News

Daniel Herda's article on discrimination fear named winner of the 2013 ASA Section on Children and Adolescents Graduate Student Paper Award.

Jacque Leaver — 2013-06-13T18:53:32Z

The Specter of Discrimination: Reported Racial Discrimination Fear among Minority Adolescents in Chicago

This paper examines the understudied phenomenon of racial discrimination fear among a sample of African American and Hispanic adolescents in Chicago. I consider the extent of these fears across race and compare them to reports from the adolescents’ parents. I also analyze the factors associated with an increased level of fear. Borrowing from research on the fear of crime, I develop several hypotheses linking fears to direct personal experience, indirect or vicarious experience, and environmental signals. Results show discrimination fear to be common among minority adolescents. Such fears are also more prevalent among adolescents than their parents. Negative binomial regression models indicate that discrimination fears are most likely when one has already experienced victimization from discrimination. Indirect discrimination experience also predicts greater fear, suggesting that the consequences of discriminatory acts are not limited to the immediate victim. Further, among African Americans, the presence of racial out-groups in one’s neighborhood acts as a signal for discrimination, resulting in greater fear.

Ali Chaudhary has received a Grant Award from the Multi-Campus U.C. Center for New Racial Studies.

Jacque Leaver — 2013-06-10T17:35:41Z

Ali Chaudhary has received a graduate student grant award from the U.C. Center for New Racial Studies for his dissertation research entitled: Racialized Transnationalism: The Criminalization of Pakistani Transnational Organizations in London, Toronto and New York City. The Center's 2013-2014 grant cycle theme is "The Racial State: Democratic and Despotic Dimensions". The grants are highly competitive and open to faculty and graduate students from any department across the 10 UC campuses. Ali is the first graduate student from the Davis campus to receive a grant award from the Center. He will be conducting dissertation research this summer as a visiting scholar at the University of Toronto and during the fall quarter as a Visiting Fellow at the International Migration Institute-University of Oxford. After returning to Davis in Winter 2014, he will be presenting preliminary findings at conferences and colloquia sponsored by UC Center for New Racial Studies. Award recipients will also be invited to showcase their work in a UCCNRS "New Racial Studies" publication series.

Ming-Cheng Lo has received a UC Pacific Rim Research Grant for her project, "The Day After: Civic Engagement and Identity Reconstruction in Response to Natural Disasters in Taiwan and Japan."

Jacque Leaver — 2013-05-23T23:10:39Z

"Many geographic areas in the Pacific Rim are vulnerable to devastating natural disasters. Furthermore, common challenges often confront the governments, NGOs, and local communities as they attempt post-disaster reconstruction: Many countries in the Pacific Rim have over-developed lands susceptible to natural disasters; Many are latecomers to capitalism whose government policies aggressively prioritize economic development over environmental concerns; Certain rural populations within the region are both the most vulnerable to natural disasters and the least capable of voicing their opinions. Under these circumstances, how can the afflicted communities consolidate and pursue their visions for long-term recovery? Informed by the sociological literature on civic engagement and interdisciplinary scholarships on identity reconstruction, we address this issue through two specific research questions. First, how do different types of civic engagement shape the debates and outcomes of community reconstruction? Second, how do survivors draw upon local cultural repertoires, while also create new rituals, symbols, or narratives, to make sense of their sufferings and articulate their subjectivities? We propose to conduct comparative ethnographic research in Taiwan and Japan, in the areas afflicted by Typhoon Morakot and the 3.11 earthquake-tsunami, respectively. Our findings will potentially contribute to both academic debates and policy discussions about post-disaster processes."

Ming-Cheng Lo and Roxy Bahar's article, "Resisting the Colonization of the Lifeworld? Immigrant Patients' Experiences with Co-Ethnic Healthcare Workers," has been published in the current issue of Social Science and Medicine.

Jacque Leaver — 2013-04-24T22:10:00Z

This article analyzes how “ethnic concordance” (i.e., matching the ethnicity of patients and healthcare workers) shapes patients' experiences of clinical interaction. Adopting the Habermasian framework of lifeworld-medicine contention, we inductively analyze 60 in-depth interviews with low-income LEP (limited English proficiency) Vietnamese and Mexican immigrants, which were conducted in a metropolitan area in Northern California between January 2006 and April 2007. Our findings indicate that, net of linguistic concordance, ethnic concordance appeared to exacerbate rather than alleviate the problem of “the colonization of the lifeworld.” Patients often felt that co-ethnic healthcare workers introduced additional power struggles from other systems, such as boundary work among co-ethnic immigrants, into the institution of healthcare. Likewise, immigrant patients sometimes racialized the professional competence and virtues of healthcare providers, ranking co-ethnic doctors below white doctors. While these two general themes characterize the experiences of ethnic concordance among both Mexican and Vietnamese patients, the comparison between the two groups also highlights some differences. Existing research has documented the impacts of ethnic concordance, but little is known about patients' subjective experiences of these interactions. Our findings address this empirical gap. Drawing heavily on the Habermasian theoretical framework, our research in turn broadens this framework by showing how both lifeworld and medicine can become distorted by strategic actions in other systems, such as class and immigration, in which the American healthcare system has become deeply imbedded.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953613001846

Diane Wolf's article with Yen Le Espiritu "The Appropriation of American War Memories: A Critical Juxtaposition of the Holocaust and the Vietnam War" will be published in Social Identities in May 2013.

Jacque Leaver — 2013-04-24T18:50:00Z

This article delineates and critically juxtaposes the differential public commemorations of the Vietnam War and the Holocaust in the US. We elucidate how the tragedies of the Holocaust have been integrated into US public memory as a central part of the American story, solidifying the image of the United States as a powerful and moral nation that rescues desperate people from tyranny. In contrast, public commemorations of the highly divisive Vietnam War are sparse, if at all, in great part because they would re-ignite questions about the role of the US in Vietnam and in the suffering of its victims. While the Holocaust enables the United States to re-narrate national glory, the Vietnam War calls attention to US defeat and upsets the narrative of rescue and liberation. Through a critical juxtaposition of these two public memories, we assert that the moral and political divisiveness of the Vietnam War constitutes one unacknowledged source of the ascendancy and centrality of the Holocaust in American memory. Through our relational analysis of differential public memories, we draw on and contribute to the field of memory studies.

Drew Halfmann's book was reviewed in the American Journal of Sociology.

Jacque Leaver — 2013-04-22T22:14:29Z

Drew Halfmann's book, Doctors and Demonstrators: How Political Institutions Shape Abortion Law in the United States, Britain and Canada was reviewed by Myra Marx Ferree in the January issue of the American Journal of Sociology.

Research by Raoul Liévanos and UOP collaborative receives media coverage.

Jacque Leaver — 2013-04-18T17:43:16Z

Raoul's dissertation research on the history of residential segregation and contemporary patterns of unequal exposure to environmental risk and home foreclosure risk in Stockton was presented at University of Pacific (UOP) Sustainability Forum in early April. His research was featured alongside complimentary collaborative research by UOP and Stockton community members in an article in Stockton's primary newspaper, The Record. For a copy of the article, see: http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130404/A_NEWS/304040327&cid=sitesearch.

Mindy Romero's New Research Receives Television and Radio Attention

Jacque Leaver — 2013-04-12T15:19:06Z

Mindy's latest research (released in March) on youth voter turnout in 2012 has received coverage by a wide range of media sources, including a segment on Univision and an article on Politico.com. For a summary of the full media coverage of her work see: http://regionalchange.ucdavis.edu/projects/ccep-in-the-media.

Raoul Liévanos to present dissertation research at University of the Pacific Sustainability Forum, April 2.

Jacque Leaver — 2013-03-26T20:15:00Z

Raoul will present findings from his dissertation research on the relationship between residential segregation and unequal risk of exposure to food insecurity, home foreclosure, toxic contaminants, and climate-related sea level rise in the Stockton metropolitan area on April 2 at the University of Pacific (UOP) in Stockton, California. It will be held from 7pm to 9pm in the Morris Chapel Sears Room 114 at UOP. The presentation is free and open to the public and part of the April 2013 Sustainability Month at UOP. For more information about the event, please contact Dr. Shanna Eller, UOP Sustainability Director, at 209-946-2763.

Drew Halfmann received the 2013 Distinguished Scholarship Award of the Pacific Sociological Association for his book Doctors and Demonstrators: How Political Institutions Shape Abortion Law in the United States, Britain and Canada.

Jacque Leaver — 2013-03-25T19:30:00Z

This winter Drew Halfmann gave lectures on abortion politics at UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the University of Oxford.

Jacque Leaver — 2013-03-25T19:27:40Z

David Kyle is the Co-Organizer (with John Dale) of a SSSP/ ASA-sponsored one-day conference in New York City on August 12th, entitled: "Re-Imagining Human Rights: The Challenge of Agency, Creativity, and Global Justice." There is a CFP due by March 31st.

Jacque Leaver — 2013-02-16T00:03:40Z

Re-Imagining Human Rights –

The Challenge of Agency, Creativity, and Global Justice

Conference Co-Sponsored by Critical Sociology,

The Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the

Human Rights Section of the American Sociological Association

August 12, 2013 (8:45 am to 5:00 pm)

The Westin New York at Times Square

New York, NY

Call for Papers

Deadline for Submission of Abstracts March 31, 2013

This one-day conference on “Re-imagining Human Rights” invites scholars and practitioners to discuss the challenge of power and inequalities embedded in current institutional arrangements and practices of human rights.

The production of human rights is not immune to the effects of inequalities across the global North and South. Conference panels will highlight projects or research within local, regional, and transnational contexts that offer insight for democratizing the production of human rights. Do understandings of justice in the Global South meaningfully shape those institutionalized as human rights, or do human rights in the name of “global justice” flow only from the North to the South? Does the social organization upon which transnational solidarity links actors across communities of the Global North and South reflect the human rights values that they pursue? What is the quality of the social relationships upon which such solidarities are formed? To what extent is the creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship of NGOs “measured” and constrained by the performative expectations of philanthropic donors and impact investment brokerages that provide the resources for their human rights work? How do our understandings of human agency and personhood shape the (re)production and (trans)formation of human rights?

We are particularly interested in learning from organizations and practices founded in the global South or affiliated transnational partnerships. In the shadow of the United Nations, the conference also will devote special attention to grassroots human rights projects and collaborative alliances operating in New York City. Participants will engage in a transnational dialogue and reflexive engagement across scholarly and activist communities (though not exclusive categories). Thus, the role of a common human rights imagination, or multiple co-existing human rights imaginations, may be a starting point for a new dialogue on academic and other approaches.

We invite submissions of 300-500 words on a broad range of topics related to human rights. We are especially interested in submissions that address the following themes: the inclusion of marginalized identities; making room for alternative conceptions of justice; developing creative narratives of agency and ontologies of human personhood; alternative transnational imaginaries; strengthening collaborative relations between critical academic research approaches and NGO activism; and identifying existing local and alternative institutional arrangements for building human rights.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: Midnight, March 31, 2013

Selected participants will be notified by April 15, 2013. Full drafts of accepted papers are due June 30, 2013.

Papers presented at the conference will be considered for publication in a planned special issue of Critical Sociology and/or in a separate edited book.

The Conference will be free and open to the public. Conference participants will be responsible for covering their own travel and lodging expenses.

Please send abstracts to conference organizers and guest editors John Dale and David Kyle at ReimaginingHumanRights@gmail.com by midnight, March 31, 2013. Include your name, institutional affiliation (if applicable), and a short biography of not more than 80 words.

Keep in touch:

o Twitter: @ReimaginingHR

o Facebook: Reimagining Human Rights

Please circulate to networks, organizations, departments, colleagues, activists, students, and other interested parties.

Ali Chaudhary accepted as Visiting Fellow by International Migration Institute-Oxford University

Jacque Leaver — 2013-02-13T19:59:24Z

Ali Chaudhary has been accepted as a Visiting Fellow by the prestigious International Migration Institute (IMI) at the University of Oxford for Fall 2013. Ali is being sponsored by IMI's co-director Dr. Hein de Haas and will be conducting dissertation research on the criminalization of Pakistani immigrant transnational engagement in London. He will also present and contribute working papers based on preliminary findings from his dissertation fieldwork and his earlier work on immigrant self-employment.

Bill McCarthy and colleagues' paper on violent victimization and crime published in Violence and Victims

McCarthy, Bill — 2013-02-06T03:43:24Z

Frederick, Tyler, Bill McCarthy, and John Hagan. “Perceived Danger and Offending: Exploring the Links between Violent Victimization and Street Crime.” Violence and Victims 28(1):16-35.

Perceptions of the danger of crime are typically discussed in the context of people’s fear that they will be harmed by offenders. In this paper we shift the focus and examine the association between perceived danger and offending, and the contribution of these perceptions to the well-established relationship between violent victimization and crime. We hypothesize that violence may embolden some victims and contribute to their perception that offending is not dangerous. We examine the mediating effects of these perceptions alongside two other potential links between violent victimization and crime: deviant definitions and risk-seeking. Our analyses of data from a sample of homeless youth finds that violent victimization is strongly associated with four types of offending—theft, drug use, drug selling, and prostitution—and that perceived danger significantly mediates several of these relationships. Our results suggest that perceived danger may be an important mechanism connecting victimization and crime.

David Kyle hosts Mondavi Event on Art and Migration

Jacque Leaver — 2013-02-01T22:51:39Z

On January 31st, David Kyle moderated a panel on "Art and Migration" held at the Mondavi Center for Performing Arts as part of a week-long UC Davis series of events related to these themes. The guest panelists were Anthony Sheppard (musicologist and professor of music at Williams College), Maria Elena Gonza´lez (a Cuban-American sculptor), Philip Kan Gotanda (American playwright and filmmaker at UC Berkeley, as well as previous Granada Artist-in-Residence at UC Davis), Peter Kulchyski (Native Studies, University of Manitoba), and Chan Park (a Korean P’ansori expert and professor of Korean language, literature, and performance studies at Ohio State University). The penal explored themes of the common thematic foundations of freedom and imagination in art and migration, as well as the challenge of authenticity and hybridity as both art and people migrate and intersect in mercurial ways.