Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Political Science, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF document. Document formatted into pages; contains [1], ii, 71 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 66-71).

Based upon fieldwork in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, South East Mexico, this thesis is about how mestiza women in a low-income barrio become mothers. As such, it is an engagement with theories of embodiment, maternal subjectivity, transformation of self and gendered modernities. The chapters are intended to evoke discussion around the roles that mestiza women, the wider Mexican society and the state play in simultaneously embracing and rejecting constructed notions of the good mother. Competing notions of good motherhood come about through local practices and ideals, and also through discourses of risk and global health. The thesis is structured so that the corporeal processes of maternity (pregnancy, birth and nurturing) provide a common and interlinking theme which also demonstrate maternal transition as a life event akin to others. In doing so, this thesis is ultimately about the way in which gendered beings experience change. I intend this thesis to be both a political and theoretical project which highlights the lives of a community of women in a particular moment in their history. This thesis provides further evidence for the need to formulate new global theories of change that foreground gender in global processes. The women I met during fieldwork, and whose narratives have shaped the direction of this thesis, show that when individuals have recourse to a mixed economy of health care and are not reliant on state intervention, it can result in an outcome that better meets with the woman’s expectations. Women’s combined use of lay and clinical services reveal ways in which they make active attempts to avoid negative pre and postnatal experiences. In doing so, they embody a maternal identity that is deeply rooted in local ways of being-in-the-world. By managing the process of maternity more akin to local ways of thinking about gendered personhood, the women reveal how social change is both assimilated and contested in daily life.

This thesis analyzes the current transition to digital cinema projection technologies within the film exhibition business. I begin by discussing two historical cases of technological change in film exhibition technology, and I identify the corporations that successfully controlled periods of technological change in order to solidify their position atop the film industry. In drawing from these historical case studies, I examine the current transition to digital cinema projection technologies by discussing the structure of the film exhibition business and identifying those exhibitors that are controlling the transition to digital cinema. I find that the top three exhibitors - Regal Cinemas, AMC Entertainment, and Cinemark - are controlling digital cinema through two joint ventures: Digital Cinema Implementation Partners (DCIP), and National CineMedia (NCM).

In my dissertation, I study the spatio-temporal variegation and transnational circulation of vegetable commodities using the case of edamame beans (the largest frozen vegetable sector in Asia). My dissertation shows that food production and trade in East Asia have fundamentally changed over the past several decades. Rapid development has lifted the region out of subsistence and into middle-class and luxury consumption. As a result, East Asia is quickly becoming the center of the global food economy. The development of edamame industries is central to explaining the transformation of the agriculture and food industries across the region. I employ a mixed methods approach that includes participant-observation, semi-structured interviews with 40 edamame farmers and entrepreneurs, and GIS mapping, alongside Social Network Analysis (SNA). In my analysis, I coin the concept of “border assemblages,” arguing that edamame trade incorporates network and state-territorial characteristics. Building on this approach, my research bridges two social science sub-fields that scholars have often applied empirically but not theoretically: international politics and regional agrarian development. Three novel findings emerge from this research: First, my research adds to the literature on Asian colonialism by showing how the Japanese Empire and the post-World War Two (WWII) U.S. Cold War regime territorialized East Asia to develop a regulatory assemblage of regional agricultural production and trade. Second, after the 1980s, a new type of food regime emerged in East Asia following the introduction of new World Trade Organization food safety regulations that reterritorialized the food production networks in Asia. My research conceptualizes the emergence of the new food regimes in an East Asian context according to the political economy and ecology of edamame trade among Taiwan, Japan, and China. Third, another strand of my research contributes to the geopolitical understanding of the edamame trade with regard to food scares and contract farming. I extend the definition of contract farming to encompass international regulatory bodies and argue that trade agreements and international food laws, such as the Codex Alimentarius, have significantly shaped the agrarian landscape in Asia. / 2021-01-11

This dissertation is a study of the tensions between the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) political party, nongovernmental organizations (NGO), and indigenous social movement struggles for territorial autonomy. This study takes a multiscale approach by examining (1) the emergence of competing indigenous leadership organizations, (2) state repression of civil society groups, and (3) strategic indigenous-NGO alliances to preserve Native Community Lands (Tierra Comunitaria de Orígen, TCOs). At the community level, the study examines new organizations of state-aligned indigenous groups that represent extractive interests and threaten social movement cohesion. At the national level, this paper analyzes the controversial road project in the Isiboro-Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park (TIPNIS) and similar state efforts to erode legal protections for native lands in the interests of extractivism. Analyzing the academic and public debates over indigenous politics in the Amazon, this study explores the struggle between the state and lowland indigenous groups over popular hegemony and the ability to shape international perception over indigeneity, socialism, and resource exploitation. The findings support lowland indigenous social movement claims of state repression but situate this criticism within a path dependent world system dominated by global capital.

Global waste generation trends are increasing at an alarming rate. Low- and middle-income countries (or the ‘Global South’) bear an increasing proportion of this burden, as the amount of waste produced in these countries is expected to surge drastically in the coming years. Since cities in the Global South rarely have formal municipal recycling systems, recycling activities are typically performed by waste pickers who are precariously employed and sell their wares in unpredictable, unregulated markets. That is to say, this economic activity is an archetype of what is commonly referred to as that taking place in the ‘informal sector.’ Although waste pickers must often confront exclusionary policies and social marginalization, some countries such as Colombia have begun to recognize the social, economic, and environmental contributions of informal recycling activities and have introduced policies that support waste pickers by trying to improve their working conditions. Bogotá has been recognized internationally as an example of ‘best practice’ in terms of creating inclusive policies aimed towards improving the livelihoods of waste pickers. To this end, the Colombian government has introduced, in 2016, National Decree 596, which recognizes and remunerates waste picker organizations as official providers of municipal recycling services. Although this decree legitimizes these ‘third sector’ organizations and has important implications for ‘alternative’ models of service delivery, it has had contradictory effects: although it successfully recognizes the important role that waste pickers play in the waste management system, it also introduces barriers that impede the formalization of waste picker organizations. For example, the decree sets unattainable requirements for the recognition of waste picker organizations and does little to mitigate the vulnerability that waste pickers experience in the face of competition from large, private (often multinational) companies. Based on one month of fieldwork conducted in Bogotá from November 10th to December 10th, 2017, this thesis explores these contradictions and suggests that these barriers originate from the conflicting neoliberal and rights-based orientations of the 1991 Constitution.

The thesis seeks to more accurately understand Judaean political organisation during the reign of King Alexander Jannaeus (104-76 BCE). I suggest that the balance of evidence does not support an understanding of Hasmonaean Judaea as a militaristic patrimony. That is, I dispute a view of Judaean social order as dominated by the centralised leadership of the Hasmonaean king and of Judaean political structures as overwhelmingly militaristic. To be sure, militarism and kingship are important to understanding the social arrangement of Judaea at the turn of the first century BCE. However, political research based on a literal reading of textual sources tends to overemphasise these factors. Instead, I here advocate using economic activity, of which bronze monetary exchange is reasonably well attested for Hasmonaean Judaea, to infer probable features of Judaean socio-political organisation. I note that the system of monetary exchange in Judaea is among the least complex of Hellenistic kingdoms at Jannaeus’s time. I propose that the most likely conclusion is that Jannaeus had a more limited political influence over societal organisation than is commonly ascribed. The relatively underdeveloped monetary system in Judaea indicates that monetary exchange likely existed in combination with local transactional frameworks, including local arbitration, payment in kind, and the manipulation of labour by regional strongmen than we might suggest for Pontus under Mithridates VI or Parthia under the early years of Mithridates II. In extrapolating to the wider issue of Judaean political organisation, this casts doubt on the ability of the Hasmonaean monarchy to forcefully Judaise, effect change in local power hierarchies, or play a defining role in Phoenician military struggles. Rather than a militaristic patrimony ordered by the diktats of a tyrannical Jannaeus, Judaean political organisation was more likely a cooperative network of local power brokers, regional administrative frameworks, and independent cultural and economic systems.

This thesis examines the qualitative transformation taking place within the processes of transnationalisation of labour markets that drive a substantive increase in the segmentation and fragmentation of migrant labour. The thesis argues that by either focusing on the agential elements or strictly structural constraints, conventional perspectives on the role of intermediaries in processes of international migration lack a comprehensive transnational theorisation of labour markets. A focus on the transnationalisation of labour markets through the role of cross-border farm labour contractors aims to address these limitations by analysing the complex nature of processes of transnationalisation in the provision of migrant labour in Californian agriculture. A transnational labour market approach is developed to show how three regimes of segmentation-fragmentation operate at the Federal (nation-state) and state (regional) levels and also at a local level through the actions of farm labour contractors in the organisation of movement and workplace practices along formal and informal lines. The core argument of this thesis is that the tensions between fragmentation and segmentation within the process of transnationalisation of labour markets between Mexico and the United States conflate in everyday precarity for migrant workers. Everyday precarity involves not only the conditions under which migrant workers perform their activities in the workplace, but also extends beyond to include aspects of their everyday lives in a transnational fashion. Farm labour contractors play an important role in organising and coordinating flexibility in fragmented agricultural labour markets. Through their position at the heart of the tensions of the interplay between the three regimes, farm labour contractors gain power over the labour process, thereby contributing to further fragmentation. This power is linked to the migration and protection policies established by nation-states at the first regime of segmentation-fragmentation, and is also shaped by the regional (Californian) labour legislation at the second regime of segmentation-fragmentation. The thesis concludes that a transnational theorisation of labour markets, which places intermediaries such as farm labour contractors within the tensions of processes of transnationalisation that account for not only segmentation but also fragmentation, is required to fully understand everyday precarity beyond national boundaries. Therefore, farm labour contractors are key channels of transnationalisation by contributing to further fragmentation at the local level in already highly segmented labour markets.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The broader conception of poverty as ‘quality of social reproduction’ demonstrates the delicate nature of the interaction between the institutions of the family/household, the economy and the state. These institutions interact in the dispensation of individual, productive and collective consumptions important for social well-being and social reproduction in society. The gap in the configuration of these consumptions relationship opens the space for the institution of micro-credits to thrive in South Africa to the detriment of adequate ‘quality of social reproduction’ especially for people living in ‘poverty range’ or ‘precarious prosperity’. The lack of comprehensive social policy regime provides the recipe for the consumption of micro-credit at the desperate, need and choice dimensions, in order to close the gap between income and consumption needs to facilitate social reproduction of concerned family/households. Micro-credit consumption is viewed as an individual response, in the absence of collective consumption in the form of social policy, to smoothen individual consumption, and to cater for the strain or challenges of social reproduction. The implications of this, for concerned family/households, are imperative to how poverty is perceived, hence, the question ‘the lords of poverty’? In addition to the income and expenditure conception of poverty, the understanding of poverty dynamics will be enriched by engaging with the method through which the poor and ‘precarious prosperous’ (people living within ‘poverty range’) respond to the gap between their income and expenditure to finance shortfalls in their consumption needs. The relief sought from micro-credit (the focus of this study) to finance the gap in consumption needs can alleviate poverty, and at the same time perpetuates it through chronic indebtedness. The patronage of micro-credit in the form of cash loan, retail goods credit and informal micro-credit in the way people living within the ‘poverty range’ live their lives, as well as the activities of micro-credit institutions are highlighted in this study. Consumer credit consumption has become such a permanent feature of the social reproduction efforts of individual households in South Africa that it is crucial to understand the broader institutional interaction that may account for this. Further, it is important to understand how the patronage of consumer credit impact on the need that prompted it in the first place and other implications that may speak to the quality of social reproduction of households. These are the core problematics that are engaged in this study. The relationship between poverty (as well-being) and the consumption of micro-credit is considered within the broader framework of political economy. The effects of predatory institutions, such as microcredit, could be significant for the quality of social reproduction of households.

In this thesis I will attempt to develop a phenomenological account for Political Liberalism. My hypothesis is that a re-articulation of the main issues in transcendental phenomenology as it relates to social philosophy, first in a genetic sense (as developed by Alfred Schutz), but also in a generative context (as developed by Bernhard Waldenfels), provides us with a methodological ground that can instigate a more complex account for the questions of social choice and the way in which we establish preferences. My thesis is that such a complex account of social choice can motivate us to focus on the disordered nature of our constitution of preferences, and point at the importance of a deep comprehension of historicity, along with a defense of freedom of speech as a tool for resignification of social values.