Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Technology Paved The Road For Students In A High-School Dropout Recovery Program To An Online College Class, C. Jayne Brahler

Physical Therapy Faculty Publications

Although there are Federal programs that are intended to assist a wide range of people with getting a college education, the educational attainment statistics confirm that these programs are not reaching the students who are the least apt to go to college. This chapter describes how technology enabled 52 inner-city high school students, 49% of whom had cumulative high school grade point averages (GPA) that were between 1.0 and 1.9 points, to be dually enrolled in an online college class and their online high school classes. The class average for the quizzes the students completed was 88% and the students …

Selectedworks User Guide, Berkeley Electronic Press (Bepress)

Roesch Library Staff Publications

Guide provides instructions for new and existing users of SelectedWorks, a companion product of eCommons designed to collect an author's scholarly work in one location from many different collections in the Digital Commons network.

2015 Program: Raymond A. Roesch, S.M., Social Sciences Symposium, University Of Dayton

Roesch Social Sciences Symposium Programs and Other Materials

No abstract provided.

How Healthy Is Your Library? Diagnosing Culture And Curing The Patient, Emily A. Hicks

Roesch Library Faculty Presentations

Every library has a distinctive organizational culture with norms, values, rules, beliefs, and basic assumptions that have developed over time and are shared by the people who make up the organization. This culture shapes the perceptions and assumptions of the library’s personnel. A healthy culture can evoke a passion for the work, a loyalty and commitment to the organization’s mission, and a deep-seated belief in the organization’s value.

Libraries with a healthy culture are resilient, responsive, and inclusive. The health of an organization is the responsibility of every member, not just the formal leadership.

Using a combination of graphics and …

Strengthening Skills: Hosting A Research Boot Camp, Stephanie Soule, Heidi Gauder

Roesch Library Faculty Presentations

Instruction librarians and an academic department formed a community of practice and developed a three-day research “boot camp” for graduate research assistants. The students gained critical research skills, which benefited their department, while the librarians experimented with new instruction techniques.

Justice For Border Crossing Peoples, David Watkins

Political Science Faculty Publications

This chapter seeks to advance the conceptual and normative analysis of what Rogers Smith (2014) calls “appropriately differentiated citizenship” for a particular category of would-be border crossers who have so far been absent from the normative literature on immigration and exclusion: border crossing peoples.

Such peoples are defined by a longstanding history of crossing a particular international border for reasons — cultural, political, and/or economic — central to their collective identity. National territorial rights theorists such as David Miller argue that restrictive immigration policies can be justified via a collectivist Lockean analogy: Private property rights are to individuals as national …

Privacy And Freedom Of Information In Organizational Contexts: Human Rights Issues In An Era Of Big Data (Abstract), Jo Ann Oravec

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Large-scale information collection and dissemination practices are acquiring greater economic and political significance in the everyday lives of citizens. Privacy and freedom of information issues are becoming more complex as “big data” and machine learning replace traditional forms of dossier collection, statistical analysis, and archiving. This paper explores the varieties of human rights issues that are emerging. The enormous amounts of data associated with social media systems and mobile applications have increased the number of facial recognition, locational tracking, socioeconomic analysis, and related practices being conducted by corporations as well as governmental agencies.

Often corporations and governmental agencies couple their …

Detaining Dialogue: Framing Treatment During The 2013 Guantánamo Hunger Strike (Abstract), Kristen Traynor

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In recent years, prisoner treatment during the “War on Terror” has re-emerged as a prominent topic in news headlines and government debate. However, the media’s framing of such treatment toward prisoners at Guantánamo Bay has received scant scholarly attention compared to that of Abu Ghraib.

With a focus on elite and media framing of treatment during the prisoner hunger strike from February to August of 2013, the goal of this paper is to explain whether government portrayal of prisoner treatment influenced the way the media framed the situation or whether the media acted with more autonomy. In the study, I …

Reciprocal Critique: A Dialectical Engagement Of Theology And Human Rights Discourse (Abstract), Diane Yeager

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Nicholas Wolterstorff puts the problem baldly: “The relation of Christians to human rights is a troubled relationship. It was not always so; it became so in the twentieth century.” A reviewer has accurately (if perhaps overdramatically) pointed out that “the assumption that rights talk is anathema to theology” functions as the ”chief impetus” propelling Ethna Regan’s ambitious and provocative Theology and the Boundary Discourse of Human Rights (2010).

While much of the discussion generated by Regan’s argument has centered on her efforts to show the constructive convergence of moral theology and the human rights movement (which she manages dialectically …

Religious Freedom And The Right To Convert: Laws Against Forcible Or Induced Conversion In India (Abstract), Laura Dudley Jenkins

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In early 2015 several Hindu nationalist leaders India have called for a national law against forcible or induced conversion. Laws against “forcible conversion” have been proposed and enacted an increasing number of Indian states in recent years. Some laws include higher penalties for conversions of lower castes or women, reinforcing paternalistic assumptions that they lack the agency or ability to determine their own religion. Based on their timing, anti-conversion laws seem to be politically motivated, used to rally the Hindu majority during elections by playing on fears of their declining numbers and potential threats of mass conversions. Both proponents and …

Catholic Social Teaching And Economic Rights (Abstract), John Sniegocki

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Catholic Social Teaching (CST) has much to contribute to ongoing discussions of human rights. One important feature of CST is its holistic understanding of human rights, which includes social and economic rights along with political/civil rights. This paper will explore the understandings of economic rights and of economic democracy that are developed in the Catholic social tradition, with particular attention to the thought of Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis.

Some implications of these concepts for current realities in the United States and globally will be highlighted. Attention will also be given to critics of economic rights and economic …

De-Centering The Human: Moroccan Islamists And Human Rights (Abstract), Ahmed Khanani

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In a critical contribution to contemporary rights conversations, Blattberg argues that “human rights talk” is simply too “thin” (2009). In particular, he argues that a flaw in scholarly conversations is the move to abstraction: the human is insufficient because it is impersonal. Blattberg lodges this criticism against a host of liberal thinkers, including Nussbaum and Walzer, and contends that the move to abstraction hinders calls to justice insofar as it fails to invest actors in the plights of other people. Yet, even as Blattberg calls to personalize the people to be protected, he does not elaborate on how to flesh …

Social Movements, Protest, And Human Rights: Latin America And Beyond (Abstract), James C. Franklin

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The basis of this paper is research I have conducted into protests in Latin America. By recording the demands and actors involved in protests, I have been able to assess human rights-related protests. This, in turn, allows a systematic investigation of the relationship between social movements and human rights. One principal finding is that there are two different types of human rights contention. Argentina and Guatemala experienced national human rights movements, led by human rights organizations and focused on general human rights problems and solutions.

The other countries I studied in the region (Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Venezuela) experienced …

Turn Up The Volume: The Amplification Of Shame (Abstract), Baekkwan Park, Amanda Murdie, David Davis

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

One important strategy that HROs, and other actors, employ to call attention to human rights abuses around the world is “naming and shaming.” By calling attention to governments for their human rights violations, HROs hope to galvanize world public opinion and increase pressure on these states to halt abuses. While some HROs, like Amnesty International, communicate directly with their large membership bases, the vast majority of HROs rely on the international media to communicate their message to the international community.

Issuing reports and press releases is a major part of their strategy the international community aware of abuses The more …

Human Rights-Based Activism: Lessons From Health Activism In South Africa And Brazil (Abstract), Kristi Heather Kenyon, Regiane Garcia

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Drawing on South Africa and Brazil’s experiences of health activism, this paper aims to provide a full illustration of how human rights-based (HRB) activism can function as an influential agency-based social determinant of health. Social determinants of health (SDH) are usually understood as circumstances and structures that disadvantage individuals by increasing their vulnerability to disease and injury. SDH are typically conceived of as conditions that act upon individuals and communities who are relatively powerless to react against the health impacts of context such as poverty and marginalization.

In addition to this ‘passive’ understanding of SDH, we put forward an ‘active’ …

International Organizations As Normative Agenda Setters: Social Influence And Reputational Costs In The Effects Of The International Human Rights Regime, Alejandro Anaya-Muñoz, Aldo F. Ponce

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This paper focuses on the question of how International Organizations (IOs) influence states. In particular, we assess the role of the mechanism of social influence in shaping states’ normative (discursive) behavior, by looking at the “reporting procedure” of the Human Rights Committee (HRC) of the United Nations (UN). Our study finds that in the definition of the substantive content of their “periodic reports,” states follow the human rights agenda set by the HRC in its “concluding observations.” In this sense, we provide systematic evidence that shows that, through social influence, even poorly “legalized” IOs can have an influence over state …

Human Rights In The Digital Age: Opportunities And Constraints (Abstract), Mahmood Monshipouri

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

By making information more accessible than ever before, digital technologies have come to shape societies and cultures in many respects. These technologies also offer tools for resistance and change that can be effectively deployed to influence existing power relations. People around the world have increasingly used digital media to present political reactions against authoritarian rule or to speak out against failed policies. In contrast to the all-too familiar centralized, vertically integrated social movements, theories Social Movements argue for a new way of doing politics—namely, “network politics.” More importance is attached to social and cultural concerns in these movements, and the …

The Potentiality Of A Digital Revolution: Alienated Activists And The Surveillance State (Abstract), Jennifer Grubbs

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The following paper will examine the ways in which digital media is used by both activists engaged in struggles of inequity as well as the State. Specifically, the paper focuses on the use of digital media in the antiracist organizing following the murders of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York. Activists relied on digital media to share information, narratives, as well as create networks for mobilization. The State relied on digital media to provide counter-narratives and promulgate a fear-based rhetoric depicting activists as “looters.”

This paper emphasizes the …

Status Of Public Access To Government Information As An International Human Right (Abstract), Amin Amiri

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Freedom of information, according to which the public has a right to have access to government-held information, is largely considered as a tool for improving transparency and accountability in governments, and as a requirement of self-governance and good governance. So far, more than ninety countries have recognized citizens’ right to have access to public information. This recognition often took place through the adoption of an act referred to as “freedom of information act”, “access to public records act,” and so on.

Some steps have been taken at the national and international level towards the recognition of freedom of information as …

Putting It On The Line: Social Justice Frameworks For Human Rights Fieldwork (Abstract), Michael Loadenthal

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Research methodology is often understood as a dry, sterile arena of IRB forms and transcription. While this is a common portrayal, things get a fair bit livelier when our field work runs amuck of extrajudicial assassinations, police infiltration and academic isolationism. Investigating social movements and individual respondents who are actively engaged in criminality presents challenging dilemmas to researchers attempting to gain respond trust while simultaneous avoid repressive State security forces. In this discussion, I will examine two venues in which this difficult navigation surfaced: ethnographically investigating Palestinian armed fighters (Nablus: 2006-2007), and interviewing clandestine Animal Liberation Front (ALF) activists (UK: …

To Adapt Or Not To Adapt? Accommodating Change In Humanitarian Response (Abstract), Emily K.M. Scott

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

What conditions facilitate or frustrate opportunities for adaptation during on-the-ground responses by non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? I seek to explain variation in the outcomes of adaptations by Doctors Without Borders (MSF)* during three crises: Ebola in West Africa in 2014, middle-income diseases after the Syrian Crisis, and HIV/AIDs and mental health in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This research shows that humanitarian organizations can be uniquely accommodating of uncertainty and change. In these cases political entrepreneurship by those in the field is filtered through an internal structure that deliberately accommodates debate and creative recombination of resources. Actors do not simply …

Crafting The Humanitarian Narrative: Development Organizations And Cause-Marketing Campaigns (Abstract), Alexandra Cosima Budabin

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Development organizations have begun to follow corporations in launching CSR initiatives such as cause-marketing campaigns. Private aid for causes is increasingly tied to branded products and celebrities, an alliance described as Brand Aid (Richey & Ponte 2011). However, scholars have found that the promotional aspects of these corporate partnerships were more important than the actual materials benefits (Hawkins 2012). The puzzle remains: if brand aid humanitarian fundraising through cause-marketing is not for the funds, then what purpose does it serve?

Using the brand aid conceptual model (Richey and Ponte 2013) and the lens of CSR, this paper will explore cause-marketing …

Double Jeopardy: The Rights Of Refugees In Marginalized Communities In The Middle East (Abstract), Eugene Sensenig-Dabbous

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The plight of Syrian, Iraqi, and Palestinian refugees in Lebanon was been well documented in recent years. Less attention has been paid to the impact these large refugee populations have had on the already marginalized regions in the northern (Akkar), eastern (Bakaa), and southern (Tyre & Nabatiye) parts of the country. Basic human rights such as education, health care, childhood development, family, employment, and equal protection before the law are being undermined through the ‘double burden’ of a largely unregulated and under-serviced refugee population, which is now threatening to exceed 2 million by the end of 2015.

This paper will …

Realizing The Right To Sport To Address The Socialization And Trauma Healing Of Children In Refugee Camps (Abstract), Konstantinos Koutsioumpas

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The forced displacement of human beings around the globe as a result of natural and humane disasters has placed great social, political and economic pressure on the international system like never before. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)(2012), there are approximately 35.8 million people of concern to UNHCR, including refugees, internally displaced people, people affected by major natural disasters, stateless or asylum seekers, and people displaced in urban areas. Almost half of this forcibly displaced population is children (UNHCR, 2014).

Children, in particular, who are exposed to these catastrophic situations, experience adverse consequences on their physiological, …

Teaching Human Rights Inside And Outside The Classroom: Education Without Borders (Abstract), Shayna Plaut, Lisa Brock, Carol J. Gray, William Simmons, Alice Kim

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

University courses addressing various human rights issues have grown exponentially at the undergraduate and graduate levels over the past 20 years. Most of these courses focus on specific issues and many programs require fieldwork and/or internships. In addition, the use of the international human rights language is increasingly integrated into professional training programs that are often labeled “social” issues; for example, labor, immigration or domestic violence. What is lacking, despite the resonance and inclusion of human rights issues in these and other areas, is the development of comprehensive human rights methods and ethics courses.

This roundtable seeks to bring together …

Indignation, Or, Reconsidering The Place Of Dignity In Human Rights Theory And Practice (Abstract), Michael Goodhart

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Human rights scholars have recently seized on the concept of human dignity as a possible ground or justification for human rights. For various reasons, this is a mistake: it gets the role of dignity in human rights theory wrong, and it distorts our understanding of human rights politics. In this paper I develop the concept of indignation, arguing that it accounts for the place of dignity in human rights theory more accurately than do foundational approaches and that it provides useful insight into the actual dynamics of human rights movements. Specifically, I argue that human dignity is likely to …

To Err Is Human Rights: Toward A Pragmatist Activism (Abstract), Geoff Dancy

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Human rights activists have often been criticized by political scientists for being “principled” rather than “pragmatic” actors. Rarely, though, is this criticism accompanied by a discussion of what pragmatism means, or what pragmatic action looks like. In this article, I conceptually trace and define three aspects of pragmatism: philosophical, methodological, and political. I then consider how these aspects of pragmatist thought can be applied in the world of human rights activism.

Among other things, I argue that pragmatic activism should remain flexible about the foundations of human rights ideals, that it should accept and even encourage local bad-mouthing of global …

A 'Revolution Of Values' In Immigrant Rights Advocacy (Abstract), Jamie Longazel

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

We have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights,” Martin Luther King Jr. told Southern Christian Leadership Conference members in 1967 as they prepared to launch the Poor People’s Campaign, “an era where we are called upon to raise certain questions about the whole society.” King called for a “revolution of values” and a recognition of the interconnectedness “of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.” The goal of the campaign was economic security for all so that poor people can maintain dignity and “control their own destiny.”

This paper lays out advocacy strategies applicable …

Linking History To Practice: Mapping The History Of Nigeria As A Tool To Combat Human Trafficking Today (Abstract), Robin P. Chapdelaine

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The international community that concerned itself with the welfare of children, protecting childhood and eventually with the wellbeing of the African child found itself with an overwhelming project in during the colonial era. The League of Nations Advisory Committees on the Traffic of Women and Children and the Protection and Welfare of Children and Young People recognized Nigerian children to be a protected group as a local expression of an international movement that targeted women and children during the 1920s and 1930s. As a result of the increased international attention and pressure, colonial officials began to investigate specific practices involving …

On Solid Ground: Evaluating The Effects Of Foundational Arguments On Human Rights Attitudes (Abstract), Stephen Arves, Joe Braun

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

What makes some human rights campaigns denouncing prisoner abuse and torture more effective than others? Specifically, what convinces individuals to support, accept, and take action on behalf of calls to stop prisoner abuse and torture? Some normative theoretical literature has argued that justifications for human rights matter, with multiple traditions offering their own versions of rights foundationalism Other theoretical literature, however, has argued that foundations used to legitimate human rights are unimportant. Despite these theoretical arguments, there is a dearth of empirical investigation into the actual appeal of different foundational arguments. This is surprising, because foundational arguments by their nature …