"Problems of Traditional Societies in Economic Transition" by D'Lynn Waldron, PhD was published in 1967. This was the first dissertation in Economic Anthropology and the theories set forth in it were used by the Federal Trade Commission, with a system design done for them pro bono by Dr. Waldron, to investigate the abuses of the Trading Post monopoly on the Native American reservations. These trading post monopolies were awarded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs as political patronage, and only to non-Native Americans.

Upon completing her doctoral degree in Autumn 1967, Dr. Waldron went to work in the County of Los Angeles with the Board of Supervisors directing research and development on Federal anti-poverty programs for HUD and HEW. This included creating the system design for Operation Breakthrough, the multi-billion dollar low income custom housing program for HUD. Dr. Waldron's system design was used nationally and later by the UN. Unfortunately most of the money disappeared down the rathole of corruption at the state and local government levels, which they did by violating the system design that they had agreed to use before they could get the Federal funds.

Several years later the UN offered Dr. Waldron the position of directing the social aspects of all their economic development programs in Asia and the Middle East. Dr. Waldron knew this would be an exercise in futility given the corruption in governments, and regretfully felt she had to turn down the position and return instead to independent ethnographic studies making a complete photographic and written record of traditional ways of life in unspoiled environments, and to try to save them, before they disappeared. This work was self-funded by Dr. Waldron whose photography was sold worldwide by the Image Bank Agency (later acquired by Kodak and then Getty Photos) and Bettman (later acquired by Corbis). Her popular food and travel articles were published by many major magazines and her scholarly photo-ethnographic study of the traditional Irish way of life in Connemara was the longest article ever run in the British Geographical Society's 'Geographical Magazine' and she was made a Fellow of the Society. BACK TO AUTHOR

copies of this dissertation THE PROBLEMS OF TRADITIONAL SOCIETIES..
by Diane Lynn Waldron-Shah, PhD (D'Lynn Waldron)
can be ordered through Proquest 1 800 889-3358 http://www.proquest.com
The dissertation Order number is 68-10,554
(This entity is handling University Microfilm publications)