Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'The Marine Society of New York'

This dissertation examines the political origins of Loyalism in New York City between 1768 and 1778. Anchored by an analysis of political mobilization, this dissertation is structured into two parts. Part I has two chapters. Using a variety of private and public sources, the first chapter analyses how 9,338 mostly white male Loyalists in New York City and the counties of Kings, Queens, Suffolk and Westchester were mobilized. Chapter 1 argues that elites and British forces played a fundamental role in the broad-based mobilization of Loyalists in the province of New York. It also recognises that colonists signed Loyalist documents for many different reasons. The second chapter of Part I is a large-scale prosopographical analysis of the 9,338 identified Loyalists. This analysis was based on a diverse range of sources. This analysis shows that a majority of the province’s Loyalist population were artisans aged between 22 and 56 years of age. Part II of this dissertation examines political mobilization in New York City between 1768 and 1775. In three chapters, Part II illustrates how elite and non-elite white male New Yorkers coalesced into two distinct groups. Chapter 3 concentrates on the emergence of the DeLanceys as a political force in New York, Chapter 4 on their mobilization and coalescence into ‘the Friends to Liberty and Trade’, or ‘the Club’, and Chapter 5 examines the political origins of what became Loyalism by studying the social networks of three members of ‘the Club’. By incorporating an interdisciplinary methodology, Part II illustrates that members of ‘the Club’ developed ties with one another that transcended their political origins. It argues that the partisanship of New York City led members of ‘the Club’ to adopt inward-looking characteristics that affected who they interacted with on an everyday basis. A large proportion of ‘the Club’’s members became Loyalists in the American Revolution. This dissertation argues that it was the partisanship that they developed during the late 1760s and early 1770s that defined their allegiance.

Different interpretations of the New York Convention’s Article V(1)(e) have caused inconsistencies regarding how courts deal with applications for enforcement of annulled foreign arbitral awards. Court cases from various Contracting States display that the courts have adopted different approaches to this matter. With the rising number of challenges of awards, the issue has become increasingly important. The author examines international case law to analyze the issue of enforcement of annulled arbitral awards with the purpose of suggesting a possible Swedish approach. A number of aspects support the view that national courts have discretion when deciding whether to enforce a foreign arbitral award notwithstanding that has been annulled in the country of origin. Both the New York Convention and the Swedish Arbitration Act leaves narrow room for the court to exercise this discretion. The author suggests that enforcement of an annulled foreign arbitral award should be possible in Sweden under certain exceptional circumstances. If the competent authority in the country where the award was made annuls the award for reasons totally unacceptable from a Swedish point of view, the option to enforce the foreign arbitral award in Sweden should still be available. This approach is in line with the wording and purpose of both the New York Convention and the Swedish Arbitration Act. The suggested Swedish approach would not cause any serious uncertainty for the parties to the arbitration, but would create a necessary safety-valve for the courts to avoid having to refuse enforcement of a foreign arbitral award when it has been set aside for obscure reasons or by a corrupt court. As is evident from international case law, the interpretation and application of Article V(1)(e) of the New York Convention varies depending on what country enforcement is sought. To avoid contributing to further inconsistencies, it is necessary for Swedish authorities and practitioners to consider the issues addressed in the study.

For over three decades, during the height of Gilded Age economic extravagance, the women of New York High Society maintained an elite social identity by possessing, displaying, and cultivating cultural capital. Particularly, High Society women sought to exclude the Nouveaux Riches who, after amassing vast fortunes in industry or trade, came to New York City in search of social position. High Society women distinguished themselves from these social climbers by obeying restrictive codes of speech, body language, and dress that were the manifestations of their cultural capital. However, in a country founded upon an ethos of egalitarianism, exclusivity could not be maintained for long. Mass-circulated media, visual artwork, and etiquette manuals celebrated the Society womanâ s cultural capital, but simultaneously popularized it, making it accessible to the upwardly mobile. By imitating the representations of High Society life that they saw in newspapers, magazines, and the sketches of Charles Dana Gibson, Nouveau Riche social climbers and even aspirant middle and working class women bridged many of the barriers that Society women sought to impose.
Master of Arts

This essay investigates how capitalism affects the characters in John Dos Passos’ novel Manhattan Transfer. It argues how capitalism in many instances leads to alienation in various ways. In order to understand the historical context of the novel and to perform this character study, the concepts of modernism, modernity, Marxism, capitalism and alienation are put forward in the theoretical framework as the foundation of the essay. The main theories used are Georg Lukács’ definition of heaviness, Ferdinand Tönnies’ discussion on community and society and Melvin Seeman’s presentation of the ways in which the term alienation has been used and explained over the years.

The purpose of this study is to show how violent crime and social problems have an impact on society. This study particularly concentrates on the five boroughs of New York. The problems associated with the five boroughs of New York are violent crime and social problems. The violent crime for the study involves; felony assaults and robberies. Whereas, the social problems for the study involves; population below the poverty line and male population who are 18-24 years with less than high school graduation. These problems were expressed through the usage of ArcGIS Pro. Using ArcGIS Pro provided an efficient way that displays spatial data. The results from this study show that felony assaults and robberies occurred in the Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Queens. Whereas, it was also discovered that the Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn experienced social problems related to poverty and education. The spatial coincidence between violent crime and social problems were expressed using overlay analysis. The findings show that the violent crimes and social problems spatially coincide within the Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn. This study provides a way in which society can be better managed in dealing with these problems.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1994.
Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Douglas M. Sloan. Dissertation Committee: William B. Kennedy. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 308-323).

Quels sont les défis urbains auxquels New York, Chicago, Los Angeles et Paris sont confrontés en matière de développement durable ? L’objectif de cette thèse consiste à dresser un état des lieux des politiques de développement durable mises en place dans des villes aux typologies différentes, qui sont confrontées aux mêmes problématiques. L’analyse des tenants et des aboutissants des actions en faveur du développement durable urbain s’envisage sous trois aspects de la gouvernance impliquant différents acteurs dans ce défi : administrations municipales, sociétés privées et habitants. Nous analyserons les processus lancés par chacun de ces groupes, exposerons les atouts qui font la force des différentes aires urbaines à l’étude, de même que leurs faiblesses et les axes d’amélioration possibles. Cette étude conclut que les quatre villes ont des divergences de priorités sur le développement durable, le diagramme représentatif du concept n’est jamais équilibré : l’un des trois piliers prend en général le dessus
What are the urban challenges New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Paris are facing regarding sustainable development? This thesis consists in examining the sustainable development policies that have been put in place in four cities with different typologies, but that are confronting the same issues. Analyzing the actions taken in support of sustainable development must be considered through three aspects representing three different groups implied in this challenge: municipal authorities, private companies and the people. We will analyze the different processes launched by each of these groups; we will discuss the assets of the four cities, as well as their weaknesses and possible improvements. The four cities have diverging priorities regarding sustainable development and the concept is never perfectly balanced between ecology, sociology and economy. One of these themes generally takes over

This dissertation centers on creating a new critical edition of the Rip Van Winkle overture. One of America's earliest opera composers, George Frederick Bristow (1825-1898), completed the opera Rip Van Winkle in 1855. When he revised it twenty-five years later in 1880, the composer omitted the original overture which was then thought to be lost. A concert version of this overture exists today only in manuscript form, located at the New York Public Library. Rip Van Winkle is significant to the history of American Music because it is one of the earliest operas composed by an American, and the first to be written on American subject matter (in this case, Washington Irving's story of the same name). Adding to the work's considerable historical significance is that the overture was one of the first American pieces performed by the New York Philharmonic Society, in which Bristow was a violinist. There is currently no scholarly edition of the overture, and thus this edition will fill a significant gap in the understanding of nineteenth-century American music. This critical edition of the overture to George Frederick Bristow's Rip Van Winkle was created in order to be published and available for performance and study, shedding light on the often under-represented American opera in the United States.

Ma recherche doctorale concerne l'étude de la vie et de la culture juive à Lugo (Italie) grâce à un examen attentif du Registre des morts (Pinqas ha-nifṭarim), une source de grande importance compilée en hébreu entre 1658 et 1825 et actuellement conservée dans la bibliothèque du Jewish Theological Seminary of America, à New York. Les actes de décès couvrent près de deux siècles et contiennent des informations inestimables sur l'histoire et sur les rabbins de la communauté. En plus du style baroque de plusieurs poèmes composés en l'honneur des dirigeants, de grand intérêt sont la description exacte de la culture funéraire des Juifs et la reconstruction généalogique de nombreuses familles juives importantes, telles que Fano, Sinigaglia, Del Vecchio, Jacchia et d'autres. Cette information a été comparée à celles présentes dans les registres communautaires contemporains. En effet, les listes des membres qui ont participé aux réunions du conseil nous permettent d'avoir beaucoup d'information de grand intérêt sur les membres éminents de la communauté et de reconstruire non seulement le contexte démographique de la communauté juive mais aussi l'évolution et les voies de son développement. Le manuscrit contient également les statuts de Ḥevrat Gemilut Ḥasadim (Bonnes Œuvres ou Société de la Miséricorde) de la communauté juive de Lugo. Cette association s'occupait de l'enterrement de chaque membre de la communauté et ses activités consistaient spécifiquement à s'occuper des membres de la famille des mourants préparant le corps avant l'enterrement; organiser la procession et la cérémonie funéraire; entretien du cimetière; aider les personnes en deuil; dire des prières rituelles; distribuer des provisions et des médicaments pour les malades. Il a été institué le 16 Hešwan 5418, le 23 octobre 1657. Le texte des statuts montre un aperçu très intéressant de la vie religieuse et sociale des Juifs de Lugo
My doctoral research concerns the study of Jewish life and culture in Lugo (Italy) thanks to a careful examination of the Register of deaths (Pinqas ha-nifṭarim) Qahal Qadosh Lugo, a source of great importance compiled in Hebrew between 1658 and 1825 and currently stored in the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York. The death recordings encompass almost two centuries and contain invaluable information about the history and Rabbis of the community. Of particular interest was the Barocco style of several poems composed in honour of leading people, the accurate description of the funerary culture of the Jews and for the genealogical reconstruction of many important Jewish families, such as Fano, Sinigaglia, Del Vecchio, Jacchia and others. This information has been compared with those present in the contemporary Community registers. The lists of members who participated in the board meetings, in fact, allow us to have a lot of information of great interest about the eminent members of the community and to reconstruct not only the demographic context of the Jewish community but also the evolution and ways of its development. The manuscript also contains the statutes of Ḥevrat Gemilut Ḥasadim (Good Works or Mercy Society) of Jewish community of Lugo. This association handled the burial of each member of the community and its activities specifically consisted in looking after the family members of the dying preparing the body before the burial; organizing the funeral procession and ceremony; cemetery maintenance; assisting mourners; saying ritual prayers; distributing provisions and medicine for sick people. It was instituted on 16 Hešwan 5418, i.e. 23rd October 1657. The text of the statutes shows a very interesting insight of religious and social welfare life of the Jews of Lugo

Never before have humans wielded a greater ability to alter and disrupt planetary processes. Our impact is becoming so noticeable that a new geological epoch has been proposed – the Anthropocene – in which Earth systems might no longer maintain the stable and predictable conditions of the past 12 millennia. This is particularly evident in the rapid expansion of urban areas, where a majority of humans now live and where environmental changes such as rising temperatures and habitat loss are happening faster than elsewhere.  In light of this, questions have been raised about what a more responsible relationship between humans and the rest of the planet might look like. Scholars in sustainability science employ the concept of ‘stewardship’ in searching for an answer; however, with multiple different applications and definitions, there is a need to better understand what stewardship is or what novelty it might add to sustainability research. This thesis investigates stewardship empirically through two case studies of civic engagement for protecting nature in cities – Bengaluru, India and New York City, USA. Further, the thesis also proposes a conceptual framework for how to understand stewardship as a relation between humans and the rest of nature, based on three dimensions: care, knowledge and agency. This investigation into stewardship in the urban context uses a social–ecological systems approach to guide the use of mixed theory and methods from social and natural sciences. The thesis is organized in five papers. Paper I reviews defining challenges in managing urban social–ecological systems and proposes that these can more effectively be addressed by collaborative networks where public, civic, other actors contribute unique skills and abilities. Paper II and Paper III study water resource governance in Bengaluru, a city that has become dependent on external sources while its own water bodies become degraded and depleted.Paper II analyzes how locally based ‘lake groups’ are able to affect change through co-management arrangements, reversing decades of centralization and neglect of lakes’ role in Bengaluru’s water supply.Paper III uses social–ecological network analysis to analyze how patterns in lake groups’ engagements and collaborations show better fit with ecological connectivity of lakes.Paper IV employs sense of place methods to explore how personal bonds to a site shapes motivation and goals in waterfront stewardship in New York City. Finally,Paper V reviews literature on stewardship and proposes a conceptual framework to understand and relate different uses and underlying epistemological approaches in the field. In summary, this thesis presents an empirically grounded contribution to how stewardship can be understood as a human–nature relation emergent from a deep sense ofcare and responsibility, knowledge and learning about how to understand social–ecological dynamics, and theagency and skills needed to influence these dynamics in a way that benefits a greater community of humans as others. Here, the care dimension is particularly important as an underappreciated aspect of social–ecological relations, and asset for addressing spatial and temporal misalignment between management institutions and ecosystem. This thesis shows that care for nature does not erode just because green spaces are degraded by human activities – which may be crucial for promoting stewardship in the Anthropocene.

At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript. Paper 5: Manuscript.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--New School for Social Research, 1995.
Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 274-294). Also available in electronic format on the World Wide Web. Access restricted to users affiliated with the licensed institutions.

博士
國立臺灣師範大學
美術學系
104
Abstract This study discusses the creation of a cross-cultural society, and it’s phenomenon, content and influence, from a design thinking point of view instead of politics and economy perspective to observe the topic. In this study, cross-cultural community of Manhattan Island is the field of observation bases. Manhattan Island, New York , is one of the best examples of cross-cultural community. Cultures around the world arrived on this island with the immigrants. Cultural diversity has become the primary character of New York. In a century's time, the significant movement of scientific and technological advances in communication. Social networking has changed our life fundamentally but also create a huge gap between generations. This result creates a tremendous impact from internationally diverse communities and contributes the development of regional cultures. This research will focus on how designers in this phenomenon can take a proposition and make influences. Several core topics emerged from the research, we will be focusing on the one with the discussions centering Modernism; especially the Modernist typographic movement. How typographic design can react to geography and cultures, and how designers create impact on cross-regional culture. How Corporate Identity System ideology can infuse cultures into business establishments. Design schools in Manhattan create social microcosm from students of diverse cultural backgrounds, and to explore how to translate a single regional culture via education system in New York as the best social networking vehicles. Schools are the best platform in New York for cross-cultural social networking. "Pidgin Country" is the primary theme of creative development; Pidgin culture was raised in Shanghai China during 19th century; corresponding the culture of Manhattan’s Chinese communities. The creative centers on two core elements: typography and photography, responding to questions: "How to discover personal creative style?" and "How to verify the research subjectively with creativity?” The objective is to verify and explain the cultural fusion phenomenon with the proposed models from the research. 1. The emergency of culture in the cross-cultural society. 2. The causes of cultural integrations. 3. Refusion of cultural integration. These questions are also observed from international perspectives concerning Taiwan’s cultural and historical developments. Self identification has gradually become a crucial topic in Taiwan. The research and study aims to discover and understand the possibility of the survival of selfness after a long process of cultural mingles and integrations.

Like many sociologists, I am perplexed by the fact that in meritocratic societies, individuals whose abilities or talent does not differ widely nevertheless enjoy considerably different levels of achievement and success. The present dissertation seeks to uncover some of the reasons behind such non-meritocratic inequality. There are two main approaches one can take to that problem. The first and more classical one consists in observing inequality that matters – inequality in earnings or career prospects for example – and to show that such inequality can be traced back to broad categorical attributes such as class, gender, or race and ethnicity. This is not the approach I follow here. Rather, I strategically select cases that make it possible to uncover the fine-grained processes and mechanisms generative of non-meritocratic inequality. Among these “pure” cases are art worlds – winner-take-all settings typically marked by high inequality, and where success is often vastly disconnected from merit or intrinsic quality. The first part of this dissertation focuses on one such art world as a laboratory for studying the social processes underlying the formation of economic value, and therefore the formation of inequality in economic success. CONSECRATION AS A SOCIAL PROCESS OF VALUATION My approach to success and inequality rests on the intuition that we can partially explain them by studying social processes of valuation, i.e. processes that shape the value of things or individuals without affecting their underlying differences in ability, merit, performance, or talent. In the first two chapters this dissertation, I outline and test a theory of one such process, namely consecration. The first chapter develops a structural definition of consecration that makes possible to study its occurrence, conditions, and consequences in a variety of social settings. The chief features of that definition are identified using a series of empirical instances of consecration. The chapter then shows how that definition can be operationalized with simple network concepts, and suggests a network-based strategy for capturing consecration empirically – in art worlds for example. The chapter finally draws testable implications from that definition, and explores its relationship with the notion of retrospective consecration. The second chapter uses that notion of consecration to solve an empirical puzzle in the sociology of valuation. Markets for unique and novel goods are often seen as privileged settings for the powerful influence of market intermediaries: when quality is uncertain, or when it lacks definition altogether, intermediaries can play a crucial role in signaling or specifying it, thereby ultimately shaping the prices consumers are willing to pay for products. Products, meanwhile, do not get much more unique or novel than in the market for contemporary art. Yet economic sociologists have repeatedly failed to observe any influence of art market intermediaries on the value of the artists they distribute. This puzzling finding, I argue, arises from a misconception of how intermediaries shape the value of artists. We usually think of intermediation as acting through two chief processes of valuation: credentialing, or the signaling of unobservable quality, and qualification, or the establishment of specific quality criteria. Yet I suggest that it also can influence value through consecration, or the structural signaling of the existence of quality differences in a population. Using the market for modern art in early twentieth-century Paris as an empirical backdrop, this chapter shows that intermediation as consecration, not credentialing or qualification, was indeed how art market intermediaries shaped the value of their artists in the heyday of French modern painting. SOCIAL PROCESSES OF VALUATION AND ELITE CONSOLIDATION IN GILDED AGE AMERICA The remaining chapter is a logical development of the previous two. It builds on the fine-grained insights they offer – on social processes of valuation, and on the mechanisms of non-meritocratic inequality more generally – to address larger-scale issues of social inequality and social reproduction. The chapter uses a new database of subscribers to the New York Philharmonic to understand how cultural participation cemented the status – or social value – of elites in Gilded Age America. The database has information on who subscribed to the Philharmonic between 1880 and 1910 – a period of huge upheaval, of threats to the dominance of traditional elites, and ultimately of elite consolidation in the United States, and in the city of New York in particular. In analyzing these data I seek to understand how culture worked as an elite resource in that era. The classic account of culture and elite consolidation posits that the formation of an upper class and its continued dominance rest on a mechanism of exclusion. In this view, cultural participation reinforces elites by setting them apart – a process akin to consecration as I delineate it in earlier chapters. My work on the Philharmonic challenges that classic view. For the distinctiveness associated with elite cultural endeavors to reinforce elite dominance, I argue, these endeavors have to happen against a backdrop of general agreement over their value. In Gilded Age New York, this agreement happened not through exclusion, but through the inclusion of a group of cultural experts into the cultural institutions championed by the social elite. The inclusion of that cultured group served to testify to the quality of the cultural endeavors of the social elite, and provided them with a stamp of cultural legitimacy. In other words, it valued the elite through a process of credentialing. The second analytical contribution of that final chapter has to do with class consolidation and the reproduction of upper class dominance more generally. While consolidation is often seen as happening through exclusion and closure, I argue that in a context of rapid social differentiation, marked by the emergence of new areas of expertise, maintaining dominance does not necessarily involve barring access to outside groups. It can also mean being flexible enough to include the experts in emerging spheres. To remain atop the social hierarchy, elites may benefit from incorporating external elements that testify to their own continued relevance. Such inclusion is not necessarily full integration – instead, I show that at the Philharmonic it involved a built-in mechanism of protection, namely segregation. Hence cultural experts were included to help reify and support upper class status and social power, but in a segregated fashion to protect the upper class from threats of destabilization. Finally, a word on title: the notion of purity is the recurring motif in this work. It conveys ideas of social exclusion and social closure, as deployed in the third chapter. When thought about in relational terms, purity may also refer to one’s absence of ties to others whom one does not wish to be associated with in the public eye. This relational take on purity has strong affinities with the idea of consecration developed in chapters one and two. As a heuristic tool for the sociological imagination, purity is the thread that connects all the dots in this dissertation.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1995.
Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 43-54).

The study is an historical investigation exploring the impact of the Carnegie Corporation's philanthropic cultural and educational activities in North America and Australia during the 1940s. The author examines the Carnegie's formation of public values and perceptions using cultural and aesthetic material in order to transmit American ideological ideals with the goal of influencing Australian, Canadian and USA cultural norms. The principal case examined in the paper is the "Art of Australia 1788-1941" exhibition, which toured the USA and Canada during 1941-42. Scrutiny of the exhibition uncovers the role it played in alliance building and the promotion of a range of cultural and political agendas. The investigation deploys a theoretical framework derived from the writings of Tony Bennett. The framework takes the form of a matrix that uses concepts of institutionalized agencies/power and individual agencies/knowledge detailed in a nine-cell matrix composed of propositional statements under the intersecting categories of culture, technologies, ethics, zones, objects, and visualization. The "Art of Australia" Exhibition is a paradigmatic case of the instrumental, cultural application of exhibitions in the interest of the state, using government and non-government, public and private organizations as intermediaries. The analysis reveals the existence of diverse agendas and power/knowledge relationships between governments, corporations and the exhibition. This account highlights the museum as a significant arena for establishing and legitimating social norms and practices whilst steering cultural values. Such actions sponsored by government and entrepreneurial philanthropy are analyzed and interpreted as an early instance of building civic values and promoting the public belief in shared national identity. In this sense the investigation explores the educational mission of the museum and it's supporting agencies in the broadest public context.

This project is a study in doing the same thing again and again and again. It experiments with a purposefully reductive design strategy limited to the repetition of a single idea. Taking cues from other disciplines, it uses this incessant repetition to introduce a new affect to architecture based upon the experience of self-similar spaces in an uninterrupted and seemingly endless sequence. Finally, it reimagines the typology of the large history museum, proposing an open-ended series of moments of historical totality as an alternative to the cumulative or narrative unfolding of content. This thesis project is at once a primitive formal game and a spatially complex reinvention of a venerable American institution. It is an architectural contraption that reorders a universe of artifacts.

This study explores various youth empowerment programs for young people aging out of foster care in the U.S. Youth Empowerment Programs (YEPs) are interventions that encourage youth to make meaningful decisions about program design, implementation, and/or evaluation. This dissertation employed three methods to contribute to the evidence-base on the effect of YEPs for youth aging out of foster care: a qualitative historical study, a comprehensive literature review, and a quantitative cross-sectional survey that utilized a contemporaneous comparison group. The historical study examined the different program aspects of the Children's Aid Society (CAS) to see if there were any empowering parts. CAS was the precursor to the modern day foster care system in the U.S. The study found that much of the programming that occurred in the Boys Lodging Houses in New York City could be classified as youth-led or youth-informed. Specifically, the children's bank, lending library, and military cadet companies provide detailed examples of youth participating in meaningful programmatic decision-making. Other program aspects in the boys lodging houses could be classified as youth dominated or anarchical. The child placement process was found to be disempowering. There was very little evidence of younger children and girls engaging in programmatic decision-making. The literature review included four studies from 2,631 potentially relevant titles and abstracts. Three of the four studies were qualitative and no randomized controlled trials were found, thus meta-analysis was not possible. The review found that the state of the evidence of the effectiveness of YEPs for youth aging out of foster care is sparse and methodologically weak. All four studies found that YEP participation improved various youth development outcomes. One study reported three iatrogenic effects for a subset of youth. The cross-sectional survey examined the level of psychological empowerment of 193 foster care alumni (ages 18-25) who did (n= 99) and did not (n=94) participate in at least one YEP in Florida. Those who participated in a YEP experienced significantly higher perceived control (B = .25, p =.007), motivation to influence their environments (B = .30, SE B =.09, p =.001), self-efficacy for socio-political skills, and participatory behavior (B = .586, SE B= .136, p =.000), than non-YEP participants even when controlling for age at program entry, gender, race, time in foster care, number of placements, and Pinellas County location. Findings from this dissertation suggest that youth empowerment is possible in child welfare and might be beneficial. Implications for research and practice are discussed.