Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

“Not Much Of A Job”: Everyday Life And Labor At Camp Au Train, Josef T. Iwanicki

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

In this thesis, I use data from Camp Au Train, a Civilian Conservation Corp camp in Michigan’s Hiawatha National Forest, as a case study to connect the everyday life of enrollees with dominant government narratives while including a focus on labor and the capitalist crisis of the Great Depression. Using the vantage point of work, play, study, and health, I integrate archaeological, historic, and photographic evidence to show contradictions between the enrollees’ real lived experience and the dominant perspectives of the CCC ‘authorities’ who organized their lives. I argue that to interpret these contradictions, the CCC needs to be connected …

Perdagangan Perempuan Indonesia Dalam Situs Pengantin Pesanan: Perspektif Feminisme Sosialis, Wabilia Husnah

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Mail-order bride websites can be easily found in cyberspace. These websites sell Indonesian women to Chinese men as wives. This study aims to explore the phenomenon of women cyber-trafficking in mail-order bride websites, especially the background of mail-order bride websites and their impacts on the victims. This qualitative research used the case study approach and the socialist feminism theory to investigate three mail-order bride websites. This study concludes that the oppression of women on mail-order bride websites is caused by long-standing patriarchy in Indonesia and China reflected in daily practices, cultural manifestations, and literary works in both countries. Capitalism has …

Path To Utopia, Leila Kincaid

Journal of Conscious Evolution

The way to survive in the Anthropocene and transform the world is to end capitalism. Humanity must stop commodifying everything and reifying its value for consumption for the sake of power and survival. The way to do this is through love. This is an inquiry into methods and processes for confronting and transforming the planetary destruction caused by capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism among other phenomena. This paper challenges the idea that it is unrealistic to believe that love can change the world. It posits that loving is caring and caring is the way humanity will shift consciousness so that capitalism …

Navigating The Cairene Table: Food And Family Between What Is Ideal And What Is Real, Iman Afify

Theses and Dissertations

Our daily encounters with food, especially during our childhood, play a crucial role in shaping and informing our identity and our habitus. In this research, by using multimodal and auto ethnography, I argue that due to the guiding path that our senses carve for us, we make sense and contextualise our surroundings through our senses, and not only the five senses of vision, smell, taste, hearing, and touch, but also through our inner senses of time and temporality, and how time and memory play an important role in the registration of our surroundings through our bodies and senses. I am …

Answering The Call: Disrupting The Logics Of Capitalism Through Indigenous Economies, Madeline Jaye Bass

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

Capitalism, racialism, and indigenous exploitation are deeply entangled practices. In their implementation, they each rely on forms of extraction and subjugation with long-lasting impacts. Denise Ferreira da Silva uses a Black feminist practice of “reading” in order to explicate the ways lives are valued and lost within this pursuit of global capital. Despite overwhelming extraction, looking closely and reading into Indigenous lifeways and organizing practices encourages the pursuit of “otherwise worlds.” This essay uses a close reading of da Silva’s chapter on global capital, and the larger collection it comes from, as a way of exploring the economic practices of …

The Banality Of Corporate Evil, Amina Dessouki

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis critiques the notion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) through tracing the multiple dynamics between a multinational corporation and a development consultancy working on a recycling project in collaboration with the Zabaleen in Mansheyet Nasser, Egypt. The thesis looks at the ways in which actors negotiate their different positions, the harmonies and discordances that unfold through various agendas coming together, the silences produced, and the ways in which structural violence is intensified under the guise of development. The thesis contrasts the detached efforts of corporate workers and development consultants with the lives of the zabaleen, who live in a …

The Material Culture Of Temperature: Measurement, Capital And Semiotics, Scott W. Schwartz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Temperature was invented in the 17th century. While cosmologists affirm that fluctuations in heat are as old as the universe, the intensive quantified scale marking these fluctuations has a relatively short history. This dissertation analyzes why temperature developed when it did and what temperature does for and to its users. I demonstrate that the ubiquitous and quotidian epistemological artifact temperature epitomizes capitalized methods of seeing, measuring, and knowing. At its broadest, the concern of this dissertation is the material culture of knowledge production among capitalizing populations—those that believe in and practice the perpetually accelerating asymmetrical growth of wealth.

In this …

Disrupted Identities And Forced Nomads: A Post-Disaster Legacy Of Neocolonialism In The Island Of Barbuda, Lesser Antilles, Sophia Perdikaris, Rebecca Boger, Edith Gonzalez, Emira Ibrahimpašić, Jennifer D. Adams

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

In the aftermath of the forced evacuation of the island of Barbuda due to Hurricane Irma, the Barbudan people have experienced an exile and return to a ‘new’ geographical, political, and economic context, albeit on the same island. With the specter of climate change and the potential impacts on island communities and nations, we use Barbuda, sister island of Antigua in the Lesser Antilles, to examine the trajectory of nomadic identities as they navigate changes that threaten contemporary land relationships and culture. Since its first permanent settlement in the 17th Century, the island geography of Barbuda has been fundamental to …

Atomization As Colonial Strategy In Palestine., Christian Alexander Brawner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Walid Daka, a Palestinian political prisoner in Israel since 1986, contends that Israel’s “final solution” to quell Palestinian resistance is currently unfolding in Israeli prisons where, as he describes, Palestinian prisoners are being divided from one another through seemingly unrelated actions and policies. Daka argues that current Israeli practices have replaced traditional physical brutality with seemingly harmless administrative decisions and actions taken by prison authorities that are aimed at instilling mistrust among Palestinians, substituting collective struggle and solidarity with individualized interests, and altering Palestinians’ awareness of national struggle. As Daka puts it, it is a set of endeavors to remold …

Gen Z Perspectives On Climate Change And The Future: Having The Courage To Imagine And Fight For A Better World, Isabelle Graj

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

I conducted 6 interviews with Gen Z students to investigate how they think climate change will impact their future and how they frame the issue in general. I communicate my findings and analysis with visual context through a zine, which is a form of alternative media created in the 1930s. Today, zines provide a creative approach to exchange ideas and explain contemporary culture (Gisonny and Freedman, 2006, 26). My zine is not meant to be utterly educational but rather it is meant to convey the emotion, confusion, and chaos associated with my findings. The interviews collectively created an image of …

The New Debt Peonage In The Era Of Mass Incarceration, Timothy Black, Lacey Caporale

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

In 1867, Congress passed legislation that forbid the practices of debt peonage. However, the law was circumvented after the period of Reconstruction in the south and debt peonage became central to the expansion of southern agriculture through sharecropping and industrialization through convict leasing, practices that forced debtors into new forms of coerced labor. Debt peonage was presumable ended in the 1940s by the Justice Department. But was it? The era of mass incarceration has institutionalized a new form of debt peonage through which racialized poverty is governed, mechanisms of social control are reconstituted, and freedom is circumscribed. In this paper, …

The Coloniality Of Disaster: Race, Empire, And The Temporal Logics Of Emergency In Puerto Rico, Usa, Yarimar Bonilla

Publications and Research

This essay uses the case of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico to discuss “the coloniality of disaster”: how catastrophic events like hurricanes, earthquakes, but also other forms political and economic crisis deepen the fault lines of long-existing racial and colonial histories. It argues that disaster capitalism needs to be understood as a form of racio-colonial capitalism and that this in turn requires us to question our understandings of both “resilience” and “recovery.” The article focuses on the “wait of disaster” as a temporal logic of state subjugation and on how Puerto Ricans responded to state abandonment through modes of autogesti� …

Salted Fish And Spawning Capitalism: The American Fur Company’S Fishing Experiment In Lake Superior, Brendan Doucet

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The American Fur Company established and operated commercial fishing stations in Lake Superior from 1834 until the company dissolved in 1842. The role that the company played in the fur trade created ecological and economic conditions that had detrimental impacts on the Anishinaabe’s ability to practice traditional ways of life and diminished the Lake Superior region of fur bearing mammals. These conditions were exasperated in their commercial fishing efforts which brought about a transition in relations between labor, capital, and the environment. This was a period of transition for both the AFC and the Anishinaabeg who by the 1800’s had …

Commmunity, Ecology, And Modernity: Faunal Analysis Of Skútustaðir In Mývatnssveit, Northern Iceland, Megan Hicks

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the archaeofaunal remains from Skútustaðir, a middle to high-status farm in Mývatnssveit, Northern Iceland, to understand the experience of rural communities and their ecologies during Iceland’s transition from regulated colonial exchange to a capitalist economy during the 17^th through 19^th centuries. Archaeofaunal analysis is used to reconstruct changes in the ways that people herded, hunted, and fished, providing insights into how they managed their local environments for subsistence and novel contexts of exchange. In addition to archaeofaunal analysis, primary textual sources are explored to assess how the Skútustaðir household and its rural community mobilized long-term …

In The Name Of Profit: Canada’S Mount Arrowsmith Biosphere Reserve As Economic Development And Colonial Placemaking, Richard M. Hutchings, Marina La Salle

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Taking a critical heritage approach to late modern naming and placemaking, we discuss how the power to name reflects the power to control people, their land, their past, and ultimately their future. Our case study is the Mount Arrowsmith Biosphere Reserve (MABR), a recently invented place on Vancouver Island, located in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. Through analysis of representations and landscape, we explore MABR as state-sanctioned branding, where a dehumanized nature is packaged for and marketed to wealthy ecotourists. Greenwashed by a feel-good “sustainability” discourse, MABR constitutes colonial placemaking and economic development, representing no break with past practices.

Subsistence In Samoa: Influences Of The Capitalist Global Economy On Conceptions Of Wealth And Well-Being, Tess Hosman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper studies Samoa’s position in the global economy as an informal agricultural economy. A country’s access to the global economy reflects a level of socio-economic development and political power. It is also reflective of the country’s history of globalization. This research uses an analysis of past and current forms of colonization that continue to influence cultural and ideological practices, specifically practices regarding food. Concepts of wealth and well-being in subsistence and capitalist economies are compared and contrasted. Research takes place on the main island of Upolu, in and around the capital, Apia. Information is accumulated from previous research and …

A Culture Of Resistance: An Ethnography Of Tampa Bay’S Racial Justice Activist Community, Emily Janna Weisenberger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Racial justice activists in Tampa Bay comprise a community and culture structured as a movement of social transformation. Data from eleven interviews and more than 100 hours of participant observation show that activists consist of a diverse array of Tampa Bay residents of varying ages, genders, sexualities, racial/ethnic identities and livelihoods. This community is best described by their beliefs and practices of ideology steeped in intersectionality and anti-capitalism, and are motivated by or empathetic to racial injustices directly experienced by them or those around them. The intention of this paper is to describe activists as they are rather than as …

How To Be The Perfect Asian Wife!, Sophia Hill

Art and Art History Honors Projects

“How to be the Perfect Asian Wife” critiques exploitative power systems that assault female bodies of color in intersectional ways. This work explores strategies of healing and resistance through inserting one’s own narrative of flourishing rather than surviving, while reflecting violent realities. Three large drawings mimic pervasive advertisement language and presentation reflecting the oppressive strategies used to contain women of color. Created with charcoal, watercolor, and ink, these 'advertisements' contrast with an interactive rice bag filled with comics of my everyday experiences. These documentations compel viewers to reflect on their own participation in systems of power.

John Lee Hancock, The Founder (2016), Alejandro Hazera

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

Adam Smith, Market And Social Change: Then And Now, Dominique Bouchet

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Adam Smith (1723-1790) provided us with a remarkable synthesis of the economic and political ideas of his time and developed a conceptual system to analyze social interactions that mattered for the wealth of nations. He proposed a radically different roadmap for the future development of the society he lived in. The fact that his original analyses were rooted in a given historical context and were founded on a well thought-through conceptual system should not be ignored. The dribs and drabs of Adam Smith ideas that are bandied about, particularly to support ‘free’ market and anti-regulatory policies, are a far cry …

Is A New Epoch Possible?, Deniz Atik, Nikhilesh Dholakia

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

The Process To Political Mobilization In Five College Capitalism: Forms Of Antiracism, Personal Reflection And Community-Building, Caitlin B. Homrich

Masters Theses

The town of Amherst, Massachusetts is home to the flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst College, and Hampshire College, institutions that have greatly influenced the town’s prolific history of political activism as well as the high educational attainment and economic status of the majority of its residents. Often hailed as a liberal utopia, research on the political mobilization occurring in this town provides insight into the process and limitations of ally politics: when most of the residents of Amherst are White, how do they engage in racial justice activism? When most of the residents are wealthy and/or highly …

Listening To The Mattole: Lessons In Bioregionalism, Cannabis, And Capitalism From A Northern California Community, Nicola R. Walters

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In the United States, from the 1960s through the 1970s, nearly a million Americans left urban areas to establish themselves in rural environments; this exodus is now known as the back-to-the-land movement. Nestled in the mountains of Northern California, along a capricious river, and surrounded by natural beauty, the Mattole Valley became home to many of these back-to-the-land immigrants. Seasoned in the social and cultural movements of Berkeley and San Francisco during the 1960s, the “new settlers” transformed the social and environmental landscape of southern Humboldt County as they integrated into rural communities. The Mattole Valley offers a unique look …

Discourses Of "Cruelty-Free" Consumerism: Peta, The Vegan Society And Examples Of Contemporary Activism, Andrea Springirth

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper draws upon the principles of critical discourse analysis in order to examine the production of capitalist and consumerist discourses within contemporary nonhuman animal rights activism. The analysis presents evidence to suggest that the discourses being produced via the websites of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and The Vegan Society are consistently being constructed through market-centric ideologies that treat activists mainly as middle-class consumers. This paper argues that the consistent presence of neoliberal discourse signals an instructive entanglement with broader sociopolitical issues. Specifically, there are concerns as to how this discourse relates to what is thought …

Investigating Alternative Subsistence Strategies Among The Homeless Near Tampa, Florida, Matthew Peter Rooney

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Modern homelessness is one of the most pressing social and political problems of our time. Several hundred thousand people experience homelessness in the United States each year, and the U.S. Department of Housing, which attempts to count those people, has admitted that their statistics are conservative estimates at best. A recent archaeological study (Zimmerman et al 2010) examining material culture associated with homeless communities in Indianapolis has suggested that those who are considered chronically homeless have generally abandoned wage labor and are instead pursuing urban foraging as a subsistence strategy. In order to better understand the structures of homeless communities, …

Uncovering And Recovering Cleared Galloway: The Lowland Clearances And Improvement In Scotland, Christine B. Anderson

Doctoral Dissertations

This study seeks to understand the removal of people from the land as symptomatic of two narratives based in the colonial and capital enterprises, clearing and Improvement. Spatially, this relationship has been constructed around the distances between two players: the beneficiaries of the colonial enterprise, namely core, western and European based countries, and the subaltern or peripheral populations usually located at great distances from the sites of inception. These peripheral spaces were the locations of immense change in terms of both material culture and historical memories. Here, these moments are explored within the small, defined space of Galloway, Scotland, which …

The Sharing Economy: Exploring The Intersection Of Collaborative Consumption And Capitalism, Ellyn E. Erving

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores how the sharing economy in America combines Collaborative Consumption ideas and social values with capitalist business models to make a profit. I discuss definitions of terms associated with the sharing economy, economic anthropological theories and case studies, as well as company and consumer motivations in sharing economy companies.

Book Review: The Archaeology Of American Labor And Working-Class Life By Paul A. Shackel, James A. Delle

Northeast Historical Archaeology

The Archaeology of American Labor and Working-Class Life, by Paul A. Shackel, 2009, The American Experience in Archaeological Perspective Series, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 160 pages, 20 illustrations, $69.95 (cloth), $19.95 (paper).

Book Review: Historical Archaeologies Of Capitalism, Edited By Mark P. Leone And Parker B. Potter, Jr., Louann Wurst

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Book Review: Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism, edited by Mark P. Leone and Parker B. Potter, Jr., 1999, Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, 262 pages, illus., $85.00 (hardcover).

The Tva Coal Ash Disaster And The Coal Calamity Continuum In Southern Appalachia, Erin Rae Eldridge

Doctoral Dissertations

Coal was once hailed as a means through which humans could free themselves from nature and enter a world of unending progress and growth. As a fuel for economic development, it has long been central to projects of capitalist modernity in the Appalachian South. It is also a resource that connects the central mining areas of the region to the development agendas of the Tennessee Valley. The 2008 disaster at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee represents one of numerous calamities along the life cycle of coal in the region. The deluge of coal ash …