QQ China features interactive and connective online channels that generate social relational resources, encourage individual engagement, and facilitate embedded economic potential. The objectives of this research are to describe QQ users’ demographics and virtual behavior characteristics, to identify the underlying dimensions of relational social capital and virtual engagement, and to investigate the impacts of social capital and virtual engagement on purchase intention. Results from an analysis of data (n = 216) from China reveal the significant impacts of relational social capital and virtual engagement on purchase intention. First, functional purchase motivations, channel usage, and purchasing behaviors are captured to portray characteristics among QQ’s users. Second, trust, identification, and norm of reciprocity are primary antecedents to predict purchase intention in QQ. Third, three dimensions of relational social capital facilitate QQ users’ virtual engagements. Finally, information seeking and knowledge creation leads to product purchase intention.

Organized crime and terrorism taking place in the Turkish provinces get more attention in the public agenda than other type of crimes. Although property crimes receive less attention, they pose a serious threat to public order and the social welfare of Turkish society. Academic researchers have also paid little attention to the analysis of property crimes at the macro level in Turkey. For these reasons, this study focused on the analysis of property crimes for three years period, 2005, 2006 and 2007 in Turkey, using a conceptual model of social disorganization. Provincial level data from Turkish governmental agencies were used. The findings of multivariate analyses showed that social disorganization approach, as measured in this study, provided a partial explanation of property crime rates in Turkey. Family disruption and urbanization had significant effects on property crime rate, while remaining exogenous elements of social disorganization (i.e., SES, population heterogeneity and residential mobility) did not have any expected effects. In mediation analysis, using faith-based engagement and political participation rates as mediators between the structural factors of social disorganization and property crime rate provided marginal support for the theory. Political participation rate partially mediated the relationship between property crime rate and urbanization rate, while faith-based engagement rate did not mediate the effects of social disorganization variables on property crime rate. These findings were consistent with the findings of research that has been completed in other nations, and made a unique contribution to the Turkish research on crime.

Magister Artium (Development Studies) - MA(DVS) / In this study, I explore recidivism, an ‘uncontrollable phenomenon’ in South Africa, within the context of rising crime and repeat offenders. Research has shown that the political economy of South Africa, inequality, persistent poverty within previously marginalised communities, high school drop-out rates among other factors, creates a breeding ground for criminal activity amongst adolescents, resulting in high convictions and prison sentences in the Western Cape. It is within this context that this study investigated recidivism and reasons for recurring trends, where first time offenders are more likely to return to prison after being released. Specifically, the study investigates why young men from Hanover Park are more likely to be repeat offenders and continuously incarcerated.

Prescription stimulant abuse is a recent drug abuse trend that is becoming a major problem across the United States. Previous research has mainly examined the amount of individuals that are abusing prescription stimulants and has ignored using sociological theory to explain why individuals are abusing these drugs. To address this gap in the literature, this thesis applies the theory of social capital to explain how an adolescents’ family structure can affect the likelihood they will abuse prescription stimulants. Examining survey data from the 2008 The National Survey on Drug Use and Health, it was found that adolescents from single parent households, with minimal parental involvement, are more likely to report abusing prescription stimulants. These findings highlight the influence of family structure and parental involvement in an adolescent’s life, as well as the need for additional research in this area to fully understand prescription stimulant abuse.

This study examines the role of religion in promoting the success of Mexican immigrants, as measured by typical U.S. standards of success, including income, education, assets (such as homeownership), and health, including access to health insurance, controlling for age, education, gender, and ability to speak English. These measures are analyzed against various indicators of religiosity. The hypothesis driving the research is: religiosity increases an immigrant's success in the United States. This hypothesis was informed by social capital theory, and a distinction is made between bridging and bonding forms of social capital. The results show only a very weak correlation between religion and success, as measured by the data. Also, immigrants attending churches where Spanish is spoken, and those with mainly Mexican immigrant populations are less likely to enjoy success, implying that bonding forms of social capital actually work against them.

This study investigates the connections between the experiences of participants and a facilitator in an intergenerational community music ensemble, including how participants make personal sense of their individual identities and positions within the field of the Intergenerational Community Cello Ensemble (ICCE), how participants map their musical and pedagogical interactions in the field of the ICCE, and how my experiences as a facilitator impact and evidence the construction of my own identities both within and beyond the field of the ICCE. I applied a lens of habitus based on Pierre Bourdieu’s social capital theory to examine how participants constructed a sense of self in their fields and to explore how participants shaped and were shaped by their social worlds. Thirteen cellists, including me, participated in this study. These cellists represented differing socio-demographics of age, race, gender, and religion. I collected data from multiple interviews with seven of the participants, recorded observations of the ensemble rehearsals, and facilitated two focus group surveys. The focus group surveys were open to all participants, but attendance varied based on availability. Research questions included: How does the experience of participating in the ICCE impact individual identities and positions within the field of the intergenerational community music ensemble? How are these identities and positions impacted within the field of the ICCE? How are these identities and positions impacted within fields beyond the ICCE? Is there any transfer between the ICCE and fields beyond the ICCE? How do participants map their musical and pedagogical interactions in the field of the ICCE? How does my experience as a facilitator impact and evidence the construction of my own identities both within and beyond the field of the ICCE? My data analysis suggested that participants experienced an overall sense of connection and increased musical proficiency in various areas: musical reading, instrumental proficiency and performance, and musical and pedagogic authority. I also considered how my identity was shaped by the reciprocal relationships developed through facilitation and participation in the ICCE. Findings suggest that participants advanced their musical and social skills as forms of personal development thus enhancing their perceptions of community music’s social and performative experiences. This study explores ways that trust, mutual respect, and shared capital were exchanged between participants and the participant-facilitator, including how these relationships enhanced confidence and connections reciprocally between those musicking and extending into broader communities in which they operate.

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

Previous research has examined certainty and severity of punishment as serving a deterrent function. This research examines the effects of economic, cultural, and social capital, as well as the effects of certainty, severity, and prior punishment on likelihood of re-offending. Data collected at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility suggest that traditional deterrence indicators are insufficient for predicting likelihood of re-offending. This research finds that prior punishment increases likelihood of re-offending, a finding completely counter to that of traditional deterrence. Re-offending may be best understood by considering the effects of punishment on increasing prison capital and decreasing real world capital. The argument is that inmates consider their potential in the real world as compared to that in a prison when reporting likelihood of re-offending. Such considerations should better explain likelihood of re-offending as compared to traditional deterrence indicators, such as certainty, severity, and prior punishment.

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