Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Problem Of Blackness In America: Becoming When The Being Never Comes To Be, Nkiru Anyaegbunam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The problem of Blackness in America is a consequence of the historical reality and continued legacies of colonialism, the triangular trade and chattel slavery that have been facilitated through violence and capitalism. This thesis will argue that this problem that is pronounced through racialized institutional systems of violence such as mass incarceration and housing inequality, which disproportionately negatively impacts Black Americans is part of a larger discourse on the human and (mis)recognition. This violence has created a quintessential incompleteness for Black Americans who neither are recognized as citizens nor human. The problem of Blackness will be continuously grounded in this …

Red Sea, White Tides, And Blue Horizons, John P. Devine

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Eric Hobsbawm, in his effort to explain the fundamental divide which produced the Second World War, convincingly argues that “the crucial lines in this civil war were not drawn between capitalism as such and communist social revolution, but between ideological families: on the one hand the descendants of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the great revolutions including, obviously the Russian revolution’, on the other hand, its opponents.” This thesis argues that the American Civil War was a “great revolution” that represented a crucial transformative point in the formation of these two waring factions. The struggle was especially influential on the theory …

Runaway: A History Of Postwar New York In Four Factories, Andy Battle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At midcentury, New York City was among the preeminent manufacturing centers in the United States. Within a generation, this manufacturing economy suffered an extraordinary collapse. Beginning in the 1950s, workers and their unions began to use the term “runaway” to describe factories that pulled up stakes in New York and set them back down in other climes. This dissertation explores the deindustrialization of New York City through case studies of “runaway” plants, or factories that left New York for the American South or abroad between the years 1945 and 1975.

In general, the manufacturers that remained in New York at …

Caring Without Sharing: Philanthropy's Creation And Destruction Of The Common World, Amy B. Schiller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores multiple ways philanthropy builds and undermines the common world. Political science treatments of philanthropy have focused mainly on its role in the development of civil society, with a recent turn towards critiques of philanthropy as an instrument of elite power and tension between private wealth and democratic governance. In this dissertation, I examine how philanthropy can foster enduring spaces of human flourishing, or reduce beneficiaries to objects of pity, surveillance and domination. I trace philanthropy's evolution from ancient to contemporary contexts and propose a framework for philanthropy to, under certain conditions, build and care for the common …

By Beauty Damned: Millennial Feminism And The Exploitation Of Women's Empowerment In Pop Culture And Corporate Advertising, Maria L. Carreon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Feminism has become a trendy cultural identity, leaving it open to exploitation by capitalists. Notions relating to “women’s empowerment” are used by capitalists to sell products to women, and yet many of those capitalists fund political campaigns that directly seek to quash or inhibit the advancement of women’s rights. With a little effort, any consumer can find out who their big purveyors are supporting politically. For example, Procter Gamble, who makes many products bought by women, gives the majority of its political contributions to republicans who oppose women’s reproductive rights. The same is true of McAndrews & Forbes, the parent …

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 …

Madison Vanguard: A Novel, Berni Moestafa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project takes the form of a popular fiction novel that introduces parts of the academic discussion on capitalism to a wider audience through storytelling. Using a fictional fiscal crisis in New York as its setting, the novel discusses the relationship between capitalism and democracy. It therefore aims to address the underrepresentation of the debate on capitalism in popular entertainment and raise awareness about some of the debate’s key issues.

Popular culture be that music, film, books, media, videogames or advertisement surround our lives and expose us to a plethora of messages that help shape our understanding of the …