abstract: The history of research in Indigenous populations is deeply problematic. Power imbalances have led Non-Indigenous researchers and outside institutions to enter Indigenous communities with their own research agendas and without prior consultation with the people and communities being researched. As a consequence, Indigenous scholars are moving to take control and reclaim ownership of the research that occurs in our communities. This study, conducted by a Pueblo researcher with Pueblo leaders, investigates their definitions of and perspectives on research. Eleven semi-formal interviews were conducted in 2017 with a subset of tribal leaders from the 19 Pueblos of New Mexico. Results show that Pueblo leaders define research using action words such as compiling, gathering, or looking for information to determine a cause or to find out more about a situation. Leaders state that research is “inherent to our beings” and gave examples such as “singing to plants,” “knowing when to plant and hunt” and sustaining our cultural ways as Pueblo activities considered research. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Justice Studies 2018

abstract: The dissertation explores how participants view the relationships between democratic principles such as freedom, liberty, justice, and equality in work and home environments and their impact on the health and productivity of people living within these environments. This information can be used to determine the gap between legal democratic instruments established the published laws and rights and the participants understanding and awareness of these rights. The first step in effectively capturing information from the participants involved developing a virtual ethnographic research system architecture prototype that allowed participants to voice their opinions related to democracy and how the application of democratic principles in various lived environments such as the workplace and home can affect their health and productivity. The dissertation starts by first delving into what democracy is within the context of general social research and social contracts as related to everyday interactions between individuals within organizational environments. Second, it determines how democracy affects individual human rights and their well-being within lived environments such as their workplace and home. Third, it identifies how technological advances can be used to educate and improve democratic processes within various lived environments such that individuals are given an equal voice in decisions that affect their health and well-being, ensuring that they able to secure justice and fairness within their lives. The virtual ethnographic research system architecture prototype tested the ability of a web application and database technology to provide a more dynamic and longitudinal methodology allowing participants to voice their opinions related to the relationship of democracy in work and home environments to the health and productivity of the people who live within these environments. The technology enables continuous feedback as participants are educated about democracy and their lived environments, unlike other research methods that take a one-time view of situations and apply them to continuously changing environments. The analysis of the participant's answers to the various qualitative and quantitative questions indicated that the majority of participants agree that a positive relationship exists between democracy in work and home environments and the health and productivity of the individuals who live within these environments. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Social Justice and Human Rights 2012

This thesis presents a critical examination of climate change vulnerability and adaptation in the northern Kaipara Catchment of Aotearoa New Zealand. I suggest that in order for all communities in the Kaipara to adapt successfully to climate change, adaptation policies must attend to climate change vulnerability as a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Using a political ecology framework, I show that a range of communities in the Kaipara have become vulnerable to harm associated with climate change because of the effects of marginalization. Because communities have been alienated from land, are restricted in their ability to exert sovereignty or control over land management, experience exclusion from environmental decision-making, and live with limited financial means, services, and infrastructure, they can experience heightened levels of exposure and sensitivity to climatic hazards, and have reduced capacity to adapt to changing conditions.

<p> This dissertation was designed using a qualitative research mode of inquiry that utilized a mixed methodology approach. This dissertation was an ethnographic narrative study tracking eight young women who were &ldquo;aging out&rdquo; or forced to leave their orphanage in Peru, where most of them had spent a majority of their lives. The study examined the way in which a collaborative art community could support the participants as they narrated their lives over a 16-month period of time through photojournaling and social media outlets. </p><p> This study relied upon interviews, on-site observations, personal journaling, and photographing, in addition to an overall thematic analysis of the output of each of the eight participants and two nuns. From these data, six key themes emerged concerning the outcomes of each young girl&rsquo;s continuing life at the Hogar and their endeavors outside of the orphanage. The focal points of this study were community building via art making and building of personal aesthetic, community engagement, reflection on self-identity, cross-cultural art education, and shared experience via photo-art narratives and social media. </p><p> This research also examined the role of collaborative art experiences in helping these young women structure new identities and form collaborations with their peers designed to sustain them into their future lives. This dissertation studied not only the formation of singular identities but how these functioned within a collaborative identity that supported the young participants as they moved out of their orphanage and forward into the outside world.</p><p>

<p> This study focused on the experiences of Black male student-athletes in Division I sports and used critical race methodology to present counter narratives. These narratives highlighted successes and heightened awareness about the needs and concerns of an extremely important, but often silenced, population. The purpose of this research was to examine the experiences of Black male student-athletes in the Division I revenue-generating sports of basketball and football. This study examined how Black males perceived the effectiveness of the NCAA supports in place for their academic success, degree attainment, and postcollegiate leadership and career opportunities. This dissertation also sought to understand the extent to which the legacy of racism in the United States has impacted the collegiate experience of these athletes. This research utilized critical race theory to frame the counter narratives of Black male student-athletes participating in this study. Through counter stories, the researcher offered suggestions that more effectively serve NCAA Black male student-athletes during their transition into and beyond Division I university sports participation as a strategy to achieve social justice for a historically marginalized group.</p><p>

<p> Cybersecurity is one of the fastest growing career fields, with the demand for qualified professionals growing at a rate 3.5 times faster than traditional information technology or computing-related jobs and 12 times faster than the overall job market. Women are largely underrepresented in the field, comprising a mere 11% of the global workforce. This qualitative study uses a modified grounded-theory methodology to explore factors influencing women&rsquo;s perceptions of the field of cybersecurity. Interviews were conducted to gain an understanding of how female college students perceive the existing gender gap and to identify motivators or barriers of entry to the field. This study resulted in the development of a substantive theory depicting the core concept of finding her way and how women take action by seeking to relate, seeking reassurance, and seeking return. Findings from this research will be used to inform efforts to attract, train, and retain future generations of women in the cybersecurity profession and to aid in meeting the growing workforce needs. </p><p>

<p> This study examined interpersonal relationships among youth from different ethnic communities. The purpose of this study was to examine interpersonal relationships among youth from different ethnic communities in Kenya, especially the vulnerable population of individuals with disabilities, and the ways interpersonal relationships between youth from different ethnic communities change as a result of ethnic conflict. This study utilized survey methodology to gain a better understanding of interpersonal relationships between youth from different ethnic communities and individuals with disabilities. The sample of the survey comprised 42 participants between the ages of 18 and 35 who were in Kenya during the postelection conflict of 2007 and 2008. This study found that some participants experienced strain in their friendships with individuals from different ethnic communities, particularly those that were fighting against one another. Both participation in and harmful action against individuals with disabilities were also reported. However, the experience of youth with disabilities was not dissimilar to that of their nondisabled peers. This study has the capacity to lead to additional studies with a larger sample size within and outside of Kenya, and to break apart key findings into individual studies.</p><p>

<p> Intimately interwoven in American culture is the unquestioned notion of paid labor as a personally gratifying moral and civic responsibility. Yet, of the 46 million Americans living in poverty in 2010, 23% held jobs (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012). The U.S. fast food industry employs 4 million workers (Statista, 2014) and &ldquo;pays the minimum wage to a higher portion of its workers than any other American industry&rdquo; (Schlosser, 2001). </p><p> The research methodology for this study was critical ethnography, which explores a cultural phenomenon and attempts to provoke social change by giving voice to marginalized communities (Thomas, 1993). A New York City&ndash;based nonprofit organization working to organize fast food workers was the field site for the study. The mining of empirical material involved multiple qualitative research methods, including observation, document and artifact analysis, and interviews with 25 fast food workers who participated at one or more strikes. This study addressed a single research question: What role does work ethic as a legitimizing myth play in the work lives of New York City fast food workers who live and work in New York City and who have participated in work actions or demonstrations? Sidanius (1999) defined legitimizing myths&mdash;an element of his social dominance theory&mdash;as &ldquo;values, attitudes, beliefs, causal attributions, and ideologies providing moral and intellectual justifications for social practices that either increase, maintain, or decrease levels of social inequality among social groups&rdquo; (p. 104). </p><p> The study found that the role of work ethic as a hierarchy-enhancing legitimizing myth appeared to depend upon what the individual was fighting to achieve when she or he joined the Fight for $15, i.e., emancipation, reciprocity, worker solidarity, or personal development. Stigma and stigmatization appeared to act as a mechanism to maintain group-based social hierarchy and thereby reinforce the legitimization of the work ethic myth. In addition, the research participants had low expectations of escaping poverty in the future and experienced anxiety about the temporal nature of a future positive financial situation, further legitimizing the work ethic narrative. Recommendations based on these findings are offered for theory and research, and policy and practice.</p><p>

This is about “eating in” with friends and others. Georg Simmel suggests that eating together is a profound intersection of the social and the individual, since what the individual eats, no one else can eat under any circumstances. This research uses qualitative interviews and participant observations to explore occasions where people inviting non-kin into their households for food and sociability. Using the work of Mary Douglas, Marjorie DeVault, and Pierre Bourdieu, I explore the concrete pleasures and labors of cooking and the discourses of food that shape the experience. When people invite friends, neighbors, or family members to partake of a meal within their household, they are engaging in forms of sociability, delineating lines of intimacy and distance. Chapters describe the events themselves, the shared meal and the sociable moments surrounding it, as well as the performances of self that are created through these everyday interactions. Narratives describe potlucks, dinner parties, buffets and barbecues as social forms that express something about the relationships being enacted. Each involves different degrees of formality, different roles and social expectations for participants, and different divisions of labor in the actual production of the food, the event, and social interactions. People choose to participate in these events as a way of constructing close relationships that are not necessarily rooted in the obligations associated with kinship. Commensality with friends and others is a key component to the ongoing construction of gender and class boundaries in contemporary America. Analyzing people's narratives along with texts like Emily Post's Etiquette and Martha Stewart's Entertaining, I suggest that domestic hospitality is a shifting social form, where an ethos of comfort and individuality often collides with more formal cultural templates of sociable meals. Among my interviewees, formal dinner parties remain important to upper middle class professionals, generally requiring invisible labor done by women, even when men cook. Others modify formality through buffets, asking guests to contribute to the meal, and using commercial foods. Potlucks are the most informal social form, with a potentially egalitarian division of labor and greater opportunities for diverse groups from different social strata to share food.

For centuries, American media has consistently romanticized the image of the Native American Indian. This persistence in producing these romanticized stereotypical and therefore negative images of "Indians" in American popular culture through comic books, graphic novels, computer video games and tattoo imagery is a static narrative that relegates "Indians" to America's past. Consequently, these negative images which have been circulated, reproduced and received for generations, are now deeply – some may even argue inextricably-imbedded in the American national and global meta-narrative. As a result, Native American's protestations regarding their misrepresentation have been repeatedly rendered moot due to the non-native's belief of possessing an already and always knowing of Native American Indian culture. American media and the dominant culture which allows and perpetuates the continued production of stereotypical images deployed through rhetorical and contextual acts, is a blatant reflection of the Euro American consciousness, or lack there of, regarding "Indians".