It is well known that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) have affected millions of people throughout the world and continues to affect people on a day to day basis. In Africa, sub-Saharan Africa is the most affected. Malawi, one of the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa is no exception to the growing trend and severity in HIV prevalence (Kalipeni& Ghosh, 2006).Like many countries in Africa, cultural practices in Malawi have been criticised as contributing to the spread of HIV and AIDS (Mwale, 2008). In recent years it has been recognised that in order to understand the spread of HIV and AIDS it is imperative to address the economic, social, cultural and political issues that lead to the contraction and spread of the virus. Hence there is a growing realisation that more effective prevention strategies in response to HIV and AIDS should focus on traditional, cultural, medical and political beliefs and practices as well as perceptions of individual risk to HIV and AIDS (Lwanda, 2005).The proposed research seeks to explore the perceptions of Malawians in the role and implications that cultural practices play in promoting HIV infections in Malawi. A sample of 17 people representing both genders from three tribes, namely the Yao, Tumbuka and Chewa participated in the study. Participants were purposively selected on their knowledge of cultural practices and in their being members of the tribe that was investigated. The research study was qualitative and a case study research design was applied. Data was analysed using thematic content analysis. The findings were therefore organised according to themes. The findings were that a number of cultural practices of the Tumbukas, Chewas and Yaos play a role in HIV and AIDS infections. Some of the cultural practices that were identified included wife inheritance, polygamy, initiation ceremonies, the practice of fisi(hyena), the practice of kulowafumbi(wiping of dust) and traditional marriages. The study found that cultural practices accompanied by lack of education, poverty, gender inequalities, lack of condom use and peer pressure among the youth promotes risky behavior that often leads to HIV transmission and prevents behavioural change. It was identified that it would be beneficial to educate elders of the community and influential people about HIV so that they could teach community members about the link between HIV and AIDS and cultural practice, and to find alternative ways to ensure that the cultural practice is safer, such as encouraging people to test before they practice wife inheritance. This study hopefully has the potential of contributing to knowledge and awareness in the fields of social development and social work on the role that cultural practice plays in promoting risky behaviour,which leads to contracting HIV infection among the Chewa, Tumbuka and Yao tribes. These findings could be useful in the creation of cultural-specific intervention programmes that are aimed at curbing HIV infection in Malawi and in many African countries where similar cultural practices are practiced.

Student Number : 9510358Y - PhD thesis - School of Social Sciences - Faculty of Humanities

A la croisée des sciences économiques et de la sociologie du travail, cette thèse porte sur les conséquences sociales des récessions économiques et du chômage de masse, à travers le cas de la Grande Récession espagnole de 2008. Elle se centre sur la manière dont celle-ci a modifié les horizons temporels des ménages et conduit à des réaménagements en termes de sources de revenus, de trajectoires d’activité des chômeurs, de pratiques de consommation, ou de marché du travail informel. En raison de ce dernier, le statut même de chômeur se trouve remis en question. Pour montrer cela, la thèse met en regard une enquête de terrain approfondie avec des traitements de données issues du système de la statistique publique espagnole et européenne. L’enquête a notamment été conduite selon la méthode dite de l’ethnocomptabilité, qui consiste à faire des relevés (monétaires mais aussi temporels ou alimentaires) avec les ménages concernés pour documenter l’évaluation qu’ils portent sur leur budget. Cette démarche conduit à plusieurs résultats marquants quant aux changements sociaux qu’entraînent les récessions sur les sociétés contemporaines d’Europe occidentale, en particulier quant aux budgets de famille ou à la temporalité sur plusieurs années qu’implique ce type de choc macroéconomique. / At the crossroad between Economics and Sociology, this PhD-thesis deals with the social consequences of Recessions and mass unemployment, by focusing on the case of the 2008 Spanish Great Recession. It analyses the household time horizons to face this recessive context, in particular concerning remodelling of consumption, income sources and inequality, grassroot activities and professional trajectories of the unemployed. Such evolutions blur the formal definition of unemployment. For this, the study uses statistical analyses in view of fieldwork material. This latter has been done by using the « ethno compatibility » method, which consists in establishing precise and exhaustive household budgets, regarding their financial dimension, but also their temporal or taste aspects. Therefore this thesis is a contribution to a better understanding of the reaction of living standards in time of recession, tackling in particular its temporal and practical dimensions.

A ausência de consenso a nível mundial sobre o que é uma Smart City abre margem para a apropriação do termo por uma retórica de consumo tecnológico que pode não ter compromisso algum com melhorias sociais e urbanas. Em um cenário em que estudos de caso e soluções-padrão são amplamente utilizados, torna-se problemático o fato de que muitos dos casos estudados na literatura foram pensados para cidades europeias, asiáticas e norte-americanas, que apresentam uma dinâmica social signifi cativamente diferente das brasileiras e latino-americanas. A presente pesquisa visa, portanto, contribuir com uma abordagem crítica e sistemática para o entendimento do discurso Smart City e seus desdobramentos práticos no contexto de metrópoles latino-americanas. Por meio de um panorama geral sobre o fenômeno Smart City, é feita uma revisão da literatura científi ca, documentos, notícias e projetos para compreender o discurso em torno da Smart City e sua evolução nos últimos vinte anos. Esse discurso é então confrontado com as práticas e fenômenos tipicamente encontrados nas metrópoles latino-americanas, tendo como referência a Região Metropolitana de São Paulo. Em seguida, são levantadas diversas fragilidades conceituais e fantasias em torno da Smart City e da atribuição da inteligência à cidade e outros objetos da técnica. Parte-se para um questionamento à própria validade do termo Smart City e coloca-se a importância de qualifi car a discussão em torno dos cenários urbanos futuros. Dada a própria natureza plural e complexa do ambiente urbano, defende-se a necessidade de uma refl exão capaz de abrir margem para novas possibilidades de discurso e prática projetual. São elencados os pilares essenciais ao sustento de tal refl exão, assim como algumas diretrizes e considerações visando a incorporação desta ao projetar do urbano. Por fi m, são sugeridas novas dimensões de análise que permitam reconhecer os aspectos problemáticos levantados ao longo deste trabalho. / The worldwide lack of consensus regarding what constitutes a Smart City leaves the concept vulnerable to being seized by a rhetoric of technological consumption, to which urban and social improvements might not be of concern. In a scenario where case studies and off-the-shelf solutions are widely used, a troubling fact arises: many of said cases and solutions where designed for North-American, European and Asian cities, which have social dynamics signifi cantly different from the ones seen in Brazilian and Latin-American cities. This research aims to contribute to systematic critical approaches seeking to comprehend Smart City discourse and it\'s practical developments in the context of Latin-American metropolises. By way of a panoramic view of the phenomena and the comparison of different academic and non-academic sources, an attempt is made to understand the evolution of Smart City discourse over the last twenty years. This discourse is them compared to the practices and phenomena typically present in Latin American metropolises, with São Paulo\'s Metropolitan Region as a reference. Several conceptual frailties and fantasies surrounding the Smart City and the general attribution of knowledge to cities - or any other technical object - are raised. The very validity of the term Smart City is put into question and the importance of qualifying the discussion on future urban scenarios is made evident. The plural and complex nature of the urban environment calls for a refl ection capable of producing new possibilities of discourse and design practices. The essential pillars for such a refl ection are proposed, as well as a few directives and remarks in an attempt to incorporate it into the design of urban spaces. Finally, new dimensions are proposed to guide analytical attempts towards recognizing the troublesome aspects outlined in this research.

As many political observers have pointed out, political participants in the United States are particularly unrepresentative of the population as a whole. Citizens who are politically active tend to be those on the upper end of the socioeconomic scale, for example, the wealthy and highly educated. This dissertation examines the ways in which inequalities in political participation lead to differences in the behavior of elected officials and their subsequent actions related to policy making. That is, politicians have the ability, and under certain circumstances the incentive, to vary how they govern and who they govern for, depending on how political influence is distributed throughout the citizenry. I argue that considering the economic status of various groups in society is an important and often overlooked aspect of representation. Economic status is linked closely with economic need, which is especially important for the disadvantaged and may be difficult to measure by relying on issue positions or priorities gathered from opinion surveys. Income affects the types of government programs people are influenced by and rely on; for example, welfare, health care, and public housing policies are more likely to directly influence the poor while those with higher economic status are unlikely to encounter any of these programs. This suggests that different levels of political activity by various groups in society can have an influence on lawmakers' decisions regarding how to address certain issues. To assess the influence of unequal participation on public policy I examine various stages of the policy process, including policy outcomes and issue agenda setting in the states. Few studies have assessed the effect of inequalities in participation on the public policy, and research assessing the link between inequality and policy has almost entirely overlooked the potential effects of unequal participation on agenda setting. This research explores whether states with higher economic inequalities in political participation have policies that are less likely to be beneficial to disadvantaged groups. Both policy outcomes and issue agendas are examined to fully understand the consequences of political inequality in the American states.

This dissertation contributes to the current understanding of human capital and its importance for earnings inequality and taxation. Human capital is typically defined as the stock of knowledge or skills acquired through education and working experience. The first chapter analyzes student borrowing behaviors in postsecondary education in the United States, the second chapter studies cross-country differences in earnings inequality within an endogenous growth model of human capital accumulation, and the third chapter examines the impact of endogenous human capital formations over a life-cycle on optimal fiscal policy. In Chapter 1, I document that new federal student loans for higher education in the United States have risen more than 5 times over the past 20 years. What caused this dramatic increase? I develop a heterogeneous life-cycle model of human capital accumulation to analyze individual college and borrowing decisions. Using this framework, I assess the quantitative contributions of changes in the college wage premium, college costs, maximum borrowing limits, and loan interest rates to explain the significant rise of federal student loans. I find that the calibrated model accounts for 57 percent of the actual increase in loans from 1990 to 2011. Increases in the college wage premium and college costs are important factors in generating the sharp rise in loans and, particularly, the increase in the fraction of borrowers and borrowing amounts. The expansion of credit availability and decreased loan interest rates have a relatively minimal impact on individual college and borrowing decisions. Chapter 2 explores why earnings inequality has been substantially higher in the US than in European countries over the last 30 years. I focus on the role of differences in tax progressivity, intergenerational earnings persistence, returns to education investments, and public education spending. I develop a growth model of human capital accumulation, and show analytically how those factors affect the dynamics of earnings inequality. The calibrated model accounts for 31 percent of the observed differences in earnings inequality between European countries and the US for 2003-07. Differences in returns to education investments and intergenerational earnings persistence are quantitatively important, suggesting the potential role of educational policy in ameliorating rising earnings inequality. Chapter 3, written jointly with Martin Gervais, analyzes the role of endogenous human capital accumulation in shaping optimal fiscal policy within a life-cycle growth model. We show that when investment in human capital is not verifiable---making the tax code incomplete---a non-zero capital income tax becomes optimal in order to alleviate the distortionary effects of the labor income tax on investment in human capital. This is true even if the government has access to a full set of age-dependent labor and capital income taxes. The main result is in sharp contrast to the finding in Jones et al. (1997) that all interest taxes are zero in infinitely-lived agent models with endogenous human capital formation.

The problem of rehabilitation of the physically handicapped in the United States is one of massive proportions. A 1968 survey conducted by the Department of Transportation estimates the number of physically disabled persons in the United States to be approximately 30 million.1 As noted above, physical deviance serves as a basis of social differentiation; and where this differentiation takes on a negative character, the concept of social distance can be useful in measuring the attitudes of physically normal persons in their acceptance or rejection of those who are physically deviant. This study intends to examine the normals' contacts (in their various forms) with disabled persons and the relationship of these contacts to the social distance established between persons who are physically normal and those who are physically deviant. 1. Ruth Lauder, The Goal Is: Mobility! Published for the National Citizens Conference on Rehabilitation of the Disabled and Disadvantaged by the U.S. Dept. of Health, Education & Welfare (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1969), p. 4

Using data from the American National Election Studies from 1968 to 2016, I explore the historical relationship between voter income, other demographic factors, and political polarization. I find that while having a higher income and a better education generally correlates with increased Republican political preference, though the relationship between higher income and increased Republican preference does not hold in lower income groups. Race is by far the most significant indicator of political preference, with whites and blacks on opposite ends of the political spectrum, and Hispanics as well as other races somewhere in between the two. In addition, I analyze the data from 20th century elections separately from 21st century elections and discover key differences in how each factor influences political preference.

Brazil faces low levels of educational achievement at the tertiary level. Historically, higher education institutions in Brazil are predominately attended by wealthier individuals. Two educational initiatives, Prouni, a scholarship program for private tertiary institutions, and Lei de Cotas 2012, an affirmative action law for public institutions, have been implemented to assist students coming from low income backgrounds. The majority of individuals in low income brackets in Brazil tend to be people of color, so inadvertently these policies may have an effect on racial minorities. This study explores the effect of the aforementioned policies on racial minority groups in higher education by reviewing previous studies and analyzing racial demographic data of higher education institutions, and concludes that the Lei de Cotas is most effective for students from racial minority backgrounds.

Since the mid-1970s, partisan polarization has been increasing in Congress and the Presidency, and, although most voters lack a stable, consistent ideology, non-ideological forms of partisan polarization have emerged in the mass public in recent decades. Moreover, ideological polarization among elites is highly asymmetrical, with increased Republican conservatism accounting for most of the increased ideological distance between the parties. Here, I develop a racial-threat backlash theory and argue that increased rates of immigration are associated with increased asymmetrical ideological polarization among elites and in the mass public. Tests of this theory on voters, the mass public in the states, state legislators, and Senators provide support for my theory. In addition, when accounting for the effects of immigration, I do not find support for the alternative explanation that increased income inequality leads to increased asymmetrical partisan polarization.