<p><b>Background:</b> In settings such as rural Bangladesh, where the majority of births occur at home, population-based data are lacking on the burden and risk factors for obstetric complications, as well as care-seeking behavior. This dissertation seeks to describe the prevalence and risk factors for obstetric complications, explore factors affecting care seeking for complications, and describe the availability of obstetric care among health facilities in rural Bangladesh. </p><p> <b>Methods:</b> We used extant data from a community-randomized maternal micronutrient supplementation trial which ascertained reported morbidities and care seeking among 42,214 pregnant women between 2007 and 2011 in rural northwest Bangladesh. Multivariate multinomial logistic regression was used to analyze the association of biological, socioeconomic, and psychosocial factors with reported obstetric complications and near misses. Multivariate logistic regression of socioeconomic, demographic, perceived need, and service factors on care seeking was performed. Primary data on availability and readiness to provide obstetric services at 14 health facilities was collected through surveys. </p><p> <b>Results:</b> Of the 42,214 married women of reproductive age, 73% (n=30,830) were classified as having non-complicated pregnancies, 25% (n=10,380) as having obstetric complications, and 2% (n=1,004) with reported near misses. In multivariate analysis, women's age less than 18 years (Relative Risk Ratio 1.26 95% CI 1.14-1.39), obstetric history of stillbirth or abortion (RRR 1.15 CI 1.07-1.22), and neither partner wanting the pregnancy (RRR 1.33 CI 1.20-1.46) significantly increased the risk of obstetric complications. Out of 9,576 women with data on care seeking, 77% sought any care, with only 23% seeking at least one formal provider. Socioeconomic factors and service factors, such as facility availability of comprehensive obstetric services (OR 1.25 CI 1.16- 1.34), improved care seeking from formal providers. Average facility readiness for emergency obstetric care was 81% in private clinics compared to 67% in public facilities (p=0.045). </p><p> <b>Conclusions:</b> These analyses indicate a high burden of obstetric morbidity, with a quarter of women reporting obstetric complications. Policies to reduce early marriage and unmet need for contraception may address risk factors including adolescent pregnancy and unwanted pregnancies. Improvements in socioeconomic factors, coupled with strategies to increase service availability at health facilities, could increase care seeking from formal providers. </p>

Taiwan is a country colonized by various regimes over the past four hundred years. The research first adopted the narrative inquiry-an autobiography on my journey to find my Taiwanese identity and mother tongue loss. Secondly, a phenomenological study on three Taiwanese families was conducted to secure an in-depth complex understanding on the scope and extent of the language loss phenomenon in Taiwan, of the thoughts and feelings about losing mother tongues, of the role of political power, the colonial history and other sociocultural contexts in the language loss phenomenon in Taiwan. Ten features and eleven themes were identified in this study. The political power and colonial history are important factors of mother tongue loss among my three participant families.

<p>This dissertation is a preliminary attempt to define and theorize Spanish literature of the late nineteenth century from the perspective of the colonized. I take as my starting point the novels of the Filipino writer José Rizal: Noli me tángere and El filibusterismo. Although these novels are considered to be the foundational texts of the Philippine nation, I will instead focus on their relationship to Spain and the literature produced there around the same period. This analysis will be contrasted with a reading of Benito Pérez Galdós's novel Doña Perfecta, which, as many critics have claimed, bears a resemblance to Rizal's first novel. I will show how Galdós's novel demonstrates a colonizing mentality despite being nominally about an internal Spanish conflict. In conclusion, I will argue for the necessity of an understanding of Rizal's novels in order to better grasp the total context in which peninsular Spanish novels were produced.</p> / Dissertation

A phenomenal thing is occurring in Indonesia’s young democracy. Politicians who are actually interested in propagating good governance and addressing the needs of their constituents are coming to power across the archipelago in increasing numbers. These fresh faces bring with them a pragmatic style of leadership that balks the trend of poor governance set by their distant, corrupt, and bureaucratic predecessors. Unsurprisingly, they have been lauded as the heroes of the people and the products of a maturing democratic regime. The foreign media, in particular, seem convinced that the people’s power, as expressed through democracy, is the driving force behind the rise of such “new breed” leaders. A closer look at the Central Java gubernatorial elections, however, reveals a more complex picture. Through the use of a critical pluralist framework, this paper aims to shed light on the reality of how power is organized between oligarch and non-oligarch actors in the Indonesian polity. In the process, we also build a systematic framework that can be applied to other cases of “new breed” leaders coming to office, so that in the future, a more comprehensive comparative analyses on the topic can be done.

In recent years there has been an increase in the adoption of tourism as an economic strategy in many developing nations and a growing interest in how communities and individuals engage with tourism. This parallels research which aims to uncover alternative readings of community participation in forms of economic and social development. This research uses tourism as a lens to understand the economic subjectivity of communities engaged in tourism. Focusing on how the local populations understand, experience and participate in tourism, it paints a picture of the Perhentian Islands which challenges existing understandings of individual and community participation in tourism. The research is broadly framed as a post-development project which highlights the grass-roots and bottom-up nature of small-scale developments and focuses on the ways in which local populations are actively engaged with tourism. It draws attention to the role played by discourse and subjectivity in constructing and reframing understandings of the individual within tourism development. Such discursive constructs can be actively co-opted as a political tool to empower individuals and communities by reconstructing understandings of local engagement in tourism. By recreating understandings of community engagement with tourism, it becomes possible to create new subjectivities outside of the framework of hegemonic capital. The methodology for this project incorporated participatory action research methods in order to facilitate community benefit through the research process. Research techniques involved both quantitative and qualitative methods in a number of settings. Ethnographic methods involving participant observation and in-depth interviews were complemented with focus groups, and property surveys. Research focused on key themes which were areas of interest identified by community members as well as questions which explored individual motivations for tourism work. In this situation, a number of motivations for engagement with tourism employment emerged. The individuals were actively seeking their employment, rather than passively accepting tourism from a limited number of choices. There were also similarities between hosts and guests which emerged, challenging the usual binary construction.

<p> Ethnic discrimination stress (EDS) in the workplace among high-achieving Adivasis is a problem that has received little attention in research literature. This qualitative phenomenological study investigates the above problem by using Giorgi's descriptive psychological method. The method, selected due its scientific rigor, applies Husserlian concepts of phenomenological reduction, intentionality of consciousness, and imaginative variation, to identify and describe the psychological structure of the lived experience of EDS. The 15 participants in the study, selected on the basis of the scores of General Ethnic Discrimination Scale, were currently employed high-achieving male Adivasis above the age of 24. The saturation of the data was achieved with the analysis of 272 pages of interview transcripts of 10 participants. The study found that the participants had to face overt ethnic discrimination and microaggressions that were endemic and not just aberrant. The lived experience of EDS involved being constantly judged by negative stereotypes, and being exposed to marginalizing behaviors from the upper caste people. The participants believed that ethnic discrimination, in spite of their academic and career achievements, was meant to perpetuate upper caste hegemony. The resultant feelings of dehumanization, disillusionment, anger, combativeness, and helplessness from silencing led to demoralization. Coping with EDS involved an initial period of resentful submission with negative coping behaviors and a gradual movement toward change-oriented proactive responses. The findings point to a relationship between resilience and career achievement as well as to the need for both structural and paradigmatic changes in order to create a discrimination-free work environment. The findings reflect the tenets of critical race theory and call for paradigmatic changes in the caste mindset and the dominant discourse that is embedded with dehumanizing stereotypes of Adivasis that promote silencing and upper caste hegemony. The findings may be significant for mental health workers and educators to understand the inner world of discrimination and to find effective strategies for coping with EDS. By giving a scientific voice to the Adivasi struggle against discrimination, the study can support the efforts of the marginalized and the governments for the creation of a discrimination-free work environment.</p>

This project focuses on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Cambodia that deal, either directly or indirectly, with sex work and sex workers. The NGOs outlined in this study have goals ranging from preventing Cambodian women from entering the commercial sex industry to empowering Cambodian sex workers through the formation of sex worker unions. Through the textual analysis of documents and web materials disseminated by these NGOs and from interviews with representatives from the NGOs, I seek to analyze how underlying assumptions about development and about the commercial sex industry shape the ways in which the personnel leading these NGOs think and act. Examining seven Phnom Penh-based organizations, I seek to answer the following research questions: What are the self-stated aims of NGOs in Cambodia that either directly or indirectly deal with the commercial sex industry in the country? What assumptions about development are embedded in the various programs being carried out by these NGOs? What assumptions about the nature of sex work are embedded in the various programs being carried out by NGOs working in Cambodia? What effect does the work of these organizations have on the lived realities of sex workers in Cambodia?

This study examined the pattern of online public opinion change in China by investigating the top one hit blog and its following commentaries of every day from July 2009 to March 2012 on a famous Chinese website, and then discussed potential factors that affected the formation of online public opinion. The extent of freedom of online public opinion during this period presented regular fluctuations. Whether criticisms were registered by commentators was influenced by four factors. First and most important, the negative tone of bloggers increased criticism and the positive tone decreased criticism, which shows that the news that flows from the media to the public is amplified and interpreted by influential bloggers according to the two-step flow theory. Second, while national and local events had no effect, international news events decreased criticism because the public strongly supported the Chinese government. This was as important as the first factor. Third, the negative tone of events discussed in blogs increased criticism, which means that the mass media did have some direct influence through negative but not positive events. And fourth, when the government censored blogs and commentaries, the public shied away from criticism because their posts would probably be removed.

<p> This thesis studies the potency of place in mobilizing social categories, and its implications for both social categories and places. I use the theory of distanciation to study associations between caste identity and place. I conducted an ethnographic study of a caste-based digital group, the <i>Cyber Thiyyars of Malabar,</i> to understand the connections and disconnections between the Thiyya caste and Malabar from the perspectives of different sets of actors involved in the identification of caste, namely the nation-state and members of this caste-based network. The nation-state knows the Thiyya caste in a manner that is disconnected from Malabar, while the <i>Cyber Thiyyars of Malabar</i> seek to re-emphasize the identification of this caste through the region. Participant observation and in-depth interviews indicate that through references to Malabar, the group seeks to establish a Thiyya caste identity that is distinct from the Ezhavas, a caste group within which the nation-state subsumes them. </p><p> I demonstrate that references to Malabar serve to counter the stigma that the <i>Cyber Thiyyars of Malabar</i> experience when the spatially abstract categorization of the Thiyyas interacts with notions of caste inferiority/superiority. Further, it serves as a mobilizational tool through which they hope to negotiate with the nation-state for greater access to affirmative action. I also demonstrate that caste identification continues to be relevant to the production of place. Place-based identification of the Thiyyas influences the manner in which the group envisions the physical boundaries of Malabar and how other social groups can belong to this region. Based on this analysis, I argue that framework of distanciation should incorporate not only the experience of place and social relations, but also how they are known and represented. </p><p> This dissertation establishes that even though social categories such as caste and place are not conventionally understood to be connected to each other, it is important to study the associations between them. Although the new media and globalization may prompt to us to think that place does not matter anymore, I establish that this caste group uses the language of place to organize and mobilize itself on a stronger basis in precisely this context. </p>

<p> Hwa-Byung, known as an anger illness, was conceptualized in Korean culture and listed in the glossary under Culture-Bound Syndromes in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Hwa-Byung develops when the emotions of anger have been suppressed for a long period of time and it becomes difficult to control those feelings. Common complaints of Hwa-Byung have two dimensions, psychological and physical symptoms. The prevalence of Hwa-Byung exhibits gender differences in that the majority of individuals who experience Hwa-Byung are women between the ages of 40 and 60. However, as the number of Korean immigrants in the United States continues to increase and their issues draw attention from researchers, the topic of Hwa-Byung receives little. Because Korean immigrants in the United States share a cultural background with their origin of ethnicity, and at the same time, may also assimilate the American culture during the acculturation process, this study will address the cultural differences in Hwa-Byung between native Koreans who live in South Korea and Korean immigrants in the United States. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to examine the differences and similarities of Hwa-Byung in native Korean middle-aged women in South Korea and Korean immigrants in the United States, roughly between the age range of late-30's to middle 60's, by investigating the influencing factors of stressful life events, stress response, anger expression, and demographic background. </p><p> A sample size of at least 200 participants, required for each group, using both paper-pencil and web-based methods, depended on participants' preferences, which were influenced by a gap in ages and the level of familiarity with and/or ability to access Internet. Participants were randomly selected from major cities, both in South Korea (including Seoul, Incheon, Busan, Daejeon, and Gyeonggi Province) and the United States (including Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles), using similar proportions of ages for both groups for the equivalences of participants in cross-cultural research. </p><p> Survey measures included five instruments: (a) the Hwa-Byung scale (Kwon, Kim, Park, Lee, Min, &amp; Kwon, 2008); (b) Life Stress for Korean women (Chon &amp; Kim, 2003); (c) stress response inventory (SRI) (Koh, Park, &amp; Kim, 2000); (d) anger expression (Hahn, Chon, Lee, &amp; Spielberger, 1997), and (e) demographic background that measured the variables used in this study. To minimize the weakness of language differences used in the different cultural contexts, survey packages for Korean immigrant participants in the United States were formatted in both Korean and English for each item. Thus, a translation process became necessary, especially for the Korean instruments of the Hwa-Byung Scale, Life Stress for Korean women and Stress Response Inventory (SRI), from Korean into Englishtwo of which were (originally developed by Korean researchers) . On the other hand, native Koreans submitted only the Korean version of questionnaires because they fully understood the meaning of questionnaire statements, as well as in order to get rid of possible distractions by the inclusion of English sentences.</p>