The thesis comprises three major parts and 8 chapters. First of all Part I consists of two chapters: a discussion on the theoretical frame of reference and a brief review of the social changes that have been both causes and consequence of the family changes of the modernisation process of the last few decades. Part II comprising four chapters examines the result of the socio-economic change or modernisation of the last four decades in the family field : a review of the traditional family as an analytical framework; a discussion of the changes in the kinship network and marriage customs; and lastly a discussion on the relationship among family members. Part III comprising of two chapters, sets out the conclusions to be drawn. It examines first dissolution of the family and changing attitudes and values concerning family life next discusses what sort of family policies should be arranged to meet the huge variation and diversity of family life in which conventional values relating to the family no longer appear to work properly.

Essa tese tem como ponto de partida e referência a tessitura de uma rede de relações genealógicas e matrimoniais entre os Manoki (e os Mky), falantes de uma língua isolada distribuída em duas variantes dialetais (Irantxe e Mky). Esses coletivos reconhecem um passado comum e habitam atualmente duas Terras Indígenas distintas situadas no vale do rio Juruena, formador do Tapajós, na região noroeste do estado de Mato Grosso. A população manoki é atualmente estimada em 373 pessoas distribuídas em sete aldeias na Terra Indígena Irantxe, localizada em uma área predominantemente de cerrado, na margem esquerda do rio Cravari. Os 129 indivíduos mky vivem em uma única aldeia na Terra Indígena Menkü, região de transição de mata e cerrado circunscrita pelos rios Papagaio e do Sangue. O parentesco é aqui considerado um idioma privilegiado para compreender quem são essas populações, como pensam sua história e as maneiras como modulam suas relações com as diferentes figuras da alteridade, que vão desde as relações internas a este conjunto linguístico, passando pelas relações com os brancos e outros povos ameríndios vizinhos, até chegar ao vasto número de seres dotados de agência, que chamam de espíritos, bichos e assombrações. / This thesis has as a starting point and reference the fabric of a kinship and marriage network among the Manoki (and the Mky), speakers of an isolated language distributed in two dialects (Irantxe and Mky). These Amerindian peoples acknowledges a common past and inhabit nowadays two distinct Indigenous Lands located in the valley of the Juruena river, a tributary of the Tapajós, in the northwestern region of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. Nowadays the Manoki population is estimated over 373 people distributed in seven different villages in the Indigenous Land Irantxe, situated in a predominantly savannah area on the left bank of the Cravari river. The 129 mky individuals live in a single village in the Indigenous Land Menkü, located in an area of transition between forest and savannah circumscribed by the rivers Papagaio and Sangue. Kinship relations are here considered as a privileged idiom to understand who these peoples are, how they think their own history and the ways they modulate their relations with different figures of alterity, ranging from internal relations between the speakers of these dialects, passing through the relations with whites and other Amerindian neighboring peoples and reaching a vast number of beings endowed with agency capabilities, which they call spirits, beasts and spectrums.

Essa tese tem como ponto de partida e referência a tessitura de uma rede de relações genealógicas e matrimoniais entre os Manoki (e os Mky), falantes de uma língua isolada distribuída em duas variantes dialetais (Irantxe e Mky). Esses coletivos reconhecem um passado comum e habitam atualmente duas Terras Indígenas distintas situadas no vale do rio Juruena, formador do Tapajós, na região noroeste do estado de Mato Grosso. A população manoki é atualmente estimada em 373 pessoas distribuídas em sete aldeias na Terra Indígena Irantxe, localizada em uma área predominantemente de cerrado, na margem esquerda do rio Cravari. Os 129 indivíduos mky vivem em uma única aldeia na Terra Indígena Menkü, região de transição de mata e cerrado circunscrita pelos rios Papagaio e do Sangue. O parentesco é aqui considerado um idioma privilegiado para compreender quem são essas populações, como pensam sua história e as maneiras como modulam suas relações com as diferentes figuras da alteridade, que vão desde as relações internas a este conjunto linguístico, passando pelas relações com os brancos e outros povos ameríndios vizinhos, até chegar ao vasto número de seres dotados de agência, que chamam de espíritos, bichos e assombrações. / This thesis has as a starting point and reference the fabric of a kinship and marriage network among the Manoki (and the Mky), speakers of an isolated language distributed in two dialects (Irantxe and Mky). These Amerindian peoples acknowledges a common past and inhabit nowadays two distinct Indigenous Lands located in the valley of the Juruena river, a tributary of the Tapajós, in the northwestern region of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. Nowadays the Manoki population is estimated over 373 people distributed in seven different villages in the Indigenous Land Irantxe, situated in a predominantly savannah area on the left bank of the Cravari river. The 129 mky individuals live in a single village in the Indigenous Land Menkü, located in an area of transition between forest and savannah circumscribed by the rivers Papagaio and Sangue. Kinship relations are here considered as a privileged idiom to understand who these peoples are, how they think their own history and the ways they modulate their relations with different figures of alterity, ranging from internal relations between the speakers of these dialects, passing through the relations with whites and other Amerindian neighboring peoples and reaching a vast number of beings endowed with agency capabilities, which they call spirits, beasts and spectrums.

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological inquiry was to explore the experiences of adoptive parents who have Black transracially adopted children. More specifically, I sought to understand how the parents perceived their child's cultural and racial identity development and how they perceived the child-parent relationship. Therefore, I used the cultural-racial identity model created for transracial adoptees as a theoretical framework to answer the following questions: What are Black transracially adoptive parents' perceptions of their child's racial/cultural identity development? What are Black transracially adoptive parents' perceptions of the parent-child relationship? Upon approval from the Institutional Review Board, six transracially adoptive parents with Black transracially adopted children participated in this study. Participants engaged in a 60-minute interview that was transcribed and coded to develop themes consistent with other participants. There were six themes identified from the data: (a) experience of the child-parent relationship, (b) impact of trauma, (c) becoming a transracially adoptive parent, (d) cultural, racial, ethnic, identity development process (CREID), (e) encounters with microaggressions, and (f) cultural socialization practices. Implications and conclusions drawn from the themes were identified for transracially adoptive parents, counselors, counselor education programs, and transracial adoption researchers to inform culturally responsive practices when working within the adoption kinship network.

This dissertation explores how experience and environment impact behavior. In the first chapter, I provide behavioral foundations for a model of taste uncertainty with endogenous learning through consumption. In this setting, uncertainty is over an unobservable, subjective state space. Preference over lottery-menu pairs is sufficient to identify the state space and the learning process. In this model, the agent is viewed as if he learns the utility of an object upon its consumption. This information is used to improve choice from the follow-on menu. This implies a trade-off between consumption value and information leading to experimentation. I provide a behavioral definition of experimentation. While the literature focuses on identifying subjective states through a demand for flexibility, I show that experimentation also (partially) identifies taste uncertainty. The second chapter explores the potential for social networks to affect decisions of political leaders. To this end we construct a database linking European royal kinship networks, monarchies, and wars to study the effect of family ties on conflict. To establish causality, we exploit decreases in connection caused by apolitical deaths of network important individuals. These deaths are associated with substantial increases in the frequency and duration of war. We provide evidence that these deaths affect conflict only through changing the kinship network. Over our period of interest, the percentage of European monarchs with kinship ties increased threefold. Together, these findings help explain the well-documented decrease in European war frequency. The final chapter builds on the robust finding from the psychology literature that the co-presentation of products causes consumers to associate them. Associated products are evaluated more similarly. Supposing that agents behave according to this evidence, I axiomatically derive a tractable utility model of this association effect. In an application, I study a two-product monopolist that can strategically choose whether or not to offer his products under the same brand. I demonstrate that psychological association can provide strict incentives for either brand extension or brand differentiation depending on the distribution of product valuations in the market. Appropriate branding strategies allow firms to extract more surplus from consumers when psychological association is present.

Submitted by Alison Vanceto (alison-vanceto@hotmail.com) on 2016-09-12T13:44:06Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DissCFC.pdf: 4570444 bytes, checksum: b582cab27887b9f5a182de60eb698d1d (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marina Freitas (marinapf@ufscar.br) on 2016-09-13T14:47:19Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissCFC.pdf: 4570444 bytes, checksum: b582cab27887b9f5a182de60eb698d1d (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marina Freitas (marinapf@ufscar.br) on 2016-09-13T14:47:25Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissCFC.pdf: 4570444 bytes, checksum: b582cab27887b9f5a182de60eb698d1d (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-09-13T14:47:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DissCFC.pdf: 4570444 bytes, checksum: b582cab27887b9f5a182de60eb698d1d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-05-11 / Outra / Through the transition from Empire to Republic in Brazil, coffee farmers constituted the economic and political elite on the municipal, state and federal levels. Starting from a Historical Sociology perspective and based on classical authors – Mosca, Pareto and Michels – the present research aimed to investigate the coffee farmers presence within the elite of São Carlos city, in São Paulo state, Brazil. With this respect, studying the configuration of those farmers was shown to be relevant to comprehend the bonds created and maintained between elite members, specifically between the years 1873 and 1904. / No período compreendido entre a passagem do Império para a República, os fazendeiros de café paulistas compunham a elite econômica e política nas esferas municipal, estadual e federal. Partindo de uma perspectiva da Sociologia Histórica e baseando-se nos autores clássicos do estudo das elites – Mosca, Pareto e Michels, esta pesquisa teve por objetivo entender a presença dos fazendeiros de café nas transformações ocorridas no município de São Carlos. Para tanto, estudar a configuração destes fazendeiros mostrou-se relevante para a compreensão das relações mantidas e criadas entre os membros desta elite, especificamente, no período entre 1873 a 1904.