Race/Ethnicity, Culture, and Strain
Theory has to account for the contexts and experiences it was not built to explain.
Race/ethnicity, culture, and social position shape what people experience as strain and the resources they can draw on to cope. In this area, I examine how people come to understand themselves as racialized subjects, and how that understanding shapes the strains they face, the coping available to them, and the harm that follows. The larger goal moves beyond explanation: understanding how these contexts should inform theory, measurement, and institutional practice, so that the people they describe are protected by and integrated into the systems built to serve them.
Key questions
- How do people come to understand themselves as racialized subjects, and how does that shape the strain they face?
- How do cultural contexts shape strain, coping, and the harm that follows?
- Why do people turn to the law, or turn away from it — and how is that shaped by race/ethnicity and social position?
Featured publications
Constructing the “other”: Online racialized hate speech and perceived threats in South Korea
Ethnic and Racial Studies
Correlates of non-suicidal self-injury in South Korean juvenile detention facilities: A general strain theory perspective
Journal of Criminal Justice
Strain in a collectivist society: An assessment of Agnew’s Asian general strain theory in South Korea
International Criminology, 3(3), 185–201
The Intersection of Race, Culture, and Strain: Insights from the Asian American Community
In Kelly Welch (Ed.), Research Handbook on Race, Crime and Justice, Edward Elgar Publishing
Theories of Sex Offending
Global Perspectives on Sex Offending, pp. 19–34, Bloomsbury Publishing
Misrecognition and victimization: The South Asian American experience
The Critical Criminologist: Special Issue, 34(2), 27–30. Division of Critical Criminology and Social Justice, American Society of Criminology
Current projects
- Under review
Noh, H.*, Song, J., & Park, H. Using machine learning alongside conventional regression, this study compares traditional criminological theory factors with cultural adaptation factors in explaining online offending among second-generation immigrant adolescents in South Korea.