Each Fall and Winter, we offer this seminar series in support of the Rural Studies Program and the provost's Sustainable Rural Communities Initiative. Graduate students may register for the series of presentations to obtain credit, but all members of the OSU community and the general public are invited to all of these presentations. Presenters for this seminar have come to us from US Department of Agriculture, US Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, Oregon Employment Department, and other state and federal agencies. Various state legislators have also presented, along with academics from around OSU and from other universities.
Denise Lach on Sociology of Salmon
The sociology of salmon? The decisions we make about managing wild salmon have a big impact on the lives of Pacific Northwest residents. Professor Denise Lach has co-authored a new book, Salmon 2100: The Future of Wild Pacific Salmon, in which the authors collect proposals by policy analysts, salmon advocates, and scientists about the last best chance for wild salmon along the Pacific Coast. Meanwhile, she has co-authored another study (with Political Science professor Brent Steel) about how informed and involved Oregon and Washington residents are in coastal policy issues such as fisheries, beach erosion, and pollution. One of the strongest findings was that people who regularly visit the coast - go to the Aquarium or Hatfield Marine Science Center, walk on the beach, watch whales - know more coastal issues and support more coastal policies than people who don't visit regularly.
Mark Edwards on Oregon's Food Insecurity
Sociologists' research can make a difference in decisions made by our leaders. Professor Mark Edwards' research into the changing rates of food insecurity and hunger in Oregon has assisted advocacy groups and legislators in improving the state's efforts to enroll low income families in food stamp programs. The apparent result has been a dramatic decline in Oregon's hunger rate in the early part of this decade, in spite of the fact that the state was experiencing an economic recession. His research has been highlighted in the Associated Press, National Public Radio, and Oregon television stations. Currently, he is studying the link between public policy decisions and changes in hunger in other western states as well. You can locate some of his papers at the rural studies website.
Dwaine Plaza on International Money Transfers
Billions of dollars a year cross international borders simply because immigrant workers send money back home. Many distant communities in far away places are thus intimately connected to the work of immigrants all around us. Residents of the U.S. may think of this primarily as a US/Mexico phenomenon, but Professor Dwaine Plaza's recent research explores this flow of money between Canada and the Caribbean. His research focuses on the sociological questions of who sends the money, why they send it, how much is sent, and how often, and his findings have important policy implications for agreements between financial institutions in different countries and for regulatory policies in Canada and the U.S.
Flaxen Conway on Changes in Coastal Communities
As a community researcher and educator in the OSU Extension Service and an associate professor in the Sociology department, Flaxen Conway is in contact with more Oregon residents than most OSU faculty. Last year she received a national award for superior outreach programming. This year she's launched an innovative research program about changes in coastal communities of place and interest, recruiting community members to assist in interviewing fellow residents and gathering necessary data to document potential socioeconomic impacts of fisheries management policy changes on communities. Towns that once primarily processed seafood now cater to tourists, and families that once lived well on income from fishing find themselves having to leave an occupation that had been intergerational. Changes in natural resource policy impact the economic, ecological, and social fabric of the community. The link below provides additional information about her research.
Kristin Barker on Fibromyalgia
More than six million Americans - most of them women - have been diagnosed with the controversial medical disorder fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS). FMS is controversial because of the immense variety of symptoms that are gathered together under this diagnostic label and because of the absence of any definitive physiological marker, well understood cause, or effective treatment. This has led many to question if is FMS is a "real" illness or if women sufferers are modern-day hysterics. Amidst the controversy, millions of women must live with their very real symptoms on a daily basis. Rather than taking sides in the heated FMS debate, Professor Kristin Barker explains how the FMS concept represents an awkward union between the practices of modern medicine and the complexity of women's worlds of pain. Using interviews with sufferers, Barker focuses on how the idea of FMS gives meaning and order to the lives of women who are beset by a combination of troubling symptoms, self-doubt, and public skepticism. Approaching FMS from a sociological perspective, and informed by feminist scholarship on women's health, this book offers a fresh look at a controversial diagnosis, avoids overly simplistic explanations, and simultaneously empathizes with sufferers while remaining critical of medicine's cultural power over our lives.
Scott Akins on Drugs and Drug Policy
Professor Scott Akins and Clayton Mosher recently published Drugs and Drug Policy: The Control of Consciousness Alteration (Sage Publications, 2007). It examines psychoactive substance use and the policies designed to regulate particular forms of substance use throughout the world. The pursuit of consciousness alteration through the use of both legal and illegal drugs is a pervasive feature of humans - some scholars have even argued that the desire to alter consciousness is a basic human drive and that absolute sobriety is not a natural or primary human state. It is also important to recognize that the tendency towards consciousness-alteration is pursued by people in many "non-drug" ways, and that drugs have become a commonly used mechanism to achieve consciousness-alteration not because they are distinct in this capacity, but because they offer a quick and convenient means to achieve this goal. Importantly, although the effects of drugs are often seen as either "good" or "bad" depending on the particular drug and the context of use, all drugs have potentially beneficial effects and the potential to be misused. Accordingly, existing policy designed to regulate substance use in America is compared with approaches that exist abroad, and substance regulation policy in general is critiqued with the recognition that when we categorize substances according to their psychoactive effects and potential for harm, rather than by their legal classification, the distinctions between legal and illegal drugs are very difficult to make.
Sally Gallagher on Religious Belonging
Professor Sally Gallagher recently completed a two year study of congregational culture and the differences between men and women as they consider, evaluate, join or reject particular religious communities. She finds that although "denomination" itself may be declining as a marker of religious identity, broader strands of tradition appear to be more enduring. They present themselves as threads of belief, practice and a sense of community that are the "stuff" of local church culture. Whether the sacramentalism of Orthodoxy, the minimalist and drive for cultural relevance of evangelicalism, or the sense of history and respect for the individual within the Reformed tradition, these patterns of worship highlight the coherent and enduring values that are at the center of corporate religious experience. One paper from this project has been published in the Review of Religious Research (2005), and a recent paper has been published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (2007). Her most recent book, Evangelical Identity and Gendered Family Life (Rutgers University Press) was published in early 2003. Based on a nationwide study of American evangelicals, the book challenges many stereotypes about gender relations, work, and family among one of America's largest religious groups. The link below reports on some important findings from her research.
Steven Ortiz on Sport Marriages
Most papers presented at sociological conferences do not usually inspire much national and international interest. But since the 2001 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, when Professor Steven Ortiz delivered his paper about marital infidelity in professional sports, dozens of newspapers, magazines, television and radio stations sought him out for interviews about his research. A series of scholarly articles and a forthcoming book will result from his several years of studying the lives of women married to professional athletes. Since the paper presentation, public and media interest in his research on sport marriages has continued, and has been featured on Countdown with Keith Olbermann (MSNBC) and newscasts. He has appeared on Dateline NBC, Anderson Cooper 360° (CNN), MSNBC Live, and Big Story with John Gibson (Fox News). His research has been the focus of interviews for articles in Sports Illustrated, New York Times, USA Today, Oregonian, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Denver Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Miami Herald, (Newark) Star-Ledger, (New York) Daily News, Indianapolis Star, (Riverside) Press-Enterprise, Kansas City Star,(Guardian) Observer, Globe and Mail, Ottawa Citizen, Toronto Star, Sunday Mail, Weekend Australian, and other major publications. His research has been the basis for interviews on news and sports-talk radio programs. The link below provides additional information about his research.