Browsing by Subject "Representation"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    Accessioning visions of the people.
    (2009-12) Goette, Susan Ann
    Visions of the People was a complex and influential exhibit focusing on American Indians peoples. This study examines the role of museums as cultural interpreters, explores the social nature of objects as markers of cultural ideas and values, analyzes the ways in which particular representations achieve their authority, assesses object selection processes with attention to patterns of inclusion as well as exclusion, and investigates the cultural narratives employed by museum workers as they conceptualized and created the exhibit. This work explores the understanding, meaning, and representation of American Indian art, history, and culture that was fashioned by the museum (MIA). The import of this case study rests on the assertion that images are powerful. Museums display objects and images in an attempt to convey particular ideas and interpretations to an audience. This study has the potential to serve as a primer for those interested in museums as historically situated institutions that possess the cultural authority to reproduce and interpret the stories we tell about ourselves to ourselves, as well as the stories we tell about others (C.Geertz). Each section of this study addresses a different topic, and brings together the perspectives of those people most concerned with or most impacted by each topic. Contributors to each section include: scholars, museum professionals, artists, and members of the audience. Each of these roles included both American Indian and non-Indian contributors.
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    The Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Coalitional Representation of Latinxs in the U.S. House of Representatives
    (2019-08) Munoz, Avram
    Scholars have established that having descriptive, surrogate representation for minority racial groups in Congress translates to effective substantive representation of those groups through certain legislative behaviors. For Latinxs, though, the relationship between racial identity and political representation is more complex. Latinidad--or Latinx identity--encompasses people of many national origins, genders, and experiences who have a variety of political interests and preferences. How, then, is it possible for Latinx representatives to accurately and adequately represent this multitude of interests when there is seemingly no unfying experience with which to draw Latinxs together? In this dissertation, I argue that the answer comes in the form of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and its efforts to engage in what I call coalitional representation. Unlike theories of descriptive and surrogate representation, which focus on the efficacy of individual legislators and their relationships with racial minority groups, coalitional representation foregrounds the relationship between groups of legislators such as the CHC and their target constituency. Using a mixed methods approach, I explore the relationship between the Latinx community and the CHC as its coalitional representative in the House of Representatives. Using an interpretive approach that draws on the CHC's archival documents and elite interviews with CHC members and staffers, I trace the history of the CHC and how the group has adapted to the shifting political context as it attempts to represent the Latinx community. I also show that the CHC pushes an inclusive notion of Latinidad that takes into account the intersectionality of Latinx identity, resulting in CHC behaviors that are more inclusive and provide representation for a greater number of Latinxs. I then quantitatively assess the CHC's efficacy as a coalitional representative. While the group does not seem effective based on traditional measures of legislative effectiveness such as passing legislation, the CHC is still an effective coalitional representative by engaging in other behaviors that help boost the voices of the Latinx community throughout American political institutions. The effectiveness of the CHC at representing the Latinx community by boosting its voice in Congress as well as other political institutions is of enormous importance at a time that Latinxs are facing increasing discrimination in the U.S. Through its practice of coalitional representation the CHC pushes American political institutions toward being both more representative and democratic, especially as the group continues to grow both in size and political power in the House of Representatives.
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    Dilemmas of political representation: antipoverty advocacy in the Post-Civil Rights Era
    (2014-04) Forrest, Michael David
    Dilemmas of Political Representation examines how urban antipoverty organizations in particular and advocacy organizations in general work as alternative sites of representation for marginalized interests. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, it raises and addresses two interrelated sets of questions about these organizations' efforts, both of which also index broader concerns about the practice of democratic representation. The first set of questions is about how advocates use their representational efforts to articulate and disseminate different constructions of their constituents' interests: What are the different types of constructions that they use? How do they actually fashion these constructions? And how, in the process, do they construct themselves as legitimate representatives of the resulting interests? The second set of questions is about the challenges that advocates face as they represent and construct their constituents' interests: What are the sources and contours of these challenges? How do advocates negotiate them? And how, in the process, do their efforts aid and/or limit the struggle for equality in the post-civil rights United States? The dissertation traces how and with what consequences advocates organize their efforts and respond to their challenges through organizing meetings, internal communications, and public actions. In doing so, it advances theoretical discussions about the promise and dilemmas of democratic representation and advocacy on behalf of the urban poor and other marginalized groups.
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    Generalizations in Practice: Investigating Generality and Specificity in Developmental Biology
    (2023) Yoshida, Yoshinari
    Although there is a consensus that pursuits of general knowledge are crucial in almost all fields of science, the majority of philosophical analyses of generalizations have focused narrowly on universal generalizations or laws of nature and what role generalizations play in scientific explanations. This narrow focus has limited the scope of philosophical discussions about scientific generalizations. This dissertation proposes and exemplifies a broader inquiry into scientific generalizations that is motivated by the question: how do scientists pursue, formulate, reason about, utilize, and communicate generalizations? In other words, how are generalizations practiced in science? To address this broad set of questions, I focus on a particular field—developmental biology—and examine investigative and representational practices surrounding generalizations. Like many other fields, developmental biology seeks both widely shared regularities and the details of causal processes peculiar to specific systems. My analyses show how this dual interest in generality and specific details is interconnected and mutually contribute to each other. This dissertation is organized as follows. Chapter 1 provides a brief overview of how philosophers have discussed generalizations. I point out that the interests in laws and explanation have dominated the past discussions. In contrast, my approach focuses on investigative and representational practices of generalization, which have received very little philosophical attention. Chapter 2 analyzes two approaches to generalizations in developmental biology: mechanisms and principles. These are distinguished based on the relevance of abstraction. I show that the two approaches are associated with different investigative practices. This analysis illustrates what forms of non-universal generalizations developmental biologists seek and formulate, which serves as a basis for discussions in the following chapters. Chapter 3 explores generalizations from the perspective of modeling desiderata. I offer a characterization of what I call multiple-models juxtaposition (MMJ), a strategy for managing a trade-off between generality and detail in scientific models. MMJ displays models of distinct processes together and fulfills different desiderata both in the individual models and by a comparison of those models. I also clarify the distinction between MMJ and multiple-models idealization (MMI), which also uses multiple models to manage trade-offs among desiderata. Chapter 4 focuses on the use of model systems. Biologists often study particular biological systems as models of a phenomenon of interest, even if they know that the phenomenon is produced by diverse mechanisms and hence none of those systems alone can sufficiently represent it. I argue that even if generalizability of results from a single model system is significantly limited, generalizations concerning specific aspects of mechanisms often hold across certain ranges of biological systems. This enables multiple model systems to jointly represent such a phenomenon. Chapter 5 considers the question “how and why do scientists generalize?” by challenging three influential assumptions: (1) generalizations are expressed linguistically; (2) scientists generalize by formulating a single representation with wide applicability; and (3) generalizations are valuable because they enable scientific explanations. My analysis of a concrete example illustrates roles that visual representations play in generalizations. It also shows that formulating a single, unified representation is not the only way to generalize; scientists often generalize by configuring multiple representations. Finally, I argue that generalizations serve to facilitate cross-fertilization among studies of different target systems, which complements the explanation-centered view.
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    Implementing Intersectionality: Creating Women’s Interests in the Rulemaking Process
    (2016-07) English, Ashley
    Although political scientists have traditionally examined women’s representation by asking whether and how female legislators support or oppose particular policies related to women’s traditional areas of interest, I provide a new, broader understanding of how American women are represented at the rulemaking stage of the policymaking process. Building on the assumption that it is virtually impossible for any one representative to speak on behalf of the diverse group of women who all have their own unique perspectives and experiences as a result of their multiple, intersecting identities, I instead examine how women’s interests are constructed from the ground up as women and their advocates interact during the rulemaking process. More specifically, I ask: (1) how and when do women and their advocates refer to women in their comments?; (2) how do those references to women vary depending on the levels of attention a rule receives and the type of policy it implements?; and (3) how do women’s organizations’ references to women and their interests differ from the references to women that other rulemaking participants use? To answer these questions, I use automated text analysis and qualitative coding to analyze three unique datasets of 8,698 comments that women and their advocates submitted to rulemakers. These comments include all of the comments that women’s organizations submitted between 2007 and 2013; and the comments that women’s organizations, individual women, other organizations, and form letter campaigns submitted during rulemakings on the contraception mandate a proposal collect data on the gender wage gap among federal contractors. In general, women and their advocates most often used their comments to speak on behalf of all women, obscuring the differences between them and leaving out the concerns of intersectionally marginalized women, including women of color, poor women, and LGBTQ women. Rulemakings that receive higher levels of attention and moral controversy exacerbated this tendency. Conversely, low attention rulemakings provided women and their advocates with a unique opportunity to focus on the concerns of particular subsets of women because they received less scrutiny from the public, Congress, and the courts. Finally, women’s organizations served as compensatory representatives for women during the rulemaking process because they made more references to women and subgroups of women than the other interested citizens and organizations that submitted comments.
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    Korean American Creations and Discontents: Korean American Cultural Productions, Los Angeles, and Post-1992
    (2020-12) Chang, Michelle
    Korean American Creations and Discontents looks at Korean American subjectivity in Los Angeles after the 1992 Riots/Uprisings. This project begins with the LAPD beating of Rodney King and ends with the fatal Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd. This dissertation is necessarily rooted in 1992 and 2020. Using Korean American cultural producers, this project examines the figure of the Korean American entrepreneur and Korean American subjectivity within the boundaries of model minority narratives, neoliberalism, multiculturalism, and post-racial rhetoric. Situated in Los Angeles, this project is grounded in the Riots/Uprisings as an event that shaped, transformed, and reified new cultural, racial, economic, and gendered assumptions of multiple categories, identities, and bodies. While some events leading up to the Riots/Uprisings are covered, this project looks more specifically at media representation and the consequences of a media-constructed Black-Korean conflict. Moreover, while this project shifts away from the Riots/Uprisings, it remains rooted in them as a spectral haunting, influencing racial dynamics in the contemporary moment, as well as Korean American cultural productions. I look at how 1992 was a pivotal moment that influenced and continues to inform how Korean American cultural producers view themselves and their work, whether consciously or unconsciously. Moreover, my own perspective as a 2nd generation Korean American instrumentally informs my work, appearing most explicitly in personal anecdotes and vignettes, inserted throughout the dissertation. Chapter one takes a broader look at the shifting Asian American figure, looking at how Asian American representation has shifted between yellow peril and model minority narratives, given the historical moment and events that are unfolding. Taking a contemporary look at the increase of Asian American representation in popular culture, I situate this idea of representation as a paradox. Chapter two then looks at the history of Korean immigrants/Americans in Los Angeles, and how generalized tropes of Asian Americans impacted Korean American figures. The second part of this dissertation takes a look at 1.5 or 2nd generation Korean American cultural producers, Justin Chon and his 2017 film Gook, Roy Choi, the creator of the Kogi Truck and the Korean BBQ taco, and Dumbfoundead, a Koreatown-based rapper and media creator. Chapter three looks at Justin Chon and Gook, alongside the 1992 Riots/Uprisings, news media representations, and the media-constructed Black-Korean conflict. Chapter four and five examine Roy Choi’s Korean BBQ taco and the Kogi truck and Dumbfoundead, respectiviely, within the context of rising multiculturalism, neoliberalism, and post-racial rhetoric.
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    Testing group-level differences in political decision-making.
    (2009-11) Griffin, Dana Raye Buckley
    A sizeable body of work in political science implies that elected officials differ from citizens in how they think, reason, and react to politics. Some suggest that indirect democracy provides an efficient and adequate representation of the public's interests, while others advocate a more deliberative democracy with direct public involvement in governance and decision-making. Amidst the clamor of this debate, these competing viewpoints have overlooked a simple but fundamental question: how different are elected officials from everyday citizens, really? Via an information board experiment of ninety elected officials and one hundred seventy-nine everyday citizens in two states, I examined how individuals use information to make political choices. In the study, participants were asked to solve two hypothetical public policy problems. I equalized the amount and content of information available to them, and tracked how individuals used information before selecting one of three policy options to solve the policy problems. I found that while elected officials differ from everyday citizens on several demographic factors (on average, elected officials tend to be significantly more educated, more knowledgeable about politics, more politically involved, and wealthier than everyday citizens), these groups do not differ significantly in how they use information to make political choices. By way of the volume of information sought, their tendency to compare alternatives, and decision-making speed, elected officials and everyday citizens in the study were far more similar than different. These findings held across both decision-making problems and under a variety of experimental contexts. The findings of this study suggest that the potential benefits and potential limitations of direct democracy are far less clear than previous research suggests.
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    Trickster skins: narratives of landscape, representation, and the Miami Nation.
    (2011-07) Shoemaker, Scott Michael
    This dissertation, Trickster Skins: Narratives of Landscape, Representation, and the Miami Nation, reinterprets sites of Miami history through the lenses of narrative and landscape. It combines Miami and Western forms of knowledge to reinterpret the complex relationships of landscape and representation within the Miami struggle against colonization and the narratives that have arisen from this struggle. It tells several stories of a small tribe that remained east of the Mississippi River after the era of Indian removal who have been neglected by the Federal Government and often misunderstood by academia and the general public. The Miami Nation of Indians of Indiana (MNI) has about 5,500 enrolled citizens. Remaining in their homeland after removal of nearly half of the Miami Nation in 1846, the Miami of Indiana struggled to retain their reserve lands and identity in the face of Federal, State, and local governmental efforts to systematically dissolve their land base and their inherent and reserved rights. These efforts hinged upon representations of the Miami people and landscape that worked to ignore and erase their continued presence in Indiana through various cultural and legal narratives ultimately denying their identity as American Indians and their recognition as a sovereign nation. Despite these efforts, this dissertation demonstrates the creative and continued resistance of the Miami in various ways. Drawing upon a myriad of sources, this dissertation focuses upon Miami narratives, pictorial and textual representations, efforts to retain their land base, public performance, museum collections and display, and legal battles. This focus examines how the relationships of the Miami people to land takes many forms and are integral to discussions of tribal sovereignty. The findings in this investigation provide alternative interpretations of these sites of Miami history and are informed by Miami narrative traditions.