Sociology of Culture Commons^™

Syrian Refugee Place Attachment And Place Making In Ottawa, On, Kiran Va Unger-Basappa

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

How can Syrian refugees’ feelings of attachment towards places and spaces in Ottawa, ON be used to indicate their own sense of integration into Canadian society? Exploring research participants’ place attachments to the city of Ottawa enables a greater understanding of their lived geographies that either hinder or elevate their integration experience. The mixed-method data collection used in this research study include an online qualitative survey, in-depth interviews, and a mental mapping exercise. The analysis of the data is based upon five factors of place attachment used to define integration. These are comfort, security, relationships, involvement, and rootedness. …

Operation Summer Care: Territories Of The Stewardship-Hospitality Complex, George Papamattheakis

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Operation Summer Care studies the expanding interest that the hospitality industry takes in the biogeophysical environment. Natural surroundings have long been an essential operational precondition of tourism in the global sunbelt, but contemporary environmental anxieties increasingly motivate different strata of hosts to take a more active role in environmental management. Usually the domain of the state, biogeophysical entities and their spaces—plants and animals, sand formations, wetlands, entire ecosystems and protected areas—are measured, ordered, and managed by actors adjacent to the tourism industry. At the same time, the socio-technical mechanisms of environmental intervention and calculation are conveniently framed as practices of …

L’Économie Solidaire De Kabylie : Une Perspective Critique, Mohamed-Amokrane Zoreli

Journal of Amazigh Studies

Résumé :

Dans cet article, l’auteur réalise, pour le contexte de la Kabylie, une étude d’ensemble de l’évolution des pratiques d’économie sociale, du modèle originel jusqu’à la période actuelle, en passant par les différentes phases de colonisation puis d’indépendance. L’objectif est triple. Voir d’abord quels sont les ressorts, les mécanismes et les finalités des solidarités locales originelles et comment elles se mobilisent pour répondre à des besoins socio-économiques et politiques. Voir ensuite comment l’Etat-nation et la mondialisation ont impacté dans le temps long ces solidarités locales, en les démobilisant et immobilisant par différents moyens, juridiques, économiques et politiques. Voir enfin …

Salty: A Diffractive Inquiry Of Visceral Knowing And Embodied Aesthetics, Mei Ling Chua

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation takes a diffractive, onto-epistemological approach to everyday practices with salt in order to articulate an expanded understanding of meaning making and knowledge production. This research reckons with and challenges dominant modes of knowing that engage a Cartesian perspective to situate knowing as the exclusive domain of the mind in both form and topic of inquiry. This research acts simultaneously as both a direct practice of and metacognition about knowledge production by examining 1. the embodied (including sensory and emotional aspects) and 2. the relational (including interpersonal and socio-cultural) dimensions of experience as visceral knowing. This articulation of …

The Politics Of The Self: Psychedelic Assemblages, Psilocybin, And Subjectivity In The Anthropocene, Joshua Falcon

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how psychedelic substances become drawn into particular sociohistorical and political arrangements, and how psychedelic experiences with psilocybin ‘magic mushrooms’ are used as tools of subjectivation. Guided by literatures in philosophy, critical theory, and the social sciences that focus on subjectivity, assemblage theory, and critical posthumanism, I argue that psychedelics are drawn into variegated assemblages, each of which conceptualizes the nature of psychedelics in highly specific ways that reflect implicit conceptions of the world and the self. In developing the concept of psychedelic assemblages, this research provides a window onto the politics of the self in the Anthropocene. …

Step By Step: Understanding Perceptions Of Time And Space In Nepal, Lillian Norton-Brainerd

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Time and space are part of everyone’s daily life; however, these concepts are rarely explicitly discussed. Hegemonic interpretations of time and space are part of capitalist, colonialist structures, thus understanding alternative perceptions is important to resisting these structures. To understand perceptions of time in Nepal, I spent a month in Gre, a small village near Langtang National Park. I interviewed villagers and spent time observing how people spend their time, talk about time, and give directions to physical places. While there is not one perception of time and space, I learned how time and space influence each other. Geography and …

Pornography: Social, Emotional And Mental Implications Among Adolescents, William Kelly Canady

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

This presentation will explain the historical development of pornography. It will highlight four segments: 1- Porn’s impact on brain development of reward pathways, ultimately increasing the appetite for more porn. 2- Porn can be a false substitute for real intimacy, resulting in decreased sexual satisfaction with a real person and increased verbal and physical aggression. 3- Porn promotes sex trafficking, promotes multiple sex partners and reduced STD prevention. 4- A review of interventions available to assist clients in navigating a lifestyle away from pornography.

Muslim Woman:Heavenly Body, Communal Autonomy, Shadyar Omrani

Sociology Student Work Collection

This project is a quick review and analysis of different socio-cultural impacts that influence the formation of a Muslim woman’s identity through the embodiment of womanhood and motherhood. I will argue that the self-determination of a Muslim woman’s body and autonomous social identity is highly influenced by their cultural and economic notions of self; the ground, based on which their emancipation can be better paved.

‘Maid In The Usa’: Immigrant Women, Domestic Labor And Double Alienation, Shadyar Omrani, Shadyar Omrani

Sociology Student Work Collection

In the past three decades, as the economy of the industrialized countries has moved towards the growing Tech industry, middle-class women have found more opportunities to fill in white-collared job positions (McDowell, 2009). The increase in the rate of women’s participation in the labor market has made them less willing to do (or capable of doing) the housework and child/elderly care _ the tasks which are historically stereotyped as feminine (ibid). Therefore, a considerably growing trend in paid domestic labor is being introduced to formerly blue-collared and dominantly immigrant women (England, P.: 2005). The tasks which are regarded as “labor …

Book Review: Our Towns: A 100,000 Mile Journey Into The Heart Of America, Keith Morton

eJournal of Public Affairs

Book review of James and Deborah Fallows, Our towns: a 100,000 mile journey into the heart of America

"Oh, Those Horsemen!" Regulatory Change And Cultural Peculiarity In Finland, Pauliina Raento

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

Abstract

Finland's three gambling monopoly operators merged into one state-owned entity in 2017. A particular challenge to the process came from its smallest constituent, the tote company Fintoto, its owner, the national Trotting and Horse Breeding Association, and the equine industry’s cultural peculiarity.

The process is examined from the perspective of the equine industry, which had to choose between joining or not joining the merger. The exchanges between 'horse people' and state regulators, the equine industry’s resistance and decision to participate in the merger, and concerns about impact are traced from Finland's leading equine newspaper, in 2015–2017. The articles are …

The Legitimation & Networked Unification Of #Nodapl: Diverse Discourses Of Value Validate A Collective Identity, Jacqueline Marie Ouellette

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

NoDAPL was, first and foremost, an Indigenous-led resistance against the construction of a pipeline in North Dakota. It was also a movement that built solidarity, bridging networks between international Indigenous peoples, Black Lives Matter activists, veterans, and feminists. This discourse analysis of social media and digital texts addresses the networked publics, collective identities, social capital, and intersectionality in applying Van Leeuwen’s (2007) understanding of legitimation. In doing so, the practice of reproducing and extending the values, themes, and images of various algorithmic imaginaries will be explored, as they relate to network homophily, identity construction, and mobilization. This study will argue …

Yardwork: A Biography Of An Urban Place By Daniel Coleman, Vivian M. Hansen

The Goose

Review of Daniel Coleman's Yardwork: A Biography of an Urban Place.

Persistence Of Cultural Heritage In A Multicultural Context: Examining Factors That Shaped Voting Preferences In The 2016 Election, Anna M. Schwartz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The prevailing discourse about the myth of the “melting pot” of American culture implies that heritage cultures are eliminated in favor of a homogenous “American” norm. However, this myth belies the persistence of our cultural heritage in forming our attitudes, morals, and habitual patterns of thought, each of which shape how we participate in our democracy through voting. By contextualizing voting predictors such as authoritarianism, social dominance, and sexism in developmental and ecological theories, this dissertation shows how they are shaped by culture and transmitted through consumption of media and interaction with members of one’s community and family. In an …

The Socio-Cultural Implications Of The Aging Population In Japan, Jacqueline Banas

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This capstone research looks at how Japan, as a nation, is dealing with aging populations as a society, what problems and solutions work for the Japanese, and how future studies and research on Japan’s elderly population could help lead for possible solutions for the global elderly. Through this capstone, I wanted to bring awareness to the Japanese elderly as well as generate light on the topic.

"Homosexuals Are Revolting": Stonewall, 1969, Erin Siodmak

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Community-Based Initiatives For Neighborhood And Community Rehabilitation: A Case Study Of The Mission District, San Francisco, California, Francesca Monique Gallardo

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Through the case study of San Francisco, CA’s Mission District, this research project addresses how community-based affordable housing development is operationalized to rehabilitate communities and neighborhoods experiencing effects of gentrification, mass displacement, and cultural dilution. My goals were to identify how the processes of building a sense of community, trust, and cohesion- rehabilitating and critical to affordable housing development efforts in the Mission District? And, how are nonprofit community development organizations engaging with these processes in collaboration with citizen and community partners? The final objective is to provide evidence-based strategies to assist other at-risk minority communities and neighborhoods in the …

"I Am A Teacher, A Woman's Activist, And A Mother": Political Consciousness And Embodied Resistance In Antakya's Arab Alawite Community, Defne Sarsilmaz

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Often pointed to as the region’s model secular state, Turkey provides an instructive case study in how nationalism, in the name of conjuring ‘unity’, often produces the opposite effect. Indeed, the production of nationalism can create fractures amongst, as well as politicize, certain segments of a population, such as minority groups and women. This dissertation examines the long-term and present-day impacts on nationalist unity of a largely understudied event, the annexation of the border-city of Antakya from Syria in 1939, and its implications on the Arab Alawite population. In doing so, it deconstructs the dominant Turkish narrative on the annexation, …

Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale: A Charismatic Authority And His Ideology, John P. Cibotti

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sikh leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale’s militant and masculinist discourses were embraced by Punjabi Sikhs because of his presence as a charismatic authority, a concept first developed by sociologist Max Weber to understand the conditions surrounding and personal qualities of a figure which attracts followers. The rebellion he led in Punjab resulted from his radical exploitation of issues concerning the Sikh community. Religion was wielded as a tool, legitimizing Sikh violence as commanded by the Gurus. Radical interpretations of Sikh scripture and folklore were initially preached to rural, less educated crowds. While his sermons brought out their frustrations with the government, …

Nature, Socio-Spatial Divisions And Connections: An Examination Of El Jardín De Guadalupe, Elizabeth Moreno

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Culture is often discussed in the content of social behavior but, how culture is spatially linked to landscapes is often overlooked. Points of social and cultural reproduction is not only tied to landscapes, but there are constantly challenged as new cultures are introduced into a space. Latino culture in the United States has, and continues to, reshape America’s landscapes. For purpose of this thesis, the reshaping of landscapes will be observed in a community. This project examines the perception that Latinos avoid participation in a community garden. This perception is not entirely true, as there was one Latina participating. As …

Listening To The Mattole: Lessons In Bioregionalism, Cannabis, And Capitalism From A Northern California Community, Nicola R. Walters

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In the United States, from the 1960s through the 1970s, nearly a million Americans left urban areas to establish themselves in rural environments; this exodus is now known as the back-to-the-land movement. Nestled in the mountains of Northern California, along a capricious river, and surrounded by natural beauty, the Mattole Valley became home to many of these back-to-the-land immigrants. Seasoned in the social and cultural movements of Berkeley and San Francisco during the 1960s, the “new settlers” transformed the social and environmental landscape of southern Humboldt County as they integrated into rural communities. The Mattole Valley offers a unique look …

A Temporary Hometown: Gendered Labor And Social Citizenship In Bremerton, Washington, A Domestic Military Colony, Anna K. Fern

MAIS Projects and Theses

This mixed-methods study addresses social construction of home and belonging for residents of a vice labor and military veteran class in Bremerton, Washington, a US military manufacturing and base city. This thesis seeks to explain how some workers and residents in the city of Bremerton, Washington have been historically marginalized, even as their roles, framed as patriotic contributions, have been integral to the socioeconomic efforts and successes of the dominant militarized culture. I explore how study participants make meaning of their experiences – some in gendered and sexualized vice labor in service to military and federal personnel, and some who …

Faroosh And Elina, Faroosh, Elina, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Faroosh was a cameraman for a private television program in Afghanistan working on a documentary about the Taliban. When he and his crew were discovered, the Taliban attacked them and he and his wife fled to Turkey, walking 12 hours to get there. Upon arrival the police arrested and harassed them. Turkey was not a safe place. After several suicide bombings in the area, they decided to move on to Greece, where they are in a refugee camp without any progress in their situation. They have no money to move forward and no ability to work and the economic situation …

Incumbent Landscapes, Disruptive Uses: Perspectives On Marijuana-Related Land Use Control, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Placeness: Mongolia A Call For The Creation Of A Human Impact Assessment, C. Winston Kies

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Sense of place, place-­‐based identities, and “placeness” are fundamental ways through which human beings understand their physical place in the world. The means by which most Mongolians—and indeed most human beings—strive for placeness is fairly simple. First, one decides what location will become their place. Their place may be predetermined (i.e. a birthplace) or chosen (based on the wildlife, the scenery, the neighborhood, etc.). Once one has a place, sense of place necessarily follows. One’s place becomes the standard by which locations are understood, and by which one understands oneself. The latter process constitutes the formation of place-­‐based identities, which …

Between Warrior And Helplessness In The Valley Of Azawa - The Struggle Of The Kel Tamashek In The War Of The Sahel, Patrick James Christian

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an Investigation into the Tuareg involvement in violent conflict in the Sahara and the Sahel of North Africa from a sociological psychological perspective of unmet human needs. The research begins by establishing the structure and texture of the sociological, psychological, and emotional life patterns of their existence when not involved in violent conflict. This is followed by an examination of the pathology of Tuareg social structures that are engaged in intra and inter communal violence as perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. The first part of the research establishes normal conditions of the sociological life cycle and highlights natural …

Capitalizing On Distinctiveness: Creating Wv For A New Economy, Brian A. Hoey

Brian A. Hoey, Ph.D.

This article explores use of images and ideas of place to promote particular social and economic agendas within the regional context of Appalachia. Despite prevailing imageries of backwardness and isolation that adhere to the region, as well as recent history of often-bleak economic conditions, communities such as Huntington, West Virginia, are ideal places to observe inventive forms of community-building, place-making, and place-marketing that borrow from emerging cultural and economic models and stand in sharp contrast to a once dominant paradigm that encouraged capital investment by relying simply on tax breaks and the provision of cheap land and labor to attract …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Theorising The ‘Fifth Migration’ In The United States: Understanding Lifestyle Migration From An Integrated Approach, Brian Hoey

Brian A. Hoey, Ph.D.

This chapter is an empirically-informed discussion of relevant social theory for examining the phenomenon of lifestyle migration in the United States in both rural and urban settings. Specifically, the chapter explores key explanatory models born of research into so-called non-economic migration occurring since the early twentieth century—models that may be characterized as primarily either production or consumption oriented in their emphasis—as a context for outlining an integrated approach. The author then highlights changes in how some Americans appear to calculate personal and collective quality of life as engendered by an emerging economic order—based on principles of flexibility and contingency—whose affects …

Urban Foraging And The Relational Ecologies Of Belonging, Melissa R. Poe, Joyce Lecompte, Rebecca J. Mclain, Patrick T. Hurley

Environment and Sustainability Faculty Publications

Through a discussion of urban foraging in Seattle, Washington, USA, we examine how people's plant and mushroom harvesting practices in cities are linked to relationships with species, spaces, and ecologies. Bringing a relational approach to political ecology, we discuss the ways that these particular nature–society relationships are formed, legitimated, and mobilized in discursive and material ways in urban ecosystems. Engaging closely with and as foragers, we develop an ethnographically grounded ‘relational ecologies of belonging’ framework to conceptualize and examine three constituent themes: cultural belonging and identity, belonging and place, and belonging and more-than-human agency. Through this case study, we show …