Sociology of Culture Commons^™

Theoretical Explanations Of Jyoshi Kousei Business ("Jk Business") In Japan, Mutsumi Ogaki

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Jyoshi kousei (JK) means high school girls in Japanese and “JK business” is an umbrella term for commercial activities done by high school girls to provide male customers with sexual arousal. The “JK business” is considered to promote sexual exploitation or sexual assault of minors. Currently, only two prefectures out of 47 in Japan enforce ordinances that specifically regulate the “JK business.” This paper intends to explore possible theoretical explanations of the “JK business” to raise awareness on the issue. Gendered pathways theory and sexual script theory are selected as the primary source of the discussions. Policy implications and future …

Conditions Of Personhood And Property, Zachary James Acree

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper seeks to demonstrate that a more robust understanding of personhood both reveals flaws in the underlying assumptions of modern property law, and orients that law to a more just application. To do this, the law needs not only a better definition of what persons are, but also a better understanding of how persons function in their society. First, in order to provide some context to the issues at stake, there is a brief historical introduction to some of the problems that personhood inquiries have faced. After the introduction, this paper is divided into four sections. Part I summarizes …

Political Stability In The Open Society, John Thrasher, Kevin Vallier

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

We argue that the Rawlsian description of a just liberal society, the well‐ordered society, fails to accommodate deep disagreement and is insufficiently dynamic. In response, we formulate an alternative model that we call the open society, organized around a new account of dynamic stability. In the open society, constitutional rules must be stable enough to preserve social conditions that foster experimentation, while leaving room in legal and institutional rules for innovation and change. Systemic robustness and dynamic stability become important for the open society in a way that they are not in the well‐ordered society. This model of the open …

Fear Of Violence During Armed Conflict: Social Roles And Responsibilities As Determinants Of Fear, Nathalie E. Williams, Dirgha Ghimire, Karen A. Snedker

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

This article investigates the prevalence and determinants of fear as a consequence of living through armed conflict. We use survey data from Nepal during the armed conflict (1996–2006) to examine how trauma, sex and gender, age, marriage, and household size affect fear of violence. We also disaggregate types of worry, and find substantial variance on whether respondents were more concerned about livelihood consequences of conflict than physical danger. We supplement quantitative analyses with discussion of in-depth interviews from the study area on these same topics. Overall, our results highlight the enduring impact of gender roles in Nepal and that conflict …

Social Stratosphere: Hot Topics And Happenings In Social Innovation, Tamara Prabhakar, Trang Delos Luu

Social Space

Ever heard of a kind of handmade paper that lasts up to 800 years? The extremely durable Dó paper—made from the bark of the Rhamnoneuron balansae and traditionally produced in Vietnam—is renowned for its durability and resilience, and famous for being the canvas for Vietnamese folk art paintings. However, the meticulous manufacturing process of Dó paper, involving up to 100 steps, is fast becoming obsolete due to the rise in mass-produced goods. Wishing to revitalise this industry, Tran Hong Nhung founded the social enterprise Zo Project, which aims to support the livelihoods of artisans and promote the papermaking trade. Not …

"This Isn't For You, This Is For Me": Women In Cosplay And Their Experiences Combatting Harassment And Stigma, Christopher M. Lucas

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

In the past two decades, cosplay, or “costume play,” has become increasingly popular among fans of anime, manga, and video games. Despite the community’s nature of embracing social difference, problems persist with regard to gender discrimination and breaching of consent boundaries. Discussion in the extant literature on cosplay has yet to address the views of women in the community, specifically the idea of cosplay and popular culture conventions being a “boys’ club.” The principle research questions of this study are: (1) What are the lived experiences of women cosplayers at anime conventions? (2) To what degree have they had to …

Tasseography From Jung's Perspective, Avetisian, Elizabeth

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

Approaching from Jung’s perspective this paper aims to understand how the unconscious communicates through symbolism that may be the basis for synchronicity arising from mantic procedures. A particular ritual of divination called tasseography will be studied whereby the seer interprets patterns in coffee grounds intuitively and by following a standard system of symbolism to foretell the seeker’s future life events or provide answers to seeker’s pressing life questions. The paper will examine various processes involved in the experience of tasseography and its ritual that enable the reader to predict the seeker’s future or bring light to the present or past …

What Is My Role In Changing The System? A New Model Of Responsibility For Structural Injustice, Robin Zheng

Women's and Gender Studies Program: Faculty Publications

What responsibility do individuals bear for structural injustice? Iris Marion Young has offered the most fully developed account to date, the Social Connections Model. She argues that we all bear responsibility because we each causally contribute to structural processes that produce injustice. My aim in this article is to motivate and defend an alternative account that improves on Young’s model by addressing five fundamental challenges faced by any such theory. The core idea of what I call the Role-Ideal Model is that we are each responsible for structural injustice through and in virtue of our social roles, i.e. our roles …

Sourcing Enchantment: From Elemental Appropriation To Imaginal Symbolics, Schwartz, Michael

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

Critical theorists and social commentators agree that modernity and postmodernity suffer from historical pathologies of world disenchantment. What might be done? Drawing on John Sallis’ phenomenology of the elemental and Tibetan Buddhist teachings on elemental practices, this paper investigates the imagination in its doubling as imaginal in generating a symbolics of the self, world, and other that is always already enchanted; an aesthetics of existence where the world itself shows forth like a work of art replete with exorbitant logics.

Graduate Admissions Recruitment Project, Kevin Anderson, Chiemela Dike, Yixin Du, Arvinder Kaur, Amanda Popp, Huizhong Yang

School of Professional Studies

In this project, several comparison schools were interviewed and disclosed to have used search lists to find candidates. The organizations that have valuable search lists which may be of good use for the School of Professional Studies include Educational Testing Service (ETS) and the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). By choosing criteria such as demographics, location, academic performance, educational history provided by search lists, we believe there are many quality candidates for SPS programs. However, as we further investigated the functionality and cost-efficiency or return of investment of GRE search list, we spotted many uncertainties and few solid and successful …

Worcester Center For Crafts: A Transition To Online Sales, Monica Gow, Carly Branconnier, Srilatha Prodduturi, Ekaterina Shusharina, Alberta Yamoah

School of Professional Studies

The Clark University School of Professional Studies created a capstone team consisting of Monica Gow, Carly Branconnier, Iana Matkovskaia, Srilatha Prodduturi, Ekaterina Shusharina, and Alberta Yamoah to assist Worcester Center for Crafts (WCC) with the launch of their new online store. Worcester Center for Crafts wanted to showcase their beautiful American handmade crafts on an online platform, Shopify, in order to increase their sales and expand their market reach. The capstone team created a charter that outlined the scope of the project and what the team would deliver to WCC by the end of the project. The team agreed to …

Audubon Data Project Final Report, Askhat Beygenov, Valinur Kutlambetov, Shrikant Patel, Phoebe Roberts, Ulfat Sayyed, Shriram Sivaraman

School of Professional Studies

The Audubon Data Project was initiated as a Clark University Capstone project. The project’s client, Mass Audubon’s Shaping the Future of Your Community program, had identified a need to improve their data management methods and make better use of their data. The Capstone team, composed of Clark University graduate students, met with the client regularly to review the current state of the data and potential improvements to be made. The process began with a data review. During the review we worked with the client to explicitly define the purposes and requirements of the data, the current process for updating and …

Reflections Of A “Pitiyanqui”: My History With Latcrit, Roberto L. Corrada

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

One of our longtime LatCrit leaders in progressive and emancipatory pedagogy, Roberto Corrada (Denver), reflects on LatCrit’s role in awakening and developing his interest in critical scholarship and critical, community-based, pedagogy. In doing so, he also puts on display how our programmatic work, again, twines the personal with the collective, and the human with the intellectual. He reminds us, again, that our work is rooted in difference, and in learning from it.

Let’S Escape Into The Music: A Cross-Generational Oral History Of Orlando Lgbtq+ Spaces, Hannah Powell

Honors Program Theses

Since Orlando’s first gay bar, The Palace Club, opened in 1969, LGBTQ+ spaces have played an essential role in the Orlando queer community. They have acted as loci of gathering, solidarity, identity-formation, recreation, and even healing. There is an absence of literature on the LGBTQ+ community in Orlando and, more generally, in Central Florida as a whole. The legacy of LGBTQ+ spaces in Orlando is worthy of study due both to the city’s rich queer history and Orlando’s singular experience of the deadliest act of hate-motivated violence against the LGBTQ+ community in the history of the United States. Through documenting …

Painters Of Modernity: A Bourdieusian Analysis Of Manet And Degas, Gillian Wei

Honors Theses

In this thesis, I utilize the theoretical framework of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to analyze the representation of class ideology in the paintings of French Impressionists Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas. Using Bourdieu’s theories of habitus and class distinction, I investigate various historical and biographical factors to illustrate how Manet and Degas were simultaneously endowed with significant cultural and economic capital of the old elite, yet predisposed to create reactionary art. I also identify several examples of bourgeoisie iconography within specific paintings created by these two artists. I argue that Manet and Degas, acting as agents within the fields of cultural …

I'Ll Hang Around As Long As You Will Let Me : Hard Country Music, The White Working Class, And The Experience Of Loss In The American Neoliberal Context, Nicholas Johnston

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

This paper utilises the object relations theories of Ronald Fairbairn to conceptualise the narratives of Hard Country music, and understand how they relate to the shifting experiences of the male, white working-class in America in the latter half of the twentieth century. This paper understands the privileges that masculinity and whiteness have afforded the male, white working-class in the post-war period, and attempts to locate the relative loss felt by this population in the subsequent eras of de-industrialisation, neoliberalisation, second-wave feminism and the civil rights movement. Undertaking a thematic analysis of Hard Country music, an art form that purports to …

Symptomatic Leadership In Business Instruction: How To Finally Teach Diversity And Inclusion For Lasting Change, Linda L. Ridley

Publications and Research

Are business faculty complicit in mythologizing business concepts by ignoring historical precedence?

The refusal to examine in totality the history of discrimination and racism allows us to perpetuate a mythology of white supremacy that is enhanced through impotent diversity programs repeated throughout corporate America. This paper examines the importance of demythologizing the business curriculum through symptomatic thinking, which allows faculty and students to untangle the quagmire of diversity and inclusion in corporate America. Students are thereby equipped with tools for behavior transformation in the workplace that uses a symptomatic, rather than symbolic approach, to decision making and problem solving.

Board Policy On Equity And Excellence, Adrienne Coleman, Traci Ellis

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Resources

The Academy recognizes and acknowledges the historical underrepresentation and marginalization of culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse groups, both universally, and particularly, in STEM education and professions. These disparities also exist in the representation of the Academy’s workforce. We are committed to advancing equity in STEM education and representation and creating a diverse, inclusive community of global citizens who can realize their full potential, and execute our mission to advance the human condition, through a model of Equity and Excellence.

Exploring The Nigerian Health System's Response To Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting, Otibho Obianwu

Reproductive Health

Although Nigeria has shown a steady long-term decline in female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) prevalence, the practice remains widespread. This study brief outlines the Population Council’s Evidence to End FGM/C research program, which, in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health, will conduct a diagnostic assessment in order to: 1) examine how the healthcare sector supports the prevention of FGM/C; 2) determine the role of the healthcare sector in the management of FGM/C-related complications and the quality of care offered to clients; and 3) identify possible solutions for strengthening the healthcare system’s capacity to manage and prevent FGM/C. Findings are intended …

Bibliography For Interstices 2018: Beyond Human: Emotion And Ai, Kristin Laughtin-Dunker

Library Displays and Bibliographies

An annotated list of materials in the Leatherby Libraries to accompany the Interstices 2018: Beyond Human: Emotion and AI event held at Chapman University in February 2018. The event featured Lisa Joy, co-creator and executive producer of HBO’s Emmy winning hit series Westworld, Jon Gratch, Director for Virtual Human Research at the University of Southern California’s (USC) Institute for Creative Technologies and Caroline Bainbridge, a Professor of Psychoanalysis and Culture in the Department of Media, Culture and Language at the University of Roehampton London. The Leatherby Libraries also hosted two book club discussions of The Positronic …