Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Abolition Of Care: An Engaged Ethnography Of The Progressive Jail Assemblage, Justin Helepololei

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation draws on ethnographic research conducted with prison abolitionists and criminal justice reform activists in Western Massachusetts - a context in which the sheriffs who operate county jails see themselves as reformers. I use the concept of a “progressive jail assemblage” to analyze the varied actors and logics that sustain incarceration locally, focusing especially on the use of care discourses and practices. I consider how progressive jailing puts prison abolitionists in the position of being against some forms of care. At the same time, abolitionists have put forth competing notions of care, ones they see as building a world …

Debris Of Progress: A Political Ethnography Of Critical Infrastructure, Ethan Tupelo

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I advance a political ethnography of critical infrastructure to better understand terminal capitalism, in which the waste products of commodification and resource depletion are destroying the ecological systems that support life. My object of study is the massive disjuncture between individual knowledge and intention, and these catastrophic collective planetary outcomes. Theoretically, I develop critical infrastructure theory to diagnose these destructive structures. By “infrastructure,” I mean systems of material and discursive flows fundamental to sedentary human organization, connecting local actions with global systems. Such infrastructure is “critical” in three senses: A) denoting the most important forms of infrastructure …

Above The Oxbow: The Construction Of Place On Mount Holyoke, Danielle R. Raad

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a study of the orogenesis of Mount Holyoke, or the making of place on a mountain. It is an orogenic ethnography and a contemporary archaeological ethnography of place. Mount Holyoke is a mountain in Western Massachusetts that rises above the Connecticut River Valley. It is a prominent destination for tourists and locals alike to recreate outdoors in a state park, to observe the view of the valley below, and to visit the historic, nineteenth-century Summit House. I explore the nature and nuances of attachment to Mount Holyoke through time, by examining conceptions of place over two centuries. …

Young Parents’ Experiences And Perceptions Of ‘Teen Mom’ Reality Shows, Devon Greyson, Cathy Chabot, Jean A. Shoveller

Communication Department Faculty Publication Series

MTV’s hit reality shows 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom were produced with an agenda of preventing teen pregnancy. Researchers have examined their effectiveness as behavioral interventions, yet little attention has been paid to experiences of young parents themselves with these shows, nor to their ethical consequences, including the potential for compounding of stigma against young parents. This analysis qualitatively examines the experiences of young parents in British Columbia, Canada, with the media phenomenon referred to as ‘Teen Mom shows.’ Interview and observation data from a large, longitudinal, mixed-methods ethnographic study of young parents was analyzed using hybrid deductive-inductive qualitative …

Property, Postsocialism, And Post-Yugoslav Identity: A Feminist Communication Performance Ethnography, Jennifer Zenovich

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes how women in the postsocialist former Yugoslavia perform gender in the transition from socialism to capitalism by considering their material and symbolic relationships to property. Using performance ethnography to theorize the relational, embodied, and discursive ways in which identity has been mobilized in the former Yugoslavia, the central question is how insights from the postsocialist world can critique notions of the individual as well as global capital. Through the prism of postsocialist and postcolonial feminist theory and performance studies, I focus on three contexts: women’s feminized labor as sustaining the tourism industry in Montenegro, my rape and …

Brooklyn Bedroom: An Ethnodrama On Female Sexuality, Third World Feminism And Performance Ethnography, Ayshia Stephenson

Doctoral Dissertations

Brooklyn Bedroom is a performance that interrogates societal perceptions of race and sexuality. I have utilized the writing of the performance as my method; the performance is an act of Third World feminist resistance and liberation. Storytelling is the type of research preferred by many black female playwrights. A type of qualitative inquiry, ethnodramatic work forms a bridge between individual stories and social issues affecting society with the goal of socio-political change. The source of reality for this ethnodrama is the Rose family, their history was a catalyst for the writing of Brooklyn Bedroom. I have explored their stories to …

The Moral Economy Of The Networked Financial Subject: Cultures Of “Wealth-Tech” (Financial Self-Help) And Moneymaking In South Korea, Bohyeong Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a multi-sited ethnography on the culture of wealth-tech in South Korea. Wealth-tech (chaet'ek'ŭ) refers to techniques of personal finance and moneymaking, including investments in stocks, mutual funds, real estate, and other financial products. It entered the everyday lexicon in the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, when South Korea witnessed radical economic restructuring and neoliberal social governing. Situating the wealth-tech boom within the restructuring of the economy and subjectivity after the 1997 crisis, this dissertation explores a new mode of subject formation under the financialization of the South Korean economy. Based on 15 …

Collective Action As Relationship In Late Modernity: Animal Advocacy In A Repressive Political Climate, Catherine M. Wilson

Doctoral Dissertations

Since the mid 1990s, in the United States, social regulation and activity with regard to animal care and the nature of acceptable human-animal relationships has changed remarkably rapidly, even as animal rights activism has become less prominent. Utilizing extensive ethnographic, artifactual, and interview data, this dissertation interrogates some of the relational processes that have contributed to these changes. After first sketching a brief history of animal advocacy discourses in the U.S., In Chapter Four, I document a shift from disruptive to productive strategies in animal advocacy. I argue that two important contributing factors to this shift were anti-terrorism legislation that …

Using Ethnographic Interviewing To Learn About Your Faculty, Carolyn Mills, Sharon Giovenale

ACRL New England Chapter Annual Conference

We were part of a nineteen institution ethnographic study on the research practices and support needs of agriculture faculty, under the auspices of Ithaka S+R in 2016. We will use our work to illustrate how ethnographic interviewing works. We will discuss:

• Training and preparation
• The process of recruiting and interviewing, and interview transcription.
• Coding & analysis of results, mapping findings from the interview transcriptions
• Our findings and conclusions which, though drawn from agriculture, are potentially applicable to a broader range of science researchers

Our message to attendees is that anyone can do this research with the right preparation and support. …

Evidence-Based Librarianship: Methods For Researching User Experience, Emily Crist, Alan Carbery

ACRL New England Chapter Annual Conference

Designing experiences for library users requires an understanding of the people, as well as the situations involved in those experiences. When developing library services, this understanding is important in order to consider how the services can fit within constituents’ practices, how they can complement existing user workflows and learning strategies, and how they can reflect and build on their users’ identities. A data-driven, evidence-based approach to librarianship is becoming increasingly important.

Additionally, libraries are increasingly tasked with demonstrating their impact and contributions towards institutional priorities in the wider higher education landscape. To that end, the presenters’ institute created a unique …

Vietnam Without Guarantees: Consumer Attitudes In An Emergent Market Economy, Kylie R. Lanthorn

Masters Theses

This research explores how Vietnam’s embrace of capitalism and global markets has impacted consumer culture. Through ethnographic research conducted in Hanoi, Vietnam in June-August 2015, this study seeks to interrogate how the political atmosphere in Vietnam coexists with market freedoms in a country which opened its economy to the world during the 1986 Doi Moi (renovation) reforms. Vietnam now conducts a considerable amount of foreign trade with major foreign investment from countries including Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. This study emphasizes the role international relations have played in these developments as Vietnam has embraced partnerships with countries with which it …

Emerging Climate Change Publics: Cultivating Sustainability And Justice In The Pioneer Valley, Vanessa Adel

Doctoral Dissertations

Climate change is setting off erratic weather patterns and environmental changes that threaten the livelihood, stability, and survival of the planet. Communities and institutions around the globe are sounding the clarion call about these devastating impacts, advocating for sustainable practices and deep changes to every facet of our lives. This dissertation research consists of an ethnography of a local network of actors and organizations who are responding to climate change, centered on those who define sustainability as integrally connected to justice. I analyze this network of activity through the lens of the concept of an emerging public. I start from …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Review Of Reclaiming Basque By Kathryn Woolard, Jacqueline Urla

Jacqueline L. Urla

Book Review of Reclaiming Basque by Kathryn Woolard. American Ethnologist February 2014.

Islam And The Everyday Life Literacy Practices Of Newly Literate Moroccan Women, Reddad Erguig, Laura A. Valdiviezo

Laura A. Valdiviezo

No abstract provided.

Reclaiming Basque: Language, Nation And Cultural Activism, Jacqueline Urla

Jacqueline L. Urla

Introduction (excerpt)

Reclaiming Basque: Language, Nation And Cultural Activism, Jacqueline Urla

Jacqueline L. Urla

Table of Contents

Decolonizing Texts: A Performance Autoethnography, Hari Stephen Kumar

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

I write performance autoethnography as a methodological project committed to evoking embodied and lived experience in academic texts, using performance writing to decolonize academic knowledge production. Through a fragmented itinerary across continents and ethnicities, across religions and languages, across academic and vocational careers, I speak from the everyday spaces in between supposedly stable cultural identities involving race, ethnicity, class, gendered norms, to name a few. I write against colonizing practices which police the racist, sexist, and xenophobic cultural politics that produce and validate particular identities. I write from the intersections of my own living experiences within and against those cultural …

The Search For Self-Fulfillment: How Individualism Undermines Community Organizing, Rachel Rybaczuk

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This paper focuses on the role of individualism in community organizing. My case study follows the organizing efforts of the Coalition for Affordable Northampton Neighborhoods (CANN) and residents’ attempts to save an affordable neighborhood from Smith College’s campus expansion. As a resident and co-founder of CANN I was particularly interested in identifying the reasons for our difficulty in organizing residents whose homes would be torn down. While attending community and city meetings, interviewing core activists and activists who left the organizing efforts, I observed individualism undermining community organizing and political involvement. People’s search for self-fulfillment was in conflict with the …

Wild Capitalism: Environmental Activism And Postsocialist Political Ecology In Hungary, Krista Harper

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

"Wild Capitalism" examines environmental issues in the "New Europe" of the twenty-first century. Specifically, it looks at how the meanings of "civil society" and "environment" have changed as environmentalists encounter the political and ecological realities of life after state socialism. Although environmentalism is a global social movement, environmental politics is a grassroots process in which activists creatively translate environmental issues into cultural idioms and political processes.

Wild Capitalism: Environmental Activism And Postsocialist Political Ecology In Hungary, Krista Harper

Krista M. Harper

"Wild Capitalism" examines environmental issues in the "New Europe" of the twenty-first century. Specifically, it looks at how the meanings of "civil society" and "environment" have changed as environmentalists encounter the political and ecological realities of life after state socialism. Although environmentalism is a global social movement, environmental politics is a grassroots process in which activists creatively translate environmental issues into cultural idioms and political processes.

Environment As Master Narrative: Discourse And Identity In Environmental Conflicts (Special Issue Introduction), Krista Harper

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Although postmodern philosophers proclaimed the death of the master narrative of enlightenment (Lyotard 1984), the environment has become a quintessentially global narrative. Throughout the world, people are imagining the environment as an object threatened by human action. Environmentalism proposes to organize and mobilize human action in order to protect the endangered environment (Milton 1995). Sociologist Klaus Eder posits that ecology has become a “masterframe,” transforming the field of political debate (Eder 1996). The articles assembled in this special issue investigate the rise of the environment as a master narrative organizing political practices.