Bringing Books to a Book-Hungry Land : Print Culture on the Dakota Prairie

The dearth of reading material was a recurring lament in the writings and memoirs of Dakota settlers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “I was born with a desire to read, . . . and I have never gotten over it,” declared Henry Theodore Washburn, recalling his Minnesota boyhood and homesteading years in Dakota Territory, “but there was no way in those days to gratify that desire to any great extent.”1 This lack was indeed of consequence. In the pre-electronic era, print was a primary means of obtaining information, insight, and pleasure. High rates of literacy, sharp increases in book production, and falling costs all contributed to the pervasiveness of the printed word. Whether it promoted particular values or challenged them, reading played a vital role in shaping how individuals assigned meaning to their lives. Governing what and how much was read were geographical location, environment, economic conditions, educational levels, and amount of leisure time. For many early South Dakota settlers, reading was certainly not a prime activity or even a real option. Those who did actively involve themselves in the culture of print were variously motivated. From ordinary rural dwellers, to the educated elite, to book publishers and sellers, each had an agenda—whether to strive for cultural improvement, spread “right ideals,” make a quick profit, or simply eke out a living. In any case, getting books to remote regions required initiative and perseverance. A historical examination of South Dakota’s print culture, focusing on the experiences of those who supplied reading material and those who received it, can afford a valuable glimpse into the cultural aspirations and attitudes of a rural population in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America

Left Behind: Social Movements, Parties, and the Politics of Reform

How does social reform occur in America? Is it through major public policy innovation? Is it through periodic partisan or electoral alignment? Or is it through moments of popular mobilization we call social movements? Can we explain the origin, development, and legacy of the civil rights movement by focusing on Brown v. Board of Education, Little Rock, the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, bussing and affirmative action? Do we focus on the electoral dynamics, the liberal revolution in Congress in 1958, and the landslide reelection of the president in 1964? Or do we start with the Montgomery bus boycott, the sit-ins, SCLC, SNCC, CORE, the freedom rides, the marches, and other forms of direct action? In this paper I argue, first, that institutional constraints built into our electoral system inhibit the formation of social reform initiatives from the inside government officials, elected officials, or parties. Social reform initiatives are initiated, however, but from the outside, as social movements. Second, these social movements unfold in a uniquely American way. They make moral claims. They employ organizational forms to strategically link local action with national goals in intense, outcome focused, campaigns. And they develop leadership skilled in arts of collective action what de Tocqueville called knowledge of how to combine. Third, as social movement leaders find that achieving their goals requires new public policy, they gain leverage by engaging in electoral politics, most often aligned with a political party, which they may well transform in the process. Fourth, although social movements form and reform around fault lines in the American polity of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, class, and generation, in the last 30 years this dynamic has produced far more change on the right than on the left. One reason is that the right has made more robust linkages among its social movement base, its partisan politics, and public policy than the left.* Explaining how this process works and why the left lost its movement - may help explain why this has occurred and clarify options available to those who would change it. * Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off-Center: The Republican Revolution & the Erosion of American Democracy, (Yale University Press, 2005). The authors show how the conservative movement has leveraged its partisan influence to dominate public policy.This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 34. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

The Claims of Cremation: A Reply to Sir Francis Seymour Haden.

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Student organization handbook

This handbook has been compiled by the Department of Student Engagement to provide our students an instructional guide of Winthrop University policies and provide helpful information to existing and registering student organizations, to help them thrive and accomplish their organizational goals

The Battle over Fracking: The Mobilization of Local Residents

In the last decade, the natural gas industry has grown rapidly, and North Texas has become a major shale gas-producing area. This paper studies the power struggle of two rival groups (Frack Free Denton and Denton Tax Payers for a Strong Economy) over fracking in Denton. How did each of these groups challenge the claims-making activities and goals of their adversaries?” We conducted data from ten in-depth interviews from each side to compare concerns about fracking. This study focuses on the campaign of the two groups on each side of the debate. We developed the model of merging the theoretical frameworks of value-conflict and social construction of social problems by examining the stages of awareness, policy determination, and reform in the battle over fracking. This project finds that the new theoretical framework model is germane to many features of claims,” “claims-makers,” and “claims-making activities

School Finance Toolkit: How to Create a Community Guide to Your School District's Budget

If your community-based organization would like to launch a school finance initiative in your community, you can use this toolkit as a starting point. The toolkit walks through the major steps organizations have gone through in their own initiatives, offering advice and examples of tools you can adapt for your own use. The toolkit explores the major challenges organizations have faced in this work, and how they have addressed those challenges. And the toolkit points you toward other resources that can help you find and analyze information about school finance. This toolkit is not itself a primer on school finance. Except in passing, it does not explain how school funding works in school districts. You will have to obtain this kind of background information from other resources (some listed in this toolkit) and as you go along.The toolkit contains five major sections:Get Started. This section helps you set a mission for your school finance initiative, organize your people to get the job done, and find the resources to get the job done.Engage the Public. This section discusses strategies for engaging the public up-front, finding out what citizens want to know about school finance -- and why.Crunch the Numbers. This section addresses the nitty-gritty work of creating a community guide to the school budget, offering helpful tips on finding, analyzing, and presenting information effectively.Put the Numbers to Work. This section talks about ways you can use the information you have gathered as a catalyst for community-wide discussions of school finance and its impact on school quality.Resources. This section contains a variety of tools used by community-based organizations in their school finance initiatives, everything from town meeting agendas to focus group questions to budget analysis spreadsheets. This section also contains references to many sources of data about school finance, many of them just a mouse-click or toll-free call away