Sociologists Without Borders and The Meaning of “Without Borders”: The Social Construction of Organizational and Scholarly Boundaries

This manuscript examines what it means to be “without borders” in an organizational and scholarly context

Rules vs. Rights? Social Control, Dignity, and the Right to Housing in the Shelter System

Sometimes the mechanisms that are in place to protect human rights lead to human rights violations. Drawing on data from ten months of fieldwork at a homeless shelter’s women’s program in a New England city. The authors trace the compromise of human dignity that accompanies one shelter’s effort to help clients fulfill their human right to housing

Rules vs. Rights? Social Control, Dignity, and the Right to Housing in the Shelter System

Sometimes the mechanisms that are in place to protect human rights lead to human rights violations. Drawing on data from ten months of fieldwork at a homeless shelter’s women’s program in a New England city. The authors trace the compromise of human dignity that accompanies one shelter’s effort to help clients fulfill their human right to housing

The State, the UDHR, and the Social Construction of Family in Human Rights: The Case of the Scarborough 11

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (UN 1947:34) declares in Article 16(3) that “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to the full protection by society and the state.” However, the UDHR does not define family, but rather presumes it is defined by traditional heteronormative marriage in a nuclear family. The failure of the UDHR to consider a more expansive view of family leaves the definition of family centrally in the hands of the state, and affects the ability of all but traditional nuclear family forms to access other human rights. We add to the scholarship on the role of the state in defining and maintaining family and family inequality through an examination of the case of the Scarborough 11, an intentional family sued by the city of Hartford, CT for violations of residential zoning ordinance based on family. This case challenges hegemonic constructions of family and illustrates the limits of the UDHR to protect all families. The case demonstrates the importance of the related questions: 1) how legal definitions of family create the capacity for local residents to understand non-nuclear families living among them, 2) whether the end-goal of this problem should be to expand the state’s definition of family or remove that power from the state in total (a question of reform vs. abolition) and, 3) what might a case concerning white middle-class professionals’ struggles to thrive tell us about boundary maintenance and the struggles of the poor to survive

Sociologists Without Borders and The Meaning of “Without Borders”: The Social Construction of Organizational and Scholarly Boundaries

This manuscript examines what it means to be “without borders” in an organizational and scholarly context

Critical Sociology Crit Sociol Inequality Whiteness as Property: Predatory Lending and the Reproduction of Racialized Whiteness as Property: Predatory Lending and the Reproduction of Racialized Inequality

Abstract With the recent economic crisis in the USA, stories of homes lost to foreclosure are increasingly common. In this paper, we attempt to connect this present day problem to its historical roots in racial oppression. We examine 2004 data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act database for racial disparities in lending. We find that African Americans are less likely than European Americans to receive loans from regulated lenders. We also find that regardless of lender type and income level, African Americans are more likely than European Americans to receive high priced loans. We argue that these racial differences in access to quality loans that allow for the acquisition of assets through home ownership are part of a historical trend of whiteness as property and undeserved enrichment and unjust impoverishment