Journal of Undergraduate Research at The College of Saint Rose, Vol. I

Journal of Undergraduate Research at the College of Saint Rose

Volume 1 Spring 2010

Contents Editor‘s Introduction Ryane McAuliffe Straus……………………..….2 Editorial Board……………………………………………………..…..3 Mediums of Consciousness in Afrofuturism Francis Cutie……..……4 Introduced by Ronald Shavers A Smile from Suffering: An Examination of the Human Capacity for Schadenfreude and Some of its Modern Manifestations Sean Horan……………………….………..16 Introduced by Jeanne Wiley Ideological vs. Factual Reality in ―The Last King of Scotland‖ Kim Clune…………………………………………...………38 Introduced by Kim Middleton Development and the Trujillo Era: The Detrimental Effects of Sugar and an Export-Oriented Economy Lindsay Jones…...52 Introduced by Keith Haynes Discovering the Stigma and Stereotypes of Welfare Carly Wolfrom……………………………………………….71 Introduced by Ryane McAuliffe Straus Do College Women Desire an Eating Disorder? Examining Media and Personality Predictors of Desire for an Eating Disorder Salina Santore……………………………………………….93 Introduced by Nancy Dorr Assessment of Benthic Macroinvertebrates, Water Quality, and Channel Condition at Three Locations along the Normanskill River Tyler Hassenpflug and Adam Leis…....111 Introduced by Paul Benzing The Programming Language Foom Adam Wilson……...…………..126 Introduced by David Goldschmidt

Editor’s Introduction Ryane McAuliffe Straus Department of History and Political Science It is with great excitement that I present the first issue of the Journal of Undergraduate Research at the College of Saint Rose.

This idea for this project first came in the Fall semester of 2007.

In that semester I taught two sections of the capstone course for the Department of History and Political Science with the theme of Racial and Ethnic Politics. This senior seminar is designed to allow students to bring together the skills and knowledge gained over their course of study in the department. The papers produced in these courses were exemplary, and I encouraged many students to submit their work for publication.

I soon found, however, that most journals publishing undergraduate work were limited to specific campuses. While I was frustrated that my students did not have a publishing outlet, this realization convinced me that the College of Saint Rose should offer the same type of opportunity for our best students.

This publication is the first volume of such an opportunity. The first call for papers solicited 22 submissions, far more than I expected.

Each paper was read by two faculty experts in a double-blind review process. Of the 22 submissions, 10 were given provisional acceptance, and eight papers underwent two rounds of revisions. The papers are presented in order of increasing technicality. The first selections are from the humanities, followed by the social sciences, the natural sciences, and, finally, the computer sciences.

A great many people contributed to this effort. The student authors are to be commended for submitting quality work and maintaining focus through an intense revision process with very fast turn-around times. My graduate assistant, Danielle Ely, assisted me with distributing the call for papers, managing the review process, and editing submissions. I continue to be awed by the level of collegiality of my colleagues; no one declined my request to review papers, and several people read and provided extensive comments on three submissions. Many of these reviewers did not originally volunteer for the Editorial Board, but the high number of submissions required more readers than I originally expected. Finally, President Sullivan and Provost Szczerbacki have shown consistent support for this project.

Editorial Board Editor Ryane McAuliffe Straus, Department of History and Political Science School of Arts and Humanities Michael Brannigan, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Cailin Brown, Department of Communications Eurie Dahn, Department of English Jenise DePinto, Department of History and Political Science Dennis Johnston, Department of Music Kate Laity, Department of English Karen McGrath, Department of Communications Silvia Mejia, Department of Foreign Languages/American Studies Erin Mitchell, Department of Foreign Languages Dan Nester, Department of English Dan Thero, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Bridgett Williams-Searle, Department of History and Political Science School of Math and Science Rob Flint, Department of Psychology David Goldschmidt, Department of Computer Science David Hopkins, Department of Biology Richard Pulice, Department of Social Work Ann Zeeh, Department of Biology School of Education Deborah Kelsh, Department of Teacher Education Christina Pfister, Department of Teacher Education School of Business Janet Spitz, Department of Business Administration

Francis Cutie Introduction to “Mediums of Consciousness in Afrofuturism” Ronald Shavers Assistant Professor English Let‘s begin with the most basic question of all: what is Afrofuturism? Simply put, Afrofuturism is a literary and cultural movement that attempts to uncover and highlight the many ways in which technology and the idea of technological innovation intersects with our contemporary problems regarding issues of race. It is a mode of critique that specifically addresses the conflation of the racial with the technological, mainly by focusing attention on the portrayal of people of color in speculative fiction. In that way, it is as much a cultural aesthetic (one that celebrates the appearance of racial subjects in science and science-fiction) as it is a method of cultural critique (by simultaneously drawing attention to the limited roles racialized subjects often play in supposedly ―race-neutral‖ technological environments). In other words, Afrofuturism is way to conduct a mediated examination of racial, racist, and racialized systems.

That said, Afrofuturism is also simple enough to address complex topics from a multiplicity of theoretical positions and perspectives, and it is in this manner that readers should engage with Francis Cutie‘s essay, ―Mediums of Consciousness in Afrofuturism.‖ What is unique— and quite Afrofuturistic—about Cutie‘s work is that Cutie takes up W. E. B. Du Bois‘ notion of double consciousness and, with an eye towards our ongoing dependence upon technology, updates it. By using literary terms derived from author Samuel P. Delany, Cutie enters into a dialogue on what it means to be both human and humanist in an age where we depend upon machines. More than just identifying racialized categories, Cutie‘s work illustrates how people can transcend them

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Mediums of Consciousness in Afrofuturism Francis Cutie English major; Class of 2011 Afrofuturism is not so much a form of literature, but an aspect of consciousness. Ranging from music to art, Du Bois’ double consciousness characterizes much of the reality of human existence. By examining this aspect of consciousness through the work of Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17, one notices the varying levels of awareness which parallel the growth of double consciousness. The purpose of this paper is to examine three levels of consciousness as experienced through language and music. Self consciousness, double consciousness and multiplex consciousness outline the shape of human awareness, and through the medium of Afrofuturism, the human experience becomes immersed with the technology of the present, resulting in a rerepresentation of double consciousness. Opposed to the conflicting consciousness of a slave being both African and American, this new sense of multiplex consciousness encompasses all forms of human ethnicity and awareness while simultaneously addressing the new consciousness of humans being in a mechanical world.

Afrofuturism is not so much a form of literature, but an aspect of consciousness. Ranging from music to art, Du Bois‘ double consciousness characterizes much of the identity of human existence.

The purpose of this paper is to examine three levels of consciousness as experienced through language and music. Self consciousness, double consciousness, and multiplex consciousness outline the shape of human awareness, and through the medium of Afrofuturism, the human experience becomes immersed with the technology of the present through the city of machines, resulting in a re-representation of double consciousness. Instead of the conflicting consciousness of a slave being both African and American, multiplex consciousness encompasses all forms of human ethnicity and awareness while simultaneously addressing the new consciousness of humans living in a technological world.

Realization and Relationship of the City of Machines We currently reside in an electronic age. The industrial revolution and advancements in technology over the last century have created a new language through the modes of HTML code and engineering equations. The fusion of man and machine is self-evident through our reliance on technology, computers, cars, and communication devices.

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But our use of digital identities transcends mere dependency to act as an accompaniment in music and art (Antares Autotune, Adobe Photoshop, etc); this is the utilization of technology to enhance expression. This mergence is the road on which the human consciousness journeys to arrive at a multiplex awareness of the mechanical and technological collective. Through studies of consciousness, one is able to picture the historical path certain races have traveled to identify relationships between humans and machines.

The city of machines constitutes a concept; not a location, but a mental presence of technology entwined within our daily lives. We do not reside in such a fantastical city, but some are in constant dialogue and awareness of it. As will be outlined in this text, the city of machines is not a figment of the new millennium or the rise of computers. Rather, it addresses every collective, or group, which was or is utilized as tools (a.k.a. machines). In ancient Egypt, the Hebrew populace occupied this oppressed city, as did African slaves in early America. With advancements in technology, human occupancy of this city has been replaced with silicon and processors. The reality of the city stems from our admittance and awareness of it. Such an awareness must transcend perceptions of self and others in order to recognize what we do not ascribe to others, as Africans enslaved in America were not considered American. It takes a strongly conscious mind to extend the recognition of an existent consciousness to the residents of this city.

Enter multiplex consciousness: the awareness of self, others, and the machine.

African-Americans have a unique relationship with the technological city, being previous inhabitants of it. Using W.E.B. Du Bois‘ struggle to overcome double consciousness (Mullen 1) as a framework, one may witness the development of consciousness and eventual transcendence to multiplex consciousness. With modern society‘s reliance on machines and technology, one must observe the agents of the current machine collective (enveloping all forms of modern technology, weapons, servers, and software) as a distinct identity and life form. By acquiring such a view, the similarities between the previous slaves of society correlates directly with the current slaves (technology). In contrast to the dualistic interpretation of double-consciousness, one must recognize this new form of awareness existing as multiplex consciousness. Through Afrofuturistic authors such as Paul D. Miller, Samuel R. Delany, Colson Whitehead, and an array of others, African-American consciousness is addressed in regards to the city of machines.

Stepping Stones: Double Consciousness

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In order to fully understand the human evolution to multiplex consciousness, double consciousness will serve two functions, as both a reflection of Du Bois‘ treatise on Africans in an alien world, and a defining universality of two states of being. The path of consciousness thus becomes a road to multiplex consciousness, an awareness of self, community, and technology. Under this heading of African-American double consciousness and the way in which it embarks to attain the multiplex vision of the present, one must examine the role of slavery in perspective to awareness.

The slave trade imprinted an original and distinct perception upon its victims. Africans were considered tools in the new world, vacant of any form of familiarity and unable to communicate with their oppressors. In ―Afrofuturism and Post-Soul: Possibility in Black Popular Music,‖ Marlo David argues that ―experiences of the Middle Passage, slavery, colonization, and racism have worked to exclude black people from humanist claims‖ (3). Africans were regarded as objects and an innate sense of labor was embedded into these early slaves. In being thrown to the pits of society as tools, AfricanAmericans acquired an interesting view of the machine collective and American society from the ground up. While various rulers acted as architects for this city of machines (solely based on preconceived notions of racial supremacy), African-Americans served as engines and gears.

Upon arriving in America, Africans were certainly not regarded as ―Americans,‖ but rather as Africans in America, having no true identity. A parallel image would be if one were to uproot a plant, toss it into a foreign ecosystem, and subsequently destroy any type of nutrients available within the soil. The first generations of slaves were explicitly aliens, unable to communicate and unrecognized as a human species. LeRoi Jones constructs this one step further in Blues People, stating that ―Americans brought slaves to their country who were not only physical and environmental aliens but products of a completely alien philosophical system‖ (7).

This subjection pays witness to our first idea of consciousness within the realms of the argument, demonstrated through W.E.B. Du Bois‘ sense of alienation in his testament The Souls of Black Folk. In the piece, Du Bois catalogues the mental chaos experienced by uprooted Africans: ―After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second sight in this American world, a world which yields him no true self consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world‖ (2-3). Apart from this excerpt being a beautifully crafted image, it raises some interesting

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Francis Cutie thoughts concerning the ―revelation of the other world.‖ Du Bois claims the only identity experienced by the first Africans in America came from others‘ notion of identity. These slaves were unable to contextualize their role within the community. Consequentially, since Africans were unable to assimilate an awareness congruent with the new environment, they were forced to adopt a new sense of consciousness altogether. This newly acquired awareness, according to Du Bois, was a simulation of ―himself through the revelation of the other world,‖ the other world being white America. One might say early slaves adopted a haunting image of themselves, which can be attributed to their debasement by the white community. This alienation and sense of identity paved the way to the first dual realization of consciousness amongst the African-American community.

Androids and Robots In these early stages of American history, one sees the initial development of African-American consciousness in association with the machine mentality. As described before, we live in the machine collective of the present, but traits of this collective reminisce with American slavery. As humans are reverted to tools David states that the ―body ceases to matter‖ (2), thus entangling humans as machines; bodies as engines and minds as processors.

In Afrofuturism, the ideals and tenets of the connection between African-Americans and technology are exemplified. The most prominent example of this is the use of the android. An android (for these purposes) entails an African-American as a tool or puppet within the city of machines in a contemporary or futuristic setting. However, the most important aspect of these androids surface from their consciousness. Ishmael Reed‘s Mumbo Jumbo android, Woodrow Wilson Jefferson, provides a character exhibiting a diversion from the previously described ―black road‖ to present day multiplex consciousness. Isiah Lavender III marks Jefferson as a tool used by white conspirators, ―an obedient machine whose ethnicity is technologically produced‖ (191). In creating this character, servile and absent minded, Reed demonstrates the connection to the city of machines through servitude. Coleman Whitehead also displays similar androids in The Intuitionist, through the characters of Pompey and Raymond Coombs. Pompey and Raymond both act as puppets for their white masters. These injections of machine/tool identities in Afrofuture texts display a negative way to mechanical self-consciousness amongst African-Americans. The androids regard their perception of self as tools, regressing to a machine state-of-consciousness. In order to attain multiplex consciousness, an individual must first acknowledge and

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Mediums of Consciousness in Afrofuturism embrace their own identity as human. Pompey‘s submission when his boss ―kicked him in the left ass cheek with the arrowhead of one of his burgundy wingtips‖ (25) discredits and ignores the self-consciousness of being a human. Raymond Coombs acts similarly as Natchez: a pawn of the Arbo elevator corporation. These characters show AfricanAmericans as tools, androids who, in casually dismissing an awareness of themselves, relegate their human identity to the likeness of a Sears Craftsman.

The All Seeing Eye of Awareness and the Cloak of Appearance Multiplex consciousness is the opposite of these characters‘ forms of self rejection. Being truly aware of one‘s self in relation to one‘s identity and heritage is fundamental in attaining a true sense of multiplex consciousness. While Whitehead shows the failed versions of multiplex characters (Pompey and Coombs), Lila Mae embodies a true essence of awareness. The author develops this character over the course of his novel, first displaying her as a shy girl with an abstract sense of consciousness. Whitehead‘s brilliant presentation of Lila Mae pronounces the connate relationship between African-Americans and technology. Initially, Lila Mae is roundly depicted as having two senses of awareness; while one might be aware of self and society, her perception encompasses herself and elevators, machines. As she is characterized through the plot, her awareness extenuates to society, thus creating a consciously multiplex character. While the author‘s adaption of developing Lila Mae‘s sense of society is interesting, I am drawn to her relationship with the machines. As an Intuitionist, she is described as being able to understand the ―elevator‘s point of view‖ (62). In this way, Lila Mae does not perceive herself to be ensnared by the nostalgia of the city of the machines, as the androids, but works alongside them, conscious of the tools she works with. Her ability to ―feel‖ and envision the elevator shaft is a symbol of technological selfreflection. Fundamentally, Whitehead‘s institute of Intuitionalism, ―a renegotiation of our relationship to objects‖ (62), serves as a working abstract of multiplex consciousness. Lila Mae‘s ability to sense and feel the elevator reflect her familiarity and awareness to the mechanical world. The character James Fulton, father of Intuitionism, projects ―there is another world beyond this one‖ (63), referring to the mechanical city Intuitionists are able to perceive.

The motif of appearance throughout Mumbo Jumbo and The Intuitionist adds an interesting contour throughout the theme of consciousness. Appearance acts only through the language of outward awareness. Although appearance manifests in the consciousness of others, it is rooted in self-consciousness (one appears how one hopes to

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be perceived). When appearing, one does not present to oneself; you cannot be apparent to your own body, you can only see through it.

Gould‘s blackface routine in Mumbo Jumbo is his attempt to appear as an authentic black man, rather than enacting stereotypes (Lavender).

The Intuitionist uses the character of Freeport Jackson to convey the contorted appearance of false self-awareness. Jackson sells ―passing‖ cosmetics to women to alter others‘ awareness of them. In doing this, an individual would have a false perception of the woman, thus transmitting a false consciousness back to her (in her awareness of others). At this point, the woman‘s altered sense becomes default, and her perspective is blurred, making a ―return to the state of innocence impossible‖ (Omry 2).

These examples are also presented through the identity of machines. As individuals like Freeport Jackson and Fulton depict aspects of ―passing,‖ elevator 11 reflects a parallel aspect of awareness. ―The elevator pretended to be what it was not‖ (229) is a deception of appearance, ―but (the elevator) did have articulate self-awareness‖ (229). These three examples of passing show the multiple ways selfawareness transgresses into all states of consciousness, affecting one‘s perception of self, others and machines. Identity of self is the root of all levels of appearance. In reflecting one‘s true persona through appearance, others are able to witness a pure gateway into another‘s perspective. The elevator‘s self-awareness and perception gave the appearance that nothing was wrong with it, so Lila Mae‘s perception of the incident proved just to be a matter, and illusion, of appearance.

Essentially, appearance defines the nature of consciousness through awareness. As Fulton‘s appearance allowed for success, his selfprojection was tortured because others saw him through a skewed lens.

Perception through Language Double consciousness is a paramount example regarding the ideal of African-American self-perception. As famously termed by Du Bois, ―double consciousness, this sense of looking at one‘s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one‘s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity‖ (3), reflects the concept of being uprooted, of witnessing and living through the forms of two entirely different social structures and internal philosophies, resulting in two identities. Samuel R. Delany captures and cultivates the essence of double consciousness in his piece Babel-17. The Afrofuture text addresses the likeness of African-American double consciousness and alienation through the character of the Butcher. In the text, Butcher is a replication of the alien aspect of the early slaves. He thinks in a different language which instills an absence of a concept of ―I.‖ In

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being unable to conceive the idea of himself, his awareness of others also suffers. Without the function of ―I,‖ Butcher‘s perception of reality is vastly demented, alienating him from others through his inability to perceive them. The Butcher‘s compounded inability to understand ―you‖ or ―me‖ corrupts his conception of awareness, further widening the gap of his mentality from the community of Jebel Tarik and the Alliance. In Jane Weedman‘s critical piece, ―Delany‘s Babel 17: The Power of Language,‖ Du Bois‘ concept of double consciousness surfaces while Weedman discusses the Butcher: ―when a person is exposed to two cultures, double consciousness evolves. To survive, the person must be able to function in both cultures: this means mastering both languages‖ (78). This quote not only relates to the inept Butcher, but reflects the early slaves‘ inability to function within the context of a foreign language, emotionally and mentally isolating them in the city of machines. However, when examining the nature of the foreign language, Delany‘s character acts as a significant example of mechanical consciousness. Somewhat similar to Lila Mae, Butcher has the single-sense-consciousness of a machine, as he views the world from the aspect of machines through the Babel 17 language. The mechanical and engineered language created by the Invaders turns one‘s complete consciousness into an engine, a graphical, apathetic workhorse. This enslaving, machine-based language insinuates the notion that ―you do not exist,‖ creating a template to how the Invaders would wish to rule over the Alliance. Does Whitehead‘s elevator‘s selfawareness contradict Delany‘s non-self mechanical language? No, they reflect an equal level of conscious development in the mechanical realm. Whitehead reflects a perception of machines on a more immediate level. In the African-American road to multiplex consciousness, Delany‘s non-self machine language was experienced through the conditioning of a slave owner, whereas Whitehead‘s elevator-awareness emerges through double consciousness.

Of Those Outside the City Replacing flesh with steel, the technological city of machines caused for contrasting reactions among races, particularly the WesternCaucasian reaction versus the African-American. In examining this difference, Leo Marx discloses machinery from a white perspective in his book A Machine in the Garden. The work discuses the way steam boats and factories appear suddenly and dauntingly within literature such as Huckleberry Finn and Melville‘s ―The Tartarus of Maids.‖ These authors‘ resentment of the machines reflects the mentality of white ideology for centuries, assuming themselves to be a primary race based on the numerous examples of oppression and conquering. The

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apprehension about this city of machines constitutes a fear of something alien (non-human, electronic), and due to the single dimensional consciousness of rarely being subjugated to alienation, whites are unable to understand this new race of machines. Upon examination, one notices a consistency in these figures‘ inability to embrace and understand the new wave of mechanics through the Invaders from Babel-17. Isiah Lavender III argues that ―Delany figures the aliens as white through their desire for power and territory‖ in his essay ―Ethnoscapes.‖ The language reflects the inability to recognize difference of self, as with the Invaders‘ creation of Babel-17, ―a weapon that forcibly initiates people in alien culture and controls them by eliminating their identities‖ (Lavender 214). Ignorance of double consciousness among Western Caucasians is the basis for their fear of the machine whereas African-Americans‘ innate sense of double consciousness sets the grounds for multiplex consciousness and their cognizance of the machine.

Mediums of Multiplex Consciousness Multiplex consciousness translates far behind the atmosphere of Afrofuture characters and literary elements. Mumbo Jumbo is an example of multiplex consciousness on a macro scale in its use of pictures, songs, news articles and fiction (as Omry portrays the multitextuality as musical modes). Although the work‘s use of intertextuality and allusions create a multi-dimensional backdrop of mixed media, eventually addressing the city of machines through his use of an android, literature is not a medium which multiplex consciousness can truly embody. Complex awareness allows one to work alongside the tools of the city of the machines, rather than control them. Through an amiable understanding and awareness of the machines, the arts aspire to new levels. Music is the most lucent example this.

Multiplex consciousness is the ability not only to be aware of more than two realties, but to be able to comprehend and function simultaneously from multiple perspectives. In relation to music, Paul D. Miller (a.k.a. DJ Spooky) remarks that ―the twenty-first-century self is so fully immersed in and defined by data that surrounds it, we are entering an era of multiplex consciousness‖ (61). The musical genre of Afrofuturism in this context pertains to the combination of technology and machines (such as turn tables, effect pedals and sampling), along with a conscious awareness of the audience, the performer, and the physical technology and machines being used. Jimi Hendrix is one of the first pioneers of this musical collaboration with technology. By manipulating the amp settings and feedback, the screeching sirens and the dive bomb sounds from his Woodstock performance in 1969

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became not only a reflection of himself and the human audience, but of the amplifier, the circuit board and even the electricity itself. Alexander G Weheliye uses the example of a DJ at a club to illustrate consciousness in his work Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic AfroModernity. Weheliye describes a DJ as a conductor of double consciousness, being aware of himself and the audience, and also in the sense of mixing and scratching double turntables (89). While the author uses the great example of a DJ, he mistakes such a performance as an embodiment of double consciousness when he says ―DJing provides two modes of sonic double consciousness‖ (89). In a club, there are at least three conscious identities taking place, the DJ (awareness of self), the audience (awareness of others), and the turntables and amplification (awareness of the machine). Multiplex consciousness is the source of the DJ‘s ability to produce and mix. Like Jimi Hendrix, there are many examples of African-American multiplex consciousness of technology through the medium of music. The musical artist Sun Ra employs many aspects of this sporadic, futuristic sound. Sun Ra demonstrates his Afrofuturistic perception through the instrumentation of his band, which Rollefson Griffith‘s ―The ‗robot voodoo power‘ thesis: Afrofuturism and anti-anti-essentialism from Sun Ra to Kool Keith,‖ describes as ―traditional West African hand drums, shakers, and bells in addition to hyperfurturistic electronic instruments such as the Wurkitzer; MiniMoog, and electric violin‖ (10). The union of multiplex consciousness is also quite visible in autotune software, which mechanically alters a singer‘s pitch, which rappers like T.I. use in excess as a form of instrumentation.

However, artists like Badu, De La Soul, and Bilal attempt to neglect their sense of musical self through the label of neo-soul and post-human motifs within their work. Weheliye states that neo-soul music is one of singularity, which has ―refamed the subjectiveness‖ of black people and suggests identities both embodied and disembodied, human and post-human (David 2); Weheliye‘s ideal of neo-soul has flaws. As described, music is rooted in the awareness of self, others and machines. Essentially, a musician cannot have an ―identity free‖ (David 2) demeanor because that would ascribe the artist as a tool, identical to Delany‘s Butcher.

The concept of multiplex consciousness manifests itself as an Afrofutristic medium through the use of music. In retrospect to the African-American journey from the city of the machine to the communal relationship with technology, awareness of self acts as the source of being outside of the city. As shown by the androids of Mumbo Jumbo and The Intuitionist, one cannot exist with distorted self-consciousness. As technology took residence within the urban

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colossus, African-Americans had the wisdom to work alongside technology, accompanying rather than ruling. The destructive Western Caucasian brooded over the rise of the new technologic epoch, being unable to enslave and afraid to embrace. Multiplex consciousness demonstrates a level of human awareness, intrinsic to self but reliant on appearance. As computers advance to artificial intelligence, they will attain awareness of self, leading to awareness of appearance, a recognition of others‘ perception of themselves and ultimately cascading to a new revolution and a new tool to take residence within the city.

Works Cited Crouch, Stanley. Reconsidering the Souls of Black Folk. Philadelphia: Running, 2002. Print.

David, Marlo. "Afrofuturism and Post-Soul Possibility in Black Popular Music." African American Review 41.4 (2007): 695-708.

ProQuest. Web. 25 Nov. 2009.

Delany, Samuel R. Babel-17 Empire star. New York: Vintage Books, 2001. Print.

Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. New York: Bantam Books, 1989.

Print.

Gray, Elizabeth D. Why the Green Nigger Remything Genesis. New York: Roundtable, 1979. Print.

Griffith, Rollefson J. "The "Robot Voodoo Power" Thesis: Afrofuturism and Anti-anti-essentialism from Sun Ra to Kool Keith." Black Music Research Journal 28.1 (2008). Black Music Research Journal. Web. 25 Nov. 2009.

Jones, David M. "Postmodernism, Pop Music, and Blues Practice in Nelson George's Post-Soul Culture." African American Review 41.4 (2007): 667-95. ProQuest. Web. 27 Nov. 2009.

Jones, LeRoi. Blues People: The Negro Experience in White America and the Music that Developed from it. New York: William Morrow, 1963. Print.

Kraft, Julie, and Mark Van Wienen. "How the Socialism of W. E. B.

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Du Bois Still Matters: Black Socialism in The Quest of the Silver Fleece-and Beyond." African American Review. 41.1 (2007): 6776. ProQuest. Web. 27 Nov. 2009.

Lavender III, Isiah. "Ethnoscapes: Environment and Language in Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo, Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist, and Samuel R. Delany's Babel-17." Science Fiction Studies 2nd ser. 34.102 (2007): 188-200. Print.

Marx, Leo. Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. Print.

Miller, Paul Allen. Postmodern Spiritual Practices: The Construction of the Subject and the Reception of Plato in Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault (Classical Memories/Modern Identities). New York: Ohio State UP, 2007. Print.

Miller, Paul D. Rhythm Science (Mediaworks Pamphlets). New York: The MIT, 2004. Print.

Mullen, Harryette. ""When He is Least himself": Dunbar and Double Consciousness in African American Poetry." African American Review 41.2 (2007): 227-82. ProQuest. Web. 27 Nov. 2009.

Moten, Fred. In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2003. Print.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy: Out of the Spirit of Music (Penguin Classics). New York: Penguin Classics, 1994. Print.

Reed, Ishmael. Mumbo Jumbo. New York: Scribner, 1996. Print.

Weheliye, Alexander G. Phonographies Grooves in Sonic AfroModernity. New York: Duke UP, 2005. Print.

Whitehead, Colson. The Intuitionist A Novel. New York: Anchor, 2000.

Print.

Zuberu, Nabeel. "Is This the Future? Black Music and Technology Discourse." Science Fiction Studies 2nd ser. 34.102 (2007): 283300. Print.

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Sean Horan Introduction to “A Smile from Suffering” Jeanne Wiley Associate Professor of Philosophy Aristotle is rumored to have said that luck is when the guy next to you on the battlefield gets hit by the arrow. Apocryphal or not, the story testifies to what James P. Twitchell calls the ―dreadful pleasure‖ to be had in the suffering of others.1 Every time we slow down on the highway to study the scene of an accident or feel the thrill of watching the latest slasher film, we raise one of the most troubling philosophical questions, i.e., ―Who are we?‖ What is it about our humanity that makes us capable of being fascinated with and entertained by scenes of carnage—scenes in which others are so clearly suffering? Understanding the role of human nature in the cause of suffering has always been and should continue to be one of our greatest moral concerns.

In light of the new technologies that enable us to disseminate and consume scenes of suffering and carnage everywhere, anytime, the following study of Schadenfreude dares to ask this important question with the renewed urgency it deserves. In it, Sean Horan offers us a rich theoretical framework to investigate the veneer theory—the view that under our civilized facades lurks a beastly appetite.2 Without rushing to conclusions or proposing easy answers, Mr. Horan tracks his quarry through a range of disciplines, including the philosophy of art, film studies, psychology, and the freshly minted insights of neuroscience. In doing so, he demonstrates the power and breadth of the philosophical mind. His study challenges all of us to continue to ask the big questions about the forces that shape our lives together.

1

James B. Twitchell, Dreadful Pleasures: An Anatomy of Modern Horror (Oxford UP, 1985).

2 Frans De Waal, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved (Princeton UP, 2006).

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Journal of Undergraduate Research

A Smile from Suffering

A Smile from Suffering: An Examination of the Human Capacity for Schadenfreude and Some of its Modern Manifestations Sean Horan Dual major in Philosophy and Religious Studies; Class of 2010 Mankind's capacity for empathy is understood as an ability to sense the needs and desires of others. This evolutionary advantage provides the human species with an ability that greatly aides in the development of social interaction. While empathy may allow for the flourishing of a group and a social/emotional culture, what happens when the human capacity for empathy is used towards less than amiable ends? In this instance, mankind uses its capacity for empathy as a means of satiating an instinctual craving to watch others suffer for the derivation of personal sadistic pleasure. This concept is known as Schadenfreude. The following essay examines possible causes and manifestations of Schadenfreude. It seeks to understand what lies within the human creature that allows for an empathetic connection with others that is deliberately devoid of compassion. In addition, this essay looks at several modern methods used to satiate this desire.

Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death (The Planet of the Apes).

An age old question in the discipline of Philosophy is whether art imitates life, or life imitates art. The prologue of this essay is a statement about the nature of the human species that comes from the 1968 film The Planet of the Apes. This film makes explicit use of cinematic metaphor as social commentary by focusing the audience‘s attention on the wayward path the cultural development of mankind has taken. Furthermore, it expressly notes that mankind has great capacity to commit and enjoy evil. Is this artistic depiction an imitation of life and human experience? This brings to mind the biblical story of Cain and Abel. Like the prologue, it depicts man as a spiteful and bestial creature, a jealous murderer. Both stories imply that human nature is inherently corrupt. From the purview of human experience, not only is mankind capable of jealousy and spite meant to inflict suffering, but it

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is also capable of a form of empathetic joy derived from the suffering of others. This emotion of sadistic joy is known as Schadenfreude.

It is an inescapable aspect of human experience to witness suffering. By virtue of familial and social constructs, each individual will have to deal with the loss of loved ones. Sometimes these losses occur in tragic accidents, and in other instances they are foreknown.

Whether sudden or foreseen, the suffering one endures with intimate loss is as inescapable as death, and it is often death itself that is the intrinsic cause of human suffering. The suffering that one witnesses often stirs emotions of sadness, pain, and despair. Oddly, while one may be moved to sadness by the suffering of those he or she loves, human beings also have the capacity for an empathetic connection to the suffering of others which brings about Schadenfreude. With this emotion one experiences delight rather than despair at the suffering of others. While one may mourn the loss of family members, he or she may cheer the suffering and death of his or her enemies, or he or she may smile at the blood, guts, and gore associated with suffering and death in a horror film. If one mourns the suffering and/or loss of those he or she loves, what is it that draws this same individual to take delight in similar experiences, whether tangible or artificial, if the only difference between them is the connection to the suffering individual?

Furthermore, if individuals were not capable of feeling such negative sensations of hurt and sadness when loved ones suffer, why would art and media develop in such a way as to glorify suffering and death for entertainment's sake? In order to explore these concepts this essay will focus on the biological origin, the psychological compulsion, and several varieties of the cultural manifestations of Schadenfreude. More specifically, this essay will look at what happens when this emotion is perceived, as well as several propositions that have been made regarding its psychological cause. Following the discussion on the theoretical causes of Schadenfreude, this essay will look closely at the way in which aspects of art and culture are intentionally designed to bring about this emotion, which mirrors the claims about humanity made in the prologue and in the story of Cain and Abel.

Understanding the Concept The term Schadenfreude is a combination of two German words; Schaden which means damage, and Freude which means joy (Schadenfreude). The work On the Study of Words, written by The Anglican Archbishop of Dublin R.C. Trench, contains an insightful and disturbing definition of the concept. This definition moves beyond simple etymological or linguistic meaning to present a word that is the embodiment of a dark and vile emotion. He states, 窶標hat a fearful

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thing is it that any language should have a word expressive of the pleasure which men feel at the calamities of others; for the existence of the word bears testimony to the existence of the thing. And yet in more than one [language] such a word is found….In the Greek epikhairekakia...‖ (qtd. in Tiedens 338). Trench's questioning of the need for the very existence of such a word, in any language, enhances the dark and demented aspect of humanity it represents. His definition, like the prologue, is a testament to the more sadistic tendencies of human nature. This definition contains a sense of awe at the deficiency of goodness in the hearts and minds of mankind that causes the need for such a term. Trench also notes that there is an equivalent expression for Schadenfreude that exists in the Greek language as epikhairekakia. The lesser used English term for Schadenfreude, epicaricacy, originates from this Greek word. This Greek term comes from Aristotle's work The Nicomachean Ethics 2:7. However, it should be noted, Trench's definition of Schadenfreude makes the assumption that a word and an understanding of its meaning necessitate the existence of the concept which the word represents.

Wired for Fear and for Fun: Schadenfreude and Human Biology It is impossible to attempt to claim any single theory of the mind, brain, and body connection as the correct source from which to examine Schadenfreude. This is due to a lack of consensus within the philosophical and scientific communities that clearly defines the relationship that exists amongst these concepts. While there is discord as to the correct means of understanding the relationship between the mind and body, research into the biological causes of Schadenfreude is not impossible. There have been numerous scientific studies into the origin of Schadenfreude from a biological perspective that illuminate the physiological origins of this emotion. Before moving ahead, it must be stated these ideas are not meant to conflate human experience with the human condition. This exploration seeks to understand the conditions that exist to make the emotion of Schadenfreude possible, which then allows for an exploration into how it is made manifest in human experience. That being said, human experience does not necessitate or imply causation from human condition. However, if it is found that Schadenfreude is a component of the human condition by virtue of biological and psychological cause then its inclusion in human experience rests upon a foundation of it being an inherent aspect of the human individual.

This section is entitled ―Wired for Fear and for Fun,‖ which implies that the human being has implicit structures that allow for the sensation and perception of the implied concepts. In a section of

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McGill University's research database dedicated to brain functions entitled When Fear Takes Control, Dr. Duboc, a neuroscientist and researcher at McGill University, explains how the basic instinctual functions of the brain tie many of the brain's operating centers together.

According to this source, the human response to instances of fear, defined here as an emotional response to a source of danger, functions in many of the same ways as that of all other vertebrate species. The idea expressed is one of, ―Stop, look, and flee!‖ When a vertebrate encounters a perception of imminent danger, the initial instinctual reaction is to stop moving. This is followed by rapid analysis of the source of the danger in order to develop a strategy to escape. Much like a rabbit scurries away when approached by a larger creature it perceives as a threat, human beings go through the same basic steps of analysis; however, the human ability to reflect upon the source of danger, analyze the threat, and develop a means of escape far surpasses all other members of the phylum Vertebrata. Duboc also notes that human beings have been observed to go into an ―overdrive mode‖ when faced with strenuous or fear-inducing situations. This physiological state has been well documented as being capable of reducing sensations of pain due to the hyperactivity of the central nervous system. In addition, increased mental and physical capabilities have been noted in individuals experiencing this instinctual ―high.‖ Duboc also points out that when the sensation of pleasure, of which Schadenfreude is a part, is perceived, the centers of the brain that are activated to induce the sense of pleasure closely resemble the same structures that take part in the ―Fight or Flight‖ response. This ties the physiological processes related to pleasure to the reactions that occur when fear is induced. Within a controlled system, such as a carnival ride, fear is intentionally induced for the purpose of leading to pleasure and fun. This implies that individuals, such as the carnival ride designers, intentionally induce fear to stimulate the biological functions leading to the perception of pleasure. The sheer volume of human devices manufactured to induce fear for the purpose of creating pleasure act as testaments of an inherent biological need that must be satiated. It should also be noted that newer developments in medical research, such as the fMRI, have allowed for deeper understanding of several biological components of Schadenfreude. One study measured neural activity in men and woman while viewing different images meant to illicit a sympathetic response. This study concluded that men are more predisposed to Schadenfreude than women. It also concluded that men derive greater satisfaction than women at seeing justice served (Rosenthal). Another study sought to measure certain mental states and their ties to Schadenfreude. This study concluded that individuals with

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envy and low self-esteem are more predisposed to feelings of Schadenfreude. The conclusion of this study implies that Schadenfreude acts as a means of quelling low self-esteem and envy through the pleasure derived from viewing others suffer, presumably those of whom an individual is envious (Takahnashi). This study also analyzed neurochemical components associated with Schadenfreude.

This study found that increased concentration of certain hormones and neurochemicals in the body correlated to a stronger degree of the perception of Schadenfreude. These attempts at quantifying the biological origins of Schadenfreude provide a concrete physical dimension to an idea that has been explored philosophically without scientific evidence for millennia. In addition, the scientific research in this field offers explanations and insights into the factors affecting its perception. These studies show that Schadenfreude is not an equally and universally perceived emotion; rather, it is an emotion that rests upon numerous external and internal factors to be perceived.

Several Proposed Psychological Foundations of Schadenfreude When discussing the psychology of Schadenfreude there is a fundamental question that must be asked: Is Schadenfreude a ―freewill‖ choice, or is it a manifestation of an innate character trait of the human species? This question is highly theoretical, and no single answer exists that can adequately answer it; however, there are several scholars who have attempted to understand the psychology associated with Schadenfreude. As noted in the previous section, the biological research into Schadenfreude presents compelling evidence that this emotion is an inherent component of the individual at the most basic biological levels. However, it does not take an fMRI to initiate a conversation on this topic. In fact, the discussion of Schadenfreude, as R.C. Trench noted, is thousands of years old. Proverbs 24:17-18 makes note of God's displeasure with Schadenfreude (New International Version). It notes His ability to remove the suffering of one's enemies and inflict the suffering on the one who sinned by taking delight in his enemies‘ misfortune. Aristotle discussed Schadenfreude two millennia ago in The Nicomachean Ethics. In this text he defines the terms of Nemesis, Phthonos, and epikhairekakia, which are different degrees of an empathetic connection to the misfortunes or good fortunes of others.

The important term here is that of epikhairekakia, which is the deficient quality of this virtue of empathetic nature. The epikhairekakia individual takes delight at the misfortunes of his enemies (Nicomachean Ethics 2:7). It is important to note that these early texts make note of this kind of joy as being specific to the misfortune of

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enemies, and not joy at the general misfortunes of others. This may just a semantic difference, but a noteworthy one nonetheless.

Much as this essay takes the approach of looking at biological cause as the origin of Schadenfreude, early thinkers in the field of psychology also speculated about the biological origins of human actions, thoughts, and emotions. One thinker that should be noted is Erich Fromm. In his work The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, he uses the psychoanalytic method, made famous by Sigmund Freud, as a means of investigating the origins of Schadenfreude. This text, while attempting to demonstrate definitive cause of the emotion, does much in the way of showing earlier methods of many philosophers to be descriptive methods of analysis rather than offering plausible or concrete evidence as to the causes of the observed behavior. However, Fromm's work suffers from many of the same critiques he makes of previous works on the subject, mostly due to the continued lack of a complex understanding of neurobiology in the early twentieth century.

However, despite its flaws, this work is essential to modern analysis of Schadenfreude as it makes note of the importance of finding the measurable causes within the human being that allow for Schadenfreude.

A more recent scholar, M. Scott Peck, in his work People of the Lie: The Hope of Curing Human Evil, takes Fromm's idea of Schadenfreude having concrete biological causes and psychological manifestations one step further in looking at the idea of ―evil‖ and its manifestations as a psychiatric disease. In a 1983 interview with the PBS program The Open Mind, he stated that humanity had reached sufficient maturity, implied as sufficient technological and cultural development, so as to be able to understand the physical origins of what we call evil. If his conclusions are true, evil, like other forms of mental illness, could then be treated with medications, psychological consultation, and rehabilitation techniques. This idea is novel in that it explicitly states that human evil, of which Schadenfreude should be considered a part, not only has clear and distinct biological origins, but that it is also a measurable and treatable phenomenon. While his thesis offers a hope for curing human evil, it forgets to ask why human beings evolved with tendencies for both good and evil. It also assumes that there would be universal agreement on the concept of ―the good‖ amongst medical professionals and the diverse cultures of the world in order to develop a treatment method to eradicate biological causes of evil. In addition, the idea of curing human evil would also imply that every human being would be a patient of this work, unless the possibility exists of a person naturally devoid of all negative or evil traits. The idea of a world in which only persons of good intentions

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exist gives hope for a better and brighter future; however, the concept is overly idealistic. It would be impossible to give ―treatment‖ to every human person to remove all tendencies leading to evil. Furthermore, the idea implies that there would be an objective means of determining which characteristics to retain and which to remove. In addition, even in a world where human beings no longer brought about evil, natural evils would still exist. Currently, mankind has very few, if any, means of controlling the many sources of natural evil. While there are several flaws to Peck's argument, the idea that evil is a treatable idea furthers this thesis‘ point that there are biological causes and psychological manifestations of Schadenfreude. Finally, this idealistic work enumerates the idea that evil is a deficiency within the human character, as has been said for millennia. Moving beyond Fromm, Peck proposes that psychiatrists should begin, at the very least, to explore how to treat evil. This of course calls for more research into the biological origins of human evil, which reinforces the idea that our psychological and character deficiencies are rooted in biological causes.

The Sublime The thesis of this paper allows for the hypothesis that the idea of the sublime exists to enhance Schadenfreude by its nature as the apex of emotional experience and its relationship to suffering. If contemporary civilization has learned anything at all from historical reflection it is the staunch contrast between mankind's enormous capacity for moral greatness, and its terrible capacity for the commission of heinous atrocities. This dichotomy is expressed in a capacity of human emotion as well. The notion of the sublime as described by Edmund Burke in his work, A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, shows a unique capacity for a specific emotion/existential experience known as the sublime. Burke refers to the sublime as the strongest emotion the human being is capable of perceiving. In addition, he claims because pain is a potent force affecting the mind of the individual that the experience of the sublime is often induced by emotions and experiences tied to painful stimuli rather than pleasurable stimuli. However, Burke's understanding of the mechanisms behind pleasure and pain are flawed in their simplistic relegation of causes that do not incorporate what modern medicine understands to be the connection between the way the emotions related to pleasure and pain are conducted and perceived by the human brain. While this does not dismiss Burke's observations and hypotheses, it does limit them to being statements based on active

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observation of human behavior that do not incorporate concrete causes, which Fromm had previously criticized.

In the way Burke describes the sublime, one may see the idea as embodying the perceptions that are felt in moments in which one is overcome by the power of an experience of supreme aesthetic beauty, as well as in the moments in which one experiences sensations of the darkest aspects of human nature. Both experiences are responsible for a sense of both awe and horror at that which is being viewed. However, both the positive and negative stimuli of the sublime carry with them the power to produce pleasure and an existential experience of grandeur within the human mind. To explain this complex emotion/experience an example of both beauty and horror will be used to illustrate its effects. On the ceiling behind the High Altar of the Sistine Chapel rests the fresco painted by Michelangelo depicting the hand of God reaching for the hand of man. For some, the power, beauty, symbolic meaning, and spiritual significance of the work may create an overpowering sense of wonder and awe, a true experience of the sublime in which one is overcome by the force of the aesthetic beauty at hand. On the other end of the spectrum, one may have an experience of the sublime from a situation which might otherwise be considered to be completely devoid of beauty. For example, while watching the film Schindler's List, a film that shows the utter horror and evil that man is capable of committing, one may be overcome by the experience of the sublime. This work of art is not meant to entertain so much as it is to convey a story and an understanding of a historical event. The events depicted in the film show both the greatest and the most deficient qualities of human nature.

The images are meant to cause the viewer to be filled with empathy, hate, sadness, fear, and loathing. This bombardment of empathy with the suffering of the characters, as well as the gross depictions of Schadenfreude experienced by many of the characters within the film, creates a highly conflicted perception of emotions while viewing the film. For some empathy with the suffering and pain of the characters may lead to an experience of the sublime. On the other hand, those having the same biological and psychological tendencies as many of the Nazis depicted in the film would experience Schadenfreude garnered by the rawness of human suffering. This could also be considered a form of the sublime. While the feeling of the sublime may very well be one of the greatest existential sensations a human being is capable of experiencing, much like the sensations of a narcotic drug, over indulgence into the sensations leaves one with a never ending craving and desire for satiation that requires continually larger doses to temporarily dull the desire, leaving it ever harder to fill the craving in the future. This creates the need for increasingly greater sources of

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suffering to satisfy Schadenfreude. Dr. Takahashi, the author of the study that noted the importance of neurochemicals and hormones to perceptions of Schadenfreude, noted that the brains of the individuals experiencing Schadenfreude in the study had received a dose of ―sweet honey,‖ a dose of pleasure. While Schadenfreude activated the reward centers of the brain and stimulated the release of chemicals leading to pleasure, Dr. Takahashi noted that the perception of Schadenfreude in the future would depend on the brain's thirst for pleasure as well as the intensity of the experience, making a statement that Schadenfreude has addictive-substance like properties (Takahashi).

The Mortal Coil and Schadenfreude Unfortunately it is an aspect of human experience that everyone must die. The biblical phrase reminding mankind of its mortality, ―Remember man that you are dust and to dust you shall return‖ (Genesis 3:19), warns against the tendency of self-delusion that death can be escaped. However, as a species that has the ability to reflect upon its mortality, mankind is in the unique position of having the ability to reflect upon its own end. Unfortunately an ability to reflect upon the fact that one's consciousness will end at some point is likely to lead to fear and anxiety. In order to subdue the fear that can ensue with contemplation of one's mortality, many human actions are meant to trick the mind into thinking death is escapable. Many of these actions revolve around creating a sense of mortal danger, while at the same time instilling a sense of pleasure at being able to avoid the consequences of the source of danger. While this idea might seem superfluous to the material at hand, it is essential to stress that the concept of mortality is heavily tied to many of the actions that stimulate Schadenfreude.

Rubbernecking can be described as the behavior of curiously observing the sight of an accident, and the traffic that ensues because of it. Anyone who has ever driven along America's crowded highways is familiar with the concept of rubber-necking. The central question here is: What leads to the cause of such curiosity at the sight of an accident?

Moreover, why do individuals have such a great interest in observing the misfortune of others? Perhaps the curiosity with the suffering of the individuals involved in the accident derives from the fact that many modern developments have shielded most individuals from having to experience first-hand suffering in daily life. For instance, medical advances, better food supplies, and better understanding of the way in which the human body functions have allowed for the prevention of much of the human suffering experienced in more primitive societies.

In addition, many of the same advances have lead to extended

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longevity for most of the world's population. While these developments can be said to be generators of ―the good‖ because they preserve life, they also heavily contribute to mankind's psychological delusions of immortality. Within the past several years articles have appeared in numerous media sources discussing research being conducted to find and stop the mechanisms allowing cells to age, essentially making one immortal. Another field in medical research seeks to develop replacement organs that would essentially allow an individual to replace a broken part of his or her body with one grown in a lab, much as one would replace a broken car part to extend the longevity of the engine. In addition to contributing to a belief in the possibility for immortality, these advances have shielded the majority of individuals from much of the suffering that would otherwise be experienced without such advances. Because of this shield, it is no wonder that rubbernecking occurs. It is a unique experience of witnessing physical suffering that is not a regularly occurring component of most individuals‘ daily lives. Without sufficient exposure to suffering in life providing for sufficient satiation of the inherent need to experience Schadenfreude, mankind has had to develop other methods of creating and depicting suffering so that Schadenfreude can be experienced and cathartic release may be achieved.

Panem et Circum While this essay opened with a line from a film that tells the story of an upside-down world where man has become dumb and savage, and sentient apes have taken the place once held by man, the message is keenly adept at quantifying the corrupt nature of human beings in this realm of reality. The reason for pointing this out from the starting point of the essay was to place specific emphasis upon what may be considered flawed aspects of human nature, which, while often times not as prominent in our minds as our capacity to do great deeds, are subversive, and act as a constant reminder of what lies hidden just below the surface of consciousness and cognitive control. Millennia ago the writers of the Book of Genesis realized that man would kill his own brother out of petty jealousy, and the same is true today. For an ―enlightened‖ species, just the events of the past century, let alone the whole of recorded history, show, at times, a species of intelligence, compassion, and love. However, the vast majority of evidence of human experience depicts a creature capable of murdering, enslaving, and abusing his fellow man for his own gain. On a conscious or ―polite society‖ level concepts such as Schadenfreude are relegated to the realm of ―the other‖ or the primitive. By publicly distancing itself from the more negative aspects of human nature society can ignore the

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import it plays upon the conscious lives of mankind. The preference becomes a focus upon the enlightened, rather than the dismal, aspects of human nature. There is a saying that those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat the mistakes that have been made. This saying is a frank point that mankind would rather focus on its achievements than its vices, but by attempting to ignore its vices mankind gives credence to them. Another phrase often used is that, ―The devil's greatest power over mankind was tricking him{man} into believing he does not exist.‖ The point being, something one does not give proper respect to has a level of power given to it by one's intentional desire to ignore it.

The title of this section of the essay is Panem et Circum a Latin phrase for ―bread and circus.‖ This phrase relates to the means by which those in power in the Roman Empire sought control over the masses. This control was achieved by means of keeping the populous entertained and distracted by the basic pleasures of food, gladiatorial games, and other carnal pleasures. The Roman leaders keenly took advantage of their understanding of the inherent desires of man and sought to aid in the satiation of these desires to gain the power to maintain security over the vastness of their territory. This final section of the essay will point out several of the most prominent ways in which mankind has incorporated the idea of Schadenfreude into its culture.

Nowhere in human experience is the concept of Schadenfreude more clearly represented than in the arts and the media. Before moving forward, one should ask why ―there's no better news than bad news.‖ That is to say, depictions of violence and suffering are far more common and emphasized than other aspects of life that could be covered by the media.

Roman leaders would hold gladiatorial shows, in which Christians, slaves, criminals, and others would be publicly executed. This was accomplished by various means, such as crucifixion, battle, mauling by animals, etc. These methods of torture were used to inflict extreme pain upon the condemned. Not only were these events public, but they were the ancient equivalent of many modern sporting events meant to provide an entertaining show for the masses allowing for cathartic release of emotions and an experience of Schadenfreude from the suffering witnessed in these ―games.‖ In his magnum opus The Republic, specifically Books II, III, and X, Plato outlines an argument that shows a belief that certain forms of art have a powerful capacity to corrupt the hearts and minds of mankind. Because of this, he argues against free reign of the arts. He believed that a moral society should elicit some degree of control over which forms of art are allowed in order to maintain its status as moral and prevent its citizens from being

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corrupted. Aristotle, moving away from his instructor's theories in his work The Poetics, sees art as an outgrowth of human understanding of life. Following this interpretation of Aristotle's argument, art must be a tangible outward expression of an inward feeling or psychological construct within the psyche of mankind. With this understanding, mankind uses the canvas of art to express inward desires, feelings, and internalized experiences from life. The canvas then becomes a symbol of human experience, a depiction of the creator's internalization of the experiences of his or her life. Thus art is a reflection upon the everyday experiences of mankind, or, at the very least, is a depiction of those things held within the heart of man. This would certainly make sense when looking at the works of art of a given time period and understanding how they relate to the culture and experience of the time.

While Aristotle's interpretation of art may imply that art is a benign recreation, perhaps his instructor Plato is correct in his belief in the strength of the arts to move mankind to action. The correct theory depends on the lens used to examine human experience. However, both Plato's and Aristotle's theories of art have relevance to Schadenfreude's manifestations, as they both offer a frame of reference to understand where Schadenfreude is derived, and what power it has in affecting mankind. It is Plato's fear of the power of the arts that signifies the many ways in which Schadenfreude may be abused, and it is Aristotle's notion of imitation from experience that allows for the perpetuation of Schadenfreude in the arts.

Plato's Fears Realized in Cinema While not wholly universal, there are certain overlapping concepts found in the majority of horror films that emphasize the psychological factors explored by this essay. These ―rules‖ of the horror genre give the director the power to endow their creation with the ability to make the audience experience both fear and Schadenfreude. While there is no reason this formula cannot be deviated from, it has been followed for so long because of how well it works. The idea of the rules is as follows: There is an ―evil‖ antagonist who usually has some relationship or connection to the main protagonist. The main protagonist is the center of the audience's empathetic connection within the film; thus, a connection between the emotions of the audience and the safety of this character are created. This empathetic connection becomes the driving force behind the stimulus of fear. This character is most often depicted as ―the girl next door,‖ a virginal, pure, and familial character that is depicted as the most moral of the characters in the film. This empathetic protagonist is surrounded by moral despots who are often depicted as promiscuous, amoral, and drug-using teenagers. These

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characters edify the stereotypes of the general culture, particularly that of teenage and young adult behavior. It is important to note that the characters are often depicted as young, ignorant, and juvenile to further the idea of a youthful belief in immortality, stimulating the ideas explored in the section on Mortality and Schadenfreude. These characters surrounding the protagonist find themselves victims of the antagonist by various means, either tangible or supernatural. The suffering of these ―victims‖ becomes the source of Schadenfreude for the audience. The audience derives Schadenfreude from their suffering because they are characters who can be envied. Furthermore, the characters do not create the same connection created between the audience and the main protagonist. Thus, while fear is induced when the audience sees their suffering, pleasure is also derived. In addition, because of how these characters are depicted, their suffering can often be seen as being just. As noted in the section on Biology and Schadenfreude, notions of justice being served heighten the perception of Schadenfreude. It is the antagonist's endgame to ―break‖ the protagonist by depriving them of their relationships, thus depriving them of all empathetic connections. At the final moment, when all hope seems lost, and after an extended scene in which the audience's positive empathetic emotions are heightened as the protagonist falls into the grips of the antagonist‘s power, the protagonist triumphs over the antagonist. Morality and goodness are seen as overpowering the source of evil. This eliminates the source of fear as the protagonist returns to safety, but leaves the audience with sensations of Schadenfreude as the suffering and death inflicted by the antagonist is irreversible. In order for the desired responses to be effective, the director must be able to carefully mold and craft the audience‘s empathetic response. In doing so, the director brings life to Plato's fear of the relationship between the emotions elicited by art and their power to move the hearts and minds of mankind to action. It should be pointed out that the horror series Scream is a play on the aforementioned rules and plot-lines. It acts as a source for reflection on the tools a director can use to craft the audience‘s emotions.

A New Age of Horror and A Celebration of Schadenfreude The cinema, once an art form for depicting uplifting stories, memories of days of old, and interpretations of great moments in history, has been transformed into Plato's worst nightmare. As technology has allowed cinema to evolve, the ability to use cinema as a means to satiate an audience‘s desires for Schadenfreude has also grown. This is not to say that all films are created to elicit Schadenfreude, but since directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and other

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early horror pioneers created a living, yet artificial, means of eliciting Schadenfreude, the film industry has radically evolved. Through this medium, as described with the plot-line above, artificial suffering is created. One may say this is harmless, as no one is actually suffering; however, even if the suffering is artificial, the pleasure one can derive from it manifests itself in the same manner it would if the suffering were real. That is to say, the emotion of Schadenfreude does not depend on the veracity of the suffering; it depends on the nature of the experience. In 1978 John Carpenter and Deborah Hill created an independent film on a budget of just over $100,000 simply entitled Halloween. The film went on to become an international sensation grossing millions of dollars (Halloween). The film‘s enormous popularity can be attributed to a number of different factors, but the film‘s greatest importance is the creation of a new genre of films meant specifically to give pleasure to the audience by a mix of terror, sexuality, and Schadenfreude. Carpenter built upon many of the classic cinematic techniques used by Alfred Hitchcock and others in order to create suspense and terror. The film diverges from earlier horror techniques in its use of explicit sexuality, drug use, profanity, and gore, which, together with the building of suspense, creates a psychological thriller that both terrifies and pleases. Another essential contribution of this film is the creation of a new kind of antagonist. In this film Michael Myers, also known as ―The Shape,‖ is depicted as the embodiment of pure evil devoid of all that makes one human. This character is more of a force than an individual, but as the antagonist of the film, he is the artistic creation that brings about Schadenfreude. In addition, the audience is also driven, to some degree, to have pity on the protagonist, adding to the conflict of emotions the film elicits.

These new cinematographic techniques laid the stage for the many other slasher film series and newer horror genres that followed such as Friday the Thirteenth, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser, as well as many others. Each of these films maintains a plot constructed on the use of empathy and emotion to drive the audience‘s pleasure as described above; the only difference between the films is the specific plot lines, characters, and central antagonist.

The recent film Untraceable acts as the perfect depiction of Schadenfreude on the silver screen. This film not only seeks to create the emotion of Schadenfreude; rather, the film itself is a play on the idea of Schadenfreude and its relationship to modern art forms, a social commentary of Schadenfreude's notable presence in modern society due to the advances of technology. The film also seeks to highlight the ways in which technology is used to satiate desires for Schadenfreude.

In this film, the antagonist creates a web page, ―killwithme.com,‖

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where people can watch his murders in real time. Each victim is placed into a mechanism designed to slowly or rapidly execute him or her. The degree of suffering and the duration of the suffering depend on the number of people logged on to the site to watch the murders. The more people that log on to watch, the more violent and deadly the means of execution become. While the authorities warn against logging onto the site, each new victim creates a greater following with thousands of individuals logging on to watch the murders. While the film creates Schadenfreude for the audience in the way that horror and suspense films are meant to, it also reflects upon society‘s consumption of suffering meant to delight. This film reflects upon Aristotle‘s belief about art, acting to show how consumed society has become with watching others suffer. While the killer is ultimately defeated by his own hand at the end of the film, the conclusion of the film leaves the audience lacking closure. The lack of closure is due to the thousands of co-perpetrators of the murders, society as a whole, who are not held responsible for their actions. Because of the explicit social commentary the feelings elicited by the film are conflicted. The film creates numerous situations that are meant to stimulate Schadenfreude; however, the film's explicit exploration of Schadenfreude in society causes a conscious awareness of it. In many situations Schadenfreude is derived without direct conscious control of the emotion. Many of the instances of Schadenfreude explored in this essay have shown the emotion as being an inherent component of human experience. Because of this, Schadenfreude is normally made manifest without intention or conscious causation. Because of these conflicts, the viewer is left with a conscious choice of emotions, whether or not to feel Schadenfreude or to feel guilty. This requires Schadenfreude to be a conscious decision rather than a perception based on an innate physiological response to the perceived stimuli in the film.

The new age of horror films on the silver screen has added the gruesome effects of outrageous gore and violence, which seek to both disgust and terrify the audience. While many of the plot elements of these films are ridiculously far-fetched, and do not fit into what would normally be considered the limits of reality, the number of these kinds of films, which often occur in series, shows the enormous success and popularity of the genre. From this a fundamental question is left unanswered: What is it about these films that draws audiences to them?

Granted, there are individuals who do not like horror films, or who are too afraid to watch them; but the majority of movie patrons like a good scare every now and then. The biological processes discussed earlier in this essay illustrate the mechanisms that occur in the body when we feel fear. Although not mentioned earlier, it was implied that these

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mechanisms rely heavily on optical stimulation to occur. As noted, cinema, unless a documentary, is an artificial depiction of reality, but fear and pleasure are still induced. The films stimulate the biological ―fight or flight‖ response as well as activating the pleasure centers of the brain. Thus, rather than simple works of art, these films become a drug. That is to say, they leave the audience wanting more. If these films only induced terror, they would probably not be very popular.

However, the degree of pleasure they are able to create keeps the audiences coming back for more. Like the drug addict waiting for his or her next fix, the audience keeps coming back to get their fix of Schadenfreude to satiate internal desires that often cannot be satiated except through cinema and television,. iSchadenfreude: Schadenfreude at our Fingertips With Bluetooth headsets, cell phones, Blackberries, iPods, and other personal electronic paraphernalia, the integration of electronic devices into the simplest functions of daily life is self evident. This wellspring of technology has ushered in a new technological revolution, in which the vast distances that once separated continents and cultures can be bridged at the speed of light by hand-held technology. However, for all the wealth of knowledge provided instantly to one's fingertips through the integration of this technology into quotidian routines, there is a catch. This technology also places into one‘s hands, on a private and individual level, the ability to satiate epicarian desires at any time one pleases. It also affords the ability for the transmission of information or media to a vast number of people at an almost instantaneous rate. Take for instance the case of the horrible events of the Virginia Tech massacre. Within minutes of the shootings, videos taken by nearby students on their cell phones showed the shocking images of the confrontation between police and the shooter.

One could argue that this information was disseminated to inform the media and the public of the events that were transpiring. Even if that was the intention of the person who filmed the events, the viral nature of its transmission and the millions who tuned in to the news to see the events transpire shows how fascinated and invested society is when able to observe a tangible instance of human suffering. As noted earlier, many aspects of technology have created a barrier between society and suffering as a present part of daily life. The section on cinema and horror films pointed out the idea that society tries to satiate Schadenfreude by creating artificial suffering. However, even with the thousands of films and other artificial depictions of suffering that one could use to experience Schadenfreude, society‘s obsession with tangible suffering has created a culture in which our hand-held

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A Smile from Suffering technology becomes a tool used to deliver it to the user‘s fingertips.

The idea of a piece of information going ―viral‖ means it reaches a large audience in a very short period of time. This is usually accomplished via the Internet, text messaging, television, and other forms of instant media delivery. For instance, shortly after the execution of Saddam Hussein, hidden camera videos shot with cell phones were posted to sites like Youtube. From there these videos reached millions, and they are still watched. While there are numerous examples, this one should be noted because of its having been seen as having carried out justice on a man who had caused suffering to untold numbers of people. Viewing the video once might satisfy one‘s biologically driven desire to see justice carried out; however, derivation of pleasure at justice being carried out, and continued viewing of the video numerous times is indicative of a culture that cannot get enough of watching people suffer. Technological cultures have developed in such a way as to provide individuals with a private and individual means of experiencing Schadenfreude anytime and anywhere.

With the bounds of technology expanding daily into new realms of possibility, it is important to step back and reflect upon the direction many of mankind‘s creations have taken, and the intrinsic purpose of many of these devices. The new television series Caprica depicts a human civilization several decades more advanced than the most modern countries of the world. This series explicitly reflects upon the dark direction the development of personal technological devices has taken. In this series a device known as a holoband allows the user to connect to a virtual reality. While created for scientific and research purposes, the device quickly developed others uses; notably, life simulating pornographic virtual realities were the first commercial uses for the device. Unlike the film medium which depicts artificial suffering that one witnesses but does not participate in, this device creates a reality in which the user can become the cause of suffering.

As the creator and wielder of suffering the user is able to create an enormous capacity to perceive Schadenfreude. The motto of the adolescents that use these devices is ―No Limits.‖ Sex, drugs, murder, human sacrifices, carnal pleasures, torture, suffering, and other deviant behaviors have become the major uses of the device. Because it is a ―virtual‖ reality, these behaviors are not condemned because they are artificial, and allow for a cathartic release of mankind's instinctual desires. However, as previously noted, the physiological experience of Schadenfreude does not make a distinction between tangible and artificial suffering. One must question why this device has become so popular. One must also ask if these behaviors are only released in the artificial reality, are they repressed in actual reality because they are not

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But does its cathartic release help to quell mankind‘s instinctual desires, or does it bring them closer to the surface making it more difficult to repress the sadistic compulsions? These ideas also bate the question, with the current level of technology just a few decades behind this artistic depiction, will our society choose to rise above instinctual desires to satiate suffering and use technology to promote general welfare, or will society continue to develop to bring us ever more realistic means of experiencing Schadenfreude whenever and however an individual desires?

Conclusion The opening statement of this essay is held as an article of faith by the apes in the film Planet of the Apes. Much like the idea of Schadenfreude implies, this film depicts man as a fallen, emotionally driven, weak-willed, and violent creature. What is referred to as ―humanity‖ is lost to a more savage and primal nature, our true nature, that lies repressed just below the surface. Films, the arts, media, and leaders often talk about peace, prosperity, and happiness for all mankind, while overlooking the fact that the human species has spent the majority of its time on this planet in the pursuit of killing other humans. Few species kill other members of their species, but none have done so on the level that mankind has done. Mankind calls itself an enlightened people, aware of the importance of individuality, its collective and social nature, and the importance of the human soul; yet humans annihilate one another like a child with a magnifying glass vaporizing ants on the sidewalk. This essay has examined the biological origin for humanity‘s derivation of pleasure from the observation of the suffering of other human beings, and the psychological mechanisms that act in concert with those biological foundations. It has also looked at the concept of Schadenfreude as it is made manifest in art and culture. Through this examination, the arguments in this essay have sought to construct a picture that explores the numerous contributory factors involved in the phenomenon of Schadenfreude in order to discover what brings it about. This essay has also sought to show that mankind is intrinsically bound to a primal nature, of which Schadenfreude is a part, that not only expresses itself in the creations of society, but has resulted in both public and private means of satiating this primal thirst. The ideas explored herein bring into question mankind's notion of free will, the idea of a conscious mind, and an individual‘s ability to act independently of his or her emotions. These ideas bring about the question: Is the individual in control of his or her

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emotions, or is mankind subject to its primal nature as the prologue and evidence presented herein imply?

Works Cited Aguirre, Manuel. Closed Space. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.

Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. W. D. Ross. The Internet Classics Archive. MIT, 2009. Web. Dec. 2009. http://classics.mit.edu/aristotle/nicomachaen.2.ii.html.

Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. S. H. Butcher. The Internet Classics Archive.

MIT, 2009. 15 Mar. 2009 <http://classics.mit.edu/aristotle/poetics.html>.

Badley, Linda. Film, Horror, and the Body Fantastic. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1995.

Burke, Edmund. Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. Online Text May 2009 <http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/107.html>.

Damasio, Antonio R. Descartes' Error Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Harper Perennial, 1995.

Duboc, Bruno. "The Brain from Top to Bottom, Emotions and the Brain, Pleasure and Pain, et. al." The Brain from Top to Bottom.

Sept. 2002-2009. McGill University (Canada). 20 Dec. 2008. <http://www.mcgill.ca>.

"Empathy." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2009 MerriamWebster Online, 21 April. 2009. <http://merriamwebster.com/dictionary/empathy>.

Freeland, Cynthia A. Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2000.

Friday the 13th Collection. Dir. Sean Cunningham, et. al. Perf. Kevin Bacon, Laurie Bartram et. al. Paramount, 1980. DVD Fromm, Erich. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. New York: H. Holt, 1992.

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Halloween. Dir. John Carpenter. Perf. Donald Pleasance, Jamie Lee Curtis. DVD. Anchor Bay Studio, 2007.

Hantke, Steffen. Horror Films: Creating and Marketing Fear.

Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2004.

Moore, Ronald D., prod. ―Battlestar Galactica.‖ Battlestar Galactica.

SyFy. Vancouver, British Columbia. 2003-2009.

Moore, Ronald D., prod. ―Caprica.‖ Caprica. SyFy. Vancouver, British Columbia. 2009-2010.

The New International Version. Grand Rapids: Biblica, 1984. Bible Gateway. 23 Dec. 2009. <http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/ ?search=Genesis%203:19&version=NIV>.

A Nightmare on Elm Street Collection. Dir. Wes. Craven et. al. Perf.

Robert Englund et. al. New Line Home Video, 1984. DVD. Peck, M. Scott. People of the Lie. New York: Touchstone, 1998.

Planet of The Apes. Dir. David Comtois. Prod. Arthur P. Jacobs. Perf.

Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter. Twentieth Century Fox, 1968. DVD Plato. The Republic Books II, III, X. Trans. Benjamin Jowett. The Internet Classics Archive. 2009. 12 Feb. 2009 <http://classics.mit.edu/plato/republic.html>.

Psycho. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Perf. Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh.

Universal Studios, 1960. DVD. Rosenthal, Elisabeth. ―When Bad People Are Punished, Men Smile (but Women Don't).‖ <The New York Times 19 Jan. 2006. Dec. 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/science/19revenge. html?ex=1139547600&en=5cb415405edddd2e&ei=50701>.

"Schadenfreude." Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian. 1 May 2009. <http://dictionary1.classic.reference.com/ browse/schadenfreude>.

Scream. Dir. Wes Craven. Perf. Neve Cambell. Dimension Films,

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1997. ―The Open Mind: Guest M. Scott Peck.‖ The Open Mind. PBS. Psychology, Boston, MA. 21 Dec. 1983. The Internet Archive.

Dec. 2009. <http://www.archive.org/details/openmind_ep1050>.

Takahashi, Hidehiko. ―When Your Gain Is My Pain and Your Pain Is My Gain: Neural Correlates of Envy and Schadenfreude.‖ Science 323: 937-39. 13 Feb. 2009. Dec. 2009. <http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/323/5916/937>.

Tiedens, Larissa. The Social Life of Emotions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2004. Google Books. 15 May. 2009. <http://books.google.com/books?id=t-5fibys.kc&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Social+Life+of+Emotions>.

Untraceable. Dir. Gregory Hoblit. Perf. Diane Lane. Lakeshore Entertainment, 2008.

Waal, Frans De. Our Inner Ape A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are. New York: Riverhead Trade, 2006.

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Kim Clune Introduction to “Ideological vs. Factual Reality in The Last King of Scotland” Kim Middleton Associate Professor of English What is the relationship between art and truth? This question has been taken up by any number of critics over centuries of debate. In Book X of The Republic, Plato‘s Socrates famously calls for the expulsion of all artists from the state, because they dangerously allow us to confuse artifice for what is real: ―the poet with his words and phrases may be said to lay on the colors of the several arts, himself understanding their nature only enough to imitate them; and other people, who are as ignorant as he is, and judge only from his words, imagine that if he speaks of cobbling, or of military tactics, or of anything else, in meter and harmony and rhythm, he speaks very well— such is the sweet influence which melody and rhythm by nature have.‖ Hundreds of years later, however, Martin Heidegger attempted to reverse Plato‘s claim and valorized art as the very access point to the truth of existence, saying pithily in Being and Time: ―art lets truth originate.‖ It probably comes as no surprise that many artists cleave more closely to Heidegger‘s position than to Plato‘s, particularly as the experience of the modern world brought about suspicions that we can‘t always trust what we perceive to be true. By the 1980s, the dominant trend in literary criticism was that of deep concern and suspicion that the fundamental truths we had been told, by religions, by scientists, and by political parties, were to be interrogated as closely as those tales that described themselves outright as fiction. If the Modernists of the previous generation had been invested in creating new truths to live by, these postmodernists of the last quarter of the century were interested in questioning the ways that truth functioned. How does it make us believe? The arts became the place to thematize the ways that truth was constructed, the methods used to give it veracity, and the motives of those who benefitted from its belief.

In ―Ideological vs. Factual Reality in The Last King of Scotland,” Kim Clune enters the age-old debate with her examination of a film that claims for itself both truth and the questioning of truth. She uses the tools of postmodern critique to parse the means by which the film makes claim to its own authority. She closely attends to the film‘s multiple audiences, and assesses the ways that The Last King of Scotland caters to their divergent needs. Most importantly, however,

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Clune addresses the subtle pressures that subvert the desire to use art responsibly in the service of truth.

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Ideological vs. Factual Reality in The Last King of Scotland Kim Clune English major; Class of 2008 Globalization and economics make the potential for colonization through entertainment media an ever-pressing reality. In the film The Last King of Scotland, the postmodern desire to believe in the political possibility of historiographic metafiction conflicts with the loss of true facts when the film’s unintended and most enthusiastic audience is a nation of Ugandans with a deep desire to learn their national history surrounding Idi Amin’s dictatorship. Comparing history with the concept of historicity illustrates the ways in which Ugandans trust the film’s seemingly factual “reality” while not understanding certain ideological realities created by its fictive devices. Filmmakers, although paying careful attention to Amin’s costumes and settings, intentionally distort the facts surrounding the death of his publicly adored wife, Kay, sacrificing the authenticity of an individual and national experience for the sake of an ideological representation of Western colonization. The determination is that while distortion and colonization are each crimes in their own right, the filmmakers’ profitdriven motive to draw the patronage of Western audiences unwittingly adds another layer of colonization to an already exploited African nation.

To examine The Last King of Scotland, a 2006 film based on Giles Foden‘s 1998 novel of the same name, is to explore the implications of historiographic metafiction as well as its limitations. This film in particular offers an interesting vantage point, having been produced for Western society while simultaneously popular in Uganda.

Determinations about various representations of reality will be reached through analysis of Nicholas Garrigan, the fictional Scottish doctor inserted into the narrative as an instrument used to reveal problematic Western representations of Uganda‘s former president, Idi Amin. The repercussions of Garrigan‘s insertion will also be addressed, as his presence distorts Ugandan citizens‘ sense of history with factual falsehoods.

The Last King of Scotland focuses on the dictatorship of Idi Amin, a former high-ranking soldier for the British Colonial Army who comes into power after staging a coup in 1971. After unseating Ugandan Prime Minister Obote, Amin inserts himself into the role of president and promises his people a democratic vote. The film establishes that

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Amin initially curries great favor among Ugandans and follows Amin as he spirals into a paranoid state, retaining power by either charming or murdering any possible opposition.

According the Washington Post article ―In Uganda, ‗Last King of Scotland‘ Generates Blend of Pride and Pain,‖ Craig Timberg writes: By the time [Amin] was driven from power in 1979, his regime had killed an estimated 300,000 Ugandan intellectuals, opposition figures and members of rival ethnic groups ... Amin also had a flare for needling Western sensibilities, as when he announced that he was not merely president-for-life of Uganda, ―Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea,‖ but also king of Scotland … calling for Scottish secession from Britain. This odd twist became the genesis for the novel ―The Last King of Scotland,‖ by Giles Foden, the main character of which, Nicholas Garrigan, bears a resemblance to Bob Astles, a former British soldier who was an advisor to Amin during his dictatorship.

(Timberg) The nature of Nicholas Garrigan‘s character is, in large part, what makes The Last King of Scotland fit the definition of historiographic metafiction. According to literary theorist Linda Hutcheon in The Politics of Postmodernism, historiographic metafiction mixes historical and fictive representation in a manner that is ―self conscious of the fictionality, the lack of the familiar pretense of transparency, and the calling into question of the factual grounding of history writing‖ (Hutcheon 33). Ideology both constructs and naturalizes the way a culture presents itself to itself. This type of postmodern work attempts to de-doxify, or denaturalize, traditional assumptions about representation as well as the contrived reality that ideology assumes as truth. Hutcheon believes that postmodernism simultaneously inscribes and subverts the convention of narrative to this end, allowing for the rethinking of representation and inspiration of new critical analysis.

Based on Hutcheon‘s theoretical framework, the making of The Last King of Scotland offers an opportunity to reveal Western cultural norms by reflecting them back to the very culture the film was designed to entertain. What remains in question is, what perceptions are created when a different viewing culture believes an ideological commentary to be factual?

The film‘s popularity in Uganda is as undeniable as is the reason for it. According to the New York Times World Africa video, ―The Last King of Scotland Opens in Uganda‖ by Jeffrey Gettleman, access to the DVD spread nationwide prior to the official release thanks to the influx

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of pirated DVDs from the Chinese underground. For the equivalent of 20 cents, as opposed to the inaccessible $5 admission to Uganda‘s only theater, masses of people have continued to file into small huts lined with wooden benches to see their history (Gettlemen). This national interest signals the grand-scale impact of Western culture upon this African nation. The effects upon Ugandan society are important to explore because the information being disseminated is not real in the sense that is assumed.

Timberg of the Washington Post explains why this film is so important to the nation‘s citizens.

For Ugandans too young to have clear memories of Amin‘s reign, ―The Last King of Scotland‖ gave them a welcome dose of insight into their own national history ... After seeing the movie, said Alice Mwesigwa, 32, ―it was, ‗Wow, this is real.‘‖ (Timberg) Anyone over 20 remembers Amin in some way. Mwesigwa has her own memory to compare with the film and comes to an interesting determination about how ―real‖ this new representation is.

Reference to the story as ―real‖ is problematic in that certain elements are obviously not real. While contamination of reality is inherent in any narrative, this particular process begins with the novel.

In the interview ―Giles Foden, The Last King of Scotland‖ conducted

by Boldtype, the English author (after spending a portion of his early life in Africa) is asked whether his portrait of Amin is based on ―research, memory, imagination, or a combination of all three.‖ Foden answers: All three, but trying to keep the research at bay was a problem.

I kept discovering these amazing things about Amin which I wanted to put in the book. This was disturbing, as I felt like I was being ―dictated‖ to, or suffering the kind of demonic possession that Amin believed existed. Still, I guess I must have pulled through: mainly I tried to hang onto the idea that this was a story. I wanted to make people turn the page. (Boldtype) Foden embraces the stereotypical ideas surrounding the dictator; those of Amin‘s disturbing behavior and his belief in demonic possession. Foden applies these to the research process itself, as if the unearthing of facts is somehow unearthing Amin‘s power, forcing Foden‘s hand in what to write. This interpretation reveals the lens through which Foden has performed his research, demonstrating his own biased making of meaning through his processing of facts. Foden

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also reminds us that his novel is ultimately a story designed to entertain and sell, a process that allows him to distill Amin‘s many advisors down to the fictional Dr. Garrigan. Screenwriters further distill Foden‘s entire novel down to a screenplay where the collective influence of the director, producers, actors and editors departs from the novel and adds their own impact to the film.

When Ugandan viewers make meaning of the final product based on their own cultural experience, they seem to confuse the film The Last King of Scotland with the traditional sense of history and reality.

This confusion is understandable and reflects the concerns of literary theorist Frederic Jameson. As stated in his work, Postmodernism or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism: The new spatial logic of the simulacrum can now be expected to have a momentous effect on what used to be historical time. The past is thereby itself modified ... The past as ―referent‖ finds itself gradually bracketed, and then effaced altogether, leaving us with nothing but text. (Jameson 18) Jameson‘s theory of postmodernism contrasts with Hutcheon‘s in that he blames postmodern literary works for having foregone the signposts that had traditionally signaled the difference between fiction and reality. Furthermore, Jameson would argue that the filmmakers are referring to a history that never happened, a simulacrum, a copy with no original. History has been replaced by the likeness of history.

In response to Jameson‘s disapproval of postmodernism, one must question whose telling of history gets privilege. History has generally been the tale of the victor or dominant culture. Hutcheon offers an alternative position: Such a clashing of various possible discourses of narrative representation is one way of signaling the postmodern use and abuse of convention that works to de-doxify any sense of the seamlessness of the join between the natural and the cultural, the world and the text, thereby making us aware of the irreducible ideological nature of every representation - of past or present ...

Postmodern fiction does not, however, disconnect itself from history or the world. It foregrounds and thus contests the conventionality and unacknowledged ideology of that assumption of seamlessness and asks its readers to question the processes by which we represent ourselves and our world to ourselves and to become aware of the means by which we make sense of and construct order out of experience in our particular culture.

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(Hutcheon 51) Although the business of reality and historicity appears convoluted in The Last King of Scotland up to this point, to apply Hutcheon‘s definition of historiographic metafiction elevates the fictional Dr. Garrigan to a tool useful in exploring the multi-faceted Amin and allows for new interpretations.

James McAvoy, the actor who plays Garrigan, believes his role to be the postmodern, self-reflexive mirror that Hutcheon describes.

McAvoy says, ―This film is not just about Idi. It‘s not just about Uganda. It‘s about the way that Britain, and maybe the rest of the world ... looked at Uganda because I‘m very much Britain‘s looking glass in the film‖ (Capturing Idi Amin).

McAvoy believes Garrigan reflects Britain‘s responsibility in supporting Amin‘s dictatorship. Garrigan also allows the audience access to Amin in ways that Amin‘s friends, family, government, subjects and the international community never have. Unlike the many people who saw only what Amin wanted them to see, Garrigan sees all.

The most widespread information about Amin‘s dictatorship consists of a collage of stereotypes. Jon Snow, a well known journalist in the United Kingdom with former access to Amin, says, ―In the early 1970‘s there was still a lot of racism about and I think Amin appealed to a racist stereotype of Africa. If he hadn‘t existed we would have had to invent him. He was a perfect kind of larger than life, ogreous, you know, people eating monster of a dictator‖ (Capturing Idi Amin).

The problem with this statement is that Amin was not always perceived as a ―monster of a dictator.‖ In fact, he began as a loyal soldier of Britain, escalating from mess hall duty to commander and eventually, as a self-appointed president, he continued to enjoy the company of loyal supporters. He was known throughout the media outlets as charismatic and gregarious. Perception only shifted once rumors of Amin slaughtering his own people were corroborated as fact.

If the movie teaches us anything new about Amin, it is that he was largely invented by the media through a dance of push and push-back.

Director Kevin MacDonald and actors Forest Whitaker and James McAvoy met with journalist Jon Snow to better understand Amin‘s relationship with the press and how to portray this relationship in the film. As MacDonald recalls from their interview: [Jon] had got to know Amin very well when he was a young journalist … he talked very interestingly about how Amin had seduced him, how he had seduced all the press corps. So even when people went to Amin to ask tough questions, to say ―I‘m

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Ideological vs. Factual Reality going to find out what‘s really going on in this country … I‘m going to put him on the spot about his murders that we‘ve heard about,‖ they would come away laughing. They would come away feeling that Amin was a decent guy. He was funny, and also the news desks back home would be saying, ―Give us more of that footage of Amin dancing, or footage of Amin in his kilt. We love that. It‘s so funny.‖ And Jon Snow says that he still feels guilty about that, that the press betrayed Uganda or let them down, at the very least. (MacDonald) The media not only failed to represent an accurate portrayal of Amin‘s wrath and fury, it also played a significant role in suppressing all but Amin‘s folly. While journalists had no direct hand in the onslaught of Amin‘s wrath, they cannot be exonerated from playing their part. The press essentially created a caricature and unwittingly drew a stereotypical shield of protection around a madman‘s murderous activities. Snow may feel some remorse about the veil that the media cast over the truth, allowing the world to giggle throughout the massacre of an estimated 300,000 people, but the bloodstained pen of the media machine has no conscience. Snow admits that the media would have created a stereotypical version of Amin had it not existed.

Amin continued to give the press what they wanted and they settled for what he fed them, the ―charming fool,‖ according to Snow (Capturing Idi Amin). Amin became a Saturday Night Live skit character and song parodies surfaced detailing his outrageous behavior.

Each instance offers lingering evidence of the deceptive 1970s media creation Snow described, one which provided an illusion for Amin to exploit. The legacy of buffoonery continues nearly 40 years later. On the ―Sucks or Rules‖ website posted in November 2007, Amin‘s image battles for votes against a picture of Bob‘s bitch tits from Chuck Palahniuk‘s contemporary film Fight Club, likely due to a resurgence of Amin‘s portrayal via the film‘s re-interpretation.

Amin intentionally and repeatedly presented his stereotype to the press, in part because his reality had become terrorized by it and, in part, because the exertion of terror by his hand had exceeded it.

According to MacDonald: Amin wore a distorted mirror reflecting back to the colonial masters in Britain what he had learned from them. He took ideas like bagpipes and kilts and imposed them into a completely inappropriate world … In some horrible way he was like a sort of puppet who had come to life. He was like a plaything of the Empire that turned around and said, ‗boo.‘‖ (Capturing Idi Amin)

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Hutcheon discusses a similar, albeit fictional, phenomenon in Angela Carter‘s novel, The Loves of Lady Purple. In this novel, a marionette is made to represent a living prostitute who, in life, was reduced to puppet status by the construct of male erotic fantasy. In the end, the marionette drinks her puppet master‘s blood, comes to life and returns to the brothel once more leaving us to question, ―Had the marionette all the time parodied the living or was she, now living, to parody her own performance as a marionette‖ (Hutcheon 31)?

Amin was a real-life, postmodern puppet. On one hand, he was somewhat illusory with his multiple costumes and cultural allusions, a fractured identity representing something beyond explanation and yet harkening toward something familiar. On the other hand, brandishing tactics the British taught him as a soldier in their colonizing army, he used the power found in the barrel of a gun as a tool to shape his own national and international identity. Which is Amin‘s real identity, clown or tyrant? His is neither and both simultaneously. By revealing the construction of the real by the press and by Amin, we reach a new understanding that representation becomes its own reality.

After researching the role of Amin through countless interviews with those who knew varying sides of him, Whitaker says, ―I wonder if we can look at Africa without the context of intervention … There is a schism in African history, and Amin was a big product of it … He‘s not Satan … He‘s not the devil. My search was to find the reasons he made the decisions that he did‖ (Haygood 1). Whitaker‘s reference to a ―schism‖ implies a failure on the part of history in general, one that Garrigan‘s presence helps to supplement.

In the film, although Amin addresses the press with complete composure and charm, Garrigan allows us access to the extreme rage and paranoia unleashed behind closed doors. Amin felt betrayed by the British. Having been embraced and empowered during Uganda‘s colonization, the nation flat out ignored his first massacre while finding him useful. Then, at the time of Uganda‘s independence, the country turned its back on him. Through Garrigan‘s eyes we see Amin‘s struggle, paranoia and pleas to his advisors for help. By revealing Amin as a multifaceted human being, the limitations of both media stereotyping and historical representation become apparent.

Regardless of an attempt at realism by creating Garrigan as a composite of Amin‘s advisors, this character influences Amin‘s decisions within the film. He impacts storyboard situations that never actually happened, contrived events which fictionalize Amin‘s story.

MacDonald defends this by saying:

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We have taken liberties, as the novel does and I think one of the reasons we feel happy doing that with Amin in particular is because there is something about [Amin] that is almost more fictional than it is real. You never really can pin down what the historical reality is. (Capturing Idi Amin) One might find fictionalization a small price to pay for the revelation of history‘s limitations, and perhaps this is true in the case of the film‘s attempt at respectful representation of Amin. In other aspects of the film, though, fictional liberties are taken too far.

The real story of Kay, one of Amin‘s many wives, is as mythical and mysterious as Amin‘s own. Some suspect Amin killed Kay for being unfaithful, although, in Time Magazine‘s 1977 article ―Big Daddy in Books,‖ Kay‘s most probable story is summarized in a review of Amin‘s former health minister Henry Kyemba‘s novel, A State of Blood.

For once, Kyemba exonerates Amin: "I do not believe, as I first did, that Amin had a direct hand in Kay's death." Instead, he writes, she died during an abortion that was being performed by her lover, a doctor. Kyemba speculates that the doctor dismembered the body in an effort to hide it, but then changed his mind; he committed suicide a few hours later. When informed of his former wife's death, Amin requested that the body be sewed back together; at the funeral, he raged to her assembled family about her unfaithfulness. (―Big Daddy in Books‖ 2) In the film‘s fabricated version, Kay and the young Dr. Garrigan have a one night stand and consequently conceive a child. Garrigan asks permission to use the presidential hospital to perform an abortion in order to spare Kay and himself a torturous death at the hands of an angry Amin. When Dr. Thomas Junju denies them access to Amin‘s hospital, Garrigan asks, ―What other choice does she have, some back street job in a village somewhere?‖ Junju replies, ―It‘s the only choice you‘ve left her. But I don‘t expect it had crossed your mind here to wonder, a white man with a black woman. What does she need with such things‖ (The Last King of Scotland)?

The union between Kay and Garrigan is used to insert the concept of colonization into the film. Although Amin opens his heart and home to Garrigan, sharing a great deal of his personal possessions, Garrigan takes more than allowed. He takes Kay without permission. With this one act, Garrigan violates the Ugandan leader‘s trust and ultimately destroys Kay‘s life. Garrigan and Kay‘s resulting child, a symbolic

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zygote of cultural fusion at the most basic human level, is aborted before it can see the light of day.

For her infidelity, Kay is dismembered. Her limbs are positioned in a gruesome and unnatural position and ordered by Amin (an adulterer himself) to be put on display at the city morgue. This gruesome exhibit illustrates well that, while men often enjoy freedoms not afforded to women, women are often made to pay for the indulgences of colonizing men.

This new interpretation of Kay‘s story is riddled with conflict, invoking global dichotomies spanning from black/white, masculine/feminine and colonizer/colonized to the ultimate life/death situation. MacDonald explains his intentions: The white man with the black woman was kind of like the racial, political element which has not really been a part of the story so far. And suddenly we see it all from a different perspective. We see him as the white man who has come in to rape and pillage the country in a way and to use a woman in a way that, you know, was the old colonial manner of doing things. You see Garrigan in a different kind of light. (MacDonald, Director‘s Commentary) This insertion of a ―racial, political element‖ may work on an ideological level, but this departure from fact as Ugandans know it is not without repercussions. Kerry Washington, the actress who plays Kay, sees the fondness Ugandans feel toward Kay and has experienced, first hand, their distress over the sacrifice of an adored individual for the sake of ideological representation: There are things about [Kay‘s] life that people are very sensitive about. People that remember her get very upset when they remember her. And while it‘s true that she did have an affair behind Idi‘s back and she did become pregnant and seek an illegal abortion, she did not have an affair with a white man, which is, you know, I guess, dramatic license. (Capturing Idi Amin) That the filmmakers struggled with the inclusion of the dismemberment scene offers little comfort to a Ugandan audience not privy to the process. Dramatic license has had a cultural impact, violating the Ugandans‘ most cherished memory of Kay. Forest Whitaker, with his consuming interest in bringing authenticity to Amin‘s role, says of Kay‘s cinematic plight, ―Idi Amin kills her, takes the body, cuts her up and sews the parts on differently,

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which is one of the most gruesome images in the film. And I think that image will stick with people really strongly. And that‘s, that‘s not true‖ (Capturing Idi Amin). Whitaker‘s tone here is remorseful and even hesitant, as if he believes this departure from reality to be a tragic failure in representation. In response, producer Andrea Calderwood says, ―We just felt it was such a powerful moment to dramatize Idi‘s frame of mind … we weren‘t just being gratuitous about it‖ (Capturing Idi Amin).

While some awareness exists for these actors and their producer, Whitaker and Washington appear to be more affected by the cinematic choice. As members of a black minority in the Western world, perhaps they have a greater sensitivity to the cultural dangers that arise from this particular story line. What neither of them address is how this scene reinforces the idea that women who do not remain in their place suffer the gravest of consequences, a message that Ugandan woman are flocking to for mere pennies a viewing. The film not only warns of forbidden sex for women, but of the forbidden combination of black and white.

As the film draws to an end, the symbolism intensifies and the implications run deeper. Garrigan, now Amin‘s traitor, is torturously hung from meat hooks piercing through his bloody, white chest, his arms limply outstretched. The imagery is strikingly Christ-like. As he is tortured, Garrigan refuses to scream as if taking on the sorrow of the hundreds of thousands of slaughtered Ugandans and refusing to let Amin hear their cries.

At first opportunity, Dr. Thomas Junju, the man who refused to help Garrigan at the hospital, cuts him down and helps him to flee the country. He does so at the risk and eventual realization of his own peril.

When Garrigan asks why Junju has a change of heart, the Ugandan says,―Go home and tell the story to all. People will believe you because you are white‖ (The Last King of Scotland). In the end, even after all the atrocities Garrigan sets into motion, he becomes one more cinematic white, Western hero.

After paying strict attention to the detailed minutia of filmmaking, from the correct costuming to Amin‘s authentic car, why would filmmakers create an ending that departs so drastically from fact? One possibility is that this ending is designed to assuage Western audiences because it does, after all, have to sell. It may also be a commentary on how the world refuses to recognize the plight of black Africans unless whites lend a sense of credibility to their narrative. These interpretations need not be mutually exclusive of one another but, in this instance, the director offers a frank assessment of his reasoning.

According to the Washington Post article, ―This Role Was Brutal,‖

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Kim Clune the theory of profit motive is confirmed. ―[MacDonald] didn‘t want a movie that fictionalized the story to the point where the white character becomes a heroic figure. ‗It‘s unfortunately the economics of moviemaking‘ he says‖ (Haygood 1). Unfortunately, when created with ticket sales in mind, the cinematic product codifies the audience into believing existing social norms are acceptable and that resistance is futile. In this film, reinforced for both Western and Eastern cultures, is the ideology of cultural separation and domination of one over another.

The Last King of Scotland kindles the postmodern desire to believe in the political possibility of historiographic metafiction. Effectively decentering notions of authenticity and subjectivity, the film creates a new way to see a larger historical representation of Idi Amin—until the destruction of facts violates the meaning attached to those facts as valued by another culture. The point at which Kay‘s memory is defaced and Garrigan becomes the nation‘s savior is the point at which the power of historiographic metafiction can no longer function. The Last King of Scotland eventually fails in its ethical ability to expose minority perspectives and incite revolution against certain dominant political ideologies because it tries to satisfy two conflicting motivations. Its power can only be unleashed when art remains true to the postmodern goal, not when motivated by profit. This film‘s failure to execute illustrates the importance of cross-cultural responsibility when crafting social commentary, particularly in the case of international topics and in the midst of global access to entertainment.

To deny this responsibility is socially careless and has the dangerous effect of adding one more layer of colonization to an already exploited people.

Works Cited ―Big Daddy in Books‖ TIME Magazine. Time Inc. Sep 19, 1977.

October 24, 2007 <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ article/0,9171,915481-2,00.html> ―Capturing Idi Amin‖ Special Feature Documentary. The Last King of Scotland. 2006. Two Step Film/BBC Scotland. 2007. DVD. The Last King of Scotland. Dir. Kevin MacDonald. Perf. Forest Whitaker, James McAvoy, Kerry Washington, Simon McBurney, Gillian Anderson. 2006. Fox Searchlight, 2007. DVD. Haygood, Wil. ―This Role Was Brutal: Forest Whitaker Tried to Humanize Tyrant Amin.‖ Washington Post. October 1, 2006.

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December 1, 2007 <http://www.washingtonpost.com> Gettleman, Jeffrey, Adam B. Ellick, and Courtenay Morris. ―The Last King of Scotland Opens in Uganda.‖ New York Times. February 21, 2007. October 26, 2007. <http://video.on.nytimes.com/> ―Giles Foden, The Last King of Scotland.‖ Boldtype. December 1998.

October 25, 2007 <http://www.randomhouse.com/ boldtype/1298/foden> Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1992.

MacDonald, Kevin. ―Director‘s Commentary‖ The Last King of Scotland. 2006. Fox Searchlight, 2007. DVD. ―Man Boobs vs. Idi Amin.‖ Sucks or Rules. DWLyle. November 4, 2007, November 24, 2007 <http://www.sucksorrules.com/battles/ detail/people/156911/man-boobs-vs-idi-amin>.

Timberg, Craig. ―In Uganda, 'Last King of Scotland' Generates Blend of Pride and Pain.‖ Washington Post. February 27, 2007. October 26, 2007 <http://www.washingtonpost.com

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Lindsay Jones Introduction to “Development and the Trujillo Era” Keith Haynes Professor of History Development has been an enduring interest of historians, social scientists, and policymakers and the questions that they have raised during the past fifty years have produced insights into seemingly intractable problems of poverty and social injustice. In the 1970s, ―dependency theory‖ concluded that these problems occurred because foreign nations had exploited the land, labor, and resources of Latin America.1 Critics of the dependency approach typically favored modernization theory, an alternative explanation for Latin American poverty. Among these scholars, Latin America‘s poverty—i.e., its ―failure‖ to develop—was largely a result of its own internal problems and its refusal to open itself to modern ideas from Western Europe and the United States. Some even suggested that this ―failure‖ was the product of a ―distinct tradition‖ in Latin America, informed by a historical legacy of militarism, local political bosses (caudillaje), indigenous communalism, and insular Iberic Catholic culture.2 The following essay, ―Development and the Trujillo Era: The Detrimental Effects of Sugar and an Export-Oriented Economy,‖ by Lindsay Jones draws on a critical synthesis of these two intellectual traditions. It emphasizes both internal and external factors that shaped the Dominican Republic‘s historical struggle to end poverty and promote development during the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo between 1930 and 1961. Her analysis usefully combines primary and secondary sources to show how clashing racial, class, and personalist interests in the Dominican Republic interacted with U.S. foreign policy goals and an expanding American investment empire in the postwar world to sabotage the nation‘s developmental efforts initiated during the interwar period.

The classic definition of dependency was offered by Theotonio Dos Santos, ―The Structure of Dependence,‖ The American Economic Review 60, no. 2 (May 1970): 231, where he argued that poverty in Latin America was ―conditioned by the development and expansion of another economy to which the former is subject.‖ 2 Howard J Wiarda, Politics and Social Change in Latin America; the Distinct Tradition (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974); Howard J Wiarda, Politics and Social Change in Latin America: The Distinct Tradition, 2nd ed. (Amherst, Mass: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982); Howard J Wiarda, ed., Politics and Social Change in Latin America: Still a Distinct Tradition?, 3rd ed. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992); Howard J Wiarda and Margaret MacLeish Mott, eds., Politics and Social Change in Latin America: Still a Distinct Tradition?, 4th ed. (Westport, Conn: Praeger, 2003) 1

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Development and the Trujillo Era: The Detrimental Effects of Sugar and an Export-Oriented Economy Lindsay Jones Social Studies: Adolescence Education major; Class of 2010 The nations of Latin America and the Caribbean are generally distinguished by the prevalence of chronic-underdevelopment; the majority of the region’s countries are plagued by widespread poverty, export-dependent economies, weak and corrupt governments and lack of infrastructure. The following article aims to determine the factors that contribute to chronic underdevelopment and analyze the importance of their interconnectedness through a case-study analysis of the Dominican Republic. The mid-twentieth century proved to be a decisive moment in the story of Dominican development as dictator Raphael Trujillo used political, social and economic reforms to combat the nation’s history of foreign intervention, vast socioeconomic inequality and inefficient government. Initially these reforms contributed to considerable progress and the nation’s development looked promising. However, Trujillo’s shift away from these policies in favor of sugar production, spurred by the desire to secure elusive U.S. sugar quotas, served to reverse much of the progress that had been made. As a result of this shift to sugar production and interaction with the United States, Trujillo actually doomed the Dominican Republic to its fate as an export-dependent, underdeveloped nation.

The countries in Central America and the Caribbean share many of the same characteristics: fragmented markets, relatively small labor forces, racial and ethnic diversity, limited access to natural resources and long histories of foreign involvement and external dependency.

Despite some considerable differences among them, overall the nations of the region are largely, and often times, severely underdeveloped with vast inequality between sectors of society and largely dependent on foreign trade. Development in this context means more than mere economic growth; rather it requires a broad distribution of wealth and resources. The factors that contribute to development are ―inter-linked issues ranging from poverty reduction, gender equality, social integration, health, population, employment and education to human rights, the environment, sustainable development, finance and governance.‖1 These factors make the Dominican Republic, considered Department of Economic and Social Affairs, ―The United Nations Development Agenda: Development for All‖ (United Nations, September 2007), iii, http://www.un.org/esa/devagenda/UNDA_BW5_Final.pdf.

1

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Lindsay Jones ―a potential source of insight into problems facing many other countries,‖ an excellent case study for this discussion.2 When Rafael Trujillo began his rule over the Dominican Republic in 1930, he took power in a nation whose development had a long and tumultuous history of external manipulation, saddled by decades of colonization, chaotic periods of independence, foreign intervention, and foreign occupation. Despite the small country‘s underdevelopment, there was still opportunity for lucrative personal gains for Trujillo, which certainly paid off; by the end of his rule and death in 1961, Trujillo was the second or third richest man in the world.3 His extensive control over the nation and its people, along with economic ties to the United States, distorted the development of the Dominican Republic.

By the time Trujillo had taken over, the country was about $20 million in debt to the United States. 4 This presented a major challenge to an island nation with an underdeveloped landscape and a relatively small population, consisting of subsistence farmers and plantation workers. Significant accomplishments under the Trujillo regime included public works projects, road construction, an expansion of government and military, and growth in commerce.5 In fact, his national rice campaign resulted in national subsistence by 1940.6 However by the 1950s, Trujillo focused on sugar production and ―transformed the economy for his personal advantage and coincidentally left behind an export-oriented economy heavily dependent on sugar.‖7 Although a powerful influence on Dominican development, Trujillo did not operate in isolation; the dictator had a fluid relationship with the United States which was illustrated by his political support of the US during World War II and the early Cold War.8 One of the most important implications of the relationship between the two nations was the sugar quota. Lobbying for and receiving sugar quotas, driven by personal economic interests, Trujillo greatly increased Dominican sugar production.9 Certain aspects of Trujillo‘s rule produced development that could have been a good 2

Jan Knippers Black, The Dominican Republic: Politics and Development in an Unsovereign State (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986), 1.

3 Ibid., 27.

4 Ian Bell, The Dominican Republic (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1981), 69.

5 Bell, The Dominican Republic, 137; Black, The Dominican Republic, 57.

6 Catherine C. Legrand, ―Informal Resistance on a Dominican Sugar Plantation During the Trujillo Dictatorship,‖ Hispanic American Historical Review 75, no. 4 (1995): 555596.

7 Black, The Dominican Republic, 63.

8 Ibid., 27.

9 Michael R Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Trujillos (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000), 24.

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foundation for future years, but his shift toward sugar production and eminent greed ultimately reinforced the Dominican Republic‘s fate as an export-dependent nation, which resulted in the distortion of its development.

Historiography Scholars generally disagree about the nature of the Trujillo regime‘s effect on Dominican development and the extent to which U.S. foreign policy influenced it. Howard J. Wiarda‘s Dictatorship and Development concludes that Trujillo was a brutal ruler who oppressed the people of his country in such a manner that development was both lacking and harmed for the future.10 This interpretation completely overlooks any foreign involvement, placing all of the blame on the dictator. In contrast to Wiarda, Jan Knippers Black‘s The Dominican Republic contributes a more balanced and comprehensive canvass. The author discusses some of the limited developments that occurred under Trujillo, including growth of the middle class and public works as well as the creation of white collar jobs. At the same time, however, she points out that Trujillo‘s shift towards sugar production displaced thousands of families and erased their customs to make way for large sugar estates.11 Essentially, the author recognizes that the nation is underdeveloped, but attributes the situation to more than just the policies of Trujillo. More so than Black, scholar Michael R. Hall heavily stresses the importance of export-oriented sugar production in relation to the United States and the matter of sugar quotas. The author emphasizes the importance of the political negotiation, arguing that the interaction between the two nations had negative implications on Dominican development, making the nation‘s economy dependent on foreign markets.12 However, many of these scholars ignore the implication of racial politics on development.

Ernesto Sagás explores this in Race and Politics in the Dominican Republic, which argues that Trujillo used an Anti-Haitian state policy to subjugate the people of the Dominican Republic and create an image of the dictator as a protector of the nation‘s integrity and security. This scholar‘s argument significantly illustrates that Trujillo exercised a control over Dominican development that stretched beyond economic manipulation.13 However, it excludes another aspect of the relationship 10

Howard J Wiarda, Dictatorship and Development; the Methods of Control in Trujillo's Dominican Republic (Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press, 1968).

11 Black, The Dominican Republic.

12 Michael R Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Trujillos (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000).

13 , Race and Politics in the Dominican Republic (Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2000).

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between Trujillo and the lower peasant class. In Foundations of Despotism, Richard Lee Turits explores how Trujillo founded a peasant alliance through reforms such as land redistribution and granting of property rights that originally promoted development, but later changed as the dictator‘s emphasis shifted to the sugar export economy. The shift to sugar production during the 1950s and an export oriented economy ended the short glimpse of limited development.14 Original Research As illustrated by the historiographical debate amongst scholars, many factors distorted development. This essay stresses the interconnectedness of these political, economic and social factors under Trujillo, which led to the demise of development in the Dominican Republic. During the first twenty years of the Trujillo regime, despite the harsh oppression of the dictatorship, limited advances in development occurred. However, through the course of his final ten years of rule, they disappeared and Trujillo‘s policies left development in the Dominican Republic severely diminished and distorted for years to come.

Located on the eastern side of Hispaniola, the Dominican Republic‘s path to underdevelopment began with the invasion of the Spanish under Christopher Columbus during the 15th century. Under Spanish colonialism, much of the island‘s native Taino population perished and the emergence of a strong encomienda system, under which the Spanish crown offered trusteeship to Spanish officials to oversee indigenous labor, ushered in thousands of African slaves to replenish the labor population throughout the 16th century.15 Periods of economic and political chaos ensued during the following century as the Spanish and French competed for control of the island and the population steadily declined. During the mid 1700s, the economy and population of Hispaniola recovered when ports opened to foreign commerce; as a result, immigration increased dramatically. Black slaves, Spanish descendants, and mixed-race freedmen flooded into the island so that ―by 1785 the colony had almost 150,000 inhabitants.‖16 However, the 19th century held no more promise for political stability or substantial development.

Throughout the 1800s, events on the island mirrored those of its past; French and Spanish factions battled back and forth for control.

The French division of the island won its independence and in 1822 14

Richard Lee Turits, Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican History (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2003).

15 Bell, The Dominican Republic, 16-17.

16 Black, The Dominican Republic, 17.

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this nation, Haiti, took control of the entire island. However, through an underground resistance movement called La Trinitarian, the Dominican Republic won its independence in 1844. Well into the 20 th century, the Dominican Republic struggled to develop a stable government infrastructure when ―between 1844 and 1930, the presidency had changed hands fifty times‖ and from 1916-1924, the United States occupied the island.17 This long era of political instability hampered development and set the stage for Trujillo‘s thirty year tight grip on the nation‘s people and economy.

When Rafael Leonidas Trujillo seized control of the state in 1930, the island remained considerably underdeveloped. His rise to power coincided with the worldwide economic depression, and government revenues ―had diminished from $14 million in 1929 to less than $7 million in 1931.‖18 The nation was largely unindustrialized, the middle class was virtually nonexistent and, before Trujillo‘s seizure of control, a small elite of fewer than 100 families emerged as the nation‘s ruling aristocracy.19 The elite‘s shift towards a commercialized agriculture in the form of large land estates threatened a peasantry that had a longstanding tradition of subsistence on untitled and communal land, remote from cities and commercial areas. As Turits explains, ―with land in much of the country being accumulated and enclosed for the first time and stock fencing being legally required in widening areas, peasants‘ economic practices and way of life were rapidly becoming untenable.‖20 This large sector of the population was at risk of becoming landless and economically disadvantaged wage laborers, near servants to the much less-populated elite class. During the first twenty years of his regime, Trujillo simultaneously exercised almost limitless control over all sectors of the nation and, although often intended only for personal gain or control, imposed policies that enacted true development in the nation.

Trujillo‘s power in the Dominican Republic included a dramatic expansion of government and military; the intent was to provide more power and control to Trujillo, but it also resulted in progress towards development including ―direct taxes, a national currency, and full customs operations.‖21 A direct result of the further development of government was the growth of the middle sector of state workers in a large bureaucracy. Civil service grew because ―the many controls which the regime exercised over the society required an enlarged 17

Wiarda, Dictatorship and Development, 10; Black, The Dominican Republic, 17-21.

Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic, 17.

19 Wiarda, Dictatorship and Development, 99.

20 Turits, Foundations of Despotism, 82.

21 Ibid., 9.

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Lindsay Jones governmental apparatus.‖22 Trujillo‘s increase in control went beyond imposing a large military and creating bureaucracy in that sense; rather ―the bureaucracy grew particularly because of Trujillo‘s growing industrial, commercial, and agricultural holdings, which required managers, technicians, laborers, and so forth.‖23 As a result, the middle sector, which was previously almost nonexistent, became an important new faction of society and reflected increased development. For a long-standing social class in the Republic, the rural peasantry, significant reforms under Trujillo provided greater distribution of and access to resources.

In an effort to incorporate the largely disconnected and populated rural peasantry, Trujillo enacted many land reforms. Under these reforms ―the state distributed fixed plots, surveyed the nation‘s landholdings, and established permanent property rights‖ and also ―developed an impressive network of roads and infrastructure, and provided much aid and irrigation.‖24 While these reforms tied peasants to the land, they now had private rights to it which limited the ability to raise animals in open ranges and better incorporated rural people into the nation. Another motive behind the reforms was the regime‘s desire to increase national subsistence. As explained by a governor under Trujillo, the goal was ―to increase by all means possible agricultural production, especially for articles of subsistence needs…the country must harvest enough to sustain itself, and even to sell abroad and obtain economic benefits.‖25 Trujillo and his cabinet members took steps to encourage agricultural subsistence by enacting land reforms just a few years after his seizure of power.

The reforms began eradicating inequality between the wealthy elite and agrarian peasants beginning in 1934 when Trujillo commissioned officials to redistribute land, some of which was privately owned. The countryside was a portrait of inequality and corruption, as plantation owners had property rights to large plots of land, segments of which were often untouched, and left many peasants landless and poor.

Many of the peasants took to squatting on the untouched land of sugar corporations. One expressed this situation in a letter to Trujillo, stating that: Where there is an immense amount of [unused] land…we the residents of these parts, eager for work, decided to cultivate certain 22

Wiarda, Dictatorship and Development, 69.

Ibid., 69.

24 Turits, Foundations of Despotism, 83.

25 Memo no. 45, 4 Sept. 1939, AGN, SA, leg. 200, 1939, in Turits, Foundations of Despotism, 91.

23

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farms in this land. But we have been stopped by employees of this company [the Santa Fé].

Knowing…that you are the true patron of the agriculturalist obliges me to write to you…to see if by your efforts we could obtain from this company permission to farm these lands, even if it were under a Contract, one that may be favorable to us, since we are not unaware that the land belongs to said company.

There are more than two hundred of us, seeming like vagrants.

Even though we are genuinely men of work, we cannot find any place to earn a living and provide for our families. 26 The same situation was described by a forest ranger in San José de Ocoa who explained that ―the people cannot open up new farms in accordance with the desires of the Honorable President Trujillo because they do not have access to lands. The local bosses have all the lands marked off…seemingly for the purpose of making the poor unable to live.‖27 As a response to the situation, Trujillo adapted a policy of land redistribution and established bureaucratic agricultural support boards, the juntas protectoras de la agricultura, which ―would seek to provide free access to idle terrain on the basis of contracts.‖28 Land redistribution produced successful results when ―by June 30, 1936, the state had reportedly distributed 107,202 hectares of land to 54,494 agriculturalists, representing 6 percent of occupied land and an impressive 29 percent of the nation‘s farms‖ and ―during the height of the campaign, 1935 to 1940, cropland increased by a dramatic 47 percent.‖29 These results stand as an example of development under Trujillo; the state decreased the land holdings of corporations and simultaneously increased access to land and resources for the large, agrarian peasantry.

Overall, the policy was well received by peasants, one of whom remarked that ―Trujillo gave us land, seeds, tools, and food and…showed great respect for agriculture. What he wanted was production. He always said ‗his best friends are the men of work.‘‖30 As illustrated, the land redistribution policy promoted broader equality in the countryside and served to provide Trujillo with the support of the many peasants who received land. It was a strategic maneuver that ―Trinidad to Trujillo,‖ 27 Nov. 1934, AGN, SA, leg. 182, n.d., in Turits, Foundations of Despotism, 89.

27 Paulino to Carretero, 18 Oct. 1935, AGN, SA, SSJA, leg. 3, 1936, in Turits, Foundations of Despotism, 91.

28 Turits, Foundations of Despotism, 91.

29 Ibid., 95-97.

30 Interview with Maldonado, De Silvain, Ramon Santana, 26 Nov. 1994, in Turits, Foundations of Despotism, 112.

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Lindsay Jones served other political purposes – it also decreased the control of property owning aristocratic families and large sugar corporations who might pose a threat to the dictator and would further accomplish other economic goals of the regime.

Trujillo‘s related land reforms such as ―fixed addresses, nucleation of the population, and the linkage of settlements to nationwide systems of transportation and communication in turn rendered the rural population accessible, observable, taxable and, in general, within reach of both state assistance and repression.‖31 By making the rural population accessible, the growing industries under Trujillo‘s control had potential new markets. For these markets to be valuable and worthwhile, however, the peasantry needed to produce not only for subsistence but also for a source of income. This was important to Trujillo because improvement of the purchasing power of the lower classes caused a greater need for goods that stimulated local manufacturing.

Tied to the reforms in rural areas was the entry of peasants into commercial markets. Opportunities to sell their crops widely expanded under the dictator.32 He also took further measures to reduce the country‘s dependence on imports and began a campaign to procure domestic subsistence in rice. In the late 1920s, the importation of rice had cost the small nation more than $1.5 million dollars annually.

Through improvements in irrigation networks and road construction, much larger areas were dedicated to rice production. Ten years later, the nation was self-sufficient in rice.33 Also in an effort to reduce dependency on foreign imports, the dictator pushed for greater industrialization. Previously, industrialization was almost solely centered on processing agricultural goods for foreign markets.

However, Trujillo constructed and oversaw the industrialization of the state and ―his factories were soon producing cans, beer, arms, explosives, phonograph records, flour, peanut oil, leather, textiles, fruit juices, sacks, chocolates, rope, shoes, alcohol, furniture, hardware, paints, and clothes.‖34 Also the state began granting some tax exemptions to selected companies in order to encourage the growth of lacking industries.35 The policy of import-substitution industrialization benefited development since the worldwide depression made payment for imports difficult as export revenues were in sharp decline. The 31

Turits, Foundations of Despotism, 83.

Legrand, ―Informal Resistance on a Dominican Sugar Plantation During the Trujillo Dictatorship,‖ 581.

33 Ibid.

34 Wiarda, Dictatorship and Development, 84.

35 Turits, Foundations of Despotism, 235.

32

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improvements under Trujillo expanded beyond mere economic stability and ventured into the difficult and expensive task of better connecting the nation‘s people and improving everyday life.

Scholars credit Trujillo as having ―greatly improved and expanded communications and transportation systems [which] enabled the regime to eliminate provincialism and regionalism and to build up, correspondingly, the power of the central state.‖36 His regime improved the quality and quantity of roads, with mileage tripling under Trujillo, the benefits of which were twofold: to incorporate peasants into commercial markets but also to benefit the sugar mills he would later develop. Also, bridge building expanded under Trujillo so that by 1961 there were over 650 modern bridges.37 The development of seaports was also an important investment of resources and ―thanks to Trujillo‘s initiative, the Republic has altogether eleven ports capable of handling international traffic.‖38 Although not designed to benefit the masses, these developments were important in modernizing the nation, better connecting its people, and equipping it for economic growth.

Other developments improved the lives of the Dominican people as the regime built ―hospitals, clinics, churches, schools, libraries…[and] housing developments‖ and by 1946, ―tap water, for instance, began to be supplied twenty-four hours a day in the capital.‖39 Despite not vastly improving the lives of the rural population, the increasing economic power of the state ―underwrote new public services and state support that helped ensure peasants‘ subsistence security and certain basic needs in health care and rudimentary education‖ that had not existed before Trujillo‘s regime.40 These economic and structural developments helped to improve the nation‘s international reputation.

The changes in the Dominican Republic were overall well received by foreign officials, with U.S. ambassador Ellis Briggs stating in 1944 that Trujillo‘s regime ―is the most efficient government the Republic has ever known, and more over-all progress has been achieved during the past fourteen years than during the preceding 438 years since the discovery of the island by Columbus.‖41 These views were understandable considering that ―between 1942 and 1952, external trade skyrocketed from $32 million to $212 million‖ and that from ―1946 to 1950 national income rose 60 percent,‖ two factors that would

36

Wiarda, Dictatorship and Development, 181.

Bell, The Dominican Republic, 139.

38 Ibid., 144.

39 Turits, Foundations of Despotism, 235.

40 Ibid.

41 Ellis Briggs to Sec. of State, no. 609, 3 Jan. 1945, RG59, 839.00, in Turits, Foundations of Despotism, 232.

37

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Lindsay Jones certainly interest a trade-seeking economic hegemonic state.42 Also as George Scherer, a U.S. embassy official, expressed, ―the government is extremely well administered, there being little graft… [And] Trujillo has built roads, hospitals and schools, always a dictator‘s manner of showing improvement in the country, but nevertheless a genuine contribution.‖43 As mentioned but overlooked by Scherer, the trends in development aimed to place the nation on a track to self-sufficiency and strength so that Trujillo could exercise more control over all aspects and increase his wealth. This eminent greed ultimately caused development to reverse in the Republic, especially after his policy shifted toward large-scale sugar production.

Sugar had a long history on the island and was produced throughout the centuries of conflict and economic instability. As late as the 1930s, sugar made up over half of the country‘s export earnings.44 However, with the world in an economic depression and Caribbean sugar less valuable due to European sugar beet production, the crop was not in Trujillo‘s highest interest during his early years in power. World War II, however, brought about a new interest in sugar because commodity prices rose after global warfare destroyed much of the European sugar beet product. Prices rose so much that ―in 1942 the United Kingdom agreed to purchase 400,000 tons of Dominican sugar for an astonishing $0.265 per pound,‖ when just a year previously the price was only $0.092 per pound.45 Trujillo placed high taxes on sugar exportation and generated over $2.6 million in revenue from them that year. Because of his control over national funds, the dictator easily transferred money into his own personal accounts, siphoning a great amount of wealth.46 Clearly, Trujillo had been exposed to the lucrative offerings of a sugar-export economy.

After the conclusion of World War II, the Dominican Republic under the Trujillo regime continued to increase wealth through the taxation of sugar. By 1947 the nation‘s government took in $16,169,063 in sugar taxes. However, Trujillo was much more interested in ―the profits reaped by the foreign owners of the sugar industry‖ who were earning well over $85 million through sales of Dominican sugar.47 The dictator was now tempted by the opportunities for lucrative personal gain and further expansion of control over the state. Under these conditions, the transition into expanded sugar 42

Turits, Foundations of Despotism, 235.

George Scherer to Sec. of State, no. 1034, 3 July 1946, RG59, 829.00, in Turits, Foundations of Despotism, 232.

44 Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic, 18.

45 Ibid., 19.

46 Ibid., 20.

47 Ibid., 21.

43

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production and ownership began; this ultimately reversed measures to reduce foreign dependency and instead led to the demise of development in the Dominican Republic.

As was a clearly identifiable trend with Trujillo, he sought not only to invest in the industry but to control and own it. He took his first steps towards doing so in 1948 when ―he purchased a second-hand sugar mill in Puerto Rico‖ and ―transported the mill, which he renamed Ingenio Catarey to a parcel of land he owned on the outskirts of Villa Altagracia.‖48 By 1951 he controlled 5.4% of the Dominican sugar industry and the percentage increased at dramatic rates for the next six years.49 Trujillo adopted an array of policies to do so, using state-run tactics to drive out foreign companies and purchasing the land and facilities from them.

Trujillo used his control of the state to initiate tactics that were wildly successful in driving out foreign owned companies. This included nationalistic rhetoric and the raising of export taxes in order to persuade the companies to sell or leave. The policies were highly successful; by the end of 1953 ―the only sugar mills not owned by the dictator belonged to the two large US sugar corporations… and the Vicini family.‖50 To raise pressure on these companies, Trujillo increased taxation and ―a law was passed subjecting all foreign sugar company profits over $50,000 annually to a 20 percent income tax.‖51 One of these remaining companies, the West Indies Sugar Corporation, wrote to the U.S. embassy and expressed how Trujillo was attempting to ―eliminate the possibility of profit from the operations of U.S. companies doing business [in the Dominican Republic]….‗We are faced with nothing less than expropriation through confiscatory measures.‘‖52 These policies appeared to benefit development by driving out foreign owned companies and establishing domestic control. However, the nation did not produce sugar as a subsistence crop and regardless of who owned and controlled production, the product was still dependent on foreign demand.

By 1957, Trujillo successfully drove out the last two US-owned sugar companies in the Dominican Republic for nearly $40 million and his ―three sugar corporations – Azucarera Haina, Azucarera Nacional, 48

Ibid., 22.

Oficiana Nacional de Estadistica de la Republica Dominicana, Estadistica Industrial de la Republica Dominicana (Cuidad Trujillo: Oficina Nacional de Estadistica de la Republica Dominicana, 1958), pp. 4-9. in Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic, 22.

50 Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic, 23.

51 Ibid.

52 ―Kirstein and Lowry, 'Memorandum,'" 21 Jan. 1954, RG59, 839.00, in Turits, Foundations of Despotism, 239.

49

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Lindsay Jones and Azucarera Yaque – controlled twelve of the sixteen sugar mills in the country.‖53 At this point, the head of state now controlled 71.3% percent of the Dominican sugar industry. 54 The value of Dominican sugar production and exports reached $83.8 million dollars.55 The total value of Trujillo‘s sugar holdings was roughly $120 million.56 Sugar production was a lucrative business, particularly when one controlled transportation industries and negotiated trade agreements with the top economic and political hegemonic power of the 20th century, which would later be largely responsible for the economic fate of the nation and its progress towards development. Before trade agreements between the United States and the Trujillo regime began to increase, the domestic social and political effects of the shift toward sugar began to manifest themselves throughout the Dominican landscape. As described by Turits, ―Trujillo‘s romance with sugar reversed the thrust of the regime‘s pre-1948 rural policies, and this would be problematic for the regime in both political and economic terms.‖57 For the peasantry, the trend in increasing sugar production was particularly damaging. Less than two decades earlier, the rural people experienced far-reaching land reform and significant gains in access to land and resources. Trujillo turned away from the rural peasantry and pursued his own economic interests and the expansion of the sugar industry resulted in thousands of landless peasants, as they had been before the dictator‘s rule. As Turits describes, ―in the 1950s the regime was responsible for much peasant dispossession.‖58 In the areas of Monte Plata, Cotuí and the Haina River, thousands of farmers were evicted from the free land given to them by the state and while some were reportedly given compensation for their homes, it was for half or less than what they were worth.59 In many regions, after the Trujillo regime seized large areas of peasant land to make way for large sugar estates, ―some villagers migrated to the capital. Those who stayed to cut cane for the estate were crowded into grim barracks called bateyes…they lost their folklore and customs of cooperation; their way

53

Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic, 23. ―Oficiana Nacional de Estadistica de la Republica Dominicana, Estadistica Industrial de la Republica Dominicana (Cuidad Trujillo: Oficina Nacional de Estadistica de la Republica Dominicana, 1958), pp. 4-9.‖; Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic, 22.

55 Alvin Gilbert to Department of Agriculture, 19 June 1959; Sugar Folder, Box 246; Dominican Republic, Narrative Reports, 1955-61; RG 166; NA. in Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic, 24.

56 Wiarda, Dictatorship and Development, 85.

57 Turits, Foundations of Despotism, 241.

58 Ibid., 243.

59 Ibid.

54

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Development and the Trujillo Era of life.‖60 The sugar policies of the Trujillo regime resulted in the displacement of peasants, the detrimental alteration of their way of life and sent bitter waves of discontent throughout the large sector of society that had previously loyally supported the dictator.

Forms of resistance against the regime were small and rare, but discontent was real. Upon reflection years later, one peasant felt that he had: lived under an illusion….Before there were all the speeches and posters on the corner that [Trujillo‘s] best friends were the men of work. And one lived completely with that sentiment, believing it. But when I saw how he repaid us in 1957 and 1958 with that eviction, that is not how one treats someone one cares about. It was when the eviction occurred…[that] I became convinced that Trujillo was not just, that he was not truly loyal.61 This peasant‘s account illustrates the dramatic shift in support as Trujillo expanded the sugar industry. In one area of the countryside dominated by sugar production, Trujillo overtook production and reneged on a contract with local managers. As a result, a monument of the dictator was desecrated with manure. One author, Turits, suggests that this expression of discontent showed that ―Trujillo‘s expansion of and identification with the sugar plantations was creating politically volatile workers rather than loyal small farmers.‖62 The people who Trujillo had relied upon for support and to carry out his goals for the nation were becoming alienated with the shift in policy. This was also true in the middle class sector – the very faction of Dominican society that Trujillo‘s bureaucracies and early reforms practically created.

Through the 1940s the middle class sector of society had grown to number over 12,000 people – double the amount it had been in 1935.63 This professional class felt that their careers were put in jeopardy by Trujillo‘s new sugar-focused economy and were upset by the increasing repression of political rights. Students, professors, young lawyers and other sectors of this middle class began to organize small pockets of opposition and ―anti-Trujillo slogans were found written on blackboards in classrooms at the university‖ of Santo Domingo. 64 Opposition even ventured into the Trujillo regime itself, evidenced by 60

Black, The Dominican Republic, 71.

Interview in Chirino, Monte Plata, 31 Jan. 1993, in Turits, Foundations of Despotism, 245.

62 Turits, Foundations of Despotism, 245.

63 Ibid., 249.

64 Ibid., 250.

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U.S. ambassadors in the country who received reports of ―unprecedented criticism of the regime from high officials within the government itself.‖65 These pockets of dissent and resistance would grow and spread throughout the 1950s as Trujillo furthered the nation‘s dependency on sugar exports with the development of an intimate relationship with U.S. policy makers and aggressive lobbying for preferential sugar quotas.

The relationship between the United States and the Dominican Republic was relatively fluid under the Trujillo regime. Just a few years previous to the dictator‘s takeover in 1930, the U.S. military had occupied the nation. Despite the intrusive involvement of the United States in Dominican affairs, Trujillo consciously and decisively developed good standing with U.S. policy makers, particularly during the Good Neighbor Policy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As described by Trujillo himself: The future of our relations with the people of the United States of America is a future of mutual benefit. Since our country lies within the Western Hemisphere, our interests are naturally tied to our great neighbor to the north. It is only natural that the United States import our exports.66 Scholars suggest that the motivation behind this rhetoric was the desire to secure a preferential sugar quota, even as early as 1939 to pay off the national debt.67 However, the Cold War truly brought about substantial economic ties between the two nations.

As the United States invested money and policies in suppressing the spread of communism, Trujillo chose a strategic position as an advocate against its expansion as well. His agreement and cooperation with the US during this time was illustrated by Trujillo ―establishing a U.S. military mission in the Dominican Republic‖ and when ―Washington secured permission for developing an important guided missile tracking station in Sabana de la Mar.‖68 The dictator also allowed the United States to carry out test flights over the island nation.69 Mutual benefits between the nations ensued as many of

65

Ibid.

Rafael L. Trujillo Molina, "Discurso Nacional Frente al Congreso Nacional en Celebracion del Dia de la Independencia, 27 Febrero 1939," in Discursos, Mensajes, y Proclamas, vol. 9 (Ciudad Trujillo: Oficina Nacional de Presidente de la Republica Dominicana, 1948), pp. 34-35, in Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic, 47.

67 Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic, 47.

68 Turits, Foundations of Despotism, 241.

69 Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic, 51.

66

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Development and the Trujillo Era Trujillo‘s authoritarian abuses were ignored due to his strategic alliance with the United States at this time.

As articulated by a U.S. diplomat in the Dominican Republic, ―Trujillo may honestly desire to maintain the closest possible relations with the United States, as he frequently alleges – but only on his own terms, including our acquiescence in his eventual absorption of most of the American capital invested here.‖70 U.S. policy makers chose to overlook Trujillo‘s aggressive tactics to drive out U.S. companies in response to his support of their anti-Communist agenda. As expressed

by John Foster Dulles, most policy makers in the United States shared the belief that ―wherever a dictator is replaced in Latin America communism will triumph.‖71 Trujillo was also rewarded for his support through the shipments of military arms – in 1951 the regime received over $6 million in such transfers.72 Friendliness between the two nations was solidified with the signing of the Military Assistance Agreement which guaranteed provisions for hemispheric defense by both parties.73 Trujillo also secured support from U.S. policy makers through other, less reputable measures.

The dictator used bribery and blackmail to win over U.S. Congressmen and journalists. It is estimated that Trujillo spent over $6 million to buy support from House Committee Chairmen, Senators, and to promote propaganda in U.S. newspapers and advertisements.

Senator Olin D. Johnson expressed his purchased view about Trujillo on the Senate floor by stating that the regime ―has rendered a greater force in deterring the spread of communism in Latin America than any other country in the Caribbean area.‖74 He also manipulated U.S. sugar corporations to express support for him by threatening to raise their taxes. Overall the Trujillo regime used tactics of public political and military support and secret coercion to position itself in a favorable relationship with the United States.

Despite increasing concerns by the Eisenhower administration about Trujillo‘s expanding repression in the Dominican Republic, the regime‘s support of the U.S. during the Cold War and relationship with ―Richard A. Johnson to the State Department, 5 May 1954; Folder 739.00/5-554, Box 3384; Dominican Republic, Central Decimal Files, 1950-1954; RG 59; NA, in Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic, 50.

71 Minutes from the 235th Meeting of the National Security Council, 3 February 1955; Declassified Documents Reference System: Minutes of Meetings in the US National Security Council, Microfilm Collection, reel 4, frame 845, in Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic, 50.

72 Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic, 51.

73 Ibid., 50-51.

74 Congressional Record, 85th Congress, 1st Session. in Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic, 53.

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bribed policy makers proved successful. When the United States eliminated Cuba‘s preferential sugar quota due to Fidel Castro‘s communist ties, the Dominican Republic was positioned in the good graces of U.S. policy makers to fulfill the sugar production requirements. Trujillo‘s purchased allies in the U.S. Senate came to his support and in August of 1960, Senator Ellender argued for the Dominican dictator by expressing that ―a Trujillo in all of the South and Central American countries‖ would be beneficial to the United States.75 Pressure from U.S. legislators was successful and in September of 1960, the Trujillo regime‘s efforts paid off as the nation was awarded 322,000 tons of the Cuban windfall sugar quota.76 This quota established the Dominican Republic‘s position as the top Caribbean sugar producer for the United States market and solidified the dependence of the nation‘s economy on foreign markets.

Conclusion The fundamental problem with Trujillo‘s investment and control over sugar production in the Dominican Republic was similar to that of foreign control of industries in a nation: the profits generated were not reinvested in the domestic economy. In this case, Trujillo‘s profits from sugar did not trickle down into other sectors of the economy and did not fund government social programs, but rather fattened his personal bank accounts.77 After Trujillo‘s assassination in 1961, the less-efficient governments that followed were unable and unequipped to maintain the costly expenditures and expansive infrastructure necessary to run them. They created the Dominican Sugar Corporation to run production previously controlled by Trujillo, but the company did not prosper because of sensitive and frequent fluctuations in world prices.

With so much of the nation‘s land and labor resources dedicated to its production, ―sugar dependency has put the economy on a roller coaster, reaching occasional highs of prosperity only to plunge once again to depths of debt and depression.‖78 This export-dependency served to undermine the positive trends in development that had taken place and instead situated the Dominican Republic in a position where its further development was largely determined by the constant fluctuations of demand and price in foreign markets. As illustrated by the analytical narrative, Trujillo‘s initial policies established greater 75

New York Times, 25 August 1960, in Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic, 100.

76 Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic, 100.

77 Bell, The Dominican Republic, 307.

78 Black, The Dominican Republic, 63.

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equality, access to land and resources and structural improvements in the Dominican Republic until the shift to sugar in the 1950s. This dramatic change radically altered development trends and as a result many of the people were dispossessed, evicted and forced to change their way of life in a nation that was dependent on an export commodity shackled by corrupt and inefficient production.

Primary Sources Alvin Gilbert to Department of Agriculture, 19 June 1959; Sugar Folder, Box 246; Dominican Republic, Narrative Reports, 195561; RG 166; NA. Congressional Record, 85th Congress, 1st Session.

Department of Economic and Social Affairs. â&#x20AC;&#x2022;The United Nations Development Agenda: Development for All.â&#x20AC;&#x2013; United Nations, September 2007.http://www.un.org/esa/devagenda/ UNDA_BW5_Final.pdf.

Ellis Briggs to Sec. of State, no. 609, 3 Jan. 1945, RG59, 839.00.

George Scherer to Sec. of State, no. 1034, 3 July 1946, RG59, 829.00.

Interview in Chirino, Monte Plata, 31 Jan. 1993.

Interview with Maldonado, De Silvain, Ramon Santana, 26 Nov. 1994.

Kirstein and Lowry, "Memorandum," 21 Jan. 1954, RG59, 839.00.

Memo no. 45, 4 Sept. 1939, AGN, SA, leg. 200, 1939.

Minutes from the 235th Meeting of the National Security Council, 3 February 1955; Declassified Documents Reference System: Minutes of Meetings in the US National Security Council, Microfilm Collection, reel 4, frame 845.

New York Times, 25 August 1960.

Oficiana Nacional de Estadistica de la Republica Dominicana, Estadistica Industrial de la Republica Dominicana (Cuidad Trujillo: Oficina Nacional de Estadistica de la Republica Dominicana, 1958), pp. 4-9.

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Paulino to Carretero, 18 Oct. 1935, AGN, SA, SSJA, leg. 3, 1936.

Rafael L. Trujillo Molina, "Discurso Nacional Frente al Congreso Nacional en Celebracion del Dia de la Independencia, 27 Febrero 1939," in Discursos, Mensajes, y Proclamas, vol. 9 (Ciudad Trujillo: Oficina Nacional de Presidente de la Republica Dominicana, 1948), pp. 34-35.

Richard A. Johnson to the State Department, 5 May 1954; Folder 739.00/5-554, Box 3384; Dominican Republic, Central Decimal Files, 1950-1954; RG 59; NA. Trinidad to Trujillo, 27 Nov. 1934, AGN, SA, leg. 182, n.d.

Secondary Sources Bell, Ian. The Dominican Republic. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1981.

Black, Jan Knippers. The Dominican Republic: Politics and Development in an Unsovereign State. Boston, Massachusetts: Allen & Unwin, 1986.

Hall, Michael R. Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Trujillos. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000.

Legrand, Catherine C. â&#x20AC;&#x2022;Informal Resistance on a Dominican Sugar Plantation During the Trujillo Dictatorship.â&#x20AC;&#x2013; Hispanic American Historical Review 75, no. 4 (1995): 555-596. , Ernesto. Race and Politics in the Dominican Republic.

Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2000.

Turits, Richard Lee. Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican History. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2003.

Wiarda, Howard J. Dictatorship and Development; the Methods of Control in Trujillo's Dominican Republic. Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press, 1968.

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Discovering the Stigma and Stereotypes of Welfare Introduction to “Discovering the Stigma and Stereotypes of Welfare” Ryane McAuliffe Straus Assistant Professor of Political Science Political science is an extremely broad field, divided along at least two axes: There is a qualitative/quantitative methodological debate, and there is a normative debate over whether scholars should attempt to promote the ―good life‖ or remain behind the wall of detached, neutral science. The subfield of public policy mirrors these larger debates, as newer scholars move toward value-dependent research while the field remains largely anchored by traditional, more scientific approaches.

In this article, Carly Wolfrom makes a strong case for making values explicit in the study of public policy. Wolfrom applies the framework of Deborah Stone,1 an influential scholar who critiques value-free, scientific approaches to the study of public policy. Based on Stone‘s framework, Wolfrom finds that the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 is a failure on all counts. Her innovative comparison of two states—one wealthy, one poor—suggests that Sanford Schram is right when he argues that, ―in order to understand the way in which welfare reform is indeed race biased, we need to get beyond the limitations of conventional public policy analysis and its penchant to focus on statistical findings divorced from historical and social context.‖2 Indeed, historical and social contexts are crucial to understanding important policy debates.

1

Deborah Stone, Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making, revised ed.

(New York: W. W. Norton, 2001).

2 Sanford E. Schram, Welfare Discipline: Discourse, Governance, and Globalization (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006).

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Discovering the Stigma and Stereotypes of Welfare Carly Wolfrom History and Political Science major; Class of 2010 In this paper, it is argued that the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, also known as the Welfare Reform Act, will not end poverty. Although President Clinton promised to â&#x20AC;&#x153;end welfare as we know it,â&#x20AC;? this policy is unequal, inefficient, insecure, and inhibitive of liberty. By comparing the welfare policies in Mississippi, the state with the highest rate of poverty, and New Hampshire, the state with the lowest rate of poverty, it becomes apparent that the Welfare Reform Act has failed to alleviate poverty because it blames the individual instead of social structures and perpetuates poverty through generalizations and racism.

At the start of this country the poor were treated on an individual basis and their state of destitution was seen as Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s will. The United States seemingly attempts, policy after policy, decade after decade, to solve the problem of the dependence of the poor on society by trying to alleviate poverty. Whether the desired outcome is an end to poverty or simply mitigating criticism of American welfare policies, these programs eventually impact the poor in some manner. When the influx of immigrants began in the nineteenth century, the poor became viewed as a collective social problem. They were flawed individuals that needed institutions such as workhouses and almshouses to remedy their situation. During the Great Depression, millions of previously middle class Americans realized that poverty could happen to anyone and welfare programs were enacted to aid the poor.1 While the goal has remained constant for decades, determining the best solution has endlessly oscillated between debates over the causes and effects of poverty.

Despite efforts, poverty remains entrenched. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, also known as the Welfare Reform Act, represents the most recent attempt at alleviating destitution in America. The Act replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and Job Opportunities & Basic Skills (JOBS) programs with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. TANF seeks to make poor families self1

Theodore J. Lowi, The End of Liberalism, 2nd ed., (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979), 199.

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efficient through a drastically different approach from past programs by requiring work to receive benefits and imposing time limits. Although President Clinton promised to ―end welfare as we know it,‖ this policy is unequal, inefficient, insecure, and inhibitive of liberty. By comparing the welfare policies in Mississippi, the state with the highest rate of poverty, and New Hampshire, the state with the lowest rate of poverty, it becomes apparent that the Welfare Reform Act has failed to alleviate poverty because it blames the individual instead of social structures and perpetuates poverty through generalizations and racism.

Differing Positions on the Poor The varied approaches to creating a welfare program can be traced to a number of differing ideologies on how best to eliminate poverty.

Researching the various scholarly approaches to poverty yields a variety of results that can be used to evaluate the Welfare Reform Act. In The End of Liberalism, Theodore J. Lowi states that ―New welfare is based upon a most meaningful, deliberate ignorance.‖2 According to Lowi, previous to the Great Depression, old welfare policies had viewed poverty as a natural occurrence that was to be accepted and tolerated. After the stock market crashed, millions of Americans were pushed from the upper and middle class into the lower class. Liberal interest groups saw poverty as a social dilemma that could be solved instead of a fact of life that would resolve itself. The economic crisis ―revealed that capitalistic poverty is systematic‖ and for liberal policy makers, ―obviously this means that something systematic should be done about it.‖3 The humanization of poverty by the interest-group liberalism approach ―was not merely superfluous and redundant; it produced a whole array of unhappy consequences.‖ Interest-group liberalism policy makers‘ attempt to eliminate a large substantive issue in small steps is futile.4 The new welfare program lacks transparency in regards to limits and objectives and is self-defeating because ―the phenomenon we fight today is in fact not poverty at all. The phenomenon is the injustice that has made poverty a nonrandom, nonobjective category.‖5 If poverty in fact was a random and natural occurrence, a mere uncomfortable symptom of capitalism, then the creation of the AFDC and now TANF is moot. However, capitalist poverty is not objective or esoteric. The same demographic groups, same areas and, for the most, 2

Ibid., 233.

Ibid., 199.

4 Interest group liberalism means the government defers to the most powerful interest groups; their political viewpoint is inconsequential to the terminology.

5 Lowi, 233.

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the same people have been consistently affected by poverty for decades. Acceptance that poverty will pass is not an option for those who have lived in a state of destitution for generations. Since humans are not ―autonomous, isolated atoms‖ but ―subjects of influence by parents, friends, lovers, spouses, children, teachers, bosses, and general cultural ideas,‖6 they cannot morally ignore suffering because of the belief that it will eventually pass. Many mobilize to aid the needy because that is what society has deemed as the right and good action to take. The question then becomes who is needy and how they can be helped.

Since poverty is not ignorable in America, different policies have been enacted as solutions. The merits of these programs rest on their fairness, equity, security and liberty, the goals outlined in Deborah Stone‘s Policy Paradox. Equality is essential in order to gain support and enact a policy. While dividing aid evenly according to mathematical calculations may seem as simplistic as a straightforward equation, equality in public policy is a far more complicated matter. ―Equality may in fact mean inequality; equal treatment may require unequal treatment and the same distribution may be seen as equal or unequal, depending on one‘s point of view.‖7 In a society as diverse as this one, the definition of equity is just as diverse depending upon one‘s perspective. Stone breaks equity into three parts: the recipient, the item and the process. This division can be applied to the distribution of welfare to begin to see the flaws of the current system. Under TANF, equity is a complicated goal because eligibility for aid is determined on a state-by-state basis. The block grant allows for fifty different definitions of ―needy,‖ as can be seen from Figure 1.

6

Deborah Stone, Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making, Revised ed., (New York: W.W. Norton Company, 2002), 219.

7 Ibid., 42.

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Discovering the Stigma and Stereotypes of Welfare Figure 1. Monthly TANF Income Eligibility Thresholds 8

This creates strife when determining the ―definition of membership‖9 that is part of equity. Individuals from state to state are treated on a differing basis despite shared circumstances, therefore no national group consensus can be determined. While this flexibility allows different costs of living to be factored into funding, it does not mean that recipients are receiving the necessary benefits to get out of poverty. As will be discussed later, even families that receive funds and have jobs continue to struggle to escape from the cycle of poverty. The actual funds do not need to be equal, but they must allow an equal opportunity to live above the poverty line. TANF promotes inequality by allowing individual states to decide eligibility requirements and therefore produces a multitude of recipients. The federal block grants also allow states to distribute funds, or the item, however they see fit.

As the map also shows, the item varies considerably throughout the nation. Each state is also allowed to determine the process by which funds are allocated, as long as they promote the four goals of TANF: assisting needy families so that children can be cared for in their own homes, reducing the dependency of needy parents by promoting job preparation, work and marriage, preventing out-of-wedlock pregnancies and encouraging the formation and maintenance of twoUrban Institute, ―TANF Income Eligibility Thresholds,‖ Urban Institute 2008 <http://www.urban.org/publications/900772.html> (25 October 2008).

9 Stone, 42.

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Carly Wolfrom parent families.10 According to Stone‘s view of equity, TANF would be considered a failure. It is a policy that attempts to implement multiple unequal solutions to the broad problem of poverty.

The inequalities mentioned above are directly related to Stone‘s policy goal of security. Security in society means a person‘s needs are being met. ―To claim a need is to claim that one should be given resources or help because they are essential.‖11 TANF tries to create security for the impoverished by meeting needs but ―any minimal and allegedly objective definition of a need, such as sheer survival of an individual, a firm, a group, an organization, or a nation, can be expanded‖ by complications in the polis such as valuation, comparison, purpose, time and unit of analysis.12 The Welfare Reform Act holds that requiring the attainment of jobs will make families self-efficient, allowing them to meet their own needs. However, as Peter Edelman, a Professor of Law at Georgetown University, says in his article in the New York Times, ―having a job and earning a livable income are two different things.‖13 Even when receiving the full benefits of TANF, welfare recipients can still feel substantial need. Edelman points out that ―if your job was, for example, a 20-hour position as a school crossing guard for $107 a week, or if you kept cycling in and out of jobs, you and your children were still threatened with homelessness and hunger‖ under the Welfare Reform Act. The state-by-state designation of needs creates different monetary amounts and working requirements for TANF recipients depending on their location. Some states are less stringent and more generous than others. Until policy makers realize that alleviating poverty means more than satisfying the cut-and-dry factors of employment and meeting the poverty line, the current welfare policy will be a source of insecurity for its struggling recipients.

Poverty must be met with not only jobs but livable wages, education and affordable housing.

Liberty, Stone‘s third goal, also challenges Welfare Reform Act. By defining liberty as the freedom from harms, the ―dilemma of liberty surfaces in public policy around the question of when government can legitimately interfere with the choices and activities of citizens.‖14 TANF policies are double-edged swords when it comes to liberty. Poor families want to be free from the harms of poverty. Since America is a ―society where liberty is deemed appropriate for all citizens, the Office of Family Assistance, ―Mission Statement,‖ US Department of Health and Human Services. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/opa/fact_sheets/tanf_factsheet.html.

11 Stone, 86.

12 Ibid., 98.

13 Peter Edelman, ―The True Purpose of Welfare Reform‖ New York Times, May 29, 2002, Opinion section.

14 Stone, 109.

10

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Discovering the Stigma and Stereotypes of Welfare solution of ‗freedom for those who can provide for themselves‘ is not an acceptable answer.‖15 At the same time, many from the upper and middle class believe they should be free from the harms of big government. These two conflicting views have provided the framework for controversial welfare policy for decades. The Welfare Reform Act requires that recipients who are able to work must do so in order to receive funds. If a TANF recipient does not find work within 24 months of coming on assistance then that person is cut off from benefits.

Despite this, just 31 percent of Americans feel that most welfare recipients capable of working try to find jobs, two out of three Americans believe that welfare recipients are exploiting the system, and just one in three believes those on welfare are actually in need of assistance.16 Because individualism and liberty are the hallmarks of American society, this culture ―is not terribly receptive to creating affirmative legal duties for the promotion of social goals.‖17 Social aid programs are contradictory to this belief system because they have been stigmatized as free handouts coming from the pockets of hardworking Americans. Now not only do families in need of help need to prove financial eligibility, they also must prove they deserve assistance by finding work. Under TANF, joblessness disqualifies a capable person of assistance. It is ironic since the unemployed are the ones that need help the most.

Seeing that the Welfare Reform Act does not meet the goals of liberty, security or equity, it is easy to see how this policy is ineffective.

In 2006, the Policy Research Institute for the Region (New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania) hosted a conference in recognition of the tenth anniversary of the Welfare Reform Act. The discussions that took place at the event were compiled into the book TANF at 10: A Retrospective on Welfare Reform. The leading scholars in the fields of economics, sociology and political science gathered to judge the effectiveness of the policy. They discovered that a drop in welfare caseloads did not mean TANF was a success. In ten years, four possible outcomes from the reform had taken place—only one of which was a success. The conference found that, coupled with a prosperous economy, tax incentives and welfare‘s new restrictions, single mothers had increased in numbers in the workforce. ―The number of single mothers having jobs rose from 62 percent in 1995 to 73 percent in 2000.‖18 This can be 15

Ibid., 122.

Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000) 61.

17 Stone, 119.

18 Keith S. Goldfield, ed., TANF at 10: A Retrospective on Welfare Reform, (New Jersey: Princeton University, 2007) 13.

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interpreted in multiple ways. Perhaps it means that mothers have to leave their children to engage in menial work. Or perhaps it means that women are achieving greater power in the workforce. The second outcome was many single mothers were denied access to welfare. Only half of those people who ever found some type of job ever got out of poverty: About 60 percent of leavers have jobs on any given day. This means 40 percent do not. More than 9 million people (about 3 million women and 6 million children) have left the rolls since 1994, when the rolls were at their peak of 14.3 million people.

Extrapolating from the studies, this means that roughly 1.2 million former welfare recipients (and their 2.4 million children) are hardly success stories, and many are clearly worse off. 19 The Welfare Reform Act pushes problematic recipients out of its way. The policy is also ineffective because it is on a state-by-state basis. This creates over fifty TANF stories to judge the policy by. If every state happened to be a ―good‖ state that provided support and assistance for people in need of welfare, then the policy might be a success. However, there ―are good states and bad states.‖20 Many states competed to drop their caseloads the fastest in a race to the bare minimum of support. According to the scholars at this 2006 conference, TANF was not effective because it does not look at individual circumstances and fails to see that ―the number of people in America who cannot make ends meet is far larger than the number we call poor.‖21 The Welfare Reform Act does not figure in the ups and downs of the economy. After the prosperous ‗90s, the policy is facing new challenges ten years later. How can those who want to work and are able to work receive aid if there are no jobs to be found?

The idea of joblessness is at the heart of William Julius Wilson‘s book, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor.

Wilson believes that poverty is not due to individual shortcomings, racial segregation, or racism, but that poverty is the result of joblessness. A lack of jobs creates a catalyst of social ills that plague the unemployed ―ranging from crime, gang violence, and drug trafficking, to family breakups and problems in the organization of family life.‖22 This idea is often ignored by policymakers who do not 19

Ibid., 14.

Ibid., 15.

21 Ibid., 17.

22 William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Random House, Inc. 1997), 21.

20

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Discovering the Stigma and Stereotypes of Welfare look to the structural causes of poverty but ―deemphasize the social origins and social significance of poverty and welfare‖ and tout the ―individualistic explanations of poverty‖ that allow ―conservative intellectuals and policymakers to overemphasize the negative aspects of persistent joblessness and the receipt of welfare by playing on the key individualistic and moralistic themes of this dominant American belief system.‖23 The negative connotations surrounding welfare impede progress by blocking poverty‘s true causes.

Previously, little education and experience could still qualify a person for a well-paying blue-collar job in the mass production system.

Today, jobs that will pay bills and put food on the tables require more schooling and experience or are being outsourced. A majority of the poor and unemployed are limited to careers in the service sector. These jobs are low-paying and usually sex-typed toward women.24 TANF is an unrealistic program. If it were possible for all welfare recipients to find jobs, the occupations available to them are not going to lead to prosperity or even stability. Instead of viewing poverty as a social problem rather than a nationwide aggregation of individual short falls, generalizations are formed to broadly explain a highly personal dilemma that calls for specific attention.25 The alienation that follows allows singular stereotypes to become accepted judgments of all those experiencing poverty. Welfare policies alienate the poor from the rest of society and perpetuate stigmas that tend to divide along color lines. The disproportionate amount of African-Americans on welfare tends to be hidden by those who want a majority of citizens to look past generalizations, but ―the best way to defeat stereotypes about welfare is to emphasize the hard realities of the inner-city ghetto and the larger society that give rise to welfare receipt.‖26 In an effort to seem objective, the Welfare Reform Act does not take race into account when considering who receives funding. In Sanford F. Schram‘s work, Welfare Discipline: Discourse, Governance, and Globalization, Schram argues that welfare reforms attempt to seem color-blind and race neutral but they actually perpetuate the circumstances that keep minorities in poverty. The TANF program creates a ―welfare regime that punishes welfare recipients who fail to find work due to reasons associated with the historical legacies of race‖ and therefore it ―is a racial policy regime that is actively working to recreate racial disadvantages in society.‖27 Schram argues that racism is 23 24 25 26 27

Ibid., 159.

Ibid., 30.

Ibid., 192-193 Ibid., 167-168.

Sanford F. Schram, Welfare Discipline: Discourse, Governance, and Globalization

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present implicitly and explicitly on the three levels of government: federal, state and local. On the surface the Welfare Reform Act appears superficially race neutral because every individual is treated equally. As Stone says, the paradox of equality is that in itself it can be unequal. As President Lyndon B. Johnson said at commencement exercise at Howard University on June 4, 1965, ―You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‗You are free to compete with all others,‘ and still justly believe you have been completely fair.‖ By ignoring African-Americans‘ comparative ―disadvantage in average education, readiness for employment, access to other sources of financial support, and other confounding factors such as residential isolation and employer discrimination, such ‗equal‘ treatment ends up producing more racial disadvantages.‖28 As can be seen from Table 1, African-Americans consistently receive the largest percentage of welfare benefits compared to other races. This data is also compounded by the fact that blacks account for about 12.4 percent of the population.

It is the failure to take past circumstances into account that will continue to perpetuate the high rate of poverty among African Americans and risks welfare ―increasingly being seen as a ‗black program‘ for those ‗other‘ people who are not conforming to the work and family rules of white middle-class society.‖29 While the racism of today is nowhere near as strong as in past decades, ―historic discrimination certainly helped create an impoverished black community‖30 that exists today. Present culture may be more able to see past skin color, but that does not erase the negative distinctions of the past and the problems they created.

Table 1. Distribution of TANF Families by Race31 Fiscal Year

White

AfricanAmerican

Hispanic

Asian

NativeAmerican

Unknown

1999

30.5

38.3

24.5

3.6

1.5

1.6

(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), 76-77.

28 Ibid., 94.

29 Ibid., 103.

30 William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 141.

31 Elizabeth Lower-Bash, ―TANF ‗Leavers,‘ Applicants and Caseload Studies: Preliminary Analysis of Racial Differences in Caseload Trends and Leaver Outcomes,‖ Department of Health & Human Services, September 2003 < http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/leavers99/race.htm#fig1> (1 November 2008).

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The previous literature creates a clearer picture of poverty in America. It makes no difference whether poverty is an inevitable economic outcome of a capitalist society. The question now is how to best structure and implement those programs in order to alleviate poverty. The ideals of equity, security and liberty help assess the weaknesses of the Welfare Reform Act and TANF. The program‘s onesided perspective fails to encompass the broader needs of society. The current policy views fairness, needs and freedom through a narrow lens. Instead of looking at social structures such as joblessness, the supposed shortcoming of the individual is blamed for their social status. This generalization is projected upon the poor of this country, feeding racist notions that are implicitly or explicitly revealed through the welfare programs. By examining the policies of the two states of Mississippi and New Hampshire, the effectiveness of Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 is truly revealed.

The Results of the Welfare Reform Act An individual look at two states at opposite ends of the poverty spectrum in America reflects the ideas and findings of the literature discussed previously. It is beneficial to view the results of the Welfare Reform Act and TANF on the nation as a whole before looking at specific state policies in order to get a broader picture. A 2000 RAND study provided numerous valuable statistics. Welfare caseload reached its peak of five million families in 1994, but by 1999, three years after the Welfare Reform Act, the number of cases had decreased by half. In 2008 the number of TANF families was about four million.32 Between 1993 and 1998, the percentage of welfare participants dropped in all fifty states, all in the double digit range. Many officials have seen these numbers as indicative of success. President Clinton stated that the Welfare Reform Act ―shows us how much we can achieve when both parties bring their best ideas to the negotiating table and focus on doing what is best for the country.‖33 A decrease in welfare cases, however, does not mean the main problem of poverty is being solved. The data are also highly suspicious.

The drop in the mid nineties is understandable due to the economic boom and subsequent decrease in unemployment. However, as the economy worsened over the late nineties, welfare caseloads continued to fall. While having a recession-proof welfare policy would be ideal, Bread for the World Institute, ―TANF Recipients,‖ The 2010 Hunger Report. 2009, http://hungerreport.org/2010/data/income-security/114-tanf 33 Bill Clinton, ―How We Ended Welfare, Together,‖ New York Times, August 22, 2006, Opinion. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/22/opinion/22clinton.html 32

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the concept does not make sense. The economy should have repercussions on a policy that is largely related to the market. Robert Pear, a journalist for the New York Times, notes that the amount of food stamps increased while the number of welfare caseloads continued to decrease. He observed that ―new rules and requirements may intimidate poor people from seeking welfare.‖34 Exceeding time limits or failing to meet the work requirement disqualifies a person from receiving benefits. These circumstances mean that previous TANF recipients and their families will remain below the poverty line but be removed from the welfare rolls. Figure 2 shows that the Welfare Reform Act has had no substantial impact on the rate of poverty in the US and the number of people in poverty has actually increased since 1996.

Figure 2. Number in Poverty and Poverty Rate: 1959 to 200735

The RAND study also found that there were ―no significant effects of TANF on work participation, weeks worked, hours worked, own earnings or family earnings.‖36 Looking at the states with the lowest and highest rate of poverty will help determine the efficacy of the Welfare Reform Act and help decide whether this policy is as beneficial as numerous politicians have claimed.

New Hampshire The state of New Hampshire has a population of 1,314,895 people.

Robert Pear, ―Despite Sluggish Economy, Welfare Rolls Actually Fell,‖ Opinion, March 22, 2004.

35 United States Department of Health and Human Services, http://www.hhsstat.net/scripts/topic.cfm?id=32 36 Blank and Schoeni, 18.

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Of these people, 95.8 percent are white and 1.1 percent is black.

Eighty-seven percent of the population has graduated from high school and 28.7 percent have earned a bachelor‘s degree or higher. As of 2004, 6.6 percent of the population lived below the poverty level. The median household income was $53,377. As of 2005, New Hampshire had the lowest rate of poverty at 7.5 percent. As can be seen from Table 2, these numbers are better than the national average. Is New Hampshire‘s welfare policy the reason for this success?

Table 2. National Comparison37 United States Average Caucasian 79.8% population (by percentage) (2008) African-American 12.8% population (by percentage) (2008) Percent of high 80.4% school graduates, persons age 25+ (2000) Percent with 24.4% bachelor‘s degree or higher (2000) Median household $50,740 income (2007) Rate of poverty 13.0% (2007)

New Hampshire

Mississippi

95.5%

60.6%

1.2%

37.2%

87.4%

72.9%

28.7%

16.9%

$62,048

$36,424

7.3%

20.7%

The small New England state‘s TANF program is divided into two distinct programs, the New Hampshire Employment Program (NHEP) and the Family Assistance Program (FAP). According to the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, the New Hampshire Employment Program gives cash assistance to eligible families with able-bodied parents and assists those parents in becoming self-sufficient by promoting work through the provision of employment support and training services. Individuals participating in the program work with Employment Counselor Specialists who U.S. Census Bureau, ―State and County Quickfacts,‖ 2008 <http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/33000.html> (18 October 37

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provide employment and training services at the NH Works/One Stop Career Centers located at NH Employment Security Offices around the state. These counselors work with participants to assess their skills and abilities and develop an individualized employment plan. It is through that employment plan that employment related activities and support services are made available to participants, either through the New Hampshire Employment Program or other community services. FAP provides cash assistance to eligible households with dependent children that are headed by adults who have either a permanent disability, longterm obstacles to employment, or are over age 60. The program also provides cash assistance for children living with a non-parent caretaker relative. There are no work requirements for adults receiving assistance through FAP.38 Table 3 shows that New Hampshire has experienced an overall decrease in poverty since the enactment of welfare reform.

Table 3. New Hampshire Poverty Rates: Selected 3-Year Averages, 1994-1996 through 2005-2007 (in percentages) 39 1994 1996 1998 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 1996 1998 2000 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 6.5 8.4 7.4 6.0 5.7 5.6 5.5 5.6

This seems like positive evidence in support of TANF. However, this nation is made up of fifty individual states. The Welfare Reform Act was meant to affect each of them. While poverty rates are declining in some states, they are increasing or remaining constant in others.

Let‘s look at the state of Mississippi before drawing final conclusions.

Mississippi The state of Mississippi has a population of 2,910,540 people. Out of these people 60.9 percent are white and 37.1 percent are black. 72.9 percent have graduated from high school, which is below the national average of 80.4 percent. Just 16.9 percent of Mississippians have acquired a bachelor‘s degree or higher. 19.3 percent live below the poverty level. The median household income is $34,278. Mississippi‘s

New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, ―Temporary Assistance for Needy Families,‖ 2008 <http://www.dhhs.state.nh.us/DHHS/TANF/family-assistprogram.htm> (1 November 2008.)

39 Institute for Research on Poverty, ―State Poverty Rates,‖ University of WisconsinMadison, 2008 <http://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq3/table2.htm> (2 November 2008) 38

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Discovering the Stigma and Stereotypes of Welfare poverty rate is the highest in the nation at 21.3 percent.40 Referring to Table 2, these statistics are far worse than the national averages.

The TANF work requirements and time limits are the same in Mississippi as they are in New Hampshire. Recipients capable of working must find a job within 24 months of assistance and cannot exceed the 60 month time limit on aid. Mississippi‘s high rate of unemployment exemplifies the irony of this policy. While Mississippi has a higher unemployment rate it has a lower recipiency rate, indicating some are not receiving the aid that should be.

Figure 3. AFDC/TANF Recipiency Rate, Unemployment Rate, & Welfare Policy Changes by State41

U.S. Census Bureau, ―State and County Quickfacts,‖ 2008 <http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/28000.html> (13 October 2008).

41 Office of the Assistance Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, ―AFDC/TANF Recipiency Rate, Unemployment Rate, & Welfare Policy Changes by State,‖ US Department of Health and Human Services, 2008 <http://aspe.hhs.gov/HSP/WaiverPolicies99/rr_un_wv4.PDF> (3 October 2008).

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As William Julius Wilson stated, ―poverty is positively associated with joblessness.‖42 According to a 2009 report from the US Department of Labor, Mississippi‘s unemployment rate is ranked 49 th of the states at 9.6 percent as of 2009. New Hampshire is ranked 8 th at 6.7 percent as of 2009.43 This is a structural problem that cannot be solved by the current welfare program. The Welfare Reform Act does not purport to create jobs, but rather demands that those in need find employment in order to receive aid. In a state such as Mississippi, how are poor families supposed to do either? Joblessness is widespread throughout the state and this has not only impacts the unemployed but also the attitudes of Mississippians who do not need welfare. In a statement to the US Commission Meeting on Race and Color Discrimination of April 19, 2006, public policy professor at Georgetown and senior fellow at the Urban Institute Harry J. Holzer stated: Studies of self-reported employer data on job applicants and hiring show differences as well, with black applicants gaining 42

Wilson, When Work Disappears, 42.

United States Department of Labor, ―Economy at a Glance,‖ Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2009, http://www.bls.gov/eag/.

43

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fewer jobs than whites or Hispanics, and black men gaining fewer than black women. The data show that smaller establishments, those with white customers, and those with white managers/owners make fewer offers to black applicants, all else equal. Ethnographic evidence confirms that employers have negative stereotypes about blacks relative to other employees, and are more fearful of black men than women.44 Racism has been a pervasive problem in the South since the first slaves were brought to America. ―Long before the birth of the welfare state, the defenders of slavery argued that blacks were unfit for freedom because they were too lackadaisical to survive on their own.‖45 It seems that welfare programs only enhance bigotry in stereotypes. New Hampshire has a black population of less than 2 percent. In his book Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card Against America’s Poor, Kenneth J. Neubeck describes Mississippi‘s racial situation: Mississippi has the largest proportion of American-American residents of any of the fifty states. In the late 1990s, almost 40 percent of Mississippians were black, and many were extremely impoverished. Consequently, black families made up more than 80 percent of the state‘s welfare caseload….Welfare has long provided Mississippi's politicians with fodder for their political rhetoric and campaigns. It has enabled them to play the ―race card‖ without necessarily being overt when making appeals to sentiments of white supremacy.46 Recent studies have also shown that states with higher proportions of minorities enact harsher welfare programs by enforcing full family sanctions, relatively short time limits and family cap policies, as can be seen in Figure 4. This graph shows that the larger the amount of black welfare recipients in a state, the greater the chance of harsher welfare requirements and restrictions.

Harry J. Holzer, ―The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.‖ Statement, Commission Meeting on Race and Color Discrimination, Washington, D.C., 19 April 2006.

45 Gilens, 78.

46 Kenneth J. Neubeck, Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card Against America’s Poor (New York: Routledge, 2000), 193.

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Figure 4. Probability of State Policy Choice Compared to black AFDC Recipients in States47

Mississippi also has the highest percentage of teenage pregnancies and ranks worst in adult literacy, where 30 percent of adults are completely or functionally illiterate and 40 percent have only eighth grade reading levels.48 Many southern states, such as Mississippi, do not allow welfare recipients to claim education as a form of work. With the pursuance of secondary education not a viable work substitution, harsh TANF requirements perpetuate poverty in the South. Therefore, people are stuck in the low skilled and low paying jobs that their education level determines. The cycle of poverty will continue to repeat unless education is promoted by welfare policies.

By using Stone‘s goals of equality, security and liberty to measure the effectiveness of the Welfare Reform Act, the faults of the program are blatant. The unequal treatment of African Americans violates their needs and freedoms. As a polis, ―individual welfare depends on the welfare of others‖ and ―to ignore side effects, or to pretend that externalities are a defect in a miniscule area of human affairs, is to 47

Schram, 91.

Pearson Liddell, Jr., Stevie Watson and William Eshee. "Welfare Reform in Mississippi: TANF and Its Implications." Journal of Gender, Social Policy, and Law (2003)<http://www.wcl.american.edu/journal/genderlaw/11/liddell.pdf?rd=1> (11 October 2008) 48

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undermine the ability of public policy to achieve efficiency in any important sense.‖49 The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 treats humans as self-damaged parts that can be fixed through set amounts of money and regulation. Those that cannot repair themselves are conveniently dropped from rolls and consequently seen as positive indicators of TANF‘s success.

Conclusion For centuries, scholars and policymakers have been trying to solve the problem of poverty. As the pendulum shifts between internal and external causes so too do the welfare programs vary from era to era.

What remains constant is that poverty degrades the quality of a nation and is seen as an ugly smudge on its reputation. It is in a country‘s best interest to eliminate poverty, but no U.S. policy has come close to achieving that goal.

From this research it can be concluded that poverty will persist until it is seen as a problem within the social structure of America. The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 propagates the tendency to blame the character of the indigent as the cause of poverty. While self-sufficiency is crucial to eliminating poverty it is not something that can be forced upon a person through work requirements and time limits. In many situations this prevents or deters families in need from ever leaving the cycle of poverty. Further research into creation of the poverty line and what qualifies as a decent standard of living must be done to establish what is needed to subsist comfortably in life. Extensive investigation must be done to eliminate racial discrimination in welfare programs.

Most difficult of all, the generalization of the unworthy poor must be broken if America ever hopes to eliminate poverty. While it may seem that the financial difficulties to fund a successful welfare program would be the heaviest burden on the public, it has always been this country‘s insidious stereotypes that have blocked the way to great accomplishments.

Works Cited Blank, Rebecca M. and Schoeni, Robert F. ―What Has Welfare Reform Accomplished? Impacts on Welfare Participation, Employment, Income, Poverty and Family Structure.‖ RAND 2000.

Bread for the World Institute. ―TANF Recipients.‖ The 2010 Hunger Report,2009. <http://hungerreport.org/2010/data/income49

Stone, 78-79.

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security/114-tanf> (accessed 11 October 2008) Clinton, Bill. ―How We Ended Welfare, Together.‖ New York Times, August 22, 2006, Opinion. <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/22/opinion/22clinton.html> (accessed 25 October 2008) Edelman, Peter. ―The True Purpose of Welfare Reform.‖ New York Times, May 29, 2002, Opinion. <http://www.nytimes.com/ 2002/05/29/opinion/29EDEL.html?pagewanted=1> (accessed 25 October 2008).

Gilens, Martin. Why Americans Hate Welfare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Goldfield, Keith S., ed. TANF at 10: A Retrospective on Welfare Reform. New Jersey: Princeton University, 2007.

Institute for Research on Poverty. ―State Poverty Rates.‖ University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2008<http://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/ faq3/table2.htm> (2 November 2008) Liddell, Pearson Jr., Stevie Watson, and William Eshee. ―Welfare Reform in Mississippi: TANF and Its Implications.‖ Journal of Gender, Social Policy, and Law 2003<http://www.wcl.american. edu/journal/genderlaw/11/liddell.pdf?rd=1> (accessed 11 October 2008) Lower-Bash, Elizabeth. ―TANF ‗Leavers,‘ Applicants and Caseload Studies: Preliminary Analysis of Racial Differences in Caseload Trends and Leaver Outcomes.‖ Department of Health & Human Services, September 2003 <http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/ leavers99/race.htm#fig1> (accessed 1 November 2008).

Lowi, Theodore J. The End of Liberalism. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979.

Neubeck, Kenneth J. Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card Against America’s Poor. New York: Routledge, 2000.

New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services. ―Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.‖ 2008 http://www.dhhs.state.nh.us/DHHS/TANF/family-assist-

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program.htm (1 November 2008.)

Office of the Assistance Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. ―AFDC/TANF Recipiency Rate, Unemployment Rate, & Welfare Policy Changes by State.‖ US Department of Health and Human Services, 2008 <http://aspe.hhs.gov/HSP/WaiverPolicies99/rr_un_wv4.PDF> (3 October 2008).

Office of Family Assistance. ―Mission Statement.‖ US Department of Health and Human Services, October 2006. <http://www.acf.hhs. gov/opa/fact_sheets/tanf_factsheet.html> (accessed 25 October 2008).

Pear, Robert. ―Despite Sluggish Economy, Welfare Rolls Actually Fell.‖ New York Times, March 22, 2004, Opinion. <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/22/us/despite-sluggisheconomy-welfare-rolls-actually-fell.html?pagewanted=1> Schram, Sanford F. Welfare Discipline: Discourse, Governance, and Globalization. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006.

Stone, Deborah. Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making.

Revised ed. New York: W.W. Norton Company, 2002.

U.S. Census Bureau. ―State and County Quickfacts.‖ 2008 <http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/28000.html> (accessed October 2008).

U.S. Census Bureau. ―State and County Quickfacts.‖ 2008 <http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/33000.html> (accessed 18 October 2008.)

United States Department of Labor. ―Economy at a Glance.‖ Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2009, <http://www.bls.gov/eag/> (accessed 1 November 2009) Urban Institute. ―TANF Income Eligibility Thresholds.‖ 2008 <http://www.urban.org/publications/900772.html> (accessed 25 October 2008).

Wilson, William Julius. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987

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Wilson, William Julius. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New York: Random House, Inc. 1997.

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Introduction to “Do College Women Desire an Eating Disorder?

Examining Media and Personality Predictors of Desire for an Eating Disorder” Nancy Dorr Associate Professor of Psychology Psychology is commonly defined as the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. In considering psychology to be a science, researchers typically apply the scientific method to study individuals‘ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. To do so, researchers generate a hypothesis and test it using empirical methods. This often includes deciding how to measure the variables of interest (such as through behavioral observation or self-report), collecting data through systematic procedures, analyzing data using statistical techniques, and interpreting the results. Although this approach is not without its limitations, the purpose is to help researchers be as objective as possible in testing their hypotheses.

In the article that follows entitled ―Do College Women Desire an Eating Disorder? Examining Media and Personality Predictors of Desire for an Eating Disorder‖, Salina Santore uses empirical methods to examine issues surrounding eating disorders. Eating disorders are considered to be psychological disorders; two of the more commonly studied eating disorders are anorexia nervosa and bulimia. A person with anorexia often diets to an extreme, becomes obsessed with being thin, and is under 85% of her or his expected weight. A person with bulimia binges and in doing so consumes a great deal of calories, and then purges by vomiting, using laxatives or other means to try to undo the binge.

Much research has been conducted to examine factors which predict who is likely to develop an eating disorder. One of the most studied ideas is the extent to which steady exposure to especially thin fashion models and celebrities places females at risk for developing an eating disorder. Ms. Santore explores the extent to which the strong pressure to be thin that is felt by many young women might end up causing them to want to have an eating disorder. As she notes, desire for an eating disorder is a construct which has not been previously investigated empirically. To study this, Ms. Santore developed a preliminary scale to measure desire for an eating disorder and then gathered data to understand what other psychological variables correlate with this desire. In choosing which correlates to study, Ms. Santore both built on past research and included her own theorizing.

To build on past research, she examined the extent to which fashion

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media consumption and viewing pro-eating disorder websites may put young women at risk for wanting an eating disorder. To explore new constructs, she examined the extent to which young women with a strong need to belong and a strong need for attention may also be at risk for wanting an eating disorder.

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Do College Women Desire an Eating Disorder?

Examining Media and Personality Predictors of Desire for an Eating Disorder Salina Santore Psychology major; Class of 2010 This study examined a need to belong, a need for attention, frequent reading of fashion, beauty, fitness, and health magazines, and the use of pro-eating disorder websites as correlates of desire for an eating disorder and eating disorder symptoms. The participants were 54 female college students. Participants completed questionnaires assessing each variable. Significant correlations were found between the desire for an eating disorder and frequent reading of fitness and health magazines. More correlations were found between eating disorder symptoms and the need to belong, frequent reading of beauty, fashion, fitness, and health magazines, and visiting of pro-eating disorder websites. Further research should include the variables of a need for attention, use of pro-eating disorder websites, and desire for an eating disorder.

The ―thin-ideal‖ appears repeatedly throughout today‘s world; it can be seen on television, the sides of buses, billboards, the internet, magazines, and in almost every clothing store. Some think that this constant exposure to the unrealistically thin or ―thin-ideal‖ has led to an increase in the number of eating disorders. Indeed, Dalley, Buunk, and Umit (2009) found that exposure to thin media increases body dissatisfaction in females. The main targets of the ―thin-ideal‖ are adolescents, young people, and females. Consequently, adolescents or young females make up 90 percent of all cases of eating disorders (American Psychological Association, 2004). That is to say that 7.2 million out of 8 million Americans that have an eating disorder are females between the ages of 12 and 25 (South Carolina Department of Mental Health, 2006). Of that 7.2 million, five percent or 360,000 are likely to die within the next 10 years (Sullivan, 1995). This number is 12 times higher than the death rate for females aged 15-24 in the general population for all causes of death (National Institute of Mental Health, 2008).

Many studies have been conducted on eating disorders in the hope that this mortality rate can be decreased. Previous studies have found that viewing beauty and fashion magazines and viewing pro-anorexia websites can be predictors of eating disorders (Pinhas, Toner, Garfinkel, & Stuckless, 1988; Stice, Schupak-Neuberg, Shaw, & Stein,

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1994; Thomsen, McCoy, Gustafson, & Williams, 2002). A proanorexia website is one that promotes and supports anorexia. The present study was designed to (a) continue research that examines the viewing of beauty and fashion magazines as predictors of eating disorders and visiting pro-eating disorder websites; (b) expand research on high desire to belong and high need for attention as predictors of eating disorder symptoms; and (c) explicitly examine the extent to which individuals self-report having a desire for an eating disorder.

Fashion Magazines Lokken, Worthy, and Trautmann (2004) examined the effects of different forms of media on eating disorder symptoms. They found that only magazine exposure had a significant correlation with eating disorder symptoms. The negative effects of viewing fashion magazines can be seen in Pinhas et al. (1988), Stice et al. (1994), and Thomsen et al. (2002).

One negative effect of media exposure is increased eating disorder symptomatology (Stice et al., 1994). One form of media exposure, magazines, has been studied extensively with eating disorder symptoms and moods (Pinhas et al., 1988; Thomsen et al., 2002).

Pinhas et al. (1988) examined the effects of fashion magazines on a personâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s mood. They found that anger and depression were immediate effects of viewing the pictures in fashion magazines. They found that mood changes were greater when the picture was of a female model and the viewer had high scores on the eating disorder scale. The motives for reading these fashion magazines were examined by Thomsen et al. (2002).

Thomsen et al. (2002) found that when a college womanâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s motivations to read fashion magazines were to lose weight, be popular, and improve oneself, there was a correlation with greater frequency of reading and higher anorexic risk. These results are not proven but lead one to believe that viewing fashion magazines may be a mediating factor between the desire to have an eating disorder and having an eating disorder. In other words, it is possible that an individual with desire for an eating disorder may then view more fashion magazines, and then develop an eating disorder.

Pro-eating Disorder Websites The pictures that appear in fashion magazines also appear on proeating disorder websites. A pro-eating disorder website is one that shows eating disorders in a favorable or good way. These sites often have guides on how to have and hide an eating disorder and blogs for individuals to share information. Boydell, Katzman, Pinhas, and Norris

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(2006) examined the contents of pro-anorexia websites and found that 92 % contained ―thinspirational‖ content or photos of extremely thin celebrities and sometimes photos of individuals exhibiting anorexia.

These photos are examples of the ―thin-ideal.‖ From the Google search engine, the key term of ―pro-ana‖ can be searched to find pro-anorexia websites. Many sites have been suspended for their content, such as the site called ―House of Thin.‖ But many sites are still running such as the site pro-thinspo.com. This site has a search engine to find thin-information, a ―thinspiration gallery,‖ and lots of ―how to be thin tricks and tips‖ (Prothinspo Incorporated, 2008). This site is a good example of the dangerous content of pro-anorexia websites.

Past studies concluded that pro-anorexia websites and their contents were dangerous (Bardone Cone, & Kamila, 2007; Boydell et al., 2006; Fox, Ward, & O‘Rourke, 2005; Lipczynska, 2007). This was determined by Bardone-Cone and Kamila (2007) after examining the side effects of viewing a pro-anorexia website just once. They found notable negative effects on the viewer‘s social self-efficacy and social self-esteem. This study concluded that pro-anorexic websites were a dangerous new form of ―thin-ideal‖ exposure and needed to be researched further.

Further research was done by Fox, Ward, and O‘Rourke (2005) where they described the pro-anorexia websites as resistance to medical and social theories of disease. They discovered that even sites that try to be helpful to the anorexic are dangerous and are ―anti-recovery.‖ A site that is ―not pro-anorexia‖ is one that is meant to support individuals that already exhibit anorexia and is not meant for people who want an eating disorder. They are ―anti-recovery‖ because anorexics use the websites as a tool to control weight and their surroundings which can be dangerous.

However, pro-eating disorder websites are not just dangerous to the current anorexic but dangerous to individuals that want to have anorexia. Lipczynska (2007) reviewed five pro-anorexia websites and found one major common danger. This danger is that the websites supported all the choices participants made, including the choice to use pro-anorexia websites despite the warnings. By entering the site the individual is exposed to ―thin-ideal‖ sayings and pictures as well as step-by-step how-to guides on how to have and hide an eating disorder.

Lipczynska (2007) interpreted individuals‘ actions of entering proanorexia sites, despite the danger warnings, as desire for an eating disorder. This would mean that, like fashion magazines, pro-eating disorder websites could be acting as a mediator between having a desire to have an eating disorder and having an eating disorder. In other

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words, if an individual desires an eating disorder, then she or he may be viewing pro-eating disorder sites, which can result in an eating disorder.

Desire for an Eating Disorder Research has shown that anorexics have a desire to be anorexic (Williams & Reid, 2007). Williams and Reid (2007) found ―wanting anorexia‖ as a core category linking themes that lead to pro-anorexic ideas. In other words, an anorexic may have wanted to have anorexia before she or he developed anorexic ideas such as, ―anorexia gives desired results that outweigh the dangers.‖ The current study looks more closely at the core construct of desire for an eating disorder. None of this past research has looked at explicit desire for an eating disorder; the current study does this.

In the present study, female college students were given questionnaires assessing high desire to belong, high need for attention, frequency of reading of beauty and fashion magazines, visiting proeating disorder websites, eating disorder symptoms, and explicit desire for an eating disorder. I hypothesized that, among female college students, desire to belong, need for attention, frequent reading of beauty, fashion, fitness and health magazines, and visiting pro-eating disorder websites would be positively correlated with the desire for an eating disorder and eating disorder symptoms.

Method Participants Participants were 58 female college students taking a Psychology class. Participants had to be eighteen years old, or seventeen with parental consent on file with the Psychology Department. Participants attended a small private college located in New York. Participants were 15 freshmen, 17 sophomores, 10 juniors, and 14 seniors in college (2 did not answer this question); the average age was 20. The participants‘ ethnicities were 47 Caucasian, 3 Hispanic, 2 African-American, 2 Asian, and 1 Bi-racial (3 did not answer this question). Participants received course credit. (Course credit could be earned by completing writing assignments for students who did not want to participate in studies).

Measures There were six scales in questionnaire packets. The scales were stapled together in this order: Media Scale, Need to Belong, Need for Attention, Eating Disorder Symptoms, Pro-Eating Disorder Websites, Desire for an Eating Disorder. Participants were also asked to give

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weight and height which were used to calculate Body Mass Index (BMI).

The Media Scale was modified from Stice, Schupak-Neuberg, Shaw, and Stein (1994). It contains thirteen questions assessing media usage. One of the questions on the scale is ―How many beauty and fashion magazines have you looked at over the past month?‖ This scale was used to collect data on beauty, fashion, health, and fitness magazine usage. The first four items were the only ones used, and each item was used as a separate indicator of media usage. High scores on these items indicated high usage of health, fitness, fashion, or beauty magazines.

The Need to Belong Scale came from Mellor, Stokes, Firth, Hayashi, and Cummins (2008). It contains ten questions assessing the extent of the need to belong. It uses a rating system of 1-5 (1 being ―strongly disagree,‖ 2 being ―moderately disagree,‖ 3 being ―neither agree nor disagree,‖ 4 being ―moderately agree,‖ and 5 being ―strongly agree‖). One of the questions on this scale is ―I want other people to accept me.‖ This scale was scored by reverse scoring 3 items and then averaging all items. A high score indicates high need to belong.

The Need for Attention Scale was created by the current researcher (See Appendix A). It contains eight questions assessing the extent of needing attention. It uses a rating system of 1-6 (1 being ―always,‖ 2 being ―very often,‖ 3 being ―often,‖ 4 being ―sometimes,‖ 5 being ―rarely,‖ and 6 being ―never‖). After computing coefficient alpha (α = .42), it was determined that the items on the scale were not wellcorrelated and hence could not be averaged to create a composite scale.

Therefore, only one single item was used to indicate need for attention: ―I feel that any kind of attention is good attention.‖ After reverse scoring this item, a high score was used to indicate high desire for attention.

The Eating Disorder Symptoms came from Garner, Olmstead, Bohr, and Garfinkel (1982). It contains 26 questions assessing the degree of eating disorder symptoms. It uses a rating system of 1-6 (1 being ―always,‖ 2 being ―very often,‖ 3 being ―often,‖ 4 being ―sometimes,‖ 5 being ―rarely,‖ and 6 being ―never‖). One of the questions is ―(I) find myself preoccupied with food.‖ The scoring procedure for this scale is to reverse every item except one then find the mean of all the items. A high score indicates more eating disorder symptoms.

The pro-eating disorder websites scale was created by the current researcher (See Appendix B). It contains eight questions assessing the use of pro-eating disorder websites. It uses a rating system of 1-6 (1 being ―always,‖ 2 being ―very often,‖ 3 being ―often,‖ 4 being

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Therefore, the first four items were used as separate indicators of proeating disorder website usage. High scores indicate high usage of eating disorder websites.

The Desire for an Eating Disorder Scale was created by the current researcher (See Appendix C). It contains eighteen questions assessing the explicit desire for an eating disorder. It uses a rating system of 1-6 (1 being ―always,‖ 2 being ―very often,‖ 3 being ―often,‖ 4 being ―sometimes,‖ 5 ―rarely,‖ and 6 being ―never.‖) One of the questions is ―If I had an eating disorder my life would be better.‖ Coefficient alpha (α = .85) showed that all the items 1 through 9 on the scale were correlated. Therefore, these nine items were averaged to create a composite scale (after reverse scoring the items). High scores were used to indicate high desire for an eating disorder.

Procedure Participants were contacted in psychology classrooms. Students who wanted to participate were given an informed consent and questionnaire packet that they completed at home. Participants brought these packets back to their classes, where they were collected. Informed consent forms were separated from the questionnaires and the only demographic information attached to the questionnaire was weight and height. All other demographic information was separated from the questionnaire while collecting them from participants. Once the participants brought in their completed packet, they received a written debriefing explaining the purpose of the study and thanking them for their participation.

Results Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were computed to examine the relationships among need to belong, need for attention, frequent reading of fashion, beauty, fitness, and health magazines, the use of pro-eating disorder websites, desire for an eating disorder, eating disorder symptoms, and BMI. The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient shows to what extent each variable is associated with the others.

As can be seen in Table 1, desire for an eating disorder was significantly correlated with three other variables. These results suggest that female college students who scored high on desire for an eating disorder had a heavier BMI and were also more likely to read a greater

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number of health and fitness magazines in a month and to spend more time reading these magazines. The correlations between desire for an eating disorder and the rest of the variables were not statistically significant (see Table 1).

Table 1. Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficients Variable EDS Belong BMI # Hours # Fitness fit Beauty Desire EDS Belong BMI #Fitness Hoursfit #Beauty

.65** ___

.17 .40** ____

.27* .004 -.13 ____

.30* .67** .29* -.17 ____

.36** .50** .20 -.33* .49** ____

.17 .34* .23 -.20 .41** .18 ____

Web E+ .23 .31* .05 -.12 .19 .18 .30*

Note. Desire = Desire for eating disorder; EDS = Eating disorder symptoms; Belong = Need to belong; BMI = Body mass index; # Fitness = Number of fitness and health magazines viewed in a month; Hours fit = Hours spent looking at fitness and health magazines in a month; # Beauty = Number of beauty and fashion magazines viewed in a month; Web E+ = Viewing of website that shows eating disorders in a positive way * p < .05; **p < .01 As can also be seen in Table 1, significant correlations were found between eating disorder symptoms and six other variables. These correlations suggest that people who reported more eating disorder symptoms also reported wanting an eating disorder, reported a higher need to belong, read a greater number of health, fitness, and beauty magazines in a month, spent more time reading health and fitness magazines, and reported viewing pro-eating disorder websites. The correlations between eating disorder symptoms and the rest of the variables were not statistically significant (see Table 1).

Discussion It was predicted that desire to belong, need for attention, frequent reading of fashion, beauty, fitness, and health magazines, and visiting of pro-eating disorder websites would be positively correlated with desire for an eating disorder and eating disorder symptoms. The findings give mixed support for this hypothesis.

There was no significant correlation between need for attention

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and any other variable. One reason for this could be that only one question on the attention scale was used for analysis and a second reason could be low statistical power. Statistical power is the probability of finding a statistically significant correlation if a correlation really exists. The power for need for attention and desire for an eating disorder was very low. This means that there was only a 10% chance of finding a correlation between the variables if one really exists. The power between need for attention and eating disorder symptoms was also low. These findings do not support the hypothesis that need for attention is positively correlated with desire for an eating disorder and eating disorder symptoms. Further research should create a new attention scale with more items similar to ―I feel that any kind of attention is good attention.‖ A better attention scale may show different results.

Analysis was conducted on only the first four items on the eating disorder website usage scale. Correlations were computed on the first item, ―I visited a website/websites that show having an eating disorder as a positive trait‖ and all other variables. The only statistically significant correlation was with the eating disorder symptoms scale and number of beauty and fashion magazines viewed in the past month.

Both are positively correlated, meaning that the more a female visited a website that portrayed eating disorders as a good trait, the more beauty and fashion magazines she viewed and the higher she scored on the eating disorder scale. This supports the hypothesis that visiting proeating disorder websites is positively correlated with eating disorder symptoms. However this does not support the hypothesis that visiting pro-eating disorder websites is positively correlated with desiring an eating disorder. There was no correlation between visiting a website that showed eating disorders as a positive trait and desire for an eating disorder. One reason for this could be because the power was low. That means there was only a 20% chance of finding a significant correlation if there really was one. In further research, the item ―I visited a website/websites that show having an eating disorder as a positive trait‖ should be used to create a new scale. This scale should contain multiple items that focus on usage of eating disorder websites that show eating disorders in a positive way.

The desire for an eating disorder was positively correlated with body mass index, number of health and fitness magazines looked at in a month, hours viewing health and fitness magazines in a month and eating disorder symptoms. In other words, the higher the desire for an eating disorder a person had, the more overweight a person was, the more health and fitness magazines that the person looked at, the longer the amount of time the person spend viewing those magazines, and the

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more eating disorder symptoms a person had. This supports the hypothesis that frequent viewing of two types of beauty magazines, fitness and health, were positively correlated with desire for an eating disorder. The results do not support the hypothesis that the number of fashion magazines viewed in a month and desire to belong are positively correlated with desire for an eating disorder. One possible reason there was not a significant correlation found between need to belong and desire for eating disorder may be because of the low power.

Low power may also be the reason for the lack of significant correlation between fashion magazines viewed in a month and desire for an eating disorder. Further research could increase power by using a larger sample and a scale that is more sensitive to the need to belong.

However, the number of beauty and fashion magazines is positively correlated with the number of fitness and health magazines and eating disorder symptoms. This means that the more beauty and fashion magazines viewed in a month was correlated with the more fitness and health magazines viewed, and the more eating disorder symptoms. This supports the hypothesis that frequent viewing of fashion and beauty magazines is positively correlated with eating disorder symptoms. These results support the research of Lokken et al.

(2004) that magazines are positively correlated with symptoms of eating disorders.

The eating disorder symptoms are also positively correlated with need to belong, number of fitness and health magazines viewed in a month, hours spent viewing fitness magazines, and desire for an eating disorder. This means that high scores on eating disorder symptoms were correlated with high scores on the need to belong scale, the more fitness and health magazines viewed in a month, more hours spent viewing those magazines, and higher scores on the desire for an eating disorder scale. This supports the hypothesis that desire to belong, frequent reading of two types of beauty magazines, fitness and health, are positively correlated with eating disorder symptoms. There is a very strong positive correlation between desire for an eating disorder and eating disorder symptoms. These findings mean that it is very likely that either desire for an eating disorder results in eating disorder symptoms, or eating disorder symptoms result in desire for an eating disorder, or they form at the same time; there is no way to tell from this study. Further longitudinal studies would have to be conducted to determine which variable is the predictor and which is the response.

A strength of this study is that it looks at the population most affected by eating disorders. Ninety percent of Americans that have an eating disorder are females between the ages of 12 and 25 (South Carolina Department of Mental Health, 2006). But by all means, this

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study is not perfect. Further research should be done to eliminate the limitations of this study. Two limitations of this study were that the scales for attention and use of eating disorder websites were not usable as complete scales and only certain items were used to run analyses.

The scales had to be broken down into separate usable questions.

Another limitation is that this study cannot be generalized to many other populations because the participants were almost exclusively of Caucasian ethnicity.

Significant results were found to support the hypothesis that eating disorder symptoms are positively correlated with desire to belong, frequent reading of fashion, beauty, fitness, and health magazines, and visiting of pro-eating disorder websites, and desire for an eating disorder is positively correlated with frequent reading of fitness and health magazines. There is no evidence to support a relationship between eating disorder symptoms and need for attention, and between desire for an eating disorder and desire to belong, need for attention, and visiting of pro-eating disorder websites. Further research must be done to examine the correlations between desire for an eating disorder, need for attention, and pro-eating disorder websites because these variables were not fully examined in this study due to unusable scales.

Future research should continue to examine female participants in college. New questionnaires should be created to examine need for attention and pro-eating disorder website use. The questionnaire on desire for an eating disorder should be reexamined to remove any poor items. Body Mass Index may be another important factor in understanding who desires an eating disorder and why height and weight should also be included in further studies. A questionnaire on only exercise and health magazine usage should be included. The questionnaire packet should include exercise and health magazines, need for attention, pro-eating disorder website usage, eating disorder symptoms, desire for an eating disorder, height, and weight. It would be interesting to further the study to males in college as well as females.

The results of the current study showed a positive correlation between reading of beauty and fashion magazines and eating disorder symptoms; this is consistent with past research and hence does not need further research (Lokken et al., 2004). The frequent reading of fitness and health magazines is a possible predictor of desire for an eating disorder and does need further research, as this is a novel finding.

There was a very strong positive correlation between eating disorder symptoms and explicit desire for an eating disorder. Examining this desire further could prove to be valuable to the fight against eating disorders and may prove to be an important part in eating disorder prevention.

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Works Cited American Psychological Association. (2004). Eating disorders.

Retrieved March 21, 2009, from http://www.apahelpcenter.org/ articles/article.php?id=9 Bardone-Cone, A., & Kamila, M. (2007). What does viewing a proanorexia website do? An experimental examination of website exposure and moderating effects [Electronic version].

International Journal of Eating Disorders, 40, 537-548.

Boydell, K., Katzman, D., Pinhas, L., & Norris, M. (2006). Ana and the internet: A review of pro-anorexia websites [Electronic version].

International Journal of Eating Disorders, 39, 443-447.

Dalley, S. E., Buunk, A. P., & Umit, T. (2009). Female body dissatisfaction after exposure to overweight and thin media images: The role of body mass index and neuroticism [Electronic version].

Personality and Individual Differences, 47, 47-51.

Fox, N., Ward, K., & O‘Rourke, A. (2005). Pro-anorexia, weight-loss drugs and the internet: An‗anti-recovery‘ explanatory model of anorexia [Electronic version]. Sociology of Health & Illness, 27, 944-971.

Garner, D. M., Olmstead, M. P., Bohr, Y., & Garfinkel, P. (1982). The Eating Attitudes Test: Psychometric features and clinical correlates. Psychological Medicine, 12, 871-878.

Lipczynska, S. (2007). Discovering the cult of Ana and Mia: A review of pro-anorexia websites [Electronic version]. Journal of Mental Health, 16, 545-548.

Lokken, K. L., Worthy, S. L., & Trautmann, J. (2004). Examining the links among magazine preference, levels of awareness and internalization of sociocultural appearance standards, and presence of eating-disordered symptoms in college women [Electronic version]. Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal, 32, 361-381.

Mellor, D., Stokes, M., Firth, L., Hayashi, Y., & Cummins, R. (2008).

Need for belonging, relationship satisfaction, loneliness, and life satisfaction. Personality and Individual Differences, 45, 213-218.

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National Institute of Mental Health. (2008). The Numbers Count: Mental Disorders in America. Retrieved March 21, 2009, from http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/thenumbers-countmental-disorders-in-america/index.shtml#SullivanAnorexia Pinhas, L., Toner, B. B., Garfinkel, P. E., & Stuckless, N. (1988). The effect of the ideal of female beauty on mood and body satisfaction [Electronic version]. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 25, 223-226.

Prothinspo Incorporated (2008). Pro Ana Tips and Tricks. Retrieved December 23, 2009, from http://www.prothinspo.com/ proanatipsandtricksindexpage.html South Carolina Department of Mental Health. (2006). Eating disorders statistics. Retrieved March 25, 2009, from http://www.state.sc.us/ dmh/anorexia/statistics.htm Stice, E., Schupak-Neuberg, E., Shaw, H. E., & Stein, R. I. (1994).

Relation of media exposure to eating disorder symptomatology: An examination of mediating mechanisms. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 103, 836-840.

Sullivan, P. F. (1995). Mortality in anorexia nervosa. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 152, 7, 1073-1074.

Thomsen, S., McCoy, J., Gustafson, R., & Williams, M. (2002).

Motivations for reading beauty and fashion magazines and anorexic risk in college-age women [Electronic version]. Media Psychology, 4, 113-135.

Williams, S., & Reid M. (2007). A grounded theory approach to the phenomenon of proanorexia [Electronic version]. Addiction Research and Theory, 15, 141-152

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Appendix A Use the rating scale below to answer the following numbered questions.

For each numbered statement circle the number that best applies to you.

1= Always

2= Very Often

3= Often

4= Sometimes

5= Rarely

6= Never

In the last year I have felt or thought: 1. I wish I was famous.

1

2

3

4

5

6

2. I hate it if I am not the prettiest person in the room.

1

2

3

4

5

6

3. I do not care if I have to look stupid to gain attention.

1

2

3

4

5

6

4. I feel that any kind of attention is good attention.

1

2

3

4

5

6

1

2

3

4

5

6

1

2

3

4

5

6

1

2

3

4

5

6

1

2

3

4

5

6

In the last five years I have felt or thought: 5. I wish I was famous.

6. I hate it if I am not the prettiest person in the room.

7. I do not care if I have to look stupid to gain attention.

8. Any kind of attention is good attention.

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Appendix B Use the rating scale below to answer the following numbered questions.

For each numbered statement circle the number that best applies to you.

1= Always

2=Very Often

3= Often

4= Sometimes

5= Rarely

6= Never

In the last year: 1. I visited a website/websites that show having an eating disorder as a positive trait.

1

2

3

4

5

6

2. I visited a website/websites that show eating disorders as a disease.

1

2

3

4

5

6

3. I visited a website/websites that have how to guides on eating disorders.

1

2

3

4

5

6

4. I visited a website/websites that promote eating disorder treatment.

1

2

3

4

5

6

5. I visited a website/websites that show an eating disorder as a positive trait.

1

2

3

4

5

6

6. I visited a website/websites that show eating disorders as a disease.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7. I visited a website/websites that have how to guides on eating disorders.

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3

4

5

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8. I visited website/websites that promote eating disorder treatment.

1

2

3

4

5

6

In the last five years:

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Appendix C Use the rating scale below to answer the following numbered questions.

For each numbered statement circle the number that best applies to you.

1= Always

2=Very Often

3= Often

4= Sometimes

5= Rarely

6= Never

I have had this thought in the last year: 1. I wish I had the will power to stop eating.

1

2

3

4

5

6

2. I wish I could be like the thin models.

1

2

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3. If I had an eating disorder my life would be better.

1

2

3

4

5

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4. I want to be like the girls strong enough to have an eating disorder.

1

2

3

4

5

6

5. The positive effects of having an eating disorder outweigh any dangers there may be.

1

2

3

4

5

6

6. If I had an eating disorder I would be popular.

1

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5

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7. Having an eating disorder is a good thing.

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8. I do not know why people try to stop others from having eating disorders.

1

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9. I wish I had an eating disorder.

1

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5

6

1

2

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I have had this thought in the last five years: 10. I wish I had the will power to stop eating.

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11. I wish I could be like the thin models.

1

2

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5

6

12. If I had an eating disorder my life would be better.

1

2

3

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5

6

13. I want to be like the girls strong enough to have an eating disorder.

1

2

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14. The positive effects of having an eating disorder outweigh any dangers there may be.

1

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5

6

15. If I had an eating disorder I would be popular.

1

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3

4

5

6

16. Having an eating disorder is a good thing.

1

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6

17. I do not know why people try to stop others from having eating disorders.

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18. I wish I had an eating disorder.

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6

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Assessment of Macroinvertebrates Introduction to “Assessment of Benthic Macroinvertebrates, Water Quality, and Channel Condition at Three Locations along the Normanskill River” Paul Benzing Assistant Professor of Environmental Science Rivers are central features in both natural and human landscapes.

Since the dawn of civilization, humans have been tied to rivers, and as the human population has grown so has its impact on rivers. Many urban centers have rivers that serve as resources for their population.

These rivers are also experiencing degradation as a result of human impacts. In Albany, we are blessed have the Normanskill, a river that runs along our western border. Along this river are several parcels of publicly held land that currently provide opportunities to the general public for recreation and river access. The river corridor is a patchwork of protected areas, public parks, and suburban and urban development.

The goal of Tyler and Adam‘s research was to conduct an ecological assessment of the Normanskill, with a focus on those areas that are currently or potentially places where the public can utilize the river as a recreational and aesthetic resource. They conducted systematic visual assessments of the river, and sampled the invertebrate community at these sites. Invertebrate communities are useful as indicators of ecosystem health. These sites are clearly suffering some impacts from the surrounding level of development, but are also still in good enough shape that they are likely candidates for restoration efforts.

Their research is a central piece of an ongoing project to monitor the Normanskill. The data they collected provides insight into the current ecological health of the river. It provides baseline data that we anticipate continuing to build on each year. Their data will allow us to see if there are significant changes in the ecosystem‘s health over time.

It is also our hope that this project will provide information that can be used to design restoration strategies that will restore ecosystem function and benefit the general public by protecting and promoting this threatened local treasure.

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Assessment of Benthic Macroinvertebrates, Water Quality, and Channel Condition at Three Locations Along the Normanskill River Tyler Hassenpflug and Adam Leis1 Biology majors; Class of 2010 The purpose of our research was to establish baseline ecological assessment data at three sites along the Normanskill. We chose the Normanskill because of its potential as a recreational and aesthetic resource due to its ideal location along the western edge of Albany. Of particular focus is the Normanskill Farm in addition to the Nott Road Fields and Tawasentha Park reaches, both of which are owned and managed by the Town of Guilderland, New York. We assessed these sites according to the National Resources Conservation Serviceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stream visual assessment protocol. Each of these assessments includes channel conditions, bank stability, habitat value, and riparian impacts among others. Assessments, though taken along the same river, differed greatly in all categories, showing that sites 1 and 3 were in much need of restoration efforts with site 2, the least influenced by humans, being the healthiest. Along with visual assessments, benthic macroinvertebrate samples were also taken. Benthic macroinvertebrates are widely used to estimate the quality of stream ecosystems by sampling the variety and distribution of species and calculating taxonomic abundance. Three macroinvertebrate samplings were taken from each location using a Surber sampler. When sample patterns depicted low diversity in taxonomic groups which were severely dominated by Hydropsychidae, we knew something was amiss in the stream. With both types of assessments completed, it can be inferred that the Normanskill could benefit greatly from restoration efforts.

The Normanskill is a major warm-water stream located in the upper Hudson watershed. It is located between the Town of Bethlehem and the City of Albany and flows directly into the Hudson River. Due to the location of the Normanskill within Albany County, it is a great resource for public recreational use. With its heavy public use the Normanskill surprisingly maintains most of its natural characteristics with only the riparian zones being severely impacted by humans. The purpose of our research was to assess the overall health of the

1

Both authors contributed equally to this research

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Normanskill River using both visual assessment and macroinvertebrate sampling.

Visual assessment is used to assess direct impacts on or around the stream. Each of these assessments includes channel conditions, bank stability, habitat value, and riparian impacts, among others. For example: steep banks lead us to believe that the stream health could be compromised by increased runoff, constant erosion, and/or downed trees; the presence of manmade structures such as railroad crossings or bridges may indicate the presence of negative human impact on the stream. These assessments alone however are not enough to allow us to assess the overall health of the stream; by looking at the population and diversity of macroinvertebrates found within the stream we can assess characteristics of the stream that are not visible.

Benthic macroinvertebrates are widely used to estimate the quality of stream ecosystems by sampling the variety and distribution of species and calculating taxonomic abundance. Macroinvertebrate sampling involves collecting, processing, and analyzing aquatic organisms within the stream and is a good indicator of stream health. It can be widely used because all types of running water contain macroinvertebrates. Macroinvertebrates are organisms large enough to be visible to the naked eye but lacking a backbone (KRIS 2009). Some taxonomic groups of macroinvertebrates used for this study were Hydropsychidae, Philopotamidae, Elmidae, and Chiromomidae, among others.

Methods Site Selection Sites were selected at three locations along the Normanskill River.

Each site was chosen based on specific criteria. Site 1, the Normanskill Farm reach, was chosen because it is located near the Normanskill Farm Community Garden and is the starting location of a historic hiking trail known as the Old Yellow Brick Road. It is located along the southwest border of the City of Albany. Sites 2 and 3, the Nott Road Park and the Towasentha Park reach, were both chosen on the criteria that they are avidly used public access areas for recreation.

Both sites are located within the town of Guilderland, slightly upstream of the City of Albany. Both are in wooded areas occupied by public parks. The locations of these sites are shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1. Satellite image of the Normanskill River as it flows through Albany County.

Visual Assessment We assessed these sites according to the National Resources Conservation Serviceâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s stream visual assessment protocol (Newton 1998). Assessments for each included channel conditions, bank stability, habitat value, hydrologic alteration, riparian zone, water appearance, nutrient enrichment, barriers to fish movement, instream fish cover, pool, insect/invertebrate habitat, and riffle embeddedness.

The categories were scored on a scale ranging from 1 to 10, 10 being the best possible score and 1 being the lowest.

Benthic Macroinvertebrate Sampling and Identification Three macroinvertebrate samplings were taken from each location using a Surber sampler. Surber sampling is a widely used technique for invertebrate sampling in instream riffle areas. Riffle areas are shallow stream areas containing rapids. Samples were collected in riffle areas at each of the three sites. Samples from each site were collected from the beginning, middle, and end of each riffle. At each site the Surber sampler was placed so that the direction of flow was perpendicular to the Surber sampler. The Surber sampler marks off 1 square foot of sampling. Once it had been placed in the river, each rock located within the sampling frame was carefully rubbed clean into the net of the Surber sampler. Once each rock had been rubbed clean, the remaining sediment was stirred up to capture invertebrates living in the

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smaller sediment material. The net was emptied into a one gallon freezer storage bag. The storage bags were then filled with a 70% ethanol solution immediately after returning to the lab, in order to preserve the macroinvertebrate samples.

After sampling was completed for all three sites, specimens were removed from each bag and sorted under a dissecting microscope.

With the use of the dissecting microscope and dichotomous key the taxonomic group of each specimen was identified and the numbers of individuals in each taxonomic group were counted (Merritt 2008).

Results Visual Assessments As shown in Table 1, the Normanskill Farm Reach (Site 1) proved to be in the highest need for restoration having only received minimal scores such as; 6 for Channel Condition because of downcutting along the banks, 4 for viable Invertebrate Habitat because of the lack of habitat in-stream, and only a 3 for Bank Stability because of its steep slopes on one side. A score of only 5 was given for Nutrient Enrichment because of the fact that it was heavily populated by algae but very little by other macrophytes which leads us to believe that there are not enough nutrients to support them. It did receive more promising scores in both Barriers to Fish Movement and Pools, receiving an 8 and 9 respectively because of its very little to no Barriers to Fish Movement and large amount of pools between 3- 5 feet in depth.

As shown in Table 1, the Nott Road Park Reach (Site 2) did comparatively better than the other two sites. It was given a score of 9 on both Channel Condition and Hydrologic Alteration seeing as it was in good shape. It was scored a 7 on Riparian Zone solely on the fact that while the right side had a large riparian zone, the left side was encroached by the local baseball fields slightly. Bank Stability also received a score of 8 because of not having any obvious downcutting.

Water appearance could be better, scoring only a 6 because of the fact that the bottom is highly concentrated with silt and when stirred up after a storm event, it does not clear up quickly. Nutrient enrichment scored a 7 for having some macrophytes present. Barriers to Fish Movement was scored an 8 because there were little to no barriers other than shallow riffles. Both In-Stream Fish Cover and Invertebrate Habitat were plentiful and diverse, scoring 8 and 9 respectively. The moderate amount of pools present earned a score of 7.

As shown in Table 1, the Tawasentha Park Reach (Site 3) was a bit of a combination of our first two sites. It did poorly in the categories of Channel Condition and Hydrologic Alteration receiving scores of 5 and

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1 respectively. This is mainly due to the fact that this site is a high flow area and conditions are very variable based on storm events. The Riparian Zone is highly influenced by humans on the left side, having parks, homes, and camping areas; therefore we scored it a 4. Bank Stability was very precarious with many banks having fallen trees and steep slopes because of ongoing rapid erosion, earning it a score of 2.

The water appeared to be very murky, earning it a score of 5. Many macrophytes were present so nutrient enrichment was scored a 7. Due to the depth of the stream, there was no barrier to fish movement so that category received a 10, as did the Pools category because of the large amount and depth of pools. The stream however did not have much diversity in types of cover and habitat, therefore in-stream fish cover and invertebrate habitat received scores of 5 and 3 respectively.

Table 1: Stream Visual Assessment Scores Normanskill Farm

Tawasentha Park

Channel condition

6

Channel condition

5

Hydrologic alteration

6

Hydrologic alteration

1

Riparian Zone

4

Riparian Zone

4

Bank stability

3

Bank stability

2

Water appearance

7

Water appearance

5

Nutrient enrichment Barriers to fish movement

5

7

8

Nutrient enrichment Barriers to fish movement

Instream fish cover

5

Instream fish cover

Pools

9

Pools

5 1 0

Invertebrate habitat

4

Invertebrate habitat

3

Overall Score (Average)

5.7 Poor

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Overall Score (Average)

10

5.2 Poor

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Nott Road Park Channel condition

9

Hydrologic alteration

9

Riparian Zone

7

Bank stability

8

Water appearance

6

Nutrient enrichment Barriers to fish movement

7

Instream fish cover

8

Pools

7

Invertebrate habitat

9

Overall Score (Average)

8

7.8 Good

Benthic Macroinvertebrate Sampling and Identification The Normanskill Farm Reach (Site 1) and Nott Road Park Reach (Site 2) were both very similar in number and types of aquatic invertebrate found. At both sites we found a predominantly high percentage of Hydropsychidae ranging in number from 82 to 189 at Site 1 (Figure 2) and ranging from 87 to 171 at Site 2 (Figure 3). The main differences between the two sites are observed in their second most prolific taxonomic groups. Site 1 seemed to have a small population of Elmidae (Riffle Beetles) in both its larval and adult stages. Site 2 seemed to have a healthy population of both Chironimidae and Philopotamidae with the latter not being found at Site 1 at all.

The Tawasentha Park Reach (Site 3) was similar to the previous two sites in that a large percentage of the aquatic invertebrates found were Hydropsychidae. This site yielded the highest Hydropsychidae counts, ranging from 150 to 549 (Figure 4). Elmidae (Riffle Beetles) in both their larval and adult forms were once again the second most prolific group of invertebrates. This site had an absence of Chironimidae which were found at the previous two sites.

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Table 2. Samples sizes of each taxonomic group collected from each site.

Normanskill Farm Sample Upper size Riffle Hydropsychidae 82 Elmidae (adult) 0 Elmidae (larvae) 4 Psephinidae 2 Athericidae 1 Chironimidae 0 Philipotamidae 0

Ball Fields Sample Upper size Riffle Hydropsychidae 87 Elmidae (adult) 0 Elmidae (larvae) 7 Psephinidae 2 Athericidae 3 Chironimidae 1 Philipotamidae 27

Tawasentha Park Sample Upper size Riffle Hydropsychidae 384 Elmidae (adult) 4 Elmidae (larvae) 26 Psephinidae 9 Athericidae 0 Chironimidae 0 Philipotamidae 20

Normanskill Farm Sample Middle size Riffle Hydropsychidae 189 Elmidae (adult) 1 Elmidae (larvae) 3 Psephinidae 3 Athericidae 0 Chironimidae 0 Philipotamidae 0

Ball Fields Sample Middle size Riffle Hydropsychidae 22 Elmidae (adult) 0 Elmidae (larvae) 1 Psephinidae 1 Athericidae 1 Chironimidae 10 Philipotamidae 0

Tawasentha Park Sample Middle size Riffle Hydropsychidae 549 Elmidae (adult) 1 Elmidae (larvae) 9 Psephinidae 0 Athericidae 1 Chironimidae 0 Philipotamidae 9

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Normanskill Farm Sample Lower size Riffle Hydropsychidae 97 Elmidae (adult) 2 Elmidae (larvae) 8 Psephinidae 0 Athericidae 0 Chironimidae 3 Philipotamidae 0

Ball Fields Sample Lower size Riffle Hydropsychidae 171 Elmidae (adult) 6 Elmidae (larvae) 8 Psephinidae 0 Athericidae 0 Chironimidae 32 Philipotamidae 27

Tawasentha Park Sample Lower size Riffle Hydropsychidae 150 Elmidae (adult) 3 Elmidae (larvae) 5 Psephinidae 2 Athericidae 0 Chironimidae 0 Philipotamidae 0

Figure 2. Benthic Macroinvertebrate sample sizes collected from the Normanskill Farm Reach

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Figure 3. Benthic Macroinvertebrate sample sizes collected from Nott Road Park Reach

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Figure 4. Benthic Macroinvertebrate sample sizes collected from Tawasentha Park Reach

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Figure 5. Macroinvertebrate samples

Note: Each bar is the mean of three samples. Error bars show the 95% confidence intervals for the means.

Discussion Of our three sites, sites 1 and 3 received average visual assessment scores of 5.7 and 5.2, respectively. These scores show that the overall stream condition in these sites is poor. A majority of the aspects that appear to have contributed to the poor conditions can be attributed to human alterations on or around the rivers. Sites 1 and 3 appeared to have a higher level of human involvement than Site 2, which received an average visual assessment score of 7.8. An average visual assessment score of 7.8 indicates that this site is in good condition.

This score can most likely be attributed to the fact that at this location the river can only be easily accessed near the far end of a park as opposed to the other two sites at which the river can be easily accessed at several points. Visual assessment is just one way of assessing stream health. To perform a more in-depth study of stream health, indicator species are used to indicate what is happening inside the stream.

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The macroinvertebrate sampling shed some light on aspects of the Normanskill that are not visible when simply looking at it. This is why we used invertebrate sampling in conjunction with the visual stream assessment. Macroinvertebrates are useful because they can be used as indicator species for determining stream health. The most prolific organism found throughout sampling was Hydropsychidae, a family of caddisflies commonly known as the net-spinning caddisflies. Ideally, they like to live in streams with a pH around 7 and dissolved oxygen level of 50% or greater (KRIS 09). Elmidae, another organism we found during sampling, is commonly known as the riffle beetle. These organisms are able to survive in stream areas with conditions that are less than ideal for other macroinvertebrates. These conditions may include but are not limited to: pH levels that are not very neutral or streams where there is very little dissolved oxygen (KRIS 09). We noticed that we were not finding certain taxonomic groups that normally thrive in the area. Two important orders of these macroinvertebrates were Plecoptera, commonly known as stoneflies, and Ephemeroptera, commonly known as mayflies, both of which are normally found in other streams in the area. One factor that differs from the organisms we did encounter is that stoneflies and mayflies thrive best in streams that have high levels of dissolved oxygen, usually around 100%. This led us to believe that low oxygen levels may be one of the factors of interest in the health of the Normanskill.

To follow up this hypothesis, we checked the preferred oxygen levels for the remaining organisms caught. Philipotamidae, Psephinidae, Chironimidae, and Athericidae all appear to be tolerant of low oxygen levels. The Normanskill seems to have a low dissolved oxygen percentage that is impacting the local aquatic insect populations. While it is not the only factor when considering stream health, oxygen content serves as an indicator for nutrient levels in the stream. Low oxygen levels can be caused by excessive nutrients, primarily nitrogen and phosphorus. This information can be utilized to come up with solutions for negative impacts on wildlife. It may prove beneficial to focus on factors such as dissolved oxygen in future research so that a comparison can be made to data obtained from other local sites.

After completion of visual assessments at all three sites, we were able to focus on a few key characteristics that affected the overall health of the stream. One characteristic that seemed to play a major role was the scouring of the riverbed at Site 3 which presented difficulties when trying to conduct macroinvertebrate sampling. A scoured riverbed can be an indicator of heavy water flow, and because Site 3 was so heavily scoured we are led to believe that heavy floods

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are more common to this part of the stream. Therefore, it would be helpful to perform further research on the flood power of the stream to determine how to improve the health of the Normanskill.

The research for this study provides a starting point for further research in this field. Considering what we have learned from our research, we can use other rivers to compare data sets. A comparison of data in further studies will allow researchers to find changes that are occurring in macroinvertebrate communities. These changes may then provide baseline information for alterations that can be made to help make long term repairs in macroinvertebrate communities.

Acknowledgements We gratefully acknowledge The College of Saint Rose for their financial support. We would also like to thank Dr. Paul Benzing for his guidance, support, and for his leadership in summer undergraduate research at The College of Saint Rose.

Works Cited CA Department of Fish and Game. 1999. California stream bioassessment procedure: Protocol brief for biological and physical/habitat assessment in wadeable streams. Aquatic Bioassessment/Water Pollution Control Laboratory. Rancho Cordova, CA. 15 pp.

Merritt, R.W., Cummins, K.W., & Berg, M.B. (2008). An Introduction to the Aquatic Insects of North America. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company.

Newton, B., Pringle, C., & Bjorkland, R. (1998). Stream Visual Assessment Protocol. United States Department of Agriculture.

NYS Department of State. (1987, November 15). NYS DOS Division of Coastal Resources. Retrieved October 30, 2009, from NYS water fronts: http://www.nyswaterfronts.com/downloads/pdfs/sig_hab/ hudsonriver/Normans_Kill.pdf Random House, Inc. (2009). Dictionary.com. Retrieved December 20, 2009, from Ask.com: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/riffle The Klamath Resource Information System . (n.d.). KRIS Web.

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Retrieved November 1, 2009, from Fish & Aquatic Life: Aquatic Macroinvertebrates: http://www.krisweb.com/aqualife/insect.htm U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). 1997. Field and laboratory methods for macroinvertebrate and habitat assessment of low gradient non-tidal streams. USEPA, Mid-Atlantic Coastal Streams Workgroup. Environmental Services Division, Region 3.

Wheeling, WV. 49 pp.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). 1997. Volunteer stream monitoring: A methods manual. EPA 841-B-97-003.

USEPA, Office of Water. 214 pp. http://www.epa.gov/ owow/monitoring/volunteer/stream/

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Adam Wilson Introduction to “The Programming Language Foom” David Goldschmidt Assistant Professor of Computer Science When asked what computer science is, I often compare it to physics. Physics describes the physical world; computer science describes the electronic world. Without a doubt, computers have become an integral part of our everyday lives, often whether we realize it or not. Our world relies on computer scientists to develop the tools necessary to build effective and reliable computer systems that handle everything from predicting worldwide financial markets to controlling the antilock brakes in a car to providing Web search results with subsecond response times.

At the heart of computer science is the study of programming languages. As Adam Wilson aptly describes, programming languages are ―abstractions, intermediary languages, providing human-readable ways to interact with computers.‖ Further, a computer program is simply a ―series of instructions that tell a computer to perform a task.‖ While we aim to design programming languages that are flexible and expressive, our key goals are to ensure programs written in such languages are reliable, maintainable over a long period of time, and predictable when in operation.

The following paper, ―The Programming Language FOOM‖ by Adam Wilson, summarizes his work and exploration of how to design a new programming language. Drawing on other existing languages, Adam has incorporated the best features of such languages into the design and initial implementation of FOOM. His inclusion of example FOOM programs makes his paper—and FOOM itself—extremely approachable as a language. In a short period of time, he has succeeded in producing a robust and expressive language worthy of industry use and further expansion.

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The Programming Language Foom

The Programming Language Foom Adam Wilson Computer Science major; Class of 2010 Foom is a new, expressive programming language. This paper explains the basic usage and facets of Foom, while also addressing the major design decisions, challenges, and the future direction of the project.

A computer programming language provides a method for a human to instruct a computer to perform tasks. The native language of computers is binary, 1s and 0s, and not easily read by humans.

Programming languages are abstractions, intermediary languages, providing human-readable ways to interact with computers. Foom aims to provide this abstraction at a high level, allowing users to write powerful programs with few lines of code. Foom was designed with a few core ideas: It must have C-style syntax. For better or worse, many of todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s programming languages1 have derived or borrowed aspects of their syntax from C. Doing so decreases the learning curve allowing broader adoption of the language.

Everything is an object. Most programming languages have a set of primitive data types such as strings, integers, floating point numbers, and Boolean values. In Foom, all of these, with the addition of functions and types, are classes. They all have properties that can be accessed and manipulated.

All curly brackets ({ }) are anonymous functions. This is a departure from C-style syntax to some extent. C uses curly brackets to limit scope and define blocks of code. Foom follows this convention; however, code within bare curly brackets is not executed until it is called, as it is a function.

Variables are lexically-scoped. The context of a variable can be found by reading the text of the program and noting the location of the declaration.

Functions are first-class objects. As mentioned above, functions are objects, which can be passed to other functions and stored in data structures. They can also be created by other functions encapsulating their scope producing what is called a closure.

Programs are a series of instructions that tell a computer to perform a task. In order for programs to be useful, the user must be able

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to store information. Foom stores information in variables. Variables must be explicitly declared; otherwise an error will result when the variable is referenced. Variables are declared by stating the type followed by the name. Optionally, they can be initialized by setting the variable equal to a value. There are eight primitive data types in Foom, as shown in listing 1.

Listing 1: Types 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

obj varObject; str varString = "abcd"; int varInteger = 123456; list varList = ["cat", 124, ["dog", "wolf"]]; bool varTrue = true; func isEven = { args[0] % 2 == 0; }; //not implemented // comments, so this would be an error dec varDecimal = 1.23456; map varMap = ["cat": "meow", "dog": "woof"];

Everything is an object. Numbers, strings, string literals, functions and even types are objects. Object members are accessed with a period(.). For example, both strings and lists have length members, such as "cat".length == 3 and ["c","a","t"].length == 3. Most objects implement a to_string member function to return a string representation. The output functions from the sys library take advantage of this fact when coercing variable to strings in order to print.

Figure 1

Functions are objects that contain statements that can be executed at some point in the future. They can be called repeatedly if needed.

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The Programming Language Foom Every { } is an anonymous function or what we will call a ―block.‖ A function is a variable of type func that is assigned a block. The for and if statements are followed by { }; thus, they execute their respective anonymous functions during each iteration of the loop, or if the if statement is true. Since Foom is lexically-scoped, the environment within a function is closed in when the function is defined. This is called a closure. As shown in listing 2, function outfunc declares freev, a free variable in infunc, which is bound to the lexical scope when function infunc is defined. Figure 2 shows the scopes of each of the functions and how you can determine the scopes by inspecting the { }.

Listing 2: Closure Example 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

func outfunc = { str freev = args[0]; func infunc = { int k = args[0]; sys.print(freev); sys.print(": "); sys.println(k); }; infunc; }; func infuncA = outfunc("cat"); func infuncB = outfunc("dog"); infuncB(33); infuncA(10); infuncB(55); outfunc("zebra")(10000);

Listing 3: Closure Output 1 2 3 4

dog: 33 cat: 10 dog: 55 zebra: 10000

The ―scope‖ of a programming language describes the extent in which a variable exists and can be resolved. Foom is a lexically-scoped language, meaning the binding of a variable is determined by the block in which it is defined and where that block is defined during the lexical analysis; that is, where the variable is declared in the text of the program when you are physically reading it. Listing 4 demonstrates that variables with the same name can be defined in different scopes and remain independent of one another.

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Listing 4: Scope 1 2 3

str x = "A"; func f = { sys.println(x); str x = "B"; sys.println(x);

4 5 6 7 8

}; sys.println(x); f(0);

Listing 5: Scope Output 1 2 3

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A B A

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The Programming Language Foom Figure 3

In listing 4, the variable x on line 3 retains the value set on line 1.

A new variable x is declared on line 4 which is printed on line 5. Note that the variable x from line 1 retains its value on line 7.

Foomâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s scopes are implemented using a reverse-tree data structure depicted in Figure 3. A reverse tree has nodes that only have pointers to their parents. The blocks have pointers to their scope nodes so that the blocks may find variables in their respective scopes or in those scopesâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC; parents. In Figure 3, all blocks can see the variables in the root scope. Block F can see variables in blocks D, A, and root, but not G and H. Each scope node has pointer to a map that contains the variables defined within its scope.

In listing 6, line 1 defines x in the global scope. Line 3 refers to x defined on line 1. Even though x is declared again on line 3, the call to f on line 6 still retrieves the x declared on line 1 because it was declared in the global scope. Had f been declared in the block assigned to g, it would refer to the x on line 5. Figure 4 shows the code graphically to make clear of the extent of the scopes.

Listing 6: Scope 1 2

str x = "A";

3

func f = { x; }; func g = { str x = "B"; f(0); };

4 5 6 7 8 9

sys.println(g(0));

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Listing 7: Scope Output A

1

Figure 4

Foomâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s implementation of lexical scoping allows nested blocks full access to variables in the parent scopes. By taking advantage of this feature, it is possible to emulate a class.

Listing 8: Pseudo-Class 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

func pseudoStr = { str s = "A"; func set = { s = args[0]; s; }; func get = { s; }; list l = [set, get]; l; }; int set = 0; int get = 1;

17 18

list strObj = pseudoStr(0);

19

sys.println( strObj[get](0) ); sys.println( strObj[set]("B") ); sys.println( strObj[get](0) );

20 21

Listing 9: Pseudo-Class Output

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A B B

1 2 3

Listing 8 demonstrates mutable variables in closures. The ability to have side effects without polluting the global namespace allows one to cleanly write callbacks and state-based programming. However, debugging would be difficult without additional tools. Inspection of objects, including functions, would be critical. The ability to inspect the scope of an individual closure instance at run-time would make this a non-issue.

Line 1 is both the definition of the class and the constructor. When pseudoStr is called, it establishes a member variable, line 2, then defines two member functions: set on line 3 and get on line 7. These functions set or read the free variable s, respectively. Finally, the block returns a list containing the set and get methods on line 11. Lines 14 and 15 are necessary because we are using a list to emulate the object instantiated by the class and we need to enumerate the methods. On line 17, the constructor for our object is called placing the list in strObj. The remaining lines call the set and get methods and display the results as seen in the output.

Foom does not resolve variables until the surrounding statement is executed. In listing 10, line 5, a call is made twice to function fib within the block that is assigned to func variable named fib.

Listing 10: Late Binding 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

func fib = { int n = args[0]; int r = 1; if(n >= 2) r = fib(n-1) + fib(n-2); if(n == 0) r = 0; r; }; for(int i=0; i<=10; i=1+i) sys.println(fib(i));

Listing 11: Late Binding Output 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

0 1 1 2 3 5 8

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8 9 10 11

13 21 34 55

It would appear that listing 10 is referencing a variable before that variable has a definition. That is exactly what it is doing; however, Foom does not execute, resolve, or look-up anything until it is called.

This is referred to as ―late-binding.‖ Variables are place holders until they are reached during execution, at which time they looked up in the scope and given meaning, or bound. Without late-binding, recursion would not be possible. If the variable is resolved during compile-time, it would have no value and would cause an error. This not only allows one to define recursive functions, but also recursive data structures.

Listing 12: Recursive List 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

list rlist = [ "cat", "dog", rlist ]; rlist[1] = "moose"; sys.println( rlist[2][2][2][2][0] ); sys.println( rlist[2][2][2][2][1] );

Listing 13: Recursive List Output 1 2

cat moose

Technical Details Like most spoken languages, a programming language consists of words and punctuation that form sentences. However, words and punctuation are called ―tokens‖ and sentences are called ―statements.‖ Both spoken and programming languages have rules that define the structure of statements, called grammar. Grammar describes the order in which tokens can appear and also provides hints to the meaning of tokens by the context in which they are used.

The execution of a Foom script has three stages: the lexer, the parser, and the interpreter. The Foom program reads a file containing the Foom script. The lexical analyzer, or lexer, transforms the input data into a list of tokens. The parser transforms the tokens into a semantically-relevant structure, the AST. The interpreter starts at the

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program entry point, the very top of the tree, and descends the AST. Each node represents an action, decision, or a piece of information. The action nodes send instructions to the CPU to process the information nodes. The output of the script is generated by specific action nodes.

As noted in Figure 5, these first two steps are considered ―compiletime‖ and the last step is called ―run-time.‖ Compile-time is the set-up stage of the program and provides an opportunity for syntax errors to be found. Run-time is the execution stage, when the program‘s code is actually running.

Figure 5

The parser starts with the most general case: the statement. A program is a collection of statements. Based on this definition, the parser expects to find a statement at the beginning of the program.

There may or may not be another statement after that; however, a program consisting of a single statement is not very useful. There are five general types of statements: Declarative statements introduce new variables to the scope.

Expressive statements manipulate variables within a scope.

Inquisitive statements control the flow of the program.

Repetitive statements repeat a statement.

Collective statements contain other statements.

Though there are only five types of statements, the rules are far more complicated. str hi; is declarative and is valid by itself.

However, declarative statements can also be expressive statements by adding an equal sign and a value in order to provide initial value to the variable.

Each word, phrase, punctuation mark, or any other symbol is analyzed and classified and added to the token list.

1

str hi = "Hello World";

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2

sys.println(hi);

The above code segment would translate to the following token list. typ_str, id, assign, string, semi, new_line, id, dot, id, oparen, id, cparen, semi

The lexer inspects each character of the file, one at a time. It classifies each word into four categories: numbers, strings, symbols, and operators. Symbols are bare words like variable names, object members, and data-types. Operators are punctuation like commas, open and close parentheses, and periods.

Once the lexer has identified each token and generated the token list for the entire program, the parser steps in and transforms the list into an abstract syntax tree. The grammar of the language dictates how the statements are structured. If a statement is grammatically correct, it can be diagrammed much like a sentence in a spoken language. The diagram in a programming language is not just for educational purposes. It is a data structure that gives order to the program. It is the abstract syntax tree, or AST. Each node of the AST represents a decision, an action, or a piece of information based on the token it represents. The AST can be manipulated or transformed to optimize the code or change how it is interpreted. if and for statements execute the block that follows; however, the block is not explicitly called using parentheses, yet it is executed. This is an AST transformation. In many programming languages, the AST is an intermediary step before compiling the languages. In Foom, it is the step before interpretation.

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The execution of the program occurs as the interpreter traverses down the AST, starting at the program entry point, root node of the tree. At each node, the interpreter calls an associated procedure that determines how the execution will proceed. For example, in Figure 6, when execution arrives at the if statement, the if procedure is called which inspects the left side of the node. If the left side resolves to a true value, the if procedure executes the right side of the node; otherwise, it skips it entirely.

Functions are AST branches that are saved in variables. When the function is called, the interpreter copies the scope tree to a new instance of the function and descends the AST branch executing the code associated to the block. When the execution completes, the last statement will be set as the return value for the function and control is returned to where it was called. When there are no more nodes left to execute, the program has finished.

Further Research While great progress has been made, Foom is still in the alpha stage of development. There are numerous features and functionalities that remain to be added and explored.

Order of Operations

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Currently, an order of operations is nonexistent. Operators are executed in the order they are found. In the current release, order may be obtained with parentheses. A more permanent solution is to rely on the way operators are parsed, giving preference to higher priority operators. This method is a common solution; however, it is not modifiable during runtime. The programming language Haskell offers a way to declare infix operators that assigns whether it is left or right associative, and defines its priority on a scale from one to ten. A solution similar to this would be preferable to give Foom more expressivity.

Garbage Collection Garbage collection does not currently exist in Foom. Once anything—string literal, number, function—is instantiated, it exists until the program exits. Garbage collection frees the user from having to manually manage memory. Attempting to use an object after it has been freed will likely result in program error. Deciding when to free memory is the crux of the problem. Some solutions, such as ―reference counting,‖ rely on keeping track of the pointers to an object. Latebinding and closures complicate these methods dramatically since an object may leave its lexical scope, but can only be counted while bound. The solution seems to lie in the implementation of scopes.

Foom will need to track when a scope expires and free any memory associated with it.

Negative and Decimal Numbers Internally, Foom handles numbers as well as C; however, the parser does not yet support decimal points in numbers, nor does it handle the unary minus sign for negative numbers. Only positive integers are available within a Foom script.

Classes Foom classes, though they can be emulated with functions, currently only exist internally. Foom does not support polymorphism or mix-ins currently, as the class system is still very minimal. The final class/object system will likely be lightweight and may not appear to be as formal as traditional object-oriented programming languages. The emulation of a class via a function will be very close to the final syntax, without the list that returns the member functions.

Maps Maps are used extensively internally; however, the syntax for defining and manipulating maps has not been introduced.

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Conclusion Foom could easily be used in a classroom environment to teach programming language concepts. It can be a very simple, imperative language; eight primitives, everything is an object, and intuitive scopes.

Yet it supports advanced constructs, such as first class functions and closures. As mentioned above, there is still much to be done. Students could add operator overloading syntax or use the library system to introduce existing C libraries, much like the sys object that lets the user write output to the screen.

Foom has accomplished more than was originally expected. The initial goal of Foom was not to create something to be adopted by the programming community at large, but rather to be educational. The process of writing the language exposed the many complexities of designing a modern, high-level programming language. Working through these challenges, while implementing the core ideas, has produced a robust, expressive language.

Acknowledgments The idea to explore writing my own language was instilled by Stevey Yeggeâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s blog post: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/02/next-biglanguage.html David Goldschmidt, Ph. D. for guiding my programming languages independent study and encouraging me to write this paper.

Works Cited [1] DedaSys, Programming Language Popularity, http://www.langpop.com.

[2] Aho, A. V., Lam, M. S., Sethi, R., and Ullman, J. D., Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (2nd Edition), 2nd ed. New York: Addison Wesley, 2006.

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Call for Papers Journal of Undergraduate Research Volume II The Journal of Undergraduate Research publishes high-quality work written by undergraduate students at the College of Saint Rose in all fields, and is published each spring. Current students and recent graduates are invited to submit their work for consideration.

Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis, though there is a deadline each fall for the following spring‘s publication. Papers must be revised before publication.

•Send your submission as a clean electronic copy, in Microsoft Word, to journal@strose.edu.

•Include a cover page with your name, department, and class year.

If the paper was originally written for a course, please indicate which course it was, when it was taken, and who the professor was. Include a statement of original authorship. Do not place your name anywhere else in the document.

•Include an abstract and a complete bibliography. Tables and figures may be included in the text or attached at the end.

•For more information, see http://www.strose.edu/academics/ academic_publications/journal_of_undergraduate_research

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