Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Exploring Psychopathy Predictors In Males And Females, Teresa M. Encalada

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Psychopathy is a clinical term used to describe a personality disorder. This personality disorder presents as callousness, lack of empathy, feelings of grandiosity, impulsivity, narcissism, and a lack of guilt or remorse (Cleckley, 1951). It is noteworthy that by some estimates, those meeting the criteria of psychopathy commit 20 – 40% of violent crimes (Drislane et al., 2019) and makeup between 15% and 25% of the prison population (Kiehl & Hoffman, 2011). As such, psychopathy is one of the most significant criminal justice constructs of the present day because of the heightened and persistent levels of aggression, criminality, and financial …

Lift Every Voice: A Narrative Study Of The Lived Experiences Of Black Female Educators In Public Schools, Rachelle A. Surrancy

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Black female educators (BFE’s) are becoming an anomaly in public school education. This decline, which can be traced back to the period of desegregation, has persisted, as Black female educators comprise only 5% of the current teacher workforce; and this at a time when their presence is needed and critically important to the successful educational experiences and outcomes of all students, but particularly Black students. While much of the research focused on Black female educators has centered around factors contributing to their decisions to leave the field, this dissertation, through the critical lenses of Critical Race Theory (CRT), and Black …

The Politics Of The Self: Psychedelic Assemblages, Psilocybin, And Subjectivity In The Anthropocene, Joshua Falcon

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how psychedelic substances become drawn into particular sociohistorical and political arrangements, and how psychedelic experiences with psilocybin ‘magic mushrooms’ are used as tools of subjectivation. Guided by literatures in philosophy, critical theory, and the social sciences that focus on subjectivity, assemblage theory, and critical posthumanism, I argue that psychedelics are drawn into variegated assemblages, each of which conceptualizes the nature of psychedelics in highly specific ways that reflect implicit conceptions of the world and the self. In developing the concept of psychedelic assemblages, this research provides a window onto the politics of the self in the Anthropocene. …

Afro-Cubans, Incorporation, And Cubanidad In Miami, Fl, Elena M. Cruz

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research study is to investigate how Afro-Cubans as double diasporic subjects have been incorporated into the socio-cultural landscape of South Florida and the relationship between these methods of incorporation and the evolution of ethno-racial identification. The study examines the role of race and racism in shaping the socio-economic adjustment of Afro-Cubans in South Florida. Miami is the appropriate research site as home to half of all Cuban immigrants in the United States where cubanidad is most closely associated with whiteness. Miami also has a substantial population of other Afro-diasporic populations, including Afro-Caribbean immigrants as well as …

Jewish Conversion During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Victoria Davide

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

March 2020 saw a stark change to daily life and religious practices for many individuals because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those converting to Judaism, or in the process of wanting to convert, found themselves physically isolated from their Jewish communities. This thesis dives into what aspects are important when creating a Jewish identity and how individuals circumnavigate these changes in crisis. Through the use of qualitative interviews this thesis illuminates the many different changes and experiences that individuals went through converting to Judaism during the COVID-19 pandemic. I bring many different groups for comparisons including different branches within Judaism and …

Physicians Among Us: The Lived Experience Of Unlicensed Foreign Born And Educated Physicians Present In The Us As They Retrain For Non-Physician Primary Care Roles., Dwight Nimblett

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There are as many as 65,000 unlicensed foreign born and trained doctors across the United States who are credentialed in their home countries but unable to practice in the U.S. The primary goal of this study was to describe and understand an understudied human experience: the lived experience of unlicensed foreign educated physicians who are present in the U.S. as they retrain for non-physician primary care roles.

The theoretical frameworks undergirding the study are Jack Mezirow’s Transformative Learning Theory (TL), also referred to as Perspective Transformation as well as the complimentary perspectives of Otherness and Liminality theories.

Seven FEPs were …

Do Home Invasion Serial Killers Warrant A Distinct Classification From Other Serial Killer Location Types? A Retrospective Comparative Examination, Caroline V. Comerford

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to address the research gap in serial homicide regarding home invasion serial killers (HISKs) and add to existing policy by providing insight and approaches to assist in serial murder investigations of such killers. Data for the study was obtained from the 2019 Radford University/Florida Gulf Coast University Serial Killer Database (RU/FGCU SKD) and additional public information searches. A retrospective comparative design and proportionate stratified random sampling of 326 serial killers from the RU/FGCU SKD (2019) were used to examine the differences and classifications of HISKs and non-home invasion serial killers (non-HISKs) in three investigations: (1) common characteristics; …

Social Class And Workplace Norms: How African American And White Women And Men From Working-Class Backgrounds Learn Workplace Norms As They Experience Career Mobility, Anna Kallschmidt

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Professional workplace norms in the U.S., such as wearing a suit to an interview or offering a firm handshake as a greeting (Sharma & Sharma, 2012), are behaviors considered ideal among members of a specific occupation (Cohn et al., 2017). This project investigated how people from working-class backgrounds in the U.S. learned, adopted, and conformed to workplace norms as they moved from a lower-status to a higher-status position within their career. Guided by Intersectionality Theory, Cultural Mismatch Theory, and the Stereotype Content Model, these studies examined how workplace norms shifted as employees changed social class and interacted with employees’ racial …

Perils, Pitfalls & Dilemmas In Responding To Transnational Organized Crime Groups., Juan Del Rio

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Governments employ several approaches to combat Transnational Organized Crime groups. These groups include drug trafficking organizations and armed-insurgent groups. Tactics such as High-Value Target strikes, Peace Accords, and vigilantism have shown to successfully debilitate criminal networks while at the same time sparking unintended negative outcomes. For example, some of these tactics are associated with an increase in cartel-related violence, terrorist attacks, and the lethality of terrorist attacks. What remains unclear is the degree to which these approaches affect these associations and which of these tactics has the most favorable outcomes in combating Transnational Organized Crime groups. The analyses conducted in …

"You've Been Accepted"?: Homonormativity And The Imagination Of Queer Higher Educational Spaces, Faye D. Pelow

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Spaces of higher education are often over-simplified in social science discourse, but their histories and evolutions are anything but straightforward. As colleges and universities have developed from institutions of religious social order to sites of perceived tolerance and exploration, they have also emerged as significant queer spaces. Indeed, some institutions of higher learning have even gained reputations for being particularly “LGBTQ+-friendly” safe spaces. Yet it is important to understand the social, political, moral and economic underpinnings upon which these establishments have been built and desire to uphold. Despite efforts to promote inclusivity, university spaces are also situated within an intricate …

Marginal Deterrence: The Association Between The Certainty Of Arrest And Monetary Reward On Robbery Escalation, Christopher E. Torres

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation serves as the seminal large-scale empirical analysis of the marginal deterrence principle. The extant literature on deterrence suffers from a great deal of controversy for two distinct reasons. First, prior research adheres to a myopic view of criminal offender decision-making because it focuses solely on the binary “yes” or “no” decision to commit a crime. It is thus plausible that prior work suppressed deterrent effects to some degree because the use of a binary outcome ignores any intermediate decision made by the criminal offender. Second, while the determination to perpetrate a crime is dependent on the sum of …

Longing For The Homeland: The Palestinian American Diaspora And Palestinian Advocacy In The United States, Mohamed Khaled Ghumrawi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores how Palestinian Americans in the diaspora connect with Palestine, Palestinian advocacy, and the Palestinian question. It analyzes and synthesizes the interaction of the Palestinian American diaspora and Palestinian advocacy, exploring its domestic and transnational linkages. It also explores the nexus of domestic and transnational aspects relating to Palestinian identity, political life, advocacy, culture, and politics. This project utilizes two main frameworks, the first is the tripartite composite state theory, focusing specifically on the normative-social structure. The second applies a framework of intersectionality, highlighting the interconnectedness of the Palestinian diaspora and the Palestinian question with other social …