The socio-spatial distribution of hazardous waste sites in the United States closely resembles the distribution of industry more generally. An understanding of these spatial patterns requires considering the positive and negative externalities of residence near noxious industrial locations and variations across social groups in the ability to externalize costs. In contrast to the central thesis of the environmental justice framework, there is no evidence of a widespread, inequitable distribution of hazardous waste sites that disproportionately burdens poor and minority neighborhoods. Tract level analysis of national data and data on large metropolitan areas for various types of industrial and environmentally sensitive land uses provides consistent evidence that hazardous waste sites are located in industrial areas. As a general trend, hazardous waste sites tend to be located in white, working class neighborhoods in which larger percentages of persons with lower skills and persons employed in industrial jobs and industries reside, and in which access to modes of mass transportation is readily available. Differences between Hispanics and blacks in the empirical findings in which Hispanics are disproportionately represented in tracts hosting certain types of hazardous waste sites, particularly in metropolitan settings, are attributed to their different migratory histories and experiences with residential segregation and labor market discrimination. The dense residential concentration of blacks in areas with little or diminishing economic activity and blacks' less successful competition with Hispanics over the shrinking base of manufacturing jobs are factors considered to contribute to the lower representation of blacks in noxious industrial locations. The more frequent incidence of Hispanic proximity to noxious industrial locations is described as being reflective of the greater integration of Hispanics in the industrial labor market. The heterogeneity of sites proved to be a salient factor with distributional effects across regions and across different racial and ethnic categories. Older abandoned sites were found in larger numbers in older Northern MSAs. Abandoned sites appeared to be more readily avoided by non-minority whites, particularly when these sites were not the only locations of industrial employment in the larger area.

This study examines how racial oppression is challenged and reconstituted through the narrative process of a mediation. Qualitative research methods are used to identify, describe and analyze themes in the mediation discourse and the narrative strategies employed by the participants, mediators, and coordinator in this case study. Each person in this multi-racial and multi-ethnic group is interviewed twice and their interpretations are used in both the data collection and data analysis phases. In this way, this research project responds to a gap in the literature by including the voices and insights of the mediation service providers and participants in the research process. The theoretical foundations of this study are based in several literatures: mediation scholarship, social justice literature, critical race theory, and narrative theory. The findings are analyzed using narrative theory and interrogated from a critical race perspective. They demonstrate that the use of narrative strategies based on the U.S. mediation field's core values of neutrality and symmetry result in the reconstitution of racial oppression in this mediation. The narrative analysis reveals that the story of the negative racialization of one of the participants is underconstructed and that the stories about rules told during the mediation are fully elaborated upon and serve as the basis for the agreement. The analysis from a critical race perspective offers that the colorblind grand narrative of rules in society provides cultural resonance for the stories of rules and for the narrative strategies based in neutrality and symmetry; however, not for the story of negative racialization. The cumulative effect is the domination by the rules stories of the story of negative racialization. This domination is only briefly challenged through several strategies periodically employed by a participant of color and a mediator of color. The results are that racial oppression is perpetuated both procedurally and substantively in this case. It is hoped that this study will stimulate further research on how racial oppression can manifest in mediation as well as encouraging the exploration of new strategies for narrative facilitation to prevent this from occurring.

This dissertation examines Soviet theoretical and methodological perspectives on ethnicity; the impact of political and economic policies on the study of ethnicity in the Soviet Union; and the impact of these policies on Soviet nationalities. In order to ground the theoretical discussions of ethnicity, I examine nationalities policy among two ethnic groups: the Chukchi and Asiatic Eskimo of the Soviet Far North. The degree to which these people have been able to retain "traditional" forms of their herding and hunting economies is seen, by both the state and the peoples themselves, as having a serious impact on the ability of groups to maintain their ethnic identity and cultural autonomy. In Soviet research and politics there is no doubt that ethnicity is a very real force which can have a dramatic impact on economic, political, and cultural processes, and as such is not a concept to be dealt with only in theoretical discussions, but through practical policies applied to daily life as well. Marxist-Leninist theory has provided a common framework for both the state and ethnography. The role of ethnographers has been to strengthen Marxist-Leninist theory in these areas where it is most deficient and to aid in the implementation of policy by providing information and an understanding of the peoples and cultures to which policy is directed in the Soviet Union. While development policies have varied to take into account the wide range of social and economic conditions of the minorities, all peoples and cultures have eventually been fit into the bureaucratic structure of the Soviet state. The problem of ethnicity will be examined in this dissertation at two levels. The first level is that of theory, and looks at how the Soviets approach ethnicity as a field of study, and how it fits into their world-view. The second level is that of how nationalities policies, which attempt to integrate Marxist-Leninist theory with the realities of social, economic and political life in the multinational Soviet Union, have been implemented in the Soviet Far North.

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