This study tests the relationship between certain economic scenarios and the state of the economy in regard to inflation and recession. Using data gathered from government publications, the economy was divided into periods of inflation, recession, and recession recovery. These periods were regressed against variables representing four schools of economic thought: monetarist scenario, structural scenario, power scenario, and micro, or supply side scenario. This study concludes that because of the complex nature of the economy, all representative variables have both positive and negative effects on the economy and no one scenario holds the key to economic stability.

Within American religious culture, there is a small but significant and growing movement that overlaps and interacts with the environmental movement. It's known by many names, including Contemporary Paganism, Neo-Paganism, Earth Religion, and Nature Religion. A few years of observation at Starwood Festival, the largest annual Pagan gathering in North America, revealed that many individuals who identify as Pagan (or Wiccan, Druid, animist, or another of the identities that fall under the Pagan umbrella) include in their spiritual practice engagement with faeries or other nature spirits. My research employed qualitative methods including participant observation and interviews to examine the extent to which engagement with faeries and other nature spirits among Pagan festival attendees affects their relationships with nature and their behaviors in the natural world. The Pagan understanding of the Earth and all of its inhabitants and elements as animate or inspirited, as exemplified in the phenomenon of faery faith, conflates the wellbeing of the Earth and wild nature with the psychological wellbeing of each individual human, making this worldview highly compatible with the emerging field of ecopsychology. Drawing on theories of enchantment, consciousness, multiple realities, imagination, and play, my interpretations of the stories of my informants contribute additional perspective to the contemporary practice of Paganism as a small but growing countercultural movement within the dominant Western culture, particularly as it informs the human-(in)-nature relationship.

This exploratory research focused on a problem stated years ago by Vannevar Bush: "The problem is how creative men think, and what can be done to help them think." The study explored the scholarly work process and the use of computer tools to augment thinking. Based on a review of several related literatures, a framework of 7 major categories and 28 subcategories of scholarly thinking was proposed. The literature was used to predict problems scholars have in organizing their information, potential solutions, and specific computer tool features to augment scholarly thinking. Info Select, a personal information manager with most of these features (text and outline processing, sophisticated searching and organizing), was chosen as a potential tool for thinking. The study looked at how six scholars (faculty and doctoral students in social science fields at three universities) organized information using Info Select as a personal documentation system for scholarly work. These multiple case studies involved four in-depth, focused interviews, written evaluations, direct observation, and analysis of computer logs and files collected over a 3- to 6-month period. A content analysis of interviews and journals supported the proposed AfFORD-W taxonomy: Scholarly work activities consisted of Adding, Filing, Finding, Organizing, Reminding, and Displaying information to produce a Written product. Very few activities fell outside this framework, and activities were distributed evenly across all categories. Problems, needs, and likes mentioned by scholars, however, clustered mainly in the filing, finding, and organizing categories. All problems were related to human memory. Both predictions and research findings imply a need for tools that support information storage and retrieval in personal documentation systems, for references and notes, with fast and easy input of source material. A computer tool for thinking should support categorizing and organizing, reorganizing and transporting information. It should provide a simple search engine and support rapid scanning. The research implies the need for tools that provide better affordances for scholarly thinking activities.

The voices of black women have traditionally been excluded from rhetorical scholarship, both as a subject of study and as a methodological approach. Despite the little attention black feminist thought has received, black women have long been articulating the unique intersection of oppressions they face and have been developing critical epistemologies.This study analyzes the National Press Club address given by NOW President Eleanor Smeal utilizing a black feminist methodological approach. The study constructs a black feminist theory for the communication discipline and applies it to a discursive artifact from the women's liberation movement. The implications of the study include the introduction of a new methodological approach to the communication discipline that can expand the liberatory reach of its scholarship.

The concept of compassion has recently held a controversial role in political thought. Critics have tied it with the condescension and latent self-interest of pity, while proponents have asserted it as the ethical posture from which to approach the suffering of others. This thesis looks at the role of compassion in the political sphere, arguing that political compassion involves a decentring of oneself as the primary subject of political action, looking instead to forego one’s own desire and to replace it with the desire of another. It pays particular attention to the thought of Hannah Arendt, who excludes this self-sacrificing compassion from the political sphere, due to the importance of speech to political action, and in turn, the importance of muteness to compassion. To Arendt, political speech intends to performatively bring one’s uniqueness into the world, whereas compassion performatively denies this subjectivity and is fundamentally unpolitical. She asserts that not only do public displays of compassion destroy their very value, but moreover, that a focus of compassion and suffering in the political sphere overshadows the need for cool, sober discourse between equals. I argue that, even in accepting Arendt’s definition of the political, there is space for compassion as a political labour. While Arendt asserts the need for speech and action in the political sphere, she conflates the free will involved in the plurality and uniqueness of the content of speech with the uniform, natural will to speak. Her articulations of the political realm, which require one to make oneself heard among equals, invoke at that same moment an immediate need for the labour of others foregoing their own desire to speak and act, to instead passively listen. Instead of being a realm exclusively to manifest one’s will, the political instead requires a reciprocity of desire, and its abnegation. / Graduate / 0615 / 0422 / 0681 / charlebois@u.northwestern.edu

Ce travail se propose une double tâche : penser l’expérience théâtrale à partir de ses coordonnées internes et, partant de là, voir à quelles conditions elle peut constituer une expérience de pensée. Dans la première partie, nous procédons à une analyse praxéologique de la situation théâtrale (ses termes, sa numéricité, son unité) qui met à jour l’articulation de deux dimensions (poïétique et pratique) auxquelles sont diversement noués chacun des termes de cette expérience triadique (« acteurs », « public » « texte »). Cette analyse s’efforce de mettre à jour ses propres procédés méthodologiques et de les confronter à d’autres. La seconde partie, plus nettement prescriptive, propose l’examen de trois opérations du théâtre, envisagées comme ses opérations de pensée. Ces opérations sont coextensives à l’expérience et appuyées aux conditions pratiques que la situation dispose : la première opération, portant sur l’objet de la pensée théâtrale, indique comment le théâtre peut faire vérité sur des situations d’hétérogénéité (amour, inimitié) en les convertissant à la tenue d’une action infinie et partagée ; la seconde, partant du régime de la répétition dont la situation se soutient, consiste en l’advenue, comme mode de la pensée théâtrale, d’une relation de crédibilité ; la troisième donne pour fin (finalité) à la pensée théâtrale la suspension de l’individualité en l’insérant dans un système de mises où se mesure, à partir d’une « mise » en commun, la situation historique de l’assemblée. / This work intends to meet a double task : consider the theatre experience starting from its internal references and, from there on, see in what conditions it can form a thought experience. In the first part, we carry out a praxeological analyses of the theatre situation (it’s terms, numerical aspect, unity) revealing the articulation between two dimensions (poïetical and practical) to which are variously linked each of the terms of this triadic experience («actors » - «public» - «text»). This analysis strives to reveal its own methodological processes and check them against others. The second part, more distinctly prescriptive, puts forward the study of three theatre operations, considered as its thought operations. These operations share extensions with experience and rely on the practical conditions laid by the situation : the first operation, bearing on the object of theatrical thought, points out how theatre can make truth on heterogenous situations (love, enmity) by converting them to holding an endless or shared action ; the second operation, based on the repetition scheme where the situation is self-sustaining, consists in the happening, as theatrical thought mode, of a credibility relationship ; the third gives as theatrical thought end (finality) the suspension of individuality by inserting it in a stake system where one can mesure, using a shared « stake », the historical situation of the gathering.

M.Ed. (Curriculum Studies) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

The theme of academic anti-Semitism has been much discussed recently in histories of the interwar period of the University of Vienna, in particular its Faculty of Law and Policy Sciences. This paper complements these studies by focusing in this regard on the economics chairs at this faculty and, more generally, on the fate of the younger generation of the Austrian school of economics. After some introductory remarks the paper concentrates on three case studies: the neglect of Mises in all three appointments of economics chairs in the 1920s; the anti-Semitic overtones in the conflict between Hans Mayer and Othmar Spann, both professors for economics at the faculty; and on anti-Semitism as a determinant of success or failure in academia, and consequently of the emigration of Austrian economists. Finally, we have a short look at the development of economics at the University of Vienna during and after the Nazi regime. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

The Nationalökonomische Gesellschaft (Austrian Economic Association, NOeG) provides a prominent example of the Viennese economic circles that more than academic economics dominated scientific discourse in the interwar years. For the first time this paper gives a thorough account of its history, from its foundation 1918 until the demise of its long-time president, Hans Mayer, 1955, based on official documents and archival material. The topics treated include its predecessor and rival, the Gesellschaft österreichischer Volkswirte, the foundation 1918 soon to be followed by years of inactivity, the relaunch by Mayer and Mises, the survival under the NS-regime and the expulsion of its Jewish members, and the slow restoration after 1945. In particular, an attempt is made to provide a list of the papers presented to the NOeG, as complete as possible, for the period 1918-1938. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

A wide variety of scholars acknowledge heritage planning as a widespread phenomenon. However, to what extent it is widespread is debatable. Also, if heritage planning is an acknowledged widespread phenomenon, what can be learned about it when looking at the rhetoric and the key concepts used in different contexts? This study aims at a cross-contextual investigation. The main aim is to interpret and to discuss rhetoric and underlying ideas used in heritage planning debates across contextual boundaries. The main aim is made workable through a number of methodological choices that curtail the scope of the study. The following main question is the result of these choices; what kinds of arguments, metaphors and figures of thought are similar (context-independent) versus different (context-dependent) in a selection of recent and on-going debates about heritage planning from Malmö and Rotterdam? As part of the methodology, figures of thought – that are expected to be relevant for understanding debates about heritage planning – are treated. This includes figures of thought such as the idea of an “original” and the idea of “progress”. Cases from the cities of Malmö and Rotterdam are chosen to study what similarities and differences come to the fore in heritage planning debates running parallel in time but being situated in different contexts (respectively a Swedish and a Dutch). The debates chosen are about the Kockums Crane and the area of Varvsstaden in Malmö and about the Porters Lodge and the area of RDM in Rotterdam. The analysis shows that the arguments and premises raised, the metaphors used and the underlying figures of thought are to a great extent similar between the cases from Malmö and the cases from Rotterdam. However, the use of arguments, metaphors and figures of thought differs professional groups in-between (“monument curators” versus “planners”) and between debates about single objects (the Kockums Crane and the Porters Lodge) and debates about the development of areas (Varvsstaden and the area of RDM). This study shows that arguments, metaphors and figures of thought effectively are exchanged across national boundaries through professions. More notable however, is that different “language-games” played or kinds of arguments used by monument curators and planners do not seem to conflict with each other at a discursive level. For example, the monument curator’s story-telling metaphors are smoothly turned into the planner’s commodification metaphors. However, at the level of figures of thought a potential conflict may arise between the preservationist idea of the moral duty of stewardship and the idea of commodification of built heritage propagated by an alliance between bureaucracy and economy.