Sociology Commons^™

Flexible Loyalties: How Malleable Are Bicultural Loyalties?, Andy Y. Chiou, Brittany K. Mercado

Publications and Research

Biculturals are individuals who are acculturated in two cultures and have dual identities. Due to this, many early discussions on biculturalism argued that biculturals may have divided loyalties between their two cultural backgrounds and the identities derived from these backgrounds. This view is further highlighted given historical and contemporary debate regarding immigrants in the European and American political arenas. These concerns illustrate two possibilities. First, that biculturals have a preference for their home or host culture, identifying one as the in-group to express loyalty toward and the other as the out-group. Second, biculturals may alternate between who they identify as …

Sexual Violence As The Language Of Border Control: Protecting Exceptional Difference, Miriam Ticktin

Publications and Research

When I first arrived in the Paris region in 1999 to do research on the struggle by undocumented immigrants (les sans papiers) for basic human rights, discussions of violence against women were remarkably absent from the public arena. Nongovernmental organizations and researchers had begun to broach the topic, but with little public visibility. However, this changed in late 2000, with a media explosion on the issue of les tournantes, or the gang rapes committed in the banlieues of Paris. Such tournantes involve boys »taking turns« with their friends’ girlfriends, both parties usually being of Maghrebian or North …

Notes On People Of Dominican Ancestry In Canada, Ramona Hernandez, Sarah Marrara, Utku Sezgin

Publications and Research

A brief profile of the Latino population in Canada, with a particular focus on Dominicans, in an attempt to develop wider interest and more scholarly research on the subject.

Being A Scholar In The Digital Era: Transforming Scholarly Practice For The Public Good, Polly Thistlethwaite, Jessie Daniels

Publications and Research

What opportunities do digital technologies present scholars? How do developments in digital media support scholarship and teaching, and how can academics apply them to further social justice activism? The authors, a sociologist and a librarian, examine scholarly practice in the digital era to explore how academics, journalists, and activists can combine efforts to support social justice issues. With scholarly communication undergoing rapid change, and with digital innovation applied in higher education for many reasons, authors outline what scholars can do to channel their work to benefit the public good.

Street By Street: Cross-Site Evaluation Of The Ojjdp Community-Based Violence Prevention Demonstration Program, Kathleen A. Tomberg, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

In 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) launched the Community-Based Violence Prevention (CBVP) program to reduce youth violence through targeted community-level initiatives. The program offered grants to cities for implementing evidence-based strategies, such as Cure Violence and the Boston Gun Project, to address high-risk youth involvement in violence. The John Jay College Research and Evaluation Center evaluated the program’s impact on five recipient cities: Brooklyn, NY; Denver, CO; Newark, NJ; Oakland, CA; and Washington, DC. The evaluation focused on the effectiveness of these interventions in reducing violence among youth and young adults.

Ashamed And Afraid: A Scoping Review Of The Role Of Shame In Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Ptsd), Tanya Saraiya, Teresa Lopez-Castro

Publications and Research

Background: Despite considerable progress in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a large percentage of individuals remain symptomatic following gold-standard therapies. One route to improving care is examining affective disturbances that involve other emotions beyond fear and threat. A growing body of research has implicated shame in PTSD’s development and course, although to date no review of this specific literature exists. This scoping review investigated the link between shame and PTSD and sought to identify research gaps. Methods: A systematic database search of PubMed, PsycInfo, Embase, Cochrane, and CINAHL was conducted to find original quantitative research related to shame …

Racial Disparities Persist In Juvenile Court Placements, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

While racial disparities in juvenile court systems may decline, these disparities appeared in national data as early as 1980. Using data from the National Center for Juvenile Justice shared by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, this databit shows how as recently as 2014, out-of-home placements were still more likely to occur with black youth.

Banishment In Public Housing: Testing An Evolution Of Broken Windows, Jose Torres, Jacob Apkarian, James Hawdon

Publications and Research

Banishment policies grant police the authority to formally ban individuals from entering public housing and arrest them for trespassing if they violate the ban. Despite its widespread use and the social consequences resulting from it, an empirical evaluation of the effectiveness of banishment has not been performed. Understanding banishment enforcement is an evolution of broken windows policing, this study explores how effective bans are at reducing crime in public housing. We analyze crime data, spanning the years 2001–2012, from six public housing communities and 13 surrounding communities in one southeastern U.S. city. Using Arellano-Bond dynamic panel models, we investigate whether …

Wsq: Queer Methods Editor's Note, Cynthia Chris

Publications and Research

This Editor's Note introduces the WSQ issue "Queer Methods," co-edited by Matt Brim and Amin Ghaziani, which asks, how is the work of queer scholarship, in an array of disciplines, done?

Total Youth Arrests For Violent Crime Still Falling Nationwide, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

Youth arrests for violent crime are declining across the country. Using Federal Bureau of Investigation data, this databit details trends from 1980 to 2015 and demonstrates how the nation is still seeing a 20-year decline in violent youth crime.

New Approaches To Data-Driven Civilian Oversight Of Law Enforcement: An Introduction To The Second Nacole/Cjpr Special Issue, Daniel L. Stageman, Nicole M. Napolitano, Brian Buchner

Publications and Research

In April of 2016, National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE) and John Jay College partnered to sponsor the Academic Symposium “Building Public Trust: Generating Evidence to Enhance Police Accountability and Legitimacy.” This essay introduces the Criminal Justice Policy Review Special Issue featuring peer-reviewed, empirical research papers first presented at the Symposium. We provide context for the Symposium in relation to contemporary national discourse on police accountability and legitimacy. In addition, we review each of the papers presented at the Symposium, and provide in-depth reviews of each of the manuscripts included in the Special Issue.

Rethinking Greece: Despina Lalaki On Hellenism, State-Building, Archaeology And The "Democratic West", Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Cradle Of Democracy And The Longue Durée Of A Crisis: Some Thoughts From The Perspective Of Historical Sociology, Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

The relationship between Modern Greece and the West has always been a complex and tortuous one. Greece as “the cradle of democracy” – a construct at the intersection of western modernity’s political imaginary and Greek national identity – a terribly familiar and powerful cliché which to a great extent, still today, informs our imagination and politics has been at the heart of this relationship. It is rather a truism to suggest that democracy lies at the political core of the civilization that the West insists offering to the rest of the world, yet we tend to forget that this is …

Durable Collaborations: The National Forum On Youth Violence Prevention, Kathleen A. Tomberg, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

In 2012, the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College began to publish the results of an assessment conducted between Summer 2011 and Summer 2012. The project conducted surveys and measured the effectiveness of the National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention. In 2016, with the support of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the research team tracked perceptions and opinions in each community involved in the National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention.

Communication Practices In The Us And Syria, Rebecca S. Merkin, Reem Ramadan

Publications and Research

This study highlights Syrian communication practices using comparative tests with the United States communication as a baseline. Additionally, theoretical findings on individualism and collectivism theory are extended to include findings from Syria. Multivariate Analysis of Covariance was used to test culture’s effect in demographically similar (in age, SES, and education) student convenience samples, with the covariate communication adaptability, on dependent variables: empathy, social confirmation, social composure, friendships, non-verbal immediacy, social self-efficacy, and general self-efficacy. Results indicated that Syrians possess more empathy, social confirmation, and perceived general self-efficacy in comparison to U.S. citizens who have greater social composure, friendships, non-verbal immediacy …

The Financial Implications Of Merging Proactive Cctv Monitoring And Directed Police Patrol: A Cost-Benefit Analysis., Eric L. Piza, Andrew M. Gilchrist, Joel M. Caplan, Leslie W. Kennedy, Brian A. O'Hara

Publications and Research

Objectives: This study presents a cost–benefit analysis of an intervention pairing proactive CCTV monitoring with directed police patrol in Newark, NJ. A recent randomized control trial found that the strategy generated significant crime reductions in treatment areas relative to control areas. The current study focuses on the financial implications of the experimental strategy through a cost–benefit analysis.

Methods: The study begins by measuring the costs and benefits associated with the experimental strategy, the findings of which can inform agencies with existing CCTV infrastructure. Follow-up analyses measure the costs and benefits of the intervention for agencies absent existing CCTV infrastructure, meaning …

Gifts Among Strangers: The Social Organization Of Freecycle Giving, Sofya Aptekar

Publications and Research

The Freecycle Network, with its millions of members gifting objects to strangers, is a stalwart fixture of the increasingly popular sharing economy. Unlike the wildly profitable Airbnb and Uber, the Freecycle Network prohibits profit-making, or even barter, providing an altruism-based alternative to capitalist markets while keeping tons of garbage out of landfills. Why do millions of people give through Freecycle instead of selling, donating, or throwing away items? Utilizing participant observation of two overlapping Freecycle groups and a survey of their members, I investigate motivations for giving and the social norms that guide it. I find that while members of …

Body-Worn Cameras And Civilian Policy Oversight: A Camden Case Study (Presentation Slides From Nacole Symposium 2016 Held At John Jay College), Maria Ponomarenko, Barry Friedmann

Publications and Research

Throughout its Final Report, the Presidential Task Force on 21st Century Policing repeatedly called for a new form of civilian oversight: for police departments to involve community members in the process of developing and reviewing department policies on a variety of topics from use of new technologies to police training. The Task Force stressed that this sort of engagement is essential to promoting external legitimacy and building trust between policing agencies and the communities they serve. Yet as a number of police officials have acknowledged, community engagement around matters of policy raises a number of difficult questions—and there are few …

Early Warning/Intervention Systems (Presentation Slides From Nacole Symposium 2016 Held At John Jay College), Jennifer Helsby, Samuel Carton, Kenneth Joseph, Ayesha Mahmud, Youngsoo Park, Joe Walsh, Lauren Haynes

Publications and Research

Adverse interactions between police and the public harm police legitimacy and produce high costs due to harms to both officers and the public as well as litigation. Early intervention systems (EIS) that flag officers considered most likely to be involved in one of these adverse situations are an important tool for police supervision and for targeting of interventions such as counseling or training. However, the EIS that exist are often not data-driven and are based on supervior intuition. We have developed a prototype data-driven EIS that uses a diverse set of data sources from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department and machine …

Self-Identified Feminist Mothers' Naming Practices For Their Children: Accepting Being "As Feminist As Everyone" Else, Amy Eshleman, Jean Halley

Publications and Research

In this study, we apply the complexities of feminism to feminists’ choices regarding the surnames of their children. Along with other progressive movements, feminism acknowledges that names matter. Across diverse perspectives within feminism, we do not want to be called girls, but women. We do not want to be called chairmen, but chair or chairperson. We want the title we earned, Dr., or the title we share with all women, Ms., not Miss or Mrs. Given this awareness, and given feminist scholars’ privileged position in the world, we examine the often-patrilineal naming decisions of self-identified feminist faculty members.

Eating In East Harlem: An Assessment Of Changing Foodscapes In Community District 11, 2000-2015, Cuny Urban Food Policy Institute At The Cuny School Of Public Health And Health Policy, Nicholas Freudenberg, Melissa Fuster, Diana Johnson, Marissa Sheldon, Michele Silver, Apoorva Srivastava, Janet Poppendieck, Ashley Rafalow, Nevin Cohen

Publications and Research

The report analyzes changes in five domains -- food retail, food insecurity and food benefits, institutional food, food and nutrition education, and diet-related health conditions -- in East Harlem from before the election of Michael Bloomberg through the first two years of the de Blasio Administration. Its goal is to assess the ways in which food environments in East Harlem have improved, stayed the same, or worsened in this 15-year period in order to inform setting food policy goals for the next 5, 10 or 15 years.

Although East Harlem is blessed with a multitude of organizations and individuals dedicated …

Age And Employee Green Behaviors: A Meta-Analysis, Brenton M. Wiernik, Stephan Dilchert, Deniz S. Ones

Publications and Research

Recent economic and societal developments have led to an increasing emphasis on organizational environmental performance. At the same time, demographic trends are resulting in increasingly aging labor forces in many industrialized nations. Commonly held stereotypes suggest that older workers are less likely to be environmentally responsible than younger workers. To evaluate the degree to which such age differences are present, we meta-analyzed 132 independent correlations and 336 d-values based on 4676 professional workers from 22 samples in 11 countries. Contrary to popular stereotypes, age showed small positive relationships with pro-environmental behaviors, suggesting that older adults engaged in these workplace …

Indigenous Ecuadorian Mobility Strategies In The Clandestine Migration Journey, Victoria Stone-Cadena

Publications and Research

Based on testimonials of migration journeys of indigenous Cañaris from southern highland Ecuador, this paper examines strategies of mobility and social networking employed by migrants and facilitators in the human smuggling market. Following a series of economic crises in the late 1990s, Ecuadorian transnational migration increased significantly, with a 55.5 percent increase to the United States between 2000 and 2008, and staggering 12,150 percent increase to Spain between 1998 and 2005. This article focuses on the growth of a regional migration industry in the southern high-land region, and pays special attention to the roles of indigenous Cañari migrants and migration …

Reclaiming Futures And Organizing Justice For Drug-Using Youth, Jeffrey A. Butts, Kathleen A. Tomberg, Jennifer Peirce, Douglas N. Evans, Angela Irvine

Publications and Research

Reclaiming Futures is an organizational change initiative that supports coordinated and individualized responses for justice-involved youth with problematic substance use issues. The Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice compared people's perceptions currently working in Reclaiming Futures communities with similar colleagues from nearly ten years ago. The study suggested that communities with the strongest engagement in Reclaiming Futures tended to have more positive perceptions of their youth justice and substance abuse treatment systems, including key facets of administration, collaboration, and overall system quality.

Emerging Justice Technologies And The Need For Evaluation, Jason Tashea

Publications and Research

This report from John Jay College’s Research and Evaluation Center examines the role of emerging technologies in criminal justice reform, emphasizing the need for thorough evaluation to assess effectiveness and avoid unintended consequences. It suggests that technology should support, not replace, human judgment in justice processes.

South African Marriage In Policy And Practice: A Dynamic Story, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

Law forms one of the major structural contexts within which family lives play out, yet the precise dynamics connecting these two foundational institutions are still poorly understood. This article attempts to help bridge this gap by applying sociolegal concepts to empirical findings about state law's role in family, and especially in marriage, drawn from across several decades and disciplines of South Africanist scholarly research. I sketch the broad outlines of a nuanced theoretical approach for analysing the law-family relationship, which insists that the relationship entails a contingent and dynamic interplay between relatively powerful regulating institutions and relatively powerless regulated populations. …

Response To A Standard Behavioral Weight Loss Intervention By Age Of Onset Of Obesity, Kristie Rupp, S. E. Taverno Ross, W. Lang, J. M. Jakicic

Publications and Research

Background The purpose of this study was to examine weight loss, physical activity, fitness and diet changes in response to a standard behavioral weight loss intervention in adults with self-reported juvenile onset (n = 61) or adult onset (n = 116) obesity.

Methods Participants (n = 177; 43.0 ± 8.6 years; body mass index [BMI] = 33.0 ± 3.4 kgm2) engaged in an 18-month standard behavioral weight loss intervention. Participants were randomized into three different intervention groups as part of the larger parent trial. BMI, physical activity, fitness and diet were assessed at baseline, 6, 12 and 18 months. Separate …

Leadership And Decision-Making Styles, Oluremi Alapo

Publications and Research

Generation X: The Role of Culture on the Leadership Styles of Women in Leadership Positions' goal is to assist organizational leaders to view Generation X women in positions of power from a different perspective. Women leaders are capable of leading a 21st century organization because of their scope of knowledge about growing businesses, and their ability to blend and incorporate new technologies and innovations in the business environment. Generation X: The Role of Culture on the Leadership Styles of Women in Leadership Positions is relevant to the fields of business, cultural, human relations, leadership, management, and cross-cultural leadership and women …

Social Justify Your Lesson Plan: How To Use Social Media To Make Pop-Culture Scholarly, Lydia Willoughby, Kelly Blanchat

Publications and Research

In this chapter, we describe a lesson plan that uses social media (specifically Twitter) to empower students with the ability to critically analyze, reflect, and actively engage with community-based research content. The lesson plan is rooted in feminist pedagogy—a teaching/learning that actively engages with the material being studied by embracing social media as a viable platform for scholarship.

Urban Farming In The North American Metropolis: Rethinking Work And Distance In Alternative Food Networks, Diana Mincyte, Karin Dobernig

Publications and Research

This article examines the role of manual work in bridging the distance between production and consumption in alternative agro-food economies, particularly in urban farming. Scholars and public commentators often draw on Marxian theories of alienation to suggest that manual work constitutes a key strategy for reconnecting production and consumption, and overcoming the ecological rift between natural processes and modern, agro-industrial production. Focusing on urban farming, this article complicates the picture of unalienated, decommodified labor and points to continuous negotiations between experiences of re-embedding in the community and the environment, and the on-going commodification of the farming experience. We argue that …