110 research outputs found
Cioran’s ‘grain of ataraxy’ : boredom, nothingness, and quietism
No full textIn reading E.M. Cioran’s œuvre, one is faced with an immediate and unremitting abrasiveness that has its roots with our being born into time. Indeed, the author of The Fall into Time and The Trouble with Being Born thought that it is precisely this accidental and unredeemable temporality, an original sin that results in a life forever situated in cycles of striving and becoming, which is to be exhuastingly apprehended in the experience of boredom: ‘Life is more and less than boredom, though it is in boredom and by boredom that we discern what life is worth.’ Cioran’s pessimism never relents; even his lugubrious friend Samuel Beckett had to keep a distance after finding him ‘too pessimistic’—who else but Cioran could write that ‘leukemia is the garden where God blooms’? Despite this, in Cioran’s often autobiographical, aphoristic and essayistic writings, we find a richly-timbred boredom (ironically so) which gives us incisive observations into a multitude of related concepts and realities. Nothingness, God, silence, mysticism, suffering, and quietism (among others) all feature in Cioran’s writings on boredom, as well as in this paper’s attempt to better situate Cioran’s work with respect to his more famous pessimistic and existentialist relations’s take on the subject, namely Arthur Schopenhauer and Martin Heidegger. In exploring his work on boredom vis-à-vis his specific interest in mysticism, Taoism, nothingness, time and insomnia, this paper aims to show how the failure to attain what Cioran called ‘a grain of ataraxy’, necessarily presupposes a limited set of ‘possibilities’ and ‘prospects’ when faced with the experience of ‘the sensation of the emptiness of existence’ that is boredom (Schopenhauer).peer-reviewe
Private Prisons : Success That Has Yet to Be Seen.
No full textPrivate prisons have been a hot topic of political debate since their official conception in the late-twentieth century in the United States. The intent behind privatizing a field that has historically been regulated by the government was to reduce budgetary expenditures and improve cost efficiency without sacrificing the quality of these institutions. Since then, private prisons' abilities to meet those goals have been widely questioned and researched. In this thesis, I review the history of prisons and how privatization was established in the United States. I then analyze the body of research surrounding the quality and cost-effectiveness of the private facilities, and I determine that this research is largely inconclusive regarding the success of private institutions. For private prisons to be useful in the field of crime and punishment, they need to be evidently and undoubtedly superior to their public counterparts. Therefore, I propose that more research needs to be done with greater sample sizes, and this research can only be done if private prisons are legally required to be more forthcoming with their financial records. Until then, it cannot be determined whether private prisons are meeting and/or exceeding their contractual obligations to the government
Restructuring of economics : automation and gender in the work force.
No full textTechnology has reached a point where robotics and computerization can do many
of the tasks that humans completed in the past. Occupations with the least amount of
routine task are less vulnerable to being automated (Frey and Osborne 2017:2018).
Automation resistant occupations require social intelligence, creative intelligence, and
perception/manipulation; however, these qualities are often constructed to be innately
gender specific, and gender constructs have segregated many occupations into female or
male-dominated fields. This paper explores the effects of gender segregation on
underemployment during the current stage of the fourth economic revolution. To do this,
I compare 2017 to four panels through multivariate logistic regression to assess if the
odds of underemployment for men and women have changed over time. I found that
currently, there is no difference in underemployment for men and women at the gender
occupational clustering rangers determined. However, individual level effects,
particularly education, are increasing in importance
A bigger piece of the federal pie : politics and crime in the United States.
No full textIn the United States, the fear of crime has risen to an unprecedented level - higher than that of 1994; a time when violent crime reached a peak. However, with recent data, scholars can begin to understand where this fear disseminates from and how it can be curbed. Using the General Social Survey (GSS), I find significant values regarding various demographics and their fear of crime, particularly related to race and political affiliation. My research methods consist of secondary survey analysis, utilizing regression analysis and interaction effects within regression. My findings outline an established concept in other literature; that minorities and Republicans have a greater fear of crime than Whites and Democrats. However, I also find that Black Republicans are among those who feel the United States should spend less, indicating a lesser fear of crime. These findings contribute to the literature involving fear of crime, as well as introduce new speculations regarding who is necessarily more afraid
The impact of technology, talent, and tolerance on community satisfaction.
No full textThis dissertation examines the role that technology, talent, and tolerance play in community satisfaction. After an introductory chapter, chapter two begins with an examination of the concept of community satisfaction and its reliability in a world of quantitative measures, such as GDP. Through a study of multi-group confirmatory analysis, the study analyzes the invariance of the factor structure of overall community satisfaction. Chapter Three and Four focus on the concept of community satisfaction integrated into the framework of Richard Florida's 3Ts – technology, talent, and tolerance. Through a multi-level statistical approach, the effect of the 3Ts is assessed on domains of community satisfaction. The final chapter briefly reviews the findings of the quantitative chapters as well as the importance of continued research in this area
Higher education institutions and human capital : impacts of colleges and universities in rural and urban communities.
No full textThis dissertation examines some of the ways in which higher education institutions (HEIs) impact the economic and social realities of the communities in which they exist. Particular attention is given to how colleges and universities contribute to human capital levels while also shaping economic outcomes in unequal ways. In this dissertation, I use the 2017-2021 American Community Survey 5-year estimates to 1) describe rural and urban differences, especially in the context of human capital levels and economic wellbeing of U.S. counties, 2) examine how colleges and universities shape these rural-urban differences and differences among rural communities, 3) examine how college presence contributes to housing affordability concerns in rural and urban counties, and 4) examine the ways in which college presence impacts rural poverty rates among working age adults and those in rural areas without college degrees. The results from these analyses help to highlight current rural-urban differences, especially within the context of college presence, and shine a new light on how colleges and universities can both contribute to, and detract from, the wellbeing of the communities around them
Civic engagement : comparing the effect of political identity and socioeconomic status.
No full textIt was noted this past midterm cycle that the Democratic Party was more politically active than their counterparts in the Republican Party. Expanding to civic engagement, will this trend continue? Furthermore, will socioeconomic status be a significant factor when analyzing partisan community involvement? Utilizing ordinary least squares regression models and the American National Election Studies (ANES) 2020 study, it was found overall that socioeconomic status does influence the three identified types of civic engagement and reduces the effect political party affiliation has on civic engagement. Socioeconomic status is found to be a significant factor in predicting civic engagement behaviors especially for members of the Democratic Party
Punitive women? : gender differences in dissatisfaction with criminal courts.
No full textPast research examining punitive attitudes has largely ignored gender or relegated it to the periphery of most analysis. Prevailing assumptions posit that women should be less harsh than their male counterparts in their desire for the harsher sentencing of criminals. However, the present study finds that women are, in fact, not less punitive than men in their views of the courts. On the contrary, women are statistically more likely than men to say that criminal courts are not harsh enough. Using the 2018 General Social Survey for both bivariate crosstabulation and multinomial logistic regression, the following research examines the presence of gender differences between men and women’s views of the criminal courts and attempts to explain why women report the criminal courts are “not harsh enough” through interaction models. Differences in views among women are also evaluated, and areas for future research are discussed
Civic engagement among emerging adults : evidence from the panel survey of income dynamics.
No full textThis dissertation seeks to evaluate the state of emerging adult civic engagement within the United States. Civic engagement is an important facet of society as it is the combination of individual and collective efforts aimed towards resolving issues of public concern. Emerging adults are a unique population as they are developing their own identity within society as they transition from the original family unit they grew up in. While largely independent, emerging adults are still engaging with their original family unit through economic and social means. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) Transition to Adulthood Supplement, I seek to evaluate the impact family composition, familial financial support, perceived time pressure, and class-of-origins has on civic engagement. Utilizing quantitative methods I found evidence to support positive relationships between being raised in a dual-headed household and higher parental class status on increases in emerging adult civic engagement. The class-of-origins of the emerging adults directly impacts the accessibility of civic opportunities, cost of participating, and the culture around civic engagement for emerging adults
The new New Age : an analysis of the New Age participant from a national random sample.
No full textThe New Age movement has not received the same level of scholarly attention as other new religious movements, in part because of the difficulty of analyzing the movement quantitatively. Because of this, past research has been mostly limited to anecdotal evidence and speculation. In addition, many aspects of the New Age movement enjoy relatively high levels of mainstream acceptance, making this analysis is particularly timely. The Baylor survey allows for the most complete analysis of the New Age movement to date, as it addresses both beliefs in the New Age and quantifiable consumption of New Age goods. In this research, I consider previous theories on participation in new religious movements, and find that none completely explains New Age participation
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