Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [192]-208).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--George Mason University, 1992. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 271-283).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisor: Helena Woodard. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis presents a comparative analysis of the operation and significance of elections in the British colonies of Jamaica, New South Wales and the Cape, from 1849-1860, with a particular focus on the creation and reconstruction of ideas of politically-entitled British subjecthood over this period. Beginning with the first elections under a system of representative government in New South Wales and the Cape, and the early elections of the post-emancipation period in Jamaica, it questions how residents within these sites engaged with elections via the cultures of the canvass, public meetings, open nominations and viva voce polling. Through this study, I show how mid-century elections became critical sites for the articulation of social tensions and long-standing rivalries between competing settler groups within each of these colonies. I argue that the franchise, although highly demonstrative of the Colonial Office and settlers’ attempts to reconcile the respective competing histories of and justifications for colonisation, was often frustrated in practice. Cultures of violence, the manipulation of land-values, double-voting and bribery provided avenues through which laws governing the right to vote were transcended during elections. Through this thesis, I show how both residents and officials used such mechanisms to reshape the function and meaning of the franchise. I also show the lasting implications of such changes, particularly for their impact on nascent attitudes to race. Via a close examination of case studies across the three sites, this history broadens understandings of the mid-century as a period in which locally-elected legislatures increasingly became the prerogative of white ‘settler’ colonies and political rights increasingly centred on an individual, defined by his race and gender, as well as his class. Although affirming the importance of the period, it shows the complexities and inconsistencies of attempts to define the boundaries of enfranchisement over this period, and the impact of struggles to achieve it via changes to electoral law and practice. The comparison between New South Wales, the Cape and Jamaica illuminates the manner through which global discourses of reform, including those relating to bribery, privacy and order, would come to be repurposed within each site. It also serves to reinforce the striking role that attitudes to race would come to play in the formation and regulation of electoral practice across the British Empire. In this manner, this thesis aims to advance imperial historiography by highlighting the role of electoral culture as a reflection of and instigating factor in wider reconceptions of political rights across the British colonial world.

In this study, titled Learning in a language that isn't one's own - the case of Jamaica, our intention is to give a picture of what the language situation in Jamaica is like. English is the official language in Jamaica, but it is coexisting with Jamacian Creole, which is not admitted as a official language, but it is the language of the people. In this study we try to point out possible factors that have created the language situation of Jamaica. We have mostly focused on the situation at school, all teaching is supposed to be in English. We have observed attitudes among pupils and teachers to English and Jamaican Creole. We will also give general explanations of the terms Pidgin and Creole and we will give a brief history background of Jamaica.

Submitted by Pedro Barros (pedro.silvabarros@ufpe.br) on 2018-07-04T21:04:05Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 811 bytes, checksum: e39d27027a6cc9cb039ad269a5db8e34 (MD5) TESE Márcia Maria Oliveira Silva.pdf: 1928321 bytes, checksum: 1d7715a416451082c3692eecd8a60357 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-07-04T21:04:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 811 bytes, checksum: e39d27027a6cc9cb039ad269a5db8e34 (MD5) TESE Márcia Maria Oliveira Silva.pdf: 1928321 bytes, checksum: 1d7715a416451082c3692eecd8a60357 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-02-21 / CAPES / A literatura é capaz de contribuir significativamente para a compreensão da existência humana através da construção de mundos ficcionais. A literatura pós-colonial ganhou espaço e notoriedade porque revela a experiência de povos que viveram sob a marca da colonização e que continuam experienciando as consequências do passado colonizador. Esta literatura quebra o silêncio promovido pelo discurso do colonizador e busca o direito à fala e à recuperação do passado; percebe-se que na literatura produzida nas Américas a herança colonial ainda é muito marcante, as escritoras Jamaica Kincaid (Antígua-Estados Unidos), Dionne Brand (Trinitad e Tobago-Canadá) e Conceição Evaristo (Brasil) apresentam em seus textos uma conexão com o contexto pós-colonial e focam em questões socioculturais significativas para a reflexão e o entendimento de temáticas como etnicidade, raça, poder, sexo, gênero e classe social. As obras analisadas nesta tese apresentam personagens excluídos socialmente, revelando narrativas que se afastam de estereótipos socialmente construídos e estabelecem novos paradigmas. Este trabalho surge com o objetivo principal de analisar um total de 12 obras a fim de compreender a maneira como Kincaid, Brand e Evaristo desenvolvem noções como identidade, memória, diáspora e pós- olonialidade. Utilizamos como arcabouço teórico autores como Stuart Hall, Gayatri Spivak, Aníbal Quijano, Frantz Fanon, Alberto Memmi, Paul Gilroy, Roland Walter, Carole Boyce Davies, Aleida Assmann, Lélia Gonzalez, Eurídice Figueiredo, entre outros, com o intuito de comprovar que as interpelações identitárias vão se construindo através das experiências de cada personagem. As narrativas analisadas abordam sujeitos que são frutos das sociedades ‘multiculturais’, sendo que estas não escondem a existência de uma ‘consciência patriarcal/colonial/imperial’ que interferem diretamente no estabelecimento das relações sociais, revelando assim as nuances da colonialidade do poder e da subalternidade. As obras analisadas se estabelecem, portanto, na maneira como Kincaid, Brand e Evaristo compreendem as marcas do colonialismo na sociedade e nas relações humanas, bem como as nuances da opressão feminina e da opressão racial. / Literature is capable of contributing significantly to the comprehension of human existence through the construction of fictional worlds. Postcolonialist literature has gained ground and notoriety because it reveals experiences of peoples who lived under colonial rule and still experience the consequences of such a past. That literature breaks the silence imposed by the colonizer’s discourse, seeks for the right of speech and retrieval of the past. It is noticeable that the colonial heritage is still very present in the literature produced in the Americas. Writers such as Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua-United States of America), Dionne Brand (Trinidad and Tobago-Canada), and Conceição Evaristo (Brazil) present in their writings a connection to the post-colonial context, and focus on significant sociocultural issues such as ethnicity, race, power, sex, gender, and social class. The literary works analyzed in this thesis present socially excluded characters, revealing narratives that problematize socially-constructed stereotypes and establish new paradigms. This study aims to mainly analyze 12 books written by the aforementioned authors in order to comprehend how Kincaid, Brand, and Evaristo develop notions of identity, memory, diaspora, and postcoloniality. The theoretical framework of this study was based on scholarly publications of Stuart Hall, Gayatri Spivak, Aníbal Quijano, Frantz Fanon, Alberto Memmi, Paul Gilroy, Roland Walter, Carole Boyce Davies, Aleida Assmann, Lélia Gonzalez, Eurídice Figueiredo, and others, with the aim of proving that identitarian interpellations are built through each character’s experiences. The narratives analyzed deal with individuals who are results of ‘multicultural’ societies, these societies do not hide the existence of a ‘patriarchal/colonial/imperial conscience’ that interferes directly with the establishment of social relations, thus revealing the nuances of the coloniality of power and subalternity. The studied literary works established themselves, therefore, according to how Kincaid, Brand, and Evaristo comprehend the marks of colonialism in society and human relations, as well as the nuances of women’s and racial oppression.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have been used in several sectors and industries and have generated positive results especially in respect of increasing productivity and collaboration. While the discipline of social informatics has studied the use of ICT in agriculture and in tourism as separate fields, little work has been done to look at ICT use in agritourism – the intersection of agriculture and tourism. Even less (or no) work has been done on ICT use in agritourism in small island developing states, the Caribbean, or Jamaica. This thesis presents the first look at the variables to be considered in applying ICT to agritourism in the Jamaican context. A holistic view of the Jamaican agritourism sub-sector, in the form of the newly crafted Jamaican Agritourism Innovation System (JATIS) model, is presented showing the interactions among the various actors (sectors) required for successful ICT implementation. The JATIS model is an extension of previous Agriculture Innovation Systems (AIS) models and is specifically applied to the Jamaican context. However, as opposed to previous models, the JATIS highlights the critical role of purveyors, or middlemen, operating in Jamaican agritourism. The model formulates a mechanism, different from the current Jamaican agritourism structure, to include all industry players in the supply/demand interaction. The inclusion of all players is done through a series of farm and purveyor groups, enabled and facilitated by ICT. In addition, the model highlights the improved quality of information exchange among the players as a result of the modified interaction proposed. It might be possible to apply the model to other Small Island Developing States, particularly those in the Anglophone Caribbean, where the socio-cultural variables and economies are similar to Jamaica’s. However, further research will have to be conducted to verify, fine-tune, or customize the model for external application.

Adolescent pregnancy and the sexual behaviors of adolescents continue to be robust public health and social problems in Caribbean countries such as Jamaica. Numerous researchers have conducted studies on the impact of sex education on sexual behaviors and pregnancy patterns among adolescents with mixed results (i.e., a lack of knowledge) especially in rural communities. The purpose of this study was to ascertain the impact of school- or home-based sex education on sexual behavior and pregnancy patterns of adolescents aged 15 —19 years in the rural community of St. Thomas, Jamaica. The parental expansion of the theory of planned behavior and cognitive behavior theory constituted the theoretical foundation for this quantitative descriptive cross-sectional study. Secondary data from the 2008 Jamaica Reproductive Health Survey (N = 8,200) were analyzed. Descriptive statistics, chi-square, and Cramer's V were computed to determine the relationship and strength between the independent variables (school- and home-based sex education) and the dependent variables (pregnancy and sexual behaviors of adolescents). The results indicate a weak negative inverse relationship that was not statistically significant between sex education in school and sex education at home on adolescent pregnancy. There is a weak positive relationship between sex education in school on condom use and a positive measure of association between sex education at home on condom use. This study may be significant to local community health departments seeking inventive techniques for improving and enhancing existing programs. The results of this study also contribute new data on the impact of sex education on adolescent pregnancy and the sexual behavior of adolescents.

My thesis seeks to answer the broad questions: can early foragers alter marine resources in island settings and can archaeological data provide insights into these changes. These questions highlight two important issues. The first issue reflects the common belief that small-scale societies did not affect their environments. The second issue centers on growing concern over the collapse of fisheries across the globe. To answer these questions, I use fish bones recovered from an archaeological site located in Belmont, Jamaica near the Bluefields Bay marine sanctuary. The Bluefields Bay site dates to the late Taíno occupation of Jamaica. The name Taíno refers to the peoples who greeted Columbus. I conduct my analyses through the identification of the faunal bones to lowest taxonomic level, and apply the theoretical tool known as resource depression to detect declines in the relative abundance of large-bodied fishes, reductions in fish body size, and changes to fish community composition. I found significant changes in body size and diversity of fishes through time, pointing to shifts in the marine ecosystem due to human exploitation that occurred nearly a thousand years ago.

This study provides a foundational framework for Afrocentric translation. Afrocentric translation in which Afrikan languages and their Pan-Afrikan cultural context, transgenerationally and transcontinentally, are central in the interpretation of Afrikan texts (written or oral) and, thus, ensuring that Afrikan people are the subjects in the episteme of the translation process. The two languages of focus in this study are Medew Netcher, the Kemetic language, and the Jamaican language. The basic grammatical features of Medew Netcher will be explained from an Afrocentric perspective through Jamaican translations. More specifically, the analysis shows that the equational juxtaposition system reflects the Afrikan notion of ontological unity, the verbal paradigm is reflective of the Afrikan notion of time, and it also shows how Afrikan existential concepts of existence and knowledge manifest in the grammar of Medew Netcher and Jamaican. In addition, this study includes the first translation of a Kemetic text in an Ebonics language as an exemplar for large-scale Afrocentric translation of a text. Overall, this study provides a foundational framework for the Africological study of Afrikan language. / African American Studies