IDENTITY AND DEVELOPMENT IN RURAL BOLIVIA:NEGOTIATING GENDER, ETHNICITY, AND CLASS IN DEVELOPMENT CONTEXTS

This dissertation examines participatory development in its cultural context: how people define it, the significance of their definitions, who participates in it, and how. Since the passage of the Law of Popular Participation in 1994, participation has become obligatory and emblematic of Bolivian citizenship. At the same time, identity based on culturally determined conceptualizations of gender, ethnicity, and class has become increasingly salient in questions of policy, politics, the law, education, and the Bolivian economy. In this social milieu, local people first and foremost must engage identity discourse in order to "do development." My central argument is that local people are required to deliberately accommodate, resist, and/or construct their own particular "development identities" in different development contexts. They employ a variety of subject positionalities - either forged themselves or imposed on them - on instrumental grounds, so that they sell the community as a good risk for development in order to garner development funding, and for transformative reasons, to engender community social relations.The study is based on 13 months of anthropological fieldwork in the small, rural community of Huancarani near Cochabamba, Bolivia. I conducted participation observation in three development contexts: 1) the local governing body, 2) a grassroots food security organization, and 3) a local women's organization. Although many of the same community members participate in more than one of these contexts, they forge different development identities for each. Participation observation was also complemented with intensive, unstructured interviews with 10 key informants and semi-structured interview schedules with 30 community members and 20 community leaders.Identity politics has the potential to both limit community participation and empower local people. My study shows that participatory development work in Bolivia is squarely a matter of negotiating and reformulating collective community identities. Instead of leveling the playing field, participation in Bolivian development often means that not having the right development identity restricts people from competing for already very scarce development resources. Under these conditions, the current model of development in Bolivia is one in which external political processes attempt to regulate not only the direction of rural development, but the very identity of communities

The Integration Of Social And Emotional Learning And Literacy

A curriculum development project exploring the integration of Social and Emotional Learning skills into the mini-lesson portion of Reader’s Workshop. Included is a definition of Social and Emotional Learning, an exploration of existing Social and Emotional curricula and state standards, a discussion of the effects of Social and Emotional Learning on both students and teachers, and an examination of impacts of Social and Emotional Learning on future success of students. The curriculum developed herein relies on picture books as a framework for enhancing both existing literacy and Social and Emotional curricula. It is organized around the five Social and Emotional Competencies developed by leaders in the field of Social and Emotional Learning. Keywords: Social and Emotional Learning, mini-lessons, Reader’s Worksho

Müller glia activation in response to inherited retinal degeneration is highly varied and disease-specific

Despite different aetiologies, most inherited retinal disorders culminate in photoreceptor loss, which induces concomitant changes in the neural retina, one of the most striking being reactive gliosis by Müller cells. It is typically assumed that photoreceptor loss leads to an upregulation of glial fibrilliary acidic protein (Gfap) and other intermediate filament proteins, together with other gliosis-related changes, including loss of integrity of the outer limiting membrane (OLM) and deposition of proteoglycans. However, this is based on a mix of both injury-induced and genetic causes of photoreceptor loss. There are very few longitudinal studies of gliosis in the retina and none comparing these changes across models over time. Here, we present a comprehensive spatiotemporal assessment of features of gliosis in the degenerating murine retina that involves Müller glia. Specifically, we assessed Gfap, vimentin and chondroitin sulphate proteoglycan (CSPG) levels and outer limiting membrane (OLM) integrity over time in four murine models of inherited photoreceptor degeneration that encompass a range of disease severities (Crb1rd8/rd8, Prph2+/Δ307, Rho-/-, Pde6brd1/rd1). These features underwent very different changes, depending upon the disease-causing mutation, and that these changes are not correlated with disease severity. Intermediate filament expression did indeed increase with disease progression in Crb1rd8/rd8 and Prph2+/Δ307, but decreased in the Prph2+/Δ307 and Pde6brd1/rd1 models. CSPG deposition usually, but not always, followed the trends in intermediate filament expression. The OLM adherens junctions underwent significant remodelling in all models, but with differences in the composition of the resulting junctions; in Rho-/- mice, the adherens junctions maintained the typical rod-Müller glia interactions, while in the Pde6brd1/rd1 model they formed predominantly between Müller cells in late stage of degeneration. Together, these results show that gliosis and its associated processes are variable and disease-dependent

Random local strain effects in homovalent-substituted relaxor ferroelectrics: a first-principles study of BaTi0.74Zr0.26O3

We present first-principles supercell calculations on BaTi0.74Zr0.26O3, a prototype material for relaxors with a homovalent substitution. From a statistical analysis of relaxed structures, we give evidence for four types of Ti-atom polar displacements: along the , , or directions of the cubic unit cell, or almost cancelled. The type of a Ti displacement is entirely determined by the Ti/Zr distribution in the adjacent unit cells. The underlying mechanism involves local strain effects that ensue from the difference in size between the Ti4+ and Zr4+ cations. These results shed light on the structural mechanisms that lead to disordered Ti displacements in BaTi(1-x)Zr(x)O3 relaxors, and probably in other BaTiO3-based relaxors with homovalent substitution.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure