Sociology

books on shelf

Research

Department of Sociology
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5257 USA
(269) 387-5270

Sociology Faculty are involved in various research projects. For details about some of these projects, see the Select Faculty Publications below. To learn more about an individual faculty member's research, visit the faculty profile pages. 

In addition, the following are part of the Department of Sociology at Western Michigan University:

The Kercher Center for Social Research emphasizes multidisciplinary collaboration and consultation and is committed to providing quality research services in combination with effective student training.

The Group for The Study of Religion and Social Change focuses on:

  • The relationships of religion and spirituality with altruism.
  • Interfaith and interethnic tolerance.
  • Conflict and peace in the context of societal and global change.
  • Assessing these relationships across nations, cultures and traditions.

Select Faculty Publications

Dr. Ron Kramer

Dr. Ron Kramer Apocalyptic Crimes book
In Apocalyptic Crimes, Ronald C. Kramer reconsiders the immense danger these weapons pose to humanity, examining the use, threat to use, and continued possession of nuclear weapons from a criminological perspective. Kramer argues that any country holding on to its nuclear arsenal—including the United States—is committing a criminal act. Offering a sharp rebuke to the common claim that nuclear stockpiles serve to deter the escalation of conflict, Apocalyptic Crimes emphasizes the harm caused by the mere possession of these deadly weapons.
Dr. Ron Kramer Carbon Ciminals Climate Crimes book
Carbon Criminals, Climate Crimes analyzes the looming threats posed by climate change from a criminological perspective. It advances the field of green criminology through a examination of the criminal nature of catastrophic environmental harms resulting from the release of greenhouse gases. The book describes and explains what corporations in the fossil fuel industry, the U.S. government, and the international political community did, or failed to do, in relation to global warming.
Dr. Ron Kramer Rolling Back Climate Regulation journal article
The Donald Trump administration has engaged in a number of crimes related to climate change. This article examines these climate crimes, in particular, the administration’s organized denial of global warming and its political omissions concerning the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions that result in the rollback of existing regulatory policies related to the climate crisis.

Dr. Chien-Juh Gu

Dr. Chien-Ju Gi The Resilient Self book
The Resilient Self explores how international migration re-shapes women’s senses of themselves. Chien-Juh Gu uses life-history interviews and ethnographic observations to illustrate how immigration creates gendered work and family contexts for middle-class Taiwanese American women, who, in turn, negotiate and resist the social and psychological effects of the processes of immigration and settlement.
Dr. Chien-Ju Gi Barganing with Confucian Patriarchy journal article
Previous studies of immigrant families have reported consistent findings concerning the positive effects of employed wives’ financial contributions and Western gender ideologies on women’s bargaining power in the family. This paper revisits this thesis. Data presented in this article are derived from a larger project based on 45 life-history interviews with Taiwanese immigrant women in a Midwest urban region.
Dr. Chien-Ju Gi Displaced Social Suffering journal article
Following Bourdieu’s approach to social suffering, this article uses Burmese Christian refugees’ life stories to illustrate their lived realities of displacement in which their despair is produced. These stories reveal not only refugees’ subjective experiences but also various structural inequalities in the sending, transit, and receiving social contexts that hinder their well-being.

Dr. Angie Moe

Dr. Angie Moe Therapy Dogs journal article
The utilization of animal-assisted interventions with trauma survivors is a growing field of practice and research. This study explored staff perceptions of the impact of therapy dogs in comprehensive neurodevelopmental assessments of children who have experienced significant maltreatment.
Dr. Angie Moe Innovative AAI journal article
This chapter addresses the work of therapy dogs within a child trauma assessment center. Incorporating animal-assisted interventions (AAI) with trauma survivors is a growing field of practice and research; however, with this growth comes the need for deliberate experimentation and adaptation. This is a specialized context for AAI, necessitating experience, education, and a particular skillset related to trauma, for both handlers and dogs.
Dr. Angie Moe Perinatal Intimate Partner Violence journal article
Intimate partner violence (IPV) includes a range of activities inflicted upon a person by a current or former intimate partner. IPV incidence rates are highest during young adulthood, the dynamics of which are made more complex during and immediately following a pregnancy (the perinatal period). This study focuses on women's perceptions of perinatal IPV. Data come from a qualitative study stemming from a community-based longitudinal project.

Dr. Vincent Lyon-Callo

Book cover inequality poverty and neoliberal governance
Lyon-Callo argues that homelessness must be understood within the context of increasing neoliberal policies, practices, and discourses. As advocates, activists, policy makers, and homeless people focused attention on market-based and individualized practices of reform and governance, collective efforts that challenged an economy dependent on low wage jobs, declining housing affordability, and the dismantling of the social safety net were marginalized and ignored. Homelessness continued, despite, and partly due to, the limitations of the neoliberal approach.
Journal article cover designing education for living well
Is it possible that the very conditions that are producing sufferings may also open a possibility for interventions on an ontological level that produce new possibilities for redefining success and how to live well together? Exploring a collaborative engagement within a high performing, midwestern United States K–12 public school system, this article analyzes community members' struggles to respond.
Journal article cover academic practice and the ends of possibility
Collaborative Anthropologies is a forum for dialogue with a special focus on the complex collaborations between and among researchers and research participants/interlocutors. It features essays that are descriptive as well as analytical, from all subfields of anthropology and closely related disciplines, and that present a diversity of perspectives on collaborative research. This special issue was guest edited by Vincent Lyon- Callo and Boone W. Shear.

Dr. Jesse Smith

Dr. Jesse Smith Goodbye Religion book
Utilizing nationally representative data and more than a hundred in-depth interviews with people who leave their religion behind, Ryan T. Cragun and Jesse M. Smith examine the variety of social, psychological, and environmental conditions behind the exiting process, as well as what people do with the time they used to devote to religious observance.
Dr. Jesse Smith Secularity and Nonreligion in North America book
This book surveys the growing field of secularity and non-religion, focusing on the North American context. The introductory overview article explains that the field encompasses a wide and disparate set of people and processes. These include the religious nones and unaffiliated, atheists and agnostics, secular humanists and secular activists, and many other kinds of the “traditionally nonreligious” along with novel forms of secular identities, organizations, and worldviews.
Dr. Jesse Smith Outcast Women Journal Article
Studies on religious disaffiliation have largely ignored the gendered dynamics at play in decisions to exit and the exit experience itself. We begin to address this gap by foregrounding gender as a structuring variable in the exit process. As we examine the disaffiliation narratives of twenty formerly Mormon women we find that gender infuses their reasons for exiting as well as their experiences during the exit process.

Dr. Katherine Tierney

Dr. Kate Tierny Journal Article in Human Fertility
In the United States, Black women’s use of infertility treatments is relatively low, despite elevated or similar rates of infertility compared with White women. Using an intersectional and comparative analysis of semi-structured interviews with Black or African American and White women enrolled in U.S. graduate programmes, this paper investigates the nature and substance of ethical concerns about medicalized infertility treatments.
Dr. Kate Tierny Journal Article Midwifery
In the United States, maternal mortality is high and patterned by race and socioeconomic status (SES). Patient-provider relationships and societal discrimination have been separately associated with poor maternal outcomes, but it is not clear how such mechanisms may be interrelated. Thus, the present study investigates how societal experiences of discrimination are associated with and manifest in patient-provider relationship quality among perinatal women.
Dr. Kathrerine Tierney journal article Socioeconomic and Racial/Ethnic Inequalities
Postpartum care is an opportunity to provide essential follow-up care to people who have given birth, but inequalities in access by race and socioeconomic status (SES) are well-documented. The purpose of this study is to provide an in-depth description of the barriers to postpartum care using a mixed-methods design.

Dr. Patrick Cundiff

Dr. Patrick Cundiff In Search of Greater Understanding journal article
This study provides a review of the relevant literature on mastery learning, a discussion of the applicability of this approach to the teaching and learning of social sciences, and a review of the process and results of the conversion of more traditionally organized and taught courses to a mastery learning approach.
Dr. Patrick Cundiff Great Expectations Unmet journal article
Previous research has shown that during adolescence, holding high expectations of college education serves as a protective factor for delinquency and substance use. Little is known whether the protective factor of college expectations extends into young adulthood, especially among ambitious youth who do not earn a degree. Using longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this research focuses on the longer term effects of adolescent educational expectations on deviant coping.
Dr. Patrick Cundiff Erasing the Mark of a Criminal Record journal article
The United States has the largest population of citizens with criminal records and the stigma associated with these records. This stigma encountered by ex-offenders is thought to contribute to the high recidivism rates currently observed through blocking opportunities for advancement in conventional society. Using audit study methodology, we examine whether the level of education matters in securing employment for ex-offenders.

Dr. Whitney Decamp

Dr. Whitney Decamp Designing and Delivering Asynchronous Undergraduate Online STEM Courses journal article
Although online courses have been a part of academia for nearly 30 years, they are still perceived as “different” than face-to-face instruction. Through in-depth interviews with four instructors, we explored how STEM faculty approach teaching asynchronous online undergraduate STEM courses.
Dr. Whitney Decamp Loot Box Consumption journal article
This study uses data from representative samples of American youth to estimate prevalence rates for video game play and loot box consumption before the pandemic and after the pandemic lockdowns to examine whether the pandemic has affected loot box usage in the general population and among gamers.
Dr. Whitney Decamp Racially Imbalanced Peremptory Challenges journal article
The use of peremptory challenges in American criminal trials has been found to be racially discriminatory despite race-based motivation being unconstitutional in jury selection. One argument made in defense of peremptory challenges is that the prosecution and the defense counteract each other, and “cancel out” each other’s impact. Using data from 208 criminal trials in Mississippi, this study examines whether the prosecution and defense counteract each other and what impact this has on juries.