This project investigates consumption as an index of social status within the context of retail food environments in Chengdu, China. A reform and opening period in the late 20th century ushered a new era of development and economic expansion. Government support for the modernization movement has promoted scientific production methods, a market economy, and increased consumption. During this period, changes in social values have increasingly aligned an individual’s consumption capability with an individual’s quality (suzhi). Based on field observations in markets of independent agricultural produce sellers (wet markets) and supermarkets, as well as analysis of semi-structured interviews, I argue food markets have become one public space where social class by consumption is expressed. An association of supermarkets with global brands, luxury goods, and an improved retail environment has firmly aligned them with the modernization movement. This is the first research to explore how this class distinction has also become manifest in a spatial distinction within the urban environment of Chengdu. As the city is reconstructed to resemble the new social values of modernity, supermarkets are made highly visible within the most commercially dense areas of the city, while wet markets have largely receded from the public sphere. However, I argue that the push for modernity is detached from the economic reality of the majority of the population, and most commercial activity occurs in the spaces subverted by the consumer dream. The modernization of the food industry has also been undermined by consumer anxiety caused by ineffective regulation of profit-seeking industrial food companies. This has lead to a small opposition movement comprised of individuals who reject the increasing commercialization and industrialization of food. This project provides insight into how the consumption values of the broader modernization movement are manifest in urban retail food environments in Chengdu.

This article attempts to explores the complicated relationship that Native veterans have with the United States military-industrial complex during the Vietnam War. This essay will explain that Native veterans who went to Vietnam were forced to witness, accept, and maybe even participate in atrocities against the indigenous Vietnamese population who were being racialized and colonized in a similar manner as their own communities back in the States. Native veterans realized that they were reproducing the same dehumanizing techniques of war that were once used against their own people, and were becoming the foot soldiers of an imperial endeavor that attempted to subjugate a different population of "little brown savages." The cognitive dissonance created by their visceral experiences in the Vietnam War pitted their identity as tribal warriors against their identity as US soldiers, forever changing their relationship with the United States government and military. This essay's main method will be close readings of autobiographies, personal statements, Westerns and war films, documentaries and secondary sources to argue that the experiences of the Vietnam War as well as the domestic political turmoil between the indigenous communities and the federal government shifted how Native veterans related with each other, their communities, and the federal government.

The Mexican political system began to change since the 1980's and enter a period of gradual democratization. This project describes this change by the shift of perceptions towards, and presence of Human Rights (HR) in politics as well as in public discourse in the last 35 years. To approach this subject, our foci are three: public institutions, political parties and NGO's present in Mexico. We look into the development of the National Human Rights Comission (CNDH in Spanish), the presence of HR in each of the main parties' lines and proposals, and the growth and development of the non-governmental sector in Mexico. Our aim is to find whether there is a connection between different periods of democratization and economical liberalization with a growing presence and acceptance of HR. Grosso modo, we find that before the 1980's HR were broadly disregarded as a set of foreign values, then we observe a growing consensus on their importance; however, explicit political support eventually does not result in institutional measures, guarantees provided by the rule of law are still lacking, and the context set by the war on drugs produces more challenges to an effective HR-respecting government policy.

What happens when corporations are given special legal power that allows them to operate sovereignly within a state? How does deregulation of industry affect marginalized communities in Nicaraguan society? And how might Nicaragua move towards a post-colonial modernity? Export processing zones, or zonas francas, have become increasingly prevalent in Nicaragua since the fall of the Sandinista government 25 years ago. These zones hold special legal status as supranational commercial entities allowing them to operate largely outside of state jurisdiction. In December 2014, construction began on Nicaragua’s interoceanic canal project, a massive undertaking carried out by an international business consortium, which also enjoys exceptional legal status. Supporters of “post-capitalist” neoliberal expansion posit that top-down development strategies will give Nicaragua the means to become the modern state its 1979 revolution sought to create and move the country towards multi-polar globalization, and thus away from imperialism. This research explores the project and its potential effects. Using a post-colonial and historical framework, I analyze sovereignty, agency, patriarchy, expropriation and citizenship in relation to the semiautonomous corporate zones within Nicaragua. I argue that this New Leftist and ostensibly anti-imperialist project in fact serves to reinscribe colonial power structures that perpetuate violence against indigenous and feminized bodies. By examining the effects of deregulated industrial zones and ethnographically interrogating the spaces of exception they have created, I will challenge the claim that such neoliberal projects can provide the Nicaraguan people with an avenue to development and a higher quality of life. I argue instead that the expansion of neoliberalism and the corresponding decline in democratic influence, regardless of political affiliation, not only fails to offer improvements to the quality of life of marginalized populations within Nicaraguan society but actively harms these groups.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, "all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, they are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." Psychopaths, born with limited emotion recognition and capacity for empathy, are equipped with the kind of reason and conscience, if any, that is significantly different from others'. Moreover, the anti-social trait of psychopaths' reasons and conscience seem to dispose psychopaths to the violation of the rights of other humans. However, psychopaths, as humans, ought to hold rights of their own. Questions hence surface regarding psychopaths: Do they challenge the universality of human rights? At what length should human rights extend to them? How should we resolve the tension between human rights of psychopathological individuals and rights of mass public? This study aims to examine the relationship between human rights and psychopaths from an interdisciplinary point of view. First, a psychology review on psychopaths will be conducted. Second, a philosophical examination on the universality of human rights will be presented. I will look at the robustness of the universality, and evaluate the tension between individual rights and community rights. Third, I will argue that psychopaths (generalizable to all people with limited or defectove reason or conscience) challenge the universality of human rights in some degree. Psychopaths do deserve human rights, but their rights need to be limited by the human rights of other individuals and groups.

For Washington's returning wolves, ostensibly the issue at hand is a management one, but I suspect it is much more. What are the consequences of “managing life"? How does wildlife management facilitate disconnection, colonial discourses, racism, and the continued exploitation of the planet? This project will be composed of several parts, accumulating into a type of anthology of different ways of knowing and understanding the wolf-human relationship in Washington and its intersections with capitalism, neoliberalism, climate change, and environmental justice. All parts will contribute to an investigation of wildlife management and the ways it has been used as a scientific and discursive field, which situates human and other subjects in varied and unequal ways. The focus will be on the term “tolerance”, which has become the dominant scientific discourse around the management of wolves. I am interested in how creating policy around the notion of tolerance or intolerance of certain beings resembles and is intertwined with histories of colonization, such as the U.S. government’s forceful displacement of Northwest Native communities to reservations. Using this lens, I want to explore the various sentiments for wolves and the communities that house them. I also want to think about the non-human animals involved in this debate. Additionally, my passion and interest in this research spawns from my desire as a concerned citizen of this planet to invest in rethinking our relations both within and across species. What would coexistence among wolves and humans look like if we lived within an ethics of responsibility rather than rights? What would living within an active politics of interconnectivity look like?

Given that the European Union is a free trade, market-oriented economic zone that should, theoretically, eliminate market distortions that fuel the informal economy, why are we seeing continued participation in the informal economy between Bulgaria and Turkey? Many scholars have sought to explain the Eastern European shuttle trade phenomenon, in which individuals buy and sell goods abroad without declaring them, thus evading customs tariffs, using economic arguments. They frequently cite price distortions, market gaps and lucrative exchange rates as a mechanism for survival in post-communist transitional societies, which are valid; however, they do not explain why the shuttle trade has continued to thrive 25 years after the communist collapse in Bulgaria. I spent several weeks conducting fieldwork on the Bulgaria-Turkey border, specifically interviewing Turkish-Bulgarian shuttle traders while traveling onboard an organized tour bus designed to facilitate shuttle trading. Through the use of meta-linguistical analysis of the interviews and analysis of the unconscious narrative (such as body language) of the shuttle traders, I found that, in addition to being a viable method of income supplementation, the shuttle trade also serves as a platform for social support and identity reconciliation for Turkish-Bulgarian participants. Collective nostalgia about the communist past and similar post-communist experiences and a strong sense of interpersonal trust serve to integrate shuttle traders, which can be explained as an investment in social capital. The broader implications of my research into the socio-psychological implications of the post-communist transition for the Turkish minority in Bulgaria suggests that policymakers should take into account the need for social support and identity reconciliation when formulating policies that address informal economic activities or other shadow economic activities.

What factors enable militant Islamist groups to maintain organizational integrity and mobilize followers given the US government’s successful elimination of top charismatic leaders? This study aims first to provide a theological and historical precedent for understanding charismatic leadership, in contrast to counterterrorism policies' focus on a predominantly organizational perspective that ignores other underlying factors that contribute to group resilience. Second, guided by the notion of historical trauma as an explanatory and diagnostic concept, I aim to isolate and show how militant Islamist leaders use aesthetic and religious-laden objects to construct their charismatic authority. The data are drawn from a close reading of statements made by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi al-Husseini al-Qurashi, the caliph of the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). I employ framing analysis to analyze three of al-Baghdadi’s statements that exhort the creation of the caliphate, an institution that embodied the Prophet Muhammad’s charismatic power. I contend that al-Baghdadi's claim to charismatic authority is composed of staged, ritually-effective performances, which thematically organized around a narrative of healing, serve to imitate and inhere the Prophet’s charismatic power. My current findings demonstrate that, coupled with a narrative of healing, al-Baghdadi's integration of aesthetics, including bodily techniques, props, and staging in his ritual performance serve to repair the fragmentation of Islam after the Prophet’s death. By using repertoires from Islamic history in his performance, al-Baghdadi is able to construct a parallel image between himself and the Prophet as the head of Islam in the contemporary era. This project considers the rise of al-Baghdadi and ISIS a symptom of the Arab governments’ failure to reconcile the population at large. Future policies should balance the use lethal force with reconciliation and socioeconomic growth to erode militant rhetoric and visualizations that function as a mirror for the dire conditions within the Islamic world.