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Title: The (De)Formation of African American Subjectivity in Toni Morrison¡¦s The Bluest Eye Institute of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Sun Yat-sen University Date: June 17, 2004 By: Kai-chung Cheng Advisor: Professor Shu-li Chang Abstract: This thesis aims to examine Toni Morrison¡¦s The Bluest Eye with Michel Foucault¡¦s concept of discipline, the notion of ownership, and the impotence of manhood to explore how Morrison textualizes the (de)formation of African American subjectivity. To begin with, I will justify the feasibility of setting up such a dialogue between Toni Morrison and Michel Foucault. Both the racial oppression Morrison textualizes and the disciplinary process Foucault contextualizes operate in such a subtle way that the subject is not aware of it and thus does not fight back. Therefore, Morrison and Foucault draw attention to how people are implicitly oppressed and disciplined in the construction of their docile subjectivity. In addition, Morrison emphasizes how she worries about the effect of ownership on the construction of African American subjectivity by pervading The Bluest Eye with African Americans¡¦ desire to own properties. Their craze to own properties indicates their desire to acquire something that they believe can be found in ownership. Morrison points out implicitly that what African Americans truly desire in their desperate pursuit of ownership is their own self. However, in Morrison¡¦s textualization, such a strategy employed by African Americans to own their self almost always ends up in failure. Based on such a failure, Morrison posits the success of owning a self, specifically an African American female self, requires one to continue in the struggles to achieve one¡¦s self identity and to build up a healthy and intimate relationship with one¡¦s community. Moreover, Morrison¡¦s portrayal of the dehumanization of African American men aims not to place blame on how brutal they are, but to arouse attention as well as pity to their suffering. It is impossible to construct a wholesome African American subjectivity without paying attention to the frustration African American males confront, for, feeling impotent in achieving their manhood, they turn to the oppression of African American females. Though Morrison projects African American females and males in different ways, she devotes her writing to both of them. To sum up the structure of my thesis: In Introduction, I will justify the feasibility of examining Morrison¡¦s The Bluest Eye with Foucault¡¦s discipline; in Chapter One, I will present how Foucault¡¦s concepts of gaze, norm, and Panopticism explain the reason why African Americans do not fight against the white value that oppresses them but adopt and practice it in their daily lives; in Chapter Two, I will focus on how the notion of ownership impinges upon their subjectivity and what Morrison puts forth to about how African Americans may begin to own their self; in Chapter Three, I will elaborate the significance of the process in which African American males are made impotent and dehumanized; in Conclusion, I will summarize the main arguments in previous chapters to conclude this thesis.

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Scholars have increasingly recognized the importance of institutional owners in the life of the firm and have sought to explain how and when these owners influence firm-level strategies. In spite of evidence that these owners can and do affect broad strategies, there is little empirical support for the extent to which institutional investors involve themselves at the level of strategic competitive actions that firms undertake. This raises the question: "How do different types of institutional investors affect strategic competitive activity between firms?" Further, owners have a unique bearing on competitive activity insofar as they can simultaneously influence firms that are competing with each other. Therefore another important question is: "How are the relationships between institutional investors and strategic competitive activity affected when those investors hold stakes in both the focal firm and their competitor?" Borrowing from the accounting literature, this dissertation classifies institutional owners into three groups based on their historical trading behavior: transient, dedicated, and quasi-indexer. Findings from examination of the ownership holdings and strategic competitive activity of thirty-six Fortune 500 rivalries over the years 1997-2006 provide insight into these questions. High levels of dedicated institutional ownership are associated with greater strategic competitive activity whereas high transient institutional ownership is associated with low strategic competitive activity. The relationship between dedicated ownership and strategic competitive activity is moderated by common ownership of a focal firm and its rival. As dedicated ownership of the focal firm and its rival increase together, strategic competitive activity is reduced. The results presented here change the way we apply agency theory to explain firm governance. For competitive dynamics researchers, this study points to a previously unexplored means by which firms are motivated to engage, or not engage, in competitive activity. This study also has broad implications for managers, investors, and policymakers.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in electronic version. Access restricted to campus users.

Thesis (M. Soc. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1983.

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-157).

It is believed that home ownership has a positive connection with family formation and child bearing as there is a speed up process of attaining home-ownership when the couples are in anticipation of starting family and having children. However, home ownership in relation with family formation and child bearing are not always in positive connection as other factors are necessary to be taken into consideration when associating relationship between them, such as (i) postponement of marriage and child bearing, (ii) family background, (iii) housing markets and financial systems, and (iv) government policies which will be investigated internationally in this research and tested the hypothesis in Hong Kong. With the family budget constraints, cost competition between housing and marriage or child bearing is one of the significant factors affecting the couples’ decision in home purchasing. Our empirical results from the questionnaire survey demonstrated that home ownership is perceived as a precondition to marriage and child bearing and indicated that the cost competition between becoming home owners and becoming parents was strong. Postponement of marriage and child bearing are found over the past decade and decrease in number of children that the respondents wanted to have are the current trend. Our empirical results also show that family background is an important factor affects decision of the couples in home purchasing when getting married and in anticipation of having children. Facing a budget constraint, most of the young couples depend on their parents who are in owner-occupied housing tenure for financial assistance to succeed their home purchasing dreams. Nowadays, Hong Kong residential property value has also increased sharply in recent years and costs of housing with increasing mortgage rate would affect decision of the young couples in home purchase, a series of measures are therefore launched by the government to solve the problems of housing since its inauguration aiming at increasing private and subsidized housing flats as well as land for affordable housing development to cool down the overheating property market. People’s home purchase is greatly affected by the prevailing housing policy found in the survey and their recommendations to the government are to provide more HOS flats, stabilize the house price, increase in amenities and facilities provision in the suburb housing developments and resume Home Assistance Loan Scheme in order to satisfy their housing needs in forming families and planning to child bearing. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

This dissertation is an extension of Leland and Pyle's (1977) signaling model. It introduces the length of the retention period to which the entrepreneur commits in the prospectus as a signal of firm value, in addition to the retention level. The analysis uses concepts of game theory to examine a two-period model where an entrepreneur seeks to issue shares on the market and invest in a productive project that generates outcomes which are publicly announced at the end of the next two periods. The entrepreneur can retain some of her firm's shares and trade them later on the secondary market, after information has been released about the outcomes. The length of the retention period is found to be a signaling mechanism that complements ownership retention. Depending on the information structure of the firm, a longer retention period may reduce or increase the retention level necessary for separation. The model also shows that there are realistic situations in which entrepreneurs prefer to retain a portion of their firm's shares for longer than the minimum retention period imposed by regulations, and others in which she prefers the shortest period possible. The optimal combination of under-diversification and commitment is shown to depend on the information structure and the probability distribution of outcomes of the firm. The empirical implications of the model are tested on the set of firms that made an initial public offering in 1981. Although the results of the tests are generally consistent with the predictions of the model, they are not strong enough to reject the null hypotheses.

This thesis presents a new approach to the theory of the labor-managed firm, based on the case of the Yugoslavian labor-managed economy. Instead of income per worker maximization, we suggest that a labor-managed firm in a certain environment and given institutional setting maximizes revenue, while under uncertainty another approach is taken, namely that of social welfare maximization. / Inefficient allocation may result in a labor-managed firm whose workers have no transferable property rights. We explore creation of an internal shares market as the means to acquire efficiency. Internal market for shares is also seen as a possible form of transition of the labor-managed firm, given the path of transformation of the institutional setting in former Yugoslavia, through a kind of industrial democracy with private (transferable) property rights.