Politics and Social Change Commons^™

Torch (December 2015), Brandon Baldwin, Civil Rights Team Project

Torch: The Civil Rights Team Project Newsletter

No abstract provided.

The Interaction Of Community Size And Perceived Local Political Efficacy Among Low-Income Individuals, Dylan Allen Brugman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As the world’s population continues to urbanize, urban studies are increasingly important. Studying the social science behind the rise of the city and its effect on various social phenomena should be a priority for scholars in the field of politics, sociology, and communication, because of the reasonable assumption that the environment of the city alters the way that a person engages people and systems within the city. This is especially true for peripheral and marginalized populations that often lack access to the social institutions necessary to improve their livelihoods. Using Diffusion of Innovation and urban studies theories of Anomie, Gemeinschaft …

Groundings Volume Two, Issue Two

Groundings

This is the full issue of Groundings Vol. 2, Iss. 2. It includes a wrap of both the 12th Annual Walter Rodney Symposium and the 3rd Annual Walter Rodney Speakers Series; a piece by Jesus Chucho Garcia that honors the late Norman Girvan; the official Save the Date for the 13th Annual Walter Rodney Symposium; information on the republication of The Groundings with My Brothers; a photo-narrative by Julian Plowden on the student protests at the Atlanta CNN Center; we then have 3 pieces surrounding the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry by Wazir Mohamed, Anne Braithwaite, and Rohit Kanhai, …

Panic At The Drive-In: Affordance, Moral Panic, And Drive-In Theatres, Maria Chatzifilalithis

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Sugar For Sale: Constructions Of Intimacy In The Sugar Bowl, Emily Zimmermann

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Private Military Contractors, Security Forces, And Mercenaries, Naomi Pearson

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Opinion: Housing Our Homeless Vets Is A Duty We’Ll Always Owe, Christopher R. Fee, Joshua L. Stewart

English Faculty Publications

As we celebrate Veterans Day across America, we are reminded of President Abraham Lincoln’s powerful admonition in the Gettysburg Address regarding what we owe to those who have sacrificed and given of themselves in the defense of the common good. [excerpt]

The Perennial Purple Heart, Anonymous

SURGE

Let’s talk about Veterans’ sacrifices. I must admit that I didn’t know much myself about veterans until one of my siblings entered the Navy. I’m very proud of his service, sacrifice, and dedication to protecting the United States. It’s probably not a common thought to all of us, but I think often of what it is like to be away during wartime serving our country. Military folks sacrifice a ton – whether it be lower pay, moving around a lot, being away from family for a long time, going into risky military operations, etc. These men and women sacrifice comparatively …

"Casting Aside That Ficticious Self.": Deciphering Female Identity In The Awakening 2015, Anne L. Dicosimo

Master's Theses

Kate Chopin’s female protagonists have long since fascinated literary critics, raising serious questions concerning the influence of nineteenth-century female gender roles in her writing. Published in 1899, The Awakening demonstrates the changeability of the various representations of woman. In the nineteenth century, the subject of women may be divided into two categories: the True Woman and the New Woman. The former were expected to “cherish and maintain the four cardinal virtues of piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity” (Khoshnood et al.), while the latter sought to move away from hearth and home in order to focus on education, professions, and political …

Identity And Security In China: The Negative Soft Power Of The China Dream, William A. Callahan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Joseph Nye concentrates on the positive attractive aspects of soft power as a foreign policy tool. This article will argue that the Chinese discussion of soft power is interesting because it does the opposite: soft power is negative rather than positive, and is employed as a tool in domestic policy more than in foreign affairs. It will use Chinese President Xi Jinping's new ‘China Dream’ discourse to explore China's ‘negative soft power’ strategy. Rather than take for granted that we understand what the ‘Chinese values’ are that inform the PRC's soft power, it argues that soft power discourse is a …

Presentation Notes, Grady Johnson

Saffy Collection - All Textual Materials

Presentation notes about Edna Saffy by Grady Johnson delivered at the UNF Library Dean's Council Gratitude Reception, November 2015.

Teaching While Lesbian And Other Identities: Sexual Diversity, Race, And Institutionalized Practices Through An Autoethnographic Lens, Sondra S. Briggs

Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership Dissertations

The implicit acceptance among educators and in institutions of learning that discussions around LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) issues are off limits perpetuates the marginalization of these identities and those who inhabit them. In K-12 schools and college classrooms the prevailing silence sends disturbing messages about the treatment of adults and children when their sexual orientation fails to fit neatly into prescribed binary classifications. As one who has been silent as well as silenced, I understand this dichotomy from a unique perspective. Moreover, my lived membership within diverse cultural and racial groups that have been routinely marginalized through institutionalized practices …

Does Information Want To Be Free? Hacktivism And The Democratization Of Information, Ashley Gorham

The Journal of International Relations, Peace Studies, and Development

It was at the first Hackers’ Conference in 1984 that Stewart Brand coined the phrase “information wants to be free.” There are many ways to interpret this statement, but the most prevalent one is the “deterministic” interpretation. According to this reading, information is understood as possessing an innate tendency toward freedom—what it “wants,” it gets. Information is seen as self-moving and progressive. Implicit in this understanding is the belief that information will promote equality and democracy as it grows. The deterministic interpretation’s strongest proponents are the three W’s: Wonks, Writers, and the Wired. Politicians, political advisors, media members and technological …

Fearless Friday: Jerome Clarke, Christina L. Bassler

SURGE

Today is Fearless Friday and we’re honoring the magnificent Jerome Clarke ’17!

Originally from Philadelphia, (aka the “city of Bromance”), Jerome is currently a Junior at Gettysburg College and is involved in countless activities and clubs, many of them geared towards social justice. [excerpt]

Reproductive Rights In Latin America: A Case Study Of Guatemala And Nicaragua, Katherine W. Bogen

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

A lack of access to contraceptives and legal abortion for women throughout the nations of Nicaragua and Guatemala creates critical health care problems. Moreover, rural and underprivileged women in Guatemala and Nicaragua are facing greater limitations to birth control access, demonstrating a classist aspect in the global struggle for female reproductive rights. Although some efforts have been made over the past half-century to initiate a dialogue on the failure of medical care in these nations to adequately address issues of maternal mortality and reproductive rights, the women's reproductive health movements of Nicaragua and Guatemala have struggled to reach an effective …

Music And Social Justice, Jennifer Thomson

Bucknell: Occupied

Jennifer Thomson, assistant professor of History at Bucknell University, interviews students in the Bucknell course Music 322: Music and Social Justice. Students describe the goals of the course and discuss the resources used to exchange knowledge about social justice issues including race, inequity, prison abolition, and sentence disparity.

‘Capitalism A Nuh’ Wi Frien’. The Formatting Of Farming Into An Asset, From Financial Speculation To International Aid, Luigi Russi, Tomaso Ferrando

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

This paper deciphers the formatting of farming into an asset by tracking the modalities by which financial calculation is enabled across different sites of agency.

The first focus of our analysis are commodity futures markets, which have witnessed a double spike in prices in 2008 and in 2012. In the paper, we look at these hikes as the outcome of endogenous dynamics, caused by the changing makeup of market participants after 2000, which turned futures markets into resources for hedging commodity index-linked derivative products.

We subsequently analyse the increasing reliance on financial actors placed by public development agencies that channel …

Praxis With Self-Advocates: Exploring Participatory Video As Radical Incrementalism, Kathleen C. Sitter, Amy C. Burke

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

In this article, the authors report selected findings from a larger study where self-advocates from the disability rights movement created a series of short videos as part of a participatory research project. Self-advocates subsequently integrated these videos into a greater community organizing initiative. While the research process of this study has been published elsewhere, this piece will explore the idea of bridging participatory video, a collaborative research methodology, with community-based advocacy initiatives. The authors contend that this presents an opportunity for radical incrementalism in which to create a praxis driven predominantly by the voices on the margins versus the academic …

The Liberal As An Enemy Of Queer Justice, Craig Schamel

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

Abstract

Liberalism as a historical mode of the political is the context in which the movement and ensuing struggle for queer justice emerged in most Western countries. The terminology, practices, tendencies, beliefs, ethics, laws, and patterns of political and social life which have been determined by this mode of the political, it is argued, are inimical to queer justice and render its achievement impossible. Liberalism as a mode of the political is approached from below, from knowledge gained in practical experience in queer groups which considered themselves revolutionary at least to some degree, and from the effects on such groups …

Detaining Dialogue: Framing Treatment During The 2013 Guantánamo Hunger Strike (Abstract), Kristen Traynor

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In recent years, prisoner treatment during the “War on Terror” has re-emerged as a prominent topic in news headlines and government debate. However, the media’s framing of such treatment toward prisoners at Guantánamo Bay has received scant scholarly attention compared to that of Abu Ghraib.

With a focus on elite and media framing of treatment during the prisoner hunger strike from February to August of 2013, the goal of this paper is to explain whether government portrayal of prisoner treatment influenced the way the media framed the situation or whether the media acted with more autonomy. In the study, I …