This dissertation focuses on school context and the whether or not good schools matter for low SES students. Existing research and theory do not provide consistent expectations regarding the performance of low SES students in middle/high SES school environments. To untangle the relationship among socioeconomic background, the school setting, and educational outcomes, I use a large, longitudinal, nationally-representative dataset, The Education Longitudinal Survey of 2002 (ELS:2002) to analyze enrollment in postsecondary institutions, institutional selectivity, and future educational expectations. Models use weighted regression with causal effect estimators to assess a potential causal effect of good schools for low SES students. While analyses using a composite SES measure (education, occupation, and income) do not show a significant causal effect of middle/high SES schools on low SES students college enrollment, models utilizing parents education as a measure for social class show good schools to have a significant causal effect on level of postsecondary education attempted for students from lower class backgrounds. A causal effect for good schools also emerges when looking at the selectivity of four year postsecondary institutions.

Civic community theory is a macro-level social control perspective that has emerged within the past 10 years as an explanation of community variation in crime rates. The theory is based on the assumption that well-integrated communities are better able to regulate their members behaviors than poorly integrated communities. It has been particularly successful in explaining violent crime rates in rural counties or communities, but research has generally ignored the relationship between civic community theory and violent crime in urban areas. The current study aims to determine the applicability of the civic community perspective to urban areas, as a link has not been demonstrated in previous research. To test its applicability, census tract data are analyzed. The link between civic community theory and violent crime, particularly homicide and aggravated assault, is determined using secondary data geocoded to census tracts in Orleans Parish, Louisiana. Data are gathered from the U.S. Census Bureaus American Community Survey, the Zip Code Business Patterns, and the New Orleans Police Department. Negative binomial regression techniques are utilized after creating a measure to capture any spatial autocorrelation that may exist between census tracts. The results reveal that the protective effects of civic community theory are applicable to violent crime in urban areas. Each civic community measure was found to be negative and significantly related to homicide and aggravated assault counts individually and when combined. Additionally, an interactive effect between civic engagement and resource disadvantage indicated that the protective effect of civic engagement is stronger in areas plagued with high levels of disadvantage. Upon analyzing the standardized percent changes, it was revealed that the strength of the individual civic community measures varies depending on which violent crime is being predicted. Specifically, self-employment was found to have a greater protective effective against homicide while civic engagement and homeownership had greater protective effects against aggravated assault. The paper is concluded with a discussion of theoretical implications, limitations of the current project, and avenues for future research.

Most of the literature on social inequality reports that traditional old-fashioned, overt racism has been transformed into a modern symbolic form of covert racism in contemporary American society. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva asserts that color-blind racism is the dominant form of racism that persists in the post-Civil Rights period in the USA. A large body of research argues that education may not make too much of a difference in individuals racial attitudes. Studies also show that despite the fact that education is a crucial social institution, it cannot make the ills of intolerance and negative racial perceptions cease to exist. Given the fact of the subtle, complex role of higher levels of educational qualification, this thesis contends that Whites higher levels of educational attainment do not necessarily ensure decreases in negative racial perceptions/attitudes toward minorities. Also, it is hypothesized that parents higher levels of educational attainment do not have any positive effect on decreasing negative racial perceptions/attitudes toward minorities. The present study produces the following findings: 1) there is a negative association between Whites educational attainment and their perceptions about the differences between them and African Americans. Specifically, education is negatively associated with beliefs that African American-White differences are due most African-Americans having less in-born ability to learn or lacking the motivation or will power to pull themselves up out of poverty. However, interestingly, the association between education and Whites perceptions about the differences between them and minorities being due to discrimination remain non-significant in this analysis. 2) Parents educational attainment is negatively associated with Whites perceptions of the differences between Whites and African Americans being due to discrimination. 3) This study does not report any significant relationship of the interaction term between Whites educational attainment and African American interviewer. Interestingly, the existing evidence does not provide a clear pattern of support for the hypothesis that Whites educational qualification and racial perceptions/attitudes are not inversely related to each other in the American social structure.

A significant body of literature has focused on the effects of religion on health and marriage on health, as well as on religion and marriage. However, there is limited research on the effects of religion and marriage on self-reported health. Using the first and only wave of the Panel Study of American Religion and Ethnicity, ordinary least square regression models are compared to investigate the causal effects of religion and marriage on self-reported health. In the analysis, it is found that religion and marriage, as forms of social support, individually have significant affects on self-reported health as the literature indicates it should. Yet religion and marriage have no significant effect on one another; there is no causal effect found between religion and marriage. From this analysis, it is suggested that religion and marriage should be discussed in the context of social support that has a positive relationship on health.

Within environmental education the promotion of environmental activism is still considered contentious despite being a major goal since its inception. While some argue on simply raising awareness a growing number believe an action component is necessary to produce citizens capable of addressing environmental issues. Critical environmental education (Critical EE) is one method of integrating action into an educational program that teaches students to better understand the social and natural environment through an integrative participatory teaching-learning culture which allows students to construct contextual value-laden knowledge. This study uses data gathered from six months of participant observation at Our School at Blair Grocery, an urban farming school which teaches from an environmental justice perspective, to examine how critical education promotes student action. Results indicate that critical reflection and action within an egalitarian, youth-centered community located in a disadvantaged neighborhood produces students who are more enlightened and empowered to create change. However, concerns around funding and safety led staff to not adhere to maintaining an egalitarian ethic, undermining the individualism and unpredictability that critical EE thrives upon and producing disconnects in students education.

Community members across U.S. municipalities grow more vocal in their concerns about how outside retail corporations shape local community life. The way these residents respond to nation-global corporations, and the way they make arguments about what it means to live in their community, is an interesting social phenomenon. By studying community response to big box retail development I answer the question: how does a geographic location become ascribed with a definition of community? Utilizing geographic theorist Krista Paulsens place character element as an analytic tool to understand a local response to potential development of a Wal-Mart Supercenter, I examine definitions of community as they relate to issues of consumption practices and community relations. These issues were identified through various methodologies including ethnography, semi-structured interviews, historical narrative analysis and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) demographic data. Building on sociologist Thomas Gieryns sociology of place framework, I uncovered new aspects of the socio-cultural, political and economic makeup of the communities studied. This makeup is represented in the material, social practices and symbolic characteristics by which people denote local place character. Identifying these characteristics is an important step in understanding why social movements occur where they do, the nature of the emplaced social movement activity, and what inspires community members to respond to what they perceive as an external threat. My research findings advance a place-sensitive sociology that reintroduces the role of community as a part of an individuals identity. By expanding the definition of community beyond the geographical setting, the built location and the meanings and values associated with a place, can be studied as part of individuals response to social change. Additionally, my research finds that a place-sensitive sociology is also important for understanding the varied and nuanced ways that globalization impacts various scales, particularly the local. As the traditional national barriers to the global flow of people and commerce are eroded, local communities will increasingly become a focal point at which globalization can be challenged.

A gender revolution has transformed the institution of asylum in the United States. The introduction of gender-based persecution laws and policies in the past decade ushered in a new era of politics in asylum decisions. Facilitated by recent laws and policies, immigrant women may gain asylum and legal entry into the U.S. by claiming they are persecuted based on factors such as female circumcision, honor killings, domestic violence, coercive family planning, forced marriage, or repressive social norms. Immigrant advocates have championed these laws and policies as reflecting the canonical feminist declaration that womens rights are human rights. The legal recognition that certain human rights abuses are gendered because they overwhelmingly happen to women has emerged as the benchmark for gendered equality in asylum adjudication. However, legal recognition of gender-related persecution is only half the story. A study of the implementation of gender-based persecution laws and policies makes visible certain assumptions about femininity, masculinity, sexuality, race, class, and nation in which asylum seekers, immigration attorneys, service providers, immigration judges, and asylum officers engage when making, preparing, and adjudicating asylum claims. In this dissertation, I offer empirical evidence of how gender structures the legal institution of asylum in the United States.

This study provides new insights on the state of participation in a contemporary ethnoreligious group organization, the Greek Orthodox Church. I examine the ethnoreligious identities and practices of participants who were diverse along lines of church activity, gender, age, generational status, marital status, ancestry, and even religion in two Pittsburgh-area churches. Data were collected through one-on-one in-depth interviews as well as participant observation within the churches organizations to capture the attitudes and experiences of the Greek Orthodox Church participant and to understand the reasons for participation amidst the predominant white ethnic climate of symbolic ethnicity. Two major themes emerged from the data. First, unmarried Greek Orthodox Americans in these organizations definitely considered how the ethnic/religious background of their chosen mate would impact their own, as well as their childrens, future in the church. Second, participants of varying generational statuses referenced different sources of attraction to the churchs activities: earlier generation (first and second) participants commonly identified the ethnic and ethnoreligious appeal of the church, while later generation (third) and convert participants acknowledged a primarily religious connection to the church. These findings suggest that theories of assimilation and symbolic ethnicity, which predict a decline in ethnic adherence, may not apply to ethnic groups who also share an exclusive religion. On the contrary, the two organizations studied here are gaining membership as Greek Orthodox Americans increasingly marry outside their ethnicity/religion but bring in their convert spouses to the organizations. Given their changing social composition, however, these churches are facing a crucial issue for their future: whether to maintain the current balance of religious and ethnic activity or to change the focus of activities to cater to the growing interest in religious-based activity.

The South African state has responded favorably to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) social movement organizations (SMOs) efforts to protect and extend sexual and gender minority rights, whereas Namibian state leaders have verbally attacked LGBT organizing and threatened to arrest sexual and gender minorities. In these countries, LGBT persons have organized themselves into publicly visible social movement organizations (SMOs) over the last ten years. Amid such different official responses to LGBT organizing, how, when, and why do Namibian and South African LGBT social movement organizations become publicly visible or retreat from visibility? To answer this question, I turn to sociologist James M. Jaspers (2004, 2006) concept of strategic dilemma. LGBT social movement organizations encountered strategic dilemmas of visibility or invisibility when they decide whether and how to become visible, modify their public profile, or forgo political opportunities. To understand the micropolitical dynamics of how LGBT social movement organizations negotiated such strategic dilemmas of visibility and invisibility, I engaged in intensive, continuous ethnographic observation of four Namibian and South African LGBT social movement organizations for approximately 800 hours and analyzed my ethnographic fieldnotes. I also analyzed more than 2,100 newspaper articles and LGBT SMO documents and conducted 56 in-depth interviews with staff, members, and leaders of LGBT SMOs. In this dissertation, I explore the varied strategic dilemmas of visibility and invisibility that Namibian and South African LGBT SMOs faced. My findings advance social movement theorizing by demonstrating the importance of studying social movements in the global South. In addition, my findings contribute to postcolonial feminist and queer theorizing by showing how marginalized sexual and gender minorities in post-apartheid Namibia and South Africa used public visibility as a strategy to argue for their democratic inclusion.

Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) was created in 1996, and it effectively abolished the sixty-year-old federal entitlement program for poor women and children known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). TANF imposed lifetime limits for receipt of assistance as well as work requirements for all recipients. These changes are problematic for many reasons and hit especially hard for women who are subject to abuse from an intimate partner. In this project, I use a qualitative approach to explore the relationship between womens experiences with battering, work and welfare use. I interviewed 20 women enrolled in a Work First program in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. These women are transitioning from welfare into the paid workforce. I found that many of these women enjoyed the social and financial benefits of paid employment. Women generally view work as beneficial for their families and believe it will afford them greater opportunities and allow them to be good role models for their children. Unfortunately, for all of these women, abuse complicates their journey. For some, work means an escape from violence at home. For others, abuse at home is an insurmountable obstacle to work. Understanding what work and welfare mean to them and the hurdles these women must overcome is critical to assisting them in their quest to break the cycle of dependency on the state or men. We must be sensitive to the variations in womens experiences with welfare and dispel the myths regarding broad stereotypes that doom all poor women and their children to a stigmatized existence.