BRUCE WESTERN Department of Sociology Princeton University Princeton NJ 08544 t: 609 258-2445 f: 609 258-2180 western@princeton.edu princeton.edu/~western |
HOW DO POLITICS AFFECT SOCIAL INEQUALITY?
How do political institutions influence the social and economic circumstances of the disadvantaged in America and abroad? At the moment, I am exploring this issue by studying the economic and family life of men who have been to prison. I trace the tremendous growth in the American penal system over the last 30 years to a historic collision between the forces of political reaction to the civil rights movement and the emergence of a chronically jobless class of young African American men. High rates of incarceration contribute significantly to unemployment and low rates of marriage in the poor urban communities that supply most of the nation’s prisons and jails. Because so many poor black men are now sent to prison and jail, and because incarceration reduces employment and disrupts families, we can understand the penal system to have transformed the landscape of race and poverty in America. CURRICULUM VITA (pdf) SELECTED PUBLICATIONS: Western, Bruce. 2006. Punishment and Inequality in America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Western, Bruce and Becky Pettit. 2005. “Black-White Wage Inequality, Employment Rates, and Incarceration.” American Journal of Sociology. Pettit, Becky and Bruce Western. 2004. “Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration.” American Sociological Review 69:151-69. Western, Bruce. 2002. “The Impact of Incarceration on Wage Mobility and Inequality.” American Sociological Review 67:477-98. Western, Bruce. 2001. “Bayesian Thinking about Macrosociology.” American Journal of Sociology 107:353-378. Western, Bruce. 1997. Between Class and Market: Postwar Unionization in the Capitalist Democracies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. |
