Sociology Theses and Dissertations
https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/3074
2024-03-29T07:43:49ZRuling Class Governance: Capitalist Class Political Blocs, Labor, and PAC Co-donation Networks, U.S. House of Representatives, 1990–2018
https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/29294
Ruling Class Governance: Capitalist Class Political Blocs, Labor, and PAC Co-donation Networks, U.S. House of Representatives, 1990–2018
Labuza, Andrew
Most contemporary political theories argue that the state is autonomous from the hegemony of the capitalist class. This project tackles the question of the relative autonomy of the state through a novel approach of converting political action committee (PAC) data into a co-donation network and applying community detection algorithms to identify class based collective political action. The project finds that PACs tend to cluster according to economic interests as defined by their location in the network of production. Such an approach identifies campaign contributions as a ‘mechanism of relative autonomy’ and enables researchers to take snap shots of the horizontal and vertical class struggle. The results reject political theories organized around state autonomy in favor of Marx and Engels’ historical materialism and political theories advocating for the relative autonomy of the state.
2024-03-25T00:00:00Z"Living Symbols of the Historic and Pioneer Spirit of the West": Impacts of Settler Colonial Logics on the Management of Range Equines in the United States
https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/29243
"Living Symbols of the Historic and Pioneer Spirit of the West": Impacts of Settler Colonial Logics on the Management of Range Equines in the United States
De'Arman, Kindra
Legally required federal management of horse and burro (donkey) populations on the American West rangelands has proven to be a challenge for the United States government. Federal management has resulted in more than desired population numbers, environmental impacts, legal contestation, and unsustainable operating costs. Ultimately, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the agency tasked with overseeing most herds through their Wild Horse and Burro (WHB) Program, is tasked with “maintaining healthy horses on healthy rangelands”. However, for many of their herd management areas, they have been unable to achieve these goals. As horses and burros are socially imbued with different cultural meanings, there are many factors that constrain or enable different social and managerial approaches to addressing concerns about horse and burro overpopulation. In this dissertation, I provide one way to think about federal lands management challenge by orienting within the social history and context of settler colonialism. The analyses reported in this dissertation come from a portion of a larger BLM-approved empirical research project focused on WHB Program decision-making more broadly. Over the course of 22-months, I engaged in interviews, field observations, and textual analyses as part of an institutional ethnography on WHB program decision-making. This dissertation shows that settler colonialism is ongoing and structured into the BLM’s WHB Program through organizational, political, and legal mechanisms. These mechanisms were developed long before current WHB Program personnel and largely exist outside of their decision-making discretion. Through this dissertation I problematize the settler colonial context as that which has informed environmental, cultural, and structural contexts for which people are concerned.
2024-01-10T00:00:00ZHow Can Low-Carbon Energy Dematerialize the Economy? Technological Transitions and the Political Economy of Electricity Generation
https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/29112
How Can Low-Carbon Energy Dematerialize the Economy? Technological Transitions and the Political Economy of Electricity Generation
Sikirica, Amanda
This dissertation addresses features of the displacement paradox in the context of electricity generation, both at the cross-national level and within one region of the United States. The displacement paradox is the empirical phenomenon of substitutes to a specific product, here fuels used to generate electricity, do not necessarily replace incumbent products in a 1:1 ratio thus increasing total resource consumption, and in some examples are observed to increase consumption of the incumbent product. Chapter 1 describes how the displacement of fossil fuels with non-fossil fuels varies based on a nation’s social structural position within the global capitalist world-system. I find that semiperiphery nations have higher predicted displacement of fossil fuels, possibly due to the dynamics of domestic elites. Chapter 2 asks how multiple dimensions of domestic inequality (gender inequality, economic inequality, and colonial history) may create landscapes of inequality on which nations are or will attempt to move away from fossil fuels. I find that much of the variation in national-level displacement of fossil fuels with alternatives can be attributed to the additive effects of each dimension of inequality, though there is some portion of variation which can be attributed to multiplicative effects. Chapter 3 traces the development of hydroelectricity in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, and subsequent growth of the region’s consumption of fossil fuels. This history illustrates an example of the displacement paradox, whereby the growth of an alternative fuel (hydroelectricity) contributed to the growth of fossil fuels in the region. This chapter points out the role of institutional continuance, grid management, and neoliberalization of the electricity industry in the growing reliance of the region on fossil fuels. In total, this dissertation demonstrates the roots of the displacement paradox in social organization and the distribution of social power as mediated by capitalist production.
2024-01-09T00:00:00ZKinship and Class: A Study of the Weyerhaeuser Family
https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/28540
Kinship and Class: A Study of the Weyerhaeuser Family
Dunn, Marvin Glenn
This study is an attempt to increase our understanding of the class
structure and political economy of the United States, through a detailed
examination of one extended family of great wealth. Focusing on a single
case, the study analyzes the multigenerational and inter-institutional
linkages of this kinship group. Through use of a genealogy, kinship
ties are traced through five generations. The genealogy also provides a
medium for identifying the family's links to corporations, foundations,
political processes, and institutions of the upper class. By demonstrating
how one wealthy family coordinates its activities for the purpose of
maintaining its social and economic position in society, this study
suggests that other upper class families may operate in a similar manner.
The study will show how the family, through a variety of institutions,
coordinates its activities. The Family Office, the annual Family Meeting,
various foundations, and several holding companies are examined as mechanisms
of internal cohesiveness and of external control over other institutions.
The potential for external control and influence also extends
itself to several large corporations, to trade associations, the candidate
selection process, churches, and schools.
381 pages
1977-03-01T00:00:00Z