Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Profits Of (The Critique Of) Patriarchy: On Toxic Masculinity, Feminism, & Corporate Capitalism In The Barbie Movie, Bryant W. Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

This article explicates the political, social, economic, and cultural contribution of Barbie (2023). Through a critical and normative analysis of four different prominent reviews of the film, this essay explores the quality of discourse surrounding Barbie, with particular emphasis on its feminist critique of toxic masculinity and lack of a coherent criticism of capitalism.

The Politics Of The Self: Psychedelic Assemblages, Psilocybin, And Subjectivity In The Anthropocene, Joshua Falcon

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how psychedelic substances become drawn into particular sociohistorical and political arrangements, and how psychedelic experiences with psilocybin ‘magic mushrooms’ are used as tools of subjectivation. Guided by literatures in philosophy, critical theory, and the social sciences that focus on subjectivity, assemblage theory, and critical posthumanism, I argue that psychedelics are drawn into variegated assemblages, each of which conceptualizes the nature of psychedelics in highly specific ways that reflect implicit conceptions of the world and the self. In developing the concept of psychedelic assemblages, this research provides a window onto the politics of the self in the Anthropocene. …

Perceptions And Risk: The Role Of Education, Body Image, Partner Availability, And Condom Negotiation On Black Women’S Sexual Risk-Taking Behaviors, Brittany Nicole Boyd

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are at an all-time high (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2021; Kreisel et al., 2021; Merman, 2021), and disproportionately impact women of color. Understanding the factors that coalesce to create elevated risk for Black women is critical for more effective prevention/intervention to reduce risks and negative health outcomes. This study extended previous research by examining the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the mediating influences of psychosocial factors (i.e., body image, perceived partner availability, and self-efficacy for condom negotiation) on sexual-risk decision making (i.e., condom use) in Black women during emerging adulthood. …

Playing Down To The Competition? Making Sense Of A Golfer's Frequently Used Excuse, Alejandro J. Regalado

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Golf is a sport that continues to develop throughout the years. The development of the sport exceeds the fascinating technological advances of the clubs, balls and gadgets and has taken a new sector of people by storm. Every year golf seems to capture a new audience and more over a new generation of women have taken a liking to the sport. With all these great advances there still seems to be a question out there on why performance fluctuates so much?

This fluctuation can be seen by the avid sports observer on any weekend of a PGA tour event, yearly …

The Role Of Sociocultural Factors On The Relationship Between (Un)Employment And Well-Being Of Latinx Emerging Adults During Covid-19, Chantal Nichole Martinez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and resulting recession have brought significant challenges for organizations and revealed deep-seated inequalities for employees of color. LatinX individuals, in particular, have experienced high rates of unemployment compared to their White and Black American counterparts and returned to work at a slower rate (BLS, 2020; 2021). As a result, organizational psychologists have been called to action to help understand the economic and psychological impacts of the recession on worker outcomes (e.g., unemployment, mental well-being). The objective of this collected papers dissertation is to a) take a culturally humble and strength-based approach to examine how the emerging …

It's Capitalism, Stupid!: The Theoretical And Political Limitations Of The Concept Of Neoliberalism, Bryant William Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

This polemical essay explores the meaning and function of the concept of neoliberalism, focusing on the serious theoretical and political limitations of the concept. The crux of the argument is that, for those interested in overcoming the exploitative and oppressively destructive elements of global capitalism, opposing "neoliberalism" (even if best understood as a process or a spectrum of "neoliberalization" or simply privatization) is both insufficient and potentially self-undermining. This article also goes into some detail on the issues of health care and climate change in relation to "neoliberalism" (both conceptually and the material processes and policies that this term refers …

Self-Referential Features In Sacred Texts, Donald Haase

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines a specific type of instance that bridges the divide between seeing sacred texts as merely vehicles for content and as objects themselves: self-reference. Doing so yielded a heuristic system of categories of self-reference in sacred texts based on the way the text self-describes: Inlibration, Necessity, and Untranslatability.

I provide examples of these self-referential features as found in various sacred texts: the Vedas, Āgamas, Papyrus of Ani, Torah, Quran, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, and the Book of Mormon. I then examine how different theories of sacredness interact with them. What do Durkheim, Otto, Freud, or Levinas say about …

The Ethical Import Of Entheogens, Joshua Falcon

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The term entheogen refers to drugs—including the artificial substances and active principles drawn from them—which are known to produce ecstasy and have been used traditionally in certain religious and shamanic contexts. The entheogenic experiences provoked by entheogens are described by users in myriad ways, including in spiritual, religious, philosophical, and secular contexts. Entheogenic experiences have shown that they can create opportunities for individuals to generate meaning, including novel philosophical insights, which users claim to gain by way of experience. As such, entheogenic experiences exhibit the ability to influence a change in a user’s fundamental philosophical commitments, or live options, including …

Worlds Ahead?: On The Dialectics Of Cosmopolitanism And Postcapitalism, Bryant William Sculos

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues that the major theories of global justice (specifically within the cosmopolitan tradition) have missed an important aspect of capitalism in their attempts to deal with the most pernicious effects of the global economic system. This is not merely a left critique of cosmopolitanism (though it is certainly that as well), but its fundamental contribution is that it applies the insights of Frankfurt School Critical Theorist Theodor Adorno’s negative dialectics to offer an internal critique of cosmopolitanism. As it stands, much of the global justice and cosmopolitanism literature takes global capitalism as an unsurpassable and a foundationally unproblematic …