Despite the availability of affordable, clean water from taps in our homes, increasing numbers of people are willing to pay for the convenience of portable water, and to consume bottled water imported from an exotic location, such as Fiji. Consequently, FIJI Water, an American-owned multinational corporation, now constitutes approximately 29 percent of Fijis domestic exports. An important question that no one has asked to date is how do stakeholders in Fiji make sense of the rapidly growing bottled water industry? Examining how water is changing from a natural entitlement to a commodity throughout the world, and exploring how this is affecting stakeholders in Fiji in particular, will help in understanding what sort of impacts commodification of a natural resource on a worldwide scale has on a community level. Using data collected through interviews and observations in Fiji, this qualitative research project examines discourses that residents of Fijian communities in close proximity to the bottled water plant and representatives of the FIJI Water Company use to make sense of the global bottled water market and how these perceptions relate to larger questions about globalization, consumerism, inequality, and justice. But what happens if the demand for bottled water dries up? This thesis examines the dependency that Fiji is developing with the bottled water industry and analyzes the situation using an environmental justice framework. I argue that although the bottled water industry may be beneficial in the short-term for some Fijian stakeholders because of the jobs it provides and the donations the company makes to local communities, the environmental, economic, social, and cultural impacts of the industry may be detrimental to Fiji in the future.

According to social disorganization and systemic theories, crime will flourish in areas with high residential mobility, low socioeconomic status, high racial heterogeneity, and high rates of family disruption. Essentially, these theories posit that these forms of structural disadvantage weaken the ability of local residents to achieve mutual goals and solve neighborhood problems, thereby resulting in high crime rates. Several studies have examined the utility of the social disorganization tradition for understanding macro-level variation in crime rates, particularly across neighborhoods. I review this research and propose three ways in which the literature can be extended. First, it is necessary to consider more critically the correspondence between the theoretical and empirical definition of what constitutes a neighborhood rather than relying on the convenience of data for empirical definitions. Second, empirical research should account for the fact that local neighborhoods are not immune to the structural conditions of surrounding areas. Finally, researchers should be more cognizant of whether the effects of neighborhood characteristics influence violent and property crimes similarly. Using data from seventy-four neighborhoods bounded by cultural and historical lines in St. Louis, my analyses speak to each of these issues indicating that both violent and property crime rates are predicted by population turnover and structural disadvantage. Thus, this analysis demonstrated no need for crime-specific models of social disorganization.

In this dissertation I find that changes associated with welfare policy, federal devolution, and the global economy constrain service providers and communities, but that local factors in the two counties mediate how organizational actors adapt to these challenges. I use global political economic theory, organizational theory, and theories of inequality to investigate how local actors address poverty in their communities. Specifically, I examine through a comparative case study how government and nonprofit service providers in two North Carolina counties cope with challenges that derive from global and national levels as well as local factors to serve the poor. I rely on extensive interviews, observations, and secondary data. I find that officials in the rural county are severely constrained in their ability to address poverty, due to lower organizational capacity and very limited financial and social resources. The implications of poverty policy for rural and urban areas differ. Not only has inequality within place been exacerbated by recent national and global trends, but inequality between places is aggravated as well. Further, most resources in the urban county are used in ways that reinforce dependence on the low-wage labor market. In both counties services are disciplinary in nature, reflecting the neoliberal environment in which service providers operate. Only in some casesâand only in the urban countyâdo agencies address the marketâs inadequacies and general issues of class, race, and gender inequality. In fact, only when there is high organizational capacity, some autonomy, and significant embeddedness in the community, do I find local leaders who are willing to stop regulating the poor as should-be low-wage workers.

Research on stress and coping has attempted to explain how people deal with difficult life events, such as the diagnosis of a potentially life-threatening disease. Little attention, however, has been given to how people work together to cope with and manage the emotions evoked by such events. The present study looks at women who joined four breast cancer support groups to help them cope with the emotional fallout of the disease. Data from participant observation in these four groups, in addition to 35 in-depth interviews, are used to develop an analysis of how the women learned to cope collectively with their disease. Seven emotion-work strategies are identified and discussed, including: (a) seeking information; (b) concealing illness; (c) engaging in sexualized joking; (d) practicing compensatory femininity; (e) creating and sharing medicalized stories; (f) taking on the identity of breast cancer survivor; and (g) redefining illness as a blessing. The analysis shows how these strategies were influenced by the class-based resources the women brought with them to the groups. It also illustrates how these strategies (and thus the women?s coping efforts) were influenced and constrained by the mainstream breast cancer culture.

Proponents of social learning theory suggest that decades of empirical criminological research have validated the core propositions of social learning theory, and that future efforts should be directed toward further theoretical elaboration and integration (see Akers 1998; Akers and Jensen 2006). In response, some critics have suggested that empirical research has failed to isolate the causal mechanisms underlying the correlates of crime and deviance, and, as a result, existing ?data are seemingly consistent with several theories at once? (Sampson 1999:443). In this paper, I outline the causal importance of differential reinforcement in Akers? social learning theory, and I provide a systematic review of a sample of psychological and criminological literature on human reinforcement learning in an attempt to evaluate the current empirical status of Akers? social learning theory. I find that the empirical evidence supporting human reinforcement learning processes found in the behavioral psychology literature may not be directly generalizable to social learning theory, and that measurement difficulties have led criminology researchers to use indirect measures or to simply leave the concept of differential reinforcement out of empirical analyses altogether. As a result, many of social learning theory?s hypothesized causal linkages remain unexamined. I conclude that future research should be directed toward testing social learning theory?s central hypotheses regarding differential reinforcement before moving on to expand and test the theory?s macro-level implications.

The physical and psychological health benefits of marriage have been well-documented in the family and medical sociology literature. Given the recent increases in the prevalence of cohabitation, this research asks whether marriage still confers the same health benefits, and whether cohabitation might do the same. Using two waves of a nationally representative sample, the effects of union type on eleven health outcomes were examined, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally; processual factors such as social support, health behaviors, and socioeconomic status were also examined. Union type was not a consistent predictor of health outcomes: spouses appear somewhat better off than singles, but major differences between cohabitation and marriage were not found. Further, the health benefits of marriage are primarily afforded to men, and the benefits of both union types are more pronounced for younger persons. Social support was a consistent and positive predictor of physical and psychological health, although men may receive greater benefits than women. Health behavior measures were not effective predictors of health outcomes, but this may be due to measurement issues. Socioeconomic status measures were also consistent predictors of physical and psychological health, although an individualâs employment was more often significant than total household income. Additional analyses were conducted to test the âselection hypothesisâ â that healthier people are more likely to enter unions. Results are supportive of selective effects for marriage, but not nearly as much so for cohabitation, implying that perhaps different mate selection processes are at work for the two union types. Theoretical, research, and policy implications are discussed.

In this study, I extend the scholarship on maternal employment and the allocation of household resources by evaluating the effects of mothers? time spent in the labor force and mothers? relative income on children?s cognitive development. I use a gendered resource allocation model that recognizes differences in investment preferences between men and women and how women can use increases in their relative earnings to direct greater amounts of family resources towards enrichment goods and services that promote child well-being. Support for this model comes mostly from research conducted outside of the United States. This study contributes to this research literature by using an American sample drawn from the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. In addition, I contribute to the research on maternal employment and child outcomes with a longitudinal analysis of children?s cognitive development trajectories from age five to 14. I find some negative effects on children?s initial levels of cognitive skills for measures of both early and current maternal employment hours. Some of these effects are moderated by race, the supportiveness of children?s home environment, and mothers? cognitive skills. Contrary to predictions from a gendered resource allocation model, I find that children?s cognitive development is lowest in households in which mothers? and fathers? incomes approximate parity, likely because of a lack of clear specialization in such households. I discuss these findings in terms of theoretical, research, and policy applications.

This paper is a partial and exploratory test of Bernardâs (1990) theory of angry aggression within disadvantaged communities as well as Agnewâs (1999) community-level strain theory. These theories posit that disadvantage and other structural characteristics of neighborhoods lead to environmental stressors, which ultimately may increase anger among individuals who externalize attributions of blame. To date, no study has assessed whether structural characteristics of neighborhoods are related to increased individual anger. Using Ross and Brittâs (1995) survey of Community, Crime, and Health: Illinois Residents, I assess Bernardâs (1990) and Agnewâs (1999) theoretical arguments. The findings show that only one structural indicator measured at the census tract level, urban location, is related to the individual outcome of anger. However, the stressors assessed in this study are positively related to anger, particularly among individuals who externalize blame. There are two main implications of these findings. (1) Community crime models should include measures of emotions such as anger, as community processes have psychological impacts on individuals that may motivate them to commit criminal acts. (2) The structural indicators identified by Bernard (1990) and Agnew (1999) require reevaluation, as only urban location was shown to be related to anger.

The purpose of this research is to examine married women?s perceptions of the division of household labor. Distributive justice theory has suggested the mechanisms through which individuals determine their situations are fair. However, the majority of applications of the distributive justice theory have been focused on Western nations. This research extends these previous applications in two ways. First, the self-evaluation theory is integrated with distributive justice theory and elaborated into a new theory, called Contextual Distributive Justice Theory. Second, part of this new theory is tested using a sample of 4581 married women from the International Social Justice Project data. Using multi-level analysis, this research suggests that context does matter in predicting married women?s perceptions of fairness of the division of household labor. There are statistically significant differences in women?s average perceptions of fairness of the division of household labor based upon their nation of residence. Context indirectly affects women?s perceptions of fairness through national ideology and women?s overall empowerment. Further, women?s individual measures of empowerment affect their perceptions of fairness differently based upon the overall empowerment of women in their nation of residence. Implications for further theoretical elaboration and empirical examination are discussed.

Power-control theory provides one of most comprehensive theoretical explorations of the gender gap in delinquency to date. The theory posits that the relative power of husbands and wives in the workplace translates directly into their relative power within the home. Household power relations, in turn, are played out in the relative control of sons and daughters, influencing ultimately the gender gap in delinquency through social psychological processes of familial control and socialization toward risk. This paper reformulates power-control theory in two important ways. First, it borrows from the family and gender literature on status-reversal and single mother households to critique the simplistic discussion of the translation of gendered power relations from workplaces to households. In doing so, the paper specifies an alternative discussion of power relations and family structures. Second, the paper draws upon criminological research and theorizing on gender and delinquency to posit a more thorough discussion of the social psychological mechanisms linking gendered power differentials to the gender gap in delinquency. Thus, the paper presents a reformulation of power-control theory that reconsiders both structural-level power differentials between mothers and fathers and individual-level processes of control and socialization of sons and daughters. From this reformulation, I derive and test hypotheses using a nationally representative sample of youths. The results suggest that further consideration of how power translates from workplaces to households is necessary and also provide some support for recent theorizing about gender differences in the social psychological mechanisms leading to the gender gap in delinquency.