Recently Published Books

Fall 2005, Volume 27, Number 1

Urban Lawyers: The New Social Structure of the Bar
By John P. Heinz, Robert L. Nelson, Rebecca L. Sandefur,
and Edward O. Laumann
University of Chicago Press, 2005, 376 pages

Over the past several decades, the number of lawyers in large cities has doubled, women have entered the bar at an unprecedented rate, and the scale of firms has greatly expanded. This immense growth has transformed the nature and social structure of the legal profession. In the most comprehensive analysis of the urban bar to date, Urban Lawyers presents a compelling portrait of how these changes continue to shape the fi eld of law today. Drawing on extensive interviews with Chicago lawyers, the authors demonstrate how developments in the profession have affected virtually every aspect of the work and careers of urban lawyers—their relationships with clients, job tenure and satisfaction, income, social and political values, networks of professional connections, and patterns of participation in the broader community. Yet despite the dramatic changes, much remains the same. Stratifi cation of income and power based on gender, race, and religious background, for instance, still maintains inequality within the bar. The authors of Urban Lawyers, who include IPR faculty associates and Northwestern law professors John P. Heinz and Robert L. Nelson, conclude that organizational priorities will likely determine the future direction of the legal profession.

How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills
in Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan
By Kathleen Thelen
Cambridge University Press, 2004, 352 pages

The institutional arrangements governing skill formation are widely seen as a key element in the institutional constellations defining “varieties of capitalism” across the developed democracies. Written by IPR Faculty Fellow Kathleen Thelen, Payson S. Wild Professor in Political Science, this book explores the origins and evolution of such institutions in four countries—Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan. It traces crossnational differences in contemporary training regimes back to the 19th century, specifically to the character of the political settlement achieved among employers in skill-intensive industries, artisans, and early trade unions.

The book also tracks evolution and change in training institutions over a century of development, uncovering important continuities through putative “break points” in history. It also provides crucial insights into modes of institutional change that are incremental but cumulatively transformative. The study underscores the limits of the most prominent approaches to institutional change, and identifies the political processes through which the form and functions of institutions can be radically reconfi gured over time.

The book was named as the co-winner of the 2005 American Political Science Association’s Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for the best book published in the United States on government, politics, or international affairs.

Human Development Across Lives and Generations:
The Potential for Change
Edited by P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, Kathleen Kiernan,
and Ruth J. Friedman
Cambridge University Press, 2004, 412 pages

This volume examines the potential for change during the life course and across generations. It addresses the possibilities for promoting healthy development from infancy to adulthood in three key domains: human capital, partnership behavior, and child and adolescent development. Contributors come from the fields of economics, demography, sociology, psychology, and psychiatry. The book takes a multidisciplinary approach to review relevant empirical work regarding aspects of change and continuity, and the ways in which policies and programs might bring about change. It features chapters from leading researchers in six countries who address these issues. The book links and integrates the lessons learned from multiple disciplines about change and continuity in order to examine how our nations can improve life chances. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, professor of human development and social policy and an IPR faculty fellow, is one of the volume’s co-editors. IPR Faculty Fellow Greg J. Duncan, Edwina S. Tarry Professor of Education and Social Policy, and Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, a former IPR graduate fellow and now assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, were contributors.

Remaking Modernity: Politics, History, and Sociology
Edited by Julia Adams, Elisabeth S. Clemens, and Ann Shola Orloff
Duke University Press, 2004, 632 pages

A survey of the field of historical sociology, the 17 essays of Remaking Modernity reveal the potential of historical sociology to transform understandings of social and cultural change. The volume captures an exciting new conversation among historical sociologists that brings a wider interdisciplinary project to bear on the problems and prospects of modernity. The contributors represent a wide variety of theoretical orientations as well as a broad spectrum of understandings of what constitutes historical sociology. They address topics of religion, war, citizenship, markets, professions, gender and welfare, colonialism, ethnicity and groups, bureaucracy, revolutions, collective action, and the modernist social sciences. Remaking Modernity includes a signifi cant introduction in which the editors, one of whom is Ann Shola Orloff, professor of sociology and an IPR faculty fellow, consider prior orientations in historical sociology in order to analyze its resurgence. They show how current research is building on, and challenging, previous work through attention to institutionalism, rational choice, feminist theories and approaches, and colonialism and the racial formations of empire.