The main objective of this thesis is to propose a new perspective in terms of the convergence debate as it is discussed in varieties-of-capitalism (VoC) literature. The initial configuration of VoC stance as well as a part of the literature foresees the convergence of hybrids to a liberal market economy. By revisiting the core arguments of national-systems-of-innovation approach as well as the elaborations of the various critiques of VoC stance, we will propose the opposite. If we are to take &lsquo / innovation&rsquo / as a starting-point of analysis and favor government intervention with respect to it, hybrids are more likely to converge to a political economy that resembles more a coordinated-one. However the meanings of the key terms such as &lsquo / coordinated-market-economy&rsquo / and &lsquo / convergence&rsquo / will be re-evaluated to be able to provide an adequate standpoint in terms of the convergence debate.

This thesis sets out to identify and problematise the Eurocentric proclivities that have characterised various approaches to anti-capitalist thought since the mid-nineteenth century. First, I consider the liberal democratic approaches of Eduard Bernstein and of Jürgen Habermas. Next, I consider the grand narrative approaches of Karl Marx and of Hardt and Negri as an alternative. I highlight the Eurocentric and imperialist tendencies of these approaches, while drawing out a series of considerations that must inform anti-capitalist theory if it is to remain committed to plurality and to anti-imperialist struggles. Finally, I explore the possibility of grounding anti-capitalist politics in the affirmation of the everyday, non-capitalist alternatives that already are being practised by subjects within the interstices of capitalism. I argue that by working to strengthen and proliferate these interstitial alternatives, anti-capitalist politics would not only prove far more accommodating to plurality than the previous approaches considered, but it would also hold far more transformative potential.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 227-250).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Indiana University, 1991. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [395]-420).

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of French and Italian, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 30-Xx).

In Egypt, during the late nineteenth-early twentieth century, older, fragmented, and more localized forms of identity were rapidly replaced with new alternative concepts of community, which for the first time, had the capacity to collectively encompass the majority of Egyptians. The existing historiography however, places Egyptian nationalism exclusively within the realm of elite politics. Thus, this dissertation seeks to investigate the agency of ordinary Egyptians in constructing and negotiating national identity. The principal reason why the Egyptian urban masses are not well represented in the literature is the almost complete neglect of colloquial Egyptian sources. Indeed, I would contend that writing a history of modern Egypt without taking into account colloquial Egyptian sources is, by default, a top-down history and will at best provide only a partial understanding of Egyptian society.This study has several simultaneous objectives. The first is to highlight and feature the role and importance of previously neglected colloquial Egyptian sources--be they oral or textual--in examining modern Egyptian history. This, I argue, is crucial to any attempt at capturing the voice of "ordinary" Egyptians. The second objective is to document the influence of a developing colloquial Egyptian mass culture as a vehicle and forum through which, among other things, "hidden transcripts" of resistance and critiques of colonial and elite authority took place. And lastly, through the lens of colloquial mass culture, this study traces the development of collective Egyptian identity, and the strengthening of Egyptian national communality from the 1870s to the 1919 Revolution.

Enrollment management practices, principles, and administrative structure are changing the behavior of the contemporary university. Through an examination of public Carnegie Research Intensive and Extensive universities in states anticipating growth in the high school graduate population, the study seeks to provide a greater understanding of enrollment management. The theoretical lenses of institutional theory (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), resource dependence (Tolbert, 1985), and academic capitalism (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997; Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004), are employed to develop a new view of administrative behavior in current enrollment management organizations. In depth interviews with the individuals leading enrollment efforts at selected universities identify the enrollment manager as an administrator, educator, and entrepreneur. These individuals operate in complex political environments balancing their personal educational philosophies with the needs of their universities. Comprehensive reviews of the strategic enrollment plans at study universities reveal three main goals across all institutions: maintaining financial stability, increasing student and institutional quality, and increasing student diversity. Administrative behavior shows that all three goals are not treated equally and that revenue enhancement activities are prioritized. The administrative behaviors detailed in this study suggest a new ideology related to revenue enhancement for public higher education in the United States.

This dissertation examines the work of alternative economies activists who have spent the last 18 years constructing barter systems and local currencies in Medellín, Colombia. Through barter, these activists hope to spark an ethical re-evaluation of production, exchange, and consumption, and to create an economy that serves Medellín's middle-class professionals, rural peasants, urban workers, students and the chronically under-employed. They also see barter as an important social and political project to repair a social fabric torn by decades of violence and economic exploitation. For these activists barter is a counter to capitalism, violence, and social fragmentation; it is a new proposal rooted in cooperation, collective well-being, and the development of local capacities. Previous researchers have thoroughly examined the emergence, organization, and impacts of these types of alternative economies, but they have neglected what many activists consider to be the greatest challenge: to cultivate the new social relations and subjectivities necessary to enact and maintain those models. In the words of Colombia's barter organizers, the goal is to "change the chip" and "clean out the cucarachas" of our capitalist mindsets in order to "create a new culture of solidarity." This research is located at precisely that sticking point. Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic research, I examine the nature and impacts of barter and the challenges that barter activists face as they try to recreate economies, social relations, and subjectivities. Medellín's barter projects, I conclude, offer extremely important opportunities for cross-class and cross-generational interaction in a city that is violently divided. They also provide material and social supports for traders who are seeking to develop alternative subjectivities, and they help active traders gain control over the means of production and the conditions of their work. However, their counter-hegemonic potential is significantly limited by three tensions within organizers' strategies: a tendency to prioritize socio-cultural forms of activism at the expense of economic ones, a focus on conscious and moral aspects of subjectivity rather than material and embodied aspects, and a stridently anti-capitalist stance that discourages economic articulations and thereby reinforces the material and socio-cultural power of capitalism.

Following years of speculation about the potential economic value of mineral deposits in northeastern Minnesota, the first full-scale attempts to exploit that potential began in 1882. That year, the Minnesota Iron Company (MIC) imported dozens of miners to start extracting iron ore from the Soudan Mine on the south shore of Lake Vermilion. They concurrently imported hundreds of men to Agate Bay on the north shore of Lake Superior, approximately 70 miles south of the mine. The MIC selected Agate Bay as the spot for their ore shipping port and they needed men to start the simultaneous construction of an ore dock in the harbor and a railroad north from the harbor to the mine. Immediately after choosing Agate Bay as the spot for their shipping port location, the MIC bought up all the land along the north and west sides of Agate Bay except for a four-acre parcel that owner Thomas Sexton refused to sell. As the MIC-controlled community of Two Harbors developed around it, Sexton's parcel, which he platted as the community of Agate Bay, remained outside of company control. It quickly developed a reputation as a sea of iniquity that eventually became known as "Hell's Four Acres," which included a particularly notorious section called Whiskey Row. Sexton's platted community of Agate Bay existed for just a few years before the iron company acquired it early in 1886. At that point the company removed or demolished all of the remaining structures and covered much of what had been the settlement of Agate Bay with a coal storage platform. This project examines the town site of Agate Bay by looking at the documentary information in the historical record as well as the material culture remains recovered during archaeological excavations. Agate Bay is examined in terms of its position in a world economy (World Systems Theory) with consideration of the potential impacts of industrial capitalism.

This dissertation seeks to clarify the moral and political shape of economic exchange with an intellectual history of capitalism at its eighteenth-century inception. It seeks to avoid the familiar polarities of Marxist and capitalist economic ideologies by framing the ethical questions of economic exchange in historical terms: Why does the modern economic order seem to create moral contradictions and undermine political institutions? In response to this question, the thesis recovers the contributions of the Scottish historian and moral philosopher, Adam Ferguson (1723- 1816). Because modern economy had not yet taken on its modern abstraction and was still a thinkable reality, Ferguson’s treatment on history, action, and political institutions provide a fertile starting point for envisaging a distinctly moral configuration of the economic sphere. He prepares ground for a critical assessment of the political and economic relationship by criticizing the ideal of progress and emphasizing the need for dignified human exertion. His claim is that the liberalized marketplace undermines political institutions—especially law—to the extent that is leaves a people enslaved both to their own dependencies, as well as to other nations for whom commercial luxury is not a vice. My argument carries Ferguson’s claim forward by asserting that the Market itself now tyrannizes and enslaves in much the way Ferguson imagined a military despot would tyrannize unprepared societies of the eighteenth-century. Eighteenth-century theology is, in many respects, a period of relative theological austerity; so it is therefore unsurprising that a morally confused political instrument (capitalism) would emerge in an age largely devoid of theological imagination or conscience. Jesus Christ is no longer the origin, end, or meaning of history; co-creation is no longer the principal object of human action or labour; and the means of Christ’s rule through the political order are rejected in favour of luxuries and conveniences of modern commerce. The marketplace now embodies all the fears eighteenth-century theorists reserved for despots, tyrannizing western societies and threatening the resolve of already fractured political institutions.