This study contemplates the limitations of traditional conceptions of Latin American Pentecostalism to account for and understand the phenomenon as it developed in the lives of individuals during charged moments like the Chilean dictatorship where meanings and significance – religious and otherwise – were challenged, disrupted, and altered. Its goal is to explore how Pentecostals lived with and against the changing religious expressions and practices that were available to them under authoritarian rule. I argue that Pentecostal religion and practice were infused with new meaning and reimagined through shifting conceptions of community, society, and faith that flowed into and nourished one another. The boundaries of Pentecostal identity and belief were ultimately less rigid and more porous than the traditional historiography suggests, as people sought to find meaning in the face of mounting oppression and insecurity. In doing so, normative definitions of terms like Pentecostal, religion, religiosity, and religious practice as they have been used as categorical frameworks for historical study are also reconsidered. This investigation examines how transformations in religious thought and practice developed and how they found meaning within the everyday experiences of the church’s members as they confronted the harrowing events that engulfed Chile between 1973 and 1990. Key to this work is the concept of ‘lived religion’. The term, often used to collapse the distinction between the personal religious experiences and the prescribed religion of institutions, is used here to approach religion within the realm of la vida cotidiana (everyday life). Based on church documents and oral histories collected from members of the Misión Iglesia Pentecostal (Pentecostal Mission Church – MIP), I use a broad historical framework to map the embodied and discursive space between leaders and lay followers, the points of contact, disjuncture, and resonance across the ideas, experiences, and sensations of their shared lives during the dictatorship.

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Thesis (M.S.V.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1981. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 54-55). / This work attempts to present the development of a new self-image of Latin American identity as manifested in the New Latin American Cinema Movement. Also, it attempts to help articulate intentions, strategies, and final products that are being formulated throughout the continent. The main part of this thesis is a compilation/documentary (in the form of a 3/4 inch video cassette) comprised of interviews with filmmakers and excerpts from these films as presented at the Second New Latin American Cinema Festival (held in Havana in November of 1980). This tape will illustrate the author's efforts to examine, present, and contribute to this growing movement. / by Joaquin O. Mercado Cardona. / M.S.V.S.

This thesis addresses the production and reproduction of narratives about people born as a result of war-related sexual violence in Colombia. I focus on the social processes through which these individuals have become part of the realities of the armed conflict that are apprehended by the Colombian government, human rights organisations and transitional justice agencies, the media, and the communities. My project draws on ethnographic content analysis of media, legal documents, and ethnographic research conducted between December 2015 and June 2016 in a rural Afro-descendent community in Colombia that was occupied by paramilitaries for approximately five years. Paramilitaries systematically used sexual violence against women and girls and, because of those abuses, children were born and later single out by members of the community as paraquitos, “little paramilitaries”. I conclude that people born as a result of war-related sexual violence have not emerged as subjects within the realities of the armed conflict that are apprehended by the discourse of transitional justice and human rights. Although information about them has circulated, it has done so within the framework for understanding wartime sexual violence. As a collective subject, they have gained a place in the imaginary of human rights organisations through naming practices that assume they are defined by the violence that conceived them. At the local level these children’s identities are dynamic and their experiences are connected to the experiences of their mothers within their cultural and moral system. For the community, these people do not belong to the collective narratives of the violence of the past. Their absence needs to be understood in relation to gendered notions of identity and reproduction that have denied women’s experiences of the armed conflict, while imposing motherhood. Although the life of people born of war starts as war-affected children, as they grow older their identities and opportunities are under constant negotiation that embody different forms of gender, economic, and social violence and resistance that challenge static notions of victimhood.

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Over time, the predominant tendency of many governments' agencies has been to evaluate a programme or policy investing large amount of resources in supporting policy evaluation. However, recommendations suggested by policy evaluators are not always taken up. Moreover, there is relatively little evidence of the extent of policy evaluation effectiveness (i.e. the influence of evaluation on the programme evaluated) and the factors which have significant impact on it. This dissertation aims to shed light on this issue by focusing on the Mexican and Chilean experiences of policy evaluation in the health care sector. It provides a detailed analysis of the extent to which evaluations have led to changes in policies and programmes and reveals a rather limited effectiveness of policy evaluation in these countries. I argue that shortcomings in the effectiveness of policy evaluation can be explained by institutional and political factors, primarily the nature of Intra Governmental Relations (IGR), but also the quality of bureaucracy, the level of democracy, the autonomy of policy evaluators, and the type of policy evaluation framework. While all of these factors seem to have some influence, the relationship between the executive and legislature is clearly the key determinant of the take up of recommendations. Thus, the findings of this thesis suggest that strengthening coordination between the different parts of government is needed to enhance the effectiveness of policy evaluation. In addition, the analysis also suggests that policy evaluation is likely to be more effective when it incorporates budgetary incentives.

This thesis seeks to examine how a particularly American ideological formation called the frontier myth has been re-enacted, challenged, and redefined in the literary works written by several American authors. Existing researches about the pervasiveness of the frontier mythology in American culture written by scholars such as Richard Slotkin, Richard Drinnon, and others demonstrate that, as the myth of the frontier–––the popular discourse that romanticizes early white settlers’ violent confrontation with American Indians in the New World wilderness–––has been deeply inscribed in America’s collective consciousness, when they faced with the war in a remote Southeast Asian country, many Americans have adopted its conventional narrative patterns, images, and vocabulary to narrate their experiences therein. The word, Indian Country–––a military jargon that US military officers commonly used to designate hostile terrains outside the control of the South Vietnamese government–––would aptly corroborate their argument. Drawing upon Edward Said’s exegesis of a structure of power that privileged Europeans assumed when they gazed at and wrote about the place and people categorized as “Oriental,” I contend that the images of the frontier frequently appearing in US Vietnam War accounts are America’s “imaginative geography” of Vietnam. By closely looking at the Vietnamese landscapes that American authors describe, I intend to investigate the extent to which the authors’ view of Vietnam are informed, or limited, by the cultural imperatives of the myth. At the same time, I will also look for instances in which the authors attempt to challenge the very discourse that they have internalized. I will read several novels and stories of American Vietnam War literature in a loosely chronological manner––from earlyier American Vietnam novels such as William Lederer’s and Eugene Burdick’s The Ugly American (1958), through three notable Vietnam–vet writers’ works published between the late ’70s and ’90s that include Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato (1978) and The Things They Carried (1990), to Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke (2007), a recent novel produced after 9/11. Hereby, I aim to explain the larger cultural/political significances that underlie the images of the frontier appearing in American Vietnam War narratives, and their vicissitude through time. While the authors of early US Vietnam War narratives reproduced stereotypical representations of the land and people of Vietnam that largely reflected the colonial/racist ideologies embedded in the myth, the succeeding generations of authors, with varying degrees of success, have undermined what has conventionally been regarded as America’s master narrative, by, for instance, deliberately subverting the conventional narrative patterns of the frontier myth, or by incorporating into their narratives the Vietnamese points of view that have often been omitted in earlier US Vietnam War accounts.

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Educational partnerships surged in the 1980s, and saw an equally substantive increase in research about these relationships. However, not all aspects of these partnerships have been examined and as a result there are gaps in the literature. A thorough literature review confirmed that in fact there was no research specifically about partnerships between traditional schools of education and non-traditional teacher training organizations. After identifying the specific partnerships to study, I collected documents, held a conference that included focus groups, administered a survey, and conducted individual interviews. I was also provided existing survey data from the partners. I coded the qualitative data to find themes across the partnerships. At the same time, I created an evaluation rubric that was used to determine the effectiveness of each partnership based on the characteristics found in each. After reviewing the data and coding it thematically, I found three common factors that existed in the various partnerships. These factors of communication, commitment, and evaluation emerged as the primary drivers of or barriers to, the success of the partnership. These characteristics are exhibited in different ways and to different degrees in each partnership. Using the data to uncover these factors, I developed a rubric that can be used to determine their existence within a partnership. This research provides guidance and a method of evaluation for similar new partnerships across the country. It aids in their development and supports their continual improvement. Simultaneously, the rubric and research should help existing partnerships improve their current relationships and collaboration.

No description available.