Browsing by Subject "Value"
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Item Neoliberal environments: Crisis, counterrevolution, and the nature of value(2017-06) Nelson, SaraThis dissertation develops a genealogy of the environment as an object of politics through the period of neoliberal transition, roughly the late 1960s to the early 1990s. Through a series of case-studies highlighting critical moments in the modern history of the environment, I use archival research, literature analysis, and key informant interviews to show how our current understanding of the environment has co-evolved with some of the forms of governance we have come to associate most closely with neoliberalism. In contrast to existing scholarship, I show that the environment is not simply an object to which neoliberal policies have been applied, but a political problem that entails ongoing negotiations over the legitimacy of market rule, the role of the state in relation to the market, and the value of ecological stewardship. In this way the project challenges the conventional understanding of the relation between neoliberalism and the environment in geographical literature, as well as accounts of neoliberalism that marginalize or ignore environmental governance. In contrast, I show that the problem of nature’s value has been central to neoliberalism from its inception, and remains a key site of politics in the present.Item Towards a Translational Model of Decision-Making: Findings from the Web-Surf Task(2017-08) Abram, SamanthaInterventions targeting cognitive disorders often hinge on assumptions that humans and nonhuman animals recruit equivalent cognitive mechanisms during decision- making. Identifying parallel decision systems across species could help bridge gaps between clinical and non-clinical research, and in turn, improve intervention efficacy. The goal of this dissertation is to assess for similar behavioral and neural markers of decision-making across humans and rodents using a sequential foraging paradigm (“The Web-Surf Task”) that was adapted from a rodent spatial neuroeconomic task (“Restaurant Row”). The included studies highlight a functional translational approach that aims to access similar functional constructs via parallel tasks and methodological approaches. The results provide evidence of cross-species behavioral equivalents, such as the ability to detect revealed preferences. Findings from a neuroimaging study suggest that different neural systems track past and forward representations, indicative of human prospection during deliberation (i.e., episodic future thinking). Moreover, neural activation related to difficult decisions is similar to many of the structures that underlie rodent deliberation. Lastly, a risk-variant of the task suggests that regret-instances provide a bridge between our liking and pursuit of rewards. This final study also finds that impulsive individuals may fail to learn from regret. Collectively, this dissertation demonstrates the utility of this novel task for elucidating human deliberative mechanisms and identifying cross-species decision system compatibilities.