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Mok, Wai-man Karina. "Planning for Hong Kong : a world city moving into the 21st century /." Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 1995. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B14799844.
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Mills, Michael F. "Witness to the American apocalypse? : a study of 21st century 'doomsday' prepping." Thesis, University of Kent, 2017. https://kar.kent.ac.uk/60441/.
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This thesis addresses the phenomenon of 21st century "doomsday" prepping. Prepping is a primarily American phenomenon centred on storing food, water, and weapons for the purpose of surviving future crisis or social collapse. Growing rapidly post-2007/8, it is the successor to the right-wing American survivalist movement that flourished (and then disappeared) in the late-20th century. This thesis engages with a lack of scholarly knowledge on prepping, which has resulted in this phenomenon being understood through media-driven stereotypes and theories of older survivalist activity. Such understandings suggest that prepping is apocalyptic, millenarian, politically-extreme, and a product of the United States' fringe right-wing militia culture. Drawing on research that involved 200 online surveys responses, ethnography and interviews with 39 American preppers, and attendance at three prominent prepping conventions, the thesis challenges such dominant ideas. It shows prepping to be a distinct, more moderate wave of American survivalist activity. The thesis establishes that preppers typically do not prepare for an "apocalypse", nor do they think in millenarian terms. Preppers instead use their preparations as precautionary protection against temporary social collapse and job loss. The thesis also reveals that prepping is not as politically-extreme as is often speculated. Rather than militia ideology, prepping intermingles with waves of right-wing "Tea Party" discontent, as well as widespread frustration at the dysfunctional and post-political state of American democracy. Additionally this work reveals that, as far as preppers retreat from political and community life, their withdrawal is symptomatic of wider currents of American individualist values, and processes of civic decline. It is thus argued that prepping must be understood as a product of "mainstream" American society. It is concluded that prepping should be principally explained as a product of: late modern capitalism's effects on democracy, secure employment, and collective sympathies; contemporary media's impact on disaster-related fears; and the American Right's promotion of political anxiety and individualistic thinking.
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VIDAL, Guillem. "The political consequences of the Great Recession in Southern Europe crisis and representation in Spain." Doctoral thesis, European University Institute, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/63265.
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Defence date: 13 June 2019Examining Board: Prof. Hanspeter Kriesi, European University Institute (Supervisor); Prof. Elias Dinas, European University Institute; Prof. Eva Anduiza, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Prof. Kenneth M. Roberts, Duke University
The Great Recession constituted a breaking point in several aspects of the cultural, economic and political life of southern European countries (i.e. Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain). This dissertation aims to shed light on the political consequences of the economic crisis in this region —with a specific focus on Spain as a paradigmatic case— by analysing different aspects of the political transformations that took place during the period of crisis. The underlying argument is that, albeit some relevant differences, the four countries experienced a common pattern: the incapacity of national politics to offer differentiated recipes to the deteriorating economic situation triggered a widespread crisis of representation that introduced new issues in the political agenda and drove the political transformations in these countries. The combination of a political and economic crisis at the national and European levels opened new political spaces that new parties capitalised by appealing to the need for democratic renewal and opposition to austerity politics. Furthermore, as illustrated by the Spanish case, and in particular the Catalan experience, the political crisis had far-reaching consequences beyond economic grievances, leading to the activation of different types of conflicts. Overall, the findings suggest that the transformations in the structure of political conflict in southern Europe in the aftermath of the Great Recession are not the by-product of a growing cultural divide —as is the case in several other continental and north-European countries—, but instead respond to the loss of credibility in the political system. Methodologically, the dissertation relies on an original dataset of media content as well as on several sources of survey data to test the empirical validity of the claims.
Chapter 2 'From Boom to Bust : A Comparative Analysis of Greece and Spain under Austerity' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as chapter 'From boom to bust : a comparative analysis of Greece and Spain under austerity' (2018) in the book Living under austerity : Greek society in crisis.
Chapter 3 'Old versus new politics: The political spaces in Southern Europe in times of crisis' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'Old versus new politics : the political spaces in Southern Europe in times of crises' (2018) in the journal 'Party politics'
Chapter 4 'Out with the Old: Restructuring Spanish Politics' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'Challenging business as usual? : the rise of new parties in Spain in times of crisis' (2017) in the journal 'West European politics'
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Lee, Ka-yan Vivian, and 李家欣. "Who will be hercules in the 21st century?: economic and social development : a comparative study of Hong Kongand Singapore." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2001. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31953116.
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Peri-Rotem, Nitzan. "The role of religion in shaping women's family and employment patterns in Britian and France." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:e0cedea1-973c-4395-9916-d47416672802.
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The current study examines the influence of religious affiliation and practice on family patterns and labour market activity for women in Western Europe, focusing on Britain and France. While both countries have experienced a sharp decline in institutionalized forms of religion over the past decades, differences in family and fertility behaviour on the basis of religiosity seem to persist. Although previous studies documented a positive correlation between religion and both intended and actual family size, there is still uncertainty about the different routes through which religion affects fertility, how structural factors are involved in this relationship and whether and how this relationship has changed along with the process of religious decline. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring the interrelationships between religion, educational attainment, female labour force participation, union formation and fertility levels. The data come from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), which contains 18 waves from 1991 to 2008, and the French survey of the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP), which was initially conducted in 2005. By following trends in fertility differences by religious affiliation and practice across birth cohorts of women, it is found that religious differences in fertility are not only persistent across birth cohorts, there is also a growing divide between non-affiliated and religiously practicing women who maintain higher fertility levels. Religious differences in family formation patterns and completed fertility are also explored, taking into account the interaction between education and religiosity. It appears that the effect of education on fertility differs by level of religiosity, as higher education is less likely to lead to childlessness or to a smaller family size among more religious women. The findings on the relationships between family and work trajectories by level of religiosity also point to a reduced conflict between paid employment and childbearing among actively religious women, although these patterns vary by religious denomination and by country.
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Lloyd, Stephanie 1975. "An anxious society : the French importation of social phobia and the appearance of a new model of the self." Thesis, McGill University, 2006. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=102807.
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This dissertation examines the introduction of social phobia into France. My analysis is concerned with how this diagnosis, which is inconsistent with the psychoanalytic model that dominates French psychiatry, is increasingly being accepted by French physicians and patients. I argue that the diagnosis social phobia offers physicians and patients a justification for life difficulties that was not provided by existing diagnoses such as phobic neurosis, obsessional neurosis or 'normal' shyness.In 2003-4 I carried out one year of fieldwork in North America and France. During this time I conducted participant observation and interviews with clinicians and members of a social phobia support group. Throughout this thesis, it is my objective to understand the disorder from three perspectives: historical, ethnographic, and sociocultural.
First, I examine French psychiatrists' claims that social phobia has existed in French psychiatric literature since the nineteenth century. I investigate the efforts of these French psychiatrists to prove that the diagnostic category has a legitimate place in French medicine. Second, I look at how a small group of Parisian psychiatrists who practice cognitive and behavioural therapy are fighting for greater awareness and acceptance of social phobia. Promoting social phobia is a means of spreading awareness of their therapeutic model. Their aim is to unseat psychoanalysis from its dominant position in French psychiatry. Many individuals prefer cognitive and behavioural therapists' explanations of social phobia symptoms to those of psychoanalysts because they are less stigmatizing and their predicted outcomes more optimistic. But many French clinicians reject the diagnosis social phobia and prefer psychoanalytic explanations for patients' symptoms. Some see it as a 'fashionable' disorder overly promoted by the pharmaceutical industry. Third, I investigate how social phobia is related to cultural behavioural ideals and societal expectations. I look at how these factors lead more people to become concerned about the symptoms of social phobia than in the past.
In the end, I explain that French physicians and patients are choosing social phobia from among other possible labels for this set of symptoms. The way that they describe this diagnosis, however, blends multiple therapeutic models and they create an explanation of the disorder which most thoroughly and positively describes patients' experiences.
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Lee, Ka-yan Vivian. "Who will be hercules in the 21st century? : economic and social development : a comparative study of Hong Kong and Singapore /." Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 2001. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk:8888/cgi-bin/hkuto%5Ftoc%5Fpdf?B23425714.
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Ahearn-Ligham, Ariell. "The changing meaning of work, herding and social relations in Rural Mongolia." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:da410056-7e73-4b15-b2e9-8be97fe40dd8.
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By using ethnographic methods based on extensive participant observation, this thesis explores the role of pastoralism and rural work as a medium of social reproduction for families in rural Mongolia. This work is reported in four articles, which examine herder household management, decision making, and the spatial aspects of household social and economic production. As standalone pieces and as a united work, the articles make a case for understanding social change through the lens of spatialized performative relations. Pastoralism as a form of work and social system is one aspect of these relations. I contend that people consciously engage with herding as a form of work, which is an important reference point in political subjectivities and administrative practices that idealize the state. The policies and practices of government institutions, including non-state agencies, play powerful roles in the particular forms through which relations are spatialized. By taking this approach and prioritizing herder critical reflections on their own lives, I argue against the dual claim that herders exist outside the state and are bound to local environments. I show, in contrast, how herder efforts to access resources beyond local environments, such as formal schooling for children, spatially transform the labour, finance, and mobility systems of households. My work presents three key arguments with reference to these concepts. The first is that patron-client relations continue to play a strong role in family hierarchies and wider social alliances used to gain access to needed resources and services. Secondly, I argue that pastoralist work is an integral part of governance and the propagation of the moral authority of the state. Pastoralism as a form of work should be seen as a political enterprise as much as an economic or cultural one. Finally, attention to the spatial organisation of household economies, including household splitting and new types of mobility, reiterates the significance of place in human agency.
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Novillo, Perez Cecilio Jose, and Perez Cecilio Jose Novillo. "La Movida Madrileña and the Rock Radical Vasco as Political and Social Agents in Post-Franco Spain: Their influence on Popular Musical Practices of 21st-Century Spain." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/626715.
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In Spain, the era of political transition to democracy known as La Transición during the 1970s and 1980s led to changes in Spanish popular music (i.e., pop, rock, punk) which became the musical representation of the new democracy’s social and political changes. Two different musical movements of that period, La Movida Madrileña and Rock Radical Vasco, established boundaries between official mainstream music and its musical counterculture counterpart, underground, and subversive musical practices within Spanish democracy. This thesis examines the nature of those musical practices, their song lyrics, and their social and political interpretations, including their influence on current musical practices.
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Simcik, Arese Nicholas Luca. "The common in a compound : morality, ownership, and legality in Cairo's squatted gated community." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:dd437dc6-1b8f-42d9-8b95-e1d460a4e66d.
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In Haram City, amidst Egypt's 2011-2013 revolutionary period, two visions of the city in the Global South come together within shared walls. In this private suburban development marketed as affordable housing, aspirational middle class homebuyers embellish properties for privilege and safety. They also come to share grounds with resettled urban poor who transform their surroundings to sustain basic livelihoods. With legality in disarray and under private administration, residents originally from Duweiqa - perhaps Cairo's poorest neighbourhood - claim the right to squat vacant homes, while homebuyers complain of a slum in the gated community. What was only desert in 2005 has since become a forum for vivid public contestation over the relationship between morality, ownership, and order in space - struggles over what ought to be common in a compound. This ethnography explores residents' own legal geographies in relation to property amidst public-private partnership urbanism: how do competing normative discourses draw community lines in the sand, and how are they applied to assert ownership where the scales of 'official' legitimacy have been tipped? In other words: in a city built from scratch amidst a revolution, how is legality invented? Like the compound itself, sections of the thesis are divided into an A-area and a B-area. Shifting from side to side, four papers examine the lives of squatters and then of homeowners and company management acting in their name. Zooming in and out within sides, they depict discourses over moral ownership and then interpret practices asserting a concomitant vision of order. First, in Chapter 4, squatters invoke notions of a moral economy and practical virtue to justify 'informal' ownership claims against perceptions of developer-state corruption. Next, Chapter 5 illustrates how squatters define 'rights' as debt, a notion put into practice by ethical outlaws: the Sayi' - commonly meaning 'down-and-out' or 'bum' - brokers 'rights' to coordinate group ownership claims. Shifting sides, Chapter 6 observes middle class homeowners' aspirations for "internal emigration" to suburbs as part of an incitement to propertied autonomy, and details widespread dialogue over suburban selfhood in relationship to property, self-interest, and conviviality. Lastly, Chapter 7 documents authoritarian private governance of the urban poor that centres on "behavioural training." Free from accountability and operating like a city-state, managers simulate urban law to inculcate subjective norms, evoking both Cairene histories and global policy circulations of poverty management. Towards detailing how notions of ownership and property constitute visions and assertions of urban law, this project combines central themes in ethnographies of Cairo with legal geography on suburbs of the Global North. It therefore interrogates some key topics in urban studies of the Global South (gated communities, affordable housing, public-private partnerships, eviction-resettlement, informality, local governance, and squatting), as Cairo's 'new city' urban poor and middle classes do themselves, through comparative principles and amidst promotion of similar private low-income cities internationally. While presenting a micro-history of one project, it is also offers an alternative account of 2011-2013 revolutionary period, witnessed from the desert developments through which Egyptian leaders habitually promise social progress.
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Gevers, Tristan Ronald. "'Leaders like children playing with a grenade?' : an analysis of how the Arab Spring was received in South Africa." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006031.
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When the Arab Spring took place, it took the world by surprise and sparked renewed interest in the idea of revolution. With differing opinions on what caused such a revolutionary wave throughout the North African and Middle Eastern region, many began looking at their own countries, and South Africa was no different. A debate was sparked in South Africa, as to whether there would be a revolution or not. What I originally set out to accomplish is to find out which side of the debate would be correct through the philosophical context of revolutionary theory. Initially, we attempted to define and consider the history of revolutionary theory. We found that revolutionary theory has gone through four generation and that even finding a theoretically informed definition is difficult. Following this, we considered some social-psychological theories of revolution as well as theories of moral indignation. We found that these theories were incredibly informative and that they provide some insight into the reasoning for revolutionary fear in the South African debate. Through the use of opinion pieces, we then considered the South African debate, and – using socialpsychological theories and the theories of moral indignation - found that both sides of the argument had valuable points, however, they often lacked some foresight. With tentative agreement, we found that the side arguing that there would a revolution in South Africa had a more valuable argument, despite its limitations. However, far more research is required before one can – with more accuracy – predict a revolutionary occurrence in such a way as was done in South Africa.
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Daleure, Georgia M. "Reflections of post-secondary educational experiences of selected women of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) : a qualitative analysis investigating the motivations, supports, rewards, and challenges encountered by seven Emirati women in the year 2004." Virtual Press, 2005. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1317929.
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Marquis, Danika Ewen. "Ties that bind: a critical discourse analysis of the coverage of the Millennium Development Goals in the Mail and Guardian." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015462.
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This study analysed the representation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the Mail and Guardian from 2000 to 2007. It drew on perspectives from cultural studies, the constructionist approach to representation and the sociology of news production. Through the use of the quantitative and qualitative research methods, content analysis and critical discourse analysis, this study established first, that few significant changes have occurred within the newspaper's coverage of the MDGs during this period, and second, that the people most affected by the MDGs and affiliated programmes are seriously under-represented and that the manner of representation marginalises and subordinates them.
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Gao, Ming. "Pro-forma consistency : the construction of the relationship between China's social organizations and the state in the 21st century." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2012. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/3820/.
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The purpose of this thesis is to understand the changing nature of contemporary China's state and society relationship by focusing on the construction of the relationship between newly emerging non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the state. The term "construction" refers to the process in which China NGOs emerge, struggle for existence, negotiate with state organizations and other social agents. In this process, how China's NGOs link with the state policies of both local and national levels, practices of both local government officers and the government organizations of superior branches is of the most interest. It has been found that Chinese social organizations often come to be congruent with the state at both local level and national policy level. Through the articulatory elements, which are the theoretical tools borrowed from post-Marxist theories, the state and the social organizations are integrated as if they are in a coherent whole under the macro state policies. Such pro forma consistency between state and social organizations provides legitimacy and room for social organizations to develop their own values and practices, which actually do not completely coincide with the state dominant orientations. A civil society constituted by social organizations with different value pursuits is likely emerging in China.
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Krishnan, Sneha. "Making ladies of girls : middle-class women and pleasure in urban India." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:e913b744-0568-42f8-bb20-4023d18ee6ca.
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Current debates in the anthropology of the Indian middle classes suggest a preponderant theme of balance - between 'Indian' and 'Western'; 'traditional' and 'modern'; 'global' and 'local'. Scholars like Säävälä (2010) Nisbett (2007, 2009), and Donner (2011) demonstrate a range of practices through which the ideal of middle class life is positioned in a precarious median between the imagined decadence of the upper classes and the perceived immorality and lack of responsibility of the working classes. Sexuality and intimacy, it has been observed, are important sites, where this balancing act is played out and risks to its stability are disciplined. Young women have particularly come under a great deal of pressure to position themselves dually as modern representatives of a global nation, who are, at the same time, epitomes of a nationalised narrative of tradition. In this thesis I examine, through an ethnographic study, the ways in which young women's bodies are implicated in the normative reproduction of everyday middle class life, as well as unpacking the social meanings of youth and adulthood for women in this context. Further, locating my study in the context of women's colleges in Chennai, this thesis comments on the significance of educational spaces as sites where normative ideals of middle class life and femininity are both produced and contested. The chief arguments in this thesis are organised into five chapters that draw primarily on ethnographic material to examine categories of risk, danger and pleasure as mutually constituted in young women's lives through everyday practice, as well as the making of the everyday as a precarious and compositional event.
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Norum, Roger. "The hypersocial : transience, privilege and the neo-colonial imaginary in expatria, Kathmandu." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.711659.
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Cheng, Yi'En. "Restructuring of education, youth, and citizenship : an ethnographic study of private higher education in contemporary Singapore." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d7ee615b-6d54-4ce5-a518-0f47d69e3c5a.
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In spite of widespread critiques about the neoliberalisation of higher education and its production of citizenship in relation to the market, transformation of students into profit-maximising individuals, and the vitalisation of a self-enterprising subjectivity, many of these claims remain under-examined with respect to cultural production. The objective of this research is to explore the neoliberal production of middle-class citizenship through the lens of educated non-elite local youth in Singapore. By combining geographical, sociological and anthropological insights about education and youth, I develop a theoretically informed ethnographic case study to examine how this segment of young people reproduce themselves as middle-class citizens. The research is based on eleven months of fieldwork at a local private institute of higher education, where I hanged around, talked to, and observed Singaporean young people between ages 18 and 25 studying for their first degree. The ethnographic materials are written up into four substantive papers, demonstrating the ways in which educated non-elite Singaporean youth in private higher education engage with state disseminated ideas around neoliberal accumulation and human capital formation. I argue that these students draw on class-based sensibilities and feelings to produce vibrant forms of normativities, subjectivities, and politics that pose a challenge to dominant assumptions of a "hollowed out" citizenship under neoliberalism. The research makes two overall interventions in geographic and social scientific writings about neoliberal restructuring of higher education and its implications for youth citizenship. First, it cautions against a straightforward claim that neoliberal technologies of control have extended market values into citizenship subjectivity and, with it, the erosion of progressive political projects. Second, it provides a much-needed analysis of middle-class citizenship formation among young people caught at the losing end of a diversifying educational landscape.
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Heffel, Carly J. "Finding Out on Facebook: a Qualitative Analysis of Adolescents’ Experiences Following a Suicide Cluster." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2014. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc699975/.
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Suicide clusters have been identified in many populations; however, research exploring the role of online communication in the aftermath of a suicide cluster is extremely limited. This study used the Consensual Qualitative Research method to analyze interviews of ten high school students following a suicide cluster in a small suburban school district. Interviewee’s responses were organized into 4 domains: the suicide, impact, perceptions of school environment, and recovery. The role of social networking emerged as a common theme across domains, suggesting broad relevance to adolescents’ experience following the suicide of a peer. Implications for clinical intervention and research are discussed.
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Djerasimović, Sanja. "Formation of the civic education policy as a discursive project in post-2000 Serbia." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:2a15894a-8189-44e5-a6b6-edcc14bf5c54.
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The introduction of civic education to Serbian primary and secondary schools in 2001 marked a beginning of an all-encompassing education reform that followed the country's 2000 'democratic revolution'. In the context of a socio-political shift from various authoritarian regimes, including the 1945-1990 state socialism and 1990-2000 nationalist authoritarianism, the policy set the tone for future changes that were designed to support democratisation of Serbia, and assist its return to Europe (Birzea, 1994). A part of the broader programme for democratisation of education and education for democracy in Serbia, the policy enabled various discursive elements constitutive of the desired post-2000 ideology to enter the national educational discourse. This thesis explored its formation. I approached the policy as a way to explore the beginning of Serbia's first proper post-communist reform, and analyse the actors and ideologies that had shaped it. I used Ball's notion of policy-as-discourse and conceptualised civic education policy as a part of a discursive project of creating a 'new Serbia'. Using elite interviews and documentary analysis, I explored its formation and development, its place in the wider reform, and its relation to religious education, (re)introduced at the same time. Combining the elements of Fairclough's critical discourse analysis, and elements of Bourdieu's social theory, I looked into the meaning and function of civic education as a part of the ideological construction of the future Serbia, as well as capital used to position Serbia favourably in the global field in the early days of its educational transition. Within the wider transition literature, I attempted to establish a comparison between Serbia's 'belated' post-communist transition, and educational changes happening across formerly communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe in early-to-mid 1990s. I also explored the applicability and usefulness of the recent theoretical developments in the transition literature that go against the conceptualisation of post-communist transitions as modernising projects, and argue instead for a focus on unique transformations that happen as a result of a meeting between globally dominant and desirable discursive elements and local contexts. I conclude that the discursive elements of the Serbian civic education policy were used as capital by Serbian policy actors to ensure their better positioning not only in the global, but also in the national field, as suggested by differences in the ideological construction of the policy discourse in different fields. This prompts a concern with the concept of various 'policyspeaks', as recently explored by Halász (2012) and Steiner-Khamsi (2014). I argue that as a part of a discursive project intended to construct post-2000 Serbia, civic education policy worked more towards eradicating the undesirable ideology of violent nationalist authoritarianism, than towards eradicating the ideology of communist authoritarianism. In this sense, the specificity of the context proved important for the shape and meaning of a post-communist reform and ideologies that it was designed to propagate. However, instead of rejecting modernist concepts of transition and democratisation, I advise a future focus on careful unpacking of their context-dependent ideological-discursive constructions.
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Lam-Knott, Sonia Yue Chuen. "The protesting youths of Hong Kong : post-80s reimaginings of politics through self, body, and space." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ae079ba9-2025-40a0-bf3f-54d9197eb6b0.
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This thesis examines the political activism of Hong Kong youths known as the Post-80s. In contrast to dominant discourse in Hong Kong claiming that these youths are driven by economic concerns, based on 18 months of fieldwork, I suggest that the Post-80s are instead striving to reimagine what politics means as a part of life in the postcolonial city. It is emphasised that youths are 'protesting' as an act of rejecting mainstream politics, and as a means to realise their desire for a different form of politics to emerge in the city. By bringing youth voices to the forefront, this thesis addresses two broad themes - why and how the Post-80s protest. The thesis first provides an overview of Hong Kong politics, arguing that youths express a deep sense of dissatisfaction towards the political culture in society dictated by financial interests, and towards the hierarchical structures within the political domains that stifle the public voice. The thesis then reviews how the Post-80s challenge these conditions by positing a form of alternative politics predicated on individualistic self-representation manifesting through the self, body, and space. I look at youth claims that becoming political is an 'individual choice', and the ways in which their strong sense of individuality interacts with/counteracts the limitations on their political participation imposed by familial ties and gender roles. I then explore Post-80s attempts to dispel bodily passivity in protests through the incorporation of performance art into their political actions to empower the individual activist, and analyse youth attempts to reconfigure urban space into political sites of individualistic experimentation. The conclusion reviews the impact Post-80s activism has had on the realpolitik of the city, noting the inherent contradictions within the political efforts of the Post-80s and their limited ability to inflict widespread structural changes in Hong Kong politics.
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Lu, Xiaoyan. "A contemporary brand China : an investigation into the development of brand China in the context of global socio-political and cultural influences in the 21st century." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2009. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/165515/.
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Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war the global economy has begun to shift its centre of gravity towards the East. This, combined with the consolidation of the power of multi-national corporations and banks and the globalisation of markets at virtually all levels, has led to the emergence of massive new global players in terms of markets and production. Despite the fact that China, unlike the Soviet Union, maintained its political system, it has emerged as a major economic global power and is extending and consolidating it’s economic and political global influence into the 21st Century. Despite China’s economic influence which is acknowledged in its positive economic and political relations with its historical ideological enemies, the ubiquitous presence of Chinese made products and unprecedented domestic and international openness it remains dogged by broadly negative perceptions in the West. This study aims to address this problem through the application of the emerging theories of Nation Branding to envisage China as a brand and to investigate possibilities for the establishment of a competitive brand identity for China as a nation. Therefore, the research addresses the issue of how China can establish a contemporary nation brand and identifies the parameters for its sustainability and management in the 21st century. To this end the study has developed a working definition of the term ‘nation branding’ as a strategically managed process of applying branding techniques to nations in order to gain competitive advantages by improving the perceived image and promoting the principle values of a nation. The study underpins the application of this theoretical model with an investigation into the specificity of the historical context of advertising and branding in China in the 20th Century. The aims and objectives of the study are incorporated into the design brief for a contemporary logo for brand China and it is through the execution of the brief by the researcher as reflective practitioner in the role of art director and designer that the study consolidates the findings of the theoretical research through specific design problems. The study concludes with an evaluative reflection of the interactions between the theoretical and practical outcomes of the research in which it is proposed that addressing the highly specific design problems of brand identity development provides a focussed point of convergence for the extensive and complex issues involved in the conceptualisation of the nation as a brand. It is proposed that the study provides the conceptual tools for the development of China as a contemporary nation brand.
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Krawatzek, Félix. "Youth and crisis : discourse networks and political mobilisation." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:80a45271-f04d-4c1d-abff-6ee6c6478941.
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This thesis explores the meaning of "youth" and the political mobilisation of young people in key moments of crisis in Europe. Between 2005 and 2011, youth became critical for the consolidation of the authoritarian regime structures in Russia. I show that this process included the restructuring of the discourse about youth, the physical mobilisation of young people, and the isolation of oppositional youth. How valid are these findings for regime crises more generally? I answer this question through an analysis of the breakdown of the authoritarian Soviet Union during perestroika, the breakdown of unconsolidated democracy during the last years of the Weimar Republic, and the crisis of the democratic regime in France around 1968. The cross-regional and cross-temporal comparison of these episodes demonstrates that regimes lacking popular democratic support compensate for their insufficient legitimacy by trying to mobilise youth symbolically and politically. By developing a new method of textual analysis which combines qualitative content analysis and network analysis, the thesis offers a novel social science perspective on the meaning of youth in the four cases. My study shows how discursive structures about youth condition the possibility of political mobilisation of young people. The thesis makes three contributions to comparative politics. First, on an empirical level, my study offers new insights into social movements at moments of regime crisis in different political settings. Second, on a conceptual level, I refine our understanding of the symbolic significance of the terms "youth" and "generation" in moments when society is reorienting itself. I also examine the significance of "crisis" and argue that the term expresses openness and the possibility to remake the past and future. Third, on a methodological level, my thesis builds on the growing interest in textual analysis by developing a novel multi-level approach in three linguistic contexts, which offers insights into the structure of public discourse and the actors involved.
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Irwin, Pamela Margaret. "The development of resilience in two cohorts of older, single women, living on their own, in a small rural town in Australia." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:e6820ead-3b23-4b87-8f68-ef4404a8c40c.
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Australian rural women are stereotypically perceived as stoic, self-reliant, and used to handling adversity. Since this iconic portrayal of resilience is traditionally (and contemporaneously) located in the harsh countryside, it is surprising that there are few articles examining this environment, person, and resilience nexus. This thesis addresses this omission by exploring the development of resilience in two cohorts of single, older women, living on their own in rural Australia. Accordingly, an ethnographic study was conducted in a small Australian town in 2012. Documentary evidence, participant observation, and interviews captured the separate and intersecting environment and person related contributors to resilience, mediated and moderated through situational relations over time. The results revealed the persistence and reinforcement of rural historical cultural stereotypes about older women, and the systematic exclusion of younger women retirees who chose to move to the town but did not fit these embedded cultural norms. When confronted with a societal attitude that socially constrains their social identity and role, and boxes them in, the older old women pragmatically accepted their situation, and successfully adapted to their new circumstances. For them, resilience is a reactive response to regain and maintain equilibrium in their lives. Conversely, the late middle-aged retirees were boxed out from actively participating and contributing to the community; for these women, resilience is equated to resignation and endurance. And as there is a symbiotic relationship between a town and its residents, this community represents a constraining force, both in terms of its stalled response to sociodemographic and structural change, and its passive indifference to the older women as exemplars of resilience. In effect, the community exerts an oppressive, dampening effect on the women's agentic resiliency; thus contradicting the prevailing literature where resilience is widely portrayed as a positive and active agentic concept.
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Walton, Shireen Marion. "Camera Iranica : popular digital photography in/of Iran." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7f6516bf-64c6-4551-b58c-08e42915183f.
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This thesis explores the contemporary genre of popular digital photography, with a specific look at photographs taken in/of Iran. It focuses on the contemporary practice of 'photoblogging' or photography-based weblogging. Photoblogs are the result of the daily posting of digital photographs concerning everyday life in Iran on personal blogs specifically dedicated to photography. The title of the thesis, Camera Iranica, refers to the subject and scope of the study, as well as to its digital-ethnographic field site. I demarcate this as a conceptual and transnational cultural field, encompassing the multitude of places and spaces, on- and offline in which Iranians across the world engage in the practice of producing and viewing popular digital photography. Iranian photoblogs are shown to operate in a manner contingent upon a particular 'visual legacy' of contested cultural identity politics since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, propagated inside Iran and in 'the West'. The thesis traces the social, economic and political implications of developments in photography and digital technologies in Iran in light of this backdrop, and explores how and why Iranians in Iran and abroad are taking up popular digital photography for visual storytelling projects, with 'Iran' as their visual subject. Based on the study's empirical findings, I extrapolate theoretical arguments concerning historical and cultural understandings of digital photographs shown and seen in online environments, and propose innovative methodological strategies for digital-visual anthropologists to continue work in these fields.
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Mitra, Mahima. "To take up or not to take up? : government early years services in India and their utilization by working mothers in a Delhi slum." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:581a1e04-e343-422a-a4f0-bb447b67d965.
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This study of early years services in India explores the take-up of the government ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services Scheme) and RGNCS (Rajiv Gandhi National Crèche Scheme), and the factors affecting their uptake by working mothers in a Delhi slum. Policy cannot assess programme outcomes effectively without understanding how services are implemented. Existing literature indicates that programme impact is related to programme take-up, with non-take-up being a complex phenomenon affected by factors operating at multiple levels of the policy process. The study makes original contributions by examining user perspectives on early childhood education and care (ECEC) in the Indian context; in being the first to research any aspect of the RGNCS; and in utilizing Critical Realism as the underlying philosophical, theoretical and methodological paradigm for studying programme uptake. It poses five research questions that examine mothers' childcare arrangements and needs/expectations from services, their take-up of government programmes and component services, and the combination of factors affecting uptake. Study findings are based on surveys with 200 working mothers and 37 children's centre workers, and interviews with 15 policy experts. Findings reveal childcare arrangements and needs/expectations to vary by family structure, child's age, and mother's age and employment. ICDS uptake is found to be higher (54.3% of all mothers), than RGNCS (18.6%). An explanatory framework for analysing take-up reveals that low take-up results from a combination of multiple factors, most significantly programme characteristics for the ICDS, and participant characteristics for the RGNCS. Two theoretical frameworks frame this analysis - Wolman's (1981) determinants of programme success and failure, and the 'barriers and bridges' to programme uptake. Critical policy analysis further identifies the effects of the policy meaning-making processes, and the role of local 'street-level bureaucrats' in take-up. Both programmes display 'conflicted policy success' vis-à-vis take-up when categorised using McConnell's (2010) criteria for programme 'success' and 'failure'. Policy implications include strategies for increasing programme uptake, and a policy focus upon service users and women in the informal economy, recognition of the dual role of ECEC, and the importance of evidence-creation for interactive governance.
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O'Hare, Sian E. M. "Essays on poverty and wellbeing." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/21806.
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Although economic growth has brought significant improvements in the standard of living in the UK over recent decades, there are still individuals living in poverty. Furthermore poverty in the UK is expected to rise. Although monetary poverty has wide ranging impacts such as poor health, low educational attainment and employability and reduced life expectancy, it does not (in the form of a poverty line at 60% of the median equivalised household income) appear to have an impact on wellbeing when the threshold was tested. Instead, multidimensional poverty – that purported by the Capabilities Approach – is a more individually relevant measure of poverty. Using a list, developed by Nussbaum, of core capabilities seen as essential for human life, capability measures were taken from the British Household Panel Survey. In analysis, some are found to be significant determinants of wellbeing, individually and in sum. Furthermore, individuals within the dataset experience loss aversion to capabilities. This thesis concludes that poverty measurement should be meaningful at the individual level, and to that aim, the Capabilities Approach provides a richer and more relevant evaluation of what poverty really means.
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Oxley, Natasha Emma Fortescue. "Talking taboos: the personal over the political? : contemporary Polish playwriting : theme and dramatic technique in selected modern Polish plays." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:036a5a0e-aa99-40f9-b610-4a267bc1e533.
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The focus of this thesis is contemporary Polish playwriting after Poland's accession to the European Union in 2004. From a broad reading of plays by many new writers, four playwrights were selected for study on the basis of prominence and artistic merit: Pawel Demirski, Dorota Maslowska, Malgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk and Przemys law Wojcieszek. Their plays were studied as texts and in performance, and twelve main plays became the focus of closer analysis. The thesis identifies and examines three major concurrent themes in the works of these playwrights. Remembering versus forgetting the past is discussed through the lens of selected aspects of memory studies, including Nora's lieux de mémoire, Hirsch's postmemory and Assman's mnemohistory. The playwrights are shown to share an endorsement of the de-politicisation of collective memory and to advocate a cessation of the passing down of trauma to post-war generations. The human body is highlighted as another concurrent thematic concern and is illuminated by certain tenets of Catholic doctrine as well as Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. The playwrights' rejection of the tabooisation of the body is demonstrated and the shared notion of the body as both sentient and unifying is exemplified. Social marginalisation is examined as the final concern, with an emphasis on the notion of the 'other', particularly in relation to socio-economic status, sexuality, and religious beliefs. The plays are shown to support and promote a rejection of the myth of homogeneity in favour of openness to diversity. Major dramatic techniques are then closely examined. It is demonstrated that the plays share traits with Lehmann's theory of postdramatic theatre, including a rejection of Aristotelian unities. Key commonalities are evidenced, particularly comedy, bad language, intertextualities with the outside world, and an engagement with Polish social realities. The playwrights' approach to the spectator as a socio-political being is shown to be of paramount importance.
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Fattah, Khaled. "Contextual determinants of political modernization in tribal Middle Eastern societies : the case of unified Yemen." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/1984.
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By all conventional measurements of modernization and development, from communication and education to bureaucracy and urbanization, Arab societies have been undergoing an impressive transformation. There is, however, a wide gap in the Arab Middle East between such a transformation and the political consequences of modernization. In other words, the Arab Middle East exhibits a sharp contrast between its societal and political progress. In the case of Yemen, such a gap looks different from the one that exists in the rest of the region. In addition to being a country with the weakest and most limited bureaucracy in the Arab world, Yemen has, also, the lowest level of urbanization and education in the region. According to United Nations Human Development Report for the year 2004, 73.7 % of Yemen’s population are living in rural areas, and the country has a combined gross enrolment rate for primary, secondary and tertiary schools of 43%. In 2008, Yemen was rated near the bottom of the Human Development Index (HDI) by the UNDP; as number 153rd out of the 177 countries with HDI data, and it ranked as number 82 out of 108 countries in the Human Poverty Index. The United Nations Human Development Report 2006, for instance, indicates that the percentage of Yemeni population who live below National Poverty Line is 41.8%. Yet, Yemen is more democratic than most countries in the Arab Middle East. In light of this paradox, the following central question guides this research: which contextual factors are central in explaining the unique process of political modernization in tribal Yemen?
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Pellissery, Sony. "The politics of social protection in rural India : a case study of two villages." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2006. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:89acdf33-794a-4dde-b112-3800fc716fd8.
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Social protection should ideally create a framework of 'welfare rights' for the vulnerable individuals and households. The state, through a set of policies of promotive and protective measures, sets out to achieve this. However, gaining these welfare rights in a decentralised democratic framework could be a function of the bargaining power that each individual, household and social group may possess. Therefore the micro-level interactions involving claimant, bureaucrat and local elites constitute the key policy process. Study of the process itself can reveal why some households gain formal social protection and other fail. This study argues that the local practices and informal rules underlying these public policy processes are purposively guided by the private interests of the local elites. At the heart of this dissertation is a comparative case-study of two villages in the Indian state of Maharashtra, based on eight months ethnographic fieldwork. Bottomup evaluation of two social protection programmes, public works (promotive) and social assistance (protective) programmes shows that 60 per cent of eligible persons are excluded from welfare rights. The mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion in these programmes are studied. The study reveals that both eligibility and entitlement to 'welfare rights' are contested within the power structure of the local community. The social identity of the claimant, and the ability to build a relationship with the local leaders or labour market managers act as key routes to access welfare rights. The precedence of informal rules at the stage of implementation of social protection programmes reproduced the existing social and economic power structures. As a result, the welfare rights of individuals and households are affected by the competing forces in the non-state sectors. These non-state actors, through their network, were able to weaken the administration and fair allocation of welfare benefits. Through this analysis the thesis contributes to the understanding of the local state, and decision-making practices over welfare rights in a decentralised context.
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Thornhill, Kerrie. "Reconstructed meanings of gender violence in postwar Liberia." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:188ca3b4-0b92-487a-aafb-01736b25fce5.
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The central question guiding this study is, how can Liberia's historical context of colonial state formation and reformation help explain public discourses surrounding gender violence in the postwar decade, 2003-2013? This question is addressed using original data from mixed qualitative methods including participant observation, visual methods, and semi-structured interviews. The research identifies narratives and meta-narratives produced by liberal institutions (including the Government of Liberia and international agencies), as well as informal discourses from adult Liberians of different backgrounds living in Greater Monrovia. Using critical discourse analysis, the argument identifies connections between the narratives that recur, the social realities they recall, and the power dynamics they perpetuate. These discourses are best understood in reference to liberal and colonial/imperial dynamics from Liberia's settlement period. Liberal institutions addressing gender violence in the postwar period face dilemmas in which universalist humanitarian ideals work in tandem with, and provide justification for, imperialism as a set of discursive and material relations. Nonelite Liberians instrumentalise and subvert both privileged donor discourses as well as long-standing colonial hierarchies of 'civilised' and 'country'. Additionally, the thesis examines how liberal institutions, traditional institutions, and Liberian citizens interact as agents of discursive construction. It will be shown that this pattern of discourse production is at times harmonious, as in the interactions around promoting male head-of-household responsibilities, and at other times adversarial, as in conflicts surrounding excision as an initiation practice for girls. Liberal institutions, non-elite Liberians, and traditional authorities both collude and compete in this era of dynamic normative contestation. Both the major discourses and the interactions that produce them can be explained in part by the liberal imperialism and its specific form of settler colonialism that propelled the founding and subsequent stages of state formation in Liberia. The consequences of that residual history indicate inherent - though, not irredeemable - structural limitations to a robust institutional response to gender violence. In this manner the study demonstrates the utility of historicising Liberia's contemporary gender violence discourses, and how doing so can address the longstanding bifurcation between rights and culture in international development and transnational feminist geography.
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Wang, David Fenglong. "Home relocation and changes in satisfaction with residence, travel and life: a study of Beijing." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2015. https://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_oa/208.
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Home relocation has far-reaching effects on both urban structure and individuals’ quality of life. While a large volume of studies have examined the determinants of home relocation, only limited attention has been paid to the outcomes of home relocation. Even less scholarly effort has been devoted to the impacts of home relocation on the movers in terms of change in their domain and life satisfaction. This study aims to explore this issue by focusing on the two following research questions: (1) has home relocation led to improvement in residential, travel and life satisfaction? (2) what contributes to the change in residential, travel and life satisfaction after move? Using a two-wave survey of residents who moved their homes in Beijing, this dissertation investigates the patterns of change in the movers’ residential, travel and life satisfaction and explores the determinants of change in satisfaction based on a series of multilevel SEM models. The specific variables applied to explain change in satisfaction after move are derived from the existing literature on residential, travel and life satisfaction. The results show a positive and significant increase in the average level of residential, travel and life satisfaction after move, suggesting that home relocation has significant and positive effects on the mover’s quality of life. The change in satisfaction after move is mainly determined by change in residential environment, change in travel conditions, motivations to move and some personal and household socioeconomics. Specifically, residential satisfaction change is mainly explained by housing tenure shift and change in the perceived neighborhood environment including physical design, safety, social composition, etc.. Travel satisfaction change is mainly predicted by change in daily travel patterns and perceived neighborhood environment. The objective indicators of change in neighborhood accessibility and walkability only exert marginal effects on travel satisfaction change. Life satisfaction change is mainly determined by change in perceived neighborhood environment and daily activity patterns, which influence life satisfaction change both directly and indirectly through changes in residential and travel satisfaction. This dissertation not only enriches the literature of residential mobility and the wellbeing studies, but also has important implications for policy-makers to enhance residents’ quality of life. To fully interpret how home relocation influences the movers, more sophisticated surveys covering more life domains and longer time series are still needed in future studies. KEYWORDS: Residential satisfaction, Travel satisfaction, Life satisfaction, Subjective wellbeing, Home relocation, Beijing
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Chiweshe, Manase Kudzai. "Farm level institutions in emergent communities in post fast track Zimbabwe: case of Mazowe district." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003096.
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The thesis seeks to understand how emerging communities borne out of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme in Zimbabwe have been able to ensure social cohesion and social service provision using farm level institutions. The Fast Track Programme brought together people from diverse backgrounds into new communities in the former commercial farming areas. The formation of new communities meant that, often, there were 'stranger households'living next to each other. Since 2000, these people have been involved in various processes aimed at turning clusters of homesteads into functioning communities through farm level institutions. Fast track land reform precipitated economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe characterised by a rapidly devaluating Zimbabwean dollar, enormous inflation and high unemployment figures. This economic crisis has impacted heavily on new farmers who find it increasingly difficult to afford inputs and access loans. They have formed social networks in response to these challenges, taking the form of farm level institutions such as farm committees, irrigation committees and health committees. The study uses case studies from small-scale 'A1 farmers‘ in Mazowe district which is in Mashonaland Central Province. It employs qualitative methodologies to enable a nuanced understanding of associational life in the new communities. Through focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, narratives, key informant interviews and institutional mapping the study outlines the formation, taxonomy, activities, roles, internal dynamics and social organisation of farm level institutions. The study also uses secondary data collected in 2007-08 by the Centre for Rural Development in the newly resettled areas in Mazowe. The major finding of the study is that farmers are organising in novel ways at grassroots levels to meet everyday challenges. These institutional forms however are internally weak, lacking leadership with a clear vision and they appear as if they are transitory in nature. They remain marginalised from national and global processes and isolated from critical connections to policy makers at all levels; thus A1 farmers remain voiceless and unable to have their interests addressed. Farm level institutions are at the forefront of the microeconomics of survival among these rural farmers. They are survivalist in nature and form, and this requires a major shift in focus if they are to be involved in developmental work. The institutions remain fragmented and compete amongst themselves for services from government without uniting as A1 farmers with similar interests and challenges.
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Dhattiwala, Raheel. "Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat, 2002 : political logic, spatial configuration, and communal cooperation." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.669731.
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This thesis uses a mixed methods approach to investigate the different levels of Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat (western India) in 2002 when at least a thousand Muslims were killed. An original dataset of killings is compiled to analyse macrospatial variation in the violence across towns and rural areas of Gujarat. Data collected from 21 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Ahmedabad city is used to investigate microspatial variation across three neighbourhoods with varying levels of violence.Macrospatial analysis discusses the link between political authority and its capacity to instigate ethnic violence as a response to electoral calculations and identifies the mechanisms by which violence against Muslims was orchestrated by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Ethnographic findings demonstrate the importance of ecological strategies adopted by attackers and targets during the course of attack and urge a re-examination of the intuitive association of spatial proximity with greater interethnic contact. Findings also reveal methods of enforcement used by legitimate and illegitimate institutions of a peaceful slum neighbourhood in resolving commitment problems of cooperation. Finally, the thesis examines the aftermath of the violence, more specifically a political phenomenon of Muslims of Gujarat supporting the BJP nine years after the brutal violence.Methodologically, the main contribution of this thesis is in bridging the quantitative and ethnographic traditions in the sociology of ethnic violence to make possible the linking, and disentangling, of macrolevel risk factors associated with violence from microlevel factors. Findings of the thesis hopefully provide a better understanding of ethnic violence in multi-ethnic democracies and a roadmap of policy-making for India as it continues to struggle with ethnic strife.
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Tzeng, Chien-Chun. "The political economy of NPOs promoting "active ageing" programs for the elderly in Taiwan." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:100e9681-c4f5-4fd2-b329-39c99e3da986.
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From the 1990s, welfare state and civil society in Taiwan were confronted with challenges and opportunities brought by population ageing. The author chooses NPOs with "Active Ageing" programs for the elderly, a group thriving as a consequence of Taiwan's unique transitional democratization and privatization under Neoliberalism, as a case to systematically investigate the governance structure. Four core NPOs of various scales and capacities are sampled while their stakeholders are also interviewed. Findings reveal that after the pension reform made possible by social movement and electoral politics, these institutionalized social forces secure their position in the welfare delivery system. However, problems remain unresolved because of structural inertia while NPOs operate under the changing field frame and conflicting institutional logics between the welfare state and civil society. Though partially impeded, NPOs develop an East-Asian way of solution with various counterplots. Contrasting rationales of networking explain NPOs' diverse achievements while quasi-subordination and structural loop consolidate respective constituency. Four patterns of perceived relational social capital relate to NPOs' networking practices and institutional settings. The connection among institutions, networking configurations, and relations further crystalizes the tripartite governance structure composed of the institutional, technical, and social environment. Legitimation of means functions mainly within the institutional environment while legitimation of ends through technical and social environment also justifies NPOs' social appropriateness. Various types of legitimacy are conferred to NPOs at different development stages while both formal and informal norms guide NPOs' behavior in the two-dimensional governing kinetics. Through this case study, the author also demonstrates how a meso-level approach of organizational study, integrating Sociological Institutionalism and Organizational Social Capital Theory, possibly sheds lights on the different areas of Sociology, especially those of social movement, NPOs, and ageing society.
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Sprunger, Luke. ""Del Campo Ya Pasamos a Otras Cosas--From the Field We Move on to Other Things": Ethnic Mexican Narrators and Latino Community Histories in Washington County, Oregon." PDXScholar, 2014. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/1977.
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This work examines the histories of the Latino population of Washington County, Oregon, and explores how and why ethnic Mexican and other Latino individuals and families relocated to the county. It relies heavily on oral history interviews conducted by the author with ethnic Mexican residents, and on archival newspaper sources. Beginning with the settlement of a small number of tejano families and the formation of an ethnic community in the 1960s, a number of factors encouraged an increasing number of migrant Latino families--from tejanos to Mexican nationals to Central and South Americans to indigenous migrants of various nationalities--to settle permanently in the county. This work studies how the growth and diversification of the population altered the nature of community among Latinos, how changing social conditions and the efforts of early community builders improved opportunities for new arrivals, and how continuing migration has assisted in processes of cultural replenishment.
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Foskolos, Konstantinos. "The acceptability and efficacy of a brief universal preventive parenting intervention for child behavioural and emotional disorders." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:cb6b28fb-12ad-4e81-b6d3-2134f7dfaec8.
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This thesis investigates the acceptability and efficacy of a brief universal preventive parenting intervention for child behavioural and emotional difficulties. The methodology included a systematic review, a literature review, a pilot randomised controlled trial and focus group discussions. The systematic review aimed to show whether behavioural and emotional difficulties are a significant problem in Greece. Greek children appeared to display high scores on, and prevalence of behavioural problems, compared to children from other countries. The results suggested that, based on parental reports, Greece seems to have a high prevalence in child behavioural and emotional difficulties. The literature review explored the effectiveness of universally delivered Triple P preventive interventions and identified research gaps. There was also insufficient evidence on the effectiveness of brief universal Triple P programmes to draw any definitive conclusions. No randomised trial had examined the short-term and long-term effectiveness of the Triple P brief universal interventions (Seminar Series). The pilot randomised trial explored the efficacy of the Triple P Seminar Series for the reduction of child behavioural and emotional difficulties. 124 parents were randomly allocated to receive three seminars on positive parenting, while parents in the control group received information on child development. There was a significant reduction in behavioural problems over time (primary outcome), and a reduction in parenting dysfunctional difficulties in the short-term. Parents gave positive feedback on the intervention indicating that overall it was acceptable, feasible, culturally relevant, and useful. Preliminary moderator analyses indicated that there were no moderator variables affecting the relation between group allocation and change in child disruptive scores. Preliminary mediator analyses suggested that a reduction in dysfunctional practices partially explained improvements in children's disruptive behaviours over time. Lastly, 46 parents of the intervention group shared their personal experiences regarding the Seminar Series during six focus groups. The facilitators of positive parenting were relevant to what they did before, during, and after their practices, while barriers included child, parent and external factors. The final conclusions after triangulation and the implications of this thesis for practice and further research were discussed.
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Xue, Asan. "Religion, Heritage, and Power： Everyday Life in Contemporary China." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2014. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1417.
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Based on an ethnographic study of the religious life of ordinary people in the town of Dongpu, this research explores the relationships between: religion and state power; Chinese ritual (li, 礼/禮) tradition and Christian culture; and religion and intangible cultural heritage in contemporary China.
This research found that both the practitioners of Chinese rituals and the Christian community deploy tactics to resist and negotiate with the hegemonic official culture through spatial and religious practices in their everyday life. Chinese ritual practices dedicated to deities and ancestors are defined as idol worship in the doctrine of Christianity and denigrated as feudal superstition in the official discourse of scientism, materialism and atheism. The contrast between Christianity as an orthodox religion and Chinese ritual practices as feudal superstition contributes to the religious hegemony of Christianity over the Chinese ritual tradition, thus rendering most Chinese rituals as lacking in status, although some Chinese rituals have gained legitimacy as intangible cultural heritage. The practice of intangible cultural heritage in contemporary China is subject to the global heritage movement spearheaded by UNESCO and China’s domestic political, cultural and economic agendas. Ordinary people deploy tactics to negotiate with the local/state power in response to the practice of top-down imposed intangible cultural heritage, thus gaining the legitimacy of practicing these rituals.
This research presents a poetics of ordinary people’s everyday life. The religious life of ordinary people is foregrounded and exerted as a self-evident entity and heterogeneous culture. This study demonstrates that everyday life can become a cultural experience of alternative modernity and an arena of cultural autonomy. Religious life is never simply equivalent to the homogenising ambitions of any power, such as capitalism, atheism or materialism. The practice of intangible cultural heritage is a process of selecting the ‘heritage in perception’ (i.e., heritage identified and safeguarded based upon UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage) from the ‘heritage in essence’ (i.e., heritage as the self-evident foundation of ordinary people’s everyday life). The safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage channelled from top-down may give rise to cultural hegemony due to the classification of intangible cultures into superior and inferior resources according to the official discourse of developing an ‘advanced culture’ and the principles of a market economy. The expert-centred mechanism of intangible cultural heritage identification rules out the cultural autonomy of genuine inheritors of intangible cultural heritage. Additionally, the identification of the intangible cultural heritage as a narrowly understood territorial property causes conflicts between nations and regions. This may stop the transmission of cultures among ordinary people and undermine UNESCO’s initial agenda of promoting the cultural diversity around the world.
Freedom in religion consists in the establishment of a civil society in which the autonomy of people’s cultural practices and religious life is achieved through democratic negotiation between the ruling government and the masses. It is until then that religious culture can be practised and transmitted as a self-evident ordinary culture and intangible cultural heritage by ordinary people in their everyday life.
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Polychronakis, Ioannis. "Song odyssey : negotiating identities in Greek popular music." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.669839.
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Humphris, Rachel Grace. "New migrants' home encounters : an ethnography of 'Romanian Roma' and the local state in Luton." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:3af69cfa-2cd7-4972-afb2-14d92238d25a.
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This ethnographic study explores how 'Romanian Roma' migrants in the UK, without previous relationships to their place of arrival, negotiate their identity to make place in a diverse urban area. The thesis argues that state forms are (re)produced through embedded social relations. The restructuring of the UK welfare state, coupled with processes of labelling, means that the notion of public and private space is changing. Migrants' encounters with state actors in the home are increasingly important. I lived with three families between January 2013 and March 2014, during a period of shifting labour market regulations and the end of European Union transitional controls in January 2014. Through mapping families' relationships and connections, I identify encounters in the home with state actors regarding children as a defining feature of place-making. The thesis introduces the term 'home encounter' to trace the interplay of discourses and performances between state actors and those they identified as 'Romanian Roma'. Due to the restructuring of UK welfare, various roles assume different 'faces of the state'. These include education officers, health visitors, sub-contracted NGO workers, charismatic pastors and volunteers. The home encounter is presented as a public 'state act' (Bourdieu 2012) where negotiations of values take place in private space determining access to membership and welfare resources. In addition, blurring boundaries between welfare regulations and immigration control mean that these actors' seemingly small decisions have far-reaching consequences. The analysis raises questions of how to understand practices of government in diverse urban areas; the affect of labelling, place and performance on material power inequalities; and processes of discrimination and othering.
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Tsarwe, Stanley Zvinaiye. ""Too tired to speak?": investigating the reception of Radio Grahamstown's Lunchtime Live show as a means of linking local communities to power." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002943.
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This study sets out to investigate Lunchtime Live, a twice-weekly, one-hour long current affairs show broadcast on a small community radio station, Radio Grahamstown, to understand its role in the local public sphere, and its value in helping civil society’s understanding of and involvement in the power structures and political activities in Grahamstown. Lunchtime Live seeks to cultivate a collective identity and promote public participation in the public affairs of Grahamstown. As a key avenue of investigation, this study seeks to test theory against practice, by evaluating Lunchtime Live’s aspirations against the audiences’ perception of it. This investigation uses qualitative content analysis of selected episodes of recorded transcripts of the shows that aired between August 2010 and March 2011, together with the audiences’ verbalised experiences of this programme through focus group discussions. The study principally uses qualitative research informed by reception theory. The research reveals three key findings. First, that resonance rather than resistance is the more dominant ‘stance’ or ‘attitude’ towards the content of Lunchtime Live. Residents interviewed agreed that the programme is able to give a “realistic” representation of their worldview, and thus is able to articulate issues that affect their lives. Second, that whilst the programme is helping establish links between members of the civil society as well as between civil society and their political representatives, residents feel that local democracy is failing to bring qualitative improvements to their everyday lives and that more ‘participation’ is unlikely to change this. Most respondents blame this on a lack of political will, incompetence, corruption and populist rhetoric by politicians who fail to deliver on the mantra of ‘a better life for all’ in the socioeconomic sphere. The study finds a scepticism and even cynicism that participatory media seems to be able to do little to dilute. Thirdly, in spite of the largely positive view about Lunchtime Live’s capacity to be a platform for public engagement, its participatory potential is structurally constrained by the material privations of most of its listeners. Given that in order to participate in talk shows and discussions audience members have to phone in, economic deprivation often precludes this. It is clear from this research that despite shows such as Lunchtime Live that are exploring new techniques of popular involvement, the voice of the ordinary people still struggles to be heard.
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Mosquera, Becerra Maria Janeth. "Socio-spatial Transformation and Contested Space at the Street Level in Latin America: The Case of Cali, Colombia." PDXScholar, 2014. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/1953.
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Since 2008, more than 50% of the world's population has lived in cities and it is projected that by 2050 around 87% will do so. Designing infrastructure in urban spaces has become increasingly critical for achieving human well-being. This dissertation examines socio-spatial transformation processes related to urbanization, economic development and the marginalization of utilitarian cycling in Cali, Colombia, as a particular expression of the struggle for transportation space occurring in urban areas. The research analyzes (a) the socio-spatial processes that have restricted the use of bicycles as a means of transportation in the city of Cali, Colombia; and (b) the social, health and economic implications for people who use bicycles as their primary means of transportation in this city.
Cali is a major city in Latin America and an excellent case to study the complex dynamic of how social and economic forces are evident in resource distribution at the street level. Informed by Harvey's work (1976; 1978; 2012), combined with an environmental justice perspective (Bullard 2007), this research adopts a conceptual framework that examines the transformation of the built environment as part of capitalist led urbanization. It concludes that the implementation of transportation infrastructure was aimed at enabling productivity and profits, with less emphasis on the comprehensive needs of all citizens, ultimately marginalizing transportation options for those of lower socio-economic status. The experience in Cali can be understood as a case of consolidation of inequality at the street level.
A historical review of Cali's urbanization process demonstrates that cycling as a mode of transportation has been losing social and physical space. Analysis of the political economy of more recent economic development initiatives suggest that the City, in responding to the demands of globalization, and in conjunction with international financial agencies and national government support has implemented a Bus Rapid Transit system and a set of megaprojects which marginalize bike commuters, particularly those who bike out of economic necessity. Although bike commuters recognize economic and health and time-saving benefits of biking to themselves as individuals they also experience daily travel in Cali as a classed, problematic, stigmatized, and transitory activity. From an environmental justice perspective, the resulting impact on residents, particularly, those of lower socioeconomic stratum, unmasks the uneven distribution of environmental benefits and harms. The marginalization of biking as a means of transportation in urban areas in Latin America may be understood as a social injustice similar to the deprivation of parks, schools, health services, or housing endured by residents of lower socioeconomic status.
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Lane, Karen. "Not-the-Troubles : an anthropological analysis of stories of quotidian life in Belfast." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/15591.
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To understand the complexity of life in a city one needs to consider a spectrum of experience. Belfast has a history of conflict and division, particularly in relation to the Troubles, reflected in comprehensive academic studies of how this has affected, and continues to affect, the citizens. But this is a particular mode of representation, a vision of life echoed in fictional literature. People's quotidian lives can and do transcend the grand narratives of the Troubles that have come to dominate these discourses. Anthropology has traditionally accorded less epistemological weight to fleeting and superficial encounters with strangers, but this mode of sociality is a central feature of life in the city. The modern stranger navigates these relationships with relative ease. Communicating with others through narrative – personal stories about our lives – is fundamental to what it is to be human, putting storytelling at the heart of anthropological study. Engagements with strangers may be brief encounters or build into acquaintanceship, but these superficial relationships are not trivial. How we interact with strangers – our public presentation of the self to others through the personal stories we share – can give glimpses into the private lives of individuals. Listening to stories of quotidian life in Belfast demonstrates a range of people's existential dilemmas and joys that challenges Troubled representations of life in the city. The complexity, size and anonymity of the city means the anthropologist needs different ways of reaching people; this thesis is as much about exploring certain anthropological methodologies as it is about people and a place. Through methods of walking, performance, human-animal interactions, my body as a research subject, and using fictional literature as ethnographic data, I interrogate the close relationship between method, data and analysis, and of knowledge-production and knowledge-dissemination. I present quotidian narratives of Belfast's citizens that are Not-the-Troubles.
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Elliot-Cooper, Adam. "The struggle that has no name : race, space and policing in post-Duggan Britain." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7efad2ea-75e2-4a54-a479-b3b2b265e827.
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State violence, and policing in particular, continue to shape the black British experience, racialising geographical areas associated with African and African-Caribbean communities. The history of black struggles in the UK has often centred on spaces of racial violence and resistance to it. But black-led social movements of previous decades have, for the most part, seen a decline in both political mobilisations, and the militant anti-racist slogans and discourses that accompanied them. Neoliberalism, through securitisation, resource reallocation, privatisation of space and the de-racialising of language, has made radical black activism an increasingly difficult endeavour. But this does not mean that black struggle against policing has disappeared. What it does mean, however, is that there have been significant changes in how anti-racist activism against policing is articulated and carried out. Three high-profile black deaths at the hands of police in 2011 led to widespread protest and civil unrest. These movements of resistance were strengthened when the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States mobilised hundreds of young people in solidarity actions in England. In this thesis, I argue that, over time, racist metonyms used to describe places racialised as black (Handsworth, Brixton etc.) and people racialised as black (Stephen Lawrence, Mark Duggan etc.), have led to the rise of metonymic anti-racism. While metonymic anti-racism was used alongside more overt anti-racist language in the period between the 1950s and early 1990s, I argue that such overt anti-racist language is becoming rarer in the post-2011 period, particularly in radical black grassroots organisations that address policing. Intersecting with metonymic anti-racism are gender dynamics brought to the surface by female-led campaigns against police violence, and forms of resistance which target spaces of post-industrial consumer capitalism. Understanding how police racism, and resistance to it, are being reconceptualised through language, and reconfigured through different forms of activism, provides a fresh understanding of grassroots black struggle in Britain.
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Bartholo, Leticia. "Articulação trabalho-familia, bem-estar infantil e o aproveitamento da janela de oportunidades demografica : a protecção social brasileira das crianças entre 0 e 6 anos no inicio do seculo XXI." [s.n.], 2009. http://repositorio.unicamp.br/jspui/handle/REPOSIP/281905.
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Orientador: Elisabete Doria BilacDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas
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Resumo: Esta pesquisa examina as políticas públicas brasileiras que facilitam a articulação trabalho-família, enfocando seu papel para o aproveitamento da janela de oportunidades demográfica em curso no País. Centralmente, argumenta-se que a ausência ou a escassa participação do Estado no compartilhamento das atividades familiares de assistência e cuidado com crianças pode gerar prejuízos a tal aproveitamento, seja por comprimir as possibilidades de engajamento produtivo das mulheres, seja por contribuir para a propagação dos riscos sociais de classe e intergeracionais que impactam negativamente as oportunidades das crianças. São analisadas as seguintes políticas de compartilhamento público das tarefas familiares de assistência aos menores de 6 anos: (i) as existentes na regulação do mundo do trabalho, basicamente, as garantias e direitos previstos na Consolidação das Leis do Trabalho (CLT) e na legislação previdenciária; (ii) os benefícios assistenciais a famílias com filhos, especificamente o Programa Bolsa Família (PBF); e (iii) o acesso a creches e pré-escolas. Examina-se o acesso da população a essas políticas, assim como o modelo de família sobre o qual repousam, implícita ou explicitamente. Nota-se que, a despeito do incremento no nível de compartilhamento público das tarefas de assistência e cuidado das crianças ocorrido principalmente a partir de 1988, a família ainda mantém-se como instituição primeira de gestão dos riscos sociais para parcela representativa da população. Ademais, o modelo de família subjacente aos serviços e benefícios analisados não os aproxima integralmente da diretriz constitucional da equidade de gênero, na medida em que mantém a vinculação entre o sexo feminino e as tarefas domésticas de cuidado.
Abstract: This research analyzes Brazilian child-care policies that facilitate work-family articulation, focusing its role on the use of the demographic window opportunity afoot in the country. Mainly, it's argued that the absence or scarce public child-care may harm the use of this opportunity, firstly, by comprising the possibilities of women productive insertion, and secondly, by contributing for the propagation of class and intergenerational risks that impact negatively on children opportunities. It's analyzed the following policies of public sharing of family assistance tasks to children under six years old: (i) the existing at the regulation of labor world, basically, the guarantees and rights present at the Labor Laws Consolidation (LLC) and at the laws of social welfare; (ii) the social benefits to family with children, specifically the Family-Grant Program (FGP); and (iii) the access to crèches and kindergarten. It's evaluated the population's access to these policies, so as the family model they are based upon, implicitly or explicitly. It's noted that, despite of the increase of the level of public sharing regarding children's assistance and care tasks, that took place principally after 1988, the family still is the main institution of management of social risks to a substantial share of population. Furthermore, the family model that underpins the services and benefits.
Mestrado
Mestre em Demografia
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Vale, Beth. "Of blood and belonging : the practice of antiretroviral treatment among HIV-positive youth in South Africa's Eastern Cape." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:c3db9d98-7d18-4e39-b8ef-344f3bbbdbff.
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HIV-positive adolescents are an increasingly numerous and challenging population in the South African HIV/AIDS epidemic. Their access to, and retention in, ART care has become a pressing public health concern. Comprised of four journal articles, this thesis explores the practice of antiretroviral treatment (ART) among a cohort of HIV-positive adolescents (age 10-19) in South Africa's Eastern Cape. By 'practice', I mean the volatile, situated and relational 'work' that goes into young people's everyday achievement of ART - into consuming daily medication, regularly attending health appointments, and participating in HIV programmes. Through an exploration of the ways in which some HIV-positive adolescents use, appropriate, or reject ART care; this thesis contributes to a much-needed evidence-base on the needs and survival strategies of adolescent ART users. Data for this study was gathered through eight months of multi-method ethnographic fieldwork with 23 HIV-positive youth, their families, and local health workers. The findings elucidate adolescent ART as a complex (and often volatile) form of social incorporation, through which young people negotiate survival, care and moral connection in contemporary South Africa. Enrolling in ART meant being encompassed into a (often hierarchical) set of social relationships, through which adolescents sought belonging, recognition and protection, amid profound insecurity. Through ART and its associated programmes, adolescents and their families attempted to strengthen familial ties, appeal to powerful patrons, petition for care, and access basic resources. Yet these pursuits were often deeply ambivalent, as discipline, blame, and resentment often came encased in the terms of care. At the crux of each article is an attempt to understand how adolescents, often alongside their families, negotiated both the social stakes and possibilities of ART. Through these discussions, we might better be able to grasp the fragility and complexity of young people's retention in ART.
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Hirtz, Natalia Vanesa. "Argentine: de la révolte vers un nouveau cycle de gouvernance :l'expérience du mouvement des entreprises récupérées par les travailleurs." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/209206.
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Un nouveau mouvement social est né en Argentine en 2001, dans un contexte de crise socio-économique sans précédent dans l’histoire du pays :le mouvement des entreprises récupérées par les travailleurs. La récupération des entreprises s’est développée comme une alternative à leur fermeture :les travailleurs occupent l’entreprise et relancent la production et la vente de produits. Ce mouvement surgit dans un moment historique de luttes sociales où le rapport de forces est favorable aux travailleurs, permettant le développement de pratiques en dehors du cadre déterminé par la loi. Or, la production et la commercialisation des produits ne sont pas durables sans l’obtention d’une autorisation légale. Les travailleurs s’organiseront et développeront diverses stratégies pour leur reconnaissance juridique et politique.
En dépit de l’abondante production scientifique concernant les entreprises récupérées, beaucoup d’éléments restent à examiner. La plupart des recherches se sont centrées sur deux questions majeures :l’analyse des résultats de la lutte des travailleurs, c’est-à-dire les pratiques sociales et économiques développées dans le processus productif ;et l’étude sur les stratégies politiques, souvent réduites aux actions juridiques, entamées par les travailleurs afin de récupérer l’entreprise. Mais force est de constater qu’il n’existe pas de recherches spécifiques sur le processus de lutte, de formation et de dissolution des organisations des entreprises récupérées. Dans ce sens, le mouvement des entreprises récupérées est souvent présenté comme étant un mouvement uniforme. Certes, des recherches s’intéressent aux rapports sociaux et politiques contenus dans le processus de lutte des travailleurs, mais il s’agit d’études de cas centrées sur l’analyse de certaines entreprises récupérées. L’ambition de la présente thèse est de pallier l’absence d’étude sur le processus de formation et développement du mouvement des entreprises récupérées. Elle cherche à relier l’expérience des travailleurs et celle du mouvement. Ces expériences se déroulent dans un moment historique essentiel d’institutionnalisation des organisations sociales nées durant un cycle de révolte. Notre étude cherche à déceler le processus par lequel certaines organisations du mouvement des entreprises récupérées ont participé à ces transformations (tandis que d’autres furent exclues des négociations) ainsi que l’impact de cette ouverture politique sur le mouvement des entreprises récupérées. Pour cela, nous analysons les influences réciproques sur la construction de ce mouvement :les formes de gestion, d’organisation et les relations de travail au sein des entreprises récupérées ;les trajectoires de lutte et les diverses organisations qui en résultent, en relation permanente avec l’évolution des réalités économiques, politiques et sociales spécifiques à chaque période envisagée. À cette fin, nous avons procédé à une étude extensive et intensive. L’intérêt de combiner ces approches répond à l’objectif général de cerner les rapports complexes et dynamiques qui lient ces deux niveaux d’analyse dans le processus de construction d’un acteur social. Étant donné que les analyses extensives existant avant 2010, étaient insuffisantes pour répondre à bon nombre des questions posées par cette thèse, nous avons élaboré notre propre analyse statistique. Cette démarche nous permet d’appréhender le phénomène dans son ampleur, mais elle n’est pas pertinente pour comprendre en profondeur les pratiques concrètes des travailleurs et de leurs organisations. En revanche, l’analyse qualitative, dépourvue d’une approche extensive, risque de nous enfermer sur l’étude des situations particulières sans comprendre le processus global. Ces deux démarches sont donc complémentaires. Dans ce sens, nous avons interviewé des dirigeants des diverses organisations des entreprises récupérées, des avocats et enfin des travailleurs de six entreprises récupérées. Dans trois d’entre elles, nous avons réalisé une enquête de terrain. Ces entreprises récupérées sont Brukman, Zanón et la Clinique Junín.
Doctorat en sciences sociales, Orientation sociologie
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished
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Hoffman, Jacobus Retief. "Older persons and intergenerational relationships in contemporary South Africa : configurations and reconfigurations in the context of poverty and HIV/AIDS." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.669925.
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Carpenter, Joshua David. "Democracy and the disengaged : a multi-dimensional study of voter mobilization in Alabama." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a2c1f070-db85-465c-b3e5-f55ddbe01438.
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This thesis investigates if and how poor, mostly minority citizens can be mobilized by a campaign whose principal policy objective would materially enhance their lives by including them in a major public program. The question is put to the test through a multi-dimensional study of voter mobilization in Alabama during the 2014 election for Governor. At stake in the election was whether Alabama would expand Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act in Alabama, an issue emblematic of "submergedness" (Mettler, 2011). In order to understand the extent to which the policy was submerged - measured by knowledge and awareness of the policy, along with its key provisions - I distributed a survey to 868 Alabamians weeks before the election. The survey used the experimental design of conjoint analysis to test which aspects of the policy were most persuasive among the target population. Additionally, I performed a randomized field experiment across the four major metropolitan areas of Alabama, micro-targeting 6,021 registered voters living in the "Coverage Gap," citizens who could gain health insurance if Medicaid were expanded. The campaign yielded negligible effects on voter turnout among subjects in the Coverage Gap, even though the interventions shifted voter knowledge, 'surfacing' the policy. In addition to the survey and field experiments, this research benefits from qualitative insights gathered in 22 semi-structured interviews conducted among poor Alabamians, many of whom were uninsured. From these interviews, it became clear that the political disengagement of the poor is deeply entrenched, prohibitive of policy-based mobilization. Disengagement is driven by a complex mix of barriers to registration and perceptions of political inefficacy based on interpretations of extant policy designs. These results have important implications for our understanding of the limitations of policy-based mobilization, suggesting that more attention must be paid to how current policies shape predispositions for mobilization.
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Koch, Insa Lee. "Personalising the state : law, social welfare and politics on an English council estate." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4335c11c-c0a5-44dc-bd15-5bbbfe2fee6c.
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This dissertation offers a study of everyday relations between residents and the state on a post-industrial council estate in England. Drawing upon historical and ethnographic data, it analyses how, often under conditions of sustained exclusion, residents rely upon the state in their daily struggles for security and survival. My central ethnographic finding is that residents personalise the state alongside informal networks of support and care into a local sociality of reciprocity. This finding can be broken into three interconnected points. First, I argue that the reciprocal contract between citizens and the state emerged in the post-war years when the residents on the newly built estates negotiated their dependence upon the state by integrating it into their on-going social relations. A climate of relative material affluence, selective housing policies, and a paternalistic regime of housing management all created conditions which were conducive for this temporary union between residents and the state. Second, however, I argue that with the decline of industry and shifts towards neoliberal policies, residents increasingly struggle to hold the state accountable to its reciprocal obligations towards local people. This becomes manifest today both in the material neglect of council estates as well as in state officials' reluctance to become implicated in social relations with and between residents. Third, I argue that this failure on the part of the state to attend to residents' demands often has onerous effects on people's lives. It not only exacerbates residents' exposure to insecurity and threat, but is also experienced as a moral affront which generates larger narratives of abandonment and betrayal. Theoretically, this dissertation critically discusses and challenges contrasting portrayals of the state, and of state-citizen relations, in two bodies of literature. On the one hand, in much of the sociological and anthropological literature on working class communities, authors have adopted a community-centred approach which has depicted working class communities as self-contained entities against which the state emerges as a distant or hostile entity. I argue that such a portrayal is premised upon a romanticised view of working class communities which neglects the intimate presence of the state in everyday life. On the other hand, the theoretical literature on the British state has adopted a state-centred perspective which has seen the state as a renewed source of order and authority in disintegrating communities today. My suggestion is that this portrayal rests upon a pathologising view of social decline which fails to account for the persistence of informal social relations and the challenges that these pose to the state's authority from below. Finally, moving beyond the community-centred and state-centred perspectives, I argue for the need to adopt a middle ground which combines an understanding of the nature and workings of informal relations with an acknowledgement of the ubiquity of the state. Such an approach allows us to recognise that, far from being a hostile entity or, alternatively, an uncontested source of order, the state occupies shifting positions within an overarching sociality of reciprocity and its associated demands for alliances and divisions. I refer to such an approach as the personalisation of the state.
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Rhee, Young Ju. "From ethnically-based to multiple belongings : South Korean citizenship legislative reforms, 1997-2007." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.711704.
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