Expanding Women's Worlds?: Development, Gender, and Environment in Rural Morocco

This honors thesis is an anthropological exploration of women's cooperatives in two regions of rural Morocco. Specifically, I am interested in how contemporary development projects such as the cooperative are understood by the peoples of these regions. By conducting first-hand ethnographic research among women's cooperatives in two drastically different environments of rural Morocco, I gain further insight into the roles that culture and geography play in determining the 'success' of cooperatives inlocal communities. In using the term 'success,' I will compare notions of success as used by both Western development organizations as well as local people in Morocco. I examine and analyze the very delicate and complex interaction that occurs between largely Western development agencies and local cultures particularly through the lens of gender. I will also convey the importance of an exchange of cultural practices through development projects rather than the imposition of one cultural system on another. In writing this thesis, I hope to contribute to the growing field of the anthropologyof development, a subset of cultural anthropology that examines international development practices and the economic, social, and political factors that have an impact on the local culture. I examine cooperatives from the perspectives of both the people whoparticipate in them through personal interviews as well as development institutions through an ongoing body of published literature. Focusing on gender implications that such development initiatives have on the rural cultures of Morocco, I argue that gender identities are crucial aspects of local cultures that must be addressed within development practices. On a broader scale, I argue that a deeper knowledge of local cultures is essential if development agencies are to be 'successful' in non-Western cultures.

Eugene Onegin As A Bridge Between Worlds: Aleksandr Pushkin As Translator Of The 19Th-Century Russian Experience

In my thesis, I use literary criticism, knowledge of Russian, and elements of translation theory to study the seminal poet of the Russian literary tradition ¿ Aleksandr Pushkin. In his most famous work, Eugene Onegin, Pushkin explores the cultural and linguistic divide in place at the turn of the 19th century in Russia. Pushkin stands on the peripheries of several colliding worlds; never fully committing to any of them, he acts as a translator between various realms of the 19th-century Russian experience. Through his narrator, he adeptly occupies the voices, styles, and modes of expression of various characters, displaying competency in all realms of Russian life. In examining Tatiana, his heroine, the reader witnesses her development as analogous to the author¿s. At the center of the text stands the act of translation itself: as the narrator ¿translates¿ Tatiana¿s love letter from French to Russian, the author-narrator declares his function as a mediator, not only between languages, but also between cultures, literary canons, social classes, and identities. Tatiana, as both main character and the narrator¿s muse, emerges as the most complex figure in the novel, and her language manifests itself as the most direct and capable of sincerity in the novel. The elements of Russian folklore that are incorporated into her language speak to Pushkin¿s appreciation for the rich Russian folklore tradition. In his exaltation of language considered to be ¿common¿, ¿low¿ speech is juxtaposed with its lofty counterpart; along the way, he incorporates myriad foreign borrowings. An active creator of Russia¿s new literary language, Pushkin traverses linguistic boundaries to synthesize a fragmented Russia. In the process, he creates a work so thoroughly tied to language and entrenched in complex cultural traditions that many scholars have argued for its untranslatability.