Environmental histories are multi-dimensional accounts of human interaction with the environment over time. They observe how and when the environment changes (material environmental histories), and the effects of human activities upon the environment (political environmental histories). Environmental histories also consider the thoughts and feelings that humans have had towards the environment (cultural/ intellectual environmental histories). Using the methodological framework of environmental history this research, located in sub-tropical northern Belize, brings together palaeoecological records (pollen and charcoal) with archival documentary sources. This has created an interdisciplinary account which considers how the vegetation of northern Belize has changed over the last 3,500 years and, in particular, how forest resources have been used during the British Colonial period (c. AD 1800 – 1950). The palaeoecological records are derived from lake sediment cores extracted from the New River Lagoon, adjacent to the archaeological site of Lamanai. For over 3,000 years Lamanai was a Maya settlement, and then, more recently, the site of two 16th century Spanish churches and a 19th century British sugar mill. The British archival records emanate from a wide variety of sources including: 19th century import and export records, 19th century missionary letters and 19th and 20th century meteorological records and newspaper articles. The integration of these two types of record has established a temporal range of 1500 BC to the present. The palaeoecological proxies provide a low resolution record over a period of 3,500 years (c. 1500 BC – AD 2010) whereas the archival record provides annual resolution over a period of approximately 150 years (c. AD 1800 – 1950). This research also uses documentary sources to reconstruct temperature and precipitation for Belize City during the period 1865 – 2010, which is the first of its kind from Belize, and the oldest continuous record from Central America. It also provides the meteorological context for further exploration into British colonial interaction with ‘tropical’ climates. Perhaps because of its status as Britain’s only Central American colonial outpost, Belize has remained on the periphery of research concerning European interactions with tropical climates. This environmental history draws together a new account of health, place and space in the 19th century colonial tropics, drawing out how different understandings of the aetiologies and transmission of disease developed, in particular yellow fever. These different research strands are brought together to create an account that considers material, political and cultural aspects of environmental history. This has enabled the identification of eight phases of human interaction with the landscape at Lamanai, which are broadly indicative of general trends across northern Belize. These include the establishment of Maya field-based agriculture c. 1600 BC and a later phase of substantial Maya construction and site development c. 170 BC – AD 150. A period of active Maya management of forest, field, savanna and palm resources is also observed c. AD 500 – 1000. Polarised imaginings of the Maya as both destroyers and protectors of the tropical forest are challenged. Spanish interaction with the landscape is evident during c. AD 1500 – 1700 and this is followed by a period of substantial British colonial exploitation of timber resources, with logwood extracted c. AD 1660 – 1910 and mahogany extracted c. AD 1750 – 1945. These periods of extraction were only identifiable in the pollen record by combing the chronology from the documentary record with observed changes in the vegetation record and this demonstrates how these two contrasting methodologies can be usefully integrated. This environmental history rejects the binary opposition of benign, passive Maya landscapes and the violent, devastated European colonial landscape (Denevan, 1992). Analysis of the pollen and documentary records reveal that biodiversity is at the highest levels post AD 1950, which suggests that the forest can regrow even after multiple, diverse and prolonged periods of anthropogenic use in a matter of decades.

The aim of this dissertation is to analyse the use of narratives informed by the discourse of human security in the context of the Colombian conflict during the government of President Alvaro Uribe Velez (2002-2010). Its main contribution is to map the transformation of these narratives from the site of their formulation in the international institutions to the site of their appropriation into domestic settings; and then consider their role in the formation of the actors' strategies and the construction of the subjectivities of the individuals affected by the conflict dynamics. The research proceeds to this analysis through an investigation of the policies for the internally displaced and those relating to the rights of the victims informed by the framework of transitional justice. It shows that, with a combination of narratives of empowerment and reconciliation, they fulfill complementary roles in the construction of the subjectivities of individuals affected by the conflict in Colombia. The dissertation also concludes that the flexibility of the human security discourse allowed the Uribe government to reinforce its position.

The effects of Gated Communities (GCs) were analysed. According to the literature, these urban artefacts are negative for society. They are blamed to provoking social segregation, social exclusion and undermining democracy. In a Latin American context the consequences could be worse. Latin America has the highest level of social inequality in the world and the rapid growth of GCs is making this inequality more visible. This study implemented the concept of Social Capital, in order to understand the urban problems in this urban geography. The study is based in Machala, a mid-sized city in Ecuador. It was found that GCs’ residents lack of trust of outsiders, residents are more distant from disadvantage groups, social networks are being homogenised and there is a stigmatisation of life outside the community’s walls. This study seeks to create awareness on the type of urban growth in Machala by exploring the consequences of fragmentation, privatisation and segregation via GCs.

Argentina’s early twentieth century is commonly portrayed as a ‘golden age’ in which it became ‘one of the richest countries in the world’. Here, however, this optimistic vision is challenged by placing Argentina within a new metanarrative of global divergence during the long nineteenth century. A massive terms-of-trade boom – the extent of which has not previously been appreciated – had profoundly uneven impacts across the periphery. Where land was abundant, frontiers could expand, leading to dramatic extensive (that is, aggregate) growth. An expanding frontier then had a safety-valve effect on labour markets, so capitalists responded to high wages by mechanising production, which raised labour productivity and, consequently, per capita incomes. In the land-scarce periphery, by contrast, deindustrialisation led to increasing quantities of labour receiving diminishing returns by being applied to limited land resources. Similarly, Argentina’s own century-long terms-of-trade boom allowed the Littoral to prosper but made the more densely populated interior stagnate. The presence of the poor interior then prevented the country from developing the kind of white-egalitarian democracy that had allowed the prosperous European offshoots to make the transition to rapid intensive (that is, per capita) growth. Most importantly, Argentina’s political backwardness ensured that landownership remained concentrated, which muted the safety-valve effect of the expanding frontier, so capitalists did not make the same investments in laboursaving technologies. The new metanarrative of global divergence thus leads to a far more pessimistic revision of Argentina at the beginning of the twentieth century – a revision that is verified through a comparative assessment of its living standards that shows them to have been considerably below the levels of Northern Europe and the European offshoots. Argentina’s ‘golden age’ is therefore a myth.

Bolivia and Guatemala experienced a process of education reform in late 90's. Even though both countries had great international support to eliminate inequalities, especially among indigenous peoples, the domestic political contexts determined to what extent such changes were possible to make. In Bolivia the process started in 1994 with the signing of the Reform Law of Education, and in Guatemala in 1996 with the signing of the Peace Agreements. After more than two decades Bolivia and Guatemala present very different outcomes derived from their respective education reforms. This study is a comparison of them, an attempt to unveil the reasons why Bolivia has moved forward in terms of diversity, indigenous languages, and inclusion while Guatemala has apparently nullified the education reform process and remains in authoritarianism. / text

Unlike the Imperial and post-1930's periods in Brazilian history, the first Republic (1889-1930) for a long time attracted little attention. In recent years however there have been attempts to reappraise the way in which the political, economic and social system of the first Republic functioned. This thesis contributes to the study by looking at the twelve presidential elections between 1889 and 1930.

In Latin America, the regimes of Fidel Castro and Alfredo Stroessner are indiscriminately posited as representative cases reflecting similarities and differences of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. This work tests the more general typology by studying the contrasting institutions, processes, and styles of the Castro and Stroessner autocracies, habitually labeled totalitarian and authoritarian, respectively. Totalitarianism emerged as an analytic concept as social scientists attempted to understand characteristics of the Hitler and Stalin regimes distinctive from other forms of dictatorship. While authoritarian regimes are generally based on history and tradition, leaving intact existing arrangements regarding wealth, status, church, family, and traditional social behavior, totalitarian regimes aim to revolutionize and politicize society, culture, and personality. They claim jurisdiction over the whole life of the citizenry and obliterate the boundaries between public and private. Despite the corpus applicable to totalitarianism, authoritarianism, and Latin America, few studies exist melding all three topics in a comparative context. Paraguay has long remained outside the mainstream of serious study by political scientists, yet Stroessner's 34-year dictatorship was one of the world's most durable. This research contributes to a better understanding of a nation and regime begging scholarly attention. Stroessner's downfall leaves Castro's Cuba the Western Hemisphere's oldest non-democracy and provokes analysis revealing organizational resemblances common to both regimes. Divergences relate more fully to sui generis social forces, forms of government, and geopolitics. The work analyzes the differences and similarities between Cuba and Paraguay, linking them to the larger typologies by focusing on four distinguishing variables comprising the totalitarian syndrome: (1) the supreme leader; (2) the nature and ideology of the single, official party; (3) the forms and uses of political force in the state control apparatus; and (4) the scope and degree of societal mobilization and mass legitimacy engendered by the regime. The work concludes by considering the policy relevance and utility of these heuristic paradigms.

<p>This dissertation explores the history of industrial fisheries in the Humboldt Current marine ecosystem where workers, scientists, and entrepreneurs transformed Peru and Chile into two of the top five fishing nations after World War II. As fishmeal industrialists raided the oceans for proteins to nourish chickens, hogs, and farmed fish, the global "race for fish" was marked by the clash of humanitarian goals and business interests over whether the fish should be used to ameliorate malnutrition in the developing world or extracted and their nutrients exported as mass commodities, at greater profit, as a building block for the food chain in the global North. The epicenter of the fishmeal industry in the 1960s was the port city of Chimbote, Peru, where its cultural, social, and ecological impacts were wrenching. After overfishing and a catastrophic El Niño changed the course of Peruvian fisheries in 1972, Chile came to dominate world markets by the early 1980s due to shifting marine ecologies along its coast that shaped the trajectory of the ports of Iquique and Talcahuano. As Peruvian anchoveta stocks recovered in the 1990s, new environmentalist voices--from local residents to international scientists--emerged to contest unsustainable fisheries practices. This study demonstrates how global, transnational, and translocal connections shaped Humboldt Current fisheries as people struggled to understand the complex correlation between fish populations, extractive activity, and oceanic oscillations within a changing geopolitical context.</p> / Dissertation

High inflation economies, especially the Latin American cases like Argentina and Brazil, have ultimately been successful in stabilising their prices using the exchange rate as a nominal anchor. Contrary to conventional wisdom inflation in these cases has not been reduced at the cost of temporary recessions, instead, they have shown positive output effects. Various theoretical explanations of such boom-cycles are discussed and a model generating such an outcome is developed. Some empirical evidence is given by the Brazilian "Real Plan" of 1994. Nevertheless, the medium and long-term effects of such programmes can result in recessions and a resumption of high inflation, although the cases show that such "postponed stabilisation costs" can be overcome by adequate and flexible supply-side policies accompanying the stabilisation programme. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

糧食安全援助與非營利組織之研究 / The International Organizations the same as the non-profit organizations are aware of how much this issue matter around the world and the government from the different more vulnerable countries represent in many cases, the principal problem that difficulties the work of the non-profit sector. There is a clear need to build a new system strategy for each bloc according to their characteristics in order to apply the correct plan for ensuring the food access for all the people as equals, but there is no doubt that the income inequality is a social issue that affects every country in the world and that also bring consequences for the food security of the people in countries such as Haiti. This topic was selected for its importance worldwide, in order to analyze the type of work of the non-profit organizations in the food security sector as aid channels in Latin American and the Caribbean regions, and how their partnership with government agencies and international organizations is indispensable for the complementation of the work. And the research finding of the two cases study is about the capacity of sustainability that the farmers of the countries can reach through the aid for food security provided by the non-profit organizations, and on the other hand, the dependency that the aid provided can cause in the donors (in the case of Haiti). The potential that both regions have to improve the food security and develop the agricultural sector, but also explaining the case of the most poor countries in each region (Nicaragua and Haiti), both cases study serve to compare the different activities of the NPO and how their work affect the sustainability and development of the beneficiaries in the field of food security.