Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Eu Ets: A Critical Analysis, Marceline Grey Swan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Carbon markets, established via cap & trade programs, are the dominant means by which climate stabilization is currently being pursued worldwide, with many centered around the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme. As such, a critical analysis of the EU ETS & its effectiveness is crucial to assess whether the EU carbon market is an effective mechanism to achieve climate stabilization. The effectiveness of the overall program was evaluated via a determination of whether the EU ETS, & to a greater extent the EU carbon market, has allowed for emissions reductions in line with the goal for climate stabilization set by …

Using Multi-Source Data To Assess The Dynamics Of Socioeconomic Development In Africa, Xuantong Wang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Frequent and rapid spatially explicit assessment of socioeconomic development is critical for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at both national and global levels. In the past decades, scientists have proposed many methods for monitoring human activities on the Earth’s surface on various spatiotemporal scales using Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Operational Line System (DMSP-OLS) nighttime lights (NTL) data. However, the DMSP-OLS NTL data and the associated processing methods have limited their reliability and applicability for systematic measuring and mapping of socioeconomic development. This research utilizes Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) NTL and the Isolation Forest (iForest) machine learning algorithm …

“The Gates Are Closed Here”: A Mixed Methods Study Examining The Lived Experiences Of Black South African Township Youth, Jason St. Mary

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

South African Black township youth encounter immense risks within their environment, with little opportunity for perceived success. The Langa Township, the oldest established segregated community in Cape Town, South Africa, is enveloped in massive unemployment rates, substantial poverty, and violent gangsterism. Extensive literature exists in North America on the relationship between positive youth development (PYD) and successful outcomes for young individuals, although there is limited research examining the framework in an international context. Due to historical oppression forced on South African youth, postcolonial theory provides a critical foundational component to PYD in the study. This mixed methods study examined the …

Denkyem (Crocodile): Identity Development And Negotiation Among Ghanaian-American Millennials., Jakia Marie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ghanaian immigrants and second-generation Ghanaian-American Millennials are largely ignored in scholarship. Using qualitative methods, this study explored the experiences of Ghanaian-American Millennials who are first, 1.5, and second-generations with the purpose of understanding how they create, negotiate, and re-create identities. Twenty-one individuals were interviewed using a phenomenological approach. The main findings suggest that even though the sample populations were of different immigrant generations, they have some similar experiences, which demonstrates the value in exploring age instead of solely immigrant generation. The findings also suggest that there are a number of complex layers that are involved in identity development and negotiation …

Multi-Level Governance Of Climate Change Adaptation: United Nations Negotiations And Adaptation Project Implementation In Nicaragua And Samoa, Anna E. Mcginn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The rapid entry into force of the Paris Agreement reaffirmed, with certainty, that the international community would continue its efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change impacts opening a new era of international cooperation on climate change. This thesis explores how both negotiations around climate change adaptation and adaptation project implementation have evolved in this post-Paris Agreement era (from adoption in December 2015 to present). Using the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) Adaptation Fund as the central lens, the chapters explore international negotiations around the Fund as well as two Adaptation Fund funded …

Climate Resilient Development And Discourse In The Peruvian Highlands, Jamie A. Haverkamp

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation strives to rethink apolitical and ahistorical efforts for adapting to climate change in terms of a political struggle for survival in times of radical global environmental change. Drawing on ethnographic and participatory fieldwork with agro-pastoralists of the Peruvian Andes, government officials and international NGO actors, this dissertation follows emergent climate-resilient discourse of rapid glacier retreat as it travels from global origins and articulates with local culture and indigenous ecologies in the Cordillera Blanca. Through this research, I offer a critical interpretive analysis of modern, capitalist and rationalist ways of knowing and planning for climate change, finding that such …

Shoulder To Shoulder Yet Worlds Apart: Variations In Women's Integration In The Militaries Of France, Norway, And The United States, Kyleanne Hunter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Women have become an essential part of Western militaries. Particularly concerning the experience of NATO militaries in Afghanistan, there has been much public attention on the role of women in the military. While Western militaries are often studied as a whole with regards to military operations, there is variation in both how women are employed in the military and the experience they have as service members. This dissertation seeks to understand the cause of this variation by examining three critical cases: France, Norway and the United States.

In this dissertation, I argue foundational beliefs about gender equality affect the institutional …

Oppositional Politics And Gramsci's Civil Society: Patron-Clientelism In Jordan And Value-Centered Scholarship, Stephen James Preisig

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Patron-clientelism or wasta in Jordan is a historically engrained institution that crosses social, political and economic spheres. For those with sufficient resources to enter into its system of exchange, patron-clientelism grants access to university admissions, government privileges and employment. For those without sufficient resources, patron-clientelism creates a barrier to entry that sustains the marginalized status of persons from low socio-economic backgrounds.

Most scholarship about patron-clientelism portrays it as something dynamic, inherently neither morally constructive nor problematic but with the potential to be both. By focusing on various historical manifestations of patron-clientelism, such scholarship detracts attention from its reprehensible effects. Posing …

The Effects Of Fundamentals, Speculation, Government Policies, And International Capital Flows On China's Stock Market, Yanshen Qi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper, based on the relationship between the economy, policy and the financial market seeks to explore the leading force in China's stock market and identify how the government policies affect the stock market, through an analysis of the performance of the Shanghai Stock Exchange Index over the past 10 years. Comparing the stocks' intrinsic value to their market price can present an aerial view of China's stock market. When the market prices deviated from fundamentals, we can find what government did to respond to the market and lead market opinions.

Through our estimation, comparing the sample fundamental prices with …

A Comparative Study Of Electoral Systems: Majoritarian Rules And Electoral Violence In Africa, Gavin M. Kiger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An increasing trend of violent elections is undermining the former optimism over multi-party elections in Africa. Electoral systems are frequently associated with election violence, but the effects of different systems are relatively unknown. This study addresses this gap and assesses whether conditions for electoral violence are greater under certain electoral systems compared to others. Using a new time-series cross sectional (TSCS) dataset, I conduct an analysis of election violence in sub-Saharan Africa from 1995-2013. Overall, I find evidence for the violence-permitting nature of majoritarian systems, and the violence-constraining nature of proportional representation systems. These findings remain after controlling for the …

A Gendered Intersectional Analysis Of The Private Security Industry, Noa Shapira

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis conducts an intersectional gendered analysis of the privatization of wars and armed conflicts through the use of private military and security companies (PMSC's), thus responding to an existing gap in scholarship on this matter. Two methodologies were used for this analysis. The first is a discourse analysis and interviews conducted in the 5th annual assembly of the International Code of Conduct Association, in November 2018. The second is a search in newspapers and secondary sources for specific incidences of gender-related human rights abuses. Based on lessons learned from peacekeeping operations, this thesis aims to answer the question how …

Dear Hubert Creekmore: An Archival Search Into The Life Of A Queer Mississippi Writer, Mary Stanton Knight

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Dear Hubert Creekmore: An Archival Search into the Life of a Queer Mississippi Writer examines the life of writer, translator, poet, painter, and trained classical pianist Hiram Hubert Creekmore, Jr. through archival research of collections donated by the author at three public institutions. The thesis explores the private relationships Creekmore had with literary and artistic figures from 1940-1966 and the silence surrounding LGBTQ archives to produce a more extensive biographical work on the author. Creekmore’s relationships with a variety of writers, composers, artists, and publishers is examined in order to discover his circle of friends as well as attempt to …

When Do Ties Bind? Foreign Fighters, Social Embeddedness, And Combatant Repertoires Of Behavior During Civil War, Pauline Luz Moore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

How does the extent to which rebel organizations are embedded into local conflict contexts - i.e. the extent to which they "fit in" or "stand out" from local populations - affect their behavior on and off the battlefield during civil war? This dissertation examines why rebel group propensities to engage in governance and violence during war vary at the macro and microlevels of analysis and uses as its point of departure the presence of foreign fighters in the ranks of rebel groups engaged in civil war. I employ a cross-national analysis of insurgencies from 1989-2011, and also conduct a theory-testing …

Getting To The Root: The Struggles And Resilience Of Black Womanhood Through Stories Of Natural Hairstyles While Attending A Predominantly White Institution, Je'monda Roy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will provide the framework for black women’s stories of struggle and resilience through natural hairstyles at a Mississippi predominantly white institution – The University of Mississippi. Although the framework of this essay is set in one institution in a state located in the Deep South, the stories and methods apply to the American society and how the lack of black representation in white spaces shape black lives, specifically black women’s lives. Like creating black safe spaces in white spaces, black hair is used as a theme in this essay to shape the stories of black women’s experiences – …

Prevention Of Violence Against Children: A Systems Readiness Assessment In Côte D’Ivoire, Marie-Kaye Soletchi Seya-Sery

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Violence against children (VAC) is a global problem with significant consequences. Recognizing the need to better understand the problem of VAC in Côte d’Ivoire (CI), the government of CI recently completed a survey on violence against children. The recent data will support an evidence-based national action plan for the prevention of VAC. Research shows that initiatives tackling specific problems will only be as successful as the community’s readiness to take action. This study applied the community readiness model to assess the readiness of the multisectoral task force (MSTF) to implement the national action plan in CI. Eight MSTF participants’ interview …

The Plantation Pull: Modernities And Genre In The Anglo-Hispanic-Dutch Caribbean-Atlantic, 1831-1935, Natalie Magdalena Aikens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, “The Plantation Pull: Modernities and Genre in the Anglo-Hispanic-Dutch Caribbean-Atlantic, 1831-1935” contrasts the idea of homogeneous national ideals with depictions in literature of stratified geopolitical regions deeply divided by issues of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status matching those ambivalent spaces described by Homi Bhabha in Nation and Narration. The project demonstrates in literature the way that the values of the capitalist plantation machine based around mechanization and modernization, what I term “the plantation pull,” nevertheless thwarts one of the major iterations of modernity in the nineteenth century: nation formation. The “plantation pull” …

Silence Descends: Lynchings And Their Aftermath In Lafayette And Union Counties, Mississippi, Jonathan Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The role of silence is explored with regard to how two lynchings in North Mississippi have, or have not, been memorialized. L.Q. Ivy was lynched in Union County in 1925. Despite several newspaper articles over the decades since the lynching has occurred his death is not acknowledged in the local history narrative, nor is it memorialized with a marker. Elwood Higginbottom was lynched in neighboring Lafayette County in 1935 and, despite a silence that has persisted for decades, has recently been memorialized. The process of memorializing Higginbottom’s lynching and what it has meant to the family is compared to the …

The Carolina Gay Association, The Southeastern Gay Conferences, And Gay Liberation In The 1970s South, David Hooper Schultz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project explores how the successes and failures of local organizing networks in the South shaped national conversations on the rights of queer Americans. Its starting point is 1970 with the Triangle Gay Alliance’s formation in Raleigh, and it ends in 1978 with the third annual Southeastern Gay Conference and repeal of Miami-Dade County’s nondiscrimination ordinance. Paying close attention to the founding of the Carolina Gay Association in 1975 and the subsequent Southeastern Gay Conferences (SEGCs), the thesis connects the attendance at conferences to locally-organized activist groups from North Carolina to Florida to show that rather than being “lonely hunters” …

Exploring The Capabilities Approach In A Sport For Development And Peace Setting., Jeffrey F. Levine

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) has become a popular approach to development. However, critical scholars remain skeptical of SDP’s effectiveness. Utilizing a holistic approach that includes local voices may help a program’s effectiveness. Scholars are searching for a framework flexible enough to accommodate the varied nature of programs. One theoretical approach is the Capabilities Approach, which evaluates well-being based on what people can do and be. This case study explored the Capabilities Approach in an SDP setting. Youth Odyssey, a non-profit organization that works with at-risk youth through adventure programming, was the case. This case study explored what role …

The Foundations Of Aleksandr Dugin's Geopolitics: Montage Fascism And Eurasianism As Blowback, Grant Scott Fellows

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an examination of Aleksandr Dugin's The Foundations of Geopolitics, of which I have translated important sections into English and these are included as an appendix. Despite the importance of Foundations of Geopolitics to Russian strategic thought there has not been a translated edition published in English. This work was published in 1997 and has been quite influential for Russian political and military leadership. I strive to provide context for the setting in which Foundations of Geopolitics was created through an analysis of the social and political conditions that existed in Russia while the text was being …

Weathering Climate Change: Provisions For Climate Change Resiliency In Transboundary River Treaties, Emily Joan Zmak

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Climate change will be most apparent in alterations to the hydrologic system - shifts in movement, variations in extremes - thereby defining many resource disputes in the coming decades. Water is a boundaryless resource; as its hydrologic patterns shift within and without borders, so too will preexisting agreements on its use and allocation. The question for transboundary water agreements is: how can agreements both satisfy parties' needs and account for future uncertainties of climate-induced changes to their basins' hydrologic systems?

From examining literature and water agreements, this thesis develops a list of provisions identified as foundational to resiliency in transboundary …

Examining The Link Between Press Freedom And Politics., Megan Wollerton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Freedom of the press is a hallmark of liberal democracy. Denying this civil liberty emboldens a government to exert an undue degree of influence over its citizens. By comparing the media discourse in a democratic country to the media discourse in an authoritarian country, one could reasonably expect to identify unique language markers, which shed light on their divergent political climates. This study specifically sourced articles from the Venezuelan publication El Universal and the Costa Rican publication The Tico Times. The author then analyzed every article related to politics published by both newspapers in March 2014 and in March …

Analysis Of Gender And Gender-Related Implicit Leadership Themes In Hr Practitioner Literature : A Comparison Of The United States And Brazilian Hr Practitioner Publications., Flavia De Sousa E Castro Rossetti

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Among the many factors studied in relation to the women and leadership equality gap are gender stereotypes, implicit leadership theories, and the congruity of gender role expectations (Eagly, & Karau, 2002). Multiple studies in the scholarly literature support the finding that men, rather than women, are more likely to be seen as leaders (Bierma, 2016; Eagly, & Schmidt, 2001), and this finding appears to be robust across some cultures (Schein, 2001). While the scholarly research on women and leadership has been burgeoning, few research studies have investigated how human resource (HR) practitioner literature addresses themes related to women and leadership …

Calibrating A System Dynamic Model Within An Integrative Framework To Test Foreign Policy Choices, Carlos Kavetsky

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Political science uses international relations (IR) theory to explain state-actor political behavior. Research suggests that this theoretical framework can inform a predictive model incorporating features of systems dynamics (SD) and agent based (AB) modeling. The Foreign Policy Model (ForPol) herein applies Alexander Y. Lubyansky's (2014) SD model for macro-political behavior to represent behaviors between real systems and mental models. While verifying and validating the resulting SD/AB/IR holistic model requires an extensive comprehensive research agenda, the present work will take a closer examination at input parameter calibration and conducting typical runs of the SD portion of the model as a first …

Communism's Futures: Intelligentsia Imaginations In The Writings Of The Strugatsky Brothers, Elizabeth Tammaro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky were the most popular science fiction writing duo in Soviet Russia from the 1960s through the 1980s. Examining their imaginative fictional worlds against the background of wider changes in the Soviet Union allows scholars to gain insights in the world of the Soviet intelligentsia, the educated bearers of culture. As members of this group, the Strugatskys expressed the hopes, frustrations and fears, of their peers, vindicating their intellectual and emotional life. I support the argument that the Brothers occupied a middle ground between conformity and dissident, dubbed the "lost" intelligentsia by Lloyd Churchward. I demonstrate this …

Terracing, Land Management And Agricultural Soils In The Andagua Valley Of The Southern Peruvian Andes, Blaise Murphy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Demographic, socio-political and climatic changes can drastically alter agricultural land management practices, affecting the availability of agriculturally relevant nutrients in the soil. This project investigates the use, reconstruction and abandonment of agricultural terraces and the implications these conditions have on agricultural soil properties of the Andagua Valley in the Western Cordillera of the Southern Peruvian Andes. During the 2016 summer field season, topsoil samples were collected from cultivated and abandoned agricultural terraces between 3229m and 3688m a. s. l. with a range of aspects and ages. Collaboration with a team of archaeologists and anthropologists gave insight into the local and …

Selfhood, Historical Consciousness, And The State In International Relations Theory, Edinson Oquendo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work seeks to examine the role of the state in international relations. While international relations treat states as institutions endowed with agency, they lack any means of explaining how the state can gain agency, autonomy, and rationality.

My dissertation seeks to reorient the theoretical assumptions of international relations in two ways. I develop a theory of the of the state that seeks to explain the mechanisms by which individuals are able to form collective social institutions and to endow them with authority and agency. I examine the relationship of the individuals to collective bodies such as states that can …

The Strategic Challenges Of Urban Warfare, Christian Aditya Niksch

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With urbanization on the rise, policymakers cannot ignore urban conflicts. In the aftermath of the Cold War, several scholars were of the opinion that primitive modes of fighting, such as close combat, would cease to be used. However, as urban spaces have increasingly become battlefields in the 21st century, there has been a retrogression to a brutal and bloody mode of fighting. This return of primitivism affects the tactics that the military can use in urban warfare, which makes it a daunting strategic challenge. A combined focus on policy, strategy, and operations is necessary to improve thinking about how exactly …

When Rhinos Are Sacred: Why Some Countries Control Poaching, Paul F. Tanghe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Why are some countries more effective than others at controlling rhino poaching? Rhinos are being poached to extinction throughout much of the world, yet some weak and poor countries have successfully controlled rhino poaching. This dissertation presents a theory accounting for divergent patterns in the control of rhino poaching, explaining why rhino poaching has been controlled in some countries yet increases exponentially in others. It does so by examining the relational models predominant in each country with wild rhino populations, including institutional analysis of all rhino range states, detailed analysis of social constructions used by nearly two hundred conservationists in …

The Political Economy Of The Automobile Industry Development In China, Muyuan Niu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper analyses the political economy of developing the modern Chinese automobile industry. By using qualitative research method, especially case study, and developmental rent management analysis framework, the author analyzed the development in three different time periods since the Chinese economic reform in 1978. Case studies of learning period, developing period and new Chinese owned enterprises after joining WTO presented different policies and rent management strategies arranged by the state to industrialize and develop the modern Chinese automobile industry. Although there are failures involved in the arrangement, China finally industrialized and developed its modern automobile industry and became the world's …