Week 5
Culture

Soci—269

Sakeef M. Karim
Amherst College

AN INTRODUCTION TO QUANTITATIVE SOCIOLOGY—CULTURE & POWER

Socialization, Transmission, Political Culture–
September 29th

A Quick Reminder

Response Memos

Response Memo Deadline

Your final response memo—which has to be between 250-400 words and posted on our Moodle Discussion Board—is due by 8:00 PM tonight.

Measuring Meaning

Capturing Cultural Knowledge

How would you define culture?

A Related Question How could you measure cultural phenomena using quantitative tools?

The Downstream “Effects” of Culture

How would you define cultural socialization?

A Related Question How could you assess if socialization shapes socioeconomic trajectories later in life?

Group Exercise I

Culture and Attainment

Brady, Luft, and Zuckerman Sivan (2025) argue that cultural explanations in sociology should satisfy two basic principles—portability and convertibility—to avoid the pitfalls of group essentialism.
What are they referring to? Discuss in groups of 2-3.

Culture and Attainment

Adaptation of Figure 1 (Panel C) in Brady et al. (2025). Click to expand.

Culture and Attainment

Adaptation of Figure 1 (Panel D) in Brady et al. (2025). Click to expand.

The Transmission of Cultural Identity in Europe
(Karim 2024)

Setting the Stage

My paper (see Karim 2024) is, in a sense, engaging with “debates” related to the cultural incorporation of Muslims in Europe.

Setting the Stage

In the case of Muslim immigrants in Europe, the causal arrow follows a Weberian trajectory from culture and religious affiliation to relational and socioeconomic outcomes. Parental influences aiming at cultural maintenance and discrimination from natives are the two sides of the predicament faced by the second-generation Muslim youths.

(Drouhot and Nee 2019:188–89, EMPHASIS ADDED)

Setting the Stage

Some (Stylized) Context

Group Exercise II

What Are My Conclusions?

In groups of 2-3, discuss how the following
images are related to—

  1. My main arguments or propositions.

  2. My main findings.

What Are My Conclusions?

Click and Scroll Through the Following Set of Images (cf. Karim 2024)

The Oil Spill of Polarized Politics in America
(DellaPosta 2020)

Is Polarization Rising?

Affective Polarization?

A Broad Question What does affective polarization refer to?

A Working Definition

Democrats and Republicans both say that the other party’s members are hypocritical, selfish, and closed-minded, and they are unwilling to socialize across party lines, or even to partner with opponents in a variety of other activities. This phenomenon of animosity between the parties is known as affective polarization.

(Iyengar et al. 2019:130, EMPHASIS ADDED)

Affective Polarization

Okay, why is affective polarization on the rise?

Affective Polarization

Iyengar and colleagues (2019) point to a few possibilities—

  • Partisan Sorting

  • Shifting Media Environment

  • Elite Articulation via Political Campaigns

  • Network Effects

Ideological Polarization

Is affective polarization epiphenomenal to
ideological polarization?

Ideological Polarization

In the broader public, adherents of the two major political parties have become increasingly distinct, as Democrats have become more consistently liberal and Republicans more reliably conservative … However, although people have become better sorted by party and political ideology, public attitudes on most political issues seem to have remained unpolarized to a remarkable degree … Although knowing someone’s political party or self-described ideology allows us to predict their attitudes with increased accuracy, these attitudes themselves have not become much more strongly aligned with other attitudes, as we would expect in a world of mass polarization … Unlike the political elite, the broader public is composed of large numbers of “ideological innocents” … who espouse cross-cutting and often inconsistent beliefs across political issues.

(DellaPosta 2020:508, EMPHASIS ADDED)

Ideological Polarization

Maybe affective and ideological polarization are unrelated?

Or maybe we’re not mapping the bigger picture.

Group Exercise III

The Oil Spill Model

If people are not necessarily polarized “on the issues,” then how is polarization taking root in American mass opinion?

The Oil Spill Model

In groups of 2-3, form an answer with reference to the following set of images:

Figure 1 from DellaPosta (2020). Click image to expand

GSS Belief Network — 1972 (DellaPosta 2020)

GSS Belief Network — 2016 (DellaPosta 2020)

Figures 4 & 5 from DellaPosta (2020). Click images to expand

Cultural Change and Stasis-
October 1st

Do People Change?

A Broad Question In your view, do people change or update their beliefs and
cultural orientations over the life course?

Two Competing Models

\begin{equation} y_{it} = y_{it-1} + \nu_{it} \end{equation}

\begin{equation} y_{it} = U_{i} + \nu_{it} \end{equation}

Equations 1 and 2 from Kiley and Vaisey (2020).

Two Competing Models

Figure 1 from Kiley and Vaisey (2020). Click image to expand

Two Competing Models

[W]e see a greater degree of evidence in support of the settled dispositions model. Around 40 percent of all items show no evidence for updating. For items that do show evidence of active updating, the overall rate of persisting change in the population is likely low … For a limited subset of items, there seems to be evidence that younger respondents are updating their views but older respondents are not. This is consistent with a “cohortization” model that views young respondents as susceptible to updating shocks and older respondents as relatively insensitive to such shocks.

(Kiley and Vaisey 2020:496, EMPHASIS ADDED)

Group Exercise III

A Rejoinder

Lersch (2023) challenges these assumptions—i.e., the primacy of the SDM—by introducing the life course adaptation model (LCAM).

A Rejoinder

In groups of 2-3, discuss how the LCAM differs from both the SDM and AUM—and what Lersch’s (2023) results suggest.

Figure 2 from Lersch (2023). Click image to expand

Group Exercise IV

A Rejoinder to the Rejoinder

In a recent paper, Keskintürk (2024) draws on a new estimation framework to challenge some of Lersch’s (2023)
findings and propositions.

A Rejoinder to the Rejoinder

In groups of 2-3, discuss how he challenges Lersch’s (2023) assumptions—and the statistical evidence he furnishes to support his claims.

Figure 5  in Keskintürk (2024). Click image to expand

Launching Module II

Download

Download RStudio

Download RStudio by clicking here.

If you have extensive coding experience, you may want to check out Positron.

Optional Tasks

Get Git

Sign Up for GitHub

Sign up for GitHub by clicking here.

Use usethis

Full Page

Enjoy the Weekend

References

Note: Scroll to access the entire bibliography

Brady, David, Aliza Luft, and Ezra W. Zuckerman Sivan. 2025. “How Does Culture Matter for Attainment, and How Would We Know If It Did?” American Sociological Review 00031224251344634. doi: 10.1177/00031224251344634.
DellaPosta, Daniel. 2020. “Pluralistic Collapse: The ‘Oil Spill’ Model of Mass Opinion Polarization.” American Sociological Review 85(3):507–36. doi: 10.1177/0003122420922989.
Drouhot, Lucas G., and Victor Nee. 2019. “Assimilation and the Second Generation in Europe and America: Blending and Segregating Social Dynamics Between Immigrants and Natives.” Annual Review of Sociology 45(Volume 45, 2019):177–99. doi: 10.1146/annurev-soc-073117-041335.
Iyengar, Shanto, Yphtach Lelkes, Matthew Levendusky, Neil Malhotra, and Sean J. Westwood. 2019. “The Origins and Consequences of Affective Polarization in the United States.” Annual Review of Political Science 22(Volume 22, 2019):129–46. doi: 10.1146/annurev-polisci-051117-073034.
Karim, Sakeef M. 2024. “Islam and the Transmission of Cultural Identity in Four European Countries.” Social Forces 103(2):756–79. doi: 10.1093/sf/soae076.
Keskintürk, Turgut. 2024. “Life-Course Transitions and Political Orientations.” Sociological Science 11:907–33. doi: 10.15195/v11.a33.
Kiley, Kevin, and Stephen Vaisey. 2020. “Measuring Stability and Change in Personal Culture Using Panel Data.” American Sociological Review 85(3):477–506. doi: 10.1177/0003122420921538.
Lersch, Philipp M. 2023. “Change in Personal Culture over the Life Course.” American Sociological Review 88(2):220–51. doi: 10.1177/00031224231156456.