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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Ambiguous Construction Of Collective "Family" In The Age Of Post-Collectivism China: Through The Lens Of Cctv's Spring Festival Gala, Lin Shi Aug 2015

The Ambiguous Construction Of Collective "Family" In The Age Of Post-Collectivism China: Through The Lens Of Cctv's Spring Festival Gala, Lin Shi

Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation, through a semiotic reading of familial imagery in CCTV's Spring Festival Gala, explores the new propaganda and its effects on Chinese people's political subjectivity, against the background combining the dying Communist ideology, the rise of neoliberalism, the proliferating social technologies, and the tremendous human dislocation in contemporary China. Particularly, informed by cultural studies and ethnographic methods, this research project explores how the post-collectivism party-state insists on a mirror image of the collectivism through constructing the country as a singular super "family" form the olden time, as exemplified in the televised spectacle - CCTV's Spring Festival Gala. In the …


From Green Economies To Community Economies: Economic Possibility In Massachusetts, Boone W. Shear Aug 2015

From Green Economies To Community Economies: Economic Possibility In Massachusetts, Boone W. Shear

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation both reflects and constitutes an attempt at theorizing, locating, analyzing, and helping to create non-capitalist possibility among community groups and social movements in Massachusetts from 2010-2013. I began my research working with green economy coalitions that brought together community groups, social justice organizations, and environmental non-profits in order to respond to economic and ecological crisis. As these groups moved forward and transformed, I participated in campaigns, internal discussions, and public representations. I wrote field notes when appropriate and conducted and recorded over 50 interviews. As I did the work, I came to understand economy as a heterogeneous field …


Parents’ Television Viewing And The Cultivation Of Materialism Among Families With Young Adult Offspring, Laras Sekarasih Aug 2015

Parents’ Television Viewing And The Cultivation Of Materialism Among Families With Young Adult Offspring, Laras Sekarasih

Doctoral Dissertations

Employing cultivation theory as a guiding framework, and utilizing online survey responses from 303 young adults aged 18 to 25, this study examined how parents’ television viewing cultivates materialism among parents and young adult offspring, as well as offspring’s social comparison and life satisfaction. Path analyses revealed the evidence for intergenerational cultivation through parents’ materialism for the success and happiness dimensions of materialism. For the two dimensions, parents’ general television viewing positively predicts their own materialism, which in turn is positively associated with their children’s materialism. Somewhat differently, the analysis on the centrality dimension of materialism suggest that parents’ general …


Investigating The Predictive Validity Of Three Measures Of Number Sense, Bethany Politylo Aug 2015

Investigating The Predictive Validity Of Three Measures Of Number Sense, Bethany Politylo

Doctoral Dissertations

Number sense has been identified as an important foundational skill in the development of later mathematics competence. Although number sense has historically been difficult to define in the educational literature, operational definitions of the construct typically consist of a collection of early numeracy skills or “number sense components” such as quantity discrimination, rote counting, and one-to-one correspondence. Consequently, assessments of number sense tend to measure a wide variety of these skills. The purpose of this study was to investigate the predictive validity of three measures of number sense: the Test of Early Numeracy (TEN), Number Sense Brief Screener (NSB), and …


Performing Critical Consciousness In Teaching: Entanglements Of Knowing, Feeling And Relating, Kathleen A. Mcdonough Aug 2015

Performing Critical Consciousness In Teaching: Entanglements Of Knowing, Feeling And Relating, Kathleen A. Mcdonough

Doctoral Dissertations

At a time when education reform is guided by neoliberalism, accountability and standardization have reshaped teaching as highly technocratic and threatened the democratic possibilities of public education. Even so, many teacher education programs have taken up the call to prepare teachers to teach for social justice, whether framed as multicultural education, critical literacy, or critical pedagogy. A construct that ties these pedagogical approaches together is critical consciousness, with the aim of some teacher education efforts to evoke critical consciousness among preservice teachers. This study focuses on exploring how nine educators from elementary grades to higher education experience and enact critical …


Who Do You Think You Are?: Recovering The Self In The Working Class Escape Narrative, Christine M. Maksimowicz Aug 2015

Who Do You Think You Are?: Recovering The Self In The Working Class Escape Narrative, Christine M. Maksimowicz

Doctoral Dissertations

This project considers how socioeconomic impoverishment and society's failure to recognize working class women as valued subjects impinge upon a mother's ability to afford recognition to her daughter's selfhood. Situated within the larger North American literary tradition of fiction animated by flight in search of freedom, the texts here explored constitutes a subgenre that I term the “working class escape narrative.” Combining close readings of fiction by Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, and Sigrid Nunez with sociological research and psychoanalytic theory, I explore a relationship between mother and daughter characterized not by mirroring and bonding but rather the absence of intimacy …


Place, Nature, And Political Economy: The Submerged Politics Of Alternative Agri-Food Movements, Matthew Aaron Lepori Aug 2015

Place, Nature, And Political Economy: The Submerged Politics Of Alternative Agri-Food Movements, Matthew Aaron Lepori

Doctoral Dissertations

I aim to speak to those studying environmentalism, food politics, and contemporary political theory, as well as provide a new way to consider the question of political economic order. I investigate three “alternative” political discourses in the United States, study their effect upon the political economic vision of the American alternative agri-food movement, and relate these effects to the stability of the American political economy. Scholars working in several disciplines attribute this stability—achieved despite economic crises and growing inequality—to the hegemony of neoliberalism. I suggest a different route: the status quo is also maintained when discourses (anterior and ulterior to …


An Ethnography Of African Diasporic Affiliation And Disaffiliation In Carriacou: How Anglo-Caribbean Preadolescent Girls Express Attachments To Africa, Valerie Joseph Aug 2015

An Ethnography Of African Diasporic Affiliation And Disaffiliation In Carriacou: How Anglo-Caribbean Preadolescent Girls Express Attachments To Africa, Valerie Joseph

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores how the contending forces of powerful African memory and enduring ideologies of British colonialism meet in the young Afro-Caribbean girls of Carriacou, Grenada through their contemplations and performances of game songs and danceplay, resulting in multi-layered and seemingly contradictory affiliations and disaffiliations with their African heritage. For the most part, Carriacouans’ expressions of African affiliations and disaffiliations are below the level of consciousness. In the case of African disaffiliation, a striking finding is that many in the population – adults and children –respond with a deep fear when confronted with direct questions about Africa. Some children also …


Bringing The Household Back In: Family Wage Gaps And The Intersection Of Gender, Race, And Class In The Household Context., Melissa J. Hodges Aug 2015

Bringing The Household Back In: Family Wage Gaps And The Intersection Of Gender, Race, And Class In The Household Context., Melissa J. Hodges

Doctoral Dissertations

Using the 1980- 2008 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), this dissertation examines how parenthood exacerbates gender wage inequality within married, heterosexual households and across families stratified by race and social class. The majority of research on motherhood penalties and fatherhood premiums investigates how individual men and women’s earnings change after the arrival of children, yet it is unclear how parental bonuses and penalties accrue within coupled households. Although studies investigating child effects on individuals’ wages draw on theoretical explanations that rely on the joint decision-making of couples, empirical analysis rarely situates the effects of children on …


Reading Queerly In The High School Classroom: Exploring A Gay And Lesbian Literature Course, Kirsten Helmer Aug 2015

Reading Queerly In The High School Classroom: Exploring A Gay And Lesbian Literature Course, Kirsten Helmer

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how teaching an English literature curriculum centered on the stories, experiences, cultures, histories, and politics of LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex) people constitutes a meaningful site for teaching and learning in a high school classroom. The dissertation offers insights on how the teaching of LGBTQI-themed texts in English language arts classes can be reframed by bridging the goals, practices and conceptual tools of queer theory to critical literacies teaching. The project follows principles of critical qualitative research and employs an ethnographic case study approach with the purpose of transforming educational …


Postive Behavioral Interventions And Supports In Out Of School Time: Providing Professional Development Via Consultation And Performance Feedback, Sheera Hefter Aug 2015

Postive Behavioral Interventions And Supports In Out Of School Time: Providing Professional Development Via Consultation And Performance Feedback, Sheera Hefter

Doctoral Dissertations

American youth are in need of supervision after the school day concludes. After School Programs (ASPs) provide students with safe and supportive venues that have the potential for encouraging student growth and development. ASPs across the country struggle to find high quality professionals to staff their programs; adequate training for these professionals is also limited. There is also significant evidence linking strong teacher-student relationships to both academic and social success. Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is a framework that has a strong evidence base to support success in promoting a proactive approach to behavior management within school settings. The …


Experiencing In Japanese: The Experiencer Restriction Across Clausal Types, Masashi Hashimoto Aug 2015

Experiencing In Japanese: The Experiencer Restriction Across Clausal Types, Masashi Hashimoto

Doctoral Dissertations

Adjectives of sensation and emotion (Experiencer adjectives) in Japanese can take only the speaker as their experiencer subject in declarative root sentences and the addressee in interrogative root sentences in conversation. This constraint, which I call the Experiencer restriction, is lifted in other various clauses, however. This dissertation examines the Experiencer restriction across clausal types under scrutiny, and presents two analyses of the phenomenon, following the claim by Krifka (2001, 2004), Speas and Tenny (2003) and others that speech acts are syntactically realized. First, I introduce the phenomenon and give a brief review of its analyses which were made before …


Estrogen-Sensitive Learning Is Not Affected By Combination Ethinyl Estradiol And Levonorgestrel Oral Contraceptive Use, Darlene F. Ficco Aug 2015

Estrogen-Sensitive Learning Is Not Affected By Combination Ethinyl Estradiol And Levonorgestrel Oral Contraceptive Use, Darlene F. Ficco

Doctoral Dissertations

Two studies were conducted to explore the cognitive effects of combination ethinyl estradiol and levonorgestrel contraceptive use during late adolescence and young adulthood. Three groups of females, naturally cycling, active pill phase, and hormone-free interval phase, were tested on a battery of estrogen-sensitive, i.e., place learning and word generation, and estrogen-insensitive, i.e., map drawing, mental rotation, digit span, story recall, and object recall, tasks. Study 2 was conducted as a means to replicate the findings observed in Study 1 and to manipulate task difficulty and sensitivity. Two measures of mood were administered, and salivary estradiol levels at time of testing …


Illegal Hunting On The Masoala Peninsula Of Madagascar: Its Extent, Causes, And Impact On Lemurs And Humans, Cortni Borgerson Aug 2015

Illegal Hunting On The Masoala Peninsula Of Madagascar: Its Extent, Causes, And Impact On Lemurs And Humans, Cortni Borgerson

Doctoral Dissertations

Two of the greatest challenges we face in the world today are: (1) reducing human poverty and malnutrition; and (2) slowing the loss of global biodiversity. Madagascar ranks nearly last in global food security, and is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world. Within Madagascar, the Masoala Peninsula is one of our greatest conservation priorities. I use one year (July 2011 – June 2012) of lemur surveys, habitat sampling, direct observations of forest mammal hunting, eleven months of daily 24-hour recall surveys, and interviews of all households in one focal village on the Masoala peninsula of Madagascar to …


Using Social Network Analysis To Investigate The Relationship Between School-Based Team Communication Networks And Implementation Of Positive Behavior Support Systems, Shannon K. Barry Aug 2015

Using Social Network Analysis To Investigate The Relationship Between School-Based Team Communication Networks And Implementation Of Positive Behavior Support Systems, Shannon K. Barry

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between school-based team communication networks and implementation of school-wide reform efforts and initiatives, namely Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). The study employed social network analysis (SNA) to determine if a relationship was present between the structure and properties of the team communication network and the level of implementation of PBIS, the position and properties of the PBIS leadership team and the level of implementation of PBIS implementation, and the quality of internal process for collaboration of the PBIS leadership team and PBIS implementation. It was predicted that schools in …


Promoting Positive Teacher-Child Interactions Through Implementation Of A Social Emotional Learning Curriculum With Performance Feedback, Elizabeth S. Barker Aug 2015

Promoting Positive Teacher-Child Interactions Through Implementation Of A Social Emotional Learning Curriculum With Performance Feedback, Elizabeth S. Barker

Doctoral Dissertations

Although the nature of teacher-child relationships is a known factor in academic and social success, little research has focused on methods to improve these relationships at the classwide level. Social emotional learning has been proposed as a method to improve child social skills, a significant factor in promoting positive interpersonal relationships. In addition, teacher performance feedback has been shown to increase use of effective behavior management practices. However, no research to date has examined the effects of a comprehensive intervention involving delivery of a social emotional learning curriculum with performance feedback on the proportion of positive and negative teacher-child interactions …


Uncovering And Recovering Cleared Galloway: The Lowland Clearances And Improvement In Scotland, Christine B. Anderson Aug 2015

Uncovering And Recovering Cleared Galloway: The Lowland Clearances And Improvement In Scotland, Christine B. Anderson

Doctoral Dissertations

This study seeks to understand the removal of people from the land as symptomatic of two narratives based in the colonial and capital enterprises, clearing and Improvement. Spatially, this relationship has been constructed around the distances between two players: the beneficiaries of the colonial enterprise, namely core, western and European based countries, and the subaltern or peripheral populations usually located at great distances from the sites of inception. These peripheral spaces were the locations of immense change in terms of both material culture and historical memories. Here, these moments are explored within the small, defined space of Galloway, Scotland, which …


Materiality And Location: A Geographic Study Of Log Home Manufacturing, James S. Peters Mar 2015

Materiality And Location: A Geographic Study Of Log Home Manufacturing, James S. Peters

Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation presents a material-geographic analysis of the materiality of log home manufacturing and may be the first quantitative application of ‘new materiality’ concepts. It tests the thesis that log home attributes reveal a manufacturer’s geographic region and building culture. A study of human-environment interaction, the research investigated the organization of log home manufacturing in the Eastern Woodlands of North America and illustrates relationships between manufacturers, their perspectives on forest resources and their choices of log conversion (i.e., processing) methods. Data were obtained from secondary sources and by surveying managers of log home manufacturing firms. Methods included hierarchical cluster analysis, …


Three Essays On Economic Inequality And Environmental Degradation, Klara Zwickl Mar 2015

Three Essays On Economic Inequality And Environmental Degradation, Klara Zwickl

Doctoral Dissertations

Rising income and wealth disparities are increasingly viewed as serious economic and social problems, but what are the environmental consequences of an unequal distribution of income and wealth? Are low income neighborhoods disproportionately negatively affected by pollution exposure, and does economic inequality thus manifest itself in environmental inequality? Are poor or unequal communities less successful in collectively organizing local environmental improvements and does inequality thus increase pollution exposure for all residents? This dissertation provides some empirical evidence on these questions. Chapter 1 analyzes regional variations in environmental disparities in US cities. Using geographic micro-data from EPA's Risk Screening Environmental Indicators …


On Belonging, Difference And Whiteness: Italy's Problem With Immigration, Flavia Stanley Mar 2015

On Belonging, Difference And Whiteness: Italy's Problem With Immigration, Flavia Stanley

Doctoral Dissertations

In the past thirty years, Italy has transitioned from a nation defined in part by a history of emigration, to a nation where immigration and attendant issues surrounding increased cultural and ethno-racial diversity dominates as a national concern. The research presented in this dissertation illustrates the ways in which, within this context, immigration is promoted and perceived unequivocally as a “problem” and a “threat.” However, rather than discussing Italy’s immigration problem, the issue here is recast as Italy’s problem with immigration. Despite deep regional differences and identities that continue to exist, increased immigration and the permanent settlement of …


Undying Protests: On Collective Action And Practices Of Resistance Against Feminicide In Ciudad Juárez, Elva F. Orozco Mendoza Mar 2015

Undying Protests: On Collective Action And Practices Of Resistance Against Feminicide In Ciudad Juárez, Elva F. Orozco Mendoza

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation project examines the wave of protests and practices of resistance that emerged in response to feminicide—the murder, with state impunity, of women and girls because they are female—in the northern cities of Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua, Mexico. Its goal is to show how those women who live under extreme regimes of violence contest it since far too often social scientific studies that examine gender-based violence in northern Mexico have sough to understand its social, economic, and political roots. While this is indeed a significant contribution, this study aims to reflect politically on the innovative responses to the increasing …


Linguistic Cognition And Bimodalism: A Study Of Motion And Location In The Confluence Of Spanish And Spain’S Sign Language, Francisco Meizoso Mar 2015

Linguistic Cognition And Bimodalism: A Study Of Motion And Location In The Confluence Of Spanish And Spain’S Sign Language, Francisco Meizoso

Doctoral Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation is to study the intrapersonal and symbolic function of gesture by a very specific type of population: hearing speakers of Spanish who, having been born to deaf parents, grew up developing a bimodal (Spanish and Spain’s Sign Language) linguistic interface, which borrows elements from the manual and spoken modalities. In the ordering of gestures devised by Kendon (1988) and cited by McNeill (1992), gesticulation and sign languages are placed at opposite ends of a continuum. At one end, gesticulation is formed by idiosyncratic spontaneous gestures lacking any conventional linguistic proprieties, which are produced in combination …


The Effects Of Children, Job Changes, And Employment Interruptions On Women’S Wages, Jessica Looze Mar 2015

The Effects Of Children, Job Changes, And Employment Interruptions On Women’S Wages, Jessica Looze

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I build upon the literature examining the motherhood wage penalty. Although previous research has found that much of this penalty can be explained by differences between mothers and childless women in human capital acquisition, job experience, work hours, and unobserved characteristics, these reasons do not fully explain the penalty. The portion of the penalty that remains unexplained is often attributed to some combination of discrimination against women by employers and lower work effort among mothers. In this dissertation, I examine another plausible mechanism: I consider the role that job changes and employment exits play in creating this …


The Semiosis Of Civil Society: Theorizing The Media In Postcolonial Polities, Srinivas R. Lankala Mar 2015

The Semiosis Of Civil Society: Theorizing The Media In Postcolonial Polities, Srinivas R. Lankala

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation is an attempt to construct a theoretical framework for the distinctive nature of the mass media in the postcolonial political context through an engagement with the theoretical legacy of Indian political theory and historiography, especially the Subaltern Studies school. I draw from Partha Chatterjee’s conceptualization of Indian politics as divided into the two spheres of civil and political society and interpret these political categories through the rubric of mass media and televisual discourse, both to locate the mass media in the discourse and practice of politics, and to also locate political practice as it takes place in a …


The Political Ecology Of Early Childhood Lead Exposure At The New York African Burial Ground, Joseph Jones Mar 2015

The Political Ecology Of Early Childhood Lead Exposure At The New York African Burial Ground, Joseph Jones

Doctoral Dissertations

Nearly 25 years ago federal officials unearthed over 400 skeletal remains in Lower Manhattan. The site of the excavation was the New York African Burial Ground (NYABG), a 17th- and 18th-century cemetery for the city’s mostly enslaved African population. Today, the burial ground serves as a reminder of New York’s 200-year experiment with slavery. It is the first National Monument to honor enslaved African New Yorkers. This recognition is a testament to the resolve of African American descendants and their allies who, through political activism, would see these ancestors afforded in death some of the respect denied them in life. …


An Examination Of The Relationship Between Leadership Practices Of School Principals And Effectiveness Of School Counselor Practice, Yolanda D. Johnson Mar 2015

An Examination Of The Relationship Between Leadership Practices Of School Principals And Effectiveness Of School Counselor Practice, Yolanda D. Johnson

Doctoral Dissertations

School counselors, whose role is often viewed as peripheral and isolated from teaching and learning, can help principals, teachers, students, and parents balance the duties and responsibilities involved in continuous student growth and performance. The purpose of this research is to examine the working relationship between school principals and school counselors and to assess how school principal leadership practices influence school counselor practice and effectiveness. This study utilized a conceptual framework that describes the relationship between concepts from the literature that may lead to school counselor effectiveness. This qualitative study investigates the leadership practices of school principals and how this …


The Promise Of Mourning, Samantha Rose Hill Mar 2015

The Promise Of Mourning, Samantha Rose Hill

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation project offers a critique of the ethical turn within contemporary political theory through the Frankfurt School tradition of critical thought. While many contemporary political theorists rely upon Freud’s distinction between mourning and melancholia in order to argue for forms of democratic political action, I examine the relationship between loss, mourning, melancholy, and temporality in the works of Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Sheldon Wolin, and Theodor Adorno in order to think about the relationship between critical thinking and political action. Focusing on their different approaches to time, history, and loss in relationship to politics demonstrates how concepts like mourning …


Democratic Potential For A Multiplicity Of Public Spaces: A Content Analysis Of Media-Hosted Discussion Boards, Bryan M. Baldwin Mar 2015

Democratic Potential For A Multiplicity Of Public Spaces: A Content Analysis Of Media-Hosted Discussion Boards, Bryan M. Baldwin

Doctoral Dissertations

Since their inception, online discussion boards have intrinsically appealed to proponents of deliberative democracy, and those appended to Web-based news sources have been recognized as possessing the potential – whether realized yet or not – to engender meaningful discussions by engaged citizens on a range of public issues. In contrast, ardent critics of such forums contend they are merely raucous and unstructured repositories of expressions reflecting the darker side of human nature (e.g. incivility, vulgarity, ad hominem attacks, racism, homophobia, etc.). This study assessed the deliberative quality of online postings made over a two- month period and affiliated with four …