Sociology of Culture Commons^™

Beto, El Escritor De Cartas De Los Braceros (Spanish/Espanol), Gil Villagran

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

About my father's experience as a Bracero (in Spanish)

Beto, El Escritor De Cartas De Los Braceros (English), Gil Villagran

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

About my father's experience as a Bracero

A Privatization Of Politics: Anthony Elliot's Concepts Of The Self (2001), Paula Murphy

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

It would be difficult to find a more appropriate image of selfhood in the modern world than that found in Ezra Pound's poem In a Station of the Metro. It is a selfhood which is at once unique and conglomerative, fleetingly visible then tantalizingly out of focus. It is this slippery, indefinable entity that is the subject of Anthony Elliot's book. The title bears witness to the enormous breadth of its subject matter: Concepts of the Self is an attempt to engage with the various contemporary theoretical frameworks through which selfhood is explicated. Elliot's approach is admirably inter-disciplinary, …

Social Capital And Religion: A Quantitative Analysis Of The Relationship Between Religious Participation And Social Capital, Kyshawn Smith

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to confirm the existence of a positive correlation between religious participation and social capital, and to show that such a correlation varies considerably when specific demographic variables, and denominational and organizational dynamics are accounted for. Beginning with the early theoretical works of James S. Coleman, The World Bank and Robert Putnam, research has shown the importance of studying the philosophy and science of social capital, and the significance of measuring interrelated concepts like community volunteerism, political involvement, and religious participation. However, much of this research surveys national audiences and either completely ignores or spends …

The Latecoming Of The Posthuman, Or, Why 'We' Do The Apocalypse Differently, 'Now', Ivan Callus, Stefan Herbrechter

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editors' Introduction]

The paper takes its cue from a brief but pointed passage in Specters of Marx, in which Jacques Derrida describes as latecomers those who discuss the apocalypse in a manner that disregards previous discussions of the theme within philosophy and theory. Especially concerned with tracing Derrida's wariness of the beguilements of narratives of the end, Callus and Herbrecther analyze the implications of that wariness for any study of the vexed relation between the apocalyptic and the posthuman, doing so on the basis of reference to a number of the relevant essays by Derrida, but in particular to …

Racial Discourse In Planet Of The Apes, Mandy Sheidah Allen

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of the study is to explore the racial discourse in the six Planet of the Apes films. The films range from 1968 to 2001 and portray the radical advances and the slow progression of race relations during this time frame. The racial discourse will be examined using themes of race and devolution, looking at the race class hierarchies of the ape society (a subversive metaphor for human society) and race as it is associated with power and political movements. The earlier films will be contrasted with Burton's 2001 version to explore how the concept race has shifted its …

Towards Heterogeneous Faith Communities: Understanding Transitional Processes In Seventh-Day Adventist Churches In South Africa, Alan Parker, Ph.D.

Faculty Works

This dissertation examines racial transition toward heterogeneity in three Seventh-day Adventist congregations in South Africa. This dissertation aims to uncover social factors involved in this change as well as to set forth a theological direction with application to the local faith community.

The first section examines recent studies and literature on multiracial congregations, indicating a possible breakdown between theory and practice. Using insights from Kuhn, Gadamer, Habermas, and Geertz, a critical correlational approach is proposed using narrative, community-based praxis, dialectical thinking, and eschatological vision. The theological methods of Groome and Browning are combined to suggest a four-phase approach to practical …

American Conversations With(In) Catholicism, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

CATHOLICISM AND AMERICAN FREEDOM: A HISTORY. By John T. McGreevy. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Co. 2003. Pp. 431. $26.95.

John T. McGreevy's Catholicism and American Freedom tells the story of how America or, more particularly, American liberalism has reacted and responded to Catholic claims about the nature and purpose of freedom. It also addresses how these claims were, in turn, shaped by Catholicism's own interactions with, internal conversations about, and adjustment to American liberalism. As McGreevy shows, for many people and for many years, the Roman Catholic Church served as a foil for American values and …

The Impacts Of Migration On Establishment Of Social Capital And Environmental Degradation In Kibwezi, Kenya, Eveily Freeman

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Review Of Subject, Society, Culture, By Roy Boyne, Michael Ian Borer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

From Fleck’S Denkstil To Kuhn’S Paradigm: Conceptual Schemes And Incommensurability, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

This article argues that the limited influence of Ludwik Fleck’s ideas on philosophy of science is due not only to their indirect dissemination by way of Thomas Kuhn, but also to an incommensurability between the standard conceptual framework of history and philosophy of science and Fleck’s own more integratedly historico-social and praxis-oriented approach to understanding the evolution of scientific discovery. What Kuhn named “paradigm” offers a periphrastic rendering or oblique translation of Fleck’s Denkstil/Denkkollektiv, a derivation that may also account for the lability of the term “paradigm”. This was due not to Kuhn’s unwillingness to credit Fleck but rather to …

The Effects Of Acculturation On The L2 Learner, Raya C. Longto

MA TESOL Collection

This paper deals with the deconstruction of a novel (A Sprig of Lemon Blossom) written on the subject of Acculturation. Since the latter half of the twentieth century the world has traveled at an incredible speed towards globalization. Given this reality the number of people who constantly travel abroad for a variety of career and work related purposes is growing by the hour. Under the circumstances the theme of acculturation has become crucial as without an adequate form of this phenomenon people cannot function to the best of their abilities. The deconstruction of this novel addresses the three-fold process of …

Kuhn's Paradigm As A Parable For The Cold War: Incommensurability And Its Discontents From Fuller's Tale Of Harvard To Fleck's Unsung Lvov, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

In a journal issue dedicated to a discussion of Steve Fuller's Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times, I argue that Kuhn’s limited acknowledgment of Fleck’s influence on his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was due to a foundational incommensurability between the standard conceptual framework for philosophical studies of science and Fleck’s historico-social and praxis-oriented approach to scientific progress. The incommensurability in question constituted an insurmountable tension between the kind of language and thinking manifest in Fleck’s study and the conceptual language evident in Kuhn and characteristic of one might still call the received view’ in philosophy of science. …

Vietnamese In Bowling Green: An American Story, Nathaniel Walker

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Three years in the making, this project delves into the world of the Vietnamese in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It attempts to understand and interpret their complex society by using a combination of photography and writing. Mostly refugees, the three hundred or so Vietnamese share the burden of migrating to a new country with one another. They rely on each other. The community is what inspires them to succeed.

Making The Italian Other: Blacks, Whites, And The In Between In The 1895 Spring Valley, Illinois, Race Riot, Caroline Waldron Merithew

History Faculty Publications

This essay takes the Spring Valley, Illinois, race riot and observes how blacks, Italians, and other new immigrants attempted to empower themselves and lay claim to status at the "nadir" of race relations ill this country. The events leading up to the riot, the assault on the African-American community, and the aftermath of the attack led to vocal outcries against oppression. What constituted oppression, however, was open to interpretation. Furthermore, no group defined itself, or its other, in isolation. Rather, each side responded to the rhetoric of its "opponents" as well as of middle-class whites who became involved in the …

"The Future Good And Great Of Our Land": Republican Mothers, Female Authors, And Domesticated Literacy In Antebellum New England, Sarah Robbins

Faculty Articles

In an 1830s review of Lydia Maria Child's Good Wives published in Sarah Hale's Ladies' Magazine, the enthusiastic commentator quoted above sets Child's latest book within a thriving literary culture that values didactic literature. Acknowledging the importance of a genre I call the domestic literacy narrative, the reviewer confidently asserts that "the prevalent rage for reading" promises to promote not only familial but national well-being-promises, that is, if more books like Child's are regularly published to help train women to direct their family's reading and extract from it principles and behaviors consonant with their country's "future good."

Autotopography: Graffiti, Landscapes, & Selves, Deirdre Heddon

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

For some time now I have been interested in autobiographical performance -- some form of the theatrical, in which performers explicitly use personal material in their work. Within this general field of autobiography and performance, one area of research concerns performances that are dependent on being located in personalised space -- what could be called, then, site-specific autobiographical performance. A recent example of this would be the performance Bubbling Tom (2000), by the UK based performer Mike Pearson, which saw Pearson return to the village of his childhood, to reflect upon and re-enact certain memories, events and persons …

Rorty's Complicit American Neo-Pragmatism, Haidar Eid

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Despite the obvious French origin of poststructuralism, its paradigmatic resonance can be found in the American philosophical scene, an essential part of which is Richard Rorty's neo-pragmatism -- the theoretical basis of American (post)modernism. However, different from poststructuralism's apparent antagonism to the authoritarian establishments, Rorty adopts the Derridean poststructuralist motifs of the decentering of the subject, and the disappearance of meaning and truth in order to defend the establishment -- or rather, the status quo.

On Guillermo Gomez-Peña's El Mexterminator And Cyber Vato, Michael Benton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

While attending Bowling Green State University in 1997 I had an experience that changed my worldview. I was a teaching assistant in the Popular Culture department and part of my responsibilities included teaching Introduction to Popular Culture (POPC 100) and Introduction to Mass Media (POPC 165). I had been struggling to engage my students in examining the way in which social reality is represented to them through popular entertainments [2]. The majority of my students were white, middle class students from the surrounding Northern regions of Ohio. My students were well-versed in the ongoing controversy over whether or …

The Ruse Of The Social: Human Waste And The Gated Community, Liam Mcnamara

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

One of the central problems of contemporary society is that of “the social”: how it is defined, constituted, conjured into existence, and supported. Jean Baudrillard has employed the term “the social” in his work, but it is never explicitly defined; it is best understood as a form of simulation that has sprung into existence in the absence of symbolic social relations. The social is constituted of all the phenomena that are generally studied by sociology, so is therefore ideologically conceived of as an organic structure that is waiting for analysis. The “social” is society, both as it stands …

Ideology And Public Sphere: A Preliminary Bibliography, Giorgio Bertellini, C. Paul Sellors

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Bibliography accompanies Bertellini & Sellors article Breaking the Mimetic Contract: Notes on Ideology, Intersubjectivity, and Film Theory

Review Of Punktown, By Jeffrey Thomas, Matthew Wolf-Meyer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Islam Di Keningau : Sejarah Dan Kesannya Terhadap Budaya Perkahwinan Masyarakat Bumiputera Kadazandusun, Siti Suriyani Sulaiman

Student Works (2000-2009)

SJTI SURIYANI BINTI SULAJMAN. Islam In Keningau : The History And The Effect To The Marriage Culture Of The Kadazandusun Bumiputera Community. Thesis, Kuala Lumpur : University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2001. Information of the arrival of Islam in Sabah is not sufficient, likewise the history of Islam in Keningau is not definite. Based on the information from reliable sources, Islam was spread after the World War Two. Although Islam has changed the belief of Kadazandusun Bumiputera Community, their lifestyle certainly have not change. Customs and prohibition arc assimilated with Islamic way. To see the effect of the arrival …

Teori Strukturalisme Genetik : Penerapan Terhadap Novel-Novel Pramoedya Ananta Teor, Azman Ismail

Student Works (2000-2009)

KEDUDUKAN Pramoedya Ananta Toer dalam konteks perkembangan sastera moden Indonesia khususnya di era Angkatan 45 telah diteliti dari pelbagai perspektif oleh sarjana-sarjana Indonesia, Malaysia dan Barat. Sumbangan besar dalam mengubah hala tuju sastera kotemporari Indonesia selepas perang telah memberi kesan penting khususnya dari aspek gaya, pendekatan dan tema. Novel-novelnya sebagai contoh, merupakan pandangan kesedaran kelompok masyarakat bawahan Indonesia dalam mcmperjuangkan kepentingan mereka. Pembahasan dalam tulisan ini dengan menggunakan teori Strukturalisme Genetik oleh Lucien Goldmann akan melihat bagaimana aspek-aspek kesedaran kolektif masyarakat bawahan dalam tiga era diketengahkan. Menerusi disertasi ini, penerapan teori Strukturalisme Genetik ke dalam novel-novel Pramoedya dibahagikan kepada enam …

The Professional Academic And Hubris: The Case Of Yongyi Song, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes a reification of academic activities in a world where there may be many kings. This reification is often employed as a vehicle to support human and civil rights initiatives. Unfortunately, this vehicle may mitigate against such rights.

The Racialization Of Sexuality: The Queer Case Of Jeffrey Dahmer, Ian Barnard

English Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"In this article I read media and subcultural representations of Jeffrey Dahmer, the white male U.S. serial killer who gained notoriety in the late 1980s for having sex with and then murdering and dismembering men of color in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My aim is to show the extent to which the degree of Dahmer's homosexualization in a particular representation determines Dahmer' s thinking and actions in the sphere of race, and to suggest how spiraling efforts to separate race from sexuality in the Dahmer case only further intricate the two analytic axes."

Confucianist's Perception Of Woman : Its Influence On Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior : Memoirs Of A Girlhood Among Ghosts And Amy Tan's The Joyluck Club, Yoke Lin Yap

Student Works (2000-2009)

This thesis proposes to examine critically how the fundamental ideals contained within the philosophy of Confucius have evolved into social rites and rituals contained within the Five Classics and Four Classics for women. This is important for it is the social conventions that form the essential patriarchal structure in addition to the moral as well as behavioral norms of Chinese society. The study and analysis of Confucius' principal doctrines will help us understand the roles and responsibilities held by Chinese women within the structural hierarchy of Chinese family and society in general. The above will provide for a unique comparison …

Tingkah Laku Pengguna Terhadap Muzik : Kajian Di Kalangan Belia Terhadap Lagu Melayu Nusantara, Noorihal Muhammad

Student Works (2000-2009)

The aim of this study is to identify the characteristics that are outstanding in the youth of today towards the special kind of music and songs that are generally referred lagu Melayu Nusantara'. The factors that influence the attraction of the youth of today towards this kind of music is given prominence. These factors are as follows, ( i ) the existence of forces that attract these youth to this particular kind of music, ( ii ) the singer presenting the song and finally, ( iii ) the lyrics of the song that captivates the youth. In my study, I …

Representing Culture: Reflexivity And Mormon Folklore Scholarship, David A. Allred

Theses and Dissertations

When writing about a culture, ethnographers can convey important insights about society. However, ethnography can also misrepresent culture. To address this fact, reflexive ethnography attempts to influence both the methodology and the rhetoric of writing about culture. Reflexivity seeks to acknowledge the bias of the researcher. To include the voice of the cultural insiders, and to more closely represent the dynamics of cultures that always have an element of hybridity. However, reflexive ethnographies can also be unwieldy and impractical. Therefore, one must find a pragmatic application of reflexivity.

Reflexivity can have application to Mormon folklore studies. The most important Mormon …

Without Closets, Without Shame: Conference Commemorates Latino/A Autobiography And Testimony, Oscar Montero, Elena Martínez, Ramón Rivera-Servera

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Crossing Borders '99, the second CLAGS conference focusing on Latino/a queers, opened Thursday evening, March 11, with a Cabaret Night hosted by the "Songbird of Cuba," Carmelita Tropicana. The evening, subtitled "Sin closet/sin verguenza" ("Without Closets/Without Shame") featured, among others, Deyanira Bautista's Afro-Caribbean Drums, dancer Arthur Aviles with his nude flying body, and the sultry, seductive, Mexican drag chanteuse, Tito Vasconcelos.