Julius Hehenkamp

Ozan Aksoy and Diego Gambetta, Behind the Veil. The Strategic Use of Religious Garb, published in European Sociological Review, 2016

There is anecdotal evidence that since the late 20th century young, educated, and urban Muslim women veil more frequently and strictly. Does this imply that the classical sociological theories of religion, which predict that modernization should cause a decrease in religious behaviours, do not apply to Islam? We investigate this question using structural equation modelling to analyse three datasets, one from Turkey, one covering 25 Muslim countries, and one from Belgium where Muslims are a minority. We find that averagely religious women conform to the classical theories’ predictions. But among highly religious women the modernizing forces—education, occupation and higher income, urban living, and contacts with non-Muslims—increase veiling. We conjecture that for highly religious women modernizing factors raise the risk and temptation in women’s environments that imperil their reputation for modesty: veiling would then be a strategic response, a form either of commitment to prevent the breach of religious norms or of signalling women’s piety to their communities. Our findings have implications for cultural policy and Muslim integration in Europe.

The award committee

• Gianluca Manzo (Chair)
• Gunn Elisabeth Birkelund
• Marc Keuschnigg
• Christian Steglich

Sarah K. Cowan, Secrets and Misperceptions: The Creation of Self-Fulfilling Illusion, published in Sociological Science, 2014

 The Robert K. Merton Award in Analytical Sociology 2016 is awarded to Sarah K. Cowan from New York University for her paper “Secrets and Misperceptions: The Creation of Self-fulfilling Illusions”, published in Sociological Science.

This study examines who hears what secrets, comparing two similar secrets — one which is highly stigmatized and one which is less so. Using a unique survey representative of American adults and intake forms from a medical clinic, I document marked differences in who hears these secrets. People who are sympathetic to the stigmatizing secret are more likely to hear of it than those who may react negatively. This is a consequence not just of people selectively disclosing their own secrets but selectively sharing others’ as well. As a result, people in the same social network will be exposed to and influenced by different information about those they know and hence experience that network differently. When people effectively exist in networks tailored by others to not offend then the information they hear tends to be that of which they already approve. Were they to hear secrets they disapprove of then their attitudes might change but they are less likely to hear those secrets. As such, the patterns of secret-hearing contribute to a stasis in public opinion.