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This thesis undertakes a multidisciplinary study of the construction of nation and identity in the context of the Caribbean and its diaspora in Britain. Taking Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Britain as the countries for comparative analysis two primary research questions are addressed: How can Caribbean nation and identity be re-conceptualised to represent its complex, heterogeneous societies? How have Caribbean identities resisted, metamorphosed and been re-constituted in the diasporic context of Britain? While current scholarship on nation and identity is interrogated, the principle guiding the methodology has been to engage with the specificities of the region's history and culture with a view to arriving at new interpretations that reflect the contemporary Caribbean situation. It is argued that Caribbean auto-biographical practice, prevalent in much of its artistic production, provides a conceptual tool for interpreting the Caribbean nation. As a site of resistance to received knowledges, Caribbean autolbiography has facilitated inter alia the re-inscription of histories and the imagining of nation spaces. Since as a genre it IS inherently democratic, multiple imaginings of nation emerge and coalesce from the wider range of voices accommodated by auto-biographical practice. The prismatic creolisation model is proposed as a re-visioning of Caribbean identity. This model modifies and augments Kamau Brathwaite's creolisation thesis with relevant scholarship from Stuart Hall and the artistic philosophy of the painter Dunstan St Orner, Prismism. Prismatic creolisation suggests a polycentric, more inclusive perspective from which Caribbean identity, culture and language might be interpreted. These theoretical tools - auto-biographical practice and prismatic creolisation - are applied to the examination of how Caribbean identity and culture are translated and re-constructed in the diaspora situation. The Windrush generation, it is argued, began negotiating Britishness by auto-biographing Caribbean transitional identities into the national imagination. Succeeding generations have been renegotiating these terms by creating new cultural forms and ways ofbeing that resist and inflect Britishness.

The research undertaken for this largely qualitative dissertation draws on newspaper articles, oral histories, historical documentation, open-ended interviews, and to a lesser extent, questionnaires, in the effort to ultimately confirm the extent to which the benefitting forces of globalization have fractured any existing traditional-historical cultural body of knowledge and expression among the Caymanian people. Indeed, by 2009 some Caymanians had long been verbally denouncing the social and cultural ills of globalization – inclusive of multiculturalism – on their so-called traditional, unassuming way of life, some of them clamoring for an extensive purge of the many foreign nationals in “their” Cayman Islands. Yet, other Caymanians have become somewhat invested in the idea of multicultural “oneness” ostensibly for the sake of peaceful coexistence, harmony and prosperity as these work towards the promotion of a global, borderless cultural awareness. This dissertation relies on theoretical frames centred both on the discrete natures of, and the dualistic struggle between, these two opposing ideological-cultural forces. That this struggle is taking place in the present age, I anticipate the ways in which more modern understandings, which are potentially open to liberating subjectivities, must clash with “historical”, xenophobic and nationalistic viewpoints, viewpoints which have constantly proven contradictory given their adherents’ complacent acceptance of, and participation in, a localised economic prosperity substantively dependent on foreign input. Thus in aggregate terms, this dissertation pinpoints the various effects of an evolving scheme of values and counter-values on an ideologically torn Caymanianness whose contradictory traditional half is especially fighting for its “cultural purity” in an era where its ‘reinvented’ logic is being more and more regarded as anachronistic and somewhat irrational.

The thesis expands the field of scholarly enquiry on the Cuban intervention in Angola beyond the frame of geopolitics into the area of cultural politics. It considers the relation between Africa as a cultural and political `territory' in the Cuban imaginary and the epic internationalist mission known as Operation Carlota. By focusing on representations and manifestations of 'Africanness' in discursive practices ranging from culture and the arts to domestic and foreign policy, the enquiry illustrates how the notion of Cuba as Latin-African evolved in relation to changes in revolutionary ideology during the period known as the quinquenio gris, and with regard to the swell of liberation movements throughout the African Diaspora. My approach proceeds from Victor Turner's theory of liminality, which discusses how ritual behaviour and symbolism - rites de passage - may be used as concepts for an understanding of social structure and processes With this view in mind, I construct a theoretical framework that conjoins the notion of ritual in Cuba's Africa derived religious practices with the more general idea of war, or in this case internationalism, as a social ritual. In this way, I demonstrate that the Angolan Experience was essential to the transformation of Cuban collective identity from Latin American to Caribbean by the 1980s. This shift, I claim, was sponsored, on the international level, by the symbolism of the military mission as an epic re-enactment of the West African Diaspora/Caribbean myth of return, and, on the national level, by slave iconology. The methodological technique used combines a critical hermeneutic reading of cultural productions with postcolonial styles of social and cultural analysis.

Deepwater continental margins constitute one of the ultimate exploration frontiers where giant oilfields have been discovered. These comprise reservoirs units affected by multi‐scale compartmentalisation resultant from stratigraphic, structural and/or diagenetic processes that compromise the lateral and/or vertical connectivity of permeable strata. A 3D seismic dataset from the deepwater Espírito Santo Basin (SE Brazil) was analysed to assess and quantify the architectural elements that influence the compartmentalisation of reservoir units. Mass‐Transport Deposits (MTDs) have growing importance on reservoir studies as they highly impact the compartmentalisation of contemporaneous reservoir‐prone turbidite strata. More significant compartmentalisation occurs in areas with higher MTD proportion, which are associated to wider dimensional ranges of laterally limited turbidites. However, salt diapirs constitute important barriers for MTD erosion, thus aiding the preservation of reservoir‐prone turbidites. The internal compositional heterogeneities and cohese strata on remnant and rafted blocks identified within the studied MTDs constitute important fluid flow or accumulation compartments, particularly when linked to underlying permeable faults. Submarine channels in Palaeocene and Neogene Units comprise important reservoir‐prone strata, thus it is crucial to understand their spatial distribution. Large channels are focused along the axis of salt‐withdrawal basins, whereas in sub‐units with numerous smaller channels these are laterally scattered across the basin. A new quantitative method used in this study shows that channel confluences and topographic confinement control significantly the density and spatial distribution patterns of submarine channels. A novel classification for submarine channel confluences is proposed, based on channel morphology and distribution of sediment facies within the tributaries. The key aim of this thesis was to undertake a seismic‐scale qualitative and quantitative analysis of the compartmentalisation of reservoir units on the Brazilian margin using methodologies that can be applied to other continental margins worldwide. As such, the results of this study can provide significant contributions for hydrocarbon exploration.

Conference: 16th International Conference, CAAD Futures 2015 - "The next city". São Paulo, Brazil, July 8-10, 2015, At São Paulo, Brazil., Volume: Computer-Aided Architectural Design Futures. The Next City - New Technologies and the Future of the Built Environment ( Communications in Computer and Information Science, Volume 527 - 2015) / The present paper is a mapping study of digital fabrication laboratories in Latin America. It presents and discusses results from a survey with 31 universities’ fab labs, studios and independent initiatives in Latin America. The objective of this study is fourfold: firstly, to draw the cultural, social and economic context of implementation of digital fabrication laboratories in the region; secondly, to synthesize relevant data from correlations between organizational structures, facilities and technologies, activities, types of prototypes, uses and areas of application; thirdly, to draw a network of people and institutions, recovering connections and the genealogy of these fab labs; and fourthly, to present some fab labs that are intertwined with local questions. The results obtained indicate a complex “homo faber” network of initiatives that embraces academic investigations, architectural developments, industry applications, artistic propositions and actions in social processes.

In moments when the artisanship tradition seems to disappear because of industrial production, we analyze cases where digital fabrication and visual programming were used in Latin American craft, encouraged by architects with skills in digital tools. The situations confront artisans with access to digital platforms and internet, use of learned skills, and the need to modify the technological level in their products and processes. Regional initiatives, which could change contemporary design history in the region with the establishing of a trans-disciplinary systematized synergy, show that traditional materials are used and unique components maintain their originality, from a region that attempts to enter into new global markets.

This study investigates the Native Baptists and the dynamics between their Biblical hermeneutic and the 1865 Native Baptist War. This work outlines, for the first time, the origin, structure and development of the Native Baptists. This study also discerns the main themes of the Native Baptists as equality and justice and their Biblical hermeneutic as a hermeneutic of liberation. The main thesis is that the Native Baptists' interpretation of Scriptures and Scripture -related sources influenced the nature and scope of the 1865 Native Baptist War. To achieve the goals of this study, this writer relied heavily on archival and contemporary documents. One of the major features of this study is that, for the first time, it provides an in-depth analysis of a major original source, which the first Native Baptists wrote about themselves. Another unique feature is the meticulous analysis of Paul Bogle's marked hymns, letter and speech and George William Gordon' s speeches in the House of Assembly. In order to examine and outline the origin, structure and development of the Native Baptists, this writer was informed by the social history of religion approach. And to reflect on their themes and Biblical hermeneutic this writer attributed the use of the Reader -Response approach to the Native Baptists. Using these approaches, this writer discovered, contrary to the dominant position in scholarly writings on Native Baptists, that the Native Baptists were orthodox, well organized, engaged in marches for justice and desired the liberation of the oppressed and the oppressors. This work gives a more accurate picture of who the Native Baptists were and how their interpretation of the Bible and sacred literature contributed to the way things happened in the 1865 Native Baptist War. A further study of the Native Baptists needs to determine if there is a co-relationship between the demise of the Native Baptists' institutional structures and the seeming retreat of present-day Baptists from political activism.

Latin America has experienced scripting and digital fabrication, and the alliance between designers and artisans. Taking into account that the revival of crafts has proved very promising in Latin America (Borges, 2015), the objective of this research is to analyse the diversity of cases and select those where designers took an interest for strengthening the artisans’ jobs in the field of pottery and textiles. We found that both revitalised the identity and cultural tradition in their own countries, in a moment when craft seemed to drop in front of industrial production. By preserving traditional materials, pieces continue to be unique and customizable, transcending thus their local origin towards new global markets.

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.