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<p><p>Denna uppsats försöker besvara om det finns ett samband mellan religiösa normer kring kön och amerikanskt bistånd. Den önskar även lyfta fram den problematik detta kan innebära samt hur detta påverkar kvinnor i Afrika söder om Saharas möjlighet till en minskad risk för HIV samt ett liv bort från fattigdom.</p><p>Det problem som uppsatsen önskar lyfta fram är att då religion får makt i samhället kan den påverka politik, vilket kan i få stora konsekvenser. Den söker även klarlägga hur denna politik, framförallt i förhållande till kvinnor, hindrar dessa från utveckling.</p><p>Genom jämförande litteraturstudier med material från internationella organisationer såväl som från det amerikanska biståndsorganet, forskare och samhällsdebattörer försöker detta klargöras. Diskussionen leder slutligen till en slutsats att den kristna religionens normer kring kön och sexualitet spelar roll och påverkar det amerikanska biståndsarbetet med att bekämpa fattigdom och spridningen av HIV/AIDS i Afrika söder om Sahara. Den kristna tron får makt över dessa aspekter, vilket bidrar till att kvinnokroppen blir politisk, genom den makt som religion kan legitimera. De religiösa ledarna och de som lobbar för att påverka amerikansk biståndspolitik har till sist en viktig roll i spridningen av sjukdomen i Afrika då deras ovilja att uppmuntra till ett användande av preventivmedel, gör att medlen för att stoppa sjukdomen inte når de drabbade afrikanska samhällena. Det innebär dessutom att kvinnor inte tillgodoses med självbestämmande, makt över sin egen kropp och familjeplanering, vilket ytterligare hindrar fattigdomsbekämpningen. Implikationerna av denna slutsats blir avslutningsvis att en förändring av synen på kvinnokroppen och preventivmedel inom kristen etik, vilken under lång tid talat om och arbetar för fattigdomsbekämpning, skulle kunna öka möjligheterna för minskad fattigdom i Afrika söder om Sahara där det finns en stark koppling mellan fattigdom och HIV/AIDS.  </p></p>

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Set in a small minority community in South Africa, the Orthodox Jewish com-munity in Johannesburg, this study explores why a person would actively and volun-tarily seek minority status by converting into an ethnic-religious minority group. Taking a social constructionist approach to understanding religious conversion, it is argued that religious conversion to Orthodox Judaism is also a social process of becoming ethnically "Jewish". In this study, two types of converts are considered, namely con-verts who come to Judaism through marriage and converts for religious purposes. Through in-depth-interviews with rabbis and converts, experiences of social inclusion and exclusion, and the meaning of conversions is understood. This study finds that regardless of the path to conversion, belonging and identity are key reasons for con-version, and that it is an ethnic process that serves group and individual needs recip-rocally. At an individual level, becoming Jewish through conversion helps avoid social exclusion and achieves other social inclusions by acquiring membership in new com-munities and by forming new social identities. At a group level, the research shows that religious conversion is part of the group's broader concern for maintaining ethnic boundaries and is therefore an element of the politics of belonging. The research shows how conversion to a minority ethnic group in a plural environment becomes a social means to protect ethnic identity and avoid assimilation. By understanding con-version as the politics of belonging, the research explores the subjective experiences of citizenship at a group and individual level.

This research began as personal curiosity about the religious beliefs of persons experiencing homelessness, and in particular their beliefs about God. What do they believe about God, and how are their beliefs socially constructed? Social research has generally limited its focus to assessing religion as an asset in ameliorating homelessness as a social problem with little attention to the religious behaviors and thought processes of persons experiencing homelessness themselves. I conducted a classic grounded theory (CGT) analysis based on 14 in-depth interviews with homeless believers (HB's) and three interviews with pastors-service-providers (PSP's) for comparative analysis. The findings include two major theoretical categories: The God Who Provides (TGWP); and, the core category, Believing in the God Who Provides. The results include two hypotheses: first, that there is no particular concept of God unique to HB's as a substantive unit; and second, that there is a similar five-stage process of believing by HB's and their domiciled counterparts.

This study examines the relationship between religious affiliation and racially discriminatory attitudes. Several investigations have been conducted on the topic, yet they did not choose national representative samples. My research examines four decades of NORC General Social Surveys to analyze how religious affiliation and attendance affect the outcome of a survey question which tests the level of discriminatory attitudes among respondents.

<p dir="ltr">Do local religious contexts impact people’s attitudes about race inequality in society? In this dissertation, I examine this question using data from the General Social Survey and multilevel modeling. I define religious context as the local population percentage that are in particular denominational groups (evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants, Black Protestants, and Catholics); the percentage that are in groupings which cross-cut denominational affiliation (religious liberal, religious moderate, and religious conservative); and the percentage that are religiously unaffiliated. The racial attitudes I examine are what a person attributes to be the root cause of Black-White income inequality in the US—individualistic explanations (a lack of will or in-born differences between the races) or structural explanations (a lack of access to education or discrimination).</p><p dir="ltr">This dissertation sits at the intersection of three bodies of literature: (1) the impact of local religious context on sociological variables, (2) the impact of religion on social attitudes about race inequality at the individual level, and (3) the impact of contextual level factors (that are not religious in nature) on social attitudes about race inequality at the individual level. The theoretical foundation for this research is a theory of religious subcultural influence which outlines how the presence of more people from a religious tradition creates a local religious subculture which can impact the local public subculture which can impact the attitudes and behaviors of individuals in the area.</p><p dir="ltr">Results from the analyses presented in this project indicate that while personal religious affiliation at the individual level is influential on these attitudes, the influence of the religious context around a person is more mixed. For some explanations of racial inequality, namely a lack of will or a lack of education, the religious contexts surrounding a person have some moderate influences. Stepwise regression analyses reveal that some other contextual variables, such as the region of the country in which the respondent resides or the local concentration of immigrants, have stronger influences on these attitudes.</p><p dir="ltr">Further analysis examines if these effects of religious context extend to all people in a geographic area, not only the focal religious group’s own people. Findings from this analysis show that, for the most part, where there are religious context effects, the effect extends to all residents of an area. In a few cases, however, there are only self-reinforcing effects (where a group is only influential on themselves) or possible reactionary effects (where there is an effect on the non-members, but it is likely not due to transmission from the religious context group).</p><p dir="ltr">Other explorations in this dissertation look for threshold, ceiling, or floor effects in the effects of religious context. This analysis shows that most of the detected effects of religious contexts are linear, and the group does not need to be a certain size before it can be influential. In a few cases, the effect of the religious context reaches a floor or ceiling limit meaning the effect of the religious context eventually levels off and does not exert any more influence. Additional analyses also look at the role of the respondent’s racial identity, how ideological differences between Hispanic Catholics and non-Hispanic Catholics may be present, if the effects of religious context are stronger now than in previous decades, and if biblical literalism is responsible for some of the influences of religious context detected.</p><p dir="ltr">Taken together, all of the analyses in this dissertation illustrate that there are some important, albeit mild, influences of local religious context on a person’s racial attitudes. These findings also show that religious context intersects with region in noteworthy and complex ways.</p>

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