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The growing interest in the processes and practices of entrepreneurship has been dominated by a consideration of temporality. Through a thirty-six-month ethnography of a technology incubator, this thesis contributes to extant understanding by exploring the effect of space. The first paper explores how class structures from the surrounding city have appropriated entrepreneurship within the incubator. The second paper adopts a more explicitly spatial analysis to reveal how the use of space influences a common understanding of entrepreneurship. The final paper looks more closely at the entrepreneurs within the incubator and how they use visual symbols to develop their identity. Taken together, the three papers reject the notion of entrepreneurship as a primarily economic endeavour as articulated through commonly understood language and propose entrepreneuring as an enigmatic attractor that is accessed through the ambiguity of the non-verbal to develop the 'new'. The thesis therefore contributes to the understanding of entrepreneurship and proposes a distinct role for the non-verbal in that understanding.

The thesis draws upon six published and peer reviewed papers and a peer reviewed book chapter. An overview of each paper is followed by the publication and then an explanation of how each has contributed to the emerging research profile and methodology. There follows a critical overview and rationale of the developing and emerging research profile and the move from a constructivist grounded methodology to a Bourdieuian theoretical and methodological position. This thesis focuses on the process of social reproduction and change in the contemporary mountaineering and climbing field. A central theme in this thesis is the relationship between social structure and individual agency. The adoption of the Bourdieuian approach represents a conceptual break with previous understandings of action, agency, objectivism, subjectivism, the individual and society. Habitus becomes a main mechanism to explore and analyse the process of social change and reproduction in the contemporary climbing and mountaineering field. Habitus makes it possible to understand and account for the dynamic and spontaneous actions of individuals as well as the process of social reproduction and change. At the centre of the process of social change is the relationship between the habitus and the field. It is through a detailed analysis of the relationship between the habitus and the field that is possible to understand the process of structural change and the conditions where individuals are most likely and able to challenge doxa. In the modern climbing context, women, particularly from the middle classes, are becoming empowered through the transformation of their bodies and the construction of often complex and contradictory identities. These women are placed to take advantage of new emerging social relations and opportunities occurring as a result of hysteresis. However, this has implications for the identities and position of established climbers, particularly men whose habitus was formed under a previous set of objective conditions, but also other women from subordinate social positions.

African American women have the highest prevalence of obesity of any other group in the U.S. (CDC, 2009). The burden of obesity increases the risk of a number of chronic diseases, and debilitating complications. The aim of this paper is threefold; first the paper aims to investigate the current literature on African American women and obesity, second this paper examines psychosocial determinants of obesity for African American women, and lastly this paper examines the racial dynamics of obesity. The first chapter of this paper includes a literature review on African American women obesity from articles published in January 1990 through December 2013. The utilization of this timeframe coincides with the initiation of Healthy People 2000 and the goal to eliminate health disparities. For the purposes of chapters two and three of this paper the National Survey of American Life Self-Administered Questionnaire (NSAL-SAQ), a 2001–2003 nationally representative cross-sectional survey was used to extract data for self-identified African American women. The 2001-2003 NSAL-SAQ only included African American females at a BMI of 18.5 kg/m2 or greater (n = 2,100). Multiple regression analyses results showed being married (p = .000) and household income (p = .005) were significantly associated with BMI. Results indicated African American women with negative racial regard and who felt close in ideas and feelings to poor African Americans were significantly associated with increased BMI. These psychosocial parameters can have profound implications on weight for African American women and should be taken into consideration for weight loss interventions.

In this paper, I locate welfare policies within the broader dynamics of the state’s relationship to capital, the hegemony of the neoliberal rationality, and class and caste politics. I ground my theoretical questions in the aftermath of the implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, based on my fieldwork in Bengaluru in early 2019. One clause of the Act, which required all privately owned schools to reserve 25% of their seats for students from socially and economically disadvantaged groups, was the subject of a fair amount of debate and generated the ire of private school associations and much of the middle and elite classes. Placing the Act within the broader context of the welfare architecture of the last few decades that falls into the framework of “inclusive growth,” I question the credibility of a welfare paradigm that sits comfortably alongside free-market capitalism. The case of the RTE in particular is demonstrative of the retreat of the state and its legitimizing of the expansion of the private sector. Engaging scholarship on the poverty, neoliberalism, and the relationship of the developmental state with the economy, I argue that the class antagonisms that came to the surface in Bengaluru in response to the RTE Act demonstrate the inherent limitations of a politics of welfare that simultaneously legitimizes the neoliberal project and ignores the structural nature of poverty and inequality as rooted in capitalist development. In this case, what transpired was middle-class and elite anxiety about the possible erasure of existing class markers, and consequent attempts to re-draw lines of exclusivity and power.

The pop punk band Green Day is a surprisingly interesting source for a discussion of class. Despite their working class background, and their massive successes with Dookie in 1994, and American Idiot in 2004, Green Day performs many middle class values in their song lyrics, stage shows, and interviews. Using Chris McDonald’s book Rush: Rock Music and the Middle Class as a template, this paper analyzes Green Day’s performance of class through theories about social class in North America. Throughout Green Day’s career, there is a noticeable tension between wanting to stick to their working class roots and acknowledging their sudden and unexpected thrust into an upper class economic standing. Yet, despite skipping a middle class standing economically, their song lyrics, stage shows, and interviews articulate many middle class values such as individualism, professionalism, and the middle class family.

After the publication of her short story "Lihaaf" in 1942, Ismat Chughtai was tried by the British Crown on charges of obscenity. Muhammad Hasan Askari's "Phislan," although published a year earlier, was never leveled with these charges and the short story generally flew under the radar in comparison to its notorious counterpart. Throughout the years, both readers and critics alike have simplified and reduced "Phislan" and "Lihaaf" as prime examples of homoerotic Urdu literature. The vast majority of literary criticism and work on gender that references these stories maintains the view that both stories are markedly homoerotic. However, the fact that the characters in both stories negotiate arguably homosocial spaces suggests that it might be more important to focus on the issues of sexuality and gender taking place rather than fixating on labeling the sexuality itself. To refocus this attention more broadly toward these issues exposes the importance of class, an aspect of the two stories that does not receive its due, proportionate interest. This paper presents original translations of Askari's "Phislan" and Chughtai's "Lihaaf," and then undertakes an analysis of the aforementioned issues of sexuality, gender and class.

This study examines the lived realities of Haitian Americans residing in Miami, Florida. By drawing on theories of global capitalism, migration, transnationalism, and diaspora it explores how the experience of Haitian migrants living in the Miami community of Little Haiti offer insights as to whether transnational, diasporic communities are uniquely placed to become socially aware and political active within their diasporic communities . Most studies on Haitians in the United States focus on New York. However, those residing in the global city of Miami are a unique population of mostly working-class Haitians who, marginalized by U.S. politicians, the media, and migrant groups in Florida, are rendered precarious. Such experiences can push Haitian migrants to maintain transnational links and form diasporic communities in areas such as the ethnic enclave of Little Haiti.Through participant observation and semi-structured interviews with Haitian volunteers and employees at the Little Haiti Community Support Center (LHCSC), in July 2014 I explored the lived experiences of politically engaged Haitian migrants residing in this diasporic community. From the interviews emerged a hybrid, at times ambivalent, diasporic political and cultural consciousness maintained through transnational forms of solidarity. Political consciousness developed in community and in strategic collaborations with other Black diasporic groups. Cultural consciousness functioned as a tool of empowerment and a medium for critiques of U.S. policies, aspects of Haitian culture, and gender norms. Activism solidified communities and families and cultivated new practices to pass on to the next generation. Using the LHCSC as an example of a transnational, politically active site of community, this paper explores how an ethnic community becomes unified as diaspora, and more socially and globally aware as a consequence of their migrant experience.

Dominant ideologies about poverty draw on personal responsibility and beliefs that a "culture" of poverty creates and reproduces inequality (Banfield 1970; Grusky and Ku 2008; Lewis 1959; Moynihan 1965; Ryan 1976). As the primary recipients of welfare benefits tend to be poor, single mothers of color, discourses surrounding welfare are also influenced by dominant ideologies about mothering, namely intensive mothering, which requires child-centered and resource intensive practices (Arendell 1999; Hays 1996; Lareau 2003). Additionally, mother blame, wherein mothers are held accountable for their children's care, behaviors, and outcomes, is deeply embedded in ideas about and expectations of mothering. Yet, given the centrality of resources involved in intensive mothering, welfare mothers are often precluded from enacting this type of parenting. In this paper, I examine how welfare program managers talk about and evaluate their clients' mothering. In order to do this, I use critical discourse analysis to analyze 69 qualitative interviews with Ohio Works First (cash assistance) program managers from 69/88 counties in Ohio. My findings suggest three themes in the way program managers talk about their clients' mothering: (1) child-centered mothering (2) the "culture" of poverty and (3) mothers (mis)managing child care. By making use of discourse strategies in their talk, program managers illustrate and draw attention to the differences in parenting between welfare mothers and middle class mothers.

This paper used the constant comparative method to examine the 12 animated features released by Disney between 2000 and 2010 for: (1) their representation of nonhuman animals (NHAs) and the portrayal of race, class, gender, and speciesism within this representation, (2) the ways they describe the relationship between humans and NHAs, and (3) whether they promote an animal rights perspective. Three major themes were identified: NHAs as stereotypes, family, and human/NHA dichotomy. Analysis of these themes revealed that Disney’s animated features promote speciesism and celebrate humanity’s superiority by justifying the subordination of NHAs to human agency. Furthermore, while Disney’s representation of NHAs remains largely anthropocentric, most of its animated features do not reflect the tenets of animal rights.

In late 2007, the crash of the housing market plunged the United States into the nation’s worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Although foreclosures, unemployment, bankruptcies and bailouts still flood the news, the crisis remains largely invisible as its victims strain to conceal their distress behind closed doors. “Close To Home” explores the causes and the destabilizing effects of corporate greed and the socioeconomic burdens it places on families and individuals. Collaging domestic wallpaper and Wall Street papers, the paintings tell the stories of those struggling to make ends meet in pursuit of the American Dream.

This dissertation examines the process of deindustrialization in an urban Appalachian community from a cultural perspective. Many initial studies concerning the effects of deindustrialization on Appalachian communities concluded that these communities were ultimately devastated. Appalachian culture was too brittle, culturally backwards, and therefore unable to withstand the shock of such an economic disaster. These studies failed to consider what subtle forms of coping mechanisms existed in the workplace before deindustrialization, and what overt forms of resistance were utilized by economically dispossessed workers after the deindustrialization process. In the 1980s, the Owens-Illinois Glass manufacturing plant in Huntington, West Virginia was significantly downsized, and in the early 1990s the glass manufacturing plant was permanently closed due to the deindustrialization process. This dissertation challenges the notion that Owens-Illinois workers in Huntington, West Virginia were “culturally backward,” and therefore ultimately defeated by the deindustrialization process. Utilizing the works of Michel de Certeau, and analyzing a series of oral histories of deindustrialized Owens-Illinois glass workers in Huntington, West Virginia, this paper proposes that former glass workers in Huntington, West Virginia creatively coped with their often tedious work environments during full employment, and later developed overt forms of resistance to the deindustrialization process.

There has been much speculation recently as to the political effect that "moral values" have on Americans and much research has shown inconclusive results as far as the effect of class. This paper aims to study how class and values, including moral values and postmaterialist values, interact with politics in the United States. The analyses performed to determine these effects include crosstabulation and logistical regressions and will include data from the National Election Studies (NES). It is found that postmaterialist values have little effect on political behavior but in separate analyses, class and moral values have increasing influences on vote choice and partisan identification. It is also determined that moral values currently has more influence on presidential votes, but there is no clear indication that values are consistent indicators of House vote choice or partisan identification.

The research on anger in the sociology of emotions literature, however, categorizes anger as a negative emotion, a form of distress with negative consequences. In contrast, I see anger as a potential source of empowerment and expect it to be tied to attributes of stratification, to gender, race, and class. Unlike much of the prior research, the analysis in this paper looks at both the experience and expression of anger by race, class, and gender. Results indicate that race, class, and gender do not operate similarly for feeling and expressing anger. Men feel anger around social class while women feel anger around family status. While blacks do not feel more anger, black men are more likely to express their anger, however not more likely to express their anger directly. Having the subjective identification of lower class is the best predictor of expressing anger towards the person who made you angry. Across analyses and social statuses a common difference is lower status people are more likely to feel, express, and directly express anger, however this finding is not true for sex status.