Mexican migration to the United States has become a pressing concern subject to widespread debate. Border and migration policies have complicated family lives in rural Mexico, leaving some family members to migrate north while others are left behind. As the husbands of women in communities near Puebla, Mexico migrate to the US, they are increasingly given the unfamiliar role of becoming the head of their house-hold. There has not been much research that examines the unique pressures that this role brings. This project examined the challenges and coping strategies women face in this situation during health emergencies, and the role of social media in maintaining strong family ties across international borders. This research calls upon the narratives of women struggling to survive on their own while also attempting to maintain the standards required of marianismo in Mexican society. The research is based on a small number of semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted in rural areas of Puebla, Mexico about demography, migration, social media Health emergencies; and other challenges and Coping Strategies. Results portrayed a nuanced view of women's struggle between family and work life that suggested the beginnings of change in women's role in traditional, rural Mexican society. Women who could afford to stay at home often had a negative perception of women who needed to work, and vice versa. Women found work and social support to be helpful coping mechanisms. Common challenges were relationship maintenance, single parenting, health emergencies, and coping with feelings of abandonment. Social media often added to these feelings of abandonment.

This dissertation analyzes the fair trade (FLO) certification system for agricultural commodities in the context of the global coffee crisis and its deleterious effects on rural livelihoods, focusing on the northern Peruvian Amazon. I begin the dissertation in my introduction by outlining my theoretical framework, which analyzes markets as bundles of institutions. The dissertation proceeds to analyze the key institutions of the fair trade coffee chain: certifications, commodity trade, cooperatives, and smallholder farming communities. In my second chapter, I explain the history of the FLO certification system, examine the dynamics of certifications in general, and point out the incentive problems therein. My third chapter provides a value chain analysis of the global coffee trade, outlining the key differences between conventional and fair trade value chain structures and identifying the key forces that have increased inequality in incomes along the coffee value chain. My fourth chapter examines existing theories and empirical evidence on the efficacy of cooperatives in improving the welfare of their members, and critically reviews the debate about the role of cooperatives in rural development. My fifth chapter examines empirically the relationship between cooperatives and their member farms, based on fieldwork I conducted in Peru in 2006–7. My empirical analysis discovers that farms are better able to access cooperative benefits when they engage in non-market labor exchanges between households. I conclude the dissertation by arguing that, despite the limitations inherent in the fair trade certification movement, it has successfully expanded economic opportunities for participating growers, and that cooperative relationships among the growers improve access to these benefits.

Based on intercultural education, socio-cultural analysis, and decolonization and critical pedagogy perspectives, this dissertation explores contradictions in Peruvian intercultural education policy and examines the potential role that African and Afro-Peruvian thought may have in the reform of this policy. Despite redefinitions of the Peruvian state as multicultural/multilingual and the adoption of intercultural concepts in Peruvian education law, the official interpretation of intercultural principles has tended to undermine the social transforming potential implicit in intercultural education. First, official Peruvian education policy overlooks the historical and cultural contributions of non-European and non-Incan social groups. Second, it fails to address inequality and inequity between socio-cultural groups in the access to economic-political resources. Third, it restricts intercultural education programs to Indigenous speaking communities. This study notes how Peruvian intercultural education policy is shaped by state discourses on national identity and by the structure of official Peruvian identity, the Castilian-Inca mestizo entity, and thus ignores Peru's African, Asian, and Middle Eastern roots. By arguing for the inclusion of Afro-Peruvian traditions, this research offers a model for opening intercultural education policy to other excluded socio-cultural groups. Archival and contemporary evidence is used to show how the substantial African presence in Peru has been erased from official history, with negative socio-political consequences for Afro-Peruvians. It presents the philosophical, political, pedagogical, and sociological contributions of the Senegalese Leopold Sedar Senghor (1906–2001), and the Afro-Peruvians Nicomedes Santa Cruz Gamarra (1925–1992) and Jose Carlos Luciano Huapaya (1956–2002) as bases for rethinking Peruvian cultural diversity and intercultural policies from decolonized, democratic, and global perspectives. Further, it presents objections and counter-proposals to intercultural education policies of the Peruvian state that were gathered in a small pilot study of the personnel of the Afro-PeruvianYapatera High School and the nonprofit organizations CEDET and Lundu. Finally, it articulates these counter-proposals with Senghor, Santa Cruz, and Luciano's theoretical inputs for decolonizing and democratizing Peruvian intercultural education policy.

This year-long participant observation qualitative case study draws together five social practices of mid-career elementary school educators in the Mexican southeastern state of Oaxaca: a protest march, a roadblock, the use of humor, a school-based book fair and alternate uses of time and space in school. The title terms charros, tlacuaches and mapaches represent some of the diverse sites of friction within witch teachers interact. Additionally, movements of diverse inquiries is derived from the definition Michel Foucault gives to critical which leads to the primary guiding question of: how have Oaxacan teachers engaged in critical pedagogical practices? The study finds that contemporary commonsense dimensions of critical pedagogy which involve developing teacher awareness toward relations of power and facilitating direct interventions in community realities of inequity prove insufficient for teachers and others engaged in a multi-sited, decades-long protest movement. The five social practices showcased here demonstrate ways teacher navigate in and out of the State Secretariat of Education and the radical union, proving that the messy life of teaching proves complex. The practices show how activities often disassociated with pedagogy and political projects: eating, drinking, gossiping play help teachers and other school-based actors enact and sustain their critical projects. It concludes that discourses often associated with acritical humanism are important additions to critical pedagogy taken on in places of intensified conflict.

Based on an ethnographic investigation, the dissertation examines the emergence and significance of discourses around "the environment" in the Lake District of the Araucanía region of Chile (Araucanía Lacustre). These are understood as part of the discursive aspect of globalization – the process by which the territory and its population are integrated ever more tightly into the networks of global market society – and considered in conjunction with discourses around Mapuche indigenous identity. Drawing on media-cultural studies, actor network theory, and medium theory, the analysis seeks to advance an ecological concept of communication that does not privilege human consciousness and agency. Communication is argued to be the principle by which space (physical and metaphysical) is configured and connected. Through a discussion of the physical and human geography of the territory it is argued that discourse is mutually immanent with material realities, including human practice and pre-discursive, nonhuman elements (chapter 3). The connection between environmental discourse and Mapuche culture is examined through the stereotype of the ecologically virtuous indigenous subject – a stereotype whose significance is changing as parallel neoliberal multicultural and sustainable development discourses boost the prestige of both Mapuche culture and ecological responsibility, even as the steady expansion of market society undermines both (Chapter 2). A program run by an NGO, funded by the Chilean state, and intended to market the agro-ecological produce of Mapuche small farmers to tourists, provides a concrete case of the intersection of neoliberal multiculturalism with environmental discourse (Chapter 4). The concept of "postmaterialism" is adapted, with a critical edge, in an exploration of the environmental activism and a certain dissatisfaction with modernity among college educated immigrants to the District from Santiago, North America and Europe (chapter 5). The process of globalization, through which Mapuche campesinos come to use environmentalist discourses, involves interactions among old and new information technologies, transportation technologies, and the non-anthropogenic realities of physical space-time and geography (chapter 6). The dissertation concludes with a normative argument about the ethical and epistemological inadequacy of globalizing market society.

During the 1920s and 30s, Mexican artists, teachers and state officials collaborated to stage educational plays in working class neighborhoods and rural communities in an effort to foster revolutionary citizens. The authors of live-action drama and hand-puppetry, known as teatro guiñol, infused their comedies and morality plays with the lessons of Mexico's revolution, endeavoring to improve rural life, strengthen class-consciousness and promote artistry among spectators young and old. In support of these initiatives, the Ministry of Education constructed thousands of open-air stages throughout rural Mexico, trained teachers to operate puppet theaters and disseminated scripts in its biweekly magazine. Many of the initiators of these projects viewed the role of theater in contradictory terms; it was a means both to elevate the standards of national culture as well as to nurture the folkloric artistry that was to be fountain of a "cosmic race." However, subsequent officials would manage theater as part and parcel of the state's adoption of socialist education, resulting in an important role for didactic theater in the state's repertoire of civic festival. Moreover, communist activists and avant-garde artists penned works of popular and puppet-theater inspired by the pedagogical practices of Russia's 1917 revolution and sought to further advance Mexico's social transformation. Engaging with literary critics, historians, and scholars of cultural studies, my study adds the role of lesser-known artists and intellectuals back into the mix to understand the multi-stranded, negotiated process that took place within the realm of post-revolutionary cultural politics. I examine play scripts written by teachers and artists, policy directives from mid-level ministry officials and reports filed by rural teachers. In this way I identify explicit and implicit moralizing messages in the plays, paying close attention to overlapping and colliding projects as well as narrative strategies and stylistic elements that relate to specific political agendas. Through an exploration of the context in which plays were produced and performed, my study shows how teachers and artists facilitated state projects even as they attempted to fashion didactic theater to suit their pragmatic needs, artistic sensibilities or more radical agendas.

This dissertation explores the topic of migration focusing on science fiction works created by artists from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the United States during the latter half of the twentieth century. My analysis investigates the four most common science fiction themes used to represent migration: space exploration, alien invasions, dystopian states, and virtual reality. The dissertation is in part a recovery project, demonstrating the significance (and even existence) of science fiction works created by U.S. Latinas/os. The dissertation is also a work of genre historical analysis, locating these Latina/o and Latin American writers and artists in the history of science fiction. Science fiction emerged in its current form during European colonialism-- its exploration, invasion, and colonization of places already settled. In my dissertation I have found that Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Latina/o writers and artists work against the coloniality of science fiction. I argue in my dissertation that the dominant plot in mainstream science fiction arose out of a particular form of colonial literature, the "going native" narrative in which a colonizer adopts characteristics of or is identified with a colonized people. In science fiction, the "going native" narrative is translated into what I call the "going alien" narrative. One can "go alien" in regard to issues other than colonialism, for example, race, gender, or nationality. In my dissertation I explore how Latina/o and Latin American science fiction writers and artists respond to and work against the "going alien" narrative system that has long been the foundation of mainstream science fiction.

This dissertation is a study of the dynamics of place and people in a rural municipality in southeastern Bolivia. A study of the dialectical relations between knowledge, ecology, and culture that are manifest through the daily life of the municipality, it is an ethnography that illuminates the multiple discourses of colonialism, nationalism, modernity and decolonization that overlay one another. The contradictions and tensions produced through these intersecting discourses represent major obstacles to the project of "decolonization" and the formation of viable and equitable "intercultural" relationships, as promoted by the indigenous leadership which is the governing party of the Bolivian state since 2006. This yearlong ethnography of everyday life, conducted together with semi-annual follow up visits, reveals how people within the municipality negotiate differing and conflicting life worlds: one sustained by traditional practices of barter and local knowledge about farming, food, health and ecology); and the other governed by bureaucratic agencies and professional expertise. These life worlds signify contrasting notions about development and well-being, culture, and politics; and how between both of these it enables an equivalence that moves us closer toward the decolonizing imperative. Taking a postcolonial approach, I argue that knowledge and the systems of education in which knowledge is largely disseminated (schools, health facilities, NGOs, municipal venues, television, Internet, etc.) are crucial places for moving toward critical reflections, social change, and justice. I also intertwine an analysis of food not only as an agricultural product, but as an integral component of communal livelihoods, interactions with others, and nutritional well-being (physical, mental, and spiritual). Using concepts of border crossings and analyses to perceive and interpret local knowledge occurring in and from the margins of development, ecology, and "well-being," I advocate for the need to disrupt systems of geopolitical values, racial configurations, and hierarchical structures of meaning and knowledge in order to see and validate multiple ways of thinking, knowing and doing. Therefore, rural localities such as this one are essential "places" to learn from and learn with, and to include in the critical discussions and debates on decolonization, inter/intra-culturality, development, and well-being.^

archives@tulane.edu / In my thesis entitled “Deslocamentos na narrative contemporânea brasileira de autoria feminina” I argue that the novels and films that make up the corpus of this study break with essentialized constructions about female identities. In general, the works gathered here give prominence to female characters, their family, and their experiences, shifting modes of representation endorsed both by a literary and cinematographic tradition, and by practices of representation in the mass media. Heterogeneous among themselves, the novels and films selected here create symbolic territories where the subjectivity of women—be they black, white, indigenous, Jewish, daughters of political dissidents, or domestic servants—is valued and made visible in a multiplicity of representations and discourses. My dissertation contains an introduction, four chapters, and a conclusion. The first chapter analyzes how Elvira Vigna’s novel Deixei ele lá e vim (2006) explores contemporary paradigms of transsexuality and homo-affectivity, exposing the arbitrariness of gender roles. The second chapter analyzes Conceição Evaristo’s novel Becos da memória (2006). In this chapter I investigate how the narrator constructs her identity through a quest for the memories of her people, and by doing so she also challenges representations of black women and the fa-vela in literature and popular culture. In the third chapter I analyze the strategies used in the identity construction of indigenous women by the writer Eliane Potiguara in Metade cara, metade máscara (2004). The fourth chapter focuses on the authorial and autobiographical doc-umentaries directed by Sandra Kogut’s Um passaporte húngaro (2001), Petra Costa’s Elena (2014), and Maria Clara Escobar’s Os dias com ele (2012). In this chapter I investigate how the meaning of women’s bodies on-screen is changed through auto-representation and reflex-ivity. In this chapter I also analyze two long features, Anna Muylaerte’s Que horas ela volta? (2015) and Daniela Thomas and Walter Salles’ Linha de passe (2008), and how their main characters (housekeepers and their offspring) negotiate, and occupy spaces traditionally not al-lowed to them. My dissertation contributes to scholarly debates on authority and authorization pertaining to female authors and filmmakers in Brazil. It highlights how this group of artists reformulated long-established perceptions of representation and participation in the industry, while revealing new narratives with the power to influence signifying practices in contemporary Brazilian culture. / 1 / Angela Moura Rodriguez Mooney

This dissertation examines how three contemporary Mexican intellectuals confront the cultural milieu and political economy of the neoliberal era by revising the utopian imaginaries of Mexico’s major 20th century student movements. Building on recent scholarship on Mexican history and geography, urban studies, and political theory, I analyze the cities and politics that Mexican intellectuals have imagined to challenge the neoliberal cultural injunction against alternative forms of utopian thinking. The principal works studied in this dissertation are Roberto Bolaño’s novels Amuleto (1999), Los detectives salvajes (1998), and El espíritu de la ciencia-ficción (2016); Eduardo Ruiz Sosa’s novel Anatomía de la memoria (2014); and Alonso Ruizpalacios’ film Güeros (2014). The first chapter examines Roberto Bolaño’s treatments of the 1968 student movement and the Tlatelolco massacre within his broader Mexico City works. Bolaño uses metaphors derived from horror film to critique traditional historiographies of ’68 that are colored by morbid fascination with the violence, while positing science fiction as a utopian method for rethinking the relationship between the past and the future. The second chapter analyzes how Eduardo Ruiz Sosa’s novel Anatomía de la memoria conjures the specters of the 1970s student guerilla uprising in Sinaloa to shed light on the present struggles against the contemporary violence plaguing cities like Culiacán. I approach Ruiz Sosa’s novel as a study of the ruins of revolutionary Third Worldism which politicizes individual and collective processes of mourning and reaffirms a future open to possibilities beyond narco-neoliberal sovereignty. The third chapter unpacks the utopian resonances of Alonso Ruizpalacios’ film Güeros about the 1999-2000 National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) student strike against the neoliberal effort to privatize higher education. I read the portrayal of the student occupation of the UNAM campus as an exploration of the dialectical utopian tensions between the needs for access to urban resources and poetic encounters with the unexpected in city life. By studying these intellectuals as critics of neoliberalism and as visual and textual philosophers of the utopian, my dissertation conceives of utopia as a strategy of finding potentialities within historical narratives to restore a sense of possibility to contemporary political landscapes.