Jane R Zavisca

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Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Books

• Zavisca, J. R. (2012). Housing the New Russia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Chapters

• Zavisca, J. R., & Gerber, T. (2017). Experiences of Homeownership and Housing Mobility after Privatization in Russia. In Housing, Wealth and Welfare.
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  Invited book chapter for volume edited by Caroline DeWilde and Richard Ronald, two of the top international experts on housing stratification. Based on our NSF-funded longitudinal survey of housing stratification in Russia. Our abstract was accepted in fall 2014. We submitted the first draft in summer 2015, revised it based on review and had it accepted in fall 2015. In 2016 we completed final revisions and the book was just published. T
• Zavisca, J. R., & Clarke, H. (2015). Housing/ Housing Markets. In Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Consumption and Consumer Studies. Wiley-Blackwell.
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  Invited submission to volume edited by Dan Cook.
• Zavisca, J. R. (2013). A Home Not One's Own: How Young Russians Living with Extended Family Negotiate Space. In Home: International Perspectives on Culture, Identity, and Belonging(pp 153-174). Frankfurt: Peter Lang International.
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  This invited chapter presents a qualitative analysis of the division and use of space within multigenerational households in Russia.
• Zavisca, J. R. (2012). The Lived Experience of Housing among Young People in Russia. In Young People and Housing. London: Routledge.
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  An invited contribution to an edited book, based on a symposium I attended in 2011 in Hong Kong, edited by Ray Forrest, an internationally renowned housing scholar. Book description can be found here.
• Zavisca, J. R. (2011). Socialism and Consumption. In Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture. Sage.
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  Extended invited entry, based on original, previously unpublished historical work from my dissertation.http://www.sage-ereference.com/view/consumerculture/n502.xml#p1336;Your Role: Contributed to simulation studies, developed empirical examples, and framed paper and statistical theory for a sociological audience. Based on work begun when I was a postdoc working with Ken Bollen.;Full Citation: Jane R. Zavisca. “Socialism and Consumption.” In Dale Southerland (ed.), Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture. Sage.;

Journals/Publications

• Weinberger, M., Zavisca, J. R., & Silva, J. (2016). Exploratory Experience: A New Model of Middle-Class Consumer Lifestyle during the Transition to Adulthood. Journal of Consumer Research.
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  This study examines middle-class consumption and lifestyle during the transition to adulthood in the United States. Based on analysis of qualitative data from interviews with emerging adults between adolescence and settled adulthood, we argue that middle-class emerging adulthood is marked by a focus on exploratory experience consumption: the consumption of novel experiences with cultural capital potential. This tacit, embodied orientation is rooted in a habitus developed during entitled childhoods but is also shaped by an anticipated shortage of opportunities for exploration after they marry and have children. Accordingly, middle-class emerging adults voraciously consume exploratory experiences in the present with their imagined future selves in mind. The class basis for this orientation is examined through our analysis of interviews with working-class emerging adults whose lifestyles are characterized not by exploratory experience consumption but by a desire for the familiar, a fear of the unknown, and a longing for stability. The discussion focuses on how the middle-class consumer orientation toward exploratory experiences reinforces class (dis)advantage, life trajectories, and inequality.
• Zavisca, J. R., & Gerber, T. (2016). The Socioeconomic, Demographic, and Political Effects of Housing in Comparative Perspective. Annual Review of Sociology, 42.
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  Few sociologists treat housing as a key independent variable, despite the emergence of disparate bodies of research analyzing how housing affects outcomes that traditionally interest sociologists. Scholars across the social sciences have proposed and tested mechanisms whereby housing could shape subjective well-being, socioeconomic status, demography, and politics. We review the evidence for causal effects across these domains. Next, we make recommendations for research designs to advance this literature. Most studies only test effects of homeownership, and most are focused on the United States and Western Europe. The evidence for causation is often weak, although studies increasingly employ complex techniques for identifying effects. Throughout, we emphasize studies beyond the United States, and we conclude by discussing distinctive insights yielded by comparative research. We advocate for a comparative perspective and more expansive conceptualization of housing status as a means to build theory and evidence regarding the conditions under which housing exerts effects.
• Gerber, T., & Zavisca, J. R. (2015). What 18 Focus Groups In the Former USSR Taught Us About America's Image Problem. Wilson Quarterly.
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  Wilson Quarterly is an editorially-reviewed journal based at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. This article was also reprinted in Newsweek as "We Are Losing Hearts and Minds in the Former Soviet Union."
• Bollen, K. R., Harden, J. J., Ray, S., & Zavisca, J. R. (2014). BIC and Alternative Bayesian Information Criteria in the Selection of Structural Equation Models. Structural Equation Modeling, 1(21), 1-19.
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  This paper is among most downloaded articles in Routledge behavioral science journals for 2014: http://explore.tandfonline.com/page/beh/behavioral-sciences-most-read/research-methods
• Gerber, T., & Zavisca, J. R. (2014). Policy Memo: Views of the United States in Four Post-Soviet States. PONARS Eurasia Policy Memos.
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  PONARS (the Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia) is based at George Washington University and is a leading outlet for research-informed policy briefs and working papers on the Eurasian region. The memo was also published in Russian in RBK, a Russian news magazine.
• Bollen, K., Ray, S., Zavisca, J. R., & Harden, J. (2012). A Comparison of Bayes Factor Approximation Methods, Including Two New Methods. Sociological Methods and Research, 2(41), 294-324.
• Zavisca, J. R. (2011). Explaining and Interpreting the End of Soviet Rule. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 4(12), 925-40.
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  Analysis of cultural conditions and mechanisms that contributed to the collapse of Soviet rule. This is the premier journal for historical studies of the Eurasian region.

Presentations

• Gerber, T., & Zavisca, J. R. (2015, 5). Housing and Divorce in Russia, 1992-2013. Population Association of America Meeting.
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  Ted presented this paper at PAA; I coauthored it.
• Gerber, T., & Zavisca, J. R. (2015, July). How Effective Is Russian Soft Power? New Evidence from Four Post-Soviet Countries. Joint Staff Strategic Multilayer Assessment Lecture Series, U.S. European Command..
• Gerber, T., & Zavisca, J. R. (2014, 10). Housing and Divorce in Russia, 1992-2013. Conference of the European Network for the Sociological and Demographic Study of Divorce (Paris).
• Gerber, T., & Zavisca, J. R. (2014, 9). Perceptions of the United States and Russia in Four Eurasian Countries. Annual Meeting of the Minerva Research Initiative.
• Zavisca, J. R., & Clarke, H. (2014, 8). Borrowing to Buy is No Disgrace: The Social Marketing of Mortgages in 1920s America. American Sociological Association Section on Economic Sociology of Credit and Inequality.
• Zavisca, J. R., & White, B. T. (2014, 8). Consumer Expenditure, Savings, or Investment? Classifying Mortgages in Crisis. American Sociological Association, Invited Session on Consumption in Hard Times.
• Zavisca, J. R., & Clarke, H. (2013, 7). Financing a Woman's Place: the Gendered Marketing of Mortgages in the 1920s. Consumer Culture Theory Conference.
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  This paper is based on archival research, with support from the UA Confluence Center for Creative Inquiry, at the Hoover presidential library and the Hoover Institute. Hannah and I presented this paper at the Consumer Culture Theory conference, a competitive annual conference predominantly attended by consumption scholars in marketing.Abstract: This paper analyzes the gendered framing of housing finance in the Better Homes in America (BHA) campaign, the most significant of the "Own-Your-Own-Home" marketing drives that facilitated thde rapid expansion of mortgages in 1920s America. Previous scholarship, which concentrates on the BHA's depiction of family life, concludes that the BHA presented a patriarchal view of the family in the owner-occupied home. However, BHA messaging on finance for women reflected the tensions and contradictions of consumption in the context of women's growing power as consumers. On the one hand BHA empowered women as purse string holders and financial stewards, but on the other positioned their true place as in the home. Housing's dual nature as an object of investment as well as consumption facilitated this framing.;
• Zavisca, J. R., & Weinberger, M. (2013, 8). Exploratory Experience: A New Model of Middle-Class Consumption During the Transition to Adulthood. American Sociological Association, Section on Consumers and Consumption.
• Zavisca, J. R. (2012, 2). Owing and Owning: Russian Responses to American Mortgages. Berkeley Program on Soviet and post-Soviet Studies, University of California at Berkeley.
• Zavisca, J. R. (2011, 2011-05-01). Intra-Household Inequality in Housing Status: The Case of Russia. Symposium on Generational Fractures and the Housing Trajectories of Young People, Department of Public and Social Administration, City University of Hong Kong. Hong Kong.
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  invited international symposium; parts of the paper I prepared was incorporated into revisions of my book manuscript; substantially revised version has been accepted for publication to appear in edited volume (Routledge);Invited: Yes;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference/Workshop;
• Zavisca, J. R. (2011, 2011-08-01). To Owe Is to Own: Homeownership as a Metaphor for the American Mortgage. Consumer Studies Research Network conference on the Crisis and Contradictions of Consumption. Las Vegas.
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  presented new research on historical and contemporary metaphorical representations of mortgages in the US;Submitted: Yes;Refereed: Yes;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;

Others

• Zavisca, J. R., & Drachman, M. (2013, 5). Symposium: Rethinking Mortgage-Based Homeownership. http://sociology.arizona.edu/symposium-rethinking-mortgage-based-homeownership
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  I was the lead organizer for this two-day event, as part of my Confluencenter grant. The event combined scholarship and outreach. The academic portion consisted of my own original presentation on cultural cognition of ownership and debt, as well as presentations by a variety of scholars from various disciplines, both external and internal to UA. The program can be accessed through the event website