Studies on sex work in India have tended to portray female sex workers as either victims or empowered agents. Over the last two decades, binaries of free and forced regarding participation in sex work have been reinforced by development discourses and interventions on HIV/AIDS and human trafficking which target the sex work community in India. This choice/compulsion binary, in turn, has elicited another binary of violent/non-violent social relations, thereby exceptionalising the nature of violence within sex work. This thesis argues against this exceptionalisation by locating an analysis of women’s participation in sex work, and their experiences of power and violence, within a context of everyday social relations in Eastern India. It presents qualitative data generated from eight months of fieldwork across two prominent red-light areas in Kolkata, a shelter home for rescued female sex workers in its southern suburb, Narendrapur, and villages in the South 24 Parganas district in West Bengal. Analysis shows that the research subjects’ experiences of power and violence in social relations with members of the household, community, market and state (Kabeer, 1994) and experiences of deviance (Becker, 1963) in these relationships, shape pathways into, lives within and pathways out of sex work. It highlights the cyclical nature of gender-based violence and power inequalities across the lives (Ellsberg and Heise, 2005) of women formerly and currently in sex work. Struggles with power and violence prior to entering sex work continue in different forms within sex work and persist even after women leave, often leading to a return to sex work. These findings problematize static readings of female sex workers’ victimhood and agency. Instead, they present a contextually nuanced analysis of their dynamic experiences and negotiations, rooted within an understanding of wider regional,social and cultural norms on women’s sexuality, mobility and labour force participation.

This thesis offers an empirical study of environmental justice, focused on the social dynamics prompted by the recent ‘rush’ for African arable land. It consists of a comparative analysis of two agricultural investments in Northern Mozambique, one of the regions that have attracted more investors. It followed a qualitative methodological strategy, which involved rural appraisal activities, observation and semi-structured interviews. The conceptual framework combines the approach of environmental justice with contributions from the property rights literature. Following Axel Honneth, I adopt a recognition-based approach, as an underlying sphere that informs participatory processes and distributive outcomes. From this perspective, I analyse how these agricultural investments have come to be; how have they changed the local dynamics; and how different notions of legitimacy, consent and fairness have emerged over time. In doing so, I identify the material and immaterial resources that social actors mobilise, in order to sustain their ownership claims, or their role under the new ‘social order’. A salient issue emerging from the case studies is the importance of historical legacy in building consent and legitimacy for corporate land owners. In the first site, characterised by the continuous existence of a plantation, before and after independence, local populations are more willing to accept a new concession. This is contingent, though, on the respect of former boundaries, and on the recognition of their labour skills and experience. Conversely, in areas that have been explored by local peasants since independence, material compensation plays the key role. By offering a new angle of analysis, whilst taking account of the materiality and temporality of land concessions, this thesis aims to contribute new theoretical and empirical perspectives to the study of land deals in Africa. Furthermore, it offers a contribution to emergent trends of environmental justice research, as well as recognition theory.

The Uyuni salt flat (Salar de Uyuni) is located in the Bolivian high Andean plateau, is considered to be the largest salt flat on earth and a natural wonder. Concentrated in its brines, is the largest lithium deposit in the world, along with important reserves of potassium, magnesium and ulexite, collectively known as ‘evaporite resources’. Over the past 40 years, this landscape has been commodified and radically transformed in a continuous process of mining capitalist expansion. What is unfolding in the case of the Uyuni salt flat, however, is not just an economicallydriven process of capitalist expansion, but also a transformation of the landscape linked to the value and symbolic meanings attached to the salt flat in an ongoing process of the neoliberalisation of nature. This thesis seeks to examine how social relations in terms of the material, discursive and cultural dynamics of evaporite mining shape and are shaped by governance frameworks. Based on a qualitative exploration, the research has three main objectives: i) to examine how and under what conditions the Uyuni salt flat has been commodified over the past 40 years (both under a neoliberal and post-neoliberal regime); ii) to analyse how lithium has exacerbated the territorial disputes and resource conflicts at local, departmental and national levels; and iii) to evaluate how and why territory and territoriality emerge as key elements within the process of commodification. These elements illustrate that commodification is not only a profit-driven process of mining capitalist expansion; but also, and most importantly, an intrinsically political process in terms of the definition of territorial spaces, governance frameworks and the social struggles that emerge as a result. By highlighting the multiple dimensions embedded in transforming and commodifying nature, I present the case of the Uyuni salt flat as a hybrid landscape within which its peculiar social and natural features are essential to understanding the different frameworks of resource governance that have emerged over time.

Despite the growing body of literature focusing on men and masculinity/ies, there is limited material that adequately explores the everyday experiences and specificities of being and living as a man in diverse social and cultural contexts. Furthermore, inadequate consideration is given to the unique ways in which men redefine, renegotiate and reconstruct their masculinities and multiple identities over time, or the challenges/limitations that they may experience during this process. More importantly, there is a lack of critical attention given to men’s agentic roles in supporting a vision for gender equality and social change. Considering men’s lived realities, subjectivities, the ways in which they redefine and reconstruct multiple masculinities and social identities across time and diverse social and cultural environments, has significant implications for studying and working with men in international human development contexts. In this thesis, I consider these dimensions within the context of township living. Through daily interactions with men in Alexandra township in Johannesburg, South Africa, I explore their subjective interpretations of what it means to be a man in this context and the ways in which change, specifically political, social and economic change, is experienced through their daily lives, their sense of self and their social relationships. I demonstrate that as men reflect on change, they struggle to renegotiate the parameters of their masculinities within a patriarchal context that is steadfast in its expectations of traditional gendered norms, alongside an absence of alternative masculine blueprints for transforming masculinities. Through self-reflection, peer group support and for some, access to gender-transformative workshops, some men are actively engaging with the change agenda and are exploring their lives and their future aspirations, and reconsidering what it means to be a man in the context of Alexandra township.

This PhD thesis employs and further develops models from environmental, epidemiological and macroeconomic studies to construct an interdisciplinary ‘Disaster Footprint Model’ based on input-output techniques for assessing the cascading indirect economic loss resulting from both ‘rapid-onset’ and ‘persistent’ natural disasters that were happened in the UK or China at different points in time. Each natural disaster will undermine physical capital and inhabitants differently in the form of destructions to infrastructures, roads, buildings, death or injuries, which are normally termed as ‘direct impacts’ of a disaster. Unfortunately, the tragedy is not over. Direct impacts of a disaster will disrupt the economic activity when machineries are out of order and labourers cannot attend the work, which will further trigger the economic output of the affected industries or regions due to the shrinking capital and labour productivity. Indeed, the initial reduction in output level of the affected industry or region can spill over those unaffected industries and regions through industrial and regional interconnectedness in the sense that each industry/region sells its outputs to or purchases commodities from other industries/regions. As a result, indirect economic loss can constitute a considerable share in total economic loss of a natural disaster. The significant role of indirect economic loss has been well documented given that the industrial and regional interdependencies have become unprecedentedly tightened under globalization in the contemporary world. In this respect, input-output model is a good candidate to cope with the cascading indirect economic loss from a disaster due to its root in ‘a circular economy’. An input-output model was developed by Wassily Leontief based on the concept of ‘a circular economy’, suggesting that social production and reproduction activities enclose the use of high-efficiency resources and environmentally friendly. Specifically, the production of the labourers will be used in the process of nature cycle while the natural resources will be used in the perpetual cycle (Liu et al, 2016). Labourers simultaneously act as consumers and economic production will be partially consumed by consumers and partially by other industries. In this respect, an input-output model takes the form of matrix and records the inter-industrial transaction flows. For ‘rapid-onset’ disasters that arrive rapidly with few days or without warnings, despite that a number of hybrid input-output based models have been proposed, they have heavily relied on accurate estimation of physical capital damages without conscientiously considering the distinctive characteristics of these disasters where their models might become invalidated. For ‘persistent’ disasters that persist longer and whose effects will be gradually realized over time, their ‘invisible’ health impacts provoke challenges for existing disaster risk modelling and little attention has been attached to constrained labour productivity in a post-disaster economy. Meanwhile, existing assessment tools in health costs studies mainly stem from a patient’s standpoint and quantify the disease burden at a microeconomic level, thus uncovering the need for investigating the macroeconomic implications from these health impacts. Environmental, health and economic problems are intertwining with one another in an environment-health-economy nexus. Any single phenomenon is resulting from a complexity of multi-factors and thus, should be solved by integrating these studies instead of keeping them as separate entities. Inspired by this, Chapter 4 designs an interdisciplinary methodological framework that bridges environmental or meteorological studies, epidemiological studies and macroeconomic analysis. The framework allows several input-output based options to consider the distinctive feathers of a natural disasters where the traditional disaster modelling cannot function well, to understand and incorporate the health impacts through an angel of reducing labour availability and productive time, and to capture the cascading indirect economic loss triggered by industrial and regional interdependencies from a macroeconomic perspective. To verify the feasibility and applicability of the approach, Chapter 5, 6 and 7 select four case studies that include the economic assessments of a typical flood with special characteristics occurred in the UK; one on China’s air pollution in 2012; and two on China’s heat waves in Nanjing and Shanghai in 2013 and 2007, respectively. After applying the approach on four cases covering both ‘rapid-onset’ and ‘persistent’ natural disasters, the thesis illumes future research with several important conclusions that 1) Disaster risk studies should attach equal significance to loss in capital productivity and labour productivity; 2) Air pollution and heat waves should be considered analogously as a natural disaster that affects human capital more than physical capital and thus, they should be investigated more deeply in disaster risk studies; 3) Disaster risk modelling should be conducted with additional attention on disaster characteristics; 4) Existing approaches used in health cost assessments generally take the patient’s perspective in evaluating the economic burden of a particular disease, which is insufficient for investigations of the macroeconomic implications on the entire economic system because industrial interdependencies and indirect economic losses are extremely important for such macroeconomic evaluations; 5) Input-output techniques and its modified forms are able to provide more modelling options for disaster risk assessment and management; 6) The developed interdisciplinary approach can successfully bridge environmental or meteorological studies, epidemiological studies and macroeconomic analysis. It also allows to consider the distinctive feathers of a natural disasters, to understand and incorporate the health impacts through an angel of reducing labour availability and productive time, and to capture the cascading indirect economic loss triggered by industrial and regional interdependencies; 7) The estimation based on such interdisciplinary model can be more accurate and effective once more comprehensive and sophisticated dataset are available, such as the occupational disease incidence rate and required time for each outpatient visit.

Adapting to the new challenges climate change will bring is vital. Pacific Islands are often cited as being at the forefront of climate change, and despite a growing body of regional research there has been limited climate change adaptation research in regional deltas. The capacity of households and communities to respond to climate change in the face of multiple stressors is influenced by a variety of factors and elements shaped by the underlying social and cultural context. Recent work has highlighted a gap in empirically-based understandings of the relationship between adaptation and sociocultural contexts, and this thesis addresses this by examining the relationships between culture, risk perceptions, social capital and indigenous worldviews in a case study of Tikina Toga in Fiji's Rewa River delta. Although well-recognised that adaptation to climate and environmental change is context specific, this case study contributes to our knowledge base around the role of and relationship between culture and potential adaptation actions. I use the Vanua, an indigenous concept and worldview, as a lens to examine potential adaptation and social capital at the household and community scale. The Vanua provides an explanatory depth to potential adaptation actions, especially around understandings of resource access, risk perceptions, perceived self- and collective-efficacy and the role of social capital in adaptation. With an increasing number of climate change initiatives in Pacific Island Countries, this thesis highlights the importance of integrating local-level understandings and processes that influence household and community potential adaptation actions in strategic planning for future climate change responses and development initiatives.

Studies have revealed intense competition over land in Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh. This study examines land dispute processes within and between hill people (Chakma Community) and Bengali settlers (who migrated through government initiated settlement program in 1979) in CHT. By understanding property, identity and authority as relational; my study explores mutually constitutive processes between property and authority relations, and between property and identity relations. It investigates how property in land is claimed and defined in the context of dynamic authority relation in land control, multiple categorisations and identity claims in CHT. By carrying out a historical analysis of state-making, I argue that CHT remains a frontier because of- the distinctive legal and administrative systems, ambivalence in property system, ongoing processes of reconfiguration of institutional arrangements in land control and state’s territorial strategies to control its population and space. The study employs an ethnographic approach and data are collected by engaging with disputants, institutional actors, academics, members of political organizations and civil society. Working across communities has enabled to encompass differences in narratives, practices and claims based on varied rules, sources of authority, history and identities. Dispute processes reveal that competing property claims are based on various norms (customary and statutory), varieties of land documents (formal and informal) and wide number of authority sources (formal and informal). Property rules (statutory and customary) are negotiated, continuously interpreted and reinterpreted through practices and claim-making. The findings show that in different kinds of disputes (within and between communities), there are different sets of authorities involved in recognising property in land. The study draws out various political constellation of institutions and authority relations that are formed through competition for authorising land relation. State institutions- bureaucratic, judiciary, regional government, traditional institutions, military authorities; and non-state authorities (political parties, leaders, brokers), all partake and compete in the process of constitution of property relation in ‘post’ conflict/mid conflict zone, suggesting that state-making or control over land/territory and property claims as an active and contested process. While the state rules and institutional competition for authority matter in shaping dispute processes, this study finds that land contestations are evolving through contestation over dakhal i.e. physical or forceful occupation of land, which depends on local authority structure for endorsement, individual’s/disputant’s position in the local power structure, proximity of the army camp and people’s ability to exist on the ground by taking certain strategies and actions. The research findings show that identity formation and social positioning play significant roles in competition over land. Struggle over recognition of property in land is intricately linked to people’s struggle for recognition of certain identities. Religious identities of Chakmas (Buddhist) and Bengalis (Muslim) are increasingly becoming stronger. Besides, religious identities are mobilised in relation to contestation over land. The study provides an account of recurrent and interrelated processes of constitution of property, authority and identity relations in a frontier region, which has also been at the margin of the state historically. In the absence of tenure security, the existing stalemate situation regarding the formalisation process and non-recognition of customary land rights of hill people, it is crucial to understand existing land relations in order to plan and implement development policies, particularly those related to land and forest in CHT. My research has taken a novel approach in studying land conflicts by investigating the making of property, authority and identity relations in a contested territory. It contributes to existing knowledge regarding land relations and related processes of authority and identity formation in CHT, and in regions that can be characterised as frontiers or at the margin of the state.

Unemployment, poverty and environmental degradation are among the challenges facing urban Tanzania. Currently, research on urban agriculture (UA) is gaining importance for its potential to reduce poverty, food insecurity and environmental stress. While research in rural areas has shown gender to be a key factor mediating agricultural performance, little is known about the dynamics of gender in UA, how they are sustained, and how UA shapes gender relations. This thesis fills this gap by examining how gardening activities and gender relations mutually shape each other in Morogoro Municipality, Tanzania. Drawing on both bargaining and the separate spheres model of the household (Sen 1990; Lundberg and Pollak 1993) Schroeder (1996, 1999), and on Ribot and Peluso’s (2003) access theory, this study focuses on how the allocation of labour in gardening and domestic activities, decision making about gardening income, and access to productive resources affect gender relations and gardening itself. The research was conducted for ten months in two open spaces where leafy vegetables were cultivated. Both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods were used. A significant finding is the centrality of access to other household members for female gardeners to undertake gardening while meeting their gendered domestic responsibilities. Their access to household members for gardening varies with their life cycle, female-headed households, for women whose spouses are non-gardeners, and for women with young children. Secondly, strategies for accessing resources are dynamic, but vary across households according to gardening season, gender, type of resource, amount of capital, and availability of household members for gardening. Finally, different ways for negotiating the utilisation of gardening income were visible, most spouses not pooling their income but cooperating in family investments. Women’s bargaining power depends both on their earnings and other sociocultural influences. An analysis of gender relations in UA shows that women’s approaches and strategies are shaped by their position, are different from those of men, and need to be considered in urban development planning.

Over the past decade, fragile states has become a resonant term in the development lexicon, frequently employed to draw attention to the need to assist these countries. Among other reasons, external intervention has been justified by their lagging performance in the achievement of development outcomes and the threats they impose to global security and stability. Still, fragile states impose a dilemma. Although they are in great need of development assistance, aid towards these countries is expected to be less effective. This is the starting point of this thesis, which contributes to the understanding of the effect of foreign aid on economic development in fragile states, using political economy theory and standard econometric techniques. A review of existing measures of state fragility highlights that most of them lack a strong theoretical grounding, thus confusing causes and outcomes of fragility. This thesis suggests an alternative measurement approach that draws on Besley and Persson’s (2011a) theoretical model, and uses principal component analysis to derive an index for each of the two core dimensions of fragility: state ineffectiveness and political violence. This distinction follows a recent call for using multidimensional approaches and finds support in an exploratory cluster analysis. This thesis then contributes to the quantitative studies examining the fragility-growth link by replacing the CPIA with the two obtained indices as proxies for fragility and considering the effects of distinct dimensions separately. Using data for the period 19932012, the results from regression analysis show distinct effects for each dimension and find no significant impact of fragility on growth when employing a single index. Finally, inspired by the empirical aid effectiveness literature, this thesis tests the proposition that aid is less effective in promoting growth in countries with higher levels of state ineffectiveness or political violence. The results show no support for this hypothesis.

This thesis presents a methodological approach, the flood footprint framework, to capture the total economic costs of flooding events, as some of the most damaging climatic disasters. Economic costs are constituted by physical destruction, and all cascaded disruptions caused by the direct destruction. The method uses the fundamentals of Input-Output modelling, which is founded on the conceptualisation of the circular flow of the economy, representing the complex transactions between producers and intermediate and final consumers, for each sector, in an algebraic array. The solution of the equations’ system allows quantification of direct and indirect impacts along the value chain from changes in final demand. The flood footprint model further extends to capture changes in production due to the distortions of the economic equilibrium caused by flooding events, and to simulate the economy’s recovery. Sources of flooding disruption within the model arise from capital constraints, disruptions to labour force, and behavioural changes in final consumption. The method was applied to four case studies. The outcomes support the lesson that losses from a disaster are exacerbated and disseminated to other economies throughout economic mechanisms, and those knock-on effects (or indirect damages) constitute a substantial proportion of total economic losses, where non-directly flooded sectors might be also severely affected. The main implications for adaptation strategies are the review of the dynamics of direct and indirect damages and to unveil vulnerable hotspots along the value chain. This would allow an efficient allocation of investment resources and minimisation of socioeconomic damages during post-flood economic recovery. The key contribution of this thesis is a comprehensive methodology for assessing the total economic impacts of flooding events, considering elements that had not been taken into account together before, by incorporating multidisciplinary techniques for evaluation and projection of future scenarios, and bringing the analysis to a multiregional (global) scale.