Matching Items (41)
Description
ABSTRACT The goal of this study is to use neoclassical realist methodology to add to the growing body of literature explaining why America is failing so horribly in its media war with militant Islamists. The general argument being conveyed is that inconsistencies in America's ostensibly liberal diplomacy strategy leaves it open to criticism and deprives it of the credibility necessary to muster an adequate rebuttal. To accomplish its aim, the analysis begins with an investigation into the origins of America's current liberal rhetorical approach. It is believed that with this sort look beneath the surface of the idealistic romanticism U.S. citizens have been continually conditioned to embrace, it becomes apparent that the grandiose pronouncements made by America's national political elite are actually based on rather dubious foundations. The evaluation then turns to a more focused rhetorical examination, which spans from the start of the so-called Arab Spring uprisings on December 18, 2010 to the delivery of President Obama's highly publicized State Department address regarding these demonstrations on May 19, 2011, in order to go behind the White House's official statements and uncover what truly motivated its policy decision making. The belief here is that a close review of the administration's abysmal performance during this historic period assists in making the inadequacy of America's current rhetorical narrative all the more evident. Finally, once the contradictory nature of contemporary American liberalism has been fully demonstrated, the last section concludes with an effort to explain why replacing America's liberal strategy with a straightforward realist stance is best for both American's relations with the Muslim world and America's overall security.
ContributorsThomas, John H., III (Author) / Mean, Lindsey (Thesis advisor) / Ramsey, Ramsey E (Committee member) / Nadesan, Majia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The economic crisis in 2008 triggered a global financial shockwave that left many wondering about the origins of the crisis. Similarly, in the early twentieth century, Wall Street faced catastrophic losses that set the stage for the Great Depression, which resulted in a decade of economic depression, leaving millions of people out of work. Using discourse analysis to understand how economic crisis is framed through the mainstream press, this research project analyzed the stock market crash of 1929-1932 and the mortgage-backed financial crisis of 2007-2009 through the lens of two mainstream publications, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Comparative analysis focused on explanations for the causes of the crises, attributions of blame, culprits, and proposed solutions emerging in news coverage of the 1929 panic and the 2007-2009 financial crises. Mainstream media accounts of the 2007-2009 crisis are then compared with `alternative media' accounts of crisis causes, culprits, and solutions. These comparative analyses are contextualized historically within economic paradigms of thought, beginning with the classical economists led by Adam Smith and transitioning to the Chicago School.
ContributorsPrice, Eun (Author) / Nadesan, Majia (Thesis advisor) / Gruber, Diane (Committee member) / Ramsey, Ramsey E (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Conducting an auto-ethnographic power analysis of a Service Industry Union (SIU) I use a feminist methodology to examine the ways women of color workers are accounted for, empowered, erased, silenced, or disempowered within advocacy organizations. As I examine the micro and macro structures of power between the SIU and the grocery store, janitorial, slaughterhouse, and union workers who compose this institution, I write with the goal of amplifying the voices silenced and lost in the translation of power in our everyday lives. Critical to this analysis are notions of advocacy, home, voice, and empowerment.
In “Voices: Power and Powerlessness in Experiences of the Self,” I write about my authoethnographic journey and the complicated sense of power I had within this organization, which often became a source of penalty. Throughout my work, I play on the etymology of advocacy—to give voice to another—and the idea of advocacy groups as “voices” for the seemingly disempowered. Concepts of voice and voiceless-ness, who can give voice to another, how, and if we should even be a voice for others, are a constant theme. In “Shadowing: Blurring the lines between Empowerment and Disempowerment Roles,” I explore moments where my translator role as a bilingual, among other roles, became imperative to my understanding of my own actions and those of others within the SIU’s advocacy. Lastly in “Speaking and Speaking Over: Getting tangled in the Web of the Relations of Power,” and in “Erasure and Representation: the Silences between the lines,” I capture a few of the ways the voices of others and myself were either amplified, spoken for, or erased whilst the Union attempted to advocate (“give voice to,” “call forth”) for workers using what I perceived to be a classic business-unionism model.
From my observations of the relations between workers and the union employees, I argue that the SIU operated within systems of power, and was often on par with corporations in terms of power. Then, I theorize that what is needed is a third-world feminist approach to unity and unions that seeks to dismantle all systems of oppression and reorganize the systems of power to end all kinds of oppression—not just class-based, worker versus corporation, oppression. This would be a solution to the problems of speaking for, silencing, and erasure that the union encountered. As I use a full-force combination of theory and activism in my “Praxis” chapter to make such claim, I delve into feminist of color ideals of solidarity. In a feminist solidarity, individuals are united by their differences, not by homogeneous experience or identity. I advocate for a third-world feminist approach to unionism through feminist solidarity, and I emphasize love and friendship as the backbone of such an endeavor.
In “Voices: Power and Powerlessness in Experiences of the Self,” I write about my authoethnographic journey and the complicated sense of power I had within this organization, which often became a source of penalty. Throughout my work, I play on the etymology of advocacy—to give voice to another—and the idea of advocacy groups as “voices” for the seemingly disempowered. Concepts of voice and voiceless-ness, who can give voice to another, how, and if we should even be a voice for others, are a constant theme. In “Shadowing: Blurring the lines between Empowerment and Disempowerment Roles,” I explore moments where my translator role as a bilingual, among other roles, became imperative to my understanding of my own actions and those of others within the SIU’s advocacy. Lastly in “Speaking and Speaking Over: Getting tangled in the Web of the Relations of Power,” and in “Erasure and Representation: the Silences between the lines,” I capture a few of the ways the voices of others and myself were either amplified, spoken for, or erased whilst the Union attempted to advocate (“give voice to,” “call forth”) for workers using what I perceived to be a classic business-unionism model.
From my observations of the relations between workers and the union employees, I argue that the SIU operated within systems of power, and was often on par with corporations in terms of power. Then, I theorize that what is needed is a third-world feminist approach to unity and unions that seeks to dismantle all systems of oppression and reorganize the systems of power to end all kinds of oppression—not just class-based, worker versus corporation, oppression. This would be a solution to the problems of speaking for, silencing, and erasure that the union encountered. As I use a full-force combination of theory and activism in my “Praxis” chapter to make such claim, I delve into feminist of color ideals of solidarity. In a feminist solidarity, individuals are united by their differences, not by homogeneous experience or identity. I advocate for a third-world feminist approach to unionism through feminist solidarity, and I emphasize love and friendship as the backbone of such an endeavor.
ContributorsHernandez, Carolina Renne (Author) / Behl, Natasha (Thesis director) / Watrous, Lisa (Committee member) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Every day we pass people without thinking everyone has a story. If an individual looks “normal,” any struggles faced living with an invisible disability are left without words or thoughts due to the dominant norm—ableism. Conversely, a more visible disability may not be dismissed as quickly. Who are unseen, ignored, and misunderstood are those who live with invisible disabilities not only in a dominant able-bodied society, but also within academic scholarship as well, because they do not fit into the dominant definition of disability. In turn, binaries form between power relations and within knowledge production that create exclusion. This thesis is an intersectional analysis on expanding the definition of disability, specifically invisible disability, in order to deconstruct, challenge, and transform the hegemonic conceptualization of disability and break binaries in order to give voice to ignored and misunderstood narratives of invisible disabilities as well as foster and create nuanced understanding within knowledge production and power itself. I particularly use an autoethnographic approach to conduct this analysis of my own everyday, lived experience as a young, mixed race woman living with an invisible disability, or chronic illness, on how ableism operates in the medical sphere and at the academy, further exploring what it means to be a “good” or “bad” chronic illness patient and categorized and labeled by the stigmas attached to the definition of disability.
ContributorsGarcia, Jordan Marie (Author) / Behl, Natasha (Thesis director) / Watrous, Lisa (Committee member) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
International relations scholarship in recent years has given great attention to the rise of China. In the developing countries of the Global South, China’s presence has increased significantly, challenging the dominating Western presence that existed hitherto. Of the developing regions, Oceania often warrants the least attention, as it receives the lowest share of trade, aid, and investment under China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Despite this marginal role in China’s purview, international scholars offer the same, unbending conclusion: China is set out to challenge Western leadership and gain great power status in the region by incorporating countries into its sphere of influence. At the same time, Oceania has spawned anti-status quo sentiment against dominant western paradigms through the adoption of alternative regionalisms. Scholars attribute the rising anti-status quo sentiment to a ‘China Alternative,’ yet Pacific Islands continue to adopt positions counter to Chinese political and development tenants. In order to investigate the implications of China’s rise in Oceania, I depart from traditional realist and liberal models of the balance of power and soft power capabilities to explain international relations in Oceania. Through a constructivist theoretical framework conformed by an analytical process of Global IR, I set out to explain that anti-west sentiment does not signal the rise of China as a regional hegemon, but rather it grants more autonomy to the Pacific Islands that is sustained by islander agency.
ContributorsSan Nicolas, Juan (Author) / Behl, Natasha (Thesis director) / Lee, Sangmi (Committee member) / School of Social and Behavorial Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-12
Description
In this undergraduate thesis, I explore the relationship between politics and popular culture through an ethnography of Justice League Arizona, a cosplay ensemble devoted to costumed civic activism. While existing scholarship addresses cosplay ensembles and political theory, there is very little that examines how the act of cosplay can be a form of politics and what the impact of that interpretation has on both individuals and the community at large. Through both participant observation and interviews with members of the ensemble, I discovered that cosplay has the ability to intensify aspects of the self, the ability to expose new aspects of the self, and the ability to bring one closer to a particular character. I also found cosplay to be political through the sensibility and situated knowledge that proves to be in practice during cosplay, ultimately having the power to be used as a form of political resistance.
ContributorsBurrus, Ella Rene (Author) / Mack, Robert (Thesis director) / Behl, Natasha (Committee member) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor) / Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
The increasing job opportunities abroad as spa therapists attract significant numbers of young Indonesian women. Although the placement process is conducted by licensed recruitment agents and supervised by government officials, migrant workers might be at high risk of experiencing work exploitation and physical or sexual abuse. To investigate the phenomenon of documented, yet still vulnerable, female migrant workers, this research conducts interviews with several former spa therapists who were working in Malaysia and some civil servants. This study highlights that individual or personal resistances could be a collective political struggles. Specifically, this research connects individual experiences with the bigger picture of social, economic, and political condition, which, together, constitutes a gender-based labor migration system. To do this, the research employs qualitative-interpretive research methods through discourse analysis and in-depth and open-ended interviews. It also employs an intersectional feminist approach to data analysis to reveal how Indonesian female migrant workers are marginalized and oppressed and the power dynamics at play.
ContributorsNabila, Asma Zahratun (Author) / Colbern, Allan (Thesis advisor) / Behl, Natasha (Thesis advisor) / Goksel, Nisa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
When one pursues a Bachelor's degree they are generally under the impression that the degree they are after will provide them with the necessary skills and knowledge to enter their career at entry-level. This is not the case for all students in every degree program. Many times Bachelor's degree holders find it difficult to enter the field. The goal of this paper is to identify gaps or discrepancies between Arizona State University's (ASU’s) Applied Computing (ACO) - Cybersecurity program's learning objectives and industry requirements for entry-level positions in the cybersecurity industry. The data used in this textual analysis were gathered from several popular employment websites and ACO course syllabi. Using this relatively small data pool several gaps were identified between the cybersecurity industry; the private and public sectors job listing requirements; and ASU's ACO course objectives. By analyzing the gaps found in the data, I have been able to provide many suggestions for ASU and some for the cybersecurity industry to implement to better prepare ACO students for entry-level cybersecurity industry positions.
ContributorsRodriquez, Maria (Author) / Nadesan, Majia (Thesis director) / Jones, Kim (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences (Contributor)
Created2022-12
Description
ABSTRACT
Despite a recognized need for corporations to take greater social responsibility, such responsibility is often lacking in the decisions of corporate America. This lack of attention to social responsibility has numerous implications, not least for the US workforce. Additionally, the workforce itself has a potential role to play in implementing social responsibility. Workers are partly responsible for actions causing negative effects; however, organizations tend to avoid addressing the negative effects as a form of organized irresponsibility. This dissertation examines decisions and actions related to the worker, their work roles, and within their organization. It aims to understand to what extent workers can function as change agents in aligning their organizations with social responsibility as it relates to organizational missions. The methodological approach used to gather data for this dissertation is Socio-Technical Integration Research (STIR), and the framework used to analyze the data is Midstream Modulation. The dissertation advances the STIR methodology in several respects as a result of studying technology startups with a focus towards organizational effects. These advances include measuring how modulations within individual workers’ decisions have outcomes at the organizational level or across multiple departments. Examples of such “organizational modulations” can be seen in two of the three studies at the core of this dissertation. Additionally, I demonstrate that multiple reflexive modulations can be involved in modulation sequences and that modulation sequences can be nested in relation to one another.
Furthermore, I present the Collaborative Change Agent Model, which may possibly be utilized to further discuss decisions and embed concepts such as social responsibility and Responsible Innovation in an individual worker’s decision-making process.
ContributorsZaveri, Shivam Rajeshbhai (Author) / Fisher, Erik (Thesis advisor) / Nadesan, Majia (Committee member) / Maynard, Andrew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
The issue of sex trafficking has been heightened the last several years but has deep history with racial injustice. Black women are disproportionately the victims of sex trafficking and criminalized in prostitution. However, within nonprofit agencies that help provide services and resources to these Black women, the women providing services do not proportionality represent the population being served. To investigate this problem of the lack of diversity and representation within antitrafficking organizations, the research conducts interviews with several Black women who are working for an antitrafficking organization. This study highlights the importance of representation within an organization to have better outcomes and participation of services without tokenizing the Black woman being hired. The research connects the individual experiences of being a token within an organization with the racial roots of sex trafficking to highlight the importance of representing the individuals being served. In order to accomplish this, the research employs qualitative interpretive research methods through semi structured interviews. It employs a critical race feminist theory approach to data analysis to show how Black women in antitrafficking organizations are tokenized but struggling to balance being the most likely to represent the women they are trying to serve.
ContributorsTomlinson, Madeleine (Author) / Behl, Natasha (Thesis advisor) / Smith-Cannoy, Heather (Thesis advisor) / Redeker-Hepner, Tricia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023