June 2011
Erica Chito Childs, Hunter College, $7,000, “Mixed” Families in Australia: Exploring Race, Families and Difference. The purpose of this research is to explore contemporary attitudes towards “mixed” families in seven Australian cities. “Mixed” families—interracial, interethnic, intercultural, interreligious—are important phenomena, yet very little has been done on intermarriage in Australia in the last decade. The primary goal of this research is to use focus groups to explore contemporary attitudes towards mixed families, especially the experiences of intermarried couples and their families in Australia and the response of various communities to the growing number of mixed families. The seven cities were chosen based not only on the feasibility of being able to conduct the focus groups but also because these are large metropolitan areas with surrounding residential areas and slightly different populations that reflect ethnic diversity.
Shannon N. Davis, George Mason University, $6,885, Gender and Career Prioritization after the Recession. Bargaining theory argues that the partner who has the best bargaining position within a couple, or, the better outside options, typically has the most power. Historically this has meant that men have been able to mobilize their greater resources to prioritize their careers, including relocating the family for job opportunities. Given the recession and rapid job losses among men, the PI raises the question of whether couples are willing to reconsider prioritizing men’s careers when men lose jobs and women gain them. The author also seeks to understand the factors that affect couples’ decision-making processes, which influence the extent to which husbands and wives report supportiveness for relocating due to a hypothetical job opportunity for their spouse. The study employs a nationally representative sample using survey design that asks questions about employment history, including relocation and prioritization history as well as expectations about employment over the next year.
Heather Gautney and Chris Rhomberg, Fordham University, $6,900, Beyond the Media Capital: Flexible Specialization and De-agglomeration in the U.S. Film Industry. This research project examines the current re-structuring and geographic dispersal of the labor process in the U.S. film business. The PI focuses on the relations among state policies, investment in new production, impacts on the organization, the culture of film work, and the implications of these factors for workplace governance. Initially, the collapse of the old studio system in the 1950s and 1960s led to the breakup of a factory-like production process and the vertical disintegration of the industry. The results led not to spatial dispersal, however, but to renewed agglomeration in Los Angeles and new work. Data collection for this project will rely on participant observation, interviews with key informants, and print and online sources. A primary component of the research will be participant observation on three film sets for roughly eight months in order to gain an inside view of the new structure of work, informal culture, and everyday experience of the production process.
Josh Pacewicz, Stanford University, $7,000, The Tea Party as Intra-Republican Party Conflict. The Tea Party has attracted significant attention, but many questions about this phenomenon remain. In an attempt to answer these questions, the PI will analyze right-wing mobilization in two Iowa cities during the 2011-12 election. The PI analyzed these same cities in 2007-08 and will use prior research as a baseline to evaluate how Tea Party activists have transformed the local connection to national politics. The study’s central hypothesis is that the Tea Party represents the final stage of an intra-Republican Party fissure. In the past, local Party activities were funded by local business leaders, and these leaders were engaged in the Party. In subsequent contacts, activists increasingly rely on money from ideologically motivated PACs and those associated with Republican candidates. The PI will interview activists, conduct observation of Party meetings and Republican campaigns, assemble a research team to observe caucuses, and conduct a comparative analysis of campaign finance.
Amy E. Traver, CUNY-Queensboro Community Colleges, $3,515, The Social-Psychological Benefits of Volunteerism for Adolescent Girls: A Case Study of Believe Ballet. This case study of volunteerism links high school girls with physically-challenged primary- and secondary-school- girls through ballet. The Principal Investigator (PI) brings together two literatures—the social psychological research on adolescent girls’ development and research on adolescent volunteerism. In framing ballet as an appropriate activity for physically-challenged primary- and secondary-school-aged girls, this activity engages hegemonic conceptions of ability and femininity. Using standardized surveys administered to three cohorts of the program’s volunteers, the PI explores the relationship between girls’ volunteerism and their self-reported goals, self-esteem, and their relationships with others. The data collected as part of this project will add to interactional designations of ability/disability and beauty/grotesque. In addition it will connect disability studies to civic engagement studies.
Steven P. Vallas, Northeastern University, Beth Rubin, University of North Carolina- Charlotte, Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, University of Massachusetts- Amherst, $6,250, Work and Inequality: Fostering New Perspectives in the Discipline. Barriers between different areas of specialization within sociology have impeded sociologists’ ability to analyze and explain the generation of social inequality within work organizations, labor markets, and economic institutions generally. A broad intellectual movement has emerged in an effort to demonstrate how institutional environments, political contexts, and social relations at work combine to shape the distribution of job rewards. The PIs will host a two-day conference at Northeastern University with two primary goals: first, to strengthen sociology’s ability to account for the social and economic inequalities that have afflicted U.S. society in recent years; and second, to broaden public debate about workplace-based inequalities, which have too often remained the unchallenged jurisdiction of economic analysts. Conference participants will include senior and junior scholars.
December 2011
Orit Avishai, Fordham University, $7,000, Saving American Marriages: Marriage Education and the Politics of Morality. This project is a case study of the marriage education movement and aims to discern the mechanisms and modalities of interaction among ideologically opposed constituents of this movement and the identification of a political middle ground. The project’s research question is why marriage education is marked by collaboration rather than contention. Using fieldwork, interviews, and analysis of print and online sources, the case study will examine the conditions that diffuse potential polarization and inform political dialogue and compromises.
Mary Bernstein, University of Connecticut, $7,000, Crossing Boundaries: Workshopping Sexualities. This workshop will provide a venue where both junior and senior scholars can work to overcome the gap between qualitative and quantitative researchers and bring these camps into closer conversation. In addition, participants will join workgroups in their area of study; participate in dissertation master classes focused on methodological design; and consider critical issues within the discipline. Finally, this workshop will seek to bridge the study of sexualities across diverse sub-disciplines within sociology, and explore how the study of sexualities can change how sociologists think of other areas of research.
Shannon M Gleeson, University of California-Santa Cruz, $6870, Mobilizing Rights, Navigating Bureaucracies: Assessing the Legal Mobilization of Low-Wage Workers. Law and society scholars have extensively documented the barriers that employees face when pursuing legal mobilization in the wake of a workplace violation. Using survey research and follow-up interviews, the study examines processes of legal mobilization for low-wage workers, and in particular, the strategies workers use when making claims about their rights. While workplace violations may be commonplace, claims-making is not among the low-wage population. In order to understand the ways legal rights are pursued among vulnerable workers, the study will gather information on the claimant’s workplace experience, knowledge about their rights, and decision-making process. the study will also uncover some of the strategies workers use when making claims on their rights. The study will also identify trends across major categories of workers – including different industries, genders, and immigration statuses. The results should be a broader understanding about how different sub-populations of workers understand and identify their rights.
Amy Lubitow, Portland State University, $6,914, Contesting Sustainability: Bicycles, Race and Place. The goal of this study is to develop a critical sociological theory of sustainable development that updates theories of gentrification. Using interviews, participant observation, and content analysis, the study will research how historical legacies of racial and economic inequality within Portland, OR, influence community opposition to a seemingly benign sustainable development project. The central research question is how and why community conflict regarding the proposed bike safety corridor erupted into a divisive issue. Similar conflicts in other parts of the United States suggest that urban planning related to sustainability may not actually serve all community members. Race and class tensions and conflicts such as those currently unfolding in Portland suggest that a generic approach to sustainable planning can become contentious. The research results should provide answers to conflict regarding the planning and implementation of initiatives developed under the guise of sustainability. This project will form the foundation of a larger, national-level comparative study.
Hiroshi Ono, Texas A&M University, $5,400, Globalization and Inequality in the Labor Market: The Study of Career Mobility in the Japanese Financial Sector. This project studies how macro-level global forces are shaping the behavior of firms and of individuals in the Japanese financial sector, with particular focus on the increasing influence of foreign firms. These firms bring employment practices that are more market-driven and less socially embedded compared to the Japanese status quo. The study will compare financial workers at domestic and international firms. The hypothesis is that that the loyalty to the firm—which Japanese workers are known for—is a factor of employment in Japanese firms, but not of Japanese culture. Thus, it is institutional not cultural factors that drive differences found among workers in foreign vs domestic firms. The co-existence of the foreign and the domestic in the Japanese labor market provides a test case for examining how local firms adapt to global pressures, and how workers navigate the changing institutional environment. The study will use in-depth interviews and econometric analysis of finance professionals in Japan..
George Steinmetz, University of Michigan, $7,000, Social Scientists and Imperial Politics: Britain, France, and Germany, 1930s-1960s. This project examines the nexus of science and politics, asking how imperial conditions shape the production of social science and how and whether researchers maintain their objectivity and distance. The middle third of the 20th century was the period in which sociological research became central to French and British colonial reform and in which Nazi Germany mobilized sociologists to plan its policies and strategies in Eastern Europe. The research builds on prior work and reconstructs the academic sociological fields in each of these countries and in their overseas colonies and zones of influence. Using archival research, the project will result in the construction of a database of all sociologists who worked on and in colonies and empires, their published and unpublished work, as well as interview with those who are still alive. The study will investigate the conditions that led some of these sociologists to support colonialism and others to reject it, as well as their lasting contributions to the analysis of empires.
Jessica K. Taft, Davidson College, $6,700, Social Movements and the Meaning of Childhood: Intergenerational Collaboration in the Peruvian Working Children’s Movement. Public and scholarly interest in children’s political participation has grown significantly in the past 20 years. However, there is little research on children’s participation and the meaning of childhood within social movements. This project begins to fill this gap by exploring the interactions between children and adults in the Peruvian movement of working children—a movement that sees children as political subjects and seeks to create collaborative political relationships across age differences. Through document analysis, participant observation, and in-depth interviewing, this project will examine organizational and cultural discourses about childhood, institutional structures that facilitate and/or limit cross-age partnership, and how these cultural and structural forms shape participants’ lived experiences of childhood, adulthood, and the relationship between children and adults. By examining how childhood is constructed and experienced within this type of organization, this project will examine the durability and fluidity of the meaning of childhood.
Bin Xu, Florida International University, $7,000, Some Sufferings Are More Equal than Others: China ‘s Educated Youths and the Difficult Past. This project identifies and explains different interpretation of memories among the “educated youth” generation in China. Approximately 18 million urban Chinese middle and high school graduates were forcibly relocated to rural areas and “re-educated” in the 1960s and 1970s. These educated youths, now older adults, should have similar narratives about their suffering. However, their interpretations about the meanings and values of the suffering vary greatly. Using in-depth interviews and a survey, the study will answer two research questions: how do the former educated youths interpret their shared experience? What social factors can explain the variations in their interpretations? The hypothesis is that current socioeconomic status leads to variations in their interpretations of the past. Those educated youths who attained relatively higher socioeconomic status after the educated youth years are more likely to have a positive view about what their sufferings mean to their later life than those with lower socioeconomic status. The broader purpose of the project is to further understand the intersection between biography and history.
