Browsing by Author "Shanahan, Suzanne"

Examination of the moralized risk discourse that occurs during moral panics can help us better understand how discourse supports neoliberal modes of governance. Using the moral panics about crack babies in the 1980's and illegal immigration in the 2000's to conduct a content analysis of almost 1500 newspaper articles, television transcripts and congressional hearings, I found that discourses of fairness, authority, and purity supported techniques of surveillance and control that contribute to the maintenance of racial and class boundaries in the US.

Over 100,000 Bhutanese refugees are in the process of being resettled from southeastern Nepal to eight different Western countries--the majority of whom are resettling to the United States. Refugees are universally at higher risk of mental illness, due to the large number of stressors to which they are exposed. Preliminary studies have suggested that resettled Bhutanese refugees may have particularly poor mental health outcomes, including high rates of suicide. This study conducted 23 in-depth life story interviews with Bhutanese refugees in Nepal, in attempt to explore the psychosocial context of mental illness among this population, and to understand the risk factors that they are, or will be, exposed to during their resettlement transition. Throughout the interviews the theme of "expectations of resettlement" emerged and revealed potentially large discontinuities between expectations of resettled life and the likely realities. Interestingly, these expectations were closely tied to many of the themes that emerged when discussing sources of mental illness within their population--suggesting that the failure of the expectations might greatly affect mental health outcomes. The results of this study are only preliminary and suggestive, but they add to the currently limited literature on Bhutanese refugee mental health. Additionally, they offer a detailed insight into the risks and needs of the Bhutanese as we prepare to incorporate them into our communities.

Few studies have historically assessed the surges and troughs of public perception regarding juvenile offenders across over a century of legislative and social change. Furthermore, a minority of juvenile crime investigations have holistically examined the interplay between changing demographic conditions (notably, economic stability, racial composition and crime rates) with its accompanying ideological shifts. Through a theoretical emphasis on social constructionism and moral panic theory, this dissertation illuminates the cyclical nature of juvenile justice reform and illustrates that panics regarding juvenile offenders are more closely related to fears regarding the maintenance of power and the insecurity that comes with historical change than with an authentic threat of juvenile crime. Over 9,000 records in The New York Times, Congressional record, and Supreme Court decisions were coded and analyzed to reveal three chronological partitions of the social construction of youthful offenders: (1) the 1890s-1930s during which the most destabilizing force to those in positions of power revolved squarely around urbanization, industrialization, and the waves of immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe; (2) the 1930s-1970s during which faith in juvenile offender rehabilitation was replaced with punitive policies stressing deterrence and an increased focus on the "problem" of racial minorities; (3) the 1970s-present which demonstrates the declining discussion of race in print media and legislative debates even as its effects in sentencing and prosecution grow in strength. This dissertation illuminates the ways in which insecurity and panic breed violence and expounds upon that notion to specify that how the violence manifests itself, whether through punitive policies or interpersonal crime, depends on the resources available and the historically-situated social norms. Over time, however, the explicit racial hostility in rhetoric and policy has been replaced with an evasion the recognition that race undoubtedly affects both juvenile justice policies as well as their implementation. In order to combat the inevitable instability that accompanies historical change, a resurgence of dialogue acknowledging the connection between race and juvenile justice is urged.

In this dissertation I explore the "homing desire" (Brah 1996:193) of American diasporas. I argue and show how identities are constructed as primordial. Specifically, I am interested in how homeland tourism, group tour experiences to ancestral homelands can be used as a "charter for new social projects" (Appadurai 1996:6) based around ancestral lands of origin and the qualities we associate with home. Therefore, this dissertation examines what happens when imagined communities (Anderson 1993) become briefly tangible.

I present analysis of participant observation and interview data from three different American populations to examine the very real desire to belong to a meaningful and worthwhile group. I map how secular college-aged American Jews, middle-class African Americans and white families with adopted Chinese daughters shape and define the imagined community through the brief face-to-face experience of the group homeland tour.

This dissertation takes the reader on tour, and analyzes the sites/sights of homeland travel, interactions between tourists, and interactions between tourists and homeland natives arguing that these experiences are consumed and interpreted to then define the individual and community's place in the social world and in the process influence domestic experiences of otherness.

Individuals engage with larger systems of organization that incorporate and implicate both the nation they reside within and the place they have chosen to visit, representing a distinctly Western and American path to imagined communities. While tourists look internationally to discover heritage and roots, I demonstrate how many expect and anticipate domestic changes and domestic acceptance of difference. In addition, tourism also facilitates global thinking, where homeland discoveries become examples of another sort of grounding in community, belonging to the cosmopolitan international global imagined.

In all these examples of empowerment and the assumed benefits of homeland explorations, we see the American, the transnational, and the global intersecting. This dissertation teases apart the multiple forms of movement occurring simultaneously that represent our contemporary moment. Therefore, I argue that this desire for rootedness and comfort that comes with knowing one's homeland reveals more about our contemporary moment and our individualistic approach to community consciousness than essential aspects of our identity and community. Homeland tours therefore provide Americans with experiences of international travel and a sense of global enlightenment, based not on heritage, but an understanding of global connectivity and power relations.

Through a comparative examination of three different engagements with homeland tourism, I examine how individuals not only tell a story to themselves about themselves, but also speak to the larger world. This dissertation therefore is a journey itself, a journey to belonging and discovery of community.

Globalization scholars have disagreed about the effects of globalization on the production and reproduction of difference: Do fundamental differences endure, do cultures converge, or is there hybridization? This dissertation analyzes the durability of distinct medical cultures in two technologically advanced healthcare systems that rely on an evidence-based, biomedical approach. Durability refers to the tendency to maintain or develop diverse, even idiosyncratic, practices and beliefs--even as the forces of globalization are perceived to be pressing health practices everywhere toward a single global standard. To do so, this dissertation offers a comparative, empirically based argument using the case of type 2 diabetes in the U.S. and Japan. As an inductive, theory-constructing project, the argument has at its foundation 11 months of ethnographic field work in Japanese hospitals and clinic exam rooms, 115 semi-structured interviews with patients and biomedical health practitioners in Japan, and 25 interviews with American health care providers and patients. I argue that physicians in both research sites, Okayama, Japan and North Carolina, USA, practice empirical biomedicine, but that empirical biomedicine is not all there is to biomedical practice. Practicing physicians in both contexts act not only on increasingly globalized professional standards, but also on local knowledge, on their own explanatory models for type 2 diabetes, and in reaction to local patient populations' explanatory models. Further, local knowledge and patient interactions shape the ways in which practicing physicians interpret global standards and best practices. Occasionally, they may even be reshaped beyond recognition without interfering with physicians' self-evaluation as participants in a universal, standardized scientific project. The interaction of globalizing standards of practice, local knowledge, and local explanatory models of illness can result in dramatically divergent medical practice across different social contexts--in this case, the U.S. and Japan.

Refugee health pre- and post- resettlement is a growing global health concern as displacement and forced migration is a reality for millions of individuals across the globe. Many refugees around the world have been displaced for a combination of reasons, ranging from, but not limited to, political and religious conflict, ethnic violence, and social upheaval. Regardless of where refugees "live", they remain stateless and lack the true rights given by a state to its citizens. Unfortunately, their voices and stories go unheard as they are shuffled from one unknown to another, oftentimes remaining invisible to citizens of the state. Thus, the majority of refugees become dependent on aid provided by international organizations, which includes receiving healthcare.

This is the case for the Bhutanese refugee population, which has resided in camps set up by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Western Nepal for over 20 years now. The stress and anxiety of leaving one's homeland and relocating to a foreign country can significantly impact an individual's mental wellbeing. Additional dynamics, such as cultural factors and community relationships can further impact an individual's mental state.

Working with the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, this project aims to gain a better understanding of the relationship between a traditional social factor, caste, and how it may impact the mental health of Bhutanese refugees. Additionally, it provided an opportunity for the refugees to tell their personal stories, which will be complied in an archive accessible to the global community.

A series of qualitative interviews were conducted with Bhutanese refugees living in five different camps administered by UNHCR in Western Nepal. A total of twenty-five interviews were conducted, with perceptions of health and caste being measured using a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being that caste does not affect health at all and 5 being that caste affects health very much. Based on self-reports, while perceived caste discrimination has significantly decreased in the camps within the past several years, possibly due to better education, the strong presence of international organizations, and/or the presence of religious organizations, overall it still remains prevalent within the refugee communities in Nepal.

Many individuals, especially those of lower caste (Dalits) described how their mental health has been affected negatively in the past and/or currently due to the discrimination they face based on their location within the caste hierarchy. However, an important recurring theme was that many of the refugees stated that while caste may not matter or affect their own lives, they believe it continues to significantly impact the lives of others within their community, especially the elderly. Stories of intercaste marriage and caste discrimination at water pumps were reiterated across many interviews. Oftentimes the terms "tension" and "anxiety" were embedded in these stories in an effort to describe the individual's mental state. Based on the interviews, there appears to be a relationship between an individual's caste and their mental well-being.

Overall, this study helped acquire a better understanding of the relationship between caste and mental health within the Bhutanese refugee community, yet further research is needed to solidify the trends. The role of education, and the presence of international organizations and religious organizations pre- and post-resettlement need to be elucidated in order to better understand how these actors impact the well-being of refugees and whether it is positively or negatively, both in the short-term as well as in the long-term. Furthermore, follow-ups need to be conducted with refugees living in the United States to better understand what role, if any, caste plays once they have resettled. For example, does the same caste hierarchy still remain or has it changed, and if so, why; is there a similar relationship between caste and mental health in the United States; do the refugees continue to face issues with intercaste marriage; what role do religious organizations play regarding individuals trying to free themselves from the caste system, and finally do the refugees receive appropriate counseling and healthcare as they adapt to new cultural and societal factors. Clarifying these questions will ultimately help in assisting refugees who face mental health issues in the camps and once they resettle.

This dissertation examines offers a corrective to the world polity theory of globalization, which posits increasing convergence on a single global cultural frame. In contrast, I suggest that national culture limits the adoption of "world culture" by actors and institutions. Instead of adopting world cultural models wholesale, they are adapted through a process I call translated global diffusion. In order to assess my theory, I follow the creation and development of organizations founded by Australia, Canada, and the United States to foster scientific development within their borders. All three national organizations were initiated around 1915, part of an international wave of state science that prima facie appears to support the world polity thesis.

Through a comparative historical analysis that combines archival material and secondary histories from each case, I demonstrate that concerns tied to national identity mediate the incorporation of models sanctioned as part of a "world cultural canopy" of institutional scripts. More specifically, federal legislatures circumscribe new organizations to fit preexisting ideas of proper government. Secondly, the scientists effectively running state science organizations negotiate often conflicting nationalistic and professional impulses. Finally, the national news media report about science in a selective and nationally filtered way. The result is a kind of particular universality, science layered with national import only fully visible from within the nation-state.

This dissertation explores the ideational underpinnings of the rise of the west through a comparison of ancient Greek geometry, medieval Arabic algebra, and early modern European calculus. Blending insights from Thomas Kuhn, Michel Foucault, and William H. Sewell, I assert that there is an underlying logic, however clouded, to the unfolding of a given civilization, governed by a cultural episteme that delineates the boundaries of rational thought and the accepted domain of human endeavor. Amid a certain conceptual configuration, the rise of the west happens; under other circumstances, it does not. Mathematics, as an explicit exhibition of logic premised on culturally determined axioms, presents an outward manifestation of the lens through which a civilization surveys the world, and as such offers a window on the fundamental assumptions from which a civilization's trajectory proceeds. To identify the epistemological conditions favorable to the rise of the west, I focus specifically on three mathematical divergences that were integral to the development of calculus, namely analytic geometry, trigonometry, and the fundamental theorem of calculus. Through a comparative/historical analysis of original source documents in mathematics, I demonstrate that the logic in the earlier cases is fundamentally different from that of calculus, and furthermore, incompatible with the key developments that constitute the rise of the west. I then examine the conceptual similarities between calculus and several features of the rise of the west to articulate a description of the early modern episteme.