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Megan Klein Hattori
mklein@socy.umd.edu
Departmental Specialty Areas:
Demography and Social Psychology
Dissertation Title and Abstract:
"Trust,
Commitment, Fidelity, and Condom Use among Young Adults in Tanzania."
With an estimated 7.0 percent of Tanzanian adults HIV
positive and no cure or vaccine available, preventing
HIV infection remains central to fighting the AIDS
epidemic. For sexually active individuals there are two
ways to avoid HIV infection: long-term fidelity with an
uninfected partner or consistent condom use. Trust and
commitment play a complex but critical role in both
fidelity and condom use. While trust in and commitment
to one’s partner are often barriers to condom use, they
are likely prerequisites for long-term fidelity.
Research on the link between trust and condom use is
emerging, yet the relationship between trust,
commitment, and long-term fidelity has yet to be
explored. Of the three standard methods of AIDS
prevention—abstinence, fidelity, and condom use—fidelity
remains relatively under-researched. For HIV prevention
to better address couples, the role of trust and
commitment must be better understood.
This dissertation aims to improve our understanding of
trust and commitment between couples in Tanzania and the
relationship that trust and commitment have with
fidelity and condom use using
multiple theories (social exchange and identity)
and multiple methods
(semi-structured in-depth interviews and in-person
survey interviews).
Semi-structured in-depth interviews prior to the survey
will allow the inclusion of unexpected local insights
and ideas to our research and questionnaires for survey
interviews. An in-person, household-based survey,
conducted by Population Services International, will
provide the empirical basis for testing and quantifying
the relationship between the elements of trust,
commitment, and preventive behavior—long-term fidelity
and condom use. Finally, a second round of
semi-structured in-depth interviews will explore the
nuances and questions raised in the analysis of the
survey data and provide insights to the meaning of the
findings.
Dissertation Advisor: Prof. Ulla
Larsen
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Veena Kulkarni
vkulkarni@socy.umd.edu
Departmental Specialty Areas:
Demography and Development
Dissertation Title and Abstract:
"Asians
in the United States Labor Market: Winners or Losers?"
This dissertation is an attempt to fill the
lacunae of an updated comprehensive assessment of Asian groups’ economic
well being relative to the native born non-Hispanic whites and
disaggregated by the countries of origin, gender, and nativity status.
It examines the outcomes of employment and earnings for the six major
native and foreign born Asian groups, namely, Asian Indians, Chinese,
Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, and Vietnamese relative to one another and
to native born non-Hispanic whites for the year 2000 at two levels:
individual and household. The use of 5 and 1 percent Census data provide
adequate sample sizes to enable such a disaggregated analysis. Although
owing to their high socio-economic status, Asians have been accorded the
label of ‘model minority’, past research and preliminary analyses from
this study, demonstrate variations between native and foreign born
Asians, men, and women, with regard to employment, individual and
household earnings. Present work is an attempt to seek explanations for
such differences. The central questions that are addressed are; how do
the various human capital and assimilation indicators interact with one
another to determine employment and earnings of men, women, and
households belonging to the various groups and what are the variations
in these interactions across groups? Do Asian households ‘indulge’ in
greater resource pooling to achieve the same level of economic well
being as native born non-Hispanic whites? Addressing these questions is
expected to enhance our understanding of the intersections between
ethnicity, gender, and nativity in determining outcomes in the United
States labor market.
Dissertation Advisor: Prof. Suzanne
Bianchi
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Sangeeta Parashar
sparashar@socy.umd.edu
Departmental Specialty Areas:
Demography and Development
Dissertation Title and
Abstract:
“Untangling
the Complexities of Context: Occupational Sex
Segregation in Post-Apartheid South Africa.”
Over the
past decade, the South African labor market’s
failure to provide employment to disadvantaged
groups has been a major topic of discussion among
both researchers and policy-makers. However, given
the history of South Africa and concomitant concerns
over labor market inequities, most studies have
highlighted racial comparisons and
discrimination, particularly between White/African
men. Although this is reasonable given the history
of apartheid, one can argue that gender
inequality is also important because women do not
enjoy the same access, opportunities and rewards in
the formal labor market as men, especially among
races traditionally subject to discrimination.
Moreover, sociologists seeking to assess labor
market trends in South Africa have not focused
adequately on the implications for women’s position
in the labor market, particularly occupational
segregation.
This
dissertation explores occupational sex segregation,
with particular focus on the simultaneous
intersections of macro and micro-level factors.
Using detailed occupational data from the 2001
Census as well as statistical models that
incorporate multiple levels of data, I investigate:
(1) the prevalence of occupational sex segregation
in South Africa, (2) how occupational sex
segregation varies by race and region, and (3)
determinants at both the micro and macro level, with
particular emphasis on contextual factors. I argue
that, in light of the country’s unique history of
segregationist and apartheid policies through
most of the 20th century, contextual
factors (local labor markets, demographic
composition, and culture) play a prominent role in
segregating men and women of various races into
different occupations.
Dissertation Advisor: Prof. Harriet
B. Presser |
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Natasha Sacouman
nsacouman@socy.umd.edu
Departmental Specialty Areas:
Development and Comparative
Areas of Interest: Public Sociology, Democratization, Social Networks, Culture, Social Movements, Comparative Sociology, Ethnographic Methods, Latin America
Dissertation Title
and Abstract:
“Defying
Expectations: Associational Participation and
Democratization in Poor Communities”
Alexis de Tocqueville
noted that the key to democracy is “knowledge of how
to combine.” This dissertation explores a poor
community’s transition from a sparse to a highly
developed associational space and the rise of new
social relations through the lens of civic
participation. It compares three different
associational settings in a poor community in the
Argentine province of Buenos Aires—i.e, a
non-governmental organization, a religious network,
and a political network--and reveals how
associational participation can create and
communicate civic understandings. This dissertation
is based upon extensive ethnographic observations in
the different associations and the community
itself. Also, I developed the analysis further on
the basis of qualitative interviews with community
leaders, participants, nonparticipants, politicians
and academics.
I
observed that leaders and participants in
associational these settings are engaged in “civic
work” at two levels: first, associations do civic
work at the institutional level that the Argentine
national and local governments failed to address;
these leaders manage participants in ways that
distinguish their association from other
associations. Second, within the associations and
the community, the interactions--between leaders and
participants, and the participants with their
neighbors--draw upon and help build and reconfigure
broader social relations. These emerging social
relations arise out of certain social identities and
the community’s image of its local autonomy in a sea
of dependency and clientelism. Ultimately, this
dissertation demonstrates how the configuration of
social relations serves to legitimate and reproduce
civic life in poor communities and analyzes the
interplays between democratic development and
exclusion/inequality; solidarity and generalized
distrust; and hierarchy and freedom.
Dissertation Advisor: Prof.
Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz
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Vanessa Wight
vwight@socy.umd.edu
Departmental
Specialty
Areas:
Demography and Gender, Work,
and Family
Dissertation Title and Abstract:
“Assessing the Intergenerational Transmission of Gendered Behavior and
Attitudes: Does What Parents Say and Do Matter?”
The purpose of
this dissertation is to expand what we know about the persistence of
gender specialization in the household by assessing the relationship
between parents’ housework behavior and attitudes when children are
young and those children’s housework and attitudes when they are
adults. The central question to be addressed is do gender egalitarian
parents produce gender egalitarian children or, conversely, do parents
who maintain more rigid gender roles produce children with similar
notions of gender? There is widespread consensus within the field that
the family is one of the most effective and efficient agents of child
development and socialization. Yet when it comes to explaining the
persistence of gendered norms and behavior, few studies explicitly test
this. Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH),
this dissertation provides a new perspective on the persistence of
gender specialization and norms by empirically documenting the
relationship between parents’ behavior and attitudes and children’s
adult gendered outcomes. The longitudinal component of the data offers
the best ability to assess the transmission of gender from parents to
children. In short, this dissertation will shed light on the ways in
which gendered behavior and attitudes are reproduced from one generation
to the next.
Dissertation Advisor: Prof. Suzanne
Bianchi
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