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Full-Text Articles in History

Quiet River, Heavy Waters: Un-Silencing Narratives Of Social-Environmental Inequalities In The Cradle Of Soviet Plutonium, Rosibel Roman Jun 2019

Quiet River, Heavy Waters: Un-Silencing Narratives Of Social-Environmental Inequalities In The Cradle Of Soviet Plutonium, Rosibel Roman

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In December 1948, the Soviet Union’s first plutonium production facility, Mayak Production Association (PO Mayak), began operation in the Southern Urals region of Russia, at the western edges of Siberia, near the restricted city of Chelyabinsk-40, known in the present day as Ozyorsk. Since then, rural communities located downstream from PO Mayak have experienced health, economic, ecological and social impacts of contamination from high-level radioactive wastes released by the facility into the Techa River and its surrounding ecosystem. My research, drawing from archival research conducted in Russia and the United States, as well as secondary sources in English and Russian, …


Foreign Policy Evaluation And The Utility Of Intervention, Graham Slater Mar 2017

Foreign Policy Evaluation And The Utility Of Intervention, Graham Slater

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation identifies and explains the factors contributing to the presence and severity of U.S. foreign-policy blunders, or gross errors in strategic judgment resulting in significant harm to the national interest, since the Second World War. It hypothesizes that the grand strategy of preponderance and the overestimation of military power to transform the politics of other states have precipitated U.S. foreign-policy blunders since 1945. Examining the Vietnam War and Iraq War as case studies, it focuses on underlying conditions in the American national identity and the problematic foreign policy decision-making (FPDM) that corresponds to this bifurcated hypothesis, termed the overestimation/preponderance …


In Search Of Safety, Negotiating Everyday Forms Of Risk: Sex Work, Criminalization, And Hiv/Aids In The Slums Of Kampala, Serena Cruz Oct 2015

In Search Of Safety, Negotiating Everyday Forms Of Risk: Sex Work, Criminalization, And Hiv/Aids In The Slums Of Kampala, Serena Cruz

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation offers an in-depth descriptive account of how women manage daily risks associated with sex work, criminalization, and HIV/AIDS. Primary data collection took place within two slums in Kampala, Uganda over the course of fourteen months. The emphasis was on ethnographic methodologies involving participant observation and informal and unstructured interviewing. Insights then informed document analysis of international and national policies concerning HIV prevention and treatment strategies in the context of Uganda. The dissertation finds social networks and social capital provide the basis for community formation in the sex trade. It holds that these interpersonal processes are necessary components for …


Political Corruption In The Caribbean Basin : A Comparative Analysis Of Jamaica And Costa Rica, Michael W. Collier Jun 2000

Political Corruption In The Caribbean Basin : A Comparative Analysis Of Jamaica And Costa Rica, Michael W. Collier

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Political corruption in the Caribbean Basin retards state economic growth and development, undermines government legitimacy, and threatens state security. In spite of recent anti-corruption efforts of intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations (IGO/NGOs), Caribbean political corruption problems appear to be worsening in the post-Cold War period. This dissertation discovers why IGO/NGO efforts to arrest corruption are failing by investigating the domestic and international causes of political corruption in the Caribbean. The dissertation’s theoretical framework centers on an interdisciplinary model of the causes of political corruption built within the rule-oriented constructivist approach to social science. The model first employs a rational choice analysis …