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Articles 1 - 30 of 51
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The Art Of Not Being Freshened: The Everyday Politics Of Infrastructure In The Mekong Delta, Timothy Gorman
The Art Of Not Being Freshened: The Everyday Politics Of Infrastructure In The Mekong Delta, Timothy Gorman
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
With the growing threat of climate change, states are increasingly turning to large-scale infrastructure projects in order to control environmental conditions, especially in coastal areas. These projects are often planned and implemented in a centralized, top-down manner and sometimes fail to achieve their stated objectives in the face of “everyday resistance” from local residents and farmers. This study draws on interviews and secondary research to examine the contentious everyday politics of infrastructure in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam, focusing specifically on how small-scale, surreptitious acts of “counter-infrastructuring” on the part of farmers, such as the construction of illicit wells …
Moral Career Of Migrant Il/Legality: Undocumented Male Youths In New York City And Paris Negotiating Deportability And Regularizability, Stephen P. Ruszczyk
Moral Career Of Migrant Il/Legality: Undocumented Male Youths In New York City And Paris Negotiating Deportability And Regularizability, Stephen P. Ruszczyk
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
As undocumented youths transition from arrival to adolescence to adulthood, regimes of migrant il/legality shape their lives in varying ways. Over the life course, undocumented youths' legal status may also shift, creating different “careers of il/legality,” sequences characterized by changes to legal status over time that re-shape self, mobility, and social roles. Longitudinal, comparative ethnographic data with undocumented male youths in Paris and New York and schools, municipal and civil society organizations show how shifts in legal status reshape youths' social identities based on access to institutional roles and evaluation of current and future conditions. Showing how undocumented youths simultaneously …
Gender Threat And Men In The Post-Trump World: The Effects Of A Changing Economy On Men’S Housework, Yasemin Besen-Cassino
Gender Threat And Men In The Post-Trump World: The Effects Of A Changing Economy On Men’S Housework, Yasemin Besen-Cassino
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
The article provides an overview of the effects of broader economic changes on the division of housework among dual earner heterosexual couples. It summarizes some of the broader methodological and theoretical trends in the field and calls for an interdisciplinary, intersectional approach in studying men today.
Race, Threat And Workplace Sexual Harassment: The Dynamics Of Harassment In The United States, 1997–2016, Dan Cassino, Yasemin Besen-Cassino
Race, Threat And Workplace Sexual Harassment: The Dynamics Of Harassment In The United States, 1997–2016, Dan Cassino, Yasemin Besen-Cassino
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
Sexual harassment is a persistent problem for women in the workplace. Prior research has explored the effects of sexual harassment on the psychological, physical and economic wellbeing of the victims. Despite the extensive research exploring the causes, most studies focus on micro-level factors, and few studies examine the role of macro-level factors on sexual harassment in the workplace. Using public Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) data and a separate dataset of individual level workplace sexual harassment complaints, we test two hypotheses about sexual harassment in American workplaces. First, we show that the decline in workplace sexual harassment complaints has been …
Myths Of Meritocracy: Caste, Karma And The New Racism, A Comparative Study, Vikash Singh
Myths Of Meritocracy: Caste, Karma And The New Racism, A Comparative Study, Vikash Singh
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
The discourse of karma (behaviour), confounded with inherent psychic and material substance of the person/group (guna), was at the heart of India’s caste ideology. This systematic and intuitive, albeit convoluted and phantasmic doctrine was critical to bridge the discrepancy between a pantheistic religious imaginary and the reality of exclusion and abjection. Although “karma” evokes an exotic orient, this ideology is near identical with the ideas of “idleness” and “instant gratification” used to make sense of racial inequities in the contemporary United States. In both cases, the idea of behavioural and moral deficiency is used to justify evident abjection and discrimination, …
Local Governance Of Immigrant Incorporation: How City-Based Organizational Fields Shape The Cases Of Undocumented Youth In New York City And Paris, Stephen P. Ruszczyk
Local Governance Of Immigrant Incorporation: How City-Based Organizational Fields Shape The Cases Of Undocumented Youth In New York City And Paris, Stephen P. Ruszczyk
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
City-based organizations and governments play an important role in incorporating undocumented immigrant youth. This article investigates how localities sociopolitically incorporate these immigrants by examining the governance constellations and institutional logics of the organizational field that manages undocumented youth. Comparing sets of municipal and civil society organizations in different national settings, I use the two cases of New York City and Paris to ask how the ‘city-based organizational field of immigrant incorporation’ shapes citizenship experiences of undocumented youth. Data come from multi-level longitudinal ethnography over 8 years with two dozen undocumented youth and with organizations in each city as well as …
Sleep It Off: Bullying And Sleep Disturbances In Adolescents, Christopher Donoghue, Lisa J. Meltzer
Sleep It Off: Bullying And Sleep Disturbances In Adolescents, Christopher Donoghue, Lisa J. Meltzer
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
Introduction: Involvement in bullying is associated with negative health outcomes for adolescents. Recent studies suggest that bullying is related to sleep disturbances. The purpose of this study was to examine differences in sleep disturbances (bedtime fears, insomnia, parasomnias) between victims, bullies, and youth not involved in bullying, as well as to explore differences across various types of bullying behavior (verbal, physical, social, cyber). Methods: High school students ages 14–17 years (mean = 16.0) in the United States (n = 885; 57.3% female; 87.5% White) completed The Children's Report of Sleep Patterns and questions about involvement in verbal, physical, social and …
Non-State Actors In The Regularisation Of Undocumented Youths: The Role Of The ‘Education Without Borders Network’ In Paris, Stephen Ruszczyk
Non-State Actors In The Regularisation Of Undocumented Youths: The Role Of The ‘Education Without Borders Network’ In Paris, Stephen Ruszczyk
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
This article uses a bottom-up perspective to highlight how a non-state actor has capitalised on discretionary power to shape regularisation practices of the state. Based on two years of ethnographic data, this case study describes key interactions between state and civil society actors in the field of governing undocumented youths in Paris. A three-step process has enabled a civil society network, whose mission is to regularise undocumented youth and their families in France, to become an effective collective actor in the governance of undocumented youths. This network uses its embeddedness in schools to link youths with social, bureaucratic, and political …
Hardwar: Spirit, Place, And Politics, Vikash Singh, Sangeeta Parashar
Hardwar: Spirit, Place, And Politics, Vikash Singh, Sangeeta Parashar
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
This article describes the narratives and projections that shaped the contested character of Hardwar and the river Ganges as symbols par excellence of the Hindus’ claim to India’s sacred geography over the last two hundred years. It deliberates on the tactics and practices through which Hardwar’s ancient and legendary status has been employed to assert Hindu identity and territorial claims vis-à-vis the colonial administrators, but also to exclude the country’s Muslim and Christian populace. The purifying, divine land of Hardwar enabled the nationalist imagination and struggle for a Hindu India, even as it was instituted as a site for the …
Should Sociologists Stand Up For Science? Absolutely!, Janet M. Ruane
Should Sociologists Stand Up For Science? Absolutely!, Janet M. Ruane
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
Standing up for science is part of sociology's mission as a social science. Standing up is also consistent with our field's ethical obligation to identify and avoid research compromised by conflict of interests.
Re(Searching) The Truth About Our Criminal Justice System: Some Challenges, Janet Ruane
Re(Searching) The Truth About Our Criminal Justice System: Some Challenges, Janet Ruane
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
This article considers the current face-off between “facts vs. alternative facts” as it relates to research on lethal encounters between police and minority citizens. I begin by reviewing major measurement challenges for those studying lethal police shootings and potential improvements for how we document police shootings. I also consider the increasing reliance on use of body cams and surveillance videos for what they may (or may not) bring to improving documentation of police/citizen encounters. Next I address a larger issue that provides the context for the “facts vs. alternative facts” dilemma: science's loss of standing as the recognized superior way …
Race, The Condition Of Neo-Liberalism, Vikash Singh
Race, The Condition Of Neo-Liberalism, Vikash Singh
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
This article addresses the social and historical relation between Chicago School neo-liberalism and contemporary racism, and its connections with the formations of racism in classical liberalism and its colonial character. I show the pragmatic and discursive operations of neo-racism in the context of this shift to a neo-liberal discourse, drawing particularly on Michel Foucault’s seminars, Society Must be Defended, and Birth of Bio-politics. Insofar as “race” cannot be understood as a discrete category outside its social, economic, moral, and political embeddedness in liberalism, I argue that methodological individualism and expectations of high-specialization constrain the theorization of race in U.S. scholarship. …
Race, The Condition Of Neo-Liberalism, Vikash Singh
Race, The Condition Of Neo-Liberalism, Vikash Singh
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
This article addresses the social and historical relation between Chicago School neo-liberalism and contemporary racism, and its connections with the formations of racism in classical liberalism and its colonial character. I show the pragmatic and discursive operations of neo-racism in the context of this shift to a neo-liberal discourse, drawing particularly on Michel Foucault’s seminars, Society Must be Defended, and Birth of Bio-politics. Insofar as “race” cannot be understood as a discrete category outside its social, economic, moral, and political embeddedness in liberalism, I argue that methodological individualism and expectations of high-specialization constrain the theorization of race in U.S. scholarship. …
From Land Grab To Agrarian Transition? Hybrid Trajectories Of Accumulation And Environmental Change On The Cambodia–Vietnam Border, Timothy Gorman, Alice Beban
From Land Grab To Agrarian Transition? Hybrid Trajectories Of Accumulation And Environmental Change On The Cambodia–Vietnam Border, Timothy Gorman, Alice Beban
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
In recent years, thousands of Vietnamese migrant farmers have crossed the border into Cambodia and leased land for export-oriented rice and shrimp production. Based on case studies in two Cambodian border provinces, we argue that these land transfers represent an intersection of broader processes of agrarian change that is re-shaping the Cambodian borderlands into a hybrid socio-ecological zone. Cambodian landlords and intermediaries use unequal access to politico-legal authority and the exclusionary power of the border to leverage control over their migrant tenants, thereby capturing a significant portion of the surplus from the migrants’ high-value commodity production systems and potentially creating …
Young People’S Perceptions Of Advice About Sexual Risk Taking, Christopher Donoghue, Consuelo Bonillas, Jennifer Moreno, Melissa Cheung
Young People’S Perceptions Of Advice About Sexual Risk Taking, Christopher Donoghue, Consuelo Bonillas, Jennifer Moreno, Melissa Cheung
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
Sexual and reproductive health indicators for young people in the USA have improved in recent decades, but teenage pregnancies remain high, and large differences between Whites and non-Whites persist in teenage births, abortions, and the acquisition of sexually transmitted infections. Prior research shows that young people are receptive to communication about sex from parents and friends, but peers have been found to be more influential on sexual risk taking. In this study of 617 young people aged 13–20 years in high-risk neighbourhoods for teenage pregnancy in New Jersey, we asked whether sexually inexperienced young people differed from sexually experienced young …
Of Migrants And Middlemen: Cultivating Access And Challenging Exclusion Along The Vietnam–Cambodia Border, Timothy Gorman, Alice Beban
Of Migrants And Middlemen: Cultivating Access And Challenging Exclusion Along The Vietnam–Cambodia Border, Timothy Gorman, Alice Beban
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
In a possible sign of a new trend in Southeast Asia, economic pressures are driving smallholder shrimp farmers from Vietnam's Mekong Delta across the Cambodian border in search of new land. Building from ethnographic research with Vietnamese shrimp farmers in Kampot province, Cambodia, this paper explores the structures, mechanisms, and relations that facilitate and impede the ability of Vietnamese migrants to gain and maintain access to land in Cambodia. The Vietnamese migrants in our study bring capital and farming skills, but their ambiguous legal status and their lack of social networks and experience with the terms of access in Cambodia …
Moving Beyond The Emphasis On Bullying: A Generalized Approach To Peer Aggression In High School, Christopher Donoghue, Alicia Raia-Hawrylak
Moving Beyond The Emphasis On Bullying: A Generalized Approach To Peer Aggression In High School, Christopher Donoghue, Alicia Raia-Hawrylak
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
Heightened attention to bullying in research and in the media has led to a proliferation of school climate surveys that ask students to report their level of involvement in bullying. In this study, the authors reviewed the challenges associated with measuring bullying and the implications they have on the reliability of school climate surveys. Then they used data from a sample of 810 students in a large public high school in New Jersey to evaluate the merits of using a more generalized definition of aggression in school climate research. Similar to national surveys of bullying, the authors found that boys …
Becoming Dacamented: Assessing The Short-Term Benefits Of Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals (Daca), Roberto G. Gonzales, Veronica Terriquez, Stephen Ruszczyk
Becoming Dacamented: Assessing The Short-Term Benefits Of Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals (Daca), Roberto G. Gonzales, Veronica Terriquez, Stephen Ruszczyk
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
In response to political pressure, President Obama authorized the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2012, giving qualified undocumented young people access to relief from deportation, renewable work permits, and temporary Social Security numbers. This policy opened up access to new jobs, higher earnings, driver’s licenses, health care, and banking. Using data from a national sample of DACA beneficiaries (N = 2,381), this article investigates variations in how undocumented young adults benefit from DACA. Our findings suggest that, at least in the short term, DACA has reduced some of the challenges that undocumented young adults must overcome …
Apologies Of The Rich And Famous: Cultural, Cognitive, And Social Explanations Of Why We Care And Why We Forgive, Janet M. Ruane, Karen Cerulo
Apologies Of The Rich And Famous: Cultural, Cognitive, And Social Explanations Of Why We Care And Why We Forgive, Janet M. Ruane, Karen Cerulo
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
In recent years, U.S. and other Western media have inundated the public with celebrity apologies. The public (measured via representative opinion polls) then expresses clear ideas about who deserves forgiveness. Is forgiveness highly individualized or tied to broader social, cultural, and cognitive factors? To answer this question, we analyzed 183 celebrity apologies offered between October 1, 2000, and October 1, 2012. Results are twofold and based in both cultural and social psychological perspectives. First, we found that public forgiveness is systematically tied to discursive characteristics of apologies—particularly sequential structures. Certain sequences appear to cognitively prime the public, creating associative links …
Moral Economy And The Upper Peasant: The Dynamics Of Land Privatization In The Mekong Delta, Timothy Gorman
Moral Economy And The Upper Peasant: The Dynamics Of Land Privatization In The Mekong Delta, Timothy Gorman
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
This paper examines how people mobilize around notions of distributive justice, or ‘moral economies’, to make claims to resources, using the process of post‐socialist land privatization in the Mekong Delta region of southern Vietnam as a case study. First, I argue that the region's history of settlement, production, and political struggle helped to entrench certain normative beliefs around landownership, most notably in its population of semi‐commercial upper peasants. I then detail the ways in which these upper peasants mobilized around notions of distributive justice to successfully press demands for land restitution in the late 1980s, drawing on Vietnamese newspapers and …
The National Social Distance Study: Ten Years Later, Vincent N. Parrillo, Christopher Donoghue
The National Social Distance Study: Ten Years Later, Vincent N. Parrillo, Christopher Donoghue
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
The Bogardus social distance scale, which measures the level of acceptance that Americans feel toward members of the most common ethnic and racial groups in the United States, was administered six times nationally between 1920 and 2001. Replicating the most recent study with its revised list of ethnic and racial groups, the authors of this study analyzed a stratified random sample of 3,166 college students, making it the largest national social distance study ever conducted. The findings indicate an increase since 2001 in the mean level of social distance toward all ethnic groups, as well as in the spread between …
Challenging The Authority Of The Medical Definition Of Disability: An Analysis Of The Resistance To The Social Constructionist Paradigm, Christopher Donoghue
Challenging The Authority Of The Medical Definition Of Disability: An Analysis Of The Resistance To The Social Constructionist Paradigm, Christopher Donoghue
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
This article attempts to explain why the social constructionist paradigm has failed to replace the medical model in American disability theory. The social movement led by American disability activists attempted to reframe the definition of disability using a minority group model based on the social constructionist paradigm. This paper argues that the disability movement was unable to successfully advance the social constructionist paradigm because the activists accepted the Americans With Disabilities Act (1990) despite its ideological basis in the medical model of disability, and the social constructionist theory does not adequately account for the importance of structural constraints to redefinition
Religious Practice And The Phenomenology Of Everyday Violence In Contemporary India, Vikash Singh
Religious Practice And The Phenomenology Of Everyday Violence In Contemporary India, Vikash Singh
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
This article focuses on ‘dread’ in religious practice in contemporary India. It argues that the dread of everyday existence, which is as salient in a biographical temporality as it pervades the phenomenal environment, connects and transfers between religious practices and everyday life in India for the marginalized masses. For such dread, dominant liberal discourses, such as those of the nation, economy, or ego-centric performance, have neither the patience nor the forms to represent, perform, and abreact. Formulated in dialogue with critical theory, phenomenology, and psychoanalytic theory, this article conceives of religious practices in continuum with the economic, social, ethical, and …
Work, Performance, And The Social Ethic Of Global Capitalism: Understanding Religious Practice In Contemporary India, Vikash Singh
Work, Performance, And The Social Ethic Of Global Capitalism: Understanding Religious Practice In Contemporary India, Vikash Singh
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
This ethnographic essay focuses on the relationship between religious performances and the “strong discourse” of contemporary global capitalism. It explores the subjective meaning and social significance of religious practice in the context of a rapidly expanding mass religious phenomenon in India. The narrative draws on Weber's insights on the intersections between religion and economy, phenomenological theory, performance studies, and Indian philosophy and popular culture. It shows that religion here is primarily a means of performing to and preparing for an informal economy. It gives the chance to live meaningful social lives while challenging the inequities and symbolic violence of an …
Professional Deceit: Normal Lying In An Occupational Setting, Janet M. Ruane, Karen Cerulo
Professional Deceit: Normal Lying In An Occupational Setting, Janet M. Ruane, Karen Cerulo
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
Normal lies are those that social actors legitimate as appropriate means to desirable outcomes. Such lies have been acknowledged in the literature as tools for maintaining social order. Yet, little has been done to document the social structural sources of normal lying. This paper offers a first step in filling this research gap, examining aspects of occupational structure and their connection to the practice of normal lying. Specifically, we discuss four dimensions of occupational structure — occupational rewards and entry requirements, occupational loyalties, social control styles within an occupation, and an occupation's level of professionalization — and we explore the …
A Multicultural Grassroots Effort To Reduce Ethnic And Racial Social Distance Among Middle School Students, Christopher Donoghue, David Brandwein
A Multicultural Grassroots Effort To Reduce Ethnic And Racial Social Distance Among Middle School Students, Christopher Donoghue, David Brandwein
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
Raising tolerance for people of different ethnic and racial groups is the goal of the Multicultural Mosaic program, a grass-roots multicultural education effort initiated by a small group of middle school teachers in a private school in the northeast. After years of enjoying the comforts of a modern, but European-based, curriculum, these teachers took the initiative to pursue an ambitious transformation of their entire school's approach to pedagogy. Not only would the English teachers introduce new texts by foreign authors and the social studies teachers introduce new materials on the history of non-Western cultures, but also the teachers of mathematics …
A Multicultural Grassroots Effort To Reduce Ethnic And Racial Social Distance Among Middle School Students, David Brandwein, Christopher Donoghue
A Multicultural Grassroots Effort To Reduce Ethnic And Racial Social Distance Among Middle School Students, David Brandwein, Christopher Donoghue
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
Raising tolerance for people of different ethnic and racial groups is the goal of the Multicultural Mosaic program, a grass-roots multicultural education effort initiated by a small group of middle school teachers in a private school in the northeast. The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of the first year of the Multicultural Mosaic program on the attitudes and beliefs of the middle school students toward people of different ethnic and racial groups. The research incorporated a pretest/post-test design, measuring feelings of cultural universality and diversity and social distance among the students. Participation in the surveys was …
Nursing Home Staff Turnover And Retention: An Analysis Of National Level Data, Christopher Donoghue
Nursing Home Staff Turnover And Retention: An Analysis Of National Level Data, Christopher Donoghue
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
The goals of this study are to provide national estimates of turnover and retention for registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and certified nursing assistants in nursing homes, and to examine the associations between management tenure, organizational characteristics, local economic conditions, turnover, and retention. The 2004 National Nursing Home Survey is used as the primary source of data. The annualized turnover rate is found to be the highest among certified nursing assistants at 74.5%, followed by registered nurses at 56.1%, and licensed practical nurses at 51.0%. National retention rates reveal that between 62.5% and 67.3% of nurses have been employed at …
Modality Analysisa Semantic Grammar For Imputations Of Intentionality In Texts, Carl W. Roberts, Cornelia Zuell, Juliane Landmann, Yong Wang
Modality Analysisa Semantic Grammar For Imputations Of Intentionality In Texts, Carl W. Roberts, Cornelia Zuell, Juliane Landmann, Yong Wang
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
Modality analysis is a text analysis methodology that affords comparisons of how people from distinct cultural contexts differ in their accounts of why one or more of their numbers find specific activities possible, impossible, inevitable, or contingent. The technique is built around a two-part semantic grammar, the application of which involves the identification of modal clauses in texts, the classification of these clauses according to their modal forms, and the identification of rationales associated with the clauses' modalities. We show that with sufficient training the method affords high interrater agreement. After providing a few tips on data-collection strategies, results are …
Traitor In Our Midst: Cultural Variations In Japanese Vs. Oklahoman Public Discourse On Domestic Terrorism In The Spring Of 1995, Carl W. Roberts, Yong Wang
Traitor In Our Midst: Cultural Variations In Japanese Vs. Oklahoman Public Discourse On Domestic Terrorism In The Spring Of 1995, Carl W. Roberts, Yong Wang
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
When “one of our own” commits mass murder, mechanisms that sustain our social order are opened to question. Based on two samples of newspaper editorials written in 1995 ‐ either after the poison gas attack in the Tokyo subway or after the Oklahoma City bombing ‐ evidence is provided that Japanese editorialists advised strategies for retaining order, whereas Oklahoman authors endorsed ones for reestablishing it. In accordance with Simmel’s distinction between faithfulness and gratitude as social forms, Japanese advised faithful continuation of wholesome interactions with their terrorists, whereas Oklahomans expressed gratitude for rescue workers’ assistance. We apply modality analysis to …