Teses / dissertações sobre o tema "Street vendors – united states"

Memories in Stone: The Confederate Catawba Monument Controversies surrounding Confederate monuments and symbols have brought increased attention to issues of Civil War memory. Often overlooked, Native Americans play an important role in the ways in which some people remember the conflict. A particularly interesting example of this role exists in Fort Mill, South Carolina. in 1900, the town unveiled a limestone monument to Catawba Indians who served in the Confederate Army. These Native people had a specific historical relationship with local and state authorities that shaped how the white ruling class formed a particular memorialization of the Catawba after the Civil War. Furthermore, the two leading local figures in the monument's creation had strong personal motivations to sponsor it. These factors combined with national trends in Civil War memorialization to make the Catawba monument a unique, yet still representative, example of Civil War memory making. Unique in that the design and message of the monument served a local purpose of permanently enshrining the white population's version of Catawba history in Fort Mill's public space, and representative in that it bolstered the ideals of Lost Cause ideology that swept the country at the turn of the twentieth century. Caught between these powerful ideas were the Catawba themselves, who utilized the beliefs represented by the monument for their own strategic goals. Reconstructing the Street: Confrontations Over Norfolk's Public Sphere, 1862-1866 on April 16, 1866, several hundred African Americans marched through the streets of Norfolk, Virginia to celebrate the passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1866. on the outskirts of town, a fight occurred between white onlookers and black marchers. Violence continued into the night, as white assailants prowled the streets of the city and killed several black people. This violence, which soon became known as the Norfolk Riot, garnered national attention. But it was not an exceptional event. Rather, it was one of many violent contests between white and black people over who had access to, and influence in, Norfolk's public spaces. Reconstruction brought irreversible changes to Norfolk's political and civic status quo. Previously excluded from or constrained within the city's public sphere, formerly enslaved and free black inhabitants seized the opportunities presented by the Civil War to exercise their demands for full access to it. However, white residents consistently resisted these claims, often resorting to organized violence. By examining several violent disputes that took place prior to April 16th, the Norfolk Riot can be contextualized as but one of a series of similar battles between the city's white and black communities centered around control of Norfolk's civic arena.

Chronically homeless individuals, or Street Dwellers, present unique challenges for clinicians and outreach workers who engage them when offering services like food, shelter, clothing, healthcare and mental health counseling including substance abuse treatment. This study examines Street Dwellers\' hopes, dreams and aspirations for a better life. Through thematic analysis of interview statements five themes emerged; Normal Life, Optimism, Planning, Helping Others, and From Rags to Respect. Study findings suggest that Street Dwellers dream vividly and often about a life off the streets while frequently forming and reforming plans to get there. These findings provide clinicians and outreach workers insight into the phenomenon of Street Dwelling that could be used to design more effective strategies to help this vulnerable population.
Master of Science

This study addresses the potential of preschool educational television programs to contribute to the literacy development of young children. Unlike the vast majority of television-related research undertaken in the United States, this examination is not limited to nationally-produced programming, but looks to other English-speaking countries for an international perspective on the problems and possibilities of literacy series developed for young children. Ten preschool educational television programs from Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States are examined via a videotape content analysis to determine the literacy potential of these program "texts." The literacy potential of children's broadcast texts has been determined within a broad framework of holistic language and learning theories developed by such researchers as Cambourne, Dewey, Eisner, Goodman, Harste, Holdaway, Rosenblatt, Smith, Vygotsky, and others. By composing a narrative of each sample episode; analyzing each program's use of visual, formic, and linguistic codes; constructing an argument for the applicability of holistic theories to television texts; and ultimately examining each sample episode through a holistic lens, a view of literacy-directed programming as it presently exists in four English-speaking countries is developed. The findings suggest that holistic learning principles applied to television texts hold great potential in providing valuable literacy-focused television events to children. Elements in the sample programs such as thematic integrity, explorations of ideas and concepts through sign systems, emphasis on child participation, language and ethnic diversity, regular inclusion of print on the screen from a variety of quality children's literature, and frequent inclusion of literacy events with children and adults demonstrated holistic principles in the sample episodes and contributed to the literacy potential of preschool programming. Characteristics of the episodes such as randomness, isolation of language subsystems from language wholes, failure to present literacy demonstrations, and exclusion of children from the visual text suggested ineffective television texts from which children had little opportunity to construct meaning. Concluding remarks explore the development of a prototypical holistic television program for preschoolers and suggest the benefits of such broadcast programs for children, their parents, media researchers/producers, and educators.

The pimp serves as an iconic ghetto hero who stands in street cultures as a figure that represents defiance, anti-establishment angst, and victorious criminality (Funches & Marriott 2002; Horton-Stallings, 2003). The American pimp has been brought into mainstream American culture through 1960’s literature, 1970’s Blaxploitation films, 1980’s hip hop and more recently, documentaries, films, books, music and television. The word ‘pimp’ has found its way into mainstream usage and popular caricatures of the pimp can be found in everything from Halloween costumes to ‘pimp and ho’ themed college parties. Despite being highly visible within mainstream culture, this character is still enigmatic as pimps are an underresearched population. Thus this thesis aims to uncover and unveil the lives and experiences of pimps involved in illegal prostitution to produce a more panoramic understanding of prostitution and an unexplored segment of major players within it. This thesis investigates the experiences and narratives of pimps involved in illegal, predominately street, prostitution in the USA. This research project stands to offer in-depth insight into the experiences of pimps in the United States within this unique subcultural context. In order to fill that literature gap, this research interviewed pimps and gathered data that explored how and why individuals become pimps, their personal histories, how they maintain their position as pimps, how pimps pimp, and the motivations for exit and/or retirement from The Game (the world of prostitution and pimping). More than just a managerial position, the role of the pimp also embraces a lifestyle with special rules, fashions and activities that create a unique and complex underground, criminal community. Rather than just presenting pimps as violent exploiters or ghetto heroes, this thesis examined the language of pimping, their orientation to their roles, the relationship between pimping and the surrounding communities and mainstream society, and explored this criminal career as a social role as well as career. With their childhood experiences of life in American ghettos leading to regular exposure to pimps and favorable impressions of illicit, underground careers, respondents came to ‘choose’ pimping as their career trajectory in their teens. Once dedicated to becoming pimps, many pimps underwent training with older pimps and later gained acceptance within the street community to earn their positions and status as pimps. When established within The Game, they started to practice ‘pimpology’ (pimp ideology) and to firmly establish their skills and methods of pimping. Two substantive chapters within this thesis are dedicated to addressing pimpology: pimpology covers the core processes, social connections and methods of management that are vital for a pimps success and survival in The Game. The aim of these chapters is to explore how pimps function as individuals, with the women who work for them, within their peer networks, and within their communities while they are actively pimping. And finally, exit from pimping will be explored. Issues such as age, exhaustion, family, health, drug addiction, trauma, imprisonment, law enforcement crackdowns and social betrayal all also act as further incentives for pimps to ‘hang up their pimp hat.’ This research has uncovered new themes and trends within the narratives of this hidden, underground subcultural population and offers great insights into the ‘career cycles’ of pimps. This project stands to fill a major gap within prostitution research as current literature lacks the perspectives and voices of pimps themselves. Within this research, a nuanced approach offers a unique view of the pimp and their complex roles and relationships within The Game. As an understudied population, pimps have rarely been the focus of academic inquiry; thus this research stands to contribute new perspectives, insights and data on a population that has remained enigmatic and well hidden from academic exploration for decades.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2014.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Despite their lack of merits and demands, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) did become a defining feature in the short aftermath of the Financial Crisis and a part of the global occupy-movements during the protest year of 2011. As the founders and organisers behind the first encampments in Zuccotti Park called out for a "Tahrir moment" in the United States of America (US), few scholars or pundits had seen the leaderless movement coming. OWS spread across the US in the matter of months, hitting the media headlines gradually and more rapidly than any previous protest movement. Scholarly responses to OWS have been plentiful, and their categorisations of the OWS’ structure, demands and impact have been going in many different directions. This study attempts to debate and analyse the main research question; is OWS a new kind of a social movement? Even though there are several ways in which one may approach this question, the following will focus on the organisational structures, the political opportunity structures and the global linkages of OWS. The organisational structures has been debated by most, as the movement has a leaderless structure, it is ruled by consensus and supported by protesters from all social spheres, who came, protested and left as they pleased. The political and economic deficits, which gives way to the political opportunity structures of the movement, has not been this dramatic since the Great Depression. The Financial Crisis of 2008 has not only been defined as an economic crisis, but also a crisis of representative democracy. Furthermore, the global protest movements of 2011 have been similar in several ways. Even as all of them, be it Tahrir, 15M, in Greece or OWS, has been unique in matters of context, time and space, they share similarities in tactics, methods and fundamental demands - democracy and prosperity. The concluding statement to the research question is not clear-cut. Rather, it revokes former debates, which distinguished between old and new social movements, and implements a globalising civil society. A new kind of a social movement has come and gone, with elements of the earlier movements. It has added new modes of tactics, structures and demands, all formed by the present context. OWS is not an exception.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Ten spyte van hul gebrek aan eise en tasbare sukses, het “Occupy Wall Street (OWS) wel ’n definiërende kenmerk geword tydens kort naloop van die Finansiële Krisies, asook ’n deel van die globale beset-bewegings tydens die 2011 protesjaar. Daar was min akademici en kenners wat, ten tye van die eerste kamperings in Zuccotti Park en die eis deur die stigters en organiseerders van OWS vir ’n “Tahrir oomblik”, die opkoms van hierdie leierlose beweging voorsien het. Binne ’n kwessie van maande het OWS dwarsoor die VSA versprei, eers stadig en daarna vinniger die hoofopskrifte van die media gehaal as enige ander protes-beweging wat dit voorafgegaan het. Daar is heelwat akademiese bydraes (uit verskillende dissiplines) wat daarop gemik is om OWS te verstaan in terme van hoe om dit te kategoriseer, die struktuur daarvan, die eise wat gestel is en die impak daarvan. Die doel van hierdie studie is om die hoofnavorsingsvraag te bespreek en analiseer, naamlik; is OWS ’n nuwe soort sosiale beweging? Die benadering wat gevolg word is om te fokus om organisatoriese strukture, politieke geleentheidstrukture and die globale verbintenisse van OWS. Die organisatoriese strukture het die meeste aandag gekry in die literatuur tot dusver, aangesien die organisasie ’n leierlose struktuur het. Besluite word deur middel van konsensus geneem en ondersteuning word gewerf van protesteerders uit ’n verskeidenheid van sosiale sfere. Hierdie protesteerders het opgedaag, protes aangeteken, en weer vertrek na willekeur. Die politieke en ekonomiese terkortkominge van die kapitalistiese stelsel in die VSA, waarin die politieke geleentheidstrukture van die beweging geanker is, was, sedert die Groot Depressie, nie so skynbaar dramaties nie. Die Finansiële Krisies wat in 2008 sy hoogtepunt bereik het, word gedefinieer nie alleen as ’n ekonomiese krisies nie,maar ook as ’n krisies van verteenwoordigende demokrasie. Daarby is daar bevind dat die globale protesbewegings wat in 2011 gedy het, soortgelyke kenmerke gehad het. Nieteenstaande die feit dat Tahrir in Egipte, 15M, die Griekse protes-aksies en OWS wel as uniek gesien kan word in terme van konteks, tyd en ruimte, is daar ooreenkomste in taktiek, metodes en fundamentele eise: deelnemende demokrasie en welvaart vir almal. Die slotsom waartoe die tesis kom is nie definitief nie. Eerder, is die gevolgtrekking dat daar teruggegaan moet word na vorige debatte wat onderskeid getref het tussen ou en nuwe sosiale bewegings, en ook na die literatuur oor die moontlikheid van ’n globale burgerlike samelewing. Wat wel vasstaan is dat ’n nuwe soort sosiale beweging verskyn het en weer gekwyn het, wat aspekte van vorige bewegings omvat maar ook in duidelike terme van hulle verskil. In die opsig is OWS nie ’n uitsondering nie, met nuwe taktiek, strukture en eise wat almal gevorm is binne die huidige konteks.

In this dissertation, the denaturalization of migrants in the US and Italy as represented in newspaper crime reports was identified and compared to the opposing naturalization of Italian crime organizations in Italy and Wall Street/ corporate criminals in the US. This was accomplished through careful, multidisciplinary, scientific analysis of over 100 articles taken from Italian and US newspapers of assorted political tendencies from the years 2004-2010. Quantitative and qualitative methods were combined beginning with a corpus analysis of texts from each group studied followed by a topic analysis designed to identify topics discussed in the media for each group analyzed. In addition, lexical choices were categorized as denaturalization, naturalization or derogation, and examples from texts were examined in depth to reveal linguistic (such as metaphor) strategies involved in negative or positive representation of these groups. A Critical Discourse Analysis Approach combined with Social Semiotics and grounded in Social Identity and Nationalism theories was employed to reveal an underlying racist and xenophobic ideology in both Italian and US media. Results show that in both the United States and Italy, the highlighting of migrants' lack of proficiency in the host country language as well as cultural practices functions as evidence of how migrants are different thus justifying discriminatory practices against them. The resulting categorization of migrants as "Them" serves the dominant group's purpose of staying in power. In conclusion, the author points to a need for teacher educators in the field of second language education and literacy to make it a top priority to educate teachers and students as to how discourse contains underlying ideologies and how to think critically to de-construct and de-mystify them.

This project focuses on graffiti art as not an unconstructive form of artwork as society might assume, but a way of coping and establishing an identity for youth mostly males who are searching for who they are.

Research shows evidence of overrepresentation of culturally and linguistically diverse children enrolled in special education services, a positive correlation between parent involvement and academic success, and a plethora of barriers impeding active 6 parent participation in IEP development. Barriers include language, culture, low income, . and school climate and team dynamics. The aim of this study was to explore: (a) In what ways do special education teachers engage with culturally and linguistically diverse families from low-income homes in the IEP development process? (b) In what ways do special education teachers address culturally and linguistically diverse children's educational needs while also addressing both legal and workplace expectations? (c) In what ways do special education teachers develop IEPs with culturally and linguistically diverse families from low-income homes addressing both legal and workplace expectations? These questions were addressed qualitatively utilizing Moustakas's heuristic inquiry. Deductively exploring themes using Lipsky's street-level bureaucracy framework exposed challenges special education teachers in this study had addressing both legal and workplace expectations, such as meeting IDEA 2004 mandates. With a systems theory approach, themes and subthemes were identified as being interconnected. Power imbalances between stakeholders and socioeconomic differences across families appeared to be the most prolific barriers impeding parent participation. Inductive analysis explored emergent and uncovered themes elucidating what it meant to be a special education teacher.

Plusieurs trillions de dollars d’actifs sous gestion : tel est le poids de l’industrie des hedge funds dans le système financier. Acteurs indispensables des marchés, les hedge funds sont pourtant des créatures méconnues. Réservés aux investisseurs professionnels ou qualifiés, ils ont longtemps tiré partie d’exemptions et échappé à une trop forte contrainte réglementaire. La crise financière de 2008 a bouleversé ce schéma et fait apparaître, en Europe et aux États-Unis, une même volonté d’encadrer davantage ces structures, par le biais de leurs gestionnaires. Aussi cette étude propose-t-elle une analyse comparée des dispositions introduites en la matière par la directive AIFM et par le Dodd Frank Act. Après un nécessaire éclairage sur cette industrie de l’ombre, elle examine les apports des deux textes, les confronte avant d’en dégager forces et faiblesses. Le traumatisme de la crise a fait émerger un double impératif : mieux protéger les investisseurs et prévenir le risque systémique. C’est à la lumière de ces deux objectifs que la seconde partie s’attarde sur le bien-fondé des réformes, leur portée réelle ainsi que leurs limites. Cette vue d’ensemble de la régulation applicable aux gestionnaires de hedge funds est également prétexte à une réflexion plus large sur la régulation financière, ses finalités, ses contours et ses défis. Nous concluons sur une feuille de route pour un acte II de la directive AIFM et formulons plusieurs propositions, en particulier l’interdiction totale de commercialisation auprès d’investisseurs de détail et la création d’une base de données mondiale du risque systémique
The hedge fund industry manages several trillion dollars in assets. Though they are key players of the financial system, hedge funds remain mysterious creatures. Available only to professional or qualified investors, they managed, for a long time, to take advantage of exemptions and to avoid a heavy regulatory burden. The 2008 financial crisis profoundly changed perspectives and led the European Union and the United States to introduce new regulations targeting hedge funds, through their managers and advisers. This study is a comparative analysis of such regulations, brought about by the AIFM Directive and the Dodd Frank Act. After a brief overview of the industry, both texts are examined and compared so as to identify their respective strengths and weaknesses. Two imperatives emerged out of the crisis: increasing investor protection and preventing systemic risk. In light of these two objectives, part II discusses the validity of the reforms, their scope and their limits. This extensive analysis of hedge fund regulation also leads to broader remarks on financial regulation, its aims, contours and challenges. Finally, a roadmap for a revised version of the AIFM Directive is proposed and concrete measures are suggested, such as the total prohibition of marketing to retail investors and the creation of a global database of systemic risk

Farmers’ markets are venues that can reflect the activity and composition of the hosting community. Within certain guidelines, WIC, FMNP, and SNAP can be utilized at participating farmers’ markets. My study examines how farmers’ markets managers and vendors decide whether to accept food entitlement program coupons, especially comparing the decision-making process between participating and non-participating markets. The influence of community ties and addressing local hunger needs in the decision-making process and the level of cooperation in making that decision are also investigated. Fourteen semi-structured interviews with managers and vendors of eight Midwestern farmers’ markets were conducted. Findings indicate that farmers’ markets with goals to improve local food security and that are collaborative and seek to build consensus, knowledgeable about food entitlement programs while also holding them in positive regard, and exhibit strong interpersonal relationships between market actors and community residents display greater tendencies to accept food entitlement program coupons.
Department of Sociology

Chan Chiu-yuen Lawrence.
Thesis (M.Div.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 60-65).
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
Introduction
Chapter Chapter One
Chapter A. --- Root of Pentecostalism: the Black Heritage
Chapter B. --- Transcending Race & Class
Chapter a. --- History of the Marginalized Black Slave in America
Chapter i. --- Social Context in America: Slavery & Racism
Chapter ii. --- Formation of Black church
Chapter b. --- The Outpouring of the Spirit: Transcending Race and Class
Chapter Chapter Two --- Transforming Christianity: Inculturation
Chapter a. --- The Concept of Inculturation
Chapter b. --- Worship in the Azusa Street Revival
Chapter c. --- African Heritage
Chapter d. --- Worship
Chapter e. --- Spirit Possession
Chapter Chapter Three --- Yielding Detraditionalization
Chapter a. --- Marginalization of Women in Mission
Chapter i. --- Masculine Domination of Missionary Societies
Chapter ii. --- Traditional Roles of Women
Chapter iii. --- Opposition of a Single Woman as a Missionary
Chapter iv. --- Resistance of Setting-up of Women's Board
Chapter v. --- Unjust Criticisms from Masculine Organizations
Chapter vii. --- Widow Case
Chapter b. --- Patriarchal Christian Tradition
Chapter c. --- Pentecostal Women in Mission
Chapter d. --- The Power of Holy Spirit: Detraditionalization
Conclusion
Bibliography

In 1967 and 1968, members of the Youth International Party, also known as Yippies, created several mass street demonstrations to protest President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s handling of the United States’ military involvement in the war in Vietnam. The Yippies were a loose network of hippies, anti-war activists, and left-wing radicals committed to cultural and political change. This dissertation investigates how the Yippies used avant-garde theories of theatre and performance in their year of demonstrating against the Johnson administration. The Yippies receive little attention in most histories of American performance, and theatre remains on the margins of political and social histories of the 1960s; therefore this dissertation places performance and political archives side by side to create a new historical narrative of the Yippies and performance. The Yippies created their own networked participatory street performance form by drawing on the political philosophy of the New Left student movement, the organizational strategies of the anti-war movement, and the countercultural values of the hippies. They modified this performance form, which they termed “revolutionary actiontheater,” with performance theories drawn from New York’s avant-garde art world, the concept of guerrilla theatre outlined by R. G. Davis of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and the notion of Theater of Cruelty created by Antonin Artaud. Using performance theory and cultural history as primary methodologies, this project traces the Yippies’ adoption of revolutionary action-theater with three examples: the 1967 “March on the Pentagon” where future Yippie leaders performed an exorcism ritual at the Pentagon; the 1968 “Grand Central Station Yip-In” event that advertised for the Yippie movement; and the 1968 “Festival of Life” at the National Democratic Convention in Chicago where the Yippies nominated a pig as presidential candidate. The final chapter on the recent phenomenon of flash mobs argues that the Yippies’ legacy lives on in this participatory street performance form, and suggests that revolutionary action-theater can still serve as a model for political action.
text

In this dissertation, "Transgressing Space and Subverting Hierarchies: A Comparative Analysis of Street Theater Groups in Sri Lanka, India, and the United States," I explore how street theater artists in three different national contexts make innovative use of space, performance traditions, language, and audience in order to question economic, political, and cultural power structures. My study involves a comparative analysis of the work of The Wayside and Open Theater in Sri Lanka, People's Theater Forum (Janam) in India, and Bread and Puppet Theater in the United States. I study the ways in which these groups appropriate spaces and, through their performances, transform them into transgressive sites where existing power hierarchies are questioned and subverted. I examine their use of hybridized forms of aesthetics - a combination of traditional formal performance methods and western performance traditions - as well as language to create a dialogic relationship with diverse audiences. While the study of Sri Lankan and Indian street theater groups interrogates the dynamics of space as it manifests itself in postcolonial contexts, my analysis of Bread and Puppet Theater provides material for comparison and contrast by examining the workings of space and power in a "first world" context. My investigation is informed by Ngugi wa Thiong'o's and Safdar Hashmi's work on space, performance, and power as well as theories of national culture and identity elaborated by Frantz Fanon and Homi Bhabha. I will likewise refer to Jacques Derrida's arguments about language and play and André Lefevere's ideas concerning translation and rewriting in order to examine the language used in the plays. While prior studies of street theater focus primarily on its status as a political or cultural event, I propose to engage in an in depth analysis of the performance texts - both written and visual - and examine the nuances in language and the particular performance techniques used by the groups in specific locations.

I am interested in investigating community perceptions of planning processes in marginalized communities. More specifically, through this project I will draw on the concept of insurgent historiography (Sandercock, 1998) to examine community members’ perceptions of planning processes, in particular for environmental justice mitigation in diverse communities. I will explore this topic through the case of the Holly Street Neighborhood and Holly Street Plant Redevelopment in Austin, Texas. Constructed in the 1950’s, the Holly Street Power Plant has served as a symbol of the trials and tribulations of marginalized communities in East Austin: institutionalized segregation, industrialization, and their disproportionate effects on minority communities in Austin. During its time in operation, the plant was reported to have had numerous spills and other detrimental events. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry lists 17 reported events related to the facility (2009). However, a Public Health Assessment conducted by the Texas Department of Health concluded that there was “no apparent public health hazard” associated with the site (Agency for Toxic Substances and Diseases Registry, 2009). After years of protest, civil lawsuits and investigations, Austin City Council voted to close the Holly Plant in 1995. It was finally taken completely offline in 2007 after approval from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, shifting the community discourse to that of justice and healing: site remediation, decommission and demolition, and redevelopment. By utilizing ethnography and other qualitative research methods, I will document subjugated types of knowledge and memories of this planning process, and, drawing on concepts of insurgent historiography and difference, construct an alternative, insurgent historiography of the Holly redevelopment. I will conclude by discussing the implications of revealing insurgent historiographies for planning in diverse, marginalized communities, and how unlocking such narratives have the potential to improve community participatory planning.
text

碩士
國立臺灣大學
新聞研究所
101
The relationships between the United States, China, Taiwan and the many international societies had a significant change from 2001 to 2008. During this time, Bush was president of the United States and Chen Shui-bian was the Taiwanese President after the Democratic Progressive Party took office for the first time. Also, the relationship between the U.S., China, and Taiwan was affected with the occurrence of different events. The outbreak of September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks changed Bush’s policies towards China and Taiwan as well as the international societies. Also, Bush gradually altered its political stance of anti-Chinese, from originally worrying about the threat of China’s growing national power by selling weapons to Taiwan as a defensive strategy, to strengthening the relationship with China and working together on “anti-terrorists” tasks. Bush’s foreign policies have also changed from “unilateralism,” seeing America as the only super power country, to "bilateralism” and “multilateralism,” cooperating with other counties on “anti-terrorist” policies. Also, the “localization” policies President Chen Shui-bian implemented after re-election in 2004, has angered the Chinese government, and increased tensions between the U.S., China and Taiwan relations. People who do not have much access to the information from these international affairs would rely on the media to obtain it. This study is going to discuss how the two elite newspapers within the United States - The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, each leaning towards liberal and conservative ideals- report on political, economic, and military issues between the U.S., China, and Taiwan relations, deciding whether or not the news would be affected by Bush’s political stance. The study will first use content analysis and the frame theory to analyze the issues discussed within the two newspapers, which are the cross- Strait political relations, the political relations between the U.S. and China, and Chinese’s military threats toward Taiwan. This study then uses discourse analysis to find a deep meaning within the news content, which shows that The Washington Post, although having a different political stance from Bush, it changed when Bush changed. The Wall Street Journal, with its political stance leaning towards conservatives like Bush, however, stuck with its “anti-Chinese” stance which did not change much with Bush. Lastly, the image of Taiwan started developing when the two newspapers began reporting on the U.S. and cross-Straits relations. Politically, both newspapers encouraged Taiwan’s democratic government, however criticizing the unnecessary policies that Chen proposed. Economically, The Washington Post, focused more on a successful trade relationship between Taiwan and China as compared to The Wall Street Journal, hoping the cross-Strait political relations can be improved. Lastly, both papers portrayed Taiwan as an island with a weak military, and because of that, require the help of the U.S. to deal with the Chinese threat, which shows that they emphasized the concept of the U.S. as a super power.

This dissertation aims to study the behavior of intermediaries under market imperfections and the consequences of that for the financial market's functioning. To do so, I focus on two classes of market frictions: funding constraints and information asymmetry. Chapter 1 studies how the dealers' capital constraints affect the market liquidity in the presence of imperfect competition and how recent regulations have shifted the competitive landscape of interest rate swaps. On the subject of informational frictions, Chapters 2 and 3 study empirically and theoretically the pace at which prices incorporate private information under the limited learning capacity of the informed traders. Understanding the microstructure of the swap markets is of interest to both policymakers and academics, especially for it helps in the efficient implementation of post-crisis regulations, namely the Dodd-Frank Act. An understudied dimension of the swap market microstructure is the determinants of the cost of the market-making activity. Using a proprietary regulatory dataset collected by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on both the interest rate swap transactions and the collateral requirements at the London Clearinghouse (LCH), in Chapter 1, I study the key balance sheet constraints that affect the ability of the bank-affiliated dealers to provide intermediation service to the end-users. Most of the interest rate swaps are now mandated to be centrally cleared. This has increased the dealer's need for collateral in the form of highly liquid assets (cash and cash equivalents) to back their swap exposures. Facing capital adequacy measures such as Supplementary Leverage Ratio (SLR), dealers find it even costlier to increase the size of their balance sheet to fund these margins. I show that a 1-percentage point increase in SLR leads to an increase of 1.09 percentage points in the bank's cost of capital per unit of margin requirement. Furthermore, I find the funding spread of the dealers (the difference between the cost of external funding and the risk-free rate) is also a relevant factor for determining the dealer's marginal cost of swap transaction; a cost that is evidently transferred to the end-users in the form of less favorable prices. Measuring the cost of intermediation for the dealer-to-client interest rate swap market is challenging because of the high concentration in the market-- the first seven dealers intermediate more than 50% of the total notional traded. Therefore, one must consider the nontrivial effect of markups in transaction prices to estimate the marginal cost of intermediation reliably. For this reason, I model a differentiated product demand for swaps in the spirit of empirical Industrial Organization (IO) literature and structurally estimate this model to account for the markups in the transaction prices using estimated price elasticities. The demand estimations show economically interpretable heterogeneity among the end-users in their taste for duration risk hedging. The structurally estimated equilibrium model of intermediation can serve as a basis for answering counterfactual policy questions, especially in the debate on the social costs and benefits of excluding initial margins in calculating supplementary leverage ratio. In Chapter 2, I turn the focus to the impact of informational frictions on market-making activity. More specifically, we study the informed trading under random stopping time. Empirical evidence is provided based on an episode of time when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) unintentionally disclosed security filings to some investors before the public for several years. For technological reasons, the delay between the private and public disclosure was exogenously random. We exploit the variation in the time window of private information to show the intensity of trades and the speed at which market prices reach their efficiency, decrease with the expected arrival time of public announcement. In addition, we find the learning capacity of the insider determines the evolution of trading intensity over time. In Chapter 3, inspired by the stylized facts observed in the earlier chapter, I extend the Kyle (1985) model of strategic trading to a case with limited learning capacity of both the dealers and the informed traders (insiders). The insider does not perfectly observe the true value of the security, but he continues to hone his knowledge by using private information sources over time. Two classes of equilibria emerge from this model. In one class, the insider trades excessively patiently, and the market efficiency is reached only asymptotically. In the second type, the insider optimally chooses a deterministic time T, before which he trades patiently as in Kyle (1985) until the price reaches its full efficiency. After T, the insider keeps revealing every piece of new information immediately, and the market price stays efficient while the insider keeps making profits. Which equilibrium emerges depends on the insider's learning capacity, initial informational advantage, and the private source's informational content.

From September 19th through October 3rd, 2008, Congress debated the largest government bailout in America history—the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA). Those sixteen days generated a vibrant conversation regarding the nature and severity of America’s economic crisis and the proper role of government in responding to such juggernauts. In this dissertation I explore the rhetoric generated by this bill and its context in hopes of illuminating the more general role of rhetoric in mitigating and exacerbating crises in capitalism. My hypothesis is that, in a global capitalist economy increasingly dependent on immaterial production (i.e., finance, the Internet, mass media, etc.), economic crisis rhetoric has become as essential to economic order as monetary and fiscal policy. To explore this claim, I focus on two key rhetorical tensions that drove much of the crisis rhetoric produced. The first of these battles is a rhetorical struggle over the spatial delineation between Wall Street and Main Street, while the second is a conflict between Keynesianism and neoliberalism in a rhetorical contest over the values of government interventionism. By analyzing a variety of policy and expert discourses that constitute the parameters of these discrete areas of debate, I argue that all rely on moral and ethical appeals to substantiate their meaning and validity. At the same time, I contend that these discourses are indebted to logics of institutional form and therefore cannot be abstracted from the financial and political contexts in which they reside. This insight leads me to forward a new theory of economic crisis rhetoric called the economic imaginary. By beginning with real economic events and then taking into account the discursive and extra-discursive forces that “overdetermine” its mediated understanding, the economic imaginary offers us a more empirical and cartographic account of how economic rhetoric actually operates in society.
text