How Locally Designed Access and Use Controls Can Prevent the Tragedy of the Commons in a Mexican Small-Scale Fishing Community

The Seri people, a self-governed community of small-scale fishermen in the Gulf of California, Mexico, have ownership rights to fishing grounds where they harvest highly valuable commercial species of bivalves. Outsiders are eager to gain access, and the community has devised a set of rules to allow them in. Because Seri government officials keep all the economic benefits generated from granting this access for themselves, community members create alternative entry mechanisms to divert those benefits to themselves. Under Hardin’s model of the tragedy of the commons, this situation would eventually lead to the overexploitation of the fishery. The Seri people, however, are able to simultaneously maintain access and use controls for the continuing sustainability of their fishing grounds. Using insights from common- pool resources theory, I discuss how Seri community characteristics help mediate the conflict between collective action dilemmas and access and use controls.

Optimizing the Correction of Memory Errors

People are always at risk of making errors when they attempt to retrieve information from memory. An important question is how to create the optimal learning conditions so that, over time, the correct information is learned and the number of mistakes declines. Feedback is a powerful tool, both for reinforcing new learning and correcting memory errors. In 5 experiments, I sought to understand the best procedures for administering feedback during learning. First, I evaluated the popular recommendation that feedback is most effective when given immediately, and I showed that this recommendation does not always hold when correcting errors made with educational materials in the classroom. Second, I asked whether immediate feedback is more effective in a particular case—when correcting false memories, or strongly-held errors that may be difficult to notice even when the learner is confronted with the feedback message. Third, I examined whether varying levels of learner motivation might help to explain cross-experimental variability in feedback timing effects: Are unmotivated learners less likely to benefit from corrective feedback, especially when it is administered at a delay? Overall, the results revealed that there is no best “one-size-fits-all” recommendation for administering feedback; the optimal procedure depends on various characteristics of learners and their errors. As a package, the data are consistent with the spacing hypothesis of feedback timing, although this theoretical account does not successfully explain all of the data in the larger literature.

A REPRESENTATIVE OUTSIDER AND THE INCLUSION OF THE OUTSIDER IN ACTS 8:26-40

In Luke’s two volumes, Luke is not interested only in Gentiles and those with high social status but also in the marginalized and those who are outsiders. This dissertation seeks to read Luke’s concern for outsiders and the theme of the inclusion of outsiders in the new kingdom of God in Luke’s narrative of the Ethiopian eunuch’s conversion in Acts 8:26-40. This paper examines the Ethiopian eunuch’s complex identity from the perspectives of the Greco-Roman world, Old Testament (LXX) allusions to the Elijah-Elisha narratives, and Luke’s interpretation of the Isaianic quotation of the Suffering Servant in Acts 8:32-33 (cf. Isaiah 53:7-8). This study pays close attention to the correlations between the theme of outsiders and three key characters in Acts 8:26-40: the Ethiopian eunuch, Philip, and the Suffering Servant. First, Luke depicts the Ethiopian eunuch as the consummate outsider—geographically, morally, socially, ethnically, and in terms of gender—and indicates that the eunuch represents other marginalized outsiders. The eunuch shows no one can prevent outsiders like him from inclusion in the kingdom of God. Second, Luke portrays Philip as a prophet, specifically a prophet like Elijah and Elisha. Philip emulates Elijah and Elisha by reaching out to the outsider (in this instance, the Ethiopian eunuch). Third, Luke presents the Isaianic Suffering Servant as a religious and social outsider and identifies the character with Jesus and the Ethiopian eunuch. The indescribable descendants of the Suffering Servant signify a universally inclusive messianic community and fulfill the outsiders’ inclusion within the people of God as Isaiah prophesied (Isaiah 56:3-8). This thesis finally suggests ways to read the story of the Ethiopian eunuch today and concludes that it is imperative to include those outsiders among us within the community of Jesus’s followers.