Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Duquesne University, 2006. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-226) and index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed June 11, 2007). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 183-197).

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The Sultanate of Oman’s health system has developed rapidly since 1970, with the discovery of oil as well as the strong central government of Sultan Qaboos bin Said. However, despite its investment and dedication to improving the health care available to its citizens, Oman has just begun to address concerns linked to cultural beliefs and social perceptions, including mental health and reproductive health. This study examines how the government has addressed mental and reproductive health, the realities on the ground, and the ways in which cultural perceptions and recent social change influence these health challenges. This study is based on semi-structured interviews with Omani health professionals that have been used to identify hurdles as well as opportunities that exist to strengthen the quality of care in these newly emerging fields in the Omani public health system.

This thesis examines the case of civil marriage in Lebanon as an example of the contestation of sectarian identities and a political system. Sectarianism in Lebanon and in the Middle East has become not only a seemingly naturally-produced social categorisation, but also the hegemonic epistemological concept through which every social and political act is interpreted. In contrast to this, the Lebanese civil married spouses interviewed in this thesis, challenge sectarian practices and discourse. I examined the context and identities civil married spouses practice. I conclude that certain sites of resistance favour the emergence of civil marriage, where individuals perform alternative practices and political identities. Practices of resistance may cycically trigger the emergence of other pockets of resistance where contestation happens. Nonetheless, as ethnographic research shows, isolated cases of civil marriage happen in many different contexts and circumstances. This research also investigates the limits of civil marriage as acts of social change. I have identified intention and consciousness as key drive which allow political acts to become transformative of power. Indeed, spouses that exhibited high levels of political consciousness identified at the same time sectarianism as an oppressive system to which they intended to subvert with their act of civil marriage. Further, politically-conscious-civilly married spouses demonstrated intersectional subversion not only to sectarianism, but also to other oppressing systems such as patriarchy, kinship or social classes. Ultimately, they contested sectarianism in a non-excluive fashion when it came to their choice of marriage. Finally, resistance, as a reflection of power, is never pure. That is, even self-conscious and self-reflexive individuals that contest sectarianism or other systems of powers do it while embedded in the same structures of power. Confronting one form of power in one context does not mean that they will confront the same form of power in another context.

Through this practice based research I argue that cultural democracy as a way of thinking contests dominant models of commissioning art to effect social change. A method of generative metaphor of critical distance emerges through four projects based on a contextual and theoretical framework that tests the conditions for recognising cultural democracy as a critical practice. Cultural democracy is distinct from the democratisation of culture, which means providing free, accessible professional culture to all. The socially engaged art commission is, I argue, an example of the democratisation of culture based on predefined economic, aesthetic and social values. Cultural democracy disrupts expected forms of participation and communication of culture, drawing attention to these values. As an uninvited act of disobedience, it is thought and practised as individuals reclaim the right to express themselves, creating conflicts with expected norms of behaviour. This research project began in 2006, nine years into New Labour's administration, and reflects an urgent question of the time: what are the implications of increasing dependency on a culture of commissioning art to effect social change that might perpetuate, rather than radically rethink, social injustices' These concerns are even more significant in a political and economic climate where public funding for critical, non-conformist participation in culture slips further down the agenda. My own career is a symptom of New Labour's neoliberal policies of social inclusion and the arts. A new period of 'austerity' may imply fewer paid opportunities for this professional class of socially engaged art workers, coupled with a distancing of the recognition of cultural democracy as a possible alternative, with further reliance on free, precarious cultural labour. For this reason, I hope this research will be of use to those who also find it an urgent task to address these issues critically and practically.

This dissertation can broadly be summarized as an examination of the construction and maintenance of a specific type of “authentic” American identity through the lens of folk music. Drawing from interpretive perspectives within the sociology of culture and social psychology, social constructionism and symbolic interactionism in particular, I combine ethnographic research with 61 interviews at two different “folk musicians’ festivals” (festivals where attendees, not hired professionals, produce the music). My principal focus at these festivals concerns the various practices and stories surrounding the creation and performance of original folk music. I use the empirical platform of musicians’ festivals, where folk songwriters are plenty, combined with the theoretical synthesis of music and narrative, to examine how such practices and stories shape, and are shaped by, culture, emotion, and identity. Specifically, I am interested in the cultural “work” accomplished by the interrelationships among music and narrative at festivals, around songwriting, and in songs, particularly as such “work” relates to the (re)production and reception of folk and festival culture, participants’ emotional experiences, the construction and maintenance of participants’ personal and collective identities, and the purposeful evocation of social change. In attending to the importance of process and meaning-making, I examine the process through which one accomplishes authenticity as a folk and festival member, the creative process of songwriting, and the process through which listeners experience and interpret “good songs.” I offer the concepts (and processes) of songwriting as inquiry and songwriting in action to account for how these interrelationships “work” for songwriters and listeners, but also for sociologists, particularly in terms of including the (mostly neglected) lived and embodied dimensions of emotional experience. Throughout, I explore how stories and practices in and around the process of musical production and performance are largely influenced by broader cultural narratives that circulate in and around folk music culture, particularly as they relate to the notion of “authentic identity” through emotionality, creativity, and social justice.