Sociology of Culture Commons^™

The Cultural Script Of Special Needs Adoption, George Grant, Jr.

Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to examine special needs adoption from the perspective of the adoptive parents. Using the general guidelines of grounded theory, the study analyzed secondary data from a post-adoption program providing services to families who adopted special needs children. The data revealed that adoptive parents function under a cultural script of special needs adoption. The cultural script influences how families view themselves, the environment around them and how they decide to function as adoptive families. The study explains the cultural script, ways that professionals working in adoption can use that cultural script to support adoptive families …

Examining The Experiences Of Nontraditional Undergraduate Women: Pedagogy Versus Andragogy, Beverly Ann Hair

Dissertations

Increasing numbers of nontraditional students, of whom many are women, are enrolling in two-year and four-year colleges and universities. The purpose ofthis study is to critically examine the experiences of nontraditional undergraduate women and their preferred learning environment--pedagogy vs. andragogy. Students were asked to respond to a variety of questions in order to reflect upon their preferred learning environment. The researcher looked for differences inthe experiences of 20 (ten Black and ten White) nontraditional female undergraduate college students within their respective institutions based on their race, socioeconomic background, age, and religious background. Also, the researcher focused on why these nontraditional …

"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."

What Have They Told Us About Gangs? A Content Analysis Of Twentieth Century Texts On U.S. Gangs, Douglas Lee Gilbertson

Dissertations

Inspired by a scholarly desire to understand and explain things, formal theoretical explanations for the social problem of gangs have been around just about as long as gangs themselves. This is an inductive content analysis of the texts within twentieth century works explaining gangs. This study explores those explanations as social artifacts and analyzes the text within them in order to identify textual similarities. This is accomplished by consolidating codified text or words until typologies of abstract theoretical concepts are revealed. The purpose of this study is to identify probable causal factors for gang formation and gang joining behavior that …

Political Tolerance, Culture, And The Individual, Gerson Moreno-Riano

Alumni Book Gallery

No abstract provided.

The Emotions: Senses Of The Modern Self, E. Doyle Mccarthy

Sociology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Native Image Logo, Hank Lehrer, Brent D. Bowen

Introduction

Native Image Logo

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 …

On Steven Duncombe's Cultural Resistance Reader (2002), Adam Reed

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

While the debates over the dis/connections between theory and practice have become essentially metaphysical, it is still useful to distinguish between micro, grassroots struggles and macro, ideological political agendas. In a world in which one of the Left's (old, new and contemporary) main achievements has been to merge the micro and macro in the popular imaginary, this distinction helps one appreciate the myriad of forces affecting social change that are condensed in primarily ideological narratives. A similar perspective is called for when one turns to cultural forms of resistance, which are usually erased by political narratives or mystified …

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

Kajian Imej Etnik Lain Dalam Cerpen-Cerpen Mahua (1970an-1990an), Kok Keong Ng

Student Works (2000-2009)

Sastera Mahua adalah sastera yang unik. Keunikan bukanlah sahaja terletak pada fungsinya sebagal penyampai dan cermin hasrat serta fikiran masyarakat, sebaliknya ia mempamerkan pelbagal cirl-clrl yang lstimewa berbandlng dengan sastera China. Salah satu faktor perlu dltegas, ialah tempat kelahirannya yang berlatarkan struktur masyarakat majmuk dengan bahasa, budaya serta agama sesama etnik berbeza, secara semula jadi telah menyediakan sumber-sumber penulisan yang subur bagi penulls Cina di Malaysia. Apabila suatu fenomena hendak dipapar ataupun perasaan hendak diluah, mahupun mesej hendak disampai oleh karyawan Cina, secara tidak langsung sudah pasti mereka tldak dapat lari dari realltl masyarakat Malaysia yang merangkuml semua perbezaan ahli …

Hikayat Bahram Syah : Transliterasi Dan Analisis Teks, Zahariah Zainuddin

Student Works (2000-2009)

This dissertation is based on the textual study of Hikayat Bahram Syah. It has six chapters which discuss certain aspects that attempt to signify Hikayat Bahram Syah as an important literary work rich with universal humanistic values. Chapter I presents the identification of the research problem. the summary of the problem. the rationale of the study, the limitation of this study, previous research related 10 this study, the position of Hikayat Bahram Syah in Malay literature, the theoretical framework, methodology, concept and conclusion in order to initiate a more elaborate discussion towards other aspects of this research. Chapter ll focuses …

An Interview With Sandra Harding, Stephanie Urso Spina, Mike Roberts, Patricia Ticento Clough

Publications and Research

Harding’s position has been critiqued as more postmodern than feminist, as viable without nasty entanglements in feminism, as too concerned with established Eurocentric, scientific discourses, and as appealing to foundational innocence by her concern with realism. But what seems to drive Harding’s choices more than anything is a conscious attempt to be effective in intervening in existing systems of power, whether empiricist and postmodern. By taking this position, Harding undertakes a difficult task. Its difficulty, however, is compensated for by the conversations she generates. As a voice not restricted to one intellectual school, Harding demands attention from many with opposing …