Using data from in-depth interviews with young queer people, this article proposes revisions for four areas of Goffman's classic work, Stigma. Interviews reveal a situation between complete acceptance of queer identity and outright hostility, which I term “being in the line of fire,” and three strategies participants use to manage their identity in this situation. Unlike classical identity management, this project considers how their “double consciousness” allows them to respond to stigmatizing situations while remaining insulated from the negative appraisals of others. Instead, they orient toward educating the stigmatizer, minimizing interaction by tailoring their identity, or disengaging. I use these strategies to demonstrate that identity management theory does not properly consider possible responses to hostile reactions, the diversity of stigmatized groups, Goffman's so-called sympathetic others, or different frames of reference on stigmatized attributes. Orienting to the point of view of the marginalized, this article demonstrates how one manages an accepted identity when one is in the line of fire.

Religious economies theory predicts that in a deregulated religious market, well-organized religions will thrive, and loosely organized religions will struggle and decline in membership. This research (1) tests this hypothesis with representative sample data from Taiwan between 1990 and 2009; (2) contrary to religious economies theory, finds significant growth of folk religion in Taiwan; and (3) highlights the growth of religious commitment among Taiwanese Buddhism—evidenced by a decrease in the overall number of Buddhist adherents and an increase in the proportion of Buddhists who are formal converts. Additionally, neither significant growth in congregational religion nor organized, sectarian folk religion is detected in the analysis.

In this study, we set out to explain fear of crime and feelings of unsafety, using two waves of the European Social Survey (2006 and 2008) covering 25 European countries (N = 77,674). The results of our multilevel analyses showed varying effects of contextual- and individual-level characteristics on our two outcomes. Higher crime levels in countries increase the fear of crime; however, they do not affect feelings of unsafety. Social protection expenditure proves to be an important determinant of both fear of crime and feelings of unsafety. Moreover, distrust in the police, generalized social distrust, and perceived ethnic threat induce fear of crime as well as feelings of unsafety. Finally, policy implications are discussed.

This article examines the interplay of homophily (similarity breeds connection) at two levels in international trade—dyadic similarity (geographic, political, and cultural proximity) and systemic similarity (structural equivalence and world-system status). First, there is a substitution effect between dyadic homophily and systemic homophily from structural equivalence. Both types of homophily generate favorable social structure that facilitates international trade. The existence of structural equivalence lessens the dependence of bilateral trade on dyadic homophily. Second, there is a stratification effect of world-system status on dyadic homophily. Geographic homophily matters the most for bilateral trade between two noncore countries, while political and cultural homophily is the most influential for trade between a core country and a noncore country. These two findings have important implications. The substitution effect of structural equivalence prevents international trade from complete fragmentation along geographic, political, and cultural lines, while the stratification effect of world-system status reveals unequal capacity across countries to overcome the structural constraints imposed by dyadic homophily.