This dissertation investigates to use and increase existing vibrancy to revitalize an urban environment. The urban response is to consolidate existing functions within Rua De Bagamoyo, as a night- life precinct through the introduction of gaming as an extension of the existing night- life activity. The architectural response is to focus on a building that houses a casino and facility for prostitutes that challenges the private-public relationships of place by extending the street into the built form and the form into the street through a series of threshold spaces that explore the notions of visual and physical access. / Dissertation (MArch(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Architecture / unrestricted

Ian Fleming’s debut novel Casino Royale (2015) introduces the iconic character James Bond. The savvy British spy who must save the world from Soviet villain is a cultural icon the world over. Yet not much is known of his personal political leanings. Fleming once claimed that James Bond’s politics lies just left of center. In this essay I analyze where James Bond lies on the left-right political scale by using Cichoka & Dhont’s (2018) “Big-five personality model”.Research has been made about the contextual, historical and political settings of the Bond novels such as Jeremy Black’s (2001) “The politics of James Bond: from Fleming's novels to the big screen” which serves as a complement to this research. Black’s (2001)claims suggest that Britain struggled for dominance after The Second World War as they were financially in ruin and although Britain lost some of its colonies, they still had many territories under their control. However, with the rising power of the Soviet Union, the nationalistic feeling in Britain grew as their reputation as a powerful empire needed to be upheld. Therefore, a need for a strong British symbol grew, which also acted as a reason for why Fleming created James Bond.The essay concludes that James Bond represents a specific part of Great Britain. The analysis has shown James Bond is a product of his time by symbolizing the longing for the return of the great British empire. This is supported by the fact of him scoring low on categories such as Agreeableness and Openness combined with the fact that he harbors anti-Communist beliefs. The analysis show that he acts in a manner that would highlight the colonial days of Britain where their strength had not yet diminished as opposed to the times after the Second World War. As such, the actions of James Bond, together with his explicit views suggest that he lies slightly more towards the right on the political scale and thus, disputesthe claim of Ian Fleming.

This thesis is studying the current global as well as Czech gambling industry with the focus on internet gambling activities. The work begins with the description of various gambling activities. The focus is taken on the internet gambling activities with description of the specifics and the current European as well as US legal frame. Next part is dedicated to the psychology of gambling together with the pathological gambling addiction. In next part the thesis studies the current situation on the Czech market - history, main official legal providers as well as main grey market providers. Second part of the work is the case study of the launch of the internet lottery games by Fortuna Entertainment Group. This case study is based on a desk research of previous successful best practices in the internet gambling industry from all around the world.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to map how Swedish gaming companies and their gaming companies work to be competitive in a market characterized by high competition, and which are also facing a change in law. Method: This study has been based on a qualitative approach in the form of four interviews, two of which have been semi-structured personal interviews and two mail interviews. Theoretical Reference Framework: The theories used in this study are pull and push strategies, brand equity, the STP process, corporate acquisitions - strategy and celebrities and fictitious characters in brands. Conclusions: The conclusion is that the gaming companies are trying to strengthen their brands using mostly similar strategies, in order to be able to take market shares, customers and increase their own competitiveness in this changing and competitive market. / Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att kartlägga hur svenska spelbolagskoncerner och deras spelbolag, jobbar för att vara konkurrenskraftiga på en marknad präglad av hög konkurrens, och som även står inför en lagändring. Metod: Denna studie har utgått från en kvalitativ ansats i form av fyra intervjuer, där två av dem har varit semistrukturerade personliga intervjuer och två mailintervjuer. Teoretisk referensram: De teorier som använts i denna studie är pull och push - strategierna, brand equity, STP - processen, företagsförvärv - strategi och kändisar och fiktiva karaktärer i varumärken. Slutsatser: Slutsatsen är att spelbolagen försöker stärka sina varumärken med hjälp av mestadels liknande strategier, för att kunna ta marknadsandelar, kunder och öka sin egen konkurrenskraft på denna föränderliga och konkurrenskraftiga marknad.

As a result of development pressures and water resource struggles, once rural, spatially segregated coastal commercial fishing villages along the U.S. portion of the Gulf of Mexico are increasingly tourist frontiers for elites and the emergent businesses that cater to them. Over the course of the twentieth century, water events, from coastal land loss to hurricane destruction to natural disaster, have fast-tracked development projects that have allowed for the expansion of the tourism sector, and relaxed policies to encourage bold new economic development initiatives that often put poor coastal communities and their environment in jeopardy. This outcome is not universal across the northern Gulf Coast, but contingent on a number of local factors overlooked in the literature on coastal tourism and water policy development. This paper investigates the local nuances that have emerged as responses to global and regional development pressures by focusing on the ways in which local values and policy decisions have influenced the spread of coastal urbanization. An intensive analysis will examine the layered effects of changing land-use patterns and tourism growth pressures on three at-risk coastal communities in Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida, in the United States. This paper will test the hypothesis that coastal communities affected by a similar set of development pressures respond to these forces in different ways, depending on complex local and regional variabilities. The paper’s focus is centered on Northern Gulf Coast tourism growth patterns from post-World War II through 2018, and employs a mixed method, multiple-sited case-study design.

My dissertation on Cuban tourism links political, economic, social, and cultural history to show how the development of tourism on the island between 1945 and 2007 has been crucial in helping to cultivate identities for Cuba and the Cuban people on multiple levels. I focus on three distinct periods - 1945 to 1958, 1959 to 1979, and 1980 to 2007. While significant shifts occurred within each of these three phases, this periodization best illuminates the relationship between tourism development and identity. The fall of the Soviet Union, for example, certainly altered the pace of the industry's growth. Arrivals soared beginning in the 1990s, yet much of the institutional framework for conditioning the relationships between touristic actors had been established years earlier. Cuban planners had begun to target a range of specific markets by 1980, over a decade before the economic strife of the 'Special Period' in the early 1990s virtually forced them to move in this direction. For the entire period between 1945 and 2007, tourism and Cuban identity were linked in two very important ways. Tourism provided a lens for foreign visitors to view the island, its people, and its culture; to know what it meant to be Cuban. As well, the industry offered a framework for powerful interests to control the behaviors of Cuban citizens; to instruct them on how to be Cuban.

This study was concerned with the health implications of new forms of gambling such as casinos, pokie machines and internet gambling for Māori women and their families in Auckland and the Bay of Plenty region of Aotearoa (New Zealand). It set out to discover what culturally appropriate services were available and the extent to which Māori women gamblers were utilising them. The literature documenting Māori perceptions of gambling shows that Māori women gamblers and their partner/whānau members and gambling service providers have been little studied previously. These goals translated into the following specific aims: 1) to study how Māori women problem gamblers, their partner or whānau members and key informants perceived gambling, what it meant to them and why they did it; 2) to investigate the consequences of gambling for Māori women, whānau and service providers in dealing with the effects of gambling; 3) to report on how these three groups dealt with the effects of gambling; and 4) to discover what helped to bring about positive changes for the three groups. All of the aims were achieved. A Māori approach (Kaupapa Māori), combined with a naturalistic approach to data collection, was adopted. Qualitative methods are most appropriate to use when working with some Māori, as there is a growing realisation that research with Māori needs to be interactive. A Māori research procedure modelled on the ritual ceremony of encounter (Pōwhiri) provided an appropriate structure for the development and presentation of the research process. The major focus was on the qualitative data obtained from semi-structured interviews in two locations - Rotorua and Auckland. The interviews were conducted with twenty Māori women gamblers, sixteen whānau members including partners and ten interviews with staff involved in services that provided help for problem gamblers. The three interview schedules were based on a number of broad themes and open-ended questions to obtain meaningful descriptive data. The interviews were audio recorded and used to produce transcripts that were then sent back to the participants for feedback. Qualitative data analysis was conducted on the returned documents. The findings from this study revealed major impacts of the women's socio-economic, familial and societal circumstances on gambling behaviour and its effects, which are areas of concern for mental health professionals and researchers. The mythical Māori canoes on which Māori voyaged from their place of origin (Hawaiiki) to Aotearoa, the Waka, provided an appropriate metaphor to present the interrelationship between the pull and push factors toward gambling, and its implications for society. This is illustrated as a spinning waka, Te Waka Hūrihuri. On the other hand, Te Waka Māia (courageous) demonstrates the relationships between the variables that help Māori women gamblers to cope and helpful strategies found to assist them to modify or stop their gambling behaviour. It is recommended that the government limit the proliferation of gaming venues and continue to encourage development of emerging Māori services. Moreover, a coordinated approach is essential, as Māori women gamblers, partners and whānau members need to heal together for positive outcomes for Māori health development in Aotearoa. The main implication of this study is that a wide range of further research into Māori and gambling is required. Recommendations on ways in which the current delivery of services in Rotorua and Auckland could be improved are: That the Ministry of Health purchase services that establish support groups for Māori people with problem gambling and their whānau, and That non-Māori provider services and organisations support the development of emerging Māori services. Heeding the outcome of this research should help improve New Zealand's existing health policy and capacity for Māori women's health development. It should also enrich our understanding of the adaptation patterns of Māori whānau member/s, and thus should have implications, not only for Māori health policies, but also relevance for the wider field of international cross-comparative research on indigenous gambling and mental health issues. Limitations of this study included a small, localised sample that means the findings can only tentatively be generalised to the wider population of Māori women gamblers. Nonetheless, information gained from the study contributes to understanding of the adaptation patterns of Māori women gamblers, their whānau member/s, and those who are trying to help them. It is hoped that the study will make it at least a little less true that every day is a war day for Māori women and their whānau trying to deal with the problem of gambling.

Absent Presence: Women in American Gangster Narrative investigates women characters in American gangster narratives through the principal roles accorded to them. It argues that women in these texts function as an “absent presence,” by which I mean that they are a convention of the patriarchal gangster landscape and often with little import while at the same time they cultivate resistant strategies from within this backgrounded positioning. Whereas previous scholarly work on gangster texts has identified how women are characterized as stereotypes, this dissertation argues that women characters frequently employ the marginal positions to which they are relegated for empowering effect. This dissertation begins by surveying existing gangster scholarship. There is a preoccupation with male characters in this work, as is the case in most gangster texts themselves. This preoccupation is a result of several factors, such as defining the genre upon criteria that exclude women, promoting a male-centred canon as a result, and making assumptions about audience composition and taste that overlook women’s (and some women characters’) interest in gangster texts. Consequently, although the past decade saw women scholars bringing attention to female characters, research on male characters continues to dominate the field. My project thus fills this gap by not only examining the methods by which women characters navigate the male-dominated underworld but also including female-centred gangster narratives. Subsequent chapters focus on women’s predominant roles as mothers, molls, and wives as well as their infrequent role as female gangsters. The mother chapter demonstrates how the gangster’s mother deploys her effacement as an idealized figure in order to disguise her transgressive machinations (White Heat, The Sopranos). The moll chapter examines how this character’s presence as a reforming influence for the male criminal is integral to the earliest narratives. However, a shift to male relationships in mid- to late-1920s gangster texts transforms the moll’s status to that of a moderator (Underworld, The Great Gatsby). On the other hand, subsequent non-canonical texts feature molls as protagonists and illustrate the potential appeal of the gangster figure to women spectators (Three on a Match). Subsequently, the wife chapter explores texts that show presence is manifested in the wife’s cultivation of a traditional family image, while absence is evident in her exposure of this image as a façade via her husband’s activities (The Godfather, Goodfellas). In the following female gangster chapter, I examine how gender functions to render this rare character a literal absent presence such that she is inconceivable as a subject (Lady Scarface, Lady Gangster). Expanding upon this examination of gender, a final chapter on the African-American female gangster (in Set It Off and The Wire) explores how sexuality, race, and female—as well as “gangsta”—masculinity intersect to create this character’s simultaneous hypervisibility and invisibility. By examining women’s roles that often are overlooked in a male-dominated textual type and academic field, this dissertation draws scholarly attention to the ways that peripheral status can offer a stealthy locus for self-assertion.

Absent Presence: Women in American Gangster Narrative investigates women characters in American gangster narratives through the principal roles accorded to them. It argues that women in these texts function as an “absent presence,” by which I mean that they are a convention of the patriarchal gangster landscape and often with little import while at the same time they cultivate resistant strategies from within this backgrounded positioning. Whereas previous scholarly work on gangster texts has identified how women are characterized as stereotypes, this dissertation argues that women characters frequently employ the marginal positions to which they are relegated for empowering effect. This dissertation begins by surveying existing gangster scholarship. There is a preoccupation with male characters in this work, as is the case in most gangster texts themselves. This preoccupation is a result of several factors, such as defining the genre upon criteria that exclude women, promoting a male-centred canon as a result, and making assumptions about audience composition and taste that overlook women’s (and some women characters’) interest in gangster texts. Consequently, although the past decade saw women scholars bringing attention to female characters, research on male characters continues to dominate the field. My project thus fills this gap by not only examining the methods by which women characters navigate the male-dominated underworld but also including female-centred gangster narratives. Subsequent chapters focus on women’s predominant roles as mothers, molls, and wives as well as their infrequent role as female gangsters. The mother chapter demonstrates how the gangster’s mother deploys her effacement as an idealized figure in order to disguise her transgressive machinations (White Heat, The Sopranos). The moll chapter examines how this character’s presence as a reforming influence for the male criminal is integral to the earliest narratives. However, a shift to male relationships in mid- to late-1920s gangster texts transforms the moll’s status to that of a moderator (Underworld, The Great Gatsby). On the other hand, subsequent non-canonical texts feature molls as protagonists and illustrate the potential appeal of the gangster figure to women spectators (Three on a Match). Subsequently, the wife chapter explores texts that show presence is manifested in the wife’s cultivation of a traditional family image, while absence is evident in her exposure of this image as a façade via her husband’s activities (The Godfather, Goodfellas). In the following female gangster chapter, I examine how gender functions to render this rare character a literal absent presence such that she is inconceivable as a subject (Lady Scarface, Lady Gangster). Expanding upon this examination of gender, a final chapter on the African-American female gangster (in Set It Off and The Wire) explores how sexuality, race, and female—as well as “gangsta”—masculinity intersect to create this character’s simultaneous hypervisibility and invisibility. By examining women’s roles that often are overlooked in a male-dominated textual type and academic field, this dissertation draws scholarly attention to the ways that peripheral status can offer a stealthy locus for self-assertion.