No description available.

Over the past decade, South African and Namibian governments have initiated processes of water-sector reform via new legislation (RSA, 1998; GRN, 2004), designed to promote increased equity, efficiency and economic and environmental sustainability of water resources. These objectives correspond to those of the discourse of integrated water resource management (Heyns, 2005; Woodhouse, 2008). Institutional reform is a key feature of the recent legislation. Participatory institutions are being formed, which are aligned to hydrological spatial units, such as water-user associations and basin management committees. These institutional spaces represent 'communities' of learning (Wenger, 1998; Johnson, 2007), and synergise with the concept of 'social learning' that links collective interaction and learning to concerted action in the collective and environmental interest (Roling & \Vagemakers, 1998; Keen et al., 2005; Pahl-\Vostl et al., 2007a; Ison et al., 2007). Drawing on the 'constant comparison' principle of grounded theory (Glaser, 1992), the thesis explores this concept of social learning using two case studies: the South African Kat River Water User Association (KatRWUA) and the Namibian Kuiseb Basin Management Committee (KuisebBMC). A multi-method research approach was used to elicit qualitative information, with data-collection methods including semi-structured interviews, ethnographic observation and secondary data sources (Denzin & Lincoln, 2002). Subsequent data analysis revealed a mismatch between the nature and outcomes of social learning processes within the case studies and the ideals of socially and environmentally sustainable behaviour, which are desired by both the integrated water-resource management discourse and by the South African and Namibian national Water Acts. Social learning, as a process for achieving these goals of social equity and sustainable social behaviour, was prevented by the five Ps: power relations, politics, personality, precedence, and the past.

No description available.

The study is divided into three sections under the headings of The Physical Environment. The Changing Human Response and Population - The Changing Pattern The elements of the environment are examined and some of the more important influences in population distribution and change arc discussed. It is found that there is a close correlation between the various physical regions of the North East and the demographic pattern. Many of the population and settlement changes which have taken place between 1696 and 1931 may be considered as reflexes of the environment. It is shown that the good framing districts based on fertile soils and favourable environmental conditions have shown the least fluctuation in population over the period and the relation of these districts to valley or basin situation on the Lowlands is indicated. These areas showed an increase in population up to the latter part of the Nineteenth century, but with a decline at the end of the Eighteenth Century. The less fertile districts on the Lowlands, of ten with an interfluvial situation, showed a high increase from the beginning of the period to the middle of the Nineteenth century with subsequent decline. These are areas of colonisation, with which are associated new settlement tpes erected for rural industry and the reclamation of waste land at the end of the Eighteenth century. The fishing population has had a different development to the landward population. There has been a high increase in the population of the larger fishing centres from the beginning of the period with slight decline in the last two decades, but the population of the smaller centres has been absorbed by the larger with changes in economic conditions. The more remote and hilly districts of the North East showed a population increase to the middle of the Eighteenth century, with, in many cases, subsequent decline to 1931. In some Highland parishes the population was less than in 1696. The migration involved in the depopulation is reviewed and an attempt made to indicate the flow to other parts of Scotland. The changes in the age and sex structure of the population, which are linked with migration, are examined and it is found that few districts or burghs of the North East show a balanced population.

We are accustomed, in this age, to regional planning, undertaken in conformity with the requirements of a national planning act, "by experts whose chief concern is to plan for the general good. A severe simplicity of line is dictated by economic necessity, and a desire to achieve fitness for purpose, rather than ostentatious show. Quite otherwise did the prosperous and ambitious Victorians embellish and decorate the works of their hands. It may be said that their excesses were a development from an earlier period of pretentious design, initiated in Scotland in the eighteenth century, when the landowners, becoming better acquainted with their more elegant English neighbours, awoke to a new sense of their dignity, as well as to the wretchedly backward and barren condition of their country.

The years between the fall of Sebastopol and the outbreak of war in South Africa in 1899 witnessed considerable changes in British society and for the British army were years which heralded reforms in army organization, tactics and weaponry, and military thinking. There were important reforms which affected the terms and conditions of service and recruitment, and these are the concern of this thesis. The conditions of service are best divided into four main areas: army health; army education; discipline and crime; and pay, career prospects, and discharge. Each of these is singled out in a separate chapter and dealt with in turn. To set the scene, Chapter I describes the size of the Victorian army in this period, its constituent parts and its employment. It also outlines recent historical discussion of the army and points out how sketchy the treatment of the topics of this thesis has been partly because of source limitations. Discussion of the conditions of service begins in Chapter II with the health of the army. Improvement over the conditions of 1856 was more marked in this area than in any other. This was a result of better diet, clothing, physical training, and most important, a better environment and an improved medical care. Chapter III deals with the questions of education and literacy in the army and discusses, since the two were inseparably linked, the educational provisions made for the soldier and for his children. The army's response to the need for an educated soldiery was a comprehensive system of education for man and child which, by virtue of universality, cost, curriculum, and quality of instruction, far outweighed the provisions society made in general for the education of the working classes for most of this period. It is discipline above all else that ultimately distinguishes an army from any other group of men. This is the subject of Chapter IV: discipline, crime in the ranks, and its prevention. Wholesale reduction in the severity of punishment and the large scale provision of recreational facilities brought an over-all decrease in crime by 1900, but failure to ease the many restrictions of army life and to relax the bonds of discipline meant that minor disobedience, insubordination, and desertion would remain as prevalent as ever. Chapter V deals with pay, career prospects, and discharge from the Service, questions which were of the most importance to army recruits. In contrast to other areas in which considerable success was achieved in bettering many of the conditions of military service, there was a striking failure to increase substantially the army's attractions either by augmenting pay, improving career prospects, or by providing adequately for the discharge of men from the forces, The connections between the conditions of service and recruitment are particularly close in a voluntary-service army since alterations to one can easily bring about changes in the state of the other. The subjects of the following two chapters are the recruiting problem and patterns of recruitment. Throughout this time the army did not raise enough men to meet its requirements. Chapter VI considers and assesses the attempts to improve recruitment through altering the terms and conditions of service, and modifying the recruiting system. Chapter VII explains the nature of the very considerable changes in the patterns cf recruitment that took place between 1856 and 1899 without solving the basic shortage of men. The final chapter of this thesis concludes with an assessment of almost a half century of reform from 1556 to 1899. Conditions for the enlisted man and his family had improved markedly in many respects since the middle of the century, and in some ways too the image of the forces had changed. If it was not respectable to become a soldier, it was at least becoming respectable to be one. The disastrous opening of the war in South Africa forced a new period of discussion about the question of military reform at all levels.

No description available.

This study is concerned with the uptake of tolerance as a response to the contemporary problems of managing diversity and developing cohesion in western societies. Drawing upon recent work that has attempted to critically theorise its contemporary uses and reveal its paradoxical operations, political agendas and civilising tendencies, this study moves to question how tolerance takes place on the ground. More specifically, it examines the relationship between tolerance and everyday encounter to consider how it is embodied, produced, and sometimes compromised by the intimacies of everyday practice. Whilst state mobilisations and discourses of tolerance clearly inflect its practice, the study argues that current debates offer only a partial account of the politics of tolerance and its affectual geographies, which are shaped by additional constituents of agency. As a way into its everyday politics, the study focuses on three in particular – geographies of place, ways of thinking (including habit, memory and familiarity) and materialities – across three different spaces of encounter in Birmingham, UK. The first site focuses upon a public bus service, which presents a challenging arena for throwntogetherness and a space of intense materiality and unusual intimacy, where movement is constrained and differences are negotiated on the smallest of scales. The second focuses upon a multicultural primary school, which is positioned as a key site for the pedagogical promotion of tolerance, to question how parents negotiate difference and their parental responsibilities through an account of habit and familiarity. The final chapter turns to a conflict management workshop, where encounters with difference are carefully engineered in an attempt to develop more tolerant individuals through a series of exercises designed to cultivate techniques of thought. Taken together, these three sites develop an account of tolerance that is more plural, unpredictable and in many cases more optimistic than prevalent debates would suggest and demonstrate how, as a response to difference, tolerance might work as part of a wider telos of social change and ethical praxis.

No description available.

The thesis is divided into five parts. I) In the introduction, the existing theory of cognitive distance is discussed and amplified, with emphasis on the differences between a psychological and a geographical approach to the subject. II) A brief thematic history of the philosophy of space is given, from the behavioural point of view. The ways in which the nature of space could affect the perception of distance are discussed. III) An account of a large experiment investigating the perception of global distances is set out. Students from three universities estimated distances to 24 places ranging in distance from Dublin to Christchurch, N.Z. In the analysis of the results a completely new methodology is introduced to deal with misestimation. Consideration is given to globe and map distances, degree of certainty on the part of the subject, cognitive barriers, logarithmicity of estimatibn and descriptive statistics. The second major experiment involved asking citizens in ten Scottish and North British towns to estimate distances to other towns in the experiment. Investigation is made of the commatativity of cognitive space, road and direct distances, logarithmicity, familiarity of destination, attractiveness of destination, the effects of travel time, certainty on the part of the subject, four different cognitive barriers and the comparability of the different subject groups. V) A brief recapitulation of the results linking some of the themes from the preceding four parts form the conclusion of the thesis.