The purpose of this qualitative inquiry was to examine retrospective experiences of bullying among a diverse sample of ethnic minority and lesbian, gay, and bisexual college students. This study examined the language that college students used to describe forms of peer aggression that they may have experienced or observed during their elementary, middle school, or high school years. The ways in which they made meaning of their experiences of peer aggression and interpreted effects of such experiences were assessed. The specific meanings that participants attached to the term `bullying' were also explored. This study attended to the influence of multicultural group memberships on language usage and meaning-making of peer aggression. Finally, this inquiry included an exploration of the impact of stigma upon assuming or avoiding personal identification as a victim of peer aggression. This qualitative investigation employed individual interviewing with college students in order to explore the primary research questions and utilized constructivist grounded theory methods and analysis. According to the results, issues of cultural identity and cultural context emerged as strong themes in this investigation. Peer aggression experienced by culturally diverse individuals often involved identity-specific peer interactions which occurred within or emerged out of cultural context. The implications of these results are that attending to culture and context may be crucial to gaining an understanding of the social worlds of minority-identified people and to developing more culturally relevant research and practice. The findings also support calls for continued research on the role of culture in the nature of and meanings associated with bullying. Moreover, the results indicated that the participants tended to minimize experiences and outcomes of bullying and to distance themselves from stigmatized victim identities. These factors may undermine constructions of bullying as a social problem and thus warrant further attention by claims-makers interested in drawing attention to this issue.

Facebook is framed as a dangerous tool or at best, a colossal waste of time for adolescents. Stories of bullying, sexual exploitation, and adolescent idiocy dominate the mainstream and sociological narrative. Yet, there are few sociological studies of 13-18 year olds' social media experience. Available research on this age group is presented from the perspectives of adults or focused on college students. This dissertation seeks to address this gap in the literature by presenting the Facebook stories of 26 adolescents (13-18). It reveals a more contemplative and positive story of adolescent Facebook use than that described in the literature. To capture their lived experience I developed a social media ethnography, including a survey, focus groups, observation of Facebook images, and follow up interviews. These data show that while adolescents spend considerable effort on their impression management work to "document us being awesome," they also want to present an authentic self. When this visual self presentation enters the public realm of Facebook it is altered by the awareness of an audience, and thus their authenticity is bounded by gendered social media rules that highlight masculinity/femininity. Simultaneously they also engage in significant back stage work to evaluate how this presentation aligns with the "real me now." Facebook provides a public space for this self reflection; it allows them to visualize the presentation of self and the feedback they receive on it. Over time these micro interactions and moments of self reflection work to constitute the evolving self. This multi-method study offers media studies a new framework from which to consider the deeper meanings that adolescents make and take from social media. It presents an example of thoughtful decision making that may challenge brain development research indicating that adolescents struggle with impulse control. It also addresses a significant gap in the adolescent development literature by suggesting that work normally done internally to craft the self narrative now has a public presentation. Adolescents are forging a new path to development, and impressively they are taking control of social media technology to do so in a way that is both complicated and potentially helpful.

Place is a setting for everyday life. Through processes of meaning making that are rooted in experience and interaction, places become meaningful and structure much of everyday life. Place is simultaneously a physical construction that gives it material form. Place is an object that is envisioned, designed, organized, redesigned, and reorganized. Often, the (re)creation of places is entrusted to professional placemakers, a population with decision making power over processes of physical construction. This research broadly identifies professional placemakers as a population whose professional work can affect change onto the built environment. The literature of place attachment provides strong testimony to the meaningful relationships that people have to built environments and physical forms. For example, the meanings and emotions that residents and stakeholders attach to their homes, neighborhoods, cities, and communities. Professional placemakers hold a degree of power over the built environment and can drastically transform the attachments that people have to place. This research explores the interaction of the social and physical construction of place by considering how placemakers socially construct places in their professional work of physically constructing sites. I ask: how do professional placemakers form emotional bonds to the places they work to (re)create? And, what do those places mean to them? Primary data analysis of eight in-depth interviews with professional placemakers reveal that placemakers socially construct places they work to (re)create in different ways. The data revealed two interacting themes – ‘for the people’ and pride. Further analysis concluded that some professional placemakers see place as a social territory that is unique with history, people, and problems; while others see place as a piece of the built environment that is the successful product of their professional work. While this research underscores the saliency of place attachment across populations by addressing a gap in the literature, these findings have implications for the professional field of placemaking in general. If placemakers are varied in the ways they socially construct the places they are charged to (re)create, what are the consequences for the places on which they work and the people who will live, work, or play in those places?

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / Alisa M. Garni / In the 21st century, millions of older adults in the United States are coming out of retirement to work. In some cases, inadequate benefits and savings force them out of retirement, especially when they or their spouses experience costly health problems. In other cases, older workers “unretire” after losing loved ones, or as they experience social loss and disengagement. These older workers seek companionship through work. Although many older workers enjoy aspects of the jobs they attain in unretirement, their compensation is often insufficient, forcing some of them to perpetually delay re-retiring. Such unretirement reverses decades of movement toward greater and earlier retirement for older adults and significantly affects cultural meanings of old age. Focusing on six different worksites in Kansas, I examine how older workers and employers socially and culturally re-construct age. Evidence from ethnographic observation and thirty-three in-depth interviews with older workers and their employers suggest that employers view older workers’ agedness as an asset they can exploit to cut costs and boost profits. In sharp contrast, many older employees’ younger co-workers and clients treat them as if agedness diminishes their competence and relevance in the workplace. This is particularly true for women, who struggle more than their male colleagues to fend off the negative labels some younger co-workers and clients attempt to apply to them. Ultimately, I find that old age is a valued human resource for employers, making older employees “ideal workers,” but the cumulative effects of older workers’ interactions in the workplaces tend, on balance, to devalue older age. Notably, the forces that promoted positive constructions of older age tend to be rooted in exploitation. Employers who idealize older workers do so to squeeze as much unpaid labor power out of them as possible. When older workers resist exploitative work assignments, they often become subject to negative labeling, as opposed to other kinds of “problem worker” labeling that younger workers might face. By specifying the mechanisms that produce harmful versus helpful constructions of age at work in traditional retirement years, my study contributes to the growing body of research on the relatively new phenomenon of unretirement in the United States.

This research was done from a Postfoundational practical Theological position and I made use of the narrative approach as my methodology. The focus of this research was to come to a better understanding of what the perspectives are of the pastoral counsellor and pastoral counselling in the South Korean context. This was done by listening to the narratives of four academics that was either teaching and/or practicing pastoral counselling in South Korea. These four professors became my co-researchers in this journey of discovering. These narratives were looked at by making use of the Social Constructionist point of view. Therefore, because I was doing research about a culture, I gave an overview of the history, the culture etcetera. To come to a better understanding of the narratives of my co-researchers and what the perspectives are of the pastoral counsellor and pastoral counselling, I have made use of an interdisciplinary team of helpers. The narratives that were shared by my co-researchers were summarised as a “neutral co-researcher’s narrative” and was commented on by the interdisciplinary team. By coming to a better understanding concerning the pastoral counsellor and pastoral counselling in South Korea, many of my pre-conceived biases were deconstructed. This in turn allowed me, with the help of my co-researchers and the interdisciplinary team, to make valuable contributions towards pastoral counselling and the pastoral counsellor in South Korea. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2015. / Practical Theology / Unrestricted

Utilizing a social construction perspective, this study uses a mixed method approach to examine the opioid epidemic. The study begins by identifying the numerous claims-making groups along with conducting a content analysis of the rhetoric and symbols used to legitimize the claims about the opioid epidemic. The data for the content analysis was obtained through a search of the websites, newsrooms, and pressrooms of claims-making groups. Additionally, the study examines and assesses the volume of money that is generated and allocated towards opioid research and prevention in an effort to determine who has more power to influence the policy initiatives. Findings show that the frequency of rhetoric and the number of claims-making groups releasing information about the opioid epidemic increased from 2010-2016. Most of the rhetoric consists of groups proposing resolution strategies and formulating new policies. Only a few claims-makers are making financial contributions towards opioid prevention initiatives and in most cases, it is a very small amount of money.

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In the past five years, there have been numerous newspaper reports on police-involved deaths (PID) in the U.S, many of which have involved African American males as victims (Shane, Lawson, & Swenson, 2017). Police-involved deaths (PID) is defined as a death of an individual that results from police action (i.e., by firearm, by electroshock weapon [commonly known as a Taser©], or by vehicle). Given the amount of coverage of police-involved deaths, it is important to investigate which PID victims receive the most coverage in U.S. newspapers. This study merges three databases (Fatal Encounters, the Washington Post, and the Guardian) which collect information about PID cases that occurred in the U.S. Once a list of PID victims was compiled, Nexis Uni (formerly Nexis Lexis) was used to obtain U.S. newspapers that covered PID incidents. In this study, I examine the race, age, region, and manner of death to distinguish which of these independent variables are the strongest predictors of the number of words and articles used in describing PID incidents. Using a linear regression model, the findings indicate that PID incidents involving African American males had significantly more articles and words written about them than PID incidents involving non-African American males and this effect remained after controlling for other correlates of PID incidents. Additionally, PID incidents involving firearm deaths received significantly more media attention as well. Given the amount of newspaper coverage on PID victims, the ways in which the media portray the victims in those contexts can influence the criminal process for officers involved in the killing. In addition, media portrayals of these incidents can impact policies that revamp the ways in which officers communicate with people of color, specifically African American men (i.e., cultural sensitivity training).

In keeping abreast of current gang phenomena, this study seeks to comparatively examine structural processes and characteristics of gangs in chronic gang city, San Antonio, and an emerging gang city that would be more likely to have "hybrid" gangs, Orlando. Hybrid gangs have been identified as having organizational processes that differ from traditional gangs; thus, this work will examine these processes that consist of a range of non-traditional phenomena, including cooperation between gangs, members switching gang affiliations, as well as gang initiations, and members leaving gangs. Additional characteristics uniquely associated with hybrid gangs consist of the notable presence of white, middle-class, and female gang members. Evidence suggests that the hybrid gang is more of a socially constructed moral panic than a reality. A limited number of recent studies have indicated that some gangs may better fit into a social network framework rather than a solid organizational analysis. Whe

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