Browsing by Subject "adoption"
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Open Access Child Valuation in Contemporary China: Abandonment, Institutional Care, and Transnational Adoption(2020-04-17) Marlow, JessicaIn this thesis, I contend that orphaned and relinquished children’s positionality in Chinese society reveals a complex entanglement between changing domestic and international policies and popular Western perceptions of China. Initially inspired by my personal experiences evaluating the mental health of children in institutional care centers in Delhi, India, this thesis focuses on socio-political and economic factors which influence how children in institutional care are valued on the state and individual level. The orphaned child’s value within economic, moral, and political spheres is not objective or easily quantifiable; rather it is determined in relation to factors which extend far beyond the reach of the individual. Nevertheless, these value-decisions have tangible effects on children’s lived experiences. Key questions I will address in subsequent chapters are as follows: (1) To what extent do adult economic concerns and expectations influence the abandonment and/or adoption of children and their status in alternative care?; (2) What are the moral considerations of care in alternative care environments and how do these differ for domestic workers, international volunteers, and potential adoptees?; and (3) How do international perceptions of the China’s orphan care influence transnational adoption narratives and transnational adoption, and how do these perceptions intersect with the China’s political development of soft power overseas? This thesis foregrounds the complex, intercultural nature of institutional care in the contemporary period which are influenced by socio-historical and political changes in China and beyond.Item Open Access Policy Opportunities to Increase Cover Crop Adoption on North Carolina Farms(2012-04-27) Miller, Lee; Zook, Katy; Chin, JenniferCover cropping is an agricultural practice that produces on-farm benefits while contributing to broader public sustainability goals. However, cover crops have not been widely adopted in the United States, while the barriers to farmer adoption of cover crops have received little research attention. This study considers the relative importance of the barriers that farmers overcome to adopt cover crops in North Carolina and identifies the resources that enable successful adoption. We used an email survey of NC farmers to gather quantitative data about cover crop use and preferences, supplemented by qualitative interviews with experts on cover crop adoption. Our data show that farmers in NC overcame three broad categories of challenges to adopt cover crops: agronomic, input costs, and knowledge transfer. The level of these challenges varies depending on farm size and income, age of farmer, farming experience, and whether information to plant cover crops was obtained through extension, farmer networks, or private industry. Timing for planting, in particular, challenges farmers regardless of their demographic characteristics. We recommend a holistic policy approach that strengthens diverse knowledge transfer networks, bolsters farmer incentives through existing cost-share programs, and invests in applied research to develop varieties that better complement common cash crop rotations.Item Open Access Policy Opportunities to Increase Cover Crop Adoption on North Carolina Farms(2012-04-27) Miller, Lee; Zook, Katy; Chin, JenniferCover cropping is an agricultural practice that produces on-farm benefits while contributing to broader public sustainability goals. However, cover crops have not been widely adopted in the United States, while the barriers to farmer adoption of cover crops have received little research attention. This study considers the relative importance of the barriers that farmers overcome to adopt cover crops in North Carolina and identifies the resources that enable successful adoption. We used an email survey of NC farmers to gather quantitative data about cover crop use and preferences, supplemented by qualitative interviews with experts on cover crop adoption. Our data show that farmers in NC overcame three broad categories of challenges to adopt cover crops: agronomic, input costs, and knowledge transfer. The level of these challenges varies depending on farm size and income, age of farmer, farming experience, and whether information to plant cover crops was obtained through extension, farmer networks, or private industry. Timing for planting, in particular, challenges farmers regardless of their demographic characteristics. We recommend a holistic policy approach that strengthens diverse knowledge transfer networks, bolsters farmer incentives through existing cost-share programs, and invests in applied research to develop varieties that better complement common cash crop rotations.Item Open Access Seeing Through the Smoke: Measuring Impacts of Improved Cookstove Interventions on Technology Adoption and Environmental and Health Outcomes(2015) Lewis, JessicaTraditional cooking using biomass is associated with adverse health consequences, local environmental degradation, and regional climate change. Improved stoves (ICS; liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), biogas, electric, efficient biomass) are heralded as a solution, but their adoption and use remains low. In the first chapter, I report on a series of pilot programs that utilized the marketing mix principles of promotion, product, price and place to increase stove sales in rural Inia. We found that when given a choice amongst products, households strongly preferred an electric stove over improved biomass-burning options. Households clearly identified price as a significant barrier to adoption, while provision of discounts (e.g., rebates given if households used the stove) or payments in installments were related to higher purchase. Collectively, these pilots point to the importance of continued and extensive testing of messages, pricing models, and responses to different stove types prior to scale-up. Thus, a one-size-fits-all approach will be unlikely to boost ICS adoption.
In the second and third chapters, I analyze the impact of mainly improved stove use on social, environmental, and health outcomes in rural India- first in a sample of biogas stove users in Odisha, India, and next with households in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. In both settings, ICS use was associated with reduced use of firewood, substantial time savings for primary cooks, and significant reduction in exposure to particulate matter and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in household air. I find that ICS users in Odisha spend reduced time in the hospital with acute respiratory infection and reduced diastolic blood pressure, but no relationship with other health measurements.
In the third chapter, I also find significant reduction in exposure to personal air pollution. Using temperature sensors as objective stove use monitors for all stoves and heaters we find that households underreport use of improved and traditional stoves.
These papers provide encouraging evidence of potential for adoption of clean stove and a suite of benefits from clean stove use; however, in order to achieve recommended levels of air pollution additional policies may be needed.
Item Open Access Sons, Seed, and Children of Promise in Galatians: Discerning the Coherence in Paul's Model of Abrahamic Descent(2010) Trick, Bradley RThe central portion of Paul's letter to the Galatians consists of three main arguments, each of which invokes a different image of Abrahamic descent: sons (3:7) in 3:6-14, seed (3:16, 29) in 3:15-4:11, and children of promise (4:28) in 4:21-5:1. Current interpretations of these Abrahamic appeals typically portray them as logically problematical, collectively inconsistent, and/or generally unpersuasive, a situation that then leads most scholars to identify them as ad hoc responses to the Galatian agitators. This inability to find a coherent model of Abrahamic descent in Galatians, however, threatens to undermine the very gospel itself by suggesting that it cannot effectively counter a Judaizing call that derives from a simple appeal to Abraham.
This dissertation argues that Paul does indeed present the Galatians with a coherent account of Abrahamic descent that accords with his persuasive intent of refuting a law-based circumcision. Its key insight lies in the suggestion that Paul understands the Abrahamic diatheke in 3:15-18 as akin to a Hellenistic adoptive testament. As a result, the promised Abrahamic seed must be both a son of Abraham and, because of Abraham's divine adoption through the diatheke, a son of God, hence Paul's identification of Christ as Abraham's sole seed (3:16).
This twofold nature of the Abrahamic seed then suggests a distinction in Paul's other terms for Abrahamic descent. The dissertation accordingly contends that "sons of Abraham" in 3:7 designates, as it typically did in the mid-first century C.E., the Jews, i.e., those physical descendants of Abraham who also share his faith. In contrast, "children of promise" in 4:28 designates gentiles who have through faith received the Abrahamic blessing, i.e., the Spirit of sonship that makes them children of God. Each group thus requires incorporation into Christ to establish their status as Abrahamic seed: the Jews so that they might share in the gentiles' divine sonship, the gentiles so that they might share in the Jews' Abrahamic sonship. This interdependent union of the Jewish sons of Abraham and the gentile sons of God in Christ then constitutes the single divine Abrahamic seed who inherits (3:29).
Paul employs this model to refute the necessity of law observance as follows. In 3:6-14, he argues that Christ's accursed death on the cross divides faith from law observance as a means of justification for Jews; the full sons of Abraham accordingly become those Jews who, by dying to the law and embracing Christ, exhibit the same radical trust in God as their forefather exhibited. In 3:15-4:11, he argues that God added the law and its curse to ensure that the Jews could not receive the Abrahamic blessing promised to the nations--i.e., the Spirit that would make the Jews sons of God and, thus, Abrahamic seed--apart from the one seed, Christ. Finally, in 4:21-5:1, he argues that, like Hagar, the non-adoptive Sinaitic diatheke produces Abrahamic descendants (i.e., non-Christian Jews) who share the general human enslavement to the stoicheia, whereas the adoptive Abrahamic diatheke produces Abrahamic descendants (i.e., Christian Jews) whose divine adoption frees them from this enslavement. Each appeal to Abraham thus undermines the gentile Christians' motivation for submitting to the law by demonstrating that Jewish Christians do not even remain under the law.
Item Open Access The Nurture Effect: Like Father, Like Son. What about for an Adopted Child?(2011-04-18) Oh, SuannaI investigate the influences of family environment and genes on children’s educational outcomes by working with data on Korean American adoptees and their non-adoptive siblings. I make use of the natural experiment setting where children were quasi-randomly assigned to families. From Sacerdote’s discussion of the three different approaches of analyzing the data, I derive a single-equation model that encompasses the three approaches as a few of its specific cases. The first part of my analysis identifies the causal effect of being assigned to a certain family environment. The second part of my analysis looks into causes of the differences between the educational attainment of adoptees and biological children, adding to the economists’ discussion on the relative importance of nature and nurture.