This dissertation is the product of both lifework and a 2007-2010 research study. Working, living and parenting in the largest First Nation community in Canada, the Six Nations Grand River Territory, I believe it imperative that any body of work I produce be of direct use to my community as well fill a needed area of research within the field of Ogweho:weh (Original/Indigenous) Education. In order to design a study that would yield results to both these ends, I spent a significant portion of this dissertation explaining Indigenous Theory and Praxis. Subsequent to the expansion of literature on Indigenous theory and Indigenous methodology is the primary document analysis and dialogues which were intended to answer the two research questions of: (1) What changes has the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) made to Ogweho:weh education in Canada; and (2) How does the community understand success at Six Nations? One hundred seventy-three documents (international, national, provincial, and local) and 52 dialogues with community advocates, educators and parents were analyzed using an original policy discourse web entitled Social Particle Webbing. Based on a sociological perspective of particle theory, Social Particle Webbing is a metaphor for identifying areas where marginalized groups can be platformed to enhance their ability to create social change. Social Particle Webbing is comprised of two-tailed threads, similar to a candle burning at both ends. The two competing themes of each thread may run polar or complimentary to each other, but are the embodiment of the written and oral documents which shape the discourse. The Discourse of Ogweho:weh Education was identified to have fourteen companion themes making up the seven threads of: (1)“Real” Self-Determinants; (2 Responsibility; (3)In the Spirit of Equity; (4)Choice in Education; (5)Rationale for Inaction; (6)Societal Opinion of Ogweho:weh; and (7)Success. Although Social Particle Webbing was created to answer the needs of Ogweho:weh education by creating an enculturated metaphorical image of Ogweho:weh Education, it is appropriately applied to all arenas of social change where a people are marginalized and not readily able to make change due to a lack of space, resources, or power.

This dissertation is the product of both lifework and a 2007-2010 research study. Working, living and parenting in the largest First Nation community in Canada, the Six Nations Grand River Territory, I believe it imperative that any body of work I produce be of direct use to my community as well fill a needed area of research within the field of Ogweho:weh (Original/Indigenous) Education. In order to design a study that would yield results to both these ends, I spent a significant portion of this dissertation explaining Indigenous Theory and Praxis. Subsequent to the expansion of literature on Indigenous theory and Indigenous methodology is the primary document analysis and dialogues which were intended to answer the two research questions of: (1) What changes has the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) made to Ogweho:weh education in Canada; and (2) How does the community understand success at Six Nations? One hundred seventy-three documents (international, national, provincial, and local) and 52 dialogues with community advocates, educators and parents were analyzed using an original policy discourse web entitled Social Particle Webbing. Based on a sociological perspective of particle theory, Social Particle Webbing is a metaphor for identifying areas where marginalized groups can be platformed to enhance their ability to create social change. Social Particle Webbing is comprised of two-tailed threads, similar to a candle burning at both ends. The two competing themes of each thread may run polar or complimentary to each other, but are the embodiment of the written and oral documents which shape the discourse. The Discourse of Ogweho:weh Education was identified to have fourteen companion themes making up the seven threads of: (1)“Real” Self-Determinants; (2 Responsibility; (3)In the Spirit of Equity; (4)Choice in Education; (5)Rationale for Inaction; (6)Societal Opinion of Ogweho:weh; and (7)Success. Although Social Particle Webbing was created to answer the needs of Ogweho:weh education by creating an enculturated metaphorical image of Ogweho:weh Education, it is appropriately applied to all arenas of social change where a people are marginalized and not readily able to make change due to a lack of space, resources, or power.

“American Impotence” investigates a continuity between literary representations of masculinity and considerations of national identity in the works of five postwar novelists. In particular, I illustrate the manner in which Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, John Updike’s Couples, Robert Coover’s The Public Burning, Joan Didion’s Democracy and The Last Thing He Wanted, and Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho challenge the patterns of daily life through which a single figure is imagined to be the essential agent of American polity: namely, the self-made individualist, characterized by manly virtues like dominance, aggression, ambition, mastery, vitality, and virility. More specifically, this project examines the manner in which the iconicity of men helps sustain a narrative of “imperilled masculinity” that at once privileges an impossible identity, situated in the representative nucleus of postwar democracy, and forecloses other modalities of political life. Observing the full meaning of the word “potency,” I elucidate the interrelationships between narrative forms, masculine norms, and democratic practice. Ellison’s work ties the maturation of African American boys to the impossibility of full participation in civic life, for instance, while in Updike’s Couples the contradictions of virile manhood manifest in the form of a fatalism that threatens to undo the carefully cultivated social boundaries of early sixties bohemianism; in a variety of ways, The Public Burning and American Psycho represent the iconic nature of masculinity as a psychic threat to those men closest to it, while Didion’s female protagonists find themselves flirting with the promises of a secret agency linked to imperial adventures in Southeast Asia and Central America. In the cultural context of the Cold War, these novelists demonstrate how intensified participation in national fantasies of potency and virility is inevitably disempowering; as an alternative, this dissertation seeks to consider impotence as dissensus detached from the mandates of hegemonic masculinity.

“American Impotence” investigates a continuity between literary representations of masculinity and considerations of national identity in the works of five postwar novelists. In particular, I illustrate the manner in which Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, John Updike’s Couples, Robert Coover’s The Public Burning, Joan Didion’s Democracy and The Last Thing He Wanted, and Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho challenge the patterns of daily life through which a single figure is imagined to be the essential agent of American polity: namely, the self-made individualist, characterized by manly virtues like dominance, aggression, ambition, mastery, vitality, and virility. More specifically, this project examines the manner in which the iconicity of men helps sustain a narrative of “imperilled masculinity” that at once privileges an impossible identity, situated in the representative nucleus of postwar democracy, and forecloses other modalities of political life. Observing the full meaning of the word “potency,” I elucidate the interrelationships between narrative forms, masculine norms, and democratic practice. Ellison’s work ties the maturation of African American boys to the impossibility of full participation in civic life, for instance, while in Updike’s Couples the contradictions of virile manhood manifest in the form of a fatalism that threatens to undo the carefully cultivated social boundaries of early sixties bohemianism; in a variety of ways, The Public Burning and American Psycho represent the iconic nature of masculinity as a psychic threat to those men closest to it, while Didion’s female protagonists find themselves flirting with the promises of a secret agency linked to imperial adventures in Southeast Asia and Central America. In the cultural context of the Cold War, these novelists demonstrate how intensified participation in national fantasies of potency and virility is inevitably disempowering; as an alternative, this dissertation seeks to consider impotence as dissensus detached from the mandates of hegemonic masculinity.

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Philosophische Fakultät--Düsseldorf, 1979-1980. / Bibliogr. p. 198-208.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Donald J. Mrozek / This work examines Maxwell M. Rabb's role in the area of civil rights and race relations from January 1953 through May 1958 during the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Rabb was the first Secretary to the Cabinet, a position created by Eisenhower. In his lesser known duty, Max Rabb quietly developed many aspects of President Eisenhower's civil rights program. Chapter One describes Rabb's pivotal role in ending segregation in the military establishment to include the Navy and the Veterans Administration. In this chapter Rabb is a lone operator, personally meeting with principal actors in the Eisenhower Administration and U.S. Congress to end segregation. Chapter Two examines how Rabb participated in and helped to develop the various organizations of the White House. As the organizations within the Eisenhower White House matured, Rabb was able to use them as roads into the problem of civil rights and to use their power to advance civil rights. The final chapter focuses on the confluence of race relations and human rights on the one hand with U.S. domestic and foreign policy on the other. The chapter uses four cases studies to illustrate the growing importance of American race relations in world affairs after World War II. Max Rabb's participation in each case serves as a reminder that the American domestic sphere had become a cause of international concern and could damage the credibility of U.S democratic values in the a world where racial sensitivity was on the rise and increasingly a factor in international relations. This work ends by concluding that Rabb's effectiveness was severely limited by President Eisenhower's narrow understanding of the limits of government. Rabb was a New Deal Republican serving in the administration of a man who rejected the activism required by New Deal Liberalism. Though Rabb served Eisenhower well, it was Eisenhower who failed to sense the full scope of the problems in U.S. civil rights and race relations.

Ce mémoire explore comment Edward Albee peut être perçu comme un postmoderniste, s’appuyant sur une compréhension du postmodernisme formulée par Linda Hutcheon et le contexte américain pendant les longues années 1960 pour examiner de façon critique deux des premières pièces d’Albee. Les pièces en question, The Zoo Story (1959) et Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), dépeignent des personnages qui ne peuvent supporter la ligne floue entre les faits et la fiction de la condition postmoderne, où il n’y a pas de motifs ou de vérités incontestables. Le besoin désespéré de vivre dans la certitude absolue et l’assurance fait que les personnages nient la condition postmoderne, et s’engagent dans un processus d’oubli forcé de leur appréhension de la condition postmoderne et des différents événements qui les ont amenés à elle. Les personnages des deux pièces utilisent différents métarécits pour créer un sens et vivre leur vie avec l’illusion de la certitude complète. Le processus de l’oubli forcé sera déduit à travers les théories de la mémoire et de l’oubli tel que compris et expliqué par Jonathan K. Foster. Le mémoire démontre comment, en raison de leur cartographie de toute leur vie sur la base de différentes métanarrations, les personnages finissent par vivre d’une manière aliénée et inauthentique. L’état apathique et émasculé de leurs identités les font se livrer à des actes extrêmes de violence et de rage. Albee montre comment les identités de ses personnages sont compromises de différentes façons en subissant leur mort sociale. / This thesis explores how Edward Albee can be perceived as a postmodernist, relying on an understanding of postmodernism formulated by Linda Hutcheon and the American context during the long 1960s to critically scrutinize two of Albee’s early plays. The plays in question, The Zoo Story (1959) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), portray characters who cannot bear the blurred line between fact and fiction of the postmodern condition, wherein there are no unquestionable grounds or truths. The desperate need to live in absolute certainty and assurance makes characters deny the postmodern condition, and engage in a process of forced forgetfulness to forget about their apprehension of the postmodern condition and different events which brought them to it. The characters in both plays use different metanarratives to create meaning and live their lives with the illusion of complete certainty. The process of forced forgetfulness will be deduced through theories of memory and forgetting as understood and explained by Jonathan K. Foster. The thesis demonstrates how, due to them charting their entire lives on the basis of different metanarratives, characters end up living in an alienated and inauthentic manner. The apathetic and emasculated state of their identities make them indulge in extreme acts of violence and rage. Albee shows how identities of his characters get compromised in different ways by suffering their social death.

This study explores the struggle of the Catholic Church to be true to itself and its mission in the midst of other religions, in the context of the non-Catholic American culture, and in relation to the modern world and its discontents. As milestones of the global interfaith movement, American religious freedom and pluralism, and of the relation of religion to modernity, the Chicago Parliaments of Religions offer a unique window through which to view this Catholic struggle at work in the religious public square created by the Parliaments and the evolution of that struggle over the course of the century framed by the two Chicago events. In relation to other religions, the Catholic Church stretched itself from an exclusivist position of being the only true and good religion to an inclusivist position of recognizing that truth and good can be present in other religions. Uniquely, Catholic involvement in the centennial Parliament made the Church stretch itself even further, beyond the exclusivist-inclusivist spectrum into a pluralist framework in which the Church acted humbly as one religion among many. In relation to American culture, the Catholic Church stretched itself from a Eurocentric and monarchic worldview with claims of Catholic supremacy to the American alternative of democracy, religious freedom, and the separation of church and state. In relation to modernity, the Church stretched itself from viewing the modern world as an enemy to be fought and conquered to befriending modernity and designing some specific accommodations to it. In these three relationships, there was indeed a shift, but not at all a clean break. Instead a stretch occurred, acknowledging a lived intra-Catholic tension between religious exclusivism and inclusivism, between a universal Catholic identity and Catholic inculturation in America (and in other cultures), and between the immutability of Catholic eternal truths and their translatability into the new languages offered by the modern world. In all this the Second Vatican Council was the major catalyst. For all three cases the Chicago Parliaments of Religions serve as environments conducive to the raising of important questions about Catholic identity, the Catholic understanding of non-Catholics, and Catholic interfaith relations.

This study explores the struggle of the Catholic Church to be true to itself and its mission in the midst of other religions, in the context of the non-Catholic American culture, and in relation to the modern world and its discontents. As milestones of the global interfaith movement, American religious freedom and pluralism, and of the relation of religion to modernity, the Chicago Parliaments of Religions offer a unique window through which to view this Catholic struggle at work in the religious public square created by the Parliaments and the evolution of that struggle over the course of the century framed by the two Chicago events. In relation to other religions, the Catholic Church stretched itself from an exclusivist position of being the only true and good religion to an inclusivist position of recognizing that truth and good can be present in other religions. Uniquely, Catholic involvement in the centennial Parliament made the Church stretch itself even further, beyond the exclusivist-inclusivist spectrum into a pluralist framework in which the Church acted humbly as one religion among many. In relation to American culture, the Catholic Church stretched itself from a Eurocentric and monarchic worldview with claims of Catholic supremacy to the American alternative of democracy, religious freedom, and the separation of church and state. In relation to modernity, the Church stretched itself from viewing the modern world as an enemy to be fought and conquered to befriending modernity and designing some specific accommodations to it. In these three relationships, there was indeed a shift, but not at all a clean break. Instead a stretch occurred, acknowledging a lived intra-Catholic tension between religious exclusivism and inclusivism, between a universal Catholic identity and Catholic inculturation in America (and in other cultures), and between the immutability of Catholic eternal truths and their translatability into the new languages offered by the modern world. In all this the Second Vatican Council was the major catalyst. For all three cases the Chicago Parliaments of Religions serve as environments conducive to the raising of important questions about Catholic identity, the Catholic understanding of non-Catholics, and Catholic interfaith relations.

Le pouvoir de marché des entreprises a toujours été un sujet d’intérêt tant du point de vue du bien-être économique que de l’allocation des ressources. D’une part, le pouvoir de marché incite les entreprises à moins produire - réduisant le bien-être des consommateurs et d’autre part, la variation de la marge bénéficiaire entre les entreprises induit une friction sur l’allocation des intrants et diminue la productivité agrégée. Suite aux récents débats sur la concentration des parts de marché dans l’économie américaine par une minorité d’entreprises, la question du pouvoir de marché et ses implications ont été largement débattues. Cette thèse, divisée en trois chapitres, contribue à cette vaste littérature d’étude du pouvoir de marché de l’entreprise. Le premier chapitre examine les causes de la hausse des marges bénéficiaires aux États-Unis dans un environnement où les entreprises accumulent des actifs intangibles. En effet, au cours des quatre dernières décennies, l’économie américaine a connu une augmentation en moyenne des marges bénéficiaires par les entreprises et une augmen- tation de la concentration des parts de marché. Ces faits ont suscité des inquiétudes quant au pouvoir de marché détenu par certaines entreprises et à l’étendue de la concur- rence. Dans ce chapitre, nous proposons une nouvelle méthode d’agrégation des marges bénéficiaires des entreprises utilisant la distribution des parts de marché. Ensuite, nous documentons trois faits empiriques basés sur la distribution jointe des marges et des parts de marché des entreprises cotées en bourse. Premièrement, la hausse de la marge agrégée a été bien inferieure à celle suggerée par la moyenne. Deuxièmement, les plus grandes entreprises en termes de part de marché, appelées "superstars", ne possèdent pas les marges bénéficiaires les plus élevées et troisièmement, la hausse de la marge agrégée résulte principalement d’une réallocation des parts de marché, associée conjointement à une variation des marges des entreprises. Pour expliquer ces faits, nous proposons un modèle où les entreprises accumulent des actifs intangibles sous forme de base de clients le long de leur cycle de vie, en investissant une valeur fixe de leurs ventes. Une baisse dans la rentabilité des entreprises entrainent une réduction temporaire des marges, afin que ces dernières fixent des prix bas et attirent de nouveaux clients. Une hausse des investissements en base de clientèle profite aux entreprises ayant de fortes opportunités de croissance, leur permettant d’accroitre les parts de vente et d’augmenter davantage leur marge bénéficiaire. Ainsi, l’augmentation des investissements en base de clientèle au cours des quatre dernières décennies explique de moitié l’augmentation globale des marges bénéficiaires aux États-Unis. Le deuxième chapitre examine les implications d’une variation endogène des marges bénéficiaires sur la productivité des usines le long de leur cycle de vie. En effet, la variation des marges bénéficiaires est une potentiel source d’inefficience dans l’allocation des ressources, réduisant la productivité globale. En utilisant l’enquête annuelle sur le secteur manufacturé en Colombie, nous montrons une diminution de la dispersion des marges bénéficiaires avec l’âge, suggérant une convergence des marges bénéficiaires des usines avec l’âge. Nous expliquons et testons cette dynamique à travers d’une théorie d’apprentissage de la demande le long du cycle de vie (à l’exemple de la formation d’une base de la clientèle). Les nouvelles usines obtiennent une productivité et une de demande dès leur entrée et apprenent de leur demande en ajustant leur marge bénéficiaire. Au cours de leur vie, elles accumulent leur demande, ce qui entraine leur croissance et une hausse de leur marge bénéficiaire. La convergence résulte d’une inadéquation entre l’échelle optimale qu’une usine souhaite opérer compte tenu de sa productivité et son échelle de production actuel. Le modèle prédit que la grande dispersion des marges bénéficiaires à l’entrée du marché, entraine une inefficience dans l’allocation des ressources productives et reduit la productivité moyenne à des nouvelles usines. Au fur et à mesure que l’usine prend de l’age, cette friction à l’allocation diminue et contribue à augmenté la productivité moyenne des usines agées. Dans le troisième chapitre, j’étudie les gains de bien-être associés à des nouveaux investissements en infrastructures de transport. Il s’agit d’un travail de recherche con- joint avec Mathilde Lebrand de la Banque mondiale. En effet, de nombreux travaux ne prennent pas en compte la demande de services de transport lors de l’étude des gains associés à de nouveaux projets d’investissements en infrastructures. Nous développons ainsi un modèle Ricardien multi-pays, multisectoriel avec un secteur des transports dont l’équilibre est déterminer de manière endogène et qui présente deux caractéristiques prin- cipales : une diversité de modes de transport et l’absence de concurrence dans le secteur de transport. Les predictions nous montre que une hausse des investissements en in- frastructures réduisent les coûts d’expédition selon trois marges : une réduction du coût marginal des transporteurs, une diminution de la marge de profit des transporteurs et une reallocation des parts de marché vers les modes de transport les plus bénefiques. Ces deux dernières marges sont particulièrement affectées par les préférences des importateurs en matière de choix de mode de transport. / Firms’ market power has always been a topic of interest in terms of welfare and resource allocations analysis. On the one hand, market power reduces the firms’ incentive to produce, reducing consumer welfare. On the other hand, the variation in firms’ markup induces friction to input allocation and lowers aggregate productivity. With the ongoing debate on sales concentration in the US economy by a few firms, there is a lot of question concerning the causes and implications of market power. This thesis, divided into three chapters, contributes to this vast literature of studying the firm’s market power. The first chapter discusses the causes of US markup rise in an environment where firms are building intangibles assets. Indeed, over the last four decades, both the average price markups charged by firms and market shares concentration have increased. This raised concerns about market power and the extent of competition. I develop a new method to aggregate firm-level markups using the sales shares distribution. I then document three facts based on the joint distribution of markups and sales shares among publicly listed firms. First, the rise in the aggregate markup has been much less than that suggested by average markups. Second, the largest sales firms-called "superstar firms" are not at the top of the markups distribution and third, the rise in US markup has been driven by a reallocation of sales shares, jointly associated with a change in firm-level markup. To explain these trends, I develop a model where firms accumulate customers base over their life cycle by investing a fixed share of their sales. Changes in firm profitability lead to a temporary reduction in markups as firms attract new customers. An exogenous increase in the share of investment into the customer base benefits firms with high growth oppor- tunities, allowing them to gain more sales share and increase their markup. Therefore, I find that the rise in the share of investment into customer base over the last four decades explains half of the overall increase in US markup. The second chapter discusses the implications of an endogenous variation in markups to plant productivity over the life cycle. Indeed, markup varies across plants, inducing an inefficiency in allocating resources that lower the aggregate productivity. Using the Annual Columbia Manufacturing survey, I find a decrease in markup dispersion with age, suggesting a convergence of all plant-level markup with age in cross-sectional. I explain and test this dynamic through active learning on demand by plants over the life cycle (e.g. customer base formation). New plants draw a productivity shock and demand shock at entry and actively learn about their demand by adjusting their markup. Over their life, they build their demand and growth in both size and markup. This convergence results from a mismatch between the optimal scale a plant desire to operate and its current scale for a given level of productivity. The model predicts that the high variation in markups at entry induces inefficient input allocation, lowering the average productivity. Along with age, the declines in markups dispersion reduce the allocative inefficiency and foster productivity growth over the life cycle. In the third chapter, I study the welfare gain from new infrastructures investments. It is joint work with Mathilde Lebrand from the World Bank. Indeed, many frameworks don’t take into account the demand for transport services when studying trade policies. We develop a multi-countries and multi-sectoral Ricardian model with an endogenous transport sector. We introduce two main features for endogeneity: the multi-modality and a lack of competition in the transport sector. New infrastructure investments reduce the shipping cost along three margins: a transporters marginal cost reduction, a decline in the transporters profit margins and a reallocation of market shares across shipping modes. The two last margins are driven by the shipping mode preference for a good.