Based on more than two years of fieldwork conducted in a Yemeni community in southeastern Michigan, this unique study examines Yemeni American girls' attempts to construct and make sense of their ...identities as Yemenis, Muslims, Americans, daughters of immigrants, teenagers, and high school students.All American Yemeni Girlscontributes substantially to our understanding of the impact of religion on students attending public schools and the intersecting roles school and religion play in the lives of Yemeni students and their families. Providing a valuable background on the history of Yemen and the migration of Yemeni people to the United States, this is an eye-opening account of a group of people we hear about every day but about whom we know very little.Through a series of intensive interviews and field observations, Loukia K. Sarroub discovered that the young Muslim women shared moments of optimism and desperation and struggled to reconcile the America they experienced at school with the Yemeni lives they knew at home. Most significant, Sarroub found that they often perceived themselves as failing at being both American and Yemeni. Offering a distinctive analysis of the ways ethnicity, culture, gender, and socioeconomic status complicate lives, Sarroub examines how these students view their roles within American and Yemeni societies, between institutions such as the school and the family, between ethnic and Islamic visions of success in the United States. Sarroub argues that public schools serve as a site of liberation and reservoir of contested hope for students and teachers questioning competing religious and cultural pressures. The final chapter offers a rich and important discussion of how conditions in the United States encourage the rise of extremism and allow it to flourish, raising pressing questions about the role of public education in the post-September 11 world.All American Yemeni Girlsoffers a fine-grained and compelling portrait of these young Muslim women and their endeavors to succeed in American society, and it brings us closer to understanding an oft-cited but little researched population.
Following rapid expansion of urbanization over the last century, Michigan's largest cities are characterized by relatively high population densities, high percentages of impervious surface coverage, ...and heavily modified stream networks (e.g. channelization, dams, or burial). Unfortunately, urban stream burial can be extensive and costly, but the spatiotemporal pattern of stream burial in most cities remains ambiguous and, for the most part, unmapped. This map illustrates the impact of stream removal in Michigan's seven largest cities, both before and after rapid population growth and industrialization. Flowlines indicating the location of streams, artificial channels, and canals/ditches were accessed from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) and digitized off historical USGS topographic maps between 1902 and 1929, ranging in scale between 1:62,500 and 1:24,000. A comparison between the two datasets showed all seven cities have stream networks altered or lost entirely to the practice of stream burial and removal. The City of Detroit has lost at least 85% of the stream channels since 1902, while other cities, such as Ann Arbor and Warren, have lost more than 60% of the stream network.
Over the last sixty years, administrators on college campuses nationwide have responded to black campus activists by making racial inclusion and inequality compatible. This bold argument is at the ...center of Matthew Johnson's powerful and controversial book. Focusing on the University of Michigan, often a key talking point in national debates about racial justice thanks to the contentious Gratz v. Bollinger 2003 Supreme Court case, Johnson argues that UM leaders incorporated black student dissent selectively into the institution's policies, practices, and values. This strategy was used to prevent activism from disrupting the institutional priorities that campus leaders deemed more important than racial justice. Despite knowing that racial disparities would likely continue, Johnson demonstrates that these administrators improbably saw themselves as champions of racial equity. What Johnson contends in Undermining Racial Justice is not that good intentions resulted in unforeseen negative consequences, but that the people who created and maintained racial inequities at premier institutions of higher education across the United States firmly believed they had good intentions in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. The case of the University of Michigan fits into a broader pattern at elite colleges and universities and is a cautionary tale for all in higher education. As Matthew Johnson illustrates, inclusion has always been a secondary priority, and, as a result, the policies of the late 1970s and 1980s ushered in a new and enduring era of racial retrenchment on campuses nationwide.
The focus of this study is on the ways in which skin color moderates the perceptions of opportunity and academic orientation of 17 Mexican and Puerto Rican high school students. More specifically, ...the study's analysis centered on cataloguing the racial/ethnic identification shifts (or not) in relation to how they perceive others situate them based on skin color.
An account of the Flint water crisis shows that Flint's struggle for safe and affordable water is part of a broader struggle for democracy.
When Flint, Michigan, changed its source of municipal water ...from Lake Huron to the Flint River, Flint residents were repeatedly assured that the water was of the highest quality. At the switchover ceremony, the mayor and other officials performed a celebratory toast, declaring “Here's to Flint!” and downing glasses of freshly treated water. But as we now know, the water coming out of residents' taps harbored a variety of contaminants, including high levels of lead. In Flint Fights Back, Benjamin Pauli examines the water crisis and the political activism that it inspired, arguing that Flint's struggle for safe and affordable water was part of a broader struggle for democracy. Pauli connects Flint's water activism with the ongoing movement protesting the state of Michigan's policy of replacing elected officials in financially troubled cities like Flint and Detroit with appointed “emergency managers.”
Pauli distinguishes the political narrative of the water crisis from the historical and technical narratives, showing that Flint activists' emphasis on democracy helped them to overcome some of the limitations of standard environmental justice frameworks. He discusses the pro-democracy (anti–emergency manager) movement and traces the rise of the “water warriors”; describes the uncompromising activist culture that developed out of the experience of being dismissed and disparaged by officials; and examines the interplay of activism and scientific expertise. Finally, he explores efforts by activists to expand the struggle for water justice and to organize newly mobilized residents into a movement for a radically democratic Flint.
Managing nonpoint‐source (NPS) pollution of groundwater systems is a significant challenge because of the heterogeneous nature of the subsurface, high costs of data collection, and the multitude of ...scales involved. In this study, we assessed a particularly complex NPS groundwater pollution problem in Michigan, namely, the salinization of shallow aquifer systems due to natural upwelling of deep brines. We applied a system‐based approach to characterize, across multiple scales, the integrated groundwater quantity–quality dynamics associated with the brine upwelling process, assimilating a variety of modeling tools and data—including statewide water well datasets scarcely used for larger scientific analysis. Specifically, we combined (1) data‐driven modeling of massive amounts of groundwater/geologic information across multiple spatial scales with (2) detailed analysis of groundwater salinity dynamics and process‐based flow modeling at local scales. Statewide “hotspots” were delineated and county‐level severity rankings were developed based on dissolved chloride (Cl−) concentration percentiles. Within local hotspots, the relative impact of upwelling was determined to be controlled by: (1) streams—which act as “natural pumps” that bring deeper (more mineralized) groundwater to the surface; (2) the occurrence of nearly impervious geologic material at the surface—which restricts fresh water dilution of deeper, saline groundwater; and (3) the space–time evolution of water well withdrawals—which induces slow migration of saline groundwater from its natural course. This multiscale, data‐intensive approach significantly improved our understanding of the brine upwelling processes in Michigan, and has applicability elsewhere given the growing availability of statewide water well databases.
Article impact statement: We investigate a widespread groundwater pollution problem with data‐driven and process‐based groundwater modeling.
Detroit's Cold War: The Origins of Postwar Conservatism locates the roots of American conservatism in a city that was a nexus of labor and industry in postwar America. Drawing on meticulous archival ...research focusing on Detroit, Colleen Doody shows how conflict over business values and opposition to labor, anticommunism, racial animosity, and religion led to the development of a conservative ethos in the aftermath of World War II. _x000B__x000B_Using Detroit--with its large population of African American and Catholic workers, strong union presence, and starkly segregated urban landscape--as a case study, Doody articulates a nuanced understanding of anticommunism during the Red Scare. Looking beyond national politics, she focuses on key debates occurring at the local level among a wide variety of common citizens. In examining this city's social and political fabric, Doody illustrates that domestic anticommunism was a cohesive, multifaceted ideology that arose less from Soviet ideological incursion than from tensions within the American public. _x000B__x000B_By focusing on labor, race, religion, and the business community in one important American city, Detroit's Cold War shows American anticommunism to be not a radical departure from the past but an expression of ongoing antimodernist and antistatist tensions with American politics and society. _x000B_
•Prairie vegetation forms medium pores (50–150 µm Ø) across various soil textures.•Prairie vegetation increases MBC with a positive influence in soil C gains.•Increases in C losses via CO2 and DOC ...contributed to slower soil C gains.•Medium pores and soil C interact in a feedback loop across various soil textures.
Perennial vegetation with high plant diversity, e.g., restored prairie, is known for stimulation of soil carbon (C) gains, due in part to enhanced formation of pore structure beneficial for long-term C storage. However, the prevalence of this phenomenon across soils of different types remains poorly understood. The aim of the study was to assess the associations between pore structure, soil C, and their differences in monoculture switchgrass and polyculture restored prairie vegetation across a wide range of soils dominating the Upper Midwest of the USA. Six experimental sites were sampled, representing three soil types with texture ranging from sandy to silt loams. The two vegetation systems studied at each site were (i) monoculture switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.), and (ii) polyculture restored prairie, also containing switchgrass as one of its species. X-ray computed micro-tomography (µCT) was employed to analyze soil pore structure. Structural equation modeling and multiple path analyses were used to assess direct and indirect effects of soil texture and pore characteristics on microbial biomass C (MBC), particulate organic matter (POM), dissolved organic C (DOC), short-term respiration (CO2), and, ultimately, soil organic C (SOC). Across studied sites, prairie increased fractions of medium (50–150 µm Ø) pores by 11–45 %, SOC by 3–69 %, and MBC by 18–59 % (except for one site). The greater were the prairie-induced increases in the medium pore volumes, the greater were the prairie-induced SOC gains. Greater C losses via CO2 and DOC contributed to slower C accumulation in the prairie soil. We surmise that the interactive feedback loop relating medium pores and soil C acts across a wide range of soil textures and is an important mechanism through which perennial vegetation with high plant diversity, such as restored prairie, promotes rapid SOC gains.
Who are the Finland-Swedes? Defined as citizens of Finland with a Swedish mother tongue, many know these people as "Swede- Finns" or simply "Swedes." This book, the first ever to focus on this ...ethnolinguistic minority living in Michigan, examines the origins of the Finland-Swedes and traces their immigration patterns, beginning with the arrival of hundreds in the United States in the 1860s. A growing population until the 1920s, when immigration restrictions were put in place, the Finland-Swedes brought with them unique economic, social, cultural, religious, and political institutions, explored here in groundbreaking detail. Drawing on archival, church, and congregational records, interviews, and correspondence, this book paints a vivid portrait of Finland-Swedish life in photographs and text, and also includes detailed maps that show the movement of this group over time. The latest title in the Discovering the Peoples of Michigan series even includes a sampling of traditional Finland-Swedish recipes.
America's Arab Refugees is a timely examination of the world's worst refugee crisis since World War II. Tracing the history of Middle Eastern wars—especially the U.S. military interventions in Iraq ...and Afghanistan—to the current refugee crisis, Marcia C. Inhorn examines how refugees fare once resettled in America. In the U.S., Arabs are challenged by discrimination, poverty, and various forms of vulnerability. Inhorn shines a spotlight on the plight of resettled Arab refugees in the ethnic enclave community of "Arab Detroit," Michigan. Sharing in the poverty of Detroit's Black communities, Arab refugees struggle to find employment and to rebuild their lives. Iraqi and Lebanese refugees who have fled from war zones also face several serious health challenges. Uncovering the depths of these challenges, Inhorn's ethnography follows refugees in Detroit suffering reproductive health problems requiring in vitro fertilization (IVF). Without money to afford costly IVF services, Arab refugee couples are caught in a state of "reproductive exile"—unable to return to war- torn countries with shattered healthcare systems, but unable to access affordable IVF services in America. America's Arab Refugees questions America's responsibility for, and commitment to, Arab refugees, mounting a powerful call to end the violence in the Middle East, assist war orphans and uprooted families, take better care of Arab refugees in this country, and provide them with equitable and affordable healthcare services.
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