Digital Commons Network^™

"Ich Kenne Jeden Stein Mit Vornamen" History, Heritage, And Discourses Of Power In Schwabisch Hall, Baden-Wurttemberg, Dylan Bailey Howard

Theses & ETDs

Ideology, or mind-set, is the set of mental constructs that are embedded in the context in which people operate as a part of their daily lives: it is the things which are taken for granted and assumed to be true. All aspects of life, from food to medicine to religious practice to social interaction, are mediated in one way or another by ideology, which restricts actions and perspectives to a certain number of possibilities. Dominant ideologies necessarily silence non-dominant ones, and anthropology is particularly suited to uncover, deconstruct, and critique these cultural constructions. This project identifies features of the dominant …

Meaning, Networks, And Costs To Participation In Sicial Change Organiztions, Leah Burger

Theses & ETDs

This thesis examines what motivates individuals to become involved in social change organizations. These organization�s goals and action straddle between social service agencies and social movements. Sociological literature on participation in social movements and collective action provide the analytical framework for this research. I interviewed eight people from a social change organization in Florida. From these interviews it became clear that involvement in the social change organization is based upon the way social networks and frame alignment interacts with costs and benefits considerations in the decision to participate. With this understanding, we are better able to entice participation in these …

Writing The Animal, Ericka Miller

Theses & ETDs

In this thesis, I demonstrate the ways in which contemporary American fiction by women uses the animal as both a literal figure and a concept. Focusing on Amy Hempel, Alice Walker, and Octavia Butler, I examine how they link their portrayal of animals to the historical, current, and potential experiences of women: these writers depict cultures whose ideologies, social expectations, ethics, and hierarchies of value prove sexist and "speciesist." First I describe historical trends in the ways that representations of animals�and animality have been used in relation to women, often to justify oppression. The advent of evolutionary discourse in the …

Where Whiskey Is For Drinking And Water Is For Cooperating Over. An Application Of The Institutional Analysis And Development Framework To The Struggle Over Pacific Northwest Water Allocation., Michael J. Dexter

Theses & ETDs

The allocation of water among multiple users has generated several water conflicts or "water wars" in the Western United States. The failure to cooperate over water resources has led many to criticize the property rights system in place under the doctrine of prior appropriation. However, such arguments neglect to consider federal recognition of tribal and environmental rights as a legitimization of stakeholders. The recognition of resource rights to multiple actors can facilitate a cooperative arrangement over water allocation. Through applying the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to four Pacific Northwest watersheds, this thesis argues that the primacy of hydropower interests …

Madre An Ethnographic Study Of Feminism, Social Change And Women's Human Rights, Erica Lindegren

Theses & ETDs

This thesis is an ethnographic exploration of how the staff members of one New York City-based nongovernmental organization, MADRE Inc., effect transnational social change. MADRE is a self-proclaimed women�s human rights organization that works with grassroots women�s organizations worldwide to provide �rights, resources, and results.� Using anthropological and feminist theoretical frameworks, I draw from interviews with staff members, observations from my internship experience, and research from MADRE and its partner organizations to analyze how MADRE serves as a conduit for social transformation through two partners in Sudan and Colombia. I examine how feminist goals have informed women's human rights, and …

Teaching To Cultivate Gardening Education Programs In Public Elementary Schools, Andrew Noune

Theses & ETDs

In an attempt to explore ways that the educational system can encourage an understanding of food production systems and their effect on the environment and human health, I explore the components of edible school gardening programs. Eight public elementary school programs in a county in southwest Florida were studied by interviewing the facilitating teachers and observing in-class activities. Components related to horticultural procedures, academic connections, and students' home life were identified and analyzed. The findings of this research suggest that in-ground school gardens are likely to contain more horticultural components and academic connections than earth box or hydroponic gardens. Therefore, …

I Am Punk A Prototype Analysis Of Identity In The Punk Music Subculture, Noelle Neemeh

Theses & ETDs

The present research looked at group and individual identity in the punk music subculture through a prototype analysis and through various measures (identity fusion and organizational identification). In the first study, a list was compiled of features that individuals saw as a description of the punk subculture. In the second study, participants had to rate how central they felt each word on a compiled list was to their concept of punks and themselves, as well as how positively or negatively they viewed it. Participants then completed measures for group identification. The results of Studies 1 and 2 indicate that punk …

As The World Burns Theoretical Frameworks For Analyzing Domestic Terrorism, Thomas Mckay

Theses & ETDs

Despite the large amount of research done on terrorism of all stripes, an overall theoretical framework of terrorism has not yet been developed. Political terrorism is a vastly complicated and politically sensitive phenomenon; as a result, the overall state of the literature is incomplete, making any attempts to develop such a model unlikely and possibly even undesirable. Even basic definitions, assumptions, and relational models are still a matter of intensive debate. This study examines two dominant approaches to terrorism analysis, the instrumental/strategic model and the organizational/incentive framework. It contains a breakdown of existing theoretical perspectives on terrorism and applies the …

All The News That's Fit To Print? A Comparison Of News Narratives Of The 2009 Horduran Coup, Sarah P. Iacobucci

Theses & ETDs

This thesis seeks to analyze the differences in the narratives about the coup d'etat of President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras in 2009 from three news sources: Mexico's La Jornada, TeleSUR, a transnational Latin American news network, and The New York Times. La Jornada and TeleSUR both represent outlets with left-leaning, counter-hegemonic tendencies, but whereas TeleSUR represents the vision of ALBA, an organization of countries seeking alternate paths of development for the region, La Jornada is a wholly independent news source. By comparing these two sources with The New York Times, an emblem of mainstream Western news, this thesis seeks to …

"Mirror, Mirror On The Wall, Who Is The Queerest Of Them All?" A Crip Perspective On Fairy Tale Intertextuality, Jody Francis Mailer

Theses & ETDs

This thesis is a project that examines and pushes the limits of fairy tale intertextuality through a critical understanding of gender and disability. I use the term �intertextuality� as it was initially employed by poststructuralist theorists and critics, in their attempt to disrupt notions of stable meaning and objective interpretation. Adversely, the fairy tale tradition is notorious for perpetuating fixed meanings of gender ideology and its objective interpretation of what exactly constitutes a happily-ever-after. Perhaps stemming from its roots in the oral folk tradition of telling and re-telling, fairy tale intertextuality has the potential for re-imagining and re-contextualizing these norms. …

"You Can Still Be A Feminist, Be Proud Of Being A Woman, And Deal With The Gender Binary" Issues Of Sex And Gender At Indian Brook Camp, Flavia Grattery-Musinsky

Theses & ETDs

Established in 1941 to provide girls the opportunity to engage in physical work and wilderness trips, Indian Brook is a single-sex summer camp in Southern Vermont. Though one must be female-bodied to attend or be employed at Indian Brook, one does not necessarily have to identify as a girl/woman; this relationship is emblematic of the unique, complex, and inevitably tenuous dynamic that is a product of the incorporation of queer pedagogy into a community organized upon seemingly conventional notions of sex and gender. Utilizing ethnographic methods over a two-month period in the summer of 2010, this study examines Indian Brook�s …

Public Lies And Private Truths Images Of Dictatorial Power In La Fiesta Del Chivo And El Oto�O Del Chivo., Sarah Thompson

Theses & ETDs

This thesis is concerned with how a community could allow and even participate in its own subjection by a brutal dictator. I examine the representations of dictatorial power in two Latin American novels: El oto�o del patriarca by Gabriel Garc�a M�rquez and La fiesta del chivo by Mario Vargas Llosa. I present an examination of the creation and dissemination of a public image that the dictator uses to affirm his power and to subject his people. I believe this to be the key mechanism that contributes to the public's belief that the dictator has either a right to rule, or …

"You Can't Wait For The Cavalry That Won't Come!" Combating Post-Katrina Urbicide, Christina Lawrence

Theses & ETDs

This thesis argues that top-down political processes enabled Katrina�s destruction, including the sustained displacement and systematic disenfranchisement of Black working-class residents during the rebuilding process. �This paper looks at post-Katrina urbicidal trends (and residential resistance to them) through a method of open-ended, grounded-theory interviews with founders, directors and workers in the grassroots, community-based organization network of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward. �The project integrates secondary literature and with participation and observation to create a narrative of urbicide and urbicide resistance in post-Katrina New Orleans. �It contends that the two most salient features of this story are a local history of …

Betwixt And Between Au Pairs In The United States, Agne Milukaite

Theses & ETDs

This thesis examines the au pair program in the United States. I argue that au pairs do not conform to a simple explanation or definition. Instead, the young women who participate in the program are better understood in terms of their liminality�a temporary phase that is part of a life-stage transformation similar to a rite of passage. I believe that this program is an illustration of a broader phenomenon of modern liminality which retains aspects of pre-industrial rites of passage but adds to those rites labor as a means of ordering this transformation. My findings show that while this labor …

Maintaining Inequality A Comparative Study Of Educational Stratification In Argentina And The United States, Maia G. De La Calle

Theses & ETDs

A growing body of literature argues that schooling is not the great equalizer; rather, it reproduces inequality. Most of these theories concur that schools are not neutral enterprises, but sites of conflict. Educational inequality can be observed in the differences in approach and quality among public schools located in different socioeconomic districts. These differences in educational experience are reflected in the curriculum, resources, achievement rates, drop-out rates, and teacher qualifications, among other factors. Given that the current decentralized educational policies in the U.S. have not reduced the expanding achievement gap, my thesis project examines whether more centralized educational policies, such …

A "Queery" Of Sex And Gender, Elizabeth Lang Tracy

Theses & ETDs

This thesis explores gender identity, and, more specifically, queer gender identity. The sculptural works exhibit our ideas of sex and gender and how they have been socially and culturally constructed. The installation created seeks to find a new view of queerness and body identity through challenging the binary gender paradigm and present-day stigmas that repress queer identity and feminism; and explores this sense of coming into the self and questioning the ordinary and normal through the sexual, queer, and avoided. The work attempts to produce an aesthetic that playfully raises discomfort in the viewer by utilizing phallic and vulval forms. …

A Resource For Harmony An Etunographic Study Of Exhibition, Heritage, And Race At Family Heritage House Museum, Bradenton, Florida, Christina Chavez

Theses & ETDs

This thesis is the product of ethnographic fieldwork spanning from January 2010 to January 2011. The artifacts, exhibits, and events which are a part of Family Heritage House Museum were methodological tools which provided cultural insight into the community-centered African American heritage museum. An analysis of specific artifacts, exhibits, and events illustrate the manner in which exhibition, heritage, and race intersect at Family Heritage House Museum. As an instrument of power exhibition separates the subject from the object turning the intangible and ephemeral responses to culture into a tangible thing. Through this process, the museum constructs heritage for specific social …

Seeing Through The Grid, Sarah Newberry

Theses & ETDs

This thesis began as an investigation of three-dimensional space through pattern, repetition, modulation and transmutation of geometric forms. In response to the formalist aesthetic of the modernist grid[1] seen in the works of artists like Piet Mondrian, Sol Lewitt, and Josef Albers, a body of work was actualized. Works have evolved into a further exploration, one in which the aesthetic nature of the grid is subverted and its logical beginnings devolve into consistently warped, imprecise, and affected representations. This thesis utilizes this logical chaos to relate the dynamic qualities of specific spaces, their constant devolution, and the capacity of the …

Facebook Sluts Transcoding Between Voyeuristic Media And Figure Painting, Dinah Juergens

Theses & ETDs

Despite differences in media, the predominant kind of pictures with human subjects being made now�digital photographs shared on the internet�have a place in the centuries-long art historical discourse surrounding representations of the human form. This paper is the written accompaniment to a thesis exhibition of thirteen oil paintings depicting nude and partially clothed figures. The paintings are interpretations of digital images from social networking websites and personal e-mail. Through my work, I hope to encourage a breakdown of perceived boundaries between digital and traditional artistic media in favor of an inclusive view of the history of images. These paintings are …

The Role Of Guanxi In Chinese Economic Transition Firm Networking & Market Autonomy, Chelsea Dye

Theses & ETDs

This thesis examines the role of guanxi in China's economic transformation. Guanxi is an institutionalized form of social capital in China that has evolved since the time of Confucius. Social capital is lauded as a resource that may help economic actors overcome the uncertainties of economic transition through the use of social networks to share information. When examining the history of China's economic transition since 1979, it is evident that guanxi has had many roles in facilitating cooperation and information sharing among Chinese firms. Yet as the transition progressed, the use of social networks to surmount barriers to entry and …

Screaming For Change An Analysis Of Cross-Movement Participation In Florida Straight Edge, Kotu Bajaj

Theses & ETDs

This study explores patterns of cross-movement participation among Straight Edge activists. Straight Edge is a youth culture that emerged out of the hardcore punk scene in Washington DC in the early 1980s and rejects drugs, alcohol and tobacco. But Straight Edge is also an alterative movement that attempts to change society by altering particular behaviors in individuals. This thesis is concerned with how and why Straight Edge kids participate in movements other than Straight Edge, and considers how alterative movements might affect cross-movement participation differently than reformative movements, which dominate the literature on cross-movement participation.

What Do The Textbooks Say? An Anthropological Study Of Highschool American History Curriculum Content, Chelsea Montgomery

Theses & ETDs

Public outreach is a growing concern within anthropology, but anthropological research that focuses on what is being taught in K-12 classrooms is nearly non-existent. However, this thesis lies at an intersection of anthropology, education, and public outreach. I begin by providing background information on the current state of educational inequity in the United States before reviewing John Ogbu's cultural ecology model (CEM). When problematized, CEM becomes a useful tool for analyzing the connection between curriculum content and student engagement. To further elucidate this connection, I looked at two recent sociological investigations of curriculum content and student engagement. From this grounding …

God Bless America How Presidents Use American Civil Religon To Legitimize Military In Their Inaugural Addresses, Tm Mawn

Theses & ETDs

This thesis demonstrates the ways in which Presidents use civil religious language to legitimize military policy in their inaugural addresses. Specifically, it focuses on the second inaugural addresses of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Using the theories of Robert Bellah and Jon Pahl, it demonstrates the ways in which these presidents use civil religious language to justify military policy while masking the true reasoning behind and consequences of those policies.

The German Influence On The British Monarchy During The Reigns Of King William Iv And Queen Victoria, Marie Van Camp

Theses & ETDs

Over time, the British monarchyhas evolved from being the primary agent of government to a national cultural figurehead. The most drastic moment change occurred during the reigns of King William IV and Queen Victoria. It is during this period that the republican and revolutionary ideals circulated Europe and caused the British monarchy to have to adapt in order to retain their position. This study examines the influence that German spouses had on the monarchy during that time using primarily letters and journals of the time. Among the many influences that helped facilitate this evolution of the monarchy�s position, the German …

Co-Creating Collaborative Health Care In A Federally Qualified Health Center: Exploring Clients' Experiences Of Behavioral Health Services, Ginny-Lea Tonore

Marriage and Family Therapy - Dissertations

Research indicates that living in poverty exacerbates the risk for poor mental health, yet low-income people are less likely to seek mental health treatment than are people in higher income brackets. The research literature reports that this reluctance to seek behavioral health care is often due to a variety of barriers, such as stigma, costs, victimization, discrimination, and labeling. Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) are collaborative healthcare clinics that are uniquely positioned to eliminate many recognized barriers to care that hinder access to mental health services for some vulnerable and underserved populations. Most of the collaborative health care literature is …

Nature, Domestic Labor, And Moral Community In Susan Fenimore Cooper's Rural Hours And Elinor Wyllys, Richard M. Magee

English Faculty Publications

Cooper's argument for a domestic ideal situated within a rural setting reinforces the importance of community connections through a shared sense of morality, as well as understanding of the natural world. Community alone—the human connections—never seems to be enough in Cooper's formulation, but must always exist with an awareness of the world outside the narrow confines of one's own domestic sphere. Concern for one's fellow-beings necessitates a concern for the world in which these beings live, and Cooper understands that when any bonds are broken—such as the bonds that connect us to the natural world—other bonds are threatened. Thus, when …

Feminism And Feminist Scholarship Today, Deborah A. Castillo

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Harding Magazine Winter 2011 (Vol. 19, No. 1), Harding University

Harding Magazines

Publication distributed to alumni and friends of the university.

"It's The Resources": Work, Governance, And The Institutionalization Of An Emergency Food Network, Stephanie Crist

Sociology - Dissertations

Thousands of loosely connected organizations such as food pantries and soup kitchens constitute the emergency food network. Organizations in this network provide a critical source of food to millions of households each year. This dissertation examines how organizations in one city-level emergency food network acquire, manage, and use resources. It pays particular attention to the relationships that develop between organizations and funding sources.

Utilizing institutional ethnography, this dissertation explicates the ways that everyday food provision in food pantries and soup kitchens is connected to a broader picture of changing modes of governance in the public and nonprofit sectors. The data …

Developing A Paradigm Model Of Youth Leadership Development And Community Engagement: A Grounded Theory, Lindsay J. Hastings, Leverne A. Barrett, John E. Barbuto, Jr., Lloyd C. Bell

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Faculty Publications

This grounded theory study explored the impact of community engagement on how youth leaders develop. A paradigm model illustrating this developmental process is presented, which includes the conditions that empowered the youth to engage in their community, the strategies used by the youth and the adults in their work together, the conditions that helped/hindered those strategies, and the resulting outcomes. Results of the analysis indicated that individual connections, common sentiments, and being asked to engage were identified as the most salient causal conditions. The action taken by the youth and adult respondents mobilized those individual connections and common sentiments into …