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Understanding the Cultural Changes of Family Creation, Size and Unity Through the Analysis of the Changing Behaviors and Meanings of Their Symbols
Title
Understanding the Cultural Changes of Family Creation, Size and Unity Through the Analysis of the Changing Behaviors and Meanings of Their Symbols.
Creator
Everest-Aranguren, Ida, Cameron, Mary, Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of Anthropology
Abstract/Description
This study seeks to explore longitudinally the changing behaviors and meanings of the symbols bound to family creation, size and unity in order to understand why and how they changed. The research method fuses historical facts collected from historical literature, the data from the participant’s interviews, and the ethnology of the American family made by David Schneider (1980), using symbolic anthropology as the guiding theoretical framework. The imposed gender differentiation, religious...
Show moreThis study seeks to explore longitudinally the changing behaviors and meanings of the symbols bound to family creation, size and unity in order to understand why and how they changed. The research method fuses historical facts collected from historical literature, the data from the participant’s interviews, and the ethnology of the American family made by David Schneider (1980), using symbolic anthropology as the guiding theoretical framework. The imposed gender differentiation, religious precepts, the shifting economic models, economic recessions, World War I and World War II, intellectual and technological developments, and the ideologies accompanying these events caused changes of human behavior and the redefinition of main cultural meanings of the symbols bound to family creation, size and unity. These resulted over time in a systematic shrinking of family creation and size and caused the re-conceptualizing of family unit. Yet, numbers of American family creation and size did not reach negative extremes, as they did in other developed nations. The resisting behavior emerges from the rich ethnic diversity in the nation that offers behavioral alternatives, the people’s trust their government and the American identity rooted on the founding ideals of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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Date Issued
2016
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004800, http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004800
Subject Headings
Kinship--United States., Social change--United States., Families--United States--Historiography., Families--Psychological aspects.
Format
Document (PDF)
Cross-cultural stories of race and change
Title
Cross-cultural stories of race and change: a re-languaging of the public discourse on race and ethnicity.
Creator
Oliver, Eloise D. (Kitty), Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature
Abstract/Description
A progressive discourse on race is impeded by several factors: debates on the reality or unreality of the term race itself; discussions of ethnicity that tend to marginalize a discussion of race; the view by majority members of society that race is a topic for discussion principally by minorities; and the lack of models for non-confrontational public conversations on the subject. In the process, a discussion of racial change rarely enters the discourse beyond brief responses in opinion polls....
Show moreA progressive discourse on race is impeded by several factors: debates on the reality or unreality of the term race itself; discussions of ethnicity that tend to marginalize a discussion of race; the view by majority members of society that race is a topic for discussion principally by minorities; and the lack of models for non-confrontational public conversations on the subject. In the process, a discussion of racial change rarely enters the discourse beyond brief responses in opinion polls. This study proposed the Race and Change Dialogue Model to facilitate the exploration of how race operates in society on an interpersonal level in everyday lives of people across cultures and how changes in racial attitudes occur over time. Theories of race and ethnicity, language, effective communication strategies, and social change provided a starting point, but a "re-languaging" approach was used to advance the innovative nature of this work. In audiorecorded oral histories for public dissemination and interviews in a documentary series on public television, cross-cultural narrators were provided with a safe rhetorical space to tell their stories and to be heard, and a framework of "racenicity" allowed for the discussion of the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, class, and culture as fused aspects of the same issue. An environment was created that enhanced effective communication of a difficult subject. Despite the challenges that arose in the patterns of talk about racial change, the door has been opened to bring change into the dialogue in a more prominent way that moves the discourse on differences in more productive directions. An alternate model for public discussions on race as "racenicity" was created that has the potential to build coalition in the U.S. and has implications for other societies as well.
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Date Issued
2009
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3337184
Subject Headings
Pluralism (Social sciences), Discourse analysis, Psychological aspects, Language and culture, Social change, Ethnic relations, Psychological aspects, Race relations, Psychological aspects
Format
Document (PDF)
Bowling in Different Alleys: A Study of Neighborhood Organizations and Schools
Title
Bowling in Different Alleys: A Study of Neighborhood Organizations and Schools.
Creator
Brown, Pamela M., Pisapia, John, Florida Atlantic University
Abstract/Description
This research study explored the nature of the relationship between neighborhood organizations and schools using social capital theory as the conceptual framework. The researcher chose a qualitative multiple case study design to examine three neighborhoods within the same city, their respective neighborhood organizations and the public schools within each neighborhood's boundary. The researcher found that the neighborhood organizations in this study help build social capital through the...
Show moreThis research study explored the nature of the relationship between neighborhood organizations and schools using social capital theory as the conceptual framework. The researcher chose a qualitative multiple case study design to examine three neighborhoods within the same city, their respective neighborhood organizations and the public schools within each neighborhood's boundary. The researcher found that the neighborhood organizations in this study help build social capital through the bonding ties they create with one another, and the bridging ties they form with other organizations and with local public schools. The positive impact of those ties for neighborhood social health, and for the maintenance and improvement of neighborhoods, can be found within each community. This finding adds to what has already been written related to neighborhood organizations and the concept of social capital. The researcher also found that neighborhood organizations faced significant barriers in their attempts to use the bridging ties of social capital to connect with schools in the community. One of the most problematic of those barriers was the attitude of the schools' personnel themselves to matters they believed to be outside of the school gate and therefore beyond their consideration. Nonetheless, the neighborhood organizations did find ways to interact with the schools and some positive impacts have been documented. The concept of enlightened self-interest, rather than simple self-interest or community spiritedness, was found to be a motivator for neighborhood organization members. This finding adds to the existing literature on both social capital and neighborhood organizations, and is significant for future research on why and how social capital is built in communities.
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Date Issued
2007
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00000653
Subject Headings
School management and organization--Case studies, Volunteer workers in community development--Case studies, Social change--United States--21st century--Case studies
Format
Document (PDF)
Soil of misfortune: Education, poverty, and race in a rural south Florida community
Title
Soil of misfortune: Education, poverty, and race in a rural south Florida community.
Creator
Gonzalez, Juan Carlos., Florida Atlantic University, Kirsch, Max H.
Abstract/Description
This dissertation addresses the structural components of education in the United States and how they have hindered the ability of a community's black and brown children to obtain the knowledge and resources needed to succeed and adapt to the changing circumstances of their region and beyond. It will do so through a case study of a small community in the American South, where the failure of education to provide access to the American dream has been clearly demonstrated in persistent poverty...
Show moreThis dissertation addresses the structural components of education in the United States and how they have hindered the ability of a community's black and brown children to obtain the knowledge and resources needed to succeed and adapt to the changing circumstances of their region and beyond. It will do so through a case study of a small community in the American South, where the failure of education to provide access to the American dream has been clearly demonstrated in persistent poverty and lack of opportunity available to its residents. Belle Glade, Florida is a rural community centrally located within the Everglades Agricultural Area. Fifty years after the historic 1954 Brown vs. Board decision, which outlawed school segregation and the separate but equal claims of Plessy vs. Ferguson, little has changed in this poor rural community. This study shows that this community, rather than representing an isolated case, is reflective of many small non-metro communities of the American South. Though integration initially intended to balance the great disparity that existed between the schools for black children and schools for white children in regards to facilities, materials, and curriculum, in Belle Glade and throughout the South those same disparities still exist today. This study argues that current state education policies, modeled after the federal government's "No Child Left Behind Plan," are a veneer for a separate and unequal educational policy and practice in the state of Florida. It seeks to explore and document why this has occurred, and place this case study within the larger context of structural inequalities on the local, national and global levels. How is it that the "freest nation in the world" with the largest gross national product has yet to fulfill its most fundamental promise to this community---equal opportunity and access to quality education? Thus, this dissertation asks why regardless of the policies, plans, curricula and tests the district and state adopt, at times with the best of intentions, nothing seems to improve the conditions of these black citizens? More importantly, when these issues are addressed, who speaks, under what conditions and for whom?
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Date Issued
2005
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/12161
Subject Headings
Social capital (Sociology)--United States, Segregation in education--Florida--Belle Glade, African Americans--Education--History--20th century, Educational change--Florida--Belle Glade, Race relations in school management--Florida, Discrimination in education--Florida
Format
Document (PDF)