Sexual difference has emerged in the last three decades as an enduring question for feminism. Drawing attention to the embodied nature of subjectivity, it enables feminists to counter the more insidious presumptions of universality and the phallocentric economy of knowledge production, and makes possible feminine expressions of subjectivity. At the same time, engaging the nature of difference has opened the way to a more detailed interrogation of identity, specifically the identity of ' woman' and 'the feminine' as categories of feminist analysis. However, tensions have emerged within this field over the concept of community, and how to motivate for political change on the basis of a common identity when the identity of woman is itself contested. In tracing these arguments, this thesis raises a number of considerations about the way difference is understood. It finds that a conceptual commitment to the specificity of the body as properly constitutive of the political can run the risk of sidelining, denigrating and presuming to excise what appears as universal, masculine, or phallocentric. In doing so, it potentially leaves aside a full political engagement with the generative and implicated nature of these terms in the formation of all identity. Consequently, questions around thought, universality, virtuality, and disembodiment may not be given full consideration, with the outcome that feminism may be foreclosing its political domain from important formative concerns. The primary aim of this thesis is to open these categories of analysis to question, to understand how they have been constructed in debates around difference, and to bring to light some of the assumptions which remain axiological to what properly constitutes feminist politics. Engaging Luce Irigaray's reading of divinity for community and identity, this thesis argues that if the implicated nature of identity is taken seriously then the organising categories fundamental to notions of political action and community become a general field of difference which exceeds the reach of feminist politics as it currently stands.

As researchers, policymakers and employers begin focusing on consumer driven health plan models and medical savings accounts (MSAs), a better understanding of the political viability of such reform initiatives is necessary. The purpose of this study was to survey state legislators' knowledge and perceptions of medical savings accounts (MSAs) and the U.S. health care system in order to identify potential future compromises to health care reform. In February 2004, 201 state legislators from nine states (Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Washington) participated in an on-line survey. The findings from this study revealed significant differences between Republican and Democratic state legislators in their attitudes towards MSAs, level of satisfaction of the U.S. health care system, and overall perceptions of the current and future health care systems. Republican state legislators were 24 times more likely to support MSAs than Democrats. Results also indicated the following three areas had possible bipartisan support for future initiatives: making individuals aware of the actual costs of health care services, providing equitable access to health care services for all individuals, and providing equal tax treatment for those individuals without employer-sponsored health insurance. / Graduation date: 2006

Not available / text

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

This inquiry explored the everyday struggles of several women who worked as coordinators and instructors in three government-funded job-entry programs for women in the non-profit sector. The programs studied included an entry program for native women, a program which trained immigrant women in bookkeeping skills, and a program which trained women on social assistance to enter the construction trades. The work of the staff in these programs was considered in light of a theoretical framework developed by Nancy Fraser. Fraser has called for a different approach -- a more critical discourse-oriented inquiry -- to the study of social-welfare policies and programs. This approach focuses on the political struggle over the interpretation of needs, particularly women's needs, which she sees as central to social-welfare policy-making. In her study of the American system, she has found that "needs talk" is the medium through which inequalities are symbolically elaborated and challenged. She also has found that needs talk is stratified and differentiated by unequal status, power, and access to resources, and organized along lines of class, gender, race, ethnicity and age. For this study, information was collected through interviews with the staff in the three programs, observations of life skills classes, and examination of program proposals. Government and government-related documents were also examined. The analysis revealed that, in the official policy documents at the national level, women’s needs were interpreted within a dominant policy framework which focused on reducing spending, matching workers to the market and privatizing training programs. Programs for women were developed based upon a "thin” understanding of women's needs -- one which focused on women’s lack of training and job experience and ignored the structural inequalities of the labour market and women’s different racial and class struggles. At the local level, analysis of the interviews, observations and documents indicated that the staff struggled to respond to the trainees' diverse and complex needs which the official policy discourse addressed in only a limited way. In their negotiations with the state, the staff employed a plurality of needs discourses, engaging in a process which both challenged and reproduced the dominant policy orientation toward getting women "jobs, any jobs”. There were moments of resistance by the staff to the dominant policy orientation, most notably in the program for native women. The trainees also challenged the narrow interpretation of women's needs, particularly in the program training women to enter the construction trades. Generally speaking, the analysis indicated that the staff played a crucial role in mediating between women and the state and in producing a kind of discourse which tended to construct the trainees as subjects needing to be "fixed". The analysis also revealed that the relationships between staff, trainees and the state were organized around unequal access to resources based on gender, race and class. In order to transcend the limitations outlined in this study, efforts are required to democratize decision-making, collectively organize the non-profit private sector, challenge privatization and the exploitive practices of the state, and bring alternative approaches which support participatory and dialogical processes of need interpretation. The analysis brings to light the importance of studying the implications of state policies on adult education practice, particularly policies which promote privatization. It also reveals the explanatory power of a feminist theoretical framework which provides a more critical, discourse-oriented approach to examining policy and practice, and the usefulness of this framework for further research and political advocacy.

In 1971, Robert Bourassa, then Premier of Quebec, launched a major hydroelectric scheme to be built 1400 km North of Montreal. Known as the "James Bay" project, the first phase included the creation of eight powerhouses, six reservoirs and the diversion of two rivers. These transformations necessarily impacted the local Cree people; a territorial agreement partly compensated them but remains controversial to this day. While northern communities overwhelmingly bear the ecological cost of the project, the bulk of James Bay energy flows south to the industrial centers of Quebec, Ontario and the U.S. The assertion then that "James Bay belongs to all the Quebecois" which was meant to ease political tensions about the project begs the question, "Who are the Quebecois" and how do the Crees fit within such a community? This thesis explore that question by looking at the Quebecois cultural production of territory and its resources in the north. If James Bay was out of reach, it was never out of view. Media and political discourses reiterated key elements of a Quebecois cultural relationship to place, some of which are contained in the rural literature known as the roman de la terre. Several elements of this literature and its broader context were recontextualized in James Bay, particularly as they pertained to the will to occupy the land and develop natural resources. This was an important aspect of making James Bay - a land historically inhabited by the Crees - into a "Quebecois" national landscape. I suggest that this process was largely rooted in representations of nature that sought to bind it with nation and national identity. Thus James Bay demonstrates the close connection between identity and environmental struggles. For the Quebecois, the access to James Bay was supported by a territorial discourse that performed their own cultural past. This provoked an organized resistance from the Crees which constituted them as a modern political unit. A look at the cultural geography of the region highlights the political scales created in the accessing of resources that render their equitable and sustainable use more difficult to achieve.

The movement to protect wilderness resources can conflict with local intentions for land use and development, particularly in economically marginal areas. In rural Italy, on the island of Sardinia, the plan to create a Gennargentu National Park has incited active opposition on the part of the communities affected. In the town of Baunei, responses to environmental legislation are motivated by the desire to maintain communal control over common lands. Political action, both formal and informal, is organised by local understandings about the impact of certain laws and institutions on the town economy, principally by the restriction of residents' usi civici (traditional rights of usufruct). This thesis considers the role and meaning of the usi civici in Baunei, and the implications of this for environmental politics in Sardinia.

Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 211-229) / Microfiche. / ix, 229 leaves, bound 29 cm

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 245-267). / vi, 267 leaves, bound 29 cm

Sexual difference has emerged in the last three decades as an enduring question for feminism. Drawing attention to the embodied nature of subjectivity, it enables feminists to counter the more insidious presumptions of universality and the phallocentric economy of knowledge production, and makes possible feminine expressions of subjectivity. At the same time, engaging the nature of difference has opened the way to a more detailed interrogation of identity, specifically the identity of ' woman' and 'the feminine' as categories of feminist analysis. However, tensions have emerged within this field over the concept of community, and how to motivate for political change on the basis of a common identity when the identity of woman is itself contested. In tracing these arguments, this thesis raises a number of considerations about the way difference is understood. It finds that a conceptual commitment to the specificity of the body as properly constitutive of the political can run the risk of sidelining, denigrating and presuming to excise what appears as universal, masculine, or phallocentric. In doing so, it potentially leaves aside a full political engagement with the generative and implicated nature of these terms in the formation of all identity. Consequently, questions around thought, universality, virtuality, and disembodiment may not be given full consideration, with the outcome that feminism may be foreclosing its political domain from important formative concerns. The primary aim of this thesis is to open these categories of analysis to question, to understand how they have been constructed in debates around difference, and to bring to light some of the assumptions which remain axiological to what properly constitutes feminist politics. Engaging Luce Irigaray's reading of divinity for community and identity, this thesis argues that if the implicated nature of identity is taken seriously then the organising categories fundamental to notions of political action and community become a general field of difference which exceeds the reach of feminist politics as it currently stands.