Search

The rise of the gig-economy in the last decade has caused a furor of public interest and debate. The argument centers on whether this phenomena is positive for workers and society. From an employment and labor standpoint the key component of the gig-economy is that companies operating in this space claim that they have no employees and that those who use their app to work are instead independent contractors. This paper places this debate in the context of the wider urban sphere. The disavowal of an employment relationship is not only a challenge to urban labor markets but also presents a massive challenge to our urban regulatory regimes. Adopting the gig economy's legal claims and promises at face value represents an ideological shift in the responsibility cities have historically taken for the maintenance of their urban infrastructure, both physical and social, and serves to further privatize a city's social political economy. To evaluate the impact of the gig-economy on cities themselves this paper evaluates how cities have responded to the advent of gig-employment, particularly transportation network companies (TNCs), such as Uber and Lyft. Through a combination of original data, reevaluation of previous studies' data, and government data this study provides a detailed analysis of the predictors of urban response to the arrival of TNCs in the largest U.S. cities. This analysis is conducted through detailed descriptive statistics and an ordered logit regression analysis of urban regulatory responses to the gig-economy. This study finds that cities have largely abdicated their responsibilities, engaging in passive privatization, especially in California where these companies are based. Where cities have attempted to regulate the gig-economy this study finds that it is larger cities, cities with stricter existing regulation, and cities where the gig-economy came later that took the strongest response. Finally, this paper ends with a discussion of how workers and unions are fighting back against the gig-economy's passive urban privatization of municipal transit systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has indicated that one of the primary reasons that White Working Class voters supported Trump in the last election was due to their hostility to changing ethnic relations in the United States. This paper explores whether this hostility is inevitable by looking at samples of white working class respondents in an area where this ethnic transition is most advanced: California. The ethnic changes that have affected this state have not been uniform: some counties have experienced much more of it than others, making for points of comparisons. It was hypothesized that ethnic hostility among this group would be negatively related to ethnic composition: that counties where there was the smallest amount of ethnic transition would find the highest degree of ethnic hostility, while those with the greatest amount would experience the lowest. The evidence partially supported this hypothesis, but found much depended on what was happening in the larger white community. More specifically, it was found that counties where there had been increases in the proportion of college educated whites produced the greatest accommodation to ethnic changes among the white working class population. I speculate in the conclusion of this paper about why this might be the case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How much should ethnographers involve themselves with the people, places, and process they study? One answer has become increasingly popular: invert the standard method of "participant observation" into "observant participation." This paper details the trade-offs between these two styles of ethnographic inquiry, underlines some important issues often ignored in the current ethnography debates, and considers the merits of combining participant observation and observant participation. To reach these ends, I drawn on an ethnography of 911 ambulance work in a large and dense California county. My fieldwork included "ride-alongs" with labor and management at a private ambulance firm (participant observation) and short-term employment as a novice emergency medical technician at the same company (observant participation). Reflecting on this study, I identify three issues at stake between participant observation and observant participation: field positioning, analytic gaze, and data assembly. I claim that ethnographers' decisions to lean toward one method over the other inevitably influences where they stand, the direction they tend to look, and the manner in which they extract local knowledge. Where participant observation presents more opportunities for mobile positioning, outward gazing, and inscription, observant participation presents more opportunities for fixed positioning, inward gazing, and incarnation. I detail the relative benefits and drawbacks of each method, but I also argue that there is something to gained by mixing them. What I call hybrid ethnography is promising for a somewhat obvious reason: it allows ethnographers to use the strengths of observant participation to counter the weaknesses of participant observation and vice versa. I close this paper by considering the limitations of a hybrid approach and highlight some directions for future research and reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child protective services are the primary agencies authorized by federal law and fortytwo state policies to intervene with drug and alcohol affected new mothers. While much of the available literature links this issue to criminalization of poor women in an increasingly punitive American welfare state, this focus overlooks the historical and institutional factors that link fetal protectionism to child protectionism. This paper draws on archival, legal, and survey data to describe the transformation of child welfare services from an institution focused primarily on destitute, disabled, and delinquent children to one focused on child abuse and neglect, including substance-exposed infants. Using national and California-specific data, this paper shows how during the 1950s and 1960s, the expansion of child welfare agencies' organizational capacity converged with a path-dependent policy feedback process, thus enabling the regulatory legitimacy that underpins child welfare agencies' expanded authority over American families. During the same period, efforts to criminalize substance-dependent pregnant and postpartum women consistently failed, and state legislatures began to view child welfare agencies as a useful protective framing for expanding regulation of pregnant and postpartum women. Through a multi-method explanation of these legal and historical changes, this paper reveals how the institutionalization of child welfare as a protective force for children shaped the development of American perinatal protective policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks two research questions. First, what are the variables that shape attitudes towards immigration and immigrants? Second, why did voters from a congressional district in the border region with Mexico support anti-immigrant messaging in the 2016 and 2018 elections? The research tests the group threat, social identity, and contact theory hypotheses using data from the General Social Survey and the American Community Survey for California's 42nd Congressional District. Two interesting findings emerge from the analysis. Americans as a whole have become more embracing of immigrants even as government policy has hardened. Social identity and party affiliation continue are accurate predictors of attitudes toward immigration and immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When people living with HIV in the U.S. pick up a prescription at a pharmacy, they are confronted with a shocking price tag. The annual "list price" of an HIV regimen in the U.S. is approximately $25,000. However, though patients are confronted with this price tag when, few insurers, including federal payers such as Medicaid and the AIDS Drug Assistance Program pay this "list price". This paper addresses the social production of knowledge about pharmaceutical prices through historical case studies of three controversies over HIV/AIDS treatment costs in the U.S. I first provide a brief history of the U.S. Orphan Drug Act (ODA). While the ODA was intended to create incentives for the development of unprofitable drugs for the treatment of rare diseases such AIDSrelated pneumonia, today, almost 40% of all drugs approved by the FDA receive the orphan designation. Rare disease is big business. Second, I briefly describe the debates about the costs of AIDS that led up to the passage of the Ryan White Care Act in 1990. I track the ways that financialization of biomedicine has reshaped U.S. HIV/AIDS treatment prices and payment. In the wake of the U.S. FDA approval of Highly-Active Antiretroviral Treatment (HAART), HIV treatment advocates took a different approach to controversies about costs. Their "rebate advocacy" leveraged industry-standard practices to decrease the payment price of HAART and extend access for a narrow group of HIV positive people. Finally, I address Turing Pharmaceuticals 2016 decision to increase the list price of a treatment for an AIDSdefining infection by 5000% and subsequent pricing transparency interventions, including California's Proposition 61. I argue that rebated advocacy and confidentially-negotiated rebates as pragmatic strategies to control pharmaceutical costs has eschewed fundamental questions about profit, cost and value in biomedical markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

California recently became the fifth state to permit physician aid in dying, which allows persons with terminal illnesses to request medications meant to hasten death. Despite growing public support for aid in dying, it is still inspires debate. Some patient advocacy groups and "right to die" movements construct aid in dying as empowering, while religious organizations, disability rights groups, and many medical providers are opposed to any interventions meant to hasten death. All of these groups engage with public opinion through the news media. In this paper, we analyze 71 opinion and editorial articles published in 6 major newspapers in California, from January 2015 to June 2016. Using content analysis to identify rhetorical elements and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to analyze how those rhetorical elements are used in combination, we compare articles that take a favorable, neutral, or oppositional stance toward the End of Life Option Act, which permits aid in dying. We find that the most common rhetorical tools are related to harm to patients and the political and legal process of passing the End of Life Option Act. Comparing combinations of rhetorical elements, we find that arguments in favor of aid in dying have simple, straightforward formulas, while those that are neutral or opposed use more varied and complex formulas. We conclude that as proponents have dominated public opinion, they are able to set the terms of the debate. Those taking neutral or oppositional stances then try to influence the public by redefining those terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

California's direct-voting ballot proposition system represents an increasingly utilized opportunity for criminal reform. In the past five years, propositions have attempted to change felony and misdemeanor sentencing, soften regulations applying to juvenile offenders, and overturn the death penalty. Yet the proposition process also works in the opposite direction: it can limit existing civil rights, enhance sentencing, or provide frameworks for the future criminalization of behaviors. While literature explores some types of discrimination in ballot propositions, it has yet to examine discrimination in propositions that regulate sexual identity and behavior. This paper examines, 1) How the regulation of sexual deviance via the ballot proposition system has changed over time, and 2) the implications of these changes for the criminalization/decriminalization of various types of sexual behavior and identity. My preliminary results indicate that California propositions regarding sex and the body have shifted from overt discrimination against sexual orientation and lifestyle to the regulation of behavior considered sexually criminal. Yet, definitions of the sexually criminal still encompass embedded homophobia and racism, exposing already vulnerable groups of individuals to additional marginalization, policing, and regulation. The results demonstrate how the state and society continue to use sex, sexuality, and sexual behavior to marginalize and police those considered "undesirable" or "deviant" at various points in time, as well as how intersecting inequalities perpetuate vulnerabilities to state policing and regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins with the following question: How do cultural producers attempt to understand what their audiences want? Using the case of the U.S. motion picture industry, this paper explores how notions of "the audience" are socially constructed by decision-makers working in the world of commercial film production. Participant observation data is gathered from a number of sites, including a Hollywood talent company and courses offered through a major film school on the business of filmmaking. The study not only looks at the content of these social constructions of the audience, but also at how these constructions are created and affirmed in the everyday world of movie production. It is argued that the processes of constructing audience attributes, behaviors, and tastes are embedded in the epistemic culture(s) of Hollywood. These notions of the audience, it is shown, are consequential in deciding what films are ultimately produced by the U.S. film industry. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a look at Medical Technical Assistants (MTA) in California prison systems. MTAs were the topic of legislative debate in California in 2000 and have resurfaced periodically through legal matters. MTAs hold a questionable position in California prison; they are prison officers empowered with custodial authority, but MTAs are also entrusted with the duty of health service workers. The tension between caring and controlling for prisoners had caused MTAs to be the foci of scrutiny for various prison deaths and the California Department of Corrections healthcare as a whole. This paper looks at how individual MTAs manage the tension of controlling prisoners as officers and caring for their health as nurses. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heroin-related overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in San Francisco. In 2003 I co-authored an epidemiologic review of heroin-related death occurring in San Francisco between 1997 and 2000. That paper found grossly disproportionate death rates among black San Franciscans, and that deaths were extremely highly concentrated in one socially disadvantaged neighborhood with a high African American population, but almost absent from another similarly socially disadvantaged neighborhood with a similarly high African American population.In this paper, I will revisit the findings of the above study through some of the frameworks provided by contemporary race theory. Two specific conclusions are that the absence of a concerted political response to the social and political damage wrought by the war on drugs is of considerable interest for both social theory and social justice, and that further exploration of the relationships between incarceration, social processes of de-incarceration, and mortality offer hope for reducing death rates and the possibility of better understanding social factors associated with patterns of mortality. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through participant observation and in-depth interviews, this paper examines how militarism and masculinity are played out and bound together in the social space of a military-style charter school in California. The middle school was opened in 2003, maintains strict entrance requirements, and enrolls over 200 male and female cadets. Drawing on Connell's concept of hegemonic masculinity and Higate and Hopton's discussion of the reciprocal relationship between militarism and masculinity, this paper argues that the construction of a militaristic masculinity at the school is used as a vehicle to promote military identification and military recruitment among the students who are overwhelmingly working-class, youth of color. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural disasters typically lead to human organization, but rarely are they the topic inquiry by researchers. This paper examines the case of the Loma Prieta Earthquake and the responses of two northern California communities: Santa Cruz and Watsonville. The descriptive nature of this paper shows how Santa Cruz redeveloped by using a utilitarian model. In contrast, Watsonville residents took a different route centered on racial politics. I argue that the Loma Prieta earthquake created an important historical moment where the space of city politics shifted from the former white majority to focus on the increasing Mexican and Mexican American population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both New York and San Francisco maintain high schools that admit students through a selection process that excludes many applicants who must attend other, less elite, high schools. In both cities, this policy has come under attack at times as manifesting discrimination by race, ethnicity, and/or parental economic status. Students admitted to these high schools over-represent white, Asian and middle- and upper-middle-class students while under-representing minority and poor students. This paper examines the attacks on these elite schools and the policies that produce them as well as the defenses of the policies that have been mounted by defenders of their existence. The trajectories of each city's conflict have differed widely, the former largely being played out in the state legislature, while the latter has been in and remains in court. Utilizing path dependency model, the paper seeks to illuminate the forces that turned the conflict in each City as it developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines patterns of self-identification among immigrant day laborers on the street corners of San Francisco, focusing in particular on the ways in which they seek and affirm dignity in the face of rampant stigmatization, ever-present uncertainty and poverty. Drawing upon interviews and ethnographic data, it presents evidence that many who work in this informal labor market maintain a sense of dignity and claim their moral worth by fashioning themselves as entrepreneurs, jacks-of-all trades and/or role models, taking pride in the seemingly unparalleled autonomy this work affords them as well as in the skill and work ethic their work purportedly exemplifies. These findings challenge popular perceptions about immigrant day laborers as well as existing scholarship on the relationship between work and dignity among the urban subproletariat. This paper furthermore argues that attempts to affirm this dignified status come all too often at the expense of others. Many of these street corner day laborers engage in a variety of practices of social distancing and differentiation, deflecting stigma onto other "undesirables" who share the same social space and joining in the dominant discourse of denouncing those who undeservingly profit from social assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines trends in civil case filings in the California state court system between 1980 and 2000 and uses time-series, cross-sectional data to identify the underlying causes of changes in the amount and rate of civil litigation. After examining differences in case filings across California?s 58 counties and over the 20-year period, we focus on changes in filings in automobile, personal injury tort filings (Auto PI). Our findings indicate that a cause for action explains an important part of the variation in Auto PI filings. These filings have grown and declined in parallel with the number of injuries caused by automobile accidents. In the remainder of the paper we explore other possible sources of unexplained variance in the number of Auto PI filings and suggest areas for needed research to explain the cause of variation in other categories of civil case filings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent planning literature implies that planning practices have moved toward greater openness and democratic practices. This paper takes a critical look at whether this is indeed the case. It examines the historical foundations of planning and zoning, particularly ideological assumptions about the appropriate social role of planning and the value-neutral discourse of contemporary planning education literature. Finally, it applies these questions to two urban contexts in the San Francisco area where low-income communities of color are attempting to use the planning process to prevent gentrification and displacement. This paper concludes that the persistence of structural ideologies embedded in planning practices limit marginalized groups? ability to employ current planning processes as vehicles for securing greater local control over land use in their neighborhoods and achieving development outcomes appropriate to local needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on differences in economic strategies between immigrant and non-immigrant families in Los Angeles. It asks whether immigrant and native families differ in how they combine a variety of resources, including work earnings, public assistance, shared housing with kin, and other sources of economic support. In addition to describing the combinations of resources immigrant and non-immigrant families use, the paper asks whether these two groups differ in the short-term stability of their economic strategies. I ask what individual and family characteristics, other than immigration status, account for differences in the combinations of resources that families use and the stability of these strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criminal sentencing policy has undergone a great deal of reform in the past thirty years. Much of this reform has been ostensibly directed toward the idea of incapacitation or public-safety goals. This paper examines the success of such reforms in California, while placing the discussion in the context of a new conceptualization of community justice, one that is informed by the school of left realism in criminology. Left realism is a theoretical framework with a deep commitment to praxis; realist criminologists endeavor to make criminal justice more inclusive and democratic both in planning and design as well as in its outcomes. The conception of community justice introduced in this paper emphasizes the notion of just outcomes for community members, consistent with the tenets of realist criminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I investigate the meanings and uses of a new attention-getting commodity the Hummer H2 high-end SUV, for different groups of California consumers. Using in-depth interviews and other naturalistic methods, I identify several constituencies for the vehicle in the Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan areas, my two fieldsites. I then seek to uncover the characteristic postures towards the vehicle for each of these constituencies. Material gathered through in-depth interviews is employed to illustrate how H2 owners can enlist this symbolically potent commodity to create various kinds of sociality, visibility, and status under particular circumstances and in particular social contexts. I conclude the paper by outlining an ideal-typical set of postures exhibited towards this attention-getting commodity by owners and enthusiasts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The way residents think about the place they live has consequences for the decisions they make and therefore the future condition of the environment. This paper investigates this process using the concept of a heritage narrative. Through observation and intensive interviews, I examine the response of the local govenment of Lake County, California to a severe incident of erosion during the instilation of a new vineyard. Couched in the rhetoric of rural pragmatism and resistance to bureaucracy, the government chose a non-binding commission of growers, government officials and public members to advise new growers on erosion-related issues. Critics of this policy use an alternate heritage narrative to justify their resistance to the decision. This paper uses scholarship on collective memory to argue for a wider conception of multiple heritage narratives in which the role of power can be further explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on a collaborative effort in the city of Pomona where college students, a faculty member, community advocates, and day laborers joined together to establish an official site from which day laborers could negotiate employment. This case study is part of a larger story taking place in Los Angles and throughout the U. S. about how workers and college students are building partnerships and coalitions to empower workers and defend their rights. This paper draws out the lessons of applying a method of service learning and participatory action research that benefits all the partners involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This, paper draws from my dissertation research which is a mutli-sited ethnographic study of sexual identity formation among queer men in Mexico City and Cuernavaca and queer Mexican immigrant men living in Los Angeles. Based on interviews and hundreds of hours of participation, this paper explores the migratory and settlement processes of the immigrant participants to illuminate the ways in which sexuality, gender, migration and ethnicity intersect in their identity formation processes. I show that the "sexual migrants" (Carrillo 2004) - migrants whose migratory and settlement processes are structured largely by their sexuality - in this study are contributing to, what I call, a "delicate" cultural of migration among queer Mexican men. I argue that for all the immigrant participants, while their sexual identities as gay men are central to the sense of selves, their ethnic and immigrant identities also profoundly impact their subjectivities. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on my dissertation which is a mutli-sited ethnography of sexual identity formation among queer men in Mexico City and Cuernavaca and queer Mexican immigrant men living in Los Angeles. Based on interviews with the immigrant and non-immigrant participants and hundreds of hours of participant observation, this paper explores the potential impact that the Internet has on the development of sexual identities and transnational queer communities for the men in my study. I show that the men in my study, through their use of the Internet, are part of a transnational Pan-Latino gay culture since most of their virtual contact takes place with other queer Spanish-speaking Latinos worldwide I argue that the Internet acts as an agent of socialization where certain ideas and discourses about what it means to be gay as well as certain established norms and practices shape the sexual subjectivities and queer communities of the informants. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the stigmatization that is present amongst special education students as well as how social hierarchy is formed as a result of the stigmatization. Through my research, which was conducted at an elementary school in central California, I found that not only do students stigmatize each other, but the school itself places stigma on special education students. This paper helps one gain a clear picture of the faults in the education system that lead to a negative school atmosphere. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its coining in the late 1960s, "Asian American," as a panethnic reference, has been contested as a political identity. In its earliest incarnations during the Movement of the early 1970s, Asian American was promoted as a more or less monolithic politicized identity, requiring a relinquishing of single-ethnic affiliations in favor of cross ethnicties. In the contemporary Movement, however, a claim of Asian American panethnic identity no longer mandates a distancing from an individual or organizations single-ethnic orientation. Rather, single-ethnicity and panethnicity reinforce and mutually affect each other. Much of the scholarship on panethnicity has tended to conceptualize the identity as either situational or part of a linear progression away from single-ethnic identification. In both instances, panethnicity and single-ethnicity are treated as discrete identities. These conceptions of Asian American, however, make no explicit reference to the potential for the simultaneous and interlocking expression of panethnic and single-ethnic identities. I argue in this paper that such interlocking is created and promoted through identity reconciliation work within social movement organizations in the Asian American community.Couched in the framework of identity work in social movements, this paper explores the interlocking of panethnic and single-ethnic identifications in the present-day Asian American movement in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. This paper utilizes a mixed methodological approach, combining demographic analysis (in progress) with in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Through qualitative interviews, leadership Asian American social movement organizations demonstrate identity reconciliation work in the development, and promotion of panethnic identity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the rapid decline in academic performance and subsequent cuts in funding many urban schools districts have implemented public school choice programs to improve achievement. The main goal of these within-district choice programs is to increase overall student achievement by allowing them to select a school which best suites their academic and social needs. Within district choice programs allow students to forgo attending their assigned neighborhood schools and instead select from any school in the district. This paper seeks to determine whether or not these goals are met and what happens to neighborhood schools in the process. Specifically, what happens to neighborhood school performance when they lose their better performing students? Using data from the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), in Oakland, California, this paper employs a counterfactual model to assess the results: the real condition based on the implementation of within-district choice is compared with the virtual condition, assuming that no one exercises their choice option. Using virtual schools, created based on the assumption that students attend their neighborhood school; the counter factual achievement scenario is contrasted with the actual one. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on archival and qualitative data from a larger study on farmworker organizing and private philanthropy, this paper shows how while it is obvious that private foundations do not fund radical social movement activities that threaten the structures of wealth that foundations rely upon, as argued by a new wave of non-profit scholarship, they have played a central role in building pre-movement momentum. In keeping with resource mobilization theory it is argued that during the early stages of the California Farm Worker Movement of the 1960's partnerships between movement leaders, foundation professionals, and regional nonprofit organizations facilitated fluid and flexible funding structures that enabled the leadership and organizational development central to the early successes of the movement. This paper reveals the contributions of philanthropic investments in social movements by examining three critical periods in which the Max L. Rosenberg Foundation invested in farmworker organizations in California's Central Valley: the dustbowl migrant education period of the 1930-40's, the self-help housing projects of the 1950's, and the early leadership training campaigns of the Farm Worker Movement of the 1960's. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animals can be classified as wild or tame and as sacred or profane, as in the Durkheimian sense. Where do American urban dwellers of today place dogs in this matrix and how does it determine their identity in urban communities? Changing cultural value-systems play a significant part in community identity, decision-making and policing regarding the use of public space, urban amenities and concomitant resource allocations. Cities need to take account of these cultural value-systems - in addition to socio-economic status or race and ethnicity factors - in order to minimize organizational ineffectiveness, inefficiencies, and unnecessary urban conflict, in addition to best serve the needs of animals and communities. First, this paper seeks to determine the modern human-animal boundary when for the first time in the history of mankind more than 50% of the world's population resides in urban, rather than rural, environments. In the United States, more than 80% of the population was comprised of urban dwellers in 2005. This switch from rural to urban living recasts the location of animal actors in human society. Second, this paper clarifies cultural differences between the dog-ownership practices of select social classes and ethnic groups in urban environments. Finally it begins to identify weaknesses in the city response to these cultural differences that negatively impact the well being of dogs and caregivers in urban communities. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on concepts from role, frame, and organization theory to examine how street-level workers construct, negotiate and contest large-scale policy reform. Using data collected from a 36-month ethnography, this project highlights role conflict among California parole agents during an intense period of top-down organizational change. The spark for this change occurred with the settlement of a decades-old law suit, Valdivia v. Schwarzenegger, 2003 that extended due process rights to parolees in parole revocation hearings. This settlement, coupled with a broader reform efforts already underway in California corrections and the lack of preparation and training, sent parole agents searching for their own methods of understanding and coping with the policy and procedural alterations they encountered. As a result, agents reframed the organization's message helping them alleviate some of the role conflict they were experiencing. At both the cognitive and behavioral levels, reframing occurred on three dimensions: moral, rational/bureaucratic and symbolic. In the end, role conflict and reframing strained the agents and constrained the larger system change, leaving an organizationally undesired reproduction of the status quo. Theoretically, the paper reintroduces the concept of role conflict to studies of organizations emphasizing its impact on organizational success or failure during periods of reform. Conceptually, this research broadens how we think about the implementation and the effects of organizational and legal changes to institutional logics. It also deepens our understanding of prisoner reentry--a subfield of criminological and sociological scholarship that is only in its infancy but is likely to impact academic and policy thinking for years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current paper seeks to extend analyses of the role of gender in affecting interactions in adult participation sports. In particular, the gendered aspects of the phenomenon of "going middle" in adult recreational softball are explored. Previous research has examined how going middle (when a batter hits the ball at an opposing pitcher) is an example of a generalized exchange process. However, as this paper demonstrates, this process is clearly gendered where expectations of competence for male and female players affect how the act of going middle is perceived. It is interesting to note that while the perceptions of going middle may be affected by the gender of the player, the actual behavior of going middle does not seem to be affected by gender as both male and female players do so. The gendered nature of going middle is explored through participant observation of adult recreational softball tournaments in southern California. The findings have implications not only for understanding the gendered aspects of softball but also the interactional aspects of adult participation sports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data collected during a four-year ethnography, this paper examines how the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation ACT (PRWORA) has impacted homeless women in San Francisco California. The paper examines how the themes of self sufficiency, the importance of work, and the reliance on extended kinship networks contained within the legislation prevents homeless women from becoming independent, finding stable work, and ultimately leaving welfare behind. Findings indicate that the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation ACT (PRWORA) has further disenfranchised an already devastated population ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper pulls together ideas from tourism/museum studies, place studies, and nature studies to examine representations of nature and place in two neighboring parks in Northern California. This case study illuminates how divergent narratives attached to a state park and a for-profit theme park create utterly different experiences of nature for tourists, even while featuring the same nature and the same place. Using participant observation and narrative analysis, I show how contrasting representations of nature and place in these parks foster very different ideas regarding society/nature relationships. Studies of nature, place, and history have come together at times to illustrate how histories can cohere in particular landscapes, which I explore in this paper, focusing on how forests are seen as outside of history or relegated to the past, how visitors are maneuvered through the parks, and how past uses of the forest are largely divorced from contemporary local forest practices. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines participatory action research at the Citizenship Project, an immigrant worker center in rural California, to analyze the challenge of practical public sociology. It catalogues a variety of dialogic interventions, observing that they aim not just to constitute or reconstitute publics but also to align them in consequential ways with other elements of their practical environment. On this basis it concludes that a practical sociology of public life demands a grasp of the relationship between publics and the larger ensembles of institutions and practices within which they are always embedded, and introduces "congruence" as an orienting concept. The paper also reflects on the author's experience of the relationship between research and participation, and also on capacitites demonstrated by skilled actors native to the setting. On this basis it recommends consideration of "sociology circles" embodying the movement for public sociology and anchored in practical settings, and "sociological extension", bridging academic and practical settings. Concluding observations tie these seemingly disparate topics together by framing public sociology as a social movement rooted in the ensemble of institutions that together produce and reproduce public life. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins with a broad question: How do cultural producers attempt to understand their audiences? Using the case of the U.S. motion picture industry, this paper explores how notions of "the audience" are socially constructed by decision-makers working in the world of commercial film production. Drawing on a wide range of data, including archival sources, interviews with Hollywood decision-makers, as well as particpant observation at a Hollywood talent firm, at a entertainment research firm, and at entertainment industry conferences, I argue that Hollywood film production is increasingly involved in processes that are epistemic. New, "scientific" understandings of audiences within the Hollywood film industry have intensified over the last several decades, stemming largely from this world's increasing reliance on market research. I briefly explore how these epistemic processes are productive, generating new audience categories and dividing media consumers into distinct groups that are seen as having definite properties. Examples of a few of these categories are identified, including those involving particular demographic groups, as well as the recent birth of the "mobile" and "customizing" movie consumer. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the case of Asian immigrants in Silicon Valley, this paper explores how social capital in ethnic communities might function to secure family settlement aid and childcare arrangements. Through analysis of 35 in-depth interviews, I identify two forms of social capital: an immigrant identity that interprets ethnicity as reconstituted kin, and the attendant moral logics in networks and communities that share this identity. These linked forms of social capital yielded two types of benefits: they produced norms of altruism within ethnic networks for aiding families, and helped generate the trust necessary in brokering care arrangements with co -ethnic strangers. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on my own ethnographic and interview data from Contra Costa County, California, along with other studies of welfare-reliant women's views of reform, I show that most welfare-reliant women not only want to work, but that they favor work requirements and believe that welfare should be temporary. I begin this paper by considering how the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), particularly Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), has been viewed by progressives as a disastrous removal of the safety net for poor families. Next I show that despite the very real concerns raised by scholars and activists, the women whose lives were most affected by reform are optimistic. In order to understand why poor women welcomed restrictive reforms, I consider what "being on welfare" looked like before 1996. Finally, I argue that welfare-reliant women support welfare reform because it offers them the hope of a better life, while also punishing those recipients who are viewed by others as 'undeserving.' ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine how socio-economic features of neighborhoods shape sustaining environments and thus impact the adaptation and resistance strategies of persons experiencing homelessness in greater Los Angeles County. First, we conduct a cluster analysis of Los Angeles's census tracks based on socioeconomic characteristics such as race/ethnicity, receipt of welfare, poverty, immigration, housing conditions, and education to distinguish three types of sustaining environments. These are prime spaces occupied by largely white, high-income, well-educated and native-born inhabitants; marginal spaces occupied by largely non-white, high-immigrant, low-education and low-income inhabitants; and transitional areas are the 'in-between' areas of lower-middle class inhabitants. Next, we analyze how services used by persons experiencing homelessness are distributed according to type of sustaining environment. We find marginal spaces to be the most concentrated with such services, reflecting the power of community opposition to segregate services for the homeless. We then examine how survival strategies and resistance to homelessness of 25 persons distributed throughout the County are varied and shaped by type of sustaining environment. We find experiences of homelessness to be patterned according to type of sustaining environment-with informants in prime spaces primarily white, middle-aged, with few vulnerabilities, and living on the street and receiving welfare episodically; informants in transitional spaces nonwhite, middle aged, receiving government aid, and engaging in shadow work; and informants in marginal spaces nonwhite, younger, receiving government aid, and living in a shelter. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the role of the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) has been cited by many as a major force in the establishment of racially encoded housing markets, and by extension, increasing segregation in American cities, much of the existing debate has centered on its presence in older manufacturing cities. This focus situates the debate over housing and segregation in the context of African-Americans in a white dominated housing market, although there is also ample evidence from the maps and files prepared by HOLC in the 1930s that ethnic identity and stereotypes were also common. This paper is the beginning of an examination of the activities of HOLC in Los Angeles during a period of rapid urban growth. Our focus here is on the narratives that were attached to the neighborhood-by-neighborhood assessment done for the city in the late 1930s. While these narratives provide insights into the operation of racial codes in the marketing of housing in a multi-racial context, they also suggest that the locational context of cities and their attendant development histories create major differences in the ways that "standardized" real estate appraisal emerged. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1863, San Francisco's local government passed a General Order that prohibited public appearance "in a dress not belonging to his or her sex." This prohibition was embedded in a broader "good morals and decency" law, which also criminalized indecent exposure, acts, and performances. From its inception, cross-dressing law was concerned with public gender transgressions, and it dovetailed with numerous other local laws concerned with the public visibility of "problem bodies." In this paper, I analyze the relationship between these laws and develop three interrelated arguments. First, I assert that San Francisco's cross-dressing law did not operate in a vacuum, but was intimately connected to efforts to police Chinese immigrants, prostitutes and those deemed deformed or diseased. Second, I argue that municipal "problem bodies" laws operated through strategies of spatial regulation, imbuing designated spaces with sexualized and racialized meanings, and impacting the socio-spatial order of the city. Finally, I identify some of the contradictory effects of policing problem bodies through spatial regulation, focusing on tensions between different laws, as well as entrepreneurs who appropriated legal strategies for economic gain. In conclusion, I discuss implications of this research for interdisciplinary, sociological studies of gender transgressions and their social control. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children residing in two-parent households have been found to fare better than those in single-parent families. However, few studies analyze the different types of single-parent families and fewer still evaluate cohabiting and other non-traditional family forms. Moreover the implicit assumption that children fare better in two-parent families as they have twice the income, twice the support, and twice the love begs the question of whether these resources are unique to biological parents or whether others may fill the role of a nonresident parent or of a less invested nonbiological stepparent or cohabiting partner. Little research exists as to the effect of coresidential and noncoresidential kin and nonkin on the wellbeing of children and few studies have simultaneously evaluated the impact of family structure and the availability of other parent-like figures on the wellbeing of children. This paper uses data from the first wave of the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey to investigate the effect of family structure on children's academic and behavioral outcomes and whether the availability and quality of children's ties to kin and nonkin both inside and outside the household mitigate any of this difference. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the nature and degree of spatial integration across generations among young adults of Mexican origin in metropolitan Los Angeles. Drawing on a new, unique data set that covers more than four generations of persons of Mexican origin, the research tests the extent to which residential settlement patterns follow two potential models: traditional spatial assimilation into the middle class, with economic and ethnic integration regularly across generations and in tandem, or working-class assimilation, in which spatial mobility is delayed by a generation or more and ethnic and economic integration are less tightly combined. Evidence supports both models. While spatial integration increases across generations, the change is most pronounced between the second and third generations. Moreover, the change in proportion Anglo outstrips the change in median income. This latter result suggests that Mexican working-class assimilation involves an additional early phase of group economic incorporation compared to the experience of many other immigrant groups. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on findings from the larger Immigrant Civic Engagement Project. The project includes focus group interviews with immigrant and native-born Californians, interviews with leaders and staff of a variety of non-profit and civic organizations, interviews with local officials and policy-makers in these communities, and analysis of newspaper coverage of immigrant communities. Here we report on preliminary findings for seven communities in the Silicon Valley (or South Bay) area. In particular, we compare and contrast the experience of the Mexican-American community (both immigrant and later generations) to those of the Indian, Vietnamese and Portuguese. We argue that sensitivity to the immigrant experience is vital in understanding social and political capital, and that the barriers faced by foreign-born Latinos cannot just be reduced to individual skills and resources, though these are important. The recognition of the additional barriers of documentation status and recent migration are critical to understanding the Latino experience, especially in comparison to other groups. Relative to other immigrant communities, it appears like Mexican immigrants have fewer civic and social service organizations. Though some argue that this difference reflects a lack of civic values and interest in politics on the part of Latinos; such perceptions increase the relative neglect of this community by local officials and policy-makers, reinforcing civic and political marginalization. This research finds that government support and mainstream outreach to immigrant communities is in fact critical in helping newcomers' create civic organizations, and through them, building social, civic and political capital. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an ethnographic and historical account of the formation of a particular technological lifeworld around the atomic bomb in Los Alamos. The Manhattan Project played a decisive role in shaping the culture of the town which remains centered around work and coexistence with nuclear materials and technology. This is a place where the techniques and hazards of nuclear science have become everyday aspects of social existence and where, consequently, residents hold onto this trait as a definition of the town and object of community pride. In addition, Los Alamos was one of the first paradigm examples of 'Big Science' carried out with extensive technological and capital investment, and it has remained so since. As such, high technology and specialized machinery are deeply imbricated into the work and social culture of the place, and the residents have become aspects of a cyborg assemblage constituted by the physical place (geography), the technology (the laboratory and its materials), and the human culture. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1920 the implicit and explicit urban model of growth in the United States has been that of concentric growth, the "Chicago Model." Recently, this model of urban growth and change has come under attack by the "Los Angeles" school of urban studies, which postulates that urban growth is now much less patterned spatially and instead can be seen as nucleated and random. Based upon more recent growth patterns, it relies much more upon the experience of the West, including Los Angeles, but also Las Vegas and other cities. With the advent of data from the National Historical Geographical Information System (NHGIS), small area (census tract level) data on the development of about 60 urban areas now exist for the decennial censuses from 1940 to 2000, some 19 of these from 1930, and some 10 from 1920, and some limited information back to 1910 for eight of these cities. Using this newly available data this paper examines the actual pattern of urban growth in the United States from the early 20th Century to 2000. Though growth through 1940 was mainly outward as population increased, even then it was not completely uniform. From 1940 to 1970 growth largely continued outward, but with even less uniformity. Since 1970 growth is much less patterned. Both the concentric Chicago Model and the unpatterned Los Angeles school should give way to a more nuance and complex analysis of urban growth taking into account both the period and the place where growth or decline is occurring ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper utilizes research done soon after 9/11 at LAX which observed and sought to understand security measures and attitudes in the airport environment. While the level of concern and efforts to heighten security standards are genuine, as illustrated by new rules regarding access to airport terminals and movement limits as well as increases in security personnel on site, the performative aspect of security appears equally important; that is, creating and maintaining an air of seriousness and diligence which is relayed to the traveling public inside the airport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores immigration and neighborhood change in Silicon Valley during a period of rapid economic expansion and displacement of the white majority. Measures of employment, housing conditions, and racial and ethnic succession are supplemented with consideration of the effects of housing foreclosure and environmental pollution on neighborhood change examined at the block group level of analysis. The analysis of mean differences reveals clear increases in ethnic residential segregation in Santa Clara County during the 1990s. Contrary to predictions of assimilation theories the mean proportion white residents is lower in 2000 than in 1990 in all ethnic block groups, regardless of whether they are below or above median county income. The cumulative findings strongly support the alternative hypothesis that ethnic residential segregation intensified in Silicon Valley during the 1990s, regardless of the income level of the neighborhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of first- and second-generation youth in the nation's schools has tripled since 1970. California's diverse immigrant youth population has grown even more rapidly than that of the nation as a whole: nearly half of California's school-age population had at least one foreign-born parent in 2000, more than double the national average. This paper uses 2000 Integrated Public Use Microdata Sample data for California and an augmented child-parent linking algorithm to determine generation status for children ages 16 to 18. Logistic regression quantifies the role of immigrant generation (i.e., first (further distinguished by age at arrival), second, and third+) on a youth's school enrollment propensity while controlling for other individual, family and neighborhood determinants of participation. I exploit the large sample sizes in the census to examine how the impact of generation status differs by national origin, and whether school participation among at-risk immigrant groups "catches up" with natives across generations. Finally, I assess to what extent observable characteristics explain differential school participation behavior. While first-generation Hispanic youth (particularly Mexicans who arrived after age 6) and indeterminate-generation natives are least likely to be enrolled in U.S. schools, preliminary results suggest that much of the observed differential is due to differences in family structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Late nineteenth and early twentieth century nativist opposition to Asian, and particularly Japanese, immigrants in California centered upon fears that these immigrants would undermine the perceived civic values of white labor and white land ownership. This rhetoric contrasts sharply with the often more paternalistic reception accorded to Mexican immigrants in the same time period. The character of these claims cannot be explained by a leading account of racial antagonism, which roots racial conflict in the creation of a split labor market. In order to move towards a more complete explanation, this paper analyzes the discourse produced by an important nativist organization between 1907 and 1913. The analysis suggests that white perceptions of immigrants were shaped in large part by common meanings of land, community and whiteness, which were drawn from the broader culture of the United States, rather than by local economic conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mosaic, a large Southern Baptist church in Los Angeles, has drawn the attention of scholars, pastors, and media journalists in recent years as an organizational representative of a vibrant religious social movement in church revitalization. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how the nuances of Mosaic’s theology stimulate and promote the stream of innovations emanating from this increasingly influential church. Data on Mosaic’s theology and practices were collected using in-depth interviewing, participant observation, and printed resources. Specifically, Mosaic’s rejection of dispensationalism premillennialism laid the groundwork for a different view of time and the agency of human beings. Moreover, in change-oriented systems like Mosaic catalytic leaders are welcomed and given influence. Mosaic constructs a distinctive leadership role, apostolic leader, responsible for continual innovation in pursuit of the church’s mission. Churches like Mosaic highlight the strategic management of religious creativity among the broadest and more mainstream currents within contemporary Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]