Digital Commons Network^™

Perceived Threats To Food Security And Possible Responses Following An Agro-Terrorist Attack, Lamesha Lashal Craft

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks exposed vulnerabilities to U.S. homeland security and defense, leading U.S. officials to analyze threats to domestic and international interests. Terrorist attacks against food and water supplies (agro-terrorism), were deemed a national security threat because of the assessed fear, economic instability, and social instability that could occur following a food shortage. Research indicated a comprehensive response plan does not exist across the federal, state, and local levels of government to mitigate the public's possible responses to a perceived threat to food security and food shortages following an agro-terrorist attack. This ethnographic case study analyzed the …

Steven Avery, A Case Study: Making A Murderer Or Making An Identity, Allison Grussing

Masters Theses

Steven Avery, a Wisconsin native, has spent the majority of his adult life in prison, once for a crime he was later exonerated from, and then again for murder. The Netflix series Making a Murderer documents Avery's murder trial, and uses only first hand accounts. Ultimately, this research had two goals: one was to better understand how the series utilized framing to engage in advocacy for Avery and the second was to uncover what identity was constructed by the producers and series for Avery. With a thematic analysis approach and open and axial coding this research revealed three themes that …

The Relationship Between Participation In Community Service And Students Academic Success, Kelsi Grubisich

Masters Theses

This study explored the relationship between participation in community service and students' academic success at a mid-sized Midwestern institution. A quantitative study was conducted by distributing a survey through the Civic Engagement and Volunteerism Office listserv. The results from the t-test showed that there was no statistical significance in the participation in community service and students' academic success. Results from the Chi Square test showed that there was no statistical significance in the type of service students chose and their major, the gender participation, and the race participation. Recommendations were made to student affairs professionals to include more opportunities …

Critical Agrarian Studies In Theory And Practice, Marc Edelman, Wendy Wolford

Publications and Research

Abstract: In this introductory article we argue for renewed attention to life and labor on and of the land—or what we call the field of Critical Agrarian Studies. Empirically rich and theoretically rigorous studies of humanity’s relationship to “soil” remain essential not just for historical analysis but for understanding urgent contemporary crises, including widespread food insecurity, climate change, the proliferation of environmental refugees, growing corporate power and threats to biodiversity. The article introduces an innovative and varied collection of works in Critical Agrarian Studies and also examines the intellectual and political history of this broader field.

Resumen: En este artículo …

The Tea Party Versus Planning: A Study Of Tea Party Activism And Its Impact On Local Government Planning, Spencer A. Norman

Theses and Dissertations

The Tea Party movement’s effect on local and regional planning in Virginia has received little study. This work identifies how conservative political activism has impacted planning in the Commonwealth and how planners have responded. The study relies on a qualitative approach involving 22 semi-structured interviews with activists, planners, and citizens, as well as textual analyses of planning documents, local and regional news reports, and Tea Party social media. The resultant findings show that Tea Party activism is rooted in deep seated ideals about private property rights and individualism. It also reveals that planning processes that increased the amount of public …

Social Sustainability: The Role Of Ecotourism In Regenerating Cultural And Environmental Histories In Rio De Janeiro, Nia Mcallister

Pomona Senior Theses

Ecotourism is a rapidly growing global export industry that aims to uphold the ethics of responsible tourism by engaging with local communities and encouraging environmentally conscious travel. With existing critiques of the greenwashing of ecotourism and the tendency for tourism agencies to exploit host communities, I advocate for participatory community-based models of ecotourism. This thesis explores both the material and conceptual benefits of community-based ecotourism through the critical examination of community-based ecotourism projects in Rio de Janeiro Brazil. Focusing on the implementation of ecotourism in of some of Rio de Janeiro’s peripheral communities, areas that are impacted by social and …

When ‘Places’ Include Pets: Broadening The Scope Of Relational Approaches To Promoting Aging-In-Place, Ann M. Toohey, Jennifer A. Hewson, Cindy L. Adams, Melanie J. Rock

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Aging-in-place is a well-established concept, but discussions rarely consider that many older adults live with pets. In a ‘pet-friendly’ city, we conducted semi-structured interviews to explore perspectives of community-based social support agencies that promote aging-in-place, and those of animal welfare agencies. Applying a relational ecology theoretical framework, we found that pets may contribute to feeling socially- situated, yet may also exacerbate constraints on autonomy experienced by some older adults. Pet-related considerations at times led to discretionary acts of more-than-human solidarity, but also created paradoxical situations for service-providers, impacting their efforts to assist older adults. A shortage of pet-friendly affordable housing …

Agricultural Production Cooperatives In The Eu: Explaining Variation In Cooperative Development, Alexander Borst

Honors Theses

This thesis examines variations in the development of cooperative businesses across member states in the European Union to identify and explain patterns in cooperative participation. Through a comparative analysis of statistical indicators coupled with regional analyses of historical determinants that may have incentivized cooperative participation, the current state of cooperatives in each region is highlighted and the relevance of each cooperative development indicator is discussed. This thesis uses literature on the early European cooperative movement, the development of the Common Agricultural Policy, and the current state of cooperative agricultural production to present a historically contextualized look at the European model …

The Sociological And Economic Factors Impacting A Workforce Development Program In An Impoverished Community, Elena Bauer

Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to inform about the best practices of workforce development, and to consider the sociological and economic factors in impoverished areas that are to be considered for successful traditional business principles to work. Through an in-depth study of eight African American male respondents who were participants in a job training program in Clarksdale, Mississippi, this study explores the impact of the vestiges of past discrimination embedded in the institutions and culture to make a Mississippi community particularly challenging for providing equitable opportunities for low income residents (Cobb, 1992; Duncan & Blackwell, 2014; Myers Asch, 2011). …

From The Fangs Of Monsters: Gender, Empire, And Civilization In The Pacific, 1800-1850, Michael David Chavez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

As the nineteenth century commenced, contact between Pacific Islanders and Anglo-Americans increased as did the concern for what resulted from those interactions. In the United States, antebellum restrained men––those who upheld their Protestant faith, self-reliance, and familial values––used ideals of gender to combat the perceived “savagery” of Pacific Islanders and the corruption of American sailors among them. In the mission field, restrained men consciously sought after Anglo-American women’s influence often believing them to be the moral authority of a softer form of empire. This particular form of empire was not government led; nor did it entail the immediate conquest of …

Exploring The Lives Of Women Who Lead, Susan Cloninger

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Scholars have identified various reasons for the underrepresentation of women in the upper echelons of organizations.This study used grounded theory methodology enhanced by situational analysis to explore how American women at senior levels in large organizational contexts engage and negotiate the totality of their situation.Utilizing a predominately White, married, middle to upper class, heterosexual sample, this study sought to understand how women create and consign meaning around their experiences; how they experience the fluidity and boundaries of multiple identities; and how they experience the entanglement of macro, meso, and micro societal forces.It explores relationships among factors participants named as influential …

The Ball's In Her Court: Communicating Gender And Sexual Identity In Today's Wnba, Jose Maldonado

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Prior research has demonstrated certain societal issues that impact not only female basketball players, but all female athletes on more of a larger scale than just participating in sport. With social media rapidly becoming a popular form of communication today, and the dilemma of these women being analyzed for something other than their basketball prowess, it is important that certain communication strategies in a mediated environment be further researched. Using textual analysis, three of the WNBA's most popular players will be examined to determine if there are significant themes and differences that confirm the previously established gender norms, along with …

La Representacion De “Raza” En La Literatura Escolar Y Juvenil Norteamericana Del Siglo Xix, Karl M. Lorenz

Education Faculty Publications

Este documento relata cómo las razas angloamericana, amerindia y negra estuvieron representadas en libros de texto de la escuela primaria y na literatura juvenil en el siglo XIX. Una muestra de textos de geografía, historia y lectura, y revistas juveniles y infantiles publicadas entre 1790 y 1890 fueron examinadas para determinar cómo se representaron las tres razas. También se presenta información adicional de publicaciones para adultos y científicas para proporcionar un contexto para las opiniones expresadas en los libros de texto y la literatura relacionada. Con base en la información transmitida en las publicaciones, se identificaron y discutieron brevemente conceptos …

Perceiving The Cultural Sea That Is Our Home - Spiritual Formation And Western 21st Century Culture, Lisa Graham Mcminn

Faculty Publications - Department of Sociology

Spiritual formation occurs in the routines of daily living. We are formed by choices made at the grocery store, as we reach for our medicine cabinet, as we consider whether to drive ten minutes or walk thirty. Such seemingly insignificant choices reflect assumptions held about who we are, and how we are supposed to live in the world. Spiritual formation, like notions of civic duty, develops from within a cultural context. Cultural environments give us largely unquestioned taken-for- granted assumptions about how the world is and how we should live in it. This essay explores three of the many Western …

An Analysis Of The Attitudes Of Undergraduate Theology Majors Towards Members Of The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgender Community, Jephet Williams

Master's Theses

Problem and Purpose

Research has identified students’ attitudes towards the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community as being determined partly by the students’ understanding of gender identity, and partly by a further mixture of variables that include religiosity, gender, and ethnicity. Most of this previous research has been undertaken in either secular or non-Adventist settings. This present study examines attitudes of undergraduate theology majors at two Adventist universities in North America and the Caribbean.

Method

A Likert Scale was constructed consisting of eight questions geared to elicit attitudes across a number of areas. Sixty-three students completed the questionnaire. Participating students …

Reducing Adolescent Anger And Aggression With Biofeedback: A Mixed-Methods Multiple Case Study, Jedidiah S. Savard

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Adolescent anger, aggression, and violent outbursts are social problems significantly affecting each of us. Individual therapeutic management of pathological anger is treated in various ways depending on practitioners’ theoretical orientations and competency levels. Popular psychological individual and group therapies addressing anger and aggression in adolescents focus primarily on cognitive-behavioral techniques that manage anger’s symptoms. Evidence-based cognitive-behavioral therapies often require clients to self-identify emerging antecedents of anger without assistance; such therapies employ predetermined strategies to assist the client to emotionally de-escalate prior to an angry or aggressive episode. However, cognitive responses to an emotional upheaval stemming from an emergence of anger …

Mobile Collaborative Learning For Female Baby Boomer Students In Canadian Higher Education, Holly Cp Chun

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Female baby boomer students (born 1946-1964) need to augment their skills in mobile collaborative learning because current knowledge of technologies is essential for making informed decisions. The purpose of this study was to determine the need to promote technologies based on the experiences of female baby boomer students. Andragogy and constructivism provided the conceptual framework for this research. The research questions were devised to investigate female boomer students' collaborative experiences using smart devices and barriers to their adoption of technology. This phenomenological study included 8 participants from a Canadian university recruited through purposeful sampling. Per the Modified Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method, data …

The Psychological Impact Of Taser Utilization In Police Officers, Yolanda Waters

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A substantial body of scientific and medical research has examined the relationship between conductive energy devices and their physical risk to humans. This phenomenological study focused on the psychological impact of Taser utilization in police officers. This research explored how the experience of using a Taser in the line of duty affected officers from the conceptual framework of stress inoculation training and its applicability to Taser certification; the typical mental processes associated with using less-lethal weapons, perceptions of Taser training; and, the preparation provided in training for citizen injuries and deaths. Fifteen officers who had deployed a Taser were included …

Exploring Social Support Networks Of African American Emancipated Foster Care Women, Donna Marie Barrett

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Many youth exit the United States foster care system each year and face challenges related to housing, employment, health care, and education. After emancipation, foster youth can experience family instability, educational disruption, incarceration, unemployment, unstable housing, and emotional problems at a much higher rate than youth in the general population. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the experiences of African American foster women and the social support they received in finding housing upon exiting foster care system. Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory provided a conceptual framework of social interrelation for the study. Data were collected from a purposeful …

The Sinophone Roots Of Javanese Nini Towong, Margaret Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article proposes that Nini Towong, a Javanese game involving a possessed doll, is an involution of fifth-century Chinese spirit-basket divination. The investigation is less concerned with originist theories than it is a discussion of the Chinese in Indonesia. The Chinese have been in Southeast Asia from at least as early as the Ming era, yet Chinese contributions to Indonesian culture is an understudied area. The problem begins with the asymmetrical privileging of Indic over Sinic influences in early European scholarship, a situation which in turn reveals the prejudices that the Europeans brought to bear in their dealings with the …

Cctv As A Tool For Early Police Intervention: Preliminary Lessons From Nine Case Studies., Eric Piza, Joel M. Caplan, Leslie W. Kennedy

Publications and Research

This study explores the prospect of utilizing CCTV as an early intervention mechanism to detect and disrupt street-level activity that can lead to violence. The analysis focuses on nine case studies in Newark, NJ, incorporating data from several sources, including video footage, computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system incident data, CAD event chronologies and face-to-face interviews with CCTV operators. The findings suggest that the benefits offered by CCTV, namely the instantaneous discovery and reporting of crime, may be rendered incon- sequential by the process times associated with the differential-response policy of police dispatch. Potential methods by which police can more proactively utilize …

‘The Charity Model Is Broken’: Crowdfunding As A Way To Democratise, Diversify And Grow Funding For Social Change?, Debbie Rodan, Jane Mummery, Cathy Henkel

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Crowdfunding has become a billion dollar business for the digital platforms that enable it. Although crowdfunding has been used for over a decade to fund a variety of artistic or entrepreneurial individual and collective projects, more recently there has been an uptake by individuals and groups wishing to effect social change. Indeed, there have been arguments that crowdfunding’s capacity to tap into personal networks and ‘like-minded’ people – via social media networks, email and the internet – is reformatting funding for social change. Insofar as crowdfunding means that there are no gatekeepers such as government or corporate policy-makers able to …

A Ten-Year-Old’S Use Of Creative Content To Construct An Alternative Future For Herself, Lelia Rosalind Green, Kylie Justine Stevenson

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The Hand Up Linkage project focuses on the family as a communication context through which to explore the dynamics of intergenerational welfare dependency. In particular, it explores ways that creative life-course interventions might allow children in welfare dependent families to construct alternative realities for themselves and alternative views of their future. Formed through an alliance between a key Western Australian social welfare not-for-profit organisation, St Vincent de Paul WA (SVDPWA and also, in the context of volunteers, ‘Vinnies’), and Edith Cowan University, the project aims to address the organisation’s vision to provide “a hand up” (St Vincent 1) rather than …

Chinese Diaspora And Western Australian Nature (Perth Region): A Study Of Material Engagement With The Natural World In Diasporic Culture, Li Chen

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Based on an ethnographic study of the everyday practices of diasporic Chinese residents of Perth, this project focuses on the relationship between the ecologic environment and diasporic Chinese cultures in contemporary Western Australia.

With the acceleration of globalization, studies in diaspora have increasingly absorbed geographic ideas. Research on the relationship between ecology and humankind has thrown new light on discussions of diaspora. However, there are few in-depth studies addressing the construction of diasporic place and space with an engagement of the material world. Considering the relative absence of the natural world as a serious subject in contemporary diaspora studies, the …

Changes In Depressive Symptoms Among Older Adults With Multiple Chronic Conditions: Role Of Positive And Negative Social Supports, Sangnam Ahn, Seonghoon Kim, Hongmei Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Depression severely affects older adults in the United States. As part of the social environment, significant social support was suggested to ameliorate depression among older adults. We investigate how varying forms of social support moderate depressive symptomatology among older adults with multiple chronic conditions (MCC). Data were analyzed using a sample of 11,400 adults, aged 65 years or older, from the 2006–2012 Health and Retirement Study. The current study investigated the moderating effects of positive or negative social support from spouse, children, other family, and friends on the association between MCC and depression. A linear mixed model with repeated measures …

Animal Pain And The Social Role Of Science, Leslie Irvine

Animal Sentience

Assuming that all animals are sentient would mean ending their use in most scientific research. This does not necessarily imply an unscientific or anti-scientific stance. Examining the social role of science reveals its considerable investment in preserving the status quo, including the continued use of animal subjects. From this perspective, the use of animal subjects is a custom that science could move beyond, rather than a methodological requirement that it must defend.

Suppfriends: Empowering Friends, Changing Culture, Allie Liss, Lily Grier

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

Without the proper education, responding to disclosure of sexual assault can be an experience for which many people feel entirely unprepared to handle – no matter how much they care about and want to help their friends. SuppFriends seeks to empower members of the WashU community to respond supportively and effectively to peer disclosures, as well as to understand their own experiences and take care of themselves in the process. In exploring what interventions already exist for the above stated problem, we searched for interventions that specifically addressed the issue of empowering friends of survivors, interventions that encompassed the idea …

Truth Or Dare: Anonymous-- A Self-Proclaimed Cyber Anarchist Movement, Yancy Mejia

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This study is based on a content analysis of 85 “Anonymous Official” YouTube videos posted online between January 2012 and July 2016. Anonymous is an amorphous hacktivist collective that challenges corporate media and threaten to expose political corruption and civil rights abuses in the United States and abroad. I organized the data around the Snow and Benford (1988, 2000) diagnostic, prognostic and motivational social movement framing concepts, and further analyzed the messages considering variations in adherence to anarchist conceptualizations of the State. In bringing together these literatures, this research explores Anonymous identity as a cyber-anarchist movement. I found that the …

17th Legislative Session, 2017-2019 File, Texas Silver-Haired Legislature

Texas Silver-Haired Legislature

17th Legislative Session 2017-2019 File . The first file in the folder, information on the orientation session, is the primary document on this record and the additional documents inside the file are attached to this record as additional files. See list below for additional files contents.

The Impact Of Ethical Concerns On Fashion Consumerism: A Review, Lena Cavusoglu, Mourad Dakhli

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Ethical and sustainable business practices have become some of the most significant concerns in the highly globalized fashion industry. Firms in this multi-billion dollar industry are taking these concerns seriously, and are carefully monitoring and responding to consumers’ actions that can range from expressing displeasure via social media to holding protests or even calling for boycotts of certain brands and firms. In this paper, the first output from a larger project on ethics of fashion, we review the extant literature on the ethical aspects of the global fashion system; and set the stage for further empirical and conceptual work.