Scholarly Works, Sociology

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Research articles, presentations, and other scholarship

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The Credibility Gap: Epistemic Injustice and Neurodivergence in U.S. Legal Contexts
Van Vorce, Hailey; Parti, Katalin; Armour, Chelsea; Edgin, Jamie O. (Sage, 2026-04-10)
Neurodivergent people, including individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, continue to face systemic barriers to meaningful and fair participation in the U.S. justice system. Legal standards governing competence, credibility, and culpability remain anchored in expectations of neurotypical communication and reasoning. These expectations do more than shape procedures; they define who is heard, believed, and ultimately brought to justice. This commentary examines forensic ableism, the privileging of neurotypical cognition and communication in legal contexts, through Fricker's framework of epistemic injustice, with a focus on testimonial injustice. In practice, credibility judgments are rooted in neurotypical norms that often devalue neurodivergent testimony. Across competency evaluations, credibility assessments, and capital sentencing decisions, disability-linked patterns of expression and interaction are frequently misinterpreted as signs of unreliability or diminished competence. Addressing forensic ableism requires the redesign of legal processes and broadened disability education to aid in the recognition of diverse cognitive and communication profiles as legitimate ways of knowing and participating. We call for reforms grounded in accessibility, epistemic humility, and collaboration with the neurodivergent community.
Was Sutherland right? An analysis of cryptocurrency offenders
Dearden, Thomas E.; Parti, Katalin; Hawdon, James E. (Emerald, 2026-04-09)
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the applicability of conventional criminological theories to white-collar offenders involved in cryptocurrency-related market manipulation, specifically pump-and-dump schemes. Using Sutherland’s differential association (DA) framework as a theoretical foundation, this research tests whether demographic and theoretical factors – such as self-control, DA, anomie and strain – predict illegal financial behavior in emerging digital markets. Design/methodology/approach: Survey data from a national sample of US adults on the promotion of cryptocurrencies for financial gain were analyzed using t-tests and regression models. Findings: The findings of this study suggest that traditional theories of crime, including DA, anomie and strain, lose predictive significance when demographic variables are considered. High-income, male and younger individuals were most likely to engage in cryptocrime in general. Overall, the results of this study highlight the complexity of white-collar criminality in digital spaces and suggest that financial and demographic factors outweigh conventional criminological theories when predicting involvement in cryptocrime. Originality/value: This paper considers early notions of white-collar crime against modern online financial crimes. The authors addressed the intersection of criminological theory and modern cryptocurrency crime.
Child Advocacy Workers’ Accounts of the Connections Between Pornography and Child Sexual Abuse
Ezzell, Matthew B.; Aadahl, Sarah; Bridges, Ana J.; Johnson, Jennifer A.; Hodges, Elizabeth; Sun, Chyng-Feng (MDPI, 2026-01-30)
This study analyzes the perspectives of support providers to survivors of child sexual abuse (CSA) on the potential links between pornography and the sexual abuse of children. Drawing from fifty interviews, eight focus group discussions, and post-interview surveys with frontline child advocacy support professionals from various backgrounds and settings, each with at least five years of experience in the field, this paper presents a conceptual model that situates pornography and CSA within interconnected “zones of violence” across digital, institutional, and community environments. Participants identified overlapping risk factors that can heighten pornography exposure and CSA vulnerability, including strained guardian–child relationships, inadequate supervision and digital literacy, socioeconomic precarity, limited access to services, and restrictive or patriarchal sexual norms. They described mediating processes linking pornography to abuse—social modeling, normalization of coercive and violent sexual scripts, grooming, power/threat dynamics (including sextortion and blackmail), and the production and circulation of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Respondents perceived pornography as pervasive in young people’s lives, reported that it contributes to perceived shifts in CSA patterns, and emphasized the absence of best practices. They advocated comprehensive, digitally literate sex education; routine, developmentally appropriate screening; trauma-informed responses that avoid labeling and criminalizing children; and coordinated, multidisciplinary reforms.
Beyond the cell block tango: What "Chicago" tells us about crime and gender
Parti, Katalin (Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech, 2026-02-01)
The protagonists of the musical Chicago were inspired by Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner, two real women whose 1924 murder trials were covered by journalist Maurine Dallas Watkins for the Chicago Tribune. Watkins, one of few women reporting on crime at the time, closely followed courtroom proceedings and became captivated by the media spectacle surrounding these cases. Drawing on her reporting, she wrote the stage play Chicago in 1926. Both the play — and later the 1975 musical — satirize the justice system and the public’s fascination with crimes, especially when committed by women.
The Role of Climate-Induced Disaster in Multidimensional Poverty: A Systematic Review and the Multidimensional Climate-Poverty Dynamics (MCPD) Framework
Nurullah, A B M; Ritchie, Liesel A.; Islam, Shammy; Roshid, Harun-Or-; Sultana, Nahida (MDPI, 2026-02-06)
Climate change is a pressing issue that has far-reaching effects on the global ecosystem, societies, and economies. Climate-induced disasters exacerbate multidimensional poverty through economic, social, and environmental pathways. This study examines the relationship between climate-induced disasters and multidimensional poverty, applying a mixed-method design comprising a PRISMA-guided systematic review and thematic analysis. Articles published between 1999 and 2025 were retrieved from Scopus and Web of Science, yielding 3587 articles. After reference checking and screening for relevance and availability, we finally reviewed 17 articles. The results highlight that climate-induced disasters disrupt economic and livelihood activities, negatively impact GDP, slow financial development, reduce per capita expenditure ability, and harm agricultural production. Disasters also have negative impacts on health and well-being, education, gender, the natural environment, and culture; these disasters promote intergenerational poverty. Among all stressors, floods and droughts are the most pervasive, and they have different magnitudes and durations of impacts. The assessment identifies governance quality, gender inequality, education, social positions, and environmental degradation as the significant mediating systems influencing vulnerability and recovery. To cope with vulnerabilities, individuals employ a variety of strategies based on their socioeconomic status. Building on these insights, the study develops the Multidimensional Climate–Poverty Dynamics (MCPD) Framework to conceptually capture climate–poverty as a socially constructed and institutionally mediated process. The study contributes theoretically to environmental sociology and empirically to climate policy by framing adaptation as a social process of transformation rather than as solely a survival mechanism.
Rebranding Pigmentocracy: Analyzing Marketing Strategies of Unilever’s Skin Lightening Products in India
Dhillon-Jamerson, Komal (2025-04-01)
This paper examines the trajectory of UK based Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL)’s video advertisements for skin lightening products in the past 15 years, critiquing the company’s rebranding of Fair & Lovely to Glow & Lovely. Discourse analysis of video commercials explores the ways in which social advantages and disadvantages are accentuated through problematic narratives, meanings and representations—more specifically the influence of Eurocentric racial, colorist, and gender values on marketing campaigns. Prior to its rebranding in 2020, Unilever’s Fair & Lovely regularly promoted skin-lightening products by further constructing and highlighting disadvantages of darker skin, including less marriage prospects and romantic interest, diminished dignity, and lack of employment opportunities. HUL’s (and other manufacturers of skin lightening products) impetus for changing its contentious branding and marketing came about in part due to the Black Lives Matters movement, sparked by George Floyd’s death in 2020. Additionally, petitions to cease the production and distribution of HUL’s Fair & Lovely line received over 18k signatures (Jones, 2020, para 3), which prompted HUL to “acknowledge the branding suggests “a singular ideal of beauty”” (Jones, 2020). Post rebranding, Glow & Lovely’s marketing strategies currently prioritizes an emphasis on gender inclusivity, while indirectly showcasing advantages of lighter skin in a posturing display of racial, colour, and gender sensitivity. As it relates to pigmentocracy, Unilever’s baseless striving toward gender equality functions as a diversion from persistent racist and colorist tropes that are increasingly obscured by shifting performative messages and meanings in the past 15 years. This intersectional analysis sheds light on how Unilever’s advertisements claim to promote gender and racial inclusivity, yet continue to promote longstanding inequalities originating in colonialism.
"To resist, first we must see": unlearning caste privilege among university students
Zare, Bonnie; Pathania, Gaurav J. (Springer, 2025-07-23)
This study explores attitudes expressed by students at several higher education institutions in India, focusing specifically on perceptions of caste dynamics. Through focus groups and follow-up interviews, we sought to understand whether upper-caste students were open to relating caste background and possessing a degree of privilege. It became clear that these students are not routinely invited to share their thoughts about caste in an informal or provisional manner. Our data allow us to compare the perceptions of an in-group’s sense of caste in India with the sense of race or defense of colorblindness observed among white students in the USA. Many students consider reservations or affirmative action policies as impediments to meritocracy, echoing wider societal aversions to confronting caste-based inequities. Their education did not provide them with substantial reasons for reservation policy beyond the obvious rural–urban educational and infrastructural divide, along with varying conditions of economic deprivation. We found many students believe caste in contemporary times is centered more on family reputation than on religion. They reflected on the potential of intercaste marriage as a means of intervening in caste hierarchy. The findings call for a transformative approach to diversity and inclusion, recognizing the intricate intersections of caste, privilege, and social justice within higher education. They underscore the need for dialogue on caste contexts within Indian academia to create a more equitable environment for social and academic success.
National Floodplain Administrator (FPA) Training Needs Assessment
Ritchie, Liesel A.; Likosar, A. J.; Roos, Micah J. (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2025-10-01)
"Giving Back": Filipina and Latina Mothers’ Intersecting Burdens in Schools and Community-Based Organizations
Gast, Melanie Jones; Ovink, Sarah; Amoatey, Solomon (SAGE Publishing, 2025-05)
Community-based organizations (CBOs) and schools are often key initial institutions encountered by immigrants. Yet little research compares immigrant perceptions of CBOs and schools. The authors use interviews with green card–status Filipina and undocumented Latina mothers at a nonprofit, low-income-serving CBO in San Francisco, California. The authors identify intersecting burdens, or emotional dilemmas associated with school and CBO participation on the basis of interlocking oppressions and marginalized racial, gender, class, and legal statuses. Intensive mothering responsibilities and immigrant backgrounds influenced these mothers’ shared feelings of gratitude for services and opportunities in CBOs and schools. Undocumented Latina mothers felt uniquely obligated to “give back” to display entitlement and maintain children’s opportunities in schools and CBOs but were vulnerable in doing so, indicating unique burdens based on their intersecting statuses. Green card–status Filipina mothers did not widely share the same pressures of obligation to “give back” to schools and CBOs. The authors connect these intersecting burdens to a moral entitlement system wherein Latinas felt uniquely compelled to demonstrate deservingness through involvement in schools and CBOs, despite their formal entitlement to school and CBO support in a sanctuary city. The authors push future research to consider emotional dilemmas and burdens shaping immigrant local participation in schools and CBOs.
Parental Phubbing and Parenting Styles’ Effect on Adolescent Bullying Involvement Depending on Their Attachments to Significant Adults
Roh, Myunghoon; Parti, Katalin; Gomez-Baya, Diego; Sanders, Cheryl E.; Englander, Elizabeth K. (Tech Science Press, 2025-12-29)
Background: Bullying is a current social and educational problem with detrimental consequences in adolescence and later life stages. Previous research has explored the risk or protective factor at different socio-ecological levels, but further integration is needed to examine the relationships of family characteristics. This study examines how parenting style and attachment relate to adolescents’ bullying and cyberbullying, and whether parental phubbing mediates these links. Methods: Grounded in social bonding theory, we surveyed a cross-sectional convenience sample of U.S. college students (N = 545; Meanage = 19.60, SD = 1.41) who retrospectively reported middle/high-school experiences from Massachusetts, Colorado, and Virginia. Measures followed established traditions of bullying involvement, parenting style, and partner phubbing). Linear regressions tested associations among parenting style, attachment to parents/teachers, parental phubbing, and bullying/cyberbullying offending and victimization. Results: Stronger parental attachment and democratic (authoritative) parenting were associated with lower bullying victimization, and teacher attachment was protective for offline and overall offending. Critically, parents’ excessive personal technology use (phubbing) mediated the link between democratic parenting and bullying outcomes: high parental device use attenuated or nullified the protective association of democratic parenting. Conclusion: Findings reaffirm the value of nurturing, boundary-setting parenting and close parent–child/teacher bonds, while highlighting a contemporary risk—parental device-related inattention. Despite rapid technological change, the core need for stable human connection remains central to reducing bullying involvement.
Designing for Life: A Socioeconomic View of Digital Learning Preferences in Cybersecurity, with Emphasis on Older Adults
Parti, Katalin; Abdelhamid, Sherif; Ladancsik, Tibor (MDPI, 2025-12-09)
As digital literacy becomes central to cybercrime prevention, we examine how adults of different ages engage with online learning, moving beyond age alone to consider additional drivers of preference. We analyzed a nationally representative U.S. adult sample (N = 1113; Nov 2024). Ordinal logistic regressions assessed associations between preferences for cybersecurity education and age, education, income, subjective well-being (SWB), and high-speed internet access. Interaction terms (e.g., age × internet access) were tested but not retained. Preferences declined with age across most tools, with the sharpest drop being for highly interactive or novel formats (VR/AR, gamification). Actor-based, non-interactive videos showed no age advantage. Education displayed selective positive links, especially for interactive features, while income was largely unrelated. SWB was a broadly enabling correlate, often with nonlinear patterns, and reliable high-speed internet was consistently aligned with stronger preferences. Overall, the model fit was moderate. Effective cybersecurity education should not rely on age-based assumptions. Designing offerings that emphasize clear purpose and ease of use, pair reliable broadband with skills supports, and account for learners’ well-being can improve engagement and potential scam resilience across age groups.
When is Violence OK? Moralistic Violence as a Counter-Hegemonic Strategy
Costello, Matthew; Hawdon, James E. (Bloomsbury, 2025-11-01)
Industrial Wastewater Disposal and Its Socio-Environmental Consequences: Evidence from the Uttara Export Processing Zone, Bangladesh
Nurullah, A. B. M.; Khatun, Most Sanjida; Ritchie, Liesel A. (MDPI, 2025-08-27)
This study examines the impacts of industrial wastewater from the Uttara Export Processing Zone (UEPZ) on natural resources, agriculture, and the health of nearby communities in Nilphamari, Bangladesh. Using a quantitative, self-report approach, data were collected from 162 households across four villages in Nilphamari Sadar Upazila, selected based on proximity to the UEPZ. Findings reveal significant environmental degradation: almost all (96%) respondents reported that water in nearby rivers and ponds has changed color and is odorous, unpleasant to taste, and contaminated, harming aquatic biodiversity. Agricultural productivity has declined, with 67 percent of respondents experiencing reduced crop yields, increased crop diseases, and rising cultivation costs due to greater dependence on fertilizers and pesticides. Also, 96 percent of respondents reported that the fish population diminished, reducing alternative income sources. Health impacts were pronounced; 69 percent of the respondents experienced water pollution-related complications, including skin, respiratory, gastrointestinal, and eye problems. Perceptions of wastewater health risks were strongly aligned with reported illnesses. Binary logistic regression further indicated a positive association between degraded crop health and human health problems. The study concludes that UEPZ’s wastewater disposal negatively affects natural resources, agriculture, and public health, underscoring the need for improved waste management and mitigation to protect affected communities.
Perceiving and Countering Hate: The Role of Identity in Online Responses
Ping, Kaike; Hawdon, James E.; Rho, Eugenia Ha Rim (ACM, 2025-05-02)
This study investigates how online counterspeech, defined as direct responses to harmful online content with the intention of dissuading the perpetrator from further engaging in such behavior, is influenced by the match between a target of the hate speech and a counterspeech writer's identity. Using a sample of 458 English-speaking adults who responded to online hate speech posts covering race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and disability status, our research reveals that the match between a hate post's topic and a counter-speaker's identity (topic-identity match, or TIM) shapes perceptions of hatefulness and experiences with counterspeech writing. Specifically, TIM significantly increases the perceived hatefulness of posts related to race and sexual orientation. TIM generally boosts counter-speakers' satisfaction and perceived effectiveness of their responses, and reduces the difficulty of crafting them, with an exception of gender-focused hate speech. In addition, counterspeech that displayed more empathy, was longer, had a more positive tone, and was associated with higher ratings of effectiveness and perceptions of hatefulness. Prior experience with, and openness to AI writing assistance tools like ChatGPT, correlate negatively with perceived difficulty in writing online counterspeech. Overall, this study contributes insights into linguistic and identity-related factors shaping counterspeech on social media. The findings inform the development of supportive technologies and moderation strategies for promoting effective responses to online hate.
The wisdom of the scammed: redefining older fraud victim support by utilizing the ecological systems framework
Parti, Katalin; Jan, Faika; Teaster, Pamela B. (Springer Nature, 2025-06-25)
Cyber victimization targeting vulnerable populations, particularly older adults, has become increasingly prevalent in the digital age. Grounded in the Bioecological Systems Framework (Bronfenbrenner in The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1979), this research explores the factors contributing to victimization, including the ease of exploitation, the situational factors setting up victims for scams, their vulnerabilities, the dynamics within their environments, and the challenges victims face in recognizing scams. Using semi-structured interviews, we asked scam victims (n = 19) aged 60 years and above about their personal and structural circumstances as well as their individual assessment of the impact of their being victimized. Despite high levels of education and computer literacy among our sample, their victimization occurred far too frequently, which prompts a call for the revision of existing approaches toward helping older adults overcome scam victimization.
Getting Away with Murder: Obstacles to Police Accountability
(2025)
Despite the national attention police violence gained and the calls for police reform following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, police officers are killing more people each year. Significantly, although approximately one-half of the people shot and killed by police are white, black and Hispanic people are killed at higher rates than white people. One reason this assault on citizens continues is that very few roadblocks stand in the way of excessive violent policing. While any policing reform is beneficial, many discussed and enacted reforms are unlikely to significantly reduce police use of excessive force. Of all the police killings documented between 2013 and 2019, one data source found that only 1 percent of cases led to a conviction of a police officer. Many members of the public and some elected officials have argued that the excessive use of force by the police could be curtailed if more officers were held accountable for their actions, primarily their actions against innocent citizens. The authors of the chapters in this book subscribe to that view and discuss some significant reasons why and how police are not held accountable for their excessive use of force. This discussion is centered on four obstacles that stand in the way of getting accountability for police officers involved in cases of excessive police violence: Qualified immunity, the reasonable officer standard, police union contracts, and Law Enforcement Officers’ Bills of Rights. Of all the police killings documented between 2013 and 2019, one data source found that only 1 percent of cases led to a conviction of a police officer. This book discusses four obstacles that stand in the way of getting accountability for police officers involved in cases of excessive police violence: Qualified immunity, the reasonable officer standard, police union contracts, and Law Enforcement Officers’ Bills of Rights.
Writing Black Life in Mountains: Race and Representation in an Emerging American Literary Field
Harrison, Anthony Kwame (Institut de Géographie Alpine, 2025-01-30)
In this article, I explore the emergence of a developing literary tradition focusing on African Americans living in mountainous regions. In doing this, I discuss the appearance of the term “Affrilachian”—combining African (American) and Appalachian—as a distinct Black American mountain identity. I additionally examine three post-1970s books, all written by African American authors in different decades, that illustrate important contours in the development of this literary field: David Bradley’s The Chaneysville Incident (1981); Henry Louis Gates Jr’s Colored People (1994); and Crystal Wilkerson’s The Birds of Opulence (2016). All three books present alternative visions of how Black people belong among mountains and negotiate the racist structures that have historically worked to deny their connection to them. In tracing the differences between the three books, I underscore a steady progression towards more liberatory and affective attachments to land. Ultimately, I argue that the emergence of this new literary tradition, centering Black mountain life, both affirms and advances African Americans’ longstanding connections to mountains, and opens up additional space for recognizing their contemporary place among them.
Rebranding Pigmentocracy: Analyzing Marketing Strategies of Unilever’s Skin Lightening Products
Dhillon-Jamerson, Komal (Oxford University Press, 2025-04-01)
This paper examines the trajectory of Hindustan Unilever—a subsidiary of the UK-based consumer goods giant—and its video advertisements for skin lightening products over the past 15 years, critiquing the company’s rebranding of Fair & Lovely to Glow & Lovely. Prior to its rebranding in 2020, Unilever’s Fair & Lovely regularly promoted skin-bleaching products by emphasising the disadvantages associated with darker skin, including fewer marriage prospects and a lack of employment opportunities. Due to increasing public criticisms, Glow & Lovely’s rebranding attempts to convey outward racial sensitivity by moving away from highlighting the benefits of “fairness” and instead shifting focus to healthy skin that Unilever characterizes as “glowing, radiant, and even.” However, discourse analysis of commercials explores the ways in which both social disadvantages and advantages related to skin colour—such as the so-called “pretty privilege” associated with lighter skin—are still exploited through problematic narratives, meanings and representations. In short, the discourse analysis reveals that despite its rebranding, Unilever continues to rely on the logic of western-based racial and gender ideals for its marketing campaigns. In an effort to downplay the pigmentocratic implications, a spurious importance on gender equality is also utilized in the new marketing material, revealing changing meanings across the past 15-year timespan of the brand. Indeed, the intersectional analysis sheds light on how Unilever’s advertisements claim to promote gender and racial inclusivity, yet instead function to promote longstanding inequalities.
Author Meets Critic Public Talk: Gratuitous Angst in White America: A Theory of Whiteness and Crime by Deena A. Isom
Dhillon-Jamerson, Komal (2024-04-04)
Gratuitous Angst in White America provides important insight into the intersections of white fragility and male fragility as they relate to criminality. Isom’s engagement with multiple theories emphasizes the creation of normative racial categories across space and time, while filling gaps related to the role of whiteness in matters related to crime and the decreased likelihood of entanglement with the criminal legal system. In this way, Isom furthers our understanding of what constitutes as crime, who is a criminal, and who deserves to be punished by considering these questions through the lens of whiteness and white privilege.
I’m not an Indian, I am a Tarahumara: Images and Narratives by the Rarámuri in Ciudad Juárez
Diaz, Selene (2025)
Since the foundation of the Mexican nation, the government and mass media have portrayed the Rarámuri as isolated from civilization. However, for the Rarámuri in the Sierra Tarahumara, a life of isolation away from major cities is not part of their ethnic identity. Rather, it is their predilection for wandering the mountains on foot that identifies them as an ethnic group and connects them to their ancestors and worldview. Given this defining characteristic, how do the Rarámuri who tread the asphalt trails of Ciudad Juárez (re)construct their ethnic identity? I use feminist ethnography to discern interethnic relationships between Rarámuri and chabochi (a Rarámuri word meaning “sons of the devil” or simply “non-Indigenous”) in Ciudad Juarez. The use of narratives based on pictures of the city allows the Rarámuri to reflect on their life experiences in Ciudad Juárez. This study finds that experiences of discrimination increase in downtown Ciudad Juárez. However, living in Colonia Tarahumara or Kilómetro 30 and belonging to the artisan community helps them mitigate the second ethnicization and reconstruct their ethnic identity by creating strong bonds of solidarity and pride through community work.

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