Sociology of Culture Commons^™

Cuban Immigrants’ Experience With Acculturation And How They Cope In The United States, Lourdes Araujo

Dissertations

Objective: This research examines how Cuban immigrants experience cope and adapt to the United States. Cuban immigration is associated with specific stressors related to the immigration experience and the necessary process of acculturation and assimilation. These major stressors can result in mental health concerns among Cuban immigrants; however, no studies have examined how acculturation may influence Cuban immigrants’ coping skills and resultant mental health concerns. This unique study is the first to examine the coping skills Cuban immigrants use during acculturation and the effects of these skills on Cuban immigrants’ mental health. Methods: Seventeen participants completed a semistructured interview and …

The Meaning Of Javanese Adolescents' Involvement In Youth Gangs During The Discoveries Of Youth Identity: A Phenomenological Study, Enung Hasanah, Supardi Supardi

The Qualitative Report

Yogyakarta is a part of Javanese society. Javanese culture, which always enforces moral values, has a practical implication toward adolescents' views about their self-identity. Yogyakarta adolescents are well known to have positive self-identity, good behavior, and tend to become successful persons in their youth. In the past years, a phenomenon of youth gangs that often conduct irresponsible acts such as brawls, stabbing terror, and even murder has emerged. The question of the research is how adolescent members of a youth gang give meaning to their involvement in a youth gang. To answer the question, we used a phenomenological research method. …

Sports In Africa, Past And Present, Todd Cleveland, Tarminder Kaur, Gerard Akindes

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

These groundbreaking essays demonstrate how Africans past and present have utilized sports to forge complex identities and shape Africa’s dynamic place in the world.

Since the late nineteenth century, modern sports in Africa have both reflected and shaped cultural, social, political, economic, generational, and gender relations on the continent. Although colonial powers originally introduced European sports as a means of “civilizing” indigenous populations and upholding then current notions of racial hierarchies and “muscular Christianity,” Africans quickly appropriated these sporting practices to fulfill their own varied interests. This collection encompasses a wide range of topics, including women footballers in Nigeria, Kenya’s …

Overview And Acknowledgments, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Doing Latinidad While Black: Afro-Latino Identity And Belonging, Vianny Jasmin Nolasco

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study centers on the experiences of Afro-Latinos and how the racialization of Latino as a distinctly ‘brown’ identity—thereby excluding Blackness—shapes their identity and sense of belonging within Latino communities and spaces. Through in-depth interviews with eight Afro-Latinos, and using West and Fenstermaker’s (1995) work, ‘Doing Difference’, I find that the invisibility of Blackness, being categorized as Black, and therefore not Latino, and the negative meanings attached to Blackness may make it difficult for Afro-Latinos to come into their racial and ethnic identity and feel like they belong in Latino spaces. However, these experiences are also an important step to …

Place-Making/Management: The Policy And Practice Of Arts-Centred Spatial Interventions In Singapore, Su Fern Hoe

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Singapore has won numerous accolades and garnered global attention for its physical infrastructure and iconic architecture. Despite these achievements, its government has recognized that certain parts of the city still lack a certain human vitality and buzz. Additionally, like other post-industrial cities, the production of a positive urban experience has been identified as that critical competitive advantage that would differentiate Singapore from other cities. Consequently, the Singapore government adopted a strategy called ‘place management’ in 2008 to inject ‘heart and soul’ into the city, and deliver a liveable, globally competitive and amenity-rich urban environment for its increasingly educated and upper …

A Changing Tea Culture, A Changing China: Variations In Conceptions Of Gift Tea Among Tea Sellers, Tiana Wang

Student Work

A 2019-2020 Williams Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Tiana Wang (Ezra Stiles College '20) for her essay submitted to the Department of Sociology, "A Changing Tea Culture, A Changing China: Variations in Conceptions of Gift Tea Among Tea Sellers” (Jeffrey Alexander, Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology, advisor).

Tiana Wang’s essay, “A Changing Tea Culture, A Changing China: Variations in Conceptions of Gift Tea among Tea Sellers” makes substantial use of original interviews and observations with twenty tea sellers across Jinan, Shanghai, and Beijing to show that tea culture is changing with new …

Time Machine Research And Approach, Tarek Bouraque

Theses and Dissertations

Time Machine is a hybrid documentary that explores the logics of enslavement, colonialism, eurocentrism and their interconnectedness in our globalized world. Mustapha Azemmouri, born in 1502, undertakes a journey to the 21st century to recount his own story of enslavement and exploration, and reflects on a collective puzzle of 500 years of hidden history.

Hollywood Media And The Model Minority Myth: The Representation Of Asian American Masculinity And Its Effects, Khanhlinh Le

Master's Projects and Capstones

Asian Americans are becoming one of the largest growing minority groups in the United States, almost surpassing the Latinx community. Asian Americans, however, are rarely ever represented in Hollywood films and are limited to stereotypical roles. Asian American actors have a difficult time finding roles playing characters that are three-dimensional and complex. While both Asian American men and women face this challenge, it seems that in Hollywood films and television shows, Asian American males are even less represented than females and are typically portrayed as the quiet nerd, sexy doctor, martial arts expert, or the villain. These media stereotypes impact …

Investigation Of The "Cultural Appropriation" Of Yoga, Olivia Bartholomew

Honors Projects

With our world becoming increasingly globalized and cosmopolitan, practices that were once very traditional and spiritual are much different when they confront Western societies. Many yoga instructors and practitioners around the world are concerned about the issue of cultural appropriation within their practice. The researcher defines cultural appropriation to mean the process of a dominant culture manipulating aspects of a marginalized culture for its benefit. Traditionally, yoga comes from India, but it has become popularized throughout the world in our recent human history. Through interviews with nine yoga instructors, each from different yogic traditions, who teach in a variety of …

Wai Puna: An Indigenous Model Of Māori Water Safety And Health In Aotearoa, New Zealand, Chanel Phillips Ph.D.

International Journal of Aquatic Research and Education

Māori (the indigenous peoples of Aotearoa, New Zealand) are intimately connected to wai (i.e., water) yet are overrepresented in New Zealand’s drowning statistics each year. On average Māori account for 20-24% of all preventable and non-preventable drowning fatalities, despite comprising only 15 percent of New Zealand’s population. Drowning remains a significant issue posing a threat to whānau (i.e., families) through premature death being imminent and whakapapa (i.e., genealogy) being interrupted. There is limited research that has examined Māori and indigenous understandings of water safety within the literature and limited studies that have investigated the issue of Māori drowning from a …

Iskay Simipi Yachay: El Papel De La Educación Intercultural Bilingüe En La Preservación Y Valoración De La Lengua Quechua En Perú, Tori Wiese

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Perú es un país multicultural y multilingüe, con una historia rica, especialmente con respecto a sus poblaciones indígenas. Específicamente, Perú tiene una población grande de quechua hablantes que viven principalmente en la región andina en el país. Más de tres millones de personas hablan quechua en Perú—el 13 por ciento de la población del país. Con un número tan significativo, el peligro que rodea al quechua puede no ser aparente, pero sin embargo existe. Durante su historia, Perú como un país sofocó la lengua quechua a favor de la lengua castellano. Esta represión de la lengua quechua también incluye la …

Regulating Cultural Expressions In Post-Apartheid South Africa: A Case Study On Pretoria High School For Girls, Michaela Shelton

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Within the social sciences, there is some debate about multiculturalism’s compatibility with governing institutions in liberal democracies. Multiculturalism is a sociological concept that states cultures, races, and ethnicities, particularly those belonging to a minority group, deserve special acknowledgment of their differences within a dominant political culture. While promising in theory, the implementation of multiculturalism can lead to superficial recognition of differences and uphold institutionalized racism. I plan to use Pretoria High School for Girls as a single case study to examine the lingering heritage of apartheid and to better understand the tensions between multiculturalism and anti-racism in historically white South …

Free Bodies, Segmented Selves: Paradoxical Spaces Of Dancehall Culture In Singapore, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper contributes to the ongoing expansion of the geographies of encounter by considering how cultural encounters can lead to the realisation, and the segmentation, of the self. As much as cultural differences can be manifested, negotiated and managed externally, so too can these differences be internal states that are realised through engagements with the embodied self. Accordingly, segmented selves are an outcome of the desire for individuals to compartmentalise diverse and disaggregated lives, and to retain a sense of cohesion and harmony within the various socio-cultural communities to which they belong. I bring these ideas to life through an …

The Interwoven Existences Of Official Catholicism And Magical Practice In The Lived Religiosity Of A Transylvanian Hungarian Village, Cecília Sándor

Journal of Global Catholicism

During the last five years I have been doing field research in a Transylvanian Hungarian village, Sânsimion (Hu: Csíkszentsimon). I present my research on this religiously homogenous, Catholic community’s worldview. Based on interviews conducted with members of the village’s various age groups, I map religious and magical knowledge passed down through the generations, using the theoretical frame of collective memory and religious transmission. Second, I highlight two different but coexisting “constructions of reality” in this rural community. By “constructions of reality,” I mean interpretations of reality expressed in narrative discourses and local magical practices that are closely and inextricably interwoven …

Rockin' The Church: Vernacular Catholic Musical Practices, Kinga Povedak

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article focuses on the unique dimensions of lived or vernacular Catholicism through the analysis of contemporary congregational music in Hungary. Looking at the musical lives of Hungarian Roman Catholics from the late 1960s to contemporary times can provide us with new understandings of the theological contents and aesthetics, as well as the vernacular religiosity of the community. Christian popular music appeared behind the Iron Curtain relatively early, in 1967 when the first “beat mass” was created and introduced at Budapest. The early Christian popular music sounded astonishingly similar to the songs of the American Folk Mass Movement of the …

Longings, Letters And Prayers: Visitor's Books At Hungarian Marian Shrines, Krisztina Frauhammer

Journal of Global Catholicism

The following study seeks to show the flow of contemporary rituals associated with pilgrimage shrines. I will consider how visitor’s books placed on display at shrine churches are being utilized in the modern context by pilgrims and tourists alike. Requests, words of thanksgiving, and testimony are coupled with an honest, reflexive style that lends to the formation of these individualized prayers. These prayers are original, specific and peculiar as they follow patterns that are informal in nature. These prayers allow pilgrims to initiate contact with the Transcendent through the act and practice of writing. An idiosyncratic form of sacred communication …

Introduction: Consumer Contexts And Divine Presences In Hungarian Catholicism, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

Introduction to Hungarian Catholicism: Living Faith Across Diverse Social and Intellectual Contexts, highlighting both the specific contributions of the articles to the study of Hungarian Catholicism and situating them within the broad sweep of Hungarian and Catholic Studies.

Overview And Acknowledgements, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

Overview of Hungarian Catholicism: Living Faith Across Diverse Social and Intellectual Context, highlighting the articles' contribution to the study of Global Catholicism.

Book Review: The Third Pillar: How Markets And The State Leave The Community Behind, George Morrow

Essays in Education

Rajan, Raghuram (2019). The Three Pillars: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind. New York: Penguin.

Mr. Rajan explains the success and failure of societies through the interrelationship of three social sciences (what he calls pillars): economics (the marketplace), political science (government), and sociology (communities). In Section I, Mr. Rajan describes the origins of each pillar starting at the end of the medieval era. Each pillar has its own tale related to it social science but their stories are interwoven as well. An example: the marketplace and the expansion of trade (both territorially and in complexity) could only …

2020 Mlk Keynote Address: Michelle Alexander Presentation, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Michelle Alexander, Rosanne Somerson, Matthew Shenoda

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

2020 MLK Series Keynote Michelle Alexander brings audiences profoundly necessary and meaningful insights on the practice of mass incarceration that plagues the US justice system, as well as eye-opening conversation on how we can end racial caste in America. Lecture Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at 5:30pm, RISD Auditorium, 17 Canal Walk, Providence, RI.

In her acclaimed bestseller The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Alexander peels back the curtain on systemic racism in the US prison system in a work that the New York Review of Books describes as "striking in the intelligence of her …

The Role Of Food And Culinary Customs In The Homing Process For Syrian Migrants In California, Sally Baho

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

This interdisciplinary thesis explores the foodways of six Syrian migrant families, both immigrants and refugees, in California and the role that culinary customs play in their homing process. The homing process is the dynamic way in which people create home according to their life circumstances: food, eating, and culinary customs after migration in this case. Home is not only the place where people live, but also, where they come from and how they feel comfortable; home is both a physical space and an abstract concept. Home, and the various definitions of home, are mapped out in this project because understanding …

Living Through The Chilean Coup D’Etat: The Second-Generation’S Reflection On Their Sense Of Agency, Civic Engagement And Democracy, Denise Tala Diaz

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation illuminates how the experience of growing up during the Chilean dictatorship (1973–1990) affected the individual's sense of self as citizen and the impact on their sense of democratic agency, civic-mindedness, and political engagement in their country's current democracy. To understand that impact, the researcher chose to study her own generation, the “Pinochet-era” generation (Cummings, 2015) and interviewed those who were part of the Chilean middle class, who despite not being explicit victims of perpetrators, were raised in dictatorship and surrounded by abuse of state power including repression, disappearance, and imprisonment. The theoretical frame of the Socio-Political Development Theory …

Queen Nanny, A Case Study For Cultural Heritage Tourism: The Archaeology Of Memory And Identity, Lacy Risner

Liberal Arts Capstones

This research project is intended to provide a foundation of knowledge of the Maroon culture in Jamaica, through the legends of one of their most prominent founders, Queen Nanny, as an aid for those who want to educate themselves before approaching community leaders about tourism development. Documentation of Queen Nanny’s life is contested and shrouded in mystery. Yet, that is part of what makes her memory so powerful. The various roles that Queen Nanny is associated with feature her adamant pursuit of an independent life for herself and her Maroons. Whether she is catching bullets or teaching the Maroons how …

Unity In Diversity: Textile Expressions Of The Human Condition In Times Of Economic And Cultural Anxiety, Eli J. Baez

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Questions about the roots of human nature have been plaguing human societies across the globe since the beginning of time. Whole societies are built around the perceived answers, and the art which these societies produce reflect upon it and even contribute to constructing ‘proper’ human behavior. One such artistic material that lays literally quite close to the human body is the textile. Textiles can possess the specific power to shape the way in which an individual human body is presented to others, as well as to position a collective of humans in relation to others. In other words, textiles can …

Fractured Lives, Newfound Freedoms? The Dialectics Of Religious Seekership Among Chinese Migrants In Singapore, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper explores the negotiations involved in the process of Chinesemigrants converting to Christianity in Singapore. For many Chinesepeople, migration involves being exposed to religion for the first time,and for some, it involves them converting to Christianity. In Singapore,the conversion of Chinese migrants to Christianity occurs in a context of‘shared’ Chinese ethnicity, which can provide both bridges and barriersto the formation of Chinese Christian identities and communities. This‘shared’ ethnicity causes many Christian groups in Singapore to targetChinese migrants in their evangelisation efforts, which can result inmigrant and non-migrant Chinese communities being formed andfractured through religion. Drawing on qualitative data, four …

The Promises And Perils Of Radio As A Medium Of Faith In A Q’Eqchi’-Maya Catholic Community, Eric Hoenes Del Pinal

Journal of Global Catholicism

Because their parish is large, dispersed, and overwhelmingly rural, FM radio is one of the few reliable means through which the Q’eqchi’-Maya Catholics of San Felipe in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, can communicate with each other en masse. Yet, because it is a one-way medium, it is also impossible to gauge how its intended audience is responding, or if is even there to receive broadcasted messages. Drawing on ethnographic material collected in 2005 (on the use of radio broadcasting to call together ritual participants) and 2016 (on an ultimately failed attempt to launch a radio station to serve rural parishioners), …

The Cultural Context For The Pursuit Of Vocation, Charles Seeley

Journal of Research Initiatives

How does the cultural context influence the pursuit of vocation? How does culture influence the decisions that young people make about the life direction they pursue? This qualitative, ethnographic study was conducted to discover and describe the motivational influences in the lives of students and graduates of The Leadership Center, located in rural Honduras, as they traveled a journey through high school and on to The Leadership Center in pursuit of a vocation. The sample of study participants consisted of thirty young women, thirteen graduates, and seventeen students of The Leadership Center. While the culture of Honduras was not explicitly …

Architecture And Geo Politics, Eka Swadiansa

South South Forum 南南論壇

On 1 July 2019, in the Workshop on Architecture and Urbanism, LAU Kin Chi (Lingnan University, Hong Kong) first gave an opening speech. Eka Swadiansa (Office of Strategic Architecture) delivered a presentation on "Architecture and Geo Politics".

Dilemma And Knowledge - Book Review Of Re-Imagining Utopias: Theory And Method For Educational Research In Post-Socialist Contexts, Jessica Zychowicz

Comparative and International Education / Éducation Comparée et Internationale

No abstract provided.