<p> The purpose of this grounded theory study was to understand and describe key factors contributing to the success of Taiwanese women leaders in the predominantly male context of contemporary churches in Taiwan. Participants included five effective female senior pastors and fourteen followers from these leaders' churches. Data were collected using in-depth, semi-structured interviews and participant observations. Data analysis yielded six major leadership characteristics in three dimensions: (a) Interactive dimension&mdash;spiritual leadership, relational leadership, team-building leadership, (b) Task dimension&mdash;organizational leadership, productive leadership, and (c) Change dimension&mdash;visionary leadership. </p><p> There is no rigid, linear, step-by-step progressive relationship among the six characteristics; rather, the linkage is reciprocal. Further, despite individual differences, all six major leadership characteristics were present in all leader participants. Also, while all leaders clearly saw spiritual leadership as the most essential, all the qualities were deemed important. </p>

<p> The current hermeneutic qualitative phenomenological study explored the impact of <i>Harambee</i> tradition of philanthropy on the philanthropic activities of Kenyan immigrants in the Twin Cities. The face to face interviews of 12 Kenyan immigrants yielded six themes which illustrated that <i>harambee;</i> skews towards social needs limited to Kenyans and other similar groups, conform to familiarity and comfort, espouse shared responsibility, enhance community participation and mobilization, maintain continuity of philanthropy and harmonizes altruistic behavior and satisfaction. Two subthemes that emerged indicate that <i>harambee</i> is for common good and is not easy to replicate in other settings. The findings of this study show that first-generation Kenyan immigrants continue to practice <i> harambee</i> years after migration. It is recommended that a Kenyan cultural community center be established in the Twin Cities to preserve the Kenyan history and culture as well as to provide avenues for research on Kenyan immigrant issues and other similar groups in the United States.</p>

<p> Research on homelessness has tended to be divided theoretically between looking at personal pathology and emphasizing structural forces, but both have focused on street and shelter life. While there is a growing consensus in Anthropology that research should place homelessness within structural context, homelessness continues to be framed within the discourse of medicalization. This discourse continues into supportive housing programs for the formerly homeless, an area that has not yet been focused on much in research.</p><p> Based on ethnographic research conducted at Lamp Community in Los Angeles, California this thesis examines the continuity of struggle and vulnerability that continues even once the homeless are placed in supportive housing. It explores how this vulnerability has structural origins and how various levels of subjective and objective violence play out in the course of people's lives to maintain that vulnerability. By reuniting the issues of extreme poverty and homelessness, current measures to address homelessness are called into question.</p>

<p> This dissertation investigates the relationship between community structure and social dynamics and farmers' livelihood and land-use decisions in settlements of land reform in the Brazilian Amazon. Using social capital theory, it addresses the following questions: How can social capital be conceptualized in areas of land reform in the Amazon region and how does it change over time? What is the role of local organizations in community formation and development in colonization areas of the Amazon region? How has settlement design influenced farmers' participation in local organizations? How does social capital within rural communities influence the dynamics of household economy in the Amazon region? How does social capital, in the form of norms of reciprocity and boundaries, affect land-use/land-cover change at farm and community levels? To answer these questions, this dissertation combines ethnographic data, social-network analyses, linear regression analyses, multi-temporal remote sensing, and Geographic Information Systems. This is a unique, in-depth study of social capital &mdash;in the form of social networks, participation in local organizations, and norms of reciprocity&mdash; taking into consideration the particularities of areas of land reform organized around a regime of private property. Three communities were chosen for this study: Nova Alian&ccedil;a, Po&ccedil;o Branco, and Serra Grande. The arrival of more capitalized farmers in Nova Alian&ccedil;a and Po&ccedil;o Branco, who tend to invest in a more diversified agriculture, has led to high incidence of land turnover, resulting in higher rates of deforestation. Conversely, Serra Grande has developed a system of boundary norms that has limited land turnover, resulting in lower rates of deforestation. In these communities, networks based on trust provide for the households' immediate needs, furthering their access to community organizations. Although settlement design is not a hindrance to interaction and trust, it results in differential participation in some local organizations, such as the farmers' associations. The latter contribute to the upward mobility of poor farmers by providing access to credit, though benefits are not equally shared among the residents. However, these associations' heavy dependence on governmental assistance jeopardize the positive outcomes they intend, limiting their effectiveness and undermining trust and cooperation among farmers. These findings will help small farmers in the Amazon and elsewhere recognize the intrinsic value of local organization and collective action, and how these intertwine in influencing their quality of life, sociocultural identity, sense of belonging, and perspectives towards the future.</p>

<p>This dissertation examines the linguistic practices 9&ndash;13 year-old African American students who attended an after school program in Washington, D.C. used to negotiate schooling and achievement. It builds on existing anthropological research on how young people are socialized into their communities, classrooms, and the wider society via language. It renders this process particular to the students&rsquo; lived experiences of race, poverty, and contemporary schooling reform. By focusing on linguistic practice and the language ideologies held by the students, the dissertation explores the difficulties racially identified minority students face in school when they are asked by the wider society&rsquo;s major socializing agents and institutions to exchange cultural identity for academic success. </p><p> The dissertation is based on 8 months of ethnographic fieldwork that was conducted from October 2010&ndash;June 2011. During these months, over 108 hours of data were recorded from 30 preadolescents who served as research subjects. Informal interviews with after school staff and adults from the local community were also conducted. In the third and final phase (April&ndash;June 2011), focus groups were conducted with 12 of the students. </p><p> The dissertation provides evidence that among same- and similar-age peers, the students often repurposed the linguistic practices they learned from adults, and in ways that did not always align with the dominant expectations of the more socially powerful members of either the community or the after school program. It argues that the types of AAVE-based &ldquo;conflict&rdquo; talk students test in peer contexts perform positive socializing functions but that these discourse styles were nevertheless often interpreted, by adults as well as the students themselves, as unpreparedness or unwillingness to achieve in school. </p><p> This study revisits major theorizing of hegemony, critical consciousness, and &ldquo;the Black underclass.&rdquo; It suggests that while preadolescent-age African Americans try to construct &ldquo;achievement&rdquo; on their own terms via linguistic practice, they are not always successful because they are not empowered in the classroom, situationally or in the long term. It concludes by recommending ways in which educational practitioners and theorists can better understand how academically marginalized students engage with schooling and how they can support these students&rsquo; negotiated achievements. </p>

<p> This is a study of contemporary jazz culture in post-apartheid South Africa. It demonstrates that the significance of jazz can productively be understood from the perspective of listeners, complementing the necessary attention that has historically been afforded to the creators and performers of the music. It describes the rich social life that has emerged around the collecting and sharing of jazz recordings by associations of listeners in this country. In these social contexts, a semi-public culture of listening has been created, it is argued, that is distinct from the formal jazz recording, broadcast and festival sectors, and extends across various social, cultural, linguistic and related boundaries to constitute a vibrant dimension of vernacular musical life. South African jazz appreciation societies illustrate that collecting may be a global phenomenon but that recordings can take on quite particular social lives in specific times and places, and that the extension of consumer capitalism to places like South Africa does not always automatically involve the same kinds of possessive individualism that they do in other settings, and might even serve as a catalyst for new forms of creativity. The study demonstrates, moreover, that what is casually referred to as "the jazz public" is an internally variegated and often enduringly segregated constellation of scenes, several of which remain quite intimate and, indeed, beyond the view of the "general public." The study foregrounds how one specific dimension of jazz culture &ndash; the modes of sociability with which the music has become associated among its listening devotees &ndash; can assume decidedly local forms and resonances, becoming part of the country's jazz heritage in its own right and throwing into relief the potential breadth, range and contrasts in the ways that jazz writ large can be figured and recontextualised as it is vernacularized around the world. The study recognizes the significant role that jazz appreciation societies play in creating culturally resonant grassroots social settings for this music, documents and analyses the creativity with which they do so, and considers the broader implications of their contribution to the musical elaboration of public space in contemporary South Africa.</p>

<p> Dominica has been recognized for its landscape containing hundreds of rivers and receiving high rainfall, and "our water belongs to the world," or so says many Dominican citizens, and their government. A schism exists in the understanding of the water resources of Dominica. Local perceptions are in conflict with regional climate change data. Where climate change research has found Dominica to be high risk for water quality and quantity, locals maintain the mindset that there is an overabundance of the resource. Local epistemologies influence governmental water management practices, which presently focus on exportation of the resource. In efforts of economic development, while trusting that there is a surplus of water, Dominica leases billions of gallons of water each year to foreign companies. A popular conception on the island is that there is an abundance of water, and therefore, it should be shared globally. This unique social construction of Dominican water has been a foundation leading to the sale of billions of gallons of fresh water to international corporations. However, the bulk exportation of water is occurring in the context of climate change, and thus, the availability of water will be impacted by changes in annual rainfall, sea level rise, increased temperatures, and more severe hurricanes. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of how the social understanding of water in Dominica was constructed, and what this means in relation to resource exportation and climate change. This research-based paper explores Dominican perceptions of water abundance and sustainability.</p>

<p> From 1914 to 1990, Assemblies of God (AG) church planting efforts in Africa produced approximately ten thousand local churches and two million adherents. Since 1990, African Assemblies of God (AAG) churches emphasized ambitious church planting initiatives resulting in the addition of approximately fifty-four thousand local churches and fourteen million believers. This study examines the narratives of AAG church planters in West Africa to ascertain those factors influencing their church planting perceptions and activities in relation to Pentecostal missiology, the sociocultural context, leadership, and organizational development. </p><p> In order to discover those factors influencing church multiplication and growth, interview narratives of twelve leaders and fifty-one AAG church planters in West Africa were examined, delimited to the Anglophone context of Nigeria and the Francophone context of Togo. Using a qualitative data collection and analysis process known as grounded theory methodology, I discovered those factors that influence the perceptions and activities of church planters in the contexts of the study. </p><p> The findings show that church planters experience transformation in Christ and seek the transformation of their past, represented in the village, by planting new churches of transformed converts. This is a process of "backwarding" the Gospel to the village. These efforts lead to a renewal of the African self in a search for true belonging, enabling redemption of the African past and reclamation of the African future through Christ in Spirit empowerment. Church planting results in the local AAG church being a place of belonging and belonging to a place. This is described as ecclesiastical belonging, dimensionalized accordingly as proximal church planting, accessible church planting, and assimilation church planting. Belonging in these contexts is experiential through Gospel proclamation in Spirit empowerment to meet African aspirations to experience the divine. Additionally, belonging is relational, for the local AAG belongs to a global Pentecostal faith community.</p>

<p> Demonstrations in response to the harsh austerity budget in Greece which cut valuable government services, and the civil unrest in Athens specifically, are an outward, visible response to economic crisis. In an androcentric society such as Greece, women are disproportionately affected by the austerity measures because of the feminization of budget cuts. This ethnographic study explores how middle class women in Athens are coping economically, politically and socially in a national and global financial crisis. Through studying middle class Greek women, one can intensively illustrate the faults of neoliberal economic policies that pride themselves on the creation of the so-called middle class while simultaneously eliminating it. This research examines the survival strategies and adaptation methods of middle class women in Athens as well as placing them within the global economic context further displaying the fallacy of neoliberal economic policies as an economic growth agenda.</p>

This thesis argues that women's bodies are constituted by discourses about them. It explores the operations of power over women's bodies by analyzing the way in which the maternal body is constructed in the discourses of law, medicine and culture. Chapter One provides a theoretical context for this thesis. It examines the organization of knowledge and its relationship to power within the Western liberal tradition. Power is implicated in the production and dissemination of knowledge about the maternal body in two ways. First, scientific knowledge is privileged in legal and cultural discourses with the effect that knowledge claims based on experience are discredited. Second, scientific knowledge about the fetus, divined through the routine application of diagnostic technologies, has generated new opportunities for scrutinizing the maternal body. This information has been used to create expectations about which bodies are appropriate for reproductive purposes. These points are explored in Chapters Two and Three. Chapter Two is a study of cultural discourses about two women whose pregnancies were condemned on the basis that their bodies deviated from the ideal maternal body. In these stories, each woman was represented as a bad mother for pursuing her pregnancy against medical advice. Chapter Three is a study of the law's response to women who have failed to comply with medical advice deemed necessary for fetal well-being. It analyzes the strategies and implications of legally regulating pregnant women. Overall, this thesis poses a challenge to the way that the maternal body is represented by excavating the partial nature of the claims upon which these representations are based. Further, it argues for a re-conceptualization of the maternal body.