Digital Commons Network^™

Democracy And Organized Crime: The Case Of Brazil, Abigail Tank

Student Research Submissions

Local-level democracy is crucial to the strength of a country’s democracy. In Brazil, informal housing settlements known as favelas have started to outpace the growth of the cities in which they exist, yet favelas often lack equal access to democratic institutions that ensure citizens’ rights. Organized crime groups have emerged in these settlements that threaten the strength and stability of local-level democracy. This yields the question, “How does organized crime impact democracy in Brazil?” Through case studies of Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte, this thesis explores whether criminal organizations influence political participation in Brazilian favelas. The case studies are …

The Impact Of Individual Culture On Purchase Decisions Of Fast Fashion In Brazil, Lucie S. Speck

Senior Theses

Fast fashion is an emerging method of production in the apparel industry that is characterized by lower-quality materials and faster production timelines than the traditional methods of producing clothing. It is becoming a trending topic in modern business due to its negative social and environmental impact, as brands that use fast fashion production processes are constantly being criticized for inhumane labor practices and large amounts of textile waste.

This research proposes two models using a survey as its main research method. The first model determines how financial situation, collectivism as a cultural value, and education level impact whether social media …

Navigating Boundaries: Challenges And Strategies In Exhibiting Brazilian Art Globally, Bruna Ribeiro Schnor

MA Theses

This thesis critically evaluates key initiatives in New York from 2002 to 2023, notably "Brazil: Body and Soul" and "Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil" at institutions like the Guggenheim and MoMA, highlighting potential shortcomings in representing Brazilian culture accurately. Additionally, it discusses exhibitions like "Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca: Five Times Brazil" at the New Museum and “The Yanomami Struggle” at The Shed for their unique approaches to showcasing Brazilian art. The methodology involves analyzing significant exhibitions in New York from 2000 to 2023, evaluating their efforts to globalize Brazilian art, and understanding their global impact. …

Desenvolvimento De Um Programa Para Capacitar Pastores Em Preparacao Pre-Matrimonial Com Andecedencia Na Associacao Paulistana De Iasd No Brasil, Jairo De Oliveira

Professional Dissertations DMin

Problem

At the São Paulo Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Brazil, a preliminary survey found that 98% of engaged couples who sought out the pre-marital preparation program offered by the church would get married shortly after the preparation course. Given this trend, there was a need for a strategy to encourage engaged couples to participate in a pre-marital preparation program well in advance. A program was then developed to train pastors in pre-marital preparation in advance in the Sao Paulo Conference whose aim was to form healthy and stable marriages.

Methodology

This study adopted a qualitative approach to …

Camargo Guarnieri's Twenty Estudos: A Commitment To Brazilian Nationalism And Virtuosity, Steven Brancaleone

Dissertations, 2020-current

This document aims to find how composer Camargo Guarnieri uses Brazilian trends and incorporates them into his individual style, specifically in his Twenty Estudos for piano. The long compositional period of these pieces displays frequent experimentation and maturation in Guarnieri’s style between 1949 and 1988. The trends that Guarnieri follow can be traced by examining his life, environment, and teachings. Brazilian figure and instructor, Mario de Andrade, also contributes to molding and refining Guarnieri’s ideas. With this study, the Twenty Estudos will display Guarnieri’s individualistic use of Brazilian trends and how they correlate to his mature compositional style.

A Grounded Theory Of Relational Masculinity In Brazil, Douglas M. Wendt

Theses and Dissertations

Many societal problems in Brazil, including sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and fatherlessness, are said to be related to hegemonic masculine development, commonly known as toxic masculinity. Very little research has been conducted in Marriage and Family Therapy and related fields that explores masculinity in the context of family systems and within relational frameworks. Current research in this area focuses largely on the negative aspects of traditional masculinity that reinforce narrow stereotypes rather than highlight possibilities of relationally healthy masculine development. The aim of this study was to develop a constructivist grounded theory of relational masculinity in Brazil by interviewing …

Essays Of Platform Work And Changing Workplaces, Luisa Nazareno Aguiar

AYSPS Dissertations

The platform economy provides employment opportunities for many workers, offering benefits such as low entry and exit costs, and flexibility. However, it also represents a contemporary manifestation of nonstandard work, characterized by insecurity and inadequate labor protections. As platforms expand and become more often a full-time job to many, the contradictions between their benefits and precariousness intensify.

Research has clarified the causes and implications of platform work, especially in the context of high-income countries. However, platform work is a global phenomenon, and its impacts are bound to differ across nations. Furthermore, as ridesharing became the poster child of the platform …

Becoming Somebody: Black Women’S Escrevivências And Politics Of Resistance, Irimara Gomes Peixoto

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses

Assata Shakur and Marielle Franco were activists fighting for racial and gender equality in the United States and Brazil. This work aims to observe their life stories and legacies, analyzing the documentary Marielle: The Crime That Shook Brazil and Assata Shakur’s memoir Assata: An Autobiography. This study will focus on the differences and similarities in their countries’ justice systems and how Franco and Shakur built strategies of resistance to navigate their homeland's necropolitics and also focus on the process of recognizing the self, using the concept of escrevivências. Therefore, observing how their political views and positions directly cause …

Liberdade Para Quem? - Layered Histories, Vanessa Shimada

Masters Theses

Uncovering the spaces of Indigenous and Black stories, and creating spaces for dialogue in the Japanese neighborhood of Liberdade, São Paulo

Particular Proceedings, Ingrid Schmaedecke

Masters Theses

Particular Proceedings is the outcome of an ongoing quest to understand the origins and motivations of my creative process as a designer.

By continuously pairing early influences and experiences — such as architecture and woodworking — with recurring interests, I gather a view of my methods and, with that, a reframing of my affinity for designing: an intimate relation between material, maker, and content, with meaning often arising out of that process.

In this thesis, I demonstrate, through projects, conversations, and essays, how this relation operates in different scenarios and through different lenses of inquiry. I alternate perspectives, repurpose ordinary …

Safer Favelas Through Urban Redevelopment: Keeping Kids Of The Street, And Away From Criminal Life, Thayna P. Rocha

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis investigates the complexity of a favela’s physical and social environment , and how urban redevelopment can improve crime prevention for youth .Favelas are informal settlements lying on the outskirts of brazilian cities. The favela of Grajau is located south of the city of Sao Paulo, and it is known for gang related violence, and high crime rates. Statistics show that an average of 240 homicides happen in the district of Grajau. Out of these 240 homicides, 104 are teenagers that were involved in gang related fights. A favela’s urban setting, and its’ lack of social programs have a …

Beyond Participation: Hélio Oiticica And Neville D’Almeida, Jocelyn Elliott Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

The collaborative works by Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica and filmmaker Neville D’Almeida responded to Brazil’s dictatorship and their self-imposed exile in New York between 1969-1974. Oiticica’s concept of crelazer and the artists elective “marginal” position converge to create a new cinematic language; challenging gender norms, and proposing new systems for living.

Forced Labor Found Within The Supply Chains Of The Coffee Industry, Hollis Deuschle

Supply Chain Management Undergraduate Honors Theses

I have focused my research on the morality within supply chains that source major coffee companies around the world. As consumers, many of us have no idea where the products that we use everyday truly come from. The purchases we make have the power to feed into the issue of forced labor. The coffee we buy often does. My thesis takes a look into the extensive issue of human trafficking and unjust labor practices on the plantations that provide us with the coffee we sip on each morning. This paper serves to enlighten producers and consumers on this phenomenon, to …

Inequality And Violence: The Case Of Brazil, Kimberly Forsyth

Dissertations and Theses

As a dominant economic powerhouse in Latin America, Brazil paradoxically exhibits profound socioeconomic divides and egregious rates of violence. This study seeks to illuminate the extent of the intricate relationship between Brazil's inherent inequalities and its propensity for violence by employing a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The study focuses on the years from 2002 to 2021, a period characterized by pivotal social, economic, and political transformations. Utilizing the United Nations definition of homicide as a primary measure of violence, I collected data from Brazilian health repositories for all 27 federative unit's annual reported number of homicides. The research …

The Impact Of Countries' Leaders' Responses On Covid-19 Deaths, Kate Rumisek

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic was an unprecedented health crisis with consequences felt worldwide. While every country was impacted, each leader had a different response resulting in different consequences per nation. This paper evaluates the responses of three countries' leaders to the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to COVID-19-related deaths. The countries analyzed are New Zealand, Brazil, and the United States. New Zealand's Prime Minister's response was characterized as proactive and strict. Under the leadership of Bolsonaro, Brazil ignored the magnitude of the pandemic, leading to a lack of a cohesive national plan. The United States, led by President Trump, responded with a …

The Effect Of Weather Events On Dengue Fever In Brazil 2014-2022, Maryclare Gabel

All ETDs from UAB

Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that is spread through the bite of an infected Aedes aegypti or Aedes albopictus mosquito. Half the world's population lives in a dengue fever risk zone. There are an estimated 100 million symptomatic dengue fever cases each year, with 40,000 deaths reported. Brazil reports the highest annual dengue fever cases in Latin America. In 2022, Brazil recorded 2.36 million dengue fever cases, the highest number of cases ever recorded in the country. We designed a retrospective ecological study to evaluate the temporal trends and the association between weather events and dengue fever incidence …

The Correlation Between Perceived Maternal Parenting Style And Perceived Emotion Regulation In Seventh-Day Adventists In Southern Brazil, Camila Cardoso Masotti

Master's Theses

Problem.\

One's ability to regulate his/her emotions utilizing coping mechanisms and dissuasive mental strategies is partly attained due to the correct functioning of innate biological systems and to life experiences that promote learning/training in this area (cf., e.g., Matsumoto & Hwang, 2012). The field of emotion regulation studies has extensively elaborated on a multivalent description of human emotional development, in which emotions are part of essential mental strategies for an individual's conscious and unconscious goals in life (cf., e.g., Lang & Bradley, 2010; Levenson, 1999). Therefore, as a partly learned ability, one's emotion regulation skills have been shown as positively …

High School Dropouts, Higher Education Dreams, And Achievement: A Six-Year Study Of A High-Stakes Test In Brazil, Eveline Miranda

Theses and Dissertations

Rumberger (2020) observed that "dropping out of school has economic and social consequences both for dropouts themselves and for the country as a whole" (p. 151). Every year, many Brazilians drop out of school due to work, early pregnancies, marriage, drug consumption, crime, etc. Dropping out of school can occur due to learning challenges, poor attendance, discipline problems, or a lack of access to high school institutions. Dropouts can experience depression and anxiety and are more likely to attempt suicide. The present dissertation includes two different papers about dropouts. The first paper uses fixed effect regression to show the main …

Mobility, Modernity, And The Middle Class: Transmediatization And Brazilian Television, Jonathan Ventura

Film, Media & Theatre Dissertations

Mobility, Modernity, and the Middle Class: Transmediatization and Brazilian Television examines the process of transmediatization in Brazil as a failed process of digital modernity. Following the pattern of diverse modernities and cultures of convergence, this dissertation argues that there are also multiple regimes of transmediatization. This dissertation provides a framework for analyzing the Brazilian regime of transmediatization through mobility, participation, and expansion, using the Brazilian telenovela Cheias de Charme (2012, TV Globo) as an extensive case study. Through an analysis of the telenovela and its transmedia extensions, industrial discourse, and sociohistorical context, I illustrate how the telenovela functioned as a …

Escribir El Desarrollo, Desplegar La Cultura: Historias De Imaginación Económica En Colombia Y Brasil, Diego Bustos

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

In this dissertation, we analyze how a group of artists negotiate through their novels and cultural performances a repertoire of meanings on inequality and plurality, formulating a program of socio-cultural transformation via literature. In the first two chapters, we examine the work by Colombian author Augusto Morales Pino (comprised of four volumes), as proponent of a transnational genealogy of economic development, offering a repertoire of meanings and practices for contemporary public policy in which the concept of middle class predominates. I argue that these representations actively shape the possibility and limits of the contemporary models of inclusion and cultural citizenship. …

Freyre’S Plantation Playground: The Changing Landscape Of The Sugar Plantation Monjope, Catherine Elizabeth Lavoy

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation investigates the changing landscape of the sugar plantation Monjope in Pernambuco, Brazil from the mid-seventeenth to the end of the twentieth century. I examine this plantation’s changing landscape as part of a number of larger social, economic and environmental forces; in particular the development of racially based labor. Established in the sixteenth century, Monjope was one of the many Brazilian sugar plantations that relied on African slavery for labor until the end of the nineteenth century. I argue the plantation’s built environment in conjunction with the larger plantation landscape was part of a global trend of controlling labor …

Impacts Of Granite Quarrying: The Case Of Subsistence Farmers In The São Pedro River Valley, Isabelle Poupard Santizo

Theses & Dissertations

Granite quarrying constitutes an occupational hazard that compromises workers’ health, destroys the environment and negatively affects nearby communities (Azevedo et al., 2020; Ibrahim et al., 2019; Oktriani, Darmajanti, & Soesilo, 2017; Shaik et al., 2015). But the demand for granite and other decorative stones continues to grow (Gupta, 2018). Despite a decrease in imports/exports due to Covid-19 (Alves et al., 2020), today Brazil remains the number 1 granite exporter to the United States (US Geological Survey, 2021). In the last 30 years, the extraction of granite in Brazil has been continuous, particularly in the states of Espírito Santo (ES) and …

Ephemeral Elsewheres: Locating Narratives Of Resignation, Resistance, And Refusal In The Poetry Of Black Cuban And Black Brazilian Women, Aidan Keys

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

This essay dissects the language of Latin American revolution and nationalism to locate the body of the black woman and the appropriation of her image. In two seemingly incommensurable radical movements—the Cuban Revolution (1952-1959) and the Brazilian Unified Black Movement (1978-)—the contributions of Black women are unevenly recognized. Reading the poetry of cubanas Nancy Morejón and Georgina Herrera and brasileiras Sônia Fátima and Esmeralda Ribeiro, this essay claims that in both contexts, the Black woman is marginalized to a geographic “elsewhere.” Expanding on this term, coined by scholar Carol Boyce Davies, this essay further identifies temporal and ephemeral “elsewheres.” The …

U.S. Monetary Policy As A Hegemonic Tool In Emerging Markets, William Martin

Honors Theses

This paper, drawing on my Senior Thesis, analyzes how the U.S. Federal Reserve policies impact the economic conditions of countries around the world. In particular, my research focuses on eight countries considered as emerging market economies from 2000 to 2020. Country-specific macroeconomic and political variables help me examine how developing countries alter their short-term targets to avoid volatile spillover from Washington. Moreover, I use each country’s sovereign nominal credit spread to assess its economic conditions, in particular its perceived risk premium or cost of borrowing. The countries examined in my thesis are Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Russia, Korea, Qatar, and …

The Beehive, The Favela, The Castle, And The Ministry: Race And Modern Architecture In Rio De Janeiro, 1811–1945, Luisa Valle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation deploys a multidisciplinary and decolonial framework to investigate the architecture of cortiços, the Favela Hill, the Castelo Hill, and the Ministry of Education and Public Health (MES) building as constitutive of the history of modernization and modernity in the Centro (city center) of Rio de Janeiro, 1811-1945. The first three chapters investigate the distinct geographies, formal and material qualities, and populations of cortiços, the Favela Hill, and the Castelo Hill, as well as their racialization and essentialization by the “unsanitary” and “degenerate” labels bestowed upon these landscapes by the state. Traditional narratives and practices of modern architecture and …

Lecturas Ecoculturales Del Caribe Hispánico Y Francés Y Del Brasil, Mariana Herring

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

In this dissertation, we analyze a selection of works, both literary and filmic, in order to explore how they connect ecological realities with the social, economic and cultural realms. Through the analysis of novels, biographies and films by Caribbean and Brazilian authors, this analysis will focus, in particular, on how these works show the impact of the imposition of the plantation, the modernization discourse, the ongoing colonial experience, and the dismissal of traditional and local knowledge and practices, on ecological problems in the past and in the present. By ecological, we do refer to the interconnectedness between the human and …

The Nexus Of Climate Change, Biodiversity, And Food Security: A Brazil Case Study, Andrew M. Berger

Dissertations and Theses

What is referred to as climate change today is the rapid warming of the climate, largely from human actions, and the effects that come with that warming. One study published by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2021 argues that, “human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases have caused increases in global average temperatures, changes in precipitation timing and intensity, rising sea levels, and many other changes.” A Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) study found that when looking at the number of countries exposed to climate extremes in five year periods from 2000 to 2020, the number of countries “exposed …

Racial Domination Through The Grey Areas: The Categorization Of Mixed-Race In The United States And Brazil, Arman Luczkow

Honors Papers

A historical comparison of mixed-race categories in the United States and Brazil, analyzing the influence of governments and political groups.

Are Risk Attitudes And Rainfall Variability Determinants Of Diversification? Evidence From Rondonia, Brazil, Brenna Swinger

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Risk exposure and management are inherent to smallholder farmers. One of the risks they face is climate change. Climate change decreases rainfall, increases frequency of drought, adds heat stress to crops from higher temperatures, and leads to higher rainfall variability. The threat of rainfall variability causes higher production in some years and lower in others. Even if the average income remains the same, people’s welfare is reduced by the variability and the size of the loss will depend on their attitudes towards risk.

Diversification is one adaption strategy that may help reduce climate risk. Diversified farmers produce multiple types of …

Abandonada, Luiz Emanuel De Castro Moura

Senior Projects Fall 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Divisions of Arts of Bard College