Browsing by Author "Richard Della Fave, Committee Member"

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Community supported agriculture (CSA) in the Mid-Atlantic United States: A sociological analysis
(2003-01-07) Loughridge, Kenneth Brandon; Randall Thomson, Committee Chair; Robert Moxley, Committee Member; Richard Della Fave, Committee Member; Risa Ellovich, Committee Member
In response to the globalization of agriculture and the proliferation of convenience-based and processed foods, many Americans have joined community supported farms. Community supported agriculture (CSA) involves people paying a seasonal fee to a local farmer in return for weekly allotments of organically-grown produce. This research investigates the membership, stabilization, and success of selected CSAs in the mid-Atlantic United States. The analyses are based upon survey data from 204 members of five CSAs collected during the 2000 growing season. Interview data from each of the farmers and thirteen of the members supplement the survey data. The data are analyzed primarily with path analytic techniques in order to test hypotheses derived from a thorough search of the relevant literatures. Results show that the majority of the members of these CSAs are white, well educated, wealthy, and female. Although the respondents tend to be interested in environmental issues, alternative agriculture, and community issues, their relative level of interest does not affect their level of investment in the CSA. A higher level of member investment, however, does have a positive effect upon the organizational success of the farms in this study. Organizational success also is found to be negatively affected by the CSA's relative degree of organizational stability, a finding that contradicts some of the literature. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of the methodological, theoretical, and applied implications of these findings. These implications include the finding that while electronic survey techniques have certain advantages, one disadvantage discovered is that electronic return rates are much lower than the return rates for U.S. mail surveys. Additionally, the process of social movement organization growth and change, as developed by resource mobilization theorists, is found to be applicable to the maturation levels of the CSAs in this study. Finally, strategies are suggested by the findings that can be used by CSA practitioners to render their membership more socially diverse, including the implementation of subsidized shares and payment plans.
Fighting for an Authentic Self: An Ethnographic Study of Recreational Boxers
(2006-12-22) Satterlund, Travis D.; Michael L. Schwalbe, Committee Chair; Michael Messner, Committee Member; Barbara Risman, Committee Member; Stacy De Coster, Committee Member; Richard Della Fave, Committee Member
This study is an ethnographic examination of the rank and file recreational boxers—mostly white and middle-class males—who frequented a gym in a mid-sized southeastern city in the United States. I conducted field research as a participant observer for nineteen months and also interviewed forty-eight fellow boxers and the gym's two owner⁄trainers. This research shows that gym members used the cultural meanings associated with boxing as resources to construct boxing as an activity from which they could derive gendered identity rewards. At the same time, however, both gender and social class complicated matters considerably, creating dilemmas for the middle-class white recreational boxers, and for the women who claimed space in a masculinist domain. As such, I show how authenticity of the gym was socially constructed to meet these identity rewards and also to resolve these dilemmas. Gym members were attracted to boxing, at least in part, as an avenue to address feelings of what it means to enact manhood. Such displays of masculinity were important for these men because of the perceived limitation of their professional identities. While most of the men had secure middle class jobs, these jobs weren't the primary basis for their feelings of self worth, especially in relation to their identity as "men." In essence, then, the boxing gym offered a means for the men to compensate for their inability to signify power, control, and toughness in their professional lives. Moreover, for the men at the gym in particular, boxing served as a resource to gain valuable cultural capital. Women also sought identity rewards from boxing and had reasons to want to signify masculine qualities. For them, too, boxing was a way to signify agency and strength. Yet, they also faced dilemmas in seeking to distance themselves from other feminine women but without being viewed as too masculine. The final chapter has implications for the gym's activity in terms of the inequalities that are maintained and (re)produced.
Maternal Employment, Relative Income, and Child Well-Being: The Effects of Gendered Household Resource Allocation on Children's Cognitive Development Trajectories
(2007-04-06) Wills, Jeremiah B; Theodore N. Greenstein, Committee Chair; Maxine P. Atkinson, Committee Member; Feinian Chen, Committee Member; Richard Della Fave, Committee Member
In this study, I extend the scholarship on maternal employment and the allocation of household resources by evaluating the effects of mothers' time spent in the labor force and mothers' relative income on children's cognitive development. I use a gendered resource allocation model that recognizes differences in investment preferences between men and women and how women can use increases in their relative earnings to direct greater amounts of family resources towards enrichment goods and services that promote child well-being. Support for this model comes mostly from research conducted outside of the United States. This study contributes to this research literature by using an American sample drawn from the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. In addition, I contribute to the research on maternal employment and child outcomes with a longitudinal analysis of children's cognitive development trajectories from age five to 14. I find some negative effects on children's initial levels of cognitive skills for measures of both early and current maternal employment hours. Some of these effects are moderated by race, the supportiveness of children's home environment, and mothers' cognitive skills. Contrary to predictions from a gendered resource allocation model, I find that children's cognitive development is lowest in households in which mothers' and fathers' incomes approximate parity, likely because of a lack of clear specialization in such households. I discuss these findings in terms of theoretical, research, and policy applications.
Social Movement Framing and the Reproduction of Inequality: Immigrant Restrictionists Constructing Virtual Selves on the Internet
(2009-09-14) Bloch, Katrina Rebecca; Jeffrey Leiter, Committee Member; Steve McDonald, Committee Member; Richard Della Fave, Committee Member; Michael Schwalbe, Committee Member; Michael Schulman, Committee Chair
This study analyzes the websites and discussion forums of immigrant restrictionist groups. The research combines the literature on social movement framing and theories of the generic processes of inequality. The research questions include: (1) How are the emotional framings of an organizationÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s website and discussion forums similar and how are they different? (2) How do the organizations use gendered symbols in their social movement frames, and (3) How do the immigrant restrictionist organizations construct a Latino/citizen binary? In total, 91 websites and 200 threads from three discussion forums are included in the study. To answer the first research question, I focus on the website and discussion forum for the organization, Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC). The results suggest that the main website presents a guise of rationality, while participants of the discussion forum openly discuss emotions. In particular, participants privilege powerful emotions. To examine the second and third research questions, I analyze all the websites and forum threads. The organizations and forum participants portray immigrants as part of an invasion that threatens the sovereignty of the nation. Many of the groups and forum members claim to rely on legal distinctions between immigrants, but they often conflate Latinos with immigrants. Further, immigrant restrictionists discuss Latinos as if they are a homogenous group, as opposed to individuals with different national heritage and class backgrounds. In contrast, immigrant restrictionists portray themselves as soldiers who are protecting the nation and mothers who are protecting their children. Immigrant restrictionists also argue that politicians and corporations are greedy, but they fail to challenge the system at large. Instead of advocating a larger redistribution of wealth that would provide more stability for the working and middle class, immigrant restrictionists attempt to maintain the rights and privileges that they perceive illegal immigrants to threaten. Immigrant restrictionists reinforce an achievement ideology, whereby hard work should lead to success. However, group members argue that immigrants receive special privileges for breaking the law, while citizens are unable to achieve success through hard work. The immigrant restrictionists make sense of their position by drawing on widely held and available meanings related to race and gender. These ideologies influence their construction of an ideal national identity, a white male. The dissertation adds to the sociological literature in three ways. First, it combines the scholarship on social movement framing and the generic processes of inequality. The social movement frames draw from and reinforce group distinctions that legitimate the reproduction of inequality. Secondly, the study contributes to the understudied importance of emotional framing and gendered frames within social movement theory. Immigrant restrictionists privilege emotions associated with men, such as rationality, power, and pride. Further, the gendered symbols of soldiers and mothers are emotionally powerful symbols within the United States, because of ideals regarding what it means to be a man or woman. Finally, I show how the emotional framing is important for legitimating inequality. The immigrant restrictionists have identity stakes in being race neutral, but simultaneously say things that marginalize racial minorities. Thus, relying on claims of rationality, using specific discourses (e.g. anchor baby vs. infant), and using stigma transference are ways in which the group members engage in emotional framing activities that allow them to maintain positive self-appraisals despite contradictions in their social movement frames.