Rebecca De Souza
Biographic Data
| ID | 4606613 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rebecca De Souza |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rebecca |
| FAMILY NAME | De Souza |
| SIGNATURE | DE SOUZA R |
| AFFILIATIONS | San Diego State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6690-9132 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 14 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 16 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The Struggle to Be “Fully Human”
Drawing on the theory of communicative disenfranchisement (TCD) and based on qualitative interviews with 27 women living in the U.S. this study illuminates the enduring and persistent role of deep-seated "ideological formations'' (i.e. essentialized and oversimplified assumptions and worldviews) in medical interactions. Specifically, the analysis uncovers three core ideological formations that shape the communicative disenfranchisement (CD) encou…
Meanings of health and healthcare in a U.S. border region
Health disparities influence health and health-related outcomes in a multitude of ways, and can be attributed to the unequal distribution of social, political, economic, and environmental resources. This study uses the culture-centered approach (CCA) to illuminate health experiences, meanings, and negotiations of 15 individuals residing in a border region of southern California. Through a qualitative semi-structured interview process, the study i…
Eating in a Neoliberal Environment
Hunger is referred to as a “wicked problem” because it cannot be solved easily and is connected to other complex problems such as climate change, racism, and health equity. Bringing together food and environmental communication, this paper illuminates how the mundane act of eating is shaped by the hegemonic organizing logics of neoliberalism. Grounded in qualitative interviews, the analysis uncovers three common sense discourses linked to eating …
Alejarse de la Edad Media ibérica y redibujarla
Este artículo traza una trayectoria personal de la investigación neomedieval para que se ilumine cómo uno/a académico/a en este campo podría teorizarlo al buscar afinidades cercanas y, por tanto, afectivas a las condiciones sociopolíticas, económicas y creativas de la producción del material que estudia. Presenta tres casos de estudio del neomedievalismo que se alejan paulatinamente de la Península Ibérica; un movimiento que también marca la carr…
Women in the Margins
Guided by the culture-centered approach to health communication (CCA), this study explores how marginalized US women understand and negotiate meanings related to hunger and health. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews with 23 women experiencing deep structural vulnerability. Findings revealed three paradoxical meanings related to hunger: (a) the "abundance versus scarcity" paradox where even though women were consistently short of food, i…
Are there limits to globalising the medieval
The aim of this article is threefold: firstly, it seeks to critique, from the perspective of Iberian and Latin American studies, the Eurocentrism inherent in the research programme known as the ‘Global Middle Ages’ that has emerged in the last two decades in Humanities faculties primarily in the USA and Europe. Secondly, it argues that the identification of global neomedievalism is particularly indicative of the Eurocentric limits of the global m…
“Motherwork” and communicative labor
Introduction The feminization of hunger plays out in communities across the globe where poverty exists, including the United States, the world's wealthiest nation. The feminization of hunger and poverty can be traced to the “gender system”—deep seated gender inequities resulting in job segregation, discrimination in pay, unpaid caring work, and gender-based violence. Methods Exploratory qualitative research study with two focus groups comprising …
Communication, carcerality, and neoliberal stigma
Drawing on three strains of critical theory – Foucauldian biopolitics, critical race theory, and the work of sociologist Loic Wacquant – I argue that neoliberal stigma is foundational to the design of the food (assistance) system. Neoliberal stigma is constituted in the discursive practices of shame, suspicion, and surveillance, which are communicative and carceral technologies used to discipline poor and racialized communities in their efforts t…
On Hope, Privilege, and Blind Spots
Hope is an ontological need and a political imperative that must survive in our writing especially when we are writing about disenfranchised communities. In this essay, I reflect upon the importance of representing and articulating hope in research and writing. How can we lay hold of hope without romanticizing or resorting to individual exceptionalism and bootstraps thinking? How might we build and construct hope in the research process? What doe…
Howdy Modi!”
This study examines the media coverage of the “Howdy Modi!” rally in Houston, Texas to understand how heavily mediatized rallies advance an ethnonationalist “American Hindutva” agenda. Content analysis followed by framing analysis was conducted on news articles published in September 2019. Content analysis revealed six topics including: spectacle, hype, and optics; Trump-Modi support; anti-Modi protests; negative coverage; anti-Islam/anti-Pakista…
Memories of Medieval Iberia in Early Modern Spain
This article proposes a new reading of four romances viejos as one of the earliest forms of neomedievalism in early modern Spain. First printed in the sixteenth century, but set between the eighth and thirteenth centuries, these romances emphasize Christian Iberia’s fragmentariness and disempowerment in relation to other medieval polities. This contrasts with other sixteenth-century neomedievalisms, from maurophile rewritings of the fifteenth-cen…
Feeding the Other
How food pantries stigmatize their clients through a discourse that emphasizes hard work, self help, and economic productivity rather than food justice and equity. The United States has one of the highest rates of hunger and food insecurity in the industrialized world, with poor households, single parents, and communities of color disproportionately affected. Food pantries—run by charitable and faith-based organizations—rather than legal entitlem…
Go
This study was registered with clinicaltrials.gov (NCT01585480) on April 24, 2012
Theorizing the Relationship Between HIV/Aids, Biomedicine, and Culture Using an Urban Indian Setting as a Case Study
The biomedical model serves as a grand narrative shaping the dominant discourse on health and illness. The goal of this study is to understand how lay people living with HIV understand meanings of health and how the biomedical narrative enters their subjective interpretations. Findings were derived from in-depth interviews with HIV+ people in India, who had access to modern medicine. While deviations from the biomedical model were found, for the …
Women living with HIV
The Past, Present, and Future of Health Development Campaigns
In contemporary society, health issues have gained increasing urgency in both political and academic spheres. Looking back at the failure of the modernist development initiatives, there is the need to realize that we live in a time of increasing sociopolitical complexity. The present moment is perhaps best understood in terms of a complex tension and linkage between the past and present, global and local, modern and postmodern. The critical-cultu…
The Past, Present, and Future of Health Development Campaigns
In contemporary society, health issues have gained increasing urgency in both political and academic spheres. Looking back at the failure of the modernist development initiatives, there is the need to realize that we live in a time of increasing sociopolitical complexity. The present moment is perhaps best understood in terms of a complex tension and linkage between the past and present, global and local, modern and postmodern. The critical-cultu…
Howdy Modi!”
This study examines the media coverage of the “Howdy Modi!” rally in Houston, Texas to understand how heavily mediatized rallies advance an ethnonationalist “American Hindutva” agenda. Content analysis followed by framing analysis was conducted on news articles published in September 2019. Content analysis revealed six topics including: spectacle, hype, and optics; Trump-Modi support; anti-Modi protests; negative coverage; anti-Islam/anti-Pakista…
Theorizing the Relationship Between HIV/Aids, Biomedicine, and Culture Using an Urban Indian Setting as a Case Study
The biomedical model serves as a grand narrative shaping the dominant discourse on health and illness. The goal of this study is to understand how lay people living with HIV understand meanings of health and how the biomedical narrative enters their subjective interpretations. Findings were derived from in-depth interviews with HIV+ people in India, who had access to modern medicine. While deviations from the biomedical model were found, for the …
Women living with HIV
The Past, Present, and Future of Health Development Campaigns
In contemporary society, health issues have gained increasing urgency in both political and academic spheres. Looking back at the failure of the modernist development initiatives, there is the need to realize that we live in a time of increasing sociopolitical complexity. The present moment is perhaps best understood in terms of a complex tension and linkage between the past and present, global and local, modern and postmodern. The critical-cultu…
Women living with HIV
Theorizing the Relationship Between HIV/Aids, Biomedicine, and Culture Using an Urban Indian Setting as a Case Study
The biomedical model serves as a grand narrative shaping the dominant discourse on health and illness. The goal of this study is to understand how lay people living with HIV understand meanings of health and how the biomedical narrative enters their subjective interpretations. Findings were derived from in-depth interviews with HIV+ people in India, who had access to modern medicine. While deviations from the biomedical model were found, for the …
Go
This study was registered with clinicaltrials.gov (NCT01585480) on April 24, 2012
Feeding the Other
How food pantries stigmatize their clients through a discourse that emphasizes hard work, self help, and economic productivity rather than food justice and equity. The United States has one of the highest rates of hunger and food insecurity in the industrialized world, with poor households, single parents, and communities of color disproportionately affected. Food pantries—run by charitable and faith-based organizations—rather than legal entitlem…
On Hope, Privilege, and Blind Spots
Hope is an ontological need and a political imperative that must survive in our writing especially when we are writing about disenfranchised communities. In this essay, I reflect upon the importance of representing and articulating hope in research and writing. How can we lay hold of hope without romanticizing or resorting to individual exceptionalism and bootstraps thinking? How might we build and construct hope in the research process? What doe…
Howdy Modi!”
This study examines the media coverage of the “Howdy Modi!” rally in Houston, Texas to understand how heavily mediatized rallies advance an ethnonationalist “American Hindutva” agenda. Content analysis followed by framing analysis was conducted on news articles published in September 2019. Content analysis revealed six topics including: spectacle, hype, and optics; Trump-Modi support; anti-Modi protests; negative coverage; anti-Islam/anti-Pakista…
Memories of Medieval Iberia in Early Modern Spain
This article proposes a new reading of four romances viejos as one of the earliest forms of neomedievalism in early modern Spain. First printed in the sixteenth century, but set between the eighth and thirteenth centuries, these romances emphasize Christian Iberia’s fragmentariness and disempowerment in relation to other medieval polities. This contrasts with other sixteenth-century neomedievalisms, from maurophile rewritings of the fifteenth-cen…
“Motherwork” and communicative labor
Introduction The feminization of hunger plays out in communities across the globe where poverty exists, including the United States, the world's wealthiest nation. The feminization of hunger and poverty can be traced to the “gender system”—deep seated gender inequities resulting in job segregation, discrimination in pay, unpaid caring work, and gender-based violence. Methods Exploratory qualitative research study with two focus groups comprising …
Communication, carcerality, and neoliberal stigma
Drawing on three strains of critical theory – Foucauldian biopolitics, critical race theory, and the work of sociologist Loic Wacquant – I argue that neoliberal stigma is foundational to the design of the food (assistance) system. Neoliberal stigma is constituted in the discursive practices of shame, suspicion, and surveillance, which are communicative and carceral technologies used to discipline poor and racialized communities in their efforts t…
Alejarse de la Edad Media ibérica y redibujarla
Este artículo traza una trayectoria personal de la investigación neomedieval para que se ilumine cómo uno/a académico/a en este campo podría teorizarlo al buscar afinidades cercanas y, por tanto, afectivas a las condiciones sociopolíticas, económicas y creativas de la producción del material que estudia. Presenta tres casos de estudio del neomedievalismo que se alejan paulatinamente de la Península Ibérica; un movimiento que también marca la carr…
Women in the Margins
Guided by the culture-centered approach to health communication (CCA), this study explores how marginalized US women understand and negotiate meanings related to hunger and health. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews with 23 women experiencing deep structural vulnerability. Findings revealed three paradoxical meanings related to hunger: (a) the "abundance versus scarcity" paradox where even though women were consistently short of food, i…
Are there limits to globalising the medieval
The aim of this article is threefold: firstly, it seeks to critique, from the perspective of Iberian and Latin American studies, the Eurocentrism inherent in the research programme known as the ‘Global Middle Ages’ that has emerged in the last two decades in Humanities faculties primarily in the USA and Europe. Secondly, it argues that the identification of global neomedievalism is particularly indicative of the Eurocentric limits of the global m…
Meanings of health and healthcare in a U.S. border region
Health disparities influence health and health-related outcomes in a multitude of ways, and can be attributed to the unequal distribution of social, political, economic, and environmental resources. This study uses the culture-centered approach (CCA) to illuminate health experiences, meanings, and negotiations of 15 individuals residing in a border region of southern California. Through a qualitative semi-structured interview process, the study i…
Eating in a Neoliberal Environment
Hunger is referred to as a “wicked problem” because it cannot be solved easily and is connected to other complex problems such as climate change, racism, and health equity. Bringing together food and environmental communication, this paper illuminates how the mundane act of eating is shaped by the hegemonic organizing logics of neoliberalism. Grounded in qualitative interviews, the analysis uncovers three common sense discourses linked to eating …
The Struggle to Be “Fully Human”
Drawing on the theory of communicative disenfranchisement (TCD) and based on qualitative interviews with 27 women living in the U.S. this study illuminates the enduring and persistent role of deep-seated "ideological formations'' (i.e. essentialized and oversimplified assumptions and worldviews) in medical interactions. Specifically, the analysis uncovers three core ideological formations that shape the communicative disenfranchisement (CD) encou…
Political science (13 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Art (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Food Security and Health in Diverse Populations (5 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Aesthetics (3 works)