Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: A glance at the top elective offices in the American political system exposes a deep gender disparity: 87% of U.S. senators, 86% of the members of the House of Representatives, 90% of state governors, 88% of big city mayors, and 78% of state legislators are currently male. Despite these large gender disparities in elective office, investigators conclude that there is little or no evidence of bias against women candidates. In terms of fundraising and vote totals, often considered the two most important indicators of electoral success, investigators find that women fare at least as well as their male counterparts.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: We consider what colleges and universities might do to promote civic engagement among their students, both while on campus and upon their graduation. We do so by studying the entering attitudes about politics and civic engagement of a group of first year students at our university. What are their entering attitudes about politics? What experiences have they had that affect their attention to or dislike for politics? How are they expecting their college experience to influence their citizenship while here and once they graduate.? Our findings suggest that students most value experiential learning about politics and engagement and that they think colleges should promote community service and teach democratic skills. On the other hand, and thus the title, they have difficulty seeing where they will have time for any active engagement given the pressures of studying and social life and think of "citizenship" as something that comes later in life. We suggest that universities should "meet students where they are" by providing experiential opportunities in democratic life within their classes and in the student life context.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper explores the cultural and structural reasons for joining gangs that are based on neighborhood, family, and school. I conducted this research formally over five years in two California gang influenced cities, Denver, Colorado and Ogden, Utah, and informally for 12 years by the researcher’s experience as an ex-gang member. This ethnographic research adds rich data to whether people join gangs to commit crime or for social reasons. I suggest that neighborhoods exerted a strong pressure for youth to join gangs based on local history and influences from larger gang cities. I emphasize how families restricted young women from joining, yet women maintained association. Families were not given the opportunity to succeed economically and politically in White America and therefore Mexican Americans were unable to give these skills to their children. Finally, I argue that school ultimately pressured Mexican Americans to join gangs. Neighborhoods and families simply provided the opportunity, but schools provided the ultimatum. In both of these segregated cities, Mexican Americans entered resource deprived schools that contributed to gang formation and the schools responded with suspensions, tickets, and expulsions that did nothing to remove the gang pressures.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Emotional Deviance: One Pathway to Entering a Support Group

In examining the issues pertaining to emotional deviance, Thoits suggests seeking out similar others as a means of reducing the self-condemnation associated with perceiving oneself as emotionally deviant (1990). Victimized individuals may feel motivated by their deviant feelings to join support groups where such feelings may be validated and normalized; thus, social support serves as the mechanism through which people learn to accept and understand their feelings (Thoits, 1990). Support groups show members that the actual experience for undergoing a life threatening experience has a particular normative quality oftentimes incompatible with popular perceptions (Thoits, 1990). In lieu of the understanding that comes from personal experience, people are apt to accept the broader social norm however unjust or inaccurate simply because they do not know any better.
Situated in the literature on emotional deviance, emotion managment, and stress and coping, this paper seeks to document the process through which individuals come to experience themselves as emotionally and cognitively deviant. It will also document how these occurrences lead victimized individuals to seek entrance in formal support groups.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Islam is the religious affiliation of at least 25% of the population in over 50 countries. In each of these countries, Muslims could potentially mobilize around an Islamic identity in the political arena to challenge the state. However, Islam has emerged as a politically mobilizing identity in only some of these countries. Likewise, within those countries that have experienced significant levels of Islamist mobilization, Islam plays a more active political role at some times than at others. This paper examines why Islam is more successful as a political tool in some contexts than in others.Through assessment of a unique data set covering Islamist mobilization in 55 polities from 1970-2000, the structural correlates of Islamist mobilization are assessed. Manifestations of Islamist mobilization in the data set include political violence by Islamist groups, street protests by Islamist groups, and electoral mobilization for Islamist political parties. The analysis suggests that Islamist violence, protest, and voting are broadly correlated across time and space. Overall, Islamist mobilization is more likely to occur in contexts with a long historical legacy of Islamic institutions, with a fragmented Islamic movement, with high levels of political instability, with rapid political liberalization. Institutional and political factors are more predictive of mobilization outcomes than are the many socioeconomic indicators often associated with Islamist successes.