The village has been the significant social unit on the Indian subcontinent for thousands of years. To maintain its integrity it has developed a set of interlocking structures, some of which are unique to the subcontinent, which are very resistant to change. The Indian national government passed legislation which provided for the formation of new structures of political allocation without providing the basis of support for changing the other related structures existing within the village. This thesis attempts to show why this particular change, advocated by the state and national governments, failed. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

The Vertical Mosaic is re-examined and an 'internal' critique of its multiple conceptual, theoretical and ethical problems is provided. Porter's value position in a 1961 essay is outlined and set up as a 'bench-mark' for evaluating the consistency of his 1965 value position. Value inconsistency is discovered in the form of a 'strategy of respectability,' consisting of five 'tactics.' This strategy is then drawn upon throughout the essay to explicate some of Porter's conceptual and theoretical errors. These errors involve his treatment of class, power and democracy. It is argued that Porter's important distinction between "real middle class" and "middle majority" violates his original position on class, and is inadequate for his stated purpose. Furthermore, the theoretical foundations underlying the structure of class are unexplicated. His failure to distinguish between power and authority raises logical and utilitarian problems. Thus the theoretical foundations underlying the structure of power are inadequate. In both the case of class and power he 'transcends' his original definition in the process of doing his analysis. The normative context of his study is found to be ambiguous, but appears to be the theory of democratic elitism. This constitutes a major value inconsistency because this theory rejects democracy as an end and treats it simply as a method. It is in opposition to thoroughgoing democracy, whose normative ends Porter supports. Its method, playing by the 'rules of the game', requires compromise and 'creates' brokerage politics, which Porter dislikes. It fears and does not allow the broadening of social participation, which Porter calls for. Finally, it furnishes a context for Porter's findings which rob them of their import. It is suggested that Porter should have treated democracy as a topic rather than as a resource. This would have allowed him to recognize the error in his rejection of liberal democracy, and would have allowed him to retain thoroughgoing democracy as a critical context with which to evaluate his findings. Furthermore, these findings would have been multiplied if he had simply used elitist democracy heuristically. Such findings and analyses, however, would have required that Porter not operate with a 'strategy of respectability.' The essay concludes with two points, both rooted in the everyday world, and both suggested as programmatic, 'external,' answers to problems in Political Sociology. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

This study is about political participation of women in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. The study will attempt to understand women’s views on the matter. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to knowledge of how Cambodian women’s participation in politics displays in relation to their educational background. To research and analyze this problem area, I have travelled to Cambodia and used semi-structured interviews as a method. Hay’s types of political participation and intersectionality have been used as theoretical framework to form questions for the interviews and to analyze the findings to uncover potential differences in participation between women of different social classes. The findings show that both interviewed groups participated in politics in various ways, but the main differences between the two educational groups of women are mostly concerning opportunities in and knowledge of politics. For all women to feel empowered, to feel like their opinions matter and to feel comfortable to express their views, education for all women is a necessity. Actions for guaranteeing women education is critical for their participation in politics and for the Cambodian society to develop. Therefore, intersectionality needs to be applied in analyses to change these structures and education for women is a prerequisite to create equal opportunities for everyone.

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This dissertation excavates the multifaceted intricacies surrounding the socioeconomic transformations of southeastern Syria, which subsequently was named Transjordan, from the late Ottoman period (circa 1840s) to the 1930s. Through a rigorous engagement with Marxism, postcolonial theory, psychoanalysis, gender and queer theor(y/ies), and studies of “economic theology,” it reinterprets capital, not as a thing or as an illusion, but as the performative effect of the capitalization of networks of knowledge-power, or, in other words, as an intersubjectively (i.e., ideologically) agreed upon symbolization of the power relations that enable the bringing of future revenue into the present.The dissertation unfolds in three parts. The inaugural section, “Deconstructing Fantasies; (Re)Conceptualizing Capital,” problematizes foundational economic theories, scrutinizes capital’s ontological and theological underpinnings, and juxtaposes capitalization to sharīʿa’s moral cosmology. In doing so, it destabilizes conventional dichotomies between the economic and the political, probing deeply into capitalization’s metaphysical affinities with the metaphysics of modernity. The second part, “Explicating Capitalification,” foregrounds the structural transformations of the Ottoman Empire, dissecting its evolution in response to capitalistic imperatives. The narrative delves into the moral cosmologies that underpinned the Empire’s existence and the subsequent structural transformation of the empire, focusing particularly on fiscal centralization, the interplay of debt and power, and technologies of capitalification. This section interrogates the Ottoman Empire’s projects in southeastern Syria, excavating its endeavors in controlling the Bedouin, the implementation of education policies, and its intricate land codes and registration policies. In the third and final part, “Post-Ottoman Legacies,” the narrative transitions to spotlighting the residual colonial imprints on Transjordan’s emergent state structures and its intricate class formations. This part of the exploration takes a critical view of the Jordanian state’s production as an effect through colonizing mechanisms, mechanisms of colonization that limited production, and the performative aspects of class as an effect of citational practices. By focusing on different stratifications such as shaykhs, soldiers, and workers, this section demystifies the intricacies of class within the Transjordanian context, particularly in relation to the capitalization of land and debt-induced expropriation.

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