What role does organized crime play in determining the success of separatist movements? I explore the role of organized crime in the separatist movements of Kosovo in Serbia and South Ossetia in Georgia, two most similar cases that have generated different outcomes in levels of separatist movement success in 1989-2012 (inclusive). Through the comparison, I argue in six propositions that organized crime can both promote and retard separatist movement success. The explanatory propositions are: (1) organized crime can be formative of state structure, capacity and stability; (2) popular support for the separatist movement can directly depend on organized criminal activities; (3) organized criminal capacity can – through its relations to the host state and separatist movement – hinder or advance separatist success; (4) the ethnic heterogeneity/homogeneity of organized crime may determine its capacity and willingness to promote separatist success; (5) organized crime contributes to separatist movement success when it is (a) prepared and (b) predisposed to divert regional smuggling opportunities towards movement goals; and (6) whether host state repression helps or harms the separatist movement depends on the role that organized crime is fulfilling vis-à-vis the state and separatists. The argument is developed in four steps. First, I examine regional indicators of a connection between separatist success and organized crime, justifying a comparison of Serbia/Kosovo and Georgia/South Ossetia as most similar cases. Second, I process-trace changes in the relational triad of host state, separatist movement and organized crime over the 24-year history, contending that different trajectories in these relations account for different levels of success for the two separatist movements. Third, I examine under what conditions aggregate regional smuggling trends before critical junctures of movement success in fact contribute to that success; I model criminal “filtering” of the aggregate criminal flows as a determinant of whether separatist goals are advanced or hindered. Finally, I compare two nefarious criminal episodes – organ smuggling in Kosovo and nuclear smuggling in South Ossetia – that harmed the separatist movements; I show that superior organized criminal capacity in Kosovo (reflected in its infrastructure, autonomy and community) managed to contain the harm of exposure from the nefarious episode. / Sociology

Emotional intimacy and support are deemed vital to most individuals’ sense of relationship quality and satisfaction. Although relationship outcomes are more closely tied with partners’ sense of emotional well-being in their partnerships, most sociological inquiry focuses on how couples navigate instrumental tasks of family work (e.g. household work, childcare, etc.). Examinations of emotional facets of couple relationship remain rare. This dissertation addresses this dearth by presenting an inductively derived analysis of how black heterosexual spouses in enduring relationships (10-40 years) sustain emotional connection. It draws on 75 semi-structured interviews - with relationship professionals (n=12) and 42 black spouses (21 couples) interviewed jointly and individually (n=63) from New York, Cleveland, and Chicago. Using a sociology of emotion lens, it extends Arlie Hochschild’s conceptual framework of emotion management by examining emotion work along four dimensions. First, challenging gender essentialism in extant research, it examines partners’ desires for, perceptions of and approaches to intimacy going beyond a discussion of gender differences to also shed light on overlap between and variation within gender groups. Secondly, it shows how the co-creation of joint emotion strategies to avoid or confront recurrent interpersonal tensions helped couples solidify a shared sense of couple identity marked by different degrees of we-ness. Third, contrary to previous studies suggesting it’s mainly women who do emotion work on themselves to manage dissatisfaction with intimacy, I reveal how both spouses engage in emotion work when connection breaks down. Often, such emotion work often arises due to tensions between the carework of intimacy and pre-existing norms and beliefs around emotional engagement. Finally, probing particularities in black women’s socialization around resilience, I disturb the monolithic portrait of women as intimacy experts in extant research, underlining challenges they face beyond dissatisfaction with male emotionality. By focusing on black couples, the study expands the demographic terrain of qualitative sociological inquiry on emotion work and couple relationships writ large. Finally, by theorizing from the experience of black couples, I disturb trends of taking educated, white, middle class couples as the normative American family, revealing how our conceptualization of emotion work could benefit from better accounting of social positionality. / Sociology

This dissertation explores certain attitudes towards Jews and Judaism in Old Norse literature. Regardless of an apparent lack of actual Jewish settlement in the Nordic region during the Middle Ages, medieval Icelanders and Norwegians frequently turned to the image of 'the Jew' in writing and in art, sometimes using him as an abstract theological model, or elsewhere constructing a similar kind of ethnic Other to the anti-Semitic tropes we find in medieval societies where gentiles really did live alongside Jews. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the differing histories and functions projected onto the absent Jew in medieval Scandinavia. / Germanic Languages and Literatures

Defiance, insubordination, and disrespect (together, “DID”) are the most common disciplinary infractions in U.S. secondary schools (Gregory & Weinstein, 2008). Consequences for these infractions -- challenges to the power and authority of the teacher – are disproportionately borne by students of color, males, and students from low-income families (Jordan & Anil, 2009). Yet little is known about: 1. Whether demographic differences between teacher and student lead to more DID referrals, and 2. Whether differences in teachers’ understanding of defiance and power are related to different numbers of DID referrals. To explore these questions, I conducted a mixed methods study at the “Gold Star” Middle School (GSMS), a large, urban middle school in the northeast U.S. I analyzed DID referral forms (n=922) for school year 2013-14 and semi-structured interviews with teachers (n=51). I found that the number of annual DID referrals issued per teacher at GSMS is higher when teacher and student differ by race (49.8 times more than for same-race teacher/student dyads) and by gender (29.8 times more than same-gender dyads), but lower (0.38 times less) when these dyads have different experiences with poverty. However, these effects are not additive: when teacher and student differ by race and gender, a teacher issues fewer (0.96 times less) annual DID referrals than when teacher and student differ only by gender. I also found significant differences between teachers with the highest and the lowest number of annual DID referrals. High-DID teachers rarely invoke their responsibilities for student academic or behavioral outcomes, ascribe student defiance primarily to ineffective school policies, and generally view power as hierarchical in nature. Low-DID teachers, however, describe specific responsibilities to care for their students and provide them with an effective learning environment. They ascribe student defiance primarily to teacher/student relationship issues and generally view power as relational in nature. Results from this study underscore the complex role played by demographic differences between teacher and student in the disciplinary encounter, and point to the promise of exploring differences in teachers’ views of their relationships with students, defiance, and power as a means of better understanding the origins of the discipline gap. / Culture, Communities, and Education

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and questioning (LGBQ) youth face considerable discrimination and peer victimization, which has been associated with a number of negative health and educational outcomes. Few studies have been conducted to understand peer attitudes and how they vary based on demographic characteristics, including sex, race and religion, and no research has been conducted examining differences in attitudes between immigrant and native-born populations. This present study analyzes the attitudes about homosexuality and gender nonconformity held by high school students (N = 957) at a racially and ethnically diverse high school in the northeast, as measured by a brief survey. The author examines how tolerance of homosexuality differs based on sex, race, immigrant identity, religious affiliation and intergroup contact with LGB people. Analyses of the results indicate that there are large differences in attitudes among demographic subgroups of students. Following examination of these baseline attitudes, the author conducted an experiment assessing the impact of two interventions intended to increase tolerance of homosexuality and gender nonconformity. The first intervention consisted of an offer to participate in a one-on-one discussion about LGB people, including questions intended to increase empathy and engage students in perspective-taking as a means of prejudice reduction. The second intervention was based upon the mere exposure effect: the phenomenon that repeated exposures to a stimulus may enhance preference for that stimulus. This intervention consisted of multiple exposures over the course of an academic year to a questionnaire assessing students’ attitudes about homosexuality and gender nonconformity. Analyses of the results of both experiments indicate that neither intervention had statistically significant impacts on prejudice reduction: the views of students who were initially accepting of LGBQ people remained positive at the conclusion of the study, while those students with pre-existing anti-LGBQ bias did not become more tolerant as a result of participation in the study, and in fact, less tolerant students appeared to experience a slight increase in prejudice. Further inquiry is needed to understand the reasons why these interventions had the opposite of the desired effect for intolerant students, in order to craft more appropriate prejudice-reduction strategies for students with pre-existing anti-LGBQ bias.

Sociological evidence consistently demonstrates that racial progress coexists with persistent racial inequality in American society. Recently, increased evidence of police brutality against black citizens, as well as the 2016 presidential election, clearly confirms that, even in the wake of the Obama era, racial conflict plagues American democracy. There is a widely held consensus that college is an optimal time to engage American undergraduates with the challenges and possibilities of the country’s racial diversity. With that in mind, I explored whether college classrooms, in particular, might be optimal spaces for this engagement. I investigated the experience of undergraduates at a private, selective university, to ask how classroom experiences in courses on race might influence students’ understanding of race, if at all. I found that, drawing from the academic grounding that the classroom provided, students displayed increased capacity to engage with one another in intellectually courageous and empathetic ways. Further, I found that students’ understandings of race became more complex and more self-authored. I call this process—linking classroom dynamics to learning about race—brave community.

In this dissertation, I examine how students at elite, private white women’s colleges in the South utilized the myth of Southern distinctiveness to articulate their opinions and attitudes on desegregation after Brown, during a protracted period of violent resistance, civil unrest, and limited integration (1954-1970). Through a critical analysis of student newspapers, I find that the cultural myth of “Southern distinctiveness,” provided easily accessible frames for students to construct and articulate their attitudes about the possible integration of black women students onto their campuses. This myth also guided students’ construction of their own identity and status within the changing racial paradigm of higher education. I argue that during the 1950’s to the middle of the 1960’s, students utilized conceptualizations of Southern heritage, evangelical Christianity, and Southern belle ideals, to construct the myth of Southern distinctiveness. These ideals helped students position themselves as “insiders” and “experts,” on desegregation, while Northern liberals and the federal government were positioned firmly as intrusive outsiders. White women students also saw themselves as the ordained preservers of a romanticized Old South, with the doctrine of “separate but equal” serving as a guiding principle. In the middle to late 1960’s as students increasingly participated in cross-racial interactions, conferences, and exchanges, they started to embrace a national, American identity alongside a Southern identity. They increasingly saw themselves as the leaders of a “New South.”

Abstract not available.

Abstract not available.

Cet ouvrage à pour objet l'analyse des facteurs socio-politiques ayant influence la réorientation des discours officiels entourant la politique canadienne de multiculturalisme au début des années 1990. Tel que dénoté par Houle (1999), les discours du gouvernement fédéral touchant directement ou indirectement la politique canadienne de multiculturalisme au cours des années 1990 furent caractérisés par l'importance accordée au partage de valeurs communes et à l'unité nationale. Selon le gouvernement fédéral, cette réorientation des discours aurait visé à corriger les incompréhensions des Canadiens vis-à-vis de la nature véritable du multiculturalisme et à apaiser les inquiétudes des Canadiens croyant que la politique canadienne de multiculturalisme permette aux minorités ethnoculturelles de ne pas s'intégrer aux valeurs de la société canadienne. Une analyse statistique des résultats de l'enquête sur les attitudes multiculturelles et ethniques des Canadiens de 1991 vise à étudier les deux éléments de cette affirmation, à savoir l'inquiétude des Canadiens à l'endroit des conséquences de la politique canadienne de multiculturalisme et la non-intégration effective des minorités ethnoculturelles aux valeurs dites "canadiennes." (Abstract shortened by UMI.)