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The conception of British West Indian societies as structured into a hierarchy based on skin color is firmly embedded in the scholarly literature and the popular mind, as is the assumption that the free colored became the "brown middle class." Using a wide variety of archival documents, as well as a series of family histories, this study argues that these assumptions both misinterpret the relation between class and skin color, and obscure the changing nature and membership of each class. It traces the emergence of two middle classes in Antigua, the first of which developed after emancipation in 1834 and lasted until the mid-1890s, and the second of which developed in the late nineteenth century and lasted until the arrival of the U.S. armed forces to build a base in 1940. Part 1, "Sugar and Empire," discusses the political economy of sugar and the planter class that controlled it as both developed from colonization until the late 1890s. It outlines the problems of sugar production and labor control, which culminated in a major economic, political, and social crisis in the mid-1890s, and describes the negotiations that led to the arrival of outside capital to take control of the sugar industry. Part 2, "The Class Called Coloured, 1834-1900," begins with a discussion of the free colored in Antigua and then uses a sample of families to trace the emergence and decline of the "first" middle class, which had its roots in the free colored population. Part 3, "Arrivance, 1900-1940," turns to an analysis of the "second" middle class, tracing a sample of families from their roots in the nineteenth century to their ascent into the middle class in the beginning of the twentieth. It describes their education, their economic and occupational roles, their politics, and their social life. It ends with a discussion of the demise of this class, by-passed by the working-class-led trade unions and disoriented by the social upheaval caused by the arrival of the American armed forces.

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 The relationship between Internet technology and human beings has been the main focus in the realm of Internet study. Those studies, generally speaking, either paid attention to the political, economical and social influences of the burgeoning Internet technology on human society, or focusing on the changing of human behavior, attitudes and psychological conditions in the Internet technological environment. Lacking of considering the core nature of Internet technology, most of studies, though proposed many insightful arguments, cannot explain why and in what way the Internet has such great influences on human beings. Since the Internet technology constructed the cyberspace, its relationship with human beings has been undoubtedly influenced by the inherent nature of the Internet. Examining the intrinsic nature and the bias of Internet technology, this study proposes the concept of cyber-micropower to describe the power relationships in the Internet field, and explores the origins of cyber-micropower. By investigating the formation and operational mechanism of the three kinds of cyber-micropower – information micropower, context micropower and subject micropower, this study provides a new analytical framework to the Internet study as well as understanding various cyberspace phenomena. The qualitative methods, especially critical literature research, online participant observation, and oral history are adopted to make thick description of various online phenomena, get empirical online data and develop the key concept of cyber-micropower. Particularly, the formation of information micropower is examined through the phenomenon of online free. Based on the analysis of online virtual identity, the formation process of context micropower and subject micropower can be developed. Then, the operational mechanism of cyber-micropower was mainly investigated through human flesh searching phenomenon. Briefly, this study argues that the bias of Internet technology is liquidity. As the core features of the Internet, both digitalization and networking of information directly reflect the widespread requiring for liquidity. This liquid Internet plays the role by empowering cyber subjects. Cyber-micropower, then, is the liquid networking relations among cyber subjects. During online interactions and the Internet use, cyber subjects always tend to make surveillance and self-surveillance, restriction and self-restriction, group participating and other ways, through which cyber subjects adapted to the new liquid cyber contexts and relations, as well as positioning their own locations in the liquid network. This new liquid disciplinary model in the “many watch the many” kind of cyberspace is the operational mechanism of cyber-micropower. Accordingly, disciplined cyber subjects and cyber conditions are like numerous panopticons superimposed together. Then, this study further argues that with the development of Internet technology, the liquid may be faster, and a larger scale of digitalization and intensive networking will follow. Such trends, though may liberate human beings initially, will go beyond humans’ ultimate state in the end. The liquid nature of information restricts cyber subjects’ ability of self-reflexive and understanding. And the liquid cyberspace may promote multiple and unstable virtual identities. As a result, cyber subjects’ cyber-micropower will become more fragile and sensitive. And the human nature may also be networked and liquefied gradually. Yet, when human beings become numerous nodes in the liquid network, not only their traditional ethics and morality are in the danger of reversing, but also the meaning of humans’ existence may be challenged. / published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Comparative Asian Studies / Master / Master of Arts

This thesis investigates the cultural and social production of AIDS in popular discourse, particularly film and mass media, and offers a critical consideration of the ways in which the proliferation and dispersion of these discourses function in our current episteme to rearticulate and reinscribe traditional value systems of sexuality, familialism, and nationalism. Taking the lead of the work of Michel Foucault on the body in various historical regimes, the author here will posit a theoretical analysis of the "discursive formation" of AIDS, how the body of AIDS is put into discourse, to provide a matrix for establishing the various disciplinary and regulatory apparatuses structuring the epidemic--that is, the affirmation of certain kinds of pleasures and bodies and the strategic circumvention of other pleasures and bodies. Under what the author refers to as the cultural logic of dis-ease, the investigations that follow will be animated by the central question: Whose pleasure and/or power is served by these representations and discourses of the body of AIDS in popular cultural practices?