Sociology Commons^™

A Comparison Of The Islamophobic Experiences Of The Female Convert And Immigrant Muslims In America, Aliaa Dawoud

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study compares the Islamophobic experiences of female converts and immigrants in America. It is based on interviews with a total of thirteen women, six Muslim born ones and seven converts. Both groups included hijabis and non-hijabis. Unlike most other studies, in which the converts are mostly or exclusively converts from Christianity, two of the interviewees were converts from Judaism while another one was a convert from a Christian/Buddhist/atheist background.

This study argues that Islamophobia is primarily manifested in the form of pervasive everyday racism that is levied at both female converts and immigrants alike, largely in the form of …

Online Communities And Offline Criminal Justice: The Digital Fallout Of Major Criminal Incidents, Jacqueline M. Scott

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

User-generated online data has, in recent years, become an important basis for sociological research, and the ubiquity of social media presages the importance of an increased understanding of its inner workings in the spheres of criminology and sociology. This dissertation examines the dynamics of user-generated information on social media and social news in the wake of 53 criminal incidents which generated higher-than-average interest online. Using multiple platforms and analytical techniques, I investigate the dynamics of within- and between-platform information uptake, examine potential avenues and drawbacks of the actionable information available online during a crisis, and describe patterns and focal topics …

Understanding Tax Progressivity As A Mechanism Of Gender Difference In Tax Payment Patterns And Post-Tax Income, Morgan A. Richards-Melamdir

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Gender difference in taxation is generally understudied. However, existing scholarship, largely country case studies, suggests men pay higher tax rates where income tax progressivity is higher, due to their higher average income. Men’s higher rates should then increase gender equality in income post-tax. However, many rich countries reduced income tax progressivity starting in the 1980s-90s during “taxing for economic growth” reforms, including over half of the high income countries included in this study. These changes have previously unexplored implications for the extent to which the current (versus past) tax systems of rich countries reduce, leave unaffected, or compound gender disparities …

A Dream No Longer Deferred: The Power And Limits Of Conditional Integration On The Social Mobility Of Undocumented Young Adults, Hyein Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Who are undocumented college graduates and how do they transition into the workforce upon graduation? This dissertation examines the diverse trajectories and social mobility patterns of 1.5 generation, undocumented Latinos, Asians and blacks with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), Temporary Protected Status (TPS), or the “truly undocumented” across the country. Although millions of undocumented young adults, closely resembling their 1.5 generation, documented peers are coming of age firmly rooted in American society, little is known about this population due to the lack of credible data. This project employs a mixed methods approach to analyze both qualitative and quantitative data …

Socially Racialized And Statistically Invisible: U.S. Census Recognition Of The Middle Eastern And North African Diaspora, Aliana J. Jabbary

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis delves into the recent decision by the U.S. Executive’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to revise the statistical categorization of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) individuals within federal statistical collection, particularly focusing on the U.S. Decennial Census’ racial and ethnic classifications as outlined in the OMB’s Statistical Policy Directive no. 15. Historically classified solely as racially White, the MENA diaspora’s statistical invisibility within federal data has significant impacts on policy eligibility and access to legal protections, contributing to their social erasure from the national identity. Through a comprehensive analysis of racialization and Orientalism scholarship, alongside an …

Altruistic Imperialism: The Co-Optation Of Mutual Aid By The Nonprofit Industrial Complex, Kelly T. Waltz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis assesses the role of the nonprofit industrial complex (NPIC) in neoliberalism’s material destruction of global community development and its exploitation of human benevolence. An examination of the institutionalization of high-profile social movements such as BLM and #MeToo demonstrates that the nonprofit industrial complex is built upon a misappropriation of feminist and liberation ideologies and practices, an insidious weaponization of our collectivist tendencies, and the systematic subjugation of mutual aid networks originally created and operated independent of systems of capital. The systemic and conceptual limitations of mainstream methods and the criteria by which nonprofit organizations’ effectiveness is evaluated are …

Interracial Instagram: Depictions Of Interracial Couples On Instagram, Christie Sillo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines depictions of interracial romantic relationships on Instagram, a popular photo- and video-sharing social networking site. Social networking sites like Instagram, whereby users connect with each other by creating, sharing, and consuming content, are prime sites for sociological study because ideas are constantly being (re)made on them. On Instagram, meaning-making is mainly done through the construction of a profile and the posting of images and/or videos. Using a mixed-methods research design of hashtag analysis, digital ethnography, discourse and image analysis, I critically analyze Instagram profiles that depict interracial romantic relationships. In doing so, I develop a contemporary, social …

From The Outside Looking In: Transmasculine Narrative Identity, Experiences, And Larger Narratives On Social Media, Micah Roldan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Narrative identity development is an essential process in how individuals perceive themselves and the world around them. Often, narrative identity is studied in cisgender heterosexual individuals and applied to others without the acknowledgment of individuals that fall outside of these categories. Drawing upon existing literature and autoethnography, this thesis aims to meaningfully bridge this gap by studying the narrative identity development of transmasculine individuals through the lens of social media. This thesis proposes that the use of social media to share gender transition journeys has created a new digital trans and queer narrative for users and viewers. This narrative is …

The Black Map Project: A Black People’S Epistemology Of Healing, Britton Williams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work is a love letter to Mary Turner and her descendants, by which I mean all Black people, that lifts recipes and roadmaps of Black creative healing and liberatory praxes. It is a freedom dream (Kelley, 2002) that dares to (re)imagine mental health care by holding Black healing and liberation centrally in mind. I do not seek to prove through this work but rather to provoke [thought|action|repair]. In this work, I unsettle prescribed notions of therapy that have long dismissed/erased/ignored the needs and [therapeutic] practices of Black people. The Black MAP Project resists epistemologies of ignorance (Mills, 2022)—born in …

A Pearl Ravaged: The Paradox Of Haiti And Its Socioeconomic Origins, Isabel Ishibe Exel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Saint-Domingue was once the most profitable colony of the Caribbean, the so-called pearl of the Antilles. Nowadays, Haiti is known for being the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, a dramatic shift that raises the question of the factors contributing to Haiti's current state, marked by persistent violence, natural disasters, and political instability. Various discourses have framed Haiti as a country doomed for failure. However, relying on binary concepts such as success and failure is counterproductive to a refined analysis. How, then, should we structure this conversation? My ultimate goal for this work is to provide a nuanced analysis of …

Interviews And Perspectives Among Community Members Working With Undocumented Female Border Crossers In The States Along The United States-Mexico Border, Melissa M. Frasco

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In order to discuss immigration in the context of the United States, we must dispel the myth that immigration is monolithic. Therefore, when we discuss national identity, gender equality, policy, employment rates, and countless other ordinary topics, we are discussing immigration, as it is embedded in our history and our future. The goal of my research is to delineate the experiences of violence that female border crossers undergo in the process of crossing into the United States via the southernmost border. The data collection process involved four semi-structured interviews to collect oral histories from workers at community-based organizations. These organizations …

Algorithmic Love: Twenty-First Century Organizations Of The Romantic, Sandra Moyano Ariza

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the highly computed and accelerated experiences of digital love as well as their cultural and artistic representations in order to shed light on the human and more-than-human entanglements producing the algorithmic love experience. The recent turn to love in critical theory and cultural studies examines how love circulates in neoliberal societies and in the subjective processes of the users, foregrounding the control of populations and the very much lamented “end of love” (Illouz 2019). My study of love supplements the neoliberalist critique of algorithmic love with a posthuman and media theory approach that attends to the material …

Critical-Race Elementary Schooling: Critical-Race Teacher Change Agents Are Challenging Whiteness In Elementary Schools, David R. Rosas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Children in elementary schools think, talk, and reason in big ways that reflect how they live and experience race, racism, and racialization. Some elementary school teachers -- or critical-race teacher change agents -- intentionally include this work in their classrooms. My aim is to find out what motivates critical-race teacher change agents to challenge Whiteness in their classrooms and understand what they say they do to challenge Whiteness with young children.

An emphasis on racial-justice work in elementary schools has often been overlooked by teacher education and has been further pushed back by the recent backlash on critical race theory …

Low Elevation Coastal Zone (Lecz) Population Social Vulnerability And Risk: A Spatial Analysis Based On The 2015-16 National Family Health Survey (Nfhs-4) Of India, Paradorn Wongchanapai

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background & Problem Statement:

This study assessed social vulnerability and risk to hydroclimate hazards of Indian urban and rural populations in the Low Elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ), a contiguous coastal area with elevations less than 10 meters. The LECZ is considered an at-risk area as hydroclimate hazards tend to be heightened. Moreover, being the most populous country in the world, any hydroclimate hazards that hit the LECZ would disproportionately impact a large number of Indian populations. Understanding the social vulnerability and risk of the LECZ populations can help mitigate and prevent potential adverse outcomes for the populations.

Importantly, this study …

What Does One Billion Dollars Look Like?: Visualizing Extreme Wealth, William Mahoney Luckman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The word “billion” is a mathematical abstraction related to “big,” but it is difficult to understand the vast difference in value between one million and one billion; even harder to understand the vast difference in purchasing power between one billion dollars, and the average U.S. yearly income. Perhaps most difficult to conceive of is what that purchasing power and huge mass of capital translates to in terms of power. This project blends design, text, facts, and figures into an interactive narrative website that helps the user better understand their position in relation to extreme wealth: https://whatdoesonebilliondollarslooklike.website/

The site incorporates …

Más Allá De La Crisis Y La Emergencia: Aproximaciones A Los Movimientos Migratorios Contemporáneos A Través De La Traducción Y La Comedia, Fabiola Fernandez Peer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Esta investigación propone una reflexión original sobre la migración más allá de los marcos de la crisis y de la emergencia en referencia a acontecimientos concretos de estos últimos diez años de “crisis/emergencias migratorias” en y entre las regiones sur y norte del continente. El análisis del ensayo visual de la escritora/artista visual Verónica Gerber; el ensayo y la escritura ficcional de la escritora Valeria Luiselli y los performances de comedia de los comediantes/influencers George Harris y Jóse Rafael Guzmán revela que estos materiales pugnan con el discurso oficial, mediático, artístico, humanitario referido a la migración. Señala el impacto …

Complicating Confidence: A Critical Analysis Of Confidence In A Girls' Empowerment Organization, Kimberly M. Belmonte

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the popular imagination, confidence is thought of as a positive or healthy state. Yet there is also a pervasive belief that adolescent girls are at risk of losing their confidence or of not having enough confidence, particularly compared to boys. The larger field of youth development theorists and practitioners see confidence as a positive, normative, and measurable aspect of healthy adolescent development (e.g., Lerner et al., 2015). Conversely, critical feminist scholars assert that confidence has become hegemonic, mandated, and commodified (e.g., Banet-Weiser, 2015; Gill & Orgad, 2016)—taken up by a neoliberal, post-feminist climate as a technology of the self …

Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the mobility politics of container shipping and argues that technological development, political-economic order, and social infrastructure co-produce one another. Containerization, the use of standardized containers to carry cargo across modes of transportation that is said to have revolutionized and globalized international trade since the late 1950s, has served to expand and extend the power of international coalitions of states and corporations to control the movements of commodities (shipments) and labor (seafarers). The advent and development of containerization was driven by a sociotechnical imaginary and international social contract of seamless shipping and cargo flows. In practice, this liberal, …

Making And Unmaking Multiethnic Black Neighborhoods: Immigration, Race, And Gentrification In New York And Paris, Maura Mcgee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a transatlantic comparative study of gentrification in multiethnic Black neighborhoods in New York and Paris. It draws on neighborhood case studies conducted in Crown Heights in Brooklyn and la Goutte d’Or in Paris, home respectively to African ancestry immigrant communities from the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa. It looks specifically at the causes and consequences of changes in neighborhood social spaces—the commercial landscape and social institutions—rather than at shifts in residential patterns.

Three main questions guide this research. First, what roles do race and immigration play in the process of gentrification, which has historically been most prevalent in …

The Promise Of Universalism Deferred: Political Economy Of Social Policy In 21st Century Latin America, Juan C. Ferre

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the first decade and half of the 21st century, most Latin American countries experienced a long-overdue reduction in income inequalities and significant social policy expansion. While this welfare expansion has been widely documented, scholars have paid less attention to the persistent or increasing segmentation: inequalities in transfers and in the quality of services across population groups continued unabated. This dissertation employs mixed-methods to respond to the following questions: have governments in Latin America, and Left governments in particular, made significant progress toward universal social policy?

For 17 Latin American countries in the period 2000-2020, I measure three dimensions …

From Voting Rights To Voter Turnout: Three Papers On The Interplay Of Racial Resentment, Racial Threat, And Politics, Kevin Morris

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Paper 1 begins by exploring the role of white racial anxieties in the formation and furtherance of narratives about election fraud. It argues that white Americans face a psychological dilemma: despite having a strong desire to reject the outcomes of recent elections that disproportionately benefit nonwhite Americans, they nevertheless seek to justify a political system that has long accrued benefits to their own racial group. This tension might be discharged by accusing nonwhite voters of fraud, thus maintaining the legitimacy of electoral politics. The paper uses three tests to show that this process is likely at play. First, public rhetorics …

Situating The Child’S Voice Within Children’S Fashion: An Interdisciplinary Examination Of The Child’S Engagement With The Clothing They Wear, Melinda Byam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper examines the child’s relationship with children’s fashion, the clothing they wear, and their fashion consumption practices. Using a wardrobe approach to fashion, and an understanding of the child as the expert in their own lives, the author questions how the child engages, interacts, and experiences children’s fashion considering that how they use, think, and speak about their clothing is minimally consulted. Situating this research within a theoretical foundation set by Goffman and Simmel (social behavior), Featherstone (consumer culture), and Merleau-Ponty and Entwistle (embodiment), this text examines fashion from the point of view of the child, hypothesizing how future …

Understanding Victim-Offender Overlap Among Youth In Custody In The United States And Taiwan, Tzu-Ying Lo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The issue of the victim-offender overlap was identified more than 60 years ago (Wolfgang, 1958), but it was not until the last decade that research interest in the victim-offender overlap began to flourish. Although the victim-offender overlap is arguably established by a substantial body of research, a closer look at the existing literature will find scant attention paid to the incarcerated population. Recent studies (Daquin & Daigle, 2020; Kuo et al., 2021; Toman, 2017) have begun to discover the victim-offender overlap in adult prisons, but the victim-offender overlap in juvenile facilities remains underexplored. To fill the research gap, this dissertation …

Colonial Geographies Of Gendered Violence And Mental Health In The United States And Puerto Rico, Lorraine Lizbeth L. Torres Colon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As of January 2021, after years of community organizing and protests, the Puerto Rican island government announced a state of emergency due to the high rates of gendered violence on the island. At the same time, within the field of psychiatric epidemiology, consistent findings have indicated higher frequencies of mood disorders and substance abuse disorders among Puerto Ricans both on and off the island, relative to all other US Latinx ethnic groups. This dissertation frames Puerto Ricans experiences with psychological distress and gendered violence as public health issues nested within differing geographies of colonial divestment. I explore the relationships between …

Confronting The Doppelganger: Mapping The Ontological Terrain Of An Afro-Caribbean Woman As She Rebrands Diasporic, Feminine Identity Politics: An Autoethnography, Aysha E. Todd-Stone

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis seeks to interrogate the intricacies governing the intra-racial\ intra-gendered relationship of an Afro-Trinidadian woman as she commandeers professional spaces in North America. The intent is to challenge the instrument of Black sisterhood deeming it as an incomplete, social instrument, and to prove using an auto-ethnographic approach how Diasporic, feminine trauma leads to psychically induced, episodic violence that is highly suggestive but subtle to the naked eye which in turn irretrievably damages intra-interpersonal relations. Quantitative studies have produced a composite from the white\black perspective (Goosby et al., 2015, Sims et al., 2012) and others dealing with gender (Braithwaite., 1981, …

Beyond Punishment: A Critical And Interpretive Phenomenology Of Accountability, Cameron Rasmussen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

State responses to interpersonal violence in the US have long been focused on punishment and prison. While opposition to punitive responses to interpersonal violence has been marginal, there are small but growing efforts to challenge the primacy of punishment and incarceration. In its place, different non-punitive approaches to justice have been practiced and promoted including restorative justice and transformative justice, which see accountability, not punishment, as a primary goal. Accountability has been theorized and researched largely from the perspective of survivors of harm, and there is limited research on the experiences of people who have caused harm and engaged in …

Typologies Of Battering: Uncovering Patterns Of Coercive Tactics Used By Abusive Men In A Mixed Methods Study, Abbie L. Tuller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Coercive control provides a current day feminist understanding of intimate partner violence (IPV). Recent research has demonstrated the significance of coercive control and suggests it provides a more accurate understanding of IPV than using physical violence alone. Utilizing a feminist lens, this study’s first aim was to explore if typologies based on coercive control could be developed. The second and third aims were to explore if demographic differences and differences in masculinity exist across typologies. The final aim of this study was to continue the feminist understanding of IPV using the moral emotions of shame and guilt as an extension …

Evocative Visualization Of Void And Fluidity, Tomiko Karino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the last few years alone, we have seen a significant increase in a demand for inclusion and diversity in every sector in our society. While there are numerous data visualization projects that point out and raise concerns about the lack of diversity, they often merely illustrate the disparity. By using the permanent collection data of the Museum of Modern Art, this capstone project explores ways to creatively visualize gender disparity among the artists in the museum’s collection and questions what makes evocative visualizations that make an impression on the audience. It examines how to create visualizations that not only …

Party Time: The Working Families Party And The Us Political System, 1998–2018, Luke P. Elliott-Negri

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1998, an upstart “third party” called the Working Families Party (WFP) limped onto the political scene in New York State. Ten years later, the WFP was at the center of the electoral effort that wrested control of the New York State Senate from the Republican Party for the first time in many decades, and a torrent of progressive legislation ensued. This dissertation is a history of the WFP from 1998 to 2018, when the Republicans were again—and this time stably—vanquished at the state level and socialists began to enter state and federal office in a new way. To develop …

Pedagogies Of Reform: The Role Of Game-Based Learning In Recontextualizing Education, Hamad Sindhi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Game-based learning, the learning games industry, and the work of learning game designers is enmeshed in a neoliberalized education system and shifting educational, economic, and technological contexts in the United States. There’s a lot of discussion and debate about various educational technologies and learning games in schools, but how much do we look at the work that goes into making those products? Technology has been a key part of school reform in the United States for the last 50 years at least. This dissertation offers an account of tech-based school reform that centers the role of pedagogy vis-à-vis learning games …