Other Sociology Commons^™

Mainstream Media Portrayal Of Banishment And Nation-Imposed Punishment, Keely Ormond

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

“In a traditional village, we wouldn’t have a teepee with no door on it and throw somebody in there. We wouldn’t cast them out, because banishment meant death. What we had to do was restore relationships” – Ryan Beardy (Thorpe, 2022).

The following project examines the representation of Indigenous traditions, customs, and issues in Canadian mainstream media. Specifically, this project is interested in the portrayal of banishment as an Indigenous practice in Canadian mainstream news outlets. This project is based on an interpretive paradigm informed by grounded theory and concepts of media framing, postcolonialism, settler colonialism and restorative justice. Nineteen …

A New Atticus Is Afoot: The Portrayal Of Lawyers In Popular Culture, Anna Thrush

Senior Theses

This project analyzes the stereotypical image of lawyers in popular culture, focusing on either overly demonic or unrealistically heroic. Both stereotypes that are common portrayals of attorneys in popular culture are unrealistic and deny society a true comprehension of the profession. Popular culture has molded the image of lawyers to the characteristics that sell, rather than focusing on a realistic portrayal. Therefore, popular culture creates a falsely dramatized image of attorneys to generate revenue, putting the reputation and future of the profession as risk. These stereotypes are exemplified in this project through a close literary analysis of lawyer characters from …

The Making And Unmaking Of Urban Citizenship In The Maspero Triangle, Nadine Abd El Razek

Theses and Dissertations

Cairo is undergoing a moment of sharpened exclusion and inclusion, with the city’s residents of informal settlements disproportionately experiencing displacement and abrupt interruptions to their social fabric to make way for investment opportunities. In pursuit of achieving the status of a global city, the Egyptian state has effectively widened its practice of structural violence, in order to accumulate capital through dispossession. In the process of doing so, the state has problematized the contested status of urban citizenship, disenfranchising the urban dwellers of Cairo from their right to the city. Following the temporal shifts in the negotiation for urban citizenship, the …

Cities Of God Under Occupation: Settler Colonial Practices And Pacification In The Favelas Of Rio De Janeiro And The Occupied Palestinian Territories, Amanda Pimenta Da Silva

Theses and Dissertations

The 2002 film ‘City of God’ tells an anecdotal story of violence in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, and is a reminder that the societies we tend to take for granted can actually be a luxury. The film portrays the daily life of the peripheries of Rio and its relation with drug trafficking, crime, and poverty, and how it has deteriorated into a war zone so dangerous that anyone risk being shot to death. Thousands of miles away from the Brazilian slums there is another so-called city of God, or the city chosen by God to be the home’s …

The Basha's Tools? Imagining Alternative Justice Futures In Egypt, Farah Ghazal

Theses and Dissertations

The dominant approach to addressing violence against women in Egypt today is carceral, or relying on the punitive instruments of the state to achieve justice (most visibly represented by the prison and police). While carceral responses are perhaps unsurprisingly advocated by state feminism, they are also promoted by what would typically be described as anti-state actors. This paradoxical entanglement takes place during what I identify as the 'carceral moment', a period marked by the intensification of political and social repression and during which incarceration appears more readily available as a solution to remedy perceived problems of governance. I argue that, …

Neither “Post-War” Nor Post-Pregnancy Paranoia: How America’S War On Drugs Continues To Perpetuate Disparate Incarceration Outcomes For Pregnant, Substance-Involved Offenders, Becca S. Zimmerman

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the unique interactions between pregnancy, substance involvement, and race as they relate to the War on Drugs and the hyper-incarceration of women. Using ordinary least square regression analyses and data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, I examine if (and how) pregnancy status, drug use, race, and their interactions influence two length of incarceration outcomes: sentence length and amount of time spent in jail between arrest and imprisonment. The results collectively indicate that pregnancy decreases length of incarceration outcomes for those offenders who are not substance-involved but not evenhandedly -- benefitting white …

Transformation As Desistance Inside: Temporality And Identity Reconstruction Among Men With Life Sentences, Richard Stover

Honors Theses

This thesis is an investigation of destistance strategies among men sentenced to life in prison in a medium security prison in Pennsylvania. Desistance here is defined as the process leading to the cessation of formally deviant behavior. Drawing from life narrative interviews conducted among 22 men, I argue that desistance is intrinsically tied to how inmates conceptualize themselves within the institutional context of the prison and can be expanded to include people who are still incarcerated. I build off of Peggy Giordano and colleagues symbolic interactionist perspective on desistance and expand it to chart how men with life sentences order …

Are Opinions On Abortion Based On Racial Attitudes?, Ashley Mueller

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

My specific research question that I will be addressing through my Honors Research Project is; Does one’s race influence their opinions and criminalization of abortion in the United States? In addition to this question I will be discussing if these views have changed over time depending on race, and how their backgrounds, due to their race, may differentiate these views.

Earth Alienation And Space Exploration: Uncharted Territory For Sociology, Sam Arroyo

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Officer Use Of Force: A Multicase Study Of Institutional Betrayal, Margarita Mcauliffe

Theses & Dissertations

Law enforcement officers in the United States are authorized to utilize force (Alpert & MacDonald, 2001); however, the use of force can cause physical and emotional trauma to the person against whom it is used, and to the person’s loved ones (WHO, 2002; Bloom, 2012; APA, 2013). The needs and rights of traumatized individuals must be addressed for healing to occur (U.S. DOJ, 2013). It was not known if the needs and rights of the survivors of officer use of force were being met. Filling a gap in the literature, this exploratory multicase study investigated 5 use-of-force incidents with demographically …

The Politics Of Wounds, Jonathan Nash

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

What configuration of strategies and discourses enable the white male and settler body politic to render itself as simultaneously wounded and invulnerable? I contextualize this question by reading the discursive continuities between Euro-America’s War on Terror post-9/11 and Algeria’s War for Independence. By interrogating political-philosophical responses to September 11, 2001 beside American rhetoric of a wounded nation, I argue that white nationalism, as a mode of settler colonialism, appropriates the discourses of political wounding to imagine and legitimize a narrative of white hurt and white victimhood; in effect, reproducing and hardening the borders of the nation-state. Additionally, by turning to …

The Predictors Of Juvenile Recidivism: Testimonies Of Adult Students 18 Years And Older Exiting From Alternative Education, La Toshia Palmer

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this descriptive, qualitative study was to identify and describe the importance of the predictors of juvenile recidivism and the effectiveness of efforts to prevent/avoid juvenile recidivism as perceived by previously detained, arrested, convicted, and/or incarcerated adult students 18 years of age and older exiting from alternative education in Northern California. A second purpose was to explore the types of support provided by alternative schools and the perceived importance of the support to avoid recidivism according to adult students 18 years of age and older exiting from alternative education.

Methodology: This qualitative, descriptive research design identified …

Exclusion From Rights Through Extra-Territoriality At Home: The Case Of Paris Roissy-Charles De Gaulle Airport's Waiting Zone, Pauline Gj Maillet

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In this dissertation I argue that, since the 1980s, French airports have been designed to exclude people from legal, human and refugee rights. The particular space where this happens has been successively called “international zone”, “transit zone” and “waiting zone” and its scope has been significantly extended overtime. I contend that French authorities have used the concept of extra-territoriality in concert with the material design of the airport to sustain exclusion. While this research focuses on France, findings bear relevance to the global governance of migrants and refugees. The French case epitomizes how states creatively use the law (or absence …

Tactical Police Officers, Romantic Attachment And Job-Related Stress: A Mixed-Methods Study, Natalie Fagan

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

Stressors stemming from tactical policing such as social isolation and increased work responsibilities often spill over into the home and affect personal relationships. Using attachment theory as the guiding framework, this mixed methods study aimed to obtain a better understanding of the factors involved in maintaining long-term relationships between tactical officers and their romantic partners. Phase I consisted of surveys administered to tactical officers in Kentucky and measured romantic partner attachment, organizational and operational police stressors. Research questions examined how operational and organizational stress correlated with attachment while controlling for demographics. Analysis indicated that holding a rank above an officer …

Who We Are: Incarcerated Students And The New Prison Literature, 1995-2010, Reilly Hannah N. Lorastein

Honors Projects

This project focuses on American prison writings from the late 1990s to the 2000s. Much has been written about American prison intellectuals such as Malcolm X, George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, and Angela Davis, who wrote as active participants in black and brown freedom movements in the United States. However the new prison literature that has emerged over the past two decades through higher education programs within prisons has received little to no attention. This study provides a more nuanced view of the steadily growing silent population in the United States through close readings of Openline, an inter-disciplinary journal featuring …