Browsing by Author "Howard Ecklund, Elaine"

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    At the Cross-Roads: African American Spirituality, Clinical Trials, and Patient-Subject Decision-Making
    (2015-04-24) Laws, Terri; Pinn, Anthony B.; Bongmba, Elias K.; Howard Ecklund, Elaine
    Published assessments of religion and health scholarship observe the substantial need for the study of African American spirituality, and that what is available has implicated this cultural production as helpful and supportive of good health yet inhibitive in end-of-life decision making. This qualitative study from semi-structured interviews with African American prostate cancer patients finds spirituality as helpful to sustaining patients in their decisions to risk medical research although patients determine their decision to accept risk based on their understanding of the medical science presented to them. They are comforted by the agency available to them through bioethical principles and practices, most notably, informed consent. The findings of this study contest the centrality of the Tuskegee narrative popularly believed to be inhibitive to African American clinical trial participation as well as the over-simplification of the relationship between religion and African Americans’ cancer fatalism widely held among members of the health professions. The study acknowledges that structural issues prevent too many African Americans from access to the option of clinical trial participation. Two constructs are offered: a cultural sociological approach (Jeffrey Alexander; Gordon Lynch) to re-imagining Tuskegee as a sacred rhetoric, and a sociological approach to risk acceptance and risk taking referencing institutionalized religion; both constructs are derived from Durkheimian theory. These solutions are offered as responses to the data that emerged through the qualitative research and existing treatments of religion and health in African American religious scholarship. This study suggests that there is a shifting paradigm in which more African Americans will merge their spirituality with scientific knowledge to increase medical research participation with the long term aim of reducing health disparities. In turn, additional theoretical frameworks will emerge beyond the closed loop epistemology inherent in Durkheim’s theory. The research agenda begun here points to implications for theory and practice in fields including African American Religions, pastoral theology, health policy, health services, and bioethics.
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    Color-Blind Racism among Non-poor Latinos in a Redeveloping Houston Barrio
    (2014-04-22) Korver-Glenn, Elizabeth; Chavez, Sergio; Cech, Erin A.; Howard Ecklund, Elaine; Lopez Turley, Ruth N.
    Accounts of urban inequality, which often focus on the urban poor, have also highlighted the centrality of non-poor minority actors in shaping poor inner-city neighborhood outcomes. This research suggests that non-poor minority actors may be particularly influential in the process of poor neighborhood redevelopment given their greater access to social, cultural, and political capital. Redevelopment in poor neighborhoods reproduces existing inequalities, at least in part through the legitimating power of color-blind racial ideology. Color-blind ideology privatizes inequality by silencing structural explanations for disparities. Additionally, color-blind ideology has also been shown to influence how minorities themselves explain inequality. Yet to date, no research has examined how non-poor minorities, redevelopment, and color-blind ideology may be linked in a single context. Relying on a year of ethnographic research and 38 in-depth interviews with non-poor Latinos, I ask whether and how these actors frame neighborhood inequality using color-blind ideology in a poor, redeveloping Houston barrio. I find widespread use of the cultural racism frame. I also ask what the implications of this finding may be, and theorize that widespread cultural racism among non-poor Latinos supports the conditions under which redevelopment stakeholders can pursue their projects without obstruction. I conclude by exploring what these findings may mean for issues such as socioeconomic integration, and offer suggestions for future research.
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    How African Immigrants Interpret The Connection Between Their Religion and Health.
    (2024-10-22) Biney, Moses Ohene; Howard Ecklund, Elaine; Diaz, Christina J
    Religion can positively and negatively influence individuals’ health behaviors. While religion can deter risky behaviors like alcohol abuse, it can sometimes discourage seeking healthcare. Religion has primarily been presented as a barrier to seeking healthcare. Additionally, African immigrants in the United States of America have received less coverage in research about their religion and health despite being part of a demographic group (Blacks) that has developed a mistrust of the medical health system in the U.S. due to historical treatment. This thesis examines the health experiences of African immigrants in Houston, Texas, focusing on how they interpret the connection between their religion and physical health. It also explores the perceived role that religious congregations play in the health experiences of African immigrants. Drawing on in-depth interviews of 37 Christian African immigrants living in Houston, I find that religion acts as a pathway to healthy living and seeking healthcare among African immigrants. Thus, religion provides a framework for a positive perspective on medical healthcare. By focusing on African immigrants, this study serves as a case for understanding the health experience and behaviors of highly educated and religious populations.
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    "How American Am I?": Comparing American Identity among US Black Muslims
    (2021-10-21) Ferguson, Jauhara; Howard Ecklund, Elaine
    Much sociological attention has focused on Black identity within the United States. Less attention, however, has been given to understanding how immigrant and native-born streams of US Black Muslims articulate American identity, a particularly important empirical gap given the connections among race, religion, and national identity. In this study I ask: how do second-generation American Black Muslims and indigenous Black American Muslims compare in the ways they narrate connections among race, American identity, and Islam? Using data from 31 in-depth interviews with Black Muslims living in Houston, I find that racial double-consciousness complicates American identity for US Black Muslims regardless of immigrant status. While indigenous Black American respondents critique racist US histories and structural inequities, I argue that in certain spaces Muslim identity has the potential to reinforce American identity for indigenous Black American Muslims. For second-generation respondents, however, American identity is reinforced through immigrant status. Second-generation respondents compare their own experiences living in the United States with that of their immigrant parents. This study makes a case for “triple-consciousness” to explain the way Black Muslims perceive their racial, religious, and national identities within the context of the United States and the Muslim American community. More broadly, I demonstrate how intersecting identities can fuel micro and macro processes that can shift the way American identity is understood.
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    How Religious Discrimination is Perceived in the Workplace: Expanding the View
    (Sage, 2022) Schneider, Rachel C.; Carroll Coleman, Deidra; Howard Ecklund, Elaine; Daniels, Denise
    Although religious discrimination in U.S. workplaces appears to be rising, little is known about how different groups of employees perceive discrimination. Here, the authors draw on 194 in-depth interviews with Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and nonreligious employees to examine perceptions of religious discrimination in the workplace. The authors identify several common modes of perceived discrimination, including verbal microaggressions and stereotyping, social exclusion and othering, and around religious holidays and symbols. The authors also find that Christians tend to link perceived discrimination to personal piety or taking a moral stand in the workplace, while Muslims, Jews, and nonreligious people tend to link discrimination to group-based stereotypes and describe a sense of being seen as religiously foreign or other. This study reveals the value of studying groups alongside one another for the fullest picture of workplace religious discrimination and points the way toward further sociological research of how both majority and minority groups perceive discrimination.
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    Indian Scientists' Definitions of Religion and Spirituality
    (MDPI, 2020) Khalsa, Simranjit; Kalinowski, Brenton D.; Howard Ecklund, Elaine
    Scientists are often assumed to be irreligious and little research has examined the role of religion and spirituality in their lives. Recent research shows that many scientists do articulate a commitment to the sacred and see religion and spirituality as influencing their work. However, we lack a basic understanding of how scientists define religion and spirituality, particularly outside of the Western world. We examine Indian Scientists’ definitions of religion and spirituality and their tie to scientists’ views on the relationship between religion and science. Drawing on 80 in-depth interviews with Indian scientists, we find that although science often operates as a global institution, national context influences definitions of religion and spirituality. Further, the views a scientist has about the relationship between religion and science are linked to their definition of religion. To understand and navigate the relationship between religion and science, we must study definitions of religion and spirituality, as well as the way they are shaped by national context.
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    “Take It to the Lord”: Religion and Responses to Racial Discrimination in the Workplace
    (Sage, 2024) Schneider, Rachel C.; Mabute-Louie, Bianca; Howard Ecklund, Elaine; Daniels, Denise
    Drawing on in-depth interview data from the nationally representative Faith at Work: An Empirical Study, this article contributes to understanding the role of religion in shaping interpretations of and responses to racial discrimination in the workplace. Specifically, it shows how Christians of different racial groups understand the relevance of their faith in coping with perceived racial discrimination in the workplace, and it illuminates the religious frames that respondents employ to “make sense” of perceived racial discrimination at work. We find that Christians of color and White Christians primarily draw on religious frames such as forgiveness and divine sovereignty in response to perceived discrimination but that these frames serve different functions. Some Christians of color also link their faith to a moral conviction to stand up for themselves and others in the workplace. While most studies on the connection between religion and racial discrimination focus on faith as an individual-level coping mechanism and buffering effect, this article also analyzes the implications of religion on racial hierarchies and racial equity efforts in the workplace—including a focus on how religion serves to produce epistemologies of ignorance and support feelings of White victimhood. Our study contributes to the scholarship on racial discrimination and religion by offering new insights into how Christians of different racial groups use faith to cope with perceived racial discrimination at work.
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    The First Era of Protestantism in Mexico: American Protestant Missionaries’ Work and Their Impact, 1873–1914
    (2022-04-18) Martinez, Cynthia G; López-Alonso, Moramay; Guthrie-Shimizu, Sayuri; Howard Ecklund, Elaine
    This dissertation focuses on American Methodist and Presbyterian missionaries’ work in central Mexico between 1873–1914. It follows the growth of Protestantism in Mexico from an American missionary endeavor to an identity Mexican Protestants defended against the nation’s Catholic majority. The Protestant missionary experience in Mexico is an important missing piece in the history of American missionary work and Porfirian Mexico. While at first glance, missionaries’ work to convert and reform Mexican’s morality through education, temperance, and the medical mission may not seem unique, I contend that the anti-Protestant sentiments they found in Mexico from Catholics drove missionaries to align themselves with the Porfirian government’s agenda. Tracing missionaries’ work through newspapers, missionary records, and personal records shows that missionaries intertwined themselves with the Porfirian idea of order and progress to advance their work. Missionaries framed Protestantism and their work in education, temperance, and the medical mission as important to advancing the moderation of Mexico the Porfirian government endeavored. By becoming allies of the Porfirian government’s agenda, missionaries spread Protestantism throughout central Mexico despite opposition from Catholics. Mexicans who embraced Protestantism saw positive changes in their lives as missionaries supported their educational advancement. Mexican Protestants formed a Mexican Protestant community with missionaries’ aid throughout the Porfirian era, but the Mexican Revolution and, more significantly, the American Intervention in 1914 disrupted the community. This project frames 1914 as the end of the first era of Protestantism not because Protestantism in Mexico came to an end, but because at this juncture, we see a firm Mexican Protestant community that could survive despite Catholic opposition and political disruptions. More broadly, analyzing the development of the Mexican Protestant community in central Mexico between 1873–1914 is important to understand the diversity in Mexican identities and how the meaning of Mexicanness has been redefined over time.