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This thesis examines the implications of the alleged rise of the `knowledge economy' for regional economic change in Europe. In particular, it is concerned with `postindustrial' trajectories of less-favoured regions, in both the Western and Eastern parts of the `New Europe'. In doing so, the thesis critically engages with the `new regionalism' economic geography approaches that draw on institutional/evolutionary economics, and on the `knowledge economy' or 'learning economy' discourses. These approaches invariably identify localised forms of knowledge production and learning and various supporting institutions as key factors behind regional prosperity. Considered as the most important organisational units of contemporary global knowledge-intensive capitalism, economically successful regions are understood as `learning regions' acting as collectors and repositories of knowledge, and displaying the ability to learn and innovate, while being supported by regional `institutional thickness'. Less-favoured regions are themselves claimed to have a capacity to improve their own economic fortunes by becoming `learning regions'. These claims are exposed to a theoretical scrutiny that reveals serious conceptual weaknesses in the `knowledge economy' and `learning region' paradigms and the thesis suggests an alternative conceptualisation of regional economic change. This alternative conceptualisation places emphasis on the `socio-spatial divisions of labour' and the accompanying `socio-spatial value chains/networks' as a useful prism through which increasingly uneven regional development in Europe can be understood. The case studies of two former industrial region-states are then presented - one in the `Western' periphery (Scotland) and one in the `Eastern' post-socialist periphery (Slovakia) of the `New Europe' - both attempting a transformation to the high value-added `knowledge-based' economy. The empirical evidence supports the view that, although institutions can play an important role in economic development of regions, their room for manoeuvre is nevertheless significantly constrained by their own historical legacies and the wider neo-liberal political economy.

<p>This thesis is a study of economic change in the Palaeoeskimo period (3200 B. P. to 1000 B. P.) at Igloolik Island, in the Foxe Basin, eastern Canadian Arctic. Evidence derived from the analysis of settlement, zooarchaeological and artefactual data was used to in fer changes in settlement, subsistence and social organization between early PreDorset (3200 B. P.) and Late Dorset (1000 B. P.). The primary economic unit during early PreDorset was probably the nuclear fanlily and at Igloolik the major subsistence activity was ringed seal hunting. PreDorset settlement was short-term and groups appear to have been highly mobile, moving away from Igloolik to exploit other resources on a seasonal basis. In contrast Dorset groups were less mobile. spending a greater proportion of the year at Igloolik and exploiting a wider range of resources. The Early Dorset period was characterized by the development of new technology, communal walrus hunting, storage practices and the appearance of larger economic and social units. In Late Dorset, this basic pattern remained the sanle, although subsistence strategies continued to broaden.</p> <p>The development of communal walrus hunting storage and the widening of the subsistence base combined to produce relative subsistence security in Dorset as compared to PreDorset. This relative security seems to have been expressed in the elaboration of material culture, particularly walrus hunting harpoon heads. and it may have resulted some socio-economic differentiation between Dorset groups in the Foxe Basin region and those in the central and high Arctic.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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This thesis examines the diverse and conflicting ways in which the past is invoked in a village in the coastal area of the Aude department, in the Languedoc region of Southern France. The region of Languedoc has been undergoing turbulent, and unpredictable socio- economic change since the development of viticultural capitalism in the 19th century, and since the 1960s has also witnessed the development of a sizeable tourist industry. These factors, along with the proximity of the village to the city of Narbonne, have led over the past 150 years to the creation of a heterogeneous village population. The thesis details the plurality of ways in which the past was temporalised in the village during the fieldwork period (1996-7), taking account of the various social groups present in the village, and their economic activities and life worlds. It also illustrates the relationship between local temporalities and wider socio-economic developments in the region, in particular in relation to the development of a tourist industry that transforms the past into a commodity. The thesis is partly concerned to assess the relationship between these wider socio-economic developments, and the sociality of the village inhabitants. Drawing on recent anthropological work on time, human temporality is viewed as the product of symbolic processes, through which agents make evident, and act upon, the inherently temporal character of existence. In this sense the apprehension and significance of the past is implicated in a dynamic with present action and future orientations, and interpreted accordingly. However, a 'culturalist' perspective is avoided in the thesis by foregrounding the importance of interpreting all human activity as both historically situated, and implicated in wider political economic processes. In this respect, the thesis also pays attention to issues of political economy, and attempts a partial synthesis of different anthropological approaches: the phenomenological, the symbolic, and the materialist.

This dissertation explores what it means to be post-socialist for Ismaili Muslims living in the Ishkashim district of Tajik Badakhshan. It examines the legacies of the Soviet era in people’s everyday lives, questioning how people continue to see themselves as socialist notwithstanding the putative end of state socialism. Part of what it means to be socialist has to do with expectations of what the state should provide. Tajik Ishkashimis experienced the Soviet Union as an allocative centre that helped them greatly. The post-Soviet Tajik state is unable to provide for Tajik Ishkashimis in the way of the former Soviet Union. I suggest that Tajik Ishkashimis’ religious leader, the Aga Khan, and his development institutions have gone some way toward filling this gap, making the Imam appear to be the new paternalist centre. I propose that we think through Ishkashimis’ memories of their relations with the Soviet allocative centre through what I call an “economy of grace”. Drawing on Pitt-Rivers’ theorization of “grace” as a morally-driven gift of excess that the receiver is never expected to (be able to) return, I trace the ways in which this economy of grace continues to frame Ishkashimis’ post-Soviet engagement with the Imam and his institutions, if not with the Tajik state. I then explore the moral legacies of Soviet socialism by examining how Ishkashimis try to maintain values that they associate with socialism, most notably the privileging of social relations over the market. Where both the Tajik state and the Imam’s institutions fail to provide for Tajik Ishkashimis in the way of the former Soviet state, Ishkashimis turn to labour migration. I draw on Greenberg’s (2011) and Jansen’s (2011) definition of “normal” as the predictability of daily life to demonstrate that remittances enable those living at home to maintain the rhythms and trajectories of “normal” village life. One of the effects of migration, however, is that the absence of migrants has made villages in Ishkashim no longer feel like home. It is my contention that wedding videos actualize a transnational home by giving hope that migrants who had been present in Ishkashim for when the wedding was taped might one-day return.Many hope that the Imam will create jobs in Ishkashim that will bring home migrants because they see that his development projects in Afghanistan have had this effect. Tajik Ishkashimis want their state to enable such development work on their side too, but they also worry that the work of the Imam and his institutions will force them to negotiate the norms and values of what it means to be Ishkashimi with their cross-border Afghan kin. And so, they look to the Tajik state to firmly enforce the border and keep clear the division between Tajik and Afghan Ishkashim. Ultimately, notwithstanding the incapacity of the Imam and his institutions to provide for Tajik Ishkashimis in the way of the former Soviet state, the Imam continues to garner legitimacy because he is also a spiritual leader. As such, the Imam commands a moral order, motivating people to be good so that they can achieve spiritual enlightenment. I explain that for Tajik Ishkashimis, being good is not (yet) defined by orthopraxy. Instead, Ishkashimis strive to be good in their own ways within the context of the changing socio-economic circumstances. In many ways, even though Tajik Ishkashimis’ present socio-economic situation is ostensibly worse than during the Soviet era, they now have access to the Imam in a way they never had before. Tajik Ishkashimis hold out hope for a better future, one that looks very much like their Soviet past, only better. Better because it has the Imam in it and the spiritual component of his leadership gives him the potential to satisfy them in ways that the former Soviet state could never have.

Ce travail de thèse vise à présenter un certain nombre de tendances et de points de tensions nés ou mis à jour à Cuba à la suite de la période spéciale en temps de paix que l'on peut définir comme une crise économique et sociale d'une ampleur considérable ayant frappé ce pays à la suite de la chute du camp socialiste au début des années 90. Pour ce faire, nous nous centrons sur l'expérience de musiciens qualifiés « d'ordinaires » évoluant dans la capitale, La Havane. C'est ainsi à la lumière du quotidien de ces artistes qu'il nous sera possible de comprendre et de saisir la profondeur de cette crise et des fortes redéfinitions qu’elle met en jeu. Il s’agit de voir les conséquences des moyens mobilisés par le régime socialiste cubain de façon à sortir de cette impasse économique et sociale tout en préservant les acquis sociaux de cette révolution, base de sa légitimité populaire. Seulement, si à terme les réformes engagées (massification du tourisme, progressive mise en avant de comportements économiques libéralisant, double circulation monétaire...) ont permis un redressement économique certain, elles ne vont pas sans questionner, voire entrer en contradiction avec les discours, prérogatives et modes de vie valorisés par le pouvoir. Nous verrons ainsi de quelles manières un certain nombre de tensions, issues de ces changements (entre un passé idéalisé et un futur incertain, entre l’image de l’authentiquement cubain et celle du non-cubain, et enfin entre le nous révolutionnaire et les projections individuelles) sont traités par ces musiciens, particulièrement sensibles au décloisonnement de l’expérience cubaine. Dans leur manière de s'auto-définir en tant qu'artiste, dans le regard qu'ils portent sur leur trajectoire et leur métier, nous verrons que ces individus procèdent à un bricolage, à une négociation identitaire incessante visant à conférer à leurs actes un sens que la réalité sociale et économique a rendu trouble.La vie et les pratiques professionnelles de ces derniers, les moyens qu’ils mobilisent pour lutter et tenter de vivre de leur musique illustrent à notre avis la société cubaine dans son ensemble, marquée par une grande ambivalence, par le besoin « d’inventer » de nouveaux moyens de subsistance et la nécessité d’assembler des éléments en décomposition ou émergents. / The aim of this research is to provide a number of trends and areas of tension that have emerged or evolved in Cuba after the « special period in peacetime », which can be defined as the most considerably developed social and economic crisis that has struck this country, as a result of the socialist camp collapse in the early 90’s. In order to achieve this, we focus on the experience of musicians seen as ordinary in the city of Havana. It is thanks to the observation of artists in action in their everyday life that we will be able to understand and to capture the depth of this crisis and these large redefinitions it causes. The purpose is to define the consequences of the means that have been mobilized by the Cuba's socialist system in order to get out of this social and economic impasse while safeguarding the social benefits of this revolution, based on its popular legitimacy. If in the end the reforms (the massification of tourism, the gradual increase of liberalizing and economical behaviors, and the dual circulation of currencies...) allowed an economic recovery, they lead to a questioning and entering into contradiction with speeches, prerogatives and ways of life valued by those in power. We will see how areas of tension, emanating from changes (between an idealized past and an uncertain future, between the picture of the genuinely Cuban and non-Cuban, and finally between the people of the revolution and the individual who has his own project) treated by these musicians, especially sensitive to the « decompartmentalization » of the Cuban experience. We will see that these musicians, in the way they define theirselves as artists, in their concept of path in life and profession, effect sweeping changes, constantly negotiating questions of identity to ascribe meaning to what they do in this confused, social and economic reality. In their life and professional practices, the means allocated to fight and to try to make a living with music show in our opinion the Cuban society in its entirety marked by a great ambivalence, the need to find new means of subsistence and to bring these decomposing or emerging elements together.

Submitted by Mario BC (mario@bc.ufrpe.br) on 2016-05-31T13:11:15Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Jucimar Casimiro de Andrade.pdf: 2776341 bytes, checksum: 16eefb359f633054b6d5185187ba6781 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-05-31T13:11:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Jucimar Casimiro de Andrade.pdf: 2776341 bytes, checksum: 16eefb359f633054b6d5185187ba6781 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-07 / Currently characterized by strong globalization and outstanding regulatory pressure, the financial capital market has shown profound changes, especially the introduction of new corporations in the agribusiness interested in capital opening. Therefore, this study aimed to analyze the causal relationship between a set of macroeconomic variables and gross revenue in agribusiness sector companies listed on the Brazilian Stock Exchange (BM&FBovespa). Thus, it has selected a sample of eight public companies with active shares on the BM&FBovespa, from the quarter of 2003.1 to 2015.2, belonging to all segments handled directly or indirectly to agribusiness. As endogenous variables, it was selected five variables: Gross Revenue of the respective companies, GDP of Agriculture, Agricultural Products Price Index (IPA), Basic Interest Rate (Selic) and exchange rate (R$/US$). Thus, using the methodology of Vector Auto Regressive (VAR), the techniques of variance decomposition and impulse response function showed similar readings, that is, the GDP of Agriculture and the Agricultural Products Price Index showed a significant influence on the revenue in 7 of the eight models analyzed, especially Eucatex SA, in which the Father has come to represent over 58% of the variance decomposition from the 18th period and Klabin SA, in which the exchange rate now accounts for over 40% of the variance decomposition of forecast errors from the 12 periods after the structural shock. When compared to the Granger Causality Test (1986), the results showed some differences, and the lagged values of own recipe that caused more about herself. / Caracterizado atualmente pela forte globalização e pressão regulatória marcante, o mercado financeiro de capitais vem apresentando profundas transformações, principalmente pela inserção de novas corporações ligadas ao agronegócio interessadas na abertura de capital. Portanto, essa investigação teve como objetivo, analisar a relação de causalidade entre um conjunto de variáveis macroeconômicas e a receita bruta em empresas do segmento de agronegócio listadas na BM&FBovespa. Destarte, foi selecionada uma amostra de oito empresas de capital aberto com ações ativas na BM&FBovespa, entre os trimestres de 2003.1 a 2015.2, todas pertencentes a segmentos lidados direta ou indiretamente ao agronegócio. Como variáveis endógenas selecionou-se 5 variáveis: Receita Bruta das respectivas companhias, PIB da Agropecuária, Índice de Preços de Produtos Agropecuários (IPA), Taxa Básica de Juros (Selic) e Taxa de Câmbio (R$/US$). Assim, com uso da metodologia de Vetores Autoregressivos (VAR), as técnicas de decomposição da variância e da função impulso-resposta apresentaram leituras semelhantes, ou seja, o PIB da Agropecuária e o Índice de Preços dos Produtos Agropecuários apresentaram significativa influência sobre a receita em 7 dos oito modelos analisados, com destaque para a Eucatex S.A., em que o IPA passou a representar mais de 58% da decomposição da variância a partir do 18º período e da Klabin S.A., em que a taxa de Câmbio passou a representar mais de 40% da decomposição da variância dos erros de previsão a partir do 12º períodos após o choque estrutural. Quando comparado ao teste de causalidade de Granger (1986), os resultados apresentaram algumas divergências, sendo os valores defasados da própria receita que mais causaram sobre ela mesma.

Manufacturing in the United States has been in a period of general decline over much of the past fifty years, though this overall pattern of de-industrialization has occurred at different times and intensities in specific geographical regions. However, local officials and development experts still focus efforts on attracting manufacturing industries into their communities, an effort often referred to as “smokestack chasing.” At the same time, environmentalism has been of increasing importance in the consciousness of American citizens. One of the central concerns of environmentalists and environmentally-oriented policy makers has been the pollution generated by these manufacturing facilities. As a result of these conflicting foci and interests, an intractable dividing line has emerged between those who view manufacturing as a source of local economic growth and employment opportunities, and those who are primarily interested in environmental quality and protection. This debate, characterized as one of “jobs versus the environment,” has been a central rhetorical frame utilized by the competing sides in both the policy and academic arenas. Numerous diverse strands of thought about these issues are synthesized into three primary theoretical perspectives, each of which purports to explain the economy-environment relationship. An assessment of the empirical relationship between economic standing, change, and environmental quality conducted using a variety of data sources and analytical techniques. Significant findings emerged which can be utilized to inform the environmental social sciences as well as policy makers and communities facing these issues.