Digital Commons Network^™

Querying The Ethics Of Data Collection As A Community Of Research And Practice The Movement Toward The “Liberalism Of Fear” To Protect The Vulnerable, Colette Mazzucelli, Anna Visvizi

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Jurisdiction, Privacy, And Ownership: Dna Technology And Field Dynamics In Conflict-Related Mass Fatalities, Stefan Schmitt, Dallas Mazoori

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article explores the dynamics and challenges of undertaking human identifications in states experiencing armed conflict or emerging therefrom. It emphasises the integral role of the State in human identifications and the need for the legal acts of the State in identifying an individual and confirming their death to be integrated into any humanitarian response to repatriating the dead. Conflict-related mass fatalities occur in uncontrolled circumstances, making DNA-based human identifications necessary. In states lacking the necessary forensic infrastructure, the promise of expedited human identifications through outsourcing DNA work can lead to the State abdicating the necessary jurisdiction and scientific transparency …

Information Communication Technologies In Atrocity Response And Prevention: Deepening Our Understanding Of The Legal, Ethical And Practical Challenges, Charles Martin-Shields

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Much of the excitement in the mid-2000s and 2010s about the potential for new technologies such as mobile phones, wireless high-speed internet, and social media software to aid in the prevention and prosecution of mass atrocities has evolved into deeper analysis of whether these tools can really do everything we thought possible. The development of the ICT for atrocity prevention field is at a stage where praxis, the use of practice to inform the development of theory, is crucial. Deeper theory, grounded in empirical examples, can lead to better data collection and thus a better understanding of the impact of …

"What Is My Environment, I Will Change": Exploring The Possibilities Of Transnational Feminism Through Kennesaw State University's Middle Eastern And North African Students, Lissa M. Small

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

Much research has been done on feminism in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as well as on the international student experience. This paper combines the two areas of research to study the international student’s role in promoting transnational feminism. Combining select works of fiction with data collected from Kennesaw State University (KSU) students via an online survey and personal interviews, the paper identifies the challenges the MENA women face in creating connections with others in the U.S. while noting the women's influence in changing perceptions. Similarly, the paper highlights the observations of the MENA students in regard to …

Elementary Mathematics Teachers’ Beliefs And Practices: Understanding The Influence Of Teaching In A Steam Setting, Melissa Negreiros

Theses and Dissertations

Many elementary mathematics teachers hold beliefs about the teaching and learning of mathematics and enact practices that are not aligned with the recommendations of reform efforts in the field of mathematics education (Stigler & Hiebert, 2009). For standards-based reform to gain any significant success, many teachers will have to alter the deeply held beliefs that they have about mathematics teaching and learning (Ellis & Berry, 2005). Given the role that teachers’ beliefs about the nature of mathematics and mathematics teaching and learning play in their selection and enactment of instructional practices, it is essential to understand the influence that different …

Caressing Radical Alterity: For A Queer Ethic Of Embodiment In Contemporary Films And Literature, Marc Demont

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation offers an analysis of the caress through the dual lens of phenomenology and psychoanalysis. I argue that the caress reveals the queerness and ambiguities of perception and that this gesture must be understood as an ethical gesture of opening toward otherness. I discuss different accounts of the caress (Levinas, Irigaray) and expose the misogynistic and/or homophobic bias at work in these theories of the caress. I suggest that Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of touch and other notions that he develops (Flesh, intertwinement, intercorporeality, encroachment, etc.) allow a redefinition of the caress that avoids Levinas and Irigaray’s pitfalls. In a reading …

Supporting Immersion Teachers: An Autoethnography, Lauren Speece

Theses and Dissertations

Immersion programs face a variety of challenges that are common to the field, such as lack of materials appropriate for students’ language abilities, assessment, teacher recruitment and retention, balancing content and language, and relevant, high quality professional development for teachers. However, within specific micro-contexts, other issues can affect the success of immersion programs. Since the teacher’s role is critical in all aspects of the immersion classroom, more emphasis needs to be placed on talking with teachers about their experiences in order to provide better professional development, and to build a stronger community of support.

This narrative autoethnography examines my journey …

Speaking Of Qualia: Examining A Craft Beer Microcommunity's Membership Identity Through Speech, Anna Hamer

Theses and Dissertations

This ethnography examines a locally owned craft beer store in South Carolina, where craft beer connoisseurs and enthusiasts come together to elevate their beer drinking experience. Many members of this microcommunity use ‘beer talk’, a technical register of speech (Agha 2007; Manning 2008; Silverstein 2006, 2016), to point to, or index, a part of their beer connoisseur identity. The ‘beer talk’ register used to describe craft beer is enacted at various scales of speech (Carr and Lempert 2016), ranging from Cicerone Certification and mobile applications, to online forums, beer festivals, beer magazines, brewery visits, and face-to-face interaction. The CofP model …

Pedagogy Of Accomplice: Navigating Complicity In Pedagogies Aimed Toward Social Justice, Robyn Stout Sheridan

Dissertations

In this study, I introduce and analyze the role of complicity in discussions of social justice pedagogies to determine how teachers, who teach social justice oriented courses, navigate complicity. Through an in-depth review of social justice education literature, I show that teacher/scholars rely upon four context-dependent discourses of complicity: (1) responsibility, (2) consciousness-awareness, (3) relation to world, self and others, and (4) inevitability and implicature. In order to understand how these discourses impact pedagogies that seek to make connections between people and social systems, I selected teacher/scholars who are widely published, read, and assigned in social justice oriented fields. I …

May 1, 2017: We Did It! #1day1smc, Saint Mary's College Of California

SMC Bulletin 2013-2020

No abstract provided.

Post-Diagnosis: A Networked Framework For Narrative Reassemblage, Kristen Gay

All Dissertations

This dissertation examines the relationship between diagnostic communication practices and deliberative rhetoric through the lens of Actor-Network theory and feminist theory. Specifically, I argue that Bruno Latour's Actor-Network Theory (ANT) provides a generative framework for tracing diagnostic networks as it accounts for uncertainty, dispersed agency, community stakeholders, and nonhumans. The chapters explore how a networked approach to diagnosis opens up opportunities to reform doctor-patient relationships, expands our conceptions of diagnostic actants, suggests ways to respond to patients living at risk for disease, and broadens our understanding of ethos in healthcare contexts. Furthermore, I also consider how a networked framework can …

“The Scourge Of The Bourgeois Feminist”: Alexandra Kollontai’S Strategic Repudiation And Espousing Of Female Essentialism In The Social Basis Of The Woman Question, Hannah Pugh

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

In The Social Basis of the Woman Question, Bolshevik feminist Alexandra Kollontai responds to bourgeois feminists’ essentialist calls for female solidarity to resolve the “woman’s question”—the question of women’s status in society— by presenting the woman question as a struggle defined not by gender but by the intersection of class and gender. Kollontai appropriates and extends their essentialist rhetoric, engaging in the classed and gendered essentialism of the particular socioeconomic position of the female worker. I argue that, by placing the essentialized woman worker at the heart of the woman question, Kollontai suggests that the woman question is an economic …

Rehabilitation And Blight Remediation: An Analysis Of Affordable Housing Policy And Development In New Orleans, E. Michelle Butcher

Senior Honors Theses

The City of New Orleans (CNO) Office of Community Development approved funding to rehabilitate 81 properties (73 of which were actually used in the project) that were moved from the site of the VA/LSU Medical complex to scattered sites city-wide. These homes, which were located in a proposed historic district, were chosen to be part of a blight remediation initiative monitored by the CNO Office of Performance and Accountability “BlightSTAT” meeting. This research examines the impact of this U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sponsored affordable housing program on the New Orleans blight remediation plan. The case study on the …

Insightful Problem Solving And Emulation In Brown Capuchin Monkeys, E. Renner, Allison M. Abramo, M. K. Hambright, Kimberley A. Phillips

Psychology Faculty Research

We investigated problem solving abilities of capuchin monkeys via the "floating object problem," a task in which the subject must use creative problem solving to retrieve a favored food item from the bottom of a clear tube. Some great apes have solved this problem by adding water to raise the object to a level at which it can be easily grabbed. We presented seven capuchins with the task over eight trials (four "dry" and four "wet"). None of the subjects solved the task, indicating that no capuchin demonstrated insightful problem solving under these experimental conditions. We then investigated whether capuchins …

Property And Sovereignty: An Indian Reserve And A Canadian City

UBC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Modeling Early Archaic Mobility And Subsistence: Evaluating Resource Risk Across The South Carolina Landscape, Joseph E. Wilkinson

Theses and Dissertations

Previous models predicting Early Archaic mobility and subsistence strategies in South Carolina have evaluated behavioral negotiations of specific resource distributions. A new model is presented using empirical datasets that quantify and evaluate the quality and geographic distributions of lithic raw materials and drainage systems in the state. By utilizing datasets from private collections and landscape elevation data, this model is generated using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software in order to produce a "Risk Landscape" from which predictions of site density, artifact density, lithic raw material diversity, and the condition of lithic toolkit assemblages can be generated based on landscape location. …

Hans Mol’S Sociology Of Religion: Reflection On The Relationship Between Identity And The Sacred As Applied To Bosnia And Herzegovina, Tomislav Tadić

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

"The transformed character of religiosity requires a transformation in the scientific methodology where we are trying to capture the complex socio-ontological, epistemological and socio-anthropological granulations which form such a divergent term as religion. The importance of the theoretical interventions of Mol, from the standpoint of the history of sociology, lies in recognizing the reconstructing form within the discipline that needs to synthetically and polythetically understand the phenomenon which it explores."

Meaning Of Pregnancy Terms Among African-American Women, Stephanie Solomon, Sandra G. Suther, Ivette Lopez, Alicestine Ashford, Linda C. Amankwaa, Gareth Dutton

The Qualitative Report

The concept of pregnancy intendedness is complex and may not bear the same meaning to all women. Moreover, researcher definition and women’s meaning were thought to be different. Some researchers have indicated that it is unclear how well women understand and relate to questions used by the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) and how the classifications relate to women’s lives. The purpose of this study was to explore the meaning of terms such as planned and/or intended pregnancy among African-American women of childbearing age using a qualitative exploratory descriptive method. Although African-American women want children, they are three times …

Bureaucratic Speech: Language Choice And Democratic Identity In The Taipei Bureaucracy, Anya Bernstein

Journal Articles

This article illuminates the social nature of bureaucratic practice. Analyzing the everyday speech of bureaucrats in a polyglossic society reveals both their intensely interactive conduct and their recognition that the government they comprise is itself a participant in a social world of institutions and values. My ethnography shows how Taipei city government administrators mobilize ideologies associated with Taiwan’s two primary languages, and stereotypes associated with bureaucracy, to undermine both. Instead, they present themselves as a post-ethnonational and post-bureaucratic avant garde of their new democracy. In doing so, they draw on local values and tropes of legitimation, which place a premium …

Sweden’S Floating Refugee Camp: A New Form Of Spatial Segregation?, Miranda L. Weinstein

Sustainability and Social Justice

This paper looks at the structure of discrimination and marginalization of refugees and asylum-seekers. The paper investigates a new form of housing –– floatels –– which was seen in Sweden in 2016. This paper explores the relevant literature on identity, biopower, and spatial segregation, to make the case that floatels are contemporary forms of encampment. Floatels are clear examples of the State’s use of biopower to spatially segregate certain undesirable populations. By providing a case study of the situation in Sweden, the overall goal of the paper is to highlight the issues and complexity involved in refugee housing. In particular, …

Spatial Patterning And Human Behavior In Level "F" At Lapa Do Picareiro., Brandon K Zinsious

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Spatial analysis at the site level offers unique perspectives and has become increasingly more accessible as advances in technology allow rapid 3-dimensional mapping and rigorous statistical analysis. This project focused on the geological stratigraphic level “F”, at Lapa do Picareiro; a shallow cave in the Estremadura region of Portugal. This level, dated to 14,000 years ago calibrated BP, experienced multiple human occupations between the Last Glacial Maximum and the Younger Dryas. This work examines the recovered material from a period of Upper Magdalenian occupations and sheds light on how enclosed space was used in Estremadura Portugal. Distinct distributions of lithic …

Late Magdalenian Lithic Technological Organization At Lapa Do Picareiro, Central Portugal., Melissa Jean Holst

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lapa do Picareiro, a cave located in Portuguese Estremadura, contains continuous deposits dated to the Late Pleistocene. As one of the highest elevation Upper Paleolithic sites currently known in Portugal, questions are raised about the function of the site during this time. This thesis presents a comprehensive analysis of the lithic assemblage recovered from the Late Magdalenian layer of F/G (13,442 to 14,011 cal BP). The data generated from this study, when looked at in conjunction with the previously analyzed faunal assemblage, helps to provide a broader understanding of the site’s function during the Late Magdalenian. The analysis focuses on …

Afro-Mexicans And The Struggle For Recognition, Kimberly Medina

Senior Theses

In light of the Mexican government’s concession to include “Afro-descendant” as an ethnic category in the 2015 Intercensal Survey, this thesis project aims to: 1) understand the contributions and experience of Afro-Mexicans within Mexican society, 2) understand the importance of official recognition as an ethnic group, 3) understand why, relative to the rest of Latin America, Mexico took so long to officially recognize its Afro-descendant population, 4) analyze the Afro-Mexican movement towards recognition, paying particular attention to its composition and strategy and 5) determine what recognition in the intercensal survey means for the future of the movement, the Afro-Mexican population …

A Social Study Of Discworld Autonomy, Morgan Rogers

Senior Theses

From 1983 to 2015, Sir Terry Pratchett wrote a series of forty-one novels, several short stories, and companion works set on the Discworld. The Discworld is a flat world that rides through space on the backs of four giant elephants that stand themselves on the back of the Great A’tuin, a world turtle. The Disc is based around the Hub, or central point, and the Rim, or the circumference of the world. There is a waterfall all around the Rim of the world that falls into space itself. The Hub compares to the Earth’s poles in that it is the …

The Hampton-Preston Tourist Home: A Furnishing And Interpretive Plan, Amy Mckinney

Senior Theses

My work in this thesis is only a small part of a larger, ongoing initiative at Historic Columbia to provide capital improvements to the Hampton-Preston Mansion. In 2018, the entire site will be updated to include new interpretations, HVAC improvements, and garden renovations. John Sherrer and Katharine Allen, Research Associate at Historic Columbia, led the curatorial initiative and served as my on-site mentors for this project.

Aura Of Authenticity: The Impact Of Original Objects In The Museum Guest Experience, Alyssa Frijey

Museum Studies Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to defend the maintenance of original object-based collections in museums with the argument that they provide profound, unique, and irreplaceable experiences for museum guests. Authenticity of an artifact carries with it an aura of importance which is a highly valuable means of connection within museums. Such meaning is the direct result of the manner in which human beings interpret material culture. Keeping in mind that this value can only be fully experienced through that which is original, it is crucial that original objects should be maintained in these institutions.

Gentrification And Police Brutality, Ladeana Phillips

Perpetua: The Journal of Undergraduate Research at UAH

This research is an attempt to discover how gentrification and police brutality are related. Drawing on scholarship from social scientists who have researched the implications of gentrification at length and from those who have examined the underlying cause of why the use of excessive force by a security apparatus may occur, I extrapolate a relationship between the two events and conclude that they are in fact related. For the purpose of this analysis, gentrification is defined as spatial segregation through the reclamation of lower-class, urban space by middle and upper-class citizens. This reclamation of urban spaces displaces those of lower …

Reviewing Biochar Research And Introducing A Possible Classification System, Patricia G. Burns

Research Papers

Biochar is the product of burning biomass, such as hardwood, rice hulls, bamboo, or even chicken litter, in a low- to no-oxygen environment. The result is a black carbon skeletal-like structure of the original biomass.

Research into biochar as a soil amendment has been influenced by the study of anthropogenic dark, richly fertile soils found in the Amazon rainforest where the native forest soil is acidic and low in fertility. Biochar research for amending agricultural soils is relatively new but there are strong indications that this practice can decrease the need for additional fertilizer and water inputs.

Biochar products will …

Waiting And Menstruation: A Look At Homeless And At-Risk Women's Experiences, Rachel F. Levit

Anthropology

Homeless and at-risk homeless women spend time in homeless centers where their time, behaviors, relationships and bodily functions are dictated by the institutions. This study looks at how women relate to their peers and staff in the homeless center as well as how they relate to menstruation. By both conducting participant observation and interviews at a homeless drop- in center, I aim to understand homeless women’s experiences in the shelter.

Changes In Body Fatness Among Mohawk Youth From 1979 To 1996-2000, Danielle Maria Garry

Anthropology

The research question is: Have the Mohawk people been affected by the obesity epidemic that has occurred in this country and globally? My research compares the data on height, weight, and skinfold thicknesses collected from 1979 by Dr. Susan Pfeiffer from Native American youth (10 to 15 years of age) of the Akwesasne tribe, located at St. Regis, with similar data collected by Gallo and Schell, from 1996-2000. I performed t-tests to compare the same measurements from the two studies. There is a significant difference in weight, triceps skinfolds, and subscapular skinfolds in all male age groups except for age …