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Having a good job and living in a nice community was not an unrealistic dream in the United States for the first half of the twentieth century. There was a golden age when U.S. companies built and nurtured the towns in which their workers lived. But that era began to decline in the early 1970s because of changes in the U.S. economy that allowed for more global competition and increased capital mobility. Through historical processes research an analysis of the end of the American Social Compact was applied to a small paper manufacturing community in Wisconsin. Following a series of corporate acquisitions, the community that was built to make and depend on paper is in decline. Workers and residents no longer have the leverage to make companies care about the communities in which they operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through in-depth interviews and observations, I have begun to explore the meanings and implications of female coming-of-age rituals for the lives and experiences of the immigrant individuals, families, and communities who celebrate them in the United States. In particular, I ask: What can Filipino American debutantes and Mexican American quinceañeras tell us about the individuals, families, and communities who organize and participate in them? And, what can studying quinceañeras and debutantes reveal about how actors can transform ?culture?? This paper-in-progress explores how debutantes and quinceañeras are sites for the production of multiple and intersecting identities, including gender, race and ethnicity, class, and age, and can therefore help us better understand immigrants, the fastest growing proportion of the US population; as well as the processes by which by which we are shaped into gendered, racialized, socioeconomic, and national beings; and/ or how we might be able to change the conditions that disadvantage certain beings over others. Preliminary findings discussed include debutantes and quinceañeras as immigrant strategies for trying to survive and transcend ?multiple liminalities,? and experiences of limited economic and social mobility. Also discussed is the hypothesis that quinceañeras and debutantes are methods of culturally socializing younger generations, especially young women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For-profit corporations generate much human misery and environmental destruction. According to many critics of capitalism, corporate law is a major culprit, as the legal model of shareholder supremacy enables corporations to put owners' short-term financial interests before all others. Benefit corporation law, the most significant innovation in state corporate law in decades, aims to undermine that model. This new form of progressive corporate law enables the creation of mission-driven for-profit firms that protect directors from liability for pursuing both a social purpose and private profits. Based on two original datasets on benefit corporations' organizational characteristics and online public discourse, this paper characterizes the organizational implementation of benefit corporation law and advances a sociological understanding of how organizations interact with their legal environments. Using descriptive statistics and content analysis, the paper identifies four major findings. First, with few relatively few firms incorporating as benefit corporations and even fewer purporting to provide any benefits, benefit corporation law is not demonstrably transforming corporate America. Second, some important organizational niches appear to be emerging, most notably an ecosystem of social enterprises that use their benefit corporation legal form to signal a shared moral economy. Third, benefit corporations narrate a neoliberal vision of progressive capitalism as good, green commerce. In this vision, firms' goods and services enhance human health and the environment. Finally, most benefit corporations give no outward indication (at least on their websites) that benefit corporation law matters to them, as either a useful resource, a regulatory threat, or a basis of market differentiation. The context of corporate law in general, and the proliferation of a voluntary progressive reform therein, provides an opportunity to revisit legal endogeneity theory. The findings challenge legal endogeneity theory's presumption that organizations' interactions with their legal environments are motivated in large measure by concerns about compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long a subject of scholarly interest, doctor-patient communication has traditionally occupied a zone of professional discretion largely beyond the reach of formal law. In the United States, this situation changed dramatically in 2003, when the handling of medical information was, for the first time, subjected to explicit Federal regulation under the "administrative simplification provisions" of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (IIIPAA). Nonetheless, much as socio-legal scholars have found in other domains, ambiguities in HIPAA's legal mandate spawned divergent constructions of "compliance" within the newly regulated organizational fielded. This paper examines how hospitals across the United States implemented the new regulatory regime, and how organization-level variations in implementation affected the perceived quality of practitioner-patient communication. Using original survey data on IIIPAA-related practices in US hospitals, coupled with public-access data on hospital-patient communication, this paper demonstrates that the quality of provider-patient communication co-varies with IIIPAA implementation, albeit in complex ways: Although many common compliance practices appear to undermine communication, a subset of patient-empowering practices may reduce or even reverse these adverse effects. In addition, hospital culture significantly moderates the impact of several compliance activities, with some activities that improve communication in the least favorable hospitals also impeding communication in hospitals that might otherwise excel. Looking across a large, representative sample of American hospitals, this study reveals the important role of previously invisible legal and organizational constraints. In the process, it also reveals significant organization-level variations in legal implementation, and significant interactions between organizational culture and legal impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically interrogates the role of authoritarianism in the 2012 United States Presidential Election. While recent studies have demonstrated the importance of authoritarianism with respect to the 2016 election, much less is known about if, and how, authoritarianism affected the 2012 election. Beyond simply asking if authoritarianism matters, there is a strong focus throughout this paper on exactly what dimension of authoritarianism matters, and how it matters. Using data from the American National Election Survey, a series of ordinary least squares and logistic regressions are conducted for white respondents. The main finding is that social dominance orientation consistently and powerfully predicts voting behavior, political attitudes, and prejudice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine shifts in medical etiologies of gender identity, focusing on the role of medical authorities in defining gender. Drawing from a qualitative analysis of an original, archival dataset, I examine the ways in which medical conceptualizations of transness have shifted over time More specifically, I closely read and code every mention of the term "transgender" and the more dated terms "transsexual" and "transvestite" in four top medical journals published in the United States. Reading references to these terms in top medical journal articles illuminates the ways in which they are understood in medical parlance and how conversations about transgender patients contribute to the medical and social construction of gender. Based on my analysis of medical journal articles, I argue that: (1) There has been a shift in the locus of gender from external genitalia an early socialization to the brain (self-conception), (2) The shift results in an unmooring of gender from sex and a medical institutionalization of Butler's formulation of the relationship between sex and gender (sex was really gender all along); (3) The gendering of facial features and external genitalia paves the way for the marketization of racialized gender essentialism: feminine and masculine features become incorporated in a fee-for-service model. In the quest for being socially affirmed and recognized as one's gender, such a transformation has crucial, life-changing and life-saving possibilities for people whose bodies do not align with their sexes. The shift also empowers medical providers and insurers to define idealized femininity and masculinity and limit access to such services through widely varying insurance coverage. Drawing from both medical and gender studies, this paper offers insights for medical sociologists interested in the medicalization and biomedicalization of society as well as gender and sexuality scholars interested in the complex relationship between gender, sex, and the body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study explores how household arrangement influences parental engagement on children's education among urban mothers in the United States, using five waves of panel data from the Fragile Families and Child Welling Study (N = 2,982). The study compares the difference in educational engagement between couples (married or cohabiting) and single mothers. Logistic regression models are be utilized to examine the impacts of household arrangement on the possibility of enrolling children in tutoring, initiating a conversation with teachers, and frequent book reading with children. The preliminary results suggest compared to mothers who live with partners, single mothers who consistently live alone (wave 4 & 5) are just as likely as the couples to hire a tutor, but are less likely to initiate conversations with teachers, after controlling for household structure, financial factors, and mother's and children's characteristics. The results also suggest no difference in after-school tutoring enrollment or frequent book reading across household arrangements. This paper will also discuss racial disparity in certain engagement outcomes between racial minorities and white mothers. The findings of this paper will have important implication on understanding the advantages and obstacles single motherhood face in urban areas. The study also suggests new hypotheses for the study of racial gap in educational engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introducing gender perspective into international migration studies has been considered very important since the end of the 20th century. However, there is not much discussion on how the gender structure of home country causes immigrants' international migration. Classical studies on international migration have revealed that economic and political disparity between home country and host country causes international migration. In this paper, the author clarifies that the disparity of gender structure between two countries may motivate women's international migration. This study focuses on women who moved to the United States from postwar Japan. The proportion of women in the Japanese people who immigrate to the United States far exceeds the national average. The characteristic of Japanese female immigrants is that there are few women who migrated to the US with their families. Many have migrated alone. In this paper, the author will analyze the interview data for the Japanese female immigrants who live in single metropolitan areas in the West Coast of the United States. The author analyzes the data of 15 women who have migrated to the United States alone, collected by the interview research held from 2011 to 2014. Many Japanese informants in the study reported resistance to gender structure in Japanese society. In any case, it is clear that "gender structure" difference between the home country and the host country becomes an important factor which cause women's international migration. As classical studies on immigration shows that economic and political gap between the home country and the host country causes international migration, this paper disclosed that the disparity of gender structure between two countries may motivate women's international migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post-civil rights era was a transformative period for Black organizations. In this period, organizations had to contend with the changing cultural and political terrain of the United States. Typically social movement scholars have examined movements at the level of the state, paying minimal attention to the relationship between movements and organizations. This paper examines Black Greek-letter organization sororities' interactions with the Black feminist movement from 1968-1980 as a case of how mainstream voluntary associations interact with radical movements. Through a comparative historical analysis of two Black sororities, I find that while one sorority engages in racial uplift and respectability politics - frames that the organizations had historically engaged with - the other sorority begins to incorporate Black feminist frames and language into their organization. I conclude the paper by discussing the way that examining the incorporation of Black feminist frames can help to extend upon the concept of interstitial politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of women seeking higher education from Muslim countries in the United States is increasing. The pursuit of higher education at American universities also introduces a new sociocultural context wherein cultivation and embrace of newer forms of identity becomes inevitable. This often requires negotiations of previous identities that were cultivated in the course of their earlier lives in their home countries. This paper critically probes the complex entanglements between older and newer forms of identity among international women students. In particular, it will investigate the impact of new pressures of fitting in into the U.S society, while maintaining their identity as Muslims in their everyday lives. This study uses a qualitative approach that includes intensive interviews of twenty Muslim women international students. However, in this working paper, the researcher included data from nine female international Muslim students and intends to add more while also making more clear theoretical grounds for the topic. The research subjects for the study are enrolled in different programs at a university in the US. The results are coded and analysed through a thematic analysis of the data and respondents' responses are presented in quotations. The findings show that students negotiate their identities at the religious/ethnic as well as gendered levels. They prioritize the values without losing their ties with either culture. On the one hand, international female students carry social and cultural expectations within a gendered gaze; they are surveilled by the Muslim and ethnic community members. On the other hand, they negotiate common stereotypes of racial and religious profiling of female Muslim students. Finally, the study provides important recommendation for the support of international female students in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The immigrant integration literature frequently focuses on the role of networks during an immigrant's socioeconomic adjustment in the host country, such as setting up initial employment positions. Immigrant networks, however, have been shown to channel migrants into oppressive and hostile work environments, leaving them little room for upward mobility. As networks are decreasing in their value, there is another tool immigrants are increasingly using to integrate into the United States - the internet. The digital divide between immigrants and the native-born population has been effectively erased in recent years, and this paper examines the benefits immigrants can accrue when they rely on the internet for job-seeking information over their in-person networks. Using the Computer and Internet Use Supplement of the Current Population Survey, this paper provides evidence from 2011-2017 to demonstrate the positive income returns experienced by immigrants who go online to seek out job opportunities, and the adverse impacts of relying solely on friends and family. This quantitative analysis lies at the intersection of technology and immigrant integration and provides necessary inroads into updating our theories for how immigrants are integrating into host societies in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an increasingly tumultuous political climate, norms of activism in the United States have been uprooted. This paper examines the recent rise in proactive corporate political activism in support of a particular cause. In particular, it focuses on participation in letter campaigns related to legislative proposals regarding climate change, human rights, and immigration. The drive behind organizations' participation in cause-related letter campaigns is analyzed based on three areas of organizational theory. Each area addresses strategic concerns related to a different aspect of the organization: its (1) internal values, (2) reputation, and (3) institutional expectations. Results show mimetic isomorphism to be the strongest predictor of letter-campaign participation. This paper serves to demonstrate shifts in societal expectations and organizations' strategic approaches to address those changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "illegality" of some family members influences opportunities, limitations, and resources for everyone in a household. While most scholarship on immigrant families has been concerned with intergenerational dynamics, sibling relationships have the potential to reveal so much more about the effect of legal status precisely because they are peers in the same household: there are no generational differences, and the environment in which they are raised in the same. This paper draws on the experiences of 100 mixed-status families, based on five years of ethnographic study in a US-Mexico border county where an estimated 11.7 percent of the general population is undocumented. The study relied on a unique approach: rather than interviewing one person from each family, it sought greater depth by focusing on multiple members of the same family in order to produce novel empirical and theoretical insights. Findings illustrate that jealousy and resentment is frequently experienced between siblings with different statuses. On the flip side, U.S. citizen siblings may feel guilty for having more opportunities and resources than others in the family. Stratification by legal status also often leads to a stratification of social and everyday responsibilities, such as driving, sharing college financial aid, or expectations to provide more internal remittances than others. Undocumented siblings must watch as their citizen brothers and sisters get better health care than they do. While many gladly assist others, sharing is not always a benign or altruistic activity, and strongly impacts power dynamics in the family. This paper, grounded in the tradition of a scholar-activist sociology, concludes that political efforts toward reform must take into account the experiences of mixed-status families, now a primary and enduring feature of the contemporary immigrant experience in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I develop a structural explanation for why 1.5 and second generation Asian Americans have higher academic achievement than white Americans in the United States. In the American job mobility structure, there are two pathways to upward mobility: (1) developing interpersonal skills (socializing) to obtain managerial occupations and (2) developing technical skills (studying) to obtain technical occupations. Asian immigrant parents find that the former pathway is inaccessible because they experience structural disadvantages in the white American social environment due to their foreign cultural background and non-native English skills. Meanwhile, they find the latter pathway accessible because they experience positive treatment and insignificant disadvantages in the white American academic environment (especially in the STEM fields). To maximize their children's likelihood of obtaining upward mobility, Asian immigrant parents encourage their children to develop technical skills and discourage them from developing interpersonal skills. Consequently, 1.5 and 2nd generation Asian Americans have higher academic achievements but lower likelihood to obtain uppermanagerial occupations than white Americans. This paper suggests that to eliminate the Asianwhite academic achievement gap, we should create "culture-neutral environments" in the uppermiddle class education and work institutions in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists' study of migration can be traced back to the early 1900's and the establishment of Sociology as a discipline in the U.S. While migration studies have formed an important part of Sociology since its earliest days, little attention has been paid to the ways early sociologists understood and analyzed migration. This paper aims to fill that gap by analyzing how sociologists studied the Great Migration in the United States from the 1890s through the 1930s. This study specifically analyzes how race and race ideology impacted early migration studies. I find that, although both black and white sociologists examined precisely the same event, their interests, methods, treatment, and conclusions about the Great Migration differed significantly. White sociologists approached the Great Migration as a problem, studying southern blacks' integration in the North, and questioning blacks' intellectual capacity to achieve the same socioeconomic level as whites. Black sociologists, on the other hand, studied the Great Migration using empirical data to explain the causes that moved blacks from South to North and demonstrating how racial violence in the South was one of the main factors stimulating their migration. I argue that the difference between these white and black scholars is rooted in the racialized context of America during late 19th Century, when white scholars viewed the Great Migration as part of the so-called "negro problem" and ignored the emergent group of black scholars that were interested in demonstrating the impact of race relations in the movement of black people from South to North. Ultimately, this paper expands on the efforts of scholars to reevaluate the development of sociology, to explain the historical division between race and migration studies, and to highlight the ways that specific areas of study, such as migration, have developed in a racialized context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to examine the formation of lifelong human capital among a group of Mexican immigrant women entrepreneurs and the role it plays in their entrepreneurial trajectories in the United States. The concept of lifelong human capital addresses not only the formal acquisition channels of skills and knowledge but also looks at the "learning and skill development as lifelong processes that begin at early ages in households and home communities, and may include formal schooling and training but also informal learning experiences" (Hagan et al., 2014:10). Thus, drawing on this lifelong human capital concept, this paper examines the biographies of a group of Mexican immigrant women in order to shed light on their pathways to the acquisition of their pre-migratory skills and how these abilities and knowledge serve to pave their entrepreneurial path in the US. Drawing on a multi-sited ethnographic study, the findings of this study highlight the gendered process in the formation of lifelong human capital in the case of these immigrant women. More importantly, the findings shed light on how this lifelong human capital becomes crucial not only at the time of launching their enterprises but also for equipping them with the skills needed to overcome the hurdles of being female, in general, and a Mexican immigrant woman in the US, in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine several different reasons for why the spatial agglomeration (or geographic concentration) of firms results in higher wages for workers. We focus on three different theoretical perspectives throughout the paper: market/externalities, new structuralism, and organizational ecology. Using data from the 1990 PUMS-L and the 1989 County Business Patterns, we estimate a three-level hierarchical linear model of earnings in the U.S. (workers nested within local industries within local labor markets). The effects of each traditional measure of spatial agglomeration (industrial dominance, localization, and specialization) on earnings can be explained in part by each of the three perspectives. However, we find more support for the organizational ecology and market perspectives than for new structuralism. On balance, the argument that the match between an employer's needs and a worker's skills seems the most plausible explanation. We conclude with a recommendation for future research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For almost two decades, U.S. public health researchers have been baffled by findings that seem to suggest that Mexican immigrants experience better physical and mental health outcomes-despite their lower socioeconomic status-than their U.S.-born counterparts. Researchers have been particularly intrigued by these patterns because epidemiological research has established a consistent and robust relationship between socioeconomic status and health, and first-generation Mexican immigrants have, in general, poorer socio-economic profiles than their second-generation counterparts. This paper examines the assumptions behind the socio-cultural explanations of the "Latino/a or Immigrant Health Paradox" through the narratives of 40 first- and second-generation Mexican immigrant women. The paper proposes a revision to the acculturation approach to incorporate an understanding of the racialization processes that Mexican immigrants and their descendants contend with as they integrate into the US. In particular, the paper examines how Mexican immigrant women negotiate their ethnic identities within the racial structure of the U.S. and learn about their location as a "minorities" in the U.S. This analysis sheds light on the racialization processes that immigrants confront as they attempt to "become American" (Waters, 1999). The paper concludes with a discussion of how these racialization processes might translate into health and wellbeing. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we assess the degree of exploitation experienced by legal prostitutes working in America's only regulated system of prostitution, the Nevada brothel industry. Based on in-depth, open-ended qualitative interviews and ethnographic research within the Nevada brothel industry, this paper considers three dimensions of exploitation as related to sex work: 1) the presence of danger and violence; 2) work conditions and control; and 3) sexual freedom. We find that legalized prostitution creates an environment in which working women report both patterns of exploitation and empowerment. The experiences of legal prostitutes vary depending on the size and location of the brothel, and the internal brothel culture in the workplace. Additionally, we find that the patterns of exploitation that emerge are primarily connected to two factors: work conditions and social stigma. Further analysis of specific contexts in which prostitution occurs is central to efforts to analyze and understand the social institution of prostitution and it's effects on women, and additional research is merited on the effects of particular labor practices and forms of social stigma on prostitutes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that voluntary associations do not contribute to participatory equality despite vigorous group-centered culture in South Korea. Because most voluntary groups are formed around kinship, place of birth, or old-boy school networks, the connections among members tend to be like-minded, informal, closely knit, and inward-looking pursuing the benefit of the their own. Under these circumstances, it is hard to expect that members will be equipped with democratic dispositions and generalized trust leading to participation in politics. Consequently, they become exclusive and isolated from civic engagement, thus their political participation, at best, is instrumental and dedicated only to their particular interests. When political actions have an instrumental basis, the advantaged with more socioeconomic resources are more likely to utilize the opportunities to have their political voices heard more loudly in politics and accumulate more resources. As a result, voluntary groups may intensify participation disparity between the advantaged and the disadvantaged in South Korea. On the contrary, compared to those in South Korea, voluntary groups in the United States are more effective in reducing the participation disparity that one would expect based on the difference in socioeconomic resources among group members. In sum, by examining whether the effects of socioeconomic resources on political participation are constrained or intensified among those who belong to voluntary associations in South Korea and the United States, this paper will be able to shed light on understandings of sociological consequences of voluntary association membership in comparative perspective. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Buddhist doctrine of non-self offers an intriguing conception of selfhood often contrasted with the western- modern conception of the self. Though much attention has been given to the study of this doctrine through Buddhist texts, the Buddhist negation of the 'self' is not well captured in the scarce ethnographies that investigate Buddhist practice. By introducing an analytic standpoint to the study of the 'self', this paper distinguishes between three levels: the analytic concept of the self used by the researcher, the emic cultural conception of the self, and the actual experience of selfhood. Based on an ethnographic research among practitioners of Buddhist meditation (Vipassana) in Israel and the United States, this paper uses the above analytic distinctions in order to shed light on the Buddhist concept of non-self. By using the analytic (etic) concept of the self as produced through social relations, this paper reveals how the practices of meditation and renunciation can dismantle emotional and cognitive identifications and aim to de-construct some aspects of the differentiation between the "self" and the "other". Since this differentiation is crucial for the experience of a sense of self, Buddhist practices have a strong influence towards an experience of selfhood that can be understood as a "non-self" experience. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds a network of interorganizational managerial relations amongst the American Fortune 100 over 16 years (1985-2001). The network is argued to be more theoretically defensible for explaining organizations' actions vis a vis a host of managerial activities than board interlock, the most commonly used network for interorganizational analysis. The paper describes the network and how it changes over the time period. Finally, it develops an argument that changes in the network should make new managerial ideas flow through the network more rapidly, thus potentially explaining the extreme faddishness experienced during the time period, but that the ideas that flow through the network have structural effects a well, creating a recursive process between institutional and network change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes up a path not taken in sociology, marked by John Dewey, C. Wright Mills and Jürgen Habermas: the structural transformation of the public sphere as a major dimension of social change and therefore as a core topic of sociology. Since then, neither the dominant ahistorical sociology nor the growing historical sociology have thematized the field of public communication as a social realm, object of study and reference point of social theory. This paper provides a synthetic empirical discussion of the structural transformation of this societal field in Western Europe and the U.S. Because their notion of the field of public communication was ultimately confined to deliberative communication, the classical works perceived the structural transformation of the public sphere as one single process within a framework of decline. This paper argues that the classical works on «The structural transformation of the public sphere», the influential book by Jürgen Habermas and the American thematization of this framework by John Dewey and C. Wright Mills, were largely right on the first structural transformation. However, they did not thematize the distinct second structural transformation, that is, the differentiation of the media from the polity and the de-differentiation from the economy.The paper provides a tentative periodization of the enlightenment public sphere, the first transformation, the era of the party press and particularly the second transformation and the era of the media economy. The uncovering of two historical large-scale structures of the public sphere, the era of the party press and the era of the media economy, results in the discussion of a third model of the structure of the public sphere which is characterized by the equidistance of the media field from both the political field and the economic field. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how older people of mixed race conceptualize their health risks. It explores how components of the ideology of race in the U.S penetrate the health sciences, and influence beliefs about race and risk. The paper includes a discussion of narratives from interviews with older people of mixed race, as they try to understand what the implications of being mixed are for their health, showing how their narratives signify deeper discourses of race, the body, and health. The various meanings of chimera are described, and chimera is offered as a metaphor for people of mixed race living in a racialized society. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper argues that a central reason why half of the citizens of the United States are presently being diagnosed with a mental health disorder lies within certain pathogenic elements in the American culture of individualism. The same pathogenic elements are equally to be found within the European American paradigm of mental health and within the culture of psychotherapy, which dominates American society at the dawn of the Third Millennium. American Individualism, spawned by the Protestant ethic, fueled through centuries of immigration, and strengthened by capitalism and the scientific/technological paradigm, has been transformed into a prison by our present culture of psychotherapy. The discipline of Psychotherapy, invented to support and heal middle class European family through the existential trauma of industrialization and the scientific paradigm, has actually exacerbated the illness of western society, by further undermining the institution of the family, and further discombobulating the already confused meanings of our Judeo-Christian heritage. The paper postulates that there are three essential conditions for human and societal welfare: Physical Nurture, Contextual Authority and Interpersonal Attachment. These conditions, when present in balance, allow human beings to survive through the life span, and allow societies to prosper through generations and beyond. In present day America, the unraveling of Family cohesion has weakened the condition of interpersonal attachment and the unraveling of Meaning has weakened the condition of Contextual Authority. As a result, American Consumer Culture is sinking into a desperate struggle to over satisfy our thirst for the third condition, Physical Nurture. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past thirty years, the ideology of "diversity" has become pervasive in the U.S. Drawing upon five and a half years of ethnographic data, this paper examines diversity discourses and practices in an urban neighborhood, a public university, and a multinational corporation. Organizational participants in all three sites consider diversity to be relevant to local social problems of institutional or organizational access, such as homeownership and displacement of poor people, college admissisons for racial minorities, and advancement for female and minority employees. Diversity discourses and practices express and formalize within organizations different interpretations of difference and inequality. The paper outlines a typology of common diversity discourses, corresponding uses of these discourses, and key organizational "access points" for these discourses (Giddens 1990) -speech acts, law, social science, and adminstrative procedures, particularly skill-development programs and metrics. The paper builds on cultural analysis and studies of inequality by arguing that a cultural object has different implications for routine organizational activity and organizations' solutions to social problems, depending on both its meanings and the specific ways in which it is formalized within organizations. Findings help to explain why diversity ideology has become so popular, especially among elites, and the implications when organizations use it to address concerns about inequity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an age of ever tightening state budgets, it is important to understand what factors shape decisions concerning the flow of resources from state governments into local service systems. Social movement theory examines how groups organize to affect public policy. Public policy analysis may analyze written policies and their implications or it may focus on issues of policy implementation. This research seeks to connect the pieces of the politics and policy puzzle by examining the role of advocates and service providers in shaping legislation in behavioral health and long term care services for the aging in the state of Arizona. I am interested in how the participation of advocates and providers shapes written legislation and in determining if and how this affects the implementation of public policy in service organizations. This paper is part of a larger research project that examines implementation in greater detail. The key to this piece of the project is to examine the connection between the political power of service recipients (as constituencies) and the design of the public policies that serve them. The paper that follows is a comparative legislative history and content comparison of long term care for the aging and behavioral health for the seriously mentally ill. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigated the multiple identities of high achieving black students. While research has shown that identity formation is related to academic engagement and school success, the scholarly community needs a more informed understanding of how academically successful black adolescents embrace and negotiate multiple identities in their pursuit of academic success. This is important because recent explanations regarding the achievement gap between black and white students has centered around cultural explanations, and assert that black students-even those who live and attend schools in middle class and affluent settings-do not value, and are disengaged from schooling. Such explanations have created a maelstrom by asserting that black culture (particularly African American culture) plays a major role in the achievement gap. We believe that other factors might be at play in social and academic identity because the students highlighted in this paper were achieving academically, while maintaining their racial identity and black culture. Using ethnographic interview data, key finding revealed that these students successfully balanced multiple identities, while simultaneously achieving academically in school. The paper highlights the need for further investigations of academically successful black students across social class and ethnicity, particularly in black communities in the U.S. South. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently in the US, the right to marry offers one access to a variety of monetary and non-monetary benefits, including higher levels of earnings and household wealth, social security benefits, tax relief, and social insurance of various kinds. Those without such rights are necessarily barred from the economic benefits offered by the legally enforceable marriage contract. This paper reviews state-of-art social science literature on the economic returns to marriage, outlining the significant economic benefits currently available only to those able to legally marry. The paper considers three general categories of marriage-related economic benefits: earnings premiums, wealth and property accumulation, and insurance against risk over the life course. Overall, married people earn more, save more, own more, and are better shielded from economic risks, including poverty, than are non-married individuals. Given the range of benefits and protections exclusively available to married individuals, the paper concludes that those without access to legally-enforceable marriage contracts face significant economic disadvantage. Denial of marriage rights, therefore, not only represents denial of basic civil liberties, but federal and state-sponsored enforcement of economic discrimination as well. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to examine the experiences of women in occupations that are male dominated and of men in occupations that are female dominated. More specifically, I focus on variation in reported levels of social support based on a worker's own gender and the gender composition of the occupation. In this paper I use a measure of social support in the workplace to test the proposition that females in the minority will encounter negative work environments and males in the minority will encounter positive work environments. My findings from a nationally representative sample suggest that the predicted effects occur widely across occupations in the United States. The results of this study indicate that gender composition of occupations does matter in terms of social support received at work. In addition, the results indicate that how the gender composition of an occupation matters, depends on the gender of the worker. It appears that being in the minority is an advantage to men and a disadvantage to women. This study is able expand on the findings of previous studies of gender minorities in the workplace by demonstrating that these effects occur widely across occupations in the United States. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The paper identifies the puzzle of the contemporary revival and diffusion of sovereignty discourse in U.S. federal Indian policy. After a century of primarily being treated as wards of the state, racial and ethnic minorities, and holders of anachronistic rights, American Indians tribes have in the last thirty years once again become treated as sovereign nations by federal policymakers. The paper disputes the common understanding that this represents a fundamental continuity with preceding policies. Instead, the paper asserts that a discourse of sovereignty was maintained by tribal communities through decades when the idea of tribes as sovereign nations was nonsensical to non-Indians. Furthermore, it argues that the contemporary policies and discourse of sovereignty was not explicitly intended by federal policymakers at the beginning of the current "self-determination" policy era. Rather, entrepreneurial tribal leaders both aggressively circulated sovereignty discourse and engaged in nation-building to instantiate the concept. Through a contingent process, both discourse and practices became increasingly plausible, reinforcing, and are now institutionalized in federal policy and language. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary focus of this paper is to describe the activities of the postsecondary pilot implementation of the ASA model curriculum for introductory sociology classes with undergraduate students at a large research university in the midwestern United States and to test the effectiveness of the curriculum in this setting. The effectiveness of the curriculum is measured in three dimensions: student knowledge of sociological content, the development of critical thinking skills, and the motivation of students to study sociology. This paper outlines the activities of the implementation and evaluation, describes the assessments and instruments used in the evaluation, and presents preliminary data on the critical thinking skills of college students in an introductory sociology class. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, sexual contact remains the primary mode of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission-despite more than two decades of safe sex public health campaigns. Social research, however, has demonstrated the need to be especially attentive to contextual factors that influence the social and sexual interactions of HIV-infected persons in order to understand the nature of HIV disease transmission. The purpose of this paper is to explore sociodemographic, health-related, and substance use correlates that affect the sexual health of HIV-positive men. Our paper uses baseline and 12-month follow-up data of a 24-month prospective cohort study entitled, "Predictors of Outcomes in HIV-Infected Men." We operationalize sexual health using four indicators: having sex in the past month, sexual quality, sexual drive, and sexual function. Bivariate analyses reveal moderately strong, positive correlations between each of these variables. Income, the presence of a domestic partner, and moderate alcohol use consistently exhibit positive associations with sexual health indicators; acquiring HIV via homosexual contact and depression are negatively related to sexual health indicators. We discuss the implications of our findings by drawing on recent literature and conclude by offering suggestions for future research on the correlates of sexual health among HIV-infected persons. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis paper focuses on the claims and efforts of U.S. microenterprise development programs (MDPs) to build social capital among poor and low income entrepreneurs. MDPs offer business training and lending services to individuals operating very small businesses (with five or fewer employees and less than $20,000 in start-up capital). We begin our paper with a short review of the varied definitions and claims about the role of social capital in promoting civic and economic empowerment. Then, drawing on interviews with practitioners from 50 programs, we consider the nature and extent of social capital building in U.S. MDPs. We consider the degree to which our sample MDPs directly promoted networks among clients, and between clients and individuals/organizations outside the program. More than half of the programs tried to network clients with each other, but only a few programs focused on building networks between clients and the larger community. From a critical perspective, we discuss more expanded notions of social capital building in poor communities and the barriers to their implementation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movement scholars have long been interested in the role of students and college campuses in social movement recruitment and activity. For the most part, however, their attention has focused almost exclusively on liberal activism. This paper brings attention to the extensive conservative organizing that has long been present on American college campuses. It identifies several important processes by which conservative social movement mobilization is taking place on campuses today. It also clarifies the specific ways in which biographical availability and social networks-two of the key underlying mechanisms for social movement recruitment-- operate among today's students. The empirical data for the paper come from a national study of the pro-life movement in the U.S. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the literature, there has been an extensive debate regarding the imposition of U.S. models for anti-racism on other countries such as Latin America. As Latin American countries struggle to re-define their identity and confront their problems amidst evidence of rampant racism in the region, some scholars have turned to the U.S. civil rights model, emphasizing racial consciousness and group identity, as a possible solution for the racial woes of Latin America. However, others have criticized this strategy as representing imperialist impositions and that these models are unfit to address the Latin American racial situation. In this paper we argue that the exchange of ideas regarding effective anti-racist strategies should flow in both directions. Traditionally, scholars have leaned on the U.S. example when interpreting racial dynamics in Latin America. In this paper we change the direction of the traditional dialogue by discussing ways in which research in Latin America can inform the theoretical foundation of U.S. anti-racism. Specifically, we discuss the implications of race mixing, minimization of racial consciousness, colorblindness, multiculturalism, racism literacy, and the perspective of new immigrants on current theories of anti-racism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is a broad recognition that styles and context of leadership are important factors in affecting the emergence, development, and ultimate impact of a social movement, the literature on leadership is underdeveloped (but see Morris and Staggenborg 2004; Robnett 1996). In this paper, we mean to contribute to an emerging literature by outlining an ideal type of a distinct model of leadership within movements, that of a platform leader who builds an organization with the primary purpose of supporting and amplifying her voice. The platform leader speaks on behalf of a position or a constituency, but beyond this, the actual relationship to that position or constituency is unclear.In this paper, we first discuss the ways scholars have dealt with the conflicting demands placed on leadership, including distinguishing between types of relationships leaders have with their followers, distinguishing between the kinds of audiences with whom leaders must communicate, and distinguishing between the types of activities in which leaders must be competent. We also discuss the broader trend in American associational life: the reduction of rank-and-file member participation within their organization combined with the rising importance of professional leaders. Next, we present two case studies of platform leadership within opposing organizations, comparing the development and maintenance of platform leadership. Finally, we discuss the implications for future research on the platform leadership model, including how it fits with the existing models of leadership, and what kinds of organizations and what kinds of movements are most likely to develop platform leaders. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A case study of recent challenges to welfare-work programs in New York City reveals the complex dynamics of social movements with institutional politics, and reveals continuities and discontinuities between the two. Drawing on Gramscian state theory, political process theory, and recent relational extensions of political process theory, the paper shows the ways in which five mechanisms-path-dependency, institutional spillover, certification/decertification, scale-shift, and time-shift-combine within and across instititutional settings to enable or stymie workfare workers' and their allies' efforts to gain rights under a workfare program that denied them clear rights-bearing status. In showing the operation of these mechanisms-which lie between structure and strategy-in worksite-based organizing, courts, legislatures, and in mass-mediated moral protest, the paper shows the ways in which challengers to workfare were at a structural disadvantage. It argues further that revealing structural disadvantage is the main justification for the study of social movements as distinct from (though embedded in) institutional politics, and is preferable to an analytic strategy that begins with pluralism, and treats movements and interest groups as the same type of entity. Finally, assessments of social movement outcomes should focus on the reconfiguration of policy options and the coalitions that underlie them. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1999 shootings at Columbine High School received saturation coverage by the American media, cycling on a 24-hr news loop and filling newspapers at the local and national level. How did newspaper reporting of the 2005 Red Lake Indian Reservation School shootings, the largest school killing since Columbine, compare with the press' representations of Columbine? In this article we perform a qualitative content analysis of three newspapers (The New York Times as the national paper of record, and local papers in the communities in which the events occurred) over a two-week period following each event. We found that the reporting of Columbine and Red Lake differed not only in terms of quantity, but also content and form. Columbine was immediately marked with social significance and became a national story while Red Lake received significantly less coverage and was mostly a local story. Red Lake reporting was explicitly raced and classed while the prominent role of race and gender in the Columbine killings was largely ignored by local and national media. Further, the press covered similar themes in their reporting but employed different narrative elements and de-politicized Red Lake. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003 was neither to disarm Iraq of its alleged weapons of mass destruction nor for Iraq's alleged links with Al-Qaeda. Both of these allegations were demonstrated to be untrue by the US bipartisan 9/11 Commission that investigated the causes of the September 11 attacks.In this paper, I argue in this paper that US militarism played a decisive role in the war decision making, invasion, and subsequent occupation of Iraq.More precisely, I argue that US militarism has influenced the Bush administration to invade Iraq using any excuse it can. This influence can be observed in the power of the military-industrial complex to extract a major portion of US revenues to spend on the Pentagon military budget, in order to tighten its grip on government and to maintain and expand US military bases abroad.By invading Iraq, the Bush administration has been following a scheme, adopted by the power elite representing the military-industrial complex, of controlling most of the world militarily, as reflected in the US military bases all over the world. Ultimately, I argue that the US invasion of Iraq serves as an expansion of the American Empire to dominate major parts of the world militarily, particularly regions of strategic importance, like the oil-rich Middle East. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movement organizational studies have primarily relied on the analysis of one source. Recently study showed the use of one source was inadequate to study the population of environmental groups at the state level. This raises questions regarding the use of single sources for the study of national and international social movement organizations. A single source that has become a standard for social movement organization research is the Encyclopedia of Associations, however, we know of only one paper assessing the adequacy of the EofA's coverage of movement organizations. Overall, an important component in the analysis of social movements is the adequacy and reliability of the data utilized. We need to know if multiple sources will result in a significant difference from the analyses based on a single source. To accomplish this, we used 155 sources (IRS data, directories, books, reports, proceedings, and web sources) to gather a comprehensive population data set of national and regional U.S. environmental organizations over a 100-year time-series. The purpose of this paper is to describe the methods used in this analysis. Our research and methods revealed that the use of a single source, such as the EofA, is significantly insufficient for studying the U.S. environmental movement population. Multiple sources are needed, including the web and IRS data files, in order to capture a representative population. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of the expansions in the duration of paid parental leave benefits in Canada from 25 to 50 weeks in 2000 on the post-birth employment patterns of women with young children. To do so, it compares changes in labor market outcomes before and after the 2000 expansion for a sample of women with young children in Canada to a comparable sample in the United States. The analysis draws on two large representative data surveys, the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, and the U.S. Survey of Income and Program Participation to estimate whether the 2000 expansions were associated with an increase in the length of time before mothers return to work after the birth of a child. The analysis also examines whether the paid leave expansions further affected maternal employment in the year after their child reaches age one. To control for differences in underlying trends in each country, it uses a "difference in difference" approach that uses women with children age 3-4 as a comparison group in each country. The paper finds that the 2000 expansion was associated with a substantial increase in the duration of time that women remain at home following child-birth in Canada relative to the U.S, and that this increase was larger for more economically advantaged groups of women. Despite the large increases in time at home, there is little evidence that there was a decline in women's relative employment rates after their child reached age one. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to initiate a discussion about the political capital of Salvadoran immigrants. In this vein, I attempt to present the reader with: a) an overview of the political science work, which has dealt extensively with Latinos' political participation, while also commenting on the limitations engendered by the lack of sociological insights in this area and b) discuss the sociological perspectives stemming from the concepts of political opportunity structure and transnationalism as they relate to the immigrant political experience. The final part of this paper will consist of a proposal that attempts to study the political mobilization of Salvadorans. I argue that El Salvador induced a political migration that is consequential for Salvadoran immigrants residing in the United States. Additionally, the U.S.-El Salvador relations play an integral part in the Salvadoran political experience and structure Salvadorans claims-making processes. These factors make this an interesting group to study and, unlike other scholars who have investigated the social and economic aspects that affect the lives of Salvadorans, I attempt to address their political capital and investigate the political participation of Salvadorans in our nation's capital, Washington, D.C. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political participation and community involvement in the United States have declined steadily and significantly over the past four decades, and some attribute the fall to new media, such as television and the Internet. This paper is a study of new technologies and their impact on political and community involvement. I-Neighbors.org is a technology allowing individuals register a free website and email list for their neighborhood. This paper is based on a study of the behavior of I-Neighbors users, looking for evidence that this technology affect community involvement and political participation. Data shows that new media can have a profound impact on community dialogue and political involvement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines social hierarchy within the plaintiffs' bar to consider the effects that organizational cultures and lawyers' social and status characteristics have on case evaluation. The initial task of this paper is to identify distinctions among lawyers based on such characteristics as experience, case load, gender, and reputation. I then ask how these characteristics affect case screening. I explore these questions, and their implications for citizen justice claims, in a comparative study based on in-depth qualitative interviews with 83 products liability and medical malpractice lawyers in four U.S. states, representing two types of state-level legal cultures. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political policy outcomes are frequently understood in terms of rational actor or organizational decision-making models, but these often fail to analyze institutional effects that cut across organizations. Taken-for-granted cultural institutions are frequently overlooked as causal agents of urban conflict. Analysts are instead inclined to rely on parsimonious economic or class explanations, even though clashing cultural institutions might be an important part of the story. Urban environments push diverse cultural perspectives up against each other, occasionally inciting social movements. Many contentious issues call for official municipal involvement, for example, parade/festival management, public art selection/location, or park use allocation. To operationalize institutionalized cultural attitudes in cities, this paper examines how city policies attempt to resolve conflicts caused by cultural diversity in human-canine relationships in three US cities: Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. Cities are simultaneously pressured by small social movements for more dog parks and by large international movements for stronger animal rights. Two opposing urban dog cultures - dog worship and dog fighting - involve assorted actors and garner the attention of city officials in unexpected ways. Relying on ethnographic research of dog worship in Chicago, this paper discusses one component of the larger, three-city, comparative study. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration legislation after 9/11 or what might be termed "homeland security racism," signals the emergence of what might also be understood as a new form of institutionalized nativism. In this paper I ask how homeland security politics at the turn of the twenty-first century compares with previous forms of nativism. Anti-immigrant sentiments are not a new phenomenon in the United States and many scholars have found that more recent forms of nativism have been primarily directed against "illegal" or undocumented immigrants. What I find, however, is that today's nativism is highly institutionalized, through key post 9/11 immigration legislation. Significantly, new institutionalized nativism is resulting in the blurring of the legal distinctions between legal and illegal immigrant, and immigrant and refugee rendering all categories of non-citizen as undesirable and suspect. As a consequence, institutionalized nativism is not merely aimed at bolstering the nation's borders from in-flows of immigrants. More significantly institutionalized nativism is aimed at expanding technologies of surveillance and apparatuses of policing to identify immigrants, regardless of legal status, for removal from American society through long periods of detention and ultimately deportation. In addition, refugees, once a distinct and almost valorized category of foreigner, no longer enjoy the legal privileges they once did. This paper explores how today's nativism is eroding immigrant rights in the United States through ethnographic and interview research in California and New Jersey. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mexican Americans are greatly affected by identity contention, that is, conflicts over how their heritage and ethnic nomenclature should be constructed. "Spanish American" identity and "Chicano identity" are two supreme examples, with Native American identity also figuring in. Not only is it manifested in rhetorical writings and oral expression, but in real community conflict. The thesis of this paper is that this pattern both reflects and extends "fragmented pluralism," i.e., conflict oriented relations in which race and ethnic groups collectively mark themselves out from other groups and compete for resources, both material and symbolic. Fragmented pluralism was put on display in a highly rancorous controversy which erupted over the proposal that a statue of Juan de Oñate, the Spanish colonial founder of New Mexico, be erected in Albuquerque's civic plaza. "Race pride " heritage contructions marked out hard and fast boundaries between Spanish Americans on one hand, and the Native Americans and Chicanos on the other. The paper traces the terms of symbolic fragmentation that were embodied in the contents of heritage as they were forged in the Oñate dispute. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, many have used the term "silent exodus" to describe the phenomena of the children of immigrants leaving their parents' churches. While some choose to attend either a panethnic Asian or racially neutral (usually majority white) church, others choose to disassociate from Christianity itself. Based on nine months of ethnographic work, and both semi-structured and conversational interviews with members of both a Korean-specific church and a pan-ethnic Christian church, this paper argues that the silent exodus is a reflection of Karl Mannheims' "problem of generations," and that ironically, second generation Korean Americans leave the ethnic church for the very reasons their parents joined them. Thus, this paper first discusses the functions and purposes of the immigrant church for the first generation and second, speaks to the second generations' experiences with the ethnic churches and their rationale for the "silent exodus." This is followed by a discussion on how the propensity to leave the Christian church is driven by cultural clashes between generations, and different functions of the church for the parental and their children's generation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from a nationally representative sample of African Americans to examine how and why they differ in their causal attributions about racial inequality. The paper shows that socializing experiences as measured by such factors as birth cohort, experiences of discrimination, and racial common fate influence the causal attributions of African Americans. The results support the view that structural factors play an important and independent role in the attribution process of African Americans. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]