Master of Arts, Miami University, 2023, Spanish

La meta principal de este estudio fue investigar el efecto combinado de region y genero en la lenicion del fonema /tʃ/, asi como el posible efecto de la lenicion en la duracion de la fricacion. Se eligio dos noticieros, uno de Sevilla y uno de Panama. Se analizo un total de 12 reporteros, 6 de Sevilla y 6 de Panama. Para cada reportero, se analizo 20 palabras que contenian el fonema /tʃ/ entre vocales. Se analizaron 240 muestras de audios utilizando el Praat (Boersma Weenink, 2022). Se encontro que la duracion de la fricacion de [ʃ] era similar a la duracion de la oclusion mas la fricacion en [tʃ]. Ademas, el efecto de genero en Panama es significativo para la lenicion. Los reporteros en los noticieros de Panama produjeron mas el fenomeno de lenicion en comparacion a los reporteros en los noticieros de Sevilla. Especificamente, las reporteras de Panama produjeron los unicos casos de lenicion. Sin embargo, no se encontraron resultados estadisticamente significativos entre regiones.

Committee: Marisol del-Teso-Craviotto (Advisor); Russell Simonsen (Committee Member); José Domínguez Búrdalo (Committee Member) Subjects: Language; Linguistics; Sociolinguistics

Master of Science (MS), Bowling Green State University, 1950, Cross-Cultural, International Education

Committee: Charles W. Young (Advisor) Subjects: Education

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2019, Antioch New England: Environmental Studies

Over the past two centuries, large terrestrial carnivores have suffered extreme population declines and range contractions resulting from the synergistic anthropogenic threats of land-use change and indirect effects of climate change. In Panama, rapid land use conversion coupled with climate change is predicted to negatively impact jaguar (Panthera onca) and puma (Puma concolor). This dissertation examined the environmental variables and scales influencing jaguar and puma habitat selection by season (annual, wet, and dry), using multi-scale optimized habitat suitability models and a machine-learning algorithm (Random Forests), in the narrowest section of Panama. The models derived from the data of an intensive camera trapping effort (2016–2018) captured a wide spectrum of ecological relationships for the sympatric felid species. Jaguar habitat selection was limited by secondary forest at a broad scale (home range), suggesting that jaguars preferred primary forest. Therefore, the persistence of primary forest in the narrowest section of the country is key for the long-term survival of the species. Pumas incorporated primary forest at a fine scale (patch) and agropecuary (agriculture and livestock) at broad scales (home range), providing evidence of the plasticity and adaptability of the species to a diverse range of landscapes. Seasonal differences in habitat suitability were evident for both species which is most likely related to prey availability. The models also provided a set of seasonal habitat suitability maps (annual, wet season and dry season) from which spatial information on jaguar and puma distribution are presented. This study improves our understanding of species-environment relationships and habitat selection of jaguars and pumas in eastern Panama, and contributes to the growing number of studies that demonstrate the strong conceptual and inferential advantages of a multi-scale approach. Further, I examined the implications of the potential relocation (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Beth Kaplin Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Peter Palmiotto D.F. (Committee Member); Marcella Kelly Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Conservation; Ecology; Wildlife Conservation

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1973, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: History

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2016, Leadership and Change

This case study examines the experience of residents of the Indigenous village of Embera Drua, Panama with 20 years of tourism. It addresses the lack of Indigenous voices in tourism literature by telling the story of Embera Drua through the lens of the villagers themselves. The study uses a mix of ethnographic observation and narrative inquiry and finds that the experience of Embera Drua mirrors the experience of other Indigenous villages offering tourism around the globe, particularly the impact of lack of community capacity on management and growth of such tourism initiatives. Findings of this study are relevant to the international discourse on tourism as a development tool. This dissertation is available in open-access at OhioLink ETD Center, www.ohiolink.edu/etd and AURA: Antioch University Repository and Archive, http://aura.antioch.edu/

Committee: Laurien Alexandre PhD (Committee Chair); Jon Wergin PhD (Committee Member); Aqeel Tirmizi PhD (Committee Member); Cem Basman PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Cultural Anthropology; Environmental Studies; Latin American Studies; Native Studies

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2015, Geography

Panama City is experiencing unprecedented urban development, particular in terms of elite real estate and finance, growth associated with the widening of the canal, and illicit activities such as money laundering. Not surprisingly, this hyper-growth is exacerbating environmental hazards whose costs are unevenly borne by residents. A case in point is the 2013 Cerro Patacon Landfill fire and subsequent air quality crisis. Cerro Patacon is a landfill just outside the city where regional waste is delivered and stored. In March 2013, a portion of the landfill caught on fire, releasing harmful toxins into the air for nearly two weeks. While sooty air engulfed the entire city, it was poor residents who experienced the greatest impacts of the fire in terms of respiratory and other health conditions. State response to the fire has not been to address the fundamental question of waste management or uneven exposure to waste-related hazards. Rather, the Panamanian government—with international support —is promoting a neoliberal response and emphasizing that when air quality in the city is poor, residents can `choose' to modify their behaviors to avoid health risks. In my thesis, I use political ecology and social metabolism to conceptualize the city, waste, and development as interdependent and foundationally co-constituting. Using evidence from ethnographic field work, landscape analysis, participant observation and other secondary data analysis, I argue that Cerro Patacon and its population are externalized and vilified by city officials, contributing to and promoting the naturalization of an unproblematic growth model that denies government accountability, wrongly blames certain populations, and justifies social exclusion. However resistance –coordinated or diffuse – is either nonexistent or largely hidden. I argue that hyper-growth and neoliberal governance have permeated Panama City's social metabolism and produce expressly neoliberal subjects, resulting in Panamanians in (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kendra McSweeney Dr. (Advisor); Malecki Ed Dr. (Committee Member); Mansfield Becky Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Geography

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2009, Geography (Arts and Sciences)

As over 76 million U.S. baby boomers prepare for retirement, Latin American countries are poised to experience increasing numbers of foreign leisure and retirement migrants. Comparatively wealthy 'residential tourists' from the U.S. have already transformed parts of Latin America. Meanwhile, national incentive policies, media coverage, and aggressive online marketing continue to attract international residents to an increasing number of destinations. Boquete, Panama has experienced a particularly rapid emergence as a destination, and may exemplify a new model of residential tourism development. Using qualitative data from on-site interviews, this thesis will discuss a range of issues and concerns experienced and articulated by local residents of distinct socioeconomic backgrounds. By incorporating a web-based marketing content analysis, this thesis will also argue that rapid, Internet-propelled development has attracted complex and dynamic international residents. The arrival of these diverse international residents has, in turn, created a wide range of consequences for both the community of Boquete and its individual residents.

Committee: Brad D. Jokisch PhD (Advisor); Geoffrey, L. Buckey PhD (Committee Member); Harold, A. Perkins (Committee Member) Subjects: Geography

Master of Arts, Case Western Reserve University, 2010, History

From the founding of its Republic in 1903, Panama has struggled for economic and political independence from the United States. After World War II, and especially under General Omar Torrijos, Panamanian nationalists looked to their neglected hinterlands for the human and natural resources that could power an independent nation. The Darien region in eastern Panama, a large and unknown tract of rain forest, became the object of a series of economic development projects that tried to put nature to work for the nation. Exploring the two largest of these projects, the Bayano Hydroelectric Dam and the Darien Gap Highway, this essay argues that nationalists in Panama, and their international benefactors, misperceived the environment they were working to “develop.” The collision of the environment that nationalists envisioned with the environment in reality crippled the projects themselves, and led to the creation of a new landscape that no one had planned for.

Committee: Marixa Lasso (Committee Co-Chair); Peter Shulman (Committee Co-Chair); Theodore Steinberg (Committee Member) Subjects: Ecology; Economic History; Environmental Science; History; Latin American History; Science History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, Anthropology

This study investigates how shifting property regimes produced by global inequities in power affect indigenous groups' access to land. Further, it explores the various means that indigenous populations use to legitimate their claims to land in a climate of shifting property regimes, when other differentially empowered claims to land may also be morally and/or legally legitimate. The study addresses these issues by using the example of the indigenous Ngobe's experience of land conflicts produced in a context of tourism boom and neo-liberal land privatization reforms in Bocas del Toro, Panama. It showcases the pertinence of the Ngobe experience to the above questions by exploring the causes of land conflicts involving the Ngobe since the rise of the tourism industry over the last two decades, and the Ngobe responses to the stressors introduced by the tourism industry and neoliberal land reforms. It argues that Ngobe vulnerability to land loss and land conflicts stem from the combination of: legal and bureaucratic framework of the neoliberal land reforms in Panama; the political economy of information flows and Ngobe position within Bocatorenean society that limits their access to crucial information; and differing conceptions of inhabited property as opposed to `natural', `unused', `uninhabited' land between the local Ngobe and immigrant Western expatriates. At the same time, the study demonstrates how the social agency of individual actors produces an individualized micro-politico-legal ecology that shapes the force-field in which the actors are embedded and displaces the intended effects of legal and institutional property constructions. In so doing, the study will problematize the usual associations between indigenous peoples and their claims to land, delineate the processes through which structural and cultural forces produce indigenous marginality and vulnerability, challenge indigenous essentialisms, demonstrate how the concrete practices of property relations m (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jeffrey Cohen (Advisor); Mark Moritz (Committee Member); Kendra McSweeney (Committee Member); Fish Allison (Committee Member) Subjects: Caribbean Studies; Cultural Anthropology; Economic Theory; Land Use Planning; Latin American Studies; Legal Studies