This paper aims to address possible psychoanalytical explanations for the heinous acts in which terrorists, particularly ISIS, engage. It focuses on Harold D. Lasswell’s principles of the id, ego, and superego as well as Tajfel and Turner’s social identity theory. Within the framework of these two theories, relevant psychological and social psychological theories are discussed in order to explore a possible connection between the psyche of violent perpetrators and their actions. By exploring these connections, I find that there may be more nuanced psychological explanations for these violent acts, which could lead to new methods of weakening perceived biases, intergroup conflicts, and extremist behavior.

This paper uses state-level variation in the implementation of the 73rd amendment in India to observe the relationship between political reservations for women in local government and female child mortality. Nationally, reservations for women are not associated with a statistically significant difference in female child mortality. However, a state by state analysis shows variations in the level of impact of reservations on the topic of female child mortality. This paper examines the constraints on female representatives and their level of effectiveness in executing pro-female policies given the political and social environment. The two case studies on Kerala and Haryana explore women office holder’s abilities to administer public goods that favor women and children and the subsequent impact on female child mortality.

This dissertation identifies and explains the factors contributing to the presence and severity of U.S. foreign-policy blunders, or gross errors in strategic judgment resulting in significant harm to the national interest, since the Second World War. It hypothesizes that the grand strategy of preponderance and the overestimation of military power to transform the politics of other states have precipitated U.S. foreign-policy blunders since 1945. Examining the Vietnam War and Iraq War as case studies, it focuses on underlying conditions in the American national identity and the problematic foreign policy decision-making (FPDM) that corresponds to this bifurcated hypothesis, termed the overestimation/preponderance theoretical model (OPM). Four indicators operationalize the OPM: (1) how U.S. foreign policymakers estimated the capacity of military power to transform the political dynamics of the target state through intervention; (2) and (3) how U.S. actors and institutions affected the capacity of the partner state and hostile state and nonstate actors; and (4) how the foreign policy was justified and rationalized within the leadership of government and to the general public as it encountered disconfirming information. In each case, the grand strategy of preponderance instituted a bounded rationality of mission in the FPDM stage and the operationalization stage that precluded the inclusion of an unfavorable outcome. In each case, U.S. foreign policymakers greatly overestimated the capacity of the partner state to establish security and legitimacy and underestimated the capacity of hostile actors to mobilize and threaten the partner state. However, these preference-confirmation biases diametrically contradicted the assessment that victory would be easy to achieve; U.S. foreign policymakers promulgated this corresponding overestimation/underestimation even while inflating the threat far beyond what the actual threat to the national-security element of the national interest represented. The subsequent implementing of this inverted calculation created a national-security national interest where none was extant, then significantly harmed that new interest via intervention. This tactical application of the grand strategy of preponderance facilitated the strategic-tactical gap in U.S. foreign policy by creating monsters in order to have monsters to slay, consistent with the ideological tradition of the imperative of crusade in the modern history of American foreign relations.

This thesis is a comparative study of the teachings of a number of Eastern sages and a representative of modern Western depth psychology in connection with the problem of abstraction versus experience (or, thinking about instead of experiencing}. This problem is considered by the writer as the central cause in the suffering of mankind everywhere. The introductory chapter will present the problem being investigated, why and how it is considered significant, and how it will be dealt with in this study. The second chapter will contain a presentation of the various sages to be considered here, how and why they were selected, and some biographical and historical data about each. In the succeeding chapters the discussion will include what each of these sages claims to be the nature of: A. The human soul. B. God and the. universe. C. The problems of mankind (how they developed, what man can do about them; how he can do it .) Following the Bibliography is an appendix which contains comparative statements from each of the sages about a variety of universal themes.

Indonesia, potentially one of the richest and most powerful of the emerging nations, could profit by an active program in family-life education such as has proved beneficial in other parts of the world. This is especially true in the rural areas. It is the purpose or this paper to explore possibilities for and to develop an extension program in home improvement, sanitation, child care, and nutrition which could be set up at Indonesia Union College, located in a typical rural area of Java. This paper will form the basis for a handbook for Home Economies teachers and extension workers. It will include descriptive data, a tally of results of a questionnaire, and suggested procedures for village home advisors. With this purpose in mind, a study was made of family life among the rural Sundanese ethnic group of West Java. ln the Tjisarua area north of Bandung, in relation to nutrition, sanitation, child care, and home improvement from 1951-1966.

This study explored the ways in which intercultural relationships are affected by cross-cultural transition through the lens of the female experience. Specifically, this research examined (1) in what ways women felt that cross-cultural transition impacted their relationship, especially with regards to cultural values and male-female role taking; and (2) what kinds of benefits women experienced in their relationships as a result of moving across cultures with their partner. A total of 15 non-Chilean women in intercultural relationships with Chilean men were interviewed; all women had lived with their partners in her home country and then moved together to Chile. Results revealed that all 15 participants maintained at least some of their own core cultural values regardless of conflicting societal pressure after moving to Chile. In addition, 11 women reported adopting Chilean values of being more relaxed surrounding time and schedules as well as openly expressing affection, which directly benefited their families. Female participants who reported gender role shifts in their relationship either described it as circumstantial since they simultaneously became stay-at-home mothers, or as a direct result of moving to a culture that adhered to stricter notions of male-female role taking. Although about half of the women reported having to make career sacrifices, most felt their roles as females, wives, and mothers directly benefited from moving to Chile due to more affordable domestic help and living in a more child friendly culture. Finally, although most women discussed some of the challenges of moving across cultures with their partner, 11 women felt their relationship had been strengthened as a result. They also described a number of skills for achieving relationship maintenance: practicing patience, good communication, and a willingness to continually negotiate with one another were the most important abilities for sustaining a highly mobile yet stable intercultural marriage.

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This study focuses on the challenges faced by U.S. college students who identify as gay or lesbian and choose to study abroad in Latin American countries. The focus is on the challenges to the formation and negotiation of a gay or lesbian identity in a new cultural construct. The study incorporates information from identity development and identity negotiation perspectives in an effort to explain the problems that these students face. There is also an emphasis placed on how these students receive support while on site, and how these supports help students continue a successful negotiation of a gay or lesbian identity while in a new cultural environment. Recommendations for providing effective support to gay and lesbian students are included.

Global projects have a high failure rate, with many project failures attributed to lack of effective leadership. A knowledge gap about leadership requirements and complexities in a global project management environment has increased the risks in global projects. The problem is evident in the increasing project failure rate and the struggling national strategies in the oil and gas industry in the Arabian Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The purpose of this study was to explore the role of leadership in project success and adaptation complexities in GCC. The conceptual framework consisted of complex adaptive systems and contingency theories. A qualitative approach was used to capture common understandings of project leaders' role and the opportunities and challenges in a multicultural global project environment. Personal interviews were conducted with 25 participants from the oil and gas industry in GCC who were selected using a purposive sampling method. Six themes emerged from an exploratory and comparative analysis, including: adaptable project structure with team and environment dynamics; leadership role and the impermanent multicultural environment; project success definition and the success criteria; aligned performance and governance systems; changing organizational strategy; and team building and the project complexity management. Based on study findings, a framework was created for leading 4 organizational processes in global projects, which includes the environment, team building, leadership selection, and setting of project success criteria. Higher efficiency in leading these processes may contribute to positive social change and support practitioners to promote a project environment for active knowledge integration.

Advocates of restorative and transitional justice practice have long drawn from practices of indigenous peoples to form the basis for more sustainable, relational, participatory, community-based approaches to conflict resolution. With the resurgence in Kazakh nationalism since the Republic of Kazakhstan independence, repatriated diasporic Kazakhs, who through cultural survival in diaspora retain more of their ethno-cultural characteristics, influence a revival of Kazakh language and culture. The purpose of this study was to understand the indigenous informal restorative conflict resolution practices of the Kazakh people. The questions that drove this study were: What indigenous informal forms of dispute resolution have been in use among Kazakhs, as reflected in their folklore and proverbs; which have continued in use among diasporic semi-nomadic Kazakh populations; and, which, if any, are restorative in nature? This ethnographic multi-case study incorporates participant observation and semi-structured interviews of participants selected through snowball sampling from among diasporic Kazakhs in, or repatriated from, China. Kazakh folklore and proverb collections were examined for conflict resolution practices and values at the family and kinship levels. Key theories used to explore the topic include Post-Colonial Theory of Sub-Altern Agency, Essentialism Theory, Soviet Ethnos Theory, and Restoration of Trust Theory. This study expands the knowledge base regarding indigenous systems of conflict resolution and contributes to the ethnography of the Kazakh people. The existence of indigenous informal restorative Kazakh systems of conflict resolution can inform reassessment and reform of public policy as to alternatives to punitive criminal justice practices.