Browsing by Author "Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Committee Member"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7

Cultivating Consent, Reaping Resistance: Identity-Based Control and Unionization at a High-End Natural Foods Company.
(2010-07-08) McTague, Tricia; Michael Schwalbe, Committee Chair; David Zonderman, Committee Member; Jeffrey Leiter, Committee Member; Michael Schulman, Committee Member; Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Committee Member
An Extension of the Intergroup Contact Theory: The Effects of Black-White Contact and Interracial Friendships on Whites' Racial Attitudes
(2004-08-04) Macomber, Kristine Claire; Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Committee Member; Thomas J. Hoban, Committee Chair; Melvin Thomas, Committee Member
Using data from the 1998 General Social Survey, this thesis examines the effects of black-white contact and close interracial friendships on whites' attitudes towards blacks. Intergroup contact theory maintains that contact between people of different groups reduces prejudices and improves attitudes. The majority of previous contact studies have focused on casual black-white contact in neighborhoods and workplaces. Emerging in the current literature is a focus on more personal contact between blacks and whites, as in close friendships. I hypothesize that a positive relationship exists between whites' having a close black friend and their attitudes towards blacks. I also hypothesize a positive relationship between contact and attitudes. I use OLS regression models to test both hypotheses. The results of the analysis support the second hypothesis. The key finding is a statistically significant positive effect of neighborhood contact on whites' attitudes towards blacks. In support of intergroup contact theory, this significant finding suggests that a necessary condition for contact effects on attitudes is equal status between blacks and whites.
Holding Disillusionment at Bay: Latino/a Immigrants and Working Class North Carolinians Expose and Reinforce the American Dream's Discrepancies
(2002-11-14) Hyde, Katherine Ann; Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Committee Member; Barbara Risman, Committee Co-Chair; L. Richard Della Fave, Committee Member; Jeffrey Leiter, Committee Co-Chair
This dissertation examines how a group of twenty-eight working class people in North Carolina, including African Americans, whites and Latino/a immigrants, cope with the discrepancy between the American dream's promises and premises and their own reality. I analyze interview data focusing on participants' inward and outward looking emotion management. With the former, participants cope by developing a 'grin and bear it' stance regarding challenges and limited opportunities. They shift their attitude in order to shut off or dull the impact of an unpleasant thought or feeling. They also use 'I can do it' pep-talks to muster up a general willingness or readiness to deal with whatever comes their way. With outward looking emotion management, participants cope by venting frustration. They 'other' fellow working class people, targeting slackers and beneficiaries of preferential treatment, who fail to abide by the meritocratic principles of the dream. I argue that participants' emotion work is driven by their practical, emotional and cognitive needs and reveals ambivalence toward the American dream ideology. They neither wholeheartedly buy into the dream, nor do they actively criticize the ideology. Their emotion management is bound up in the logic of the dream; it represents a response to the dream, it takes place within the dream's logic, and, in the end reinforces the dream. I discuss the helpful and hurtful implications of participants' emotion management and suggest that the short-term gains are outweighed by such long-term costs as perpetuating inter-ethnic hostility and misunderstanding and inhibiting solidarity among oppressed people. I emphasize that participants' power-evasive emotion work deflects attention away from the ideology itself, the economic system to which the ideology is tied, and the elite agents of this system. My findings point to a need for more research on the emotional and cognitive costs of abandoning the dream's framework and the conditions under which oppressed people may develop an alternative framework for understanding and responding to their life's difficulties.
Illuminating Individual-Level Sources of Crime for African Americans and Whites: An Examination of Four Theories
(2006-11-17) Latimore, Traronda; William R. Smith, Committee Member; Ronald Czaja, Committee Member; Charles R. Tittle, Committee Chair; Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Committee Member; Catherine Zimmer, Committee Member; Melvin Thomas, Committee Member
This research addresses two important theoretical questions in the sociological study of race and crime: (1) If racial differences exist between African Americans and Whites, can self-control, general strain, social bonding, and social learning theories account for the differences? (i.e., the "racial gap" issue) and (2) Are the processes specified by these theories the same for African Americans and Whites? (i.e., the "racial generality" issue). Using data from randomly selected African American and White adults who live in Wake County, North Carolina, several answers to these questions are suggested. Concerning the "racial gap" issue, this study finds no significant differences in offending between African Americans and Whites. Concerning the "racial generality" issue, the results offer considerable insight into the individual-level sources of crime for both groups. Collectively, the findings offer limited support for social bonding theory and mixed support for self-control, general strain, and social learning theories. The implications of these results, particularly as they pertain to criminological theory and social policy, are also discussed.
Inequality in Wages Among Men: An Examination of the Bachelor Wage Penalty
(2003-07-30) Manton, Marion Rose; Jeffrey C. Leiter, Committee Member; Catherine R. Zimmer, Committee Chair; Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Committee Member; Theodore N. Greenstein, Committee Member
Married men earn more than single men. Statistically significant wage disparities have been documented in each of twelve industrialized countries. These analyses have ignored the impact of cohabitation on wages. Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households, this study extends the research designs of earlier studies by including the cohabiting status of unmarried men. It investigates the adequacy of the needs, wife as a resource, and statistical discrimination theories. The inclusion of the cohabiting variable suggests that marriage is a stronger predictor of income than cohabitation status. The cohabitation variable also casts doubt on both the needs theory and the wife as a resource theory. There is no evidence to suggest that the presence of a partner and family causes an employer to provide a wage premium as suggested by the needs theory. Nor is there evidence to suggest that the presence of a child or workplace participation by a partner results in a wage penalty as suggested by the wife as a resource argument. The most important finding in this work is the interaction effect between experience and marital status for never married men. Since I use cross-sectional data I cannot present a life course interpretation. However, for this group of men, the interaction effect suggests that at the outset, married men do earn more than never married men, but with more years of experience these differences disappear. This finding supports statistical discrimination.
Race, Place, Cops and Stops: Local Context, Racial Profiling, and Social Control in North Carolina.
(2003-07-30) Miller, James Kirk; Matthew T. Zingraff, Committee Chair; Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Committee Member; Patricia L. McCall, Committee Member; William R. Smith, Committee Member
The importance of race in explaining criminal justice processes and outcomes has been a research focus of sociologists interested in social control. In spite of conventional wisdom to the contrary, the expected negative effects of racial minority status on social control outcomes have been somewhat elusive in empirical tests. The practice of racial profiling, defined as the use of race by police in decision-making and especially traffic stops, is at the forefront of contemporary public concern about policing, racial discrimination, and public safety. The dissertation begins to address the open questions about racial profiling by developing and testing a multilevel conceptual model of police traffic stops. The conceptual model focuses on four distinct sources of police decision-making and behavior: suspect or driver characteristics, legal or driving behaviors, organizational characteristics of the police, and community contextual characteristics. The research incorporates survey data collected in 200 and 2001 on 1445 licensed Black and 1475 licensed white drivers in North Carolina with 1990 and 2000 census data and criminal justice data spanning the 1997-2000 time period. The survey data contain measures of driver characteristics and driving practices along with geographic markers which allow the individual level data to be linked with community data sources. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) techniques are used to separately model driver reported traffic stops by local police agencies and by the North Carolina State Highway patrol (NCSHP). Key aspects of the conceptual models are confirmed by HLM models of local police stops which suggest that driver characteristics which compose social threat are important to increases in the risk of experiencing a traffic stop. Driver race, gender, and age are important predictors of increases in traffic stop risk, while many driving factors do not appear to be related to the risk of a traffic encounter with local police. In contrast, models of NCSHP stops suggest that stop risk is increased for those who self-report higher level of illegal driving behaviors. Driver race and gender are not related to stop risk by the NCSHP. Evidence for contextual effects is mixed. Implications for current and future police research are discussed.
Workplace Organization, Labor Process Control and Occupational Health
(2006-08-10) Treiber, Linda Ann; Michael Schulman, Committee Chair; Catherine Zimmer, Committee Member; Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Committee Member; Maxine Thompson, Committee Member
The purpose of this research is to understand the complex relationships between working conditions and occupational health. The research draws from labor process theory that generally views worker control over the labor process as essential to non-alienated labor and from epidemiologic models of host, agent/exposure, and environment. Using General Social Survey 2002 cross sectional data, I investigate the effects of standard epidemiologic factors and worker labor process control factors in multivariate models to predict the dependent variables of workplace injury, persistent pain, exhaustion, and general health status. I suggest that labor process autonomy, social cohesion and skill utilization generally have positive and protective effects on worker occupational health status net of socio-demographic, job status, exposures, and environments. The addition of labor process factors to the epidemiologic triad improves the model specification of persistent pain, exhaustion and general health status; however, the specification of workplace injury models was not improved. Analyses indicate that labor process control is protective for workers who do not perform heavy lifting, but such control may exacerbate workplace injury for those who do perform heavy lifting. Of particular interest is the significant protective effect of perceived safety climate in all models, which may reflect normative consent. The study concludes that the sociological addition of labor process factors to the epidemiologic model needs to be further modified to include issues of labor process consent and organizational commitment.