This dissertation seeks to understand the ways in which Pakistani government’s attempts to initiate large-scale infrastructure development projects in Balochistan Province have transformed its social and political landscape. Ethnographically, the study focuses on Gwadar, a small coastal town in Pakistan’s western Balochistan Province to show how colonial and postcolonial projects of progress and development suppress or subsume other kinds of lived geographies and imaginations of place. Keeping in mind the centrality of everyday experiences in generating social forms, this dissertation describes how development, transnationalism, and ethnic identity are (re)configured. It is based on ethnographic encounters that foreground the lived experiences and imaginations of fishermen from Med kinship and occupational group who occupy a subaltern position within the local status hierarchy in Gwadar. On the one hand, the promise of becoming modern citizens of the future mega city incites new desires and longings among those fishermen that facilitate their incorporation into emergent regimes of labor and entrepreneurship. On the other hand, Pakistani security forces have tightened their control over the local population by establishing a cordon sanitaire around Gwadar Port and the town. These mechanisms of control have disrupted local fishermen`s experiences of place and intimate sociality and introduced elements of exclusion, fear, and paranoia. By interrupting the fishermen`s expectations of their rightful place in the city, it compels them to think of alternate ways to confront the state’s development agenda, including peaceful protest and armed struggle. The dissertation concludes, tentatively, that the imposition of political violence by state authorities that accompanies the structural violence of mega infrastructure projects tends to create a mirror effect whereby the victims of development adopt a language of violence and a different idiom of identity. / text

Following the 1973 rise in the price of oil, the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations of the Middle East became hosts to hundreds of thousands of foreign workers taking part in the economic development of the region. From the beginning, the employment of migrant workers was seen as a temporary measure, necessary to compensate for the small indigenous populations in the Gulf. The numbers of foreign workers has become so great, that the migrants now constitute a majority of the population in several of the GCC countries. The relative permanence with which foreign workers have now established themselves is of great concern to the host governments. It appears that the insufficient skill-levels and sizes of the national workforces, together with the position the extensive and growing migrant communities hold in the growing Gulf economies point to the continued presence of large foreign populations for some time to come.

This study investigates whether the remedial tertiary-level EFL classes in the Arabian Gulf States optimize the process of acquiring English for the majority of the students, namely the graduates of government high schools. I have endeavoured to uncover, by reference to my three years as an EFL teacher in the Gulf and the pertinent literature, why so much time and effort invested by myself and my students resulted in such a disproportionate lack of progress in reading and writing. I show how three major factors (diglossia, a linguistic trichotomy, and low literacy levels) conspire to impede students from learning to read and write in English through second language methodology and compare this situation to the one in Quebec. I conclude with two suggestions to make tertiary-level EFL classes more efficient and effective: the use of more familiar methodology and the teaching of reading and writing through a literacy framework. I also propose some longer-term solutions to deal with the linguistic trichotomy, a problem the Gulf Arabian States may wish to address if they intend to pursue the goal of providing a world-class education to their children.

Self and nation, popularly considered to be of natural origin in the Western world, are in fact constructed through social processes. One of these processes is narrative: the stories that purport to describe the nation and the self actually bring them into being. This thesis argues that national identity and the individual subjectivity of citizens are mutually and simultaneously constitutive, as the stories that construct both phenomena draw on the same discourses. Nations are constructed through narratives told about their citizens, whilst individuals draw on shared discourses within the national domain in order to narrate their identities. According to scholars like Dawson (1994) and Summerfield (1998), who use the term “subjective composure” to describe this process, narrating life experiences allows people to construct an “acceptable” version of their past and their selves that can be comfortably lived with. When a person’s stories are authorised the identity produced by those stories is socially validated. In this thesis I explore the processes of the simultaneous construction of self and nation via an analysis of the narratives told about one event: the deployment of the Royal New Zealand Air Force’s 40 Squadron to the coalition force that fought Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. 40 Squadron’s own narratives of the event, collected in interviews in 2007, as well as media representations and government statements from the time of the Gulf War, are analysed in regards to their various identity projects, alongside memoirs and histories of both the Gulf War and earlier wars in which New Zealand has taken part, in order to illuminate the shared discourses against which New Zealand narratives of the Gulf War must find affirmation. I find that the identity project of the nation is at odds with those of individual 40 Squadron members; so that the same discourse cannot be used to achieve both projects. This results in several different definitions of 40 Squadron’s deployment. Whilst the government and media categorise it as a peacekeeping mission, members of 40 Squadron construct it as an instance of their either being “at war” or “on holiday.” Because only the peacekeeping categorisation circulates in the public sphere, 40 Squadron struggles to find affirmation for the stories they tell about their experience and therefore for the identities they narrate through those stories. National discourses may not always be workable for citizens attempting to compose acceptable selves.

After the discovery of oil, many Arab Gulf States failed to diversify and expand their economies beyond the oil sector. Resource curse theory contends these states, also known as rentier states, exhibited slower economic development than other states due to their dependency on oil. Dubai has been classified as a rentier state, however, it has achieved significant economic growth and political stability. Kuwait and Qatar were selected as case studies to compare and contrast with Dubai. Dubai s growth can be attributed to its rulers decisions prior to and after the discovery of oil and the growing role of the merchant class in the state. Therefore, the resource curse theory alone cannot address the development of Arab Gulf states.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-109). / vi, 109 leaves, bound col. ill., col. map 29 cm

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Services, 2007. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 298-335).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Auburn University, 2008. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 143-151).

Thesis (M.S.)--School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, 2008. / "June 2008." Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 141-148). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis--University of Maryland. / Without thesis statement. Bibliography: p. [159]-163.