This dissertation is based on 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork in an urban, working class neighborhood or kampung. Research concentrated on the work of women as housewives and mothers within the community and specifically on their roles within the national housewives organization, PKK (Pembinaan Kesejahateraan Keluarga, or Support for the Prosperous Family). One of the central arguments of this dissertation is that to be a good citizen in Indonesia is to subscribe to a particular gendered idea of community--community that is virtual, incremental, and cumulative. PKK and the system of local governance are analyzed as residues of Dutch colonial control, Japanese occupation, and post-Independence infrastructural development. It is argued that state-sponsored domesticity and community have been overdetermined by a government that seeks to absorb excess female labor dispossessed by changes in agricultural production, to ameliorate the bottleneck in employment for the young and educated, and to support under-employed males. Women's work as community social workers as well as informal sector workers helps support unemyloyed and under-employed family members, while simultaneously keeping the cost of reproduction low and providing low-cost infrastructural improvements. Moreover, fieldwork shows that the structures of governance, social control and state ideology become lived practice when used as resources by local women to make do within their specific lived communities. Domestic space as it is mapped by kinship practices, economic production and reproduction, and kampung morality are used to show that the domestic is implied within the community as well as vice versa through the daily reproductive work of women which involves them in flows of resources and labor between and within households. The contributions of this research include refocusing attention on the inconsistencies, cleavages, and contradictions in the center rather than just on the margins. The effects of this refocusing emphasize the quotidian over the aesthetics of Javanese court culture and bring the gendered facets of cultural power into view. State formation was and is a cultural project producing not only the "state" as all idea and a set of practices but the citizen and the political culture within which she moves.

This research examines women's lives at the United States-Mexico border in Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora, focusing on women's physical mobility and their perceptions of the border in everyday life. Women's choices about where they will and will not go reflect their connections to the significant people and places in their lives, the constraints and opportunities offered by the urban context, and the gender roles and relations shaping their possibilities, perceptions, and actions. Patterns of mobility that relate directly to the border are differentiated by place of residence and nationality, and the border is a more significant influence on the daily mobility of women in Agua Prieta than of those in Douglas. Women in Agua Prieta tend to cross the border more frequently and regularly, stay for longer times, and shop for US products related to daily household maintenance, such as food and clothing. Women from Douglas cross the border less frequently, and more often in search of specialty items only available or less expensive in Mexico, such as medicines and certain foods. Place of residence and nationality also differentially shape women's attitudes toward life at the border. The women from Agua Prieta generally view the border positively and appreciate having ready access to US stores and products, while women in Douglas are more negative, and many regard the border with fear that restricts their cross-border travel. The study also highlights the changing nature of cross-border relationships, as economic factors become increasingly important in the functioning of border communities and social ties fade. On both sides, gender roles and relations in the household are critical influences on patterns of mobility within the community, overriding other factors such as economic levels and nationality. In both Douglas and Agua Prieta, women's transportation of children and their employment outside the home are the most important factors shaping their mobility. To meet the obligations of their gender roles in this sociocultural context, they make multiple trips throughout the day, often without direct control over the necessary means of transportation.

This exploratory study sought to provide insight into the persistence of undergraduate women in the physical and biological sciences. The study examined the experiences of women who persisted and graduated in science and non-science fields of study. Specifically, a group of science and non-science alumni were asked to talk about, in their own words, the factors and conditions that they believe played a role in their ability to persist and graduate. Two methods were used to gather data: a self-report survey and a semi-structured interview. The survey was designed to collect information about the women's background characteristics and experiences, while the semi-structured interview was designed to gain insight into the factors and conditions that played a role in the women's ability to persist and graduate. In interpreting the survey and interview responses, a conceptual framework that drew on salient constructs taken from two bodies of scholarly research--the research on women students in higher education and the research on student persistence and graduation rates in higher education--was used. The results of the current study not only provide insight into why women persist, but also suggest the importance of including variables not previously considered in future research on student persistence and graduation rates. These variables include: the role of pre-college expectations and attributes, the use of academic good practices, and the importance of social support in student persistence. Future research must continue to draw upon qualitative methods, as this study has done, and to look beyond the obvious in understanding the factors and conditions that play a role in student persistence.

This dissertation documents the valorization of gender differences in urban Yunnan, particularly as it affects women in their twenties and thirties. Urban women of this generation are expected to appear feminine and family-oriented in order to be considered normal/moral. Such expectations are underscored by popular commentary on the "strong woman." The strong woman, or nu qiang ren, is admired for her success in the business world or in academia, but is reviled as unfeminine, negligent of her family, and cold-hearted. Despite pressures to appear feminine and family-oriented, many urban Yunnanese women achieve financial independence. I found that women outwardly embody "gentleness" and other norms of femininity, while practically subverting such norms by focusing on their careers, or by voicing criticism of the hypocrisies surrounding contemporary gender relations. Furthermore, most men appear to prefer that their wives work outside the home, regardless of economic need. Such contradictions reveal how dominant ideologies are never reproduced completely. Nor are dominant ideologies applied evenly across social classes. I argue that the current valorization of a Confucian gender hierarchy is linked to the formation of middle-class subjectivity. Talk of "weak men" and the need for a men's movement in China reflects several different preoccupations, most prominently employment anxiety generated by the "market adjustments" associated with economic liberalization. Magazine articles about "weak men" also articulate a sense of urban anomie, the burdens of male emotional repression, and a variety of fears centered on women who are perceived as threatening in one way or another. Generally, however, the tone and content of the magazine articles analyzed suggest that talk about "weak men" is largely about male resistance to women's empowerment. Such articles, as well as popular commentary that ridicules strong, autonomous women, reveals that women have become scapegoats for men's anxieties. Popular gender commentary is linked in a dialogical relationship to notions of tradition, authenticity, modernity and progress. The tensions between change and stability provoke many paradoxes. Growing commercialization, generational differences and changes regarding marriage and sexuality are some of the other themes I explore as they enter into this network of referential meaning and practice.

This is a study, over time, of a teenage unwed mother. Narrow concepts of agency have historically been part of a stigmatizing view of teenage pregnancy defined in terms of adolescent sexual activity and welfare dependence. In understanding her situation the study examines the concept of agency in models of the learner. In a sociopsycholinguistic transactional view (the view taken in this dissertation) the learner is conceptualized in terms of an ability to "go meta"--think outside the web of realities. The study examines theoretical models of the learner in alternate perspectives: (a) feminist theory in terms of the premise that all women are simultaneously the same yet different; (b) critical theory in terms of the process of her voicing concerns and experiences, but closely examined by the collective; and (c) sociocultural-historical theory in terms of the process of learning in constant contact with the collective. The usefulness of theories depends on how practical and negotiable they are in everyday life. Each construction fails to provide for a coherent representation of the learner, what her notions are, or whether or not her experiences count if the classroom is not an appropriate place to air "official," toxic allegations leveled against her; the theories speak to methods but not pedagogies. Criteria derived from the perspectives stipulate the learner, then target conditions under which she might be more resolute, consoling or useful. The study includes implications for a theory which connects support to a teenage mother's courage; she sought to push her own thinking about the powers that trained her for motherhood in punitive ways, then punished and controlled her by taking away her baby.

This research is an in-depth exploration of turning points and adaptations in the lives of four women living below the poverty line in Tucson, Arizona. From the most extremely impoverished woman living on the streets to the housed, poor working woman, a life history approach is used to explore the mechanisms by which these four women fell into, stayed in, and may eventually climb out of poverty. While the life history reveals great complexity among the women, it also reveals common turning points among their troubled lives. All four women have had a least one parent who was an alcoholic and/or drug addict, all four women quit pursuing their education after high school and have a history of low-wage, low-mobility jobs. All four women have had prolonged relationships with men who were alcoholic and/or drug addicts and were physically abusive. Finally, all four women have had major health problems which have hindered their ability to work. It is concluded that the life history method and the emphasis on turning points and adaptations is an improvement over quantitative studies which gloss over the true mechanisms behind poverty and fail to capture real lives.

Different explanations have been given for the sex gap in pay between male and female occupations. Comparable worth proponents argue predominantly female occupations pay less than comparable male occupations because of their sex composition, that occupations' sex composition affects their wages. In contrast, Reskin and Roos (1990) and Strober (1984) argue the correspondence between occupational sex composition and wages is due to employers' preferences for male workers. Given first choice of occupations, males choose the better compensated occupations, which results in a causal effect of occupational wages on sex composition. Despite these opposing causal claims, few studies have attempted to ascertain the causal order between occupational sex composition and wages. This research focuses on the relationship between occupational sex composition and wages during the 1980s. Consistent with causal assumption of comparable worth proponents, analyses of Current Population Survey data (Study 1) support a causal effect of occupational sex composition on wages. Study 1 demonstrates that sex composition has a linear effect on wages for females and a nonlinear effect on wages for males. For both males and females, sex composition has a negative effect on wages over the entire range of sex composition. Study 2 revisits the causality question using 1980 and 1990 Census data, supplemented by additional controls from other data sets and finds a nonlinear effect of occupational sex composition on wages for females, but not for males. A negative effect of wages on sex composition was not found in any of the models. These results suggest that males may be less susceptible to the negative effects of sex composition than females. Study III uses an experimental study to determine if a "devaluation by association process" accounts for the lower wages of female occupations. The study found males but not females engage in a devaluation by association process, but neither males nor females devalue occupations based on their association with women. This may be indicative of a decline in the importance of sex as a diffuse status characteristic. The combined results of these studies suggest cautious optimism as far as reducing the sex gap in pay is concerned.

This dissertation is a study of the Arizona Mexican American women writers--las arizonenses--of the twentieth century, with special emphasis on the works by Eva Antonia Wilbur-Cruce and Patricia Preciado Martin. A primary focus of the dissertation is the ways in which these writers relate to their physical and cultural landscapes. A comparative analysis is made between Wilbur-Cruce who responds to a critical time of transition for Mexican American rancheros moving from rural to urban areas at the turn of the century, and Preciado Martin, who focuses on the neo-colonization and growing tourism of Tucson and surrounding areas during the second half of the twentieth century. Playwright Silviana Wood and poet Patti Blanco are studied for the contributions they make to the writing about life in a small Arizona mining community and the Tucson Mexican American barrio, respectively.

Ecological literary criticism integrates environmental awareness with the study of literature. If we understand where we are, ecocriticism asserts, we will choose to act in accord with the ecological needs of that place. Contemporary American writers Gretel Ehrlich, Terry Tempest Williams, and Linda Hogan model this awareness by examining the multiple stories that characterize a sense of place. Ecological critics utilize many theoretical underpinnings of Romanticism, particularly Phenomenology and Mysticism, which I discuss in the context of Annie Dillard's work. While Dillard fits a traditional Romantic model, writers like Ehrlich, Williams, and Hogan critique Romanticism's failure to recognize cultural, scientific, and ecological stories in order to describe nonhuman nature. Gretel Ehrlich, in Islands, the Universe, Home, explores the relationship between physical geography, geology and geophysics, spirituality, culture, and story to find a sense of home. Ehrlich calls into question her own subjectivity by utilizing the foundational concepts of humanist geography. Terry Tempest Williams integrates ecological and environmental issues, personal and familial concerns, and spiritual elements, examining human influence on the landscape as well as human inability to adapt to natural cycles in the environment. In Refuge, Williams constructs a feminine genealogy connecting women and the land. Linda Hogan critiques the European-American concept of individualism, arguing that it is a primary force in the destruction of the environment and its human inhabitants. In Solar Storms, she revises traditional autobiography as her protagonist Angel Wing learns that her individual story cannot be understood out of the context of her family, tribal community, and the land. The final chapter investigates the use of the memoir within the nature writing tradition by examining the work of feminist memoirist Nancy Mairs, who emphasizes the human body as a dwelling for the spirit. I synthesize the work of Mairs, Dillard, Ehrlich, Williams, and Hogan to develop an erotics of space and place that reflects a multi-epistemological approach to nonhuman nature. As all of my writers would agree, if we see all space as sacred, as "home," then we're less likely to desecrate it.

Widows as individuals and as a social group held fundamental importance to both the family and civic life of early modern Castile. Archival sources indicate that widows' influence throughout all levels of Castilian society was magnified by their relative degree of legal autonomy, combined with a tacit acceptance of women's activities in many areas of familial and municipal life. The use of documents more closely reflecting women's daily activities allows for contextualization of the complex impact of moral and legal rhetoric on the social construction of widowhood, providing concrete examples of widows' practical and often highly tactical employment, evasion, and/or manipulation of patriarchal and moral norms. The experience of widowhood both forces a re-examination of gender boundaries by questioning current theories of female enclosure and demands a re-evaluation of gendered patterns in expressions of patronage and parentage. Marital status and social class become more important that the gendered moral and legal strictures of an apparently patriarchal society in terms of early modern women's ability to take part in a wide range of activities normally not considered possible for their sex. Toledo's widows challenge public/private spheres models by giving evidence of the public nature of private lives and the private ends of public acts. Examining widows' lives provides insight into the complex mechanisms lying behind the formulation of gender boundaries in the early modern world and the pragmatic politics of everyday life at the nexus of family and community.