Sociology Commons^™

¿Cómo Traducimos "Ni Una Más" Al Inglés?: Latin American Manifestation Of The Phenomenology Of Femicide, And The United States’ Subsequent Internal Neglect, Suemi Mendez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper aims to tackle two components in analyzing the phenomenological concept of femicide, most simply known as the killing of women because they are women through structural violence and oppression. First, it will develop its deployment within the Latin American framework as it has been adapted to function within the regional lexicon, both socially and legislatively. This assessment will serve to address the successes and failures thus far in tackling femicide as the location with the highest statistics globally. Through this foregrounding, it will lead into how this revised deployment of femicide fits into the context of Global North …

Precarious Empowerments: Sexual Labor In The Coffee Shops Of Santiago, Chile, Pilar Ortiz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Precarious Empowerments analyzes sexual labor in ‘tinted cafes,’ spaces hidden from public view where women dance for their male clients and clandestinely perform sexual services. Drawing from an embodied ethnographic account of the everyday lives of five coffee shops that fit into the lower status ‘tinted cafes’ where sexual labor is common, this thesis examines sex workers’ experiences at the intersection of class, racial, and gender hierarchies. From an intersectional perspective, my study examines how inequalities based on class, gender, race, nationality, and body capital are reproduced and contested by sex workers. Based on the multiple facets of the precariousness …

Thrown Off Course: School Suspension And Its Consequences For Students’ Educational Trajectories And Outcomes, Celina Cuevas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Purpose: The literature on exclusionary school discipline has repeatedly documented disparities in its use and its relationship to various negative outcomes, causing the use of suspensions to become a pressing concern in the United States. The goal of this dissertation is to add this body of literature by being the first to examine the educational trajectories youth take after first being suspended, and how the effect of school punishment on trajectories may be more severe for subgroups of students disproportionately affected by school discipline and often underserved in school settings.

Methods: New York City Department of Education data is used …

A Re-Evaluation Of The Hyper-Selectivity Perspective: The Case Of Second-Generation Filipinos, Brenda B. Gambol Gavigan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Scholars Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou (2015) argue that the upward mobility of one racial group --- Asian Americans --- in the U.S. can be explained by its “hyper-selectivity”: the Immigration Act of 1965 brought in Asian migrants who are more highly educated than their compatriots back home and the average American. These middle-class immigrants bring with them a success frame based on exceptional achievement and generate ethnic capital (i.e. resources and information available in the community) that ultimately benefits all members of an ethnic group, including the second-generation. In addition, the educational leaps of the second-generation have altered racial …

Self-Determination In Transportation: The Route To Social Inclusion For People With Disabilities, Jessica Murray

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

People with disabilities encounter many challenges with transportation but are not usually considered in research about travel behavior and well-being. Research on transportation challenges is often disability-specific even though different access needs can complement or conflict with each other. I argue that disability should be centered in the study of travel and well-being because it magnifies problems that may also frustrate people who do not currently consider themselves disabled. The goal of the dissertation was to identify how basic psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence apply to the context of transportation and identify ways to measure fulfillment and frustration …

Examining Racial And Ethnic Disparity In Prosecutor’S Bail Requests And Downstream Decision Making, Connor Concannon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Rigorous academic research into prosecutorial and judicial decision making has been taking place for over three decades, but a great deal remains unknown about the mechanics of prosecution. A majority of the work done by prosecutors occurs outside of public view, and most research focuses on the ‘back end’ of the adjudication process, leaving unanalyzed numerous decision points made upstream of the final plea and sentencing outcomes. Using unique data from the New York County District Attorney’s Office that tracks 43,971 felony complaints, this research examines racial and ethnic disparity at multiple decision points during case processing, with a focus …

The Emergence Of Ecosystems-Based Fisheries Management From The Groundfish Crisis In New England: An Actor-Network Theory Analysis, Catherine King

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research investigates the emergence of ecosystems-based fisheries management (EBFM) for New England's marine fisheries in the context of the "crisis" that is escalating in its groundfish fishery. Close observations of the practices of fisheries scientists in coordination with managers at the New England Fisheries Management Council, with focus on how knowledge is being produced and employed, allows for understanding EBFM as an emergent construction produced by networks of associations between actants, human and non-human, material and semiotic, and not strictly as a policy prescription informed by experts on biology, ecology, and socio-economics. This analysis identifies and elucidates the multiplicity …

Is The South (Still) America’S Sacrifice Zone? A Regional Analysis Of Toxic Emissions, 1987–2017, Tanesha A. Thomas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The southern United States has been labeled a “sacrifice zone” for the rest of the nation's toxic waste. In the early days of the environmental justice movement, researchers found that the south contained a disproportionate number of toxic sites, including garbage dumps, landfills, and waste incinerators. These initial studies used different data sources and methodologies, but arrived at the same conclusion: America was dumping in Dixie, a predominantly poor African American region of the country. Since then, researchers have mainly confirmed or called into question the existence of environmental racism within the south. However, none have investigated the south’s environmental …

Engaging Neighbors: Housing Strategies And Political Mobilization In Moscow's Renovation, Anna Zhelnina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In summer 2017, residents of thousands of socialist-era apartment buildings in Moscow were invited to vote and decide whether their building should be included in the demolition and relocation program proposed by the Mayor’s Office. Renovation is an ongoing urban renewal plan, first announced in Moscow in February 2017, to demolish whole neighborhoods of socialist-era, five-story buildings and replace them with high-rises. The vast project affected more than 5,000 buildings with approximately a million inhabitants.

This dissertation addresses general questions of political agency and the possibility for diverse people in urban neighborhoods to produce change: to achieve desired policy outcomes, …

Migratory Timescapes: Experiences Of Pausing, Waiting, And Inhabiting The Meanwhile Of Migrants And Asylum Seekers In Mexico, Isabel Gil Everaert

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico´s southern border with Guatemala, this dissertation provides insights into contemporary experiences of migration in Mexico by engaging with the notions of movement, control, and settlement from a critical perspective. I explore these experiences through the idea of migratory timescapes, defined as structural temporal-relational contexts in which migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers are socially embedded. In the case of this dissertation, I unpack three migratory timescapes which are situated in a regional context of growing displacement and increasingly restrictive migratory and asylum policies, what I call the block-and-wait system.

First, I introduce the idea …

Being And Becoming: Voice And The Performance Of Self By Black And Brown Women Members Of An Educational Space Organized In Whiteness, Anamaria Correa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation joins the voices of experiences of Black and Brown individuals in elite white spaces of independent schools. As a qualitative research project this study utilizes narrative, I Poems, and art-ifacts to create an ecology of experiences illustrating the past and the resiliency of the present. This research disrupts status quo narratives of lauded diversity efforts of excellent private school education and is a call to action for accountability in anti-racist owning up and restructuring of independent school spaces, leadership, governance and cultural practices. Undergirded by Critical Race Feminist Theory as the theoretical framework this dissertation presents the intersectional, …

Crumbs To Keep Them Full: Neoliberal Spectacle At The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Lisa Gueldenzopf

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has been a fall staple in the U.S. for nearly a century. This event has the potential to make a significant impact on national culture due to its immersion in long-held traditions, the extent of media consumption, and the role of advertising. Unlike many other parades and cultural festivals in the world, opposing values and points of view are placed side by side, meant to be consumed as a single package. This thesis argues that today neoliberal ideology engulfs the annual event, as seen in part through token representation of marginalized identities. The parade of …

Spheres Of Identity: Theorizing Social Categorization And The Legitimacy Of Criminal Justice Officials, Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Identity is of central importance in the subjective experience of justice and assessments of legitimacy. In this study, the researcher explores whether perceptions of legitimacy are constructed differently across social group identity, particularly where social groups differ in relation to government (e.g., outgroup or ingroup). The analyses are conducted using data from a procedural justice study conducted in two U. S. cities. The findings suggest evidence of a generally similar construction of legitimacy though with important dissimilarities based on social group. Additionally, certain respondents’ narratives follow common narrative scripts in describing interactions with police, suggestive of a shared master narrative …

Many Forms Of Black Death: Coal Extraction, Transnational Activism And The Value Of Life In Colombia, Oscar H. Pedraza Vargas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

After the murder of the president and vice president of the coal union by paramilitaries in the department of Cesár, Colombia, the union is left adrift. Its fragility is only heightened when the person who decides to take over, is killed six months later. The union has been vocal on their critique of environmental destruction produced by coal and argues that their criticism is part of the reasons why they were targeted. Not far from there, in the department of Guajira, the conglomerate in charge of Cerrejón, the largest open-pit coal mine of South America, wants to divert a creek …

Developmental Predictors Of Adolescent Mental Health Stigma And A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial Of "Ending The Silence" In New York City, Joseph S. Deluca

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study explored predictors of mental health stigma among adolescents and the effectiveness of a school-based mental health stigma reduction and health promotion program, “Ending the Silence” (ETS), developed by the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Youth mental health service use is impacted by many factors, but concern about stigma and low mental health knowledge have been consistently identified as leading barriers to help-seeking. Beyond education and contact program components, existing research on how to design a successful adolescent stigma reduction intervention has been inconclusive. A diverse sample of 206 high school students in New York City participated in the …

Legitimizing Violence At The European Border: Gendered Misrepresentations At Sea And The Vulnerable Other, Michela Demelas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis highlights a temporal and spatial gap in the feminist literature about migrants' journeys throughout the Mediterranean, and investigates the gendered dynamics acting upon the encounter between the European border and racialized bodies at sea. The Mediterranean sea’s material features allow Europe to approach migration as a humanitarian crisis coming from outside, which discharges its responsibility for the deaths. Yet, essentialistic views represent the feminized Other as vulnerable and needing to be saved from the male Other and the sea. Such views shape the Western narratives around concrete rescue procedures and border authorities behaviors. The encounter between the border …

Making Muslim Americans: Parenting Practices, Parochial Schools, And The Transmission Of Faith Across Generations In Metropolitan Detroit, Rebecca Karam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At present, it is estimated that there are 3.45 million Muslims living in the United States, the vast majority of whom are immigrants and the children of immigrants. While religion has typically been found to foster assimilation among immigrant newcomers, Islamophobia is rampant and threatens to challenge this process. This dissertation project intervenes in this empirical puzzle by asking the following research questions: How do we explain the conscious attempt by second generation Muslim parents to foster a distinctly Muslim and American identity among their third-generation children? More specifically, how have the parenting decisions of upper-middle class, second-generation Muslim Americans …

Paper, Places, And Familias: Tracing The Social Mobility Of Mexicans In New York, Guillermo Yrizar Barbosa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Why and how do some undocumented immigrants, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, and their families in the United States do better than others in terms of family household income and educational planning? Immigrant “illegality” can limit specific possibilities and opportunities for most immigrants and their family members. But important variations have been identified in ethnographic fieldwork for this dissertation and through a dataset of contemporary immigrants interviewed in New York. The objective of this dissertation is to analyze how immigration status, place or local ecosystem, human capital, social networks, and intra-family dynamics affect the socioeconomic mobility of individuals, born …

Inspirations For Awake: Expressions Of Trauma Through Fiction And Autoethnographic Literature, Sophia Rodriguez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Awake is a novella based on true events in my own life. This capstone project addresses my own experiences with intimate partner violence. While it is inspired by my life, I chose to write a fictional narrative rather than a strictly biographical piece of nonfiction. Instead, this novella illustrates a few of the traumas that I went through from within the lens of a fictional narrative. This enabled me to tell about my experiences by crafting my memories into a story, without the pressure of submitting an accounting of them. Writing Awake has been helpful to me in that it …

The Life And Death Of Mambo: Culture And Consumption In New York's Salsa Dance Scene, Carmela Muzio Dormani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent decades salsa dancing has become a global phenomenon, spawning a variety of styles and levels. Although formerly passed from person to person through Latinx family and community networks, salsa dance has long been practiced in a more codified way. Today, salsa is largely reproduced in dance studio classes, congresses, and competitions collectively referred to as “the salsa scene”. In New York City, the salsa scene retains vestiges of Nuyorican and Afro-Caribbean identity, though it is practiced by people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds and marketed to a global base. Building on long term participation observation and nearly …

“I’M Real I Thought I Told Ya”: Developing Critical Media Literacy Through U.S. Latinx Digital Media Representations, Solange T. Castellar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores how audiences engage with U.S. Latinx media representations through the practice of critical media literacy. I interrogate how media consumers construct critical media literacy through interacting with U.S. Latinx figures on digital media platforms, particularly on the social-media app, Twitter, and the user-generated video content platform, YouTube. Throughout this thesis, I argue that users on these platforms who engage with U.S. Latinx pop culture figures, like Jennifer Lopez and Belcalis Almanzar (Cardi B), read, digest, and comprehend a variety of multimedia images, texts, or videos, and that this engagement becomes an accessible form of critical media literacy, …

Learning To Fail? Student Experiences In Remedial Mathematics In Community Colleges, Margaret P. Fay

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Referral to remedial coursework in mathematics is a significant barrier to degree attainment for community college students, which in turn has serious consequences for their employment and earning prospects. Students are placed into remediation when they are deemed unprepared to engage in college-level coursework, most often based on a score on a placement test. Nationally, 59% of community college students are placed into remedial math courses. Of these, only 49% complete remediation and gain access to college-level coursework. Because a college-level math course is often a degree requirement, many students who fail to complete remedial math courses are forced to …

The Guinea-Bissau Constitutional Reform Debate, Watson Aila Gomes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The enactment of law is not to be confused with the rule of law, and simply having a constitution does not guarantee political order. In Guinea-Bissau there have been calls to write a new constitution, but whether that helps Guinea-Bissau become a more stable country is questionable. Currently, there is a gap in the research of social science, history and political science examining how the processes of instability have unfolded in Guinea-Bissau. Few studies attempt to examine the correlation between a country’s stability and its constitution. A paradoxical situation exists in many countries in Africa where the political system is …

Cracks In The Bathroom Stall: A Discourse Analysis On Transgender Bathroom Usage At Garden Spot High School, Kirsten D. Corneilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent years, high schools across the country have seen the concern around transgender students using gendered facilities, such as bathrooms and locker rooms, come to the forefront. Often, dissenters raise worries of privacy and of “catering to a minority,” no matter what decision is reached. At Garden Spot High School in New Holland, Pennsylvania, the site of this research, one such concern has led to a district-wide decision to eliminate gendered facilities and move to single-use facilities, in the name of preserving student privacy. Through the examination of historical precedent and discourse analysis, this paper examines how transgender surveillance …

Shadow Standards And The Logic Of Costs: Care, Stewardship, And Data In U.S. Community Health, Margarite J. Whitten

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the delegation of responsibility for providing health care to particular categories of marginalized populations in the United States in the absence of a uniform and universal health care system. It explores how the U.S. federal government governs patient populations at a distance by mandating that healthcare providers collect, produce, and report on patient data. Drawing from eighteen months of ethnographic research in Massachusetts clinics for the homeless and the frail elderly between 2014-2015, I argue that when marginalized patients are unable to satisfy the neoliberal ideal of self-governance to maintain their health in cost-effective ways, providers are …

Can Gentrification Improve Education For Low-Income Minority Students?, Edir Coronado

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Gentrification is the process of investment into disinvested neighborhoods. The development of gentrification brings a reduction in crime, new job opportunities, and better government services, but these new neighborhood amenities are not available to all residents within the gentrified location. Newark, NJ one of the poorest municipalities in the northeast has long been one of the faces for urban blight and is one of the most troubled cities in the state of New Jersey in terms of crime, poverty, and academic performance.

Out of gentrification expensive chain stores, high priced rental units, and charter schools are born. Structurally the neighborhood …

Work–Family Conflict In Low-Income Households, Maritza G. Hiciano Ramos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The United States is the only country not offering paid parental leave. Paid leave is left at the discretion of employers and only a few states offer Paid Family Leave benefits. The FMLA was established to protect workers from losing their jobs in case they needed to care for an elderly person or for their children. However, since value is not placed in family structures there has not been much development in that area. The FMLA fails to account for the grand majority of people in the U.S., especially those of lower socioeconomic status. Moreover, the vast inequalities that exists …

Campus Design And The Community College Experience: An Exploration Of Stress, Belonging And Scholarly Identity, Vanita Naidoo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This mixed methods research study examines factors that influence the development of scholarly identity at a community college campus. It uses survey methods and a focus group with undergraduate students at the Bronx Community College (BCC) campus to examine how campus design relates to a sense of belonging, the process of reflection, and the development of a scholarly identity. Academic attrition and low performance are challenges at urban community colleges. The study aims to address how campus design, specifically green space, impacts undergraduate students at a community college. It seeks to better understand the experience of the diverse student population …

Living In A World Of “Stop, Question And Frisk” And “Trespass Enforcement”: Black And Latinx Youth Engaging In Police Reform In New York City, Jeanene Lee Barrett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although much has been written about youths’ experiences with police encounters in general, little qualitative research has been conducted into the SQF and housing trespass enforcement experiences of Black and Latinx youth in NYC. Additionally, there is little research that uses the voice of Black and Latinx youth to envision interactions with NYPD that could improve police-community relations. The present study, using a purposively sampled sub-set of 20 transcripts from a larger focus group process, examined the lived experience of Black and Latinx youth between the ages of 13 – 25, with a focus on stop-question-frisk (SQF) and housing trespass …

If It Wasn’T For The Women: An Exploration Of Works By Renita Weems, Wil Gafney, & Kelly Brown Douglas, Charlene Adams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Womanist Bible scholars Renita Weems, Kelly Brown Douglas, and Wil Gafney’s offerings to the world of biblical scholarship have had a profound impact on Christian faith in the United States. Womanist biblical scholarship is the hermeneutics, ethics, critique, theology, and more, done with a specific lens on Black women and how we are understood within and as a result of biblical texts. Weems, Douglas, and Gafney’s work has asked the tough questions of Christianity, and bravely tackled taboo topics like sexuality, abuse, and racism. Their aim has been to interrogate whose voices have not been present in popular Christian discourse, …