This thesis analyzes the struggle of the last decade to improve the quality of Swedish science and how the methods towards this goal can be understood from different scientific traditions. By studying the latest research proposals by the Swedish government it shows a development towards viewing all the sciences as natural sciences in certain aspects. It argues that the notion of scientific peers being the same for the natural sciences and the human sciences is a problematic assumption, when it comes to evaluating the human sciences through certain quantitative methods. It further argues that whether or not this assumption is true for a certain discipline is essential for the adequacy of these evaluation methods. It also tries to make a first assessment of whether or not the discipline of Swedish economic history is indeed suitable for this kind of evaluation.

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This study evaluates, by means of face to face interviews and a postal survey, aspects of the Market Towns Initiative (MTI), the Beacon Towns Programme (BTP), and related programmes of community-led work, the majority of which arose from the British Government’s Rural White Paper of 2000. Particular emphasis is placed on: participants’ experiences, achievements and opinions about the programmes; their understanding of rural poverty; the extent to which they thought that the programmes should have had poverty alleviation as an aim, and to which they believed that the programmes had helped to identify and address rural poverty. A review of the literature relating to rural policy reveals that political interest (and, therefore, policymakers’ interest) in the functions of England’s country – “market” - towns, and their place in the settlement hierarchy, has waxed and waned since the Second World War. During this period the nature of government, in particular the balance between the various tiers, has tilted in favour of central government. Consequently, the powers available to County and District/Borough Councils, if not Town/Parish Councils, have reduced. Central government has increasingly looked to partnerships formed from public, voluntary, and private sector organizations to implement policy. It is governance, therefore, rather than government, that has grown in importance in recent years. The MTI/BT programmes were both designed for implementation by broad-based partnerships of professionals and volunteers. The literature also reveals that the post-war period has seen research into poverty become increasingly nuanced and sophisticated, with definitions moving away from the relatively simple to understand (eg lack of money) to more complicated notions of disadvantage, deprivation, and social exclusion. The factors that affect rural poverty have, since the 1970s, been remarkably constant (eg access to services, affordable housing, low income self-employment). The problems of rural poverty have not been solved. It is argued, based on the results of the data acquired from this research, that community-led development programmes such as the MTI/BTP, have the potential to inform the development of policy and practice relating to community-led development and poverty alleviation, to add to the body of knowledge about rural poverty, and to improve the overall understanding of the functions of England’s small towns. Despite the potential of partnerships to effect change, the important role of local authorities as democratically accountable organizations, and contributors to partnerships’ success and effectiveness, is noted.

The present study is centered in the conception of Social Movements while expression of the content of the division and of the conflicting relations among the social class. In that sense, it is understood the construction of the notion of Social Movement and its unfoldings, as part of a wide project, that is mined, in the ideological plan, the social conflicts, through the politics of the collaboration among the classes and of the consequent remeaning of the conflicts. The analysis perspective that permeated the debates, around the Social Movement category, in the years 1980/1990, pointed the emergency of "New Social" Movements (NMS) related to the supposed loss of the centrality of the work and of the crisis of the class struggle, under the paradigm of the culture. In the opposite direction of that affirmative and its presuppositions, our analysis was based in the dialectical method that allows verifying, starting from the category totality, that the social conflicts exist equal and step in its contradictions, independent of what is put as cultural identity. It is defended in this thesis that the memory of the peasants struggles in Brazil, stippled of manifestations and historical experiences, are evidences in the several ways of reactions to the exploration logic, below the syntony of interest of the hegemonic class, in the power, articulated with the State, fact so well evidenced in our geographical historical Brazilian formation, in the Northeastern semi-arid. In this inclination it was fundamental to understand the reason why the semi-arid has been constituted as appropriation territory and convergence of interests of the capital, metamorphosed in the rhetorical speech of the geographical naturalization, but that, concretely, it is configured in government programs that guarantee the conformation of the social and territorial inequality of the labour. In this path the field research accomplished in the Territory of the Alto Sertão Sergipano proved as the proposal of a new rural development, now backed in the local development, with focus in the territory, it is part of a strategy with many faces, formulated by the neoliberal State and for its cooperators and international allies, to contain insurrection of the rural workers without their own land. Engendered in the salience of the development politics for relief of the rural poverty, the territorial development is organized to neutralize the tactics of direct actions of the popular movements, such as the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra - MST; Movimento dos Pequenos Agricultores - MPA, and Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens - MAB. The territory is presented as planning instrument, in which, illusionality, are found the solutions for the problems of the local population. The Social Movements have been facing the challenge of being part of that architecture of legitimation of the ideological character of the dominant class that is dressed on the speech of the administration of collective participation. Such perspective aims to neutralize the conflicts, to guarantee the conciliation and, to justify the conflicts as actions of criminalization of the Social Movements. As resistance the Social Movements try to enlarge their scales of performances, to narrow and to intensify the alliances, in the sense to assure and to reaffirm their beginnings and their struggle flag. To Geography, the task is to think, to contemplate, to watch and to reveal this reality, permeated of contradictions, in the way as the capital produces and reproduces spaces self-territorializing, and to present alternatives of overcoming possibilities to the warranty of the alternative territories of the peasant population. / O presente estudo está centrado na concepção de Movimentos Sociais enquanto expressão do conteúdo da divisão e das relações conflituosas entre as classes sociais. Nesse sentido, compreende-se a construção da noção de Movimento Social e seus desdobramentos, como parte de um amplo projeto, que minou, no plano ideológico, os conflitos sociais, através da política da colaboração entre as classes e da conseqüente ressignificação dos conflitos. A perspectiva de análise que permeou os debates, em torno da categoria Movimento Social, nos anos 1980/1990, apontou para a emergência de novos Movimentos Sociais (NMS) relacionada à suposta perda da centralidade do trabalho e da crise da luta de classes, sob o paradigma da cultura. Na contramão dessa afirmativa e seus pressupostos, esta análise foi embasada no método dialético, que permite constatar a partir da categoria totalidade, que os conflitos sociais existem par e passu nas suas contradições, independente do que é posto como identidade cultural. Defende-se nessa tese que a memória das lutas camponesas no Brasil, pontilhada de manifestações e experiências históricas, são evidências das diversas formas de reações à lógica de exploração, sob a sintonia de interesse da classe hegemônica, no poder, articulada com o Estado, fato tão bem evidenciado na nossa formação histórica geográfica brasileira, no Sertão Nordestino. Neste viés foi fundamental entender o porquê o Sertão tem se constituído território de apropriação e convergência de interesses do capital, metamorfoseado no discurso retórico da naturalização geográfica, mas que, no concreto, se configura em programas governamentais que garantem a conformação da desigualdade social e territorial do trabalho. Nesta trajetória a pesquisa de campo realizada no Território do Alto Sertão Sergipano comprovou como a proposta de um novo desenvolvimento rural, agora respaldada no desenvolvimento local, com enfoque no território, faz parte de uma estratégia multifacetada, formulada pelo Estado neoliberal e por seus cooperadores e aliados internacionais, para conter a insurreição dos trabalhadores rurais sem terra. Engendrada no bojo das políticas de desenvolvimento para alívio da pobreza rural, o desenvolvimento territorial é organizado para neutralizar as táticas de ações diretas dos movimentos populares, tais como o Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra MST, o Movimento dos Pequenos Agricultores MPA e o Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens MAB. O território é apresentado como instrumento de planejamento, no qual, ilusoriamente, são encontradas as soluções para os problemas da população local. Os Movimentos Sociais têm enfrentado o desafio de fazerem parte dessa arquitetura de legitimação do caráter ideológico da classe dominante, que se traveste no discurso da gestão de participação coletiva. Tal perspectiva objetiva neutralizar os conflitos, garantir a conciliação e poder justificar os conflitos como ações de criminalização dos Movimentos Sociais. Como resistência os Movimentos Sociais procuram ampliar suas escalas de atuações, estreitar e intensificar as alianças, no sentido de assegurar e reafirmar seus princípios e sua bandeira de luta. À Geografia, cabe a tarefa de pensar, refletir, desvelar e revelar esta realidade, permeada de contradições, no modo como o capital produz e reproduz espaços se territorializando e apresentar alternativas de possibilidades de superação para a garantia dos territórios alternativos da autonomia camponesa.

This thesis examines the shifting relationship between the state and its subjects with regard to responsibility for and entitlement to care. Using Malaysia as a case study the research engages with international medical travel (IMT) as an outcome of the neoliberal retrenchment of the welfare state. I offer a critical reading of postcolonial development strategies that negotiate the benefits and challenges of extending care to non-national subjects. The research draws from relevant media, private-sector and governmental documents and 49 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with IMT proponents and critics representing federal, state and urban governmental authorities, professional associations, civil society, private medical facilities and medical travel agencies in Malaysia’s principal IMT regions (Klang Valley, Penang and Malacca). Across four empirical chapters, the thesis demonstrates how ‘Malaysia’ gets positioned as a destination within a range of imagined geographies of care through a strategic-relational logic of care and hospitality. I argue that this positioning places ‘Malaysian’ subjects and spaces into lucrative global networks in ways that underscore particular narratives of postcolonial hybridity that draw from Malaysia’s ‘developing country’, ‘progressive, moderate Islamic’ and ‘multiethnic’ credentials. In considering the political logics of care-giving, I explore how the extension of care can serve as a place-making technology to re-imagine the state as a provider and protector within a globalising marketplace in which care, increasingly commodified, is tied to the production of new political, social, cultural and economic geographies.

The thesis is a study of a Guaraní community (comunidad) situated in the Department of Santa Cruz in the southeastern lowlands of Bolivia. The thesis uses the concept of ‘comunidad’ as a focus of investigation. While this concept is one that is familiar and firmly embedded in contemporary discourses throughout Bolivia, the meanings which different people and interest groups attach to it and the purposes which they ascribe to it are far from unanimous. Apart from the physical and legal entity, comprising a group of people, the land on which they live, and the legal title for its ownership, a comunidad is a multifaceted and multilayered complex of diverging and sometimes competing ideas, desires and agendas. Questioning the concept of ‘comunidad’ in this way opens up new perspectives on what people are doing and why that could easily be overlooked in continuing to assume that we know what we are talking about when talking about a ‘comunidad indígena’ in Bolivia today. The thesis explores the case of Cañón de Segura by eliciting and bringing together the various claims and perspectives that impact on the lives of its inhabitants (comunarios). Starting with a historical overview to situate the comunidad within Bolivian and Guaraní history, the thesis moves into an ethnographic discussion of the comunarios’ own perceptions and meanings of ‘comunidad’, followed by an exploration of various outsiders’ perspectives on the same topic that impact on the comunarios’ lives in different ways. The aim of the thesis is to illustrate the overlap and entanglements between these different positions in order to show how the different perspectives on the meaning and purpose of a Guaraní ‘comunidad’ all contribute to shape the actual realities of people’s lives ‘on the ground’.

Gender Mainstreaming ist eine gleichstellungspolitische Strategie, die daraufhin ausgerichtet ist, sämtliche Entscheidungen in einer Organisation kritisch auf ihre Auswirkungen auf die von geschlechterbezogenen Ungleichheiten unterschiedlich geprägte Lebensrealität von Frauen und Männern zu überprüfen und diesbezüglich bestehende Differenzen abzubauen. Kritik wird u. a. aufgrund der voraussetzungsreichen Umsetzung und der Gefahr, stereotype Geschlechterbilder zu verfestigen, geübt.

Gender Mainstreaming ist eine gleichstellungspolitische Strategie, die daraufhin ausgerichtet ist, sämtliche Entscheidungen in einer Organisation kritisch auf ihre Auswirkungen auf die von geschlechterbezogenen Ungleichheiten unterschiedlich geprägte Lebensrealität von Frauen und Männern zu überprüfen und diesbezüglich bestehende Differenzen abzubauen. Kritik wird u. a. aufgrund der voraussetzungsreichen Umsetzung und der Gefahr, stereotype Geschlechterbilder zu verfestigen, geübt.