Purvi Patel is an Indian American woman who, in 2015, was the first U.S. citizen to be convicted under feticide statutes for allegedly attempting her own abortion. Though her 2015 conviction was overturned the same year, the feticide conviction was significant as a legal precedent as well as part of a larger trend criminalizing pregnant women of color. With an eye towards the greater pattern of the criminalization of other pregnant women of color (Boyd, 1999; Faludi, 1991; Humphries, 1999; Mahan, 1996; Roberts, 1997), in this thesis I employ a feminist legal studies methodology and the theoretical frameworks of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991) and Reproductive Justice (Ross and Solinger, 2017; Silliman et al., 2004) to analyze five pro-Patel briefs, two from Patel’s appellate lawyers and three from amici curiae. The four themes present are: fetal personhood; racialized gender; medical privacy and trust; and surveillance, knowledge, and legitimacy. I argue these briefs were not always consistent with the tenets of intersectionality and Reproductive Justice, even as the briefs may have been effective in convincing the Court of Appeals to overturn Patel’s conviction. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of Patel’s case for public health and law. I suggest that criminalization of abortion is harmful to public health and that the feticide mandate as it stands now does not do what it was intended to do, which is to protect the pregnant woman from harm.

xvi, 621 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This dissertation observes ways of speaking about environment and community in Kake, a Native Tlingit village on Kupreanof Island in Southeast Alaska. The study investigates the functions and values of legal/regulatory and economic linguistic resources that travel through time and space, linking Kake to other sites, regional, national, and international. In light of increasing environmental issues world wide, the study examines how legal and regulatory processes influence beliefs about community and environment as a whole. Within the dissertation are case studies to show how local, day-to-day, community and environment-related narratives interact with state discourses. The study asks how words and stories in everyday conversations express and interpret the extent to which local Kake people feel emotion and responsibility for their forest and marine environment and each other. In addition, the study asks how people communicate their narratives about place, community, and work to government representatives, who converse using their own specialized language, narrative, and discourse rules. How, in turn, do local groups interpret and react to law-making and regulatory narratives? In the context of social attributes that help communities focus on sustainable livelihood strategies and the importance of environmental integrity, the study assesses what types of information get left out of discourses between local island people and state representatives. Communicating with official government agency personnel in public hearings, through documents, and in reaction to state decisions, influences changes in local words, stories and perceptions about people and place. The discursive and ideological adjustments that result can enhance or detract from local narratives that socialize moral codes and attachment to community and environment. / Advisers: Carol Silverman, Phil Young

This thesis is an intimate portrait of kinship, personhood, and social mobility in the central Philippines. Through the story of a sibling set that came of age after the Second World War, their kin, and neighbours, it explores why and how upward mobility was aspired for, its consequences, and the ways in which such an achievement are recalled and narrated. The chapters examine the manifold and, at times, contradictory emotions that surrounded journeys of social mobility, whilst historicising the very selves and relations within which such narratives and emotions become embedded. Central to this account is siblingship, as viewed from later life, and in relation to filiation, the pursuit of personal autonomy through gendered educational and professional fields, and marriage and family formation. Although expectations of solidarity and life-long, and even transgenerational, support saturated ties of siblingship, conflicts between siblings were also deemed unsurprising, especially in adulthood, after marriage, and most especially, after the death of their parents. Whilst solidarity amongst siblings was seen as fundamental to achieving middle-classness, the pursuit of upward mobility in some cases heightened the potential for hierarchy, inequality, gendered differences, and enmity implied by siblingship, whilst mitigating and reversing it in others. Upward mobility had implications too for the succeeding generation, as conflicts and unequal life chances were passed on by parents to their children, sibling set sizes became smaller, and cousins became geographically distant from one another. Rooted in the anthropology of Southeast Asia and the Philippines, this thesis speaks to broader concerns about how kinship and personhood unfold and are transformed over time, how persons and their relations reflect, absorb, and refract broader societal shifts, and how seemingly ordinary, intimate, and private aspects of life have wider reverberations.

A ritxo(k)o tem sido citada na bibliografia etnográfica desde a primeira expedição que chegou ao Araguaia em 1887. Desde então tem sido traduzida como \"boneca karajá\" e muitas etnografias sugerem seu papel como brinquedo de criança. O presente trabalho tem como objetivo refletir sobre essa tradução, tentando entender quais as redes de relações que a ritxo(k)o engendra e participa. Mostrarei que a ritxo(k)o está inserida nas redes de relações de parentesco, ao mesmo tempo que constitui algumas dessas relações, em especial aquelas entre avós e netas. Também ressaltarei seu lugar de importância nas relações com os tori (os não indígenas). O parentesco é aqui abordado como processo de produção de corposparentes, portanto, além de explorar a produção das relações entre os parentes, também me voltarei para o corpo que se visa construir nesse processo. Irei sugerir que este corpo é produzido através de processos que se assemelham aos utilizados na produção de objetos, como a ritxo(k)o. Por último apresentarei uma reflexão sobre a questão do brinquedo nas sociedades ameríndias. / The bibliography has mentioned the ritxo(k)o since the first expedition which took place in Araguaia in 1887. From this time forward, the researchers chose to translate it as karaja doll and suggest its place as a childrens toy. The present research aim to discuss this translation, based on the relation networks in which ritxo(k)o participates and produce. I will demonstrate that the ritxo(k)o participates in relation networks between kin and at the same time is constitutive of some of this relations, especially those between grandmother and granddaughter. Also, I will remark its important place among the relations with the tori (nonindigenous). I talk about kinship as a process that produces kin-bodies. This approach requires not only an exploration of the production process of kin relations, but of the body that is constituted in this process as well. I will suggest that this body is produced through process that resemble those used to produce objects. In the conclusion, I will present a discussion about the matter of toys among the Amerindians.

Focusing primarily on a number of small Heathen communities known as ‘kindreds’ and their ‘kith’ near Ottawa, Toronto and Montréal in Canada, this thesis approaches Heathenry as a potential means of ‘everyday’ self- and world-making. It examines the ways in which the ‘virtuous’ words and deeds of my interlocutors helped them to actively effect certain formations of self and world, and attempts to capture the significance of Heathenry as a practical process of formative interpersonal engagement and self-fashioning. Paying special attention to the ‘playful’ character of this process, it explores Heathenry as an aesthetic and ethical project of self-making – a project that produces and underpins particular kinds of ‘excellence’ and ‘authentic’ subjects. Emphasizing the creative poiesis entailed in this project, my thesis explores the ways in which Heathenry enables people to locate and orient themselves within a shared field of potentiality as subjects and agents questing for a ‘virtuous self’. I argue that both the end and means of this quest entails a reorientation in people’s aesthetic sensibility and personal ethical quality. The thesis concludes by illustrating how this highly personalized yet shared process of self formation facilitates people’s continuing journey to become increasingly ‘worthy’ Heathen subjects; that is, selves realized through their own virtuous acts of narrative objectification and those of others. As skillful and skillfully fashioned subjects, I suggest that my informants became able to experience their own potential virtuous development as a development of the ‘cosmos’ itself – a development, that is, of the very realms their quests embodied and manifested, and throughout which their virtuous selves came to be projected.

Magister Artium - MA / The central research question this thesis explores is whether or not the availability of new social media alters the concepts of gendered personhood in working-class neighbourhoods on the Cape Flats. The arguments I will present all speak to my central argument that there is not only a relationship between “good” daughterhood and new social media, but that this relationship consists of young women in Cape Town namely Eersteriver, using their internet enabled cell-phones as a means of exploring the social and virtual realm without putting their title of a “good” or “respectable” girl at risk. I will incorporate comparative arguments from different bodies of academic literature which speak to the key question and arguments presented in this thesis so as to provide a global perspective. A brief socioeconomic history of the area will also be included in this thesis so as to provide some social context for my research. This thesis shows how young women of Eersteriver use the freedom, privacy and anonymity that they believe the internet and social media freely offers, to push the boundaries of good daughterhood and respectability. This thesis further demonstrates how social media have changed young women’s understanding of what social interaction is as well as their “doing” intimacy. I further show that their very interaction via their internet enabled cell-phones is a social form of gift giving. This research is particularly important because it is located at the intersection between gender issues and the study of new social media. This study explores how new gendered subjectivities emerge from performances and representations of personhood in new social media such as WhatsApp and Facebook, and how understandings of “good” daughterhood and respectability are altered and thus crafted into these practices. Literature in this area of research is still on the rise, so I am confident that this study will make a valuable contribution to this growing body of literature which speaks to young women and new ICTs.

From the personal contemporary pastoral experience of caring for dying people, and with particular attention given to the psychospiritual anguish often associated with the perceived failure of death, I argue that suffering is primarily identified in the modern West as an insult to normality, often expressed in various forms of the question: 'Why me?'. I challenge this view of 'suffering as insult' by selectively identifying and critiquing some culturally embedded views of the nature of reality, taking note of the influence on suffering persons of the dialogue between science and faith in the UK, and by introducing dialogue with the process thought of Whitehead as an alternative to traditional theistic models of God. Such a dialogue also affects the nature of the person conceived in imago dei, and so I examine the effect of replacing the rational autonomous individual with the dialogical personhood of McFadyen. I then consider the rehabilitation of suffering as a key experience of metanoia in the formation of the person. Finally I reflect on suffering in postmodernity in the light of Ricoeur's hypothesis that reality is narrative in form, and develop the argument that suffering can be understood as an 'ontological impertinence', analogous to the 'semantic impertinence' which Ricoeur attributes to the category of metaphor.

South Africa’s foreign policy decisions and behaviours are routinely referred to as “schizophrenic” by scholars and political commentators alike. A malady of the human brain, the World Health Organization (WHO) defines “schizophrenia” as “a severe mental disorder, characterized by profound disruptions in thinking, affecting language, perception, and the sense of self [that] can impair functioning through the loss of an acquired capability to earn a livelihood, or the disruption of studies”. If schizophrenia is a disorder of the human mind, then diagnosing a state with this disorder implies an acceptance of the argument that, indeed, “states are people too”. Yet, for all of the diagnoses of foreign policy schizophrenia handed to the South African state on such a regular basis, very few scholars have seriously contemplated the implications of state personhood for our understanding of politics among nations, and the importance of this approach to International Relations (IR) for research on state behaviours. Pushing Alexander Wendt’s (1999) claim that “states are people too” beyond its present conceptual limits, this research undertakes a personology of South Africa as state-person. “Personology” is, in its simplest form, a science of persons: how they exist in relation to others, how they differ from others, and how their experiences of the world affect their cognitions and behaviours. Persons are more than just identities. Persons have emotions, they maintain relationships with significant Others, and they experience internal conflicts that spark certain defensive behaviours. Behaviours, in turn, take on specific patterns in individuals based on historical experiences of the external world, and on the individual’s internal configuration that predisposes it to certain courses of action that are again based in past experiences of the individual’s interactions with Others. In this sense, the project distinguishes between “identity” and “personality” as two interrelated, but distinct, components of personhood. While constructivist IR to date has contributed significantly to our understanding of state identities, considerations surrounding personality remain unexplored. In the context of the above, the thesis asks the question “how do South Africa’s experiences of relationships with other state-persons shape its behaviour in international politics, and why do these behaviours take on these unique dynamics?” Departing from a reexamination of the South African state’s identity as both difference from and likeness to Others, the thesis incorporates insights from personality theory and psychoanalysis to propose a workable model for analysing state behaviours. Through an examination of significant events from South Africa’s recent foreign relations, the thesis considers both defensive mechanisms employed by the state to protect its Self when faced with criticism from peers, and the reasons why these specific defences are employed in the way that they are employed. An understanding of the functions of narcissistic defences in individuals allows us to make sense of seemingly inconsistent, self-contradictory or incoherent behaviours beyond unexplored accusations of a disordered mind. Persons communicate their Selves, and their experiences of the world, through carefully selected symbols – both linguistic and non-linguistic. The study of these symbols, or semiotics, has long been the purview of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which takes both linguistic and non-linguistic forms of communication as the foundations of social practice. Drawing heavily on the work of, among others, Foucault, Derrida and Lacan, CDA concerns itself with the social and political context of agency and structure, observable through the lenses of representation, manipulation, interpretation, that is embedded in the discourses of individuals or groups within societies. Discourse is produced with the aim of achieving something; this may simply include positioning the Self within society, communicating with Others to achieve the common aims of the group, or eventually, to change the external world in a way that corresponds to the individual’s inner image of its Self in relation to outside world. Informed by this understanding of discourse as the performance of the Self, and the means through which to satisfy internal desires, the project looks at ways in which the South African Self is narratively constructed and performed in relation to significant Others, and how South Africa attempts to shape the external world according to its own mentalistic images of itself-in-theworld.

After countering claims that truth cannot be a norm of belief, this dissertation argues that truth’s normativity is grounded in personhood. It does so by attending to the fact that truth is a norm for the human person, and to the relationships between the human person and the objective goodness and value of truth. The dissertation develops this argument by critically appropriating writings of Thomas Aquinas and representatives of twentieth-century personalism on the relationship between truth and the human person. The dissertation’s initial chapters rebut objections (1) that the involuntariness of belief rules out any possibility of norms of belief, (2) that truth cannot be a norm of belief because truth is unable to provide guidance in determining what to believe, and (3) that it is incompatible with other norms of belief such as justification. It rebuts the first objection by challenging its general account of belief and outlining an alternative account. It responds to the second argument by criticizing its understanding of guidance as overly narrow and sketching an alternative notion of guidance-by-value. It counters the third objection by arguing for the primacy of the truth-norm. The dissertation then takes up the question of what grounds the truth-norm. Chapter Three surveys recent accounts, drawing from its survey a set of desiderata for any satisfactory account. Chapter Four begins the dissertation’s account of the normativity of truth. Working from Dietrich von Hildebrand’s conception of objective goods, it argues that truth is an objective good for the person by showing how deeply interwoven truth is with friendship. Given that friendship is an objective good for the person, and that truth stands in certain intimate relationships to friendship, it follows that truth is an objective good for the person. Chapter Five rounds out the argument. The objective goodness of truth entails that truth is a value. Values are normative for persons. Therefore, truth is normative for the human person. This chapter defends the claim that values are normative for persons by elucidating the dependency of the realization of personhood—in several of its various dimensions—on value-grasping and value-realizing acts.

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