Congratulations to the student paper competition winners! The student paper competitions awards are proudly sponsored by the Divisions

COMMUNITY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT DIVISION

No award given

CONFLICT, SOCIAL ACTION, AND CHANGE DIVISION

Pamela NeumannWinning Title: “‘We are not retarded’: Explaining Collective Inaction in a Company Town” 

Author: Pamela Neumann 

Affiliation: University of Texas at Austin

E-mail: pneumann@utexas.edu

Abstract:

The dynamics of contaminated communities have become an increasingly important area of research with the rise of environmental hazards worldwide. While much is known about communities which unite to protest toxic conditions, places where such mobilization has not occurred are far less frequently studied. Drawing on five months of ethnographic research, this paper examines one such community (La Oroya) in Peru which is plagued by dangerously high lead levels, a product of ninety years of heavy metal smelter activity. What little mobilization has occurred in La Oroya arose not to protest contamination, but rather to contest the potential closure of the metallurgical complex. Through an analysis of the discursive frames that residents use to make sense of contamination, this article highlights the significance of community, collective self-understandings, and moral boundary-making in community responses to toxic conditions. These aforementioned dimensions—not merely the presence of industry or potential job loss—shape subjective perceptions of risk in La Oroya in ways that tend to suppress the emergence of sustained collective action.

CRIME AND JUVENILE DELINQUENCY DIVISION

Jessica SimesWinning Title: “For Whom Does a Neighborhood Effect Matter? Neighborhood Trajectories of a Cohort of Released Prisoners” 

Author: Jessica T. Simes

Affiliation: Harvard University

E-mail: jsimes@fas.harvard.edu

Abstract:

Each year nearly 700,000 people leave prison and become residents of neighborhoods across the United States. Neighborhoods are social contexts to which people are connected. Imprisonment is a fundamentally segregative experience. When this period of separation ends, people leaving prison must reconnect and reimagine relationships with the labor market, with family and friends, the welfare system, the political system, as well as neighborhoods and communities. Capturing how individuals establish a relationship with place after a period of total institutional segregation is not well understood. Combining census data and administrative records with a longitudinal survey of people leaving prison and returning to the Greater Boston area, this paper examines neighborhood attainment after a period of imprisonment. Results indicate black and older respondents with mental illness and addiction were less likely than their counterparts to achieve neighborhood membership; during the study period nearly 20 percent moved into formal institutional settings, returned to prison, or lived in extreme marginality within the city. For those living in neighborhoods, black respondents consistently lived in more resource deprived, disadvantaged areas with higher rates of violence than other groups—even after accounting for sample selection bias. For many individuals leaving prison, their strategy for survival necessarily detaches them from neighborhoods. These findings call into question previous measurement of exposure to urban inequality and point to a new and understudied type of neighborhood disadvantage—detachment from social context entirely.

Jay B?orchertHonorable Mention: “A New Iron Closet: Failing to Extend the Spirit of Lawrence v. Texas to Prisons and Prisoners” 

Authors: Jay Borchert

Affiliation: University of Michigan 

E-mail: borjay@umich.edu

Abstract:

Since Stonewall, gender non-conformity and consensual same-sex sex in particular have been decriminalized and removed from criminal law and its associated punishments. Yet every prison system across the United States maintains a “sexual misconduct” rule baring consensual same-sex sexual behavior and non-conforming gender presentation. Violations of these administrative rules, which I argue continue to criminalize consensual same-sex sex despite the ruling in Lawrence v. Texas 2003, frequently earn prisoners (who often identify as LGBT) harsh punishments to include long periods in solitary confinement. This essay, motivated by my own experience as a gay man who spent 7 years incarcerated in California, Minnesota and Illinois, develops an understanding of the ways these rules operate by examining examples of rules violations and punishments from the Michigan Department of Corrections, discusses how and why current prison law is a barrier to carceral change, and ends with an admonition for all of us to consider prisons and prisoners as within the broad LGBT social movement in order to foster progressive change in our nation’s prisons.

DISABILITY DIVISION

Tara FannonWinning Title: “Out of Sight Still in Mind: Visually Impaired Women’s Embodied Accounts of Ideal Femininity” 

Author: Tara Fannon

Affiliation: National University of Ireland, Galway

E-mail: t.fannon3@nuigalway.ie

Abstract:

With its emphasis on physical form, the diffusion of the feminine ideal relies heavily on the use of visual imagery but there is a common knowledge about it that penetrates language and discourse. The relationship between mainstream representations of the feminine ideal and non-disabled female body/self dissatisfaction has been well-documented over the years but less attention has been given to understanding how such visual representations affect women with disabilities, specifically women with visual disabilities. Drawing on qualitative data taken from the personal diaries and in-depth interviews with seven blind and visually impaired Irish women, and using a feminist disability model reinforced by sociology of the body, gender theory and visual studies, I examine what it means to be a young woman with a visual disability living in a visually-reliant, appearance-oriented culture. I explore interpretations and expressions of femininity and beauty, the complicated, often fraught, relationship with female body and self and the rituals and practices used to manage appearance amidst having a disability that is, often times, more personally perceptible because of a visual-discursive emphasis on female appearance and the social value ascribed to seeing and being seen.

DRINKING AND DRUGS DIVISION

Kathryn NowotnyBruce D. Johnson Paper Winning Title: “Variations in Drug and Alcohol Treatment Utilization across Men’s Prisons” 

Author: Kathryn M. Nowotny 

Affiliation: University of Colorado, Boulder 

E-mail: kathryn.nowotny@colorado.edu

Abstract:

U.S. inmates comprise a vulnerable group with a substantial need for substance use treatment services. To date, research has examined the organizational and structural factors that predict the availability of prison treatment services including evidence-based treatment. The current study examines if the prison social context influences whether male inmates use treatment services while incarcerated. Results from a national sample (2004 Survey of Inmates in State Correctional Facilities) are used to answer the following questions: (1) is there variation across prisons in inmate reports of using treatment services? (2) to what degree does the prison context moderate the association between inmate substance use dependence and using treatment services? and (3) which features of the prison social context are associated with substance dependent inmates using treatment services above and beyond compositional effects? Multilevel modeling techniques reveal that the prison context matters for treatment utilization for male prison inmates and that there is a high level of treatment need in this sample. At the average state prison, about one-quarter of inmates utilize treatment with estimates showing a range of treatment utilization from 9 percent to 53 percent depending on the prison. The findings also identify unique features of the prison social context that are important for inmate utilization of treatment services including age structure and race/ethnic makeup, security level (proportion violent offenders), use of solitary confinement, and work/education programing and work assignment. Structural-level interventions to increase treatment usage are discussed.

EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS DIVISION

Anthony JackWinning Title: “(No) Harm in Asking: Culture, Class, and Undergraduates’ Help-Seeking and Engagement Strategies” 

Author: Anthony Abraham Jack

Affiliation: Harvard University

E-mail: aajack@fas.harvard.edu

Abstract:

How do undergraduates engage college officials? Existing explanations of help-seeking and engagement predict class-based engagement strategies. Employing 137 interviews with undergraduates and two years of ethnographic observation at an elite university, this article shows how undergraduates with disparate precollege experiences differ in their orientations and strategies toward help-seeking and engaging college officials, and considers the payoffs. Middle-class undergraduates report being at ease when engaging college officials. Undergraduates from working-class backgrounds, however, are split. The Privileged Poor—lower-income undergraduates who attend boarding, day, and preparatory high schools—enter college with cultural repertoires akin to those of their middle-class peers, are primed to engage college officials, and are proactive in doing so. By contrast, the Doubly Disadvantaged—lower-income undergraduates who remain tied to their home communities and schools before college—are more defensive when engaging college officials and withdraw from them. Through documenting the overlooked heterogeneity between lower-income undergraduates, this study outlines how precollege experiences have lasting influence on undergraduates’ cultural repertoires that is independent of family background. In all, this study sheds new light on the cultural underpinnings of education processes, mobility, and the reproduction of inequality in college that results from uneven access to institutional resources via college officials.

ENVIRONMENT AND TECHNOLOGY DIVISION

Rebecca ElliotBrent K. Marshall Paper Winning Title: “Calculative Ambivalence: Climate Change and the Mapping and Pricing of Flood Risk in New York City” 

Author: Rebecca Elliott

Affiliation: University of California, Berkeley

E-mail: rfelliott@berkeley.edu

Abstract:

This paper introduces and develops the concept of calculative ambivalence in an investigation of calculations related to climate change, focusing empirically on recent efforts to re-map and re-price New York City’s flood risk. Drawing on interview, ethnographic, and documentary evidence, I follow the deployment of new “flood insurance rate maps” (FIRMs) as actors in New York City attempt to make practical use of them. I show that actors on all sides of the FIRM—both those enforcing and those subject to the new FIRMs—experience an ambivalence of feeling and outcomes related to the calculations in which they engage. Specifically, as the FIRMs graft new (higher) insurance prices onto the landscape, homeowners, as well as experts and officials, at once understand the risk as real (i.e. sea levels are rising) and quantifiable, but do not want to displace communities in the face of this (expensive) risk. In addition, while the FIRMs incentivize “rational” floodplain management, they generate affordability problems that trouble authorities and homeowners alike. Calculative ambivalence does not arise from the failure of the FIRM in a technical sense, but rather arises when this device does precisely what it is designed to do. The paper argues that calculative ambivalence is theoretically and empirically significant for three, interrelated reasons. First, the concept articulates the scholarship on calculation and calculative devices to larger issues and theories of risk in modern societies. Second, this case shows that calculative ambivalence can motivate politics and legislative change. Third, calculative ambivalence clarifies some of the challenges of adapting to climate change.

FAMILY DIVISION

Winning Title: “How Does the Personal Become Political? Assessing the Impact of Mothers’ Employment on Daughters’ Political Organizing” 

Author: Mónica L. Caudillo

Affiliation: New York University

E-mail: monica.caudillo@nyu.edu

Abstract:

I assess whether gender socialization theories explain the probability of participating in political organizations among women of the “Millennial” generation, born after 1980. This generation grew up in a period when labor force participation of mothers with children under 18 was rapidly increasing, and were exposed to changing feminine role models. Using prospective data of respondents’ childhood conditions, I assess whether exposure to a full-time working mother during a woman's childhood has an impact on her probability of political participation as a young adult. I present linear regression, propensity score weighting and genetic matching analyses for low- and high-income daughters, and repeat analyses on sons as placebo tests. Evidence across models shows that exposure to a full-time working mother makes low-income daughters more likely to participate in political organizations in early adulthood. According to sensitivity tests, these effects are reasonably robust to unobserved confounders.

GLOBAL DIVISION/CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY GRADUATE STUDENT PAPER AWARD

Winning Title: “Jewish Tourism to the Palestinian Territories and its Effects on Diaspora Identities and Politics” 

Author: Emily Schneider

Affiliation: University of California, Santa Barbara

E-mail: schneider@umail.ucsb.edu

Abstract:

For Jewish tourists in Israel/Palestine, venturing into the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) can have a jarring effect on their political views, often motivating them to fight injustice in the region. These effects however, are of course highly varied, and many individuals walk away from such tours without sharp changes in their opinions or activism. If tour participants from similar backgrounds each see the same sites and hear the same stories of struggle and oppression, what causes some people to leave feeling shocked and motivated to act, while others appear apathetic and even dismissive? This paper seeks to understand which factors motivate American Jews to challenge dominant attitudes on Zionism and to take action against unjust Israeli policies. Using a mixed methods approach that combines pre/post tour surveys with longitudinal in-depth interviews, I examine this question though the lens of global travel in order to understand the role of alternative tourism in promoting transnational activism. I find that among Jewish travelers to the OPT, it is those participants with strong connections to Jewish peoplehood who are most likely to engage in protest against the Israeli state. Therefore, I conclude that it is actually the contradictions in diaspora members’ relationships to a base state that prompt transnational activism, rather than clear support or opposition towards a diaspora "homeland." As such, rather than stifle activism, ideological tension in one’s diaspora national identity appears to sustain transnational political engagement.

HEALTH, HEALTH POLICY, AND HEALTH SERVICES DIVISION

Winning Title: “Profiles in Health: Multiple Roles and Health Lifestyles in Young Adulthood” 

Author: Trenton D. Mize

Affiliation: Indiana University

E-mail: tdmize@indiana.edu

Abstract:

Social roles have long been theorized to be associated with health, with most of the research on multiple roles focusing on health outcomes. Health behaviors have also been shown to have strong influences on health outcomes, but little research has examined the influence of holding multiple roles on health behavior. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N=13,964) I analyze the effects of holding multiple roles on health behaviors. Drawing on recent theoretical and empirical research, I model health lifestyles as the overall combination of multiple health behaviors. Results indicate that holding more social roles is associated with lifestyles of less health-risky behaviors. However, the type of social role matters, with intensive obligatory roles associated with less substance use while voluntary roles are associated with more active lifestyles. The results illustrate the importance of modeling overall health lifestyles and advance our understanding of holding multiple roles by examining health behavior.

INSTITUTIONAL ETHNOGRAPHY DIVISION

George W. Smith Paper Winning Title: “The textual account of ‘quality’: Institutional technologies that coordinates the scheduling of community nursing for children with diabetes in Ontario schools” 

Author: Lisa Watt

Affiliation: McMaster University

E-mail: wattlh@mcmaster.ca

Abstract:

Using institutional ethnography, this paper explores the social organization of the scheduling of community nursing for students with diabetes in Ontario Schools. The entry points of inquiry are my experiences of having several different and differently qualified community nurses delivering care for my child with diabetes at school, and of being routinely drawn in myself to provide supplementary healthcare work. Exploration begins thus as problems arise in situations where 'inconsistent' community nursing care is being delivered. The exploration moves beyond the local setting of the school to the office of a community healthcare agency where service coordinators are working competently to ensure each nursing visit is fulfilled by a community nurse. The paper shows how their scheduling work is coordinated extra-locally via the Community Care Access Centre (CCAC). In particular it brings into view how an institutional technology, the Client Health Related Information System (CHRIS), mediates the routine work of service coordinators in community healthcare agencies, and shapes the conditions for community nursing as well as the experience of students with diabetes and their families. Further, information gathered by CHRIS about service offers accepted and rejected by the agency, is taken up by the CCAC quality and financial officers to monitor, evaluate and determine the allocation of ‘market share’ to the agency. Managers at healthcare agencies are thus organized to accept service commitments for which they cannot always provide a consistent nurse – directly affecting the quality of nursing care and the daily lives of children and families who rely on this care.

LABOR STUDIES DIVISION

Harry Braverman Paper Winning Title: “Contention Across Social Fields: Labor Organizing and Community-Based Living Wage Campaigns in the Southern California Hospitality Industry” 

Author: Pablo U. Gaston

Affiliation: University of California, Berkeley

E-mail: gaston@berkeley.edu

Abstract:

In the past two decades, many American labor unions have undertaken substantial organizational reforms intended to reorient contention over workplace issues away from workplaces themselves, and toward political arenas more traditionally dominated by ‘community’ concerns. This article examines the mechanics of organized labor’s shift in contentious practices in order to engage recent debates surrounding social movement contention within and across ‘social fields,’ arguing that movement organizations can purposively generate cross-field effects. I propose the concept of cross-field manipulation to account for these dynamics. Using an historical study of evolving union tactics in the Southern California hotel industry, this paper finds that activists can learn to trigger cross-field effects, deliberately generating crises and creating opportunities for mobilization. The paper identifies three causal mechanisms at work in unions’ comprehensive campaigns—'leverage identification,' 'alliance building,' and 'crisis triggering'—whereby unions engage in the cross-field manipulation.

Harry Braverman Paper Honorable Mention: “Social Movement Unionism in Practice: Organizational Dimensions of Union Mobilization in the Los Angeles Immigrant Rights Marches” 

Authors: Cassandra Engeman

Affiliation: University of California, Santa Barbara

E-mail: engeman@umail.ucsb.edu

Abstract:

To revitalize union movements globally, labour scholars frequently prescribe social movement unionism. This union strategy adopts social change goals beyond member representation and contract negotiations and often requires allying with community organizations in pursuit of these goals. As a term, however, social movement unionism is often described in opposition to union organizational functions, such as member representation. This article challenges this organization-movement dichotomy by demonstrating the important influence of union organizational dimensions on the dynamics of social movement unionism. Analysis is based on case study research of labour union involvement in the 2006 immigrant rights marches in Los Angeles. Unions that participated in organizing these marches - thus, practicing social movement unionism - allied with large community organizations, preferred reform goals and advocated tactics perceived as effective. Such strategic decisions were informed by organizational considerations regarding members' interests and unions' long-term capacity for mobilization.

Ruben EspinozaHarry Braverman Paper Honorable Mention: “Farm to Factory: The Making of Precarious Unionized Labor” 

Authors: Ruben Espinoza

Affiliation: University of California, Santa Cruz

E-mail: respino1@ucsc.edu

Abstract:

This paper examines the coalescing between unionized jobs and precarious labor relations by focusing on workers from bagged salad factories in California’s Salinas Valley. How do precarious labor relations operate in unionized industries and workplaces? What role do union workers, through their experiences of social mobility, play in the fostering of precarious labor conditions? Through twenty-five qualitative interviews, I uncovered that a large segment of the bagged salad labor force shares five social characteristics: (1) they are people born in Mexico who entered the U.S. as undocumented immigrants, (2) are now legal or permanent residents of the U.S., (3) worked as farm laborers for an extended period, (4) are now classified as unionized industrial workers, and (5) they recognize the precariousness of their labor even as they celebrate the achievement of upward mobility. I argue that precarious labor practices are able to penetrate into this highly unionized industry because bagged salad companies import precarious labor systems from agricultural farms to unionized factories. Such research can help us understand the degree to which industrial unions, legal statuses, and occupational upgrades can facilitate upward mobility in the contemporary period.

LAW AND SOCIETY DIVISION

Alfred R. Lindesmith Paper Winning Title: “Jurors’ Subjective Experiences of Deliberations: The Tangled Nature of Status Characteristics” 

Author: Alix Winter and Matthew Clair

Affiliation: Harvard University

E-mail: awinter@fas.harvard.edu and clair@fas.harvard.edu

Abstract:

A considerable amount of research on juries considers how jury deliberations influence criminal defendants’ outcomes; however, comparatively less research has considered the outcomes of jurors themselves. Among studies that consider jurors’ outcomes, most have focused on objective outcomes such as participation rates. This paper, instead, considers whether jurors’ subjective experiences of jury deliberations vary by race, gender, or socioeconomic status. Namely, we draw on status characteristics theory to consider which jurors are less likely to feel they had enough time to express themselves during deliberations. Utilizing a unique survey dataset of over 3,000 real-world jurors, we find that blacks and Hispanics, and especially those of lower socioeconomic status, are less likely to feel they had enough time to express themselves during deliberations relative to whites. Our findings call attention to the importance of subjective assessments of interpersonal interaction, demonstrate the importance of the joint consideration of race and class, and have implications for the perceived legitimacy of the criminal justice system.

POVERTY, CLASS, AND INEQUALITY DIVISION

Winning Title: “Housing Vouchers and the Re-Concentration of Poverty in Suburbs” 

Author: Rahim Kurwa

Affiliation: University of California, Los Angeles

E-mail: rahim.kurwa@gmail.com

Abstract:

This article reports on the social experiences of minority tenants moving from low-income neighborhoods in the City of Los Angeles to a predominantly white, middle class suburb, the Antelope Valley, using the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher. In addition to experiencing little to no improvement in their economic circumstances, tenants experience significant social exclusion and barriers to their integration, leading them to withdraw from their new communities as a means of avoiding public and administrative scrutiny, and as a way of protecting their status in the program. The privacy created by the voucher system is undone as neighbors use racial shorthand to label minority tenants as voucher holders and apply added scrutiny to their everyday lives. These findings complicate traditional understandings of neighborhood effects and expand on important findings of social stigma for public housing tenants in mixed-income developments.

RACIAL AND ETHNIC MINORITIES DIVISION

Winning Title: “Colorism and Classism Confounded: Perceptions of Discrimination in Latin America” 

Author: Angela Dixon

Affiliation: Princeton University

E-mail: angelad@princeton.edu

Abstract:

Historically, national narratives in many Latin American countries have acknowledged the presence of class disadvantage, but minimized the role of racial and skin color discrimination. Since the 1990s, however, social science research and social movements have increasingly highlighted the racial and skin color-based inequality within Latin America. Yet, much less is known about the degree to which people themselves distinguish between types of discrimination or attribute disadvantage to both class and color. This study draws on the social psychological concept of attributional ambiguity, which suggests that marginalized groups may have difficulty attributing the motivation behind the treatment they receive. I expand this concept by considering whether individuals experience dual discrimination, which is defined in this study as perceiving both color and class discrimination. Using the 2010 AmericasBarometer LAPOP survey data for Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru, I find that color-based explanations have not replaced class-based explanations. Instead, both class and color appear to be part of schemas drawn upon by individuals to understand the unfavorable treatment they perceive—in line with scholarship showing both class disadvantage and color conjointly influence the stratification systems of Latin America.

Honorable Mention: “Bursting Whose Bubble?: The Racial Nexus between Social Disaster, Housing Wealth, and Public Policy” 

Authors: Kasey Henricks

Affiliation: American Bar Foundation and Loyola University, Chicago

E-mail: khenricks@luc.edu

Abstract:

While prior research considers race a factor in the mid-2000s housing meltdown, few scholars have extended a structural interpretation to explain the racial nexus between social disaster, housing wealth, and public policy. Utilizing national-level data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, I measure the housing crash’s before-and-after impact on home equity values by completing a series of ordinary least-squares regression models. My aim was to discern what extent racial disparity exists in housing wealth, how this disparity has changed since the housing crash, and what implications these trends have for the institutional maintenance of racial inequality. The evidence I offer confirms that race is an organizing principle for who can claim long-term benefits of homeownership. Having implications for ‘the sedimentation of racial inequality,’ my findings show how institutional restraints build upon one another in overlapping and interacting ways to reproduce racial inequality.

Honorable Mention: “(Un)Deserving Iraqi Refugees? Racialized Moral Boundary Constructions among U.S. Resettlement Bureaucrats” 

Authors: Fatima Sattar

Affiliation: Boston College

E-mail: sattarf@bc.edu

Abstract:

Drawing on participant-observation and interviews at a U.S. refugee resettlement agency in an urban northeastern city, I examine street-level bureaucrats’ perceptions of Iraqi refugees’ status of ‘deservingness’ of resettlement benefits. I found that bureaucrats construct Iraqi refugees in dual contradictory terms of (un)deservingness in reference to their class and legal status. Iraqis are ‘undeserving’ because their claims-making efforts challenge resettlement benefits and bureaucrats’ implementation of U.S. policy goals to make refugees self-sufficient. However, they are simultaneously viewed as ‘deserving’ refugees, in bureaucrats’ recognition of the consequences of their physical and social displacement, as found in reflections of service interactions with them. As a result, Iraqi refugees are racialized through stereotypes in bureaucrats’ situated symbolic moral boundary making practices and markers of them as (un)deserving in the institutional context of resettlement.

SEXUAL BEHAVIOR, POLITICS, AND COMMUNITIES DIVISION

Winning Title: “Does Acculturation Matter? Predicting Variability in Attitudes Toward Same-Sex Relations Among College Students” 

Author: Ray Sin

Affiliation: University of Illinois at Chicago

E-mail: rsin2@uic.edu

Abstract:

Attitudes toward homosexuality have been liberalizing consistently for the past several decades. At this same moment in history, the United States is undergoing a dramatic demographic shift with sustained immigration from Latin America and Asia. Previous studies tend to emphasis cohort turnover as the main determinant in explaining the growing acceptance of sexual non-conformity. What is missing is understanding variability within cohort. Drawing from assimilation theories and methodological insights from intersectionality, I argue that acculturation is an important process accounting for the liberalization and variability of attitudes toward same-sex relations among young adults but there is much variation between regions of origin and race/ethnicity. Specifically I ask: among college students, does acculturation explain variability in attitudes toward same-sex relations? I examine whether attitudes of immigrants toward same-sex sexual behavior are shaped by their race/ethnicity, region of origin and if their values, overtime, adapt to the prevailing standards in their new home country. For this analysis, I utilize a dataset of college students from 22 universities and colleges across the United States (N=18, 967). On average, the results show that generational differences exist among immigrants, children of immigrants and native-born Americans. The pace of attitudinal change, however is contingent upon region of origin and ethnic category.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS THEORY DIVISION

No award given

SOCIETY AND MENTAL HEALTH DIVISION

Winning Title: “Constructing and defining mental illness: the DSM and professional practices” 

Author: Michael Halpin

Affiliation: University of Wisconsin, Madison

E-mail: mahalpin@wisc.edu

Abstract:

How mental illnesses are defined has significant ramifications, given the substantial social and individual repercussions of these conditions. This paper analyzes how mental health professionals use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in their work. Drawing on observations of a neuropsychological laboratory and interviews with 27 mental health professionals (e.g., psychiatrists, psychologists), I investigate how the DSM is used in research, clinical practice and institutionally. In research, the DSM influences study design and exclusion/inclusion criteria. In the clinic, the DSM influences how disorders are conceptualized and treated. Institutionally, the DSM operates as an obligatory passage point, steering professional practices and aligning the patient-professional encounter to commercial and pharmaceutical interests. I conclude that the DSM restricts professional agency, such that all possible actions must orient to DSM criteria and that the DSM remains a pernicious site of medicalization, with professionals both a source and object of institutionalized gaze.

SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL WELFARE DIVISION

Winning Title: “Voluntary Child Welfare Workers’ Perception of the profession: Workers’ Experiences with Psychological Climate and Implications for Job Satisfaction” 

Author: Allison Houston and Anne-Marie Gomes

Affiliation: SUNY-Albany

E-mail: ahouston@albany.edu and agomes@albany.edu

Abstract:

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between psychological climate, embedded in Parker’s psychological climate scale, and job satisfaction as applied to workers in voluntary child welfare agencies. Cross-sectional data from thirteen non-profit agencies that were collected between 2009 and 2012 were used. Regression equations were calculated using ordinary least squares in which overall satisfaction scores were the dependent variables and overall psychological climate was the main independent variable. Analysis of two-way interactions between climate and workers’ perception of child welfare work on job satisfaction was also considered. Results show psychological climate positively impacted child welfare workers’ satisfaction with their job. Annual salary and job type hold significant explanatory power among child welfare workers. Low salary was inversely related to satisfaction, workers identified as educators were less satisfied than direct child care workers, clinical social workers, and administrators. Workers’ perception of child welfare work moderates the association between organizational climate and job satisfaction. Results highlight the need to examine more fully the impact of climate on disparities in job satisfaction derived from employees’ job type and salaries. Investigations of other contextual factors that might moderate the effects of psychological climate perception on job satisfaction are also needed.

SPORT, LEISURE, AND THE BODY DIVISION

Winning Title: “The Effect of Work and Parental Role Occupancy and Role Performance on Exercise Participation among U.S. Adults” 

Author: Kyler J. Sherman-Wilkins

Affiliation: The Pennsylvania State University

E-mail: kjs390@psu.edu

Abstract:

To maintain a healthy weight and minimize the risk of negative health outcomes, federal guidelines advocate for regular participation in moderate-intensity exercise. Despite the efforts of such public health campaigns, many Americans may find it difficult to engage in the recommended amount of exercise while also devoting time to the demands of work and parenting. Previous research examining the relationship between work, parenting, and taking part in exercise has not adequately teased apart the differences between occupying a role and performing said role. Using data from the American Time Use Survey’s (ATUS) Eating and Health Module (EHM), I draw on social role theory and the time availability perspective to examine whether there are distinct effects of worker/parental occupancy versus work/parenting role performance. Results from zero-inflated negative binomial regression models indicate that the relationship among work, parenting, and exercise varies depending on whether the worker/parent role is operationalized in terms of occupancy or performance. I conclude that research focusing on the link between social roles and health behaviors must take care not to conflate role occupancy indicators with role performance indicators.

TEACHING SOCIAL PROBLEMS DIVISION

Winning Title: “Reification and Recognition in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program” 

Author: Molly Malany Sayre

Affiliation: University of Kentucky

E-mail: mms3595@gmail.com

Abstract:

An Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program course is held in a correctional facility in which roughly half the students are from the university (“outside students”) and half are residents of the facility (“inside students”). The author participated as a teaching assistant in an Inside-Out social work course on drugs and crime that was offered in a prison for men and interprets the observed and reported experience of students using Lukács’ concepts of recognition and reification as discussed by Axel Honneth (Honneth, 2008). This paper explores the implications of the Inside-Out course for outside students’ reification and recognition of people who are incarcerated, and by extension, members of groups that typically receive social services. The pedagogical elements of Inside-Out courses that promote recognition and the limitations of the program are discussed.

YOUTH, AGING, AND THE LIFE COURSE DIVISION

Co-Winning Title: “Own Gender, Sibling’s Gender, Parent’s Gender: The Division of Elderly Parent Care among Adult Children” 

Author: Angelina Grigoryeva

Affiliation: Princeton University

E-mail: agrigory@princeton.edu

Abstract:

This study examines the gender division of elder care. Whereas prior sociological scholarship on the gender division of family labor has been largely focused on the married dyad, this study argues that in the case of elder care, most gender division takes place among siblings (i.e., brothers and sisters) rather than between spouses (i.e., husbands and wives). Therefore, it shifts the focus from married couples to sibling groups. To examine how adult children share caring responsibilities for their elderly parents, the study marries the well-developed explanations of the gender division of family labor (but adapted to elder care and extended to sibling groups) with theories from social gerontology (that largely miss the theoretical conceptualization of elder care as family labor). Using the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS), the study finds that the division of parent care among siblings reflects a complex interaction of the adult child’s gender, gender of the sibling(s), and elder parent’s gender. First, daughters provide twice as much care to their elderly parents as sons. Second, correlates of caregiving to elderly parents appear to differ by the adult child’s gender. Third, not only an adult child’s own gender, but also the gender of sibling(s) and the gender of the parent requiring care appear to matter for the gender division of parent care among siblings. Finally, empirical analyses did not reveal changes in the gender division of parent care over time.

Co-Winning Title: “Gender and Time Use in College: Converging or Diverging Pathways?” 

Author: Natasha Yurk Quadlin

Affiliation: Indiana University

E-mail: nmyurk@indiana.edu

Abstract:

Gender differences in children’s and adults’ time use are well-documented, but few have examined the intervening period—young adulthood. Because many Americans navigate higher education in young adulthood, college time use provides insight into how gendered behaviors evolve during this critical life stage. Using three years of time use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen and latent transition analysis, I examine gender differences in time use within and across the college years for those in selective institutions. Among students whose time use is consistent throughout college, I find that women exhibit academically-oriented time use more often, and men exhibit socially-oriented time use more often. However, many men transition from social time use at the beginning of college to academic time use toward the end—to the extent that gender gaps in academic time use converge by the third year. I argue that men and women construct distinct college pathways, and that men, in particular, must reroute their time use to accommodate gendered expectations for the transition to adulthood.