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Variation In Life History And Behavioral Traits In The Colonial Spider Parawixia Bistriata (Araneidae): Some Adaptive Responses To Different Environments, María Florencia Fernández Campón

Doctoral Dissertations

Widely distributed species are exposed to different environmental forces throughout their range. As a response to differences in local environmental conditions, these species are expected to present geographic variation in phenotypic traits (e.g., behavioral, physiological, anatomical) in order to better adapt to these conditions. Parawixia bistriata (Araneidae) is a colonial spider distributed in a variety of habitats in South America. This species is unusual in two respects: contrary to most social species found in tropical wet forests, P. bistriata’s distribution extends from tropical to temperate latitudes; and it exhibits facultative group foraging, a behavioral pattern absent in territorial colonial …

Perspectives On Self-Immolation Experiences Among Uzbek Women, Elizabeth Ann Campbell

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the motivation of Uzbek women who committed acts of self-immolation and survived. The study examined the role of the religion and culture of Islam, whether the act of self-immolation was a suicide attempt or an act of protest, and whether the use of fire had some symbolic significance. Self-immolation, or deliberate self-burning, is increasingly becoming a cause of death and disability among young Muslim women in the Middle East andCentral Asia. However, little is known about this phenomenon.

This was a qualitative, bounded case study, which used a blended model of case …

Narrating Single Motherhood: What Does It Mean To Be A Single Mother?, Brandee Rutherford Mathews

Masters Theses

Status transitions such as divorce challenge those who undergo them to revise or reformulate identities lined to statuses no longer held. This study focuses on the identity work of recently divorced mothers of dependent children. Participants were solicited from those attending a “singles’ group” designed for adults with children sponsored by a large evangelical church located in the southeast. The women’s identity work occurred within a religious context that emphasized the desirability and sanctity of marriage. The researcher both participated in the group and conducted phone interviews with eleven of the mothers in the group. Identity ambiguity and identity limbo …

The First Full Tv Generation: A Grounded Theory Study Of Persons Born From 1960 To 1976 Regarding Their Experiences With Parental Mediation Of Television And Movies, Bradley W. Bull

Doctoral Dissertations

According to Gallup polls, the number of U.S. households owning televisions (TVs) went from 6% in 1949 to 90% in 1959 to 97% in 1966. Thus, persons born from 1960 to 1976 represent the first full TV generation in that they are the first members of society to grow up with television as a constant presence. The parents of this cohort vividly remember the advent of television and were themselves raised by parents who had no experience growing up with television. For the most part, the parents of those born since 1960 faced making decisions related to mediating television having …

Food Security In The 21St Century: Lessons From Cuban Agriculture For Materializing Realities, Evan L. Weissman

Masters Theses

Worldwide, hunger continues to pose great problems for humanity. Despite popular belief, hunger is a problem of inequality, not agricultural production. The fast-approaching global peak in oil production, the point at which half of all existing oil has been used, means that hunger, now a problem of inequality, will soon become a problem of production unless contemporary agricultural production is transformed. This project examines the promise of urban agriculture in providing food security following the collapse of petroagriculture.

The case of Cuba, albeit fostered by political economic conditions and not emerging geophysical limitations, provides a model of agricultural development for …

The Collaborative Creation Of Alternate Realities And The Use Of Torture: An Analysis Of Abu Ghraib, Denise Margarett Knight

Masters Theses

The abuses at Abu Ghraib, an American-run prison in Iraq, raise the question, how does torture happen in a society whose members for the most part believe that doing harm to others is wrong? Ronald Crelinsten (2003) offers the explanation that people create an alternate reality in which torture is justified. Three types of people, perpetrators, victims, and bystanders, participate in the maintenance of this alternate reality. My study is an instantiation of Crelinsten's framework. It focuses on the perpetrators at Abu Ghraib. I propose that two types of perpetrators participated in the abuses: the soldiers and personnel in the …

From An Issue-Based To A Globalized Frame For Addressing Women's Grievances: Possibilities For Social Change?, Kristen Lea Vanhooreweghe

Masters Theses

Women throughout the world disproportionately absorb the social and environmental costs of globalization. Globalization, therefore, works more often to inhibit, than to promote, women’s needs necessary for survival. Using a materialist feminist perspective, I examine the harmful effects of globalization on women’s production, reproduction, and engagement with the environment and offer a comprehensive frame for addressing women’s associated grievances. I then offer brief vignettes of two contemporary feminist organizations to evaluate the possibility of a cross-cultural and widespread movement of women for social change.

Resilience: Its Relationship To Forgiveness In Older Adults, Linda Cox Broyles

Doctoral Dissertations

This descriptive, correlational study investigated how psychological resilience might be associated with forgiveness in older adults. The population selected was a planned community in the southeastern United States; the majority of the 4,500 residents were over 50 years old, Caucasian, married, retired or semi-retired, and in reasonably good health. Having relocated to this community from all over our nation and from foreign countries and having achieved a generally high level of success on the average, these people brought with them a wide range of life’s experiences. A random sample of 900 was drawn from the community directory. Of these, 497 …

The Effects Of Depressive Symptomology On Women’S Childbearing Considerations, Andrea Darlene Marable

Masters Theses

Empirical literature dedicated to pursuing knowledge of the relationship between women who suffer from depression and their considerations of childbearing is lacking. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study was to determine the types of relationships that exist between depressive symptomology in women and their childbearing considerations.

Secondary data analysis was the chosen form of research analysis, and the National Survey of Families and Households (Wave 1) was the data set employed. There were a total of four independent variables (depressive symptomology, global life satisfaction, global optimism, and self-esteem) and two dependent variables (10 constraint items and 4 motivational factor …

State Terrorism And Globalization: The Cases Of Ethiopia And Sudan, Asafa Jalata

Sociology Publications and Other Works

This article compares the essence and effects of Ethiopian and Sudanese state terrorism by focusing on the commonalities between the two states. These peripheral African states have used global and regional connections and state terrorism as political tools for creating and maintaining the confluence of identity, religion, and political power. Ethiopia primarily depends on the West, and Sudan on the Middle East, since Christianity and Islam are the dominant religions in these African states respectively. While the Ethiopian state was formed by the alliance of Abyssinian (Amhara-Tigray) colonialism and European imperialism, the Sudanese state was created by British colonialism known …