Regional Sociology Commons^™

Critical Consciousness & The Rural-Urban Divide, Kendall O'Rorke

University Honors Theses

This study investigated the relationship between conceptions of Critical Consciousness (CC) and urban vs. rural geographic location type. Participants (N = 31) completed the Short Critical Consciousness Scale (CCS-S, Rapa et al., 2020), and 25 additional questions regarding potential location-based Idealogical differences. No measurable differences were found regarding differences in conceptions of critical consciousness (using CCS-S scores) based on rural-urban location, however, other responses supported some current research regarding political typology. Additional research is needed to fully understand this topic.

Examining Food Insecurity Among Mississippi Community College Students, Laura Jean Kerr

Theses and Dissertations

Food insecurity among postsecondary students and especially community colleges is a persistent social problem, but the prevalence continues despite much research. Postsecondary students experience food insecurity slightly differently from the general population and they are held to different rules to qualify for food support such as the supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP). In this research I examine the prevalence, frequency, and duration of food insecurity experiences among Mississippi community college students. I begin with a discussion of the literature of food insecurity and policy used to address food insecurity. I draw upon Bourdieu’s theory of social fields, capital, and habitus …

Factores Que Inciden En El Origen De Asentamientos Informales En El Interior Del Pedm Entrenubes, Lina Esperanza Ortiz Mendoza

Economía

Teniendo en cuenta las distintas problemáticas que presentan en la actualidad las áreas protegidas en entornos urbanos, el presente trabajo busca ahondar en los procesos de asentamiento informal en el interior de estas áreas desde el enfoque teórico de los bienes de uso común y las dinámicas de desigualdad. Esto con el fin de identificarse adecuadamente son los factores que incentivan este tipo de asentamientos. Para lograr este objetivo, se emplea una metodología de tipo cualitativo como es el estudio de caso cuyo instrumento empleado es la entrevista semiestructurada en una zona de asentamiento informal en el interior del Parque …

Brain Drain In Mississippi, Clifford Adam Conner

Honors Theses

Brain drain is the out-migration of educated individuals from an area. It is a problem with which Mississippi is overly familiar. This thesis uses data gathered from a survey of 965 respondents to identify who is leaving the state and for what reasons. The data gathered suggest confirmation that brain drain is an issue for the state, with roughly two-thirds of respondents having left the state or seriously considering doing so. The impetus for this varies with each individual, but respondents underscore economic and societal factors within Mississippi as pushing them away from the state. Quality of life factors are …

Complejo Agroturístico Y Trapiche Comunal Para El Desarrollo Rural Sostenible De La Laguna De Ortices, San Andrés, Santander, Víctor Andrés Reyes Barajas

Arquitectura

Desde la arquitectura, son innumerables las propuestas que se han planteado con el objetivo de mejorar las condiciones de vida y el desarrollo en general de las comunidades rurales del planeta. Algunas han funcionado y otras en el mejor de los casos pasan por obras inconclusas tras una fuerte inversión del estado.

Cada comunidad rural de Colombia presenta problemas relativos a este desarrollo rural y, por tanto, estas comunidades necesitan programas y proyectos que se ajusten realmente a sus vocaciones productivas, y que su cultura sea respetada desde las tipologías arquitectónicas, hasta el programa funcional de las edificaciones que se …

Localizing Resistance: How Southern Women Locate Sexual And Bodily Autonomy And Strategically Resist The Institutions Aiming To Shape Them, Gillian Raley

Honors Projects

This paper analyzes the methods of resistance enacted by women-identifying people in Mississippi against the institutions seeking to police how they understand their own sexuality and bodily autonomy. This analysis draws upon a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted in the summer of 2020 focused on construction of community, intersectional identity, relationship with the body, and what inputs frame how women in Mississippi understand sex. This project puts these interviews in conversation with literature from a variety of subfields, including resistance studies, the Sociology of the South, and the Sociology of sexuality, all of which help bring the argument behind …

Understanding South Dakota Farmers’ Intentions To And Adoption Of Conservation Practices: An Examination Of The Theory Of Planned Behavior, Edem Avemegah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Conservation agriculture practice is a sustainable farming method based on three principle: crop diversification, minimal soil disturbance or movement and permanent or semi-permanent of soil cover. Government and stakeholders within the agricultural sector in the United States are promoting conservation farming practices but limited voluntary adoption still exists among producers at the farm level. This research study investigated the factors that influence the adoption of conservation practices among producers in the eastern and central parts of South Dakota (SD). A modified theory of planned behavior (TPB) is used as a framework alongside socioeconomic and demographic indicators to understand farmers’ current …

A Town Centre Management Framework For Rural Ireland: Fit For Purpose, David Jordan

Theses

The purpose of this study was to identify a Town Centre Management Framework [TCMF] for future-proofing towns in rural Ireland. Town centre management has been widely credited as a mechanism for town rejuvenation to combat high vacancy rates, online retail sales, changing demographics, out of town shopping centres, changing consumer behaviours. Despite the popularity of this public-private partnership model growing internationally in the last decade (Currently over 600 schemes currently operating in the UK), Ireland remains steadfastly dependent on volunteers anchoring up retail-focused strategies. Initiatives, through Business Improvement Districts [BID] somewhat redress this imbalance in some larger towns. The model, …

Out Of The Shadows: Women Of The Fmln Guerrilla Army In El Salvador’S Civil War, 1979–1992, Erica Gonzalez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the course of a century, revolutionary movements have emerged every few years across the region of Central America, movements that fought for overturning dictatorships and confronting socio-economic inequalities. Women experience higher levels of poverty, human rights violations and discrimination due to gender inequalities. Representing 30% of the FMLN guerrilla army, women in El Salvador took a quantum leap into one of the most horrific and violent armed conflicts in the history of the country (Montgomery 123). Theorists have sought to explain why women became involved in the war. Experts of insurgent collective action agree that women's participation played a …

Public Perceptions Of Homelessness In Humboldt County, John Thomas Krapf

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Homelessness is a social and political issue of great importance in the United States. For every 10,000 people in the U.S. 17 are experiencing homelessness (Bishop et al. 2017). Despite being a consequence of structural factors in the economy such as a lack of affordable housing and livable wages, the news media often frames the issue as an outcome of individualistic factors such as deviant characteristics, criminality, and personal flaws like drug addiction and mental illness. This study examines public perceptions of homelessness in Humboldt County. To explore this question, I conducted a content analysis of 94 articles on homelessness …

Twenty-­‐First Century Deindustrialization And Uneven Development In Appalachia, Katherine Custis Gerlaugh

Doctoral Dissertations

The causes and consequences of deindustrialization in the United States are myriad and have created a dire situation for millions of working class people as blue-­collar jobs have mostly vanished. This reality has been particularly hard in places like Appalachia, where manufacturing and extraction were the largest, and often only, employers for most of the 20th Century. Especially for rural areas with little appeal for new markets, tourism often appears to be one way to attract people to the area to spend money, but it is unclear whether or not this strategy is helpful to local economies. In this study, …

Moving Mountains : A Study Examining Long-Term Impacts Of Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining On Mortality In The Appalachian Region Using Geographic Information Sciences Techniques., James Howard Kent Pugh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Over the last hundred years, the Appalachian region has been dominated by the coal industry. It has also been and currently is one of the unhealthiest regions in the United States. Recent scholarship has examined the relationship between coal mining and health and mortality rates in the Appalachian region. The first study incorporates air quality and pollution data to examine if coal mining counties have higher levels of pollution and if this pollution contributes to mortality disadvantage. In the second study, I construct a population-based coal-exposure measure to better evaluate the relationship between coal mining and health I find that …

A Cross-Sectional Exploration Of Household Financial Reactions And Homebuyer Awareness Of Registered Sex Offenders In A Rural, Suburban, And Urban County., John Charles Navarro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As stigmatized persons, registered sex offenders betoken instability in communities. Depressed home sale values are associated with the presence of registered sex offenders even though the public is largely unaware of the presence of registered sex offenders. Using a spatial multilevel approach, the current study examines the role registered sex offenders influence sale values of homes sold in 2015 for three U.S. counties (rural, suburban, and urban) located in Illinois and Kentucky within the social disorganization framework. Homebuyers were surveyed to examine whether awareness of local registered sex offenders and the homebuyer’s community type operate as moderators between home selling …

Grassroots Diplomacy And Vernacular Law: The Discourse Of Food Sovereignty In Maine, John Welton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the discourse of food sovereignty in Maine, a coalition of small-scale farmers, consumers, and citizens building an alternative food system based on a distributed form of production, processing, selling, purchasing, and consumption. This distribution occurs at the municipal level through the enactment of ordinances. Using critical-rhetorical field methods, I argue that the discourse of food sovereignty in Maine develops a ‘constitutive’ rhetoric that composes rural society through affective relationships. Advocates engage the industrial food system to both expose its systemic bias against small-scale farming and construct their own discourse of belonging. Based upon agrarian values such as …

A "Dying Breed"? Exploring Logger Identity After The Decline In The Timber Industry In Hayfork, Ca, Sheri L. Harrison

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The rapid decline of timber operations in the late twentieth century had an immense impact on rural communities whose economy was dependent on logging and lumber mills. The voices and concerns of timber-dependent communities and timber workers have been marginalized by broader forces that focused on political, economic, and environmental issues throughout the Pacific Northwest timber conflict and the subsequent deindustrialization of the timber industry. This study examines the social impacts on loggers, their families, and the broader community in Hayfork, California, through the framework of identity theory. The formation of logger identity and the broader processes that have impacted …

Different Names For Bullying, Marco Poggio

Capstones

“There's all different forms of bullying,” says Steven Gray, a Lakota rancher and former law enforcement officer living in South Dakota. In this look into Gray’s life, we learn about two instances of bullying: the psychological and physical harassment that pushed his son, Tanner Thomas Gray, to commit suicide at age 12; And the controversial construction of an oil pipeline in an ancient tribal land that belongs to the Lakota people by rights of a treaty signed in 1851, which Gray sees as an institutional abuse infringing on the sovereignty of his people. Gray is involved in the movement that …

Monhegan: A Prescription For Resilience, Kenneth Paul Kiel Gross

Muskie School Capstones and Dissertations

Monhegan, like many island communities, is threatened by the loss of population as its young adults migrate to the mainland. The purpose of this study is to develop a resilient population on Monhegan Island.

Knowing the problem is easy, as is asking the obvious question, “How do we get people to move to this area?” This is a problem that confronts not only Monhegan, but also other Maine islands and even Maine itself.

Several factors make Monhegan’s future uncertain. The first is the gradual shift from commercial fishing, the mainstay of its economy, as it becomes more reliant on tourism …

Rural Reality: How Reality Television Portrayals Of Appalachian People Impact Their View Of Their Culture, Ivy Jude Elise Brashear

Theses and Dissertations--Community & Leadership Development

Appalachian people have faced stereotyping of their culture and region in popular culture, news media, and art for generations. For more than 150 years, images of the region have been extracted by outside media makers and disseminated widely, solidifying the “hillbilly” stereotype in the national lexicon. This study focuses on such images in reality television shows about Appalachia, and seeks to determine whether or not those images, and the proliferation of them, has an impact on the ways in which Appalachian people understand and accept their own culture.

Environmental Gentrification And Development In A Rural Appalachian Community: Blending Critical Theory And Ethnography, Rhiannon A. Leebrick

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is twofold: first, to explore the relevance of environmental gentrification, a concept largely applied to urban settings, as a means to understand social change in rural and small town Appalachia; and secondly, drawing upon political economy perspectives within environmental sociology and the tradition of early Frankfurt School critical theory, to contextualize the process of environmental gentrification within global capitalism. Conflicts over green economic development, including the maintenance of idyllic vistas, appear to have arisen among various groups with opposing interests and perceptions. These conflicts are complex, affected by the rise of gentrification accompanying uneven development …

Veterinary Practices, Reactions And Laws: Analyzing The Difference In Rural And Urban Practices, Daniel Jude

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the College of the Caudill College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Morehead State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by Daniel Jude on June, 23rd 2015

The Social Costs Of Industrial Growth In The Sub-Arctic Regions Of "Canada", Caylee T. Cody

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Colonialism in the land that is now called “Canada” is rooted in the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous people’s way of existing and interacting with the world. The present study identifies that the social costs of industrial growth are part of an ongoing process of colonialism which continues to annex Indigenous lands to feed the capitalist economy and reify the power of the state. Through a comparative analysis of literature written about the Attawapiskat First Nation and the Innu Nation, the study reveals that the financial rewards of industrial growth are few, while the cultural, human, and environmental costs are many. …

Dating Violence On Small Rural College Campuses: Are Administrator And Student Perceptions Similar?, Jean Allen Oldham

Theses and Dissertations--Kinesiology and Health Promotion

In recent years dating violence has become more and more prevalent on college campuses. Reports of the range of dating violence vary widely, with studies reporting from 20% to 85% of college women experiencing dating violence. However, almost all research has been conducted among urban and/or large colleges and universities, with virtually no attention to what is happening on small and/or rural college and university campuses.

When a possible 20% of college women have experienced dating violence on college campuses, there becomes a crucial need for administration at a college to have an accurate assessment of the college’s liability, and …

The Primacy Of Context: An Exploration Into The Causes Of Food Insecurity In Kitere, Kenya., William O. Aludo

Capstone Collection

The purpose of this study was to explore the specific reasons why households in Kitere village, Kenya experience persistent food insecurity every year while the region enjoys the advantage of two planting/harvest seasons in a year. Kitere village lies within the lakeside region of Nyanza Province in Kenya, generally considered to be one of the more agriculturally productive parts of the country. The Participatory Rural Appraisal method was employed to gather qualitative data on the causes of food insecurity in Kitere village. The data sources were focus groups and a self-administered, one-time survey of random and non-random samples of key …

Marital Strategies And Elder Care Arrangements Among Single Men In Rural China, Kun Zhang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In China, the distorted sex ratio at birth and its subsequent masculinization in the marriage market has raised significant concern. It is speculated that the large population of ‘surplus men’ will increase discordance within households and shift elder care burdens to local communities and the state. This thesis is based on a qualitative research conducted in Shannxi and Jiangsu Provinces of China in 2012. Based on 30 in-depth interviews with single men and their family members and narratives from many other locals, it examines single men’s spouse-seeking strategies; elder care arrangements among households with single men; and the relationship between …

Untangling Neoliberalism’S Gordian Knot: Cancer Prevention And Control Services For Rural Appalachian Populations, George F. Bills

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

In eastern Kentucky, as in much of central Appalachia, current local storylines narrate the frictions and contradictions involved in the structural transition from a post-WWII Fordist industrial economy and a Keynesian welfare state to a Post-Fordist service economy and Neoliberal hollow state, starving for energy to sustain consumer indulgence (Jessop, 1993; Harvey, 2003; 2005). Neoliberalism is the ideological force redefining the “societal infrastructure of language” that legitimates this transition, in part by redefining the key terms of democracy and citizenship, as well as valorizing the market, the individual, and technocratic innovation (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999; Harvey, 2005). This project develops …

Climate Influence On The Health Of An Appalachian City, Ryan Wade Becka

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

In 2008 the Center for Disease Control (CDC) found Huntington, West Virginia, to be the unhealthiest city in America. A Gallup Poll conducted in 2010 found the Huntington-Ashland metropolitan area number one of 188 metro areas where depression diagnoses are most common. Manifestations of poor health in Huntington may be related to Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a type of depression that occurs mainly in winter months. Symptoms of SAD are reported as a lack of energy, sleeping more, and consuming high amounts of carbohydrates and starchy foods. I theorize that these maladaptive behaviors may be a reaction to climate conditions …

Domestic Violence In Appalachia With A Focus On Cabell County, Wv, Deborah Ann Moore

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This study of domestic violence in Appalachia with a focus on Cabell County, West Virginia involves many aspects. The costs of domestic violence, as well as, how abused women here conceptualize the major contributors to abusive behavior in men are examined. The demographics of Cabell Co., WV are discussed. The effects of battering and violence on woman’s work and employability are examined. What I did not anticipate to find through the qualitative interviews is the absence of a honeymoon stage in Walker’s (1989) cycle of violence. Goode’s (1971) resource theory provides an influential explanation of violence in Appalachia where a …

This One's For The Children : Collaborative Leadership In A Rural Appalachian Community, Jennifer J. Scharf

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The current research is an ethnographic case study of one collaborative community group that worked toward solving complex problems related to early care and education in their community. The methods used consisted of conducting in-depth interviews and observations, recording and transcribing group meetings, and collecting documents that furthered understanding of the group. The research questions addressed were related to the nature of the relationships among the members, leadership enactment in the group, and how they created positive outcomes and overcame obstacles they faced. Several themes emerged related to each question, confirming and extending current understanding of collaboration and collaborative leadership. …

Alaskan Native Suicide, Karl T. Pfeiffer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Class Structure Of A Minority Group In A Valley City, Marcus Asie Williams

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

There is an accepted principle amongst sociologists that all communities have some pattern of stratification. Since the Valley City Negroes, the minority group selected for this research. represent a community structure, some pattern of stratification is present. At the time of this study the specific nature of the class structure tor this community had not been identified.

Statement of the problem. It was the purpose of this study (l) to delineate the social class structure of the Negro community of the Valley City metropolitan area in the year 1950~1951; (2) to show the relationships of membership in associations to class …