Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This study investigates the Meaning of Grades scale (Goulden & Griffin, 1997) to determine its reliability and construct validity. The scale is found to be a one-dimensional scale. Once 11 non-correlating items are discarded, the resulting 14 item scale results in an alpha of 0.75. Further, the scale is correlated significantly with the Implicit Theories of Intelligence scale (Dweck, 2000), suggesting interesting implications for further research in understanding student and teacher communication about grades.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Civil War reenacting consumes the time, money, efforts, and imaginations of all those who don the uniform of the fallen soldier. Unlike some avocations, however, the efforts of reenactment participants evoke historical concerns bearing more social significance than a mere pastime. The reliving of this pivotal event in our country’s history brings to light a number of social issues our society is grappling with in modern times. Questions of the individual in modernity, historical representation, and race and gender relations all manifest themselves in the theatre of the reenacting battlefield.
To date, most research on Civil War reenacting has been done by academics in the arenas of folklore and cultural studies. This paper attempts to rectify the lack of research placing reenactment in a sociological context. The research explores the meanings of reenactment for the participant, as well as the crises of historical representation along race and gender lines occurring in the arena. Qualitative methods are used to examine the topic; participant observation at a battle reenactment and four in-depth interviews with reenactors have been conducted for the research thus far (interviews and participant observations are ongoing, however). A theoretical framework of collective memory to examine Civil War reenacting is utilized, while acknowledging emergent themes manifested in the data. Historian Alon Confino’s assertion that the past is constructed as myth to serve a particular community, a past which individuals are committed to constructing to sanctify community and individual meanings, is discussed in the context of the research.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: This research examines response to neighborhood change in Price Hill and Westwood, two urban neighborhoods in Cincinnati. Both neighborhoods are predominately white and working-class and are often portrayed as receiving neighborhoods for an “overconcentration” of subsidized housing recipients after HOPE VI-funded housing project demolitions. Community organizations were active in both neighborhoods, each with stated goals to stabilize the neighborhoods.

Prior literature demonstrates that residents of neighborhoods experiencing perceived change often express concerns about neighborhood decline. A mixed methodological approach was used to examine the two neighborhood cases. Interviews were conducted with individuals from neighborhood organizations to determine if trends in the literature were present in these cases. Neighborhood level quantitative data were collected from a variety of sources spanning from 1994 to 2004 to test whether the perceptions about neighborhood decline were correct. Data sources include: census data, Part 1 crime data, and subsidized housing data. GIS mapping was utilized to visually depict demographic characteristics.

Census data show the neighborhoods did become increasingly diverse, with increases in African-Americans and decreases in non-Hispanic whites. As popularly perceived, the level of subsidized housing did increase, yet the most noticeable income changes were seen in modest increases in the level of middle-income residents. Crime levels rose, yet this increases pre-dated public housing teardowns, a correlation often asserted by interviewees. Census data indicate that property values and the amount of middle-income residents rose during the decade, suggesting that modest levels of gentrification, rather than deterioration, may be occurring in the neighborhoods.

Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: The ongoing debate over the ethicality and effectiveness of integrating conservation and development is so thorny because it conflates two fundamentally irreconcilable and opposing truths. On one hand, true conservation requires eliminating or at least minimizing human use of natural systems. On the other, conservation is almost exclusively a human endeavor that ultimately requires getting resource users to support conservation aims. So what’s a conservation practitioner to do? The need to address this problem has become particularly acute and relevant in the context of recent efforts to develop a common language and software tools for designing, managing, monitoring, and learning from conservation efforts. If you are writing a vague text description of your ecotourism or education strategy, you can fudge and claim that this work will simultaneously achieve both conservation and development ends. But if you diagram a results chain (theory of change) showing how your proposed strategy will achieve both ends, you soon realize you have to make choices and tradeoffs -- that it is impossible to reach these mutually exclusive goals. The solution thus lies in sorting out ends from means. Conservation organizations need to focus solely on clear biodiversity ends, but make judicious use of development means that address human stakeholder needs and concerns. If we continue to conflate these two conflicting ends, resource over-use will inevitably lead to a mean end to conservation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper will analyse the notion of ?the responsibility to protect? (R2P) using a second-generation cybernetic approach. The approach posits a means-driven decision-making process, in contrast to ends-based approaches that presume instrumental rationality. A cybernetic approach finds that goals are hazily defined, and that outcomes are therefore uncertain. Decision-makers do not construct maximising policies, but instead assemble policies that suffice from a repertoire of existing policies, processes and legal perspectives. The paper will trace the development of R2P from its introduction into contemporary international discourse by the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) in 2001, through to its inclusion in the Outcome Document of the 2005 United Nations High-Level Plenary Meeting (World Summit). In doing so, it will be shown that a cybernetic approach gives a more nuanced, and ultimately more realistic image of the status of the notion of R2P in current discourse on intervention, and allows for more informed speculation on its future in both international legal and political debate.