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Today, the credibility of the international development community is increasingly being called into question. At the root of the problem are the extremely unequal nature of recent growth, the end of the Cold War, economic recession in the North, and the lacklustre record of foreign aid in reaching those left behind. By the 1990s, the notion of Sustainable Human Development (SHD) or what is sometimes called People-Centred Development (PCD) was being hailed as a possible framework for building a newly-invigorated system of international development cooperation based on genuine North-South partnership, holistic, equitable, participatory, empowering and sustainable development. This thesis explores the implementability and transformational potential of the SHD/PCD paradigm by analyzing how a multilateral development agency (UNDP) and an international NGO (Action Aid) put it into practice both globally and in Uganda. Its main argument is that despite both agencies' contributions to service-delivery and training, and their genuine efforts to reorient their work towards SHD/PCD approaches, in the final analysis neither UNDP or Action Aid realize the more transformative goals of the SHD/PCD agenda or seriously challenge the status quo. This is partly due to the excessively abstract, unfinished, ideologically confused and contradictory nature of the SHD/PCD paradigm itself, (i.e., the Baroque Science Phenomenon). However UNDP and Action Aid, both of which adopted SHD/PCD to enhance their profiles, must assume much of the responsibility blame for subordinating core SHD/PCD goals to their own organizational interests (i.e., the River Pollution Phenomenon) . The thesis also demonstrates how both agencies undermine their effectiveness by making a series of fallacious assumptions about both poor communities' and their own catalytic potential in an effort to reconcile the gap between their agencies' SHD/PCD aspirations and the real-life constraints facing their goals.

Today the numbers of single people in Britain are mushrooming.  It is predicted that by 2020 they will form 40% of the total population.  This thesis seeks to discover why this is happening and to learn from the personal stories of single people to see how the Church may better minister to this vital section of society. After a brief historical survey of Irish monasticism and the impact of the Reformation on the nuclear industrial family, the thesis discusses the impact of the Victorian author and of the Hollywood film industry on traditional notions of romance and marriage.  These are contrasted sharply with prevailing contemporary post-modern views where relationships are often portrayed as temporal and vacuous. The thesis then enters the arena of real world research, exploring the issues of singleness with fifteen Christians - men and women of various ages, most of whom are single, although a number are (or were) married.  The primary focus of the interviewer is “What is it like being a single person in the Church today?”  The answers are wide-ranging and fascinating, touching on a number of important contemporary topics, such as loneliness, internet dating and sexuality.  Of particular note is the research suggesting that many church-going single people do not feel supported or understood by their faith communities.  In fact some find church to be one of the most isolating places of all. The author carefully weights up the evidence (including the biblical materials) and in the final chapter offers a strategic model for the contemporary Church.  Where there is a humble community which values friendship and encourages people to discover their own gifts to serve God, then <i>all</i> of God’s people - and not merely single people - are most likely to flourish.

This investigation has examined the demographic and social psychological variables of voluntary association membership, income, self-perceived health, marital status, level of education, and their relationship on' age and happiness. The data were obtained from an interview study based on a probability sample-survey of the adult population of the United States, which was conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). Cross-tabulations were used as the mode of analysis.The study looked at the relationship between independent variable of age and the dependent variable of happiness. In addition, the variables of voluntary association membership, income, self-perceived health, marital status, level of education, and sex were used as controls to ascertain what affect, if any, they might have upon the relationship between age and happiness. Results from the study indicate that happiness varies by age and is also affected by the control variables. The findings also concur with previous research in showing the importance of self-perceived health and level of income as predictors of life satisfaction among the aged.

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

This thesis examined predictors of mood disturbance by use of the Profile of Mood States (POMS) in older and younger subjects using a multiple regression procedure. Major variables used were home security, community security, health, marital status, age, income, perceived mobility, desire for increased mobility, and total excursion destinations. Variables entering in the equation for each group differed significantly. For the older group, home security and income were significant variables. For the younger group only desire for increased mobility predicted mood disturbance. The expected relationship with mobility was not significant for older individuals. These results indicate a need to re-evaluate the determinants of mood disturbance in the young and old and a need to review the emphasis on mobility for the old by younger policymakers.

Tracking multiple articulated objects (such as a human body) and handling occlusion between them is a challenging problem in automated video analysis. This work proposes a new approach for accurately and steadily visual tracking people, which should function even if the system encounters occlusion in video sequences. In this approach, targets are represented with a Gaussian mixture, which are adapted to regions of the target automatically using an EM-model algorithm. Field speeds are defined for changed pixels in each frame based on the probability of their belonging to a particular person's blobs. Pixels are matched to the models using a fast numerical level set method. Since each target is tracked with its blob's information, the system is capable of handling partial or full occlusion during tracking. Experimental results on a number of challenging sequences that were collected in non-experimental environments demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.

This is an ethnographic study of the Chewong, a small group of aboriginal people who live in the tropical rain forest of peninsular Malaysia. They are shifting cultivators, hunters and gatherers. After an introductory chapter in which language, history, ecology, economy, demography, and kinship are briefly examined, the main body of the thesis is presented in three parts. In Part Two, "Relationships", I suggest that a lack of hierarchy on the political level is only one manifestation of a fundamental egalitarian value system permeating Chewong beliefs and practices. Not only are no humans imbued with a higher status than any other, but also the numerous superhuman beings who inhabit the Chewong universe are not regarded as superior to human beings, nor to one another. In Part Three, "Consciousness and Relativity", the discussion focuses upon Chewong conceptionsof what it means to be human. This includes an evaluation of their concepts of soul, its relationship to the body, and other aspects of the individual. These concepts are then contrasted with Chewong ideas about the rest of nature as well as the superhuman beings. The suggested conclusion is that although there is an envisaged unity of nature (including human beings) and supernature, consciousness is nevertheless species-bound. Part Four, "Rules and Classification" first examines the implications of the numerous rules which govern Chewong behaviour. These are seen to constitue their moral universe and to form a theory of causality. The issue of symbolic classification is then addressed. Taking those rules which refer to animals, an attempt is made to determine explicit or implicit principles which might account for the allocation of specific animals to specific rules. The data are also subjected to a Principal Components Analysis. No underlying principles were found. In view of this it is concluded that membership of a class is due only to contingent circumstances.

No description available.

No description available.