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Uneasy Alliances: Belief And Action On A Geropsychiatric Team, Elizabeth Blesedell Crepeau

Doctoral Dissertations

This ethnographic study explores the influence of two competing ideologies, the medical model and the empowerment model, on the actions of staff on an acute geropsychiatric unit. The medical model emphasizes the professional power of the physician and other health care workers. In contrast the empowerment model emphasizes the autonomy of patients and their role in directing their care. Since these beliefs are contradictory, staff may feel conflict no matter how they act. The tacit nature of these beliefs mask the source of this tension. The mission of the unit is to enhance the independence of people over 60 with …

A Sociological Study Of The Manifestation Of Multi-Culturalism In Public Schools, Christy Lee Hammer

Doctoral Dissertations

Debates on multi-culturalism are prevalent in politics, the mass media, and the educational system. I identify the range of local and national views concerning multi-culturalism and multi-cultural education, and explore how these views are manifest in actual multi-cultural practices in the schools. My central thesis is that the implementation of multi-culturalism in the schools threatens core, traditional values functional to the power structure. Yet, effective, quality multi-cultural education does takes place. This reveals a contradiction between the needs of the Nation-State to maintain certain core values and the need for multi-culturalism by international capitalism.

I have explored multi-cultural issues in …

The Contemporary Work Ethic: An Exploration Of Culture And Structure In Post-Industrial Society, Marcia J. Ghipina

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation the relationship between structure and culture is explored in the context of the American work ethic. This analysis has two components. The first involves a socio-historical examination of the evolution of conceptions of work. Work is first viewed as lacking any positive qualities but with the emergence of the Protestant ethic and its later secularized versions, work took on positive meaning. These conceptions are analyzed in relation to their structural context, particularly early capitalist industrial society.

To further explore the relationship between culture and structure, a second component is included in this research. In order to characterize …

Work And Power In Post-Fordist Production: A Case Study Of Four Machine Shops, Stephen A. Sweet

Doctoral Dissertations

American industry is shifting to a "post-Fordist" approach to production. The post-Fordist approach includes expanding use of advanced manufacturing technologies, decreasing organizational sizes, decreasing bureaucratization of the work place, and the abandonment of Tayloristic managerial practices in favor of increasing worker participation in decision making processes. This study examines the effects of the post-Fordist approach upon power relations in four work places in the machining industry.

Interviews with 44 machinists, employers and community leaders in the case study site "Machinist Valley" show that the shift to post-Fordism is accompanied by declining incomes, fewer employment opportunities, lower benefits, and less job …

Punitiveness And Public Opinion On Abortion And Capital Punishment In The United States, Kimberly Joyce Cook

Doctoral Dissertations

The intriguing paradox of opposition to abortion and support for capital punishment is the central concern of this dissertation. Others have argued that these are inconsistent life views. However, there is some evidence that these views are rooted in traditional morality and political conservatism. Beyond traditionalism, is the desire to punish those who violate the social order. Punitive respondents desire to secure obedience to the law or moral code by means of punishment. Criminal abortion laws allow the authority of the state to punish those who have or perform abortions. Capital punishment is one means of punishing those who are …

Dancing On Razor Wire: Caring To Write And Writing To Care In A Women's Prison, Kathe Penfield Simons

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative study investigates the writing of women in prison as a tool to care for themselves and others. The inmates participated in a student-centered, socially contextualized, process writing class whereby they could write for their own purposes, and share and publish their writing. The study presents case studies of two women who were also involved in a peer-tutoring program (one serving as the tutor for the other) and who used their literacies extensively on their own time outside of the classroom.

Many of our nation's inmates are considered illiterate by standardized, school-based measures. Some participate in correctional education programs …

Final Vows: Organizational Dilemmas And Emergent Status-Reconstruction Of The Contemporary American Nun, Mary Anne Wichroski

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the effects of societal, institutional, and structural change on the status of Roman Catholic nuns. Based on interviews with 34 members of female religious orders, archival materials, Church documents, and participant observation, two case study orders (apostolic and cloistered) are compared in terms of structural change since Vatican II and their relative viability in the 1990s. As members of declining organizations, apostolic sisters are reconstructing their roles by drawing upon sources that pre-date formal hierarchical structures, as well as aspects of gender-status. Although active sisters show some congruence with feminist beliefs on work-related issues, other aspects of …

Islands Of Deutschtum: German Americans In Manchester, New Hampshire And Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1870-1942, Robert Paul Mccaffery

Doctoral Dissertations

The history of the German-American communities of Manchester, New Hampshire and Lawrence, Massachusetts raises several important issues about German immigration to the United States. Comprising only a small percentage of the population of the two cities German immigrants founded a distinctive culture--islands of Deutschtum--as vibrant as those in the "German belt" of the Midwest. The historiography has generally concluded that German-Americans could not unite in common cause, and that World War I ended German culture in America. However, not only did Germans in Manchester and Lawrence unite, but they maintained Deutschtum through World War I into World War II.

Several …

The Creation Of The New Hampshire State Prison For Women: Some Unintended Consequences Of Legal Reform, Elaine Rizzo

Doctoral Dissertations

In 1989, New Hampshire established its first women's prison in response to a lawsuit filed by inmates charging the state with sex discrimination in its treatment of women prisoners. This litigation reflects a growing use of legal reform based on equal protection rights by female inmates to express and remediate correctional needs.

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the conditions that led to the creation of the women's prison, and the unintended consequences that have resulted from legal reform on the correctional treatment and court processing of female offenders.

This research uses qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative analysis …

Children Experiencing Unemployment Stress: A Comparison Of Families With Stable And Unstable Employment Histories, Barbara Alice Wauchope

Doctoral Dissertations

This study investigates children's experiences of changes that occur in families when fathers lose their jobs, the children's interpretations and responses to those changes, and their resulting symptoms of stress. In the first part, school-aged children and their parents in fourteen two-parent families in northern New England were interviewed and completed instruments measuring the children's behavior and symptoms of stress. In the second part, adults from seventy-six additional families completed a self-administered questionnaire. In both parts, children in families were divided into two groups and compared: middle-class with older parents in which fathers had little or no history of losing …