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<p>The issue of bullying, among school age children, has been popularized by North American news media. These media frame bullying as a violent epidemic plaguing our schools, resulting in school officials implementing new anti-violence intervention and prevention programs. However, popular media and school administrators often do not rely on research with consistent definitions for bullying behavior to inform these changes. As a result, the term bullying has become quite ubiquitous, conflating bullying behavior with other forms of youth violence. My research aims to delineate the contextual influences for youth violence and the types of violence youth engage in. I argue that sociology can contribute to the study of bullying by elaborating on the roles of three kinds of contexts: immediate networks, neighborhoods and micro-geographies, and status situations. Further, gender can also be a consistent conditioning influence on those contextual effects. This study utilizes a multi-method approach to better understand the contexts and dynamics of youth violence. My quantitative component uses data from systematic social observations of all Hamilton public school neighborhoods, Hamilton Safe School Surveys and the 2006 national census. These methods build on different contexts for youth violence. While the survey findings used in the quantitative portion of this thesis examine broad contextual influences, my qualitative interviews develop micro-geographic contexts for youth violence. Using these data sources, I found significant relationships between gender, age, physical disorder and types of violence used by students. My qualitative component used interviews conducted with fifteen Hamilton youth from a variety of different neighbourhood backgrounds to understand youth’s social dynamics in different kinds of violence. I found dynamics that were consistent with the types of in-school violence described by Randall Collins (2008, 2011) and different types for violence used by male and female students for similar social ends. It is my hope that these findings can be used to better inform violence intervention and prevention policies within Ontario schools.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

This thesis is motivated by a desire to explore the business model centred on sharing, aiming to address critical issues of social inequality and environmental degradation. Inspired by the potential of resource-sharing to reduce overconsumption and enhance equitable access to resources, we chose to study a community-based non-profit sharing organisation Fritidsbanken to assess its impact on social justice and environmental sustainability. Through this study, we show how generosity, trust, and community engagement are embedded within the organisation's operations, enhancing justice and well-being while reducing material consumption, which also introduce new perspectives within the sharing economy. Our research highlights that the success of such initiatives is not only dependent on building trust, generosity and community engagement, but also hinges on how sharing is designed around principles of justice and equality. Consequently, the strategic design rooted in justice fosters trust and generosity, potentially driving a shift towards greater equity within the sharing economy. However, despite the positive impacts, the study also uncovers the organisation's operational challenges tied to funding and resources, reflecting broader systemic issues that hinder the pursuit of sustainability. It calls for strategic changes that support the scalability and effectiveness of community-based sharing initiatives.

This doctoral thesis provides the first comprehensive study on the physical processes controlling hydrodynamics and transport in Lake Garda. The investigation is carried out in parallel on three different levels: data collection and analysis, three-dimensional numerical modeling and theoretical study. On the first level, data are collected by building up a network of research institutes and local administrations in the lake area. New data are acquired through traditional field campaigns (CTD, thermistor chains, satellite imagery), while a citizen-science approach, based on local knowledge harvesting, is successfully tested to gather qualitative data on surface circulation. On the second level, a three-dimensional modeling chain is set up, by coupling one-way a mesoscale atmospheric model to a hydrodynamic model. Both models are validated on multiple temporal and spatial scales, allowing to identify the main interactions between the weather forcing and the hydrodynamic response of the lake. Circulations in Lake Garda are found to be very sensitive to the thermal stratification, to the spatial distribution of the wind forcing and to the Earth’s rotation. Surface cyclonic gyre patterns develop in the lake as a residual outcome of alternating wind forcing of local breezes and differential acceleration induced by Earth’s rotation, whereas unidirectional currents flow under a nearly uniform and constant wind. Both model and observations evidences show that, under weak thermal stratification, Ekman transport activates a secondary circulations in the northern part of the lake, driving surface water to the deep layers and possibly preconditioning the lake for subsequent buoyancy-driven deep mixing events. On the third level, the relevance of the Coriolis term in the equations of motion for relatively narrow closed basins is analytically addressed. The classical Ekman problem is solved by including the presence of lateral boundaries and a new analytical solution is formulated. The validity of the new solution is proved by numerical tests of idealized domains of different size, geographical location and turbulent regime, and on Lake Garda as a real test case. The meaningful length scales are discussed, and the significance of Rossby radious as a reference horizontal scale is disproved for steady-state circulations driven by wind and planetary rotation.

At a time when regulation impacting colleges and universities has steadily increased, institutional leaders have explored ways to maximize their educational effectiveness, impact, and public contribution to their surrounding communities. Public colleges and universities often use public-private partnerships to develop institutionally owned or managed spaces on and surrounding their campuses. As a result, institutional stakeholders are infused with existing community neighborhoods, cultures and structures, which often results in permanent change imposed on these neighbors and neighborhoods. Using a comparative case study approach, this exploratory research explored the relationship between campus stakeholders utilizing campus and private recreational spaces and their sense of belonging to the campus environment in the neighborhood areas in a newly developed area. The study involved the use of interviews and facilitated conversations determine: (a) how campus stakeholders' sense of belonging is impacted using newly developed recreational space in their neighborhood and (b) how new public recreational space demographically and socially influences the surrounding community. The case in this study is a newly developed community park dedicated to the community it resides in. It also is a recreational space in a downtown, urban city. The space is partially managed and funded by a private developer, two major institutions of higher education, and the local government.

The case study “To Engage a Community”  examines the Pikin to Pikin Tok radio project in Sierra Leone, a project designed by Child to Child and the Pikin-to-Pikin-Movement to address child rights issues during and after the Ebola crisis. The study focuses on the projects’ use of participatory communication strategies to engage communities in the Kailahun district. The primary objective of the study is to offer valuable insights to the field of communication for development by analysing the project's design. Through a qualitative approach that involved thematic analysis of project documents and interviews with project staff, the research sought to gain a deeper understanding of the community participation in the project. A key finding highlighted in the study is the pivotal role of the community in the design and implementation of the radio program, underscoring the significance of tailoring initiatives to be child-friendly, and adapted to culture and context. The study emphasises the importance of genuine community engagement throughout the project, emphasising the need for sustained involvement and ownership beyond consultation. By shedding light on the successes and challenges encountered in the Pikin to Pikin Tok project, the research aims to offer valuable lessons that can inform future social change initiatives and contribute to the communication for development field. / Fallstudien undersöker Pikin to Pikin Tok-projektet i Sierra Leone som utvecklades av organisationerna Child to Child och the Pikin-to-Pikin-Movement, med särskilt fokus på användningen av teorin participatory communication (deltagarbaserad kommunikation) för att engagera samhället i Kailahun-distriktet. Det främsta målet med studien är att bidra med värdefulla insikter inom området kommunikation för utveckling genom att analysera projektets planerings- och designfas. Genom en kvalitativ metod bestående av en tematisk analys av intervjuer med projektarbetare och projektdokument, strävade forskningen efter att nå en djupare förståelse för civilsamhällets deltagande i projektet. Ett resultat som lyfts fram i studien är civilsamhällets avgörande roll i utformningen och genomförandet av radioprogrammet, vilket understryker vikten av att anpassa initiativ till till barn samt kultur och kontext. Studien betonar den kritiska betydelsen av genuint samhällsengagemang genom hela projektet, och framhäver behovet av långvarigt engagemang bortom enbart konsultation. Genom att belysa framgångar och utmaningar som möttes i Pikin to Pikin Tok projektet, syftar denna uppsats att bidra med värdefulla lärdomar som kan bidra till utvecklingen av framtida sociala förändringsinitiativ och bidra till området kommunikation för utveckling.

It has long been established that women play unique roles within schools, volunteerism, and school-based community work (Griffith and Smith 2005; Calarco 2020; Lewis and Diamond 2015; Posey-Maddox 2014). Additionally, research suggests that the work done surrounding the institution of education primarily falls on mothers (Griffith and Smith 2005; Haley-Lock and Posey-Maddox 2016; Lareau 2000; Lareau 2011). However, little research has been done that explores how gender dynamics play out in education activism that lies outside of schools. This study seeks to understand how women view gendered expectations of mothering work in regard to education and if/how they perceive that work in relation to their political activism. This study aids in better understanding how activists perceive the roots of their activist work and provide insights about political activism surrounding education. As activism surrounding education can greatly contribute to achieving a more just and equitable society, this work is crucial for scholarship seeking to understand the activists attempting to change our education system.

Progressive religious leaders are playing an increasingly important role in the effort to combat climate change. Through a combination of unstructured in-depth interviews and primary source analysis, this thesis highlights nine U.S. religious leaders from various denominations of Christianity, Judaism and Islam who are actively involved in working on climate issues. Drawing on literature in social movement theory, I explore how clergy are uniquely influential in climate issues because of the organizational advantage and moral authority they hold through their positions as religious leaders, granting them the ability to highlight social justice implications of climate change with distinctive legitimacy. Clergy engage in climate issues through a number of tactics and myriad activities spanning three domains: their congregations, the climate movement, and policy circles. While religious leaders are imbued with moral authority that allows them to speak powerfully on the social justice implications of climate change, they are also limited in a number of ways precisely because they are working within a religious context.