ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst
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Recent Submissions
Publication Networks in Action: Three Essays on Social Ties, Health, and Health Inequalities(2024-09)Under what conditions are social ties salubrious? This dissertation addresses this question by examining three distinct aspects of social relationships and resources embedded in these relationships: social capital over the life course, the racial and gendered adolescent popularity effects on adult body mass index, and the relationship between network spillover and workplace food choice. While network research increasingly demonstrates that social networks manifest themselves in highly context-dependent ways, it is unclear when, where, how, and for whom people's networks become a "resource," "cost," or "nothing at all." Investigating these contexts has practical implications because sociologists and policymakers wish to understand what network interventions might more effectively improve individual well-being and reduce health inequalities. Theoretically, examining these contexts is significant because it may elucidate overlooked mechanisms that underlie the network effects for health and health inequalities. In the second chapter, I demonstrate that in contrast to prior work, which found the stability of social capital, only 16% of individuals maintained social capital throughout their lives, whereas most experienced gains or losses. Life-course social capital matters, as maintaining high or increasing social capital can improve adult general health. Further analyses demonstrate that whether people maintain, increase, decrease, or have mixed life-course social capital depends on the social positions they occupy in multiple stratification systems. In the third chapter, I show that adolescent structural prestige at the ego and structural levels are linearly associated with adult self-reported and measured BMI and waist circumference, even after adjusting for early- and late-life confounders. However, the direction of associations is dependent on the intersections between gender and race, where white women receive benefits, yet women of color receive null or penalties. In the fourth chapter, I demonstrate that when network spillover is present, even 20% of individuals receiving interventions can significantly improve population-level behavior change. However, segregated interactions undermine the effects of network spillover. Ultimately, this dissertation highlights the role of social networks in health and health inequalities and the potential of computational social science in opening up new research on social determinants of health.Publication On the Minimal Model of the Resolution of Symplectic Cyclic Quotients(2024-09)To any action of a finite group $ G $ on a closed symplectic $ 4 $-manifold $ ( M , \omega ) $, one can associate a symplectic resolution $ \pi : ( \widetilde{M} , \widetilde{\omega} ) \to M / G $. When $ b_+^G ( M ) \geq 2 $, equivariant Seiberg-Witten-Taubes theory implies the existence of an invariant collection $ \mathcal{K} $ of pseudoholomorphic curves representing $ c_1 ( K_\omega ) $ and containing (almost) all the fixed points, and when $ ( M , \omega ) $ is minimal with $ c_1 ( K_\omega )^2 = 0 $ the possibilities for $ \mathcal{K} $ and its symmetries are constrained. In this work, we explore the nature of $ ( \widetilde{M} , \widetilde{\omega} ) $ and its minimal model when $ ( M , \omega ) $ has symplecitc Kodaira dimension $ \kappa^s ( M , \omega ) = 1 $ and $ G = \Z / p $ for $ p $ prime by tracing the evolution of such a collection $ \mathcal{K} $ through the quotient $ M \to M / G $ and resolution $ \widetilde{M} \to M / G $, finally to the minimal model. We apply this to address a conjecture of Chen, showing for $ G = \Z / p $ that if $ \kappa^s ( M , \omega ) = 1 $ then $ \kappa^s ( \widetilde{M} , \widetilde{\omega} ) \in \{ 0 , 1 \} $.Publication HERITAGE LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE, LANGUAGE IDEOLOGY, AND IDENTITY OF KOREAN AMERICAN YOUTH AND THEIR FAMILIES(2024-09)In the first two decades of the 21st century, scholarly interest in heritage languages (HLs) in the United States has grown significantly. However, despite efforts by language minority families to promote HLs and resist language shifts, relevant research on these efforts and the language practices among the youths in community settings remains limited. In this context, addressing this research gap, the present dissertation investigates a cohort of eight Korean American youths and their parents’ HL maintenance, with a particular focus on youth language practices, language ideologies, and identity dynamics. Using ethnographic case study methods that involved interviews and participant observations, this study explores how Korean American families sustain HL, how their youths engage with HL, and how language ideologies and identities affect Korean American speakers’ practices, particularly in the context lacking ethnic enclaves or public support. The main argument of the present study is that HL maintenance is a complex issue intertwined with conflicting and shifting language ideologies and identities on individual, familial, and community, and societal levels. Despite the undermining impact of conflicting English-dominant ideologies, both families’ significant investments in maintaining Korean, on the one hand, and youths’ agentic HL practices, on the other hand, challenge monolingual and assimilative ideologies, affirming “Koreanness” as central to their identity. Taken together, the findings highlight the critical need for language awareness, societal and institutional support for HLs, as well as innovative pedagogical approaches for young HL learners.Publication Geometrically Frustrated Assembly at Finite Temperature(2024-09)Geometric frustration refers to the incommensurability between locally preferred order and global geometry. The inclusion of such frustration in systems of self-assembling particles has been shown to give rise to unique, scale-dependent states characterized by the self-limitation of domain size and the presence of topologically defective ground states. In this dissertation, we introduce a minimal lattice model of geometrically frustrated assembly and use a variety of numerical and theoretical techniques to explore its behavior at finite temperature. In chapter \ref{chapter: intro}, we review the literature of frustrated assembly and identify the key questions that we seek to address throughout this dissertation. In chapter \ref{chapter: model_intro}, we introduce our minimal model and develop the numerical and theoretical machinery that we will use throughout the following chapters. In addition to this, we will derive several key predictions for the effect of temperature on frustrated assembly. In chapter \ref{chapter: self-limiting assembly} and \ref{chapter: bulk condensation}, we use our numerical techniques to test these predictions and explore the self-limiting and defect bulk phase of assembly under fairly dilute conditions. In chapter \ref{chapter: equilibrium paths}, we investigate the role of entropy in stabilizing self-limiting assembly. After that, we relax the dilute restriction and study our model over the entire range of allowable concentration. Here, we show the existence of a percolation transition at high concentration and compare the structure of this resultant phase to the defective bulk structure. In chapter \ref{chapter: soft gauge model}, we generalize our model to allow the effects of subunit elasticity to be studied. Finally, in chapter \ref{chapter: conclusion}, we summarize the key results of this work and discuss several future directions that are motivated by experiment.Publication Motherhood and Inequality: Centering Trans Women in the Fight for Reproductive Justice(2024-09)Many scholars affirm the importance of family to everyday survival and how families reflect and reproduce inequalities. My dissertation both extends this literature and addresses its exclusion of transgender women by centering the experiences of trans women who currently parent or want to be parents in the future. I conducted 54 semi-structured interviews with 27 white trans women and 27 trans women of color across North America. Using the concept of reproductive governance, I examine how trans women navigate dominant gender, race, and parenting ideologies as they create and support their families. These ideologies police both the legal and symbolic boundaries of motherhood, providing conditional protections to advantaged white women who fulfill these norms while punishing perceived deviation. However, whereas existing research on trans women often reduces them to victims of violence, my research highlights the families and communities that trans women build despite institutional barriers. My findings also contribute to several debates within gender and family scholarship. The first debate involves the ability of legal protections to minimize intersecting inequalities. My research shows the legal impact of anti-trans discourses that portray trans women—particularly low-income trans women and trans women of color—as “unfit mothers,” whose perceived danger and deceitfulness require intervention to “protect children.” By examining how judges and case workers mobilize these stereotypes, I theorize how anti-trans discourses reinforce the regulation of other communities. The second debate involves the reproduction of inequality via everyday interactions. By looking at how trans women are ascribed or denied motherhood, I argue that when trans people “do gender” they are also being held accountable to dominant racial and class ideologies. A third debate concerns what counts as “family.” Various scholars have argued that trans people form alternate kinship structures as a replacement for the nuclear family. However, I spoke to respondents who have and desire both sets of relationships. I argue that trans women engage is a range of kinship practices that challenge the depiction of motherhood as a “private act” that necessarily maintains the status quo.
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