Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Zamrock: Negotiating Masculine Urban Identity In Zambia And Music Success In A Postcolonial World, Emeline Avignon

Senior Theses and Projects

This thesis analyzes, through predominately an ethnomusicologist approach and methodology, the lyricism, instrumentation, performance, and album art of the movement of Zamrock in Zambia from 1970 to the mid-1980s. I explore the agency and construction of urban youth masculinity by Zamrock artists in the context of Zambia’s colonial history of the Copperbelt, into its decades after independence. First, I look at the socio-political and economic context of colonized and independent Zambia, and how out of these conditions Zambian rock music was fused and forged. I break down the negotiations and desires of Zamrock artists in their identity construction via their …

Privacy Perceptions Transformation In Cairo’S Home Designs - A Case Study: Gated Communities, Yasmine Esmat

Theses and Dissertations

The infrastructure of gated communities in Egypt’s New Cairo and 6th of October cities have become the new normal. The streets bordered by fences, walls, and the occasional gate, formed when two or more gated communities face each other, dominate the urban landscape today (Kostenwein, 2021). Nowadays, it is highly common to see billboards advertising new gated communities everywhere on the roads and bridges. Gated communities offer various privileges, and one of them is privacy. Taking Cairo city with its several gated communities as a case study, the research focuses on the transformation of privacy perception for Cairo’s home designs …

Neil Postman's Loving Resistance Fighter: A Philosophy Of Communication In The Age Of Technopoly, Ryan Mccullough

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project walks the work of Neil Postman (1931-2003) into the philosophy of communication. Traditional conceptions of Neil Postman’s body of work position his ideas within the traditions of media ecology, general semantics, or, more broadly, as a form of media studies and criticism. In addition, others label Postman’s work, especially in Technopoly (1992), as pessimistic, deterministic, and/or imbibed with Luddite tendencies. This project articulates a different view and contends that Postman’s scholarship, in particular his articulation of the loving resistance fighter in the final chapter of Technopoly, is committed to resisting the nefarious forces embedded in both technology …

Notes On Insurgent Universality In Ambedkar’S Social And Political Thought: A Critique Of Postcolonial Anti-Universalism, Sitharthan Sriharan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this thesis, we seek to take steps towards problematizing postcolonial theory and its frequent anti-universalism. Towards this end, my initial focus will be some of the productive and problematic aspects of what Getachew and Mantena term the “decolonization of political theory”. Here, we highlight how some comparative political theory scholars have methodologically overemphasized ‘difference’ in their studies of non-western political thought as an overcorrection to Eurocentrism. In supporting this claim, we review literature in comparative political theory, postcolonial theory, and modern South Asian history and historiography in order to demonstrate that a more philosophically robust, but still historically informed, …

Backward Glances: The Cultural And Industrial Uses Of Nostalgia In 2010s Hollywood Cinema, Matthew Cooper

College of Communication Master of Arts Theses

Over the course of the 2010s, one identifiable trend in Hollywood cinema was the significant presence of nostalgia films. These films stage idealized recollections of the past, appealing to affective longing for its perceived comforts and stability. This thesis utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to present a historical narrative of recent Hollywood cinema and its intersection with broader American culture and society. I argue that the most recent cinematic “nostalgia wave” is attributable to the broad, epochal conditions of modernity and late modernity, specific historical events and trends of the 2010s, and Hollywood-specific technological and industrial discontinuities. In an attempt to …

Placing God: Defining “Post-Christianity” For Contemporary Japanese Christians, Leryan Anthony Burrey

Master's Projects and Capstones

This work suggests that we consider a new, working definition of post-Christianity. This new paradigm is in response to Western Christian thought being too dominant a force that fails to take into enough account other global experiences— like those of Japanese Christians. These reflections are based on scholarly opinions claiming that Christianity is a “global culture,” and ultimately argues for more international inclusivity in Western Christian thought and institutions, especially regarding the Asia-Pacific. Moreover, this paper illuminates how iitoko dori allows Christian thought to peacefully coexist in Japan’s greater society. The research also explores specific Japanese cultural practices that make …

The Public Library As Past Become Space, Greg Nightingale

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

I use Walter Benjamin’s historical materialism in The Arcades Project to critique contemporary notions related to the understanding of the public library as a place. My critical theoretical approach, grounded in historical research and Benjamin’s theories of modernity, highlights contemporary aspects of the public library and broadens and deepens our understanding of the library’s physical role, both within and outside its walls. My research is based on the concurrent yet divergent social and cultural development of modern public libraries and Benjamin’s symbolic shopping arcades. Like Benjamin with the arcade, I believe that the public library contains innovative potentiality, in its …

Thoughts Of Becoming: Negotiating Modernity And Identity In Bangladesh, Humayun Kabir

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation constructs a history and conducts an analysis of Bangladeshi political thought with the aim to better understand the thought-world and political subjectivities in Bangladesh. The dissertation argues that political thought in Bangladesh has been profoundly structured by colonial and other encounters with modernity and by concerns about constructing a national identity. Negotiations between the incomplete and continuous projects of modernization and identity formation have produced certain anxieties about becoming that permeates political consciousness and ideas in the country. Though such anxieties of becoming are also shared by other postcolonial countries, the specific, though not necessarily exclusive, character of …

The Political Aesthetic Of Hannah Arendt: Modernity, Judgment, And Culture, Quixote R. Vassilakis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The plan of this thesis is, first, to interpret Arendt’s critique of the modern age. Next, this paper outlines Arendt’s reconceptualization of Kant’s theory of judgment as the basis for a novel model of the public sphere in light of the conditions of modernity. Finally, this paper explores Arendt’s poetics as a means of activating the faculty of judgment in order to reconcile with the modern world. In order to address the political crises of modernity, Arendt develops a political aesthetic alive to the role of narrative and culture in reconstituting political communities. I argue that Hannah Arendt develops a …

Bureaucratic Modernity And The Erosion Of Practical Reason: A Rhetorical Education As An Antidote, David Impellizzeri

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To what extent and in what ways does modernity reveal itself through the bureaucratic? This project aims at an interpretive understanding of bureaucratic modernity. The rationalization of society and action in the (late) modern world requires that an increasing number of human activities and domains be explained in allegedly neutral, ‘rational’ terms and without reference to morally substantive ends. Ultimately, this entails a form of epistemic reductionism that elevates instrumental rationality to the exclusion of practical reason and probabilistic ways of knowing. Bureaucratic modernity signifies a decrease in choices that can be legitimized in public on some basis other …

La Modernité Tunisienne Dévoilée : Une Étude Autour De La Femme Célibataire, Madison Wagner

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explains recent accounts of discrimination and cutbacks in reproductive health spaces in Tunisia. Complicating dominant analyses, which attribute these events to the post-revolution political atmosphere which has allowed the proliferation of islamic extremism, I interpret these instances as a manifestation of a deeply rooted stigma against sexually active single women. I trace this stigma’s inception to the contradictory way that Habib Bourguiba conceptualized modernity after independence, and the responsibility he assigned to Tunisian women to embody that modernity. This responsibility remains salient today, and is putting Tunisian women in an increasingly untenable and vulnerable position.

After independence, Bourguiba …

The Ghost Of Modernity: Normative Power Of Modernity As Propaganda, Seoyoon Choi

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explores how domestic factions and authoritarian regimes in Japan and Korea in the period from the 1850s to 1970s appropriated the concept of “modernity” to gain normative superiority over their competitors. The appropriating entity revised the concept of modernity to suit its own worldview. Across the case studies, the propaganda of modernity created a hierarchy that privileged those who are “more modern,” encouraged martial masculinity, and attached itself to existing domestic norms, such as ethno- nationalism. Under authoritarian regimes, modernity helped justify the mobilization of capital, manpower, and other critical resources in the name of nation-building or defense. …

Cultural Relativism In The Age Of Modernity: Are Human Rights Still Up For Debate?, Devani N. Whitehead

Dissertations and Theses

Modernity has given rise to the state as the primary unit in international relations moving away from the primacy of more traditional units such as the clergy, family, etc. Given this shift, the protections offered by these traditional units for individuals have shifted to the responsibility of the state. However, these protections are not a given. Individual rights can be compromised by the state for its overall benefit as states work to maintain and increase power in a globalized world.

The concept of human rights has been a response to the primacy of the state, outlining what the state should …

Psychoanalysis And Modernity: A Failure To Find Relief From Existential Terror, Erin Liat Claridge

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project considers the ways in which culture—the symbols and institutions that guide behavior and provide meaning to the individuals living within a community—serves a defensive function against conscious awareness of existential terror. The term existential terror refers to the cognitive and emotional experience of recognizing the inevitability of death, which is often accompanied by feelings of angst, isolation from others, and awareness of meaninglessness. In this dissertation, I will argue that the broad shift from traditional culture based on Judeo-Christian religious beliefs and communal forms of social life to modernity represents a slow but destabilizing deterioration of the defensive …

Hyphenated Japan: Cross-Examining The Self/Other Dichotomy In Ainu-Japanese Material Culture, Jonathan Chira Shapiro

Honors Papers

This is a historical ethnography that examines how shifts Japanese national identity and values of homogeneity have affected Japan’s minority Ainu population. I argue that the symbolic position of Ainu culture has historically been rearranged to suit prevailing ideas about Japanese nationality and culture without input from Ainu. Using theoretical understandings of Self-Other dichotomies, I examine the particular way these practices manifested in Meiji Japan to create modern Japanese national identity, and how these functioned both against the West and people colonized by Japan. From there, I look at how cultural nationalism was objectified as present from time immemorial in …

Political Ecology Of Medicinal Plant Use In Rural Nepal: Globalization, Environmental Degradation, And Cultural Transformation, Emily Dovydaitis

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Prior to the advent of biomedicine, rural communities in Nepal relied on phytochemically active compounds in medicinal plants as their primary source of medicine; however, ethnobotanical practices have shifted over time due to economic, environmental, and sociocultural stimuli. Findings from 2016 fieldwork conducted in Dumrikharka, Nepal and Tutung, Nepal are compared to existing literature to describe the political ecology of medicinal plants in rural Nepal.

Anthropogenic climate change threatens individual plant species and ecosystem biodiversity. Globalized markets unabated by weak conservation programs place increasing demands on medicinal plants. As indigenous plants become overharvested and more difficult to access, Nepalis incorporate …

The Relationship Between Generation, First And Second, Ethnic Identity, Modernity, And Acculturation Among Immigrant Lebanese American Women, Hanan Elali Fadlallah

Wayne State University Dissertations

Based on Berry’s model of acculturation, when immigrants move to a new country, they choose to live according to any one of the following four acculturation modes: assimilation, integration, separation, or marginalization. The specific cultural and psychosocial characteristics of the acculturating individual or group determine what acculturation mode they will most likely follow. Generation, ethnic identity and modernity are few examples of those cultural and psychosocial referents. The present study examined the relationship of generation, ethnic identity and modernity to acculturation among first and second-generation Lebanese American immigrant women living in the metro-Detroit area. Using the snowball technique, ninety women …

José María Arguedas Y La Decolonialidad: Lectura De "Todas Las Sangres" Y "El Zorro De Arriba" Y "El Zorro De Abajo", Iván Andrés Espinosa Orozco

Theses and Dissertations

This project seeks to understand José María Arguedas’s literary production through the

lens of decolonial theory. The first chapter is an introduction to the objectives of this

project. Next, the second chapter is based on an approach to the concepts of decoloniality

and postcolonial studies, which serve as a theoretical background for the purpose of this

thesis. The third chapter is based on a decolonial reading of Arguedas’s "Todas las

sangres", which leads to problematize the aspects related to identity in Peru. The fourth

chapter is based on the analysis of Arguedas’s "El zorro de arriba y el zorro de …

Afro-Colombians And The Encroachment Of Paramilitaries On The African Palm Oil Sector, Stacie Hecht

Anthropology ETDs

The African palm oil industry in Colombia has burgeoned in the last decade, with state-sanctioned promotions and new developmental productions for the expansion of these plantations seeking to provide economic stability for the country. In addition, with the passing of the Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Colombia in 2011, as well as deals with several European countries for the exportation of the product, comes an even greater demand than previously known for the industry. However, the continuation of this endeavor will lead to the devastation of the bio-diverse lands being used for economic gains. Furthermore, palm oil …

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 …

The City Of Minas: The Founding Of Belo Horizonte, Brazil And Modernity In The First Republic, 1889-1897, Daniel Lee Mcdonald

Masters Theses

The foundation of Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais in 1897 represents a pivotal moment in urban planning and the search for modernity in Brazil. This thesis argues that the decision to move the capital of Minas Gerais at the outset of the First Republic and the designing of the new city encompassed an evolving vision of modernity that helped establish the planned city as a means to transport Brazil into the future. It also situates the effort to build Belo Horizonte within the wider theoretical discourse on modernity and the development of urban spaces in Brazil. The …

At The Margins Of The Plantation: Alternative Modernities And An Archaeology Of The "Poor Whites" Of Barbados, Matthew Connor Reilly

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is an historical archaeological examination of the "poor whites" or "Redlegs" of Barbados. Excavations were undertaken from October 2012 to July 2013 in an abandoned tenantry, Below Cliff, on the east coast of the island, once inhabited by dozens of families locally referred to as the "poor whites" or "Redlegs", said to be the descendants of seventeenth century European indentured servants. Combining archaeological, ethnographic, and historical methodologies, this dissertation explores class relations of Below Cliff residents to processes of capitalism as well as other island laborers, including Afro-Barbadians. Additionally, racial categories are interrogated through an analysis of complex …

Selling Tradition: Impression Management And Draft Animal Agriculture Of A Mississippi Farmstead, Matthew Corbin Lance

Master's Theses

This thesis is a case study of a family of farmers in Mississippi’s Piney Woods who use horse-drawn equipment to grow crops. This practice is notable in the context of a larger agricultural system that prioritizes mechanization (particularly the use of tractors). The production style and their use of local direct selling via farmers markets allowed them to thrive economically because they were able to tap into a niche market of consumers desiring an alternative to the modern, conventional agricultural system.

Other literature on Alternative Food Networks (AFN) discusses the issues of alterity and appropriation—that is, whether AFN ventures are …

The Unbreakable Circle: An Intellectual History Of Michel Foucault, Chris Mb Moreland

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The following is a chronologically ordered internal intellectual history of Michel Foucault. The objective of this analysis is to determine whether or not Foucault provides a viable critical social theory of bourgeois society. In order to examine this topic, I trace the development of Foucault’s thought during his early, pre-archaeological stage, his archaeological stage, and his genealogical stage. I frame Foucault’s stages as attempts to overcome Kant’s subject/object division—or the paradox that man operates as both a meaning-giving subject and an empirical object—that one encounters in discourses pertaining to the social sciences. Foucault’s pre-archaeological stage is characterized by two humanistic …

Liberalism And Globalization: An Essay On Montesquieu, Tocqueville, And Manent, Trevor Shelley

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Many in the West today talk about the emergent unity of humanity, as social scientists examine the world through “global values,” assessing “global opinion”; economists study the “global economy” and “global finance”; historians write of “universal history;” legal scholars speak of “global domestic politics” and “world society,” while advocating “transnational justice”; political pundits announce the death of the nation-state. One could list additional examples illustrating the same apparent fact: a growing sense of global unity, and a universalist perspective on things social, economic, legal, historical, and political. To what extent, however, is this phenomenon—often referred to as “globalization”—an extension of …

Liberty Against Itself: British Freedoms In North America, Matthew Charles Connell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation explores the theoretical foundations of what I refer to as the Canadian liberal ethos. Taking the British parliamentary revolution of 1688 as pivotal event I examine the development of political liberty in its English incarnations and trace its development as it was expressed in colonial British North America. This dissertation hopes to provide an explanatory analysis the of the liberal ethos that can: (a) contribute to understanding the pre-suppositions of liberty in a liberal democratic order, (b) contribute to an understanding of diversity and competing philosophical principles that informed the settlement of British North America and the institutionalization …

The Relation Between Parenting Beliefs, Behaviors, And Acculturation On The Social Skills Of Prekindergarten Hispanic Children, Peter C. Winstead

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Research related to the importance of social skills in children shows that they are important to children's development and performance in school. Research on problem behaviors in children, such as bullying, have been shown to be related to negative outcomes later in life for children such as lower performance in school, and juvenile and adult criminal behavior. What parents believe and how they act on those beliefs have been found to be related to fewer problem behaviors, and to higher social skills in children. However, the research we have has focused on the parenting behaviors and social outcomes in children …

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations: Hazards, Environmental And Health Risks As The Latent Products Of Late Modernity, Bryan R. Clarey

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

CAFOs raise tens of thousands of animals in confined cages and feedlots, feed them high calorie diets, and ship them to slaughter in record time. These factory farms (as they are sometimes called) devastate neighboring environments with the releases of toxic methane gas and animal waste. Progress in modernized agricultural production has enabled us to feed the growing population but unintended consequences for human health and neighboring communities are happening. This study examines environmental and human health impacts of CAFOs on Central Mississippi residents. Through analyses of existing studies and data and telephone surveys, the objectives will be met. Risk …

Modernity, Capitalism, And War: Toward A Sociology Of War In The Nineteenth Century, 1815-1914, Eric Royal Lybeck

Masters Theses

The academic discipline of Sociology has rarely broached the subject of war and its recursive relationship with society. This paper addresses three major approaches in several disciplines that can be deemed ‘economically deterministic’: Marxist, Liberal, and Realist. These approaches can be useful for certain questions, but also leave out, or cloud other non-economic variables in understanding war – notably culture and military variables themselves. By using Karl Polanyi’s thesis regarding the “Myth of the Hundred Years’ Peace” (1815-1914) as a foil, the historical case of war in the nineteenth century is used to highlight the nature of war in European …

Narratives Of Social Change In Rural Buryatia, Russia, Luis Ortiz-Echevarria

Anthropology Theses

This study explores postsocialist representations of modernity and identity through narratives of social change collected from individuals in rural communities of Buryatia, Russia. I begin with an examination of local conceptualizations of the past, present, and future and how they are imagined in places and spaces. Drawing on 65 days of fieldwork, in-depth interviews, informal discussion, and participant-observation, I elaborate on what I am calling a confrontation with physical triggers of self in connection to place, including imaginations of the countryside and village, sacred and ritual spaces, landscapes, and the environment. I also explore how the anxieties embedded in narratives …