Digital Commons Network^™

Never Put Your Head Down Unless You Pray: The Stories Of African American Men In The Wisconsin Prison System, Julia Marie Kirchner

Theses and Dissertations

Prior research on offender narratives has not examined culture as a factor in how prisoners explain their crimes. This qualitative ethnographic research project explores the self-constructions of African American male prisoners using both participant observation with active gang members on the street and discourse analysis of over 300 letters written by incarcerated men. Focusing primarily on six prisoner consultants, this study investigates the claims that offenders make about themselves in reference to their identity. These convicted felons justify their crimes as rational under the circumstances prevalent in segregated inner cities. In reference to economic crimes such as drug dealing and …

An Undergraduate Seminar On Irish Musical Culture In Ireland And The Irish Diaspora In America, Including The Influence Of Irish Music On Appalachian Folk Music Culture, Frieda Eakins

Masters Theses

The following project establishes a concise, yet multifaceted design for a seminar on Irish musical culture. While it was initially developed as a course for its author to teach in the undergraduate, on-ground classroom, this project provides a framework adaptable enough for use by other instructors and/or for additional music seminars. This project is unique in its two-fold purpose in that the design and resources are directed to assist the instructor with streamlining course curriculum preparation, while the course content specific to the project when utilized offers students in the undergraduate college classroom a better understanding of Irish musical culture …

"Myths Of Matriarchy" And The Sacred Flute Complex Of The Papua New Guinea Highlands, Terence Hays

Terence Hays

In Hays study of the "Myths of Matriarchy" in the Papua New Guinea Highlands, he draws upon Joan Bamberger's "Myths of Matriarchy" from 1974. He seeks to address whether Bamberger's analysis of South American objects can illuminate those from the area he is studying, that of the Highlands of New Guinea. Hays notes that there is a long argued idea that the "sacred flute complex" was manifested from and contributed to the mutually antagonistic gender relations of the societies in which that area is known for and that once upon a time women brandished the flute and bullroarer instruments and …

Village Literacy: Adult Education In Northeastern Kenya, Jodi Heidorn

Senior Honors Theses

The underdevelopment of effective adult literacy programs in Northern Kenya is a problem that must be addressed to meet the needs of a changing generation of nomadic pastoralists. Existing programs must be reevaluated in order to increase their efficiency and incorporate the unique aspects of local cultures into their design. This paper explores the broadening definition of literacy and discusses how there are in fact multiple literacies in any given culture. Next, it examines the history of education in Kenya and the barriers that may be unique to adult literacy programs in Northern Kenya. Also, it examines how changes in …

Review Of The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture And Deviance At Nasa, Peter F. Meiksins

Peter Meiksins

Reviews the book "The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA," by Diane Vaughan.

Understanding The Culture Of Ahiska Turks In Wheaton, Illinois: A Case Study, Omer Avci

The Qualitative Report

This study focuses on the cultural characteristics of Ahiska Turks in Wheaton, Illinois in the United States. By trying to understand the culture of the participants, I sought to shed light on how the Ahiska Turks managed to cope with the hardship they experienced and yet preserved their ethnic identities. In this multicase study, I interviewed six male Ahiska Turks. As a result of my analyses, eight themes emerged: family, religion (i.e., Islam), language (i.e., Turkish), communal life, endogamy, authoritarianism, oppression against the preservation of culture and identity, and education for upward mobility. The Ahiska Turks’ agrarian way of life, …

Homelessness: Causes, Culture And Community Development As A Solution, Kaitlin Philipps

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

This thesis seeks to explain the reasons that homelessness occurs, and how it is currently being dealt with in public policy. Triggers and predictors of homelessness are explored and it is shown that triggers are almost always compounded, indicating a multitude of factors that lead to homelessness. The culture and community surrounding the homeless lifestyle is seen as playing a significant role in how the individual copes with their homelessness. The norms and values of their culture are investigated and its role in rehabilitation is explored. Current institutions for helping the homeless are analyzed for different success rates. Additionally, initiatives …

Whose Story Is It? An Autoethnography Concerning Narrative Identity, Alec J. Grant, Laetitia Zeeman

The Qualitative Report

This paper is divided into three parts, each separated by centrally spaced asterisks. The first part, co-written on the basis of the standpoint interests of both authors, outlines the historical, philosophical, theoretical and methodological contexts for the use of autoethnographic short stories in the social and human sciences. The functions and representational practices of this genre are reviewed and discussed, and the main criticisms leveled by its detractors responded to. This sets the scene for the second part of the paper, an autoethnographic short story. Effectively a story of stories, it was constructed directly from the first author’s memories of …

Two Tales Of A City: Nineteenth-Century Black Philadelphia, Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

[Excerpt] In the tension between Forging Freedom and Roots of Violence certain themes present themselves for further research and thought. Neither volume successfully analyzes the historical roots of the African-American class structure. This is especially evident in each book's treatment of the black middling orders. While neither defines the category with clarity, their basic assumption that small shopkeepers and regularly employed workers were critical to the community's ability to withstand some of the worst shocks of racism is important. The clash between these books also raises questions concerning the role of pre-industrial cultural values in the transition to industrial capitalism. …

Place, Ethics, And Everyday Eating: A Tale Of Two Neighbourhoods, Josée Johnston, Alexandra Rodney, Michelle Szabo

Publications and Scholarship

In this article we investigate how ‘ethical eating’ varies across neighbourhoods and explore the classed nature of these patterns. While our focus is on ‘ethical eating’ (e.g. eating organics, local), we also discuss its relation to healthy eating. The analysis draws from interviews with families in two Toronto neighbourhoods – one upper and the other lower income. We argue that understandings and practices of ‘ethical eating’ are significantly shaped by social class as well as place-specific neighbourhood cultures which we conceptualize as part of a ‘prototypical’ neighbourhood eating style. People compare themselves to a neighbourhood prototype (positively and negatively), and …

The Real Virtual World: Connectivity And Techno-Mediation In The Lives Of College Students, Alecea Standlee

Sociology - Dissertations

This dissertation examines the way in which techno-mediated communication technologies, such as social media, text messaging, and virtual communities are used to negotiate, establish and maintain interpersonal relationships among college students. Using in-depth interview and online participant observation, I explore the relationship between technological communication and social behavior, interpersonal relationships and social networks. I focus on three broad questions: how do developments and structures of technological communication allow for the emergence of new social expectations and behaviors in the realm of connectivity and social interaction? How do individuals experience social pressures for connectivity and how do such pressures shape relationships? …

Foreword: Lessons Of Work And Workers, Robert Mccarl

Robert S. McCarl

McCarl discusses, primarily through his own personal experiences, how the oppositional techniques of cultural work itself can provide a critique of work while at the same time develop a cooperative relationship with workers to articulate views and strategies that fit their needs. The conferences and the establishment of the fund in Occupational Folklife at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill acknowledge the high standards in this field set by Archie Green, an advocate of labor studies research. In order to maintain those standards, cultural workers musk ask hard questions of themselves and their positions within the ranks of …

The Significance Of A K-12 Diabetes-Based Science Education Program For Tribal Populations: Evaluating Cognitive Learning, Cultural Context, And Attitudinal Components, Carolee D. Francis, Doug Coulson, Bonnie Kalberer, Lemyra Debruyn, William Freeman, Janet Belcourt

Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice

Preventing and reducing the onset of type 2 diabetes among American Indian/Alaska Native youth requires ground-breaking strategies to affect knowledge, attitudes, and cognitive decision-making skills. In an unparalleled endeavor to address the growing epidemic of type 2 diabetes in tribal communities, a K-12 Diabetes Education in Tribal Schools (DETS) curriculum was created by eight tribal colleges and three federal agencies. This article highlights the results of the implementation phase, the final evaluation step in acquiring and measuring student knowledge and attitude gains through pre-post standardized assessment.

National Identity Through Prototypes And Metaphors: The Case Of "Romanianness", Razvan Sibii

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

The last country God created was Romania. Realizing that he still had a lot of riches left over from the other countries, He let Romania have more natural treasures than anybody else. Seeing this, Saint Peter asked in surprise: "My Lord, why are you giving this country more riches than you've given to any other?" "Don't you worry," said the Lord, "Just wait 'till you see the people I will put in charge of those riches!..."

Whether Saint Peter was eventually satisfied with Romania's condition, we do not know. What this paper does investigate, however, is what God meant by …

The Impact Of Neighborhoods On Intimate Partner Violence And Victimization, Gillian M. Pichevsky, Emily M. Wright

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Research on intimate partner violence (IPV) and victimization is widespread across disciplines. To date, the majority of research underscores the importance of individual-level factors to explain IPV, thereby neglecting the significance of macro-level elements. Nevertheless, research suggests that the characteristics of the neighborhood where an individual lives are important for fully understanding IPV. This review focuses on the effects of neighborhoods and macro-level context on violence between intimate partners, specifically identifying empirical studies that have examined contextual predictors of IPV utilizing the major tenets of social disorganization theory. The authors note consistencies and differences across research results and describe study …

Influence Of American Media Upon Korean Broadcasting Culture - Analyzing 'American Idol' Vs. 'Superstar K Ii', Han Na Shin

Masters Theses

This study examines the influence of American media on Korean broadcasting culture, based on analysis of American Idol and SuperStar K Season II. Viewer ratings were analyzed to find out the popularity of American programs in South Korea. Web-based surveys and individual interviews were analyzed to figure out the difference between both programs and its influence upon Korean viewers. The result shows that American programs currently influence the Korean media and Korean viewers, and that influence is getting more produced. With those findings, the study concludes it affects Korean viewers and Korean society as well. Audition programs become one of …

Hard Work, Overcoming, And Masculinity: An Ethnographic Account Of High School Wrestlers' Bodies And Cultural Worlds, Bryan Snyder

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The dissertation explores the cultural worlds of high school wrestlers at an inner-city school in the Mountain West region of the United States. The data upon which this dissertation is based come from a ten-month ethnography, where I conducted “observant participation” (Wacquant 2011) and semi-structured, open-ended interviews with members of this school’s wrestling team. I approached both my data collection and analysis through cultural-sociological frames. Although I intend to contribute to a number of areas of specialization, in this dissertation I use high school wrestling as a site to ask basic questions about key sociological themes such as meaning, identity, …

Research Brief: "Veteran Status, Race-Ethnicity, And Marriage Among Fragile Families", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This brief summarizes an examination of the impact of men's past military service on the likelihood that a couple will marry within 5 years of a nonmarital birth.

Multicultural Experience Enhances Creativity: The When And How, Angela K. Y. Leung, William W. Maddux, Adam D. Galinsky, Chi-Yue Chiu

Ka Yee Angela LEUNG

Many practices aimed at cultivating multicultural competence in educational and organizational settings (e.g., exchange programs, diversity education in college, diversity management at work) assume that multicultural experience fosters creativity. In line with this assumption, the research reported in this article is the first to empirically demonstrate that exposure to multiple cultures in and of itself can enhance creativity. Overall, the authors found that extensiveness of multicultural experiences was positively related to both creative performance (insight learning, remote association, and idea generation) and creativity-supporting cognitive processes (retrieval of unconventional knowledge, recruitment of ideas from unfamiliar cultures for creative idea expansion). Furthermore, …

Culture, Psyche, And Body Make Each Other Up, Dov Cohen, Angela K. Y. Leung, Hans Ijzerman

Ka Yee Angela LEUNG

The commentaries make important points, including ones about the purposeful uses of embodiment effects. Research examining such effects needs to look at how such effects play themselves out in people's everyday lives. Research might usefully integrate work on embodiment with work on attribution and work in other disciplines concerned with body–psyche connections (e.g., research on somaticizing versus “psychologizing” illnesses and hypercognizing versus hypocognizing emotions). Such work may help us understand the way positive and negative feedback loops operate as culture, psyche, and body make each other up.

Toward A More Complete Understanding Of The Link Between Multicultural Experience And Creativity, William W. Maddux, Angela K.-Y. Leung, Chi-Yue Chiu, Adam D. Galinsky

Ka Yee Angela LEUNG

Responds to G. J. Rich's comments on the current author's original article which presented evidence supporting the idea that multicultural experience can facilitate creativity. Rich has argued that our review, although timely and important, was somewhat limited in scope, focusing mostly on smaller forms of creativity ("little c": e.g., paper-and-pencil measures of creativity) as well as on larger forms of multicultural experience ("Big M": e.g., living in a foreign country). We agree with many aspects of Rich's assessment. The issue of whether different forms of multicultural experience can affect Big C creativity is of interest to both scholars and laypeople …

Quiero Ser Alguien En La Vida: Hispanic Women And The Role Of Culture In Educational Attainment, Lupita Maria Pivaral

Master's Theses

There are very few studies that investigate the low educational attainment rates of Latinos, and even fewer that consider the role culture may have on educational attainment. In particular, Latinas have been neglected in academic studies regarding their academic pursuits and performance. This study aims to fill this void in the academic literature. It is based on interviews with 13 Hispanic women who were enrolled in a Chicago area adult high school. The women shared their personal narratives, describing in detail various life events and sharing their thoughts of how these may have lead them to make decisions that ultimately …

Mexican-Origin Youth's Cultural Orientations And Adjustment: Changes From Early To Late Adolescence, Kimberly A. Updegraff, Adriana J. Umana-Taylor, Susan M. Mchale, Lorey A. Wheeler, Norma Perez-Brena

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

Drawing from developmental and cultural adaptation perspectives and using a longitudinal design, this study examined: (a) mean-level changes in Mexican-origin adolescents’ cultural orientations and adjustment from early to late adolescence; and (b) bidirectional associations between cultural orientations and adjustment using a cross-lag panel model. Participants included 246 Mexicanorigin, predominantly immigrant families that participated in home interviews and a series of nightly phone calls when target adolescents were 12 years and 18 years of age. Girls exhibited more pronounced declines in traditional gender role attitudes than did boys, and all youth declined in familism values, time spent with family, and involvement …

Labor Culture: Labor Morality Under Socialism, Vladimir Magun

Russian Culture

Soviet leaders had always taken a keen interest in workers' behavior and labor motives and sought to keep labor morality under strict state control. A complex network of values and regulations was developed for this purpose after the October Revolution of 1917. They were best articulated in the "political economy of socialism" which purported to present a scientific picture of the country's economic life. Textbooks on socialist economy were widely circulated in the Soviet Union and appropriate courses included into a core curriculum for all higher education institutions in the country. Basic tenets of socialist political economy were taught in …

Historically Black Colleges And Universities: Sustaining A Culture Of Excellence In The 21st Century, Nia I. Cantey, Robert Bland, Lakerri R. Mack, Danielle Joy Davis

Social Work and Urban Studies Faculty Research

Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) continue to provide a substantial role in the black community and in higher education by providing a culture of excellence. Yet, their role in higher education is the center of many academic and political debates. Defining this role has been thwarted with questions of HBCUs relevance in society, in the African American community, and in higher education. The relevance of HBCUs is neither the dilemma nor the question for higher education and HBCUs. The conundrum for HBCUs is ensuring that they are equipped with the necessary tools to address global and economic 21^{st …}

This Paper Is Only Skin Deep: The Socio-Cultural And Biological Reality Of Human Variation, Paige Jamieson

A with Honors Projects

This project is an anthropological study of human variation and "race".

Seeing Stars: Emotional Trauma In Athlete Retirement: Contexts, Intersections, And Explorations, Scott P. Tinley

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Few areas of modern sport are as misunderstood in popular and academic literature as that of retired professional and elite athletes. While the subject has been studied, the case of the retiring athlete has yet to be fully explored in a detailed, qualitative, and interdisciplinary study focusing on nuanced contexts affecting the quality of an athlete's exit from sport. Utilizing 3 participant groups--29 elite athletes (16 sports, 18 males, 11 females), 9 professional sport administrators, and 8 sport media journalists--over an 18-month period, extensive semi-structured interviews resulted in 1,436 raw data themes that constituted 13 direct, 3 indirect, and 3 …

Job Satisfaction Determinants: A Study Across 48 Nations, Jeanine K. Andreassi, Leanna Lawter, Martin Brockerhoff, Peter Rutigliano

WCBT Faculty Publications

This paper examines the drivers of job satisfaction across four cultural regions—Asia, Europe, North America, and Latin America. Using Hofstede’s theory, determinants were used to predict job satisfaction for each region and then compared to determine significant differences. Data was collected from a proprietary industry survey on employee work attitudes. The sample consisted of over 70,000 employees from 4 large multinational organizations. Data was analyzed using regression analysis and comparison testing across models. There are significant relationships between job characteristics and job satisfaction across all regions of the world, with a sense of achievement universally the most important driver. Although …

Leading Through Listening: Racial Tensions In 1968 New York, Janice W. Fernheimer

Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Cape Crusaders : An Ethnography Investigating The Surfing Subculture Of Cape Naturaliste, Western Australia, Robert Anthony Holt

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Surfing is a byzantine phenomenon. With a global army surpassing 30 million participants, the wave riding culture has escalated from an underground lifestyle into a mainstream colossus. This thesis investigates a unique population of the surfing culture, the Cape Naturaliste surfing subculture. Located in the South West of Western Australia, Cape Naturaliste is home to the Cape Crusaders.