The purpose of this dissertation is to study the literary discourse in the narrative texts of Miguel Mendez, contextualizing them within the specific historical time and space of the U.S.-Mexican border during the contemporary period. It is our specific aim to demonstrate that his literary texts are structured upon base that lends them coherence and gives them continuity. A symbolization of an historical rupture or break has meaning on a personal, internal level because it represents the author's irrevocable loss of the cultural milieu of childhood, a history of affective-spiritual disintegration due to specific events in his life. As a literary structural technique found in the narrative world of Miguel Mendez's fictional works, this symbolization presents the characteristics of an ambivalent poetics of rupture that questions the unity of historical reality. The image in his work of polysymmetrical reality has two faces, two perspectives: on one hand, a tragic, pessimistic view of the contemporary world; and on the other, a hopeful, ironic, and optimistic view of life. This bipolar stance is a consequence of a real break, of a concrete separation, of an historical barrier: the geopolitical and cultural border that is viewed as a powerful obstacle that impedes and makes difficult a collective conviviality between cultures, and ultimately the possibility of a better world. In this sense, Mendez's poetics reflects an external social division. That is, Mendez's view of an imaginary world recreates and is a manifestation, a representation of a border society profoundly and intentionally divided. This division, which occurred ostensibly to establish racial and ethnic order, is reproduced aesthetically and at the effective level in his works as an overall image of disenchantment, disillusionment, and deceit. His is a poetics that symbolizes the dichotomy of separation, barriers, and disintegration. At the same time, it is a poetics that holds out the hope of a new integration of limits and borders. This basic signification that gives coherence to Miguel Mendez's narrative fiction services as a thread that can be traced throughout his works, and it is one that gives them unity. This thread of meaning allows us, on a literary interpretative level, to establish relationships between the various themes found in his most important fictional works. The web of relationships comprise the cultural system whose underlying aspect is the border.

The English Civil War represents a liminal period within the history of the nation, one that offered many opportunities for experimentation with gender roles in social institutions. This historical episode had no universally legitimate authority, in either the government or the church, and the population had to deal with the resulting confusion individually. In comparing the writings and actions of women during this period with the popular publications of men that described and prescribed women's behavior, I argue that a significant number of men and women disregarded prescribed gender roles out of necessity. The major themes of this thesis involve the relationship between power and gender, as seen through contemporary language and writing that reveal how English culture viewed women acting in "masculine" endeavors in a time of crisis. Any perceived threat to the social order or the gender hierarchy of early modern England caused anxiety, but the actual challenges to this social organization posed by the Civil War provoked a substantial backlash. However, the women who acted in the war in public developed an identity independent of their culturally subordinate status. In order to substantiate this argument, this thesis discusses the fluid nature of gender, including the significant changes that resulted within the decades of the Civil War, as it was depicted in seventeenth-century England. Using primary documents, including letters, pamphlets, diurnals, and diaries, I show how the gender roles created by the church, state, and society were contradicted by the reality of the behavior exhibited by the participants in the English Civil War. I examine both women who acted within the traditional confines of femininity and those who transgressed these boundaries. Close attention is paid to women's activities in the areas of defense, religion, and politics. In conclusion, the thesis examines the ways in which historians have sought to interpret this period and place the actions of women within a patriarchal context. Possible challenges to the gender hierarchy caused great anxiety amid early modern England, but actual transgressions of gender roles, which occurred during the English Civil War, prompted a reevaluation of femininity.

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1991. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 145-148). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1990. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 110-113). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Erlangen.

有關臺灣邊地的拓墾研究，往往傾向研究土地拓墾的過程與組織。其基本論述架構是漢墾戶向官方申請墾照後，官府將界外未墾的荒埔提供給漢人開墾，漢人如何自力或與官方合作經營的結果。這類的研究論述忽略了原來早已存在的非法拓墾行動一直沒有消失。拓墾的申請與其說是新的程序，不如說是一種合法化的過程。也正是這樣一種認知脈絡下，內山設隘開墾的組織就不是表面上所認識的是一批為官方守邊，或是因生番擾害而防番的一支武力組織。十九世紀初隘的設防已逐漸成為一種界外開墾的管道，清代官方檔案也提醒我們注意這些界外開墾的墾戶不僅沒有防番，可能還一直與生番有貿易來往關係。換言之，這些以防番為名的墾戶其實是假借防番為名，掩護越界開墾之實，其向官府強調「生番擾害」的原因只是為自己取得更大界外土地開墾的正當性。 / 道光年間以前這類非法開墾早已經存在，官方也早已發現界外越墾的問題，因此如何控制界外開墾乃成為官方邊地控制的一大課題。為了處理這些問題，官府不斷調整其政策與設定邊界，從乾隆到道光年以後，這些邊界的浮動，與其說是官方主動規畫計議的結果，不如說是漢人與熟番通過各種途徑越界開墾，建構地權主張、操弄挪移既有的邊界後，官府最終追認的結果。臺灣邊界的變動以及隘墾區的拓墾顯示清代官方政策的實踐是不斷在向地方社會的現實妥協中逐漸調整的，而地方社會也在官方政策的模糊空間中，藉由官方的名義與權威，尋求自己利益的伸張與庇護。這便是臺灣邊地所顯現的一幅國家與地方互動的景象。臺灣作為清王朝帝國的邊疆，其邊地社會的建構，除了幫助我們把握臺灣整體歷史進程的理解外，也提供我們從一側面掌握清帝國擴張的內在軌跡與多元族群統治下的彈性策略。 / Existing studies on land cultivation in Taiwan’s frontier have the focus on its process and organizations. The most popular narrative is that the Han Chinese cultivators were granted the right to the waste land from the government. What is missed out in the narrative is the fact that illegal cultivation that had lasted for so long had never disappeared; therefore the application for license was little more than a move of self-legitimating. In light of this, the organizations which set up forts and managed land cultivation should not be taken on surface value that their purpose was to safeguard the border for the government or defend against the harassment of the aborigines. The forts became a system of land cultivation beyond the border, and the official documents evidenced the fact that cultivators did not defend against the aborigines, rather, they kept doing businesses with them. In other words, the cultivators in the name of self-defending were actually to cover their illegal activities and to grabbing more land, and for that purpose they emphasized the "harassment of the raw aborigines". / Illegal activities had already existed before mid-Qing. The government was aware of this border control issues and had adjusted its cultivation and border policies. The line was not planned by the government; it was just government recognition of the new situation when the border was maneuvered by the Han Chinese so as to advance their economic interest and establish their land rights. What happened on Taiwan frontier demonstrates the interaction between the state and the local society. To be specific, on one hand, the official policy was adjusted to the ground realities and was thus implemented; on the other hand, the local society took advantage of the name and authority of the government to advance their own agenda. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / 傅寶玉. / Thesis (Ph.D.) Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2015. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 235-250). / Abstracts also in English. / Fu Baoyu.

The boundary between the personal and the professional self is a site of professional and personal creativity and tension, a space that reflects some of the key ontological and epistemological issues confronting social work. Exploring the social construction of the self through the stories of fifteen Australian social workers brings these issues into stark relief. The participatory and reflexive research process facilitated the development of knowledge about how a group of culturally diverse social workers construct personal and professional boundaries in practice.The need to explore these processes and relationships was predicated on a concern that while the self is generally recognised as shaping practice, there has been a paucity of attention given to what lived experiences constitute the self. Social work practice is broadly defined as a socially constructed profession, yet the personal and professional boundary is regarded as individually constructed and defined. This discourse neglects the influence of contextual, cultural, relational and structural dimensions of the self, thus denying the possibilities of practice being continually informed by a myriad of experiences.Recognising that the socially constructed self is situated within intersections of knowledge and meaning opens up possibilities for the development of dialogical practices within an ethics of care. The research also has implications for social work practice and education and for the way that we supervise and manage social work staff. Professional dialogue, debate and practice needs to reflect a diversity of experiences and recognise that the dominant discourse about boundaries and the self leaves many workers feeling that their practice reality is not a shared one.

No description available.

No description available.

This study was undertaken to establish the impact of the Alaska-British Columbia boundary on socio-economic development in the boundary region. The impact was studied in three stages: (1) an historical analysis to determine the raison d'etre of the boundary and the consequent adaptations which have been made to its resulting barrier functions, (2) a contemporary analysis of the boundary as a constraint on the transportation routeways which it divides and (3) an analysis of a future problem which the situation of the boundary is expected to create in the division of authority over the international rivers which traverse the boundary. It was found that historically the boundary was established as a result of the extention of the Russian and British fur trade economies and thus was created as a barrier to penetration by the opposing traders. As a result of its delimitation on this basis, it created considerable stress in the region as the need arose for greater economic and social penetration of the boundary. Several rail, highway, and water routes were utilized to exploit this region and it was found that the boundary impeded the efficient operation of these routeways, albeit to a lesser extent than the Canadian public have expressed in political concern. However, to overcome this problem, effort has been directed at altering the location of the boundary to facilitate Canadian transportation routeways. This solution was found to offer little possibility of success. It was therefore suggested that the functions of the boundary be reviewed and that this approach would lead to a reduction in the barrier effect of the boundary. The future possibility of efficient utilization of the hydro electric resources of the Yukon, Taku and Stikine Rivers was also found to be hampered by the division of political jurisdiction. It is suggested that the limited market base in the region and large capital costs required for hydro projects preclude separate American and Canadian development programmes. Precedent established along the southern boundary of Canada and the United States provides a sufficient political-geographic framework within which to exploit jointly the power available on the northern rivers. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate