This thesis considers the nutritional, social and economic dimensions of seasona flood insecurity in Mali from the conceptual viewpoint of risk. It incorporates both longitudinal and crosssectional designs, and quantitative and qualitative methods to explore the strategies agriculturalists employ to minimize risk, and the characteristics of the vulnerable. Anthropometry, morbidity, adult energy expenditure, and household food consumption were monitored over a 14 month period in a village sample of 33 households to test the hypothesis that seasonal nutritional risk is experiencedd ifferentially by age and gender groups in the population. Significant seasonal changes were detected in all nutritional indicators, but few which exceeded threshold levels used to define risk. At the household level the thesis examines the hypothesis that exogenous factors and endogenous household characteristics combine to influence the range of strategies available to food insecure households, and therefore, the degree of risk they experience. Cross-sectional data on seven villages revealed striking interregional and interannual variations in the prevalence and severity of household food insecurity which are strongly related to rainfall. Household stratification according to the capacity to sustain a secure, adequate and viable diet revealed the food secure to be large and wealthy households with sufficient resources to diversify production, and to invest in agriculture and social networks of exchange. At the other extreme were food insecure households which tend to be poor, small and dependent on the proceeds of labour sales to breach the shortage period. Longitudinal study of food stock flows, labour exchange, monetary expenditure and other transfers, demonstrated the continuing vitality of social networks of exchange as means of spreading risk. Vulnerable households had less access to such networks.

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Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

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This thesis aims to examine how Native Americans survive through storytelling, using Linda Hogan¡¦s Solar Storms as my anchor text. The entire work proceeds in five chapters. The first chapter is my introduction. Chapter Two, ¡§Famine Stories,¡¨ delineates the mental starvation that Native Americans suffer. In this novel, there are abundant stories dealing with the trauma caused by colonial deprivation. Such stories are termed as ¡§famine stories,¡¨ which according to its influential level, is further divided into three kinds¡Xpersonal famine stories, familial famine stories, and communal famine stories. These stories intertwine with one another, and their causes can all be traced to the colonial history. Chapter Two, ¡§Feed Me Stories,¡¨ intends to seek a recovery from Native people¡¦s mental famine. Taking Angel¡¦s self-constructing journey as an example, I argue that storytelling reconnects the lost Native American with the lost past. In addition, stories reconstruct the Native worldview, which looks forward to harmony and balance between the human and non-human. Emerged in her grandmothers¡¦ storytelling, Angel comes to realize her mother culture and rebuild her Native identity. Moreover, she retrieves her correlation with the land, develops an intimacy with animals and plants and inherits her family tradition to be an herbal woman. She at last recovers from her psychical wounds. Chapter Three, ¡§The Future Storyteller,¡¨ sheds light on Hogan¡¦s intention to carry Native survivance into the future. Protesting against dam construction, Angel takes the tribal future as her responsibility. She devotes her love to nurturing the tribal youth and justifying her Native living right by revealing the deprivation which traumatizes the Native community. Her telling is powerful. It challenges the dominators¡¦ covering the truth up, and puts Native perspective into attention. She de-annihilates Native culture and assures its prosperity in the future. What she does corresponds to Gerald Vizenor¡¦s ¡§Native Survivance,¡¨ ensuring ¡§an active sense of presence,¡¨ and ¡§the continuance of native stories¡¨ (vii). The entire tribe is reunified due to storyteller¡¦s effort and the community is again ¡§the Beautiful People¡¨ (313).

The Great Famine (1845--1852) was not only a catastrophic moment in Irish history, it was and remains an important source of textual production, particularly in regard to literature and drama. These cultural products carry a powerful discourse used to communicate various social and political agendas. From the beginning, Irish novelists, poets and dramatists have confronted the question of the Famine's meaning then and now. At each historical moment, they have interrogated the Famine and have employed various discursive strategies to communicate to their readers and audiences. / This dissertation makes four primary claims: (a) The historical Irish Famine has remained a source of discursive activity by Irish writers, and so constitutes a phenomenon that merits communication research; (b) This discursive content constructs the Famine in ways that communicate its meaning for contemporary readers in successive historical periods; (c) The multiple discursive meanings of the Famine are often contradictory, and demonstrate the conflicting socio-cultural and political goals of both writers and their readerships; and (d) The emergence and evolution of Famine discourse, which consistently recruits pre-existing discourses, provides an important site for examination of the communicational function of imaginative literature and drama. / A survey of Famine literature and drama reveals inconsistent patterns of textual production and discursive content. By determining the historical periods of Famine literary and dramatic production, and by analyzing the contextual dimensions and textual features of representative works, the reasons behind periods of high and low output, the purposes of discursive maintenance and manipulation and the relationship between literary and dramatic discourse and readerships can be approached. To undertake this analysis, five central tropes---land, national identity, religion, gender and agency---are employed. These themes are multi-layered and mutually implicated both on the level of textual production and consumption, that is, in their writing and in their reading/viewing. These tropes have been employed in and through the communicational perspectives of several thinkers, notably Pierre Bourdieu and Teun van Dijk. / Termed an Gorta Mor in the Irish language, the Famine dramatically altered Ireland's social, economic and political fabric, triggered massive emigration to America, Britain and Canada, and etched itself into the Irish psyche as an enduring, if frequently repressed, moment of trauma. As such, a study of its role in communication, in human meaning-making, can illuminate not only Irish experience but the human capacity to tell a bitter, painful story, for specific ends, by remembering and manipulating its elements and to use that story as tool in achieving social and political goals, and in obtaining or maintaining power.

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