemata for pro-
easiness will be more or less directly related to ducers in markets can be based on any num-
the proportion of language users who would ber of features or on patterns of relations with
agree to the use of the word in that context. . . . other agents.) An agent’s schema maps a la-
It is in this sense that it might be reasonable bel (and a time point) to a nonempty subset
to treat the probability of categorization as a of the ordered n-tuples of the values of rele-
measure of graded membership. vant features: the schema-conforming patterns.
Defining a schema as a function indirectly im-
Fuzziness also matters on the audience side. poses the restriction that a schema for a label
Use of a label, as with any other aspect of lan- is unique. This restriction accords well with
guage, is inherently social (as Wittgenstein in- the view that schemata serve to promote com-
sisted in arguing against considering private prehension of a complex reality: that attaching
languages). If different audience members apply multiple schemata to a label will only create
a label differently, then the lack of extensional confusion.

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The coupling of a label and a schema serves label it, and try to schematize it. We defined
as the basis for concept formation if the audi- the contrast of a (fuzzy) set as the average GoM
ence agrees about meanings or intensions. (The in the set for those objects with positive GoM.
terminology here reflects the conventions in As contrast approaches one, the set becomes
logic and linguistics in referring to meanings as crisper (less fuzzy).
intensions; in technical terms, an intension of a
label is a function that gives its extension in each
possible world.) So the second step in formal- PRODUCER NICHES
izing fuzziness in an audience addresses inten- The initial theoretical work on the emergence
sional agreement. The approach to intensional of categories in markets largely considered the
agreement taken by Hannan et al. (2007) paral- case of a single (isolated) category, and it made
lels that sketched for the extensional case. Let only modest effort to elaborate the analysis to
the GoM μi(l) (x, y, t) tell the degree to which x the case in which producers might have mem-
fits y’s intension (meaning) for the label l at time berships in multiple categories. More progress
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t. The key idea for analyzing typicality as an in- on this issue has been made recently by recast-
stance of the meaning of a label is to equate ing the issue of multiple memberships in a niche
μi(l) (x, y, t) with the degree to which the ob- theoretic perspective. I turn now to that work,
ject’s (perceived or default) feature values fit the beginning with a sketch of how niche theory
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agent’s schema for the label. has been generalized to apply to (fuzzy) cate-
The key issues for intensional consensus are gory memberships.
the same as with labeling: consensus and fuzzi- The concept of niche has been extremely
ness. An agent’s typicality in an intensional se- useful for specifying attraction and competi-
mantic consensus about a label is the degree tion in sociological analysis (Popielarz & Neal
to which her schema for the label agrees with 2007). However, various strands of theory and
those used by the rest of the audience. In paral- research define and use the concept in dif-
lel with the assumption made about extensional ferent (occasionally conflicting) ways. Hannan
consensus, the strength of the intensional con- et al. (2003) developed a formulation that uni-
sensus about a label is the average agreement fies the main strands of sociological niche the-
over the producer-audience pairs. ory. This model was subsequently generalized
Communication within an audience and by introducing fuzziness of the kind considered
over the producer-audience interface runs in analyzing categories (Hannan et al. 2007,
smoothly when agreement prevails about la- chapter 8). This turned out to be a deep change,
beling and meanings. When audience mem- and it alters some of the central arguments.
bers agree about a concept in the sense that ex- The fundamental niche tells what regions
tensional and intensional consensus are high, of a social space a producer can exploit if it does
the label can be said to mark a category for not face competitors. Fundamental here means
that audience. With this specification, category that the space reflects only on the degree to
emergence means that an audience reaches such which the producer’s features fit the local social
consensus. landscape. (The realized niche is the subset of
the fundamental niche that can be sustained in
the presence of competition.) The new theory
Contrast defines the fundamental niche in terms of
My colleagues and I proposed a theory of emer- intrinsic appeal and engagement. Whether a
gence that features the causal role of contrast producer’s offering is intrinsically appealing to
(Hannan et al. 2007, chapters 3–6). The key the members of the audience at a social position
idea is that a high-contrast set stands out from depends on how well it fits the prototypical taste
the background (the domain), which causes en- of that local audience. The conversion of intrin-
thusiasts in the audience to pay attention to it, sic appeal into actual appeal depends, according

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to this theory, on engagement by producers. Postulate (Intrinsic appeal and engagement


Engagement means (a) learning about the generate actual appeal)
tastes of local subaudiences, (b) designing the A. The expected actual appeal of an offering in
offering to make it attractive to those tastes, and a category to an audience member at a social
(c) trying to establish a favorable local identity position normally equals zero if the offering
and reputation. The fundamental niche, in does not have intrinsic appeal to the charac-
this construction, consists of the subset of the teristic local taste, or the producer does not
social space in which a producer has positive engage that position.
actual appeal (which requires positive intrinsic B. The expected actual appeal of an offer to
appeal and engagement). an audience member at a position normally
increases with its fit to the typical taste at the
position and with the producer’s engagement
Producer Niches in Blau Space at the position.
This theory builds on McPherson’s (1983) rep-
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resentation of niches as subsets of Blau space The signature of niche theory is the pre-
(a space with dimensions such as age, educa- sumption of a trade-off between breadth and
tion, sex, and ethnicity). Extensive research re- depth, between the width of the niche and
veals that social-demographic position influ- fitness/success at positions within the niche. In
by 220.131.9.3 on 09/18/10. For personal use only.

ences tastes. Hannan et al.’s (2007) fuzzy niche particular, sociological theories of the niche im-
theory holds that each social position possesses pose the constant-sum constraint that increased
a prototypical taste but that the tastes of indi- breadth of a niche comes at the expense of low-
vidual audience members at the position match ered fitness at some positions within it (Hannan
the prototypical taste to varying degrees. Let an & Freeman 1977, Hsu 2006). Analytic leverage
audience member’s location in the social space in fuzzy niche theory comes from the assump-
be denoted by the function pos (y). The relevant tion that both a producer’s total engagement
position in some contexts might refer to a met- and its total intrinsic appeal over positions nor-
ric space, e.g., age or wealth; in others, position mally are the same for all typical producers in a
refers to a qualitative feature such as gender or high-contrast population. Here, the nonmono-
ethnic group membership. Unlike previous ef- tonic logic plays an important role: Lacking any
forts, fuzzy niche theory applies to both cases. information more specific than that two pro-
The similarity of an audience member’s taste to ducers are typical members of a high-contrast
the typical taste for a category at his social po- population, the default expectation is that they
sition, in formal terms ρ(l, y, x, pos(y), t), maps exhibit the same overall capacity for engage-
to [0,1]. A typical member of the audience at a ment and gaining intrinsic appeal.
position is one for whom ρ(l, y, z, t) = 1, where
pos(y) = z. Postulate. The expected levels of total en-
The argument that actual appeal depends gagement and total intrinsic local appeal over
on intrinsic appeal and engagement relies on positions normally are the same for all full-
defaults, generic statements with possible pat- fledged members of a high-contrast category.
terned exceptions. In technical terms, this refers
to a formula quantified by a generic quantifier
that indicates that an expression provides a rule Categorical Niches of Producers
with possible systematic exceptions.2
The framework sketched above considered only
a single category. Recent research has expanded

2
Generic rules are expressed in a nonmonotonic logic
for which specificity considerations govern the interac- specific premises overrule those based on less specific ones).
tions among conflicting premises (arguments based on more Pólos & Hannan (2002, 2004) provide the technical details.

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SO36CH08-Hannan ARI 2 June 2010 23:31

the framework to apply to sets of categories as- where μ̃i(l) (x, y, t) is the proportion of the
sociated with a market (Hsu et al. 2009a). For producer’s total category memberships that
instance, one study discussed below considers comes from l.
the supercategory of films and its component B. The width of a category-engagement niche
genres. The generalized theory focuses on a set is the unevenness of the distribution of the
of categories for which none is a subtype of an- producer’s engagement over categories:
other (for the audience). 
2
W (ε(x, t)) = 1 − l∈l p (t) ε (l, x, t).
Targeting a broad set of categories is as a
kind of generalism. A category specialist focuses
These two measures index generalism on the
its efforts on fitting one category and, therefore,
two key dimensions of the fundamental niche.
has a very unequal distribution of GoMs across
categories; a category generalist has a more even
Under these assumptions, if a profile of cat-
distribution.
egory memberships broadens, then the GoM
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of at least one must decline3 because producers


Definition (Producer niches in a space of
that target multiple categories exhibit feature
categories)
values that are atypical in some or all of the
A. A producer’s category-membership niche
categories. The more a producer fits an agent’s
is a fuzzy set whose GoM function reflects the
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schema for one category, the less well it fits an-


degree to which the audience member regards
other. This is the intuition behind the proposed
it as a member of each category:
trade-off between the diversity in categories tar-
μ(x, y, t) = {l, μi(l) (x, y, t)}, l ∈ l(t). geted by a producer and its peak performance
across categories.
B. A producer’s category-engagement niche Likewise, engaging multiple categories lim-
is a fuzzy set whose GoM function tells the its a producer’s ability to devote attention
proportion of its engagement devoted to each and other resources to engaging the audi-
category: ence for any one category. The principle of
allocation in engagement holds that a pro-
ε(x, t) = {l, ε(l, x, t)}, l ∈ l(t), ducer’s engagement within at least one category
must decline as its category-engagement profile
where l(t) denotes the set of categories (within broadens.
some unspecified supercategory) in a market It simplifies analysis (without disturbing the
at time t. key intuitions) to consider the typical members
of the audience: those with a high GoM in the
Specialism/generalism pertains to niche intensional consensus for the collection of cat-
width. Because categories generally lack a met- egories to be analyzed.
ric, Hsu et al. (2009a) built on the general (non-
metric) niche theory and adapted a standard Postulate (Principles of allocation in a space
index of diversity, Simpson’s (1949) index, to of categories)
measure niche width. A. The sum of total category memberships
to typical audience members is normally the
Definition (Niche width in category space) same for all producers in a market.
A. The width of a producer’s category- B. The level of total category engagement
membership niche (from the perspective of is normally the same for all producers in a
an audience member) is the unevenness of its market.
memberships over categories:
 3
W (μ(x, y, t)) = 1 − 2
μ̃i(l) (x, y, t), In general we cannot anticipate which category member-
l∈l p (t) ships in a niche will decline with an increase in niche width.

168 Hannan
SO36CH08-Hannan ARI 2 June 2010 23:31

The empirical research discussed below also of producers in the market can be observed.
imposes the auxiliary assumption that the max- Therefore, it is useful to extend the formal-
imal sum of a producer’s memberships in the ization to apply to relative success or fitness.
set of categories considered equals one. This Fitness refers generally to a producer’s ability
assumption simplifies formal development of to thrive within its environment—to obtain
the trade-offs between patterns of membership necessary resources, to persist, and to grow.
and intrinsic appeal by stipulating that a cat- The relevant lines of theory research assume
egory generalist cannot have a greater level that a producer’s expected fitness in a positively
of total category membership than a category valued category normally increases monoton-
specialist. ically with the total appeal of its offerings in
It also concentrates on categories that have that category (Hannan et al. 2007, chapter 9).
positive valuation to the audience. This means The main implication of this argument is the
that the expected appeal of an offering in a following.
category by a producer to a normal audience
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2010.36:159-181. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

member increases with the degree to which the Theorem (Niche width, appeal, and success).
producer’s feature values conform to his/her In the case of positively valued categories in a
schema for the category. diverse market and typical members of the au-
dience, generalists in (1) category membership
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and (2) category engagement have lower ex-


Specialism and Generalism
pected appeal and lower expected fitness than
Over Categories
at least one producer.
The implications of the model of niches in
category space can be seen most clearly by com-
paring pure specialists with generalists. The
argument implies that a category-membership
Empirical Evidence on Producer’s
specialist has higher expected actual appeal in its
Categorical Niche Width
focal category than any membership generalist I now sketch the results of six empirical stud-
(who does not also have higher engagement in ies that have recently tested implications of the
that category), and an engagement specialist model of generalism in a space of fuzzy cate-
has higher expected actual appeal than any gories. Among other things, this overview il-
engagement generalist within its focal category. lustrates a variety of approaches to measur-
Generally, we want to know how specialist ing GoMs in categories and the contrast of
and generalist producers fare in broader com- categories.
petitive arenas in which they generally face
a range of competitors. Hsu and colleagues Feature film projects. Hsu et al. (2009a) an-
(2009a) develop their argument for the case of alyzed the effects of the width of category-
what they call a diverse market, one in which membership niches on the appeal and success of
each category normally contains at least one feature films released in the U.S. industry dur-
producer with maximal GoM in the category ing 2002–2003. Films, like other art forms, are
who also fully engages the category. In the case generally understood in terms of genres. Film
of a diverse market, generalists’ offerings are al- studios and distributors usually eschew genre
ways inferior in expected appeal to the offering labels (to avoid suggesting that a large portion
of at least one other producer, no matter which of the audience might not be interested), leav-
categories they pursue. ing the assignments to external agents (espe-
To this point, I have discussed the relative cially critics). These public assignments allow
appeal of producers’ offerings to audience memberships to be measured from the perspec-
members. However, sometimes appeal is not tive of key agents in the audience (assuming that
directly observable, but the relative success the critics correctly understand and reflect the

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conventions of the audience to whom they are This analysis distinguished sellers who listed
addressed). items in two or more categories from those who
This research used information about focused on one category (70% of the sellers).
the genres assigned to films by professional Inclusion of quality indicators and category-
critics and firm enthusiasts from three archival specific acronyms in item titles supplied by the
sources that classify films into 17 genres, such as sellers provides useful information for buyers
action, adventure, animation, comedy, crime, but requires sellers to possess some familiarity
documentary, and drama. A film’s GoM in a with the linguistic conventions of the audience.
genre was set to the proportion of the entries Analysis of the probability that such informa-
in three sources that classify the film under tion gets included in a title (as a measure of
that genre. The width of genre niches was engagement) yields results consistent with the
calculated with a Simpson index, as described reasoning behind the principle of allocation.
in the previous section. The appeal of a film to Sellers who engaged more than one category
the (typical) audience members was measured on the focal day were (significantly) less likely
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2010.36:159-181. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

using film critics’ and consumers’ assessments to use acronyms or quality indicators. In turn,
of quality. The fitness of films is measured as the use of quality indicators in titles significantly
(the natural logarithm of ) U.S. box office gross. increased the likelihood that an auction ended
The statistical analyses control attributes with a sale.
by 220.131.9.3 on 09/18/10. For personal use only.

that likely affect the amount of energy that au- Net of these effects (and of the number
diences will devote to identifying film projects: of items listed and of posted reputations/
star power, director power, the breadth of a feedback), the width of the category-
film’s theatrical exhibition during its opening engagement niche has a significant negative
weekend, size of budget, sequel, backing by effect on the probability of completing a
a major or independent distributor, crowding sale. The combined results suggest that niche
within a film’s genres, and GoMs in the 17 gen- width has both direct and indirect effects (via
res to control for the effects of differences in the more effective labeling of items) on fitness.
popularity or niche volume of individual genres Finally, this research builds on Koçak’s (2008)
on the film’s appeal (a fuzzy membership analog finding that bidders in categories for goods
to using dummy variables for genre member- with greater symbolic value are more likely to
ships). Net of these controls, niche width has signal identification with the category in their
significant negative effects on (the three mea- eBay identifications. She argues that bidders
sures of ) appeal and on the measure of fitness: in these categories display more selectivity
U.S. box office gross. in choosing sellers. Koçak et al. (2009a) find
evidence of such a pattern: Sellers who have
Sellers in eBay auctions. The paper just dis- generalized in the past are penalized strongly
cussed also analyzed the effects of the engage- in categories where the bidders themselves
ment niche width on success of sellers in eBay display category-focused identities.
auctions (success means ending the auction with
a sale). This research analyzed a random sample Winemakers. Negro et al. (2008) analyzed the
of auctions that ended on August 31, 2001, in effect of niche width over wine styles on criti-
a diverse set of 23 categories, including antique cal evaluations of Barolo and Barbaresco wines.
furniture, folk art, digital cameras, model trains, Style in the making of these elite wines became
and watches. These data allowed for measure- a source of contention in the late 1980s and
ment of category engagement (both on the date 1990s when some producers began to vary tra-
of observation and over the prior 17 months). ditional techniques to produce initially a French
Sellers must pick among a predefined set of cat- style of Barolo/Barbaresco and later an interna-
egories for listing items, and the chosen cate- tional or New World style. The type of barrel
gory corresponded to a defined target audience. used for aging became the main focus in the

170 Hannan
SO36CH08-Hannan ARI 2 June 2010 23:31

contention about the authenticity of the styles that style. In other words, a principle of alloca-
as expressions of Barolo or Barbaresco. tion applies to learning from experience. This
Traditionally these wines were aged in large study implemented this imagery by using GoMs
casks (grandi botti) made from Slovenian oak in styles to calculate experience in styles. The
or chestnut. This tradition was challenged by resulting (fuzzy) measure of experience sums a
modernists who began aging wine (partially) winery’s GoM in each of its current styles over
in barriques, small barrels made from aromatic prior vintages. Fuzzy experience with a style
French oak. Because the traditional botte has has a (significant) positive effect on critical
a much smaller surface-to-volume ratio than ratings. In addition, the evidence suggests that
a barrique, the wood does not have nearly as straddling styles hinders learning about how to
much influence on taste with the traditional produce them. Specifically, the effect of fuzzy
method. The barrique became a symbol of experience on quality ratings diminishes with
modernity, and the French-style wines found increasing niche width. Taken together, these
favor with the critics and consumers in the estimates imply that the effect of experience on
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2010.36:159-181. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

1990s. This stylistic insurgency sparked a tradi- appeal is positive for narrow niches and dimin-
tionalist countermobilization around regional ishes with increasing niche width. This result is
typicality that sought to preserve traditional the opposite of what has been found in studies of
practice, including sole reliance on botti as the typecasting. In research on typecasting in labor
by 220.131.9.3 on 09/18/10. For personal use only.

essence of authenticity (Negro et al. 2008). markets for film actors, Zuckerman et al. (2003)
Although traditionalists regard any use of found that inexperienced actors benefit from
barriques as signaling a modern or interna- being typecast because labor market interme-
tional style, the predominant view acknowl- diaries interpret narrow experience as signaling
edges the existence of a distinct middle style. skill in the genre. Experienced actors do not en-
With these distinctions, a producer’s style joy this benefit because market intermediaries
niche is a triplet of GoMs in styles: μ(x, t) = are less likely to regard them as unskilled.
{μ(trad, x, t), μ(mod, x, t), μ(mid, x, t)}, where Finally, the fuzziness of the styles also mat-
μ(s , x, t) denotes the GoM of the producer x as ters. As noted above, the contrast of a pop-
an exponent of the style s at time t. A winery’s ulation is the average GoM in the category
GoM in a style was set to the proportion of its among the entities with positive GoM; con-
portfolio (in a vintage) that comes from the fo- trast is therefore inverse to the fuzziness of a
cal style, and the width of each producer’s style category. This research on vintners calculated
niche for each vintage was calculated with the the contrast of the styles along these lines. It
Simpson index. finds that specialists have a big advantage over
Critical ratings were coded from two influ- generalists under high-contrast conditions, but
ential critical publications that communicate this advantage wanes as contrast falls (styles
ordered assessments of appeal/quality. (One become fuzzier). Such a loss of contrast seri-
guide also indicates for each wine whether it ously damages the critical ratings of the style
was aged solely in barriques, solely in botti, or specialists. Full-fledged membership in a cat-
in both.) Estimates of ordered logit specifica- egory does not convey much advantage when
tions reveal that the quality ratings of wines the category boundary blurs, according to these
made by wineries with broad style niches fell estimates.
significantly below those of wines made by style
specialists. Actors’ careers in film and television. The
Negro et al. (2010) argue that partiality has general argument has implications for careers,
implications for how we should think about building on the research of Zuckerman et al.
experience. According to the spirit of the fuzzy (2003) on typecasting of actors (which used a
niche theory, a vintner learns more about pro- crisp conception of categories). Koçak et al.
ducing a style in vintages when specializing in (2009b) consider the consequences of category

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spanning in the case of two separate but Restaurants and other food services.
related domains: film and television. Using de- Kovács & Hannan (2010) argue that the
tailed records of actors’ participation in produc- consequences of spanning categories for appeal
tions in each domain and of their degree of spe- to an audience depends on the contrasts of
cialization over genres within each, this study the categories spanned. When categories lack
shows that category spanning within the focal contrast (have very fuzzy boundaries), spanning
domain significantly reduces the chances that categories does not cause much additional
an actor will subsequently gain a starring role confusion for the audience; thus, the penalties
in that domain. However, category spanning in associated with spanning ought to be slight.
one domain does not diminish the chances of But, when the contrasts of the categories
success in the other; it has, if anything, a posi- spanned are high, audience members will
tive effect on the chances of gaining a starring have difficulty interpreting the producer, so
role. This asymmetry suggests that categorical spanning categories will be devalued more.
identities can be strongly domain-specific (even Kovács & Hannan (2010) analyzed reviews
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2010.36:159-181. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

for closely related domains) and that the penalty of all the San Francisco–based organizations
for generalism within a domain reflects mainly assigned at least one category in the food do-
a typecasting effect. main on a Web site.4 The researchers followed
the studies sketched above and set producers’
by 220.131.9.3 on 09/18/10. For personal use only.

Peer-to-peer lending. Leung & Sharkey GoMs in categories as inversely proportional


(2009) analyze success of applicants in a peer- to the number of categories assigned.
to-peer online lending site. In the early years of This study found, as predicted, that produc-
the site’s operation, individual applicants could ers who get assigned to more than one high-
affiliate with at most one group. The leaders of contrast food category get lower evaluations
each group could list a set of categorical affil- on average than those assigned to one high-
iations (e.g., occupations, gender, religious af- contrast category and one or more low-contrast
filiations of group members). Groups differed ones.
in breadth (number) of affiliations claimed, and
funders could click through to pages that de-
scribed the group members and their loans. THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE
Holding constant the applicant’s credit score, OF THE AUDIENCE
size of the proposed loan, and other relevant
Audience Structure
covariates, Leung & Sharkey (2009) find that
applicants from groups have much higher prob- Another strand of the emerging theory focuses
ability of receiving funding than those who do on the audience side (Cattani et al. 2008, Koçak
not affiliate with groups but that, among the et al. 2009a). This work deals with various facets
latter, the probability of funding declines sig- of the notion that the social structure of the au-
nificantly with the number of categorical affili- dience affects agreement about the applicability
ations claimed by the group. of labels and their meanings. Here the key no-
This study concentrates on a natural experi- tion is represented formally by a function that
ment. Midway through the observation period, tells the intensity of an agent’s engagement as a
the Web site stopped listing the categorical af- member of an audience for a label. Engagement
filiations of the groups. Once the funders could
not see whether a group claimed a narrow or 4
This domain consists of 108 categories, including food gen-
diffuse categorical identity, the effect of diffuse res such as a broad array of ethnic cuisines, e.g., American
identity disappears in an analysis with fixed ef- (traditional), Basque, and soul food. Others refer to the mode
fects for groups (allowing a comparison of the of service, e.g., buffet, fast-food, and food stand. Still others
pertain the key ingredient(s), e.g., burgers, live/raw food, and
effect of membership in a group before and after seafood. Finally, some refer to particular food codes such as
the removal of the categorical information). halal, kosher, and vegan.

172 Hannan
SO36CH08-Hannan ARI 2 June 2010 23:31

as a member involves learning about the pro- offerings more attractive to other audience
ducers, evaluating producers and products, con- members. This argument provides a way to
structing and enacting labels and schemata, and validate indirectly the claim that insiders (pro-
buying, consuming, discussing, and displaying ducers) help to shape the consensus about the
the products/services of the producers. It also meaning of a category.
means gaining fluency in the specifics of the au- It is worth pointing out that the concep-
dience’s language, including proper names and tion of the audience and producer roles that
labels for clusters of offerings. So more engaged underlies this research assumes that producers
audiences likely develop more elaborate cate- generally play both roles because producers are
gory languages. In particular they ought to rely audiences to each other. This conception runs
more on proper names and category-specific against the common claim that mediated mar-
labels. kets involve an interface in which critics medi-
In this context, it also makes sense to ate between producers and audiences. Surely
discriminate a vanguard from the mass au- producers do play this role, but mainly with
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2010.36:159-181. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

dience. Highly engaged audience members respect to what is sometimes called the exter-
often develop more subtle and finer-grained nal audience (the fraction of the audience that
distinctions, and they often develop schemata is composed of nonproducers). This reasoning
that code these distinctions. They generally suggests that critic also be defined as a role. In
by 220.131.9.3 on 09/18/10. For personal use only.

share their observations with others and try to many cases, occupants of the critic role also play
reach consensus about how to label objects in the audience role, as when highly engaged audi-
the domain and about what the labels mean. ence members post blogs that review offerings
Koçak and collaborators (2009a) consider three in the category, as with the Malt Advocate, the
types of audience members whose presence can magazine for whisky enthusiasts. However, in
strengthen a vanguard: (a) activists: audience other cases the critic adopts a dispassionate pos-
members who are highly engaged in the mar- ture that distances itself from the audience role,
ket, who participate more in the activities of the e.g., Consumer Reports.
category; (b) enthusiasts: audience members
whose personal identities are invested in the
collective identity and for whom engagement Empirical Evidence on
in the market is both a social and an economic Audience Structure
activity; and (c) insiders: producers who have a Attention has been paid to the empirical impli-
nonzero GoM as members of the audience for cations of the theory on the audience side of the
the label. Activists likely lead public discussions interface of a domain.
of how a market should be organized; they are
also more likely to be consulted by authorities. Buyers in eBay auctions. Koçak et al. (2009b)
The symbolic capital of enthusiasts and the used the data on eBay auctions discussed above
know-how that insider audiences bring to the to examine some implications of the foregoing
mass audience likely give them a privileged arguments. They measured the overall level of
position as well, increasing their chances of in- engagement by the audience in each category
fluencing the agreement among the audience. in two ways: the median number of items bid
Hence, increases in the prevalence of activists, on by bidders in the category over the previ-
enthusiasts, or insiders in the audience segment ous 17 months and the number of repeat bid-
presumably raise the expected levels of inten- ders over that period. The degree of activism
sional consensus, agreement about valuation, is indexed by variation in engagement, a Gini
and development of a category language. index defined over the number of bids per bid-
This work also proposes that being an ac- der, as well as the proportion of repeat bidders.
tive participant in the audience and fully en- The prevalence of enthusiasts is the prevalence
gaging the market makes producers and their of category-specific identifications, as discussed

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above. Finally, the prevalence of insiders is set meaning of “accountant.” The meaning was
to the proportion of those who sold in the cat- contested for much of the period, and as many
egory who also bid on offerings in it. as 15 professional associations promulgated
On the outcome side, agreement about val- competing codes. On the argument that dis-
uation is measured by the concentration of de- sensus in the audience about the meaning of a
mand (over items) on the ground that a high label impedes cognitive legitimation (Hannan
level of agreement about valuation should cause et al. 2007) and the standard ecological argu-
many audience members to seek the same items. ment that legitimation improves life chances of
The indicator of the elaboration of a category the bearers of a label, this research relates dis-
language is the frequency of use of category- sensus to the hazard of exit for accounting firms.
specific proper names and acronyms in item Dissensus is measured in terms of the evenness
titles. of the distribution of memberships over pro-
Each of the arguments sketched above re- fessional associations. As predicted, dissensus
ceives (partial) empirical support. Concentra- increases the exit hazards from accountancy.
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2010.36:159-181. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

tion of bids is significantly higher in categories


with stronger vanguards. Likewise, the use of Modernistic music. The case of the arrival
a category language is significantly more com- of modernistic music in Brussels during 1919–
mon in categories with more engaged audience 1939 presents an interesting alternative picture
by 220.131.9.3 on 09/18/10. For personal use only.

members (on average) and stronger vanguards. of the relationship between the vanguard and
Finally, items put on auction by sellers who the mass audience (Boone et al. 2009). There
are also buyers (insiders) are significantly more were two dominant styles during the 1920s and
likely to end in a sale, net of the effects of repu- 1930s: French Neoclassicism (with Stravinsky
tation, number of items listed, and niche width. as the prototype) and German Expressionist
(with Schoenberg as the prototype). A Flemish
Feature-film producers. Cattani et al. (2008) hybrid combined elements of the two musical
argue that consensus about labels depends on forms.
the network structure of the audience, the Boone et al.’s (2009) analysis finds a diver-
density of ties over the producer-audience in- gence in the reception of modernistic compo-
terface, and the temporal stability of the mem- sitions at venues favored by music enthusiasts
bership of the audience. They investigate these and those favored by the mass (high-status) au-
claims in an analysis of data on film production dience. Stylistic fragmentation among all pro-
companies (the producers) and distributors (the ductions for a year (a Simpson index of diversity
audience). Their analysis of the hazard of exit of over the three styles) depressed the hazard of
firms from film production finds that the dele- performance of all forms of modernistic music
terious effects of adopting a broad niche in the in the mass venues. But the sign of this effect
space of genres is weakened when the audience was the opposite for the enthusiasts’ venues, at
is less densely tied, has fewer repeat ties with least initially. This research points to the need
producers, and has a higher rate of turnover. to specify the temporal dynamics of these pro-
In other words, a more fragmented audience cesses more precisely, especially for cases in
agrees less about the category boundaries or is which enthusiasts lead in adopting a style but
less able to enforce its codes on the producers. switch to another once the style gains accep-
tance in the mass audience.
Accounting. Bogaert et al.’s (2010) analysis
of the emergence and legitimation of the Software categories. Pontikes (2009) con-
accounting profession in the Netherlands over trasted the reactions of two functionally dif-
the period 1884–1939 centers on variations ferentiated audiences to category spanning in
in the degree of consensus among producers the software industry (as described above). She
(accounts) and the outside audience on the points out that all of the previous research has

174 Hannan
SO36CH08-Hannan ARI 2 June 2010 23:31

concentrated on the buying audience, whose contrast falls, fewer producers conform fully
members value producers/products for fit to to the relevant schemata; consequently, the
their category schemata. Other relevant audi- offerings in the category generally have lower
ences take different perspectives. In particular, appeal.
venture capitalists generally want to invest in Lowered contrast also limits appeal in an in-
firms that show the potential to gain important direct way, through an effect on disagreement
shares of large markets. Pontikes (2009) argues about the meaning of the category. When con-
that this interest creates a bias in favor of cat- trast falls, bearers of a label diverge on schema-
egory spanners. She measures appeal in con- relevant feature values. This dissimilarity sparks
sumer markets by sales of software and appeal to disagreement about the meaning of the label
venture capitalists as a high hazard of receiving and about which producers belong to the cat-
venture capital funding. As predicted, spanning egory. Hannan et al.’s (2007, chapters 4 and
has opposite effects on the two outcomes: Pro- 5) theory of category emergence posits that in-
ducers with broad and unconstrained category creasing contrast (sharper category boundaries)
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2010.36:159-181. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

niches do less well in market competition but generally increases agreement about the mean-
have higher hazards of gaining venture capital ing of a category. If key audiences agree about
investments. meaning, then some products/producers can
become widely accepted exemplars. However,
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Restaurants and other food services.


a failure of critics and enthusiasts to reach in-
Kovács & Hannan (2010) argue that enthusiasts
tensional agreement makes it unlikely that any
in an audience will react strongly to producers
offering in that category will receive broad ac-
who span domains but less strongly than the
claim. The process of category erosion can work
general audience to spanning categories within
at the other end of the spectrum of evaluations:
a domain. Activism as an audience member is
Lack of consensus also lowers the likelihood
judged in this study by the number of reviews
that an offering will be widely judged to be in-
posted. The study finds that activists (those
ferior. In this sense, lack of consensus ought to
who post many reviews) differ from other re-
lower the variance of evaluations. Negro et al.
viewers, who are presumably more like the mass
(2010) argue that critics and enthusiasts gener-
audience. Activists impose much weaker (and
ally make finer and more careful distinctions in
sometimes no) penalties to restaurants that span
the upper range of offerings. If so, then the dis-
categories in the food domain. However, the
agreement about a category spurred by lowered
activists react more negatively to producers who
contrast will tend to lower evaluations overall.
span over the boundary of the food domain.
The social value attached to a category presum-
ably declines when its boundaries blur.
FUZZINESS, APPEAL, AND THE Moving beyond consideration of the effects
STABILITY OF CATEGORIES of the contrast of a focal category, Kovács &
Recent work has also examined the effect of Hannan (2010) argue that contrast also affects
contrast (lack of fuzziness) on appeal and on the the audience reaction to spanning. In partic-
stability of categories. The central argument ular, combining memberships of sharp (high-
is that lowered contrast (increased fuzziness) contrast) categories is likely to cause more con-
reduces the appeal of all offerings in a category. fusion and to make identities harder to interpret
One line of argument points to a direct effect of than when a high-contrast category is combined
contrast. By the definition of a positively valued with a fuzzy one.
category, the expected appeal of a producer’s
offering to typical audience members increases Empirical Evidence on Fuzziness,
with the degree to which the producer (and the Appeal, and the Stability of Categories
offering) conforms to the audience member’s Winemakers. As noted above, Negro et al.
schemata for the category. As a category’s (2010) found an effect of style straddling at the

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level of the winery: A wine’s appeal to critics account of the degree of focus of the label over-
declines with the width of the style niche of laps (where high focus means that most overlaps
its producer. This effect weakens as straddling are with a small number of other categories).
proliferates (and style niches broaden on aver- She defines leniency as the product of fuzziness
age). More important, the appeal of all wines of (one minus contrast) and the count of the other
a style decreases as the style-category contrasts labels that a label’s members claim.
decline. So, as expected, widespread straddling Through an intricate analysis of overlaps in
blurs the boundaries of a category and dimin- citations to “prior art” in the sets of all patents
ishes it social appeal. in the relevant patent categories, she measured
the coherence of labels in knowledge space. A
Tape-drive producers. Similar issues are ad- label has a coherent position to the extent that
dressed in a study of the participation of data prior-art citations are localized within the set of
storage firms in the various technical formats firms that claim the label. She reasoned that this
that have characterized tape storage over the measure of technical similarity would serve as
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2010.36:159-181. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

history of this industry. Carroll et al. (2010) the basis for producers and other relevant audi-
analyzed complete histories of adoptions and ences to schematize a label. High similarity will
deletions of formats for all firms that have ever make it more likely that a label would become
offered a tape-drive product. They characterize a category.
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a firm’s GoM as a producer of a format as the An analysis of the probability that a soft-
inverse of the number of formats that it pro- ware producer claims a new (to the industry)
duces (a firm that produces only one format has label found, as predicted, that firms that claim
a GoM of one in that format and zero in all of more lenient labels are significantly more likely
the other existing formats at the time). to claim new ones (that is, broaden member-
This research focused on the average level ship niches). Moreover, the probability that
of contrast of a firm’s portfolio of formats. a producer will adopt a new label increases
Among firms with more than one format, hav- with the average fuzziness of the labels that it
ing a high-contrast portfolio makes a firm hard claims. These effects, taken together, reveal that
to interpret for potential exchange partners. An fuzzy and lenient categories tend toward greater
analysis (that controls for many details of the fuzziness, because in many cases the new label
technologies involved and for firm characteris- adopted adds to the set of labels being claimed.
tics) reveals that the average contrast of a firm’s
portfolio of formats has a significant positive ef- Feature-film projects. A similar pattern
fect on a firm’s hazard of failing or leaving the emerges in an analysis of the factors that en-
industry. courage genre spanning in Hollywood film pro-
ductions (Hsu et al. 2008) using data prepared
Software producers. Pontikes (2008) ana- by the American Film Institute (AFI). This data
lyzed the effect of fuzziness and constraint on set assigns all American films produced during
the prevalence of multiple category member- 1911–1970 to a dominant “stand alone” genre
ships in the software industry and especially on and possibly to subordinate genres as well. In
variations in the degree to which firms claim this context, genre spanning means that a film
newly available labels. She coded press releases project chose content that led the film to be
by software producers to characterize their af- listed in one or more subordinate genres (which
filiations with labels and measured a producer’s is the case for 15% of the 25,895 films analyzed).
GoM in a label as the number of times it claims The AFI database also lists the subjects
that label taken as a ratio to the number of times addressed by each film. For instance, films
that it claims any label. assigned to the horror genre are classified
Pontikes (2008) analyzed the effects of con- as dealing with murder, physicians, revenge,
trast and also proposed a measure that takes vampires, monsters, scientists, and so forth.

176 Hannan
SO36CH08-Hannan ARI 2 June 2010 23:31

These researchers conducted a latent semantic of firms in the UK airline industry during
analysis to measure the similarities of pairs of 1919–2000.
films (released during moving five-year win- In this case, a moderate naming consensus
dows) and constructed a measure of the average arose during the 1930s. During this period The
similarity of films in each (stand-alone) genre Times of London began to refer to the indus-
for each year. They used this information to try as the aviation industry (rather than terms
measure the fuzziness and the leniency of gen- used earlier such as aeronautical or aerial nav-
res, following Pontikes (2008). This analysis igation) and firms increasingly began to add
reveals, for instance, that mystery and war are Aviation (and also Air, Airways, or Airlines) to
especially fuzzy, and western and musical com- their names. Kuilman & Wezel (2008) calcu-
edy are very crisp. War and mystery are also lated the degree of naming consensus (using
very lenient; the most constraining genres are the labels just mentioned along with Fly/Flight,
satire, musical comedy, and romantic comedy. Sky, and Jet). Agreement on adjectives that ex-
Analysis of the likelihood that a film gets press connection to a label amounts to a kind of
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2010.36:159-181. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

assigned a subordinate genre (controlling for extensional consensus among producers. The
characteristics of the individual film project and degree of such consensus has a significant neg-
for the age and recent success of the genres) ative effect on the hazard of mortality, which
replicates Pontikes’s (2008) key findings: Films supports the view that consensus reflects taken-
by 220.131.9.3 on 09/18/10. For personal use only.

with a main classification in more lenient genres for-grantedness. Moreover, a firm’s GoM in the
have a significantly higher probability of assign- consensus (how well its name fits the conven-
ment to additional genres, meaning that they tion) also has a significant negative effect on the
(partially) fit the schemata of multiple genres. hazard of mortality during the early years of the
Net of that effect, the fuzziness of a film’s main population’s history (when air travel was surely
genre also significantly increases the odds of as- not taken for granted).
signment to subsidiary genres as well.
Another aspect of fuzziness is a lack of sim-
ISSUES OF MEASUREMENT
ilarity of subject matter within a genre. Films
assigned to genres with high similarity of sub- This survey of recent research reveals that a va-
ject matter are significantly less likely to stray riety of empirical strategies have been deployed
from the typical subject matter of the genre in a for measuring partiality in category member-
way that gets them assigned to subordinate gen- ships. I now consider these strategies explicitly,
res. However, when similarity of subject matter discuss their advantages and disadvantages, and
becomes very high, the effect reverses. The au- consider how they might be improved.
thors interpret this latter effect as reflecting a The studies discussed in the previous sec-
tendency for designers of film projects to move tions have used various strategies for measuring
away from highly crowded subjects. GoMs in producer categories and in engage-
ment of producers and of audience members.
Passenger airlines. Researchers who collect In the case of assessing the GoMs of producers/
full histories of producers that have claimed products in categories, five strategies have been
membership in a category often notice (but deployed (see Table 1):
do not analyze) that naming patterns tell 1. Collect assignments by critics and other
something about the taken-for-grantedness of audience members of producers/products
a label. Putting a category label in a producer’s to a relevant set of categories (e.g., studies
name (e.g., Bank of New York, Fairchild of films, restaurants).
Semiconductor, Paramount Pictures) signals 2. Use self-claims to memberships over a
focus on a category and a bet that the category set of categories, such as the patterns of
is durable. Kuilman & Wezel (2008) show that names and labels claimed (e.g., Pontikes’s
this kind of pattern mattered for the mortality 2008 analysis of software categories).

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Table 1 Approaches to measuring grades of membership of producers in labels and categories


Audience/critic
Category assignment Self-claim/label Similarity Ties Inference
Accounting BBC
Airlines KW
Bank forms VWL
eBay categories HHK
Food service KH
Film genres HHK, HNP Hsu
Music genres BDRV
Peer lending LS
Software categories Pontikes
Tape formats CFLM
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2010.36:159-181. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

Wine styles NHR


Universities Kovács

Abbreviations: BBC: Bogaert et al. (2010); BDRV: Boone et al. (2009); CFLM: Carroll et al. (2010); Hsu: Hsu (2006); HHK: Hsu et al. (2009a);
HNP: Hsu et al. (2008); Kovács: Kovács (2009); KH: Kovács & Hannan (2010); KW: Kuilman & Wezel (2008); LS: Leung & Sharkey (2009);
by 220.131.9.3 on 09/18/10. For personal use only.

NHR: Negro et al. (2010); Pontikes: Pontikes (2008, 2009); VWL: Visentin et al. (2008).

3. Base GoMs in a category on objective organizations, the more intensely they


similarities among offerings (e.g., ele- compete.
ments of formal properties of music com- 5. Make inferences about likely perceptions
positions as in the study of modernistic of audience members from other observ-
music or latent semantic analysis of film able features of producers/products (e.g.,
themes). using a winery’s methods of aging to
4. Rely on aggregated perceptions of simi- judge membership in wine styles).
larities of producers/products from pat- Each approach to measuring partiality has
terns of ties. For instance, Kovács (2009) yielded sensible empirical patterns. Those that
demonstrated that a structure of graded rely on assessments of audience members or on
similarity can be constructed by analyz- claims by producers ought to be most informa-
ing in-links to Web pages of universi- tive. Continued development along these lines
ties and colleges. In this construction, holds the most promise.
two entities are similar if similar entities My research group is exploring how to ad-
link to them. The result for contempo- dress in laboratory experiments some of the is-
rary American colleges and universities is sues treated here. For instance, we want to set
a cloud of points in a fairly low dimen- the task of assigning producers to a set of poten-
sional (nonmetric) space, with a dense re- tially relevant categories in a controlled setting
gion at the edge of the cloud that con- in which we can measure latencies: the time it
tains the most prestigious organizations. takes a subject to make an assignment of an ob-
Moreover, the structure of similarity pre- ject. Low latency would signal a high GoM in
dicts pairwise intensity of competition for the category chosen.
students (net of the effects of physical dis- As we have worked on this kind of design,
tance and distance on a set of measured we confront the problem that subjects will only
characteristics concerning academic and be able to complete this task for prominent
social climates): The more similar the exemplars (e.g., Stanford University, but not

178 Hannan
SO36CH08-Hannan ARI 2 June 2010 23:31

perhaps DeVry University). Here the contrast of GoMs in categories have been quite indirect;
with Rosch’s research might be informative. other studies get much closer to the audience’s
Recall that Rosch (1973) asked subjects to tell perspective. Further refinement of these
how typical were subconcepts of concepts (ap- notions in empirical testing requires improve-
ples and olives as fruit, for instance). No exem- ments in the measurement of graded typicality.
plars were involved. Our task is more difficult This first wave of research has largely sup-
and may require a gradual approach, beginning ported the notion that the degree of fuzzi-
with the Roschian paradigm. ness (lack of contrast) of a label has conse-
Research along these lines could investigate quences for those who affiliate with the label
various concepts and their subconcepts and set or get assigned it by the audience. In general,
the contrast of a category proportional to the the offerings of low-contrast labels lack appeal.
average GoM of the subconcepts in the con- Moreover, labels that gain high-contrast and
cept. For example, the comedy genre for films is high-intensional consensus tend to thrive; those
generally thought to include subgenres such as with low contrast appear to have low survival
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2010.36:159-181. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

screwball comedy, black comedy, and so forth. chances.


How typical are these? Or, consider craft beer. An important source of partiality is category
Subjects might be asked to associate with this straddling by producers: adopting feature val-
category (or not) such types as steam beer, cof- ues that fit partially to more than one category
by 220.131.9.3 on 09/18/10. For personal use only.

fee stout, fruit ale, and extreme beer. Finally, and/or engaging as a member of more than one
for the case of university for which I suggested category. Both types of partiality (in member-
examples above of exemplars that differ in typi- ship and in engagement) appear to get penalized
cality as instances of the this concept, we could by audiences.
instead focus on the subtypes religious univer- So we have some evidence that partiality
sity, for-profit university, and so forth. matters on each side of the producer-audience
interface. However, these studies consider only
one side at a time. The next challenge is
DISCUSSION to model the two sides simultaneously. This
In a brief time, researchers have devised ways means developing theories of the coevolution
to address implications of partiality in category of the producer and audience roles and of the
memberships. Some efforts at measurement language that expresses them.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
The author is not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings that might
be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Nobel Symposium “Foundations of Organi-
zations” in Saltsjöbaden, August 2008. It draws on collaborative work with Glenn Carroll, Greta
Hsu, Özgecan Koçak, Balázs Kovács, Giacomo Negro, László Pólos, and Huggy Rao. I thank them
and Avinash Dixit, Jeroen Kuilman, Susan Olzak, Elizabeth Pontikes, and Ezra Zuckerman for
their helpful suggestions and corrections. This research was generously supported by the Stanford
Graduate School of Business and the Stanford GSB Faculty Trust.

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Annual Review
of Sociology

Contents Volume 36, 2010

Frontispiece
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John W. Meyer p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p xiv

Prefatory Chapter
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World Society, Institutional Theories, and the Actor


John W. Meyer p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 1

Theory and Methods


Causal Inference in Sociological Research
Markus Gangl p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p21
Causal Mechanisms in the Social Sciences
Peter Hedström and Petri Ylikoski p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p49

Social Processes
A World of Standards but not a Standard World: Toward a Sociology
of Standards and Standardization
Stefan Timmermans and Steven Epstein p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p69
Dynamics of Dyads in Social Networks: Assortative, Relational,
and Proximity Mechanisms
Mark T. Rivera, Sara B. Soderstrom, and Brian Uzzi p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p91
From the Sociology of Intellectuals to the Sociology of Interventions
Gil Eyal and Larissa Buchholz p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 117
Social Relationships and Health Behavior Across the Life Course
Debra Umberson, Robert Crosnoe, and Corinne Reczek p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 139
Partiality of Memberships in Categories and Audiences
Michael T. Hannan p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 159

v
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Institutions and Culture


What Is Sociological about Music?
William G. Roy and Timothy J. Dowd p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 183
Cultural Holes: Beyond Relationality in Social Networks and Culture
Mark A. Pachucki and Ronald L. Breiger p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 205

Formal Organizations
Organizational Approaches to Inequality: Inertia, Relative Power,
and Environments
Kevin Stainback, Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, and Sheryl Skaggs p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 225
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2010.36:159-181. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

Political and Economic Sociology


The Contentiousness of Markets: Politics, Social Movements,
by 220.131.9.3 on 09/18/10. For personal use only.

and Institutional Change in Markets


Brayden G King and Nicholas A. Pearce p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 249
Conservative and Right-Wing Movements
Kathleen M. Blee and Kimberly A. Creasap p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 269
The Political Consequences of Social Movements
Edwin Amenta, Neal Caren, Elizabeth Chiarello, and Yang Su p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 287
Comparative Analyses of Public Attitudes Toward Immigrants
and Immigration Using Multinational Survey Data: A Review
of Theories and Research
Alin M. Ceobanu and Xavier Escandell p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 309

Differentiation and Stratification


Income Inequality: New Trends and Research Directions
Leslie McCall and Christine Percheski p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 329
Socioeconomic Disparities in Health Behaviors
Fred C. Pampel, Patrick M. Krueger, and Justin T. Denney p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 349
Gender and Health Inequality
Jen’nan Ghazal Read and Bridget K. Gorman p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 371
Incarceration and Stratification
Sara Wakefield and Christopher Uggen p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 387
Achievement Inequality and the Institutional Structure of Educational
Systems: A Comparative Perspective
Herman G. Van de Werfhorst and Jonathan J.B. Mijs p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 407

vi Contents
SO36-FM ARI 2 June 2010 4:38

Historical Studies of Social Mobility and Stratification


Marco H.D. van Leeuwen and Ineke Maas p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 429

Individual and Society


Race and Trust
Sandra Susan Smith p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 453
Three Faces of Identity
Timothy J. Owens, Dawn T. Robinson, and Lynn Smith-Lovin p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 477

Policy
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2010.36:159-181. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

The New Homelessness Revisited


Barrett A. Lee, Kimberly A. Tyler, and James D. Wright p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 501
The Decline of Cash Welfare and Implications for Social Policy
by 220.131.9.3 on 09/18/10. For personal use only.

and Poverty
Sandra K. Danziger p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 523

Indexes

Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 27–36 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 547


Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 27–36 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 551

Errata

An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Sociology articles may be found at


http://soc.annualreviews.org/errata.shtml

Contents vii

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