Grounds of Knowledge: Unofficial Epistemologies of British Environmental Writing, 1745-1835.

British literature from the mid-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries has long been important to critical investigations centered on ecology and environmentalism. Ecocritical explorations of this literature, however, often look through texts to the plants, animals, and environments they represent, bypassing important questions about the act of representation itself. Resisting the temptation to take literary representations of the environment at face value, this dissertation moves the focus away from what written representations of the environment say about it to how those representations are made. Through a combination of close reading and examination of works in light of the literary critical and scientific ideals of their moment, I investigate the epistemological beliefs held by individuals and communities of authors about how knowledge is absorbed by the mind, what standards of documentation are necessary for its transmission in a written text, and which proofs of authenticity are required for it to be accepted as legitimate. Grounds of Knowledge discusses both literary and practical texts from the mid-1740s to the mid-1830s, including the works of William Collins, Joseph Warton, Thomas Warton, Charlotte Smith, John Clare, Jane Austen, and the agriculturalists Arthur Young, William Marshall, and William Cobbett. As these authors portray the environment in both literary and practical works, I argue, they use representational methods that are based on epistemological ideals as well as aesthetic and practical considerations. In each case, their works are governed by “unofficial” epistemologies—philosophies of collecting, apprehending, and disseminating knowledge that are implicit in written works and exist independent of academic and professional philosophy. By focusing on the epistemology of representation, this dissertation fills a gap left open by traditional thematic ecocriticism as well as more recent ontologically-based forms of ecocriticism. It does not seek to undermine the ecocritical project but rather to provide a much-needed foundation for ecocritical investigation in understanding how and why British authors of the mid-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries represented the environment in their works.PhDEnglish Language and LiteratureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116716/1/enhoward_1.pd

The 1913 Campaign for Child Labor in Florida

So minutely prepared and well conducted was the campaign for a child labor law for Florida in 1913 that the advocates were surprised when the proposed bill was challenged by a solitary newspaper, The Florida Times Union. According to an official of the National Child Labor Committee, this strong objection on the part of the Jacksonville, Florida newspaper would have wrecked the legislation had it not been for the astute thinking on the part of the authors of the bill when the opposition first appeared

COVID-19 Vaccination in Palestine/Israel: Citizenship, Capitalism, and the Logic of Elimination

Despite Israel’s responsibility under international law to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics in its occupied territories, Israeli officials have refused to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Through a critical discourse analysis of Israeli officials’ statements regarding Israel’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign, this paper explores how Israel evades this responsibility while presenting itself as committed to public health and human rights. We find that Israeli officials strategically present Palestinians as an autonomous nation when discussing COVID-19 vaccinations, despite Israel’s ongoing attempts to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. Relatedly, Israel justifies its refusal to vaccinate Palestinians on the grounds of the Palestinian Authority’s economic independence, thereby obscuring Israel’s control over the Palestinian economy. In this way, Israel relies on citizenship and economic inequality, as internationally sanctioned forms of exclusion, to deny Palestinians their right to health. Drawing on theorists such as Michel Foucault, Achille Mbembe, and Jasbir Puar, we argue that withholding vaccines from Palestinians reveals the ways that Israel furthers its settler-colonial aims under the guise of liberal humanitarianism and economic growth. Instead of directing these conclusions toward Israel as an exceptional case, we contend that these processes reveal how settler-colonial societies use liberal frameworks of citizenship and capitalism to carry out their racialized projects of elimination

The Validation of Novel Ecological Survey Methods for Use in Describing Harvest Mouse Micromys minutus Autecology

According to much of the literature relating to Micromys minutus (harvest mouse) the species has historically presented many challenges to researchers, particularly when attempting to collect sufficient data to describe their ecology, life history and responses to the ever-increasing threat of habitat loss and fragmentation. Methodological improvements are needed which provide sufficient species-specific data to underpin conservation and which are of sufficient quality to allow their movement ecology to be quantified. Here two novel methods were developed and tested, which included remote scent surveys using a detection dog and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) trapping. After validation, RFID trapping was then used to quantify M. minutus movement in fragmented habitats. A preliminary study was carried out which assessed the ability of a dog to be trained to indicate the scent of M. minutus. Here positive reinforcement training methods were used and the dog’s effectiveness was evaluated in a training environment using scent samples collected from controlled and uncontrolled situations. Secondly, RFID trap effectiveness was compared to the results of live trapping. Data were maximised by releasing individually tagged M. minutus into a suitable semi-natural enclosure on the Moulton College estate. After validation a further release was undertaken to investigate M. minutus movement ecology. Here gaps of differing widths were incorporated into the release enclosures and movements between the habitat patches were measured. Individuals included in each release cohort were exposed to an Open Field Test prior to release, and thus, their behaviour in relation to trapping and movement was also assessed. There is strong evidence that a dog can be trained to detect M. minutus and discriminate their scent from other sympatric nontarget species in a controlled training environment. When applied to uncontrolled field situations, the remote scent survey proved more effective than nest search surveys by volunteers during the autumn months, providing preliminary evidence that olfactory indicators could be more efficient than visual clues when establishing presence of M. minutus. Additional validation in uncontrolled settings is still required. Encouraging results were also seen during validation of the use of RFID trapping with better results in terms of raw trapping rates over live trapping being observed. Furthermore, findings indicate that M. minutus have sufficient navigational and motion capacity to successfully move over gaps ≤2m, but gaps greater than 2m could limit their movement with possible implications for population persistence. The findings also suggest that individuals that explore more slowly may have an advantage when inhabiting a fragmented habitat. Thus, movement propensity is likely to be an individual behavioural trait and may vary across situations; this provides a novel perspective on their conservation and may support conservation decisions being based on behaviour rather than density. The data collected for this thesis demonstrates that progress has been made in terms of monitoring M. minutus and the findings presented are entirely novel for this species. Nevertheless, they remain a challenging species and more questions have been asked than can be answered within the thesis. However, the sum of this work has provided a clear direction for future research on M. minutus

Dual Eligibles: Medicaid Enrollment and Spending for Medicare Beneficiaries in 2007

Provides an update on the share of total Medicaid enrollment and spending on those eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid through 2007, state-by-state estimates of Medicaid enrollment and expenditures for dual eligibles, and a breakdown of expenditures

Measuring privatisation in education: methodological challenges and possibilities

© 2018, © 2018 Educational Review. As the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) spreads, key questions that attempt to identify both the nature and the increasing scope and scale of this phenomenon become empirically significant. The concern of this article is to highlight some of the complexities of measuring one key element of the GERM: the privatisation of public education systems. Exploring indicators of privatisation through a set of methods for analysing Likert-style data, Mokken scale analysis and Rasch analysis, we generate a scale to measure an educational phenomenon so complex that it can appear to defy measurement. Our intention is to demonstrate that complex phenomena should not be oversimplified for the purpose of generating numeric data and that measurement is possible. The results, drawn from a European-wide survey, portray a nuanced pattern of privatisation at this regional level in which public funding and ownership remain important, but schools are commonly adopting a wide range of “private-like” practices

Disaggregating diabetes

Interest in disaggregating diabetes into numerous subtypes is growing as patients and providers recognize the limitations of standard diabetes typologies. As anthropologists, we draw attention to how ‘subtyping’ may reduce stigma derived from the connection between obesity and ‘type 2 diabetes’. We highlight the complexities that drive diabetes and argue that an exclusive or dominant focus on diet and obesity obfuscates other underlying risks. Yet, we warn that subtyping may promote unnecessary pharmaceuticalization, especially for other subtypes of diabetes that may be associated with stress and inflammation. We call upon providers to continue to closely attend to patients’ lived experiences. While we recognize the shortcomings of the existing classificatory scheme, patients’ outcomes and prognoses are often more closely connected to the social and medical support they receive than to the underlying metabolic classification

Permanent Housing In Rural Colombia

https://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/gps-posters/1749/thumbnail.jp