Browsing by Subject "United States"
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Item American Institutions For The Feeble-Minded, 1876-1916(2019-05) Jirik, KatrinaBetween 1876 and 1916, American institutions for the feeble-minded became an established part of the landscape and reflected important educational, social, medical, and scientific shifts during that period. This dissertation traces attitudes toward those deemed feeble-minded and the institutions that housed them by investigating the voices of people, organizations, and state governments that have not been well explored previously and identifying the particular influences that shaped them. The Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions of Idiotic and Feeble-minded Persons (AMO) formed in 1876 as the professional organization for institution superintendents and expanded its membership over the years to encompass other professionals with an interest in feeble-mindedness. It strove to become the repository of all things related to feeble-mindedness with its members seen as the recognized experts in the field. From small private establishments before the Civil War, these institutions expanded rapidly in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Not only did the number of institutions increase, but the number of residents in the institutions and thus the size of the institutions to house them also grew significantly. While the establishment of pre-Civil War institutions had relied on philanthropic efforts and the advocacy of superintendents, the post-Civil War institutions were usually state funded and relied on the advocacy and social capital of prominent societal leaders. Between 1890 and 1900, the well-established institutions consolidated both the authority of those providing care and the functions of the institutions; in the process they moved from small residential schools to large, congregate, and increasingly, custodial institutions. The beginning of the twentieth century, from 1900 to 1916, brought new issues to the forefront. Compulsory school attendance laws, new understandings of heredity, and eugenics all pushed administrators and sponsors to reconsider the previous conceptions of care for the feeble-minded. Throughout these decades, superintendents, parents, educators, legislators and even members of the general public became engaged in the definition, growth, and influence of these institutions. It was not a static process; all these entities worked in concert with, and, sometimes, in opposition to, with each other.Item Apparent Attenuation Beneath the United States and its Correlation to Lithospheric Provinces(2016-09) Kowalke, SaraWe map apparent attenuation beneath the continental United States through time-domain waveform analysis of 19 deep-focus teleseismic events recorded by the USArray Transportable Array. Results show good correlation with lithospheric boundaries. Low t* is common across the cratonic continent and high t* regions dominate in the western U.S. and east of the Appalachian front. Some geographic variations are not consistent with expectations, such as relatively low t* in the North Basin and Range. Comparisons with additional techniques, including heat flow, tomography, and seismicity, indicate regional influence of non-thermal attenuation factors. Different lithospheric provinces have distinct attenuation signatures that assist in understanding the behavior of the lithospheric continent.Item Border Barometer(Border Policy Research Institute, 2021) McKinley Research Group; Border Policy Research Institute, Western Washington University; Geoffrey Hale, University of Lethbridge; University of Minnesota Duluth. Bureau of Business and Economic Research; Cross-Border Institute, University of Windsor; Kathryn Friedman, SUNY Buffalo; Jeffrey Ayres, Saint Michael's College; Stefano Tijerina, University of MaineItem Braving the Storm: Hurricanes and Human Migration(2024) Opatz, AidenThis study investigates the impact of hurricanes on human migration within the United States, leveraging year-to-year IRS data to address changes and FEMA disaster declarations. The research aims to determine whether natural disaster risks and personal experiences with such events influence migration decisions. Using a regression model similar to Mullins and Bharadwa (2021), the study measures the average impact of hurricanes on origin counties. Key variables include FEMA assistance data, county adjacency to affected areas, and various socio-economic and natural amenity factors. The findings reveal complex migration patterns, with notable influences from natural amenities, urbanization, and previous hurricane impacts. Contrary to expectations, hurricanes appear to decrease outmigration, suggesting nuanced responses to disaster risk. This work contributes to understanding how climate-related risks shape population dynamics and can inform policy on housing, infrastructure, and disaster preparedness.Item Cities of (In)Difference: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Place and Wellbeing In Later Life(2018-06) Finlay, JessicaWhere one lives constitutes an important determinant of health and quality of later life. Yet few studies to date focus explicitly on the everyday experiences, contexts, and needs of individuals to age well within their physical and social environments. While aging in place represents a widespread goal of individuals, service providers, and policymakers, it remains an ambiguous, problematic, and uncritical concept. This can have devastating consequences as it is frequently applied with little consideration of the places themselves. This study investigated aging in a harsh continental climate with a strong focus on underrepresented low-income and racially diverse older adults. Three case study areas across the Minneapolis (Minnesota, USA) metropolitan area purposefully contrasted socio-demographic and geographic characteristics. Seated and mobile interviews were conducted with independent-dwelling men and women (n=125, mean age 71 years) from May to October, 2015. A geospatial audit evaluated participants’ homes at the dwelling, street, and neighborhood level. Ethnography with six participants over twelve months (September, 2015 – August, 2016) and semi-structured interviews with ten local policymakers and community service providers (May – October, 2016) deepened understanding. The findings depict how built, social, and natural environments contribute to aging in very particular ways. Older bodies literally express structured advantages and disadvantages of their surrounding contexts. Aging in place efforts can exacerbate the deeply uneven conditions of American cities and the vulnerabilities of those aging ‘in the margins’. Theoretical analyses unpack and unsettle discourses about aging in order to address problematic assumptions, blind spots, and unchallenged and unconsidered modes of thought upon which geography rests. The chapters engage political, economic, feminist, critical race, disability, health, and urban theories to enrich not only geographic scholarship, but also the lives of older adults. The dissertation destabilizes the foundations of age-friendly governance and generates novel possibilities for more just and inclusive modes of urban form. It creates more room for alternative ways of ‘being in the world’ based upon a richer understanding of people, place, and space across the life course.Item Dialectics of the U.S. Constitution(MEP Publications, 2000) Franklin, Mitchell, 1902-1986Mitchell Franklin (1902-1986) is described by the Buffalo Law Review as the foremost Marxist legal philosopher in the English-speaking world. In these selected writings, Franklin, a professor of law at Tulane University for 37 years, discusses how the development of natural law from an idealist to a materialist concept in the transition from feudalism to capitalism is reflected in the drafting of the U.S. Constitution and its interpretation today. --Publisher's summary.Item The dynamic relationship between firm capabilities, regulatory policy, and environmental performance: renewable energy policy and investment in the U.S. electric utility sector.(2009-09) Fremeth, Adam RyanThe choice by a firm to improve its environmental performance is a result of both characteristics that distinguish firms from one another and the public policy that compels such action. This dissertation examines how policy outcomes and subsequent firm responses are contingent upon the capabilities of the firms to respond to such policy. I present a theory of compliance specificity that ties firms and regulators together based on the heterogeneity of capabilities that firms hold with regards to a pending public policy of variable stringency. I test this theory within the context of the regulation and investment of renewable power in the U.S. electric utility sector and the growth of a utility scale renewable energy industry. I have identified that firms are able to shape the stringency of an environmental policy in the electric utility sector as the heterogeneity among firms can impact the potential costs that a regulator would face in the case that a policy is set that would leave firms out-of-compliance. Further, the choices that firms make with regards to their use of renewable power is conditioned on the contingent relationships of the capabilities that they possess and these same policies that they have influence over. My theoretical approach and empirical analyses provides a more sophisticated depiction of the interrelationships between firms and regulators within this industry context.Item An entirely new interest has been taken by the school:" meanings, logistics, values, and evaluation in the American high school extracurriculum, 1905-1935(2014-06) Opsal, Christen LynnThis study uses educational writings from 1905-1935 (including sources discovered and analyzed using new digital technologies, such as HathiTrust digitization and full-text search) to describe the evolution of the terminology used to label the American high school extracurriculum during the early 20th century and the logistical arrangements under which it was carried out, elucidate the existence of the extracurricular values claimed by educators at the time, add contextual detail about the meaning and intentions behind those values, describe attempts to limit students' participation in these activities, and discuss contemporary concerns about the extent to which the desired values of extracurricular participation had been or could be attained.Item Essays in Food Security in Latin America and the United States(2018-11) Bohorquez-Penuela, CamiloThis dissertation comprises three essays related with the problem of food insecurity (i.e., lack of access to enough and varied food required by households for their daily activities) in middle and high-income countries. The first chapter, "Subsidized Health Care and Food Insecurity: Evidence from Colombia", suggests that participation in a public-funded health care insurance for the poor is associated with a reduction on the probability of being food insecure. This result principally holds for rural households. The second chapter, "The Effects of Rising Staple Prices on Food Insecurity: The Case of Tortilla in Mexico" provides evidence on how increases in the price of tortilla, the most important staple in the country, is related with higher household food insecurity rates in Mexican states. Moreover, these price surges are more relevant when they take place in grocery stores---that sell low-quality tortillas---rather than locally-owned, small-scale tortillerias, specialized in selling freshly-made tortillas. The third chapter, "Food Price Fluctuations and Household Food Insecurity in the United States, 2005-2010" studies the association between food prices and household food insecurity in this country, showing that the price of grain and dairy-based products has the greatest association with higher food insecurity rates among American households during the Great Recession.Item Exploring the Ecology of Evaluation Contract Work in the United States: Implications for Industry(2023-04) Verhoye, AlexandraWhile evaluators have provided goods and services to U.S. states and the federal government for decades, little is known about how the market’s demand-driven nature impacts evaluation practice. This study explored the likelihood evaluation firms and universities acquired newly funded evaluation-specific contracts from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) each fiscal year (FY) between FY 2008-2022, some of the factors that influenced the likelihood a firm or university acquired new HHS evaluation contracts, external research and evaluation providers’ perceptions of the federal evaluation contracts landscape, and the ways external research and evaluation providers positioned themselves within the federal evaluation market to compete for resources. Contracts data from USAspending.gov and semi-structured interviews with 11 practicing evaluators and researchers were used to explicate the demand-driven nature of external evaluation contract work in the U.S. Contracts data focused on the composition of evaluators (i.e., organizational size, type, niche) and length of time in the HHS arena between FY 2008-2022. Interview data focused on practicing evaluators’ perceptions of external environmental factors in the market—including changes in presidential administrations, the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, and George Floyd’s murder—in relation to their practice. Study results suggest that not small firms are more likely than small firms or universities to acquire new HHS contracts. Interviewee perceptions did not necessarily align with the literature; a few evaluators, all specializing in disability and special education-related work, described how changes in presidential administrations did not have a major impact on the number or types of federal contracts made available over the years. Discussions on the increase in work related to economic, health, and racial disparities; experiences with demand-side barriers to embedding diversity, equity, and inclusion in research and evaluation; their organization’s niche, size, and type; and the need to build internal organizational capacity were all framed in the context of needing to be responsive to funder (i.e., state and federal government) demands. Overall, this research provides a glimpse into the marketplace conditions and structures for contractual evaluative work in the United States and the implications such structure poses for the evaluation industry.Item The impact of charity and tax law/regulation on not-for-profit news organizations(The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford and the Information Society Project, Yale Law School, 2016) Picard, Robert; Belair-Gagnon, Valerie; Ranchordás, SofiaItem Learning from landowners: exploring peer exchange in the private landowner community through organizational case studies.(2010-12) Kueper, Amanda MaryOver half of the forested land in the United States is privately owned. As a majority of this private land is divided into individual or family-owned properties, the decisions made by these owners can have substantial implications for U.S. forests. However, traditional professional outreach efforts have been unsuccessful in reaching the majority of „family forest‟ owners, resulting in a lack of accessible management-related information for this community. This study examined peer-to-peer learning, or peer exchange, as an alternative means of diffusing information throughout the private landowner community, a burgeoning but as yet underrepresented area of research in the natural resource literature base. Case study methodology was used to examine landowner/community organizations in order to better understand a) how and to what degree peer exchange was fostered within each organization, b) how these organizations influenced landowners and contributed to information dissemination within the landowner community, and c) how the examples provided by these organizational models may be translated to inform future peer exchange and information outreach efforts in the family forest landowner community, specifically. Qualitative data were collected from five diverse landowner organizations in the United States and Australia via 61 in-depth interviews with organizational leaders and landowning members, as well as from supplementary observation of group functions. Results from analysis revealed a variety of strong common themes across cases. The organizations utilized peer exchange and social incentives in concert with professional resources to foster credible, appealing atmospheres and comfortable learning environments. Participants gained access to networks of both practical, peer-based information as well as technical, professional-based information. Additionally, organizations increased participant awareness of landowning issues and provided assistance in refinement and accomplishment of management goals. The results of this research can inform future efforts in fostering peer exchange and information dissemination in the private landowner community, with specific considerations for practitioners seeking alternative information channels for reaching the masses of family forest owners in the United States.Item Managing risk, managing race: racialized actuarial science in the United States, 1881-1948(2013-05) Wiggins, Benjamin AlanThis dissertation investigates how insurers and the United States government relied on the supposed neutrality of actuarial science to justify their racially discriminatory policies. It argues that the use of race as a variable in the statistical assessment of risk transformed the nature of racism and, in turn, ushered racial disparities in health, wealth, and incarceration from the nineteenth century into the twentieth. Specifically, it investigates the explicit use of race in the actuarial formulas of insurers such as Prudential, in prison management and parole-hearing risk assessments, and in the underwriting manual used for the mortgage insurance decisions of the Federal Housing Administration. It finds that already by the dawn of the twentieth century, leading actuaries and statisticians knew that the social and environmental conditions concomitant with slavery, genocide, and indentured servitude distributed risk inequitably among races. However, capital was ambivalent about the wrongs of the past and the state viewed itself as responsible more for the welfare of capital than for the welfare of its citizens of color when it entered the insurance game during the New Deal.Item A middle-of-the-road peace movement: ethos and the practical pacifists.(2009-05) Bruenger, Aaron MichaelBetween the years of 1905 and 1917, the peace movement in the United States was dominated by an ideology known as Practical pacifism. The crux of this movement was a heterodox approach to preventing war that focused upon adopting a persona that appealed to the expanding middle-classes of the nation. This focus upon the character of the movement led the Practical pacifists to concentrate their persuasion upon their ethos, which defined both how they represented their movement and the other types of persuasion the movement used. This etho-centric discourse, a discourse focused upon persuading through character, allowed the movement unprecedented growth and support within the United States. Central to their creation of this ethos was the Practical pacifists' ability to link their movement to defining tropes and discourses within the United States at the time: the idea of practical rationality; law, justice, and patriotism; Social Darwinism and the Civilization discourse; and economic stability and growth. Using rhetorical analysis to examine the ways the Practical pacifists linked their discourse to these mechanisms of cultural definition illuminates the ways these peace advocates created identification with their audience and reveals the limits of their ethocentric discourse.Item The More Influential, the More Controversial: How Eleanor Roosevelt and Eva Perón Broke Gender Norms and Redefined the Role of First Lady(2018-05) Kahlenbeck, JosieThis thesis is a cross-cultural examination of how Eleanor Roosevelt and Eva Perón broke gender norms and redefined the role of first lady in the United States and Argentina. I examine the expectations for women in the early and mid-20th century and analyze how Roosevelt and Perón's actions were within and beyond these expectations. I find that Roosevelt's language was less forceful and groundbreaking than that of Perón, who was able to mix her strong visual presence with forceful language to create a Peronist image, and broke gender norms more than Roosevelt.Item Motivations and values of outdoor education students: Perspectives from North Karelia, Finland and Minnesota(2013-05) Erpestad, MattiThis study explored pre-service and alumni outdoor education students' motivations for studying outdoor education and their values of the field of outdoor education. Student and alumni perspectives from one American and one Finnish institution of higher learning were investigated through electronic surveys and semi-structured interviews. Data was collected and analyzed using a concurrent mixed methods research design. Findings indicated that respondents' motivations and values are seldom singular, but rather a combination of factors. Prominent findings across study sites indicated that students were motivated by the combination of recreational pursuits in the outdoors with a job and by past experiences in the outdoors. They perceived outdoor education as valuable in providing people with meaningful experiences in the outdoors that benefit both people and the natural world, and in helping counteract a societal disconnection from nature. Implications for practitioners and for research are discussed, and specific recommendations for each site are provided.Item Parole Rules in the United States: Conditions of Parole in Historical Perspective, 1956-2020(2020-11-16) Wiggins, Benjamin A.; Rhine, Edward E.; Mitchell, Kelly L.; Crye, Bree; Tu, Robin L.; ; benwig@umn.edu; erhine3997@aol.com; crye0010@umn.edu; tu000011@umn.edu; mitch093@umn.edu; Wiggins, Benjamin A.; University of Minnesota University Libraries; University of Minnesota Department of History; University of Minnesota School of LawData set of six censuses of standard conditions of parole that have been conducted between 1956 and 2020.Item Popular Culture Images of the Mulatta: Constructing Race, Gender, and Nation in the United States and Brazil(2013-08) Mitchell, JasmineThrough a hemispheric framework, this dissertation explores how national, transnational, and racial identities have been mobilized through contemporary media representations of the mulatta/mulata (woman of African and European descent) figure in the United States and Brazil. Key to the national imagination, the mulatta figure embodies racialized sexual desires and tensions. Chapters One through Four compare U.S. and Brazilian histories, tropes, star texts, and cultural productions concerning mixed-race women of African descent. Chapter Five uses a transnational approach to consider the mixed-race figure. The dissertation uses both comparative and transnational methodologies to engage with a hemispheric framework. Through a hemispheric approach, this dissertation attempts to elucidate intersections and tensions of national, gender, sexual, class and racial formations and to uncover the very assumptions that construct these formations. As each country's historical and ideological responses towards racial mixing generated different national identities, images of the mulatta reflect these racialized national identities. At this juncture, the paths of Brazil and the United States are intersecting so that understandings of race in the United States and Brazil are becoming more similar. The dissertation shows how mixed-race discourses have upheld as well as resisted dominant racial ideologies. By examining media depictions of mixed-race actresses in both countries, the dissertation also shows how racial self-labeling repudiates national racial topographies. Using case studies from Hollywood films and U.S. and Brazilian television shows and star texts of mixed-race actresses, my dissertation argues that popular culture images of the mulatta demonstrate these shifts and that ideas of utopian mixed-race societies often operate concurrently with desires to manage or contain blackness and nullify racialized differences. The idea of the mixed-race figure of European and African descent then is hemispherically circulated such that similar indicators of sexual availability are signified in both countries. The last chapter explores the transnational dimensions of racial imaginings through an analysis of how Brazil is represented in U.S. cultural productions to mediate contemporary U.S. anxieties and desires around race and national identity. The dissertation ends with the upcoming Rio 2016 Olympic Games to examine how Brazil projects itself to the world. As the idea of race has been produced nationally and transnationally, my research shows that eliminating racism demands understanding race in both national and transnational contexts.Item Presence of Uncertainty in Friendships: A study on Morocco and the United States(2017) Grev, VictoriaThis study seeks to understand how culture influences people’s level of uncertainty and information seeking strategies in interpersonal relationships. The general premise is cultures experience different levels of uncertainty and, therefore, the uncertainty reduction theory can be observed in different ways. Hypotheses were formed regarding how aspects of culture may change the level of uncertainty and information seeking present in Morocco and the United States. A study was conducted through the distribution of a survey asking questions about friendships between Moroccan students (N=25), and friendships between American students (N=46). It was found that American students have more certainty, and use the interactive information seeking strategy more, than Moroccan students. Furthermore, certainty within friendship leads to more direct and interactive information seeking strategies. Relationship length was positively associated with more certainty in friendships, as was relationship closeness. The authors conclude the study by discussing how these findings influence the future research of culture and the uncertainty reduction theory.Item Refiguring old age: shaping scientific research on senescence, 1900-1960.(2009-07) Park, Hyung WookThis dissertation traces the origin and the development of gerontology, the science of aging, in the United States and the United Kingdom. I argue that gerontology began to be formed as a multidisciplinary scientific field in the two countries from the 1900s to the 1950s. Unlike earlier scholars who had thought that the aging of the whole body was caused by the inevitable decline of an unknown critical factor, such as "vital heat," gerontologists of the twentieth century conceived aging as a contigent phenomenon whose rate and mode differed in distinct portions of the body. They also introduced systematic experimental approaches in their investigation which had seldom been employed in the study of aging before the twentieth century. Furthermore, with these new ideas and methodologies, gerontologists established their research field in which scholars from diverse disciplines could work in a cooperative manner, including biologists, physicians, psychologists, and social scientists. Amid the Great Depression, which threatened the very survival of the elderly, these multidisciplinary scholars formed professional societies and research institutes for more organized study of aging. But gerontology followed different paths of development in America and Britain due to their distinctive political and cultural conditions, academic traditions, and leading scholars' social and academic status. While British scientists of aging were struggling with various problems related to funding, professional recognition, and the recruitment of scholars interested in aging, American gerontologists came to have relatively ample and stable sources of financial support and an expanding network of national and local organizations. By analyzing this difference and tracing the beginnings of the new concepts and approaches, this dissertation aims at explaining the birth of a multidisciplinary scientific field within historical contexts.