Sharde Davis

Analyzing divorce from cultural and network approaches

Abstract Because of the high divorce rate and subsequent outpouring of research on divorce in the United States and other Westernized countries, divorce is often framed from an individualistic perspective as a process that is negotiated between two individuals – as ‘his and her divorce. ’A primary assumption is that the spouses negotiate what is best for them and their children, seemingly irrespective of extended kin or culture. This study provides a more complex understanding of the role of culture in the divorce process by examining divorce from culture and network theory approaches. Interviews with 60 Mexican Americans who experienced divorce are combined with the extant literature to illustrate how culture and social networks shape divorce decisions and behaviors. Five themes surfaced from the interviews: (1) power differentials and gender roles, (2) female collective empowerment, (3) social capital, network density, and family members as stakeholders, (4) family members as bridges of structural holes and (5) religion as culture and law.

The “Strong Black Woman Collective”: A Developing Theoretical Framework for Understanding Collective Communication Practices of Black Women

The “Strong Black Woman” ideal is a long-established image in U.S. society placing pressures on Black American women to maintain a façade of strength, self-sufficiency, and resilience. This article advances the Strong Black Woman Collective (SBWC) as a developing standpoint framework for analyzing the complexities associated with embodiment, communication, and regulation of strength among groups of Black women. While reinforcing such behaviors as a collective enables resistance against racial-gendered oppression and validates Black womanhood, it may also impede sharing vulnerability and emotionality.

Taking back the power: an analysis of Black women’s communicative resistance

ABSTRACT Black women are a structurally oppressed group in a subordinate position in the power hierarchy. Language is an important demonstration of group identity and is used to manage the day-to-day realities of being both Black and women. Scholars have devoted attention to explaining why Black women’s discursive practices are a function of their particular vantage point and can serve as a measure of protection against social and political hostilities. While there is a great deal of research acknowledging Black women’s ability to resist, the work can be extended by analyzing the specific resistance strategies Black women employ in common social environments. This essay uses Black/feminist standpoint and power and discourse frameworks to analyze Black women’s communicative resistance across three communication contexts: (1) education, (2) workplace, and (3) personal relationships.

The Impact of a Need for Closure and Support Quality on Verbal and Cognitive Brooding

This study examined whether a need for closure explains why people verbally brood and whether the support received when they verbally brood during a conversation reduces anxiety and cognitive brooding afterward. In two studies, friends came into the laboratory and were randomly assigned to be a subject or confederate. The confederate was trained to provide “good support” or “poor support” to the subject who talked about a stressor he or she could not stop thinking and talking about recently with that friend. The overall models suggested that individuals were more likely to verbally brood when they had a higher need for closure and were more likely to feel better and positively reframe the stressor when the friend was supportive rather than unsupportive, which reduced anxiety. However, if individuals did feel better and/or positively reframed their stressor, even if they received “poor support,” it reduced their anxiety. Finally, positive reframing of the stressor, rather than simply feeling better, helped subjects reduce their cognitive brooding 20 minutes after the conversation.

The Aftermath of #BlackGirlsRock vs. #WhiteGirlsRock: Considering the DisRespectability of a Black Women’s Counterpublic

Abstract This study considers the failed attempts at unifying Black women with Black men and white women after the #BlackGirlsRock mantra was criticized on social media in 2013. I examine the discursive labor of a Black women’s counterpublic in an online comments section and argue that its constituents rejected the behavioral expectations of harmony and decorum in favor of agitation, disrespectability, and ratchetness (Cooper, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c). Qualitative discourse analysis (Gee, 2014a, 2014b) revealed that Black women’s language challenged misconceptions of singular identity narratives through an oppositional discourse and celebrated Black womanhood concurrently. I warrant these claims by discussing the language functions according to two larger discourses: (1) disparaging Black men and white women and (2) fortifying the sistahood.

Testing the theory of resilience and relational load (TRRL) in families with type I diabetes

ABSTRACT The theory of resilience and relational load was tested with 60 couples and their adolescent children (ages 11–18) with type I diabetes (T1D). The couples participated in a stress-inducing conversation task in their home, followed by a random assignment to a two-week intervention designed to increase their relationship maintenance. Before the intervention, stronger communal orientation predicted greater maintenance for husbands and wives, but maintenance only reduced T1D stress for wives. The wives’ and adolescents’ T1D stress were also correlated, but the husbands’ T1D stress was not significantly associated with either of them. Better maintenance was associated with less conflict during couples’ conversations. Maintenance was also directly associated with less perceived and physiological stress (cortisol) from the conversation. Finally, wives in the intervention reported the most thriving, communal orientation and the least loneliness. The intervention also reduced adolescents’ general life stress, but it did not influence their T1D stress or thriving.