Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Organic Farming And Rural Transformations In The European Union: A Political Economy Approach, Charalampos Konstantinidis

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the impact of organic farming for achieving the environmental and social objectives of sustainability in Europe over the past 20 years. Organic farming is considered the poster child of rural development in Europe, often seen as a model of the integration of small-scale production with environmental considerations. Since this model runs counter to the logic of developing capitalist structures in agriculture, I revisit the Marxian predictions regarding the "agrarian question". Furthermore, I trace the discursive changes in support of small-scale production in the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and assess whether small farms have improved their situation …

Rebranding Diversity: Colorblind Racism Inside The U.S. Advertising Industry, Christopher Boulton

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation examines race inequality inside the United States advertising industry. Based on qualitative fieldwork conducted at three large agencies in New York City during the summer of 2010 (including ethnographic observations, affinity-based focus groups, in-depth interviews, and open-ended surveys), I argue that the industry's good faith effort to diversify through internship-based affirmative action programs is overwhelmed by the more widespread material practices of closed network hiring--a system that advantages affluent Whites through referral hires, subjective notions of "chemistry" or "fit," and outright nepotism through "must-hires." Furthermore, the discriminatory nature of White affirmative action is hidden from view, masked by …

Organizing Markets: The Structuring Of Neoliberalism In The U.S. Airline Industry, Dustin Robert Avent-Holt

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation examines the emergence of neoliberalism through an historical analysis of the evolution of the U.S airline industry. In 1938 the basic economic activities of U.S. airlines were placed under the regulatory oversight and control of the Civil Aeronautics Board. This institution of "regulated competition" persisted largely unquestioned until the economic crisis of the 1970s. Out of this crisis the Airline Deregulation Act was passed in 1978, eliminating most of these economic controls. Based on analysis of Congressional hearings, a key industry trade press (Air Transport World), the general business press, and financial and labor market data on the …

The Sources Of Financial Profit: A Theoretical And Empirical Investigation Of The Transformation Of Banking In The Us, Iren G. Levina

Open Access Dissertations

The last thirty years in the US have been characterized by rising financial profits as a share of total profits and the growth of banking activities yielding non-interest income. These developments pose two questions. First, what are the social relations enabling and sustaining financial profits and what are their macroeconomic sources? Second, what do these trends imply for the nature of banking and what kind of theory of banking can capture them? This study addresses these questions and makes four contributions. First, a Marxist theory of banking is developed to capture the transformation of banking drawing on two characteristics: first, …

Roots Of Modality, Aynat Rubinstein

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation explores the interplay of grammar and context in the interpretation of modal words like ought, necessary, and need. The empirical foci of the discussion are patterns in the use of strong and weak necessity modals in conversation, and the interpretation of syntactically and semantically versatile modals like need in the various grammatical configurations they appear in across languages.

It is argued that a sensitivity to collective commitments in a conversation is necessary for understanding certain aspects of modal strength, in particular the traditional distinction between strong and weak necessity modals (exhibited by must and ought …

The Relationship Between Mass Incarceration And Crime In The Neoliberal Period In The United States, Geert Leo Dhondt

Open Access Dissertations

The United States prison population has grown seven-fold over the past 35 years. This dissertation looks at the impact this growth in incarceration has on crime rates and seeks to understand why this drastic change in public policy happened.

Simultaneity between prison populations and crime rates makes it difficult to isolate the causal effect of changes in prison populations on crime. This dissertation uses marijuana and cocaine mandatory minimum sentencing to break that simultaneity. Using panel data for 50 states over 40 years, this dissertation finds that the marginal addition of a prisoner results in a higher, not lower, crime …

Verbalizing In The Second Language Classroom: The Development Of The Grammatical Concept Of Aspect, Prospero N. Garcia

Open Access Dissertations

Framed within a Sociocultural Theory of Mind (SCT) in the field of Second Language Acquisition (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), this dissertation explores the role of verbalizing in the internalization of grammatical categories through the use of Concept-based Instruction (henceforth CBI) in the second language (L2) classroom.

Using Vygotsky's (1986) distinction between scientific and spontaneous or everyday concepts applied to L2 development (Negueruela, 2008), this study focuses on the teaching and potential development of the grammatical concept of aspect in the Spanish L2 classroom, and the role of verbalizing in its internalization. It is proposed that verbalizing mediates between the learners' …

Sac Attack: Assessing The Role Of Recollection In The Mirror Effect, Angela M. Pazzaglia

Open Access Dissertations

Low-frequency (LF) words have higher hit rates (HRs) and lower false alarm rates (FARs) than high-frequency (HF) words in recognition memory, a phenomenon termed the mirror effect by Glanzer and Adams (1985). The primary mechanism for producing the mirror effect varies substantially across models of recognition memory, with some models localizing the effects during encoding and others during retrieval. The current experiments contrast two retrieval-stage models, the Source of Activation Confusion (SAC; Reder, Nhouyvanisvong, Schunn, Ayers, Angstadt, & Hiraki, 2000) model and the unequal variance signal detection theory (UVSDT) criterion shift model (e.g., DeCarlo, 2002). The SAC model proposes that …

Money, Reality, And Value: Non-Commodity Money In Marxian Political Economy, Joseph Thomas Rebello

Open Access Dissertations

My dissertation offers an advancement of the Marxian theory of money, motivated by a methodological critique of monetary theory in general. As such, my dissertation is located within the philosophy and methodology of economics and the history of monetary thought, in addition to Marxian political economy. This intermingling of fields reflects both my research interests and my argument with respect to the current state of scholarship on Marx and money. Despite increasing acceptance of the compatibility of non-commodity money and Marxian political economy, a dualist social ontology has stunted attempts to theorize the relationship between money, value, and class. I …

Stress In Harmonic Serialism, Kathryn Ringler Pruitt

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation proposes a model of word stress in a derivational version of Optimality Theory (OT) called Harmonic Serialism (HS; Prince and Smolensky 1993/2004, McCarthy 2000, 2006, 2010a). In this model, the metrical structure of a word is derived through a series of optimizations in which the 'best' metrical foot is chosen according to a ranking of violable constraints. Like OT, HS models cross-linguistic typology under the assumption that every constraint ranking should correspond to an attested language.

Chapter 2 provides an argument for modeling stress typology in HS by showing that the serial model correctly rules out stress patterns …

Essays On Urban Sprawl, Race, And Ethnicity, Jared M. Ragusett

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the economic consequences of urban sprawl for US minorities. Each essay focuses on a key empirical debate related to that relationship. The first essay establishes a set of attributes and empirical measures of sprawl based upon a comprehensive review of the literature. I define sprawl as a multi-faceted pattern of three land-use attributes: low density, deconcentration, and decentralization. I then resolve several methodological inconsistencies in the measurement of sprawl. Extensive analysis of spatial and economic data finds that metropolitan areas do not commonly exhibit high-sprawl (or low-sprawl) features across multiple measures. Instead, they often exhibit unique combinations …

Farm-To-Fork: Understanding Locally-Oriented Farm-To-Vendor Food Systems: Access, Boundaries, And Power-Relations, Shawn Alan Trivette

Open Access Dissertations

Locally oriented food has recently gained considerable popularity as an alternative to the industrial food system. Current scholarship on local food has typically focused on direct-to-consumer (DTC) arrangements, such as farmers' markets or CSAs. Yet other players besides producers and consumers engage with locally-oriented food. Food vendors (restaurants, retailers and grocers, and value-added food processors) have recently entered the scene and locally-oriented farm-to-vendor arrangements constitute one of the cutting edges of the development of local food systems. This dissertation studies one such local food system in southern New England. Utilizing a mixed methods approach entailing social network analysis, in-depth interviews, …

Biocultural Perspectives On Gender, Transitions, Stress, And Immune Function, Leo Zachary Dubois

Open Access Dissertations

Health disparities, including higher rates of mental or physical illness, are found among members of minority or marginalized groups including people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. However, there is a paucity of research incorporating both experiential components and measures of physical health, particularly among trans men during their transition from female to male. Trans men transition through the use of testosterone therapy (T) and surgical procedures in order to align their internal male gender identities with their physical presentation. This study combines the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data in order to understand trans men's experience of …

Fair Trade, Agrarian Cooperatives, And Rural Livelihoods In Peru, Noah Enelow

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes the fair trade (FLO) certification system for agricultural commodities in the context of the global coffee crisis and its deleterious effects on rural livelihoods, focusing on the northern Peruvian Amazon. I begin the dissertation in my introduction by outlining my theoretical framework, which analyzes markets as bundles of institutions. The dissertation proceeds to analyze the key institutions of the fair trade coffee chain: certifications, commodity trade, cooperatives, and smallholder farming communities. In my second chapter, I explain the history of the FLO certification system, examine the dynamics of certifications in general, and point out the incentive problems …

The Role Of Contextual Restriction In Reference-Tracking, Andrew Robert Mckenzie

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation explores the semantics and syntax of switch-reference (SR). It makes novel generalizations about the phenomenon based on two empirical sources: A broad, cross-linguistic survey of descriptive reports, and semantic fieldwork that narrowly targets the Kiowa language of Oklahoma. It shows that previous attempts at formalizing switch-reference cannot work, and offers a new theory of switch-reference that derives the facts through effects that emerge from the interaction between the syntax and the semantics.

The empirical investigation results in four major findings: First, SR is introduced by its own head, instead of being parasitic to T or C. Second, switch-reference …

Newlywed Couples' Marital Satisfaction And Patterns Of Cortisol Reactivity And Recovery As A Response To Differential Marital Power, Mattitiyahu Scott Zimbler

Open Access Dissertations

This study investigated the extent to which gender moderates, and perceptions of fairness mediate, the link between marital power and overall marital satisfaction, as well as cortisol stress trajectories in response to marital distress. Study 1 examined a sample of 213 opposite sex newlywed couples from western Massachusetts, and focused on marital satisfaction as the dependent variable. Findings from the structural equation analysis suggested that perceptions of relationship fairness concerning the division of labor completely mediated the association between marital power and marital satisfaction for wives, but not for husbands. These results also implied an association between wives' perceptions of …

Three Essays On Oil Scarcity, Global Warming And Energy Prices, Matthew Riddle

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation is composed of three essays. In the first essay, I construct a supply and demand model for crude oil markets. I then fit the model to historical price and quantity data to be able to project future oil prices. Ex-post forecasts using this model predict historical price trends more accurately than most oil forecasting models. The second essay incorporates the supply and demand model from the previous paper into a complex systems model that also includes oil futures markets. Adaptive-agent investors in futures markets choose from a set of rules for predicting future prices that includes the rational …

The Devil's In The Details: Abstract Vs. Concrete Construals Of Multiculturalism Have Differential Effects On Attitudes And Behavioral Intentions Toward Ethnic Minority Groups, Kumar Yogeeswaran

Open Access Dissertations

The current research integrates social cognitive theories of psychological construals and information processing with theories of social identity to identify the conditions under which multiculturalism helps versus hinders positive intergroup relations. Three experiments investigated how abstract vs. concrete construals of multiculturalism impact majority group members' attitudes and behavioral intentions toward ethnic minorities in the US. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that construing multiculturalism in abstract terms by highlighting its broad goals reduced majority group members' prejudice toward ethnic minorities by decreasing the extent to which diversity is seen as threatening the national group. However, construing multiculturalism in concrete terms by …

Goals, Big And Small, Martin Walkow

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation explores the interaction of syntax and morphology in the morpholog- ical realization of AGREE-relations. I present two case studies of derivational interactions of AGREE-processes where the morphological realization of the later processes are affected by the earlier ones. The two cases studied differ in the way probes and goals interact. The first part of the dissertation explores restrictions on clitic combinations where two goals vie for the features of one probe. The second part discusses the reverse situation, where two probes are agreeing with the same goal.

The first configuration arises in restrictions on clitic combinations where v …

Sleep Disturbances In Alzheimer's Disease And Caregiver Mood: A Diary Study, Anna Maria Katarina Akerstedt

Open Access Dissertations

Sleep disturbances are common in persons with Alzheimer's disease (AD) (Hart et al., 2003) and pose a great strain on their family caregivers (Hope, Keene, Gedling, Fairburn, & Jacoby, 1998) including their emotional functioning (Schulz & Martire, 2004). The current study is the first to examine the impact of daily sleep and mood in persons with AD on their caregiver's sleep and emotional functioning. The study examined sleep and mood across eight days in 40 family caregivers of persons with AD. It was hypothesized that poor sleep in the person with AD person would have a negative impact on caregiver …

Syntax-Prosody Interactions In Irish, Emily Elfner

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation is an empirical and theoretical study of sentence-level prosody in Conamara (Connemara) Irish. It addresses the architecture of the syntax-phonology interface and the relation between syntactic constituent structure and prosodic structure formation. It argues for a fully interactional view of the interface, in which the phonological form may be influenced by a number of competing factors, including constraints governing syntax-prosody correspondence, linearization, and prosodic well-formedness. The specific proposal is set within the framework of Match Theory (Selkirk 2009, 2011), an indirect-reference theory of the syntax-prosody interface in which correspondence between syntactic and prosodic constituents is governed by a …

A Minskian Approach To Financial Crises With A Behavioural Twist: A Reappraisal Of The 2000-2001 Financial Crisis In Turkey, Mathieu Perron-Dufour

Open Access Dissertations

The phenomenal financial expansion of the last decades has been characterised by an exacerbation of systemic instability and an increase in the frequency of financial crises, culminating in the recent meltdown in the US financial sector. The literature on financial crises has developed concomitantly, but despite a large number of papers written on this subject, economists are still struggling to understand the underlying determinants of these phenomena. In this dissertation, I argue that one of the reasons for this apparent failure is the way agents, as well as the environment in which they evolve, are modelled in this literature. After …

Knowledge, Gender, And Production Relations In India's Informal Economy, Amit Basole

Open Access Dissertations

In this study I explore two understudied aspects of India's informal economy, viz. the institutions that sustain informal knowledge, and gender disparities among self-employed workers using a combination of primary survey and interview methods as well as econometric estimation. The data used in the study come from the Indian National Sample Survey (NSS) as well as from fieldwork conducted in the city of Banaras (Varanasi) in North India.

The vast majority of the Indian work-force is "uneducated" from a conventional point of view. Even when they have received some schooling, formal education rarely prepares individuals for employment. Rather, various forms …

Agriculture And Class: Contradictions Of Midwestern Family Farms Across The Twentieth Century, Elizabeth Ann Ramey

Open Access Dissertations

In this dissertation I develop a Marxian class analysis of corn-producing family farms in the Midwestern United States during the early twentieth century. I theorize the family farm as a complex hybrid of mostly feudal and ancient class structures that has survived through a contradictory combination of strategies that includes the feudal exploitation of farm family members, the cannibalization of neighboring ancient farmers in a vicious hunt for superprofits, and the intervention of state welfare programs. The class-based definition of the family farm yields unique insights into three broad aspects of U.S. agricultural history. First, my analysis highlights the crucial, …

Citizenship In Times Of Exception: The Turn To Security And The Politics Of Human Rights In Valle Del Cauca, Colombia, Erika Marquez Montano

Open Access Dissertations

Since at least the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, security has emerged as a major political paradigm built upon an expansive definition of state control emphasizing not only the mere policing of violations of law, but the means through which the state asserts itself as a particular political entity through the militarized management of social actors both inside and outside its borders. Through an analysis of the case of Colombia's Democratic Security policy, this dissertation documents the transformations of social mobilization within the boundaries of the newly politicized, and newly globalized, security state.

The research builds upon six months …

Remaking The Political In Fortress Europe: Political Practice And Cultural Citizenship In Italian Social Centers, Angelina Ione Zontine

Open Access Dissertations

At the current moment, with voter turnout low and mass popular uprisings re-fashioning the political map, questions of political participation and dissent are extremely pressing. In established democracies and newly democratized states alike, an active and potentially dissenting citizenry is often seen as the necessary balance to overreaching state power and unregulated market forces, but scholars struggle to keep abreast of a proliferation of new foci and forms of engagement. This dissertation focuses on the form of collective political engagement enacted at centri sociali occupati autogestiti (occupied, self-managed social centers) or CSOA in Bologna, Italy. As they enact political alternatives …