Thesis (Ph. D.)--Dept. of History and School of Education. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 1998. / "A dissertation in history and education." Advisor: Lawrence H. Larson. Typescript. Vita. Title from "catalog record" of the print edition Description based on contents viewed Nov. 13, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 238-254). Online version of the print edition.

In recent years, historians have attempted to reassess the image of sectarian Ireland by offering an ethnically and religiously complex narrative of social intersection. Due to the changing intellectual and political climate in Ireland, archaeologists and historians can now begin revaluating the myths of the conquered and conqueror. As settlers poured into the Irish landscape to carry out the English government’s plantation schemes, they brought traditions and goods from home, and attempted to incorporate these into their lives abroad. Woodland clearance supplied timber and destroyed the wood kerne-infested fastness, and new houses erected on plantation settlements rattled a landscape still speckled with the wattle huts of its native inhabitants. Using the 1641 Depositions as the core of this dissertation, this research endeavours to contextualise evidence of material culture embedded within the written testimonies, beginning with the private world of the home and ending with the public devotional space of the church. Evidence found in the depositions will be placed alongside archaeological evidence, cartography, a small collection of wills and inventories, and seventeenth-century trade records. This thesis investigates the extent in which the English and Irish communities were at conflict in a material way: in their homes, local economy, clothing, household goods and religion.

This dissertation has two results. First, I argue that each of the two basic components of technological determinism (TD)—what I call the inexorability thesis and the autonomy thesis—are plausible claims on a naturalistic stance. Second, I argue that a normative model for the design of cognitive systems can guide the practice of cognitive engineering, e.g. the task of building cognitive aids and enhancements. TD conjoins two logically independent but empirically related claims. The inexorability thesis is the claim that technology change is an evolutionary process. I defend this claim against considerations raised by Lewens, most notably the lack of a robust account of artifact reproduction that would underwrite genuine transmission. I consider (but reject) the solution of memeticists to this problem. I find that theorists of cultural evolution, e.g. Boyd and Richerson (among others), do present a plausible response. Technologies can be said to evolve via the cumulative selective process of cultural retention. The autonomy thesis is the claim that features of human cognitive agency arise from material culture. I argue for this thesis through a consideration of the merits of Preston’s theory of material culture. Her sociogeneric approach attributes human cognitive agency to a material cultural genesis, and this approach is backed by strong anthropological evidence. Preston would not accept the thesis but she does not manage to exclude it, despite an admirable attempt to develop an account of innovation. I also consider the design of technologies in the practice of cognitive engineering and propose adopting a normative theory of factitious intellectual virtue as a model to guide design in this arena.

This thesis is a northern response to the dwelling culture and housing shortage of the Cree community in Moosonee, Ontario, located on the Western James Bay. The program of this thesis centres on housing, shared workshop space, and a public room, all designed specifically for those with the greatest need, multi-generational families, the elderly, and single parents with children. By anchoring the project with the premise of home as a zero point, a necessary place of beginning, I examined the typology of the house and its ability to respond to both landscape and culture. The housing responds to existing patterns in material culture, social structure, and ways of experiencing the land. Through this project I have investigated the myriad ways in which architecture can act as a cultural tool that reaffirms a sense of place and responds to living patterns and the northern climate.

'Home' in a country with a notorious history of division becomes both a material and symbolic handle for belonging. The thesis looks at the nature of home making and home building as it is subjected to conflicts of tradition and domestic design organisation. The material objects together with the physical as well as the psychological spaces of home in South Africa exemplify the struggle with the ironies of a nascent modern era. / The thesis addresses the combination of home and modernity in a place and at a time when the one seemed to cancel the other. The role of authorities and missionaries in determining what home was to particularly categorised people and also what modernity should represent contributes to the subtle formulations of meaning in the narrative of this thesis. South African design and material culture precedes a discussion of land as home and visual culture's expression of this. This expression is seen in the monumentalising of struggles for a home country and more specifically a homeland. Some of these visual expressions are in the form of architecture and some as sculpture, painting or drawing. The visual art of the time informs and comments upon the notion of home as a place of belonging, longing or a place that is lost. A subtle reading of this ostensibly modern art is that it is strangely disengaged from its subject matter. Notions of white supremacy in line with a romantic nationalism based on theocratic beliefs in the 'promised land' are addressed in relation to these and other visual documents of the time. / Domestic design advice and advertising for the home provides insight into the home as an ideal as well as the home as an example of ostensible modernity. Issues such as fashion, taste, relevant theories of consumption together with the constant denial of African consumption form the background to the chapter's arguments on white South African middle class consumer reticence. The printed face of South Africa's supposed domestic modernity in the advertisements and decorating columns is balanced by a discussion of deeper psychological and emotional interiorities, these are evidenced in biographies, letters, oral family histories and historical novels. The possible meaning of home is also viewed through the lens of historical documentation, which shows the role of authorities and missionaries as partial players in the construction of modern domesticities. The notion of domesticity and its association with western progress or civilisation is shown to be filled with anxieties relating to hygiene and order. / Thesis (PhDArchitectureandDesign)--University of South Australia, 2005.

Thesis (Ph.D.) in History--University of Maine, 2007. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-173).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Central Florida, 2008. / Adviser: Elayne Zorn. Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-113).

Thesis (M.A. in anthropology)--Washington State University, December 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 127-135).

No description available.

Many ethnographic accounts within the annals of anthropological literature describe the religious beliefs and magical rituals of peoples throughout the world. Fewer scholars have focused on the relatively young Neo-Pagan religious movement. "Neo-Pagan," explains Helen Berger in Voices from the Pagan Census (2003), "is an umbrella term covering sects of a new religious movement, the largest and most important form of which is…Wicca" (Berger et al. 2003: 1). This thesis examines the relationship between practice and ideology by analyzing the material culture of Wiccan altars as used by Wiccans in Central Florida, USA. Particular attention is paid to beliefs concerning concepts of gender associated with ritual objects, and concepts of gender and sexuality as understood by practitioners. Many Wiccans see divinity as manifested in two complementary beings: the Goddess and the God. The fertility that these divine beings achieve through sexual union is the subject of an elaborate ritual called the Great Rite. A pair of Wiccans, often a masculine High Priest and a feminine High Priestess, conduct this ritual by manipulating specific objects, which are believed to be strongly gendered. I argue that Wiccan rituals reflect, construct, and reinforce the Wiccan precept of a gender-balanced cosmos through the interaction of these primary ritual actors and the gendered objects they manipulate. As a practicing Wiccan, my theoretical approach is aligned with that of the native scholar. The native scholar faces challenges distancing her or himself from research, but gains opportunities from insider knowledge. Wiccan ideology stands in contrast to heteronormative conventions of gender and sexuality. However, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Wiccans may need to actively negotiate for representation in this movement, where fertility is stressed. Wiccans continuously reinvent established practices in an attempt to create a more satisfying religious community.