This paper is premised upon the assumption that classical pluralist theory is no longer a useful tool of explanation for contemporary western societies. In its original form, as espoused by Arthur Bentley and David Truman, pluralist theory was accepted as mainstream political thought, apparently capable of demystifying the structure and relation of power blocks within modern western democracies. As time elapsed, however, greater numbers of critics emerged and glaring inadequacies began to show through its once flawless facade. The group of neo pluralist writers were the first to attempt wholesale salvage of the model. One of their foremost considerations was the expulsion of the myth of perfect competition amongst groups. This was replaced instead, with what was then an alarming proposition: contrary to the original pluralist contention, there exists a marked tendency for power to concentrate in the hands of an elite policy community. The neo pluralists further suggested it was important to understand the structure and organization of a group if a coherent group theory of politics was to be developed. While they illustrated the undemocratic nature of the coalescence of power within pluralist society, however, various proponents of this model also suggested that groups were a functional requirement within any modern democratic governing system. A group of economic theorists, led by Mancur Olson and his rational actor model, also contributed significantly to the downfall of classical pluralism. At the same time, Olson's criticisms also undermined elements of neo pluralist thought. He argued that, contrary to both the pluralist and neo pluralist assumptions, the goals and aspirations of groups were not necessarily the product of the values and desires of the group membership. Olson argued that by virtue of the nature of the collective good, those in control of the organizational mechanisms of the group could dictate the policy goals of the group and still maintain the mandate of the group membership. Olson's paradigm also had the advantage of being analytically convenient, a precise model within which social phenomena could be neatly packaged. Further contributions have built upon Olson's' model, developing his emphasis upon the internal dynamics of the group and, in particular, the importance of group leadership. The organizational behaviouralists illustrated the utility of Olson's introduction of selective incentives, and also that it could be taken further, that material incentives were only one type of incentive. The exchange theorists further narrowed this analysis with an exclusive focus upon the relation between the entrepreneur and the group membership and characterizing it as an exchange of value. They adopted Olson's leadership focus but incorporated non-material incentives within their framework. The end result is the potential for the development of a coherent and effective analytical tool. With the systemic level of analysis provided by the neo pluralist framework, recent contributions to group theory may make possible an interest group theory of politics capable of providing a level of insight into social phenomena previously unavailable to proponents of this theoretical tradition. It is thus the object of this paper to combine elements of group analysis previously considered distinct. Terry Moe builds upon Olson's analysis, illustrating that individuals will form organizations for reasons of a non-economic nature. While the interaction of groups within contemporary society has been shown to differ from the original conception of the classical pluralists, the neo pluralist perspective, with the addition of Moe's insight, holds the potential for a valuable analytical tool. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

archives@tulane.edu / This dissertation is a study of the legal treatment of artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in Colombia. The main hypothesis of this dissertation is that in Colombia, over time, a byproduct of the formal legal system designed to govern mining resources has been the emergence of alternative management systems for mining resources at a small-scale level, which crafted an order without law. This has been the constant through the history of Colombia. Local regulatory arrangements defined by traditional local miners are complex, community-based systems for mining resources management (CBSMRM) that are rooted in the historical defense of rural territories. Their complexity and social legitimacy do not mean that they are ideal systems, and these community systems do not regulate all small-scale mining activities. However, some communities have put in place local orders that are not based on formal institutions, but rather are regulatory frameworks with diverse sources of authority, rules, objectives, actors, and forms of guiding the activity. An ethnographic work done in Marmato, Caldas showed that local miners, over time, and as product of many experiments and social transformations, have crafted CBSMRM. In other words, at the local level, disenfranchised groups gestate their own forms of relating to and using mining resources; over time, this creates community-based forms of mining resources management. The order without law has grown outside the formal institutions and clashes with them. As consequence, stakeholders on the ground are facing a gridlock situation in which none of the orders is capable achieving real effectiveness. To solve this situation, a dialogic platform is proposed with the intention of creating a bridge to connect legalities and trigger an open participatory mechanism in which legalities and stakeholders can define the new rules to govern those resources. In other words, define a governance order as a system of rules that gravitates around social legitimacy and not the source of the norms defining social interaction. This is an effort to open the door to new regulatory alternatives and dialogues among legalities; it is not a final answer to the crisis that extractive activities are experiencing but the proposal of a social laboratory of deliberation. / 1 / juan diego alvarez

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No description available.

Suicide and suicidal behavior affect individuals of all ages, genders, races and religious groups in all countries, representing an important social issue. The major risk factor associated with suicide is depression. However, in some instances, suicide is not preceded by warning signs of mental disorders. Variations in the sociopolitical structures in the communities in U.S. may hold the explanation of variations on suicide rates. The objective of this study is to understand how suicide relates with variations in the community structure. Some specific socio-structural elements of a community have the potential to protect against distress by protecting individuals’ socio-psychological health. Specifically, variations in structural pluralism affect a community’s welfare because of the potential presence of dense networks of associations that create problem-solving capacity for the community. The problem solving capacity of communities results from pluralistic political structures with dense networks of associations, advocating civic welfare. As one of the consequences of influence on community’s welfare, the structural pluralism theory is tested here as a direct protection again suicide. To address this objective, county-level data are needed. Several data sources will be used to provide information essential for the analysis in this study. The suicide rates will be calculated from the Centers for Disease Control, National Center for Health Statistics’ Compressed Mortality File for the years of 1998-2002. To provide information on structural pluralism, data from the 2000 County Business Patterns will be used. The 2000 Census data and the Religious Congregations and Membership Study 2000 will be used to provide information on demographic characteristics.

This study uses literature on identity work to examine the gender similarities and differences in the ethnic identity work that Asian Indian immigrants to the United States do. It also looks at the changes Indian immigrants' understanding of themselves as Indian men/women due to migration. Interviews with thirty-eight first generation Asian Indian immigrants reveal that while food, clothing, language, and family roles are significant means of expressing ethnic identity, men and women differ in the kind of identity work they perform. Migration also changes men and women's family and work responsibilities, and thereby their social networks. This impacts their identity as Indian men and women in the United States. The study uses these findings to critique the ethnicity paradigm, especially the perspectives of assimilation, which calls for immigrants to adopt the ways of the dominant group, and pluralism, which advocates that immigrants retain their cultural practices and ethnic identities but treats ethnic groups as monoliths. Both the assimilationist and the pluralist models assume that men and women experience the process of migration and adaptation to the new context in similar ways. However, adaptation is a process that occurs differently by gender, and gender relations can create obstacles to assimilation. These models therefore need to be revised to pay greater attention to the varied experiences within groups, based on gender, and other identities such as age and social class. / Ph. D.

Epistemologists often debate whether we ought to be internalists or externalists about epistemic justification. Internalists say that whether an agent's belief is justified depends on facts internally accessible to the agent, and externalists deny this. But what if internalists and externalists could both be right? This would be a pluralist view of epistemic justification. You might think that a pluralist view would be plausible because it would allow us to explain why we have different intuitions in different cases, and it would allow us to use different concepts for different purposes. In this paper, I argue the pluralist view has several serious flaws that make it much less plausible than it might initially seem. I show that pluralists run into even worse problems than monists when trying to vindicate intuitions about cases. They also run into problems when trying to specify a singular concept of epistemic justification to use for a certain purpose. It is therefore unclear what reason we would have to adopt a pluralist stance. I conclude that we ought to be monists about epistemic justification. / Master of Arts / Epistemologists often debate what it is that makes a belief justified. The view that the criteria for justification are internal to an agent is called "internalism" and the view that the criteria include factors external to an agent is callee "externalism." But what if internalists and externalists could both be right? This would be a pluralist view of epistemic justification. You might think that a pluralist view would be plausible because it would allow us to explain why we have different intuitions in different cases, and it would allow us to use different concepts for different purposes. In this paper, I argue the pluralist view has several serious flaws that make it much less plausible than it might initially seem.

Modern societies are for the most part pluralistic in their compositions and world views. As such, we are given a variety of possibilities to embrace in our everyday lives and social interactions. The plethora of religious choice is a prime example of societal pluralism. John Hick is an eminent proponent of religious pluralism. His adoption of the religious pluralist stance arises from his experience and observations of various religions and their practices wherein he has noted similarities in the development of moral individuals in spite of vastly different and exclusive truth claims made by their religious systems. Hick, in a huge leap of faith, believes these similarities among such great differences must indicate a unitary source of revelation from a Transcendent Ultimate Reality to humankind sometime during the great Axial Age of human development more than two thousand years ago.<p> Religious pluralism, in its Hickean formulation, is a call for individuals to not only abandon their religions claims to exclusive truth about the Transcendent Ultimate Reality but also to reduce religious dogmas to their essential elements and modify them in order to preclude contradictory assertions that would exclude other religious systems. The benefits would be to reduce or eliminate religious intolerance and claims to superiority; incidents of religious violence should also be expected to decrease.<p> This thesis critically examines Hicks thesis and finds that religion has a greater role to play in individual lives than Hick acknowledges. For those with weakly held religious beliefs, the call to religious pluralism may find appeal. However, for those with strongly held religious views, operating within religious structures that serve their needs and eschatological hopes, the adoption of religious pluralism of the Hickean variety may cause them to abandon something that is working well for them without replacing it with something of equal benefit. In the final analysis, I find Hicks call to embrace religious pluralism to be unpersuasive since it is not in itself a religious system; it is, rather, a philosophical system which attempts to address the epistemological challenges associated with the myriad systems of faith and belief found within the great world religions.

Modern societies are for the most part pluralistic in their compositions and world views. As such, we are given a variety of possibilities to embrace in our everyday lives and social interactions. The plethora of religious choice is a prime example of societal pluralism. John Hick is an eminent proponent of religious pluralism. His adoption of the religious pluralist stance arises from his experience and observations of various religions and their practices wherein he has noted similarities in the development of moral individuals in spite of vastly different and exclusive truth claims made by their religious systems. Hick, in a huge leap of faith, believes these similarities among such great differences must indicate a unitary source of revelation from a Transcendent Ultimate Reality to humankind sometime during the great Axial Age of human development more than two thousand years ago.<p> Religious pluralism, in its Hickean formulation, is a call for individuals to not only abandon their religions claims to exclusive truth about the Transcendent Ultimate Reality but also to reduce religious dogmas to their essential elements and modify them in order to preclude contradictory assertions that would exclude other religious systems. The benefits would be to reduce or eliminate religious intolerance and claims to superiority; incidents of religious violence should also be expected to decrease.<p> This thesis critically examines Hicks thesis and finds that religion has a greater role to play in individual lives than Hick acknowledges. For those with weakly held religious beliefs, the call to religious pluralism may find appeal. However, for those with strongly held religious views, operating within religious structures that serve their needs and eschatological hopes, the adoption of religious pluralism of the Hickean variety may cause them to abandon something that is working well for them without replacing it with something of equal benefit. In the final analysis, I find Hicks call to embrace religious pluralism to be unpersuasive since it is not in itself a religious system; it is, rather, a philosophical system which attempts to address the epistemological challenges associated with the myriad systems of faith and belief found within the great world religions.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2000. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 256-272).