Social scientists have long held that the media has a profound effect on modern societies. However, the cultural production of motion pictures and television shows has largely been neglected as a topic of inquiry. The following dissertation seeks to fill this lacuna in the current research by offering a systematic, comprehensive, and comparative analysis of the industry known colloquially as "Hollywood." Specifically, this dissertation seeks to uncover the matrix of causal processes that filter the infinite array of potential television shows and motion pictures to the chosen few that are selected for production. This process is known as "development and green lighting." Drawing from 110 interviews with writers, directors, producers, agents, managers, studio executives, network executives, financiers, and assistants who had been involved in the development and green lighting process, I explore not just decision making but the social milieu within which those decisions were made. Over the course of three chapters, three distinct social processes are examined in turn: institutional scripts ("Formulas"), status ("Stars"), and social capital ("Relationships"). Throughout the thesis, a new approach to cultural production is carried out, based on an inductive methodology where micro-level social processes are examined in the context of macro-level struggles over legitimacy, power, and resources. / Sociology

The Weber Basin Water Conservancy District is a state institution, but its primary function is collecting money for the U.S. Bureau of reclamation, to pay for the Weber Basin Project. Different classes of water users pay markedly different fees for identical Project services. More than half of the water developed by the Project is not used consumptively, yet supply facilities continue to be built in the Basin because they are less expensive to their owners than prices charged for the underused capacity of the Project. Paradoxically, some Basin residents are bitterly resentful to both the District and the Bureau, claiming that water rights formerly their own have, by means of the Project, been stolen. That is, both the enemies and the proponents of the Project adhere to the Western orthodoxy that water is scarce and drought imminent. The principal difficulty of this investigation lay in identifying the nature of the problem, for the situation seemed full of contradictions. Consequently, the primary contribution of the dissertation is an explanation of Basin circumstances that accounts for arresting observations without inconsistency or contradiction. The most important hypotheses are, therefore, empirical, or historical and institutional. Economics, according to Richard T. Ely and Frank H. Knight, is a set of principles concerning what ought to be, not empirical descriptions of what is. Consistent with that perspective, once the nature of the problem is clear, applications of economic principles is a prescriptive judgement of how the problem may be resolved. The most important empirical hypotheses are as follows: Water is not scarce in the Weber Basin; neither are storage and conveyance facilities. All are abundant, even redundant. Nevertheless in combination with certain institutional arrangements and sustained propaganda campaign, this very abundance contributes to persistence of the attitude that water is scarce. Redundant facilities thereby encourage even more unneeded development. What appears on first examination to be a case of misallocated water resources by discriminatory prices, turns out to be a problem of distributing the burden of paying for excessive, unwanted public works. Water itself is a free good in the Basin. Actual distribution of the repayment burden is partly ideological and partly pragmatic; partly a political choice and partly a bureaucratic decision; partly a manifestation of agrarian policy and partly what the traffic will bear. If water is free, it is not an economic good, and not a subject for economic analysis. The Basin has an ample water supply, but water may nevertheless be locally and periodically scarce. The water problem is therefore one of conveyance and timing. Control of timing requires storage. Conveyance requires energy, as well as aqueducts. In the Weber Basin, conveyance energy may be either the controlled flow of falling (mountain) water, or electrically powered pumps tapping abundant groundwater reservoirs. The water development problem is therefore, an issue of alternative capital facilities for the control and delivery of water (itself abundant). Efficient resource allocation in water development is consequently relevant at the investment level; it is not a matter of pricing water. In this case, the major investment decisions have already been implemented, and the problem is one of evaluating distribution of the repayment burden. The relevant economics literature is principles of equitable taxation, and of public utilities' pricing. Application to the basin situation produces a conclusion that present arrangements are as equitable as could be devised. Further redundant investment (inefficient use of resources), however, could be avoided if the State Engineer's Office took a harder line on requests to drill new wells. The information provided in this work could be the basis for making such a program popularly acceptable.

Weber’s discussion of ethics in his famous lecture (and then essay) Politics as a Vocation (1919) clearly indicates that two possible ethical stances, the ethic of conviction and the ethic of responsibility, are rooted in ‘distinct and irreconcilably opposed principles’. Throughout Politics as a Vocation, it is the ethic of responsibility that appears to be endorsed by Weber as suited for political life. Yet, Weber concludes his essay by claiming that a combined ethic is ideal for a political vocation. This makes Weber’s position regarding the ideal ethical stance for a man who has a ‘true political calling’ appear contradictory: the ethics are opposites but somehow to be combined. Commentators have mostly concluded that, for Weber, the ethic of responsibility is the ideal ethic for politics. That appears further in accord with the fact that a key concern of the speech in its historical context was to warn political students of the dangers associated with an ethic of conviction. Weber, as a realist, was especially critical of a stance that disregarded the corrupted nature of the world, which the ethic of responsibility alone seems to accept. Politicians with single-minded convictions were responsible for Germany’s political stalemate, supporting the fact that the ethic of conviction should not be deemed acceptable in politics. And yet there is much this position neglects by opting for only one of the two ethics, by concluding that only the ethic of responsibility is appropriate for political vocation. My thesis offers something different; something I admit is ambitious. What I propose is the synthesis of the opposition, of finding a way to combine the two irreconcilably opposed ethics.

Theses (Ed.D.)--University of Tulsa, 1987. / Bibliography: leaves 65-66.

Zugl.: Erlangen, Nürnberg, Univ., Diss., 2006

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1996. / Includes bibliography.

Proefschrift--Sociale wetenschappen--Utrecht--Rijksuniversiteit, 1985. / Mention parallèle de titre ou de responsabilité : Lösung aus dem Bann der Vernunft : eine Konfrontation zwischen der kultur- und wissenssoziologischen Auffassung von Max Scheler und Max Weber. Résumé en allemand. Bibliogr. p. 376-394. Index.

Thesis (D.M.A.)--University of North Texas, 2002. / Accompanied by 4 recitals, recorded Nov. 13, 1995, Oct. 12, 1996, Mar. 9, 1998 and June 3, 2002. Includes bibliographical references (p. 44-46).

Inaug.-Diss.--Frankfurt am Main. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 170-196.

Inaug.-Diss.--Cologne. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 593-619).