Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Immortalizing The Spirit Of The Colonizer, Maximiliano Lombardi

Dissertations and Theses

"European colonial expansion has institutionalized and simultaneously normalized, at the global level, the supremacy of a class, of an ethno-racial group, of a particular type of state organization, spirituality, an epistemology, a particular kind of institutionalization, a production of knowledge, language, pedagogy, and an economy oriented toward the accumulation of global capital. To understand these processes we cannot separate them from each other. In fact, even the word ""capitalism"" is misleading because it leads us to think of an economic system, when in reality it is a hegemonic system that transcends economic relations and includes race, sex, gender, spiritual, linguistic, …

Women's Development In Guangdong; Unequal Opportunities And Limited Development In A Market Economy, Ying Hua Yue

Dissertations and Theses

In the context of China’s three-decade market-oriented economic reform, in which economic development has long been prioritized, women’s development, as one of the social undertakings peripheral to economic development, has relatively lagged behind. This research is an attempt to unfold the current situation of women’s development within such context by studying the case of Guangdong -- the province as forerunner of China’s economic reform and opening-up -- drawing on current primary resources. First, this study reveals mixed results for women’s development in Guangdong: achievements have been made in education, employment and political participation in terms of “rates” and “numbers,” and …

An Endless Array Of Options; How The Internet Is Revolutionizing The Ways We Meet And Mate, Maria Montesano

Dissertations and Theses

Marriage rates are at a record low in the United States and there are currently more single people searching for partners than there have ever been at any point in our history. The Internet has revolutionized many aspects of our lives and it is increasingly playing a role in the formation of relationships. Much the way one looks for work online; shops for clothes, stays in contact with friends, or gathers information - one may now search online for a suitable romantic partner. Using a qualitative approach, this study seeks to explore the experiences of online dating site users through …

Why Oil Production Has A Negative Impact On Socioeconomic Development In Chad?, Annicette Kessely

Dissertations and Theses

"Oil production in Chad is considered one of the most important Sub-Saharan investments in Africa. In 2000, the World Bank agreed to finance oil production under the condition that oil revenues would be invested in socioeconomic development projects. Furthermore, the World Bank emphasized that oil revenues should be used in a transparent and accountable matter.1 Oil production started in Chad in 2003 and brought billions of dollars to the government. Nevertheless, the Chadian population continues to live in extreme poverty. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of oil production on socioeconomic development. It will demonstrate that …

Economic Growth And Energy Consumption In Oecd Countries; A Causality Analysis, Daria Kostyannikova

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of High Skilled Non-Immigrants (H-1b Visa Holders) On The Wages Of Natives, Onur Arslan

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

The Post-Conflict Reconciliation Process; Truth Commissions, Tomoe Nakagawa

Dissertations and Theses

"Since the end of the Cold War, our world has seen an increase in intra-state conflict and the emergence of the notion of state accountability for the treatment of their citizens. Furthermore, sovereign states increasingly see that it is in their interest to apply the rule of law and human rights norms beyond their borders. While peace building efforts have been achieved through criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparation programs, and vetting, a truth commission, in particular, has been progressively used in the past decade as one aspect of transitional justice measures. This increase in use illustrates its popularity in handling …

Minority Rights In Europe; The Roma Population As A Case Study, Michael Brooks

Dissertations and Theses

"This thesis undertakes an in-depth analysis of the minority rights of Roma populations living within the European Union. The Roma people face economic, social and political discrimination that permeates both government institutions and society in general and has prevented this minority group from integrating into the workings of society. This issue is important because the Roma lack a positive identity both of themselves and from other groups, which deprives the state of an important source of productivity. This is due in part from their own actions based on chosen isolation to some degree, and also because some Roma have become …

The "Europeanization" Of The Western Balkans; Is European Conditionality Fostering Democracy?, George Kostakis

Dissertations and Theses

"This thesis analyzes the current model of European Union conditionality toward the Western Balkans, which based on a dual approach through the Stabilization and Association Process (SAP). Through SAP, the European Union (EU) is trying to stabilize the Western Balkans, while at the same time associating them with EU policies and supporting them in taking over the EU acquis. My hypothesis is that in order to promote democracy and the rule of law, the EU's policy of stabilizing and integrating should be reformed to better strengthen and clarify conditionality. In order to test my hypothesis, I focused on the three …

Does Democratic Peace Theory Apply To Small Powers? A Case Study Of Turkey And Israel, Robert Lattin

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis hypothesizes that shared democratic values and institutional constraints, proposed as explanations by Democratic Peace Theory (DPT), should in theory prevent small powers from engaging in physical conflict. However, because these democracies are small and developing, these constraints may not influence outcomes in the same way as they do in larger and more developed powers. To test this hypothesis, a dyadic case study was conducted of the relationship between Turkey and Israel. Specific focus was given to two related events, both of which could have resulted in a physical conflict between the two countries: the May 2010 Flotilla incident …

Iran; A Nuclear Super Power? Understanding Nuclear Ambitions, Lindsey Sera

Dissertations and Theses

"Iran is a nation in flux, with a history of political strife and revolution. The everchanging political atmosphere in the nation has made Iran an unpredictable political actor. It is a nation coping with a new governing system, just a few decades out from a revolution from the reign of the Shah of Iran. The fall of reformism has left the nation politically isolated from the international community. Iran is a nation on the brink of nuclear weapon capabilities and with strained relations there is little comfort in sight for an amicable solution. The conservatives of today's Iran seek independence …

The Security & Development Nexus, Manizha Sayar

Dissertations and Theses

In the 21st century the need for conflict and post-conflict reconstruction efforts have increased since a number of conflicts in Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe necessitated the building of newly-democratized states while aiming to achieve security and promoting development. The difficulties that arise when helping to reconstruct states that have failed or those approaching a “failed state” status is that they are neither stable nor have a secure environment which prevent the opportunity for economic development, despite reconstruction efforts. These are the most difficult of situations due to the interconnectedness and direct correlation of the two significant criterions for established …

The Impact Of Internet On Economic Growth In Bangladesh, Mohammed Meah

Dissertations and Theses

"The purpose of this paper is two fold. The first goal is to reveal that an increase in the number of Internet users has a positive effect on economic growth within a nation. Based on this causality, the next objective is to demonstrate that less developed countries, specifically Bangladesh is in the best position to increase investment in the Internet to experience economic growth. Finally, the implications of Internet penetration on various economic sectors in Bangladesh are discussed. Panel data for 244 countries from the World Bank from 1990-2011 is used to carry out the experiment for the first goal. …

The Impacts Of Neo-Liberal Policies On Turkey In 2000-2001, Rezzan Alagoz

Dissertations and Theses

Since the late 1970s, many developing countries have been faced with difficulties due to their adoption of neo-liberal policies through agreements with World Bank and IMF. Especially due to the Structural Adjustment Programs and the conditions imposed by these Institutions on developing countries, the development process of these countries has been fraught with problems. Many of these countries faced severe economic crises, causing them to rely more heavily on the intervention of international institutions, thus becoming more engaged with neo-liberalism. As seen in Turkey, for example, engagement with these institutions generally resulted in a crisis; the burdens of the crises …

Poor And Marginalized Women Active In The Public Arena During Nepal's Peace-Building Process After Maoist Insurgency, Rakshya Pandey Shrestha

Dissertations and Theses

In Nepal, a country where more than half of the population is female, the society is blatantly patriarchal, and the social system is based on caste, class, ethnicity and gender discrimination. It cannot be denied that the violent Maoist insurgency led to socioeconomic and political deterioration in the country. The decade- long violent conflict killed an estimated figure of more than 13,000 people and has displaced even more. Currently, the country is in the process of transformation and peace-building and is moving towards adjusting the past discrepancies to address root causes of the insurgency. However, the Maoist insurgency also brought …

Reflections And The Narrative Turn In Social Work, Benjamin C. Shepard

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Explaining Success And Failure In Climate Policies: Developing Theory Through German Case Studies, Roger Karapin

Publications and Research

Theories of environmental outcomes have been developed mostly through large-N cross-national studies, which have a structuralist bias and do not include the mechanisms through which inferred causes operate. Structured, focused case studies can help overcome those limits by incorporating political processes and identifying causal mechanisms. Here, comparisons of climate policy outcomes within Germany are used to test and develop theory, by explaining the differences among nine cases with the help of process tracing. The findings suggest that environmental-outcome theories should be modified to include: external events and advocacy-coalition formation as key processes; multiple causal paths through which green parties improve …

Climate Policy Outcomes In Germany: Environmental Performance And Environmental Damage In Eleven Policy Areas, Roger Karapin

Publications and Research

Germany has reduced its emissions of greenhouse gases more than almost any other industrialized democracy and is exceeding its ambitious Kyoto commitment of a 21% reduction since 1990. Hence, it is commonly portrayed as a climate-policy success story, but the situation is much more complex. Generalizing Germany's per-capita emissions to all countries or its emissions reductions to all industrialized democracies would still very likely produce more than a two-degree rise in global temperature. Moreover, analyzing the German country-case into eleven subcases shows that it is a mixture of relative successes and failures.

This illustrates several major problems with the literature …

An Annotated Bibliography For The Correlates Of War Interstate Wars Database, Zachary Shirkey, Alex Weisiger

Publications and Research

We provide an annotated bibliography for the Correlates of War Interstate Wars dataset. The availability of such a bibliography should help scholars to address several obstacles to valid inference, including over-reliance on well-known or highly salient cases, concerns about whether proxy variables accurately capture the variable they are intended to measure, problems assessing the theoretical and empirical significance of outliers, and concerns about whether observed statistical relationships exist for the reason that theory leads us to expect. This document should also be helpful for scholars who are interested in coding new variables or in evaluating the appropriateness of existing variables …

The Geography Of Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Within Urban Areas Of Asia, Jochen Albrecht, Peter Marcotullio, Andrea Sarzynski, Niels Schulz

Publications and Research

This paper aims to advance two objectives: (1) identify and explore greenhouse gas emissions from urban areas in Asia at the regional level; and (2) explore covariates of urban greenhouse gas emissions. We use the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research estimates for carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and sulfur hexafluoride from 14 source activities for the year 2000, which are allocated on a 1/108 global grid. We extract emissions for 3535 urban extents all with populations over 50,000, accounting for approximately 91% of the region’s urban population. We use regression analysis to associate emissions with urban area and growth, …

Publish. Perish? The Academic Author And Open Access Publishing, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

What concerns do graduate authors face about distribution of their work as it is increasingly situated online? This essay traces the history of dissertation preservation and publication, considering matters raised by open access publishing as it affects authors, advisors, and readers.

Subtle And Overt Forms Of Islamophobia: Microaggressions Toward Muslim Americans, Kevin L. Nadal, Katie E. Griffin, Sahran Hamit, Jayleen Leon, Michael Tobio, David P. Rivera

Publications and Research

Previous research suggests that microaggressions, or subtle and covert manifestations of bias, are commonplace in the life experience of people of color, women, and sexual minorities. However, there is a dearth of research focusing on microaggressions toward people from religious minority groups. Using a qualitative approach and directed content analysis with Muslim American participants (N=10), six themes emerged: 1) Endorsing Religious Stereotypes of Muslims as Terrorists, 2) Pathology of the Muslim Religion, 3) Assumption of Religious Homogeneity, 4) Exoticization, 5) Islamophobic and Mocking Language, and 6) Alien in Own Land. Implications for Muslim mental health are discussed.

Conference Interpreting As Extreme Language Use, Loraine Obler

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Digital Video: Engaging Students In Critical Media Literacy And Community Activism, Jessie Daniels

Publications and Research

This article presents a strategy for teaching health communication that fosters critical media literacy through the strategic combination of digital video, documentary film, video worksheets, and peer-reviewed journal articles. Given the media-saturated environment in which notions of health are shaped, critical media literacy skills are crucial to students in health-related fields. Cases of key concepts illustrated through documentary films and the peer-reviewed literature are presented. The article then explores how one class took the lead in designing a community event that critically engaged both a YouTube video and a documentary film about police brutality as a public health issue.

Using Php To Parse Ebook Resources From Drupal 6 To Populate A Mobile Web Page, Junior R. Tidal

Publications and Research

The Ursula C. Schwerin library needed to create a page for its mobile website devoted to subscribed eBooks. These resources, however, were only available through the main desktop website. These resources were organized using the Drupal 6 content management system with contributed and core modules. It was necessary to create a solution to retrieve the eBook databases from the Drupal installation to a separate mobile site.

The Syntax Of Non-Verbal Causation: The Causative Apomorphy Of 'From' In Greek And Germanic Languages, Alexandra Ioannidou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is a study of the meaning and syntax of non-(lexical)verbal causation. Macroscopically, it examines the preposition 'from' as attested in contexts like "X is/comes from Y". Syntactic diagnostics are applied to formally distinguish the causative from the spatial interpretations of `from'-PPs in Greek, English, Dutch, and German. The syntactic landscape of causative 'from' will turn out to be very minimal with 'from' directly selecting the Cause-DP, in contradistinction to its spatial counterpart, where 'from' always selects for another PP layer. More microscopically then I focus on the causative interpretations only, which are particularly revealing because (i) they give an …

The Prison Fix: Race, Work, And Economic Development In Elmira, New York, Andrea R. Morrell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Based on more than a year of ethnographic and archival research in Elmira, New York and, to a lesser extent, New York City, this dissertation analyzes the social, economic, and political processes through which Elmira, New York was transformed by the construction of the Southport Correctional Facility in 1988 as a project of economic development during a period of massive expansion of the New York State prison system. It focuses on the unfolding of the project of mass incarceration and its impact on the lives of Elmira's citizens and workers, as well as the men incarcerated in Elmira's prisons and …

How Milk Does The World Good: Vernacular Sustainability And Alternative Food Systems In Post-Socialist Europe, Diana Mincyte

Publications and Research

Scholarly debates on sustainable consumption have generally overlooked alternative agro-food networks in the economies outside of Western Europe and North America. Building on practice-based theories, this article focuses on informal raw milk markets in post-socialist Lithuania to examine how such alternative systems emerge and operate in the changing political, social, and economic contexts. It makes two contributions to the scholarship on sustainable consumption. In considering semi-subsistence practices and poverty-driven consumption, this article argues for a richer, more critical, and inclusive theory of sustainability that takes into consideration vernacular forms of exchange and approaches poor consumers as subjects of global history. …

Lacuny Executive Council Meeting Minutes, December 2011, Lacuny

Meeting Minutes

No abstract provided.

Attention And Olfactory Consciousness, Andreas Keller

Publications and Research

Understanding the relation between attention and consciousness is an important part of our understanding of consciousness. Attention, unlike consciousness, can be systematically manipulated in psychophysical experiments and a law-like relation between attention and consciousness is waiting to be discovered. Most attempts to discover the nature of this relation are focused on a special type of attention: spatial visual attention. In this review I want to introduce another type of attention to the discussion: attention to the olfactory modality. I will first clarify the position of attention to smells in a general taxonomy of attention. I will then review the mechanisms …