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Pliny's Defense Of Empire, Thomas Raymond Laehn

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Despite perennial interest in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History as a record of the prodigious, the quotidian, and the useful in Rome in the first century AD, for over half of a millennium Pliny has been considered little more than an inept compiler of facts and marvels intellectually incapable of formulating a cogent argument supported through the selective marshalling of his materials. It is my contention that Pliny’s encyclopedic text is in fact a first-rate work of political philosophy constituting an apology for Roman imperial expansion grounded in a sophisticated conception of man as the only being capable of passing …

Capitalism Reassessed, Frederic L. Pryor

Economics Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Transnational Gaze: Viewing Mexican Identity In Contemporary Corridos And Narcocorridos, Charlene Ladawn Montano

Honors Papers

Through the lenses of technology and gender I offer a new perspective on the employment and utilization of corrido tropes throughout history and in modern culture. Technology has expanded the transnational gaze, not only increasing the sheer number of listeners but also incorporating a visual element to the (narco)corridos. The enlarged and geographically diversified community of listeners coupled with visual elements only strengthens the tropes evident since the earliest corridos.

Gender is markedly absent in the literature that discusses corridos, but its presence in the tradition has a strong influence on the Mexican mask. The ways in which gender is …

The End Of Farming In The “Northern Periphery” Of The Southwest, James R. Allison

Faculty Publications

Prehispanic farmers belonging to the Virgin and Fremont traditions once occupied most of Utah and adjacent parts of Arizona and Nevada. Through much of the twentieth century, these areas were called the "Northern Periphery'' of the Southwest, but in recent decades, both Fremont and Virgin have often been left out of syntheses of southwestern archaeology-even though they clearly had strong connections to the Southwest and represented, respectively, the northernmost and westernmost extensions of maize-based horticulture in western North America. This exclusion results from a combination of factors, the most important of which are geography and the territorial behavior of some …

Implementing The Good Friday Agreement: Overcoming Challenges And Obstacles, Joseph Michael Debraggio

Honors Theses

On April 10, 1998, history was made in Northern Ireland. Years of sectarian violence would end as the Belfast Agreement, known more popularly (and perhaps more fittingly due to the religious identities defining the two sides) as the Good Friday Agreement, was signed bringing peace to Northern Ireland (Northern Ireland Office, 2007). This paper will look at the Good Friday Agreement in detail. By analyzing the historical factors leading up to 1998, the Agreement itself, and the post-Agreement implementation stage,it is possible to pick out the relative successes and failures of the Agreement, and of its implementation.

Short Term Strategies For Long Term Power: The Rise And Potential Fall Of Hugo Chávez, Linden E.S. Schult

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explores the route to power of Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez and the methods by which he has remained in power throughout his presidency. Also, it explores the potential for Chávez to lose power, given the current economic and political situation in Venezuela. The importance of the oil industry, Chávez's suppression of the opposition and control of the media, and constitutional changes and reforms are all discussed as keys to Chávez's continuance in power.

Economy Of Pakistan: Challenges And Prospects, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Newspaper and Magazine Articles

Economy practically affects every single walk of life. This lecture provides an overview of the structure of Pakistan's economy since 1947, identifies key challenges such as low savings, trade imbalance, fiscal deficit, weak social indicators, and energy and water shortages, and offers prospects and solutions for improvement.

Corporate Power In The Public Eye: Reassessing The Implications Of Berle’S Public Consensus Theory, Marc T. Moore, Antoine Rebérioux

Seattle University Law Review

We analyze Berle’s overall corporate governance project in accordance with what we see as its four core sub-themes: (A) the limitations of external market forces as a constraint on managerial decision-making power; (B) the desirability of internal (corporate) over external (market) actors in allocating corporate capital; (C) civil society and the public consensus as a continuous informal check on managerial decision-making power; and (D) shareholder democracy (as opposed to shareholder primacy or shareholder wealth maximization) as a socially instrumental institution. We seek to debunk the popular misconception that Berle’s early work was a defense of the orthodox shareholder primacy paradigm …

Five Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know, Ann K. Vaught

Honors Theses

Operating under the assumption that the average college student knows little to nothing about the Supreme Court and significant cases in the field of American constitutional law, the author hypothesizes that this ignorance is due not to an inability to understand the material, but an unwillingness on the part of the average student to expend the effort necessary to decipher the "legalese" of an average Supreme Court opinion. The author also hypothesizes that it is the high and lofty language of the opinions that generally disenchants the reader, and not the information itself. Therefore, as a means of testing this …

Yitzhak Rabin And The Price Of Peace, Steven Alan Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

A society that wishes to remain free and self-governing must learn to recognize that endemic political violence, including the symbolic violence of character assassination, is an invitation to either tyranny from without or conquest from without. As Edmund Burke put it: ‘Men of intemperate minds cannot be free; their passions forge their fetters.” As a general rule, we might conclude that a fixation on the purity of political outcomes at the expense of the integrity of the political process leads people away from politics to the realm of ideology, from civility to fanaticism. This is the way nations and civilizations …

E Pluribus Unum? (Geopolitica), Steven Alan Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Angelo M. Codevilla: A Student’S Guide To International Relations Study Guide, Steven Alan Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Sticks And Stones: Fracture Analysis Of The University Of Iowa-Stanford Collection, Diane Eddie

Honors Program Theses

Bones are an integral part to the human body. They support the entire system, help produce blood, and serve as places for muscles to attach. The condition of bones can say something about the conditions a person lived in. When and how bones warp and fail can also reflect upon the living conditions of a person. Fractures in bones prior to death can show the types of stressors the person had to put up with in life or if there was a particular type of stressor for a certain population. The number of individuals in the University of Iowa-Stanford Collection …

Hidden In Plain Sight: An Examination Of Entertainment-Education, Kendra M. Mcclure

Masters Theses

Entertainment-Education is the process of weaving social messages into programming intended to entertain. The term was coined several decades ago, and the strategy has been widely used in mediated programs in the United States and abroad, particularly in developing countries. This thesis critiques the practice from a critical/culture perspective and particularly highlights issues that stem from political economy of media, agency, and critical pedagogy. To accomplish this, the volume is broken down into four sections: a survey of E-E and an explanation of its theoretical framework, an examination of Get Schooled, an initiative that fits the profile of an E-E …

Understanding Terrorism: Religious & Political Dimensions, Christopher Cusano

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Terrorism in the twenty-first century has had one of greatest effects on the status quo of international relations, peace and war. It has become the 'specter' of our era and in many instances, it has been referred to as the predominant threat of modern civilization. Furthermore, it has the potential to drastically change the world we live in. For these reasons it has rightfully earned our attention and focus. Many efforts to understand terrorism have fallen short of recognizing the underlying causes. In many cases, acts of terror have either been of purely political motivation or have had socioeconomic conditions …

Empirical Evaluation Of The Effectiveness Of Eye Tracking-Based Search Performance Diagnosis And Feedback Methods, Meredith Carroll

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In today's complex combat environments, troops are often faced with increasingly challenging tasks different from those experienced in the past. Warfighters must be trained in adaptive perceptual skill sets, such as search strategies that enable them to detect threats across any number of environmental, cultural, and situational conditions. The goal of the present study was to explore how advanced technology, specifically eye tracking, can be used to increase understanding of perceptual processes such as search and detection and provide tools that can be used to train search skills. Experiment 1 examined a method of diagnosing perceptual performance in order to …

Domestication Alone Does Not Lead To Inequality: Intergenerational Wealth Transmission Among Horticulturalists, Michael Gurven, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Paul L. Hooper, Hillard Kaplan, Robert Quinlan, Rebecca Sear, Eric Schniter, Christopher Von Rueden, Samuel Bowles, Tom Hertz, Adrian Bell

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

We present empirical measures of wealth inequality and its intergenerational transmission among four horticulturalist populations. Wealth is construed broadly as embodied somatic and neural capital, including body size, fertility and cultural knowledge, material capital such as land and household wealth, and relational capital in the form of coalitional support and field labor. Wealth inequality is moderate for most forms of wealth, and intergenerational wealth transmission is low for material resources and moderate for embodied and relational wealth. Our analysis suggests that domestication alone does not transform social structure; rather, the presence of scarce, defensible resources may be required before inequality …

Mestizaje: Piro Indian And Spanish Vecino In Socorro, Texas From 1744 To 1813, David Camarena

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This research examined culture on what is now the U.S./Mexico border, among Piro Indians and Spanish citizens (vecinos) in the community of Socorro, Texas between 1744 and 1813. The purpose was to better understand the process of mestizaje as experienced by Piro Indians as they participate in larger hegemonic Spanish civil and ecclesiastical institutions. Using archival materials along with secondary sources, this thesis reconstructs the antecedents that ultimately led the primary Indian community to transform into a Hispano settlement along the banks of the Río Grande. Pressured by vecino encroachment, participation in the Spanish wage-labor system, several environmental catastrophes in …

Prejudice With A Conscience: How A Strong Moral Identity Relates To Greater Prejudice, Moira P. Shaw

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The present research investigated the effects of moral licensing on prejudice for participants with a strong moral identity. It predicted that, because people with a stronger moral identity are especially motivated to be moral, they would be strongly affected by moral licensing effects on prejudice. Three experiments tested this prediction by measuring moral identity, experimentally manipulating and measuring three sources of moral license (moral affirmation, moral superiority, and moral threat), and measuring inter-group prejudice. The results demonstrated that with moral affirmation and moral superiority, a strong moral identity relates to greater prejudice (Experiment 1), moral superiority moderates the relation between …

Fight Or Flight? Defending Against Sequential Attacks In The Game Of Siege, Cary Deck, Roman M. Sheremeta

ESI Working Papers

This paper examines theory and behavior in a two-player game of siege, sequential attack and defense. The attacker’s objective is to successfully win at least one battle while the defender’s objective is to win every battle. Theoretically, the defender either folds immediately or, if his valuation is sufficiently high and the number of battles is sufficiently small, then he has a constant incentive to fight in each battle. Attackers respond to defense with diminishing assaults over time. Consistent with theoretical predictions, our experimental results indicate that the probability of successful defense increases in the defenders valuation and it decreases in …

The Attack And Defense Of Weakest-Link Networks, Dan Kovenock, Brian Roberson, Roman M. Sheremeta

ESI Working Papers

This paper experimentally examines behavior in a two-player game of attack and defense of a weakest-link network of targets, in which the attacker‟s objective is to successfully attack at least one target and the defender‟s objective is diametrically opposed. We apply two benchmark contest success functions (CSFs): the auction CSF and the lottery CSF. Consistent with the theoretical prediction, under the auction CSF, attackers utilize a stochastic “guerilla warfare” strategy — in which a single random target is attacked — more than 80% of the time. Under the lottery CSF, attackers utilize the stochastic guerilla warfare strategy almost 45% of …

The Impact Of Cartel Related Violence On Ongoing Traumatic Stress And Self-Medication In Young Adults Living Along The U.S./México Border, Thom J. Taylor

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Ongoing Potentially Traumatic Stress (OPTS) as a result of violence and insecurity along the U.S./México border remains understudied. Many residents of the border may be both indirectly and directly exposed to potentially traumatic events on an ongoing basis, particularly in the city of Cd. Juárez, México. The present study examined the impact of the violence and insecurity on daily traumatic stress levels and the potential for self-medication via alcohol, cigarettes, and illicit drugs within Spanish speaking young adult residents and commuters to Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua, México. Participants (N = 121) completed multiple online reports of location in and travel to …

Breaking The Silence: A Health Narratives Approach To Understanding Tuberculosis In El Paso, Texas, Angelica Forero-Quintana

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Tuberculosis is a chronic illness affecting people in El Paso, Texas. TB continues to be a disease of great concern along the US-México border. The TB rates in El Paso for 2008 and 2009 were 5.4 and 8.9 per 100,000 and 13.5 and 13.3 per 100,000 in Ciudad Juárez. The number of new TB cases in 2008 and 2009 for El Paso were 40 and 67 cases and in Ciudad Juárez, they were 311 and 306 cases (Moya, 2010). This study relied on interviews with fifteen people undergoing treatment for TB (and three of their children) using a health narratives …

El Paso, Texas, And Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, 1880-1930: A Material Culture Study Of Borderlands Interdependency, Gladys Arlene Hodges

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Material culture theory informs this study of urban history and borderlands interdependency at El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, from 1880-1930. Features incised into and structures built onto the natural environment by the first arriving colonists after the mid-seventeenth century endured for more than two centuries. Over that period, the humanly-created material environment, a social product, fed back into the development of social forms--institutions, rituals, practices, modes of interaction, activities, and beliefs. A significant number of these social forms endured into the late nineteenth century and beyond, even after mechanization and industrialization arrived in the region known …

The Literary Fictioning Of John Gregory Bourke's Imperial Nostalgia, Toni K. Mcnair

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Nineteenth-century Army Captain and American ethnographer John Gregory Bourke (b. 1846 - d. 1896) meticulously described and documented a vast amount of information on military life, geography, ecology, and people on both sides of the Mexican-American border, offering observations and opinions of American, Mexican, Mexican-American, Apache, Pueblo, Zuni and Plains Indian cultures. Because of his ethnographic studies of Mexican-Americans along the Rio Grande, cultural studies scholars, José E. Limón and José David Saldí­var have identified John Gregory Bourke as complicit in the U.S. government's imperialist project. Referring to Renato Rosaldo's anthropological theory of imperialist nostalgia, These authors declare Bourke's work …

Security By Contractor: Outsourcing In Peace And Stability Operations, Volker Franke

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

"Surely It Deserves A Name:" Homosexual Discourse Among Ellis, Carpenter, And Symonds, Jonathan E. Coleman

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

This thesis argues that British scholars Havelock Ellis, John Addington Symonds, and Edward Carpenter viewed themselves as somewhat rebellious, attempting to reconstruct norms of sexuality, particularly those concerning homosexuality. To do so, they invoked the well‐established constructions of class, gender, and sex. Nevertheless, in spite of their attempts problematize these constructions, they simultaneously worked within and reinforced them. Ellis, Carpenter and Symonds desired to change widelyheld perceptions of homosexuality and while doing so, alter notions of class, gender, and sex. These scholars asserted that homosexual relationships could exist across the divides of the class‐system, helping to engender a greater cross‐class …

Integrating Situation Awareness Assessment Into Test And Evaluation, Cheryl A. Bolstad, Haydee Maria Cuevas

Publications

To guarantee the success if network- centric operations, warfighters need the ability to extract and share critical task-relevant information to develop and maintain the situation awareness that is so critical far effective team performance. As such, the design of emerging technologies and systems must adopt a "user-centric" approach, with consideration for human information processing capabilities and limitations. In turn, to ensure that these technologies and systems are meeting their design objectives, test and evaluation must similarly be expanded to include metrics that assess how well system features and functions are supporting critical human cognitive processes such as situation awareness and …

Commencing The Rationale For War: George W. Bush’S Address At West Point, June 1, 2002, Steven R. Goldzwig

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Caretakers Of The Garden Of Delight And Discontent: Adirondack Narrative, Conflict, And Environmental Virtue, Eric Richard Holmlund

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation concerns a widely recognized natural area, New York's Adirondack Park, that serves both as an international model for conservation and as a context for persistent conflict over natural resources, space, wealth and esthetics. It employs narrative inquiry as a method to examine the sources and the function of narratives or stories explaining the history and the present status of social groups in the Park. Narrative theorists maintain that we borrow from such socially circulating narratives to craft our own identities, and then repeat them until we believe them, almost without regard for the factual basis in history or …