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 …

Historical Trauma: Literary And Testimonial Responses To Hiroshima, Mariam Ghonim

Theses and Dissertations

The concept of trauma is controversial in literature. While one may be able to come up with ways to describe trauma in fiction, representing historical trauma is a hard task for writers. Some argue that trauma can not be described through those who did not experience it, while others claim that, provided some elements are added, one can represent trauma to the reader. This thesis focuses on twentieth-century historical traumas related to a nuclear catastrophe and explores the different literary and testimonial responses to the catastrophic man-made event of Hiroshima (1945). In this thesis, Kathleen Burkinshaw’s historical fiction The Last …

Understanding The Impact Of Scientific Testimony On Potential Jury Members: Independent And Interactive Effects Of Expert Characteristics And Jury Member’S Social Location, Ellory R. Dabbs

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

As science and technology evolve, they impact society at different levels. With these changes, it is important to understand how members of society will be affected. One area where there has been a rise in the use of scientific information is in jury trials. Those who are on trial for a criminal offense are more often relying on forensic evidence, and forensic experts, to aid in their defense, and those who are prosecuting a criminal case are also relying on forensic evidence and forensic experts. However, forensic evidence is not consistent in type or interpretation – what one person may …

The Great Resignation: A Content Analysis Of News Sources' Portrayals Of The Covid-19 Labor Shortage., Mackenzie Williams

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

When workers left the labor market in large numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic, proclamations of a labor shortage emerged extensively throughout the news. In this study, I analyze the coverage of the worker shortage among three news sources with different political orientations. Several themes emerged from analyzing a total of 75 articles. The findings showed that the perspective shown in the article, the cause of the labor shortage, restaurant worker portrayal, support of solutions, and opinion of the labor shortage all differed based on the political identity of the news source. This research supports previous findings that show there is …

Possessed: New Horror Films In The Era Of Neoliberalism, Bethany C. Nelson

Doctoral Dissertations

Since its inception, the horror genre has been reflective of cultural fears. In neoliberal society, horror cinema has experienced a cultural revival that has challenged the conventional boundaries of the genre and expanded our current understandings through a convergence of neoliberalism and gothic horror with unprecedented popularity in the cultural imaginary. The conjuring universe, one of the highest grossing and most popular horror universes to date, presents a key space for cultural criminologists, like horror and film fans, to engage with the terror of the neoliberal world through mediated new gothic images, resulting in a gothic criminology. Through an ethnographic …

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.

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 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 …

A Little Dab Will Do Ya: An Exploration Of First Time Dabbers On Youtube, Christopher L. Coker

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This thesis project is an in-depth examination of a rising subculture within cannabis users. With this research project, my aim was to explore and provide insight into the initial experiences of novice cannabis concentrate use as represented on YouTube while they are initiated into this emerging cannabis subculture. Referred to as “dabbing” or “dabs,” this highly potent and concentrated form of cannabis is being utilized by cannabis users to achieve greater highs and effects than those from the traditional cannabis flower. In this study I explored first-time “dabbers” by drawing from social media content in the form of YouTube videos …

A Political Ecology Of Information: Media And The Dilemma Of State Power In China, Michael L. Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I employ a Weberian concept of social power in order to theorize the challenges posed by, and the varieties of state response to, the dilemma of state power: the need of all states to empower societies with social capacities that may, in turn, threaten state interests. Through a comparison of traditional and new forms of media in China, I show that rather than posing qualitatively new types of challenges to authoritarian states, new media exacerbate the dilemma of state power. They do so because along each of three dimensions of social control, new media shift the relationship …

Denial: A Sociological Theory, Christina Nadler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation develops a theory of sociological denial through an investigation of contested social problems. I begin by reviewing the literature on denial, both sociological and psychological, in order to situate the project and exemplify the relevance and need for a sociological theory of denial. Then, through examining three scales of the social, I account for multiple layers of the social structure and denial’s place in each. These scales are the sites at which denial happens: geographic, cognitive, and unconscious. I explore five contested social problems through varied paradigms that allow me to analyze each scale of the structural. I …

A Study Of Nature Versus Nurture While Diagnosing Anxiety Or Conduct Disorders In Adolescents, Austin Laura Schnur

Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

"Tough On Crime, Tough On The Causes Of Crime": Liberal Carceral Logics And The Reproduction Of Settler Colonial Violence In Winnipeg, Mb, Canada, Bronwyn Dobchuk-Land

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation illustrates how settler colonialism is reproduced in present-day Canada through the governance of crime, and how political struggles against policing, imprisonment, and colonialism are linked. It focuses on the politics of crime in the Province of Manitoba from 1999–2016, during which the left-of-center New Democratic Party (NDP) government engineered a significant expansion of the carceral state, overseeing unprecedented increases in policing and jail growth. In Manitoba, the vast majority of prisoners are Indigenous. This dissertation explores the logic through which the NDP integrated their support for policing and imprisonment into their “progressive” value system, packaging their carceral expansion …

Socially Deviant Communities Online: How The Pro-Anorexia Movement Utilizes The Anonymity Provided By The Internet To Thrive, Samantha Thomas

Honors Theses

The creation of the internet has produced an environment in which many communities have been able to develop into strong and thriving societies. A large number of communities that are now predominantly online were unable to exist successfully before the establishment of the internet for a variety of reasons. The internet has made it easier for people from different backgrounds and locations to network, form communities, and share information with one another. Unfortunately the internet has also given harmful underground communities the opportunity to develop and thrive as well. Socially deviant communities, groups that support ideas and behaviors deemed unacceptable …

Critical Champions Or Careless Condemners? Exploring News Media Constructions In Cases Of Wrongful Conviction, Katherine Rozad

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Countless incidences occur throughout the world each and every day. However, only a few of these occurrences are deemed newsworthy by the media. One area of information quite often categorized as “newsworthy” is that surrounding crime. Within crime-related news coverage are occasionally cases of wrongful conviction – miscarriages of justice in which the innocent are labeled “guilty” and wrongly punished. Despite decades of research in both the areas of crime and media, as well as wrongful conviction studies, no research to date has examined the way that cases of wrongful conviction are constructed in the media from the beginnings of …

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 …

The Social Contagion Of Violence; A Theoretical Exploration Of The Nature Of Violence In Society, Kayla Kirkpatrick

Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Examining Juvenile Crime And Recidivism, Charles M. Watson

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

High juvenile recidivism rates are a dilemma that is plaguing the juvenile justice system and the treatment facilities that operate within. There is little understanding of the causal relationship between recidivism rates, treatment types, and the demographics of the residents at the various treatment facilities. The purpose of this research is to identify the common flaws existing in current treatment practices and to utilize social labeling theory as a means of gaining a better understanding of this issue.

Witchcraft, Communism And Social Control, Kristi B. Salmons

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Society is composed of rules and regulations governing action, behavior and thoughts of its members. The Salem witch trials of 1692 and the McCarthy Era are discussed in terms of their how and why each event occurred so similarly. Findings suggest social stress and large scale societal shifts to be at the crux of the issue. Other factors discussed relating to causality are; gender, deviance and its functions, norms and conformity.