The current debate about women and gender in development, sustainable development, and the impact of western development systems on Third World countries, has provided the primary impetus for this study. The ongoing debate is between two opposing view points, profit-oriented and people-oriented. This study focuses primarily on the newly independent Eastern Caribbean States, former British colonies referred to as the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). The Caribbean as a region has largely been lumped together with Latin America, and these nation states have not attracted many scholars to examine or investigate their intrinsic development and political systems. My intent is not to present a definite or fixed model, but to suggest an alternative development paradigm for the Eastern Caribbean. The specific contours of the transformation process would vary from one nation or area to another, depending on particular individualized circumstances. The broad based principles of the transformation process would nevertheless be applicable to the larger Caribbean region, as well as other Less Industrialized Countries. I drew on grounded theory and qualitative research to describe and analyze the practices and factors that characterize a development project in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. This approach is particularly appropriate for a topic which is multi-dimensional in its investigation. Using multiple qualitative data sources and the involvement of the investigator as a researcher and participant observer to the social environment of the chosen site, allowed for the greatest possible depth and richness in this study. It included opportunities for observations of the formal and informal processes of the project implementation. The proposed alternative paradigm includes factors such as development that redefines growth; development in which women play a central, active and guiding role; development which revitalizes indigenous culture and identity; development that empowers the poor majority and builds a basis for genuine democracy; development that permits a spectrum of political and economic options and experiments. The practical outcome is that Eastern Caribbean Nations and Less Industrialized Countries no longer have to adhere rigidly to one paradigm to guide their development path.

Pregnant women with substance use issues are a doubly at-risk group in desperate need of support. Using open-ended interviews, participant-observation, and media analysis, I examine the support provided by the Department of Children and Families (DCF) in Massachusetts for pregnant women who seek treatment at Project Empowerment. Project Empowerment provides prenatal care, maintenance therapy, and other services to expectant mothers who struggle with substance use issues. Drawing upon Foucault’s (1975) notion of surveillance, I explore how pregnant women with substance use issues are surveilled by agencies, and how these surveillance agencies structure their care and policies through their definitions of what it means to be a “good mother.” I argue that through the Department of Children and Families definition of the “good mother,” DCF produces an unintended paradox of support for pregnant women with substance use issues in Massachusetts.

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Theory and research regarding interorganizational relations (IOR) can be applied to many situations in the field of human service delivery. An example of IOR in public human services occurs in the transition of special needs students from special education programs to adult human services. In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts the transitional process is defined by legislation entitled Chapter 688. This research examines Chapter 688 from the conceptual framework of IOR theory. It examines some of the issues and problems involved in the implementation of IOR in the transition process. The organizational domain is delimited to include four key Chapter 688 organizations (agencies): public schools, rehabilitation commission, department of mental health, and department of mental retardation. Local (area) directors of each organization completed a survey questionnaire containing three parts; knowledge of Chapter 688, attitudes toward Chapter 688 and IOR, and the Klonglan Scale (a measure of intensity of IOR). Information on actual referral patterns and IOR in Chapter 688 was obtained through document analysis of Individual Transition Plans, ITP, and State data base files on Chapter 688 referrals. The results of the study indicated that the local area directors of the target agencies involved in the Chapter 688 interorganizational relationships, IOR, have a good working knowledge of the law. The area directors are of the opinion that the components of Chapter 688 implementation are satisfactory. They value IOR as a means of improving services, but need to develop a clearer idea of IOR. The area directors' description of the intensity of IOR in the Klonglan Scale is not substantiated in terms of participation in ITP meetings and/or ITP services. Lastly, the local area directors identify the following barriers to interorganizational relationships: inadequate funding, lack of coordination of funding, lack of goal clarity and uniformity, and insufficient knowledge of, and trust in, other agencies.

Due to critical flaws in the existing studies, this study advances a new theory--the theory of controlled commodification--for the analysis of media and culture in the peripheral capitalism of Singapore. Since political independence, the state in Singapore has pursued a developmental policy based on the principles of the market economy that has given rise to its newly industrialized status. It promotes the development of the capitalist institutional framework, structures, and practices for the commodification process, yet restricts the process where it pertains to the flow of commodities effected through the exchange mechanism of the marketplace. The critical manifestation of this fundamental contradiction is in the media-cultural terrain. The existing approaches, in failing to grasp or address this contradiction, have provided a theoretically inadequate account of Singapore's media and culture. Thus they are overly narrow or localized (as in the works of media freedom, development media, and communication developmentalism) or overly broad or globalized (as in the cultural dependency perspective) or ahistorical in treating the convergence and conflict of the local-global forces (as in Galtung's structural theory of imperialism). The theory of controlled commodification is premised upon a historical appreciation of the local-global articulation of the commodification process within such peripheral capitalism as Singapore. Constructed from the two Marxian media-cultural approaches of Western Marxism and the Marxian political economy, the theory assumes the centrality of the (Singapore) state--as a managerial state for (global) capital--in the constitution of media operating as a commercial, profit-oriented institution in a market economy. Adopted for the analysis of Singapore's print and electronic media, together with its politics and culture, the theory of controlled commodification sheds the much needed light on the intricate relationship between state control of media and culture, on the one hand, and the commodification process, on the other--i.e., the very contradiction of peripheral Singapore, itself. Although controlled commodification is developed specifically in relation to Singapore, its theoretical thrust is argued to be applicable to other peripheral capitalism as well.

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