Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1989. / Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of Sociology, 1979. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 184-190).

Paper presented at a panel entitled "Dependency Theory Reassessed", at the sixth national meeting of the Latin American Studies Association in Atlanta, Georgia, March 25-28, 1976. / Summary in English and French. Includes bibliographical references (p. 30-32).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2005. Graduate Programme in Political Science. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 458-485). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNR11617

The wave of working-class radicalism that swept across France at the turn of the twentieth century has largely been attributed by historians to the pressures of industrialization undermining traditional methods and organizations of labor. However, the Angers slate mining industry experienced a very stable production process from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries limited as much by the environment as by the economy. Working-class formation here instead must be understood in contradistinction to capitalist-class formation coming in response to those same economic and environment factors. The steady growth of an entrepreneurial class in the slate mines around Angers, France, took place within a legal and social framework that allowed mine investors to begin associating and identifying as a class distinct from their workers. It was against this capitalist-class formation that workers began organizing in order to preserve the social organizations and independence they had enjoyed in the pre-capitalist era.

This doctoral thesis traces the various forms in which ordinary people engaged in the stock market across twentieth-century Britain. It asks how and why previously stigmatised forms of investment and speculation came to be regarded as socially, politically and economically desirable. I argue that financial and economic historians, preoccupied with the growing dominance of financial institutions over British security markets during this period, have neglected the social and cultural relevance of popular share ownership. Consequently investment is seen as more than an economic activity. Understanding the ways in which social and cultural attitudes towards finance relaxed over time, allows us to better understand the arrival of neoliberalism in Britain. After World War I, Britain witnessed a significant expansion of private stock market investment. However, in comparison to the United States, Britain’s financial establishment took a more conservative stance on universal share ownership and restrained much of the potential for a “democratisation of investment”. After 1945, private share ownership continued to grow gradually across classes due to higher living standards and in spite of nationalisation, high taxation and the institutionalisation of securities markets. Politics was not the main driver of this trend as efforts to widen share ownership were difficult to square with the interventionist postwar economic settlement. More importantly, the rapidly expanding trade of financial journalism increasingly educated multiple audiences about stock market affairs. By widening the analytical scope beyond socioeconomic conditions, it becomes apparent that the sweeping social and cultural changes during the 1950s and 1960s helped to loosen older reservations against financial speculation, thereby drawing evermore investors into the market. The key shift of this period was that ‘playing the stock market’ became a popular and socially acceptable hobby, predominantly among middle-class households. Tracing these developments to the 1970s and 1980s, this thesis concludes that market populism had a powerful appeal to savers and investors hit by inflation, thereby accelerating the growth of economic individualism long before the Thatcherite Revolution unfolded in Britain.

This thesis presents original evidence on changes occurring within the exchange economy of a north-west Oxfordshire rural community during the first half of the eighteenth century. It has been suggested that capitalism began to evolve in rural areas of England during this period due to the transformation of agriculture and growth of consumerism. Thus one would expect to find evidence of a growing commercialisation of the agrarian population characterised by increased reliance upon the market and a diminution of customary exchange and self-provisioning. Drawing evidence from the Ditchley estate accounts, the balance of monetary and nonmonetary exchange, the nature of transactions, and the role of kinship connections in mediating them, are described and analysed. It is argued that whilst the accounts do reveal significant levels of monetization and widespread use of market exchange especially after 1725, an extensive, largely non-monetized internal estate market in goods operated in parallel. These two systems appear to have been as much complementary as in competition, reflecting the high levels of integration within the local agrarian economy of the stonebrash region. Moreover, analysis of kinship networks suggests that many seemingly monetary transactions had a social component. Market exchange at Ditchley was essentially as dependent on social relations as reciprocal exchange within the neighbourhood area. The customary economy of kinsman and neighbour continued to flourish and to complement the expanding market economy in early eighteenth-century England, because both had a moral component. For the villagers at Ditchley there was no clear dichotomy between the two.

Thesis advisor: Michael Smith / Contemporary American capitalism is sick. To determine what is wrong with it we must first go back to its conception and understand the theoretical advantages and drawbacks of this system. Once we come to understand what capitalism is, and how it developed, we will move on to see how it has evolved to its current state within an American mixed economy. Wealth inequality is at an all time high in America, exacerbated by the 2008 financial crisis, with warnings from men like Karl Marx coming to fruition more than a century later. Today, corporations praise capitalism on the way up, and exploit interventionist concepts such as bailouts on the way down to skew wealth to unprecedented levels. Multi-millionaire politicians accept lobbying funds and allow this to happen, stopping capitalism from running its natural course. The wealthy 1% are able to invest in economic vehicles and share in this massive wealth shift while most Americans cannot afford to, and as a result the average American is left behind. To rationalize whether capitalism is a system worth saving, we will then look to why some economic inequality is inherent to capitalism to some degree. Once this is understood, we can then analyze whether or not such wealth inequalities are immoral in itself. We will find that wealth inequality may be an unavoidable feature of capitalism, however under certain conditions it is not in itself immoral — it is the lack of economic opportunity and economic sufficiency for Americans that is. Perhaps there is a reason why corporations and politicians act the way they do, and if so we will look at potential remedies to limit inequality and hold corporations and politicians accountable. The thesis will conclude that if this pattern of growing wealth inequality continues as demonstrated in the recent COVID-19 pandemic, capitalism in America may be doomed. / Thesis (BS) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Philosophy.

This thesis explores the circumstances behind the dissolution of the state of Czechoslovakia. Unlike previous works, this paper contends that the Velvet Divorce was not simply a result of the expulsion of Communism, but rather the end product of a multitude of forces, both interior and exterior to the state's boundaries. The transition from Communism was merely the catalyst. In examining the attitudinal and eventual physical division between the majority of Czechs and Slovaks, this paper extends the criteria for consensus articulated by George Schöpflin (1993) into the context of Czechoslovakia. Schöpflin contends that support for the state in the post-Communist period is based on three characteristics: faith in the nation, belief in economic reform, and hatred for all things Communist. This thesis contends that most Czechs and Slovaks in Czechoslovakia were divided on the basis of whether they believed that their nation's right to self-determination had been fulfilled, whether they advocated more socialist or capitalist policies, and whether they benefitted from the experience of Communism. These fundamental differences contributed to the failure to reach agreement in 1992 concerning the shape of the "new" or "revived" Czechoslovakia. Furthermore, this paper will show that the Velvet Divorce was not merely a product of internal disagreements. The creation, existence, and even dissolution of the state were influenced by global forces. Events such as the French Revolution, World War II, and even the Independence of Croatia had an impact in Czechoslovakia. The state was not born into a bubble; its borders were chronically permeable. / Master of Arts

Master of Arts (MA)