<p> This study examines reasons for participation and barriers or obstacles to participation in sustainability-based organizations at a mid-size publicly-funded state university in the Mid-West. Based on participant observations and qualitative interviews with students, faculty, staff, and administration, this project examines the intra- and interpersonal factors associated with identity formation related to participation: alternative forms of educational pedagogy in relation to sustainability or environmental curriculum: collective action and resource mobilization as a means of increasing student awareness and participation in sustainability-based initiatives and activities on campus and among the greater community surrounding the campus: and finally, the specific dialogue in which sustainability is discussed and the ways in which this impacts the overall perception of sustainability as a concept and a movement. Due to the lack of participation among students in sustainability-based organizations and initiatives, this study explores barriers to participation and possible alternatives for increased engagement within diverse areas of the students experience to enhance this area of personal and educational development.</p><p>

<p> Theory has been an object of interest for HCI researchers working on questions related to disciplinary identity and maturity. And recently there have been empirical studies of theory use in HCI research publications. These recent studies are crucial for enriching our understanding of how HCI researchers use theoretical knowledge objects like Activity Theory or the Trajectories Conceptual Framework. Moreover, they establish precedent for conducting textual-analytic empirical studies of theory use. However, there are limitations to these recent empirical studies.</p><p> In this dissertation, I discuss several formative studies conducted during my doctoral career. These formative studies contribute material to the conceptual and theoretical frameworks that I apply in a summative study of theory use in five years of CHI best paper winners (n=90). These studies motivate three primary contributions. First, I provide an empirically grounded description of the richness and diversity of theory use in HCI scholarship. Second, I show that there is a growing collection of nascent HCI theories being proposed and developed. Finally, I suggest an alternative way of framing the HCI research community &ndash; one that embraces the diversity and richness of theory use evidenced in its scholarly publications.</p><p>

<p> A robust body of research suggests that inclusive and collaborative approaches to ecological restoration, specifically watershed management, are not only successful but also optimal for long-term sustainability. This research is embedded within the context of the EPA regulated Chesapeake Watershed restoration, which spans six states and requires multiple levels of collaboration and engagement. The research used ethnographic methods to explore what motivated community leaders to engage in water resource conservation and restoration initiatives in Havre de Grace, Maryland, a city on the shores of the Upper Chesapeake Bay. The Chesapeake Watershed is a pivotal example of both global and United States trends in degraded water resources. The research questions for the study were: How do community leaders express their understanding of water-related issues through a sense of place, nature connection, and local knowledge? How can community leaders catalyze community engagement in support of water-related environmental restoration, education, and conservation? What are the common points of concern, optimism, and motivation articulated by community leaders to conserve the freshwater and estuarine water resources? Data was collected through in-depth interviews and analyzed using a qualitative coding method. The research contributes to an understanding of how best practices in community leadership and community engagement can be mobilized to conserve and restore critical ecosystems within the context of a broader watershed management initiative. The research results are useful for community organizers and stakeholder institutions with an interest in protecting and restoring degraded natural environments through locally relevant initiatives.</p><p>

<p>The purpose of the current content analysis was to identify response trends concerning social connections within the prison community in relation to participation in available programs and activities in 181 surveys completed by long-term inmates incarcerated at Louisiana State Penitentiary in 2003. As social connectivity has been linked to decreased levels of violence and rule infractions, and this group of inmates will likely be the responsibility of the state for the rest of their natural lives, it is important to investigate the connections that they share with other inmates. The current analysis addressed the following three questions: Are the number of programs that inmates participate in and their rating of connection to the prison community related? Which programs do the inmates at Louisiana State Penitentiary view as the most beneficial in aiding their connection to the prison community? What factors do inmates identify in their selected programs as valuable to forming and maintaining social connections within the prison community? In order to answer these questions, survey responses concerning inmate program participation, reasoning behind participation, and indications of connection within the prison community were input into a spreadsheet. The separated data was then subjected to content analysis. The program participation was compared to indicated level of prison connection. Written explanations of participation, in particular programming, were examined for similarities amongst all respondents. Results suggest a positive correlation between program participation and an increased sense of connection with the prison community, as well as concern for the well-being of others. Suggestions for future research include in-person data collection specifically designed to investigate inmate connections with the prison community and program participation, and an interview versus survey structure.

<p> A qualitative methodology employing an auto-ethnography, face-to-face interviews, and an online survey investigates: 1) how American gondoliers experience, interact with, and fulfill romantic expectations of couples, 2) what couples experience when encountering gondola boats, gondoliers, and the landscape of Naples and Alamitos Bay, and 3) why gondola cruising is significant for the neighborhood of Naples, its adjacent communities, and the City of Long Beach. Results provide insight on the experience of romantic spaces, the relations, subjectivities, and dispositions of workers (gondoliers) and clientele (couples), issues of gender and ethnicity, the culture and performances of American gondoliers, and maritime landscapes as workplace. This study shows American gondola boats, gondoliers, and canals work together to socially construct, authenticate, and embody a romantic sense of place throughout the landscapes of Naples and Alamitos Bay, which benefits the tourism of Long Beach, California by attracting visitors wishing to experience romance in a special way.</p>

Political theorists have long noted the “liberal” dimensions of Max Weber's theory of politics. In doing so, I believe they overlook the anti-political overtures in his push for national glory, his mechanical design of parliamentarism, and his desperate faith in plebiscitarian leaders—all of which constrain the prospect of human struggle underlying his idea of politics. Political theorists who address Weber's works on science and methodology have viewed them as “correlates” of his theoretical project of politics. I contend that they too ignore the degree to which Weber's methodological works reveal an immanent critique of his own theory of politics in particular and the craft of political theorizing in general. In this dissertation I confirm the anti-political overtures that underlie Max Weber's theory of politics. I challenge his theory of liberal democracy insofar as he anchors it to his public and quite problematic advocacy of German national glory. But more important, I charge that his scientific and methodological works provide greater insight into the elements that comprise a theory of politics in his thinking. I believe they do so in that Weber's theory of scientific scholarship posits the aim of ethical clarity, the divide between facts and values, and the conditional quality of all human values. I thus turn Weber the ethical scholar against Weber the active citizen. With this critique, I draw several conclusions about the contemporary value of Max Weber's political thinking. In clarifying the differences between his concepts of political judgment (Augenmass) and scholarly judgment (Urteil), I confirm that where the former succumbs to the dictates of one conviction, the latter ultimately contests all convictions. Based on this contrast, I also affirm how Weber's idea of scholarship invites more fruitful prospects of political struggle, prospects that extend outside the “life-sphere” of the liberal institutions of politics. Finally, from this alternative location of politics, I suggest that Weber's idea of an ethic of responsibility (Verantwortungsethik) includes the scholar as much as the politician, especially a scholar who contests the ultimate ends of the politician, other scholars, and one's own self.

As the country with biggest Internet population, by December 2011, China had at least 513 million Internet users. As the biggest developing country in the world, in the past three decades China experienced rapid social change and enormous economic development. The impacts of new media and ICT (Information and Communication Technology) on social change and development in China have attracted increasing attention among scholar communities. This dissertation aims to study the new media and ICT for social change and development phenomena in China. It draws upon data from my fieldwork and participant observations in the past three years as well as a nationwide large sample survey of ICT use among Chinese CSOs (civil society organizations). I situate this research primarily in the theoretical framework of communication for development and social change studies (e.g., Servaes, 1999; Servaes, 2008). In this research, new media and ICT for social change phenomena refer to the widely emerging new media and ICT for social change and development policies, projects, or actions initiated by different stakeholders including government, CSOs, and individual activists. Through a case analysis approach, this research analyzes specific new media and ICT for social change cases, conducted by different stakeholders, concerning urgent social change issues such as digital inequality, CSOs empowerment, government accountability and transparency, and hunger/malnutrition using various communication for development and social change theories as well as other new media studies theories and the ICT/new media for social change model that I propose in Chapter two. This research reveals: how different stakeholders engage in new media for social change and development interventions (policies, projects or actions); the communication channels involved in these interventions; the relation and the interactions of different stakeholders in these new media for social change interventions; the sustainability issue of these social change and development interventions. The findings of the research show that the new media for social change model I propose is an effective analytical framework for the study of new media for social change. The research reveals that a multi-channel perspective which incorporates ICTs and other communication channels as well as the interactions between different channels is of great significance in the study of new media for social change. Moreover, the analysis of the interactions between different communication channels shows that in the media environment of convergence culture (Jenkins, 2006), in social change actions, the relation between ICT channels and other communication channels is not an either/or relation. They interact with each and reinforce each other in the social change actions. The research also shows that the multi-stakeholders approach I employed can significantly enrich our knowledge of the new media for social change phenomena. The multi-dimensional relations and interactions between different stakeholders in social change interventions are important issues that the study of new media for social change should address.

By virtue of his powerful notion of overdetermination, Althusser lays the groundwork for the fusion of Marxism and postmodernism. Althusser's overdetermination is an attempt to go beyond or break out of the essentialist dichotomies. As is interpreted by the Amherst School, Althusserian overdeterminism does not take Marxism and postmodernism as oppositional and alternative theoretical frameworks but sees them as closely related and even inseparably intertwined in taking Marxism in new directions. One contribution of my work is in the presentation and elaboration of this articulation between Marxism and postmodernism. In light of Althusserian overdeterminism, I will demonstrate these points of articulation from Marxism to postmodernism using instances of postmodern expressions and impulses found in the works of Lenin, Lukacs, and Gramsci. My project therefore is an attempt to shed light on the postmodern moments in the Marxist tradition through the theoretical framework of Althusserian overdeterminism. This, however, is not to say that these theorists are full-blown postmodernists. I would rather like to make visible the glimpses or impulses of the overdeterminist (postmodern) theory they formulate while they are attacking non-Marxist thinking as, what may be called, essentialist (modernist).

Social philosophy at the end of the twentieth century must be prefixed by what it follows. It has become commonplace to describe our moment as postmodern and post-structuralist, perhaps also post-Marxian. While true enough, our situation more specifically must be post-Lacan, post-Althusser, post-Foucault, and post-Critical Theory. A number of theorists highlight the context this dissertation places itself in, but Slavoj Žižek and Judith Butler should be emphasized in this regard. The positive project of this dissertation begins with radical doubts about the operation of epistemic truth in subjectivity and in language (of a sort first raised by Nietzsche). The dissertation is a series of case studies in the modes of failure of truth, and of the manner in which ideology functions within the void left by the necessary absence of truth. It has a political project of determining what forms counter-hegemony can take absent a traditional assumption of a solid ground for veracity.

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