Politics and Social Change Commons^™

Sustainable Economic Development In The Post-Covid Era In Asia And The Pacific, Yasuyuki Sawada

CBER Conference

The second day of the 1st International Conference at the CBER, IBA Karachi commenced with an opening address by the Chief Economist at the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Mr. Yasuyuki Sawada. Speaking about the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus and how it has destabilized the economic outlook and widened existing social inequalities, impacting lives and livelihoods of millions in Asia-Pacific region and beyond, Sawada remarked, “Regional GDP contracted by 0.2% in 2020 with East Asia faring much better. After a sharp contraction last year, growth in South Asia will rebound in 2021. However, the recovery will be uneven”. Dr. Sawada’s …

Toward Successful Coin: Shining Path's Decline, Darren Colby

Independent Student Projects and Publications

The rapid decline of the Peruvian left-wing insurgent organization Sendero Luminoso was not only the result of the arrest of its leader. An analysis of the precipitous weakening of the organization using two social movement theories finds other factors were involved in the demise of the organization as well. These factors—participatory politics, support for the military among the rural population, and alienation of the population by Sendero Luminoso—provide insights to effective counterinsurgency tactics.

Roles Of Social Media In The Black Lives Matter Movement During Covid-19, Reilly E. Olson

Honors Projects

By definition social movements reflect unique times in history. To fully grasp the implications of a movement the social and political climate that induce them must be understood. An intersectional model should be used when framing and studying the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, a modern descendant of both the NAACP and Civil Rights movement. From its inception, BLM has utilized social media as an important tool by coining #BlackLivesMatter, a hashtag that frequently comes to life offline as BLM organizers use it as a call for action and mobilization. The accessibility of social media made its role in the …

Polarization: A 21st Century Challenge To Global Democracy, Tim Biocic

Political Science Theses and Capstones

The purpose of this paper is to identify the issue of political polarization as it relates not only to American politics, but also to see how the issues in political polarization that exist in the United States are also experienced in other democracies around the world. The paper takes a look at what some of the different theories are about where polarization originates, who some of the leading scholars are in the debate over polarization, what institutional mechanisms contribute to the problem of polarization, and then finally what polarization looks like elsewhere in the world.

When it comes to the …

Catholic Voting: The Influence Of Abortion, Benjamin O’Brien

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Throughout the history of the United States, voting trends in American elections have evolved. One example of this is how the Catholic vote has changed since the 1960s. Factors such as race, gender, economics, and religious values may impact voting trends. These factors may have some impact on the shift in the Catholic voting trend. To determine this, I studied how Catholic voters feel about certain issues and how their responses may differ by income level, race, and gender. In my analysis I used data from the Congressional Campaign Election Study, which was gathered by a survey of voters in …

Grassroots On Common Ground

DePaul Magazine

This article looks at various student organizations at DePaul that work with outside agencies, other universities and within various disciplines to achieve social justice and understanding. The organizations are Community Peacemakers, Students Against Incarceration, Chicago Area Peace Action-DePaul, The Women's Center and the DePaul Alliance for Latinx Empowerment.

Catholics & Cultures As An Act Of Improvisation: A Response, Thomas M. Landy

Journal of Global Catholicism

This essay responds to seven articles published in the same issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism on the use of Catholics & Cultures, a multimedia website, as a pedagogical resource for college classrooms. The site is deliberately presented in a fashion that undermines notions of center and periphery and presents Catholicism from a lay, lived-religion perspective as the multicultural faith that it is, minimizing reference to religious typologies. Particular attention is given to how to navigate tensions around theorizing, categorizing and sorting information for cross-cultural comparison. Given scholars’ current state of knowledge, writing about and teaching about global Catholicism …

Catholics & Cultures: A Panoramic View In Search Of Greater Understanding, Stephanie M. Wong

Journal of Global Catholicism

While internet-based technologies can open up greater awareness of the world or create self-perpetuating echo-chambers, the Catholics & Cultures project aspires to do the former. Aiming to ‘widen the lens’ on the variety of Catholic communities and practices, the site delivers on this goal by introducing viewers to a vast array of articles, pictures and videos from around the world. The organization of the site by country and by certain key features of lived Catholicism offers some interpretive guidance. However, the project could be strengthened as a pedagogical resource if it were more extensively thematized and hosted reflections on potential …

The Value Of Online Resources: Reflections On Teaching An Introduction To Global Christianity, Hillary Kaell

Journal of Global Catholicism

Reflecting on my experience teaching Introduction to Global Christianity, this essay ponders questions at the heart of undergraduate teaching: How can we encourage students to utilize online sources? How can we empower them to seek out answers to their questions? It offers practical examples of how I have used the Catholics & Cultures website in my classroom at a large public university. In particular, I reflect on my experience working with students who are mostly of Catholic heritage, but from many cultural and social contexts.

Teaching Sexuality On The Catholics & Cultures Website: A Refreshing Turn Toward The Longue Durée, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

I present a close reading of the Catholics & Cultures (C&C) website’s treatment of sexuality-related issues and discuss this material in relation to debates about how to teach sexuality in religious studies and theology classrooms. The C&C website occasionally and intermittently uses a typical “contemporary issues” approach that considers sexuality in relation to legal and legislative decisions and government policies. In contrast, country profiles consistently situate sexuality in relation processes like nation building, urbanization, and lay Catholics’ growing authority. My interpretation highlights the site’s decision to emphasize the longue durée, long-term and deep structural processes driving cultural and religious changes. …

Ritual Among The Scilohtac: Global Catholicism, The Nacirema, And Interfaith Studies, Anita Houck

Journal of Global Catholicism

More than six decades after its publication, Horace Miner’s 1956 article “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” remains a reliable pedagogical tool, remarkably successful in helping students see their own ethnocentric biases. Catholics & Cultures has potential to do similar work. The site lacks some of what makes Miner’s text so effective, in particular its capacity to bring about a sudden shift in perception. The site also shares some of the article’s limitations, particularly in focusing on ritual to the relative exclusion of other aspects of religion. That said, the site can help students gain the religious literacy and develop the …

Focus On The Busy Intersections Of Culture And Cultural Change, Laura Elder

Journal of Global Catholicism

The dynamics of religious resurgence reveal the important ways that religious ritual and performance are meaning making spaces which are not self-contained or cut off from the rest of culture, but rather are a key locus of cultural change. A renewed emphasis on the busy intersections of meaning making – as rituals are connected, disconnected, and reconnected to other domains of social life – would improve the utility of the Catholics & Cultures website for understanding global cultural change. And a renewed emphasis on cultural change would also provide a better means for exploring reflexively by seeking to understand both …

A Widened Angle Of View: Teaching Theology And Racial Embodiment, Mara Brecht

Journal of Global Catholicism

Today’s undergraduate students are digital natives, shaped by constant access to information and countless experiences of encountering the world through the convenience of a screen. The ostensible comfort students have with difference gives way to a paradox, and one that’s made especially apparent in the theology classroom: Students are comfortable with seeing difference and particularity at a distance, but not adept at locating difference and particularity “at home.” I contend that Catholics & Cultures can help students from the dominant culture—namely, white students who comprise the vast majority of Catholic college students—destabilize their notion of the Catholic tradition as tightly …

Introducing Catholics & Cultures: Ethnography, Encyclopedia, Cyborg, Mathew N. Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

In introducing the Catholics & Cultures site and the articles in this special issue, this essay initially locates the overall Catholic & Cultures project within the traditions of ethnography and encyclopedia. Drawing extensively on the work of J. Z. Smith, this essay reflects upon the theoretical implications of emphasizing the diversity of Catholicism in and through a web-based platform that facilitates comparative study and pedagogy. This essay then more specifically considers the web-based aspects of Catholics & Cultures by identifying a nascent cyborgian aesthetic in the site and considering how the site might eventually engage post-modern themes and concerns.

Person-Centered Practice As Anchor And Beacon: Pandemic Wisdom From The Ncapps Community, Connor Bailey, Martha Barbone, Lydia X.Z. Brown, Alixe Bonardi, Bevin Croft, Marian Frattarola-Saulino, Karyn Harvey, Miso Kwak, Kelly Lang, Nicole Leblanc, Michelle C. Reynolds, Carole Starr

Developmental Disabilities Network Journal

Objective: This article summarizes the individual, systemic, and collective challenges and opportunities presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, based on 16 videos solicited by the National Center on Advancing Person-Centered Practices and Systems (NCAPPS) and submitted by NCAPPS collaborators during the first six months of the pandemic.

Method: Informed by participatory action approaches and content analysis, we describe common themes in a series of 16 videos solicited by NCAPPS from subject matter experts with professional and lived experience of disability and human services systems.

Results: The team organized the findings to identify both specific factors within each of the levels and …

Battling The Public Health Harms Of Tobacco Takes Time, Persistence, And Political Will: Reflecting On The New York State Clean Indoor Air Act Of 2003, Mary E. Helander

Population Health Research Brief Series

New York State’s Clean Indoor Air Act of 2003 (CAA03) and similar state laws are credited with curtailing several smoking-related diseases and deaths in the U.S. Yet smoking remains the top preventable cause of disease and premature death in the U.S. This issue brief summarizes the history of NY CAA03, discusses the efforts of key players to get the bill passed, and advocates for a more robust national strategy to address the still prevalent but preventable health consequences of smoking in the U.S.

The Torch (March 2021), Crtp

Torch: The Civil Rights Team Project Newsletter

The Maine Office of the Attorney General administers the Civil Rights Team Project (CRTP). The CRTP’s mission is to increase the safety of elementary, middle school, and high school students by reducing bias-motivated behaviors and harassment in our schools. CRTP accomplishes this by supporting student civil rights teams in Maine schools. The CRTP and student teams are active in engaging school communities in thinking and talking about issues related to:

• Race and skin color
• National origin and ancestry
• Religion
• Disabilities
• Gender (including gender identify and expression)
• Sexual orientation

The Attorney General’s Office created the CRTP in 1996 as a pilot …

What Telling Of A Survivor's Story Will Finally Force A Remedy? Notes On A Silencing By Lacy Crawford And Is Rape A Crime? A Memoir, An Investigation, And A Manifesto By Michelle Bowdler, Jody Raphael

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Getting Radical: Feminism, Patriarchy, And The Sexual-Exploitation Industries, Robert Jensen

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

The sexual-exploitation industries, including prostitution and pornography, are patriarchal institutions that are inconsistent with dignity, solidarity, and equality. Radical feminism offers a compelling analysis not only for women but also for men striving to be fully human.

Prostitution Decriminalization Campaigns In The United States: Libertarianism Or A "Decent Society", Jody Raphael

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Recently, legislative campaigns to totally decriminalize the sex trade industry in a handful of U.S. states and the District of Columbia failed, but a look at campaign supporters and their arguments demonstrates that libertarian principles are mainly guiding their efforts. This article explores how libertarianism principles, when applied to the sex trade, could bring about severe and lasting harm to others, including sellers of sex, potential victims of sex trafficking to meet the new demand, and the general community. Philosophic principles of liberty have been incorporated by courts, which find that liberty is never absolute and requires a balancing test …