Family, Life Course, and Society Commons^™

Boys’ Sex Education In Rural Maharashtra: Context, Community, And Trust, Sierra Bradshaw-Kreimer

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The primary research question of this study is: do alumni of CRHP’s Adolescent Boy’s Program (ABP) and parents of alumni of the ABP report that the boys have changed after completing the program, and if yes, in what ways? Beyond that, the study is also concerned with examining potential reasons behind the results of the primary research question. The researcher conducted interviews with 3 ABP alumni and 3 parents of ABP alumni, in addition to attending information sessions and observing the workings of CRHP. The primary findings were that yes, the respondents reported a change. The change was described as …

The Challenges Of India’S Rising Breast Cancer Epidemic, Brigette Stickney

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

India is currently undergoing rapid urbanization, which is greatly impacting Indian citizens’ health. One of the rising concerns due to the drastic lifestyle and environmental changes that are results of urbanization is the issue of breast cancer. Breast cancer diagnosis rates are rising exponentially, and breast cancer has moved its way up to be the most common cancer in India. Breast cancer mortality rates in India are also some of the worst in the world. This paper analyses the social, mental, economic, geographic, and physical challenges that are present for women diagnosed with cancer in India. It assesses how they …

What Does It Mean To Respect One’S Mother? A Narrative Approach Exploring Maternal Respect Through The Perspectives Of Zulu Mothers And Their Children, Sarah Robertson

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper attempts to synthesize both background research and interview content on respect, specifically respect for mothers from their children in Cato Manor. Cato Manor is populated with largely single-mother, matriarchal households of Zulu identifying people.

I conducted eight interviews with four mothers and their children, with the “children” ranging in age from 19 to 29. I requested that my participants share as many stories with me as possible in order to help me write my findings in a narrative approach. I asked about a variety of topics, including what respect is in general, what it means to respect one’s …

Exploring The Space Between Healers: A Narrative Approach To Understanding The Relationship Between Traditional Healers And Biomedical Practitioners In Kwazulu-Natal, Marisa Delsignore

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Despite playing essential and parallel roles in the lives of patients, there exists a frictional, imbalanced relationship between traditional healers and Western doctors in South Africa. While national policy encourages a seamless system rooted in both Western science and indigenous knowledge, biomedical institutions are hesitant to accept traditional medical practices, which are based on less tangible and more spiritually-oriented elements. This research project turns to these two ideologically different entities to assess their perspectives on the roles of themselves and the other within the context of the South African health system.

Responses from semi-structured interviews with seven health practitioners from …

Examinando La Relación Entre El Ecoturismo Y La Migración En La Nevería, Pueblos Mancomunados, Oaxaca / Examining The Relationship Between Ecotourism And Migration In La Nevería, Pueblos Mancomunados, Oaxaca, Thomas Canny

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Los proyectos ecoturísticos en los Pueblos Mancomunados de la Sierra Norte de Oaxaca son un ejemplo de organización comunitaria para disminuir la emigración y mejorar la calidad de vida. Esta investigación intenta de analizar los cambios en el fenómeno migratorio del pequeño pueblo de La Nevería por medio de entrevistas personales con pobladores, y trazando la historia del proyecto ecoturístico que han implementado en su comunidad.

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The ecotourism projects in the Mancomunados Towns of the Sierra Norte de Oaxaca are an example of community organization to reduce emigration and improve the quality of life. This research tries to analyze …

El Estado “Ingobernable” La Relación Entre Usos Y Costumbres, La Migración, El “Progreso” / The "Ungovernable" State The Relationship Between Uses And Customs, Migration, "Progress", Rosario Rivera

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

No abstract provided.

Never Again! Surviving Liberalized Prostitution In Germany, Sandra Norak, Ingeborg Kraus

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This article, co-authored by a six-year survivor of the sex trade industry in Germany (Sandra Norak) and a psychologist and trauma therapist (Ingeborg Kraus), provides perspectives on the difficulty of withstanding the coercion of traffickers and the difficulties of exiting prostitution in a country in which prostitution has been legalized, normalized and made “a job like any other.” This normalization persuades survivors to believe their traffickers that it is a legitimate occupation and encourages them to endure the violence. Liberalization also has prevented the development of needed trauma services to those seeking to exit the sex trade industry.

(S)Expectations Abroad: Male Traveler Interactions With Southeast Asian Economies, Elliot J. Glotfelty, Glenn M. Miles

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Interacting with locals is a highlight of the tourism experience; however, these interactions may be accompanied by unsolicited propositions for the traveler to participate in the sex industry. Through the lens of Thailand’s largely visible sex industry, this work addresses issues of tourism and travel intertwined with the sex industry in greater Southeast Asia. Governments, a variety of businesses and individuals benefiting financially from a burgeoning sex tourism industry encourage persistence of a viable local sex trade. Although subtleties exist between human trafficking, the sex industry, and sex tourism, each can be intertwined. This article provides an overview of the …

Abuse Or Be Abused: Traumatic Memory, Sex Inequality, And Millennium As A Socio-Literary Device, Kate Rose

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This article applies the research of French psychiatrist Muriel Salmona to literary analysis of Stieg Larsson’s protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, in the Millennium trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 2008; The Girl Who Played with Fire, 2009; The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, 2010). It suggests that Larsson’s novels may be useful in raising awareness of childhood sexual abuse, through reading neglected signs linked to the neurology of traumatic memory. In the tradition of Nordic noir novels, hyperboles in Salander’s sensationalized identity serve to magnify and bring to light a misunderstood social problem. The article …

Why Do Cell Phone Interviews Last Longer? A Behavior Coding Perspective, Jerry Timbrook, Kristen Olson, Jolene Smyth

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Why do telephone interviews last longer on cell phones than landline phones? Common explanations for this phenomenon include differential selection into subsets of questions, activities outside the question-answer sequence (such as collecting contact information for cell-minute reimbursement), respondent characteristics, behaviors indicating disruption to respondents’ perception and comprehension, and behaviors indicating interviewer reactions to disruption. We find that the time difference persists even when we focus only on the question-answer portion of the interview and only on shared questions (i.e., eliminating the first two explanations above). To learn why the difference persists, we use behavior codes from the U.S./Japan Newspaper Opinion …

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 …

Honor And Violence: An Account Of Feuds, Duels, And Honor Killings, John Thrasher, Toby Handfield

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

We present a theory of honor violence as a form of costly signaling. Two types of honor violence are identified: revenge and purification. Both types are amenable to a signaling analysis whereby the violent behavior is a signal that can be used by out-groups to draw inferences about the nature of the signaling group, thereby helping to solve perennial problems of social cooperation: deterrence and assurance. The analysis shows that apparently gratuitous acts of violence can be part of a system of norms that are Pareto superior to alternatives without such signals. For societies that lack mechanisms of governance to …

Strengths And Coping Strategies In The Life Narratives Of Sexual Minority Women, Laurie Drabble, Karen F. Trocki, Brenda Salcedo, Bobbi R. Morales, Rachael Korcha

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This study explored self-described strengths and strategies for coping with stress among sexual minority women (SMW), drawing on qualitative narratives of sexual minority and heterosexual women who were recruited from a population-based sample. In-depth follow-up qualitative telephone interviews were conducted with 48 women who had participated in the National Alcohol Survey, a U.S. population-based survey. Participants included 25 SMW and 16 matched exclusively heterosexual women. Narrative data were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis and constant comparison to explore the study aim, with an emphasis on themes that diverged or that were particularly salient for SMW relative to heterosexual women. Strengths …

Neighborhood And Social Environmental Influences On Child Chronic Disease Prevalence, Ashley Wendell Kranjac, Justin T. Denney, Rachel T. Kimbro, Brady S. Moffett, Keila N. Lopez

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

We investigate how distinct residential environments uniquely influence chronic child disease. Aggregating over 200,000 pediatric geocoded medical records to the census tract of residence and linking them to neighborhood-level measures, we use multiple data analysis techniques to assess how heterogeneous exposures of social and environmental neighborhood conditions influence an index of child chronic disease (CCD) prevalence for the neighborhood. We find there is a graded relationship between degree of overall neighborhood disadvantage and children’s chronic disease such that the highest neighborhood CCD scores reside in communities with the highest concentrated disadvantage. Finally, results show that higher levels of neighborhood concentrated …

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.

Kinship Diversion In The District Of Columbia: A Review Of Local Practice To Inform National Policy, Marla P. Spindel, Beth A. Stekler, Stephanie Ridgway Mcclellan

GrandFamilies: The Contemporary Journal of Research, Practice and Policy

This article addresses a practice commonly known in the child welfare community as “kinship diversion,” where a child welfare agency informally places children with relatives as an alternative to foster care. While evidence predominantly shows that abused and neglected children have better outcomes when they are placed with relatives when they cannot remain safely at home, serious concerns about these children’s safety and well-being arise when the placement with relatives is informal. Indeed, it is often not understood that these same relatives can be approved as foster parents and can receive essential financial assistance and supportive services to help safely …

Book Review: Battering States: The Politics Of Domestic Violence In Israel. By Madelaine Adelman. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 2017. Pp. Xiv+290. $69.95 (Cloth); $34.95 (Paper)., Amy Leisenring

Faculty Publications, Sociology

In Battering States: The Politics of Domestic Violence in Israel, anthropologist Madelaine Adelman utilizes an impressive array of ethnographic methods to examine how statecraft shapes domestic violence. Her thoughtful project is interdisciplinary in nature and analyzes when and how intimate partner violence intersects with cultural politics of the state. Her focus centers on Israel, where a number of distinctive factors make this a particularly compelling site for the type of study in which she engages: the existence of a “contentious multinational and multiethnic population,” “competing and overlapping sets of religious civil family law” (p. 2), pervasive state securitism and political …

Being With Friends And The Potential For Binge Drinking During The First College Semester, Lizabeth A. Crawford, Katherine B. Novak

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

In this prospective study, we assess the relationship between being with high school friends during the college transition and binge drinking. Across analyses (n = 489), the presence of high school friends during the college transition was associated with reduced binge drinking at the end of the first college semester among individuals at risk for this behavior because they drank in high school, associated alcohol use with the student role, or engaged in binge drinking at the beginning of the fall term. This is consistent with research linking social integration to behavioral regulation and suggests the presence of high …

A History Of Play In Print Board Games From The Renaissance To Milton Bradley, Kelli Wood

Occasional Papers

This essay considers how a historical legacy of printed games dating back to the sixteenth century in Italy laid the foundation for modern board games like those produced by Milton Bradley. The technology of print and the broad publics it reached enabled the spread of a common gaming culture- one built upon shared visual structures in game boards. Modern board games, of course, relied upon similar rules and replicated the ludic functions of their Renaissance progenitors. But perhaps more importantly, they built upon and perpetuated entrenched narratives about how fortune and morality contributed to lived experiences, presenting their viewers and …

Older Workers In Boston: An Age-Friendly Perspective, Jan Mutchler, Brittany Gaines, Ping Xu, Caitlin Coyle

Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging Publications

As this report makes clear, work challenges experienced by older people are not uncommon in Boston. Retraining and upgrading skills are required for some people to retain or secure employment. For those who have not participated in job search for some time, support with job seeking strategies may be necessary. Programs that also offer socioemotional support are helpful to some older job-seekers. Yet while training and job search support is an important part of the solution, these are not the only targets of intervention required. Employers need to be educated about successful strategies that will help them to retain their …

Exploring The Links Between Early Life And Young Adulthood Social Experiences And Men’S Later Life Psychobiology As Fathers, Mallika S. Sarma, Patty X. Kuo, Sonny Agustin Bechayda, Christopher W. Kuzawa, Lee T. Gettler

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Early life cues of environmental harshness and unpredictability have been hypothesized to influence within-species variation in the timing of life history transitions and the dynamics of reproductive strategies, such as investments in mating and parenting. It is also believed that adolescence is an influential developmental period for male reproductive strategies, with those who achieve greater social and sexual success during that period maintaining faster life history strategies into adulthood. If correct, such early life and post-pubertal experiences could also help shape the psychobiological pathways that mediate reproductive strategies, including the well-documented physiological shifts that occur when some men become parents. …

Ageing: A Sin In Nigerian Society?, Raji Abdullateef, Sunkanmi Folorunsho, Adeshina Olawale, Raji Adeyemi

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Ageing can be said to be a permanent and irreparable innate process determined by a reduction in mental and equally physical status of people. Due to multiple factors, this essential process and its significance vary significantly among individuals and across cultures. The phenomenon of ageing is not attracting the attention it deserves especially in the developing countries like Nigeria. Importantly, old people in Nigeria are facing many challenges ranging from financial and economic shortcomings, socio-cultural discriminations among others. The study set out to understand the challenges and prospects of ageing in Nigeria. The theory used to explain this is the …

The Price Of Sociality, John Thrasher

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Jonathan Birch's The Philosophy of Social Evolution, published by Oxford University Press.

Fear Is A Liar, Tara Boer

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Although social work is unpredictable and stressful at times, the worry and fear that I experience as a parent is far greater."

Posting about ­­­­­­­­surrendering our fears to God from In All Things - an online journal for critical reflection on faith, culture, art, and every ordinary-yet-graced square inch of God’s creation.

https://inallthings.org/fear-is-a-liar/

Childrearing Stages And Work–Family Conflict: The Role Of Job Demands And Resources, Kei Nomaguchi, Marshal Neal Fettro

Sociology Faculty Publications

Objective

The authors examine the role of job characteristics in influencing variation in mothers' work–family conflict by childrearing stage.

Background

Although researchers generally contend that having younger children is related to greater work–family conflict, examination of this association is limited.

Method

Using data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 774), we conduct fixed effects models to examine variations in mothers' job characteristics across four waves when their children are 6 months old, 15 months old, third graders, and fifth graders and their links to variations …

Leap Of Faith: My Sons’ Adoption Stories, The Journey Continues, Janice G. Schuster

Sociology Between the Gaps: Forgotten and Neglected Topics

No abstract provided.

Toward Culturally Competent Archival (Re)Description Of Marginalized Histories, Annie Tang, Dorothy Berry, Kelly Bolding, Rachel E. Winston

Library Presentations, Posters, and Audiovisual Materials

Influenced by the radical archives movement, panelists discuss their (re)processing projects for which they wrote or rewrote descriptions in culturally competent approaches. Their case studies include materials regarding underrepresented peoples and historically oppressed groups who are marginalized from or maligned in the archival record. Targeted to processors, this session aims to teach participants to apply their cultural competencies in writing finding aids through an introduction to cultural competency framework, the case study examples, and a short audience-participation exercise.

Family Experiences In Engaging In Employment: How Do We Improve Outcomes?, John Kramer, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

ThinkWork! Publications

Session 018: Abolishing Exploitive Labour Practices Room: Freedom H

Sponsors: Disability Youth, Aging, and the Life Course

Organizer, Presider &

Discussant: Katherine Caldwell, University of Illinois at Chicago

Papers:

“Differences in Earnings among Persons with and without Disabilities,” Alexandra Krause, Florida State University

“Family Experiences in Engaging in Employment: How Do We Improve Outcomes?” John Kramer, University of Massachusetts Boston

“Shifting the Paradigm through Entrepreneurship,” Katherine Caldwell, University of Illinois at Chicago

Are Biological Science Knowledge, Interests, And Science Identity Framed By Religious And Political Perspectives In The United States?, Joseph C. Jochman, Alexis Swendener, Julia Mcquillan, Luke Novack

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Science trust and views of science differ by political and religious orientations. In this study we examine whether political and religious perspectives are also associated with biological science knowledge, science interest, and general science identity. Results show that conservative Protestants have lower biological science knowledge than other religious groups on several specific topics. Party affiliation is associated with vaccine knowledge but not science interest and identity. Adjusting for demographic characteristics explains some political and religious group differences, but not all. We discuss implications regarding attention to potential political and religious framings of science topics in public education efforts.

Building Strong Family–School Partnerships: Transitioning From Basic Findings To Possible Practices, Susan M. Sheridan, Lorey Wheeler

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

In the present article, we describe the translational process undergirding a particular aspect of family science: families working in partnership with schools to achieve mutual goals for children’s optimal functioning. In doing so, we illustrate a translational cycle that began with identifying problems of practice and led to the development of a family–school intervention (i.e., conjoint behavioral consultation) in a way that embraced families as partners in goal-setting and problem-solving. We discuss the evolution of the intervention from development to efficacy trials and practice guidelines. Key decision points borne out of practical relevance, empirical investigations, tests of mechanisms and conditions, …