Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This research addresses the effect of disruption upon task groups’ stability and individual group members’ feelings about the task and the group itself. The disruptions that we consider are not generated from within the group, but rather have their source outside the group. Using the theory of structural ritualization and the theory of group cohesion and productive exchange, we predict that positive disruption and negative disruption both have negative effects upon the maintenance of routine. However, based upon the application and extension of principles involving loss aversion, we expect that negative disruption will have stronger affects upon both group stability and individuals’ affect. We design and conduct a four-condition experiment to test our predictions.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: The impact of weight cycling on women’s well-being is poorly understood. The current qualitative study investigated this issue using a feminist framework and in-depth interviews with ten women from diverse backgrounds. Results reveal that weight cycling is associated with pervasive disruptive body experiences, emotional difficulties, and fragmented self-concept.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: We examine the dynamics of the terrorism policy disruption for policy subsystems addressing various facets of public risks that comprise the broader homeland security agenda. This leads to insights about the dynamics of policy disruption across subsystems and of the emergence of homeland security as a substantive area for policymaking. The effects of large policy disruptions like the threat of terrorism can play out in a variety of ways among affected subsystems. Key indicators that we examine are the extent of attention to the triggering disruption, resultant volatility in subsystem policymaking, redefinition of subsystem organizing principles, and the make up of subsystem participants. Our analyses of these for eight policy subsystems show shifting attention to terrorism accompanied by increased policymaking volatility, a weak organizing policy glue of homeland security, and powerful organizational counterweights to the massive Department of Homeland Security. These are indicative of subsystems under stress rather than of a transformation of the prior subsystems to embrace the new homeland security agenda. These findings underscore the limits of ideational and structural reforms in bringing about cross-subsystem policy change.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Theorizing families as “gender factories” where girls/women and boys/men learn, reproduce, and actively negotiate gendered identities has been a major accomplishment of feminist scholars. Using extrafamilial childhood sexual abuse (CSA) as a catalyst, this paper explores how gender is (re)produced in response to a family disruption. I interviewed 46 non-offending parents who had sons enrolled in group therapy for sexually abused boys. I organized the data from the gendered accounts analytically through two concepts proposed by Hochschild: gender strategies and family myths. Two discourses emerged. One, the alternative discourse, is progressive and is exemplified most thoroughly in group therapy. The other is traditional and blames mothers for the abuse and absolves fathers from care work. Despite that parents had their sons enrolled in group therapy that espoused an alternative discourse, the traditional discourse was most widely deployed. The traditional discourse of CSA is largely propagated from three areas: (1) immediate family members; (2) extended family; and (3) social services. After examining these three areas, the consequences of deploying the traditional discourse are examined.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: We address theoretical and empirical aspects of interest mobilization following disruptions that affect multiple areas of policymaking. Our theorizing about different mobilization processes leads us to consider the effects of widespread disruptions in mobilizing interests, in affecting differences in the interests that are mobilized, and in affecting the diversity and spillover of interest involvement across policy areas. We consider these mobilization effects for eight different policy subsystems that were disrupted after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001. Our findings suggest policymakers sought to reduce policy uncertainty by calling upon interests that were best equipped to help craft and implement policy solutions. We find limited evidence of interest upheaval or cross-subsystem spillovers in interest involvement. These findings are more consistent with a demand-driven than a supply based perspective concerning interest mobilization. Taken together, these patterns of interaction between issues attention, interest involvement, and policymaking institutions illustrate the stabilizing influence of policy subsystems in buffering against the effects of widespread disruptions.