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Articles 1 - 30 of 78
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Hiplife Music In Ghana: Postcolonial Performances Of Modernity, Nii Kotei Nikoi
Hiplife Music In Ghana: Postcolonial Performances Of Modernity, Nii Kotei Nikoi
Doctoral Dissertations
This research project examines the operation of development discourse in popular culture, how it is reproduced, contested and how alternatives are imagined. It is a post-development study of the production and consumption of Ghanaian hiplife music videos and culture. It explores how hiplife makers challenge development discourse and advance alternative ideas of social transformation. Considering the enduring (and damaging) legacies of colonialism, hiplife as a site of relative freedom of expression is fertile for the potential production of a decolonial vocabulary to heal colonial wounds— undoing colonial sensibilities imposed on the colonized. The project reveals that mainstream male hiplife stars …
Gaming For Life: Gaming Practices, Self-Care, And Thriving Under Neoliberalism, Brian Myers
Gaming For Life: Gaming Practices, Self-Care, And Thriving Under Neoliberalism, Brian Myers
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation frames gaming practices in relationship to thriving, an area of inquiry that has received little attention within the fields of video game studies and cultural studies. It argues that video games can be used by audiences as a tool for thriving, provided we define thriving outside of the framework of success and failure established by a neoliberal political rationality. Using survey data from 70 video game audience members, textual analysis, and ethnographic and auto-ethnographic methodologies, this dissertation first describes how video game audience members define thriving by distinguishing it from a related term, self-care. It then moves to …
Dimensions Of Us Global Financial Power: Essays On Financial Sanctions, Global Imbalances, And Sovereign Default, Mariam Majd
Dimensions Of Us Global Financial Power: Essays On Financial Sanctions, Global Imbalances, And Sovereign Default, Mariam Majd
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation examines how U.S. capabilities in the global financial arena enable it to affect outcomes to its advantage. The first essay presents theoretical support for the hypothesis that holdings of U.S. sovereign debt collateralize public and private dollar borrowing in developing and emerging market economies. The second essay empirically tests the theory presented in Chapter 1 and provides evidence that, indeed, a statistically significant relationship exists between a country’s official holdings of US Treasury securities and its level of outstanding dollar credit. Our results demonstrate that even after controlling for a persistence effect (i.e., inertia) in US Treasury security …
An Examined Life Of A Language Teacher Of Chinese: An Autoethnographic Investigation Into Agency, Ying Zhang
An Examined Life Of A Language Teacher Of Chinese: An Autoethnographic Investigation Into Agency, Ying Zhang
Doctoral Dissertations
There is a paucity of research about and done by L2 Chinese educators regarding the theoretical construct of agency. It is also noted that the qualitative inquiry is marginalized in L2 Chinese research field, let alone the narrative study of the agency of experienced by L2 Chinese-teachers. In this dissertation research, I aim at filling in the gap by conducting a longitudinal autoethnography which captures over a decade (1997-2017) of my personal and professional development with an agency perspective. The highly personalized autoethnographic accounts open up my personal and professional life as an experienced, college-level, transnational, early 40’s female native …
Class, Gender, And Mediated Labor Activism In Globalizing China, Siyuan Yin
Class, Gender, And Mediated Labor Activism In Globalizing China, Siyuan Yin
Doctoral Dissertations
My dissertation analyzes the relationships between mediated labor activism and the formation of counter-hegemonic forces in contemporary China. As China becomes a seemingly ideal model to justify the normalization of global capitalism, this study seeks to demonstrate how resistance from disenfranchised groups can challenge hegemonic power. Rural-to-urban migrant workers, who have been among the most disadvantaged groups since China’s economic reform of the 1980s, suffer from institutionalized discrimination, economic exploitation, and social exclusion. Approaching the analysis from an intersectional feminist lens, I explore the politics and possibilities of working-class resistance in searching for a just and equal China. Based on …
Three Essays On Remote Work And Regional Development, Ryan Wallace
Three Essays On Remote Work And Regional Development, Ryan Wallace
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation is comprised of three papers that collectively explore the relationship between remote work, or people that work from anywhere, and regional economic development. The first paper measures remote occupational employment in the United States with Census microdata and a shift-share model to decompose the share of occupational growth attributed to remote work. Findings indicate remote work has grown significantly since 2000, with the most pronounced growth in high skill jobs. The second paper uses a mixed-methods design to understand the role of remote work in migration decisions. It concludes that remote work arrangements enable access to employment opportunities …
Phrasal And Clausal Exceptive-Additive Constructions Crosslinguistically, Ekaterina Vostrikova
Phrasal And Clausal Exceptive-Additive Constructions Crosslinguistically, Ekaterina Vostrikova
Doctoral Dissertations
This work focuses on the syntax and semantics of exceptive and exceptive-additive constructions across different languages. Exceptive-additive constructions are constructions that can be interpreted as ‘except for’ and ‘in addition to’ depending on the context they are used in. The meaning an exceptive-additive construction gets depends on the other functional elements in a sentence. Those constructions get the exceptive meaning when they are put together with universal quantifiers and they get the additive meaning with existentials, wh-words and focus associates. In each context only one of the meanings is available. This work is the first systematic study of the …
Understanding China’S Discourse On South-South Cooperation And China-Africa Higher Education Exchange: A Field Research Study At Zhejiang Normal University’S China-Africa International Business School, Yi Sun
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation research attempts to distinguish China’s model from that of the traditional North-South relationship, with a focus on how China’s philosophy articulates its foreign policy and the nation’s higher education engagement with African countries. It examines the China-Africa higher education partnership in response to China’s discourse on South-South Cooperation (SSC), Africa’s human resource flows, and the benefits and constraints of current China-Africa cooperation. In order to achieve these goals, the dissertation uses one of the China-Africa partnership universities in China, Zhejiang Normal University (ZJNU) as a site for its field research. The fieldwork looks at both a student level …
The Solution Is The Problem: An Immanent Critique Of Capitalism's Crisis, 2008-2018, Michael Stein
The Solution Is The Problem: An Immanent Critique Of Capitalism's Crisis, 2008-2018, Michael Stein
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation examines the way that capitalism responded to the financial crisis of 2008 by presenting itself as the solution to problems of its own making. Guiding my criticism, is the concept of immanent critique and these chapters represent works of critical theory that endeavor to think through the contradictions of contemporary capitalism. The chapters of this dissertation examine capitalism’s response to it’s own crisis in four domains: political consumerism, the 2010 Haitian earthquake, philanthropy, and the prosperity gospel. Each of these responses seeks to overcome one or more of the fundamental problems of capitalism – inequality, poverty, environmental degradation, …
“You Can Be A Good Romanian, But Not A Romanian”: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of The Romanian History Textbook Narrative, Razvan Sibii
“You Can Be A Good Romanian, But Not A Romanian”: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of The Romanian History Textbook Narrative, Razvan Sibii
Doctoral Dissertations
Employing a version of the Critical Discourse Analysis methodology that privileges close textual readings, I examine in this dissertation the manner in which contemporary Romanian history textbooks put forward an essentialist view of ethnonational identity by tracing through history the development of a putatively homogenous “proto-Romanian” entity. I seek to show how the “Getae-Dacian” and “Daco-Roman” identity categories acquired their thing-ness and their boundaries as a result of deliberate rhetorical work performed by Romanian historiographers with the help of such heuristics as “Romanization,” “ethnogenesis” and the nation-as-family metaphor. I also scrutinize how the textbooks treat the two ancient texts that …
The Influence Of Wind Power On Rural Areas Economic, Demographic, And Community Services Impacts, Eman Shoeib
The Influence Of Wind Power On Rural Areas Economic, Demographic, And Community Services Impacts, Eman Shoeib
Doctoral Dissertations
Wind power development has rapidly expanded in the United States. Much of this growth occurred in rural areas because of the availability of land and wind resources required to power turbines. The economic promise of wind power projects is particularly appealing for rural areas whose traditional economic base (typically agricultural) no longer supports as many households as it once did. Numerous studies have found that wind power projects have positive economic impacts on rural areas. What is less well understood is the effect of these wind power farms on other indicators of development, such as municipal services, demographic change, and …
Emotional Response To Negative Mood Induction In Mild Cognitive Impairment And Cognitively-Intact Older Adults, Gennarina Diane Santorelli
Emotional Response To Negative Mood Induction In Mild Cognitive Impairment And Cognitively-Intact Older Adults, Gennarina Diane Santorelli
Doctoral Dissertations
Older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) report greater rates of psychiatric symptoms than cognitively-intact older persons. This may be associated with emotion dysregulation, which is prevalent in cognitively-impaired populations. No research to date has investigated responses to emotionally-provocative stimuli in persons with MCI. Aim 1 of this study determined differences in emotional reactivity to and recovery from negative mood induction in older persons with amnestic MCI (aMCI) and cognitively-healthy older adults. Moreover, emotion dysfunction in MCI may be linked to impairment in executive function (EF), a common feature of MCI. Theoretical models postulate that EF is essential to the …
Social Signals For Change: Examining The Role Of Interpersonal Communication For Positive Ecological Progress, Meaghan Guckian
Social Signals For Change: Examining The Role Of Interpersonal Communication For Positive Ecological Progress, Meaghan Guckian
Doctoral Dissertations
It perhaps goes without saying that society is collectively failing to meet the challenges posed by climate change and natural resource management, among other issues. Stagnated efforts may in part be driven by social processes that have been shown to shape whether, how, and to what extent individuals engage with environmental issues. In light of these stalled efforts to advance positive change, there is a pressing need to broaden our understanding of the normative processes that support the formation and maintenance of situation-appropriate social norms. In this dissertation, I integrate research from various fields to explore the role of interpersonal …
Cross-Cutting Narratives Of Opioid Use Disorder Among Pregnant Women And Mothers: Implications For Humanistic Care, Alice Fiddian-Green
Cross-Cutting Narratives Of Opioid Use Disorder Among Pregnant Women And Mothers: Implications For Humanistic Care, Alice Fiddian-Green
Doctoral Dissertations
Opioid-related fatalities in the U.S. have increased drastically. Pregnant women and mothers with opioid use disorders (OUD) are a rapidly growing and vulnerable population. Using a critical narrative approach, this dissertation examines how the syndemic of trauma, substance use, and mental health conditions influences opioid use and treatment trajectories among pregnant women and mothers across the lifecourse. The goal of this dissertation was to examine three discursive resources that shape the social construction of perinatal and maternal opioid use across all strata of social life: macro-level (news media), meso-level (scientific), and micro-level (individual) narratives. Informed by 18-months of ethnographic observation, …
Improving Chinese Mothers’ Health Literacy: A Wechat Intervention, Qiong Chen
Improving Chinese Mothers’ Health Literacy: A Wechat Intervention, Qiong Chen
Doctoral Dissertations
The health literacy and eHealth literacy of women during the reproductive age is crucial, as it can affect their health and the health of their children. Promoting health literacy is essential to achieve mothers’ empowerment by improving access to and capacity of using health information effectively. However, functional, interactive, and critical health literacy and eHealth literacy have never been assessed among Chinese women. The first study during this dissertation assessed functional, interactive, and critical health literacy and eHealth literacy among 421 of Chinese mothers with children under 3 years old. The results revealed overall less than optimal level of health …
Three Essays On Uncertainty In Social Dilemmas, Abdul Kidwai
Three Essays On Uncertainty In Social Dilemmas, Abdul Kidwai
Doctoral Dissertations
Social dilemmas are settings where the interest of the individual is at odds with those of society i.e. overharvesting in a fishery, not contributing to a public good. These dilemmas are widespread and take myriad forms with public goods and common-pool resources being the most prominent ones. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how individual behavior is impacted by the presence of uncertainty in public goods and common-pool resources. These dilemmas exhibit two types of uncertainty, strategic and environmental. Strategic uncertainty refers to uncertainty about the actions of other individuals facing the dilemma i.e. will other individuals contribute …
Essays On The Minimum Wage, Immigration, And Privatization, Doruk Cengiz
Essays On The Minimum Wage, Immigration, And Privatization, Doruk Cengiz
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation empirically examines effects of the minimum wage, immigration, and privatization; three of the most crucial policies that impact workers worldwide using recent advances in statistics and econometrics to provide causally interpretable results, and to reconcile controversies in the literature. In the first chapter, titled “Seeing Beyond the Trees: Using machine learning to estimate the impact of minimum wages on affected individuals”, I identify minimum wage workers prior to estimating its effects using machine learning tools, and provide highly representative demographically-based groups that capture as much as 73.4% of all likely minimum wage workers. I find that there is …
A Flexible Comparison Process As A Critical Mechanism For Context Effects, Andrea M. Cataldo
A Flexible Comparison Process As A Critical Mechanism For Context Effects, Andrea M. Cataldo
Doctoral Dissertations
Context effects such as the attraction, compromise, and similarity effects demonstrate that a comparison process, i.e., a method of comparing dimension values, plays an important role in choice behavior. Recent research suggests that this same comparison process, made more flexible by allowing for a variety of comparisons, may provide an elegant account of observed correlations between context effects by differentially highlighting dimension-level and alternative-level stimulus characteristics. Thus, the present experiments test the comparison process as a critical mechanism underlying context-dependent choice behavior. Experiment 1 provides evidence that increasing a dimension-level property, spread, promotes the attraction and compromise effects and reduces …
Framing The Crisis In The Merrimack Valley: The Opioid Epidemic, White Despair And Authoritarian Populism On The New England Borderlands, Gyuri Kepes
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation examines how discourses and ideologies about the opioid crisis were framed, produced and constructed in the geographic specificity of the Merrimack Valley in the period leading up to the 2016 presidential election. Applying the theoretical and methodological frameworks offered by the cultural studies tradition, this dissertation project attempts to map out the complex interplay between the news media, law enforcement, policymakers, and citizens in producing, circulating, amplifying, framing and sustaining public anxiety about the opioid crisis in the Merrimack Valley and beyond. Employing a mix of qualitative and quantitative forms of inquiry, including interpretation of data collected through …
The Historical And Legal Creation Of A Fissured Workplace: The Case Of Franchising, Brian Callaci
The Historical And Legal Creation Of A Fissured Workplace: The Case Of Franchising, Brian Callaci
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation explores the consequences of institutional change in capitalist firms, focusing on vertical dis-integration, the legal boundaries of the firm and what David Weil has called workplace "fissuring," in which corporations place intermediaries (subcontractors, temp agencies, or franchisees) between themselves and workers, often with negative consequences for workers. It focuses specifically on franchising, a type of fissured workplace in which one firm outsources retail operations to smaller, legally independent franchisees. The first chapter uses archival sources to identify the legal and policy changes driving workplace fissuring in the franchising context: specifically the relaxing of antitrust prohibitions on vertical restraints …
Binding And Coreference In Vietnamese, Thuy Bui
Binding And Coreference In Vietnamese, Thuy Bui
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation investigates the real-time comprehension and final interpretation of object pronouns in Vietnamese, a language in which reflexive and non-reflexive pronominal forms have overlapping meanings. It addresses the questions of whether and how Principle B is applied as a structural constraint to determine the appropriate antecedent for pronouns in the language. The central argument is that Vietnamese speakers rely on two distinct mechanisms to resolve anaphoric relations: Within a pronoun's local domain, even though coreference is highly permissive, binding is strictly prohibited. Results from three two-alternative forced choice and three self-paced reading experiments show consistent profiles for both the …
Narratives Of Queerness: Queer Worldmaking (In) The Classroom With Undergraduate Students, Rachel Briggs
Narratives Of Queerness: Queer Worldmaking (In) The Classroom With Undergraduate Students, Rachel Briggs
Doctoral Dissertations
This research brings together education research, queer theory, and performance theory to consider the worldmaking potential of the queer classroom. Using students’ stories about queerness in the classroom and my own stories about the classroom, I ask what we can learn from students’ voices about how queerness is/can be performed in the classroom and through relations. This study uses critical ethnography, personal narrative, and performative writing to examine the production of subject positions in the classroom, to connect this to a queer theoretical framework, and to explore the worldmaking potential of the classroom. I interviewed seven undergraduate students at a …
Computing Agreement In A Mixed System, Sakshi Bhatia
Computing Agreement In A Mixed System, Sakshi Bhatia
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation develops a comprehensive response to the question of how agreement is computed in Hindi-Urdu – a language with a mixed agreement system where the verb can agree with a subject or an object depending on the structural context. This dissertation covers new empirical and theoretical ground in two domains. First, I identify three kinds of atypical agreement patterns which are not accounted for under traditional approaches Hindi-Urdu agreement -- verb agreement with the nominal component of Noun-Verb complex predicates, long distance agreement of embedding Adjective-Verb predicates with embedded infinitive clause objects, and copular agreement in identity copula structures. …
Bangladesh's Energy Policy: Economic, Environmental, And Climate Change Impacts, Rohini Kamal
Bangladesh's Energy Policy: Economic, Environmental, And Climate Change Impacts, Rohini Kamal
Doctoral Dissertations
The research examines Bangladesh’s energy policies with respect to development, climate change, and environmental risks by comparing three plans for 2050: business-as-usual (BAU), a government renewable plan, and an alternate green plan, along five aspects: investment costs, employment, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, environmental costs, and social costs. The model used is an Input Output Model, which calculates factor inputs (land, water, labor, emissions: GHG and co-pollutants) for energy-related sectors considered in the three plans. To apply the model to specific plants for a more accurate estimate of localized environmental and social costs, and to analyze distributional impacts, a supplemental field-study …
Effects Of Phonological Contrast On Within-Category Phonetic Variation, Ivy Hauser
Effects Of Phonological Contrast On Within-Category Phonetic Variation, Ivy Hauser
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation investigates an often assumed hypothesis in phonetics and phonology: that there should be relatively less within-category phonetic variation in production in languages which have relatively more phonological contrasts (Lindblom, 1986, on vowels). Although this hypothesis is intuitive, there is little existing evidence to support the claim and it is difficult to generalize outside of vowels. In this dissertation, I argue that this hypothesis is not trivially true and needs additional specification. I propose an extension of this hypothesis, Contrast-Dependent Variation, which predicts relative differences in extent of within-category variation between languages and individual speakers. Contrast-Dependent Variation can make …
Trajectories Of Depressive Symptoms Among Low-Income Perinatal Women: The Role Of Father Involvement, Hillary Halpern
Trajectories Of Depressive Symptoms Among Low-Income Perinatal Women: The Role Of Father Involvement, Hillary Halpern
Doctoral Dissertations
The present study sampled a racially diverse group of 207 women at five time points from the third trimester of pregnancy until one year postpartum. Group-based developmental trajectory modeling was used to examine unique trajectories of women’s depressive symptoms (CES-D) across the perinatal period. Analyses yielded four distinct depression trajectory groups, conceptualized as the low symptom group, the intermediate symptom group, the desist-return group, and the chronic depression group. Next, fathers’ roles were examined as predictors of maternal depression trajectories in resident- and non-resident father families. Specifically, aspects of father involvement were assessed as predictors of women’s membership to …
Envisioning Pathways Toward Transformative Food Systems Change: Understanding The Role Of Multi-Stakeholder Engagement At The Culinary And Nutrition Center In Springfield, Ma, Kristen Whitmore
Masters Theses
The alternative food movement claims varied goals such as building environmental sustainability, strengthening local economies, and promoting health equity, yet critics argue that the movement’s transformative potential is threatened by a lack of shared vision. Literature suggests that community-based multi-stakeholder coalitions are a useful tool for building consensus around food systems futures. But what kinds of futures? Home Grown Springfield is a school food initiative aimed at reducing hunger in Springfield, MA by serving healthy, homemade, and locally-sourced meals via the Culinary and Nutrition Center, a brand-new full-service commercial kitchen and storage facility. This qualitative case study examines the engagement …
The Role Of International River Basin Organizations In Facilitating Science Use In Policy, Kelsey Wentling
The Role Of International River Basin Organizations In Facilitating Science Use In Policy, Kelsey Wentling
Masters Theses
Transboundary watershed management seeks to reconcile the dichotomy between political lines and the resources that flow freely over such borders. Transboundary waters cover half of the earth’s surface and define the natural communities of over 40% of the global population. Because water plays an integral role in every culture and society, international entities seek to identify the principles and methods that minimize conflict and maximize harmonious water resource management across borders. Successful management practices to date have aimed to incorporate relevant scientific literature throughout the basin using alternate governance structures. International River Basin Organizations (IRBOs), independent governing structures, provide one …
How Perception Of Decision Environment And Future Information Affects Changes In Delay Discounting Rates: Differences Across U.S. And China, Differences Before And After The U.S. 2018 Midterm Elections, Fran Walsh
Masters Theses
In this thesis, I will explore the idea that choices between present, smaller value options and future, larger value options depend on how much individuals trust the future to deliver the reward. Due to this aspect of trust, the individual must build their estimate of trust based on information for their present environment and their future expectations. This estimate of future trust can change across different time points in the same environment (i.e., before and after a national election) and between environments in the same time point (i.e., between two countries experiencing different economic rates of change). In this set …
Relationships Between Personality Type And Cognitive Ability In Marmoset Monkeys (Callithrix Jacchus), Zachary Marciano
Relationships Between Personality Type And Cognitive Ability In Marmoset Monkeys (Callithrix Jacchus), Zachary Marciano
Masters Theses
Personality refers to multiple traits that are thought to be stable over time and across situations. It is recognized that personality has a neural basis and is associated with health outcomes. Whether personality is also associated with cognitive ability, however, is still a matter of intense debate. One way to examine these potential relationships is to use a nonhuman primate model for which complexities present in humans can be minimized. Recent research into the varying personality types of marmoset monkeys suggests that there are predominantly three to five core primary domains that most marmosets and other primates can be categorized …