About this Collection
The books archived in this Georgia Southern Commons collection are published or edited by the faculty of the College of Behavioral and Social Science.
Faculty Research in Georgia Southern Commons
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Publishing Information
GS Commons is an open-access digital repository. Copyright and licensing agreements for works published by GS Commons protect the author's rights while facilitating the sharing of research. The works in this gallery were originally published or presented under agreements with entities external to this repository. Records for each work provide the access permitted by the original copyright and licensing agreement. For additional access or questions about a work, please contact the authors or email the GS Commons team.
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Justice Leah Ward Sears: Seizing Serendipity
Rebecca Davis, Georgia Southern University
9-2017
This is the first full biography of Justice Leah Ward Sears. In 1992 Sears became the first woman and youngest justice to sit on the Supreme Court of Georgia. In 2005 she became the first African American woman to serve as chief justice of any state supreme court in the country. This book explores her childhood in a career military family; her education; her early work as an attorney; her rise through Georgia's city, county, and state court systems; and her various pursuits after leaving the supreme court in 2009, when she transitioned into a life that was no less ... Read more
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Challenging Immigration Detention- Academic, Activists, and Policy-makers
Michael J. Flynn, Global Detention Project and Matthew B. Flynn, Georgia Southern University
2017
Immigration detention is an important global phenomenon increasingly practiced by states across the world in which human rights violations are commonplace. Challenging Immigration Detention introduces readers to various disciplines that have addressed immigration detention in recent years and how these experts have sought to challenge underlying causes and justifications for detention regimes. Contributors provide an overview of the key issues addressed in their disciplines, discuss key points of contention, and seek out linkages and interactions with experts from other fields.
Edited by Michael J. Flynn, Global Detention Project, Switzerland and Matthew B. Flynn, Georgia Southern University, US
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New Dimensions in Community Well-Being (Community Quality-of-Life and Well-Being)
Patricia B. Kraeger, Georgia Southern University; Scott Cloutier, Arizona State University; and Craig Talmage, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
6-15-2017
This volume addresses new innovations in quality of life and well-being from the perspectives of the individual, society and community. It aggregates the perspectives, research questions, methods and results that consider how quality of life is influenced in our modern society. Chapters in this volume present theoretical and practical examples on different aspects of quality of life and community well-being representing American, European, Native American and African perspectives. This volume is of interest to scholars in sociology, psychology, economy, philosophy, health research as well as practitioners across the social sciences.
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A Student's Introduction to Political Analysis
Patrick J. Novotny, Georgia Southern University
12-8-2017
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Motherhood, Fatherland, and Primo Levi: The Hidden Groundwork of Agency in His Auschwitz Writings
Robert Pirro, Georgia Southern University
9-5-2017
Motherhood, Fatherland and Primo Levi: The Hidden Groundwork of Agency in his Auschwitz Writings offers major new insights into the political dimensions of Levi’s thought by using those texts conventionally thought to be marginal to his oeuvre (i.e., his short works of science fiction and fantasy and his World War Two partisan novel) to deepen our understanding of the lessons he offered in his more well-known and celebrated texts, Survival in Auschwitz and The Drowned and the Saved. Typically cast as one of the most profound theorists of what human beings at their worst can do to one another, Levi ... Read more
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Negotiating Membership in the WTO and EU: The Politics of Accession
Jamie E. Scalera, Georgia Southern University
2017
Book Summary: With the accession of Afghanistan in 2016, the World Trade Organization (WTO) numbered 164 members with nineteen other states in line to join. The WTO is certainly not alone in its growth though; the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the European Union (EU) are all expanding with dozens of states continuing to negotiate their potential membership. What impact does membership in international organizations really have? Why do some states have a seemingly easy path to joining international organizations while others find the process nearly impossible? What implications do these ... Read more
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Professional Issues in Therapeutic Recreation: On Competence and Outcomes
Norma J. Stumbo; Brent Wolfe, Georgia Southern University; and Shane Alexander Pegg
2017
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Listening, Looking, Living: Qualitative Research, the Study of Politics, and Understanding the World in Which We Live, 2nd Edition
Darin H. Van Tassell and Patrick Novotny, Georgia Southern University
2017
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The Integrity of American Governmental Institutions: The Role of Ethics in Public Service
Jose de Arimateia da Cruz, Georgia Southern University and Becky Kohler da Cruz
2016
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State Fragility Around the World: Fractured Justice and Fierce Reprisal
Laurie Gould, Georgia Southern University and Matthew Pate, University of Albany
1-1-2016
Book Summary: Failed and fragile states often govern through the criminalization of otherwise inconsequential or tolerated acts. These weak states also frequently use kidnapping, murder, and other violent or oppressive tactics to maintain order and stay in power. State Fragility Around the World: Fractured Justice and Fierce Reprisal analyzes the path to state failure, one manifestation of which appears through the fragility and dysfunction of its criminal justice system. This book examines what happens when a government loses the ability, or will, to provide basic goods and services to its constituents.
Acknowledging the tremendous variability of failed and fragile states, ... Read more
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Cybercrime in Progress: Theory and Prevention of Technology-Enabled Offenses
Thomas J. Holt, Michigan State University and Adam Bossler, Georgia Southern University
2016
The emergence of the World Wide Web, smartphones, and computers has transformed the world and enabled individuals to engage in crimes in a multitude of new ways. Criminological scholarship on these issues has increased dramatically over the last decade, as have studies on ways to prevent and police these offenses. This book is one of the first texts to provide a comprehensive review of research regarding cybercrime, policing and enforcing these offenses, and the prevention of various offenses as global change and technology adoption increases the risk of victimization around the world.
Drawing on a wide range of literature, Holt ... Read more
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Coverage of Recreational Therapy: Rules and Regulations (3rd Edition)
Tim Passmore, Oklahoma State University; Dawn De Vries, Grand Valley State University; Thea Kavanaugh; and Kristen Fedesco
2016
This text has been developed to assist the recreational therapist in developing a recreational therapy program which is compliant with all current Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Joint Commission, Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities International, and Public School regulations at the time of publication.The text has also been specifically structured to aid the RT in communicating with administrators and other allied health professions and professionals regarding the appropriateness of the presences of recreational therapy in the various treatment and residential settings.
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The Criminal Brain: Understanding Biological Theories of Crime
Nicole Rafter, Northeastern University; Chad Posick, Georgia Southern University; and Michael Rocque, Bates College
8-30-2016
What is the relationship between criminality and biology? Nineteenth-century phrenologists insisted that criminality was innate, inherent in the offender’s brain matter. While they were eventually repudiated as pseudo-scientists, today the pendulum has swung back. Both criminologists and biologists have begun to speak of a tantalizing but disturbing possibility: that criminality may be inherited as a set of genetic deficits that place one at risk to commit theft, violence, or acts of sexual deviance. But what do these new theories really assert? Are they as dangerous as their forerunners, which the Nazis and other eugenicists used to sterilize, incarcerate, and even ... Read more
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Rating the Presidents: A Ranking of U.S. Leaders from the Great and Honorable to the Dishonest and Incompetent
William Ridings Jr; Stuart B. McIver; and Christopher M. Brown, Georgia Southern University
2016
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The South China Sea Disputes: Past, Present, and Future
Nalanda Roy, Georgia Southern University
12-2-2016
Book Summary: The South China Sea has long been regarded as one of the most complex and challenging ocean-related maritime disputes in East Asia. Recently it has become the locus of disputes that have the potential of escalating into serious international conflicts. Historical mistrust, enduring territorial disputes, and competing maritime claims have combined to weaken an at least partially successful regional security structure. Issues of concern include territorial sovereignty; disputed claims to islands, rocks, and reefs; jurisdiction over territorial waters, exclusive economic zones, and the seabed; regional and international rights to use the seas for military purposes; maritime security; rapid ... Read more
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Allegiance to Liberty: The Changing Face of Patriots, Militias, and Political Violence in America
Barry J. Balleck, Georgia Southern University
2015
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Pharmaceutical Autonomy and Public Health in Latin America: State, Society, and Industry in Brazil’s AIDS Program
Matthew Flynn, Georgia Southern University
2015
Brazil has occupied a central role in the access to medicines movement, especially with respect to drugs used to treat those with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). How and why Brazil succeeded in overcoming powerful political and economic interests, both at home and abroad, to roll-out and sustain treatment represents an intellectual puzzle.
In this book, Matthew Flynn traces the numerous challenges Brazil faced in its efforts to provide essential medicines to all of its citizens. Using dependency theory, state theory, and moral underpinnings of markets, Flynn delves deeper into the salient ... Read more
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Cybercrime and Digital Forensics: An Introduction
Thomas J. Holt, Michigan State University; Adam Bossler, Georgia Southern University; and Kathryn Seigfried-Spellar, The University of Alabama
2015
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Policing Cybercrime and Cyberterror
Thomas J. Holt, Michigan State University; George Burruss, University of South Florida; and Adam Bossler, Georgia Southern University
4-29-2015
The purpose of Policing Cybercrime and Cyberterror is to provide an in-depth discussion of the perceptions and responses of U.S. law enforcement agencies at all levels in dealing with cybercrime and cyberterror. The themes for this book include the challenges that cybercrime and digital evidence handling pose for local and state agencies, the jurisdictional and investigative hurdles that hinder the response capabilities of police agencies, and the complexities of the actual investigation of these offenses and their impact on officers.
This text analyzes data collected from local law enforcement agencies in the U.S., in order to understand officer perceptions of and ... Read more -
Living Together, Living Apart Mixed Status Families and US Immigration Policy
April M. Schueths, Georgia Southern University and Jodie Lawston, California State University, San Marcos
11-2015
Immigration reform remains one of the most contentious issues in the United States today. For mixed status families-families that include both citizens and noncitizens-this is more than a political issue: it's a deeply personal one. Undocumented family members and legal residents lack the rights and benefits of their family members who are US citizens, while family members and legal residents sometimes have their rights compromised by punitive immigration policies based on a strict "citizen/noncitizen" dichotomy.
This collection of personal narratives and academic essays is the first to focus on the daily lives and experiences, as well as the broader social ... Read more
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Emerging Trends in Drug Use and Distribution
David Khey, Loyola University New Orleans; John Stogner, University of North Carolina at Charlotte; and Bryan Lee Miller, Georgia Southern University
2014
This Brief explores emerging trends in drug use and distribution. This timely Brief examines recent examples of emerging drugs including salvia (from the plant Salvia divinorum), bath salts (and other synthetic stimulants) and so-called research chemicals (primarily substituted phenethylamines, synthetic cousins of ecstasy), which have tended to receive brief levels of high intensity media coverage that may or may not reflect an actual increase in their usage. Over the past decade in particular, “new” substances being used recreationally seem to come out of obscurity and gain rapid popularity, particularly spurred on by discussion and distribution over the internet. While changing ... Read more
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The Press in American Politics, 1787-2012
Patrick Novotny, Georgia Southern University
10-14-2014
From the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and the fight for ratification of the Constitution in the pages of America's newspapers through the digital era of 24/7 information technologies and social media campaigns, this book tells the story of the press as a decisive and defining part of America's elections, parties, and political life. * Provides a compelling and unique perspective of American politics through the early adoptions of technology by the press, especially in the era of electronic broadcasting and information technology in the 20th century * Thoroughly documents the early emergence of the uses of radio, television, and the ... Read more
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Listening, Looking, Living: Qualitative Research, the Study of Politics, and Understanding the World in Which We Live, 1st edition
Patrick Novotny, Georgia Southern University and Darin H. Van Tassell
2013
