Globalization asserts increasing pressure on marginalized cultures and languages. While faced with the pragmatic, often economic, need to communicate via global languages such as English and Chinese, communities of non-dominant language users struggle to maintain or reestablish their own cultural and linguistic practices. This thesis considers three areas of theory to further inquiry into how revitalization contexts may operate within an increasingly borderless world. The specific focus is the CHamoru/Chamorro revitalization context on Guåhan /Guam. First, readers enter the discussion through the conduit of narrative theory which focuses on how legends spanning generations may lend insight into how the dispositions of local inhabitants developed. Second, affect theory is considered to illustrate how narratives are constructed about the future through fear and anxiety. Third, revitalization rhetoric and the emergent theory of translingualism are addressed as they lie at the intersection of narratives about the past and future. The thesis works to initiate conversations between theories which previously worked apart from one another in a context infrequently considered in an effort to establish a foundation for future research and activism on the the island of Guåhan

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-106). / iv, 106 leaves, bound 29 cm

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 303-334).

Understanding how change occurs in lesser developed countries, particularly in Latin America has been the subject of a prolonged theoretical academic debate. That debate has emphasized economics more that politics in general and predictability over unpredictability in the Latin American region. This paper challenges these approaches. Explaining change requires an examination of the politics of public policy as much as its economic dimensions. Second, change in the Latin American region may be less predictable than it appears. Scholars maintain that change in Latin America occurs when contending elites negotiate it. Their power comes from the various resources they possess. Change, therefore, is not expected to occur as a function of regime change per se. This paper considers the treatment of education policy in Nicaragua during the regimes of the dynastic authoritarianism of Anastasio Somoza Debayle (1967-1979), the revolutionary governments of the Sandinistas (1979-1990), and the democratic-centrist government of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (1990-1996). The central research question is: When regimes change, do policies change? The methodology defines the independent variable as the regime and education policy as the dependent variable. It posits three hypotheses. The right-wing regime of Somoza was expected to restrict both the qualitative aspects and the financing of education; (2) the left-wing regimes of the Sandinistas were hypothesized to have expanded both; and (3) the democratic-centrist regime of Chamorro was expected to have both expanded and restricted certain aspects of education policy. Several chapters describe these regimes' expansive or restrictive education strategies. A comparative analysis of these 26 years demonstrates several variables' effect over time. An OLS regression and a times series analysis specifies the relationship between regime change and percent of GDP each regime devoted to education. Both the statistical and qualitative findings of this study confirm the hypotheses. The study reveals that, as regimes changed, education strategies and policies changed. Such findings challenge some current thought about political behavior with respect to Latin American development in particular and development theory in general.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 303-334). / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / x, 334 leaves, bound map 29 cm