Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of London, 1980. / Based on E. Bjorklund's method of culture-space mapping. Includes bibliographical references (p. 333-336).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1930. / Bibliography: p. 110-112.

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in the Department of Geography at University of Zululand, South Africa, 2000. / There has recently been an increase of clusters of informal business operators in different parts of the city of Pietermaritzburg. Allegations have been made that street vending causes pollution of the environment in the city and that it was an illegal activity associated with crime and other anti-social activities that were inimical to formal business enterprises and the viability and sustainability of the city of Pietermaritzburg. This dissertation was conducted in the context of Agenda 21 of the Rio Earth Summit which advocates for sustainable development of business enterprises, which governments worldwide were persuaded to adopt in their development planning policies. The Pietermaritzburg-Msunduzi Transitional Local Council (TLC) has recently initiated a move to implement the Local Agenda 21 programme as advocated by the Rio Declaration. The main aim of the dissertation was to examine the impact of the informal business enterprises on formal business and the environment, and thereby determine the sustainability of the city of Pietermaritzburg. It was found in this dissertation that street vending was related to the high rate of unemployment in Pietermaritzburg, and that both males and females in their productive years were involved in street vending. Informal businesses were found to be partially responsible for littering and environmental pollution in the city by generating litter from the items they sold on the streets. It was also found that many of the street vendors lived in squalid informal settlements or on the street pavements which contributed to the pollution of the city's environment. It was found that their actions resulted" from an involuntary and necessary condition of poverty. The Street vendors were actually actively engaged in cleaning up operations and environment education in accordance with local Agenda 21. The informal business enterprises were found to be recognised legal activities that cooperated with formal business, the city council and other stakeholders in the fight against environment pollution and crime. It was found that there was a complementary relationship between formal and informal business, which did not jeopardise formal commerce and industry and the sustainability of the city of Pietermaritzburg. It is argued in this dissertation that, with more positive encouragement and assistance, the informal sector is an essential means of alleviating the problems of unemployment and poverty. Guided in the correct direction, the informal business enterprises are a way of promoting the viability, development and sustainability of the city of Pietermaritzburg.

In navigation from one place to another, spatial knowledge helps us establish a destination and route while travelling. Therefore, sufficient spatial knowledge is a vital element in successful navigation. To build adequate spatial knowledge, various forms of spatial tools have been introduced to deliver spatial information without direct experience (maps, descriptions, pictures, etc.). An innovation developed in the 1970s and available on many handheld platforms from the early 2000s is the Global Position System (GPS) and related map and text-based navigation support systems. Contemporary technical achievements, such as GPS, have made navigation more effective, efficient, and comfortable in most outdoor environments. Because GPS delivers such accurate information, human navigation can be supported without specific spatial knowledge. Unfortunately, there is no universal and accurate navigation system for indoor environments. Since smartphones have become increasingly popular, we can more frequently and easily access various positioning services that appear to work both indoors and outdoors. The expansion of positioning services and related navigation technology have changed the nature of navigation. For example, routes to destination are progressively determined by a “system,” not the individual. Unfortunately we only have a partial and nascent notion of how such an intervention affects spatial behaviour. The practical purpose of this research is to develop a trustworthy positioning system that functions in indoor environments and identify those aspects those should be considered before deploying Indoor Positioning System (IPS), all towards the goal of maintaining affordable positioning accuracy, quality, and consistency. In the same way that GPS provides worry free directions and navigation support, an IPS would extend such opportunities to many of our built environments. Unfortunately, just as we know little about how GPS, or any real time navigation system, affects human navigation, there is little evidence suggesting how such a system (indoors or outdoors) changes how we find our way. For this reason, in addition to specifying an indoor position system, this research examines the difference in human’s spatial behaviour based on the availability of a navigation system and evaluates the impact of varying the levels of availability of such tools (not available, partially available, or full availability). This research relies on outdoor GPS, but when such systems are available indoors and meet the accuracy and reliability or GPS, the results will be generalizable to such situations.

This thesis examines forms of activism among middle-class youth in the context of neoliberal urban change in Delhi. The research is set within four interdisciplinary bodies of literature reflecting the experiences of young activists: middle-class identity, everyday politics and new modalities of social action, intersectionality, and active citizenship. What emerges from each of these bodies is a view to the contradictory politics of the young middle-class. Focusing on new forms of social action at the community level, this thesis uses an expansive definition of both activism and middle-class to encompass a range of activities from social enterprise, to technology-enabled mobilization around social issues, to political campaigning among India’s expanding middle-class. The research is framed within young peoples' period of waiting: for full adulthood, marriage, and importantly, full-time employment. Grounded in qualitative fieldwork, this thesis concentrates on young people, aged 18 to 30, in the middle-class with putatively distinct activist practices. Young people in Delhi are engaged in various activities that loosely correspond to different ideals of social justice or social work. I illustrate the innate differences in these ideals, their motivations, and methods. I analyze the limitations of different activist projects and the extent to which the social action is constructive—in the sense of enhancing the capabilities of marginalized sections of society and promoting inclusivity. The young people at the core of this project contend to be anti-politics, yet they are quite political. Additionally, the interlocutors show contempt for the state and the commercial interests of the market but deploy and rely on strategies from both. My examination gives prominence to the improvised nature of young people's lives and the decisions they make at key life stages. Activation of the self, and actualization for the researched youth, manifests in entrepreneurial activity, community work short of politics, and the negotiation of class, caste, and gender on an everyday basis. This thesis argues for more scholarly attention to the everyday lives of middle-class youth that can offer insights into this key demographic and connect individual decisions to broader social and political change.

The original contribution of this thesis is through its conceptualisations of human more-than- human encounters on the allotment that break down the boundaries of subjectivities. This work extends knowledge of cultural food geography by investigating how people engage with the matter of the plot and learn to grow food. The conceptual tool by which this occurs is set out as processes of visceral learning within a framework of mattering. Therefore this work follows the material transformations of matter across production consumption cycles of allotment produce. This is examined through processes of bodily adaptions to the matter of the plot. The processes of growing your own food affords an opportunity to focus on the processes of doing and becoming, allowing the how of food growing to take centre stage (Crouch 2003, Ingold 2010, Grosz 1999). Procuring and producing food for consumption is enacted through the human more-than-human interface of bodily engagement that disrupts dualisms and revealing their complex inter-relationships, as well as the potential of visceral research (Roe 2006, Whatmore 2006, Hayes-Conroy 2008). Therefore, this is an immersive account of the procurement of food and the development of food knowledge through material, sensory and visceral becomings, which occur within a contextual frame of everyday food experiences. This study is contextualised in the complexities of contemporary food issues where matters of access, foodism and sustainability shape the enquiry. However the research is carried out at a micro-geographies lens of bodily engagements with food matter through grow your own practices on allotments. Growing food on new allotments is the locus of procurement reflecting a resurgence in such activities following from the recent rise in interest in local food, alternative food networks (AFNs) and food as a conduit for celebrity in the media (Dupuis & Goodman 2005, Lockie & Kitto 2000, Winter 2003). Moreover, the current spread of the allotment is examined as transgressing urban/rural divides and disrupting traditional perceptions of plot users. This allows investigations into spaces where community processes can unfold, providing a richly observed insight into the broadened demographics of recent allotment life.

This thesis investigates the lives of young Polish migrants living in Northamptonshire, who migrated to the UK following Poland’s accession to the European Union in May 2004. Over 1.1 million Worker Registration Scheme (WRS) applications were made in the UK between May 2004 and December 2010, of which around two-thirds were made by Polish nationals. It is noted that high numbers of young people in Poland migrated to the UK, and a little under half of all WRS applications in the UK have been migrants aged between 18 and 24 years. Research exploring the lives of young migrants details strong connections between migration and life course progression. Given the relatively young ages of those migrating, this thesis is concerned with the impacts of migratory experiences upon migrants’ senses of ‘self-identity’, and transitions through the life course. Explanations for these movements have often treated migration as an ‘empirical event’ by focusing upon economic rationales, and much less attention has been given to motivations for migration, everyday experiences and future intentions of A8 migrants. To address this gap, this research explores the biographies of 40 young Polish migrants, revealing individual factors that influenced their migratory decision-making, and considering distinguishing features that set groups of Polish migrants apart. To achieve this, participants were asked to prepare a narrative of their experiences, based upon four biographical periods: life in Poland, the decision to migrate, life in the UK and perceived future pathways. Following this, 10 case studies were conducted with participants different ‘types’ of Polish migrant. Semi-structured interviews were organised and participants led ‘photo tours’ of their everyday locales. The findings show that while economic triggers were important to decision-making, it was also the case that social factors were critical, and migration to the UK for some was viewed as a means of leaving the parental home. Traditional social markers of difference, such as gender or age, were found to be of less importance: rather, participants emphasised a range of shared migratory experiences: ‘priorities’, ‘planning’, ‘stability’ and ‘language’. The themes of ‘temporariness’ and ‘trust’ were found to be central to everyday experiences, and participants indicated they were vulnerable to exploitation from other Polish migrants, as well as from known contacts pre-dating migration. Connections were identified between participants’ migratory experiences and their transitions though the life course. Four factors were found to have influenced participants’ transitions through the life course - spaces, times, self identity and support - which combine to form the relative pace(s), ‘smoothness’ and risks of such changes. The term ‘turbulent transitions’ is used to encapsulate major changes within participants’ biographies as a result of migration, which many experienced as being made quickly with limited access to support structures and in environments that contain high degrees of risk. The research calls for a more sensitive account of post-accession migration, which can only be achieved by exploring the experiences, encounters and biographies of migrants

O presente estudo analisa o conteúdo relativo ao continente africano no livro escolar. O recorte temporal abrange desde a introdução de conteúdos sobre a África nos manuais de Geografia, em 1890, pela reforma educacional Benjamin Constant, até a implementação da obrigatoriedade desse conteúdo no currículo básico em 2003, com a Lei nº 10.639/03. A análise está dividida em quatro partes, abordando um livro didático por período, priorizando aqueles que atingiram um maior número de alunos, segundo o Ministério da Educação (MEC). Nosso objetivo foi debater a forma como esse continente foi tratado pela Geografia escolar presente do livro didático. Nossa hipótese de trabalho é a de que o conteúdo sobre a África é tratado nos livros didáticos com um enfoque de dominação territorial de caráter colonial imperialista. / The present study analyzes the content on the African continent in the textbook. The time frame covers from the introduction of the content, about Africa in the manuals of Geography in 1890 by Benjamin Constant education reform, through the implementation of the mandatory content of the basic curriculum, in 2003 with the Law No. 10.639/03. The analysis is divided into four parts, addressing a textbook per period, prioritizing those who have attained a greater number of students according to the Ministry of Education (MEC). Our goal was to discuss how this continent was treated by the present school Geography textbook. Our working hypothesis is that the content about Africa is treated in textbooks with a focus on territorial domination of the imperialist colonial character.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Tartu, 2004. / Includes reprint of 5 previously published articles. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2010. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 106 p. : ill. (some col.), maps. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-103).