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The proliferation of the American music business has created a power elite which shapes and controls the popular music industry. For American blues and jazz musicians in the 20th century, becoming an expatriate served as an alternative to that subjugation. That alternative existed in the 1990s in some degree, though Europe too has fallen under the influence of American marketing of artists popular in the United States. This dissertation discusses the community of American expatriate jazz musicians currently living in Paris. These musicians derive the bulk of their income working in Parisian nightclubs and restaurants. Paris is often the focal point of a myth that Europe celebrates its blues and jazz musicians. The myth's logical conclusion is that expatriate American musicians find easy success in Europe. The community of working American musicians in Paris, however, must struggle to live, thereby replicating the existence of many of their counterparts in America. For a musician to now increase their European stature, and to increase their personal stature and fulfillment as a musician, building a career in the States prior to relocating to Europe is a more practical career plan. In the present, nightclub capitalism is international in scope and contributes to the shaping of the careers and, more fully, the lives of American expatriate jazz musicians.

For the first time in recent history, Somali society has experienced the plight of a mass exodus. Millions have been displaced by civil war and have sought refuge in places thousands of miles away from their homelands. There are tens of thousands of Somali refugees in Canada; the majority settled in Metropolitan Toronto. Upon arrival, Somalis, still suffering from the trauma of war and uprooting, face the challenges of adapting to life in the post-modern Canadian society. Adaptation implies bridging the cultural differences between Somalia and Canada. This study, using ethnographic methods such as in-depth interviewing and participant observations, explores the socio-cultural experiences of Somali refugees in Toronto during the process of adaptation. The research questions focus on challenges Somalis face during the adaptation process, and the coping mechanisms they employ in response to the challenges they face. The study finds that, as recent migrants, Somali refugees have not achieved significant structural integration into the social, economic, and political structures of Canadian society. Dependence on social welfare assistance, a high rate of unemployment, limited educational pursuits, and social and residential segregation are features common among Somali refugees in Toronto. Factors that hinder their effective integration include lack of access to critical initial resettlement services; limited length of residence; limited proficiency in official languages of Canada; and prejudice, discrimination, and racism directed against them as Blacks and as Muslims. Internally, Somalis are making significant cultural adaptations by synthesizing elements of the two cultures. Younger Somalis are acquiring the values of their peers, which create intergenerational conflicts within the family. Religiosity among the adults and some youngsters is also on the rise. Somalis have created their own ethnic institutions such as businesses and community organizations to provide critical services. However, considering the salience of racism in Canada and the exclusion of Black ethnic groups from the economic, social, and political structures, it is unlikely that the experience of the Somalis in Canada would be significantly different than that of other Blacks. Most Somalis identify themselves first as Muslims, and second as Somalis, but others see them just as Blacks.

Identity and specifically American Indian identity is frequently established by tribal enrollment base on blood quantum or percentage of Indian blood from a specific Indian nation. Here I demonstrate how American Indian identity of individuals from the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin has been formed by experiences rooted in a historical context shaped by contemporary issues. From the treaty period in the 19th Century through Termination and Restoration in the 20th Century, pressure to assimilate into the non-Indian community failed and instead fostered a strong Menominee identity. Blood quantum plays a political and social role determining who is accepted on the tribal roll. Language and cultural expressions and traditional ceremony reinforce identity. However, Menominee connection to their land and the interaction of the land and people provides the foundation for their identity and creates an unbroken bond to their ancestors and a responsibility to the Menominee of the future.

This dissertation accepts that the way that international social and economic development is taught, practised and critiqued condemns its practitioners to co-opt those who engage them in alliances into becoming instruments for the extension of western hegemony. It demonstrates that this analysis and its outcome are inevitable conclusions given the Enlightenment approaches used in the theory and practice and the postdevelopment theory deployed in the critique of development. This dissertation argues that the work of Jacques Lacan provides a foundation for training for, the practice of and the critique of development that escapes these limitations. Initial exploration for dissertation was composed within the work of Michel Foucault. This perspective made it possible to see the effects of the partial use made of Foucault by postdevelopment critics. The gap between this potential and their use justified field research. Research involved an iterative sequence of interviews with development professionals that engaged both their accounts of the relationship between knowledge and action in development and accounts of their own production and reproduction as development professionals. Following the Foucauldian argument that there are a plurality of discourses, the content of these interviews was synthesized into narratives that evinced a variety of relationships between knowledge and action. Actions, however, are necessarily justified on the terms of, and therefore reinforce, the dominant discourse. In addition to discussing the relationship between knowledge and action, subjects were also found to discuss dispositions like naïveté and cynicism. These were not anticipated nor are they well accommodated in Enlightenment or Foucauldian frameworks. This surplus was productively engaged through the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. Lacan's notions of fantasy and the unconscious are found to provide a terrain within which it is possible to suggest how development practitioners can be engaged as allies in a manner that does not result in the extension of western hegemony. His theory is also found to suggest a framework for the understanding of education that may produce development professionals who are far more fit than those solely educated in the Enlightenment tradition to serve as allies.

In this dissertation I explore the cultures of death and dying in medical institutions, hospices and funeral work. I argue that not only are there competing cultures of death and dying in American society, but within these institutions that produce tension and conflict, sometimes among the workers, other times between the workers and those they serve, and other times between the institution and outside organizations. Medical institutions, by medicalizing death and dying, constructed a “death as enemy” orientation in which doctors fight death with the use of medical technology, practice detached concern from their patients, and marginalize religion and spirituality. On the other hand, a “suffering as enemy” orientation has also emerged, primarily in the form of palliative medicine, in which needless suffering is considered worse than death, therefore life-saving technology is removed, doctors empathize with patients and families, and spirituality is incorporated. Hospice started as a social movement to change how dying patients were treated at the end of life, addressing patients' physical, spiritual and emotional pain. However, the bureaucratization of hospice, particularly the Medicare Hospice Benefit, has led to a compromise of the social movement's ideals and these competing orientations shape how hospice workers, particularly nurses and social workers, express frustrations with their work. Funeral directors assert their jurisdictional claims of the right to handle the corpse and assuage the grief of the bereaved, through embalming, informal grief counseling and the funeral performance, but funeral directors encounter resistance from large funeral corporations and the funeral societies. Large corporations centralize embalming, turning the corpse from a craft to a product, recruit other professionals to practice grief counseling, and sell standardized funeral packages. Funeral societies challenge the necessity of embalming and funeral directors' expertise in grief counseling, and focusing on the value of simple, dignified and affordable funerals. I conclude this dissertation by showing how orientations toward death and dying vary in American society and these institutions because of tension between experts who espouse a particular orientation and challenges from within and outside these institutions.

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