SOCIOLOGY RESEARCH
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Social inequality in the United States
2
EMPLOYMENT
DISCRIMINATION
Pager, Devah, Bart Bonikowski, and Bruce Western. 2009. "Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor
Market: A Field Experiment." American Sociological Review 74(5):777-799.
https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240907400505
ANNOTATION
Pager, Bonikowski, and Western use a field experiment to study racial discrimination in the
low-wage labor market of New York City. Matched white, Black, and Latino applicants with
equivalent résumés were sent to hundreds of entry-level jobs, allowing the researchers to compare
employer responses under similar conditions. The article is valuable for sociology because it
provides direct experimental evidence about discrimination rather than relying only on reported
attitudes or broad labor-market statistics. Its design also shows how sociologists can study unequal
treatment through controlled field research in real social settings.
NEIGHBORHOODS
Sampson, Robert J., Stephen W. Raudenbush, and Felton Earls. 1997. "Neighborhoods and Violent
Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy." Science 277(5328):918-924.
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.277.5328.918
ANNOTATION
Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls investigate how neighborhood social organization relates to
violence using survey data from 8,782 residents in 343 Chicago neighborhoods. They define
collective efficacy as social cohesion combined with residents' willingness to intervene for the
common good and test whether it is associated with differences in violent crime. The study is useful
for sociology because it links individual behavior to neighborhood-level social processes. Its
multilevel design also demonstrates how sociological research can examine relationships operating
simultaneously at individual and community scales.
FAMILY & CLASS
Lareau, Annette. 2003. Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
ANNOTATION
Lareau examines how social class shapes family life and children’s everyday experiences in the
United States. Through detailed observations and interviews with Black and white middle-class,
working-class, and poor families, she identifies different patterns of child-rearing, institutional
interaction, and access to organized activities. The book is useful to sociology because it shows how
inequality can be reproduced through ordinary family routines and interactions with institutions
such as schools. It gives a close-up perspective that complements large-scale studies of income,
segregation, and labor markets.
