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Attending to the felt quality of experience, this work looks at how a community of Mexican campesinos go about thew life While cultivating coffee, trying to make sense of how villagers feel, know, and understand the world "on their own terms". The aim is to work through (and from) the plane of the body, a narrative strategy that seeks to convey some of the give an take of everyday life; the joy and salubrity that are often bounded in moments of good health, the sorrow and pain that poverty entails. But since "well being" is not "culture five" but guided by moral and aesthetic constraints, I map out the cultural "building blocks" to see how local notions of health and illness tie into feelings of integrity or fragmentation. Last, we look at what social ideals underscore notions of personhood and how these shape local experiences of land.

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The sudden and steady increase in the involvement of women in the Mexican labour force beginning in the 1980s, signifies a major shift in gender roles and activities. It is a little studied outcome of Mexico's combination of economic crisis (which served to increase the supply of female labour) and subsequent adoption of neoliberal economic policies (which stimulated the demand for female labour). In fact, what is not known, are the implications of this employment for the Mexican women themselves. The dissertation moves beyond the existing literature on the gendered consequences of employment and economic development, by bringing in the citizenship literature to help define women's status. Specifically, the dissertation proposes a way of determining these consequences by examining three dimensions of women's status, two of which refer to women's roles and capabilities in the public sphere---political and economic---and one which refers to women's status in the private sphere---the household. By disaggregating the status variable, the dissertation highlights the significant improvements in women's status while identifying the remaining obstacles to gender equality. The dissertation develops a number of measures of women's multidimensional status, and assesses the differences between employed and non-employed women using data obtained from a survey of women in Mexico City. In the economic sphere, the findings indicate that employment improves women's status by enhancing women's independence. Employment provides women with the economic resources that enable them to lessen their dependence on men. At the same time, women continue to face inequality in the labour market, signifying the continuing subordination of women. In terms of women's household status, the findings show that women retain the primary responsibility for childcare, and for the maintenance of the home. This inequality is significant, and serves to limit further improvements in

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On New Year's Eve 1993, there was little indication that popular President Carlos Salinas de Gortari was about to take a monumental fall. Mexico was in the midst of unprecedented prosperity. The world's oldest ruling political party, Mexico's PRI, enjoyed substantial support. Allegations of corruption within an authoritarian regime were now frivolous charges obscured by economic success. The nation was poised to become a major player in the global market; vying with Japan to be the second largest trading partner of the U.S.A. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, the largest trading partner of the U.S., Mexico and the United States became effective January 1, 1994. Just after midnight 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) went to war in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. Approximately 2500 peasants (mostly indigenous men of Mayan descent) had mobilized against the Mexican government. The violence sparked world wide interest in the human rights of Mexican Indians. Ten days later, as the EZLN retreated into the jungle, an international audience remained captivated by the struggle. The Mexican Army did not advance. The EZLN refused to lay down its arms. Within the year, the Mexican economy collapsed. Soon thereafter, President Salinas went into voluntary exile amidst charges of high crimes against the state. Was it just a coincidence that the rebellion coincided with the implementation of NAFTA? Did the treaty really present such an enormous threat to Mexico's underclass? Did NAFTA contribute to the nation's political problems? The following thesis answers these questions. It is the product of years of travel and study throughout Chiapas and Mexico, both before and after the rebellion. The intricacies of the relationship between NAFTA, the Mexican government and the EZLN are revealed. The government's position and rebel demands are reconcilable. This is an important conclusion. But Mexico is a poor country embroiled in a rebellion to the south as well as a precarious economic treaty with the world's wealthiest nation to the north. In addition, the EZLN has come to represent the world's beleaguered poor in an era of free trade. As Mexico's past and present are explored, conclusions about the country's future have implications that go beyond NAFTA. / Graduation date: 2000

This dissertation focuses in the phenomenon of partner violence in Mexico. It examines the causes of partner violence at multiple levels of analysis. At the micro level it examines characteristics of individual victims, the family and the relationship. At the macro level the focus is on the legal and social structures that define domestic violence and the State's response. Throughout the analysis, the State plays a central role as the set of institutional arrangements that define the rules of the game and that determine the possibilities for change and the potential roles and effectiveness of key players including the feminist movement. Throughout the analysis I examine the confluence of forces that influence the State's attempts to reduce individual women's risk of partner violence through its legislative, judicial and police powers in a historically defined situation characterized by pervasive structural patriarchy. A major objective is to asses the influence of the pervasive patriarchy in the system on individual women's risk of partner violence. The approach adopted in this dissertation is based on the assumption that patriarchy is a social system that permeates social institutions and that becomes internalized and part of the normative everyday reality that structures individual's interpretations and motivations. This research demonstrates that, on average, the structural gender inequality between Mexican men and women is high. This inequality is revealed through qualitative and quantitative analyses that demonstrate empirically the influence of the patriarchal system both on individual experiences of partner violence, and on the State's response. Adopting a feminist post-structuralist approach to the analysis of the State's role, the research reveals inconsistencies between the discourses and practices of the Mexican State regarding partner violence. By analyzing administrative family violence legislation, I determine whether the Mexican State has in fact made substantively meaningful attempts to challenge patriarchy and to end violence against women in the family realm. The family violence legislation has two often inherently contradictory purposes. On the one hand the objective is to protect the family as a core social institution. The second, which is often in conflict with the first objective, is to protect women from abuse by their partners. This dissertation demonstrates that these conflicting objectives and the embededness of patriarchy throughout the social help explain why certain branches of the Mexican State tend to strengthen patriarchy and reify women's subordinate position in the family. The way in which the State interprets and implements family violence legislation reveals the inability and/or unwillingness of the State to protect women's rights and highlights the patriarchal assumptions pervading the State's actions. Finally, this research looks at feminist and women's movements and NGOs to determine whether they have been effective in influencing the State to adopt measures to guarantee women a life free of violence. I looked not only for their influence on the legislative level, but also surveyed the role they continue to play in implementing antiviolence laws. / text

The study is a comparative analysis of the development of two networks of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Jalisco and their contribution to the strengthening of the political capacities of NGOs. A new view of civil society is introduced that emphasizes its multiple functions and forms the basis for disaggregating capacity into three dimensions: defensive, propositional and infrastructural. A political process approach draws from social movement theory for understanding the emergence and activities of NGO networks. / The development of NGOs in Mexico from the 1960s through the 1990s is analyzed as the result of mobilization in response to political opportunities arising from transformations to the political and social policy regimes of the Mexican state. The study compares the national pattern with the experience of two regional NGO networks: Foro de Organismos Civiles de Oaxaca (FOCO) and Foro de Organismos Civiles de Jalisco (FOCIV). Each network emerged in response to state-level defensive and propositional opportunities. / Comparative historical case studies and a latitudinal analysis of linkage development reveal the contribution of these two networks to capacity-building. Increased communication between member organizations was an positive result of the network activities. However, neither network strengthened linkages of NGOs with popular movements, political parties, or the state. The study confirms earlier research findings that these types of networks contribute to the development of pluralism in civil society, but reveals the defence of NGO autonomy to be a barrier to greater linkage development. / The focus on autonomy can distance NGOs from other important political actors and their struggles, hinder coordination with other actors, and thus reduce the political effectiveness of the networks. The two cases also illustrate the important role of third-order NGOs to the development of the sector as a whole, and suggest that linkages tend to be stronger in networks where third-order NGOs promote network development.