Princeton Sociology Ph.D.s on the Market for 2009-2010

Sofya Aptekar

Education
Princeton University, PhD expected, Sociology, 2010
Princeton University, MA, Sociology, 2006
Yale University, BA, Sociology, 2001

Areas of Specialization
Sociology of Culture, Immigration, Stratification and Inequality, Race and Ethnicity, Political Sociology, Comparative Sociology, Demography

Dissertation
Title: "Immigrant Naturalization and Nation-Building in North America"

The dissertation is a mixed-method empirical examination of tensions in the social construction of nationhood at the critical juncture of citizenship acquisition by foreigners.  I explore nationalism and national identity as reflected in the naturalization processes in two countries of mass immigration, Canada and the United States, and consider the disjunction between these and realities of immigrants themselves.  I examine and contrast stories that nations tell about themselves and their new immigrant members with the way these new members themselves understand citizenship and belonging.  Empirical chapters include analysis of remarks made at naturalization ceremonies over the past fifty years; interview-based study of the way immigrants themselves understand naturalization; and a demographic modeling of the changing intersections between citizenship status and other axes of inequality.  Broadly conceived, the dissertation is an attempt to grapple with the meaning of immigration, membership, and justice in modern pluralistic societies.   

Selected Publications
Forthcoming
Aptekar, Sofya. Forthcoming. "Organizational Life and Political Incorporation of Two Asian Immigrant Groups: A Case Study." Ethnic and Racial Studies

Aptekar, Sofya. Forthcoming. "Contexts of Exit in the Migration of Russian Speakers From the Baltic Countries to Ireland." Ethnicities

Book Chapters

Newman, Katherine & Sofya Aptekar. 2007. "Sticking Around: Delayed Departure From the Parental Nest in Western Europe and Japan." In The Price of Independence: The Economics of the Transition to Adulthood, edited by Sheldon Danziger and Cecilia Rouse. New York: Russell Sage Foundation Press.

Aptekar, Sofya. 2008. "Highly-Skilled but Unwelcome in Politics: Asian Indians and Chinese in a New Jersey Suburb." In Civic Hopes and Political Realities: Immigrants, Community Organizations, and Political Engagement, edited by S. Karthick Ramakrishnan and Irene Bloemraad. New York: Russell Sage Foundation Press.

Under Review

Aptekar, Sofya. "Citizenship and Inequality in Canada and the United States, 1970-2001." Under review at Social Forces

Selected Honors and Awards
University Center for Human Values Graduate Prize Fellowship (2009-2010); Honors, Qualifying Examinations in Sociology of Culture and Immigration (2006); American Studies Research Prize (2009); Summer research support prizes from Center for Canadian Studies, Princeton Institute for International and Regional studies, and Center for Migration and Development (2008-2009); Global Network of Inequality Fellowship (2006); Finalist, The Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans (2005); Center for Migration and Development Fellowship Support (2004-2006)

Teaching Experience
Preceptor for Sociology of Immigration (Margarita Mooney); Introduction to Urban Studies (Douglas Massey); Modern Mexican Society (Douglas Massey).

Teaching Interests
Immigration, Stratification and Inequality, Sociology of Culture, Race and Ethnicity, Urban Sociology, Quantitative and Qualitative Methods, Theory

For More Information
http://www.sofyaaptekar.com/

Debbie Becher

Degrees
2009 Ph.D in Sociology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
2005 M.A. in Sociology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
1991 B.A. in Mathematics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

Areas of Specialization
Economic Sociology, Law and Society, Political Sociology, Urban Sociology, Cultural Sociology, Social Inequality and Justice, Race, Social Theory

Dissertation/Book Project
A Moral Code in Property Politics: Investments and Returns in Eminent Domain for Private Redevelopment, Philadelphia 1992-2007

Debbie is currently revising her dissertation, Valuing Property: Eminent Domain for Urban Redevelopment, Philadelphia 1992-2007, for publication as a book about the social meaning of real property.  The exceptional act of taking property exposes a moral code operating in many other situations.  This moral code of real property, which attempts to match returns to investments, guides individual and organizational action in the contemporary urban United States, but it is not yet described by legal, political, and economic scholarship.  This project reveals how institutions and individuals employ this code to resolve tensions between public and private interests. 

In the first comprehensive study of a city’s eminent-domain acquisitions, Debbie explores which properties the city pursues for private redevelopment and how stakeholders decide that government actions are either a use or abuse of power.   A quantitative overview of citywide practice combines originally collected data on eminent domain with City of Philadelphia and U.S. Census data on properties and neighborhoods, showing that eminent domain has been largely uncontroversial though fairly common (approximately 7,000 properties and 400 development projects pursued from 1992 to 2007).  Case studies of two controversial development projects probe more deeply into the porous and shifting boundary between desirable and undesirable government action.  Readers follow these projects through planning and implementation, with evidence from public records, documents on file in offices of the Mayor and the Redevelopment Authority, and interviews with residents, business owners, community leaders, government representatives, attorneys, and appraisers.  Though in moments of conflict those opposing eminent domain employ an idea of property security as possession (“what’s mine is mine and what’s your is yours”), more flexible approaches to property governance are more common. 

Property-governing institutions enforce a moral code trying to value and reward property investment – including emotional, financial, temporal, and cognitive investment.  Written rules, public claims, and individual practices aim to ensure that the social environment provides returns to investments of all kinds in a fairly equitable manner.  Dissatisfaction and claims of public wrongs arise not when or because government threatens property titles.  They arise instead when property-governing institutions fail to meet the task of enforcing this more complex and evasive moral code.  The accounts in this book explore specifically how problems related to uncertainty and communications cause these institutional failures that emerge in public discourse as violations of property security as possession. 

Fellowships and Awards
2009-10 Visiting Scholar, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2008-09 Research Fellow, The Brookings Institution, Metropolitan Policy Program
2008-09 American Fellow, American Association of University Women (AAUW)
2007-08 Graduate Prize, American Studies, Princeton University
2006-08 Fellow, Society of Woodrow Wilson Scholars, Princeton University
2006-07 Graduate Prize Fellowship, Center for Human Values, Princeton University
2006 Arthur Liman Fellowship, Yale Law School/Princeton University
2002-06 Summer Fellowship, Princeton University
2002-06 Graduate Fellowship, Princeton University

Grants
2008 - Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, Research Grant for dissertation
2007 - U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant
2007 - National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant, Law and Social Sciences
2007 - Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations Research Grant for:  "Nonprofit Status in Government Partnerships: Niche, Symbol, or Signal?"
2006 - Global Network on Inequality Fellowship for: "The ‘Land-grab law’ in Valencia, Spain: Forcing Compensation for Benefit rather than Harm"
2006 - Dissertation Research Grant, Department of Sociology, Princeton University
2006 - Law and Society Association, Graduate Student Workshop
2005 - Policy Research Institute for the Region Dissertation Grant, Princeton University

Publications
 "The Participant’s Dilemma: Bringing Conflict and Representation Back in through Intermediation" Conditionally Accepted by the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.  Forthcoming.

 "The Rights Behind Eminent Domain Fights: A Little Property and A Lot of Home" in Property Rights and Neo-liberalism: Cultural Demands and Legal Actions.  Eds. Laura Hatcher and Wayne McIntosh.  Ashgate Press.  Forthcoming.

 "Narrating and Naming Positive Agents: Storytelling by Philadelphia Postwar Political Elite." Poetics. 36(1) 72-93. 2008.

 "Government v. Property-owners? Eminent Domain Practice and Judgment, in and out of Court."  The Princeton Law Journal.  1(1): 25-27.  2006.

Work in Progress
"Twin Pluralisms: Legal and Economic Formality and Informality in America’s Heartland."  To be submitted to the American Journal of Sociology.

"From Politics to Market: The Selling of Philadelphia Anti-Blight Initiative." To be submitted to Journal of Urban Affairs.

For More Information:
Visit her website at LAPA: http://lapa.princeton.edu/debbie.becher.html

Phillip Connor

Areas of specialization
Religion, international migration, political sociology, research methods

Education
Princeton University, PhD, expected, Sociology 2010
Princeton University, MA, Sociology 2009
McGill University, MA, Sociology 2005
Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, MDiv, 2002
Acadia University, BA, Music, 1998

Dissertation
Title: "Disruption, Assimilation, and Facilitation: A Theory of Immigrant Religious Adaptation"

Current literature claims that religious activity not only eases the emotional adjustment of immigrants within the receiving society, but also serves as a mechanism to immigrants for upward mobility and building of social capital. Although immigrant religious participation facilitates immigrant incorporation, we still know very little of the religious adaptation process in general terms. Previous immigrant religion research is voluminous, mostly qualitative in methodology and American in scope. Although this research has served as a good inductive foundation to understanding immigrant religious adaptation in the new society, it has resulted in a loosely connected set of theoretical propositions idiosyncratic to specific locales and/or immigrant religious groups. In Disruption, Assimilation, and Facilitation, Connor brings together multiple, immigrant cohort datasets from the Western world (i.e. Canada, the United States, Australia, and Western Europe) to find similar processes of immigrant adaptation, regardless of national context or religious group affiliation. Migrating internationally disrupts the regularity of religious participation among immigrants. This is less due to individual level changes such as family obligations, family composition, and employment, but rather to religious contextual changes from origin to host societies. Although immigrants do not assimilate en masse to the dominant religious beliefs in the new society, immigrants do religiously assimilate in terms of form or frequency of religious participation. However, this form assimilation does not occur equally for all religious groups in all national contexts. Immigrant Muslims in Western Europe are the most resilient in this case, mostly due to negative immigrant public opinion among the native-born population. In understanding the role of religion for immigrant incorporation as well as the religious adaptation process, this dissertation also seeks to elaborate current theories of immigrant adaptation in other domains, establishing a full research agenda for further exploration.

Selected Publications and Papers
Connor, Phillip. Forthcoming. "Contexts of Immigrant Receptivity and Immigrant Religiosity: The Case of Muslims in Western Europe."  Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Connor, Phillip. 2009. "International Migration and Religious Participation: The Mediating Impact of Individual and Contextual Effects."  Sociological Forum: 24(4).

Connor, Phillip. 2009. "Immigrant Religiosity in Canada: Multiple Trajectories."   Journal of International Migration and Integration : 10(3).
               
Connor, Phillip. 2008. "Increase or Decrease? The Impact of the International Migratory Event on Immigrant Religious Participation." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 47:243-257.

Connor, Phillip. "Do Immigrants Religiously Assimilate? Contextualizing Immigrant Religious Participation in Western Europe, the United  States, and Canada."  Under Review.
     
Connor, Phillip. "A Balm for the Soul: Immigrant Religion and Emotional  Well-Being."  Revise and Resubmit.

Selected Honors and Awards
Graduate Student Paper Award, ASA Religion Section, 2009
McNamara Student Paper Award, Honorable Mention, Association for the Sociology of Religion, 2008
Best Student Paper Award, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, 2007
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship, 2008-2011
Center for the Study of Religion Graduate Fellow, 2008-2010
Princeton Canadian Studies Program, Dissertation Support

Teaching Experience
Soc 301: Social Research Methods (Quantitative). TA to Scott Lynch, 2008
Soc 201: American Society and Politics. TA to Paul Starr, 2009
Center for the Study of Religion Teaching Intern, 2009

Teaching Interests:
Undergraduate: Research Methods, Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Migration, Political Sociology, Statistics, American/Canadian Comparisons
Graduate: Research Methods, Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Migration

For More Information:
See Phillip Connor's web site: www.phillipconnor.com

 

James Gibbon

Education
PhD, Princeton University, Sociology, expected 2010
MA, Princeton University, Sociology, 2006
BA, Wheaton College, Sociology, 1999

Areas of Specialization
Religion, Culture, Immigration, Political Sociology, Ethnicity, Cognition, Turkey

Dissertation
Title:  "Sermons of the State:  Religious Bureaucracy and the Production of Islamic Sermons in Turkey"

My dissertation advances scholarship on religion and the state by offering the first in-depth study of a government agency responsible for religious affairs.  My research sheds light on the inner workings of a religious bureaucracy, showing how government oversight shapes the creation of religious knowledge and how boundaries between religion and politics are negotiated within a democratic state.  I address these issues by examining the production of Islamic sermons in Turkey, where the avowedly secular government oversees virtually all public religious matters, from the training of imams to the management of more than 79,000 mosques.  Employees at the Directorate of Religious Affairs (DRA) also prepare the weekly sermons that are read nationwide during Friday prayers, with topics ranging from personal hygiene to human rights.  I ask:  How has state regulation shaped the religious content transmitted weekly to nearly 20 million Muslims?  How do clerics employed by the state reconcile tension between bureaucratic directives and theological commitments when they craft Friday sermons?  What accounts for change in religious policies?  To answer these questions I conducted 20 months of fieldwork in Turkey, where I collected and digitized over 1,700 Friday sermons to create the largest database of Islamic sermons in existence.  Additionally, I gained unprecedented access to 50 sermon planning meetings in five different provinces and observed sermon production first-hand.  Drawing on sermon texts spanning eight decades, documents from government archives, interviews with religious officials, and rare ethnographic data from within a religious bureaucracy, my dissertation explains how the trademarks of contemporary Turkish Islam – Golden Rule ethics and the avoidance of politics – have been institutionalized over time.

Publications
James Gibbon.  2008.  "God is Great, God is Good: Teaching God Concepts in Turkish Islamic Sermons."  Poetics 36:389-403

Becky Hsu, Amy Reynolds, Conrad Hackett, and James Gibbon.  2008.  "Estimating the Religious Composition of All Nations: An Empirical Assessment of the World Christian Database."  Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 47:678-693.

Papers Under Review
James Gibbon.  "Between Religion and the State: Democracy, Religious Markets, and Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs."

James Gibbon.  "Sending State Involvement in Immigrant Religion:  Reexamining the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB) in Germany."

Work in Progress
James Gibbon.  "Unveiling Islamophobia:  American Attitudes Toward Islam."

James Gibbon. "Here Now, But Not Yet:  Turkish Immigrant Entrepreneurs in the U.S."

Grants and Fellowships
National
2007   Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship
2007   American Research Institute in Turkey Dissertation Fellowship (Declined)
2007   Jack Shand Research Award, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion
2005   National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program, Honorable Mention
2004   National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program, Honorable Mention
2004   American Research Institute in Turkey Summer Language Fellow
1999   Pew Younger Scholars Summer Study Grant, Notre Dame University

Princeton University
2009   Dissertation Writing Grant, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies
2007   Dissertation Research Award, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies
2006   Graduate Research Award, Center for the Study of Religion
2006   Global Network on Inequality Fellowship
2005   Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship (Arabic)
2005   Cognitive and Textual Methods Project Fellowship
2005   Graduate Research Award, Center for the Study of Religion

Teaching Experience
The Western Way of War.  Teaching Assistant to Miguel Centeno, spring 2005.
The Sociological Perspective.  Teaching Assitant to Mitchell Duneier, fall 2004.

Teaching Interests
Religion, Culture, Immigration, Stratification and Inequality, Ethnicity, Cognition, the Middle East

For More Information
Curriculum Vitae (pdf) / James Gibbon's website: www.jamesgibbon.org

Alice Goffman

Areas of Specialization
Urban sociology, social interaction, poverty and inequality, crime and punishment, race and ethnicity, ethnographic methods, and theory

Education
Princeton University, Ph.D. in Sociology, expected May 2010
University of Pennsylvania, B.A., 2006

Dissertation
Title: "On the Run"
Committee: Mitchell Duneier (chair), Viviana Zelizer, Paul DiMaggio

The number of people arrested, incarcerated, and released under court supervision rose dramatically in the last quarter of the 20th century. While Black men with low levels of education comprise a startling portion of this supervised population, we know little about how the police, the courts, and the prisons are shaping everyday life in poor Black communities.  We lack this view from the ground because most ethnographic work was conducted before the criminal justice system became such a dominant institution in the lives of poor people.  Indeed, up until the 1990s, observers described the ghetto as virtually abandoned by law enforcement.

Drawing on six years of in-depth fieldwork in Philadelphia, this dissertation provides an extended ethnographic account of life in the heavily policed ghetto as it has emerged in the era of mass incarceration. In the community I studied, police helicopters circle overhead, cameras monitor people on the streets, and the police routinely stop, search, and arrest people.  Many young men have pending court cases, probation and parole sentences, and low-level warrants out for minor infractions, such as failing to pay court fees or breaking curfew. For these young men, avoiding jail becomes a daily preoccupation. As the police search for them at their homes, jobs, and even the hospital, men find that staying out of jail and participating consistently in work and family life become contradictory goals. Suspicious of those closest to them, they cultivate unpredictability in an effort to prevent others from informing. Yet in this context of limited opportunity, young men also call on their wanted status to explain failures that may have occurred anyway.  Similarly, mothers, girlfriends, and children endure police raids and interrogations, but also harness the threat of the police to control the men in their lives. Local entrepreneurs devise innovative ways to capitalize on those in a precarious legal position, while young men who are not entangled in the system face a series of dilemmas as they negotiate relations with friends and relatives who are "dipping and dodging" the police.

This work confirms that the criminal justice system has become a means of passing on disadvantage, but it also suggests that residents of poor Black neighborhoods are able to resist the authorities and make use of the police and the courts for their own purposes, to supplement their income, to exert power over one another, and to make claims for themselves as honorable people.

Selected Publications
On the Run. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; under contract.

"On the Run: Wanted Men in a Philadelphia Ghetto." American Sociological Review 74/2    (2009): 339-357. (Lead article.)

Teaching Experience
Co-Instructor, Department of Sociology, Princeton University 2004, 2006-2009
Freshman Seminar: The Ghetto as a Socio-Historical Problem, with Mitchell Duneier
(as Lloyd Cotsen Graduate Teaching Fellow 2006-2008)

Teaching Assistant, Department of Sociology, Princeton University, 2004-2006
Sociology 250: The Western Way of War, with Miguel Centeno
Sociology 302: Sociological Theory, with Patricia Fernandez-Kelly

For More Information
Alice Goffman CV

Becky Hsu

Areas of Specialization
Theory, culture, economic sociology, organizations, religion, China, public sociology

Education
Princeton University — PhD Sociology, expected 2010
Princeton University — MA Sociology, 2004, general examination with distinction
Yale University — BA Sociology with History, 1997, cum laude, distinction in the major

Dissertation
Dyadic Ethics: How Person-to Person Obligations Change the Meaning of Debt in Rural China
Committee: Robert Wuthnow (chair), Paul DiMaggio, Miguel Centeno, Deborah Davis

The dissertation focuses on the effect of moral understandings on the economy. I ask the question "What are the conditions under which people pay debts?" in the context of microcredit poverty alleviation programs in rural China. I examine whether villagers understand their decisions in a way that is consistent with traditional Chinese philosophical thought.

In this region, villagers barely live above subsistence despite economic growth in other parts of the country. Considering power, network, and cultural explanations, I compare two very similar programs with dramatically different repayment rates. I find that one program makes paying the debt a person-to-group obligation, while the other makes it a person-to-person (dyadic) obligation. I argue that, in my field site where Confucian ideas are important, dyadic obligations are much more meaningful to the villagers than person-to-group obligations. The consideration of these Confucian ideas provides a new framework for understanding why the villagers respond differently to debt obligations.

Articles
2009. Hsu, Becky. "Dyads, Collective Sanctions, and Culture: Weakness of Strong Ties in a Chinese Microloan Program." Under review.
* Winner, Student paper award, American Sociological Association, Section on Asia and Asian America
* Winner, Best student paper, Eastern Sociological Society

2009. Hsu, Becky. "Debt and Moral Obligation: Culture, Networks and Microcredit in Rural China." Under review.

2009. Hsu, Becky. "Microcredit" in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, ed. George Ritzer. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Under contract.

2008. Hsu, Becky, Amy Reynolds, Conrad Hackett, and James Gibbon. "Estimating the Religious Composition of All Nations: An Empirical Assessment." Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion 47(4):678-693.

2007. Hsu, Becky. "Social Capital as the Underlying Mechanism Linking Religion and Economic Development." The International Scope Review 8(13).

2004. Wuthnow, Robert, Conrad Hackett, and Becky Hsu. "Effectiveness and Trustworthiness of Faith-Based and Other Service Organizations: A Study of Recipients’ Perceptions." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 43:1-17.
* Winner, Distinguished article award, American Sociological Association, Sociology of Religion Section

Hsu, Becky. "Mismatched Moral Dispositions and Economic Logics: Social Collateral, Liability, and Microcredit in Rural China." (working paper)
* Winner, Student award, American Sociological Association, Sociological Practice and Public Sociology Section
* Honorable mention, student paper award, American Sociological Association, Theory Section

Books
Dyadic Ethics: How Person-to Person Obligations Change the Meaning of Debt in Rural China. A manuscript is under development which examines the effect of moral understandings on the economy. This should be of interest to American sociologists because it addresses the classical sociological question of religion and the economy. It also uncovers an interesting relationship between culture and the dyad by using original ethnographic evidence collected from rural China to make its case.

Awards
2008 American Sociological Association, Sociological Practice and Public Sociology Section, Student Practitioner Award
2008 American Sociological Association, Theory Section, Shils-Coleman Memorial Award for best student paper, honorable mention
2007 American Sociological Association, Section on Asia and Asian America, Student Paper Award
2007 Eastern Sociological Society, Candace Rogers Award for best graduate student paper on any topic
2004 American Sociological Association, Sociology of Religion Section, Distinguished Article Award for paper authored with Robert Wuthnow and Conrad Hackett

Grants and Fellowships (Selected)
National Science Foundation, Sociology Program (proposal in development), 2009
Mellon/ACLS Doctoral Completion Dissertation Fellowship, alternate, 2007
Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, finalist, 2007
Research grant, Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University, 2004, 2005, 2007
Graduate fellowship, Peking University Harvard-Yenching Institute, 2006
Fellowship of Woodrow Wilson Scholars, Princeton University, 2004-2006

Professional Service
Secretary-Treasurer of American Sociological Association Section on Sociological Practice and Public Sociology — 2009-2011

Consultant
Pew Research Center, Washington DC — 2006-present

Teaching
Co-Director, Senior Thesis Workshop, Princeton University — 2003-2004
Teaching Assistant, Social Basis of Individual Behavior, Princeton University — 2003-2004

Teaching Interests
Theory, culture, economic sociology, organizations, religion, China

For More Information
http://www.princeton.edu/~bhsu/

Pierre-Antoine Kremp

Areas of Specialization
Economic sociology; sociology of organizations; sociology of culture

Education
2004.   M.A. in Sociology (with Distinction). Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)---Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS), Paris.

2000.   B.A. in Economics (with Distinction). University of Paris-I (Pantheon-Sorbonne).

1999-2004. Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris.

Dissertation Title
"Financial Risk, The Diffusion of Stock ownership and the Consequences of the Financialization of Wealth"

Committee: Paul DiMaggio (chair), Martin Ruef, Viviana Zelizer.

Dissertation Abstract
My dissertation analyzes the diffusion of individual stock ownership and its consequences on wealth inequality in a context of financial bubble. While economic sociology has developed a significant literature on the professional world of finance, little attention has been paid to the role of individual investors and the changes in attitudes towards financial risk in periods of financial booms and busts. The field of behavioral finance on the other hand has long emphasized the need for psychological and sociological approaches to account for the emergence of financial bubbles and crashes, but has consistently relied on the former and overlooked the latter in empirical and theoretical research. This dissertation provides a sociological account of stock-market bubbles and their consequences on wealth inequality by analyzing the late-1990's financial euphoria as a social diffusion process, in which new investors started investing a growing share of their wealth in risky financial assets (such as stocks and stock mutual funds). In particular, using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics on the investing practices of individual households, I show that households who entered the stock market during the late-1990's bubble differed in significant and systematic ways from traditional populations of investors --- and even more so as the market reached its peak. I relate this diffusion process to observed increases in wealth inequality before and after the market crash by showing that differences in timings of entry (and exit) from the stock market during a bubble significantly affected investors' chances of experiencing gains or losses: because they entered the market late during the bubble and regardless of their investing skills, younger, less well-off and African-American investors were significantly more likely to experience losses on their investments once the market crashed. More generally, I argue that the social structure of the sequencing of the diffusion of asset ownership can be a powerful mechanism susceptible of reinforcing wealth inequality in markets affected by bubbles and crashes --- such as the stock market or, more recently, the housing market.

Selected Publications
Kremp, Pierre-Antoine. "Innovation and Selection: Symphony Orchestras and the Construction of the Musical Canon in the United States, 1879-1959." Forthcoming in Social Forces (link)

Selected Awards and Fellowships
2009-2010. Beyster Fellowship. School of Management and Labor Relations. Rutgers University.

2007. Graduate Student Teaching Award. Department of Sociology, Princeton University.

2006. Ronald Burt Best Graduate Student Paper Award. American Sociological Association, Section on Economic Sociology.

2004-2009. Princeton University Graduate Fellowship.

2002-2003. Procter Fellowship, Visiting Graduate Student, Princeton University.

Teaching experience
Teaching assistant for "Money, Work and Social Life" (Viviana Zelizer); "Introduction to Sociology" (Patricia Fernandez-Kelly).

Teaching interests
Economic sociology, sociology of organizations, sociology of culture, quantitative methods, stratification and inequality.

Valerie Lewis

Areas of specialization
Poverty and inequality, race and ethnicity, demography, development, urban sociology, India

Current position
Legatum post-doctoral research fellow, The Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Director Robert Putnam, June 2009-Present

Education
Princeton University, PhD, Sociology, June 2009
Princeton University, MA, Sociology, June 2007
Rice University, BA, Sociology, May 2004

Dissertation
Title: "Slums and Human Capital Disadvantage: The Case of India"

The developing world is rapidly urbanizing, and most of the world's future population growth will be in cities of the developing world. The fastest growing segments of these cities are the poorest-- largely the particularly poor neighborhoods known as slums. Using the case study country of India, the world's largest democracy and a country rapidly urbanizing, I examine several aspects of disadvantage among slum residents. I first explore the concept and definition of slums using government literature and interviews with public officials and intellectuals, looking to new and better ways to define and measure the fuzzy phenomenon of slums. I then examine disadvantages faced by slum residents quantitatively on several outcomes using the National Family Health Survey from 2005-2006 that is the first national data to  include oversamples of slum residents in 8 Indian cities. I first examine infant and child mortality, finding that family wealth supercedes residence in explaining differentials. I next consider child health, finding that children's health status as reported by mothers is susceptible to bias in reporting based on mothers' own education and health knowledge, rendering analyses by location difficult. Lastly, I analyze primary and secondary educational attendance, finding that slum children are as likely as other urban children to be in primary school but the least likely (even compared to rural residents) to be in secondary school. This is likely the result of economic opportunities in slums' vibrant informal economies combined with a lack of available secondary schools for slum children. Overall, this dissertation is one of the first pieces of research to rigorously answer questions about slum disadvantage, an issue that will only become of increasing importance over the next few decades.

Selected Publications
Lewis, Valerie A. Forthcoming. “Social Energy and Racial Segregation in the University Context.” Social Science Quarterly.

Wuthnow, Robert and Valerie A. Lewis. 2008. “Religion and Foreign Policy Altruism: Evidence from a National Survey of Church Members.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 47:191-209.

Papers Under Review
Lewis, Valerie A., Michael O. Emerson, and Stephen L. Klineberg. “Residential Segregation and Neighborhood Racial Composition Preferences of Whites, Blacks, and Latinos.” (revise and resubmit, Social Forces)

Lewis, Valerie A. “Slums, Poverty, and Child Death in India.” (revise and resubmit, Population Studies)

Lewis, Valerie A. “Places and Poverty: How City Contexts Shape Race and Hardship.” (under review)

Lewis, Valerie A. “The Urban (Dis)Advantage: Slums and Schooling in India.” (under review)

Selected Honors and Awards
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, awarded 2005
Qualifying exams passed with highest distinction, 2007
Dissertation grants from the Center for Migration and Development, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, and the Global Network on Inequality, 2007-2009

Teaching Experience
Research methods (undergraduate statistics), teaching assistant spring 2006, fall 2006
Social Statistics (graduate statistics), teaching assistant, fall 2006
Demographic research methods (graduate), teaching assistant, spring 2007

Teaching Interests
Statistics, research methods, demography, race and ethnic relations, stratification and inequality, poverty (domestic or international), urban sociology

For More Information:
Curriculum vitae (pdf) 
Valerie Lewis's website: http://valerie.lewis.googlepages.com/

Amy Reynolds

Education
Princeton University, Ph.D. expected, Sociology, January 2010
Princeton University, M.A., Sociology, 2006
Georgetown University, M.P.P., Public Policy, 2005
Harvard University, A.B., Sociology, 1999

Areas of Specialization
Sociology of religion, sociology of culture, economic sociology, gender, globalization, and Central American studies

Dissertation Title and one-paragraph summary
"Saving the Market: The Role of Values, Authority, and Networks in International Trade Discourse"
Committee: Robert Wuthnow (chair), Miguel Centeno, and Viviana Zelizer

Given the increasing attention on markets as social constructions, in this dissertation I ask the question of how values come to bear in discourse on global markets.  Specifically, I study the discourse of three religious cases over international free trade agreements, through consultation of texts produced by the groups, informant interviews, and general observation.  In line with the literature that suggests social location, organizational structure, and institutional context matter in the perspectives and decisions that organizations make, I select three cases that vary along these lines:  an ecumenical social action group in Canada, the democratically governed Presbyterian Church in the United States, and the Catholic Council of Bishops in Costa Rica.  I argue that for religious groups, values about the market are heavily influenced by their religious traditions, although such traditions are often colored by national identity.  Secondly, I find that the different conceptions of the role of religion and moral authority influence the ways values are employed and the strategic decisions regarding discourse made by groups.  Three models that emerge within this study include the use of religious values as a general framework, an analytical lens, and concrete practice for entering into economic markets.  Finally, and perhaps the central finding of this research, is that religious networks are essential in influencing the way that values ultimately shape economic policy.  Although such networks exist for most religious communities, it is through personal connections that they become salient for economic discourse.  Networks – both who is in them and the content of them – influence the tools, perspectives, and discursive strategies that groups use to apply their theological values to the political and economic realm.  

Selected Publications
Becky Hsu, Amy Reynolds, Conrad Hackett, and Jim Gibbon. 2008. "Estimating the Religious Composition of All Nations: An Empirical Assessment of the World Christian Database."  Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 47(4): 678-693.

Amy Reynolds and Christopher Winship. 2005. "Faith, Practice, and Transformation: A Theory-Based
Evaluation of Faith-Based Teen Programs." In Taking Faith Seriously: Engaging and Evaluating
Religion in American Democracy, edited by Mary Jo Bane and Brent Coffin, Harvard University
Press.

Amy Reynolds. "Networks, Ethics, and Economic Markets: Faith-Based Business and the Coffee Trade in Central America." Revised and Resubmitted.

Rebekah Massengill and Amy Reynolds. "Moral Discourse in Economic Contexts."  In The Handbook for the Sociology of Morality, edited by Steven Hitlin and Stephen Vaisey. Springer. Under Review.

Selected Honors and Awards
Hauser Center for the Study of Non-Profits, Harvard University, Dissertation Support
Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Dissertation Support
Center for the Study of Religion, Graduate Fellow 2004-2008
Harvey Fellowship, Mustard Seed Foundation, 2006-2008

Teaching Experience
Adjunct Positions
Sociology of Religion, Boston University School of Theology, Spring 2009
Religious Responses to Poverty, Eastern University, Spring 2008
Theology and Economic Life, Andover Newton Theological Seminary, Summer 2006

Teaching Assistantships
Globalization and Culture (Teaching Assistant to Professor Laura Adams), Spring 2006
Urban Sociology: The City and Change in the Americas (Teaching Assistant to Professor Patricia
Fernandez-Kelly), Spring 2005
Sociological Methods (Teaching Assistant to Professor Marta Tienda), Fall 2004

Teaching Interests
Sociology of religion, research methods, economic sociology, gender, international political economy and globalization, stratification and inequality, Central American/Latin American studies

See www.princeton.edu/~areyno for more information

Cristobal Young

Education
PhD in Sociology, Princeton University, Expected June 2010.
Dissertation: The Non-Pecuniary Costs of Unemployment.
Committee: Paul DiMaggio (Chair), Martin Ruef, Sara McLanahan
 
MA in Economics, University of Victoria. 2004.
                Thesis: The Emergence of Sociology from Political Economy: 1880-1940.

BA in Economics and Sociology (double major), University of Victoria. 2001.

Research Interests
Economic Sociology, Labor Markets, Public Policy, Statistical Methodology.

Dissertation
Economists and sociologists agree that unemployment is harmful because of its financial impact. However, they disagree on the non-pecuniary aspects of job loss. For economists, the non-pecuniary effect is positive: the jobless enjoy greater free time away from work. For sociologists, the non-pecuniary effect is negative, representing a loss of social status and identity. My dissertation explores these costs and benefits in three competitive tests of the rival perspectives. First, how does subjective well-being change as people enter and exit unemployment? I revisit this question using new U.S. data (from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics), and control for important factors that have been neglected in past research (income, consumption, and Unemployment Insurance eligibility). Second, does unemployment provide enjoyable leisure time, similar to what working people look forward to on weekends and holidays? Using the American Time Use Survey, I test the similarity of "unemployment time" to the "weekend time" of working people. Finally, when UI benefits are more generous, are recipients less likely to search for work? For this, I use a unique data set of random audits of UI recipients’ actual work search record. The general conclusions are 1) unemployment harms an individual’s sense of well-being by much more than what the loss of income would suggest; 2) the unemployed spend a great deal of time alone, and are "waiting for the weekend" to make full social use of their free time; 3) benefit generosity seems to have little impact on search intensity, suggesting that UI provides searchers with more time to find the right job.

Selected Publications
"Model Uncertainty in Sociological Research: An Application to Religion and Economic Growth." American Sociological Review. Vol. 74(3):380-97. 2009.

"The Emergence of Sociology from Political Economy in the United States: 1880-1940." Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. Vol. 45(2):91-116. 2009. (Lead article. Won best graduate student paper award from ASA History of Sociology section.)

Trends in New Jersey Migration: Housing, Employment, and Taxation. Princeton University: Policy Research Institute for the Region. (First author with Douglas S. Massey and Charles Varner) 2008.

"The Politics, Mathematics, and Morality of Economics: a Review Essay on Robert Nelson’s Economics as Religion." Socio-Economic Review. Vol. 3(1):161-172. 2005.

Recent Newspaper Editorials
"Call the Millionaire’s Bluff." New York Daily News. 10/ 27/ 08. (With Charles Varner). (This is the fifth-largest newspaper in the US, with a circulation of more than 700,000.)

"A Tale of Two Health Care Systems." Victoria Times-Colonist. 03/22/09:D2

Manuscripts Under Review
"The Non-Pecuniary Costs of Unemployment." Social Forces. Revise and Resubmit.

"Millionaire Migration and the State Taxation of Top Incomes: Evidence from New Jersey." (First author with Charles Varner.) Submitted to National Tax Journal.

Research In Progress
Programming Model Uncertainty

On Gender Deviance: Unemployment and the Division of Household Labor

Healthy Living in Hard Times? Individual vs. Macro Effects of Economic Recession.

Religion and Economic Growth in Western Europe: 1500-2000. (Accepted for Historical Sociology regular paper session at ASA 2009)

Christianity, Judaism, and the Spirit of Capitalism: The Weber-Sombart Debates.

Asymmetric Information in the Market for Medicine: the Disconnect Between Hospital Quality and Patient Satisfaction.

Awards
ASA History of Sociology Best Graduate Student Paper Award. 2009.

Princeton University Dodds Honorific Fellowship. 2009-10.

Harvard University Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Kennedy School of Government, Saguaro Seminar. 2009-10 (Declined)

Yale University Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course. 2009-10 (Declined)

Princeton University Graduate Fellowship. 2004-09.

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship. 2005-08.

University of Victoria Graduate Fellowship, 2001-02.

University of Victoria President’s Scholarship for Undergraduate Students, 2000.