Digital Commons Network^™

Hidden Poverty In Union County, Paloma Flores, Da'mirah Vinson

SOCI 258: Gender Race and Poverty

In Union County, there is a significant problem of economic insecurity that is not widely known among Bucknell students. Economic insecurity has a profound impact on people's lives, particularly in the area. It can lead to food insecurity, poor health outcomes, and limited access to education and job opportunities, perpetuating a cycle of poverty. Therefore, it is critical to raise awareness about this issue and its consequences. Bucknell students have a unique opportunity to play a vital role in this effort. By engaging with the community and partnering with local organizations, students can raise awareness of economic insecurity and its …

Politics Of Belonging: Being Armenian In Turkey And Lebanon, Pinar Ertekin

Theses and Dissertations

An estimated two million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire before the beginning of World War I, and almost all of them were annihilated or displaced during the genocide of 1915. My work revolves around the meaning of the Armenian Genocide to Armenians living in Turkey and Lebanon. I focused on what it feels like to be an Armenian living as a Turkish citizen in a state and nation that had perpetuated and then consistently denied the genocide of their ancestors, and I examined how Armenians in Turkey experience their everyday lives, the challenges they encounter as well as their …

The Greatest Show On Earth: Is Trinidad’S Carnival Perpetuating A Society Of Elitism And Class Struggle?, Charisse A. Lewis

Student Theses and Dissertations

Trinidad's Carnival, often hailed as "The Greatest Show on Earth," embodies a vibrant celebration of culture, identity, and liberation. Over the last two decades Trinidad’s Carnival has become a popularized, global phenomenon. A highly anticipated event that remains a top-notch experience year in year out. The Carnival that was once known for its traditional characters, calypso, J’ouvert and “pretty mas” has now become a globalized event that not only represents the country’s attempt to increase its foreign revenue through tourism but also appears to perpetuate the class struggle that has existed throughout the history of Trinidad. Beneath its colorful surface …

Anth201: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Fall 2023), James Tolleson

Open Educational Resources

Cultural anthropology emerged to study the differences among human beings (and between human and non-human beings). This course will cover the foundations of the discipline, including a critical perspective on anthropology’s ties to European colonialism and the rise of global capitalism. Students will come away with an understanding of how cultural anthropologists study culture, defined as “a set of beliefs, practices, and symbols that are learned and shared. Together, they form an all-encompassing, integrated whole that binds people together and shapes their worldview and lifeways” (Brown, McIlwraith & Tubelle de González 2020, 6). We will also pay close attention to …

The Ripple Effect: Gender And Race In Brazilian Culture And Literature, Maria José Somerlate Barbosa

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

In The Ripple Effect: Gender and Race in Brazilian Culture and Literature, Barbosa adopts a comparative, multilayered, and interdisciplinary line of research to examine social values and cultural mores from the first decades of the twentieth century to the present. By analyzing the historical, cultural, religious, and interactive space of Brazil’s national identity, The Ripple Effect surveys expressive cultures and literary manifestations. It uses the martial art-dance-ritual capoeira as a lynchpin to disclose historical ambiguities and the negotiation of cultural and literary boundaries within the context of the ideological construct of a mestizo nation. The book also examines laws …

The Definition Of A Black Man: The Entanglement Of Race, Sexuality, And Space, Michael Moore

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how Black queer men and transmasculine individuals navigate Black heteronormative and White queer spaces in New Orleans. Over the last few decades, articles, including anthropological and sociological, have focused on the relationship between race, gender performance, sexuality, and emotional expression among men such as Christian (2005), which analyzed how Black queer men expressed their masculinity within queer spaces (Christian 2005). This thesis builds on this literature to explore how societal and cultural pressures of masculinity can hinder Black queer men institutionally, socially, and romantically.

How The Concept Of Race And Ethnicity Played An Integral Role In The Sri Lanka Civil War From A Sociological Perspective, Pasan Vinura Joseph De Silva

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The social constructs of race and ethnicity played a pivotal role in the Sri Lankan Civil War as the intercommunal violence between the Sinhalese and Tamil groups was attributed to discriminatory policies. However, there is a lack of literature from published academic sources and archival/governmental data pertaining to the variables of race and ethnicity from a sociological perspective. The concept of race and ethnicity are an integral component of social conflict that identifies positions through self-consciousness as a cultural, religious, and linguistic community. This thesis utilizes historical research through qualitative secondary data sources to analyze how racial and ethnic inequities …

Proving Intra-Racial Discrimination In The U.S. And Canada: The Room For Making The Artificial Distinction Between Genealogical Relatedness And Race, Martin Kwan

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

This article takes the role of the Devil’s advocate in order to question the judicial willingness to distinguish “race” from comparable notions. It suggests that, depending on the exact circumstances, a defendant can make an arguable case that the alleged intra–racial discrimination is motivated by perceived genealogical relatedness, but not because of belonging to the same “race.” Factually, the defendant claims to believe in being remotely genealogically related to the plaintiff. This is not unworthy of credence, because it is academically recognized that modern genealogy and root tracing can be an imaginative, forged exercise. Legally, this argument is supportable because …

A Vicious Cycle: How Racialised Moral Panics Simultaneously Reproduce (And Are Reproduced By) Repressive Policing Practices, Oscar D. Sharples

Culture, Society, and Praxis

Policing and moral panics exist in a mutually reinforcing, reciprocal relationship, the harmful outcomes of which are disproportionately directed towards poor communities of colour. This paper will draw on two examples of moral panics: those surrounding Islamic terrorism and Black crime, in order to illustrate the harm that this reinforcing relationship can cause. This harm manifests itself in increasingly restrictive antiterrorism laws, Prevent initiatives, racial profiling, and internal surveillance within the Muslim community; as well as the policies of Joint Enterprise, Knife Crime Prevention Orders (KCPOs), and the strengthening of the school-to-prison pipeline, which disproportionally target Black youth. With reference …

“Racial Heterosexual Habitus” And Management Of Racial Education Discussions Within Black Female/White Male Romantic Relationships, Marya T. Mtshali

Faculty Journal Articles

Scholars (Steinbugler 2012; Twine 2010) have examined the role that the white racial lens can play in limiting the development of racial literacy for white partners in black/white relationships, while the role of gender ideologies has gone largely unexamined. Through analyzing “racially educational” conversations between 36 members of black female/white male heterosexual couples, I introduce the concept of “racial heterosexual habitus” and its influence in managing these discussions on race. I argue that it generates limits—as well as unique opportunities—for couples during these conversations about race. My findings reveal how black female heterosexual habitus orients black women to navigate these …

The Connection Between Colorism And White Supremacy: Colorism As A Tool Of White Supremacy In The Contemporary Age In The United States And Puerto Rico, Taylor Nicole Bell

Senior Theses

As the world moves into a perceived post-racial era, it is important to acknowledge and understand the existing presence and strength of white supremacy. While outright expressions of racism become less acceptable, people of color continue to face discrimination in multiple facets of their lives. One way to preserve and strengthen white supremacy in the modern age is through color-based discrimination or colorism. Across the globe, people of a lighter complexion, or those in closer proximity to whiteness, experience privileges and better treatment than those of a darker complexion. My thesis aims to argue that colorism in the modern age …

Spirits And Spirituality: Temperance And Racial Uplift In Nineteenth-Century Nantucket, Ma, John T. Crawmer

Graduate Masters Theses

Studies of alcohol consumption have shown alcohol’s role in defining social boundaries based on class and ethnicity, but few have interrogated alcohol in the context of race. During the early-19th century, free black communities were encouraged to refrain from alcohol as part of a larger project of racial uplift. Black societies and churches perceived intemperance as not only immoral but a threat to community survival. Excavations of the Nantucket African Meeting House noted a considerable lack of alcohol bottles, but it was unclear whether temperance was equally observed at the neighboring Boston-Higginbotham House. This research uses a minimum number of …

“Nails Done, Hair Done, Everything Did!”: Consumption And The Creation Of Black Feminine Selves, Simone Reid

Honors Theses

This thesis examines how race and gender shape the meaning that Black women associate with their beauty consumption practices and spending. Much of the existing feminist scholarship on beauty has been postfeminist, privileging the concept of agency and empowerment over structural realities. However, the materialist feminist frame has more utility to address how beauty operates within the lives of Black women as a form of distinct gendered racial oppression. The concept of aesthetic capital emerges from the materialist feminist perspective and suggests that beauty demands the investment of considerable economic resources and can deliver economic returns. Despite this, aesthetic capital …

Mixed Speak: Towards A Re-Poetics Of Race And Self, Celina Mizuki Ohga Samuelson

Media and Cultural Studies Honors Projects

This paper tells the stories of mixed-race Japanese people. I engage in a re-poetics, positing storytelling as an essential tool into complicating our understandings of race and self. I examine the relationship between language and race, exploring how subjects existing within a space of mixedness navigate identity-formation and racial belonging. Operating under a socio-constructivist lens, I begin with a brief re-telling of the history of race in Japan, re-framing mythologies of race throughout literature, legislation, and into national and colonial projects. While popular discourse alleges Japan was and is a country of racial homogeneity, I argue that this falsifies colonial …

The Influence Of Motivation To Control Prejudice On Facial Processing Flexibility In Individuals Who Identify As Biracial, Chloë Steckart

Honors Theses

Facial processing is one of the most important and immediate aspects of cognition (Jaeger, 2019; Kovács, 2020). Race is an extremely salient facial processing cue that has immediate and long-term impacts on how we interact with others (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008; Senholzi & Ito, 2013; Blascovich et al., 2017; Kawakami et al., 2022). Race is a powerful in-group in American contexts, and race cues in facial processing play a part in determining in- and out-group members (Tropp & Wright, 2001; Castano et al., 2002).

We investigated how race impacts the facial processing of individuals who identify as Biracial and whether, …

A Race-Police Regime: Nypd Technology And Urban Governance In New York City, Elliott Liu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation draws on three years of ethnographic and archival research to explore the relationship between technology, policing and race at the NYPD. In focusing on the ways problems are constructed and police power enacted, I explore the more-than-human entanglements in the production of race and the governance of cities under racial capitalism. My overarching claim is that urban governance works through contentious techno-political arrangements I call race-police regimes, which sanction and elicit race by enacting forms of exclusion and belonging. Racial capitalism in New York City, I argue, is governed through a technocratic mode of policing which leverages …

Moroccan Trance: Unruly Bodies And The Colonial Imagination, Samuel Llano

World Music Textbook

This article considers colonialism’s impact on the production and perpetuation of negative stereotypes about Sufi trance in Morocco by exploring how it developed under strict strutiny and control as an object of fear, misunderstanding, dismissal, and scorn.

Developing A Racial Justice Framework For U.S. Private Philanthropy, Mayara Aguiar Rosa

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

The international development sector has been experiencing an awakening regarding the impacts of colonialism in the field. Calls for anti-colonial practices, cultural competency, and enhanced attention to imbalanced power dynamics have become increasingly prevalent, but despite this shift, the field still shows resistance to explore and intentionally address the role of race. In this project, I investigate how race has shaped development and explore its impacts on the design of development interventions, organizational structuring, and funding allocation. The work proposes alternatives that envisions to consider a racial lens to shift power and tackle inequalities and aims that development programs of …

Race As A Predictor Of Co-Rumination In Friendship Among Adolescents, Jendayi A. Stafford

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Co-rumination refers to the excessive and extensive discussion and revisiting of problems and negative feelings within dyadic relationships. Differences in friendships concerning co-rumination have found that girls co-ruminate more than boys, however, researchers have not examined the relations between the racial composition of friend dyads and co-rumination in the friendships of adolescents. Theoretical frameworks included response styles theory and fictive kin theory. The study involved secondary analyses of an archival data set in which adolescents responded to surveys about co-rumination and their same-sex friendships. The population used for the study consisted of 265 adolescent friend dyads from a town in …

Race As A Predictor Of Co-Rumination In Friendship Among Adolescents, Jendayi A. Stafford

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Co-rumination refers to the excessive and extensive discussion and revisiting of problems and negative feelings within dyadic relationships. Differences in friendships concerning co-rumination have found that girls co-ruminate more than boys, however, researchers have not examined the relations between the racial composition of friend dyads and co-rumination in the friendships of adolescents. Theoretical frameworks included response styles theory and fictive kin theory. The study involved secondary analyses of an archival data set in which adolescents responded to surveys about co-rumination and their same-sex friendships. The population used for the study consisted of 265 adolescent friend dyads from a town in …

College Students And Beliefs In The American Dream: The Impact Of Race, Class, And Gender, Maggie E. Marlow

Honors College Theses

The concept of the American Dream and its promises of prosperity and social mobility, primarily through hard work, has been prevalent throughout modern U.S. history. However, what defines the American Dream has been arbitrary and varied, and research has shown that attitudes and beliefs surrounding the Dream have changed over time with shifts in the economic and political environments. The research for this thesis uses qualitative methods, specifically thematic analysis, to analyze 16 in-depth, one-on-one interviews to examine how students attending a predominantly white university in the Southeastern United States perceive the American Dream today while factoring in how those …

The Political Consequences Of Racialized Ethnic Identities, Kimberly Cardenas, Heather Silber Mohamed, Melissa R. Michelson

Political Science

Racial classifications are a social construct with no basis in biology; yet, race is an omnipresent and powerful factor in U.S. politics, shaping electoral boundaries, disbursement of resources, and political alliances (Omi and Winant 1994, Haney López 1994). Race, then, is a malleable construct wielded by varying interests, with racial definitions changing in response to social and political battles. Some new immigrant groups initially classified as not white have been reclassified as white over time, thereby benefitting from associated legal, economic, and sociopolitical privileges. More recently, however, some Latinos have sought recognition as a distinct non-white racial group, in acknowledgment …

Accuracy Of Ancestry Estimation In Forensic Anthropology: An Examination Of Select Nonmetric Methods, Mackenzie Miller

All ETDs from UAB

A goal of forensic anthropology is to aid in identifying unidentified human remains, often by creating a biological profile. An important piece of this profile is an ancestry estimate, and methodological accuracy is taken seriously. Traditional typological nonmetric methods of ancestry are heavily critiqued for being subjective and lacking scientific rigor in analysis. In addition, these methods are noted for conflating morphological traits with specific ancestral categories, ignoring the reality of continuous human variation. To combat this, scholars have proposed morphoscopic nonmetric methods as an alternative because they retain the accessibility popularized by typological methods but add a layer of …

Fighting For Whiteness In Ukraine, Marissa Jackson Sow

Law Faculty Publications

Teri McMurtry-Chubb’s Race Unequals: Overseer Contracts, White Masculinities, and the Formation of Managerial Identity in the Plantation Economy offers groundbreaking insights into the gendered economic hierarchies internal to the body politic of whiteness through its examination of the limitations that plantation overseers’ contracts in the American Deep South placed on their ability to exercise the proprietorship and contracting authority prerequisite to white identity. This Essay uses the Ukrainian campaign to be recognized as a liberal white nation, and formally become a member of the West, as a contemporary case study of how whiteness remains hegemonized and subject to the ability …

Religious Convictions, Anna Offit

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The Anglo-American jury emerged at a time when legal and religious conceptions of justice were entwined. Today, however, though the American public remains comparatively religious, the country’s legal system draws a distinction between legal and religious modes of determining culpability and passing judgment. This Article examines the doctrine that governs the place of religious belief and practice in U.S. jury selection proceedings. It argues that the discretion afforded to judges with respect to applying the Batson antidiscrimination doctrine has given these beliefs and practices an ambiguous status. On the one hand, judges aim to protect prospective religious jurors from discrimination. …

Suicide At The Intersection Of Race And Gender, Marina Geider

Masters Theses

Sociological studies have examined suicide rate differences between groups since the work of Durkheim in 1897, and current literature still draws on his classic theories and methods. Although research has begun identifying the social factors that affect the suicides of Black and White populations differentially, little progress has been made towards an understanding of Black female suicide. The present study takes an intersectional approach to Durkheim's social integration-regulation thesis to bridge this gap. Several negative binomial regression analyses were employed to model suicide counts for Black men, Black women, non-Hispanic White men, and non-Hispanic White women in the United States. …

Intersectional Identities Of Race And Religion Of African American Muslims And Their Attitudes Toward Seeking Mental Health Services, Cheruba A. Dhanaraj

Dissertations

African American Muslims have overlapping and interconnected identities of race and religion that can be conceptualized by the intersectionality framework to understand the complexities of barriers they face when seeking mental health services. African American Muslims have a higher risk of mental health issues due to systemic racism, racial discrimination, racial trauma, and Islamophobic discrimination. Yet, there is a lack of scholarly research or studies that focus explicitly on African American Muslims' specific mental health needs, barriers, and attitudes related to seeking mental health treatment.

This study sought to fill the gap in knowledge about attitudes toward seeking mental health …

Playing Together: A Call For Multiple Stakeholders To Reduce Exclusionary And Harsh Discipline For Young Bicoc With Disabilities, Saili S. Kulkarni, Sunyoung Kim, Tunette Powell

Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education

Punitive disciplinary actions deny Black, Indigenous,2 Children of Color (BICOC) with disabilities from access to meaningful instruction and increase their risks for truancy, dropping out, and incarceration. At the intersection of race, disability, and discipline, this paper is a call to action for research and practices that bring together stakeholders and co-constructed, local solutions to exclusionary disciplinary practices affecting BICOC with disabilities. Specifically, we assert that efforts to reduce disproportionately racist responses to the challenging behaviors of young BICOC with disabilities (birth through age 8) cannot be solved with a single intervention strategy or simplistic approaches. Instead, we highlight the …

George Floyd In Papua: Image-Events And The Art Of Resonance, Karen Strassler

Publications and Research

This article offers an introduction to the “image-event” as both concept and method through a focus on the circulation of images around the killing of George Floyd. It examines how these images reverberated and resonated in West Papua, a restive region of Indonesia that has been the site of a long-standing separatist movement. It critically examines a celebratory media discourse that sees the US-based Black Lives Matter movement as expanding outward to spark similar movements elsewhere, a logic that reiterates long-standing colonialist narratives that figure places like Papua as backwaters belatedly receiving and imitatively taking up ideas that flow from …

Marx, Race, Black Radicalism, And Racial Justice, Gregory Slack

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation I defend the claim that not only was Marx not an anti-black racist, he was an anti-anti-black racist, despite sometimes employing racist language and epithets. I prove this claim by adducing massive amounts of textual evidence from Marx and Engels’ writings, spanning their entire careers as writers and revolutionaries, where time and again they condemn black slavery and the slave-trade, look forward to and call for their abolition, and aim at a future of racial justice and equality for black people, as a component part of communist justice for all working people, under a communist mode …