Rebel movements in Sri Lanka, Eritrea, Nepal, Columbia, and El Salvador among others report between 20-40% participation by female combatants. These women have largely been excluded from the literature around the recruitment, mobilization, and participation in violent social movements. If we acknowledge that young women are among those who might rebel, then existing paradigms on how rebellion occurs must also be re-imagined to include the experiences of the female combatant.

Looking at the case of women's involvement in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka, this dissertation aims to address two main overarching questions around female participation in rebel movements. The first set examines how we take seriously the politics around female participation in violent politics, without resorting to a feminist debate on agency. Assuming that female fighters are agentive actors, how to we understand their politics at an individual and collective level? The second explores how variations in state repression shape political identities and impact the eventual nature of political participation for Tamil women. How do we understand the agency of women confronting multiple forms of repression?

Drawing upon existing theories of mobilization and participation, I argue that in order to understand the impact of state repression on female participation, we must adopt a new theoretical framework. This dissertation highlights the interactive nature of the relationship between the individual and the collective, expands the timeline of analysis to incorporate entire life histories, and understands female combatants as exercising `restricted agency'. The analysis uses a unique data set, relying on significant field work done over ten years as both an academic and a humanitarian worker. Significant trust built over time in local communities, allowed for entry into controversial spaces (detention centers, training areas, refugee camps) and difficult to access populations (female fighters, victims of gender-based violence). The theories developed in this qualitative study rely on the insight and concepts generated using an ethnographic approach to data gathering that includes CPOs, person-centered interviews, focus groups, and gathering testimonies.

Working within the framework established above, I find that given pre-existing conditions of inequality (both political and gender), the identity of Tamil women are mobilized by multiple mechanisms, among which experiences of direct and indirect state repression are most likely to shape political identities and the nature of political participation.

While many accounts of sex workers presume they lack agency, this project studies how people framed as powerless assert positions of power through social interactions, friendships, and organizing. I examine sex workers' politics and power from the perspective of a subset of female Costa Rican sex workers. I engage specifically with sex workers who organize, in order to theorize everyday experiences of politics, including solidarity building and acts of accommodation or resistance vis-à-vis state interventions, health policies, and the police. Central theoretical bases for the project include Michael Hanchard and James Scott on "politics from below." I also draw on the work of Michele Berger in order to advance Political Science literature and frameworks in regarding everyday and labor-related interactions, challenging and extending the field's understanding of the politics of work-related interactions. I position sex-work as a form of labor and analyze the role that informal interactions play in organizing. The project also engages a multi-disciplinary set of literatures, including key texts from feminist and gender studies as well as theoretical and empirical approaches to studies of race, ethnicity, discrimination, and social movements. I discuss the political valences of stigma against sex work by extending concepts of discrimination from African-American studies.

This study examines micro and macro aspects of sex worker activism through resistance politics, empowerment strategies, and organizing. It also provides practical and theoretical insights on sex worker politics that can apply to other communities. The project's central questions are: 1) what kinds of political actions characterize sex workers' engagement in Costa Rica? and 2) how are informal and formal strategies used to organize sex workers? Unique among studies of sex work, I present a multi-level analysis of these perspectives in a Latin American context. As a case, Costa Rica highlights the diverse ways sex workers organize to resist the status quo. The dissertation examines three distinct but interconnected contexts: individual sex workers working in San José's zona roja (red zone); female sex workers who organize with the twenty-year-old sex worker project La Sala (The Living Room); and the international network of Latin American sex worker organizations, RedTraSex.

This dissertation asks: How does the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) impact Latinas in the Washington, DC area? My research focuses on the Violence Against Women Act and the ways in which the theory of intersectionality is absent from policy, although it is a necessary consideration when on-the-ground advocates are helping foreign-born, Latina, immigrant victims of intimate partner violence. I contend that Washington, DC is a new region for Latino/a communities and that Latinas are less likely to report violence against them. Through path dependency on the VAWA and qualitative interviews with advocates and Latina survivors, I conclude that VAWA has had positive effects on this particular group of victims. This was a qualitative analysis with primary data where I interviewed direct-service providers and conducted a focus group of foreign born Latina immigrant women who had applied for self petitions or U Visas as allowed by the VAWA. This dissertation brings together literatures from women studies, American and race and ethnicity politics. Other topics that are touched up on include immigration and theories of empowerment. The dissertation ends with a chapter on policy recommendations for policy makers.

From the Horn of Africa, to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the outer reaches of the African continent, conflict, civil war, and coup d’états have dominated Africa for nearly a century. These violent episodes stifle development, hinder the accumulation of capital (physical and human), and arrest growth. Abundant natural resources such as oil, diamonds, and timber, serve as one source of conflict. For nations endowed with such resources, these blessings, when mismanaged, often become curses. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and leading petroleum producer, is no exception. In the Southwest, however, the Yorùbá, though internally divided among Christians and Muslims, appear immune to the ethno-religious conflict seen in the Northern and Middle Belt regions. Are the Yorùbá “exceptional” and atypical given their demography—a Pax Yorùbá over the region? The literature is far from conclusive on the issue—very few recent studies examine the intersection between the Yorùbá, conflict, and religion. Some explanations point solely to the region’s colonial legacy and common ancestry. Relying on in-depth interviews and ethnographic field research, I find that the Yorùbá are the beneficiaries of what I call “Peace Entrepreneurs”. These key local leaders identify potential conflict situations before they escalate and become deadly. The Yorùbá example may help to derive important solutions to alleviate entrenched violent episodes seen elsewhere in Nigeria and other conflict-prone contexts.

Concerned with the role of social context on political incorporation, this dissertation addresses three primary questions: 1) what are the social factors that influence Afro-Caribbean group attachments in New York City and Los Angeles County; 2) what are the factors that influence socio-political attitudes towards the Obama Presidency among Afro-Caribbeans in the United States; and, 3) how does social context influence the pathway to political incorporation chosen by Afro-Caribbeans in New York and Los Angeles? Relying on in-depth interviews with first and second generation Trinidadians and Jamaicans in New York and Los Angeles, as well as participant observations, the dissertation finds that Afro-Caribbean group attachments are influenced by group reputation in the public consciousness. As such, Afro-Caribbeans utilize culture as a mechanism for navigating ethnic, racial and country of origin attachments simultaneously. Multiple attachments and the emphasis on culture inform political attitudes towards the Obama Presidency, while also serving as a means of public claims making.

A country's level of objective income inequality and a person's income are predictors of individual level redistributive preferences. These theoretical assertions arise from formal models that ignore the subjective dimensions of income inequality. A country's level of objective income inequality, usually measured in Gini ratios, affects the life chances of individuals but not a person's normative values about income inequality. Such subjective dimensions of income inequality are important because they affect substantive outcomes. This dissertation examines the determinants of one subjective dimension of income inequality, individual tolerance for income inequality, and its effect on a person's redistributive preferences.

This dissertation contributes to the income inequality literature by conceptualizing and testing the determinants of individual tolerance for income inequality. Using a cross-nation dataset of 87 countries, I show that an individual's subjective social status affects his level of tolerance for income inequality and I present a counterintuitive finding: a country's level of wealth and objective income inequality do not systematically affect an individual's level of tolerance for income inequality. Substantively, a person who lives in a poor country with high objective income inequality (e.g., Nigeria) and another person who lives in a rich country with low objective income inequality (e.g., Switzerland) are equally likely to feel that their respective country's level of income inequality is not too high.

Redistribution is a government's way of reducing inequality but people who live in the same country have different levels of preferences for redistribution. This dissertation's second contribution is to the redistribution literature. I argue that a person's level of tolerance for income inequality and other socio-economic characteristics (e.g., income) affect his preferences for redistribution. Specifically, a person who feels that his country's level of objective income inequality is too high is more likely to support government redistribution. Contrary to extant studies, this dissertation finds that a country's level of wealth and objective income inequality do not systematically affect its citizens' preference for redistribution. I argue that the crux of the theoretical and empirical connections between redistribution and inequality are the multiple income inequalities that citizens perceive and a country's level objective income inequality, by itself, does not systematically affect a person's degree of preference for redistribution.

This dissertation situates the emergence of revolutionary resistance in Pahlavi Iran in parallel with the emergence of neoliberal political rationality in the Middle East. In the process, it theorizes neoliberalism anew. Through an engagement with archives of social practice in Iran and its diaspora between 1968 and 1979, neoliberalism is presented as a political rationality that involves rhetorical disavowal at root --- what I refer to as indeterminate governmentality. The study employs parallelism as a theoretical construct reflecting the logic of the revolutionary transformation and periodic shift at hand. The disavowals considered include renderings of a collective on individualist terms; formations of solidarity through empathy; and orientations toward order in the production of disorder. The archival material considered includes state documents; activist records, ephemera, and publications; theoretical texts; literature; popular cinema; periodicals; and ethnographic interviews. In sum, I argue that an event variably labelled Iranian or Islamic may just as well be understood as the first neoliberal revolution.

During the early 1970's, Puerto Rican grassroots activism in U.S. communities reached its height on the heels of the civil rights movement and after widespread migration to the U.S. from Puerto Rico. By 1980, many of these groups became financially insolvent or their volunteer base shrank drastically due to decreasing public funds and widespread demographic changes within Puerto Rican communities. This dissertation asks the following questions: how did these groups negotiate citizenship rights in terms of identity, place, and institutional proximity? What role do factors such as race, gender, local politics, philanthropic support, and congressional representation play in these organizations' bids for success? This study analyzes two case study groups from the Puerto Rican civil rights era in New York City, The United Bronx Parents and Aspira, through original fieldwork consisting of extensive archival content analysis of organizational records and correspondence as well as oral interviews with organizational staff and leadership past and present.

The overarching goal of these inquiries is to explain the consequences and strategies that have come out of non-profit corporate and philanthropic modeling among Puerto Rican organizations since 1980 and the implications of these changes on political identity and the process of expanding civil rights in American politics. The project also investigates the intricacies of the El Nuevo Despertar, or late era of the Puerto Rican movement; most notably the strong presence of female leadership among grassroots organizations. This study documents the significant shift in demographics and public funding after the dissipation of war on poverty programs which Puerto Rican organizations in New York each handled differently and with vastly different outcomes. These organizational choices are of much interest in the general arena of Latinos, political inclusion, and community/ nonprofit work today.

Theories utilized in discussion include citizenship, formal and informal political institutions, the politics of place, racial solidarity, Puerto Rican nationalism, and Latino nonprofit organizational culture. These themes specific to the Puerto Rican community extend to general discussions of the Latino political and economic middle class as a growing stake holder in New York City and across the United States. This topic is of much interest in political science and ethnic studies today as the political challenges facing Latino representation in the private and public sectors are garnering vast public attention. Understanding the Puerto Rican experience across the canvass of exclusive American democracy broadens traditional notions of politics and participation and expands the concept of citizenship from a static set of privileges to a dynamic process of negotiation.