Sociology Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2804

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The Jezebel Speaks: Black Women's Erotic Labor in the Digital Age
(2019) Brown, Melissa; Ray, Rashawn; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
According to contemporary scholars of sex work in the digital age, information and communication technologies (ICTs) provide sex workers various affordances. Some of these affordances include new ways of business or marketing; greater security; more autonomy; and better wages. Much of this scholarship centers young white women working in specific fields of sex work that cater to young white men clientele. Thus, several questions remain about the affordances and constraints of the internet for sex workers of color. Affordances refer to the functional and relational aspects of objects that create possibilities for human agency through interaction with them. In this present study I use existing theories of the mobile internet and Black feminist thought to intervene into the sociology of sex work and the internet to show how Black women sex workers negotiate controlling images of Black women's sexuality on the social networking application Instagram. This study seeks to address the following broad research questions with respect to embodiment and labor: 1) In what ways, if any, do controlling images of Black women’s sexuality emerge online? 2) How do power dynamics within the matrix of domination shape racial-sexual hierarchies of worthiness and desirability online? And finally, 3) What sexual politics, if any, do Black women exotic dancers use on social networking sites to negotiate controlling images? To answer these questions, I use a mixed methods approach to examine the affordances of digital technology for Black women sex workers. First, I used GIS mapping software to visualize the locations of where Black women exotic dancers based in the Memphis, Atlanta, and D.C. metropolitan areas perform. Second, I distributed an online survey among this group of women to create an exploratory profile. Finally, I conducted a content analysis to explore the erotic labor of Black women sex workers as a form of racial-sexual and gendered embodiment and performance of sexuality. My findings indicate Black women exotic dancers use social networking sites (SNS) and the mobile internet to leverage racialized erotic capital into various entrepreneurial pursuits and forms of self-eroticism beyond exotic dance. Nevertheless, controlling images of Black women’s sexuality popular within the discourse of contemporary rap music shape expectations around their erotic labor. As a result, the innovation of social networking sites on the mobile internet has done little to reshape the racially and economically marginalized landscape of strip clubs wherein Black women exotic dancers perform.
The New Bottom Line: Black Women Cultural Entrepreneurs Re-Define Success in The Connected Economy
(2016) Buford, Kathryn Buford; Hill Collins, Patricia; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Black women cultural entrepreneurs are a group of entrepreneurs that merit further inquiry. Using qualitative interview and participant observation data, this dissertation investigates the ways in which black women cultural entrepreneurs define success. My findings reveal that black women cultural entrepreneurs are a particular interpretive community with values, perspectives and experiences, which are not wholly idiosyncratic, but shaped by collective experiences and larger social forces. Black women are not a monolith, but they are neither disconnected individuals completely devoid of group identity. The meaning they give to their businesses, professional experiences and understandings of success are influenced by their shared social position and identity as black women. For black women cultural entrepreneurs, the New Bottom Line goes beyond financial gain. This group, while not uniform in their understandings of success, largely understand the most meaningful accomplishments they can realize as social impact in the form of cultural intervention, black community uplift and professional/creative agency. These particular considerations represent a new paramount concern, and alternative understanding of what is typically understood as the bottom line. The structural, social and personal challenges that black women cultural entrepreneurs encounter have shaped their particular perspectives on success. I also explore the ways research participants articulated an oppositional consciousness to create an alternative means of defining and achieving success. I argue that this consciousness empowers them with resources, connections and meaning not readily conferred in traditional entrepreneurial settings. In this sense, the personal, social and structural challenges have been foundational to the formation of an alternative economy, which I refer to as The Connected Economy. Leading and participating in The Connected Economy, black women cultural entrepreneurs represent a black feminist and womanist critique of dominant understandings of success.
New Wine Calls for New Wineskins: Black Megachurch Approaches to Racial Inequality
(2015) Barber, Kendra Hadiya; Hill Collins, Patricia; Marsh, Kris; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The changing nature of racism in the post-Civil Rights period coincides with the decline in collective racial protest, or what some scholars consider the activist or prophetic wing, of black churches. As a result of the shift from the overt racism of the Civil Rights era to the hidden and often invisible forms of contemporary racism, the ways in which blacks address and resist racism might reflect similar shifts. In other words, I argue that black churches’ responses to contemporary racial inequality may be different from the actions taken by some churches before and during the pre-Civil Rights era. This study seeks to explore the explanations and solutions for contemporary racial inequality offered by black megachurch leaders and attendees. More specifically it also takes into account how religious culture may influence these explanations of and solutions to racial inequality. A case study approach is utilized to examine three black megachurches in Washington, D.C.—one Baptist, one Pentecostal, and one nondenominational. Data from semi-structured interviews with church leaders and congregants, content analysis of church documents, and participant observation of church worship services reveal three main findings. First, contrary to literature that states blacks tend to rely on structural rather than individual explanations of racial inequality, church leaders and congregants tend to rely on explanations that are simultaneously individual and structural. Second, the strategies used by the megachurches in this study do not reflect the direct action protesting strategies used by some black churches during the Civil Rights Movement. The strategies of the megachurches in this study to address racial inequality range from aiding in educational achievement to civic engagement to employment training to address racial inequality. Furthermore, each of the churches has developed nonprofit Community Development Corporations to provide social services such as transitional housing. Third, although the various religious cultures of megachurches in this study inform how they address racial inequality, other factors, such as declining membership and changing community demographics, also shape strategies to intervene in racial inequality.
Reimagining Black Carceral Masculinities and Community Care Work: A Study of Credible Messengers in the Nation’s Capital
(2024) Martinez, Rod; Ray, Rashawn; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The following dissertation examines a group of community workers known as credible messengers in Washington, D.C. Credible messengers have lived experience surviving carceral systems such as prisons and environments and have transformed their lives to guide, relate to, and support others who share their backgrounds. Their credibility stems directly from their intimate knowledge of the communities they serve. This dissertation project draws on qualitative interviews with male credible messengers from a more considerable multi-year evaluation of a newly implemented credible messenger program housed in a youth agency. Sociologically, the project explores Black carceral masculinities and mentoring as civic engagement. The findings reveal how men resist and challenge prevailing notions around hegemonic and carceral masculinities through their racially gendered experiences, which shape how they approach their work with youth. The study also suggests that the men engage in credible messenger work for motivations other than redemption and in service of a larger mission to Black youth and their local communities. The dissertation project also includes a conversation with a formerly incarcerated public figure from Washington, D.C., as a call to action to researchers and others to uplift the experience of impacted people and communities. The dissertation project concludes with a set of recommendations aimed at policy and practice as it relates to criminalized Black men and boys.