Browsing by Subject "Social science"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Assimilating Hawai‘i:racial science in a colonial “Laboratory,” 1919-1939
    (2012-07) Manganaro, Christine Leah
    This dissertation demonstrates how American physical anthropologists and sociologists working in Hawai‘i framed the biological and cultural assimilation of mixed race people and Asian migrants into Americanness as natural rather than ideological, thus naturalizing the islands' incorporation into the United States as a story about integration rather than colonization. Scientists argued that mixing in this "racial laboratory" improved the quality of the majority non-white population, that migration and colonization were features of a natural historical trajectory of Americanization, and that race relations in the islands were the product of a human ecology that went hand in hand with capitalist development. All of these ideas became the racial common sense that traveled to the continental U.S. and perpetuated American amnesia about empire. This project revisits the historiography of the supposed retreat of scientific racism and, by closely examining the methods, actual data, and conclusions of scientists whose work shaped their disciplines, demonstrates how racialist thinking persisted in work that has been characterized as either questioning the race concept, as politically progressive, or both. Taking cues from studies of settler colonialism in Hawai‘i and recent debate about the actuality of a retreat of scientific racism in the United States, this dissertation demonstrates how treating assimilation as a natural process that needed to be better understood, rather than a discursive project of colonial governance, legitimated American power in the islands. During a period when scientists and politicians alike were interested in fitness, degeneracy, and the consequences of immigration and miscegenation as part of debates about national progress, scientists viewed Hawai‘i as a laboratory where they could conduct research on heredity and cultural change that was difficult or impossible to do in the continental United States. American social scientists working in Hawai‘i framed the processes they studied, particularly the assimilation of mixed race people and Asian migrants into American culture and identity, as natural rather than ideological. American scientists with sometimes opposing political orientations such as Louis R. Sullivan and L.C. Dunn concluded that, unlike mixed race people generally and especially "mulattoes," Chinese-Hawaiian "hybrids" were actually improvements on their supposedly pure parents (chapter 1). Physical anthropologist Harry Shapiro, in his study of racial plasticity among migrants in a changed environment, developed few concrete findings, but helped establish Hawai‘i as a long-term human research site. Sociologist Romanzo Adams, who was trained at the University of Chicago, produced the history of Hawai‘i as a history of admixture that exaggerated the degree of interracial reproduction and suggested that the territorial population was well on its way to complete biological amalgamation (chapter 3). Through a series of interviews with couples in interracial marriages and the collection of student papers about identity and racial prejudice, many of which contradicted Adams' findings and predictions, graduate researcher Margaret M. Lam recorded the testimony of residents who both resisted certain types of racialization as they also participated in the construction and maintenance of racial boundaries and meanings (chapter 4). Finally, sociologist Andrew Lind, framed social inequality and tense race relations in the territory as a product of competition for jobs and housing, a "natural" feature of "human ecology," rather than a product of intentional labor control and government decisions (chapter 5). This advanced the idea that social conditions in Hawai‘i were a natural product of modernization rather colonization.
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    An interpreting animal: hermeneutics and politics in the human sciences.
    (2010-09) Gimbel, Edward William
    Beginning with a historical study of the human sciences' position between the natural sciences and the humanities, this dissertation examines the consequences of the fixation on questions of method that has characterized this positioning. Drawing on the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, I illustrate how it is that methodological concerns can serve to obscure other, more fundamental concerns. Gadamer uses Aristotle's ethics to make this point about method, and I take the further step of bringing this intersection of Aristotelian ethics and Gadamerian hermeneutics to bear productively on the human sciences. The result of this work is an approach to the human sciences characterized less by attention to methods and more by appreciation of ends. I argue that in the development of what I call "political teleology" the human sciences exploit their particular strengths, and find their political import.
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    Predicting Local and State-Level Water Risk Perceptions in Minnesota
    (2020-01) Peplinski, Jaren
    Risk perception research in the field of natural resources science and management has come a long way since the publication of “Perception of Risk” by Paul Slovic in 1987, and some scientists have started attempting to predict risk perceptions. At the time of this writing, 40 percent of assessed waters in Minnesota are reported as impaired. However, resident water risk perceptions are not aligned with technical risk assessments conducted by water experts. To better understand the mechanisms that drive heightened or lowered water risk perceptions, a mail survey was distributed to Minnesota residents across the state. The questionnaire asked residents about their values, perceived community capacity to manage water problems, and perceived awareness of water quality issues in their local area to develop a model predicting perceptions of water risk at two levels: local and statewide. In the survey, an adaptation of the values constructs created by Steg et al. (2014) was employed, and several new value constructs were created for this survey. The multivariate regression model developed was moderately effective, explaining about a third of the variance in water risk perceptions for both local and statewide levels. Consistent with previous research in Minnesota, this study has found gaps between technical assessments of risks to water in Minnesota and public perceptions of this risk. The exploratory nature of this risk perception research suggests that future investigation into the predictors of water risk perceptions should examine the reliability of the measures used in this study.