This dissertation investigates subject expression patterns in Dominican Spanish (DS). In this variety, the null subject constructions associated with Non-Caribbean Spanish co-exist with the widespread use of overt subjects, which are found in specific constructions that are either rare or unattested in other Spanish varieties. Interestingly, these structures co-exist in the Dominican grammar with the null subject constructions associated with Non-Caribbean Spanish. While subject expression has been studied in a number of Spanish dialects within the generative and the variationist paradigms, monolingual Dominican Spanish, to the best of my knowledge, has not been investigated in previous variationist work. This study covers this gap by examining a large corpus of spontaneous speech (N=6005) gathered in the capital city of Santo Domingo and a rural area in the northwestern Cibao region. Furthermore, in line with the cohesive approach to syntactic variation developed in recent work (Adger and Smith 2005), theoretical implications are drawn from quantitative results. The results obtained in this study show that null and overt subject patterns in DS are regulated by the same constraints that have been found relevant in previous variationist work, i.e. discourse-related factor groups and Person (Otheguy, Zentella and Livert, 2007). These results depart from previous work in that evidence for language change in progress has been found in subject position patterns, rather than in null and overt subject distribution. When this phenomenon is examined, urban, young, high-middle class and female speakers arise as the social groups leading grammatical restructuring. Quantitative and qualitative evidence is taken into account for testing previous syntactic-theoretical proposals on DS. Taking the cartographic approach to syntactic structure (Rizzi 1997) as a point of departure, it will proposed that multiple specifier positions are available within the TP and CP fields to host strong and weak subjects. This proposal, in turn, makes it possible to account for the Null Subject Parameter profile displayed by synchronic DS without resorting to competing grammars in the minds of the speakers.

Poverty reduction and conservation can seem contradictory as integrated goals. Despite mixed results over the past several decades, both goals are increasingly being sought out together in practice. Using a case study of an integrated conservation and development project in the Azua province of the Dominican Republic, this thesis examines the definitions and measurement of poverty and wellbeing within integrated conservation and development initiatives. It asks whether the inclusion of subjective ideas and participatory approaches may present new opportunities to better integrate poverty measurements within natural resource initiatives. Four focus groups and 250 questionnaires formed the core methods for data collection. The study reveals wellbeing as a concept was better able to capture the multi-faceted nature of capabilities poverty. Wellbeing often engages with the themes of vulnerability and inequity and includes politically-sensitive considerations instead of concepts that are about assets or consumption, ideas based in the outdated income-poverty perspective. Locally developed indicators were best able to reveal nuances related to context that universal poverty indicators would miss or misrepresent. The results also found that the way poverty, wellbeing, problems and solutions are conceptually framed and defined can be highly relevant. Using asset-based concepts and metrics would lead to economic development goals whereas rights-based ideas would promote very different objectives and methods. The comprehensive identification and targeting of stakeholders was found to be a necessary focus in determining the priorities. Participatory processes, especially with a commitment to power devolution, can help ensure that an array of local ideas are accounted for, and contribute to, a nuanced understanding of complex phenomena. Overall, subscribing to a rights-based approach that targets the means (opportunities) of development and not the ends (assets) can facilitate the needed shift towards the new poverty paradigm, in both concept and practice. A more successful integration between poverty reduction and conservation will require such a shift.

This dissertation investigates subject expression patterns in Dominican Spanish (DS). In this variety, the null subject constructions associated with Non-Caribbean Spanish co-exist with the widespread use of overt subjects, which are found in specific constructions that are either rare or unattested in other Spanish varieties. Interestingly, these structures co-exist in the Dominican grammar with the null subject constructions associated with Non-Caribbean Spanish. While subject expression has been studied in a number of Spanish dialects within the generative and the variationist paradigms, monolingual Dominican Spanish, to the best of my knowledge, has not been investigated in previous variationist work. This study covers this gap by examining a large corpus of spontaneous speech (N=6005) gathered in the capital city of Santo Domingo and a rural area in the northwestern Cibao region. Furthermore, in line with the cohesive approach to syntactic variation developed in recent work (Adger and Smith 2005), theoretical implications are drawn from quantitative results. The results obtained in this study show that null and overt subject patterns in DS are regulated by the same constraints that have been found relevant in previous variationist work, i.e. discourse-related factor groups and Person (Otheguy, Zentella and Livert, 2007). These results depart from previous work in that evidence for language change in progress has been found in subject position patterns, rather than in null and overt subject distribution. When this phenomenon is examined, urban, young, high-middle class and female speakers arise as the social groups leading grammatical restructuring. Quantitative and qualitative evidence is taken into account for testing previous syntactic-theoretical proposals on DS. Taking the cartographic approach to syntactic structure (Rizzi 1997) as a point of departure, it will proposed that multiple specifier positions are available within the TP and CP fields to host strong and weak subjects. This proposal, in turn, makes it possible to account for the Null Subject Parameter profile displayed by synchronic DS without resorting to competing grammars in the minds of the speakers.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Florida, 2004. / Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains 92 pages. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Tourism development has been advocated for as a means by which to stimulate regional economic development in developing countries by international development agencies and governments seeking to transition from agricultural to industrial economies. First viewed as a purely private sector activity, tourism development planning was ad hoc or reactive to the demands of a quickly growing and highly dynamic industry. The externalities and negative impacts of rapid development and poor planning were quickly recognizable in small economies; high economic leakages, cultural encroachment, environmental degradation. When planning processes were undertaken, methodologies were derived from those of developed countries, proving not to be the most appropriate approaches to tourism development in lesser developed economies where administrative and structural capacities are weak or non-existent. Planning objectives also were heavily focused on physical requirements and financial outputs, all derived from identified market segments. Sustainable tourism development evolved from the recognition that the industry is dependant upon natural and cultural resources which must be preserved. Planning processes focus more on the capacity of these underlying resources, as opposed to simply meeting market demands for products and services. The integration of these resources as tourism amenities is furthermore thought to be crucial to sustaining the value of the tourism product. Nonetheless, sustainable tourism development planning is no better defined than its traditional counterpart. Implementation of planning processes, both traditional and sustainable, are challenging, especially in developing countries. This report seeks to identify fundamental differences in traditional versus sustaining planning processes for tourism in regards to vision, goals, objectives, strategies and performance indicators. The goals and objectives of sustainable tourism development are evaluated against national developmental indicators for socio-cultural, environmental and economic outcomes. A case study example is undertaken of the mass tourism destination La Romana-Bayahibe, Dominican Republic where, through the local private sector hotel association, the Interamerican Development Bank is funding the development of a “Sustainable Tourism Development Model”. An evaluation of the established goals and objectives is undertaken with the aim of identifying rational performance indicators for evaluation of the project’s impact. / 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

This dissertation examines the hagiographical corpus of the Dominican preacher Thomas of Cantimpré (c. 1201–1270), a critical early respondent to the burgeoning women’s religious movement in the Southern Low Countries. Writing at a time when both lay and religious spirituality were being radically refigured in light of new organizational structures and devotional practices, Thomas’s hagiographical corpus reflects the diversity of vocational possibilities available for women and men in this period at a time of great religious experimentation and innovation. Using historical, literary, and theological methods, the dissertation examines the ways in which Thomas’s vitae struggle with the question of how lay and religious, male and female readers might, in Thomas’s words, “take up” the different kinds of figures Thomas offers as models for practice and objects of devotion. Each of the vitae offer unique solutions to this question even as they represent different sorts of persons as exemplary. An important assumption governing the dissertation is that hagiography is a vital part of the spiritual and theological tradition of Christianity. Thomas’s vitae, I argue, attempt to articulate a theology of exemplarity in order to address the issue of what constitutes sanctity, who can become a saint, and by what means sanctity is attained. For Thomas, exemplarity is animated by theological notions of incarnation and scriptural revelation. Christ, as manifest in his life and in the words of scripture, is the great exemplum for embodied lives. For each of Thomas’s saints, Christ is both the singular figure who saves and the one in whom the saint participates, raising the question of how the individual human being embodies and exemplifies Christ’s singularity. Thomas’s Lives will be shown, in the course of their narratives, to illumine the tension between the singularity of Christ and its repetition in the saintly figures represented in the vitae and the readers of those vitae. Exploration of this tension reveals great richness in Thomas’s works, showing that Thomas’s narrative voice often speaks doubly within a single vita, thematizing the limits and possibilities of exemplarity and its hagiographical representation.

The purpose of this report is to help fisheries officials better understand the cultures of small - scale fishing communities. By doing so they will be better prepared to develop more successful management policies and practices, and to help people in such communities to have more decent lives. The paper discusses cultural characteristics of small-scale fishing communities that are particularly important for fisheries officials to understand. Methods which might help fisheries managers to obtain trustworthy and reliable information about fishing cultures in an ethical manner are also suggested, including methods for rapidly acquiring important information while working within tight budgetary and time constraints. Recommendations appearing near the end of the paper provide guidance concerning how the foregoing objectives can be achieved, underscoring the importance of sustaining small –scale fishers' rights of access to fisheries resources while making their cultures integral considerations in fisheries- management policies and practices. Buen Hombre is one of six case studies of contemporary small -scale fishing communities from distinct world -culture regions are annexed at the end, richly exemplifying many of the issues discussed in this report The essay written by Richard Stoffle is about the people of Buen Hombre, a small coastal fishing and farming village of about a thousand people located on the north coast of the Dominican Republic near the Haitian border. It is found on pages 219 – 245. The people of this village deal with the normal and abnormal problems of change. These changes are sometimes global and sometimes local. Changes occur in their climate, economy, and their environment. The people of this village prepare for and accommodate to these changes by (1) promoting a conservation ethic and (2) limiting access to their marine resources. When they are successful, fish -based food security issues are ameliorated. This essay discusses food security issues as these were faced by the people of the village of Buen Hombre from 1985 to 1995. While this is a very small segment of time, many changes did occur and these illustrate key temporal and spatial processes. Short-term changes in the economy and climate are common for coastal peoples who must constantly adjust their adaptive strategies to survive. The full reference for the entire report is: McGoodwin, James, R. (2001). Understanding the Cultures of Fishing Communities: A Key to Fisheries Management and Food Security. Rome, Italy: Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations; FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 401.

These three talks present a summary of key findings from socio-ecological research conducted in Buen Hombre, the Dominican Republic.

This is an assessment of the social and cultural factors that potentially will influence the transfer of Caribbean King Crab or Mithrax mariculture as it has been developed in two West Indian project sites. The projects are located in Nonsuch Bay, Antigua, and Buen Hombre,Dominican Republic. The projects derive from an original proposal entitled "A New Mariculture Project for the Lesser Antilles," which was submitted by the Smithsonian Institution, Marine Systems Laboratory (MSL), to the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID). That project was funded as AID Project No. 598 -065. This anthropological and sociological assessment was contracted by the Smithsonian Institution as specified in P.O. No. ST5080090000 on July 10, 1985.