Current identified adoption literature focuses on family formation and cultural or racial development of adoptees. When adoptees are the focus of the study, they tend to compare their experience in relation to their adoptive parents or the study revolves around identity or ethnic development and does not explore beyond variables such as self-esteem or adjustment. In order to shift the focus from adoptive parents onto the adoptees, this research will analyze adoptee authored children’s books and inquire about how adoption has implications on how society defines family. This presentation is a review of current adoption research and will focus on Chinese international and transracial adoptees. The research question is as follows: How does adoption contribute to the broader conversation: what defines a family?
With rising Sub-Saharan African migration along with emerging diasporas in Western countries, it is critical to evaluate current research on transnational, adjustment, and enculturation processes in families. When analyzing cultural adjustment in the United States, social sciences literature frequently concentrates on European, Asian, and Latin American immigrants, but Sub-Saharan African migrants are largely overlooked. This approach ignores these migrants' particular experiences, such as how they internalize racial systems in the United States and reflect them back in their home countries. This project attempts to investigate these processes by observing Kenyan parents and families as they raise children in a culturally diverse context. One Kenyan-born mother, recruited during a #RejectFinanceBill demonstration in the San Francisco Bay Area, was interviewed in four 40-minute Zoom sessions. The interviews, conducted in English, highlighted themes such as culture shock, the importance of positive racial socialization for children, and maintaining transnational ties through education, religion, food, and language.
This study will feature semi-structured interviews with Black trans men, focusing on positive aspects of their transitional period, mainly effects of holding the Black identity and the impacts of anti-Blackness. Black trans men are underrepresented in sociological research, leaving their experience and knowledge behind. This research aims to add to the literature through looking at intersectionality and resilience in the face of oppression. The focus on positive aspects of their experience is another main basis of the study due to a lack of research on positive experiences of marginalized communities: positive narratives are valuable, though they are often passed over in favor of narratives of discrimination and negativity. The data received from interviews will be guided towards and analyzed in a way that focuses on positive experiences more than negative ones, and will aim to bring more knowledge and joy to both Black trans men and the sociological community.
The 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution states that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Despite being credited with ending slavery, the 13th Amendment actually perpetuates indentured servitude and slave labor in the U.S. prison industrial complex. Through a Marxist lens, I analyze essays written by those in the U.S carceral system. I conduct a content analysis of these works and argue how they mimic the conditions of those who were held under the bonds of slavery. Critical of neoliberalism, I further explain how the Prison Industrial Complex and the labor conducted by prisoners is carried out by the state itself. The Prison Industrial Complex is operated and maintained by the state in order to perpetuate the historical conditions of slavery.
The digital age has overwhelmed the American public with a flood of information through internet access and social media. An increasing amount of this information is designed and shared to distort understanding of democratic systems, political figures, and personal rights; intentionally or not. This literature review explores the impact of disinformation on the American psyche, focusing on the role of mass media and the breakdown of epistemological frameworks. The manipulation of truth through tactics like astroturfing and the exploitation of epistemological virtues such as curiosity and open-mindedness is discussed highlighting how disinformation campaigns leverage human tendencies to create and reinforce biased beliefs. In comparison to global media environments, the U.S. media landscape's emphasis on profit over substance exacerbates the spread of disinformation. The public's call for media reform, including the potential for a publicly-funded media ecosystem, reflects a growing awareness of the need to combat the pervasive effects of disinformation.
This project examines the intersections of Mexico and Latin America’s colonial histories of religious imperialism and their impact on the religious lives of Mexican and Latin American Catholic women in the 21st century. Using social media as an indicator of the religious lives of Mexican women and Latinas, this project identifies how religious and spiritual women engage with religious content online (broadly understood) demonstrating the ways online spaces offer Mexican and Latina women more religious freedom in contrast to institutional Catholic realities. Drawing on methods from Latinoax and mujerista theologians and from ethnographic studies of online religious communities, my research investigates the importance and impact of social media in sharing religious knowledge and practice. This is especially relevant for online engagement with Mexican and Latin American popular Catholicism on platforms such as TikTok and Youtube. This project considers religious traditions and practices from both the institutional Catholic Church and Latin American/Mexican popular Catholicism in order to analyze the similarities and differences between these religious traditions to better account for and engage with the subjugating effects of Spanish colonization on indigenous peoples and their belief systems. This project emphasizes Mexican and Latin American Catholicism’s connection to both pre-Hispanic indigenous and Eurocentric Catholic belief systems in order to deconstruct what is often labeled as “satanic worship” and brujería and aims to further explore Mexican and Latin American popular Catholicism based on the lived religion of Mexican and Latina women.
