No description available.

Recent years have seen the emergence of a novel type of community space around the world, labelled variously as makerspaces, hackerspaces, hacklabs, Fab Labs, and repair cafés. These workshops, often known collectively as the ‘maker movement', have inspired considerable speculation regarding their potential to prefigure a more sustainable economy, including a shift to localised and participatory forms of production and consumption (Smith and Light, 2017). Until recently, the social scientific work on such spaces has been sparse, especially in-depth ethnographic work, though scholars are increasingly turning their attention to them, particularly in the fields of design and science and technology studies. This thesis, a practice-led ‘enactive ethnography' drawing from three case study workshops in Edinburgh, Scotland, explores the question of sustainable development and maker spaces along two main axes: firstly, the emergence of sustainable practice in such spaces, and secondly, the relevance of such spaces to the cultivation of human wellbeing. The thesis is the first examination of such spaces drawing from developments in social theory towards relational materialism, more-than-representational approaches, and a focus on social practice. It draws a number of conclusions. Firstly, that claims of an undifferentiated global ‘maker movement' may be exaggerated: the grassroots participant-led creation of such spaces results in irreducible diversity and local differentiation. Secondly, while claims about the potential of such spaces for reconfiguring global production and consumption are overstated, when viewed from a practice-oriented perspective, the communities of practice populating such sites comprise potent and potentially-valuable crucibles of knowledge and materials. And thirdly, trying to move away from individualistic conceptions of wellbeing, the case studies provided evidence for the shared workshops playing a crucial role in the contingent emergence of participant wellbeing. These findings are further developed in tandem with a posthuman reading of maker practices, contributing to timely scholarly debates on ‘making' and ‘craft'.

In recent years there has been an increase in the adoption of tourism as an economic strategy in many developing nations and a growing interest in how communities and individuals engage with tourism. This parallels research which aims to uncover alternative readings of community participation in forms of economic and social development. This research uses tourism as a lens to understand the economic subjectivity of communities engaged in tourism. Focusing on how the local populations understand, experience and participate in tourism, it paints a picture of the Perhentian Islands which challenges existing understandings of individual and community participation in tourism. The research is broadly framed as a post-development project which highlights the grass-roots and bottom-up nature of small-scale developments and focuses on the ways in which local populations are actively engaged with tourism. It draws attention to the role played by discourse and subjectivity in constructing and reframing understandings of the individual within tourism development. Such discursive constructs can be actively co-opted as a political tool to empower individuals and communities by reconstructing understandings of local engagement in tourism. By recreating understandings of community engagement with tourism, it becomes possible to create new subjectivities outside of the framework of hegemonic capital. The methodology for this project incorporated participatory action research methods in order to facilitate community benefit through the research process. Research techniques involved both quantitative and qualitative methods in a number of settings. Ethnographic methods involving participant observation and in-depth interviews were complemented with focus groups, and property surveys. Research focused on key themes which were areas of interest identified by community members as well as questions which explored individual motivations for tourism work. In this situation, a number of motivations for engagement with tourism employment emerged. The individuals were actively seeking their employment, rather than passively accepting tourism from a limited number of choices. There were also similarities between hosts and guests which emerged, challenging the usual binary construction.

Globalisation and trade integration have positioned Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as a development imperative for many developing countries, including Southern African Development Community (SADC) economies. Despite concerted efforts both at individual country level and at regional level, FDI flows to the SADC region have declined compared to other regions in the world. The main reasons posited for SADC's inability to attract and retain FDI include negative risk perceptions; a weak ease of doing business environment, and endemic corruption. Hence, the study seeks to investigate the relationship between FDI inflows and corruption and ease of doing business in SADC. The research applies Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) analysis to all 16 SADC countries over a period of 2010 to 2019. The results show that although both corruption and ease of doing business are significantly and positively relate to FDI inflows in SADC, ease of doing business affects FDI to a greater extent compared to corruption. In addition, the inclusion of the interaction between corruption and ease of doing business shows that FDI inflows are more closely attracted by ease of doing business than by corruption.

Diese Doktorarbeit untersucht die Rolle die Bürgerinitiativen an der Schnittstelle zwischen städtischen und digitalen Räumen spielen können. Sie folgt drei Untersuchungslinien. Zunächst wird untersucht, wie die Forschung zu aus Graswurzelbewegungen entstandenen Alternativen für nachhaltige und gerechte Städte von einer besonderen Art des digitalen Gemeinguts profitieren kann: des kollaborativen kartografischen Mappings. Zweitens wird die Verflechtung von digitalen Gemeingütern mit physischen städtischen Gemeingütern untersucht, um zu verstehen, wie die gemeinsame Nutzung zu transformativen Effekten in der Stadt führen kann. Drittens wird versucht, das transformative Potenzial der Gemeingüter als ein Narrativ des Wandels für nachhaltige und gerechte Städte im digitalen Zeitalter zu bewerten. Methodisch stützt die Arbeit sich auf Aktionsforschung, primäre Einzelfallstudien sowie eine vergleichende Fallstudienanalyse. Ein vorläufiges Ergebnis ist die Identifizierung von basisgeleiteten kollaborativen Mappings – hier betrachtet als Initiativen des gemeinsamen Wirkens (Commoning) – als wertvolle Wissensquellen zu alternativer Stadtökonomik. Die Hauptergebnisse zwingen uns dazu, das klassisch-naturalistische Verständnis des Gemeinguts in Frage zu stellen, welches dazu neigt, ein Gemeingut als gegeben zu betrachten. Stattdessen wäre es für die Forschung von Vorteil, einen gemeinsamen Prozess zu untersuchen: die Rückgewinnung, Schaffung und Nutzung gemeinsamer städtischer Ressourcen. Über die künstliche Trennung zwischen materiellen und immateriellen Facetten des Gemeingutes hinaus lässt sich (urbanes) Commoning am besten als eine relationale Praxis in Pflege und Aufbau von Partnerschaften für die Reproduktion von Leben in der Stadt definieren. Dies ist umso wichtiger, dass digitale Werkzeuge zwar neue Potenziale eröffnen können, aber im Gegensatz zu anderen Diskursen (Sharing Economy, Smart Cities) für das Commoning der Stadt nicht von zentraler Bedeutung sind. / This doctoral research investigates the role that citizen-driven initiatives can play at the intersection of the urban and digital spaces. It follows three lines of investigation. First, it explores how research about grassroots alternatives for sustainable and just cities may benefit from a particular type of digital commons: collaborative cartographic mappings. Second, it investigates the intertwin of digital commons with physical urban commons to understand how commoning may lead to transformative impacts in the city. Third, it seeks to evaluate the transformative potential of the commons as a narrative of change for sustainable and just cities in the digital age. Methodologically, it relies on action research, primary individual case-studies as well as a comparative case-study analysis. A preliminary result is the identification of grassroots-led collaborative mappings – seen as commoning initiatives – as valuable sources of knowledge about alternative urban economies. Main results compel us to question the classical/naturalist understanding of the commons that tends to consider it as a given. Instead, research would benefit to investigate a commoning process: the reclaiming creation, and use of shared urban resources. And, further, transcending artificial divides between the tangible and intangible facets of the commons, (urban) commoning is best defined as a relational practice of caring for and building partnerships for the reproduction of life in the city. This is all the more important that another significant result of the present work is that, while they may open new potential, digital tools are not central to commoning the city, in contrast other discourses (Sharing Economy, Smart Cities). Epistemologically, the author recommends aligning the effort of researching urban commoning to the Diverse/Community Economies research agenda which calls for performative studies of more-than-human urban commoning-communities.