Center for Public Policy & Administration Faculty Selected Works pages

Proceedings of the OSS 2012 Doctoral Consortium

Klaas-Jan Stol et al. — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 07:04:29 PST

Papers accepted (and revised) by doctoral students who participated in the Open Source Systems (OSS) 2012 Doctoral Consortium, Hammamet, Tunisia

Visual interventions and the “crises in representation” in environmental anthropology: Researching environmental justice in a Hungarian Romani neighborhood

Krista Harper — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 13:44:04 PDT

Participatory visual research, or "visual interventions" (Pink 2007) allow environmental anthropologists to respond to three different “crises of representation”: 1) the critique of ethnographic representation presented by postmodern, postcolonial, and feminist anthropologists, 2) the constructivist critique of nature and the environment, and 3) the “environmental justice” critique demanding representation for the environmental concerns of communities of color. Participatory visual research integrates community members in the process of staking out a research agenda, conducting fieldwork and interpreting data, and communicating and applying research findings. Our project used the Photovoice methodology to generate knowledge and documentation related to environment injustices faced by Roma in Hungary. I discuss the promise and limitations of “visual interventions” as a pathway leading applied environmental anthropologists beyond the three “crises in representation.”

Introduction to Geographic Science Using ArcGIS V10

Bethany Bradley et al. — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 07:51:47 PDT

This is a lab exercise manual with extra supplemental exercises for use in an introductory course in GIS for students in environmental conservation programs or studying public policy public administration. The emphasis is on environmental management/analysis-related applications. Lab exercises require the ESRI ArcGIS v10 software. Data for all labs and exercises are available on this site as supplementary material in .zip format.

Proceedings of the OSS 2011 Doctoral Consortium

Charles M. Schweik et al. — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 11:05:47 PST

Proceedings of the Open Source Systems 2011 Doctoral Consortium that was co-located with the 7th International Conference on Open Source Systems (OSS 2011), October 5th, 2011 in Salvador Brazil. http://ossconf.org/2011

Introduction to Geographic Information Systems using ArcGIS v10

Charles M. Schweik et al. — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 07:08:22 PDT

A lab exercise manual used in an Introduction to Geographic Information Systems class designed for undergraduates or graduate students. Material takes students though the fundamentals using ArcGIS v10. This is a full pdf version that I have made freely available for others to use. If you find this material useful, I'd like to hear from you. cschweik 'AT' umass 'DOT' edu. If you want a hardcopy version, you can order one at Lulu.com at http://tinyurl.com/3nry9b9 .

Great Expectations? The Changing Role of “Europe” in Romani Activism in Hungary

Krista Harper et al. — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 06:33:23 PST

Contemporary political action for ethnic and national minorities in Europe appears to be increasingly directed towards supra- and transnational structures. This development seems indicative of the growth of a European space for minority activism – a public space that is less state-centered, that allows claims to be framed in terms of European standards and therefore facilitates the emergence of an active European citizenship. In theory, this “Europeanization” of minority politics may offer minority activists additional avenues for raising demands about cultural recognition and economic equalization. This article seeks to identify the possible implications of the Europeanization of minority politics by exploring the case of the Roma (Gypsies), an economically and socially marginalized minority that is increasingly conceptualized as transnational and “European.” Especially in the context of the enlargement of the European Union the Roma have received a lot of attention from European institutions. We focus our analysis on Hungary, a new EU member state with an active Romani movement. While one would expect the Europeanization of minority politics to have positively affected the ways in which Romani activists in Hungary organize and mobilize, our analysis of documentary sources and interviews reveals a more complex picture. We identify an ambiguous understanding of the Europeanization of minority politics among various actors in Hungary and historically shifting ideas about the significance of “Europe” in Romani mobilization.

Toward Open Public Administration Scholarship

Charles M. Schweik et al. — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 16:58:07 PST

This essay focuses on the potential of information communication technologies to move the Public Administration (PA) scholarly community into a new information paradigm. We begin with a review of conventional approaches PA scholars use to communicate with each other, students, and practitioners. After illustrating advances in Web applications, we call for an ‘‘Open PA Scholarship’’ in which research, teaching, and engagement are conducted in a more participatory, timely, and effective manner enabled by new technologies. We conclude with a proposal of Online PA Commons, an interactive Web platform that may facilitate the development of such scholarship.

Radio interview: "Growth of far right in Hungary poses a danger to Roma"

Krista Harper et al. — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 09:02:13 PDT

Right-wing and far-right parties made significant gains in Hungary's recent national election. This rise in support has coincided with an increase in violence against Roma people. Peter Driftmier spoke with Krista Harper of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts and David Boromisza-Habashi of the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado in Boulder. (18:20 minutes)

Across the Bridge: Using PhotoVoice to Investigate Environment and Health in a Hungarian Romani (Gypsy) Community

Krista Harper — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:55:49 PDT

Success and Abandonment in Open Source Commons: Selected Findings from an Empirical Study of Sourceforge.net Projects

Charles M. Schweik et al. — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 06:48:42 PDT

Some open source software collaborations are sustained over long periods of time and across several versions of a software product, while others become abandoned even before the first version of the product has been developed. In this study, we identify factors that might be responsible for one or the other of these collaborative trajectories. We examine 107,747 open source software projects hosted on Sourceforge.net in August 2006 using data available through the FLOSSmole Project. We employ Classification and Regression Tree modeling and Random Forests statistical approaches to begin to establish an understanding of how various project attributes, especially physical and community ones, contribute to project success or abandonment. We find that factors associated with success and abandonment differ for projects in the early stage of development (pre-first release) compared to projects that have had a first release, and that product utility, project vision, leadership, and group-size are associated with success in open source collaborations. We also find that successful open source projects exist across all types of software and not simply in areas associated with the open source “movement.” Other evidence suggests that Sourceforge.net may play an important role in “intellectual match-making.”