Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Libraries As Community: Investigating Social Infrastructure And Community Cohesion, Mora N. Rehm

Kentucky Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Libraries are a form of public infrastructure that guide, protect, and preserve the spirit of community. Established as the guarantor of a peaceful, well-informed society, this research evaluates the library's methods and degree of influence over citizens' feelings of community alongside other social phenomena; looking both within and without existing systems, the researcher posits a model of critical librarianship, acknowledging that current practices reinforce existing structures of inequity and privilege. A methodological investigation is then made into the link between library and community through use of secondary data analysis, concluding that strong library systems positively associate with community cohesion on …

Predictors Of College Student Support Toward Colin Kaepernick’S National Anthem Protests, Brooke Coursen, Nicole Peiffer, Sakira Coleman, Philip Lucius

VA Engage Journal

Racial discrimination and inequality have perpetuated within the U.S. since its inception. In 2016, Colin Kaepernick initiated the national anthem protests to oppose the oppression of people of color in America. This study was developed in 2018 to identify social determinants of health underlying discriminatory beliefs and behaviors. The objective was to investigate the impacts of college students’ race, gender, political ideology, socio-economic status [SES], NFL interest, patriotism, and general protest support on support for the national anthem protests. We administered paper-and-pencil surveys across locations on the James Madison University campus using a convenience sample. There were 408 participants included, …

Book Review: Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race, Laura M. Stanton, Leo M. Taylor, Jenny M. Lobb, Pat Holmes, Steve Brady, Imani Scruggs

Journal of Youth Development

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? and Other Conversations About Race is a 2017 revised and updated edition to Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum’s original book written in 1997. The book explores decades of research on the psychology of racism, with an emphasis on the psychology of racial identity in Black, White, and other ethnic and cultural identities. The author helps readers gain a better understanding of historic and modern racism and the implications it has on individuals today. The book also contains important messages for people who work with diverse groups of adults and particularly …

Design Is A Social Process: A Survey On Inclusive Practice, Gabriel De Souza Silva

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This inquiry pivots the discussion on design practice toward process, and seeks to elucidate how inclusivity is achieved in it, and by what means it is maintained. The design process is interrogated through a series of case studies on contemporary practitioners that either describe themselves or are recognized by the wider design community as inclusive of gender, race, sexual orientation, ability level, and are sensitive to history of place. The case studies are selected to demonstrate a diversity of project types, management structures, and design tools, and they comprise the practices of LA Más, Assemble, and Bryony Roberts. The product …

Intergroup Dialogue: Affecting Real Change, Lauryn Hulett

Honors Projects

Intergroup Dialogue (IGD) is a course adapted from The University of Michigan. In this Honors Project, a systematic literature review is done from eleven sources in hopes to theorize best practices and areas of improvement amongst applications of Intergroup Dialogue.

Equity + Catalyst Framework Guide, Naomi M. Silas

Culminating Experience Projects

There has been a shift in society, in light of Covid-19 and the global pandemic, more people have begun to recognize the structural and institutional injustices that exist in this country. Social innovation allows collaboration between people from different sectors, disciplines, industries, and backgrounds; in order to create sustainable change to complex social issues. Design thinking is an iterative process used in business to create innovation and products; it’s also used for social impact.

The goal of the Equity + Catalyst Framework is to bridge concepts that include design thinking, and embodiment, as well as lived experiences and community care …

Social Justice And The Us Food System: A Critical Course On The Human Dimensions Of Food, Ali Brooks

Food Systems Master's Project Reports

Our world is made up of overlapping political, environmental, and economic spheres that engender social injustice and inequality. Though separate societal issues can seem divergent and unconnected, they are all linked together by one universal necessity: food. Because everyone eats, everyone is connected to—and dependent on—food and the systems that govern it. However, the impacts of our industrial food system are not felt equally among people who hold different positions of power within it.

Today’s industrial food complex operates on the capitalist principle of profit accumulation through exploitation, commodification, and extraction. This set of relations is not defined by scale …

Redefining “Comprehensive” Sexual Education: A Pedagogy Of Empowerment And Social Justice For K-12 Sex Education, Nina June Lee

Community Engagement Student Work

In the United States currently, there are significant gaps in sex education. Youth in the United States today are identifying more diversely in the past and many are not receiving the comprehensive sex education they deserve, creating negative sexual and social outcomes. Through examining the legacy of religiosity, white supremacy, power, and privilege in the United States, one can pinpoint how historical legacies still influence the sex education youth receive today. In conversations with research and theory, a solution to this issue may lie in creating applicable tools that allow educators to better accommodate the needs of youth they are …

Sticky Situations: Understanding The Law And Life, Krystal Banks

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

Law and life go hand in hand. Understanding the law and how it connects to life can be an effective tool in teaching youth and adults the value of making good decisions when it comes to life and the law. Sticky Situations places real-world situations in the context of learning how to apply the law and effectively respond to life's sticky situations.

The Imperative For Climate Action At Portland State University, Stephen Percy

Office of the President Publications and Presentations

Portland State University President Stephen Percy announces the formation of the Climate Change Initiative.

Adult Education For Japanese Immigrant Community: Social Bonding To Social Bridging, Naomi Nakamura

Community Engagement Student Work

Many Japanese who have been living in the U.S. for more than decades identify themselves as Japanese, not U.S. citizens. This so called transnational identity has an impact on how they assimilate or integrate to American social life. The purpose of this project is to explore the better learning environment and the effects of education for Japanese adult immigrants who may not actively participate in local communities. A workshop was held with Japanese residents in the Boston area to explore microaggressions and how people can think about their engagement with their communities. Workshop evaluation findings suggested that there is a …

Environmental Social Justice Issues And Health Risks In Younger Kids From Vulnerable Communities In The United States: Educating Youth Of Immigrant Communities To Address Social Justice Issues, Shilpa J. Kulkarni

Community Engagement Student Work

This project was conducted to examine the environmental social justice issues in the United States and how they are linked to health issues in younger children in low-income communities and people of color through the lenses of multiple theoretical frameworks. The workshop was focused on educating youth from other communities of people of color, providing them resources so that while bridging the cultural gaps they will become allies. The targeted audience was Asian-Indian youth of Maharashtrian communities across the country. The youth of mixed age group and first and second generations of immigrants from those communities participated in the workshop. …

Youth Involvement In Street Gangs: Obstacles Of Leaving Street Gangs, Edvaldo Do Rosario Lopes Ferreira

Community Engagement Student Work

Even though there seems to be a good number of youth programs that focus on youth street gang prevention, there is a shortage of programs that offer opportunities so youth can leave street gangs and promote a street gang-free lifestyle (Young & Gonzalez, 2013). The workshop, Obstacles of Leaving Street Gangs, intended to engage local community residents and organizations who do youth programming in a meaningful discussion about street gangs and the obstacles to leave and also share personal stories of people who have successfully left street gangs. This workshop also meant to share resources that help with these obstacles. …

“You’Re Almost In This Place That Doesn’T Exist”: The Impact Of College In Prison As Understood By Formerly Incarcerated Students From The Northeastern United States, Hilary Binda, Jill D. Weinberg, Nora Maetzener, Carolyn Rubin

Journal of Prison Education and Reentry (2014-2023)

This qualitative study examines the immediate and lasting impact of liberal arts higher education in prison from the perspective of former college-in-prison students from the Northeastern United States. Findings obtained through semi-structured interviews with formerly incarcerated people are presented in the following three areas: self-confidence and agency, interpersonal relationships, and capacity for civic leadership. This study further examines former students’ reflections on the relationship between education and human transformation and begins to benchmark college programming with attention to the potential for such transformation. The authors identify four characteristics critical to a program’s success: academic rigor, the professor's respect for students, …

Centering Equity In Oregon’S 100 Year Water Vision: A Student-Led Policy Paper Prepared By The Oregon Water Stories Team At Portland State University, Clare T. Mcclellan, Sadie Boyers, Victoria Cali De Leon, Tony Cole, Laura Cowley-Martinson, Shersten Finley, Dustin Lanker, Julia Seydel, Aakash Nath Upraity, Janet Cowal, Melissa Haeffner

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of this report is to provide evidence for the need to further intentionally incorporate equity into Oregon’s 100 Year Water Vision. Four case studies contextualize this need and highlight the variety of water issues throughout the state, supported by linguistic analyses of local newspapers. As Oregon policy-makers are responsible for ensuring working water systems for all Oregonians, we also suggest implementable criteria for the evaluation of equity in water issues and decision-making. This student-led and interdisciplinary report comes from the Haeffner-Cowal Oregon Water Stories research lab at Portland State University.

It’S Not All About Climbing Rocks: Reorienting Outdoor Educators Toward Social Justice, Sarah J. Clement

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

The field of outdoor adventure education was born in the Western world in the twentieth century because of several specific factors. These factors include, but are not limited to: changing Euro-American attitudes toward wilderness, Kurt Hahn’s character education schools and the pervasiveness of white supremacy. Today, outdoor adventure education is widely popular among the white middle class. According to current instructors in the field, outdoor education is for the purpose of individual development, learning in a wilderness setting and teaching students how to be environmental stewards for wild places. These purposes result from underlying, sometimes false, assumptions about the nature …

Voces Del Canal: Building Safe Communities Through Strong Partnerships In The Canal, Julia Van Der Ryn, Jennifer Lucko, Tom Wilson, Omar Carrera, Miho Kim, Reem Assil, Saba Waheed, Jennifer Lee, Diego Garcia, Bill Hogan

Jennifer Lucko

The Canal, a vibrant community of Latino immigrant families, is rich in diversity and cultural traditions, strong family networks, and a determination towards economic selfsufficiency. Latino immigrants in Marin County are heavily concentrated in the Canal and have the highest labor force participation rates in the County.i Despite being a vital part of Marin’s social, economic, and cultural society, Canal residents continue to struggle to meet basic necessities for their families.

To this end, a coalition of resident leaders from the community came together to form Voces del Canal to lead an unprecedented community-driven research project. Residents wanted to affirm …

Numeracy And Social Justice: A Wide, Deep, And Longstanding Intersection, Kira Hamman, Victor Piercey, Samuel L. Tunstall

Numeracy

We discuss the connection between the numeracy and social justice movements both in historical context and in its modern incarnation. The intersection between numeracy and social justice encompasses a wide variety of disciplines and quantitative topics, but within that variety there are important commonalities. We examine the importance of sound quantitative measures for understanding social issues and the necessity of interdisciplinary collaboration in this work. Particular reference is made to the papers in the first part of the Numeracy special collection on social justice, which appear in this issue.

Combating Food Waste: Dumpster Diving As A Form Of Consumer Resistance, Brock J. Vaughan

Bridges: An Undergraduate Journal of Contemporary Connections

This paper explores North America’s food waste issue associated with our current industrial globalized food system. Through a sociocultural lens, this essay examines the new social movement of dumpster diving among food waste activists and ‘freegans’ in urban areas. Millions of people are currently unaware as to where their next meal will come from, yet Western households and supermarkets waste massive amounts of edible food. Dumpster divers do not just encourage us to be mindful of the choices we make with respect to food waste; they seek to challenge pre-existing capitalist structures and conventional ways of thinking. Analyzing the counterculture …

A Change Is Gonna Come: Renewing Information Worker's Commitment To Social Justice, Elisa Slater Acosta, Aisha Conner-Gaten, Javier Garibay, Rhonda Rhosen, Desirae Zingarelli-Sweet

Aisha Conner-Gaten

Crisis And Reorganization In Urban Dynamics: The Barcelona, Spain, Case Study, Rafael De Balanzó Joue, Nuria Rodriguez-Planas

Publications and Research

We use adaptive cycle theory to improve the understanding of cycles of urban change in the city of Barcelona, Spain, from 1953 to 2016. More specifically, we explore the vulnerabilities and windows of opportunity these cycles of change introduced in the release (Ω) and reorganization (α) phases. In the two recurring cycles of urban change analyzed (before and after 1979), we observe two complementary loops. During the front loop, financial and natural resources are efficiently exploited by homogenous dominant groups (private developers, the bourgeoisie, politicians, technocrats) with the objective of promoting capital accumulation based on private (or private-public partnership) investments. …

Critical Social Justice Theory In Action: A Practitioner Inquiry Into The Service-Learning Capstone Experience, Julie A. Jaynes

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Service-learning pedagogy can be found in K-12 schools and higher education classrooms across the country. Those programs and courses exist on a complex spectrum from charity to social justice; research presented here documents my efforts as a service-learning teacher to better align the program’s senior capstone class to the teachings from critical social justice theory. I used a practitioner inquiry approach to address the problem of an epistemology in the research process that recreated systems of oppression by excluding the knowledge and voices of the minoritized groups who are impacted by the issues being researched. My inquiry centers my students’ …

#Nodapl: Social Media, Empowerment, And Civic Participation At Standing Rock, Hayley Johnson

Faculty Publications

The struggle for environmental and social justice within American Indian communities is one that has been ongoing since the beginning of United States history, but the main catalyst to effect change and to promote and disperse the American Indian narrative has emerged through the power of social media in today's hyperconnected society. This article examines the power of social media to effect change, as well as a hyperconnected society's ability to empower historically disadvantaged groups that have often been misrepresented within traditional media outlets. The historic movement occurring at Standing Rock, North Dakota, and the #NoDAPL protests illustrates the capacity …

Animal Rights Is A Social Justice Issue, Robert C. Jones

Robert C. Jones, PhD

The literature on social justice, and social justice movements themselves, routinely ignore nonhuman animals as legitimate subjects of social justice. Yet, as with other social justice movements, the contemporary animal liberation movement has as its focus the elimination of institutional and systemic domination and oppression. In this paper, I explicate the philosophical and theoretical foundations of the contemporary animal rights movement, and situate it within the framework of social justice. I argue that those committed to social justice – to minimizing violence, exploitation, domination, objectification, and oppression – are equally obligated to consider the interests of all sentient beings, not …

Experiences Of Former Participants In Teen Advocates For Sexual Health (Tash), Celeste Nicholas

Dissertations

This qualitative study explores the experiences of former participants in a Planned Parenthood youth development and sex education program, Teen Advocates for Sexual Health (TASH). Phenomenologically-based interviews centered the question, “What did it mean to participate in TASH?” Chapter 1 introduces the study context and synthesizes foundational literature from the fields of sex education, public health, critical pedagogy, civic engagement, youth development, and youth organizing. Chapters 2-4 each contain complete manuscripts, representing three complementary analytic approaches to a common data set and inviting multiple audiences. Chapter 2 addresses sex educators in describing TASH’s “rights-based” sex education model. Research questions included: …

I Am Me, Vanessa C. Martinez

SURGE

You say my accent is interesting It shows I’m not you I don’t understand your words even though I grew up knowing I am me and you are you I guess what I’m saying is well, what do you mean? When you say that my accent is interesting Are you trying to get to know me or assign me an identity? Is the nopal que tengo en la frente a symbol too ambiguous to fully convince you? When you’re unsure, do my words comfort you? Because they are connected to the deserts and the cacti that are linked to the …

Social Justice And The Future Of Higher Education Kinesiology, Brian Culp

Faculty and Research Publications

This article presents a rationale for the infusion of social justice into kinesiology programs for the purpose of reducing inequities in society. Specifically, the current climate for social justice is considered and discussed using examples from an university-inspired service-learning initiative, law, and politics. Of note are the following areas of discussion: (a) differentiation between social diversity and social justice, (b) public pedagogy as a means by which to inspire service action, (c) the creation of climates for speech and application of social justice, (d) modeling and socialization for equity, and (e) the neoliberal threat to inclusiveness. The article concludes with …

Forging Political Will From A Shared Vision: A Critical Social Justice Agenda Against Neoliberalism And Other Systems Of Domination, Renato M. Liboro

Psychology Faculty Research

Due to pervasive inequalities and inequities in society, many people have a difficult time envisaging a just society, let alone how to go about actualizing such an aspiration. A critical reflection on the concept of a just society and the role that community psychologists and other advocates can play in upholding a critical social justice agenda in their research and civic engagement, particularly against neoliberalism and other systems of domination, is discussed. As part of a proffered framework, four tasks are proposed to fulfil the role: (1) raising public critical consciousness, (2) convincing people of the possibility of change, (3) …

We Want To Create Our Own History: Youth Power And Leadership In The Boston Youth Justice Movement 2005-2008, Mark Warren, Perri Leviss, Sandeep Jani

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

This collaborative research project aims to co-create new knowledge on the youth justice movement in Boston that will be useful to partner organizations in advancing their goal of building a stronger movement as well as to contribute to academic and broader public understanding of youth justice.

Prophetic Imagination: Confronting The New Jim Crow & Income Inequality In America, Cornel West

Engaging Pedagogies in Catholic Higher Education (EPiCHE)

On October 11, 2014, Cornel West delivered the keynote address to nearly 600 students at the regional Leadership & Social Justice Conference, hosted at Saint Mary’s College of California. The conference occurred two days before West was arrested in Ferguson, Missouri, during a demonstration to protest the killing of young Black men by White police officers, as in the case of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson. Speaking of the students, West said, "I would like to see these precious young people commit themselves to lives of integrity, honesty and decency, where they are vigilant against all forms of evil—White supremacists, …