Jessi Streib
Biographic Data
| ID | 3596818 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jessi Streib |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jessi |
| FAMILY NAME | Streib |
| SIGNATURE | STREIB J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Duke University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9914-309X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 85 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
How the Habitus Facilitates Class Reproduction and Social Mobility
Bourdieu’s theory of the habitus explains class reproduction but undertheorizes social mobility. I address this by developing the conditions model of the habitus, which preserves the concept’s core features while challenging Bourdieu’s assumption that people in the same class share the same conditions and habitus. Using interviews from the National Study of Youth and Religion, I demonstrate that youth in the same class develop different habitus i…
How Cultural Capital and Its Evaluation Enable Social Mobility
How does cultural capital facilitate upward and downward mobility? Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital is widely used to study class reproduction but is less often used to study social mobility. In this article, I review research showing that exceptions to one of Bourdieu's theories help explain social mobility. Bourdieu argued that class reproduction occurs when class‐advantaged individuals acquire cultural capital, class‐disadvantaged individ…
How White Americans Decide What’s Racist and Sexist
Why do White conservatives and White liberals disagree about what is--and is not--racist and sexist? Research with more than 125 White voters reveals a definitional divide driving this persistent gap and recommends a better way forward
How the Class-Advantaged Fail to Obtain Greater Economic Capital from Their Greater Social Capital
How do class-advantaged individuals with more social capital fail to obtain greater economic capital than class-disadvantaged individuals with less? Although stratification scholars often assume that the class-advantaged convert their greater social capital into greater economic capital, social capital researchers regularly find no wage benefit from its possession or use. Drawing on the case of college students entering the midtier business labor…
America’s Hidden Equalizing Machine
Inside a labor market luckocracy, where low information and class-neutral hiring criteria even the odds for high earnings
Moving Away from One's Origins
Nearly a third of students whose parents do not have bachelor's degrees become first-generation college graduates and over a third of students with at least one parent with a bachelor's degree do not become continuing-generation college graduates. We apply insights from social reproduction theory to study educational mobility, examining which factors are associated with becoming a first-generation college graduate and not becoming a continuing-ge…
Class and the cultural styles applicants present to gatekeepers
How the Privileged Fall
Not everyone born into the uppermiddle-class is equally advantaged. The disadvantaged portion of the advantaged class can fall into the middle class, or lower. This happens by making the most of the resources they have rather than trying to gain more resources
Privilege Lost
One in two white youth born into the upper-middle class will fall from it. Drawing upon 10 years of longitudinal interviews with over 100 American youth, this book shows which upper-middle-class youth are most likely to fall, how they fall, and why they do not see it coming. The book shows that upper-middle-class youth inherit different amounts of academic knowledge, institutional insights, and money from their parents. Those raised with more of …
Writing in Race
Hiring managers and segments of the American public believe that white, black, and Hispanic job-seekers present distinct soft skills to employers. Sociologists have not tested this belief and provide competing theories about whether it is likely to be true. Structural theories maintain that different resources and networks inhibit racial groups from displaying similar non-technical skills and experiences, while cultural approaches posit that all …
Presenting Their Gendered Selves? How Women and Men Describe Who They Are, What They Have Done, and Why They Want the Job in Their Written Applications
Class, culture, and downward mobility
The unbalanced theoretical toolkit
Benign Inequality
Media targeted at adults tends to portray poverty and social class inequality as the result of individual merit and moral worth. Research, however, has not uncovered how poverty and social class inequality are portrayed in media targeted at children. Drawing on a content analysis of the highest grossing G-rated movies, this study examines the proportional representation of characters in each class as well as frames of class conditions, characters…
Privileged Pathways for Privileged Students
The Power of the Past
In an era in which class divisions are becoming starker than ever, some individuals are choosing to marry across class. The Power of the Past traces the lives of a subset of these individuals - highly-educated adults who married a partner raised in a class different from their own, primarily between those from blue- and white-color backgrounds. Drawing upon detailed interviews with spouses who revealed the inner workings of their marriages, Jessi…
Explanations of How Love Crosses Class Lines
Sociologists know little about how actors explain their attraction to a partner who grew up in a different social class or why their accounts are likely. This is problematic as one form of social class heterophily is relatively common—heterophily by class origin. Drawing upon data from interviews with college‐educated respondents in heterophilous marriages by class origin (n = 60) as well as interviews with college‐educated respondents in homophi…
Class Origin and College Graduates' Parenting Beliefs
Previous studies have documented relationships between parenting beliefs and social class. Few studies, however, have examined how parenting beliefs vary among those who share a class position. Drawing upon interviews with 54 college graduates—27 parents with working-class origins and their 27 spouses with middle-class origins—I show that heterogeneity in college-educated parents' beliefs cohered around class origin. Specifically, ideas of childr…
Class Reproduction by Four Year Olds
Class Reproduction by Four Year Olds
The unbalanced theoretical toolkit
Benign Inequality
Media targeted at adults tends to portray poverty and social class inequality as the result of individual merit and moral worth. Research, however, has not uncovered how poverty and social class inequality are portrayed in media targeted at children. Drawing on a content analysis of the highest grossing G-rated movies, this study examines the proportional representation of characters in each class as well as frames of class conditions, characters…
Presenting Their Gendered Selves? How Women and Men Describe Who They Are, What They Have Done, and Why They Want the Job in Their Written Applications
Class, culture, and downward mobility
Class and the cultural styles applicants present to gatekeepers
Moving Away from One's Origins
Nearly a third of students whose parents do not have bachelor's degrees become first-generation college graduates and over a third of students with at least one parent with a bachelor's degree do not become continuing-generation college graduates. We apply insights from social reproduction theory to study educational mobility, examining which factors are associated with becoming a first-generation college graduate and not becoming a continuing-ge…
Writing in Race
Hiring managers and segments of the American public believe that white, black, and Hispanic job-seekers present distinct soft skills to employers. Sociologists have not tested this belief and provide competing theories about whether it is likely to be true. Structural theories maintain that different resources and networks inhibit racial groups from displaying similar non-technical skills and experiences, while cultural approaches posit that all …
Explanations of How Love Crosses Class Lines
Sociologists know little about how actors explain their attraction to a partner who grew up in a different social class or why their accounts are likely. This is problematic as one form of social class heterophily is relatively common—heterophily by class origin. Drawing upon data from interviews with college‐educated respondents in heterophilous marriages by class origin (n = 60) as well as interviews with college‐educated respondents in homophi…
Class Reproduction by Four Year Olds
Class Origin and College Graduates' Parenting Beliefs
Previous studies have documented relationships between parenting beliefs and social class. Few studies, however, have examined how parenting beliefs vary among those who share a class position. Drawing upon interviews with 54 college graduates—27 parents with working-class origins and their 27 spouses with middle-class origins—I show that heterogeneity in college-educated parents' beliefs cohered around class origin. Specifically, ideas of childr…
The Power of the Past
In an era in which class divisions are becoming starker than ever, some individuals are choosing to marry across class. The Power of the Past traces the lives of a subset of these individuals - highly-educated adults who married a partner raised in a class different from their own, primarily between those from blue- and white-color backgrounds. Drawing upon detailed interviews with spouses who revealed the inner workings of their marriages, Jessi…
Explanations of How Love Crosses Class Lines
Sociologists know little about how actors explain their attraction to a partner who grew up in a different social class or why their accounts are likely. This is problematic as one form of social class heterophily is relatively common—heterophily by class origin. Drawing upon data from interviews with college‐educated respondents in heterophilous marriages by class origin (n = 60) as well as interviews with college‐educated respondents in homophi…
The unbalanced theoretical toolkit
Benign Inequality
Media targeted at adults tends to portray poverty and social class inequality as the result of individual merit and moral worth. Research, however, has not uncovered how poverty and social class inequality are portrayed in media targeted at children. Drawing on a content analysis of the highest grossing G-rated movies, this study examines the proportional representation of characters in each class as well as frames of class conditions, characters…
Privileged Pathways for Privileged Students
Class, culture, and downward mobility
Presenting Their Gendered Selves? How Women and Men Describe Who They Are, What They Have Done, and Why They Want the Job in Their Written Applications
How the Privileged Fall
Not everyone born into the uppermiddle-class is equally advantaged. The disadvantaged portion of the advantaged class can fall into the middle class, or lower. This happens by making the most of the resources they have rather than trying to gain more resources
Privilege Lost
One in two white youth born into the upper-middle class will fall from it. Drawing upon 10 years of longitudinal interviews with over 100 American youth, this book shows which upper-middle-class youth are most likely to fall, how they fall, and why they do not see it coming. The book shows that upper-middle-class youth inherit different amounts of academic knowledge, institutional insights, and money from their parents. Those raised with more of …
Writing in Race
Hiring managers and segments of the American public believe that white, black, and Hispanic job-seekers present distinct soft skills to employers. Sociologists have not tested this belief and provide competing theories about whether it is likely to be true. Structural theories maintain that different resources and networks inhibit racial groups from displaying similar non-technical skills and experiences, while cultural approaches posit that all …
Class and the cultural styles applicants present to gatekeepers
America’s Hidden Equalizing Machine
Inside a labor market luckocracy, where low information and class-neutral hiring criteria even the odds for high earnings
Moving Away from One's Origins
Nearly a third of students whose parents do not have bachelor's degrees become first-generation college graduates and over a third of students with at least one parent with a bachelor's degree do not become continuing-generation college graduates. We apply insights from social reproduction theory to study educational mobility, examining which factors are associated with becoming a first-generation college graduate and not becoming a continuing-ge…
How White Americans Decide What’s Racist and Sexist
Why do White conservatives and White liberals disagree about what is--and is not--racist and sexist? Research with more than 125 White voters reveals a definitional divide driving this persistent gap and recommends a better way forward
How the Class-Advantaged Fail to Obtain Greater Economic Capital from Their Greater Social Capital
How do class-advantaged individuals with more social capital fail to obtain greater economic capital than class-disadvantaged individuals with less? Although stratification scholars often assume that the class-advantaged convert their greater social capital into greater economic capital, social capital researchers regularly find no wage benefit from its possession or use. Drawing on the case of college students entering the midtier business labor…
How the Habitus Facilitates Class Reproduction and Social Mobility
Bourdieu’s theory of the habitus explains class reproduction but undertheorizes social mobility. I address this by developing the conditions model of the habitus, which preserves the concept’s core features while challenging Bourdieu’s assumption that people in the same class share the same conditions and habitus. Using interviews from the National Study of Youth and Religion, I demonstrate that youth in the same class develop different habitus i…
How Cultural Capital and Its Evaluation Enable Social Mobility
How does cultural capital facilitate upward and downward mobility? Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital is widely used to study class reproduction but is less often used to study social mobility. In this article, I review research showing that exceptions to one of Bourdieu's theories help explain social mobility. Bourdieu argued that class reproduction occurs when class‐advantaged individuals acquire cultural capital, class‐disadvantaged individ…
Sociology (16 works) · Political science (12 works) · Social class (11 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Social and Cultural Dynamics (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies (6 works)