This study explores the process of religious identity formation and examines the emergence of religion as the most salient source of personal and social identity for a group of second-generation Muslim Americans. Drawing on data gathered through participant observation, focus groups, and individual interviews with Muslim university students in New York and Colorado, three stages of religious identity development are presented: reli^on as ascribed identity; religion as chosen identity; and religion as declared identity. This research illustrates how religious identity emerges in social and historical context and demonstrates that its development is variable rather than static. Additionally, I discuss the impacts of September 11 and show how a crisis event can impel a particular identity-in this case, religious-to become even more central to an individual's concept of self. Through asserting the primacy of their religious identity over other forms of social identity, religion became a powerful base of personal identification and collective association for these young Muslims. The religious landscape of the United States has changed markedly over the past four decades, largely due to the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, which repealed country-of-origin quotas estahlished in the 1920s that predominantly favored Western European, mostly Judeo-Christian, immigrants. This change in federal immigration policy led to an unprecedented diversification of the American population over the suhsequent years, as millions of immigrants arrived from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. The post-1965 "new" immigrants are racially, ethnically, linguistically, and religiously more heterogeneous than the immigrants of a century ago (Warner 1993:1061). Political turmoil, wars, revolutions, disasters, and labor market trends also prompted refugees and immigrants from around the world to settle in the United States (Ebaugh 2000; Warner 1998). These and other social.
An estimated 200 million children worldwide experience various forms of disability. This critical review extrapolates from existing literature in 2 distinct areas of scholarship: one on individuals with disabilities in disaster, and the other on children in disaster. The extant literature suggests that various factors may contribute to the physical, psychological, and educational vulnerability of children with disabilities in disaster, including higher poverty rates, elevated risk exposure, greater vulnerability to traumatic loss or separation from caregivers, more strain on parents, and poor postdisaster outcomes, unless medical, familial, social, and educational protections are in place and vital social networks are quickly reestablished. Future research needs are outlined in the conclusion.
Gendered disaster social science rests on the social fact of gender as a primary organizing principle of societies and the conviction that gender must be addressed if we are to claim knowledge about all people living in risky environments. Theoretically, researchers in the area are moving toward a more nuanced, international, and comparative approach that examines gender relations in the context of other categories of social difference and power such as race, ethnicity, nationality, and social class. At a practical level, researchers seek to bring to the art and science of disaster risk reduction a richer appreciation of inequalities and differences based on sex and gender. As the world learns from each fresh tragedy, gender relations are part of the human experience of disasters and may under some conditions lead to the denial of the fundamental human rights of women and girls in crisis.We begin by briefly discussing the dominant theoretical frameworks that have guided gender disaster research to date and seem likely to develop further. We then organize and review the extant literature around seven interrelated themes. The literature review is designed to highlight published research conducted on human behavior and social consequences in primarily natural disasters and thus does not include, for example, armed conflict and displacement, HIV/AIDS, and other related literatures. The third section of the chapter examines international perspectives in the gender and disaster field. Finally, we point out knowledge gaps and some new directions we hope will guide the endeavors of those who produce and use knowledge about disasters.
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