Global Studies Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/1794/6124

Note that prior to Fall Term 2023, the department was known as International Studies.

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 110

Open Access
Youth Empowerment and Community Wellbeing: The Case of Ophelia's Place
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Shannon, Taylah; Braun, Yvonne
Adolescence is a time of change and exploration, and youth today experience adolescence in world of hyper-connectedness and unlimited access. Post COVID, the adolescent experience comes with its own unique challenges, encouraging communities to reflect on the ways in which they are supporting and empowering their youth. Through a case study analysis of the local Eugene non-profit organization, Ophelia's Place, communities must be implementing services that work to empower their youth in order to reach levels of community wellbeing. Through highlighting a gap in community wellbeing literature where the youth experience is not discussed in community wellbeing indexes, it is paramount that moving forward youth empowerment should be at the forefront of community projects. Various interviews, participant observations, and examinations of survey data at Ophelia's Place exemplify that by providing spaces for youth outside of the home and school, youth can better navigate adolescence and engage with their communities.
Open Access
Challenges of Smallholder Farmers in Jamaica: Bridging Perspectives in Agriculture Development
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Matheson, Joel; Wooten, Stephen
Smallholder farmers constitute a vital component of agricultural systems globally, playing a pivotal role in ensuring food security. This thesis delves into critical issues surrounding agricultural development in Jamaica, focusing on the role of government, education, access to resources, and perspectives on climate change. By foregrounding local viewpoints, this research contributes to the broader discourse in development studies, emphasizing the necessity for inclusive and context-sensitive approaches. Adopting a critical development perspective, this study aims to elucidate power dynamics and structural complexities hindering development efforts. Conducted as a case study in Jamaica, this research seeks to address several key questions. Firstly, it examines the primary challenges confronting smallholder farmers at the local level. Secondly, it explores the involvement of Development Actors in assisting these farmers on a global scale. Lastly, it investigates the alignment of views between smallholder farmers and Development Actors regarding challenges and solutions. Qualitative methods, including 17 semi-structured interviews (11 with smallholder farmers and 6 with Development Actors), were employed to gather data. Analysis revealed a notable gap in the literature pertaining to Small Island Developing States, particularly regarding the limited inclusion of smallholder farmer voices in decision-making processes related to agricultural development. Key themes emerged from the analysis, highlighting a disconnect between the perspectives of smallholder farmers and Development Actors. While both groups acknowledge challenges, disparities exist in their perceived solutions. Effective communication and collaboration between global and local stakeholders are underscored as crucial for addressing these disparities. In the context of Jamaica, recommendations include enhancing the messaging and outreach of Development Actors to better serve the needs of smallholder farmers.
Open Access
Political Ecology of Conservation and Sustainable Development: A Case Study of World Wildlife Fund Community-Based Conservation in The Iténez Protected Area (PD ANMI), Beni, Bolivia
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Camacho, Alejandra; Hindery, Derrick
For years, Bolivia's cultural and environmental diversity has been threatened by indigenous marginalization and resource exploitation directly linked to waves of political and economic reforms that shape its people and ecosystems. This thesis examines a community-based conservation (CBC) initiative by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Bolivia in the Iténez Protected Area, applying a political ecological framework to analyze human-environment interactions over a complex network of spaces and time. The study advocates for the re-envisioning of conservation action, scrutinizes the role of NGOs, and highlights the influence of global power dynamics. It calls for genuine community participation to achieve sustainable development and environmental stewardship, challenging traditional conservation methods and power imbalances.
Open Access
Disability and Inclusive Education in Mexico: Perspectives and Impact of Civil Society
(University of Oregon, 2024-01-10) Grigoreva, Anastasiia; Yarris, Kristin
This thesis examines the role of civil society organizations (CSOs) in promoting inclusive education (IE) in Mexico. Semi-structured interviews were conducted from July to September 2022, involving 33 representatives from 28 distinct CSOs and capturing the voices of some individuals with disabilities and parents. The findings delve into the current state of IE in Mexico, the ideal of IE as envisioned by CSOs, and the actions they take to advance IE in Mexico. Contrary to existing literature, personal barriers emerged as a key obstacle hindering inclusion. In addition, many CSOs challenged the predominant view of a stark dichotomy between IE and special education, presenting both frameworks as mutually reinforcing. The research also sheds light on the diverse contributions of CSOs that directly and indirectly impact IE. CSOs lay the groundwork for IE by creating inclusive cultures, improving accessibility, training educators, collaborating with support teachers and governmental entities, and engaging in activism. Importantly, CSOs also directly participate in the IE process within educational institutions, playing a hands-on role in facilitating the inclusion of students with disabilities and ensuring they receive a high-quality education. In essence, this research underscores the dynamic and versatile role of CSOs in shaping an IE landscape in Mexico. CSOs are uniquely positioned to bring together all key stakeholders involved in IE and orchestrate the entire process.
Open Access
Agroecological Transformations in Oregon's Willamette Valley: A Historical and Ethnographic Case Study
(University of Oregon, 2024-01-10) Olson, Tara; Meek, David
This thesis is an evaluation of the constraints and opportunities for agroecological transformation in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, in attempt to find what can be learned from the particularities of this context. Using a historical and ethnographic case study approach, I evaluate the strategies of food systems allies in the Oregon Community Food Systems Network. I explore how agroecology is being translated to contribute to socially just and ecologically sustainable agri-food systems. The case study is situated historically, through the frame of territory, to illuminate the particularities of place that enable and constrain transformation, beginning with settler colonization. Allies are contributing to transformation through a network approach, where they are able to facilitate transformative encounters between the grassroots and the regime, and build trust-based relationships amongst themselves to undo systemic lock-ins.
Open Access
Beeing in the Willamette Valley: A Look at Human and Honey Bee Relationships and the Global Currents That Shape Them
(University of Oregon, 2024-01-09) Paone, Taylor; Wooten, Stephen
This thesis explores interspecies relationships between humans and honey bees. Through multispecies ethnographic vignettes, beekeeper-honey bee relationships reveal the ways in which social systems inform interspecies entanglements. The research is grounded in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, and highlights the experiences of eleven beekeepers. Stories highlight how bodies interact within larger landscapes that are dictated by the dominant food system model. The bee hive becomes a meeting place for bodies to interact with, contradict, and reflect, conditions set by global currents.
Open Access
Understanding and Addressing Structural Barriers to Healthcare Access for Mam Indigenous Women in Oregon
(University of Oregon, 2024-01-09) Garcia, Veronica; Yarris, Kristin
This thesis explores structural barriers to healthcare access for Mam Indigenous women in Oregon. It provides an overview of structural barriers within the healthcare system and local community and how service providers can address them. From July 2022 to April 2023, I conducted semi-structured interviews with service providers and Mam women in Lane County, Oregon. I also analyzed policies related to healthcare access and observed Mam women at a local support center where I volunteered during a parenting class for Maya and Latino/a/x families. Situating my findings in the literature on health policy and medical anthropology, I argue service providers should practice structural competency to understand and address structural barriers to healthcare access for Mam and immigrant communities. I also provide recommendations to address the structural barriers revealed by this study and a flyer with local health resources that I shared with the community to help improve access to them.
Open Access
Mapping Disaster: Indicators for a Resilient Food System in North Minneapolis
(University of Oregon, 2024-01-09) Schlegelmilch, Joanna; Wooten, Stephen
This research examines the complexities within the interdependent global issues of racism and food insecurity and argues for the need to build empirical systems of analysis around the reliability of food systems to advance targeted efforts of disaster planning and response. To explore the barriers to food security that BIPOC communities face in North Minneapolis, Minnesota, I take a local case study approach and direct my focus to community-based organizations that are addressing issues around food security. Through the exploration of structural barriers that exist within the food systems serving marginalized communities, this project will exemplify a localized case study of a global dynamic and determine the extent that community development approaches to food security are designed to respond effectively, efficiently, and sustainably to crises. Furthermore, this project will seek to understand the ways community-based organizations can provide enhanced community support around the reliability of food systems.
Open Access
Expressing Values and Fulfilling Obligations to Family Through Education: An Exploration of Higher Secondary School Student Experiences & Expectations in Sindhupalchowk, Nepal
(University of Oregon, 2022-10-26) Wright, Grace; Weaver, Lesley
Students in Nepal face numerous barriers in accessing and affording higher secondary schooling, yet many of their families prioritize education and send them on rural-to-urban pathways. While being uprooted from their home communities would presumably create conflicts between students’ family and school responsibilities, this exploratory, qualitative research found that students view the value of education and family as synchronous and complimentary. Conducting remote, semi-structured interviews with participants from a rural subsistence-based community in Nepal found that students expressed the value of education as a vehicle to value their family and generate collective returns home. Conflicts arose for students to balance their responsibilities when the COVID-19 pandemic overwhelmingly negatively impacted their education. Structural barriers, such as students’ lack of social capital, also limited their abilities to realize the value of their education for their families. The value of family continues to strongly direct students’ pathways even after higher secondary schooling.
Open Access
Caregiving in pandemic times: Perspectives from women heads of transnational households in rural Mexico
(University of Oregon, 2022-10-04) Pedraza, Alejandra; Yarris, Kristin
This thesis explores how women heads of transnational households in one rural Mexican village in Querétaro, Mexico experienced the COVID-19 pandemic vis-à-vis their gendered family roles. From June 2021 to February 2022, I conducted remote semi-structured interviews with twenty-five mothers actively receiving remittances to understand how the pandemic and related outcomes have manifested with their caregiving roles that already expand upon their husbands’ labor migration. Situating my findings in the literature on the social science of migration, I argue that the social conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic have intertwined with the social conditions of migration to compound caregiving responsibilities for the women in my study. In turn, the tremendous caregiving burden women in my study bore throughout the pandemic had detrimental consequences on their mental health. I situate the distress the women in my study experienced throughout the pandemic as an outcome of the distress associated with transnational family life that intertwined with the caregiving burden they were expected to provide throughout the pandemic and the social conditions of the pandemic they were subjected to. Ultimately, I show how various axes of marginalization directly shaped their lived experience throughout the pandemic.
Open Access
Law as Violence in the Post-Colonial State: the Case of Lawfare in Kashmir
(University of Oregon, 2022-10-04) Massara, Lindsay; Joya, Angela
This study uses law as a divining rod to draw out historical connections and intersections that implicate power, violence, and oppression in Indian-administered Kashmir. Broadly, this study asks why violence and oppression persist in Kashmir and how law acts as an underwriting force. Specifically, this study seeks to uncover in what ways do law, the post-colonial context, security discourse, and violence and oppression in Kashmir intersect, influence, perpetuate, and legitimize one another.
Open Access
Building Bridges and Breaking Down Barriers: First Food Knowledge Transmission of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation
(University of Oregon, 2022-02-18) Caudill, Lydia; Meek, David
Through semi-structured interviews with CTUIR community members, I assessed the current spectrum of relationships that exists between CTUIR community members and their First Foods. Furthermore, I identify two categories of resources and opportunities of First Food knowledge transmission that these individuals have previously used and are drawn to: independent and interdependent. This assessment utilized Tuck et al.’s (2014) land education theoretical framework to provide the lens with which to structure questions and analysis. I argue that where a CTUIR community members falls along a spectrum of closeness in relationships with land and community is the highest indicator not only of their current relationship with First Foods but also the education and outreach opportunities they are drawn to. I conclude that First Food knowledge transmission practices would benefit from additional attention given to 1) the definition of First Foods and 2) further understanding of inclusion or exclusion among CTUIR community members.
Open Access
Breaking Down the Walls: Fostering Opportunity and Dignity Amongst Refugee Women and Girls Through Sport
(University of Oregon, 2021-11-23) Gerken, Kimberly; Weiss, Dr. Anita
Sports for Development and Peace (SDP) refers to the intentional use of sports in the pursuit of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This thesis primarily centers on three SDP Goals: #3, Good Health and Well-Being; #5, Gender Equality; and #16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. Through a series of semi-structured interviews with SDP organizations located in various parts of the world, I have identified common barriers and challenges to including female refugees into sports programs and propose strategies to overcoming these barriers. This thesis situates sports in the context of International Development and details the significance of women in sport through the lens of gender equality and empowerment. It suggests that empowerment surrounds ideas of opportunity and agency, discusses the critical distinction between gender equality versus equity in sports, and highlights that a critical component of sports programming with refugee populations is dignity.
Open Access
Cross-Cultural Accessibility and Inclusion in Youth Outdoor Experiential Education
(University of Oregon, 2021-11-23) Gupta, Neti; Carptner, Kathie
This study explores Kenyan parent’s values and beliefs about nature, and how they perceive the role of nature in their child’s development. Further, this study investigates the barriers to accessing outdoor experiential education for this Kenyan community living in Lane County, Oregon, and how summer camps are responding to the lack of diversity. The purpose of this study was to provide a deeper understanding of accessibility to youth outdoor experiential education in the context of summer camps. This study was designed to elicit narratives from members of the Kenyan community to study their values and beliefs about nature and their perceptions of barriers and opportunities for mitigation. Further, this study intended to study narratives of summer camp staff to glean their experiences and perceptions of inclusion and accessibility in outdoor experiential education. This study also sought to obtain information to make recommendations on creating a more inclusive environment for outdoor experiential education
Open Access
Culture in the Food Security Literature of West Africa: A Critical Review
(University of Oregon, 2021-11-23) Ziesenhene , Ellen; Wooten, Stephen
This critical review analyzes the visibility of three aspects of culture in West African food security literature: livelihood and practice, social, and systems of meaning. It presents insights into these cultural applications within localized food studies. This review offers a critical lens into food security engagement that is necessary during a time of heightened food insecurity due to stressors, including political unrest, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic. To develop sustainable programming around food security, it is useful to audit previous studies to capture the best methodologies of measurement and localized definitions. Valuable insights from this review include an analysis of examples of engagement with all three aspects of culture, an emphasis on qualitative methodologies that capture personal narratives and perceptions of well-being, the presentation of gaps in the literature, and proposed pathways for future research and practitioners that wish to incorporate cultural studies into their research and programming framework.
Open Access
Assessing the Status of Forces Agreement in Okinawa, Japan
(University of Oregon, 2021-09-13) Fouts, Matthew; Weiss, Anita
The Japanese prefecture of Okinawa is a contradiction. A peaceful, idyllic tourist destination for beachgoers today, in 1945 Okinawans suffered through a four-month battle where hundreds of thousands of civilians died by American bombs, suicide, and at the hands of their Japanese soldier countrymen. For nearly thirty years afterwards, Okinawans used the U.S. dollar as citizens of an occupied territory. Today, Okinawa hosts over seventy percent of the U.S. military in Japan. Incidents in Okinawa between U.S. military personnel and accompanying civilians unsurprisingly become international incidents, testing the U.S.-Japan alliance. This thesis details Okinawa’s history, the violence perpetrated by U.S. military personnel, and the Status of Forces Agreement (“SOFA”) that surrounds and governs Okinawa’s “military base problem.” It suggests jurisdictional reforms in criminal prosecutions and in accident investigations, concluding with proposed changes to the U.S. military criminal justice system to lead to greater accountability for servicemembers accused of sexual violence.
Open Access
"Just a Dash of Salt": Salt and Identity Formation in Historical and Contemporary Jamaica
(University of Oregon, 2021-04-27) Sperry, Alyssa; Wooten, Stephen
Salt is a ubiquitous substance that has played a significant role in the development of human culture. It is a recognizable universal human need that over time has adapted symbolic and practical significance across cultures and regions. However, most scholarship around salt has focused on the practical use in the form of production and consumption, where salt’s symbolic significance has been overshadowed. Moreover, research has underestimated how essential salt was in the fueling of the Atlantic Slave trade (15th – 19th centuries), while being a contributor in creating, and later preserving, identities of enslaved Africans and the newly developed cultures that emerged from colonial oppression. This thesis explores the symbolic significance and value of salt, and how beliefs and practices were created around salt to aid in the development and preservation of two African-derived cultures in Jamaica that emerged from the Atlantic Slave trade era: Maroons and Rastafarians.
Open Access
Towards a Transformative Agroecology: Seeding Solutions for Food Sovereignty and Climate Change Among Smallholder and Tribal Farmers in Rajasthan, India
(University of Oregon, 2021-04-27) Nikfarjam, Michelle; Wooten, Stephen
This thesis explores how the state-wide non-governmental organization (NGO), CECOEDECON, is using agroecology as a vehicle for promoting greater farmer sovereignty and preparing for negative impacts of climate change in Rajasthan, India. Based on three months of ethnographic research, I describe how a hybridization of peoples’ movements and NGOs are galvanizing development agendas that work to forge new paradigms for participation for farmers, revitalize and maintain cultural and livelihood practices and foster greater climate resiliency through ecological farming. Through my investigation, I draw attention to the ontological distance between food sovereignty and agroecology at the theoretical and policy levels and the complex, constrained reality of how they are being realized at the grassroots level. In doing so, I unearth the challenges and opportunities of agroecology as an effective strategy for addressing the needs of smallholder and tribal farmers operating in the rapidly evolving environmental, social and economic contexts of food production in Rajasthan.
Open Access
Show Me the Money: Understanding FATCA - United States & CARICOM Relations
(University of Oregon, 2021-04-27) Hall, Jeffery; Braun, Yvonne
This study explores the provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Services’ Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and its demands to increase disclosure and transparency pertaining to the financial data of foreign account holders who are American citizens and corporations. This study specifically analyzes the cultural and economic impact of FATCA on Caribbean nations.
Open Access
Rural Sanitation Preferences and Household Decisions: A Mixed-Methods Case Study in Wolaita, Ethiopia
(University of Oregon, 2020-12-08) Hansberger, Dayna; Weaver, Lesley Jo
Rural Ethiopian families bear the responsibility to invest in their own sanitation, resulting in large disparities in latrine quality. This study analyzes considerations for household latrine purchases, desirable latrine characteristics, and satisfaction among households with unimproved and improved latrines. The mixed-methods study included observations, key informant interviews, household interviews, household surveys, and health worker focus groups. Key findings include a model of shared and distinct sanitation motivations and barriers at two household decision points – the decision to build an unimproved latrine and the decision to purchase a basic improved latrine. Households with improved latrines experienced high levels of satisfaction, compared to households using an unimproved latrine. A human-centered design approach to the improved latrine was integral to the product desirability, effective sales process, and customer satisfaction. Study results are intended to better understand sanitation influences and facilitate practical and incremental improvement in household sanitation facilities.