Incarceration is a stigmatizing event that is likely to lead to negative labor market outcomes. Prior research has linked incarceration to reduced earnings and slow wage growth, but little is known about individual differences that lead to divergent wage trajectories between formerly and never-incarcerated individuals. Moreover, race differences in these wage trajectories have yet to be fully explored. I employ a multilevel modeling technique (MLM) to examine hourly wage trajectories across the careers of incarcerated and non-incarcerated males using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). I find that incarceration leads to a significant reduction in wages that is not explained by individual differences in human or social capital. This suggests that incarceration is a stigmatizing event with long-term labor market consequences. I do not find any evidence for a significant interaction between race and previous incarceration; however, additively, I find that formerly incarcerated white individuals earn as much as never-incarcerated African Americans through their late 40s.

In response to the globalization of agriculture and the proliferation of convenience-based and processed foods, many Americans have joined community supported farms. Community supported agriculture (CSA) involves people paying a seasonal fee to a local farmer in return for weekly allotments of organically-grown produce. This research investigates the membership, stabilization, and success of selected CSAs in the mid-Atlantic United States. The analyses are based upon survey data from 204 members of five CSAs collected during the 2000 growing season. Interview data from each of the farmers and thirteen of the members supplement the survey data. The data are analyzed primarily with path analytic techniques in order to test hypotheses derived from a thorough search of the relevant literatures. Results show that the majority of the members of these CSAs are white, well educated, wealthy, and female. Although the respondents tend to be interested in environmental issues, alternative agriculture, and community issues, their relative level of interest does not affect their level of investment in the CSA. A higher level of member investment, however, does have a positive effect upon the organizational success of the farms in this study. Organizational success also is found to be negatively affected by the CSA's relative degree of organizational stability, a finding that contradicts some of the literature. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of the methodological, theoretical, and applied implications of these findings. These implications include the finding that while electronic survey techniques have certain advantages, one disadvantage discovered is that electronic return rates are much lower than the return rates for U.S. mail surveys. Additionally, the process of social movement organization growth and change, as developed by resource mobilization theorists, is found to be applicable to the maturation levels of the CSAs in this study. Finally, strategies are suggested by the findings that can be used by CSA practitioners to render their membership more socially diverse, including the implementation of subsidized shares and payment plans.

Research on unemployment among managers and professionals has documented the experience of job loss as stressful not only because of economic strain, but because of the damage it does to valued identities and self-conceptions. Little research, however, has examined the processes through which displaced workers collectively attempt to repair this damage. Data from participant observation in four support groups for displaced managers and professionals, plus intensive interviews with twenty-two group members, are used to develop an analysis of the self-concept repair strategies used by these relatively privileged workers. Four main strategies are identified: (a) redefining the meaning of unemployment; (b) realizing accomplishment; (c) restructuring time and activities; and (d) helping others. These strategies are argued to be oriented toward bolstering feelings of self-efficacy damaged by job loss and prolonged unemployment. The analysis shows how these self-concept repair strategies depended upon resources not readily available to blue-collar workers. Also considered are the implications of these strategies for the reproduction of class advantage and for the political mobilization of professional/managerial workers in response to recession and mass unemployment.

Despite over 30 years of awareness, intervention, and research regarding race, class, and gender differences in educational achievement, large differences still persist. These differences have a significant impact on individuals? quality of life. Research on educational achievement gaps has been largely focused on schools or families; while policy efforts to address these gaps have been focused on schools, with limited success. This study examines the broader community context in which schools and families are embedded. Specifically, this study addressed the policy question: Is relative inequality in employment opportunity in local areas related to relative inequality in educational achievement in the same areas in North Carolina? Employment opportunity was conceptualized as quality of employment and as earnings. Relative inequality was measured by comparing a race (Black or White), class (high school education or less vs. education beyond high school), and gender group to White males with parental education beyond high school. Relative inequality in Biology and English I achievement were measured at the school level and at a modified Public Use Microdata Area (PUMA) level. Relative inequality in quality of employment and earnings were measured at the modified PUMA level, and measured separately for the local area and neighboring area. This study was unique in that it a) examined the variation in employment opportunity across communities and b) examined race, class, and gender inequality as simultaneously experienced rather than as separate inequalities. Relative inequality in local earnings had a positive relationship with relative inequality in high school Biology for most Black and White student groups. Relative inequality in local earnings had a positive relationship with relative inequality in English I for Black students. There was little support for the hypothesis that relative inequality in the local quality of employment had an effect on relative inequality in achievement. There was also little support for the effect of neighboring community employment factors on inequality in achievement. This study found reason to support policies that would reduce relative inequality in earnings in local areas as a means to reducing educational achievement gaps.

<p>ROBINSON, ROBERT. Construction Workers' Reactions to Structural Alienation and Inequality. (Under the direction of L. Richard Della Fave.) Using a participant observation approach, this study documents specific examples of structural alienation in the lifeworlds of 35 residential construction workers (in North Carolina and Virginia) who perform finish work--such as painting and floor refinishing--on expensive houses. It includes a look at what these workers think about the inequalities that they see and help to create within the society. Despite the fact that they get to see how some of the richest individuals in this society live, the workers in this study believe in the legitimacy of inequality and in the premise of the equity principle--that individuals deserve unequal rewards depending upon how much they produce within the society. There were a number of ways that the workers coped with the structural alienation and relative deprivation that they experienced on the job. Many of these workers experienced economic conditions where they were just trying to survive and they mainly focused their attention on this aspect of their lives. Other ways that they coped included attempting to maximize their position within the status hierarchy of the job, exhibiting pride in their work and craft skills, and focusing their attention on what they were doing when they were not working--such as interacting with family, friends, and members of their status groups who share common consumption patterns with themselves. <P>

<p>The central focus of my dissertation is the process through which people construct and strategically use an emotional culture as an interactional resource. My research is based on three years of fieldwork observing an intentional community's business meetings, retreats, workdays, and social events, as well as interviews with all community members. For many of the community's therapeutic founding members, intense, unconstrained processing was a self-developmental end in itself. They took from therapeutic discourse the idea that it is only through unearthing true feelings that one can hope to process childhood pain and find one's true self. However, other members were interested in the community for political or environmental reasons and didn't like intense therapeutic processing. I show how these differences among members led to micropolitical struggles over community structure, focus, and definition. Therapeutic members had the most control over the emotional culture, creating a context in which there was an unacknowledged stigma attached to not sharing emotions and reproducing the idea that "authenticity" meant appearing out of control. I showed how they then used therapeutic discourse as a resource to preserve a therapeutic emotional culture in which they were seen as the most proficient and brave. The unintended consequences of their use of this therapeutic discourse were to exclude or discredit other perspectives, to shield the current context from critical examination, and to create an emotional double standard for men and women. <P>

Over the past two decades, children’s school readiness has gained national attention. This has resulted in a variety of national, state, and local initiatives often with an emphasis on accountability. However, the beliefs of those who are held accountable (teachers, administrators, and parents) are rarely included in the development of such systems. This study sought to identify any relationships between teacher beliefs about school readiness with parents’ beliefs or directors’ beliefs about school readiness. Additionally, the study examined predictors of teacher beliefs and whether teacher beliefs were related to teachers’ practices in the classroom. This study used a statewide sample of 114 preschool teachers of community-based child care programs. Teachers, parents, and director beliefs were examined using the same 13-item question while child care quality was examined in four distinct ways: global quality (as measured by ECERS-R), curricular quality (as measured by ECERS-E), the quality of teacher-child interactions, and instructional quality (both of which are measured by the CLASS). The findings indicate that teachers, directors, and parents believe that both academic and social skills are very important in preparing children for kindergarten. Parents placed more emphasis on both sets of skills than teachers and directors. Teacher years of experience in early childhood education was negatively related to their beliefs about academic skills while the level of urbanization and program type were positive predictors of teachers’ beliefs about school readiness skills. Teacher beliefs about school readiness were not related to the practices associated with any of the types of quality captured in this study. Although these beliefs do not translate into practice, there is reason to think that beliefs are still important in understanding what teachers do in the classroom. As a result of their job demands, preschool teachers may no longer be aware of the teaching practices they are utilizing. Those working with teachers can help them make this connection by encouraging them to think about their beliefs and then examine their beliefs in the context of the classroom. Policymakers can support practice by allocating resources to provide opportunities for teachers to increase their formal education.

Most studies on Africa that analyzed the institution of the state emphasized the colonial origins of state formation, tracing the crisis of socioeconomic and political development to that specific historical trajectory. Colonialism has shaped the characteristics of modern African states, but it is also important to address institutional factors, methods of governance, and state-society relations in the post independence period. As Ethiopia was not directly constituted by European colonialism, a study of the Ethiopian state provides an opportunity to look at how the state has performed, and how it relates to its own society, without the colonial baggage. This case study explores the characteristics of the Ethiopian state employing neopatrimonialism as a theoretical framework. It addresses the system of personalization, hybridization, patronage, coercion and external factors in the exercise of state power. According to both Weberian and Gramscian theories of the state, the legitimacy of states is contingent upon the tacit acceptance of its authority by the majority of the population under its jurisdiction. Coercion is used as a threat and a last resort when all other persuasive and ideological methods have failed or become inadequate. Yet, the case study shows the use of coercion as an enduring feature of some states. The Ethiopian state has been consistently challenged internally and isolated regionally. Consequently, it has depended on a combination of coercion and external patronage as a survival strategy. This strategy has further complicated internal cohesion, and external patronage has also served as a disincentive to accommodate internal demands for inclusion. The endurance of violence and internal challenges to the authority of states is a general characteristic of states with contested legitimacy.

Understanding the impact of human decisions on vital resources is a core task of environmental sociology, which studies the interaction between human society and the environment. The overarching theme of this research is the economicenvironmental relationship in U.S. public policy, using a case study of a specific environmental resource problem in a specific region. It fuses basic assumptions of two economic growth models (treadmill of production and the urban growth machine) to examine the extent to which these assumptions permeate the worldviews of policymakers and those who advise them. When the growth imperative is a priority in their worldviews, then the paradigm shapes policy decisions favorable to growth. When the growth imperative paradigm dominates the decision-making structure, then policy decisions favor economic growth over concerns for and at the expense of environmental resources. This is the case because economic growth requires unlimited commoditization and exploitation of finite resources. The results are impairment of both the quantity and quality of natural resources on which communities depend for growth and their existence. This research examines the economic-environmental relationship in a case study of the Memphis, Tennessee area to ascertain how policy decisions that promote growth affect groundwater and may have sparked an inter-state water conflict. The State of Mississippi filed a federal lawsuit against Memphis and its utility Memphis Light, Gas and Water over rights to groundwater, the sole source of drinking water. The study ascertains that the predominance of the growth paradigm is linked to policymakers’ perspectives and reflected in their decisions that impair the quantity and quality of vital environmental resources. The case demonstrates how the growth imperative contributes to resource depletion, which can lead to conflict among users of a common resource.

The purpose of this study was to assess the presence of developmental assets of youth participating in two programs that have similar goals but are organized differently. One program was structured around a theoretical and empirical model of youth development (i.e., developmental asset framework) and one program was not organized around this framework. Gender was examined to determine if differences in reports of developmental assets existed across programs in relation to gender. Data were obtained from 40 youth between the ages of 10 and 14 participating in both programs. A 47-item questionnaire was administered to participants in small groups at program sites. The questionnaire consisted of items that were similar to asset descriptions of the developmental assets framework. A subsample (5 youth from each program) participated in the interviews at each program site. In the interviews, participants were asked to talk about each of the 40 assets in relation to three contexts (i.e., home, school, program). There were no differences in the number of developmental assets reported by youth across programs on the questionnaire. There was no main effect or interaction effect for gender by program. The result showed that there was no significant difference between gender across program type. Within the context of home, interview participants in both programs reported experiencing 21 or more assets. For the context of program, all interview participants in program type 1 indicated that they experienced 21 or more assets. All participants in program type 2 indicated that they experienced between 0 to 20 assets within the context of program. Within the context of school, 4 of 5 participants reported 21 or greater assets and 1 participant reported experiencing 0 to 10. In program type 2, one participant reported experiencing 11 to 20 assets and 4 reported experiencing between 21 and 30 assets within the context of school.