Digital Commons Network^™

The Development Of Environmental Consciousness And Identity In Surfing Subculture, Alex Mass

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Since the 1960’s and 1970’s, surfing has exuded the stereotype of a laid-back, environmentally conscious and left-wing culture, a connotation often spread through media outlets such as movies, television, and music that encourage the idea. While the stereotype is often known and widely accepted, no studies could be found that actually tested this view. Using a series of interviews and surveys of the New Ecological Paradigm, this study investigated the formation of environmental consciousness and identity in surfing subculture in order to examine the accuracy of such stereotypes, and analyse the effect that such generalized views have on the formation …

Migration As An Economic Activity: The Efficiency Of Population Redistribution In Viet Nam, Megan L. Maurer

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Migration policy in Viet Nam views land and populations as economic resources. At reunification, these resources were not evenly distributed, thus the migration policy of the newly formed Socialist Republic of Viet Nam sought to redistribute them in a more efficient manner. However, this viewpoint does not take into account environmental and social factors. These factors include, but are not limited to issues surrounding the suitability of land for cultivation, the choice of crops to be cultivated, the infrastructural supports provided to migrant communities, and the lack of capital being put into the system.

As a consequence of these factors, …

Development, Civil Society And The Conflict In Nepal, Shan Rehman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

For more than two decades now, scholars such as Etienne Balibar and Antonio Negri have argued the ‘total subsumption of capital’; there remains no ‘outside’- all aspects of social life are governed by commodities and wage labor. This process, given impetus by the processes commonly referred to as economic globalization or market liberalization, also came to be synonymous with ‘development’. Imperfect markets, the widely implemented ‘Washington Consensus’ package of economic policies further implied, were far better social mechanisms than imperfect states.

The study and practice of ‘development’ worldwide, however, is in flux. Critiques of the mainstream ‘development’ project, widely implemented …

Reproducing Social Identities: Employer-Employee Relationships Within Paid Domestic Labor In The Netherlands, Melissa Macdonald

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

My independent study project analyzes how through employer relationships with their domestic workers, whether maternalism, personalism, distant hierarchy, or business relationship, social statuses and structural inequalities are reproduced within paid domestic labor in the Netherlands. Using Pei-Chia Lan’s concept of “boundary work” and Mary Romero’s employer typologies as theoretical tools I analyzed four interviews with native Dutch, female employers, and three with immigrant domestic workers. Along with providing an overview of paid domestic work within the Netherlands, my analysis focused employers perceptions of the “Other;” conceptualization of personal relationships, and conceptualization of labor relationships. This research found that employers fell …

The Black Question, Nicole L. Butler

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In April 2006, a 37-year old Ethiopian man was brutally attacked by two skinheads sending the country into a state of mourning. In the days to follow, the German press covered the attack extensively raising the question if whether or not race-based crimes had witnessed resurgence in Germany. For many people, the answer to such a question required a further analysis of the last few years in Germany. In 2005, Oury Jalloh, an immigrant from Sierra Leone burned to death while in a holding cell at the city jail in Dessau. The examiners labeled his death suicide although his hands …

The Development Of Bilingual Education In Berlin’S Primary Schools, Elizabeth Buckley

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The debate on language education is flourishing in the current state of globalization and immigration. The rising amount of globalization has increased the amount of linguistic diversity present in one’s everyday life. There are between 6,000 and 7,000 languages in the world and half of them are in danger of disappearing. Therefore, it is becoming more common for the presence of many different linguistic groups within one country. For instance, in Indonesia, there are over 700 languages spoken. Although, the distribution of languages is not equal, it is nearly impossible to go through life without being exposed to another language …

Roma Education In Serbia: The Implications Of Prejudice And Ethnic Conflict And The Potential For Change, Shane Branon

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Cultural, religious and ethnic divisions are nothing new to the Slavic people of the southwest Balkans. The region once known as Yugoslavia has experienced periods of assimilation and peaceful coexistence as well as ethnic hatred and aggression. In recent years, the majority of this has been concentrated inside Serbia, the nucleus of the former Yugoslavia. While it may appear that Serbia has overcome the ethnic hatred that has plagued its social and political culture, there continues to be ethnic discrimination in both the social sphere and government institutions. This prejudice is most evident in the relationship between the Serbian majority …

La Otra Camina Educativa: Being A Change To Teach A Change At Siidenofal/Cideci In San Cristóbal, Chiapas, Kailee Brickner-Mcdonald

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Eighteen years of my short life have included attending school, and it would be difficult for me to define myself and my interests without involving some sort of illusion to the world of formal learning or my primary occupation of being a traditional student. I was born with a teacher as my mother and since then I have lived in a town with one of the best school systems in New Jersey, chosen to take several classes on topics related to education at The College of William and Mary, and planned to work in a field of education in my …

Mujeres De Frente: Conciencia, Amistad Y Voz En La Cárcel De Mujeres El Inca, Rachel Nordberg

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Pasé el mes de este proyecto de estudio independiente en Quito, la ciudad capital del Ecuador. Hablaba y participaba con el grupo Mujeres de frente, externas e internas en la cárcel de mujeres de Quito, un colectivo de mujeres dentro y fuera de la cárcel de mujeres que está en el barrio quiteño el Inca. En este ensayo, estudio desde las perspectivas de las Mujeres de frente, el ambiente sociopolítico del Ecuador y la resultante caracterización y criminalización de las internas, además de la pobreza y cómo se relaciona a las experiencias de criminalización. Comento en las distintas concepciones qué …

El Movimiento Político Mapuche: Factores De División Y Debilidad E Ideas Para El Futuro, Devon Kay Whitham

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study explores the Mapuche political movement in Chile since the military dictatorship. It asserts that the movement is more divided and weak presently than it was during the dictatorship because at that time all sectors of the Mapuche society were able to unite in order to fight against a common and concrete enemy. However, since the return of democracy in Chile the Mapuche political movement has experiences a process of fragmentation that has weakened it greatly. This study identifies the five most important factors that have contributed to the process of fragmentation within the movement—the diversity of opinions within …

Luta: The Story Of The Movimento Dos Atingidos Por Barragens In The Valley Of Jaguaribe, Rachel Wood

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This is a paper about communities of share-croppers, landless families, and often-illiterate subsidence farmers who organized themselves to fight for their human rights after they were displaced by a dam. By organizing themselves with the national Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens, they were able overcome their marginalized position and demand changes that would protect their culture, protect their community, give them better access to education, access to work, and access to safe drinking water. What’s more, they are fighting for their right to participate in politics and in decisions about their own lives, and by promoting participation, promoting education, and …

What About Sustainable Improvement? Current Efforts And Challenges In The Work Of The Municipal Government To Improve The Rights Of The Garbage Pickers In Fortaleza, Brazil, Shehzia Valiulla

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The government programs seek to improve the condition of the oppressed and the poor, but very few truly have a sustainable positive impact on the lives of the poor. This research, through a case study of a program, Pilot Project of Selective Collection in Jangurussu, run by municipal officers for the benefit of garbage pickers (catadores do lixo in Brazil), attempts to define what characterizes and ensures the sustainable improvement in the work-related rights of catadores in Fortaleza, a city in Northeast Brazil, through seeking perspectives from two important stakeholders, the catadores and the municipal officers. Organizing catadores into legal …

Sex-Education And Preventative And Contraceptive Services: Educação-Sexual E Serviços Contraceptivos E Preventativos, Elizabeth M. Ortiz

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Maternal morbidity is one of the leading causes of death amongst women in Latina America. Lack of access to Reproductive Health services has incited a continental epidemic amongst adolescent women - and should be considered a public health crisis. Yet, there is little being done by the governing male bodies to secure access and the Right to Reproductive Health services. This is not only a means of re-enforcing gendered inequalities- but also class, and racial disparities. Reproductive Health in Brazil and Northeastern Brazil in particular, serves as an allegory for socio-economic, gender, ethnic, and racial inequality in the region. The …

From Quilombo To Bairro: The Maintenance Of A Permanent Afro-Brazilian Underclass, Calisha Myers

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Inequalities in access to education, as a result of institutionalized racism and social exclusion, are contributing to the maintenance of a permanent Afro-Brazilian underclass. Beiru, a community that sits on the periphery of Salvador, Bahia is an example of what the results of this physical and social marginalization is doing to Afro-Brazilian communities all over the Northeast. In my research, I sought to gain an understanding of what the young Afro-Brazilians that attend secondary school at the Escola Estadual de Zumbi dos Palmares and youth in the community are getting from these schools (in terms of what they are learning, …

Learning To Fight: The Mst’S Escola Nacional And Its Pedagogy Of Resistance, Marisol León

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

O Movimento de Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST), has accomplished extensive land occupations and other socioeconomic and political gains by interjecting a class struggle in its agrarian reform platform. Thus, connected to its physical fight and demand for land, the MST from its inception has engaged in the political formation of sem terra—a process that “refers to learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality” (Freire 35). For the MST, this political formation is critical in the construction of an alternative socialist “nation that …

Casa Da Mulher Do Nordeste: Feminist Visions Of Development, Sarah Frazer

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study presents the unique approach of Casa da Mulher do Nordeste to rural women’s empowerment and sustainable development. Their approach focuses on three main areas: 1) raising collective consciousness about unequal gender relations; 2) providing technical skills and assistance to in the areas of production and commercialization; 3) providing institutional support to the networks created in the occupation of economic and political spaces. CASA intimately links women’s empowerment to movements of agroecology and economic solidarity, thus extending the vision of equality between women and men to equality between human beings and the Earth—an ultimate definition of sustainable development. Their …

La Economía Solidaria: Ayudando A Las Mujeres A Cambiar Su Destino De Pobreza, Michele Frix

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In the last two decades in Latin America many social movements have arisen in response to the permeation of neo-liberalism throughout. These movements have many different labels (economía solidaria, economía comunitaria, economía social, solidaridad social, etc) but are all centered around the objective of forming a network of groups in the fight for economic justice, joining in solidarity, cooperation and mutual support. The idea of “economía solidaria” has become an alternative method of development in Latin America on the micro level, alleviating the effects of poverty that result from neo-liberal policies. Many non-governmental organizations have adopted the beliefs of “economía …

The Grass Is Always Greener In Gated Communities: The Social Segregation And Construction Of Difference In The Urbanizaciones Cerradas Of The Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, Ben Simons

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In the past 15 years, the metropolitan region of Buenos Aires (RMBA) has experienced the phenomenon of the massive development of hundreds of gated communities outside the city center (Capital Federal). This has been due to a perceived decrease in the quality of life within the city center by many middle to upper class residents, and a rising sensation of insecurity and fear within the open urban environment. The search for a more safe and secure setting as well as a higher quality of life has led many of these residents to flee the city for the enclosed environments of …

Father Presence Matters: A Case For Family, Marcia Redmon Miles

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Children from single parent homes experience disadvantages that often continue into adulthood. This qualitative dissertation project examines the pain and lived experiences of a family where father absence continued through three generations. Literature regarding father absence is reviewed, and the negative outcomes associated with fatherlessness are explored. This project combines a l2-week curriculum training, a 12-day Twelve-Step component, and a 12-month mentorship in a faith-based response to fatherlessness. The objective of this project is to reconnect fathers in a meaningful way with their children, ease pain and facilitate healing of all involved parties.

The Importance Of Place: Using Local-Focus Videos To Spark The Sociological Imagination, Elizabeth A. Hoffmann

Department of Sociology Faculty Publications

Sociologists have documented how important place is in people’s lives. For example, certain places are associated with various emotions, such as triumph, sadness, fear, and contentment (Gieryn 2000). We also know that as people live in a place for more time, they become more attached to it (e.g., Herting et al 1997). Other scholars have shown that the bonds people create between themselves and certain geographic places reframe how certain sites are understood both by those involved and by outsiders (Gupta and Ferguson 1997). These geographic-human bonds shape how people identify themselves and others, and how they understand the issues …

University College News, Spring 2006, University College

News, Magazines and Reports

Highlights: Reverend Oliver F. Williams spoke at the annual Hesburgh Alumni Lecture -- The Pelosos making graduation a family affair -- Work study students -- New Center for Financial Education formed -- UC chapel of love -- Alpha Sigma Lambda inducts 40 new members.

The Impact Of Microenterprise Development Training On Low-Income Clients, Michele Cranwell Schmidt, Jane M. Kolodinsky, Carol Flint, Bruce Whitney

Journal of Extension

The study reported here examined the impact of microenterprise development (MED) programs on low-income individuals using a case study of 140 clients of the Vermont Micro Business Development Program who participated in a statewide telephone survey. The study also examined variables that are associated with change in client reliance on public assistance. Outcomes achieved include: access to capital, positive attitude changes, business start up and growth, job creation, increased household income, decreased reliance on public assistance, and satisfaction with services. Significant relationships were found between certain client characteristics and outcomes and decreased reliance on public assistance.

The Future Of Agriculture In Our Community: A Pilot Program To Increase Community Dialogue About Agricultural Sustainability, Kathryn J. Brasier, Timothy Collins, Timothy W. Kelsey, Martin H. Lenihan

Journal of Extension

The Future of Agriculture in Our Community is a program developed to allow Pennsylvania communities to assess and address the needs of local agriculture. This article describes the program in detail and provides results from an evaluation conducted of the pilot program. Findings (n=55) suggest that the program was received very well among participants and seemed to increase community organization skills, knowledge of local agriculture, interest in agriculture and in community life, and intentions to participate in future volunteer efforts. Based on these results, recommendations are offered for those interested in pursuing similar programs.

Keynote Address: Reforming Eyewitness Identification, Thomas P. Sullivan

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

The article addresses the critical issue of eyewitness identification errors in criminal investigations, highlighting their role in wrongful convictions. It advocates for reform through improved identification procedures, particularly the sequential lineup method, and emphasizes the need for public and professional education on the fallibility of eyewitness testimony.

Slavery In The 21st Century, Paul R. Rickert

Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper briefly examines the modern practice of slavery. It attempts to demonstrate that slavery is a larger problem than most understand, does exist in the United States, and will outline some effective means to combat it.

"Does It Take One To Know One?" A Comparison Of Police Recruits' And Sergeants' Perceptions Of A Good Police Officer, Kara K. Hoofnagle

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

Police departments strive to hire good officers. However, there is difficulty in defining what constitutes a good police officer. The literature is rife in defining what constitutes a good police officer and characteristics indicative of a good officer. Past research suggests that characteristics of a good police officer may be more than the characteristic itself and that officers' may form their perception of what characteristics good officers harbor based on socialization, the police subculture, and the official police organization.

As such, this study sought to explore the following research question: What differences, if any, exist between police recruits' and sergeants' …

Self-Reported Attitudes, Concerns, And Behaviors Related To Global Environmentalism: Can A Mandatory Class Make A Difference?, Erin Mehalic

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to determine what initial attitudes and behaviors first-year college students had about the environment and how they changed as a result of a taking a required global environmentalism course. A second goal in this study was to learn whether there were differences in environmental attitudes and behaviors based on gender and ethnicity. Participants in this study were first-year students at Old Dominion University enrolled in a mandatory general education course, New Portals to Appreciating the Global Environment ( GEN 101 ). An online survey was completed that measured the participants' attitudes and behaviors related …

Black Power In Green And White: Integration And Black Protest In Michigan State University Football, 1947-1972, John Matthew Smith

Masters Theses

While southern college football teams remained all white until the late 1960s and early 1970s, Michigan State University head football coach Duffy Daugherty formed championship teams in 1965 and 1966 by recruiting the best southern black players. While coaches in the North recruited black athletes and played them regularly by the mid-1950s, no other coach took the risks Daugherty did to integrate his teams. Duffy Daugherty's path-breaking teams broke all the rules of integrated competition and forced southern schools to reconsider their stance on segregated college football.

The ground breaking integration of black athletes in the mid-1950s and 1960s under …

Dance Club Culture, Amy M. Iseler

Masters Theses

My research examines the dance club culture in a mid-sized Northwestern city. I explore this subject through participant observation and interviews with dance club patrons. The issues I address in my research include dance club music, music videos, alcohol, clothing, sexual behavior, non-verbal communication and the dance club environment. The purpose of this Masters Thesis is to determine whether dance club culture perpetuates sexist attitudes and beliefs within its patrons.

This original piece of research is based in existing literature which informs the individual elements of the dance club culture. The experiences of dance club patrons demonstrate how these elements …

Social Trust Benefits And Sense Of Identification At Dog Parks: An Exploratory Study, Kelly E. Price

Human Movement Studies & Special Education Theses & Dissertations

Dog parks are growing in popularity across the United States, yet are under researched in the field of recreation and leisure. The purpose of this study is to investigate the current state of research on dog parks, while also exploring the relationships that exist between perceived benefits, social trust, identification with people and place, and dog park usage. On-site surveys were collected from dog park users at two Hampton Roads dog parks between Fall 2003 and Fall 2005. Statistical analyses were run on the data to determine if there was a difference in park usage patterns between various demographic groups …