Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 1999. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 218-226).

Not available / text

The primary aims of this study were to: 1.) determine the conditions which are optimal or detrimental for microbreweries to exist, and 2.) analyze and evaluate the specific beneficial impacts microbreweries have on communities and neighborhoods. Microbreweries and neighborhood taverns play a social, psychological, cultural, and economic role in our local communities which is largely under overlooked. This role is suggested to be in accordance with a movement toward an increasing appreciation for local called “neolocalism.” Using a case study approach, demographic and economic characteristics were analyzed of several neighborhoods in major cities (Chicago, Portland, San Francisco, and Milwaukee) which revealed higher densities, greater percentage of 25 to 34 year olds (the “creative class” according to Richard Florida), and higher rates of education attainment were most pervasive in neighborhoods which supported microbreweries. Interviews of microbrewery owners and patrons revealed microbreweries foster a sense of community, have a higher level of responsibility to the community, and function as social and cultural anchors of the community. However, microbreweries today face a series of zoning, land use, and licensing hurdles which this study argues are endemic to attitudes toward land use planning and alcohol consumption which are antiquated. / Department of Urban Planning

This thesis is an ethnographic analysis of a Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) in the American Midwest. I examine salient aspects of American culture, and how persons in the American Midwest understand relationships and themselves in the context of eldercare, and particularly, how issues of personhood and kinship are conceptualised in a long-term care facility. Rather than focusing exclusively on just the labour of caregivers, or how the residents in the CCRC receive care, my study is grounded in the interaction and relations that obtain during specific regimes of caregiving. Because the exigencies of ageing are met with certain exigencies of care, this study touches upon three dominant themes that make sense of the tensions that emerge when principles and practices do not square up. The first theme deals with how ageing and care are constituted, and made relational to one other. Secondly, I demonstrate that in the CCRC where I conducted fieldwork, ageing is constructed as a process and institutionalised, resulting in a distinctive way in which space and time are dealt with and unravelled from their inextricability. The resulting consequences affect not just the older residents and the CCRC staff, but also impacts how caregiving takes on specific forms and meanings. Thirdly, I investigate how formal (professional) caregivers and care receivers produce a type of social relation, which cannot be understood alone by conventional studies of kinship and economic relations. Ultimately, this thesis sets the frame for future debate on the ontological commitments involved in eldercare, and how the segregation of care and of the elderly in society relate to wider social norms regarding ageing and marginality.