Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Ngo Handbook Of Volunteer Management Essentials, Ehsan Abushadi, Taylor Moore, Hedayat Selim, Iain Tutwiler

Papers, Posters, and Presentations

A short handbook that addresses why NGOs need volunteers, how they can benefit from them, how to effectively manage volunteers, tips on how to ensure that volunteers remain a benefit rather than a burden on NGOs, recruitment methods and tools, sample forms, and a list of recommended publications for further reading. This handbook was created as coursework for the community based learning anthropology and sociology course “Third World Development”, at The American University in Cairo, under the instruction of Pandeli Glavanis, during the Fall 2012 semester. It was created using Plan Egypt as our focus group. The inspiration for this …

Arab Spring Uprisings: Revolutionary Patterns And Theoretical Explanations, Doha Mostafa

Papers, Posters, and Presentations

The paper briefly highlights theoretical explanations of concurrent Arab uprisings through a literature review on the writings of democratization, authoritarianism in the Middle East and third generation insights on the causes of revolutions. Theoretical explanations are supported with empirical evidences from State Fragility, and Transformation Index on the democracy status of eight Arab countries: Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Bahrain, Jordan, Libya, Yemen, and Algeria. The paper seeks to illustrate differences of revolutionary patterns among those countries, how this can be theoretically explained, and how concurrent upheavals would draw a new political map for the region. Through theoretical discussion to Arab uprisings, …

The Media' Role In Constructing The Real Estate Problem In Egypt And Its Impacts On Policymakers' Decision, Case Study (Madinaty And Palm Hills), Nahla Mahmoud

Papers, Posters, and Presentations

The media plays a crucial role in defining and constructing the social problems (Parsons, 1995); if there is an agreement among the policymakers and the stakeholders on a certain problem, policies should be taken to resolve this problem. Although most of the literature acknowledged the role of the media in constructing the problems, there has been no agreement among them on its particular functions or role, its determinants and the ways of influence and impacts on making policies. Some scholars maximized the role of the media, other minimized it to the lower level and the rest put some determinants and …

Weighing In: Coping With Stigmatization Through The Fat Acceptance Movement And Weight Loss Surgery, Jaelyn L. Forthun

Senior Theses

This study investigates the social movement, Fat Acceptance, and the personal experiences and discourse of members in online forums that discuss topics such as advocacy and personal struggles, as well as the personal experiences and discourse with members of online groups that went through, or are about to go through, weight-loss surgery. Five interviews with individuals from both groups were conducted for the study and allow for a more in-depth view into the individual experience, supplemented with observations from online blogs and forums. I found that the Fat Acceptance Movement and the WLS (weight loss surgery) community generally opposed discrimination …

Craft Beer: Penetrating A Niche Market, Douglas W. Murray

Department of Nutrition and Food Studies Scholarship and Creative Works

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the underexplored niche market potential of craft beer, especially as it may relate to independent food and beverage operations, as a means of gaining competitive advantage.

Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected through the distribution of a survey instrument to craft beer and home brewers, designed to assess the demographic profile, purchasing/restaurant selection, and decision behavior of this group and assess the likelihood of their future behavioral intentions toward continued participation in the craft beer segment.

Findings – The paper reveals that craft beer and micro brew pub success has been …

Deep Engagement With Student Learning: Librarians As Instructors-Of-Record For Writing-Intensive Undergraduate Courses, Jean Caspers, Susan Barnes Whyte

Faculty & Staff Presentations

How can librarians gain authentic knowledge about how students apply the skills and concepts we teach? In order to address this question, Susan Barnes Whyte and Jean Caspers share the knowledge they have gained by teaching two writing intensive courses: Information Gathering, a required 4-credit course for Mass Communication majors, and Information Ethics: the Individual as Creator and Consumer, a required 4-credit first year inquiry seminar course. Caspers and Whyte both continue to teach multiple information literacy (IL) sessions for other professors’ courses. Their for-credit teaching experiences have helped them understand the difficulty other teaching faculty have finding …

Kickin' Sand And Tellin' Lies, Jackson B. Miller, Christopher Forrer

Kickin' Sand and Tellin' Lies: The Play

This document is the script of the two-act play, Kickin’ Sand and Tellin’ Lies, by Jackson B. Miller and Christopher Forrer. The Linfield College Theatre Program presented the world premieres of the play in November 2012 in McMinnville, Oregon and in Pacific City, Oregon. The play was created as part of the Launching through the Surf: The Dory Fleet of Pacific City project, which focuses on the historical and contemporary role of dory fishers and dories in the life of the coastal village of Pacific City, Oregon. Inspired by stories from the project, Kickin’ Sand and Tellin’ Lies is a …

U.S. Radio In The 21st Century: Staying The Course In Unknown Territory, Michael Huntsberger

Faculty Publications

This essay examines the development of the radio industry in the United States as it makes its way into the 21^st century. Issues of regulation, technology, commerce, and culture are addressed.

“Takin’ It To The Web”: Updating Operations Manuals For Today's Techno-Realities, Kathleen Spring

Faculty & Staff Publications

This article describes the process of revamping an existing operations manual for the interlibrary loan department at a small, private liberal arts college. It documents how staff met their goals of integrating traditional reference materials and training information, utilizing Web-based tools for content creation and delivery, consolidating assessment and evaluation mechanisms, and facilitating updating of content. By incorporating theories of blended learning into the design of the new resource, supervisors were able to shift their existing documentation from 2D to 2.0. Strategies for implementing an interactive training resource and operations manual are provided.

The Influence Of Social Priming On Speech Perception, Sierra N. Broussard

Senior Theses

Speech perception relies on auditory, visual, and motor cues and has been historically difficult to model, partially due to this multimodality. One of the current models is the Fuzzy Logic Model of Perception (FLMP), which suggests that if one of these types of speech mode is altered, the perception of that speech signal should be altered in a quantifiable and predictable way. The current study uses social priming to activate the schema of blindness in order to reduce reliance of visual cues of syllables with a visually identical pair. According to the FLMP, by lowering reliance on visual cues, visual …

Relationally Aggressive Media Exposure And Children’S Normative Beliefs: Does Parental Mediation Matter?, Jennifer Ruh Linder, Nicole E. Werner

Faculty Publications

Research indicates that relationally aggressive media exposure is positively associated with relational aggression in children. Theories of media effects suggest that these associations may be mediated by aggressive cognitions. Although parental mediation can attenuate the effects of violent media, it is unknown whether there are similar benefits of parental mediation of relationally aggressive media. The current study examined concurrent and longitudinal associations between relationally aggressive television and movie exposure and normative beliefs about relational aggression, and whether parental mediation moderates these associations. Participants were 103 children (50% female) in grades 3-6 and their parents. The following year, 48 children (52% …

Risky Sexual Behavior: A Race-Specific Social Consequence Of Obesity, Tamara Leech, Janice Johnson Dias

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Scant attention has been given to the consequence of actual weight status for adolescents' sexual wellbeing. In this article, we investigate the race-specific connection between obesity and risky sexual behavior among adolescent girls. Propensity scores and radius matching are used to analyze a sample of 340 adolescents aged 16-17 who participated in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth Young Adult Survey in 2000 or 2002. Nearly even numbers of these participants identified as white and black (183 and 157, respectively). We find that compared to their non-obese white peers, obese white adolescent girls exhibit higher rates of multiple sex partners …

Challenges In Localizing Global Human Rights, Ranita Ray, Badana Purkayastha

Societies Without Borders

Drawing from ethnographic and historical data combined with document analysis, this article addresses two issues related to the mechanisms involved in localizing global human rights ideas: 1) the disharmony that may results when global ideas are concretized in the form of domestic laws and come in conflict with the ever shifting local rights consciousness and 2) the role of habitus in determining how human rights advocates respond to changing local rights consciousness. By examining the ways in which violence against women is addressed by a human rights commission in an Indian state, the disjuncture between local appropriations of global human …

Universal Moral Grammar: An Ontological Grounding For Human Rights, Vincent Walsh

Societies Without Borders

In this article I connect the principles of the UN Declaration of Human Rights to the issue of global social justice, and ask the question: is there a genetically endowed Universal Moral Grammar common to all human beings comparable to the Universal Grammar for language acquisition demonstrated so convincingly by Noam Chomsky and others?

‘Woman As…’: Personhood, Rights And The Case Of Domestic Violence, Stacy Missari, Christine Zozula

Societies Without Borders

This article uses the first domestic violence case filed against the United States in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to discuss the politics of gender and domestic violence. We discuss how gender-neutral frameworks of the case in the U.S. ignore the interpersonal gender and power issues which often attend domestic violence cases. The case before the IACHR was arguably more successful in addressing gender by drawing from the human rights literature on women’s rights. However, given that this case is the first human rights charge against the United States by a domestic violence survivor, the specifically gendered framework …

Trafficking Risks For Refugees, Annie Wilson

Societies Without Borders

This article examines a number of risk factors in the life situation of refugees that place them in danger of falling prey to human traffickers. Among the factors discussed are protracted refugee situations, conflict situations and security, precarious economic conditions, the circumstances of women and children, the prevalence of sexual and gender-based discrimination and violence, physical and psychological trauma, and the absence of legal protection. The article examines the unintended consequences of enforcement and border controls in increasing trafficking risks for refugees. Stronger refugee protection is the fundamental building block for reducing trafficking risk. Additionally, mapping, assessment and targeted programs …

The Failures And Possibilities Of A Human Rights Approach To Secure Native American Women’S Reproductive Justice, Barbara Gurr

Societies Without Borders

This article has three purposes: the first is to bring to light current violations of Native American women’s basic right to health as these violations are produced by the federal government and imposed through the Indian Health Service. The second is to articulate the challenges of current human rights discourse in articulating and providing for Native Americans’ human rights within the United States. Third, this article offers a potential strategy for understanding and redressing the violation of Native women’s right to health through the rubric of reproductive justice. Drawing from over ten years of participant observation as well as semi-structured …

Help Create Order; Beggars Opera; Communication, George Snedeker

Societies Without Borders

No abstract provided.

Review Of Framed By Gender: How Gender Inequality Persists In The Modern World By Cecilia L. Ridgeway, Rachel Feinstein

Societies Without Borders

No abstract provided.

Review Of Anarchy As Order: The History And Future Of Civic Humanity By Mohammed Bamyeh, Dana M. Williams

Societies Without Borders

No abstract provided.

An American Sociologist In Iran, John L. Hammond

Societies Without Borders

I was invited to a conference in Tehran on Occupy Wall Street. I was hesitant to accept because I feared that my criticisms of US policy through the lens of OWS might lend support to the oppressive Iranian regime, but I thought it might be an opportunity to express solidarity with the Iranian people against possible US or Israeli aggression. In the end I decided to go and found it an eye-opening experience. On my return I was attacked as a terrorist by apologists for Israel and censored by Tehran University because, in a paper I submitted at the conference …

State-Society Incompatibility And Forced Migration: The Violent Development Of Afghanistan Under Socialist, Islamist, And Capitalist Regimes, Jeremy Hein, Tarique Niazi

Societies Without Borders

The state-centric theory of forced migration presents the nation-state as the ultimate sanctuary of citizen rights. It posits that forced migration results from state instability, which is caused by geopolitical or national identity conflict. In either case, it contends that the sources of forced migration are exogenous to the state. This paper argues that under certain conditions the state becomes an endogenous cause of refugees and internally displaced persons. These conditions occur when the state deploys violence to dominate society. Using the case of Afghanistan, we document that since 1973 a series of Socialist, Islamist, and Capitalist regimes have engaged …

Indirect Violence And Legitimation: Torture, Surrogacy, And The U.S. War On Terror, Eric Bonds

Societies Without Borders

This paper contributes to the sociological study of legitimation, specifically focusing on the state legitimation of torture and other forms of violence that violate international normative standards. While sociologists have identified important discursive techniques of legitimation, this paper suggests that researchers should also look at state practices where concerns regarding legitimacy are “built in” to the very practice of certain forms of violence. Specifically, the paper focuses on surrogacy, through which powerful states may direct or benefit from the violence carried out by client states or other armed groups while at the same time attempting to appear separate from and …

Ethnopoetics: A Jamaican Deportee Tells His Story, Tanya Golash-Boza

Societies Without Borders

No abstract provided.

A Comparative Analysis Of Mexican-And Europe And European- Origin Immigration To The United States: Proposing An Interactive Colonization Theory, Manuel Barajas

Societies Without Borders

From the 1970s, Latin American immigration, mainly from Mexico, increased rapidly surpassing European migration in the 1980s for the first time in US history and now constituting over half of the total foreign-born population in the United States. In this paper, I compare this newer, Latin American wave of immigration to earlier, European waves and find that though a combination of push-pull and structural perspectives does much to explain the European experience, it fails to explain Mexican-origin migration and nature of incorporation. Therefore, I argue for an interactive colonization approach to understanding the uniqueness of the Mexicanorigin immigration experience.

Review Of Security And Everyday Life Edited By Vida Bajc And Willem De Lint, Toni Y. Sims-Muhammad

Societies Without Borders

No abstract provided.

Just Places: Creating A Space For Place In Environmental Justice, Damayanti Banergee

Societies Without Borders

This paper explores how discourses on sense of place and cultural heritage inform environmental justice conflicts. I argue that while economic distribution remains the overarching frame within environmental justice scholarship, cultural entitlement concerns are rarely discussed in the literature. I argue that environmental justice scholarship can draw upon place and cultural research to explore how cultural entitlement claims can be incorporated in environmental justice. I draw upon place literature to propose a three-dimensional typology of place. I call these three dimensions – political place, cultural place, and moral place. The proposed typology allows us to examine how discourses of place …

Symposium On The Implications Of The Asa Human Rights Statement For Research, Teaching And Service, Mark Frezzo, Judith Blau, Louis Edgar Esparza, Davita Silfen Glasbert, Bruce K. Friesen

Societies Without Borders

No abstract provided.

Wikileaking The Truth About American Unaccountability For Torture, Lisa Hajjar

Societies Without Borders

Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions are international offenses and perpetrators can be prosecuted abroad if accountability is not pursued at home. The US torture policy, instituted by the Bush administration in the context of the “war on terror” presents a contemporary example of liability for gross crimes under international law. For this reason, classification and secrecy have functioned in tandem as a shield to block public knowledge about prosecutable offenses. Keeping such information secret and publicizing deceptive official accounts that contradict the truth are essential to propaganda strategies to sustain American support or apathy about the country’s multiple current …

Review Of Divided Cities: Belfast, Beirut, Jerusalem, Mostar, And Nicosia By Jon Calame And Esther Charlesworth, Daina Cheyenne Harvey

Societies Without Borders

No abstract provided.