Sociology of Culture Commons^™

Cultural Exposure For Cal Poly Orientation Programs: Training Orientation Leaders To Promote An Inclusive Enviroment And Creating Respect And Diversity Programming For Incoming Students, Sofia Rodriguez Mata

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo is home to the largest student run orientation program in the nation. The success of the program is due to a combination of student volunteer involvement, comprehensive topic coverage, campus and community involvement, and dedicated leadership. Topics to ensure student success are carefully researched, conceptualized, and implemented to construct programming for Soar and Week of Welcome. As an Executive Board Member, supervising a committee focused on student and student supporter transition and awareness topics, one has the option to specialize on projects. Improvement of respect and diversity training and programming needed to ...

The Kolla Of Argentina: Neoliberal Trends And The Promise Of Law In The Process Of Reframing, Claiming And Maintaining Land Rights, Courtney C. Nussbaumer

The Macalester Review

Indigenous groups around the world have faced countless hardships—the Kolla of northwestern Argentina are no exception. While there is no doubt that the Kolla are a minority group both oppressed and marginalized, they have only recently begun to reconceptualize themselves as indigenous. Kolla identity struggles coupled with larger Latin American trends explained below make the Kolla an excellent case study to conceptualize the larger struggle between neoliberal governments and indigenous employment of international legal norms. Processes of legal globalization have led to the increasing codification of the collective rights of indigenous peoples in Latin America. This can be seen ...

Notes, Phrases, And Clauses: An Examination Of Identity In Music Focused Conversation, Bryan Cannon

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Music is everywhere. From formal occasions to a person’s morning run. Music is available on cell phones, computers, in religious ceremonies, at concerts and venues. Music is seen by society to be important and a person’s choice of music can be used to present an identity. The question considered in this article is how people talk about music and how they present identity through their discussion. The current study examines eight focus groups of three actors instructed to simply talk about music. The discussions were recorded and analyzed in a conversation analytic style to identify the structures of ...

Globalizing "Jesus": Critial Review Of Processes Of Media Globilization In The Production And Global Promotion Of The Film "Jesus", Wilson Mcfarland

Undergraduate Research Conference

To answer the question of how the Jesus film exemplifies media globalization, the author uses a critical review of globalization literature to look at the history of the Jesus film, how the film is an agent of cultural deposition, the technological and cultural influences of the film, the translations of the film, common critiques of the film, and the display of globalization in its production, promotion and use.

Gender Transformation At The Grassroots: A Gender And Development Program From The Practitioners' Perspective, Tyler Curtis

Master’s Theses – Sociology

This study investigates the “gender transformative” Men as Partners (MAP) program as implemented in the West African nation of Togo. Using a qualitative research design, the project examines the successes and barriers of implementation, with an emphasis on the relationship of foreign (the American international development agency, the Peace Corps) and native practitioners (Togolese individuals implementing the program at the grassroots level). The study provides an ethnographic perspective of the researcher’s work as a MAP practitioner in Togo whose experiences are juxtaposed with seven different interviews from American and native practitioners administering the program on the national, regional, and ...

Behind The Seams: An Ethnographic Study Of The Performative Nature Of Theatrical Costumes, Emily M. Lindholm '13

Student Publications

Actors are said to bring a play to life, but what about the garments that they wear? Like set production, light design, and direction, the role of the costume plays an important part in informing and enchanting the audience. However, this is not all that they do. This paper acts as an in-depth examination of the culture of costume creation and destruction at Gettysburg College, researching their roles as garments, as well as how the garments themselves "act" around others. Imbued with their own set of responsibilities, the costumes are expected to behave certain ways, perform specific functions, and put ...

The Cultural Omnivore In Its Natural Habitat: Music Taste At A Liberal Arts College, Anna Michelson

Honors Projects

This mixed-methods study examines college students’ music preferences in order to better understand the phenomenon of cultural omnivorousness, or eclectic taste. I found that the majority (76%) of students were cultural omnivores. Education is a very important influence on music taste, but it works in complex ways. Formal classes increase appreciation of new genres. Parent influences were a factor, but musicianship was a more important predictor of “highbrow” taste than parents’ education level. The major way college education promotes omnivorousness is through increased diversity of social networks. There were, however, patterned dislikes that suggest both music as a symbolic boundary ...

The Characteristics Of Women Seeking Funding From The Dc Abortion Fund, Karin Elizabeth Bleeg

GW Research Days 2013

Objectives: To determine whether the population DCAF serves, based on current research, are those most in need of its financial services. Describe the population that DCAF is supports by age, race and ethnicity, poverty, educational attainment, union status, contraceptive method used, referral source, and number of prior pregnancies.

Methods: An adapted version of The Guttmacher Institute's National Patient Survey will be used to collect data from women who contact DCAF for financial assistance for their abortion (n=150). The data will be collected for one month and then analyzed in SPSS.

Results: Between January and March 2013 approximately 400 ...

Repurposed Narratives: The Battle Of Ṣiffīn And The Historical Memory Of The Umayyad Dynasty, Aaron M. Hagler

Mathal/Mashal

The Battle of Ṣiffīn (36/657) is the flash point in the emergence of sects within Islam. The presentation of the Ṣiffīn story in Arabic historical writing therefore changed over time as the sectarian split among Sunnīs and Shīʿites became increasingly defined. This paper will trace the development of the presentation of the Ṣiffīn story in Arabic histories across developing Sunnī and Shīʿite identity crystallization and the region of origin of their authors, as well as literary and stylistic developments in the field of Arabic historical writing.

The specific historians examined have been chosen in part because they demonstrate a ...

Volunteer Programming Impact On Long-Term Care Facilities, Paul P. Falkowski

Open Access Theses and Dissertations from the College of Education and Human Sciences

The purpose of this present study was to examine the direct and indirect effects between the organizational structure of a long-term care facility, the amount of volunteers at the facility, the activities in which volunteers engage while at the facility and daily average number of hours care staff spend with nursing home residents. The time care staff spends with residents has been directly linked to the quality of care provided by the facility. This time is measured by calculating nursing hours per patient and it includes only nursing staff hours.The data for this study come from the National Nursing ...

Digital Underground: Musical Spaces And Microscenes In The Postindustrial City, David Grazian

David Grazian

No abstract provided.

Beauty In The Indigenous Pageant The Cultural And Social Relevance Of Miss Samoa, Mariko Hamashima

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper investigates the Miss Samoa pageant’s historical origins, cultural relevance and preservation, the ways in which it empowers women, the public’s perspective, and future development. Secondary sources on the pageant were limited to eight pieces, so interviews with judges, contestants, winners, and participants were sources of information. Sixty surveys were also conducted to gain the public’s perspective of the pageant. The study found Miss Samoa is more popular for its entertainment value than cultural relevance. The Miss Samoa pageant has been utilized as an agent of empowerment for individual women but is not necessarily influential on ...

Cultural Identity, Deafness And Sign Language: A Postcolonial Approach, Steven Loughran

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

Franz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks describes the experience of the recently de-colonized members of the Negro (as he refers to those of African descent) population living in Europe, particularly France, in the 1960s. A little over a decade later, Edward Said published Orientalism, thus adding to a growing discipline of scholarship in the fields of art, literature, and cultural studies called “Postcolonialism.” My essay attempts to show that Deaf persons who communicate with each other using sign language can be viewed as a colonized group, and that applying postcolonial theory to the study of their culture is appropriate.

Socially Constructed Teen Motherhood: A Review, Marc Fonda, Rachel Eni, Eric Guimond

The International Indigenous Policy Journal

This article reviews literature on the gradual construction of teenage pregnancy as a social issue in North America. It shows how teen motherhood emerged not as an issue unto itself, but as a microcosm of numerous, closely intertwined phenomena including: the evolution of Western views on human sexuality and gender roles; the place of religious values in society; and the emergence of various modern technologies, the social and medical sciences, and how such disciplines view childhood, motherhood, and women in society. In particular, it shows that even as teen pregnancy is today viewed primarily through public health and/or socioeconomic ...

Voices From The Land: Reflections On Teenaged Pregnancy In Aboriginal Communities Today - The Voices Of Traditional Healers, Delores Cardinal, Clifford Cardinal, Earle Waugh, Darryn Baddour

The International Indigenous Policy Journal

While the precarious state of Aboriginal health is often noted, and several studies have detailed the issues raised by teenage pregnancy, the voices from traditional healers, many of whom have to deal with the youth are scarcely recorded. These reflections are in response to the conversation of select traditional practitioners at The Gathering, held in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, the University of Alberta, in October, 2010. They spent about one-and-a-half hours discussing the issue with health care professionals and physicians. This article reprises high points of that discussion along with additional material offered to support their contentions.

University College Connection, Dennis K. George, Dean, Wendi Kelley, University College, Western Kentucky University

UC Publications

No abstract provided.

Les Oubliés De L’Histoire: Perceptions Of Harkis And Community Awareness, Lauren Gilbert Gilbert

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

“Harki” is derived from the Arabic word “Harka,” meaning movement. This term is used to denote not only the original approximately 200,000 Algerian Arab and Berber Muslims, who militarily supported the French Army during the Algerian war for independence between 1954 and 1962, but also their families and descendants.[1] Especially during the war with Algeria and immediately following, they were often referred to as francais-musulmans, francais-musulmans repatries, or repatries d’origine nord africaine, thus avoiding the topic of conflict with the colony. This support took a range of forms, not always military; for example, the “Groupes d’auto ...

La Cosmovisión Andina En La Comunidad De Amaru: Una Investigación Sobre La Condición De La Filosofía Andina A Partir De La Presencia De Sectas Religiosas Y El Turismo., Renzo F. Moyano Condía

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

El siglo XXI puede ser definido por dos grandes procesos; la globalización acelerada y la pérdida de la diversidad biológica y cultural. Usando métodos antropológicos para describir transformaciones dentro la cosmovisión (filosofía o religión) de una comunidad, me enfoco en los grandes cambios dentro de la manera de vivir en la comunidad indígena de Amaru en el distrito de P’isaq, que de una manera u otra ha forzado transformaciones en los valores centrales de su cosmovisión. El propósito es de dos partes. Uno es describir los valores de la cosmovisión andina y los de la cosmovisión judeo-cristiana para poder ...

Promotional Ubiquitous Musics: New Identities And Emerging Markets In The Digitalizing Music Industry, Leslie Meier

University of Western Ontario - Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the intensifying relationship between the digitalizing music industry and corporate brands. It analyzes the ‘crisis’ and recuperation of popular music’s commodity form in the digital era; in an increasingly post-CD music marketplace, it argues, ‘artist-brands’ tied to multiple revenue streams and licensed to brand partners constitute the foundation of music’s capitalization. Contemporaneous with key shifts in music marketing and monetization strategies, advertising firms have taken increased interest in branded entertainment strategies that employ popular music. These colliding commercial dynamics have produced a proliferation of what I term ‘promotional ubiquitous musics’: original music by recording artists ...

Introduction To The Naked Communist: Cold War Modernism And The Politics Of Popular Culture, Roland K. Végső

Faculty Publications -- Department of English

The first half of The Naked Communist is devoted to the theoretical and historical foundations of my reading of anti-Communist fictions. After the theoretical introduction, I examine anti-Communist aesthetic ideology by first analyzing its political and then its aesthetic components.

In the second half, I examine the way the culture of anti-Communism defined the “world” as the ultimate horizon of political imagination. Included is a brief overview of some of the most popular texts of the given genre.

Finally, I conclude these chapters with a reading of particular authors.