Master of Arts / Department of Sociology / Laszlo Kulcsar / “Family” is a sacred concept to the Kansas State football team. Calling a group of 100 plus players from across the nation and ten coaches a family is a unique concept when it is viewed from the outside. However, if you have been a part of the rituals involved in it, you understand. This research project examines the role of ritual in the “family” environment of Kansas State football and how that affects young men from different sociological backgrounds by interviewing 20 current and past players in the program. Though the findings showed that this culture affected all respondents in a positive way, it was also discovered that 4 particular young men who grew up with less family support were affected more than those who felt supported by their family from a young age.

Contemporary networking in Canada, like most of the developed world, involves significant use of media to maintain relationships. This is not the use of media for faraway alters where in person contact is difficult, but media use within the very fabric of everyday life alongside in person contact. Past debates about the effects of new media have frequently focused on a medium's potential for social isolation. These debates have resulted in ambiguous, muted or contradictory findings. So instead of suggesting another response to the issue of social isolation, this thesis reorients the focus towards a different question: under what conditions are alters accessible and how does multiple media use affect this accessibility? Rather than suggest that new media simply offer "more" social accessibility, I contend that they complicate social accessibility by offering individuals increasingly differentiated ways to habitually maintain contact with each other. The result of this differentiation is that while individuals might be able to maintain contact with more alters (or at least just as many) in the abstract sense, they end up maintaining contact with the most accessible alters rather than alters with whom one has the strongest ties. This is the conundrum of multiple media use: how is it that each individual medium offers increased convenience but the sum total of media use makes life less convenient, more planned and more complicated? I suggest it is because media use cuts across longstanding social norms of public and private spaces (or public and private time) without offering a coherent normative framework as a substitute. Instead, individuals are differentially accessible via each medium. Moreover, this accessibility is related more to emergent personal habits than to tie strength. Data for this study comes from 350 random-sample surveys and 86 follow-up social network-oriented interviews in East York, a former borough on the east side of downtown Toronto, Canada. The data were collected in 2005, before the widespread adoption of social networking software, but after the widespread adoption of cellular telephones, instant messaging services and email.

This thesis focuses on issues of the growing level of violence that continues to be leveled at two groups of women in Canada; Aboriginal women and African Canadian women. I propose that a combination of State racism, sexism, colonialism, poverty and societal indifference are responsible for the marginalization and oppression that both these groups of women are facing in Canada today. I will make use of three key tenets of sociological discourse that are built on the theoretical frameworks of anti-colonial, Indigenous and Black Feminism. These frameworks describe ways in which the interlocking systems of oppression maintain a Eurocentric, colonial hegemony that continues to perpetuate violence against Aboriginal and African Canadian women. This comparative approach opens an investigative lens into the ways that ideologies (including cultural representations in the media) demean both Aboriginal and African Canadian women.

This thesis focuses on issues of the growing level of violence that continues to be leveled at two groups of women in Canada; Aboriginal women and African Canadian women. I propose that a combination of State racism, sexism, colonialism, poverty and societal indifference are responsible for the marginalization and oppression that both these groups of women are facing in Canada today. I will make use of three key tenets of sociological discourse that are built on the theoretical frameworks of anti-colonial, Indigenous and Black Feminism. These frameworks describe ways in which the interlocking systems of oppression maintain a Eurocentric, colonial hegemony that continues to perpetuate violence against Aboriginal and African Canadian women. This comparative approach opens an investigative lens into the ways that ideologies (including cultural representations in the media) demean both Aboriginal and African Canadian women.

Contemporary networking in Canada, like most of the developed world, involves significant use of media to maintain relationships. This is not the use of media for faraway alters where in person contact is difficult, but media use within the very fabric of everyday life alongside in person contact. Past debates about the effects of new media have frequently focused on a medium's potential for social isolation. These debates have resulted in ambiguous, muted or contradictory findings. So instead of suggesting another response to the issue of social isolation, this thesis reorients the focus towards a different question: under what conditions are alters accessible and how does multiple media use affect this accessibility? Rather than suggest that new media simply offer "more" social accessibility, I contend that they complicate social accessibility by offering individuals increasingly differentiated ways to habitually maintain contact with each other. The result of this differentiation is that while individuals might be able to maintain contact with more alters (or at least just as many) in the abstract sense, they end up maintaining contact with the most accessible alters rather than alters with whom one has the strongest ties. This is the conundrum of multiple media use: how is it that each individual medium offers increased convenience but the sum total of media use makes life less convenient, more planned and more complicated? I suggest it is because media use cuts across longstanding social norms of public and private spaces (or public and private time) without offering a coherent normative framework as a substitute. Instead, individuals are differentially accessible via each medium. Moreover, this accessibility is related more to emergent personal habits than to tie strength. Data for this study comes from 350 random-sample surveys and 86 follow-up social network-oriented interviews in East York, a former borough on the east side of downtown Toronto, Canada. The data were collected in 2005, before the widespread adoption of social networking software, but after the widespread adoption of cellular telephones, instant messaging services and email.

This dissertation draws attention to the interaction between insurgents and the target state as the appropriate context for explaining the motivations of suicide bombers, the rationales of the organizations that support them, and the popularity in certain societies of suicide bombing. Based mainly on data collected from 88 interviews conducted in 2006 with senior leaders of six Palestinian political organizations and close relatives and friends of a 25 percent representative sample of Palestinian suicide bombers during the second intifada, it demonstrates the following: (1) During the second intifada, changes in the political opportunity structure, especially extreme state repression, were chiefly responsible for growing public support for suicide bombing, the development of organizational rationales justifying suicide bombing, and the crystallization of suicide bombers’ motivation to act. State repression produced a widespread desire for revenge at all levels of Palestinian society. (2) Cultural forces, notably the growing popularity of fundamentalist Islam and its embodiment in the political culture of certain militant organizations, were of secondary importance in causing the spread of suicide bombing. (3) Strategic calculations (“rational choice”) aimed at speeding the liberation of occupied territory were of tertiary importance in motivating suicide bombers but they figured more prominently at the level of organizational rationales. (4) While the literature often invokes creative agency, psychopathology, and material deprivation to explain the rise of suicide bombing, little or no effect was discovered for these variables.

This dissertation draws attention to the interaction between insurgents and the target state as the appropriate context for explaining the motivations of suicide bombers, the rationales of the organizations that support them, and the popularity in certain societies of suicide bombing. Based mainly on data collected from 88 interviews conducted in 2006 with senior leaders of six Palestinian political organizations and close relatives and friends of a 25 percent representative sample of Palestinian suicide bombers during the second intifada, it demonstrates the following: (1) During the second intifada, changes in the political opportunity structure, especially extreme state repression, were chiefly responsible for growing public support for suicide bombing, the development of organizational rationales justifying suicide bombing, and the crystallization of suicide bombers’ motivation to act. State repression produced a widespread desire for revenge at all levels of Palestinian society. (2) Cultural forces, notably the growing popularity of fundamentalist Islam and its embodiment in the political culture of certain militant organizations, were of secondary importance in causing the spread of suicide bombing. (3) Strategic calculations (“rational choice”) aimed at speeding the liberation of occupied territory were of tertiary importance in motivating suicide bombers but they figured more prominently at the level of organizational rationales. (4) While the literature often invokes creative agency, psychopathology, and material deprivation to explain the rise of suicide bombing, little or no effect was discovered for these variables.

Doctor of Philosophy / Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / Don L. Kurtz / How and why individuals choose to become gun owners is a complicated issue. Historically, in America, firearms have been associated with patriotism, citizenship, and freedom. Also, historically, much of the research on gun owners has primarily focused on males. Despite the fact that many women do, indeed, own firearms; women, even today, are still often considered an anomaly when it comes to owning guns and participating in the shooting sports. This research utilized an historical analysis, direct interviews with female gun owners, and participation-observation at National Rifle Association (NRA) sponsored Women on Target events, to explore and examine how and why women become owners; as well as how they negotiate the often masculine world of the shooting sports. The data is analyzed through a gender lens, primarily focusing on doing gender, othering, and boundary maintenance. Findings show that firearms ownership is a complex issue and that stereotypical gender believes strongly influences the interaction and images of men and women shooters alike.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / Laszlo Kulcsar / This dissertation examines the discourse of biofuels development in Kansas as promoted by rural growth machines. Corn-based ethanol production capacity and use in the United States has grown exponentially between 2000 and 2009, culminating with the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act’s 36 billion gallon Renewable Fuels Standard 2. At the national level, biofuels development is promoted by the media as important to national goals such as energy/national security, economic growth, and environmental improvement. Examination of the biofuels discourse employed content analysis of newspaper articles as well as in-depth individual interviews and focus groups. The analysis revealed that rural growth machines created an ethanol discourse similar to the one promoted at national level, but with an almost exclusive emphasis on the economic development frame. The rural growth machine’s ideological hegemony promoting ethanol development in the region was maintained through their power of creating and disseminating information. For the issue of biofuels development in Kansas, the analyzed newspapers played both conduit and contributor roles, as newspaper coverage strongly supported the interests of growth machines when the subject was local economic growth opportunities. Members of the rural growth machines set an exclusive and one-sided discourse to legitimate their pro-growth activities and to portray the ethanol development projects as corresponding with the wider good of these communities. Because of dwindling demographic and economic bases as well as scarce natural resources, local political and economic elites approached the issue of growth form a standpoint of hegemony. They promoted growth to carry out their own political and economic agenda while there was a strong desire among the residents for almost any type of economic development. This might explain the weak opposition to the actions of the growth machine in these rural settings.

Master of Arts / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / Dana M. Britton / The literature on friendship and social networks finds that individuals form social ties with people who are like them; this is termed "homophily." Several researchers demonstrate that social networks and social ties are homophilous with regard to race and class, for example. However, few studies have explored the relationship of homophily to the social ties of lesbians, and fewer still have explicitly examined sexual orientation as a point of homophily. This study intends to help fill that gap by looking at homophily among lesbian social ties, as well as how urban and non-urban residency might shape homophily and lesbian social ties. I gathered data that would answer the following central research questions: Are lesbian social ties homophilous and if so around what common characteristics? What are lesbians' experiences with community resources and how does this influence their social ties? How does population influence lesbian social ties? Data for this research come from 544 responses to an internet survey that asked lesbians about their social ties, their interests and activities and those of their friends, and the cities or towns in which they resided. Using the concepts of status and value homophily, I attempt to make visible some of the factors and forces that shape social ties for lesbians.