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Pleasure Principles: The Social Construction Of Gambling And Sex Addiction Treatment, M. Kelly James Jan 2002

Pleasure Principles: The Social Construction Of Gambling And Sex Addiction Treatment, M. Kelly James

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The transformation of behavior into deviance requires many players, individuals, and institutions invested in the social construction process and its outcomes. Although considered private recreational matters by some, gambling and having sex are gaining spotlight in the addiction arena. With the growing availability of casino entertainment, lotteries, OTB venues, prostitution, internet pornography, and 900 numbers, gambling and sex are interpreted, labeled, and treated by addiction recovery specialists. Using ethnographic methods and face-to-face interviews, I explore a southern community’s institutions and practitioners providing services to gambling and sex addicts. I examine the community’s discourse and its methods for defining and controlling …


General Strain Theory And Social Support: A Study Of African Americans, Jason Alan Lyons Jan 2002

General Strain Theory And Social Support: A Study Of African Americans, Jason Alan Lyons

LSU Master's Theses

Agnew’s (1992) general strain theory (GST) has gained increasing attention and empirical support for the effects of strain on negative emotions and deviant coping. However, previous research provides inconsistent results about (1) the effects of negative emotions on deviant coping, (2) the significance of social support in GST, and (3) gender differences and GST. This paper addresses these issues by testing hypotheses generated from GST and analyzing data collected from a nationally representative sample of African American adults. Results from ordinary least squares regression analyses generally support the hypotheses. First, the effects of strain on deviant coping are fully mediated …


Influence Of Locus Of Control On Court Attendance, Anna Cutlip Jan 2002

Influence Of Locus Of Control On Court Attendance, Anna Cutlip

LSU Master's Theses

The aim of the present study was to discover whether there is a relationship between locus of control and court attendance. Data were collected from 95 inmates residing in a southern Louisiana jail. It was expected that a person with an internal locus of control would choose to comply with court attendance requirements because of the belief that he may affect the outcome, while another individual with an external locus of control would passively respond through absence because the outcome is believed to be controlled by chance, luck, or fate. The Prison Locus of Control scale was employed to measure …


Sport, And The Changing Definition Of Whiteness, Bradburn Virgil Buras Jan 2002

Sport, And The Changing Definition Of Whiteness, Bradburn Virgil Buras

LSU Master's Theses

This paper looks at the effects of professional basketball on white culture. Traditional scholarship focuses on the impact this has on the African-American community. Very little attention is given to its effects on white America. The focus of this paper is to examine whiteness and to understand how it is socially constructed. In addition, this paper will examine how some elements of black style have been appropriated by white America and changed the definition of whiteness in America. White America's appropriation of limited aspects of black style has been facilitated by the culture that is associated with professional basketball. The …


Hispanics And Violent Crime In The United States: Examining The Effect Of Segregation, Dorothy Mecom Jan 2002

Hispanics And Violent Crime In The United States: Examining The Effect Of Segregation, Dorothy Mecom

LSU Master's Theses

The purpose of this study focuses on Hispanics and violent crime. Previous studies (Krivo and Peterson, 1993, Shihadeh and Flynn, 1996) analyze crime rates among blacks; however, the research on Hispanics is very limited (Massey and Denton, 1992). The majority of sociological studies analyze racial residential segregation in order to explain higher rates of violent crime among blacks. (Peterson and Krivo, 1993; Frey and Farley, 1996.) Most researchers employ the Index of Dissimilarity (D), which measures evenness (distribution of the population), in order to measure segregation. (Fischer and Massey, 2000). In this study, I plan to fill the gap in …


The Perceptions Of And Attitudes Toward Partner Abuse Among First Generation Korean-Americans: Their Relationships To The Incidence Of Partner Abuse, Bonnie Ahn Jan 2002

The Perceptions Of And Attitudes Toward Partner Abuse Among First Generation Korean-Americans: Their Relationships To The Incidence Of Partner Abuse, Bonnie Ahn

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of the perceptions of and attitudes toward partner abuse, and various demographic characteristics on the incidence of partner abuse among first generation Korean-Americans. The study employed a correlational explanatory design using a cross-sectional survey technique utilizing a total of 223 Korean immigrant adults currently residing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A three-part instrument was used for data colleciton. Part I of the instrument measured the perceptions of and attitudes toward domestic violence among Korean-Americans. Part II measured the incedence and nature of domestic violence, and part III inquired demographic information about …


Building Community: An Environmental Approach To Crime Prevention, Gustavo A. Barreto Jan 2002

Building Community: An Environmental Approach To Crime Prevention, Gustavo A. Barreto

LSU Master's Theses

Crime cannot be understood as a single-solution problem. Participation of the community is important to complement and make more efficient any program of crime control by police authorities or any other law enforcement agency. This thesis is intended to create consciousness among designers of the urban environment of their social role. Cities must include places to promote community interaction and formation of social bonds. As social bonds among residents increase, and bonds with the place begin building a sense of territoriality in the community, the residents become active defenders of the place against crime. A theory summary presents different and …