Sociology
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2273
Browse
14 results
Search Results
Item The Politics of Metabolism: The Metabolic Syndrome and the Reproduction of Race and Racism(2009) Hatch, Anthony Ryan; Collins, Patricia H; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Biomedical researchers, government agencies, and the pharmaceutical industry increasingly use the term metabolic syndrome to define the observed co-occurrence of the major biological risk markers for heart disease, type II diabetes, and stroke. The metabolic syndrome is a new feature in what I call the politics of metabolism, or the discourses, social processes, and institutional relationships that governs the metabolism of individuals and groups. The emergence of the metabolic syndrome reflects a growing network of scientific, state, and corporate actors and institutions that are invested in studying, regulating, and profiting from control over metabolism. Drawing on insights from critical race theory, science and technology studies, and Foucauldian studies of biopower, I analyze the metabolic syndrome as a new discourse about metabolism that continually draws upon racial meanings to construct individual and group differences in different kinds of metabolic risk. The metabolic syndrome not only constitutes a new way of constructing, studying, and treating metabolic health problems, it also constitutes an emerging site for the production of racial meanings. Researchers use race in metabolic syndrome research and to study, prescribe, and label prescription drugs that may be related to the metabolic syndrome. I investigate the use of race and the metabolic syndrome in biomedical research on prescription drugs and African Americans. I develop the metaphor of killer applications to examine how prescription drugs operate in the politics of metabolism. A killer application is a superior technology that combines human and non-human elements that structure bodily practices in a wide range of social, commercial, and scientific contexts--prescription drugs have become the new killer applications in biomedicine. I argue that the search for killer applications has transformed the ways that pharmaceutical corporations study prescription drugs, metabolism, and race. I compare how drug researchers use race and the metabolic syndrome to study antipsychotics and statins in African Americans, how physicians' race-based diagnoses of schizophrenia and high cholesterol structure the prescribing patterns of antipsychotics and statins, and how scientists' assumptions about the genetic basis of racial differences in drug metabolism structure the debate about racebased drug therapies.Item Residential Segregation: Hurting or Helping U.S. Hispanic Health?(2009) Nelson, Kyle Anne; Iceland, John; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)U.S. Hispanics experience health disparities that are in part socially determined. My dissertation explores the connections between health and residential segregation for Hispanics and key Hispanic subgroups in metropolitan America. I conduct a multivariate analysis combining individual-level health survey data on Hispanics from the 1997-2002 Urban Institute National Survey of America's Families with metropolitan area-level residential segregation scores from Census 2000. My primary research question is: What is the role of residential segregation in shaping the health disparities of U.S. Hispanics? I compare the link between segregation and health for U.S. Hispanics with African Americans, and evaluate differences among Hispanics by nativity and country of origin. My outcome measures are self-rated health, insurance status, and having a usual source of health care. I find a significant negative effect on health status of residential segregation from whites for U.S. Hispanics even after accounting for compositional factors such as poverty status and education. Consistent with spatial assimilation theory, however, much of the observed negative effects of segregation on health are overshadowed by individual-level socioeconomic characteristics. In support of place stratification theory which emphasizes the relative disadvantage of African Americans as racial minorities in the U.S., I find that African Americans experience modestly greater health disparities associated with segregation than Hispanics. Despite my prediction that health outcomes for foreign-born Hispanics may actually improve with higher segregation, nativity does not significantly alter the link between health and segregation among U.S. Hispanics. I do find a significant interaction between nativity and segregation for Mexicans in the prediction of being uninsured and for Cubans in the prediction of self-rated health. For foreign-born Mexicans, segregation is more of a disadvantage in the prediction of being uninsured. The only evidence I find of any positive or protective link between segregation and health is for Cuban-origin Hispanics whose odds of reporting good self-rated health increase with higher levels of segregation. While segregation has a positive association with health status for both U.S.-born and foreign-born Cubans, the effect is substantially stronger for the foreign born. This research highlights the importance of examining residential segregation as a social determinant of health, and reveals important nuances in the link between health and segregation for nativity and country-of-origin subgroups of U.S. Hispanics.Item Breaking into the Public Sphere: Temporality, Context, and Innovation in the Politicization of Latin American Immigrants(2008-11-21) Cantor, Guillermo; Korzeniewicz, Roberto P; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation aims to improve our understanding of the political life of Latinos in the U.S., in specific local contexts and historical moments. To that end, I propose to reframe the understanding of politics and the political. Borrowing elements from political philosophy, I propose using the concept of politicization, which is primarily defined by the introduction of innovation in the public realm; the generation of consequences that affect not only those directly involved in a situation but others as well; and the intervention in a public domain that is not limited to state structures. To elaborate on this idea of politicization as well as to bring history, context, and in particular, temporality, to the center of this research, I look at two major events that crystallized the most critical landmarks in the recent political history of Latinos in the Washington D.C. area: the Mount Pleasant Riots of 1991 and "La Marcha" of 2006. In order to disentangle the process of politicization in each of the events analyzed, I examine the interplay of context (including demographic, political, and organizational features of the local Latino community), episodes of contention, attribution of opportunities and threats, social and organizational appropriation, and innovation. I then reconstruct these cases by inscribing them in their contexts and analyzing how, why, and when different consequential actions were performed. Both the Mount Pleasant riots and La Marcha involved the engagement of ordinary people in the Latino community in contentious public acts which led to the emergence of a transformed ethnically-centered political actor. I argue that this actor constitution was the result of the way in which ordinary people and various collective actors proceeded throughout the exceptional public performances, before, during, and after. My main argument is that the profile and structural location of leading organizations (e.g., dependency on government contracts, foundations' grants, employers, or ordinary people) involved in the events had a decisive impact on the actions adopted by community leaders which, in turn, affected the direction of the political path that the Latino community undertook.Item Asians in the United States Labor Market: 'Winners' or 'Losers' ?(2008-08-05) Kulkarni, Veena S.; Bianchi, Suzanne M.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines employment, earnings, and income of the six major foreign and native born Asian groups, namely, Asian Indians, Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, and the Vietnamese for the year 2000. The dissertation makes three contributions. First, it provides an updated analysis of employment and earning attainments of Asian individuals disaggregated by countries of origin, gender, and nativity status using the latest available and most suitable data. Second, it explores the use of a non-parametric technique, namely reweighting, to assess the Asian -white earning gaps. Third, it analyzes intergroup variations in household income, inclination to pool resources, and factors associated with the likelihood of forming nuclear living arrangements. Descriptive statistics document high average levels of employment, earnings, and human capital attainments for Asians relative to whites with notable subgroup differences. The multivariate and reweighting analyses show that foreign born Asians experience greater disadvantage relative to whites than the native born Asians. The gender comparisons indicate that being native relative to being foreign born is more beneficial for Asian women than men, with native born Asian women experiencing higher earnings than white women. Additionally, there is evidence of a 'glass ceiling' among Asian men. At the household level, the descriptive associations show the relative economic position of Asian households depends on the specific measure of household income employed. Asian households experience similar or higher levels of total household income and income per labor hour employed but lower levels of per capita income than white households. Also, a higher inclination to pool resources among the foreign compared to the native born Asian and white households is seen. Intergroup comparisons indicate foreign born Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese households having a greater tendency to pool resources than the foreign born Indians and the Japanese. Multivariate analyses show a positive relationship between the householder's earnings, education, and length of stay and the likelihood of forming nuclear relative to nonnuclear households. The overall findings from this dissertation suggest that - at both the individual and household levels, the differences between the foreign and the native born Asians are more significant than the intergroup variations among Asians.Item Marginalized By Race And Place: Occupational Sex Segregation In Post-Apartheid South Africa(2008-07-29) Parashar, Sangeeta; Presser, Harriet B.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Racial and gender disparities found in most other societies are particularly magnified in South Africa where the marginalized social group constitutes a numerical majority of the population. These factors, along with region, are dominant axes of inequality in the country. However, empirical knowledge of the interplay between these systems of social inequality in determining employment outcomes remains somewhat scant. This dissertation addresses that gap by studying occupational sex segregation across various racial groups using multilevel modeling techniques. Individual-level data from the 2001 Census and magisterial-level data from survey data aggregations and published sources are used. I first study the influence of (1) individual (education and migration), (2) household characteristics (family status), and (3) contextual factors (urbanization, former homeland residence, industrial composition, and culture) on women's likelihood of being in white- and blue-collar male-dominated occupations. I then investigate whether the effects of these individual and contextual characteristics on occupational placement vary across the four main racial groups (i.e., black African, Coloureds, Asian-Indians, and Whites)? That is, do these factors interact differently for different racial groups? Results from the analyses indicate that high concentrations of service industries tend increased women's opportunities for holding white-collar male-dominated occupations. On the other hand, while black African women's placement in male-dominated jobs is not influenced by urbanization, women of other races, particularly Coloureds and Whites, fare better in urban districts. In fact, residence in and around homelands was particularly significant for black Africans who are still trying to gain a foothold in mainstream South African society. In the unique case of Indian women, labor supply factors such as education, have greater predictive power than macro-level demand factors. In terms of human supply variables, educational attainment improves women's chances of holding male-dominated occupations among white collar workers across all racial groups; the effect is not as strong among blue-collar workers. However, returns to education are not as high as expected. Migration is significant for only black Africans, highlighting the legacy of apartheid. Finally, women's marital status and associated short-term child bearing obligations do not act as impediments to their occupational choices.Item Gender, Kinscripts and the Work of Transnational Kinship among Afro-Caribbean Immigrant Families: An Exploratory Analysis(2007-08-23) Forsythe-Brown, Ivy; Thornton Dill, Bonnie; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Using an integrated, quantitative and qualitative, research design this study explores the type, frequency, duration and circumstances of transnational kinship ties among Afro-Caribbean immigrants in the U.S. Focus is on how immigrants maintain kinship connections across international boundaries, the delegation of kin work tasks among family members, and the impact of gender and/or kin designated roles on these activities. Qualitative data is from in-depth semi-structured interviews with multiple members of four English-speaking Afro-Caribbean families, key informants and two group interviews among immigrants with transnational kinship ties (n=41). Quantitative data from a sub-set of the National Survey of American Life (NSAL) re-interview, an integrated, hierarchical national probability sample, is utilized to examine the statistical significance of factors that impact transnational kinship contact (n=101). The notion of kinscripts posited by Stack and Burton (1993) is with combined theoretical perspectives on doing and performing gender, the household division of labor, and literature on Caribbean families and migration to create a lens through which the activities and behaviors of study participants are analyzed. Findings indicate that gender, social class, family size and gender composition, parents residing in the Caribbean, and length of stay in the host nation impact the frequency, extent, and direction of kin contact among NSAL respondents and study participants with transnational kinship ties. Men were found to engage in kin work in the absence of available women in the family to perform kin work tasks. Additionally, the study finds that who executes the majority of kin work in immigrant families tends to be voluntary and closely linked to individual skill and personality.Item Examining and Explaining Racial/Ethnic Variation in Men's and Women's Household Labor Participation(2007-04-30) Hunt, Kristin Reid; Bianchi, Suzanne M; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Using American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data from a national sample of 3,641 married dual-earner men and 4,440 married dual-earner women interviewed in 2003 and 2004, I examine racial/ethnic variation in men's and women's time spent doing housework and its covariates. The ratio of women's to men's total housework time is greatest for Asians and Hispanics and smallest for whites and blacks. Household composition variables are good predictors of white and Asian women's housework time; resources are good predictors for Hispanic and black women; relative resources have some predictive power for white, Hispanic, and Asian women's housework time. For men, own work hours are negatively associated with housework time for white and black dual-earner men; for Hispanic men, having a wife who works more, as compared with a wife who works less, is associated with an increase in housework time. Resources show some predictive power for all dual-earner men across race/ethnicity.Item SPACE, IDENTITY AND INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY: NEGOTIATING DECOLONIZATION IN THE UNITED NATIONS(2006-05-11) Patil, Vrushali; Korzeniewicz, Roberto P; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Beginning with the colonial and imperial encounters that constitute the early, conflict-ridden moments of trans-territorial contact, this research is interested in the relationship between gender, race, and shifting transnational power relationships. Bringing together work from Sociology, Women's Studies, and Postcolonial Studies, it is interested in the following questions. How are modern constructions of gender and race forged in transnational--colonial as well as 'postcolonial'--processes? How did they emerge in and contribute to such processes during the colonial era? Specifically, how did they shape colonialist constructions of space, identity and international community? How has this relationship shifted with legal decolonization? First, it offers a theory regarding these questions in the European colonial era, the theory of kinship. This theory posits that the colonialist construction of space, identity and international community historically relied on a trope of kinship, which operated by constructing the colonies as 'children' and the metropoles as 'parents.' Even more, kinship actually helped to constitute colonial notions of race (i.e., 'childlike natives') and gender (i.e., 'the lack of the nuclear household in African society as evidence of cultural immaturity'). In this manner, kinship helped to define colonized others as children, thereby to deny the subjectivity of these others (particularly their spatial and identity claims), and thus to ultimately build hierarchical structures of international community. Combining discourse and comparative historical methods of analysis, this work explores how colonialists and anti-colonialists renegotiate transnational power relationships within the debates on decolonization in the United Nations from 1946-1960. It argues that while colonialists continued to use the trope of kinship to legitimate the status quo, anti-colonialists insisted that the colonies had 'grown up' and that continuing colonialism was a humiliation that emasculated fully adult men. Thus, anti-colonialists attempted to reorder global power relationships by renegotiating the kinship trope. In other words, to the politics of paternalism, they responded with the politics of masculinity. Ultimately, then, the complex, shifting, politics of race relied on a politics of gender/sexuality, both of which were central to the changing contours of international community in the mid-20th century.Item African American Residential Mobility: An Analysis of Individual and Contextual Factors(2006-05-10) Adams, Cecily Darden; Falk, William W.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Building on the work of South and Deane (1993), I examine racial differences in residential mobility using multilevel analysis. I analyze 2001 and 2003 American Housing Survey sample data at the individual, household and neighborhood levels, and 2000 U.S. Census data at the metropolitan area level. I found that while African Americans experience higher residential mobility, after controlling for individual and contextual factors, being Black continues to decrease the likelihood of residential mobility. However, race currently has less of a suppression effect on residential mobility then previously. Home ownership remains the most important predictor of decreased residential mobility for both races. While racial differences in the determinants of residential mobility at the individual and household levels persist, metropolitan area predictors changed dramatically. Racial concentration and residential segregation measures no longer significantly predict residential mobility, while economic factors--median rent and home value--better explain racial differences in residential mobility.Item Does Place Matter? Metropolitan Area Differences in the Wages and Gains to Human Capital for Male Hispanic Immigrants in the U.S.(2006-05-10) Nelson, Kyle Anne; Kahn, Joan R; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The unprecedented movement of Hispanic immigrants to new growth areas raises important questions about the opportunity for immigrants to succeed in labor markets that have little history of incorporating immigrants. I analyze Census 2000 data to compare wages of male Hispanic immigrants across 28 metropolitan areas grouped into "immigrant gateway types" derived from Singer (2004). I examine the role of human capital factors and metropolitan area characteristics in shaping the wage profiles of male Hispanic immigrants. Workers in the sample earn higher wages and gain more from human capital investments in traditional gateway areas than in newer growth areas with more service sector jobs and less historical presence of Hispanics. Human capital and immigrant-specific characteristics explain much of the wage advantage for male Hispanic immigrants in the traditional gateway areas; however, metropolitan area characteristics benefit workers in newer growth areas, pointing to booms in new economy sectors in these areas.