UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
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Item Core Values: American Ambivalence Towards Equality, Limited Government and Moral Traditionalism(2008-06-06) O'Rourke, Laurence Matthew; Gimpel, James; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the role of core values in American public opinion, utilizing the closed-ended questions used to measure values in the National Election Studies (NES) survey. In-depth interviews were conducted with a non-random sample of 31 individuals recruited in the Washington D.C. area and in Rockingham County Virginia. These respondents were first asked to answer the NES value questions and then to elaborate on their detailed thoughts generated by answering these questions on limited government, equality and moral traditionalism. The results of this cognitive interviewing on how individuals interpret these widely used measures of values should be useful to researchers wishing to gain a better understanding of the sources of instability and error in these NES measures. In addition, quantitative analyses of NES data for the years between 1992 and 2004 were used to provide further insights from the in-depth interviews. The results of this research contribute to the broader political science literature on values. While the public is often uninformed about many issues of politics and policy, Feldman and other scholars have argued that values can serve to anchor public beliefs. By using values, the public is presumably able to take information shortcuts to substantive political decision making. Values are often conceptualized as stable and durable beliefs that can affect many specific attitudes. This study finds substantial public ambivalence towards limited government, equality and moral traditionalism. While some scholars, like Alvarez and Brehm, have argued that ambivalence is rare, this study finds that the public is torn about many of their core values. Ambivalence towards core values is often caused by feelings about specific social groups and social contexts. Conflicts between values and the different dimensions of each value also were a source of conflict for many of these respondents. The organization of the public's values into value systems thus appears weak. In some cases partisanship provides some of the glue that links different values together. These findings are important because they illustrate the complexity of the public's values. The public may hold a number of core values, but this study shows these beliefs to be intricate, nuanced and conflicted.Item Albert Camus and the Political Philosophy of the Absurd(2008-05-12) Bowker, Matthew Hamilton; Alford, Charles F; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Compared to the unmistakable impact of absurd theatre, literature, and art on contemporary European and American cultures, the philosophy, morality, and politics of the absurd have remained relatively obscure. Few interpretations of Albert Camus' philosophic contribution have successfully defined the meaning of absurdity, its components and dynamics, or its moral and political consequences. This dissertation attempts to clarify these areas of absurd thought by applying the logic of ambivalence to Camus' philosophy of the absurd, revealing its compelling diagnosis of extremism and indifference, its experiential grounding for post-traditional values, and its unique appeal for moral and political maturity. After reviewing the recent history of the concept of absurdity in Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Nagel, and elsewhere (Chapter 2), I offer detailed analyses of Camus' absurd and the contributions of his scholarly critics (Chapter 3). I introduce the concept of ambivalence in the work of Eugen Bleuler, Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Otto Kernberg, and relevant sociological and political researchers (Chapter 4) to argue that the absurd is best understood not in skeptical or existential terms, but as an ambivalent 'position' with respect to countervailing desires, primarily a desire for unity and a kind of principium individuationis (Chapter 5). These ambivalent desires are implicated in the moral and political tensions between self and others, absolutes and limits, creation and destruction, even good and evil. Applying this interpretation to Camus' The Stranger and its main character, Meursault (Chapter 6), and to The Myth of Sisyphus, The Rebel, The Plague, and other works (Chapters 7 and 8), I argue that the destructive ideologies Camus decried may be understood as defenses against the ambivalence of the absurd, while an absurd morality demands mature and creative resolutions of contradiction, resistance against defensive reactions, and deliberate moral and emotional identifications with others and enemies. Analyses of two controversial cases, Camus' defense of Kaliayev and the 'fastidious' Russian assassins of 1905 and Camus' unpopular stance on the Algerian War (1954-1962), are offered as miniature case-studies to ground conclusions about the meaning of absurd morality and politics (Chapter 9).