Browsing by Subject "power"
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Item Flooded in Sludge, Fueling the Nation: Generating Power, Waste, and Change in East Tennessee(2014-05) Hatmaker, MelissaThis project is a genealogy of the largest coal ash flood in US history that traces the intersecting forces that brought it into existence. And, it is a material analysis of the psychological, social, and geological processes that render this matter and this event largely invisible. At the intersections of environmental history, cultural geography, anthropology, and affect theory, this work centers on an analysis of power across multiple scales of social organization and through the development of the US electric grid. It is a layered account of the multiple ways desire for power and change produce a residue that perpetually accumulates. The project aims to enact a way of seeing that challenges and subtly alters the processes of knowledge production that render the ash flood invisible and outside of history. By drawing attention to the coal ash flood as a node of connection among multiple groups, ideas, and pasts, it explores how the excess production of coal ash physically and metaphorically emerges out of that which is forgotten or excluded from everyday life and the modes of knowledge production that condition it in the contemporary US.Item Fragile Energy: Power, Nature, And The Politics Of Infrastructure In The ‘New Turkey’(2016-08) Erensü, SinanThis dissertation provides a reading of political power in twenty-first century Turkey through the lens of (energy) infrastructures. By tracing the country’s bourgeoning energy infrastructures along their material, legal and financial dimensions, I examine energy’s ability to do political work and securing societal consent in Turkey, at a time when the idea of development is being privatized and the challenge of climate change encounters the country’s growing energy deficit. Relying on ethnographic and other qualitative methods collected along the path of energy infrastructures—including corridors of the bureaucracy, investment banks, construction sites, ribbon-cutting ceremonies, energy expos, local courthouses as well as electricity grids and hydropower penstocks—I argue that energy has played an under-recognized yet influential role in the establishment and sustenance of an authoritarian neoliberal experience, what is being dubbed by its founders, the ‘new Turkey’. Rather than collapsing the power harnessed from energy resources with political power, I introduce energy as a form of governmental rationality in the new Turkey that seeps into other realms of government from urban governance to counter-terrorism. The prowess of this emergent rationality, which I name as energorationality, stems from energy’s unique qualities in bringing center and periphery, urban and countryside, capital and commons together, from its ability to suture a variety of unlikely actors, policies, and ideas to each other. By examining grassroots mobilizations struggling against energy infrastructures in Turkey’s rural Eastern Black Sea Region (EBSR), I also discuss the fragility of energorationality. Mining disasters, unexpected droughts, unreliable projections, unruly villagers and urban riots, put delicate project cycles into disarray. I illustrate throughout the dissertation how energy infrastructures—small hydropower plants (small hydro, or SHP) in particular—, cause unexpected cracks as well as powerful sociopolitical alliances while converting uncharted rural and environmental settings into energy landscapes.Item In-Service Teachers’ Conceptions of Racial Identity(2017-07) Ahlgren, EricaThere is a large discrepancy between the racial identities of current teachers and the students they teach. In the United States, white middle-class women constitute 90% of the teaching population (Picower, 2009), while students of color comprise approximately one third of the population, with an expected increase to approximately two thirds by the year 2050 (Howard, 2003). This discrepancy in racial identities often leads to deficit views and colorblindness within classrooms, resulting in the continued replication of dominant forms of power. Therefore, it is crucial to examine racial identities of teachers in hopes to build and expand on the current understandings of the role that race and racial identity have within classroom spaces. With an ethnographic study, I examined how teachers conceptualize their racial identity. How are teachers’ racial identities and their students’ racial identities represented in practice? How do teachers conceptualize their racial identities and their students’ racial identities within their practice? The research was conducted at an urban middle school with five white, female in-service teachers. The study centered around a book club series using perspectives from critical race theory. Influences on racial identity were identified from power domains using theories of pedagogy of the oppressed (Freire, 1993) and intersectionality (Hill-Collins & Bilge, 2016). Methods of qualitative analysis and an iteration of critical discourse analysis (Gee, 2014) were used to highlight findings. Findings demonstrated that teachers constructed their identities in a dual or hybrid space between oppressed (constrained power) and oppressor (empowered). By illuminating domains of power (interpersonal, disciplinary, cultural and structural) I was able to examine how these domains inform racial identities, where they overlap and how intersections of multiple domains influence participants’ conceptions. Additionally, participants named oppressive systems that influenced the complexities of their conceptions of racial identities. Participants valued the intricacies of students’ dynamic identities and conducted practices that embraced an urgency towards learning in order to combat academic underachievement. This dissertation makes a contribution to understanding the intersections that educators are between and within. This study has further implications for how teachers continue to practice with pedagogies and mindsets that validate and value the identities of both students and teachers, while simultaneously teaching within schools where dominant forms of knowledge and understandings are often valued.Item A Linear Electromagnetic Piston Pump(2017-06) Hogan, PaulAdvancements in mobile hydraulics for human-scale applications have increased demand for a compact hydraulic power supply. Conventional designs couple a rotating electric motor to a hydraulic pump, which increases the package volume and requires several energy conversions. This thesis investigates the use of a free piston as the moving element in a linear motor to eliminate multiple energy conversions and decrease the overall package volume. A coupled model used a quasi-static magnetic equivalent circuit to calculate the motor inductance and the electromagnetic force acting on the piston. The force was an input to a time domain model to evaluate the mechanical and pressure dynamics. The magnetic circuit model was validated with finite element analysis and an experimental prototype linear motor. The coupled model was optimized using a multi-objective genetic algorithm to explore the parameter space and maximize power density and efficiency. An experimental prototype linear pump coupled pistons to an off-the-shelf linear motor to validate the mechanical and pressure dynamics models. The magnetic circuit force calculation agreed within 3% of finite element analysis, and within 8% of experimental data from the unoptimized prototype linear motor. The optimized motor geometry also had good agreement with FEA; at zero piston displacement, the magnetic circuit calculates optimized motor force within 10% of FEA in less than 1/1000 the computational time. This makes it well suited to genetic optimization algorithms. The mechanical model agrees very well with the experimental piston pump position data when tuned for additional unmodeled mechanical friction. Optimized results suggest that an improvement of 400% of the state of the art power density is attainable with as high as 85% net efficiency. This demonstrates that a linear electromagnetic piston pump has potential to serve as a more compact and efficient supply of fluid power for the human scale.Item Theorizing Karen Women’S Experiences Of ‘Power’ To Engage In Self-Help In Resettlement(2018-04) Horn, TonyaThis study describes the experiences of 10 first-generation Karen women to resettle to St. Paul, Minnesota. Since 2005, Karen people from Burma have been one of the largest refugee groups being resettled to Western resettlement countries. Existing literature suggests that refugee-background communities may have a wealth of knowledge and experiences in developing and adapting self-help structures and processes, and that they play a critical role in their own resettlement. However, little attention has been paid to how, why, and for what purpose new communities are able to (re‑)form historical self-help structures in resettlement or the supports or barriers that impact a community’s ability to utilize these structures to promote self-help. The purpose of this study was to examine Karen women’s experiences of power to engage in self-help in resettlement. Semistructured, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 10 Karen women who had experience with Karen women’s organizations in Burma, Thailand and/or the United States. Interviews were analyzed using constructivist grounded theory methodology. Guided by principles of qualitative research, grounded theory, and ethnographic methods, what emerged was a preliminary theory of “power,” defined by participants as agency and capacity to help each other in resettlement, and factors that impacted their power to engage in self-help. Four categories emerged that explained women’s experiences of power to help each other in resettlement: (re‑)establishing a self-help structure; personal and premigration relationships or Knowing Each Other; having resources, which included knowledge, time, transportation, and financial resources; and having authority. Findings add knowledge that is situated in cultural context in relation to the experiences of Karen women. This dissertation study addresses several critical gaps in existing literature by revealing the processes through which a first-generation Karen community (re‑)established historical structures of self-help to meet the needs of their community in resettlement, the conditions that affected their agency and capacity to help one another, and by capturing the perspectives and experiences of Karen women. Findings can be used to inform development of interventions and resettlement policies that recognize and support the strengths, strategies, and resources that new refugee-background communities bring with them to resettlement settings.Item Trust, Power, and Organizational Routines: Exploring Government’s Intentional Tactics to Renew Relationships with Nonprofits Serving Historically Marginalized Communities(Public Administration Review, 2023) Cheng, YuanExisting public management practices and organizational routines in the contracting regime have systematically created power asymmetry and distrust between government agencies and nonprofits serving historically marginalized communities. However, little is known about how the government could reform public bureaucracies to renew relationships with these important organizations and build trust. Through a process-oriented inductive study of Minnesota’s 2-Generation Policy Network, we find that government’s cascading trust-building tactics both inside the bureaucracy and with nonprofits serving Black, Latino, Indigenous, and Immigrant/Refugee communities allowed them to create a new collaborative infrastructure that both changed organizational routines and built power to address racial inequities in the existing human service system. Power is not a zero-sum game. By sharing resources and building trust with their nonprofit partners, government agencies and nonprofits collectively access more power for genuine public management reform to address systematic inequities.Item Vitamin D Deficiency and Physical Performance in Athletes(2013-07) Fitzgerald, JohnThe aim of this cross-sectional study was to investigate the relationship between vitamin D status and laboratory measures that are relevant to physical performance in competitive ice hockey players. Data was collected for 53 junior and collegiate ice hockey players residing near Minneapolis, Minnesota (44.9� N) during the offseason (May 16-June 28). Vitamin D status was inversely associated with percent body fat and positively associated with handgrip strength, trended with peak power during the wingate test, but not with vertical jump height after adjusting for measured covariates. Representing a novel finding of this study, 25(OH)D status was inversely related to jump execution time, time to peak power and positively associated with force gradient during the squat jump after adjusting for potential covariates.