Digital Commons Network^™

Essays On The Economics Of Unhealthy Behaviors, Raul Segura-Escano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to explore a variety of responses in the form of unhealthy behaviors as a consequence of different sudden events perceived by individuals. The first one is the doubtlessly pure exogenous shock caused by an unexpected terrorist attack, Boston Marathon Bombings. The second one is the turmoil caused by the Great Recession of 2008, which is the most serious economic downturn since the Great Depression during the 1930’s. This dissertation consists of the following two chapters:

Chapter 1: “The Impact of Terrorism on Mental Health and Substance Use: Evidence from the Boston Marathon Bombings” On April 15, 2013, …

Gender And Terrorism: A Homeland Security Perspective, Diana Rosa Rodriguez-Spahia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While scholars have been studying the growing trend of female terrorists for several years, their research has not permeated politics or the media to help inform our Homeland Security policies. The findings from this body of research indicate that there is hesitance on behalf of the public (especially politicians and law enforcement) to acknowledge that women can be terrorists due to deeply engrained gender norms and expectations about gender roles. Terrorist groups are exploiting this unwillingness by recruiting more women to perpetrate terrorist acts (Lele, 2014; Bloom, 2011). Against the backdrop of the changes in gender norms and expectations that …

Insecure Hegemony: The Cultural Construction Of 'Righteous Retaliation' In The Hunt For Osama Bin Laden, Marisa Tramontano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the American “authorized discourse” about the hunt for and killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to better understand it as an episode in American cultural hegemony maintenance. Through a structural hermeneutic analysis of presidential speeches and widely-circulated national strategy documents, high distribution news coverage, and entertainment media, alongside one-on-one interviews and focus groups, I illuminate the symbolic mechanics by which the death of Osama bin Laden was constructed as righteous and legitimate retaliatory violence in response to the unprompted, offensive violence of the 9/11 attacks.

Drawing on an array of theoretical approaches including classical sociologists Karl …

Islamic Terrorism In The United States – The Association Of Religious Fundamentalism With Social Isolation & Paths Leading To Extreme Violence Through Processes Of Radicalization., Shay Shiran

Student Theses

This exploratory study focuses on identifying motivations for religious terrorism and Islamic terrorism in the United States in particular. Terrorism is a crime of extreme violence with the end purpose of political influence. This crime is challenging to encounter for its multi-faced characteristics, the unusual motivations of its actors, and their semi-militant conduct. The hypothesis of this study asserts that religious terrorists are radicalized by passing from fundamental to extreme devout agendas, caused by isolation from the dominant society, and resulted in high potential to impose those agendas by extreme violence. Under the theoretical framework of subculture in criminology, this …

An Analysis Of Successful And Unsuccessful Terrorist Assassinations: Informing Counterterrorism Through Situational Crime Prevention, Marissa Mandala

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study applies environmental criminology and situational crime prevention (SCP) to study successful and unsuccessful assassinations by terrorists. Using these perspectives, a series of hypotheses were devised to understand the situational factors that contribute to successful compared to unsuccessful assassinations. A random sample of roughly 1,000 successful and 1,000 unsuccessful assassination attacks taking place between 2005 and 2014 was acquired from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD). Open source materials were then consulted to supplement the GTD with the creation of new SCP variables. The hypotheses were tested in a binary logistic regression, and additional regression models were created for 4 …

An Analysis Of The Efficacy Of Post 9/11 Security Policy In Countering Violent Extremism And Reducing Acts Of International Terrorism, Omaima Khan

Dissertations and Theses

Terrorism is a phenomenon that baffles even the most experienced of researchers within academia. Understanding what constitutes terrorism is important to the field of international relations because combatting terrorist violence yields no straightforward method of prevention and protection. This paper examines four measures of counterterrorism taken by the U.S. government after the September 11^th attacks. The methods included in this study and the framework in which they are congruent with are: The War on Terror as a defense strategy, torture and “enhanced interrogation techniques” as a deterrence method, targeted drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan as a compellence force, …