Browsing by Subject "Boundaries"
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Item Blurring boundaries: shifting perceptions of femininity in the context of the English Civil War(2009-06-02) Scamardo, Tara MarieThe English Civil War represents a liminal period within the history of the nation, one that offered many opportunities for experimentation with gender roles in social institutions. This historical episode had no universally legitimate authority, in either the government or the church, and the population had to deal with the resulting confusion individually. In comparing the writings and actions of women during this period with the popular publications of men that described and prescribed women's behavior, I argue that a significant number of men and women disregarded prescribed gender roles out of necessity. The major themes of this thesis involve the relationship between power and gender, as seen through contemporary language and writing that reveal how English culture viewed women acting in "masculine" endeavors in a time of crisis. Any perceived threat to the social order or the gender hierarchy of early modern England caused anxiety, but the actual challenges to this social organization posed by the Civil War provoked a substantial backlash. However, the women who acted in the war in public developed an identity independent of their culturally subordinate status. In order to substantiate this argument, this thesis discusses the fluid nature of gender, including the significant changes that resulted within the decades of the Civil War, as it was depicted in seventeenth-century England. Using primary documents, including letters, pamphlets, diurnals, and diaries, I show how the gender roles created by the church, state, and society were contradicted by the reality of the behavior exhibited by the participants in the English Civil War. I examine both women who acted within the traditional confines of femininity and those who transgressed these boundaries. Close attention is paid to women's activities in the areas of defense, religion, and politics. In conclusion, the thesis examines the ways in which historians have sought to interpret this period and place the actions of women within a patriarchal context. Possible challenges to the gender hierarchy caused great anxiety amid early modern England, but actual transgressions of gender roles, which occurred during the English Civil War, prompted a reevaluation of femininity.Item Crossing through yards : narratives of boundaries in East Austin(2011-12) Steiner, Audrey Moya; Stross, Brian; Stewart, Kathleen; Hartigan, John; Campbell, Craig; McKenna, BrianThis study examines what individuals of limited pecuniary resources in an urban society have to say about how they conceive of or interact with family, neighborhood, city, and society at large, as well as what some of the material and metaphorical boundaries are they meet, and how these function. The narratives they tell delineate ways, directly or indirectly, the consultants attempt to make sense of their lives, and explicate certain of their intertanglements with and perspectives on boundaries they encounter. When boundaries are placed, according to their characteristics, on a soft to hard continuum, an opening presents itself, signaled by specific, identifiable components, to reveal the constructions of empowerment and disenfranchisement that lie behind some seemingly unbreachable barriers. The consultants for this paper tell of skills and creativity they use to re-frame, ignore, cross, or otherwise get around many prevalent constrictive boundaries in order to conduct fulfilling lives. Since much of the success of ethnography, particularly that based on participant observation, hinges on capabilities to cross boundaries in order to understand different communities, the consultants' knowledge of ways to contend with boundaries can be applied productively to anthropological investigations.Item The gerrymandering of educational boundaries and the segregation of American schools : a geospatial analysis(2012-05) Richards, Meredith Paige; Holme, Jennifer Jellison; Crosnoe, Robert; Cantu, Norma; Reyes, Pedro; Gooden, MarkDespite steady and substantial decreases in residential racial/ethnic segregation since the 1960s, public school segregation is increasing steadily. As a result of these trends, schools, which have historically been less segregated than their surrounding neighborhoods, are now becoming more segregated than neighborhoods, underscoring the need for research on the ways in which educational institutions are facilitating segregation. Adopting a “student exchange” framework from the literature on electoral gerrymandering, this study provides initial empirical evidence examining how gerrymandered educational boundaries exacerbate or ameliorate patterns of residential segregation by “zoning in” certain students and “zoning out” others. Using a large, nationally-representative sample of 9,717 school attendance zones and 9,796 school districts, this study employs geospatial analytic techniques to investigate the effects of school attendance zone and school district gerrymandering on the racial/ethnic diversity of schools and districts. The effect of gerrymandering on diversity is assessed by comparing the characteristics of students residing in current boundaries to those residing in the “natural”, compact zone or district that would be expected in the absence of gerrymandering, operationalized as the equal land area circle of Angel and Parent (2011) and convex Voronoi polygons. Analyses reveal that, on average, both school attendance zones and school districts are gerrymandered to “zone out” more racially/ethnically dissimilar students in favor of more racially/ethnically similar students. As a result, schools and districts are significantly more racially and ethnically homogeneous than they would be in the absence of gerrymandering. While gerrymandering serves to segregate students of all races and ethnicities, it particularly serves to exclude blacks and Hispanics from predominantly white schools and districts, reinforcing the historical divisions between these groups. Indeed, estimates suggest that, on average, school attendance zones and school districts are 15% and 14% less black-white diverse, respectively, than would be expected if their boundaries were not gerrymandered. Findings suggest that the gerrymandering of boundaries adds another pernicious layer of segregation to public education institutions, which are already highly segregated by residency. The finding that the gerrymandering of school attendance zones and school districts serves to segregate underscores the importance of educational boundaries as a contemporary mechanism of segregation. However, findings also warrant some optimism. Because attendance zone and district boundaries are modifiable and subject to policy intervention, state standards for boundary compactness and rezoning efforts designed to create more equitable boundaries present cost-effective opportunities to achieve meaningful gains in integration. While changing school district boundaries is less politically feasible than changing school attendance zones, when such windows of opportunity arise, they have the potential to reduce school finance inequities and equalize educational opportunity while also increasing racial/ethnic equity.