Digital Commons Network^™

Rough Hands: Family Conceptions Of Rural Morocco’S Agricultural Labor, A Case Study, Leah Kahler

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Conceptions of success for people in any capitalist context are tangled with social hierarchies of work. The rural women of Morocco have been specifically singled out as the objects discourses about their domestic and agricultural work, agency, gender identity and role, and their use of private and public space ownership. This project will examine the justifications, conceptions, and satisfaction with rural-agricultural work in a small-scale family farm in Morocco’s Al Hoceima province. Using the case study approach, I will live with a family in Sidi Bouafif and work alongside the family for an eight-day fieldwork period. Through participant observation and …

Challenging Tunisia’S Homogenous Arabness:Post-Revolutionary Civil Society Activismfor The ‘Invisible’ Tunisian Amazigh, Xavier A. Torres De Janon

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The 2010-11 Tunisian revolution brought to the forefront of the country an explosion of activism and organizing from civil society, including multiple voices urging for the defense, protection and/or recognition of Tunisian ‘minorities.’ An unprecedented Amazigh (pl. Imazighen, the indigenous population of North Africa) wave of activism from individuals and organizations appeared in the public sphere of the country, a population systematically denied and marginalized by the Tunisian dictatorships and society emboldened to stand up for their rights and challenge the status quo. In the post-revolutionary context of thispseudo-homogenous North African country, dominated by a strong Arab/Islamic ideology since independence, …

Making The Invisible Heard: German-Kurdish Cultural Organizations And Transnational Networks, Drew A. Hoffman

Student Publications

The increasing corpus of theoretical literature on transnationalism remains to be applied to many of the transnational migrant communities which have developed since the advent of modern globalization. This literary essay seeks to provide a perspective on the German-Kurdish community in Berlin, and how they fit into the larger European and Kurdish contexts. It illustrates the convergence of opportunities and disadvantages that German-Kurds face in Berlin, while also investigating what it means to be a Berliner-Kurd. The literary essay accordingly explores the role of language, cultural organizations, and regional networks. In doing so, it is hoped that topics about German-Kurds …

“In Light Of Real Alternatives”: Negotiations Of Fertility And Motherhood In Morocco And Oman, Victoria E. Mohr

Student Publications

Many states in the Arab world have undertaken wide-ranging family planning polices in the last two decades in an effort to curb high fertility rates. Oman and Morocco are two such countries, and their policies have had significantly different results. Morocco experienced a swift drop in fertility rates, whereas Oman’s fertility has declined much more slowly over several decades. Many point to the more conservative religious and cultural context of Oman for their high fertility rates, however economics and the state of biomedical health care often present a more compelling argument for the distinct differences between Omani and Moroccan family …

Who Are You Wearing? A Study Of Moroccan Fashion Discourse, Identity Performance, And Social Change, Leah Michalove

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Clothes and their consumption become almost invisible in their very ubiquity, yet fashion acts as a sort of optical litmus test for the mood of society. Clothing can express cultural norms, serve as shorthand for social grouping, and provide a kind of corpus of visual allusion; in short, clothes and how we wear them constitute a system of signification, a visual language as dynamic, complex, and arbitrary as any spoken communication. I set out to investigate the grammar and syntax of Moroccan fashion, to explore what the diversity of observed choices meant to the people who made them and how …

The Historic Inability Of The Haitian Education System To Create Human Development And Its Consequences, Patrick Michael Rea

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study aims to evaluate the role that a lack of literacy and education has played in Haiti's historic and presently low level of human development. The pedagogical philosophies of two educationists, Paolo Friere and Maurice Dartigue, are used throughout the study as lenses from which to read and interpret the history of Haitian education -its many failed attempts, and recurrent challenges- in creating a literate and educated population. The author concludes that mass literacy is prerequisite if the Haitian people are to achieve self-realization and actualization, which essentially equates to what the United Nations Development Program calls "Human Development". …

The Egyptian Uprising And April 6th Youth Movement Split, Somaia Metwalli El Sayed

Theses and Dissertations

Few months after the Egyptian uprising, a considerable number of April 6th Youth movement announced their split. Knowing that the movement was already suffering from internal disputes over a number of issues, the research problem is centered on questioning whether and how the uprising played a role in such incident. Academic scholarship on social movements developed partial and action-oriented theories to explain different processes and dynamics of movement’s collective action. However, little work has been done on the trajectory of social movements in the Middle East, especially after radical forms of change as revolutions, uprisings or upheavals. It is argued …

Jean Sénac, Poet Of The Algerian Revolution, Kai G. Krienke

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The work presented here is an exploration of the poetry and life of Jean Sénac, and through Sénac, of the larger role of poetry in the political and social movements of the 50s, 60s, and early 70s, mainly in Algeria and America. While Sénac was part of the European community in Algeria, his position regarding French rule changed dramatically over the course of the Algerian War, (between 1954 and 1962) and upon independence, he became one the rare French to return to his adopted homeland. I will argue, sometimes polemically, that Sénac was and should be considered a properly Algerian …

Quantifying Soil Loss In The Hispaniola Borderland, Andrew Valenski

Geography and the Environment Capstone Projects

Resource management is a highly contested topic, as various methodologies have been employed by governments, corporations, and interest groups across the globe. Contemporary debates regarding resource management primarily focus on two linked issues: the role of government and problem recognition. This paper will explain the two different resource management strategies and delve into the problem recognition process. Ultimately, this paper will examine the Haitian-Dominican borderland to address both of these issues and demonstrate the need for an integrated, sustainable, interventionist approach in the management of borderland resources.

Paper prepared for the Environmental Studies Senior Seminar/Geography Capstone.

Faculty Advisor: Dr. David …

Getting Kids Out Of Harm's Way: The United States' Obligation To Operationalize The Best Interest Of The Child Principle For Unaccompanied Minors, Erin B. Corcoran

Law Faculty Scholarship

The government estimates by the end of the fiscal year over 90,000 children will enter the United States. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 58% of these children were forcibly displaced and are potentially in need of international protection. However, in U.S. immigration law unaccompanied children are often seen as illegal migrants and law enforcement prioritizes their “alien” status over their status as children. As the crisis escalates, many of these children are being housed at emergency shelters in icebox-cold cells – nicknamed hierleras, Spanish for freezers, with no access to food or medical care, while DHS …

Exhibit "To The Light Of Resurrection Through The Thorns Of Catacombs”, Iryna Ivankovych

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

Threatening Others : Nicaraguans And The Formation Of National Identities In Costa Rica, Carlos Sandoval-Garcia

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

During the last two decades, a decline in public investment has undermined some of the national values and institutions of Costa Rica. The resulting sense of dislocation and loss is usually projected onto Nicaraguan “immigrants.”
Threatening Others: Nicaraguans and the Formation of National Identities in Costa Rica explores the representation of the Nicaraguan “other” in the Costa Rican imagery. It also seeks to address more generally why the sense of national belonging constitutes a crucial identification in contemporary societies. Interdisciplinary and based on extensive fieldwork, it looks critically at the “exceptionalism” that Costa Ricans take for granted and view as …

Corruption In Oil Revenue Distribution And Conflict In Bayelsa State, Nigeria, Chux Ibekwe

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

In the last seventeen years, several high level government officials in Nigeria have faced corruption charges totaling $22 trillion dollars related to oil revenues. In Bayelsa State, a Nigerian state that produces oil, officials have been marked with high level corruption in oil revenue. In particular, the state faces constant conflicts among the government, multinational oil corporations, and the people of the state. Based on these observations, this dissertation seeks to understand the relationship between corruption in oil revenue redistribution and perpetuation of conflicts in Bayelsa State of Nigeria.

Bayelsa State is one of the nine states in Nigeria’s Niger …

The Art Of Lebanese Verbal Dueling: The Battle Of Beit Mery And Beyond, Paula Marie Haydar

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the living and vibrant oral tradition of verbal dueling in Lebanon, also known as Lebanese zajal. The introductory chapter explores the historical, sociolinguistic, and musical-metrical roots of today's Lebanese zajal contests and festivals, which feature teams of up to four poets who compete against each other in improvised, sung verse in colloquial Lebanese, carrying a sort of dialogue within which they argue opposing sides of universal themes and topics of current social interest. Though time, tradition, and culture in the Lebanese mountainside have nurtured the development of sung oral poetry into its current form and status …

Structural Causes Of Social Conflict In Africa, Lucien Charland

HIM 1990-2015

Social conflict, as opposed to armed conflict, has received less attention in the field of quantitative research. This paper investigates the structural causes of political violence in 35 African states using data from the Social Conflict in Africa dataset and the Beck and Katz panel corrected standard errors time series regression model. Theoretically, a closed political opportunity structure, combined with a weak state unable to provide public goods, should together produce high levels of social conflict. The independent variables attempt to operationalize these concepts from four different angles. In this analysis Access to Education and Infrastructure (AEI), Ethno Linguistic Fractionalization …

Black Is Decidedly Not Just Black: A Case Study On Hiv Among African-Born Populations Living In Massachusetts, Chioma Nnaji, Nzinga Metzger

Trotter Review

Black or African American is a racial category that includes the descendants of enslaved Africans as well as members of foreign-born black communities who migrated to the United States from places abroad, such as Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Grouping native-born and foreign-born blacks into a single homogeneous racial category may make it easier to track disease and health outcomes; however, it masks the different cultural experiences, histories, languages, social and moral values, and expectations that influence health beliefs, attitudes, practices, and behaviors. It also ignores such factors as migration, which forces foreign-born populations to examine both their traditional …

Paisajes Del Exilio En La Poesía De Juan Balboa Boneke: Compromiso Social Con La Patria Guineoecuatoriana, Dosinda Garcìa-Alvite

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Tempering The Resource Curse In Sub-Saharan Africa: An Explanatory Analysis Of The Variance Of The Resource Curse In Nigeria And Botswana, Jody-Ann Suzette Jones

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The issue of the resource curse has been central to the academic debate since the 1990s. In recent years, we have witnessed a resurgence of the importance of this topic because of the discoveries of oil, natural gas, and other point source resources in several developing countries such as Ghana, Mozambique and Tanzania. It is important to note that while the resource curse is not solely limited to developing states, the main observation is that the majority of negative effects associated with the resource curse primarily afflicts poorer countries, especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is reported that sub-Saharan Africa …

Human Paternal Lineages, Languages And Environment In The Caucasus, David Tarkhnishvili, Alexander Gavashelishvili, Marine Murtskhvaladze, Mariam Gabelaia, Gigi Tevzadze

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

Publications that describe the human Y-DNA haplogroup composition in different ethnic or linguistic groups and geographic regions provide no explicit explanation of the distribution of human paternal lineages in relation to specific ecological conditions. Our research attempts to address this topic for the Caucasus – a geographic region that encompasses a relatively small area but harbors high linguistic, ethnic, and Y-DNA haplogroup diversity. 224 men that identified themselves as ethnic Georgian were genotyped for Y-chromosome 23 STR markers and assigned to their geographic places of origin. The genotyped data were supplemented with the published data on the haplogroup composition and …

Toward A Biocommunicable Cartography Of Health Decision-Making In The Amazon Basin Of Ecuador, James Cartwright

Lawrence University Honors Projects

This paper comprises a critical, ethnographic study of health communication in a rural community of Amazonian Ecuador. By synthesizing approaches from anthropology, discourse studies, and public health, the study explores how conversations influence health decisions, how communities understand health systems, and how macrostructural discourse changes the political economy of healthcare in Ecuador. My work draws on the recent theoretical development of ‘biocommunicability’ in anthropology as well as earlier sociological research on knowledge construction. Most importantly, this paper offers a critique of current interventions by NGOs in the region.

Huu-Fa Thesis Dat?: A Syntactic Analysis Of Possessive Jamaican Creole Possessive Wh-Elements, Toni Ashlie Foster

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis discusses the differences between the Jamaican Creole expressions huu-fa and fi-huu. Jamaican Creole is a language that was born from a combination of the lexifier language English and the substrate language Twi, therefore it is reasonable to check whether the features of JC were derived from these languages. The distribution of huu-fa and fi-huu resembles the distribution of English whose. Fi-huu and huu-fa are WH-elements that show possession, similar to the English word whose. They are made of a WH-pronoun and a form of the preposition fi "for". Both terms differ in internal structure, and distribution. The difference …

From The Bx To A Ba: Latino Male Students And The Transition From High School To College, Alejandro Eduardo Carrion

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study aims to provide a counter narrative to the deficit filled discourse surrounding Latino males by informing teachers, policymakers and researchers of the barriers and resources encountered by this population as they make the transition from high school to college. A qualitative research design was utilized for this study, which focused on 10 Latino males who mainly identified as Puerto Rican and Dominican, from the Bronx. Bourdieu's Theory of Practice, and his theoretical tools of field (structures), habitus (dispositions) and capital (social, cultural and economic), was used as the theoretical framework guiding this study. Participants shared the nuances of …

Integration Or Interrogation? Franco-Maghrebi Rap And Hip-Hop Culture In Marseille, Jenna Catherine Daley

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper focuses on rap and hip-hop music that is produced from Franco-Maghrebi communities living in Marseille. The discussion revolves around the question of how rap music helps these communities to assimilate into French culture. The conclusion is two-fold. Marseille, as a city whose urban planning promotes physical assimilation of immigrants with French-born citizens, performs as an integrative force for these communities. Additionally, rap simultaneously assists Franco-Maghrebis in integrating into and subverting from French society. Franco-Maghrebi rappers integrate by becoming a part of mainstream French culture. Yet, they also subvert by extraordinarily placing race and discrimination at the forefront of …

Reading Nation In Translation: The Spectral Transnationality Of The Malaysian Racial Imaginary, Fiona Hsiao Yen Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent decades, literary studies has experienced a global turn, often understood as a move beyond national paradigms of analysis, which are deemed to be narrow and particularistic. Although wary of the tacit universalizing tendencies of global frames, scholars of race and postcoloniality have critically embraced the global by arguing for the need to theorize transnationalism from marginalized perspectives. However, casting the global and the national in oppositional terms ignores the fact that national racial ideologies both actively shape and are shaped by globally circulating ideas about race. An understudied site in postcolonial studies, Malaysia--formerly known as Malaya--is an exemplary …

Paris And Havana: A Century Of Mutual Influence, Laila Pedro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation employs an interdisciplinary approach to trace the history of exchange and influence between Cuban, French, and Francophone Caribbean artists in the twentieth century. I argue, first, that there is a unique and largely unexplored tradition of dialogue, collaboration, and mutual admiration between Cuban, French and Francophone artists; second, that a recurring and essential theme in these artworks is the representation of the human body; and third, that this relationship ought not to be understood within the confines of a single genre, but must be read as a series of dialogues that are both ekphrastic (that is, they rely …

Créativité Et Lecture En Langue Seconde : Propositions Pour La Lecture Des Textes Des Journaux Francophones Du Cameroun, Louis Martin Onguéné Essono

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Nowadays, it is common to say that the French press in Africa greatly contributes to the lower level of French. If true, this assertion hides a much deeper problem that concerns the act of writing and the act of reading in a non-native language. The performance of newspaper, radio or television journalists show that these writers share the same competence and face the same difficulties as the entire French-speaking population who is compelled to transmit ideas and information in a second language they do not master, or just a bit. This paper aims at understanding the reasons why non-African readers …

Nous Habitons Les Langues Et Les Langues Nous Habitent, Cheikh Tidiane Sow

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Who has not his mother, suckles his grandmother. This wolof of Senegal adage tells us that the absence of the native language and the adoption of another language, far from being a handicap, would open more “naturally” to the universal. The author, whose parents are Fulani speaking Pulaar, delivers his experience and his relationship to his two family “second languages”, Wolof and French.

Pa'lante! Toward The Presidency: Understanding Factors That Facilitate Latino Leadership In Higher Education, Gloria Lopez

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of my study was to explore the role of cultural values in the lived experiences of Latino college and university presidents at four-year higher education institutions and to determine how cultural values contributed to and reflected their professional strengths. Using the Community Cultural Wealth framework developed by Tara Yosso (2005) to capture the assets or forms of capital that people of color bring with them to all settings, this study utilized a strengths-based approach to examine the ways in which Latino higher education executives translated their cultural upbringing and values into skills and approaches that facilitated their ascension …

Eritrean Resettlement In Indianapolis, John Andrew Traylor

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

This project has been designed to look into the challenges of resettlement for Eritreans moving to live in Indianapolis. The discussion of this work follows the footsteps of research on refugee resettlement by asking and responding to some of the common questions surrounding resettlement: why choose to resettle; what is a refugee'S initial response to entry into a host country; what is the resettlement process like; how does a refugee cope with their resettlement difficulties; and what are the prospects for future generations? This work will provide answers to these questions by analyzing the case of three resettled immigrants living …

The Specter Of Intolerance: Understanding Religious Violence In Pakistan, Syeda Haider

Honors Scholar Theses

The role of religion in Pakistani political and civil life has had a defining role in the political development of the nation. The country is now a breeding ground for religious extremism, with militant groups conducting brutal attacks against the Shia, Ahmedi, Christian and Hindu communities of Pakistan. There have been few explanations attempting to describe the problem of religious violence domestically, within Pakistan’s borders towards Pakistani citizens. This essay examines how, despite Pakistan’s initial conception as a secular state, the country has become haunted by intense religious violence. It links the lack of consensus around national identity with the …