Half Price Books, Records, Magazines, Inc. (HPB), fills a unique niche by selling a variety of new, used and rare merchandise primarily in their chain of 116 stores in sixteen states and online. The company has noticed increased mobile device use among customers in their stores while sales have declined in recent years. To remain viable HPB is attempting to adapt to market forces in a timely manner while remaining continually interested in growth and innovation. A major part of adapting, growing, and innovating is the adoption and astute utilization of technology in-store and a more complete understanding of their customers’ activities and preferences. The goal is to make Half Price Books a more technologically savvy destination for shopping, community events, and entertainment. One purpose of this study is to give the company a better idea of how customers use technology in searching for merchandise including information searches generated in-store from mobile devices and how customers use the internet to find merchandise prior to and following their experiences in HPB’s stores. Another important purpose is to also determine what kinds of events such as book signings, poetry readings and other special events customers would like to see at Half Price …

Beginning May of 2013 and ending in September, I worked with Grace After Fire (Grace), a virtual nonprofit organization that focuses on issues related to female veterans. Grace’s mission is to provide female veterans with the means to gain knowledge, insight and self-renewal. Grace’s mission is accomplished through peer support and resource referral. The aim of my thesis project was to conduct an analysis of Grace’s peer support system, Table Talk: Color Me Camo (Table Talk). Because Table Talk is a fairly new program for Grace, just over a year old, the outreach coordinators were eager to learn: 1) if they were indeed meeting their mission of empowering female veterans, and 2) the point-of-view of the peer facilitators who conduct Table Talk. To help Grace gain perspective, I interviewed women who had previously attended Table Talk, as well as peer facilitators responsible for coordinating the peer support system-all of whom are female veterans. The following is their story.

This thesis builds upon several theoretical ideas. The first of which is the anthropologists’ transition into the corporate context and the particular type of skills and value that someone with anthropological training can bring to operations management. As anthropology is relatively new and unfamiliar to corporations, anthropologists are often hired without explicit knowledge of how they will address organizational problems. Frequently, this incremental relationship building between the anthropologist and the organization leads to shifting project goals which come only after the anthropologist is able to reveal initial findings to someone who has the power to grant the anthropologist further access to employees and company information. This refocusing comes from a building of trust that is crucially important for the anthropologist’s ability to identify social issues, which is the anthropologist’s expertise. In order to develop the context of this project the following paragraphs will explain in more detail and expand into particular cases in which anthropologists have helped organizations to identify and manage social, organizational problems. As a relationship needs to be built between the anthropologist and the organization, here I argue that there needs to be continual relationship building between anthropological, design, and management theories to optimally solve organizational problems.

American downtowns were once the place to see and be seen, but the introduction of the shopping mall in the late 1950s challenged this notion and gave the American consumer a different place to spend their time and money. The prevalence of shopping malls has slowly been declining across the country since the beginning of this century, leaving room in the American retail landscape for downtowns to reclaim their status as community and retail centers. Towns across the U.S. are turning to national and local organizations to assist them in revitalizing their downtown districts. Downtown Bloomsburg, Inc. (DBI), a non-profit organization located in the small town of Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, has been working since 2006 to revitalize its town’s downtown and main street area. The unique findings presented here were derived from a four month long ethnographic study of downtown Bloomsburg merchants and shoppers and are meant to be used by DBI as a supplemental guide for further revitalization of the town.

This study represents a community needs assessment conducted for Trans.lation Vickery Meadow, a community-based organization in a North Dallas community, Vickery Meadow. Vickery Meadow is a community where refugee resettlement agencies place incoming clients, and therefore, there is a focus on immigrants and refugees in this study. Using theoretical conceptions of development, immigration policy, and the refugee resettlement process, this project measured residential perceptions of Vickery Meadow, the operations of Trans.lation Vickery Meadow, and overall community needs. Also included are perceptions of Trans.lation Vickery Meadow members concerning community needs and the operations of Trans.lation. Recommendations are made based upon research and conclusions from fieldwork.

This project employs participatory action research methods in efforts to create a community specific environmental curriculum for the high school age youth at the only Jain faith community in the North Texas region. Aligned with the community’s goals, the youth led in deciding, creating, and carrying out initiatives that were aimed at increasing the level of awareness about environmental issues amongst community members. The research done by the youth aimed at looking at environmental issues through the lens of Jain doctrine. The final creation of a curriculum as a living document to be used by the youth in efforts to promote critical thinking skills and class discussion continues the participatory model. The curriculum encourages experiential and interpretative learning, which grants ownership of the topics to the youth themselves and ultimately empowering them to learn more and spread the importance of being environmentally friendly.

This thesis investigates how to create an environment for organizational change within the Market Research Department at the Gangler Company (a US-based consumer products company). I explore what is influencing the current cultural environment and which of those influencers can be shifted to encourage organizational change toward the “ideal” culture that the organization has identified. Using new institutionalism as the theoretical approach, I discuss the significance of institutional forces (such as the economy and the rise in technology) on the cultural elements (i.e. behaviors, ideas, material artifacts and social structures) in the Market Research Department. Lastly, I show that by understanding those institutional influences, I can better assess what cultural elements can be shifted and which cannot. Of the cultural elements that are able to be shifted, I recommend three interventions that the organization should employ: 1) from a contrive culture to a culture of candor, 2) from a culture of division to a culture of cohesion, and 3) from a culture of knowing to a culture of learning.

Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, an intentional community of roughly 70 members in Northeastern Missouri, is working to create societal change through radical sustainable living practices and creation of a culture of eco-friendly and feminist norms. Members agree to abide by a set of ecological covenants and sustainability guidelines, committing to practices such as using only sustainably generated electricity, and no use or storage of personally owned vehicles on community property. Situated within the context of a sustainability study, this thesis explores how Dancing Rabbit is creating a more socially and ecologically just culture and how this lifestyle affects happiness and well-being.

This project attempts to describe how a hospice and palliative care partnership program works. Through the assessment of one such program, the researcher sought to find out the essential components of the partnership including how the two partner organizations interact and work together. Data was collected using various methods: document review of organization documents such as newsletters, annual or quarterly reports, brochures and other available literature e.g. materials on organizations’ website and on social media; in-depth interviews with stakeholders of both organizations that included staff and board members; observation of staff working; and participant observation during organization events. The findings of the research shows that in order for organizations to have an effective partnership program in place, both partners need to have strong leadership in place, possess a willingness to learn from each other, maintain regular communication, and visit each other regularly. With this in place, several outcomes of the program are likely such as: increasing advocacy for hospice and palliative care, increasing visibility of the organizations both nationally and internationally, and provides an opportunity for organizations to network with other organizations in their locality in order to achieve partnership objectives. The study further reveals that global collaborations in the …

In 2011, African Americans in Tarrant County, Texas experienced an infant mortality rate of 14.3 per 1,000 live births. The leading cause of infant mortality in Tarrant County is prematurity and maternal nutritional status. Both maternal under-nutrition and over-nutrition are known risk factors for premature birth. Improving maternal nutrition, by reducing rates of gestational diabetes and preeclampsia, and by increasing consumption of essential prenatal vitamins and nutrients, is a road to decreasing preterm birth in African Americans. This qualitative study, based on both anthropology and public health theory, of the nutrition behavior of a group of African American expectant mothers and the experience of their health care providers and co-facilitators had a goal to provide a foundation for future development of nutrition behavior research and education for this specific population. The main finding of this study was the substantial gap of lived experience and education between the patients and their providers and co-facilitators, which hinders delivery of care and the patients’ acquiescence to nutrition recommendations. The discrepancies between the authoritative knowledge of the providers and the bodily knowledge of expectant mothers were responsible for the ineffectiveness of nutrition recommendations.

As mobile phones become increasingly ubiquitous in today’s world, academic and public audiences alike are curious about the interaction between mobile technologies and social norms. To investigate this phenomenon, I examined how individuals use technology to actively manage their communication behaviors. Through a three-month research project on usage patterns of Burner, a mobile application, this thesis explores the relationships among technology, culture, and privacy. Burner is a service that equips individuals with the means to create, maintain, and/or dissolve social ties by providing temporary, disposable numbers to customers. The application offers a way to communicate without relying on a user’s personal phone number. In other words, Burner acts as a “privacy layer” for mobile phones. It also provides a valuable platform to examine how customers use the application as a strategy for communication management. This thesis represents a marriage of practice and theory: (1) As an applied enterprise, the project was constructed as a customer needs assessment intending to examine how the service was situated in the lives of its users. The findings have successfully been applied to my client’s company strategy and have led to a more informed customer approach. (2) As an academic endeavor, this research contributes to …

An analysis utilizing both ArcGIS and ethnographic interviews from private land owners and environmental professionals examined how man-made landscape changes affected plant and tree species in the LBJ National Grasslands in Wise County, Texas north of Decatur. From the late 1800s to the Dust Bowl Era the land was used for crop production and cattle grazing resulting in erosion and loss of soil nutrients. The research indicated by 2001 that cattle grazing and population increase resulted in land disturbance within the administrative boundary of the national grasslands. Participants expressed concern over the population increase and expansion of 5 to 10 acre ranchettes for cattle grazing common in modern times. Recommendations for the future included utilizing and expanding the resources already existing with environmental professionals to continue controlling erosion.

Torture survivors find difficulty navigating through an unfamiliar healthcare and social service system. Many survivors who already face Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and depression also endure a secondary threat which leads to re-traumatization through the struggles of acculturation. The aim of this study is to determine: 1. Identify differences and assumptions between service providers’ and clients’ definitions of self-sufficiency; 2. Examine prominent barriers to self-sufficiency that survivors encounter; 3. Pinpoint the survival strategies that survivors use in order to cope with life in DFW; 4. Determine what resources CST staff, area service providers, and survivors feel need to be improved for CST and the DFW metroplex.

The Bonton and Ideal neighborhoods in Dallas Texas, developed in the early 1900s, experienced physical and social decay throughout the 1980s. Neighborhood organizations and resident activism were vital to the rebirth of the community in the 1990s. Current revitalization efforts taking place there have been a source of contention as the neighborhood continues to overcome inequalities created by decades of racialized city planning initiatives. This thesis focuses on how the structuring structure of whiteness has historically affected, and continues to affect, the neighborhoods of Ideal and Bonton, as well as acts to identify how black residents have navigated their landscape and increased their collective capital through neighborhood activism.

This thesis contributes to research that informs the studies of organizational management and organizational anthropology. It examines the internal hierarchy and organizational practices of a Tech Company and describes how findings contributed to policy recommendations aimed towards supporting a “guild” model for organizational success. The data collecting and research were undertaken while working as an employee of the Tech Program and subsequent analysis continued past the end of that phase of work. Methods included semi-structured interviews which captured the sentiments and understandings of employees within the organization, and a questionnaire which revealed sentiments and experiences from former employees. These were buttressed with participant observation engaged through a participatory action research methodology. Findings add to the work directed towards understanding the effect of Founder’s Syndrome within organizations. Additionally, this thesis contributes to a growing body of research centered on best practices for fostering positive organizational growth by creating lines of communication from front-line employees to management level employers.

The Energy Assistance Fund (EAF) is a voluntary, nonprofit fuel fund that provides grants to income qualified utility customers in an effort to help those customers avoid electricity service disconnection. The administering utility and the energy industry as a whole is undergoing transformative change, resulting in a projected decrease of fundraising capacity for EAF among its most substantial donor pool - utility shareholders and employees. Utility customers represent a small percentage of EAF donors, despite the significant size of the customer base. Through a series of ethnographic interviews and secondary research, this thesis seeks to understand the demographics and motivations of utility customers who donate to EAF in order to help improve EAF’s fundraising strategy and donor solicitations to eventually grow customer donations. The goal of EAF is to maintain or grow donations from 2014 levels so the Fund can continue to serve income qualified customers facing energy poverty. This thesis provides a contextual review of fuel funds; challenges faced by the energy and utility industry; the politics and culture of energy; as well as nonprofit sector fundraising challenges and cultures/motivations of giving. This thesis includes client deliverables such as thick description of donor motivation, motivation themes and a donor …

Since the recession of 2008, there has been an increased scrutiny of higher education, with little research done on how this affects high school students' college search process. This study seeks to understand how college perceptions are formed and how they affect the college decision process of high school students in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In order to gain a holistic perspective of this process, this study utilized a mixed method approach of analyzing public data, conducting interviews with community members and students, conducting a focus group with high school guidance counselors, and administering a survey to high school students. This study found that students in this area form their perceptions of college in three distinct phases and that these phases affect a student's college priorities. Special attention was given to how academics, cost and location contributed to a student's overall college decision. These findings can be used to assist faculty and staff at higher education institutions in creating effective messaging and programming that relate to this group of students.

The purpose of this research was to conduct a needs assessment for the city of Denton, Texas to learn how residents view Denton's aging-friendliness. The research design was based on the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services' Aging Texas Well Toolkit and was funded by a two year grant from that agency. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to gather data on six community indicators: demographics, housing, transportation, health care (including mental health and substance abuse services), recreation, and community supports and services. Input from city residents was gathered through focus groups, followed by a survey of the broader community in the city to validate and prioritize the needs identified. The research found gaps in Denton's aging-friendliness. Denton residents feel that although there are some services for the aging in the area, other services are lacking. The top needs identified by residents were a single point of contact for, and better communication about, resources currently available, as well as a need for increased transportation options.

Situated within the jurisdiction of the Municipality of Tulum and within the Sian Ka'an Biosphere gives the village of Punta Allen a distinctive agency in determining their role in the on-going development of tourism in the region that is not given to other communities in the state. This unique circumstance facilitates a dialogue between the reserve, the municipality, and the business cooperatives of Punta Allen that produce a negotiated living. Through the negotiations with the reserve and Tulum, the lobster fishing and tourism cooperatives are given the opportunity to have a relatively significant role in determining the future of Punta Allen in regards to tourism.

My thesis provides evidence supporting a theory asserting that the high level of competition that exists between motor carriers operating within long-haul trucking is the most significant factor contributing to the continuously high driver turnover rates affecting the entire logistics industry. I explore how long-haul truck drivers internalize the conflict between their identity and the aggressively competitive environment within which they work. Social science authors, industry reports, and truck driver feedback from my own ethnographic study are analyzed for contexts in order to explore the current operating definition of success for motor carriers in both monetary and human terms.

There is limited anthropological research on inclusive play and universally designed playgrounds and this study aims to make some contribution in this field. This was a qualitative research study guided by anthropological theory and methods, conducted for For the Love of the Lake (FTLOTL) Foundation. FTLOTL is a non-profit organization located in Dallas, Texas, dedicated to White Rock Lake Park's maintenance. In 2014, FTLOTL became of the view that the park's current playgrounds lacked accessibility for differently-abled children. Therefore, FTLOTL decided to undertake a renovation project of Flag Pole Hill playground to incorporate inclusiveness and diversity in the playground design. The overarching objective of this exploratory, ethnographic needs assessment was to provide insights for an inclusive playground using universal design for families with special needs children. Fourteen parents, each with at least one child having physical, social, or intellectual disabilities in the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) Texas metroplex were interviewed. The interviews were semi structured, each lasting for about an hour and were digitally recorded. Later these audio recordings were transcribed verbatim and then coded using Dedoose. The coded data was synthesized into coherent themes and sub-themes and finally organized into formal research findings. Observations were made of existing universally designed …

This project aims to explore the beliefs of international teachers regarding the students with whom they work, and the change in those beliefs over time. Participant observation, interviews, and questionnaires were used as tools of collection to address the following research questions: How did teachers' beliefs about students change over time? What variables were significantly associated with the rate of change in teacher beliefs about students? What types of challenges did teaches face while living and working in Thailand? Over the course of four months, I shadowed twenty-two U.S. teachers in thirteen different locations throughout Thailand. Participants were enrolled in an international teaching program in Thailand that provided a cultural orientation and teacher training. Participants were then assigned to teaching jobs throughout the country. Qualitative and quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS and NVivo software. This project contributes to the scholarship of teaching and learning, and anthropological and education research dedicated to exploring teachers' beliefs about students. Results of the study provide vital information about what variables or experiences may influence a critical analysis of beliefs among teachers working with students who they perceive as different from themselves. Due to some of the parallels between this study population and that …

This work addresses the experiences of female asylum seekers from Central and Mexico currently living in Dallas, TX. The main purpose is to analyze how these women engage in the gendered processes of both migrating to and accessing legal resources and protection within the United States. As the women move through male-dominated spaces in their home country, the borderlands, and the asylum court they must challenge the patriarchal institutions that attempt to silence their narratives and criminalize their bodies. Their physical wounds become evidence in the courtroom, while outside of the courtroom their movements are monitored and tracked through multiple mechanisms of state control: ankle monitors, detention centers, ICE check-ins. They face intersectional discrimination as they are targeted as both women and immigrants. However, these female asylum seekers are not victims. They constantly display agency as they represent themselves in court, find solace in their faith, and form community with each other.

This study incorporated a community based assessment with a focus on community based tourism in Kalache and Hulgol, India. Kalache and Hulgol are two agrarian based communities located in the environmentally significant region of the Western Ghats. Each of these communities has considered community based tourism as a means to reduce urban youth outmigration, to diversify economic resources, and to encourage the empowerment of women. The primary goals of this study were to understand the community issues and objectives, to determine the level of support for tourism development, to determine participant attitudes toward tourism, and to determine the obstacles to tourism development. The findings of this project address the complexity of operating in the tourism industry, the impacts of tourism, and the use of community based tourism models in support of sustainable tourism.