Thesis (doctoral)--Universität zu Köln, 1979. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 957-996).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2004. / Thesis directed by David K. O'Connor for the Department of Philosophy. "April 2004." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 333-342).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2004. / Thesis directed by David Soloman and Paul J. Weithman for the Department of Philosophy. "January 2004." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 312-314).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong. / Typewritten.

This dissertation explores burial practices and funeral rituals in Mexico City during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. I argue that international shifts in ideas about public health, class, and nationalism were reflected in new spaces and practices for dead bodies. Furthermore, I examine how mass death challenged traditional burial practices. The daily practices involved in managing the disposal and veneration of dead bodies illuminate the social and cultural challenges in building modern cities and the ways in which these projects are adopted or rejected by the citizenry. The first three chapters focus on the modernization of burial practices in the nineteenth century. Burial reform laws in the 1850s led to the foundation of the capital's first large, modern cemetery, the Panteón de Dolores, by the Liberal government in 1879. The cemetery became a microcosm for the clean, modern city, mapping the new social class configuration through the distribution of its graves. Quickly the administrators of the Dolores Cemetery failed to meet ideal due to the realities of daily operation. The cemetery had been imagined as a space that reflected elite ideas of modernity, but it served a capital that was mostly indigent. In response to overcrowding, the technology of cremation, which targeted the poor, created a class division between those who could be buried and those who had to be cremated. Government officials successfully constructed a modern, sterile approach to death and began to wrest away control of the symbolic power of death from the Catholic Church. The last two chapters focus on the temporary breakdown of these practices and the reinterpretation of funeral rituals in the early twentieth century. Instability and high mortality rates during the Revolution of 1910-1920 led to overcrowding in cemeteries and spread the dead beyond the cemetery, including impromptu battlefield cremations. A comparison of three funerals in 1928-1929 shows new ways in which the funeral was used to perform ideas about the nation, family, and masculinity. The Revolution's unmanageable casualty levels and the advent modern, secular funerary practices in the period before the Revolution influenced how the government, military, and civilians handled and memorialized death.

In the first chapter, this thesis exemines the legal, political and economic foundations of the liberal state. Drawing upon the works of Hobbes, Locke, Hume and Rousseau the first chapter focuses upon how the idea of natural "good" was replaced by a political "right" manifested through the law. In chapter one, the thesis criticises neo-liberalism and corporate theory in their attempts to strip nature of all intrinsic values except self-preservation. In the context of neo-liberal domination, the first chapter further argues that the legal and political foundations of the liberal state have been miscast. It defends reform liberalism against criticisms and attacks the assumption common to such criticisms that the landscape of liberalism is barren ethically. From this perspective, the second chapter injects competing neo-liberal and reform-liberal ideas into debates about the role of the state and systems of governance in, what is claimed to be, the globalized world. Troubled as the years of nationhood have been, the thesis suggests that it is misleading to summarize contemporary transformations in legal, political and economic systems under the term "globalization". The changes in the global order do not imply the withering away of the nation-state, but rather suggest a re-interpretation and transformation of its role. Besides the nation-state, macro-regional and local entities are emerging as the new sources of political, legal and economic identity. In the third chapter, the thesis explores the nature, content and legal aspects of privatization as the dominant and hugely misused tool of liberal policy. The thesis discusses the analytical framework of the term "privatization" and suggests that privatization may not be regarded exclusively as an economic process but rather should be seen as a policy tool with political, legal, economic and ethical repercussions. In chapter three, the thesis further suggests an elusive line between public and private ownership and argues that the state has direct or indirect rights in practically every economic activity under its jurisdiction, whether undertaken by individuals or public authorities. Our demand for democratization and "liberalization" of liberalism should not be devoted only to the improvement of economic efficiency and the empowerment of private ownership, but rather to the affirmation of the public sphere and changes in the structures of power. The thesis approaches ideology, government and ownership from a theoretical perspective that sees law as a constitutive part of the political, social and economic field.

Are Aboriginal rights defensible within the framework of liberalism? Liberalism's commitment to individual equality seems to preclude Aboriginal rights insofar as these rights are exercisable by only a sub-set of the Canadian population and not by all Canadians equally. Instead of asking how Aboriginal rights can be justified within the liberal state, we need to question the legitimacy of the state's assertion of sovereignty over Aboriginal peoples and territories. Of the four potentially applicable modes of acquiring sovereignty - discovery, conquest, cession and prescription - only treaties have the potential to provide a liberally-compelling basis for the legitimacy of Crown sovereignty. But historical treaties did not purport to transfer sovereignty. As such, Canadian sovereignty suffers from a normative lacuna. Aboriginal rights, as set out in mutually consensual treaties addressing the sharing of sovereignty, have the potential to fill this lacuna and thereby to ground the legitimacy of Crown sovereignty.

No description available.

Are Aboriginal rights defensible within the framework of liberalism? Liberalism's commitment to individual equality seems to preclude Aboriginal rights insofar as these rights are exercisable by only a sub-set of the Canadian population and not by all Canadians equally. Instead of asking how Aboriginal rights can be justified within the liberal state, we need to question the legitimacy of the state's assertion of sovereignty over Aboriginal peoples and territories. Of the four potentially applicable modes of acquiring sovereignty - discovery, conquest, cession and prescription - only treaties have the potential to provide a liberally-compelling basis for the legitimacy of Crown sovereignty. But historical treaties did not purport to transfer sovereignty. As such, Canadian sovereignty suffers from a normative lacuna. Aboriginal rights, as set out in mutually consensual treaties addressing the sharing of sovereignty, have the potential to fill this lacuna and thereby to ground the legitimacy of Crown sovereignty.

This thesis takes as its focus several works in the late period of Philip Roth’s writing and examines the way in which these particular texts address issues of American national experience since the Depression. In particular, this study looks at Roth’s assessment of a distinctly modern liberal vision that came to prominence during the 1930s and was to dominate American political and cultural life until the late 1960s. In thus covering the wider historical sweep of these novels, the research will draw attention to the way in which such broader matters of American cultural and political life intersect with more local issues of Jewish-American subjectivity and literary style that have been explored recurrently throughout Roth’s greater body of fiction. This study thus aims to show how the more recent ‘historical turn’ in Roth’s novelistic focus is in fact consistent with certain pivotal themes that have helped to define his overall development as a writer.