Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item The Influence of Place Attachment, Aspirations, and Rapidly Changing Environments on Resettlement Decisions(2016) Strong II, Michael Lee; Silva, Julie; Geography; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Resettlement associated with development projects results in a variety of negative impacts. This dissertation uses the resettlement context to frame the dynamic relationships formed between peoples and places experiencing development. Two case studies contribute: (a) the border zone of Mozambique’s Limpopo National Park where residents contend with changes to land access and use; and (b) Bairro Chipanga in Moatize, Mozambique where a resettled population struggles to form place attachment and transform the post-resettlement site into a “good” place. Through analysis of data collected at these sites between 2009 and 2015, this dissertation investigates how changing environments impact person-place relationships before and after resettlement occurs. Changing environments create conditions leading to disemplacement—feeling like one no longer belongs—that reduces the environment’s ability to foster place attachment. Research findings indicate that responses taken by individuals living in the changing environment depend heavily upon whether resettlement has already occurred. In a pre-resettlement context, residents adjust their daily lives to diminish the effects of a changing environment and re-create the conditions to which they initially formed an attachment. They accept impoverishing conditions, including a narrowing of the spaces in which they live their daily lives, because it is preferred to the anxiety that accompanies being forced to resettle. In a post-resettlement context, resettlement disrupts the formation of place attachment and resettled peoples become a placeless population. When the resettlement has not resulted in anticipated outcomes, the aspiration for social justice—seeking conditions residents had reason to expect—negatively influences residents’ perspectives about the place. The post-resettlement site becomes a bad place with a future unchanged from the present. At best, this results in a population in which more members are willing to move away from the post-resettlement site, and, at worse, complete disengagement of other members from trying to improve the community. Resettlement thus has the potential to launch a cycle of movement- displacement-movement that prevents an entire generation from establishing place attachment and realizing its benefits. At the very least, resettlement impedes the formation of place attachment to new places. Thus, this dissertation draws attention to the unseen and uncompensated losses of resettlement.Item THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INCOME, WEALTH, AND LIFE SATISFACTION(2010) Hitaj, Ermal; Murrell, Peter; Prucha, Ingmar; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation inquires into the relationship between income, aspirations, and life satisfaction in post-transition Russia. It first explores the channels through which adaptation and social comparison contribute to higher income aspirations. The results show that social comparison is a strong agent in shaping aspirations, while the effect of adaptation is relatively weak. Subsequently, the dissertation tests for the effect of aspirations on two separate satisfaction indices, satisfaction with life and satisfaction with economic conditions. This dissertation uses a Chamberlain random-effects ordered probit estimation to control for time-invariant unobservable individual traits. In contrast to previous studies, the results suggest that increases in aspirations have a positive effect on life satisfaction. This dissertation argues that this is caused by the expectations contained in income aspirations. Higher aspirations reflect an increase in needs commensurate to changes in own and others' income, but they also reflect improved income expectations based on the information provided by the present income of relevant others. The improved outlook embedded in the higher income aspirations causes the latter to have a positive effect on life satisfaction. This suggests that, ten years into the transition process, the reaction patterns of life satisfaction in Russia differ substantially from those in developed countries. While the relationship between life satisfaction and income or institutions has recently received a lot attention, the relationship between life satisfaction and accumulated wealth remains unexplored. This dissertation makes use of the 2008 Gallup World Poll and a novel wealth database compiled by the World Bank to evaluate the effect of wealth, produced capital, and natural resources on life satisfaction. The dissertation finds that both produced capital and natural capital have a positive effect on life satisfaction. The effect of good institutions and informal safety nets is also positive. However, in results that parallel findings from the resource curse literature, this dissertation shows that the positive effect of natural capital is due to diffuse natural resources like cropland, pastureland and forestry. Subsoil asset wealth has no significant effect on life satisfaction. Blood feuds represent a significant challenge to law enforcement, institutional consolidation and economic development due to the violence they generate and the other forms of crime they contribute to. This paper seeks to model and explain the decision making dynamics behind blood feuds. Rather than a simple retaliatory act, the violence associated with blood feuds is very much an integral aspect of an institutional framework that reflects a different set of ecological conditions and preferences. This paper incorporates different cultural and ecological aspects of various societies into a theoretical model that explains how blood feuds are sustained in a society. In addition, the model developed in this paper helps explain the longevity of blood feuds and reconcile different views from the anthropology literature.