Between the crusades and Columbus, the Genoese maritime empire centered in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea transformed into a financial empire based on the Iberian peninsula. From the thirteenth century, Mongol, Mamluk, Turcoman, and Latin formations carved out Byzan…
This study is an ethnographic exploration of the Pakistani state as it implemented a number of reforms aimed at achieving conditions of good-governance and development. Based on fieldwork conducted from January to December 2006 in Islamabad city and district Kohat of the North W…
In the context of historical marginalization of indigenous people from diverse ethnic communities in Bangladesh, this study will investigate how mainstream researches and writings, in books, research reports, newspapers, and blogs on indigenous issues have ignored women's relega…
In the dissertation I explore the dynamics of production, exchange, and power in the town of Wazzan in northern Morocco. I focus on Wazzan's two salient realms of activity, its weaving trade and its religious order. I argue that underlying both domains is a similar generative se…
This thesis examines the significance of a micro-level approach to the Israeli-Palestinian water conflict. By rethinking scale of analysis and examining local insecurities, Palestinian experiences reveal how water conflict plays out in latent and discursive ways. In a step-by-st…
The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 had an overwhelming geopolitical impact on Western Europe which included a discursive shift that depended greatly on the ideological construction of this event by its contemporaries for its consequences. In other words, the nature o…
This thesis studies the roles of the state in the modernization of Haiyuan in Ningxia, China, and analyses state power and the state use of space. Also analyzed is how ordinary people respond to state power in this state-led modernization. Focusing on the background of moderniza…
This thesis analyzes the use and unintended outcomes of power in international politics through an examination of economic sanctions in selected countries. A theoretical argument is derived from punishment theories and analyzes the effects of punishment on the target, including …
This study explores the extent and depth of moral obligations in international relations, and how our collective understanding of these obligations has changed in the post-Cold War era. The genocides in Rwanda (1994) and Srebrenica (1995) raised questions about the moral legitim…
This dissertation studies the consistent and systematic official Ottoman policy to legally ban torture that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. I explore mainly why the practice of torture was legally banned and how this policy was implemented from the mid-nineteenth up until…
This project engages the UNESCO World Heritage program's international place-making and heritage preservation campaign, and the processes that are carried out to transform an everyday cultural place into a World Heritage site. I consider what effects these preservation projects …
School leadership is about effecting change in education and promoting excellence in teaching and learning. School leaders, however, practice leadership in multiple arenas with diverse stakeholders. Students, local community members, faculty, staff, and each layer of government …
This project empirically analyzes Domhoff's higher circles and the power structures of the Middle East Institute (MEI). Domhoff proposes a community of corporate owners and executive managers dominate control of the US, creating an upper social class through institutions that fa…
In a complex foreign policy system, involving myriad bureaucracies, advisors, and political entrepreneurs, who advises? What advice is heeded, and which advisor is followed? While most scholars tacitly acknowledge the importance of advisors in international relations, few attemp…
This dissertation examines how rural public health became politically vital at key moments of national transition from the time of the Netherlands Indies colony in the 1930s to the present post-Suharto moment in Indonesia, bringing about complex changes in local forms of knowled…
Capable and accountable public authority has proven elusive throughout the developing world, but not entirely unattainable. Southeast Asia exhibits as much if not more cross-case variation than any other region in terms of both state capacity and levels of democratic accountabil…
This dissertation begins with the premise that disciplinary conservatism in Egyptology would benefit by engaging in interdisciplinary dialogues and that interdisciplinary theories and methods can be usefully applied to Egyptological research. To this end, I appropriate theories …
The current research investigated how power-related motivations affect the way group members approach intergroup contact and how certain types of contact might affect power relations between groups. Due to different motivations for change in the status quo (i.e., change in the p…