Browsing by Subject "Local"

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Dancing the local : two-step and the formation of local cultures, local places, and local identities in Austin, TX
(2016-04-22) Ronald, Kirsten Marie; Hoelscher, Steven D.; Meikle, Jeffrey; Davis, Janet; Hartigan, John; Mellard, Jason; Rossen, Rebecca
This dissertation uses Austin’s two-step country dance scene to examine the construction of the local in American culture. Two-step is a social dance that is central to country music culture in Texas, Oklahoma, and the Southwest. Without a central governing body, the form and social norms associated with the dance vary across dance communities, which means that dancers use two-step to both construct and express their local culture. In Austin, the local two-step scene is a conservative response to neoliberal globalization, which many dancers feel is destroying Austin’s unique identity and culture. Here, the local operates along four interrelated dimensions. As a scene, the local is constituted through the performance of traditional gender roles; as a place, it is preserved and policed via social and structural constraints; as a form of belonging, it is a whiteness that is shaped by the Mexican and Mexican-American bodies and practices that it excludes; and as a scale, it is a terrestrially bound social formation that is inextricable from the global culture it purports to resist. Many cultural theorists emphasize the progressive potential of the local. However, the inner workings of Austin’s two-step scene suggest that the local can just as easily espouse an insular, exclusive politics, even in a supposedly progressive city.
Education, labor, and health disparities of racial and sexual minorities
(2020-06-25) Delhommer, Scott Michael; Murphy, Richard J., Ph. D.; Trejo, Stephen J., 1959-; Oettinger, Gerald; Black, Sandra; Vogl, Tom
The three chapters of this dissertation explore the applied economics of inequality in educational attainment, labor market outcomes, and sexual health for racial and sexual minorities. In the first chapter, I explore the role of same-race teachers reducing gaps in minority education, presenting the first evidence that matching high school students with same-race teachers improves the students’ college outcomes. To address endogenous sorting of students and teachers, I use detailed Texas administrative data on classroom assignment, exploiting variation in student and teacher race within the same course, year, and school, eliminating 99% of observed same-race sorting. Race-matching raises minority students’ course performance as well as improves longer-term outcomes like high school graduation, college enrollment, and major choice. My second chapter examines how public policy can reduce labor market inequality across sexual orientation. I present the first quasi-experimental research examining the effect of both local and state anti-discrimination laws on sexual orientation on the labor supply and wages of lesbian, gay, and bisexual workers. To do so, I use American Community Survey data on household composition to infer sexual orientation and combine this with a unique panel dataset on local anti-discrimination laws. Using variation in law implementation across localities over time, I find these laws significantly reduce inequalities in the labor supply and wages across sexual orientation for both men and women. The last chapter explores the moral hazard and health inequality implications of a life-saving HIV prevention drug, PrEP, for gay men. We document the first evidence of PrEP on aggregate STD and HIV infections. Using the pre-treatment variation in the gay male population, we show that male STD rates were parallel in states with high and low gay population before the introduction of PrEP and begin to diverge afterwards. However, HIV infections were consistently downwardly trending before PrEP with no break at the introduction of PrEP, making inference of the effect of PrEP on HIV infections difficult. Specifically, we show that one additional male PrEP user increases male chlamydia infections by 0.55 cases, male gonorrhea infections by 0.61 cases, and male syphilis infections by 0.03 cases.
Offense at your door : Roman Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, judicial review, and Cantwell v. Connecticut, 1938-1940
(2014-05) Batlan, Katharine M.; Graber, Jennifer, 1973-; Tweed, Thomas A
Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940) marked a new moment in religious liberties in the United States. In this case the Supreme Court nationalized free exercise of religion. While many legal scholars point to this case as important for precedents used in the arguments of subsequent cases, the context from which this case emerged was also important. I argue that Cantwell should also be studied for what it can tell us about religious conflict at the time. In Cantwell the Supreme Court of the United States incorporated the free exercise of religion to states, but in doing so it obscured the real religious tensions between Roman Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses and local efforts to adjudicate those conflicts.
Tango with the global, national, and local : new multi-functional organizations in the Chinese independent documentary ecosystem
(2011-08) Yang, Jing; Schatz, Thomas, 1948-; Chang, Sung-sheng, 1951-
Compared to the early days of China’s New Documentary Movement in the 1990s, Chinese independent documentary in the past decade has become more diverse in topic and style, thanks to technologies such as digital video cameras and the internet. Independent documentaries capture a fast-changing China in progress, and have thus drawn scholarly attention from cultural or social studies perspectives. However, industrial development in the past decade has often been neglected in favor of textual analysis of films. Since the marketization of independent documentaries in the 1990s was mainly through international film festivals, and a domestic industry has been lacking, it is easy to assume that Chinese independent documentarians today still have to follow the same path as their counterparts in the 1990s. However, my research on the Chinese independent documentary scene in Beijing in 2009 showed me a picture of a burgeoning domestic industry for independent documentaries, with a handful of newly emerged multi-functional independent film organizations practicing production, distribution and exhibition. Since a real industry has not yet formed, I use “ecosystem” instead of “industry” in the context of Chinese independent documentary. This study compares three representative organizations which are different from each other in nature and emphases, from their birth and evolution to their work and strategies. I argue that these organizations have created new possibilities and opportunities for today’s Chinese independent documentaries, through their different strategies in balancing themselves in a three-legged system of the global, national and local forces and resources.
The eastern crescent and beyond : the current state of and potential for local food production and multifunctional agriculture in the Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown peri-urban fringe
(2022-05-06) Romero, Veronica Yanil; Lieberknecht, Katherine E.
By 2050, urban areas will house 68% of the total global population (United Nations, 2018). As these areas expand, agricultural lands are lost to development. In the United States, the bulk of this agricultural land is located in the peri-urban fringe – a distinct area that exists between urban and rural areas and is characterized by prime agricultural soils and local production of fruits and vegetables (Optiz et al. 2015; Brinkley, 2012). When compared to other states, Texas’ peri-urban agricultural lands were found to be the most susceptible to land use conversion. However, a policy response to combat agricultural land loss is nearly non-existent (Freedgood et al., 2020). The loss of agricultural land is indicative of declining local food systems and food production. In addition to loss of agricultural land, local food production suffers from diminishing economic viability. Multifunctional agriculture is often recommended as a strategy for farm viability (Meert et al., 2005). Multifunctional agricultural encourages farms and ranches to diversify operations by providing diverse goods, services and experiences, such as educational workshops, farm-to-table eateries, composting, venue space, and more, in addition to food production (Zasada, 2011), This report aims to understand the state of and potential for local food production and multifunctional agriculture in the eastern peri-urban fringe of the Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown metropolitan area. This aim is fulfilled by employing three methods: 1) a quantitative assessment to determine the potential amount of fruits and vegetables which could be produced in the site, 2) a review of local government land use planning and policies, and 3) a multi-criteria analysis to identify suitable land for food production. The study area includes four counties and eleven municipalities in the eastern peri-urban fringe of the Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown metropolitan area in Central Texas. Findings indicate that although the study area can potentially support the estimated annual fruits and vegetables demand of residents within and nearby for the next two decades and that there is a cluster of large parcels suitable for food production, current local government land use planning and policies do not seem to support the local food system