Sociology and Criminal Justice

Operant conditioning is a learning process in which the behavior is modified by punishment or reinforcement . The main goal is to increase punishment in order to establish a more subtle behavior such as a reward or consequence. This field of learning association was first extensively

Polo is a non-sex-segregated team sport played on horseback. Although formally organized, the sport is strictly amateur and overwhelmingly played as a seasonal leisure activity. Players bring little human capital to the game, making the competition for recognition, in the form of handicap rank, heated. Handicap rank was used to measure network efficiency. Nine, three-person networks were calculated. Average networks confirm the forces found by prior research to act on network formation and returns to social and human capital. The consistencies in the patterns of return for players support prior analyses where the efficiency of men’s networks exceeded the efficiency of women’s. But the structure of polo networks as a combination of informal and formal relational affiliations mitigate some of the findings of that research

This discussion presents the preliminary findings of a week-long ethnographic and pictorial inquiry into the last remaining family owned and operated oyster farming operation in South Carolina. The research was conducted from March 23 – 29, 2013.
Findings are presented which address the four, initial foci of interest.
1. The social construction of oyster farming as generated by the realities of the industry
Initial findings indicate that the demand for oysters has increased but the technology related to oyster farming remains the same. Oysters are harvested and processed by hand. New technologies are needed to meet the demands of the industry, an aging labor force, and the lack of willing workers.
2. The formal and relational structure of the processes involved in maintaining the financial and cultural viability of the Bluffton Oyster Company.
Initial findings indicate the need to tie oyster farming to the local culture as an important signifier of regional identity, to create a local market for oysters, to diversify the company where other forms of seafood are harvested, processed and sold, and to create new markets, uses, and products using oysters and other seafood.
3. The place and function in those structures of the actors who are directly affiliated with oyster farming and those who are indirectly related as consumers of local seafood products and members of the local community.
Data indicate relevant concerns regarding issues of gender, race, age, poverty, exploitation, disenfranchisement, affine relations, and regional gentrification.
4. The interactions between participants as they may include the reproduction of global and local gender, racial, and age norms.
Data indicate strict alignment regarding labor with traditional gender norms, some alignment with race norms, but violation of age norms.
Of equally important concern are the possible impediments to doing the needed further research on this way of life. The impediments include but are not limited to the race, place of origin, gender, and class status of this or other researchers; the difficulties of communicating during a working day with the laborers, the cost of staying in the area to conduct research, the seasonal nature of the business, the small size and isolation of the company at issue. Suggestions for future study will be made.