Blood Over Soil: The Misconception of Nazi Environmentalism

Most people do not immediately think of environmentalism when they hear the term “Nazi.” Nazis were racist imperialists who killed millions of people. Is it possible for the genocidal policies of the Third Reich to be compatible with green politics and nature preservation? Several historians and sociologists during a period of anti-green backlash and Nazi revisionism in the late 20th century argued that environmentalism was, indeed, a central part of National Socialism. Citing environmentally progressive Nazi legislation combined with elements of the “Blood and Soil” element of Nazi ideology, these individuals made a case that Hitler and the Nazis were some of the first modern environmentalists. This intriguing and unusual claim was used both to depict Nazis more favorably as well as to paint contemporary green politicians in a more negative light. Although it is important to consider the views of such historians like Schama and Bramwell, who argued the above point, the Nazis cannot be called environmentalists. Despite their passing of a few noteworthy pieces of green legislation and their admiration for the German landscape, the Nazis prioritized rearmament, war, and ethnic purity far above national environmental protection policies, which were largely abandoned with the escalation of the Second World War. Nature preservation remained an effective propaganda theme for the National Socialists, as they were quite fond of linking the volk and their pure blood to the German land, but sweeping environmental reform simply did not take place. With that said, it is imperative to review the scholarship of those who argue that the Nazis were true environmentalists and the elements of the Third Reich that led them to come to those faulty conclusions

Establishing a Baseline Plant Species Inventory Within the Penn’s Woods Deer Exclosure

Overpopulation of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) is a problem adversely affecting the ecological health of eastern deciduous forests in the United States, including those in southeastern Pennsylvania. Trampling and herbivory have led to the loss of native understory and ground cover species and expedited the invasion of aggressive exotic plants. The use of deer exclosure fencing has become common practice as a method of protecting vulnerable sites from these impacts. In 2016, an exclosure was installed in the Penn’s Woods section of Morris Arboretum’s natural lands with the hopes of facilitating forest restoration and learning about the response of the plant community. This project was designed as a comprehensive survey to establish a baseline record of plant species present within the exclosure so that changes in species composition can be monitored over time. In order to organize this inventory, a grid system of 22 plots was created and mapped using a GPS device and ArcGIS software. The herbaceous and woody plant layers within each plot were surveyed and documented. Statistical analysis was used to identify the most ecologically significant plants. In addition, photographs were taken of each plot and of the tree canopy in both winter and spring, so that these can be repeated over time to visualize changes to the canopy and understory layers. This data will be available to the manager of the Morris Arboretum natural lands and may be referenced for planning and restoration efforts going forward. Strategic corners of the grid were permanently marked so that it may be easily rebuilt and this inventory can be replicated at regular intervals in the future. Information gleaned from these surveys will afford a better understanding for how the exclusion of white-tailed deer impacts the forest ecology, and can inform future uses of deer exclosures on the property for habitat improvement

Interrelations Between Religiosity, Mental Health, and Children

This dissertation consists of three independent but related research articles dealing with religiosity, mental health, and children. The first uses the General Social Survey to perform the first large-N, non-convenience-sample analysis of the relationship between belief in God and sense of purpose. Using logistic regression analysis I find that there is a positive association, expanding our knowledge of the association between religious frameworks on a particular facet of mental health. The second article uses OLS to test the relationship between belief in God and fertility intentions in the Czech Republic and Slovenia using the European Fertility and Family Survey, once again finding positive relationships between belief in God or belief in a higher power and fertility intentions. This finding is theoretically important because the prior literature has tended to invoke directly institutional mechanisms in the fertility/religion relationship without considering the possibility that more individuated forms of religiosity may have independent associations. Finally, the third article uses the General Social Survey (and, once again, OLS) to test the role of religiosity as a moderator in the relationship between number of children and happiness. The literature on children and happiness has progressed beyond simple associations, but the literature incorporating concrete social moderators is still in its infancy, and especially social moderators whose influences are vectored through ideational, and not necessarily material, associations. I make the theoretical argument that, as religiosity in the United States tends to be associated with pronatalist norms and culture, and as happiness is positively associated with fulfilling sociocultural imperatives, then, all things being equal, the more religious will have a higher happiness effect (or lower unhappiness effect) from their children than the less religious. Using General Social Survey data, my empirical analyses empirically confirm this hypothesis, showing a positive and significant interaction term between religion and child number, representing a higher happiness association with child number for the religious. This interaction is partially explained by another interaction term between higher ideal family size (measuring pronatalist tendencies), but this second interaction does not explain all of the religiosity/children interactive effect

Contemptible Cravens and Dumb Beasts: The Story of the Wiggans Patch Massacre

On the evening of December 9, 1875, around forty masked men broke into the boardinghouse of the elderly widow Margaret O’Donnell in Wiggans Patch, a mining town outside of Mahanoy City, and killed her pregnant daughter and her son, an alleged Molly Maguire. The perpetrators of the Wiggans Patch Massacre literally got away with murder. One of the most brutal crimes of a particularly violent era was soon forgotten, especially when the Molly Maguire trials began the following month. How did this happen? Why was the Wiggans Patch Massacre forgotten when within the next few years (1876-1879) twenty men were hung for murders committed up to sixteen years before? In order to find the answers, we must first understand the entire Molly Maguire phenomenon and its place in labor versus capital relations of the rapidly industrializing United States of America. Firstly, they did not cause as much of an outrage as several of the other murders around the same time because the victims were the widely hated and feared Molly Maguires. Furthermore, to most of the United States, the perpetrators were also Molly Maguires. Finally, the Pinkertons and the Coal & Iron Police were the most effective bodies of justice in the anthracite region. They obviously did not want to pursue an investigation of the Wiggans Patch Massacre because that would ultimately incriminate them, and they enjoyed a stainless reputation in the anthracite region as the heroes who defeated the hated Molly Maguires

Orientation and experience in the perception of form: A study with the arizona whale-kangaroo

When subjects are presented with the Arizona whale-kangaroo, an ambiguous figure, perception of the whale is more common than perception of the kangaroo. However, this difference is smaller in Australian than American subjects. Perception of the kangaroo is more orientation dependent than perception of the whale, which is perceived at all orientations of the stimulus. Together with the difference between subject populations, this effect reveals an influence of past experience on the perception of this new ambiguous figure. Perception of the whale versus the kangaroo differs in both reconstrual of parts and realignment of the object-centered reference frame. Observers report reference frame reconstruals before reference frame reversals, shedding light on the organization of object memory

How Far is Too Far? Understanding Identity and Overconformity in Collegiate Wrestlers

Although athletes who endanger the health and well-being of others are publicly shamed, those who endanger their own health and well-being in an effort to embody the sport ideal are often praised. Athletes are expected to distinguish themselves from their peers, make sacrifices for the good of the game, play through pain and injury, and push physical and mental limits on the path to achieve their goals (Hughes & Coakley, 1991). Collectively, these expectations are known as the sport ethic and while they are considered part of sport culture, athletes who overconform to them may engage in behaviors that risk their health and well-being including disordered eating, chronic overtraining, and substance use. Although some research has investigated overconforming athletes\u27 behaviors, overconformity to the sport ethic remains largely under researched (Coakley, 2015), despite an increasing prevalence of overconforming behaviors in the college athlete population. In an effort to examine athlete identity and deviant overconformity, the current study was designed within a psychocultural life story framework (Peacock & Holland, 1993), using a constructivist-interpretivist paradigm (Ponterotto, 2005). Three collegiate wrestlers were interviewed using a life story interview protocol (adapted from McAdams & Guo, 2014) and a semi-structured interview. Participants also completed the Athlete Identity Measurement Scale (Brewer & Cornelius, 2001), the Social Motivation Orientation in Sport Scale (Allen, 2003), and a brief written expression exercise to provide context for participant narratives. Data were analyzed using provisional (Saldana, 2014) and narrative coding (Smith & Sparkes, 2009b) and represented through the use of a word cloud (McNaught & Lam, 2010) and creative nonfiction (Caulley, 2008; Sparkes & Smith, 2014). Participants described a process of overconformity to the sport ethic that supported and extended previous research (Donnelly & Young, 1988; Hughes & Coakley, 1991). Results indicated that the wrestlers in the current study believed that, because athletes must push boundaries in order to find success, they cannot ever go too far . Moreover, they reported that their athlete identity held significant personal and social meaning to the extent that they willingly engaged in behaviors associated with overconformity in previous literature (e.g., Atkinson, 2011; Johns, 1998; Waldron & Krane, 2005). Recommendations for future research in this line of inquiry include similar studies with other sport populations (e.g., other sports, other competitive levels, other cultural backgrounds) and the development of a measure to identify athletes\u27 degree of deviant overconformity. Practitioners may use this research to better conceptualize the health-compromising behaviors their clients use to obtain athletic success, which may improve treatment planning and outcome goals

Personal Growth Interpretation of Goal Attainment as a New Construct Relevant to Well-being

AbstractPersonal growth interpretation (PGI) of attained goals is one kind of positive cognition that contributes to well-being. We identify five facets of PGI: Concordance Competence, Specific Competence, Efficacy Competence, Cumulative Competence, and Facilitated Competence. We report on the development of a tool, the Personal Growth Interpretation Scale (PGI Scale), which measures these five facets. Analyses provided initial descriptive statistics and indicated adequate construct validity. It is recommended that the PGI Scale is utilized in future research investigating the relationship between PGI, need satisfaction and well-being

The measurement of psychological literacy: A first approximation

Psychological literacy, the ability to apply psychological knowledge to personal, family, occupational, community and societal challenges, is promoted as the primary outcome of an undergraduate education in psychology. As the concept of psychological literacy becomes increasingly adopted as the core business of undergraduate psychology training courses world-wide, there is urgent need for the construct to be accurately measured so that student and institutional level progress can be assessed and monitored. Key to the measurement of psychological literacy is determining the underlying factor-structure of psychological literacy. In this paper we provide a first approximation of the measurement of psychological literacy by identifying and evaluating self-report measures for psychological literacy. Multi-item and single-item self-report measures of each of the proposed nine dimensions of psychological literacy were completed by two samples (N = 218 and N = 381) of undergraduate psychology students at an Australian university. Single and multi-item measures of each dimension were weakly to moderately correlated. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of multi-item measures indicated a higher order three factor solution best represented the construct of psychological literacy. The three factors were reflective processes, generic graduate attributes, and psychology as a helping profession. For the measurement of psychological literacy to progress there is a need to further develop self-report measures and to identify/develop and evaluate objective measures of psychological literacy. Further approximations of the measurement of psychological literacy remain an imperative, given the construct's ties to measuring institutional efficacy in teaching psychology to an undergraduate audience