Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Postmodern philosophies claim that universal or monolithic categories should no longer
be used. In reality this is not the case because people are still defined by, perceived as, and treated in terms of these categories. In other words, these categories have an actual and material reality that directly influence people. Arguing that these categories do not exist in a world presently divided by such categories will not make the categories disappear nor their accompanied advantages and disadvantages. To theorize that universal categories are null and void does not take into account the important fact that some people, more than others, are harmed by many of today’s policies. Nor does it take into account the antithesis, that many people are at an advantage as a result of the same situation.
This paper looks at environmental justice generally and epidemiology specifically to illustrate that as far as safety and health are concerned it still matters what your race, sex, and socioeconomic status is. Within the United States poor people and people of color share a disproportionate burden of environmental hazards as well as a higher burden of health related problems. Unfortunately the field of epidemiology fails to take into account categories of race, age, sex, and location, all which seem to be very important variables if prevention and treatment are to be maximized. Within the environmental justice movement there a push to transform epidemiology so that it informs the concerns of specific communities.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This essay provides a theoretical literature review aimed at emphasizing the potential importance of categories and category systems in organizational sociology. Drawing on the empirical example of disease categories, it focuses on understanding what categories do. It highlights three themes for understanding what categories do in organizational contexts: organizing information, making meaning and exerting control.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: For more than sixty years, the Current Population Survey (CPS) has provided timely information on the labor force, and many demographic, social and economic characteristics of the United States population. The CPS is a national survey conducted on a monthly basis. Although, the main purpose of the survey is to collect labor market information, it also provides social and economic data on such measures as age, sex, race, marital status, educational attainment, and family structure. Data collected from the CPS are used to develop economic and social policy in the United States.

Information on race is used by government, public, and private organizations to fulfill a variety of legislative, programmatic and business needs such as equal access to employment, services for health programs and target marketing.

Because of the multiple uses and high visibility of the CPS data in general and race in particular, the reliability of race estimates needs to be evaluated periodically. This paper will analyze what effects the change in race reporting has on the consistency of race data in the CPS.

Using data from the 2002 and 2003 CPS, and Census 2000, we will compare the differences in racial distributions among the single race and in-combination White, Black or African American, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander populations, as well as the Some Other Race and Two or More Races populations. In addition, we examine differences in distributions for these populations by selected demographic, social, and economic characteristics.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is threefold: 1) to develop a model integrating the measures or categories of crisis communicative strategies (CCS), 2) to explore the over-arching continuum representing crisis communicative strategies, and 3) to investigate CCS in a Chinese context. A survey of public relations and/or public affairs managers from Taiwan’s top-500 companies was undertaken to examine actual experiences of handling crises. The results showed that five crisis communicative strategies emerged from the factor analysis, i.e., denial, diversion, excuse, justification, and concession. Moreover, these five CCS can be placed in a two-dimension (continuum) matrix, i.e., defense-accommodation and specification-ambiguity. The paper concludes with a discussion of practical applications, theoretical contribution, and cultural implication of the results.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In the field of international policy analysis knowledge is increasingly regarded as an important explanatory variable for explaining the enforcement of certain policy paradigms and policy change within international politics. These so called cognitivist aproaches, however, predominantly focus on the question of how knowledge becomes a source of political influence in situations of uncertainty (e.g. Adler/Haas 1992, Haas 1992). In this strand of literature knowledge is reduced to issue-specific knowledge or scientific knowledge respectively. We argue that the concept of knowledge has to be broadenend in order to understand the productiveness of knowledge and in order to explain how selective mechansims become inscribed into policy paradigms. In drawing on Michel Foucaults concept of power/knowledge we will develop an analytical framework that enables us to understand the interrelationship between knowledge generation and policy formulation. After having outlined the theoretical framework, we are going to apply it to the current trends in the commodification of mobile and migrant labour. Migration ? or as the WTO names it: "temporary movement of natural persons" ? is included into trade agreements such as the GATS (WTO, General Agreement of Trade in Services, Mode 4). Hence labour migration policies are part of trade and commodification policies. The way how labour mobility is included is based on very specific knowledge systems (scientific knowledge, normative knowledge, social knowledge etc.). Knowledge systems not only construct the policy problem that has to be regulated by GATS but also constitute the ?migrants? who are subject to commodification policies within GATS. We will deal with questions such as: How do the concepts of mobility and migration and correspondingly of gender get contructed through different systems of knowledge and how are they inscribed into GATS? Why does the GATS agreement not denominate 'migration', but only 'presence of natural persons' and 'mobilty'? Who are the gender-neutral "natural persons", who shall be a "GATS-migrant"? We specifically focus on gender and underlying gendered assumption within knowledge systems for two reasons: First, knowledge is seldomly regarded as being pre-structured along gendered lines, but our analysis shows that it is. Secondly, the focus on gender and commodification of labour enables us to visibilize to what extend international policies on trade in services are not gender-neutral by concept and outcome.