Schools and the formation of Black identity during the Civil Rights Movement: Change and resistance in Holly Springs, Mississippi, 1964--1974

Desegregation of social and public spaces was the most visible result of the Civil Rights Movement. After 1960, the integration of schools in Mississippi became a source of conflict. The social change of Civil Rights attacked the social order of White Resistance that supported the state superstructure. The public schools were a place for the discovery of identity for Blacks. The integrated on of the schools caused many Whites to leave rather than be integrated with Blacks. Desegregation of schools was also a slow process because the local and state government could not enforce the decisions of the US Courts, leading Blacks to realize their place in American society could only be secured through individual action. ^ This work explains the role of schooling during the integration of the Holly Springs Separate School System. The process of forging a new identity by local Blacks is examined against the forces of social change and resistance. I addition, this work examines the perils for the Blacks as they faced the uncertainty of change in the crucial Civil Rights years between 1964 and 1974. ^ This work analyzes how the Black community dealt with the problems triggered by the desegregation of the school system in Holly Springs, of a constructed social condition, a psychological state of being, the realities of racism and segregation, and the change and resistance between the individual and the collective. It is based on six months of field work investigation. Although the schools were a crucial aspect of community life for Blacks and Whites, Blacks did form their identity in them. Other institutions, such churches were more crucial. Second, the aspect of politeness and belief in law made the experience in Holly Springs unique to that place, and thus, warrants further study to determine its place within the Civil Rights Movement. Finally, while the political and economic control of Holly Springs remained with Whites, desegregation led to the resegregation of the public schools: as Whites left to private schools. ^

A youth vision of the city: The socio-spatial lives and exclusion of street girls in Bogota, Colombia

This dissertation documents the everyday lives and spaces of a population of youth typically constructed as out of place, and the broader urban context in which they are rendered as such. Thirty-three female and transgender street youth participated in the development of this youth-based participatory action research (YPAR) project utilizing geo-ethnographic methods, auto-photography, and archival research throughout a six-phase, eighteen-month research process in Bogotá, Colombia. ^ This dissertation details the participatory writing process that enabled the YPAR research team to destabilize dominant representations of both street girls and urban space and the participatory mapping process that enabled the development of a youth vision of the city through cartographic images. The maps display individual and aggregate spatial data indicating trends within and making comparisons between three subgroups of the research population according to nine spatial variables. These spatial data, coupled with photographic and ethnographic data, substantiate that street girls’ mobilities and activity spaces intersect with and are altered by state-sponsored urban renewal projects and paramilitary-led social cleansing killings, both efforts to clean up Bogotá by purging the city center of deviant populations and places. ^ Advancing an ethical approach to conducting research with excluded populations, this dissertation argues for the enactment of critical field praxis and care ethics within a YPAR framework to incorporate young people as principal research actors rather than merely voices represented in adultist academic discourse. Interjection of considerations of space, gender, and participation into the study of street youth produce new ways of envisioning the city and the role of young people in research. Instead of seeing the city from a panoptic view, Bogotá is revealed through the eyes of street youth who participated in the construction and feminist visualization of a new cartography and counter-map of the city grounded in embodied, situated praxis. This dissertation presents a socially responsible approach to conducting action-research with high-risk youth by documenting how street girls reclaim their right to the city on paper and in practice; through maps of their everyday exclusion in Bogotá followed by activism to fight against it.^

Essays on city size distribution and real estate bubbles

This is a dissertation about urban systems; within this broad subject I tackle three issues, one that focuses on an observed inter-city relationship and two that focus on an intra-city phenomenon. In Chapter II I adapt a model of random emergence of economic opportunities from the firm growth literature to the urban dynamics situation and present several predictions for urban system dynamics. One of these predictions is that the older the city the larger and more diversified it is going to be on average, which I proceed to verify empirically using two distinct datasets. In Chapter III I analyze the Residential Real Estate Bubble that took place in Miami-Dade County from 1999 to 2006. I adopt a Spatial-Economic model developed for the Paris Bubble episode of 1984–1993 and formulate an innovative test of the results in terms of speculative intensity on the basis of proxies of investor activity available in my dataset. My results support the idea that the best or more expensive areas are also where the greatest speculative activity takes place and where the rapid increase in prices begins. The most significant departure from previous studies that emerges in my results is the absence of a wider gap between high priced areas and low priced areas in the peak year. I develop a measure of dispersion in value among areas and contrast the Miami-Dade and Paris episodes. In Chapter IV I analyze the impact on tax equity of a Florida tax-limiting legislation known as Save Our Homes. I first compare homesteaded and non-homesteaded properties, and second, look within the subset of homesteaded properties. I find that non-homesteaded properties increase their share of taxes paid relative to homesteaded properties during an up market, but that this is reversed during a down market. For the subset of homesteaded properties I find that the impact on tax equity of SOH will depend on differential growth rates among higher and lower valued homes, but during times of rapid home price appreciation, in a scenario of no differential growth rates in property values, SOH increases progressivity relative to the prior system.

Best Management Practices in Green Lodging Defined and Explained

Best management practices in green lodging are sustainable or “green” business strategies designed to enhance the lodging product from the perspective of owners, operators and guests. For guests, these practices should enhance their experience while for owners and operators, generate positive returns on investments. Best management practices in green lodging typically starts with a clear understanding of each lodging firm’s role in society, its impact on the environment and strategies developed to mitigate negative environmental externalities generated from the production of lodging goods and services. Negative externalities of hotel operations manifest themselves in energy and water usage, waste generation and air pollution. Hence, best management practices in green lodging are dynamic, cost effective, innovative, stakeholder driven and environmentally sound technical and behavioral solutions that attempt to ameliorate or eliminate the negative environmental externalities associated with lodging operations, while simultaneously generate positive returns on green investments. Thus, best management practices in green lodging should reduce lodging firms’ operating costs, increase guest satisfaction, reduce or eliminate the negative environmental impacts associated with hotel operations while simultaneously enhance business operations.

Climate Change and the Color Line

Climate change is estimated to be responsible for 400,000 deaths per year, mostly because of hunger and communicable diseases affecting children in the Global South. Using the sociology of W.E.B. Du Bois, I attempt to demonstrate how and why climate change occurs along the color line. I conclude by arguing why it is important to think about climate change as a human rights issue.

Putting the Green in Bureaucracy: Practices of Quantification and Valuation in Environmental Regulation

While researchers have devoted considerable attention to exploring the ways that intentional environmental reregulation creates new avenues for capital accumulation (e.g. Smith, 2007; Castree, 2008), it remains somewhat unclear how the less grandiose day-to-day work of environmental regulators may also help create new sources of ecological value. Through an ethnographic study of environmental regulators tasked with enforcing key environmental laws, I shed light on the subtle ways that rule interpretation and scientific practice structure the frames, models, and methodologies regulators use to enact “best professional judgments” about ecological systems, and ultimately to assign particular values to nature. I also show the ways that non-human nature pushes back against such assessments, which in combination with the interpretive work of environmental regulation, opens spaces of conflict in at least two arenas: one focused on modes of quantification, where actors contend between economistic, ecological, statutory, and moral frames for making value assessments; and one focused on presentations of value, where actors contend between value assessments that best represent their self-defined interests. The ‘value settlements’ environmental regulators reach in these contested spaces allow processes of commensuration to proceed, and ultimately make nature legible for capitalization and exchange. Accounting for the ways that these basic regulatory practice help create ecological value is essential for creating a fuller picture of the ways capital and natural capital relate.

Use of Homeostatic Model Assessment Indexes for the Identification of Metabolic Syndrome and Insulin Resistance among Cuban-Americans: A Cross Sectional Study

Aim: to determine cut off points for The Homeostatic Model Assessment Index 1 and 2 (HOMA-1 and HOMA-2) for identifying insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome among a Cuban-American population. Study Design: Cross sectional. Place and Duration of Study: Florida International University, Robert Stempel School of Public Health and Social Work, Department of Dietetics and Nutrition, Miami, FL from July 2010 to December 2011. Methodology: Subjects without diabetes residing in South Florida were enrolled (N=146, aged 37 to 83 years). The HOMA1-IR and HOMA2-IR 90th percentile in the healthy group (n=75) was used as the cut-off point for insulin resistance. A ROC curve was constructed to determine the cut-off point for metabolic syndrome. Results: HOMA1-IR was associated with BMI, central obesity, and triglycerides (P3.95 and >2.20 and for metabolic syndrome were >2.98 (63.4% sensitivity and 73.3% specificity) and >1.55 (60.6% sensitivity and 66.7% specificity), respectively. Conclusion: HOMA cut-off points may be used as a screening tool to identify insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome among Cuban-Americans living in South Florida.

Spatial Articulations of Race, Desire, and Belonging in Western North Carolina

The sociocultural mythology of the South homogenizes it as a site of abjection. To counter the regionalist discourse, the dissertation intersects queer sexualities with gender and race and focuses on exploring identity and spatial formation among Black lesbian and queer women. The dissertation seeks to challenge the monolith of the South and place the region into multiple contexts and to map Black geographies through an intentional intersectional account of Black queer women. The dissertation utilizes qualitative research methods to ascertain understandings of lived experiences in the production of space. The dissertation argues that an idea of Progress has been indoctrinated as a synonym for the lgbtq civil rights movement and subsequently provides an analysis of progress discourses and queer sexualities and political campaigns of equality in the South. Analyses revealed different ways to situate progress utilizing the public contributions of three Black women interviewed for the dissertation. Moreover, the dissertation utilizes six Black queer and lesbian women to explain the multifarious nature of identities and their construction in place. Black queer and lesbian women produce spaces that deconstruct the normativity of stasis and physicality, and the dissertation explores the consequential realities of being a body in space. These consequences are particularly highlighted in the dissertation by discussions of the processes of racialization in the bounded and unbounded senses of space and place and the impacts of religious institutions, specifically Christianity. The dissertation concluded that no space is without complication. Other considerations should be made in the advancement of alleviating oppression deeply embedded in United States landscapes. Black women’s geographies offer epistemological and ontological renderings that enrich analyses of space, place, and landscape. The dissertation also concludes that Black women’s bodies represent sites for the production of geographic knowledge through narrating their spaces of material trajectories of interlocking, multiscalar lives.