College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/8
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item THERAPIST-CLIENT RACIAL MATCHING VS. NON-MATCHING AND THERAPISTS’ COUNTERTRANSFERENCE: EXPLORING THEIR RELATION AND TESTING MODERATORS.(2016) Palma Orellana, Beatriz Isabel; Gelso, Charles J.; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The present study assessed the influence of clients’ race (i.e., Black/African American or White/European American), therapists’ universal-diverse orientation (UDO), and therapists’ anger discomfort on countertransference reactions. Countertransference was operationalized as therapists’ self-reported state anxiety, their verbal avoidant responses (as manifestation of behavioral countertransference), and their self-reported countertransference. Data were gathered from 63 White, European American therapists and therapists-in-training. Participants completed online measures pertaining to universal-diverse orientation, anger discomfort, trait anxiety, social desirability, and a demographic questionnaire. A week after completing such measures, the participants completed a Lab session. The therapists and therapists-in-training were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: An angry White/European American client or an angry Black/African American client. Participants watched and verbally responded to a video of the assigned scripted analogue client. Right afterward, the therapists and therapists-in-training completed a measure of state anxiety and three single items assessing the influence of the participant’s countertransference in his or her behaviors, thoughts, and feelings while responding to the videotaped client. Additionally, the participants’ verbal responses were transcribed verbatim and coded as approach or avoidant responses, which ultimately provided an index of behavioral countertransference. Results showed that therapists’ anger discomfort, their universal-diverse orientation, clients’ race, and interaction terms (clients’ race X UDO and clients’ race X anger discomfort) predicted state anxiety. However, in this model, only anger discomfort was statistically significant. No significant effects were found on the other countertransference measures. Additionally, only anger discomfort significantly and uniquely accounted for variance in state anxiety. Contrary to expectations, neither clients’ race nor universal-diverse orientation uniquely accounted for variance in the dependent variables. Results were not significant for the interaction of clients’ race and UDO on therapists’ countertransference reactions. Results were also non-significant for the interaction of clients’ race and anger discomfort on the participants’ countertransference reactions. Implications of the findings are further discussed.Item The Influence of Place Attachment, Aspirations, and Rapidly Changing Environments on Resettlement Decisions(2016) Strong II, Michael Lee; Silva, Julie; Geography; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Resettlement associated with development projects results in a variety of negative impacts. This dissertation uses the resettlement context to frame the dynamic relationships formed between peoples and places experiencing development. Two case studies contribute: (a) the border zone of Mozambique’s Limpopo National Park where residents contend with changes to land access and use; and (b) Bairro Chipanga in Moatize, Mozambique where a resettled population struggles to form place attachment and transform the post-resettlement site into a “good” place. Through analysis of data collected at these sites between 2009 and 2015, this dissertation investigates how changing environments impact person-place relationships before and after resettlement occurs. Changing environments create conditions leading to disemplacement—feeling like one no longer belongs—that reduces the environment’s ability to foster place attachment. Research findings indicate that responses taken by individuals living in the changing environment depend heavily upon whether resettlement has already occurred. In a pre-resettlement context, residents adjust their daily lives to diminish the effects of a changing environment and re-create the conditions to which they initially formed an attachment. They accept impoverishing conditions, including a narrowing of the spaces in which they live their daily lives, because it is preferred to the anxiety that accompanies being forced to resettle. In a post-resettlement context, resettlement disrupts the formation of place attachment and resettled peoples become a placeless population. When the resettlement has not resulted in anticipated outcomes, the aspiration for social justice—seeking conditions residents had reason to expect—negatively influences residents’ perspectives about the place. The post-resettlement site becomes a bad place with a future unchanged from the present. At best, this results in a population in which more members are willing to move away from the post-resettlement site, and, at worse, complete disengagement of other members from trying to improve the community. Resettlement thus has the potential to launch a cycle of movement- displacement-movement that prevents an entire generation from establishing place attachment and realizing its benefits. At the very least, resettlement impedes the formation of place attachment to new places. Thus, this dissertation draws attention to the unseen and uncompensated losses of resettlement.Item Violence against Women Policy and Practice in Uganda - Promoting Justice within the Context of Patriarchy(2016) Gardsbane, Diane; Freidenberg, Judith N.; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The goal of this study was to understand how and whether policy and practice relating to violence against women in Uganda, especially Uganda’s Domestic Violence Act of 2010, have had an effect on women’s beliefs and practices, as well as on support and justice for women who experience abuse by their male partners. Research used multi-sited ethnography at transnational, national, and local levels to understand the context that affects what policies are developed, how they are implemented, and how, and whether, women benefit from these. Ethnography within a local community situated global and national dynamics within the lives of women. Women who experience VAW within their intimate partnerships in Uganda confront a political economy that undermines their access to justice, even as a women’s rights agenda is working to develop and implement laws, policies, and interventions that promote gender equality and women’s empowerment. This dissertation provides insights into the daily struggles of women who try to utilize policy that challenges duty bearers, in part because it is a new law, but also because it conflicts with the structural patriarchy that is engrained in Ugandan society. Two explanatory models were developed. One explains factors relating to a woman’s decision to seek support or to report domestic violence. The second explains why women do and do not report DV. Among the findings is that a woman is most likely to report abuse under the following circumstances: 1) her own, or her children’s survival (physical or economic) is severely threatened; 2) she experiences severe physical abuse; or, 3) she needs financial support for her children. Research highlights three supportive factors for women who persist in reporting DV. These are: 1) the presence of an “advocate” or support 2) belief that reporting will be helpful; and, 3) lack of interest in returning to the relationship. This dissertation speaks to the role that anthropologists can play in a multi-disciplinary approach to a complex issue. This role is understanding – deeply and holistically; and, articulating knowledge generated locally that provides connections between what happens at global, national and local levels.Item Exploring the Impact of Neighborhood on State-Building in sub-Saharan Africa(2013) Garcia, David; Reed, William L; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Why is state-building more advanced in some sub-Saharan African countries than in others? And, over time, what accounts for the steady gains, steady declines, or gains followed by declines (or vice-versa) observed in the state-building trajectories of Africa's states? This dissertation endeavors to shed light on these questions by assessing the impact of one suspected cause of state-building variation: the way power is distributed among states and their neighbors. Specifically, this dissertation assesses whether the relative distribution of power provides incentives or disincentives to regimes in charge of states to pursue policies that are conducive or detrimental to state-building. Employing OLS, two hypotheses are tested: one which predicts that regimes in charge of relatively weak states promote policies conducive to state-building, and another which predicts that regimes in charge of relatively weak states opt for a strategy of personal rule that runs counter to the imperatives of state-building. Findings are mixed and often contingent upon how state-building is measured; when state-building is assessed in terms of how proficiently the state regulates social and economic life, provides infrastructure services to its population, and promotes human development, support is found for the latter hypothesis. Yet when state-building is measured in terms of how well the state monopolizes the legitimate use of force or forges convergence between nations and the state, no statistically significant relationship in either direction is found. Thus, while there is at least some evidence that the regional distribution of power impacts the state-building process, it does not appear to do so quite as robustly as expected.