Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: On July 15, 2003, the Colombian government, headed by Alvaro Uribe Vélez (2002–2010) signed the “Santa Fe de Ralito” agreement with armed paramilitary groups. Based on this accord, the paramilitaries committed to a gradual demobilization. From the moment of the signing of the accord until August of 2006, 30,915 people have been demobilized collectively and 10,370 individually.
In this investigation, the process of exiting the role of the paramilitary by 10 individuals that were demobilized from different paramilitary groups is analyzed, on the basis of the theory of roles and ex-roles. On the basis of this analysis it was found that for the majority of the individuals interviewed joining the armed paramilitary group didn’t involve an abrupt change from the activities they had been engaging in, and that the process of adaptation to the paramilitary group was difficult. It was also found that the majority of the people interviewed decided to leave the paramilitary group based on the necessity of being with their family, and when they left the group, the process of adaptation to civilian society was difficult.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Abstract
Most research on gender differences in distress in the United States focuses on the unequal distribution of social resources among men and women, such as working status, and domestic roles in a family. However, the role of culture in shaping patterns of behavior has not received much attention. This study aims to explore the effect of culture on gender difference in distress.

By applying models identified in the United States to the sample in China, the effect of culture emerges. Work role and family role, which are well-documented social factors for gender differences in distress in the United States, do not significantly associate with people’s psychological distress. It is instead gender role ideology that significantly influences people’s distress. An individual is more likely to be distressed if his/her gender role ideology is not consistent with that defined by the social norms, which reflects the effect of collective culture tradition.

Thus, it is crucial for researchers to consider the unique characteristics of a culture when exploring gender patterns of distress across different cultural environments.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Do men and women’s income predict their propensity to marry, and if so, how do their gender role attitudes impact the relationship between income and entrance into marriage? To answer this question, I estimate discrete-time event history models with fixed effects using the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979. I find that employment and income are important predictors of marriage across white, Black, and Hispanic men and women. This similarity across these groups is striking, as opposed to previous research. For white women, gender role attitudes moderate the relationship between income and marriage, suggesting that income is a more reliable predictor of marriage among women who hold egalitarian attitudes. For other demographic groups, however, economic considerations are consistent predictors of marriage regardless of gender role attitudes.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study explores workplace engendering processes that have facilitated a national trend of married women’s domestic role orientation amid market transition in post-Mao urban China. Data come from in-depth interviews of 130 married women from three large cities and one industrialized village. It is found that while market reform aims at providing individuals with incentives and opportunities to improve their livelihood through decentralization, privatization, and open-door policies, the reform strategies have paradoxically generated doomed incentives, uncertain prosperities, and a stronger attachment to domestic roles among women. This is found to be mainly caused by emerging antagonistic relations between state and family, between the ruling party and working class women, resulting from the state’s smashing of socialist welfare functions and egalitarian principles, unbridled development of crony capitalism, and state officials’ emergence of new bourgeois classes. Implications for Marxist and feminist grand theories on women’s liberation are also discussed in the Chinese context.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: UNHCR is seen as an effective and authoritative international organization (IO) due to its ability to adapt to new problems and teach new normative understandings to states. Its success, however, is surprising for two reasons. The first of these is that when UNHCR was created in 1950, it was initially granted a strictly limited mandate and scant resources. The second is that prior to its creation, the institutional record had been decidedly mixed, most notably in the failure of IOs both inside and outside of the League of Nations to protect refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. In the post-Second World War period, while Western states recognized the need for a formal IO to protect refugees, they disagreed on the form that it should take. Why did UNHCR succeed when other IOs did not? This paper will suggest that the interwar IOs, while they introduced a number of crucial norms, were unable to get widespread state adoption due to discordance with domestic norms which reflected a widespread anti-immigration bias. After the Second World War, states more readily accepted humanitarian principles and the discordance slowly disappeared. Even so, an effective IO did not emerge until UNHCR succeeded in reframing refugee protection as a Cold War issue and by expanding it away from a Eurocentric basis to a global one. Thus this paper will argue that an IO's success as a norm entrepreneur can vary significantly. In order to be effective at reframing state identities, an IO's efforts must build on a preexisting concordance with domestic norms and culture.