No description available.

This thesis takes up the question, how can agency for people living in informal settlements be strengthened? To address this question, I carried out systemic action research with two NGO partners and residents from seven informal settlements in Raipur, India. This involved organizing ‘slum improvement committees' (SICs) in each of the seven settlements and carrying out joint actions in support of housing rights and implementation of the Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) housing policy. The data on which my analysis is based includes over one hundred conversations between myself and the project participants (both from the settlements as well as the partner NGOs), records of two public events, a social network survey of 46 people living in the participating settlements, a separate set of 9 participatory social network maps (NetMaps), and over two hundred pages of my own field notes based on my observations and participation in the research activities. My thesis makes an original contribution to the study of community agency by analysing it through the lens of complex systems theories and utilising the tools of social network analysis. My thesis also makes an original contribution to research methodology by making the technical analysis participatory, accessible, and useful for the participants. This allowed me to combine analysis of relational structures (social networks) with relational dynamics to show how significant social change happened over the course of the project. My thesis suggests that agency can be strengthened through an organizing practice that brings NGOs, academic researchers, and residents of informal settlements together to build relational power, take collective action, and create social change.

The United States presently focuses much of its energy on the prevention of terrorism through particular counterterrorism policies and strategies. Today, deterrence is the primary theoretical basis for counterterrorism policies. If the United States invests so heavily in deterrence as a counterterrorism strategy, is it successful? If not, what are its theoretical flaws? Who is best served by efforts to prevent terrorism through a deterrent project? This thesis will argue that a more appropriate understanding of terrorism is necessary. In order to achieve a more holistic conception of the terrorism problem, efforts should be made politically and theoretically to incorporate international relationships that include politics, economics and culture. Such an approach to understanding terrorism as a collective action that is related to various social structures is not facilitated within the 4 present theoretical application of deterrence to counterterrorism. Therefore, this thesis is a political and economic approach to understanding the relationship between theories of terrorism and strategies of counterterrorism. If deterrence is not the most appropriate way of addressing terrorism, then the first step to creating alternative strategies is to analyze the deterrence policies currently in place. Therefore, this thesis is a stepping stone to moving past present conceptions of how to address terrorism; in order to critique U.S. counterterrorism strategy and understand why deterrence is employed as a strategy so that we can create more suitable counterterrorism strategies.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Psychology, Committee on Human Development, June 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Queensland, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

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This thesis in a broad sense deals with the relationship between social change and violence. It is an exploratory investigation and examines in detail the urban riots of the sixties and the social, economic, political and psychological conditions that might have contributed to ghetto riots.Special attention has been given to the April 1968 riot in Chicago, and organized efforts to effect change in that city. For this purpose the activities of the Chicago Committee on Urban Opportunity (CCUO) from 1964 to 1969 have been analyzed to determine whether or not the he riots of the sixties affected them.These riots, the Chicago riot in particular, have been analyzed in terms of the conflict theory of society developed by Dahrendorf.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington. / Bibliography: l. [249]-264.

Thesis (M.Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 50-53). Also available in electronic version.