Tobacco use prevention education (TUPE) programs in the state of Florida: Teachers' perceptions of program structure and effectiveness

This study described teacher perceptions of TUPE program effectiveness in Florida in an attempt to improve programs by identifying factors that might influence teacher motivation and performance. Very little work has been done to examine how teachers' perceptions are related to the effectiveness of TUPE programs. A statewide survey provided information about how teachers' perceptions of program effectiveness are affected by variables such as: program structure, barriers, tobacco use norms, and training variables. Data were obtained from a telephone survey conducted in Florida as part of the Tobacco Pilot Project (TPP). The sample included 296 middle school teachers and 282 high school teachers as well as 193 middle school principals and 190 high school principals. Correlational and hierarchical regression analyses identified correlates and predictors of teachers' ratings of effectiveness. Results suggest that use of peer leaders, more frequent evaluations, a higher degree of parent involvement, fewer barriers, greater student interest, and lower tolerance for tobacco use were correlated with higher ratings of program effectiveness. Furthermore, student interest, peer, staff, and community tolerance norms, peer leaders, program evaluation, and parent involvement predicted middle school teachers' perceptions. Parent tolerance, student interest, number of barriers, and more frequent program evaluation predicted high school teachers' perceptions. In addition, middle school teachers who reported a lower number of factors negatively associated with teacher receptivity were more likely to view TUPE programs more favorably than teachers who reported a greater number of these risk factors. This relationship was not as robust among the high school teacher sample. Differences between the middle and high school sample were found in the magnitude and number of significant correlations, the proportion of variance accounted for by predictor variables, and the strength of the relationship between the number of factors negatively associated with teacher receptivity and teachers' perceptions of TUPE effectiveness. These findings highlighted the importance of the timing, program features, and the external environment for enhancing or minimizing teachers' ratings of TUPE program effectiveness. In conclusion, significant increases in TUPE teachers' self-efficacy will occur through the participation of peers, parents, staff, and community leaders in different aspects of TUPE programs. ^

Politics and prayer in West Perrine, Florida: Civic social capital and the black church

This thesis traces the mechanisms and sources responsible for the generation of civic social capital (a set of shared norms and values that promote cooperation between groups, enabling them to participate in the political process) by black churches in West Perrine, Florida. Data for this thesis includes over fifty interviews and participant observations, archival records, newspaper articles, and scholarly journals. ^ Despite the institutional racism of the first half of the twentieth century, many blacks and whites in Perrine developed levels of trust significant enough to form an integrated local governing body, evidence of high levels of csc. At mid-century, when black and white interactions ceased, Perrine's csc decreased, leading to the deterioration of Perrine's social and physical conditions. Perrine's csc increased in the 1980s by way of broad-based coalitions as Perrine's churches invested their csc in an effort to eradicate crime, clean up its neighborhood, and win back its youth. ^

Relations between acculturation and alcohol use among international students

In the current study, 226 international students attending Florida International University responded to an Web-based questionnaire that assessed self-reported scores for: acculturation, acculturative stress, alcohol use patterns, perceived peer alcohol use, and perceived injunctive social norms for alcohol use. The purpose of the study was to evaluate structural relations among this set of variables using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) via AMOS 17.0. The results of SEM analyses documented acceptable fit of a model which hypothesized that relations between acculturation and alcohol use variables are mediated partially by acculturative stress, perceived peer alcohol use, and perceived injunctive social norms. While significant path coefficients were documented for paths between (a) acculturation and acculturative stress and (b) acculturative stress and alcohol use, the coefficients had negative signs, contrary to existing studies investigating these relations among immigrant youth. While paths between (a) perceived peer alcohol use or (b) perceived injunctive social norms and participants’ alcohol use were significant, path coefficients between acculturation and either (a) perceived peer alcohol use or (b) perceived injunctive social norms were not statistically significant. In addition, multiple-group comparisons suggested that social support had a significant moderating influence on several significant paths in the structural model. Specifically, international students reporting higher social support reported lower scores for acculturative stress and alcohol use, in contrast to their counterparts who reported lower scores for social support.

In God we trust: Faith-based development, spiritual transformation, and economic change in southern Andean indigenous communities

In communities throughout the developing world, faith-based organizations (FBOs) focus on goals such as eradicating poverty, bolstering local economies, and fostering community development, while premising their activities and interaction with local communities on theological and religious understandings. Due to their pervasive interaction with participants, the religious ideologies of these FBOs impact the religious, economic, and social realities of communities. This study investigates the relationship between the international FBO, World Vision International (WVI), and changes to religious, economic, and social ideologies and practices in Andean indigenous communities in southern Peruvian. This study aims to contribute to the greater knowledge and understanding of (1) institutionalized development strategies, (2) faith-based development, and (3) how institutionalized development interacts with processes of socio-cultural change. Based on fifteen months of field research, this study involved qualitative and quantitative methods of participant-observation, interviews, surveys, and document analysis. Data were primarily collected from households from a sample of eight communities in the Pitumarca and Combapata districts, department of Canchis, province of Cusco, Peru where two WVI Area Development Programs were operating. Research findings reveal that there is a relationship between WVI’s intervention and some changes to religious, economic, and social structure (values, ideologies, and norms) and practices, demonstrating that structure and practices change when social systems are altered by new social actors. Findings also revealed that the impacts of WVI’s intervention greatly increased over the course of several years, demonstrating that changes in structure and practice occur gradually and need a period of time to take root. Finally, results showed that the impacts of WVI’s intervention were primarily limited to those most closely involved with the organization, revealing that the ability of one social actor to incite changes in the structure and practice of another actor is associated with the intensity of the relationship between the social actors. The findings of this study should be useful in ascertaining deductions and strengthening understandings of how faith-based development organizations impact aspects of religious, economic, and social life in the areas where they work.

Reimagining Reflection: Gender, Student Perception, and Reflective Writing in the Composition Classroom

The purpose of this thesis is to discover any existing correlation between gender and student perceptions of reflective writing in the composition classroom. Seventy-five students at Florida International University participated in a survey that explored their approaches to and understanding of reflective writing. In order to connect the specific results of this study to the larger context of composition theory, this thesis includes an examination of the theoretical background of gender and reflective writing. The results of the survey indicate that the only identifiable difference between male and female student responses resulted from their definitions of reflective writing. Beyond this difference, however, there were no significant variances in student perceptions of reflective writing. The response of these students at FIU indicates a shift in expected gender norms and suggests a reconsideration of what it means to be a gendered writer in the composition classroom.

Relations Between Acculturation And Alcohol Use Among International Students

In the current study, 226 international students attending Florida International University responded to an Web-based questionnaire that assessed self-reported scores for: acculturation, acculturative stress, alcohol use patterns, perceived peer alcohol use, and perceived injunctive social norms for alcohol use. The purpose of the study was to evaluate structural relations among this set of variables using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) via AMOS 17.0. The results of SEM analyses documented acceptable fit of a model which hypothesized that relations between acculturation and alcohol use variables are mediated partially by acculturative stress, perceived peer alcohol use, and perceived injunctive social norms. While significant path coefficients were documented for paths between (a) acculturation and acculturative stress and (b) acculturative stress and alcohol use, the coefficients had negative signs, contrary to existing studies investigating these relations among immigrant youth. While paths between (a) perceived peer alcohol use or (b) perceived injunctive social norms and participants’ alcohol use were significant, path coefficients between acculturation and either (a) perceived peer alcohol use or (b) perceived injunctive social norms were not statistically significant. In addition, multiple-group comparisons suggested that social support had a significant moderating influence on several significant paths in the structural model. Specifically, international students reporting higher social support reported lower scores for acculturative stress and alcohol use, in contrast to their counterparts who reported lower scores for social support.

The Central European initiative : an approach to regional stabilization and democratic consolidation

This thesis examines how multilateral institutions can contribute to democratization and regional stability. It is a case study of the Central European Initiative (CEI), a regional intergovernmental organization founded by Italy and Austria in 1989 to undertake a regional integration process, and of its role in stabilizing post-communist democracies. Documents were collected at the CEI offices in Trieste, Italy, and interviews conducted with CEI officers, and data obtained from the websites of related organizations and of CEI member countries. The thesis probes the relevance of concepts derived from theories of international regimes and social constructivism. It shows that the CEI diffuses norms and institutional rules conducive to consolidating democracies, including the development of a free civil society, a relatively autonomous political society, rule of law, state bureaucracies that are usable by the new democratic governments, and functioning free market economies, addition, and fosters habits of dialogue, socializes participants, and supports the creation of supra-national identities.

Androgyny versus Patriarchy: A Historicist‐Psychoanalytic Reading of Hemingway's The Garden of Eden and Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White

This paper will examine how male and female character interactions in Ernest Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden and Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White expose the internalization, normalization, and perpetuation of current modes of patriarchy in terms of gender roles through their presentations of androgyny. This paper highlights the parallels of gender construction and the interaction within the social relations depicted in these two novels, which have not been compared previously. The premise, based on the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan and cultural materialism of Raymond Williams, is that fiction reflects historical and contemporary social relations. Lacanian and feminist interpretations have both been conducted on literature written by Collins and Hemingway; however, neither look at these particular novels as two examples for the same contemporary phenomenon of 21st century patriarchal interpellation. This paper most similarly follows the work of Slavoj Žižek who analyzes contemporary social relations through film (including classics such as Casablanca and works by Alfred Hitchcock) and other aspects of popular culture. This project’s contribution and uniqueness lie with the way it applies theory to these particular literary works, specifically concerning gender relations and the prevalence of androgyny in widely read works by well-known authors in two very different literary and historical eras. My interpretation of these two novels provides an evaluation of historical and contemporary patriarchal norms and a radical potentiality for subverting the idea of static gender roles that has remained prevalent throughout the three centuries of these texts’ existence.

Hiearchies of Eating Disorders: Fat-Phobia and Internalized Beauty Ideals in Online Communities

Research and discourse on Eating Disorders (ED) have a tendency to perpetuate certain stereotypes regarding women of color, however unintentional or innocuous it may appear. The research conducted, does show that the prominent ED within communities of minorities or of lower social status is Binge Eating Disorder (BED). A Foucauldian discourse analysis of online forums by young women with ED, such as myproana.com, would be the primary method of documenting how these women form a hierarchy of the community's ED, and analyze if it correlates with the social status primarily associated with the Eating Disorder. Within these forums, and ED based communities, a clear hierarchy is formed, with Anorexia Nervosa at the top and BED at the bottom. From the minimal research available on women of color and ED, it is clear that, for Black women at least, BED is the most common—and thus it is my goal to explore any possible correlation if applicable. Because so little exists that focuses on EDs in women of color, this analysis may help to promote more research in race and class dynamics of Eating Disorders, as well on how those factors affect how women view their own bodies.

Atuações e papéis femininos: o corpo a corpo da atriz no teatro pernambucano durante a ditadura militar

This research investigated the female performance in Pernambuco theater during the Brazilian military dictator ship in the 1970s, analyzing the works of four actresses of theater groups Hermilo Borba Filho, Experiential and Expression, who acted in the period. Launches a look at the female body in the theater from a body scenic transgression: the conscience of a body insubordination in response to a given context. However, before delineated an overview of the artistic and socio - cultural position of women in the theater, in the periods prior to the dictatorship in Brazil and Pernambuco, covering theatrical and historical references, in order to reflect on how these settings interfered in the picture Social actr ess under the dictatorship. The groups are revisited by the looks of interpreters, which was perceived that female targeted search relationships, and in this context, relations with other theater groups of the time, with other artists of the groups that we re inserted with the dictatorial context with censorship, with the offender engaged and theater, with the body. In parallel, it develops a reflection on the scenic body that opposed the dictatorship, a body that violates the established norms, the Transgre ssor Body. The research also discusses an analogy between the work of the actresses who opposed the military regime and militant women. Starting from analyzes with interviews with the actresses from the methodologies of Oral History and Discourse Analysis, the study is developed by building up connections between the testimonies of the artists and the philosophical assumptions of Henri Bergson, on the body and memory. It is also designed to reflect on the changes of the female body in the theater in history , also in line with the philosophical concept of Becoming Woman Felix Guattari. It was found, therefore, that the actresses from the nineteenth century, were a group of female social actors who changed the position of women in history; the stigmatization o f the actress by profession, considered indecent in previous centuries, left traces in some areas today and the idea of the liberation of the female body propagated by feminism in the 1970s, was configured at the time as the best way to protest and will influence, in some contexts, the representation of women in their theatrical make.

Small-scale Fisheries and the Global Economy: Understanding Common-pool Resource Governance in the Context of Market Pressures, Neoliberal Policies, and Transnational Institutions

The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to a better understanding of how global seafood trade interacts with the governance of small-scale fisheries (SSFs). As global seafood trade expands, SSFs have the potential to experience significant economic, social, and political benefits from participation in export markets. At the same time, market connections that place increasing pressures on resources pose risks to both the ecological and social integrity of SSFs. This dissertation seeks to explore the factors that mediate between the potential benefits and risks of global seafood markets for SSFs, with the goal of developing hypotheses regarding these relationships.

The empirical investigation consists of a series of case studies from the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. This is a particularly rich context in which to study global market connections with SSFs because the SSFs in this region engage in a variety of market-oriented harvests, most notably for octopus, groupers and snappers, lobster, and sea cucumber. Variation in market forms and the institutional diversity of local-level governance arrangements allows the dissertation to explore a number of examples.

The analysis is guided primarily by common-pool resource (CPR) theory because of the insights it provides regarding the conditions that facilitate collective action and the factors that promote long-lasting resource governance arrangements. Theory from institutional economics and political ecology contribute to the elaboration of a multi-faceted conceptualization of markets for CPR theory, with the aim of facilitating the identification of mechanisms through which markets and CPR governance actually interact. This dissertation conceptualizes markets as sets of institutions that structure the exchange of property rights over fisheries resources, affect the material incentives to harvest resources, and transmit ideas and values about fisheries resources and governance.

The case studies explore four different mechanisms through which markets potentially influence resource governance: 1) Markets can contribute to costly resource governance activities by offsetting costs through profits, 2) markets can undermine resource governance by generating incentives for noncompliance and lead to overharvesting resources, 3) markets can increase the costs of resource governance, for example by augmenting monitoring and enforcement burdens, and 4) markets can alter values and norms underpinning resource governance by transmitting ideas between local resource users and a variety of market actors.

Data collected using participant observation, survey, informal and structured interviews contributed to the elaboration of the following hypotheses relevant to interactions between global seafood trade and SSFs governance. 1) Roll-back neoliberalization of fisheries policies has undermined cooperatives’ ability to achieve financial success through engagement with markets and thus their potential role as key actors in resource governance (chapter two). 2) Different relations of production influence whether local governance institutions will erode or strengthen when faced with market pressures. In particular, relations of production in which fishers own their own means of production and share the collective costs of governance are more likely to strengthen resource governance while relations of production in which a single entrepreneur controls capital and access to the fishery are more likely to contribute to the erosion of resource governance institutions in the face of market pressures (chapter three). 3) By serving as a new discursive framework within which to conceive of and talk about fisheries resources, markets can influence norms and values that shape and constitute governance arrangements.

In sum, the dissertation demonstrates that global seafood trade manifests in a diversity of local forms and effects. Whether SSFs moderate risks and take advantage of benefits depends on a variety of factors, and resource users themselves have the potential to influence the outcomes of seafood market connections through local forms of collective action.

The Catholic Church and revolution in Ireland

Despite the involvement of radical socialists like James Connolly and the Irish Citizen Army in the 1916 Rising and the unanimous passing of the Democratic Programme (a socialist manifesto for the new Government) by the First Dáil in 1919, the Irish state has since its inception exhibited a highly conservative approach to social and economic policy, and politics generally in Ireland, North or South, have never faced a serious challenge from those seeking radical change. Several factors have played a part in this and this article focuses on one of these - the power and conservatism of the Catholic Church and its influence in shaping the political landscape. Despite a decline in recent years, the Church remains influential north and south of the Border in education provision, the current debates in relation to abortion and in culturally important aspects of life - baptism, communion and burial. In the past the Church’s political influence among Ireland’s majority Catholic community had been even more pronounced. The article begins by looking at the Church’s attitude to revolutionary change in Ireland historically before focusing on its influence in the North during the Stormont years and during the more recent ‘Troubles’ – 1969 - 98. It shows how the Church attempted to influence political thought and discourse in Ireland when it was at the height of its power. Whilst it is true that the Church was not a monolith, and there have always been individual priests who have adopted a more radical approach, the general thrust of the Church was conservative, attempting to ally itself with the power elites of the day where possible. It is this influence which appears to have stood the test of time despite attempts in past generations to radicalise the Irish population.

Shaping Religious and Cultural Aspiration: Engraved Sutras in Southwestern Shandong Province from the Northern Qi Dynasty (550-577 CE), China

This dissertation explores how the Buddhist texts carved on the cliffs of mountains served their patrons’ religious and cultural goals. During the Northern Qi period (550-577 CE), these carved Buddhist sutra texts and Buddha names were prevalent, and were carved directly onto the surfaces of numerous mountains in southwestern Shandong Province. The special focus of this study is on the Buddhist engravings at Mt. Hongding in Dongping, and at Mt. Tie in Zoucheng. Created in approximately 553-564 CE, the carvings at Mt. Hongding stand as the terminus a quo of the history of Buddhist sutras carved into the rocks of the Shandong mountains. The Buddhist carvings at Mt. Hongding served monastic goals. The monk patrons, Seng’an Daoyi, Fahong, and others created the carvings as an integral part of their Buddhist meditation practices. The carvings at Mt. Tie paint a very different picture. At Mt. Tie, a colossal Buddhist sculpture-style carving was created in 579 CE. Sponsored by several Han Chinese patrons, the carving was designed in the form of a gigantic Chinese traditional stele. This study suggests that several Han Chinese local elites proudly displayed their Han Chinese linage by using the gigantic stele form of Buddhist text carving as a means to proclaim Han Chinese cultural and artistic magnificence. To achieve these non-religious goals, they appropriated rhetorical devices often used by the Han elite, such as the stele form, written statements about the excellence of the calligraphy used, and discourse on calligraphy connoisseurship.

Frederick Douglass and Ireland, 1845: The "Vertiginous Twist[s]" of an Irish Encounter

Frederick Douglas was a reader of and writer on the nineteenth-century political and social texts and contexts of oppression, which he experienced at home and witnesed while in Ireland and Britain, 1845-47. This thesis is unique in its identification of several surprising lacunae in the research and critical evaluation of Frederick Douglass’ activities of reading and writing and the texts and contexts that supported these activities. This thesis takes Douglass’ relationship with Ireland and the Irish as its starting point, and offers several moments in the transnational space engendered by Douglass’ readerly and writerly experience of the transatlantic axes of Ireland, Britain and America. This thesis draws upon archival research to recover information regarding Douglass’ trip and subjects his reading and writing on Ireland and the Irish to the critical rigours of narratolgical, cultural and discourse analysis. One lacuna is Douglass’ favourite and neglected school primer, the Columbian Orator, which Douglass signified upon across his autobiographical project. The speech by the Irish patriot and exile, Arthur O’Connor, included in the Orator, is crucial to Douglass’ understanding and expression of justice and equality. Genette’s narratological analysis gives theoretical traction to the ways in which, in his autobiographical representations of his British trip, Douglass recalibrates his autobiographies to reflect his changing perspectives on his life and work. Contrary to popular assumptions, Douglass did, in two letters to Garrison address and comment on Irish poverty. This thesis interrogates the strategic anglophilia of these letters. While the World’s Temperance Convention (WTC) refused to discuss African- American slavery, analysis of Douglass’ speech in Covent Garden and of the paratextual apparatus of the published proceedings of the WTC demonstrates the impossibility of separating these closely interrelated reform causes. When a newly discovered poem from Waterford that admonished the city for its disregard for Douglass’ message is juxtaposed with an uncomfortable moment in Cork, we understand that Douglass became a pawn to bolster sectarian rivalries between nationalist and establishment factions. Though Douglass believed imperial politics was the best vehicle for modernity, he recognised that it had failed Ireland: consequently, in Thoughts and Recollections of a Trip to Ireland (1886), he advocates for Home Rule for Ireland.

Resilience and the ‘everyday’: beyond the paradox of ‘liberal peace’

Over the last decade there has been a shift towards critical understandings of ‘liberal peace’ approaches to international intervention, which argue that local culture holds the key to the effectiveness of peace interventions. In this ‘bottom-up’ approach, peace, reconciliation, and a ‘culture of law’ then become secondary effects of sociocultural norms and values. However, these liberal peace critiques have remained trapped in the paradox of liberal peace: the inability to go beyond the binaries of liberal universalism and cultural relativism. This understanding will be contrasted with the rise of ‘resilience’ approaches to intervention – which build on this attention to the particular context of application but move beyond this paradox through philosophical pragmatism and the focus on concrete social practices. This article clarifies the nature of this shift through the focus on the shifting understanding of international intervention to address the failings of the ‘war on drugs’ in the Americas.