There are many ways parents can improve their offspring’s outcomes. For example, they can invest in offspring’s education or health. They can provide better social connections to obtain job information or personal references. In addition, they can exert political influence to obtain better labor market outcomes for their offspring. Understanding exactly how parents improve their offspring’s outcomes is very important for the formation of political perspectives and policy designs. However, it is very difficult to disentangle the factors, as parents of high socioeconomic status do many things to help their children succeed. This dissertation presents three quasi-experimental studies to understand the causal mechanisms of parents’ influence on children’s outcomes in the context of China and United States. Chapter two examines the implementation of court-ordered racial desegregation of schools and finds that school desegregation increases biracial births. This provides the first evidence of how an education policy that affects racial integration also has demographic implications and an intergenerational impact on social and economic opportunities. Chapter three examines the effect of school desegregation on infant health. This chapter adopts the same empirical strategy and data as chapter three. I extend the paper by examining the effect of school desegregation on infant health. I find that for black mothers, school desegregation improves infant health, as measured by preterm birth. It also increases maternal education and fertility age. These may be important pathways to improve infant health. Chapter two and chapter three add to the growing literature on the impact of school desegregation beyond academic achievement. Chapter five examines the effect of fathers’ political influence on offspring’s labor market outcomes in China. It presents a difference-in-difference approach that exploits the variation of political influence in three dimensions: parent bureaucrat occupation, retirement status instrumented by retirement policy, and offspring gender. Using cross-section data from China Household Income Survey, it finds that the retirement of a bureaucrat with political influence translates into a decrease in offspring’s income of 13 percent. Chapter six provides a summary and conclusions and discusses future research directions.

Within the context of debates concerning the impact of global media on local youth, this study explores how a sample of South African youth responds to texts which were produced internationally, but distributed locally. Recognising the profound rootedness of media consumption in everyday life, the research examines the way these youth, differentially embedded in the South African economic and ideological formation, use these texts as part of their ongoing attempts to make sense of their lives. The study rejects the 'either/or' formulations that often accompany competing structuralist and culturalist approaches to text/audience relationships. Instead, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods, it seeks to highlight the interplay between agency and structure, between individual choice and the structuring of experience by wider social and historical factors. The findings of the study point to the complex individual and social reasons that lie behind media consumption choices, and the diverse (and socially patterned) reasons why local audiences are either attracted to, or reject, global media. These and other findings, the study argues, highlight the deficiencies of the media imperialism thesis with its definitive claims for cultural homogenisation, seen as the primary, or most politically significant, effect of the globalisation of media. As such, this study should be read as a dialogue with those schools of thought that take a more unequivocal point of view on the impact of globalised media culture.

Orientador: Leila Maria Ferreira Salles / Banca: Debora Cristina Fonseca / Banca: Angela Fatima Soligo / Resumo: Este trabalho tem como objetivo investigar as concepções e objetivos que fundamentam as ações e programas sociais direcionadas aos jovens, desenvolvidos em uma cidade do interior do Estado de São Paulo. O desenvolvimento desta pesquisa contou com o mapeamento dos programas sociais direcionados a jovens, examinando os objetivos desses programas e suas atividades, além de identificar e analisar a concepção de juventude que os fundamenta. O levantamento evidenciou que no total 17 programas estavam em execução no ano de 2013, onde foram analisados os documentos referentes aos programas e também aqueles disponibilizados nos sítios relativos aos projetos como os disponibilizados pelos membros gestores. Os programas foram agrupados conforme os objetivos centrais a que se propunham. O que parece subsidiar a atuação do poder público junto à juventude é a situação do jovem ser mais ou menos vulnerável. Os jovens objetos das políticas públicas são em geral os estereotipados como jovens problemáticos, facilmente sujeitos a "desvios", uso de drogas e protagonismo de violência / Abstract: The present study aims to investigate the concepts and objectives that underlie the actions and social programs targeted to the youths, developed in a city in the interior of the state of São Paulo. The development of this research included the mapping of social programs targeted at youths, examining the objectives of these programs and activities, and identifies and analyzes conception about youth that underlies them. The study showed that in total 17 programs were running in 2013, where documents relating to the programs and also those available on the sites for the projects such as those provided by the coordinators were analyzed. The programs were grouped according to the central objectives that had been proposed. What seems to support the performance of the government by the youth is the situation of the youth to be more or less vulnerable. The youths objects of public policies are generally stereotyped as troubled, easily subject to "deviations", drug use and protagonist of violence / Mestre

This thesis is the first dedicated sociological attempt to offer a critical response to cultural studies and allied discourses that concern themselves with the relationship between technology and violence. A critical reconstruction is necessary because these cultural theorists have failed to adequately contextualize their arguments in relation to both the globally ascendant neoliberal policy outlook and its associated social Darwinian technoculture: the combined pernicious effects of which could be described as the logic of ???social constructionism as social psychosis???. The most prominent manifestation of this theoretical psychosis has to do with an interest in biotechnology in particular. The problem I identify in the treatment of this theme is how easily it can be used to support a technologically determinist position. One undesirable side effect is that these determinists are able to project from present trends a dystopian exhaustion of all critique through their focus on violence. In the thesis of ???bioglobalism??? this state of affairs is also deployed to take sociologists to task for insufficient recognition of processual ???network??? forms of distributed agency in technological processes. At stake therefore is the recovery of sociological critique. It follows that the core of my thesis is the radical reworking of two related heuristic devices: seriality and contingency. Seriality is taken to refer to social practices as diverse as the possible relationships between the social problem of rationality, case studies of individuals who have run amok, and the functioning of network characteristics. I use contingency to eschew seriality???s deterministic accounting of the social. Here I propose a new conceptual relationship between creativity and action. Emphasis is accordingly placed upon two related normative projects: Raymond Williams???s cultural materialism, and three of the ???problematiques??? Peter Wagner has identified as inescapable for theorizing modernity: the continuity of the acting person, the certainty of knowledge, and the viability of the political order. I conclude with a renewed conception of the role of normative critique as a form of conceptual therapy for bioglobal projections of seriality.

This thesis documents a period of ecological and cultural change on a Willamette Valley, Oregon landscape. In particular, this study examines the Peavy Arboretum area and the cultural changes that accompanied the transformation of the landscape from an oak savannah in the mid-nineteenth century to a dense Douglas-fir forest in the early twentieth century. Culturally, the inhabitants of this period included late-prehistoric native people, Euro-American based fur industry personnel, and Euro-American settlers. As a student of history and archaeology, I have used a combination of methods and sources for this study including surface surveys for cultural materials and features, archaeological excavations and analysis, and documented materials. Knowledge gained as a result of surveys and excavations are studied within the context of other Willamette Valley archaeology, and likewise, documented materials concerning this landscape and its historic features and people are compared against larger patterns in the history of the American West. Geographically, the study area was in a fortunate position to witness cultural events. Located along the edge of the foothills of the Willamette Valley, its many desirable features attracted both native people and the first white settlers. The study area was also located along a main route of travel that was used by natives, fur company personnel, travelers, and Euro-American settlers. The section of trail has been a part of regional travel routes known at different times as the Hudson's Bay Company Trail, the California Trail, the Southern Route (Scott-Applegate Trail), and the Territorial Road. The objective of this thesis was to see what kind of information could be retrieved for a given landscape using a variety of methods practiced in history and archaeology. I believe such a multi-disciplinary approach allowed me to be more flexible and open to all pertinent sources of information. This type of investigation also provided an example of the type of work that could be done professionally when determining the cultural significance of a property. My fascination with the study of landscapes and their cultural features was also influential in my selection of a thesis topic. / Graduation date: 1999

Proactive socialization tactics, measures that organizational newcomers take to facilitate their own adjustment, have been shown to predict adjustment and more distal work-related outcomes, such as organizational commitment and intent to remain with the organization. Several cognitions and behaviors are considered to be types of proactive socialization tactics, but research has yet to distinguish between different types. Also, several individual dispositions have been identified as antecedents of proactive socialization tactics, but there has been little focus on identifying contextual or non-dispositional individual difference antecedents. The purpose of this research was to propose a dual-mode conceptualization of proactive socialization tactics and to distinguish between tactics directed toward changing oneself and those directed toward changing one's environment. This research also examined the role of contextual factors, the newcomer's age, and the newcomer's work experience as antecedents of proactive socialization tactics. The results of this research suggest that job and workgroup characteristics do indeed play a role in predicting proactive socialization tactics. Age and work experience were predictors as well, but not as strong as expected. Both self-directed and environment-directed proactive socialization tactics predicted desirable adjustment outcomes, but self-directed tactics were clearly stronger predictors of these outcomes. There was some evidence to suggest that newcomers' early fit perceptions moderated relationships between antecedents, such as workgroup characteristics, and proactive socialization tactics. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

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Cognition and social values prevail in urban evolution. Analysis of these values reconstruct an era that has largely vanished; the context is historic downtown Tucson, and the significance is the Mexican enclave that had La Placita as its social focus. The historical evolution and the urban character of La Placita and its surrounding barrio is documented with emphasis on the social meaning of its change. A newly developed cognitive theory of vantages and coordinates provides a model to depict the viewpoints that defined urban development in Tucson. The analysis of personal viewpoint provides a statement of the manner that social values and cognition shaped architecture and urban change throughout the years of growth in the center of Tucson.

This thesis is the first dedicated sociological attempt to offer a critical response to cultural studies and allied discourses that concern themselves with the relationship between technology and violence. A critical reconstruction is necessary because these cultural theorists have failed to adequately contextualize their arguments in relation to both the globally ascendant neoliberal policy outlook and its associated social Darwinian technoculture: the combined pernicious effects of which could be described as the logic of ???social constructionism as social psychosis???. The most prominent manifestation of this theoretical psychosis has to do with an interest in biotechnology in particular. The problem I identify in the treatment of this theme is how easily it can be used to support a technologically determinist position. One undesirable side effect is that these determinists are able to project from present trends a dystopian exhaustion of all critique through their focus on violence. In the thesis of ???bioglobalism??? this state of affairs is also deployed to take sociologists to task for insufficient recognition of processual ???network??? forms of distributed agency in technological processes. At stake therefore is the recovery of sociological critique. It follows that the core of my thesis is the radical reworking of two related heuristic devices: seriality and contingency. Seriality is taken to refer to social practices as diverse as the possible relationships between the social problem of rationality, case studies of individuals who have run amok, and the functioning of network characteristics. I use contingency to eschew seriality???s deterministic accounting of the social. Here I propose a new conceptual relationship between creativity and action. Emphasis is accordingly placed upon two related normative projects: Raymond Williams???s cultural materialism, and three of the ???problematiques??? Peter Wagner has identified as inescapable for theorizing modernity: the continuity of the acting person, the certainty of knowledge, and the viability of the political order. I conclude with a renewed conception of the role of normative critique as a form of conceptual therapy for bioglobal projections of seriality.

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Division of Linguistics & Psychology, Department of Linguistics, 2005. / Bibliography: p. 329-355. / Preamble -- Research objectives and methodology -- Theoretical and epistemological frameworks -- Culture, identity and power -- Meetings -- "The clearing of the sky" -- Project reform. / The data for this research thesis derives from a development project in Samoa. Through the study of key project events and their associated discourses the study identifies and interprets cultural and professional resources that the project team draws on as they negotiate their way through the project; in particular the 'resources' (including communication resources) that participants bring to project interactions. The thesis explores how participants used these resources and what consequences resulted (for them and for others) from such use. -- This study takes a critical and ideological stance, underpinned by a belief in the value and possibility of social action. While not primarily a call to action, the thesis presents its interpretations in the context of larger ethical and political challenges, with a view to informing change, specifically what deliberate action might be taken to improve processes and practices in future projects. The project is explored as a 'soft' system of social interactions and processes; and as a 'Third Space' (Bhabha 1990, 1994) where traditional boundaries of sociocultural organisation, or of professions, are destabilised and where newlyconstructed practices, orders of discourse, identities and representations are required. -- The study is evaluation and policy oriented. It explicitly addresses the implications of knowledge gained from the research for future project design and implementation. In making recommendations for project change, the study argues for the inclusion of local research as a legitimate project task, to inform evaluative processes and create a framework for ongoing modification to project design and implementation. The recommendations for change made in this study are concerned with determining principles and codes of practice for: - identifying and developing intercultural competence in project situations ; - project training (for intercultural project work, including ongoing participant research) ; - improving project systems ; - using relevant approaches/techniques in organisational change management. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / 397 p