Sociology of Culture Commons^™

The Repatriation Experiences Of American Third Culture Kids, Nicole Mazzo Bennett

Educational Studies Dissertations

American families moving abroad are often informed of the initial difficulties they will encounter as residents in a new culture; however, they may not recognize the possible subsequent effects on their children, when returning home to their native cultures during the repatriation process. The children who experience the effect of living in a new culture and eventually repatriating are known as Third Culture Kids (TCK). As globalization and expatriate populations increase, it is important that society becomes aware of the Third Culture community. This qualitative research study focused on analyzing the repatriation transition process of four Adult Third Culture Kids …

Remaking Selves, Repositioning Selves, Or Remaking Space: An Examination Of Asian American College Students' Processes Of "Belonging", Michelle Samura

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"Only a few studies have examined Asian American students’ sense of belonging (Hsia, 1988; Lee & Davis, 2000; Museus & Maramba, 2010). Scholars who study Asian American college students have suggested that Asian Americans are awkwardly positioned as separate from other students of color vis-à-vis the model minority stereotype (Hsia, 1988; Lee & Davis, 2000). Furthermore, Asian Americans often are viewed as overrepresented on college campuses, yet they remain under-served by campus support programs and resources and overlooked by researchers. Many Asian Americans have gained access to higher education, but the ways in which they belong on campuses is unclear. …

Disengagement From Ideologically-Based And Violent Organizations: A Systematic Review Of The Literature, Steven Windisch, Peter Simi, Gina Sott Ligon, Hillary Mcneel

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

Research on disengagement from violent extremism is an emerging field of inquiry. As compared to the related field of radicalization, there have been fewer studies of disengagement. Further, little effort has been made to conduct a large scale, systematic review of what is currently known about disengagement from violent extremism. This type of meta-literature assessment can play an important role in terms of informing strategies and programs designed to facilitate exit. To help fill this gap, our project systematically examines the disengagement literature to determine the range and frequency of various exit factors identified in previous studies. We also rely …

"Their Shadows Still Walk With Us": Mapping A Decolonial Cartography Of Struggle With Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa, Sandra Álvarez

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

This paper maps a cartography of struggle to document the dynamic, living legacy of Menominee leader Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa and her contribution to the decolonial possibilities of transnational Indigenous feminism. I propose that mapping a cartography of struggle is a useful way for movements to consider how the past informs the present and future possibilities of resistance and decoloniality.

Este artículo traza una cartografía de las luchas que llevó a cabo la líder Menominee Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa con el fin de documentar su legado dinámico y vivo y su contribución a las posibilidades decoloniales del feminismo indígena transnacional. Propongo la …

"Pitiful Creature Of Darkness": The Subhuman And The Superhuman In The Phantom Of The Opera, Jessica Sternfeld

Music Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"This chapter focuses on The Phantom of the Opera, the megamusical that perhaps most boldly faces the idea of disability head-on, as it stars a character whose face, as one journalist described it, looks 'like melted cheese' (Smith, 1995). The musical's approach to the Phantom's disability is remarkably layered and inconsistent; the Phantom is portrayed in numerous ways (monster, criminal, genius, god, ghost) and his physical disability blurs regularly with his 'soul;' which is where numerous characters locate the origin of his problems. His face and its famous mask covering are both feared and thrilled over, but with a reassuring …

Duration Of U.S. Stay And Body Mass Index Among Latino And Asian Immigrants: A Test Of Theoretical Pathways, Annie Ro, Georgiana Bostean

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

Studies find that longer-term immigrants have higher body mass index (BMI) than their more recently-arrived counterparts. Most interpretations of these health patterns by duration of U.S. residence rely on theories of immigrant integration; they posit that with increasing time in the United States, immigrants incorporate economically, socially, and culturally into aspects of U.S. society, and that these changes impact health. Few studies empirically examine whether these aspects of integration are indeed mediators of the association between duration of U.S. stay and BMI, and if their patterns differ across immigrant subgroups. This study examines data from the National Latino and Asian …

1st Place Research Paper: Moviegoers And The Moon In 1953, Hannah E. Gary

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

"By analyzing the complicated production of the sexually-provocative The Moon is Blue in the early 1950s, this essay seeks to isolate the perspectives of censorship groups, artistic authorities, governmental legislatures, and the Production Code Administration (PCA) in their respective appraisals of the Hollywood industry’s movie-going public. Referencing communications between studio personnel and the PCA, as well as court documents and scholarly research, this paper highlights how the various organizations’ differing conceptions are relevant with regards to their Cold War context. This period inspired containment ideology in narratives celebrating 'universal ideals and patriotic or sacred causes' through the awareness of a …

When Justice Demands Inequality, John Thrasher, Keith Hankins

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

In Rescuing Justice and Equality G.A. Cohen argues that justice requires an uncompromising commitment to equality. Cohen also argues, however, that justice must be sensitive to other values, including a robust commitment to individual freedom and to the welfare of the community. We ask whether a commitment to these other values means that, despite Cohen’s commitment to equality, his view requires that we make room for inequality in the name of justice? We argue that even on Cohen’s version of egalitarianism equality, freedom, and welfare are not always compatible. Justice will require trade-offs between these values. Sometimes, equality will need …

A Forward To The Special Issue On Neoliberalism In Education The Long Road To Redemption: Critical Pedagogy And The Struggle For The Future, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Peter McLaren introduces a special issue of Texas Education Review focused on Neoliberalism in Education by advocating for critical pedagogy in the face of the challenges and harms wrought by American capitalism, politics, and "economic exploitation, racism, homophobia, sexism, imperialism, the coloniality of power and White supremacy".

Technology And Political Participation, Chris Molina

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The most efficient way to get people to take action has always been a big topic of discussion when it comes to political mobilization. Technology has greatly affected the way that people mobilize; it has created a platform for people to have easier access to those of like minds. With social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter it is very easy in today's era to get your point across to thousands of people and if need be mobilize them into a political rally or protest. It is important to see if technology has actually had an impact in the …

Devising: Improving A Perceived Glistening Community!, Katie Laner

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Theatre for social change has long relied on devising methods to create pieces reflecting current cultural and societal issues. Through exercises, games and workshops, theatre for social change devising practices are as distinct and numerous as the many different communities they work with. The leading pioneer, Augusto Boal, created Theatre of the Oppressed, which utilizes many kinds of practices meant to address local issues effecting a group of people who have suffered from repression or whose needs have been invisible from greater society.Since his initial groundbreaking theories and practices, many modern artists and groups have adapted and changed his methods …

Perceptions Of Identity In Post-Famine Irish Return Migrants, Brittany Walsh

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The Irish census records from 1841 and 1851 demonstrated a nearly 20% drop in population over the course of the Great Famine, accounting for both death and emigration during that period. Among this drop was the community of nearly 1.5 million emigrants who left during the decade, a number accounting for half of the citizens leaving Ireland in the nineteenth century. While most of this community were permanent migrants, an estimated 10% of those who emigrated to the United States returned to Ireland during the second half of the century. This research will analyze the construction of Irish emigrant identity …

Multi-­‐Method Assessment Of Isil, Michael Nagata, Ali Abbas, Scott Atran, Bill Braniff, Andrew Bringuel, Muayyad Al-Chalabi, Sarah Canna, Jocelyne Cesari, Jacquelynn Chinn, Jon Cole, Steven Corman, Jonathon Cosgrove, Allison Astorino-Courtois, John Crowe, Richard Davis, Natalie Flora, James Giordano, Craig Giorgis, Mackenzie Harms, Benjamin Jensen, Richard John, Randy Kluver, Larry Kuznar, Gina Ligon, Leif Lundmark, Clark Mccauley, William H. Moon, Sophia Moskalenko, Dan Myers, Ryan Pereira, Stacy Pollard, Philip Potter, Hammad Sheikh, Johannes Siebert, Peter Simi, Lee Slusher, Anne Speckhard, Jason Spitaletta, Laura Steckman, Shalini Venturelli, Jeff Weyers, Lydia Wilson, Detlof Von Winterfeldt

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

"The contents of this paper reflect some of the work that Dr. Cabayan and his colleagues are doing to help us understand and comprehend this “intangible power” across a unique enterprise of academicians, scientists, policy intellectuals, current and former Foreign Service, military, and intelligence professionals. Most importantly, their efforts to improve our comprehension will enable us to adjust our efforts, our operations, our investments, and our risk-­‐calculations to more effectively contest it and the organization that wields it. I am grateful for their tireless work in this regard, and I commend it to the reader."

Ordering Anarchy, John Thrasher

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

Ordered social life requires rules of conduct that help generate and preserve peaceful and cooperative interactions among individuals. The problem is that these social rules impose costs. They prohibit us from doing some things we might see as important and they require us to do other things that we might otherwise not do. The question for the contractarian is whether the costs of these social rules can be rationally justified. I argue that traditional contract theories have tended to underestimate the importance of evaluating the cost of enforcement and compliance in the contract procedure. In addition, the social contract has …

Spectacles Of Reform: Theater And Activism In Nineteenth-Century America By Amy E. Hughes (Review), Jocelyn Buckner

Theatre Faculty Articles and Research

In Spectacles of Reform Amy Hughes advocates for “spectacle as methodology” (4), a means of interpreting spectacle in nineteenth-century melodrama, as well as a wide variety of other media, that rehearses and reforms concepts of citizenship and identity related to race, class, gender, and morality. Through this lens, Hughes seeks to answer the questions “where and how do activist spectacles appear before and beyond the theatrical encounter?” and “why is spectacle kept alive through reinvention, revision, and repetition long after the drama is over?” (5). Hughes traces her theory of the spectacular instant through three popular sensation themes of the …

Isamu Noguchi's Modernism: Negotiating Race, Labor, And Nation, 1930-1950, Stephanie Takaragawa

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

In a study that combines archival research, a firm grounding in the historical context, biographical analysis, and sustained attention to specific works of art, Amy Lyford provides an account of Isamu Noguchi's work between 1930 and 1950 and situates him among other artists who found it necessary to negotiate the issues of race and national identity. In particular, Lyford explores Noguchi's sense of his art as a form of social activism and a means of struggling against stereotypes of race, ethnicity, and national identity. Ultimately, the aesthetics and rhetoric of American modernism in this period both energized Noguchi's artistic production …

Review Of Klansville, U.S.A.: The Rise And Fall Of The Civil Rights-Era Ku Klux Klan, Peter Simi

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Klansville, U.S.A.: The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights–Era Ku Klux Klan by David Cunningham.

Older Adults’ Contributions To The Tsimane Forager-Farmer Economy, Eric Schniter

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Portfolio of original photographs and an accompanying essay about the role of elders among the Tsimane, an indigenous group living in the Bolivian Amazon.

Building Cultural Competency In Therapy, Naveen Jonathan

Marriage and Family Therapy Faculty Presentations

Discusses how to build better cultural competency in order to help clients of diverse ethnic, racial, and cultural backgrounds.

Do Market Incentives Crowd Out Charitable Giving?, Cary Deck, Erik O. Kimbrough

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Donations and volunteerism can be conceived as market transactions with a zero explicit price. However, evidence suggests people may not view zero as just another price when it comes to pro-social behavior. Thus, while markets might be expected to increase the supply of assets available to those in need, some worry such financial incentives will crowd out altruistic giving. This paper reports laboratory experiments directly investigating the degree to which market incentives crowd out large, discrete charitable donations in a setting related to deceased organ donation. The results suggest markets increase the supply of assets available to those in need. …

Culturally Responsive Methodologies At Work In Education Settings, Mere Berryman, Suzanne Soohoo, Ann Nevin, Te Arani Barrett, Therese Ford, Debora Joy Nodelman, Norma Valenzuela, Anna Wilson

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe culturally responsive methodology as a way to develop researchers. The aim is to illuminate the dimensions of culturally responsive methodology such as cultural and epistemological pluralism, deconstruction of Western colonial traditions of research, and primacy of relationships within culturally responsive dialogic encounters. An overarching question is: “How can we maintain the original integrity of both participants and researchers and their respective cultures and co-construct at the same time something new?”

Design/methodology/approach – Five case study narratives are described in order for readers to understand the range and types of studies …

"Spectacular Opacities": The Hyers Sisters' Performances Of Respectability And Resistance, Jocelyn Buckner

Theatre Faculty Articles and Research

This essay analyzes the Hyers Sisters, a Reconstruction-era African American sister act, and their radical efforts to transcend social limits of gender, class, and race in their early concert careers and three major productions, Out of Bondage and Peculiar Sam, or The Underground Railroad, two slavery-to-freedom epics, and Urlina, the African Princess, the first known African American play set in Africa. At a time when serious, realistic roles and romantic plotlines featuring black actors were nearly nonexistent due to the country’s appetite for stereotypical caricatures, the Hyers Sisters used gender passing to perform opposite one another as heterosexual lovers in …

Practicing What They Preach? Lynching And Religion In The American South 1890 - 1929, Amy Kate Bailey, Karen A. Snedker

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

This project employs a moral solidarity framework to explore the relationship between organized religion and lynching in the American South. The authors ask whether a county’s religious composition affected its rate of lynching, net of demographic and economic controls. The authors find evidence for the solidarity thesis, using three religious metrics. First, their findings show that counties with greater religious diversity experienced more lynching, supporting the notion that a pluralistic religious marketplace with competing religious denominations weakened the bonds of a cohesive moral community and might have enhanced white racial solidarity. Second, counties in which a larger share of the …

Introduction To America's Four Gods: What We Say About God And What That Says About Us, Paul Froese, Christoper Bader

Sociology Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Despite all the hype surrounding the "New Atheism," the United States remains one of the most religious nations on Earth. In fact, 95% of Americans believe in God--a level of agreement rarely seen in American life. The greatest divisions in America are not between atheists and believers, or even between people of different faiths. What divides us, this groundbreaking book shows, is how we conceive of God and the role He plays in our daily lives.

America's Four Gods draws on the most wide-ranging, comprehensive, and illuminating survey of American's religious beliefs ever conducted to offer a systematic exploration of …

Acting In Good Faith: An Economic Approach To Religious Organizations As Advocacy Groups, Anthony J. Gill, Steven J. Pfaff

Sociology Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"Advocacy groups are all the rage! Over the past two decades, a new cottage industry has erupted in academia examining the seemingly explosive growth in new social movements, advocacy groups and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that has occurred in Western industrialized nations and several developing nations as well. Many of these movements and NGOs have crossed international boundaries, feeding the notion that globalization is eroding boundaries between people all around the world. This literature certainly has added to our knowledge of how advocacy groups originate and operate. But curiously missing from these recent studies has been any discussion of what amounts …

Para-Romantic Love And Para-Friendships: Development And Assessment Of A Multiple-Parasocial Relationships Scale, Riva Tukachinsky

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

Parasocial-relationships (PSR) are viewers' imaginary relationships with media personae. Despite the growing body of research on PSR, the field is still lacking a clear conceptualization and precise measure of this phenomenon. The present study suggests a novel theorization of PSR as para-friendship and para-love. Study 1 demonstrates construct validity of a new Multiple-PSR scale using the logic of a multi-trait multi-method approach. Study 2 replicates the factorial solution using confirmatory factor analysis. Finally, Study 3 provides evidence for the criterion validity of the scales. Together, these findings suggest that PSR encompass several types of relationships that might mediate different media …

Communalism Predicts Prenatal Affect, Stress, And Physiology Better Than Ethnicity And Socioeconomic Status, Cleopatra M. Abdou, Christine Dunkel Schetter, Belinda Campos, Clayton J. Hilmert, Tyan Parker Dominguez, Calvin J. Hobel, Laura M. Glynn, Curt A. Sandman

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

The authors examined the relevance of communalism, operationalized as a cultural orientation emphasizing interdependence, to maternal prenatal emotional health and physiology and distinguished its effects from those of ethnicity and childhood and adult socioeconomic status (SES). African American and European American women (N = 297) were recruited early in pregnancy and followed through 32 weeks gestation using interviews and medical chart review. Overall, African American women and women of lower socioeconomic backgrounds had higher levels of negative affect, stress, and blood pressure, but these ethnic and socioeconomic disparities were not observed among women higher in communalism. Hierarchical multivariate regression analyses …

Familialism, Social Support, And Stress: Positive Implications For Pregnant Latinas, Belinda Campos, Christine Dunkel Schetter, Cleopatra M. Abdou, Calvin J. Hobel, Laura M. Glynn, Curt A. Sandman

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

This study examined the association of familialism, a cultural value that emphasizes close family relationships, with social Support, stress, pregnancy anxiety, and infant birth weight. Foreign-born Latina (n = 31), U.S.-born Latina (n = 68), and European American (n = 166) women living in the United States participated in a prospective study of pregnancy in which they completed measures of familialism, social support, stress, and pregnancy anxiety during their second trimester. As expected, Latinas scored higher on familialism than European Americans. Familialism was positively correlated with social support and negatively correlated with stress and pregnancy anxiety in the overall sample. …

Images Of God: The Effect Of Personal Theologies On Moral Attitudes, Political Affiliation, And Religious Behavior, Christoper Bader, Paul Froese

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

Social scientists often explain religious effects in terms of religious group affiliations. Typically, researchers identify religious groups by denomination or some broader popular categorization, such as “fundamentalist” or “evangelical.” To capture religious differences more effectively, Steensland et al. (2000) propose an intricate classification of American denominations that takes into account the theology and historical development of various American religious traditions to predict individual attitudes and behaviors. We believe that equal care and attention should be devoted to the development of key measures of belief that may cross denominational lines. In this article, we propose one such measure: personal conceptions or …

Winks, Blinks, Squints, And Twitches: Looking For Disability And Culture Through Our Son’S Left Eye, Philip M. Ferguson, Dianne L. Ferguson

Education Faculty Articles and Research

In this article, we argue that while an appreciation of disability's cultural context is fundamental, we should be careful not to replace one essentialist version of disability with a new one. We look at the relational patterns that emerge from the specific circumstances of significant intellectual disability. This article follows Clifford Geertz’ well‐known account of the multiple layers of cultural context and interpretive richness raised by even a seemingly simple act such as winking. By exploring the meaning of son's ability to wink, we argue that intellectual disability may be interpreted as the absence of culture. The article goes on …