Sociology of Culture Commons^™

An Exploratory Study Of Acculturation Experiences Of Graduate Student Immigrants At The University Of San Francisco, Courtney Lamar

Master's Theses

This study explores the shared challenges during the acculturation process of graduate student immigrants pursuing higher education in the United States. 13 graduate student immigrants at the University of San Francisco discuss their experiences of cultural adjustment into U.S. culture. Through qualitative interviews and thematic analysis, this study seeks to understand the acculturation experiences of graduate student immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area of the United States. This analysis is based on the individual-level experience examining attitudes and acculturation strategies in the dominant society. Analysis, possibly policy implication for institutions of higher education, and possible directions for future research …

Now Hiring: Exploring Deportee Transnational Identities And Socio-Economic Reintegration In Baja California, Mexico’S Call Center Industry, Brenda Vargas

Master's Theses

The anti-immigrant rhetoric in the U.S. intensified deportation, including that of Mexican and Salvadorian migrants with some having served in the U.S. military. Despite weak social connections and explicit/structural barriers in Mexico, many deportees make the decision to stay in Mexico. The focus of this thesis is male deportees belonging to the “1.5 generation,” aged late 20’s-early 60’s, who, after spending their childhood and adulthood in the U.S., have undergone deportation and are faced with social and economic reintegration in the northern border area of Baja California, Mexico. Through 15 in-depth semi-structured interviews, I explore transnational identity negotiations that impact …

La Comunicación Lingüística En Español Y Sus Barreras En El Sistema De Salud De Los Estados Unidos, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

La enseñanza del español con fines médicos en los Estados Unidos ha experimentado un crecimiento exponencial en las dos últimas décadas. Sin embargo, los pacientes de origen hispano se encuentran desprotegidos ante las barreras lingüísticas que impone el sistema de salud estadounidense en muchos contextos monolingües y bilingües. Esta investigación descriptiva muestra como, por un lado, los malentendidos producidos por la comunicación ineficiente desarrollada por intérpretes e intermediarios (familiares, enfermeras con conocimientos de español, facultativos con una preparación lingüística deficiente, etc.) tienen serias repercusiones para la salud en el tratamiento de los casos. Por otro lado, el estudio da cuenta …

Mda As A Research Method Of Generic Musical Analysis For The Social Sciences: Sifting Through Grime (Music) As An Sft Case Study, Monique Charles

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

Using Grime as a case study, I employ the analytical framework I created, that is, Musicological Discourse Analysis (MDA) as a holistic mode of analysis to contextualize Grime sociologically and musicologically. This method retheorizes genre, providing a more specific, useful, and detailed musical classification system; the sonic footprint timestamp (SFT). The MDA framework provides a generic mode of musical analysis for research projects in sociology, cultural studies, and the social sciences fields. This article evaluates key musical influences in the evolution of Grime as both (i) a musical form and (ii) an analysis of influences in relation to its social …

Who And What Is Amazigh? Self-Assertion, Erasure, And Standardization, Alexis Colon

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This research focuses on the identity of the indigenous peoples of Morocco, or the Amazigh. While this culture has endured different iterations of colonization, self-assertion and activism in favor of preserving culture and improving conditions for Amazigh can often be viewed as controversial to the elites of Morocco. This controversy, however, does not stop Moroccans from proclaiming their Amazigh background or portraying their culture. This paper aims to describe qualitative data taken from numerous interviews on the subject of self-identification of Amazigh and different hopes and expectations for the continuation of the language and culture of Amazigh among common peoples.

Something Old, Something New: Historicizing Same-Sex Marriage Within Ongoing Struggles Over African Marriage In South Africa, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

This article examines contemporary struggles over same-sex marriage in the daily lives of black lesbian- and gay-identified South Africans. Based primarily on 21 in-depth interviews with such South Africans drawn from a larger project on post-apartheid South African marriage, the author argues that their current struggles for relationship recognition share much in common with contemporaneous struggles of their heterosexual counterparts, and that these commonalities reflect ongoing tensions between more extended-family and more dyadic understandings of African marriage. The increasing influence of dyadic understandings of marriage, and of associated ideals of romantic love, has helped inspire same-sex marriage claims and, in …

Anti-Queer Microaggressions Towards Queer Black Men, Camisha D. Fagan, Anna Smedley-López

McNair Poster Presentations

Microaggressions are reoccurring derogatory messages that degrade and/ or discredit one’s identity. While invisible and unknown to many, they remain visible and apparent to those impacted by them. The research questions for this project are: (1) What microaggressions do Queer Black men experience within larger society? (2) To contrast with larger society, what microaggressions do Queer Black men experience within Black communities? By conducting focus groups, I will examine the intersectional microaggressions that Queer Black males experience in their own community, as well as document microaggression that they experience in larger society. After conducting my focus groups, I will be …

Insecure Hegemony: The Cultural Construction Of 'Righteous Retaliation' In The Hunt For Osama Bin Laden, Marisa Tramontano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the American “authorized discourse” about the hunt for and killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to better understand it as an episode in American cultural hegemony maintenance. Through a structural hermeneutic analysis of presidential speeches and widely-circulated national strategy documents, high distribution news coverage, and entertainment media, alongside one-on-one interviews and focus groups, I illuminate the symbolic mechanics by which the death of Osama bin Laden was constructed as righteous and legitimate retaliatory violence in response to the unprompted, offensive violence of the 9/11 attacks.

Drawing on an array of theoretical approaches including classical sociologists Karl …

Race, Xenophobia, And Punitiveness Among The American Public, Joseph O. Baker, David Cañarte, L. Edward Day

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

We outline four connections between xenophobia and punitiveness toward criminals in a national sample of Americans. First, among self-identified whites xenophobia is more predictive of punitiveness than specific forms of racial animus. Second, xenophobia and punitiveness are strongly connected among whites, but are only moderately and weakly related among black and Hispanic Americans, respectively. Third, among whites substantial proportions of the variance between sociodemographic, political, and religious predictors of punitiveness are mediated by levels of xenophobia. Finally, xenophobia is the strongest overall predictor of punitiveness among whites. Overall, xenophobia is an essential aspect of understanding public punitiveness, particularly among whites.

Different Choices: A Public School Community’S Responses To School Choice Reforms, Amanda U. Potterton

The Qualitative Report

In the United States, state and federal reforms increasingly encourage the expansion of school choice policies. Debates about school choice contrast various concepts of freedom and equality with concerns about equity, justice, achievement, democratic accountability, profiting management organizations, and racial and class segregation. Arizona’s “market”-based school choice programs include over 600 charter schools, and the state’s open enrollment practices, public and private school tax credit allowances, and Empowerment Scholarships, (closely related to vouchers), flourish. This qualitative analysis explores one district-run public school and its surrounding community, and I discuss socio-political and cultural tensions related to school choice reforms that exist …

Toward Culturally Competent Archival (Re)Description Of Marginalized Histories, Annie Tang, Dorothy Berry, Kelly Bolding, Rachel E. Winston

Library Presentations, Posters, and Audiovisual Materials

Influenced by the radical archives movement, panelists discuss their (re)processing projects for which they wrote or rewrote descriptions in culturally competent approaches. Their case studies include materials regarding underrepresented peoples and historically oppressed groups who are marginalized from or maligned in the archival record. Targeted to processors, this session aims to teach participants to apply their cultural competencies in writing finding aids through an introduction to cultural competency framework, the case study examples, and a short audience-participation exercise.

Yardwork: A Biography Of An Urban Place By Daniel Coleman, Vivian M. Hansen

The Goose

Review of Daniel Coleman's Yardwork: A Biography of an Urban Place.

Dimensions Of Diversity In U.S. Arts Participation: Race-Ethnicity, Education, Genre Origins, And Means Of Broadcast Consumption, Nile Degray Patterson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Dimensions of Diversity in U.S. Arts Participation uses data from the 2012 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts to investigate the following three research questions: (1) Does education’s association with visual and performing arts participation vary by race-ethnicity; (2) does visual and performing arts attendance amongst racial-ethnic groups differ depending upon a genre’s cultural roots; and (3) does education’s relationship to visual and performing arts consumption vary between traditional and non-traditional broadcast media? Major findings reveal that education has a more consistent positive association with the likelihood and diversity of visual and performing arts attendance for Whites than non-Whites. …

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review Spring 2018

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review

No abstract provided.

Acknowledgement, The Zine Team

New and Dangerous Ideas

The editorial team’s acknowledgement of Dr. Mina Chung’s contribution to the publication of the journal.

Dear Students Of Color, Melissa Mota

New and Dangerous Ideas

Why are we hated for the things that we cannot control? Why is the killing of a black man just another sequel? Why don’t black lives matter?

Sensuality, Sara Slowik

New and Dangerous Ideas

My quilt is an intimate object that explores sexuality, feminism, beauty, and the vulnerability of women. I explored these topics through hand-stitching sensual images onto squares of fabric, which I then sewed into a quilt. There is a conflicting connection between the security of a quilt and the vulnerability of the images. In my Mixed Media class, I explored the ways in which society's views on nudity causes tension between security and vulnerability. Sensuality is a taboo topic, yet it fills the media. Where is the line between sexualizing women and embracing their bodies and beauty? This quilt was created …

Letter From The Editor, Lily Schenk

New and Dangerous Ideas

A summary of the first issue of New and Dangerous Ideas.

On Apocalypses: 11.9.16, Raffi Altman-Allen

New and Dangerous Ideas

I wrote this piece as my way of trying to come to terms with the most recent presidential election. I needed to process how weird it was that something so impactful and terrible had happened, but everyday life didn't stop existing. My hope is that this poem will offer encouragement to those of us involved in social justice work in the wake of the election. I would also want this to act as an acknowledgment that in other places in the world people are living in war-zones, surrounded constantly by death and destruction, and still get up in the morning …

Lotus Blossom, Meg Dela Dingco

New and Dangerous Ideas

In making Lotus Blossom, I hoped to bring light to the fact that Asians do face racism and how Asian women, in particular, have been fetishized. There are many misconceptions that racism is only violent in specific ways, such as the genocide of Indigenous people or much of America being built on the slavery of Blacks and African Americans. Through ｌｏｔｕｓ ｂｌｏｓｓｏｍ, I wanted to show that racism isn't based only on physical violence (although I did cover the demographics of Asians when it comes to being victims of sexual assault), it is also about history.

Table Of Contents

New and Dangerous Ideas

Photocopy of the Table of Contents.

No Te Pierda, Xante Chalwell

New and Dangerous Ideas

The Dominican Republic is globally portrayed as a paradise. Tourists flock from every corner of the earth to experience the glamorized side of the Dominican Republic. However, few venture out to the reality. The reality that is a two-tier caste system, exemplified by the city of Punta Cana. Security guards and gates separate the two starkly different realities of this nation.

Nasty, Paulina Kobylar

New and Dangerous Ideas

There are numerous ways to combat institutionalized oppression, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and violence. One way just so happens to be through the art. This piece explores identity groups who are discriminated against every day, which President Trump has only emphasized through his actions and words. It questions why the history of our country has divided people by the color of their skin, why powerful men can say what they please about the female body, why heterosexuality is the only sexual orientation, why people should fall on either side of a gender binary, and why violence has continually …

Black Life Mater: Debunked!, Asia A. Carter-Lamb

New and Dangerous Ideas

The Black Lives Matter movement emerged in 2012 to combat racial targeting after the death of Trayvon Martin. The purpose of the movement, according to the Black Lives Matter Guiding Principles, is to serve as “an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise” and “an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.” From meetings with Democratic National Convention leaders, to attending a meeting at the White House at the invitation of the President, the Black Lives Matter movement …

Different Tongues, Skyler Moncada

New and Dangerous Ideas

I wanted to share my experience as an individual who often intervenes in challenging or dangerous situations who was transformed into a bystander by a familiar situation that occurred in an unfamiliar setting. While my study abroad experience was undoubtedly one of the best moments in my life, it brought a lot of discomfort in the forms of different cultures, settings, peoples, and expectations.

Afrobeat, Elfreda Hoff

New and Dangerous Ideas

My dance is called Afrobeat. You may ask, what is Afrobeat? Afrobeat is a unique style of dance and popular music embracing elements of African music, jazz, soul, and funk. I used a mixture of African songs that focus on romance, self-love, and acceptance. I ended my dance with a powerful song that talks about always pushing through no matter what the struggles and hard times will be.

Prisoner Of America, Kat Vicente

New and Dangerous Ideas

I wanted to expose the fact that many understand that we do not live in a just world but they do nothing to fight against it either, which makes them part of the problem. It just shows that you can know something is wrong, but if you chose not to do anything about it, then you have sided with the oppressors.

It’S Not Because I’M Black, Judith Suffrard

New and Dangerous Ideas

This piece is my way of responding to the accusations that a lot of minoritized peoples receive. Too often, they are asked to explain why they are offered an amazing opportunity. They do not owe anyone an explanation as to why they were chosen any more than their white counterparts would. It takes away from the joy of their success and can motivate them to avoid opportunities for success in the future.

“There’S Twenty-Four Letters In The Alphabet, And I Couldn’T Find Two”, Jen Campisi

New and Dangerous Ideas

With all of the #MeToo and sexual assault allegations appearing out of nowhere in the media these days, it gave me a flashback of my two friends who had felt this fear first-hand. I dedicated the poem/prose to them, for they have made a comeback and continue to live their lives as if nothing was holding them back, which is incredibly courageous despite everything they have gone through. This is for them.

Scream, Valerie Moran

New and Dangerous Ideas

This artwork shows the moments where I had felt lost, missing, unworthy, powerless, hopeless, and ultimately alone.