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Reviewed by:
  • Social Dynamics of the Life Course: Transitions, Institutions, and Interrelations
  • J. Brian Brown
Social Dynamics of the Life Course: Transitions, Institutions, and Interrelations. By Walter R. Heinz and Victor W. Marshall. Aldine De Gruyter, 2003. 306 pp. Cloth, $55.95.

Heinz and Marshall's edited volume Social Dynamics of the Life Course: Transitions, Institutions, and Interrelations arose from the proceedings of a symposium at the University of Bremen entitled "Status Passages and Risks in the Life Course." The contributors make this volume an enjoyable international affair designed to expose the reader to the history of life-course research, the dominant perspectives of today, and the challenges of life course in an increasingly global society.

In the first section, "Tradition and Innovation in Life-Course Research," the contributing authors lay the theoretical foundation for life-course research. Marshall and Mueller begin the section with an overview that compares and contrasts the United States and European life-course perspectives. Next, Krüger uses the example of gender and the division of labor to argue that we must focus on how the areas of the life course are gendered to explain ongoing sex differences in an increasingly individualized life course. In the next chapter, Elder draws from his understanding of period effects to emphasize the growing importance of geographical effects, especially in cross-national research. Period and geographical effects, he concludes, are not just methodological obstacles; they are worthy of substantive examination. Heinz concludes the section by detailing a mixed-methods panel survey design that could prove effective at answering questions about the dynamic between individual agency and institutional/structural influence.

The second section, "Life-Course Transitions and Sequences," begins with Sackmann and Wingens' theoretical overview of life-course "trajectories" versus "transitions," which sets up their proposal for a typology of sequence types that bridges the gap between those two concepts. The following chapter by Buchmann, Kriesi, Pfeifer, and Sacchi is the first traditionally empirical contribution. They use women's employment interruptions in Switzerland to demonstrate the utility of both organizational and segmented labor market theories in understanding women's life-course transitions. Continuing this theme, Schaeper and Falk examine Germany's post-unification gender order and the effect unification had on (formerly) Eastern and Western German women's life-course experiences in the labor market. The theoretical clarity, historical significance, and multifaceted empirical evidence make this chapter worth singling out as the strongest overall contribution.

To begin the third section, "Institutions and the Life Course," Weymann extends the examination of the unification of Germany with a more general discussion of life-course policy, institutions, and changing individual life-course options. In the next chapter, Leisering and Schumann use Germany's social welfare system as an example to examine the role of institutional control, or regulation, over the life course. Furstenberg, turning the attention to the United States, emphasizes the role of social class on the relationship between institutions and the life-course. [End Page 1773]

All of the authors in the fourth and final section, "Interrelations and the Life Course," attempt to conceptualize "linked" or "interdependent" life-course experiences. Whereas early life-course research focused on an individual's history of successive life-course stages, this new direction in life-course research attempts to observe patterns that emerge when the life courses of specific individuals are linked empirically. For example, one can examine the career paths of dual-earner couples, as Moen did in the first chapter of this section. Without a couple-level framework, she argues, it is difficult to understand the roles of conflict and adaptation in the individual life course. In the next chapter, Drobnic expands on the previous chapter using survival analysis (i.e., hazard models) to illustrate how the presence and characteristics of a husband affects wives' employment transitions. Finally, Born takes a different perspective on "linked lives" and descriptively illustrates intergenerational convergence in attitudes toward gender equality that are not observed in actual behavior.

The editors of Social Dynamics of the Life Course: Transitions, Institutions, and Interrelations clearly thought through the organization and content of this volume. Every chapter finds its place, and most segue seamlessly to the next, which makes reading it from...

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