Sense Of Social Status Research Articles

A Sense of Social Status: Antecedents and Relationship to Academic Performance

A Sense of Social Status: Antecedents and Relationship to Academic Performance

Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson by Christina Snyder

Reviewed by: Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson by Christina Snyder Gregory D. Smithers Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson. By Christina Snyder. ( New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xiv, 402. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-19-939906-2.) Some five hundred miles from the heart of the Choctaw Nation sat Great Crossings, in Scott County, Kentucky. This extraordinary antebellum experiment in indigenous education was the first national Indian boarding school operated by the United States government. When it opened in 1825, Richard Mentor Johnson, who eventually became vice president of the United States, oversaw this ambitious educational endeavor. When it closed in 1848, Johnson's political career lay in tatters, and his reputation among the Choctaws was severely tarnished. The story of Great Crossings is a tale of a small place in Kentucky with some profound historical implications. Historian Christina Snyder brings this story to life by using this federally funded educational institution to connect readers to fresh perspectives on Choctaw history and the histories of the Native South, slavery, and the social and political changes that altered life in antebellum America. Snyder's analysis is grounded in solid archival research. An insightful introduction and conclusion bookend twelve well-conceived chapters. In chapter 1 Snyder introduces readers to early-nineteenth-century Choctaws and the prominent Choctaw families who craved educational opportunities for their children. In the 1820s the Choctaws were already feeling the pressure of removal politics. The world that the previous generation of Choctaws defined as traditional was fading, and young men sought different paths to manhood and new skills to fight for their sovereignty. For the Pitchlynn family, that path involved a formal education. The most impressive and ultimately most famous member of the family was Peter Perkins Pitchlynn, or Hatchoctucknee. [End Page 443] For Peter Pitchlynn, Great Crossings proved to be an attractive alternative to the mission schools that dotted the Native South. As we learn in chapter 2, Pitchlynn met Richard Mentor Johnson at Great Crossings. Johnson and his mixed-race "'wife,'" Julia Chinn, oversaw the daily operations at Great Crossings (p. 3). Their work included navigating the racial tensions between Native Americans and African Americans at Great Crossings, which Chinn did with considerable skill. Great Crossings was indeed a diverse place. In chapter 3 Snyder provides insights into the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Potawatomi, Creek, and Cherokee students, as well as students from other Native communities, who attended the school. From this chapter readers get a sense of daily life among the students, the school's curriculum, and the pressures that were placed on the institution as the student population grew. Chapters 3 and 4 also provide glimpses of how students were taught to think about American history. As the school grew and students like Peter Pitchlynn excelled in their studies, racial tension persisted. In chapter 4 Snyder observes that disputes arose over issues as seemingly minor as the meals served at Great Crossings and the sense of social status that students projected on campus. Johnson, for example, felt that some Native students acted as if they were above their station. Chapter 5 provides a clear outline of how the racial science of phrenology emerged and helped sharpen discriminatory perceptions of indigenous people. The hardening of antebellum racial logic, Snyder explains, provided the intellectual foundation for removal and prompted an exasperated John Pitchlynn to refer to white Mississippians as "'the damnedest people in the world'" (p. 143). Chapters 6 and 7 address Choctaw removal in the early 1830s. In these chapters Snyder's analysis loses its focus on Great Crossings and reads like a fairly traditional narrative about Indian removal. Still, we continue to learn about the Choctaw students. As chapters 8 and 9 reveal, a number of these students, including Peter Pitchlynn and Adam Nail, became accomplished professionals, political leaders, and key figures in exposing the failings at Great Crossings during the late 1830s. While Johnson fought to maintain federal funding for Great Crossings, his support among both the Choctaws and the U.S. government dried up. As Snyder details in chapters 10–12, a new era in Choctaw education was about to open...

Homeowner Attitudes and Practices Towards Residential Landscape Management in Ohio, USA

This study describes the results of a survey of 432 homeowners in Ohio, USA concerning their perceptions and practices regarding management of residential landscapes. The results reveal that outdoor residential environments are extremely important to homeowners, who tend to view their yards as serving multiple functions: a place to observe nature and to socialize as well as a place of beauty and recreation. Use of a lawn care company to apply chemicals is reported by 22 % of respondents, while 40 % either apply chemicals themselves or have someone other than a lawn care company do it. Logistic regressions reveal that factors influencing a homeowner's decision to employ a lawn care company or to apply chemicals themselves include: household income (+), perceived impacts on the environment (-), whether the next door neighbor does it (+), and type of residential environment (rural -, suburban and urban +). A theme that emerges throughout the study is the perceived importance of the role of the lawn in residents' sense of social status or acceptance in the neighborhood. This perception can be viewed as a positive in ensuring that residential environments are well maintained, but also as a negative resulting in environmental degradation or presenting a barrier to creativity in the development of alternative residential environments. Specific policy implications of these findings are that efforts aimed at educating homeowners about the environmental impacts of their lawn care choices are likely to have more success if they are directed at neighborhood groups rather than individuals, show that alternatives are easy to adopt, affordable, and can produce the characteristics of lawns that homeowners seek.

Writing, Rewriting the Beach: An Essay

Abstract Calcutta 1811. The rich travelled on the shoulders of the poor in Calcutta in 1811. Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, in his palanquin, bobbed along above the heads of the coolies and beggars in Tank Square. He did not see the short man with a sailor's gait and a scarred, near-toothless face. But Edward Robarts saw him. Seeing Raffles gave Robarts hope. For ten months on this, the harshest of his beaches, Robarts had been on the slide. Calcutta was a Company town, an East India Company town. A white man without Company connections, or without a trade that the Company valued, had nothing to sell but his poverty. In an empire city, there was no space between the empowered rich and the disciplined native population who did their work for them. The relentless pressure on the poor white man was downward. A man never went up in the rounds of begging a few rupees from vestrymen's wives and daughters. There was only the trading of one disrespectful gaze for another degrading judgement. Just a year before, Rob...