Effects of Group Status and Identity Alignment on Social Influence

Abstract: A series of three studies examine effects of social identity alignment versus social status on influence within task groups. Status Characteristics Theory (SCT) predicts that deference will be given to high-status members, and Social Identity Theory (SIT) predicts deference to in-group members. This dissertation investigates conditions under which social status or identity alignment might be more predictive of deference by examining status characteristics that also constitute significant identities or memberships to a social in-group (e.g., race, gender). By discerning when social identity or status holds greater sway in task groups, results of three experimental studies shed light on influence dynamics and the interplay of status and social identity. The studies tested three mechanisms—degree of in-group identification, identity threat, and task importance—expected to be impactful in affecting the influence of high-/low-status, in-/out-group partners under varying conditions. Study 1 examines these processes in a minimal group setting (based on abstract groups based on “cognitive association styles”), and Studies 2 and 3 use more naturally-occurring social groups (e.g., home state in Study 2), such as those attached to an overarching status hierarchy (e.g., gender and race in Study 3). Each experiment had participants work with two (simulated) partners to complete a series of trials on an uncertain group task. This setting met the scope conditions for the theories I am applying to establish group structures: Participants were task and collectively oriented (SCT), were working on a task with no immediate feedback about performance and were explicitly told of categorical group differences between themselves and their partners (SIT). The instructions for Study 1 assigned participants to minimal groups based on bogus cognitive association styles. Study 2 used self-reported home state as a group-differentiating characteristic, and finally, Study 3 tested theorized processes with gender and race. Hypothesis 1 predicted that high-status partners would exert more influence than low-status partners and found partial support in Studies 2 and 3, primarily driven by the influence of high-status (in-group) partners over subjects. Hypothesis 2 predicted that in-group partners would have more influence than out-group partners, and results generally supported this by revealing strong influence from in-group partners, regardless of status (although in-group high-status partners were most influential in Studies 2 and 3). Hypothesis 3, which expected heightened task importance to increase deference to high-status others, did not receive strong empirical or theoretical support and was only directly manipulated in Study 1. Hypothesis 4 predicted that under threat to group identity, the effects of group membership on influence would increase relative to that of status. Contrary to expectations, results revealed that identity threat significantly increased the influence levels of high-status partners, even when that high-status meant out-group membership. These findings suggested that identity threat did not heighten the SIT-based effects on social influence (i.e., in-group influence), as predicted, and in some ways point to an SCT-based explanation (i.e., high-status influence) under threat. Hypothesis 5, predicting that identification to the in-group would increase the impact of group membership, relative to that of status, on outcomes of social influence, was strongly supported in Studies 1 and 3. Participants who more highly identified with their in-group accepted greater influence from their in-group (compared to out-group) partners, regardless of that in-group’s relative (high- or low-) status. An SIT interpretation of this finding suggests that low-status in-group members who more highly identify with their (e.g., racial, gender) in-group may not necessarily be more influenced by similar in-group others simply because of their shared group membership. They do, however, appear to be significantly less influenced by out-group others (even when that out-group is higher-status), a finding consistent with my predictions on in-group identification. Finally, Hypothesis 6, predicting in-group identification to moderate the relationships between task importance (6a) and identity threat (6b) on social influence, found mixed support. More highly-identified participants were more influenced by in-group partners (compared to their out-group counterparts), and in-group identification significantly and directly predicted influence above and beyond effects from experimental manipulations. Results from the three studies show that subtle features of the group context (identity threat and heightened in-group identification) affect how much influence (high- and low-status) group members exert over individuals. Findings from this research highlight the complex interplay between status, group membership, identification and threat in shaping social influence dynamics, and I conclude by using these results to evaluate the relative strength of status-based (SCT) versus identity-based (SIT) processes in driving outcomes of social influence.

Variability of Age at First Union Formation and First Marriage and Its Potential Effects on Experiencing Depression

Abstract: This study aims to investigate changes in the variability of age at first union formation and first marriage and how the relative timing potentially affects the likelihood of experiencing depression at the age of forty in the United States. Both the destandardization of the life course and the deinstitutionalization of marriage over the past few decades may have contributed to less pronounced cultural conformity regarding the age at first union formation and first marriage. This, in turn, leads to a more diverse variability of age at first union formation and first marriage in recent cohorts among the overall and married populations. In addition, owing to the divergent paces of destandardization of the life course and the deinstitutionalization of marriage across gender, education levels, and race, changes in variability may differ among these social groups. Using multiple nationally representative datasets, the results reveal a U-shaped trend in changes in the variability of age at first union formation and first marriage. Specifically, the variability becomes less diverse in the mid-twentieth cohorts and then becomes more diverse in recent cohorts. However, the trend varies across gender, education levels, and race. While Black and highly-educated women have a more diverse variability of age at first union formation, women, non-Hispanic White, and highly educated people tend to have a less diverse variability of age at first marriage. The results indicate an insignificant effect of relative timing on the likelihood of experiencing depression. These findings shed light on changes in cultural conformity embedded within marriage as a social institution and highlight the important roles played by the destandardization of the life course and the deinstitutionalization of marriage in these changes in the United States.

Trends in the Educational Differences in U.S. Mothers’ Paid Work and Child Care Time-Use and Implications for Mothers’ Well-Being

Abstract: This dissertation explores U.S. mothers’ time allocation to employment and child care post-2000 and its implications for their well-being, addressing three empirical questions: (1) How have educational disparities in mothers’ developmentally adaptive child care time evolved in recent decades? (2) How have paid work-child care time divisions shifted differently for less-educated versus more-educated mothers? (3) What are the trends in educational disparities in mothers’ well-being, and to what extent do mothers’ time-use patterns contribute to these changes? This dissertation found that there has been a significant historical decline in educational disparities in mothers’ developmentally adaptive child care time investment over the past two decades. Second, mothers with different educational attainments have gradually adopted divergent paid work-child care time coordination strategies: while high school and less educated mothers saw an increased tendency to spend high volumes of time on child care without employment, college-educated mothers became more likely to invest moderate time on child care while maintaining full-time professional jobs. Finally, college-educated mothers, who were initially at a disadvantage, have experienced significant improvements in the quantity and quality of downtime over the past two decades. Some evidence suggests that the shifting distribution of paid work-child care time coordination patterns contribute to the enhancements in leisure quality for college-educated mothers. This dissertation offers an updated understanding of how US mothers with varying educational backgrounds balance work and family, the potential trade-offs between mothers’ well-being and children’s development, with suggestive impacts on the intergenerational transmission of advantage.

The Effects of Causal Attributions and Previous Status on Expectations

Abstract: In this dissertation, I explore the influence of status history and causal attribution on expectations. I propose that information about status history and causal attribution of status help to explain how expectations form. To test these propositions, I develop a model that accounts for the possible influence of previous history with a characteristic on current expectations. I also propose that causal attribution and previous status information may work in concert to influence expectations. I examine the influence that causal attribution of status has on expectations when status remains consistent and the influence of causal attribution in the event of status change.

I begin by assessing the utility of this combined “Status-Attribution Model” overall. Next, I build upon findings examining if perception of status affects both expectations of those being evaluated and behavior toward these individuals. Finally, I explore effects that the combination of status history and attribution has on the self-concept.

In Study 1, I found, as expected, that information about status history and information indicating attribution of status can affect expectations. Status loss had a significantly negative effect on evaluations compared to evaluations of those with consistently low status. Also as expected, internal attribution of status led to significant differences between ratings. Results from Study 2 were more variable. As expected, those who experienced status loss were rated as significantly more dependent than those who remained consistently low status on that characteristic. But causal attribution of status did not always affect evaluations. In Study 3, many findings supported my hypotheses. As predicted, internal attribution of low status made individuals rate themselves as less trustworthy and report a lower sense of mastery and self-esteem. And the effect of attribution on self-concept was magnified when considered with status loss. But unexpectedly, those that experienced status loss rated themselves as significantly less able and competent relative to those with consistent low status. Results from each study indicate that factors apart from current status, including status history and causal attribution, can significantly influence expectation formation. Both expected and unexpected findings present many avenues for future research.

Does Women’s Continuation in the Labor Force Matter for Union Formation? An Assessment of Evidence from the United States and Latin America

Abstract: Social scientists have long been interested in the interplay between women’s roles as paid employees, partners and mothers. One of the first puzzles they intended to solve was about the consequences of women’s participation in the labor force for marriage. Currently, evidence about high-income Western countries overwhelming supports that women’s employment does not hinder union formation generally or marriage specifically. This conclusion is consistent when looking at multiple dimensions of employment, including earnings, employment status, economic potential, and job quality.

Women’s employment engagement during the transition to adulthood have received scarce attention as a determinant of whether and when women move in with a romantic partner for the first time. In particular, and despite its relevance to understanding family-work dynamics across life, the relationship between continuous employment, the number of years employed without breaks/interruptions, and union formation has been overlooked.

Additionally, despite increasing rates of women’s participation in the labor force and drastic sociodemographic changes in the last decades, the association between women’s employment and union formation in Latin American countries has been scarcely examined.

To address these two gaps in the existing literature, this dissertation analyzes whether—and how—employment engagement influences women’s transitions into their first unions. Specifically, I measure and compare two dimensions of employment during the transition to adulthood: 1) the number of cumulative years/months of employment, and 2) the number of years/months of continuous employment. For this purpose, I analyze three nationally representative longitudinal and retrospective datasets, and focus on the experiences of women born in the 1970s or later in Mexico, Chile, and the U.S.

The results confirm the relevance of women’s employment engagement on decisions toward moving in with a romantic partner for the first time, highlighting differences between the two employment dimensions, as well as between contexts. By contrasting cumulative and continuous employment, the dissertation contributes to our understanding of why and how women’s employment shapes union formation. It also invites us to expand theories about the interplay between women’s economic position and family from a comparative perspective. Given the increasing uncertainty of labor markets, it also motivates further exploration about the role of expectations and experiences of continuous employment on family transitions.

Understanding Women’s Labor Force Participation in Sub-Saharan Africa Through Migration, Kin Support and Relationship Dynamics

Abstract: Family sociologists and demographers have long maintained a profound interest in understanding the determinants and consequences of female labor force participation. Much of this research has predominantly concentrated on the Western contexts, albeit with a handful of remarkable works shedding light on the Global South, where is also witnessing a growing focus. However, our comprehension of the intricate interplay between gender, work, and family in sub-Saharan Africa remains insufficient and restricted. Over the years, there has been a steady increase in women's education and labor force participation in this region. Yet, many women continue to grapple with sociocultural barriers that hinder them from fully harnessing their employment opportunities. Particularly noteworthy is the mounting tension between conforming to traditional gender roles and meeting household needs through women's paid employment, especially in the face of increasingly challenging economic circumstances. This challenge is particularly pronounced among marginalized populations, such as rural and low-income urban population. My doctoral dissertation seeks to address three hitherto understudied issues: 1) examining the relationship between an individual's employment status and that of other household members in South Africa, and how it influences that individual's likelihood of future migration, 2) investigating the role of employment among kin members and the support provided by family members in facilitating women's employment in Nairobi, Kenya, and 3) exploring the dynamics of women's work concerning union formalization, motherhood, and livelihood in Nairobi. The dissertation comprises two quantitative analyses and one qualitative methods study, resulting in three papers that draw from two datasets collected in South Africa and Kenya.

From Black Lives Matter to We Don’t Even Matter: The Invisible Hand of Power on Social Movement Participation and Activism in Urban and Rural Spaces

Abstract: The field of social movement research is vast and evolving as technological advances continue to expand the field of movement space to include virtual worlds and digital platforms, ensuring new research endeavors. However, as movement spaces expand, one constant is the pursuit and exchange of power between competing groups and within groups with similar collective identities. My research focuses on identifying and tracing some of the diverse paths within social movement spaces that power dynamics manifest. Specifically, I ask the following three questions. What do participants in Black Lives Matter reveal about the movement and internal power dynamics? How does power manifest itself in public hearing spaces? How do Black people living in the rural South engage in the Environmental Justice Movement?

I explore power within groups such as Black Lives Matter participants in local chapters, participants in state-regulated public hearings, and development of a local movement center within rural, eastern North Carolina through engagement with the Environmental Justice Movement. Through participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and discourse analysis, I investigate, analyze, and interrogate the various pathways of power within movement spaces. I find that participants in local Black Lives Matter chapters negotiate power through their activist identity. Also, residents can be rendered illegitimate because they do not speak the language of those in power even though they have the power to participate in public hearing spaces. Finally, there is a shift from indigenous funding sources within rural, Black communities which potentially disempowers those communities from advocacy and engagement.

The Worst of Times? Aging With Limited Family Ties in the United States

Abstract: The drastic demographic and family transitions since the 1970s have raised ongoing discussions about whether older adults fare well socially and psychologically when they are increasingly likely to age alone in the U.S. Based on the social convoy model, the three studies of this dissertation answer this question by extending the focus from the proximal kinship ties to nonkin networks and broader social participation. Particular attention is paid to gender and racial/ethnic differences as demographic and family transitions are experienced unevenly by different social groups. The first study examines how family instability and the deviation from “normative” family trajectories are associated with older adults’ mental health. It found different levels of importance of the structure and instability of family for men and women of different racial/ethnic groups. Moving beyond family and households, the second study explores the substitution effect of extended family, friends, and neighborhoods in the absence of proximal relations. It reveals the “double plight” of Black and Hispanic older adults who may suffer from both a disproportionate exposure to the declining marriage and a lack of supportive distant relations serving as buffer zones in the absence of core kinship ties. The third study disentangles the population-level age and cohort trends of social connectedness, a more comprehensive indicator of individuals’ social wellbeing. It finds distinct intercohort changes in both the overall level of social connectedness and intracohort gender and racial/ethnic disparities. These trends can be partially explained by cohort differences in socioeconomic resources and health. However, societal changes that emphasize the significance of intergenerational solidarity, friendship ties, digital communication, non-religious social participation, and volunteering may play a more significant role. Taken together, this dissertation depicts a mixed picture of different populations who demonstrate varying levels of vulnerability and resilience against the quickly developing society. Therefore, it calls for both the enhancement of social welfare regimes and more positive narratives about unique resilience and strengths for women, racial/ethnic minorities, and socioeconomically disadvantaged older adults.

Reimagining Black Carceral Masculinities and Community Care Work: A Study of Credible Messengers in the Nation’s Capital

Abstract: The following dissertation examines a group of community workers known as credible messengers in Washington, D.C. Credible messengers have lived experience surviving carceral systems such as prisons and environments and have transformed their lives to guide, relate to, and support others who share their backgrounds. Their credibility stems directly from their intimate knowledge of the communities they serve. This dissertation project draws on qualitative interviews with male credible messengers from a more considerable multi-year evaluation of a newly implemented credible messenger program housed in a youth agency. Sociologically, the project explores Black carceral masculinities and mentoring as civic engagement. The findings reveal how men resist and challenge prevailing notions around hegemonic and carceral masculinities through their racially gendered experiences, which shape how they approach their work with youth. The study also suggests that the men engage in credible messenger work for motivations other than redemption and in service of a larger mission to Black youth and their local communities. The dissertation project also includes a conversation with a formerly incarcerated public figure from Washington, D.C., as a call to action to researchers and others to uplift the experience of impacted people and communities. The dissertation project concludes with a set of recommendations aimed at policy and practice as it relates to criminalized Black men and boys.

Warriors, Guardians, Wolves, and Sheep: Officer Perceptions of Police-Civilian Identities and the Persistence of Organized Inequity

Abstract: Despite nearly a decade of community engagement and police reform efforts guided by the Warrior/Guardian paradigm, there remains little evidence of police culture change and rates of racially disproportionate police misconduct remain a social problem. In this work, I bring officers into this conversation and leverage the Warrior/Guardian paradigm as a starting point for an exploration of how identity structures constitute police organizational culture and practice, its consequences, and its potential for change.

The present work contributes to the public and scholarly discourse on police culture and the role of identity processes in the reproduction of organizational practices. I characterize police culture as a set of identity schemas that connect people, practices, and social resources. I chart three domains of symbolic interaction that characterize the intersection of police structure, police culture, and public culture and account for police organizational rules and practices that distribute law enforcement outcomes and pattern organized inequity.

Platonic Co-parenting: A New Lens into the Unfinished Gender Revolution

Abstract: The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the extent to which platonic co-parenting (PCP), an alternative family form in which parenting is separated from romantic relationships and often also from coresidence, is creating and sustaining gender egalitarian parenting relationships. In other words, how gender egalitarian are these parenting partnerships? Using 32 in-depth semi-structured interviews with men, women, non-binary and trans people, who were at different stages of the PCP journey, I investigated the practice of platonic co-parenting by focusing on the motivations for people to choose the PCP path to parenting; and how they navigated gendered patriarchal norms in the process of becoming PCPs including division of household labor. I found two broad categories of people who were drawn to PCP: those who attempted to subvert hegemonic, heteronormative ideals of family and parenting; and those who attempted to reproduce these ideals. The subverters aspired to form gender egalitarian and equal partnerships whereas the reproducers desired/imagined the mother as the primary parent and the father’s role being closer to a sperm donor’s—a father figure as opposed to an involved father. Among the subverters, the realities of the division of labor once they had a child turned out to be far less gender egalitarian than they had intended as the pull of traditional gender norms was quite strong for both men and women. PCPs engaged in gendered boundary work to separate aspects of their family that fell in the transactional realm and those that fell in the intimate/sacred realm free of monetary or other exchanges. Framing certain activities (childbearing, breastfeeding, relocation, and parental leave) as intimate had the unintended consequence of creating inequality between the male and female co-parents. By using the language of altruism to naturalize their arrangements, PCPs intend to be seen as “real” families while leaving in place traditional cleavages of the gendered division of labor.

Social Inequalities in Motherhood: The Consequences on Women's Well-being and Children's Outcomes

Abstract: Parenthood in general, and motherhood in particular, has long been documented to bring both costs and benefits to adults’ well-being. The well-being of mothers and the impacts of motherhood on women’s well-being are also found to vary depending on the social groups women belong to. However, current findings on racial-ethnic and socioeconomic differences in mothers’ well-being are limited, inconsistent, and concentrated predominantly in Western developed countries. Poor mental health in mothers can negatively affect children’s development. Children experiencing development problems, in turn, can also trigger poor mental health in mothers. Yet, so far, we know little about whether this bi-directional relationship varies according to mothers’ socioeconomic status (SES). Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: 2010-11 Kindergarten Class and the China Family Panel Study, this dissertation answers three sets of research questions. First, are there racial-ethnic differences in U.S. mothers’ parenting-related stress and its associations with depression? Using latent profile analysis to address the multidimensionality of mothers’ parenting stress, I find racial-ethnic disparities not only in the type of parenting stress that mothers face but also in the associations between each type of parenting stress and mothers’ depression levels. Second, do Chinese mothers aged between 20 and 49 report better or worse well-being than their peers who have never had a child? Does the effect of motherhood on women’s well-being vary by women’s SES? The results show that while Chinese mothers generally report worse well-being than women without children, the negative well-being consequences of parenting non-adult children are less pronounced among rural-to-urban migrant women with moderate income and education than among their more disadvantaged and privileged peers. But having only adult children, when compared to not having children, is more harmful to migrant women than to more privileged women. Third, how do U.S. mothers’ parenting stress and children’s developmental outcomes influence each other bi-directionally over time? How do mothers’ education levels moderate the relationships? I find negative mutual impacts between mothers’ parenting stress and children’s developmental outcomes. But both the harm of high parenting stress on child outcomes and the detrimental impact of children’s developmental problems on parenting stress are more pronounced among mothers without a college degree. Overall, my findings reveal the complex roles of race-ethnicity, SES, and national contexts in shaping mothers’ parenting experiences, well-being, and children’s developmental outcomes. I conclude by discussing the empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions of these findings to research on social inequalities in motherhood and the consequences on mothers’ well-being and children’s outcomes. Additionally, I address the policy implications of this dissertation for enhancing the well-being of women and children with diverse social backgrounds.

"It's Not Like I Can Just Pause Diabetes:" How People Living with Type 1 Diabetes Navigate Relationships, Reproduction, and Parenting

Abstract: This dissertation draws on 26 qualitative in-depth interviews to explore how people who live with type 1 diabetes (T1D) navigate three important and intimate areas of life: dating and relationships, reproduction, and parenthood. Applying a sociological disability framework to this research, I explore how participants’ trajectories and outlooks, decisions, and feelings of agency and self-efficacy in these areas of life are influenced biographically, structurally, and culturally on account of living with T1D. Each of the three substantive chapters of this dissertation is an article that examines the relationship between living with T1D and either dating and romantic relationships, reproduction, or parenthood. First, I argue that dating and relationship norms and expectations can be rooted in ableist ideals that marginalize potential partners living with impairment or disability. I also demonstrate the importance of two kinds of support that dating partners offer to participants living with T1D: tangible support and incorporative support. Both kinds of support work against assumptions made about dating and relationships among people living with impairment or disability. I then examine facets of living with T1D occurring at multiple analytical layers (structural and cultural, interactional, self, and body) across the life course and how they influence whether people with T1D feel having children is something they want or need or is within their reach. This article enriches our understanding of disability by demonstrating that individuals with less noticeable or visible disability are subject to similar social imperatives of risk management and moral reproduction as those with more noticeable physical or sensory disabilities. Finally, I discuss how participants think about and practice balancing caring for their T1D and caring for their children, as well as how they reconceptualize “good parenting” within an intensive parenting culture that expects child-centered and self-sacrificing parenting. I also discuss how adults who grew up as children and adolescents with T1D reflect on how they have been and continue to be parented regarding their T1D, leading them to challenge norms of “expert-guided” parenting within an intensive parenting culture. This challenge is made through advocating for more agency, autonomy, and expertise grounded in embodied experience to be afforded to children and young adults with T1D in ways that supersede the expertise of doctors and researchers. Overall, this dissertation illustrates: (1) how experiences, interpretations, and representations of disability at multiple analytical levels have the power to remove some feelings of agency and self-efficacy from disabled people throughout the process of reproduction, in their dating lives and romantic relationships, and in their roles as parents; and (2) the ways that individuals with disability adapt to, challenge, and disrupt the norms, ideologies, and assumptions that marginalize them in these intimate areas of life.

Latinx Motherhood Reassessed: How Second and Later-Generation Latina Mothers Redefine Motherhood, Latinidad, and Pursue Intergenerational Healing

Abstract: This dissertation examines how social location, experience with racialization, and generation since immigration influence the parenting practices and mothering ideologies of second- and later-generation upwardly mobile Latina mothers. Through 62 in-depth semi-structured interviews with Latina mothers across the United States, I explore four sets of questions. First, how do second and later-generation Latinx mothers approach parenting amidst multiple cultural scripts of motherhood? Second, how does social location, experience with racialization, and immigrant generation inform the motherhood ideologies and parenting practices of second and later-generation Latinx mothers? Third, how do Latinx mothers approach ethnoracial socialization and transmission of cultural knowledge with their children? And lastly, how do second and later-generation Latinx mothers’ experiences and practices highlight the incorporation strategies and challenges of later-generation Latinx people? My findings show that upwardly mobile second and later-generation Latinx mothers intentionally deviate from the mothering strategies used by earlier family matriarchs and also do not replicate those of white American mothers. Instead, they adopt what I call a culturally transformative mothering approach that involves 1) intentionally selecting and integrating valued aspects of their cultural background into their parenting practices while also 2) identifying and altering practices they deem harmful and remnants of structural inequalities. Overall, my findings demonstrate that middle-class Latina mothering is distinct from both mothers’ ethnic communities of origin and white American middle-class motherhood. It is instead informed by cultural expectations and traditions but adapted to fit their current social, cultural, and economic needs of mothering in the United States.

Epidemiological Transition and Shifting Mortality Inequality: An Extension of Fundamental Cause Theory

Abstract: The dissertation addresses two "public health puzzles" in US mortality inequality trends: (1) SES inequalities in mortality have been growing wider despite declines in overall mortality levels and the expansion of social welfare policies; (2) mortality inequalities present diverging trends across age groups, with declines at younger ages but growth at older ages. These puzzles challenge existing theories in explaining the complex dynamics of mortality disparities. The study aims to bridge this gap by proposing an alternative theoretical framework that combines Fundamental Cause Theory with the concept of epidemiological transition.Previous research has focused primarily on socioeconomic factors as the main drivers of widening mortality disparities. However, this dissertation argues that mortality inequalities can evolve independently of socioeconomic factors due to shifts in disease patterns towards non-communicable diseases and advancements in health-beneficial innovations. By analyzing county-level US mortality rates from 1968 to 2020, this study reveals that mortality inequality related to infectious diseases declined in the early 1970s and remained stable over time. On the other hand, mortality inequality related to non-communicable diseases remained at a low level during the 1970s but saw a significant increase since the 1980s. Further, this study found that mortality inequality from non-communicable diseases is more pronounced in middle-aged and older adults, and the age distribution of mortality inequality progressively shifts towards older ages. This study contributes to the existing literature with a new theoretical perspective to understand the developments of mortality inequalities over time. This framework sheds light on the two "public health puzzles” and emphasizes the crucial role of disease patterns prevailing during specific historical periods in understanding the developments of mortality inequality. Furthermore, the study underlines the interplay of disease patterns, prevention/treatment innovations, and social and economic inequalities in collectively shaping the future of mortality and health disparities. It also sheds light on the social-political circumstances of medical innovation as well as behavioral factors over the life course in determining future population health and health inequalities.

Applying a Gendered Lens to the Study of Work and Caregiving Responsibilities Among Chinese Middle- To Older-Aged Adults

Abstract: This dissertation consists of three papers that investigate the working and caregiving roles of middle-to-older adults and their implications for well-being in China. While existing literature predominantly focuses on older adults as care recipients, this research sheds light on the significant number of older individuals who actively participate in the labor market and provide informal caregiving to family members. Studies usually focus on either caregiving or employment while keeping the other in the background, leaving the intersection of work and caregiving responsibilities understudied. I then ask whether and how work-life conflicts, commonly discussed in the context of middle-aged women, are also applicable to the older population and are shaped by gender. Using data from the China Health and Retirement Study, the study investigates work and caregiving patterns among middle-to-older adults and explores the well-being consequences of juggling these roles. Furthermore, the research examines whether gender-based patterns persist in work and caregiving dynamics during this stage of life. The study is conducted in China, a developing country experiencing accelerated population aging, and the boundaries between work and family responsibilities are less distinct compared to developed societies. Early retirement age in the formal sector provides opportunities for older workers to engage in caregiving, while informal sector and agricultural workers may need to continue working until old age due to low pension rates. The culture of filial piety and intergenerational solidarity further encourages older generations to provide financial and caregiving support to their younger family members, leading to the common occurrence of middle-to-older adults taking on both work and caregiving roles. The first paper explores the association between living arrangements and middle-to-older adults’ work prospects, considering gender and work sector differences. The second paper examines the impacts of living arrangements on role transitions, especially the transitions of workers and worker-caregivers given their prevalence, while also considering the moderating effects of gender and residence. The third paper investigates the joint impact of work and informal caregiving on mental well-being, analyzing the differential effects based on intensity, gender, residence, socioeconomic status, and social isolation level. In the context of accelerated aging in developing countries, this dissertation highlights the contributions of middle-to-older adults and emphasizes the need for investment in and design of long-term care services to meet the demands of rapidly aging populations.

Mothers as Agents of Social Change in the Movement Against Sexual Violence

Abstract: My dissertation examines how the #MeToo movement is changing generational understandings of sexual violence. Through this research, I examine how sexual violence is both a cause and a consequence of systemic gender and race inequality. Using eighteen in-depth semi-structured interviews of mothers with at least one child aged five-years or older, I investigate three sets of questions. First, how are mothers evaluating their own experiences with sexual violence post #MeToo movement? Second, how is sexual violence part of mother-child conversations about sexual behavior? Third, how do mothers; social location contribute to how they feel about the #MeToo movement and how they teach their children about sexual violence? My findings suggest mothers are transmitting new understandings of sexual violence to their children. Specifically, mothers are teaching their children that appropriate touch, sexual or nonsexual, cannot be determined using a binary yes or no standard of consent. Their approach to sex education is driven by their own experiences with sex that was violating and/or nonconsensual and consideration of their own and their children's social location. Overall, my findings demonstrate the #MeToo movement and other associated events have ushered in a change in mothers' rape consciousness which is facilitating change in children's sex education. If successful, mothers will have contributed to decreased prevalence of sexual violence as these children age into adolescence and adulthood.

Shape of Care: Patterns of Family Caregiving Activities Among Older Adults from Midlife to Later Ages in China and the U.S.

Abstract: This dissertation consists of three papers that investigate the long-term family caregiving patterns among Chinese and American older adults. Family caregiving has long been an essential fabric of long-term care services. Due to the prolonged life expectancy and the declined family size, older adults today are more likely to care for multiple family members for longer years than the previous cohorts. However, studies on caregiving predominately focus on singular care experiences over a short period time. As older adults transition into and out of multiple care roles, the overall caregiving patterns are overlooked. Leveraging two rich longitudinal datasets (the China Health and Retirement Study and the Health and Retirement Study), this dissertation aims to fill this current research gap by developing long-term family caregiving typologies. The first paper develops a care typology for Chinese older adults, and thoroughly assesses how gender, hukou status, living arrangement, and significant life transitions are associated with the long-term caregiving patterns. In the second paper, using linear mixed-effects models, I continue exploring the positive and negative health consequences of each caregiving pattern among Chinese older adults. The third paper focuses on developing a long-term family caregiving pattern for American older adults. In addition to prolonged life expectancies and the decline in family size, the U.S. has experienced complex transitions in family structures over the past few decades, leading to more diverse family networks and international relations in later life. After establishing the long-term care typology, the third paper pays closer attention to the variations of family caregiving patterns across the War Babies cohort, Early Baby Boomer, and the Middle/Late Baby Boomer cohort. Moreover, I explore how gender, race, and socioeconomic status are linked with these patterns. In the context of global aging, this dissertation highlights the heterogeneity in the family caregiving experiences and identifies the most vulnerable demographic groups who shoulder the heaviest care burden over time. In the end, the findings from the dissertation provide guidance for the investment and design of long-term care services in rapidly aging contexts.

Gender-Specific Significance of Family Transitions on Well-being and Work Attitudes

Abstract: Marriage and parenthood are major life events for many individuals. Marriage is linked with improved health partly through spousal influence on health-related behaviors including diet. Previous theoretical and qualitative research suggests a link between family transitions and meal patterns. Yet empirical research using a nationally representative sample to examine the association is scarce. And the issues of whether spousal influence on health-related behaviors can be extended to other types of romantic relationships, such as cohabitation, as well as whether the transition to parenthood is linked with changes in meal patterns, have not been adequately researched. Additionally, research examining whether the health benefits that marriage brings can be universally found for both genders across countries is limited. Family life events carry other consequences, too. Prior research also suggests that family life often has a negative impact on attitudes toward paid work, particularly for women. Past research, however, primarily relied on small sample interview data or cross-sectional data, leaving unclear how work attitudes change during adulthood. This dissertation examines the impact of different family life events such as marriage, cohabitation, and parenthood on changes in subjective well-being, health-related behavior (meal patterns), and attitudes towards work by gender. I focus on adults in their prime work and family life stages in the U.S. and Japan. By using fixed effects models and panel data, I aimed to estimate the average effect of family life events within individuals over time. I found that entering a romantic union reduces meal skipping, but the type of union matters differently for men and women. I also found that the transition to parenthood discourages women’s regular meal patterns, suggesting family ties do not necessarily facilitate healthy behaviors. In the highly gendered social context of Japan, contrary to previous findings from Western industrialized countries, I found no evidence indicating that marriage is associated with self-rated health for women. Additionally, I found that the transition to parenthood is negatively linked with men’s self-rated health. In terms of work attitudes, even when controlling for various job characteristics, I found that both marriage and parenthood are negatively associated with enthusiasm toward work achievement, only for women in Japan. These findings highlight the importance of country context and reveal that entry into marriage triggers shifts in women’s work attitudes even before having children.

Heterogeneous Effects of Grandchild Care on Employment, Working Time, and Work-Family Conflict

Abstract: A substantial number of adult children, both in dual-earner and single-parent families, are increasingly relying on grandchild care to bridge childcare gaps. Despite the growing trends of grandchild care and the prolonged participation of older Americans in the workforce, prior evidence over how time spent on grandchild care is associated with grandparents’ employment outcomes remains inconclusive. Considering unobserved (time-constant) heterogeneity is important for a better understanding of the association between grandchild care time and employment/work hours, because mixed findings in prior research may be attributed to omitted variables, such as preferences related to grandchild caregiving and work. Empirical research has not yet examined how grandchild care time influences family-to-work conflict and work-to-family conflict over time among employed grandparents. To examine these questions, this dissertation uses the Health and Retirement Study between 2004 and 2014 and employs fixed effects models to take into account unobserved heterogeneity and to address selection issues, and use a random effects model for family-to-work conflict.

Chapter two illustrates that considering class and employment informs us with further understanding of grandchild care time, while the effects of gender and race/ethnicity on the time allocated to grandchild care largely remain. Particularly, non-employed NH Black men with a high school diploma or less provide substantial grandchild care (500 hours or more over the two years; approximately 4.9 to 96 weekly hours), matching the level of care provided by non-employed NH Black women with the same education. Class is only linked to the time spent on grandchild care for employed NH White and Hispanic men. College-educated employed NH White men engage in a low level of grandchild care (1-99 hours over the two years; about 1 weekly hour), which is greater than that of employed NH White men with a high school diploma or less. Employed Hispanic men with some college education or more tend to provide an intermediate level of grandchild care more (100-499 hours over the two years; roughly 1 to 4.8 weekly hours), whereas devoting to substantial care less, compared to employed Hispanic men with a high school diploma or lower education. Employment status exclusively influences the time that NH White grandparents dedicate to grandchild care: Non-employed NH White women and men are more involved in substantial grandchild care compared to their employed counterparts. In contrast, no employment variations in grandchild care among NH Blacks and Hispanics may suggest that racial minority groups prioritize grandchild care regardless of their employment status.
Chapter three shows that an increase in time spent on grandchild care is link to a decrease in work hours over time among both grandmothers and grandfathers. Although the direction of providing each additional hour of grandchild care on employment status appears similar to the effect on work hours, it is not significant. No gender differences are found in the effect of grandchild care hours on both work hours and employment status.

Chapter four demonstrates that employed grandfathers who provide a low level of grandchild care experience a decrease in family-to-work conflict and an increase in work-to-family conflict over time compared to employed grandfathers who do not engage in grandchild care. No significant associations are found among employed grandmothers. However, employed grandfathers who engage in a low level of grandchild care are more likely to experience an increase in work-to-family conflict compared to employed grandmothers who do the same level of care. No significant evidence for gender differences in the association between grandchild care time and family-to-work conflict is found.

Results in chapter three and four collectively provide insight into both negative and positive aspects of grandchild care. Results in Chapter three indicate that an increase in time spent on grandchild care is linked to reduce grandparents’ work hours regardless of gender and may potentially produce economic repercussions, especially among grandparents who are socioeconomically disadvantaged. Results in Chapter four demonstrate the buffering effect of minimal grandchild care on family-to-work conflict and its adverse effect on work-to-family conflict among employed grandfathers. In conclusion, my dissertation sheds light on both different aspects of grandchild caregiving, with outcomes potentially depending on the level of caregiving engagement and gender.

Understanding Values in Organizational Contexts: The Case of Species Conservation

Abstract: Biodiversity loss poses an existential threat to human life, and human activities both intentionally and unintentionally affect other species. Values provide an important tool for explaining such human behavior. While we have evidence of the causes and consequences of wildlife values at the individual level, much human activity that influences wildlife occurs in organizational settings. This project seeks to uncover the roles and negotiation of values in conservation organizations, filling an important research gap.

The project uses a case study approach to illuminate the role and negotiation of values in case studies of three wildlife conservation contexts: national wildlife conservation, red wolf conservation, and horseshoe crab conservation in the mid-Atlantic. Through strategic selection of two organizations in each case, I explore how values function in these varied conservation contexts using interviews with staff and volunteers and content analysis of websites and social media.

I argue that a broader typology of value frames exists within wildlife conservation organizations than is traditionally discussed in wildlife value literature. I find that frames include moral conservationist, community-steward, and complex utilitarian values, adding nuance to the previously understood value spectrum of humans versus nature.

While findings indicated that values were behavior motivators for volunteers, volunteers were more likely to perceive and attempt to construct value alignment than to actively seeking organizations that were compatible with their values. While organizations proclaimed their values and described using values in determining tactics and approaches, they also did not report consciously attempting to align values in processes of volunteer recruitment.

Findings indicated differences in value processes in local versus national organizations, and a complex value framing in organizational settings. Despite the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic is an extremely disruptive social event that was directly tied to wildlife and biodiversity issues, this connection was not highlighted equally by volunteers or organizations, nor did organizations equally or significantly respond to a nationwide call to reckon with racial injustice. I argue that the organizations and volunteers who framed their values and approaches more broadly and included moral value of the wellbeing of both humans and other species were more responsive to changing social contexts.

Collective Racial Emotion and Whites' Reactions to Demands for Racial Equity

Abstract: Research has shown that white people in the United States support the principle of racial equity, but oppose most practical efforts to advance it. Less is known about how whites respond to social actors who push for these efforts. Building on theories of racial policy attitudes, this research addresses the following questions: How do whites respond emotionally to actors who push for (and against) racial equity? Does the race of the actor matter? And what influence, if any, do these reactions have on subsequent policy evaluations?To begin answering these questions, I conducted three experiments (n = 1255) with self-identified white respondents recruited from Prolific Inc. In each of the studies, respondents reported their emotional reactions to an article designed to look like an online opinion piece. In the first and second studies, I varied the author’s race and whether or not the author supported or opposed race-targeted COVID-19 related economic stimulus. In the third experiment, I examined whites’ emotional reactions to Black and white advocates pushing for (or against) a presumably race-neutral policy—carbon taxing. My findings show that the author’s race does influence reactions, particularly when the policy has racial implications. Whites tended to direct more anger toward a Black advocate of the economic relief than they did when a comparable white advocate made the same claim. But whites showed more warmth toward the Black author when he argued against the relief. In both cases, the Black advocate promoted greater opposition to the policy by way of the emotional response. However, when the policy was race-neutral, the advocate’s race did not much influence emotional responses, suggesting that the response is, in part, related to the presumed effect the policy would have on reducing the social gap between Blacks and whites. The results of this research shed light on how white people react to demands for racial equity, and if the race of the messenger has any influence. It extends on previous research by focusing on emotional responses to these demands—both positive and negative—and the influence they have on policy opinions.

A Sociological Analysis of the Impact of Online Education on Community College Completion: A Case Study of Montgomery College in Maryland

Abstract: Community college completion is a top priority throughout the U.S. and particularly in the State of Maryland where the College and Career Readiness and College Completion Act (CCRCCA) was passed in 2013. To increase college completion rates, many community colleges throughout the state have prioritized online education by incorporating it into their institutional strategic plans. In doing so, higher education institutions in the state strive to lower social problems associated with college dropout rates, such as limited job or career opportunities, lower earning potential, increased unemployment, greater food and housing insecurity, and decreased community bonds. With more students enrolled in online courses, especially in community colleges, it becomes urgent to understand who is benefitting from online learning and who continues to experience challenges.

In an examination of online education at Montgomery College in Maryland, results from this dissertation show that the delivery of high quality online education can help increase college completion rates. While not statistically significant, the time to completion for online students is 1.154 years less than fully face-to-face (F2F) students. Yet, middle income students graduate faster than their high income counterparts, Computer Science and Technologies students graduate faster than General Studies students, and online Computer Science and Technologies students graduate faster than their fully F2F counterparts.

On average, there was no significant difference in the average time to completion across five academic years for online and fully F2F students – 4.5 years. Also across this five academic year span, specific online groups – males, Blacks or African Americans, high income and low income students, and General Studies, Business, and Early Childhood Education Technology majors – experienced an average time to completion that was lower than that of their fully F2F counterparts.

The average time to completion at Montgomery College for online students exceeds that of fully F2F students after six online courses. However, for some online student groups – males, Blacks or African Americans, low income students, and Business majors – their time to completion is negatively impacted after 13 and 14 online courses, respectively. The research also suggests that the global COVID-19 pandemic has already positively influenced the way online education is delivered, the way instructors are trained, and the way students are engaged and learning at Montgomery College.

Income Inequality and Caste in India: Evidence from India Human Development Surveys

Abstract: The problem of income inequality has become a defining problem in today’s world yet, the implications of overall income inequality for different social groups remain understudied. The sociological literature on stratification has treated these two important facets of inequality, namely overall income inequality and group income gaps, separately. I study these two problems together in this dissertation by examining overall income inequality and caste and religious groups in the context of Indian society. Using the nationally representative data from India Human Development Surveys, I first examine in detail, overall income and consumption changes and inequality from 2004-05 to 2011-12. Then, I look at changes in income and consumption for different caste and religious groups and study inequality changes between these groups. In the end, I evaluate the role played by educational expansion and returns to education in explaining changes in overall income inequality as well as group income gaps using OLS and Quintile regression models.I find that income inequality based on both income as well as consumption measures has increased in India between 2004-05 and 2011-12. But contrary to the global pattern of increasing income inequality, income inequality in India was driven not just because of high growth for households at the top, but more so due to low growth of incomes for households at the bottom of the income distribution. Despite this rise in overall income inequality, income gaps and inequality between the forward caste and disadvantaged caste groups are getting closed. Though caste disadvantage is operational at all parts of income distribution, it becomes less oppressive over time. I find that while education helps explain the declining between-caste income inequality, it does not satisfactorily answer why overall income inequality is growing. I also find that socially disadvantaged groups as well as low educational households who are concentrated disproportionately at lower incomes did better in terms of their income growth over time. Yet, the low-income households as a whole somehow did not grow much over time. These opposite trends among lower income households, is a puzzling result.

Sex Cam Modeling: Labor, Intimacy, and Prosumer Porn

Abstract: This dissertation begins with the assumption that the porn industry has radically changed in ways we are yet to fully understand. Drawing on interviews and auto-ethnography, it attempts to offer three distinct theoretical lenses through which these changes can be observed. First, I examine what is bought and sold in cam rooms, concluding that the work of cam modeling (both on camera and behind the scenes) has many dimensions that are not captured by reductionist tropes about selling one’s body. Second, I argue that camming fits a broader pattern in online content, where clear divisions between producer and consumer begin to break down. I conclude that camming (and especially custom content/shows) can best understood as prosumer pornography (i.e., as a co-creation of model and viewer). Finally, I explore the ways in which sex cam models actively develop intimacy with clients in spite of the fact that the interactions are defined by social and spatial distance; technological mediation; asymmetry; gendered expectations; and commercial transaction.

The Socioeconomic Associations with Women's Partnership Formation and Dissolution in Russia, Germany, and the United States

Abstract: This dissertation consists of three studies that evaluate how women form partnerships, leave partnerships, and the economic outcomes of those partnerships. These demographic transitions and outcomes are evaluated in three country contexts with differing political, welfare regimes, social history. I use longitudinal data from Russia to analyze marital status differences and trends in in poverty risk. Contrary to assumptions that unmarried mothers will have higher risks of poverty over time as welfare policy weakens, unmarried mothers and married mothers’ risks of poverty came close to converging in the late 2000s. Second, I use German data to examine educational assortative mating in East and West Germany. I use the Revealed Preference Model (RPM). First, from bivariate analysis of the SOEP, I find that among the people who are partnering, they are doing so mostly homogamously in the East and the West. Highly educated women in the East are still less likely to partner somebody of a lower education status. The RPM estimated parameters then showed that in West Germany and East Germany alike, educationally hypergamous partnerships were most preferable. Though the availability of higher educated partners in East and West Germany are different, the preference for hypergamy remains. Finally, I move on to the United States to estimate the divorce risk of partners of various education levels. I use the Survey of Income and Program Participation, providing accurate representation of the contemporary U.S. The model estimates divorce risk using women’s own education, men’s own education, and their relative education levels. It reveals several persistent patterns. Women’s divorce risk decreases monotonically as education increases, so highly educated women have the lowest rate of divorce. Men’s education, however, is less of a determinant on the risk of divorce. Relative to hypergamy and homogamy, hypogamous unions (woman marrying a man of a lower education status than herself) were more likely to divorce. This study supports past research that finds the female breadwinner model the most volatile when it comes to likelihood of divorce and continued support for this trend into the 2010’s.

Determinants of Differential Regional Fertility Rates in India: An Examination of Fertility Intentions, Behavior, and the Unmet Need for Contraception

Abstract: This dissertation analyzes social, cultural, and structural factors that lead to women’s fertility related decision-making processes, and outcomes, in the Indian context. Although there is a rich literature on fertility in India, my work is the first to use nationally representative panel data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) 2005, and 2012, to study the impact of past intentions and actions on subsequent outcomes, and on how intendedness of a birth can affect maternal healthcare utilization. First, I examine the differences between factors that impact regional differences in fertility preferences, and on the ability to crystallize these preferences. Results show that while a substantial portion of regional differentials in fertility preferences are explained by socio-economic traits of individuals and their households, a much smaller proportion of differentials in unintended births across regions is explained by these factors. This suggests that unobserved factors, potentially those associated with regional health systems, have a far greater role in explaining underlying differences in unintended births than in explaining fertility preferences. Second, I evaluate why women who want to limit childbearing in 2005, do not use any contraception (and thus have, an unmet need for contraception); and how this unmet need of contraception translates into subsequent unintended births. Results show that women belonging to poorest households, and residing in neighborhoods with less access to the maternal and child healthcare system, are more likely to have an unmet need for contraception; and women who have an unmet need for contraception in 2005, are more than twice as likely as those without an unmet need to have an unintended birth between 2005 and 2012. Finally, I examine the consequences of having an unwanted birth on maternal healthcare utilization. Results show that women who have unwanted births are less likely to obtain adequate antenatal, and postnatal care to help support their own health and their babies’ health. Results from this study also highlight inequalities in access to maternal healthcare services, based on socio-economic status, caste group, religious group, and area of residence. Overall, the dissertation helps obtain a better understanding of unwanted fertility, contraception use, and sexual and reproductive health disparities in the Indian context.
 

Surviving the Storm: An Intersectional Analysis of Hurricane Katrina’s Effect on Lingering Physical and Mental Health Disparities

Abstract: This three-paper dissertation used an intersectional analytical framework to examine disparities in physical health and mental health (respectively) for Hurricane Katrina survivors by race and gender. To do so, health outcomes for New Orleans residents who survived Hurricane Katrina were analyzed. Displaced New Orleans Resident Survey (DNORS) data was used to investigate if natural disasters exacerbate health disparities. In Chapter 2, eight waves of self-reported data from the nationally-representative Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) were used to conduct a sensitivity analysis of self-reported diagnoses. This was done to determine if there are differences by race and sex in the accuracy of self-reports. Chapter 2's analysis indicates that the intersections of race and sex were not associated with reporting variability after accounting for proxy status and class related characteristics. In Chapters 3 and 4, we determine if significant increases to physical and mental health diagnosis vary by race and sex, following Hurricane Katrina. The main finding of Chapter 3 was that Black women were more likely to report negative physical health outcomes than their White or male counterparts, both before and after Hurricane Katrina. Chapter 4's main finding was that Black women were not more likely to report a diagnosis of negative emotional problem and depression post-Katrina when compared to their White or male counterparts. There were increased adverse mental health outcomes across all four race-sex groups.

Inequality in the College-to-Career Transition: Self-Scarring and Underemployment

Abstract: A recent college graduate working as a coffee shop barista, earning minimum wage and carrying thousands of dollars in student loan debt, is a familiar trope in conversations about the value of a bachelor’s degree. In the college-for-all era, young people are encouraged to attain a bachelor’s degree to bolster their labor market opportunities (Rosenbaum 2001), yet 42 percent of recent college graduates, and 35 percent of all college graduates, are working in jobs that do not require a college degree (Federal Reserve Bank of New York 2020). The American Dream posits that individual perseverance will lead to increased economic security. Young people invest in college as a pathway to a good job. Why does a degree not equally benefit all graduates, and how do graduates respond when their college investment does not pay off?

I employ restricted-access Monitoring the Future panel data (1976 – 2015) and interviews with 60 recent college graduates to examine how college graduates transition from school-to-work, and how they respond when it does not go as planned. I contribute to studies of underemployment scarring by extending the context from workplace consequences to individual decision-making, unpacking how and why young people make choices related to their post-graduation employment outcomes. By examining how graduates engage as students and connecting that to post-college employment outcomes, I illustrate how graduates self-scar by making choices that diminish their ability to quickly translate their degree into a good job along three dimensions: 1) not engaging in outside-the-classroom activities during college, which are critical for career exposure and career-relevant skill-building; 2) downshifting job expectations in response to underemployment; and 3) making labor market choices that elongate underemployment. However, graduates’ decisions are not made in a vacuum, and preexisting inequalities – in economic resources, first generation student status, and social and cultural capital – are often perpetuated in the wake of underemployment. Graduates often blame themselves for their lack of labor market success. This project illuminates how inequality is replicated during the college-to-career transition through graduates’ self-scarring decisions and contributes to our understanding of who can achieve economic mobility through returns on a college education.

Inequality of Suicide in South Korea: Unequal Distribution of Completed Suicide and Suicidal Ideation

Abstract: Suicide in South Korea, considered a serious social issue, has been investigated by a number of scholars in multidisciplinary fields. However, suicide continues to be framed and focused only on limited aspects, such as having an individual-level focus on problems they face in only biomedical and psychiatric factors or only macro-level social contextual factors. Those one-sided approaches contain flaws from paying little attention, which results in an incomprehensive understanding of suicide occurring in society. This dissertation has three primary aims to examine: (1) major influential factors of suicide rates in South Korea counties from 2005–2013, (2) gender, age group-specific influential factors of suicide rate of South Korea in 2005 and 2010, and (3) individual level inequality of suicidal ideation in South Korea from 2007–2017 controlling province level regional predictors. County-level suicide rates were lower in the counties with higher population density and crude birth rate. In contrast, counties with higher crude divorce rates had higher expected suicide rates. For age group- and gender-specific suicide rates, all age groups had higher suicide rates in 2010 than 2005 after holding all other variables constant. Especially for the elderly suicide rate, counties with a higher proportion of the elderly were associated with a lower suicide rate, indicating the social network effect. The risk of suicidal ideation was higher for females, older age groups, lower-income, unemployed, not currently married, negative health status (stressed, bad health, depression without care).

Diverse Care Networks and Unmet Care Needs of Older Adults in a Changing America

Abstract: This dissertation consists of three papers that examine the complexity, dynamics, and stratification in care networks and unmet care needs of older adults in a changing America. For generations, most older Americans have been cared for by loved ones at home in their time of need. However, with sweeping demographic and family changes during the last several decades, care provision by immediate family (typically spouse and adult children) can no longer be assumed. Despite growing public interests in other alternatives beyond the spouse and adult children, limited research attention has been directed toward the provision of care by increasingly diverse care networks. The first paper develops a care network typology that captures the multidimensionality of care networks with a combination of different types of care, including informal care from the spouse, children, extended kin, and nonkin caregivers, formal caregiving from professional services, and self-care with assistive technologies. At the same time, demographic and family transitions are experienced unevenly across racial and ethnic groups, making minority older adults more vulnerable to structurally restricted care networks than older whites. Also, research on racial/ethnic differences in caregiving often emphasizes the role of cultural values in shaping care networks among specific subgroups of the aging population. Drawing from explanations that focus on both structural and cultural elements, the second paper investigates to what extent, racial/ethnic differences in care networks could be explained by structural and cultural factors separately, and further explores how they jointly shape diverse care networks across different racial and ethnic groups of older adults. The third paper questions whether some compositions of care networks are more effective in serving the needs of older adults, and whether others are more likely to lead to unmet care needs. Moreover, I explore how the perceived association between care networks and unmet care needs is further conditioned by race/ethnicity and gender. In the context of the declining availability of traditional caregivers, this dissertation can contribute to the understanding of which other alternatives are available and provide evidence on whether they can adequately meet the needs of older adults.

Love Walks: The Sojourned Self, Social Solidarity, and Pilgrimage

Abstract: 

My research site is pilgrimage as a space of liminality. I focus on the Camino de Santiago, particularly its Camino Frances route, a 500-mile pilgrimage across northern Spain. Specifically, I explore the experiences of people who participate in this pilgrimage liminality, focusing on both self-concept work and social solidarity formation. In other words, I investigate how people participate in pilgrimage for personal, self-care reasons while simultaneously, and perhaps paradoxically, developing solidarity with others also participating.

Tangentially, I also explore how pilgrimage may be related to social justice pursuits such as those embodied in such lived experiences of (in)famous social movement revolutionaries as: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez, and Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

Therefore, my main research questions are:1. How is pilgrimage used to work on the self-concept?, and 2. How does pilgrimage create social solidarity?

My peripheral research question is:3. How, if at all, is pilgrimage used as a tool of structural resistance?

Three stories appear from my participants on how pilgrimage is used to work on the Self:

1. Participants walk pilgrimage during a transitional life stage, 2. When defining “pilgrimage,” participants do describe a relationship between Self and the Other, and
2. “Good” pilgrimage experiences eclipse “bad” experiences among participants, with substantial illustrations of social connections between the Self and the Other.

Three stories that appear regarding how pilgrimage creates social solidarity include:

1. Communitas is experienced among and between participants walking the pilgrimage, 2. Participants describe the common goal of reaching Santiago as a reason for social solidarity, and
2. Participants describe why and how walking pilgrimage is way to make the world a better place.

Finally, my peripheral research question about pilgrimage as a structural resistance tool is investigated in the conclusion’s conversation about the act of walking being societal opposition.

It is my intention that this dissertation-sojourn provides insight into how pilgrimage creates social solidarity and into the relationship between self-concept, social solidarity, and social justice.

Factors Contributing to the Experience of State Loneliness

Abstract: In this dissertation, I examine the factors that contribute to the experience of loneliness in daily life (i.e., state loneliness). In the first study, I propose that being alone is most likely to lead to feelings of loneliness when a person is expected to be social, relative to moments when there is less of an expectation to be social. In the second study, I propose that how people engage with others has implications for how lonely they will feel in a situation, and that the importance of how they engage with others will partly depend on the kinds of people present in the situation. In the third study, I propose that engagement with romantic partners will be less beneficial for avoiding state loneliness when experiencing work-schedule conflict, due to the detriment such conflict may have on relationship quality. The lack of research on state loneliness is related to the difficulty of collecting data during or near the moment in which it is experienced. In this dissertation, I overcome this challenge by developing a platform that allowed participants to conveniently provide the time-diary data utilized in all three studies. In Study 1, I found, as expected, that participants felt loneliest when isolated during normatively social times. Unexpectedly, normatively social activities and locations did not associate with the strongest feelings of state loneliness. Results for Study 2 came out largely as expected—engaging in a shared task (active engagement) associated with lower rates of state loneliness relative to mere co-presence (passive engagement), and the benefit of active over passive engagement was strongest among weak ties and, unexpectedly, family members. Lastly, as expected, results from Study 3 show that work-schedule conflict associated with heightened loneliness when engaging with romantic partners. Unexpectedly, this appears to be less related to relationship quality between romantic partners and more related to the association between work-schedule conflict and participants reporting being generally lonely. Results from these studies show how factors ranging from broad cultural beliefs to small changes in engagement influence the experience of loneliness throughout a day, while unexpected findings highlight the need for further research.

Grandparent Wealth and the Well-Being of Black & White Young Adults

Abstract: Social origins are important predictors of adult success, and parental resources, particularly parental wealth, are positively correlated with adult well-being. Meanwhile, the overall population is now healthier and living longer than previous generations. Therefore, families are experiencing increased opportunities for multigenerational relationship formation and investment. This dissertation extends social mobility and stratification research by considering how multigenerational resources are related to young adult well-being. I examine how grandparents’ accumulated wealth prior to individuals’ eighteenth birthday is related to young adults’ educational attainment, self-rated general health and mental health, and financial independence. Additionally, in light of large, enduring racial wealth gaps between Black and White identified people, I examine whether and to what extent racially disparate patterns of family wealth accumulation condition the relationship between grandparent wealth and young adult well-being. I perform this investigation with analysis of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the PSID’s Transition to Adulthood Study (TAS). I employ multivariate longitudinal analysis techniques to perform interracial and intra-racial analyses of the relationship between grandparent wealth and young adult well-being. I decompose racial group gaps to see whether the results are attributable to family socioeconomic characteristics or the return to those characteristics. Lastly, I use marginal probabilities to examine and compare the absolute and relative consequences of racially disparate levels of grandparent wealth across well-being outcomes.

The Jezebel Speaks: Black Women's Erotic Labor in the Digital Age

Abstract: According to contemporary scholars of sex work in the digital age, information and communication technologies (ICTs) provide sex workers various affordances. Some of these affordances include new ways of business or marketing; greater security; more autonomy; and better wages. Much of this scholarship centers young white women working in specific fields of sex work that cater to young white men clientele. Thus, several questions remain about the affordances and constraints of the internet for sex workers of color. Affordances refer to the functional and relational aspects of objects that create possibilities for human agency through interaction with them. In this present study I use existing theories of the mobile internet and Black feminist thought to intervene into the sociology of sex work and the internet to show how Black women sex workers negotiate controlling images of Black women's sexuality on the social networking application Instagram. This study seeks to address the following broad research questions with respect to embodiment and labor: 1) In what ways, if any, do controlling images of Black women’s sexuality emerge online? 2) How do power dynamics within the matrix of domination shape racial-sexual hierarchies of worthiness and desirability online? And finally, 3) What sexual politics, if any, do Black women exotic dancers use on social networking sites to negotiate controlling images? To answer these questions, I use a mixed methods approach to examine the affordances of digital technology for Black women sex workers. First, I used GIS mapping software to visualize the locations of where Black women exotic dancers based in the Memphis, Atlanta, and D.C. metropolitan areas perform. Second, I distributed an online survey among this group of women to create an exploratory profile. Finally, I conducted a content analysis to explore the erotic labor of Black women sex workers as a form of racial-sexual and gendered embodiment and performance of sexuality. My findings indicate Black women exotic dancers use social networking sites (SNS) and the mobile internet to leverage racialized erotic capital into various entrepreneurial pursuits and forms of self-eroticism beyond exotic dance. Nevertheless, controlling images of Black women’s sexuality popular within the discourse of contemporary rap music shape expectations around their erotic labor. As a result, the innovation of social networking sites on the mobile internet has done little to reshape the racially and economically marginalized landscape of strip clubs wherein Black women exotic dancers perform.

Race, Politics, and Structural Diversity: How Hate Crimes, Discrimination, White Supremacy, and Art Shape Social Identities During College

Abstract: This dissertation offers a longitudinal in-depth view into how students respond to a structurally diverse campus, a series of hate crimes and incidents of racial discrimination and bias, and a distinct set of creative engagement diversity activities. With a focus on racial and political identity differences, I employ social identity theory and symbolic interactionism to look at how these three aspects shape their social identities, their opinions of diverse others, and their opinions of diversity in general during their undergraduate career. To explore this, I engage members of the 2015 incoming freshman class and then analyze results from three data sources administered to them: a four-year online survey (n=170), a paper questionnaire (n=537), and two sets of in-depth interviews (n=62). My findings run counter to those of Pettigrew with and Tropp and others (2015, 2011, 2000, 2006): for this cohort intergroup contact does not reduce prejudice. Students in this study are on the leading end of Generation Z, which looks to be the most accepting of diverse others generation to date. Although this cohort and this campus satisfy Allport’s (1954) conditions for prejudice reduction, this does not occur based on my data. Further, a series of distinct creative engagement diversity training activities has no long-term positive effect on their opinions of diversity and diverse others. Diversity and inclusion endeavors without multifaceted, dedicated efforts do not necessarily lead to positive changes in students' attitudes, identities, behaviors, and experiences. This research holds potential to contribute to the canon of social psychology and diversity training practices.

Racial Differences in Protections Against Pregnancy: Competing Goals and Decisions

Abstract: Racial disparities in unintended pregnancy are largely related to differences in contraceptive practices. Black women are less likely to use an effective contraceptive and more likely to discontinue a method compared to their White counterparts. More concerning is that the Black-White gap in these protections against unintended pregnancy may have widened over time. Reasons for these racial disparities and the pathways to contraceptive practices that leave at-risk women vulnerable to unintended pregnancy are unexplained This project addresses some of the existing gaps in the literature by using a mixed-methods approach to 1) investigate the various factors contributing to Black-White differences in contraceptive practices over time and 2) explore the contraceptive decision-making of women at high risk of unintended pregnancy. Using multinomial logistic regression and a Fairlie decomposition on data from the National Survey of Family Growth 1988 and 2011-2015 survey cycles, I analyze contraceptive use and effective method choice of young adult women. Results reveal that the Black-White gap in contraceptive practices in 2011-2015 are 2-3 times larger than in 1988. Very few factors were statistically significant at explaining the 13% Black-White difference in 2011-2015. Interviews with Black women in Philadelphia were used to improve our understanding of contraceptive practices that are less effective at protecting against pregnancy. Findings highlight criteria for method selection, concern for STDs, and partner trust as key factors guiding contraceptive practices.

Dark Mirror: Heterotopia, Utopia, and the Extermination Camps of Operation Reinhard

Abstract: In Michel Foucault's body of work, the notion of heterotopia stands out as both particularly intriguing and particularly underdeveloped. Introduced in the introduction of The Order of Things (first published 1966) and further described in the lecture “Of Other Spaces” (1967), heterotopia has been used by scholars in a variety of fields, from social theory to architecture. Of special interest is the way Foucault describes the relationship between heterotopia and utopia, one defined by its liminal nature and the other by its unreality. This work seeks to shed new light on that relationship, by focusing on heterotopias as threshold spaces between the real social world and the perfected but unreal world to come. I approach the concept of utopia with an eye toward its eliminationist implications, and use three extermination camps established as part of the Nazi regime’s Operation Reinhard as cases through which to explore significant features of a heterotopia, how those features manifest in these cases, and what connects these spaces to the world that can be glimpsed in the mirror they create. Although I primarily use historical cases as a way to expand existing theory, I aim to build upon that expansion by pointing the way toward the development of new theoretical tools for historical-comparative analysis of spaces of both extermination and detention. Finally, I suggest that work might be done focusing on embodied identities as themselves forms of heterotopia, which introduces possibilities for additional analysis of the roles of bodies and identity in cases of certain kinds of mass violence and death.

Adolescents' Attitudes Toward the Economic and Societal Responsibilities of Government in 24 Countries

Abstract: Adolescents’ attitudes toward government responsibilities for economic and societal well-being are examined in 24 countries grouped within welfare regime types. Adolescents’ own sense of civic responsibility to participate in community service is also investigated. This study uses data from the IEA Civic Education Study (1999) in combination with macroeconomic indicator data employing descriptive statistics, multiple regression, and other techniques to compare results between regimes and countries. The adolescents surveyed in 1999 are now adult members of a millennial generation that is rising in political influence.

Adolescents demonstrate well-established attitudes that are consistent with those of adults in certain welfare regime contexts. Attitudes toward economy-related government responsibilities are in the expected directions for regimes with a legacy of communism, which are above the international mean, as well as in the liberal regime, which is below the international mean. Adolescents in the United States (a liberal regime ideal-type country) hold the least favorable attitudes toward government-provided economic support. In addition, adolescents’ expectations of community participation are higher in the liberal and Southern Europe regimes.

Female students are more likely to believe in government provision for economic needs in liberal, Southern Europe, and post-communist Central Europe regimes. Notably, no significant gender differences are found in the social democratic regime, where women face fewer social protection risks. Female students are also much more likely than males to anticipate future volunteer community participation across regimes. Contrary to expectations, variables measuring social class have few significant or meaningful associations.

Volunteering has small negative effects with belief in government-provided economic support in most regimes, and small to moderate positive effects with adolescents’ anticipated community engagement in all regimes. In addition, studying community problems has small positive effects with support for economy-related government responsibilities in several regimes (including liberal) and small to moderate positive effects in all regimes for anticipated community engagement. Finally, collective student efficacy and support for ethnic minority group opportunities have positive associations with beliefs that both governments and individuals are responsible for economic and societal needs.

Multicultural Politics and National Boundary Making in Korea: Mapping the Intersectional Dimensions of Nation, Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in State Policy and Practice

Abstract: This dissertation examines the conception and implementation of state multicultural policy to analyze how migrants are received and incorporated within South Korea, a newly emergent migrant receiving country in Asia. To this end, I conducted ethnographic research at two Centers established to enact governmental multicultural policy, focusing on the separate accounts and experiences of ground-level policy practitioners (Koreans) and targeted recipients (migrants) in relation to the policy implementation and its ‘real world’ effects. The results show the varied and conflicting perspectives of those involved, and how they are informed by the intersecting social constructs of nation, ethnicity, gender, family, and class. These intersectional workings and effects also contribute to the unequal social relations between Koreans and migrants, especially in shaping a particular national form of ‘racism’ against migrants, and helping to maintain the previously unchallenged formation of national identity in Korea. Three thematically arranged analysis chapters discuss specifically how these social processes serve to form and naturalize social hierarchies and powers in Korea, with each chapter examining a specific intersectional circumstance: The intersection of gender inequality and nationalism; the intersection of class and nation(ality); and, the emphasis of joint Korean nationality and ethnicity in the multicultural policy. Each chapter illustrates the predominance of nationalism, as the critical mechanism and rationale behind Korea’s contested multicultural politics, and the central axis to connect with other dimensions of power including gender, class, and ethnicity. The combined research outcomes reveal the complex ways in which the inter-group relations and hierarchies are organized, through the state policy, bureaucratic practice and individual agency.

Growing up in Rural Malawi: Gendered Aspirations, Time Use, and Socialization

Abstract: My dissertation focuses on three understudied dimensions of challenges among youth in Malawi, and is structured as three separate papers. The first is, the relationship between aspired and actual timing of transitions out of school, and the extent of the gender gap in this relationship. The second dimension is gender disparity in acquired skills and learning outcomes in primary school, and how demands for labor at the household level help explain differences in dropout and student performance on Math and Chichewa tests. The third dimension focuses on girls’ relationship power, and the gender socialization experiences at school and individual characteristics that are correlated with it. Using the Malawi Schooling and Adolescent Study (MSAS), I find that 1) a higher desired age for marriage is associated with a lower likelihood of school dropout, and marriage related school dropout, with this association significant mainly among girls, 2) a high work burden is associated with a greater likelihood of school dropout in the subsequent year, but is not associated with performance on Math and Chichewa reading comprehension tests, and there is no significant gender difference in these relationships, 3) attitudes form an important dimension of the measurement of girls’ relationship power, and earlier experiences of physical violence in school, and individual characteristics including self-esteem and attitudes against spousal violent predict power in relationships in later adolescence and early adulthood. Together, the three papers in this dissertation provide critical insights into individual mechanisms that allow adolescents to stay in school longer, structural constraints like household labor allocation that limit their educational attainment, and the contribution of early socialization experiences to girls’ power in later relationships.

Falling in Love, or Falling in Line? Trump, Clinton, and Mobilization in the 2016 Election in Florida

Abstract: The 2016 presidential election was a contentious period that exposed some of America’s deepest, most acrimonious divides. In few places was the contest more hard-fought than in Florida, a perennial swing state whose voters often play a decisive role in who occupies the White House. Previous scholarship explores questions of who becomes involved in social movements and why, but the literature is inconclusive as to whether individuals with opposing political views will likewise express different motivations for mobilizing in campaigns. Other scholars have also theorized the potential differences in strategy employed by movements with divergent aims; this body of work is also inconclusive. In a novel treatment, this project examines candidates’ campaigns as social movement organizations (SMOs), providing empirical insight (via in-depth, semi-structured interviews with campaign volunteers and staff) into the question of whether and how individuals and movements differ in motivation and strategy, as they do in beliefs. The results indicate that, while their political preferences are dramatically different, campaign volunteers are quite similar in their reasons for becoming involved, their propensity for idealism or pragmatism, and their animosity toward the other side. By contrast, the two major parties’ campaigns differed in strategy to a dramatic degree, employing different tactics, running campaign events differently, and approaching persuasion in distinct ways. To add context to the interview findings, the project also uses survey and observation data from campaign rallies to illustrate differences in the two candidates’ bases of support and their campaigns’ workings.

Rural Migrant Workers’ Agency in Capitalist Production in China

Abstract: China’s recent economic success largely depends on making more than 100 million rural migrants work in the “world’s factory”. This dissertation investigates why rural migrants work in factories under unappealing conditions from their subjective perspectives. While the literature emphasizes state repression and factory management control, this dissertation proposes that rural migrant workers approach factory work through complicated agency, with agency being defined as the ideas, thoughts, considerations, perceptions, and plans that rural migrant workers bring to factory work. Based on ten months of ethnography in two small manufacturing factories in East China that hired approximately 160 rural migrant workers, this dissertation discusses how the rural migrant workers participated in factory production with thoughts and values that had developed from various sources in their general social lives. The findings have implications for studying and theorizing capital-labor relations in particular and power relations involving domination and exploitation in general.

Power and Status in Judging and Punishing Immorality

Abstract: This research offers a framework that explains how observers respond to moral violations when considering the amount of power and status held by violators. It follows the group processes literature on the characteristics of power and status. A proposed theory describes that prior to witnessing moral violations, observers develop moral expectations about potential violators on the basis of the levels of power and status attributed to the violators. When the moral violations occur, the moral expectations about the violators, as well as the resources available to the violators, in turn, affect the judgment and punishment decisions of the observers toward the violators. An online vignette study and a laboratory experiment test my predictions based on the proposed theory by varying the relative levels of perceived power and status between evaluation targets (i.e., violators) and evaluators (i.e., observers).

Beyond Honorary Whiteness: Ideologies of Belonging and Korean Adoptee Identities

Abstract: Using Asian Critical Race Theory as a framework, this dissertation examines how Korean adoption contributed to constructions of race – racial meanings and a racial order – and the effects on Korean adoptees’ identity development. This dissertation asks the following questions: What role has Korean adoption played in the U.S. racial formation? What role do various levels of social structure (e.g., media, interpersonal interactions) play in adoptees’ understanding of their belonging, both as it relates to the U.S. and Korea, and how do adoptees resolve any competing messages about their social and national citizenship? And, how do Korean adoptees make-meaning of their adoptee identity? In order to answer these questions, I draw upon three original data sources: 18 months of participant observation, an online survey (N=107), and in-depth interviews (N=37) with Korean adoptee adults.

Coming Home as "Wounded Warriors": Identity, Stigma, and Status among Post-9/11 Wounded Veterans

Abstract: Increased public attention on wounded and injured veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has popularized the term "wounded warrior.” This defining phrase is used as both a colloquial term and an official status. This dissertation traces the symbolic meaning of “wounded warrior” in the lives of post-9/11 wounded veterans. Specifically, I examine how this socially constructed status is defined, its impact on the community of wounded veterans, and how it has come to shape the everyday experiences of post-9/11 wounded veterans. I rely on two forms of qualitative data, content analysis and in-depth interviews, to capture public discourse and personal experiences of being a “wounded warrior.” In the content analysis I use news media coverage from 2001 to 2013 to analyze the broader construction of wounded veterans as “wounded warriors.” Secondly, I conducted in-depth interviews with 39 wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to examine how veterans see themselves and their injuries and how they craft their personal and social identity within the “wounded warrior” framework. In both sets of data I attend to the role of visibility, whether a veteran’s injuries are readily seen, as a significant factor affecting both the portrayal and experience of veteran’s status as a “wounded warrior.” Post-9/11 wounded veterans are a socially valued group, benefiting from civilians who want to “support the troops” after the hostile homecoming of Vietnam veterans. “Wounded warrior” is a status connected to material benefits, social esteem, and symbolic capital, but the definition of who qualifies shifts and changes depending on the context. Combat wounded veterans use social and symbolic boundaries to establish themselves as the real “wounded warriors.” Wounded veterans employ social closure, a strategy of social stratification, for distinction using expectations and community norms to position themselves as the most worthy “wounded warriors”, protecting the meaning of their service and sacrifice. The visibility of a veteran’s injuries conditions their experience as a “wounded warrior”, impacting their relationship to the wounded veteran community, the experience of stigma, and their own identity. Overall, I find that post-9/11 wounded veterans actively shape and are shaped by their status as “wounded warriors.”

Multiple Dimensions of Race and the Mental Health of Latinos From Afro-Latin America

Abstract: Building on past scholarship on the processes of racialization of Latinos, this dissertation addresses the role of both internal and external factors in influencing racial classification and the implications of race on the mental health outcomes of Latinos of Afro-Latin American origin. Latinos of this population have unique experiences with racial/ethnic boundaries and racialization, as many do not fit the dominant image of latinidad across the United States. This dissertation asks the following questions: How does the social context of metropolitan areas impact racial self-classification practices of Latinos? How do physical and external factors – such as skin tone, race of partners and observers – impact how Latinos are racially ascribed or self-classify? What are the mental health implications of the lived experience of race for Latinos? I draw upon the 5-year 2012-2016 American Community Survey (ACS) data and Waves 3 and 4 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) data to address these questions.

Inequality and the Household Economy

Abstract: Intrahousehold finances offer a window into the crossroads between the market domain’s emphasis on self-reliance and the family domain’s emphasis on interdependence. Modern couples confront tensions between ideals of mutual family interests and values of individualism, a departure from fitting themselves into culturally expected family arrangements of the past. How these social changes impact progress towards gender equality is not well understood. The dissertation aims are to: (1) identify mechanisms associated with different types of money arrangements in families, and (2) examine the association between financial arrangements and gender inequality in families. To meet these aims, I used data from two sources. First, I used multinomial modeling of 2012 International Social Survey Programme data to show cohabiting couples in countries with greater gender equality partially integrated their money instead of keeping it separate. Married couples pooled money regardless of country-level gender equality. Findings suggest that different cultural logics operate in married and cohabiting partnerships across gendered contexts, rather than cohabitation functioning as a weaker form of marriage. Second, I devised a novel survey experiment to collect the first nationally representative sample of U.S. adults’ attitudes about income sharing in families. Results challenge the notion that marriage distinctively encourages support for financial integration in families. Findings also revealed that respondents believed higher-earning partners ought to hold back a greater absolute value of their earnings for personal use, allowing inequality in labor market rewards to perpetuate unequal conditions within families. I also used this data to disentangle the mechanisms associated with perceptions of decision-making authority. Findings indicated higher relative-earners within families were not regarded as entitled to the final word in decisions. Whether respondents considered earnings individually or community owned did not explain the lack of association between relative earnings and decision-making clout. Instead, findings showed a significant association between the fictional decider’s gender and respondents’ perceptions of fairness. Specifically, when women were presented as the decider over monetary family choices, unilateral decision making about monetary items was viewed more favorably. Collectively, these findings suggest gender socialization theories are essential to explaining persistent gender inequality in families.

In the Name of Culture: The Politics of Celebration in the Multicultural Civil Sphere

Abstract: A common barrier to the civic integration of immigrant and minority groups is the suite of symbolic classifications that structure everyday relations in diverse societies and set standards for inclusion and exclusion in shared public spaces. Although the regulatory norms governing the civil sphere are increasingly understood to be constituent elements of social power, they are not frequently seen as targets of collective action. As they are held in private attitudes and expressed spontaneously in everyday conduct, these forms of symbolic power do not easily lend themselves to political solutions. What form might a contestation of symbolic exclusion take?

This dissertation examines the strategy of celebratory civics pursued through an annual series of 23 free public cultural festivals organized throughout the year by ethnic community organizations in partnership with the city of Seattle. Participating groups describe the dominant civil sphere as a place where opportunities for public deliberation about ethnic minority issues are scarce and ineffective, while confrontational protests antagonize potential allies and produce negative associations with minority cultural groups. They are skeptical that traditional civic action targeting policymakers is adequate to addressing discriminatory practices where they are most intimately felt, in the everyday conduct of social life in diverse societies. Through positive emotional appeals directed towards unfamiliar audiences unlikely to engage with them in everyday life, festivals aim to establish “common ground” on which to displace ethnic and racial stereotypes and make viable alternative ways of affirming civic belonging.

Based on interviews with ethnic community organizations, their municipal sponsors, and festival visitors, surveys demonstrating the audience profile and expectations for the event, and a year of ethnographic observation at planning meetings and public festivals, this dissertation explores the promise and limitations of a form of civic engagement that takes up positive emotions as both a tactic and the target of its efforts. I demonstrate that this style of collective action seeks to supply members of the dominant culture with the familiarity required not to see ethnic identity as a threat or a curiosity, such that ethnic minorities can feel comfortable conducting themselves in public spaces on other days of the year. This desire defines a multicultural civil sphere that cannot be secured through rights alone, but only through the erasure of symbolic boundaries preventing the viability of diverse cultural practices and different ways of asserting belonging in public space.

Disproportionality, Discourse, and the Debate over Coal-Fired Power

Abstract: Following Freudenburg’s framework of the “double diversion,” this dissertation aims to understand environmental inequality as the product of two interrelated processes: (1) inequality in the generation of environmental harm, or “disproportionality,” and (2) inequality in the ability to shape discussions about environmental harm through discourse, or “privileged accounts.” I employ a mixed-methods approach in order to assess both disproportionality and discursive power in the debate over coal-fired power in the United States. First, I analyze emissions data at the facility and parent company levels to assess whether a minority of producers is disproportionately responsible for the majority of CO2 generated in the sector. Results indicate that inequality in the generation of emissions is more extreme at the parent company level than at the facility level, with only three companies responsible for the worst 25% of emissions in 2015. Second, I analyze qualitative data from in-depth interviews (n=209) with policy elites at the federal level and in the state of Ohio to identify the dominant narratives and discourse coalitions that shaped the debate over coal-fired power surrounding the 2016 election. I identify the “legitimating discourses” used in support of coal-fired power, then compare these “privileged accounts” to anti-coal counterframes. Discourse analysis findings illustrate how pro-coal interests shifted their discursive strategies to adapt to changing policy contexts, as well as the shortcomings of the anti-coal narratives that sought to shift the discourse toward environmental interests. Finally, to understand the connections between patterns of disproportionality, I explore how the “extreme emitters” identified in quantitative analysis appear within interview data. Together, these analyses illustrate the influence of privileged accounts over the debate, definition, and response to persistent environmental problems.

Re-Inscribing Subculture: Commodification and Boundary Work in American Traditional Tattooing

Abstract: This auto-ethnographic research explores the debate surrounding the analytical utility of the concept of subculture. Utilizing interview data collected from 58 tattoo artists and collectors, I address fundamental concerns regarding the concept, examine its historical development, and defend a refined notion of subculture as coined by Hodkinson (2002) in his study of Goth. Utilizing the four characteristics of subcultural “substance”, I showcase how American traditional tattooing is the premier example of this concept.

In exploring this debate, I examine the role of the subcultural commodification process in the construction of new, field-dependent identities such as the tribal entrepreneur Goulding and Saren (2007) outline in their study of Goth. Using a general theory of subcultural commodification, I propose a new figure emergent from this process, that of the “traditionalist”, an inward-looking role adopted by many who resist the commodification process. The traditionalist seeks to defend their field-dependent identities as subculturalists at the core of these groupings. Utilizing the notion of tradition, these individuals construct new forms of subcultural capital (Thornton 1996) that position themselves outside of and away from the mainstream.

In a nod to Durkheim (1912), I discuss how the sacred and the profane are used to label insiders and outsiders through the use of aesthetic judgments. This role positioning process is essential for the preservation of subculture at the level of lived experience. My research shows how traditionalists employ boundary work (Lamont and Molnar 2002) in their defense of their subcultural identities. They strategically deploy the symbolic boundaries of the sacred and the profane in order to police the social boundaries of this community.

Intersecting Inequalities in the Paid Care Work Sector Under Changing Social and Economic Contexts

Abstract: This dissertation focuses on the expanding paid care work sector as a key terrain for examining labor market inequalities in the United States and China, with three papers attending to different aspects of social stratification. In the U.S., men’s presence in care work jobs remains rare despite the fast job growth in education and health care and the decline in traditionally male-dominated manufacturing sectors. Despite growing public interest, little is known about the reasons and pathways of men’s transition into care work jobs. The popular discourse attributes men’s reluctance to a matter of gender identity, whereas scholars adopting a structural approach argue that men have little incentive to enter care work jobs mainly because those jobs are underpaid. The first paper examines how well the structural and cultural approaches, respectively, explain why men enter care work jobs or not. Moreover, care work jobs have been increasingly polarized in terms of pay and job security since the 1970s, and the polarizing pattern of care work job growth is characterized by racial disparity. Is such pattern driven by racial disparity in education and labor market experience, and/or by racial discrimination? The second paper addresses this question by examining the changing determinants of entering into low-paying versus middle-to-high-paying care work jobs between two cohorts of young men who joined the workforce under different labor market conditions. Findings suggest a persisting logic of a racialized “labor queue” underlying the changing patterns of racial inequality. In the context of urban China, the transformation from a centrally planned socialist economy to a profit-oriented market economy has ended welfare-based, life-long employment in the cities, and fundamentally changed the social organization of care. The third paper examines how care workers fared in terms of earnings relative to non-care workers since the early 2000s and the factors contributing to the earnings disadvantages of care workers. Taken together, this dissertation aims to provide a better understanding of intersecting inequalities by gender, race, and class in the paid care work sector under changing social and economic contexts.

The International Political Economy of Fascism

Abstract: This dissertation focuses on the intersection between security, governance, and the international economic system in the interwar period - constructing an analytic narrative to explain why so many states adopted the policy prescriptions of the radical right, which states did so, and what form these prescriptions took. While many new authoritarian states were established in the 1920s - and Fascist Italy was not the only one where radical right activists played a major role in regime consolidation - the ends pursued by these states were largely traditional. In the wake of the Great Depression, however, the difficulties in simultaneously attaining full employment, freedom of labor, and profitability forced capitalist states to adopt active macroeconomic policies - and, in turn, either move left, assigning labor a significant role in governance, or right, repressing organized labor. The fascist and “para-fascist” regimes which would be established in the 1930s would represent a renegotiation - whether brokered from within democratic or extra-democratic politics - between these conservative elites and fascist activists. Although the balance between the two would differ from place to place - from especially strong movement activists in Germany to especially strong traditional elites in Japan or Balkan royal dictatorships - all of these new compacts represented a willingness of the conservative elites to turn their back on economic and geopolitical liberalism forever. Which path elites chose to take, I argue, depended upon their positionality in the world economy. High-mobility fractions of capital were concentrated in the leading states, could discipline governments through exit, and benefited from a worldwide open market economy. Low-mobility fractions of capital, by contrast, especially those attached to semiperipheral states, needed to discipline governments through monopolies on voice. Further, relatively richer economies at the core of the world-system were in a better position to compromise with labor. This process resulted in a polarization within countries and in turn a polarization among countries - in favor of a relatively more liberal and international capitalism as against a relatively more nationalist and state-monopoly variant of capitalism.

The Sociological Study of Expert Knowledge Work: Current Trends and Changes in the Study of the Professions, Professionalization, and Professionalism

Abstract: This dissertation is a collection of three papers, separate but related investigations in the sociological study of expert knowledge. Drawing on the theoretical perspectives developed in the study of the professions, this work continues the current trend of applying the revised concepts to occupational groups that more accurately reflect contemporary economic arrangements. To contribute to the most recent trends in the study of expert knowledge, this dissertation endeavors to integrate the concepts of professionalism and professionalization to the study of expert knowledge—specifically, a group’s ability to control an area of labor and define its practice.

The first case study builds on previous research pertaining to professionalization to argue control over consumers is integral to understanding how expert knowledge is leveraged and cordoned off from competition. Using a qualitative approach to the study of tattoo artists and their interactions with clientele and the public, the findings provide support for recognizing informal and formal means of control over consumers, in addition to controls over standards of practice and membership.

The second case study investigates the professionalization of volunteer work. This study aims to explicate the ways in which volunteer work may operate and be understood in the same ways as paid occupational groups. Employing survey and in-depth interview data to evaluate the effects of volunteers’ training, the study reveals training programs for volunteer work can instill a sense legitimacy in volunteers and make them more effective in their work, however, like other occupational groups, to attain social closure they would also need a strong, active network of members and a coordinated means of influencing their public image.

The last case study investigates how professionalism is maintained or diminished in the wake of change spurred by external bureaucratic arrangements. Taking faculty members of higher education as the focus of this study, situating them in the context of expanding enrollments and online course instruction, this work demonstrates how professionalism is exercised through defining problems in terms of their expertise. In that way, engagement with problems posed by external pressures may foster disciplinary identity and new boundaries of professional practice.

Foreign Versus u.s.-Born Black Adult Obesity and Depression: An Analysis of Enduring Patterns and Mechanisms

Abstract: Foreign-born Blacks have better health outcomes than U.S.-born Blacks. The extent to which the health status of foreign-born Blacks change with increased exposure to the U.S. socio-cultural environment is less known than for other immigrant groups. Two prominent theories used to understand foreign and U.S.-born health disparities are the immigrant health paradox theory and immigrant health assimilation theory.

The literature is conclusive that foreign-born Blacks have better health outcomes than U.S.-born Blacks, but this dissertation questions the appropriateness of framing this pattern as an immigrant health paradox due to the better socioeconomic status (SES) of foreign-born Blacks, relative to U.S.-born Blacks in general. The literature has been inconclusive on the extent to which immigrant health assimilation describes the health trajectories of foreign-born Blacks with increased duration of residence of the first generation in the U.S. or in comparing the first generation to subsequent generations. This dissertation interrogates the utility of immigrant health assimilation theory to describe the health trajectories of Black immigrants. Specifically, the dissertation focuses on the health outcomes of body mass index (BMI), obesity, depressive symptoms and depressive disorder. The sample of the dissertation includes foreign and U.S.-born Blacks generally, first generation foreign-born Afro Caribbeans, second and third generation U.S.-born Afro Caribbeans and U.S.-born African Americans.

Collectively the three papers of this dissertation confirm a healthy immigrant effect for the health outcomes studied, when comparing the foreign-born to U.S.-born Blacks generally or African Americans specifically. In these comparisons first generation foreign-born Blacks have better socioeconomic status than the U.S.-born or African Americans. There is an immigrant health paradox for the health outcomes studied when comparing foreign born Afro Caribbeans to U.S.-born Afro Caribbeans, where U.S.-born Afro Caribbeans have better SES than the foreign-born.

The dissertation does not find support for immigrant health assimilation. For BMI and obesity, the foreign-born Black trajectories compared to U.S.-born Blacks indicates patterns of no convergence or divergence. Intergenerationally, while first generation foreign-born Afro Caribbeans had lower obesity rates than second and third generation U.S.-born Afro Caribbeans, U.S.-born Afro Caribbeans had higher rates of obesity than African Americans. A similar intergenerational pattern was found for depressive disorder. Immigrant health assimilation theory predicts convergence of health outcomes between U.S.-born Afro Caribbeans and African Americans, not worse outcomes.

The dissertation uncovers two mechanisms that help to explain the observed health trajectories of foreign-born Blacks. The lower first generation foreign-born Afro Caribbean obesity rates compared to second and third generation U.S.-born Afro Caribbeans is explained by differential rates of return on characteristics: the same characteristics provide more obesity protection for the foreign-born than the U.S.-born. Also perceived discrimination was informative in explaining variations in depression. U.S.-born Blacks reported higher levels of perceived discrimination than the foreign-born and foreign and U.S.-born Black women experienced higher depressive symptoms with increased perceived discrimination than men.

I Am But I Do Not See: Color-Blind Racial Ideology in College Millennials

Abstract: Research suggests that in the midst of pervasive claims of a post-racial society, it is mostly whites who ascribe to color-blind ideology, while people of color still point to the significance of race. However, we know relatively little about the views of young adults, who have largely come of age during the time of the U.S.’ first black-identifying president. Building upon research done by Bonilla-Silva (2003), and drawing upon from literature on racial ideology and racial identity, my research primarily addresses the following question: In what ways do the racial identities of Millennials impact their utilization or rejection of a color-blind racial ideology?

To answer my research question, I conducted a study involving 70 racially diverse college students from four schools in the Washington, D.C. area. Students kept weekly journals about race in their lives for a period of time between 3-12 weeks (n = 65), and I interviewed about half individually following the journaling period (n = 35), with questions focusing on racial identity and racial attitudes.

My findings suggest that white college Millennials still utilize the frames and styles of color-blind racism in largely the same ways as the individuals in Bonilla-Silva’s work. Millennials of color use color-blind racism, but typically in more nuanced and even contradictory ways. Millennials of color across all races use color-blindness at similar rates, although some differences emerged across ethnicity. Additional emergent themes include that whites often demonstrate a disconnect between their beliefs about living a diverse life and their actual lives, experience white guilt, and are impacted in complex ways by colorblindness. People of color live more diverse lives than their white peers, believe that race and discrimination are still significant factors in their lives, and may use colorblindness as a coping mechanism.

My research brings people of color into conversations about colorblindness in ways that have not been done before. Further, it has implications for understanding racial ideology within the emerging tri-racial system in the U.S., suggesting that the intersection of racial identity and racial ideology within this emerging system may be just as complex as identification itself in the system.

Behavioral Problems of Children in l.a: Extended Family, Neighborhood, and Nativity

Abstract: This dissertation consists of three papers that examine the association between family living arrangements and internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems in children. With increasing immigration and growing heterogeneity in family forms, extended family members are of increasing importance in children’s lives. However, knowledge about extended family living arrangements is lacking. The first paper examines the association between the presence of co-resident extended kin and children’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Children in the sample were found to be disadvantaged in extended households, especially with regard to internalizing behaviors. This association was found mostly among married-parent extended households. Further, this pattern emerged more clearly among children of documented immigrants, compared to those with native-born parents and those whose parents were undocumented immigrants. These findings suggest a need to revisit previous theories on extended family living arrangements. The second paper examines what kinds of household extension are associated with child behavioral problems. I specify the types of household extension by their relation to the householder—vertical, horizontal, and non-kin. Results from the cross-sectional sample indicate that horizontal extension is associated with higher internalizing behavior problems in children. However, the results from fixed effects models suggest that this pattern may be due to selection effects. Fixed effects estimations show that children moving into vertically extended household increase externalizing behaviors or that children moving out of a vertically extended household decrease externalizing behaviors. I discuss what implications this type of transition represents. The third paper examines the interaction between extended family household structure and neighborhood characteristics on children’s behavioral functioning. Findings suggest that the co-residence with extended kin is associated with both higher internalizing and externalizing behaviors for children. Although the health disadvantage of living with extended kin seems to be independent of the neighborhood income and racial minority concentration levels, extended kin moderate the associations with neighborhood structure. The advantage of living in higher-income neighborhood strengthens for extended families, reducing internalizing behavioral problems in children. Minority concentrated neighborhood functions as an advantage for extended families, decreasing externalizing behavioral problems. I conclude with discussion of future research and policy implications.

Effects of Threats to Groups on Ingroup-Prosocial Behaviors and Orientations

Abstract: This research investigates how threats to people’s ingroups promote ways of thinking and behaving that benefit these groups (ingroup prosociality). Drawing on terror management theory and other relevant literature, I propose that threats promote ingroup prosociality, and that threats play an important role in explaining why members of collectivistic societies (e.g., Eastern) tend to exhibit more ingroup prosociality than members of individualistic societies (e.g., Western). Three experimental studies isolated effects of threats on outcomes I propose reflect ingroup prosociality: holistic versus analytic types of cognitive and social orientations (Study 1), upholding status orders in groups (Study 2), and promoting the legitimacy of power in groups (Study 3). To experimentally manipulate threat, participants wrote about either a threatening or non-threatening situation. In the group studies (2 and 3), the threat situation was also part of the task itself. Study 1 provides some support for increased ingroup prosociality when threatened, and some evidence for differences by culture and type of threat. Though results generally suggest that Americans respond more ingroup prosocially than Indians, they do not provide compelling evidence of consistent cross-cultural patterns as predicted. Study 2 provides only minimal support for threat increasing adherence to status orders. Study 3 provides a great deal of support for threat increasing promotion of the legitimacy of power structures, and results suggest especially strong responses among high-status participants with low-status partners. For each study, I also address some results in the opposite direction predicted. Taken together, the results only somewhat support my proposed ingroup prosociality worldview theory. Alternatively, patterns in results suggest that threatened ingroup members may be motivated to preserve their self-esteem and reduce their anxiety. Though this self-serving explanation is consistent with terror management theory, it is not consistent with the ingroup prosociality worldview initially proposed. Overall, the results provide evidence that threat (1) affects both behaviors and orientations (many proposed to reflect ingroup prosociality), which warrant consideration together as defensive responses to threats, and (2) increases promoting the legitimacy of power based on status in some situations. I discuss limitations, implications for theory and potential leadership interventions, and directions for future work.

Health Associations with Interracial and Inter-ethnic Marital, Cohabiting, and Dating Relationships in the United States

Abstract: Research consistently finds that health is stratified by race, ethnicity, and gender, and that romantic relationships, particularly marriage, are protective of health. Despite increasing prevalence of interracial and inter-ethnic relationships, few studies have investigated the association between partnership exogamy and health. In this dissertation, I examine whether and how heterosexual exogamy is associated with self-rated health, being overweight and obese, and depression. I additionally examine evidence for health selection into exogamous versus endogamous relationships and the evidence for health change over time in relationships. First, I use data from four panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, representing the adult population aged 18-59 in the US, to investigate partnership exogamy and self-rated health among Whites and nonwhites. I find that having a White partner is associated with better self-rated health for nonwhites, and that having a nonwhite partner is associated with worse health for White women. I find evidence that people in better health select into partnerships with Whites, and that having a White partner is associated with better self-rated health over time. Second, I use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, representing young adults who came of age in the 1990s, to look at associations of partner race and ethnicity with being overweight and obese, and with depression. I find that overweight and obese White women select into new relationships with Black men, and also that having a Black partner is associated with weight gain over time for White women. Finally, I find that White young men and women who are more depressed are more likely to partner with nonwhite partners, and this effect is particularly strong for White women who have Black dating partners. I find evidence for depression increase over time among White women with Black partners, though the findings suggest a weaker causal impact of interracial relationships on depression than suggested by prior studies. To interpret the results throughout, I draw on gendered theories of interracial relationship formation including status exchange theory, and gendered theories of relationships and health that focus on stress and social status.

Factors in the Reporting of Unethical Conduct: The Importance of Trust in Leaders

Abstract: My research investigates factors related to the reporting of unethical conduct. While accounting for known individual, organizational and situational correlates, I focus particularly on leaders and especially on trust in leaders as whistle-blowing research to date has neglected the well-developed sociological literature of trust. Leveraging the benefits of multiple methods, I analyze recent secondary data on federal civilian employees, collect and analyze interview data at four civilian and military sites, and conduct a factorial vignette study to test factors and themes identified in the first two sections of my research.

My secondary data analyses support previous whistle-blowing research in relating supervisor status, greater importance placed on anonymity, greater organizational support for anonymous reporting, greater organizational protection for whistle-blowers and greater severity of observed misconduct to increased reporting. Contrary to what previous literature theorizes, I find more observed leader misconduct and in-group location of misconduct relate to increased reporting. With the exception of an expressed in-group preference, my qualitative analyses reinforce these findings and identify a peer-oriented culture and self-preservation as reasons why unethical conduct may go unreported. My interview data also reveal that participants prefer to report unethical conduct to a trusted leader, although the severity of such misconduct may moderate this preference.

My vignette analyses find greater trust in leaders is related to increased reporting only for non-supervisors, highlighting the additional importance trust plays for lower-status individuals. Also, good behavior by the leader accepting a report is related to increased reporting for all participants. My vignette data bolster previous findings, including relating a lesser orientation towards Machiavellianism to increased reporting, and find the severity of observed misconduct has the largest relative effect on the reporting outcome. Counter to my prediction, vignette participants are less likely to report unethical conduct perpetrated by a supervisor supporting the notion that fear of retaliation may factor into the reporting decision. By highlighting obstacles to reporting, I assist leaders in addressing such barriers possibly contributing to the identification and correction of unethical conduct. I conclude with implications for federal employees and all leaders seeking to increase the reporting of unethical conduct in their organizations.

‘Don’t Tell Me You’re One of Those!’ a Qualitative Portrait of Black Atheists

Abstract: Black Atheists are one of the least studied and understood populations in American society. Drawing on literature from the sociology of religion, social psychology, and critical race theory, my research focuses on the following questions: Is there a meaningful ‘Black Atheist’ identity? And if there is, how do people who claim a Black Atheist identity conceive of it? How does this identity relate to the way in which they live their lives?

To explore these questions, this project aims to understand what it means to be a Black Atheist in America through in-depth open-ended qualitative interviews with 46 Black Atheists in the Washington DC/Baltimore area. This includes but is not limited to investigating and understanding Black Atheist identities, how Black Atheists conceive of themselves, how they perceive, internalize, and manage stigma, how they view in-group belonging, and how they understand their experiences as Atheists to be racialized. This project addresses the paucity of information on Black Atheists in America by investigating and centralizing their experiences, lives, and identities.

The results suggest that Black Atheists do indeed perceive themselves as holding a unique ‘Black Atheist’ identity. That is, they believe their being Black, and their being Atheist, inform each other in meaningful ways that affect their beliefs, behaviors, and lived experiences. Additionally, respondents described both an identity and emerging social space informed by the particular sets of challenges and racialized cultural and social pressures they face. Namely, they perceived pervasive and intense racialized stigma against Atheists within Black communities and often their own families, and also feel social distance from Mainstream Atheists, whom they perceive to be inattentive to the particular challenges faced by Black Atheists. Respondents also linked being Black Atheists to the way that they navigated familial relationships, romantic relationships, and broader communal spaces, engaging in significant amounts of stigma management. Most commonly this was done through use of the closet, which proved to be a significant social space for respondents. Additionally, there were potentially significant gendered ways in which respondents made sense of their identities, and linked them to the external world. In essence, the way stigma in America interacts with identity seemingly produces distinctive identities at this particular intersection of race and religion. Because they reside at the bottom of two separate hierarchies, namely, Atheists are at the bottom of religious hierarchies, while Blacks are at the bottom of racial hierarchies, identity work and behavioral strategies in the face of stigma are likely to be particularly pronounced among Black Atheists.

The Guantánamo Trials: Sovereignty and Subject Formation in the War on Terror

Abstract: Recent political theory has explored the idea that states reconstitute sovereign power by deciding on the exception to law. By deciding on which laws to follow and how to interpret them in new ways, sovereign states not only reconstitute sovereign power but they also exercise the power to set the terms of citizenship and political exclusion. By focusing on the U.S.-led global War on Terror, I argue that this explanation of how sovereignty reconstitutes itself and how it sets the terms of citizenship focuses too narrowly on the juridical dimension. Sovereign power also reconstitutes itself in a representational dimension by attending to processes of signification and representation. The juridical dimension and the representational dimension are connected because the decision on the exception is simultaneously an effort to create exclusions, both legally and through the deployment of representations. I analyze these exceptional decisions as orchestrated security events that create discursive openings and a platform for state officials to introduce frames and narratives for understanding the unfolding events in the War on Terror. Specifically, I look at the first few years after the 9/11 attacks and analyze the legal documentation that comprise the rationale and wording of key decisions on the exception, which created the Guantánamo Bay detention camps. I also conduct a textual analysis of newspaper articles written about Guantánamo Bay during the same time period in order to catalogue the frames, narratives, and representations deployed by state officials. One major aim of this dissertation is to describe how the juridical and representational dimensions articulate with one another.

Intergenerational Support and Well-Being of Older Adults in Changing Family Contexts

Abstract: This dissertation consists of three papers that examine the complexities in upward intergenerational support and adult children’s influence on older adults’ health in changing family contexts of America and China. The prevalence of “gray divorce/repartnering ” in later life after age 55 is on the rise in the United States, yet little is known about its effect on intergenerational support. The first paper uses the life course perspective to examine whether gray divorce and repartnering affect support from biological and stepchildren differently than early divorce and repartnering, and how patterns differ by parents’ gender. Massive internal migration in China has led to increased geographic distance between adult children and aging parents, which may have consequences for old age support received by parents. This topic has yet to be thoroughly explored in China, as most studies of intergenerational support to older parents have focused on the role of coresident children or have not considered the interdependence of multiple parent-child dyads in the family. The second paper adopts the within-family differences approach to assess the influence of non-coresident children’s relative living proximity to parents compared to that of their siblings on their provision of support to parents in rural and urban Chinese families. The study also examines how patterns of the impact are moderated by parents’ living arrangement, non-coresident children’s gender, and parents’ provision of support to children. Taking a multigenerational network perspective, the third paper questions if and how adult children’s socioeconomic status (SES) influences older parents’ health in China. It further examines whether health benefits brought by adult children’s socioeconomic attainment are larger for older adults with lower SES and whether one of the mechanisms through which adult children’s SES affects older parents’ health is by changing their health behaviors. These questions are highly relevant in contemporary China, where adult children have experienced substantial gains in SES and play a central role in old age support for parents. In sum, these three papers take the life course, the within-family differences, and the multigenerational network perspective to address the complexities in intergenerational support and older adults’ health in diverse family contexts.

Self-Presentation Styles, Status, and Influence

Abstract: This research examined effects of individual self-presentation styles on influence in groups. Perceived competence and social acceptance both play a role in determining how much influence group members enjoy. Aggrandizing and deprecating self-presentation styles may affect perceived competence, social acceptance, and ultimately influence. I predicted that aggrandizing self-presentation would lead to perceptions of competence and that self-deprecation would lead to social acceptance. The anticipated strength of those trends, however, was unclear, and I proposed that they would vary depending on status. I conducted two studies designed to assess whether aggrandizing or deprecating self-presentation styles lead to differences in influence outcomes for high and low-status individuals. In Study 1, participants gave feedback and a promotion recommendation for a fictitious (male or female) job candidate based on employee evaluation information presenting the candidate as either deprecating or aggrandizing. The main findings from Study 1 were that aggrandizers were rated as less likable than deprecators. No other predictions were supported. Study 2 was an online experiment in which participants made hiring recommendations in reference to résumés from fictitious applicants that varied by race, gender, and presentation style (aggrandizing, deprecating, or neutral). Results provided some evidence that low-status candidates were punished for using aggrandizing self-presentation strategies. The results of the studies suggest no one- best technique for self-presentation and that there may be costs for aggrandizing or deprecating depending on race and gender.

Black Survival Politics: Organized Mobilization Strategies in African American Communities to End the HIV/Aids Epidemic

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to examine organizational patterns of African American activism in response the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Given their political, economic, and social disenfranchisement, African Americans have historically developed protest and survival strategies to respond to the devaluation of their lives, health, and well-being. While Black protest strategies are typically regarded as oppositional and transformative, Black survival strategies have generally been conceptualized as accepting inequality. In the case of HIV/AIDS, African American religious and non-religious organizations were less likely to deploy protest strategies to ensure the survival and well-being of groups most at risk for HIV/AIDS—such as African American gay men and substance abusers.

This study employs a multiple qualitative case study analysis of four African American organizations that were among the early mobilizers to respond to HIV/AIDS in Washington D.C. These organizations include two secular or community-based organizations and two Black churches or faith-based organizations. Given the association of HIV/AIDS with sexual sin and social deviance, I postulated that Black community-based organizations would be more responsive to the HIV/AIDS-related needs and interests of African Americans than their religious counterparts. More specifically, I expected that Black churches would be more conservative (i.e. maintain paternalistic heteronormative sexual standards) than the community-based organizations. Yet findings indicate that the Black churches in this study were more similar than different than the community-based organizations in their strategic responses to HIV/AIDS.

Both the community-based organizations and Black churches drew upon three main strategies in ways that politicalize the struggle for Black survival—or what I regard as Black survival politics. First, Black survival strategies for HIV/AIDS include coalition building at the intersection of multiple systems of inequality, as well as on the levels of identity and community. Second, Black survival politics include altering aspects of religious norms and practices related to sex and sexuality. Third, Black survival politics relies on the resources of the government to provide HIV/AIDS related programs and initiatives that are, in large part, based on the gains made from collective action.

The New Bottom Line: Black Women Cultural Entrepreneurs Re-Define Success in The Connected Economy

Abstract: Black women cultural entrepreneurs are a group of entrepreneurs that merit further inquiry. Using qualitative interview and participant observation data, this dissertation investigates the ways in which black women cultural entrepreneurs define success. My findings reveal that black women cultural entrepreneurs are a particular interpretive community with values, perspectives and experiences, which are not wholly idiosyncratic, but shaped by collective experiences and larger social forces. Black women are not a monolith, but they are neither disconnected individuals completely devoid of group identity. The meaning they give to their businesses, professional experiences and understandings of success are influenced by their shared social position and identity as black women.

For black women cultural entrepreneurs, the New Bottom Line goes beyond financial gain.  This group, while not uniform in their understandings of success, largely understand the most meaningful accomplishments they can realize as social impact in the form of cultural intervention, black community uplift and professional/creative agency.  These particular considerations represent a new paramount concern, and alternative understanding of what is typically understood as the bottom line.  The structural, social and personal challenges that black women cultural entrepreneurs encounter have shaped their particular perspectives on success.

I also explore the ways research participants articulated an oppositional consciousness to create an alternative means of defining and achieving success.  I argue that this consciousness empowers them with resources, connections and meaning not readily conferred in traditional entrepreneurial settings.  In this sense, the personal, social and structural challenges have been foundational to the formation of an alternative economy, which I refer to as The Connected Economy.  Leading and participating in The Connected Economy, black women cultural entrepreneurs represent a black feminist and womanist critique of dominant understandings of success.

Investigating the Postwar Decline of Race in Science

Abstract: Race as a biological category has a long and troubling history as a central ordering concept in the life and human sciences. The mid-twentieth century has been marked as the point where biological concepts of race began to disappear from science. However, biological definitions of race continue to penetrate scientific understandings and uses of racial concepts. Using the theoretical frameworks of critical race theory and science and technology studies and an in-depth case study of the discipline of immunology, this dissertation explores the appearance of a mid-century decline of concepts of biological race in science. I argue that biological concepts of race did not disappear in the middle of the twentieth century but were reconfigured into genetic language.

In this dissertation I offer a periodization of biological concepts of race. Focusing on continuities and the effects of contingent events, I compare how biological concepts of race articulate with racisms in each period. The discipline of immunology serves as a case study that demonstrates how biological concepts of race did not decline in the postwar era, but were translated into the language of genetics and populations. I argue that the appearance of a decline was due to events both internal and external to the science of immunology. By framing the mid-twentieth century disappearance of race in science as the triumph of an antiracist racial project of science, it allows us to more clearly see the more recent resurgence of race in science as a recycling of older themes and tactics from the racist science projects of the past.

More Than Just ‘Mob Violence’: An In-Depth Look at Vigilante Violence in South African Townships

Abstract: Vigilante violence is generally understood as an alternative means of controlling crime and providing security where the state does not. It has been found in nearly all modern societies at one point or another. Currently, in South Africa, vigilantism is common, accounting for roughly 5% of daily homicides. Despite its ubiquity, vigilante violence has largely been ignored by scholars, and in South Africa, vigilante violence tends to be dismissed as “mob violence.” This dissertation draws on extensive fieldwork, multiple qualitative and quantitative data sources, and different theoretical and methodological approaches, to provide a comprehensive analysis of vigilante violence in Gauteng, South Africa. The first paper address critical theoretical issues surrounding the role of weak and failed states in fostering vigilantism. In this analysis, I use large-scale quantitative data from the Gauteng City-Region Observatory 2013 Quality of Life Survey and an independently compiled database of newspaper articles detailing incidents of vigilantism in Gauteng. I employ measures of perceptions of government performance and the provision of state security to test the relationship between perceived state legitimacy and vigilante violence. I find that negative perceptions of government performance are actually associated with decreases in vigilante violence, while negative perceptions of state security are associated with increases. The second paper utilizes the same data sources and uses the well-establish social disorganization ad neighborhood effects literature to examine the relationship between neighborhood cohesion, collective efficacy, and vigilante violence. I find that, in contrast to existing research, higher levels of neighborhood cohesion and collective efficacy actually result in more incidents of vigilante violence. The third paper expands upon the micro-sociological perspective of violence developed by Collins (2008), “forward panic,” the process whereby the tension and fear marking most potentially violent situations is suddenly released, bringing about extraordinary acts of violence. Analysis of in-depth interviews shows that episodes of vigilante violence in townships are often clearly episodes of forward panic. Although the concept of forward panic focuses on individuals, I argue that if the pre-conditions that foster forward panics in individuals are structural, there is the potential for forward panic in entire groups or parts of communities.

Why Does Employment Discrimination Persist against People with Mental Illness? Effects of Negative Stereotypes, Power, and Differential Discrimination

Abstract: Mental illness affects a sizable minority of Americans at any given time, yet many people with mental illness (hereafter PWMI) remain unemployed or underemployed relative to the general population. Research has suggested that part of the reason for this is discrimination toward PWMI. This research investigated mechanisms that affect employment discrimination against PWMI. Drawing from theories on stigma and power, three studies assessed 1) the stereotyping of workers with mental illness as unfit for workplace success, 2) the impact of positive information on countering these negative stereotypes, and whether negatively-stereotyped conditions elicited discrimination; and 3) the effects of power on mental illness stigma components. I made a series of predictions related to theories on the Stereotype Content Model, illness attribution, the contact hypothesis, gender and mental health, and power. Studies tested predictions using, 1) an online vignette survey measuring attitudes, 2) an online survey measuring responses to fictitious applications for a middle management position, and 3) a laboratory experiment in which some participants were primed to feel powerful and some were not. Results of Study 1 demonstrated that PWMI were routinely stigmatized as incompetent, dangerous, and lacking valued employment attributes, relative to a control condition. This was especially evident for workers presented as having PTSD from wartime service and workers with schizophrenia, and when the worker was a woman. Study 2 showed that, although both war-related PTSD and schizophrenia evoke negative stereotypes, only schizophrenia evoked hiring discrimination. Finally, Study 3 found no effect of being primed to feel powerful on stigmatizing attitudes toward a person with symptoms of schizophrenia. Taken together, findings suggest that employment discrimination towards PWMI is driven by negative stereotypes; but, stereotypes might not lead to actual hiring discrimination for some labeled individuals.

The Propensity to Serve in the Armed Forces: An Examination into the Factors Associated with Military Propensity During the Post-9/11 Era

Abstract: The end of military conscription and the rise of the All-Volunteer Force (AVF) in 1973 forced the armed forces to compete in the civilian labor market with other employers and colleges for desirable young workers. As a consequence, the Department of Defense and the individual services began large-scale programs of market research designed to monitor the quantity and quality of personnel in the civilian labor force who might be eligible and inclined to volunteer for military service. One element of these research programs has been microdata analysis based upon large-scale longitudinal surveys of America’s youth. The University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future (MTF) project is one particular program that has been surveying high school seniors since 1975 and tracking their subsequent life-course trajectories up to the age of thirty-five. Although originally intended for use as a drug and alcohol use study, there are numerous demographic and attitudinal questions on various forms of the MTF study that have been previously used by scholars and military practitioners to describe trends and predict factors associated with the propensity to serve in the armed forces. However, scholars have not extended this research since 9/11. My research bridges this gap in knowledge by employing cross-sectional data from MTF to examine the various macro-social and social-psychological factors associated with military propensity during the post-9/11 era (2002-2013)- a period marked by sustained war in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the macro-social level, I find that the propensity to serve in the military is negatively related to public support for war and U.S. casualties, but is positively related to a rise in unemployment. Black youth continue to have a higher propensity to serve compared to Hispanic and white youth, although their propensity is relatively lower compared to years prior to 9/11. Further, the gap in propensity between race and ethnic groups disappears after controlling for socioeconomic factors. Significant attitudinal differences are observed between youth with and without propensity and between racial and ethic groups who have the propensity to serve. Youth with propensity are more likely to affiliate with the Republican Party and to possess a conservative political ideology. Youth with propensity are more likely to have greater institutional orientations toward work, although occupational orientations also exist among youth with propensity during the post-9/11 era. Youth with propensity are likely to possess more traditional attitudes toward gender roles and are no less egalitarian in their attitudes toward race relations compared to youth without propensity. Women continue to have lower propensity than men, but women’s overall propensity levels do not significantly decrease during the post-9/11 era compared to years earlier. Findings have important implications for life course studies of the post-9/11 era, recruitment and retention in the military, for research on the integration of women into combat positions, and for research on civil-military relations concerning the nature and extent of a civil-military gap.

Who Cares? Student-Faculty Interaction at a Research University

Abstract: High quality interaction with faculty is central to undergraduate student success (Kuh et al. 2010). A wealth of existing research uses students' ratings of quality of interaction with faculty to analyze undergraduates' engagement in educationally purposive activities. But how do students actually make meaning of the interactions that inform their ratings? What do undergraduates at a public research institution in the early 21st century United States count as high quality interaction with faculty? For Becker and colleagues (1968), a "GPA perspective" provided the lens through which all undergraduates made meaning of interaction with faculty. But do such generalizations adequately explain how students make meaning of quality of interaction with faculty now? The answer is: it's complicated. Specifically, I find that from students' perspectives, high quality interaction happens when faculty care. Caring, in the view of undergraduates participating in this study, means supporting students in embodying or coming to embody perceived institutional ideals. But students' perceptions of institutional ideals are not uniform. In an ethnographic study involving 35 voluntary undergraduate participants for three years in in-depth interviews and participant observation, as well as a content analysis of an instructor-reviewing web site, I analyze students' perceptions of institutional ideals, how they see themselves in relation to those ideals, and these understandings shape their approaches to with faculty. Specifically, I find two evaluative stories for what counts as care in interaction with faculty, with social class strongly shaping - but not determining - meanings made and interactions elicited. In the first, care entails "remaking the grading." In the second, care both produces and is produced by educationally purposive practices. I find that the institution, in spite of its stated ideals and stated commitment to student engagement, tends to reward the former understanding of care much more directly than the latter.

New Wine Calls for New Wineskins: Black Megachurch Approaches to Racial Inequality

Abstract: The changing nature of racism in the post-Civil Rights period coincides with the decline in collective racial protest, or what some scholars consider the activist or prophetic wing, of black churches. As a result of the shift from the overt racism of the Civil Rights era to the hidden and often invisible forms of contemporary racism, the ways in which blacks address and resist racism might reflect similar shifts. In other words, I argue that black churches’ responses to contemporary racial inequality may be different from the actions taken by some churches before and during the pre-Civil Rights era. This study seeks to explore the explanations and solutions for contemporary racial inequality offered by black megachurch leaders and attendees. More specifically it also takes into account how religious culture may influence these explanations of and solutions to racial inequality.

A case study approach is utilized to examine three black megachurches in Washington, D.C.—one Baptist, one Pentecostal, and one nondenominational. Data from semi-structured interviews with church leaders and congregants, content analysis of church documents, and participant observation of church worship services reveal three main findings. First, contrary to literature that states blacks tend to rely on structural rather than individual explanations of racial inequality, church leaders and congregants tend to rely on explanations that are simultaneously individual and structural. Second, the strategies used by the megachurches in this study do not reflect the direct action protesting strategies used by some black churches during the Civil Rights Movement. The strategies of the megachurches in this study to address racial inequality range from aiding in educational achievement to civic engagement to employment training to address racial inequality. Furthermore, each of the churches has developed nonprofit Community Development Corporations to provide social services such as transitional housing. Third, although the various religious cultures of megachurches in this study inform how they address racial inequality, other factors, such as declining membership and changing community demographics, also shape strategies to intervene in racial inequality.

The Changing Nature of the Retirement Transition for Dual Earning Couples

Abstract: My dissertation examines how dual-earning couples navigate the retirement transition differently now that women's and men's work lives have become more similar. As the retirement transition has become more complex, understanding how and when people retire requires researchers and policymakers to be attuned to the family lives in which individuals are embedded. The decision to retire is an individual choice but one's family circumstances, particularly one's spouse, can influence the process. Couples must often factor in spouses' age, health, pension assets, and health insurance coverage, especially since the work lives of many women have become much more similar to men. Whereas men's retirement decisions were seen to depend on their employment situation and women's' on their husband's, women's rising attachment to the labor force means their work lives should be increasingly important in understanding the retirement transition of couples.

This dissertation fills a gap in retirement research by utilizing a life course perspective to systematically study change across cohorts in how marital partners manage the retirement transition amidst rapid structural changes in the economy. Analyses use multiple waves of data from the Health and Retirement Study, applying a variety of modeling techniques to investigate the way that couples move from employment to retirement. Specifically, I focus on retirement expectations and timing, looking at whether dual earning couples influence and synchronize each other's retirement and how this may change across cohorts.

Results suggest that coordination between couples may be declining, as both husbands and wives influence their respective partners' retirement expectations less in later cohorts. Analysis of the degree to which dual-earning couples synchronize their retirement expectations show that such couples expect to retire together when they both have the pension resources to do so. Results from event history models further indicate that the retirement trajectories have changed for the leading baby boom cohort, as evidence implies they are delaying retirement longer than previous cohorts. The findings provide mixed support for the notion that wives are influencing their husbands' retirement timing more in later cohorts or that the influence of husbands on wives' retirement timing has declined across cohorts.

Competing Demands: Financially Dependent Children and Parental Retirement

Abstract: The 1960s through the 1980s saw an expansion of generous pensions allowing workers to retire at younger ages. Since then, pensions have become less generous, and more people are working longer. Although previous research has often focused on financial and pension-related explanations for the postponement of retirement, little research has focused on how family demands shape retirement decisions.

Changes in family formation in the second half of the 20th Century include delayed marriage, delayed childbearing, divorce, and remarriage. These trends, combined with the increasing time children are taking to transition to adulthood, means that parents are now more likely to be supporting children as they prepare to retire. This dissertation examines how demands from children affect older parents as they approach retirement. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, I ask whether parents with adolescent or dependent adult children postpone retirement to later ages than other parents. I examine retirement both prospectively, by comparing parents' retirement expectations across cohorts, and then longitudinally, by modeling one cohort's transition from working to retirement. In both analyses, I focus on the impact of children who are either dependent-aged (<18), college-aged, coresident, or financially dependent.

Results from this study show that needs of children do not appear to exert much influence over their parent's retirement plans. Net of parental characteristics, demands from children do not have an independent effect on retirement outcomes. It also does not appear that children in more recent cohorts exert a greater influence on parental retirement despite greater demands from children in recent years. For some subgroups (e.g. unmarried mothers and fathers, black and Hispanic parents) having certain types of demands from children is associated with greater expectations of working at older ages, while having other types of children is associated with a lower chance of expecting to work longer. For some subgroups (e.g. unmarried mothers), having certain types of dependent children are associated with retiring later. However, for the majority of adults, retirement plans and behaviors are driven more by parental retirement readiness (e.g. wealth, pension participation, and age) rather than the needs of children.

The Impacts of Food Insecurity, Networks, and Marital Dissolutions on Demographic Processes in Rural Malawi

Abstract: This dissertation consists of three papers that examine topics related to the three components of demography. This research is situated in rural Malawi and I evaluate under-explored mechanisms in demographic and sociological research that aim to explain fluctuations in fertility, the duration of migration spells, and predictors of old-age health. The first paper assesses how famines and food crises might influence the chances of giving birth in subsequent years. Individuals and households in many low-income nations face the prospect, and severe consequences, of food insecurity, yet the effects of exposure to such episodes on fertility are not completely understood; Malawi had a famine in 2002 and major food crisis in 2005-2006. The second paper questions the extent to which the presence of family and friends in a migrant's destination impacts his or her length of stay in that location after controlling for economic, marital, regional, and period factors that often strongly explain migration patterns. Like in many sub-Saharan African countries, labor migration accounts for a large share of internal and international migration, but recent research has also stressed the effects of marital dissolutions and HIV/AIDS in this process as well. Nonetheless, the role of potential support networks--comprised of family members and friends--on migration patterns has been overlooked. The third paper responds to the National Academy of Sciences' call for more research on aspects of aging in sub-Saharan Africa. While concerns about population aging in sub-Saharan Africa are not new, few scholars conducting research on the continent have examined how marital status and marital dissolutions are associated with health among older individuals despite the fact that these are well known, at least in high-income contexts, to be closely correlated with health outcomes. Thus, I examine the relationship between marital status/dissolutions and health over two years using several self-reported health metrics. In sum, these three papers seek to expand the dialogue on alternative explanations to demographic processes, using the case of rural Malawi.

Identity Processes, Social Context, and the Formation of Social Solidarity in Groups

Abstract: A proposed theory explains how actors rely on subtle features of social context when deciding whether to contribute resources to the group and punish their partners after they behave selfishly. The theory incorporates elements of identity control theory with social exchange theory. It proposes that features of social context shape the perceptions of actors in groups. These perceptions, in turn, affect their behaviors and the formation of social solidarity between group members. Three experiments test elements of the proposed theory by varying the context in which actors viewed themselves, their partners, and the overall goals of their groups.

The instructions for study 1 told groups of actors that they either had cooperative or competitive personality types. Study 2 referred to the partners of actors as either collaborators or competitors. Study 3 told actors the goals of their groups were either defined by cooperation or competition. Each study assigned actors to the same group structure in which individuals completed a public goods game with opportunities to anonymously punish their partners. Results show that actors contributed more resources to their group, and spent fewer resources punishing their partners, when they viewed themselves or their partners as more cooperative than competitive. These behaviors, in turn, affected levels of trust, commitment, and cohesion that formed between group members. The context in which actors viewed the goals of their groups affected their contributions to these groups, but it did not significantly affect their punishment of partners. These patterns of behaviors also had negligible effects on social solidarity in groups. Thus, results from these experiments show that subtle features of the relational context (i.e. perceptions of self and partners) affect the means by which actors promote collective action in groups, shaping the formation of social solidarity between group members.

Early Employment and Family Formation in the United States

Abstract: In this dissertation, I examine three scenarios by which U.S. young adults’ early employment and access to material resources intersect with their family formation behavior. I first address how educational attainment and early employment prospects enable and constrain young women’s ability to enter into the kind of family forms they prefer. I investigate the relationship between women’s preferences as stated in adolescence for or against having children while unmarried, their socioeconomic resources in young adulthood, and their eventual likelihood of having marital first birth, having a nonmarital first birth, or continuing to postpone childbearing. I find that after accounting for individual resource acquisition and early partner characteristics, women’s preferences play a stronger role in whether or not they postpone childbearing than in whether they have a marital versus a nomarital first birth. I next address the role of early employment experiences and early family formation behavior as they affect the accuracy of young women’s retrospective reporting on the timing of their first stable employment. I use panel data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth-1997 (NLSY97) to evaluate the accuracy of responses to retrospective questions about first stable employment from three surveys that interview respondent retrospectively about their first substantial employment. I find that women with higher early employment history salience and lower complexity, and those who have “anchoring” biographical details of early family formation report more accurately the timing of their first employment. I next address the topic of how early employment in the military affects veterans’ likelihood of entering into race/ethnic intermarriages, which are more common among military veterans than in the general population, and have increased at a faster rate among veterans than non-veterans from the 1960s to the present. I show that a combination of exposure to diverse race/ethnic composition in a military setting, training and benefits that facilitate veterans’ socioeconomic advancement, and military policies and norms that hold personnel to standards of nondiscriminatory behavior jointly contribute to increasing veterans’ likelihood of intermarriage relative to non-veterans. These effects are strongest for black and white veterans.

Social Capital and Childhood Malnutrition in India

Abstract: Social capital has increasingly been recognized as an important determinant of health in developed countries with advanced infrastructure, educated populations, and accessible and quality health and educational services. Hence, it may be a particularly advantageous resource in developing countries where human and economic capitals are found wanting. This dissertation addresses the paucity of developing country research on this issue by examining the relationship between social capital and children’s nutritional outcomes in India.

The literature on social capital identifies three key distinctions: between bridging and bonding social capital; between positive and negative effects of social capital; and the different roles of household and community based social capital that are critical for understanding how social capital operates. Using the India Human Development Survey 2005-2006, I operationalize these different forms of social capital and test how they impact child nutrition. I find that household-based bridging social capital has a positive association with child nutrition whereas bonding social capital has the opposite impact. Household-based connections with social capital are of greater importance than community (village)-based social capital. Contextual social capital primarily operates as a proxy for local development.

Next, I find that bridging social capital improves child nutrition by improving access to modern health care, such as antenatal care, improving uptake of government nutrition supplementation programs, and health knowledge. On the other hand, religious or caste-based social capital reinforces traditional fertility ideals and discourages the use of contraception thereby adversely affecting the health of children. Lastly, I ask if the impact of social capital on child nutrition varies by the level of regional development. I find that social capital acts in the expected ways in developed regions, which have stronger public amenities and higher literacy rates. However, in more deprived areas, bonding social capital has unexpected positive consequences on child nutrition because of how social capital interacts with community resources.

The Spatial Configuration of American Inequality: Wealth and Income Concentration through US History

Abstract: Drawing on a variety of data sources--national surveys and censuses, probate and tax records, wage series and rich lists--I identify five period or regimes in US history with distinct wealth and income distributions. I argue that this periodization of inequality in the United States is a product of Arrighi's systemic cycles of accumulation. Each cycle of accumulation is associated with a spatial configuration, a global pattern of interdependent technologies, infrastructure, institutions, networks and social relations, and ideologies, that structures the distribution and flow of wealth. Interdependence in the components of the spatial configuration means that there are periods of relative stability delineated by moments of cascading change when space is reconfigured; new patterns of wealth and income concentration emerge as a result. The principal contribution of this approach is to further our understanding of the impact of global processes on within-country wealth and income concentration; we cannot isolate domestic market institutions and technological change from global political and economic competition.

Speaking Truth to Power: Spoken Word Poetry as Political Engagement among Young Adults in the Millennial Age

Abstract: Civic and political disengagement is an often-cited distinguishing feature of young Americans today, collectively known as the millennial generation--i.e., those born between 1980 and 2000. Yet, measures of engagement often fail to consider how young people themselves define acting political. This dissertation investigates youth politics through the prism of spoken word performance poetry, an art form assigned social change attributes by its principal practitioners: young urban adults. This study asks: how do contemporary young adults use spoken word poetry to civically and politically engage?

Using ethnographic research methods, I followed discourses and practices deployed in the Washington, D.C. spoken word poetry community that centered on social change. I identify three social change processes carried out by these young poets. First, through a process I call speaking truths, poets used spoken word to draw upon their lived experiences--their truths--as a political and moral source of knowledge that guided and legitimated their social change messages. Second, poets healed themselves and others by writing and performing their truths in the form of spoken word therapy narratives, thereby placing their community in a position to do sustainable social justice work. Third, using new school activist approaches, poets leveraged spoken word to advocate for social justice causes, build political networks, and mobilize others into political action.

To frame this analysis, I integrate social change scholarship on (1) public sphere civic and political engagement, focusing on young adults, (2) culture and politics, concentrating on art and popular culture, and (3) the role of identity and narrative in social change. I introduce and develop the theoretical concept of creative politics as a way to situate the untraditional ways that young urban adults in Washington, D.C. politically and civically engaged: poets leveraged the unique properties of art as a way to speak truths, individually and collectively heal, and do new school activism. By doing so, poets honored their subjective truths and identities, and at the same time transcended these subjectivities in order to communicate more universal ideas about social justice and change. Specifically, a universal belief in the power of love guided the poets' creative politics.

The More Things Stay the Same: Colonization, Resistance, and the Fractured Sovereign State

Abstract: Has the authority of the sovereign state system undergone a fundamental transformation in recent decades? This dissertation seeks to: 1) offer a critical examination of claims regarding the perceived fracture and erosion of sovereign state authority; 2) contribute to the task of building a theoretical framework to study the power and authority of the sovereign state system and its changes over time; 3) find evidence of patterns in how the nature of that power and authority changes over time and across different political organizations in the context of war. Theoretically, the characterization of the threat non-state combatants pose to the authority of the state system neglects relations of power between those who hold privilege within that system and those who are excluded from its benefits. Empirically, there has been an absence of systematic study of potential authoritative transformations that is both historically and geographically broad. This dissertation analyzes the language of justification for war - as expressions of political authority - used by political and military leaders from 1618-2008, employing a combination of fuzzy-sets qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) with interpretive case analysis to determine the constellations of conditions which drive the use of justification for war. Findings indicate that non-state actors are not challenging the authoritative logic underlying the sovereign state system; rather, the use of sovereign rights logics of justification in asymmetrical conflicts indicates a desire to access the benefits and privileges of that system. When interpreted through a post-colonial and critical race lens, these claims appear as a challenge to exclusion that is largely rooted in a legacy of racialized colonial subjugation. Relations of power, embedded in a state system that developed through imperial conquest and colonial domination, drive the use of justification frames. Thus, low power actors may in fact threaten the stability of the sovereign state system, but not in the manner characterized by the fracture narrative. The threat is not to the authoritative logic of the system, but rather to the uneven distribution of the powers and privileges of that system that stems from a legacy of colonization, which produced lasting divisions in power.

Penalties and Premiums: Clarifying Perceptions of Parents in the Professional Workplace

Abstract: Parental status inequality is pervasive in American workplaces. Mothers' wage penalties and fathers' wage premiums are well-documented, with much academic and policy interest invested in explaining why we observe these disparate earnings patterns. Employer discrimination and biased perceptions of parents are likely, although not easily researchable, culprits. In this dissertation, I contribute to the ongoing effort to explain parental status inequality at work by examining how parents are perceived and evaluated in the context of the professional workplace, beyond differences by gender alone. I advance the literature by assessing how perceptions of mothers and fathers vary based on three dimensions: a) their level of involvement with children; b) their race/ethnicity; and c) characteristics of the perceivers. Data come from three sources: two parallel experimental vignette studies in which nationally representative samples of employed adults rated a fictitious job applicant, one male and one female, who varied on parenthood status (non-parent, nominal parent, less involved parent, highly involved parent) and race/ethnicity (white, African-American, Latino, Asian), as well as a semi-structured interview study of 15 employers in the professional sector. Together, results from these studies expound upon our existing knowledge of workplace parental penalties and premiums, yielding three major findings: 1) Fathers received an involvement premium as highly involved fathers, but not mothers, were offered higher salaries than their childless and less involved counterparts; 2) The documented perceptual penalty leveled at mothers in the workplace was most acutely directed at white mothers, whereas Asian mothers, by contrast, were perceived most favorably among women; and 3) Mothers may suffer from an interpersonal penalty in the workplace as employers observed that their childless employees perceive parent coworkers with resentment and as being unfairly advantaged. Together, these results bring the cultural terrain of parental status inequality into sharper relief. Following a discussion of the dialectical relationship between culture and policy for reducing parental status inequality at work, I conclude by calling for a reconceptualization of the ideal worker norm based on evidence of a cultural shift underway in how parenthood, namely fatherhood, is interpreted in the workplace.

Parental Resources, Educational Progression, and Family Formation

Abstract: In this dissertation, I use longitudinal data (1997-2011) to explore two types of financial constraints during the transition to adulthood. First, I explore the relationship between parental resources (income and net household worth) and educational transitions among U.S. men and women. I revisit the Mare model of educational transitions which asserts that parental resources decline in importance with each educational transition. I find that, for the current cohort of young adults, parental net worth, in particular, is positively associated with high school graduation, four-year college attendance, and four-year college completion. Yet, the magnitude of the effect of parental net worth does decline with each educational transition. Furthermore, after controlling for parental income and net household worth, non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic students are more likely to graduate from high school and to enroll in college, yet remain less likely to graduate from college. For enrollment into professional or graduate school, the effect of parental resources is statistically nonsignificant. Next, I examine the relationship between parental resources and timing of women's first birth. I find that parental resources impact first birth timing, wherein compared to women from low-resource families, women from middle-resource families have a lower likelihood of first birth through the mid-20s and women from high-resources families were found to have substantially lower likelihood of having a first birth by age 30 or 31. I find that greater and earlier incidence of Hispanic women's first birth is entirely explained by differences in parental resources and other sociodemographic characteristics. Furthermore, differences in parental resources explain the higher likelihood of first births in teen years, and most of the higher likelihood of first births in the 20s, among Black women. Finally, I consider whether student loan debt delays family formation for men and women attending four-year college. I find that student loan debt is associated with later transitions to marriage and first birth, for both women and men, but that only for women does a statistically significant association remain after controlling for income, family background, and other socio-demographic characteristics, and even then only at low levels of debt.

Place and Caste Identification: Distanciation and Spatial Imaginaries on a Caste-Based Social Network

Abstract: This thesis studies the potency of place in mobilizing social categories, and its implications for both social categories and places. I use the theory of distanciation to study associations between caste identity and place. I conducted an ethnographic study of a caste-based digital group, the Cyber Thiyyars of Malabar, to understand the connections and disconnections between the Thiyya caste and Malabar from the perspectives of different sets of actors involved in the identification of caste, namely the nation-state and members of this caste-based network. The nation-state knows the Thiyya caste in a manner that is disconnected from Malabar, while the Cyber Thiyyars of Malabar seek to re-emphasize the identification of this caste through the region. Participant observation and in-depth interviews indicate that through references to Malabar, the group seeks to establish a Thiyya caste identity that is distinct from the Ezhavas, a caste group within which the nation-state subsumes them.

I demonstrate that references to Malabar serve to counter the stigma that the Cyber Thiyyars of Malabar experience when the spatially abstract categorization of the Thiyyas interacts with notions of caste inferiority/superiority. Further, it serves as a mobilizational tool through which they hope to negotiate with the nation-state for greater access to affirmative action. I also demonstrate that caste identification continues to be relevant to the production of place. Place-based identification of the Thiyyas influences the manner in which the group envisions the physical boundaries of Malabar and how other social groups can belong to this region. Based on this analysis, I argue that framework of distanciation should incorporate not only the experience of place and social relations, but also how they are known and represented.

This dissertation establishes that even though social categories such as caste and place are not conventionally understood to be connected to each other, it is important to study the associations between them. Although the new media and globalization may prompt to us to think that place does not matter anymore, I establish that this caste group uses the language of place to organize and mobilize itself on a stronger basis in precisely this context.

A Tale of Two Cities: A Case Study of Physical and Social Disorder in Two Baltimore City Neighborhoods, Using GIS and Spatial Methods

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to explore how urban residents respond to their social and physical environments--what they define as problems and how they respond to them. I focus on one large, city--Baltimore, Maryland--and then compare two very different neighborhoods within it: Federal Hill, a well-off, and fashionable, area with mostly white residents, contrasted with Sandtown-Winchester, a neighborhood plagued by urban blight and crime, and where the majority of residents are black. I use a geographic information system (GIS) and spatial analyses to explore neighborhood call rates regarding physical and social incivilities, using the traditional sociological framework of "social disorder" as a theoretical lens for exploring similarities and differences in what disorders increase or decrease call rates.

I use more commonly applied stochastic methods for much of the analysis (statistical means and ordinary least squares statistics), but I also explore, in a tentative way, the potential power of spatial methods, which are not widely used or known in sociology, to reveal more about what makes these spaces similar and different and how they affect call rate patterns.

The predictive models demonstrate mixed results when predicting variation in the call rate patterns of the two neighborhoods. Income, education, and population-density effects are consistent, yet weak, positive predictors in both areas, while other indicators (home ownership, number of vacant houses, etc.) exhibit substantive positive effects in the wealthier neighborhood but none in the poorer. Neighborhood homogeneity and stability show negative impacts on rates, but depending on the neighborhood.

I focus on how local variations in action, even under similar circumstances, may depend not only on residents' aggregate capacity to commit to change, but also on how neighborhood space is internalized as a "neighborhood generalized other" as a "community," according to George Herbert Mead, either constraining or enhancing engagement. This within- and between-neighborhood variance in the strength and direction of predictor variables, and in their capacity to predict residents' calling patterns, underscores issues of validity and operationalization regarding indicators traditionally used to measure social disorganization, and how spatial methods can be valuable corrective tools.

Transmigrancy Experiences of Eastern and Central European AU Pairs in the Washington D.C., Metropolitan Area

Abstract: This dissertation explores transmigrancy experiences of au pairs by examining the processes of building and maintaining transnational mobilities among this population. These processes involve these women's motivations for becoming au pairs in the United States, settlement plans and strategies prior and subsequent to migration, and long-term incorporation patterns in the home and host countries. I employ intersectionality and transnational feminist frameworks of analysis in order to contextualize and scrutinize multidimensionality of women's transmigrancy experiences at multiple levels. At the individual level, I look at the extent of transmigrant women's agency in seeking their initial and long-term settlement plans. At the intermediate level, I examine the extent of their social networks in shaping their settlement and incorporation goals by analyzing formation, types, and sustenance of these networks at the local and transnational levels. At the structural level, I investigate the structural contexts their agency is embedded in, and how their transmigrancy experiences and practices relate to structural power relations of gender, social class, marital status, nationality, and immigration status.

The findings of this research draw on a three-year-long feminist ethnographic study of transmigrant women who originated from Eastern and Central European post-communist countries, entered the United States through au pair programs and were residing in the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Area. I show that these women were primarily motivated to partake in au pair programs for non-economic goals such as cultural exchange, and planned short-term settlement. However, in the long-term, they sought to sustain double affiliation in their home countries and the United States for negotiating oppressive economic, cultural, and social structures intensified with post-communist transition in their home countries. In doing so, they managed to maintain a legal immigration status and ultimately planned to obtain permanent residency rights in the United States.

The empirical findings of the dissertation challenge overgeneralized assumptions on transmigrants' agency, social networks, settlement, and incorporation patterns in transnationalism scholarships. It also contributes a nuanced understanding of the dynamics and complexities of building and maintaining transnational mobilities among an under-researched population; namely, au pair transmigrants.

Working for Pay or Raising a Family? Three Papers on Women’s Work Expectations and Market Outcomes

Abstract: Since the gender revolution of the 1970s, we have learned a great deal about the determinants of female employment. One of the themes most frequently discussed in the literature refers to the role played by work expectations in shaping women's market achievement. As a supply-side explanation for women's market performance, work expectations emphasize women's internalized attitudes and preferences, which might lead some of them to make work and family decisions that will curtail their options down the road. To this point, most scholars have favored demand-side and contextual accounts of women's market achievement; these highlight mechanisms such as workplace discrimination against women or mothers, and similar structural constraints embedded in the larger cultural, social and economic systems. In this dissertation, I use longitudinal data to expand our understanding of women's work expectations in three directions. First, I revisit the neoclassical human capital argument's claim that individuals with low work expectations will invest less in human capital and choose jobs with lower penalties for work interruptions. I find support for this argument: work expectations are relatively good predictors of early baby-boom women's human capital accumulation, job characteristics, employment rates, hourly wages, and occupational prestige. Second, I explore variation in the role of work expectations across two cohorts of American women, early and late baby boomers. I find that rapid social change made it easier for later cohorts to absorb the negative market consequences of holding low work expectations in young adulthood. Third, I model the life-course employment trajectories of early baby boomers from ages 20 to 54, and find that a significant proportion of them exhibited intricate work patterns throughout adulthood, with periods in which they were focused on their career and other periods in which they seemed to pursue other life interests. My research shows that -when observed over time- most women's work behavior is characterized by a high degree of complexity. This calls for a more nuanced approach to the study of women's market performance, one that -together with the structural forces constraining their action- explicitly accounts for women's subjective expectations, preferences and attitudes towards work and family.

Technoscientific Knowledge Practices of Adolescent Mental Health Care Work

Abstract: This study examines the technoscientific knowledge-practices of adolescent psychotherapy. Employing an interpretive, feminist version of grounded theory, 40 interviews with psychotherapists were analyzed. Building on Science and Technology Studies and the Sociology of Health and Illness, the following research questions are asked: How are adolescent mental illnesses defined and approached within and across social worlds? How do practitioners negotiate social processes of diagnosis? In what ways does the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) as a technology, shape the diagnostic and treatment work of mental health practitioners? In what ways does Managed Care (MC) shape adolescent mental health care?

Social worlds define psychotherapy as an art and science, resist biomedicine and embrace eclectic theoretical orientations to treatment. Psychotherapists utilize Evidence Based Practices (EBPs) in their treatment plans but critique how EBPs privilege scientific evidence over patient subjectivity, social contexts and the therapeutic relationship. 

Psychotherapists challenge the cultural authority of the DSM and downplay its significance for clinical work. While the DSM is a socially-scripted technology, its significance is interpretively flexible. Psychotherapists employ work-arounds to the problems posed by biomedical and bureaucratic standardization, and participate in processes of cribbing. Cribbing signifies the collective knowledge building and translation work necessary to learn the codes that facilitate therapeutic service authorizations and minimize denials. The DSM technology and MC privilege a therapeutic focus on surface level symptoms and behaviors whereas psychotherapists focus on communication, relational and emotional issues. The assemblage of the DSM and MC creates diagnostic dissonance for psychotherapists--a conflict between their own theoretical orientations and the biomedical model. Biomedicalization processes are uneven and actively resisted.

MC governs the clinical practices of psychotherapists. For-profit MC companies have shifted care from intense psychodynamic therapy towards short-term surface level medications and behavioral programs. MC policies limit services, over-manage treatment and harm the therapeutic relationship. MC stratifies providers and patients by encouraging seasoned professionals to leave public forms of insurance. The least experienced practitioners care for those with the most intense mental illness while those with experience opt-out and treat the worried-well.

Improving Survey Measurement Questions for Sexual Minorities and the Trans Population: Toward an Understanding of the Socially Constructed Nature of the Trans Life Course

Abstract: Sexual minorities are a hidden population who are difficult for social researchers to analyze well. One specific group of sexual minorities, the transgender population, and how they understand their sometimes changing identities, may be especially complex to study. Not only is this sometimes a hidden population, but they may only identify as transgender at certain points in the life course, preferring other identity categories at different life stages and in different circumstances. I use the shortened term "trans" to refer to all members of what the hegemonic gendered order would consider gender non-conforming. Using the overarching sociological concepts of social constructionism and classification and drawing on a life course perspective, this dissertation explores how the self-identity of members of the trans community might shift across the life course. The goal then is to better understand trans identity awareness and developments across the life course in order to make better sense of existing survey data as well as to improve future questions related to trans identity.

Analysis for this dissertation drew upon data collected from 139 in-depth cognitive interviews in both English and Spanish from a project related to testing a new sexual identity question for the National Health Interview Survey conducted by the Questionnaire Design Research Laboratory at the National Center for Health Statistics to explore how survey wording affects what researchers know, or think they know, about sexual identity distribution, particularly as it relates to trans identity. It also drew upon data collected from 10 in-depth qualitative interviews done with members of the trans community in order to explore how an understanding of the trans life course enables us to make better sense of the ways in which this group identifies on official surveys. A sociological approach, one particularly embedded in social constructionism, was used to address the improvement of a survey research question.

Service, Sacrifice, and Citizenship: The Experiences of Muslims Serving in the U.S. Military

Abstract: The events of 9/11 and the subsequent "War on Terror" activated long standing stereotypes in the United States that portrayed Muslims as fundamentally different from other Americans. In this project, I interview 15 Muslims who have served in the U.S. military since 9/11 to determine if and how the activation of this us/them boundary shaped their military experiences.

I find that the us/them atmosphere that characterizes civilian discourse about Muslims is present in the military. However, most of my respondents felt that it had little practical effect on them. I discuss this in terms of the presence but irrelevance of this boundary. I connect this finding to the history of racial integration in the U.S. military, arguing that characteristics of the military, including an emphasis on policies of equal opportunity, the ability to compel certain behaviors, and the nature of military service, which promotes close contact among diverse individuals, can mitigate some of the negatives effects of being othered. While most of my respondents had positive experiences, in some units the us/them discourse was exacerbated, creating atmospheres of distrust and suspicion which led to negative outcomes including harassment, accusations, and decisions by Muslim service members to leave the military.

A theme that emerged in exploring this dichotomy of experience among my respondents was the role of leadership. Leadership that saw value in diversity and was invested in supporting it, mitigated negative effects of othering, making this an irrelevant frame. However, leadership that repeated stereotypes or fears reinforced this tension, creating toxic environments in which Muslim service members felt excluded.

I began this project with the expectation that citizenship would be a central narrative for Muslim service members, as it was for Japanese Americans in World War II. However, the respondents in my sample rarely use their military service to directly make claims on citizenship. They do however express institutional motivations to serve and engage in dialogue, bridge building, and other aspects of everyday citizenship.

Community through Comedy: Cultural Consciousness in the Russian Soviet Anekdot

Abstract: The way by which nationality and citizenship are codified in law or used by political entrepreneurs to mobilize populations is different from how individuals make sense of themselves. Although sharing a particular attribute or physical connection offers some sort of relational identity, it is the product of belonging both to a category and network of individuals in addition to the feeling of belonging which produces a bounded groupness. The Russian Soviet anekdot--a politically subversive joke--provides an intimate view into the perspective of the Russian people living under the Soviet regime. The anekdot serves as a discourse of "cultural consciousness," connecting otherwise atomized people to a homeland, collective culture and memory. Beyond its transgressive properties, politically subversive texts like the anekdot articulate the details of an intimate set of knowledges that insiders "are taught not to know" (Taussig 1999). In this dissertation I look at how the characters and narratives construct (1) the boundaries of "we"--who belongs and who does not by exploring how different groups are "marked" in the anekdoty, (2) how the collectivity negotiates their understanding of leaders, institutions and State propaganda as a means of rejecting or reifying aspects of Soviet power, and (3) what sort of collective memory and identity is conveyed through the expressions of the public secret, nostalgia and/or regret. The anekdot reveals power dynamics at multiple levels: within the family, between ethnic groups and geographical regions, and between people and state. Together these multiple identities and relationships express a form of "cultural consciousness" among Russians uniting this group in a shared identity and network amid the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Do Economics Trump Culture? Effects of Women's Work and Relative Economic Resources on Married Women's Authority in Household Decisionmaking in Jordan

Abstract: The effects of work on women's household decisionmaking authority have been documented in many empirical studies. However, few studies have explored its effects in a social context where women's labor force participation is low. Little is known about the conditions through which women's work enhances authority within the household. Using 2007 Jordan Demographic and Health Survey I explore the effects of women's work and relative economic resources on their authority in household decisionmaking net of culturally relevant sources of power. The country has enhanced its human capital base, developed new industries and promoted women's work, but it also remains a bastion of traditional gender norms. Drawing on resource theory, gender performance theories, theories of institutionalized patriarchy and bargaining approaches, I argue that women's work and relative economic resources matter more for some dimensions of household decisionmaking than others. Engagement in the labor market confers exclusive control over matters of personal wellbeing, while enhancing women's leverage to participate in family management decisions. However, only women in nuclear households experience the benefits of productive work on authority in household decisionmaking. Results confirm the multidimensionality of household decisionmaking power, and a possible causal effect of work participation. While individual factors matter, regardless of women's economic resources and other characteristics, living in regions with high socio-economic development and less patriarchal norms is associated with greater decisionmaking authority. The results of this research contribute to our understanding of women's empowerment by empirically demonstrating the conditions under which economic resources may trump cultural scripts, when cultural factors may matter more, and when the two interact.

From Urban Enclave to Ethnoburb: Changes in Residential Patterns of Chinese Immigrants

Abstract: In recent decades, immigrant settlement in the United States has undergone tremendous changes. Chinese immigrants, who have long been known for their concentration in inner city Chinatowns, now are increasingly becoming suburban residents. In contrast to the predictions of the spatial assimilation model, many suburban Chinese immigrants are not assimilating into mainstream society culturally and structurally; rather, they are forming ethnic clusters of residential areas and business districts in suburbs--ethnoburbs. Little theoretical explanation has been offered for the emergence and growth of ethnoburbs. Focusing on the Chinese community in the Greater Washington, DC metropolitan area, in this dissertation I first portray the changes in residential patterns of Chinese immigrants and verify the emergence of ethnoburbs in DC area by Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping; second, I reevaluate spatial assimilation theory by analyzing degree of segregation and predictor of residential location using 1970 and 2010 IPUMS data; third, I conduct in-depth interviews with community leaders and residents from DC's Chinatown and inner suburbs to further examine spatial assimilation theory and to provide individual perspectives about the changing dynamics of the Chinese community in DC area; last, I propose new conceptual models to address the nature and implications of studying ethnoburbs. My conclusion is that the changes in the residential patterns of Chinese immigrants reflect a "paradoxical outcome" of assimilation (Zhou 2009). As the assimilation theory predicts, many Chinese immigrants have transformed their socioeconomic gains to spatial mobility and residential assimilation into white-dominant suburbs; however, the emergence and growth of ethnoburbs contradicts some of the predictions of the assimilation model. Rather, as Li (2009) has proposed, ethnoburbs have emerged under the influence of the changing local and global economy, race relations, immigration policies, and increasing transnational connections. Further research will be needed to predict how long ethnoburbs will persist.

Global Islam in the Age of Civil Society: Transnational Civil Society, Religion, and Power

Abstract: This dissertation examines the instrumental benefits of civil society discourse for Muslim civil society organizations and their pursuit of conservative agendas. Since early 1990, informal religious communities in the Muslim world have been reestablishing themselves as formal NGOs at unprecedented rates. Additionally, they are joining forces and forming transnational coalitions. The constituents' goals of religious support and solidarity remain unchanged in terms of their commitment to conservative and religious norms. By contrast, existing transnational civil society literature is dominated with assumptions of liberal and secular agendas. Yet, despite the seemingly inherent contradiction, the members of these faith-based organizations and coalitions persistently position themselves within the sphere of civil society. This dissertation problematizes this conflict and asks: Why are the previously informal Islamist networks adopting the discourse of civil society, transforming into formal NGOs, and establishing transnational coalitions?

In this study, I examine one of the largest Muslim NGO coalitions to date - the Union of the NGOs of the Islamic World (UNIW). With its 193 member NGOs from 46 countries, the UNIW aims to consolidate faith-based Muslim NGOs and to coordinate member actions for the welfare of Muslim communities around the world. Based on fieldwork conducted in Turkey, Germany, the U.S., Malaysia and Cambodia, I employ qualitative and ethnographic methods and draw on diverse sources of data including in-depth interviews, participant observation and document analysis.

My findings suggest that framing this transnational religious solidarity project as a transnational civil society network provides Islamist groups additional channels of power. Specifically, previously informal communities find opportunities to increase their social capital through membership in a transnational coalition, engage in mutually profitable relationships with states, and claim legitimacy as global political actors. The empirical findings of the dissertation challenge several assumptions of the constructivist and sociological institutionalist literature. These perspectives' contributions to the study of transnational advocacy networks, international NGOs, and transnational NGO coalitions have prioritized ideational and normative concerns over instrumental and interest-based motivations in transnational non-state actor politics. In this dissertation I argue that ideational motivations of transnational non-state actors regularly intersect with instrumental concerns. By demonstrating the instrumental motivations of norm-oriented networks, this dissertation moves beyond the instrumental/ideational divide that permeates the literature on transnational non-state actors.

"Fertility as Mobility" in India: Salience of Caste, Education and Employment Opportunities

Abstract: In this dissertation, we use the "fertility as mobility" approach to study the determinants of fertility outcomes in India. More elaborately, we re- examine the Beckerian hypothesis of a tradeoff between number and quality of children with increasing income levels using the India Human Development Survey (2005) data. Our contention is that it is not necessarily the case that couples at higher end of the income scale will have fewer but higher quality children as compared to those lower down the income scale. Drawing on the seminal work of Susan Greenhalgh on "fertility as mobility" in late nineteenth century traditional Chinese society (1989) and modifying Coale's three necessary and sufficient conditions for demographic transition (1975), we argue that even couples lower down the income scale will be willing to invest in quality rather than quantity of children if the institutional framework in terms of education and employment opportunities enhance mobility prospects. We also find considerable persistence of occupations across generations suggesting that increasing occupational mobility across generations particularly for those lower down the caste hierarchy is essential for mobility to be a relevant factor in fertility decisions for disenfranchised castes.

The Motivations and Experiences of Mexican Americans in the U.S. Marine Corps: An Intersectional Analysis

Abstract: As one of the largest and fastest growing minority groups in the United States, Mexican Americans are reshaping the major institutions of American life, including the military. The Mexican American military population, although still underrepresented when compared to their presence in the American population generally, is a growing ethnic group. Although growth is occurring across the services, Mexican Americans have a large presence in the U.S. Marine Corps, a trend unlike the military behavior of African Americans, the next largest minority group in the military. This trend holds for both Mexican American men and women, even though the Marine Corps is the most combat-oriented of the service branches and the service branch with the lowest proportion of occupations open to women.

Using an intersectional approach and through in-depth interviews of Mexican American men and women serving in the Marine Corps, I examine the personal characteristics, motivations, and experiences that are associated with the decision to join the Marine Corps. I argue that Mexican American Marines, regardless of gender, share common motivations for service grounded in the intersection of their common ethnicity and socioeconomic position. However, while the majority of respondents were drawn to the military because of occupational considerations, I also argue that they felt a connection to the Marine Corps because of its more institutional nature, which intermeshed well with their own individual values.

I also compare the experiences of the respondents while in the service. In regard to ethnicity, the majority of respondents discussed the large number of Hispanics in the Marine Corps, even as they noted stratification in the population. They did not view themselves as a minority, but as a population growing in size and influence. These commonalities decline with the application of an intersectional analysis, as gender becomes the most salient and divisive characteristic. Despite their diversity, the women were considered a unified category and as a token population, their proportions shaped the group culture in predictable, visible ways. I conclude by discussing how lived experiences are not only shaped by one's social characteristics, but by the social institutions in which one operates.

Constructing Private Social Responsibility Standards: A Social Movement's Struggle to Regulate Global Capitalism

Abstract: In the last several decades, increasing corporate abuses against labor, human rights, and the environment have sparked an explosion in the discourse around what corporations' responsibilities are to society. One form of this discourse has been the production of specific sets of standards by the social responsibility movement to hold businesses accountable to society. While many in the movement continue to target the state to advocate for laws and regulations, the movement has also increasingly targeted corporations directly in an effort to create private standards to which they expect businesses to adhere. Relying on contentious outsider pressure against corporations, advocates work through institutional channels and with corporations to promote social change in a way that traditional social movement theories have largely ignored.

This study examines socially responsible investing and social certifications as two particularly important sites for the development of private standards that function outside of the state. Each of these sites are conceptualized as social movement fields in which actors compete to define standards, and which have their own unique rules, opportunities, and constraints. Specifically, I ask: how are private social responsibility standards constructed? Within each field, I draw upon qualitative, in-depth interviews to examine multiple cases, or sets of standards, to understand how advocates translate their expectations into specific standards and what field-level mechanisms shape the standard-setting process. I compare standards across time, and within and across fields to identify causal mechanisms that shape standards in similarly patterned ways. My findings show how power, culture, and institutions shape standards by including or excluding certain criteria and raising or lowering thresholds of socially responsible practices. By examining standard-setting within these fields, we can better understand how meanings are assigned to the different claims of social responsibility, the opportunities and constraints of these fields for the global governance of capitalism, and the relationship between outsider and insider strategies within social movement theory.

More than human capital: Global social mobility and categorical inequality among South Koreans

Abstract: Social scientists in the modernization school argue that industrialization and modernization lead societies to be "open" societies characterized by equal opportunities and a central importance of individual efforts and achievements in social mobility. They assume, using nation-states as the unit of analysis, that stratification takes place primarily and exclusively within nations. This study, by contrast, perceives stratification and social mobility as processes taking place globally. Shifting its focus from national dimensions to global and transnational dimensions, this study investigates the global social mobility of South Koreans, including Korean immigrants in the United States.

This study situates income earnings and social mobility of non-migrant South Koreans and Korean immigrants in the United States within broader patterns of transnational and global social mobility, and reassesses the relative weight of categorical attributes (e.g. country) with that of human capitals (e.g. college education). The results suggest that how social stratification, despite the modernization of South Korea and the United States, remains shaped by categorical inequalities. In this sense, achievement and ascription, as criteria of selection, continue to be fundamental to global stratification. The role of achievement is far more modest than usually assumed when compared to the continuing impact of categorical attributes such as race/ethnicity and nationality.

Identity as Chronic Strain and Coping Strategy in the Job Loss Process

Abstract: Involuntarily losing a major social role, such as employee, may trigger a process of decline in mental health due to changes in time use, social networks, and resources. However, the experience of role loss and associated mental health outcomes is also conditioned by one's subjective experience of salient identities. I argue that exploring the ways in which identities relate to the stress process will provide us with a better understanding of mental health outcomes that follow involuntary role loss.

The linkages among three strands of literature - mental health and identity, stress process, and work and occupations - have not been explored systematically. Using involuntary job loss as an illustrative example, I build on the concepts of identity discrepancies and the stress process by examining participants' identity change, identity work, and distress levels.

In my research, I use data from in-depth interviews conducted at two points in time (about three months apart) from 25 unemployed or underemployed former white-collar employees. I show that involuntary job loss may trigger identity discrepancies that produce identity-based distress, but that identity work may be used to relieve this distress. I identify three types of identity discrepancies experienced by participants: verification discrepancies; temporal consistency discrepancies; and status consistency discrepancies.

I also show that unemployed or underemployed people may engage in specific types of identity work to cope with and reduce the distress produced by identity discrepancies, and I identify three paths on which people may end up after job loss: 1) shifting; 2) sustaining; and 3) identity void. My results show that not all paths are equally available to everyone. Rather, structural factors guide and shape their identity work options. Specifically, social statuses and the extent of one's involvement in social institutions (e.g., family) expand or constrain these options. One's conceptions of past and future identities are also important to this process.

This study demonstrates why we should include identity in processual models of distress and coping, shows how structural factors (i.e., statuses and social institutions) expand or constrain one's identity work options after job loss, and illustrates why we should expand our conceptions of identities to include the past and future. I also discuss ways in which my findings may be applied to involuntary role losses more broadly, as well as links to classic theories of the interrelation between self and society.

Living Arrangements and Health of the Elderly in India

Abstract: Do multigenerational (co-residential) families have protective effects on elderly health? Demographic literature on aging in developing countries has started to examine this question as the contours of global population have been undergoing dramatic changes.

Nevertheless, the theoretical and empirical literature on the relative benefits for the elderly of residing in multigenerational households versus living alone, have remained remarkably elusive. In part, the empirical inconsistency is a result of a significant methodological gap in the extant literature: most empirical studies are based on cross-sectional data where the authors have been largely unsuccessful in eliminating explanations based on the possible selection effects.

India offers an interesting context to study this relationship as the country experiences a growing elderly population coupled with a severe lack of institutional systems of care for the aged. This dissertation draws data from the India Human Development Survey (2004-05) - a nationally representative, multi-topic data set of 41,554 households. It focuses on the relationship between household composition-whether the elderly are living independently, with children, or with other relatives-and short-term morbidity in the last month. The analysis uses standard multivariate regression models and a relatively unconventional technique-propensity score analysis to account for the endogeneity/selectivity problem.

Three particularly salient conclusions are drawn from this research. First, household level analyses using propensity score methods highlight the importance of multigenerational families to the health of the elderly. These results also suggest health effects of household wealth, urban location, the number of adults in the household, and (male) gender. A second set of analyses show that multigenerational families also spend more on medical care when the elderly do get sick. Moreover the same set of household variables that predict better elderly health (wealth, urbanization, adults, gender) also predict higher medical expenditures. Finally, multilevel analyses, using district-level data from the Census of India (2001), corroborate the "urban advantage" finding and demonstrate that health of the elderly is affected not only by household compositional factors (e.g. living arrangements) but also by the larger context created by urbanization.

Mothers' Transitions to the Empty Nest Phase

Abstract: Much of the sociological research on women as mothers focuses on the transition into motherhood or the work and pleasure of raising children. This dissertation uses mixed methods to examine a rarely studied aspect of motherhood - the transition out of day-to-day parenting and into the empty nest stage of the life course. Three very different data sources and analysis techniques are used to develop a rich understanding of how women's daily routines are affected by this transition, as well as what these changes mean to the individual women going through them.

The first analytic component draws on time diary data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) to explore two transitions - the initial transition into motherhood and the gradual changes that occur as children grow. This analysis focuses on labor force engagement, care work, and leisure activities of women as they move through the childrearing years. The second analysis, based on a series of 12 in-depth interviews with women whose children have recently left home, concentrates on the perceived meaning of the transition into the empty nest phase. New sources of meaningful activity and the effect of this transition on women's relationships are also described. In the third substantive section, longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Survey-Young Women (NLS-YW) are used to investigate differences in labor force, helping work, and psychological well-being outcomes between empty nest mothers, mothers with young adult children living at home, mothers with adolescent children living at home, and women without children.

Together, these three analyses paint a picture of the transition into the empty nest as one dominated by emotional changes - lower levels of depressive symptoms, new feelings of freedom, and changes in relationships. While some evidence of new activity was found, especially among the women interviewed for the qualitative analysis, the transition to the empty nest is not typically associated with substantial changes in labor force engagement or other activities.

Citizens, Foreigners, or Germans? The State and Persons of Immigrant Background in the Making of Membership in Germany Since 1990

Abstract: This dissertation examines citizenship and nationness in contemporary Germany. It argues that citizenship and nationness represent two forms of membership which are constituted at the level of state and at the level of prospective citizens. At the level of the state, it considers changes in German citizenship policies in 1990, 1992, and 2000. At the level of prospective citizens, it examines forty-seven persons of immigrant background and their understandings of German citizenship and their own nationness.

Though not the same, citizenship and nationness may be related in various ways. Previous scholarship shows that nationness has been a key category and criterion for who may become a citizen at the level of state, as expressed in citizenship policies. Similarly, the self-understandings of individuals as members of the nation may inform their decision to become citizens. Equally, their citizenship status may inform their sense of their own nationness. Finally, understandings of citizenship and nationness which are institutionalized in the state may inform the understandings of persons of immigrant background.

Beginning in 1990, citizenship policies became increasingly more liberalized and accessible to persons of immigrant background without German descent. This dissertation shows that these changes after 1990 are explained by understandings of nationness, as expressed in narratives of political parties about immigrants and foreigners, Germany and the nation, and citizenship as an institution. Contrary to scholarship emphasizing nationally-specific traditions of citizenship, as well as shifts towards liberalizing access to citizenship, this dissertation shows that understandings of nationness differ mainly by political parties.

The self-understandings of persons of immigrant background reflect some, but not all, of the changes at the level of the state. In particular, most persons of immigrant background see themselves as German and as belonging in everyday life in Germany. However, their citizenship status is largely independent of their sense of national belonging. This suggests that national belonging and citizenship are largely disconnected for ordinary people. In addition, the disconnect between nationness and citizenship is more pronounced for persons who are citizens, indicating that they view their membership as citizens should be met with a sense of national membership.

Spatial Inequality in Child Nutrition in Nepal: Implications of Regional context and Individual/Household Composition

Abstract: With nearly 42% of children below age five nutritionally stunted, child malnutrition is a social, economic, and public health issue in Nepal. Even more disheartening is the wide variation of malnutrition across sub-regions within country, which seems to disproportionately disadvantage children in certain regions as opposed to others. This dissertation aims to understand the extent and causes of child stunting from a regional inequality perspective.

Household data from the Nepal Demographic and Health Surveys (NDHS) 1996, 2001, and 2006 are used to analyze national and regional trends of stunting of children age 6-59 months. Various data sources including the Nepal Census and the Health Management and Information System are used for regional level data. Both household and regional data are then analyzed using two-level Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM).

The results show that stunting is declining albeit very slowly in Nepal and across all thirteen regions. But there are significant and consistent disparities across regions that are not decreasing over time.

HLM analyses show that the regional variance in child stunting is due to both household and regional (i.e. contextual) factors. Specifically, women's literacy at the regional level is found to have a profound impact as it explains 60% of the regional variance in stunting. Among other factors, road accessibility and food production also appear to have important roles but not as large as women's literacy. Together, these three contextual factors explain 75% of the regional variance. Adding household compositional factors- socioeconomics in particular- reduces the residual regional variance only by few additional points. One important finding from the household-level analysis is that the so-called lower caste children are disproportionately stunted compared to other caste groups.

Regional women's literacy remains a strong factor influencing child stunting above and beyond mother's education at the household level. Hence, women's literacy at the contextual level should comprise the most important policy agenda against malnutrition in Nepal which is not the case now. Moreover, a special emphasis on the disadvantaged castes is of utmost important so that potential inter-generational transfer of malnutrition could be reduced.

"Priestesses Unto the Most High God": LDS Women's Temple Rituals and the Politics of Religious Identity

Abstract: This study enters into broader debates surrounding the study of women in traditional religions by examining the ways in which LDS women utilize temple ritual in the ongoing production of religious identity. In-depth interviews with eighteen LDS women are explored to highlight themes in LDS women's perspectives regarding temple rituals. I demonstrate that LDS women's perspectives on these ceremonies reveal that LDS women draw from an amalgam of competing dominant, alternative, and oppositional discourses to define their religious experiences and identities. These self-definitions revealed that the women in this study drew from ritual symbols, gestures, images, and dialogue to shift normative definitions of LDS women as mothers who bear and raise children to more expansive identities as "priestesses unto the most high God." I argue that examining the practices of women in traditional religions reveals hidden layers of their experiences, identities, and ways of knowing.

Navigating New Norms of Involved Fatherhood: Employment, Gender Attitudes, and Father Involvement in American Families

Abstract: In recent decades, gender roles have shifted toward greater overlap of men's and women's roles: women have entered the labor force in record numbers, while new norms of fatherhood emphasize men's involvement with their children in addition to their traditional role of financial provider. These "new fathers" are expected to be more equal partners in parenting, spending time nurturing children and performing both interactive and physical caregiving. However, men may face tension and conflict in attempting to fulfill their roles as both provider and involved father.

The primary tension lies in the conflict of time and place: while the "new father" role requires spending time with children, the "provider" and "good worker" roles require a commitment to spending time on the job. How do men navigate these contradictory roles? To what extent does employment impact men's involvement with their children? Are men with more egalitarian attitudes trading off longer work hours for more time with their children? This dissertation examines these questions using two waves of the Child Development Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID-CDS), which offer rich measures of father involvement, employment, and gender attitudes. Specifically, it examines the relationship between employment and father involvement, and whether and how gender attitudes moderate that relationship. Statistical methods include cross-sectional and fixed effects OLS regressions.

Results indicate that nontraditional attitudes toward the father's role, "new father" attitudes, are associated with both engagement with children and responsibility for their care, particularly engagement in physical care. Attitudes toward public and private roles of women, on the other hand, are not related to father involvement. Results further suggest that the "provider"/"good worker" role prevails for men, much the way the nurturer role tends to prevail for women. Despite inelastic work hours, however, there may in fact be a cohort of "new fathers" whose behavior matches their attitudes, in that they are 1) more involved with their children than more traditional fathers, and 2) they are able to preserve time with children, likely by cutting back on leisure time or incorporating their children into their leisure time.

Children’s Schooling and Maternal Well-Being: Evaluating the Role of Elementary Schools as Social Institutions in Mothers’ Lives

Abstract: Motherhood is accompanied by costs to well-being, and the mechanisms that negatively affect mothers' health are not clearly defined. Using a stress process perspective, this dissertation examines the role of strains associated with children's education to explain racial/ethnic and class variation in maternal well-being. Using mixed methods, I argue that much of the literature on family-school "partnerships" ignores the ways in which schools affect family life. Additionally, stress process literature fails to analyze stressors within schools, which house a myriad of potential difficulties for mothers. In short, while much research considers children's success in school, we know little about how this social institution affects mothers' lives and relationships.

Multi-level modeling with the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K, N=6,995), illustrates which strains affect mothers' self-rated health and depressive symptoms. Key strains associated with children's health and school problems include children's disabilities, poor health, and poor behavior. Strains associated with mothers' own time pressures include looking for work, employment transitions during elementary school, and missed events/activities at the school. Strains in the school context include the proportion of students in poverty and the school neighborhood conditions. Longitudinal analyses show that school context is a central mediator of the relationship between mothers' racial/ethnic status and self-rated health and depressive symptoms, explaining health differences between African-American and white mothers and accounting for nearly one-third of the differences between Latina and white mothers.

Finally, I explore whether social integration through school involvement benefits mothers. Though associated with improved well-being, school involvement does little to mitigate the effects of schooling strains. In-depth interviews with a racially/ethnically diverse group of 27 middle class mothers show that school involvement often comes at a cost to mothers in terms of time with family, difficult interactions with fellow parents, and concerns for an equitable distribution of labor at the school. Moreover, mothers' motivations for involvement vary with some mothers, more commonly mothers of color, focused solely on involvement as a component of good mothering, while other mothers, mainly the white mothers in the sample, also refer to their involvement as an opportunity to expand their own friendship networks.

Spirituality in the Laboratory: Negotiating the politics of knowledge in the psychedelic sciences

Abstract: In this study I argue that psychedelic substances served as a doorway through which spirituality entered the scientific laboratory to an unprecedented degree given their traditionally demarcated relationship by making spirituality more amenable to scientific paradigms and accessible to scientific methodologies. I conduct a feminist discourse analysis of the politics of knowledge enacted in this unique intersection of spirituality and science in the psychedelic sciences. I draw on feminist theories of science and knowledge which conceptualize science as a dominant knowledge constituted through and productive of the intersecting and historically hierarchical systems of power of race, class, gender and nation. Using discourse analysis techniques, I analyze a documentary archive I created through a theoretically driven sampling of the psychedelic sciences of spirituality from the 1930's to the present. In Chapter 2, I analyze how spirituality was brought forward and negotiated in these sciences. I argue that psychedelic scientists utilized a range of what I call tactics of legitimation to justify the scientific study of these peculiar substances and the spirituality with which they are associated vis-à-vis dominant scientific knowledges and I analyze the attendant epistemological costs of this assimilation. In Chapter 3, I analyze the efforts to integrate psychedelic substances and the spiritual experiences they induce into western therapeutic assumptions and practices. I argue that their efforts to scientifically determine the mysticality of mystical experiences and their pursuits of scientific liturgical authority over the administration of psychedelic sacraments resulted in the emergence of a would-be psychiatric clerical authority. In Chapter 4, I analyze the efforts to integrate and develop indigenous spiritual psychedelic knowledges and practices across each step of a bioprospecting model from plant identification to the determination of mechanisms of action and finally to drug development studies. I argue that in each step indigenous spiritual knowledges were assimilated into dominant scientific assumptions and practices reifying western scientific authority over indigenous knowledges and practices and reinforcing historically hierarchical colonial relationships despite the `good intentions' of these psychedelic scientists. In the final chapter of this study I discuss future sociological and feminist projects analyzing these peculiar psychedelic sciences and spiritual substances.

Innovation as Group Process: Hierarchy, Status, and the Dilemma of Participative Leadership

Abstract: Organizations that are characterized by vertical authority structures, where decisions are made and implemented through a clear chain-of-command, are commonly seen as less responsive, less innovative, and less dynamic than organizations that have authority distributed more horizontally. This study takes aim at this presumption by miniaturizing authority structures to the level of the group, where group process theory can be marshaled to predict, measure, and assess outcomes for group innovation in an experimental setting.

Using status theory, I propose that hierarchical groups will be more rather than less innovative than egalitarian groups.  I conduct an experimental test by manipulating hierarchy in groups instructed to complete a common task, with outcomes mapped to innovative performance.  Findings show that hierarchical groups are actually no more, and no less, innovative than egalitarian groups.  Irrespective of authority structure, innovation appears to be most likely in groups in which a clear leader emerges who makes others in the group feel like her equal during group interaction.  

Other findings are presented to explain the apparent no-effect of authority structure on innovation.  I will show that status processes advantage each type of group differently with respect to innovation.  Hierarchical groups are advantaged by the presence of a clear leader; egalitarian groups are advantaged by the participative interaction that comes naturally to status peers.  But the two conditions must occur together to maximize the likelihood for innovation, and this poses a problem for groups who seek to innovate, because status dynamics that promote one of the conditions undercut the status dynamics that promote the other.  In egalitarian groups, when authority seekers try to take charge and lead, participative interaction is endangered because members resent the status move.  In hierarchical groups, when higher ranking members act participatively, group leadership is contested because others feel empowered to take charge.  Each group type therefore faces a dilemma of participative leadership, and because the dilemma is reversed across group types, the net effect of authority structure on innovation is no apparent effect.  Implications of the findings for theory and practice are discussed.
 

Pathways to Early Pregnancy by Race/Ethnic and Class Locations: Adolescent Girls’ Self-Concepts and Ambivalence Towards Pregnancy

Abstract: An important paradox in adolescent pregnancy is that adolescent girls' stronger self-concepts (e.g., higher efficacy and self-esteem) are thought to reduce the likelihood of becoming pregnant: However, minority adolescents, particularly Black girls, have equal or stronger self-concepts than White girls, yet have higher pregnancy and birth rates in adolescence. Thus, the self-concept (or different components of the self) may operate differently for Black and Hispanic girls than White girls, either being positively related or unrelated to pregnancy. One way to disentangle the paradox is to focus on girls' feelings about becoming pregnant and their initial sexual decisions, which serve as more proximate determinants and occur prior to contraceptive behaviors and the occurrence of pregnancy. Based on a theoretical framework grounded in intersectionality and symbolic interactionism and utilizing the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health, N = 5,735), this dissertation examines the influence of adolescent girls' self-concepts, including self-efficacy, perceived mattering, self-esteem and possible selves, on two primary outcomes--feelings of ambivalence towards pregnancy and the transition to first sexual intercourse--and how these relationships vary by race/ethnicity and social class. Statistical methods include discrete-time event history analysis and OLS and logistic regression. Results generally indicate that stronger self-concepts, in particular self-efficacy, mattering, and educational possible selves, are protective against girls' feelings of ambivalence towards pregnancy one year later. Two- and three-way interactions reveal that the relationship between educational expectations and aspirations and ambivalence varies by girls' race and class locations. Educational aspirations are protective for high-SES White girls and low-SES Black girls whereas educational expectations are protective for low-SES White and high-SES Black girls. Girls' perceived mattering is protective against an early transition to first sexual intercourse, particularly for low-SES girls. Ambivalence towards pregnancy is positively related to an early transition to first sexual intercourse and this relationship varies by race/ethnicity and class. This dissertation highlights contingencies by race/ethnic and social class locations and the complexity of the influence of girls' self-concepts in understanding the pathways leading to adolescent fertility.

The Politics of Teenage Sexualities: Social Regulation, Citizenship and the U.S. State

Abstract: This study examines the emergence of a now-hegemonic discourse of teenage sexuality, which constructs teenagers' engagement in "sexual activity" as a social problem with and about girls in general and low-income girls of color in particular, and explores how the U.S. state and the community health centers that contract with it regulate the sexual practices, relationships, and identities of teenagers in relation to these and related understandings. My analysis draws on feminist and queer theories of sexuality, gender, the state, social regulation, and sexual citizenship and emphasizes how intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and age are explicitly and implicitly articulated through dynamics of regulation prior to state intervention at the federal level; the federal policymaking process; and the discourses and practices of service providers working in two community health centers that provide health care and social services to a predominantly low-income Latina/o clientele in Washington, DC. I argue that the U.S. state and community health centers comprise important sites through which inequalities of gender, race, class, sexuality, and age are articulated and teenage sexual citizenship is produced. As such, this study is located at the intersection of political sociology and gender and sexuality studies, and makes contributions to the sociological and interdisciplinary literatures on intersectionality, welfare states, social regulation, sexual citizenship, and the social construction of adolescence.

Managing Water: Efficiency-Equity Tradeoffs in the Participatory Approach

Abstract: This dissertation investigates the hypothesis that participation can overcome trade-offs in equity and efficiency. Literature within the field of economics and sociology has argued for tradeoffs in outcomes of allocative efficiency and equity and institutional efficiency and equity, respectively. Community-based participatory institutions are expected to overcome this tension by introducing institutional accountability and local-level decision making, which serve to enhance technical and allocative efficiency while retaining mechanisms for equitable allocation and empowerment. This research draws on fieldwork from a community-managed water supply program in rural Bahia, Brazil to examine whether outcomes of efficiency and equity are mutually compatible. Findings from the field research indicate that explicit and implicit subsidies to the water supply systems led to outcomes of allocative equity in the sites visited, but that these generated tradeoffs with allocative efficiency. Findings from the research also indicated that the community organizations were relatively efficient in their administrative practices, but that this efficiency came at a cost to equality of membership and voice in the community organization. This suggests that participatory water supply programs generate certain and specific costs, although the findings also suggest additional positive externalities associated with participation.

Constructing a Disabled Identity: The Influence of Impairment, Social Factors and Reflected Appraisals

Abstract: The claiming of an identity as disabled has important implications for impaired individuals' interpersonal interactions and well-being, however not all impaired individuals claim a disabled identity. In this dissertation I build upon social and medical models of disability by extending the work in two key ways using multi-methods. First, using a symbolic interactionist frame, I examine how individuals' experiences are mediated through self processes in shaping their identity claims. Second, I assess how the identification process is influenced by individuals' social statuses. Data used in this study is from the 1994-1995 National Health Interview Survey on Disability, a large nationally representative sample of individuals with impairments. In addition, I supplement this analysis with data from 30 qualitative interviews.

Results underscore prior research showing that not all individuals who experience impairment identify as disabled. The qualitative interviews illuminated a third group not obvious in the quantitative analysis - those in the process of negotiating a disabled identity. Experiences of socially constructed barriers have important implications for claiming an identity as disabled; however experiences of impairment also have strong effects on identity claims. In depth interviews also showed social barriers, but not environmental barriers, and impairment affect impaired persons' identity claims as disabled.

Self-processes perform an important role in helping impaired individuals understand their positioning in society and verify their identity claims. Reflected appraisals of being disabled increased the likelihood of claiming a disabled identity and these appraisals mediated the relationship between the experiences of socially constructed barriers, impairment and the self. In the qualitative analyses, social comparisons and self presentations were also found to be an agentic tool used by individuals to assert their identities as disabled/not disabled and in shaping others' views of them.

Finally, social statuses have important implications for the construction or rejection an identity as disabled. Those with higher social statuses were MORE likely to claim disabled identity, all things equal. In the qualitative analyses, women's disabled identity claims were often disregarded, perhaps underscoring their more difficult experience verifying their identity claims. Consistent with this, interactions between social statuses and the social and medical models were identified.

From Many Identities to One Voice?: Arab American Activism Forged From the Politics of Isolation

Abstract: This dissertation answers key questions about the reasons behind the mobilization and consolidation of Arab American collective identities expressed in political activism. Summarized into one overarching question, these key questions examine what encourages and challenges the mobilization of a consolidated political voice of Arab Americans in the American political arena. The ultimate goal of this project is to understand the reasons behind the existing political weakness of Arab American voices in the American socio-political arena. More specifically stated, the key questions are: "What, in the history of immigration of Arab American, impacted the current weakness of the collective, Arab American political voice?;" "What impact did political events and policies have on the mobilization of the consolidated Arab American identity?;" "What are the challenges and motivations for consolidation of the Arab American political voice related to the heterogeneity of Arab American communities?;" and finally "What role does counter-mobilization, namely pro-Israeli lobbies, play in affecting the intensity of Arab American voices in American politics?"

The general answer, which was acquired through tracing the process of formation of this mobilization and consolidation of the Arab American identity, demonstrates that political isolation is the predominant mobilizing factor for identity-based activism and consolidation of Arab American identities. This study concludes that Arab Americans face political isolation due to several factors such as the relatively short presence of Arab immigrants in the United States, their brief political engagement in the American political arena, the heterogeneity of Arab American communities preventing a development of strong leadership uniting the communities, and the presence of counter-mobilized communities such as well established pro-Israeli lobbies which are often in opposition to Arab American political efforts.

Historical events such as the 1967 War or the attacks of September 11 make Arab American activists aware of their political isolation. Thus, unlike many ethnic minorities motivated by cultural and economic factors, Arab American motivation is predominantly politically driven.

In regard to methodological approaches, this research draws on interviews, life histories of members of self-labeling Arab American organizations in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area and document analyses to learn about their organizations and motivations behind identity-based political activism. In regard to pre-existing scholarship, this study engages the literature about panethnic mobilization and the incorporation of immigrants into a host society. A recurrent theme in this literature is how panethnic mobilization is driven by economic or cultural factors. However, economic and cultural factors are not key catalysts driving panethnic Arab American identities. At the collective level Arab Americans enjoy all elements of citizenship: legal status, rights and a sense of belonging yet their path to full participation in U.S. political arenas remains a challenge.

The consolidated identity-based activism of Arab Americans focuses on gaining a political voice and creating an influential political constituency. As this study reveals, Arab American panethnic organizations strive to disrupt the monolithic and negative discourse about Arabs and Arab Americans in the popular and political culture of the United States by taking ownership over the "Arab American" label. Thus, the use of the monolithic label of Arabness is ultimately a strategic move towards gaining political voice(s). The complexities and nuances of this political isolation and corresponding political mobilization unfold in the chapters below.

Developing Pathways to Serving Together: Dual Military Couples’ Life Course and Decision-Making

Abstract: The increase in the number and types of military families since the advent of the All-Volunteer Force in 1973 has increased the impact of the work-family interface for the military. For dual career couples, where both the husband and wife are in the military, both are subject to deployment for extended periods of time, high geographic mobility, probability of a foreign residence, the risk of injury or death, and they must manage two specialized and structured career paths (Segal 1986). The purpose of this study is to analyze the work careers and family life course of dual military couples and their decision-making processes, using a life course perspective. Using a grounded theory methodology, I interviewed and analyzed the transcripts of 23 dual military officer couples in the U.S. Navy. Results show that work and family decisions are influenced by the organizational constraints as well as institutional and cultural norms. The rhythm of life in the Navy is shaped by cyclic changing of job assignments and locations, rotation of sea and shore duty assignments, warfare specialty career paths designed for promotion, and the cultural fast track. These couples' experiences in trying to live together with collocated job assignments shape their long-term decision-making for maintaining a career in the Navy. Their experiences show that the organization's demands and far-reaching control are infused into every aspect of their lives. Couples' discourse is focused on their human agency in an effort to maintain control of their life course while meeting the organizational demands of rigid and structured career paths, increased number of sea duty tours and deployments, and perceived low priority of collocation in the assignment process. Dual career couples in this organization use a long-term perspective of the life course to cope with their current situation with the knowledge that their life satisfaction will improve in the near future as they progress in their career. These couples adapt by employing work-family prioritization strategies for achieving their personal and professional goals. Learning how to successfully combine and separate roles through these prioritization strategies reduces stress and increases life satisfaction.

Firefighting in the New Economy: Changes in Skill and the Impact of Technology

Abstract: To better understand the shift in workers' skills in the New Economy, a case study of professional firefighters (n=42) was conducted using semi-structured interviews to empirically examine skill change and the impact of technology. A conceptual model was designed by both introducing new ideas and integrating traditional and contemporary social theory. The first component of this model categorized firefighters' skills according to the job-context in which they occurred, including: fire related emergencies, non-fire related emergencies, the fire station, and non-fire non-emergencies. The second component of this model drew from Braverman's (1998/1974) skill dimension concept and was used to identify both the complexity and autonomy/control-related aspects of skill in each job-context. Finally, Autor and colleagues' (2002) hypothesis was adapted to determine if routinized components of skill were either supplemented or complemented by new technologies.

The findings indicated that skill change among firefighters was clearly present, but not uniform across job-contexts. A substantial increase in both the complexity and autonomy/control-related skill dimensions was present in the non-fire emergency context (particularly due to increased EMS-related skills). In fire emergencies, some skills diminished across both dimensions (e.g., operating the engine's pump), yet others had a slight increase due to the introduction of new technologies. In contrast to these two contexts, the fire station and non-fire non-emergency job-contexts had less skill change.

Technology played a major role in the skill change experienced by firefighters. Surprisingly, aside from the introduction of computerized engine pumpers, the technology introduced did not diminish skill by replacing routinized tasks (Autor et al. 2002), and also did not create an overall decrease in firefighters' skill as would be suggested by Braverman (1998/1974). Instead new technologies tended to create new skills for firefighters, especially in the fire and non-fire emergency contexts. Similar to the consistent level of skill used in the fire station and non-fire non-emergency contexts, with only few exceptions (e.g., computers) technology's impact on firefighters' skill was found to be rather limited in these two dimensions. Using the tenets detailed in the conceptual model, a more elaborate understanding of skill change and technology's impact was able to be realized.