Sociology of Culture Commons^™

Worcester Chamber Of Commerce: Recruiting Minority Business Owners, Ryan Dimaria, Alexander Hull, Xikun Lu, Haopeng Wang, Jiacheng Hou, Danning Zhao

School of Professional Studies

Our capstone project was to help the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce identify how to re-frame their marketing so it would be appealing to immigrant and minority owned businesses. Based on interviews and external research, our group was able to create a tangible and resourceful data set that provided justified recommendations and ideas on how the Chamber could make adjustments to their marketing plan to attract more businesses of this particular demographic in the city of Worcester. By implementing these recommendations, we believe the Chamber has the opportunity to create a more diverse group of Chamber members, add value to …

Service Now: Cmdb Research, Monika Patel, Smita Patil, Katerina Tzanavara, Manish Chauhan, Yuhao Wang, Houmin Xie, Lei Shi

School of Professional Studies

The MAPFRE Capstone team has been tasked with reviewing and recommending roadmap on the existing CMDB configuration. Paper discusses the team’s overall research on ServiceNow CMDB, Client’s deliverables and introduction to the latest technological innovations. Based on given objectives and team’s analysis we have recommended key solutions for the client to better understand the IT environment areas of business service impact, asset management, compliance, and configuration management. In addition, our research has covered all the majority of the technical and functional areas to provide greater visibility and insight into existing CMDB and IT environment.

For One Child, Zion Bereket, Xin Huang, Yitong Lin, Ruobing Pei, Rachel White, Ziyuan Li

School of Professional Studies

The entirety of this project was completed on the foundation of the three focus areas, which were identified by our client as areas of high need. The client wanted to prioritize these three areas as they believed that these three areas were the most integral to the successful achievement of their mission, as well as to the overall health and longevity of the organization.

Hiv/Aids In The Latino Community Of San Francisco: Past And Present, Jessica Da Silva

School of Professional Studies

There are approximately 122,000 people of Latino origin in San Francisco, which account for 15% of the total population (Census, 2010). Historically, Latinos have and still face several barriers to access healthcare and improvements in health (Aguirre-Molina, Molina & Zambrana, 2001). When the world was exposed to the spread of a new and unknown virus, the broader population suffered from the epidemic. The Latino community in San Francisco was and still is one of the hardest hit by the virus.

Changing The Current Perception Of Affordable Housing In Worcester, Simone Mcguinness, William Roberts, Vaske Gjino, Tong Zhou, Mengxin Ma, Sarawadee Sonpuak

School of Professional Studies

One of Worcester Interfaith’s goals is to eradicate the stigma of affordable housing in Worcester. Currently, the perception of affordable housing is of an image of unkept and old residences filled with destitute citizens who cannot afford basic needs to live in a city, let alone housing. This image is perpetuated by media, stigma, and a lack of education of the true reality of affordable housing and who its recipients are. Affordable housing-qualified citizens represent a range of educations, professions, age, race, and income levels. Affordable housing units, too, represent a variety of homes, many of which are extremely well-kept …

Liable To Change, Jody Travis Thompson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Liable to Change is a body of paintings in which I explore diverse approaches to the representation of visual space. Depictions of space and movement change throughout the pictures by combining various artistic conventions, such as trompe l’oeil realism and non-objective, geometric abstraction. Oil paint, resin, beeswax, and other materials create built-up surfaces which contain the history of their making. Interaction between various finishes and light on these surfaces changes based on the viewers' proximity to the painting. Images of monkey bars, lattice, golden ratio and flower of life patterns provide a structure through which line, form, and space are …

Thinging : Powerful Objects., Tammy M. Burke

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The works in "Thinging” are inspired by desire, the genuine and the false, systems of real and perceived values, the quest for immortality, the allure of things, our use of them to make ourselves, and imagining pasts and futures via objects. The following concepts are threaded through the work: cathexis, ritual as a value builder, collections, hoarding, display, object history, exchange, use, and sign values, and vibrant materiality. At the heart of my investigation is the quest to examine the origins of object power, and by what measures it can be evaluated: value from belief, market value, and something perhaps …

Sweeping Exposures: Lead Poisonings And Black Working Poor Populations In The United States, Shirley Reid

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The focus of my thesis is to explore some of the realities that the impoverished urban black poor populations face in America today. The goal of my thesis is to illustrate how poverty is reproduced within impoverished neighborhoods through the idea and mechanism of lead exposure, by recognizing how specific exposure to the element lead and its by-products is both a symbol and a material cause of black urban poor illness and disability. There is no mistake that people living in the U.S. are aware of the social injustices against black populations in the form of racial injustice. However, …

Navigating Colorism And Racial Identity In Dominican Women, Christine Hernandez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Colorism has been perpetuated in Dominican culture across generations. That along with a colonial mentality has shaped the racial identity and ideologies of their people. I explore what historical and societal factors play into identity in Dominican women. Additionally, I delve into the history of blackness on the island of Hispañola and how it has led to the perpetuation of colorism. I show how this perpetuation influences the racial self-identity of Dominican women through different forms of media and culture.

Queerness, Witchcraft, And Embodied Presence: Aesthetic Knowings Of What A Body Can Do, Megan Bigelow

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Taking as a point of entry the critique of representation and affirming the limitations of the cuts that language makes, this capstone project explores the imbrications and assemblages between Foucault’s concept of subjugated knowledges, witchcraft and other body-based ways of knowing and being, and the consciousness of non-human forms such as plants and through the framework of non-representational theory, process philosophies, aesthetics, queerness, and the concept of difference itself.

Since such theories themselves are living, breathing entities, this capstone project explores the ideological split that has occurred between sacred and secular beliefs, moving through different figures such as nuns and …

Ways To Create Awareness On Cultural Heritage: An Overview, Somipam R. Shimray

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to examine the various ways to create awareness and facilitate general awareness on cultural heritage

Design/methodology/approach - The author had reviewed the past literature on methods to promote cultural heritage awareness and analyzed how it can be used by memory institute to create awareness.

Findings - Preceding studies on cultural heritage it is found that heritage festivals, freedom walk, heritage trails, heritage walk, heritage awards, street plays, heritage newspapers and promotion of heritage in education are the prominent tools to create awareness.

Originality/value - This study helps to understand different techniques to …

The Amygdala Era: Emotion And Experience In Memoir, Meagan Shelley

Senior Honors Theses

Amygdala Era is a culmination of short memoirs and brief poetry designed to express a stream of consciousness state of emotion over logic. The work utilizes base, primal parts of the mind such as happiness, sadness, and fear, and dissipates into the emotion and memory that is experienced daily. This is achieved through a focus on creative writing theory including stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and free indirect discourse. Amygdala Era synthesizes the techniques, strategies, and methodology of these three theories by examining past literary examples from world history. Analysis of the targeted market for Amygdala Era is detailed based …

Culture Without Borders: Intercultural Awareness Through Interviews And Images From International Asian Students, Zhi Xin Wee

Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to understand and raise awareness of international Asian students’ culture and experiences at Western Michigan University. As an immigrant, I am interested in listening to personal stories about people’s culture and upbringing. I want to give students an opportunity to share their narratives and a chance to help contribute to a better understanding of culture and inclusion on campus.

Through this study, I will explore the unique stories from international Asian students at Western Michigan University to encourage and bring awareness of the many dimensions of diversity. At the end of this research, I …

Developing Interactive Elicitation: Social Desirability Bias And Capturing Play, Matthew Spokes, Jack Denham

The Qualitative Report

Drawing on research from a mixed-methods project on gaming we argue for a qualitative methodological approach called “interactive elicitation,” a form of data collection that combines elements of photo elicitation, interviewing and vignettes. After situating our broader research project exploring young people’s experiences of violent open-world video games, we outline the process of conducting interactive elicitation, arguing for a mixed-methods approach where participants are observed and interviewed both during and immediately after interacting with particular cultural artefacts, in this case the game GTA V. We reflect on the initial design of the research methodology, the problematic aspects of conducting the …

Descriptive To Substantive Representation: A Study Of Gender Quotas In The National Assembly Of Pakistan, 2002-2018, Ameena Zia

Dissertations

Women’s political representation is linked to the empowerment of women in society. In efforts to alleviate women’s disenfranchisement from the political discourse, the international development framework included gender quotas as mechanisms to facilitate an increase in the presence of women in parliaments. Existing research has examined the link between Hanna F. Pitkin’s conceptualization of descriptive representation and substantive representation with a focus on performative measures of women parliamentarians. This longitudinal study expands the scope of existing inquiry and captures the transformational change in power relations as an outcome of the increase in women members of parliaments. This research provides an …

Ancestry, Indigo Martin

New and Dangerous Ideas

Ancestry websites like 23 and Me or Ancestry.com remove the culture and the meaning behind the concept of ancestry. Ancestry as a concept means looking back at the culture we come from and the ways of life that shaped our ancestors. With queerness, ancestry cannot be traced through bloodlines. It is a passing down of culture through word of mouth. This culture has not been preserved over time but rather erased. This piece is a social commentary on the erased culture of queerness and showing the culture and what has kept it hidden. As someone who identifies as both queer …

Perceptions Of Mental Health: Eight Conversations With Mainers From Africa, Teresa Sosa, Emelda Ogweta

Thinking Matters Symposium Archive

As of 2016, 42 million refugees from around the world had been forced to flee their homes due to war, persecution, or natural disaster (George & Jettner, 2016). Due to these factors, as well as relocation and resettlement, refugees are at a significant risk for trauma and other mental health issues (George & Jettner, 2016). While the literature consistently validates this heightened risk for mental illness in refugees, more research is needed into refugee's perspectives on mental health. Through analysis of semi-structured interviews with eight refugees from Africa, this phenomenological study investigated refugee's perceptions of mental health and mental illness. …

A Culture Of Conformity, Alexandra Huston

Classical Conversations

This paper explains the serious problem of society pressuring people to conform to gender norms. In the current culture, there is intolerance for breaking these gender norms and unfortunately, the consequences can be severe. This cycle creates a society where harms are exacerbated because either no one is aware of what is going on or they feel so pressured to stay within the lines of what society deems “acceptable” that they choose to conform. The specific gender norms focused on range from seemingly trivial to obviously severe: clothing choice, colors, personal grooming like shaving, masculine gender norm issues like suicide …

Forjando Un Feminismo (No) Transgeneracional: Una Examinación De La Memoria Y La Construcción De Identidades En El Movimiento Estudiantil Feminista Del 2018-19, Isabel Guarnieri

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The student feminist movement of 2018-19 was dubbed Chile’s “third wave” of feminism. Media outlets framed it not only as a push to address violence against women and establish a non-sexist education system, but as a revolt against the neoliberal system that generates gender-based inequality – a legacy of the military dictatorship. This paper sought to investigate the processes by which the activists of the 2018-19 student feminist movement constructed a transgenerational movement through the mobilization of memory, as well as to interrogate the intergenerational perspectives surrounding the effectiveness of this mobilization, recognizing feminism’s continuities and the importance of remembering …

The Guthi System Of Nepal, Tucker Scott

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The purpose of this research is to understand the role of the guthi system in Nepali society, the relationship of the guthi land tenure system with Newari guthi, and the effect of modern society and technology on the ability of the guthi system to maintain and preserve tangible and intangible cultural heritage in Nepal. This research took place in three different sections of Kathmandu. The methodology behind this research was a combination of historical analysis of the traditional role of the guthi system in Nepal along with three case studies of guthi organizations with different assigned functions. These case studies …