Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2007. / Title from PDF title page screen. Advisor: Wesley D. Allan; submitted to the Dept. of Psychology. Includes bibliographical references (p. 43-49).

We follow our cow and forget our home'. This statement encapsulates the problems that this thesis addresses in relation to the three interdependent themes of identity, movement and survival. This study is concerned with Fulani identities and mobility in Greater Accra, Ghana. It is ultimately about Fulani survival across space and through time. It involves an understanding of where people are coming from, where they have travelled to and the environments in which they have grown up, been educated, married, borne children and worked. The units of analysis are the lives, stories and experiences of individuals, as well as the communities and ultimately ethnic group of which they form a part. The account thus addresses the 'personal troubles' of individual women and men, both young and old, as well as wider 'public issues' taken up by the Ghanaian state and press. These issues are also observed to be the subject of debate and concern in the Fulani community in Greater Accra. This thesis concerns itself with the sites and circumstances in which Fulani consider themselves to be the same or different. The markers of Fulani identity, as recognized by Fulani and non-Fulani alike, are examined. The factors are investigated that allow them, as a distinct ethnic category, to maintain and perpetuate this identity and viability in Greater Accra. The analogy of 'construction sites' is useful for considering these different, explicit and implicit events and recurring processes, through which people reproduce themselves as Fulani (of various kinds). These sites are locations as well as contexts of action. They are social circumstances (with personnel, power relations, procedures etc.) such as ethnic associations, public gatherings and common rites of passage. The recurring processes include genealogical reckoning of kinship and endogamous marriage transactions, and the ways in which ties of descent and filiation are used to enhance individual survival and family development goals.

Regardless of a subject's own level of physical appearance, it has been found that both male and female subjects tend to prefer and choose the most physically attractive dating partner from those available (Agoglia, 1969; Walster, Aronson, Abrahams, and Rottmann, 1966). This finding fails to confirm the plausible alternative hypothesis . that subjects would choose a dating partner of about equal physical attractiveness. Why does an individual, regardless of his own physical appearance, tend to choose the most nhysically attractive alternative presented to him (her) for a dating partner?

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 95-96).

Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 2002. Graduate Programme in Psychology. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 127-136). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pMQ71583.

This thesis is an empirical study on the phenomenon of compensated dating [hereafter known as CD] in Hong Kong. It examines the lived experiences of CD participants and their self-understandings of their identities and behaviors. Drawing from formal in-depth interviews with 30 male clients and 12 young women who provided CD, cyber ethnography of a major online CD forum, informal conversations with CD participants and offline participant observations of various types of non-commercial and non-sexual social gatherings amongst groups of CD participants from the period between March 2010 and December 2012, this thesis examines why and how individuals come to be involved in CD, how they form intimacies in the context of CD and the nature of these intimacies. In the process, it illuminates the emerging social phenomenon of CD in light of the transformation of intimacy, plastic sexuality, new female and male biographies, gender relationships, the advance of information technology, and various social changes in an increasing fragmented and risky society as we enter into the world of late modernity. This thesis argues that CD participants perceive CD as a space for practicing plastic sexuality rather than a form of prostitution. The fact that sex does not necessarily happen in CD, the dynamic interactions amongst CD participants, and the changes of conventional sexual script from a marital, reproductive and monogamous one to a non-marital, non-reproductive, recreational, non-monogamous and even emotionally indifferent one make the CD script more like the mainstream sexual script in late modernity and less like the traditional commercial sexual script. The resemblance between the CD script and modern intimacy serves as a major rationale for CD participants to justify their CD behaviors. This thesis also argues that male clients of CD desire more than just bounded authenticity and that CD relationship is a complex and dynamic interpersonal relationship rather than a simple and static seller-buyer relationship because more often than not, CD participants extend their relationships beyond a bounded, commercial sexual context to an unbounded, non-commercial social context. This thesis examines the factors that facilitate CD participants to transform an impersonal and bounded commercial relationship to a genuine and unbounded interpersonal and/or romantic relationship. This thesis concludes that although CD relationships may be ephemeral, precarious and founded on economic elements, so too are many conventional relationships in modern society. There is an increasing intellectual tension to demarcate between CD relations and conventional intimate relations because while the former underscores the romantic and reciprocal qualities of the later, the later also reflects the recreational, economic and unstable elements of the former. Although plastic sexuality, the transformation of intimacy and various consequences of modernity are not in themselves the causes of the emergence of CD, they do create the contexts of an environment that is favorable to the development and growth of the CD phenomenon. / published_or_final_version / Sociology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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