This thesis depicts the UNESCO World Heritage Convention (1972), an international law for the protection of natural and cultural heritage sites, as an example of the multiple practices within international policy making. By analysing its transnational constitution, I show how the Convention is constructed in and between locales through bureaucratic and diplomatic procedures characterised by intersecting political and economic interests. Using neo-institutional theory, I argue that organisations such as UNESCO frame problems as global, provide solutions, and organise the actions of states, organizations, and individuals; furthermore, my research not only illustrates how this occurs but also explores the preconditions of international policy making. While adhering to its officially proclaimed aspirations, states, organisations, and individuals also use the Convention for other purposes such as international prestige, career advancement, publicity, identity, development, tourism – even war. Such contending interests raise the question of explaining the success of the Convention and thereby the preconditions of policy making at the international level. A conclusion reached by this study shows that growing interest in the Convention can be regarded to result only partially from the general acceptance of its global rhetoric and morally vested perspective or the need for states to gain legitimacy by engaging in international relations. My thesis proposes that rather than by its official aims and formal procedures, the Convention is constituted primarily through complex informal relations, concurring contexts, and external structures. Data for this ethnographic study consists of field notes from participant observations during UNESCO meetings in France, Morocco, Australia, and at the Convention’s secretariat. A case study of the Agricultural Landscape of Southern Öland, a Swedish World Heritage site, is also included, along with interviews, documents, and media.

published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Fluid flow rates and pathways in partially-welded, fractured, unsaturated tuff are investigated in a sloping borehole (DSB-1) cored from the surface to a perched aquifer at the Apache Leap near Superior, Arizona. Suspected water-bearing fractures were identified in the borehole using video and geophysical logs. Pore water extracted from cores associated with these fractures proved to have elevated ¹⁴C activity relative to pore waters from intermediate depths. Pore water from the deepest fracture interval contained post-bomb ¹⁴C. Low tritium concentrations in most samples indicates imbibition from each flow is small relative to the volume of water in the pores, but cumulative imbibition over time is significant based on ¹⁴C distribution through the unsaturated zone. The saturated zone beneath DSB-1 is a mixture of fracture flows with older aquifer water. Estimates based on ¹⁴C and ³H data indicate half of the water in the local aquifer originated from fractures near DSB-1. Geochernical models incorporating pore-water, surface-runoff, aquifer-water and mineral chemistry suggest that fracture flow may also be the predominant source of recharge for the older aquifer water. Water and carbon are extracted from core samples using uni-axial compression and a new vacuum distillation technique. Distillation is shown to be an effective method when carbon extraction is not possible by other methods. Mass yields from distillation provide evidence that there may be a substantial reservoir of carbon adsorbed to mineral phases. Carbon-14 activity of formation air samples from intervals with low air permeability reflect the composition of water imbibed from fracture flows at those depths. In zones of higher permeability, atmospheric contamination is suspected even though SF₆ (injected as a tracer during drilling) concentrations had not diminished. An independent investigation on the carbon isotopic composition of soil-zone CO₂ demonstrates the need to correct soil-respired CO₂ samples for CO₂ contamination in base reagents and for fractionation during sample collection. The minimum δ¹³C-shift from soil CO₂ to soil-respired CO₂ is also shown to be a function of the δ¹³C of soil organic material rather than a fixed 4.4%₀ as previously thought.

This study engaged in a micro-genetic analysis (Wertsch, 1984) of facilitation in participatory research (PR). The research conducted in this study explored the facilitation process of two facilitators using two participatory techniques (a 'road of life' technique and a ranking exercise) with children in a rural context. The facilitators' perceptions of facilitation and their experiences of facilitating a PR technique were examined through the use of individual interviews, and were analysed using a reading guide method (Mergendollar, 1989). Of particular concern was that in PR, there is no account of the mechanisms which bring about successful facilitation. This study exposed how some PR techniques, like the ranking exercise can simply be implemented through using a set of instructions, but other kinds of techniques such as the 'road of life' technique are inherently embedded in the principles of PR and are more difficult to implement. A lack of an understanding of the PR principles has major consequences for the implementation of PR processes, and whether or not PR processes achieve their aim i.e. critical reflection. The importance of training in PR was thus emphasised, and the importance of providing a theoretical framework of the facilitation process in PR was accentuated. / Thesis (M.Psyc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

This dissertation explores the symbiotic relationship resulting from the merging of situated learning's socio-cultural conceptualization of the nature of learning with community service learning's ethos of service. As such, I enquired into the effects of the integration of situated learning as the conceptual framework, and community service learning as both an instructional methodology and educational philosophy. Specifically, through an ethnographic investigation I sought to discover the nature and outcomes of learning which result when high school students take their skills out of the classroom into the community to help solve authentic problems. The students with whom I worked were members of a high school computer technology class in which expectations were that they (the students) would combine learning with service by devoting ten to twenty hours to help a community agency solve technology-related problems. In this regard, eight different student groups applied their technology skills within a variety of school and community environments. Thereupon, I looked to ascertain not only if the students improved upon their already sufficient technical skills, but also what other abilities and knowledge of themselves and/or the world they appropriated. Thus, as per the defining features of situated learning and community service learning, I hoped to find evidence of learning in areas related to technological development, workplace knowledge and expertise, problem solving, group skills, personal and social maturity, and an ethos of service. Such learning occurred and, thus, I concluded that the integration of community service learning and situated learning in this technology classroom resulted in a symbiotic relationship in which the nature and specific outcomes of learning were 1) accounted for by situated learning and 2) enhanced beyond what would normally be expected in a non-service Information Technology Management classroom in the Province of British Columbia. Hence, the well documented and rigorously determined empirical findings: 1) argue that situated learning provides a viable theoretical framework for community service learning, 2) add empirical support to the learning claims of both situated learning and service learning, and 3) suggest a means of enabling education to become more responsive to the students and the community.

This study explores how Swedish migrants on the Costa del Sol in Spain create belonging and how this is expressed in migration stories and practiced in the daily life. The migrants are part of a migration phenomenon that is conceptualized as lifestyle migration, often to destinations in association with tourism and leisure. Based on ethnographical fieldwork carried out among Swedish migrants within the Swedish infrastructure of institutions, organizations and private enterprises on the Costa del Sol, the thesis examines how belonging is created adopting a phenomenological and constructivist perspective on transnational and diasporic practices. This is accomplished through studying migration stories, where the migration experience is being told, structured and made meaningful for the migrants. In addition, it focuses on internal and external identification and positioning on location on the Costa del Sol. Another concern is the study of how the migrants relate to notions and practices of new home, and old home. The thesis presents how belonging is shaped on a collective basis within the Swedish infrastructure, despite the fact that the interviewees make up a diverse group in different ages, with different reasons for dwelling along the coast, with different migrant experiences, with different approaches to living a transnational migrant life in-between the old and the new country, and with different degrees and range of incorporation to the local society. The study shows how a transnational position is created with a plurilocal frame of reference. It is marked by simultaneously expressing attachments and affiliations to several localities and contexts across territorial borders, shaped by past and recurrent travels and communication, and connected to the Swedish diasporic collective that can function as a compensatory source of national affiliation for the Swedish migrants on the Costa del Sol.

Mémoire (M.Ed.)--Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, 1997. / Document électronique également accessible en format PDF. CaQCU

Thesis (M. Soc. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1991.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 96-102).

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1991. / Also available in print.