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The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between middle class and higher education through higher education policy. While the society gradually form the social class, each of them will try to obtain as much resource as they could. However, most of the resource is controlled by the upper class, which, due to the incapable of self-improvement, will eventually cause the conflict between different classes. In order to prevent the class struggle and conflict, and to maintain the social harmonious, the stable existence of Social Mobility is critical and important. And the easiest way for lower class to flow upward, is the education. After the declare end of the marshal law, the main purpose of education innovation in our country, is to expand the chance for people to receive higher education, raise the standard of knowledge, and increase the national competitiveness. However, while fixing all the old issue by the execution of the innovated policy, the upcoming problems have already risen. After the KMT re-achieve the presidency, the Exective Yuan shows the determination of restrain depression by the announcement of forming firm and solid middle class. If the indispensable way of social flow, education, is malfunctioning, the forming is incapable as well. It¡¦s obviously that the importance and requirement of education is raised, and the higher education is also widespread. However, does higher education in our country play it¡¦s role of promoting social flow? Does the consequence of successively education reform cause positive (or even negative) impact on the social mobility? These are the factors that this thesis wants to investigate.

To the progress of social development, the middle-class has the ability to maintain the stable of social order development and the promotion of rational revolution. Among them, the location of labor is an important influential factor to the structure and change of classes. After the social change like industrialization and land reform, the middle-class in Taiwan appeared highly developed. However, with the circulation of the global capital, the employment position of labor markets had a division into two opposing extremes, which had cause the danger and anxiety among the middle-class. In this study, we take the view point of public employment regime to discuss how the State using the administrative power to stimulate labor, and how did they enforce social reform from the middle-class to reduce the opposition and confliction among classes. First, we take an observation on the long term Taiwan employment situation transition. We found out that, in order to promote the middle-class, we should place importance on the individual employment problems to provide education and employment training courses to reduce the long term unemployment. Second, we take the operation of the ¡¥short term employment promotion project¡¦ for consideration. We realized that in order to positively promote labor. We should think over the ¡¥lawful long term employment service¡¦ to enforce the employment service ability by ensuring the accountability and responsibility of administration departments by law; guarantee the occupation training; and enforce the ability of employment service department. Our suggestion is that, we should face squarely on the roles of Taiwan's middle-classes played on the autonomy and public sphere, and focus on the moderate social forces they had to avoid confliction and opposition to establish harmonious and mutually beneficial society.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 2000. / Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 108-117).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Sociology, August 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.) in History--University of Maine, 2001. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 129-141).

Thesis--M. Phil., University of Hong Kong, 1982.

“Sabha theater” is a genre of Tamil language comedy theater that started in Madras (Chennai) in the period following India’s 1947 independence. Its name comes from the fact that the amateur drama troupes rely on cultural organizations known as sabhas for patronage, but the theater also has a very specific aesthetic and narrative style. Sabhas are known for their patronage of classical music and dance, but many also support amateur theater troupes. These organizations, along with the press and academics, create a notion of “good” taste in Chennai, India. All three fields are dominated by the high caste Brahmin community, which thus both constructs and embodies the idea of good taste in the city. The identity of Brahmins, as the taste-makers of the city, is influential in shaping middle-class culture in Chennai. I argue that this identity is not best visible in tradition, because performances of the classical arts and the response of connoisseur audiences to them reveal an ideal that is frozen in time. I look instead to something spontaneous: humor. The fact that elite Tamil Brahmins choose to join sabhas or attend sabha dramas is not to say that the plays are ideal representations of Tamil Brahmin culture or good taste. In actuality, the discourse about the plays has created two factions within the Tamil Brahmin community, the most vocal of which dismisses them as “just comedy.” I engage with both voices through case studies of plays that have remained popular with audiences over the years. I also consider such things as how the contemporary political climate and development of mass media have affected live theater in Chennai in terms of aesthetics, personnel, scripts, production, and patronage. / text

The concepts and definitions of housing affordability vary depending on the economic and social contexts of specific countries. However, irrespective of the context, housing affordability is not only influenced by the market conditions, but also by the prevailing policy environment, among other social and economic factors. The impact of the supply-side instruments of the policy environment, such as the regulatory regime, on the provision of affordable housing and housing affordability has been widely studied mainly in the context of developed or richer developing countries where strong regulatory and institutional frameworks exist. Little has been done in the context of developing countries with weak regulatory and institutional frameworks. This dissertation pioneers a study of this kind in the context of Bangladesh. It aims to investigate the housing affordability problems of the middle-income groups in Dhaka and to identify the underlying supply-side causes of the policy environment. A qualitative approach is adopted for this research. The social constructivist paradigm combined with the interpretive type of narration has been engaged as the research strategy. Both the ratio and residual-income based approaches of measuring housing affordability are used. Working definitions of housing affordability and income groups are also developed. Primary and secondary data were collected using various approaches such as document analysis, questionnaire survey and interviews. This study reveals that the formal housing market in Dhaka failed to provide affordable housing for the middle-income groups. The price-to-income ratio in Dhaka is one of the highest among the major South Asian cities. The middle-income groups struggle to maintain a minimum standard of living and largely rely on rental housing. However, rents are also unaffordable to them and Dhaka has the highest rent-to-income ratio in Asia. The housing units in the informal settlements could be affordable to them, but their social status inhibits them from living in these settlements. The regulatory and infrastructure development regimes are found to be non-enabling. Existing land-use regulations encourage land hoarding and land value speculation. Despite the weak urban growth control, the land price is very high and the land-supply fails to meet the demand. Further, the planning permission processes for residential development are significant time and cost inflators. Investment on infrastructure is not targeted to facilitate residential land supply. Serviced residential land is expensive due to the short supply of residential infrastructures. Institutionally, the non-participatory mode of governance, absence of a clear line of authority, and poor human resources capacities of the related government organizations are the main underlying causes of the non-enabling performance of supply-side regimes. This study recommends pro-active government initiatives to strengthen the enabling functions of the regulatory regimes. Utilization of planning tools such as planning incentives and mandatory contributions of affordable housing in private housing projects are recommended. Infrastructure investment targeting at facilitating residential land supply is suggested. Institutional restructuring and the establishment of a housing data bank are also recommended. This study enriches the literature related to the impact of the policy environment on housing by widening the debate to cover the developing countries. / published_or_final_version / Urban Planning and Design / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This dissertation is concerned with the everyday lives of transnational Indian call center workers when situated within the global politics of voice-based outsourcing. The call center economy gained impetus in early 2000-2001, when multinational corporations began to train young men and women in India to mask their spatial and temporal location, in order that they could serve customers in the US and the UK. Taking calls through the night to serve the work day of Western consumers, these customer service agents were asked to assume a different name, location, and cultural and language markers, as part of the requirements of work. I explore the ways in which these young, middle-class workers located themselves within practices, contentious representations, and material outcomes of this transnational outsourcing economy. Through ethnographic research in Pune, a prominent university town and call center hub in western India, I investigate (1) everyday life in and out of the call center, (2) labor management practices within call centers, and (3) the socio-economic and cultural transformations that accompanied and framed the development of the urban Indian call center economy. This research engages with the machinations of multinational corporations as they incorporate large number of labor forces worldwide into transnational work. It builds on three main bodies of theory - flexible or late capital and flexibility, the South Asian postcolonial nation-state, and affective labor. Through these, I provide a thick description of the history, construction, maintenance and disruption of this site, as also the ways in which this particular story of capital was stabilized. I engage with questions such as, what complex negotiations underlie the ostensible success of new service economies in India? What are its cultural, political and economic determinants and ramifications? What grounds are the claims of state, capital and culture being contested or reified upon, and what do such negotiations mean for service workers within the landscape of urban India? This dissertation shows how the practice of everyday life in this transnational milieu is best explained as the collusion and tension between the contested socio-economic spaces of the new Indian middle-classes and middle-class-ness, and an ungrounded discourse of mobile and flexible capital. The stories of call center workers in this analysis are the stories of particular subjects called upon and striving to be constantly flexible in order to successfully become middle-class and global in the same breath, one often seamlessly overlapping the other. / text