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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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University of Massachusetts Amherst

2022

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Articles 31 - 60 of 131

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

What Did You Expect? An Investigation Of Lexical Preactivation In Sentence Processing, Jon Burnsky Oct 2022

What Did You Expect? An Investigation Of Lexical Preactivation In Sentence Processing, Jon Burnsky

Doctoral Dissertations

Language users predictively preactivate lexical units that appear to the comprehen- der to be likely to surface. Despite ample language experience and grammatical competence, it appears that language users tend to preactivate verbs in some contexts, called role-reversal contexts, that would create plausibility violations if they were to actually appear; these verbs assign thematic roles to their arguments in such a way that it leads to implausibility. These anomalous predictions provide a window into the mechanisms underlying lexical preactivation and are the case study that this dissertation focuses in on. This dissertation is an exploration of what linguistic information is …


Employer Power: Consequences For Wages, Inequality And Spillovers, Ihsaan Bassier Oct 2022

Employer Power: Consequences For Wages, Inequality And Spillovers, Ihsaan Bassier

Doctoral Dissertations

In several countries, wages have stagnated and union membership declined, even as productivity has increased. The established view of employers helpless to the labor market's invisible hand has increasingly come under question. Attention has turned towards the power of employers to set wages; yet only recently have the data required to investigate this – observing workers at their employers – become available, and then mostly in richer countries. My first chapter, “Monopsony in Movers” (co-authored with Arindrajit Dube and Suresh Naidu), proposes a new credible estimation strategy to measure employer monopsony power. We build on the idea that employers with …


Work, Workers, And Reproducing Social Control: Racial Post-Fordism And Alternative Systems, Hannah Rebecca Archambault Oct 2022

Work, Workers, And Reproducing Social Control: Racial Post-Fordism And Alternative Systems, Hannah Rebecca Archambault

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation interrogates the composition of workers, work, and class, as processes in contemporary capitalism and in other existing or future systems. The first section develops a theoretical framework to understand work and workers which draws on Autonomist Marxist, Black radical, and Marxist feminist literatures. This includes considering new forms and organizations of work that arise from current capitalist economic relations, racialized work, and reproductive work. With this framework I build a theory of racial post-Fordism as the current system of economic relations. In the next section, I apply this theory of racial post-Fordism to work and workers in the …


Micah Vandegrift Keynote - Open To Change: Possibilities And Probabilities, Micah Vandegrift Oct 2022

Micah Vandegrift Keynote - Open To Change: Possibilities And Probabilities, Micah Vandegrift

Open Access Week

The grand challenges of our day are being met with grand visions for the future. An opportunity sits at the intersection of climate change, open science, and community engagement. This talk speaks to what is distinctive about that opportunity in 2022, especially in light of the fresh directions in U.S. research policy, and offers a case study in what that might look like. Mr. Vandegrift speaks from experience and his recent research, and provides attendees with a foundation and a forecast.


The Global Impact Of The Antarctic Ice Sheet In A Warming World: Using Numerical Modeling And Critical Physical Geography To Assess Climate Change, Sea Level Rise, And Climate Justice Sep 2022

The Global Impact Of The Antarctic Ice Sheet In A Warming World: Using Numerical Modeling And Critical Physical Geography To Assess Climate Change, Sea Level Rise, And Climate Justice

Doctoral Dissertations

Anthropogenic climate change is causing disruptions in the Earth system with negative ramifications for life on our planet. Increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations lead to accumulated heat content and the cryosphere is one of the earliest places to show changes in response to rising temperatures. The melting of the Antarctic Ice Sheet will have myriad effects on global climate due to interconnections and feedbacks between the ice sheet, ocean, and atmosphere. In this dissertation I use numerical modeling and critical geography to assess future climate conditions that occur in response to changes in Antarctic Ice Sheet melt as well as …


Dimensions Of Social Isolation And Adverse Health Outcomes Among Older Men And Women In The United States: How Aging, Living Alone, And Obesity Contribute To Mortality, Youngjoon Bae Sep 2022

Dimensions Of Social Isolation And Adverse Health Outcomes Among Older Men And Women In The United States: How Aging, Living Alone, And Obesity Contribute To Mortality, Youngjoon Bae

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the interaction of a series of potential social and biological mechanisms that may affect inequalities in mortality among those 65 or older. The mechanisms are social isolation and its relationships with obesity and diabetes. Although many prior studies have confirmed social isolation as a risk factor for adverse health outcomes such as obesity, diabetes, and even premature death, how and why social isolation works to generate adverse health outcomes remains mostly unknown. To extend the scholarship on social isolation and health, each chapter of this dissertation tests distinctive aspects of social isolation: living alone, rurality, and retirement, …


The Survivors Of The Train: Disability, Testimonio, And Activism In Migrants With Disabilities, Claudia J. Morales Sep 2022

The Survivors Of The Train: Disability, Testimonio, And Activism In Migrants With Disabilities, Claudia J. Morales

Doctoral Dissertations

Abstract My dissertation centers the healing processes and praxes of migrants from Central America who have suffered injuries resulting in amputations on their way to the US through Mexico atop an old freight train known as "La Bestia" (The Beast). My scholar activism is based on fieldwork and research conducted with amputated migrants recovering at rehabilitation centers in central Mexico and alongside the activist group Migrant Disabilities Organization (MDO) based in California. My contributions place emphasis on converging dialogues between Afro-Indigenous conocimiento/knowledge and theory from medical and linguistic anthropology (specifically Aulino’s phenomenological approach to the praxis of care and Arnold’s …


It’S Not Black & White: Relationship Quality Within Interracial Couples, Alexandrea Craft Sep 2022

It’S Not Black & White: Relationship Quality Within Interracial Couples, Alexandrea Craft

Doctoral Dissertations

Within the United States, there has been a significant rise in multiracial families and biracial children. Approximately 17% of marriages occur between spouses of different races and/or ethnicities while 1 out of every 7 children born identify as multiracial. In light of the growing number of racially and ethnically diverse families, it is of concern that interracial couples are at heightened risk for divorce or separation compared to monoracial couples. Little research has explored why these disparities exist. Poorer relational outcomes in multiracial families may be the result of heightened conflict caused by a greater difference in partners’ values and …


In-Between Spaces: Atmospheres, Movement And New Narratives For The City, Paul Alexander Stoicheff Jun 2022

In-Between Spaces: Atmospheres, Movement And New Narratives For The City, Paul Alexander Stoicheff

Masters Theses

We often think of architecture as distinct buildings, yet as we move through the city we continuously pass through a built environment that is a collage of buildings. These spaces between buildings are underestimated as influences on our experience of everyday life in the city. Considering architecture as linked existential experiences through spaces rather than confined to individual buildings is more in line with our experience of the city as a series of interconnected spaces and places. Rather than describing a single, static architecture through words, how can we express this linked experience of spaces dynamically through narratives? Can writing …


An Economy Of Care: George Eliot's Middlemarch And Feminist Care Ethics, Madison V. Newman Jun 2022

An Economy Of Care: George Eliot's Middlemarch And Feminist Care Ethics, Madison V. Newman

Masters Theses

This thesis assesses the centrality of care relationships in George Eliot’s Middlemarch and, by doing so, seeks to provide a nuanced understanding of individual and collective morality. Using the ethics of care as a methodological framework to acknowledge the importance of care acts and successful care relations – especially those complicated by the presence of dichotomized socioeconomic hierarchies – will allow readers to engage more fully with this text, its author, her relations, her characters, and the community of readers; reading Eliot’s work from this lens will allow us to validate every interaction, every thread of connectedness, and every act …


The Effects Of Spoken Self-Disclosure Scripts On Nonaphasic Listeners' Perceptions Of People With Aphasia, Colleen B. Ward Jun 2022

The Effects Of Spoken Self-Disclosure Scripts On Nonaphasic Listeners' Perceptions Of People With Aphasia, Colleen B. Ward

Masters Theses

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of spoken self-disclosure scripts on nonaphasic listeners’ perceptions of people with aphasia (PWA). Self-disclosure is a tool that PWA can utilize in the event that they want a conversation partner to know of their communication disorder. However, limited research has been conducted on the effects of aphasia self-disclosure or whether it affects perceptions of PWA from neurotypical communication partners. If self-disclosure is determined to make a positive impact on a communicative interaction, it could be grounds for encouraging PWA who are interested to develop a self-disclosure script or use …


A Relational Investigation Of Political Polarization On Twitter, Tyler Walton Jun 2022

A Relational Investigation Of Political Polarization On Twitter, Tyler Walton

Masters Theses

Over the last several decades there has been a debate among social scientists on whether the United States has become, or is in the process of being, politically polarized. These conversations started with discussion of the “culture wars,” moved to the discussion of selective exposure and media outrage, and currently involve concerns about online radicalization and the spread of online misinformation. Throughout these themes one characteristic has remained constant: a lack of systematic evidence despite anecdotes and feelings of animosity between the two parties. Today researchers are beginning to shift from operationalizing political polarization as growing divides in attitudes towards …


Barriers To Place-Related Actions In A Post-Communist Town. A Case Study Of Targoviste, Romania, Anamaria Georgescu Jun 2022

Barriers To Place-Related Actions In A Post-Communist Town. A Case Study Of Targoviste, Romania, Anamaria Georgescu

Masters Theses

Our future is more uncertain than ever as a result of myriad environmental problems that require communal responses. In order to build resilient communities and to increase the effectiveness of planned changes to built environments, it is crucial to involve local communities throughout the decision-making processes. However, in Romania, the traditions of top-down governance from its communist period still hold sway among elected leaders - and, in some cases, its citizens. This is problematic because scholars have argued that top-down approaches to environment-related projects are more likely to fail than bottom-up initiatives that are more inclusive of community interests. This …


Exploring Urban Forestry Non-Governmental Organizations In The Temperate Forest Region Of The United States, Alexander J. Elton Jun 2022

Exploring Urban Forestry Non-Governmental Organizations In The Temperate Forest Region Of The United States, Alexander J. Elton

Masters Theses

The environmental and human health benefits of urban forests have been well documented. In the United States, volunteers conduct 5% of municipal tree care-related activities in urban forests. A literature review related to urban forestry volunteers in the United States was conducted and it was concluded that urban forestry volunteers are often organized via a committee or non-governmental organization (NGO) and that there is limited understanding around many of these entities. Following Dillman’s methods, an electronic qualitative survey with a primary objective of better understanding their characteristics was disseminated to urban forestry NGOs throughout the temperate forest region of the …


Unmasking The Racial Projects Of The Colombian Multicultural Racial State, Dario H. Vasquez Padilla Jun 2022

Unmasking The Racial Projects Of The Colombian Multicultural Racial State, Dario H. Vasquez Padilla

Doctoral Dissertations

Drawing on official reports, legislative procedures, court documents, and interviews with black leaders and scholars, this dissertation focuses on the racial discourses and institutional practices of the Colombian multicultural racial state. In a series of three papers, I empirically examine how the executive, legislative, and judicial bodies of public power interpret and regulate race, ethnicity, and racism in the country. In Chapter 2, I scrutinize the logic, discourses, practices, and silences of the Colombian state by analyzing the official reports submitted by the government to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). I forward the notion of the …


The Political Economy Of Consumer Credit Expansion And Real Exchange Rate Policy In Dual Economies, Esra Nur Ugurlu Jun 2022

The Political Economy Of Consumer Credit Expansion And Real Exchange Rate Policy In Dual Economies, Esra Nur Ugurlu

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents three essays on the political economy of consumer credit expansion and real exchange rate policy in dual economies. The first essay analyzes the structural change implications of consumer credit expansions using a dual-sector growth model. In the model, policy-induced increases in banks’ willingness and ability to lend result in new consumer lending, boosting aggregate demand and average wages in the nontradable sector. Under fixed relative wages and mark-up pricing in the tradable sector, wage pressures translate into inflationary pressures. The inflation-targeting central bank raises the policy rate to contain inflationary pressures. This intervention causes a real exchange …


Professional Learning Cultures At Work: How Principals Serve As Catalysts For Learning, Christopher J. Tranberg Jun 2022

Professional Learning Cultures At Work: How Principals Serve As Catalysts For Learning, Christopher J. Tranberg

Doctoral Dissertations

Principals are an influential factor in a child’s academic success (Manna, 2015; Louis et al., 2010; Waters et al., 2003). Although the path of influence is often indirect, principals affect student learning by developing and sustaining strong professional learning cultures (Hattie, 2009; Leithwood & Jantzi, 2012). As a result of the complexities surrounding principalship, a desire to understand the attributes, skills, and leadership actions of successful principals persists as an international focus of educational research. This study examines principalship through the experiences of various stakeholders within a school system utilizing a descriptive single case study ethnographic qualitative approach. This approach …


Making The Old City: Life Projects And State Heritage In Rhodes And Acre, Evan Taylor Jun 2022

Making The Old City: Life Projects And State Heritage In Rhodes And Acre, Evan Taylor

Doctoral Dissertations

The “old city,” a widely recognizable category of urban space, has long been a locus of development projects, state monitoring, and mass tourism, while also being home to resident communities. This dissertation explores the intersections of community life and state-driven heritage projects in the Old Town of Rhodes, in the Greek Dodecanese, and the Old City of Acre (‘Akka), a Palestinian community in northern Israel/Palestine. Both old cities are UNESCO World Heritage sites and subjects of intense state-supported tourism development. However, their resident populations and their built environments, which coalesced mainly under Crusader and Ottoman rule, challenge the authorized heritage …


Nahuatl Discourses And Political Speeches As Ways To Negotiate The Racial Monolingual Ideology Of The Mexican State In Hidalgo, Mexico, Vanessa Miranda Juárez Jun 2022

Nahuatl Discourses And Political Speeches As Ways To Negotiate The Racial Monolingual Ideology Of The Mexican State In Hidalgo, Mexico, Vanessa Miranda Juárez

Doctoral Dissertations

This research focuses on language use as a means of linguistic, cultural, and communal negotiations with political economic forces of assimilation and systematic racial discrimination. I specifically analyze how the use of Nahuatl and Spanish within a Nahua community in Mexico, San Isidro Atlapexco Hidalgo, signifies ideological and power relationships. I pay particular attention to the dynamics of interaction and communicative practices within assemblies—a key form of local governance. Here, I show that the collective force displayed in such spaces might be the engine to transgress, oppose, and challenge the highly racialized language ideology of the state that advocates Spanish …


Another Postcolonialism: Innovating Sovereignty From Below Through The Responsibility To Protect, Gabriel P. Mares Jun 2022

Another Postcolonialism: Innovating Sovereignty From Below Through The Responsibility To Protect, Gabriel P. Mares

Doctoral Dissertations

I focus on the work of civil society actors, scholars, and diplomats from the Global South, in particular the South Sudanese anthropologist and diplomat Francis Deng, and the ways in which they attempt to remake sovereignty through institutions. Using sovereignty-as-responsibility and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as problem spaces, I recover an alternate vision of sovereignty and the community of states that emerged in response to defenses of non-intervention by postcolonial state actors. Focusing on sovereignty allows these agents to simultaneously critique and innovate that which is “above” (the international state system) and that which is “below” (the sovereign state). …


Rules Of Recognition: Indigenous Encounters With Society And The State, Erica Kowsz Jun 2022

Rules Of Recognition: Indigenous Encounters With Society And The State, Erica Kowsz

Doctoral Dissertations

For Indigenous peoples, being recognized has come to mean not simply being known and acknowledged by one’s own relations but also being seen in the right way by the eye of authority. For decades, to gain access to the resources, rights, and legitimacy that state recognition confers, Indigenous political actors globally have navigated bureaucratic processes, from court proceedings to paperwork petitions. While the notion of Indigenous rights emerged at a global scale, they are specified in national jurisdictions. Indigenous people confront problems of their recognizability at all scales in their everyday lives and where they engage with state processes determining …


Quality Of Life For Women With Chronic Lyme Disease: A Socioeconomic Investigation, Dale M. Jones Jun 2022

Quality Of Life For Women With Chronic Lyme Disease: A Socioeconomic Investigation, Dale M. Jones

Doctoral Dissertations

This is a mixed methods investigation of how chronic Lyme disease, including Lyme-like diseases and co-infections, affects the quality of life of women who have chronic Lyme. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used during three phases of research: a 91-question survey instrument followed by focus group discussions and written narratives. The research considered the socioeconomic impact on quality of life in five areas: obtaining a diagnosis, relationships and personal support systems, struggles with the medical system, the ability to work, and access to treatment. There were 500 responses to the survey, of which 373 were analyzed; 11 participants in …


Class, Family Involvement, And Asian American Four And Two-Year College Students’ Experiences Of Advantage And Disadvantage, Blair Harrington Jun 2022

Class, Family Involvement, And Asian American Four And Two-Year College Students’ Experiences Of Advantage And Disadvantage, Blair Harrington

Doctoral Dissertations

While the significance of familial support in college receives substantial and growing attention, Asian American college students’ experiences of such support remain unclear. In a series of three articles that draw on a total of 140 intensive semi-structured interviews, this dissertation explores the effect class has on students’ experiences of three different types of familial support: 1) students’ receipt of parental support, 2) students’ provision of parental support, and 3) students’ receipt of sibling support. The first article The Power of Class and Not Institution Type: Asian American Four and Two-Year College Students’ Receipt of Parental Support” employs a …


Native America Speaks: Blackfeet Communication And Culture In Glacier National Park, Eean Grimshaw Jun 2022

Native America Speaks: Blackfeet Communication And Culture In Glacier National Park, Eean Grimshaw

Doctoral Dissertations

This study is a description and interpretation of a Blackfeet (Amskapi Piikuni) discourse of identity as expressed by Blackfeet presenters as part of the Native America Speaks (NAS) program in Glacier National Park, the longest-running Indigenous speaker series in the National Park Service. The study is based on what Blackfeet identify as being important parts of Blackfeet identity within this particular scene, as well as how they participate in that scene. Primary data include a corpus of 30 Blackfeet programs recorded during the summers of 2018 and 2019. Data were analyzed in response to an overarching research question which guides …


Beyond Revolutionaries, Victims, And Heroic Mothers. Reproductive Politics In War And Peace In Colombia, Vanesa Giraldo Gartner Jun 2022

Beyond Revolutionaries, Victims, And Heroic Mothers. Reproductive Politics In War And Peace In Colombia, Vanesa Giraldo Gartner

Doctoral Dissertations

During the 2016 peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), reproductive policies in this guerrilla group became a site of contestation in producing new discourses about peace, gender, and nation. This dissertation addresses this controversy and explores the implications of reproductive politics in war and peace among ex-combatant women. The data for this project was collected through archival research and a multi-sited ethnography in Caquetá-Colombia. It discusses the role of contraception in the transformation of the FARC from a grassroots guerrilla movement to a revolutionary army and analyzes the multiple discourses produced about …


Residents' Perspectives Of Young, Street-Facing Trees: Three Cases From Legacy Cities With Active Tree Planting Initiatives, Alicia Coleman Jun 2022

Residents' Perspectives Of Young, Street-Facing Trees: Three Cases From Legacy Cities With Active Tree Planting Initiatives, Alicia Coleman

Doctoral Dissertations

Organized tree planting initiatives are underway in cities across the world in order to expand tree canopy cover, combat environmental threats, and create more livable places for urban residents. Trees along and near city streets provide a number of services for residents; however, evidence from environmental design and landscape preference research suggests that the perceptual effect of large-statured, mature trees may differ from small-statured, young trees. This dissertation explored these differences in three studies based in communities with active tree planting initiatives. Chapter 2 compares tree preferences from a hypothetical tree planting initiative to preferences for trees in other settings …


Three Essays On Social Justice Issues: Health, Gender, And Policing, Travis B. Campbell Jun 2022

Three Essays On Social Justice Issues: Health, Gender, And Policing, Travis B. Campbell

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation empirically examines three pressing social justice issues in the United States. In the first chapter, titled "Black Lives Matter's Effect on Police Lethal Use-of-force," I explore the influence of Black Lives Matter protests on police lethal use-of-force. A difference-in-differences design finds census places with protests experienced a 15% to 20% decrease in police homicides from 2014 through 2019, around 300 fewer deaths. This decrease was prominent when protests were large or frequent. Potential mechanisms behind the reduction include police agencies obtaining body-worn cameras to curtail force and depolicing following a so-called `Ferguson Effect.' Fewer property crimes, but more …


Three Essays On Public Policy And Welfare In Developing Countries, Alvaro Jeronimo Callejas Jun 2022

Three Essays On Public Policy And Welfare In Developing Countries, Alvaro Jeronimo Callejas

Doctoral Dissertations

Developing countries typically implement public policies that modify the market structure to reach a specific goal. However, in this attempt to achieve a policy objective, policymakers may not consider unintended consequences caused by firms' and consumers' optimizing behavior. Moreover, the reaction of market agents to the implemented policy may undermind its effectiveness or lead to an outcome opposite to the one persuaded. This dissertation uses a set of structural models to assess the welfare effect of both intended and unintended consequences of public policies introduced in developing countries. In the first chapter, we evaluate the welfare implications of a public …


Organizational Variation In Federal Agencies’ Gender Pay Gaps, Karen M. Brummond Jun 2022

Organizational Variation In Federal Agencies’ Gender Pay Gaps, Karen M. Brummond

Doctoral Dissertations

Although previous research has identified differences in the gender pay gap by employment sector, existing research on the causes of employer variation in the gender pay gap, particularly in the U.S. Federal Government, is limited (Smith-Doerr et al. 2019; U.S. Government Accountability Office 2020). This dissertation fills that gap by exploring organizational characteristics contributing to varying inequality regimes (Acker 2006) and subsequent pay equity variation. Using a linked employer-employee administrative dataset covering over 2 million federal employees, I measured governmentwide and agency-level gender pay gaps and explored organizational characteristics that explain agency-level differences. I found a governmentwide gross gender pay …


Three Essays On Growth And Distribution In Dual Economies, Adam Aboobaker Jun 2022

Three Essays On Growth And Distribution In Dual Economies, Adam Aboobaker

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is composed of three essays on growth and distribution in dual economies. The first of the essays explores short run implications of the relationship between hierarchical consumption preferences, redistribution, and structural change for the robustness of conclusions from neo-Kaleckian models. Integrating class-based heterogeneity to consumption patterns, inspired by notions of a hierarchy of wants, into a dual-sector model of a semi-industrialized economy generates qualitatively distinct results from those that typically follow from contemporary Kaleckian models, even when retaining the core features of the latter class of models. The results depend on the shock to income distribution emphasized and …