Creating and navigating social and classroom spaces with gravity

Gravity is one the principle forces in the universe, its power always apparent, giving us three-dimensional creatures a constant sense of “up” and “down”. We propose the use of a metric for applying gravity, or similar “pulling” forces, to social environments by weighting and reordering set network structures where links cannot be added, but nodes may be rearranged. We begin by introducing gravity in social networks, describe previous web applications and uses, and then briefly experiment with the metric within a classroom setting. To that point, we describe and design requirements to effectively apply our metric to classrooms, as well as other social spaces. Finally, we assert that by flavoring network structures with our so-called “gravity”, we make those structures inherently more navigable in terms of personality similarity, and perhaps indirectly, communication and learning

In Search of Safety, Negotiating Everyday Forms of Risk: Sex Work, Criminalization, and HIV/AIDS in the Slums of Kampala

This dissertation offers an in-depth descriptive account of how women manage daily risks associated with sex work, criminalization, and HIV/AIDS. Primary data collection took place within two slums in Kampala, Uganda over the course of fourteen months. The emphasis was on ethnographic methodologies involving participant observation and informal and unstructured interviewing. Insights then informed document analysis of international and national policies concerning HIV prevention and treatment strategies in the context of Uganda. The dissertation finds social networks and social capital provide the basis for community formation in the sex trade. It holds that these interpersonal processes are necessary components for how women manage daily risks associated with sex work and criminalization. However, the dissertation also finds that women’s social connections can undermine the strategies they need to manage their HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. This is because current HIV/AIDS policies prioritize individual behavioral change practices that undermine the complex interpersonal activities developed by women to stay alive. In response, this dissertation concludes that social networks are fundamental to the formation of sex work communities and to the survival of women in the sex trade and should be considered in future HIV policies and programs intending to intervene in the HIV epidemic of female commercial sex workers in Kampala, Uganda

Women and science in development: a longitudinal analysis of gender, networks, and information technology in Ghana, Kenya, and India

This dissertation examines the gendered nature of the scientific career for researchers in universities and national research institutes in Ghana, Kenya, and Kerala India. Employing panel data, I analyze three issues related to the diffusion of ICTs in the scientific communities of less developed areas: 1) access; 2) interaction; 3) and involvement. More specifically, I examine the way in which human capital, family structure, travel experiences, contextual factors, and technological antecedents interact with gender to influence access to and use of personal computers, email, and the Web. From there, I incorporate technological behavioral changes to predict interaction within professional networks. In the last step, I incorporate professional network measures to examine the gendered nature of research outcomes in the form of scientific productivity. The results suggest that over time ICTs have rapidly diffused within the three locations. At the same time, women continue to report less long-term access to email and the web. Furthermore, men and women are distinctly different in terms of intensity and extent of email and web use with women emerging as less technologically oriented. In spite of the differences on these measures, men are not earlier adopters of the technologies than women. It does not appear, however, that there is a consistent relationship between greater email use and integration within professional networks. Gender, on the other hand, emerges as one of the most consistent predictors of network outcomes, particularly in terms of absolute network size, geographic and gender diversity, and the proportion of male contacts reported. Finally, men and women are equally productive in domestic venues, but women are less productive in foreign venues. Furthermore, network structure is not as strongly related to productivity as are changes in technological use behavior. Respondents using email for a wider variety of reasons over time produce more in foreign and domestic venues, but intensity of email use is actually negatively related to productivity, suggesting that it is not technology use in general that matters when predicting outcomes, but the type of technology use. Network structure on the other hand, is only a significant predictor of domestic productivity

Conflicts, integration, hybridization of subcultures: An ecological approach to the case of queercore

This paper investigates the case study of queercore, providing a socio-historical analysis of its subcultural production, in the terms of what Michel Foucault has called archaeology of knowledge (1969). In particular, we will focus on: the self-definition of the movement; the conflicts between the two merged worlds of punk and queer culture; the \u201cinternal-subcultural\u201d conflicts between both queercore and punk, and between queercore and gay\lesbian music culture; the political aspects of differentiation. In the conclusion, we will offer an innovative theoretical proposal about the interpretation of subcultures in ecological and semiotic terms, combining the contribution of the American sociologist Andrew Abbot and of the Russian semiologist Jurij Michajlovi\u10d Lotma

Lonely Sounds: Recorded Popular Music and American Society, 1949-1979

Abstract: Lonely Sounds: Popular Recorded Music and American Society, 1949-1979 Lonely Sounds: Popular Recorded Music and American Society, 1949-1979 examines the relationship between the experience of listening to popular music and social disengagement. It finds that technological innovations, the growth of a youth culture, and market forces in the post-World War II era came together to transform the normal musical experience from a social event grounded in live performance into a consumable recorded commodity that satisfied individual desires. The musical turn inward began in the late 1940s. Prior to the postwar era, the popular music experience was communal, rooted in place, and it contained implicit social obligations between the performer and the audience and among members of the audience. Beginning in the late 1940s, technological, social, and cultural innovations, including new radio formats, automobile radios, and an expanding recording industry liberated popular music from some of the restraints of place and time. Listeners in the 1950s acquired expanded opportunities for enjoying music in ways that were more private, mobile, and intensely personal. Not only did the opportunities to listen alone expand enormously, but so also did the inclination. The postwar youth culture that grew up around the Top 40 radio format and 45-rpm singles stood at the vanguard of this revolutionary change in the musical experience. For many young listeners, rock and roll records represented a singular authentic experience. By the middle 1960s, these listeners believed that correctly listening to rock records not only revealed a unique self but also reintegrated alienated individuals into supportive communities. The isolated nature of the listening experience, however, poignantly frustrated such hopes. The dream of social renewal through rock records collapsed in the early 1970s. In its place came a more aggressive emphasis on self-sufficiency and personal control. In the subsequent decade devices such as the Sony Walkman successfully colonized public space, shielding listeners from other sounds while enclosing them in a private sonic environment of their choosing. This revolution in the musical experience, I contend, reflected and contributed to the pervasive sense of loneliness associated with the postwar era