Research Report submitted in the obtainment of a Masters in International Relations. UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND Johannesburg, South Africa 28 May 2015 / This research sets to understand the intricacies of modern Empire and in particular the United States of America as the central agent of neoliberal imperialism. This is done with the objective of assessing the accuracy of Empire theory as an international relations tool of analysis. Empire theory has gained rising academic attention since the early 2000s, this research sought to assess its place and use when analysing the United States as Empire. In particular, the study focused on Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin’s version of informal Empire and Empire by invitation. These notions were understood in the relations existing between the United States and its client states, Mexico and South Korea, via the medium of international financial institutions and trade agreements, namely the International Monetary Fund and the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement. Mexico and South Korea were clearly described as neoliberal states operating within Empire. Yet, this study sought to challenge the concept and the theory of Empire by investigating these client states’ political voices. Their agenda-setting abilities were analysed within the G20 context, thanks to its rotational presidency within the forum. The researcher sought to uncover whether Mexico and South Korea had the ability to shape discussions and break away from the neoliberal discourse, and therefore Empire. The findings were of mixed results as it was established that while Mexico steps further away than South Korea from neoliberal perspectives, both client states still formulate their policies within a neoliberal framework, as the United States does not oppose or contest their agendas. While a fundamental conclusion was not reached, it was settled that Empire theory is still accurate in describing inter-capitalist state relations however it does not analytically grasp the rising opportunities existing for states, internal or external to the neoliberal context, to confront Empire.

Thesis advisor: James Bernauer / 1. This dissertation explores the apparently known object of our thought that is called poverty. To do so, it attempts an analysis that begins by noting that poverty has a past, which is not history, and constitutes destitution in specific ways. More precisely, my dissertation consists of fathoming what poverty might be by identifying those elements that, at a specific moment in our history, articulated the emergence of a problematization that continues to make its presence felt today. My goal is to pinpoint and describe those specific elements that have become conditions of possibility for a problematization of poverty which, although historically contingent, has shaped our way of thinking upon and acting against poverty. In order to carry out such a task, I have used specific conceptual tools inherited from the philosophy of Michel Foucault. 2. This dissertation contends that when the police of the poor began to be established in the second half of the Spanish and American eighteenth century the emergence of a new problematization of poverty began to crystallize. This problematization implied a discontinuity regarding the knowledge encompassed in the doctrine of charity, which nevertheless bequeathed to it some essential parts. The emergence of a police problematization supposed the emergence of governmental knowledge and the slow fading away of the problematization organized around charity. Curiously, this problematization will be constituted both in opposition to and also in articulation with the Christian doctrine of charity. 3. Chapter two of this dissertation will be devoted to the doctrine of charity as it existed at the beginning of the Spanish eighteenth century. The chapter does not affirm that such Spanish-American variations of charity were particularly novel. Yet it is important to trace its forgotten truth and organize, albeit briefly, its governmental knowledge. In doing so, it will be possible for us to not only understand better the problematization of poverty that charity generated at the beginning of the eighteenth century in both Spain and América, but also the subsequent appropriation of charity by the enlightened science of the police. At the beginning of the eighteenth century in Spain and América, Catholic charity was a regime of truth whose validity concerning poverty had no serious rivals in either the Iberian Peninsula or on American soil. Charitable governmentality articulated a problematization of poverty revolving around the threat to physical life caused by material needs, the suffering provoked by pain, the hate that inclined towards revenge, and the correction of one who has fallen into sin. A distinctive type of government will be needed to tackle each one of these issues. Thus, the regime of truth of charity will be articulated by a government of material needs and the excess of goods through the exercise of almsgiving, a government of pain through the exercise of tribulation, a government of hate through the exercise of loving your enemy, and a government of correction through the exercise of fraternal correction. Almsgiving was the charitable way of governing how to deal with material needs and excess and was organized around the precept of not killing one’s neighbor. However, almsgiving was not just a precept. Its purpose was to make the subject become entirely Christian by giving life to his faith. Thus, the giver became a charitable steward who united himself with God, with the neighbor and with himself in the act of giving. Alms initially forged this threefold unification. Charity was thus a vital regime of truth which carried on its shoulders the truth of the believer, the life of the community, and the divine government of the world. 4. In the middle of the century identified with the Enlightenment, the age-old concern about poverty found a new moment of inquietude both in Spain and in Spanish America. Within the limits marked by the thought contained in Bernardo Ward’s Obra Pía (Pious Work) (1750) and the laws on the police of the poor that established the Diputaciones de Caridad (Charity Councils) (1778), destitution emerged as a State affair that the science of the police was in charge of solving. Chapter three is devoted to the forgotten science called the science of the police. The science of the police during the Enlightenment was a body of knowledge about how to know and govern the interior of the State, including the vassals. Like all of the arts of governing, the science of the police was teleological, and happiness was its end goal. The mandate of the science of the police was to increase the forces of the interior of the State, and to do so it must first identify those forces and learn about them in order to eventually multiply them. Such identification not only refers to which of the activities were to be preferred, but also concerns the objects from which riches are gained—namely, land, merchandise, and vassals. Among these three elements, the vassals stand out as the police's privileged object of the science of the police. The wealth—and therefore the international position of the State—depends, finally, on the vassals being productive forces. Thereby a permanent attempt to conserve and increase not only the number but also the usefulness of those subjects was made in order to strengthen the State. These attempts to conserve and augment the members of the State will be part of a thesis that we could call populationist. Poverty constituted an extraordinary threat for the science of the police because destitution undermined those factors that are considered necessary to make the population grow. Significantly, the poverty considered by the science of the police poses an urgency that is not exactly the same as that conceived by charity. Destitution was a problem of the conservation of the vassals and cast the State as the giver who must address this problem. Thus, the poverty characterized by the science of the police was seen primarily as a problem for the sovereign. Destitution, and with it also the poor, become an affair of the Enlightenment State. 5. After analyzing the science of the police, we might be inclined to explain the deployment of the police of the poor as a consequence of the science of the police that left behind—finally!—the charitable alethurgy used to comprehend the poor. However, charity was called again at the moment when the police writers and statesmen began to fashion a new way to think about and govern the needy—namely, once they had to shape and deploy one specific police for the poor. Chapter four will explore the peculiar relationship of these two dissimilar bodies of knowledge in the Enlightenment device called the police of the poor. The police problematization of poverty was modeled on some charitable questions, namely: Who are the faces of poverty? Should we give to them? What ought we to give? These questions will be an opening to think about poverty in the Enlightenment. To govern the poor in the truth, nevertheless, the police of the poor will answer these questions by accepting the police’s imperative to produce and circulate wealth in order to constitute a happy State. Despite the diversity of deficiencies of the poor, the vicious idleness that defines or surrounds the poor's material needs is the most pressing urgency for the police of the poor. The perils of idleness made it imperative to lead the poor towards active productivity. Thus, the police poor was constituted by the duality represented by material necessity on the one hand and inactivity—whether viciously voluntary or dangerously forced—on the other. The sovereign is on his way to becoming a king not only of justice and peace, but also of charity that assumes, as the central element of his sovereign figure, that the king should love the poor with the love of a father. Thus, the pious king who gives police alms begins to assume and to incorporate the duty of giving alms as a function of the State. The police of the poor found in alms a method of support. Almsgiving provided a well-known and mandatory way through which each vassal could contribute to sustain the poor of the State. In fact, the obligatory nature of alms seems to have made the idea of taxes that would support this public policy unnecessary. Also, almsgiving referred to a long and well-established truth: that in the act of giving you can spiritually transform the recipient. The police alms accept—with an easiness that never ceases to astonish—the possibility of delivering spiritual alms to the poor within the State under the sovereign's auspices. Even more surprising is that one of the primary ambitions of charitable giving is also a pillar in this police re-elaboration of alms—namely, the constitution of a subject through the act of giving. 6. The difficult position of charity since the middle of the eighteenth century—that is, the dispute that this dissertation will explore concerning some of its elements—puts us on the path of what Foucault called a "reflexive moment" (Foucault, OS, 242). This is a point in which the thinkers of the Enlightenment began to reflect on the truth from which they had to understand and govern poverty. The enlightened vassals lost the familiarity they used to have concerning a charitable way of governing the material necessity of the political association; they subjected charity to criticism; and, finally, they elaborated a governmental truth, which I have called police-charity truth, to govern the poor of the State in order to alleviate destitution. The police of the poor is the expression of this moment—or maybe its articulation. With the police of the poor, the enlightened subjects intervened in the politics of their time, generating—almost paradoxically—a transformation of charity and its continuity. Such an intervention was neither announced in the charitable alethurgy nor prefigured in the science of the police. It was instead an invention that articulated some of the concepts present in both bodies of knowledge, and in doing so crystallized a truth about poverty and the poor, as well as establishing a way of governing the needy towards happiness. The Enlightenment governmental knowledge on poverty was forged at its intersection with religious charity. Such a realization puts us on the path to a conclusion by Foucault, to which James Bernauer s.j. was one of the first people to call our attention. Namely, that western modernity, instead of being characterized by its dechristianization, is sometimes modeled by processes of "Christianization-in-depth." / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Thesis advisor: Hiroshi Nakazato / In Latin America, Indigenous peoples still exhibit markedly lower qualities of life compared to their nonindigenous peers. One of the most direct ways to change this cycle is through reforms to existing and implementation of new systems of education, such as intercultural bilingual education (EIB), to reflect a greater understanding of and sensitivity to Indigenous linguistic and cultural needs. Through an exploration of EIB in Peru, Bolivia, and Guatemala countries, this study determines some of the primary conditions necessary for EIB’s success to be: national and regional stability; governmental support in both legal and fiscal terms; funding and resources; community support and participation; and system design, program adaptation, and flexibility. If these prerequisites are met, EIB can be an effective way to provide an education to Latin America’s Indigenous peoples in such a way that it is adequate according to local, national, and international standards while simultaneously fulfilling the Indigenous groups’ articulated desire and need for an educational system that appropriately respects, preserves, and fosters the distinct languages and cultures existing within a multicultural state. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: International Studies Honors Program. / Discipline: International Studies.

Thesis advisor: Davarian Baldwin / This thesis explores the paradoxical role of American women in the 1920s. The Twenties was a decade of rapid industry and progressive liberalism that generated the birth of the “modern” woman. As a group, women gained significant power in political, economic, and educational domains and ushered in ideas of female independence, individuality, and free will. Yet it was also a period of superficial exploitation and objectification of female bodies. Women could express their individuality, but only within the bounds of what was deemed acceptable by the male-dominated commercial beauty culture. While women had increasing control over their lives, they used this control to scrutinize and regulate their own bodies to achieve standards of feminine beauty. The combined experience of the American woman’s new independence and power, the growing beauty culture, and new understandings of the body as a site for change was both liberating and restricting. Ultimately, this thesis shows that the Modern Woman liberated and empowered the modern American woman, while submerging her further into the strangling grasp of self-regulation and societal constructs. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: History Honors Program. / Discipline: History.

Thesis advisor: Richard McGowan / Thesis advisor: Robert Murphy / Microfinance has been heralded as the solution to global poverty by optimists in the development field. Many regard the practice of extending unprecedented financial access to the poor through small loans as a necessary and important tool in the development process. The industry has grown and changed shape over the last two decades and recently has come under fire. The new face of microfinance has included for-profit lenders, usurious interest rates, loan sharks, and suicides. Many critics are beginning to question the ethics, practices and efficacy of microfinance. They claim that microfinance cannot make more than a marginal impact on poverty, and more serious development efforts should address structural causes of underdevelopment. This paper will examine the effects microfinance on extreme poverty as defined by the poverty headcount ratio at $2 a day and $1.25 a day. The study will focus on the Latin America and Caribbean. Through regression analysis, this paper measures the effects of microfinance on the poverty rate while controlling for structural economic changes. We will conclude that microfinance has a statistically significant effect on extreme poverty in this region. These results are an important response to critics who posit that the costs of microfinance outweigh the benefits. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics Honors Program. / Discipline: Economics.

Thesis advisor: Lisa S. Cahill / As ethicists, we have a responsibility to engage with major issues around the world. In Latin America, gender-based violence has become a reality for far too many women, and community organizers from faith-based organizations are working to change attitudes and structures in society. Many women from these organizations are using theological resources to aid them in their activism. This dissertation will examine how theological resources contribute to the activism of Latin American women. Through an examination of Jon Sobrino’s Christology, we can see that “resurrection” serves as a major theme for women who are fighting gender-based violence, and that specific concepts within this Christology can inspire hope. Sobrino’s work offers women a theological framework through which they can understand their protest activities as an important part of their spiritual lives. Although Sobrino provides this helpful paradigm, his writing refers to all Latin Americans in general and does not take the contextual specifics of women’s lives into consideration. Therefore, in order to add a gender lens to the conversation about women’s uses of theological resources in Latin America, this dissertation will put Latina feminist theologians in conversation with Sobrino. Although liberation theology has contributed to an important foundation for feminist theologians, liberation theologians often do not consider the realities of women’s lives as unique experiences. By looking at the writings of Marcella Althaus-Reid, Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Ivone Gebara, María Pilar Aquino, and Nancy Pineda-Madrid we can see that a gender lens is especially important for women who are using theological resources to animate their protest activities. In addition to offering important resources for women struggling against the reality of gender-based violence, it is also necessary for theologians and ethicists to develop responses to gender-based violence and to support activists in their work for change. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

University of Macau / Faculty of Arts and Humanities. / Department of English

Cladonia perforata is an endangered lichen endemic to the Atlantic Coastal Ridge, Lake Wales Ridge, Southwest Florida, and the North Gulf Coast of Florida. In all but a single locality, C. perforata relies entirely on asexual reproduction through fragmentation for reproduction, dispersal, and recruitment. This study suggests a positive correlation between fragment size and survivability of fragments after one year. The average thallus grew at a rate of 10.42% per year and younger branches of a thallus grew at a quicker rate than older branches. Additionally, a review of thalli morphology suggests C. perforata has a diverse form, and becomes more bifurcated as it increases in size. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

My research focused on understanding how viceregal authority was accepted in Mesoamerica. Rather than approaching the problems from the perspective of institutional history, I drew on prosopographical techniques and the court-studies tradition to focus on the practice of government and the affinities that bound indigenous and non-indigenous political communities. In Chapters two and three I investigate how particular notions of nobility informed the ‘ideals of life’ of the Spanish and indigenous elites in New Spain and how these evolved up to 1535. The chapters also serve to establish a general context to the political situation that Mendoza faced on his arrival. Chapters four to seven explore how the viceroys sought to increase their authority in New Spain by appropriating means of direct distribution of patronage and how this allowed them personally to satisfy many of the demands of the Spanish and indigenous elites. This helped them impose their supremacy over New Spain’s magnates and serve the crown by ruling more effectively. Viceregal supremacy was justified in a ‘language of legitimacy’ that became increasingly peculiar to New Spain as a community of interests developed between the local elites and the viceroys who guaranteed the local political arrangements on which their status and wealth increasingly depended. I conclude by suggesting that New Spain was governed on the basis of internal arrangements guaranteed by the viceroys. This led to the development of what I define as a ‘parasitic civic-nobility’ which benefitted from the perpetuation of the viceregal system along with the crown. The internal political logic of most decision making and a defined local identity accompanied by increasingly ‘sui generis’ ‘ideals of life’ qualify New Spain to be considered not as a ‘colony’ run by an alien bureaucracy that perpetuated Spanish ‘domination’ but as Mexico City’s sub-empire within the Habsburg ‘composite monarchy.

Chapter One asks whether Christianity and religion have been re-defined in the Jamaican context. The definitions of spirituality and mysticism, particularly as defined by Lartey are given and reasons for using these definitions. Chapter Two examines history and the Caribbean religious experience. It analyses theory and reflects on the Caribbean difference. The role that literary forefathers and foremothers have played in defining the writers about whom my research is concerned is examined in Chapter Three, as are some of their selected works. Chapter Four reflects on the work of Lorna Goodison, asks how she has defined God whether within a Christian or African framework. In contrast Olive Senior appears to view Christianity as oppressive and this is examined in Chapter Five. Chapter Six looks at the ways in which Erna Brodber re-connects the spirit. Chapter Seven regards the spiritually joyful God of Jean 'Binta' Breeze. Conclusions are then drawn as to whether writers have adapted a God to the Jamaican context, whether they have re-connected to the spirit and if it is true that Jamaica is a spiritual nation.