Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Social Construction Of Homelessness By Service Providers: A Narrative Of Our Country's Biggest Blindfold, Sophia Kali Pappas

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Value(S) Based Diversification: Environmental, Social, And Governance Investing Sub-Issue Preferences Mapping Through Forced Trade-Offs, Sophia Justine Logan

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Using empirical evidence on consumer preferences for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing issues, this author builds upon the economic literature that agents have pro-social inclinations. Evidence from the study shows that ESG preferences are nuanced and heterogeneous, unlike the assumptions in academia and the financial services world today of homogenous preferences across ESG issue categories. This author employs the relatively new methodology of MaxDiff to analyze preferences by forcing trade-offs. A survey with 1,000 respondents was administered to create a rank ordering of ESG issue preferences. The project finds that the highest ranked issues fall within the “social” category …

Imagining Ceuta And Melilla, Hailey Cassidy

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Deconstructing And Reconstructing Guidebook Ideologies: The Influence Of Travel Guidebooks And The Media On Nature Tourism Projects In Costa Rica And Tanzania, Sarah Wallock

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Multidisciplinary Studies of Bard College.

The Future Of Forever Wild: The History, Politics And Economics Of The New York State's Forest Preserve, Michael R. Callejo

Senior Projects Spring 2019

The New York State's Forest Preserve, a successful century old public land program, has been the target of new development projects that threaten its fragile ecosystem, particularly its trees. This paper examines the history, politics, and economics of the Forest Preserve in order to understand what factors led to its creation and why it is so important in times where many citizens are experiencing the effects of climate change for the first time in history.

“Only Girls Play With Those”: An Analysis Of Preschoolers’ Gender Schema Development Through Gender Stereotype Knowledge And Recognition Of Gendered Information, Abigail Lee Sullivan

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Since Sandra Bem’s introduction of Gender Schema Theory (GST), researchers have analyzed how gender schemas influence children’s information processing (Signorella, Bigler, & Liben, 1993; Welch-Ross & Schmidt, 1996). These studies, however, tested schema processing using familiar gender-atypical information (e.g., “only boys play with dolls”) instead of novel gender-atypical information (e.g., “only girls play with xylophones”). The present study seeks to fill this gap in the research by using novel gender-atypical information in order to test the extent to which children’s schemas influence their information processing. First, I tested children’s memory and preference for two picture books, one with a female …

An Algorithmic Approach To Detect Non-Injectivity Of The Partial Borda Count, Jazlyn Johnson

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Voting is how we elect today’s voices, faces, and leaders in our country. It is argued to be a very essential right we have as a people. A voter votes, by listing their preferences. Their preferences are relating the candidates to one each other (i.e. whether they prefer candidate A to candidate B or if they are indifferent between the two). There are many different social choice functions that can be used to calculate the results of an election. This project glances over the theory of Condorcet, Borda, Arrow, and Young, all of whom had a great impact on voting …

Understanding Greek Unemployment: Is Greece's Nightmare Over ?, Dionysis D. Tzortzis

Senior Projects Spring 2019

This senior project talks about the unemployment problem of Greece, and examines the conditions of Greek unemployment for the last 25 years. In this project I traveled through the years from 1995 to today, I wrote down the statistics, trends, and projections for the future of unemployment in Greece. In this project I attempt to answer the question, Is Greece’s Nightmare Over which is something difficult to answer. In this project, I review historical decisions by the Greek governments over the years and its consequences regarding unemployment. In order to understand the problem of Greece we need to first understand …

In Fear We Trust: Anxious Political Rhetoric & The Politics Of Punishment, 1960s-80s, Stella Michelle Frank

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Prevention Through "Deterrence": How The United States Border Patrol Uses Violent Rhetoric And Policy To Engage In Necropolitics, Tess E. Hamilton-Ward

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Multidisciplinary Studies of Bard College.

From Urumqi To Heart Mountain: A Comparative Study Of Forced Internment Befalling Two Peoples, Eight Decades And Two Continents Apart, Caroline Paris Gluck

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Look Out, Not Up: Union Survival In The Wake Of Janus Vs. Afscme, Cooper T. Slack

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

A History And Analysis Relevant To The Us Border: A.K.A. "Fuck The Border”, Cole Rainey-Slavick

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Borders are proliferating throughout the world today; dividing the core from the periphery, racially excluding vulnerable peoples, and facilitating the exploitation of labor. But, it has not always been like this. Borders were once limited only to a small scattering of city states, and even these borders looked little like those of today in terms of their enforcement or function. Where do borders come from? What do they do? What social forces produce and alter them? What is the history of the US border? What is the border …

Huge In France: Explaining French Underperformance In The International Box Office, Jay D. Rosenstein

Senior Projects Spring 2019

In the face of near complete American dominance of the global film industry, the French have adopted a number of policies to protect their domestic industry. This project provides a history of public intervention in the French film industry, a theoretical framework to explain American dominance and the possibility of French competition, and finally an empirical evaluation of the French policy of public intervention. It finds significant evidence that public spending has a depressing effect on the size of movies on the upper end of the budget spectrum, but perversely that increasing the proportion of public spending on film increases …

Faulty Vision And Political Realism, Quinn F. Lewis

Senior Projects Spring 2019

This project responds to and expands upon Sheldon Wolin’s magnum opus, “Politics and Vision.” It critiques Wolin’s unnecessarily fragile conception of democracy, as being by nature “ephemeral,” and thus fundamentally non-institutional, by comparing it with the more pragmatic, realist approaches of two historical organizers, Saul Alinsky and V.I. Lenin. The project uses Wolin’s insightful analysis of the state of American politics under late capitalism, to ask, “What is to be done?” exploring the possibilities of organizing and political realism for the Left in the current day.

The Role Of Unpaid And Alternative Labor On Organic And Sustainability-Oriented Farms, Abigail Avital

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Organic and otherwise ecologically sustainable farming methods are generally known to be more labor intensive, largely due to the lack of synthetic herbicides and pesticides. The ways in which such a labor demand might be met has not been the focus of many studies.There is some evidence that suggests that forms of unpaid or reduced pay alternative labor might help meet this extra demand on small sustainable farms. Using a content analysis of thirteen farmer interviews in Upstate New York, this paper will review the possible roles of unpaid and alternative labor on organic farms, as well as their potential …

A Test Of Obedience Or Patience? A Modified Replication Of “Nothing By Mere Authority” By Haslam Et Al. (2014), John J. Machen

Senior Projects Spring 2019

After Milgram’s infamous experiments and their subsequent ethical critiques, social psychologists have been challenged to search for ways to learn more about the psychology of destructive obedience while still holding true to modern IRB standards of participant protection. One of the ways in which this has been attempted is through the invention of newer and safer paradigms of the Milgram task, perhaps the best known of which would be Jerry Burger's (2009) partial replication of Milgram’s voice-feedback experiment. Five years later, a team of researchers devised a completely new obedience task, the simplified premise of which was to have naive …

Decisions, Decisions: A Look At Government Decision-Making In Response To The Threat Of Terrorism, Casey Ann Witte

Senior Projects Spring 2019

In this paper, an exploration of how governments make decisions is presented. The policy decisions surrounding four separate terrorist incidents in Spain and Great Britain are analyzed using prospect theory, and other concepts from game theory in order to demonstrate the decision making process of policy makers. The aim of this study is to demonstrate how the decisions of governments are influenced by their own specific histories and policies that were used in the past. It is shown that governmental decision making is influenced by previous experiences with terrorism, and that governments learn from previous mistakes.

Examination Of United States Housing Data And The Racial Wealth Gap Case Study Of Westchester County, Ny, Ezekiel Nana Demasio

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Vibrations, Memory, And Identity: The Embodiment Of Tambú And The Afro-Curacaoan Identity In Curacao, Jazondré Kaniela Renee Gibbs

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Study On Chinese Immigrants And Chinese-Americans In United States: A Focus On New York City, Xishixin Song

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

How To Earn And Lose Your Constituency: A Case Study Of New Jersey's Fifth Congressional District, Christopher R. Blake

Senior Projects Spring 2019

In 2016, Donald Trump inspired a "red wave" of voting that granted the Republicans control of the House and Senate for the first time since 2006. This seemingly should be a great time to be a Republican incumbent, especially in a Republican district. However, Scott Garrett, a long term conservative incumbent in New Jersey's fifth congressional district, fell to Josh Gottheimer, a Clinton-backed Democrat. So what happened? I conclude that Garrett fails to capture a new base that comes into his district after redistricting, loses his original base after failing to correctly achieve a Dual Constituency approach, and is hindered …

Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor, But Not Too Many: U.S Public Opinion And Illegal Immigration, Nicholas Henry Bader

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Establishing An Effective Interest Rate In Latin America’S Microfinance Sector: A Comparative Analysis Between Mexico And Peru, Dylan Kevin Frawley

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Microfinance is defined as small scale loans designed for less fortunate citizens. Ever since its creation, an economic development tactic that was hoped to greatly benefit developing economies, has been under much scrutiny. Why is this supposed poverty alleviating lending tool under such scrutiny? Well a quick outlook on Compartamos Banco profit statistics along with knowing that their loan default rate is near one percent is a good place to start. Latin America has taken Yunus’s social welfare Microfinance model and turned it into a profit generating giant with an interest income of 74.7% in the Mexican Microfinance sector. Although …

Discrimination In The U.S Mortgage Market: A Historic Overview Of Discriminatory Practices And How The Rapid Expansion Of The Secondary Market Has Reshaped Them And The Incentives Behind Them, Ioannis Prousanidis

Senior Projects Spring 2019

My paper contributes to the existing literature regarding discriminatory practices in the mortgage market. It is argued that the development of the mortgage market, and specifically the rapid expansion of the secondary market, gave rise to new discriminatory practices (predatory lending, algorithmic based discrimination). My project analyses the specifics of these developments and how they are associated with the introduction of these current discriminatory acts, outlines the changing incentives behind them and argues that current legislation has been proved to be too inflexible to adapt to the changing nature of the mortgage market and of the practices themselves. Furthermore my …

Center For Immigration Studies: A Progressive Case For Immigration Restriction?, Jeremy Coppola

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Does Climate Change Invoke Conditions That Create Conflict? Lessons Learned From Syria And Beyond, Mara A. O'Connell

Senior Projects Fall 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

Private Lives Of Public Figures, Charlotte Miriam Albert

Senior Projects Fall 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

A Theoretical And Empirical Analysis Of The Wage Effects Of Marriage In Same-Sex Households, Peyton Nash

Senior Projects Fall 2019

This Senior Project analyzes the wage effects of marriage for same-sex couples from a theoretical and empirical perspective using data from the 2012-2017 American Community Survey. I present the first empirical evidence of a wage effect to marriage for same-sex couples. I find strong evidence that this premium is driven by an increased degree of household specialization in married gay and lesbian couples. For both gay and lesbian couples, my results show a large and statistically significant return to marriage for the primary earner in same-sex couples. This raises several questions for future research and potential issues for the more …

Deconstructing Hikikomori: From Literature To Reality, Lydia Perry

Senior Projects Fall 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Multidisciplinary Studies of Bard College.

This work explores the growing trend of socially withdrawn individuals in Japanese society known as "hikikomori." Through the lenses of philosophy, literature, anthropology, economics, and more, I deconstruct the common perceptions of hikikomori and expand upon the cultural critiques inherent in choosing a life of solitude.