Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Cross Cultural Study Of Disability In The United States And Brazil, Emily Kirsten Stortz

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Disability is not only a biological issue, it is an inherently social one. People are only as disabled as their society allows them to be. Enhancing our understanding of the social processes affecting the disabled will allow for their increased participation within society. The researcher employed qualitative methods including semi-structured interviews and participant observation to perform case studies at fieldwork sites providing care to the disabled in Chicago, IL, USA and Santarém, Pará, Brazil. The researcher spent two consecutive weeks in each location. The former location is a residential facility for people with developmental disabilities and the latter is a …

Colorful Dialogue: Talking Towards Civic Engagement, Kate Olson

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Noticing a need in the Mankato, Minnesota area to link new immigrants and refugees with the greater Mankato community, the YWCA Mankato started the Walking in Two Worlds program. The Colorful Dialogue, a part of the Walking in Two Worlds program, is a monthly community forum where long-time residents and newcomers, including immigrants and refugees, meet to discuss topics important for community building. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the program as a form of civic engagement. Two main questions shape the research: (1) Is the YWCA program, Colorful Dialogue an effective method of civic engagement? (2) Is …

Documenting The Oral Narratives Of Transient Punks, Thomas Ross Heffernan

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The uninitiated do not realize the complexity of the punk rock sub-culture. Outsiders may find it hard to distinguish the subtle lines by which differentiation occurs within the so-called subculture. The "punk rock subculture" is a misnomer; it is not a salient community. The experience of being "punk" is fractal; what it means to be punk and what classifies one as punk is in constant redefinition and there are various different communities with varying ideologies and identities. The punk subculture has absorbed various epistemologies in its 40+ years of existence, modified them, and made them their own. Within this milieu …

Confraternity And Community : Negotiating Ethnicity, Gender And Place In Colonial Tecamachalco, Mexico, Annette Dionne Richie

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Cofradías, lay religious brotherhoods introduced to New Spain by Mendicant friars in the mid-16th century, were optimal vehicles for corporate consciousness. This case study in colonialism, evangelization and ethnic politics centers on avenues and strategies for assessing, accommodating and rejecting cultural elements from "foreign" groups, as well as the freedom to assemble and incorporate, but also marginalize, others.

Gringotenango : The U.S. Retirement Migration To Antigua, Guatemala, Katherine Wilnelia Platt

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation documents the migration of U.S. retirees to Antigua, Guatemala. Antigua is a charming Spanish colonial city in the middle of the Guatemalan highlands with beautiful volcano views, cobblestone roads, the presence of Mayan and Ladino cultures, and an eternal spring climate. The physical and cultural beauty of Antigua allows U.S. citizens to enjoy a permanent vacation-like retirement experience. Antigua, however, is located in a country whose recent history is characterized by 36 years of civil war, and current events are stressed by new violence criminal activities. Despite the beauty of Antigua, this colonial city is an odd retirement …

Meeting Of The Minds: Perceptions Of And Experiences With School-Based Mental Health Services, Jill Priest Amati

Anthropology - Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to understand the meanings and perceptions that families, teachers, and school-based service providers on the Westside in Syracuse, New York ascribe to school-based mental health services. The Westside is an economically disadvantaged and under-resourced neighborhood where children experience a great deal of stress in everyday life. Many children in need of mental health care are referred to school-based mental health service providers by their teachers. The primary motivation of this research is to understand how parents and school staff give meaning to the school-based mental health services and how these meanings affect whether they …

Artifacts Of Exchange: A Multiscalar Approach To Maritime Archaeology At Elmina, Ghana, Andrew T. Pietruszka

Anthropology - Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the excavation and interpretation of two European ships discovered at Elmina Ghana, the coastal site of the first and largest European fort in sub-Saharan Africa. Discovered in 2003, the first vessel, located 1.5 miles offshore of the castle, is largely comprised of remnants of cargo exposed on the seafloor. European trade wares recovered from the site suggest a mid-seventeenth century vessel, most likely of Dutch origin. AMS radiocarbon dates obtained from several fragments of wood recovered in cores taken at the site support this assumption. The second vessel was discovered by accident during the 2007 dredging …

Of His Bones Are Coral Made: Submerged Cultural Resources, Site Formation Processes, And Multiple Scales Of Interpretation In Coastal Ghana, Rachel Lynelle Horlings

Anthropology - Dissertations

Integrating theoretical and methodological approaches to formation processes across a range of scales from micro-artifact to region and from historical to environmental processes, this work explores the archaeology of the event related to submerged archaeological sites within the Elmina seascape of coastal Ghana. Building on and intersecting with the work of other scholars, this research is a unique approach to the investigation of submerged cultural remains related to historical maritime trade. Remote sensing surveys in 2009 led to the identification of three sites related to maritime trade, adding significantly to the two previously known sites, which include a circa 1650 …

Transforming The City. An Ethnography Of Contested Public Space In Venezuela, Ana Servigna

Anthropology - Dissertations

My research falls within urban anthropology, as it examines how supporters and opponents of the Venezuelan government have manipulated symbols in attempting to control certain public places in Venezuela's capital city, Caracas. My thesis is that by using public places to advance their respective agendas, President Chávez' supporters and opponents have struggled for power and have exacerbated the country's social segregation, territorial division and political intolerance. My study reveals that despite its particular topography and socioeconomic structure, Caracas has a characteristic cartography of political segregation. This cartography has been created by groups of government opponents and supporters that want to …

Food And Identity: A Case Study Of Roman Soldiers And Native Civilians In Roman Britain, Aaron Michael Bobik

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Food is a universal medium through which identity is expressed. In cultures both past and present, food represents a direct way to communicate many aspects of identity such as ethnicity, nationality, status, age, and gender. In archaeology, while the nutritional and economic roles of food have been a topic of study for decades, the relationship between food and identity is a research area largely in its infancy. In my thesis, I explore general aspects of identity in the past, and in particular, I utilize a case study of four archaeological sites (Segontium (Caernarfon), Portchester Castle, Wavendon Gate, and Dragonby) to …

Using Archaeological Fish Remains To Determine The Native Status Of Anadromous Salmonids In The Upper Klamath Basin (Oregon, Usa) Through Mtdna And Geochemical Analysis, Alexander E. Stevenson

Dissertations and Theses

Within the Upper Klamath Basin, Oregon, the native status of anadromous salmonids (Oncorhynchus spp.) has been a long standing question. Ongoing efforts to establish if these fish were native to the region prior to the construction of the Copco I Dam on the Klamath River (c.1917) have relied on sparse, contradictory and sometimes unreliable historic documentation and informant testimony. Current restoration projects with very high financial and social costs necessitate accurate and reliable data on salmonid species which once called the region home. Often, archaeolofaunal remains present a novel way to determine species present in an area prior to …

Relationships Between Snake River Paleofloods, Occupational Patterns And Archaeological Preservation At Redbird Beach Archaeological Site In Lower Hells Canyon, Idaho, Tabitha Trosper

All Master's Theses

The Snake River basin drains 282,000 km² of the northwestern U.S. and is the largest tributary to the Columbia River. Redbird Beach, an archaeological site located in the lower Hells Canyon reach of the Snake River, contains extensive vertical exposures of archaeological materials interbedded with Snake River flood sediments. Redbird Beach formed in the lee of the Redbird Creek debris fan, is composed of interfingering deposits from large floods on the Snake River and locally-derived alluvial sediments from Redbird Creek. Through stratigraphic analyses of slackwater deposits, this study compares the temporal and spatial patterns of human occupation at Redbird …

Jeely Beely: Rolling Into The Russian Fairy Tale, Sarah Greeson

Honors Theses

When I was a child, I used to think that fairy tales always ended happily, and that winning a prince's affection was life's grand goal. I thought so because I was exposed to Disney versions: tales of a handsome prince rescuing an isolated stepchild from boring housework as in Cinderella (1950) and tales of a kiss literally saving at least two girls' lives as in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and in Sleeping Beauty (1959). While I recollect my father reading to my brother and me from an encyclopedia-sized collection of Aesop 's Fables, I do not recall …

Postglacial Sandy Hill: A Regional Manifestation Of The Gulf Of Maine Archaic Tradition, Benjamin Russell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Over twenty years of archaeological excavations at Sandy Hill, in Mashantucket, CT, have provided an incredibly rich assemblage of artifacts. Yet some of the most basic questions about Sandy Hill's Early Archaic inhabitants remain unanswered. This thesis will synthesize the results of major excavations at Sandy Hill by analyzing site morphology, lithics, and hard tissue macrobotanical remains from several radiocarbon dated contexts. Macrobotanical artifacts recovered from Sandy Hill indicate a preference for hazelnut as well as wetland roots and tubers. The lithic assemblage is related to the Gulf of Maine Archaic Tradition and the predominance of quartz flakes technology and …

"... Rivalry, Hostility, And Romanita." An Ethnographic Study Of As Roma's Ultras, Mark Wayne Dyal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is an ethnographic study of Italian Ultras, the organized and ritualized fan organizations associated with professional soccer in Italy. It examines the relationship between their belief and behaviors, paying particular attention to their political behaviors. The study follows 15 months of anthropological fieldwork undertaken in Rome, Italy. Its goal is to assess the role that the Ultras' particular critical understanding of modernity plays in organizing and actualizing their behaviors inside and outside of sporting contexts. Part of my effort in this study is to examine local reactions to national and international issues of globalization and liberalization. In following this …

Faunal Analysis Of The Early Modern Bishop's Farm At Skalholt, Arnessysla Iceland, George Hambrecht

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents the analysis of faunal material recovered from middens outside the main complex of the Bishop of Southern Iceland's Cathedral farm at Skáholt, Arnessysla, Iceland. Issues of diet, deposition patterns, as well as participation in larger trade and intellectual networks addressed. All of these issues are examined in order to investigate larger issues centered around the early modern Atlantic world. The Skáholt material is also compared with the larger body of existing early modern Icelandic archaeofaunal data in order to investigate issues of adaptation and resilience in the face of harsh climatic as well as social and economic …

Personal Narratives Of Women's Leadership And Community Activism In Cherkasy Oblast, Martha Kichorowska Kebalo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ukraine's women's movement is part of a complex social field characteristic of formerly Soviet countries, but it also emerges from its own specific political history. Post-Soviet period, (neo-) nationalism, feminism and (neo-) socialism are significant forces shaping women's collective behavior. Their activism resonates with the pre-Soviet liberation struggle while it is shaped also by practices from the recent Soviet past. It also is sensitive to external pressures, including the agendas of Western aid and the Ukrainian diaspora.

This study accepts the emergence of non-state women's organizations as indicative of an incipient movement and examines this field of social activism in …

When Women Migrate: Children And Caring Labor In Puebla, Mexico, Denise Geraci

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This investigation concerns children and caregivers in Santa Ursula, a town in Puebla, Mexico from which many women have migrated to the United States in recent years. The expansion of female migration since the 1980s and children who remain behind in women's poorer nations of origin, where households, communities and governments assume their care, are salient features of global economic restructuring (Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001). This study analyzes how children's circumstances change when mothers migrate, and how family, community and state representatives understand and deal with these changes. Social reproduction in a community like Santa Ursula supports not only a source of …

Foča Bosnia-Herzegovina: Presentations Of Identity In Survivor Narratives And Testimony, Francesca Leaf

WWU Graduate School Collection

In April of 1992 the Foča municipality of Bosnia-Herzegovina was taken over by the ultranationalist Bosnian Serb, Serb and Montenegrin forces. As part of a larger strategy of genocide, the ultranationalist forces systematically raped and sexually abused the Bosniak girls and women of Foča. The systematic rapes perpetrated in the Foča municipality are representative of the larger pattern of rape during the 1992-1995 genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The use of rape as a tactical force of war in the Foča municipality garnered international media attention; resulting in a wealth of literature, interviews with survivors and the International Criminal Tribunal for the …

Delayed Diagnoses In The Spectrum Of Gluten-Averse Conditions, Crystal L. (Crystal Leigh) Maki

WWU Graduate School Collection

Celiac Disease (CD), gluten allergy (GA), and non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) represent a highly varied disease grouping that affects individuals to varying degrees in response to the ingestion of certain cereal proteins (wheat, barley, rye, and sometimes oats). Generally, epidemiologic data on food allergy and intolerance is severely lacking; given current trends of under-diagnosis, prevalence of overt CD alone is estimated at 1-2% of European populations. There is a large and growing body of scientific literature that ascribes the complexity of various gluten-sensitive symptomology to multiple developmental pathways. This complexity translates largely in to delayed clinical diagnosis by medical professionals. …

Realizing Virtuality: Tracing The Contours Of Digital Culture, Nicholas Andrew Riggs

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

People connect digitally through social media, fusing their relationships with meaning in a non-space of relational potential--a translucent and fluctuating enclave where the self becomes elastic. This thesis explores how I have formed bonds in virtual space through ritual interaction. Looking at the ways I learned to use technology through the progression of a close personal relationship, I suggest that social media use is a performance of identity--a virtuality that exposes how people negotiate the digital enclosure of contemporary society. My story is one of digital nativity and reclaiming love through virtual performance. I show how these performances have had …

Growing Up With Hiv: Disease Management Among Perinatally Infected Adolescents, Barbara J. Szelag

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Children born with HIV in the 1980s and 1990s are surviving into adolescence and adulthood, due to the availability of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). Growing up with a chronic and stigmatized disease presents considerable challenges as young people explore their sexuality, develop relationships, and take steps to become independent and productive adults. Adherence to HAART is an essential and life-long practice for the maintenance of health and longevity. For adolescents born with HIV, a daily medication schedule is one aspect of disease management that also includes medical visits, HIV status acceptance, bouts of illness, and disclosure of HIV status …

People In Between: The Value Of Life Stories In Exploring The Needs Of Colombian Asylum Seekers, Poonam R. Valliappan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The long, protracted civil war, spanning nearly fifty years, in the South American nation of Colombia has displaced almost four million civilians in as much time. Tens of thousands of refugees were resettled in Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela and other neighboring countries. Some, still threatened in their country of first asylum, and resettled to the United States (US) with their families, must learn to navigate the often complex systems of life and living in America. Resettlement programs that focus primarily on immediate needs such as employment and accommodations are aware of the growing need for more long&ndashterm assistance. However, while there …

Life And Death Journeys: Medical Travel, Cancer, And Children In Argentina, Cecilia Vindrola Padros

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent studies on the Argentine public health system have demonstrated that the lack of medical resources in different parts of the country force pediatric oncology patients and their family members to travel to Buenos Aires in order to access care. This internal migration poses difficulties for these families as travel and resettlement are expensive, lead to the separation of family members, and interrupt the child's schooling. This dissertation was designed to document the everyday life experiences of traveling families in order to understand the barriers they faced while attempting to access medical treatment and the strategies they used to surmount …

More Than "Modern Day Slavery": Stakeholder Perspectives And Policy On Human Trafficking In Florida, Nathaniel Dickey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, Florida has acquired a reputation as fertile ground for human trafficking. On the heels of state and federal anti-human trafficking legislation, a host of organizations have risen to provide a range of services. In this thesis, I discuss findings from 26 interviews conducted with law enforcement, service providers, legal representatives and trafficked persons to contextualize the variability in the way anti-trafficking work is conceptualized by stakeholders across the state. Additionally, I explore how conflicting organizational policies on the local, state, and federal levels impact stakeholder collaboration and complicate trafficked persons' attempts to navigate already complex processes of …

Adolescence Is An Ocean: A Biocultural Investigation Of Youth Food Consumption In Tanzania, Elizabeth J. Danforth

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates adolescents' relationships with food and other community and household members' perceptions of youth and their food consumption to understand the multifactorial dynamic processes which create nutritional outcomes among urban and rural youth in central Tanzania. Youth are an important and demographically large population in developing countries. The identities created during this distinct stage of cultural production can be reflected in youths' food consumption and relationships with food. Nutrition likely affects how youth transition through a variety of states, including their growth and development stages, primary to secondary to higher education, child to parent, or unemployed to employed. …

”Tag, You’Re It!”: Using Social Media “Tags” To Help Solve The Problem Of Church Classification In Sociology Of Religion, Steven Losco

Pitzer Senior Theses

Edited Abstract for presentation:

Categorizing humans and human activity can be difficult. In my own research on evangelical church styles in Los Angeles, I found that the services defied discreet categories. I turned to the social web for inspiration on how to categorize the services and landed on blog post “tags” as something that could give me a flexible and dynamic way to “define” the church. Briefly, tags are a set of words or phrases that users categorize anything from blog posts, books on GoodReads, website bookmarks, etc, in other words: metadata. What makes tags so potent as definition is …

Perceptions Of Disabilities Amongst The Tarahumara In Northern Mexico, Carolyn Raynor Trussell

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This research focuses on the perceptions of disability amongst the Tarahumara, known amongst themselves as the Rarámuri, in the Sierra Madre region of Northern Chihuahua. This population of individuals has typically lived in isolated areas in communities in the Sierra Madre where medical and specialized educational services were rare. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions, knowledge and beliefs related to disabilities, as well as the access and beliefs related to educational and medical services.

The study focused on the individual and the society to examine how bodily conceptions influence perceptions of others. The target group for …

Inalienable Possessions And Flyin' West: African American Women In The Pioneer West, Justin Hosbey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nicodemus, Kansas is one of the few remaining settlements founded by African American former slaves in the post-Civil War period of American history. Designated by the National Park Service as a National Historic Site in 1996, Nicodemus has secured its role as a place deemed important to the history of America. For this project, I worked as an intern for the Nicodemus Historical Society, under the direction of Angela Bates. This local heritage preservation agency manages archival and genealogical records important to Nicodemus descendants, and exhibits several of the community's cultural and material artifacts for the public. I was specifically …

Bivalve Growth-Stages As A Measure Of Harvesting Intensity: Application On The Southern Northwest Coast, Shona D. (Shona Dejeanne) Pierce

WWU Graduate School Collection

Prehistoric settlements along the Pacific Northwest Coast have produced some of the clearest records for study on human subsistence use, such as harvesting practices (Butler 2000; Cannon et al. 2008; Croes 1992; Moss 1993; Wesson 1988). The archaeological and ethnographic records in this region have produced artifacts and oral accounts that have led scientists to logical conclusions about specific types of subsistence use. In turn, subsistence use data can tell us many things about a society, including population size, longevity of settlement and site function. Intensities in subsistence practices can also show whether an area was used as a long-term, …