Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews最新文献

{"title":"Public Confessions: The Religious Conversions That Changed American Politics","authors":"Fenggang Yang","doi":"10.1177/00943061231181317h","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231181317h","url":null,"abstract":"during his childhood in South Chicago and is present among Black Americans today. Despite its merits, there are several critiques to be raised with this text. In places, this book appears to be written for readers who are already familiar with Black identity scholarship and Cross’s work. Too often terms and phrases are engaged in the text before they are defined or given context. For example, the ‘‘buffering’’ strategy for protecting identity appears on page 83, but the term is not aptly defined until page 86. Until it is defined, the reader is left to use context clues to fully understand the meaning and practice of buffering. Similarly, though the term eudaimonia appears in the title of the book, there is no section of the text that unpacks its meaning or application to Black identity. As such, the term ‘‘eudaimonia’’ is mostly implied and alluded to throughout the text. At each brief mention (a sentence or two here and there) the term is defined a little differently, and the reader is left to connect the dots of ‘‘eudaimonia’’ and Black identity for themselves. After having read the book, I have a general sense of the author’s direction and intention for this term. But in truth, I am left with more questions than answers. Finally, I must offer that I was disappointed that the ‘‘barber’s chair’’ motif did not figure more prominently into the text. As the author implies, childhood and adult experiences in Black barber and beauty shops can greatly inform a sense of identity and community. Given the title of the book, the title of the first chapter, and the photo on the book cover, many readers will be expecting this concept to be well integrated throughout the text. While the ‘‘barbershop bias’’ is disused briefly in the first chapter, it does not figure prominently into the text as whole and feels a bit like a ‘‘bait and switch.’’ The strengths of this text are many. Notwithstanding my previous comments about the presentation of concepts and terms, the text does not present as overly abstract or esoteric. In fact, the major themes and concepts are illustrated for the reader through application to historical events and prominent figures in ways that will resonate with many audiences. Though readers will have to do a bit of digging for the meaning of some of the key terms, the book is still accessible and digestible to learners at various levels, including advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and academics. Next, the book is interdisciplinary in its approach, drawing from the broad fields of history, psychology, sociology, literature, and art. This approach lends itself well to discussions of identity, since the character of humanity is complex, including the social, the creative, and the psychological self. For this reason, the book will also appeal to some readers outside of the academy. In all, Black Identity Viewed from a Barber’s Chair is a worthwhile and engaging read for anyone interested in Black humanity and experiences.","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"330 - 332"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48782953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Vehicles of Decolonization: Public Transit in the Palestinian West Bank","authors":"S. Gasteyer","doi":"10.1177/00943061231181317n","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231181317n","url":null,"abstract":"‘permanent’—in other words, those that were to be taken up as the thinker’s own thought’’ and distinguish it from what he calls ‘‘discards.’’ This is especially true, Gramsci says, ‘‘when one is dealing with a personality in whom theoretical and practical activity are indissolubly intertwined and with an intellect in a process of continual creation and perpetual movement, with a strong and mercilessly vigorous sense of self-criticism. Given these premises, the work should be conducted on the following lines: 1. Reconstruction of the author’s biography, not only as regards his practical activity, but also and above all as regards his intellectual activity. 2. A catalogue of all his works, even those most easily overlooked, in chronological order, divided according to intrinsic criteria—of intellectual formation, maturity, possession, and application of the new way of thinking and conceiving life and the world. Search for the Leitmotiv, for the rhythm of the thought as it develops, should be more important than that for single casual affirmations and isolated aphorisms’’ (1971:383–84). Frétigné’s biography generally hits the mark on both fronts, especially the first. What it does not do, what has never yet been accomplished, even for Marx, is to create the kind of myth that, for Gramsci, makes Machiavelli’s The Prince so powerful, giving ‘‘imaginative and artistic form to his conception . . . such a procedure stimulates the artistic imagination of those who have to be convinced, and gives political passions a more concrete form’’ (see Gramsci 1971:125–26). It remains to create such myths for a new party. To Live Is to Resist should be read and studied, and used in such an endeavor.","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"342 - 344"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45019795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Comment","authors":"P. Glass","doi":"10.1177/00943061231181319","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231181319","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"390 - 390"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43093007","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Text as Data: A New Framework for Machine Learning and the Social Sciences","authors":"K. Freeman","doi":"10.1177/00943061231181317p","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231181317p","url":null,"abstract":"At its most fundamental, ‘‘social science is the process of creating generalizable knowledge that explains or predicts societal patterns’’ (p. 264). Text as Data: A New Framework for Machine Learning and the Social Sciences seeks to provide readers with a model to do just this, but with a relatively untapped form of data, at least for the social sciences. Using text as data happens frequently in the computer science world, and Justin Grimmer, Margaret E. Roberts, and Brandon M. Stewart, the authors of this text, seek to extend known computer science methodology to align with social science methodological principles. The authors bridge this gap by applying our methodological models (some of them, at least) to this novel, timerelevant, and expanding form of data. This is an ambitious text that, at different stages, provides critical insight for undergraduates, graduate students across the social sciences, and practitioners. Text as Data systematically walks readers through the research process, from selection and representation to discovery to measurement and, finally, to inference and prediction. In the first section of the text, they concisely detail this model of research and the justifications behind it for the more novice scholars. The text then introduces each stage of this research process, laying out the assumptions and best practices informing this specific approach with text as data. Common to all of these introductory chapters is the emphasis on the crucial role of the human researcher. The authors do not shy away from a common fear in analyses with ‘‘big data,’’ that human work is becoming obsolete and theory is disappearing. Instead, they make a compelling case that although the analytic processes necessitated by ‘‘big data’’ may seem (and sometimes even be named) as if computers are operating independently of theory and of humans, the social science project will only succeed with the continued and constant engagement of the human-generated ideas behind the projects. Following each of these introductory chapters that adeptly frame the overall endeavor and lay out the novel application of research methods to text data, the authors present a thorough overview of the many ways in which practitioners can pursue research with text data. Here, the authors present work that has already been done in the social sciences (e.g., authorship of the Federalist papers, identifying a model of Congressional ideology from press releases, authorship and tone of tweets from former President Trump) and also work through one or more basic algorithms to link the reader to the algebraic and mathematical progressions that provide the foundation for machine learning (or other similarly opaque procedures). Concluding these detailed presentations of possible steps through the research process, the text progresses to the next step in the research process (i.e., from measurement to inference), clearly linking and overlapping these processes where appropriate. Often","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"347 - 348"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49217936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rebellion in America: Citizen Uprisings, the News Media, and the Politics of Plutocracy","authors":"Thomas V. Maher","doi":"10.1177/00943061231181317j","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231181317j","url":null,"abstract":"For the past fifteen years, when I tell someone that I study social movements, one of the most common responses is, ‘‘Well, you sure have a lot to write about.’’ With its substantive breadth, Anthony DiMaggio’s book Rebellion in America: Citizen Uprisings, the News Media, and the Politics of Plutocracy is an excellent reminder of the truth behind this sentiment. Covering a wide range of movements loosely related to the persistence of plutocracy in American society, DiMaggio argues that these contemporary social movements are motivated by a sense of economic injustice and social identity and that progressive change is driven by social movements rather than politicians or political parties. DiMaggio’s book is organized around five ‘‘movements’’: The Tea Party, The Economic Justice movement (including the Wisconsin uprising, Occupy, and the Fight for 15), pre2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM, with the responses to the murders of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray treated as separate campaigns), the Populist Party campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, and the Anti-Trump uprising (including the Women’s March, #MeToo, and several eventspecific campaigns) that followed his election. Each campaign gets a well-organized chapter that typically starts with a brief description of the social problem, followed by a history of the campaign, an analysis of the media coverage and public opinion, and a summary of the policy or social outcomes. The author takes a mixed-method approach, triangulating across participant observation of the Tea Party, Wisconsin protests, and anti-Trump protests, content analysis of media coverage, and regression analysis of public opinion (pp. 11–12). The content analysis focuses on the relative positivity of media coverage for the campaigns and the issues they care about. The author identifies issues that are nominally positive or negative for the movement and reports the portion of local and national articles that discuss those issues. For example, if a paper reported that Scott Walker was attacking collective bargaining, it would be coded as positive; but if the article stated that Walker was concerned about budget deficits, it would be coded as negative. These are not mutually exclusive (and not treated as such), and some categories lack variability, but they do offer subtle insights into the difference in the scale of coverage as well as how media coverage was largely positive for some movements (Madison) while more ‘‘balanced’’ in its coverage of others (BLM and Occupy). DiMaggio also conducts binomial and ordered logit regression analyses of demographic differences in public opinion (largely from Pew Research Center) on the movements or campaignrelated issues. While these models often seem overfitted (with 201 variables and separate indicators for Blacks, Black men, and poor Black men, for example), the results largely operate predictably (White conservatives support the Tea Party, Black people support BLM, etc.). There are some ","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"334 - 335"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48412340","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Prison Labor across the Carceral Continuum","authors":"Keesha M Middlemass","doi":"10.1177/00943061231181316c","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231181316c","url":null,"abstract":"division replacing the bottom (last place) two teams that drop down one competitive level for the following season. Typically, the lowest tier is comparable in talent to a local YMCA adult recreational sport league. Above the bottom two levels, players are compensated according to their ability and value to their team. In this book, Guest has done an excellent job by blending relevant sociological concepts to explain soccer’s extraordinary international importance and popularity while acknowledging that the game remains irrelevant to most U.S. sport fans.","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"305 - 309"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47092684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Inequality, Class, and Economics","authors":"M. Vidal","doi":"10.1177/00943061231181317gg","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231181317gg","url":null,"abstract":"the role of sampling and other methodological concepts in qualitative research, and organizing and coding data. Its section on training researchers features unexpectedly moving passages about the emotional toll this research had on researchers, including Rudes herself, while reviewing how these impacts were managed. Despite the book’s many strengths, one disadvantage of its style is that the reader never gets to know the interviewees’ individual stories in depth beyond relatively brief one-off quotes. Rudes explains that she deliberately avoided presenting more than one quote with the same pseudonym, since repeated quotes could enable the identification of individuals and pose security risks. Observation of the RHUs was also impossible due to institutional concerns. These restrictions, though understandable, diminish the data’s ethnographic richness. As someone most familiar with the grounded theory and extended case method approaches to qualitative research, I was initially surprised at the book’s lack of detailed engagement with theory. Aside from the concept of masked malignancy, which reappears periodically in the book as a way of capturing the various hidden harms generated by RHUs, theorization is largely absent. Yet this is not necessarily a shortcoming, since there are many legitimate ways to envision the role of theory in qualitative research. The book’s restrained approach to theory, aside from being friendly to the lay reader, seems consistent with the view of some sociologists, like Max Besbris and Shamus Khan (2017), who argue for empirical description and novel empirical findings for their own sake, with minimal theoretical explanations. The book does, it is worth noting, do a fine job of placing its findings in the context of previous research and findings from other fields. Surviving Solitary illustrates well the potential magic of qualitative research: how simply letting people speak for themselves, with some sparse yet insightful commentary, can function as a devastating critique. Thebook would be a fitting addition to a corrections class or a monograph-based introductory course. But most of all, I want copies in the hands of policy-makers.","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"377 - 379"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46171770","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Soccer in Mind","authors":"Robert Podhurst","doi":"10.1177/00943061231181316b","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231181316b","url":null,"abstract":"With Soccer in Mind: A Thinking Fan’s Guide to the Global Game, Andrew Guest has written an excellent, highly relevant book that examines topics including soccer’s extraordinary popularity and untapped potential for nation-building (more about this aspirational potential later). The unanswered question is, ‘‘can soccer, as a globally shared cultural form, actually do good in the world?’’ Here, the author’s obvious affection for the game somewhat clouds his judgment. The gatekeepers of soccer—and their American counterparts responsible for football, basketball, and baseball—share one absolute objective: to grow their respective sport by promoting elite youth programs to produce the next generation of superstars. The author provides an important service to readers by accurately capturing the sexist history of FIFA. One of many examples is Canada conducting the Women’s World Cup tournament on artificial turf fields, ‘‘a surface expressly prohibited for the men’s tournament.’’ I do have several issues with Guest. One revolves around his well-intended aspiration that soccer can actually do good in the world. Another involves applying social science to prioritize people and neglected regions over profit and winning. In reality, irrespective of geography, the more important the game becomes—from soccer in Europe and South America to American football and basketball—the more the objective is winning and the intense emotional and psychological joy derived from being a fan and supporting winning teams. Guest engages in a bit of wishful thinking by suggesting that we utilize social science to develop ‘‘a more enjoyable, enriching, and effectual experience of the game.’’ Fanhood ‘‘transports the individual into a special world . . . filled with exceptionally intense forces that take hold of the fan.’’ Jerseys, scarves, and flags are used to signify fandom and publicly solidify one’s unquestioned loyalty and identity. The inclusive acronym BIRG—‘‘Basking in Reflected Glory’’—describes the satisfaction of supporting a successful team. This mindset is consistent with the pronoun ‘‘WE’’ after defeating an archrival. Guest also does an admirable job in describing FIFA’s opposition to the Women’s World Cup, muting its criticism after the 2015 World Cup when the women’s games garnered the largest TV audiences of any soccer games ever televised in the United States. I disagree with Guest when he writes, ‘‘more than any nation, the U.S. has politicized its Olympic participation.’’ Russia conveniently waited until after the Chinese Winter Olympics was concluded before invading Ukraine. Another example is blatant doping among medal winners, which has become a familiar narrative involving specific Russian athletes. An important critique involves the author’s utopian perspective that ‘‘soccer can be fashioned as a social good’’ and the hope that the game will ‘‘prioritize people and places over profit and performance.’’ This idealistic aspiration is overcome by the absol","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"302 - 305"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44051587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Form of Ideology and the Ideology of Form: Cold War, Decolonization and Third World Print Cultures","authors":"L. Miller","doi":"10.1177/00943061231181317aa","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231181317aa","url":null,"abstract":"Bartels, Larry. 2008. Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Buchmueller, Thomas C., Zachary M. Levinson, Helen G. Levy, and Barbara L. Wolfe. 2016. ‘‘Effect of the Affordable Care Act on Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Insurance Coverage’’ American Journal of Public Health 106(8):1416–21. Derlet, Robert W. 2021. Corporatizing American Health Care: How We Lost Our Health Care System. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Douthit, Nathan, Sakal Kiv, Tzvi Dwolatzky, and Seema Biswas. 2015. ‘‘Exposing Some Important Barriers to Health Care Access in the Rural USA.’’ Public Health 129(6):611–20. Hacker, Jacob S., and Paul Pierson. 2010. WinnerTake-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—and Turned its Back on the Middle Class. New York: Simon and Schuster. Lillie-Blanton, Marsha, and Catherine Hoffman. 2005. ‘‘The Role of Health Insurance Coverage in Reducing Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Health Care.’’ Health Affairs 24(2):398–408. McGregor, Alyson J. 2020. Sex Matters: How MaleCentric Medicine Endangers Women’s Health and What We Can Do About It. New York: Hachette Books. Metzl, Jonathan M. 2019. Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland. New York: Hachette. Michener, Jamila. 2018. Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Michener, Jamila. 2020. ‘‘Race, Politics, and the Affordable Care Act.’’ Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 45(4):547–66. Morgan, Kimberly J., and Andrea Louise Campbell. 2011. The Delegated Welfare State: Medicare, Markets, and the Governance of Social Policy. New York: Oxford University Press. Page, Benjamin I., Jason Seawright, and Matthew J. Lacombe. 2018. Billionaires and Stealth Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rosenthal, Elisabeth. 2017. An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back. New York: Penguin Publishing. Smith, David Barton. 2016. The Power to Heal: Civil Rights, Medicare, and the Struggle to Transform America’s Health Care System. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Starr, Paul. 1982. The Social Transformation of American Medicine. New York: Basic Books.","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"367 - 369"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46577493","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rules, Paper, Status: Migrants and Precarious Bureaucracy in Contemporary Italy","authors":"E. D. Graauw","doi":"10.1177/00943061231181317jj","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231181317jj","url":null,"abstract":"This important and insightful book documents migrants’ everyday encounters with Italy’s ‘‘documentation regime,’’ a bewildering government bureaucracy lacking transparency, accountability, and consistency that migrants must navigate to secure and maintain legal status, bring family members into the country, and attain Italian citizenship. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2009 and 2016 in a city in the northern EmiliaRomagna region, Rules, Paper, Status: Migrants and Precarious Bureaucracy in Contemporary Italy follows migrants, their nongovernmental advisors, and public officials who implement and bend the rules interpreting Italy’s exclusionary yet flexible immigration laws that regulate the lives of migrants residing in Italy. Anna Tuckett vividly describes how Italy’s frequently changing immigration laws and their inconsistent implementation produce anxiety, insecurity, and tensions for migrants, who experience continued social marginalization even if they are long-term, culturally integrated residents. Yet she also highlights how migrants with knowledge of Italian immigration laws can become brokers and advisors to other migrants, in the process building social and economic capital while ensuring that Italy’s migration bureaucracy does not succumb to its own irrationality. The book is clearly structured and has eight chapters. The Introduction discusses the increased bureaucratization of migration flows and provides an overview of migrants in Italy and Italian immigration laws, which are simultaneously harsh and lenient. Chapter One introduces the book’s central fieldwork site: a migrant advice center affiliated with a labor union that helps migrants with filling out forms and offers advice on navigating Italy’s precarious immigration bureaucracy. Chapters Two and Three explore how first-generation migrants manipulate and successfully navigate this bureaucracy using both informal and extralegal rule-bending, practices that can put migrants in danger of losing legal status or prevent them from obtaining Italian citizenship. Chapter Four focuses on community brokers, migrants who use their knowledge of Italian immigration laws and cultural dexterity to help others while improving their own community standing and socioeconomic mobility. While Chapter Five considers how encounters with Italy’s immigration bureaucracy create upset and disjuncture for 1.5and second-generation migrants, Chapter Six discusses how uncertain legal status, discrimination, and lack of social mobility cause many migrants to feel disappointment and personal failure and to view Italy as a stepping stone to a better destination elsewhere in Europe. The Conclusion contextualizes the book’s findings within broader processes of contemporary migration and globalization and points out the political utilities—to different public and private actors—of the Italian immigration system’s contradictions. One of the book’s strengths lies in its contributions t","PeriodicalId":46889,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Sociology-A Journal of Reviews","volume":"52 1","pages":"383 - 384"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48925271","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}