Sociology Department Dissertations Collection

In the heart of the beast: Masculinity and fatherhood on the inside

Curtis, Anna M — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 12:24:36 PST

Drawing on two and a half years of participant observation (n=280 hours) and extended life history interviews with incarcerated fathers (n=49), this dissertation examines the relationship between masculinity, fatherhood, and the organization of the prison system. This dissertation examines the ways assumptions and practices centered in the dangerous masculinity of prisoners draw on larger historical and cultural patterns to reinforce the ways that the prison system contributes to the social control project of the criminal justice system as a whole. In particular, I focus on the raced and classed underpinnings of dangerous masculinity of the prisoner. This dissertation also considers the ways incarcerated men struggle to balance their understandings of masculinity and fatherhood within the confines of the prison. Focusing on incarcerated men’s understanding of the ways manhood and fatherhood support and undermine one another as a set of practices within prison contributes both to research in prisons and also to the larger conversation about masculinity and fatherhood. ^

Farm-to-Fork: Understanding Locally-Oriented Farm-to-Vendor Food Systems: Access, Boundaries, and Power-Relations

Trivette, Shawn Alan — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 07:11:42 PST

Locally oriented food has recently gained considerable popularity as an alternative to the industrial food system. Current scholarship on local food has typically focused on direct-to-consumer (DTC) arrangements, such as farmers' markets or CSAs. Yet other players besides producers and consumers engage with locally-oriented food. Food vendors (restaurants, retailers and grocers, and value-added food processors) have recently entered the scene and locally-oriented farm-to-vendor arrangements constitute one of the cutting edges of the development of local food systems. This dissertation studies one such local food system in southern New England. Utilizing a mixed methods approach entailing social network analysis, in-depth interviews, fieldwork observations, and GIS analysis, this study interrogates how direct-to-vendor (DTV) local food systems operate. I show through the literature review that though local food systems hold considerable promise, they are not inherent mechanisms of sustainability. Next I turn to the question of what "counts" as local, examining the range of distances farms and vendors within this region travel to sell or purchase food, and asking what are the forces and conditions that influence this range of travel? The greatest influences are number of ties to other local food entities, what type of farm or food-vendor they are, size, and urban proximity. I then focus on key participants in the area of study. What are the challenges and constraints around developing a vibrant locally-based food system? These participants face continual pressure to expand their size and markets, emulating the dominant food system and thereby undercutting their sustainable potential. However, these participants also find ways to overcome what are sometimes contradictory interests to forge a functional locally-based food system based on reciprocity and trust. Due in part to price premiums on local food many local food participants tend to be white and have high incomes and levels of education. In the final empirical chapter I ask: in what ways do these inequalities manifest systematically? By geospatially mapping the locations of local food outlets against census data on race, income, and education, I show that racial and class advantages are perpetuated in terms of people's proximal access to these local food outlets.

Organizing Markets: The Structuring of Neoliberalism in the U.S. Airline Industry

Avent-Holt, Dustin Robert — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 12:38:42 PST

This dissertation examines the emergence of neoliberalism through an historical analysis of the evolution of the U.S airline industry. In 1938 the basic economic activities of U.S. airlines were placed under the regulatory oversight and control of the Civil Aeronautics Board. This institution of "regulated competition" persisted largely unquestioned until the economic crisis of the 1970s. Out of this crisis the Airline Deregulation Act was passed in 1978, eliminating most of these economic controls. Based on analysis of Congressional hearings, a key industry trade press (Air Transport World), the general business press, and financial and labor market data on the airline industry I explain the stable reproduction of "regulated competition" from 1938-1973, the mobilization against regulated competition that began in 1973 that led to the reorganization of the industry in 1978, and the transformation of the market for air travel in the 1980s following the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act. Through analyzing this case of the transition from state interventionism to neoliberalism I make three interrelated historical and theoretical arguments. First, as an historical object neoliberalism is a contextual and often incoherent political project that to fully understand requires fine-grained analyses of the social spaces in which neoliberalism is inserted and adapted. Second, neoliberal deregulations such as occurred in the airline industry do not translate into a simple self-regulating market. Instead, what we observe in this case is that market actors rebuild institutions and reorganize social relations in order to protect themselves from market competition. Finally, at a theoretical level I argue that while analytically distinct networks and institutions are mutually constitutive of markets and interact with each other in the evolution of a market. This case demonstrates the back and forth dynamics of actors building social relations to transform institutions that then transform existing social relations that is the hallmark of market dynamics. Thus, at a theoretical level I draw out the importance of understanding the relationship between networks and institutions in understanding the evolution of markets as social fields, while at a historical level I argue that focusing on concrete cases of neoliberalism will help us understand the multiplex politics behind producing a neoliberal political economy and the unexpected consequences of it.

The persistence of military honor in a culture without victory

Burland, Daniel Alton — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 14:13:13 PDT

The military has a long tradition of distributing honors to its soldiers in a calculated and uneven way, all to reinforce internal hierarchies it finds necessary. For example, officers have nicer uniforms, are shown more respect, and are awarded medals at a higher rate than the soldiers they command. “Normal” soldiers used to be similarly privileged over their auxiliary “colored” counterparts. In the 20^th Century a new line of demarcation was created between front-line combatants (infantrymen, artillerymen, and so on) on the one hand, and rear-echelon support soldiers (supply clerks, cooks, and so on), on the other. This new line of demarcation creates a two-tier system of honor, with support soldiers debased in social standing to show greater honor to their combatant brethren. Before the 20^th Century, there were hardly any support soldiers to demean, as the logistical needs of the U.S. military were provided for by civilian camp followers. Now uniformed support soldiers constitute roughly seventy percent of the military. The front-line combatant soldier, once the typical soldier, has become a minority within the military, but a prestigious minority. The two-tier system of honor that privileges combatant soldiers over their support counterparts finds enthusiastic support among combatant soldiers, support soldiers, and in the civilian world. It is reasonable to show the most respect to soldiers who have suffered the most, and undeniably combatant soldiers are killed and wounded at the highest rate. Yet the nature of the two-tier system of honor has qualities that suggest that it is based on more than simply logical and just deference. First, support soldiers (the majority of the military) are not so much shamed as invisible: the fact that the new “median” soldier is today not an infantryman, but a cook, clerk, or water purification specialist rarely enters into public discourse. Secondly, while some uniformed service members are denied military honor, certain civilians have begun making unprecedented claims to military honor. By analyzing recent commemorative art about war, including the Washington D.C. memorials, the Quartermaster Museum at Fort Lee, VA (a museum founded to honor support soldiers), and local commemorative projects that aspire to national recognition, I will show that the social narrative of combat, long the dominant storyline of the military, has been fused with the related personal (and more inclusive) narrative of trauma. This new storyline of trauma-combat has discredited competing storylines. Technical competence, contribution to victory, and belief in the system one defends have become irrelevant, and these were the pathways to military honor open to support soldiers as such. The new narrative of trauma-combat also makes it possible for a war widow or a disabled contractor to claim the honor formerly reserved for soldiers. Loss related to war is the ultimate and only sign of a soldier, and who best embodies this loss than a war widow or a civilian contractor paralyzed by war wounds? At the beginning of the 20^th Century, military authority asserted direct control over its camp-followers by placing them in uniform, thus creating a body of support soldiers that would eventually outsize the combat component it was designed to support. At the beginning of the 21^st century, the periphery of the military continues to be militarized, while within the military itself, the typical soldier ceases in many ways to be a soldier at all.^

Citizenship in Times of Exception: The Turn to Security and the Politics of Human Rights in Valle del Cauca, Colombia

Marquez Montano, Erika — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 09:19:24 PDT

Since at least the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, security has emerged as a major political paradigm built upon an expansive definition of state control emphasizing not only the mere policing of violations of law, but the means through which the state asserts itself as a particular political entity through the militarized management of social actors both inside and outside its borders. Through an analysis of the case of Colombia's Democratic Security policy, this dissertation documents the transformations of social mobilization within the boundaries of the newly politicized, and newly globalized, security state.

The research builds upon six months of ethnographic work and in-depth interviews with Valle del Cauca regional chapters of pacifist feminist grassroots network Women's Peaceful Route, with human rights advocacy organization Permanent Committee for Human Rights, and with afrodescendant movement Process of Black Communities. Analyzing the work of these organizations, this dissertation assesses the uneven impact of security policies on social actors claiming territorial, cultural, and political rights. Through these organizations the work illuminates how security is gendered and racialized, while it is strongly resisted by the movements' challenge to the model of citizenship promoted by the state. The research poses that, no longer able to see human rights work in terms of the defense of individuals, social movements have instead redeployed the concept of human rights as a mode of articulating radical democratic demands reflecting a collective social struggle.

Illustrating the connections between neoliberal development and security, and its impact for afrodescendants and women's claims for rights and recognition, the dissertation shows how global discourses on security influence the constitution of new social identities through the constant re-iteration of the question 'who is the terrorist,' and the subsequent re-articulation of new parameters of citizenship. Beyond Colombia's case, this research advances existing scholarship regarding the technologies of statehood in the post September 11 era, at the same time that it contributes to an understanding of social mobilization in the context of global and hemispheric governance.

Defining Legal Parenthood: The Intersection of Gender and Sexual Identity in U.S. Child Custody Decisions, 2003-2009

Watkins, Kristina A. — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:49:10 PST

This dissertation examines the contested terrain of family through qualitative analysis of child custody decisions. Legal parenthood was historically based on the heteronormative family ideal of a legally married monogamous heterosexual couple and their biogenetically related children. In the context of diverse family forms of the twenty-first century, however, courts struggle to draw the boundary lines of legal parenthood. Although previous research has examined the role of parental gender or sexual identity on child custody decisions, my research fills an important gap, as I analyze variations in gender, sexual identity, and path to parenthood for heterosexual, gay, lesbian, and bisexual mothers and fathers. Using the universe of state-level child custody decisions from 2003 to 2009, I created a unique data set in which I matched court cases involving gay and lesbian parents to cases in the same court and time period that involved heterosexual parents, resulting in 254 court decisions. This research design enabled me to illuminate how courts construct families and parents in the context of variations in parental gender, sexual identity, and path to parenthood. In addition, qualitative textual analysis demonstrates how the courts struggled to conceptualize family forms outside of heterosexual marriage and biogenetically related children. Indeed, biogenetics continue to remain central to legal constructions of parenthood. This research also reveals the continued legal regulation of family forms that deviate from the heteronormative ideal. Overall, this research elucidates larger questions about inequality, gender, sexuality, and family in the United States.

French Postcolonial Nationalism and Afro-French Subjectivities

Munif, Yasser A. — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:01:36 PST

This research examines urban renewal in Clichy-sous-Bois, a suburb of 30,000 inhabitants located in the northeast of Paris. It studies the modalities of spatial racialization, nation building, and subject formation among Afro-French young men living in the city. It also builds on a world-historical perspective to explore the diasporic webs in which the lives of Afro-French are embedded. Taking spatial racialization as a point of entry, the study attempts to understand how governmental strategies and urban policies regulate lives and residential patterns in the city. Three lines of investigation are pursued: 1) an examination of Afro-French racialization and genealogies; 2) an analysis of narratives and struggles of these communities and their impact on neoliberal spaces; 3) an exploration of the various ways spatial governmentality constrains and/or produces Afro-Frenchness. The primary purpose of this ethnographic research is to comprehend the French colonial history and its impact on the racialization of diasporic Afro-French living in metropolitan France. For this end, the study proposes the notion of "Afro-French," an analytical concept that designates a constellation of groups from Sub-Saharan, North African, and Caribbean origins. The term provides a heuristic to comprehend the urban and cultural experiences of diasporic sub-groups who have different but overlapping genealogies. Second, the project helps understand why Afro-French living in Clichy-sous-Bois embody and at the same time transgress official narratives of the nation. It argues that France's nationalism, like other forms of European nationalisms, is facing a contradictory moment in the neoliberal conjuncture. On the one hand, discourses about liberalization of the economy involve the deployment of narratives that celebrate mobility and flexibility. This new dependence on a global neoliberal economy destabilizes national economies and erodes the state's structures. On the other hand, state actors diffuse identitarian and xenophobic discourses that blame ethnic and religious minorities for the socio-economic crisis. Third, the study argues that spatial governmentality and urban strategies enable certain aspects of Afro-Frenchness but constrain others: there is no homogenous or unified logic to regulate lives and spaces in Clichy.

Resisting Schools, Reproducing Families: Gender and the Politics of Homeschooling

Kapitulik, Brian Paul — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 11:09:11 PST

The contemporary homeschooling movement sits at the intersection of several important social trends: widespread concern about the effectiveness and safety of public schools, feminist challenges to the patriarchal family structure, anxiety about the state of the family as an institution, and challenging economic conditions. The central concern of this dissertation is to make sense of homeschooling within this broader context. Data were gathered through interviews with forty-five homeschooling parents, approximately half of whom are religious and half of whom are secular. The interviews were organized around three central questions: 1) What are the frames that parents use to justify homeschooling? 2) What are their particular tactics or methods for homeschooling? 3) What are the components of homeschoolers' collective identity? I argue that homeschooling bears the imprint of broader changes regarding the gender system and contemporary family life, as well as other economic and cultural changes. Both religious and secular parents come to homeschooling out of shared concerns about schools being ineffective and incapable of catering to their children's individual needs. They also share concerns about the state of the family and the general moral decline of society. Religious and secular parents differ in their actual practice of homeschooling, depending on their particular conceptions of childhood, but they are alike in the fact that it is women who do most of the homeschooling work. These parents are also different in their collective identities. Religious parents regard homeschooling as just something they do. However, secular parents characterize homeschooling as part of who they are as moral people and this compels them to employ various strategies of identity work. In the end, I argue that this movement is unlikely to contribute to meaningful social change. I base this conclusion on the fact that the homeschooling movement contains two major contradictions: 1) This movement is simultaneously resisting one alleged failing institution - schools - while reproducing another highly criticized institution - the patriarchal nuclear family. 2) This movement offers individual solutions to social problems. While the participants have many concerns about social institutions, their answer is to withdraw their participation and retreat into their own families.

Social Meanings of Mortality: The Language of Death and Disease in 19th Century Massachusetts

Beemer, Jeffrey Keith — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 10:50:45 PST

This dissertation investigates the emergence and development of cause-of-death registration in nineteenth-century Massachusetts. I examine the historical, demographic, sociopolitical, and theoretical conditions that gave rise to the first state-implemented cause-of-death registration system in the United States, Massachusetts's vital registration system. Developments in almost every arena of social life during the nineteenth century were shaped in some fashion through disease. The disease ecology changed dramatically during this period shifting from acute infectious to chronic degenerative diseases, which marked the beginning of the epidemiological transition. Registration systems were key components in this transitional period, providing the raw data on which nineteenth-century public health policy emerged. The greatest challenge that public-health reformers faced in implementing and regulating cause-of-death registration was standardizing the language and practice of disease and cause-of-death reporting. I look closely at issues of implementation and regulation and examine the relative impact that standardized nomenclature and reporting practices had on cause-of-death registration in Massachusetts from 1850 through 1912. Efforts to standardize disease and cause-of-death terminology in the United States and internationally did not, however, successfully emerge until the late nineteenth century. While many disease terms were in common, their diagnostic applications were not. I argue that certain constitutive and regulative features of death registration did not match up with the institutional mandate of Massachusetts's vital registration system until forty years after its implementation. The institution-building process required the alignment of these features as normative practices, culminating in the organized efforts of European and American medical professionals to instruct physicians in proper nomenclature through explicit references and sanctions in the 1900 International Classification of Diseases. The pragmatic conditions out of which both Massachusetts' cause-of-death registration system and the International Classification of Diseases emerged did not consist of special circumstances or unique cultural practices. The social meanings of mortality in nineteenth-century Massachusetts reflected the public commitments of a diverse set of communities and practices that shared similar resources in working out the struggles and triumphs of communicating the language of death and disease.

Mothering in jail: Pleasure, pain, and punishment

Aiello, Brittnie Leigh — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 13:15:12 PDT

This dissertation examines the role of motherhood in the women’s unit at Northeast Jail, a medium-security facility located in the Northeastern United States. Staff and administrators at Northeast Jail identify the facility as unique in the age of “get-tough” policies toward crime and punishment because the jail provides drug rehabilitation programming, educational opportunities, some job training, and a variety of classes and therapeutic groups. Preparation for parenting is an important part of the therapeutic agenda for women inmates at Northeast Jail. Officially, motherhood manifests in jail in the form of parenting classes and visitation, but motherhood is woven throughout other therapeutic groups, daily life and conversation. In these venues, staff promote an ideal form of motherhood that is not available to women in or out of jail. Thus, constructions of ideal motherhood punish women who cannot practice them. Motherhood is also tied to formal mechanisms of punishment that the jail uses to discipline inmates who break institutional rules. Or, motherhood is invoked to encourage women to behave in institutionally prescribed ways. Furthermore, since the purpose of Northeast Jail is to punish and confine, therapeutic endeavors are often superseded by punitive measures. In order to maintain a rhetoric of rehabilitation in the face of traditional punishment, staff and administrators construct inmates in ways that justify incarceration on therapeutic or punitive grounds. In short, motherhood is an integral part of life at Northeast Jail, even though women are practically and ideologically barred from practicing motherhood in their everyday lives. I will argue that this disconnect, and the primacy of motherhood to women’s lives makes motherhood an effective tool of gendered punishment. ^