Miss Carina Van Rooyen

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This is a study of the gangs that inhabited Philadelphia and its neighboring districts in the mid-nineteenth century. In discussing the drastic societal shifts taking place in major American cities during this period--industrialization, immigration, urbanization, and the solidifying of class lines, this work paints a chaotic scene. Within this tumultuous setting, gangs emerged in working-class neighborhoods to meet two basic needs of their members and the communities they occupied. First, gang membership allowed working-class boys and men to establish shared identities. Utilizing a gender analysis, this study will demonstrate how working-class males developed a distinct version of masculinity. Set in defiance of middle-class values of self-control, wealth accumulation, and respect for the social hierarchy, this brand of masculinity embraced rowdiness, intemperance, and libertinism. Participation in activities such as assault, drinking, and battling rivals allowed gang members to assert their working-class manhood. Additionally, gang membership helped working-class boys and men carve out identities within their own neighborhoods. In the rapidly changing urban landscape, native-born whites, immigrants, and African Americans often lived alongside one another. By forming gangs along ethnic, religious, and political lines, these young men developed a sense of community and camaraderie in a sea of strangers. The second function mid-nineteenth century Philadelphia's gangs served was to empower their members and communities. Through violent attacks, gangs could establish a degree of control over which ethnic, racial, or religious groups lived and worked within their neighborhoods. Second, gangs empowered their members and communities politically. Recognizing their skill in using force, politicians in the mid-nineteenth century allied themselves with gangs in order to win elections. In return for their services, gang members received patronage positions and a degree of protection from the law. To Philadelphia's ruling elites, the poorer masses' increased participation in politics was unacceptable. In an effort to curb the influence of the city's and surrounding districts' gangs, reformers fought to establish a more effective system of law enforcement and to bureaucratize local government. As this thesis argues, the consolidation of Philadelphia and its neighboring districts in 1854 represents the traditional authorities' attempt to wrangle political power from the ward bosses of less affluent communities. / History

This dissertation argues the South’s system of Jim Crow segregation, exploitation, disfranchisement, and violence was both embedded in and evolved through the successive reorganizations of the region’s forests. In turn, it tells a three-hundred-year history of black resistance and resilience in the forests of the Deep South. In the longleaf pine and bottomland hardwood forests along the Gulf of Mexico, water proved just as important as soil in determining the contours of the colonial and antebellum plantation regimes. This project follows the water to show how African Americans drew on deep environmental knowledge to form maroon communities in the colonial era, create a free, politically engaged Afro-Creole culture in the antebellum period, and build successful farming communities after Emancipation. From New Orleans to Mobile, African Americans deployed skills in shipbuilding, sailing, agriculture, and cattle herding to engage in trade that brought them to ports like Havana and Tampico. These economic relationships created enduring patterns of black land ownership on the coast. The deep history of African American autonomy along the forests of the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast – an area I define as the Piney Woods Littoral – makes the region an opportune space in which to analyze the ways in which environmental relationships inflected the economic, legal, and political history Jim Crow. While this study shows how white supremacy hastened the collapse of the Deep South’s forests just as reforestation perpetuated Jim Crow, it also broadens our understanding of the connections between human domination and environmental change. Some of the most important battles over race and the rights of citizenship in the South, from the 1875 and 1890 Mississippi Plans to Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), were part of broader contests over land and access to resources between white and black farmers, planters, and industrialists. Twentieth century efforts to transform Gulf Coast politics and modernize its economy helped break the environmental connections that had long supported African American self-determination. In turn, they inscribed patterns of inequality on the landscape that persisted well beyond the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

published_or_final_version / Economics and Finance / Master / Master of Economics

While a great deal of historical literature has concentrated on the effects of industrialization on town development, most of the accounts relate to the introduction of industrialization into an established town. This study attempts to analyze, in sociological terms, the effects of industrialization (in this case, the emergence of the railroad) on the social structure of Denison, Texas which was created by industrialization. It is an attempt to combine Marxian and Weberian theory to produce a multi-dimensional theory that can explain town development without the usual economic bias as evident in most contemporary theory. This study proceeds on the assumption that the social order of a newly formed community is not based solely on economic factors. While economic considerations were important for the town of the study, social stability of the town was maintained by other “non-economic” elements. The purpose of the study is to construct a composite theory that can be utilized to analyze town development. The thrust is not the creation of new theory, rather it attempts to combine existing “classical” theories to present a balanced and, to an extent, “objective” explanation of community development. Adding the social aspects of Weber's theory to Marx's theory results in a theory that limits the economic bias associated with pure Marxian theory.

This study concerns a comparison and contrast of two development approaches to determine their applicability in dealing with the global problem of unequal development. Chapter I introduces the purpose and the significance of the study, and the selection of one representative model for each approach. They are W. W. Rostow's model and Samir Amin's model. Chapter II elucidates Rostow's model. Chapter III explains Amin's model. Chapter IV presents a comparison and contrast of the two models both methodologically and conceptually. Chapter V contains the conclusion that Rostow' s model cannot be a universal development model due to its methodological shortcomings, whereas Amin's model should be accepted for its analysis in explaining the reasons' for today's unequal development on a world scale.