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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2012 - 20142

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    "Unique By Nature, Traditional By Choice": Music Initiatives and Social Change in a Rural Appalachian Community
    (2014) Terman, Jennie; Rios, Fernando; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In Pocahontas County, West Virginia, a cherished musical heritage exists alongside a continuously changing population, and music initiatives demonstrate the tension between preserving local traditions and embracing diversity. Employing practice theory, concepts of globalization, and an applied ethnomusicological approach, three music initiatives--a historical performance hall, public school music education, and the local community radio station--are investigated in terms of their history, current role in the community, and programming and curricula. These initiatives serve as tools for exploring how the music programming and education in this community reflect outside interests and social changes during the past century and help frame suggestions of how public music initiatives, both in this community and elsewhere, might better respond to social change. With collaboration and an in-depth understanding of the complexities of a population, music initiatives can make positive and effective contributions to communities.
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    Direct Democracy and the Culture Wars
    (2012) Biggers, Daniel Ryan; Kaufmann, Karen M; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Proponents of direct democracy maintain that this institution can facilitate political participation in the United States. By providing citizens with a greater role in the legislation-making process, these supporters assert, the initiative and/or referendum may heighten the importance assigned to political action and engage those who do not consistently vote. Substantial empirical evidence supports this relationship, and the positive relationship between direct democracy and turnout is the most consistent finding in all of the literature on this institution. I contend, however, that the existing literature is both theoretically and methodologically incomplete. Theoretically, scholars have yet to identify the exact causal mechanism that explains why any ballot measure might bring citizens to the polls, and this failure has led to the employment of multiple incomplete measurements of the direct democracy process. I attempt to rectify this concern by positing two key requirements necessary for any proposition to influence the decision to vote. These criteria lead to the conclusion that we must look at the issue content of each individual ballot measure to identify its effect on participation. Using moral issue propositions as an example of those that consistently possess the potential to raise voting rates, I illustrate the factors necessary for direct democracy to fulfill the expectations of its proponents. Across a number of contexts, I find substantial evidence for the ability of moral issue propositions to habitually engage citizens, mobilize them above normal turnout rates, and even increasing levels of political knowledge. In contrast, the average ballot measure rarely maintains this capacity, and even others that address salient and/or controversial issues (such as tax matters) exhibit difficulties in doing so more than episodically. These findings provide significant insights into the consequences of permitting the public to legislate via the ballot, how institutions shape the size and composition of the electorate, and what might be done to increase turnout in this country.