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In this study I investigate coalitions between advocacy organizations and corporations with respect to the government regulation of appliance and equipment energy consumption. In general, corporations tend to oppose government regulation because it may require appliance and equipment manufacturers to redesign their products and modify their manufacturing process. In contrast, energy efficiency advocates, who are part of the broader environmental movement, typically support government regulation because it can lead to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions resulting from energy production. Advocates and corporations engaged in government regulation leads to unequal power relations because the corporations have greater research and expertise resources to influence the policy process. This study examines the ways in which advocacy organizations leverage divisions between corporations on opposing sides of the regulatory process to bring about change. They do so by forming strategic alliances, called social movement-corporate coalitions, with selected corporations or industry segments that can stand to benefit from increased regulation. This study investigates the formation of alliances between advocacy organizations and corporations to develop a contribution to the literature on social movement theory by expanding the current theory of the industrial opportunity structure.

Workplaces are the locations of significant social outcomes that are worth studying in their own right. In addition to pursuing and achieving their own intended outcomes (i.e. a well-educated and healthy public, in the case of the American public education and American healthcare systems), they are resources on which individuals rely for social, psychological, spiritual, and economic fulfillment and identity. Central to a persons overall efficacy within the workplace is the extent to which they exercise influence over their time and behaviors. In contrast to sociological works on bureaucracies, research on professional autonomy tends to be symbolic-interactionist and qualitative in its theoretical approach and methods (the latter tending toward ethnographic and interview-based studies). There is significantly more sociological literature on bureaucracies than on professional autonomy. The few works on professional autonomy have done little to change thinking on bureaucracies perhaps because they have limited their focus to the needs and opinions of workers and not the needs and opinions of the bureaucracy (as expressed by the bureaucracy executives). The following 3-part, interview-based dissertation examines the perceptions and opinions about professional autonomy of two sets of professionals: 1) public high school teachers and principals in Louisiana, and 2) doctors and healthcare executives in one New England (U.S.A.) state. Professional autonomy is revealed to be a highly subjective idea that is to say that the way an interviewee defines and thinks about professional autonomy depends on the things that matter most to them in the workplace. A nurse, for example, defined professional autonomy as the right to be treated as a doctors equal because she was very frustrated by people treating her as less than a doctor. Interviewees attempt to balance these desires with the needs and mandates of their organization (and the superiors who enforce those mandates), and are often frustrated by their inability to accomplish both. Nearly every interviewee expressed strong emotions toward the experiences and feelings they associate with professional autonomy, and revealed their workplaces to be locations of emotionally intense conflicts about, and struggles over, influence in the workplace.

The study of perceptions of criminality is significant in sociology due to its sociopolitical implications for our criminal justice system. Race, class, and gender disparities in this system influence prejudices in the American public, which in turn allows the perpetuation of inequality. Using an intersectional approach, this research seeks to interpret how race, class, and gender intersect to create and shape perceptions of criminality. Conducting an experiment on approximately 500 undergraduate students at a southern university during the Spring 2015 semester, subjects are shown a series of photographs and asked to select who, out of the individuals depicted, they believe to be criminals. Findings suggest that perceived class is a strong determinant of criminality, with race and gender effects as well. This study proposes that results are shaped by the workings of the criminal justice system, media portrayals of criminals, and the particular significance of our current social and political environment.

<p> This dissertation is about the relationship between sport and community in South Boston. It focuses on forms of community. First, it will show how communal relations are constructed within the arena of youth sport. Then, it will show how those communal relations within sport relate to community dynamics within the neighborhood as a whole. In this sense, more specifically, the dissertation asks the question: what is the relationship between community within the rink and community within the neighborhood? Therefore, this dissertation is about the various, layered connections between sport and community in an urban neighborhood. It accomplishes this through qualitative methodology, specifically: two seasons of fieldwork and observations; as well as 20 tape-recorded, semi-structured interviews, and numerous informal, ongoing conversations with residents.</p>

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