This paper examines the determinants of firms’ non-reliance judgment and the effect of restatements disclosure venue choice on future litigation risk. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires firms to disclose any error that will undermine investors’ reliance on previously issued financial statements in Item 4.02 of Form 8-K starting on August 23, 2004. The requirements for non-reliance judgments lack clear guidelines; raising concerns that firms are cloaking errors and mistakes through opaque disclosure venues instead of the more prominent Form 8-K. This paper is the first to investigate the quantitative and qualitative criteria that firms use for non-reliance judgments and estimate the likelihood of specific disclosure venue choice. Applying this estimation into securities class-action litigation setting with controls for restatement characteristics and potential self-selection biases, I find that a more prominent restatement disclosure venue is associated with higher future litigation risk. This finding provides a plausible explanation for the current popularity of so-called ‘stealth restatements.’ These findings are robust to the exclusion of a transition period of the new regulation, firms with multiple restatements, and dismissed lawsuits.

Critics of Edith Wharton frequently discuss the material culture that pervades her work, but the trend in doing so has been to rush past the things themselves and engage in abstracted conversations of theory. I would like to suggest that a closer scrutiny of the individual objects being presented in Wharton’s novels can highlight Wharton’s own theoretical approaches to material culture. Working from Bill Brown's distinction between objects and things, I want to argue that Wharton firmly situates the material culture in The Age of Innocence in the background of her characters' lives as objects which they utilize as extensions of the self; but she brings the thingness of material culture to the forefront in Twilight Sleep, where the material culture in the novel alternately stands out and malfunctions, as characters attempt—and fail—to construct coherent and livable identities for themselves in the face of a 1920s New York that Wharton depicts as a paradoxically over-furnished wasteland. I will ultimately argue that things, problematic as they are, become a matter of survival strategy for her characters in Twilight Sleep when they utilize them to reconstruct the social relations that have become increasingly threatened from the world of The Age of Innocence. / text

Standard setters recently proposed increasing audit disclosures and reporting. Two experiments examine the effects of auditor-provided disclosures on financial statement users’ perceptions of auditor independence, management credibility, reporting quality, materiality, and investment decisions. In the first experiment, I manipulate auditor agreement with management’s estimates and whether the estimates are incentive-consistent for management. I find that users view auditors as more (less) independent when they agree (disagree) with management, given an unqualified opinion. I also find that users are able to identify management bias using audit disclosures, and that the disclosures are value-relevant. In the second experiment, I provide users with either an explicit or implicit materiality disclosure and elicit users’ materiality judgments either before or after the disclosure. I find that users’ materiality judgments are closer to the auditor’s when elicited after an explicit materiality disclosure. Path analysis demonstrates that users’ materiality judgments affect subsequent investment and audit-related judgments but do not affect important decisions related to auditor liability and investment. The findings provide empirical support for the argument that additional audit disclosures would increase the transparency and value-relevance of the audit report.

This thesis is based on fieldwork carried out among weavers of rush-woven objects in rural Taiwan. In this thesis, I argue that nowadays rush-weaving is good work, though not good labour, for the weavers, and the social logic of Yuanli rush-weaving lies in the process of craft production. It is an ethnographic investigation into the practice of rush-weaving in association with colonialism, the heritage movement, and museum operation. Firstly, this thesis examines the economics and history and practice of craft production, in order to understand how the craft industry has become what it is and what is embedded in the process of production. The skill-based knowledge required of weavers is embedded in the relationship between a weaver and her environment. While this fundamental characteristic remains, new meanings and uses are attached to craft practice and the objects produced. Secondly, this thesis explores the process by which craft production is involved in the heritage and museum movement in contemporary Taiwan, so as to understand the interrelationship between craft production and the movement. I consider how ideas of tradition, heritage, and museums are perceived and enacted in everyday life, and find that these ideas contain contradictions and have different meanings for insiders and outsiders. The analysis as a whole seeks to explain why artisans keep weaving in contemporary society, and that it must be understood in terms of their continuous reaction to the constant transformation that the rush-weaving industry has undergone, which is reflected in the relationship between artisans and their objects in the process of production. The thesis addresses current issues – which are both fiercely contested in events and policies, and marginalised in everyday life – in Taiwan, but also attempts to contribute to the anthropological perspective on knowledge in practice, technology and social logics, past and present, and tradition and innovation.

This dissertation explores the challenges posed by the materialities of oceans and other extraterritorial spaces to state capture and capital development. Utilizing theories emerging political geographers surrounding vertical and volume components of territory and theoretical engagements with materiality of non-terrestrial spaces, this research seeks to investigate entanglements of the geopolitical and geophysical in constructing and practicing (re)interpretations of territory and sovereignty, power and space. A focus on New Zealand and the South Pacific serves to unravel these cross scalar, dynamic categories of national territory and sovereignty in relation to the emerging political and social constructions of the deep sea, sea level, and air space, as well as the blurred and shifting boundaries of each. Contextualizing historical and regional contingencies of the spatial organizations of maritime space, this dissertation seeks to open up new ocean imaginaries and ontologies by making explicit the material, technical and political constructions that produce offshore territories.

Anishinabeg are not strangers to photography. Like many Indigenous communities in North America and elsewhere, Anishinabeg have a history of being pictured by governments, artists, and researchers working within the confines of colonial thought and practice. Not surprisingly, much of this colonial artwork has drawn considerable scholarly critique, calling attention to issues including misuse of power, cultural appropriation, assimilation, and misrepresentation. While this work continues to be significant in contributing understanding of how colonialism played out visually and materially, it may also unintentionally generate the misconception that Indigenous Peoples were only the subjects of the camera or had little or no authority over the photographic experience. Indeed, photography has its own history and place within the creative practices and traditions of many Indigenous Peoples. This research project explores the role of Anishinabe photography in the reclamation and continuance of Anishinabe stories, memories, and knowledge among Anishinabe families with ancestral and present day ties to Anishinabe lands in the northwest region of Ontario. As a result of imposed colonial legislation, Anishinabeg in this region have been displaced from their traditional lands, which has had direct consequences on their ability to retain their language, culture, and life skills. Today, Anishinabeg live in the aftermath of colonial violence perpetuated against their ancestors. The severing of land and kin connections has left many Anishinabeg struggling with issues including loss of identity and sense of belonging. Despite of these ongoing challenges, Anishinabeg have struggled to recover and maintain their knowledge, language, sovereignty, and spirituality through various personal and shared activities and initiatives. This research incorporates a research framework that integrates visual, narrative, and material strategies to directly confront the aforementioned colonial legacies of erasure and disappearance of Anishinabeg. It seeks to explore and privilege Anishinabe experiences and stories by weaving together various theoretical and methodological threads of decolonization, photography, place, visuality, materiality and memory. Through processual and creative ways of bringing together and experiencing photographs, it contributes to understandings of the significance of photography to Indigenous-led efforts directed towards decolonization, including cultural revival and continuity, sense of belongingness, identity, and caring for relationships among person, place and land. This research intervenes in Anishinabe lands, stories, and experiences that fall outside the jurisdiction of the Indian Act or “official” dominant versions of history and therefore provides a powerful counter narrative that seeks to both destabilize widely accepted colonial myths and contribute to Anishinabe sovereignty. Major findings of this research position Anishinabe photographs as highly relational and social things that may help configure and congeal a host of relationships between people, the land, and their ancestral past. It introduces new ways of working with and through historical family photographs—ways that are grounded in existing Anishinabe material and embodied practices. Through these practices it contributes knowledges about the past that can be acquired through these practices. As such, it offers new sets of relationships that strengthen individual ties to the ancestral past in ways that both honour our responsibilities to our ancestors and their teachings as well as our commitments to generations ahead of us. / Graduate

Entre 3500 e 2900 a.C. as sociedades do Oriente Próximo passam por grandes transformações socioculturais. O mundo proto-urbano, que abarcava um amplo horizonte geográfico, começa dar sinais de declínio e esta crise é sentida de formas diferentes nos mais diversos locais, que desaparecem ou se retraem. Em Uruk, já em um avançado momento de urbanização, esta retração cultural promoveu efeitos diversos dentre os quais surgem novos mecanismos de administração baseados no arquivamento de tabletes protocuneiformes. Estes novos mecanismos acabaram gerando uma hipertrofia documental que coloca problemas para a instituição geradora da informação, que passa a se tornar cada vez mais autocentrada. / Between 3500/2900 BC Near Eastern societies are undergoing major transformations. The proto-urban world, which covered a broad geographic horizon, begins to show signs of decline and this crisis is felt in different ways in different places, which disappear or retract. In Uruk, already in an advanced moment of urbanization, this retraction promoted cultural effects many of which are new administrative mechanisms based on archiving proto-cuneiforms tablets. These new mechanisms have been generating a large volume of documents that posed problems for the information institution, which goes on to become increasingly self-centered.

O objetivo geral da pesquisa é ranquear alguns contextos (frames) que impactam subjetivamente no julgamento de materialidade que os auditores ponderam, abordando, além da visão global das demonstrações contábeis apresentadas para asseguração, distorções materiais e não conformidades, procedimento analítico, perfil dos gestores e ambiente de controle de negócios. A pesquisa é quantitativa e qualitativa, utilizando como coleta de dados a Metodologia Q (Stephenson, 1953) e Narrativa Oral (Llewellyn, 1999). Os participantes da pesquisa são sócios, gerentes e seniores de auditoria de firmas Big 5 e sócios de firmas de pequeno porte. O instrumento de pesquisa contou com a apresentação de 27 cenários (frames) dispostos em cartões livremente ordenáveis de forma decrescente em percepção de relevância pelo participante como situações que o faria alterar a materialidade em um cliente. A coleta de dados contou com 18 entrevistas. O tratamento estatístico dos dados contou com a análise fatorial exploratória (AFE), e o tratamento qualitativo com análise interpretativa e análise por templates. A materialidade é influenciada para níveis mais conservadores em dois momentos: no planejamento de auditoria ou durante a coleta de evidências em campo, de acordo com a percepção do auditor da relevância de informações negativas. Porém, é influenciada para níveis menos conservadores apenas no planejamento de auditoria, quando há uma percepção acumulada historicamente pelo auditor sobre a efetividade dos controles internos e do bom caráter dos gestores do cliente. Para os estudos acadêmicos, esta dissertação objetiva contribuir para o aumento de pesquisas nacionais na área. Para a profissão contábil, objetiva-se refletir sobre os conhecimentos do dia a dia dos auditores em campo, visto que qualquer contador pode ser um auditor independente (CFC, 1983). Para a sociedade, objetiva-se oferecer mais informações sobre o auditor para, potencialmente, milhões de shareholders (investidores, credores, prestadores de serviço, funcionários, governo etc.) que depositam confiança nesses profissionais em suas decisões. O estudo é pioneiro na apresentação da materialidade como uma probabilidade da percepção de um risco de exposição do auditor e na compreensão dos fatores de julgamento de materialidade ex ante a entrega do relatório final de auditoria. / This research aims to to rank contexts (frames), which subjectively shall impact the judgment of materiality that auditors assess, addressing, aside from the global view on the accounting statements report for assurance, material distortions and nonconformities, analytical procedure, profile of managers and business control environment. The research is both quantitative and qualitative, using for data collection purposes the Q Methodology (Stephenson, 1953) and Oral Narrative (Llewellyn, 1999). Participants were partners, managers and senior auditors from Big 5 companies and members of small-sized enterprises. The research instrument comprised the presentation of 27 scenarios (frames) presented in cards arranged in random randomly in descending order according to how relevance was perceived by the participant as situations that would change the materiality of a client. Data collection included 18 interviews. The statistical treatment of the data included the Exploratory Factorial Analysis (EFA) and the qualitative treatment of the information was through analysis both interpretative and by templates. Materiality is influenced at more conservative levels in two circumstances: in the audit planning or upon field evidence collection, and according to the perception by an auditor of the relevance of a negative piece of information. However, it is influenced at less conservative levels only in audit planning when there is a historically acquired perception by the auditor on the effectiveness of internal controls and concerning the good character of the client\'s managers. As for academic studies, this dissertation aims to contribute towards increasing nation wide research on the subject area. As for accounting as a profession, it aims to reflect on the daily knowledge of the auditing field, that is considering that any given accountant may be an independent auditor (CFC, 1983). To society, it aims to provide more education on the work of an auditor to potentially millions of shareholders (investors, creditors, service providers, employees, government, etc.) who depend upon the trust placed in such professionals to their decisions. The study is a pioneer in the subject regarding the presentation of the subject materiality as a probability of perception of exposion risk to an auditor and in the understanding of the factors involved in the materiality judgment ex ante to the delivery of a final audit report.

My journey starts off using photography as a tool to investigate materiality, body, object and space. During my trip I constructed a photo, or as I see it, translated a 2D photo into a 3D form. I travel through material values and the relationship between material and form, encountering questions on legitimacy and hierarchy: Why does some material become more real? What charachterizes these material and gives them more credibility? Why do we value material differently? The path I follow consist of fused material: digital, traditional and unknown. My expedition challenges craft, the definition of the handmade, and the concept of the final piece.

This research calls for a reconsideration of the notion of rubbish; one that does not consider disposal as the final act of the production-consumption cycle but, instead, appreciates the practices enacted around rubbish as constitutive of value creation. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre's Production of Space (1991) and Rhythmanalysis (2004) this thesis traces the social life of rubbish to understand the social, cultural, political, and economic practices implicated in the organisation of waste. In particular, I employed a sensory ethnographic approach comprising of participant observations, self-reflexive observations, formal and informal interviews. I undertook a six months fieldwork, where I explored and documented the practices enacted by six sets of stakeholder who are involved in the organisation of rubbish in Lagos, Nigeria. Without overlooking the representational aspects (i.e. interviews, visuals) of practices, this thesis contributes to consumer research and the wider marketing discipline by tackling the more-than-representational elements of practices. The research exposes the spatial dynamics, embodied and multisensory experiences and power relations that are negotiated and co-produced when everyday practices are performed around rubbish. In so doing, I question and challenge the notion of disposal as being limited to environmentalism, green consumption and sustainability. I pushed these boundaries by investigating how rubbish acts as the lifeblood that fuels socio-spatial as well as economic relations in both formal and informal economies. This ethnographic study reveals the coping tactics and spaces of resistance that are utilised by marginalised informal operators to 'make-do' and sometimes subvert the strategies imposed by the formal authorities when they attempt to abolish these practices. The findings unmask the processual quality of practices and the recursive nature of objects in terms of their transformation from a state of 'rubbish' into valuable categories. It also makes visible the manner in which the practices enacted around rubbish (de)synchronises with natural rhythms such as seasons. The thesis alerts policymakers to the contributions of the informal waste economy to the socioeconomic development of the formal economy. It also suggests that the urge to engage in sustainable consumption practices - recycling and less consumption - can have detrimental effects on stakeholders that rely on the surplus or detritus that emerge post consumption to sustain their socioeconomic livelihoods in developing economies across the world such as Lagos, Nigeria.