Digital Commons Network^™

Longing For The Homeland: The Palestinian American Diaspora And Palestinian Advocacy In The United States, Mohamed Khaled Ghumrawi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores how Palestinian Americans in the diaspora connect with Palestine, Palestinian advocacy, and the Palestinian question. It analyzes and synthesizes the interaction of the Palestinian American diaspora and Palestinian advocacy, exploring its domestic and transnational linkages. It also explores the nexus of domestic and transnational aspects relating to Palestinian identity, political life, advocacy, culture, and politics. This project utilizes two main frameworks, the first is the tripartite composite state theory, focusing specifically on the normative-social structure. The second applies a framework of intersectionality, highlighting the interconnectedness of the Palestinian diaspora and the Palestinian question with other social …

Rethinking The Functions Of Regional Economic Communities: Why African Small States Join And Remain In Sub-Regional Entities, Cliff Kodero

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation advances new arguments about regional integration in Africa. It sheds light on the roles of regional economic communities (RECs) for small-economy states in Africa by examining the benefits and drawbacks of participating in such regional groups for both the small states themselves and their ruling regimes. The study suggests that RECs, rather than being agents of economic development, facilitate regime-boosting agendas of neopatrimonial regimes, promote a sense of (false) sovereignty, and entrench the political elite’s capture of the states.

The significance is threefold. First, it suggests that RECs provide an extension of neopatrimonial networks, which expand state-capture by …

Between Harlem And Paris: Haitian Internationalism In The Interwar Period, 1919-1937, Felix Jean-Louis Iii

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project locates the transnational contributions of elite Haitians to the efforts to remake blackness and mitigate the racial subjugation of people of African descent between 1919 and 1937. The arguments forwarded here are founded on archival materials such as letters, newspapers, personal documents, and the reports of government agents. Through my engagements with these documents, at times reading against the grain, I explore the ways in which my actors directed the course of events and shaped the discourses of major organizations that sought to affect Pan-African solidarity and promote anti-colonialism. It locates their participation two major sites interwar black …

Reggaeir@ Sou Eu: Race, Nation And The Politics Of Identity In Roots Reggae Culture In Sao Luis Do Maranhao, Brazil, Gloria Angebelle Yawson

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the performative space of roots reggae music and dance performancescape in São Luis do Maranhão, Brazil. It examines the ways in which Caribbean sounds are employed by Afro-Maranhese to create performative spaces that contest representations of blackness in Brazil. In this examination, I address how Afro-Maranheses engage in the process of transformation by appropriating Caribbean Sounds in the performative spaces of blackness. The dissertation also examines the ways in which these performative spaces, as spaces of struggle are objects of legal forms of surveillance, discipline and punishments that are targeted by the policia militar (military police) because …

Commemorative Bodies: (Un)Making Racial Order And Cuban White Supremacy In Little Havana's Heritage District, Corinna Jeanne Moebius

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation unearths memory- and place-making practices, processes and “racializing regimes of representation” in Little Havana’s heritage district, now a major tourism destination in Miami, Florida. It draws on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and consultations of various archives that span decades back to the 1960s and trace the origins of the district in plans for a “Latin Quarter.”

My analyses borrow from and combine various bodies of scholarly work to examine and deconstruct the use of always multi-vocal “commemorative bodies” for the production of racial narratives that are embedded in--and give shape to--acts of memorialization and commemoration.

By examining the …

The "New" Black In The New South: Negotiating Race And Space In North Carolina's Immigrant Communities, Masonya Joy Bennett

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores identity and subject formation among black immigrant populations in Charlotte, N.C, a non-traditional gateway city. It interrogates claims made by regional scholars and policy-makers that, due to recent demographic shifts and economic development, Charlotte embodies the “New South”, a designation signifying the transition from an agricultural to a corporation-based economy and from a racially polarized to a multicultural society. Based upon 18 months of ethnographic research utilizing a mixed method approach among immigrants of African descent in the trans-ethnic enclave of East Charlotte, the dissertation focuses on the role of space, place, material culture and affect in …

Material Girls: Consumption And The Making Of Middle Class Identity In The Experiences Of Black Single Mothers In The Washington, Dc Metropolitan Area, Aysha L. Preston Ph.D.

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the ways in which black single mothers in the Washington, DC metropolitan area use material goods and consumption practices to inform their identities as members of the middle class. Black middle class women are challenging stereotypes surrounding single mother households, the idea of family, and class status in the United States, as more women overall are having children while single, delaying or deciding against marriage, and are entering the middle and upper-middle classes as a result of advanced education and career opportunities. Because of these demographic and sociocultural shifts, the romanticized “nuclear family” which consists of a …

An Alternative Narrative Of Integration In Germany Through An Ethnographic Exploration Of Cuban Immigration, Ana M. Rusch

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This ethnographic study on Cuban immigrants conducted in Germany explored the dynamics of integration through an understudied immigrant population. Most of the research conducted on integration in Germany has overwhelmingly been on Turkish immigrants, which is Germany’s majority immigrant group. To contribute to Integration Studies, this research focused on a minority and lesser studied immigrant group, Cuban immigrants. Cuban immigrants in Germany not only have a different historical and geopolitical relationship with Germany than its majority group but they also subscribe to different cultural and ethnoreligious categories. Because of these varying circumstances, Cubans act as a counter example to the …

Making African Civil Society Work: Assessing Conditions For Democratic State-Society Relations In Rwanda, Fiacre Bienvenu

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation offers a single case in-depth analysis of factors precluding civil society from democratizing African polities. Synthesizing existing literature on Rwanda, I first undertake an historical search to trace the origins and qualities of civil society in the colonial era. This effort shows, however, that the central authority—commencing before the inception of the Republic in 1962—consistently organized civil society to buttress its activities, not to challenge them. Next, using ethnographic research, I challenge conventional economic and institutional accounts of civil society’s role in democratization. I show that institutional change and the economic clout of organized groups are marginal and …

Jewish Women’S Transracial Epistemological Networks: Representations Of Black Women In The African Diaspora, 1930-1980, Abby S. Gondek

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates how Jewish women social scientists relationally established their gendered-racialized subjectivities and theories about race-gender-sexuality-class through their portrayals of black women’s sexuality and family structures in the African Diaspora: the U.S., Brazil, South Africa, Swaziland, and the U.K. The central women in this study: Ellen Hellmann, Ruth Landes, Hilda Kuper, and Ruth Glass, were part of the same “political generation,” born in 1908-1912, coming of age when Jews of European descent experienced an ambivalent and conditional assimilation into whiteness, a form of internal colonization. I demonstrate how each woman’s familial origin point in Europe, parental class and political …

Seeking Friends With Benefits In A Tourism-Based Sexual Economy: Interrogating The Gambian Sexscape, Mariama Jaiteh

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation engages with the driving motivations behind the actions of all those involved in The Gambia’s tourism-based sexual economy: the Gambian and other West African male and female sex workers, the Global North (habitually European) male and female tourists, the Gambian and expatriate Lebanese bar and restaurant owners, the Gambian state, and the semesters (members of the Gambian diaspora on vacation in The Gambia). It presents thick ethnographic accounts of interactions with Gambians and tourists, as they form temporary couples or friendships for the duration of tourists’ vacations, and sometimes for longer. This ethnography-rich dissertation pays careful attention to …

An Ethnographic Study Of Sectarian Negotiations Among Diaspora Jains In The Usa, Venu Vrundavan Mehta

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argued that the Jain community in the diasporic context of the USA has invented a new form of Jainism. Sectarian negotiations are the distinguishing marks of the diaspora Jain community and their invented form of Jainism. Based on ethnographic study that is, interviews and observations conducted at four different sites (Jain temples/communities) from June-August 2016, the thesis examined the sectarian negotiations among the diaspora Jain community in the USA and the invented Jain tradition that is resulting from these negotiations. The central questions of the research on which this thesis is based were: 1) what are the levels, …

(Un)Making The Food Desert: Food, Race, And Redevelopment In Miami's Overtown Community, William Hall

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, efforts to transform food environments have played a key role in urban revitalization strategies. On one hand, concerns over urban food deserts have spurred efforts to attract supermarkets to places where access to healthy food is difficult for lower income residents. On the other, the creation of new spaces of consumption, such as trendy restaurants and food retail, has helped cities rebrand low-income communities as cultural destinations of leisure and tourism. In cities around the US, these processes often overlap, converting poorer neighborhoods into places more desirable for the middle-class. My dissertation research examines the social and …

The Sound Of Silence: Ideology Of National Identity And Racial Inequality In Contemporary Curaçao, Angela E. Roe

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses racism in contemporary Curaçao—a former Dutch colony in the Caribbean that remains a component of the Kingdom of The Netherlands. The dissertation theorizes racism as a partially hidden constituent of the island’s ideology of national identity, which throughout its history has emulated hybridity before being influenced, more recently, by multiculturalism. The research’s main objective is to uncover the ways race and racism have been entangled with Curaçao’s hegemonic ideology of national identity, a reality too often omitted and always under-theorized in Dutch and Dutch Caribbean scholarship.

Using historical, ethnographic, statistic, and discourse analysis data, the dissertation reveals …

“¡Pobres Negros!” The Social Representations And Commemorations Of Blacks In The River Plate From The Mid-Nineteenth Century To The First Half Of The Twentieth (And Beyond), Roberto Pacheco

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To counter regnant arguments in the historiography about the putative historical “forgetting” of Afro-Platines in their nations, “‘¡Pobres negros!’” explores the various social representations and commemorations devoted to blacks in the River Plate over the period from the mid-1800s to the 1930s. While never uniformly or consistently positive, over the nineteenth century these social remembrances nevertheless experienced a radical transformation. Early intellectual nation builders among the Generation of 1837 associated blacks with the forces of social, political, and cultural “barbarism.” These representations remained a part of the national memory until well into the late 1800s in liberal and progressive circles. …

"New" Social Movements: Alternative Modernities, (Trans)Local Nationalisms, And Solidarity Economies, Mamyrah Prosper

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation is the first project on the Haitian Platform for Advocacy for an Alternative Development- PAPDA, a nation-building coalition founded by activists from varying sectors to coordinate one comprehensive nationalist movement against what they are calling an Occupation. My work not only provides information on this under-theorized popular movement but also situates it within the broader literature on the postcolonial nation-state as well as Latin American and Caribbean social movements. The dissertation analyzes the contentious relationship between local and global discourses and practices of citizenship. Furthermore, the research draws on transnational feminist theory to underline the scattered hegemonies that …

Crossing Boundaries To Education: Haitian Transnational Families And The Quest To Raise The Family Up, Tekla Nicholas

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nearly 175, 000 Haitian immigrants have settled in South Florida since the 1970s. Their lives are often lived transnationally with persistent connections and obligations to family members in Haiti. Yet, traditional theories of immigrant assimilation focus on the integration of immigrants into host countries, giving little consideration to relationships and activities that extend into migrants' countries of origin. Conversely, studies of transnational families do not explicitly address incorporation into the receiving country. This dissertation, through the experiences of Haitian immigrants in South Florida, reveals a transnational quest “to raise the family up” through migration, remittances, and the pursuit of higher …

Harlemites, Haitians And The Black International: 1915-1934, Felix Jean-Louis Iii

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

On July 28, 1915 the United States began a nineteen year military occupation of Haiti. The occupation connected Haiti and the United States and created an avenue of migration in the country. As a consequence of extreme racism in the South and segregation in the Northern states, the majority of the immigrants moved to Harlem. The movement of people reinvigorated the relationship between African Americans and Haitians. The connection constituted an avenue of the interwar Black International. Using newspapers articles, letters, and press releases from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Yale Beinecke Rare Books and …

Self-Determination Theory And Student Motivation In Social Studies In An Urban Broward County Public High School, Roberto Fernandez Iii

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated how students perceived their motivation in high school social studies classes in school and to determine if a correlation exists between students’ grade level, race, gender, and their motivation. The sample included 337 high school students in Broward County, Florida.

To assess students’ perceptions on their motivation the academic self-regulation questionnaire was utilized. Results indicate that social studies students show high levels of external regulation, with a mean score at 22.31 on a scale of 36 points. The results show a mean score of 24 on a scale of 28 points for identified regulation among social …

Mexico And "Nuestra Tercera Raíz" : Ideology, History Identity And Two Towns Of Veracruz, Richard Fantina

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The thesis contributed to the growing body of knowledge and discourse on the African presence in Mexico. Long underresearched, Afromexican studies today command the attention of some of Mexico's foremost historians and anthropologists. This thesis focused on some of their ideas and gave a general overview of the history of people of African descent in Mexico, particularly in the state of Veracruz, the port of entry for most of New Spain's African slaves. Drawing on the work of these Afromexicanista scholars, this thesis demonstrated how their ideas intersect, and sometimes differ with, traditional scholarship in this neglected area. The elusive …

Playing Miami : Afrocuban Performance Artists Negotiating Cubanidad, Kameelah Nicole Benjamin-Fuller

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The social scripts that are deeply involved in cultural production by AfroCuban identified artists in Miami, during the late nineties to the present, participate in a climate that is informed by and feeds from the so-called Latin Explosion of this time period. More specifically, varying historical, socioeconomic, and geopolitical trajectories have placed Africa and African-based religion and cultural production (via music and theatre) at the center of Cuban national identity. The purpose of this study is to facilitate a discussion of the experiences of AfroCuban performance artists and the climate for production, given the aforementioned dynamics, in mass media. These …