Prior research examining between community variations in violent crime has largely been guided by the social disorganization perspective and the systemic model of community attachment. This literature supports a strong relation between structural resource deprivation, residential instability, and rates of violent crime. In communities where poverty, unemployment, and broken families are geographically concentrated and home ownership and length of residence are relatively low, levels of violent crime are exacerbated. This dissertation extends prior research by focusing on variation in the nature or quality of violence rather than crime rates or quantities. While many analyses explore variations in rates of crime, few have focused on understanding the contextual level predictors of variation in the relative prevalence of race specific forms of violence. The current study addresses this gap by elaborating a theoretical model that links characteristics of the contextual environment to variations in the prevalence of intra and interracial violence. It is proffered that concentrated disadvantage and residential stability decrease opportunities for fortuitous interracial associations which, in turn, reduce the likelihood that violent crime will involve actors from different race groups. Further, it is predicted that residential racial heterogeneity will increase opportunities for interracial contact and will thus be associated with an increase in the likelihood that violence will be interracial. The model is tested by merging crime data from the National Incident Based Reporting System with data on county characteristics culled from the U.S. Census. Nonlinear multilevel regression analyses provide strong support for the predicted pattern of relations between structural features of communities and the relative prevalence of race specific forms of violence. In communities with higher levels of structural disadvantage and residential stability violent crimes are relatively less likely to be interracial in nature. Conversely, violence that occurs in racially heterogeneous residential environments has an increased probability of being interracial. Analyses also reveal significant disparities in the contextual level correlates of black as compared to white intra-racial violence. The relevance of these findings and implications for criminological theory, future empirical research, and public policy are discussed in the concluding chapter.

This study investigates race and class differences in the stress-support-distress process. Incorporating the social support strand of network analysis in the stress-support-distress model allows social support theorists to understand better what network sectors enhance/restrict access to such resources as social support and, in turn, affect such outcomes as mental health. I used data collected in a 2003 study of residents in Orleans Parish, Louisiana, to construct measures used in my analyses. Using independent samples t-test and ordinary least squares regressions, I addressed five general research questions: (1) whether and how there are variations in network capital forms the structure and resource element of network capital -- by race and class, (2) whether there are race/class differences in perceptions of support adequacy, (3) how network capital affects perceptions of social support adequacy by race and class, (4) how the stress-support-distress process varies by race and class. I find that both race and class differences exist in the stress-support-distress process. My results also suggest there are greater significant differences exist between working/lower-class blacks and whites in the stress-distress-support process. Further, my findings provide evidence that my race- and class-sensitive analyses begins to suggest that race and class differences in network capital is important for understanding the variations in the stress-support-distress process across social strata.

Empirical research demonstrates that social networks the aspatial social structures created through social relations constitute a critical context that affects individuals health and well-being. Net of individual characteristics, social network structures can increase perceived adequacy of social support and psychological health, particularly in the aftermath of a natural disaster. However, the question of whether social contexts affect men and women differently remains largely unanswered. This dissertation examines the effects of social structural characteristics on social network structures for both national and regional data. The General Social Survey (GSS) provides the nationally representative data on social networks; the 1985 GSS serves as the baseline measure for making comparisons with the 2004 GSS data. My comparisons provide important information regarding the structure of social networks over the past two decades and allow me to explore whether, and to what extent, the effects of structural characteristics on social networks differ between men and women. My results indicate that the effect of marital status on proportion female differs significantly between men and women in both 1985 and 2004. Further, the effect of marital status on structural density also differs significantly between men and women in 1985; it exerts a positive effect for both men and women, but demonstrates greater significance for women. The second objective of this dissertation is to examine the effects of social networks on social support and psychological distress, within the context of a natural disaster. Social network data collected from the New Orleans metropolitan area in 2003 (pre-Katrina) act as the baseline to which to compare the 2006, post-Katrina social network data. My results indicate that in 2003, the proportion female in core networks are positively related to social support, but for women only. However, post-Katrina, network size and proportion kin significantly predicted perceived adequacy of social support, for men only. Regarding psychological distress, pre-Katrina, social support is only significant and negatively related to psychological distress for women. However, after Hurricane Katrina, social support is negatively related to psychological distress for both men and women.

This dissertation outlines the occupation of private investigation and the role that females play within that profession. The difficulties women experience in male-oriented occupations remains noteworthy in sociological research today. Progress has been made, yet many barriers still exist for women. These include structural, social, and cultural factors that influence women and/or the jobs that they hold. With the completion of interviews with twenty-six female private investigators, I was able to analyze the existing structural, interactional, and gender barriers which moderate the number of women that work as private investigators. Few studies have examined this occupation and this gap may be detrimental to our understanding of this issue. I discovered that women have less difficulty getting into and succeeding in private investigation than in law enforcement. Finally, I found that based on the nature of the work, client demand, opportunity for self-employment, and limited training requirements, females have risen in the labor queue that feeds private investigation. I argue that females may be more desirable to employers and clients because of the advantages their gender provides. Exploration of this topic holds importance for a comprehensive understanding of the position of women in the occupational structure.

This study examines gender differences in psychological well-being and its causal factors in 33 countries. Previous studies documented womens vulnerability in mental health, and according to social role explanations, gender differences in mental health are attributed to gendered socialization and gender roles assigned to men and women. Gender differences in mental health thus should disappear when we see gender-neutral socialization and social roles. I incorporate contextual factors, such as the country-level gender equality and gender norms, and argue that the effects of gender and family-related factors at the individual-level on psychological well-being are conditional on societal-level factors in each country. I hypothesize that gender differences in psychological well-being are smaller in countries with greater gender equality and more egalitarian gender norms. Utilizing data from the 2002 International Social Survey Program and multi-level modeling, I investigate how the contextual factors impact the effects of marriage, employment, and parenthood on psychological well-being for men and women. The results show that gender differences in mental health remain, though it is not as simple as women experiencing lower psychological well-being than men. Women show lower psychological well-being that is related to the extent of family responsibility, and caring roles are negatively associated with womens psychological well-being more than mens. Meanwhile, men indicate more stress with work responsibility, and provider roles have more impacts on males than females. I interpret these results to mean that the gendered socialization and gender roles still have strong influences on mental health and these are gender specific. In addition, more significant effects of the country-level variables--both direct and cross-level-- are found for the female sample, and the effects of gender equality and egalitarian gender norms on womens psychological well-being are mixed. In other words, women in more egalitarian countries are not necessarily better in mental health than those in more traditional countries. These results suggest the polarization of womens gender role preferences and work orientations, implying that women are more heterogeneous than men not only within country but also between countries.

This dissertation examines the link between economic restructuring and patterns of social capital and social control. Although social capital literature frequently examines the consequences of social capital on a variety of outcomes, the key theoretical contribution of my dissertation is a framework to explain how community structure conditions social relations among local residents. Specifically, I examine the effects of changes in economic structure on social capital. Using nine South Louisiana community case studies, I evaluate the effect of restructuring in the offshore oil industry on the development of weak ties among local residents. My central finding is that population turnover and the in-migration of workers demanded by a rapidly expanding economy enhances the density of weak tie networks within the community. This is important because weak ties have been shown to have negative impacts on crime since they serve as a foundation for exerting social control over community members engaging in collective problem solving activity. My research underscores how growing communities can better accommodate a growing population. I demonstrate that the presence of voluntary associations (Rotary, Lions, and Elks Clubs) help integrate newcomers and mitigate the negative effects of population turnover. This is in sharp contrast to social disorganization theory that posits a negative effect of population change whereby in-migration dilutes ties among community members and results in higher rates of criminal activity.

This study is a contextual event history analysis of the risk of homicide victimization in the United States from 1986 to 2002. Although the majority of research on homicide deals with how community factors influence homicide rates, a much less studied aspect of homicide victimization deals with the influence of individual factors on homicide victimization risk. This study examines the influence of contextual-level measures of social disorganization on the risk of homicide victimization and focuses specifically on how the effects of these measures change once individual-level characteristics are considered in the models. Grounded in social disorganization theory, this study includes contextual-level predictors of disadvantage, including measures representative of resource deprivation, urbanness, and housing instability. Lifestyle theory suggests that a persons individual attributes may compel that person to behave in certain ways that may work to either increase or decrease their risk of being the victim of a crime, and may also reduce or diminish the effects of the social structure on their risk of victimization. This study, using National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data matched with National Death Index (NDI) data, examines the intersection of these ideas and seeks to explain how community context influences ones chance of being a homicide victim and especially on how individual attributes alter the relationship between community context and homicide victimization. The findings of this research indicate that individuals living in areas with high concentrations of disadvantage, such as resource deprivation, urbanization, and housing instability experience increased risk of being the victim of a homicide. However, a persons individual traits, particularly age, race, and sex do, in fact, greatly reduce the criminogenic consequences of both resource deprivation and housing instability on their risk of being killed by a homicide. However, regardless of a persons individual attributes, living in an area with high levels of urbanization have three times greater odds of being killed by a homicide, compared to persons living in MSAs with less urbanization. In this study, urbanization is measured using an index obtained from a principal components analysis that contains measures of population size, population density, and two measures of racial/ethnic heterogeneity.

During the second half of the 20th century, changes in gender relations and equality have led to substantial shifts in many aspects of American life. As one feature of society, the relationship between social structure and crime has also changed with the shift from traditional to nontraditional views of gendered interaction. In particular, what were once thought to be invariant structural predictors of homicide may, in fact, have varying explanatory power over time; in particular, measurements of disadvantage and population structure may not equally affect men and women between 1970 and 2000. Therefore, the present study posits a transformation in the strength of these known covariates of homicide to explain county-level rates of homicide disaggregated by gender, by gender and victim/offender relationship, and by gender and race. Using Supplementary Homicide Reports and U.S. census data from 1970 to 2000, negative binomial regression results show variance in the explanatory power of homicide predictors between 1970 and 2000. Specifically, as they are related to male and female offending, measures of resource disadvantage have a greater effect at all time points on homicides perpetrated by females; while in contrast, measures of population structure have a larger effect on male homicide offenses in 1980, 1990, and 2000. When gender and the victim/offender relationship are considered, the most notable outcome indicates that for counts of homicides perpetrated by females who did not know their victims, the effects of structural covariates of homicide drastically increase in their predictive strength between 1980 and 2000. Finally, accounting for offenders gender and race illustrates that with homicides perpetrated by whites, regardless of gender, the association with measures of resource deprivation and population structure is significant in 1980, but nonsignificant in 1990 and 2000. In contrast, the relationship between structural predictors and homicides committed by nonwhites is consistently significant from 1980 to 2000. Conceptual and theoretical implications of the results are also proposed.

A large body of literature on the relationship between prejudice and discrimination and the size of minority populations suggests that as a minority population increases so will incidents of prejudice and/or discrimination. This school of thought is led by Hubert Blalock who contends that large minority populations generate prejudice among the majority, who view the minority as a threat to their economic and/or political standing. Minority population size has been tested and widely confirmed as a cause of anti-black prejudice and discrimination. But the corresponding research for Latinos has generally produced inconsistent and largely inconclusive findings. The reason for this confusion, according to this thesis, is that prior research has not accounted for a major turning point in the migration of Latinos. It is my contention that there are, in fact, two distinct Latino communities. One resides in the old and well-established immigrant communities that have been the destination of Latino migrants throughout the 20th century. But in recent years, Latino migrants settled in new destinations, in far-flung places, some very remote and generally lacking the social control benefits of old and well-established Latino enclaves. Thus, the link between anti-Latino sentiment and population size is more complex than previously considered. As such, my research produces four interrelated findings: 1) There is a positive relationship between percent change in the population of Latinos and resentment toward them among non-Latinos. 2) This effect exists in new Latino destinations, but not in old destinations. 3) The arrival of Latinos generates a broader resentment, not just toward Latinos specifically, but toward other minorities as well. These findings confirm the first three hypotheses. But the fourth finding does not support the final hypothesis. Specifically, my results do not confirm that anti-minority sentiment (in this case, toward Latinos) are rooted in competition over jobs. There is no significant link between the relative size of the low-skill labor market and anti-Latino prejudice. There are several implications of these findings.

This study consists of three separate, yet interrelated analyses - all three examine the effects of Latino immigration. Since the mid-1980s, the pattern of settlement by Latino migrants has changed dramatically. These migrants are now settling in parts of the United States that have never before had significant Latino populations. This has led many to fear an increase in crime. Unfortunately, early explanations of immigration and crime focused on the experience of Eastern European immigrants. Therefore, it has not been clear whether the experience of Latino immigrants could be explained in the same way especially with some researchers finding that immigrants now lower crime rates. However, most recent research on immigration has failed to analyze any of the new areas of settlement. The first study examines immigrations effect on Latino homicide victimization by grouping migrants according to their period of entry into the United States. Results show that immigration has no effect in traditional areas, while only recent immigrant arrivals have an effect in new destinations. Preliminary results from an additional analysis suggest this could be due to changing emigration patterns in Mexico. Since 1990, more Mexican migrants have been coming from states with high levels of violence. The second study attempts to explain the effects of immigration on Latino homicide with various measures of segregation. Given the beneficial nature of ethnic enclaves, it is assumed that contact between Latinos will lower homicide victimization. Results support this hypothesis, showing that Latino-Latino contact has a greater effect on homicide than Latino-White contact. However, the effect of recent immigrants in new destinations cannot be explained away by any of the segregation measures. As noted in the first analysis, a possible explanation is the changing emigration patterns of Mexico. The third and final analysis examines how Latino immigration affects black homicide rates through competition for low-skill employment. Results show that when Latinos gain ground in low-skill employment relative to blacks, black homicide victimization increases. However, the findings apply only to metropolitan and new destination areas. Further analysis reveals that among the low-skill industries, the strongest effects are for Manufacturing/Construction and Services.