Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 290-300).

<p> Este estudio fue uno de tipo descriptivo. Su objetivo principal fue examinar los factores determinantes de los cambios demogr&aacute;ficos que est&eacute;n relacionados con los servicios complementarios en las escuelas p&uacute;blicas de Puerto Rico entre 1970 y 1990. En el mismo se describi&oacute;, la matr&iacute;cula y nivel escolar que utiliz&oacute; los servicios. Entre las variables se encuentran: orientaci&oacute;n, trabajo social, transferencias, m&eacute;dicos y comedor escolar. Igualmente, se analiz&oacute;, transportaci&oacute;n, escuelas y matr&iacute;cula por zonas geogr&aacute;ficas demarcadas por el Departamento de Educaci&oacute;n. Los indicadores principales fueron: el cambio porcentual del servicio y la matr&iacute;cula, el por ciento que utiliz&oacute; el servicio y la distribuci&oacute;n porcentual del servicio atendido. </p><p> Los resultados revelaron que un porcentaje considerable de los estudiantes matriculados en los tres niveles educativos utilizaba los servicios complementarios en las escuelas p&uacute;blicas de Puerto Rico durante el periodo de estudio. Estos fluctuaron desde -35.3 % de la matr&iacute;cula total en el servicio de comedores escolares hasta un 350.2 % en los servicios de trabajadores sociales. Observ&aacute;ndose, un incremento en los servicios ofrecidos por los trabajadores sociales y los orientadores. Una situaci&oacute;n adversa se reflej&oacute; para los servicios m&eacute;dicos y los comedores escolares. Adem&aacute;s, se reflej&oacute; que el nivel elemental fue el que m&aacute;s utiliz&oacute; los servicios durante el periodo de estudio. </p><p> Se estudi&oacute; la densidad de la matr&iacute;cula por milla cuadrada, as&iacute; como el promedio de estudiantes por zona geogr&aacute;fica. Se registr&oacute; una alta densidad de matr&iacute;cula en la zona urbana tanto en el 1970 como 1990. As&iacute; como, una zona rural superabundante con un incremento en el promedio de estudiantes, durante el periodo. En conclusi&oacute;n, existen factores determinantes de los cambios demogr&aacute;ficos que impactan los servicios complementarios de los estudiantes en las escuelas p&uacute;blicas de Puerto Rico. Entre &eacute;stos se identificaron los siguientes: densidad de matr&iacute;cula y de escuelas por millas cuadradas, tama&ntilde;o y volumen de la poblaci&oacute;n, tasa anual de crecimiento y balance migratorio. Entre las implicaciones relacionadas con los determinantes demogr&aacute;ficos se encuentra la reducci&oacute;n de la poblaci&oacute;n estudiantil matriculada en escuelas p&uacute;blicas, la cual impacta la cantidad de maestros, salones y escuelas.</p>

This dissertation research is the study of cultural resource management initiatives and the extent to which archaeological surveys and excavations include or exclude African Caribbean contemporary and historic communities, throughout these processes. Varying types of archaeological sites identified by archaeologists, along with community inclusionary measures are examined to determine as to the degree to which archaeological surveys and excavations are reflective of historic and contemporary African Caribbean communities. Data were collected through archival research, interviews and surveys and analyzed qualitatively to examine the degree to which stakeholders, particularly those who have been historically marginalized, have been incorporated into these processes. It was anticipated that changes in nationalistic identities and the emergence of an African Caribbean middle class would bring about a shift in the focus of cultural resource management initiatives, away from those associated with colonialist Europeans and Americans towards those associated with African Caribbean communities. A comprehensive examination of economic, political, social and cultural conditions provides the framework for an examination of historic and contemporary factors that have influenced the emergence of African Caribbean middle class communities. The data suggest that shifts in cultural resource management initiatives do occur as African Caribbean middle classes emerge from European colonialist societies. However, in some cases, the emergence of this middle class has been delayed. The data also suggest that archaeological surveys and excavations are still conducted without comprehensive community inclusionary measures or the inclusion of aspects of community based site significance. History, memory, and identity are key components of community-based concepts of tangible resources and as indicated in this study, differ greatly from resources as defined historically by colonialist and currently by archaeologists.

The investment needs of the water and sanitation sector and the financing constraints facing many developing countries were important catalysts for the promotion of private investment during the 1990s. Towards the end of the decade however, the flow of private capital began to decline primarily due to the poor performance of some investments and difficulties encountered during these transactions. Regardless, private investment is still considered an important financial resource for the sector which has resulted in considerable attention in addressing governance, economic and socio-political factors which can discourage investment. The aim of the research is to develop a strategic framework for attracting private investment to the Caribbean water and sanitation sector. Using a multiple-case study approach, the research examines the phenomenon of private investment in the water and sanitation sectors in Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago by assessing the environment for private investment and determining the specific drivers and deterrents to this type of investment. The implications of small size in the Caribbean context for institutional requirements to support private investment in the sector are also examined. Primary data for the research are obtained from public officials involved in the management, operation and regulation of the sector, local and international private service providers and local financial institutions through interviews and survey questionnaires. Documents are used to contextualise, corroborate and augment the research. The research found that in addition to traditional strategic and financial criteria in terms of provisions of the operating environment and investment performance, behaviour-related factors such as interest in job security, recognition and comfort were also important to the investment decision in the sector. Investors' perceptions of the utility were also found to be a statistically significant determinant of investment. Besides emphasising the importance of creating a conducive environment for investment, the research highlighted a need to simultaneously focus on generating specific investment opportunities to build investor confidence. The most important consequence of small size to negatively impact on creating conducive conditions for investment was the effect of limited professional capacity on institutional arrangements in the sector. Accordingly, sharing professional expertise to address capacity constraints emerged as the most feasible opportunity for regional cooperation to improve the environment for private investment in the sector.

Many scholars in the field believe that identities are fluid without question. Butler’s “fluidity of identities,” for instance, describes the numerous variations in gender identities that denaturalize gender, but not consider its racial dimensions (179). Butler analyzes drag performance as a model to show how gender identities are fluid, suggesting agency and social mobility in everyday life. But what is most striking to me about fluidity of identities is the assumption that everyone has fluid identities with scarcely any regard for how racialized stereotypes fix identities (Hall 1997, 258). Fixity is the repetition of colonial power over racialized subjects rendering them without agency and access (Bhabha 94). Fixity uses stereotyping, which is a process of constructing “composite images” about groups of people, and that hold certain identities within “symbolic boundaries” (Brantlinger 306). As a result, this dissertation challenges the universality in a fluidity of identities by examining three case studies in Caribbean racialized gender identities, often thought to be fluid because of multi-ethnicity, but discriminate against, and erase blackness or “Africanness,” in race theories of “whitening” (blanquemiento), “darkening” (negreado), color-casting, and colonial stereotypes of “miscegenation” throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Through performance analyses of three black and "miscegenated" Anglophone Caribbean performers Denise “Saucy Wow” Belfon in Trinidad carnival crossdressing, Carlene “The Dancehall Queen” Smith in Jamaican dancehall transvestism, and Staceyann Chin in American performance poetry with racialized “androgyny,” I examine the figures of Creole, La Mulata, Dougla and “half-Chiney” by these women in their performance genres in order to investigate whether identities are as fluid as Butler suggests, and to chart their fixities. Focusing on fluidity alone risks denying inequalities and the lack of social mobility restricting access to marginalized people. Belfon, Smith and Chin manipulate racialized “drag” by simultaneously crossing race and gender in masquerade traditions of Trinidad carnival, Jamaican dancehall, and in the orality and embodiment in American performance poetry in performances I call black liminal displacements, defined as self-stereotyping and self-caricaturing. However fluid racialized gender identities may appear to be, I argue that racialized gender identities are not definitively fluid because racial stereotypes fix identities. / text

When thinking specifically of transnationalism, African diaspora and the fluidity of identity: Where do we locate Afro-Latina women? The answer for this question would seem to come from a Black or Chicano feminist thought, nonetheless, these theoretical frameworks have static spaces where fluid subjectivities like that of Afro-Latina women are not recognized. This report frames a theoretical conversation between these two frameworks through a dialectic discussion of their empty spaces or limits and proposes a new approach to Afro-Latina feminism based on the processes and intersections of Black consciousness, sexuality, and the knowledges that are created through the body and its fluidity. More importantly, paying close attention to the roles of translocation, transformation, and the fluidity of identity. In furthering this theoretical conversation, under the theme of Afro-Latina women, this report takes on the case of Dominican women’s transnational experiences and their different dimensions as represented in novels like, Nelly Rosario’s Song of the Water Saints and Ana Lara’s Erzulie’s Skirt. Looking specifically at the relationships between women and women, and women and their bodies as being transformed through the sacred, this report concludes that the centrality of Afro-Latina women’s experience is in recognizing that the body as an archive, is a place from where knowledges are re-created and disseminated creating a feminist epistemology for themselves. / text

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"Christian Slavery" shows how Protestant missionaries in the early modern Atlantic World developed a new vision for slavery that integrated Christianity with human bondage. Quaker, Anglican, and Moravian missionaries arrived in the Caribbean intending to "convert" enslaved Africans to Christianity, but their actions formed only one part of a dialogue that engaged ideas about family, kinship, sex, and language. Enslaved people perceived these newcomers alternately as advocates, enemies, interlopers, and powerful spiritual practitioners, and they sought to utilize their presence for pragmatic, political, and religious reasons. Protestant slave owners fiercely guarded their Christian rituals from non-white outsiders and rebuffed the efforts of Quaker, Anglican, and Moravian missionaries to convert the enslaved population. For planters, Protestantism was a sign of mastery and freedom, and most believed that slaves should not be eligible for conversion. The planters’ exclusive vision of Protestantism was challenged on two fronts: by missionaries, who articulated a new ideology of "Christian slavery," and by enslaved men and women who sought baptism for themselves and their children. In spite of planter intransigence, a small number of enslaved and free Africans advocated and won access to Protestant rites. As they did so, "whiteness" emerged as a new way to separate enslaved and free black converts from Christian masters. Enslaved and free blacks who joined Protestant churches also forced Europeans to reinterpret key points of Scripture and reconsider their ideas about "true" Christian practice. As missionaries and slaves came to new agreements and interpretations, they remade Protestantism as an Atlantic institution. Missionaries argued that slave conversion would solidify planter power, make slaves more obedient and hardworking, and make slavery into a viable Protestant institution. They also encouraged the development of a race-based justification for slavery and sought to pass legislation that confirmed the legality of enslaving black Christians. In so doing, they redefined the practice of religion, the meaning of freedom, and the construction of race in the early modern Atlantic World.Their arguments helped to form the foundation of the proslavery ideology that would emerge in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

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Inarticulate Prayers: Irony and Religion in Late Twentieth-Century Poetry examines irony and its implications for religious belief within texts ranging from the New York School Poets to the Language Poets and, in Caribbean literature, within the poems of Derek Walcott and Kamau Brathwaite. Taking Jacques Derrida's distinction between deconstruction and negative theology as a point of departure, I argue that contemporary poets employ ironic language to articulate an ambivalent, and skeptical, system of belief. In "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials," Derrida contrasts his theory of differance--as a fundamentally negative and critical mode of inquiry--with negative theology, which ultimately affirms God's being after a process of negation. My study asserts that contemporary poets, in accord with principles of negative theology, engage in inarticulate, self-canceling and negative utterances that nevertheless affirm the possibility of belief and enlightenment. By postulating the affinity between contemporary poets and the apophatic tradition, I explain how the work of these poets, despite often being dismissed as arid exercises in poststructuralist thought, productively draws on linguistic theories and also advances beyond the "negativity" of such theories. Moreover, as it intervenes in recent debates over the absence of a spiritual dimension to contemporary poetry, my dissertation opens new perspectives through which to theorize postmodern literature. Demonstrating that experiments in language and form are driven by an ironic stance towards belief, authorship and literary tradition, Inarticulate Prayers ultimately redefines contemporary lyric and narrative poetry and asserts negation, inarticulateness, and contradiction as determining characteristics of postmodern writing.