M.Tech. / This study is based on the premise that awareness of active citizenship among South African citizens should be encouraged and can be developed through specific educational and skills interventions embedded in Visual Art learning programmes. South Africa‟s developing democracy requires active citizens with the capacity to disseminate values of equality, dignity, liberty and social justice, amongst other constitutional rights. Our country‟s history in the struggle for liberation encompasses a legacy of resistance, and screen-printed protest posters played an important role in communicating dissent towards the apartheid state (Seidmann 2009, Peffer 2009). My research examines the role of screen-printing as a particular graphic medium which is an organising tool to create awareness and communication. The project uses co-operative enquiry as a participatory action research method to facilitate the application of hand-made fine art screen-printed artworks and posters that support skills development, an understanding of self-identity and a sharing of skills that contribute to active citizenship. I present three visual art screen-printing projects that I facilitated from 2010 to 2011 at Artist Proof Studio (APS), an art centre in Johannesburg, whose mission is to inculcate aspects of active citizenship among the participating learners. I contend that the combination of all three screen-print projects presented to the group of students, leads to skills-development, awareness of personal identity and participation in community engagement projects which may enhance their ability to participate as active citizens and which in turn supports the mission statement of the education unit at APS. Such an intervention serves as a learning model that can further contribute to social, educational and economic redress among the participants at APS.

This study focuses on motivation -Involved in recycling behavior among residents of Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. Knowledge of recycling and how it was acquired, and the variables of environmental concern, economic incentive and the peer pressure were compared so that behavior could be distinguished that separated recyclers from nonrecyclers. Talcott Parsons' work in action theory and George Homans' work in exchange theory provide the theoretical foundation for my study. The research was approached in a qualitatively based design with interviews of twenty area residents. Demographic factors of age, sex, religious affiliation, church attendance, education and income of respondents were solicited. In addition to interviews, I administered a demographic survey. Recycling behavior was correlated positively with older age, convenience, female sex, higher levels of education, higher income, affiliation with liberal church denominations, and urban residence. It was negativley correlated with church attendance. Recyclers were better informed about environmental topics, especially those pertaining to recycling. Peer pressure was shown to have a positive effect on recyclers and recycling behavior. Recyclers were concerned about the quality of their environment, while nonrecyclers felt that the quality of the local environment was above average.

Natural resource development has tremendous potential to create inclusive economic growth in countries well-endowed with oil, mineral, and agricultural resources. At the same time, natural resource development can cause negative environmental externalities, and, in several cases, extractives companies can engage in labor abuse. The intersection of the government’s and the corporation’s interest can lie in Corporate Social Responsibility Projects.This thesis will analyze an alternative model of CSR: community development agreements (CDAs). CDAs are voluntary, or sometimes government mandated, agreements between the project developer and the project affected community that define company commitments to issues such as environmental impact mitigation, benefit sharing, and local employment, for example. The objective of this thesis is to review the theoretical underpinnings of CDA process, analyze the application of CDAs in several case studies, and develop a framework of best practices for CDAs based on those analyses.

This study explores the relationship between social workers’ perceptions of the HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) /AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) population and the effects on their service delivery. This study used a quantitative online survey with a self-administered questionnaire. Data was collected for 60 social worker participants for this study. Participants were provided a postcard to a link of the questionnaire that surveyed participants’ regarding demographics, general knowledge, knowledge about contracting HIV/AIDS, HIV/AIDS risk, and service delivery. Implications from the correlation coefficients identify a significant negative relationship between stigma and HIV/AIDS knowledge, suggesting that higher levels of stigma were present based on lower levels of HIV/AIDS knowledge. This study found that social workers were comfortable with PLWHA (people living with HIV/AIDS) and that social workers did not have strong levels of stigma towards PLWHA. A significant negative relationship between stigma and service delivery was found indicating that service delivery decreases based on the levels of stigma on behalf of the social worker. The findings of this study suggest further research and examination of social workers’ perception of PLWHA due to underrepresentation of social workers perceived stigma. The study also suggests that social workers need to increase their knowledge about PLWHA and the need for additional cultural competency trainings.

Rap music has been a major force in American culture since the 1970s. It can be political, uplifting, and celebratory. It can also be misogynistic and degrading to women, the focus of the current research. This paper begins with a brief history of the importance of music in the African American community. It then provides a history of rap music and major influences on its development through the decades. A systematic comparison of Billboard’s top 5 rap videos for 2004 and 2014 follows. This section, the core analysis, compares the lyrical and visual content in terms of the representation of African American women. Findings reveal three stereotypes—Jezebel, Sapphire, and Mammy/“Baby Mama”—dominate the presentation of African American women in the videos. Based on these three stereotypes, the videos present African American women as greedy, dishonest, sex objects, with no respect for themselves or others, including the children under their care. The women in the videos are scorned by men and exist to bring pleasure to them. Differences between 2004 and 2014 with respect to misogyny and degradation of a group that has historically suffered from dual disadvantage—because of both race and gender—are minimal. This research is a call to action to pay close attention to rap songs and rap music videos and to demand change both from rap artists and the companies that back them.

This dissertation is based on Sociocultural Theory, Social Learning Theory and Trauma Theory, as well as a new theoretical framework (Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome) which takes into account multigenerational trauma. Five research questions involving independent variables believed to predict violent behavior in African American male youth were investigated. The first three questions addressed stressors experienced by African Americans: violence witnessing, violence victimization, and daily urban hassles. The fourth and fifth questions concerned the sociocultural characteristics of racial socialization and prosocial attitudes toward respect. Participants were 200 African American male youth residing in inner Northeast Portland, Oregon who were recruited from four organizations: The Portland House of Umoja residential facility, McLaren Youth Correctional Facility, Donald E. Long Youth Correctional Facility and the Bridge Builders Gentlemen's Rites of Passage Program. The study included two groups of African American male youth ages 14 to 18, 100 of whom were incarcerated and 100 of whom were non-incarcerated. All five independent variables significantly predicted use of violence in separate regression equations. Multiple regression analyses revealed that the strongest predictor of the use of violence was victimization extent which alone accounted for 43.3% of the total variance in use of violence. In the second step of the regression, witnessing was added to the equation which increased the explained variance to 49.2%. The third and final step added prosocial attitudes toward respect to the regression accounting for a total of 51.2% of the variance of the extent of the use of violence. Variables excluded from the final regression equation were racial socialization and urban hassles which failed to significantly increase the prediction of the criterion variable of extent of use of violence. The data provide evidence that trauma characteristics of absent mothers, witnessing violence, experiencing violence, and feeling disrespected by others are key factors that can provide practitioners a better lens to use in assessment and treatment planning than the current response of punishment and incarceration for displays of violent behavior.

The Green Space Based Learning (GSBL) approach builds on a long-term partnership between a Research I university, surrounding community, and local school district, transforming underutilized community green space into an interactive educational tool to addresses national infrastructure and educational challenges. The GSBL approach is an educational platform for engaging K-12 and the local community in engineering design and construction of sustainable Green Infrastructure (GI) projects. GSBL was piloted as a part of a federally funded Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program in which teachers participated in two intensive 6-week summer research experiences and two consecutive academic year components. The summer experience focuses on the development of Science Technology Engineering and Mathematic (STEM) lessons and activities that meet Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards and the dissemination of the RET research experience. Approximately 400 K-12 students and teachers participated in both formal and informal educational activities that led to GSBL approach outputs throughout the academic year. These outputs included 4 Campus GI Challenge's for identifying areas of implementation and student driven GI design, the publication of 7 curricular products, the design and installation of 70 personal rain gardens and 8 bioretention cells (a type of GI), one of which was designed as a field scale research site within the Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS) district. The eight bioretention cells, seven of which are on three public school campuses and one located at a local community leader's house were designed and implemented as a result of university research, K-12 outreach, and community engagement. These sites were selected based on one or more hotspot factors (e.g. localized areas of flooding, access to site, presence of learning space, willingness to pay, property ownership, visibility of location) and designed to restore the hydrology and water quality to pre-development conditions. The bioretention cells were designed to capture a storm-event ranging from 1.27 cm to 2.54 cm and cost between $550 and $1,650 to construct depending on the design scope, scale, and installation methods. The installed bioretention systems route stormwater runoff to a ponding area sized approximately 2-5% of the total catchment area, are designed to capture between 31% and 67% of annual runoff (March 2010 - March 2015), and attenuate between 97,500 and 226,100 mg N annually. The educational sites were used to provide insight into hydraulic performance, maintenance requirements, and nutrient management impacts associated with bioretention design. Three of the bioretention cells (BR 1, BR 2, and BR 3) were used as a field research site for collecting bioretention plant performance data on 12 Florida native plant species, Coreopsis leavenworthii, Flaveria linearis, Salvia coccinea, Solidago fistulosa, Canna flaccida, Tradescantia ohiensis, Tripsacum dactyloides, Hymenocallis latifolia, Iris virginica, Sisyrinchium angustifolium, Spartina patens, and Equisetum hyemale. Mean baseline accumulated nitrogen concentration for tested species was 18.24 ± 5.76 mg N/g biomass. This compared to a harvested mean concentration rate of 12.28 ± 2.23 mg N/g biomass, a reduction of uptake capacity of nearly 33% after two growing seasons. This study found a similarity in mean total nitrogen concentration between baseline and harvested plant species for Flaveria linearis, Sisyrinchium angustifolium, Solidago fistulosa, Canna flaccida, Salvia coccinea, Spartina patens, and Coreopsis leavenworthii and a significant difference in means for Equisetum hyemale, Iris virginica, Salvia coccinea, and Tradescantia ohiensis. These harvested data were used to calculate mean total nitrogen concentration per square meter with Sisyrinchium angustifolium, Equisetum hyemale, Spartina patens, Solidago fistulosa, Salvia coccinea, Coreopsis leavenworthii, Iris virginica ranging from 286 mg N/m2 to 4,539 mg N/m2, and Canna flaccida, Flaveria linearis, Tradescantia ohiensis ranging from 12,428 mg N/m2 to 15,409 mg N/m2. Seven of the twelve species (Flaveria linearis, Equisetum hyemale, Iris virginica, Tripsacum dactyloides, Coreopsis leavenworthii, Salvia coccinea, Tradescantia ohiensis) displayed highly desirable results, ranking (>0.20x̅) when evaluated across 10 quantitative attributes and assessed for their applicability for the subtropical Tampa Bay area. This research developed a plant selection utility index (PSI) that allows for individual plant scoring based on qualitative and quantitative plant selection criteria. The qualitative PSI was used to evaluate 26 native and regionally friendly plant species commonly found within the subtropical Tampa Bay climate to provide an example and act as a template for selecting plant species. The qualitative PSI scores categorized the identified plant species as highly desirable (n=4, PSI ≥ 80), Flaveria linearis, Tripsacum dactyloides, Salvia coccinea, and Chamaecrista fasciculata; moderately desirable (n=15, 80 > PSI ≥65), Solidago fistulosa, Hymenocallis latifolia, Canna flaccida, Tradescantia ohiensis, Arachis glabrata, Mimosa strigillosa, Callicarpa Americana, Penta lanceolata, Monarda punctate, Muhlenbergia capillaris, Helianthus debilis, Glandularia tampensis, Silphium asteriscus, Stachytarpheta jamaicensis, and Coreopsis lanceolata; and least desirable (n=7, PSI < 65) Spartina patens, Equisetum hyemale, Sisyrinchium angustifolium, Iris virginica, Coreopsis leavenworthii, Myrcianthus fragrans, Zamia puila. The quantitative PSI was used to evaluate attributes of 11 of the 26 species within a 32.5 m2 field-scale bioretention system (BR 1, BR 2, and BR 3) ter two-growing seasons. The tested species scored as highly desirable (n=2, PSI ≥ 70) for Salvia coccinea, Tradescantia ohiensis; moderately desirable (n=5, 70 > PSI ≥ 50) for Equisetum hyemale, Sisyrinchium angustifolium, Solidago fistulosa, Iris virginica, Coreopsis leavenworthii, and least desirable (n=4, PSI < 50) for Spartina patens, Flaveria linearis, Canna flaccida, Hymenocallis latifolia. Both qualitative and quantitative scores were combined on a 0-200 scale to provide a list of recommended species based, ranking from high to low: Salvia coccinea (PSI=160), Tradescantia ohiensis (PSI = 148), Sisyrinchium angustifolium (PSI =127), Flaveria linearis (PSI = 125), Solidago fistulosa (PSI = 124), Iris virginica (PSI =121), Coreopsis leavenworthii (PSI = 117), Equisetum hyemale (PSI = 114), Canna flaccida (PSI = 104), Spartina patens (PSI = 103), Hymenocallis latifolia (PSI =90).

Despite their prevalence throughout the United States, summer camps are rarely considered as businesses or high-functioning not-for-profit entities. This paper explores the camping industry with a focus on not-for-profit camps. It adapts typical not-for-profit efficiency metrics to camps in order to demonstrate that powerful missions are not always enough to keep not-for-profits in operation. The paper examines two members of the Association of Hole in the Wall Camps which serve children with serious and life-threatening illnesses. Ultimately, this paper is a tool for donors to observe how organizational performance is a crucial factor when donating to organizations with similar mission.

This analysis seeks to understand the power of social media to create sustainable social movements. The 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle were one of the first internet-supported acts of protest and illustrate the power of the Internet and social media to bring together diverse coalitions of actors and maintain decentralized power structures. Next, the analysis studies the non-profit advocacy organization Invisible Children and the recent media explosion of their Kony 2012 campaign to make sense of how uses of the Internet have expanded since 1999. The Kony 2012 case illustrates the power of committed networks in disseminating information but also alludes to some of the new challenges social media presents. Ultimately, this analysis concludes that social media has simultaneously empowered and crippled social media, calling for an intentioned use of the Internet applications, strong leadership, and cultural framing to sustain mobilization.

Neoliberal restructuring of the state has had destructive effects on families and children living in urban poverty, compelling them to adapt to the loss of social welfare and demolition of the public sphere by submitting to new forms of surveillance and disciplining of their individual behavior. A carceral-welfare state apparatus now confines and controls the bodies of expendable laborers in urban spaces, containing their threat to the neoliberal socioeconomic order through criminalization and workfare assistance, resulting in a new symbiosis of prison and ghetto. The resulting structures of punishment, police surveillance, and criminalization primarily surround African Americans living in high poverty and low income urban neighborhoods. Criminalization intrudes into the everyday lives of African American youth as well, pushing them out of school and into the criminal (in)justice system at an early age. This process may appear natural and inevitable to those experiencing it, but it is really the result of political, economic, historical, and social forces, including institutional discourses, public policies, and investment in law enforcement at the expense of community development and social welfare. This dissertation presents the results of five years of engaged ethnographic collaborative research with African American youth while I was volunteer director of Moses House, a community youth arts organization based in Sulphur Springs, a high poverty neighborhood of Tampa, Florida. Grassroots nonprofit organizations such as Moses House are often created and guided by dedicated community leaders, but social marginalization can prevent them from securing resources and labor necessary to sustain an organization. Engaged anthropologists can use forms of community engagement to leverage university resources, social networks, and student service-learning to assist grassroots organizations, in the process learning firsthand about the political, economic, and social forces that produce and reproduce the injustices against which such organizations and their communities struggle. As a doctoral student in an applied anthropology graduate program, I was able to assist the organization in revitalizing itself and applying for IRS nonprofit status, as well as to advocate for the very existence and viability of the organization itself in opposition to a variety of antagonistic forces. Through the process of doing social activism on behalf of the organization, I was able to establish solidarity with people in the community who were socially networked through Moses House. As an outsider to a community rightfully suspicious of outsiders, especially ones who are white, gaining the confidence of residents was a prerequisite for doing engaged research that intended to explore how African American youth living in a high poverty neighborhood experience marginalization and criminalization, and how they can communicate their experiences through their own production of creative media. In a variety of mentoring, advocating, and parenting roles, I was able to build empathic, trustful relationships and observe how various policies, procedures, practices, and institutional discourses are criminalizing African American youth in nearly all aspects of their everyday lives. Accompanying Moses House youth through various educational, recreational, and governmental agencies and institutions, I learned with them not only how they were being seriously harmed by the policies of the carceral-assistential state, but also how they were able at times to resist or avoid the system to their own advantage. Using critical dialogue while in conversation with Moses House youth, I nurtured an ongoing analysis of their everyday reality in order to reveal what is criminalizing them and constraining their agency, in the process collaboratively constructing transformative activities, practices, and educational programs that were based on the youths' own aspirations toward social justice, personal success, and community betterment. In establishing social justice based approaches to improving community well-being, grassroots organizations such as Moses House can be understood as spaces that foster and support critical dialogue, social activism, and cultural production and as sites of collective struggle against racism, poverty, and criminalization. University-community engagement can shed light on these social problems, provide research and analysis that is not only rigorous but meaningful and relevant to the community, offer technical assistance for nonprofit leadership, management, and fund development, as well as assist in designing and implementing community-based alternatives and solutions to community-identified problems.