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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
A Comparison Of Neo-Hobbesian Social Contract Theory And Anthropological Accounts Of Socio-Political Complexity, Benjamin Lee
A Comparison Of Neo-Hobbesian Social Contract Theory And Anthropological Accounts Of Socio-Political Complexity, Benjamin Lee
Undergraduate Honors Theses
Social contract theory continues to be a leading theoretical framework in political philosophy. It argues that an individual's moral and political obligations are generated by, and dependent upon, an agreement or contract between that individual and the other individuals within their society. Notable scholars who have championed this theory include Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Rawls, and Gauthier. This thesis focuses on reviewing the descriptive aspects of Hobbes’ social contract theory, by revising an already revised account provided by Gregory Kavka. Once this revision is complete, it will be argued that the descriptive aspects of Hobbes’ account of social contract are in …
Pompeiian Mill-Bakeries: Spatial Organization And Social Interaction, Madeleine Rubin
Pompeiian Mill-Bakeries: Spatial Organization And Social Interaction, Madeleine Rubin
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This thesis examines bread production and the daily lives of those who worked in mill-bakeries during the first century CE. Bread was the staple food across the ancient Mediterranean; however, there is little textual evidence about those who produced the bread that fed the Roman Empire. The most significant body of evidence relating to the lives of mill-bakers is the archaeological remains of mill-bakeries from the city of Pompeii, preserved by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE. This thesis analyzes the spatial organization of bread production within these mill-bakeries and applies the methodologies of spatial syntax – a …
The People's House?: Countermajoritarianism In The House Of Representatives, Andrew Hoffman
The People's House?: Countermajoritarianism In The House Of Representatives, Andrew Hoffman
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This is the first study of countermajoritarianism in the House of Representatives. Although the House is considered a majoritarian institution, intrastate malapportionment remained rampant prior to the 1964 Wesberry decision; the three-fifths clause drove systematic antebellum differences in the number of free people in northern and southern House districts; and widespread voter discrimination in the South led to systematically different levels of turnout. Combined, these factors potentialized roll calls in which the chamber’s majority did not actually represent more free individuals, voters, or electoral supporters than the minority. Using three separate measures, I characterize such outcomes as countermajoritarian. I find …
Beyond The Exit: Moma Design Store & The Extended Museum Experience, Anna C. Wershbale
Beyond The Exit: Moma Design Store & The Extended Museum Experience, Anna C. Wershbale
Undergraduate Honors Theses
American art museum attendance soared following World War II as museums became popular education and entertainment destinations for the growing middle class. Shaped by the influence of 1980s Reaganomics and the effects of neoliberal funding policies, museum shops developed from small information desk ventures into a vital source of public relevance and financial sustainability. When given creative liberty and economic attention, the now standardized amenity presented the opportunity to sell institutional ethos. In light of neoliberal capitalism’s tendency to construe value primarily in economic terms, shops reveal how the art museum strategically assigns new meaning to its collection, mission, and …
The Diy Ethic In Richmond, Virginia’S Underground Music Community, Calvin Sloan
The Diy Ethic In Richmond, Virginia’S Underground Music Community, Calvin Sloan
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This project seeks to examine Richmond, Virginia’s underground music community through the analytical perspective of sociocultural anthropology. I argue that Richmond’s underground music community is guided by a governing ideology I refer to as the “DIY ethic”. The application of the DIY (Do It Yourself) ethic helps to explain the community’s unique practices, including moshing and the formation of new, niche genres. This ethnographic approach includes interviews with community members and my own firsthand observations of music venues and other subcultural spaces. This research is part of my undergraduate honors project at the College of William & Mary.
France's Compliance Of The International Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Racial Discrimination: French Universalism Versus Group Rights, Alex Earls
Undergraduate Honors Theses
There exists a constant battle between universalism and anti-racism in France, where universalism is positioned as the predominant force of western values and anti-racism as a dog-whistle for ‘wokeness’. This thesis will position that France is predisposed to incomplete compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) in part due to its rooted concept of French universalism and the nationalistic undertones therein that do not tolerate intermediate identifications between the individual and the Republic. The purpose of this argument is to generate an interpretive tool to observe and analyze France’s relatively weak civil …
Rethinking ‘Feminicide’: The Role Of Organized Crime Groups In Increased Rates Of Feminicide In Mexico, Giselle Figueroa
Rethinking ‘Feminicide’: The Role Of Organized Crime Groups In Increased Rates Of Feminicide In Mexico, Giselle Figueroa
Undergraduate Honors Theses
Why has feminicide significantly increased in Mexico over the past two decades? Previous feminicide research in Mexico has centered around the idea that the introduction of neoliberal politics changed family structures and increased the vulnerability of women as they entered the workforce. However, this explanation does not fully explain patterns of political violence against women in Mexico. I argue that Mexico’s War on Drugs and the intrinsic patriarchal ideologies and structures of organized crime groups (OCGs) reinforce gender hierarchies and increase the vulnerability of women. To evaluate my argument, I analyze state-level public government data on organized crime and feminicide …
Infrastructures Of Race? Colonial Indigenous Segregation And Contemporaneous Urban Sorting, Luis Baldomero-Quintana, Guillermo Woo-Mora, Enrique De La Rosa-Ramos
Infrastructures Of Race? Colonial Indigenous Segregation And Contemporaneous Urban Sorting, Luis Baldomero-Quintana, Guillermo Woo-Mora, Enrique De La Rosa-Ramos
Arts & Sciences Articles
We study the impacts of a colonial segregation policy on modern-day spatial population patterns and residential sorting by human capital in Mexican cities. After the Conquest, the Spanish aimed to segregate Indigenous individuals into settlements called pueblos de indios. While the segregation policy lasted until the end of the colonial era, we use present-day census data at the block level on population, schooling and access to medical services to understand the persistent effects of pueblos on within-city structure. First, we document a spatial non-monotonic correlation between the location of the pueblos and population deagglomerations. Second, we study the causal impact …
R. Ḥasdai Crescas And The Concept Of Motivation In Modern Psychology And The Philosophy Of Education, Esti Eisenmann
R. Ḥasdai Crescas And The Concept Of Motivation In Modern Psychology And The Philosophy Of Education, Esti Eisenmann
Journal of Textual Reasoning
The concept of educational motivation refers to the desire to invest time and effort in a particular activity, even when this is difficult, exacts a high price, and may be unsuccessful. Recent decades have seen a growing recognition of the central role of motivation processes in students’ success in their studies and other processes of adaptation. Modern motivation theories attempt to study and explain the psychological processes that motivate human beings—processes associated with arousal, self-intention, and the like. According to these studies, motivation is both a cognitive and an emotional process, because thinking and emotion determine our individual path and …
Black Lives, White Kids: White Parenting Practices Following Black-Led Protests, Allison P. Anoll, Andrew M. Engelhardt, Mackenzie Israel-Trummel
Black Lives, White Kids: White Parenting Practices Following Black-Led Protests, Allison P. Anoll, Andrew M. Engelhardt, Mackenzie Israel-Trummel
Arts & Sciences Articles
Summer 2020 saw widespread protests under the banner Black Lives Matter. Coupled with the global pandemic that kept America’s children in the predominant care of their parents, we argue that the latter half of 2020 offers a unique moment to consider whites’ race-focused parenting practices. We use Google Trends data and posts on public parenting Facebook pages to show that the remarkable levels of protest activity in summer 2020 served as a focusing event that not only directed Americans’ attention to racial concepts but connected those concepts to parenting. Using a national survey of non-Hispanic white parents with white school-age …
Quality Of Communications Infrastructure, Local Structural Transformation, And Inequality, Camilo Acosta, Luis Baldomero-Quintana
Quality Of Communications Infrastructure, Local Structural Transformation, And Inequality, Camilo Acosta, Luis Baldomero-Quintana
Arts & Sciences Articles
We analyze the causal impact of improvements in the quality of communication infrastructure on the structural transformation of US counties. Our treatment is the quality of communication infrastructure in a county, measured by the average Internet speed offered to businesses. We use as an instrumental variable the spatial structure of ARPANET, a network funded by the Department of Defense that is considered the precursor of the Internet, and whose location we determine using historical government documents. We show that faster Internet stimulates short-run growth and increases the shares of employment and GDP in high-skilled services, while negatively affecting sectors such …
The Cash Crop Revolution, Colonialism And Economic Reorganization In Africa, Philip Roessler, Yannick I. Pengl, Robert Marty, Kyle Sorlie Titlow, Nicholas Van De Walle
The Cash Crop Revolution, Colonialism And Economic Reorganization In Africa, Philip Roessler, Yannick I. Pengl, Robert Marty, Kyle Sorlie Titlow, Nicholas Van De Walle
Arts & Sciences Articles
In the 19th and 20th centuries, African economies experienced a significant structural transformation from the slave trades to commercial agriculture. We analyze the long-run impact of this economic transition focusing on the dynamic effects of: shifting geographic fundamentals to favor agroclimatic suitability for cash crops; infrastructural investments to reduce trade costs; and external forward production linkages. Using agro-climatic suitability scores and historical data on the source location of more than 95 percent of all exports across 38 African states, we assess the consequences of these changes on economic reorganization across the continent. We find that colonial cash crop production had …
The Effect Of Subsidies On Small Exporting Sectors In Chile, Leah Damelin
The Effect Of Subsidies On Small Exporting Sectors In Chile, Leah Damelin
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This paper measures the impact of a widespread trade subsidy program on the exporting sectors in which Chile faces comparative disadvantages (i.e., small exporting sectors). More specifically, I analyze the effect of export subsidies on the changes in exports experienced by these sectors in Chile between 2002 and 2013. My regression analysis utilizes data on Chilean exports from Chile’s National Customs Service. It also uses information on the eligibility requirements for receiving the aforementioned subsidies — which are worth three percent of the value of an export — from the Chilean government. This information is provided by annual legal documents …
The Journey Of Unlearning: A Close Reading Of Civil War Pedagogy In Alabama And Virginia, Michaela Hill
The Journey Of Unlearning: A Close Reading Of Civil War Pedagogy In Alabama And Virginia, Michaela Hill
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This thesis is a close reading of Civil War pedagogy in Alabama and Virginia with special attention given to Black history during the Civil War era. Through an examination of Civil War history, it is evident that slavery was the main cause of the War. The development of the Lost Cause narrative, a reaction to Blacks gaining Civil Rights that aimed to prove the Confederate war effort was honorable, is still promoted in southern schools. Alabama and Virginia both provide state standards, outlines of the minimum required knowledge to be obtained on a given subject by the end of the …
The Role Of Homeownership In Taiwan's Low Fertility Story, William Anderson
The Role Of Homeownership In Taiwan's Low Fertility Story, William Anderson
Undergraduate Honors Theses
With one of the lowest fertility rates on record, Taiwan is at the forefront of the global lowest-low fertility phenomenon. Policymakers in Taiwan and researchers around the world have a considerable interest in the reasons driving Taiwan’s depressed fertility and possible ways to alleviate the associated economic concerns. Properties of the housing market represent one suggested factor that may be contributing to this trend. Using individual panel data from Taiwan’s Panel Study of Family Dynamics, I test the correlation between homeownership and fertility outcomes. I find that other variables, such as marriage, age, generation, and socioeconomic status, can explain much …
Cultivation Through Excavation: Performing Community And Partnership In The Historic First Baptist Church Project, Eleanor S. Renshaw
Cultivation Through Excavation: Performing Community And Partnership In The Historic First Baptist Church Project, Eleanor S. Renshaw
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This thesis explores the relationships and partnerships developing around the First Baptist Church -- Nassau Street Archaeology Project in Colonial Williamsburg. Exploring the defining of "descendant community" and the contributions of tourists through the lens of Erving Goffman's stages and participant frameworks, this project looks at the past, present, and future of this project.
Robert Brandom On Semantics And The Objectivity Of Conceptual Norms, Jiayu Wu
Robert Brandom On Semantics And The Objectivity Of Conceptual Norms, Jiayu Wu
Undergraduate Honors Theses
In arguing for an inferentialist understanding of conceptual contents, Robert Brandom claims that a fundamental feature of the norms that govern our concept-using practices is that they are objective. Brandom believes that the objective aspect of conceptual norms is grounded in the distinction between the normative status of a performance being a correct (or incorrect) application of a concept and the normative attitude of a performance being taken as a correct (or incorrect) application. In the first two sections of this thesis, I will offer an overview of Brandom’s inferential approach to semantics and his normative approach to pragmatics. In …
Showing Off And Going Out: China’S Vanity Project Phenomenon, Caroline Morin
Showing Off And Going Out: China’S Vanity Project Phenomenon, Caroline Morin
Undergraduate Honors Theses
In September 2018, Xi Jinping announced that BRI financing will not be spent on vanity projects. Despite and prior to this proclamation, using the AidData data set, I uncovered a vanity project phenomenon in Chinese development financing. Chinese financed vanity projects, or development projects that do not aid a country’s development needs, are present in 79 countries across the world, ranging from sports stadiums in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to community centers in the Pacific islands. In this thesis, I find that vanity projects are most likely to occur in fragile states with strong international political cooperation with …
The Tale Of Two Counties: A Case Study Analysis Of Sociological And Systemic Health Barriers In Powhatan And Galax County, Virginia, Rebecca Rogers
The Tale Of Two Counties: A Case Study Analysis Of Sociological And Systemic Health Barriers In Powhatan And Galax County, Virginia, Rebecca Rogers
Undergraduate Honors Theses
The year of 2020 will famously be known by most as the year “the world stopped working.” Unfortunately, the world had not been functioning sufficiently prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Utilizing 2019 as a pre-pandemic baseline, the not so evident discrepancies in healthcare systems were illuminated during the pandemic, not only between countries but also between states, cities, and even counties. My research, being inductive, aims to dissect the pathways that allow health inequities to exist alongside providing realistic solutions that could be implemented through health policy. To accomplish my research goal, I conducted a case study that compares the …
The Rails That Bind: America's Freedom Trains As Reflections Of Efforts To Form Cultural Consensus And Indicators Of The Weakness Of Cold War Memory, Daniel Speer
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This paper assesses why two projects with the same name, concept and intent of forming cultural consensus, the Freedom Trains, took such different forms between the postwar "consensus" (1947-1963) and detente (1963-1979) phases of the Cold War. It argues that organizers Attorney General Tom C. Clark (1947), Ross Rowland (1975), and their corporate backers articulated histories based on perceived common values of limited rights (1947), cultural pluralism (1975) and consumption (both) that attempted unity, but resulted in silences. The reception to each train, and the organizers' responses to those reactions, showed the limitations of a unifying consensus, but varied between …
The Apocalyptic Mode In Contemporary Environmental Art, Victoria Erisman
The Apocalyptic Mode In Contemporary Environmental Art, Victoria Erisman
Undergraduate Honors Theses
Apocalyptic themes make up a growing trend in contemporary Western environmental art, especially art concerned with climate change. From art that revives the apocalyptic sublime of the nineteenth century Romantic and Hudson River School movements to photojournalism of current end-of-days disasters, apocalyptic motifs and subject matter have become significant in visual responses to and depictions of present environmental crises. This thesis examines the apocalyptic mode in contemporary environmental art, arguing that the apocalyptic mode ultimately creates more problems instead of spurring solutions to environmental injustices. Through engagement with existing scholarship on the history and efficacy of apocalypticism and catastrophism, as …
Asking For Forgiveness: Negotiating The Creation Of Memory Through Public Memorialization, Alyssa Castronuovo
Asking For Forgiveness: Negotiating The Creation Of Memory Through Public Memorialization, Alyssa Castronuovo
Undergraduate Honors Theses
The practice of spatializing culture, or “examining space through theories of embodiment, discourse translocality, and effect,” localizes the global and separates hegemonic narratives of space from how it is actually utilized by the people who interact with it. Setha Low argues that this perspective is especially useful to the anthropologist committed to challenging the discipline’s historically eurocentric approach to studying culture. She writes that a spatial focus “[draws] on the strengths of studying people in situ, producing rich and nuanced sociospatial understandings.” This project began with an interest in theorists such as Edward Soja, Michel de Certeau, and Henri Lefebvre, …
Communism And The Politics Of Cultural Labeling: Patriotism And Piety In American Life, Mark Smith
Communism And The Politics Of Cultural Labeling: Patriotism And Piety In American Life, Mark Smith
Undergraduate Honors Theses
The goal of this paper is to analyze the history of Marxism and its emergent opponents in American political, religious, and cultural spheres. Examining Karl Marx and his influences reveals that, contrary to popular belief, Marxist thought has deep roots in ancient philosophy and literature. Marx drew upon these influences to highlight industrial and economic problems and propose a dialectically-based prescription for these ailments that sought to eradicate class divides and abolish private property. Marx’s reception in the United States came long after his death and was coupled with the rise of the Soviet Union and the end of World …
The Bodies Politic: Sex, History, And The Promise Of A Black Queer America, Jonathan Newby
The Bodies Politic: Sex, History, And The Promise Of A Black Queer America, Jonathan Newby
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This essay examines and critiques the ways in which Black, Queer, and Black Queer people's culture, politics, and lived experiences are experienced in the United States, historically and in the present day. The Bodies Politics calls for American history and culture to be reoriented to acknowledge and center the contributions of Black Queer people to the nation.
Silver, Ships And Soil: Gift-Giving In Medieval Icelandic Sagas, Emma Eubank
Silver, Ships And Soil: Gift-Giving In Medieval Icelandic Sagas, Emma Eubank
Undergraduate Honors Theses
Through applying anthropological theory to gift exchange in medieval Icelandic sagas, we can uncover a wealth of information about the construction and reinforcement of gender, power, and value. This study incorporates Mauss, Sahlins, and Graeber alongside other theorists to analyze how the narrators of Egil's Saga, The Saga of Grettir the Strong, and Gisli Sursson's Saga perceived a past Iceland.
“A Sea Of White Faces”: How Courtroom Portraits Undermine Justice In Virginia, Lauren Miller
“A Sea Of White Faces”: How Courtroom Portraits Undermine Justice In Virginia, Lauren Miller
Undergraduate Honors Theses
The presence of Confederate symbols and other reminders of white institutional power in courtrooms introduces a risk that impermissible factors such as implicit bias, conscious prejudice, and sympathy for white supremacy will harm litigants’ rights. I compiled data for 210 of 328 courts (64%) in the Commonwealth and found that there are more than 617 portraits on display in Virginia courtrooms. At least 357 portraits depict white men, six depict Black men, fifteen depict white women, and twenty-eight depict people who served in the Confederacy, either in the government or the Confederate States Army (CSA). At least fourteen different courts …
Intergroup Perceptions Of Discrimination, Neelamberi Klein
Intergroup Perceptions Of Discrimination, Neelamberi Klein
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
Efforts to effectively combat discrimination require an understanding of how groups in power think about those experiencing prejudice and discrimination. To study how White individuals think about the discrimination faced by different racial groups (Non-Hispanic White, Black, Asian, Middle Eastern, Native and Indigenous, Latinx and Hispanic, and Mixed-Race men and women), 304 White participants completed an edited version of the Everyday Discrimination Scale and the Hypervigilance scale for each of these 14 groups to assess participants’ perceptions that these targets experience discrimination. Further, explicit attitudes towards each group were assessed with feelings thermometers. Results of our within subjects ANOVAs found …
Seeing Community Values And Resistance In The Grave: Burial Practices At Terre Haute African Cemetery, Annabelle Julia Lewis
Seeing Community Values And Resistance In The Grave: Burial Practices At Terre Haute African Cemetery, Annabelle Julia Lewis
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
This thesis examines a group of 114 burials found within the Terre Haute African Cemetery in Midlothian, Virginia, using gender and resistance as frameworks through which to understand the relationships that members of the historically Black Huguenot Spring community had with the American funeral industry as it developed parallel to the cemetery’s use history from roughly 1800 to 1934. The movement for the beautification of death and increasing emphasis on material goods for funerary commemoration beginning in the nineteenth century did not occur in a vacuum; this work explores the ways in which Huguenot Springs community members chose to participate …
Media Coverage Of Muslims: Introduction And Overview, Erik Bleich, A. Maurits Van Der Veen
Media Coverage Of Muslims: Introduction And Overview, Erik Bleich, A. Maurits Van Der Veen
Arts & Sciences Book Chapters
Existing research largely concurs that coverage of Muslims is negative. Yet this masks how much remains unknown. In particular, there has been no clear or consistent way to gauge precisely how much negativity is present in stories about Muslims. This chapter introduces a systematic way to assess the tone of articles and discusses how this allows for answers to six important questions about coverage of Muslims. The chapter also outlines the structure of the book and summarizes the key findings. In particular, it argues that coverage of Muslims is strikingly negative by every comparative measure examined.
White Animals: Racializing Sheep And Beavers In The Argentinian Tierra Del Fuego, Mara Dicenta
White Animals: Racializing Sheep And Beavers In The Argentinian Tierra Del Fuego, Mara Dicenta
Arts & Sciences Articles
In the summer of 1946, a landowning bourgeoisie organized the II Livestock Exhibition of Tierra del Fuego, and the Argentinian Navy filmed the introduction of twenty Canadian beavers in the region. Both events echoed power disputes between a military government seeking to nationalize lands and capitals and the European landowners whose privileges were threatened. The events show that landowners and state officers negotiated their interests by articulating Argentina’s white exceptionalism with animals and against racialized others. Interrogating the interspecies articulation of whiteness in Tierra del Fuego during the 1940s, I examine how sheep and beavers helped secure white privilege through …