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Articles 1 - 17 of 17
Full-Text Articles in Theory, Knowledge and Science
Greenwashing “Brown Gold”: A Critical Analysis Of Anaerobic Digesters And California’S Neoliberal Environmental Programs In Wisconsin’S Dairyland, Sarah Emily D'Onofrio
Greenwashing “Brown Gold”: A Critical Analysis Of Anaerobic Digesters And California’S Neoliberal Environmental Programs In Wisconsin’S Dairyland, Sarah Emily D'Onofrio
Doctoral Dissertations
Large dairy farms, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), have turned to anaerobic digesters as the industry is increasingly pressured to find ways to lower their greenhouse gas emissions. Digesters are machines that turn animal waste from CAFOs into electricity and fuel which are then sold as “credits” in California’s market based climate change mitigation programs such as cap and trade and the low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) program. However, this dissertation not only challenges the assertion that digesters are “green,” but also that these programs are doing what they claim to do in a deregulated and re-regulated …
Ruinous Natures: The Approach Of Social Timespace, Thomas Frederick Bechtold
Ruinous Natures: The Approach Of Social Timespace, Thomas Frederick Bechtold
Doctoral Dissertations
This Dissertation advances across three areas: first, a theory of social timespace that borrows from critical social theories, post-ontological systems theory, and literary critique; second, it proposes a revisioning of sociological ‘methods’ by an historical reproachment: how sociology is a method among others for the study of society and culture, what are called variously the social sciences, and how sociology also has a method of its own developed in the work of the first sociological institutions in the United States, Germany, and France, that is parallel to linguistic structuralism in the same historical period and has mostly been advanced outside …
Possessed: New Horror Films In The Era Of Neoliberalism, Bethany C. Nelson
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 …
Attitudes And Norms Affecting Scientists’ Data Reuse, Renata Gonçalves Curty, Kevin Crowston, Alison Specht, Bruce W. Grant, Elizabeth D. Dalton
Attitudes And Norms Affecting Scientists’ Data Reuse, Renata Gonçalves Curty, Kevin Crowston, Alison Specht, Bruce W. Grant, Elizabeth D. Dalton
DataONE Sociocultural and Usability & Assessment Working Groups
The value of sharing scientific research data is widely appreciated, but factors that hinder or prompt the reuse of data remain poorly understood. Using the Theory of Reasoned Action, we test the relationship between the beliefs and attitudes of scientists towards data reuse, and their self-reported data reuse behaviour. To do so, we used existing responses to selected questions from a worldwide survey of scientists developed and administered by the DataONE Usability and Assessment Working Group (thus practicing data reuse ourselves). Results show that the perceived efficacy and efficiency of data reuse are strong predictors of reuse behaviour, and that …
Automation, Work, And Ideology: The Next Industrial Revolution And The Transformation Of "Labor", Anthony Jack Knowles Ii
Automation, Work, And Ideology: The Next Industrial Revolution And The Transformation Of "Labor", Anthony Jack Knowles Ii
Masters Theses
Over the last several decades, scholars and commentators from a variety of different fields, expertise, and ideological positions have written on automation technologies and their potential to cause technological unemployment. As a sociological analysis and critical examination of how experts ideologically frame these issues, this thesis demonstrates that ideology plays a crucial role in the revived debate over automation and technological displacement. Weberian ideal types are developed to demonstrate how three major ideological positions—liberal, conservative, and radical—approach and frame the link between automation, technological displacement, and the potential for technological unemployment. The qualitative tools of ideal type construction and theme …
Acceleration, Disintegration, And Reconstitution: Fidelity In The Age Of Late Capitalism, Jesse Aaron Farber-Eger
Acceleration, Disintegration, And Reconstitution: Fidelity In The Age Of Late Capitalism, Jesse Aaron Farber-Eger
Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects
No abstract provided.
Environmental Gentrification And Development In A Rural Appalachian Community: Blending Critical Theory And Ethnography, Rhiannon A. Leebrick
Environmental Gentrification And Development In A Rural Appalachian Community: Blending Critical Theory And Ethnography, Rhiannon A. Leebrick
Doctoral Dissertations
The purpose of this dissertation is twofold: first, to explore the relevance of environmental gentrification, a concept largely applied to urban settings, as a means to understand social change in rural and small town Appalachia; and secondly, drawing upon political economy perspectives within environmental sociology and the tradition of early Frankfurt School critical theory, to contextualize the process of environmental gentrification within global capitalism. Conflicts over green economic development, including the maintenance of idyllic vistas, appear to have arisen among various groups with opposing interests and perceptions. These conflicts are complex, affected by the rise of gentrification accompanying uneven development …
Economic Wealth And Social Welfare: A Longitudinal Analysis Of Transnational Well-Being, Kelly Brooke Martin
Economic Wealth And Social Welfare: A Longitudinal Analysis Of Transnational Well-Being, Kelly Brooke Martin
Doctoral Dissertations
Macro changes in the financial arena have prompted ongoing research focused on global economic trends. As America emerges from an era of stagnant wages, rising unemployment, and growing class stratification it is necessary to explore differences in cross-national socioeconomic behavior to address the changing needs of our country. Many studies attempt to describe statistical correlations between economic wealth and social well-being domestically and abroad by utilizing methodological perspectives that do not account for longitudinal change. To address the gap in existing research, this study seeks to measure variations in econometric indicators between the U.S. and Nordic countries to further explicate …
Entropy And The Economy Of Violence: Anthropophagy And Sacrificial Violence In Late Modernity, Benjamin Corey Webster
Entropy And The Economy Of Violence: Anthropophagy And Sacrificial Violence In Late Modernity, Benjamin Corey Webster
Masters Theses
In this project, I explore the relationship of biosocial perspectives, specifically the study of energy and entropy, to contemporary work in criminology and social theory. After working through an elaboration of entropy, I explore its relevance to social life through an eclectic but necessary survey of a key set of scholars whose work focuses upon the sacrifice and criminalization of the poor, the intensification of exclusion and genocidal contexts, and finally, the possibility of a politics of change through indigenous knowledges. Bringing these various schools of thought together allows us to see the interdisciplinary linkages that might better reveal the …
Social Systems And Psychic Confluence: Flash Mobs, Communications, And Agency, Nicholas John Hauman
Social Systems And Psychic Confluence: Flash Mobs, Communications, And Agency, Nicholas John Hauman
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation involves two components: 1) an analysis of the history of flash mobs including detailed descriptions of specific flash mobs and 2) an exploration of what this analysis elucidates concerning the interaction between individuals and social structure. By focusing on the flash mob as a form of communication, the dissertation displays how the flash mob has communicated multiplicitously through various social systems (e.g. art, mass media, economy, politics) to achieve various and often divergent ends. Within this larger understanding of the interaction between flash mobs and social structure this dissertation also finds, through an application of Luhmannian systems theory, …
After The Human: Theory And Sociology In The Age Of Fractal Ambiguity, Dromology, And Emergent Epi-Spaces, Joel Michael Crombez
After The Human: Theory And Sociology In The Age Of Fractal Ambiguity, Dromology, And Emergent Epi-Spaces, Joel Michael Crombez
Masters Theses
Modernity marks both a novel form of political and economic organization, and a transformation of reality through technological and spatial innovations. It marks a shift in the history of life on this planet, for the technological appendage—originally created by and for humans—has a cost that is shared by all life on the planet, whether it be ecological, biological, or mental. As a result, the weight of responsibility for the continuation of life itself can no longer be rationally displaced onto an omnipotent other. The knowledge that rational thought functions on fractal scales of space and time—which need not account for …
Religion’S Influence On Environmental Concern: U.S. Evangelicals’ Construction Of Climate Change Perceptions, Aaron S. Routhe
Religion’S Influence On Environmental Concern: U.S. Evangelicals’ Construction Of Climate Change Perceptions, Aaron S. Routhe
Doctoral Dissertations
Scholars identify an emerging religious social base to U.S. environmentalism and public concern about anthropogenic global climate change. Surveys also show religious and political conservatives express skepticism about this environmental problem and oppose environmental regulations addressing it. White conservative Protestants reflect this contrast by denying human activity causes it and opposing climate policy for mitigating anthropogenic effects on Earth’s atmosphere, while concern and activism for climate protection simultaneously increases among other environmental evangelical Christians. Decades of quantitative investigations reveal religion’s role in environmental concern remains murky. Little clarity exists about how biblical literalism, “end times” eschatology, and religious environmental stewardship …
Sociobiophysicality, Cold War, And Critical Theory: Human-Ecological Transformation And Contemporary Ecological Subjectivity, Alexander Stoner
Sociobiophysicality, Cold War, And Critical Theory: Human-Ecological Transformation And Contemporary Ecological Subjectivity, Alexander Stoner
Doctoral Dissertations
The United States is an important global player in resource depletion, energy use, waste production, and other indicators that contribute to economic threats to humanity’s ecological future. Critical theory provides conceptual tools that are uniquely well-suited to more fully comprehend the links between economic progress and ecological deterioration. In key regards, the present situation is the continuation as well as amplification of political-economic, social and cultural features that took hold during the Cold War, and which demand rigorous sociological focus, scrutiny and analysis. To date, however, sociology has barely begun to assess the consequences that resulted from the Cold War …
Editors' Introduction, Shane Willson, Rachael E. Gabriel
Editors' Introduction, Shane Willson, Rachael E. Gabriel
Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum
It is with great pride that we present to you the inaugural issue of Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum. Here we have attempted to create an innovative, peer-reviewed space in which people from numerous disciplines, or even those claiming no discipline, can present research, multimedia, and art aimed at furthering the ideals of social justice, broadly defined. Social justice is not a concept owned by the academy, for attempts to create a more just world can come from many professions, or even from no profession at all. By applying the traditionally academic peer-review process to work done by activists, artists, …
Mediating Justice: Toward A Critical-Reflexive Sociology, George Christopher Gondo
Mediating Justice: Toward A Critical-Reflexive Sociology, George Christopher Gondo
Masters Theses
Today, an increasing number of sociologists incorporate the theme of social justice within their work and strive to contribute to efforts to improve existing social conditions. In their view, sociological work that actively engages in issues related to social justice exemplifies ‘the promise’ of sociology and represents a means of refocusing and reinvigorating the discipline at a time of perceived crisis. Yet, a growing body of evidence questions whether previous efforts to use sociology as a mechanism of improving social conditions have been successful. In this thesis, I rely on the works of Alvin W. Gouldner to examine the relationship …
Modernity, Capitalism, And War: Toward A Sociology Of War In The Nineteenth Century, 1815-1914, Eric Royal Lybeck
Modernity, Capitalism, And War: Toward A Sociology Of War In The Nineteenth Century, 1815-1914, Eric Royal Lybeck
Masters Theses
The academic discipline of Sociology has rarely broached the subject of war and its recursive relationship with society. This paper addresses three major approaches in several disciplines that can be deemed ‘economically deterministic’: Marxist, Liberal, and Realist. These approaches can be useful for certain questions, but also leave out, or cloud other non-economic variables in understanding war – notably culture and military variables themselves. By using Karl Polanyi’s thesis regarding the “Myth of the Hundred Years’ Peace” (1815-1914) as a foil, the historical case of war in the nineteenth century is used to highlight the nature of war in European …
The Assumption Of Non-Coerciveness And The Total Food Market, Harwood Schaffer
The Assumption Of Non-Coerciveness And The Total Food Market, Harwood Schaffer
Doctoral Dissertations
For the last 46 years, the countries of the world have tried to reduce the number of chronically hungry people. Despite all the efforts, the numbers have barely budged from the over 850 million people who were chronically hungry in 1974 until the 2007-2009 food price crisis, when the numbers increased to over 1.02 billion. The blame for this situation has variously been put on bad governance, the lack of adequate market reforms, the market reforms that were imposed on developing nations, and globalization. Food, like other products in this globalized world, is allocated using the market system. One likely …