Contemporary articles citing Tilly C (1998) Durable Inequality

networks, inequality, depend, better, categories, processes, series, public, mechanisms, major

Kuorikoski, Jaakko & Samuli Poyhonen. 2012. "Looping Kinds and Social Mechanisms." Sociological Theory. 30:3 187-205. Link
Human behavior is not always independent of the ways in which humans are scientifically classified. That there are looping effects of human kinds has been used as an argument for the methodological separation of the natural and the human sciences and to justify social constructionist claims. We suggest that these arguments rely on false presuppositions and present a mechanisms-based account of looping that provides a better way to understand the phenomenon and its theoretical and philosophical implications.

Wimmer, Andreas. 2009. "Herder's Heritage and the Boundary-making Approach: Studying Ethnicity in Immigrant Societies." Sociological Theory. 27:3 244-270.
Major paradigms in immigration research, including assimilation theory, multi-culturalism, and ethnic studies, take it for granted that dividing society into ethnic groups is analytically and empirically meaningful because each of these groups is characterized by a specific culture, dense networks of solidarity, and shared identity. Three major revisions of this perspective have been proposed in the comparative ethnicity literature over the past decades, leading to a renewed concern with the emergence and transformation of ethnic boundaries. In immigration research, ``assimilation'' and ``integration'' have been reconceived as potentially reversible, power-driven processes of boundary shifting. After a synthetic summary of the major theoretical propositions of this emerging paradigm, I offer suggestions on how to bring it to fruition in future empirical research. First, major mechanisms and factors influencing the dynamics of ethnic boundary-making are specified, emphasizing the need to disentangle them from other dynamics unrelated to ethnicity. I then discuss a series of promising research designs, most based on nonethnic units of observation and analysis, that allow for a better understanding of these mechanisms and factors.

Fuhse, Jan. 2009. "The Meaning Structure of Social Networks." Sociological Theory. 27:1 51-73. Link
This essay proposes to view networks as sociocultural structures. Following authors from Leopold von Wiese and Norbert Elias to Gary Alan Fine and Harrison White, networks are configurations of social relationships interwoven with meaning. Social relationships as the basic building blocks of networks are conceived of as dynamic structures of reciprocal (but not necessarily symmetric) expectations between alter and ego. Through their transactions, alter and ego construct an idiosyncratic ``relationship culture'' comprising symbols, narratives, and relational identities. The coupling of social relationships to networks, too, is heavily laden with meaning. The symbolic construction of persons is one instance of this coupling. Another instance is the application of social categories (like race or gender), which both map and structure social networks. The conclusion offers an agenda for research on this ``meaning structure of social networks.''.

Tilly, C. 2003. "Changing Forms of Inequality." Sociological Theory. 21:1 31-36. Link
Individual sorting models prevail in current explanations of inequality, but individual sorting systems form rarely and depend on extensive institutional infrastructure. Inequality results more generally from the conjunction of socially organized categories with (a) clique control of value-producing resources, (b) clique deployment of those resources in relations of exploitation and/or opportunity with members of subordinated or excluded categories, backed up by (c) emulation and adaptation. Historically, major value-producing resources in the production of inequality have included coercive means, labor, animals, land, commitment-maintaining institutions, machines, financial capital, information, media, and scientific-technical knowledge. In the future, financial capital, information, media, and scientific-technical knowledge will play increasing parts in the generation of social inequality.

Tilly, C. 2003. "Inequality, Democratization, and De-democratization." Sociological Theory. 21:1 37-43. Link
Reversions from democratic to undemocratic regimes have often occurred historically and continue to occur frequently. Both increases in categorical inequality across a regime's subject population and declines in the insulation of public politics from categorical inequality tend to de-democratize regimes. A general account of democratization and de-democratization yields a series of conjectures concerning the processes by which changes in categorical inequality threaten democracy.

Tilly, C. 2000. "Processes and Mechanisms of Democratization." Sociological Theory. 18:1 1-16. Link
Unlike Artistotle's analysis, recent treatments of democratization identify pathways and propose necessary conditions but fall short of specifying cause-effect relations. Democratization does not follow a single path, and is unlikely to have universally applicable necessary or sufficient conditions. A political process analysis of democratization defines it as movement toward broad citizenship, equal citizenship, binding consultation of citizens, and protection of citizens from arbitrary state action. High levels of all four elements depend on a significant degree of state capacity. Democratization emerges from interacting changes in public politics, categorical inequality, and networks of trust, which in turn depend on specifiable mechanisms of change in social relations. When the shocks of conquest, confrontation, colonization, and revolution promote democratization, they do so by accelerating the same causal mechanisms. The next round of research and theory on democratization requires identification, verification, and connection of the relevant causal mechanisms.