Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / A study of the history of the idea of State-sponsored popular education to mold common loyalties and values in the interest of national unity. The study finds that this idea has implied rivalry with competing sources of meaning, including traditional religion. This rivalry has taken the form not only of excluding "sectarian" teaching from the common school, but also of seeking to provide its equivalent: a "common faith". In so doing, it has led repeatedly to conflict with parents who do not accept the values and beliefs inculcated by the State and its educationists. The first attempt, by the French Jacobins in 1792, to implement this "common school agenda" in an antireligious form was a failure because of the resistance of parents, but their Dutch allies were more successful implementing common schools saturated with lowest-common-denominator religious and moral teaching. It was Dutch "common school religion" that inspired French and American reformers in the 1830's in the creation of State-sponsored common schools. Implementation of the common school program in Massachusetts encountered resistance from orthodox Protestants as well as Catholics to what they rightly perceived as its religious content, but Protestant leadership closed ranks around the common school when faced by the threat of cultural diversity as a result of Catholic immigration. The final chapter describes the "triumph of the common school" in France and the United States, but its defeat in the Netherlands, where orthodox Protestants and Catholics gained full tax support for confessional schools. The continuing conflict over popular education raises troubling questions in a democracy. How can the pluralism that we claim to value, the liberty that we prize, be reconciled with a "State pedagogy" designed to serve State purposes? Can government somehow assure that every child is educated in the essentials required by the social, political and economic order, without seeking to impose uniformity?

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Tourism in its modern garb is very new to China. Not until 1978 when the bamboo curtain was parted and the ‘Open Door’ policies introduced was international tourism welcomed. It is only 21 years ago, in 1984, that was tourism approved by the Chinese Government as an appropriate form of economic development that could contribute to the modernization of the country. The form that tourism takes in contemporary China, especially the development and presentation of natural sights and sites, demonstrates qualities that immediately set it apart from western forms of tourism development. While there are similar aspects – all part of the ubiquitous spread of ‘globalization’ – there is much that retains a unique Chineseness that is immediately distinctive. In analyzing the specific qualities of contemporary Chinese tourism it is argued that 4000 years of continuous culture, which has produced a body of understanding known as ‘Chinese common knowledge’, has been fundamental in directing and determining the way in which natural landscapes are utilized for contemporary tourism. The values inherent in this enduring cultural heritage are an amalgamation of Confucian thought, Doaist and Buddhist theology, folklore and an extraordinarily rich literary heritage in which the poem and calligraphy are regarded as the highest art forms. They imbue every natural landscape with a cultural overlay, drawing upon the immense strength of Chinese common knowledge in ways which make many such sights and sites incomprehensible to non-Chinese visitors because no interpretation is provided - since none is needed for their Chinese viewers. One outcome of this research is the identification of a Chinese tourist gaze that has many elements which distinguish it from the western tourist gaze. It is highly structured through sociolinguistic parameters which feature correlative and relational thinking (in which no individual entity exists in isolation but is connected to all things around it in dynamic relationships), and this has produced what I have termed ‘the relational tourist gaze’. The Chinese value system also includes a degree of anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism that stands in opposition to the western biocentric approach to conservation and maintenance of ‘naturalness’ and ‘wilderness.’ There is a pervasive view that nature is imperfect and ‘man’ has a responsibility to improve on nature to forge a symbiotic relationship, these sentiments summed up in the phrase known to all Chinese: ‘man and nature in harmony’. A significant component of a Chinese tourist gaze is thus what I have termed ‘the harmony gaze’ that contrast strongly with current western notions about wilderness and pristine nature. This thesis defines Chineseness and Chinese common knowledge, examines the particularities of the sociolinguistics of Chinese to illustrate the way in which this cultural heritage has been transmitted down through the centuries to the present day, and then analyses the manifestation of this knowledge and its attendant values in incorporating natural landscapes - mountains, caves, rivers – in contemporary tourism in China. The result is - ‘Bie you tian di’ – an altogether different world.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Murdoch University, 2002. / Thesis submitted to the Division of Business, Information Technology and Law. Bibliography: p. 441-449.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Plant Breeding and Genetics Program, 2006. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Nov. 12, 2008) Includes bibliographical references. Also issued in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-191). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-191). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1948. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [82]-84).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

The advent of advanced means of communication, faster modes of transportation and sophisticated trading technologies has facilitated economic and financial integration across the world. The emergence of globalization in the last two decades has transformed the economic outlook and perceptions of consumers, investors and policymakers. Consumers have a vast range of goods and services to choose from, investors seeking to maximize profits and minimize risks have access to markets worldwide and last, but not least, policymakers can harness the benefits accruing from international trade to abet economic growth and development. Although augmented economic and financial integration has its benefits, it does have its pitfalls as well. Highly synchronized financial and goods markets are relatively less insulated from disturbances or shocks arising in foreign markets. This synchrony makes these markets more susceptible to foreign shocks, thus, compromising their economic autonomy. Accordingly, the issue economic interdependence among countries warrants a detailed investigation. This dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay investigates exchange rate dynamics among the ASEAN-5 economies of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The second essay is dedicated to a detailed analysis of real and monetary interrelationships among the economies of Norway, Sweden, the UK and the US. In the third essay, the short-term and the long-term co-movements among the price of crude oil and the real exchange rates of the Canadian Dollar and the Norwegian Krone are examined. Exchange rate movements are central to international trade and finance as they directly impact the relative price of goods and services in domestic and foreign markets. Fluctuations in exchange rates can have a significant bearing on the terms of trade and the value of foreign asset holdings. Moreover, they can potentially transmit economic shocks across countries. Consequently, exchange rate dynamics are of keen interest to investors and policymakers alike. In the first essay, common trends and common cycles among the exchange rates of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand are investigated in detail. We identify and isolate the permanent and transitory components of the nominal exchange rates of the currencies of Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand in an effort to examine the similitude of their responses to within-country and across-country economic disturbances in the long-run as well as in the short-run. This also allows us to ascertain the relative impacts of permanent and transitory shocks on the behavior of the observed exchange rate series. We find that a large proportion of economic and financial shocks have a dual impact on the behavior of the exchange rates, i.e., while a proportion of the impact of certain shocks is transitory and fades away with time, there is a persistent proportion of these shocks that alters the long-run path of the exchange rates. Thus, most shocks cannot be considered as exclusively transitory or permanent. It is observed that in the case of pegged exchange rate regimes, the trend and cyclical components move in opposite directions and offset the impacts of one another. The small open economies of Norway and Sweden rely extensively on foreign trade. Outside the Scandinavian group of countries, Germany and the UK are two of their biggest trading partners within the European Union (EU), while the US is one of their largest non-EU trading partners. Real and monetary disturbances in one or more countries can easily be transmitted to other countries that are linked through channels of trade. Consequently, the assessment of the impact of foreign shocks on the domestic economy is central to the formulation of economic policy. In light of this, the second essay is dedicated to the investigation of the impact of real and monetary disturbances arising in the major trading partners of Norway and Sweden on their respective price levels and outputs. Such an assessment may provide useful insights into the nature of the transmission mechanism of economic disturbances across these countries and may prove to be useful in the formulation and conduct of monetary policy. The central banks of Norway and Sweden seek output stability while explicitly targeting pre-specified inflation rates in order to conduct monetary policy. The achievement of such quantitative targets relies considerably on the forecasts of the target variables themselves, and of the impact of the changes in the instrument variables that are adjusted to achieve the targets. Our results indicate that output shocks have a more significant impact than monetary shocks on the GDPs of both Norway and Sweden. While the GDPs of Norway and Sweden are predominantly influenced by output shocks originating in Norway and Sweden in the short-run, the output shocks originating in the larger economies of the UK and the US dominate the variation in the GDPs of Norway and Sweden in the long-run. We find that monetary shocks have a more significant impact than real shocks on the CPI variables of both Norway and Sweden. Specifically, the monetary shocks originating in Norway, Sweden and the UK are found to be more significant than those originating in the US. Crude oil constitutes a large proportion of exports for Canada and Norway. In fact, they are two of the largest net exporters of crude oil in the world. Therefore, oil price shocks may significantly impact the trade balance of these countries, thereby, prompting their monetary and fiscal authorities to intervene. The nature and the degree of the intervention would depend significantly on the assessment as to whether these shocks are permanent and/or transitory. Accordingly, the links among the trends and cycles in the price of crude oil, the real exchange rate of the Canadian Dollar and the real exchange rate of the Norwegian Krone are investigated in the third essay. We address this issue by ascertaining the presence of common trends and common cycles among the price of crude oil and the two real exchange rates, and then decomposing them into their trend and cyclical components in a multivariate modeling framework. We find that, while the real exchange rates of the Canadian Dollar and the Norwegian Krone vis-à-vis the US Dollar are trend-dominated, the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil price is neither trend-dominated nor cycle-dominated. We also find evidence for a positive relationship among the cyclical components of the WTI crude oil price and the two real exchange rates. As a robustness check, common trends and common cycles among the Brent crude oil price denominated in Euros, and the real exchange rates of the Canadian Dollar and the Norwegian Krone vis-à-vis the Euro are also examined. As in the previous case, we find evidence for the presence of common trends as well as common cycles. The positive co-movement among the cyclical components of the price of crude oil and the real exchange rates appears to be robust to changes in the numeraire currency. However, we observe a slight contrast in the co-movement among the trend components of the three variables when different numeraire currencies are used. The composition of the dissertation is as follows: The first chapter serves as an introduction to the dissertation and presents a broad picture of the analyses undertaken in this dissertation. Chapters two, three and four comprise essays one, two and three respectively. Chapter five concludes the dissertation.