Browsing by Author "Bell, Shannon E."

Now showing 1 - 16 of 16
  • Thumbnail Image
    Alma Mater? Lactation Rooms as a Case Study for Centering Place-making in the Quest for Inclusion on College Campuses
    Nuckols, Erin Lorann (Virginia Tech, 2024-01-23)
    In the 2019-2020 school year, there are at least 30,000 pregnant students on U.S. university campuses who might need a place to pump or nurse while in school. National policies protect the need for time and space for employed lactators, but there are only suggested protections for space for lactating college students. Many postpartum people, members of the campus community, are falling through the gaps of support by their universities. Some universities have developed policies that require lactation rooms for capital construction projects. The state of the policies themselves and consistency of the application in the built space is poorly understood. Few policies address the larger issue of inclusion for this diverse population. This study investigated the issue of lactation rooms on campuses from three different perspectives or domains of knowledge. The work explored the claims made by universities about postpartum support and lactator inclusion (proclamations); the manifestation of those policies in the lactation space (actions); and the user experiences of lactating on their campus (perceptions). The perspectives provide contrasting views on the adequacy of lactation space in this complex ecosystem and the needs for improving the process of developing new policies, the application in capital construction, and the operation of lactation rooms. Merging the socio-ecological model with the human rights model (Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability, and Quality (AAAQ)), lactation policies on two case study campuses were assessed to evaluate the claims made by universities about inclusion and dignity as represented in the built environment. Using a mixed-methods approach of institutional ethnography, an environmental assessment (merging photovoice and indoor comfort measurements), and narrative interviews with lactators, the study centred the lactation room as a site of place-making to demonstrate the overall impact of the interrelationships and intersection of these three domains of knowledge. The results indicated that design and construction standards on the case study campus have changed over time in response to national policies and other influences. The findings illuminate that the facilities themselves have not changed to meet the contemporary needs of lactating bodies of varied academic intersectionalities. Despite policies focused on improving spaces for lactating people, best practice guidelines for lactation rooms, and many publications describing the barriers that users experience in meeting this basic need, universities are still struggling to include all of the lactating people in developing their physical infrastructure and to create the supporting social infrastructure. To address some of the gaps in the immediate future, universities could include the variety of lactating people when creating web-based messaging for lactation room access. Future needs include developing postpartum provisions for the lactators and clearly communicating what is available to them. Universities should develop additional sessions on postpartum support to include in their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) trainings for supervisors. The dramatic change in abortion policies in the U.S. directly impacts this age population. Therefore, student health tracking systems need to incorporate more questions on birth experiences, postpartum needs, and lactation. Universities are unique ecosystems and the current desire to improve in policy and action. There is now an incredible opportunity to explore multi-tiered approaches to improving the DEI landscape.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Beyond Food Access: Accumulation by Dispossession and Dollar General in Central Appalachia
    Burroughs, Amanda Marie (Virginia Tech, 2021-07-13)
    Dollar General has seen massive growth, opening almost 1,000 stores per year for ten years. Executives attribute the company's success to their attention to the expanding poverty class in low-food-access urban and rural areas. Central Appalachia in particular -- which has one of the highest rates of low food access and poverty in the nation -- has been a growth center for Dollar General stores. Has the growth in Dollar General stores in Central Appalachia affected residents' food procurement patterns? Through an analysis of USDA data on food access and by conducting interviews with 11 people living in Central Appalachia, I find that Dollar General stores are most frequently found in low-income and low-food-access counties and that Central Appalachian people perceive the chain as a necessary evil. I argue that the complicated relationship between Dollar General and Central Appalachian people is an example of David Harvey's theory of accumulation by dispossession. Neoliberal globalization created the conditions that allow Dollar General to thrive in the region – in particular, the corporate enclosure of the commons, the decline of the coal industry, and the new economy which has forced many people to travel hours a day for work.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Building Interdisciplinary Partnerships for Community-Engaged Environmental Health Research in Appalachian Virginia
    Satterwhite, Emily M.; Bell, Shannon E.; Marr, Linsey C.; Thompson, Christopher K.; Prussin, Aaron J. II; Buttling, Lauren G.; Pan, Jin; Gohlke, Julia M. (MDPI, 2020-03-05)
    This article describes a collaboration among a group of university faculty, undergraduate students, local governments, local residents, and U.S. Army staff to address long-standing concerns about the environmental health effects of an Army ammunition plant. The authors describe community-responsive scientific pilot studies that examined potential environmental contamination and a related undergraduate research course that documented residents’ concerns, contextualized those concerns, and developed recommendations. We make a case for the value of resource-intensive university–community partnerships that promote the production of knowledge through collaborations across disciplinary paradigms (natural/physical sciences, social sciences, health sciences, and humanities) in response to questions raised by local residents. Our experience also suggests that enacting this type of research through a university class may help promote researchers’ adoption of “epistemological pluralism”, and thereby facilitate the movement of a study from being “multidisciplinary” to “transdisciplinary”.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Civil Disobedience as a Radical Flank in the Mountain Valley Pipeline Resistance Movement
    Baller, Cameron Reid (Virginia Tech, 2023-05-19)
    Communities of resistance are increasingly turning to radical tactics, including acts of civil disobedience, to fight back against encroaching fossil fuel infrastructure. The fight against the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is no exception. The MVP is a 303-mile long proposed fracked gas pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia. I apply radical flank effect (RFE) theory and the theory of movement dynamism to understand the role of civil disobedience, as a radical flank, in the MVP resistance movement. I contribute to the literature on RFEs by focusing primarily on how the radical flank of this movement has affected within-movement social dynamics, like trust, unity, and interpersonal relations. I rely on 15 semi-structured interviews with pipeline fighters, both those who have and have not participated in acts of civil disobedience, to gain insight into the use of civil disobedience, as a radical flank in the movement. This movement has used diverse tactics to challenge construction of the MVP, making it a strong case for understanding the role of radical tactics, and their relationship to moderate tactics. I find several positive RFEs (energizing effects, connecting effects, engaging effects, uniting effects, and movement outcome effects) and some potential negative RFEs (conflict/alienation, fear of consequences and organizational risks). I also find evidence of movement dynamism in the form of an ecosystem of tactics which emerged in the MVP resistance movement. Movement actors kept moderate and radical flanks publicly separate for strategic reasons while overlapping membership bridged the social dynamics of the movement, encouraging cohesion and collective movement identity.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Do You See What We Carry?:  A Digital Content Analysis of Black Mothering Affective Experiences
    Amore, Jenaya (Virginia Tech, 2023-06-09)
    This project aims to explore the affective experiences of Black mothering within an anti-black context by analyzing podcast episodes. The project is organized by examining a) socio-historical constructions of race and gender which influenced Black motherhood and mothering experiences during chattel slavery, b) how those meanings have informed contemporary social constructions around Black mothering in opposition to normative mothering and motherhood–defined as white, cisgender, and middle class and c) the ways affect appears in Black mothering strategies today in a country that many argue continues to devalue Black lives The following questions ground this project: 1) How do social constructions around normative motherhood as a raced, gendered, and classed institution continue to impact Black women's mothering experiences, and 2) How do Black mothers narrate their mothering experiences, including their affective experiences of mothering within the U.S.? To capture Black mothers' sentiments around mothering, I used purposive sampling to select 33 podcasts from mothering blogs and a content platform that compiled lists of recommended podcasts of Black mothers speaking on mothering and other related topics. I analyzed the dialogue in 15 episodes of Black mother's reported experiences. I arranged the findings under three categories of affect: the affect of surrender and survival, the affect of agency, and the affect of community which is reflected in the conceptual framework of liberatory parenting.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Environmental Injustice and the Pursuit of a Post-Carbon World: The Unintended Consequences of the Clean Air Act as a Cautionary Tale for Solar Energy Development
    Bell, Shannon E. (Brooklyn Law School, 2017-01-01)
    The combustion of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas) and, to a lesser extent, changes in land cover, have led to a rise in greenhouse gasses (GHG) in the atmosphere and an increase in global average surface temperatures.¹ This human-induced warming is causing dramatic changes in the climate that are manifesting in numerous ways throughout the world, including an intensification of storms, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, salt-water intrusion of fresh-water aquifers, more frequent and extreme floods, droughts, and heat waves, changes in the range and occurrence of certain infectious diseases, declines in agricultural productivity, and social upheaval resulting from competition for scarce resources.² Arguably, the transition to a post-carbon³ world is urgent, but thus far little progress has been made toward curbing carbon emissions in the United States and globally.⁴ Even the recent Paris Accord—which was lauded as a “historic breakthrough” and “landmark” climate deal⁵—falls far short of what many scientists argue is needed to limit the rise in global temperatures to a safe level. While the Paris Negotiations yielded an agreement to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels” and to “pursu[e] efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C,”⁶ the emission cuts in the agreement are voluntary pledges made by governments and do not actually come close to achieving the 1.5-degree, or even the 2-degree, goal.⁷ The limited outcomes of the Paris Accord should not indicate a lack of grassroots support for effective international policy aimed at addressing climate change, however. On the eve of the Paris Negotiations, over 750,000 people from more than 175 countries took to the streets in what was collectively called the Global Climate March.⁸ Their message to world leaders was a demand to leave “fossil fuels in the ground and [to] finance a just transition to 100% renewable energy by 2050.”⁹ Protests have continued since the Paris Negotiations, such as the “Break Free” demonstrations organized by 350.org during May 2016 that again urged leaders across the world to “break free” from fossil fuels and to make a shift to one hundred percent renewable energy.¹⁰ But what does that transition look like? Many argue that well-designed environmental regulations have the potential to engender technological innovation.¹¹ But can technological fixes really provide a sustainable future for all of us?
  • Thumbnail Image
    Exploring the influence of sociopolitical context on environmental education field trip effectiveness for adolescent youth in the United States
    Thorpe, Emily Grace (Virginia Tech, 2022-05-24)
    Environmental education (EE) programs strive to develop an environmentally literate citizenry capable of addressing the world's environmental problems. However, environmental concerns have become increasingly politically polarizing. As middle school-age youth are developing their own identities, they are likely becoming aware of the dominant political attitudes and environmental messages within their own communities. This thesis investigates the influence of sociopolitical context on student learning outcomes following participation in EE field trips and whether particular approaches produce more positive learning outcomes for students from different contexts. We used a quantitative approach employing pre-existing databases and geographic information systems to create measures of sociopolitical context for each school in our sample based on political partisanship and socioeconomic status. I have organized my research in three chapters: Chapter 1 presents a more comprehensive introduction to the field of EE and extended literature review regarding the question this research intends to address. Chapter 2 presents a quantitative study exploring the influence of sociopolitical context on student outcomes following participation in an EE field trip. Chapter 3 presents a reflection of my graduate learning experience and what I hope to achieve in the future. Results suggest that EE field experiences lead to less positive outcomes for students from wealthier Democratic contexts. While we also found some differences in program characteristics associated with outcomes for each sociopolitical subgroup, effect sizes were small and thus warrant further investigation. We discuss potential explanations for these trends and call for further research on the influence of sociopolitical context and socioeconomic status with relation to EE.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Landowner Response to a Rural Appalachian Natural Gas Pipeline Project
    Gerus, Stephen Paul (Virginia Tech, 2023-01-30)
    Recent research identifies a number of factors associated with public support for or opposition to environmentally-contentious energy infrastructure projects. Much of that research documents the attitudes of populations surrounding projects where energy is produced, such as powerhouses, mines, or drilling operations. I use survey and interview data to argue that those factors do not adequately reflect the concerns of landowners distributed along the 303-mile path of a rural Appalachian natural gas project, which I identify as a site of energy transmission rather than production. I use social representation theory to elicit factors unrecognized in prior research. It provides a framework for the process by which resident rural landowners become aware of, interpret, evaluate, and then respond to the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Landowners express their sense of injustice when the pipeline developer, public policymakers, and permitting authorities are unaware of or indifferent to factors that are especially relevant to them as the pipeline is imposed on their rural environment. The study is based on a sequential mixed-methods approach. I conducted a secondary analysis of the Quality of Life in Rural Virginia and West Virginia Survey dataset (Bell et al. 2019), which consists of mail surveys completed by 783 residents living in 10 counties along the route of the Mountain Valley Pipeline. In 2021 and 2022 I conducted follow-up semi-structured interviews with 25 landowners in the blast zone, which is 1,115 feet on either side of this pipeline, who had completed the survey. The first aim was to test three factors that prior research suggested are associated with attitudes toward such projects. The first factor, economic self-interest, was statistically nonsignificant for these landowners. The interview data suggest that unlike sites of energy production, where jobs stimulate support, landowners saw few jobs available for local people. Any financial value from the sale of easements did not affect their support. The second factor, political ideology, was important in other studies, because conservative ideology is associated with pro-business attitudes. In contrast, even though 60% of the landowners in this study identified themselves as conservative, there was only a weak association between political ideology and support for the pipeline, due in part to the perception of inappropriate application of eminent domain law by the pipeline developer and the courts. Distance from the pipeline, the third factor, was moderately associated with attitude toward the project, with less support for pipeline construction among landowners in the blast zone. The second aim was to use social representation theory to reveal factors in addition to distance that influenced landowners' attitudes toward the project. Interviews revealed that landowners in the blast zone were as concerned with threats to cherished water supplies, for both domestic and agricultural uses, as they were with the danger of a pipeline explosion. The interviews also revealed participants' concern for the disruption of their attachment to and dependence on their properties. These factors were underrepresented in the planning and permitting for this project. The intuitive, common-sense structure for eliciting landowners' attitudes provided by social representation theory was effective at this microscale of inquiry, and may be useful for comparative studies that further distinguish between sites of energy production and sites of energy transmission.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Making Community in the Wilderness: A Case Study of Women's Land's Throughout the United States
    Ayers, Katherine Elizabeth Ruth (Virginia Tech, 2021-01-19)
    Over the summer and fall of 2018, I spent time at nine of the lands and two women's-only music festivals and interviewed 39 women. This dissertation is the result of those interviews and my copious field notes. Chapter one frames the question of community sociologically and examines why the lands often remained homogenous even though their goal was that every woman was welcome to come visit and live. It contrasts the lands to women's-only music festivals, which often included diverse women. Chapter two shows how lands not designed to support old women slowly, and unintentionally, become retirement communities. Families of choice, often consisting of the other women living in the community, help the women who need extra assistance, but within limits set by an unaddressed ageism. The lands are at risk if they fail to attract younger members. Chapter three explores the mutual mistrust between the women's land members and the academic community that I found myself navigating as I completed this project. It details the compromises all feminist communities must make to sustain themselves, and explores how the tension caused by my participation in both the women's lands and academic feminist communities yielded insights into both.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Pipelines and Power: Psychological Distress, Political Alienation, and the Breakdown of Environmental Justice in Government Agencies’ Public Participation Processes
    Bell, Shannon E.; Hughes, Michael; Tuttle, Grace; Chisholm, Russell; Gerus, Stephen; Mullins, Danielle R.; Baller, Cameron; Scarff, Kelly; Spector, Rachel; Nalamalapu, Denali (Elsevier, 2024-01-25)
    Environmental health research has demonstrated that living near industrial activity is associated with increased stress, depressive symptoms, and feelings of powerlessness. Little is known, however, about the effects of new natural gas pipelines—or the institutional processes dictating their approval and construction—on the mental health of local residents. Through our analysis of a mail survey, an online survey, and a set of semi-structured interviews, we examine how engagement with public participation processes associated with new interstate natural gas pipelines affects mental health. Our results suggest that the public participation opportunities offered by regulatory agencies during the pipeline certification process are primarily performative, and we find that many of the people who have taken part in these performative public input opportunities experience psychological distress, stress-activated physical health effects, and a loss of trust in government institutions. We argue that when people engage in public participation processes that have little or no effect on agency decision-making, it not only disempowers, but can harm those individuals and erode their trust in government institutions. Furthermore, we contend that providing the public with participation opportunities that are merely performative, with little ability to influence decision-making outcomes, is a violation of both procedural and recognition justice, two of the core tenets of environmental justice.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Populist Just Transitions
    Abraham, Judson Charles (Virginia Tech, 2020-01-31)
    This dissertation argues that the just transition policy framework may not vivify labor internationalism or erode support for right-wing populists if just transitions are not part of left-wing populist projects. Labor internationalism, which involves labor unions cooperating across borders to pursue common goals, is increasingly important as unions strive to work with their foreign counterparts to influence the international community's urgent efforts to address climate change. Right-wing populism is a growing threat to organized labor and climate protection efforts. Some labor activists hope that advocacy for the just transition policy framework, a set of guidelines for compensating workers in polluting industries who are laid-off as a result of environmental protections, will unite labor organizations from around the world and improve their approaches to international solidarity. Progressives hope that just transition policies will discourage voters from supporting right-wing populist candidates, who are often climate skeptics, out of fear of the job losses that accompany environmentalist reforms. However, I question the assumption that just transition policies, in and of themselves, can serve as solutions to the challenges posed by right-wing populism or overcome divisions within the global labor movement. It is possible for economic nationalism at the expense of global solidarity to continue and for right-wing populists to maintain support in decarbonizing areas where policy makers have indemnified laid-off fossil fuel workers. Integrating just transition policies into left-wing populist politics could potentially make just transitions more useful for countering the far-right and promoting labor internationalism. This dissertation looks to the political theorist Antonio Gramsci's thoughts regarding the "national popular," which Gramsci's readers often associate with left-wing populism. The national popular entails intellectuals from different fields (such as the academy, journalism, and manufacturing) coming together to modernize patriotism and strip it of chauvinistic nationalism. I point out that the original proposals for just transitions prioritized providing free higher education for the workers laid-off from polluting industries. The just transition framework's stress on higher education has populistic implications. Educators, particularly members of teachers' unions, may practice populism throughout the implementation of a just transition for laid-off coal workers by encouraging the displaced workers to cooperate with knowledge workers to rethink nationalism. If workers displaced from polluting industries rethink nationalism in university settings while maintaining their connections to the labor movement, then these workers may in turn reject far-right politicians and discourage organized labor from supporting trade nationalism.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Post-Coal Futures in Central Appalachia: A Critique of the Appalachian Regional Commission and Liberal Economic Development Models
    Gore, Caleb William (Virginia Tech, 2022-05-17)
    This project critically evaluates liberal development plans created for Central Appalachia by the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) through a historical materialist lens. It demonstrates that these plans and their explicitly liberal origins are not sufficient for the working classes in the region to achieve a sustainable 'post-coal' future. Central Appalachia is one of the most impoverished regions in the United States and its political economy was shaped largely by coal mining that was overseen by absentee proprietors. This mono-economic structure has bred unique political conditions in the region. The economics of coal have historically influenced most political decisions. As the coal industry has declined, the region has been subjected to multitudes of economic development plans from the ARC. However, Central Appalachia still exists as an impoverished peripheral zone within the United States' political economy. This thesis is motivated by the decline of coal and the economic and ecological hardships this has created for the region's working-class, and the urgent need to begin envisioning a post-coal future for the region which avoids the insufficiency of liberal economic development. The thesis is not purely an attack on the ARC as an organization, but is rather a critique of the methods they use to enact economic development and shows how these methods are not only inadequate for the Appalachian working class, but all working classes subjected to the liberal economic development model.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Resistance, Acceptance, and Quiescence: The Role of Social Networks in Predicting Responses to a New Natural Gas Pipeline
    Bell, Shannon E.; Gerus, Stephen; Mullins, Danielle R.; Hughes, Michael D. (Mary Ann Liebert, 2022-04-28)
    As a wide body of social movements scholarship demonstrates, inaction in the face of environmental injustice is far more frequent than mobilization. Using the case of the Mountain Valley Pipeline – a highly controversial natural gas pipeline that has been under construction through the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia and West Virginia since 2018 – we ask: what conditions predict whether a person who has experienced negative quality-of-life impacts from this pipeline will take action or resign themselves to quiescence? Through our analysis of responses to a 92-question survey questionnaire that our team mailed to residents living in ten of the counties through which the Mountain Valley Pipeline is being constructed, we find that the most powerful predictors of quiescence are variables related to social networks. Among respondents reporting negative quality-of-life impacts from the pipeline, those with neighbors supporting the pipeline were nine times more likely to be quiescent, and those who were not sure how their neighbors felt about the pipeline were five times more likely to be quiescent. Likewise, those who had joined a social media group focused on stopping the pipeline were nine times more likely to take part in resistance actions than those who had not. We situate our findings within existing scholarship on social movements, which points to the centrality of social networks for predicting social movement participation and quiescence, while also adding nuance to discussions of neoliberalism and sites of acceptance.
  • Thumbnail Image
    The Sexual Agency of Adolescent Girls: A Case Study of Trinidad and Tobago
    Robertson Foncette, Leslie-Ann C. (Virginia Tech, 2022-04-29)
    The purpose of this study is to investigate the attitudes, expectations, and evolution of early experiences of Trinidadian adolescent girls as they navigate physical and emotional intimacy, their capacity to conceptualize and/or enact sexual desire to develop their own sense of agency. Using Trinidad and Tobago (TandT) as a case study, it examines whether attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors pertaining to sexual agency are influenced by socioeconomic factors or key life events, adverse experiences, and the influences of family, community, and broader societal structures. Emerging scholarship on sexuality in the Caribbean explores how women navigate sexual relationships and exercise their agency within the social and economic contexts of the Caribbean. The lived experiences of Caribbean people, particularly women and girls, are important, worthy of exploration, and necessitate permanent documentation. An examination of Caribbean society – a confluence of diverse and complex natural and social environments will enrich scholarship on the worlds shaped by people in this region, particularly by youth who will form the society of the future. Using transnational, Caribbean, and Black feminist frameworks, this study seeks to understand sexual awareness, desire, actions, and motivations in their early stages by conducting interviews with a diverse sample of adolescent girls in TandT.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Understanding learning and action in place-based climate adaptation workshops
    O'Brien, Caleb (Virginia Tech, 2023-10-11)
    Addressing today's complex environmental challenges requires learning, collaboration across sectors, and long-term collective action. This dissertation examines the role of place-based climate adaptation workshops can play in helping communities as they grapple with the current and anticipated effects of anthropogenic climate change. The manuscript contains five chapters. The introduction (Chapter 1) presents the phenomenon of place-based climate adaptation workshops and offers an overview of the research in this dissertation. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 are stand-alone manuscripts. Chapter 2 draws upon surveys with participants in 33 workshops that took place in the United States between 2017 and 2020 to identify perceptions of meaningful outcomes and effective workshop elements. Chapter 3 describes a comparative case study that delves more deeply into 30 of the workshops from Chapter 2 and includes interviews with facilitators and local organizers to identify which workshop characteristics were most often associated with subsequent adaptation-related planning and action. In Chapter 4, we examine learning processes and outcomes in eight additional adaptation workshops held in communities in the United States from 2021 and 2023 by testing a hypothesized learning typology and exploring how it aligns with the theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation. Our findings suggest that workshops contribute to learning, strengthened feelings of efficacy, and deepened relationships, which, in turn, can yield meaningful planning and action outcomes. We suggest that workshops also expand reference groups and foster norms around climate change adaptation. We identify a range of factors that are associated with higher-performing workshops, including the presence of a local champion, co-design of workshop with participants, sustained support from workshop organizers or a backbone support organization, and a suite of effective facilitation techniques. Our exploration of learning in climate adaptation workshops indicated that learning takes place within distinct declarative, procedural, and relational domains and across tacit and explicit dimensions. We found no differences in participants' learning outcomes between in-person and online workshops. Our findings suggest that effective workshops could be designed to help participants articulate, share, and combine disparate sets and forms of knowledge. In the conclusion (Chapter 5) , I synthesize our findings and reflect on my Ph.D. experience.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ...written by a angry woman or a #Soyboy? So hard to tell sometimes.: Investigating the Reinforcement of Social Inequality Through the Soyboy Discourse
    Patrick, Anne McNutt (Virginia Tech, 2023-05-22)
    The soyboy is a label given to men who do not fall into culturally idealized versions of masculinity, specifically men who are politically left leaning and embrace alternative masculinities. This discourse surrounding the soyboy participates in the larger symbolic boundary that upholds and reifies traditional masculinity. The soyboy discourse engages with cultural knowledge that reinforces the gendered and political hierarchies that are upheld through traditional masculinity. This project outlines the soyboy discourse through two analytic components: Component I analyzes digital spaces, defining the soyboy and how the discourse is used and Component II explores how that discourse influences face-to-face interactions, reinforcing inequalities. Through a content analysis of Twitter.com, Component I answers the question of how the soyboy discourse is used and which structures of power it is reproducing. Through interview analysis with eighteen (18) young adults, Component II answers the question of how the discourse is seen in face-to-face interactions and what that means compared to online interactions. Component I details how social inequalities are a part of the soyboy discourse and Component II identifies how that discourse shapes and influences human interactions. The final section of this project outlines how the soyboy discourse reifies existing inequalities through mundane or "low-stakes'' interactions. Through the use of Component I and II's data, the final section examines the process through which inequalities are continued and preserved.