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<p> The <i>khrueangsai pii chawaa</i> ("Thai stringed instruments with Javanese oboe") ensemble in central Thailand is a unique and highly-regarded ensemble known for its repertoire, idiosyncratic tuning, high level of technical difficulty, and exceptionable virtuosity. <i>Khrueangsai pii chawaa</i> is reserved for very special royal functions including processions and dramatic performances of royal literature. Royal authority indirectly controls the performance and transmission of the ensemble and its repertoire, which is now maintained professionally only by the Fine Arts Department of the Thai government. At present only a few musicians are capable of performing or teaching the repertoire and performance style for this ensemble. The selection of new students is competitive and politicized. The <i>khrueangsai pii chawaa </i> ensemble is rare and kept largely outside of the gaze of ordinary spectators in Thai society. Nonetheless, a few individuals in institutions outside of Bangkok have tried to build <i>khrueangsai pii chawaa</i> ensembles, challenging the limits of authority and exposing tensions within the musical community. I argue that royal authority functions to keep this musical ensemble endangered by design, so that those chosen to participate maintain a powerful control over the tradition and repertoire and thereby preserve their unique social status.</p>

<p> In Chapter 1 I estimate economic returns to communist party membership in China. To overcome the problem of underreporting income, I propose a new method to impute family income based on the Engel rule. Using data from China Household Income Project, I find that for party member families the underreported family incomes, the difference between the imputed and reported income, are 27% and 17% of the reported incomes in 1995 and 2002 respectively, and that non-party member families do not underreport household incomes, consistent with the assumption. The estimated rates of return to party membership based on the imputed income are two-and-a-half to four times of those based on the reported income and are also substantially larger than the previous estimates reported in the economics literature.</p><p> In Chapter 2 I examine the impact of the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) on the private transfer behavior of non-coresident adult children toward their elderly parents in rural China. Using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey and the regression discontinuity design and difference in difference method (RD-DiD), I find no evidence that pension payment from the NRPS program significantly crowds out economic support from adult children to their elderly parents. The heterogeneous effects at different income percentiles indicate that pension payment significantly increases the probability of receiving gross transfers, the net amount of transfers as well as the likelihood of positive net transfer for those elderlies with low income. The empirical findings suggest that the NRPS program is an effective tool for general poverty reduction and social protection for the targeted elderly population. </p><p> In Chapter 3 I examine how the commute time affects labor supply. The theoretical model I construct does not offer clear-cut predictions. Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, I find that commute time has no effect on daily labor supply but has a negative effect on work days per week and weekly labor supply. These findings are different from those for Germany and Spain, and are potentially related to unique features of the labor supply and the labor market in China. Further, the effect of commute time on workdays per week is stronger for workers who change jobs and for high skill occupation workers who do not change jobs. The effects of commute time on labor supply do not differ between males and females.</p>

<p> This study is based on the extraction and sequencing of the mitochondrial DNA from 132 ancient human samples from central Mongolia dating to the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age (Xiongnu) and Mongol Empire periods. The data collected were compared to mtDNA gene pools from multiple published studies of ancient and modern human populations from across Eurasia with particular focus on Eurasian steppe populations. The results of these analyses support a model of human migration showing an original eastern population on the Neolithic Mongol Steppe that admixed with a western population, which had migrated onto the eastern Eurasian steppe zone during the Neolithic. This study demonstrates western Eurasian DNA on the eastern Eurasian steppe as far as the Mongol Steppe by the Late Neolithic, and reveals a significant western component in the Bronze Age population of Central Mongolia. It supports an indigenous population as the origin of the Xiongnu, confirms that the Xiongnu had a strongly admixed mtDNA gene pool, and indicates that a significant shift towards eastern mtDNA occurred between the Xiongnu Empire and Mongol Empire periods, which has continued up to the present.</p><p>

<p> Millions of Vietnamese have migrated to the United States, after having endured the traumas of war. To meet the mental health needs of populations, who encounter both socioemotional and cultural adjustment challenges, social workers have approached such individuals with a culturally relevant approach. This has been implemented through cultural matching of providers to consumers. Given that the social worker&rsquo;s role is to be an ongoing learner of clients&rsquo; experiences, the proposed program aims to improve culturally matched services by underscoring that cultural nuances exist, despite providers fitting the same ethnic profile as consumers. The purpose of the project was to develop a cultural humility training for the Vietnamese Community of Orange County, a nonprofit organization that provides comprehensive social services to the Vietnamese. The potential funding source for the project was identified as the California Wellness Foundation. Actual submission and funding were not required for the completion of this thesis.</p>

The purpose of this study was to examine predictors of client-counselor working alliance by understanding the effects of acculturation, perceived multicultural competence in counselors, and cultural value conflicts among South Asian women. The study was based on a nonrandom sample of women ages 18 to 39 years living in the United States who had completed at least three counseling sessions with a mental health professional in the last 5 years. Forty participants completed the online survey. Participants were recruited through personal contacts, social networking Internet websites, businesses, agencies, and places of worship. The majority of participants were highly educated, second-generation women descending from India or Pakistan. The full survey included an eligibility screening questionnaire, demographic questionnaire, the Working Alliance Inventory-Short Revised with an average mean of 4.82, Cross-Cultural Counseling Inventory-Revised with an average mean of 4.17 and reliability of excellent internal consistency reliability at ? = .92, Asian Values Scale-Revised with an average mean score of 2.44, and Cultural Value Conflicts Scale for South Asian Women with a mean score of 3.33. Participants reported experiencing working alliance often within the therapeutic relationship and experienced middle levels of Asian value adherence, falling in the integration level. The results indicated that participants experienced neutral to agreeable cultural value conflicts. Bivariate correlations indicated a statistically significant, moderate relationship between participants’ perceptions of counselors’ multicultural competence and their reports of working alliance in the therapeutic relationship. All other correlations reflected small to moderate effect sizes; however, these correlations were not statistically significant. Similarly, bivariate regression indicated that perceptions of multicultural counselor competence predicted the client-counselor working alliance to a moderate degree. From the results of hierarchical linear regression, acculturation and cultural value conflicts did not predict client-counselor working alliance even after accounting for perceived multicultural competence in counselors. The strongest predictor of client-counselor working alliance was the perceived multicultural competence of counselors. Probable reasons for the results of this study were discussed, limitations were identified, and suggestions for counseling practice were provided. Implications for the profession of counseling were made, and recommendations for future research were provided.

<p> The Asian summer monsoon supplies around 3 billion people with much of their yearly supply of freshwater, necessary for human consumption as well as in agriculture and industry. In many regions, particularly along the Ganges River in India and in northern China, use of freshwater far exceeds natural recharge rates. Given the high population density of these regions, a substantial fraction of Asia's population is therefore critically sensitive to interannual changes in the supply of freshwater by the monsoon, as well as potential future change under 21st century warming. This dissertation focuses on understanding the atmospheric dynamics of the leading mode of July-August Asian Monsoon rainfall variability, which links two major subsystems: the South Asian and East Asian monsoons. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)</p>

<p> Over the past decade, the government of Laos has granted extensive tracts of land to plantation, mining, and hydropower investors across the country, constituting five percent of the national territory. Such projects have transformed rural livelihoods and environments, particularly via the dispossession of the lands, fields, and forests that Lao peasants rely upon for daily subsistence and cash income. While large-scale land acquisitions, or land grabs, across the Global South have been countered by social protest and movements in many countries, organized and vocal social mobilization is largely absent in Laos due to authoritarian state repression of dissident activity perceived to be anti-government. Lao peasants, however, have increasingly crafted politically creative methods of resistance that have enabled some communities and households to maintain access to land that had been allocated to investors. In this dissertation, I examine how effective resistance materializes within the Lao political landscape, by resisting with the state, shaping how industrial tree plantations are governed and their geographies of agrarian-environmental transformation. </p><p> The overarching argument of the dissertation is that in authoritarian contexts, like Laos, peasants are able to maintain access to land by taking advantage of political relations among state, corporate, and community actors that provide politically feasible means of refusal. Peasants find ways to resist that tread a middle path, that do not challenge state hegemonic power nor engage in under-the-radar acts of everyday resistance. Instead, they exploit and refashion established lines and relations of power among communities, state agencies, and plantation managers. They resist within the bounds of state power. Political relations between resource companies and the state vary, affecting how state sovereignty is mobilized to dispossess peasants of their land. Communities targeted by companies with weak relations with the state are afforded greater opportunities to contest such projects as they are not developed with the heavy coercion afforded to companies with better state relations. Communities that have powerful political connections with the state are also in a better position to resist. They are able to more effectively lodge their claims with the state when they have the political links to do so, particularly ethnic and kinship ties developed during the Second Indochina War. Communities more effectively resist the acquisition of lands that are afforded greater value by the state, particularly lowland paddy rice fields and state conservation areas. Finally, internal community relations, particularly democratic decision-making and solidarity, shape how effectively they mobilize against unjust land dispossession. </p><p> These arguments draw upon 20 months of in-country, ethnographic fieldwork during which I studied the operations of two plantation companies in 10 villages of Phin and Xepon districts, eastern Savannakhet province, southern Laos. One company is a state-owned Vietnamese rubber enterprise while the other is a private Chinese paper and pulp company planting eucalyptus and acacia trees. The bulk of the data comes from semi-structured one-on-one and focus group interviews with government officials at all administrative levels, civil society organizations, plantation company managers, village leaders, village households, and village women. The study is also deeply informed by participant observation &ndash; particularly with Lao government officials, civil society organizations, and rural communities &ndash; and by participatory mapping exercises and collected investment project documents. </p><p> The dissertation makes novel contributions to the discipline of geography. First, I demonstrate the importance of contested political ethnography, a methodological approach through which immersion in uncomfortable and oppositional political situations provides insights that would otherwise go unnoticed. Second, I contribute to understandings of how nature-society transformations occur in under-studied, authoritarian political contexts where neoliberal reforms are integrated with a heavy-handed role of the state in the economy. Third, I theorize how resistance can materialize and be effective in such contexts, despite its heavy repression. Fourth, I contribute to understandings of how dispossession actually occurs in practice and is governed by varying political relationships, leading to geographically variegated agrarian-environmental transformations.</p>

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) suffered a crushing defeat to the Kuomintang (KMT) in the 2008 presidential elections in Taiwan that left them passive, disorganized, and without a clear future in the Taiwanese government. The pro-independence DPP had successfully maintained executive power for two terms, winning the 2000 and 2004 elections while increasingly promoting a spirit of Taiwanese nationalism. However, President Chen Shui-bian’s administration soon proved to be disastrous with his corruption scandals and failed policies that were evident of the party’s lack of political experience. After eight years under Ma Ying-jeou, the DPP, with its limited resources, managed to revive itself to win a complete transfer of power with Tsai Ing-wen’s victory in 2016. The purpose of this paper is to provide an explanation for the domestic events that allowed for the DPP’s return. Three major categories include: the collapse of the KMT government, the changing society and rise of a new era, and the restructuring of the DPP’s platform and campaigning practices. These areas will be examined through key events, which provide crucial insight into how these external factors became favorable conditions for the opposition party. The findings from this case study of Taiwanese domestic politics can be instrumental in further understanding cross-Strait relations.

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