Shifting ideas about the qualities of children's imaginations transformed relationships between adults and children in nineteenth-century Britain. This dissertation contends that these new paradigms of children's fancy led authors of children's literature to partner with the young as creative collaborators, which accounts for frequent representations of children as an adult author's auditor, coauthor, illustrator, or guiding genius. These intergenerational collaborations were new models of authorship and evidence of a growing cultural imperative to recognize the young as active agents shaping their own social worlds. Alert to the fact that depictions of children are historically variable, I situate children's literature with and against discourses from psychology to education reform, demonstrating how the perceived powers of fancy granted children agency in a variety of cultural arenas. My project, then, offers an alternative to critical accounts that represent children as ciphers fulfilling adults' psychological and sexual desires. My introduction examines children's literature of the early nineteenth century, which I contend was a collaboration between adults Debates about the child's imagination, however, indicate a shift in expectations regarding adults' relationships to children. The remaining chapters detail the consequences of this shift, exploring four ways children were acknowledged as creative collaborators. Chapter one explores how many authors for children, inspired by fairy tale collections and cultural associations between children and preliterate cultures, structured their fictions according to models of oral narration. These authors defined children not as silent listeners but as participants in the narrative. Chapter two investigates coauthorship in the work of Robert Louis Stevenson, who understood composition as a collaboration between multiple familial, literary, and psychological personas. Partnering with his stepson, Stevenson developed a vocabulary of images that resurface throughout his works and express a social model of authorship. My third chapter explores the unruly child, examining children's literature that depicts collaborations between disobedient children and dim-witted adults in the context of education reforms that privileged imagination over adult authority. The figure of the disorderly child suggests anxieties about the imaginative power of those considered socially vulnerable. I conclude with a chapter on illustration, situating images by Edward Lear and Rudyard Kipling against ideas about children and art, arguing that these author-illustrators fuse childlike spontaneity and adult order, representing collaboration through playful images.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Criminal Justice and Folklore and Ethnomusicology, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Feb. 8, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-05, Section: A, page: 1792. Advisers: Philip C. Parnell; Henry H. Glassie.

Core notions from social movement research and Sociology of Law studies are integrated into development theory and power/inequality arguments to evaluate the relative importance of internal social organizations of groups, resource dependency, and the impact of the organizational learning process on Native American tribes' inclinations to take greater amounts of control over their economic, political, and social development. This frames development as a political problem, not just an economic one. An analytical model is developed that can be applied to many indigenous groups. This model is used to answer the following question: when new opportunities for sovereign expression are created through changes in the law, which sociological factors impact the ability to take advantage of it? This study raises and addresses some theoretical questions about the conditions under which collectivities opt for more self-determination and develop greater institutional autonomy. It also addresses public policy issues by identifying factors that have proven to be barriers for tribes to pursue greater degrees of self-determination.

This dissertation is a gendered analysis of the creation and attempted implementation of America's first eugenic commitment law. On 1 July 1915, Illinois became the first state to enact a law that stated that any individual found to be "feebleminded" by a competent expert could be committed indefinitely. Women reformers played a critical role in the creation and attempted implementation of Illinois commitment law, and although the language of the law itself remained gender neutral, the arguments used to legitimize the creation of the law and the actual implementation of the law remained highly gender. Young poor and working-class women, not men, remained at the center of the debate over eugenic institutionalization in Illinois. Although Mark Haller argued in 1963 that indefinite institutionalization was one of the most popular eugenic reform measures in the United States, scholars are just beginning to make a detailed historical analysis of the relationships among gender, eugenics, and institutionalization. Illinois provides an excellent opportunity to build on this emerging body of scholarship. As many scholars have shown, Illinois was in the vanguard on most social reform issues. It was also a place where women played a significant role in social reform. Reformers in Illinois created the country's first juvenile court and were among the early advocates of the creation of a separate municipal court. They were also pioneers in labor and education reform, as well as myriad other social issues. The willingness of both female and male reformers in Illinois to experiment with modern state-sponsored social reform measures led to their eventual adoption of the eugenic commitment law, which they viewed as yet another way of using science and the state to improve society. Analyzing the creation and attempted implementation of Illinois' commitment law will expand our understanding of the relationship between "progressivism" and eugenics and, more importantly, our understanding of the role of women and gender in early-twentieth-century eugenics. This dissertation covers not only the legislative process and debates surrounding the eugenic commitment law, but also the rise of "scientific" testing and the emergence and transformation of sociology, psychology, and social work; the contested definition of expertise; the creation and transformation of mental health institutions; and the dynamics among the young subjects of eugenic institutionalization, their parents, and those experts and reformers responsible for their incarceration.

Using a network perspective, this dissertation investigates the diffusion of high-technology innovations to organizational users. The particular innovation of interest is satellite remotely sensed data, and the diffusion phenomena occur among geospatial professionals who work in local government agencies. I utilize multiple methods in the dissertation. Essay 1 looks at the impacts of structural bases of social influences on diffusion. In Essays 2 and 3, I focus the investigation on advocates, the adopters who share their adoption experiences with their professional peers. While Essay 2 investigates the structural consequences at an individual level, Essay 3 provides an overarching framework of diffusion consequences at individual, organizational and population levels. This project makes theoretical contributions to marketing, consumer behavior and management. For marketing, I investigate the origins of imitation effects of diffusion by examining the social networks of the adopters and potential adopters. For consumer behavior, I examine the underlying logic for aspiring professionals to focus their work on spreading knowledge of innovation, and I demonstrate that innovation diffusion is a means to compete for high-status positions in the professional field. For management, I look at the reciprocal relationships between innovation diffusion and career development of adopters, and show that personnel mobility is crucial for diffusion in the organizations and population. This dissertation demonstrates how news and interpretations of innovations are filtered through consumers' networks. Since users are connected with social networks, the adoption of innovation by one individual user has ramifications among those with whom he or she is connected. Similarly, adopting organizations are interconnected through their employees' participation in various interorganizational projects and professional associations. Therefore, the adoption in one organization encourages similar processes to occur in other connected organizations. By examining the nature of contacts among adopters and potential adopters, marketers can anticipate the market trajectory and hence market growth. The knowledge generated from this dissertation should sensitize public policy makers about the countervailing nature of diffusion consequences. Adopting organizations may or may not gain in technological sophistication after adoption because their advocating employees become desirable in the field and are likely to be sought out by other organizations.

This study utilizes a multi-method approach to analyzing the experience of working class and lower class women's experience in graduate school. A quantitative analysis is used to determine the number of working class and lower class females in graduate school using parents' education as a proxy. Most first-generation females in graduate school were found in Research I universities in the field of Education. A qualitative analysis includes semi-structured interviews of 34 women from two Research I institutions in the Southwest in the fields of Education, Psychology, Health Sciences and Biology. Data consists of the women's definitions of social class, values and experiences as well as their perceptions of graduate school culture and their mobility process during their graduate school experience. The women in this study revealed a contemporary definition of social class unlike academic Marxist and other sociological definitions. Their experiences of graduate student culture reveal a direct conflict with their social class values. Finally, their mobility experience in graduate school reveals contradictory feelings of pride and hiding their accomplishments from family.

This project examines how changing organizational arrangements in a technological field affect individual level outcomes and processes of career formation. In the field of the life sciences, the biotechnology industry has emerged as an employment option with a fundamentally different organizational form. Three main research questions are addressed concerning the changing organizational setting of life science careers: (1) How are traditional stratification of science patterns affected by the option of employment in network rather than hierarchical, organizations? (2) Who enters a new, sought after, employment arena first? and (3) How does a new career path become legitimate? The data collected for this project are both quantitative and qualitative. The quantitative data were gathered from National Institutes of Health archives. Logistic regression analyses were performed on the sample of 3395 PhDs to estimate dichotomous career outcomes. The qualitative data come from interviews and ethnographic observations with scientists in a variety of settings--university laboratories, commercial firms, and government institutes. While traditional patterns of stratification in science--educational background and gender--were found to have effects in this sample as well, organizational context is very important to understanding how stratification may be mitigated. Gender inequality in the attainment of leadership level positions was consistently found in more hierarchical organizational settings, but did not appear in network organizations (biotechnology firms). In contrast, educational background had significant effects across all types of organizational forms. PhDs with elite educations were more likely to enter biotechnology both in earlier and later periods of industry history. Male and female PhDs were equally likely to enter the biotechnology industry, and this result also did not vary by time period. The common frames used by scientists in biotech and other science-based organizations to legitimate biotechnology work include: resources (scientific as well as monetary), networks (ties to respected scientists who endorse biotech), and analogies to academe. Biotechnology employment is retroframed as similar to yet different from academic work---indicating some interesting frame tension. This study has implications for scholarship particularly in the areas of organization theory, sociology of science, and gender and work.

The following research seeks to understand the effects of competition and regulation on the development of new industries. Specifically, the issue of whether or not laissez faire markets best promote industry growth and good economic performance is investigated. This work challenges prevailing neoclassical economic assumptions regarding the efficacy of competition and unfettered markets. Drawing on lines of research in economic sociology, institutional analysis, and organizational theory, I examine how public and private regulatory agencies, including states and associations, are used by firms to facilitate cooperation and organize economic activity. Contrary to prevailing neoclassical economic assumptions, I find that regulatory institutions are not necessarily a means of denying competitors access to markets, inflating prices, and gouging consumers, but rather a means by which economic actors overcome problems of collective action. Unfettered competition, I find, thwarts the growth and development of new industries that rely upon inputs that possess "collective goods properties", specifically, technical knowledge and a legitimate reputation. This research is historical and comparative. I study the development of America's aviation industry over the period 1903--1938. This period marks the birth of the industry through its rise to early maturity. Competitive pressures to control key technologies and develop appropriate standards for the use of aircraft created problems of collective action that undermined the fledgling industry's ability to establish viable markets for its goods and services. Industry members found they were unable to manage their proprietary activities through unfettered markets and private firms and, thus, turned to more cooperative arrangements to govern their economic affairs. Producers formed an association to pool their patented technology, solve free-rider problems, pursue uniform regulatory measures for the operation of aircraft, and conduct a national campaign to make the public "airminded". Not until these institutional arrangements were established did America's aviation industry move beyond its nascent stage of development and begin to experience good economic performance.

A society can use two kinds of controls to ensure that individuals comply with its rules. They are legal control and normative control. Legal control refers to punishment of deviant behavior by a legal institution that is supported by taxes. Normative control refers to punishment by individuals themselves who personally take action against a deviant. This research investigates the relationship between these two types of control--specifically, how change in the strength of one control institution affects the strength of the other. A theoretical argument is developed, suggesting two conclusions: (1) cohesive communities with strong normative controls facilitate the growth of strong legal systems; and (2) investment in the legal system, for example, in police and prisons, will weaken normative controls and thus the ability of communities to address social problems like crime in more informal ways. In other words, strong communities contribute to the growth of the legal system which in turn weakens the communities on which it depends. An experiment is conducted to test these and subsidiary hypotheses. In the experiment, subjects interact with each other using computers. They make decisions about sanctioning and about responding to the sanctioning decisions of others. Resulting changes in the strengths of the two types of control are measured.

Food Security is defined as the condition in which an assured, sustainable supply of enough nutritionally proper food is available for people to lead healthy, productive lives. The condition in which any of these requirements is missing is known as "Food Insecurity." In this paradigm, absolute food security as enjoyed by most people in the United States is at one end of the food security continuum and Famine is at the other; different levels of food insecurity make up the rest. The above definitions mandate that any analysis of why regions or populations are vulnerable to different levels of food insecurity must consider more than just the availability of food. The "Indicator Approach" to these analyses is based on the collection and analysis of diverse types of data, from multiple sources, which address socioeconomic, agroecological, demographic, environmental, agricultural and political factors in order to come to a more comprehensive understanding of food security conditions and their underlying causes in the areas studied. The hypotheses of this research are (1) That some of these "indicators" are correlated to measures or proxies for vulnerability and food insecurity at statistically meaningful levels, and (2) That the indicators so related will, in general, vary at the subnational level. The data set for this research consists of about 70 indicator and outcome parameters from different aspects of life in the Republic of Malawi, in Southern Africa. The analysis was performed through the following sequence of steps: (1) Definition of four national level proxies for Vulnerability and Food Insecurity, (2) Decomposition of Malawi's 154 EPAs into six non-overlapping EPA clusters, and (3) Independent analysis of each EPA cluster and the nation for each proxy variable with three analytic approaches (Bivariate Correlation, Regression Trees, and Multiple Linear Regression). The results of these 84 separate "mini-analyses" confirmed the research hypotheses and led to other conclusions about vulnerability assessments in general, and conditions in Malawi in particular. These results independently confirm that very small landholdings, female heads of household, and the lack of adequate employment opportunities are among the primary correlates of vulnerability and food insecurity in Malawi.