Mexico and South Korea share many structural features, yet exhibit diverse patterns in income inequality and human well being. Between 1960 and 1990, the South Korean economy grew rapidly, retaining relative equality in income and enhancements in mass well being, while, in Mexico, in spite of impressive rates in economic growth for decades, income inequality remained substantial. The hypothesis of this study is that state autonomy is key to understanding economic and social outcomes in Mexico and South Korea. States that are autonomous from both internal and external coercion have the potential to enact growth-oriented and more equitable policies. Economic growth and income equality in peripheral countries are contingent upon the state, the internal class structure, and the world economy. Peripheral states that are free from undue pressure from the ruling class and core countries can exercise relative autonomy, and then have the potential to achieve both growth and equality. However, most peripheral countries are like Mexico, which, because they do not enjoy relative autonomy from the ruling class and global capitalism are unable to achieve economic growth and equality mutually. As a consequence of Japanese colonization, South Korea inherited a strong state and underwent a genuine land reform program, leading to a weak and unorganized agrarian elite, which remained ineffective in challenging state policies. In the 1960s and 1970s, South Korea assumed a crucial political position as a bulwark against international communism in East Asia, which further enhanced state autonomy. Both Japanese colonialism and the Cold War shaped South Korea's political economy. Mexico, on the other hand, remained vulnerable to both international capitalism and its internal elite class. Though Mexico underwent a long period of revolution, the class structure remained unchanged, and Mexico never attained a level of political and ideological importance to the United States, remaining vulnerable to U.S. economic interests. Unlike the South Korean state, the Mexican state failed to escape internal and external coercion, and was unable to achieve relative autonomy from international capitalism and its internal elite class, and thus was unable to effectively mandate policies that were beneficial for growth and equity.

This study explores President Woodrow Wilson’s evolution between his 1912 presidential campaign and the mid-point of his second term from staunch opposition to a federal woman suffrage amendment to an active advocate for the cause. Besides clearly identifying the array of forces within and outside Congress that pressured Wilson and the extent to which he was, in turn, able to influence Congress and voters, this study more fully integrates the suffragists and anti-suffragists into American political history and situates the issue of woman suffrage in the broader context of Wilson’s two administrations. I argue that the National American Woman Suffrage Association, not the National Woman’s Party, was decisive in Wilson’s conversion to the cause of the federal amendment because its approach mirrored his own conservative vision of the appropriate method of reform: win a broad consensus, develop a legitimate rationale, and make the issue politically valuable. Additionally, I contend that Wilson did have a significant role to play in the successful congressional passage and national ratification of the 19th Amendment, though powerful currents of sectionalism, race, and economic interests sometimes limited the extent of his influence. A deeper understanding of the final stages of the woman suffrage movement holds relevance for our understanding of both Progressive Era America and our present times. Observing Wilson treading the fragile line between executive interference and reasonable influence provides great insight into Progressive Era conceptions of separation of powers and presidential power and leadership. Furthermore, debates over woman suffrage contributed to the larger late-19 th and early-20th century debates over the meaning of citizenship and the role of the state in an increasingly industrialized nation. Enfranchising one-half the population marked a significant moment in our nation’s history. This study deepens and enriches our understanding of the process by which that momentous event came to pass.

Over the past 20 years, small-scale citizen action movements have become an integral part of the social and political landscapes of countries throughout the post-industrial west. In poor communities in particular, the protagonists of such endeavors are often women. Based on two years of fieldwork in a municipality in northern England, I examine the emergence of local-level campaigns, initiated and sustained by women who are tenants of public sector housing developments (council estates). By combining ethnographic material based on participant-observation with historical research, I suggest that the current fluorescence of grassroots activism is one outcome of a shift in the way in which poverty is being "governed" in post-industrial societies, away from the government of the poor once characteristic of welfare states and toward a new notion of government by the poor as manifested in policies intended to foster such values as "freedom," "choice" and "empowerment." In Chapter 2, I propose an historical explanation for women's on-going participation in local-level campaigns by considering the extent to which poor mothers were made the primary targets for the application of such interventions as social work, health visiting and urban planning. I argue that it was this emphasis placed on the role of the mother in the governing of families that explains her engagement in grassroots movements which are intended to better the lot of poor households and neighborhoods, whose well-being has traditionally been designated her responsibility. Chapter 3 offers a view of life in these communities at the present moment. I document the ways in which women's activism is coming to fill in the void created by the prolonged flight of the state from poor communities. And, in Chapter 4, I consider how post-welfare technologies of government now locate "expertise" within the domain of experience, rather than as a result of professional training, obliging the poor not only to govern themselves, but also to police their own communities. Finally, I discuss how popular representations of poverty as a "spectacle" demonstrate the extent to which mobilizing images of "normality" and "deviance" remains integral to the project of governing society as a whole.

Childhood sexual abuse is a pernicious problem that is frighteningly common in our society, as when abuse is defined as fondling and intercourse by a person at least five years older than the victim, about 20% of children in the United States are abused. One factor that is typically related to childhood sexual abuse is the experience of multiple victimizations or what some researchers term revictimization, a phenomenon which has strong empirical support in the literature. There is some research to suggest that the coping mechanism of dissociation is related to revictimization. Becker-Lausen, Sanders, and Chinsky (1996) conducted the only study that empirically tested the link between dissociation and revictimization using path analysis and found that childhood abuse was related to dissociation and depression as well as negative life experiences. A study was formulated to explore this link between dissociation and revictimization in-depth with a theoretical model. The factors in the model are processing into consciousness, memory, self-esteem, and learned helplessness. Subjects were female undergraduates, 60 subjects with a childhood sexual abuse history and no adult victimization experience, and 60 with childhood sexual abuse and adult victimization. Processing into consciousness, was measured by scenarios of abusive situations and non-abusive scenarios, after which the subjects filled out measures of affect. Memory was measured by autobiographical memory during which subjects were asked to recall their memories that are provoked by a prime. They were also given measures of self-esteem, learned helplessness, dissociation. Significant results were found for all for four factors and dissociation. Socio-economic status was used in the analysis, but was not related to this factors. Clinical implications for this research effort are outlined in the study. In conclusion, it may be that childhood abuse causes dissociation which leads to revictimization by the four factors in the model. However, this causality cannot be ascertained from the this research study. Further research using a prospective design is needed.

This dissertation is a qualitative exploration into the politics of pornography and focuses on the instability of the pornographic sign and on the external determinations which naturalize pornographic ways of looking. My project is to supplant assumptions in current debates that pornography has interior, often trans-historical meanings and effects which are "put into" the text by various agencies with the idea that pornography is a cultural transaction constructed in practice. I offer up the idea of a pornographic code to designate the moment (or the "event") which occurs when others are transformed into sexualized objects, and I explore pornographic sign as a site (rather than an object) where important cultural issues relative to gender, power and representation are staged and contested. This dissertation is thematically divided into halves, with the first three chapters providing an historical overview of various "stagings" of pornography. In this first half, I examine key transformations of "pornography" in the United States and Great Britain from the word's first use (circa 1857) as the writings about prostitution as a matter of social hygiene to its currently accepted use as the sexually explicit material intended to arouse the consumer and which sometimes equates sex with violence. Specific chapters track permutations of pornography throughout the mechanical age (roughly 1850-1920), and, later, during the "sexual revolution" and its aftermath (late 1960s to mid-1970s). The final three chapters explore the indeterminacy of the pornographic sign and the ubiquity of the pornographic code through an examination of current stagings. Chapter Four draws extensively from the literature of feminism and considers the problem of interpretation within a postmodern context. Chapter Five provides an analysis of the literature emanating from such Christian Right leaders as James Dobson, Carman, and Jerry Falwell; I argue that their anti-pornography and anti-gay material reenforces instrumental and pornographic ways of looking. The dissertation concludes by revisiting the idea of a feminist erotic as an alternative to pornographic culture.

I examine a problem or dilemma of legitimation faced by the critical theorist who takes as the object of his or her critique a totality of which she or he is a part. The dilemma is that the theorist must either illegitimately exempt her critical theory from the determining influences of the totality or lose normative authority. The critics I examine in detail are: Adorno and Horkheimer; Kant; Hegel; feminist standpoint epistemologists, in particular, Sandra Harding; Irigaray; Foucault; and Arendt. I conclude that a purely theoretical or epistemic ground for the legitimacy of totalizing critique is impossible; philosophical critique must involve an extra-rational faith or a political commitment. However, I also argue that the project of theoretical grounding should not be abandoned. I continue this project by drawing out of the critical theorists I examined some preliminary concepts and strategies (such as mimesis, hysteria, free action, and psychoanalytic practice) that may, after further development, serve to provide a theory of the legitimacy of critical philosophy.

The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics and behavior of women who are functioning in visible leadership roles in a nonprofit sector organization in order to document the effectiveness of their leadership as measured by the outcomes they achieve. The study population included thirty-eight women who were Executive Directors or Chief Executive Officers in Mental Health Associations (MHA's) in the United States. The study was intended to provide a better understanding of the leadership aspirations, styles and achievements of women who work within the context of an organization dedicated to social change for people with mental illnesses. The study was guided by the following research questions: (1) What were the influences in the lives of the women that led them to work for an organization focused on pursuing social justice for persons with mental illnesses (i.e., family background, education, history of mental illness in self or family, role models)? (2) What do participants see as the essential components of leadership? (3) How do the participants asses their own leadership outcomes in the context of their employment with the Mental Health Association? (4) What were the leadership behaviors and strategies used by the participants and to what extent did they use collective power to accomplish their organization's goals? The research was conducted as a descriptive case study utilizing qualitative methods including a participant profile. A particular emphasis was made to include leaders who are women of color and leaders who are consumers of mental health services in the study. The study found that study participants generally viewed leadership as nonhierarchical and often saw themselves as a catalyst or facilitator who enabled others to act collectively toward the accomplishment the mission and goals of the Mental Health Association. The study is a partial replication of a study developed by Helen Astin and Carole Leland in 1991 (Women of influence, women of vision. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass) which focused on understanding the dynamics of leadership used by female leaders in the women's movement of the 1970's and 1980's. This study supported the findings of Astin and Leland in their initial study.

Challenging the widespread perception of Anatolian-German women as economically inactive, the thesis presents two detailed case studies of sites where they figure prominently as economic subjects. Using a Marxian theoretical framework, the study renders visible Anatolian-German women's economic contributions and underlines exploitation as an economic justice concern to migrant women in Germany. The first case study scrutinizes the Anatolian-German household as a site of unpaid labor. Feminist scholarship has established the migrant 'home' to be a highly contested terrain, where women's homemaking activities reflect struggles over the gendered marking of ethnic belonging. The thesis contributes to this field of research by introducing class as a contested process that overdetermines how 'home' is lived in the Anatolian-German community. Struggles over the production, appropriation, and distribution of surplus labor in migrant homes are explored, using data from the researcher's survey of homemaking practices among Anatolian-German women. The discussion points to myriad economic, socio-cultural and political factors that trap migrant women in exploitative household constellations. Self-appropriation is critically assessed as a non-exploitative alternative encountered across household types (among singles, single mothers and in nuclear families). The second case study focuses on Anatolian-German women's paid work in cleaning services. In-depth interviews explore the effects, which the outsourcing of janitorial services by public institutions and private enterprises has had on the exploitation of the female migrant janitorial workforce. It analyzes the value flows characterizing the highly fraught economic relations between capitalist enterprises specialized in the provision of janitorial services, clients purchasing such services as well as janitorial and non-janitorial employees. Anatolian-German's collective and individual struggles against exploitation are critically assessed. Finally, the study explores why, contrary to global trends in migrant women's employment, jobs as domestic workers in private homes remain unattractive to Anatolian-German women and evaluates the implications from a Marxian perspective. What emerges is a complex portray of Anatolian-German women as economic subjects. Against the spectacle of oppressed Muslim migrant women dominating popular and academic discourse in Germany, this study urges feminists to rethink their understanding of migrant women's emancipatory struggles and recognize class as a crucial dimension of economic justice.

This dissertation explores the communal uneasiness and hermeneutic impasse created by suicide in twentieth-century US American literature by women. By considering how history is negotiated through suicidal acts and how literary texts are structured by self-inflicted death, I suggest that this intentional turn is most fundamentally readable through public spaces—the Middle Passage, Hiroshima, Harlem, San Francisco's Chinatown. My first chapter focuses on Ludwig Binswanger's The Case of Ellen West: An Anthropological-Clinical Study (1944), an existential analysis of a Jewish woman who killed herself in Switzerland when she was thirty-three. Along with Anne Sexton's poetry, West's writing acts as a prelude to my subsequent chapters because it makes the body inextricable from the imagination, and both inextricable from history, community, and politics. In Chapter Two, I trace the conflation of white femininity and suicide in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature before turning to modern novels in which women ambiguously fall to their deaths: Nella Larsen's Passing (1929), Mary McCarthy's The Group (1963), and Fae Myenne Ng's Bone (1993). These texts disperse intention over a field of inquiry, connecting the private act of suicide to culture less through consciousness than through public space—the fictional space of falling in public and the imagined space of a reading public. In Chapter Three, I examine revolutionary suicide in Toni Morrison's Beloved (1988), Sula (1973), and Song of Solomon (1977), integrating theories from Emmanuel Levinas and Huey Newton. Self-destruction operates on two revolutionary levels: within the story, as a political form of resistance and within the narrative structure, as a discursive strategy, an axis around which meanings revolve. Finally, in Chapter Four, I sketch the political terrain covered by female suicide in Adrienne Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964), Velina Hasu Houston's Tea (1983), and Suzan-Lori Parks's Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (1990). Each play extends the logic that I have traced in previous chapters, deploying the act of suicide to register the effects of colonialism, war, and white supremacy on contemporary American women's lives.

This study of participatory action research (PAR) among Thai women and girls involved in sex trafficking and prostitution demonstrates ways to: (1) educate women and girls; (2) empower women and girls through the process of reconstructing and using their own life experiences; (3) generate a body of popular knowledge and action plans derived from their own experience which is more relevant to the problem solutions; and (4) raise their consciousness as of the process outcome in order to improve in their lives. The process of PAR including (1) problem defining, (2) data collecting and analyzing, and (3) action plans was undertaken by the participant group. These women and girls were residing at the Kredtrakarn Protection and Occupational Development Center shelter; and I took the role of facilitator. Sixteen group discussions were conducted for the PAR process at the shelter and a one-time interview of the stakeholder group consisting of politicians, government officials, police, international and domestic NGOs and etc. was implemented so as to add to the generation of popular knowledge. Learning, empowering and raising consciousness are the process outcome. Evaluations were conducted by means of the process of PAR to produce the PAR process outcome. All participants stated that they all learned much about the issues related to sex trafficking and prostitution and increased their self-confidence. Findings include: (1) two sets of in-depth people knowledge, and (2) two sets of short-term and long-term plans. Findings explore contributing factors such as family with problems, running away from home, poverty, insufficient education, drug usage, peer pressure, consumerism, gullibility, and the role of agents. Findings of this study provide more relevance related to issues of sex trafficking and prostitution because they were derived from people who had been directly involved. Findings were analyzed and consolidated within the context of Thai socio-economic-cultural views. Key concepts for implications include: (1) family issues, (2) educational efficacy, (3) law enforcement and revision, and (4) an agent. Findings related to all of these concepts can contribute toward social reform and policy development, practice within the nursing profession, and ground theory generating.