Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Indigenous Water Governance In The Anthropocene: Non-Conventional Hydrosocial Relations Among The Wayuu Of The Guajira Peninsula In Northern Colombia, David A. Robles

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation problematizes the supremacy of a global water management regime while discerning and defending local Wayuu hydrosocial relations. The Wayuu relationship with water—considered non-conventional, unsanitary or insecure according to hegemonic Western standards—can also be characterized positively as alternative, resilient, sustainable, adaptive and exceptional. Contemporary water governance presents challenges yet also opportunities for the Wayuu and other Indigenous peoples to (re)assert and (re)establish contextualized and culturally specific practices, traditions and ways of knowing that have been historically silenced by conventional water management.

The Wayuu territory, located on the semi-arid Guajira Peninsula in northern Colombia, is widely considered a region suffering …

Religion And Ethnicity Among Afro-Colombian Muslims In Buenaventura (Colombia), Diego Giovanni Castellanos

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the way in which religious beliefs and practices are instrumentalized by a Muslim community in order to strengthen Afro-Colombian ethnic identity, in an urban context of social exclusion. The study aims to examine the relationship between ethnicity and religion, and the role they play in the process of identity construction, particularly the way in which religious concepts and behaviors can be used to fortify ethnic identity. Another aim of this research is to describe and understand the processes of social change in an ethnic-religious minority and, as a final goal, to analyze …

The Impact Of Decentralization And New Intergovernmental Relations On Public Service Delivery: A Comparative Analysis Of Colombia And Paraguay, Cristina A. Rodriguez-Acosta

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to examine the factors that have influenced political decentralization in Paraguay and Colombia and how the new intergovernmental relations that result in political, fiscal and policy decentralization impact local governments and their capacity to deliver public services. The research, building on institutional theory, places particular emphasis on trying to explain and understand how intergovernmental relations shape the decentralization—and effectiveness—of public service delivery to local and regional governments, particularly in the areas of health and education.

The research method is principally a path-dependent within-cases analysis. The analysis traces how the processes of decentralization evolved from …

Local Media Representations Of The Colombian Women’S Peace Movement La Ruta Pacífica De Las Mujeres, Elizabeth Anna Kersjes

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to analyze how the media in Colombia covers the events and campaigns of the pacifist women’s movement La Ruta Pacífica de las Mujeres. The movement was formed in 1996 to draw attention to violence against women and to call for a negotiated end to Colombia’s internal armed conflict through peaceful demonstrations. The study uses a series of semi-structured interviews with members of the movement and a content analysis of major print media stories about the movement to analyze press coverage and forms of representation. The analysis finds that large, powerful media outlets based …

Blessed Are The Peacemakers: Transnational Alliance, Protective Accompaniment And The Presbyterian Church Of Colombia, Michael C. Brasher

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to explore how Christian networks enable strategies of transnational alliance, whereby groups in different nations strive to strengthen one another’s leverage and credibility in order to resolve conflicts and elaborate new possibilities. This research does so by analyzing the case of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia (IPC). The project examines the historical development of the IPC from the initial missionary period of the 1850s until the present. Specifically, the purpose of the study was to consider how the historical struggle to articulate autonomy and equality vis-à-vis the U.S. Presbyterians (PCUSA) and paternalist models of …

One Hundred Years Of Servitude : The Colombian Labor Movement 1848-1948, Curtis Curry

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current study seeks not only to place into focus the general patterns of social and economic organization prevalent in Colombia in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth (such political and economic organization has been ably illustrated by several authors), but also strives to elucidate the systems of thought or 'ideologies' to which such socio-economic and political structures gave rise. It is concerned with the thought-systems that influenced the development of the Colombian labor movement, those of actors external to organized labor and indigenous systems of thought of labor activists themselves.

The hypothesis is that class and party-based …