The role of RDP housing cannot be underestimated and it plays a big role in South Africa. It assists those who are less fortunate to afford to buy houses. RDP housing delivery is not only expected to put a roof over people's heads but to change their lives in various ways. RDP housing delivery tackles issues related to social and economic enviroment. In terms of policy documents and surveys, research has shown that it is critical to incorporate RDP housing beneficiaries from planning right up to development stage. Public participation and the involvement of beneficiaries from the planning stage onward assists in determining the basic needs of the community that can be addresed through RDP housing development. This study is about the role of RDP housing in revitalising the socio-economic environment with a specific reference to Second Creek, which is under the jurisdiction of Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality.

The South African government cannot in isolation deliver all the community needs as expected. Therefore, the involvement of all the sectors becomes crucial in the fight against poverty, largely due to the fact that the delivery of services (community needs) by the public sector does not balance with the amount of the resources allocated. This implies that government cannot successfully manage to deliver the community needs in isolation. A shared service delivery strategy to support the socio-economic development initiatives towards sustainable shared growth is therefore essential. The Public-Private Partnerships and Public-Public Partnership have emerged as alternative measures or important public policy tools in addressing the ‘shared delivery’ of services to the general public of South Africa. As a result of high levels of poverty experienced by the people of the Eastern Cape, in fact by the larger South African population, major interventions by NGOs, CBOs and other civil organisation are gaining momentum. Likewise, the establishment of the National Development Agency as mandated is also a public policy tool that looks into improving the socio-economic development of the local communities. Such interventions and partnerships therefore have a big role to play in support of the ANC led government to effectively deliver on its mandate, thus ensuring improved citizen’s welfare. Importantly, what triggered the undertaking of this study are the high levels of poverty, poor local economic developments and poor monitoring and evaluation of the funded projects in the Eastern Cape. In this study community and poverty in developing South Africa is well discussed. Attention is drawn to the whole idea of socio-economic development - simultaneously touching on the socio-economic shift in SA. Local Economic Development is also discussed with its LED dimensions, including business developments within the two said districts. The main aim of this study is to establish the extent to which the interventions by National Development Agency ‘Public Entity’ have improved the socio-economic development of the rural local communities in the Amathole and OR Tambo Districts towards sustainable and shared growth. The study includes a conceptual meaning of the public sector in general with its key service delivery role players. The study also includes the conceptual theoretical basis of the socio-economic development with specific reference to South Africa then cascades down to the study areas. Under the same note, a detailed explanation is also given on the nature of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) as a model for improved socio-economic development. Conceptual presentation of the Public-Public Partnership (PPP) for shared service delivery is also alluded to.

Since mercantilism, which began in the mid 1600s, there have been numerous systemic changes in the global trading system. The most significant changes have been colonialism, the slave trade, peasant enclosures, industrialization and the formation of global economic institutions. Each one of these has had a marked effect on the distribution of resources and the wealth generated from their manufacture. Mercantilism, a theory related to trade and commerce, brought about intense competition amongst Northern countries in order to secure markets and resources. Colonialism was a way of assuring traders access to both primary resources and overseas markets in Southern countries. This pattern of trading whereby Southern countries provide the raw resources for the benefit of those in the North is still relevant, and has contributed significantly to divisions in wealth between the hemispheres. By the early 1800's mercantilists posed a threat to the aristocratic classes, which found themselves land rich but money poor. This, along with the growing movement towards industrialization, led to the eviction of peasants from land they had lived on for centuries. Two sources of cheap labour became available. Peasants who were desperate to find work in order to survive, and those deemed to be slaves from the developing world. Their labour was used to clear land for cultivation and for factory work. This combination of cheap labour and access to primary resources from the South enabled Northern countries to forge ahead with the industrialization of their economies. The year 1944 was an important year for global trading. Three institutions, namely the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the General Agreement on Tarriffs and Trade (GATT) were formed shortly thereafter. These international organisations would help solidify globally the ideology of laissez -faire economics. They would also play a direct role in influencing Southern governments to reduce trade barriers. It is claimed by critics that the IMF, the World Bank and GATT have used their power to uphold policies which have pried open Southern economies for the gain of those in the North. Critics believe these policies have been particulary negative for those living a subsistence lifestyle. Poverty in the developing world is currently at catasrophic levels with 34,000 children dying every " day from malnutrition and disease. Some charge the IMF, World Bank and GATT for increasing the vulnerability of the poor and ecological destruction. Fair trade is a system of trade which deliberately seeks to establish a more equal basis of exchange between the two geographical hemispheres. It helps to counter some of the imbalances of the current trading system. With the commitment of Alternative trading organisations (ATO's) thousands of men, women and children have secured a lifestyle which is both economically viable and ecologically sustainable. The challenge for fair trading is to apply alternative trade models more widely, and to promote fair trading as a part of mainstream commercial activity. One way the fair trading system is doing this is through labelling products sold in supermarkets with a fair trade label. Those products with a fair trade label have passed the fair trading criteria agreed to by the International Federation for Alternative Trading. Social Work is one of many professions that could help support fair trading. By organising fair trade networks as part of social development practice, social work could be active in supporting an economic system which empowers those who are most disadvantaged, and thereby reduces the inequality perpetuated by the current trading system. There are a number of other key roles for social workers. They could educate the public about global economic issues through conferences, workshops and writing educational material. Another role for social workers is that of negotiation. Social workers in the international development field would be in a good position to link Southern producer groups to Northern fair trading businesses. They could also link socially responsible business in the North to marginalised groups in their own countries. A third role for social workers committed to fair trading, is research. Topics could include ongoing analysis of the social and environmental effects of the current trading system, exploring the effectiveness of various alternative trading models and research on factors that could help facilitate the growth of socially responsible business. There are three international bodies which help social workers maintain a global perspective. They are the IFSW (International Federation of Social Work), the LASSW (International Association of Schools of Social Work) and the ICSW (International Council on Social Welfare). / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate

This dissertation explores the path of Tibet’s economic integration with China in the first half of the twentieth century. It particularly examines the borderland region of Kham that encompasses parts of present-day Sichuan, Qinghai, and Yunnan. Drawing on borderland histories and bringing together Tibetan and Chinese archival sources, it focuses on indigenous institutions and local economic practices in order to demonstrate that the twentieth-century Sino-Tibetan integration was mediated primarily by Tibetan economic institutions and actors. While previous scholarship has examined the history of Kham in relation to Chinese state-building practices, this dissertation acknowledges the equally important place of Tibetan state-building practices and their impact on the region. As a borderland, Kham was caught between two modernizing states with conflicting agendas. Understanding its economic history, I argue, requires a direct engagement with the Tibetan financial and monetary structures, taxation practices, and labor regimes that not only dominated life Kham but also conditioned the development of the Chinese state itself in the frontiers. Chinese officials frequently collided, clashed, and collaborated with local Tibetan leaders, while Chinese merchants and companies engaged in trade and partnered with and worked alongside Tibetan merchant companies, whose economic reach extended from Shanghai to Calcutta. This dissertation focuses on four main institutions to rethink this history on the Chinese borderlands by focusing on the indigenous Tibetan institutions and structures: ulak conscript labor, currency, monasteries, and merchant companies. All four of these institutions were rooted in Tibetan socio-economic practices and were critical in the transformation of Tibetan society in the Sino-Tibetan borderland. The economic interconnectedness of the twentieth century and the increased links between Tibet and China brought a simultaneous and seemingly contradictory economic trajectory to Tibet. As the Chinese presence on the plateau increased, so did the power of Tibetan economic institutions, for the Chinese government, military, and merchants had to rely on them to exist. In a politically and economically fragmented environment, Tibetan institutions challenged state building efforts and thrived by asserting their own political, religious, and economic power across the Tibetan Plateau and beyond. A history of Tibetan economy as seen and written through the eyes of the Tibetans offers a new perspective to not only rethink modern Chinese history, but also the present day in which the Tibetan institutions still continue to mediate social and economic life on the fringes of the People’s Republic of China.

Inequalities in levels of development between regions within a country are frequently regarded as a problem. The magnitude of the problem is more severe in developing countries than in developed countries. Zimbabwe, as a developing country, is no exception and the country is characterized by severe regional inequalities. This research is concerned with the spatial patterns of socio-economic development in Zimbabwe. The composite index method was used to rank administrative districts of Zimbabwe according to level of development. The composite indices together with socio-economic characteristics were used to demarcate the administrative districts into development regions according to Friedmann's (1966) model. Attention was given to the spatial development policies applied in Zimbabwe. Friedmann's (1966) guidelines, for the development of the different regional types in his model, were applied to the Zimbabwean spatial economy. Suggestions were made regarding possible adjustments to previous strategies used in Zimbabwe, for spatial development planning. / Anthropology and Archaeology / M.A.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Johannesburg, 2017. / This study analyses the politics of liberation heritage in postcolonial southern Africa with special reference to Mozambique. The aim is to scrutinise the different ways in which liberation heritage discourse is used and mobilised to construct a range of socioeconomic and political values in the southern African region and to examine the processes of heritagization in Mozambique based on field observations at two national heritage sites: Chilembene and Matchedje. I adopt the conceptualisation of heritage as discourse and put the hegemonic Western heritage discourses into historical perspective in order to explore how this Western understanding of the past has influenced the official discourse and practice in southern Africa in both colonial and postcolonial periods. I argue that the process of re-appropriation and ‘mimicry’ which allow the perpetuation of Western paradigms in the conception of heritage result from a combination of geopolitical and socio-economic contexts and circumstances at play nationally, regionally and globally, combined with the strategies adopted by former national liberation movement’s ruling elites to pursue their own nationalist agendas related to state-crafting and nation-building. I also argue that the recent traction that has led to the institutionalisation of liberation heritage discourse in southern Africa, represents a specific way in which former national liberation movements, now in government, have tried to respond to changes in circumstances marked by an increasing contestation by the different social groups over the content of the official discourse of ‘the past’, based on selective memories of the liberation struggle, in an increasingly disputed multi-party democratic dispensation. To understand the politics of heritagization of the liberation struggle in postcolonial Mozambique, I look at FRELIMO’s efforts to undertake selective celebrations and to silence particular ‘pasts’ for particular ‘presents’ during the struggle years as well as through the different socio-political and economic contexts of the successive presidencies: Samora Machel (1975-86), Joaquim Chissano (-2004) and Armando Guebuza (-2014). By (1) addressing the question of why and how the heritagization of this particular category of the past (i.e. liberation heritage) accomplishes the reproduction of state power held by ruling elites of former national liberation movements, and by (2) illustrating the networks of meanings and practices on which liberation heritage rests, and by (3) analysing the socioeconomic, cultural and political work it does, this study contributes to the embryonic body of knowledge about heritage processes in southern Africa. / LG2017

by Chun-wai Chan. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-66). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Acknowledgments --- p.i / Abstract --- p.ii / Table of Contents --- p.iv / List of Tables --- p.v / List of Figures --- p.vi / Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter 2 --- Data Source --- p.4 / Chapter Chapter 3 --- Methodology --- p.11 / Chapter Chapter 4 --- Empirical Analysis --- p.13 / Chapter Chapter 5 --- Conclusion --- p.34 / Appendix --- p.36 / References --- p.62

本文提出「影像/形象資本」作為考察影像/形象、資本及權間關係的工具。「影像/形象資本」發展至自布爾迪卮的文化資本，但「影像/形象」資本把焦點放在視覺或形象資源如何在文化/經濟、生產/消費以及上層建築/下層建構界線越趨模糊的符號空間經濟主導代，成為文化場域中新的權資源。 / 透過考察橫店影視城一個結合影視生產及遊的中國影城生產地域化及經濟符號化的過程，本文嘗試對「影像/形象資本」的概作深入的分析。沿著布爾迪卮的框架，影視城被視為一個由擁有同影像/形象資本的能動者構成的場域，而這些能動者自在地及跨境的生產及消費網絡。在橫店影視城生產、積與轉換的過程的探中，本文嘗試回答：一)影像/形象在文化場域中的功能及其轉換為經濟或其他資本的條件；二) 影像/形象資本在國際文化分工成員中的分佈以及其結構對影像資本的價值及轉換的影響。第一條問題旨在闡釋經濟符號化的過程，第二條問題則希望剖析影像/形象與資本主義結下的地域分工以及動政治。作為一個可以同時探究影像帶的可能性及限制的概，影像/形象資本把媒介影像的研究，從批判學派對影像呈現的控制及霸權形成，展至影像對同能動者、以至在符號經濟時代中冒升的社會機構所產生的建設性及壓迫性的權的多重探索。 / This thesis develops the concept of image capital to investigate the relationship between image, capital and power. Image capital is built on Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital, but looks specifically into how visual and imagery resources becomes a power at stake in the cultural field at the juncture of the economies of signs and space featured by growing convergence of culture and the economy and subsequent blurring of the boundaries between base/superstructure and production/consumption. / The concept of image capital is examined through the case study of the spatialization and the semioticization processes of Hengdian World Studios, a China studio complex that serves domestic and international film and TV productions and operates film studio tourism. The studio, as a case, is theorized as a field which is constituted by different agents with various forms of image capital, including those embedded in local as well as transnational production and consumption networks. The processes of production, accumulation and conversion of image capital at the field of Hengdian World Studios are investigated to chart 1) how image functions as a form of capital at stake in the cultural field and how it can be converted into other forms of capital; 2) how the distribution of image capital is structured amongst agents in the field and how this structure influences the value and conversion rate image capital to other forms of capital. The first question aims at studying the semioticization process, whilst the second attempts to scrutinize the spatialization and the labor politics underpinning the alliance of image and capitalism. By theorizing image as Bourdieusean form of capital and examining both its enabling possibilities and constraints, this thesis sheds light on the study of media images by steering beyond ideological control to both the productive and repressive power of images onto different agents as well as the social intuitions of the up and rising economies of sign and space. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Chow, Pui Ha. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2012. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [419-439]). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese. / ABSTRACT / 摘要 / ACKNOWLEDGMENTS / TABLE OF CONTENT / Chapter CHAPTER I --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter CHAPTER II --- Image and Capitalism --- p.21 / Marx's capital and critical media theories on image studies --- p.21 / Political economies of signs and the media --- p.26 / Implications of the political economy of signs on critical Marxist media theories --- p.31 / Alternative frameworks for the study of image and capitalism: End of Production and Labor or NICL? Or Bridging capital and labor in image production and consumption? --- p.38 / Chapter CHAPTER III --- Bourdieu's Capital, Field and Habitus --- p.51 / Bourdieu's concept of Capital --- p.52 / Field and Habitus --- p.63 / Theoretical implications of habitus and field of Bouredieusean capital --- p.71 / Chapter CHAPTER IV --- Field Theory of Cultural Production and the Political Economy of Signs --- p.76 / The field of cultural production --- p.77 / The field of cultural production and the political economies of signs and space --- p.91 / Image Capital and the political economies of signs and space --- p.105 / Chapter CHAPTER V --- Image Capital, Field and Film Studio --- p.112 / Intercontextuality: Contextual knowledge, globalization and field --- p.113 / Film Studio, image capital and field --- p.117 / Research question, design and method --- p.124 / Chapter CHAPTER VI --- The Development of Film Studio Complex --- p.135 / The emergence of film studio complex in the global field --- p.135 / Transformation of China's National Field of Cultural Production --- p.144 / Conclusion: Studio complex, image capital, and field of cultural production --- p.170 / Chapter CHAPTER VII --- Spatialization: Hengdian as a Field of Cultural Production --- p.176 / Iron Road: co-production, image capital, and boundaries negotations --- p.179 / Hengdian World Studios as Image Factory --- p.192 / Conclusion: the image factory flying beyond the place --- p.219 / Chapter CHAPTER VIII --- Semioticization: Capitalizing Image and the Mediation of Production and Consumption --- p.227 / Image capital and film-induced tourism --- p.228 / Capitalizing image at Hengdian World Studios --- p.237 / Key Image Labors --- p.252 / Chinese Hollywood: the negotiations and struggles in the capitalization of the global and the national imagination --- p.261 / Conclusion --- p.271 / Chapter CHAPTER IX --- Image Capital and Tourist Consumption: Gaze, Class and Prosumption --- p.275 / Image capital and tourist consumption --- p.276 / Tourist gaze at Hengdian World Studios --- p.284 / Image Capital, class and prosumption --- p.314 / Chapter CHAPTER X --- Image Capital and Place-Making --- p.339 / Hardware make-up: physical infrastructure engineering --- p.341 / Software make-up: lifestyle formation --- p.345 / Place branding --- p.365 / Chapter CHAPTER XI --- Conclusion: Image, Capital and Power --- p.372 / Image as capital --- p.374 / Forms of image capital --- p.376 / Functions of image capital --- p.382 / Image capital: semioticization and spatialization --- p.400

Pricing practices of firms are an important yet little studied aspect of the price phenomenon in sociology. This study asks the question: Why do different firms, even in the same market, tend to use different pricing practices--value-informed, competition-informed, or cost-informed pricing--to set prices? To answer this question, this study builds a dynamic flocking model of pricing to investigate the inter-dynamics among pricing practices and various market uncertainties. The model shows that each pricing practice is only viable under certain combinations of levels of different market uncertainties. Supporting evidence, theoretical innovations, and practical implications of the model are discussed. Contrary to common intuition, uncertainty, conceptualized as some cognitive tolerance interval, is akin to lubricant, making the otherwise rigid, brittle, and friction-fraught system more smooth, robust, and error-tolerant under certain circumstances. Therefore, uncertainties, and the inter-dynamics among them, should be treated as an endogenous and integral part of the social mechanism at issue, rather than some amorphous “other” external to it.

There appears to be a growing recognition among economists and other social commentators that people attempt to enhance their relative position (which is commonly described as status) through consumption choices and other behaviour. It has been less common to consider whether attempts to enhance relative position impact on saving behaviour. This thesis makes a number of contributions relating to the impact of relative position on saving behaviour. In this thesis I: - consider why concern for relative position may impact on saving behaviour. I demonstrate, with a simple intertemporal model the surprising result that when people are concerned with relative position, income risk can lead to most people saving less and the rich saving more. - conduct an empirical study to test the importance of relative position on saving behaviour. I find a statistically and economically significant relationship between peer income and saving behaviour consistent with theories that people actively forgo saving to seek to enhance their relative position. I use the data to demonstrate that relative position can help to explain why prior research has consistently found that the rich have higher saving rates. - consider the policy implications of relative position to saving behaviour. I examine the policies, primarily corrective taxation, that have been advocated to address externalities of relative position in a static setting. I find that there are significant issues when these policies are considered in an intertemporal setting. I examine the policy of mandatory saving in addressing distortions caused by relative position and the possibility that concern for relative position improves the effectiveness of mandatory saving policy.