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Societal upheavals often ignite bias against "the other." The early political rhetoric around the COVID-19 pandemic keenly engaged this othering process, even from its early nomenclature as the "Wuhan" and "China" virus. Although media accounts of xenophobic violence against Asian Americans abound, little behavioral evidence exists that identifies the prevalence and scope of anti-Chinese bias during the COVID-19 pandemic. We examine whether and to what extent traces of such othering systematically emerge in Americans' everyday behaviors. Specifically, we analyze a novel dataset focused on Yelp reviews for Chinese and American restaurants in eight large metropolitan areas. Using difference-in-differences estimation, we find that Chinese restaurants received significantly lower ratings compared with American restaurants shortly after the start of the pandemic. The effect is localized to Chinese restaurants, rather than to all Asian restaurants. Our results highlight the emergence of anti-Chinese prejudice in an ostensibly apolitical setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative judgments abound in sports. Fans and pundits bandy about which of two players or teams is bigger, faster, stronger, more talented, less injury prone, more reliable, safer to bet on, riskier to trade for, and so on. Arguably, of most interest are judgments of a coarser type: which of two players or teams is, all-things-considered, just plainbetter? Conventionally, it is accepted that such comparisons can be appropriately captured and expressed by sports rankings. Rankings play an important role in sports arguablybecauseof the conventional acceptance that rankings capture and express all-things-considered relations between the ranked teams or players. Standard ranking practices rely on a number of widely held assumptions. I discuss three of the most important and argue thatat least oneof them must be false. If this is right, the strong and growing commitment to using rankings to determine participation in tournaments and the awarding of championships is mistaken. At the least, given the conventional wisdom about rankings, my argument provides good reasons to be skeptical thatanyparticular ranking ‘gets it right’. At the limit, it suggests that our most basic assumptions about all-things-considered athletic quality are wrong. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, I synthesize insights from urban growth machine and risk society theories to advance scholarship that furthers an understanding of why and how environmental racism, in this case rebuilding a school on toxic land in a Black community, is produced during prolonged recovery to disaster. Using a single, embedded historical case, I focus on the redevelopment of the Booker T. Washington High School in the heart of New Orleans, LA with confirmed worrisome concentrations of highly toxic and carcinogenic elements and the associated health risks conferred to majority Black children who will attend. Using an explanation building technique, I find explanatory support for recovery machine theories that argue post-disaster funding is used to propel growth machine dynamics. In other words, reinvestment creates environmental risks that amount to environmental racism. Building on this theory, I illustrate through the case how redevelopment of post-disaster New Orleans manufactures environmental risk and how local groups experience that risk differently adding to sociological theorizations on the contested nature of risk. I discuss implications of the intersections of urban growth, environmental risk, and inequalities for cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1981 Ketchup as a Vegetable debacle has rendered ketchup an indelible fixture in our political as well as our culinary culture. In the Reagan administration's attempt to slash $1.5 billion from children's nutrition funding, school lunch program requirements were worded (whether deliberately or not) so as to conceivably allow for designating ketchup as a vegetable, allowing the USDA to eliminate one of the two vegetables required to meet minimum food and nutrition standards, and thus shrink costs considerably. While the proposal included other changes that involved similar, dramatic category shifting, these received only minor attention compared to the idea of the salt and sucrose--laden condiment ketchup as an equivalent to a bona fide vegetable. Ketchup came to symbolize the malevolence of the economic policy of the Ronald Reagan presidency even as it underscored the deep government indifference to children in lower-income and minority populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines brand dispersion-variance in brand ratings across consumers-and its role in the translation of brand assets into firm value. Dispersion captures the covert heterogeneity in brand evaluations among consumers who like or dislike the brands, which would affect an investor's decision to buy or sell a stock. The higher the dispersion, the more inconsistent and polarized the brands' cross-consumer ratings. Multiple analyses on 730,818 brand-day observations provide robust evidence that brand dispersion fluctuations affect stock prices. Brand dispersion has Januslike effects: it harms returns but reduces firm risk. Furthermore, downside dispersion has a stronger impact on abnormal returns than upside dispersion, indicating an asymmetry in brand dispersion's effects. Moreover, dispersion tempers the risk-reduction benefits of higher brand rating in both the short run and long run. Without modeling dispersion, brand rating's impact on firm value can be over- or underestimated. Managers should consider dispersion a vital brand-management metric and add it to the brand-performance dashboard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite societal shifts making the United States more inclusive, particularly among younger people, transgender people and people of color remain populations that have labels like "exotic" or "taboo" associated with them. This article explores the racialized dating experiences of an immigrant trans woman of color who uses online dating platforms to facilitate her dating life in Texas. Given that the existing literature on trans people tends to focus on identity development, health concerns, or questions of legality and policy in arenas such as the workplace and in education, there is still limited research on the romantic and sexual lives of trans people. In fact, much of the growing research on trans relationships focuses either on couples where one partner transitioned and the couple maintained a relationship or studies lumping trans experiences under an LGBT umbrella. Using an intersectional theoretical approach, this case study unpacks how race, racism, and transphobia, as well as internalized racial and gender logics, work in tandem to shape desirability and date ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For most of the twentieth century, public opinion was nearly analogous with polling. Enter social media, which has upended the social, technical, and communication contingencies upon which public opinion is constructed. This study documents how political professionals turn to social media to understand the public, charting important implications for the practice of campaigning as well as the study of public opinion itself. An analysis of in-depth interviews with 13 professionals from 2016 US presidential campaigns details how they use social media to understand and represent public opinion. I map these uses of social media onto a theoretical model, accounting for quantitative and qualitative measurement, for instrumental and symbolic purposes. Campaigns' use of social media data to infer and symbolize public opinion is a new development in the relationship between campaigns and supporters. These new tools and symbols of public opinion are shaped by campaigns and drive press coverage (McGregor 2019), highlighting the hybrid logic of the political media system (Chadwick 2017). The model I present brings much-needed attention to qualitative data, a novel aspect of social media in understanding public opinion. The use of social media data to understand the public, for all its problems of representativeness, may provide a retort to long-standing criticisms of surveys—specifically that surveys do not reveal hierarchical, social, or public aspects of opinion formation (Blumer 1948 ; Herbst 1998 ; Cramer 2016). This model highlights a need to explicate what can—and cannot—be understood about public opinion via social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on black authenticity identifies "oppressive othering" and "white standards of beauty", particularly lighter skin tone, as key components. Few studies disentangle which of these two theoretical components matter the most for a particular outcome. Rap music, whose lyrics are often categorized as authentic expressions of blackness, offers an intriguing case to compare the effects of "oppressive othering" (as alcohol and drug lyrics) and "white standards of beauty" (as the rap artist's skin tone) on national music charts. Analysing artists' skin tone and lyrical content of songs ranked on Billboard Rap Year-End Charts from 2007 to 2011, results show that lighter skin tone is significantly and positively related to higher chart rankings. Alcohol and drug lyrics, however, had a non-significant effect. Implications are discussed in relation to the effects of the commodified imagery of "authentic" blackness in the new digital era of music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: The study of crime trends has proceeded along two paths: 1) normal science investigations of slow‐moving and tractable changes in crime rates and explanatory conditions and 2) research encounters with unexpected and abrupt changes in crime rates resulting from exogenous shocks. I draw from my research on the relationship between crime rates and changing macroeconomic conditions to illustrate the pains and pleasures of studying crime trends with the tools of normal science. I describe my exploratory investigations of the recent homicide rise in the United States to underscore the theoretical importance and methodological challenges of research on exogenous shocks to crime rates. Finally, I hope to convey to the next generation of criminologists the intellectual excitement that comes from the study of crime trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author offers his reflections on teaching feminist theory as a man. Topics discussed include advantages of his presence as a male teacher, stories that can help make students aware that traditional masculinity can encourage behavior that harms oneself and/or others and the need for everyone's personal experiences to be understood in light of the political structures and practices that shape each individual.

We study whether leaders influence the unethical conduct of followers. To avoid selection issues present in natural environments, we use an experiment in which we create simple laboratory firms and assign leadership roles at random. In our first experiment, firms engage in competition and unethical behavior enhances firm earnings but produces a negative externality for all firms. We vary, by treatment, two instruments through which leaders can influence follower conduct--prominent statements to the group and the allocation of monetary incentives. We find that leaders influence the ethical conduct of followers both through their statements and through the use of incentives. Moreover, leaders who are likely to have acted dishonestly in a preliminary stage of the experiment are more likely to employ mechanisms to encourage dishonesty among followers. As a result, firms randomly assigned one of these unethical leaders are more likely to engage in misreporting. A second experiment finds that the above relationships are present, though weaker, when firms do not engage in direct competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out to explore the strength of the relationship between the proximity of a property to the city center and its price. Buyers are willing to pay extra for apartments or houses closer to the city center, but the extent of this willingness remains largely unexplored. Our research question is: How much does a minute of commuting time influence the price of an apartment in Prague? In other words, with every minute of commuting time, how much more is paid for a house or an apartment closer to the central business district (CBD)? Our analysis has found that on average, every minute of commuting time closer to the city center corresponds to an additional cost of CZK 43,390.45 for an average sized apartment in Prague. A regression analysis is graphically plotted in the Chart 1. We have also found that this relationship changes according to distance from the city center. For a commuting time of 1-20 minutes to the city center, the price increase is the highest: CZK 259,466.18 per minute. However, this figure is only CZK 55,809.01 for the interval of 21-40 minutes, and CZK 33,924.29 per minute for the interval of 41-55 minutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Direito da Cidade is the property of Editora da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (EdUERJ) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses social and political conditions for transgender Brazilian sex workers. The author contrasts an alleged improvement in rights for gay Brazilians with the alleged oppression of sex workers and transgender people, criticizes government raids on brothels during the World Cup and other sporting events such as the planned Olympic Games, and examines the social, religious, and political roles of Brazilian homophobia and homonormativity.

The media and generalist scholarly work have created a conventional wisdom that China's one-child policy is the driver of the country's skewed sex ratio and so should be relaxed in order to ameliorate the imbalance. However, we show through historical, domestic and international comparisons that son preference, which we treat as an observable and measurable variable made up of labour, ritual, inheritance and old-age security practices and policies, is crucial to explaining the imbalanced sex ratio at birth. China's sex ratio cannot fully normalize without addressing son preference. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents excerpts from several articles including "The Killing of Osama bin Laden" by Seymour M. Hersh in the issue of "London Review of Books, "The Media's Reaction to Seymour Hersh's bin Laden Scoop Has Been Disgraceful" by Trevor Timm in the issue of Columbia Journalism Review, and the "SurveyMonkey Was the Other Winner of the U.K. Election" by Carl Bialik from the website FiveThirtyEight.

The Tea Party Movement ( TPM) burst onto the political scene following the 2008 elections. Early on, the movement attracted broad public support and seemed to tap into a variety of cultural concerns rooted in the changing demographic, political, and economic face of the nation. However, some observers questioned whether the Tea Party represented anything more than routine partisan backlash. And what had started as a seemingly grassroots movement that changed the face of American politics in the 2010 election was reduced to being mainly a caucus within Congress by 2012. In this article, we examine the cultural and political dimensions of Tea Party support over time. Using polling data from North Carolina and Tennessee and quantitative media analysis, we provide new evidence that cultural dispositions in addition to conservative identification were associated with TPM favorability in 2010; that these dispositions crystallized into shared political positions in 2011; and that by 2012 little distinguished TPM adherents from other conservatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We advocate a relational approach to understanding contemporary conservatism in the United States. Our approach suggests that conservatism provides a cultural repertoire for adherents to use in adapting to new or changed political situations. We provide evidence based on public opinion data that conservatism is neither a single, monolithic ideology nor a mere coalition of convenience among disparate interest groups. Instead, conservatism should be understood as an amalgam of overlapping but distinct styles of thought, held together through a cultural identification with conservative identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three contemporary leadership challenges face local governments today. The first encourages department heads to more actively work the intersection between political and administrative arenas. The second promotes collaborative work, synchronizing city and county boundaries with problems that have no jurisdictional homes. The third argues that citizen engagement is no longer optional-it is imperative-and that connecting engagement initiatives to traditional political values and governing processes is an important mark of successful community building. These three leadership challenges stem from a widening gap between the arenas of politics and administration-that is, between what is politically acceptable in public policy making and what is administratively sustainable. The gap is fueled by conflicting trends experienced locally and common internationally. Failure to bridge this gap between political acceptability and administrative sustainability results in decreasing legitimacy for governing institutions and increasing challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ubiquity of data in the twenty-first century provides unprecedented opportunities for social science research, but it also creates troubling possibilities for privacy violations. The emerging field of statistical disclosure control (SDC) studies how data collectors and analysts can find an optimal solution to balancing privacy protection and data utility. This article introduces SDC to readers in the applied political science research community and outlines its implications for analyzing individual-level data. The vocabulary of SDC is introduced and is followed with a discussion emphasizing just how easy it is to break almost any release of supposedly “anonymized” data. The article then describes how SDC measures almost always destroy the ability of researchers to accurately analyze complex survey data. These results are in conflict with increasing trends toward greater transparency in the social sciences. A discussion of the future of SDC concludes the article. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The underground economy (UE) in the United States has kept growing especially during recent years especially following the great recession of 2007. It is a ubiquitous problem and like other economic ills it has no definitive cure. For the most part, cash transactions or illegal enterprises such as drug trafficking, prostitution, and gambling constitute the lion's share of an underground economy; it is not, however, limited to such activities. Legal transactions or jobs can also go underground for various reasons, most notably the avoidance of having to pay taxes or receiving government handouts while working at a paid job. Accurate assessment of the actual size of the UE is next to impossible for the obvious reasons that its activities are clandestine and its inhabitants remain anonymous. For that reason, researchers have utilized a variety of proxy measures; the most often relied upon is the amount of currency in circulation, cash outside commercial banks. This paper discusses some of these measures together with the detrimental consequences of underground economy. The distortions created by the UE are damaging not only to the official economy but also to government policy makers because these distortions impede their ability to make proper macroeconomic decisions that are based on accurate assumptions about economic variables such as the poverty rate, the unemployment rate, and the pace of aggregate income and spending. The UE is obviously a more complicated issue than what is addressed by this paper. More thorough and timely analyses backed by empirical evidence are necessary to the formulation of effective remedies for the UE and its related problems. Also, policy makers need to have accurate estimates of its size and causes in order to be able to devise suitable economic policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotions can have important effects on performance and socioeconomic outcomes. We study a natural experiment where two teams of professionals compete in a tournament taking turns in a sequence. As the sequential order is determined by the random outcome of a coin flip, the treatment and control groups are determined via explicit randomization. Hence, absent any psychological effects, both teams should have the same probability of winning. Yet, we find a systematic first-mover advantage. Further, professionals are self-aware of their own psychological effects and, when given the chance, they rationally react by systematically taking advantage of these effects. ( JEL C93, D03, D82, L83) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews recent developments in American felony disenfranchisement law. Examining several variables' impact on states' likelihood of enacting reform, I find that only initial policy severity proves a strong predictor of restriction-relaxing change, as most of the dozen states enacting such reforms in the last decade began the period with extremely restrictive policies. Entrepreneurship by African American and Democratic lawmakers has been important, but many Republicans conclude that debating disenfranchisement can be advantageous to them, as well. The Help America Vote Act has centralized administration of this policy, while local officials retain important roles. The article concludes by examining two unresolved problems: whether ineligibility follows a person moving from one state to another, and whether Congress has the constitutional authority to enfranchise former offenders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike the edited news package, which dominates network and local news in America, the cable news channels recount the day's news predominantly through conversation, a format dubbed here dialogical news. At the center of this article is the concept of internal fragmentation, a consequence of the turn to conversation-based reporting, and its central implications: (1) the authority of the news reporter diminishes; (2) question-asking replaces fact-checking; (3) news organizations relinquish their accountability for news content; and (4) the news audience assumes the role of witness or participant rather than receiver. As dialogical news becomes prominent in the repertoire of viewers, short- and long-term prospects are suggested here. In the short-run, journalists are losing their battle to control their sources and maintain their gatekeeping function. In the long run, journalism might lose its significance as society's reflexive storyteller, reverting instead to its former role as a partisan instrument, a source of entertainment or a bit of both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]