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Through the use of semi-structured and narrative interviewing, this study considers the perspectives of twelve newcomer women engaged in organizing and facilitating community activities with other newcomer women. The participants shared their views on the challenges faced by newcomer women, and the strength that these women access through community support. The study is grounded in an analysis of literature derived from such interdisciplinary sources as Peace and Conflict Studies, feminism, anthropology, and community-development. While newcomer women are faced with numerous hardships and losses, the participants – everyday peacemakers – emphasize the importance of empowerment. They engage in creating spaces for women to gather, form relationships, and benefit from economic and social development. Through this work, the women foster a form of ‘constrained empowerment’ that exists within the context of various structural barriers to well-being. Despite being constrained, this form of empowerment provides the foundation for social change, and social justice.

Through the use of semi-structured and narrative interviewing, this study considers the perspectives of twelve newcomer women engaged in organizing and facilitating community activities with other newcomer women. The participants shared their views on the challenges faced by newcomer women, and the strength that these women access through community support. The study is grounded in an analysis of literature derived from such interdisciplinary sources as Peace and Conflict Studies, feminism, anthropology, and community-development. While newcomer women are faced with numerous hardships and losses, the participants – everyday peacemakers – emphasize the importance of empowerment. They engage in creating spaces for women to gather, form relationships, and benefit from economic and social development. Through this work, the women foster a form of ‘constrained empowerment’ that exists within the context of various structural barriers to well-being. Despite being constrained, this form of empowerment provides the foundation for social change, and social justice.

Community gardens play a valuable role in creating places where people can socialize; share knowledge, experiences, and mutual interests; and improve food security. As previous research has shown, effective leadership is a prerequisite to community building in garden programs. However, relatively little research to date has examined the types of leadership and leadership practices that exist and work in community garden settings, and even less has focused on the role of leadership in facilitating social interactions and relationship building. This study aimed to gain a better understanding of leadership practices related to community building in the context of community gardens by exploring various stakeholders' perspectives on leadership. The primary purpose of this research was to: 1) explore knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding community building in different types of community gardens; 2) obtain a better understanding of stakeholders' views on leadership competencies and roles; 3) examine how informal leadership emerges and develops; and 4) identify how organizational structures and managerial schemes influence leadership practices and performance. Building upon transformational and adaptive leadership theories, this research focuses on the interactive process whereby leaders and various actors mutually influence each other to meet individual as well as organizational goals. This study employed a two-phase research design. The first phase consisted of collecting quantitative data through self-administered surveys from five groups of stakeholders – garden coordinators, executive directors, gardeners, representatives of allied organizations, and non-gardening neighbors – in four Virginia community garden programs located in Blacksburg, Salem, and Roanoke. The second phase entailed conducting semi-structured interviews with 21 participants and using cross-case analysis to interpret the results. The comparative case study included four community gardens characterized by different organizational structures and ties to their adjacent communities. The findings indicated that leadership performs an overarching role not only in fulfilling a garden program's mission, but also in facilitating social interactions and trust-based relationships between garden members and with wider communities. Good leadership practices in the context of community gardens implied engaging in inclusive and transparent communications with different entities on a regular basis and attending to the needs and motivations of each member. This study also shed light on the value of dedicated informal leaders to facilitate a garden's social function and to take on the maintenance and supervision of hands-on tasks on-site. Comparative analysis of the four cases revealed that different characteristics inherent to the community gardens, such as whether they are place-based or interest-based and whether their governance structure is formally or informally driven, are closely related to the leadership approaches that constitute best practices. These findings have implications for practitioners who organize and manage community organizations in a broader context, as well as community garden programs. / Doctor of Philosophy / Community gardens are places where people socialize and cultivate relationships, in addition to growing food. Even though leadership plays a major role in enhancing these functions, relatively little research to date focuses on leadership in the context of community gardens. This study reveals leadership practices related to social interactions and relationship building. This study also explored diverse experiences and opinions about leadership competencies and roles from the perspectives of garden coordinators, executive directors, gardeners, representatives of allied organizations, and non-gardening neighbors. To compare and contrast leadership practices in diverse types of programs, four community gardens were selected, each representing a different organizational structure and ties to their adjacent communities. 100 people involved in four Virginia community garden programs located in Blacksburg, Salem, and Roanoke completed surveys. 21 people of these respondents were interviewed to gain further information. The findings indicated that leadership performs an overarching role not only in fulfilling a garden program's mission, but also in facilitating social interactions and trust-based relationships with garden members and wider communities. Good leadership practices in the context of community gardens indicated engaging in inclusive and transparent communications with different entities on a regular basis and attending to the needs and motivations of each member. This study also shed light on the value of dedicated informal leaders to facilitate a garden's social function and to take on the maintenance and supervision of hands-on tasks on-site. Comparative analysis of the four cases revealed that different characteristics inherent to the community gardens, such as whether they are place-based or interest-based and whether their governance structure is formally or informally driven, are closely related to the leadership approaches that constitute best practices. These findings have implications for practitioners who organize and manage community organizations in a broader context, as well as community garden programs.

Despite natural beauty and strong ties to kinship and community, the Appalachian region has experienced economic and social disadvantages compared to other regions of the United States. Historically rural areas have been left by the wayside with little federal or state funding; rural areas received $401-$648 less per capita than their metropolitan counterparts in the years between 1994 and 2001(Kellogg Foundation, 2004). 42 percent of the population of Appalachia live in rural areas, compared to 20 percent nationally (Gohl, 2013). As of 2014 the poverty rate in Appalachia is 17.2 percent in comparison to the national average of 15.6 percent (ARC, 2016). Consequently Appalachian towns have been privy to anti-poverty policies and development work by the United States government for over half a century (Farmbry, 2014). But the anti-poverty measures did very little to change the region. In order to promote change and prosper as a region, many Appalachian towns have turned to using their cultural capital as a community development resource. As a tool in community building, cultural capital shifts the focus of a community away from its problems, towards its assets (Phillips and Shockley, 2010). The purpose of this study was to explore how two rural Appalachian towns use cultural capital to impact their community's viability. To do so the researcher used qualitative interview methods and focus groups to understand the experiences of three leadership groups in each community. The findings of this study provide insight into how communities identify and operationalize their cultural capital, and what impact it has on their economic and social prosperity. Additional research should be done on community viability in rural areas, including community visioning, and power dynamics of rural spaces. / Master of Science in Life Sciences

This thesis seeks to evaluate the progress of regional community building in Southeast Asia, which has been undertaken by the Association of Southeast Asians (ASEAN). The thesis analyses the extent to which there has been a shift from policies and processes associated with “old regionalism” (state-security-economic centred regionalism) towards those which are associated with “new regionalism” and a regional community (the widening of regionalism to non-state actors, and expansion of regional cooperation into new areas, and regional solidarity). The first half of the thesis demonstrates the persistence of “old regionalism,” based on a tendency to differentiate others as an external security threat in Thailand's bilateral relations. This tendency is driven by a deeply embedded historical legacy of differentiation, which is pursued by state actors for domestic political interests, as well as on-going bilateral disputes, and a militarised border. The second half of the thesis tests the significance of “new regionalism,” based on three case studies on civil society participation in regional community building. These case studies demonstrate how “new regionalism” is significant in form, rather than in substance, and how progress in community building is mainly driven by the more democratic ASEAN member states. Visible progress in community building includes the emergence of ASEAN-CSO meetings, an ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), and a transnational civil society network (TCSN), which is increasing society's regional awareness and society's participation in regionalism. However, substantive progress is lacking, due to the region's political diversity and the prioritization of regional unity over the realization of a people-oriented ASEAN Community. Thus, ASEAN community building is empty in substance, due to the continuation of politically motivated differentiation and border insecurity, symbolic meetings between states and CSOs, a powerless regional human rights body, and the remaining gap between regional declarations and policy implementation.

This dissertation examines the so-called revival of local traditions in reform-era China. It compares the different paths of adapting local traditions to market transitions and a changing political landscape. Three questions guide this study: 1) given state suppression of tradition, to what extent is power and society in localities still structured by traditional practices? 2) What determines how a particular community can provide support to individual members? 3) Does the cultural legacy of a community constrain how the community can respond to new situations? And how easily can a community reformulate the past to suit the present need? This study argues that local communities have actively used traditional practices to build community strength and deal with a variety of community issues arising from changes in the political landscape and socio-economic situations. Traditional practices are not nostalgia, but are the base for collective action and social organization in rural communities. The revival of traditional practices constructs community identity, defines how one relates to others, and instructs how one experiences the group to which one belongs. This study shows that the same sets of cultural practices and symbols with different arrangements can produce different degrees of community solidarity and strength. Variation on the use of traditional practices for building community in different localities is explained through an interactive model with a number of factors jointly shaping the community strength. These are the local legacy, the state, the new market economy, and interests of individual community members. These factors have different interactive relations in each local community, and result in different degrees of community strength. This study adds to our understanding of reform era China in two particular aspects. The first is to demonstrate how the collective aspect of traditional practices has worked in rural communities. The second is to demystify the effectiveness of Chinese culture on economic development. My study does not treat Chinese culture as a holistic system. Rather, it shows that in economic behavior there is nothing essentially Chinese, such as using lineage or family networks. Cultural utility, such as strong and effective lineage networks, is a result of complex interaction among top-down state forces, the market, local culture, and individual interests, and cannot be duplicated simply out of functional utility and rational calculation. / Sociology

This thesis describes the creation of the gay and lesbian community in Dallas, the fourth largest metropolitan area in the United States. Employing more than seventy-five sources, this work chronicles the important contributions the gay men and lesbians of Dallas have made in the struggle for gay civil rights. This thesis adds to the studies of gay and lesbian history by focusing on a region of the United States that has been underrepresented, the South. In addition, this work addresses the conflicts that arise within the community between men and women.

In recent years, a group known as “Incels” has caught the public eye. The group consists ofmen who believe themselves to be in “involuntary celibacy”, without the means to ever finda sexual or romantic partner. The community is predominantly based online, organized innetworks and forums, where a worldview consisting of anti-feminism, sexual determinismand a hatred of modern society thrives. But why is the community successful, and how doesso many men end up on the forums? In this thesis, the mechanisms of the incel-forum areexamined by conducting a netnography on one of the larges incel-forums, incels.is, andevaluate the findings through a sociological lens. With this perspective, it is possible tounderstand incels as a societal phenomenon rather than something unique andindividualistic; because even though incels are unusual in their extreme rhetoric and actions,the mechanisms that influence them are not. By understanding incels within the specificcontext of love and sex in modernity, where romantic and sexual relationships have becomean important source for a sense of self-worth and romance and sexuality is in a state ofanomie, the level of misery expressed by members of the group becomes understandable.To combat this misery the power of groups becomes evident, where the expressions ofcontrol, status within the group, establishing group borders and creating a sense ofbelonging all contribute to protecting and strengthening the community. For incels, theforum becomes a place where meaning is created. In a state of anomie, incels reject societyand turn to retreatism, where the group becomes the place where they create their own setof strict rules and morals for the members of the community to follow.

The role of hospitals as partners in community health improvement is changing, especially for nonprofit hospitals receiving tax exemptions in exchange for providing benefits to the community. There are examples of reported health improvement activities funded through hospitals' charitable donations, but there's a gap in the literature on the effect of policy and legislation on hospitals' investments in community building activities that address the social determinants of health. Grounded in eco-social theory, this quantitative, correlational study compared secondary data from CA's nonprofit hospitals' annual 2009 and 2012 reports to determine what, if any, changes have occurred in the hospitals' investments in community building since the 2010 implementation of the IRS' new community benefit standard. Matched-pair t test and chi-square goodness of fit tests were used to determine if there is a relationship between IRS regulations and how hospitals distribute their charitable dollars. Independent sample t test and ANOVA were run to determine if the characteristics of the hospitals studied were predictive of the changes found. Aside from a shift in the distribution of community building investments by types of activities, this study found no significant change in the use of nonprofit hospitals' community benefit funds to address the social determinants of health. Analysis did not indicate that current public policy supports hospitals' shift from sick-care institutions to institutions that promote population health. Rather, it revealed that CA's hospitals currently make only small financial contributions to activities that address the social determinants of health missing opportunities to leverage their resources to more effectively impact multi-sector efforts to improve population health and reduce health inequities.