Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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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
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Item Institutions, Poverty, and Tropical Cyclone Mortality(2019) Tennant, Elizabeth; Patwardhan, Anand; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Tropical cyclones can result in thousands of deaths when the exposed population is unprepared or ill-equipped to cope with the hazard. Evaluating the importance of institutions and socioeconomic conditions for these deaths is challenging due to the extreme variability in hazard exposure. Studies of socioeconomic risk factors that do not account for exposure will be imprecise and possibly biased, as a storm’s path and intensity are important determinants of mortality and may be correlated with socioeconomic conditions. I therefore model and then control for hazard exposure by spatially interacting meteorological and socioeconomic data, allowing me to develop novel evidence of socioeconomic risk factors. In essay 1, I construct a global dataset of over one thousand tropical cyclone events occurring between 1979 and 2016. Controlling for population exposure to strong winds and rainfall, I find that higher levels of national government effectiveness are associated with lower tropical cyclone mortality. Further, deaths are higher when exposure is concentrated over a subset of the population that is already less well off. In essay 2, I investigate whether local government capacity and poverty alleviation can reduce tropical cyclone deaths, using panel data from 78 provinces and 1,426 municipalities in the Philippines. Tropical cyclone exposure is concentrated in wealthier regions of the Philippines, but once wind exposure and rainfall are controlled for I find robust evidence of a link between local poverty rates and cyclone deaths. In essay 3, I investigate the potential for leveraging policy experiments for causal inference about the effects of development interventions on disaster mortality using an existing randomized control trial in the Philippines. This empirical example illustrates how randomization overcomes issues of multicollinearity and omitted variable bias; however, the presence of outliers in exposure and vulnerability to natural hazards interact to make average treatment effect estimates highly imprecise. Strong evidence of an association between government effectiveness and cyclone deaths suggests that capacity constraints need to be addressed in tandem with risk-specific strategies and financial transfers. Further, evidence that local poverty rates and socioeconomic conditions matter highlights the need for equitable and inclusive approaches to mitigating the risk from tropical cyclones.Item Resilience to Climate Change: An Ethnographic Approach(2016) Johnson, Katherine Joanne; Paolisso, Michael J; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Global projections for climate change impacts produce a startling picture of the future for low-lying coastal communities. The United States’ Chesapeake Bay region and especially marginalized and rural communities will be severely impacted by sea level rise and other changes over the next one hundred years. The concept of resilience has been theorized as a measure of social-ecological system health and as a unifying framework under which people can work together towards climate change adaptation. But it has also been critiqued for the way in which it does not adequately take into account local perspective and experiences, bringing into question the value of this concept as a tool for local communities. We must be sure that the concerns, weaknesses, and strengths of particular local communities are part of the climate change adaptation, decision-making, and planning process in which communities participate. An example of this type of planning process is the Deal Island Marsh and Community Project (DIMCP), a grant funded initiative to build resilience within marsh ecosystems and communities of the Deal Island Peninsula area of Maryland (USA) to environmental and social impacts from climate change. I argue it is important to have well-developed understandings of vulnerabilities and resiliencies identified by local residents and others to accomplish this type of work. This dissertation explores vulnerability and resilience to climate change using an engaged and ethnographic anthropological perspective. Utilizing participant observation, semi-structured and structured interviews, text analysis, and cultural domain analysis I produce an in-depth perspective of what vulnerability and resilience means to the DIMCP stakeholder network. Findings highlight significant vulnerabilities and resiliencies inherent in the local area and how these interface with additional vulnerabilities and resiliencies seen from a nonlocal perspective. I conclude that vulnerability and resilience are highly dynamic and context-specific for the local community. Vulnerabilities relate to climate change and other social and environmental changes. Resilience is a long-standing way of life, not a new concept related specifically to climate change. This ethnographic insight into vulnerability and resilience provides a basis for stronger engagement in collaboration and planning for the future.Item Integrating Environmental Justice and Social-Ecological Resilience for Successful Adaptation to Climate Change: Lessons from African American Communities on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay(2016) Hesed, Christine Danielle Miller; Paolisso, Michael; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This research concerns the conceptual and empirical relationship between environmental justice and social-ecological resilience as it relates to climate change vulnerability and adaptation. Two primary questions guided this work. First, what is the level of resilience and adaptive capacity for social-ecological systems that are characterized by environmental injustice in the face of climate change? And second, what is the role of an environmental justice approach in developing adaptation policies that will promote social-ecological resilience? These questions were investigated in three African American communities that are particularly vulnerable to flooding from sea-level rise on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, I found that in all three communities, religious faith and the church, rootedness in the landscape, and race relations were highly salient to community experience. The degree to which these common aspects of the communities have imparted adaptive capacity has changed over time. Importantly, a given social-ecological factor does not have the same effect on vulnerability in all communities; however, in all communities political isolation decreases adaptive capacity and increases vulnerability. This political isolation is at least partly due to procedural injustice, which occurs for a number of interrelated reasons. This research further revealed that while all stakeholders (policymakers, environmentalists, and African American community members) generally agree that justice needs to be increased on the Eastern Shore, stakeholder groups disagree about what a justice approach to adaptation would look like. When brought together at a workshop, however, these stakeholders were able to identify numerous challenges and opportunities for increasing justice. Resilience was assessed by the presence of four resilience factors: living with uncertainty, nurturing diversity, combining different types of knowledge, and creating opportunities for self-organization. Overall, these communities seem to have low resilience; however, there is potential for resilience to increase. Finally, I argue that the use of resilience theory for environmental justice communities is limited by the great breadth and depth of knowledge required to evaluate the state of the social-ecological system, the complexities of simultaneously promoting resilience at both the regional and local scale, and the lack of attention to issues of justice.Item Not Leading Lady Material(2015) Morse Jans, Megan Adrielle; Bradley, Karen; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Title of Document: NOT LEADING LADY MATERIAL Megan Morse Jans, Master of Fine Arts Dance, 2015 Directed By: Professor Karen Bradley, Head of MFA Dance Program; Head of Dance Performance and Scholarship, School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies This thesis is a reflection on the creation, cultivation, process and performance of Megan Morse Jans' original work Not Leading Lady Material, an interdisciplinary dance-theater piece presented in a style evocative of the cabarets of the Weimar Republic. The performance included song, storytelling and dance, and thematically explored intimacy, identity, and social/political disruption all while eliminating the fourth wall and inviting the audience on a journey through personal narrative. This paper examines the navigation and weaving together of different expressive disciplines, as well as the challenges presented in the performance of both original and copyrighted material. The result was a dynamic performance that engaged the audience in an evening of laughter, participation, and vulnerability.Item Essays in Human Rights and Education: Accommodating Vulnerable Minorities(2012) Kosko, Stacy Jeanne; Crocker, David A.; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Numerous questions arise in the effort adequately to accommodate and serve minority students in public education, not the least of which are questions concerning how education decisions are made, by individuals, groups, or the state itself. This dissertation begins with the broadest, most far-reaching kinds of decisions, those made by groups (or representatives of groups) during the process of education policy formation. It then moves closer to home (and school), to the narrower kinds of decisions made by individual parents, school officials, and school-age children. The first essay engages in a broad theoretical discussion, applicable beyond education policy, and then applies this perspective to indigenous education. It asks: How might we evaluate the degree of self-determination that indigenous peoples exercise in decisions that affect them? In order to answer this question, this chapter suggests a theoretical framework for evaluating public participation and applies it to Sámi education policy-making in Norway. The second essay engages in a similarly broad theoretical discussion, though in this case it is motivated by an education policy problem. It asks: What ought to be the role of parental consent in education decisions that affect their children? It takes as its jumping-off point three European Court of Human Rights cases of educational discrimination against members of the Roma population, Europe's largest, poorest, and fastest-growing minority group. The final, and most applied, essay proceeds in the reverse order, beginning with an empirical question, and concluding with a discussion of the theoretical implications of the results. This essay uses quantitative methods to test whether Roma students do, in fact, have a higher drop-out rate than similarly situated non-Roma students and, finding that they do, asks why. This chapter goes on to investigate the labor market for Roma and subsequently to delve into the role of adaptive preference formation in schooling decisions (Do Roma really not "value" education, as is so often suggested?). The work closes with a short discussion of areas for future research.