My thesis argues that political authority produces very particular regimes of informality. The description of the city of Luanda that I undertake is concerned with explaining the process of political transformation. The city of Luanda was mostly built during colonialism to spatially accommodate extant race and class divisions. The million or more Angolans who occupied those differentiated spaces in the aftermath of independence challenged the colonial distribution of space. I explain the recent transformation that the city has undergone by focusing less on the theory and practice of urban planning, and more on the inscription and influence of political patronage onto space. Political power, then, has been a force in the spatial transformation of Luanda. These developments have taken place against backdrop of a very particular politico-economic structure, which has two consequences that I explore in the remainder of the dissertation. The first one concerns the disjuncture in formal terms of the relationship between the state and society. As one of the second largest oil producing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa after Nigeria, the Angolan government is not dependent on the population for the extraction of tax resources. Consequently, the government is not only unaccountable to the population and civil society, but by being out of joints with large swaths of the population forces most Angolans to reproduce themselves beyond any formal intervention of the state. The second consequence can be seen in the informal links between rulers and the ruled which are sustained by other institutions of intermediation, such as the ruling party, but even more importantly the family. In post-socialist and neo-liberal Angola, family is no longer the domain of private relationships. Family has come to signify the intermediation between the state and society. For affluent Angolans, family ties to the political elite allow them to share the distribution of national resources. For poor Angolans, family is the unit of production by means of which ends can be met.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Supervisors: Susan Deans-Smith and Sandra Lauderdale Graham. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Hamburg, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 461-491).

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Murdoch University, 2005. / Thesis submitted to the Division of Arts. Bibliography: leaves 122-129.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2008. / Title from file title page. Yiu-man Barry Chung, committee chair; Kenneth B. Matheny, Gregory L. Brack, Francis A. McCarty, committee members. Description based on contents viewed July 17, 20009. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Bordeaux III, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 597-605).

Moustapha Dimé (1952-1998) is one of Senegal's most well known sculptors of the late 20th century. Despite his local and international clout, Dimé remains an enigmatic figure in art historical discourse. Documentation of his early years (prior to 1990) and the sculptures he achieved during this time is perfunctory. Despite more numerous publications on his works dating from the early nineties until his death, this dissertation is the first critical analysis of the artist and his contributions to post-colonial art and scholarship in Senegal. Over the course of a sustained professional career, Dimé engaged with multiple aspects of the practice of sculpture. He apprenticed with street carvers and furniture makers and then enrolled at the Centre de Formation Artisanale in Dakar to study woodworking. He subsequently attended the École Nationale des Beaux Arts in Senegal. By the time he reached middle age, Dimé was working in a style known in Senegal as récupération - in which found and acquired objects are assembled into a finished sculpture. Most often, scholars view Dimé's récupération works as a definitive rupture with his early carved work. This is one interpretation I challenge in this dissertation. Analysis of archival material reveals that Dimé's récupération works, while a departure from carving, were not a rejection of his earlier styles. Rather, I present evidence to suggest that Dimé arrived at récupération through a sustained investigation of sculptural methodology over the course of his career. In assessing the entirety of Dimé's oeuvre, one finds a continuous exploration of the concepts of identity, aesthetics, and spirituality as these are inscribed onto the sculpted form. Interpreted thus, Dimé's sculptures define a much more calculated approach to material and to the meaning of sculpture in post-colonial Senegal than has been previously understood.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2006. / Title from title screen. Kathryn A. Kozaitis, committee chair; Emanuela Guano, Cassandra White, committee members. Electronic text (207 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed May 15, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 196-203).

Thesis (doctoral)--Paris, EHESS, 1998.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2005. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 263-273). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.