The thesis describes the geography of the woolen textile industry in Poland during certain periods of particular interest after 1870. The geography of the Industry is defined as the distribution of the varied types of mills of which the industry was composed, and the distribution of the employment and output. The industry in studied in the years between 1870 and 1914, in the 1930's, and in the period since the Second World War. Within this framework the thesis attempts to outline the distinctive patterns which developed in the distribution and form of the Polish industry during its growth in the environments of capitalism and socialism. The geography of the growing capitalist industry is studied in the period before 1914 and the pattern of development in the 1930's is also analysed, while the geography of the socialist industry in treated throughout the post-war years. The distribution and form of the industry is described at the beginning of two periods of growth after 1870 and 1945 in relation to the location and characteristics of the market for woollen textiles. The characteristic aims of capitalist and socialist management, which influenced the distribution and form of the industry, are observed. Attention is paid to the characteristic scales of operation and to the structure of production in the mills in each in important textile town and to the contrasts between the mills in the various towns at the conclusion of the period of growth in each environment. The changing distribution of the industry among its locations and the factors affecting the choices of new locations and the abandonment of others in the two environments are investigated during the periods before the First and after the Second World War.

Competition over the future development of natural resources, especially biodiversity and land, and valuable mineralised deposits beneath, lies at the root of a conflict within farming communities and with a transnational mining company in Ecuador. This qualitative study uses political ecology's theoretical framework to examine compelling development planning themes---land-use conflicts, competing rural development perspectives, local sovereignty over decision making, poverty, unequal power relations, human and environmental rights, biodiversity conservation, and natural resource extraction activities. From a discourse analysis approach, the research goals are to understand and theorise: the environmental and development claim-making process within a contested land-use and development intervention how claim-makers utilise knowledge to construct development and environmental discourses which in turn articulate their opposing claims either supporting a large-scale open cast copper mining-based economy or promoting biodiversity conservation together with ecologically-adapted alternative forms of local economic development to extractive industries how multiscalar discourse coalitions use their claims and counter claims in this dynamic struggle for power to determine which of two competing visions for the future economic development of the Intag valley will prevail how the socio-environmental process of claim-making affects the balance of power between empowered and disempowered claim-makers through the use of discursive claims and finally the impacts of the conflict and the claim-making process on the structure and agency dimension and on the moments of the social process dialectic in terms of material practices, institutions, social relations, beliefs, discourse, knowledge and power. The findings advance understanding of the dialectical social process of claim-making from all sides and levels of a multiscalar socio-environmental conflict arising from the tensions between alternative forms of local economic development which can inform development planning practice and theory and ultimately contribute to the avoidance, reduction, and resolution of resource based conflicts in fast-developing Andean economies and transition economies elsewhere.

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The thesis analyses the changing pattern of water utilication within the wear catchment over the historic period. First the evolution and present characteristics of the surface water system are examined. River discharge over the period May 1965 – September 1967 was measured by the erection of a gauging station at the Abbey weir. Durham, and rainfall records, kept over the same period were applied to the computed results. Secondly the use of these ater resources is considered, before 1830 water power was widespread and used as a prine mover in many aspects of a productive economy. Water supply was organised on a local and family basis, and although the drainage functions of atercoures were ubiquitous, the low density of population had little effect on the quality of river water. After 1830 water power declined and water supply began to be organised on a community basis, with abstraction from one plant on a local stream an the distribution extended until the unit of supply became a statutory aea and contained many communities. The drainage function of watercourses became more important with the development of urban communities, and the extension of shaft mining for coal and lead. Since 1945 water power has almost disappeared. Water supply is being though of in regional terms, and the role of the wear has been reduced. The drainage function of atercourses remains important, although effluents must now maintain a high degree of purity consequent on the increasing use of watercourses as an arenity. This has always been of some importance’s, with angling remembered since the days of the “Lambton Worn” and pleasure boasting since the late seventeenth century.

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