Browsing by Subject "Violence"
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Item A cross-national analysis of political violence: a model specification and its empirical test(Texas Tech University, 1979-12) Yough, Syng NamNot availableItem A long quavering chant : peonage labor camps in the rural-industrial South, 1905-1965(2013-05) Reynolds, Aaron Kyle; Jones, Jacqueline, 1948-; Bsumek, Erika; Sidbury, James; Falola, Toyin; Bremen, BrianThis dissertation is a study of social and environmental conditions inside rural industrial labor camps throughout the U.S. South between 1905 and 1965. The use of peonage labor, i.e., the coercion of labor against ones’ will through indebtedness or violence impacted nearly a fourth of rural workers in the postbellum south, particularly in isolated railroad construction sites, lumber operations, turpentine camps, and commercial vegetable farms. Though employers’ various peonage labor regimes changed within the context of the camps’ physical environment and evolved over time, they continually took advantage of marginalized social groups, immigrants, African-Americans, and the poor. The relative inability of workers, their families, and reformers to prosecute employers and foremen for labor abuses stemmed from the collusion of local law enforcement and the indifference of federal government officials. Ultimately, broader market forces of globalization and technology changed peonage labor regimes, not the enforcement of federal statues outlawing the practice.Item Acculturation stress and criminal attitudes as risk factors for externalizing behaviors in recently immigrated adolescents(2017-06-20) Munoz Gonzalez, Carla G.; Venta, Amanda; Varela, Jorge G.Violence risk assessments may fall short with ethnic minority populations because they fail to consider unique contextual and individual factors. In addition, the utility of these instruments may be diminished when administered to ethnic minorities for whom the measure was not originally developed, potentially leading to deleterious effects on the individuals and social system more broadly. This study examined (1) the concurrent validity of a risk assessment measure (i.e., Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth; SAVRY) in relation to caregiver-reported youth externalizing behaviors (measured through the Caregiver-Report Questionnaire Child Behavior Checklist, Externalizing Behaviors scale, parent form; CBCL-EXT) in 39 recently immigrated youth, and (2) the effect of criminal attitudes and acculturation stress on the relation of risk for and caregiver reported externalizing behaviors. Results showed that although the total score of the SAVRY was significantly associated with the total score of the CBCL-EXT; at a subscale level, the SAVRY did not predict total or subscale scores of the CBCL-EXT. Additionally, a significant three-way interaction was found, such that the association between the SAVRY and the CBCL was significant and positive at low levels of criminal attitudes and moderate and high levels of acculturation stress, at moderate levels of both criminal attitudes and acculturation stress, and at high level of criminal attitudes and low levels of acculturation stress.Item Affecting change : death, violence and protest in Manipur, Northeastern India(2015-05) Kshetrimayum, Jogendro Singh; Stewart, Kathleen, 1953-This dissertation explores some of the ways in which precarity takes form in a reeling present. Many social and political analysts have described the contemporary socio-economic and political situation in the Northeastern states of India, marked by a situation of civil war for more than half-a-century, as an “impasse.” With particular focus on Manipur, one of the eight Northeastern states, this dissertation looks at some of the ways in which people live through this “impasse.” Through a series of extraordinary and ordinary scenes, brief encounters, public testimonies, biographical sketches and autobiographical accounts it speaks of the precariousness of life, relationships, rituals and cultural categories even as people suffer and respond to the ongoing “crisis” of law and order, a defining feature of the “impasse.” Inspired by the affective turn in Critical Theory, this dissertation does not see precarity as necessarily traumatizing, thereby keeping the trope of trauma at a critical distance while attending to the lives of people in a situation of low-intensity armed conflict of long duration. It does not claim to provide any final explanation of what is happening in Manipur today rather it offers an innovative way to revisit anew some of the old anthropological questions about people and places undergoing dramatic changes.Item Affecting violence : narratives of Los feminicidios and their ethical and political reception(2012-12) Huerta Moreno, Lydia Cristina; Robbins, Jill, 1962-; Domínguez Ruvalcaba, Héctor, 1962-; Arroyo, Jossianna; Chapelle-Wojciehowski, Hannah; Ravelo-Blancas, Patricia; Pia Lara, MariaIn Mexico there is an increasing lack of engagement of the Mexican government and its citizens towards resolving violence. In the 20th century alone events such as the Revolution of 1910, La Guerra Cristera, La Guerra Sucia, and most recently Los Feminicidios and Calderon’s War on Drugs are representative of an ethos of violence withstood and inflicted by Mexicans towards women, men, youth, and marginalized groups. This dissertation examines Los Feminicidios in Ciudad Juarez and the cultural production surrounding them: chronicles, novels, documentaries and films. In it I draw on Aristotle’s influential Nicomachean Ethics, Victoria Camps’ El gobierno de las emociones (2011), María Pía Lara’s Narrating Evil (2007), Vittorio Gallese’s and other scientists’ research on neuroscience empathy and neurohumanism, and socio-political essays in order to theorize how a pathos-infused understanding of ethos might engage a reading and viewing public in what has become a discourse about violence determined by a sense of fatalism. Specifically, I argue that narrative and its interpretations play a significant role in people’s emotional engagement and subsequent cognitive processes. I stress the importance of creating an approach that considers both pathos and logos as a way of understanding this ethos of violence. I argue that by combining pathos and logos in the analysis of a cultural text, we can break through the theoretical impasse, which thus far has resulted in exceptionalisms and has been limited to categorizing as evil the social and political mechanisms that may cause this violence.Item The animal at the scene of writing : narrative subjectivities of the Lebanese civil war(2010-08) Miller, Alyssa Marie; El-Ariss, Tarek; Ali, Kamran A.This thesis inquires into anti-humanist trends in Lebanese literature of the civil war and post-war period by examining the limit concept of the animal in three novelistic works: Beirut Nightmares [Kawābīs Bayrūt] (1976) by Ghādah Sammān, Yalo (2002) by Elias Khoury, and The Tiller of Waters [Ḥārith al-miyāh] (1998) by Hudá Barakāt. Marking a departure in previous critical work done on this body of literature, which has been dominated by trauma theory as an analytical framework, this thesis employs an innovative synthesis of narrative theory and affect theory to describe how the authors utilize narrative to humanize the war experience, thereby mitigating the effects of contingency and fragmentation on the narrative subject. After the collapse of the state, the human being is separated from its political form, leaving it perilously exposed to acts of violence. It may also, however, carry out aggressions on its fellow man with impunity. Both of these terrible aspects of man’s nature in wartime are understood conventionally as exposing a beast within man, since they radically undermine the precepts of moral value and self-sovereignty that constitute the pillars of humanism. Through acts of “composition” the first person narrators of these novels strive to insulate their affective core from participating in ambient currents of violence, which are viewed as a kind of contamination understood as “becoming-animal.” While implicating the subject in a participation that is other-than-human, these animal becomings are also, following Deleuze and Guttari, ways of attaining a new vitality and escaping the hierarchical symbolic power of logos. Use of this animal figure allows the authors to rethink the human in ways that does not assume a fixed humanist ontology. For Sammān, the animal represents a principle of vitality that allows her protagonist to overcome human sources of inertia, such as melancholic memories or ingrained habit, thereby preserving the authentic voice of the writerly self. For Khoury and Barakāt, the animal permits them to foreground the figure of the subaltern who stands in a minoritarian relation to logos. They also propose a post-humanist ethos of co-presence based on the affective subject’s receptivity and vulnerability; its capacity to both affect and be affected.Item "Are you getting angry Doctor?" : Madea, strategy and the fictional rejection of black female containment(2014-05) Faust, Mitchell R.; Richardson, Matt, 1969-Within the scope of this thesis, I provide close textual and visual readings of director/actor/producer Tyler Perry's most well-known character, Mable "Madea" Simmons -- a performance he does in full female drag attire -- focusing on his mainstream hit film, Madea Goes to Jail (2009). My reading of the character of Madea veers against the common narrative her existence being just another recycled trope of men disguised as women only to perform in stereotypical and demonizing behavior. I argue Madea represents what I refer to as a "trans*female character", within the space of Perry's popular film that feature her. Read through the lens of being trans*female character, I propose this shift in analysis and critique of cinematic displays of drag helps to transgress beyond male/female binaries of acceptable and possible visual gender representations. More in-depth, using the theoretical concept of Gwendolyn Pough's "bringing wreck", I make the argument that while ostensibly representing the "angry black woman" stereotype, Madea's characterization and actions within the film represent strategies and efforts to not be contained within hegemonic ideals of black female respectability politics and the law efforts to put her behind bars. By "bringing wreck", Madea's fictional acts of violence and talking back are read as a strategy that reflects a historical trend of misrecognition that renders black women's concerns and discontent with marginalization as irrational anger.Item Art education as violence : Western European influence upon the Mandan(2011-05) Timme, Matthew Robert; Bolin, Paul Erik, 1954-; Adejumo, Christopher O.This thesis attempts to complicate the solely positive nature most often attributed to art education. This complication occurs through a deconstruction of an episode of art education and subsequent interpretation and analysis through both poststructural literary theory and postcolonial theory. By conducting a close reading of a colonial interaction, between two artists trained in the Western canon and two Native American artists, the study begins to view the process of art education as an act of violence, manifested in the rapid shift in artistic style away from a traditional Mandan technique towards one that reflects a Western European tradition. This violence is in turn viewed as typical in the systematic destruction of the culture of a colonized group, as a means for the West to gain, and maintain, authority through the use, and the controlling, of both knowledge and education. Ultimately the field of art education is described as being central within this struggle, in that ideology is both created and promoted within the field at the expense of supplanting previous cultural knowledge. This process of ideological struggle, while inherently violent, is not automatically negative. The struggle between violence and negativity within the field of art education forms the final section of the study.Item Bleeding Mexico : an analysis of cartels evolution and drug-related bloodshed(2012-08) Medel, Monica Cristina; Dietz, Henry A.Drug-related violence in Mexico has increased exponentially in the last five years, killing near 50,000 people. Even though the country has been a producer of marijuana and opium poppy for nearly a century, it was not until the beginning of the new millennium that drug violence skyrocketed. Up until now, academic studies and policy papers have focused primarily on the political changes Mexico underwent over the last decade and on ingrained corruption as the central factors in explaining the increased violence. But such a jump in homicides rates, as well as the sheer brutality of the violence involved, also reflects the evolution of the country's drug organizations -- which went from being merely feared and ruthless drug producers and smugglers to far-reaching criminal empires that now dominate all aspects of the illicit drug underworld in the Americas. Many have become so powerful that they have formed their own armies of hit men and foot soldiers that operate like full-fledged paramilitary groups protecting their territories and smuggling routes to American soil. Further feeding the cycle of murders in Mexico is an increasing diversification of drug gangs' businesses, which now range from drug production and smuggling to extortion, kidnapping and human trafficking. Through an historical, spatial and statistical analysis, this study sets out to deconstruct the current wave of Mexican drug violence, show how it is spreading and why, and how that reflects the evolution of Mexican drug organizations.Item Checkpoint : a deconstruction of the video game violence debate and proposed strategies to create solutions(2013-05) Hamilton, Grayson Lee; Coleman, Renita; Quigley, Robert J. (Senior lecturer)In the months following the Sandy Hook elementary school tragedy, there has been increased attention and debate regarding violent video games and how they affect those who play them. While some lobby for increased regulation of their sale, others argue that video games are not the reason such tragedies continue to happen. In this report, I approach the debate from social, personal and political dimensions to better identify the inconsistencies regarding how violent video games are presented to and received by the public. I also interview video game developers, critics, and researchers to uncover solutions and new strategies to increase video game education and perception about the use of violence in a video game.Item The children are always watching : violence, distressed children, and signs of hope in the cinema of Michael Haneke(2011-05) Tate, Adam Wyatt; Staiger, Janet; Kearney, Mary C.This thesis is an analysis of director Michael Haneke’s theatrically-released films. Using a neoformalist approach, it is a dissection of how the director uniquely employs violence and child and youth characters in his films to critique society while looking for potential signs of hope. I argue that Haneke is a successor to those filmmakers who have taken violence to a new extreme in the cinema. However, Haneke has created a signature form of depicting violence in his films. I also argue that although Haneke typically places child characters in peril, a narrative facet that perhaps turns away some viewers, their placement in such scenarios serves to reflect his consistent view of a crumbling, insensitive society. Despite these representations of violence and children in peril, Haneke still finds places to infuse glimmers of hope in his narratives.Item Ecological influences on self-esteem and violent behavior among Latino, African-American, and Euro-American Youth: An investigation of mediating and moderating effects(Texas Tech University, 2009-08) Rappleyea, Damon Loren; Harris, Steven M.; Bean, Roy A.; Reifman, Alan; Whiting, Jason B.This study utilizes an Ecological Systems framework to conceptualize how various biopsychosocial factors influence violent behavior in adolescents. Violence, particularly in youth under the age of 21, has reached epidemic proportions. Existing research related to clinical implications and intervention strategies are often contradictory and confusing. Structural equation modeling was used to investigate the socialization influences of Neighborhood Disorganization, Parental Violent Behavior, Lack of School Initiative, and Lack of Peer Connection and their impact on Self-Esteem and Adolescent Violent Behavior. Additionally, the study explores the mediating and moderating effects of Self-Esteem, Ethnicity, Socioeconomic Status (SES), and Gender on Adolescent Violent Behavior. Findings suggest that Neighborhood Disorganization, Parental Violent Behavior, and Lack of School Initiative displayed significant unidirectional relationships with self-esteem and Adolescent Violent Behavior. It was determined that self-esteem mediated the relationship between the socialization variables and Adolescent Violent Behavior. SES and ethnicity were determined to have a moderating effect on the full structural model. There were no significant differences in relation to gender and the socialization variables, however. The results and clinical implications are discussed. Findings support the use of existing, empirically validated systemic-based therapies in Marriage and Family Therapy. The strengths and limitations of the study and the direction for future research are set forth.Item Employing handicrafts to communicate the course of trauma : a test in using handicrafts as an explanatory method(2010-05) Willman, Lisa Anne; Olsen, Daniel M., 1963-; Hall, Peter A.This report contains discussion of four design projects aimed to investigate the ability of handicrafts to communicate complicated subject matter. In this exploration, handicrafts are used to present the experience of recovering from a traumatic experience by challenging commonly held stereotypes about handicrafts. By breaking the trauma and recovery process into four distinct stages, each stage can be discussed in detail via the corresponding design piece. Consequently, each stage also allows for new opportunities to apply handicraft practices in new ways. Through this line of questioning, the four pieces expand upon the imagery, materiality, subject matter, and formal creation techniques typically used in handicraft projects. This collection adds to a greater body of work that intersects traumatic experiences with art and design and that explores the power of design as a communication tool. It opens the door for further investigation into the application’s potential as a teaching tool for trauma victims, nontraditional applications of the craft, its ability to aid in the recovery process, and the potential risk and benefit victims have from such work being done and from creating such pieces themselves.Item Everything is liquid(2014-05) Swan, Taylor; Rifkin, Ned; Higgins, Kathleen MarieIf we are to imagine universal reality--a reality where both subjectivity and objectivity exist--mapped as a hollow sphere, the outer shell that defines its physical presence would be the objective reality and the vacuum of space encased would be subjectivity. The hollow core is not defined by--or representative of--a singular piece of the shell, but only of the shell in its entirety. The human subject solely roams this inner space since they are nothing outside themselves. Their task is to wander the spectrum of subjectivity completely until they have reached objectivity. The objective reality only defines shape and mass. It is concrete and monolithic. Energy is distributed equally along its surface and each point reinforces the structural existence of the adjacent points. All of humanity is a varying degree of subjectivity, but the spectrum is finite with objectivity always at one end; objectivity is subjectivity's ultimate experience. Death is the crystallization into the shell of objectivity for the subject becomes pure matter and form that is severed from will. It seems then the only real limit to an individual’s experience is death, the human's subjective experience permeating into objectivity and transforms from a state that is on the inside perceiving out, to a state that is outside of itself, which is to say nothing. It is possible to observe this transformation as a continuous seam of reality with varying degrees of transformation, and not a bold division of two states.Item Exceptional feelings, ordinary violence(2013-05) Pascual, Michael Aaron; Cvetkovich, Ann, 1957-Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (2009) and the work of LGBTQ activists in the U.S. I argue that the act consolidates the U.S. nation-state’s monopoly on violence by relying on criminal law as a cognitive apparatus and stifles the work of LGBTQ activists and cultural labor to expand or challenge sensibilities regarding violence. I look to the work of trans and queer activists and how they frame “minor” hate crime cases in relationship to space and systems of criminalization. The activism surrounding Sakia Gunn, the New Jersey 7, Chrissy Lee Polis, and CeCe McDonald broaden theoretical account of violence provided by hate crime protections by attending to affect, the body, and space, and make political demands that move beyond criminal law. This thesis attempts to follow those trajectories and provide alternative grammars and methods for addressing violence.Item Fear and discipline in a permanent state of exception : Mexicans, their families, and U.S. immigrant processing in Ciudad Juarez(2011-05) Bosquez, Monica Dolores; Sletto, Bjørn; Hale, CharlesThe United States recently completed the construction of a new Consulate compound in an underdeveloped site in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. Mexican applicants for U.S. Immigrant Visas, particularly those who had previously entered the United States without inspection, are sent to the facility to apply through a mandatory personal interview. The interview process necessitates highly invasive medical exams at designated militarized facilities, followed by a series of interviews with consular officers. Applicants, many of whom are visiting Juarez for the first time, must wait in the city for days or weeks as they attempt to navigate the requirements. Even as the city has become more violent, the U.S. Consulate mission in Juarez has become an economic driver as it processes more immigrant visas than any other U.S. Consular office in the world. It is also the largest U.S. Consulate building on the planet and the immigration complex is drawing new migrants who are both seeking asylum through it and aiding in its construction. U.S. immigration policies and the administrative procedures that accompany them also serve to discipline immigrant visa applicants long before they arrive in Juarez as they navigate a system built on penalties and waivers. The effects of these policies transcend borders and citizenship, impacting not only the immigrant applicant, but their U.S. families as well. The normalization of violence towards Mexicans and their families is becoming entrenched in a culture of impunity, both in Mexico and the United States. The immigrant processing and maquiladora manufacturing that take place in Ciudad Juarez play a specific role in U.S. / Mexico relations and are representative of the intersection of immigration policy, labor desires, and neoliberal and post-neoliberal policies of structural violence. The United States has developed, in Juarez, an economic development and security program and immigrant processing center concomitantly and Mexico has worked lockstep to fortify this position. I examine this historical occurrence, and the experiences of immigrant applicants and their families, using Foucault’s theories of discipline.Item Grim Sleeper : gender, violence, and reproductive justice in Los Angeles(2014-08) Grigsby, Julie Renee; Vargas, João Helion Costa; Ali, Kamran; Smith, Christen; Browne, Simone; Rodriguez, DylanDiscussions of South Los Angeles often reflect dystopic conditions of black communities as supine beneficiaries of endless social welfare living in seemingly malignant spaces where poverty and disease darken corners of an otherwise ideal city. This dissertation contributes to literature on urban violence, public health, and nonprofit studies through a feminist ethnography of black women’s community organizing. The Grim Sleeper murders spanned a 25-year period, marking two decades of violence against black women’s bodies in South Los Angeles. Slow moving police investigations began in 1984, were colored by depictions of murdered black “prostitutes,” which spurred a community response by women activists, yet the suspect was not arrested till 2010. Just a year before, in 2009, public health research for Los Angeles County, revealed staggering disparities in black women’s reproductive health, including: a maternal mortality rate nearly four times all other racial groups and rising STI’s among adolescents and women between the ages of 14 - 25. Again, with little comment or action this time in public health, the lives and bodies of black women continued to be in precarious positions. In national and popular debates of reproductive rights discussion surrounds abortion legislation, failing to address a range social inequalities that cut into reproductive lives of black women. I explore, the Grim Sleeper as not just a named serial killer but as characteristic of latent state responses to reproductive health challenges experienced by black women. Activist’s response to this parallel and cyclical lived experience of gendered violence against black bodies is at the center of my research. I argue that blackness, neither marginal nor invisible, is principal to understanding how race and social inequalities effect lived geographies. I closely examine; (1) the nature of reproductive justice within a community organization and (2) the ways California’s economic downturn affects approaches to social transformation through nonprofit and advocacy work. (3) A murderer’s twenty-five year history of targeting black women and the silence that surrounded it as reflective of state approaches to the lives of black women. Utilizing public health, policy, archival, oral history and ethnographic data my dissertation proposes the advancement of a reproductive justice standpoint by situating black women’s agency as a starting point for well-being and community health agendas.Item Identification and interpretive rights in the rhetoric of violent spectacle(2014-05) Eatman, Megan Elizabeth; Roberts-Miller, Patricia, 1959-; Diab, Rasha; Wilks, Jennifer; Faigley, Lester; Cloud, Dana"Identification and Interpretive Rights in the Rhetoric of Violent Spectacle" approaches lynching, the death penalty, and stealth torture as multimodal public discourse, comprised of violent events, their representations, and their surrounding debate. While the forms of violence I discuss all have avowed communicative purposes, I argue that the rhetorical emphasis on these messages often masks more important claims about group identity and the nature of punishment. Through examination of the physical and discursive constructions of these violent events, I argue that these spectacles serve as centers of identification through which rhetors reinforce divisions between groups and standards of violent and non-violent argument. Chapter One builds on the common claim that lynching was a performance that affirmed a version of white Southern identity by examining how pro-lynching rhetoric performed lynching's implicit refusal to deliberate. Chapter Two addresses the contemporary death penalty's shift away from live spectacle and examines how pro-death penalty rhetoric constructs the audience/execution relationship when visual access is not an option. Chapter Three discusses how rhetors circumscribe "the right to look" at illicit images of Saddam Hussein's execution and the torture at Abu Ghraib, illustrating how the "right" reaction to a violent image can be a marker of group membership. The Conclusion begins to expand the dissertation's argument by raising questions about understandings of justice, legal codifications of pain, and multimodal representations of violent events.Item In the Wake of War: Violence, Identity, and Cultural Change in Puritan Massachusetts, 1676-1713(2012-10-19) Heaton, CharlesThis thesis seeks to grasp how King Philip's War influenced cultural evolution in Massachusetts in order to determine whether it produced a culture of violence and conflict amongst the Anglo-Puritan inhabitants of the Massachusetts Bay colony following the conflict. Specifically, this work uses primary sources produced by European inhabitants of Massachusetts Bay to examine the period between 1676 and 1713. Chapter II examines the impact of King Philip's War on the evolution of colonists' attitudes towards Indians by tracing the development of scalp bounties in Massachusetts. The use of scalp bounties highlights a trend towards commoditizing Indian lives in New England, and King Philip?s War proves critical in directing that trend. Chapter III explores the results of King Philip's War on the relationship between Massachusetts and the metropole in London. This chapter focuses on the riot of April, 1689, in Boston, that removed the London-appointed leader of the Dominion of New England, a political entity created, in part, in response to the weak showing of colonial government during King Philip's War. This chapter highlights the diverging views of empire and authority between the Massachusetts colonists and the royal officials in London. Chapter IV analyzes conflict and change within colonial Massachusetts society in the wake of King Philip's War. Here, I find that the war had the smallest impact on the overall course of subsequent cultural development in the colony. This does not mean that the war had no impact at all, but rather that such impact did not stand out against other patterns of cultural influence such as religion and economics.Item Masculinity, gender, and power in a Mayan-Kaqchikel community in Sololá, Guatemala(2014-05) Ajcalon Choy, Rigoberto; González-López, Gloria, 1960-How do self-identified heterosexual Kaqchikel men in the rural areas of Sololá attain status and power in their relationships with women? This question is explored here by analyzing different masculine roles in various social spaces. The complexity of masculine identity requires a meticulous analysis to assess the extent to which the masculine role and identity has been or not a determinant factor in the social and personal development of both women and men in the communities. This exploration also allows us to see the different expressions of masculine identities and evaluate their current role in society. I learned that the Kaqchikel men I interviewed find their social power and status in part through well-established, old ideologies and belief systems, as well as their perception of a biological superiority, which they justify by their hard work in agricultural activities. Based on this socially constructed beliefs and practices, men emphasize the passivity of the women and their social absence – their subordinate status in society. However, the authority of the men is not limited to their remarkable role as leaders and head of the households; it also encompasses pernicious acts such as domestic violence, which is still highly prevalent in contemporary Sololá. This project also explores these men’s perceptions about: (1) the women living in their communities, (2) the low level of education of these women, and (3) the justice system that is still weak and flawed. While all of these are indeed prevailing problems in the communities, women are challenging to an extent all the practices and beliefs associated with the authority of the men.