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At the beginning of the 1990s, independent Chinese fiction and documentary film works made their first step, marking the rise of Chinese Sixth Generation cinema. Faced with the dominant communist state ideology and commercial values, both the two film types remained “marginal” and even “underground” in Chinese film history. Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to figure out what cinematic subjects and film aesthetics make them an anomaly in relation to Chinese official and commercial cinema. Regardless of their different film types, this study uses the theories of intertextuality to deal with the iconographic signs and film codes shared by them. I shall argue that in the post-1989 era independent Chinese filmmakers root the two film types in marginal urban groups and jishizhuyi [on-the-scene realism]. On the one hand, they concentrate on urbanites' sufferings against the background of the oppressive political environment and the social upheaval of China's reform age. On the other hand, they introduce jishizhuyi and neorealism aesthetics to represent social reality, refusing to dissimulate the cruelty of reality. Under the enlightenment of intertextuality, this thesis provides a new angle of view on what and how contemporary Chinese urban identity is shaped in multiple Chinese independent film works. It also exposes the establishment of independent Chinese filmmakers' speaking rights in the struggle against the official and commercial system.

Sir Thomas Malory’s fifteenth-century prose romance, Le Morte Darthur, depicts public and private identity as distinct and often incompatible halves of the Arthurian courtly community. In addition, masculine and feminine identity are represented as having different roles and functions within the text. Arthurian scholarship has predominantly focused on Malory’s portrayals of masculine and communal identity, as exemplified by central figures such as Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. However, in the past two decades an increasingly concentrated interest in the Morte’s female protagonists has emerged. As a contribution to this burgeoning site of critical inquiry I offer a tripartite case study of three marginal queens in this text: Igraine, Morgause and Morgan. Despite being the mother and sisters of King Arthur, these women have attracted comparatively little attention, either as individuals or as a family. This thesis argues that Malory presents noteworthy portraits of marginality in Igraine, Morgause and Morgan, which reveal the significance of space to the formation of identity in the Morte. Each of these protagonists is imagined in a variety of spaces in the Arthurian world: narrative, social, geographical, physical and emotional. Such spaces are contained within two principal romance locations, the court and quest wilderness, in which protagonists’ expressions and activities differ. Courts are typically governed by patriarchal authorities such as kings, knights, magicians and clerics, who privilege masculine public identity and political issues affecting the Arthurian community. By contrast, the quest wilderness encompasses places governed by what are termed ‘matriarchal’ authorities including queens, ladies, supernatural women and nuns, where private identity and individual emotions are more readily expressed. Marginal women speak and act in both the court and quest wilderness, but their identities are articulated differently in each. This thesis argues that Malory’s text presents moments when Igraine, Morgause and Morgan are marginalised by the Arthurian community critically, whilst the development of their individual identities in the quest wilderness is depicted sympathetically. As such, an examination of these protagonists’ movements across a variety of spatial boundaries in the world of the story as well as the narrative’s composite structure offers a revised reading of identity, gender and marginality in Malory studies. This thesis challenges two dominant assumptions about female voice and agency in the field. Firstly, that marginality is primarily a position of disempowerment, particularly for medieval women. Secondly, that marginal individuals are inherently subversive and threaten the Arthurian community.

This thesis examines the dual identity of the Church of England priest employed as an NHS healthcare chaplain. In 1948, full-time NHS chaplains provided a Church of England ministry of liturgy and pastoral care. Their twenty-first century counterpart delivers existential spiritual or pastoral care. Though Church of England chaplains are licensed by the Church, their work is shaped by the NHS and the Trust which employs them. They are accountable to the Church and the NHS even though each promotes different values and serves different ends. Published literature alludes to the chaplain’s sense of marginalization from the Church and within the NHS. Interviews with twelve full-time NHS chaplains, who are Church of England priests, focused on how they interpreted their dual identity as priest and chaplain, and the impact the two institutions had on these identities. This I framed using the theoretical model, ‘communities of practice’. Analysis of these interviews confirmed that chaplains thought they were disconnected from the priorities and values of the Church. This they described as ‘marginalization’, a term which appears elsewhere in published literature sometimes interchangeable with ‘liminality’. I claim that liminality is not only conceptually different but makes a distinct contribution to understanding the work and identity of chaplain and priest. I argue the existence of liminal intelligence and its importance in the ministry of the chaplain. I maintain that ministerial priesthood needs to be faithful to its liminal credentials. These I trace back to the liminality of the cultic priesthood outlined in the Hebrew bible as well as the liminality of Jesus, his teaching and the communitas of the early Church. I propose that the role of the ministerial priest is not only about recalling the institutional Church to its liminal roots but that liminality is the essence of priesthood.

This submission for the award of PhD by Published Work includes a range of single, joint and multiple-authored publications that were published between 2005 and 2016. The publications cover a range of issues relevant to social work with a particular emphasis on mental health and health inequalities. The statement provides an underpinning conceptual framework that demonstrates interwoven themes of power, partnership and marginality. These are explored in relation to the published work, demonstrating an original and coherent contribution to the social work knowledge and practice base. The discussion draws on a reflexive journey through social work practice, education and research. The conclusion proposes that considerations of power and partnership are crucial elements of the potential for creative work 'on the margins'.

This thesis addresses aspects of Romanian society and cinema, by analyzing post-communist films through the perspective of marginality. The central hypothesis of this study refers to the ways in which films illustrate conditions of post-communist Romanian society, as they consider representations of the periphery through the angle of allegories of marginality. Following a long tradition, especially in literary studies, where it refers to the overt insertion of symbolic meanings, allegory refers in this study to a less noticeable delivery, by using a postmodern interpretation of the concept. This translates to detecting a latent meaning in films, by interpreting them in a broader context pertaining both to the film's circumstances (production, distribution and reception), and to the broader framework of the film's content. What connects post-communist Romanian films is a concern for matters of marginality, as they focus on dissensions in society, intergenerational conflicts, youth and limited opportunities of social movement, and the use of satire as a way of handling the bleak conditions of life. Aiming to provide a realistic representation of post-communist life, new wave Romanian films focus on the mundane reality of everyday life. The films discussed in this thesis expand beyond the scope of the new wave, and present a diversity of aesthetic approaches and relating perspectives on allegory—from distinct to obscure—defined by the contextual conditions of post-communism.

Does banning opposition candidates from ballots increase the risk that they will turn to bullets instead? Globally, since the end of the Cold War, blatant election rigging tactics (such as ballot box stuffing) are being replaced by 'strategic rigging': subtler procedural manipulations aimed at winning while maintaining the guise of legitimacy in the eyes of international observers. In particular, incumbents (in regimes stuck between democracy and authoritarianism) are turning to 'electoral exclusion', neutralizing key rivals by illegitimately banning certain candidates, in turn reducing the need for cruder forms of election day rigging. I used mixed methods - combining insights from an original global dataset with extensive elite interviews conducted in five countries (Madagascar, Thailand, Tunisia, Zambia, and Côte d'Ivoire) - to establish that electoral exclusion is an attractive short-term election strategy for vulnerable incumbents that produces a much higher chance of victory but comes with high costs in the longer-term. Global probit modeling (using electoral exclusion as an independent variable and coups d'état and civil wars as separate dependent variables) suggests that, since the end of the Cold War, excluding opposition candidates from the ballot roughly doubles the risk of a coup d'état or quadruples the risk of civil war onset. In spite of these risks, incumbents fall into this 'exclusion trap' because of the shortened time horizon that frequently accompanies competitive multi-party elections. Vulnerable incumbents worry more about the short-term risk of losing an election than the long-term but ultimately unknown risk that political violence will ensue after the election. Finally, the inverse corollary of these findings is that inclusion of opposition candidates during multi-party elections can be a stabilizing factor. Though it may seem counterintuitive, fragile 'counterfeit democracies' - and so-called 'transitional' regimes - may be able to stave off existential threats to regime survival by extending an olive branch to their fiercest opponents. These findings combine to form the overarching argument of this dissertation: when opposition candidates are excluded from the ballot, they become more likely to turn to bullets by launching coups d'état and civil wars.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this research explores Zimbabwean literary and other cultural texts within the broader context of the construction of identities and the politics of inclusion and exclusion in nationalist and oppositional discourses. It also analyzes two texts by major non-Zimbabwean African writers to examine the thematic links between Zimbabwean and other African writing. Through combining historical, anthropological and political approaches with postcolonial, postmodern and feminist critical theories, the thesis explores the ways in which African writing and performance represent alternative histories to official versions of the nation. It further investigates questions of gender and their significance in nationalist discourses and shows how writing on war, trauma and healing informs and develops readers’ understanding of the relationship of the past to the present. Considered together as a coherent body of work, the published items submitted in this thesis explore how Zimbabwean and other African writers, through re-visioning history and writing from oppositional or marginal positions, intervene in political debates and suggest new transformative ways of constructing and negotiating identities in postcolonial societies.

The Chinese are the largest ethnic minority in Canada. As a group, they are well-known for not being able to speak fluent English, including those well-educated individuals who immigrated to Canada mainly in the 2000s. There is a rich literature in applied linguistics about immigrants’ second language learning. Nevertheless, studies on second language practice of this particular group of well-educated Chinese immigrants are lacking. This enquiry is aimed at exploring the reasons why well-educated professional Chinese immigrants, who constitute a large portion of the Chinese population in Canada, do not put more effort into improving their English after settling down there, even though a better level of proficiency can bring apparent benefits to their economic and social success in the new host country. Nineteen well-educated professional Chinese immigrants took part in in-depth interviews, the sole method of data collection of this exploratory study which has a conceptual framework capitalizing on such concepts as motivation/demotivation, value, capital, investment, community and identity. The findings reveal that the principal reason for a dearth of efforts is that they do not deem such efforts very necessary and worthwhile. The contribution of this study to knowledge lies in the conceptualization of non-investment, which complements the existing notion of investment by incorporating into it motivational/demotivational factors that the latter dismisses, and which addresses the issue as to what resources an individual depends on when making investment decisions. In addition, this concept is also a contribution to the under-researched area of demotivation. The immigration of well-educated Chinese professionals to Canada is one of the trends in human migration on the global scale which is a part of globalization. Therefore, the comprehension of the rationale behind their second language practice is significant to the applied linguists who work in the realm of globalization.

The concept of accessibility (hereafter “accessibility”) encapsulates the relationships between the availability of opportunities; an individual's ability to access, engage with and ‘benefit' from such opportunities, and; the problem of social exclusion. However, while “improving accessibility” has been a policy objective in the United Kingdom since 1997, an emphasis on economic and environmental considerations at the expense of social considerations has become a cause for concern. This thesis helps address that concern by exploring why and how accessibility should and could be made more directly relevant to people's everyday lives; and by proposing a form of and an approach to the implementation of accessibility that supports the provision of social interventions, irrespective of the origin and scale of the same. Consequently, this thesis critically reviews extant ideas of accessibility and redefines the concept using Amartya Sen's Capabilities Approach. It then explores the operationalization of that redefined concept through an action research case study in North-East Scotland. Finally, it examines the potential role of digital information and communication technology (ICT) in managing the accessibility related data needed to support decision taking in providing social interventions. The key findings are: (1) the capabilities approach enables the redefinition of accessibility as a holistic, more socially representative and agent centric concept; (2) that definition could be usefully related to the concept of social exclusion through the notion of risk; (3) this emerging theory and practise of accessibility requires further development to achieve broader acceptance; (4) that notwithstanding the philosophical arguments underpinning action research, the participation of ‘local' people in research can build stronger, more informed and productive (research) relationships, and; (5) the use of digital ICT is central to realising the full potential of accessibility.

In this thesis I examine the ways in which residents of France's so-called 'banlieues' respond to everyday life in stigmatised neighbourhoods. Through a description of the processes at work in two housing estate neighbourhoods of the southern French city of Nîmes - Pissevin and Valdegour - and drawing upon an analysis of intensive interviews, I question the popular belief that residents of French banlieue-spaces come to internalise the stigmatic representations that are produced outside their place of residence. The overarching argument of the thesis is that, while it is clear that territorial stigmatisation has long-lasting and pervasive consequences for banlieue residents, affecting their sense of self and their capacity for collective action, there are a number of ways in which the 'blemish of place' is challenged and the marks of neighbourhood stigma resisted. It is important to recognise the attempts that are made within French housing estates to displace or negotiate stigmatising gazes and to confront the labels that affix themselves to place. This thesis argues that there are a variety of counter-discursive attempts to reframe and to reclaim the representations of France's housing estates that leads to the affirmation of banlieue-identities. Within the banlieues, there are solid links between residents and place, as well as between the residents themselves. Strong efforts are deployed by associations, neighbourhood committees and grassroots organisations to actively challenge the stigmatic scripts that are imposed upon stigmatised neighbourhoods. However, this thesis also draws attention to the everyday tactics that residents enact in order to cope with territorial stigmatisation and its effects. These everyday practices allow for some to cope with the heavy burden of stigma while taking control of the 'neighbourhood space'. All of these tactics challenge and 'speak back' to the labels, the stereotypes and the stigmatising language that is produced at the level of urban planning. This leads to the vital rethinking of policies that aim to displace and disperse residents in the name of social mixing, as well as urban policy initiatives that equate renovation to the demolition of housing estates within French banlieues.

This dissertation offers a study of everyday relations between residents and the state on a post-industrial council estate in England. Drawing upon historical and ethnographic data, it analyses how, often under conditions of sustained exclusion, residents rely upon the state in their daily struggles for security and survival. My central ethnographic finding is that residents personalise the state alongside informal networks of support and care into a local sociality of reciprocity. This finding can be broken into three interconnected points. First, I argue that the reciprocal contract between citizens and the state emerged in the post-war years when the residents on the newly built estates negotiated their dependence upon the state by integrating it into their on-going social relations. A climate of relative material affluence, selective housing policies, and a paternalistic regime of housing management all created conditions which were conducive for this temporary union between residents and the state. Second, however, I argue that with the decline of industry and shifts towards neoliberal policies, residents increasingly struggle to hold the state accountable to its reciprocal obligations towards local people. This becomes manifest today both in the material neglect of council estates as well as in state officials' reluctance to become implicated in social relations with and between residents. Third, I argue that this failure on the part of the state to attend to residents' demands often has onerous effects on people's lives. It not only exacerbates residents' exposure to insecurity and threat, but is also experienced as a moral affront which generates larger narratives of abandonment and betrayal. Theoretically, this dissertation critically discusses and challenges contrasting portrayals of the state, and of state-citizen relations, in two bodies of literature. On the one hand, in much of the sociological and anthropological literature on working class communities, authors have adopted a community-centred approach which has depicted working class communities as self-contained entities against which the state emerges as a distant or hostile entity. I argue that such a portrayal is premised upon a romanticised view of working class communities which neglects the intimate presence of the state in everyday life. On the other hand, the theoretical literature on the British state has adopted a state-centred perspective which has seen the state as a renewed source of order and authority in disintegrating communities today. My suggestion is that this portrayal rests upon a pathologising view of social decline which fails to account for the persistence of informal social relations and the challenges that these pose to the state's authority from below. Finally, moving beyond the community-centred and state-centred perspectives, I argue for the need to adopt a middle ground which combines an understanding of the nature and workings of informal relations with an acknowledgement of the ubiquity of the state. Such an approach allows us to recognise that, far from being a hostile entity or, alternatively, an uncontested source of order, the state occupies shifting positions within an overarching sociality of reciprocity and its associated demands for alliances and divisions. I refer to such an approach as the personalisation of the state.

This thesis examines marginality as a regime of interconnectedness. Drawing on the ethnographic material from a 16-month-fieldwork between October 2009 and December 2010 on the street economy and streetlife in Arada, the old city centre of Addis Ababa’s inner city, I argue that marginalized subjects are not to be seen as social actors that inhabit and create alternative and parallel social, political and economic realities away from the mainstream society. Rather, the way the urban poor are connected and integrated in the broader political economy of the Ethiopian urban society frames and defines modalities, forms and experiences of marginality. From this perspective, this thesis focuses on the on-going reconfiguration of the street economy in Addis Ababa’s inner city. Since the early 2000s, the increasing concern with poverty reduction and good governance in the development agenda has concurred with the attempts of the ruling party to expand its machinery of political control and mobilization at the grassroots of urban society. In this context, under the impact of development programs promoting the establishment of small-scale enterprises, the street economy has undergone a pervasive process of formalization and politicization that has come to advance the realization of an authoritarian form of developmental state, while imposing a regime of unskilled and badly paid labour on the street. This thesis examines this process by looking at the history of streetlife in Arada, as a terrain of social, economic and political practice, and it recounts the everyday life and life trajectories of those involved in the street economy. In particular, I look at how the political reconfiguration of the street economy has come to intertwine with the way living through marginality and dealing with forms of social inequality on the street have been historically conceptualized and experienced in Addis Ababa’s inner city.

This thesis explores Turkish migrants’ practices of diabetes care in Germany. Health statistics frequently identify minority groups as vulnerable to chronic illness and Turkish-origin Germans are said to be more likely to suffer from type 2 diabetes than Germans or Turks in Turkey. Anthropological studies on marginal population groups with diabetes explore experiences of social suffering and inequality that influence such high illness prevalence, or investigate how conflictual lay beliefs and medical encounters affect illness care. Those studies that analyse active diabetes patient and healthcare practices concentrate on the majority population. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Berlin from September 2006 to September 2007, this thesis examines how Turkish Berliners actively engage in diabetes care, and thus joins two themes seldom connected: illness practices and marginality. Initial interviews with healthcare professionals alluded to a Turkish migrant patient group living in deprivation and immobilised by high illiteracy rates, lacking language skills and health knowledge. Despite such experience of marginality, ethnographic exploration revealed that informal diabetes care, for example through a Turkishlanguage self-help group, is nonetheless individually and collectively negotiated where formal care is inadequate. On the one hand, the thesis investigates practices of diabetes control in learning, monitoring and manoeuvring diabetes. Rather than representing the common image of the inert, disadvantaged migrant patient, Turkish Berliners of the self-help group engage in deliberate “tactics of diabetes control” to make their chronic illness experience habitable. On the other hand, the thesis explores how “diabetes among Turkish-origin Berliners” can be a form of sociality, political activism and economic enterprise that involves many social actors not only patients and their healthcare professionals, in order to fill a provision gap.

Gothic literature represents what lies in the margins of society, with the forbidden and impossible. Following Jacques Rancière ideas on the politics of literature, this thesis explores the political implications of the Gothic narrative of Argentinian author Mariana Enríquez by analyzing the representation of marginalized subjects. In Mariana Enríquez's Gothic narrative, marginality and disability embody society's fears and anxieties by becoming monstruous. Nevertheless, this monstrosity is one created by the society that fears it. Enríquez's monsters are a product of a society where institutions themselves have become monstrous: the military dictatorship of the 70's and 80's ignores the law and disappears thousands of people, while the wealthy elites are allowed to utilize the bodies of marginalized groups for their own benefit. Disability becomes monstruous when it refuses to adapt to social ideas of normalcy. In "Nuestra parte de noche", the reinterpretation of disability by the religious sect of The Order ultimately serves their own interests: to control the bodies of their followers.

Marginal cropland is suboptimal due to historically low and variable productivity and limiting biophysical characteristics. To support future agricultural management and policy decisions in Nebraska, U.S.A, it is important to understand where cropland is marginal for its two most economically important crops: corn (Zea mays) and soybean (Glycine max). As corn and soybean are frequently planted in a crop rotation, it is important to consider if there is a relationship with cropland marginality. Based on the current literature, there exists a need for a flexible yet robust methodology for identifying marginal land at different scales, which takes advantage of high spatial and temporal resolution data and can be applied by researchers and outreach professionals alike. This research seeks to individually identify where cropland is marginal for corn and soybean as well as classify the extent of marginality that exists. This research also seeks to classify cropland as being part of a long-term corn-soybean crop and see if marginality differs between this cropland and the remainder of cropland. Two crop-specific multi-criteria evaluations (MCE), consisting of crop production, climate, and soil criteria, was performed using Google Earth Engine to identify and classify marginal cropland. Criteria were individually thresholded before addition to the MCEs. Cropland that was classified as part of a long-term corn-soybean crop rotation was identified by factoring in the balance of corn and soybean occurrence on long established cropland. Most cropland in Nebraska has at least some marginality for corn while most has no marginality for soybean. Marginality classification is spatially distributed with increasing marginality from the northeast to the southwest. Cropland under a long-term crop rotation shows much less marginality compared to non-rotation cropland. This study improves upon previous attempts to identify marginal cropland in Nebraska by increasing spatial and temporal resolution, providing a programmatic and replicable methodology, and confining the classification to existing cropland. The implications of these findings are useful for policy makers and agricultural extension efforts in Nebraska to identify opportunities for conservation, solar energy capture, and biofuel production on cultivated land. Advisor: Yi Qi

The number of students reporting or seeking assistance for trauma has steadily risen over time. Research suggests that between 67% and 84% of students in college will experience a potentially traumatic event (PTE) in their lifetime. This percentage increases for women and for Black students. As the number of PTE exposure rises so too does the need to understand how trauma impacts education, learning, and personal development. Researchers have expressed a growing concern over the needs of trauma-affected students in recent decades. There is a dearth of research on the experiences of trauma-affected students and their overall inability to persist in higher education. However, there is a lack of research on the experiences of successful trauma- affected Black women who have persisted past the second year of college. Employing a participatory research design, the purpose of this study is to explore and record the experiences of trauma-affected Black women who have defined themselves as successful at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) through photovoice. Data analysis from the pilot study illuminated three essential shared experiences across participants: (a) Black women persist despite numerous obstacles; (b) being happy and finding one’s sense of purpose is the key to success; and (c) institutions may not have the people or the resources to adequately support trauma-affected Black women which forces these students to live on the margins of this community. The second phase of this study complimented the experiences shared in the pilot study and include four more essential experiences across the participants: (a) persistence and resilience is complex and participants need adequate levels of support to succeed; (b) educational success is strongly impacted by mental health; (c) Black women are simultaneously hypervisible and marginalized in PWIs; and (d) there are experiences that are completely unique to doctoral students, especially first generation doctoral students.

This thesis examines the trope of hunger in Cuban cinema produced during the socio-economic context known as the Special Period. Films selected for this discussion are Fresa y chocolate (1993) by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío, and El Rey de La Habana (2015) by Agustí Villaronga. Focused on the analysis of the trope of hunger, this study offers a summary of the Cuban cultural manifestations of the last decades that have addressed the issue of hunger as well as a brief historical context that allows us to understand the development of this trope from 1960 to the present. Focused on the aforementioned films, this study has observed the aesthetic and stylistic particularities used in filmic representations to convey the island's shortcomings. The thesis demonstrates the existence of two main famines within Cuban society: cultural hunger and physiological hunger. Cultural hunger is studied in Fresa y chocolate as a direct consequence of the cultural control of the repressive ideological apparatus implanted in the sixties. The analysis of El Rey de la Habana shows how physiological hunger builds a marginal and abject subject, unable to escape the vicious circle that society has imposed on him.

The purpose of this research study was to determine the attitudes of low-income, first-generation White students' as it relates to their sense of mattering at Rowan University. In addition to a demographic sheet, data were collected using Mattering Inventory (Tovar et al., 2009).

How does a citizen become a data subject? This dissertation examines on-the-ground problems and practices in building and appropriation of Aadhaar (translation: Foundation), the biometrics-based national identification infrastructure of India. It advances public understanding of the affordances and limits of biometrics-based data infrastructures in practically achieving inclusive development and reshaping the nature of Indian citizenship. Deploying a mix of interview-based multi-sited ethnographic research and documentary analysis, I examine how various Indian bureaucracies—especially, the Public Distribution System that establishes access to food rights for low-income households—are using Aadhaar to distribute welfare. Aadhaar is imbricated with existing practices of identifying and authenticating each eligible citizen’s claim to government services. I show how making these claims becomes a matter of making as much of the Indian population as possible visible through Aadhaar. Tracing the sociotechnical, legal, and administrative development of Aadhaar, this dissertation captures the artful blending of the entrepreneurial culture of IT start-ups with the bureaucratic culture of the Indian government. It develops the framework of seeing like an infrastructure to analyze the distributed work of street-level bureaucrats in administering and everyday struggles of low-income citizens in securing welfare benefits. Certain combinations of data provide more comprehensive pictures of citizens than others. Visibility afforded by data infrastructures is not just a method of state control; it also conditions citizens’ existence, rights, and participation in state services as data subjects. Drawing inspiration from the optical attribute of resolution, I describe how the Indian state zooms in and out of the lives of citizens in (re)configurations of the registration, circulation, and interpretation of their data. The spectrum of this resolution embeds multiple meanings of citizenship. A low-resolution citizen faces challenges of data-driven marginalization; a high-resolution citizen must often contend with invasion of privacy and surveillance. In emerging regimes of data-driven governance, the work of resolving citizens through data is simultaneously a social and a moral problem: social, because making up and interpreting a population as data requires so much work, organization, and discipline; moral, because using data records to represent citizens inevitably involves responding to demands of fairness, accountability, and social justice.

This study explores feelings of marginality and mattering as defined by Schlossberg (1989) in LGBTQIA undergraduate students at Rowan University. The study used a modified version of the College Mattering Inventory (Tovar, Simon, and Lee, distributed via email to students utilizing the university's LGBTQIA Center. The study provided an opportunity for LGBTQIA undergraduate students to give feedback regarding their experiences at Rowan. A total of 39 students responded to the survey. The study found that LGBTQIA undergraduate students at Rowan University are experiencing feelings of mattering and marginality simultaneously. These students feel that they matter as students, and that they matter as LGBTQIA individuals, but there is dissonance between these identities that is creating feelings of isolation, loneliness, invisibility, and marginality. Overall, the LGBTQIA undergraduate population is struggling as a marginalized group, but is having some positive experiences indicative of feelings of mattering as well.

This study explores the theory of mattering first developed by Rosenberg and McCullough (1981) that was later adapted to a higher education setting by Schlossberg (1989) and applies it to an international student context. More specifically, this study aims to measure the degree to which international students feel as though they matter to Rowan University across six subscales: general college mattering, mattering versus marginality, mattering to counselors, mattering to instructors, mattering to students, and perception of value. Using the College Mattering Inventory (CMI) instrument developed by Tovar, Simon, and Lee (2008), 132 international students at Rowan University were surveyed on their perception of mattering. Forty-five students responded, yielding a response rate of 34%. Tentative findings suggest that international students generally feel a relatively high level of mattering. Comparisons with undergraduate, residential students in a previous study (McGuire 2012) indicate that internationals actually had higher levels of mattering across four of the six subscales. However, they scored lower in the mattering to students and general college mattering subscales and on specific questions related to loneliness in the mattering versus marginality subscale. Suggestions for further practice related to these areas are recommended.

The purpose of this study is to gather deaf student feedback and to better understand if they feel as though they matter to Rowan University. This study also provides an opportunity for deaf students to express their experiences transitioning from K-12 to a higher education institution. A total population of 24 were targeted in this study and they had the opportunity to complete the College Mattering Inventory (CMI), which showed their feelings of mattering verses marginality. A total of 83% of the population responded to this study. Following the completion of the survey, a total of three subject agreed to participate in individual interviews to better understand their transition to college, as well as the quality of their accommodations and services. Overall, students who were registered as deaf or hearing impaired with the Academic Success Center at Rowan University showed positive feelings of mattering in their careers. Also, this study showed that deaf students are experiencing similar transitions into college as other students. There is, however, room to better improve the feelings of mattering to instructors and continue to better accommodations offered to the deaf student population at Rowan University.

Abstract: This thesis explores the unofficial photography of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus in the 1980s and 1990s: an art form that is barely studied in academia and therefore remains almost completely unknown to the general public. The dissertation offers a novel perspective of research within Eastern European art, as it reflects on the photographic practices in the context of a transitional period in these former Soviet republics: the era of stagnation during the early 1980s, the Perestroika of 1986, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the decade that followed it. Photographs which best represent the characteristics of these art movements during such a pivotal time in history for these three countries were selected and different information was collected directly from photographers and art institutions, analysed and presented in my manuscript. The formal analysis of the selected photographs uncovered the evolution of certain socio-cultural and politico-economic aspects in Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian societies and at the same time the impact of this evolution on photographic art itself. This study proceeds along four axes. First, it examines photographic truth in the selected images and reveals that it is defined by the authenticity of the authorial approach, the abolishment of socialist ideology, and a critical vision of reality. Secondly, it scrutinizes the notion of critical realism and its divergence from socialist realism (officially sanctioned theory and method of artistic expression, which prevailed in the Soviet Union between the 1930s and late 1980s). Thirdly, it explores various unorthodox practices the photographers used, such as work with photographic ‘margins’, the documentation of ‘subaltern’ characters, and the use of ‘minor’ language of photography. Finally, this work shows how Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian photography under study offers a critical view of everyday life in the region. Unlike the sanctioned photography of the 1980s and the commercial photography of the 1990s, the photography studied reveals the unspoken truth about the everyday and its heroes who appear far from the role models suggested by socialist realist and capitalist methods. The work presented in this thesis also aims at laying a solid foundation for further research concerning the evolution of photography in post-Soviet countries.

The purpose of this study was to determine the sense of mattering in the Bantivoglio Honors Concentration at Rowan University. A secondary purpose was to use this population to compare feelings of mattering between residential and commuting students. The subjects of this study were 240 Rowan University students who were enrolled in an undergraduate program as well as the Bantivoglio Honors Concentration during the spring semester of 2017. Data were collected using a variation of the College Mattering Inventory (Tovar et al., 2009), which contains 29 Likert scale statements consisting of six subscales that sought to determine students' attitudes toward mattering. Results indicate that students enrolled in the Bantivoglio Honors Concentration had a higher overall sense of mattering when compared to the normative sample by Tovar, Simon, and Lee (2009) as well as a previous study on mattering conducted at Rowan University (McGuire, 2012) with undergraduate students. This study also found that when comparing residential and commuting students in the same concentration, commuter students had all-around lower feelings of mattering and higher feelings of marginality than their residential peers.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether Latino/a students at Rowan University felt as though they mattered. The subjects in this study consisted of undergraduate, full-time and part-time students at Rowan University enrolled during the 2014 Spring semester. Data were collected using the College Mattering Inventory, which consisted of 29 Likert scale items. The findings of this study revealed that Latina/o students at Rowan University generally have positive attitudes toward mattering in the subscales. Latina/o students at Rowan University reported the lowest levels of mattering in the general college mattering sub-scale and the Mattering to Students sub-scale. Overall there were only marginal differences in the mean scores of the study of Rowan University business transfer students by Johnston (2014), Rowan University residential students by McGuire (2012) and those of Rowan University Latina/o students.

Although a vast body of research on social identity considers marginalized individuals (e.g., women of color) as disadvantaged in the workplace, extant scholarship provides little support for ways in which their ‘marginality’ positively impacts their work experiences, particularly in leadership. Marginality refers to (1) a structural condition in which individuals lack resources and access to achieve status in society, (2) a psychological orientation derived from existing at the nexus of two opposing cultures or entities, and (3) a lived experience where individuals criticize social institutions and cultivate resources for survival. Given the emerging focus of positive, generative processes embedded in and among underrepresented populations (Roberts, Wooten, & Davidson, 2016), I examined how Black women extract meaning from their marginality to construct positive work identities, and used their marginality to shape institutional structures and processes. Specifically, I capturing Black clergywomen’s sensemaking of their underrepresentation and marginalization as church leaders to deepen our insight for how marginality is experienced in the workplace. To address my research questions, I conducted an interpretive phenomenological analysis of Black clergywomen (n =28) practicing in Protestant churches across the United States. I critically examined their life narratives and found that Black clergywomen notice structural marginality, recognize their own psychological experiences of marginality in leadership roles, and embrace marginality through as a tool to effectively navigate their organizations. Additionally, I find that the persistence of institutional barriers position Black clergywomen as critical lovers of their institutions which they reshape through their everyday identity and institutional work. Based on my findings, I propose a conceptual model of Black clergywomen using their marginality to extract meaning and develop behaviors that facilitate the construction of positive work identities and organizations.

Because racial and ethnic minorities each have recent histories of continuous acts of subordination and discrimination in the United States, members of these groups may be more aware of and sympathetic to other types of discrimination. In this dissertation, I address the question: do perceptions of marginalization within one disadvantaged group increase support for policies favoring another marginalized group? Using two multi-racial, nationally representative surveys, I examine the role of perceived marginality on support for a variety of policies. For racial minorities, I find that perceptions of discrimination against one’s racial ingroup and linked fate with the ingroup predict support for of policies favoring other marginalized groups. As racial minorities perceive a more open society with opportunities for social mobility, the more likely they are to favor the status quo and oppose policy interventions.

Like much of Subsaharan Africa, development has been an ever-present aspect to postcolonial life for the Halpulaar populations of the Fuuta Tooro region of southern Mauritania. With the collapse of locally historical modes of production by which the population formerly sustained itself, Fuuta communities recognize the need for change and adaptation to the different political, economic, social, and ecological circumstances in which they find themselves. Development has taken on a particular urgency as people look for effective strategies to adjust to new realities while maintaining their sense of cultural identity. Unfortunately, the initiatives, projects, and partnerships that have come to fruition through development have not been enough to bring improvements to the quality of life in the region. Fuuta communities find their capacity to develop hindered by three macro challenges: climate change, their marginalized status within the Mauritanian national community, and the region's unfavorable integration into the global economy by which the local markets act as backwaters that accumulate the detritus of global trade. Any headway that communities can make against any of these challenges tends to be swallowed up by the forces associated with the other challenges. The upshot is that Fuuta residents feel that life is getting worse instead of better, and there is a sense that their communities do not have a viable future. While they feel frustrated and abandoned by their own government and the international community, they cannot give up trying to survive and improve the quality of their lives. Fuuta communities remain ready to engage in partnerships through development, with the hope that partners be more willing to listen to the perspectives and expertise that local communities have accumulated through a half-century of development efforts. From their point of view, the institutional infrastructure of development needs to integrate itself with the grassroots to provide better support to local production, economic activity, and social services as communities struggle to overcome the challenges they face. To Fuuta communities, such an integration would embody their notion of communitarian solidarity (jokkere en¿am), which was the primary historical basis for the survival and flourishing of Halpulaar society in the difficult environment of the region. For the time being, development practices do not align with this ideal, while the international development community operates at a substantial remove from Fuuta populations. This work recommends that development organizations and scholars seriously engage the cultural dimension of local communities to better address the survival and livelihood concerns that arise from persistent underdevelopment.

This thesis focuses on three community-centered initiatives in Fiji undertaken by WWFSouth Pacific Programme Office (WWF-SPPO), to examine how this organization's CBNRM efforts challenge or reinforce meanings of marginality, community and identity in Fiji. It examines existing state-constructed imaginings of national belonging and marginality in Fiji and how these identities and meanings have been reproduced through contemporary international conservation discourse. This analysis demonstrates how current CBNRM generally reinforces existing inequitable constructions of belonging in, ownership of, and marginality in, Fiji's landscape.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between acculturation and mammography utilization among Korean American (KA) women. The specific aims of this study were to determine the differences in demographic characteristics, perceived health beliefs, self-efficacy, and knowledge of breast cancer, and mammogram history among the four cultural groups (American identity, Bicultural, Korean identity, and Marginality) of KA women, and to examine the effects of the level of acculturation on the likelihood of getting a mammogram. Breast cancer remains the most commonly diagnosed cancer among KA women. However, KA women consistently have lower screening rates for breast cancer. Although the overall rate of mammogram utilization by KA women in the United States is low, it is relatively higher when compared with that of women in Korea. This comparatively higher screening rate in KA women may be an indication of sociocultural influences from the host country. A descriptive correlational study using a cross sectional design was conducted. A convenience of sample of 215 KA women was recruited from local Korean churches in LA County. The participants completed several self-administered questionnaires and they were divided into four cultural groups according to their scores on the acculturation scale. The perceived barriers played as the most significant factor for receiving a mammogram. The American identity group scored the highest in the self-efficacy scale while the Marginality group scored the lowest. No relationship was identified between knowledge and mammography utilization. The American identity group had the highest rate (57.1%) of recent mammograms while the Marginality group had the lowest rate (26.1%). The Bicultural group had the highest rate (21.7%) of regular mammograms while the Korean identity and Marginality groups demonstrated lower rates. Logistic Regressions demonstrated that the Bicultural group would be significantly more likely to receive regular mammograms than the Korean identity group (OR = 0.340). Therefore, acculturation was an important predictor for mammography utilization among KA women in this study. Developing culturally appropriate interventions with specific emphasis on targeting different acculturation levels would be an important factor for increasing breast cancer screening practices of KA women. Keywords: acculturation, mammography, Korean American women.

Drawing on data from thirteen qualitative interviews this thesis aims to understand the experiences of Black male student-athletes at a predominantly white university. Robert Park's (1928) theory of the marginal man is the guiding framework for this study. Taking the marginal man theoretical framework into mind, Black male student athletes are an interesting group to study because they occupy a unique social location,one on the margins. Respondents expressed that they experience stress and are marginalized academically, athletically, and socially. Respondents' perceptions of social support have also been recorded and analyzed. Findings suggest that the respondents view stressful experiences and subsequent experiences with social support at the university to be a consequence of a combination of their race and role as student-athletes.

The purpose of this dissertation is to study the thematic and aesthetic changes in contemporary Indian Anglophone novels written since 2000 and addressing socio-economic changes that globalization brought to India. The economic liberalization of India in 1991 resulted in a wide array of changes, mainly based on the tenets of neoliberalism, in the socio-economic and political constitution of India. Primarily an economic vision, ‘neoliberalism’ wields immense influence on the social sphere and government policies that aim at developing a free growth of the market, transnational movement of capital and labor, privatization of the public infrastructures, and an emphasis on notions of individual responsibility and self-care. This project analyzes how the recent Indian Anglophone novels represent these changes in contemporary India in terms of the new modes of neoliberal subjectivity and citizenship; the structural changes taking place in India after liberalization; and the ways in which the marginalized groups are perceived and treated in post-liberalized India. In order to reach these objectives, this project focuses on three distinct themes of Indian novels (social upward mobility, remodeling of the Indian cities, and environmental rights) and studies their reflection on fictional characters representing marginalized sections of the Indian society. Methodologically, this project seeks to forge connections between various disciplines and conventional literary studies by reading selected Indian novels through three main critical frameworks--neoliberalism, urban studies and eco criticism—that correspond to the three central issues of contemporary globalization—namely the dynamics of neoliberal ideology, the restructuring of the urban space and the environmental debates of globalization. Through the above objectives, this project contributes to the recent developments in postcolonial studies that move from its predominantly cultural conceptualization of globalization towards an emphasis on the materialist realities of globalization as well. A project like this is especially pertinent today to locate the changing trends in Indian Anglophone novels and the way these novels foreground a critical discourse of globalization that challenges the dominant conceptualization of globalization as an unadulterated emancipatory force, especially in the global South.

This dissertation is an in-depth investigation of the manner in which Peruvian Andean identities are represented and constructed in Cusqueñan literature after José María Arguedas’s posthumous publication of El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (1971). In this text, fragmented language reconstructs itself in the form of a new community for the future that can be seen as the symbolic “body” of a possible nation, a “utopia under construction.” Peruvian Andean authors after Arguedas echo his perspective on language through their literary production: they pick up the fragments of the Andean past to recreate and reformulate a new Andean identity through language. Subsequently, they transform their perceived marginality into the “new center” of Peruvian contemporary identity by positing choledad (a term originating in the Colonial era used to negatively denote a person’s Andean or indigenous characteristics) as a defining trait of all Peruvians.

The purpose of this ethnographic case study was to explore the construction and alteration of Roanoke Virginia's cultural imaginary, as well as the engagement of marginal groups and their concerns in those processes. This research examined these issues through the experiences of key actors involved with the creation of Roanoke's first city-wide arts and cultural plan and the creation and growth of the Roanoke-based Marginal Arts Festival (MAF). Cities around the globe are increasingly engaged in transnational projects of place identification, reconfiguration, and attraction: attracting capital, residents, workers, tourists and attention (Cronin & Hetherington, 2008; Hague, 2005; Jensen, 2005, 2007; Pine & Gilmore, 1999; Zukin 1995). Moreover, cities undertake various kinds of identity projects: on-going, dynamic processes through which spaces are produced and reproduced by conscious strategies of place making and identity building (Nyseth & Viken, 2009). Such initiatives are concerted efforts to establish or extend a particular idea, or imaginary, of a city. This study focused on one kind of urban identity endeavor that has become widespread during the past two decades: the effort to shape and market a creative, culture-rich place, to project a specific urban cultural imaginary. This analysis also responded to a straightforward problem, that of the manner through which people, in places pursuing arts and culture as a primary focus for development, come to terms with differing understandings of art and its role in development. This study identified four principal future paths for the analysis of cultural imaginaries and the practice of cultural development: studying and supporting civic tinkering activities, recognizing the relevance of localized imaginaries and urban identity projects, valuing full participation in the project of the city, and conducting place-specific and critical analyses.

This qualitative study examined the experiences of lay administrators at freestanding theological seminaries, their perceptions of meaning related to their work, and how those perceptions have an impact on decisions about their careers. Schlossberg’s research on career transitions, and marginality and mattering, informed the inquiry. The study sought to identify the self-perceptions of lay administrators of freestanding seminaries within their workplaces, and within the academy. Analysis of interviewed participants was approached from a phenomenological perspective, using Colaizzi’s (1978) model of phenomenological inquiry. Results indicate that lay administrators focused on themes of knowledge, community, change, leadership, and the insider’s perspective when thinking about themselves and their careers.

This research investigates how, in the aftermath of 20 years of internal war, rural Quechua speakers in the Peruvian Andes are labeled as ‘marginal’ subjects by scholars, government personnel and aid agencies. This category, and the discourse it produces, are widely used and systematically preclude the recognition of rural Quechuas’ voices, projects and expectations. Looking to highlight the economic exclusion of indigenous groups in Peru, scholars have broadly used ‘marginality’ without acknowledging that through this category they are perpetuating the same condition that they aim to denounce. This work approaches social and political mediation enacted by local authorities, NGOs, government agencies, politicians, scholars, and insurrectionary groups produces and reproduces hierarchical relationships of race and power. The analysis is centered in Chapi (in the district of Chungui), an Andean community in the Peruvian region of Ayacucho which was a key theater of war for two major insurrectionary movements, each with its own state project, 25 years apart. This community had been the scene of endemic violence, both physical and symbolic, directed at smallholders and peons by ‘strongman’ landowners (Sp. gamonales). Afterwards, this community became the setting of localized legal and insurrectionary violence against Chunguinos (i.e. the inhabitants of the district capital). Racial ideologies and practices upon which governmental policies are constructed (nurtured in many cases by scholarly and NGO research), continues stratifying Peru in two different groups: the Creoles, associated with modernity and development; and the indigenous group, associated with poverty and backwardness. This ideology is at the core of how the Andes and its inhabitants have often been understood by the Peruvian academia and the state, and results in the continuous legitimization of the urban group domination over the Andes. This work investigates and analyzes the central role that social mediation plays in this process.

My dissertation, “The Architecture of Homelessness: Space, Marginality, and Exile in Modern French and Japanese Literature and Film,” explores the literature of marginality in the age of rampant urban growth and development, initially during the Haussmannization of Paris and during Meiji Japan. Both cross-cultural and interdisciplinary, my project compares the liminal aspects of the architecture of two vastly different metropolises, Paris and Tokyo, through representations in literature and film. In addition, it reaches back in time to mid-nineteenth century and stretches forward to modern day. The opening chapters analyze works by writers Emile Zola, Higuchi Ichiyō, and Shimazaki Tōson, who captured their respective countries' urban transformation as it was occurring and simultaneously represented the lives of people, especially the lower classes, marginalized by this exponential growth. In these chapters I argue that the liminal space left over from newly built architecture and the space on the edge of mainstream society becomes “home” to those displaced persons. This process of urbanization and the subsequent marginalization of its minorities irrevocably bind these two nations together.While my first three chapters concentrate on the rapid urbanization of Paris and Tokyo as represented in literature, in the final chapter, I articulate the way in which homelessness is depicted on film in France and Japan through cinematic analysis of five films: Akira Kurosawa's Rashōmon and Dodesukaden, Eric Rohmer's Le Signe du Lion, Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine, and Abdellatif Kechiche's L'Esquive. I argue that these four filmmakers, in the style of Naficy's “exile cinema,” confront this taboo topic in their texts by bringing the problem of urban failure to the public's consciousness. Rather than mental illness, addiction, poverty, or ill-fated fortunes, I propose that the central problem of homelessness rests with an individual's alienation from his or her community or in-group. Homelessness, urban living, and marginal spaces are not particular to any one city. My project moves away from East-West dualism and area studies to explore global concepts of space, the effects of rapid urbanization at its onset and today, and the problem of homelessness, which has no boundaries.

Abstract: This thesis examined factors affecting Chinese Canadians’ visitation to local parks and distant parks. These factors included environment identity, leisure attitudes, attitudes towards parks, level of acculturation and marginality. It was anticipated that these factors would positively predict Chinese Canadians’ visitation to parks. Convenience sampling of Chinese Canadians was conducted at three cities, Vancouver, Toronto and Edmonton. A self-completed questionnaire was used to collect data. The average response rate was 42%; 624 questionnaires were input into the data file. Passive activities characterized respondents’ participation in park-based activities. Lack of time was the most frequently reported constraint to visiting parks. Respondents’ suggestions for improving the park visitor experience included better and more accessible washrooms and parking lots, more entertainment facilities and more facilities for children. Respondents reported high levels of environmental identity, positive attitudes towards parks, and positive attitudes towards leisure, as well as moderate levels of acculturation. Results from multiple regression analysis revealed that only environmental identity positively predicted visits to local and distant parks.

The purpose of this study was to qualitatively explore the issues of race and mattering in relation to African American participation within historically White fraternities. Participant perspectives were obtained through six interviews with African American males at four collegial institutions within the Southeastern Region of the United States. Critical Race Theory was utilized to framed issues surrounding race in a homogenous Greek context. A second lens, Rosenberg and McCullough's (1981) concept of mattering, provided a comprehensive description of participants' feelings of significance within the inter-racial Greek experience. Thematic findings indicate that although African American members are recruited to be a part of a particular historically White fraternity's brotherhood, they initially experience marginality. Through continued interaction, the fraternal bonds become strengthened with participants rising to varying levels of leadership within the group, and, mattering to their White fraternal brothers. Other themes related to African American participation within historically White fraternities include: (a) One or no family member that attended college, (b) no immediate family members that are Greek, (c) significance of race is downplayed, (d) limited fraternal knowledge prior to entering college, (e) recruitment is driven by image, status, and counter assumption, (f) stereotypical organizations are racial holdouts; and, (g) discord exist with other African Americans that disapprove of the inter-racial experience.

Single parent households are on the rise, and female headed households are more likely to live in poverty than other single parent households (Holyfield, 2002). Many single mothers who do not have an undergraduate degree see education as a way out of poverty (Holyfield, 2002; Heller & Bjorklund, 2004). This research was undertaken to highlight areas where universities are assisting single mothers to attain a degree. This qualitative study utilized semi-structured in depth interviews of 16 single mothers who transferred from community college to a university. Three themes emerged regarding the educational experiences of single mothers who work and attend college. The first theme, “Finding my way to and through college†; highlights their motivating factors, their support network(s) and their feelings of pride. The second theme, “Struggle for legitimacy as a parenting student†focuses on the challenges that confront mothers as students: invisibility within the institution, and the fact that motherhood is a full time job which she cannot neglect. The final theme, “Striving for balance between multiple roles†centers around how they cope with their multiple obligations: knowing herself (honoring abilities as well as limits), and overcoming time scarcity (by managing multiple priorities). Women in this study were challenged by financial need not met by aid packages, finding appropriate child care, insensitive instructors and class schedules which made working difficult. These women were proud of their academic accomplishments and felt supported by institutional recognition of success. They were also supported by student health, counseling services and academic support programs.

This dissertation argues that efforts to identify, improve, and, at times, preserve “marginal” environments such as moor, marshlands and alpine slopes both contributed to and complicated the broader process of state-building in modern France. It employs the concept of environmental marginality, defined broadly as a set of unequal but mutable economic, political and cultural relations between the French state and rural communities, to demonstrate how environmental claims forwarded and frustrated state power. In particular, it highlights the role of discourses of degradation, risk and the public good in the ongoing negotiation between the French state and rural peripheries over the proper use and allocation of natural resources. Three case studies frame the geographical and temporal scope of this dissertation: the creation and management of pine forests in the Landes de Gascogne south of Bordeaux; the reclamation and hydraulic engineering of the Camargue, delta of the Rhone river; and the alpine restoration campaign in the southern Alps and Pyrenees. I argue that these projects of environmental engineering, initiated by the Second Empire and extended by the Third Republic, reflected a shift in attitudes towards national territory, from a given set of geographical boundaries defined by sovereignty to a space of rationalization and improvement. Distinct in scale, scope and objectives, all three projects sought the same end: to govern nature in a way that best served the agricultural, commercial and industrial needs of the nation. At the same time, the dissertation demonstrates how environmental marginality tested the limits and coherence of state power. Marginal landscapes, I contend, did not easily submit to the demands of modernization and state-building. Rather, they proved to be stubborn sites of contestation and creative appropriation, where the conventional boundaries between state and society blur. Rural and urban groups alike vied with both the state and one another for control over the material resources and cultural meaning of local environments. Environmental marginality, this dissertation concludes, was not merely a useful fiction of administrative control but rather an ongoing dialogue of national belonging that emerged at the interstices of state, society and nature.

This dissertation examines how otherness and marginality are articulated in three literary works: Reinaldo Arenas’ Antes que anochezca (1992), Fernando Vallejo#8217;s La virgen de los sicarios (1994) and Paulo Lins’ Cidade de Deus (1997). Furthermore, this study investigates whether the representation of subjects historically viewed as peripheral, both inside and outside the borders of the nation, perpetuates or undermines the conceptualization of the Latin American continental identity as “Other” in relation to dominant Eurocentric and North American perspectives.The choice of the texts of Arenas, Vallejo and Lins as paradigms of representation in the Latin American context is not fortuitous. Antes, La virgen and Cidade de Deus are works that underscore renewed perspectives on the significance of the nation inasmuch as they challenge the conventionality of historical discourses through the articulation of marginal subjectivities as prevailing accounts of reality. Arenas’ autobiography constitutes a narrative in which the exilic Self subverts the hegemony of the Cuban socialist state by contesting history and its truth through the account of a homosexual and political dissident who witnesses and personally contributes to one of the most defining moments of the nation’s past; Vallejo’s representation of the formerly exiled intellectual in La virgen, in complicity with the sicariato class with which he associates himself, inscribes the marginal elements of Colombian society onto the present narrative of the nation; and Lins’ re-imagination of the favelado space in Cidade de Deus dismantles the conventional perception of Brazil as a racial paradise by denouncing the poverty found in the slums of Rio de Janeiro as a social condition intrinsically tied to the country’s racial “invisibility.”