The purposes of the study were to determine who was taking care of three- and four-year-old children in Middletown USA, and to attempt to identify why parents of these children chose particular types of child care. A further purpose of the study was to supply data relative to the Muncie, Indiana, community which were not gathered in the Middletown studies. The sample consisted of 153 parents of three- and four-year-old children who lived on randomly selected city blocks in Muncie, Indiana.An informal questionnaire was constructed in order to gather information needed to test the null hypotheses and to obtain data relative to the community. Informal interviews were conducted at the home of each subject. Responses were recorded on the questionnaire forms. Null hypotheses were tested at the .05 level of significance.The observed proportion of parents who provided parental care for their three- or four-year-old children was significantly greater than .5. The observed proportion of parents who provided parental care for their three- or four year-old children because they wanted to take care of their own children was significantly greater than .5. The observed proportion of parents who arranged informal care for their three- or four-year-old children because of a need to work was significantly greater than .5. The observed proportion of parents who arranged group care for their three- or four-yearold children because of its educational value was considerably less than .5. For those parents who arranged informal care, cost, convenience, and the quality of care were equally probable stated reasons for specific choice of informal care. For those parents who arranged group care, stated reasons for specific choice of group care were not equally probable. Convenience, educational value, and social value deviated most from the expected mean.It was concluded that many more preschool children were being provided with non-parental care than results from previous Middletown research hid indicated. Parents most often saw their need to work as the primary reason for arranging non-parental care.

This thesis analyzes the socio-economic consequences of the Tanzania population's exposure to food insecurity between 1919 and 1985. The thesis covers: the incidence of food inadequacy in peasant households throughout the country; the impact of famine relief measures of the colonial state and the Native Authorities; the role of Asian traders; the development of an African wage labour force and its food demand; the problems of supplying food to plantation workers and other geographically dispersed wage labourers during the inter-war period; state food policies arising from the exigencies of World Mar II; decolonisation and the restructuring of the social division of labour on a non-racial basis between 1950 and 1973; state food production and Marketing policy in response to rapid urban growth; African marketing cooperatives, the national economic crisis years between 1973 and 1985; the parastatalisation of national marketed food supply; the parallel food market; the state's difficulties in implementing its industrialisation and peasant agricultural transformation policies; and the deterioration of the functional division of labour to the extent that the occupational division of labour between rural and urban areas blurs. The central argument of the thesis is that food insecurity retards development of functional social groups and the organisational structure of the market and state relative to the household and clientage networks. This situation arises from the prevalence of risk-averting, household-based strategies of all functional groups in contradistinction to the maximizing strategies of market and state agents. With domination of household and clientage networks, the formation of functional groups is restricted to that made possible by face-to-face accountability or household ties. A circular process begins. Food insecurity is perpetuated and often intensified by the limited scale of the division of labour, its barriers to outside innovation and to the free flow of food between deficit and surplus areas through market channels. In the process, the technological development of food production is severely hindered.

The thesis analyses social and political change in twentieth-century Ukraine and its impact on the development of the national consciousness of Ukrainians. In the pre-revolutionary era Ukrainians had a weak sense of national identity because the strategic sectors of society were dominated by non-Ukrainian minority and because the infrastructures of national life were poorly developed. The 1917 revolution saw the rise of a Ukrainian national movement which, while unable to achieve independence, proved strong enough to force major concessions, such as the creation of a Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and acceptance of the principle of Ukrainization policies, from the Bolsheviks. The transformation of socio-economic relations in the course of the revolution facilitated the entry Ukrainians into the socially-mobilised sectors of society, which, together with the development of the infrastructures of national life, brought Ukrainians to the threshold of nationhood by the end of the 1920s. During the first five-year plan Stalin's policies generated much opposition in Ukraine. The purges, the abandonment of Ukrainization, the great famine and the imposition of a totalitarian socio-political order in the 1930s, destroyed much of the fabric of Ukrainian national life. However, the rapid urbanization and industrialization saw Ukraine emerge as a majority of the socially-mobilised population. Also, the fact that many republican institutions survived, at least in form, facilitated the resurgence of Ukrainian national assertiveness in the post-Second World War period. Ukraine lagging economic development, large-scale Russian immigration and the Russification of Ukraine's educational system created a highly competitive environment in the republic which served as the social backdrop for a recrudescence of Ukrainian nationalism in the post-Stalin era. While the Ukrainian intelligentsia were the most vocal exponents of national claims, they were often backed by the new generation of Ukrainian political leaders who, having been trained for responsible positions, were anxious to assume them free from excessive interference from the centre. The Russian leadership's response to this new autonomism was to accelerate Russification and central control of the republic. These policies generated new national conflicts rather than resolve old ones.

This thesis looks at the social significance of dance in Dakar, Senegal, both as an everyday practice and as a performing art. The boundaries commonly drawn between stage and mundane performance are shown to be irrelevant, as people circulate between performance spaces and dance forms. The dance itself is described as an elusive and ever-changing way of constructing identity, which is renewed every time it is performed. Most importantly, this thesis introduces dance as a vehicle of social mobility in its multiple dimensions, as an instrument in the politics of ethnicity in Senegal, and as a site of negotiation of gender relations. The complex interplay between the agency of local dancers and global performing circuits is also examined. Transformations in social status of performers are traced through time, space and across three genres of performance: the sabar, which is central in what I call "women's dances", folkloric performance, and recent choreographic experiments, lumped under the misleading label of "contemporary dance". The sabar and women's dance events are examined both as the local movement style that informs some of the choreographic work displayed on stage, and as a central space in which alternative gender relations are experimented with. I suggest that urban dance events have become increasingly dominated by women, for whom the dance is a convenient way of excluding men from their sociality, or including them on their own terms. Women are thus able to retain the control of important aspects of social life (the socialization of young girls, marriage negotiations, exchanging secrets on how to "tie" a husband), engage in trade and coach each other into small-scale business. Alongside the celebration of female solidarity, dance events are also moments of intense female competition. This is achieved through fashion, sexually explicit dancing and elaborate manipulation of the body. I argue that in a depressed economic climate which has turned to the disadvantage of most men, women are discreetly using their favourite form of sociality - the dance to make advances into the socio-economic domain. The argument on the performer's status through time takes the pre-colonial status stratification, particularly the figure of the Griot-performer, as a starting point. I suggest that the international career opportunities generated by the development of the folkloric genre from the 1960s onwards have helped modify the perception of the performer, albeit on a moderate scale. Further improvement has recently been achieved with the emergence of "contemporary dance". This is because the most successful performers within this experimental genre have benefited from the opportunity to promote themselves as individual artists. Moreover, when on tour abroad they are usually paid more and perform in more prestigious theatres than they do with folkloric performance, which often remains confined to "African festivals" and tourist resorts. In Senegal, they engage in collaborative work with visiting artists from Europe, North America or Japan. By contrast with the elitist character of the genre in its early days, in the 1970s, "contemporary" Senegalese dance is gradually becoming popularized, as people promote themselves as artists with a social consciousness. But the thesis also emphasizes that social mobility is not equally available to all, and that success, far from being a linear process, also contains the possibility of its own downfall: touring abroad may lose much of its appeal once people realize that they are being exploited. For performers who experiment with "contemporary" forms, social recognition can easily turn into accusations of doing "White people's stuff". This may partly explain why these performers are so keen to make their "local" grounding explicit, and why they nurture a fascination with "tradition". In a broader sense, this study also highlights the complexities of globalization processes in performance. It hints at the risks of the forms of globalization that reinforce power imbalances. Indeed, the renewed interest in the "contemporary" arts of Africa may be seen as part of a more general movement towards exploiting the creativity of African cultures. I examine people's ambivalent attitudes towards this, and argue that people perceive their own lives, as well as their status in the wider world, as deeply entangled with the representations of Africa which are projected onto the worldwide stage.

This thesis explored the possibilities of regional history as a basis for understanding the development of society in Iran in the nineteenth century. It begins by defining some conceptual problems needing dis- cussion in order to embark on such a history. The choice of a regional society as the unit of study, and the selection of Kennan in particular are examined. The problem of source material is dealt with by a survey of the sources used in the study of nineteenth century Kennan. The emergence of the region as a geographical and historical entity is then summarised in order to clarify its identity as it appeared by the nineteenth century. The central section of the thesis is an examina- tion of the important aspects of material life in Kerman. The rural sector is discussed first as being dominant in economy and society, with a survey of crop production being followed by examination of rural technology and society, and then a discussion of landlord-cultivator relations. The urban sector is then analysed in terms of a survey of craft production and then of social organisation. A separate chapter examines the sphere of circulation linking urban and rural sectors, looking at urban-rural contacts especially as articulated by landlord- peasant relations, and also at the links between Kennan and other regions, and with international markets. There is an appendix on the special case of pastoral ism and nomadism. The last section of the thesis uses the understanding of society which has emerged in an analysis of politics. Discussion of useful definitions of this term is followed by examination of various levels of political life, and more specifically of the decade 1905-1915. Finally conclusions are drawn about the contribution of this regional study to better under- standing of history arid society in Iran,

This thesis aims to determine the relationship between demographic/socio-economic and cultural change in an early modern English village. The village of Pluckley in the Weald of Kent was chosen for the richness of surviving documentation both at a regional and a parochial level. This has enabled Pluckley's experience over the 150-year period after 1550 to be located in the context of regional developments, thus permitting a fuller appreciation of the significance of such micro-history to the national life of the period. Pluckley's geographical location on the boundary between scarpland and wealden Kent resulted in a relative shortage of common, waste and forest suitable for encroachment or squatting. This spared the village the high levels of immigration found in many woodland-pasture communities, but considerable indigenous population growth during the 1590s-1620s needed to be accomodated. This required the sub-division of many existing holdings; a process made possible by the expansion of textile manufacture in the region. The result was two-fold: a consolidation in the position of small husbandmen and craftsmen in the village at the expense of more substantial landholders; and an increase in the numerical importance of Pluckley's poorest strata -labourers, cottagers, poor craftsmen and widows. Two responses to the interlocking demographic and economic crisis of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries can be observed. One was the emigration of perhaps ten per cent of Pluckley's households in the three decades following the industrial crisis of 1630-1. The other was revealed in the apparent resentment of some village officeholders -many of them middling farmers not immune to the financial pressures of the period- to the increased burden posed by the expanding population of poor in the village. This resentment found expression in an attempt to tighten standards of sexual and marital conduct during the period 1590-1640. There is no evidence, however/ that sustained reforming activity in the village extended beyond sexual regulation to other 'disorders' associated by contemporaries with popular culture. Relatively low levels of poverty in the village (compared with elsewhere in mid-Kent) may have hindered the emergence of a powerful Puritan lobby bent on such reforms; though fissures within Pluckley's ruling elite as well as demographic and economic developments may have played their part in the continuing weakness of the 'godly' cause.

This thesis explores everyday practices of Peruvian women at the soup kitchen, a self-help organization that feeds poor families. Every day, women put their culinary knowledge into practice and provide people with good tasting food in spite of limited material resources. In addition, these women share experiences and advice, affirm their authority towards male beneficiaries, and resist to the governmental control exercised through a national food aid program. I will argue that through these everyday practices and social interactions, women express forms of resistance. Concurrently, they are able to contest gender, socio-economic and political domination, and construct an identity of proud, active women. This complex and intimate look at the experiences of women at the soup kitchen will be based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Villa Maria del Triunfo, a district on the outskirts of Lima composed largely of migrants who came in town in hopes to construct a better life.

This is an examination of the position of Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (1633--1694) with regard to contemporary societal gender-paradigms, which were the conditions under which she produced her literary work; these same conditions are also reflected in her texts. / The first chapter includes a methodological discussion and establishes the importance of applying a socio-historical approach in order to better understand the situation of women in the Baroque period, and of Greiffenberg in particular, in order to answer the question, how it was possible for the author to write and publish at a time that generally excluded women from such activities. / The second chapter provides a brief biography of Greiffenberg and a review of secondary literature, with the main focus on the positioning of the poet within patriarchal society. / The socio-historical framework includes the religious, social, and legal position of women. These include: the hierarchy of power based on gender-roles, definitions of women in marriage, educational paradigms, as well as characteristics typically attributed to women. An analysis of the moral and theological view of women, as outlined by Martin Luther and presented in sermons by Johann Michael Dilherr, evaluates the general conditions for women during the Baroque period and the specific position of Greiffenberg (chapter three). With a similar aim in mind, chapter four examines the genre of "Hatisvaterliteratur" through the example by Wolfgang Helmhard von Hohberg. / This provides a framework for the investigation of Greiffenberg's expressions of her views regarding gender politics. She made the restrictions placed on women a topic in both her published and unpublished texts. She also developed strategies to overcome these restrictions. She found the courage to act against the proscribed role for women by defining her writing as God's will and thus based her profession on a higher authority. She also affirmed the gender-paradigms, while at the same time transgressing their boundaries, whereby she was able to negotiate the roles of both a woman and a publishing writer at a time when one identity conflicted with the other (chapters five and six).

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