R Light
Biographic Data
| ID | 31675 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R Light |
| GIVEN NAMES | R |
| FAMILY NAME | Light |
| SIGNATURE | LIGHT R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oregon |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1508-154X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 210 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Clouding climate science
Years of Social Forces as seen through Bibliometric Publication Patterns
The 100th anniversary of Social Forces provides a rich opportunity to reflect on the history of the journal and changes to sociology as a whole. Using a series of formal text-analytic methods, we describe the shifting intellectual landscape of Social Forces publications. We uncover a wide diversity of topics that shift over time reflecting the breadth of interests engaging sociologists as Social Forces grew into one of the discipline’s premier jo…
It’s Getting Difficult to Be a Straight White Man”
An Intercategorical Ecology of Lead Exposure
In 2014, city and state officials channeled toxic water into Flint, Michigan and its unevenly distributed and corroding lead service lines (LSLs). The resulting Flint water crisis is a tragic example of environmental racism against a majority Black city and enduring racial and spatial disparities in environmental lead exposures in the United States. Important questions remain about how race intersected with other established environmental health …
Mobilizing Covid-19 Science
While there are many uncertainties about the ensuing COVID-19 pandemic, scientific mobilization that integrates knowledge from across the wide-ranging intersection of applicable expertise will optimize our response strategy. As we continue to coordinate these efforts, sociological contributions can continue to identify improved social coordination opportunities, even while practicing social distancing
Quantitative Methods in the Humanities
How Behavior Spreads
Managing the Boundaries of Taste
The proliferation of cultural objects, such as music, books, film, and websites, has created a new problem: How do consumers determine the value of cultural objects in an age of information glut? Crowd-sourcing—paralleling word-of-mouth recommendations—has taken center stage, yet expert opinion has also assumed renewed importance. Prior work on the valuation of artworks and other cultural artifacts identifies ways critics establish and maintain c…
Directional Asymmetry in Sociological Analyses
The authors present a straightforward method for assessing symmetry and asymmetry in the effect of an independent variable, on the basis of its direction of change, on a dependent variable in statistical models and provide two different empirical illustrations: (1) the effect of economic change on electricity production in nations and (2) the effect of change in income on wealth accumulation among individuals. In so doing, the authors also demons…
Institutional Discrimination
Institutional discrimination refers to prejudicial practices and policies within institutions that result in the systematic denial of resources and opportunities to members of subordinate groups. This form of discrimination is maintained by the laws, organizational guidelines, or traditions of an institution. Institutional discrimination occurs in both direct and indirect forms. Direct institutional discrimination refers to explicit institutional…
Oracles of Peace
Social movement frames are dynamic, shifting and embedded within an already existent cultural milieu—a milieu that affects mobilization opportunities. In this article, we invoke the concept of the “cultural clearinghouse” to tackle how broader cultural structures translate to frames or influence frame resonance. Our illustrative case, the Nobel Peace Prize, along with our use of topic modeling, a computational technique that identifies commonalit…
Scientific consensus, the law, and same sex parenting outcomes
Like strangers we trust
From Words to Networks and Back
Digital text has revolutionized how we consume and produce information, and also provides seemingly limitless sources of data from Twitter feeds to online historical archives. Such new data challenge traditional boundaries between quantitative and qualitative research, and exciting horizons have emerged. New analytic approaches are warranted, however, given the typically unstructured, respondent-generated format of such data. In this article, I e…
Racial Formation in Perspective
Over the past 25 years, since the publication of Omi & Winant's Racial Formation in the United States, the statement that race is socially constructed has become a truism in sociological circles. Yet many struggle to describe exactly what the claim means. This review brings together empirical literature on the social construction of race from different levels of analysis to highlight the variety of approaches to studying racial formation processe…
Racial Discrimination, Interpretation, and Legitimation at Work
Research on race stratification and employment usually implies discrimination as a key mechanism in race stratification, although few if any analyses bring attitudes, employee-employer interpretations, and established discriminatory behavior into a singular analysis. In this article, the authors do so and offer a relational account of how discrimination operates, drawing on a large sample of verified racial discrimination cases. Building on racia…
Gender Stratification and Publication in American Science
Gender stratification continues to pervade the American workplace, and academic science as a vocation is hardly exempt. In this article, I review prior work on why and how gender inequality affects scientific careers. I focus specifically on scientific publication, an important determinant of scientific success. The research indicates that processes of gender stratification operate through formal and informal relationships contributing to the ine…
A view from above
Racial Formation in Perspective
Over the past 25 years, since the publication of Omi & Winant's Racial Formation in the United States, the statement that race is socially constructed has become a truism in sociological circles. Yet many struggle to describe exactly what the claim means. This review brings together empirical literature on the social construction of race from different levels of analysis to highlight the variety of approaches to studying racial formation processe…
A view from above
Directional Asymmetry in Sociological Analyses
The authors present a straightforward method for assessing symmetry and asymmetry in the effect of an independent variable, on the basis of its direction of change, on a dependent variable in statistical models and provide two different empirical illustrations: (1) the effect of economic change on electricity production in nations and (2) the effect of change in income on wealth accumulation among individuals. In so doing, the authors also demons…
Racial Discrimination, Interpretation, and Legitimation at Work
Research on race stratification and employment usually implies discrimination as a key mechanism in race stratification, although few if any analyses bring attitudes, employee-employer interpretations, and established discriminatory behavior into a singular analysis. In this article, the authors do so and offer a relational account of how discrimination operates, drawing on a large sample of verified racial discrimination cases. Building on racia…
Scientific consensus, the law, and same sex parenting outcomes
Oracles of Peace
Social movement frames are dynamic, shifting and embedded within an already existent cultural milieu—a milieu that affects mobilization opportunities. In this article, we invoke the concept of the “cultural clearinghouse” to tackle how broader cultural structures translate to frames or influence frame resonance. Our illustrative case, the Nobel Peace Prize, along with our use of topic modeling, a computational technique that identifies commonalit…
From Words to Networks and Back
Digital text has revolutionized how we consume and produce information, and also provides seemingly limitless sources of data from Twitter feeds to online historical archives. Such new data challenge traditional boundaries between quantitative and qualitative research, and exciting horizons have emerged. New analytic approaches are warranted, however, given the typically unstructured, respondent-generated format of such data. In this article, I e…
It’s Getting Difficult to Be a Straight White Man”
Quantitative Methods in the Humanities
Like strangers we trust
Gender Stratification and Publication in American Science
Gender stratification continues to pervade the American workplace, and academic science as a vocation is hardly exempt. In this article, I review prior work on why and how gender inequality affects scientific careers. I focus specifically on scientific publication, an important determinant of scientific success. The research indicates that processes of gender stratification operate through formal and informal relationships contributing to the ine…
How Behavior Spreads
A view from above
Gender Stratification and Publication in American Science
Gender stratification continues to pervade the American workplace, and academic science as a vocation is hardly exempt. In this article, I review prior work on why and how gender inequality affects scientific careers. I focus specifically on scientific publication, an important determinant of scientific success. The research indicates that processes of gender stratification operate through formal and informal relationships contributing to the ine…
Racial Discrimination, Interpretation, and Legitimation at Work
Research on race stratification and employment usually implies discrimination as a key mechanism in race stratification, although few if any analyses bring attitudes, employee-employer interpretations, and established discriminatory behavior into a singular analysis. In this article, the authors do so and offer a relational account of how discrimination operates, drawing on a large sample of verified racial discrimination cases. Building on racia…
Racial Formation in Perspective
Over the past 25 years, since the publication of Omi & Winant's Racial Formation in the United States, the statement that race is socially constructed has become a truism in sociological circles. Yet many struggle to describe exactly what the claim means. This review brings together empirical literature on the social construction of race from different levels of analysis to highlight the variety of approaches to studying racial formation processe…
From Words to Networks and Back
Digital text has revolutionized how we consume and produce information, and also provides seemingly limitless sources of data from Twitter feeds to online historical archives. Such new data challenge traditional boundaries between quantitative and qualitative research, and exciting horizons have emerged. New analytic approaches are warranted, however, given the typically unstructured, respondent-generated format of such data. In this article, I e…
Scientific consensus, the law, and same sex parenting outcomes
Like strangers we trust
Institutional Discrimination
Institutional discrimination refers to prejudicial practices and policies within institutions that result in the systematic denial of resources and opportunities to members of subordinate groups. This form of discrimination is maintained by the laws, organizational guidelines, or traditions of an institution. Institutional discrimination occurs in both direct and indirect forms. Direct institutional discrimination refers to explicit institutional…
Oracles of Peace
Social movement frames are dynamic, shifting and embedded within an already existent cultural milieu—a milieu that affects mobilization opportunities. In this article, we invoke the concept of the “cultural clearinghouse” to tackle how broader cultural structures translate to frames or influence frame resonance. Our illustrative case, the Nobel Peace Prize, along with our use of topic modeling, a computational technique that identifies commonalit…
Managing the Boundaries of Taste
The proliferation of cultural objects, such as music, books, film, and websites, has created a new problem: How do consumers determine the value of cultural objects in an age of information glut? Crowd-sourcing—paralleling word-of-mouth recommendations—has taken center stage, yet expert opinion has also assumed renewed importance. Prior work on the valuation of artworks and other cultural artifacts identifies ways critics establish and maintain c…
Directional Asymmetry in Sociological Analyses
The authors present a straightforward method for assessing symmetry and asymmetry in the effect of an independent variable, on the basis of its direction of change, on a dependent variable in statistical models and provide two different empirical illustrations: (1) the effect of economic change on electricity production in nations and (2) the effect of change in income on wealth accumulation among individuals. In so doing, the authors also demons…
How Behavior Spreads
Mobilizing Covid-19 Science
While there are many uncertainties about the ensuing COVID-19 pandemic, scientific mobilization that integrates knowledge from across the wide-ranging intersection of applicable expertise will optimize our response strategy. As we continue to coordinate these efforts, sociological contributions can continue to identify improved social coordination opportunities, even while practicing social distancing
Quantitative Methods in the Humanities
An Intercategorical Ecology of Lead Exposure
In 2014, city and state officials channeled toxic water into Flint, Michigan and its unevenly distributed and corroding lead service lines (LSLs). The resulting Flint water crisis is a tragic example of environmental racism against a majority Black city and enduring racial and spatial disparities in environmental lead exposures in the United States. Important questions remain about how race intersected with other established environmental health …
Years of Social Forces as seen through Bibliometric Publication Patterns
The 100th anniversary of Social Forces provides a rich opportunity to reflect on the history of the journal and changes to sociology as a whole. Using a series of formal text-analytic methods, we describe the shifting intellectual landscape of Social Forces publications. We uncover a wide diversity of topics that shift over time reflecting the breadth of interests engaging sociologists as Social Forces grew into one of the discipline’s premier jo…
It’s Getting Difficult to Be a Straight White Man”
Clouding climate science
Sociology (15 works) · Political science (11 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Social science (7 works) · Computational and Text Analysis Methods (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Social and Cultural Dynamics (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Biology (4 works)