Sociology
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Item DARK MIRROR: HETEROTOPIA, UTOPIA, AND THE EXTERMINATION CAMPS OF OPERATION REINHARD(2019) Wanenchak, Sarah; Korzeniewicz, Roberto P; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In Michel Foucault's body of work, the notion of heterotopia stands out as both particularly intriguing and particularly underdeveloped. Introduced in the introduction of The Order of Things (first published 1966) and further described in the lecture “Of Other Spaces” (1967), heterotopia has been used by scholars in a variety of fields, from social theory to architecture. Of special interest is the way Foucault describes the relationship between heterotopia and utopia, one defined by its liminal nature and the other by its unreality. This work seeks to shed new light on that relationship, by focusing on heterotopias as threshold spaces between the real social world and the perfected but unreal world to come. I approach the concept of utopia with an eye toward its eliminationist implications, and use three extermination camps established as part of the Nazi regime’s Operation Reinhard as cases through which to explore significant features of a heterotopia, how those features manifest in these cases, and what connects these spaces to the world that can be glimpsed in the mirror they create. Although I primarily use historical cases as a way to expand existing theory, I aim to build upon that expansion by pointing the way toward the development of new theoretical tools for historical-comparative analysis of spaces of both extermination and detention. Finally, I suggest that work might be done focusing on embodied identities as themselves forms of heterotopia, which introduces possibilities for additional analysis of the roles of bodies and identity in cases of certain kinds of mass violence and death.Item Adolescents' Attitudes Toward the Economic and Societal Responsibilities of Government in 24 Countries(2019) White, Gregory; Kahn, Joan; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Adolescents’ attitudes toward government responsibilities for economic and societal well-being are examined in 24 countries grouped within welfare regime types. Adolescents’ own sense of civic responsibility to participate in community service is also investigated. This study uses data from the IEA Civic Education Study (1999) in combination with macroeconomic indicator data employing descriptive statistics, multiple regression, and other techniques to compare results between regimes and countries. The adolescents surveyed in 1999 are now adult members of a millennial generation that is rising in political influence. Adolescents demonstrate well-established attitudes that are consistent with those of adults in certain welfare regime contexts. Attitudes toward economy-related government responsibilities are in the expected directions for regimes with a legacy of communism, which are above the international mean, as well as in the liberal regime, which is below the international mean. Adolescents in the United States (a liberal regime ideal-type country) hold the least favorable attitudes toward government-provided economic support. In addition, adolescents’ expectations of community participation are higher in the liberal and Southern Europe regimes. Female students are more likely to believe in government provision for economic needs in liberal, Southern Europe, and post-communist Central Europe regimes. Notably, no significant gender differences are found in the social democratic regime, where women face fewer social protection risks. Female students are also much more likely than males to anticipate future volunteer community participation across regimes. Contrary to expectations, variables measuring social class have few significant or meaningful associations. Volunteering has small negative effects with belief in government-provided economic support in most regimes, and small to moderate positive effects with adolescents’ anticipated community engagement in all regimes. In addition, studying community problems has small positive effects with support for economy-related government responsibilities in several regimes (including liberal) and small to moderate positive effects in all regimes for anticipated community engagement. Finally, collective student efficacy and support for ethnic minority group opportunities have positive associations with beliefs that both governments and individuals are responsible for economic and societal needs.Item MULTICULTURAL POLITICS AND NATIONAL BOUNDARY MAKING IN KOREA: Mapping the intersectional dimensions of nation, gender, class, and ethnicity in state policy and practice(2019) Yu, Sojin; Marsh, Kris; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the conception and implementation of state multicultural policy to analyze how migrants are received and incorporated within South Korea, a newly emergent migrant receiving country in Asia. To this end, I conducted ethnographic research at two Centers established to enact governmental multicultural policy, focusing on the separate accounts and experiences of ground-level policy practitioners (Koreans) and targeted recipients (migrants) in relation to the policy implementation and its ‘real world’ effects. The results show the varied and conflicting perspectives of those involved, and how they are informed by the intersecting social constructs of nation, ethnicity, gender, family, and class. These intersectional workings and effects also contribute to the unequal social relations between Koreans and migrants, especially in shaping a particular national form of ‘racism’ against migrants, and helping to maintain the previously unchallenged formation of national identity in Korea. Three thematically arranged analysis chapters discuss specifically how these social processes serve to form and naturalize social hierarchies and powers in Korea, with each chapter examining a specific intersectional circumstance: The intersection of gender inequality and nationalism; the intersection of class and nation(ality); and, the emphasis of joint Korean nationality and ethnicity in the multicultural policy. Each chapter illustrates the predominance of nationalism, as the critical mechanism and rationale behind Korea’s contested multicultural politics, and the central axis to connect with other dimensions of power including gender, class, and ethnicity. The combined research outcomes reveal the complex ways in which the inter-group relations and hierarchies are organized, through the state policy, bureaucratic practice and individual agency.Item Grandparent Wealth and the Well-Being of Black & White Young Adults(2019) Brown, Joey D; Cohen, Philip N; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Social origins are important predictors of adult success, and parental resources, particularly parental wealth, are positively correlated with adult well-being. Meanwhile, the overall population is now healthier and living longer than previous generations. Therefore, families are experiencing increased opportunities for multigenerational relationship formation and investment. This dissertation extends social mobility and stratification research by considering how multigenerational resources are related to young adult well-being. I examine how grandparents’ accumulated wealth prior to individuals’ eighteenth birthday is related to young adults’ educational attainment, self-rated general health and mental health, and financial independence. Additionally, in light of large, enduring racial wealth gaps between Black and White identified people, I examine whether and to what extent racially disparate patterns of family wealth accumulation condition the relationship between grandparent wealth and young adult well-being. I perform this investigation with analysis of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the PSID’s Transition to Adulthood Study (TAS). I employ multivariate longitudinal analysis techniques to perform interracial and intra-racial analyses of the relationship between grandparent wealth and young adult well-being. I decompose racial group gaps to see whether the results are attributable to family socioeconomic characteristics or the return to those characteristics. Lastly, I use marginal probabilities to examine and compare the absolute and relative consequences of racially disparate levels of grandparent wealth across well-being outcomes.Item RACIAL DIFFERENCES IN PROTECTIONS AGAINST PREGNANCY: COMPETING GOALS AND DECISIONS(2018) Young Harrison, Eowna; Kahn, Joan; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Racial disparities in unintended pregnancy are largely related to differences in contraceptive practices. Black women are less likely to use an effective contraceptive and more likely to discontinue a method compared to their White counterparts. More concerning is that the Black-White gap in these protections against unintended pregnancy may have widened over time. Reasons for these racial disparities and the pathways to contraceptive practices that leave at-risk women vulnerable to unintended pregnancy are unexplained This project addresses some of the existing gaps in the literature by using a mixed-methods approach to 1) investigate the various factors contributing to Black-White differences in contraceptive practices over time and 2) explore the contraceptive decision-making of women at high risk of unintended pregnancy. Using multinomial logistic regression and a Fairlie decomposition on data from the National Survey of Family Growth 1988 and 2011-2015 survey cycles, I analyze contraceptive use and effective method choice of young adult women. Results reveal that the Black-White gap in contraceptive practices in 2011-2015 are 2-3 times larger than in 1988. Very few factors were statistically significant at explaining the 13% Black-White difference in 2011-2015. Interviews with Black women in Philadelphia were used to improve our understanding of contraceptive practices that are less effective at protecting against pregnancy. Findings highlight criteria for method selection, concern for STDs, and partner trust as key factors guiding contraceptive practices.Item MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS OF RACE AND THE MENTAL HEALTH OF LATINOS FROM AFRO-LATIN AMERICA(2018) Pena, Jessica Elaine; Marsh, Kris; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Building on past scholarship on the processes of racialization of Latinos, this dissertation addresses the role of both internal and external factors in influencing racial classification and the implications of race on the mental health outcomes of Latinos of Afro-Latin American origin. Latinos of this population have unique experiences with racial/ethnic boundaries and racialization, as many do not fit the dominant image of latinidad across the United States. This dissertation asks the following questions: How does the social context of metropolitan areas impact racial self-classification practices of Latinos? How do physical and external factors – such as skin tone, race of partners and observers – impact how Latinos are racially ascribed or self-classify? What are the mental health implications of the lived experience of race for Latinos? I draw upon the 5-year 2012-2016 American Community Survey (ACS) data and Waves 3 and 4 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) data to address these questions.Item The International Political Economy of Fascism(2018) Wasser, Matthias; Korzeniewicz, Patricio; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation focuses on the intersection between security, governance, and the international economic system in the interwar period - constructing an analytic narrative to explain why so many states adopted the policy prescriptions of the radical right, which states did so, and what form these prescriptions took. While many new authoritarian states were established in the 1920s - and Fascist Italy was not the only one where radical right activists played a major role in regime consolidation - the ends pursued by these states were largely traditional. In the wake of the Great Depression, however, the difficulties in simultaneously attaining full employment, freedom of labor, and profitability forced capitalist states to adopt active macroeconomic policies - and, in turn, either move left, assigning labor a significant role in governance, or right, repressing organized labor. The fascist and “para-fascist” regimes which would be established in the 1930s would represent a renegotiation - whether brokered from within democratic or extra-democratic politics - between these conservative elites and fascist activists. Although the balance between the two would differ from place to place - from especially strong movement activists in Germany to especially strong traditional elites in Japan or Balkan royal dictatorships - all of these new compacts represented a willingness of the conservative elites to turn their back on economic and geopolitical liberalism forever. Which path elites chose to take, I argue, depended upon their positionality in the world economy. High-mobility fractions of capital were concentrated in the leading states, could discipline governments through exit, and benefited from a worldwide open market economy. Low-mobility fractions of capital, by contrast, especially those attached to semiperipheral states, needed to discipline governments through monopolies on voice. Further, relatively richer economies at the core of the world-system were in a better position to compromise with labor. This process resulted in a polarization within countries and in turn a polarization among countries - in favor of a relatively more liberal and international capitalism as against a relatively more nationalist and state-monopoly variant of capitalism.Item RURAL MIGRANT WORKERS’ AGENCY IN CAPITALIST PRODUCTION IN CHINA(2018) Guo, Yu; Hill Collins, Patricia H; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)China’s recent economic success largely depends on making more than 100 million rural migrants work in the “world’s factory”. This dissertation investigates why rural migrants work in factories under unappealing conditions from their subjective perspectives. While the literature emphasizes state repression and factory management control, this dissertation proposes that rural migrant workers approach factory work through complicated agency, with agency being defined as the ideas, thoughts, considerations, perceptions, and plans that rural migrant workers bring to factory work. Based on ten months of ethnography in two small manufacturing factories in East China that hired approximately 160 rural migrant workers, this dissertation discusses how the rural migrant workers participated in factory production with thoughts and values that had developed from various sources in their general social lives. The findings have implications for studying and theorizing capital-labor relations in particular and power relations involving domination and exploitation in general.Item INEQUALITY AND THE HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY(2018) Pepin, Joanna; Sayer, Liana; Cohen, Philip; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Intrahousehold finances offer a window into the crossroads between the market domain’s emphasis on self-reliance and the family domain’s emphasis on interdependence. Modern couples confront tensions between ideals of mutual family interests and values of individualism, a departure from fitting themselves into culturally expected family arrangements of the past. How these social changes impact progress towards gender equality is not well understood. The dissertation aims are to: (1) identify mechanisms associated with different types of money arrangements in families, and (2) examine the association between financial arrangements and gender inequality in families. To meet these aims, I used data from two sources. First, I used multinomial modeling of 2012 International Social Survey Programme data to show cohabiting couples in countries with greater gender equality partially integrated their money instead of keeping it separate. Married couples pooled money regardless of country-level gender equality. Findings suggest that different cultural logics operate in married and cohabiting partnerships across gendered contexts, rather than cohabitation functioning as a weaker form of marriage. Second, I devised a novel survey experiment to collect the first nationally representative sample of U.S. adults’ attitudes about income sharing in families. Results challenge the notion that marriage distinctively encourages support for financial integration in families. Findings also revealed that respondents believed higher-earning partners ought to hold back a greater absolute value of their earnings for personal use, allowing inequality in labor market rewards to perpetuate unequal conditions within families. I also used this data to disentangle the mechanisms associated with perceptions of decision-making authority. Findings indicated higher relative-earners within families were not regarded as entitled to the final word in decisions. Whether respondents considered earnings individually or community owned did not explain the lack of association between relative earnings and decision-making clout. Instead, findings showed a significant association between the fictional decider’s gender and respondents’ perceptions of fairness. Specifically, when women were presented as the decider over monetary family choices, unilateral decision making about monetary items was viewed more favorably. Collectively, these findings suggest gender socialization theories are essential to explaining persistent gender inequality in families.Item Intersecting Inequalities in the Paid Care Work Sector Under Changing Social and Economic Contexts(2018) Sun, Shengwei; Chen, Feinian; Yu, Wei-hsin; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation focuses on the expanding paid care work sector as a key terrain for examining labor market inequalities in the United States and China, with three papers attending to different aspects of social stratification. In the U.S., men’s presence in care work jobs remains rare despite the fast job growth in education and health care and the decline in traditionally male-dominated manufacturing sectors. Despite growing public interest, little is known about the reasons and pathways of men’s transition into care work jobs. The popular discourse attributes men’s reluctance to a matter of gender identity, whereas scholars adopting a structural approach argue that men have little incentive to enter care work jobs mainly because those jobs are underpaid. The first paper examines how well the structural and cultural approaches, respectively, explain why men enter care work jobs or not. Moreover, care work jobs have been increasingly polarized in terms of pay and job security since the 1970s, and the polarizing pattern of care work job growth is characterized by racial disparity. Is such pattern driven by racial disparity in education and labor market experience, and/or by racial discrimination? The second paper addresses this question by examining the changing determinants of entering into low-paying versus middle-to-high-paying care work jobs between two cohorts of young men who joined the workforce under different labor market conditions. Findings suggest a persisting logic of a racialized “labor queue” underlying the changing patterns of racial inequality. In the context of urban China, the transformation from a centrally planned socialist economy to a profit-oriented market economy has ended welfare-based, life-long employment in the cities, and fundamentally changed the social organization of care. The third paper examines how care workers fared in terms of earnings relative to non-care workers since the early 2000s and the factors contributing to the earnings disadvantages of care workers. Taken together, this dissertation aims to provide a better understanding of intersecting inequalities by gender, race, and class in the paid care work sector under changing social and economic contexts.