Thesis (M.S.W.)--University of Hong Kong, 1990.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2007. / "Graduate Program in Women's and Gender Studies." Includes bibliographical references (p. 235-247).

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This thesis analyses the content, tone, form and authorship of the national newspaper gossip column 1918-1939, as a new means through which the qualities of the popular press in this period can be more closely defined. Often dismissed as an example of the sensational, Americanization of early twentieth-century popular culture, the celebrity gossip column has been loosely grouped with the friendly, informal language and bolder formatting of the ‘New Journalism’ of the late nineteenth century and the development of the dramatic ‘human-interest’ stories of ‘everyday life’ in the interwar period (LeMahieu, 1988; Wiener, 1988). Through a comparative study of six newspapers including the Daily Express, Daily Mail and News of the World, I analyse the changing representation of the celebrity subject, and, originally, the shifting character and persona of the gossip columnist. Whereas some historians have analysed the content of newspapers without considering the questions of the newspaper’s production, I analyse newspaper employment records, gossip columnists’ memoirs and their unpublished letters and diaries to define the specific economic, social and cultural circumstances which, I argue, influenced their public portrayal. Also, in examining the unpublished correspondence between editors, proprietors and columnists and the burgeoning print culture of journalistic training manuals and professional memoirs, I provide a history of the press’s professionalization in this period. The national popular press has often been used as a historical source to define national character and national identity in the interwar period (Bland, 2008; Kohn, 1992). By scrutinizing the content and production of the gossip column and particularly the class, behaviour, interactions and subject matter of the columnist, I argue that the gossip column presented a version of ‘Britishness’ that was not so inward-looking and domesticated as so many accounts of interwar Britain suggest.

Current debates in the anthropology of the Indian middle classes suggest a preponderant theme of balance - between 'Indian' and 'Western'; 'traditional' and 'modern'; 'global' and 'local'. Scholars like Säävälä (2010) Nisbett (2007, 2009), and Donner (2011) demonstrate a range of practices through which the ideal of middle class life is positioned in a precarious median between the imagined decadence of the upper classes and the perceived immorality and lack of responsibility of the working classes. Sexuality and intimacy, it has been observed, are important sites, where this balancing act is played out and risks to its stability are disciplined. Young women have particularly come under a great deal of pressure to position themselves dually as modern representatives of a global nation, who are, at the same time, epitomes of a nationalised narrative of tradition. In this thesis I examine, through an ethnographic study, the ways in which young women's bodies are implicated in the normative reproduction of everyday middle class life, as well as unpacking the social meanings of youth and adulthood for women in this context. Further, locating my study in the context of women's colleges in Chennai, this thesis comments on the significance of educational spaces as sites where normative ideals of middle class life and femininity are both produced and contested. The chief arguments in this thesis are organised into five chapters that draw primarily on ethnographic material to examine categories of risk, danger and pleasure as mutually constituted in young women's lives through everyday practice, as well as the making of the everyday as a precarious and compositional event.

The specific purpose of this study was to explore the correlation between social support, socioeconomic status and psychological well-being among Hispanic adolescent females. In examining these specific variables, the researchers obtained a clearer picture as to the predictors that influence Hispanic adolescent female's psychological well-being.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Women who fail to confront sexism can experience negative intrapersonal consequences, such as greater negative self-directed affect (negself) and greater obsessive thoughts, particularly if they are highly committed to challenging sexism. Female undergraduates (N = 392) were sampled to investigate whether failing to confront past sexism influences future task performance and whether any effects on performance occur through the depletion of cognitive resources. Participants were randomly assigned to recall either confronting or failing to confront past sexism, then completed measures of affect, obsessive thoughts, working memory, and performance. Women who recalled failing to confront were expected to have greater negself and obsessive thoughts related to the situation and lower working memory and performance, and desire to respond to the situation was expected to moderate these effects. As predicted, compared with women who recalled confronting, women who recalled failing to confront reported greater negself. Contrary to predictions, there was no significant effect of confrontation condition on obsessive thoughts, working memory, or performance. However, condition interacted with desire to confront, such that the more women who recalled failing to confront wanted to respond to the situation, the more negself they reported and the lower their working memory. In addition, for women who recalled confronting, greater desire to respond was associated with higher performance, while desire to respond was unrelated to performance for women who recalled failing to confront. In contrast to predictions, neither obsessive thoughts nor working memory mediated the failure to confront-performance relationship, and there was no evidence of moderated mediation. In sum, although the cognitive variables of obsessive thoughts and working memory did not mediate the effect of failing to confront on performance, the results nevertheless demonstrate the importance of confronting sexism, particularly when one wants to do so, and have important implications for settings like the workplace where women may face discrimination and have to decide whether or not to confront.

Lamaholot is a population found on Flores and in the Solor Archipelago of Eastern Indonesia. The population is village-based and divided into patrilineal descent groups. Marriage is coupled with bridewealth and follows a pattern of asymmetric marriage alliance between descent groups. This thesis shows that a small group of Lamaholot in the administrative regency of East Flores shares certain traditions with a neighbouring population called Ata Tana ‘Ai. Ata Tana ‘Ai are a sub-group of the Sikka population in the administrative regency of Sikka. Descent group among Ata Tana ‘Ai are matrilineal and households were traditionally based in scattered gardens. Marriage is not coupled with bridewealth and instances of asymmetric marriage alliance between descent groups are here a consequence rather than a cause of marriage. The current fieldsite seems to have been part of the ceremonial system of Ata Tana ‘Ai and also to have shared a tradition of dispersed settlement in the gardens. The descent groups might initially have been matrilineal, but in the recent past there was also a habit of dividing children between the parental descent groups. Recent traditions of dividing children can be found throughout central-east Flores, but seemingly not to same extent as at the fieldsite. The payment of elephant’s tusks was a central feature in the acquisition of group members at the fieldsite and could be paid by both men and women. These payments were not necessarily tied to marriage and did not serve as bridewealth. In the last century outer social factors, such as the Catholic mission and the creation of the Dutch colonial state, have resulted in that many of the traditional practices at the fieldsite have been replaced with traditions from Lamaholot elsewhere. The residence pattern is now village-based, but gardens retain a central social and ritual position. The role of the elephant’s tusks has taken different expressions throughout this period of social change, and alongside the changing role of tusks, the traditional social and material authority of women at the fieldsite has declined, whereas that of men has increased. This thesis examines the current and the traditional practices in and around the fieldsite, and focuses on local definitions of descent group, kinship, and inheritance, looking at both biological and social perspectives.

This dissertation describes the manner by which a multinational corporation (MNC) enacts a market-based logic with a locally embedded partner in a complex and unfamiliar operating setting to fulfil both business and social objectives. It examines a hybrid partnership between BP, an MNC, and SSP, a rural Indian non-governmental organisation (NGO). Together, the organisations trained rural women, who were affiliated with SSP, as agents to distribute and sell BP’s ‘smokeless’ cookstoves and fuel pellets to households who cook on smoky firewood stoves. The research draws on two theories—neo-institutional organizational theory and real markets theory—to examine the process by which logics are aligned across partners and projected and translated into the rural Indian exchange setting. It constructs a four-actor model (MNC, NGO, agent, customer) to explore the exchange relationships between the actors at the meso- and micro-levels. At the meso-level, it explains how the MNC and NGO’s non-aligned logics, asymmetric power dynamics, and lack of mutual trust contribute to the venture’s failure. In addition, the NGO was so determined to succeed as a professional, market-driven, channel partner that it shed part of its identity as a civil advocacy organisation and adopted mainstream commercial practices that were not sensitive to the needs of its local stakeholders. At the micro-level, the partners did not come to a common understanding with the agents regarding the cultural challenges they faced marketing the stove. Moreover, the marketing strategy glossed over the multi-layered social relationships and culinary, behavioural, and religious practices that needed to be translated for the technology to meet the needs of consumers. Using gritty ethnographic data, the dissertation highlights a challenge that large, foreign companies face when entering ‘Base of the Pyramid’ markets, namely the inconsistency between the MNC’s market logic and the wider associational logics that motivate village agents and customers.