Classical theories of the division of labor emphasize the overwhelming productivity benefits that arise from specialization. But recent evidence reveals that the division of labor in late industrial societies is under increasing strain. Here, we discuss two types of strain: increasing task burdens and coordination problems. First, worker task burdens are expanding due to the rationalization, bureaucratization, and financialization of late industrial societies. Second, population growth, system complexity, and political attacks on bureaucracy mean that organizational capacity is being overwhelmed. Rising exposure to crisesâincluding pandemics, climate disasters, and geopolitical conflictâfurther undermines the robustness of the division of labor: Workers are forced to take on unfamiliar tasks and the resilience of existing systems is challenged. We conclude our review by considering the potential of artificial intelligence to relieve or exacerbate these vulnerabilities by reshaping task structures, enhancing coordination, and supporting crisis response. The review integrates fragmented literatures to highlight systemic challenges and possible future trajectories of work and society.
In this article we review the multi-disciplinary literature on how gender is implicated in illiberal and authoritarian-leaning politics as well as how illiberal political regimes impact gender justice. While a large body of literature is dedicated to the analysis of the so-called âantigenderâ discourses adopted by illiberal politicians, less is written about how these are translated into policy and institutional change. We identify two key policy areas where illiberal leaders have been particularly active and innovative: in reregulating aspects of reproduction to suit their ethno-nationalist, pronatalist agenda and in reshaping knowledge production around the concept of gender. We argue that policy and institutional change in these two areas is particularly relevant for the process of gendered dedemocratization. While both discourse and policy change are important to understand the gendered nature of illiberal rule, we need more information on how gendered illiberalism actually reshapes society and gender hierarchies.
Analysts of social movements habitually conceive of political mobilization as a collective action problem, potentially misleading analysts about the nature of the conflicts. Collective action mobilizes individuals to pursue interests shared by a given group. Collective behavior is mobilization that undermines shared interests and splits existing groups, leading to unintended and collectively destructive outcomes. This article recounts several of the author's research projects into political upheavals in Mao-era China, in which movements initially thought to be a form of collective action focused by network ties turned out to be a form of collective behavior that undermined structurally strong dictatorships and the interests of their beneficiaries. The research revealed the hidden vulnerabilities of strong network ties and seemingly impregnable authoritarian structures built on them.
Financialization in the Twenty-First Century: Contemporary Trends and Emerging Research Directions
Following the 2008 financial crisis, financialization has emerged as a central research program for analyzing the changing economy and its broader social consequences. This article examines recent scholarship on financialization and argues that this economic transformation has evolved substantially in the past two decades, demanding a more expansive analytical framework and new research directions. Focusing on the economy-wide organization of capital, we document three trends that characterize the contemporary manifestation of financialization in the United States: ( a ) rising intermediation by nonbank financial institutions, ( b ) growing investment in nontraditional financial assets, and ( c ) deepening household participation in the financial market as investors. These developments have wide implications regarding the stability of financial systems, the operation of businesses, and the distribution of economic resources across US society.
Sociological Methods & Research
Measuring Social and Political Identities in Social Media Self-Descriptions
Clara Vandeweerdt, Gregory Eady, Frederik Hjorth, Peter Thisted Dinesen
Identities are fundamental to our understanding of social and political behavior, but are challenging to measure and are rarely observed in real-world settings. We introduce a method for measuring the identity-relevant aspects of brief self-descriptions regularly used online (e.g., on social media). Our approach combines the benefits of word embeddings for finding related identity terms with the ability of clustering algorithms to aggregate terms into discrete categories. To illustrate our approach, we apply it to daily observations of bios from millions of US Twitter/X users. We present three applications of our approach with substantive findings. First, we track usersâ social and political identities over time and find, among other things, that direct expressions of political affiliations are rare. Second, we map the identities that are most characteristic of each US state. Third, we show that usersâ political identities are highly predictable based on non-political identity markers. With the growing availability of user self-descriptions on social media platforms and elsewhere, our approach enables researchers to map and analyze expressions of identity at scale.
A Machine Learning Approach to Preferential Attachment and Status Advantage in a Hip-Hop Collaboration Network
Status is central to understanding collaborative behavior, yet it is often difficult to measure in cultural fields where perceived standings are only partially observable. This study develops a scalable supervised machine learning approach to infer directed deference in collaboration networks using a partially observed status hierarchy derived from a ritualized site of status conferral (a televised competition series). Drawing on a longitudinal âfeaturingâ network of more than 3,000 South Korean hip-hop artists, we train a classifier to learn how differences in status-relevant characteristics map onto observed deference patterns and then use it to estimate preferential attachment across all collaboration dyads. The resulting measure aligns closely with external expert assessments of artistsâ relative standing. Applying this metric to streaming performance data, we show that collaboration improves listener engagement and that its effect varies nonlinearly with status distance: artists benefit both from partnering with higher-status collaborators and from featuring emerging talents.
Population and Development Review
Measuring the Impact of Armed Conflict on Population Health: A Guide for Researchers
Maya Luetke, Signe Svallfors, Elizabeth Heger Boyle
The humanitarian impact of armed conflict remains a significant international issue, with an estimated 2 billion people residing in fragile or conflictâaffected settings. Despite increasing attention and study of armed conflict and its impact on human populations, few studies have evaluated the methods necessary to assess such relationships: how to use disaggregated and granular conflict data, measure and operationalize conflict, etc. In this study, we identify important considerations for conducting armed conflict and health research, including how data structures and decisions might impact conclusions. We discuss the particular characteristics of existing armed conflict datasets and the types of biases that may be present in data drawn from conflictâaffected areas. Further, we demonstrate how data and measurement choices can result in different conclusions and, if handled improperly, even spatial misclassification, bias, and spurious conclusions. Lastly, we illustrate some of these data and measurement choices in an empirical example where we assess the impact of conflict on women's contraceptive use in Nigeria. Using conflict event data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and health data from the Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey in 2018, we show how the relationship between exposure and outcomes varies across different spatiotemporal dimensions of conflict exposure measurement.
LinaâMariaMurilloFighting for Control: Power, Reproductive Care and Race in the USâMexico BorderlandsThe University of North Carolina Press, 2025, 336 p. $29.95
This paper examines whether women's employment in the 21st century remains a barrier to family formation, as it was in the 1980s and 1990s, orâsimilar to men'sâit has become a prerequisite for childbearing. We address this question through a systematic quantitative review (metaâanalysis) of empirical studies conducted in Europe, North America, and Australia. We selected 94 studies published between 1990 and 2023 ( N = 572 effect sizes). Our analysis uncovers a fundamental shift in the relationship between women's employment and fertility. What was once a strongly negative association has become statistically insignificant in the 2000s and 2010sâand even turned positive in the Nordic countries, parts of Western Europe (France, Belgium, and the Netherlands), and Central and Eastern Europe. This shift is evident both among childless women and mothers and has occurred across all analyzed country clusters, except for the German/Southern European group, where the relationship has remained negative. These findings challenge longstanding assumptions about workâfamily tradeâoffs and suggest a reconfiguration of the economic and social conditions underpinning fertility decisions in contemporary highâincome societies. The paper calls for a reconceptualization of the employmentâfertility relationship and development of a new theoretical framework that better captures these evolving dynamics in contemporary highâincome societies.
Revisiting the Relationship between Marriage and Childbearing in East Asia: The Role of Fertility Desires in Japan
Fumiya Uchikoshi, Ryota Mugiyama, Shohei Yoda, James M. Raymo
In this study, we propose and evaluate a new framework for understanding âlowestâlowâ fertility in East Asia, emphasizing the link between the desire for children and marriage. Recognizing that delayed and declining marriage is the primary reason for low fertility in the region, we posit that marriage decisions are shaped by intentions or incentives (not) to have children. We evaluate this hypothesis using Japan as a case, a society where parenthood is an integral part of the âpackageâ of normative family expectations accompanying marriage, especially for women. After confirming that attitudes toward marriage and fertility are strongly correlated, we estimate discreteâtime hazard models of first marriage using nationally representative longitudinal data. We find that, net of marriage desires, (1) women and men with no desire to have children marry significantly later than those who desire children, and (2) uncertain attitudes toward parenthood are also associated with later marriage for men, but not women. The link between negative or uncertain fertility desires and delayed marriage among men is partially explained by their lower engagement in efforts to find a marriage partner. These results provide insights for policy discussions about declining fertility in East Asia, especially concerns that proânatalist policies are mistargeted.
As both ethnoracial and sex/gender categories come to be increasingly understood as fluid, contextual, and constructed, transgender identities have gained cultural legitimacy, yet transracial claims remain widely contested. This contrast has prompted the question, âIf transgender, why not transracial?â I contend that this comparison overlooks fundamental differences between ethnoracial and sex/gender systemsâparticularly in their modalities of division and structures of exclusionâthat render the analogy problematic. Drawing out these distinctions, I argue that transgender identification emerges as a plausible outcome of a sex/gender systemâconstituted through culturally elaborated nomenclatures, institutions, and practicesâthat has historically given rise to variable categories of âdevianceâ from cis-heteronormative standards. By contrast, transracialism remains unintelligible and will likely remain so within ethnoracial systems that sustain hierarchical boundaries between legitimized racialized groups, boundaries that are reinforced through collective loyalties. Recognizing this distinction, this study calls for greater precision in theorizing how culturally elaborated categories acquire specific structural forms.
Social Forces
Between beliefs and borders: migration, religion, and abortion attitudes
Abortion remains a uniquely contentious issue, rooted not only in moral concerns but also in its broader implications for womenâs reproductive autonomy and population dynamics. These tensions become particularly pronounced in migration contexts, where they intersect with debates on integration, cultural identity, and perceived demographic threats to the majority population. We investigate how abortion attitudes among immigrants and their descendants evolve over time spent at destination and across generations, whether this varies when individuals move from less to more liberal settings or vice-versa, and how it is moderated by religion and religiosity. We adopt a multi-sited approach, fitting cross-nested multi-level models on a sample of individuals in thirty-one European countries and originating from ninety-three countries. We find clear patterns of intra- and intergenerational convergence with destination-country views and divergence from origin-country ones, even for migrants moving to more conservative settings. Highly religious individuals across all major faiths are less likely to be aligned with prevailing attitudes in both origin and destination countries, suggesting their views may be shaped by transnational religious frameworks. These findings challenge assumptions that abortion attitudes are either stable or follow a unidirectional liberalizing trajectory, and that patterns of âblocked acculturationâ are more prominent among Muslim immigrants.
Beer and the labor process: how risk-taking, crowded housing, and family separation shape drinking behaviors among migrant roofers
When natural disasters (such as hurricanes or tornadoes) damage homes, migrant roofers known as rapid responders help tarp and rebuild affected communities. However, these workers labor under precarious conditions, live in crowded housing, and are separated from the social support of family. This mixed-methods study draws on surveys (n = 358) and in-depth interviews (n = 58) with a hidden population of migrant roofers to elucidate the role of alcoholâparticularly beerâin the labor process by examining how a multitude of factors intersect to shape drinking behaviors. Our quantitative analysis shows (1) taking ârisks at workâ is significantly associated with more frequent drinking, (2) living in crowded housing is positively related to binge drinking, and (3) alcohol use frequency increases with prolonged family separation. Our qualitative results reveal that some workers believe drinking mitigates the fears associated with the job and the unbearable monotony of work, especially under extreme heat conditions. Drinking patterns are further reinforced through peers and group dynamics that spill over from work to home and vice versa. Finally, we find that separation from loved ones destabilizes family life, leading not only to a loss of comfort and support but also to the watchful eye of family members who may help regulate unhealthy behaviors. Our paper shows how labor and migration intersect to produce health and social behaviors associated with the transient, precarious lifestyle of migrant roofers.
European Sociological Review
Fertility trends across migrant generations reexamined: insights from Finnish register data
Migrant descendants in several European countries show increasingly lower fertility rates, sometimes even lower than native-born peersâa pattern defying conventional expectations that migrant descendants either maintain origin-country patterns or converge toward host-country norms. Using Finnish register data (1985â1994 birth cohorts), we analyze first-birth timing across six ancestry groups spanning three migrant generations: 1.5, second, and 2.5 (children of mixed or exogamous couples). Entry into parenthood occurs progressively later across these generations, with the 2.5 generation surpassing even native Finns in postponement. We tested four mechanismsâurban residence, educational investment, economic instability, and barriers to union formationâbut none explained the delay. Our study contributes to the literature by, first, underscoring the limitations of the convergence narrative to account for the fertility behaviour of migrant descendants and, second, by drawing special attention to the 2.5G as a sui generis group whose behaviour requires further conceptual and empirical attention.