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This dissertation is a narrative self-representation, one that employs auto/ethnographical methodology to illustrate the process of the transformative learning experience of an international graduate student. This narrative focuses on showing the process, including the continually nature of personal transformation and transformative learning experiences. Through auto/ethnographical portrayal, I show how the process of self-knowing and self-understanding enables me to relate and then transform my knowledge and my understanding of interrelationships between interdisciplinary discourses on education for (social and personal) development and the pedagogical approaches that are employed in formal and nonformal learning settings for empowerment and for the achievement of (social and personal) transformation. I also show how reflexivity enables me to realize possibilities to apply theoretical insight and knowledge that I have acquired from my graduate study in my future practice as a nonformal educator. I use a variety of auto/ethnographical representations to illustrate how the historical shifts and changes in theoretical and epistemological assumptions have continually affected the transformation in the articulations of international development policy and the development of educational models as well as pedagogical interpretations and practices of education for empowerment that are implemented in various societal contexts and institutions. Using self-reflexivity during the process of writing auto/ethnography, I show how my personal experiences, which I attained from different learning contexts, influence the transformation in my understanding, my interpretation and my practices of specific pedagogical approaches for empowerment.

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People who experience structural violence are an increased risk for health conditions including HIV and Hepatitis C. Particularly they are at greater risk for experiencing known syndemic interactions between these two chronic infectious diseases. The risks are mediated bio-socially through the ways that structural inequality increases social and biological vulnerability to illness and suffering. Structural inequalities, or experiences of structural violence shape environments of risk; environments of risks increase social and biological vulnerability to the structures of risk promoting syndemic interactions between biological, behavioral, and psychological conditions. The lived experiences of people diagnosed with a combination of HIV, HCV, and mental health conditions (MHC) (e.g., mood disorders and depression) are, however, thus far understudied. Many aspects and consequences of structural violence and social suffering; poverty, homelessness, substance use, lack of access to healthcare, and structural risks for HIV, HCV, MHC and interactions between the three. Through this mixed-methods, primarily qualitative, ethnographic fieldwork with individuals in the Boston area living with HIV, HCV, or both HIV and HCV, or suffering from MHC I ethnographically explore people’s perceptions of their vulnerability to these syndemic interactions. I also investigate their experiences of being at-risk for these conditions. Through this process, I seek to illuminate individuals’ understandings of the impact structures of risk (i.e., substance use, food insecurity and unstable housing) have on lived experiences with HIV/HCV, HIV/MHC, and HCV/MHC syndemics. The perceptions of the lived realities of disease-behavioral-psychological interactions and health consequences are analyzed in the context of substance use. Substance use’s biological and social dimensions have a role in promoting syndemic interactions for each of the syndemics experienced within this population. Therefore, substance use is a syndemogenic factor because of its role as a mediator for environments of risks, and as a structural risk factor in all three of these syndemics. These interactions, and consequential health outcomes, in sufferers’ own words, enrich the landscape of syndemics research, producing a clearer picture regarding the structures of risks affecting this vulnerable group in the greater Boston area.

This ethnography of interreligious dialogue in Rome is concerned with how interfaith encounters and social transformation are dialectically constructed and enacted. The network of Roman interfaith organizations is placed in a Durkheimian framework as a moral community with distinct rituals and sacred objects, referred to as the "interfaith society." The interfaith society described here is distinctly shaped by its location in Rome: the neighboring Vatican, engrained cultural Catholicism, and-through global migratory patterns distinct to the late 20th century-the inundation of non-Catholic religions into Italy. This research analyzed the differences that exist between elite institutional events and informal grassroots (di base) gatherings, noting the way third sector nonprofits form a "hinge" between the two. In-depth examination of the publishing cooperative and program office Confronti shows the evolution of Catholic ecumenical efforts into today's interfaith society. It also shows the value of creative dialogue as a form of interfaith engagement. This exploration is based upon interviews with 52 participants across these settings, participant-observation of interfaith practices, and interviews with 17 Romans who do not practice dialogue. Interfaith encounters and interviews with 25 dialoguers in Israel and Palestine illustrate the difference geographical and sociopolitical context can make in the practice of dialogue, and demonstrate that dialogue is framed in both settings as a method to disrupt historical patterns of stereotyping and objectification. This study finds that interfaith dialogue can best be understood by examining its processes and asking what they mean for participants, rather than looking for "metrics." Encounters across religious difference are found to require intention, leadership, and repetition in order to establish a "safe haven." Participants speak of their goals in terms of "humanizing" the other and striving for "mutual recognition." Each of these discursive goals is explored through the narrative data gathered. They are found to be best understood not by measurement of their "success," but as shared sacred values that bind together the interfaith society. The repeated, communal invocation of these sacred values signifies to the members of the community that they belong to the collective, solidifying also awareness of who is not in their group.

One of the most troubling features of the contemporary critical scene is the near-total absence of "non-western" theories. My thesis investigates how this absence is constructed not through institutional discursive, or disciplinary constraints, but through the content of hegemonic theories. This requires exploring two main questions, namely, "what makes elite theories imperialist?" and "how can we rearticulate "indigeneity" so that the project of reconstructing indigenous theories is not a nativist project"? Instead of reducing the imperialism of elite theories to their geographical or cultural origins, I look at what they do within specific cross-cultural contexts. No unique definition of cultural imperialism is assumed. Theories become imperialist through a variety of tropes, within specific contexts. One of the predominant ways in which this occurs is by situating the West as Theory, and East as Evidence. This is based on the interpretation of the "indigenous" as necessarily nativist, authentic, ahistorical, pure and autonomous. My thesis also demonstrates how processes of "contextualization," "displacement," "historical erasure," "dislocation," and "homogenization" become tropes of cultural imperialism, silencing the other as theory, in theory. The relationship between theory and cultural difference, central to the project of reconstructing indigenous theories is usually understood in terms of the notion of determination. If problems of reductionism are to be avoided, I argue that it is important to reformulate the relation in terms of the notion of "location." Rasa, a theory indigenous to the Indian context is discussed in order to demonstrate that the absence of "non-western" perspectives is ideologically constituted. All theories are indigenous, that is, local, particular, and situated within specific social and historical contexts. It is in this sense I argue, that the margins of theory need to be reinterpreted so as to reconstitute the heterogeneity of postcolonial space and time.

This study is concerned with the ways in which people organize their attitudes toward abortion. The dissertation explores two conceptually distinct aspects of public attitudes toward abortion: characteristics of abortion situations that impinge upon moral acceptance of abortion, and the social and ideological attributes that individuals bring to bear upon their judgments of abortion situations. Two research instruments, a factorial survey and a conventional telephone survey were administered to an age-sex stratified sample of adult respondents from Greenfield, Massachusetts. The factorial survey design was used to generate thousands of hypothetical abortion situations that vary in terms the life course characteristics, health and financial status of the pregnant woman, as well as the overt reasons for an abortion, the phase of gestation, and the views of parents and partners. The results indicate that among the various characteristics that describe an abortion decision, three factors have the most significant impact on abortion attitudes: the reasons individual women provide for their abortion decisions, the phase of gestation, and the general health of the pregnant woman. Second, age differences in abortion attitudes suggest cohort effects on the structure of abortion attitudes. Respondents are also more sympathetic to abortion decisions made by vignette women who share their marital status and parity. Third, a comparative analysis of the two methods used to measure abortion attitudes show that they essentially capture the same structure of attitudes. Supplementary data from a conventional telephone survey was used to place abortion attitudes within a larger context of attitudes and beliefs in three other domains: Sexuality/reproduction, human life, and gender roles. Abortion attitudes are strongly related to human life values and attitudes in the domain of sex/reproduction, but only moderately related to gender role ideology. Furthermore, the abortion belief structure and its links to beliefs and values in other life domains have changed historically, and show variation across subgroups of respondents defined by age, religion and gender. In sum, abortion attitudes are shaped by past experiences, current life circumstances and the overall vague orientation individuals bring many aspects of social and personal life.

This dissertation theorizes political resistance in the wake of critiques of the transcendental subject made by poststructuralist theorists. After a review of the theoretical approaches among U.S. rhetoricians to the "rhetoric of social movements" (1965-1985), I review the contributions of three French post-structuralists (Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and Jean Baudrillard) to theories of discourse and resistance, concluding with Michel de Certeau's correctives to them. The final two chapters propose a theory of political resistance which distinguishes rhetorical performance from rhetorical performativity to account for two forms of resistance in tension within the post-WWII "new social movements" in the U.S. Focusing specifically on the gay liberation movement, one chapter analyzes dance and popular culture (through Madonna's "Vogue" video and the cult it stems from/spawns) as sites of resistance where signifiers of gender, race, and sexuality are deployed, but evade the essentializing rhetorics and institutional forms of power seen in the field of identity. The final chapter analyzes the modes through which new right identity construction and gay liberation identity construction work in tandem, and in relation to black civil rights identity to constitute a contested field of power. I argue that identity is not a developmental accomplishment, but a deontic closure which both constitutes and is constituted by the discourse of "minority" in the U.S., and, therefore, related to a range of social practices from segmented advertising to legal claims to civil rights.

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