For more than a decade tourists originating in developed nations have been giving various gifts to locals of tourism communities in developing nations. This occurrence is commonly associated with the Caribbean, and is particularly well known to occur in Cuba. Tourism has often been adopted as a part of economic development strategies of developing nations, however due to a lack of studies on tourists’ philanthropic gift-giving it is unclear how the occurrence affects both human and economic development, and likewise its impacts such as possibilities of population disparity. There are current restrictions in Cuba which forbid locals from accepting the gifts of international tourists (Taylor & McGlynn 2009; Mesa-Lago 2005), however the island’s unique need for material goods seems to over-rule this policy. The implication herein indicates benefits to accepting gifts from tourists. Tourism employees most frequently come in contact with tourists and the potential of gift receipts by tourism employees is heightened. This in turn carries implications of social disparities amongst the population resulting from unequal gift receipts by tourism employees. Furthermore, current research suggests that complex social relationships are created through gift-giving yet little is understood within the context of tourist-to-local community member. The goal of this thesis is to determine whether international tourist philanthropic gift-giving contributes to social disparity within a local community as well as its affects on human and economic development. This has been achieved through case study research from a mixed-methods approach in Trinidad, Sancti Spirtus, Cuba. The results of this research point to significant economic gains and improvement in access-to-material-goods through tourists’ gift-giving, which in turn have been found to contribute to economic development. However, the external nature of tourists’ gift-giving limits using the phenomenon as a reliable tool for economic development. Impacts on human development are not as clearly defined. Although tourists’ gift-giving contributes to some aspects of human development, the phenomenon cannot be considered to contribute to overall human development. Although population disparity was found to be an impact of tourists’ philanthropic gift-giving, community members viewed the occurrence as a positive benefit of tourism. The policy in Cuba restricting locals from accepting tourists’ gifts has been largely ineffective as this type of economic gain was found to be well integrated in the informal economy. The general public is largely unaware of the policy and it is likely Cubans will continue to accept tourists’ gifts. Although this research has revealed interesting insight regarding tourists’ philanthropic gift-giving much remains to be known of its impacts and several recommendations for future studies are suggested.

The theme of gift has in recent years been subject to considerable commentary in diverse disciplines including philosophy, anthropology, sociology, religious studies and literary criticism. The vast majority of these studies focus on how or whether gift can be differentiated from exchange. In this dissertation I maintain that gift is a form of giving and receiving that is distinct from exchange or commerce, and that it need not create an obligation to return or reciprocate. This gift is given unilaterally to the need of the other and results in relatedness rather than indebtedness. This essay considers the characteristics of exchange and of gift, then reviews the thought of five writers on giving/receiving and reciprocation. This is followed by an overview of the gift theme in African Traditional Religion and the Judaic and Christian traditions, and a concluding chapter summarising thoughts on gift and self-interest, sharing, need, and gratitude. / Religious Studies and Arabic / M.A.(Religious Studies)

What would happen if, the systems we deal with everyday, and the situations we find ourselves in, could trigger us to give something to someone else? This work started by exploring the theme of  money systems and social structures and the ambition to find alternatives for our current economic system, which has failed in several ways. People all over the world are already coming up with alternatives that can supplement and stabilize our money-monoculture and that give new meaning to currency.This research investigates a particular alternative economic system called the gift economy, which has great potential to build meaningful relations and re-establish a sense of  community. Since the gift economy has been mainly researched by anthropologists and ethnographers in the last century, my focus is on implementing its principles in society today. Through literature review, case studies and a series of  design projects, this thesis articulates possible ways of  triggering a gift economy. With a special coin, a concept for a bar and by linking the local bakery to Konstfack, we may start to understand what giving really means, how it can benefit us, in what way it can build more meaningful relationships and how it can offer an alternative way of  thinking than what currently drives our economic system

The bonding power of the gift has been the subject of much social scientific research. My dissertation adds to this by examining the relationship between gift giving and commitment to a social network or an employing organization. Ideas and concepts from social exchange and identity theories provide the theoretical underpinnings for this investigation. Social exchange theory views human interaction as a series of resource exchanges, and I contend that how people exchange resources may have ramifications for the bonds that develop between them and for their commitment to particular social relations. This study has two parts. In the first half of the dissertation, I ask whether the greater relational solidarity that results from direct reciprocal exchange, as opposed to negotiated exchange, differentially affects whether actors choose to leave their existing exchange networks for new ones and if so, why? Direct reciprocal exchange involves actors directly and independently giving resources to others without knowing whether the recipients of those resources will reciprocate in kind. Negotiated exchange involves actors jointly bargaining over the terms of an agreement. Differences between these two forms of exchange inform my causal argument about why actors are more like to stay in social networks if they participate in direct reciprocal exchange. I test this argument using an experiment. The second half of the dissertation continues this investigation into reciprocal exchange by examining the factors that affect gift giving in the workplace as well as the effects of gift giving on organizational commitment. Here, gift giving is defined broadly to include any act that involves people freely and independently volunteering to provide either tangible or intangible benefits to others without knowing if others will reciprocate. Data from a survey distributed to registered nurses working for a large healthcare organization provides the empirical basis for this investigation. Together the experiment and survey allow for an in-depth investigation into how exchange processes affect commitments to social networks and organizations. As such, the findings reported herein advance sociological understanding about how micro-level processes shape macro-level structures. They also speak to the practical issue of organizational retention.

The focus of this study is the consumer behaviour habits of adults giving of toys to children aged 11 and under as gifts. It is borne out of a need to understand why adults buy gifts for children adding to the issues on consumption practices and materialism. It begins by discussing the issues of researching with children, outlining an exploratory artwork session conducted with children prior to making a decision to use adults as the unit of assessment for the study and to take a positivist stance. The literature review chapter explores the concepts of gift-giving of toys to children by synthesising topics of consumer behaviour and gift-giving as fields of study. It considers gift-giving models and focuses on buyer behaviour when gift-giving; information sources used in gifting; whether adults are concerned about gift-giving; adults roles and motivations in gift-gifting and relationship impacts between adults and children for incorrect gifting. These themes are researched within a demographic perspective keeping in mind the consumer socialisation issues and a figure is developed to show the hypotheses for testing. The methodology takes into account both interpretivist and positivist philosophies reaffirming the reasons for a positivist choice. Semi structured interviews are used in two phases to explore adults perceptions of gift-giving in general and gift-giving of toys to children. The main data collection instrument was a structured questionnaire which developed and extended previous researchers’ items. This questionnaire was distributed across a sample section of schools within the Aberdeen City and suburbs via a homework bag method. The value of the study lies in the contribution to knowledge through the analysis of the data. Contribution was found to exist with roles and motivations in gifting where three new roles were highlighted and one discounted. For information sources the interpersonal sources were important to mothers; the internet was found to be a new source, and mass media was found to be popular with a lower educated strata giving rise to issues for TV advertising policy. Differences existed between gifting at Christmas and birthday times and to adults’ own and other children providing contribution to the lack of birthday gifting research and to the givers’ perspective. A number of demographics such as gender, education and marital status were found to be important in understanding this gifting behaviour, whereas age on the other hand, did not. Finally, recommendations are made to policy makers from these contributions in particular regarding information sources and the education of children.

Currently there is a critical shortage of transplantable organs in the UK. The existing evidence base highlights that cultural and religious norms can hinder familial consent and uptake of registration as an organ donor, particularly within ethnic minority groups. There is a dearth of information relating to the Polish community in the UK. Since the expansion of the European Union and the potential and consequent economic migration of Poles to the UK, this community presents a potential significant contribution to the active transplant waiting list, NHS Organ Donor Register and requests made for organs for donation on behalf of a relative. The aim of the study was to examine in depth, the perceptions of the relationship between deceased organ donation, gift exchange and religion. Due to the exploratory nature of the study, grounded theory methodology was used and one to one interviews were carried out with 31 participants who were recruited using a purposive convenience sampling strategy. This approach allowed for the collection of rich and deep data in a hitherto under-researched issue with the Polish community in the UK. To contextualise the key findings of the relationship, an in-depth analysis of settlement patterns, helping behaviour and experiences of and attitudes toward religion was conducted. The relationship between religion and gift-exchange was perceived to interact in different ways with deceased organ donation depending on the context. For the individual making an end-of-life choice, gift exchange impacted on the perception of the organ as a gift and whether reciprocity was expected, religion shaped views of the need for the body after death and social and cultural norms influenced the view of the 'typical' donor and family discussion of donation. For the relatives, social, religious and cultural norms impacted on death rituals and the conceptualisation of the dead body and experiences of a relative's death. This study contributes to an understanding of the social, cultural and religious norms toward deceased organ donation from a Polish perspective and the implications for policy, health promotion and clinical practice.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Ciencias de la Ingeniería, Mención Mecánica / Both the CAD software and FEM software have a significant impact on engineering nowadays. Even though both are powerful tools for design and analysis, the main drawback is that CAD geometries and Finite Element models do not entirely match, which results in the necessity to re-parameterize the geometry many times during the solution cycle in FEM. Isogeometric Analysis (IGA) was proposed to fulfill this gap and create the direct link between the CAD design and FEM analysis. The main idea of IGA is to substitute the shape functions used in FEM by the shape functions used in the CAD software. In particular, one of the main drawbacks of NURBS basis functions, and therefore of IGA, is the lack of local refinement, which makes them computationally highly expensive in applications that demands a non-uniform refinement of the geometry. Polynomial splines over Hierarchical T-meshes (PHT-splines) were introduced by Deng et al. as a type of spline that allows local refinement and adaptability by means of a polynomial basis capable of parameterizing the geometry. In this work, we demonstrate the application of PHT-splines for two type of problems: time-harmonic acoustic problems, modeled by the Helmholtz equation, and fracture mechanics of thin plate problems, modeled by the Kirchhoff-Love theory. Solutions of the Helmholtz equation have two features: global oscillations associated with the wave number and local gradients caused by geometrical irregularities. The results show that after a sufficient number of degrees of freedom is used to approximate global oscillations, adaptive refinement can capture local features of the solution. The residual-based and recovery-based error estimators are compared and the performance of $p$-refinement is investigated. Moreover, an eXtended Geometry Independent Field approximaTion (XGIFT) formulation based on Polynomials Splines Over Hierarchical T-meshes (PHT-splines) for modeling both static and dynamic fracture mechanic problems for plates described by the Kirchhoff-Love theory is presented. Adaptive refinement is employed using a recovery-based error estimator. Results show that adaptive refinement can capture local features of the solution around the crack tip, improving results in both static and dynamic examples. In both cases, the simulations are done in the context of recently introduced Geometry Independent Field approximaTion (GIFT), where PHT-splines are only used to approximate the solution, while the computational domain is parameterized with NURBS. This approach builds on the natural adaptation ability of PHT-splines and avoids the re-parameterization of the NURBS geometry during the solution refinement process.

[pt] A reciprocidade é um tema clássico nos estudos antropológicos, mais frequentemente abordada mediante perspectivas positivas de interação, como a troca de favores e dádivas; no entanto, a violência motivada pela troca de hostilidades e ofensas revela uma parte negativa, que insistimos em recalcar: os ciclos de vingança, as desforras. Tendo em vista entender vingança e honra enquanto elementos culturais, este trabalho procura diagnosticar como tais aspectos estão inseridos em um contexto de reciprocidade violenta, sobretudo na realidade brasileira. Para tal, examinaremos dentre outros fatores as lutas de famílias, o banditismo social, a relação entre os poderes público e privado ao longo da história e as representações culturais que simbolizam e reconstroem vingança e vingador no imaginário popular brasileiro. / [en] Reciprocity is a classical theme among anthropological studies, more frequently considered under positives perspectives of interaction, as the exchange of favors and gifts; however, the violence motivated by the exchange of hostilities and offenses reveals a negative part, strongly repressed: the cycles of revenge, the retaliations. Aimed at understanding vengeance and honor as cultural elements, this work seeks to diagnose how these aspects are inserted in a context of violent reciprocity, especially in Brazilian reality. Therefore, we will examine the blood feuds, the social banditism, relations between public and private powers throughout history and cultural representations that symbolize and helped to forge vengeance and avenger at people s imagination.

This dissertation draws on studies of gift exchange by cultural anthropologists and social theorists to examine representations of gifts and gift giving in nineteenth-century British novels. While most studies of the economic imagination of nineteenth-century literature rely on and respond to a framework formulated by classical political economy and consequently overlook nonmarket forms of social exchange, I draw on gift theory in order to make visible the alternate, everyday exchanges shaping social relations and identity within the English novel. By analyzing formal and thematic representations of gifting over the course of the nineteenth century, in novels by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot, I consider the way that gift exchange relates and responds to the emergence of capitalism and consumer culture. I trace two distinct developments in nineteenth-century gift culture: the first, the emergence of an idealized view of the gift as purely disinterested, spontaneous, and free, and the second, the emergence of a view of charity as demoralizing to the poor. These developments, I contend, were distinct ideological formations of liberal economic society and reveal a desire to make the gift conform to individualism. However, I suggest further that these transformations of the gift proceeded unevenly, for in their attention to the logic and practice of giving, nineteenth-century writers both give voice to and subvert these cultural formations. Alongside the figure of the benevolent philanthropist, the demoralized pauper, and the quintessential image of altruism, the selflessly giving domestic woman, nineteenth-century novels present another view of gift exchange, one that sees the gift as a mix of interest and disinterest, freedom and obligation, and persons and things. Ultimately, by reading the gift relations animating nineteenth-century novels, I draw attention to the competing conceptions of selfhood underlying gift and market forms of exchange in order to offer a broader history of exchange and personhood. In its recognition of expansive conceptions of the self and obligatory gifts, this dissertation recovers a history of the gift that calls into question the ascendency of the autonomous individual and the view of exchange as an anonymous, self-interested transaction.

O objeto deste trabalho será analisar criticamente a maneira como o direito conceitua a doação. Será dividido em três partes. O Capítulo I tratará dos diversos modos como a doação foi estruturada no direito romano, no direito francês, no direito italiano e no direito brasileiro, das razões para essa diversidade e possíveis críticas à estruturação atual. O Capítulo II cuidará dos critérios para delimitar a fattispecie da doação e distingui-la dos demais contratos gratuitos. Normalmente, a doutrina identifica um elemento objetivo e um elemento subjetivo como caracterizadores da doação. O Capítulo III problematizará esses elementos, a fim de indagar sobre a abrangência do conceito jurídico de doação, tendo como base dois aspectos: a possibilidade de a doação ter por objeto prestações de fazer e o papel atribuído ao chamado animus donandi. / The purpose of this thesis is to analize critically the legal concept of gift. It will be divided into three parts. Chapter I covers the different legal structuring of gifts in Roman Law, French Law, Italian Law and Brazilian Law. The chapter also covers the reasons for the existence of different concepts and possibile criticism of the actual structure of gifts. Chapter II deals with the criteria for defining a legal concept of gift and the distinction between gifts and other gratuitous contracts. Generally, legal science identifies an objective element and a subjective element as characteristic features of gifts. Chapter III discusses these elements focused on the magnitude of the legal concept of gift in accordance with two aspects: the possibility of gratuitous services to be considered gifts and the role assigned to the so-called animus donandi.