The soyboy is a label given to men who do not fall into culturally idealized versions of masculinity, specifically men who are politically left leaning and embrace alternative masculinities. This discourse surrounding the soyboy participates in the larger symbolic boundary that upholds and reifies traditional masculinity. The soyboy discourse engages with cultural knowledge that reinforces the gendered and political hierarchies that are upheld through traditional masculinity. This project outlines the soyboy discourse through two analytic components: Component I analyzes digital spaces, defining the soyboy and how the discourse is used and Component II explores how that discourse influences face-to-face interactions, reinforcing inequalities. Through a content analysis of Twitter.com, Component I answers the question of how the soyboy discourse is used and which structures of power it is reproducing. Through interview analysis with eighteen (18) young adults, Component II answers the question of how the discourse is seen in face-to-face interactions and what that means compared to online interactions. Component I details how social inequalities are a part of the soyboy discourse and Component II identifies how that discourse shapes and influences human interactions. The final section of this project outlines how the soyboy discourse reifies existing inequalities through mundane or "low-stakes'' interactions. Through the use of Component I and II's data, the final section examines the process through which inequalities are continued and preserved. / Doctor of Philosophy / Social media is often perceived as a separate part of life compared to our day-to-day, face-to-face interactions. The mundane or "low-stakes" interactions of social media are not seen as impactful in comparison to how our face-to-face interactions are perceived. This dismissal of online interactions limits our ability to understand the social world. Through an investigation of the phrase "soyboy," this project outlines how interactions in online spaces move from digital space to face-to-face interactions. The first component of the project analyzed social media posts from a collection of Tweets containing the phrase "soyboy" from 2015 to 2021. Component I defines what a soyboy is and points out how the use of "soyboy" contributes to certain social inequalities. Component II moved to observe how the discourse can be seen in our daily interactions. Through interviews with eighteen (18) young adults, Component II details the way online discourses influence how people interact with each other. The final section of this project connects the findings from Component I and II to explain a cycle of cultural reproduction, which reifies and preserves social and cultural inequalities.

What happens when "child bearing hips" become 'too' wide and layered with fat? The medicalization of weight and body size pathologizes difference as deviance, framing fat women as a danger not only to themselves but to society at large when daring to reproduce. This dissertation seeks to uncover the long term impacts of weight stigma at different intersections in order to expand sociological understandings of fatness, health, gender, and inequality in motherhood. It highlights parallel mechanisms of surveillance (for example, between fat and poor mothers) to show how society constructs who "should" and "should not" be parents. Based on a series of 36 in-depth interviews with 18 mothers conducted in the first half of 2022, findings illustrate that the negative social and medical perception of fat motherhood has a significant detrimental impact on the lived experiences of fat mothers. Findings also pull from material culture in the form of representational artifacts from motherhood brought by participants in order to understand how medical and social anti-fatness impacts identity and experiences, and contributes to inequality in fat motherhood. / Doctor of Philosophy / What happens when "child bearing hips" become 'too' wide and layered with fat? The medicalization of weight and body size pathologizes difference as deviance, framing fat women as a danger not only to themselves but to society at large when daring to reproduce. This dissertation seeks to uncover the long term impacts of weight stigma at different intersections in order to expand sociological understandings of fatness, health, gender, and inequality in motherhood. It highlights parallel mechanisms of surveillance to show how society constructs who "should" and "should not" be parents. Based on a series of 36 in-depth interviews with 18 mothers conducted in the first half of 2022, findings illustrate that the negative social and medical perception of fat motherhood has a significant detrimental impact on the lived experiences of fat mothers. Mothers were also invited to bring objects that were of importance to them to discuss the ways in which society's negative views about weight impacted their experience.

No / The aim of this chapter is a comprehensive analysis of various aspects of the emergence of BRICS. We begin with an examination of emergence of BRICS showing that BRICS have been members of the top 15 largest economies in the world since 1960. In purchasing power parity terms, by 2015, BRICS have equalled G7 countries in terms of the share of global output. Various possible explanatory factors of their growth are examined. Though BRICS account for nearly a half of global output growth, in terms of real per capita income, BRICS have a long way to go. There are many challenges to BRICS in terms of the levels of income and wealth inequalities, the educational inequalities as measured in terms of education-Gini and the quality of their infrastructure notwithstanding the massive investments being made remains inadequate. We also analyse the nine BRICS summits so far and the text analysis of these declarations suggests that such summits are becoming more formal and focused on specific policy outcomes and creation of new institutions for deepening multilateral co-operation. The chapter ends with an analysis of global governance issues and four possible future scenarios of BRICS.

By conducting both qualitative and quantitative analysis of data from interviews and game content, I examine representations of race, gender, and sexuality in contemporary video-game narratives. I use data from interviews to show how they view their representations in this medium and to set categorical criteria for an interpretive content analysis. I analyze a sample of top-selling narrative-driven video games in the United States released from 2016-2019. My content coding incorporates aforementioned interview data as well as theoretical-based and intersectional concepts on video game characters and their narratives. The content analysis includes measures of narrative importance, narrative role, positivity of representation, and demographic categories of characters, though the scale of this study may not allow for a full test of intersectional theory of links between demographics and roles. Interview and content analysis results suggest an overrepresentation of white characters and extreme under-representation of non-white women. / I examine representations of race, gender, and sexuality in contemporary video-game narratives. I use data from interviews to show how people view their representations in video games and to set a guide for analyzing the games themselves. I analyze a sample of top-selling narrativedriven video games in the United States released from 2016-2019. My content coding incorporates aforementioned interview data as well as theoretical-based and intersectional concepts on video game characters and their narratives. The content analysis includes measures of narrative importance, narrative role, positivity of representation, and demographic categories of characters, though the scale of this study may not allow for a full test of intersectional theory of links between demographics and roles. Interview and content analysis results suggest an overrepresentation of white characters and extreme under-representation of non-white women.

When faced with Duhemian problems of underdetermination, scientific method suggests neither a circumvention of such difficulties via the uncritical acceptance of background assumptions, nor the employment of epistemically unsatisfying subjectivist models of rational retainment. Instead, scientists are challenged to attack problems of underdetermination 'head-on', through a careful analysis of the severity of the testing procedures responsible for the production and modeling of their anomalous data. Researchers faced with the task of explaining empirical anomalies, employ a number of diverse and clever experimental techniques designed to cut through the Duhemian mists, and account for potential sources of error that might weaken an otherwise warranted inference. In lieu of such progressive experimental procedures, scientists try to identify the actual inferential work that an existing experiment is capable of providing so as to avoid ascribing to its output more discriminative power than it is rightfully due. We argue that the various strategies adopted by researchers involved in the testing of Bell's inequality, are well represented by Mayo's error-statistical notion of scientific evidence. In particular, an acceptance of her stringent demand for the output of severe tests to stand at the basis of rational inference, helps to explain the methodological reactions expressed by scientists in response to the loopholes that plagued the early Bell experiments performed by Alain Aspect et al.. At the same time, we argue as a counterpoint, that these very reactions present a challenge for 'top-down' approaches to Duhem's problem. / Master of Arts

The object of this paper is to consider necessary and sufficient conditions in order for certain important inequalities, which are frequently used in analysis, to reduce to equalities.

This paper investigates the effect of innovation on income inequality in Sweden, which to the best of my knowledge has not been explored previously. I use data on the number of patent applications to measure innovation, while income inequality is measured as the income share that goes to the top 1% of income earners. To address potential endogeneity issues, I apply an instrumental variables approach with municipality and time fixed effects. I instrument for innovation using data on funding from Vinnova to research projects.  I find persistent positive estimates of the effect of innovation on income inequality, which is in line with previous research. However, due to issues with potential bias from violated identifying assumptions and statistical significance, I am unable to say anything about the causal effect. Nonetheless, the results indicate that policymakers may need to consider balancing the benefits of innovation with potentially harmful consequences of higher degrees of income inequality. Because of this, further research is necessary for formulating effective policies to manage the trade-offs between promoting innovation and mitigating income inequality.

This dissertation contains three essays on the political economy and economic development in Iran. In the first paper, I investigate the political resource curse. The comprehensive literature on the relationship between democracy and income counts oil-rich countries in Middle East as outliers: the abundance of funds for the states and the absence of effective tax systems hold back the formation of democracy. But democracy is more than a purely political system. Sustainable democracy requires a set of social norms and intra-citizen relationships that is called social capital. Emphasizing the importance of the formation of social capital on the democratization of a society, I use female labor force participation as a proxy for social capital. Using survival analysis, I show that oil revenue delays the formation of the social capital required for the democracy. In the second paper, I inspect the trend and patterns of group-based inequality in Iran. Inequality among groups can be a source of conflict and instability. Iran is a habitat of ethnic diversity and experiences stable peaceful relationships among its ethnicities, while its neighbors experience many ethnic conflicts. In this study, we compute three measures of group-based inequality for the following outcomes: education, assets, income, and expenditure per capita. The groups are defined based on gender, ethnicity/language (Persian, Azeri, and other ethnic minorities), and region (urban versus rural and capital city versus other places). The data are 23 years of annual Household Expenditure and Income Surveys (HEIS) from 1990 through 2012. Inequality between groups based on religion (Muslim, non-Muslim) and citizenship (Iranian, Non-Iranian) is also studied, using the 2006 census. The analysis of the trend of horizontal inequality reveals substantial reduction in between-group inequalities over the 1990–2012 period. On the other hand, gender based income inequality remains high. The implications and underlying reasons for these results are discussed. The third paper studies one the most serious recent problems facing Iran’s economy: the economic cost of the recent US and UN sanctions. This paper measures the economic cost of the U.N. trade and financial sanctions on Iran’s economy. While there is a substantial literature studying how sanctions impact the economies of target states, the aggregate economic cost of sanctions remains underexplored. This study provides a new measure of the cost of sanctions at the aggregate level, defined as the gap between Iran’s actual GDP and what it would have been without sanctions. Using the synthetic control method of analysis, I replicate Iran’s GDP without sanctions. I demonstrate that, while previous sanctions had a negligible impact, Iran’s GDP fell markedly following the financial sanctions of 2010. / PHD / This dissertation contains three essays on the political economy and economic development. The first paper studies the negative relationship between democracy and oil-income. Formation of democracy requires strong role of citizens in governing the society which is called social capital. I show that oil revenue delays the formation of the social capital, and therefore delays democratization. In the second paper, I inspect the trend and patterns of group-based inequality in Iran. Inequality among groups is counted as a source of conflict and instability. Iran is a habitat of ethnic diversity which experiences stability and almost peaceful relationships among its ethnicities, while its neighbors experience many ethnic conflicts. This study shows substantial reduction in between-group inequalities over the 1990–2012 period. On the other hand, gender based income inequality remains high. The third paper measures the economic cost of the U.N. trade and financial sanctions on Iran’s economy. I estimate the amount by which Iran’s GDP decreased following the financial sanctions of 2010.

Yes / Area level factors, such as deprivation and urban/rural settings, have been associated with variation in local resources and services and health inequality in later life. The aim of this study is to investigate the potential impact of deprivation and urban/rural areas on capability to live well with dementia and to examine whether availability of informal carers modified the associations. The analysis was based on a large cohort study of 1547 community-dwelling people with dementia across Great Britain. Quality of life, life satisfaction, and well-being were measured as indices of "living well." Multivariate modelling was used to investigate differences in living well measures across deprivation quintiles and urban/rural areas adjusting for sociodemographic factors and number of comorbidities and stratifying by three groups: those living with a carer, those with a noncoresident carer and those without a carer. Negative dose-response relationships between deprivation and measures of quality of life (-2.12; 95% CI: -3.52, -0.73), life satisfaction (-1.27; 95% CI: -2.70, 0.16), and well-being (-5.24; 95% CI: -10.11, -0.36) were found in participants living with a carer. The associations were less clear in those with a noncoresident carer and those without a carer but these two groups generally reported lower scores on living well indicators than participants living with a carer. There was no urban/rural difference. The findings suggest inequalities in living well with dementia according to levels of deprivation. Additional resources are needed to improve postdiagnostic care in highly deprived areas and support those who have no informal carer.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Mathematics / Charles N. Moore / The main focus of this work is to study the classical Calder\'n-Zygmund theory and its recent developments. An attempt has been made to study some of its theory in more generality in the context of a nonhomogeneous space equipped with a measure which is not necessarily doubling. We establish a Hedberg type inequality associated to a non-doubling measure which connects two famous theorems of Harmonic Analysis-the Hardy-Littlewood-Weiner maximal theorem and the Hardy-Sobolev integral theorem. Hedberg inequalities give pointwise estimates of the Riesz potentials in terms of an appropriate maximal function. We also establish a good lambda inequality relating the distribution function of the Riesz potential and the fractional maximal function in $(\rn, d\mu)$, where $\mu$ is a positive Radon measure which is not necessarily doubling. Finally, we also derive potential inequalities as an application.