Family, Life Course, and Society Commons^™

Something Old, Something New: Historicizing Same-Sex Marriage Within Ongoing Struggles Over African Marriage In South Africa, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

This article examines contemporary struggles over same-sex marriage in the daily lives of black lesbian- and gay-identified South Africans. Based primarily on 21 in-depth interviews with such South Africans drawn from a larger project on post-apartheid South African marriage, the author argues that their current struggles for relationship recognition share much in common with contemporaneous struggles of their heterosexual counterparts, and that these commonalities reflect ongoing tensions between more extended-family and more dyadic understandings of African marriage. The increasing influence of dyadic understandings of marriage, and of associated ideals of romantic love, has helped inspire same-sex marriage claims and, in …

Introduction To Sociology Zero-Cost Syllabus, Mateo Sancho Cardiel

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus will help you to create your OER Introduction to Sociology course. The course is designed in order to create connections with the news, with classic and contemporary cinema and with hot topics in our everchanging society, making it a useful tool to engage students beyond the conventional approach to the content.

Everyday Violence And Women's Lives In Zambia: An Autoethnography, Amina Shikupilwa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Gender inequality has been a prominent feature of human societies for the longest time. Zambia, like most countries in Africa, is very conservative and patriarchal in nature. In a typical Zambian household, the male is the head of the family. I am going to talk about my experiences as a female growing in a culture that was highly patriarchal and traditional, and how those experiences have shaped me into the person that I am today. Central to my experiences, is the issue of violence in our home which I experienced from a young age. Domestic Violence is prevalent in most …

Still Life: Growing Up With Death - A Visual Memoir, Lindsey Roth-Rosen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone is a multidimensional visual narrative project that incorporates heuristic methodology to illustrate complicated grief that emerged from early childhood loss. The memoir’s intention is to exemplify grief as a complex and mutable composite response to the death of my mother. One objective of this capstone is to understand melancholy, commonly associated with mental illness or symptomatic of depression, as an aesthetic emotion as well as a conduit for philosophical reflection. I use non-verbal approaches to the genre of a memoir by incorporating my photography to epitomize art as a powerful means to comprehend the totality of loss: as …

Embody: The Transformation Of Intimate Knowledges Through Generations In Liberal Societies, Lisa Kronberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis project aims to examine how intimate knowledges[1] are transferred and communicated between generations in Western, liberal societies. By ‘Intimate knowledges’ I mean to encompass diverse knowledge of emotional intelligence, sexual identity, and gender.

Intimate knowledges evolve with human life circle everywhere and at all times, but in Western popular discourse of today, are treated with confusion and repression; they thus emerge as a “loud display of simultaneously silent sexual desire.” (Fine and McClelland, 2006) I explore this tension through a critical, feminist lens that sheds light on the ways in which political economy creates cultural norms that …

Conditions Of Personhood And Property, Zachary James Acree

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper seeks to demonstrate that a more robust understanding of personhood both reveals flaws in the underlying assumptions of modern property law, and orients that law to a more just application. To do this, the law needs not only a better definition of what persons are, but also a better understanding of how persons function in their society. First, in order to provide some context to the issues at stake, there is a brief historical introduction to some of the problems that personhood inquiries have faced. After the introduction, this paper is divided into four sections. Part I summarizes …

Is It Morally Permissible To Have Children, Awinyandji W. Djebou

Theses and Dissertations

Having children is something that has always been considered morally good. Generations and generations of human beings have been raised with the idea that procreating is part of the natural processes of life. To have a child is often considered an important milestone in a person’s life most societies. In fact, it is expected of any well-rounded adult. However, in recent years, some philosophers have argued against the moral permissibility of having children. In this thesis I aim to end the debate on the morality of procreation. I will argue that it is morally permissible to have children, but only …

Very Long Engagements: The Persistent Authority Of Bridewealth In A Post-Apartheid South African Community, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

This article examines the persistent authority of the customary practice for forming recognized marriages in many South African communities, centered on bridewealth and called “lobola.” Marriage rates have sharply fallen in South Africa, and many South Africans blame this on the difficulty of completing lobola amid intense economic strife. Using in-depth qualitative research from a village in KwaZulu-Natal, where lobola demands are the country’s highest and marriage rates its lowest, I argue that lobola’s authority survives because lay actors, and especially women, have innovated new repertoires of lobola behavior that allow them to pursue emerging needs and desires for marriage …

Introduction: For Better Or For Worse? Relational Landscapes In The Time Of Same-Sex Marriage, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

As same-sex marriage has become a legal reality in a rapidly growing list of countries, the time has come to assess what this means for families and relationships on the ground. Many scholars have already begun to examine how marriage is helping some same-sex couples, but in this introduction I call for a broader and more critical research agenda. In particular, I argue that same-sex marriage crystallizes a key tension surrounding families and relationships in many contemporary societies. On the one hand, strict family norms are relaxing in many places, allowing more people to form more diverse types of caring …

Prodigal Father, Robert John Exley Jr

Capstones

Prodigal Father tells the story of one man’s journey from teenage drug addiction to joining one of the most violent white supremacist gangs in the country and now, nearly 20 years after turning his life around, he is dealing with the aftermath of a lifetime of bad decisions.

Bobby Exley, a former Nazi Low, spent most of his adult life in prison or on parole battling a 20-year heroin addiction. His wife, Rhonda, stuck by his side throughout his many incarcerations while raising their eight children. The Prodigal Father, told through the eyes of namesake son, filmmaker, Robert Exley Jr., …

The Behavioral Effects Divorce Can Have On Children, Wanda M. Williams-Owens

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

According to a statistical study (Cherlin et al. 1991) 40% of children who live in the United States will experience parental divorce before they reach the age of 18. Consequently, many children are affected by the process of divorce and its finalization. When my daughter was just nine years old, she asked incredulously why my husband and I were the only married couple in our neighborhood? After twenty-two years of marriage, I realized long-term marriages in my community are not conventional. When parents’ divorce, children often face the loss of one parent's constant presence and economic stability; as a result, …

Woman Energy: How Our Lesbian Past Informs Our Lesbian Future, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

Sinister Wisdom Issue 3, published the year 1977 holds an essay by poet Adrienne Rich, titled, “It is the lesbian in us...”; The cover of the same issue has art by photographer Tee Corinne. Sinister Wisdom is a multicultural lesbian literary and art journal. This non-fiction creative essay written by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz reflects on the first year of Sinister Wisdom's publication as a celebration of 40 years through this special edition anniversary print for which only 1000 have been printed. The essay remarks on the shift in lesbian identity and community and the potential impact of the Sinister Wisdom journal …

Conceptualizing The Emergence Of Social Capital In Young Children, Courtney Wong

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper explores the concept of social capital as it relates to children. Three major theorists, Coleman (1988), Putnam (1995), and Bourdieu (1986), offer different conceptualizations of social capital, but all agree that social capital exists within relationships amongst people and allows them to facilitate an action or receive some sort of benefit. Within much of social capital literature, children are mostly viewed as passive recipients of social capital from their parents and teachers, as opposed to being acknowledged as creators of their own social capital. More recent research is starting to recognize the latter and to conceptualize how children, …

Older Adults And Mobile Technology: Factors That Enhance And Inhibit Utilization In The Context Of Behavioral Health, Alexis Kuerbis, Adina Mulliken, Frederick Muench, Alison A. Moore, Daniel Gardner

Publications and Research

While numbers and proportions of older adults with behavioral health issues are expected to substantially increase, there is also a widening gap in available services for older adults. Mobile health interventions (mhealth) are a way to address existing barriers to treatment, provide frontline assessment and increase access to services for older adults. Due to perpetuated stereotypes, many assume that older adults do not utilize mobile technology nor will they accept a mHealth intervention. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize contemporary literature from information technology and healthcare regarding: (1) current mobile technology utilization by older adults, particularly in regards …

Overpopulation And The Impact On The Environment, Doris Baus

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this research paper, the main focus is on the issue of overpopulation and its impact on the environment. The growing size of the global population is not an issue that appeared within the past couple of decades, but its origins come from the prehistoric time and extend to the very present day. Throughout the history, acknowledged scientists introduced the concept of “overpopulation” and predicted the future consequences if the world follows the same behavioral pattern. According to predictions, scientists invented the birth control pill and set population control through eugenics. Despite that, population continued to increase and fight with …

Desire And Fantasy Between Commercialism And Personal Room, Yukimi Otagiri

Theses and Dissertations

I apply two aspects of my life history to my art; my childhood experiences and my advanced studies in sociology. My work therefore combines a highly personal reading of my experiences of social interactions and my ongoing analysis of the nature of capitalism and socialism, commodification and media, especially in regard to the experiences of women in particular and consumers in general.

Different Names For Bullying, Marco Poggio

Capstones

“There's all different forms of bullying,” says Steven Gray, a Lakota rancher and former law enforcement officer living in South Dakota. In this look into Gray’s life, we learn about two instances of bullying: the psychological and physical harassment that pushed his son, Tanner Thomas Gray, to commit suicide at age 12; And the controversial construction of an oil pipeline in an ancient tribal land that belongs to the Lakota people by rights of a treaty signed in 1851, which Gray sees as an institutional abuse infringing on the sovereignty of his people. Gray is involved in the movement that …

Woof, Joseph D. Jaafari

Capstones

About 10 percent of Americans identify as polyamorous, defined as having multiple love affairs within a single relationship. Those relationships are as diverse as they are complicated with some ranging from having multiple people within a relationship to a couple having outside individual relationships.

Within the gay world, polyamory and open relationships has become a norm, and within the gay fetish scene it’s almost a requirement.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_MnWyJVYJneYVAzXzcxU2U3bFE

But polyamory has its own set of complications legally. Because in America we have a system where only one person can receive benefits (be it through marriage or blood), there are complications if, …

Some Social Differences On The Basis Of Race Among Puerto Ricans, Carlos Vargas-Ramos

CUNY Centro, The Center for Puerto Rican Studies

Puerto Ricans are a multiracial people. This is given by the fact that the Puerto Rican population is composed of people from different categories of socially differentiated and defined racial groups, and also because not an insignificant number of Puerto Rican individuals share ancestry derived from multiple racial groups. Yet, the analysis of social difference and inequities among Puerto Ricans on the basis of physical difference is largely avoided, and when it is conducted its findings are often neglected.

My Mother Needs Me! Is It Possible To Stay Connected While Being My Own Person? The Object Relations Of The Latina “Dutiful Daughter”, Juliana Martinez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: Latinas are culturally expected to be “dutiful daughters” establishing strong attachments and adhering to the traditional values characterized by loyalty, cooperation, respect and interdependence within family members. Conventional Latina mother-daughter bonds, therefore, are expected to be exceptionally close. Healthy mother-daughter closeness can be a valuable source of support while closeness without differentiation from the mother may result in a lack of independence and poor interpersonal and personal growth. Mutuality of autonomy, a dimension of object relations (OR) theory, focuses on the progression of separation – individuation from developmentally normative fused representations in infancy to highly differentiated self-other representations as …

Boundaries Of Home And Work: Social Reproduction And Home-Based Workers In Ahmedabad, India, Natascia Boeri

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation critically questions the use of women’s labor in international development and global capitalism by examining women’s participation in the informal economy, a significant source of work for women in the Global South. Based on ten months of fieldwork in Ahmedabad, India, this study considers women’s experiences with informality when they participate in home-based work, the production of goods for the market in one’s own home. I ask how women’s place-based activities redefine their roles and positions across three spheres of social life: the family, the economy, and civil society (through their participation in a non-governmental organization, or NGO). …

Where Have All The Feminists Gone?: A Mixed-Methods Study Of College Students' Attitudes Toward Gender Equality, Erin Maurer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The perceived lack of interest in feminism among “millennials” is a subject of continued debate in sociological literature as well as public discourse. While the U.S. women’s movement of the 1960's and ‘70s can claim some success in reducing educational and professional barriers, legalizing abortion, and transforming conceptions of sex/gender both in academia and in the wider culture, numerous obstacles to gender equality remain. Indeed, the paradox of the second-wave is that it was successful in so many respects that young women and men coming of age today might assume that gender equality is a fait accompli. For scholars and …

Obesity Over The Life Course: Perspectives In Health And Mortality, Noura E. Insolera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation seeks to examine obesity in different contexts throughout the life course. Through empirical analyses, separate stages of the life course are considered: namely childhood through adolescence, young adulthood, and adulthood. By using a life course perspective, it is possible to consider longitudinal and intergenerational approaches to these questions, which will update and inform the current debates surrounding obesity.

Beginning with children, the intergenerational transmission of diet disease knowledge, socioeconomic status, and child health behaviors are considered in their associations with the outcomes of child diet in 2002, and in turn their associations with child obesity in 2007. Information …

Media Representation Of Asian Americans And Asian Native New Yorkers’ Hybrid Persona, Min Huh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Asian Americans, having been degraded in the realm of popular media and neglected in the consumer market, have been unable to obtain a voice or leave a trace in American pop culture. The meager representation that Asian Americans rarely have is highly controlled through a distorted lens, inclined to paint them in a grotesquely exaggerated light for comic relief. The absence of Asian Americans in the media has compelled the Asian American youth to adapt the personas of different cultures in their desires for social and cultural mobility. These factors have given birth to a hybrid persona among Asian Native …

Household Shocks And Transition Into Marriage: Evidence From Rural Ethiopia, Boyd K. Tembo

Theses and Dissertations

The study tests the primary hypothesis that household shocks do not have a positive and significant correlation with a child's transition into early marriage. It finds that there is no statistically significant correlation between parental death and transition into marriage for both genders of subjects in the study.

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. …

Theory Development And Pilot Testing Of A New Survey Instrument On Usability By Older Adults, Meriam Caboral-Stevens

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

An aging population and the use of technology are two pervasive phenomena that are burgeoning simultaneously. The confluence of these phenomena may present challenges for the older adults that could prevent a successful interface. Barriers and challenges can be addressed by examining the interface between older adults and technology. Usability is described as how well and how easily a user without formal training can interact effectively with the system. A review of the literature shows paucity in nursing theories on usability and the use of technology among older adults. This paper describes the development of a conceptual model - Use …

An Examination Of The Effect Of Vision-Related Factors And Availability Of Health Care Resources On Depression, Functional Status, And Falls Among New York City Senior Center Attendees, Lauren Evans

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There is substantial variability across different geographic regions and demographic groups in health outcomes and health resource availability. This dissertation examines the relationship between self-reported ocular disease and depression, functional status, and falls in a diverse sample of senior center attendees in New York City. Further, these analyses explored whether the availability of health care resources at the area level affects the observed relationship between ocular disease and these other adverse outcomes.

This dissertation project addresses two main gaps in the current research, specifically, the need to better understand elders' experiences with these conditions in different geographic regions and demographic …

Toward A Political Sociology Of Conjugal-Recognition Regimes: Gendered Multiculturalism In South African Marriage Law, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

While conjugal-recognition policies are often a subject of political debate, scholarly attempts to explain such policies are relatively rare and typically focused on discrete policies—same-sex marriage, no-fault divorce, etc.—with comparatively little investigation of potential connections among policies. This article begins to develop a more holistic approach focused on explaining and understanding what I call conjugal-recognition regimes. Adapting the concept from the existing literature on welfare regimes, I argue that conjugal-recognition regimes exist when an identifiable pattern or principle organizes an institution’s conjugal-recognition policy and thereby shapes social relations at multiple levels, from the individuals in conjugal relationships to the multiple …

Hipsterevolution, Alessandra Malito

Capstones

The hipster is part of an ever-present subculture rapidly taking over metropolitan areas, regardless bias or perception. It is an old word with a deep history, and those who follow it – consciously or subconsciously – are bringing the subculture to the forefront of urban life, and impacting every aspect from social to economic through the increase of housing prices, the introduction of big-name brands in otherwise small neighborhoods and the pushing out of residents who had been there long before the new kids on the block, but won’t be there after. So who are they -- and where are …