Other Research Projects

Environmental Uncertainties and Livelihood Thresholds in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

Principal Investigator: Kelley Crews
Additional Investigator: Brian King, The Pennsylvania State University
Funded by: National Science Foundation

This research will combine insights from both social and natural sciences to understand how variability and uncertainty in time and space impact human-environment interactions. The project will examine social responses to environmental variability, particularly precipitation and flooding. Of interest is how people maintain their livelihoods, and further how these strategies change in anticipation and in response to environmental change. Thus this work will also characterize the patterns of precipitation and flooding as well as their impacts on household farming, household collection of materials such as reeds, grasses, and wood, and individual entry into the tourism sector. The work will be positioned in the international treaty-recognized Wetland of Importance, the Okavango Delta (OD) of Botswana. Nestled within the Kalahari (Kgaligadi) Desert and flooded each year from Angolan highland precipitation, the OD has experienced vastly dramatic changes in precipitation and flooding in the last several decades. This rural area's population is highly dependent on the natural resource base, either directly (e.g., farming, reed collection) or indirectly (e.g., the wildlife-oriented ecotourism industry). It is therefore further hypothesized that these fluctuations have increased people's uncertainty about the availability of water and the timing / magnitude of flooding, impacting their decisions about which and how many livelihood strategies to employ. The overall project research goals are as follows: 1) quantify environmental change in the OD human-environment system, with particular respect to precipitation and flooding; 2) capture the distribution of natural resources over space and time using field-collected and satellite-derived data; 3) map resource activity areas and management / tenure systems to better understand livelihood decision-making; 4) assess how environmental change impacts livelihood strategy selection, and, in turn, how these decisions impact the environment; and 5) evaluate the utility of a human-environment system framework for understanding dynamic systems such as the OD.

Generosity Orientations & Behavior in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Principal Investigator: Pamela Paxton
Funded by: Science of Generosity, University of Notre Dame

This project will explore how individual social position and national social context influence generosity orientations and behaviors using multilevel models. Two large, over-time cross-national surveys form the backbone of our proposed analyses. The World Values Survey (WVS) is a worldwide survey of attitudes with information on individuals in 90 countries in five time periods. The European Social Survey (ESS) is a survey of Western and Eastern Europe with information on individuals in 32 countries in four time periods. Both surveys ask a range of questions covering both generosity orientations and behaviors, and both surveys allow a series of research questions.  To begin, by using multiple surveys and multiple measures of generosity, the investigators will produce a more comprehensive picture of cross-cultural differences in generosity behaviors and orientations and their individual-level determinants than has been possible in the small amount of existing literature.  Second, the investigators will examine how the social, economic, and political structures of nations affect generosity.  For example the investigators will assess whether extensive welfare states "crowd out" individual-level generosity or, alternatively, support the valuation of generosity by modeling generous behavior.  Third, their analyses will address how dispositions and behaviors relate and especially whether this relationship depends on context.  For example, an orientation to generosity may have differential effects on generous behavior in contexts of high and low generalized trust. The investigators models will compare countries within a given year, examine temporal change within a given country, and examine temporal changes across countries.

Collaborative Research: Measuring International Nongovernmental Organizations and World Polity Network Embeddedness

Principal Investigator: Pamela Paxton
Additional Investigator: Melanie Hughes, University of Pittsburgh
Funded by: National Science Foundation

For this project, the investigators will link world polity and social networks to inform the development of a new over-time measure of country-level connectedness to the world polity, labeled the "INGO Network Country Score." This measure will score countries by their centrality in the world country-INGO network. The resulting published dataset will be useful to a cross-disciplinary audience. In a second part of the project, an in-depth analysis is carried out on one domain of INGOs-Women's International Nongovernmental Organizations, or WINGOs. The investigators draw upon theories of the international women's movement to provide testable theories about expected changes in the WINGO network structure over time.

Doctoral Dissertation Research: The New Pentecostals and Political and Social Activism

Principal Investigator: Nicolette Manglos
Faculty Sponsor: Mark Regnerus
Funded by: National Science Foundation

This study will use qualitative data from Malawi and missionary archival data from London to examine the extent to which public political involvement by churches has been shaped by their role as increasingly prominent social welfare providers. It compares two types of churches: those that were planted in the missionary period and retain ties to foreign religious bodies, and those rapidly-growing Pentecostal churches that have been independently founded by local actors. The study has the potential to enlighten practical understanding of the effects of neoliberal privatization, as well as advance sociological theories of why and when religious groups become major political players.

CAREER: Rural Transformation and Latino Transnational Migration and Settlement in the U.S. South

Principal Investigator: Rebecca Torres
Funded by: National Science Foundation

Over the past decade a "new geography" of Latino transnational immigration has emerged with a shift towards the southeastern U.S. and more "permanent" settlement of families. Much of this growth has occurred in rural areas that have transformed rapidly from historically biracial to multi-ethnic communities. North Carolina, with the highest Latino growth rate among all U.S. states over the past decade, provides a unique opportunity to analyze "early stage" migration and settlement processes. Project research objectives include: 1) Identify how key micro and macro factors have shaped the migration and settlement of Latinos in the rural South; 2) Explain how Latino migration and settlement in the rural South has restructured economic, social and racial/ethnic relations in both origin and destination communities; 3) Analyze the transnational networks and relations Latinos construct over time and space linking them to homeland place of origin, U.S. gateway cities and new rural home communities in the South; and 4) Identify the most effective approaches to building new community and economic development initiatives that incorporate Latinos. The geographic focus of this multi-sited project includes three rural eastern N.C. communities, neighboring cities of the east and a town in the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacan (Mexico) with strong transnational ties to eastern N.C. This project will take a theoretically eclectic approach including multi-level analysis, gender analysis, inter-group relations and transnational paradigms. The research will employ a "mixed method" approach including: 1) Qualitative Interviews with Latino Families and Non-Latino residents in N.C. Rural Communities and with Key Informants; 2) Quantitative eastern N.C. Survey of Non-Latino Resident Attitudes and Perceptions of Latino Migration and Settlement; and 3) "Michoacarolina" Transnational Case Study in collaboration with the Mexican Migration Project (MMP). Through an integrated program of research, education and outreach, this project seeks to make a significant contribution to the growing academic literature on the new geography of Latino migration, particularly to rural areas in the South; to develop urgently needed curricula that will integrate migration studies into various ECU academic programs; to mentor and support minority graduate students specializing in migration; and to provide outreach that will improve service delivery for initiatives targeting Latino communities.

Doctoral Dissertation Research: Central American Immigration on Mexico's Southern Border: Embodiments of Power, Citizenship, and Gender

Principal Investigator: Lindsey Carte
Faculty Sponsor: Rebecca Torres
Funded by: National Science Foundation

As embodiments of the state, low- to mid-level "officials," such as bureaucrats, educators, and border guards, possess the power to regulate immigrant citizenship and belonging through their everyday actions. In the Mexico-Guatemala border city of Tapachula, Chiapas, the growing inflow of Central American immigrants and the subsequent creation of immigration policies have led to increased interactions between low- to mid-level officials and immigrants. Very little is known, however, about how these officials working on the ground interpret and implement their powers on an everyday basis; how their actions impact immigrant experience and exercise of social and political citizenship rights; and how immigrants respond to and negotiate interactions with these officials. Because of their power, low- to mid-level officials can affect immigrants' vulnerability to exploitation, domestic violence and other human rights violations that are increasingly prevalent in the region. This doctoral dissertation research project will describe low- to mid-level officials' everyday actions in implementing and interpreting migration policy, and it will demonstrate how low- to mid-level officials support or contradict official migration policies and understand the institutional norms that influence these actions. Additional objectives of this project are to understand and describe Central American immigrants' experiences with low- to mid-level officials, including how their experience varies across gender, ethnicity, race, and class, and to describe Central American immigrants' feelings of political citizenship and belonging as a result of their interactions with officials. The doctoral student will draw upon and contribute to theories on the micro-scale operations of state power in feminist geopolitics, feminist migration studies, and citizenship studies in geography. The project will employ a qualitative, multi-method approach based on in-depth interviews with officials and Central American immigrants; participatory workshops with immigrants; and participant