UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
Browse
16 results
Search Results
Item Exercising Social Class Privilege: Examining the Practices and Processes Defining Upper-Middle Class Swimming Club Culture(2010) DeLuca, Jaime; Andrews, David L; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Cultural theorist Pierre Bourdieu argues that social class is defined by the interplay and operation of various forms of capital and, as such, is thought to be a significant determinant of an individual's everyday experiences, understandings, and identities. He believes that participation in private sport communities, such as swimming clubs, can contribute to one's social standing by positioning "the body-for-others," distinguishing those maintaining a privileged lifestyle, and transferring valuable skills, characteristics, and social connections to children for the purposes of class reproduction (Bourdieu, 1978, p. 838). Drawing on these ideas, this research explores the inter-related social constructs of the physically active swimming body, family, and social class at the Valley View Swim and Tennis Club (a pseudonym), a private recreational swim club in an upper-middle class suburban town on the outskirts of a major mid-Atlantic city. Through four years of ethnographic engagement, including participatory lived experience, observations, and interviews with mothers and children who belong to the pool, this project examines the way in which membership at Valley View plays an integral role in daily and family lives. Invoking Bourdieu (1978, 1984, 1986), I argue that pool participation is illustrative of members taken for granted, lived experience of power and privilege. Valley View operates as a distinctive consumption choice offering families a strategic opportunity to promote, demonstrate, convert, and transmit their varied levels of capital in and through their children, with the goal of expressing distinction now, and reproducing their familial social class position for future generations. Specifically, from the maternal perspective, this research discusses how the pool functions as a physical space for children's acquisition of physical capital and the tools to live a healthy, physically active lifestyle emblematic of social class position; details the way in which pool participation is a constitutive element of the upper-middle class family habitus, and thus offers parents an opportunity to teach their children valuable social and cultural dispositions; examines how Valley View provides children with enriching, intangible experiences characteristic of their class-based privilege; and lastly, explores how club membership is an important feature of these mother's privileged everyday daily lives.Item Investigating the Relationship Between Micro and Macro Levels of Efficacy and Their Effects on Crime(2010) Ahlin, Eileen M.; Paternoster, Raymond; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The concepts of self-efficacy and collective efficacy have both been used by scholars to explain involvement in individual-level crime. Scholars have found that both types of efficacy are related to crime at the individual level. However, little research has examined the relationship between self-efficacy and collective efficacy and its influence on youths' involvement in crime. Using the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) data, this study focuses on the independent influences of self-efficacy and collective efficacy on involvement in crime among youths ages 9 to 19, and examines the potential moderating effect of collective efficacy on the relationship between self-efficacy and crime. The relationship between self-efficacy, collective efficacy, and crime is addressed by asking three questions. First, does a general measure of youth's self-efficacy influence their involvement in crime? Second, does a macro level measure of collective efficacy influence youths' involvement in crime? Third, does collective efficacy moderate the relationship between self-efficacy and crime? To control for the contexts in which youths live and individual-level factors that can influence involvement in crime, and may influence efficacy, neighborhood context, family context, and individual-level demographic variables are also examined. Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling, the analyses indicate mixed support for a relationship between efficacy and individual-level involvement in crime. First, a significant negative relationship exists between self-efficacy and crime. Second, no significant effects emerge between collective efficacy and crime. Third, collective efficacy completely moderates the relationship between self-efficacy and crime, but not in the expected direction. After controlling for collective efficacy, the significant negative relationship between self-efficacy and crime is nullified. The conclusion then is that a general measure of self-efficacy influences a youth's involvement in crime, while a macro level measure of collective efficacy does not. Areas of future research and implications for theory and policy are discussed.Item Managing Water: Efficiency-Equity Tradeoffs in the Participatory Approach(2010) O'Donnell, Anna; Korzeniewicz, Roberto P; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates the hypothesis that participation can overcome trade-offs in equity and efficiency. Literature within the field of economics and sociology has argued for tradeoffs in outcomes of allocative efficiency and equity and institutional efficiency and equity, respectively. Community-based participatory institutions are expected to overcome this tension by introducing institutional accountability and local-level decision making, which serve to enhance technical and allocative efficiency while retaining mechanisms for equitable allocation and empowerment. This research draws on fieldwork from a community-managed water supply program in rural Bahia, Brazil to examine whether outcomes of efficiency and equity are mutually compatible. Findings from the field research indicate that explicit and implicit subsidies to the water supply systems led to outcomes of allocative equity in the sites visited, but that these generated tradeoffs with allocative efficiency. Findings from the research also indicated that the community organizations were relatively efficient in their administrative practices, but that this efficiency came at a cost to equality of membership and voice in the community organization. This suggests that participatory water supply programs generate certain and specific costs, although the findings also suggest additional positive externalities associated with participation.Item How University Athletic Program Success Associates With University Prestige Via the Halo Effect For Different Types of Universities(2008-12-05) Quattrone, Westleigh Alan; Lucas, Jeffrey; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Athletic program success may be a way for universities to achieve prestigious status. The halo effect may allow perceptions of athletic programs to be extended to other aspects of the university. This process was hypothesized not only to occur, but to occur to a differing extent across university types. I predicted that universities that are new, secular, public, outside of the Northeastern United States, and that do not have name designations would show the greatest gains in prestige upon achieving high athletic success. Regression analyses tested the relationship between expert ratings of universities and athletic success rates of major football and basketball sports programs. Results indicated a positive association between athletic success rates and university prestige. This process did not significantly vary by university types. Results also showed expert ratings of universities highly correlated with those of non-experts, indicating that expert assessment is a good proxy for typical prestige perceptions.Item Defying Expectations: Associational Participation and Democratization in Poor Communities in Argentina(2008-08-19) Sacouman, Natasha; Korzeniewicz, Roberto P.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Alexis de Tocqueville noted that the key to democracy is "knowledge of how to combine." This dissertation focuses on the following question: Can participation in associations facilitate democracy within the communities in which they exist even if such associations are not democratically organized - i.e., vertical, hierarchical organizations. To consider this question, this dissertation explores a poor community's transition from a sparse to a highly developed associational space, and examines the impact of this process of democratization on social relations at both the associational and the personal levels (between leaders, participants, and non-participants). Specifically, I compare three different associational settings in a barrio in Greater Buenos Aires, Argentina -- i.e., a non-governmental organization, a religious network, and a political party network -- to assess whether democratization can occur with the construction and communication of symbolic meaning and objective practices by vertically structured, hierarchical organizations. I analyze the interplays between inclusion and exclusion; solidarity and generalized distrust; and inequality and protagonism. Ultimately, this dissertation demonstrates how the configuration of social relations serves to legitimate and reproduce civic life in poor communities. This dissertation is based upon extensive ethnographic observations in three different associations and the community itself, as well as upon qualitative interviews with community leaders, participants, nonparticipants, politicians and academics.Item Society and Infrastructure: Geographical Accessibility and its Effects on School Enrolment in Nepal(2007-10-12) KC, Shyam; Vanneman, Reeve D.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This research examines the effects of geographical isolation on school enrolment in Nepal using mainly the Nepal Living Standards Survey-II (2003-2004). Nepal, a country with severe road accessibility problems, presents an especially suitable population for this research. Geographical access is measured as the time required by the household to reach the nearest motorable (dirt or paved) road. The accessibility profile that emerges reflects three forms of imbalance in the state-society relations in Nepal. The first imbalance is regional. The second imbalance is socio-economic reflected mainly in higher concentrations of poverty and illiteracy in inaccessible areas. The third imbalance is the state's inability to cater essential services for the people there. Stepwise regressions of the NLSS-II cross sectional data show that isolated children are less likely to be enrolled in part because they are poorer, have less educated parents and are from disadvantaged caste/ethnic groups. Another important part of the reason is isolated children are served by distant and low quality schools and also lack basic services such as electricity. Among secondary aged children, isolation continues to have an independent effect even after taking into account all other determinants of enrolment. This suggests that isolation operates beyond the socio-economic, familial and institutional disadvantages the children face in getting enrolled in school. Adolescent (but not pre-adolescent) girls are more likely to be impacted by inaccessibility than boys. There is no evidence that inaccessibility operates differentially amongst the poor and the non-poor in sending children to school. Analyses of the NLSS panel data reveals that improvements in accessibility improves the chance of the children to continue being enrolled in school, but the remoteness they lived through in their childhood also affects such chances in later years. 'Physical' networks in the form of roads have the potential to enhance social networks and the political voice of isolated households, which in turn enables them to value and demand education for their children. Sociology of roads is a field that needs to be expanded to get a better insight on the social changes that are associated with the building of roads.Item Field Notes from the Light: An Ethnographic Study of the Meaning and Significance of "Near-Death Experiences"(2007-08-03) Gordon, Laura Suzanne; Caughey, John L; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is based on a comprehensive study which investigated the meaning and social significance of "near-death experiences" (NDEs) by situating 50 experiencers (NDErs) as the "inside" experts on these profound, subjective experiences and their real-world impact. I used a phenomenological, "person-centered" ethnographic approach, new to Near-Death Studies, to make experiencers' lives the orienting framework for my study. Informed by "reformist" qualitative-research ethics and health-education-and-counseling values, I analyzed study-participants' life-history narratives against medical-scientific Near-Death Studies explanatory models, an NDE-Integration-Trajectory (NDE IT) patterns model, and social construction and identity-alternation theory. My findings were, first, that study participants' descriptions of NDE impact and aftereffects, which matched previous findings, were adequately explained by neither social construction nor medical-scientific theory. Second, participants in this and previous studies described significant NDE interpretation and integration problems, in which I recognized a previously unidentified, health-education-and-counseling-related, pattern of unmet NDE integration needs. Third, my findings supported the previous NDE IT findings and model; and also recognized the importance of individuals' multiple cultural meaning systems in shaping their NDE integration patterns.. Fourth, 29 of 50 study participants had not sought out and did not identify Near-Death Studies as a useful NDE integration context or resource; and they described it negatively if they mentioned it at all. Moreover, the 21 participants who had sought a connection with Near-Death Studies expressed similar dissatisfactions. My findings speak to the need for development of a research agenda and model(s) designed to assess and address the education and counseling needs of tens of millions of NDErs, and their health care providers. My analysis addresses the potential social-wellness value, as well as the needs, of a community of 13 million adult NDErs, in the U.S. alone. It situates its analysis within a context of escalating social and ecological crises and an in-progress paradigm-shift away from the still-official Newtonian/Cartesian material world view of Western culture. It recognizes the potential social value of NDErs' collective visibility as agents, among many others of a (re)emergent sacred worldview; one that is linked to the world views of diverse indigenous knowledge systems as well as of quantum physics.Item Constructing Civil Society in Transitional China: Case Studies of One Private University and One Non-governmental Institute for Peasant Education(2007-07-11) Liu, Yan; Lin, Jing; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The political shift in China in the last two and a half decades, from an emphasis on ideological orthodoxy and centralized economic control, to an emphasis on national economic development for modernization, has made it possible for non-governmental actors to enter into fields previously controlled by the government and to take initiatives in making social changes. This dissertation examines the capacity that non-governmental organizations demonstrate in their fight against all odds and their promotions of a civil society in China, using two non-governmental organizations working in the field of education as examples. The cases are analyzed from a historical institutionalism perspective to show how organizations' actions are affected by the contextual factors and meanwhile how their actions influence the institutions. In the case studies, the interaction between the society and the state government is carefully studied; moreover, the associational, ideological and cognitive dimensions of the civil society construction in China are comprehensively examined. Two non-governmental institutions are examined in this study. Their increasing participation in educational practices provides alternatives to the educational model in government-managed organizations. The dissertation also examines the development of the two organizations and pays special attention to the constraints imposed on the organizations by the existing political and educational system: The government is alert to their increasing power and attempts to restraint it. However, both organizations were successful in negotiating spaces for their survival and gained increasing influence in the society. Case analysis showed that the most important feature in the state-society interaction in China is trust-building which requires sophisticated strategies. While sticking to their non-state identity, these organizations have made significant efforts in establishing channels of discourse with the government, and won their trust in this way. Overall, the civil society groups in China showed divergence in their goals and practices from other countries, but also share certain convergence in their features and strategies for the redefinition of state-society boundary. In the dissertation, a dynamic interaction between the institutional factors and the agency of social actors is discovered. The institutional contexts shaped the social actors' vision and strategies, and the institutional environment was also transformed by the action of social groups. The direction of political and social reform is co-steered by the state-government and the society, instead of being determined by the government alone.Item El Rocío: A Case Study of Music and Ritual in Andalucía(2007-04-26) Poole, W. Gerard; Robertson, Carolina; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Music is central to the processional pilgrimage of El Rocío, which attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Andalusia, Spain, late each spring. The pilgrimage affords a unique view, in microcosm, of the relationships between music and ritual from both ritual-studies and ethnomusicological perspectives. Based on extensive fieldwork and other research, this dissertation explores the nexus of the Catholic ritual system in Andalusia, flamenco, and the specific music of El Rocío: the Sevillanas Rocieras. That nexus becomes clear through exploration of three particular features of the pilgrimage: (1) the devotional processions that generate a single, focused, collective emotion; (2) the Andalusian musical form called the palo; and (3) the informal musical gatherings called juergas, which take place nightly along the route. Analysis of structural and morphological relationships between ritual, music, and emotion yields surprising realizations about how these three elements come together as embodied aesthetics within a communitas to generate popular culture. Another important finding of this work is the necessity of placing, at the center of the inquiry, the religious experience—including the curious Andalusian phenomenon of the “chaotic” emotional procession and its role within the overall pilgrimage and ritual system. The dissertation concludes with two theoretical positions. The first addresses the process of “emotional structuring” and its role within the musical rituals of El Rocío and, by extension, Andalusia. The second advances a theory of ritual relations with potential application to ritual systems beyond Andalusia. The author presents both positions within an evolutionary framework based on the tenets of biomusicology, neurophenomenology, and Peircean semiotics.Item The World War II Veteran Advantage? A Lifetime Cross-Sectional Study of Social Status Attainment(2007-03-16) Smith, Irving; Segal, David R.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The impact of military service on the social status attainment of World War II veterans has been studied since the 1950s; however, the research has failed to come to any consensus with regard to the level of their attainment. Analyses have generally focused on cross-sectional data or longitudinal data without considering the effects of military service over the life course. In this study I argue that World War II veterans had greater social attainment over their lifetimes; that black World War II veterans attained more than white World War II veterans relative to their non-veteran peers; that veterans who served in the latter years of the World War II mobilization attained more than those who served in the earlier years; and that veterans born in cohorts with large proportions of veterans attained more than veterans born to cohorts with smaller proportions of veterans. Social status is measured in terms of education, income, and Duncan Socio-Economic Index. In order to test these hypotheses I use data from the 1950 through 2000 Public Use Microdata Sample. Military service clearly afforded veterans significant advantages through their early and middle working years; however, their non-veteran peers eventually did catch up. Black veterans attained more social status than their non veteran peers throughout their lives. Furthermore, the magnitude of the difference in social status attainment is greater for black veterans relative to their non-veteran peers than the difference for white-veterans relative to their non-veteran peers until very late in the life course. Additionally, peak mobilization phase veterans receive advantage although it is relatively short lived.