In the wake of an ever-expanding global network, attention is often focused on cultural intersections and juxtapositions set in motion by financial or technological interests. Relying on frameworks that place people and societies into binary (e.g., oppressed and oppressor, influenced and influencer, etc.) or hierarchical relationships (e.g., First World and Third world, developed and developing, etc.), scholars in the humanities and social sciences continue to grapple with the ramifications of rapid inter-cultural processes active across the globe. Hierarchical and hegemonic frameworks fail to account for the reciprocal nature of inter-cultural exchange occurring within such frameworks. With respect to Latin American music, such intra-hierarchical exchange has been ubiquitous, constant, and necessary for the development of a plethora of musical genres across Latin America and the United States. In the last fifty years, these interactions have been exacerbated by the speed at which technology makes inter-cultural interaction ever more instantaneous, pervasive, and intensely creative in contemporary contexts. How might a methodology focused on exchange between musicians in Latin America and the United States yield a more nuanced understanding of inter-cultural dynamics in a contemporary context? Utilizing ethnography focused on musicians who have forged careers from the confluence of disparate musical genres, this project explores the relationship Latin American musicians share with each other and with musicians in the United States as a means to better understand inter-cultural dynamics within a network consisting of multiple cultures, situated within different nations, and in diverse socio-economic standings. The result will be a study aimed at understanding how individuals consume foreign cultural influences by grounding themselves in familiar cultural realities, how polycultural identities are forged in such a process, and how this process is crystallized in the music of select artists from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Untied States.

Powerful drug cartels have left an indelible mark in Mexican history, and they continue to operate with relative impunity today. Efforts by authorities to curtail their influence have failed, largely because of their inability to learn from lessons of the past. This thesis examines the history of Mexican cartel influence- highlighting the problems in government, society and culture- to understand why and how cartel influence has spread. Authorities would benefit to use this knowledge to forge a more holistic approach in their war against Mexican cartels, as their current tactics lack much efficacy. Diminishing the formidable influence of Mexican drug cartels will likely reduce violence, corruption, sexism, drug use, crime, chauvinism, environmental damage, and human rights abuses. There is no singular method to make this happen. It would be beneficial for government and society to work together, using a variety of means and introducing new ideas as necessary, to combat drug cartels.

A book of poetry that reimagines the reality of the Mexico–U.S. border.

This dissertation is a study on the son jarocho and its fandango as a migratory and transformative musical culture between nations and social circumstances. The son jarocho embodies tradition in many cultural practices of society, such as its presence at social rites and at fandangos. However, there exist hidden histories, transcripts of resistance not accounted for in M�xico's official history, of the son jarocho as music of struggle and protest. From censorship, punishment, and imprisonment of son jarocho musicians and dancers during the Holy Inquisition of eighteenth and nineteenth century New Spain (M�xico), to solidarity exchanges in Zapatista rebel camps in the 1990s, the son jarocho functions as a musical demand for social justice and lyrically picaresque resistance. The son jarocho's resistance roots is embedded in this music as it migrates into the United States.

I trace the historical trajectory of the son jarocho in California as a way to understand how it was shaped before its present use as music of struggle and protest. The son jarocho began to emerge in the United States during the post-World War II period of 1940s California. Migrant musicians from M�xico, Chicanos, and White Americans introduced the son jarocho into universities, the film industry, processional recordings, concert venues, restaurants, and theme parks. Ensembles formed by Andr�s Huesca, Los Tigres de la Sierra, and Conjunto Papaloapan were amongst the earliest son jarocho groups to develop in California between the 1940s and 1960s. By the 1970s, the son jarocho exists within the Chicano Movement as a reinterpreted foundational music of Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles. Participants of the Chicano Movement and the United Farm Workers embraced the music of Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles as a cultural expression to musically support efforts of social justice.

Reclaiming the historical roots of the son jarocho as music of resistance and protest, the jaranera and jaranero movement is a prominent presence in social justice movements in the United States. From my observation, since the early 2000s, this music became a common soundtrack for marches, fasts, and protests for immigration reform, worker's rights demonstrations, the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and anti-militarization protests such as the School of the Americas Watch vigil held annually at Fort Benning, Georgia. By looking into the resistance roots of the son jarocho during M�xico's colonial period, gathering oral histories from pioneering musicians in California, and participant-observation in social movements in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, the objective of my research traces how the son jarocho and its fandango migrates and transforms within social and cultural movements.

This dissertation calls for a shift in the way scholars approach the role of schooling in democratic participation. Much of the scholarship documenting unequal schooling conditions exposes the absence of civic learning opportunities in under-resourced schools, and conversely, how more rigorous academics and democratic learning environments in higher resourced schools result in higher rates of youth political participation. However, more analyses are needed that interrogate the ideologies that undergird these “successful” students’ political ideas and practices and that explore how homogenous schooling environments, specifically predominantly white and politically conservative schools, impact the development of youth in these spaces. Also, not sufficiently considered is the impact of settler colonialism in structuring relationships, ideologies, and schooling, and how these derive from and give rise to specific relationships to the nation-state. Reading, Writing and Right-Wing Reproduction: The Teaching and Learning of Settler Citizenship in Ohio offers this contribution and investigates the political ideologies that circulate and are (re)produced within spaces commonly perceived as “good schools.” This dissertation looks at the everyday life in US Government classrooms and asks: What role does schooling play in shaping how youth come to think and act politically?

A political ethnography of schooling, this project examines the political education occurring in two predominantly white high schools in central Ohio: one in an affluent suburb, the other in a working-class semi-agricultural small town. Drawing upon observations, interviews, and documents from students and teachers, findings show that both schools play important roles in the (re)production of settler citizenship and this process is: 1) teacher-facilitated through ascription to politically neutral pedagogy that, in fact, reifies right-wing hegemony 2) student co-constructed via funds of settler knowledge that students draw from and deploy to co-create communities of practice where settler logics are apprenticed, and 3) sanctioned in school communities though a settler-normed pubic sphere that amplifies dominant ideologies and serves an assimilatory function into the white settler normative citizen. These findings highlight the importance of accounting for the sociocultural and, ultimately, colonial contexts in which political education takes place and the impact this has to (re)produce settler power and engagement in the public sphere. As scholars and education practitioners continue to theorize and research schools as potential sites of democracy-building, this research offers insights with regard to how we approach citizenship, governance, and political engagement and the (im)possibilities of disrupting settler-citizenship education in the classrooms of those most benefited by political and social structures as they are.

Drawing from anthropological fieldwork in three jazz clubs, this dissertation explores the global scale of contemporary jazz practice through an examination of the communities that sustain them in Los Angeles, California; Santiago, Chile; and Novosibirsk, Siberia. These spaces, which bear striking similarities to one another both in terms of architectural aesthetics and community practices despite the vast distance between them, are investigated as instantiations of jazz space informed by logics of jazz listening, and as sites of jazz practice—a process that I call jazz anthropology. It argues that to understand why jazz practices continue to manifest anywhere, we must understand what they mean to people elsewhere—that is, beyond the music’s geographical centers of production on the U.S. East Coast. By attending to these peripheries, we can hear the music as a manifestation of jazz consciousness, as tendrils of black radical modes of thinking transposed to far-flung geographies—even ones that very few black people inhabit. To situate these practices in a longer genealogical timespan, the dissertation also includes brief historical sketches of jazz practice in each of the three locations in 1917, 1959, and 1990, demonstrating the long local histories that inform the music in each locale. Each subsequent chapter focuses on a different club, as well as a distinctive aspect of global jazz world-making. Taken together, they tell a story of how people around the world share a sense of meaning and emplacement in ideas of Jazz as a universal signifier.

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