Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1980. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography: leaves 216-245. / by Tim E. J. Campbell. / Ph.D.

The thesis will be divided into the following parts: the introduction will focus on the objectives of the research, review of literature, and the blueprint of methodology. Chapter One will define some basic concepts and introduce the historical background. Chapter Two will explore the relationship between modern city and the Avant-garde drama in terms of "modern city", thus leading to four relevant parts: new ways to understand space and time, cultural transformation, global spectacle and new media. Chapter Three will turn to the definition of the Avant-garde drama, discussing the relationship between the specific areas of drama (drama practitioners, motives of the drama, stage scenery, spectatorship, and body) and the modern city. Chapter Four will analyze in details the cases in two metropolis: Beijing and Shanghai, particularly comparing their cultural background, production situation, the type and quality of the production and the spectator groups. The variation of the urban culture influences the production choices of the Avant-garde drama; while the Avant-garde drama reflects the cultural transformation of different cities. In addition, this chapter will briefly analyze the drama as a carrier of cultural interaction of cities, and I will conduct a comparative study in this interchange and interaction. The results of the above research will be concluded in the final chapter. / The thesis will discourse on the context of contemporary mainland China, and analyze the inner tensions lying in a complex matrix of contending relationships between the modern city and the Avant-garde drama. I will try to explore the characteristics, situation, evolution and future possibilities of the dramas in the context of modern urban society, while probing into the situation and symptoms of modern Chinese cities in relation to the Avant-garde drama. I will find out the construction of the power relationships concomitant with the cultural transformation in mainland China from 1990s, and will explore the possibility of the Avant-garde theatre as a public space as well as the modern city's stimulation and facilitation of this possibility. / 李婭菲. / Advisers: Thomas Luk; Natalia Chan. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: 1840. / Thesis (doctoral)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 214-230). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / School code: 1307. / Li Yafei.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Communication

Doctorat en sciences sociales, politiques et économiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Doctorat en sciences sociales, politiques et économiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Liverpool and Baltimore in the 1980s were amongst the poorest cities in the United Kingdom and the United States, respectively. Since the 1960s, the ports on which they had built their economies and their reputations had all but collapsed and thousands of manufacturing jobs had been relocated or slashed. Property-led regeneration did more for the investors behind projects and the tourists who enjoyed them than for the cities' working classes. In such cities, battered by forces largely beyond their control, what could people disadvantaged by race and/or economic status do to compete for the resources necessary to improve their living conditions and wield power on a citywide level? This thesis explores the capacity of poor and middle-income people's pressure groups to successfully accomplish their goals in Liverpool and Baltimore during the 1980s. To do so, it examines three case study groups in Liverpool, the Merseyside Community Relations Council, the Eldonian Community Association, and the Anti-Cuts Campaign; and one in Baltimore, Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development. It follows their trajectories under unusually authoritarian local political regimes, the Militant Tendency-directed Labour city council in Liverpool and the Schaefer mayoral administration in Baltimore, through local elections in 1987, and finally under the more open local political regimes following those elections. Their success depended on three sets of factors. First, strong leadership and an animating cause were necessary conditions for groups to cohere, but were not sufficient to ensure their success. That further depended on a group's goals and the distribution of resources necessary to accomplish those goals, which in turn shaped the strategies each group chose to pursue its agenda. Third and finally, the effectiveness of those strategies depended on the group's ability to access and influence the resource-holders identified and, finally, on the scope for action of those resource-holders themselves.