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Neighborhood Effects And Mobility Patterns Among Residents Of Chicago's Residential Homeless System, Julie Frances Hilvers

Dissertations

This study explores the effects of location and neighborhood characteristics on the probability that residents in shelters, Interim, and Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) programs in Chicago's homeless system move to market-rate housing or intend to leave their communities in the near future. The study uses survey data collected in 2009-2011 by Loyola University Chicago's Center for Urban Research and Learning in cooperation with the Chicago Alliance to End Homelessness and the City of Chicago. These data were collected as part of the Evaluation of Chicago's Plan to End Homelessness.

Within the literature exists an extensive body of research examining neighborhood …

Life Course Narratives From U.S. Expatriates: Continuity Work, Victoria L. Russo

Dissertations

This qualitative, exploratory research examined the American life course through narrative accounts of twenty, former expatriates. All participants had lived and worked in another country for a minimum of at least one year before returning to the US. In-depth, face-to-face interviews were conducted between April 2011 and June 2012. Interviews were unstructured and lasted between 1-2 hours.

Participants in this study were well-educated, middle class professionals with highly desirable skills. Yet, despite the flexibility that privileged status bestowed, participants maintained normative life course patterns. Families were instrumental in monitoring the life course and distributed sanctions and benefits to family members …

An Ethnographic Study Of Psychiatric Assistants: The Social Processes Involved In The Subordination Of Workers In A Psychiatric Hospital, Terrence Allison

Dissertations

This research examined how the structure of a modern day psychiatric institution shapes the work experiences of subordinated, non-licensed-workers. I found that that the work experiences of PAs are shaped by their institutional positions. The PA position by default is one of subjugation and servitude, and these carry meanings. PAs are positioned on the ward to service and control patients. In spite of their absolute importance to the day-to-day running of the hospital, frontline PA work is devalued institutionally. This devaluation is internalized rationally (what bureaucracies do) by PAs, who often work understaffed and underappreciated. I found that PAs lack …

Discrimination And Psychological Distress Among Latinos: The Role Of Family Conflict, Family Cohesion And Religion, Lydia Samir Billatos

Dissertations

This study examined the role of family conflict, family cohesion and religion on the relationship between discrimination and psychological distress among Latino/as in the United States with a focus on gender differences. The study had two main objectives: 1) To test alternate stress-buffering models to understand the mechanisms through which family cohesion, family conflict, and religion affect the relationship of discrimination and psychological distress, allowing for interaction effects with ethnicity and gender; 2) To test hypotheses about the possible non-linear effects of family cohesion on psychological distress, derived from the ([1989] 2000) Olson Circumplex Model (OCM), which was originally based …

Urban Agriculture And Sustainability In Chicago, Matthew Hoffmann

Dissertations

Sustainability is increasingly informing the organization of urban life. In the past 15 years, cities have sought to alleviate the dual effects of environmental degradation and a changing economy by introducing sustainable development initiatives. Policy makers and environmental activists have often praised these efforts, pointing to the enhancement of quality of life, the mitigation of industrial pollution, and these initiatives' capacity to address poverty in a post-welfare state. Most popular depictions of the experiences of sustainability come from the perspective of white, middle class, college-educated volunteers and, increasingly, social entrepreneurs such as artisans, farmers, and other producers connected to "local" …

Investigating The Professional Values Of Teachers: The Differential Impact Of Accountability On Teachers' Career Decisions, Cortney Rowland King

Dissertations

Education reform and policy efforts have focused a great deal on teachers over the past decade or more. Reform efforts focused on accountability have altered how teachers are paid, how they spend their time, how they are evaluated, what they are accountable for, and what sort of control they have over their daily tasks. At the same time, teacher attrition continues to rise. This study employed principal component analysis (PCA) on a subset of questions from the National Center for Education Statistics' (NCES) 2007-2008 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and 2008-2009 Teacher Follow-up Survey (TFS) data. I examined the extent …

He Seems Like A Good Kid Lessons In Informal Social Control From A Midwestern Peer Court Program, Patricia Lee Maddox

Dissertations

This study examines how peer court jurors make meaning out of the sanctioning trials of youth offenders. In particular, it focuses on how peer court jurors understand juvenile delinquency, deterrence and punishment. Data was collected utilizing ethnographic field observation methods while attending a Midwestern County's peer court program between the end of the 2011-2012 school year and the 2012-2013 school year. Thirteen interviews were conducted after the sessions with willing peer court jurors in order to supplement the field work data.

During the peer court sessions the youth jurors tried to understand the nature of the offenses and how to …

Putting "Community" In Community Schools: Organizational And Cultural Contention In A Public-Private Partnership, Kathleen D. Pacyna

Dissertations

Public-private partnerships as a new organizational form for delivering health and human services to those who require them remains an under-studied but important topic of research in an era significantly influenced by the weakening of the traditional civic welfare infrastructure. Based on two years of ethnographic research including in-depth interviews and participant observation, this research aimed to understand better how the concept of community held by members of the public-private partnership influenced their collective attempts to create a full-service community school program in the Brighton Park neighborhood of Chicago. Research revealed that members of the partnership negotiated and contested the …

Moving Social Spaces: Public Transportation, Material Differences, And The Power Of Mobile Communities In Chicago, Gwendolyn Purifoye

Dissertations

Urban research on stratification in the public terrain has focused on how intentional and unintentional physical arrangements and social conventions limit and enable particular kinds of stratification processes and interactions. This prior research primarily focuses on static places such as plazas, restaurants, sidewalks and train stations and does not give adequate attention to the impact of mobility. As one of the few places where people of different social classes and ethno-racial backgrounds encounter each other, public mobile spaces are sites of the replication of civility and incivility among people of different race, gender, and class positions, and sites of its …

When Subcultures Become Careers: Working In Indie Rock, Annmarie Schneider-Edman Van Altena

Dissertations

This dissertation examines the careers of workers within the Indie rock industry in Chicago. Little is known about how workers transition from subculture participants to industry workers. Expanding upon research on workers in culture industries, I conducted twenty-six qualitative interviews with workers in the industry, asking open-ended questions about their careers and experiences to understand how they establish and maintain careers in an industry that relies on a particular subculture whose ethos considers financial success as suspect, and a risk to integrity. I show how workers' early interest in music goes beyond typical teenage fascination and becomes the focus of …

Some Of My Best Dolls Are Black: Colorblind Rhetoric In Online Collecting Communities, Rebecca Joan West

Dissertations

While dolls are beloved play objects, they have also been the subject of social critique for many years. From the generic "baby" to the sexualized Barbie, they have been alternately praised and vilified for their role in forming the behaviors and identities of the children who play with them. However, such criticism overlooks a key component of doll play: the element of the adults who purchase the dolls, for children as well as for themselves, and the ways in which such toys are used to express engagement with larger social structures.

My research focuses on the American Girl Dolls Collection, …

There's A Place For Us: How Ethnic Identities Are Revealed In Ethnic-Specific Organizations, Crystal Jackson

Dissertations

Ethnic-specific organizations have long been features of American society. Historically, they have provided ethnic actors with

a means of preserving culture and history. They have also been sites where collective interests are pursued. In this dissertation I study two ethnic-specific organizations. Using identity, incorporation and

inequality, as essential dimensions of American ethnicity, I describe how the political and civic work that occurs in two organizations reveals

group boundaries.

My data and analysis support three major findings. First, I find

that the identities that emerge from this kind of organizational work are transactional identities. Transactional identities are identities that are confirmed …

Seeing The State: Women, Incarceration, And Social Marginality, Cesraea Rumpf

Dissertations

Based on in-depth, semi-structured qualitative and photo-elicitation interviews with 36 formerly incarcerated women, this dissertation answers three central research questions: (1) How does the state structure women's post-incarceration experiences? (2) How do these post-incarceration experiences relate to women's experiences of criminalization and incarceration? (3) How do women respond to criminalization, incarceration, and post-incarceration? By centering women's standpoint, I draw upon poststructuralist theories of the state to show how women experienced governance across multiple sites. I first examine the violence and dehumanization women experienced in their encounters with the criminal legal system and how the state labeled women as "criminals" and …