June 2017
Stacey Bosick, University of Colorado Denver, $7,901, The Power of Discretion: Racial Disparities in Criminal Prosecution. Racial disparities in the criminal justice system have long motivated criminologists to investigate sources of inequality and understand how these inequalities contribute to criminal participation and biased treatment in criminal arrests and sentencing. Lacking in this literature are comprehensive investigations into the prosecution stage. This project investigates the prosecutor’s role in shaping racial disparities in criminal justice outcomes. FAD funding was granted for the first phase of this extensive researcher-practitioner collaboration to use administrative data from the Denver District Attorney’s Office electronic case management system to investigate disparities at two points of prosecutorial discretion: case dismissals and plea agreements. These results will lay the groundwork for the latter phases of this research including an extensive review of case files and qualitative interviews with prosecutors.
Barbara Combs, Clark Atlanta University, $7,999, A Symposium Examining Race Relations and Economic Inequality on the 150th Anniversary of the Birth of W.E.B. Du Bois. February 2018 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of W.E.B. Du Bois—a scholar, public intellectual, and champion of social equality, especially for blacks. Thirty years after the abolition of slavery, Atlanta University conducted an annual program of scientific investigations into the social, economic, and physical condition of blacks. Under DuBois’ leadership, the annual Atlanta University Study of the Negro Problems produced numerous groundbreaking—yet often later ignored—studies. This symposium will include an examination of the accomplishments and legacy of that school. The program has the dual aims of: (1) considering the relevance of those early historical inquiries and insights about race for understanding contemporary society; and (2) increasing the visibility and preserving the heritage of this (until recently) little recognized school of sociology.
Rebecca Emigh, University of California-Los Angeles, $8,000, A Golden Age for Women in Music? Women’s Compositions and Occupational Segregation at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Women’s participation in music flourished around the turn of the 20th century. This research expands on existing historical, biographical, and musicological scholarship with a unique sociological and musical perspective. Emigh will use occupational segregation theories to analyze whether women musicians increased numerically during this period in relation to men, to explore what social factors explain this numerical trend, and to analyze differences in women’s and men’s compositions. Her methodology will use a quantitative analysis of U.S. Census data and a qualitative analysis of U.S. musical organizations and musical composition analysis. This project provides a unique opportunity to engage humanities in a public discourse, bringing academic research to a broader audience to support women musicians.
Nicole Fox, University of New Hampshire, and Hollie Nyseth Brehm, Ohio State University, $8,000, Resisting Genocidal Violence. Up to one million people were killed in Rwanda by their fellow citizens during the 1994 genocide. Yet, many chose a different path—they not only resisted genocidal violence, they actively saved others. Through interviews with people who engaged in rescue efforts during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, this project will highlight the complicated nature of rescue efforts and move away from the dominant psychological literature on rescuers. Fox and Nyseth Brehm will analyze how individual-level dynamics influenced participation in rescue efforts and how communal-level dynamics shaped these efforts. In addition to advancing multiple subfields in sociology, this project has the potential to have considerable influence beyond academia for policy on violence prevention, intervention, and education.
December 2017
Karen Albright, University of Denver, and Melissa Scardaville, The American Institutes for Research, $7,800, Sociology Outside the Academy: Non-Academic Career Patterns and Implications for Sociological Training. In order to remain a vibrant discipline, sociology must achieve two goals. First, it must evolve to meet the topography of the current job market. Second, it must stand as equal to other social sciences (e.g., economics, psychology) as a potent framework for institutions to develop programs and policies and for individuals to interpret and shape their everyday lives. This study will explore an avenue through which both these goals may be realized by collecting data from PhD sociologists who are working outside of academia. By systematically gathering information on how these professionals engage with sociology in their careers, we will begin to elucidate the ways in which sociology can be an effective tool outside of university settings and how graduate training can better prepare students for this career trajectory. Using an explanatory sequential mixed methods design, we will survey ~200 sociologists currently working outside academia and then conduct ~50 semi-structured interviews to probe emergent patterns. Findings will be disseminated as five deliverables targeted to non-academic and academic stakeholders, thus ensuring that the study will reach the multiple intended audiences and provide both a theoretical framework and a set of practical recommendations that will advance the discipline.
Kasey Henricks, University of Tennessee, and Amanda Lewis, University of Illinois at Chicago, $8,000, Spatial Inequality and the Geography of Monetary Sanctions: A Case Study of the Great American City. Joining court records with crime and sociodemographic data, the project uses Chicago as a case study to deploy a spatial approach (geographically weighted regression) that explores whether structural conditions shape the unequal generation of monetary sanctions. The findings will advance what we know about court fees and fines in five ways. First, whereas the research available on these sanctions has focused on patterns between rather than within locales, this study will determine whether these penalties follow a spatial geography at the neighborhood level. Second, the focus will emphasize sanctions for both felony and misdemeanor convictions. Other studies have prioritized legal sanctions paid upon felony conviction. Third, the attention to statutory sanctions builds upon earlier studies that emphasize those of the discretionary variety by addressing how fees and fines result from predetermined sentencing guidelines. Fourth, the imposition of sanctions will be quantified by overlapping forms of government at the state and local levels. Much of the available research does not account for those imposed by multiple jurisdictions. And fifth, this study discusses punishment from a vantage point that stresses how public finance formalizes inequalities that define symbolic relations between groups, their relation to the state, and the unspoken social contract.
Victoria Reyes, University of California, Riverside, $8,000, The Racialized and Gendered Cultural Wealth of Subic Bay, Philippines. Research shows that cultural wealth—how reputations, symbols and myths shape economic activity—is racialized and/or gendered in particular ways. However, is cultural wealth racialized and/or gendered differently depending on the audience? In previous work, there is an underlying assumption that places have one reputation, myth, or symbol. Yet, we know social positions differ not only between groups but also within groups. Do these differences shape how reputation is created and received? Using Subic Bay, Philippines as a case study, this project considers the questions, “Does cultural wealth differ depending on audience and variation in groups of people?” and “If it does differ, what are the implications for how it is racialized and gendered, for whom, and under what circumstances?” I hypothesize that cultural wealth does differ depending on the audience examined and that different audiences racialize and gender cultural wealth in different ways. This research and hypotheses shifts scholarly attention towards a more fine-grained analysis of how cultural wealth operates by focusing on variation within audience and the accompanying implications, and will provide important policy implications by highlighting how government officials and businesses can develop multiple strategies targeting varied audiences and reduce inequalities based on skin color, class, and nationalities.
Jennifer Utrata, University of Puget Sound, $8,000, Carework’s ‘Third Shift’: Grandparental Support and Family Inequality. How does the growing support of grandparents for their adult children and grandchildren constitute an important but undertheorized form of social inequality in American family life? Relatedly, how does a “third shift” of carework centered on extended kin support across households reflect social inequality while also serving as a way families manage inequality? Demographic and cultural trends surrounding longevity, paid work after retirement, exorbitant childcare costs, and increasing levels of insecurity and instability in family life have led to an underexplored reliance on grandparents, especially for regular childcare support, with differing effects by race and class. As the work of grandparenting intensifies and expands over the life course, there is a critical need to advance sociological knowledge of age relations as well as the “third shift” of family life – carework for others outside of one’s own household, often involving extended kin – while remaining attentive to the emotion work and power struggles embedded in this carework. The very relationship of “third shift” carework to better-known “second shift” inequalities requires further attention. This project explores cultural meanings of grandparental support across households, decentering nuclear families by interviewing intergenerational dyads: grandparents providing childcare and adult children relying upon this grandparental assistance.
