This dissertation research uses the analysis of internet-based comments on two major news stories to study the role of identity in anchoring power during discursive participation. For this purpose, identity includes the categorical group memberships that people may place themselves or others into, such as gender, race, or occupation. Identity, as an anchor, is used as a resource for the purpose of linking one’s wishes to power, with power being the amount of preferential treatment given to any particular identity in determining the course of events or proper direction of discussion. The Daniela Pelaez case and Trayvon Martin case were each selected for making national headlines at approximately the same time, both occurring in the same state, and both being in reference life altering circumstances for minority teenagers, yet representing different outcomes. A content analysis of news comment board posts for the Daniela Pelaez and Trayvon Martin cases has been performed to ascertain the use of identity in comments and prevalence of particular identities, the use of identity to anchor power, the acknowledgement of identities by readers, and the conditions under which identities were used. One article for each case was selected from the same national news source, with an analysis completed for the first 1,000 comments on each article. Identity used as an anchor to power is found to exist, but only has a significant interaction with presentation of an argument for the Martin case. This indicates that the association between anchoring identity and presenting an argument can vary by news story. Identity as an anchor itself varies with race, and is dependent on how race relates to the news story. It is also found that anchoring is more dependent on authors’ expectations of what others will consider important than it is effective on readers’ actual recordable reactions. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Sociology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester 2017. / November 14, 2017. / Includes bibliographical references. / Deana Rohlinger, Professor Directing Dissertation; Carl Schmertmann, University Representative; Paromita Sanyal, Committee Member; Koji Ueno, Committee Member.

This dissertation uses second homeowners as a lens through which to understand contemporary changes, challenges, and opportunities for post-industrial urban and rural communities. Over the past twenty years, second homeownership has steadily increased across the United States. Although this concentrates in rural, amenity rich destinations, select global cities are also experiencing a new surge of this form of homeownership. Despite this shift, little is known about the everyday routines and practices of second homeowners, as a group or class, within and across urban and rural locales. To unpack these processes, this dissertation utilizes in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations in Rangeley, Maine and Boston, Massachusetts. The case of Rangeley advances the understanding of how the meanings people attribute to places have the power to shape local life. This chapter reveals how, and the conditions under which, both second homeowners and permanent residents—who have distinct orientations to the town—situate second homeowners as a venerable visitor, a narrative which celebrates second homeowners as a deserving, and lauded member of local life. This case broadens our vision of the variable ways in which rural place distinction can emerge and the conditions under which it varies, by turning attention to the ways in which two groups of locally embedded actors—with presumably distinct interests—build consensus over a place’s distinct local qualities. The second case traces two types of second homeowners in Boston: speculators and specters. The former, who purchased second homes between 1980 and 1999 in gentrifying neighborhoods, engaged in city-building projects through direct civic and political participation. The latter, who purchased second homes after 2000 in upscale neighborhoods, more inconspicuously shape the contours of urban life through donations to and participation in elite, high-cultural institutions. These findings shed light on the form and function of increasingly affluent central cities. Together, these cases underscore the heterogeneity of affluent in-migrants within and across urban and rural communities and the variable ways in which they shape the form and function of post-industrial locales. I furthermore utilize second homeowners to broaden our understanding of the shifting cultural meanings of the city and the country.

Since the mid-20th century, we have seen a rise in the percentage of women who work in the paid labor force, including women with children. Over the course of that time, much research has focused on the challenges that women have faced in finding ways to balance these “new” employment roles with the domestic labor traditionally considered women’s work, particularly childrearing and care of the home (e.g. Hoschschild 1989; Hays 1996; Christopher 2012). Increasingly research has suggested a shifting of domestic labor, such that men are beginning to share more (although not yet an equal share) of the burden for childcare and housework (Fillo et al. 2015; Pew Research Center 2017). At the same time, though, changing ideas about appropriate parenting practices, particularly for mothers of young children, have led to generally more intensive and focused parenting behavior than ever (Faircloth 2014). Thus, for many people, especially young working women, parenting may be more stressful than ever, as they are more likely than women in the past to combine multiple work and family roles and hold higher expectations for their engagement as a mother. There still is inadequate research, however, about the factors that predict the specific combinations of employment and childrearing roles in which women will engage, particularly during their early adult years, and little is known about how women in the various combinations of activity are faring in terms of their mental health outcomes. This dissertation contributes meaningfully to the existing literature on young women’s involvement in employment and childrearing activities and their relation to mental health outcomes within two distinct analytical chapters, both of which draw on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). The first paper examines the distinct employment-childrearing combinations of activity that are common among women in their mid-late 20s and early 30s in the United States today, and, relying upon a lifecourse perspective as a theoretical guide, uses multinomial logistic regression to determine the socio-demographic characteristics and childhood/adolescent family factors that significantly predict particular employment-childrearing combinations. The analyses examine the long-term influence of the mother-daughter relationship during adolescence, maternal work and education status, maternal religious background and general childhood SES, and whether any relationships between these variables and adult employment-childrearing roles is conditioned by race/ethnicity or other status characteristics. The second paper focuses specifically upon women in their mid-late 20s and early 30s who are mothers, to determine whether there is a relationship between specific employment-childrearing combinations and negative mental health outcomes. Specifically, this paper relies on a stress process model and OLS regression to examine both measures of internalized mental health outcomes, such as self-reported stress and depressive symptoms, and externalized mental health outcomes, such as problematic drinking-related outcomes. In addition to direct effects, analyses examine potential mediating and moderating influences on the relationship between employment-childrearing combinations and mental health outcomes. Results of this dissertation suggest that the experiences that young girls have within their families of origin, particularly their experiences with and observations of their own mothers, have enduring consequences, influencing their adult outcomes, including the specific employment-childrearing situations in which they find themselves during the early stages of their motherhood. In general, it appears that childhood/adolescent factors may be more predictive of young women’s decisions to have children, at least by their early 30s, than they are of the particular types of employment arrangements women who do have children will hold. Among women who are mothers, maternal presence during adolescence appears a particularly important predictor of engagement in different employment situations, suggesting an important and enduring role-modeling effect. While the employment-childrearing combinations have little direct association with self-reported stress levels of young mothers, employment-childrearing combinations are significantly associated with changes in levels of problematic drinking-related outcomes and depressive symptoms over time. In particular, stay at home mothers tend to experience significantly lower levels of increase in these negative outcomes than do their full-time working mother peers. Interestingly, despite common notions that part-time working mothers are able to have the “best of both worlds,” no significant differences emerge between full-time working mothers and part-time working mothers in terms of stress, drinking-related problems or depressive symptoms. Overall, these findings increase our understanding of the factors that predict the employment-childrearing situations of women in their mid-late 20s and early 30s, and have important implications for our ability to identify the groups of young mothers who may be at most risk for declining mental health outcomes. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Sociology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2018. / June 28, 2018. / Employment, Mental Health, Motherhood / Includes bibliographical references. / Kathryn Harker Tillman, Professor Directing Dissertation; Lenore McWey, University Representative; Karin Brewster, Committee Member; Miranda Waggoner, Committee Member.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in verbal and nonverbal communication and socialization, and behaviors that are restricted and repetitive in nature. As there is no cure, inherent in an autism diagnosis is a high degree of uncertainty, and prognosis is highly dependent on how the child responds to his or her individual treatment. Beginning with the empirical finding that all but two children undergoing assessment at an autism clinic received a diagnosis of the disorder, this dissertation argues for an institutional understanding of diagnosis. Parents and children are processed through a network of agents and organizations which eventually leads to the assignment of the diagnostic label of autism. Diagnosis is not an isolated act; rather, it is a prolonged process that is neither independent of the content of the diagnostic category itself nor its history. Based on participant observation, in-depth interviews and content analysis, I analyze the process through which parents and clinicians arrive at an autism diagnosis. I argue that the interests of parents and clinicians are not pre-conceived, motivational factors that direct their actions, but that their interests are constituted through interaction with the institutional matrix in which they are embedded. Parents do not enter this process wanting ambiguity about their child's potential, they wish for a cure; clinicians do not want to dispense ambiguous diagnoses, but aim at providing definitive prognoses. However, during the diagnostic process, the interests and actions of both are mutually adjusted to, and coordinated with, one another. From their initial interactions with Early Intervention therapists, parents learn how to identify the symptoms of autism in their children. They also learn how to find a physician who can diagnose autism, and how to obtain treatment services. In effect, children become patients-in-waiting, occupying a liminal state between health and disability, and parents enter a race against time to re-train aberrant neural pathways. In diagnostic interviews, clinicians alternate between narrative modes which frame autism as either a real disease, a performance, or a label with which to obtain services. Depending on parents' needs, clinicians switch between these different frames in order to re-translate parents' interests, ushering them from the temporality of cure to that of "one day at a time." Ultimately, I observed that nearly all children received a diagnosis of autism as a result of the clinic's positioning within the institutional funnel. Finally, this study describes the historical use of autism diagnostic instruments as they reveal the looping processes that have altered the autistic prototype as well as the alternating privileged status of parental and clinical expertise over time.

This dissertation asks how global humanitarian spaces are being made through the socio-material practices associated with the Cluster Approach for the coordination of humanitarian action. Drawing on in-depth interviews with humanitarian professionals from the UN, the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement and various humanitarian NGOs, participant observation in cluster training courses, and an extensive documentary review, this dissertation traces the various practices, material arrangements, and knowledge practices through which the Cluster Approach is enacting global humanitarian spaces and achieving a global scale of humanitarian action. Starting with an exploration of the places and territorializations of global spaces, this dissertation moves into an account of the ways crises are made knowable and sites are connected through the circulation of information within the clusters. The dissertation also looks at the temporal orientations of humanitarian action are implicated in the designation of spaces as specifically humanitarian by different cluster actors, before finally considering how the deployment of different material response items enact different spatial relations and timelines of crisis. Rather than finding that practices are unified or that they enact global humanitarian spaces in a singular way, the dissertation finds that socio-material practices associated with the Cluster Approach are multiple, making different global humanitarian spaces.

Remittance flows to Bangladesh during the 2008 global financial crisis presented an exceptional case of resilience while most remittance recipient countries were experiencing a drastic decline, as was predicted by leading world economists (World Bank, Ratha 2009). The question I seek to resolve in this dissertation is: Why did remittance practices from Bangladeshi immigrants keep on flowing when the majority of remittance flows to many other developing countries declined following the 2008 economic recession? One reason is the strong presence of what I call a "moral economy of giving and sharing" that is guided by cultural or religious repertoires on family obligations, kinship, gender, hierarchy, and charity. Drawing on empirical narratives and biographies that combine open-ended interviews with 65 Bangladeshi male immigrants in New York (the majority being Muslim) as well as ethnographic interviews of 7 families in Dhaka, Bangladesh, I use the concept of moral economies to analyze the motivations behind remitting under variable conditions. My results suggest that Bangladeshi remitters invest in remittance practices because they allow the remitter to have control over his role as the main provider, while at the same time enhancing his self-worth. I model three mechanisms by which the Bangladeshi men I interviewed evaluate their self-worth: 1/ the practice of remitting enables Bangladeshi male migrants to maintain their role as the main provider, thereby guaranteeing hierarchical social roles; 2/ sending remittances serves as a strategy to maintain status and honor in both New York and Bangladesh; and 3/ not sending has social and affective consequences for both remitters and recipients. These results are consistent with transnational scholars who argue that remittances have a cultural dimension, allowing for the maintenance of family ties (Levitt 2001, Nyberg Sørensen 2005). They are novel in that they suggest that Bangladeshi immigrants' underlying motives are culturally specific moral concerns, which in the case at hand, are shaped by Islamic scripts on ideas of sharing, being the care provider and giving alms. Analyzing how Bangladeshi male immigrants articulate the remittance practice into their daily lives, this study demonstrates that elements of culture are a fundamental framework through which to understand how remittances persist or decline. My findings are generalizable to other Muslim male immigrant groups. These results allow researchers of migration and remittances to understand better international migration that comes from Islamic countries. Particularly, it adds to the conventional economic analyses that see remittances only in terms of profit maximization or risk minimization that is rooted in Western economic rationality. This study is important because of the dearth of research on the Bangladeshi population to the US which constitutes today one of the fastest growing immigrant groups, reaching 92,237 in 2000 (U.S. Census) and estimated at 200,000 in 2010 (2008 Census estimate while awaiting the 2010 Census to be published).

Scholarship argues that anti-immigrant sentiment originates at the individual-level, is evenly distributed within countries, and is primarily manifested in a single form as hostility toward the out-group. In A Structural Explanation for Anti-immigrant Sentiment, I challenge these three claims and propose a novel approach to the sociological understanding of inter-ethnic contention. My explanation for anti-immigrant sentiment builds upon prevailing theories within political sociology, which center on the role of the state (Evans et al. 1985; Scott 1998; Skocpol 1979). While scholars have long acknowledged the role of the state in the regulation of immigration flows and their incorporation (Brubaker 1992; Castles and Miller 1993; Geddes 2003; Lahav 2004; Massey et al. 2002; Messina 2007; Money 1999; Sassen 1996; 1999; Zolberg 2006), only limited research has examined the extent to which the state, through its regulations and institutions, may also affect public attitudes toward immigration. I argue that, as states establish the parameters for native-foreigner interaction, they play an active role in the establishment of inter-ethnic relations. I use a mixed methods research design that combines surveys, interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and socio-demographic and policy estimates to examine the distribution of anti-immigrant sentiment across three Belgian and three Spanish regions. Using regions as units of analysis facilitates isolating the role of structural conditions in the manifestation of citizens' hostility. Three empirical chapters show that distinctive manifestations of anti-immigrant sentiment emerge in geographical enclaves with specific demographic, economic, political, and cultural characteristics. Findings from this research contribute to prevailing theories of anti-immigrant sentiment, and its relation to state regulation of immigration and integration. Moreover, I consider how current policies might be revised in light of these findings and I suggest new approaches to the regulation of multi-ethnic environments, as well as to the strengthening of social cohesion in these environments.

Between 1563 and 1736 there were 3,212 accusations of witchcraft in Scotland. Existing accounts have identified ideology, conflict or anomie as causes of witch trials. However, for the Scottish case, the combination of the extreme temporal and geographical variation of witch trials on the one hand and the conspicuous over-representation of gentry on the other hand has hitherto remained a puzzle. My dissertation solves this puzzle by showing that witch trials emerge out of identity activated through the opening of opportunities for upward mobility among the gentry. Using a remarkable dataset on all known witch trials in early modern Scotland, including prosecutor information, trial details and individual properties of accused witches, I show that the persecution of witches was an unintended consequence of state making. Identity and interest rather than ideology explain prosecutors' actions. Contrary to popular explanations and scholarly assumptions, my findings contradict the hypothesis that ecclesiastical actors drive witch-hunting. Minister biographies in selected parishes yield no evidence of zealousness - on the part of ministers - in witch-hunting. The data support the alternative theory that secular actors propelled ministers into witch trials at times when their position in a parish was weak. On the level of administrative units, witch-hunting is at the same time widely distributed over regions and extremely rare on the level of parishes. There are no theoretically meaningful patterns emerging on the parish, county and region level. I overcome limitations resulting from the use of administrative units to analyze geographical patterns by using social network analysis tools that allow actors' actions to draw boundaries around locations. Employment of this strategy makes it evident that the core areas of witch-hunting are near the center of political power in Edinburgh. Witch trials were most numerous where they are visible to the gatekeepers of office careers. A small detail in the formal procedure of initiating witch trials made it possible for witch-hunting to serve as a strategy for gentry without prior access to jurisdiction to gather reputation at the political center. Therefore, persecution was not - as scholars of both witchcraft and statemaking have suggested - an attempt to control the population but a signal to people in power: Prosecutors used witch trials to communicate upstream rather than downstream. Witch-hunting is thus an unintended outcome of statemaking, Upward mobility created identities who fed on witch trials in their strive for influence within new opportunity structures.

Despite advances in mental health and housing interventions, social isolation among persons with severe mental illness (SMI), particularly among those who have experienced homelessness, continues to be high (Perese & Wolf, 2005; Hawkins & Abrams, 2007). Given that social attachment can be considered a fundamental need and that social connectedness is key to health, well-being, and recovery, it is imperative to understand why high levels of social isolation persist among persons with SMI. Whereas prior research has typically focused on how individual pathology undermines the ability of individuals to develop social connections, and how stigma leads to social exclusion, this study investigates the possibility that social isolation may also be addressed as a by-product of agency; that is, that it may result in part from a calculated decision-making process in response to the social conditions in which formerly homeless individuals with SMI live their lives. Using grounded theory methodology, the study analyzes in-depth qualitative interviews at baseline and eight-year follow-up with participants who have SMI and are receiving housing and support services through a Housing First program. Interviews elicited individuals' experiences with their social networks and social interactions, while also capturing the perceived context in which these patterns of relating are embedded. The study sought to address the following research questions: 1: How do formerly homeless individuals with SMI describe their social connectedness and how does overall social connectedness change over time? 2: What are the factors that hinder social connectedness as reported by persons with severe mental illness? 3: What are the factors that facilitate social connectedness as reported by persons with severe mental illness? In line with previous research (Hawkins & Abrams, 2007; Padgett et al., 2008; Tsai et al., 2012; Yanos et al. 2012), participants' social connectedness was generally low. Further, individuals appeared to make limited progress in the domain of social connectedness over the course of eight years. This was generally attributable to their underlying ambivalence regarding social connectedness. On the one hand, individuals valued the privacy and solitude of being at home and were content with spending their time alone; on the other, individuals also expressed concerns regarding loneliness and when discussing what was missing in their lives, the subject was overwhelmingly in the domain of social connectedness. Individuals' actions regarding social connectedness were generally characterized by social distancing - a purposeful limiting of social interaction - yet their desires still reflected a longing for close others. Engaging in social distancing appeared to have developed in reaction to individuals' history of exposure to relationships that involved negative interactions, stress, and threats to personal freedom, resources, and recovery. Social distancing thus emerged as a strategy for minimizing exposure to risky situations and often occurred for practical reasons of self-preservation. Individuals described much of their social environments as characterized by poverty, prejudice, discrimination, and illicit activity, which set the stage for problematic relationships and sustained social distancing. Many themes reflected upstream factors that influence people's opportunities to develop social relationships and likelihood of experiencing negative consequences, including residential segregation, racial discrimination, stigma, disability policies that yield inadequate incomes, poverty in general, and concentrated poverty in particular. Despite depicting a fairly consistent picture of strained relationships, disadvantaged social conditions, and social distancing, the data also suggested several factors that prevented complete isolation for persons with SMI. These included connecting with aspects of their past, taking care of others, pursuing artistic activities, accessing distal neighborhood supports and resources, and having employment or volunteering. Further, maintaining or rebuilding relationships with past network members posed one of the few viable alternatives to social isolation. Overall, this study suggests that social isolation among formerly homeless persons with SMI often reflected a lack of perceived opportunities for safe, stress-free, and supportive social affiliations, an issue that may be more a consequence of cumulative and concentrated disadvantage than a direct effect of mental illness (Draine, Salzer, Culhane, & Hadley, 2002). Given the benefits to quality of life that persons with mental illness derive from having their own homes through Housing First programs (Padgett, 2007; Yanos et al., 2004), addressing the broad factors that contribute to social isolation could increase connectedness and further enhance the effectiveness of this program model.

My dissertation, The Morphology of Resistance: Korean Resistance Networks 1895-1945, develops a theory of resistance. Investigating the dynamics of collective resistance, this study focuses on people who decisively resisted an unwanted authority; colonial Korea is the empirical locus. Despite the prevalence of resistant movements thoughout our history, very little is known about the relational structure of resistant movements. Thus, my dissertation fills that lacuna in the literature. The focal question is how less powerful and less equipped colonized people organized and sustained collective resistance. Building on the accumulated knowledge from the social movement theory, studies of secret societies and a social network perspective, my dissertation advances a structural understanding of resistance movements and covert social networks. I have conceived my dissertation in four empirical components. First, my study focuses on relational structures of the Korean resistance movement from 1895 to 1945. Using an innovative prosopographical network method, I capture the historical trajectory of the morphology of resistance, providing structural accounts of Korean resistance movements. Next, I statistically examine the structural conditions that enable large-scale mobilization under the conditions of severe repression. Proposing a theory of network visibility highlighting structural heterogeneity and network fragmentation, I demonstrate the ways in which network visibility operates for covert mobilization. Comparing the March 1st Movement (MFM) in 1919 and the June 10th Movement (JTM) in 1926, I next consider why the MFM mobilization was remarkably successful than the JTM. I argue that the escalated insurgency of the MFM can only be explained by the specific structural conditions for mobilization. Then, my study shifts focus to the demobilization process. What are the structural mechanisms that can explain the evolution and devolution of resistance movements? I empirically show different dynamics for movement mobilization and demobilization. Lastly, I examine the Provisional Government of Korea, which operated from 1919 to 1945 in Shanghai, China, as a case of a successful covert organization. By systematically allocating risk on the margin and to the members who have shorter experience, the covert organization protected the core members and secured their resistance resilience. As a result of these analyses, my dissertation contributes to understand of both resistant movements and covert social networks. The lessons learned from the Korean case help make sense of other cases of covert collective action.