This Report applies the theories of Structuration and reflexivity to the Internet in Amman, Jordan, to argue how the Internet can challenge authority as embedded in kinship social formations. In the first place, the Internet can be an empowering agent by challenging authority; at the same time, kinship’s social and moral codes can structure the reflexivity that users derive from the Internet and guide the Structuration to which the Internet can lead. This Report argues that there is a symbiotic relationship between the Internet and kinship. Situating Internet usage within kinship would challenge the ontological and epistemological centrality of the “the media text” in Media Studies. Furthermore, situating Internet usage within kinship would highlight users’ emerging Structuration, which can lead to counter-hegemonic currents in Amman. Then, the Report explains how and why an anthropological approach to media, including the Internet, would be especially suitable for exploring the Internet’s functions in users’ lives. Finally, the Report uses an interview of an Arab woman student to show how kinship’s social and moral codes structure user’s reflexivity on one hand, and the Internet’s ability to encourage reflexivity-- eroding kinship’s codes-- on the other hand. An anthropological approach would offer the conceptual and methodological tools for understanding how media usage in general is a social process, and that reflexivity and structuration emerge within that process, rather than assuming technological determinism. This is crucial in the context of the “Arab Spring,” where the Internet has challenged authority. Thus, this Report proposes kinship as a form of authority and social structure and the Internet as a conduit of Structuration. / text

This dissertation deals with three issues that are important to many firms, namely, volatile commodity prices, environmental regulations, and globalization. In the first essay I study the benefit and the coordination of inventory sharing when there are two existing channels for procurement, i.e., the spot and forward markets. I propose a method for sharing inventory such that the decentralized firms get the same benefit per unit of the sharing transactions regardless of whether the firm is borrowing or lending. The procurement cost gap between the centralized and decentralized cases is dramatically small by using this method. In the second essay, I analyze whether imposing carbon costs to retailers and consumers changes the supply chain design or social welfare. I consider three types of players who want to maximize different objectives and three kinds of competitive settings. Different from previous studies, I show that the supply chain design is changed significantly by imposing carbon costs especially when market competition is medium to high. In the third essay, I consider long-term / short-term strategies of multi-national corporations. For the long-term strategy, I show that the correlation between the exchange rate and the market demand in a foreign country affects plant location. For the short-term strategy, I show that manufacturers increase the inventory levels as the exchange rate of the country where the plant is located grows weaker. I confirm these results empirically using plant-level data of Korean multi-national corporations provided by the Export-Import Bank of Korea. / text

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CEJ is an open access e-journal that publishes engaging articles geared towards practitioners, scholars, and students in the compliance field. It offers a platform for compliance experts to share their innovative ideas with others who are interested or are already involved in the compliance industry.

CEJ is an open access e-journal that publishes engaging articles geared towards practitioners, scholars, and students in the compliance field. It offers a platform for compliance experts to share their innovative ideas with others who are interested or are already involved in the compliance industry.

This thesis examines the suggestion that the Western economies are witnessing the globalisation of markets, production, finance and knowledge which has placed severe limits on the economic role of national governments, and that effective public policy is now restricted to the promotion of education and training which is the chief determinant of national competitiveness in the new global, knowledge-intensive economy. In practice, governments have become heavy supporters of knowledgeintensive industries through policies aimed mainly at upgrading human capital. This view of the role of economic policy amounts to a new academic and policy orthodoxy and is subject to critical examination in this thesis. This thesis contends that some convergence of economic systems has occurred with national economic development enmeshed in a global economy in which some positions are more rewarding than others. At the same time, the nation-state remains central to shaping industrial activity. Nowhere is this argument more true than in `high technology or `knowledgeintensive' sectors where increasing returns apply and where government policies continue to play a critical role in determining industrial development. These arguments are examined through a case study of skills and training issues in European biotechnology - purportedly a sector exposed to processes of globalisation. The study reveals the explanatory limits of the new orthodoxy. It reveals a picture of biotechnology in which economic development is far more complex than originally assumed at the beginning of the skill shortage study. The economic validity of the argument that investments in skills and training are a panacea to improving productivity in a knowledge-intensive industries and are thus the key to the economicprosperity of nations is criticised. It is shown how popular assumptions in relation to the scientific labour market are misplaced and inappropriate. The development of the sector is shown to have been heavily influenced by the operation of national structures and the ways in which these have structured the level and nature of demand for the industry's products and the availability of investment finance for new technologies. Significant changes in the dimensions of national biotechnology industries are acknowledged to have occurred through the globalisation of capital and markets, but the role of the national environment and of the strategic choices of governments in developing the sector are seen to have been highly influential in shaping the dynamics of the industry. Although the failure of the European biotechnology industry to develop at the pace originally envisaged has been attributed to skill shortages, it is argued that the pace of economic development in this sector has been influenced also by the power of national and transnational social groups, differential access to knowledge and finance - in short by the combination of the institutional characteristics of national societies and the emerging power of transnational movements

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published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Philosophy

This paper engages operationalized discourses from economics and political science on resources and conflict using anthropological theory and ethnographic techniques. Current trends among civil war scholars locate grievances as ubiquitous constructs or rhetorical tools, irrelevant in causal analysis. This de-emphasis generates an unsavory menu of options for governments seeking to eliminate domestic conflict in resource-rich regions rationalizing grievance-generating human rights abuses.In "developing" resource-rich regions the historical trajectory of indigenous populations is placed in conflict with a development agenda that serves state interests. Grievances are central to the conflict over identity within the affected communities in a struggle for national affiliation or disaffiliation. In the absence of a pluralistic political system grievance-motivated political imperatives combine with political isolation to generate political unrest. As grievances are central to understanding cultural change and social unrest, pluralistic institutions and human rights protections have "realpolitikal" value in securing stability in resource-rich regions.

The AmazonCoop--a cooperative that mediates trade between Brazilian Amazonian indigenous groups and the transnational cosmetics firm The Body Shop--seeks to use the market opportunities provided by neoliberal economic globalization to achieve sustainable development in indigenous villages, with mixed results. While the cooperative provides significant material benefits, it fails to achieve the social goals of democracy, participation, and self-development embodied in the cooperative principles. In this paper, I examine AmazonCoop in the context of historical globalizations on Brazil's "extractive frontier," demonstrating substantial continuity between contemporary and historical political economies. I use this historical anthropological analysis to discuss the potential contributions of cooperatives to development, the relationships between historical and contemporary globalizations, and the political-economic landscapes on which indigenous people can pursue their interests.