Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Debate On Physician-Assisted Death In The United States: A Narrative Analysis Of Formula Stories, Rebecca Blackwell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Public policy discussions can be viewed as empirical windows into broadly shared culturalvalues and emotions of the social contexts in which the policy discussions take place. This project is a narrative analysis of the public debate on physician-assisted death (PAD), drawing from three data sources: newspaper articles, the websites of social movement organizations, and testimonies from a state legislative hearing. This analysis explores ways in which social actors deploy personal stories that contribute to shape the policy-making process by appealing to cultural beliefs and broadly shared emotions. The findings of this project constitute a contribution to the study of emotions …

“Here Come The Crackers!”: An Ethnohistorical Case Study Of Local Heritage Discourses And Cultural Reproduction At A Florida Living History Museum, Blair Bordelon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project explores the complex roles of power and heritage in the reproduction ofcultural and ethnic identities in the context of a local living history museum called Cracker Country. Throughout this thesis, I demonstrate how discourses of Florida heritage are constructed, reproduced, or contested in various ways among all the museum’s different communities of stakeholders. Using Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s (1995) theory of historical silences and expanding on Laurajane Smith’s (2006) notion of the Authorized Heritage Discourse, I explore the ways that heritage “works” at a local level, and the multitude of meanings it can hold within particular communities. I analyze the …

Meaning And Monuments: Morality, Racial Ideology, And Nationalism In Confederate Monument Removal Storytelling, Kathryn A. Delgenio

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis I examine the reproduction of nationalism and white supremacy within Confederate monument removal (CMR) storytelling, and the ways collective identity and emotions are implicated within these reproductions. Using reader generated CMR narratives published in a Southern newspaper, the Augusta Chronicle, I conduct narrative analysis in order to identify key story elements, moral arguments, and cultural codes present in the public CMR debate. Findings indicate that two sharply contested narratives emerge during this debate, one calling for the protection of Confederate monuments and one calling for the removal of Confederate monuments. Further, though these contested stories produce opposing …

Resisting Essentialism In Cultural Research: A Participatory Action Research Study Of Parent Involvement In Education Among Spanish-Speaking Students And Families, Michael J. Frank

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The present study aimed to investigate a locally-driven action research project to improve connections between Spanish-speaking Latinx parents and the high school that their children attend. Using Participatory Action Research (PAR), the study sought to create a collaborative research agenda that would empower the participants to study their own culture and practices at the school, and how the two combined to create a home-school partnership. Six parents and two members of the school’s bilingual staff comprised the PAR team, with a total of nine members including the principal investigator. The project began with the creation of a public sphere in …

Decreased Visibility: A Narrative Analysis Of Episodic Disability And Contested Illness, Melissa Jane Welch

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the United States alone, disability touches the lives of a tremendous amount of people. An increased prevalence of chronic illness, coupled with an aging population means it is likely and perhaps inevitable that everyone will experience disability in one way or another over the course of their lifetime. However not everyone who is disabled is recognized as such. Culturally, the narrative of “the healthy disabled person,” – or someone who is healthy, permanently, predictably, and visibly disabled renders many people with chronic and episodic pain, fatigue, and illness as unrecognizable as disabled. Even though increasing numbers of disability scholars …

Breaking The Crass Ceiling? Exploring Narratives, Performances, And Audience Reception Of Women's Stand-Up Comedy, Sarah Katherine Cooper

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite the long history of stand-up comedy as a distinct form of popular entertainment, there has been little sociological attention given to its cultural significance. Comedians have arguably become legitimate and visible voices in many public conversations about social issues and social justice. This dissertation explores the cultural work of women’s comedy in popular culture. Specifically, I examine narrative representation and audience reception of women’s stand-up comedy through multi-method qualitative inquiry.

First, I analyze stand-up performances by popular U.S. comedians Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes, and Margaret Cho. Through narrative analysis, I focus on the ironic performativity of Schumer and the …

Unraveling The Wild: A Cultural Logic Of Animal Stories In Contemporary Social Life, Damien Contessa

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is about the stories people tell about animals when they don’t do what they are expected to do in contemporary social life. More specifically, it examines three case studies where “wild” animals unexpectedly challenge, transgress, or blur socially defined boundaries in public spaces. Drawing on cultural and interactionist studies of animals and environment, I explore popular animal stories written in news media, social media, and enacted in situ. Each qualitative case study illustrates a moment in time/space where the surprising movements or presence of wild animals causes the cultural categories of wildness/order to breakdown and destabilize. These “surface …

“You Can Fight Logic…But You Can’T Fight God”: The Duality Of Religious Text And Church As Community For White Lesbians In Appalachian And Rural Places, Jessica Mae Altice

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Much of the research conducted on lesbians and place focuses on women who live in urban areas or highlights how participants wish to live in urban areas. Knowing that there are lesbians who live in rural and Appalachian areas that do not wish to leave to urban areas, this research examines participants’ experiences living in those places. Participants discuss how religion is a socially circulating meaning system in the places they live and it dictates much of social life. I argue that religion has a two-fold meaning for participants: one, it is a religious text that is used as a …

The Experience Of Chronic Pain Management: A Multi-Voiced Narrative Analysis, Loren Wilbers

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since the late 1990s, the abuse of prescription opioid painkillers has been constructed as a major social problem in the United States, commonly referred to in the media as the “prescription painkiller epidemic.” Stories of addiction, overdose deaths, robberies, and other tragedies related to prescription opioids have been, and continue to be, commonly featured in the media. In response to public outcry regarding the “epidemic,” government and medical institutions have enforced strict regulations on the distribution of opioids, targeting most of these regulations at the treatment of chronic pain in particular. In this dissertation, I examine the experience of chronic …

"In Heaven": Christian Couples' Experiences Of Pregnancy Loss, Grace Ellen Peters

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how young, married, heterosexual Christian couples talk about and make sense of pregnancy loss, specifically loss before the twentieth week. Studies of pregnancy loss often focus on individual differences in response to pregnancy loss, but this research engages a shared, relational notion of pregnancy loss. Furthermore, this project focuses on Christianity as a tool for making sense of pregnancy loss, not simply a demographic characteristic. I conducted six open-ended interviews with two couples, with one interview together and an individual follow-up interview with each spouse. Following the interviews, I analyzed and interpreted the interview transcripts for symbols …

Was It Something They Said? Stand-Up Comedy And Progressive Social Change, David M. Jenkins

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

From our earliest origins in every civilization across the globe, comic performances have fulfilled an important social function. Yet stand-up comedy has not attracted the serious academic inquiry one might expect. This dissertation argues that in the absence of public intellectuals stand-up comics are important to how we talk about and negotiate complicated issues like gender and race. These comic texts are sites of cultural critique, public discourse, tools for articulation, a means of persuasion, and serve to galvanize communities.

This dissertation argues that stand-up comedy performances are a vital part of modern American intellectual and social life and are …

Beauty Is Precious, Knowledge Is Power, And Innovation Is Progress: Widely Held Beliefs In Policy Narratives About Oil Spills, Brenda Gale Mason

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Scholars from diverse perspectives have sought to understand the features and mechanisms that influence the design and implementation of public policy. Some (realists) have emphasized the role that material interests have played while others (idealists) have emphasized the influence of subjective ideas on ‘how policy means’ (Yanow 1996). Recently, observers in both camps have demonstrated curiosity in the influence of culture on policymaking and its consequences. Regrettably, this shared concern has not resulted in much collaboration across epistemological divides.

I argue that narrative analysis provides a way to bridge the divides by specifying an interpretive approach that identifies culture as …

A Multilevel Examination Of Cultural Moderators Of The Job Demands-Resources Model, Seulki Jang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although the Job Demands-Resources Model (JD-R) is the dominant theoretical framework used to understand the relationship between workplace factors and employee well-being, the cross-cultural generalizability of this model has seldom been directly tested. Therefore, this study examined whether and to what extent relationships between: 1) job demands (i.e., organizational constraints) and strain (i.e., job satisfaction, and turnover intentions) and 2) job resources (i.e., job control, participation in decision-making, direct supervisor support, senior leader support, and clear goals and performance feedback) and strain were moderated by cultural dimensions (i.e., individualism-collectivism and uncertainty avoidance). Survey data from workers in 28 countries were …

Constructing Legal Meaning In The Supreme Court Oral Arguments: Cultural Codes And Border Disputes, Jeffrey Forest Hilbert

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Culture plays a part in the construction of legal understandings in the Supreme Court contrary to much legal scholarship. The oral argument of the Supreme Court is a unique way for Justices to gather information beyond the formalized briefs and prior written opinions. In the oral argument the Supreme Court Justices utilize cultural codes as tools to probe, shape, negotiate and challenge the legal meanings and boundaries of the case before them. Using the oral argument transcript in a 2010 Supreme Court case on the issue of whether California has the right to censor the sale of violent video games …

Expatriates' Acculturation Strategies: Going Beyond "How Adjusted Are You?" To "How Do You Adjust?", Matthew Lineberry

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Expatriates' degree of adjustment to living and working in a foreign country is well-accepted as an important outcome variable in expatriate management research. However, measures of degree of adjustment do not capture the breadth of strategies expatriates may use to achieve such adjustment, which may be critical for understanding whether expatriates have achieved a healthy and productive orientation to life abroad. Borrowing from research on immigrant populations, this study examines the construct of expatriate acculturation strategies, which characterize expatriates' mode of adjustment along two independent dimensions reflecting maintenance of one's home culture and engagement of the host culture, respectively. One …

Strategizing Relationships 2.0: An Analysis Of International Companies' Use Of Social Media, Jessica Marie Brightman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Because of technological advances and the blurring of boundaries, the world is becoming a global community. Global communications have made it essential for multinational corporations to develop and maintain a consistent worldwide identity and brand image. It is no longer possible to classify people into simple and stable segments of customers; the world is evolving and so is the population. The purpose of this research is to bridge the gap between the academic and professional world of international public relations by expanding the stream of literature and incorporating a global aspect. Within the last few years, social media has seen …

The Maghreb Maquiladora: Gender, Labor, And Socio-Economic Power In A Tunisian Export Processing Zone, Claire Therese Oueslati-Porter

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study is about Tunisian women's work and lives in the present era of economic neoliberalism. The focus is women in the city of Bizerte, Tunisia, both those who work in Bizerte's export processing zone (EPZ), as well as those who work outside it. This study is a qualitative examination of formal and informal employment, set inside and outside of women's traditional political and economic domain, the home. Through ethnography of women's work and lives, this study's purpose is to contribute evidence against conflating women's "empowerment" with incorporation into global production. However, this study also lends itself to considerations of …

Prospects For Political Reform In China, Jody Lee Tomlin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study is intended to analyze levels of institutional confidence in China. The purpose is to measure the relationship between changing political and cultural values with modernization and levels of institutional criticism. To analyze institutional criticism modernization and political culture theories are used. Using these theories together offers explanatory power as to what political and cultural values may change and why changes in confidence in governance may occur. These theories include socioeconomic, traditional, and political values to measure institutional confidence in 1990 and 2007. The examination of traditional versus modernization values imply that individuals possessing these opposing values display different …

The Holistic Complementary Structure Of Western Bio-Medicine And Traditional Healing And Achieving Complete Health, Candace Gail Oubre

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Achieving complete health requires a deep understanding of complementary cultural competency sensitivity between physician and patient. This may include but is not limited to access to preventative health care resources, access to health educational resources and access to cultural healing resources, for example, shamans, Ayurvedic physicians, and herbal healers. Advocates of cultural competency emphasize great importance on knowledge of the patients' cultural background; however, the transcendence of this knowledge can be explained further through complementary cultural competency sensitivity. This is when the cultures of the physician and patient complement each other in terms of understanding what is in the patients' …

That Is Bad! This Is Good: Morality As Constructed By Viewers Of Television Reality Programs, Joseph Charles Losasso

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Reality shows that feature people going about their presumed daily lives are not base entertainment. Internet message boards about reality programs are sites where moral work happens. Viewers write about the appearance and actions of show characters and construct moral lessons. Through naturally occurring data produced by fans of these shows, I find that viewers generally express a traditional heteronormative morality around class and gender through stating moral lessons, explaining what is wrong with the characters, or through ridicule and praise.