Political Economy Commons^™

Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the mobility politics of container shipping and argues that technological development, political-economic order, and social infrastructure co-produce one another. Containerization, the use of standardized containers to carry cargo across modes of transportation that is said to have revolutionized and globalized international trade since the late 1950s, has served to expand and extend the power of international coalitions of states and corporations to control the movements of commodities (shipments) and labor (seafarers). The advent and development of containerization was driven by a sociotechnical imaginary and international social contract of seamless shipping and cargo flows. In practice, this liberal, …

The Euro And Bumps In The Road: Historical Patterns Of Nonresident Holdings In Eurozone Bonds, 1980–2018, Michael H. Scarlatos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A developed bond market which attracts nonresident investors both enables and reflects a host currency’s transition from domestic to international status. My analysis of historical private nonresident holdings of Eurozone portfolio debt securities spanning the euro’s 1999 creation and its subsequent 2008 crisis reveals diverging patterns.

This analysis, complemented by coefficient stability tests, discovers that the conversion of national currencies to the euro was reflected by a pickup in nonresident holdings of bonds issued by countries adopting the euro, especially those of the periphery (Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain) relative to the core (Germany, Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, and the …

Original Gangsters: Genre, Crime, And The Violences Of Settler Democracy, Sean M. Kennedy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Building upon examinations of genericity, subalternity, and carcerality by Black, Indigenous, and women-of-color feminist scholars, my dissertation offers an account of how truth claims are produced and sustained to limit social change in representatively governed societies. Taking the gangster genre as my lens, I first resituate the form, assumed to depict white-ethnic conflict in the U.S. and Europe, as a type of resistance to race-based political economic policies imposed by imperial regimes. After linking the subaltern classes of pre-20th-century southern Europe, southern Africa, South Asia, and the U.S. South—all subjected to criminalization as a mode of colonial and capitalist control—I …

Travel To Cuba: A Case Study Of Media Branding In A Politicized Context, Yaneisis Infante

Student Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to detail a case study of U.S. tourism to Cuba in a politicized context; specifically, to compare and contrast the Obama and Trump administrations. This study seeks to examine how the Cuban “brand” and the island’s overall tourism strategy is formulated, circulated, shaped and reshaped by various actors and the public in the changing context of the newly antagonistic bilateral U.S.-Cuba political relationship. The research questions explore issues of how diplomatic relations impact Cuban tourism and advertising messaging. This paper also discusses the changes in the U.S. news media coverage of Cuba as a …

The Origins Of The Jones Act Of Puerto Rico, Stephanie Mercedes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

After the Spanish-American War that ended in 1898, Puerto Rico was given to the United States by Spain as a war booty, becoming a US colony. The first law ever created by the United States to control Puerto Rico was the Foraker Act (also known as the Organic Act of 1900). This established a civilian government in Puerto Rico. It also extended the federal government rulings to the island. After its creation, the Puerto Rican population began to wonder what their political status was since nothing was concretized until the Jones Act was signed. The Merchant Marine Act of 1920, …

Senegal’S Unsustainable Economic Growth., Amadou Konteye

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

The Dictators’ Dilemma: Repression Or Concessions In The Face Of Resistance, Chris Massaro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Arab Spring revolts of late 2010 and 2011 were a profound moment in the history of a region troubled by decades of authoritarianism. Years of economic mismanagement and security force repression trammeled on the rights and aspirations of people striving for a better life. When social movements and anti-government protests erupted throughout the region, each country responded to the uprisings with different methodologies. This research closely examines why autocratic regimes of the region chose such divergent responses, with some opting to use violent repression, others attempting to make concessions and most combined repression with concessions. I will make the …

Venezuela: Oil And Madness. Politics, Propaganda, And Realities Of The Chavista Era, Alvaro E. De Prat

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is an interdisciplinary exploration of Venezuela’s political paradoxes and their consequences during the Chavista years. On a concrete level, in this work I propose how the manner in which Hugo Chávez implemented his at first apparently benign redistributive politics in fact precipitated the country's current humanitarian crisis and what I will argue are the times of starkest inequality in modern Venezuelan history. Integral to this, although on a more philosophical level, here I also offer a theory of how and why Chávez’s representations might have been so misinterpreted.

The list of eminent political thinkers who have vouched for …

Making The Gigantic Suburban Residential Complex In Beijing: Political Economy Processes And Everyday Life In The 2010s, Pengfei Li

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Suburbanization is an ongoing development process in China. Hundreds of thousands of construction projects are being undertaken in outskirts of most Chinese cities, despite the increasing domestic and international concerns over China’s housing oversupply (Xu, 2010; Gough, 2015; Li, 2015). The suburbanization of China, however, is fundamentally different from the suburbanization of most Western countries, especially the United States, whose massive post-war suburbanization took place as a continuation of its pre-war industrialization and urbanization movements. In the Chinese context, suburbanization is the process of urbanization as well—urbanization and suburbanization have been promoted simultaneously since the 1990s. It is …

Patterns Of Growth And The Economic Development Of China, Adam C. Watson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

By looking at the historical rise of modern China, starting with the end of the First Opium War (1842) through to the start of the war with Japan (1937), and then from the beginning of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms (1979) to the present, this work reveals the striking similarities between the earlier and the later periods of capitalist development. If the country had not been able to draw on the deep-rooted knowledge and skills which originated in Shanghai and the port cities in the mid-nineteenth century, and instead pursued only uninformed free market principles without the training to make these …