June 2008
Esther Ngan-ling Chow, American University, $1,500, International Conference on Gender and Social Transformations: Global, Transnational and Local Realities and Perspectives. The conference, co-sponsored by the Women’s Studies Institute of China and the All-China Women’s Federation, addressed the issues, social problems, and emergent phenomena that question existing theoretical paradigms of globalization and transnationalism from feminist perspectives.
Joanna Dreby, Kent State University, $7,000, The Effects of Parental Migration on Mexican Children’s Educational and Migratory Aspirations. According to the PI, tens of thousands of immigrants migrating from Mexico to the United States leave their children behind. The study asks whether parents are able to translate their sacrifices into gains for their children. Alternatively, does separation create such discord in their families that children’s grades suffer and they also migrate? The results show those with mothers in the U.S. have higher aspirations while those with both parents in the U.S. have lower aspirations.
Lynn Fujiwara, University of Oregon, $7,000, The Politics of Removal: Forced Deportations, Exclusion, and the Impact on Immigrant Families. According to the PI, contemporary immigration in the U.S. remains an often volatile, policy-driven matter. Recent policies have led to the increase of forced removals of undocumented and legally residing immigrants. This research studies the impact of these removals on a sample of Cambodian and Latino families.
Meredith Kleykamp, University of Kansas, $7,000, From War to Work: How Employers Shape Veterans’ Transition into the Civilian Labor Market. This research seeks to understand how recently separated military veterans make transitions back into the civilian labor force. In particular, it focuses attention on the role of employers. It measures whether employers exhibit discriminatory or preferential attitudes toward and treatment of military veterans in the hiring process.The PI found that employers did not discriminate but rather that there is a mismatch between veterans’ skills and available jobs.
Christina A. Sue, University of Colorado-Boulder, $6,884, John or Juan? How Mexican and Mexican-American Parents Choose Names for their Children. Selecting a name for a child represents an important cultural decision because they signify ethnic identity, particularly the identity that parents would like their children to have. For immigrants and their descendants, first names can be a powerful sociological indicator of socio-cultural assimilation. This study examines the naming practices of Mexican and Mexican-American parents who gave birth to children in Los Angeles County.
December 2008
Gary Alan Fine and Alice Eagly, Northwestern University, $3,500, Bridging Social Psychologies: Building Linkages between Sociological and Psychological Social Psychology. The purpose of this grant is to support graduate student participation in a small conference that establishes links of theory and methodology between sociological and psychological approaches to social psychology in order to introduce the next generation of social psychologists to cross-disciplinary practices. The conference will explore similarities and differences between social psychology as practiced by sociologists and psychologists. Paired senior scholars will examine central analytical topics and prepare essays that address how social psychologists can establish cross-disciplinary research agendas.
Kathryn Gold Hadley, California State University-Sacramento, $7,000, Deconstructing the Model Minority Experience in an Urban High School: Educational Expectations and Ethnic Identities. The PI investigates how Asian American students at a low-income public high school manage their ethnic identities in the face of academic stereotyping and varied academic performances.
Annette Lareau and Kristen Harknett, University of Pennsylvania, $3,500, Thinking about the Family in an Unequal Society: A Workshop Proposal. Research opportunities for sociologists are increasingly stratified because younger scholars at non-elite institutions have higher teaching loads, fewer colloquia, and a lack of travel monies and fewer chances to obtain informal feedback concerning their work. The PIs ran a one-day workshop to provide such an opportunity for 20 qualitative and quantitative early- and mid-career researchers whose area is sociology of the family, but who are not employed at Research I universities. Along with efforts to advance the quality of future research in sociology of the family, the workshop developed a network for future collaboration and exchange.
Erin Leahey, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, $6,370, Straight from the Source: How Highly Cited Authors Explain their Influence. The PI analyzes an under-examined data set of interviews with authors of heavily cited science articles as to why they thought their work had become important. The thoughts, ideas, understandings, and “origin stories” of the authors themselves reveal that they think there is one dominant pathway to scientific influence—support of professional networks, novelty of the work, and usefulness to subsequent scholars.
Susan C. Pearce, East Carolina University, $6,996, Re-imagined Communities, Mnemonic Mirrors, and Europe’s 1989 Revolutions: Research on the Twenty-Year Anniversaries. In order to understand the social memories produced by the state and civil society, the PI conducted ethnographic research in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Serbia as these countries commemorate the 20th anniversary of the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc of the former Soviet Union. The PI demonstrates that context matters.
Erin Ruel and Deirdre Oakley, Georgia State University, $7,000, Journaling the Public Housing Relocation Process: Home, Place and Strata in the Social Hierarchy.The goal of this project is to employ participant audio journaling and photo-elicitation, an innovative and little used methodology within the social sciences, in order to explore the lives of public housing residents as they are relocated to subsidized, private market housing.
Lindsey Wilkinson, Portland State University,and Jennifer Pearson, Wichita State University, $6,550, Exploring the Role of Heteronormative School Culture in the Sexual Identity Development, Disclosure, and Well-Being of Young Adults. The PIs analyze data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (ADD Health), and supplement it with in-depth interviews of young adults. The purpose of this data collection effort is to investigate how variation in heteronormativity within high schools impacts the well-being of self-identified lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) young adults and the construction and disclosure of sexual identity in young adulthood.
