During the decade preceding the height of the civil rights movement, a small population of Hondurans established residence in the New Orleans area. This Honduran migration was largely due to the trade relationship that existed between Honduras and New Orleans. Honduras was also experiencing political unrest and economic instability due to military coups, fruit company strikes and floods during the late 1950s. In response, the advent of the 1960s brought with it the first wave of Hondurans. According to the 2000 Census there were 64,340 people of Hispanic origin in the four parishes included in the New Orleans metropolitan area, of which 24% were Honduran (United States Census 2000). This first wave of immigrants settled into the lower Garden District of Orleans Parish, allowing them to be centrally located with access to both the bus and streetcar route into the central business district. As the population grew and the community prospered, an out-migration to the suburbs occurred establishing a stronger and more permanent presence. In order to gain a better understanding of this Honduran community, its identity and the way in which it establishes place and represents itself, I chose to construct two life histories that I believe offer a glimpse of the Honduran experience. One is of Pilar* who migrated in the late 1950s when she was just five years old. The other is of Mando who migrated as a twenty-six year old bachelor prepared to take on the world. They both engage in symbolic practices shared across New Orleans. These practices help define who they are as individuals and also play a part in creating a Honduran history within a New Orleans context.

This qualitative study focuses on a planning process in Baton Rouge, Louisiana called Plan Baton Rouge, which began in the summer of 1998 and continues through the present. The overriding goal of the Plan Baton Rouge process is to revitalize downtown Baton Rouge and promote economic and cultural vitality while implementing the design practices of New Urbanism. New Urbanism is a design methodology that condemns suburban sprawl while promoting denser, early-twentieth-century-style townscapes and urban centers, focusing on mixed land use, pedestrianism, and aesthetic and architectural continuity. Through participant observation, this ethnographic account of New Urbanism in practice provides an in-depth case-study of how New Urbanism, a far-reaching international planning paradigm, works in a specially local context. Throughout the Plan Baton Rouge process, public participation was solicited through a charrette town-planning format. I argue that Baton Rouge is promoted in a particular way, creating a seemingly interactive dialogue between charismatic leader, local planners, politicians, and participants. Specifically, a powerful learning discourse is strategically implemented in the planning document as well as the public meetings to create an experience perceived as innovative and inherently progressive. But New Urbanism isnt always about looking forward. As New Urbanists draw directly from design elements of the past, they also depend upon solicited public local memories during the planning process to strengthen their use of neotraditional design. Through the use of memories and photographs, the way things use to be becomes a powerful and evocative selling tool in engaging both local planners and community participants. However, while it is certainly a powerful promotion tool, this nostalgic sentiment may not be a positive and productive force in the revitalization process as it depends upon highly selective, romanticized notions that may obfuscate the more complicated issues of creating a diverse and vibrant urban community.

Throughout the twentieth century difficult economic circumstances have resulted in reduced employment opportunities. In-migrants have long borne the brunt of these limitations, facing open hostilities from residents who felt that these "outsiders" were undeserving of employment and social services. Within the context of the 1930s Depression in the Central Valley of California, such negative public sentiment was often directed at "Okies," the 315,000 former residents of the "Western South" who crossed the California state line in search of employment in the agricultural fields of the Golden State. In this dissertation, I examine the changing conceptualizations of Okie identity throughout the twentieth century in California's Central Valley. In the early years after their arrival to the "Golden State," Okies found themselves the subject a public discourse that classified them as socio-spatial transgressors, unfit for inclusion in California society. Denied by social and economic means from easily participating in this discourse, Okies turned to their own venues or expressing their own public identity. Okie migrant constructions of their own public identity developed in direct response to the labels bestowed upon them by Californians. While Californians drew boundaries of exclusion along state lines, Okies turned to notions of inclusion based upon their American heritage. With the rise of World War II and a rebounding economy, Okies faded from public discourse for several decades. With their socio-economic rise, though, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Okies once again rose to public attention as they sought to reassert their own unique identity. Now a socially, economically, and politically dominant group in California's Central Valley, Okies have gained their own voice and begun to re-establish their own unique public identity. Importantly, however, like the Okie identity of the 1930s, Okies today continue to draw upon the past, but this time that past is 1930s California. Okie identity is culled from a social memory of the migrant experience and has come to represent the diversity of contemporary California identity. Without California, Okie identity would not exist. But without "Okies," contemporary California identity would not exist as it does today.

Today, computer technology is producing new methods of investigation into the complex nature of serial killers; among these are geographic profiles. Yet, due to the lack of proven success, budgetary constraints, and the inherent multifaceted nature of serial murder, these geographic profiles have not been completely embraced by the law enforcement community. Because of this, the academic and law enforcement communities continue to refine and develop new methods to solve serial killer cases. This thesis investigates the possibility of identifying the location of the interaction site of a serial killer and his victims using a commercial geographic information system (GIS) as the primary tool. This will be accomplished by analyzing the daily activities of three hypothetical victims of serial murder. A comparison of survey results from the hypothetical victims of this study and their associates shows evidence that victim activity areas can contribute to serial killer investigations. This new method demonstrates that, instead of costly spatial analysis software used today in geographic profiling, geographic information pertinent to a serial killer investigation can be disclosed using a commercial GIS. The addition of a geographic method that adds the component of time and focuses on the daily routine of the victim will complement existing profile methods and provide investigators with a new tool in understanding serial killer phenomena. A law enforcement perspective of this method and GIS is also presented.

This thesis takes a close look at the lived world of Jamaican Rastafarians through the lens of food-related practices and preferences, working to define the group's characteristic strategies for maintaining wellness and illuminating their tastes and sensibilities. It strives to evoke a sensorial and discursive awareness of the activities through which Rastafarians nourish and heal their physical and social bodies, by focusing on ways in which they produce and use I-tal food-medicines. Rastafarian taste for I-tal has developed alongside collective engagement with the valorization and revitalization of traditional knowledge about health and land use. In addition to providing sites for bodily nourishment, food-related practices have become historically, politically, and culturally significant "ways of operating" (de Certeau 1984:xiv) in the Rastafarian lived world. First historicizing the emergence of the taste for I-tal and discussing how this preference has become embedded in Rastafarian ideology and ecology, I then demonstrate how and why Rastafarians objectify and manifest this taste in dietary norms, in culinary preparation and arrangement of kitchen spaces, and in medicine production and therapy. My goals are threefold: to illuminate the Rastafarian taste for I-tal and sensibility for natural living; to evoke a sensorial and discursive awareness of the everyday practices and strategies Rastafarians use in building, cleansing, and encouraging bodily growth; also, to show how and why my Rastafarian informants, in particular, struggle to maintain control over commoditization of I-tal products and related cooking-healing practices.

The Grateful Dead hold a unique niche in the musical, social, and cultural history of the United States. However, while the volume of available academic literature concerning the band is increasing, the Grateful Dead remain to be nearly ignored by academia and, to this point apparently, completely ignored by cultural geographers. This paper introduces the Grateful Dead into the field of geography. I analyze the geography of certain aspects of the band, such as its context in San Francisco, the carnival atmosphere of the entire phenomenon, the over 2300 tour dates, as well as the huge catalog of lyrics sung by the band throughout their thirty year career. I intend this thesis to serve as an introduction to geographic research of the Grateful Dead phenomenon as well as a basis for further geographic research of it, offering some ideas for further research in the final chapter.

This study seeks to apply the geological method of paleotempestology to reconstruct past hurricane activities for Central America and the Caribbean. Landfalling hurricanes may deposit distinct overwash sand layers in coastal lake sediments through storm surges and tidal overwash processes that can be dated to establish a chronology of past hurricane strikes. Proxy records from lake-sediment cores were taken for this study in the spring and summer of 2003 from Lake Sophie, Providenciales Island, Turks and Caicos, and from Laguna de Los Micos, Honduras. Loss-on-ignition analysis revealed many changes in the sediment stratigraphies for both sites that appear to represent overwash sand layers caused by past hurricane landfalls. The identification of the overwash sand layers through loss-on-ignition and grain size analyses and radiocarbon dating allowed for a preliminary estimation of return periods and annual landfall probabilities for the regions around Laguna de Los Micos and Lake Sophie. Four cores taken from Laguna de Los Micos, composed mostly of gyttja, contain two distinct sand layers deposited within 500 years of sediment. Radiocarbon dating indicates that the events occurred around AD 1660 and 1550, suggesting a return period of 250 years and an annual landfall probability of 0.4% for Laguna de Los Micos. The core from Lake Sophie is composed of marl and contains 8 distinctive layers of coarse calcareous sand that are interpreted to be hurricane overwash layers. Radiocarbon dating indicates the core to be around 4240 years old, suggesting a return period of 530 years and an annual landfall probability of 0.18% for Lake Sophie. The return periods and annual landfall probability estimates for these sites in Honduras and Turks and Caicos Islands were found to be comparable to those reported from the U.S. Gulf Coast. These results are the first proxy records of past hurricane strikes for Central America and the Caribbean region.

The post-1965 generation Korean immigrants in the U.S., who have left their country for betterment of their lives, find themselves unable to acculturate to the U.S. mainstream culture. Although legally Americans, these Koreans strive to hold onto their culture they brought with them. A group of Koreans who belong to this post-1965 immigrant generation in Baton Rouge established a church to share religious and cultural experience while speaking Korean language and sharing Korean food--The Korean Baptist Church of Baton Rouge. The members of the Korean Baptist Church of Baton Rouge ("the Church") create a familial community within Christian and Confucian ideology. Christianity guides the members' spiritual lives; Confucian codes dictate their social behavior. The roles and responsibilities the members carry out resemble that of a family structure prescribed by Confucian ideology, and biblical teachings and Protestant beliefs reinforce the maintenance of the Korean church community in Baton Rouge.

One of today's most fecund fields of research in medical geography involves using historical datasets from past epidemics and contemporary cadastre maps to plot the course of the contagion. The purpose is to study the spatial patterns of diseases that are rare or extinct today but still have large research value. The best example of this problem is smallpox. This project involves taking one of the most complete records of a smallpox epidemic, plotting the cases in a geographic information system (GIS), and exploring the spatial patterns using statistical software. As one of the most contagious and damaging diseases to infect humans, the World Health Organization mission to remove smallpox from the human world officially concluded in 1979 (Tucker 2001; Henderson 1978). However, with the advent of bioengineering and the more recent growth in bioterrorism-related research it has become vital for researchers to examine the behavior of smallpox in various human environments (Tucker 2001). Researchers have begun to mine antique records for well-documented epidemics (Mortimer 2003; Mortimer and McVail 2002; Williams 1994; Angulo, et al. 1980a, 1980b; Morrill and Angulo 1981, 1979; Thomas 1974). The historical record for this project is the report of a medical officer assigned by the British government to investigate and control an outbreak of smallpox in Sheffield, United Kingdom. This outbreak, which began in August 1887, expanded into an epidemic, killing 598 people. Dr. Frederick Barry, the medical officer, recorded the demographic information for all the victims. This data set, combined with Charles Goad Fire Insurance maps, was used to create a GIS and complete spatial analyses of the epidemic.

An ethnography of music, ritual, and festival in western Jamaica, this thesis reports on fieldwork performed in St. Elizabeth and St. James Parishes between June 2002 and January 2003. Featured field sites include rural dancehall events, Kumina performances, Accompong Town's Maroon Heritage Festival, and a Rastafarian music and nutrition festival called "The Supper of Rastafari." Building an account of these and other sites of cultural performance, this study focuses on social connections between groups of participants, traced through poetic, historical, and personal relationships among performers, especially across boundaries of ethnic, stylistic, or religious difference within Jamaica's national cultural identity.