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In recent decades, economic globalization has grown significantly in affluent democracies. "Faking this as a point of departure, we review social science research on the consequences of economic globalization for the state, the economy, and civil society. We advocate for a concrete position of empirical scrutiny, between the grand theorists and earlier empirical skeptics, and measure economic globalization as the heightening of international trade and investment. Social scientists have engaged in lively debates surrounding such topics as how globalization affects the welfare state, politics, deindustrialization, inequality, and organized labor. Among the themes that emerge from these debates are the distinct values of within- and between country comparisons and the need for a stronger connection between theoretical accounts of globalization and empirical analyses. At the same time, many aspects of social life have been neglected by recent research on globalization. Throughout, we gauge current consensus and dissensus, identify understudied topics, and suggest directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the increasing popularity of comparative work on other-regarding preferences, the implications of different models of altruism are not always fully understood. This article analyzes different theoretical approaches to altruism and explores what empirical conclusions we should draw from them, paying particular attention to models of redistribution preferences where inequality explicitly triggers other-regarding motives for redistribution. While the main contribution of this article is to clarify the conclusions of these models, we also illustrate the importance of their distinct implications by analyzing Western European data to compare among them. We draw on individual-level data from the European Social Survey fielded between September 2002 and December 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reviews recent literature on varieties of capitalism, drawing on insights from existing studies to propose a new, more differentiated way of thinking about contemporary changes in the political economies of the rich democracies. The framework offered here breaks with the 'continuum models' on which much of the traditional literature has been based, in which countries are arrayed along a single dimension according to their degree of 'corporatism' or, more recently, of 'coordination.' In so doing, it reveals combinations-continued high levels of equality with significant liberalization, and declining solidarity in the context of continued significant coordination-that existing theories rule out by definition. I argue that these puzzling combinations cannot be understood with reference to the usual dichotomous, structural variables on which the literature has long relied, but require instead greater attention to the coalitional foundations on which political-economic institutions rest. A coalitional approach reveals that institutions that in the past supported the more egalitarian varieties of capitalism survive best not when they stably reproduce the politics and patterns of the Golden Era but rather when they are reconfigured-in both form and function-on the basis of significantly new political support coalitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social reproduction theory argues that schools are not institutions of equal opportunity but mechanisms for perpetuating social inequalities. This review discusses the emergence and development of social reproduction analyses of education and examines three main perspectives on reproduction: economic, cultural, and linguistic. Reproduction analyses emerged in the 1960s and were largely abandoned by the 1990s; some of the conceptual and political reasons for this turning away are addressed. New approaches stress concepts such as agency, identity person, and voice over the structural constraints of political economy or code, but results have been mixed. Despite theoretical and methodological advances-including new approaches to multilevel analysis and alertness to temporal processes-the difficult problem remains to understand how social inequality results from the interplay of classrooms, schools, and the wider society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this review, we examine the idea of organizational restructuring as a conceptual tool and how it has been used to alter societal definitions and interpretations of employment. Although use of the term restructuring is relatively recent, the broad issue of changing employment conditions with which it is concerned has a long history, going back to the industrial revolution. Our main focus is a consideration of the causes and consequences of restructuring, in its more recent rhetorical and structural versions. In their pursuit of greater efficiencies, organizations adapt to the demands of increasingly global markets, and these adaptations are crucial components of what is popularly referred to as the new economy. Such developments are applauded in most economic theory, but sociologists examine both sides of their social impact, including the adverse effects and implications of such externalities as the social disruptions caused by downsizing and other organizational and corporate changes. These studies provide important contributions to our knowledge of how much, and when. promises of organizational efficiency are in fact deliverable and responsive to those affected by them. We argue that the language of restructuring is regularly used to mask, reframe, and sugarcoat economic slumps as possessing positive social outcomes. We conclude by positioning restructuring as an important component of the current American export of managerial ideology to transnational contexts and suggest further examination of how restructuring affects the culture of business in these other national contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review critically surveys an extensive literature on mining, development, and environment. It identifies a significant broadening over time in the scope of the environment question as it relates to mining, from concerns about landscape aesthetics and pollution to ecosystem health, sustainable development, and indigenous rights. A typology compares and contrasts four distinctive approaches to this question: (a) technology and management-centered accounts, defining the issue in terms of environmental performance; (b) public policy studies on the design of effective institutions for capturing benefits and allocating costs of resource development; (c) structural political economy, highlighting themes of external control, resource rights, and environmental justice; and (d) cultural studies, which illustrate how mining exemplifies many of society's anxieties about the social and environmental effects of industrialization and globalization. Each approach is examined in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "end of welfare as we know it" constitutes an important challenge for poverty research, shifting the focus away from once-dominant themes of dependency and toward the reality of widespread "working poverty." The literature reviewed in this chapter points in the direction of a reformulated research agenda, built around issues of inequality, political economy, and stratification by gender, race, class, and place. It also calls into question the traditional distinction between welfare and working poor, as well as the notion of an isolated underclass existing apart from the social and economic mainstream. Finally, it points to the need to broaden a policy discourse that has been narrowly fixated on welfare and on changing the behavior of the poor. A real anti-poverty agenda would focus instead on the elements of mainstream political economy and culture that continue to produce widespread economic inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]