While the strict boundaries and ideal measurement of prediabetes remain contested internationally, health officials and private donors in the health sector in Mexico have promoted its diagnosis and treatment as a key strategy in the nation’s fight against diabetes. This dissertation examines the circumstances under which officials have come to view prediabetes diagnosis as a feasible strategy for the Mexican context and the implications of treating individuals, situated across deep lines of social inequality, who are not yet sick, but deemed at risk of developing disease. Set against Mexico’s chronic disease crisis, where diabetes was declared a national sanitary emergency in 2016 and where experts suggest up to 40% of adults likely have prediabetes, this dissertation engages the prediabetes diagnosis as a lens through which to illuminate the social forces, values, and assumptions currently at work in Mexican health politics. The project foregrounds the dilemmas raised by highly medicalized and clinic-based approaches to chronic disease prevention and mobilizes the case of prediabetes in Mexico to illustrate the broader convergence of the fields of biomedicine and public health. Centered in Mexico City, field research for this project was carried out over 30 months, employing multi-sited ethnographic methods, including 106 in-depth interviews (47 of which were with individuals diagnosed with prediabetes and their families), observations of 382 medical exams, and attendance at 71 scientific, community health, and activist-hosted events. Alongside the powerful influence of the pharmaceutical industry, my findings bring to the fore a new set of actors and circumstances involved in the circulation of predisease diagnosis to this developing country context. These include (1) the epistemological limits imposed by “projectification” in global health science, (2) the influence and ideologies of an elite-mega philanthropist and his Foundation’s conviction that technological innovation will foster better health, and (3) local and global imaginaries that endorse the power of Big Data analytics to solve a plethora of development challenges. Further, in tracing the enactment of the prediabetes diagnosis across public and private clinics, I show that the pre-disease condition that economic elites experience when they are diagnosed contrasts sharply with that experienced by working class and low-income patients—I argue that in practice, prediabetes is multiple and its diagnosis amplifies existing social inequities. I also show that the emotional and ethical responses to the diagnosis among patients can differ substantially, particularly across socioeconomic divides. I argue that in Mexico, increased access to risk knowledge does not foster a spirit of “optimization” among the majority of Mexicans, but rather an alternative ethic, which I term “strategic preservation.” Finally, I show that many health experts in Mexico share a common set of values and norms in thinking about diabetes risk. On a macro level, they discursively link the looming threat of prediabetes, diabetes risk, and diabetes itself to the nation’s potentially disastrous macroeconomic future, effectively charging individuals with the responsibility to mitigate this threat through behavior and lifestyle modification. Health experts in this arena also frequently communicate the notion that the Mexican body itself is a key source of diabetes risk. I point to other elites in Mexico who, relying on a similar conception of the Mexican body, are investing in molecular technologies to better detect embodied diabetes risk, and to expand the reach and precision of medicalized prevention strategies in the future. These findings have implications for developing countries globally, which now bear the highest burden of chronic disease. Developing countries are already or will soon grapple with a similar epidemiological crisis and, as this occurs, Mexico’s strategies and experience will set precedents and establish key paradigms for public health action globally. With this in mind, I call for the disentanglement of expertise between the fields of biomedicine and public health and for a turn toward more structural, indeed socially radical, policies for chronic disease prevention at the population level.

Since its democratic dispensation, South Africa has been striving to find the right economic tool to confront the challenges of poverty, joblessness, widening income gap and lack of job related skills. Numerous methods have been put to trial in an attempt to rescue the rural masses from the scourge of poverty, joblessness and social degradation, but with limited impact. Literature surveys in this regard attest to social intervention programmes failing, due to the absence or little involvement of beneficiary rural communities in the programme establishment. Renewed rural development initiative at Mhlontlo Municipality occurs within this context. The study was then undertaken to evaluate stakeholder participation in the planning, the implementation and the monitoring and evaluation of the pilot programme. This is a study of the rural development pilot programme at Mhlontlo Local Municipality in the Eastern Cape. The statistical population for the study included all institutionalised stakeholder’s organizations, as critical components of engagement to realise the programme setting. The study target participants were 90 adult individuals involve in local stakeholder’s public participation institutions. A self-completed questionnaire was administered to the 90 target participants with 64 returned completely filled. The results were analysed using statistical mean, standard deviation and coefficient of variance and presented as tables and graphs. Findings were that there was more participation in the programme implementation phase, than in the programme planning and monitoring phase. Assessment of programme outputs by respondents was diverse and inconclusive. This was attributed to poor participation by programme stakeholders in programme’s planning. / Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.

The early 20th century saw the rise of a new constellation of social and cultural elites whose wealth and status was tied to the production and manipulation of symbols and rhetoric, images and narratives, data and analysis, ideas and abstractions, drawing from Bourdieu, let us call them symbolic capitalists. From the outset, symbolic capitalists have defined themselves as champions of the desperate, vulnerable, marginalized and otherwise disadvantaged in society. However, as they have grown in affluence and influence, various forms of inequality have not only persisted, they’ve grown. And although symbolic capitalists are among the most likely in the U.S. to identify as antiracists, feminists, environmentalists, or ‘allies’ to LGBTQ Americans, they are also among the primary beneficiaries of systemic and institutional inequalities. Their lifestyles and social position are contingent on exploiting and reproducing many of the social conditions they explicitly condemn. This dissertation seeks to explore the role social justice discourse plays in the political economy of the symbolic professions.

In response to growing social inequality, environmental crises, and economic instability, sustainability discourse has become the dominant "master signifier" for many fields, particularly the field of urban planning. However, in practice many sustainability methods overemphasize technological and economic growth-oriented solutions while underemphasizing the social dimension. The social dimension of sustainability remains a "concept in chaos" drawing little agreement on definitions, domains, and indicators for addressing the social challenges of urban life. In contrast, while the field of public health, with its emphasis on social justice principles, has made significant strides in framing and developing interventions to target the social determinants of health (SDH), this work has yet to be integrated into sustainability practice as a tool for framing the social dimension. Meanwhile, as municipalities move forward with these lopsided efforts at approaching sustainability practice, cities continue to experience gentrification, increasing homelessness, health disparities, and many other concerns related to social inequity, environmental injustice, and marginalization. This research involves multi-site, comparative case studies of neighborhood-scale sustainability planning projects in Portland, U.S.; Copenhagen, Denmark; and Nagoya, Japan to bring to light an understanding of how the social dimension is conceptualized and translated to practice in different contexts, as well as the challenges planners, citizen participants, and other stakeholders encounter in attempting to do so. These case studies find that these neighborhood-scale planning efforts are essentially framing the social dimension in terms of principles of SDH. Significant challenges encountered at the neighborhood-scale relate to political economic context and trade-offs between ideals of social sustainability, such as social inclusion and nurturing a sense of belonging when confronted with diverse neighborhood actors, such as sexually oriented businesses and recent immigrants. This research contributes to urban social sustainability literature and sustainability planning practice by interrogating these contested notions and beginning to create a pathway for integration of SDH principles into conceptualizations of social sustainability.

M.A. / Although all forms of apartheid control legislation have been repealed and the Constitution and Bill of Rights adopted, it is questionable in what way these principles of equality and non-discrimination are effectively implemented and whether changes have occurred in practice. Chapter one therefore provides an overview of the study. The discussion of legislation viz. the Constitution, the Equality Clause and Employment Equity Act urges the elimination of discrimination and the implementation of equality. The legacy of policing also provides the challenge to change. Several SAPS policies and directives such as the SAPS Policy Document on Affirmative Action and Fundamental Equality Directives in theory indicate the movement towards change and initiatives to implement equality and eliminate discrimination. It is therefore impressive to have legislation, policies and directives, but the question is in what way these are effectively being implemented and whether one can notice a change in the actual behaviour of police officials. Equality and non-discrimination, which are at the heart of effective policing, underpin good community and human relations. It is important to assess in what way the SA police culture and working climate have changed from a traditional partisan and discriminatory approach to a service provider that celebrates diversity and human rights. The research therefore investigates in what way the rhetoric of equality and non-discrimination have been implemented and its effect on individuals in a policing environment. The perceived gap between policy legislation and reality in practice was a further motivational aspect of the study, as policy alone will not ensure the implementation of equality principles. The goal and objectives of the study narrow the focus and the presentation of definitions provides further clarity. The research nature for this study was primarily explorative, and also descriptive. The goal of the study was to explore and describe police officials' experience and behaviour in the implementation of equality and the elimination of discriminatory practices in the working environment at police station level during the period 1996-7. This research was primarily of a qualitative nature and a single embedded case study design strategy was used. The unit /item of analysis or sampling element was police officials working under the jurisdiction of one specific police station in Gauteng. The demographic profile and characteristics of the police officials in the study sample was presented and analysed quantitatively (SSPS descriptive statistics according to frequency counts and cross tabulations) and achieved the first secondary objective of exploring and describing the level of representivity at the police station being studied. A non-probability sampling method - based on convenience and reliance on available subjects - was the primary sampling strategy used. Other secondary types of sampling used in this study were snowball or chain, confirming and disconfirming cases, opportunistic, and a combination or mixed strategies.