This essay examines the limitations of societal gender norms and expectations of the late nineteenth-century and how the fictional character Ántonia Shimerda adheres to and fails to conform to them. In nineteenth-century America men and women were divided into two different spheres. Women were expected to stay within the four walls of the home and take care of cooking, housekeeping and raising the family’s children. The home was believed to be the only place where a woman could be truly happy. However, in the novel Ántonia proves that women can be happy performing physically demanding tasks outside of the expected sphere for women. To explore Ántonia’s gender fluidity this essay focuses on gender expectations and norms in the historical setting of the novel and analyzes the reasons for her to abandon her gender and the consequences this has in her life. The representation of a character that both adheres to and fails to conform to the nineteenth-century gender perceptions indicates the performative nature of gender. Cather creates a fluid gender in Ántonia, who proves to be both an independent and strong character that clearly illustrates the limitations of rigid gender norms.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Psychology / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Psychology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

In my dissertation, I argue that rationality, for real humans, is best understood as a strategy for communication and interacting in a social environment. In particular, I argue that humans are rational to the extent that they are able to understand and be understood by others, to the extent that they can give and accept reasons and explanations. This raises a pair of questions. The first concerns the source of the norms for giving and accepting reasons. The second is why we should accept and follow these norms if they are not guaranteed to preserve truth or optimize outcomes. I address the first question by arguing that these norms function as constraints on our imaginations, on the ways in which we can think about or understand the world. This goes beyond the traditional view that these norms govern acceptable inferences. Rather, I argue, the more significant function of these norms is to govern the structure of our reasoning in the sense of guiding considerations about the relevance and form of our understandings of situations. This suggests an answer to the second question. We ought to accept these norms because they are self-confirming. Following them allows us to communicate and interact with others who follow these same norms. In those endeavors that require interaction and coordination in a social group, being understood is frequently more important than being right. / text

Alcohol use in young adults requires continued attention due to the significant number of problems related to alcohol consumption. The alcohol use literature has explored a variety of constructs related to alcohol use in young adults including religiousness. The aims of the current study were to demonstrate the relationships between religiousness and alcohol use, explore the associations between religiousness and descriptive drinking norms, replicate the relationships between drinking norms and alcohol outcomes, and explore the mediating role of descriptive drinking norms on the relationships between religiousness and alcohol outcomes. Three hundred and thirtythree undergraduate students (M=19.72 years old; SD=1.1) completed questionnaires assessing religiousness, descriptive drinking norms, alcohol consumption, and alcoholrelated consequences. Religious commitment and comfort were inversely associated with alcohol consumption and alcohol-related consequences; religious strain was positively associated with alcohol-related consequences but not significantly related to alcohol consumption. Religious commitment and comfort were inversely associated with drinking norms for ones close friends; religious commitment was also inversely related to drinking norms for the average person his/her age. The significance of the relationships between drinking norms and alcohol outcomes depended on the specific drinking norm target; however the majority of drinking norms were positively associated with personal drinking behavior. Finally, perceptions of close friends drinking behavior at least partially mediated the relationships between religious commitment and comfort and alcohol outcomes. This study contributed to the current literature by examining multiple aspects of religiousness and alcohol use, exploring the role of descriptive drinking norms, and empirically testing a theoretical model explaining the role of religiousness in alcohol use.

<p>The subject of this paper is the mediation of norms about sexuality, from personnel working at the Swedish “ungdomsmottagning” (youth centre for service and counselling about sexual health), to the visiting teenagers. The purpose of the empirical study is to investigate how the staff understands the part of their work that implies giving advice about sexuality; how they work, which norms they have about youth sexuality and how they see their roll as advisers. To answer these questions, I have interviewed six staff members working at different youth centres. Three of them work as social counsellors and three as midwifes.</p><p>The main area of work at the centre consists of individual appointments, but another important task is meeting with school classes visiting for purposes of study. Young people turn to midwifes to test themselves for sexually transmitted deceases, for counselling about contraceptives, etc. They turn to the social counsellors to talk about problems, relationships, their identity etc. As advisors the staff tries to act on how the teenagers themselves view their situation. It does occur though, that they express their own opinions and mediate norms. These norms are, for example, that the purpose with having sex should be to experience pleasure, that sex should be mutual and that young people should take responsibility for their sexuality. In this way, the workers influence how youth manage their sexuality. They play a part in young people’s socialisation. The motif of their actions is to foster the physical and mental health of the youth.</p>

Using Taiwanese data this dissertation attempts to test five criminological theories against one another. Alternative models are derived from social control, strain, differential association, power-control, and conflict theories to obtain a critical test. Furthermore, social control, strain, differential association, and power-control theories assume the causes of official delinquency will be the same as the causes of self-reported delinquency. Conflict theory, focusing on judicial judgements, has been applied mainly to official delinquency. Various statistical techniques--crosstabulation, Pearson correlation, factor analyses, logit regression, ordinary least squares regression, and Chi-squares difference test computed from EQS--are used to identify the equations. These five theories are presumed to apply in the entire sample and in a male sample. The data show that social control theory and conflict theory are partly supported, but differential association, power control and strain theories are not. The best fitting model suggested in this analysis for an Asian society is comparable to prior models found in studies in the United States and Canada.

As civil conflicts continue to be the most prevalent form of war, women and children are disproportionately affected by intrastate violence. In response to such findings, the United Nations, at the behest of a transitional activist network, passed United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, which outlined how to include more women in formal security practices.Because of the normative qualities of the Resolution, I employ a norms framework to explore the properties and evolution of when and how women are part of peace agreements. Before exploring the norm of engendered security, I present a review of feminist security studies and how engendered security is understood using a gender lens. To first establish what a norm is, I developed a three-level approach which illuminates the principles, properties and policies that constitute a norm; I then apply this model to the norm of engendered security. I then use this norm to study peace agreements, and develop graphs and tables illustrating the varied levels of engendered security in different peace processes.Then, to address the ways in which this norm has evolved, I employ a norm lifecycle model which includes four stages: innovation, emergence, enactment and routinization. Subsequent chapters explore the first three phases of engendered security's development into a norm. This includes a discussion of Guatemala as a norm innovator, in which a strong domestic women's movement and feminist leaders promoted a high level of engendered security in their peace process. Norm emergence focuses on the agenda-setting of a Peacewomen's Network who promoted Resolution 1325; it includes an analysis of the developing discourses of security and women, culminating in global recognition of women's insecurity in conflict. The final chapter explores norm enactment and the ways in which norms become common practices and policies in various security-related institutions. This chapter concludes with a study of Sudan's two peace processes and the role the international community played in producing very different levels of engendered security.Ultimately, the views of leaders during peace processes, the presence of an organized women's movement and agenda and gender-conscious mediators seem to account for higher levels of engendered security.

The importance of good relationship among parties in the construction industry has been accepted as one of the central issues of an organisation's success. The growing acceptance to the Relational Contracting approaches that representing partnering, supply chain alliances and other types of collaborative working relationships shows how construction organisations are moving forward from the traditional adversarial culture to a more harmonious working environment. However the application of the Relational Contracting Norms in the context of national culture has received relatively little attention in the literature. This study attempts to fill this void by investigating how good relationships develop within construction projects in Malaysia. It also investigates the adaptability of the relational contracting norms in different cultural setting and explores whether similar relational contracting norms emerge in different projects before developing a relationship development model that is applicable to the academic and practitioners. By using qualitative approach, the main data was collected from 36 semi-structured in-depth interviews across four case studies. The results were validated by 20 follow-up interviews with selected respondents, two stages of expert interviews and cross-case analysis. This study found that good relationships within construction projects in the Malaysian construction industry developed from the interplay of twelve structural and relational dimensions that went through three stages of relationship development process in project setting. It highlights the significant importance of the value and emotion-related dimensions in developing good relationships. A relationship development model was produced based on these twelve dimensions (special contract directive, power, performance, trust, commitment, loyalty, personal relationships, emotions, values, social interaction, work inter-dependency and political connection). The research contributes to construction management literature by supporting the Transaction Cost Economics Theory and extends the Relational Contracting Theory. It proposes seven new dimensions that are incorporated in the newly proposed relationship development model. Although the study was conducted in a specific national culture, it is argued that the model is applicable to other context on the basis that spiritual, emotional and human components of the work experience could be learned by other cultures.

In many online communities, users reveal innovative and potentially valuable intellectual property (IP) under conditions that entail the risk of theft and imitation. Where there is rivalry and formal IP law is not effective, this would lead to underinvestment or withholding of IP, unless user-organized norms compensate for these shortcomings. This study is the first to explore the characteristics and functioning of such a norms-based IP system in the setting of anonymous, large-scale, and loose-knit online communities. In order to do so, we use data on the Threadless crowdsourcing community obtained through netnography, a survey, and a field experiment. On this basis, we identify an integrated system of well-established norms that regulate the use of IP within this community. We analyze the system's characteristics and functioning, and we find that the "legal certainty" it provides is conducive to cooperation, cumulative effects, and innovation. We generalize our findings from the case by developing propositions aimed to spark further research. These propositions focus on similarities and differences between norms-based IP systems in online and offline settings, and the conditions that determine the existence of norms-based IP systems as well as their form and effectiveness in online communities. In this way, we contribute to the literatures on norms-based IP systems and online communities and offer advice for the management of crowdsourcing communities.