Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
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Description
In an effort to understand and improve interactions between homeless young adults and the nonprofit organizations that serve them, I engaged in a long-term, qualitative, participatory action project. My project involved input from homeless young adults, nonprofit organizations, volunteers/staff, and communication scholarship. While taking a community-engaged, participatory, and qualitative approach, I focused on the interactions between youth and the organizations. Particularly, I drew on homeless young adult experiences to inform services and illuminate compassion within the context of the nonprofit organizations. In the end, this project extends the individual model of compassion to include presence, identifies potential ruptures in the process of compassion, and models compassionate dynamics in organizations. It also articulates a method I call pragmatic fieldwork, a qualitative and pragmatic approach to participatory action research. Each of these outcomes speaks to varied community interests, from theoretically nuancing scholarly models of compassion to informing policy in the interest of more effectively and compassionately serving homeless youth.
ContributorsHuffman, Timothy (Author) / Trethewey, Angela (Thesis advisor) / Tracy, Sarah J. (Committee member) / Hagar, Mark (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This narrative study sought to understand the socialization experiences of Hispanic entrepreneurs. While several studies have explored socialization and work-life wellness, few have focused specifically on Hispanics or entrepreneurs. A total of 25 participants were formally interviewed for this study including 16 entrepreneurs and 9 of their family members. Data were also collected through participant observation in which 210 participants were observed at several venues. Participants were recruited from three Southwestern states including: Arizona, Colorado, and Texas. The study employed qualitative interpretive methods to collect and analyze data. Research questions focused on the socialization experiences Hispanic entrepreneurs' reported, how they narrated the ways in which these experiences influenced their work-lives as entrepreneurs, and what they and their family members reported about the relationship between family and work. Results indicate Hispanic entrepreneurs were exposed to work at very young ages, acquired a variety of skills (e.g. sales and leadership) that transferred to their careers as entrepreneurs, and developed coping skills which helped them deal with business and personal hardships. Moreover, participants noted the ways in which faith, positive self-talk, and emotional labor played a role in their work lives. Finally, this research extends current constructions of care and what constitutes work and quality family time.
ContributorsMontoya, Yvonne Jay (Author) / de la Garza, Sarah Amira (Thesis advisor) / Tracy, Sarah J. (Committee member) / Margolis, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
More than simply a source of income, work has become a central source of identity (Beder, 2000; Ciulla, 2000; Clair, McConnell, Bell, Hackbarth & Mathes, 2008; Muirhead, 2004). motivating scholars to engage in a plethora of studies examining the impact of work as a way of defining ourselves, ranging from identification with the organization (Scott, Corman, & Cheney, 1998) to the influence of work on non-work lives (Kirby, Wieland & McBride, 2006). And yet, in such volatile political and economic times, individual's identities as worker are threatened, spurring questions about how to decenter the meaning of work in our lives (Rushkoff, 2011). Despite young people's roles as organizational members, few communication scholars have considered the organizational experiences of youth as a productive area for research and theory (for exception see Myers & Sadaghiani, 2010). I adopt a discursive approach to unpack the multiple ways that discourses, at interpersonal, organizational and social levels, impact and influence youths' identity construction process (Ashcraft & Mumby, 2004; Fairhust & Putnam, 2004). I empirically demonstrate how discourses of work operate simultaneously at multiple levels, interacting and overlapping to position youth as workers. Analysis is based on interviews with youth, ages 12 to 21, participating in a popular national nonprofit organization that serves over four million youth each year. In addition to 49 one-on-one formal interviews, I observed 50 hours of a worker preparation program, which serves as an important context for priming participants and situating our conversations about work. Practically, this project illustrates the influence of organizations to mediate the relationship between discourse and identity. Methodologically, I further clarify discursive analysis as a method by explicitly articulating a concrete framework by which to identify micro-, meso-, and macro-levels of discourse. I also present a qualitative instrument for interviewing youth. Theoretically, this research offers an innovative and necessary expansion to the scope of organizational research by highlighting youth as current and future workers, pointing to the ways they are already engaged in work-life negotiation practices and considering how their micro-discursive practices serve to decenter the organization and make work and family meaningful.
ContributorsWay, Amy Kathleen (Author) / Trethewey, Angela (Thesis advisor) / Tracy, Sarah J. (Committee member) / Karin, Marcy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The global spread of body techniques, such as Yoga, meditation, Tai Chi, Qigong, and non-competitive martial arts have been diffusing into socio-cultural spaces and institutions outside of their native contexts. Despite the ubiquity of cultural borrowing and mixing, the much needed conceptualization and theorization of cultural appropriation is nearly absent within intercultural communication studies. This ethnographic study examines one community of martial artists who practice Aikido, a martial art originating from Japan, in the United States to explore how members negotiate and appropriate its cultural elements in their practice, how the practice binds the dojo community, and how the practice cultivates an embodied dialogic practice. The study takes an ethnographic approach that uses qualitative methods (e.g. participant-observation and interviews). It is also an experiment with methodology comprised of two moment: the first taking an informative and a communicative view of ethnography, and the second, a performative approach. The ethnographic account transposes the Aikido technique - 1) attack, 2) evasion, 3) centralization, and 4) neutralization - onto the chapters as a way to co-produce the world textually rather than extract representations from it. At the dojo Shining Energy, corporeal, material and semiotic components coexist to produce both defined and latent relationalities that open fields and spaces not predetermined by meaning, law, and authority. The transmission of skill takes places through the relational openings in the rich structured environment during practice that each member helps to generate regardless of their skill level. Aikido practice cultivates a latent form of coping strategy where practitioners learn to flourish in midst of hostile situations while maintaining their own presence and identity. Practitioners persist in the practice of Aikido to submit themselves to the processes to engage their sinews, senses and neural paths to keep up with the particulars of situations so that perception, control, and action to run together like the "flash of lightening" to open up inert reality into a process. The practice of Aikido points to a space and time beyond the movement forms to intimate and reveal new ways of not only moving in the world, but also moving the world!
ContributorsKong, Jie-Young (Author) / Broome, Benjamin J. (Thesis advisor) / Tracy, Sarah J. (Committee member) / Ballestero Salaverry, Andrea (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts or actions are on the rise in adolescents (National Institute of Mental Health, 2015; Bridge, Asti, & Horowitz, 2015). Parents, school administrators, and therapists are searching for resiliency factors with in at-risk groups to aid students in need. In previous work, Luthar and Zigler (1992) reported that intelligent youth are more resilient than less intelligent youth under low stress conditions but they lose their advantage under high stress conditions. This study examined whether intelligence (reflected in grade point average; GPA) and maladaptive (internalizing and externalizing symptoms) behaviors are negatively related in adolescents, and tested whether level of stress, reflected in emotion regulation and friendship quality, moderated that association. It also probed whether the relationships differ by gender. Sixth-graders (N=506) were recruited with active parental consent from three middle schools. Adolescents completed self-report questionnaires Regarding demo graphics, maladaptive behaviors, emotion regulation, and friendship quality, and GPA data were collected from the school. Regression analyses found that GPA was negatively related to externalizing symptoms. Girls with poor friendship communication report significantly higher maladaptive behaviors. This relation was more pronounced for girls with high GPAs, as predicted. Results support the theory that intelligent female adolescents are more reactive under adverse circumstances. Future efforts should follow students through middle school into high school to evaluate whether friendships remain important to adjustment, hold for boys as well as girls, and have implications for relationship interventions.
ContributorsGonzales, Ashlyn Carol (Author) / Luthar, Suniya (Thesis director) / Davis, Mary (Committee member) / Infurna, Frank (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
The Burning Man Festival, a free-spirited yet highly sophisticated social experiment celebrating "radical self expression and radical self reliance" is well-known for its large-scale and highly interactive public art installations. For twenty-five years, Burners (as festival participants are called) have been creating and displaying amazing works of art for the annual event, which currently takes place in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. In the desert, Burners build a temporary city, appropriate the open space to serve as their "tabula rasa" or "blank canvas," and unleash their creative potential in the name of "active participation" and social civility. In the process, they produce public art on a scale unprecedented in United States history. This dissertation, a visual and narrative ethnography, explores the layers of aesthetic and social meanings Burners associate with public art. Told in narrative form, this project utilizes "in situ" field notes, photographic field notes, rhetorical analyses of art installations, thematic analysis of Burner storytelling, and writing as a method of inquiry as means for investigating and understanding more fully the ways Burners create, display, and consume public art. Findings for this project indicate Burners value public art beyond its material presentation. Preparing for, building, celebrating, and experiencing aesthetic transformation through the engagement of public art all are viewed as valuable"art" experiences at Burning Man. Working in tandem, these experiences also produce profound feelings of connection and collaboration in the community, suggesting Burning Man's methods for producing public art could serve as model to follow, or points for reflection, for other groups wishing to use public art and other forms of material expression to bring their members closer together.
ContributorsStewart, Karen Ann (Author) / Goodall, Jr., Harold (Thesis advisor) / Margolis, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Tracy, Sarah J. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010