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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Social Relations Society'
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1
Mello, Brian Jason. "Evaluating social movement impacts : labor and the politics of state-society relations /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/10711.
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2
Sillar, William J. M. "Pottery's role in the reproduction of Andean society." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1994. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/272798.
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3
Paker, Hande. "Social aftershocks : rent seeking, state failure, and state-civil society relations in Turkey." Thesis, McGill University, 2004. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=85026.
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This research emerged from the belief that merely economic explanations of rent seeking were too narrow and an interdisciplinary approach was needed to understand historical structural factors that contribute to particularistic exchanges. Rent-seeking and particularistic ties are almost always explained from a strictly neoclassical perspective which tend to be reductionist approaches that fail to explain why some states will be rent-seeking while others will not. Moreover, other frameworks that analyze state-civil society interaction do so without taking into account particularistic state-civil society interaction. Thus, there is a need to explain such particularistic ties in a comparative institutional framework. My dissertation research was undertaken on two associations in Turkey, namely the Turkish Red Crescent (Kizilay) and AKUT (a search and rescue team), in order to understand the dynamics of the relationship between a particularistic state and civil society associations. The TRC was chosen because it was involved in particularistic exchanges and functioned as an institution of the state, which meant that it partook in the state failure the state in Turkey faced in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in 1999. The Marmara earthquake was devastating not only physically in terms of the damage it caused, but also socially in terms of the extent of the failure of state institutions it exposed and the extent of criticisms it unleashed. The immediate chaos that ensued in the aftermath of the earthquake was marked by the "absence of the state". The failure of the state provoked an unprecedented civil reaction and mobilization. AKUT, the second case of the research, also became the focus of public attention, albeit for completely the opposite reason. It was revered for the successful rescue work it carried out in the earthquake while the TRC was severely criticized for its failure to deliver services.My dissertation research has shown that in cases of state failure, the state can only establish particularistic ties creating a multilevel chain system of particularized exchanges and fails to deliver public goods and services universally. Thus, the state co-opts a civil society organization into this chain system, demonstrated both by the TRC and AKUT. Furthermore, in cases of state failure, a civil society organization that has developed independently of the state becomes over-missionized with filling the gap created by state failure (AKUT), with public expectations and demands from AKUT far exceeding their self-defined goals and capabilities. Thus, ineffectiveness of the state does not translate into well-working civil society organizations. The absence of a capable state affects the nature of civil society organizations adversely. This finding is a direct contribution to the more general debate on the effectiveness of state institutions and the voluntary sector. More importantly, my research effectively shows that much of the dichotomous discussion of the state on the one hand, and civil society on the other, needs to be discarded. Such dichotomous thinking does not capture the complex interactions between the state and civil society organizations, as I have shown in the case of Turkey.
4
Lapierre, Christine. "Shop-floor society : work and social relations on the North Shore of Québec." Thesis, McGill University, 2005. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=83191.
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Iron Bay is a small community situated on the North Shore of the province of Quebec, where people work mainly in the resources and industrial sectors. This study examines the social relations of the workers of an iron pellet plant in that community, both at work and outside. The social organization of work, the relations between hierarchical orders at work and leisure activities are examined to produce an ethnographic account of the way of life of an affluent, if isolated, segment of the working class of Quebec.
5
Lin, Ching-Hsiu. "Women and land privatisation, gender relations, and social change in Truku society, Taiwan." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/5990.
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This research is based upon fieldwork carried out in 2005 and 2006 among Truku people, a Taiwanese indigenous group living in eastern Taiwan. It examines the transformation of the relationship between women and land, and explores meanings related to women’s ownership of land since the government introduced the privatisation of land ownership and cash cropping into Truku society in the 1960s. However, the imposition of these programmes of land reform and capitalisation has generated various types of conflict over land in Truku society. Since the 1960s, Truku people have suffered from loss of lands, arising from various governmental policies on economic development. Hence, many land reclamation movements have arisen, organised by Truku people in order to reclaim their land rights. Furthermore, the transformation of property relations has generated many conflicts over land and inheritance between different households and has created tensions between women and men in terms of land ownership in contemporary society. Most importantly, I reflect on the prevalent idea that women’s right to own land is not sanctioned by ‘traditional’ Truku culture, an argument which, I argue, is problematic, because the idea does not (neatly) fit into actual Truku practices of property transaction. Truku people strategically make use of this narrative of ‘tradition’ in order to strengthen their own tactical position in land disputes which arise between different households. Furthermore, I am critical of the emphasis placed on masculine or male Truku culture in this narrative, which is constructed by Truku activists in land reclamation movements in contemporary Truku society. Through investigation of the processes by which women obtain land in Truku society, I argue that women’s ownership of land cannot simply be regarded as a consequence of the implications of privatisation, but is also a result of kinship practices and their work in cultivating land and maintaining the economic well-being of the household in contemporary society. This research attempts to contribute to anthropological perspectives on property relations, economic anthropology, gender studies, kinship studies and studies of indigenous movements in Taiwan.
6
Pershutkin, Alexander. "Information society and domestic conflicts." Diss., Online access via UMI:, 2008.
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7
Abramowitz, Alan F. "Transnational corporations : an examination of the consequences for society." Thesis, Kansas State University, 1986. http://hdl.handle.net/2097/9895.
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8
Souri, Eirini. "Global Civil Society : A Study on the Transformative Possibilities of Civil Society as an Agent in International Relations." Thesis, Linköping University, Department of Management and Engineering, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-8530.
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Global Civil Society is a spectrum of diverse social actors, which offers an alternative to the making of contemporary politics, and towards social change; it provides us with a new approach to change the existing global order through development rather than confrontation. For this reason, global civil society has recently attracted increased interest in the academic and political discourse and consequently has left the margins and is placed in the centre of contemporary International Relations and political theory.
Utilizing neo-Gramscian ideas this study examines global civil society’s concept and core features and focuses on its role as well as transformative possibilities as an agent in contemporary world politics. This thesis demonstrates through the findings of our
case study on "Civil Society Organisations" Response to the Fourth European Union – Latin America and the Caribbean Summit in Vienna 2006” the alternative approach in dealing with political issues and actively working towards those ends.
This research’s conclusions designate the great potentialities of civil society’s organizations, if carefully managed to transform the contemporary world; as well as the necessity of addressing global civil society in order to understand the role of the social realm in reducing the gap of legitimacy in the contemporary world order.
9
Moisan, Frédéric. "The bonds of society : an interdisciplinary study of social rationality." Toulouse 3, 2013. http://thesesups.ups-tlse.fr/2090/.
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Cette thèse est consacrée à l'étude des principes fondamentaux de la rationalité humaine dans les interactions sociales afin de combler l'écart séparant le comportement individuel et égoïste de la coopération sociale. A cet effet, je présente d'abord une analyse logique du rôle de la connaissance dans les jeux séquentiels. Plus précisément, j'utilise la logique modale pour formaliser le raisonnement d'agents sur les stratégies et la connaissance, et examiner le théorème bien connu d'Aumann stipulant que l'induction rétrograde dans les jeux à information parfaite peut être dérivée de l'hypothèse de connaissance commune de rationalité individuelle. Ensuite, le chapitre suivant étudie la nature des relations sociales comme une explication possible du comportement coopératif humain. Après avoir fourni une définition basique des liens sociaux, je présente alors un nouveau modèle théorique basée sur l'hypothèse que de telles relations sociales influencent les préférences des individus. Afin d'étudier cette théorie, je propose l'analyse d'un nouveau type de jeu de coordination qui permet de dissocier les prédictions de théories basées sur l'intérêt personnel, les préférences sociales, et les liens sociaux. Je valide alors le modèle proposé de liens sociaux à travers une étude expérimentale qui implique des sujets humains partageant des liens réels les uns avec les autres. Enfin, je présente une généralisation de ce modèle afin de formaliser le comportement rationnel coopératif dans les interactions sociales pouvant comporter plus de deux individus. Dans ce cas, j'illustre les similarités et différences existantes avec la théorie de raisonnement en équipe de BacharachThis thesis is devoted to study the underlying principles of human rationality in social interactions as an attempt to bridge the gap between individually egoistic behavior and social cooperation. For this purpose, I first present a logical analysis of the role of knowledge in the context of sequential games. More precisely, I use modal logic to formally model agents' reasoning about strategies and knowledge, and investigate Aumann's well known theorem stating that backward induction in perfect information games can be derived from the assumption of common knowledge of individual rationality. The next chapter focuses on studying the nature of social relationships as a possible explanation of human cooperative behavior. After providing a basic definition of social ties, I then introduce a novel theoretical model built upon the main hypothesis that such relationships directly influence the players' preferences. In order to investigate this claim, I first propose a theoretical analysis of a new kind of coordination game, which allows to disentangle predictions from theories based on self-interest, social preferences, and social ties. I then validate the proposed model of social ties through an experimental study involving subjects who share some genuine bonds with one another. Finally, I present a generalization of this model as a means to formally represent rational cooperative behavior in strategic interactions possibly involving more than two individuals. In this case, I illustrate the existing similarities and differences with Bacharach's well known theory of team reasoning
10
Campbell, Catherine Magda. "Identity and gender in a changing society : the social identity of South African township youth." Thesis, University of Bristol, 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/1983/f57ac2b1-dc45-43d2-8663-641cc13e8cee.
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Domenichini, Eleanora. "Social capital in contemporary society decline or change : a project based upon an independent investigation /." Click here for text online. Smith College School for Social Work website, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10090/1028.
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Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2007Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Social Work. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-64)
12
Yesiltas, Ozum. "Civil Society And Democratization In Turkey: A Critical Evaluation Of Civil Society-democracy Relationship In The Context Of Turkey-eu Relations." Master's thesis, METU, 2006. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12607779/index.pdf.
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This thesis tries to analyze the role of civil society within the process of democratization in Turkey with special reference to the impact of civil society policies of the EU on the internal operating styles of civil society organizations in Turkey. In this respect, a critical evaluation of the said issue was tried to be put forward in the sense that the extensive discussions on the concept of civil society were examined and gathered with the observations and empirical evidence gained on the subject in order to reach an answer on the very nature of civil society-democracy relationship. In doing this, the purpose was to uncover the reasons behind the recent popularization of the concept as an indispensable precondition of democracy and to question whether certain circumstances exist under which the term may rather harm than enable the process of democratization. Within this framework, the consideration of the civil society policies of the EU implemented in Turkey was seen as all the more necessary because of the fact that the process of Turkey&rsquos EU membership has major implications for not only the process of democratization in Turkey, but also on the development of civil society as a significant part of this process. In accordance with the purpose of the study, in order to understand the extent of democratic capacity of civil society organizations in Turkey and the impact of the EU in that sense, a field research was conducted in Ankara, Turkey with the participation of 46 CSOs active mostly in the fields of women, children, disabled, human rights and environment. Through the field research, the main purpose was to understand the dynamics of the internal operating styles of those organizations, their views concerning the relations between CSOs as well as between the CSOs and the state on the one hand, to measure the extent to which their participation to civil society programs of the EU influence their intra-organizational structures on the other. According to the results of the field research, over the experience of 46 participant organizations, an analysis of the extent to which the EU-implemented civil society programs serve for the building of democratic capacity of civil society organizations in Turkey was tried to be made.
13
Nordell, Dan. "ISIS – Information principles, skills, relations and capabilities for an inclusive learning society : -." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för datavetenskap, fysik och matematik, DFM, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-21897.
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In our complex world of today we see that the leader- and followership is getting harder and harder to “command and control” our organizations and our society. The awareness of the decision makers are often too fragmented in relation to the often complex real situations out there. The information is only flowing in organizational stovepipes and not across boundaries as it should today. The patterns of mutual complex dependencies have taken over and we have difficulties in controlling the consequences of our decisions. The relations over organizational borders are often weak and fragmented and the mutual trust is low. Technology has always been a driver for the society to evolve and our idea is that technology can be the main driver for evolving cross boundary collaboration in order to meet the demands of the world. Technology can be the main driver but only if we consider all of the important dimensions when implementing Information and communication technologies (ICT) In order to find the right method of using technology and scientific methods for achieving better cross boundary collaboration a number of data collection activities has been performed, described and analyzed in the work with this thesis. The activities has been diverse in its nature, brainstorming activities, qualitative interviews and a small case study has been combined in order to derive the result – a path forward against further research for a better cross boundary collaboration in our western community. The thesis now have identified a path forward and a scientific framework for taking all of our experiences, existing capabilities, earlier performed research one step further and lift it up to the cross boundary level in organizations and in our society. We have the chance of cultivating all of the properties, relations, amounts of information, and evolve our technology. This may be all that we need in order to achieve a more socially sustainable climate in leader- and followership in our organizations and society. Who knows … maybe we can change the world … or at least make a real difference somewhere!
14
Cook, Gina A. "Temperament, Attachment, and Parenting Stress in Infancy; Relations to Social Competence of Second Graders." DigitalCommons@USU, 1999. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/2458.
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The importance of social competence in children's development has been recognized, and evidence has been found that children who are socially incompetent are at risk for academic problems. Yet the influences that may be involved from infancy, such as temperament and attachment, have not been explored longitudinally. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of infant temperament characteristics on later social development and to explore the idea that this influence may be affected by the infant's attachment security mediated by parenting stress.
Eighteen-month-old infants, from a previous study, were studied as second graders to examine whether their development was influenced by early attachment and temperament . This study examined the involvement of infant temperament and attachment in relation to maternal goodness-of-fit and parenting stress to predict social problems in the school years to gain valuable insight into the potential of the infant to influence his/her own development.
Results indicate that characteristics of the infant and the mother-infant relationship have only indirect relations with how children function later in childhood. However, the child's temperament as a second grader, although not stable from infancy, is related to how well a child adapts in a school environment
15
Kreitzer, Mark Robert. "A missiological evaluation of the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk's new social theology (Church and society 1990)." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 1997. http://www.tren.com.
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16
Hasan, Mahdee. "Involvement of Syrian Immigrant in Swedish Society and Their Work and Family Life in Sweden." Thesis, Högskolan i Halmstad, Akademin för hälsa och välfärd, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-43147.
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The research mainly carried out on the Syrian immigrants in Sweden who are working in Swedish society and also living with their families. The primary objective is to find out how the Syrian immigrants combine their work-life as well as family life in Sweden and also the difficulties they are facing. It is mainly a qualitative study and the data has been collected from the five in-depth interviews immigrant those who are living in Halmstad, Sweden for five to six years. The collected data depend on the idea such as involvement in working life, social integration, and involvement in family life, communication with a particular community, health, and lifestyle as well as religious factors. Sweden is one of the multi-cultural countries in the world where equality between persons to persons is emphasized everywhere. Besides, immigrants are contributing to the development of different sectors. Nevertheless, people from another country like Syrian immigrants are living in Sweden and they are involved in different organizations. Besides, they are integrated with the Swedish work life and family life. The interpretation of the collected data is based on the health and lifestyle theory (Cocker-ham. 2005) and acculturation theory (Sam and berry, 2006). The interpretation resulted in four main themes such as work-life, family life, social identity, and the difficulties Syrian immigrants are facing. The study presents various perspectives of Syrian immigrant’s work life and family life in Sweden and the problem they are facing. The results show different factors of Syrian refugee’s lifestyle and the process they are leading their work life as well as family life. The result of the study can be used in future research projects to understand the life of Syrian immigrants in Sweden.
17
Cox, Wayne S. "States, social systems and violence : a socio-centric conceptualization of structural violence." Ottawa, 1990.
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18
Dodgson, Richard Paul. "The women's health movement and the international conference on population and development : global social movement, population and the changing nature of international relations." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.285376.
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19
Donahue, Robert Charles. "Guidelines for raising awareness among Christian leaders for the need of reconciliation in a multiethnic society." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 1995. http://www.tren.com.
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20
Piliavsky, Anastasia. "Theft, patronage & society in Western India." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:227b49fc-1ca7-458c-9b1a-86da3212d042.
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This thesis is an ethnography of a community of professional thieves called the Kanjar-a 'caste of thieves' by practice, public perception and self-designation-in the northern Indian province of Rajasthan. It is also an argument that spells out the broader logic of rank in local society. Insofar as it offers the first ethnography of the Kanjar community- and of caste-based, professional, hereditary theft-this study is new. My analytical concern with hierarchy and rank, however, is old, engaging in the once central, and now largely out-fashioned, discussion in the sociology of South Asia. My project began with a narrow set of concerns with the place of thieving and thieves in local society. In the course of my fieldwork, however, it became apparent that the received wisdom of South Asian sociology regarding the principles of rank did not offer useful explanatory tools and that a different conception of rank was necessary to make sense of what I observed, both about the social position of Kanjars and the hierarchical social formation at large. As is so often the case, what began as a study of historically and sociologically particular circumstances became an inquiry into the pervasive regnant aspects of the local order of things.
21
Zhang, Dashi. "Business and society : an integrated study of corporate philanthropy and organization-public relationships in China." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2013. http://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/1550.
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22
Foran, Tira. "Rivers of contention : Pak Mun Dam, electricity planning, and state-society relations in Thailand, 1932-2004." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/1984.
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This study investigates how actions – especially narratives and claims – of civil society advocates influenced electricity generation planning and hydropower project implementation, in the context of a democratising authoritarian state. To pursue this research agenda, I use a critical realist philosophy of science to ground a conceptual framework whose fundamental components consist of institutions, interests, and discourses. The research presents three case studies from Thailand, a nation-state with distinct authoritarian legacies, as well as significant economic and political dynamism in the late 20th century. The cases step from macro to micro levels of analysis: (1) Electricity generation planning: an overview and critique of the social construction of peak power demand and supply options in Thailand, 1960s–2004. I focus on the rise of energy conservation advocacy in the early 1990s, and the rise of more confrontational energy activism in the late 1990s; (2) Pak Mun Dam: contention between EGAT, anti-dam villagers, and other state and civil society actors, 1989–2003; (3) Pak Mun Dam: analysis of how knowledge discourses shaped debates over fisheries and local livelihoods in the lower Mun river basin, 1999–2004. I pursue these cases in the larger context of Thai state–society relations, 1932–early 2000s: from the Khana Ratsadorn (People’s Party) and its founders’ increasingly authoritarian struggles to shape the state; through to the rise of civil society in the Indochina-war era; through the emergence of parliamentary politics and NGO evolution in the 1980s and early 1990s; to the Thai Rak Thai “money politics” party that emerged in 1998. Specific research questions focus on patterns and outcomes of state–society interaction, the role of lay and expert knowledge discourses in structuring conflict, and plausible causal connections between outcomes and concepts used in the conceptual framework. The study is based on fieldwork conducted between 2001 and 2005, with 18 months of intensive work concentrated in 2002 and 2004. Recurrent procedures consisted of collecting policy narratives and arguments and re-constructing actors’ interests (including those of leaders in organizations) via participant observation, interviews, and textual analysis. The thesis argues that anti-dam advocates influenced project implementation practices at Pak Mun Dam by forming social change networks, gaining contingent recognition as new political actors. Through innovative and disruptive action, through claims for transparency and justice, through mass performances of worthiness, unity, and commitment, and through the production of local knowledge, they helped set agendas. They triggered elite intervention, as well as reactive counter-mobilization and occasional violence. The escalation of uncertainty from unintended outcomes challenged elites – aided by deliberative exchanges – to reconsider unfavourable decisions, to reconsider their preferences, and to make concessions. At the same time, a number of events made the Assembly of the Poor, the main anti-dam movement organization, vulnerable to destabilizing action at the local and national levels. These include: the formation of competitive organizations in the lower Mun basin; complex and intractable issues (such as multiple rounds of compensation); and inability to take credit for championing the interests of vulnerable small farmers. Destabilizing interactions occurred particularly in the restricted media space of the post-financial and economic crisis years. Populist platforms put forward by Thai Rak Thai and Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra pre-empted the AOP’s influence. Sustainable energy advocates influenced practices of power system planning by teaching new techniques of energy conservation, and diffusing new norms. In the recent period, however, as some of them engaged in more contentious interaction, such as intervening in conflicts over new coal and hydroelectric power plants (in southern Thailand and Laos respectively) they disrupted dominant rationalities, and found themselves confronting some of the same core practices of a power-wielding bureaucracy and an authoritarian state, namely rhetorical strategies that police the boundaries of policy-relevant knowledge. The thesis, intended to contribute to social science methodology and theory, concludes with a critical appraisal of the conceptual framework. I suggest new research agendas for analysts interested in mechanisms of civil society advocacy in the context of democratising states.
23
Foran, Tira. "Rivers of contention : Pak Mun Dam, electricity planning, and state-society relations in Thailand, 1932-2004." Connect to full text, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/1984.
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PhDThis study investigates how actions – especially narratives and claims – of civil society advocates influenced electricity generation planning and hydropower project implementation, in the context of a democratising authoritarian state. To pursue this research agenda, I use a critical realist philosophy of science to ground a conceptual framework whose fundamental components consist of institutions, interests, and discourses. The research presents three case studies from Thailand, a nation-state with distinct authoritarian legacies, as well as significant economic and political dynamism in the late 20th century. The cases step from macro to micro levels of analysis: (1) Electricity generation planning: an overview and critique of the social construction of peak power demand and supply options in Thailand, 1960s–2004. I focus on the rise of energy conservation advocacy in the early 1990s, and the rise of more confrontational energy activism in the late 1990s; (2) Pak Mun Dam: contention between EGAT, anti-dam villagers, and other state and civil society actors, 1989–2003; (3) Pak Mun Dam: analysis of how knowledge discourses shaped debates over fisheries and local livelihoods in the lower Mun river basin, 1999–2004. I pursue these cases in the larger context of Thai state–society relations, 1932–early 2000s: from the Khana Ratsadorn (People’s Party) and its founders’ increasingly authoritarian struggles to shape the state; through to the rise of civil society in the Indochina-war era; through the emergence of parliamentary politics and NGO evolution in the 1980s and early 1990s; to the Thai Rak Thai “money politics” party that emerged in 1998. Specific research questions focus on patterns and outcomes of state–society interaction, the role of lay and expert knowledge discourses in structuring conflict, and plausible causal connections between outcomes and concepts used in the conceptual framework. The study is based on fieldwork conducted between 2001 and 2005, with 18 months of intensive work concentrated in 2002 and 2004. Recurrent procedures consisted of collecting policy narratives and arguments and re-constructing actors’ interests (including those of leaders in organizations) via participant observation, interviews, and textual analysis. The thesis argues that anti-dam advocates influenced project implementation practices at Pak Mun Dam by forming social change networks, gaining contingent recognition as new political actors. Through innovative and disruptive action, through claims for transparency and justice, through mass performances of worthiness, unity, and commitment, and through the production of local knowledge, they helped set agendas. They triggered elite intervention, as well as reactive counter-mobilization and occasional violence. The escalation of uncertainty from unintended outcomes challenged elites – aided by deliberative exchanges – to reconsider unfavourable decisions, to reconsider their preferences, and to make concessions. At the same time, a number of events made the Assembly of the Poor, the main anti-dam movement organization, vulnerable to destabilizing action at the local and national levels. These include: the formation of competitive organizations in the lower Mun basin; complex and intractable issues (such as multiple rounds of compensation); and inability to take credit for championing the interests of vulnerable small farmers. Destabilizing interactions occurred particularly in the restricted media space of the post-financial and economic crisis years. Populist platforms put forward by Thai Rak Thai and Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra pre-empted the AOP’s influence. Sustainable energy advocates influenced practices of power system planning by teaching new techniques of energy conservation, and diffusing new norms. In the recent period, however, as some of them engaged in more contentious interaction, such as intervening in conflicts over new coal and hydroelectric power plants (in southern Thailand and Laos respectively) they disrupted dominant rationalities, and found themselves confronting some of the same core practices of a power-wielding bureaucracy and an authoritarian state, namely rhetorical strategies that police the boundaries of policy-relevant knowledge. The thesis, intended to contribute to social science methodology and theory, concludes with a critical appraisal of the conceptual framework. I suggest new research agendas for analysts interested in mechanisms of civil society advocacy in the context of democratising states.
24
Wong, Ka-yee Carrie, and 黃家怡. "An investigation into Chinese kinship terms in Hong Kong society." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2000. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31944711.
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25
O'Boyle, Patrick M. "The role of international PR firms in the use of CSR to achieve harmonious society in mainland China and Hong Kong." online access from Digital Dissertation Consortium, 2007. http://libweb.cityu.edu.hk/cgi-bin/er/db/ddcdiss.pl?1443892.
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26
Smith, Janel. "Civil society, human security, and the politics of peace-building in victor's peace Sri Lanka (2009-2012)." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2013. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/937/.
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This thesis aims to expand scholarship on civil society and peace-building through exploration of civil society’s experiences, perspectives, and practices in relation to the politics of peace-building and human (in)security in instances of victor’s peace, using post-war Sri Lanka as case study. It adopts Human Security as an analytical approach calling attention to insecurities operating on and through Sri Lankans but also the nature of power dynamics underlying these insecurities based on the subjective and political nature of ‘peace’ itself. The thesis contributes conceptually and empirically to knowledge of the operation of victor’s peace and its implications for civil society in peace-building. This thesis’s central contention is that acts of securitization and governmentality carried out by Sri Lanka’s central governmental elite within and enabled by the victor’s peace have constricted spaces for civil society to articulate alternatives or engage in critical dialogue within the political process fostered under the victor’s peace. This study, thus, questions romanticized notions of the potentiality of ‘local’ resistances to shift structural inequalities and power asymmetries in victor’s peace. At a disciplinary level, the thesis also deepens knowledge, first, on civil society as complex and contested sphere. It argues that to conceptualize civil society as homogenous or inherently altruistic risks drastically oversimplifying its highly diffuse nature and politics within the sector in which certain actors may benefit within the victor’s peace and engage in ‘peace’-building activities in order to both capitalise on those benefits and sustain the victor’s peace. Second, the thesis addresses the nexus between civil society and peace-building, and specifically the politics of peace-building, in the victor’s peace. In not being constrained by negotiated peace settlement it asserts that, as in Sri Lanka, instances of victor’s peace can quickly transition into repressive environments. Here it is unlikely that civil society, despite innovative methods of exercising agency, can significantly alter the trajectories of the ‘peace’, and further that those civil society actors that support the victor’s peace may seek to exploit the benefits they gain from it at the expense of the human security of others. Finally, the thesis asserts that, ultimately, Human Security’s utility may lie not as political agenda that validates external intervention based on a ‘responsibility’ to intervene, but as a conceptual framework for developing deeper understandings of the nature of (in)security and factors driving (in)security at multiple levels of analysis within different articulations or ‘types’ of peace.
27
Youngblood, Thomas. "Racial Stereotypes and Racial Assimilation in a Multiracial Society." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2009. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc28379/.
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Interest in a multiracial society has increased in recent years and including on racism and prejudice and in the propensity to stereotype out-groups. Theories on racism help explain the dominant group's prejudice toward subordinate groups. Yet they only explain why dominant group members stereotype subordinates or if the dominant group's propensity to stereotype is different from that of subordinate groups. Recent assimilation theories suggest that some minorities are assimilating with Whites but Blacks are not undergoing assimilation. Classic assimilation theory suggests that when a subordinate group assimilates with the dominant group then they will also take on the dominant group's values and beliefs, including their prejudices and propensities to stereotype. The use of racial stereotypes in support of the assimilation of a minority group has not been tested. Results from the LSAF national survey provide support for Asians to be assimilating with Whites. However, Hispanics do not appear to be taking on Whites' propensity to stereotype, contradicting the prediction that Hispanics are assimilating with Whites.
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Almutairi, Faris Muteb. "RELIGIOUS ATTITUDES TOWARD SOCIAL MODERNIZATION AND THEIR IMPACT ON STATE-SOCIETY RELATIONS IN SAUDI ARABIA FROM THE 1920s TO THE 1970s." OpenSIUC, 2019. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dissertations/1718.
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This study examines the religious discourse produced by ulama and preachers toward social modernization in Saudi Arabia and how it has affected the relationship between the state and citizens. The Saudi ulama have historically supported the state’s political legitimacy while simultaneously resisting state modernization projects that would diminish their own authority. The ulama relied on two religious precepts to resist such projects: “loyalty and enmity” and the “propagation of virtue and prevention of vice.” These principles were challenged by the discovery of oil, which led to urbanization, changes in lifestyle, and a desire to adopt modern technology and ideas to be able to interact with the international community. To examine religious discourse regarding modernity and how it influenced state-society relations, this study focuses on three state modernization projects: forging diplomatic relations with non-Muslim countries, reforming public education, and adopting modern mass media. Drawing data from available archival and local sources, this study covers the period from the 1920s to the 1970s.
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Rehnbäck, Arostegui Cindy. "Uppsala Municipality and civil society in the integration process : - Asylum seekers and newly arrived." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Institutionen för globala politiska studier (GPS), 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-44904.
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During the refugee crisis in 2015, Sweden received a record amount of asylum seekers whowere received by civil society. Civil society played a crucial role in the integration process ofasylym seekers and newly arrived. This study concentrates on gaining a deeper understandingand knowledge in the field of integration within Uppsala Municipality, civil society and theircollaboration. The chosen methodology used to carry out this study is qualitative researchapproach. Five organizations within civil society were chosen and totally nine semi-structuredinterviews were included in the study. This study demonstrates that integration is described asa possibility to participate in society on equal terms. There are different integration-promotingactivities for asylum seekers and new arrivals, which increases social integration among them.
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Stephan, Lea. "Social policies and racial questions : from the Great Society to Obamacare." Thesis, Toulouse 2, 2017. http://www.theses.fr/2017TOU20120/document.
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Cette thèse propose un éclairage inédit sur la stratégie politique employée par le président Barack Obama pour réduire les inégalités raciales ; ceci dans un contexte dominé par le fort ressentiment de la population blanche envers les politiques sociales en général et les mesures dites « raciales » en particulier. La présente analyse s’appuie sur l’exemple spécifique de la réforme de santé Obamacare, fruit d’une stratégie politique soigneusement et prudemment choisie, mais qui a vu le jour au terme d’une bataille houleuse. La réforme fut élaborée dans un contexte d’extrême polarisation partisane en matière de politique sociale et de questions raciales, mais aussi au sujet de l’intervention de l’État. Ayant pour but la création d’une législation significative quoique politiquement acceptable, Obama a opté pour une stratégie politique de neutralité raciale en ciblant toutefois des problèmes spécifiques aux Afro-Américains. Ainsi, cette thèse démontre en quoi cette tactique s’est basée sur des considérations tant de faisabilité politique que d’efficacité afin de répondre aux besoins économiques spécifiques à la population noire. Il s’est également agit d’analyser comment l’administration Obama a réussi, après presque un siècle de tentatives infructueuses, à promulguer une loi mettant en place un système de couverture de santé universelle ; loi que les attaques répétées du Parti républicain ont profondément mutilé. Nous démontrons enfin qu’à l’instar de la non-extension de Medicaid qui a particulièrement nuit à la population noire, la réforme d’Obama, puisque basée sur un système préexistant, a finalement ravivé les problèmes de stratification racialeThis dissertation examines the political strategy used by President Barack Obama to address racial inequalities in a context dominated by a rejection of social policies in general, and race-specific initiatives in particular. This analysis is based on the example of health care reform. The legislation known as Obamacare, passed in 2010, which is composed of two Acts, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, was the result of a careful political strategy and a heated political battle. Obamacare was enacted in a context of strong partisan polarization around issues of social policies, racial inequalities, and the scope of government intervention. To achieve meaningful, yet politically acceptable, legislation, Obama chose a race-neutral, but issue-focused approach. This approach was mainly based on considerations of political feasibility, but also on considerations of efficiency in furthering black economic interests. Thus, this dissertation examines the foundation, application, and outcome of Obama’s political strategy as applied to health care reform. On the one hand, his administration managed to enact comprehensive health care reform after almost a hundred years of frustrated attempts. On the other hand, subsequent Republican attacks maimed the reform. Moreover, as the reform was built on the existing system, previous issues of racial stratification resurfaced. The non-extension of Medicaid was particularly detrimental to African-Americans. Yet, despite its imperfections, Obamacare, by creating for the first time a system of universal health care coverage in the US, has contributed to make public opinion more favorable to a single-payer system, in other words, a fully government-run health care system
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Nordenankar, Malin, and Malin Nordström. "Mångfaldens interaktion : Skapandet av socialt kapital inom interkulturella relationer." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för socialt arbete - Socialhögskolan, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-153089.
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Sweden has developed into a country of ethnic and cultural diversity. Research highlight the importance of reciprocal integration and intercultural venues. Minority and majority population must participate in the process of integration, by mutually accepted conditions. The civil society offers social venues but these venues are culturally segregated which prevent intercultural relationships to develop. Språkvän is a civic organization that takes on this challenge. By examining how reciprocity is created within these intercultural relations, knowledge of how reciprocal integration can develop in practice will be created. Reciprocity is developed through social relationships, and the relationship in its entirety must therefore be studied. Theories of social capital enable the study of social relations, based on three features: a structural, a cognitive and a relational dimension. The aim of this study has been to examine how social capital is created within the intercultural relationships, and participants of Språkvän has been interviewed. Volunteers and newcomers were interviewed in focus groups, based on a qualitative and hermeneutic approach. The study showed that there is a discrepancy regarding expectations of the relationship. In line with previous research the terms of the relationships are not reciprocal which endangers the cohesion and perseverance of the relationships.
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Farkhatdinov, Nail. "From decoding to enacting : an ethnographic study of the social relations at exhibition sites : a contribution to the "new sociology of art"." Thesis, University of Aberdeen, 2013. http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=196295.
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This thesis is a sociological exploration of emergent social relations at art exhibition venues. It focuses on the experience of art which the dominant “decoding” metaphor fails to describe conceptually and empirically. To grasp the interactional and emergent character of interaction with art, I constructed a framework that defined audiences as sets of emerging social relations. Building on the concepts of experience (Merleau-Ponty), enchantment (Gell), multiplicity and enactment (Latour, Mol and others), I emphasise the situated and embodied nature of art experience. The study draws on a series of ethnographic observations at the exhibition sites of a number of Moscow art institutions. It is supplemented with unstructured interviews with visitors and art professionals at these venues (artists, curators, wardens etc.). Conceptually, I have suggested a dual social ontology that art establishes in the events of perception. Bringing uncertainty into visitors’ actions, art enables interactions in which visitors establish meanings, and leads to practices that make their art experience organized and less problematic. The thesis examines the ways art experience becomes stable through meaning-making events supported by socio-material relations. These relations enable participants to produce recognizable actions. The process of meaning-making at the exhibitions is seen not as a direct communication of pre-given aesthetic meanings (as the decoding perspective would assume), but rather is understood as consisting of multiple instances of micro-level discoveries which mediate an “enchanting” form of art experience. Enchantment engenders the social relations of expertise which visitors practically achieve in their interaction with material objects and through performances of meaningfully recognizable actions. T Though the study mainly focuses on the experience of interactive art installations, I argue that the conceptual considerations and empirical results are relevant to the experience of other forms of art. The thesis is intended to make a contribution to the so-called “new sociology of art”, not just by subjecting the dominant Bourdieu-inspired assumptions about “decoding” to critique, but also by pointing out the conceptual limits of much of the new sociology of art, and pointing towards new conceptual horizons for sociology’s ongoing encounter with matters artistic.
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Kinoshita, Yukiko. "Art and society : a consideration of the relations between aesthetic theories and social commitment with reference to Katherine Mansfield and Oscar Wilde." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 1997. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/1533.
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The chief purpose of this project is to discuss Katherine Mansfield's aesthetic ideas in connection with those of Oscar Wilde and fin de siècle Aestheticism. The proposed study will also analyse her Modernist technique in Symbolist terms, and consider her major themes from aesthetic and political points of view. The primary, underlying concern of this study is to negotiate two, often opposing critical values: the aesthetic and the political. The artist's negotiation of the conflict between aesthetics (art) and politics (society) is a controversial 'modern' critical issue: the issue all serious artists and critics have been facing and consciously dealing with since the late nineteenth century. Fin de siècle Aestheticism and Symbolism form a dominant stream of Modernism because of this intensified shared concern over the delicate relationship between art, life and society. Wilde's stress on the autonomy of art is related to his notion of an ideal relationship between art, life and society: he shows a keen awareness that the autonomy of art and the aesthetic self-realization of the artist could be realized only in a society without any social, cultural or moral hegemony, that is, in a society without moral, social or political oppression. The Wildean 'poeticization' of society lies in his politicization of art; and this aesthetic influences Mansfield's. French Symbolism suggested to Wilde and Mansfield an aesthetic which enabled them to realize their Aestheticism. Wildean and Mansfieldian Symbolism attempt to 'shock' the reader: they aim at breaking the reader's reading habit, and his or her stereotypic point of view and fixed sense of values. Here lie not only the political potential of Symbolism as a Modernist aesthetic but also the aesthetic and political link between their Symbolism and avant-garde Modernism.
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Lopez, Garcia Ana Isabel. "Social mobilisation and the pure presidential democracies of Latin America." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:574f4f26-617b-4cb2-8be2-2f88034cfb86.
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This thesis seeks for an explanation of social mobilisation by examining the nuts and bolts of the institutional design of democracies. Since the nature of executive-legislative relations in democracy is an important influence on the distribution of policy outcomes between actors in society, and consequently on the extent of support (or inclusion) of citizens to the way power is exercised, the present work investigates how pure presidentialism (and the whole range of institutional accessories that can be combined with this particular executive) affects the opportunities and constraints for social mobilisation. This is done by conducting a within-format comparison across pure presidential regimes in Latin America, where most pure presidential regimes are located. The thesis is grounded in both quantitative and qualitative methods of research. Quantitatively, protest events are measured across time and space and the parameters are estimated through pooled cross-sectional time-series models for count data. Qualitatively, three case studies are examined: Bolivia (electoral rules), Ecuador (non-legislative and legislative presidential power) and Venezuela (party system). The main findings of this study are: Within presidential systems social mobilisation is more likely to occur whenever: (1) presidents are selected in runoff elections in the assembly, and (2) constitutions allow the immediate re-election of the president. However, the prospects for social mobilisation are not significantly affected by the extent to which electoral formulae promote the entry of parties to the assembly. As regards to the relative powers of the presidency and the legislature, the extent of the decree and veto powers of the president do not affect the occurrence of social mobilisation. Instead, the probability of contentious action is greater whenever (3) the capacity of legislatures to censure and sanction the members of the executive is low; and (4) legislatures have weak authority over public spending. Lastly, it is shown that the probability of social mobilisation does not vary across majoritarian and minority governments; neither is social mobilisation susceptible to the levels of electoral volatility in the legislature. Rather, (5) social mobilisation is highest whenever the pro-presidential contingent in the legislature is dominated by one large political party. The thesis thus concludes by strongly advocating for the inclusion of the format of the executive as an important variable in the comparative study of social mobilisation and of the substantive outputs of a democracy, in general.
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Mullenite, Joshua. "Engineering Colonialism: Race, Class, and the Social History of Flood Control in Guyana." FIU Digital Commons, 2018. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3800.
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Overabundance and scarcity of water are global concerns. Across the world’s low-lying coastal plains, flooding brought on by sea level rise acts as an existential threat for a multitude of people and cultures while in desert (and increasingly non-desert) regions intensifying drought cycles do the same. In the decades to come, how people manage these threats will have important implications not only for individual and cultural survival, but also for questions of justice. Recent research on flooding and flood management probes the histories of survival, and adaptation in flood threatened regions for insights into emergent flood-related crises. However, scholars have thus far overemphasized the technical aspects of how engineered flood control systems functioned, overlooking both the specific social, political, and economic contexts within which past practices emerged and the social worlds that they helped create. This dissertation examines the social, economic, and political histories of flood control projects in the South American country of Guyana in order to understand the long lasting social, political, and environmental impacts of colonial-era projects.
To do this, I utilized archival data collected from the National Archives in London, UK, historical newspaper articles collected through online newspaper databases, press release statements from Guyana’s major political parties, and unstructured and semi-structured interviews with residents from coastal Guyana. These data were imported and analyzed using qualitative data analysis software in order to make connections across spatial and temporal scales.
The key finding of the dissertation is that, in Guyana, flood control engineering has historically played multiple social, political, and economic roles beyond the functional explanations assumed in many present environmental management discourses. Colonial engineering projects served as a way to protect colonizers from economic crises and social upheaval and were not just a means for protecting the coast from flooding. Additionally, the dissertation found that these projects were key to creating the racial geographies that helped to protect colonialism in its final years and which continue to shape coastal life today. Finally, the dissertation found that, after the end of colonialism, flood engineering projects were incorporated into larger projects of racialized regime survival.
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Honkanen, Jennie. "A piece in the puzzle? : A qualitative interview study on the role of civil society in local integration work." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Institutionen för globala politiska studier (GPS), 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-45623.
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Since the Swedish reception crisis in 2015/16, civil society has gained increased recognition for its contribution to integration work and the government has made efforts to strengthen its capacities. While civil society should be autonomous and independent from the state, many actors within civil society are dependent on state funding and face a number of difficulties that exacerbate its potential to contribute further to society. As such, this single case study aims to investigate the role of civil society in the local integration and civil society experiences of working with integration. The empirical material consists of seven interviews, two conducted with representatives from the local municipality and five interviews with civil society representatives. 'Governance' forms the theoretical framework of the study, which is employed on the collected interview material to gain a deeper understanding of the role of civil society in regard to integration work. Findings show that civil society fills a complementary role in relation to the public sector, in that it is suitable for work that the state is less able to carry out. Its function is mostly discussed in relation to the social aspects of integration. Moreover, the material suggests that remaining autonomous and independent from the state is difficult, mainly depending on a selective grant system that seems to award certain types of integration work above others; a system that facilitates a dependency on the state. As such, the study awakens important questions involving the autonomy and independence of civil society.
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Ericson, Jessica, and Maria Millqvist. "Familjen & Döden : föräldrars förhållningssätt till sina kvarvarande barn." Thesis, Stockholm University, Department of Social Work, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-7011.
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The aim of this study was to explore the role of death in the Swedish family. How do parents and families cope with the loss of a child/sibling? How do the remaining children in a family fare after loss of sibling? The study was caused out partially through a selective review of the literature on children loss in families and partially through interviews with families who had experienced death of a child. The results were analysed with help of Family system theory, Emotional theory and with an Esoteric perspective. The findings of the study were that although families do eventually cope with the situation the majority is struggling to adjust. Open communication between family members is important and will depend on how parents cope with their own grief. How the remaining children are treated also depends on how parents cope. Sometimes communication is lacking due to fear of facing their children’s pain. The study concludes that the way we are socialized in Sweden may alienate us from death and loss. Another conclusion is that philosophy of life seems important to be able to cope with loss.
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Lees, Nicholas D. M. "The evolution of international inequality : justice, order and north-south relations from the NIEO to the G20." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5ae4a460-7eb7-4f6b-8b17-1556d3957eef.
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Within the contemporary international order, deep structural inequalities coexist alongside a nominally pluralistic society of states that grants international personality to politically organised communities. Asymmetric interactions between distinct political communities have shaped the development of the international system from the colonial era to the present phase of global economic integration. Rising interdependence, problems of unequal development and the democratic mobilisation of peoples around the world have generated moral claims regarding the injustice of global inequality. In this context the international politics of inequality have taken the format of challenges by the political representatives of the global South to the dominance of the advanced industrialised North. The normative dimensions of this process can be understood through a focus on this process of political argument between unequals. Political argument is contestation over the principles appropriate to govern a sphere of social interaction. The thesis seeks to vindicate the notion that the challenges by the global South have given rise to a dynamic of political argument within a norm-governed international society. Changes in patterns of normative belief, material power and forms of political organisation have historically shaped North-South relations. Therefore, through the analysis of particular episodes of North-South argument, the thesis attempts to provide insights into the moral limits and possibilities of an evolving international society. Analysing the organised attempts to challenge inequality on the part of the representatives of the global South, the thesis seeks to advance the position the tensions generated by claims over inequality might provide the nucleus for the incorporation of egalitarian concerns into the operation of international society. Through participation in common practices of statehood, the peoples of the global South possess at least some ability to challenge structural inequalities and thus the potential to expand the moral limits of international society.
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Hartzén, Ann-Christine. "The European Social Dialogue in Perspective : Its future potential as an autopoietic system and lessons from the global maritime system of industrial relations." Doctoral thesis, Lund University, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-67414.
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There are three starting points for this thesis. First, there is the system of ESD, which is criticised for lacking capacity to improve the working conditions within the EU. Secondly, there is the system developed through the global ITF FOC campaign, which is considered to have capacity to improve working conditions for seafarers at a global level. Thirdly, there is the theory on self-referential autopoietic systems, which is a useful tool for analysing systems of industrial relations and their functions. The purpose of this thesis is to deepen the understanding of the function of the ESD in relation to the development of EU legislation and policy with the aim of trying to find a model for providing a holistic analysis of regulatory systems for the labour market. The research questions are: ‘How can the significant differences and similarities between the ESD and the global ITF FOC campaign be understood?’ and ‘Why is the ESD generally regarded as lacking the capacity needed for producing results that improve working conditions, while the ITF FOC is considered to have such capacity?’ The theoretical framework used for the analysis is Luhmann’s theory on autopoietic systems. Since the thesis has a normative core I have applied a methodological model that consists of a two-layer analysis at both the empirical and theoretical level. Firstly an analysis of positivistic values has been carried out and secondly an analysis of hermeneutic values. The empirical material consists of documents and texts that can be considered part of or reflecting the communication of the studied systems. The main conclusion is that whereas the ITF FOC system is a traditional system of industrial relations based on the binary code of negotiable or non-negotiable between collective actors the ESD is a system of industrial relations based on a less clear binary code of discussable or non-discussable. The ESD is also subject to less developed communicative structures that negatively affect the system’s capacity both to produce results and to secure the efficient implementation and application of these results. This makes the ESD as a system more sensitive to hermeneutic values framing the programming of structurally coupled systems causing difficulties for the ESD to challenge such hermeneutic values.
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Maslanik, Jeffrey D. "Refugees Welcome: a Multilevel Analysis of Refugee Labor Market Integration in the Swedish Welfare State." FIU Digital Commons, 2017. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3555.
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To explore the complexities of refugee labor market integration in Sweden, the research performed a multi-level analysis of refugee labor market integration: from the perspective of civil society (meso-level) and from that of the refugee (micro-level). Sweden was ideal for this task because historically, it has been Europe’s most generous welfare state and during the height of the crisis, received the highest number of refugees of any European Member State (163,000 or 1,600 per 100,000 people).
The research was guided by two primary research questions: First, how have the roles of the state and civil society adjusted over time in relation to the process of integrating refugees, especially since the founding of the first integration policy in 1975? Second, how are resources actually provided by each element of society, and accessed by the refugees themselves? Analytically, the research first performed a historical institutional breakdown, separating Sweden’s integration policy by sociopolitical and economically significant junctures: 1970-1990, 1990-2010, and 2010-present day. Subsequently, seventy first-person, semi-structured interviews were conducted with political-elites, civil society representatives, and refugees from different sending countries, who arrived no earlier than 2000. The findings suggest that while civil society is becoming more systematic in its operations, its utility remains under-utilized. Next, meeting human capital requirements (e.g., country specific and post-secondary education and training) does not guarantee employment. Instead, given the alteration of its labor market, it seems social capital may play a more significant role in determining employment outcomes for refugees. In other words, it seems difficulties in accessing employment for refugees are more attached to institutional constraints than they are human capital itself. Finally, given the visible segregation and low refugee labor market participation, the research supports the assumption that a highly accessible and comprehensive welfare state may not be the most efficient socioeconomic orientation for integrating refugees.
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Mowell, Barry D. "Degree and Patterns of Formal NGO Participation within the United Nations Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC): An Appraisal of NGO Consultative Status Relative to Political Pluralism." FIU Digital Commons, 2017. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3213.
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The United Nations (UN) has invested increasing levels of effort in recent decades to cultivate a more effective, diverse and democratic institutional culture via the inclusion of and interaction among international civil society organizations (CSOs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to supplement the traditional role of states as the primary transnational actors. The principle vehicle for the UN-civil society dynamic is the consultative status (CS) program within the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), wherein a diverse range of nearly 5,000 transnational organizations ostensibly participate.
This research examined patterns of participation and the nature/level of CSO/NGO involvement within the UN, with particular focus upon ECOSOC. In examining participation patterns, the research identified patterns related to geographical/proportional representation among developed and developing regions and world regions in general and also as related to policy/issue areas represented. In terms of involvement, the research sought to assess the types and degree of contributions being made by CSOs/NGOs in association with the UN. To address both areas, the research employed a two-prong methodology including (1) a detailed analysis of the UN’s online integrated Civil Society Organizations (iCSO) database and (2) a comprehensive survey questionnaire mailed to a randomly-selected sample of 10% of all organizations holding consultative status with UN-ECOSOC.
The findings challenge the assumption that UN association with international civil society has realized pluralist ideals in that substantial variations were found to exist in the representation of policy/issue areas, with some areas far better represented than others. Perhaps more importantly, the research revealed that only a minority of organizations in the ECOSOC-CS program appear to be actively/regularly engaged with the UN, with a large minority of CS-accredited organizations engaged only periodically or to a more limited extent, and a substantial minority not participating/interacting in any way. Rather than exemplifying pluralism within the constructivist tradition, findings imply support for liberal institutionalist theories in that decades-long expansion of IGO influence has facilitated a corollary expectation of expanding international civil society and an associated expectation of linkages between transnational governance and democratic institutions on the one hand and transnational civil society on the other as a standardized norm.
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Pitkin, William R. IV. "Wind Energy Opposition in Vermont: Perspectives on the State's Energy Future." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2013. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_theses/78.
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Due to its high levels of concern and awareness of environmental issues, rural character, and sparse population, Vermont would at first glance appear to possess the ideal recipe to become a national leader in renewable energy development. Renewable initiatives have focused primarily on wind energy, as over a dozen wind farms have been proposed in the last few years across the state. However, in spite of the widely held belief in Vermont’s wind energy future, its proponents have run into vehement opposition at every proposed site, often successfully impeding the planned developments.
This report develops a wide-level framework of the motivations of and complaints presented by wind opposition groups around the state, followed by an analysis of opposition strategies commonly employed. These are contrasted with the tactics used by wind developers and their supporters to remediate or overcome this opposition. Next, this essay will offer a view of the state and local institutional settings in which these battles take place, and finally conclude with a brief analysis of various alternatives to utility-scale wind, offering suggestions for wind’s role in the future of energy in Vermont.
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Shivlani, Manoj. "The Impacts of Fisheries Management on the Performance and Resiliency of the Commercial Fishing Industry and Fishing Communities in the Florida Keys (Monroe County, Florida) from 1950-2010." FIU Digital Commons, 2014. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1234.
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Commercial fisheries in the Florida Keys have experienced a significant decline in participation and harvest over the past two decades, with over half of the fishers exiting the fishery since 1990 and a 50-70% decline in annual landings compared to previous decades. The conventional narrative of fisheries management identifies overfishing and overcapacity as the malaise endemic to open-access fisheries systems, for which the remedy offered is technocratic management. Technocratic management, which seeks to restore ecological integrity and economic efficiency, has been increasingly employed in the Florida Keys, in the form of limited access and property rights measures. I contend that the technocratic management approach is flawed and in a large part responsible for the decline of Florida Keys fisheries because the approach has ignored social sustainability, leading to a significant reduction in fisher participation, the fragmentation of fishing communities, and erosion of social capital. Technocratic management has also underestimated the importance of non-fishery factors, unique to place, and these factors – including population, tourism, and globalization factors – have exacerbated the impacts of management measures. The net result has been the opening up of scarce and valuable coastal space, which was previously occupied by fishers, fish houses and processors, and other fisheries infrastructure, to conversion for non-working waterfront uses. While measures have been undertaken to foster fisher participation and slow down waterfront conversion, these have largely failed due to the measures’ inability to address the core problem, which is the flawed management approach that undermines social sustainability. I provide a revised, comprehensive fisheries management framework that, if implemented, can at least address some of the technocratic management’s shortcomings and prevent further decline in fisher participation and fisheries decline.
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Kucera, Tomas. "The soldier and liberal society : societal-military relations in Germany and the United Kingdom." Thesis, Aberystwyth University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2160/85e2ff9a-712d-496f-95ea-c2be20fa895f.
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It is a generally accepted view in the literature on civil-military relations and military sociology that the military is a ‘Janus-faced’ organisation. One of its faces has to watch the strategic requirements and the other face looks at its parent society. The Janus-face analogy indicates that the strategic and societal views are intrinsically antithetical. The notion of the antithetical relationship between liberal ideology and military security was established as early as the 1950s in Samuel Huntington’s seminal book The Soldier and the State. This thesis is conceived as a critical debate with Huntington, challenging, in particular, the notion that societal and functional imperatives are inevitably distinct and antithetical. The aim of this thesis is to analyse in what ways liberalism – as a meta-ideology or a guiding ethos – determines the military capacities of West European societies. The empirical analysis has been carried out on the cases of the German Bundeswehr (from the 1950s onwards) and the British armed forces (from the beginning of the 20th Century onwards). Despite the enormous divergence these two cases represent, a similar pattern of behaviour is recognisable in them. This examination reveals that specific policies, institutions and practices are preferred because of their relation to liberal principles. Sometimes liberal norms are used merely to advocate an otherwise necessary policy, such as universal conscription at the time of emergency. Regarding other issues, such as the right to conscientious objection, liberal principles are the most relevant causal factor. Among the issues affected by liberal ideology are also the varieties of military mission, military ethics and professional identity of soldiers. The case studies examined in this thesis demonstrate that a meaningful adaptation of the military to the principles possessed by its parent society can be, more often than not, desirable also from the perspective of security strategy.
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Johansson, Susanne. "Projects for Roma inclusion – a content analysis exploring empowerment and intersectionality within five projects." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-21242.
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Projects are a common method in the work of closing the gap between the majority society and the Roma people. As a national minority in Sweden, the Roma people are entitled to certain rights of participation within this work. This thesis aims to analyze five projects, meant to work towards the Roma people’s inclusion, to answer how the concepts of empowerment and intersectionality are expressed or implicitly embodied within them. It is also questioned how the projects have considered the Roma people’s perceptions of their own situation and context. By using content analysis together with the theoretical framework, it is possible to bring light to these concepts, as well as to find key variables in order to answer the research questions. The main findings show that while the projects lacked in using an intersectional approach, the concept has important analytical tools which could be helpful in order to include the vulnerable persons within the Roma groups and to work with more sensitive issues. Some levels of empowerment is also found in the projects, both as a goal and as a means.However, in order to empower the Roma people, the majority society would have to give more decision power to the group. Thus the projects have not reached the potential they could have had in contributing to the shift which has been set in motion towards letting the Roma people develop the perspective of the work as well as be part of the execution.
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Benkhalti, Abdellah. "Mapping the Desertification Process in Southern Morocco Using Remote Sensing Data." TopSCHOLAR®, 1987. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/2149.
Full textAbstract:
Desertification is a problem occurring in arid and semiarid zones all over the world. It is a consequence of mismanagement of the land. Human activities and livestock pressure on such fragile ecosystems lead to a deterioration of the soil by increasing its salinity, lessening its moisture, and covering it with sand and dust. Aerial photographs and satellite images constitute a tool for mapping and monitoring the desertification process. Multispectral data can assist in detecting the indicators of desertification in early stages in order to plan adequate action.
The improvement of the resolution of satellite images and the fact that they are available on a periodic basis make the use of these data suitable for mapping the evolution of desert patches at large scales. The green band of Landsat MSS is used in this study.
Two images taken, respectively, in 1976 and 1985 and covering the province of Ouarzazate in southern Morocco are used to map the desertification process and its evolution in the region. At the scale used and given the ground resolution of the MSS (80 meters), significant changes were found between the two images. However, changes occurring at scale smaller than 80 meter square were impossible to detect by visual interpretation of this band.
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Lafferty, Janna L. "Plant Pedagogies, Salmon Nation, and Fire: Settler Colonial Food Utopias and the (Un)Making of Human-Land Relationships in Coast Salish Territories." FIU Digital Commons, 2018. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3863.
Full textAbstract:
As knowledge about the constellating set of environmental and social crises stemming from the neoliberal global food regime becomes more pressing and popularized among US consumers, it has brought Indigenous actors asserting their political sovereignty and treaty rights with regards to their homelands into new collaborations, contestations, and negotiations with settlers in emerging food politics domains. In this dissertation, I examine solidarities and affinities being forged between Coast Salish and settler food actors in Puget Sound, attending specifically to how contested sovereignties are submerged but at play in these relations and how settler desires for belonging on and to stolen Indigenous lands animate liberal and radical food system politics.
The dissertation presents my ethnographic fieldwork in South Puget Sound over a period of 18 months with two related Coast Salish food sovereignty projects that brought Indigenous and settler food actors into weedy collaborations. One was a curriculum development project for Native and regional youth focused on the revitalization of Coast Salish plant landscapes, knowledge, pedagogies, and systems of reciprocity. The other was a campaign to counter the introduction of genetically engineered salmon into US food markets and coastal production facilities across the Western Hemisphere, which I situate within longstanding salmon-centered social and political struggles in Coast Salish territories in the context of Indigenous/settler-state relations. Throughout these engagements, I identified how multicultural, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist food movement frameworks share in common with neoliberal nature privatization schemes modes of disavowing the geopolitics of Indigenous sovereignty within the US settler state. The research reveals patterns in how Coast Salish food actors push back against the ways settler food actors are plugged into settler colonial governmentality. These insights, in turn, helped to make legible how inherited liberal mythologies of the nation-state and legal orders rooted in the doctrine of terra nulliuslimit the stakes of food system work in terms of inclusion and equality, and miss their collusion with structures that unmake the human-land relationships that Coast Salish people define as existential and (geo)political.
In my analysis, I engage Indigenous critiques of settler colonialism to complicate Marxian, Deleuzian, and Foucauldian analyses of North American alternative food politics, while doubling back to consider the ways the disavowal of ongoing Indigenous dispossession functions across these literatures and the social practices they influence, ultimately to consider how food-centered scholarship, environmentalism, and politics in North America stand to be transformed by what I argue is a Coast Salish ‘politics of refusal’. This project is unique in attending to how settler colonial theory, Indigenous critical theory, and Indigenous politics in North America enrich and complicate the literatures provincializing the Nature-Culture divide, as well as a largely Marxian and antiracist critical food studies literature. It contributes to settler colonial studies as a project of redefinition for the study of US politics and society while specifically bringing that interdisciplinary project into the ambit of North American critical food studies scholarship.
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Anderson, Jennifer Leigh. "Lives, Livelihoods, and Landscapes: A Study of Land Use and Social Change in Northeastern Nepal." PDXScholar, 2006. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/2238.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis explores the forces of change in lives and landscapes that have altered the Lamosangu-to-Everest route in northeastern Nepal and shows how a transect in photographs and conversations across the east-central Himalaya allows us insight and a greater understanding into the processes and consequences of this change.
Three forces of change over the last twenty-five years dominated discussions with local informants: the rise of the "People's War"-Nepal's Maoist Insurgency beginning in 1996; the Democratic Revolution of 1990; and dependence on tourism for livelihood after the establishment of Sagarmatha National Park in 1976. Understanding the cultural-historical context for these forces is necessary to understand the concerns of today's residents living along the Lamosangu-to-Mount Everest Base Camp transect.
The visual and ethnographic evidence discussed in this thesis takes a larger role than strict analysis of conspicuous large-scale land use change and I hope the comparative 200 I images will be used as benchmarks for future research as well as for further exploration into the ways people and place have been represented.
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Enqvist, Johan. "Stewardship in an urban world : Civic engagement and human–nature relations in the Anthropocene." Doctoral thesis, Stockholms universitet, Stockholm Resilience Centre, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-146193.
Full textAbstract:
Never before have humans wielded a greater ability to alter and disrupt planetary processes. Our impact is becoming so noticeable that a new geological epoch has been proposed – the Anthropocene – in which Earth systems might no longer maintain the stable and predictable conditions of the past 12 millennia. This is particularly evident in the rapid expansion of urban areas, where a majority of humans now live and where environmental changes such as rising temperatures and habitat loss are happening faster than elsewhere. In light of this, questions have been raised about what a more responsible relationship between humans and the rest of the planet might look like. Scholars in sustainability science employ the concept of ‘stewardship’ in searching for an answer; however, with multiple different applications and definitions, there is a need to better understand what stewardship is or what novelty it might add to sustainability research. This thesis investigates stewardship empirically through two case studies of civic engagement for protecting nature in cities – Bengaluru, India and New York City, USA. Further, the thesis also proposes a conceptual framework for how to understand stewardship as a relation between humans and the rest of nature, based on three dimensions: care, knowledge and agency. This investigation into stewardship in the urban context uses a social–ecological systems approach to guide the use of mixed theory and methods from social and natural sciences. The thesis is organized in five papers. Paper I reviews defining challenges in managing urban social–ecological systems and proposes that these can more effectively be addressed by collaborative networks where public, civic, other actors contribute unique skills and abilities. Paper II and Paper III study water resource governance in Bengaluru, a city that has become dependent on external sources while its own water bodies become degraded and depleted.Paper II analyzes how locally based ‘lake groups’ are able to affect change through co-management arrangements, reversing decades of centralization and neglect of lakes’ role in Bengaluru’s water supply.Paper III uses social–ecological network analysis to analyze how patterns in lake groups’ engagements and collaborations show better fit with ecological connectivity of lakes.Paper IV employs sense of place methods to explore how personal bonds to a site shapes motivation and goals in waterfront stewardship in New York City. Finally,Paper V reviews literature on stewardship and proposes a conceptual framework to understand and relate different uses and underlying epistemological approaches in the field. In summary, this thesis presents an empirically grounded contribution to how stewardship can be understood as a human–nature relation emergent from a deep sense ofcare and responsibility, knowledge and learning about how to understand social–ecological dynamics, and theagency and skills needed to influence these dynamics in a way that benefits a greater community of humans as others. Here, the care dimension is particularly important as an underappreciated aspect of social–ecological relations, and asset for addressing spatial and temporal misalignment between management institutions and ecosystem. This thesis shows that care for nature does not erode just because green spaces are degraded by human activities – which may be crucial for promoting stewardship in the Anthropocene.At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript. Paper 5: Manuscript.
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Peers, Justin. "A Systematic Assessment of Socio-Economic Impacts of Prolonged Episodic Volcano Crises." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2019. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3580.
Full textAbstract:
Uncertainty surrounding volcanic activity can lead to socio-economic crises with or without an eruption as demonstrated by the post-1978 response to unrest of Long Valley Caldera (LVC), CA. Extensive research in physical sciences provides a foundation on which to assess direct impacts of hazards, but fewer resources have been dedicated towards understanding human responses to volcanic risk. To evaluate natural hazard risk issues at LVC, a multi-hazard, mail-based, household survey was conducted to compare perceptions of volcanic, seismic, and wildfire hazards. Impacts of volcanic activity on housing prices and businesses were examined at the county-level for three volcanoes with a “very high” threat designation from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS); LVC, (caldera system), Mount St. Helens, WA (stratovolcano), and Kīlauea, HI (shield volcano). A negative relationship was found between volcanic risk perception and preparedness. Additionally, the perception that housing prices declined after volcano alerts was confirmed by econometric modeling.