<p> This thesis used group and individual interviews to collect and study discourse produced by both self-defined heterosexual and self-defined homosexual males, living in a socially progressive region of the United States, in order to evaluate how the male subjects appease male gender expectations, as is still socially expected today, while also abstaining from expressing homophobia, as is also expected today in such environments. While the analysis suggests that self-defined heterosexual subjects in this research indeed produced hegemonic, discriminatory utterances toward the homosexual and female community, a positive aspect of this discrimination is the fact that the same males who produce utterances in line with homophobia often do so in a way that is indirect and even seemingly unintentional due to a proposed lack of understanding. Implications and suggestions derived from this research thus include a need for more education and awareness in the areas of gender, sexual orientation, and particularly the subtleties of discursive forms of discrimination and dominance that maintain hegemony and victimization even in more progressive locations in space and time.</p>

This thesis is an examination of the process of learning to mother as experienced by women in Scotland between 1945 and 2004. The research involved interviews with mothers and their adult daughters – the latter also being mothers – as well as consulting archival sources and contemporary, professional advisory material available either to the mothers or to professionals who interacted with mothers.

<p>To understand the life-course narratives of women who leave the California prison system, life history interviews were used. The focus was on how they perceive their identities and how their life trajectories have been influenced by social institutions (i.e., family and education). Reform to California penal policy is recommended based on the experiences discussed in the interviews. It is thus proposed, based on the narratives, that policy be community-oriented for effective prevention, intervention, and reintegration programming and strategies. While reform is needed within government, it must largely come from within communities in which crime and trauma have been normalized. Part of the process is changing the way in which communities are defined as ?ghetto? or ?crime-ridden? and how such definition influences women?s lives. To change how women in this study are defined socially and legally, public perception of them has to expand beyond the lens of crime and conviction.

Thesis (M.A.)--Lehigh University, 2009. / Advisers: John Pettegrew; Dawn Keetley.

<p> The following dissertation is an historical archaeological study of the material culture of gendered protective magic used by Anglo-Europeans in seventeenth-century New England as a tactic to construct boundaries that mitigated perceived personal, social, spiritual, and environmental dangers. Such boundary construction was paramount in the seventeenth-century battle between good and evil epitomized by the belief in and struggle against witchcraft. This dissertation sought to answer three interrelated research questions: 1) What constitutes protective magical material culture in seventeenth-century contexts and how is it recognizable in the archaeological record? 2) What signifies gender specific protective magical practices and what can these differences relate about gender roles, identity, and social relationships? and 3) In what way and to what degree is the recourse to traditional beliefs significant in coping or risk management contexts? Synthesizing data from historical and folkloristic sources, and reviewing all accessible archaeological site reports and inventories from State Historic Preservation offices and principal site investigators for domestic structures in New England ca. 1620-1725 provided data to catalog and develop a typology of potential magical items. Analyzing these data then allowed the assessment of domestic and gendered patterns of magical risk management strategies. Magical content was frequently embedded within or symbolically encoded in architectural or artifactual details, whose gendered association tended to correspond with gender role activities or responsibilities; however, the general omission of magical interpretations in historical archaeology limits the visibility of potentially magical objects in site reports and inventories, so it is likely a wider range of materials and contexts exist. The final result of this dissertation was the construction of a criterion model for the identification and interpretation of magic in historical archaeological contexts, which extends the notion of ritual from specialized places and materials, and communal behaviors to include quotidian objects and settings, and individual practices. Ultimately, the results of this dissertation extend the field of the archaeology of ritual and magic in particular, and the broader field of archaeology more generally by providing theoretical and methodological tools for understanding and recognizing how magical belief contributes to physical and metaphoric boundary construction and maintenance.</p>

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore how uninstitutionalised female preachers, or dā'iyāt, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia construct authority in a context in which male ulama dominate the production of religious knowledge and represent the apex of the religious and social hierarchy. The study was broad, descriptive, and explanatory and drew primarily on the framework known as ‘accountable ethnography’. Data collection occurred between June and December 2009 and consisted of observations, interviews, and collection of literary artefacts, which were reviewed alongside literature published internationally. A flexible mode of inquiry was employed, partly in response to constraints on public religious discourse imposed in Saudi Arabia after September 11, 2001. The study concludes that the dā'iyāt construct authority predominantly by relying on male ulama as marji'iyya diniyya (religious frame of reference) when issuing fatwas, as pedagogical models, as sources of charismatic inspiration, and as providers of personal recommendations. The dissertation also addresses a set of 'alternate' strategies of authority construction employed by Dr Fāṭima Nasiīf. Almost uniquely, this dā'iyā is found to construct authority that goes beyond reproduction of institutionalised views by developing scholarly arguments to support interpretations of Islamic texts that are responsive to women’s perspectives and needs. In doing so, she expands the parameters of religiously permissible practice while remaining, for her part, within the confines of orthodox practice. Thus, although her society and most researchers perceive knowledge as a masculine attribute in the Saudi religious sphere, in matters relating to women, as well as through active leadership in ritual practice, Dr Fāṭima demonstrates that the dā'iyā can become the authority. Nevertheless, for her and for the other dā'iyāt, the study finds that legitimatising female religious authority depends upon maintaining the established social order, including the hierarchy that places women in a subordinate position to men.

No description available.