This research employs an anthropological perspective in the examination of the impact upon social workers of changing welfare policies within a fostering and adoption unit in a London Borough. It is a study of the ways in which issues of policy, governance and power affect people on the ground. Nonetheless, this study is very much about the relationships between macro as well as micro processes. For that reason, it includes an illustration of the irreversible shift from the old notions of care, via major reforms to public sector management, and the introduction of market principles into welfare during the 1980s and 1990s. This research also highlights the notion of family and kinship as a set of ideas that are reproduced in government rhetoric about what environment is normal (and what is ideal) for children. In this context, fostering and adoption have become sites for significant and sustained policy legislation over a number of decades. Thus, the fostering and adoption unit offered a unique location for the focus on the fit between the formal specificity of top-down policy upon the day-to-day practices that social workers engage in. In so doing, it reveals how the redefinition of the role of social workers in the twenty-first century results in a tension between notions of professionalism and public sector managerialism. It draws attention to social workers as instruments of government control and intervention, and provides the framework through which to demonstrate the continually changing nature of the identity of social workers in negotiations of power. At the same time, it provides the context for another major strand of government policy legislation for local authorities that are based on the historical discourse of modernisation.

<p dir="ltr">Early agriculture represents a critical change in human subsistence strategy in the Interior Eastern Woodlands of North America. Given that this change in diet is associated with an overall decline in nutrition and health, scholars have often wondered why such a transition would have occurred in the region. Since the foraging-farming transition is known to be a global phenomenon, numerous hypotheses have been proposed to explain this foraging-farming transition. These hypotheses include environmental hypotheses, sociocultural hypotheses, demographic hypotheses, risk-based hypotheses, co-evolutionary hypotheses, and aggrandizement hypotheses. Previous research in North America has focused on demographic hypotheses, risk-based hypotheses, and sociocultural hypotheses. One area that has not received attention in North America is the effect of climate change on the emergence of agriculture under the environmental hypotheses.</p><p dir="ltr">Although scholars previously thought the climate did not change during the foraging-farming transition, more recent research has suggested otherwise. Thus, the goal of this dissertation is to explore how climate change influenced the foraging-farming transition in the Interior Eastern Woodlands of North America. I combine paleoenvironmental reconstructions, cultural resource management (CRM) data, and multivariate statistical methods to examine the effect of climate change on the foraging-farming transition. Using advanced statistical methods, I found that increases in mean annual temperature and mean annual precipitation are associated with the plant-dominated diets of the foraging-farming transition. Furthermore, these later occurring plant-dominated diets are associated with an increased prevalence of cultivars like sunflowers, maygrass, goosefoot, marshelder, and squash. Additionally, a comparison of the northern Interior Eastern Woodlands and the southern Interior Eastern Woodlands revealed different impacts of climate change on diet.</p><p dir="ltr">This study provides a methodological advancement in the field of anthropology. Specifically, the application of advanced statistical methods to explore the effect of climate change on the foraging-transition is novel. Additionally, the compilation and use of a large dataset in analyses demonstrates the usefulness of CRM data when exploring regional trends.</p>

Why did black southern migrants during the Great Migration not get off the train along the migratory corridor that connected the points of departure and arrival, i.e. the Jim Crow South and the urban North? How did midwestern small-towns and black America come to be understood as polar opposites? Based on archival and ethnographic research, this project answers these questions by disrupting grand narratives about the Great Migration and the Midwest: 1) it disrupts the idea of predefined destinations of southern black migrants by illustrating that not all wanted to settle in big cities; 2) it disrupts the midwestern whiteness by displaying resilience and resistance of minorities in the same landscape; and 3) it disrupts stereotypes of midwestern friendliness by uncovering the self-perceived understanding of midwestern hospitality of Hoosier communities that stands in stark contrast with the unwelcoming environment as experienced by outsiders. Together, the chapters in this dissertation record the racialized geographies of Indiana and provide a nuanced understanding of identity and belonging in the Midwest. Analysis of the data identifies cultures of exclusion prevalent in midwestern small towns.