The purpose of this thesis is to present a history of the founding, operations, services, and growth of the First State Bank of Gladewater,Texas, with special emphasis placed on the economic relationships between the bank and the community. The general problem in this thesis is to gather all the material and data pertaining to the organization, operation, and functions of the bank, with relation to the growth of the community and to present them in a readable coherent manner.

As a consequence of Cuba’s severe mid-1990s economic crisis and the government’s attempt to remedy it by investing in the tourism sector, a new interactional space has opened up, providing Cubans with the opportunity to form economically advantageous relationships with foreigners. This thesis contributes to the anthropological understanding of the lifeworlds of Cuban women who engage in relationships with foreign men that are sexualized and commercialized to various degrees. These touristic encounters are morally and ideologically contested in late socialist Cuba. They are also characterized by an ambiguous tension, as the women have to manage foreign men’s expectations regarding exchanges of love and money. Based on six months of fieldwork in Havana, I examine the components and developments of such relationships and discuss the women’s particular role. I highlight their agency as they capitalize on touristic desires and fantasies of the exotic and erotic Caribbean Other, simultaneously reproducing a system of sexualized, racialized and gendered inequalities. Through a discussion of the methodologies employed in the research, I question the analytical use of empirical categories in anthropological analysis. I argue that emic categories applied to relationships between Cuban women and foreign men are political and normative markers of social statuses, but are not valid analytical units.

Our dissertation tried to gain insight on the possible implications of the euro behavior and the EMU economic activity on the economies of typical Sub-Saharan African countries in a bipolar international monetary system. Chapter 1 has built a three country model in which an interdependent monetary policy game between two big economies, especially that of the United States and the EMU, has an impact on outcomes of a small country monetary policy. It was found that cooperation between big country monetary policymakers is beneficial for the small country whenever the shocks affecting big country economies imply changes in the euro-dollar exchange rate. Chapter 2 has dealt with the issue of the sustainability of pegging an African currency to the euro as EMU monetary authorities pursue a ``low inflation' policy and asymmetric shocks affect the anchor and the pegging country. Our model indicated that the key factor of this longevity is the virtual convertibility granted by the French Treasury to the CFA franc. Moreover, it appears that structural asymmetries are likely to make the currency peg to the euro more restraining. In Chapter 3, the relationships between EMU and Sub-Saharan Africa's countries are empirically investigated. This chapter showed that despite the appealing theoretical relations suggested by trade flows, the EMU business cycle and the European product prices have a limited impact on African country economies. But in the monetary area, the European Central Bank monetary policy leads significantly that of African countries according to the available data. African inflation performances follow that of EMU after some lags. This result confirms the ``operation account' mechanism effect which allows African countries to momentarily have a worse inflation performance without any devaluation. Chapter 4 empirically tackles the possible impact of euro-dollar exchange rate variations on Sub-Saharan Africa's country trade balances. After providing a theoretical model of a typical Sub-Saharan African country trade balance that suggests an inverted J-curve--like effect, it is found that only the trade balance of Benin among ten countries is affected by the movements of the euro-dollar exchange rate. The result also suggests that the inverted J-curve effect works at least partially for this country. / Notre recherche a essayé d'appréhender les possibles implications des variations de la valeur de l'euro et de l'activité économique au sein de la zone euro pour les pays de l'Afrique Sub-Saharienne. Ces implications sont considérées dans le contexte d'un système monétaire international bipolaire. Dans le premier chapitre, nous avons construit un modèle à trois pays dans lequel l'interdépendance des politiques monétaires des deux grandes économies, désignant celle de l'Union Monétaire Européenne (UME) et celle des Etats-Unis, a un impact sur la mise en œuvre de la politique monétaire d'un petit pays. Nous avons montré que la coopération entre les deux grandes économies est bénéfique pour le petit pays si les chocs auxquels les grandes économies sont confrontées entraînent des variations du taux de change de l'euro par rapport au dollar. Le deuxième chapitre a traité du caractère soutenable de l'ancrage d'une monnaie africaine à l'euro dans la mesure où, d'une part les autorités monétaires de l'UME poursuivent une politique très restrictive et, d'autre part, des asymétries structurelles affectent le pays ancre et les pays africains. Notre modèle a expliqué la longévité de la zone CFA essentiellement par la convertibilité virtuelle du franc CFA que confère le Trésor Français. Par ailleurs, il en est ressorti que sans le mécanisme du « compte d'opérations », le processus de désinflation qui a accompagné la formation de l'UME est susceptible d'avoir accru le niveau des contraintes de l'ancrage d'une monnaie à l'euro. Il est également apparu que l'environnement politique et économique défavorable en Afrique est un facteur de renforcement des contraintes liées à l'ancrage à l'euro. Une étude empirique des relations économiques entre l'UME et les pays de l'Afrique Sub-Saharienne a été menée dans le troisième chapitre. On y a découvert que, malgré les substantielles relations commerciales qui existent, le cycle économique de l'UME et les prix de gros européens n'ont qu'un impact limité sur les économies africaines. Néanmoins, sur le plan monétaire, la politique de la Banque Centrale Européenne influence significativement les politiques monétaires africaines. Le temps d'adaptation qui est constaté, avant que les performances en matière d'inflation ne se mettent au niveau des performances européennes, suggère que l'effet du compte des opérations est bien réel pour les pays de la zone CFA. Le quatrième chapitre a étudié l'éventuel impact des variations du taux de change de l'euro par rapport au dollar sur les balances commerciales des pays de l'Afrique Sub-Saharienne. Après avoir mis en exergue le cadre théorique suggérant un mécanisme similaire à celui d'une courbe en J inversée, l'étude trouve que seul la balance commerciale du Benin, parmi les dix pays de l'échantillon, est affectée par les mouvements du taux de change de l'euro par rapport au dollar. Selon ces résultats, l'effet de la courbe en J inversée fonctionne au moins partiellement pour ce pays.

Southern Turkey’s Amuq Valley has been described as a point of convergence bridging distant regions within the ancient Near East. Through an in depth techno-typological and chemical characterization study of 290 obsidian artefacts, this research details changes in deep-time patterns of obsidian use from the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age (6000 BCE – 2400 BCE), arguing that shifting traditions of consumption reflect socio-economic developments both within and beyond the Northern Levant. These artefacts come from the three sites of Tell al-Judaidah, Tell Dhahab and Tell Kurdu, the material excavated during the 1930’s by the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. Methodologically raw material sourcing was achieved using energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (EDXRF) in the well-established McMaster XRF Lab [MAX Lab]. With these artefacts’ raw materials all being exotic to the Amuq Valley, originating from various outcrops in Cappadocia, the Lake Van region and Transcaucasia (Turkey and Armenia), over 1000km away, this study not only offers new insight into how Amuq Valley communities engaged in long-distance relations, but also contributes to a larger, deep-time regional study of obsidian consumption as a proxy for understanding significant shifts in Near Eastern socio-economics, from hunter-gatherers to the earliest states. In turn, this study, by employing an Annales school framework to consider practice over deep time at the local and supra-regional level further contributes to an ‘archaeology of the long-term’. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / This research involved the chemical analysis of 290 artefacts of archaeological obsidian – a naturally occurring substance made of crystallized lava - as a means of studying ancient exchange systems in the Near East. More specifically, this study covers archaeological periods from 6000 B.C.E. (Late Neolithic) to 2400 B.C.E. (Early Bronze Age) in the Amuq Valley region of southern Turkey. These artefacts were procured during excavations under the Oriental Institute Museum (University of Chicago) beginning in the 1930s. All artefacts are exotic to the Amuq Valley from several known obsidian outcrops in Anatolia (Turkey), some over 1000km away. Analysis was conducted using X-ray fluorescence (XRF) to match each artefact to its geological origin thereby identifying the range of exotic materials were exchanged across long-distances. The goal of this research was to uncover social and/or economic dynamics of the Amuq Valley through deep-time with regards to the greater obsidian trade network of the Near East.