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- Creatore:
- Muhm, Linette
- Descrizione:
- Using Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, this thesis examines neoliberal ideology as a fragmented hegemon that legitimizes itself through other cultural projects. Using narrative analysis, I produce speech excerpts from the Reagan administration to the Trump administration and discuss their social impact, ideological appeal, and economic appeal towards neoliberalism. Findings on neoliberal culture-projects are revealed through the War on Drugs, Welfare reform, War on Terror, and Immigration policy. In addition, I use Gramscian and Debordian theory to discuss the 2016 presidential election, the present crisis of legitimization, and the prospect of counter-hegemony.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- Sociology
- Creatore:
- Funk, Zachary
- Descrizione:
- Rap music has been alive and well as a form of popular music for the last three decades. While the salience of hip-hop culture and rap music in our society has provided a rich environment for diverse forms of its expression, it has also provided a rich environment for its commercialization. Rappers independent from major record labels must negotiate the presentation of their identity within a climate of homogenized claims of authenticity by commercially popular rappers. This thesis seeks to explore the ways that this relationship plays out through the freestyle and written rap music of independent artists. Multiple methods were used, including: participant observation, interview and content analysis. Local artists are highlighted in this work, with reference to the social context in which their music is framed. Therefore, this thesis provides insight into the ways that independent rap artists express their status, while resisting the homogenization of rap music and culture at large.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Humboldt
- Department:
- Sociology
- Creatore:
- Bertana, Amanda R.
- Descrizione:
- The ever-growing volatility in the Middle East is creating a need for countries to diversify their oil source. As the world’s dependency on oil grows, the competition for its diminishing supply becomes more aggressive. Nations that were once considered Third World, such as China and India, are joining the rest of the world in the race for oil in order to raise their international status. While the current superpowers are experiencing economic distress, some of these former Third World countries are experiencing economic success. China, for example, is attempting to stabilize its economy by monopolizing oil reserves. The final determining factor in restructuring the current global hierarchy and shifting hegemonic power matrix is the race for oil, in which Africa is the target. The current monopolizing of oil in Africa by China is reaping criticism as being similar to “neocolonialist” practice. In this current era, Europe and the United States are not the colonizers, as it had been in the past, but it is primarily China that has a foothold on Africa’s oil. China has created a business relationship, but more importantly a “friendship” in order to access African oil. The leaders of China stress the fact that they can empathize with Africa because they were too victims of imperialism by the West. Beyond empathy, China has a past with Africa, embedded in liberation movements during the 1970s to help build Africa’s infrastructure, so it could liberate itself from colonization. This common ground has created an instant camaraderie between the two nations, to the extent that the political leaders of China and Africa have created a Forum of China African Cooperation. The leading oil suppliers in Africa are Angola, Nigeria, and Sudan, and unfortunately these countries have corrupt governments, and participate in genocide, and other crimes against humanity such as in the case of Sudan. China continues to support these governments and economies despite these conditions. It is part of its foreign policy not to discriminate against nations based on their internal situation. Yet, China is receiving criticism from other nations, NGOs, and others for supporting the corruption and genocide in Darfur. This thesis is intended to look at the importance of oil and its role in the relationship between China and Africa. China argues that it is a nation’s right to economically flourish and build its infrastructure, but the case in Africa, specifically Sudan, Angola, and Nigeria is problematic due to its internal affairs. The question that arises is China exploiting the political instability in Africa so it can gain access to African oil in order to raise its international status?
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Humboldt
- Department:
- Sociology
- Creatore:
- Leonardini, Anthony
- Descrizione:
- This study analyzed punk rock song lyrics that were released between the years 1996-2006, from two California record companies, Fat Wreck Chords and Epitaph Records. The purpose of doing so was to find political themes, during the Pre and Post 9/11 Eras, while using a content analysis research method. By critically analyzing and interpreting song lyrics, this allowed me to highlight how music scenes, like punk rock, can be outspoken towards inequalities, corruption, and political issues. Specifically, I identified seven political themes that reflect punk’s anti-hegemonic values, which are rejecting the status quo and opposing political corruption. My research questions aimed to find how particular regions and political eras play a role in the construction of lyrics with political content. Although punk rock has always been critical of the status quo and conventional values, my argument is that certain regions, for example, California, and political eras, like the Post-9/11 Era, generate a greater influx of political content from punk bands. As a result, song lyrics, from the Post-9/11 Era, contained more political themes than the Pre-9/11 Era’s song lyrics. Music’s influence on society is too significant to overlook. Studying song lyrics gives us an opportunity to explore and better understand new perspectives, attitudes, and ideas about social and political factors that influence our behaviors and lives.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- Sociology
- Creatore:
- Pritchard, Ryan K.
- Descrizione:
- This study examines the rhetoric of gay pride parades from their inception to their current incarnation though the examination of selected published photographs in The New York Times. The study analyzes six photographs from New York City’s gay pride celebrations, each corresponding with a significant event affecting the LGBTQIA rights movement. The study uses Entman’s (1993) four aspects of framing as its primary theory to analyze the selected images from LGBTQIA pride parades/festivals and combines Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, Gregory Herek’s theory of heterosexual masculinity and hegemony to supplement the theory and further examine the many factors comprising gay pride celebrations. The goal of this thesis is to illustrate that gay pride parades and festivals have changed from a form of civil protest to a celebratory event that is overtly sexual in nature.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- Communication Studies
- Creatore:
- Meza Lievanos, Maria Georgina
- Descrizione:
- An ideological criticism of the telenovela Por Ella Soy Eva was conducted through a close reading of the text. The close reading of the text provided the means to understand the messages about gender that the telenovela is transmitting. Previous studies indicate that telenovelas have over time included stories consistent with the traditionally patriarchal hierarchy. The study revealed that while the telenovela Por Ella Soy Eva incorporated discussion of important gender issues, the issues were discussed in the light of dominant ideology. A focus on issues such as physical image, professional development, and marriage provided examples on how these issues seem to be opening conversation for gender equality but in reality promote the same dominant ideology as other telenovelas. This thesis suggests that through the process of hegemony Por Ella Soy Eva contributes to dominant ideology.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- Communication Studies
- Creatore:
- Jackson, Aaron James
- Descrizione:
- Pirates are a fascinating subject, inspiring authors and filmmakers alike with dramatic and romantic tales of daring and adventure to create works of fiction like Treasure Island, Peter Pan, and Pirates of the Caribbean. Pirates have inspired historians to explore topics ranging from the pirate crews' proto-democratic organization to their role in developing world systems of trade and cultural exchange. Few, however, have examined how pirates helped to establish the great European maritime empires, which emerged from the relative backwater of sixteenth-century Europe to conquer distant lands and peoples, master global trade winds and tides, and muscle their way into every corner of the globe by the nineteenth century. Emerging theories in the discipline of world history appear to provide the most promising explanations of European ascendancy by emphasizing global systemic connections and contingencies. Systemic explorations of economic connections and commodities have provided historians with a much better understanding of the past, and this exploration of piracy fits this mold. Piracy was both a form of economic connection and commodity, particularly when defined as the use of violence to achieve economic gains. As this paper will show, Europe's maritime empires, and the British Empire in particular, traded this commodity heavily between the late-fifteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. The Early Modern Era was a bigger world than the one we occupy today. Reliant upon the trade winds and favorable seas to connect the imperial metropole with its colonies, the British Empire relied on a collection of frontiers to fuel its economic engines. In these frontiers, pirates helped build the British Empire, their crimes later justified its centralized authority and the state monopoly on violence, and their continued existence served as a laboratory for developing new methods of international power relations. In these ways and more, pirates deserve a great deal more credit and attention from scholarly circles. Unfortunately for historians, pirates rarely left detailed documents outlining their actions and motives, but Subaltern Studies methodology provides a potential solution. While researching colonial Indian peasant uprisings against the British for his 1983 book, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, Ranajit Guha encountered difficulties in finding primary source material portraying the peasants’ perspectives, which is not surprising given that colonial Indian peasants were largely illiterate. Guha could discern their perspectives by deciphering coded language in the abundance of British documents—by reading against the grain of the biased documentary record. Similarly, the clear majority of primary source material on piracy originates from official British documents, including trial transcripts, colonial correspondence, the occasional journal entry, and contemporary literature and newspaper articles. The government sources are often biased, of course, but Guha’s methodology provides a filter to deal with source prejudice. Contemporary literature, such as the works of Daniel Dafoe or the infamous A General History of the Pyrates, is often embellished for entertainment value, making the separation of fact from fiction difficult. But cross-referencing this literature with sources less likely to be embellished allows one to sift through the chaff and acquire a contextual understanding of piracy. Finally, a wealth of secondary source material is available to assist in parsing the primary documentation. For example, Marcus Rediker’s work on the social history of outlaws and the Atlantic slave trade provides invaluable contextual information, Linda Colley’s work on captivity narratives provides insight into the victims of piracy as well as the nature of empire, K.N. Chaudhuri’s work illuminates the pre-European trade systems in the Indian Ocean that European empires and pirates alike would later prey upon, and Sven Beckert’s work provides an example of a global analysis of commodity exchange. World history methodologies provide frameworks in which to draw connections between seemingly separate areas and events to depict the bigger picture. Both pirates and empires have been the subjects of many historical studies, but few historians have sought to explore their interrelated natures in their European manifestations. Building an empire requires the use or threat of violence to establish a dominance relationship through which the empire draws upon the resources of the conquered—essentially piracy writ large. The development of the British Empire, with its mercantile foundations, was not a simple expression of force relationships from the beginning. It developed slowly, expanding more often through the efforts of its merchants than its navy, and in such an environment, the empire relied on the skills of pirates to acquire the resources and corresponding power required to become the largest and most influential maritime power to date. Exploring the roles pirates played in the development of imperial systems helps historians to better understand the nature, scope, and function of early modern structures that serve as the foundation for the modern era. Understanding how piracy shaped early modern empires, therefore, tells us a great deal about ourselves.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- History
- Creatore:
- Cordero, Brittany D.
- Descrizione:
- Since 2000, the Internet has quadrupled in size and Computer-Mediated Dating (CMD) websites have become multibillion-dollar businesses (Wysocki & Childers, 2011). The Internet has been able to accommodate increasingly smaller niches, speaking to a variety of individual needs, wants and desires. One such niche website is Seeking Arrangement (SA). Launched in 2006 and with over 3.6 million users, “SeekingArrangement.com” is a site that pairs “Sugar Daddies or Mommies” (older, wealthy men/women) with “Sugar Babies” (younger and poorer women or men) who seek financial assistance in exchange for “companionship” in what has been termed a “mutually beneficial relationship” (“Press & Media,” 2014). This kind of relationship is also known as “Sugar Dating” or “Sugar Culture.” Critics such as Miller (2012), Abigail (2014), and Motz (2014) argue that Sugar Dating is a euphemism for prostitution, while others such as Motyl (2013) argue that it is a combination of prostitution and dating. Regardless of how Sugar Dating is framed, questions about its nature remain, particularly with regard to its juxtaposition to current feminist theory. Specifically, what are the reasons women and men become Sugar Babies and Sugar Daddies? How do women and men characterize an “arrangement”? And how is power and agency exercised and practiced within the lived experiences of female Sugar Babies and Sugar Daddies? Therefore, this thesis seeks to critically examine the Sugar Dating site Seeking Arrangement (SA) in various aspects. Critical and feminist theory will be used to analyze the data, which will be collected through in-depth interviews of SA participants. The results will address compelling topics such as agency and what it means for the modern individual to possess agency, as well as Foucault’s explanation of power and how it affects the actions of individuals. Specifically, the study will explore the balance of power in Sugar Dating arrangements and how female Sugar Babies negotiate power within arrangements with their older wealthier Sugar Daddies. Ultimately, however, it examines Sugar Dating within the larger context of heterosexual relationships and determines where it lies on the spectrum of patriarchal discourse.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- Communication Studies