Sociology of Culture Commons^™

Cross Cultural Analysis For Training And Facilitating Latin-American Audiences, Jose P. Alcazar

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

The purpose of this project is to help Creative Problem Solving (CPS) trainers and facilitators to improve the efficacy when working with Hispanic groups and individuals, either in a personal or in organizational environments. This project will guide the facilitators to use a more appropriate tools that will allow the resource group to feel more comfortable during the idea generation, creating an environment more according to the believes and behavioral habits; and the client to feel more confident to converge and make decisions accordingly to the initial goals. When training people in CPS, the project will align the methodology and …

後Cepa 時期香港電影懷舊想像中的「本土」身份書寫, Dan Shen

Lingnan Theses

2003 年中國內地與香港簽訂《內地與香港關於建立更緊密經貿關係的安排》(Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement, 簡稱CEPA)。其中關於電影的條款放寬了香港電影進入內地的條件，加之龐大的市場需求，香港電影工業的跨境活動變得日益頻繁, 並開啟了新一輪的中港「合拍片」潮流。電影產業及其市場環境的轉變背後是更為深層的中港經濟、政治與文化的融合。香港從「九七」前後至今在新的政治空間及身份脈絡中不斷尋求「本土」位置顯得日益困難。電影作為流行文化文本和社會實踐曲折地表述「本土」、「自我」、「身份」，其中「懷舊」（nostalgia）便是近十年香港電影文化想像中一個顯著的憶述工具和路徑，亦即通過處理「過去」、歷史、集體記憶等來書寫「現在」的某種情感、經驗、欲望。

本論文以後CEPA 時期的香港電影為研究對象，檢閱以合拍片為主導的電影工業體制下，和香港近十年來文化政治脈絡中，不同類型、風格、主題，以及不同生產方式、製作規模、市場面向的香港電影懷舊想像與「本土」身份的互構關係。以及後CEPA 時代香港電影的懷舊想像與此前懷舊電影相比下的延續與新變。

Intergenerational Conflicts In Iran: Myth Or Reallity?, Mohammad Hossein Panahi

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

One of the important social issues attracting the attention of social thinkers in post WWII era has been the issue of intergenerational conflict. Presented by scholars such as Karl Manheim and Margaret Mead, it was thought that in post WWII era intergenerational conflicts or gap rose to a degree that it made the communication and understanding between pre and post WWII generations very difficult. It was theorized that this unbridgeable gap between the two generations was due to grave and rapid social changes that occurred in that era, so that these two generations experienced and lived in two totally different …

Improv To Improve Interprofessional Communication, Team Building, Patient Safety, And Patient Satisfaction, Candace A. Campbell

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

The purpose of this process improvement project was to implement a test of change within a healthcare team utilizing applied improvisational exercises (AIEs), and to lay the groundwork for more effective inter- and intra-professional communication.

Literature review: AIEs have been shown to facilitate individual participant communication strengths through a process of un-learning certain common behavioral habits, and learning new habits that assist in creating and expanding closed-loop communication. Such un-learning and learning enriches the participant’s awareness of the environment and encourages participant adaptability through positive group interactions.

Method: An all-day AIE seminar/workshop was conducted with members of two healthcare teams …

"Does This Thesis Make My Behind Look Big?" A Master's Thesis Using Qualitative Research To Examine Clothing As A Communication Tool, Lynne Forth

Masters Theses

The purpose of this narrative research study is to discover and understand what and how clothing communicates by using carefully selected individuals as studied in their natural environment. The study utilized Geert Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Theory, which is based on in-depth research and analysis of cultures across the globe and what aspects define each culture. In order to understand clothing as a communication tool, the researcher interviewed participants from both American and Dutch cultures. Many books, articles and the above mentioned interviews were utilized to gain a more in-depth understanding of clothing as a form of communicating and how this …

What The Phub?, Kendall T. Wolf

SURGE

“Nobody talks to each other anymore.” When my grandfather said this as we sped down the highway, I wondered what to make of it. Is he simply being a negative elderly man, or is there some truth to the statement? Considering that I had been trying to tune out his questions with my headphones the whole drive, I guess I deserved some type of scolding. As his questions were repeated, my mother pointed out to my grandfather that I could not hear him, to which he shook his head and said, “Nobody talks to each other anymore.” Finally, I put …

Diversity Plan, Illinois Mathematics And Science Academy

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Resources

The Multicultural Committee was formed during the 2013-2014 Academic Year and charged with the task of updating the Diversity/Multicultural Development Plan, initiated in 2003 and last updated in 2011. The committee consists of 23 faculty and staff from the following departments: President’s Office, Principal’s Office, Student Life, Residential Life, Science Department, Wellness Department, Foreign Languages, Human Resources, Maintenance, Information Resource Center, Development Office, Enrollment Management and Academic Opportunities, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Professional Field Services, IT, Marketing and Communications and the Business Office. With direction from the Multicultural Education Specialist, this committee is responsible for overseeing the implementation of this plan.

Teaching Australian Literature In A Class About Literatures Of Social Reform, Per Henningsgaard

English Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article presents an intriguing thesis about proximity and identification, distance and empathy based on the experience of teaching Sally Morgan’s My Place to American university students alongside Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in a class examining literature as an agent of social change. Indeed, its response to the question, “How does the Australian production of My Place influence its American reception?” will surprise many people. Students more readily demonstrate empathy with characters and are prepared to ascribe their unenviable life circumstances to social structures that propagate oppression when reading literature about cultural groups …

Notes, Phrases, And Clauses: An Examination Of Identity In Music Focused Conversation, Bryan Cannon

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Music is everywhere. From formal occasions to a person’s morning run. Music is available on cell phones, computers, in religious ceremonies, at concerts and venues. Music is seen by society to be important and a person’s choice of music can be used to present an identity. The question considered in this article is how people talk about music and how they present identity through their discussion. The current study examines eight focus groups of three actors instructed to simply talk about music. The discussions were recorded and analyzed in a conversation analytic style to identify the structures of the conversations …

Reefer Madness To Marijuana And Legalization: Media Exposure And American Attitudes Towards Marijuana (1975-2010), Richard James Stringer

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

American attitudes toward marijuana have varied greatly from the time it was criminalized in the 1930's until 2010, and public opinion favoring the legalization of marijuana has steadily risen since 1990. Since the media is purported to have had an impact on the legislation rather than objective risk factors, it is possible that the marijuana epidemic could be the result of a socially constructed moral panic. As such, this study utilized General Social Survey data to examine the relationship between media exposure and attitudes toward the legalization of marijuana from 1975 through 2010, 1975 through 1990, and 1991 through 2010. …

Cultural Identity, Deafness And Sign Language: A Postcolonial Approach, Steven Loughran

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

Franz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks describes the experience of the recently de-colonized members of the Negro (as he refers to those of African descent) population living in Europe, particularly France, in the 1960s. A little over a decade later, Edward Said published Orientalism, thus adding to a growing discipline of scholarship in the fields of art, literature, and cultural studies called “Postcolonialism.” My essay attempts to show that Deaf persons who communicate with each other using sign language can be viewed as a colonized group, and that applying postcolonial theory to the study of their culture is appropriate.

Power Girls Before Girl Power: 1980s Toy-Based Girl Cartoons, Katia Perea

Publications and Research

The socio/cultural history and partnership of toy advertisement and children’s television is rich and well documented (Schneider 1989, Kunkel 1988, Seiter 1993). In this article I discuss the influence of policy in girl’s cartoon programming as well as the relationship between commercialization and financial motivation in creating a girl cartoon media product. I then discuss the formulaic, gender normative parameters this new genre set in place to identify girl cartoons as well as girl media consumption and how within those parameters girl cartoon characters were able to represent an empowered girl popular culture product a decade before the nomenclature Girl …

Theories Of Public Opinion, Patricia Moy, Brandon Bosch

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

While the issue of citizen competency has vexed scholars throughout history, the modern concepts of a mass public and mass media are relatively new. Beginning with the seminal works of Lippmann and Dewey, we chart the evolving theories of public opinion, from the "hypodermic needle" model of the early twentieth century to the more psychologically oriented approach to media effects of today. We argue that in addition to understanding how audiences process media content, theories of public opinion must account for how media content is constructed and disseminated, which is complicated by the ever-changing nature of our media landscape.

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 …

Popular Culture’S Ambivalence Toward Female Autonomy: The Great Depression, Ian M. Post

Grand Valley Journal of History

The Great Depression forced many Americans to accept new and alternate methods of income when faced with low unemployment and a harsh economic environment. This crisis spawned the autonomous women of the Great Depression's popular culture that signified the acceptance of the newly discovered role. This essay argues that although the creators of popular culture maintained ambivalence in supporting this lifestyle, they nonetheless portrayed women as finally satisfied when she became dependent on a man.

Operating The Silencer: Muted Group Theory In The Great Gatsby, Sarah Funderbruke

Masters Theses

This master's thesis examines gender and social roles seen in dialogue in the American classic novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The researcher conducted a coding and rhetorical analysis to determine if elements of muted group theory were in the novel. Muted group theory was developed by Edwin and Shirley Ardener after their research indicated that a culture's values and social structure were voiced through rhetoric. The theory states that dominance in certain groups mutes, or silences, others from communicating effectively. Five passages from The Great Gatsby were selected for this analysis. These passages highlighted dialogue between the …

How Is The Most Segregated City In The Country Addressing Disproportionate Minority Contact With A Juvenile Burglary Restorative Justice Program And What Implications Exist For Community Based Restorative Circles? : Conflict Analysis And Recommendations, Lauren Thrift

Capstone Collection

Milwaukee, Wisconsin is considered the most segregated city in the country and has the most disproportionate rate of minorities in Wisconsin’s juvenile justice system. The State of Wisconsin recognizes disproportionate minority contact (DMC) is a product of both differential offending by minorities and the racist differential processing by the juvenile justice system. Milwaukee’s residents are locked in a conflict about the role of racism in the high rates of minority crime and whether to address DMC with more stringent punishment or increasing alternatives to incarceration. The entrenched segregation between African American and Caucasian neighborhoods and social groups reinforces polarization, increasing …

Influentials, Novelty, And Social Contagion: The Viral Power Of Average Friends, Close Communities, And Old News, Nicholas Harrigan, Palakorn Achananuparp, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

What is the effect of (1) popular individuals, and (2) community structures on the retransmission of socially contagious behavior? We examine a community of Twitter users over a five month period, operationalizing social contagion as ‘retweeting’, and social structure as the count of subgraphs (small patterns of ties and nodes) between users in the follower/following network. We find that popular individuals act as ‘inefficient hubs’ for social contagion: they have limited attention, are overloaded with inputs, and therefore display limited responsiveness to viral messages. We argue this contradicts the ‘law of the few’ and ‘influentials hypothesis’. We find that community …

Creating A Millennial Generation Contextualized Church Culture, Christopher Deitsch

Masters Theses

The Millennial generation, or Generation Y as some people know them, is the biggest generation in the United States of America history. As they flood schools, universities, and the job market it is easy to see that there are major differences between them and previous generations. Simultaneously, the church in America has hundreds of individual churches each year closing and tens of thousands each year declining; most churches are ceasing to grow. The inability to reach Millennials is one of the reasons for this decline. This thesis purposes to give a snapshot of the Millennial generation, overview a few of …

Me, Myself, & Identity Online: Identity Salience On Facebook Vs Non-Virtual Identity, Nathalie N. Delise

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Many Social Networking Sites have come and gone over the past decade, but Facebook continues to grow in popularity. Facebook is designed to connect people to one another through virtual networks of “friends” where members participate in the presentation of self virtually- through profile creation, maintenance, and exchanges of content. Social Networking Sites create a location for identity formation and projection that is similar, yet distinct, from face-to-face interactions. Facebook offers a unique avenue for people to control their presentation of self, while maintaining reflexive features. This study this study explores the notion of a particular “Facebook role” while specifically …

2012 Multicultural Development Plan, Illinois Mathematics And Science Academy

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Resources

The affirmation, appreciation, and inclusion of multiple cultures is vital to ensure that all students, faculty, and staff and the IMSA community will be able to thrive in a multicultural academic and residential environment. From this perspective it is important that community members be effective at interacting across cultures, which is essential to IMSA’s vision of “ igniting and nurturing creative, ethical scientific minds that advance the human condition”. The multiple cultures that make up the IMSA community include individual characteristics that contribute to personal identity such as race, ethnicity, geographic origin, gender, socioeconomic status, religion, age, sexual orientation, and …

Steps Toward A Socio-Technical Categorization Scheme For Communication And Information Standards, Joann Brooks, Anne W. Rawls

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Socio-technical systems continue to grow larger and more complex, comprising increasingly significant portions of contemporary society. Yet systematic understanding of interrelationships between social and technological elements remains elusive, even as computers and information systems proliferate. In this paper, we draw on ethnomethodology to distinguish several different kinds of processes through which communication and information are constituted. We discuss the distinctive properties of each in an effort to develop systematic understanding of basic elements of socio-technical systems. In particular, we offer a basic categorization of communication and information standards, noting the constitutive importance of their accompanying social practices. Implications for theory …

Broader Questions And A Bigger Toolbox:A Problem-Centered And Student-Centered Approach To Teaching Pluralist Economics, Julie A. Nelson

Economics Faculty Publication Series

This essay discusses a "broader questions and bigger toolbox" approach to teaching pluralist economics. This approach has three central characteristics. First, economics is defined so as to encompass a broad set of (provisioning) concerns. Second, emphasis is placed on contemporary real-world issues, institutions, and current events, rather than on debates in the history of economic thought. Third, a variety of concepts and theories are introduced, all of which are treated as partial and fallible--useful in some (perhaps very limited) situations while not so useful in others. Possible reasons an instructor might want to adopt this approach, and examples of use …

Fair And Lovely: Standards Of Beauty, Globalization, And The Modern Indian Woman, Rebecca Gelles

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

With the expansion of globalization in the modern era, ideas from individual cultures are more easily able to spread to other parts of the world. One set of cultural standards that may be spreading to India is that of beauty, where a media with an increasingly Western style shares television space with advertisements from corporations that are often foreign in origin. This study seeks to examine exactly what influence this globalized media has on its viewers, and, in particular, on their perspectives on beauty. In addition, since the ability to conform to cultural standards affects how people view themselves, this …

A Foreigner’S Gaze On The Micro-Culture Of The Car-Rapide—Senegalese Values Vs. Monetary Lust, Merrill Pierce

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The vibrant, chaotic, and interactive Car Rapide, a poignant micro-culture in Dakar, is a visually communicative entity and social space in Senegal’s transportation system. From an outsider’s gaze, this project addresses the history, artistic and religious significance, inner-workings of the system of employees, and present day implications of the car-rapide. The car-rapide emerges as the embodiment of both valuable and challenging aspects of Senegalese culture.

Determinants Of Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking And The Urgent Need For A Global Cultural Shift, Karen M. Hoover

Senior Honors Theses

In the United States, an overtly selfish and sexual culture contributes to the spread of human trafficking, thereby requiring a complete culture shift in order to diminish this modern day slavery initiated by the aberrant culture. Sex trafficking of minors in the United States encompasses a variety of factors that facilitate the bondage and brutal enslavement of American children. These children are bought and sold hundreds of times, with no regard for their personal well-being. Major factors such as demand, vulnerability, and America’s induced culture of sex serve to increase the environment that trap children and youth in commercial sexual …

Theorizing Embodied Communicative Organizing: Fleshing Out Genre With Goffman’S Situational View, Joann Brooks

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Circus: An Integrated Curriculum Unit, Institute For The Development Of Gifted Education, Ricks Center For Gifted Children, University Of Denver

Ricks Curriculum Units Series

An integrated curriculum is an instructional approach that connects the disciplines to an underlying theme or topic. Immersing students in an integrated-thematic unit provides the backdrop for experiences to occur across the disciplines. Shaping coursework around integrated themes is especially appropriate for gifted students, however using an integrated-thematic curriculum is appropriate for all learners as it develops students' abilities to make connections, to solve problems by looking at multiple perspectives, and to integrate information from different fields of experience. An integrated-thematic curriculum permits students to be active participants in their own learning as they design their own explorations and take …

November Uri Community Diversity Project 2010, Joseph A. Santiago, Riley Davis, Richard V. Travisano

November Diversity Project

November is National Novel Writing Month. For the first time at the University of Rhode Island November was a month for the URI community to share their stories, poems, art, and photos with the world. The Writing to Model Diversity project intends to connect individuals across cultural boundaries and borders by sharing the stories and experiences that challenge our everyday experiences and the dreams of the future. Built on the efforts of the World Voice series, URI presents a book that shares the stories and culture of the students, faculty, staff, and community members who embrace the idea of becoming …

November Uri Community Diversity Project 2010, Joseph A. Santiago Mr, Riley Davis Ms, Richard V. Travisano Mr

November Diversity Project

November is National Novel Writing Month. For the first time at the University of Rhode Island November was a month for the URI community to share their stories, poems, art, and photos with the world. The Writing to Model Diversity project intends to connect individuals across cultural boundaries and borders by sharing the stories and experiences that challenge our everyday experiences and the dreams of the future. Built on the efforts of the World Voice series, URI presents a book that shares the stories and culture of the students, faculty, staff, and community members who embrace the idea of becoming …