This goal of this study is to discern the ways in which women's subjectivities have changed through the processes of decolonisation, modernization, and nation building between the 1930s and 2000 in rural Dominica. The relationship between the shifting conditions of colonial and postcolonial life in its material, political, social, and cultural aspects, and the change in the discourses that relate to proper behaviour (moral discourses) are examined. I have explored the ways in which women position themselves with relation to these discourses (which could be called moral discourses), through how they employ them in their representations, and how they negotiate them, engaging them in the creation of what could be called an 'ethics of self.' The research, carried out over a one-year period in the village of La Plaine in Eastern Dominica, involved participant observation in the village; life history interviews with women of three generations; the analysis of skits and pageants; and documentary research involving primary and secondary sources. Several discursive themes emerged in the analyses: women's use of accounts of the past to critique the present, in what I have called critical nostalgia; the change in values epitomized by the notion of respect that formed the basis of local relations and which has begun to disappear with the change in governance and economic relations; the ambivalences involved in gender relations, especially those associated with expectations of women towards men and women's autonomy from men that derive from historical circumstances of colonization and decolonization; and the celebration and discursive dissemination of values that associate femininity with the political entity that Dominica has become. Differences found between women's expressions in both the discourses they engaged with, and in the particular ways they used them to frame their experiences, were related mainly to age and socio-historical changes, but also to socio-economic background.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Anthropology, June 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph.D.). / Written for the Dept. of Anthropology. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2008/08/04). Includes bibliographical references.

Fathermen is an ethnographic journey in the kinship lives of men on the island of Dominica, West Indies. It traces the various complexities, conundra and contradictions Dominican men encounter and create as they navigate relational life trajectories. These are termed kinship predicaments: moments in kin-lives that trouble hegemonic concepts of fatherhood and masculine personhood; that spark ambivalence between dominant ideals and lived experiences; that provoke quarrels between mothers' expectations and fathers' practices; and expose incongruities between established norms and emerging forms. Seeking to transcend the historical and contemporary circumscriptions that stereotype Caribbean fathers as absent studs or patriarchal authoritarians, this enquiry asks how Dominican men chart their own paths of paternal becoming. Developing an intuitive participatory methodology, referred to as the ethnography of relation, Fathermen commutes into the kin-worlds of Caribbean men, seeking to understand fatherhood through deep dialogue as it is built from the ground up. Organising its chapters around local idioms through which Dominicans frame kinship, Fathermen features discussions on: the romantic and conjugal tensions that precede/inform parenting; the ‘mystic' bodily affects that draw men into reproduction; the vexed norm of paternal provision; Caribbean fathers' emergent nurturant practices; the classed politics of paternal recognition; and, finally, men's ambivalent intergenerational experiences of becoming grandfathers. Fathermen argues that it often takes a lifetime to realise fatherhood, with many Dominican men unable to resolve its many paradoxes within their mortal spans. Whilst it contends that men are ‘tied' tighter into kin-life as they grow along their paternal journeys, ambivalences persist. Yet still, amidst angst and complexity, Fathermen is nonetheless an ethnography of love, dedication, familial vitality, creativity and humour.

The Commonwealth of Dominica has acquired a reputation as the nature island of the Caribbean. This thesis sets out to explore how Dominicans perceive and relate to nature in their nature island. It considers these perceptions and relationships as consisting not only of people’s cognitive and intellectual constructions of nature, but as also comprising their practices in and embodied engagements with the natural world. A key premise underlying this work is that people’s ideas about and relationships to nature go beyond the discursive: they arise in and from historical, geographical and social contexts, but also emerge through particular personal encounters and experiences. So, for example, tourism and conservation are two prominent means by which Western constructs and discourse of nature are brought to bear in Dominica in the present day, but they also provide opportunities for engagement with the natural world and for the cultivation and expression of experiential knowledge. The focus on engagement and experience is consonant with Dominicans’ thoughts about what it means to know and understand nature, in which considerable emphasis is placed on practical knowledge and knowledge by acquaintance. Further investigation of ideas of nature, through the use of selected collateral concepts, shows how Dominicans think about nature and certain relationships with nature as being an integral part of “what Dominica is about”. Correspondingly, Dominica can be seen as providing the context and framework for their notions of what nature is about. The findings of this sort of place-based empirical investigation can be useful to the formulation of nature-related policies, in that such policies are more likely to have practical purchase if they are seen to be germane to local ideas of and relationships to nature. Research of this kind can also provide new answers to the interesting philosophical question: what is nature?

Diss.--Theologische Fakultät--Freiburg, Schweiz--Universität, 1990. / Contient un choix de textes de J. D. von Rottenberg. Bibliogr. p. 15-23. Index.

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of Entomology, Waite Agricultural Research Institute, 1978.