THE CHIMERA OF KANSAS: AN EXPLORATION OF PLACE, POLITICS, AND CULTURE

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Issue Date
2008-01-01Author
Way, Henry Alexander
Publisher
University of Kansas
Format
409 pages
Type
Dissertation
Degree Level
Ph.D.
Discipline
Geography
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This item is protected by copyright and unless otherwise specified the copyright of this thesis/dissertation is held by the author.
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This dissertation first examines the role of geography in Kansas state politics, focusing on the years 2005 to 2008. A "spatial dialectics" is seen in the politics and policy-making process. This insight drives a process-oriented, critical interpretation of the cultural geopolitics. Four legislative issues are stressed: school funding, immigration, gambling, and the Holcomb power plant. New insights are offered into each of these, as well as the prevailing discourses of Kansas that can be taken from such analysis. The second part of the dissertation uses the sense of place and representative qualities of legislators to construct a cultural geography of contemporary Kansas. In this, dialectical and oppositional dimensions could be seen in the perception of place. In particular, place-by-place differentiation and rivalry, and schools, were identified as central to the cultural construction of places in Kansas.
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