This thesis outlines dominant ideologies and practices that affect women's authority in the urban social milieu of north India. Theories that consider the causes of social stratification by gender as well as social movement patterns are useful for understanding the durability of gender roles. The utility of these theories for...
Mukti Ashram is a rehabilitation center in north India that works with ex-child laborer boys. Fieldwork completed at the ashram in 1997-98 centered around the issue of the organization's attempt to enact social change through the engineering of community within the ashram's walls. Several fundamental processes that contribute to this...
Founded over fifty years ago by K. Viswanathan, the Mitraniketan educational facility in Kerala, India provides literacy and vocational education to socially marginalized women, men, and children through nursery, elementary, high school and an educational preparatory program for young adults. Viswanathan founded the school on several ideals including Neo-Marxist, Quaker,...
In India, globalized flows of bio-medical discourse, practices and technologies are reshaping the field of reproductive healthcare, and the performance of childbirth more specifically. These projects aim to produce institutional delivery rooms that are "safe and modernized" by equating the utilization of westernized, obstetric techniques for managing delivery with better...
This ethnographic study was conducted among the Meo community of north India to understand cultural norms, prescriptive behaviors, and practices associated with conceptions and contraception among Meo women and men living in five neighboring villages in the region of Mewat. The study goals were to collect ethnographic data on fertility-related...
Numerous development projects are implemented in developing countries to attain economic and ecological development. However, in most cases, the encouraging results observed during the implementation phase terminated with the project period, raising concerns on these projects' sustainability after the project period has ended. This study focuses on this sustainability issue...
Twenty five years' worth of science indicates that the world can expect a number of climate change impacts. Increasingly, local municipalities, businesses and communities of people are becoming more concerned about what to do, yet they are looking for ways to best work together under these conditions. Communities must adapt...
The importance of language and bilinguality in the
development, perpetuation, and "degeneration" or change of
culture is a central theme throughout this treatise.
Original pictorial representations of Mayan hieroglyphic
sculpture are included as examples, and represent artistic
styles and language variations of written Cholan and
Yucatec. Modern Cholan and Yucatecan...
Lean manufacturing, or more generally continuous improvement (CI), has been the methodology behind significant improvements in quality, work in process inventory reductions, lead time reduction and cost reduction while conversely being associated with failed implementations and occasionally with unpopular work practices. This research focused on promoting understanding of CI methodology...
This thesis examines the convergence of neoliberal rhetoric across popular media, academic, and institutional discourses, and draws connections between contemporary women's travel literature and common scripts in study abroad promotion. Finding such narratives to be freighted with ethnocentric constructs and tacit endorsements of market-based globalization, I critique the mainstreaming of...