Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2003. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains xi, 176 p. : ill. (some col.), maps. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 144-158).

This thesis mainly analyzes the effects of Turkish Grameen Microcredit Program (TGMP) on income levels of the program participants in Eskisehir. The studies found in the literature which examine the effects of TGMP on participants concentrate on Diyarbakir in 2007 whereas this thesis provides evidence for a province which has different socio-economic characteristics, Eskisehir, in 2011. The methodology used is sample survey on participants through interviews and results are evaluated with non-parametric statistical tests. Poverty levels of program participants, characteristics of microbusinesses conducted by them, effect of the program on profit levels of microbusinesses and relation between profit levels of microbusinesses and other variables are analyzed in detail. The main findings of the study reveal that TGMP Eskisehir branch does not discriminate in favor of or against poorest women, microbusinesses conducted by participants concentrates on traditional and low profit ones, the program positively affects the profit levels of some microbusinesses but not for all of the participants and the effect of the program on profit levels is positively related with the microcredit amount spent for these businesses. It is concluded from the findings that TGMP cannot be the solution for poverty by itself and recommendations for improving the program and its effects are provided accordingly.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-125).

This thesis is concerned with plants, chronic illness and medicine in Oku, Northwest Region, Cameroon. I focus on patient strategies to obtain effective medical outcomes, and on how such outcomes may be obtained through seeking traditional medicine in Oku. I argue that biomedical notions of efficacy do not appropriately represent the central and diverse roles that plants play in traditional medicine nor do they correctly represent how people in Oku evaluate the efficacy of plant-based traditional medicine. I argue instead that efficacy must be understood in terms of the emic concept of power. This power is understood to be located in the Oku landscape, which is still uniquely forested and said to embody powerful ancestral spirits. With plants as the primary tangible material of power, and traditional doctors in Oku as those who claim exclusive rights to manipulate and disperse such power, I discuss traditional medicine in Oku as a system wherein power from the natural landscape is drawn upon to challenge harmful powers feared to derive from the social arena. Using the pragmatic and phenomenological approaches, I show how patients evaluate the efficacy of a medical treatment based on their bodily experiences, and how their actions, as revealed in their therapeutic trajectories, reveal their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with a given diagnosis and/or therapy. I discuss how enduring illness generates and exacerbates bodily, treatment-outcome, social, and psychological uncertainties. In this context, effective outcomes can be understood as those which address and limit these uncertainties and anxieties while offering ways to imagine hopeful prognoses. This thesis then outlines the major sources of uncertainty, people’s responses to such uncertainties, and what people might achieve in terms of limiting uncertainties by seeking traditional medicine in Oku.