Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Drivers Of Change: Explaining Imf Low Income Country Reform In The Post Washington Consensus, Mark Rittenhouse Hibben

Dissertations - ALL

Through use of rationalist, constructivist, and historical structural theory, this study of IMF Low Income Country (LIC) policy change from 1996 to 2010 identifies potential causal variables and mechanisms that drive contemporary reform in the institution toward its poorest member states. Patterns uncovered through principal-agent analysis suggest that coalition formation between at least two actors is a necessary condition for LIC policy reform. Principal-agent analysis also establishes that discontinuity among powerful states gives IMF management and staff greater openings to initiate or block reform efforts. Constructivist analysis assesses if shifts in thinking among IMF insiders and the broader epistemic community …

Expanding The Usage Of Renewable Energy Through Innovation And Technology Transfer, Jung Eun Kim

Dissertations - ALL

Moving green growth forward requires acknowledging the well-known carbon dilemma facing all nations: carbon-based economic development versus carbon emission reductions. Switching conventional carbon energy to renewable energy offers a potential win-win solution to tackle this dilemma. This dissertation empirically examines innovation and technology transfer of renewable energy technology at the international level with its three essays. The first essay explores how oil endowments of a country influence its innovation paths, specifically in the automobile sector. I show that a country's oil endowment is a negative driver for alternative technologies, while a positive driver for oil extracting technologies. Depending on their …

Khwaja Sira: Culture, Identity Politics, And "Transgender" Activism In Pakistan, Faris Ahmed Khan

Dissertations - ALL

In 2009, the Pakistani Supreme Court began granting rights to gender ambiguous people who are locally known as khwaja siras. The Court organized this population into taxonomic groups and ordered the government to `mainstream' them. These actions were based on certain cultural assumptions and occurred amid uncertainties about who khwaja siras really were. Meanwhile, khwaja siras began to mobilize in an effort to control their public image. Based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork on the identity politics of khwaja siras in Karachi, this dissertation seeks to understand the ways in which gender ambiguous people constructed, negotiated and represented themselves …

The Graduation Rate Tragedy In New York State, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

People Are Suffering: Noncombatant Mobilization For Peace In Africa, Bertha Kadenyi Amisi

Dissertations - ALL

During the 1990s and early 2000s, a number of domestic social actors mobilized for peace in several African countries. They did so under unfavorable political conditions. Some of them went further and pursued their objective for peace at the level of formal negotiations. This particularizing inquiry sought to understand the process leading to their engagement with formal negotiations. To achieve this, inquiry focused on two questions: what about the conditions and contexts prevailing in the 1990s to early 2000s accounted for social actor's engagement with formal negotiation processes and how civic groups went about doing so. The main argument was …

Ways To Refuge: Bosnians In Central New York In Ethnographic Perspective, Fethi Keles

Dissertations - ALL

Ways to Refuge: Bosnians in Central New York in Ethnographic Perspective

This dissertation documents the resettlement experiences of Bosnian Muslims relocated to two urban locales in the north of New York State during and after the Bosnian War in the Balkans. To do so, it relies on ethnographic data gathered mainly through extensive interviews and participant-observation conducted over a period of fourteen months of fieldwork in a variety of places in Central New York.

The dissertation provides individual- and group-level descriptions and analyses of various aspects of the diasporic experiences of the Bosnians encountered in the research, in addition to …

Interaction Effects Between The 5-Httlpr Genotype And Family Environments On Adolescent Alcohol Use And Misuse, Jueun Kim

Theses - ALL

Emerging evidence shows that the 5-HTTLPR genotype interacts with social environments and influences drinking behaviors. However, few studies have examined interaction effects between the 5-HTTLPR genotype and specific aspects of family environments on adolescent drinking. The present study investigated whether the effects of family conflict or parental monitoring on adolescent drinking differed as a function of the 5-HTTLPR genotype cross-sectionally and longitudinally. It was replicated in two independent samples consisting of 175 adolescents in the U.S. and 4,916 adolescents in the U.K. The results of path analyses and multi-group analyses showed that, in the two samples, the 5-HTTLPR low-activity allele …

Investigating The Role Of Social Environmental Stress And Implicit Motives In Predicting Salivary Alpha-Amylase Reactivity To The Social Competence Interview, Jun A. He

Theses - ALL

Salivary alpha-amylase is emerging as a promising proxy for assessing sympathetic-adrenal-medullary (SAM) axis activity. However, it is not known whether a brief semi-structured behavioral assessment, such as the social competence interview (SCI), also elicits alpha-amylase changes. I hypothesized that (1) the SCI would elicit alpha amylase reactivity, (2) social environmental stress (i.e, high levels of exposure to violence during childhood and low perceived community social status) would predict the alpha-amylase response to the interview and (3) that agonistic striving would mediate the relationship between social environmental stress and amylase reactivity. The study sample was comprised of healthy young adults aged …

Fan Music Videos, Fan Romanticism, And Romantic Content, Alexis Bordeaux Finnerty

Theses - ALL

Twilight and Harry Potter have become extremely successful multimedia franchises in large part thanks to the two series' devoted fans. Many fans not only consume these two series, they also produce stories, pictures, and videos that seem to use the characters from Twilight and Harry Potter to fulfill their own romantic fantasies. However, the tremendous popularity of fan music videos and the diverse demographics of the videos' producers and consumers challenge some of the assumptions early qualitative researchers made about fan communities. The study of fandom would be greatly advanced by a quantitative study that connects producers to their content; …

Cripping The Memoir: Unraveling The Discourse Around Disabled Athletes' Identities, Jessica Kerley

Theses - ALL

This thesis rhetorically examines the discourse surrounding disability and body capabilities. I employ feminist theory, queer theory, disability, theory and performance theory as I analyze the memoirs and media surrounding two disabled elite athletes, Sarah Reinertsen and Mark Zupan. I examine the construction of identity for these athletes and what the language use surrounding these athletes means to the current status of disability discourse. These memoirs have the potential to reach a large lay audience, and therefore, the opportunity to educate and challenge assumptions. My analysis leads me to conclude that the limitations of memoir and societal pressures allow for …

Black, Yellow, And Shades Of Purple: Radical Afro-Asian Collective Activism In The San Francisco Bay Area From The Perspectives Of Women In The Struggle, 1966-1972, Jeanelle Kevina Hope

Theses - ALL

The San Francisco Bay Area emerged as radical space for student and youth driven activism during the 1960s. The area was the birthplace of Ethnic studies and a key organization of the Black Power era--the Black Panther Party. This work uncovers the shared activist centered relationship between African Americans and Asian Americans by interrogating how members of the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) and the Black Panther Party (BPP) worked within the frameworks of grassroots and collective activism to address local and Third World liberation. Furthermore, this work seeks to bring forth and provide a space for the suppressed voices …

Searching As Thinking: The Role Of Cues In Query Reformulation, Veronica Maidel

Dissertations - ALL

Given the growing volume of information that surrounds us, search, and particularly web search, is now a fundamental part of how people perceive and experience the world. Understanding how searchers interact with search engines is thus an important topic both for designers of information retrieval systems and educators working in the area of digital literacy. Reaching such understanding, however, with the more established, system-centric, approaches in information retrieval (IR) is limited. While inherently iterative nature of the search process is generally acknowledged in the field of IR, research on query reformulation is typically limited to dealing with the "what" or …

Introducing Wireless Grids Technology To The Field Of Telemedicine, Dale W. Meyerrose

Dissertations - ALL

While telemedicine and technology-enabled education are not new concepts and have significant bodies of research, in depth application to management and treatment of veteran Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is relatively new. The conflicts in the Southwest Asia over the last two decades have significantly increased the need for healthcare and support services for these returning warriors. Creative thinking and innovative technologies are needed to meet the growing and changing demand of these patients in the face of many competing demands within the U.S. healthcare sector.

This doctoral research study investigated the potential for a platform-agnostic …

Geographies Of Containment: Logics Of Enclosure In Aboriginal And Asylum Seeker Policies In Australia's Northern Territory, Kate Shipley Coddington

Dissertations - ALL

In this dissertation, I explore how logics of enclosure underscore policies about national identity, citizenship, and belonging in Australia. Darwin, the capital of Australia's Northern Territory, has become a central place for policy struggles over migration and Aboriginal communities over the past ten years. The city offers a lens through which to read geopolitical processes of migration and detention, sovereignty and citizenship, and settler colonialism and consider their consequences for people's everyday lives. Asylum seekers in Australia face policies of mandatory detention while they wait and hope for refugee status, and Darwin's many immigration detention centers have earned it the …

The Motivation Of Working Practitioners Seeking A Doctoral Education: From The Perspectives Of Confucian Learning Philosophy, Anna Ching-Yu Wong

Dissertations - ALL

This doctoral study explores the motivational orientations of working practitioners pursuing a professional doctoral program who are former and current DPS-IM program students at Syracuse University, School of Information Studies. The found motivational orientations are compared to Confucian philosophy principles of self-cultivation illustrated in The Great Learning (DaXues`å>{t) which is considered the first of a set of Four Books (Sishusl`t). The manuscript's structure consists of a brief of three principles, followed by eight steps that promote individual self-cultivation. Researchers frequently utilize these steps as a connection between civil conduct applied to social and political order (e.g. Keenan, 2011, p. …

Agglomeration Economies, Investment In Education, And Regional Development, Shimeng Liu

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation consists of two essays that study the linkages among agglomeration economies, investment in education, and regional development. In the first essay, I study the impact of a federal educational investment on various aspects of local economies. In the second essay, I examine the spillover effects among workers with different skills, which are identified by their college majors.

The first essay presents evidence of direct spillovers from universities and examines the short- and long-run effects of university activities on geographic clustering of economic activity, labor market composition and local productivity. I treat the designation of land-grant universities as a …

The Incentive Effects Of Health Insurance On Labor Market Outcomes And Ssdi/Ssi Utilization, Chun-Chieh Hu

Dissertations - ALL

Chapter 1

While there has been a tremendous amount of literature on how Unemployment Insurance (UI) affects unemployed workers' job search behavior, there has been no previous study on how the health insurance premium subsidy affects this behavior. To fill the gap in previous studies, this paper analyzes the impact of the substantial federal health insurance premium subsidy on unemployment duration, using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). To begin this study, I detail the history of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) of 1985 that was established to help keep unemployed workers insured. Furthermore, …

Rummaging Through The Wreckage: Geographies Of Trauma, Memory, And Loss At The National September 11th Memorial & Museum At The World Trade Center, Jacquelyn Micieli-Voutsinas

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation traces the emergence of 9/11 memory as it is shaped in relation to the event's memorialization at nationally-dedicated landscapes of memory. Focusing on the National September 11th Memorial & Museum, The National Flight 93 Memorial, and the National Pentagon 9/11 Memorial, my research examines how cultural memory is mediated through the establishment of `places of memory' within the built-environment. Here, I argue, the preservation of place acts as a repository of national memory by safeguarding the history of 9/11 for future generations. Contextualizing these landscapes of memory within the global war on terrorism, my analytical framework engages the …

Laboring Lesbians At Gas Stations: Pumping The "Good Life", Amy Jo Tweedy

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation project is an interdisciplinary exploration of laboring lesbian bodies within the context of U.S. gas stations. I begin with an investigation of the history of gas stations in connection with the oil industry and the company for which they work. In addition, I examine how institutions of class, gender and sexuality are imprinted onto laboring lesbian bodies within the workplace. I suggest that the work within U.S. gas stations is now primarily feminized labor as is typical of the service economy. I also highlight the ways in which sexuality matters in the workplace through an analysis of the …

The Ghost Of Olmsted: Nature, History & Urban Park Restoration In Boston's Emerald Necklace, Phil Birge-Liberman

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation examines the nineteenth-century production, the twentieth-century deterioration, and the twenty-first century restoration of Boston's Emerald Necklace, a 1,100-acre series of parks and parkways designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. (1822-1903). Originally built to meet a particular set of aesthetic landscape tastes, over time this park system changed to meet the recreational needs of visitors. Throughout, the Emerald Necklace has served the interests of Boston's urban elite. It is, therefore, an appropriate case for examining the historical relationship between power and landscape. The parks of the Emerald Necklace did more than provide pretty views and space for play; they …

The Relationships Between Stress, Social Support, Maternal Self-Efficacy, Maternal Depression, Maternal Reports Of Child Demandingness And Maternal Reports Of Child Social And Emotional Quality Of Life In A Sample Of Overweight And Obese Women Two Years Post Childbirth, Elizabeth Banks Feldhousen

Dissertations - ALL

Emotional problems in the postpartum period affect both mothers and children. This is particularly salient for mothers who are overweight or obese, who have been shown to be more at risk for adverse postpartum outcomes than mothers who were of a normal weight before pregnancy. The current study examined the relationships between maternal stress, maternal depression, social support, maternal self-efficacy, maternal perceptions of child demandingness, and child social and emotional quality of life (as the outcome variable) in the two years after a second childbirth among a sample of overweight and obese women. The subjects of this analysis were the …

Politics Of Popular Creativity And Popular Knowledge: On The Case Of Adbusters And Harry Potter Fans, Stephanie Schreven

Dissertations - ALL

My research looks at and investigates popular creativity and the politics involved in two different cases. I situate popular creativity and the politics involved in the context of cultural studies.

My first case looks at advertisements that are placed under attack, or busted. I investigate the different politics of defamiliarization between two specific busted ads. The politics of defamiliarization create moving images based on the Freudian uncanny and Brechtian Verfremdung. My second case involves Harry Potter fans and fan fiction writing. Specifically, I investigate the politics of closure or stereotyping involved in a copyright dispute over the publication of the …

Three Essays On Robust Estimation Of Key Factors Underlying The Changes To The U.S. Income Distribution, Pallab Ghosh

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation consists of three chapters and mainly focuses on the robust estimation of different important factors contributing changes to the U.S. income inequality over the last two decades. The primary objective is to precisely estimate different labor market outcomes when the behaviors of the tails of the distribution bear much importance. These studies are very relevant in the current context of the U.S. labor market because over the last three decades the U.S. income distribution have come very skewed and therefore, we are more interested at the behaviors of the the upper and lower-tails of the U.S. income distribution …

When Heritage Preservation Meets Living Memory: Constructing The Medina Of Fez As A World Heritage Heterotopia, Matthew Houdek

Theses - ALL

This project engages the UNESCO World Heritage program's international place-making and heritage preservation campaign, and the processes that are carried out to transform an everyday cultural place into a World Heritage site. I consider what effects these preservation projects and the tourists they attract have on communities of living memory, while also engaging non-Western conceptions of heritage and the local processes for how it is preserved or produced in such contexts. To these ends, I look at one of the first non-Western urban sites to be inscribed on the World Heritage list-- the Medina of Fez, Morocco. The Medina offers …

Starved For Information: The Conflict Between Mobilizing Hunger Strikes And Distracting Media Frames, Alicia Wright

Theses - ALL

This study considers the newspaper coverage of Irom Sharmila's on-going, 13-year hunger strike in India to question how information from the media plays a role in generation of social movement conflict. With specific attention paid to the cultural context and method of protest, the study applies theories of conflict, social movement planning, and framing to examine whether the hunger strike elicits coverage that includes salient frames generated by the movement. Such coverage could signify a potential shift in the protest paradigm applied to English-language newspapers in India. Through a quantitative content analysis, articles pertaining to Irom Sharmila's hunger strike against …

20 Weeks, 13 Hours, 140 Characters: The Abortion Controversy In The Texas State Senate And Online, Elyse Nicole Janish

Theses - ALL

The abortion controversy in America has long been characterized by problematic discourse in which neither prolife nor prochoice groups make headway in persuading the other side. This thesis examines the discourse of the abortion controversy as it played out in and around the Texas State Senate on June 25th, 2013, during a filibuster of a restrictive abortion bill known as Senate Bill 5 (SB5), by Senator Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth). The analysis focuses on three sets of data: first, the testimonies authored by citizen protestors and animated by Senator Davis; second, the question-and-answer period between Senator Davis and Republican Senator …

An Epidemiology Of Big Data, John Mark Young

Dissertations - ALL

Federal legislation designed to transform the U.S. healthcare system and the emergence of mobile technology are among the common drivers that have contributed to a data explosion, with industry analysts and stakeholders proclaiming this decade the big data decade in healthcare (Horowitz, 2012). But a precise definition of big data is hazy (Dumbill, 2013). Instead, the healthcare industry mainly relies on metaphors, buzzwords, and slogans that fail to provide information about big data's content, value, or purposes for existence (Burns, 2011). Bollier and Firestone (2010) even suggests "big data does not really exist in healthcare" (p. 29). While federal policymakers …

The Effect Of Maternal Separation And Postnatal Oxytocin Administration On Social Recognition In Adolescent Female Mice, Nathaniel Richard Thomas

Dissertations - ALL

A vast body of literature indicates that exposing rodents to maternal separation during infancy results in long - term developmental changes in physiological, behavioral, and psychological domains. Because several previous studies have indicated that maternal separation may be detrimental to the processing and discrimination of social cues, the primary aim of this dissertation was to determine whether separating female infant mouse pups from their mother, but not siblings, for 3 hrs daily, during the first two weeks of life, influences social recognition during adolescence (Experiment 1). This dissertation also sought to evaluate whether postnatal administration of the oxytocin would influence …

Father Involvement In Low-Income Families: Evidence On Predictors Of Involvement From Two Large Scale Maternal-Child Health Datasets, Mark Dean Thomas

Dissertations - ALL

The literature on father involvement in low-income, racially diverse families has grown in recent years, but is far from complete. Continued research is needed to better understand those factors that support father involvement, which has been identified to be a key contributor to maternal and child wellbeing. This dissertation examines the utility of using existing, large-scale maternal-child health datasets to generate insights into the processes that contribute to father involvement. Two large scale maternal-child health data sets on low-income families were examined to improve our understanding of the nature of father involvement at birth and in infancy/early childhood. Multinomial logistic …

The Prospects Of Institutional Transfer: A Within-Case Study Of Nato Advisor Influence Across The Afghan Security Ministries And National Security Forces, 2009-2012, Nicholas J. Armstrong

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is an in-depth case study of NATO advisors and their perceived influence in Afghanistan (2009-2012). It explores the two-part question, how do foreign security actors (ministerial advisors and security force trainers, advisors, and commanders) attempt to influence their host-nation partners and what are their perceptions of these approaches on changes in local capacity, values, and security governance norms? I argue that security sector reform (SSR) programs in fragile states lack an explicit theory of change that specifies how reform occurs. From this view, I theorize internationally led SSR as "guided institutional transfer," grounded in rationalist and social constructivist …