The goal of this thesis is to explore the recent changes in the social landscape of a Wapishana village, due to long-term separation from kin. I consider the impact of a recent educational shift from small scale community based education to regional boarding schools on family life and community structure amongst Amerindian people in the hinterland of Region 9, Guyana. Furthermore, the project analyzes an emergent form of spirit possession that affects almost exclusively young women who live in the dormitories, locally referred to as the sickness. Using the sickness as an analytical lens, the thesis examines the ways in which young Amerindian women navigate a shift in expectations from their parents and communities as well as how they experience this rapid social change and transformation. Various vantage points employed in the analysis of the sickness help to illustrate the complexities of the current lived reality of Amerindian life. By exploring the experience of kinship and community in the Wapishana village of Sand Creek, it is possible to demonstrate how these relationships are produced and reproduced in everyday life through the sharing of space and substance. Furthermore, it is necessary to consider different aspects of the Creole and Amerindian notions of the spiritual world and their intervowenness in Wapishana lives, drawing out human and non-human agency and how they effect change in the world. Additionally, drawing on the anthropology of education, the thesis identifies the influence the state has on people's lives through institutionalized education, and locates this process within the wider context of historical indigenous residential schools. The ethnographic data on the experience of the sickness is put in dialogue and contrasted with other conceptions of spiritual vulnerability in Amerindian communities, examples of ‘mass hysteria' in schools or other institutional settings in other parts of the world, and the Afro-Caribbean experience of spirit possession. Finally, through an analysis of the etiology of the sickness, the final chapter draws on Amazonian literature to examine the embodiment of gender and the local gendered history of knowledge production in the area. The sickness is a phenomenon that permeates life in Southern Guyana for Amerindian youth, their families, and their communities. Undoubtedly, these various themes found in Wapishana young women's lives influence one another, irrespective of an ultimate manifestation of spirit possession. In the concluding section I show how these themes can be placed in the wider Amazonian framework of alterity and ‘Other-becoming', illustrating how this phenomenon provides a productive tool for the analysis of the experience of rapid social change among Amerindian youth and the impact of these transformations throughout the region.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2003. / Advisor: Harvey Feit. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 283-319). Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D. in Anthropology)--Vanderbilt University, May 2010. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pittsburgh, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 238-248).

The late Quaternary palaeoclimatic history of the lowland Southern Hemisphere Tropics of South America (SHTSA) has been little studied and analysis of key climatic events, such as the Last Glacial Maximum (centred ~ 21,000 years ago (21 cal. ka BP)) and the glacial-Holocene transition is limited. Studies from the SH tropical Andes and the Atlantic seaboard demonstrate a strengthening of the South American summer monsoon during the LGM, in tune with the ~ 20 kyr precession orbital cycle. However, palynological studies from SHTSA suggest a drier LGM. There are difficulties in interpreting different palaeoenvironmental proxy records and the extent to which they reflect changes in temperature, precipitation, and/or atmospheric CO2 concentrations. In particular, the palaeoenvironmental significance of palynological data is often unclear. Also, high frequency, millennial-scale events have not been captured in records from the lowland SHTSA due to a lack of high resolution temporal records. Diatoms have been used widely in other parts of the world to reconstruct lake level change and therefore provide an independent proxy for precipitation, and an understanding of the modern diatom ecology is essential for accurate palaeoreconstruction. The main rationale of this thesis is to address the uncertainty of the glacial-Holocene climate in South America. To this end, this thesis aims to: (a) investigate the distribution, ecology, and flora of diatom taxa at Laguna La Gaiba (17°45’S, 57°40’W) (LLG) in the heart of lowland tropical South America, where very few modern diatom studies exist; (b) determine whether modern diatom assemblages at LLG will provide a useful analogue for palaeoenvironmental reconstructions, in particular, lake depth reconstruction; (c) provide a detailed late Quaternary lake level reconstruction for the lowland interior of SHTSA, based upon fossil diatom analysis of a sedimentary core in LLG. Descriptive, quantitative and multivariate analyses were applied to modern diatom assemblages and environmental variables to ascertain the modern diatom environment of LLG. Diatom, pollen, and geochemical analyses, chronologically constrained by 18 AMS 14C dates, were performed on a sediment core extracted from LLG. Key findings indicate: (1) Aulacoseira ambigua, A. ambigua var. robusta. A. distans and A. granulata var. angustissima were the most abundant species. Shallowwater species, such as Staurosira and Eunotia spp., dominated the shallows and littoral zone, whilst deep-water species, such as Aulacoseira sp., dominated in open water; (2) The highest percent variance in the diatom data was explained by depth and pH; (3) Analysis of fossil diatom assemblages from the LLG core demonstrated that the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and late glacial period (prior to 12.5 kyr BP) was drier than present. This corroborates and significantly strengthens pollen-based palaeo-hydrological reconstructions from the same core; (4) An abrupt shift from 12.5 kyr BP from shallow water to deep water diatoms signals major flooding of LLG associated with the transition from relatively drier glacial conditions to wetter Holocene conditions and also highlights an anomalously wet period centred over 12.2 kyr BP that falls within the Younger Dryas chronozone; (5) Deep-water diatoms remain high throughout the Holocene, which means that the mid-Holocene aridity inferred from the pollen data (expansion of seasonally-dry tropical forest) is not captured by the diatom data. These results not only present the modern diatom ecology of a little studied area in lowland Bolivia, but also highlight the potential of diatoms as a proxy for past lake level fluctuations, improving the understanding of late Quaternary palaeoclimate of tropical South America. Used as part of a multiproxy reconstruction, this record has provided a more complete picture of the variation between regions of late Quaternary climate change in South America, as evidence of a dry LGM climate contrasts with the robust, well-dated climate archives of the central Andes and E Brazil. This suggests the climate in the continental interior of SHTSA was not driven by the precesionally-forced monsoon cycle but is in step with changes in glacialinterglacial cycle boundary conditions.

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No description available.

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.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Anthropology, March 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.