Browsing by Author "Jones, Benjamin"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Environment and Economy Along Houston’s Bayous
    (Rice University, 2016) Jones, Benjamin
    The bayous have played a key role in the development of Houston since the city’s founding in the early 19th centuries. Houstonians have approached their relationship with the bayous in several different ways. Boosters and industrialists, who transformed Buffalo Bayou into the Houston Ship Channel, viewed the bayous as key pieces of infrastructure to be shaped and utilized in order to optimize Houston’s trading position. Environmentalists, City Beautiful proponents, and others saw the bayous as ideal green spaces. However, all groups laying claim to Houston’s bayous have done so for the express purpose of economic growth. In a city defined by its entrepreneurial spirit, even Houston’s natural features have been put to work
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    Michael E. Debakey High School for Health Professions: Houston Magnet Schools and the Mandate of Integration
    (Rice University, 2018) Jones, Benjamin
    In the 1970s, the Houston Independent School District embarked on an ambitious program of voluntary desegregation driven by magnet schools. The DeBakey High School for Health Professions, which offered high quality career education to students across the district, quickly became the program’s flagship institution. Forty years later, DeBakey serves a disproportionately white and Asian student body and integration is no longer a goal of the school. The language of choice, once used by segregationists, has been refashioned to suit the purposes of the magnet school. Waning commitment to DeBakey’s integrative potential is emblematic of Houston’s failed attempt at racial equality.
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    Women on the Oil Frontier: Gender and Power in Aramco's Arabia
    (Rice University, 2017) Jones, Benjamin; Wu, Xiaoyu (Linda)
    The Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco), which controlled the world's largest crude oil reserve and was once the largest American investment overseas, often claimed that its petroleum extraction activities contributed to the modernization of Saudi society. Scholars have critiqued Aramco's narrative of enlightened self interest by showing how the company clung to a racialized labor hierarchy and repeatedly eschewed reforms. This essay continues that criticism by examining Aramco’s policies on women and the family. Using internal memos and publicity materials released between 1940 and 1970, this study reveals how Aramco’s American owners used gender to understand, manage, and Orientalize their Saudi employees. In its public image, Aramco claimed to be liberating Saudi women from an anachronistically oppressive society. Yet in the jobs it did (and did not) offer to women, as well as the housing options it gave to Saudi families, the company’s policies demonstrate a similarly patriarchal logical work.