Reimagining access to justice through the eyes of rural domestic violence survivors

Access to justice is a theoretical construct and applied principle within the US legal system, centering equity in access to legal services and representation. However, access to justice extends beyond the legal sphere and into the daily lives of vulnerable people. This article contributes to long-standing efforts to reimagine and repurpose the access to justice framework through an ethnographic examination of rural domestic violence. In doing so, there exists significant promise to transform access to justice in a way that comprehensively sees and addresses inequity and injustice. Access to justice can be used in a multitude of ways to make sense of vulnerability at the intersection of rurality, domestic violence, resource accessibility, and activism, expanding the theoretical framework beyond its original scope toward social justice.

Bridging White Supremacist Discourse: An ethnography of the online world of the ‘Alt-Right’

<p>This thesis examines the social world of white supremacy using online ethnography of an Alt-Right forum on 4chan. For four months, I conducted fieldwork on 4chan’s “politically incorrect” (/pol/) message board three to four days a week, observing the interaction of users in real time, compiling ethnographic fieldnotes, and archiving relevant documents and forum threads. This data was systematically analysed and provides the foundation for the case studies at the centre of this thesis: (1) users use of the metaphor of “red pills” to describe their entry to the Alt-Right and adoption of core tenants of movement ideology; (2) the way they translated this ideology for a wider (offline) audience through a campaign to poster the phrase, “It’s Okay to be White” around local neighbourhoods; and (3) the way they constructed collective meaning out of an act of racist violence from a self-identified insider to the community, Stephan Balliet, who killed two people near a synagogue in Halle, Germany, during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.</p><p><br></p><p>This ethnographic examination of 4chan not only provides a ground-up view of what is generally regarded as among the darkest corners of the internet, based on the everyday interactions of participants in the community, but contributes to wider academic debates about the contemporary landscape of racial inequality and online white supremacy.</p>

Bridging White Supremacist Discourse: An ethnography of the online world of the ‘Alt-Right’

<p>This thesis examines the social world of white supremacy using online ethnography of an Alt-Right forum on 4chan. For four months, I conducted fieldwork on 4chan’s “politically incorrect” (/pol/) message board three to four days a week, observing the interaction of users in real time, compiling ethnographic fieldnotes, and archiving relevant documents and forum threads. This data was systematically analysed and provides the foundation for the case studies at the centre of this thesis: (1) users use of the metaphor of “red pills” to describe their entry to the Alt-Right and adoption of core tenants of movement ideology; (2) the way they translated this ideology for a wider (offline) audience through a campaign to poster the phrase, “It’s Okay to be White” around local neighbourhoods; and (3) the way they constructed collective meaning out of an act of racist violence from a self-identified insider to the community, Stephan Balliet, who killed two people near a synagogue in Halle, Germany, during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.</p><p><br></p><p>This ethnographic examination of 4chan not only provides a ground-up view of what is generally regarded as among the darkest corners of the internet, based on the everyday interactions of participants in the community, but contributes to wider academic debates about the contemporary landscape of racial inequality and online white supremacy.</p>

Border Splurge to Deter Border Surge: An Auto-ethnographic Examination of Border Security Operations on the South Texas–Mexico Border

In the summer of 2014, the South Texas–Mexico border became the epicenter of a humanitarian crisis as thousands of unaccompanied minors and mothers from Central America seeking asylum traveled to the Rio Grande Valley. The institutional response from the state of Texas was to militarize the border with a multi-agency initiative dubbed Operation Strong Safety, at a cost of $1.3 million a week for the remainder of the year. I collected data for this study while I worked as a police officer in a police department located on the South Texas–Mexico border that participated in the operation. Importantly, from an institutional perspective, this study illustrates what police officers do while working on this operation. Findings reveal that officers spent their time performing non-enforcement functions. I argue that state governmental officials should divest from ineffective border security operations and should instead allocate funds to local communities and local organizations who are assisting with the humanitarian crisis.

An ethnographic examination of the experience of ecotherapy as an intervention for mental health in South and West Wales.

This thesis uses ethnographic methods to explore the experiences of people in South and West Wales doing ecotherapy activities. Ecotherapy describes a variety of outdoor nature-based activities intended to improve individual and population health and wellbeing. The expected outcomes of ecotherapy are contested, and there is a widespread focus on how to measure nature exposure or test particular psychological or biological pathways and mechanisms. I argue that this reductionist reification of ecotherapy outcomes leads to a lack of critical attention to the myriad irreducible experiences of people currently taking part in ecotherapy groups in particular places. Ethnographic methods, including participant observation, interviews, and documentary analysis, are deployed to examine four ecotherapy projects in South and West Wales. These projects are indicative of the variation of ecotherapy in the region and include two woodland based groups, a sustainability skills organisation, and a coastal trail running group. Findings are presented in three chapters. First - “How bureaucratic systems as ‘smooth flows’ and ‘striated events’ shape participant’s experience of ecotherapy.” - examines the bureaucratic practices in use by the different projects. I suggest the ways in which the ‘natural’ spaces are produced as therapeutic is informed by how these practices are deployed on a continuum between ‘smooth’ and ‘striated’. Second – “The expression of multiple notions of ‘escape’ and ‘getting away’ as a frame to ecotherapy” - in which the natural spaces are operationalised as restorative and energising resources by some and as protective and safe refuges by others. In the final findings chapter – “People, place & agency: A typology of orientations to ecotherapy” - I use my analysis of the fieldwork data to generate a tentative four-part typology of participant orientations towards ecotherapy. My analysis indicates that a greater emphasis is needed on the multiple ways in which spaces are produced as therapeutic by individuals and groups who are already negotiating a complex intersection of environmental, health, and organisational challenges. This original contribution shows that there are conflicting rationalities at play in ecotherapy which are being resisted and reproduced in ways not captured by other potentially reductionist and reifying approaches commonly applied to this field of research.