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Articles 103141 - 103170 of 659782

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Decolonization: The Litmus Test Of The Human Rights Framework, Isiuwa Omoigui Aug 2021

Decolonization: The Litmus Test Of The Human Rights Framework, Isiuwa Omoigui

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

This literature review examines the complicated relationship between anticolonial activism and the human rights framework that emerged in the wake of the Second World War. I contextualize the scholarly debate on the tension between conceptions of human rights as an individual entitlement and the collectivist nature of African anticolonial struggles. The universalism of the human rights framework endures the harsh light of critique, given its emergence from the twentieth-century European experience of genocide and great powers’ competing commitments to democracy and empire. The crimes against humanity committed in the name of colonial conquest and rule challenge the great powers’ moral …

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Social Media And The Construction And Propagation Of Populist-Nationalist Discourse, Paula Pineda Aug 2021

Social Media And The Construction And Propagation Of Populist-Nationalist Discourse, Paula Pineda

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

The growing overlap between three important phenomena—the increasingly widespread use of social media (especially as a tool for political communication), the current populist zeitgeist (as described by Cas Mudde), and the rise of right-wing nationalism—make the question of how social media can be employed as a platform for the amplification of populist-nationalist discourse particularly pressing. This paper explores the affordances of social media that allow for its employment in the creation and propagation of populist-nationalist discourse, particularly the elective affinity between social media and populism, the way that social media can provide a platform for the emotive element of populist-nationalist …

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Art As Protest: How Creative Activism Shaped “Black Lives Matter” In Richmond, Virginia, Anaheed Mobaraki Aug 2021

Art As Protest: How Creative Activism Shaped “Black Lives Matter” In Richmond, Virginia, Anaheed Mobaraki

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Unrest spurred by the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States has flowed throughout the city of Richmond, Virginia. Unique forms of protest have proliferated across the city, encompassing several artistic tactics such as graffiti art, oral storytelling, graphic design, and movement art. This paper will explore the effectiveness of art as protest by analyzing its impacts on several foundational aspects of social movements. Combining my personal observations, scholarly literature, and research on other social movements, I have developed my own findings regarding the use of art in Richmond’s Black Lives Matter movement. I posit that …

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“Our Neighbors In The Americas”: Obama, Empathy, And The Cuban Thaw, Sarah Mckinnis Aug 2021

“Our Neighbors In The Americas”: Obama, Empathy, And The Cuban Thaw, Sarah Mckinnis

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

In the study of International Relations, there is growing research and consideration of the significance of empathy in political communications and nation-to-nation relationships. This article examines cognitive empathy, the ability to understand the perspectives and feelings of another, in the case of the Cuban Thaw, the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Cuba and The United States. It traces President Obama’s use of empathy in publicly communicating intentions towards Cubans and Americans, a rhetoric that marks a contrast from the previous U.S. administrations’ attitudes toward Cuba. This article then analyzes the efficacy of that rhetoric, finding that though there are indications …

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Troubles Of The Coast: Industrialization, Climate Change, Marginality, And Collective Action Among Fishing Communities In Kerala, India, Abigail Maher Aug 2021

Troubles Of The Coast: Industrialization, Climate Change, Marginality, And Collective Action Among Fishing Communities In Kerala, India, Abigail Maher

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper explores the ways in which small-scale fishing communities in Kerala, India are affected by both industrialization and climate change, how they respond to these challenges, and the spatial, political, and social context in which these communities are situated. In order to do this, a combination of primary source materials and scholarly work is utilized. Construction of small-scale fishing communities as culturally “primitive”, as well as caste prejudice on the part of the government and industrial fishers, has resulted in increased marginalization of fishing communities and increased difficulty in adapting to the adverse changes associated with both climate change …

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Sounding The Alarm: Down-Ballot Setback For The Democrats In 2020, Yaakov Huba Aug 2021

Sounding The Alarm: Down-Ballot Setback For The Democrats In 2020, Yaakov Huba

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

The 2020 general election turned out more American voters than any other election, its monumental stakes commanding the attention of the world. While the focus in the race’s aftermath has primarily been the top of the ticket, the rebuke of President Trump’s time in office, the equally important down-ballot races have been largely passed over. Many major political analysts like the Cook Political Report predicted that Democrats would expand their House majority by 5-10 seats. Yet, the Democratic Party ended up losing 10 seats1. During the certification of election results, I collected data on incumbents in the US House of …

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The Cuban Vote: How A Very Unreligious Group Votes For A Very Religiously Affiliated Party, Kelly Gouin Aug 2021

The Cuban Vote: How A Very Unreligious Group Votes For A Very Religiously Affiliated Party, Kelly Gouin

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

While there is a strong recorded correlation between religiosity and Republican Party affiliation, Cuban Americans report low religiosity but strong support for the GOP (58% of Cuban Americans are affiliated with the GOP). This is only one way in which this community is an outlier: Cuban Americans do not behave like other Hispanics; do not vote like other religious groups; are more liberal than the average Republican voter; and have not experienced the religious revival often observed in citizens of former communist regimes. These particularities suggest that Cuban Americans’ reaction is very specific to the combination of their experiences in …

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The Impact Of Climate Change On Security In The Middle East: A Review Of The Literature, Yara El-Khatib Aug 2021

The Impact Of Climate Change On Security In The Middle East: A Review Of The Literature, Yara El-Khatib

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

The Middle East, which is already plagued by a series of security threats–such as terrorism, religious conflict, political instability, and more–is also an increasingly water-scarce and climate-vulnerable region. In this review, I examine the most recent and relevant literature on the debate of: how will, and how has climate change affected security in the Middle East? I examine five articles and one book that tackle this question, and I organize these sources based on the extent to which they argue that climate change is a determinant of insecurity in the region. While a few authors argue that climate change has …

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“Developing” Gender Equality: A Transnational Feminist Critique Of International Development Theory And Practice, Caroline Crystal Aug 2021

“Developing” Gender Equality: A Transnational Feminist Critique Of International Development Theory And Practice, Caroline Crystal

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Gender equality is increasingly understood as fundamental to international development, despite how the field differs from feminism in its intellectual tradition and ultimate goals. However, legitimacy, gender and understandings of gender equality are transnational and not global modalities, and even the most well-meaning institutions are not absent from global power relations or individual subjectivities. Often located in the “West,” international development organizations frequently make assumptions shaped by Western hegemony and therefore reproduce the very inequalities they claim to address. I explore the overlaps and asymmetries between transnational feminism and the gender equality programs of international development organizations such as the …

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An Indigenous-Informed Archaeological Approach To Dating The Taos Pueblo, Cameron Chacon Aug 2021

An Indigenous-Informed Archaeological Approach To Dating The Taos Pueblo, Cameron Chacon

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper sets out a theoretical proposal for obtaining an absolute date for the Taos Pueblo, a living archaeological site that may be the oldest continuously occupied structure in North America. The paper first explores the history and current state of archaeological and anthropological study at the Taos Pueblo and within the larger Taos community, determining that past academic studies have not fully aligned with the goals of the community itself, and have done harm in relationships between archaeologists and members of the Pueblo. I propose that the living heritage framework, as described in Trujillo (2019) and in accordance with …

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Xenophobia In The ‘Rainbow Nation’: An Analysis Of Intergroup Conflict In Contemporary South Africa, Rachel Calcott Aug 2021

Xenophobia In The ‘Rainbow Nation’: An Analysis Of Intergroup Conflict In Contemporary South Africa, Rachel Calcott

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Since the inception of democracy in South Africa, the nation has been touted as an example of racial reconciliation and harmonious diversity. However, the xenophobic violence that has plagued the state since 2008 and resulted in hundreds of fatalities reveals deep and ongoing intergroup divides. Dehumanizing rhetoric around immigration is propagated by both elected officials and the media, and non-natives are frequently characterized as ‘parasitic’ and ‘criminal.’ In this paper I suggest that the xenophobic violence observed in contemporary South Africa may be explained via a three-pronged analysis: the construction of an ‘exceptional’ South African social identity during the early …

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Returning To The Gender Gap In College Major: How Much Can Pre- College Skills Explain?, Nathalie Beauchamps Aug 2021

Returning To The Gender Gap In College Major: How Much Can Pre- College Skills Explain?, Nathalie Beauchamps

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

The gender wage gap in the United States is a well-known phenomenon and researchers across many disciplines have tried to pinpoint its cause. One popular explanation is the gender gap in college major choice; however, it is still unknown why women tend to major in so-called soft sciences and men in hard sciences. This paper builds upon Speer (2017)’s work studying the gender gap in major choice as explained by test scores. Rather than utilizing OLS regressions, I employ a Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method, which also shows how unspecified discrimination works for or against women (or men) in how much their …

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The Run On Repo And Bank Stock Returns, Madison Battaglia Aug 2021

The Run On Repo And Bank Stock Returns, Madison Battaglia

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

The run on the sale and repurchase market (“run on repo”) was at the nexus of the Financial Crisis of 2007- 2009. Up until now, the economics literature has not studied the effect of sale and repurchase agreement (“repo”) haircuts on bank stock returns using an empirical economic approach. I utilize private repo haircut data from 2007Q1-2009Q1 supplemented with bank stock returns, total reserve balances, and market rate of returns and risk-free rate of returns data to trace the path of crisis from repurchase agreements into a market that had no connection to housing. In linear model regressions, I find …

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Optimal Information Design In Two-Sided Trade, Pradhi Aggarwal Aug 2021

Optimal Information Design In Two-Sided Trade, Pradhi Aggarwal

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

In a two-sided market with a broker, the broker can influence the buyer’s and seller’s optimal trading behaviour through strategic information design. We study the impact of information about waiting times on riders and drivers in a rideshare market. We consider three information regimes: the first in which no information about time is revealed, the second in which true waiting times are communicated, and finally an intermediate regime in which agents are only told whether their waiting time falls within a high or low category. We evaluate the optimality of each information regime by maximizing welfare and revenue for each …

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Tabula Rasa: Mechanism, Intelligence, And The Blank Slate In Computing And Urbanism, Claire Gorman Aug 2021

Tabula Rasa: Mechanism, Intelligence, And The Blank Slate In Computing And Urbanism, Claire Gorman

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

No abstract provided.

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Examining Variations In Community Benefit Generation Across Namibian Conservancies, Amanda Zhang Aug 2021

Examining Variations In Community Benefit Generation Across Namibian Conservancies, Amanda Zhang

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Centered around Namibia’s Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) program, this analysis explores varying levels of community benefit generation across 51 of Namibia’s conservancies by comparing benefits across four conservancy subsets and using multiple linear regressions (MLRs) to examine relationships between selected conservancy characteristics and benefit generation. The statistically significant models predict that the presence of one additional major species is linked to an additional $N 1.458 in meat value per capita, $N 0.543 in conservancy wage per employee, and 0.661 in community game guard employment. While there appears to be a positive correlation between the number of species and …

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Environmental Determinism And Spurious Correlation: Just-So Stories In Phonology, Jeremiah Jewell Aug 2021

Environmental Determinism And Spurious Correlation: Just-So Stories In Phonology, Jeremiah Jewell

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

The sounds and sound structures of languages often pattern in geographic clusters. Most accounts of this phenomenon rely on language contact and common descent as the principal causes of areal features. Modern linguistics rejects the notion that the nature of the location in which a language is spoken affects its phonological system. Nonetheless, some have argued that climate, topography, and other aspects of the ambient environment causally affect phonologies. The aim of this paper is to assess recent attempts in linguistics literature to broaden the view of what motivates geographically correlated phonological structures. I focus on the realms of phonology …

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Social Movements In The Information Communication Technology Age: The Case Of Hong Kong, Justin Jin Aug 2021

Social Movements In The Information Communication Technology Age: The Case Of Hong Kong, Justin Jin

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper develops current understandings of social movements by incorporating research on state formation and counterinsurgency, expanding political process theory by introducing the concepts of legibility and capacity. It then considers the changes caused by widespread use of Internet communications technologies (ICTs). The paper conceptualizes state-movement contention as a competition for access to civil society and its resources. Movements and states attempt to maximize their access, otherwise known as capacity, and minimize that of their rival. The legibility of society to either side impacts their success. Success, or lack thereof, determines future capacity. Increased usage of ICTs and digital surveillance …

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The Dark Side Of Variety: An Economic Model Of Choice Overload, Teeger Li Blasheck, Jawwad Noor Aug 2021

The Dark Side Of Variety: An Economic Model Of Choice Overload, Teeger Li Blasheck, Jawwad Noor

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Choice Overload is a phenomenon well studied in psychology. It goes against the classical ³more is better´ dogma and describes the behavior of an agent when presented with too many options, in which instance an agent may either experience a decrease in satisfaction or end up deferring the choice all together. The standard Utility Maximization model of economics, however, largely follows the classical dogma and is unable to accommodate the behaviors of Choice Overload. This paper seeks to offer two possible economic models for Choice Overload based on the two mechanisms put forward by the psychological literature: search cost and …

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Children's Reasoning About In-Group And Out-Group Obligations, Karli Cecil, Julia Marshall, Paul Bloom Aug 2021

Children's Reasoning About In-Group And Out-Group Obligations, Karli Cecil, Julia Marshall, Paul Bloom

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

We examined whether children (ages 4-9 years) show in-group bias in expectations to help others as well as obligations to help others. We showed participants vignettes featuring two novel groups and a variety of scenarios where one character is in need and another is a bystander who notices this. Younger children did not show in-group bias in terms of expectations to help others, but an in-group bias was present in older children. For obligations, however, we did not find an interaction between age and group: children think you have to help in-group members more than out-group members, regardless of age. …

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The Keiretsu Advantage: How Japanese Automakers Thwarted American Competition, Jasper Boers Aug 2021

The Keiretsu Advantage: How Japanese Automakers Thwarted American Competition, Jasper Boers

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Today, Japan’s auto industry is renowned for its dominance of foreign markets. Japanese cars are cheap and fuel-efficient, undercutting larger, more expensive automobiles from Europe and America. Scholarship on recent Japanese industrial development tends to prioritize a ‘developmental state’ and robust industrial policy in shielding Japanese manufacturers from trade liberalization. This paper will argue that, while the industrial policy steered by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) played a significant role in advancing the interests of the Japanese auto industry, it was ultimately the unique trust-based keiretsu conglomerate structure that gave Japanese auto producers a comparative advantage vis-à-vis …

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“Hong-Kong Style Cultural Revolution” — Weaponization Of The Cultural Revolution In The 2019 Hong Kong Protests, Yat Fung Aug 2021

“Hong-Kong Style Cultural Revolution” — Weaponization Of The Cultural Revolution In The 2019 Hong Kong Protests, Yat Fung

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

The pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong started in June 2019 received international attention as clashes prolonged. A peculiar phenomenon has been observed in the textual space of both the pro-democracy camp and the pro-government camp, which is a shared set of terms surrounding the Chinese Cultural Revolution amid the camps’ antagonism. This essay thus investigates the comparisons between either the pro-democracy protests or the pro-government movement, with the Cultural Revolution, made by Hong Kong writers who position differently in the political spectrum. This essay aims to analyze the use of the Cultural Revolution as an idiomatic weapon to attack the …

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Resisting Gentrification: Everyday Politics & Collective Action From Oakland To Madrid, Caitlyn Clark, Stephanie Redden, Sakena Abedin Aug 2021

Resisting Gentrification: Everyday Politics & Collective Action From Oakland To Madrid, Caitlyn Clark, Stephanie Redden, Sakena Abedin

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

!is paper utilizes case studies in resistance to housing insecurity and neoliberalism to demonstrate the successful combinations of everyday resistance with collective action. Presenting the case studies as illustrations of two modes of analysis (Feminist Everyday International Political Economy and Marxism) previously thought of as somewhat contradictory, this paper argues that these models can strengthen one another. Using the examples of the Moms 4 Housing movement to resist gentrification and affordability crisis in Oakland, CA, and the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) that followed the Spanish housing and eviction crises, this paper addresses the possibility to combine the …

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Co-Opted By U.S. Capital: A Diachronic Study Of Korean Americans’ Relation To The Model Minority Myth, Hannah Kwak Aug 2021

Co-Opted By U.S. Capital: A Diachronic Study Of Korean Americans’ Relation To The Model Minority Myth, Hannah Kwak

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper examines the historical conditions within which Korean Americans became a “model minority,” linking transnational Korean history to the diasporic formations around the model minority stereotypes. It advances that Korean Americans’ conceptualization of their economic success borrows heavily from the narrative of Korea’s postwar economic development, which itself resulted from the nation’s desire to overcome the past of Japanese colonialism. For instance, the Korean American small business owners interviewed in Sai-I-Gu, a documentary about the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, emphasize the values of hard work, thrift, and sacrifice when telling their immigrant stories, echoing media representations of Korea’s postwar …

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The Structural Grammaticalization Of The Biblical Hebrew Ethical Dative, Oliver Shoulson Aug 2021

The Structural Grammaticalization Of The Biblical Hebrew Ethical Dative, Oliver Shoulson

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper offers a structural analysis of the evolution of a grammatical phenomenon in Biblical Hebrew known as the Ethical Dative (ED). My analysis is rooted in the grammaticalization chain proposed by Talmy Givón wherein the Ethical Dative evolves incrementally from other dative forms, accounting for its lopsided distribution across the Bible. Via its similarity to the Personal Dative in Appalachian English, I propose a derivation for the ED whose locus is the specifier of a high Applicative Phrase, allowing us to account for Givón’s progression through the gradual reduction of merge-operations and feature-valuation at that node. My analysis bolsters …

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Why Women Leave White Nationalist Movements: Exploring The Deradicalization Process, Julia Yingling Aug 2021

Why Women Leave White Nationalist Movements: Exploring The Deradicalization Process, Julia Yingling

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

This essay aims to explore primarily why women leave white nationalist movements, and the possible role of gender in the radicalization and deradicalization of white women in white nationalist movements. This essay examines the narratives of three former white supremacist women - Angela King, Samantha, and Katie McHugh - and identifies patterns in their journeys. This study has a limited scope due to the small number of case studies available and needs further research. In attempting to connect different narratives of former white supremacist women in an under-studied area, I take the liberty to interpret their stories within the broader …

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Evaluating Sustainable Frameworks And The Interrelationality Of The Sustainable Development Goals, Lawrence Stephen Early Iv Aug 2021

Evaluating Sustainable Frameworks And The Interrelationality Of The Sustainable Development Goals, Lawrence Stephen Early Iv

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Sustainable development in the 21st century has utilized an array of metrics to evaluate the success of cities and nations in three conventionally defined pillars of sustainability: social, economic and environmental. Inspired by Elkington’s Triple Bottom Line, the success of nations dedicated to sustainable development has been characterized by targets achieved within these pillars, as most recently and cohesively defined by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The paper argues that these pillars (a) fail to successfully bridge the gap between sustainable targets and the principles guiding sustainability; (b) engenders the consequence of preferential “weight” being attributed unevenly between …

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From “Pseudowomen” To The “Third Sex:” Situating Antisemitism And Homophobia In Nazi Germany, Gabriel Klapholz Aug 2021

From “Pseudowomen” To The “Third Sex:” Situating Antisemitism And Homophobia In Nazi Germany, Gabriel Klapholz

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

In this article, I examine how Nazi antisemitism and homophobia built upon one another, employing parallel narratives about femininity, foreignness, and threats to the nation state. I explore how early historiography of the Nazi period links the two phenomena as part of a single project, variations on the same theme of Nazi hatred. Ultimately, however, I work to challenge the earlier historiographical narrative and illuminate the ways in which Nazism treated Jews and gays very differently. In order to do so, I examine the two main strands of German sexology at the time, that of Magnus Hirschfeld and that of …

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What Two Canonical Novels Tell Us About Linguistic Prejudice In United States Courts, Charlotte Van Voorhis Aug 2021

What Two Canonical Novels Tell Us About Linguistic Prejudice In United States Courts, Charlotte Van Voorhis

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

In this senior essay, I reflect on how African American English (AAE) is represented and perceived in our society. I establish that it is a regular and systematic variety of English. I investigate two novels, To Kill A Mockingbird and Their Eyes Were Watching God and whether their depictions of AAE accurately reflect its systematicity. I equate inaccurate representation in the novels with the disrespectful treatment of AAE and its speakers in the United States currently. I compare the treatment of AAE in the novels’ trials to its treatment in State of Florida vs. George Zimmerman (2013), in which Rachel …

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Deep Learning In Musical Lyric Generation: An Lstm-Based Approach, Harrison Gill, Daniel Lee, Nick Marwell Aug 2021

Deep Learning In Musical Lyric Generation: An Lstm-Based Approach, Harrison Gill, Daniel Lee, Nick Marwell

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper explores the capability of deep learning to generate lyrics for a designated musical genre. Previous research in the field of computational linguistics has focused on lyric generation for specific genres, limited to Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) or Gated Recurrent Units (GRU). Instead, we employ a Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) network to produce lyrics for a specific genre given an input sample lyric. In addition, we evaluate our generated lyrics via several linguistic metrics and compare these metrics to those of other genres and to the training set to assess linguistic similarities, differences, and the performance of our …

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