Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Although there have been a multitude of studies in the social sciences that have addressed the level of participation, partisanship, and prospects for multiracial coalitions among Latino and Asian immigrants, few studies have attempted to substantively address the racial attitudes of Asian and Latino immigrants, particularly toward African Americans. Using the 1998-1999 pooled Los Angeles County Social Survey, I examine the racial attitudes of Asian and Latino immigrants toward African Americans. This paper will then test the utility of existing theoretical models of White racial attitudes which include:, symbolic racism, group position, and political theories for Asian and Latino immigrant groups. Do these theoretical models help us better understand the racial attitudes of Asian and Latino immigrants? I argue that these models, although helpful in accounting for the principle-policy paradox among Whites, are problematic in explaining the racial attitudes of Asian and Latino immigrants towards African Americans due to the inability of each theory to account for the unique racial position that Asians and Latinos hold in the racial hierarchy as well as the unique experience of political socialization for these immigrant groups. I conclude by offering two theoretical models, which as of yet, have not been used to study racial attitudes: assimilation theory and racial triangulation theory. Both of these theories incorporate salient independent variables that could better account for the racial policy preferences of both Asian and Latino immigrants.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Stuart Hall’s assertion that “the great stable collectivities of class, race, gender, and nation” in which “the whole adventure of the modern world” was played out, “have been, in our times, deeply undermined by social and political developments is a widely accepted narrative (Hall, 12). However, it falls short of articulating the basis for community and place today. The very social process that have undermined the traditional categories around which identity was produced, have created the conditions for a new type of identity, based around consumption. Presenting the self to an anonymous crowd is the key problem in building an identity in this late capitalist world. The epistemological mode that mode that arises to deal with this problem is shopping, but beyond an emphasis on consumption I believe that a consumer logic is deeply implicated in the way that individuals relate to the crowd, to strangers. People are the new “place,” and the primary vehicle for this sort of place is the celebrity interview. The interview is a technique used, by both the social sciences and journalism, in creating the social space of the crowd as an intelligible place. Specifically, I examine the media reaction to an interview given by Katherine Hepburn to Barbara Walters, in which Walters reputedly asked Hepburn, “if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?” The overwhelmingly hostile response to this question, and it’s entry into popular culture, indicate that something more is at stake than simple entertainment.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: There has been significant recent scholarly interest in reading the Collège de Sociologie of the French inter-war years (and especially its leading figure, Georges Bataille) as an important intellectual point of connection between the Durkheimian school of the pre-WWI period and the post-‘68 generation of poststructuralists (see e.g., Gane 1991a and b; Richman 2002). This work, though useful and often ground-breaking, largely concentrates itself in a history of ideas tradition that is centered on texts. I propose that a full understanding of the intellectual genealogy necessitates an interpretive framework more attentive to the sociology of knowledge; that is, a framework sensitive to the actual institutional and other social sites in which the melding of Durkheimian and other (especially Nietzschean) ideas could take place in such a way as to clearly inform subsequent generations of thinkers with a kind of intellectual Zeitgeist that has both textual and lived, experiential, social elements. The journal Critique (which was founded by Bataille in 1946 and later edited by Jean Piel, brother-in-law to both Bataille and Jacques Lacan) serves as one such institutional (if in many ways ‘outsider’) site. Here, and in a few other sites I examine, the conditions were present for the creation of interaction rituals and the production of a kind of collective memory that linked thinkers of Bataille’s generation influenced by Durkheimian thought via Marcel Mauss to thinkers of the post-’68 generation (e.g., Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze) who would absorb these Durkheimian/Maussian elements often without explicitly realizing it.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The identification of a behavior or trait as “deviant” from mainstream society has long had significant implications. The individual or group is often ostracized or chastised for their difference. In severe cases, intolerance among the “norm” has escalated to violence against the deviant, even death. Most people do not witness this intentional death firsthand, however, but experience it through media representations. Therefore, television and film play a crucial role in teaching people what behavior is “deviant” and thus, results in death (Goodwin and Bronfen, 1993).
Little research has focused on the victim’s role in crime. Most studies focus on crime patterns or violence and cultivation in television viewing (Dominick, 1973; Soulliere, 2003; Gerbner & Gross, 1976). It is important to look beyond crime patterns and audience effects into the specific representations appearing on television. These depictions likely shape and reinforce public perception of deviance and suggest victim culpability due to personal characteristics.
This research examines homicide victim representations, exploring what traits and behavior is possibly linked to death in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Findings indicate that victim typologies exist, suggesting that traits such as physical difference and race, along with particular lifestyles, result in one’s murder. These results are significant because they reinforce early theories of victimology, implying that a person contributes to his/her victimization by embodying certain characteristics or lifestyles—a notion generally rejected by contemporary scholars. This is alarming because these representations identify certain qualities as “deviant,” thereby reinforcing intolerance and justifying victimization of these groups.

Publication Type: Roundtable Discussion
Abstract: Are your students experiencing “nature-deficit disorder”? PLT, the Cornerstone for EE, has 50 PreK-8 activities designed for taking your students outdoors to understand environmental concepts through multidisciplinary, hands-on, relevant learning. Come participate in and receive several PLT activities, correlated to academic standards.