<p> This thesis explores the relationship between out of school suspensions and court-involvement for youth in Mecklenburg County. Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the concept of implicit bias serve to inform this examination, interpretation, and analysis of the school to prison pipeline. The research study includes the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools&rsquo; suspension records from 2006-2013 for 21,690 youth and Mecklenburg County Sheriff&rsquo;s Office data from those same years and same youth plus for 7,349/21,690 youth, their delinquency records. This sample was thus, divided into two groups: Non-Court-Involved (14,341) and Court Involved (n=7,349). Descriptive statistics indicate that African-American students are 3-8 times more likely to be disciplined by the use of out of school suspensions than their fellow White students. The results show that African-Americans miss 11 days more of school because of OSS than their White counterpart. In addition, the results indicate that approximately every 25 days of out of school suspensions accumulates to 1 arrest. The African-Americans in the Court-Involved group average 22 days of suspension. One specific contribution of this study is the unique collaboration and data sharing between the schools and sheriff&rsquo;s office to examine and address this issue. The study results are consistent with similar research about school discipline and juvenile justice. Moreover, these findings can be used to increase awareness of the racial and ethnic disparities in educational disciplinary practices and policies in the Charlotte Mecklenburg School System and potentially, beyond.</p>

The essential socio-political question abortion raises is twofold: within whose legitimate province is the abortion decision to be made and what are the salient factors in determining subsequent resolutions over access. The answers speak to perceptions of legitimate authority, which are fundamental to the social construction of abortion. The disparate literature on abortion was examined to develop a typology of perspectives on abortion. Theories from feminist sociology and social psychology were employed to examine the impact abortion access and the subsequent negotiation over legitimate authority have on the social order. The underlying hypothesis of this research is that abortion is socially constructed through competing perspectives’ delineation of authority. Three perspectives on abortion were culled from the literature on abortion rights to create an index of attitudes: Feminist, Traditional, and Population Control. Coupling this index with a measure of attitudes toward access to legal abortion and a measure of the consignment of legitimate authority to women, an overall typology of abortion attitudes was hypothesized. The research questions at hand were: 1) Do attitudes concerning abortion access support an index of attitudes; Feminist, Traditional and Population Control; and, to further construct the typology, 2) where does each perspective locate the authority to make the abortion decision? This study was designed to explore the definition of abortion, as delineated above, by men and women entering adulthood under liberalized abortion and contraceptive laws. In order to uncover the social construction of abortion, this study focused on the audience of the rhetorical debate over abortion, instead of the activists as is done in most of the literature on abortion attitudes. A seven page questionnaire was administered to a nonprobability sample consisting of 397 undergraduate students at a large public urban university in the Southeast and was used for exploration into the social construction of abortion. The Feminist and Population Control dimensions were expected to resemble each other on the abortion attitudes measure, but differ with respect to legitimate authority. Conversely, the Traditional and Population Control dimensions were expected to perform similarly on the legitimate authority measure, but differ on attitudes about access to legal abortion. Additionally, it was postulated that personal experience with abortion has the effect of making one more empathetic, and, therefore, more supportive of legal abortion. The expected pattern of responses to the abortion attitudes and legitimate authority measures were confirmed for two of the three dimensions; Feminist and Traditional. The Population Control dimension failed to correlate with either dependent variable. Finally, it appears that this study was not able to capture any influence that experience with abortion might have on one’s attitudes toward abortion access.

Within the last two decades, the United States has witnessed the growth of a phenomenon which the media has referred to as "The New Age Movement". This multi-faceted social pattern includes astrology, meditation, mysticism, and eastern philosophies, the popularity of which have increased significantly in the 1980's. This thesis is a case study of the "New Age Movement". First, I develop a descriptive model of the key ideological themes and organizational structures of this social pattern. Subsequently, I organize this model in terms of several sociologically based theoretical frameworks including activity fads, social movements, and sociocultural shifts, in order to provide the most appropriate classification system. The results suggest that a synthetic model which utilizes elements of each of the individual perspectives is the most useful framework for analyzing a social pattern that is as broad and complex as "The New Age Movement".

A consequence of systemic racism in the United States is low-wealth minority neighborhoods that are segregated from the rest of society and whose residents have less opportunities for social mobility than the general population. These neighborhoods often become the target of post-racial neoliberal projects of community development that emphasize individual development and achievement, or assisting residents with escaping their community as a means of achieving social mobility. One of the major forms of development is sport for development, aimed at youth in low-wealth minority neighborhoods. Here I call for a new narrative of community development that is critical, taking into account the significance of race at the individual and structural level for shaping the everyday experiences of residents of low-wealth neighborhoods. This new narrative should be asset-based, and make use of critical race concepts, such as community cultural wealth, and critical models, such as the Black Organizational Autonomy model, to reframe community development as a process of resistance capable of transforming both individuals and communities. My case study of the Pearson Youth Alliance football and soccer programs provides an example of the critical praxis of sport for development in a low-wealth minority neighborhood in the southern United States. I elaborate on this new narrative of development, especially the ways residents of the Pearson neighborhood perceive the work of the Pearson Youth Alliance and frame it as an ongoing project of resistance to manifestations of systemic racism.

This thesis is a study of the relationship between selected socio-demographic variables and the attitudes of rural elderly toward impending death. Sex, age, and religious group affiliation are examined to determine the extent to which these factors help to explain variations in attitudes toward death. The sample was comprised of 65 respondents: 31 males and 34 females, including 20 Catholics and 45 Protestants. All respondents were between the ages of 60-92. The sample for this study is a subset of 234 Life History Interviews collected by Dr. Wilbur H. Watson (1978-80) in a larger study of older blacks in rural southeastern states focusing on "Informal Social Networks in Support of Elderly Blacks in the Black Belt of the United States." The Life History Interview was designed to facilitate the development of descriptive and explanatory data on personality development, changes in individual life styles, social roles, and community organization. This study limited its scope to data from two states: Mississippi and Louisiana. The following hypotheses were tested in this study: 1. There is a significant difference between males and females in attitudes toward death. 2. There is an inverse relationship between age and attitudes toward death. 3. Protestants have more positive attitudes toward death than Catholics. To analyze these data, secondary analysis involving descriptive and inferential techniques were used. The findings showed that there was no relationship between sex and attitude toward impending death. However, a significant inverse relationship was found between age and attitudes toward death. The findings also showed that Protestants had significantly more positive attitudes toward death than Catholics. It was concluded that age and religious group affiliation have significant effects on attitudes toward impending death. However, there was no apparent relationship betweens sex and attitudes toward impending death.

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<p> This dissertation addresses the topics of stigma and legal consciousness through close examination of the attitudes and life experiences of legal gun owners in upstate New York. Based in the symbolic interactionist tradition, and using a grounded theory approach, this project explores data gathered from participant-observation sessions, and semi-structured interviews with 37 participants. Analysis of this data reveals that respondents highlight safety, responsibility, skillful operation, and fun as the primary values they associate with the ownership and use of firearms. Additionally, in a departure from previous research in this area, respondents reported few individual experiences of social stigma, and engage in very few stigma management techniques surrounding their ownership and use of firearms. However, respondents do experience negative outcomes surrounding their engagement with the political realm, leading to perceptions of disadvantage, especially in state-level politics. Using Ewick and Silbey&rsquo;s theory of legal consciousness as a framework, respondents&rsquo; accounts reveal how their perceptions of the political process as a whole are best viewed using the &ldquo;with the law&rdquo; perspective, whereas their attitudes about New York State politics specifically are better described using the &ldquo;against the law&rdquo; perspective. These research findings can be applied more broadly to gain understanding about the nature of stigma and its effects on individuals and groups, as well as the conditions under which groups feel engaged with, or disconnected from, legal and political processes.</p>

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