When: Friday, April 25, 2025 (12:30-1:30PM)

 

Where: 360 Parrington Hall and on Zoom (register here)

 

We are looking forward to hosting Lake Lui from National Taiwan University on Friday, April 25 in Parrington Hall 360 and on Zoom. This seminar is co-sponsored by the Jackson School of International Studies East Asia Center, Population Health Initiative, and the Jackson School Taiwan Studies Program.

 

Grounded in the literature on the deinstitutionalization of marriage, this presentation explores why, despite holding diverse ideologies about marriage, people in Taiwan have not widely practiced alternatives such as long-term cohabitation or singlehood. The analysis is framed within the cultural-cognitive approach of neoinstitutionalism, examining how individuals and couples renegotiate their relationship with the institution of marriage.

Drawing on love and marriage histories from 35 Taiwanese adults aged 20–40, I analyze the meanings young people ascribe to marriage and how these perspectives align with or challenge the normative and regulatory foundations of Taiwan’s marriage institution. I also investigate the structural and cultural factors that enable or hinder the realization of their marital beliefs, including conflicting logics within the institution of marriage—such as the tension between traditionalism and newer logics, such as romanticism, the value of companionship, and the aspiration for autonomy—as well as the influence of surrounding institutions, including work, intergenerational family, and legal institutions.

Finally, I examine the strategies individuals employ when their circumstances do not allow them to act on their marital beliefs, focusing on those who do not wish to marry but ultimately do, and those who wish to marry but remain single. Strategies such as challenging multigenerational obligations within marriage and adopting practices that blur the distinctions between cohabitation and traditional marriage, for example, reshape the institution of marriage in its fundamental structure and meaning.

 

Lake Lui is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at National Taiwan University. She is also affiliated with the Taiwan Social Resilience Center at National Taiwan University and the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (CSDE) at the University of Washington. Her research explores how global forces such as economic restructuring, migration, and sociocultural changes interact with national policies to shape gender relations and family dynamics in Asia. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, she examines marriage formation processes, household dynamics, and fertility decisions. Her recent work investigates the relationships among im/mobilities, political contestations, political repression, and the role of the family in weathering changes. Her major publications have appeared in Social Forces; Sociology; International Migration Review; The Sociological Review; Social Science Research; and Journal of Family Issues. She is also the author of Re-negotiating Gender: Household Division of Labor when She Earns More than He Does (Springer).

CSDE Affiliate Khai Hoan Tram (Infectious Disease, UW Medicine) recently won the UW/Fred Hutch Center for AIDS Research’s 2024 CFAR New Investigator Award! The purpose of this award is to encourage early-stage investigators (at a senior stage of training or recently independent) to conduct independent  research, acquire preliminary data to use for subsequent grant submissions, publish, receive mentorship, and write one or more grants to obtain funding to continue their HIV research careers. Dr. Tram’s research uses the tools of epidemiology, geospatial analysis, and infectious diseases modeling to inform data-driven, precision public health interventions against the TB and HIV epidemics. Over the past few years, Dr. Tram’s research program has centered on studying the relationship between human mobility and infectious disease transmission. The collaboration leading to Dr. Tram’s CFAR award initially started with a CSDE Population Research Planning Grant that funded a research planning trip to South Africa in 2023. Congratulations on receiving this award Dr. Tram and we look forward to learning more about your research! 

Around 11% of US children are diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A previous study from CSDE Affiliate Dan Eisenberg (Anthropology) showed that the ADHD-associated 7R allele of the gene encoding the D(4) dopamine receptor (DRD4) had a positive effect on the nutritional status of nomadic adult Ariaal men and a negative effect on settled adult men. This suggests that those with ADHD might have environmentally contingent benefits which are more apparent in nomadic contexts. In a pre-registered paper recently published in the American Journal of Human Biology, joint first authors Amanda Kunkle (PhD Candidate, Anthropology) and CSDE alumnus Robert Tennyson along with CSDE Affiliates Dan Eisenberg (Anthropology) and Bettina Shell-Duncan (Anthropology), and CSDE alumna Katherine Wander (Binghamton University) were unable to replicate this previous finding in a sample of children from a closely related population, the Rendille, but found a positive association between DRD4 7R and household economic status. Read the full story here.

With a critical mass of new affiliates working in the area of modeling transmission dynamics of infectious diseases — CSDE decided to form a new working group! An initial meet-and-greet and planning meeting was held in mid-March, with ten folks in attendance. Now, we’re ready to announce our regular meetings: every fourth Tuesday (summer included!), 3:30 – 5:00 pm, in HRC (Hans Rosling Center (HRC), a.k.a the Pop Health Building). We are hoping for Room 101 for the long term, but will need to be flexible for the first few meetings. Zoom will also be available, but in-person is always preferred!  Each month we’ll have someone present their research, past, present or future, with a focus on both the substance and the methods, so we can all learn from one another, provide thoughtful feedback, and make new connections and collaborations. Steve Goodreau and Abie Flaxman will be co-leading for the start.

For more information about each talk, and other relevant events, please join our mailing list here. Feel free to invite students, post-docs, advisers, etc. Note that for those with more of an interest in within-host pathogen modeling, the Hutch’s Mathematical Modeling Affinity Group may also be of interest.