St. Lawrence Island, Alaska is home to two Formerly Used Defense Sites (FUDS) under remediation by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers since 1985. After more than two decades the local residents continue to be concerned about inadequate site characterization and cleanup. During the summer of 2005, I collected ethnographic...
This thesis evaluates the programs, activities, and relationships of Enfoque Ixcan, a non-profit eye care project providing services to a rural area of Guatemala.
I conducted ethnographic interviews with key stakeholders of the organization and carried out participant observation in the Ixcan region of Guatemala in February 2006. The research...
This study examines selected cultural elements of the negotiating environment in seventeen organizations having home or branch offices in the Northwest United States. Conference room and boardroom design, intentional placement of meaningful artifacts, arrangement of seating, and providing of refreshments are compared. Observations and interviews of organizational representatives in nine...
Micronesians are in the process of becoming independent nation-states after nearly a
century of colonial rule, including four decades of U.S. administration as the Trust
Territory of the Pacific Islands. Pressures to attain self-sufficiency have led many of these
island nations to embrace tourism as an economic development strategy. Meanwhile,...
Culturally based stereotypes are a pervasive force behind quick judgments about behavior, intent, and beliefs which allow individuals to interact efficiently to meet their own goals. Gender stereotypes are present in marketing media and servicescapes, where they define the behavior, needs, and wants of shoppers. The literature on consumer behavior...
This thesis examines the motivations of ecological restoration volunteers with the Oregon chapter of The Nature Conservancy. This study helps fill in voids left by a lack of research on the motivations of ecological restoration volunteers. Studies that have explored restoration volunteer motivation relied largely on surveys that revealed altruistic...
This thesis presents a discussion of the main materialistic theories proposed to explain the process of development among the indigenous population of Latin America. Four theoretical approaches are presented and discussed. The first one deals with the social group referred to as peasants. The second one explains the process of...
This thesis examines the concepts of power and participation and how they are intertwined in the examination of the urban planning systems in Curitiba, Brazil. Power is identified as both the planning system's ability to affect the daily lives of the city's residents and the power of individuals and groups...
The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of women in the
Japanese workplace. Data obtained from in-depth interviews and
questionnaires, shows that the Japanese workplace is in a state of
change moving toward a higher level of opportunity for female workers.
While similar to the circumstances experienced...
Culture, thought worldview and language have been
discussed for a long time in different fields from various
perspectives. However, the basis of this study is the view
of language as both the product and producer of people just
as people are the producer and product of language. Each
language requires...
Gender relations as well as the social situation of Manchu women have long been ignored in studies of the cultural evolution of the Manchu. By setting the discussion of Manchu women in the context of cultural adaptation, this study reintroduces gender and women's problems into the research on the Manchu...
This thesis outlines dominant ideologies and practices that affect women's authority in the urban social milieu of north India. Theories that consider the causes of social stratification by gender as well as social movement patterns are useful for understanding the durability of gender roles. The utility of these theories for...
This thesis examines the values and criteria American companies use in hiring or placing expatriate employees in China. These values and criteria affect the success or failure of expatriate employees and a company's bottom line - profitability. Investigating this topic required an examination of the history of the political, economic,...
In June 1999, I was a volunteer for a United States non-governmental organization, Crossroads Africa. I joined six other American women traveling to Ghana, West Africa to participate in a collaborative program designed by the Ghana Red Cross Society and Crossroads Africa. Specifically our group was assigned to work on...
Shan-Mei, a Tsou aboriginal village in Taiwan, is widely known as a legend of environmental conservation, where ecotourism has been successfully combined with integrated community development. Indigenous knowledge containing "ecological wisdom" and decision-making based on consensus are perceived to be the greatest contributors to this achievement. I conducted three months...
The purpose of this thesis is to explore the current linguistic situation of the Venetian language (a minority language spoken in the northeastern Italian region of Veneto) and its relationship with Italian, the official language of Italy. This is a study of Venetian people and how they are reacting to...
This thesis examines perceptions of cooperation among small to medium sized enterprises (SME) in western Oregon's forest products industry. Recent changes in the industry, such as corporate consolidation, global marketing, and government regulations have created an environment in which many SMEs find it difficult to stay competitive. Cooperation among SMEs...
The objective of this research is to shed light on the phenomenon of independent volunteer traveling. It represents a form of tourism in which travelers independently organize their own volunteer efforts and typically provide assistance to local people in return for room and board. Travelers operate outside the confines of...
This thesis reviews theoretical and local understandings of sustainability and examines the contributions which the NGO, the Toledo Institute for Development and Environment (TIDE), makes to achieving sustainability in the district of Toledo in Belize, Central America. The study focuses mainly on the Port Honduras Marine Reserve, which TIDE manages...
The success of NIKE, Inc. is deemed miracle by professionals on both Wall
Street and Madison Avenue. Research done in the past tends to credit the growth
of NIKE, Inc. to its marketing strategies. By placing the achievement of the
company in the postmodern context, this study analyzes the cultural...