My experience as a development aid worker has brought to the fore the incongruence between the rhetoric and practice of community development in India, more so in relation to women. Historically, the practice of community development in India has also been imposed and could be considered as an 'imperialist' relic of the colonial rule. This has been traced through an extensive literature review and discourse analysis of the five year plan and other related documents. The research aimed to uncover the manner in which rural Indian women engaged with structures and processes of community development and to explore what benefits or otherwise accrued to them. It further sought to explore the reasons for the failure of a particular program as envisaged by local women. The thesis used the framework of structuration, everyday life and community development theories (Giddens, Lefevbre, de Certeau, Ife) and an ethnographic methodological approach. One rural community of 52 households, in the state of Orissa (India) was the subject of study and in-depth interviews were conducted with three key informants. Participant observation was the cornerstone of this research in order to gain an in-depth view of the everyday lives of women, with the researcher spending seven months in the community. Themes were developed around the community development program (Mahila Mandals) and the key informants were interviewed regarding the same, its formation, structure, processes, the reasons for its initial success and subsequent failure and finally women's agency in engaging with various aspects of the program. The findings showed that this program would not have developed unless it had been driven from the top; women had no say in the structures and processes, and while it was successful initially for instrumental reasons, not taking into account women's agency was the reason for its downfall. Despite these lessons, it is recognised that the practice of community development continues to remain top-down. Till date, international aid agencies, government's (national, state and local), and/or INGOs/ NGOs that determine the needs of the communities and the approaches to addressing and evaluating them. Conclusions include a policy discussion on the attempt by international agencies, especially DFID, and governments (of India and Orissa) to address gender issues in their existing and new programs taking into account women's agency as constructed in their everyday lives. There is an agreement with the international, national and local debates that gender issues have to be addressed with great urgency in view of the changing roles of women.

The primary objective of this investigation was to offer a marriage enrichment workshop enabling the participants to increase their communication and problem solving skills, and the prevention of future marital distress through an educational experience. Marital communication and marital adjustment scores were obtained from an experimental group consisting of 16 married Indian couples living in the United States who attended a marriage enrichment workshop. These scores were compared with those scores derived from 16 married Indian couples living in the United States who participated in a marriage enrichment workshop at a later date. Nineteen hypotheses were generated which assumed that couples participating in a marriage enrichment workshop would experience a significant increase in their level of marital communication and marital adjustment. The five-session workshop was conducted on five consecutive Saturdays, the duration of each session being three hours. The format for the workshop included the exercises designed by Hendrix (1988) to improve communication skills and practice new relationship skills. The importance of creating a more loving and supportive relationship was emphasized in the workshop. The instruments used to study the dependent variables were the Marital Communication Inventory and the Marital Adjustment Test. The statistical treatment applied was Analysis Of Variance with repeated measures. Subjects were tested on the first day of the workshop, the last day of the workshop, and finally five weeks after the marriage enrichment workshop. The results indicated that the marriage enrichment workshop had moderately significant positive effect on marital communication and marital adjustment. The level of communication and adjustment showed consistent statistically significant increase over time (five week delay) after the workshop. In addition, the results established positive correlation between marital communication and marital adjustment. Finally, the content of the workshop designed by Hendrix (1988) was much appreciated by all participants and they identified remarkable similarity between the the Western thought and the Eastern culture. / Graduation date: 1997

Arundhati Roy¡¦s first novel The God of Small Things focuses on the incessant confrontation permeating in divergent layers of the Indian society. With the prevalence of the caste system, which stabilizes the society by eliminating individuals¡¦ social mobility, Roy reveals that the essential conflicts individuals face in their daily interactions are repressed by their social consciousness and accordingly distort their subjectivities. ¡§Love Laws,¡¨ an oxymoronic term that Roy intriguingly combines, points out the generally-believed opposing position of love and laws but simultaneously reveals their interrelated relationship that blurs their division. Based on ¡§Love Laws,¡¨ body serves as another battlefield for the social norms and individuality to compete against each other. Individual bodies are trapped between their desire for bodily contacts and their inscription of various social codes. Such confrontation even subtly seeps into individuals¡¦ daily lives through visual, olfactory and tactile senses and provides them with numerous ways to sense their unquenched desire in the severely guarded society. The natural environment, vulnerable to human abuses, is also encoded with ¡§Love Laws.¡¨ The monsoon and the river, closely related to the prosperity of the Indian people, bear human beings¡¦ love, fear, and impulses to control. In human beings¡¦ pursuit of happiness, the Nature ¡§witnesses¡¨ and suffers their brutality that leads to the destruction of both the Nature and human beings. Thus, ecology functions as a broader scope to demonstrate the power of ¡§Love Laws¡¨ and expresses Roy¡¦s utmost concern for human beings¡¦ unruly abuse of the Nature. In The God of Small Things, it is through the discussion of ¡§Love Laws,¡¨ body and ecology that Roy presents the incessant confrontation in human nature. Instead of being pessimistic about such confrontation, Roy transmits the message that only by celebrating individuals¡¦ love that transcends laws, only by paying homage to their bodies that perform their subjectivities as well as their positive relationship that bridges the gap with nature, can the ever-lasting conflicts within human nature be ceased and a new prospect of a better tomorrow will emerge.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 229-241). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International.

Diss.--Giessen. / Lebenslauf. Published also as Hessische beitrāge zur staats- und wirtschaftskunde, 10. "Literatur-verzeichnis": p. [213]-215.

Thesis--University of Illinois. / Issued also in microfilm form. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--Agra University. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 361-368).

Thesis--London, 1928. / Bibliography: p. [341]-347.

Thesis--Heidelberg. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 254-276).