Politics and Social Change Commons^™

The Role Of Nations-State In Protecting And Supporting Internally Displaced Persons, Daisy Byers

Master's Theses

The rising increase of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) has become a global problem. There are over 40 million internally displaced people globally, and 15.9 million are displaced in Africa. These displacements come into place due to war/conflict, corruption, massive human rights violations, natural disasters, urban renewal projects (at the hands of powerful nations such as America, China, France, UK, etc.), and large-scale development projects. According to UNHCR, refugees are people who have international cross-border. In contrast, internally displaced persons must stay within their own country and stay under the protection of their government, even if the government is the reason …

Exploring Social Determinants Of Covid-19 Related Sickness And Suffering In The Bronx, Hamida Chumpa

Student Theses and Dissertations

Through a positivistic and phenomenological approach, the study examines social determinants of COVID-19 related sickness and suffering in the Bronx, New York City, New York, ZIP codes 10462, 10472, 10467, 10458, 10474, and 10464. I utilize a violence paradigm (structural and everyday violence) to describe the social determinants of risk and sickness-related suffering and deploy an assemblage framework to shed light on how these determinants create negative synergies that undermine wellbeing and render certain communities vulnerable to extreme suffering. The mixed methods include 64 surveys and eight interviews. Analysis methods include a descriptive analysis of survey results and a thematic …

Cancel Culture, Beginning, Development, And Consequences., Daniela Garcia

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

The phenomenon of cancel culture as a movement has become more influential as the American culture awareness grows regarding the owing respect and honor to one another. Cancel culture in today’s American society plays an important role, that is why it is important to see the origin of it, and its development from the sixties to now. Generally, cancel culture has been characterized for their perseverance on justice but with results in hate, resentment, and vengeance in American society. Thus, one would say that the origin and development of the movement cancel culture, despite its intentions of social justice, has …

A Tale Of Two Biennales: How Contemporary Art In Italy Reflects Current European Politics, Hannah Rosabel Capucilli-Shatan

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

No abstract provided.

An Inferentially Robust Look At Two Competing Explanations For The Surge In Unauthorized Migration From Central America, Nick Santos

Dissertations

The last 8 years have seen a dramatic increase in the flow of Central American apprehensions by the U.S. Border Patrol. Explanations for this surge in apprehensions have been split between two leading hypotheses. Most academic scholars, immigrant advocates, progressive media outlets, and human rights organizations identify poverty and violence (the Poverty and Violence Hypothesis) in Central America as the primary triggers responsible. In contrast, while most government officials, conservative think tanks, and the agencies that work in the immigration and border enforcement realm admit poverty and violence may underlie some decisions to migrate, they instead blame lax U.S. immigration …

When Half The Neighborhood Is Missing: How To Overcome Systemic Poverty And Gentrification Following The Models Of Dudley Street And Mission Waco, Kevin A. Brown, Kevin A. Brown, Kevin A. Brown

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

Abstract

By following the examples of Mission Waco and The Dudley Street Initiative, it is possible to renew a sense of beloved community by changing the narrative of poverty and gentrification by rebuilding the village through empowering the poor and marginalized.

Mission Waco and The Dudley Street Initiative are comprehensive sustainable communities because they combine numerous social and economic interventions under developed strategic plans. The principal question that this dissertation seeks to answer is whether these models can be implemented in local communities to help overcome gentrification and poverty. Implementation can be successful if we can identify the problem, rethink …

Will The United States Finally Decolonize Puerto Rico?, Pedro Caban

Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies Faculty Scholarship

On April 14, 2021 the House Committee on Natural Resources held hearings on two competing bills to end Puerto Rico’s colonial status. The different bills reflect the changing political dynamics in the archipelago, as well as the Puerto Rican diaspora’s growing political clout. H.R.1522, the Puerto Rican State Admission Act, binds Congress to admit Puerto Rico into the Union if a majority vote in favor of doing so in a special referendum. H.R. 2070, the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act, authorizes the insular legislature to convene a semi-permanent status convention where elected delegates decide on alternative self-determination options that are “outside …

Introducing The Principles And Practice Of Restorative Justice: Reactions From A Generalist Audience, Grace Michels

Undergraduate Theses

Legislative activity and public opinion polling, among other indicators, suggests there is growing support for change in how our justice system functions. As the country begins to look for other tools and more knowledge of different practices, a key challenge will be bridging the gap between the public’s general support for a new path moving forward and a clear picture of what that path could look like. The goal of this project was to help propel this movement toward exploring justice alternatives forward by making this knowledge accessible and persuasive. As such, this project involved the creation of a material …

Bridging The Gap: Analyzing The History Of U.S.-Russian Relations Throughout History And The Actions That Would Improve Them, Coleman Anderson

Senior Honors Theses

After the onset of communism in Russia, relations between the United States and Russia have been tense up to the modern day. Even the fall of the Soviet Union could not usher in a permanent peace between the two countries, with mistrust pouring over from both parties. Utilizing both primary sources and commentary from subject matter experts, this paper argues that in order to achieve a legitimate and sustainable policy of peace between the United States and Russia, policymakers need to first understand the history and culture of the people they are reaching out to. Using this knowledge, policymakers can …

Big Five Personality Traits And Political Orientation: An Inquiry Into Political Beliefs, Ian E. Phillips

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Personality research centered on the Big Five personality traits has heavily impacted our understanding in regards to what forces orient a person on a political spectrum. Examining how personality differences interact with political orientation, this research seeks to provide information on what makes someone either more or less likely to be liberal or conservative based on their temperament. In this paper, previous personality research is synthesized into one discussion, centered on what the effects of each trait are and how they impact political orientation, the heritability of personality, and what implications there are for such research in the realm of …

Ecofascist “Snakeoil” And The Imperative Of Racializing Environmental Justice For The 21st Century: A Burkean Rhetorical Criticism Of Contemporary Ecofascist Manifestos, Lantz Shifflett

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Ecofascism of the 21^st century is a revival of centuries-old white nationalist fascism integrated with a concern for environmental issues from the last few decades. Designated by their writers as “manifestos,” three ecofascists have widely disseminated their documents online just before committing acts of racially motivated terrorism in three different countries. Furthermore, these manifestos provide a lens into contemporary ecofascist conspiracies as well as their own concocted “snakeoils” that present their ecofascist agendas in the form of rhetorical “curatives” to environmental issues of pollution. These “cures” are grounded in a new “green nationalism” that attempts to disguise the white …

History In Crisis: Museum Programming During The Covid-19 Outbreak, Lindsay Mcconnell

Honors Thesis

The subject of my research is how museums adapted their public programming in response to COVID-19. The goal of my research is to analyze how successfully museums shifted their community engagement programming to online platforms. Since I hope to work in the museum field of programming, I was motivated to conduct this research. Not much research can be found on this topic because COVID-19’s effects on museums are still unfolding. My research could provide a foundation of ideas to build on. To begin, I read articles about the relationship between museums and technology. I applied this knowledge to analyze how …

Learning From The Bats: Cooperation A Fundamental Sustainability Principle, Juan Humberto Young

Perspectives@SMU

Most scientists agree that COVID-19 was transmitted to humans from bats. In an ironic twist, their social behaviour could help us solve many of our collective problems

Water Elites’ Perceptions Of Water Security In The Middle East And North Africa Region, Ghaleb Akari

Dissertations

The Middle East and North African region continues to face significant water security challenges. The purpose of this dissertation is to gain a deeper understanding of water elites’ perceptions of water security in the MENA region. It is not meant to generalize the findings. Instead, the intention for the research is to identify, explain, and analyze by national elites' contrasting perceptions in Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, and Tunisia.

The study examines water elites’ perceptions in four areas: current knowledge level of water security, water resource management, water service delivery, and water-related risk mitigation. These elites’ perceptions of water security will help …

Incu-Bus: A Live-Working Internet Incubator, Muci Yue

Architecture Senior Theses

The framework for this company includes three main components: development, human resource, and finance. In the Finance aspect, it is an Internal circular economy; people Only can use credits for food or all the resources. Development and human resource are taking part in evaluating employee's work, rand and deciding their credits. It is running in the winner take all system. The company only provide living space resources or facility. The Worker: produce internet/mobile-related profitable ideas. The Venture capitalist: provide funding to the company but also discover the potential project for early stage.

Remaking Divinity In Aldous Huxley’S Brave New World 2021, Sebastian Vignone

Master's Theses

Humanity is an experience. Shaped through both individual and collective encounters, we understand the self and the world around us as an amalgamation of interactions over the course of our lives. Arguably, one of the most common experiential archetypes is religion, and more specifically the relationship one has with a divine being as it has been framed by a religious institution. While the United States does not have an official religion, there is a host of people who refer to the U.S. as a “Christian nation,” and it is therefore irresponsible to elide the panoply of inequities that run through …

Police Homicide: Race And Ethnicity, Christine Henderson, Aimee Quinn, Charles E. Reasons, Veronica Salas, John Vinson, Brittney Warf

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

During the pandemic, routines were interrupted lives were changed and during this time, many individuals spent more time watching the news to learn more about how long it would take to resume normalcy. When George Floyd was murdered by four police officers, time stood still and the world watched. Outrage was immediate. The pandemic offered everyone the opportunity to witness tragedy unfold in front of them a brutality which happens every day, yet is easily ignored. This article examines the incidence of police homicides of people of color, the lack of law enforcement to seek solutions to their own internal …

Hip Hop Urbanist Reconstructions: Strategies & Tactics For Spatial Reparations, Isaac Howland

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Latino Voter Registration And Participation Rates In The 2020 Presidential Election, Laird W. Bergad, Luis A. Miranda Jr.

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction:

This report examines voter registration and participation rates among Latinos in every presidential election since 1992.

Methods:

All data on registration and voting found in this report were derived from the Voting and Registration Tables issued by the U.S. Census Bureau at https://www.census.gov/topics/public-sector/voting/data/tables.html.

Discussion:

Latino voter registration rates reached an all-time high in the 2020 presidential election: 61.1% of all Latino citizens 18 years of age and older, rising from 57.3% in 2016. Latino voting rates (the percentage of Latinos eligible to vote who actually voted) also rose to a historic high of 53.7% in November 2020, increasing from …

Life Through The Eyes Of An Undocumented Immigrant In The United States, Yesenia Torres

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This research project focused on how undocumented immigrants experience their lives in the United States, taking in mind the multiple barriers that prevent them from integrating into the community. This research project surveyed the California State University of San Bernardino School of Social Work students who work or engage with undocumented immigrants. A positivism paradigm research design was used to obtain quantitative data of participant's knowledge of immigrants' past and present experiences while living in the United States. The study's goal was to bring mental health awareness to the well-being and emotional experiences during the resettlement and acculturation of undocumented …

“They’Re Bringing Drugs... They’Re Bringing Crime... They’Re Rapists”: Exploring Latino Immigration, Crime, And Voting Patterns In The 2016 Presidential Election, Brogan Estelle Arguelles

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The political race for the 2016 United States President brimmed with conflict over an array of issues, notably Latino immigration from Mexico and Latin America to the U.S. The rhetoric of then Presidential Candidate Donald Trump centered around the idea that Mexico was not sending its finest immigrants; that, in place, they were sending rapists and criminals. This rhetoric was heard loud and clear and has since affected various U.S. policies and programs that actively exclude Latino immigrants. Using census data from 2015, rates of immigration and rates of violent crime were compared against 2016 election results, all at the …

Allyship Training Programs In Higher Education: Creating A Critical Curriculum Of Change, Macy Marin Keith

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Allies Training Programs (also known as Safe Space/Zone training) are found in many institutions of higher education. Usually provided by an LGBTQA+ or Gender and Sexuality Center staff, the goal is to prepare participants for an allyship role in hopes of promoting safe spaces on campus and decrease instances of queerphobia. This thesis examined current allies training programs to determine what content is being presented and compare to the latest critiques and definitions. After analysis it is determined that current allyship trainings are inadequately preparing higher education staff and faculty for an ally role. Using the results of this study …

Grappling With The Aftereffects Of Modernism In American Literature And Culture: Spiritual, Political, And Ecological, Joseph Neary

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

In this portfolio, Joe Neary examines various texts within contemporary American culture, including David Foster Wallace’s short story, “Good Old Neon,” Harmony Korine’s film, Spring Breakers, Richard Powers’ novel, The Overstory, and Bruce Holsinger’s book of criticism, Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror.

The Violence Of Asylum: The Case Of Undocumented Chinese Migration To The Us, Amy Hsin, Sofya Aptekar

Publications and Research

A sizable portion of the undocumented population in the US is Chinese, yet they are an understudied group. We integrate a multidisciplinary body of work on undocumented Chinese migration with the sociology of migration and analyze interviews with undocumented migrants, community organizers, social workers, and others working in the Chinese community in New York City, as well as participant observation of community events. We show that restrictive immigration policies exclude most Chinese migrants from legal entry into the US, force many to endure dangerous migration routes, incur extraordinary debt and bind Chinese migrants’ experience of illegality with asylum seeking. The …

Intersectionality And Accessibility To Social Services, Nora Khuder

Thinking Matters Symposium

In times of a crisis the intersectionality of sex, class, and ability creates a vulnerable population. Many available “resources'' are exhausted, due to high demand. Intersectionality signifies the impact of multiple intersecting identities in society as a direct correlation to the specific and unique barriers of marginalized groups. Resources are currently limited due to the lack of representative data. Although many studies have been conducted, many researchers have failed to capture the need of social services in rural areas.

Whose Expectation? Ideal Beauty And The Cultural Construction Of The American Woman, Ameliea Rose Dulaney

Honors Theses

My research project “Whose Expectation? Ideal Beauty and the Cultural Construction of the American Woman” explores the cultural and political climate of American society over the last four centuries, analyzing how ideal beauty standards have worked in the lives of American women over the years, examining (1) how they have been negotiated by women at different times of cultural and political flux, (2) how, although beauty has long been an integral aspect of feminine identity, it has become even more so with the introduction of new technologies (advertising, tv, makeup, etc.), and (3) how as a result, the definition of …

Mapping Renewal: How An Unexpected Interdisciplinary Collaboration Transformed A Digital Humanities Project, Elise Tanner, Geoffrey Joseph

Digital Initiatives Symposium

Funded by a National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Foundations Grant, the UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture’s “Mapping Renewal” pilot project focused on creating access to and providing spatial context to archival materials related to racial segregation and urban renewal in the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, from 1954-1989. An unplanned interdisciplinary collaboration with the UA Little Rock Arkansas Economic Development Institute (AEDI) has proven to be an invaluable partnership. One team member from each department will demonstrate the Mapping Renewal website and discuss how the collaborative process has changed and shaped …

031— Identity Politics In America: The Role Of Catholicism And Its Implications, Jessica Buffamonti

GREAT Day Posters

My research paper and its corresponding informative poster with the paper’s highlights details the role of religion in American identity politics, specifically that of the Christian Catholic Church. Identity politics leads to individuals (the electorate and the elected officials alike) making political decisions, forming policy stances, and choosing partisanship to help those most similar to them as well as what reflects them most. It even provokes those with said social identity characteristics to protest their beliefs as a reaction to certain policies and potential policy changes out of their favor. I will examine how Catholic religious beliefs play a role …

Quarantine Ethics: From Past To Covid-19, Chrystal Barnes

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Annual Conference

Quarantines have been a preventative measure for reducing communicable disease spread for centuries. The method of implementation can vary widely and to some extent requires some level of judgement from enforcing powers, often state police power. As such, historically, some quarantines have been unfairly enforced based on discriminatory practices. COVID-19 has brought about the most widespread and extended quarantine in U.S. history, which makes evaluating the ethics all the more critical. In addition, it is well established that COVID-19 impacts have disproportionately caused harm to populations, such as those who are of a low socioeconomic status and people of color. …

Sustainable Economic Development In The Post-Covid Era In Asia And The Pacific, Yasuyuki Sawada

CBER Conference

The second day of the 1st International Conference at the CBER, IBA Karachi commenced with an opening address by the Chief Economist at the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Mr. Yasuyuki Sawada. Speaking about the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus and how it has destabilized the economic outlook and widened existing social inequalities, impacting lives and livelihoods of millions in Asia-Pacific region and beyond, Sawada remarked, “Regional GDP contracted by 0.2% in 2020 with East Asia faring much better. After a sharp contraction last year, growth in South Asia will rebound in 2021. However, the recovery will be uneven”. Dr. Sawada’s …