VTechWorks Repository :: Browsing by Author "Cook, Samuel R."

Browsing by Author "Cook, Samuel R."

Now showing 1 - 20 of 20

Autistic Workers: Invisible People
Nye, Tamieson Marjorie Ruth (Virginia Tech, 2016-12-21)
Existing literature about autistic workers concentrates on the troubles autistics have in the workplace; these problems are linked back to documented deficits in autistic people, thereby constructing a picture of autistic workers as people who need to be helped. There have been no academic studies asking autistic adults to give their general impressions on their work environments. The paucity of narratives from working autistic authorities has effectively made them into a hidden, or invisible population. We do not know if they agree with the views presented about them. We do not know what jobs they are in or in what levels of authority they are working. The only way to understand working autistic adults and their worth and presence in the workforce, is to ask them. This exploratory, qualitative study asked 38 autistic adults (currently working or who have a past work history) 55 questions about their work environments. Most participants provided elaborative answers about their work experiences. Participant experiences often contradicted current literature about autistic adults or mentioned little known phenomenon. Confirmation of existing themes in autism literature was sometimes arguable. The narrative accounts gathered in this study give new opportunities for research into autistic adults and their places in society.
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.
Crises Transformed: The Motivations Behind Engagement in Anarchy
Stapp, April Marie (Virginia Tech, 2017-06-06)
What motivates individuals to take part in anarchistic movements and spaces? For those who do, what occurs during engagement in anarchy? By collecting the oral histories of anarchistic activists, this study indicates how crises, personal and collective, is a not only a motivating factor for why individuals join and engage in anarchistic movements and spaces, but how crises are, in turn, radically transformed through engagement in anarchical practice. To understand this process, this study explores crises through the development of an eco-anarchistic dialectical framework--negate-subvert-create--to indicate how the crises of capital are embodied, consciously negated, subverted politically, and ultimately transformed through engagement in anarchy. Anarchy is accordingly conceptualized as a liminal spatio-temporality that allows individuals to reconnect their selves to their potentials to become something beyond the ecological destructive and dominant social world. These potential are realized through the embodiment of communitas, or collective liminality--a natural communality that individuals reconnect to engaging in anarchy. I end with an exploration of the possible outcomes and potential futures of anarchy by situating the current political, economic, social and ecological crises occurring around the globe within the eco-anarchistic framework developed in this study. Here, I indicate the importance of engaging in care practices and creating care-networks as a necessary outcome and future political practice for anarchistic movements as a way to mitigate and ultimately transform the crises of capital.
Culture on a Plate: The Social Construction of Authenticity in Food Culture
Byrd, Kaitland Marie (Virginia Tech, 2017-04-21)
This study uses three case studies to show how authenticity is fabricated in food culture. Conceptualizing food as a cultural product makes possible the analysis of social processes through food. In doing so, food becomes a mirror reflecting the happenings within the broader social world. This study examines three empirical cases to sociologically understand food culture: southern barbeque, Top Chef, and ramps and quinoa. Southern barbeque allows the examination of the role of fabricated authenticity within food culture. Top Chef is evidence of how chefs actively produce distinction to legitimate their position and status within the field. Ramps and quinoa are examples of two ingredients that have been exploited from their original context to become elite and mainstream ingredients without concern for the consequences to the people who relied on them in the quest for the exotic. Together these cases provide examples of how research on the fabrication of authenticity and impression management can be expanded to include food.
A 'Demonstration Plot' for Equality: A Qualitative Analysis of Clarence Jordan and Koinonia Farm
McLaughlin, Laura Shay (Virginia Tech, 2016-06-20)
The purpose of this study is to explore the biography of a white, Southern Baptist-reared Clarence Jordan and his goals in the creation of Koinonia Farm. This thesis explicitly evaluates these motives through the examination of archival material—specifically Jordan’s sermons and speeches—that uncovers Jordan’s own words and testimony. This thesis answers the following questions: (1) What was Clarence Jordan’s aim in founding Koinonia Farm and continuing to implement it over time? (2) How did he go about methodically achieving his aim? And (3) How effectively were the objectives achieved as reflected in measurable outcomes—did Jordan’s sermons frame his position so as to make Koinonia Farm work over its lifetime? Additionally, this thesis challenges the methods of Clarence Jordan and Koinonia Farm in the way they employ the agricultural and industrial educational models as a means of liberation and uplift for African Americans and poor whites in Sumter County, Georgia.
Discerning Neighborhood Characteristics as Contributing Factors to Infant Mortality in Rural Northern Plains Communities
Masilela, Ayanda Martha (Virginia Tech, 2014-09-11)
American Indians are distinct in their current geographic isolation and history of exclusionary policies enacted against them. Citizenship and territorial policies from the 1700s through the early 1900s have manifested in the distinctive status of many American Indian communities as sovereign nations, a classification that no other ethnic group in the United States can claim. However, as a result of political and geographic isolation, disparities in heath and economic development have been an ongoing problem within these communities. Among the most distinctive health disparities are in infant mortality and obesity-related complications. This project will focus on South Dakota, a state that was late in its application of assimilationist policies, yet today is home to some of the least healthy reservation communities in the United States. An investigation into the making of reservation healthcare delivery systems and patterns of prenatal care utilization will hopefully reveal patterns of health and economic characteristics that predispose infant mortality.
Examining the Impact of Indigenous Cultural Centers on Native Student Experience
Faircloth, Melissa (Virginia Tech, 2022-05-17)
Research has noted the persistence of hostile campus environments for underrepresented college students. However, Native and Indigenous students continue to be one of the most understudied populations within higher education, particularly as it relates to their campus experience and ways in which they navigate institutional climates. In addition to illuminating the campus climates Native students face at predominantly White institutions, this dissertation examines the impact that Indigenous cultural centers have on their overall campus experience and persistence. As the primary method, it draws on 12 semi-structured interviews with Indigenous students at a predominately White institution within the Southeast United States. Findings from this study demonstrate the systemic colonization which exists in higher education through the analysis of microaggressions students regularly face. Unique to Native students, these were most often laden with narratives of erasure. However, in the face of less-than-ideal climates, participants in the study also derived a sense of community, affirmation, and support from the existence of a Native student center. Though participants derived many benefits from having such a space, they also indicated that the Native center was not always immune to the climate issues faced within the larger campus. These accounts contrast existing research on cultural centers. Findings from this study suggests that the narrow understanding of Indigenous identity as an exclusively racialized one, functions as a powerful tool in advancing erasure narratives within the space itself.
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.
The Language of Ethical Encounter: Levinas, Otherness, and Contemporary Poetry
Schwartz, Melissa Rachel (Virginia Tech, 2017-07-18)
According to philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, alterity can exist only in its infinite and fluid nature in which the aspects of it that exceed the human ability to fully understand it remain unthematized in language. Levinas sees the encounter between self and other as the moment that instigates ethical responsibility, a moment so vital to avoiding mastering what is external to oneself that it should replace Western philosophy’s traditional emphasis on being as philosophy’s basis, or “First Philosophy.” Levinas’s conceptualization of language as a fluid, non-mastering saying, which one must continually re-enliven against a congealing and mastering said, is at the heart of his ethical project of relating to the other of alterity with ethical responsibility, or proximity. The imaginative poetic language that some contemporary poetry enacts, resonates with Levinas’s ethical motivations and methods for responding to alterity. The following project investigates facets of this question in relation to Levinas: how do the contemporary poets Peter Blue Cloud, Jorie Graham, Joy Harjo, and Robert Hass use poetic language uniquely to engage with alterity in an ethical way, thus allowing it to retain its mystery and infinite nature? I argue that by keeping language alive in a way similar to a Levinasian saying, which avoids mastering otherness by attending to its uniqueness and imaginatively engaging with it, they enact an ethical response to alterity. As a way of unpacking these ideas, this inquiry will investigate the compelling, if unsettled, convergence in the work of Levinas and that of Blue Cloud, Graham, Harjo, and Hass by unfolding a number of Levinasian-informed close readings of major poems by these writers as foregrounding various forms of Levinasian saying.
Legal Associations: Modern United States Indian Policies and their Seventeenth-Century Antecedents
Walters, Samuel P. (Virginia Tech, 2006-05-24)
After establishing its first permanent colony in North America, the English government in the seventeenth-century began creating a legal context for their relationship with the Native Americans living in close proximity to the colonists. In a similar fashion, the United States government, immediately following independence from Great Britain, focused on developing policies to address its legal relationship with the Native American nations that resided within and on the borders of the United States. By examining the statutes, treaties, and court rulings regarding North American Indians used by both the United States and England, this thesis will highlight the close similarities that exist between modern federal policies and seventeenth-century English policies. Each chapter focuses on an important modern United States Indian policy and then presents corresponding evidence from seventeenth-century legal sources.
Munda Politics and Land: Understanding Indigeneity in Jharkhand, India
Raonka, Pallavi (Virginia Tech, 2021-02-02)
The eastern state of Jharkhand in India has been the site of contention between Adivasi communities, like the Munda, and the national government. This is a relationship between these communities and centralized, outside power that has existed for centuries in different forms. To understand this ongoing conflict, we need to understand the root causes of contention. Various scholars have traced this to a general rejection by Adivasis of State-sanctioned neoliberal development projects like land-grabbing and mining. I analyze, based on a fifteen month long ethnographic study conducted from May 2017 to December 2018, the meaning of land for the Munda community, and how these meanings underlie the Adivasi-State conflict, based on several forms of qualitative data. I argue that at the core of this ongoing conflict lie questions of identity construction and representation, neoliberal market forces, gender, and a historical narrative of resistance against outsiders. Importantly, to best understand Adivasi politics and their relationship to their local environment, one must actively listen to how these communities represent themselves.
Native Sovereignty, Narrative Argument, and an International Shift: The 1974 Rhetoric of George Manuel and Vine Deloria, Jr.
Dyson, Charles Wesley (Virginia Tech, 2004-07-08)
The modern era of globalization presents a situation where indigenous cultures are potentially being eroded away. As a result, leaders of these groups need to begin using effective rhetorical strategies in their efforts to defend their worldview against the dominating views of Western ideology. This thesis attempts to present a case study analysis of the work of two leaders in the Native American rights movement: George Manuel and Vine Deloria, Jr. Manuel's book The Fourth World: An Indian Reality and Deloria's Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence are presented as examples for how modern indigenous leaders can use narrative argument, addressing the persuasive functions of social movements, to foster political action on a people-to-people, national, and transnational level.
Native Voices: Native Peoples' Concepts of Health and Illness - Opening Ceremony
(Virginia Tech. University Libraries, 2016-09-16)
This is the opening ceremony for the Native Voices exhibit. The exhibit examines concepts of health and medicine among contemporary American Indian, Alaska native, and Native Hawai'ian people. The traveling exhibition, produced by the National Library of Medicine, features interviews and works from native people living on reservations, in tribal villages, and in cities. topics include: Native views of land, food, community, earth/nature, and spirituality as they relate to Native Health; the relationship between traditional healing and Western medicine in native communities; economic and cultural issues that affect the health of Native communities; efforts by Native communities to improve health conditions; and the role of Native Americans in military service and healing support for returning Natives veterans.
Native voices: Native peoples' concepts of health and illness - Panel discussion
Bowers, J. Michael; Copeland, Nicholas M.; Ferguson, Victoria; Hester, Rebecca; Hey, Christina K. Mae; Cook, Samuel R.; Pannabecker, Virginia; Trinkle, David B. (Virginia Tech. University Libraries, 2016-09-20)
This panel discussion was a joint effort between University Libraries, Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, and American Indian Studies. Virginia Pannabecker, Health, Life Science, and Scholarly Communications Librarian; David Trinkle, Associate Dean for Community and Culture, Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine; and Sam Cook, Director, American Indian Studies at Virginia Tech led the planning effort. Panelist Victoria Ferguson (not featured in the video recording) provided an introduction and led a discussion at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine event location in Roanoke.
The panel was part of a series of events complementing the display of the exhibit Native Voices: Native Peoples' Concepts of Health and Illness (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/) at Newman Library from September 16th to October 25th, 2016. The exhibit was developed and produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM). The American Library Association (ALA) Public Programs Office, in partnership with NLM, toured the exhibition to America’s libraries. It was brought to Virginia Tech by University Libraries; Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine; American Indian Studies; Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise; Division of Student Affairs: Intercultural Engagement Center; and the Moss Arts Center.
The exhibit examined concepts of health and medicine among contemporary American Indian, Alaska native, and Native Hawai'ian people. The traveling exhibition, produced by the National Library of Medicine, featured interviews and works from native people living on reservations, in tribal villages, and in cities. Topics included: Native views of land, food, community, earth/nature, and spirituality as they relate to Native Health; the relationship between traditional healing and Western medicine in native communities; economic and cultural issues that affect the health of Native communities; efforts by Native communities to improve health conditions; and the role of Native Americans in military service and healing support for returning Natives veterans.
Negotiating Sovereignty: Resistance and Meaning Making at the Bear Mountain Mission in Early-Twentieth Century Virginia
Blake, Erica Nicole (Virginia Tech, 2022-06-16)
In 1907, the Episcopal Church established a mission in the heart of the Native Monacan community on Bear Mountain in Amherst County, Virginia. The Bear Mountain Mission operated a church, day-school, and clothing bureau until 1965, when the day-school closed after the integration of Amherst County Public Schools. This thesis investigates how Native Monacan congregants negotiated sovereignty, enacted resistance against the assimilating efforts of the Episcopal Church, and maintained group identity and safety at the Mission during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Monacan congregants utilized the inherently colonial nature of the Mission's structure in ways that allowed them access to influential white Protestant networks, as well as validation by the mission workers who lived in and around the Bear Mountain community. I argue that Monacan people used strategies such as the refashioning of Mission teachings, anonymous and signed letter-writing to the Bishop, and communal protests to ensure that the Mission remained a safe space that worked for their Native community during a time of immense racial animosity. Using the personal correspondence between women mission workers, church leadership, and Monacan congregants, I examine the inner workings of the Bear Mountain Mission, and the beliefs and actions of mission workers and Monacan people alike. This thesis challenges the history of Bear Mountain Mission, and Native missions within the United States more broadly, to consider the unique and numerous ways that Native peoples enacted resistance strategies in order to ensure that Protestant Missions worked in ways that benefited their communities.
Situating Critical Indigenous Worldview within Western Academic Traditions: Place-Based and Culturally-relevant Science Education for Human Empowerment and Environmental Sustainability
Hey, Christina K. Mae (Virginia Tech, 2017-05-02)
Learning to value ourselves as uniquely endowed, understanding our irreplaceable fit into the social and environmental fabric, and becoming active agents woven into our communities will maximize our capacity for progressive change through empowerment. There are effective practices in orchestrating learning environments for empowerment that have ancient and proven roots but have become marginalized in contemporary education. These ways focus on fostering the development of unique gifts and group cohesion, as opposed the fostering of independence and competition, the latter being two ideologies not found in Nature when it is in balance and harmony. This reversal in paradigm will reclaim our ability to critically problem-solve and evoke transformative action by increasing the diversity of perspectives and talents focused on an endeavor. Central to this research is an exploration of the strategization involved in supporting cultural, cognitive, and creative capital—the gifts endowed to humankind that enable our co-evolution with this specific regions of this planet. This research explores methods not only of maintaining the integrity of Indigenous voice through the process of research and reporting but also of using science as a tool for building community through a sense of critical Indigenous identity. It is my hope that the data contained in this research will serve as a relevant, without being transferable, model of progressive educational approaches to ameliorate science education on a local, national, and global scale.
Storying Our Experiences: Caribbean Students at U.S. Universities
Popova, Dyanis Aleke (Virginia Tech, 2016-07-06)
In this qualitative research project, I explore the daily lived experiences of five Caribbean students studying at a rural university in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I investigate the personal challenges encountered by young adult Caribbean students and focus on their perspectives and coping strategies as they negotiate the racial binary and sociocultural norms found in the United States. I present my research here in two manuscripts. In manuscript one, Transcultural Adaptations: Caribbean Students at U.S. Universities, framed both by my use of testimonio as method (Haig-Brown, 2003; Pérez Huber, 2009) and the composite lens formed by my use of bricolage (Kincheloe, 2001; Kincheloe, 2004; Kincheloe, McLaren, and Steinberg, 2012), I look at how all these factors influence their academic experiences and their perception and performance of the Self. In doing so, I highlight key aspects of the community experience and add to the conversation surrounding the adaptation of international students to U.S. universities. In manuscript two Interrogating Whiteness: The View from Outside, I delve more deeply into one aspect of their adaptation by interrogating one participant's perspectives on whiteness. I use critical autoethnography (Boylorn and Orb, 2014; Tilley-Lubbs, 2016), and the call-and-response tradition (Hebdige, 1987; Toussaint, 2009) common in Trinidad and Tobago and in the African diaspora to present my exploration of his perspectives. I present his perspectives using the third person voice, followed by an examination of my own ways of knowing, to highlight the questioning and internal conflict that emerged as a result of these conversations on whiteness. I share my epiphanic experience (Denzin, 2013; 2014) in the hopes of establishing discourse and resonance with my reader in this deconstruction of my way of understanding the world.
Unforgetting the Dakota 38: Settler Colonialism, Indigenous Resurgence, and the Competing Narratives of the U.S.-Dakota War, 1862-2012
Legg, John Robert (Virginia Tech, 2020-06-04)
"Unforgetting the Dakota 38" projects a nuanced light onto the history and memory of the mass hanging of thirty-eight Dakota men on December 26, 1862 following the U.S.-Dakota War in Southcentral Minnesota. This thesis investigates the competing narratives between Santee Dakota peoples (a mixture of Wahpeton and Mdewakanton Dakota) and white Minnesotan citizens in Mankato, Minnesota—the town of the hanging—between 1862 and 2012. By using settler colonialism as an analytical framework, I argue that the erasing of Dakotas by white historical memory has actively and routinely removed Dakotas from the mainstream historical narrative following the U.S.-Dakota War through today. This episodic history examines three phases of remembrance in which the rival interpretations of 1862 took different forms, and although the Dakota-centered interpretations were always present in some way, they became more visible to the non-Dakota society over time. Adopting a thematic approach, this thesis covers events that overlap in time, yet provide useful insights into the shaping and reshaping of memory that surrounds the mass hanging. White Minnesotans routinely wrote Dakota peoples out of their own history, a key element of settler colonial policies that set out to eradicate Indigenous peoples from the Minnesota landscape and replace them with white settlers. While this thesis demonstrates how white memories form, it also focuses on Dakota responses to the structures associated with settler colonialism. In so doing, this thesis argues that Dakota peoples actively participated in the memory-making process in Mankato between 1862 and 2012, even though most historical scholarship considered Mankato devoid of Dakota peoples and an Indigenous history.
What's mine isn't yours, but what's yours is definitely mine: University student use of Cherokee Indian culture in identity formation
Money, Emalee Faith (Virginia Tech, 2023-06-05)
Workfare and the Great Recession: Socioeconomic Outcomes among Black, White, and Hispanic Mothers in the Era of Work-First Welfare
Delaney, Patrick Prescott (Virginia Tech, 2014-07-01)
With the introduction of welfare reform in 1996 – the culmination of Bill Clinton's campaign promise to 'end welfare as we know it' – means-tested cash assistance became conditional upon participation in the labor market. The current welfare program Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) is dependent on recipients being able to find work, typically in the low-wage service sector. In addition, this reform handed the states considerable autonomy in TANF's implementation and administration. The literature, citing increased caseworker discretion and state-level policies, has also shown substantial evidence of favorable treatment toward white recipients (e.g. less sanctioning) compared with that of blacks and Hispanics. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1997 cohort, this study examines the impact of TANF before and during the Great Recession of 2008 by comparing socioeconomic outcomes among TANF recipients and similarly situated 'non-entrants' with an added focus on racial disparities in these outcome measures. Also, the role of state-level policy context is explored by assessing employment, income, and healthcare coverage outcomes among white, black, and Hispanic recipients living in states whose TANF policies are comparatively strict. Main findings include a significantly negative relationship between TANF participation and socioeconomic outcomes when controlling for relevant factors. No evidence was found, however, linking state TANF policy strictness with decreased socioeconomic outcomes among program participants.

Browsing by Author "Cook, Samuel R."

Results Per Page

Sort Options