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What are the implications of welfare state restructuring in the U.S. for service provision to the poor in different locations? I examine how county social service workfare programs (named Work First in North Carolina) differ across rural, nonmetropolitan urban, and metropolitan counties in North Carolina using semi-structured interviews with Work First program managers. I also consider differences by poverty levels. Current findings are based on a working sample of 39 out of 100 North Carolina counties. Findings suggest that U.S. workfare policy severely inhibits local governments' ability to serve the poor (especially poor single mothers) across urban and rural counties and areas with different levels of poverty. However, rural counties are particularly disadvantaged by welfare state restructuring. Drawing on global political economy literature, I suggest that because some locations have a lessened capacity to benefit from and protect people from market forces, federal restructuring that devolves responsibility to the local level and instates workfare programs for the poor reinforces inequality within and between locations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research is based on interviews with a racially diverse group of 42 middle-school children in a small southeastern city. For girls, we found a contradictory set of expectations that lead them to condemn emphasized femininity while being careful to do femininity through bodily display. For boys, peer social control is organized around the conflation of sexuality and gender, which involves conscious and concerted efforts to avoid violating gender expectations in order to avoid being labeled "gay." We argue that the girls in our sample have begun to undo gender, or at least to narrow policing each other around gender to how the body is presented. Boys' choices remain narrowly prescribed by peer ridicule and stigma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with explaining variance in state action regarding the signing of international environmental agreements through the examination of both nationally internal and external factors using OLS regression techniques. Significant internal factors turn out to include the percentage of women in Parliament, partially supporting some versions of ecological modernization theory, although other modernization variables were either not significant or not in the expected direction. Citizen values, citizen participation regarding environmental reform, and the density of international nongovernmental organizations were not significant predictors, or did not exhibit an effect in the expected direction. Concerning external factors, world system position, specifically core status, appears to be a significant predictor of environmental treaty ratification, supporting world system/dependency schools of thought. The international context and particular position of the nation-state within the world-system are considered important for understanding the decision to engage in international agreements dedicated to environmental reform. The significance of percentage of women in Parliament for environmental reform is also discussed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a comparative case study of the social welfare systems of an urban and a rural county, I consider various theoretical approaches to understanding variation in local welfare implementation by examining organizational strategies. Regulation theory is found to be relevant, but inadequate. Structuration theory provides useful principles for detailing how organizations and actors function in their environment and exercise agency. Cultural studies are also useful for examining the ways in which different understandings of poverty and community mediate larger external pressures. Different organizations, in effect, develop different capacities for agency. More specifically, the enforcement of low-wage work that is supported by national policy is highly constraining, but can be challenged through a welfare organization when the right conditions are present. Such conditions involve financial and cultural resources that were present in the urban county, but not the rural county. Service provision in the rural county was less diverse and less effective than in the urban county due to such place-based factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]