Sociology Commons^™

Outing The Center: Homophobia In Jamaica, Jamilah King

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Jamaica is a country with a unique historical legacy of slavery and resistance. Once Britain most prosperous colony, Jamaica was also home to the majority of slave uprisings in the New World . This legacy of resistance has created a contemporary climate rife with cultural contradictions; the country’s motto, “Out of many one people” belies the many racial, class and gender hierarchies that are omnipresent forces in Jamaican daily life.

Despite the image heralded around the world of Jamaica as a tropical paradise, the country also has the reputation for being fiercely homophobic. How is homosexuality perceived in Jamaican society? …

Dutty Wine: Ooman Big Up Or Dis?, Nicole Cruz

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study explores the extent to which females are liberated or oppressed in dancehall in Kingston, Jamaica. Using a qualitative approach and feminist perspective, I explore dancehall culture and the ghetto communities on which it centers. Participant observation allowed me to experience the dynamics of the dancehall space. Using in-depth interviews, I assessed my observations with the opinions of dancehall fans and other community members. Ultimately, it becomes clear in this study that though heterosexual females are liberated with their freedom of sexual expression, dancehall is still has a deeply patriarchal structure. Heterosexual males dominate dancehall by oppressing heterosexual females, …

Viviendo Sin Bosques: Perspectivas En Disputa Sobre El Desarrollo Y Su Impacto En El Pueblo Mbya Guaraní, Maya Politis

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The indigenous populations all over the world have been and continue to experience drastic transformations in these past decades, each at its own pace and in its own form. Although throughout history all cultures and societies experience transformations, for the most part the recent transformations have been forced on these communities to a degree more brutal than ever. The powerful effects of the modern capitalistic system are quickly displacing and endangering indigenous populations. Practically every square foot of land and air has been privatized, sold to big corporations and exploited to benefit productivity without even the consideration of sustainability. This …

Dance Club Culture, Amy M. Iseler

Masters Theses

My research examines the dance club culture in a mid-sized Northwestern city. I explore this subject through participant observation and interviews with dance club patrons. The issues I address in my research include dance club music, music videos, alcohol, clothing, sexual behavior, non-verbal communication and the dance club environment. The purpose of this Masters Thesis is to determine whether dance club culture perpetuates sexist attitudes and beliefs within its patrons.

This original piece of research is based in existing literature which informs the individual elements of the dance club culture. The experiences of dance club patrons demonstrate how these elements …

Symbolic Interaction Theory And Architecture, Ronald W. Smith, Valerie Bugni

Sociology Faculty Research

Architectural sociology is receiving renewed attention but still remains a neglected area of investigation. As a major theoretical perspective within sociology, symbolic interaction helps us understand how the designed physical environment and the self are intertwined, with one potentially influencing and finding expression in the other; how architecture contains and communicates our shared symbols; and how we assign agency to some of our designed physical environment, which then invites in a different kind of self-reflection. This article discusses numerous instances of symbolic interaction theory–architecture connections, with applied examples showing how symbolic interactionists and architects can collaborate on projects to the …

Learning Sustainable Design Through Service, Karim Al-Khafaji, Margaret Catherine Morse

Higher Education

Environmental sustainability and sustainable development principles arc vital topics that engineering education has largely failed to address. Service-learning, which integrates social service into an academic setting, is an emerging tool that can be leveraged to teach sustainable design to future engineers. We present a model of using service-learning to teach sustainable design based on the experiences of the Stanford chapter of Engineers for a Sustainable World. The model involves the identification of projects and partner organizations, a student led, project-based design course, and internships coordinated with partner organizations. The model has been very successful, although limitations and challenges exist. These …

Public Scholarship: Making Sense Of An Emerging Synthesis, Judith A. Ramaley

Higher Education

This concluding chapter, written by a national leader in higher education, reflects on public scholarship from a perspective beyond Penn State and argues that public scholarship promises to strengthen “that special form of public decision making that we call democracy.”

Trust In Wildland Fire And Fuel Management Decisions, William T. Borrie, Adam Liljeblad

Society and Conservation Faculty Publications

Public land managers are stewards of public lands and of the relationship between the public and these lands. Maintaining one aspect of this relationship, trust in the agency, can be challenging. Lack of trust can influence public response to management decisions, including about wildland fire use. By considering the factors that influence trust, managers can be more effective in accomplishing fire stewardship objectives.

Clarifying The Role Of Self-Efficacy And Metacognition As Indicators Of Learning: Construct Development And Test, Trevor T. Moores, Jerry Cha-Jan Chang, Deborah K. Smith

Management, Entrepreneurship and Technology Faculty Research

We propose extending our understanding of self-efficacy by comparing self-efficacy with a related construct called metacognition. Metacognition involves the monitoring and control of one's thought processes and is often related, as is self-efficacy, to performance on a task. We develop an instrument that attempts to measure both self-efficacy and metacognition with respect to one's performance on a test covering declarative and procedural knowledge (knowing that, and knowing how) of DFDs and ERDs. With data collected from a sample of 124 students, we use partial least squares (PLS) to show that self-efficacy and metacognition are distinct yet related constructs. While self-efficacy …

Producing Norms: Same-Sex Marriage, Refiguring Kinship And The Cultural Groundswell Of Queer Coupledom, Rob Cover

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Poststructuralist feminism, postmodern inquiry, queer theory and various radical and liberal-humanist forms of lesbian/gay rights have worked to undo the claim to the naturalness of masculine-feminine and male-female complementarity in sex and relationships. That is, the rhetorical grounding of the very notion of relationship ‘coupledom’ has been put in question over the past half-century and opened the possibility of a radical reorganisation of modern kinship. The destabilising impact on much contemporary western legislation concerning family, children, IVF access, adoption, immigration rights and social security centers on whether or not the subject of that legislation is ‘single’ or ‘coupled’. Such legislation …

The Phenomenology Of Nonidentity And Theatrical Presence In M. Butterfly, William S. Haney Ii

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

David Henry Hwang’s postmodernist play M. Butterfly, abounds with alienation devices for deconstructing the notion of a unified subject. This essay, however, seeks to challenge the assumed poststructuralist vantage-point that the self and the metaphysics of presence are illusory by exploring what holds the play's identities together as dynamic matrices that function coherently within their discursive contexts. How tenable is the constructivist claim that our shifting subject positions designated by power relations are self-sustaining, that the self does not in fact extend beyond the material tokens of narrative conventions and discursive fields? Even if performers and audience can shift …

Pedagogy, Ideology, And Space In The Classical Anarchist Conception Of Freedom, Michael Vastola

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This article attempts to understand the term “freedom” through a comparative analysis of how it was mobilized in various anarchist texts from the nineteenth century. Such an analysis helps to differentiate the anarchist conception from its mainstream liberal and libertarian variants. This is accomplished with the aid of a broad spatial framework in which incommensurable notions of space and spatiality are clarified. Likewise, the framework demonstrates the extent to which popular assumptions about pedagogy from the anarchist tradition are based on a contradictory recognition of ideal educational practices. Such practices often utilize a propaganda model that is in many respects …

Not Only A Consequence Of Power, But Also One Of Its Strategies: An Interview With Lorna Rhodes, Matthew Wolf-Meyer, Lorna Rhodes

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Introduction]

In 2004 Lorna Rhodes published Total Confinement: Madness and Reason in the Maximum Security Prison as part of the University of California Press’s Public Anthropology series. This ethnographic manuscript – supplemented by a number of articles – took as its object of anthropological analysis the supermax prison system in Washington State. In so doing, Rhodes brought to the fore questions of power and agency as they are shaped by prison officials, prisoners, psychiatrists, and other stakeholders in the state-run prison system. In the following, Rhodes discusses her current research, American culture, and her views on academia and ethnography with …

On Chris Lehmann's Revolt Of The Masscult, George Ciccariello Maher

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The good folks at Prickly Paradigm are certainly doing their job. Their stated objective is “publishing challenging and sometimes outrageous pamphlets,” and Lehmann's short piece fulfills this claim brilliantly, evoking intellectual mood swings that span from shouting for joy at a particularly lucid formulation to shouting angrily at the deftness with which Lehmann transforms his lucidity into suspiciously wrongheaded and reactionary assessments. The clinical bipolarity of this work, as we will see, is no coincidence: it is precisely the political entanglement of the subject of mass culture (“masscult”) that leads to both respect for one's opponents and suspicion …

Wildland Fire Effects On Visits And Visitors To The Bob Marshal Wilderness Complex, William T. Borrie, Stephen Mccool, Joshua G. Whitmore

Society and Conservation Faculty Publications

Wildland fire can affect wilderness visits and scientific efforts to understand visitor relationships with wilderness places. Large-scale and long-lasting fires occurred in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, Montana, in 2003. A study of visitors that year to monitor long-term trends in visit and visitor characteristics was repeated in 2004 to fully understand how the 2003 fires affected trend analysis. This article considers the question of how wildland fire changes the relationship people have with wilderness, particularly related to their visits and visitor attitudes toward fire management.

Review Of The Louisiana Project, By Carrie Mae Weems, Larry M. Taylor

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

More Than In And Out Of The Classroom Closet: A Study Of Lesbian, Gay, And Bisexual Teachers’ Identity Management Strategies, Teresa S. Lance

Dissertations

Two advancements in the study of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals’ workplace sexual identity management, the Workplace Sexual Identity Management Measure (WSIMM) and the Workplace Sexual Identity Management (WSIM) social cognitive model of identity management are incorporated in the current study of LGB K-12 teachers’ workplace sexual identity management strategies. The purpose of this study was to assess the psychometric properties o f a revised version the WSIMM, investigate the workplace sexual identity management strategies of LGB teachers, and gain further understanding of the complex process LGB individuals navigate related to managing their sexual identity at work by exploring …

Implementing Community Policing Successfully: An Analysis Of The Degree Of Police Engagement With The Philosophy And Practice Of Community Policing, Robert G. Muladore

Dissertations

The police community in the United States began to adopt the philosophy of community policing in the early 1970s as a solution to rising crime rates. Since that time a great many police departments have officially stated that they have embraced and practice this concept. When later studies began to question theeffectiveness of community policing in reducing crime rates, measures such as reduction of citizens' fear of crime and citizen's attitudes toward policebecame the secondary measures of success of this philosophy. Few comprehensive studies have specifically looked at the degree of congruence betweenpolice agency adoption of the community policing philosophy …

Donde Habite El Olvido (Reflected In The Photograph), Michaela Mccaughey

Senior Honors Projects

The concept of place, so intangible and yet embedded in all, remains a complicated and debated philosophical topic. What is place? Why are we drawn to certain places and averse to others? Why does a sense of home continue to feel so necessary to us – when there we are nurtured by it and when separated we long for it. Art works, places in themselves, provoke similar questions in us. We are drawn to certain works of art; they signify something to us in their being-in-the-world. Their place matters to us. Art is a place you can return (home) to. …

Explaining Disparities In Treatment Seeking: The Case Of Infertility, Lynn K. White, Julia Mcquillan, Arthur L. Greil

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Objective: To present an integrated model of help-seeking, review empirical work in its support, and show its application to the explanation of racial and ethnic disparities in infertility help-seeking.
Conclusions: A help-seeking model provides a plausible explanation of observed disparities in infertility help-seeking. In addition to being related to income, race and ethnicity is related to prior experience with doctors, marital status, parity, knowledge and attitudes toward reproductive technology, and attitudes supporting spiritual rather than technological solutions to health problems.

Comparing Check-All And Forced-Choice Question Formats In Web Surveys, Jolene D. Smyth, Don A. Dillman, Leah Melani Christian, Michael J. Stern

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

For survey researchers, it is common practice to use the check-all question format in Web and mail surveys but to convert to the forced-choice question format in telephone surveys. The assumption underlying this practice is that respondents will answer the two formats similarly. In this research note we report results from 16 experimental comparisons in two Web surveys and a paper survey conducted in 2002 and 2003 that test whether the check-all and forced-choice formats produce similar results. In all 16 comparisons, we find that the two question formats do not perform similarly; respondents endorse more options and take longer …

Small Select Library Or Miserable Excuse: Antebellum College Libraries In The American Southeast, Patrick M. Valentine

The Southeastern Librarian

What role did antebellum college libraries play in the development of the South? National studies rarely mention southern institutions, while institutional histories neglect the role of the library. Yet the history of southern antebellum college libraries should be of special interest because this was often their initial formative period. There were few college libraries in the South prior to 1800 but many were founded in the following decades. It was in the last decades before the Civil War that the South first became really aware of the need for widespread education. At the same time, southern colleges were in many …

Kemiskinan Dan Lingkungan : Kasus Komunitas Lahan Basah Kota Di Depok Dan Jakarta, Rissalwan Habdy Lubis

Jurnal Ilmu Kesejahteraan Sosial

There are relationship between environmental issues and other issues that enclose to the human life. There are two dimensions of Environmental contex, namely: physical spatial context and social context. In fact, anthropogenic activities have serious impacts to the damage of the environment. The relation between environmental issues and poverty is very complex. The World Bank identified three main relations between the degradation of environmental condition and the living condition of poor people, namely: the environmental health, the livelihoods of poor people,and the vulnerability of people living below poverty line.

Nixi: A Case Study Of The Influences Of China’S Economic Development On The Fringe Of Tibet, Zachary Johnson

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

On the eastern mountainside of Nixi cling several tall, red earthen houses, the winding road to Deqin cuts between; they face a swell in the middle of the valley where several more houses stand, and one in mid-construction. The two clusters of beautiful Tibetan houses are connected by a fairly recently added crushed stone road, walled in by rough stonework patched with cement. The village is surrounded by evergreens and blossoming mountain laurels. To the north the green mountains are staggered until they slowly fade into pale blue creases humbled by a high snowcapped range at the Tibetan border. To …

Migration As An Economic Activity: The Efficiency Of Population Redistribution In Viet Nam, Megan L. Maurer

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Migration policy in Viet Nam views land and populations as economic resources. At reunification, these resources were not evenly distributed, thus the migration policy of the newly formed Socialist Republic of Viet Nam sought to redistribute them in a more efficient manner. However, this viewpoint does not take into account environmental and social factors. These factors include, but are not limited to issues surrounding the suitability of land for cultivation, the choice of crops to be cultivated, the infrastructural supports provided to migrant communities, and the lack of capital being put into the system.

As a consequence of these factors, …

Development, Civil Society And The Conflict In Nepal, Shan Rehman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

For more than two decades now, scholars such as Etienne Balibar and Antonio Negri have argued the ‘total subsumption of capital’; there remains no ‘outside’- all aspects of social life are governed by commodities and wage labor. This process, given impetus by the processes commonly referred to as economic globalization or market liberalization, also came to be synonymous with ‘development’. Imperfect markets, the widely implemented ‘Washington Consensus’ package of economic policies further implied, were far better social mechanisms than imperfect states.

The study and practice of ‘development’ worldwide, however, is in flux. Critiques of the mainstream ‘development’ project, widely implemented …

Reproducing Social Identities: Employer-Employee Relationships Within Paid Domestic Labor In The Netherlands, Melissa Macdonald

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

My independent study project analyzes how through employer relationships with their domestic workers, whether maternalism, personalism, distant hierarchy, or business relationship, social statuses and structural inequalities are reproduced within paid domestic labor in the Netherlands. Using Pei-Chia Lan’s concept of “boundary work” and Mary Romero’s employer typologies as theoretical tools I analyzed four interviews with native Dutch, female employers, and three with immigrant domestic workers. Along with providing an overview of paid domestic work within the Netherlands, my analysis focused employers perceptions of the “Other;” conceptualization of personal relationships, and conceptualization of labor relationships. This research found that employers fell …

The Black Question, Nicole L. Butler

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In April 2006, a 37-year old Ethiopian man was brutally attacked by two skinheads sending the country into a state of mourning. In the days to follow, the German press covered the attack extensively raising the question if whether or not race-based crimes had witnessed resurgence in Germany. For many people, the answer to such a question required a further analysis of the last few years in Germany. In 2005, Oury Jalloh, an immigrant from Sierra Leone burned to death while in a holding cell at the city jail in Dessau. The examiners labeled his death suicide although his hands …

The Development Of Bilingual Education In Berlin’S Primary Schools, Elizabeth Buckley

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The debate on language education is flourishing in the current state of globalization and immigration. The rising amount of globalization has increased the amount of linguistic diversity present in one’s everyday life. There are between 6,000 and 7,000 languages in the world and half of them are in danger of disappearing. Therefore, it is becoming more common for the presence of many different linguistic groups within one country. For instance, in Indonesia, there are over 700 languages spoken. Although, the distribution of languages is not equal, it is nearly impossible to go through life without being exposed to another language …

Roma Education In Serbia: The Implications Of Prejudice And Ethnic Conflict And The Potential For Change, Shane Branon

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Cultural, religious and ethnic divisions are nothing new to the Slavic people of the southwest Balkans. The region once known as Yugoslavia has experienced periods of assimilation and peaceful coexistence as well as ethnic hatred and aggression. In recent years, the majority of this has been concentrated inside Serbia, the nucleus of the former Yugoslavia. While it may appear that Serbia has overcome the ethnic hatred that has plagued its social and political culture, there continues to be ethnic discrimination in both the social sphere and government institutions. This prejudice is most evident in the relationship between the Serbian majority …