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Political Science

Rhode Island College

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Refusing To Be Silent: A Case Study Of Act Up & The Dual Role Of Anger In Social Movements, Juliet Aurora Antonio Sep 2022

Refusing To Be Silent: A Case Study Of Act Up & The Dual Role Of Anger In Social Movements, Juliet Aurora Antonio

Honors Projects

The central question for my thesis is: How much can activism be fueled by anger, and how can that anger lead to a movement destruction? Anger is an effective catalyst for a movement; However, if a movement fails to change its goals to adapt to a shifting political climate, and if activists begin to turn their anger on each other, then the movement will decline and collective action will cease. I argue that those emotions led to ACT UP demise as the organization fractured after its controversial responses to routine opposition and failure to adapt to a changing political context. …


Fair Trade: The Successes And Failures As Seen Through The Sustainable Development Goals, P. Alison Macbeth Apr 2021

Fair Trade: The Successes And Failures As Seen Through The Sustainable Development Goals, P. Alison Macbeth

Honors Projects

In this paper I seek to understand fair trade as a social movement and the relationship of fair trade to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals created by the United Nations. I look at the history of the fair trade movement in the context of alternative trade organizations and the sustainability movement during the precipitous rise and stature of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the 1990s. I analyze the growth and scalability of fair trade in the U.S. since 2015 through three of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 1: Ending Poverty; SDG 5: Gender Equality; and SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and …


A Pilot Study Of Airborne Hazards And Other Toxic Exposures In Iraq War Veterans, Chelsey Poisson, Sheri Boucher, Domenique Selby, Sylvia P. Ross, Charulata Jindal, Jimmy T. Efird, Pollie Bith-Melander Dec 2018

A Pilot Study Of Airborne Hazards And Other Toxic Exposures In Iraq War Veterans, Chelsey Poisson, Sheri Boucher, Domenique Selby, Sylvia P. Ross, Charulata Jindal, Jimmy T. Efird, Pollie Bith-Melander

Honors Projects

During their deployment to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) , many Veterans were exposed to a wide array of toxic substances and psychologic stressors, most notably airborne/ environmental pollutants from open burn pits. Service members do not deploy whilst unhealthy, but often they return with a multitude of acute and chronic symptoms, some of which only begin to manifest years after their deployment. Our findings, while preliminary in nature, suggest that Iraq War Veterans who participated in our survey reported a decrease in overall physical fitness and increased respiratory clinical symptoms compared with pre-deployment periods. The objective …


Investigating The Social Support For Three Social-Political Movements: A Terror Management Theory Perspective, Esther Quiroz Santos Apr 2018

Investigating The Social Support For Three Social-Political Movements: A Terror Management Theory Perspective, Esther Quiroz Santos

Honors Projects

Objective: This study investigated the social support for the Black, Blue, and All Lives Matter movements from the perspective of terror management theory (Greenberg et.al., 1986; TMT). Method: Participants completed a set of questionnaires about death, pain, self-esteem, self-consciousness, justice sensitivity and their opinions towards social issues currently happening in the nation. The order of questionnaire differed, as to prime participants with death (the experimental condition) or pain (the control condition) as their first questionnaire. Results: There was support for the Black Lives Matter movement regardless of priming condition. Additionally, post-hoc analysis revealed a negative correlation between participant’s death anxiety …


Gatekeeper Persuasion And Issue Adoption: Amnesty International And The Transnational Lgbtq Network, Robyn Linde Jan 2018

Gatekeeper Persuasion And Issue Adoption: Amnesty International And The Transnational Lgbtq Network, Robyn Linde

Faculty Publications

Network theory is a valuable tool for understanding how transnational human rights advocacy emerges and develops; how norms become salient; and how nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) gain prominence within networks. This article evaluates political network theory through the case study of the transnational lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) advocacy network. Through interviews with key figures at human rights and LGBTQ NGOs, I suggest that the transnational LGBTQ network emerged through contestation with the human rights gatekeeper, Amnesty International, and its US section, AIUSA. This process of contestation would produce a specific type of gatekeeper activism that would become a …


Racial Construction And Hierarchical Privilege In The Dominican Republic, Nicauris Heredia Jan 2017

Racial Construction And Hierarchical Privilege In The Dominican Republic, Nicauris Heredia

Honors Projects

The first step to solving any problem is admitting you have one. The Dominican government is in denial of a problem that is clearly noticeable to others. The government claims that there is no racial discrimination in the country and that anything said by the international community asserting the opposite is just a conspiracy against the State. Regardless of the Dominican Republic’s position, it is clear that immigration policies in the Dominican Republic are a source of racialization. Immigration policy was the vehicle the government used to drive the national processes of racialization, the construction of racial identities, and the …


Amidst The Varieties Of Populism: The Case Of The Recurrent Pattern Of Nativism And Authoritarian Populism In The Politics Of U.S. Immigration Policy, Michelle C. Arias Santabay Jan 2017

Amidst The Varieties Of Populism: The Case Of The Recurrent Pattern Of Nativism And Authoritarian Populism In The Politics Of U.S. Immigration Policy, Michelle C. Arias Santabay

Honors Projects

This project started as a comparison of varieties of populism emergent in the past two decades, which grew into discerning how authoritarian populism is rooted in nativism as a recurrent concept throughout immigration policy in the U.S. This is demonstrated historically by reviewing the different types of nativist movements in different epochs of controversial immigration policy. The project’s methodology derives from the usage of political sociology conceptualizing populism as a discursive register or rhetorical style as argued by Ernesto Laclau (2005; 2011) or as a structure of feeling (as argued by Raymond Williams 1977). Therefore, populism is seen as a …


On The Micropolitics And Edges Of Survival In A Technocapital Sacrifice Zone, Peter C. Little Nov 2016

On The Micropolitics And Edges Of Survival In A Technocapital Sacrifice Zone, Peter C. Little

Faculty Publications

This article explores the industrial sacrifice zone of Endicott, New York, which in 1924 became the birthplace of International Business Machines Corporation and quickly established itself as an industrial launching pad for the production and innovation of modern computing technologies. Drawing on ethnographic research and taking a micropolitical ecology approach, I consider industrial decay and community corrosion key agents for understanding the sedimentary record of neoliberal “technocapitalism” [Suarez-Villa, Luis. 2009. Technocapitalism: A Critical Perspective on Technological Innovation and Corporatism. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press]. In particular, I explore here how the flip-side of local narratives of deindustrialization and economic …


Sustainable Science And Education In The Neoliberal Ecoprison, Peter C. Little Jan 2015

Sustainable Science And Education In The Neoliberal Ecoprison, Peter C. Little

Faculty Publications

As part of the general ‘greening’ of prisons in the last decade of neoliberalization and the formation of institutionalized programs to provide science and environmental education opportunities for the incarcerated, the Sustainability in Prisons Project (SPP), a partnership between Evergreen State College and the Washington State Department of Corrections, has become the most vibrant partnership in the US to mesh the cultures and institutions of environmental science and corrections. Drawing attention to the SPP’s anchoring mission, which is ‘to bring science and nature into prisons,’ this article looks at environmental science education in the contemporary prison in light of recent …


Congress, Interest Groups, And The Strategic Use Of Judicial Review, Gary S. Pascoa Apr 2014

Congress, Interest Groups, And The Strategic Use Of Judicial Review, Gary S. Pascoa

Honors Projects

Prior research suggests that political actors use judicial review for politically strategic purposes in order to achieve policy goals. Depending upon institutional considerations, members of Congress and interest groups will either seek to allow or preclude judicial review of agency actions. This study seeks to test these claims using the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 and focuses on the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The findings provide some support for the claims, but show less than expected concern over judicial review, particularly among interest groups. The study then provides four explanations for these findings.


Thoroughly Under The Skin, Patrick Pride Apr 2014

Thoroughly Under The Skin, Patrick Pride

Honors Projects

This honors project examines the connections between literature and political theory. Specifically I will follow the journey of the British literary critic Raymond Williams. Williams had a very interesting life. He grew up in the Black Mountains of Wales as the son of a railroad worker: a life he memorialized in his autobiographical novel Border Country (1960). In his obituary of Williams in The New Statesman in 1988, Stuart Hall reminds us how Williams’s deep sense of attachment to the Welsh working class border community of inhabited shared commitments in which he grew up. This community of shared commitments was …


"How Did They Do It? A Structural Analysis Of Portuguese American Political Incorporation In Rhode Island (1937-2012).", Dulce Soares Scott, Marie R. Fraley Jan 2014

"How Did They Do It? A Structural Analysis Of Portuguese American Political Incorporation In Rhode Island (1937-2012).", Dulce Soares Scott, Marie R. Fraley

Elected and Appointed Officials Project

No abstract provided.


Addressing The "Go Green" Debate: Initiatives That Encourage Small Green Behaviors And Their Political Spillover Effects, Katherine Lacasse Jan 2013

Addressing The "Go Green" Debate: Initiatives That Encourage Small Green Behaviors And Their Political Spillover Effects, Katherine Lacasse

Faculty Publications

While there are numerous supporters of initiatives that promote small green behaviors, there are also critics who debate the effectiveness of these actions in addressing global climate change. The critics claim that people often choose to perform easy green behaviors to rationalize their inaction in other ways, which is detrimental to garnering support for political action. The supporters emphasize the cumulative effects of small green behaviors, including the likelihood of these actions spilling over into further green behaviors as well as greater political concern about climate change. The relationship between green behaviors and political attitudes should be considered more closely, …


Environmental Justice Discomfort And Disconnect In Ibm's Tainted Birthplace: A Micropolitical Ecology Perspective, Peter C. Little Aug 2012

Environmental Justice Discomfort And Disconnect In Ibm's Tainted Birthplace: A Micropolitical Ecology Perspective, Peter C. Little

Faculty Publications

The ‘‘toxic time bomb’’ of the so-called ‘‘green’’ high-tech industry is no longer a secret. Today, ‘‘[h]igh-tech pollution is a fact of life wherever the industry has operated for any length of time, from Malaysia to Massachusetts’’ (Siegel and Markoff 1985, 163), and so is resistance to high-tech toxic disaster. Since at least the late 1970s, electronics workers, academics, and environmental justice and labor rights activists have ‘‘challenged the chip’’ industry (Smith, Sonnenfeld, and Pellow 2006; see also Pellow and Sun-Hee Park 2003). Their struggle exposed not only the toxic externalities of microelectronic modernization, but also the emergence of redgreen …


The War Next Door: Peace Journalism In Us Local And Distant Newspapers' Coverage Of Mexico, Katherine Lacasse, Larissa Forster Jan 2012

The War Next Door: Peace Journalism In Us Local And Distant Newspapers' Coverage Of Mexico, Katherine Lacasse, Larissa Forster

Faculty Publications

This study explores the relationship between proximity to a conflict and the tendency to use peace journalism rather than war journalism modes of reporting. In the context of the current drug war occurring in Mexico, articles from both local, border region US newspapers and from distant US newspapers were coded according to their usage of war or peace journalism frames. Analyses revealed that local newspapers utilized more peace journalism frames overall, and presented a less pessimistic and negative view of the conflict and parties. Distant newspapers, however, were more likely to showcase complexity of the conflict and many parties and …


Discourse And Argument In Instituting The Governance Of Social Law, Richard R. Weiner Mar 2011

Discourse And Argument In Instituting The Governance Of Social Law, Richard R. Weiner

Faculty Publications

Social Rights were initially understood as the rights of a pluralism of instituted associations; and transformed to the rights of distributive justice associated with the politics of access to welfare state corporatism. More recently, they have been understood as the rights of multicultural difference; and now as the rights to complexity (Zolo), and rights to consideration of polycontextural effect vis-a-vis transnational corporations (Teubner). Social rights are no longer subject positions versus political bodies, but also against social institutions, in particular, vis-a-vis centers of economic power.


From Rapists To Superpredators: What The Practice Of Capital Punishment Says About Race, Rights And The American Child, Robyn Linde Mar 2011

From Rapists To Superpredators: What The Practice Of Capital Punishment Says About Race, Rights And The American Child, Robyn Linde

Faculty Publications

At the turn of the 20th century, the United States was widely considered to be a world leader in matters of child protection and welfare, a reputation lost by the century’s end. This paper suggests that the United States’ loss of international esteem concerning child welfare was directly related to its practice of executing juvenile offenders. The paper analyzes why the United States continued to carry out the juvenile death penalty after the establishment of juvenile courts and other protections for child criminals. Two factors allowed the United States to continue the juvenile death penalty after most states in …


Trauma And The Limits Of Redemptive Critique, Richard R. Weiner, Karl P. Benziger Jan 2011

Trauma And The Limits Of Redemptive Critique, Richard R. Weiner, Karl P. Benziger

Faculty Publications

The authors continue to test the limits of Emile Durkheim/Maurice Halbwachs approach to collective identity in the experiences of trauma, shame, and yearning related to the ill-fated Hungarian Revolution. In a more poststructuralist vein the authors move from a focus on piacular subjectivity to one of baroque subjectivity, especially in understanding the October 2006 fiftieth anniversary commemorations of the Revolution in Budapest. Specifically, what indexical undercurrents of disposition persist and can not be ignored in attempts at redemptive critique, as well as in colonized nostalgia and the re-enactment of pathos. To what extent do the commemorations of the 1956 Revolution …


Les Forms Changeants Des Contrats Dans Une Societé Aux Résaux Transnationaux, Richard R. Weiner Jan 2011

Les Forms Changeants Des Contrats Dans Une Societé Aux Résaux Transnationaux, Richard R. Weiner

Faculty Publications

Alors qu’au nouveau millénaire on soulignait les « règles de collision » au sein des gouvernances globale et corporative, les crises économiques qui émergeas en 2008, ont déplacé l’accent sur l’échec des pratiques régulatrices. Les crises actuelles mettent au défi non seulement l’hégémonie néo-libérale mais aussi le modèle étatique de coordination du New deal/grande société, étant donné que nous avons passé de la société des individus à la société des organisations. Nous vivons présentement, dans une société au réseau transnational de pratiques de gouvernances corporative et contractuelle. Cette société de réseaux ne peut désormais être clairement associée aux conceptions traditionnelles …


The Changing Forms Of Contracting In A Society Of Transnational Networks, Richard R. Weiner Jan 2011

The Changing Forms Of Contracting In A Society Of Transnational Networks, Richard R. Weiner

Faculty Publications

Whereas the new millennium brought with it a focus on collision rules within global governance and corporate governance, the economic crises emerging out of 2008 turned the focus to the failure of regulatory practices. The current crises challenge not only a neoliberal hegemony but the New Deal/Great Society coordinating state model as well; as we have moved not only beyond a society of individuals to a society of organizations. We live now in a society of transnational network contracting and corporate governance practices. This society of networks can no longer be clearly associated with traditional conceptions of state, market or …


Complementary Institutions And Reflexive Governance In Autonomous Social Law, Richard R. Weiner Jan 2008

Complementary Institutions And Reflexive Governance In Autonomous Social Law, Richard R. Weiner

Faculty Publications

We approach institutions as stabilizing structures with consequences of functional incorporateness. Yet we also imagine, assert and enact claims and warrants as institutionalizable practices. There are functional supports. And there are the warranted claims of categorical normativity. Normativity in itself can be understood in terms of compliance with or acquiescence in legitimating structures. Yet normativity itself can be understood as a solidarism we intersubjectively co-constitute. The challenge in political thought has been dealing with the disincorporateness associated with modernity, specifically how a new order and dialogue may be of heterogeneous social values. A new way of ordering socioeconomic relationships of …


Ideas, Constructivism, And Complentarity In Insititutionalism, Richard R. Weiner Aug 2007

Ideas, Constructivism, And Complentarity In Insititutionalism, Richard R. Weiner

Faculty Publications

Colin Crouch recently chided the proliferation of institutionalisms (e.g., historical, normative, ideational, discursive, constructivist) as a growing cottage industry more focused on creating intellectual fiefdoms than extending political theory. In this vein, we can assess the recent constructivist institutionalism developed by Colin Hay out of the ideational and discursive institutionalism efforts of himself, Mark Blyth,Vivian Schmidt, J.L. Campbell and Ove Pedersen. This constructivism reproduces all of the weaknesses of the sociology of knowledge without heeding the contributions of critical theory, poststructuralism, interpretivism (e.g., Mark Bevir), polycontexturality (e.g., Gunther Teubner) or recent economic theory. We are challenged to represent a polycontextural …


Statelessness And Roma Communities In The Czech Republic: Competing Theories Of State Compliance, Robyn Linde Jan 2006

Statelessness And Roma Communities In The Czech Republic: Competing Theories Of State Compliance, Robyn Linde

Faculty Publications

This paper examines the Czech Republic’s passage in 1993 of a citizenship law that rendered approximately 10,000 to 25,000 members of the Roma community stateless. The Czech Republic, a former satellite state of the Soviet Union, peacefully split from the Slovak Republic with the dissolution of the Czechoslovak Federal Republic (hereafter Czechoslovakia) in 1993, a process known as the Velvet Divorce. Following the dissolution, a new citizenship law came into effect that put steep requirements on individuals who wished to gain or retain Czech citizenship. These requirements included verification of a five-year period of residence, a clean criminal record, and …


Piacular Subjectivity And Contested Narrative In The Imre Nagy Memorials, Karl P. Benziger, Richard R. Weiner Sep 2005

Piacular Subjectivity And Contested Narrative In The Imre Nagy Memorials, Karl P. Benziger, Richard R. Weiner

Faculty Publications

The funeral of Imre Nagy on June 16, 1989 can be seen as a critical moment in the Hungarian transition to a democratic republic as it explicitly undermined the moral and political authority of the communist government then in power. This Nagy memorial signified a longing for a national identity tied to the spirit of republicanism that had been thwarted in 1956 and had roots going back to 1848. The unity of purpose displayed by the Hungarian people at the funeral brings to mind Emile Durkheim_s analysis of piaculum and the conscience collective. This is what the sociologist, Robert Bellah …


Assessment Governance, Richard R. Weiner, Karl P. Benziger Feb 2005

Assessment Governance, Richard R. Weiner, Karl P. Benziger

Faculty Publications

There has emerged a web of exogenous forces emanating from national and regional accreditation associations, particularly a satellite professional association involved in teacher preparation called the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). The reality of this web contradicts the implicit idealist sentiment in John Ishiyama’s report on the “Assessment of Student Outcomes’ meetings at the 2004 TLC where he describes “assessment as a voluntarist/bootstrapping “bottom up” effort of individual faculty members. [PS.27: 3, July 2004, 483-85.] Faculty are increasingly bombarded by outside agencies for standards inventory matrices, evaluation rubrics, and course maps.


Traces Of The Stillborn? , Richard R. Weiner Apr 2004

Traces Of The Stillborn? , Richard R. Weiner

Faculty Publications

The architect Daniel Libeskind has written a noted lecture, "Traces of the Unborn." We might add, "Traces of the Stillborn." There is a tendency in historical institutionalism (HI) to concentrate on the retrieval of traces of paths taken rather than (1) to consider the processes involved in the selection of paths; and (2) to reflect upon the conditions of institutional emergence and sedimentation of paths, whether taken or untaken. Contrary to the path-dependency obsessed historical institutionalism of a Paul Pierson, this paper stresses the significance of historical case studies of institutional emergence in the earlier 20th century and …


Dialogue On Diversity Spring Speaker: Anthony Romero (2002), Anthony Romero Apr 2002

Dialogue On Diversity Spring Speaker: Anthony Romero (2002), Anthony Romero

Rhode Island College Audio Video collection

No abstract provided.


Marcia Ann Gillespie: Confronting Racism And Sexism: Towards A More Humane Society (2000), Marcia Gillespie Apr 2000

Marcia Ann Gillespie: Confronting Racism And Sexism: Towards A More Humane Society (2000), Marcia Gillespie

Rhode Island College Audio Video collection

No abstract provided.


John H. Bracey, Jr.: The Cost Of Racism To White America (1999), John H. Bracey Apr 1999

John H. Bracey, Jr.: The Cost Of Racism To White America (1999), John H. Bracey

Rhode Island College Audio Video collection

No abstract provided.


Democracy In Cape Verde, Richard A. Lobban Oct 1992

Democracy In Cape Verde, Richard A. Lobban

Faculty Publications

The news from Africa usually carries headlines about natural disasters, coups, civil wars, human tights abuses and famine. Despite these tragic cases there is also a bright side the upsurge of a new movement of democratization.