This thesis investigates the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and other intermediate goods in multi-sector growth models that aim to account for recent growth experiences of the United Kingdom and the United States. Chapter 2 examines how ICT drive growth in an economy with three sectors: ICT-producing, ICT-using and non-ICT-using. The benefits from ICT come from the falling prices of the ICT-using sector good, which is used for the production of intermediates. Their falling prices provide incentives for investment in sectors that use them as intermediate inputs, so the non-ICT-using sector experiences sustained growth driven by capital accumulation. Sectorial rates of growth differ, but the aggregate economy is on a constant growth path with constant labour shares across sectors. The model's predictions are consistent with evidence for the United States. Chapter 3 is an empirical study of the patterns of intermediates use in the United States and the United Kingdom. It shows that in both countries, since 1970s there is substitution of the goods-intermediates with the services ones in the gross output of the average industry. The increasing relative prices of the services-intermediates and the complementarity between intermediates types in the production is an important driver of this trend. The estimated elasticity of substitution is used to get measures of the latent technological and/ or policy factors that affect industries' choice of intermediates. Chapter 4 analyzes the impact of equity market information imperfections on R&D driven growth. The features of its production make R&D largely dependent on equity, which can be persistently mispriced, when the rational investors' beliefs are affected by both private and public information. Optimism in equity market raises R&D investment, resulting in technology improvement and thereby higher output, wages and consumption. Despite the capital losses, the mechanism can generate permanent gains in consumption.

This research aims to evaluate the attempts of Anglo-Saxon feminists to elaborate a new practice for the natural sciences. It focuses on biology, a discipline which extends beyond the realm of social science, and on which basis feminist critics have undertaken to reform the norms of scientific practice and to recast scientific epistemology. The central question of this research is: Is a feminist science of biology possible, both epistemologically and as a social practice. If so, what would it be like; and under what kind of practical conditions. The arguments of this thesis are developed in three steps. The first part consists of an analytical assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the feminist critiques and suggestions to reform the scientific norms of biological research, including what many of them see as 'context-bound scientific canons' such as 'objectivity'. These criticisms thus range from theory choice to the very epistemological foundations of biology which are all conceived of as contributing to the development of spurious explanations of women's biology and behaviours. The second part investigates the contribution of sociologists of knowledge and philosophers, focusing more specifically on Habermas, Hesse, and Gellner. It aims at shedding light on the particularities of both the ontologies and social norms and values that distinguish the epistemologies of the social and natural sciences. It is believed that these aspects need to be discussed more fully in order to elicit the models of explanations used in biology and the criteria of validation that feminists could not dispense with in their projects of implementing the practice and knowledge produced by feminist biologists. The third part of the thesis analyses interviews of mainstream biologists and two case studies of practising feminist biologists. First, it shows the points of convergence and rupture between the norms of practice in conventional biology and in feminist biology. Secondly, it highlights the originality of the actual contribution that feminists have made in the domain of biology both sociologically and scientifically (i.e. epistemologically, methodologically, conceptually). Thirdly, it discerns the gaps and continuity between feminist theory and feminist practice of science. It also suggests, however, that the resistance of mainstream biologists to the feminist critiques and concrete projects of biology in the past decade remain partly political (i.e. hostility to feminism) and normative (i.e. according to institutionally acceptable scientific rules). For, while the idea of a feminist biology derives fruitfully some original conceptual tools and designs of enquiry from the social sciences (especially in the areas human biology and clinically-oriented research), one can as yet recognize that the epistemological conditions and methodological norms of production biological knowledge nevertheless constitute the shared framework of both feminist and mainstream researchers in most areas of biology. Hence, the shift of recent feminist critics of science (such as Harding and Longino), from an epistemologically-oriented critique of scientific knowledge to a critique in terms of theory building and ideological assumptions, may appear as more fruitful in the institutional legitimation and advent of concrete projects of feminist biology.

The thesis investigates digital divides in Greece, looking specifically at parameters of Internet adoption. It aims to reach beyond access and usage issues, placing Internet adoption within a socio-cultural and decision-making framework. Theoretically, the thesis is structured around three perspectives. First, it draws upon Alfred Schutz's 'everyday life-world' and argues that digital divides should be explored by scrutinising the interactions of individual and systemic agent(s) in an everyday life framework and as part of a continuum of evolution in time. To understand, in particular, Greece's delay in adopting the Internet, the thesis draws on Martin Bauer's work on resistance to technology and argues in support of research to examine the driving forces behind techno-phobia and other forms of resistance. To complement these perspectives on socio-cultural forces, the importance of structural factors is recognised by drawing on the sociology of policy and regulation and pointing out the need to look at the role of society's culture in policy and regulation practices. It thus draws on historical accounts of Greece, introducing cultural indicators that are critical for disentangling policy and regulation in the Greek information society. Empirically, the thesis reveals that in Greece decision-makers appropriate society's culture to serve their own professional interests, without responding to society's needs for accountability and visibility, and that patronage networks, bureaucracy and traditionalism have provided the space for public authorities to direct a weak civil society. Meanwhile, ordinary people dismiss technologies and are critical of policy and regulation which put established everyday life cultures at risk, but also appropriate decision-making mechanisms which serve their individual interests. With profound interdependencies between decision-making and civil society in Greece, policy and regulation have not only failed to drive societal change but have themselves been influenced by the societal traits of traditionalism and techno-phobia that deter Internet adoption. These findings also raise implications for the European information society. Methodologically, mixed and multiple data sources are employed, enabling a comparison and cross-validation from a complementarity and triangulation perspective of data collected on the complex issue of digital divides. The advantages of multiple source data over single methodological approaches are thus demonstrated, offering a potential contribution to other research in the field.

The concept of the 'information society' has been systematically deployed to denote a new techno-socio-economic paradigm with information and communication technologies (ICTs) at the centre, which entails significant economic and social transformations and bears implications for governance and potential for development and quality of life. Departing from the deterministic view of information society as a set of uniform societal arrangements, the thesis examines its national variations, as they emerge from the interaction between ICTs and relevant policies with pre-existing social, political and economic realities. Drawing on a conceptual framework based on political economy and historical sociology, it proposes that the unfolding of any national information society is a contested process feeding on the historically formed relationship between the state and the national economy and society. This relationship is expected to inflect international policies and processes in quite idiosyncratic ways, leading to differentiated national information society trajectories, while the state is instrumental in articulating international policy directions with national societal arrangements. Identifying an empirical gap in the examination and analysis in semi-peripheral and middle-income countries, the thesis seeks to address evolving characteristics and dimensions of the 'Greek case' of information society, stressing the dialectic between European policy and the national socio-cultural, political and economic idiosyncrasies, the role of the Greek state, as well as the weaknesses encountered in the process. The emphasis is on the period 1998-2008, which includes the first comprehensive strategy and provides the opportunity to analyse preliminary results of the policies adopted. The empirical material includes relevant policy documents, quantitative indicators, personal observations, as well as a set of elite interviews with policymakers, ICT industry representatives and other actors involved in information society policies and processes.

Firms located in industrial clusters benefit from economies of agglomeration and collaboration, which help them overcome their resource constraints and acquire new technological capabilities. Developing countries promote industrial clusters expecting them to foster collaborations that will benefit local enterprises. This research analyses the emergence and impact of a variety of productive collaborations that domestic producers established in the Costa Rican Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) cluster with other local firms, investors, universities, multinationals' subsidiaries and actors located outside of the cluster. The findings show that some collaborations promote the capabilities of local firms, while others bring them into technological and transactional dependence. To explain how developmental and non-developmental collaborations emerge, this work combines the principles of new institutional economics with theories of the social embeddedness of economic action. When deciding whether to collaborate and how to do so, actors evaluate the information available to them and respond to the incentives generated by the institutions that regulate their behaviour. Actors use their social ties to access filtered information, and to circulate and enforce social incentives. Thus, actors operating under the same institutional framework who have different social ties may opt for different, even opposite, collaborative outcomes. In the Costa Rican ICT cluster the two key obstacles for the formation of developmental collaborations are lack of institutional incentives and information failure, which hampers the coordination of actors' economic actions. Social ties that bridge divided communities, such as MNCs' managers and local entrepreneurs, compensate for information failure, introducing incentives to establish developmental collaborations. Social ties that link actors within closed communities hamper the formation of developmental collaborations, circulating redundant information and diffusing anti- collaborative behavioural norms. The study shows that actors' embeddedness in social networks is a significant factor in understanding the emergence of productive collaborations, which affect the development of local firms.

No description available.

This thesis is a contribution to the growing body of work which brings geographical scrutiny to bear on the history of science, by foregrounding the close relationship that exists between knowledge, space and place. It has as its focus, a reassessment of the traditional historiographical approach to science in Dublin which has tended to present a bifurcated Catholic/Protestant model in its discourse on the late nineteenth-century relationship between science and Irish culture. Instead, this project applies a methodology based on geographical and biographical principles to underscore the critical role of space and place in the reception, circulation and mobilisation of scientific ideas in the city. It builds on the geographical premise that scientific knowledge bears the imprint of its location and that place matters in the way scientific claims come to be sanctioned. The lives of eight Dublin scholars, George Fitzgerald (1851-1901), William Barrett (1845-1925), Alexander Macalister (1844-1919), David Moore (1808-1879), Alfred Haddon (1855-1940), Daniel Cunningham (1850-1909), George Sigerson (1836-1925) and Eoin MacNeill (1867-1945) are all called upon here to explore the interplay of lifespace, cityspace and science between 1870 and 1910. The case studies congregate around fundamental scientific debates on the origin of the universe, life, humankind and language. Each spatial snapshot explores the negotiation of a particular debate through the lives of two co-religionists in the group. By attending to the specifics of location and being sensitive to the ways in which local culture, politics and personal conditions shaped their encounters, the case studies demonstrate that the myriad 'spaces of a life' trumped religious bracketing when it came to late Victorian polemics on 'origins'. In sum, the thesis underscores the crucial role these Dublin spaces played, in moulding ether theories, in shaping ideas of biological form, in directing anthropological debate, and in advancing linguistic philosophies at the tum-of-the-century.

This thesis delves onto the relations between Britain and Chile during the shifting and dynamic years of the Spanish American independence (1806-1831). I explore how Britons and Chileans perceived each other from the perspective of cultural history, considering the consequences of these ' cultural encounters' for the subsequent nation- state building process. It is state,d that from 1806 to 1831 both British and Chilean ' state and non-state ' actors interacted across several different 'contact zones', and thereby configured this relationship in multiple ways. These interactions reveal that although the extensive presence of ' non-state ' actors was a manifestation of the 'expansion' of British interests to Chile, they were not necessarily an expression of any British imperial policy. In a first moment (1806- 1808), interactions were held in an inter-state level and were expressed in both plans to invade Chile and to defend it. From 1808 to the 1817 interactions were mainly held between ' non-state ' actors such as missionaries, educators, seamen and traders as a result of Britain's neutrality policy which restrained state actors to interfere in the Spanish American independence struggles. From 1817 to 1831' both state and non-state actors overlapped as a result of both the inauguration of negotiations for British recognition of the independence and the opening of trade, which encouraged thousands of traders to settle in Chile. During the Independence era there were multiple attitudes, perceptions, representations and discourses by Chileans on the role played by Britain in the world, which changed depending on the circumstances. Likewise, for Britons, Chile was represented in multiple ways, being the most predominant the image of Chile as a pathway to other markets and destinations. All these had repercussions in the early nation-building process.

This thesis examines the organisational principles, repertoires of contention, practices, and the political culture of the Centro Sociale Occupato Rivolta as an expression of the Disobedient movement. The study, which is based on 42 interviews, participant observation and original documents, discusses the main theories on social movements which combine different theoretical perspectives, namely resource mobilisation, new social movements and the theory of political opportunity structure. Providing a definition of CSO as a convenient name to indicate a number of profoundly heterogeneous experiences that rely on illegal occupations of empty buildings and the principle of self-management, the study interprets the Rivolta as a proactive subject and political entrepreneur. These two concepts refer to the attempt of the Rivolta to overcome their identity as a new-left organisation, its ability of mobilising symbolic and material resources and to its continuous change and development. The case of the Rivolta shows that a movement actor has to continually 'destroy' old conditions and create new ones in order to survive and expand. The combination of different theoretical approaches and the analysis of the Rivolta has allowed the research to highlight some specific issues. Firstly, this movement area has overcome the dichotomy between conflict for recognition and for socio-economic resource distribution. While the Rivolta is an actor that mobilises resources, it also aims to promote its autonomous cultural identity and to extend social and political rights in society. Secondly, the relations between local and national institutions and the Disobedient movement area, far from being linear, either in terms of conflict or dialogue, are changeable and discontinuous. The study shows that the extra-institutional advocacy of this movement network still persists and has been combined with institutional participation. Finally, the thesis shows that the movement area to which the Rivolta belongs, in exploiting the opportunities offered by the general context, has set its struggles, claims and protests both at the local and the global dimension, marginalising national issues and targets.

The history of women's peace campaigning in Britain has been described in terms of two phases or waves of mass activism. The first arose from the radical suffrage and labour movements during the First World War and continued until the mid-193Os. The second was a shorter phase which emerged in response to the marked deterioration of East-West relations and the escalation of the nuclear arms race at the beginning of the 1980s. The period between these two waves is seen as a relatively low point in women's peace activism. General histories of peace campaigning in Britain during these decades have tended to concentrate on the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the anti- Vietnam War movement: both of which involved women, but the neither of which were women-led. There was, however, an identifiable and vital women's peace movement in Britain, rooted mostly in the political left, during the quarter-century after the Second World War. Although it did not constitute a mass movement, women's activism during this period was organised, purposeful and influential. This dissertation examines this neglected phase of women's peace campaigning between 1945 and 1970.