Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Changing Structure Of Agriculture In Nebraska, Bruce B. Johnson

Center for Public Affairs Research (UNO): Publications

Production agriculture in Nebraska is undergoing profound change. Longrun structural trends have emerged during the financially stressed 1980's. Increasingly, fewer farms account for most of the production volume, while thousands of smaller farms exist by combining nonfarm income with modest farm receipts. By the year 2000, Nebraska may have less than 30,000 farms, half the current number. These trends, in combination with the likelihood of continued economic stress for U.S. agriculture, pose considerable policy challenges to a state whose economy remains heavily interrelated with agriculture. Bold institutional measures need to be made to ease the transition and to position the …

Small Business And Economic Development For Nebraska, Bruce A. Kirchhoff

Center for Public Affairs Research (UNO): Publications

Economic theory and research data suggest that Nebraska policymakers should redirect economic development efforts toward the formation and growth of small businesses. A mechanism is presented for categorizing small businesses into sectors which are most likely to provide the economic growth so necessary to the state. Recommendations for implementing a search and screening process to identify businesses with high-growth potential in the state are discussed. Finally, recommendations for changing policies and programs to increase the formation and growth of small businesses in Nebraska are presented.

Nebraska Policy Choices (1986): Overview, Jeffrey S. Luke, Vincent J. Webb

Center for Public Affairs Research (UNO): Publications

The purpose of the Nebraska Policy Choices series is to improve the basis for making state policy choices. This series tries to enhance Nebraskans' awareness of their many alternatives for steering Nebraska into the future. Each annual volume in the series will provide a forum for considering the major issues facing the state and for identifying the various policy options or choices available to Nebraskans. The goals are to broaden public understanding and to promote informed and responsible choices among alternative policies.

Aging And Long-Term Care In Nebraska, James A. Thorson, Burce J. Horacek

Center for Public Affairs Research (UNO): Publications

A high proportion of Nebraska's population is age 65 or older and this is the fastest growing segment of the population. The population aged 85 years and older, which is the population most in need of long-term care, grew by over 45 percent between 1970 and 1980, and is expected to increased by 202 percent by the year 2000. This group includes individuals who are likely to require public assistance to help meet their medical and long-term health care needs. We estimate that the cost to the state to provide Medicaid assistance will increase from $60.4 million to 164.5 million …

Another Style Of Competence: The Caregiving Child, Carolyn P. Edwards

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

This chapter discusses child and sibling caregiving as an opportunity for the learning of nurturance and responsibility. The argument is based on case examples from ethnographic material, that children in multiage dyads or groupings negotiate constantly with one another and thereby reveal their reasoning about rational and conventional moral rules. The observational material is drawn from the work of Carol R. Ember (1970, 1973) who studied children in a Luo community of about 250 people in the South Nyanza district of Kenya. This community, referred to as Oyugis (actually the name of the market town 2.5 miles away, is one …

Cross‑Cultural Research On Kohlberg's Stages: The Basis For Consensus, Carolyn P. Edwards

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Kohlberg’s stage theory has been met by many theoretical statements attempting to refute aspects of his conclusions or claims about cultural universality. Equally of importance, the theoretical controversy has stimulated much empirical research intended to test the cross-cultural claims. This chapter reviews the status and current progress of comparative studies of moral judgment and addresses the following three questions: Is the dilemma interview method a valid way of eliciting the moral judgments of people in other cultures? Is the standard scoring system appropriate and valid for cross-cultural use? Is cognitive-developmental theory useful for understanding psychological development in comparative cultural perspective? …

Ritual Pageantry In The American West A Wyoming Case Study, Audrey C. Shalinsky

Great Plains Quarterly

Festivals that celebrate the founding of the town or a similar historical event of local or regional significance are common throughout the United States. In this paper I analyze the annual reenactment in Thermopolis, Wyoming, of the Shoshoni tribe's cession to the whites of control over several thermal springs, an event that led to the founding of the town. I show that the reenactment is an idealized interpretation of various historical events recorded and portrayed in poetic form by a group of townspeople with the limited participation of a few Shoshoni families from Wind River Reservation. I argue that the …

A Review Of The Indian Frontier Of The American West By Robert M. Utley, Thomas Wm. Dunlay

Great Plains Quarterly

In the past twenty years or so the Western American Indians and their conflicts with the white man have become the object of serious historical inquiry. The policies pursued by the United States government have received searching scrutiny, and the study of white men's attitudes toward Indians has become almost a field in itself. The literate public has become aware as never before of the consequences for the Indians of white frontier expansion. What has been needed for some time is a synthesis of the wide range of work being done in the field. Robert Utley is, of course, a …

Cultural And Economic Resilience Among The Kickapoo Indians Of The Southwest, Joseph B. Herring

Great Plains Quarterly

When white explorers encountered them in their Wisconsin homeland, the Kickapoo Indians lived in separate and widely scattered bands. I Although individuals referred to themselves as Kickapoos and identified with the major tribal group, over time the dispersed bands adopted additional cultural traits suitable to different regions and conditions. Environmental factors, proximity to white settlers, missionary pressure, and interaction with other tribes all produced a drift toward cultural pluralism.

Although noted for their conservatism, the Kickapoos were willing to adopt material culture traits that were to their advantage. This trend intensified after a portion of the tribe settled in Kansas …

Review Of The Papers Of Chief John Ross Edited By Gary E. Moulton, W. David Baird

Great Plains Quarterly

John Ross was the foremost leader of the Cherokee people during the nineteenth century if not the whole of tribal history. Born in 1790 of mixed-blood parentage and educated largely by private tutors, he served as chief from 1828 until his death in 1866. Because most of those last century events-removal, factionalism, civil war-that dramatically 3haped the destiny of the Cherokees, as well as other Indian peoples, occurred during Ross's tenure as chief, to understand him and his role in those events is to have a better insight into a large slice of American history. The Papers of Chief John …

Review Of Daughters Of Joy, Sisters Of Misery: Prostitutes In The American West, 1865-90 By Anne M. Butler, Melody Graulich

Great Plains Quarterly

Anne M. Butler's Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery is a broad history of prostitution throughout the American West, based on extensive primary research and illustrated with some wonderful photographs. Like many women's historians, Butler begins with two assumptions: that she will rescue a particular group of women from "historical obscurity" and that she will test and ultimately undermine the stereotypical and often one-dimensional portrayal of their lives. Her major thesis, however, gives her book added scope: while her discussion of the lives of prostitutes reveals that they were often powerless and victimized, she demonstrates convincingly that as a group …

Review Of The Canadian Prairies: A History By Gerald Friesen, R. T. Harrison

Great Plains Quarterly

In The Canadian Prairies, Gerald Friesen has taken on a monumental task. Over the past generation prairie historiography has grown too rapidly to lend itself to synoptic treatments. It would therefore be unreasonable to expect specialists to be entirely satisfied with Friesen's treatment of their aspects of prairie history. I know I would like to edit his remarks on prairie literature, yet my informal inquiries suggest that this book is highly respected both by professional historians and by prairie pioneers, who find that Friesen's narration rings true to their actual experiences. One of Friesen's greatest achievements is in making …

Review Of Maps Of Texas And The Southwest, 1513-1900 By James C. Martin And Robert Sidney Martin, Robert K. Holz

Great Plains Quarterly

Frequently old maps are gathered and reproduced in folio volumes that have little scholarly value but that make handsome coffee table displays. In Maps of Texas and the Southwest, 1513-1900, James and Robert Martin have produced an excellent book on the history of cartography that will be of benefit to current and future collectors and students but that is much more than another coffee table volume. The book goes beyond a simple reproduction of old maps on Texas and the Southwest. The authors have done an admirable job of researching the historical record, not only for old maps, but …

Review Of A Tropical Plains Frontier: The Llanos Of Colombia 1531-1831 By Jane M. Rausch., Kristine L. Jones

Great Plains Quarterly

The strength of this monograph is evident in its solid documentation of three hundred years of Spanish and creole settlement in the tropical plains (llanos) frontier of Colombia, which extends east from the Andean cordillera into the greater llanos of Venezuela. Although speaking directly to a general historiographical and theoretical interest in the frontier, particularly in Latin America and specifically in Colombia, Jane Rausch also provides important background detail about rural history as it relates to political and economic development, especially for Latin America.' While limited to discussion of the Colombian llanos, Rausch's synthesis of parochial detail permits tantalizing comparative …

Review Of Plains Country Towns By John C. Hudson, Lawrence H. Larsen

Great Plains Quarterly

John C. Hudson's new book, Plains Country Towns, deals with the dynamics of town building in a 20,000 square-mile area of north central North Dakota. Between 1880 and 1920 railroad colonization agents and independent speculators platted over 500 town sites. Three railroads, the Soo Line, the Northern Pacific, and the Great Northern, planned towns at roughly ten-mile intervals along their main and branch lines. Sometimes, where tracks intersected, they built neighboring promotions. No one expected all the projects to succeed. They were a device used by the railroads to effectively dominate marketing activities. Hudson, a Northwestern University professor of …

Review Of Lewis And Clark Among The Indians By James P. Ronda, G. Malcom Lewis

Great Plains Quarterly

In his instructions of June 1803 to Meriwether Lewis concerning the conduct of what was to become known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Thomas Jefferson made it quite clear that one of the Expedition's purposes was to pave the way for the development of American commerce with the Indians of the northern Plains, Rocky Mountains, and Pacific Northwest. That was soon to occur but the President could not have anticipated the longer-term economic spin off for the nation's publishing industry. Since the appearance in 1807 of the first printed account of the Expedition more than one hundred books have …

Review Of A Field Guide To American Windmills By T. Lindsay Baker, Homer E. Socolofsky

Great Plains Quarterly

This guide, useful for identifying windmills but somewhat cumbersome for carrying in the field because it weighs more than four pounds, is the most complete general history of the American turbine-wheel windmill. Attractively published, A Field Guide to American Windmills will find a positive response from users of all kinds-those who want to know much about all kinds of windmills or those who want a small amount of specific information.

Review Of Kit Carson: A Pattern For Heroes By Thelma S. Guild And Harvey L. Carter, Stephen Tatum

Great Plains Quarterly

Kit Carson fulfills its authors' hope of providing a readable and reliable biography of its subject. It has helpful maps and illustrations; for the most part it reads well, although the Fremont expedition narrative was the only series of chapters conveying any excitement or enthusiasm. It should appeal to Carson buffs and to history buffs interested in the American Southwest. If it had been more venturesome in speculating at key points on the man's motivations and intentions, and if it had offered intelligent insights on the sociocultural milieu which accorded this unlikely man fame, the biography perhaps would have even …

Review Of Gennan-Russian Folk Architecture In Southeastern South Dakota By Michael Koop And Stephen Ludwig, Roger L. Welsch

Great Plains Quarterly

This is a modest but invaluable introduction for a larger research problem that should be attacked soon, before the artifacts are gone. The authors carefully describe architectural artifacts, providing historic and geographic contexts. There are drawings and photos that provide full detail of the items. Everyone who is interested in ethnic folklore, material culture, or German-Russians will want to have this book.

The Dust Bowl An Introduction, John Braeman

Great Plains Quarterly

In March 1985 the Center for Great Plains Studies of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln held its ninth annual symposium "Social Adaptation to Semiarid Environments." The relevance of that topic was evident alike to specialists and to the reader of daily newspaper stories about drought and accompanying starvation in Africa, recurring crop failures in Russia, China's struggle to feed its teeming population, out-of-control grassland fires in Australia, and depletion of ground water supplies and continued soil erosion in the North American Great Plains. Specialists in a broad range of disciplines explored the ways in which different societies have adjusted in the …

Who Was "Forest Man?" Sources Of Migration To The Plains, John C. Hudson

Great Plains Quarterly

One of the points of high drama in Walter Prescott Webb's The Great Plains is his description of forest man's entry into the grasslands: Let us visualize the American approach to the Great Plains by imagining ourselves standing on the dividing line between the timber and plain ... As we gaze northward we see on the right side the forested and well-watered country and on the left side the arid, treeless plain. On the right we see a nation of people coming slowly but persistently through the forests, felling trees, building cabins, making rail fences, ... advancing shoulder to shoulder, …

Dust Bowl Historiography, Harry C. Mcdean

Great Plains Quarterly

In the late 1930s, Undersecretary of Agriculture Milburn Lincoln Wilson organized "T ravelling Great Plains Schools," culminating three decades of research and reform work in the Great Plains. The schools brought hundreds of rural social scientists together with scores of federal and state policymakers. The schools were broken into two sections, one dedicated to the southern Plains and the other to the northern. Those who attended spent several weeks making their way through the Plains, with care taken to differentiate problems particular to each of the two regions. In the southern Plains, the school spent several days examining the problems …

The African Experience Drought And Famine In The Dry Zone, Randall Baker

Great Plains Quarterly

This paper concerns the changing climate in the semiarid regions of Africa and the technological response to it. Often the central issue in physical and social change in Africa seems to be interpreting a sketchy but rapidly evolving base of "evidence" and trying to decide the process that the evidence would suggest is at work. This is a far from easy task, requiring inspired guesswork as much as proof, but clearly it is absolutely central to formulating an appropriate policy response.

Drought Mitigation In Australia Reducing The Losses But Not Removing The Hazard, R. L. Heathcote

Great Plains Quarterly

In Australia technology has reduced but not eliminated the impact of drought and seems set to do the same for the foreseeable CO2-induced climate change. To document this claim, I wish here to consider first a brief history of drought in Australia-pointing up some parallels and contrasts with the North American experience; second, to outline the various strategies (technological and nontechnological) that have been adopted to try to mitigate drought; third, to review the current thinking on the effect of increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 on the Australian climate and their releva9ce to agricultural and pastoral activities through possible modification …

International Drought Mitigation An Introduction, Donald A. Wilhite

Great Plains Quarterly

This special issue of Great Plains Quarterly includes the papers from the international sessions of the symposium, beginning with the keynote address by J. M. Powell, "Abideth Forever?" Global Use of Semiarid Lands in the Interwar Years." Powell's thesis is that the new nationalisms, old imperial networks, and burgeoning successes and ambitions of scientists combined between the two world wars to create new systems of land use in semiarid regions. In his introduction, Powell poses an interesting question: Were decisions about the management of these fragile ecosystems developed within the region as a result of experience, or outside the region …

Review Of Sharing The 49th Parallel: A Handbook For Montana Officials, Robert W. Wright

Great Plains Quarterly

This book presents an encyclopedic summary of the political, economic, geographic, and social structure of Canada, written to provide public officials in Montana with background information to use when Canadian issues become relevant to their decision processes. This review is written by a Canadian who is reasonably knowledgeable about his country but who knows nothing about the information gaps in the minds of Montana officials; it should be interpreted within this context.

Multiple Dimensions Of The Moral Majority Platform: Shifting Interest Group Coalitions, Helen A. Moore, Hugh P. Whitt

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The issues raised by the New Political Right and the Moral Majority have overlapped in recent political history. Researchers have assumed that a single additive scale across conservative issues can identify the base of support for the Moral Majority as an organization. We examine general support for the Moral Majority separately from support for six specific issues: teaching creationism, voluntary public school prayer, military defense spending, gun control, pornography and abortion. Data are from a 1982 random sample of adult respondents from Nebraska (N = 1907).

Overall, support for the Moral Majority organization is low. Discriminant analysis identifies fundamentalist and …

Great Plains Quarterly, Volume [6], No. [1], Winter 1986

Great Plains Quarterly

PICTURES AND PROSE: ROMANTIC SENSIBILITY AND THE GREAT PLAINS IN CATLIN, KANE, AND MILLER -Ann Davis and Robert Thacker

RITUAL PAGEANTRY IN THE AMERICAN WEST: A WYOMING CASE STUDY -Audrey C. Shalinsky

THE BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN: THE CONSEQUENCES OF A DELUSORY AMERICAN DREAM - Kenneth C. Mason

KANSAS THROUGH THE EYES OF KANSANS: PREFERENCES FOR COMMONLY VIEWED LANDSCAPES -Roxane Fridirici and Stephen E. White

BOOK REVIEWS

The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk's Teaching Given to John G. Neihardt

A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians

The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890

Native Faces: Indian Cultures in …

Pictures And Prose Romantic Sensibility And The Great Plains In Catlin, Kane, And Miller, Ann Davis, Robert Thacker

Great Plains Quarterly

The romantic movement in America, like that in Europe, was characterized by fondness for the exotic and observation of nature. So the Great Plains and the peoples who lived there were favored topics of artists and writers from the mid-1820s through the 1850s. However, at its height the American romantic movement was challenged by a subtle but persistent search for realism. The distinctions between romanticism and realism in belles lettres were not always recognized, since early visual depictions of the plains were seen primarily as ethnographic material, records of an unknown land and the exotic beings who lived there. The …

The Big Rock Candy Mountain The Consequences Of A Delusory American Dream, Kenneth C. Mason

Great Plains Quarterly

Wallace Stegner's great, obsessive theme, evidenced in all of his novels, from the first, Remembering Laughter (1938), to the latest, Recapitulation (1979), is the hard, painful process by which solid, culture-engendering and -preserving values are achieved. The portrayal of intrafamilial conflicts and tensions, extending across generations, has been the means by which Stegner has most successfully demonstrated this process of acquiring civilization-building values. Stegner has left the depiction of the alienation and angst of the modern antihero to others. The family is what truly inspires him, stimulating him to give sensate fictional body to his ideas. Critics have recognized this …