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Negotiating Identity Through Emigration: Value, Aspiration, and the Anthropology of the Future—A Hong Kong Case Study
Get PDFIn 2019, a new emigration wave began in Hong Kong following a series of anti-government social movements. As a response to the movements, the Chinese government implemented the National Security Law in June 2020. In the following year, Hong Kong witnessed a 1.2% decline in the city’s population. Centering on the relation between evaluation, aspiration, and anticipation, this thesis explores how changes in the sociopolitical environment are influencing the emigration decisions of Hong Kong’s people. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six interlocutors. I first explore how the interlocutors conceptualize their identities. Next, I discuss how their modes of identification alter meanings assigned to recent social changes in Hong Kong. Finally, by examining my interlocutors’ emigration narratives, I highlight how emigration decisions are rooted in aspirations and anticipations, restricted and facilitated by external forces, and mediated by shifting exposures and current situations. I argue that because a Hong Kong identity is constructed largely upon values and qualities different and readily differentiable from those of mainland Chinese, recent social changes (understood as an increased integration into China) place Hong Kong’s people in a new reality where their values are contested, and where decisions to emigrate become means through which aspirations, identities, and futures are negotiated and reformed
Faunal Remains from Anau South Trench 5: A Preliminary Study
Get PDFAnau, Turkmenistan offers a lens into Central Asian cultural and societal development. Its continuous settlement through the Bronze Age has served to provide stratigraphic chronologies for the entire region. Via detailed observation of a previously unstudied assemblage of faunal remains, this paper seeks to build on our understanding of Central Asian archaeology. A taphonomy-based study yielded insight into the preparation and discard of animal materials. Aspects of cooking, scavenging, and post-depositional damage are discussed in detail
Haudenosaunee Economic and Social Connections, 1695-1726
No full textThis dataset is a cleaned version of the account book of fur trader Evert Wendell in Albany, NY, transcribed from the original held by the New-York Historical Society. The account book is also available transcribed and translated in a published edition edited by Kees-Jan Waterman and Gunther Michelson. This dataset documents the social connections between 102 Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and Mahican people between 1695 and 1726, and has been prepared for network analysis by regularizing the spelling of names and using information from the published version of the account book to match individuals who appear under differently spelled names where possible. Source/Target pairs for network analysis were created for individuals with documented interactions with one another, such as people who bought gifts for another person, people who vouched for the credit of another person, or people who traveled together. The network is assumed to be undirected. Date information for edge creation is not included in the dataset but is available in the published version of the account book. Individuals are identified by gender and nation where possible. Individuals in the edge sheet are identified by ID number listed in the nodes sheet
Formulation and Evaluation of a Biophilic Protective Surface Treatment for Stone Substrates
Get PDFThis thesis develops and preliminarily tests a biophilic adhesive filler for the fossilized tree stumps at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument (FLFO), which are rapidly deteriorating due to the impacts of precipitation and freeze-thaw cycling. At the crown of Stump P47, lichens have been observed to have a consolidating effect, preventing further fragmentation. Recent conservation research confirms that in certain environments, with specific substrates and organisms, microflora and macroflora can act as protective and consolidating agents for stone substrates. This thesis explores these benefits by considering potential materials for the formulation of a biophilic adhesive filler, which could be used as a protective surface treatment on the FLFO stumps. The adhesive filler for open cracks and fissures could offer temporary protection, consolidation, waterproofing, and a bioreceptive and nutrient-rich surface on which lichens may continue to flourish. In order to develop the surface treatment, optimal performance characteristics were established. Materials were researched and selected based on their adherence to these characteristics, then preliminarily tested for their properties individually and in combination with other materials as composite systems. Qualitative observations determined which formulations met the outlined characteristics, and recommendations for future confirmatory testing are made. This thesis suggests an innovative direction for future research for cultural heritage protection
An Evaluation of Shelter Coating as a Preventive Conservation Method for Earthen Sites
Get PDFShelter coating is a global practice implemented as one form of protection at earthen sites to reduce surface erosion of adobe. At Fort Union National Monument, the largest adobe site in the United States, shelter coating has been used since the 1980s and of various formulations and application methods. Current shelter coat practices at Fort Union consist of a two-coat system of an unamended layer of similar composition to the original adobe walls, followed by a second amended mud layer modified with a stabilizing agent (Rhoplex™ E-330) to enhance the exterior layer’s water resistance and weatherability. Rhoplex™ E-330, an acrylic polymer emulsion, has been used at earthen sites across the Southwestern United States since the 1970s and began being tested for use in shelter coats at Fort Selden in the 1980s, and Fort Union in the early 2000s. Localized failures from cracking and loss leaving the original walls exposed and vulnerable, and increasing intensity of precipitation events due to a changing climate all argue for the current study of the practice and formulation of shelter coats at Fort Union. This thesis aims to examine earthen shelter coats applied as a method of preventive conservation to exposed adobe walls at archaeological or otherwise uninhabited heritage sites, with Fort Union National Monument in Watrous, New Mexico serving as the case study. Established in 1851, Fort Union was a military enclave and trade depot serving the Santa Fe Trail. Adobe served as the primary construction material at Fort Union given its regional availability and low cost. When Fort Union was abandoned in 1891, the adobe walls deteriorated significantly in part due to local despoiling which removed protective features and left the adobe walls exposed to the elements. Fort Union’s “melting” adobe ruins remained unprotected until 1956 when the National Park Service began stabilization efforts. While formulas and application methods for shelter coats can vary, their performance should satisfy critical optimal properties identified through laboratory and field testing. In order of importance, these optimal properties include good consistency (plasticity), low shrinkage, good adhesion to the substrate (durability), good cohesive strength to resist erosion (durability), low liquid-water absorption, high desorption, moderate water-vapor permeability, and comparable color and texture to the substrate. This research identifies and evaluates performance parameters for earthen shelter coats and tests their efficacy in a series of lab-based simulations designed to characterize the soil, and then subject the soil to a series of performance tests to determine their properties. While the soils and amendments tested in this project are specific to Fort Union National Monument the methodology can be applied at any earthen site
Vaults Speak: A History and Material Analysis of Guastavino Akoustolith Tile
Get PDFSince antiquity, reverberation has been linked to monumental interiors. Roman temples and medieval Gothic cathedrals produced a recognizable soundscape that was considered as natural as gravity. Vaults, domes, pendentives, and other large concave surfaces produced reverberant spaces that enriched the medieval latin chant but was detrimental to the clarity of the modern Protestant sermon. At the turn of the twentieth-century, Wallace Clement Sabine and Rafael Guastavino Jr. responded to a demand to quiet Protestant cathedrals. Together, they patented two acoustical products, a clay-based tile named “Rumford” and an artificial stone named “Akoustolith.” These were structural, imitated traditional masonry, and absorbed the mid and high pitches. They were bonded as a soffit to the vaults and domes of interlocking structural clay tiles. The Akoustolith was not only specified in religious buildings, but enjoyed success in secular buildings: banks, auditoriums, libraries, museums, classrooms, courthouses, laboratories, gymnasiums, swimming pools, and railroad stations. This thesis broadens the history of the origins, development, and application of Akoustolith tile. It presents a material analysis on the following properties: water absorption, particle size distribution, compressive strength, and mineralogical composition. This thesis demonstrates that the Akoustolith tile presented variability in composition across commissions and within individual tiles, modifying its acoustical behavior by changing particle size, angularity, sorting, and binder-to-aggregate ratio. It presents evidence that the degree of sorting is inversely correlated with compressive strength. This informs the hypothesis that sorting is proportional to sound absorption
Network, Network Regression, and Equity Holding Network
No full textNetworks play a ubiquitous and crucial role in our lives and are powerful vehicles for us to perceive the interconnected relationships among agents. Understanding the structure of networks helps reveal the underlying mechanism of how agents interact and how networks affect agents\u27 behaviors and decision-making. In this dissertation, we study the network structure of the equity holding network in China and a fundamental network metric, centrality, which is often used in regression models to study the network effect on outcomes of interest. We further propose a novel supervised network centrality estimation (SuperCENT) methodology that improves upon a widely-used method for network regression with centrality
Methods for Text Summarization Evaluation
No full textThe ability to effectively evaluate a learned model is a critical component of machine learning research; without it, progress on tasks cannot be measured and is thus impossible. In the natural language processing task of text summarization, evaluation is incredibly difficult: the notion of the perfect summary content is ill-defined, but even if it could be defined, that content can be expressed in many different ways, making it difficult to identify in a summary. The evaluation metrics that researchers propose for text summarization must overcome these challenges in some way. In this thesis, I identify problems with the existing methodologies for evaluating summaries as well as meta-evaluating the quality of an evaluation metric and propose solutions for improving them. I demonstrate that commonly used evaluation metrics fail to properly evaluate the information content of summaries and propose an evaluation metric based on question-answering to address the shortcomings of existing metrics. Then, I argue that the class of metrics which attempt to evaluate the quality of a summary\u27s content without the aid of a human-written reference is inherently biased and limited in its ability to evaluate summaries. Finally, I identify that the methodology for quantifying how well an automatic metric agrees with human judgments of summary quality fails to provide a complete understanding of a metric\u27s performance. To that end, I propose new statistical analysis tools to address the limitations of the standard meta-evaluation procedure and provide a new protocol for meta-evaluating metrics that better evaluates metrics in realistic use cases
The Minor Declamations and Roman Rhetorical Education
No full textIn this dissertation, I demonstrate how the Minor Declamations, a Latin rhetorical text of unknown authorship from the early Roman empire, can be used as a window into the ways that Romans of the imperial period taught and learned the rhetorical skills that would dominate their future as speakers, writers, and thinkers. Originating from the classes of an unknown Teacher, these declamatory controversiae with didactic comments provide unprecedented insights into Roman rhetorical instruction. I first use paratexts transmitted together with the Minor Declamations to reconstruct their earliest physical form as a cache of class notes which was only gradually assembled into the collection we have today. Then, I demonstrate that units of individual controversiae reflect curricular progression. Contrary to current belief, stylistic features of certain parts of the text suggest that some of these units could have been written down by students during class time, and not prepared in advance by the Teacher. In other words, at least some parts of the text are a collective product of the Teacher who delivered the lectures and the students who edited his lessons as they wrote them down. Finally, I show that this Teacher had adopted a pragmatic teaching philosophy in designing his curriculum: he only taught the core parts of a declamatory speech (argumentation) and bypassed the marginal ones such as proems and epilogues. From his programmatic statements scattered across the collection I conclude that this approach was crafted in response to the current debates on style and “decline of oratory.” The Teacher defended his choices from students’ criticism, arguing that an excess of epideictic elements results in declamation which is pleasurable to the ears, but not supported by a strong substructure of logical arguments. He knew that moving the audience was important to the students, but he insisted that making their speeches appealing is something they could do on their own, while argumentation needed to be learned through sustained practice. His program is therefore not striving to change the prevailing taste, but rather to ensure modern oratory has substance
Essays on Inequality and Frictions in the Labor Market
No full textFrictions in the labor market are important forces driving the unequal outcomes in wages, mobility, and work arrangements. I study the life cycle gender wage gap and alternative work arrangements in labor markets with information frictions and search frictions. The first chapter proposes a novel mechanism behind the life cycle gender wage gap: female workers are offered wage contracts that suppress future job mobility because of employers’ screening under asymmetric information about female job attachment. Job attachment is lower among women than men, with substantial individual-level heterogeneity. Employers value job attachment but job attachment is not directly observed. I show that the information problem of female job attachment is detrimental to female labor market outcomes. I propose a model where there is information asymmetry about female job attachment but not about male job attachment in a frictional labor market. To screen for female job attachment, employers offer separating wage contracts that distort the wage profiles of high-attachment women. The distortions suppress female job-to-job mobility, resulting in worse labor market outcomes than comparable men. The second chapter empirically investigates the life-cycle gender differences in labor market outcomes, based on the theoretical framework developed in the previous chapter. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I document substantial gender differences in the likelihood of employment-to-nonemployment transitions, confirming the central assumption of the theoretical model. I document empirical evidence on the gender differences in job mobility and wage return to tenure, consistent with the theoretical predictions. I quantitatively implement the model and assess the contributing factors to the gender wage gap. The parameterized model generates gender gaps in wage growth and distribution along the job ladder. I show that the gender differences in the job value distribution are the main contributor to the gender wage gap. The third chapter studies alternative work arrangements in an environment with moral hazard and adverse selection. Workers are hired on a per-task basis, whose effort and marginal product may not be observed. The employer chooses between offering a bonus contract and selling off the task. Bonus contracts provide workers with insurance against output risks but subject them to organizational uncertainty. Allowing workers to buy out the task induces higher worker effort but provides no risk sharing. I characterize the tradeoff between the two arrangements. Adverse selection limits the use of the latter arrangement on low marginal product workers and hence the employer’s ability to induce their effort