This thesis attempts to understand the intellectual milieu of Maori society in the early colonial period through the medium of Maori-language sources of information dating from that time. A base in Maori documentary allows Maori history to exist under the same disciplines as that of other literate peoples. The thesis argues that the imposition of English meanings on Maori language has shaded Maori meanings. It offers a rereading of documents including the Treaty of Waitangi in order to restore their Maori historicity. Maori society has also been misrepresented historiographically by the creation of false distance between metropolitan and indigenous culture, including the failure to sufficiently consider the shaping force of literacy on Maori perceptions of citizenship and on the politics of sovereignty that developed at mid-century. The thesis argues that land sales were the main Maori experience of government, and that the government's ability to define the terms of the market reconstrued society in ways which destroyed its former political structure.This turned it into a land-owning collective, in which power lay not in human consequence, as formerly, but in the size of the cultivations to which an owner could prove a right in terms constructed by officials. All members of the kin-group were constutued land owners, and the status of the chief was reduced to the size of the lands to which he could prove ownership. By 1865, when the Native Land Court was instituted, power within Maoridom lay in the land itself: te mana o te whenua. This position was written into culture, and endures into the present. The premise of the thesis is that change towards western norms is the proper frame of study of colonial Maori society, but that the magnitude of change has been obscured, both by the politicisation of the past on presentist premises and by the transformation of colonial models into what is now assumed to be 'traditional Maori society'. In order to separate the colonial from the traditional the thesis looks at precontact society custom regarding authority over land and fisheries. The thesis underscores the magnitude of change when tapu disappeared as the support of chiefs' civil governance, which was played out in the migration of mana (personal power) from chiefs to, modern, land. The disappearance of tapu also, however, aided the rise of Maori civil society within the colony on the basis of the desire for modernity which kept Maori engaged with the government - and therefore still governed. This is studied through letters that detail the operation of civil life in Taranaki and among Ngati Kahungunu, with special reference to the experience of Wiermu Kingi and Renata Kawepo.

The inter-relationship of cultural expressions is the basis of a model of cultural change (the cultural expression web) presented in this dissertation. The thesis and model are derived from formative case studies in developing nations of the Asia Pacific region. Cultural expressions, the 'physical' manifestation of culture, are often a 'product' for tourism. Many host communities trade cultural expressions for benefits that tourism can provide. As such, cultural expressions are a direct link between a host culture and the tourist. Modelling the change process in expressions is presented as a heuristic device as well as a prognostic tool for cultural impact assessment. The thesis proposes that cultural expressions are linked and that a change in one affects others. The magnitude of change to a cultural expression, and flow-on effect, depends on the significance of the cultural expression to the culture, the number of links and the strength of these links, determined by practice and its contribution to maintaining social structure and providing physical benefits to the individual and community. The dissertation documents thesis development from a personal construct, through analysis of formative case studies to identify conceptual categories, and formalisation of the model. The thesis and model are tested against cultural impact theory presented in the tourism literature and are found to be consistent or related. They are also tested against tourism related case studies from Indonesia and are found to explain reported changes to culture and cultural expressions. Methods to test the model empirically are presented.

This thesis examines variations of the Chinese ‘combat film’, from its origins within cinema in 1949, through to the contemporary period. My argument transposes the critical approach of ‘genre’, as a popular style within conventional film criticism, to a specific Chinese form. In particular, this study investigates the ‘combat film’ as a prevailing mode in Chinese cinema, with a particular history, form of progression and set of aesthetics. The argument initially applies the ‘war film’ and ‘combat genre’ categorisations to Chinese forms. Consequently three major variants emerge, manifest in the ‘regulated’ (1949-1966), ‘reformed’ (1980s) and ‘renewed’ (1990s) styles, respectively. These modes are subsequently examined in rigorous narratological and cinematic contexts, resulting in an expanded conception of the Chinese ‘combat’ film. This thesis offers an integrative appreciation of variegations of the Chinese ‘combat film’ since 1949, sutured to wider discursive and socio-political changes within the country. Moreover, this argument produces a framework for a more expansive and complex comprehension of Chinese cinema, one undergoing continual modes of re-negotiation as the medium progresses into the Twenty First Century.

123 p. / Submitted by Santiago Fabio (fabio.ssantiago@hotmail.com) on 2012-12-19T19:17:51Z No. of bitstreams: 1 66.pdf: 3131226 bytes, checksum: e78b51d59100da2e05f3d35b1609af84 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2012-12-19T19:17:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 66.pdf: 3131226 bytes, checksum: e78b51d59100da2e05f3d35b1609af84 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / O presente trabalho parte de um estudo de caso, em uma empresa petroquímica brasileira, envolvida em processo de mudança cultural em razão do contexto de fusão e integração de empresas. Neste cenário, investiga a percepção das pessoas sobre a influência de uma cultura forte e predominante na mudança cultural. Esta percepção é identificada através de uma pesquisa tipo survey, qualitativa e quantitativa, realizada através de questionário aplicado em amostra representativa das pessoas que vivenciaram diretamente o processo de mudança cultural do caso estudado. Na análise dos dados foi identificado que a cultura forte e predominante contribui sim para a mudança cultural em um ambiente de fusão e integração. Como complemento dessa confirmação, foi possível identificar na leitura qualitativa dos dados que essa influência é positiva. Os resultados foram comparados com estudos existentes na literatura e com pesquisas anteriores realizados no ambiente corporativo. Também foi abordada a influência de mudanças no ambiente físico de trabalho na mudança cultural. Como impactos gerenciais do estudo foi possível concluir que a existência de uma cultura dominante associada à sua prática efetiva são condições necessárias e indispensáveis para uma estratégia de gestão de mudança, porém, somente elas não garantem o sucesso. O exercício adequado do papel da liderança, reforçado pelo exemplo na prática dos valores e princípios da cultura dominante, constitui um caminho crítico para lograr êxito na execução dessa estratégia. / Salvador

A cultura de um povo ou qualquer sociedade humana nunca é estática, pois está sempre sujeita a mudanças, fruto de influências endógenas e exógenas. Partindo desta premissa, pretendemos nesta tese analisar os processos de mudanças socioculturais ocorridos entre os nyungwe, a partir de fatores e contatos externos, ou seja, exógenos. Entre esses, elegemos apenas quatro que julgamos mais significativos, a saber, o sistema dos prazos, a invasão dos Nguni no vale de Zambeze, a guerra colonial e a guerra civil pósindependência. Partimos da hipótese de que em qualquer situação de contato entre culturas diferentes, produzem-se dois fenômenos que ora se conflitam, ora dialogam: a resistência e a ruptura. A resistência resultaria na continuidade da cultura tradicional de um povo, enquanto a ruptura resultaria na interpretação assimilativa dos aportes culturais estranhos. Em ambas as situações, a identidade dos nyungwe, enquanto categoria de autodefinição e heterodefinição, se manteve. / The culture of any human society is never static, for it\'s always subjected to changes as a result of exogenous and endogenous influences. Starting from these premises, we intend to analyze the socio-cultural changes that took place among nyungwe from external factors and contacts. Between these factors we elected only four which we found more significant. The prazos system, the nguni invasion in Zambezi valley, the colonial war as well as post independence civil war. We started from the hypothesis that in any situation of contacts between different cultures, this situation produces two phenomena that sometime get in conflict themselves, or get in dialogue: the resistance and the rupture. The resistance results from the people traditional continuity culture, while the rupture results from the assimilative interpretation of strange cultural elements. In both situation the identity of nyungwe people as self-definition category and hetero-definition remains.

This study examines the influence of religion on economic attitudes over time. To do this, it focuses on how the impact changes without camouflaging the effect of religious beliefs and practices. It partially adopts the approach by Guiso et al. (2003) to test the enduring importance of religion and then extended to capture its influence over time–using OLS and Panel regression models. An “Integrated Values Surveys 1981-2014” data set from both the World Values Survey (WVS) and the European Values Survey (EVS) is employed in the study, using the latest available waves. Over time, I find that religion remains significant and statistically correlated to the development of institutions favorable for economic growth. Although these effects vary across different religious denominations, however, none of them seems to be an impediment to the development of government institutions, and for the most part a free market economy. Further analysis reveals that religious belief, irrespective of service attendance, appears to be an important measure of religiosity, and excluding its effect from the study of religion seems to conceal much of its influence on people’s attitudes. Religious people tend to exhibit more positive economic attitudes than atheists, and these effects are virtually significant across categories, even if we focus on how they differ over time. However, religious people seem to be less concern about market competition but are more likely to support its fairness. For some religions, these effects tend to remain constant over time, while for others, there are significant changes across denominations. Another key observation is that conservative attitudes toward women for almost all religions tend to be weakening, moving one year in time, compared to the result reported by Guiso et al. (2003). But this effect is however opposite regarding women’s right to education and roles as housewives, where nearly all religions are becoming far more conservative over time. Perhaps not surprising also, all religions are becoming far more trustful of the government, the police, the army and the justice systems, although their attitudes toward strangers and people of other races seem to be moving in opposite direction. Therefore, contrary to conventional wisdom on the persistence of cultural traits on economic outcomes, this study provides one of the newest evidence that religious values and preferences are susceptible to changes over time, and that these effects are observable between generations, moving 33 years up, from 1981 to 2014. / Master's Thesis

Implementing cultural change is a huge project for any company. Not only is it time consuming, there are also many factors that determine the success of a cultural change. This study aims to explore a number of these success factors from a social perspective of sustainability, in particular the employees’ perspective. The employee’s psychological perspective is more difficult to expose compared to the economic and environmental perspectives, because it has a qualitative nature and cannot be easily captured in quantitative models. However, this does not make the employees’ psychological perspective less important. Recent studies show that psychological safety supports the individual learning process and creates an openness and motivation for change. Results of this study show that a stronger sense of psychological safety can be created by a positive atmosphere among colleagues, a high level of trust, supportive leader behaviors, and systems that facilitate efficient information and knowledge sharing. Furthermore, the study contributes to the field of organizational theory by investigating the role, effect and perception of psychological safety within one multinational company.

Organizational culture is a widely known concept and is something that has increasingly become a subject of importance as many argue for its relation to an organization’s overall performance and business. The idea for this study was born in the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic that broke out during the year of 2020. The authors’ interest in the subject of organizational culture and the identified lack of research on the area culminated in the research question to what extent does remote work affect organizational culture? The aim with our study was to deepen our knowledge on remote work and its effects on culture because of the widespread discussion on a more flexible attitude towards it even after the COVID-19 pandemic. The theoretical framework in this study was based on a three- perspective-approach that consists of three different perspectives on how to study organizational culture. The research was based on a qualitative case study and nine semi- structured interviews were conducted. The results showed that organizational culture has been affected by remote work to some extent. The authors suggest future research on the subject with a similar study, but at a later point in time to be able to conclude the more long term and permanent effects of remote work on organizational culture.

The main goal of this thesis is to study the life and customs of the Lacandon Indians, one of the smallest indigenous groups of Maya origin, who live in two villages in the Lacandon jungle, in Chiapas, Mexico. The thesis is focused on Lacandon life from the time when they were living in relative isolation from the outside world, and also on changes that have occurred during the 20th century. It has been particularly considered the changes in the Lacandon family and the position of Lacandon women. The study is based on available ethnographic studies, gender theories and especially on my own research realized in the communities of Lacanjá and Nahá from 2008 to 2012.

No description available.