"A little kingdom of mixed nationalities" : race, ethnicity, and class in a western urban community--Rock Springs, Wyoming, 1869-1929

Includes bibliographical references (pages [324]-352).In 1885, the mining settlement of Rock Springs, Wyoming, witnessed one of the worst episodes of ethnocentric violence in the urban West as Euroamerican miners massacred Chinese laborers and burned Chinatown to the ground. Less than four decades later, in 1926, inhabitants of Rock Springs, including immigrants and natives, Asian Americans and Euroamericans, came together at a time of heightened national ethnic tensions to celebrate the diversity of their municipal community in the first of four annual "International Night" festivals. This study explores the apparently dichotomous reality of Rock Springs from its establishment as a mining camp during the building of the Union Pacific Railroad in the late 1860s to the conclusion of the International Night movement in the mid- to late 1920s The focus of this dissertation centers upon the role of immigrants and their descendents in constructing diverse community networks and how they syncretized those varied networks into a unifying ethos of "municipal community," an identity expressed through their sense of ethno-racial boundaries, western heritage, inter-class cooperation, and negotiation with monopoly capitalism. By focusing on ethnicity, race, class, and region, I address how the inhabitants of Rock Springs negotiated the cultural and material challenges to construction of a community identity posed by a hegemonically inclined corporation, the Union Pacific Railway and its coal operations, and organized themselves into a community of publicly articulated common interests despite their culturally diverse group identities.Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy

War and Social Change: A study of a Scottish Burgh, 1910-1922.

Wars seem to be endemic, but their effects are difficult to measure. Do wars have a positive side? Or are they purely negative? A great deal has been written since 1965 in an attempt to answer this question. This thesis analyses the impact of World War One on the city of Perth by examining social conditions pre-war with those that appeared post-war and endeavouring to establish links.The introduction reviews the extensive literature and identifies the main areas of controversy, assesses the contribution of Arthur Marwick to the ongoing discussion, tries to define the concepts of total war and social change and lists the contribution of several participants.The pre-war evidence shows that Perth, although it still had a strangely rural, almost Victorian flavour, was a city in transition and that many aspects, usually taken as modem - the motor car and the cinema - were already influencing life. Then the next five chapters are devoted to the progress of the war, year by year, as far as the civilian population was concerned. Each year, of course, producing its own mood ranging from crusading zeal to gloomy despair. As with most cities in the UK, 1917 was to prove the year of crisis. The post-war period, despite the exhaustion, was one of speedy recovery.The conclusion, based on an enormous volume of confidential police reports, shows a society emerging from a limited rather than a total war, in which all traces of conflict had disappeared within months and which picked up the threads of pre-war life with great composure. The post-war period was dominated by the development of the motor car and the expansion of the cinema.It would seem that the main effect of World War One was psychological

International Workshop on Socioeconomic Constraints to Development of Semi-Arid Tropical Agriculture

Microlevel studies of existing farming practices in northern Nigeria show a clear-cut socioeconomic rationale behind the practices adopted by farmers in the area. Mixed cropping is favored because returns per acre are high and risk is minimized. Only those technologies that encourage and support the strategies behind the farming practices in this region will have a good chance of being successful. Conventional research approaches emphasizing single-crop technologies should be discouraged; an approach that examines all crops in the farming system and considers the felt needs of farmers should be evolved. The importance of multidisciplinary work and the ex ante role of the social scientist in the research effort are emphasized