Most Recent FAD Awards
December 2020
Xóchitl Bada, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Shannon M. Gleeson, Cornell University, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, $8,000, Portable Rights for Migrant Workers: Bringing the Sending State Back Into the Local. As international migration continues to rise, sending states play an increasing role in “managing” their diasporas, and in some cases even stepping in to protect their citizens´ labor and human rights. The Mexican government is perhaps the clearest example of this trend, increasingly directing its resources to the more than 11 million Mexican nationals living abroad. Despite sending states´ formal proclamations of support and legal commitments, we know little about how nations like Mexico are being held accountable for ensuring the wellbeing of its diaspora. This book in progress, Portable Rights for Migrant Workers: Bringing the Sending State Back into the Local, examines the on-the-ground, transnational defense of migrant labor rights. The PIs draw on 210 interviews over a decade with both state actors (Mexican diplomats and U.S. labor regulatory agencies) and local civil society (worker centers, labor unions, and other migrant-serving nonprofits) in 20 cities across the United States and Mexico. This book offers a ground-up view of binational partnerships, one that frames the sending state as both co-enforcement partner and cross-border target for accountability. Support from the ASA FAD will go towards supporting final analysis, publication costs, and open access for greater public engagement in these important policy debates.
Jennifer W. Bouek, University of Delaware, $7,725, The Political Economy of Child Care and the Families Within: A COVID Comparison. This project offers a first glimpse into the effects of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic on the political economy of American childcare and the families embedded within. The pandemic has revealed the painful fragility of childcare in the United States. Amidst school and daycare closures, families are scrambling to balance work and care responsibilities. And as the pandemic wears on, it has grown increasingly evident that the gendered labor of childcare operates as a critical turning point of opportunity and inequality for mothers. Leveraging three years of fieldwork in pre- pandemic Boston, this research pairs archival analysis of state administrative records with pre- and post-pandemic interviews among parents from up and down the economic hierarchy to tell the story of how childcare changed in one city and how its families are finding their way through. Findings will offer needed empirical evidence of the direct impacts of the pandemic on families’ childcare arrangements, and on providers themselves. More broadly, this work intervenes into the discussion of the role of organizations in processes of social stratification by investigating changes in organizational resources across space and time and by contextualizing families’ pathways to organizational tie formation.
Shantel Gabrieal Buggs, Florida State University, Whitney Laster Pirtle, University of California, Merced, $8,000, Leaky Pipelines or Broken Pipes? Mapping Black Sociologists’ Networks, Successes, and Setbacks during Hiring and Promotion. A 2007 ASA research brief identified a “leaky pipeline” for Black sociologists: though Black students comprised the largest share of BA and MA sociology degree-recipients among non-white students, this trend did not continue in the share of PhDs earned or tenure-track employment. This project investigates the experiences of Black faculty who are currently working or have worked in academic positions that have promotional tracks (both full-time teaching and tenure-track) to understand how Black sociologists traverse this “pipeline.” The project focuses on the ways that Black sociology faculty in the United States are hired, tenured, promoted, and/or transited across institutions. Specifically, this mixed-methods project fields a survey that includes questions about advisor networks, perceptions of social status, and demographics, and conducts oral histories to develop a deeper understanding of what roadblocks exist in the academic sociology pipeline. The survey will 1) establish an initial record of Black sociologist “firsts” to achieve tenure and/or promotion, 2) ascertain the degree to which tenured/promoted Black sociologists move between departments and university roles, and 3) map the social connections they are part of to understand their role throughout sociologists’ careers. Oral histories will expand on survey findings and consider how these obstacles are broken down.
Nicole Fox and Alexa Sardina, California State University-Sacramento, $7,967, Remembering Rape: America’s First Memorial to Sexual Violence Survivors. America has recently become part of the broader global trend of “memorial mania” in which memorials dedicated to remembering injustice have exploded into public space. Memorials that facilitate the centering of marginalized narratives of violence hold significant power for social change. This project focuses on one such space, the first ever memorial to survivors of sexual violence which opened in October 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Survivors Memorial has been intentionally constructed to be an accessible and visible space focused on providing all sexual violence survivors public acknowledgement of their experiences while simultaneously engaging community members in dialogues about sexual violence. This project sits at the intersection of scholarship on memorialization and the scholarship on sexual violence to document how the Survivors Memorial impacts visitors. The PIs will deploy a mixed-methods approach utilizing surveys and in-depth interviews to answer two primary lines of inquiry: 1) Who goes to the memorial and why? 2) What impact does the memorial have on the visitor, if any? How and why does the memorial experience impact visitors from a range of social locations? Over two years and eight field trips to Minneapolis, the researchers of this project will collect survey data from approximately 200 visitors immediately after their visit and conduct follow-up interviews with 50 of those visitors 2-4 weeks after their initial visit. This project is focused on broader processes of commemorating mass violence and what it means to commemorate sexual violence in particular, which is traditionally hidden from public spaces. While America experiences one of the most extreme political divides since the American Civil War, the Survivors Memorial has the potential to create significant social change and healing by acknowledging the millions of sexual violence survivors who have previously been invisible in our built environment.
Anne H. Groggel, North Central College, $4,726, Mediated Communication and Perceptions of Sexual Consent. Understanding expectations of intimacy before individuals ever meet face-to-face becomes important as more aspects of our daily lives take place online. While assault remains a well-documented social issue, less attention has been paid to how individuals communicate and interpret sexual consent. Previous scholarship on college students’ relationships indicates that sexual consent often involves an interpretative process in which nonverbal cues play a significant and potentially dangerous role. This study will evaluate implicit meanings of sexual consent between college students, as conveyed through mediated communication such as Snapchat conversations that use emojis. Specifically, through a survey experimental design, this study will examine students’ interpretations of ambiguous text messages as indicating consent to making out, oral sex, or sexual intercourse. This proposed study examines how the race of the couple, the gender of the person who initiates the conversation, and other contextual cues (such as the time the message was sent) impact the perceptions of consent in the text message. Understanding how sexual consent meanings are conveyed over mediated communication sheds light into the dynamics of sexual consent on college campuses.
Erin Hatton, University at Buffalo-SUNY, $8,000, Working for Rehab: Labor, Addiction, and Salvation in Substance Abuse Treatment. “Work therapy” is the centerpiece of many addiction treatment programs for poor people in America, though there is often little that is recognizably therapeutic about it. Much of the time, it is simply work without the rights and benefits of legally protected employment. In the Salvation Army’s 119 addiction treatment centers across the U.S., for example, clients are required to work without pay for eight hours a day, picking up and sorting donations for the evangelical Christian organization’s thrift stores. Yet, despite the centrality of labor to addiction treatment (and, arguably, to poverty governance), there has been little scholarly interrogation of it. This project explores the world of rehab labor with a multi-method, multi-site ethnographic analysis of the Salvation Army’s drug rehab programs. In doing so, the PI will analyze the diverse and often conflicting ways that Salvation Army staff and clients unequally construct and experience this labor regime: as economic opportunity or exploitation, addiction treatment or coercion. Ultimately, this study will shed much-needed light on “work therapy,” this liminal landscape of labor that sits uneasily at the borders of sociomedical treatment and economic endeavor.
James R. Jones, Rutgers University-Newark, $8,000, Invisible No More: Inequality and Representation Among Political Professionals. Congressional staffers are known as the invisible force in American lawmaking. They provide critical advice, guidance, and analysis to lawmakers in the creation of federal law. These staffers are involved in nearly all dimensions of legislative work, from idea generation and constituent services to the oversight of the federal government and day-to-day operations of the legislature. Without congressional staff, much of the work on Capitol Hill could not be done. However, the invisibility of congressional workers masks deep-seated inequality in the congressional workforce. Recent studies show that racial minorities and women are underrepresented in top staff positions. These reports indicate the presence of a racial and gender hierarchy within Congress. While we know these inequalities exist, the social mechanisms and processes undergirding these disparities remain opaque. This research project uses novel quantitative methods to provide an estimate of the racial composition of congressional staff and then analyzes congressional payroll data for racial and gender disparities in pay, promotion, and retention.
Bianca N. Manago, Vanderbilt University, $7,700, The Social Construction and Consequences of Stigma. Stigma has negative societal consequences, but we do not fully understand how nominal characteristics become stigmas. In this project, Manago adapts status construction theory to stigma, thereby establishing and testing a theory of stigma construction which is both general (i.e., spanning many different kinds of stigma) and causal. Drawing on social psychological research on stigma, status, stereotyping, and norms, this study examines how a nominal (i.e., otherwise undifferentiated) characteristic becomes a stigmatizing characteristic and how this process differs for status. Specifically, it will investigate how perceptions of difference or separateness cause stereotyping, which lead to intergroup anxiety, and in turn, a desire for social distance. To test this theory, Manago designed an experiment which includes three steps: 1) creating a nominal characteristic that differentiates people; 2) through a series of small group interactions, establishing norms for how people with this characteristic are perceived—tying this characteristic to social exclusion and a lack of deference; and 3) examining how these norms affect individuals’ beliefs about and treatment of those with the characteristic. In summary, this project utilizes experimental methods to examine co-occurring stigma and status construction processes, distinguishing the necessary and sufficient conditions for each.
Ashley C. Rondini, Franklin and Marshall College, $1,928, “First Do No Harm”: Sociologically Examining Meso-Level Racism Medicine. At the intersections of critical race theory, medical sociology, narrative medicine, and bioethics, this project builds upon an existing research collaboration with Dr. Rachel H. Kowalsky, MD, at Weill-Cornell Medical Center, to undertake a critical sociological examination of racialized clinical practice guideline (CPGs) in medical settings that may contribute to the reproduction of health inequities. This FAD grant will provide funding for two undergraduate researchers to join the team to analyze case studies of CPGs that operationalize race as a proxy for presumed biological difference, such that they function to codify inequitable standards of care by requiring that Black patients meet a higher threshold of illness severity or duration before being considered eligible for diagnostic or therapeutic interventions that their white counterparts would receive more readily. The research team will trace the foundational scholarship cited in existing racialized CPGs to identify the socio-historical constructions of race reflected in study design, conceptual framing, operationalization of variables, analyses, and conclusions. The PI will collaborate with students to co-author an overview of the work and subsequent recommendations for medical care providers in support of equitable approaches to care.
Paige Sweet, University of Michigan, $8,000, Crisis Inside and Out: Domestic Violence During COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing us to recognize that “home” is not a neutral space. Rather, home is a site where inequalities may be exacerbated, where public tensions may become intimate and interpersonal. Early evidence suggests that domestic violence has been on the rise since the beginning of the pandemic and that victims lack resources. Through a qualitative study of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and “stay at home” orders on domestic violence, this study will examine the relationship between crisis conditions, intimate violence, and social safety net access. How do shutdowns and pandemic conditions affect the dynamics of intimate abuse? How have shutdowns affected victims’ help-seeking and survival strategies? Through in-depth interviews with survivors, policymakers, and anti-violence workers, this research will trace changes in victims’ experiences of abuse and help-seeking, as well as changes in the structure of care surrounding domestic violence. Comparisons will be made between victims in rural, urban, and suburban areas. Part of the aim of this research is to document barriers to service systems during COVID-19 for this vulnerable population and to explore how survival strategies are cultivated during crises.
June 2020
Daniel L. Carlson, University of Utah, Richard J. Petts, Ball State University, and Joanna R. Pepin, University of Buffalo, $8,000, The Long-Term Consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic for Household Gender Equality. COVID-19 has profoundly disrupted the lives of nearly every American household, fundamentally altering paid and unpaid domestic labor in families. Stay-at-home orders and the sudden removal of care and domestic support providers have created a crisis of role conflicts among parents, threatening 60 years of progress toward gender equality. This study aims to understand how parents have responded to meet the challenges of the pandemic and how this response will shape the gendered division of labor over the long term. It does so by administering a survey questionnaire to a panel of partnered U.S. parents at six-month intervals until at least two years after the pandemic ends. Preliminary results from the first survey round demonstrate that the pandemic has both exacerbated and reduced gender inequalities in couples’ divisions of labor. Gender inequality is a persistent and fundamental sociological issue that permeates all aspects of society. The findings from this study will inform theoretical development on the gendered division of labor and work-family policy, and identify topics that are likely to become the subject of research for years.
Lucius Couloute, Suffolk University, and Yolanda Wiggins, San Jose State University, $8,000, Black Women and Secondary Criminalization: Understanding the Diffuse Impacts of Mass Incarceration. Although we know much about the collateral consequences of justice system contact for those directly experiencing it, we know less about how our criminal justice system affects broader networks of people who are dealing with the criminalization of a family member. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Black women who have experienced a partner’s incarceration, this study asks: how do black women conceptualize and make meaning of their experiences with the criminalization of partners? How has the rise of mass criminalization impacted this group, both socially and economically? In what ways do black women respond to the incarceration and release of partners? And, how does the criminalization of a partner intersect with the criminalization of Black women themselves? This qualitative research project will help to unpack the hidden social and economic implications of the rise of mass incarceration and determine the extent to which its reach is wider than previously recognized.
Angela R. Dixon, Emory University, $8,000, A Deadly Inheritance: Intergenerational Impacts of Kinship and Household Mortality. Blacks are more likely than whites to experience the deaths of multiple family members and experience them at earlier ages. While a great deal of alarm has been raised about recent declines in life expectancy among whites, Blacks still live on average four years less than whites. Though research indicates that experiencing death within one’s family shapes survivors’ health, relatively little research has analyzed how network death contributes to health inequities. The objective of this study is to quantify Black-white disparities in familial and proximate deaths and their relationship to health disparities using longitudinal survey data. This project is innovative in its focus on: 1) racial disparities in death from broader social network ties outside of the nuclear family, and 2) the examination of the pathways through which exposure to death can contribute to adverse health for survivors.
Renee Shelby, Northwestern University, $8,000, Designing Justice: Sexual Violence, Technology, and the Law. Since the 1970s, citizen-activists have challenged how the justice system neglects assault by redesigning the technology used for self-defense, reporting, investigation, and punishment. The institutionalization of these technologies is signaling a shift in the dominant paradigm from a legal to a techno-legal response to violence. Yet, few studies have engaged survivor, activist, and legal voices to identify the social and legal consequences of these objects, or examined how, if at all, anti-violence technologies could be redesigned to meet a broad spectrum of justice needs and contest the reproduction of racial injustice. The project traces this paradigm shift and examines its impact on racial justice, rape law, and social movement organizing. Through close examination of new narrative and participatory design sources, this analysis will analyze the legal implications of anti-violence technology, and articulates a framework for designing technologies that better serve those on the social, economic, and legal margins. Preliminary findings show that although well-meaning activists design these technologies to mobilize survivors and foster institutional accountability, they are a crucial site of enacting whiteness and uphold the racially unequal practices of the punishment industry. Addressing these inequalities through an anti-oppression lens is necessary to sustain long-term change.
Blake R. Silver, George Mason University, $7,840, Labor Market Precarity and Higher Education. How does economic uncertainty shape the ways students navigate higher education? The last 50 years have witnessed a shift from relative stability to precarity in the labor market as steady, well-paying jobs have been replaced by part-time, low-wage, and contingent work. These trends have been compounded in the 21st century, first by the 2008 recession and more recently by the COVID-19 pandemic. While research has documented the broad impact of economic uncertainty on higher education institutions, little is known about how individuals are experiencing this type of uncertainty within colleges and universities. By analyzing in-depth interviews with 80 college students, this project will explore how students navigate economic uncertainty within higher education. Moreover, with the support of an intersectional lens, the study will examine how the mutual constitution of race, class, and gender shapes experiences with and resources for managing labor market precarity.
