Home > News & Events > Workshop Series: Complete Spring 2006 Schedule

Sociology Workshop Series
Tuesdays, 4:00-5:15pm, 1114 Social Science

Spring 2006 Printable Schedule            Past Workshops

Spring 2006 Complete Schedule

January 17
Chris Uggen and Shelly Schaefer
Voting and the Civic Reintegration of Former Prisoners

ABSTRACT: When Iowa governor Tom Vilsack restored voting rights to all former felons in that state this July Fourth, he noted that “research shows that ex-offenders who vote are less likely to re-offend.” The National Review countered that “the problem with Vilsack’s claim is that there is absolutely no research to support it. Not one longitudinal study exists showing the effects of the restoration of voting rights on crime rates or recidivism.” We undertook such a study this summer, by matching criminal records with voting records. We conceptualize voting as a form of “civic reintegration,” analogous to the work and family ties that are well-established in life course criminology. For our 1990 Minnesota release cohort, we find that approximately 20 percent of the former felons registered to vote. Our event history analysis shows that felons who voted in the previous biennial election have a far lower risk of recidivism than non-voting felons, and that this effect holds net of age, race, gender, and criminal history. The talk will discuss the strengths and limitations of our data and covariate adjustment approach for making causal inferences, the implications of felon enfranchisement for public safety, and the viability of weaving former felons back into the citizenry as stakeholders.

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January 24
Ron Aminzade
Citizenship and Exclusion: The Case of Tanzania

ABSTRACT: Many studies of citizenship in the late 20th century suggest a trajectory of change marked by greater inclusion due to globalization and the decline of the nation-state as a privileged locus of citizenship rights.  This case study of Tanzania documents a trajectory of more exclusive national citizenship and more restrictive national borders despite democratic political reforms and efforts to establish a supra-national East African Union.  We document a trajectory from inclusive to more exclusive citizenship by focusing on how political debates and public policies have dealt with five groups- refugees, nomads, borderland politicians, the Asian-Tanzanian minority, and foreigners.  Our explanation highlights the consequences of neo-liberal economic and political reforms, the new national discourse that emerged during the transition from state-socialism to neo-liberal capitalism, and violent regional conflicts and the refugee crisis they generated.

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January 31
Teresa Gowan
What's Social Capital Got To Do With It? Social Ties and Underemployment in the St. Louis Ghetto

ABSTRACT: Over the last ten years, social capital analysis has inundated political science, economics, development studies, and sociology. In social policy circles it has had equal success, providing the theoretical justification for a broad reconceptualisation of poverty and anti-poverty action in both advanced industrialised countries and the global South. Where the old social democratic notion defined poverty as the product of an unequal relationship to "capital," the new exclusion/social capital model addresses it as the result of isolation from a more positively conceived social "mainstream." In this talk I will address the relationship between social capital and unemployment by analyzing qualititative interviews with a group of  African-American men drawn from several impoverished neighbourhoods of St. Louis, Missouri. Although some of the men had been circulating between illicit work and prison for many years, the majority had considerable experience in low-wage jobs, but were perennially dissatisfied with their options. Certainly lack of productive social connections appeared to be part of this picture. They were well aware that they did not have the family connections, or some other "right contact," which might open up more rewarding jobs. However, the simple "deficit" model of local social capital that is being mobilized in the non-profit sector neglects the less salubrious aspects of social capital, and therefore obscures the double-edged nature of social ties for those living in the ghettos of St. Louis. Social ties among whites, formal and informal, continue to mold the geographic segregation and economic marginalization of the city's African-Americans; while social contacts inside the ghetto pull residents into the arms of the drug industry.

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February 7
Ann Ziebarth (Design, Housing, and Apparel)
Discrimination to Domicide: Discussing Immigration, Housing, and Rural Communities

ABSTRACT: Housing discrimination is often considered an urban phenomena, however in this work-in-progress, Dr. Ann Ziebarth explores the accumulating evidence that racial/ethnic immigrants and in-migrants face similar housing disadvantages in rural communities.  Qualitative data indicate that the level of discrimination for Latino migrants, immigrants, and in-migrants in rural Minnesota communities has escalated from subtle forms of residential discouragement to blatant domicide-- the public policy of demolishing housing occupied by a particular social, racial or ethnic group in the name of "the public good". Conflicts over local housing issues reflect many social concerns including homeowners' attempts to protect the economic value of their homes, the difficulty of meeting housing demand for newcomers especially the rising number of in-migrants and immigrants, and the persistence of land use policies promoting residential segregation. This work puts domicide into a theoretical context and raises questions about the ways in which housing, as a concrete and visible element, provides an indicator of economic, demographic, and political change here in Minnesota, around the country, and across the globe.

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February 14
Karen Seashore (Educational Policy and Administration)
Educational Leadership in the States:  A Cultural and Political Analysis

ABSTRACT: Using a framework derived from research on political cultures and policy instruments, this project examines how historical patterns of decision-making and power relationships within states are interpreted by participants at several levels.  Interviews with approximately 90 positional leaders in 9 states (including elected officials, directors of professional organizations and interest groups, and higher education representatives) focused on recent educational policy-making in two areas:  accountability and leadership development.  In addition, questions about district-state relationships were part of interviews with superintendents and other top administrators, while surveys of principals included a few items on the state's role in improvement and accountability.  A second round of data collection will be carried out this spring. 

This research is part of a five-year project examining the impact of leadership on school learning conditions that is being conducted with funding from the Wallace Foundation.  The nested sample includes 9 states, 5 districts in each state, three schools in each district, and 4 classrooms in each school.

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February 21
Jim Raymo (University of Wisconsin – Madison) (Tentative)
Life Course Trajectories and Retirement Transitions

ABSTRACT: Objectives: This study investigates relationships between occupational trajectories and the timing of retirement.
Methods: Using the large sample of respondents to the 1993 and 2004 rounds of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, we estimate discrete-time hazard models for self-reported transition to retirement.  We estimate the association between retirement timing and occupational experiences across the life course, evaluate the extent to which these relationships are mediated by characteristics temporally proximate to retirement, and explore potential gender differences in the relationship between life course trajectories and retirement timing.
Results: Preliminary analyses indicate that, net of current occupational status, cumulative exposure to higher status work is significantly related to retirement timing for men but not for women.  The nature of this relationship differs by the measure of occupational status used, with cumulative engagement jobs characterized by higher occupational education associated with later retirement and cumulative engagement jobs characterized by higher occupational income associated with earlier retirement.  The latter relationship disappears when current economic resources are controlled but the former is robust to control of a wide range of temporally proximate correlates of retirement.
Discussion: These analyses extend existing work on life course influences on retirement by (a) using detailed occupational history data for a large cohort sample now in the midst of the retirement process, (b) considering multiple dimensions of occupational trajectories across the life course, and (c) elaborating the mechanisms through which life course trajectories influence the timing of retirement.  These extensions are important in the context of growing heterogeneity in both occupational experiences across the life course and in the retirement process.

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February 28
Erin Kelly and Phyllis Moen
An Overview of the Flexible Work and Well-Being Study

ABSTRACT: The Flex Work Study is a multi-method, multi-year project that investigates a local company's efforts to re-write the rule book about when, where, and how work is done. We approach this "natural experiment" using theory and scholarship that suggests that control over work conditions will be associated with more positive health outcomes, psychological well-being, and satisfaction with work, and that control over work conditions will moderate or reduce the negative effects of high work demands. We are also exploring how actors within a corporate culture attempt to change that culture. This session will give us a chance to describe our on-going research and share some of the challenges of doing a quasi-experimental, longitudinal, multi-method study in a real, live organization.

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March 7 (Postponed to April 18)
Shawn Wick and Evan Schofer
The Effects of National Educational Structures on Educational Participation and Inequality

ABSTRACT: Societies differ significantly in they way they organize education.  In some countries it is routine for young children to be separated at early ages into “college-bound” versus “vocational” schools.  In others, students face daunting exams at particular stages which prevent educational advancement.  In short, the very structure of education varies across societies.  We explore the effects of these structural differences on two key outcomes:  educational participation and overall societal economic inequality.  We argue that sharp structural divisions in education generate and legitimate higher levels of social inequality.  We draw on newly collected cross-national data on educational structures of a large sample of nations.  We use pooled panel regressions over the period from 1980 to 2000 to explore the issue.

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March 21
Gina Allen and Ross Macmillan
Disability in the Transition to Adulthood: A Latent Pathway Analysis

ABSTRACT: This project investigates the role of disability in the transition to adulthood. Specifically, the research models pathways in the transition to adulthood by focusing on similarity and difference in the order and timing of school leaving, entry into and continuity of paid employment and marriage, and the onset of parenthood.  Our research addresses two specific issues: the ways in which disability shapes the transition to adulthood and the interaction of sex, disability and transitional experiences in young adult attainment. The data used in this research are from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health. First, we use a two-stage latent class approach that allows us to formally model heterogeneity in the structure of the transition to adulthood for disabled and non-disabled adolescents. Second, we examine the conjoint role that sex, disability and pathway into adulthood play in shaping occupational attainments in early adulthood.

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March 28
Jay Gabler (Harvard University)
From Captains Courageous to Captain Underpants:  Children's Books as a Cultural Field in the Twentieth Century

ABSTRACT: Children's books in the United States have undergone a significant shift over the course of the twentieth century; the field has institutionalized in comparison and opposition to emerging new media, in the context of a broader social shift towards children's market autonomy.  This case study, drawing upon archival and interview research, illustrates the dynamics of competing cultural fields and advances our understanding of childhood and culture in the media marketplace.

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April 4
Ross Macmillan, Jeylan Mortimer, and Jennifer Schultz (University of North Carolina)
Transitions, Pathways, and Commitments: Acquiring an Adult Identity

ABSTRACT: While much research has examined the roles people occupy as they move through life stages, the study of the life course is increasingly turning ‘inward,’ with attention focused on the subjective meaning of life stages, the ways people experience the life course and understand their position within a socially constructed, age-graded life span.  The links between objective and subjective pathways is especially germane for contemporary young people, as they take longer than previous generations to accomplish the traditional demographic markers of transition to adulthood, and do so in more diverse sequences (Shanahan, 2000).  As a result, their “adult identity” may be more tenuous for a longer period of time.  Prompted by Arnett’s claim that role transitions matter less for youth’s conceptions of themselves as adults than individualistic criteria, investigators recently have examined empirical correlates of adult-like identity (Shanahan, et al 2005; Johnson, et al 2005).).
 
With work in its infancy, this paper extends theory and methodology in significant ways.  Specifically, we examine the socio-demographic bases of perceptions of adulthood using unique data from a community based panel spanning mid adolescence to the early 30s.  First, we examine measurement models of perceptions of adulthood (feeling like an adult), as experienced within several social domains (including school, work, family, recreation, and volunteerism).  Our goal is to understand how such perceptions are differentially appended to various realms of activity that characterize both adolescence and the post adolescent years. 

Second, we articulate and test four theoretical propositions on the social sources of adult identity.  The first focuses on demographic markers (i.e., leaving school, starting full-time work, marriage, parenthood) and their association with perceptions of adulthood.  A key problem with this approach is that such markers are decontextualized, treated as independent rather than connected phenomena and divorced from the modal schema of the life course. Hence, a second thesis focuses on modal pathways into adulthood, defined in terms of the multi-faceted interlock of role trajectories, indexing the order and timing of key roles.  A third thesis argues for interaction between pathways and transition markers such that markers have distinct meaning depending upon when and how they occur in the life span.  Finally, we examine whether individualistic criteria, including commitments in various institutional spheres (political, occupational, community organizations), co-vary with distinct pathways to adulthood and impact the acquisition of adult identity.  “Emergent adults” are said to be engaged in exploration, with little commitment to their roles.  If this is the case, a more tentative embrace of one’s current occupation, for example, indicated by lesser occupational commitment and a lesser likelihood of reporting that one’s job is one’s “career,” would predict weaker identity as an adult.  Our approach promotes a conceptualization of the life span as characterized by three interlocked phenomena--cultural schema of the life course that govern the order and timing of transitions, the transitions themselves and the attainments that they connote, and individualistic psychological orientations--all of which may affect the acquisition of age-graded identities.     

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April 11
Markus Hadler (University of Graz, Austria)
Individual Affiliation to the Political Community “Europe” and the Role of Institutions and Modernization

ABSTRACT: The analyses presented in this talk are part of a larger research project that deals with the influence of institutional settings and modernization processes on individual attitudes and behaviors. In this talk I will focus on the affiliation to a particular political unity, namely the European Union.

For a long time, the political community was more or less congruent with the fellow citizens of the nation-state. But, during the last decades the European Union has expanded enormously and comprises nowadays 25 member states. From the institutional point of view, the European Union can also be considered as an institution which promotes itself and tries to create a European consciousness. For instance, the introduction of the common currency, the Euro, can be seen as an effort to create a European identity. It, thus, can be expected that the subjective affiliation to the European political community will become stronger with the expansion of the European Union. Furthermore, it can be assumed that the longer a country is a member of the EU, or the farther negotiations about a joining are, and the denser the intersection with the EU, the higher will be the affiliation to the European Political Community of its citizens.

Modernization and socioeconomic progress can also be related to the subjective affiliation to and the perception of a political community. Here it is asserted that within less affluent societies higher rates of national pride can be found. Inhabitants of affluent nations also prefer functional-communicative aspects of national identity while those of less affluent societies prefer traditional aspects.

This talk shall highlight the complex interactions of individual attitudes and features of the social context. Furthermore, the effects of institutional settings and modernization factors will be contrasted.

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April 18
Shawn Wick and Evan Schofer
The Effects of National Educational Structures on Educational Participation and Inequality

ABSTRACT: Societies differ significantly in they way they organize education.  In some countries it is routine for young children to be separated at early ages into “college-bound” versus “vocational” schools.  In others, students face daunting exams at particular stages which prevent educational advancement.  In short, the very structure of education varies across societies.  We explore the effects of these structural differences on two key outcomes:  educational participation and overall societal economic inequality.  We argue that sharp structural divisions in education generate and legitimate higher levels of social inequality.  We draw on newly collected cross-national data on educational structures of a large sample of nations.  We use pooled panel regressions over the period from 1980 to 2000 to explore the issue.

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April 25
Robin Stryker
Social Science in Employment Discrimination Law

ABSTRACT: TBA

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May 2
Ana Prata Pereira
Women’s Movements in Times of Democratic Expansion – The Spanish and Portuguese Cases

ABSTRACT: Different theories of Southern European democratizations have privileged an elitist or “top-down” orientation to democratization, focusing mostly on the state and on pacts between elites. These approaches tend to neglect the role of non-elite political actors (e.g. women’s movements) and are unable to capture the full range of experiences that impede or facilitate participation of previously excluded actors in democratization.

After the formal transition to democracy in Spain and Portugal (elections, drafting of the Constitution) began a decade of democratic expansion in which various groups struggled to participate and find representation. In both countries, the women’s movement actively joined this process.  They made claims for several specific issues, the most important of which was reproductive rights. However, the outcomes of their efforts were very different, with Spain providing much greater reproductive rights policies then Portugal.  The difference in outcomes is unexpected because the two countries had many similar conditions: similar democratic rights provided to women; organizationally weak movements; a political environment dominated by parties; similar fascist experiences; patriarchical cultures; and strong Catholic counter-movements. 

By focusing on an issue central to women’s movements in both countries – reproductive rights -- this paper explains the relative impact of women’s movements in the two democratization processes.  Using archival research and interviews, I gathered data in both countries on women’s organizations and their interactions with the state, the media, political parties, and the parliament.  At this point, my analysis indicates that the difference in outcomes occurred due to allies and the institutional structure of government.  Compared to Portugal, the women’s movement in Spain could count on the presence of influential allies (Socialist Party) and had increased possibilities for legal collective action in regions due to their relative autonomy within the Spanish state.

 

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