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Raising Children The American Way: Court-Mandated Parenting Education In Alameda, California, Nicole D. Laborde

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Based on ethnographic research in Alameda County, California, this dissertation examines the parenting practices and knowledge that are taught in court-mandated parenting classes along with those of parents enrolled in these classes. In California, two of the primary reasons that parents would be mandated to take classes are because of involvement with Child and Family Services (CFS) or in a custody dispute that reaches the courts. I argue that the different forms of knowledge and the practices advanced in the classes, at times consistent with, at times in conflict with those of the parents, reflect the demands and social responsibility …

Breach Of Trust: Customary/Commercial Documents And Practices Of Private Law In An Egyptian Port, Christine Hegel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an ethnography of private law in contemporary Port Said, Egypt. Based on extensive fieldwork in 2005 and 2007, it considers how Port Saidians come to possess economic and social entitlements vis-à-vis one another and how concomitant obligations get construed and actualized. As an analysis of quotidian practices of private law and surety, this dissertation is intended to contribute to broader scholarly debates about legal subjectivity and legal consciousness, and to reconsider the intersections between law, custom and morality.

The analysis of contemporary transactional and surety practices is rooted in a discussion of both Egyptian legal reform and …