This research thesis examined the applicability of the enablement paradigm in the public-private partnership (PPP) of housing delivery systems (HDS) in Lagos among middle-income groups using the periods of changing historic conditions as baseline for the analysis. Nigeria’s postdemocratic Housing and Urban Development Policy for the first time in 2002 recognized the formal private sector as a major stakeholder in its framework. This recognition was in line with the World Bank’s policy recommendation for governments to create enabling environment for private sector participation in housing provision. The major changes by this policy were the grant of access to land with ownership tenure and access to housing finance with low interest rate. This thesis underscores the failure of the Housing and Urban Development Policy framework in Nigeria to achieve real gains in housing delivery. By unbundling the determinants of HDS in Lagos, this research identified the universal objectives of housing delivery in terms of the quantity and quality of housing and its environmental quality. The findings from this research work identified significant correlation between failures in government policies and poor stakeholders’ delineation and roles. The study further associated stakeholder’s delineation and role to PPP optimization: By so, identified PPP as the fulcrum for resource, process and social optimization towards achieving AHD. Through an extensive analysis of historic conditions, theories and policies nationally and internationally, this research drew relevant lessons which informed its conceptual departure for unbundling PPP within HDS. It also relied on empirical data obtained from quantitative and qualitative research instruments drawn from four estate typologies and three categorized stakeholder’s respondents’ frame it used in evaluating HDS. In its contribution, this study developed a project lifecycle framework for housing development, a proposal for PPP effectiveness and an Adequacy Evaluation Technique (AET). Common to these models was the delineation of the universal objectives of housing from which the 3-Qfactor of housing quantity, and quality and the quality of housing environment emanated as a measure of value added contribution. By this, the study established a departure from previous architectural approaches which promised value satisfaction as a functional derivative of design. Through these models, PPP can be designed at the architectural and operational levels towards achieving AHD through the window of the universal objective of housing delivery; and can be evaluated for functional satisfaction and real value (return on investment) based on assessment of profitability of housing development actors/partners. The second major contribution is the delineation of stakeholders in three dimensions namely, the household, the housing development actor/partner which reflects changing roles and circumstances and the housing development experts. Of emphasis are the changing roles and circumstances that this study is able to delineate from its literature and field work through an understanding of the social focus groups which exist within the Lagos settings. This study in conclusion emphasizes the need for delineating stakeholders’ roles contextually as a pre-condition to initiating partnerships. It also posits that there is need to deduce all resources, processes and social context as the framework for PPP before initiating partnerships. It established that, current policy practice already targets the middle-income in its use of PPP, and this can be extended to other social income groups and that the basis for the utilization of PPP should stem from an understanding of specific application of the three-step adequacy evaluation technique (AET) developed by this study as a relevant tool for evaluating the adequacy of housing development projects. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.

This dissertation joins a vibrant conversation in the social sciences about the challenging nature of care labor as well as feminist discussions about the role of the daughter in Victorian culture. It explores the literary presence of the middle class managing daughter in the Victorian home. Collectively, the novels in this study articulate social anxieties about the unclear and unstable role of daughters in the family, the physically and emotionally challenging work they, and all women, do, and the struggle for daughters to find a place in a family hierarchy, which is often structured not by effort or affection, but by proscribed traditional roles, which do not easily adapt to managing daughters, even if they are the ones holding the family together. The managing daughter is a problem not accounted for in any conventional domestic structure or ideology so there is no role, no clear set of responsibilities and no boundaries that could, and arguably should, define her obligations, offer her opportunities for empowerment, or set necessary limits on the broad cultural mandate she has to comfort and care others. The extremes she is often pushed to reveals the stresses and hidden conflicts for authority and autonomy inherent in domestic labor without the iconic angel in the house rhetoric that so often masks the difficulties of domestic life for women. She gains no authority or stability no matter how loving or even how necessary she is to a family because there simply is no position in the parental family structure for her. The managing daughter thus reveals a deep crack in the structure of the traditional Victorian family by showing that it often cannot accommodate, protect, or validate a loving non-traditional family member because it values traditional hierarchies over emotion or effort. Yet, in doing so, it also suggests that if it is position not passion that matters, then as long as a woman assumes the right position in the family then deep emotional connections to others are not necessary for her to care competently for others.

Despite education reform efforts to improve the quality of education in urban lower-income areas, a continued correlation between social status and academic achievement that disproportionately disadvantages those from a lower class background remains. This thesis explores the connection between social class and the meanings placed upon education and presents a number of distinguishing elements that middle class and working-class individual's value about education in a predominantly white working-class urban neighborhood in the Midwest. More specifically, while both middle-class and working-class individuals espoused a value for parent involvement, "caring" or quality teachers, and relevant curriculums, unique schemas and meanings were evoked by each of these elements. For example, the meaning of a "caring" teacher was different for each group as each looked for different attributes as signs or markers of quality. / Department of Anthropology

Access to abstract permanently restricted to Ball State community only. / Review of literature -- Research context and methodology -- Voseo -- Phonological variable -- Morphosyntactic variables. / Department of English

This dissertation covers five female Victorian authors (Elizabeth Gaskell, M.E. Braddon, Dinah Craik, Juliana Horatia Ewing, Edith Nesbit) and the representations of masculinity in their novels. By taking a masculinity studies approach, this dissertation finds that these novels, in an attempt to gain authority and legitimacy in the male-dominated social sphere, often promoted middle-class masculine gender identities as the dominant, ideal masculinity for others. I will argue that female authors in the Victorian period took part in this struggle over re/defining hegemonic male gender identity in different ways, in different genres, for different purposes. Gaskell’s Mary Barton and North and South seek to ensure middle-class dominance over the working classes. Braddon’s novels Lady Audley’s Secret and Aurora Floyd illustrate the unnaturalness of gender (and thus to call into question notions of “natural” differences between men and women, or men and other men) and broaden the definition of acceptable gender identities for men and, by extension, women. The authors of late-period children’s literature created texts that either changed or shield from change both male and female gender identities to define the proper way to educate children during a time when gender roles were undergoing changes due to innovations in industry, education, and calls for equal rights for women and non-hegemonic men. All of these texts display a great amount of confidence in the power of literature to shape gender identity. The male characters in novels covered in this dissertation help govern the individual from abstract potential to concrete reality in terms of how masculinity is lived in the everyday world. While pamphlets, medical journals, and conduct books can instruct the reader on ideal conduct (or, conversely, warn against inappropriate conduct) for men, women, boys, and girls, these texts often function in the abstract. The belief held by these authors in the power of literature is enables them to position fictional men in the real world under the assumption that these characters are therefore able to “live out” these ideas of what is and what is not appropriate in performing one’s male gender identity. / Department of English

This thesis attempts to make a useful contribution to our picture of the development of early nineteenth-century provincial liberalism. It investigates various political, social and economic aspects of liberalism in Manchester and draws attention to the ideas and activities of a small and identifiable group of respectable reformers who were active in the town in the first half of the nineteenth century and who had a significant impact on local affairs. Much has been written about Victorian Manchester and about Manchester politics in the era of Chartism, the Anti-Corn Law League and the so-called 'Manchester School'. This thesis seeks to elucidate and explain some of the less explored developments which were antecedent to and shaped these later events and movements. The main avenue of inquiry is provided by the public careers of a 'small but determined band' of reformers (as they were called by one of their number, Richard Potter), men who involved themselves in numerous political campaigns and who also pioneered a new kind of political journalism in the provinces. Archibald Prentice and John Edward Taylor in particular made the newspaper a vital organ in the formation and direction of liberal opinion. These men represented prominent features of Mancunian liberalism in the years before parliamentary reform and incorporation, and the main concern of the thesis is to illustrate these features by investigating the principles and campaigns of this reformist vanguard. Attention is paid to the band's political and theological precepts and motivations, to the examples and encouragement provided by earlier Manchester reformers, to the key role of the local reformist press in the work of enlightenment and mobilisation, to the liberals' battles with Manchester's mainly Tory-Anglican ruling party on certain local government issues, to the band's involvement in campaigns and discussions relating to important social questions such as education, health and welfare, poverty and labour relations, to the band's participation in commercial campaigns and the movement against the corn laws, and to their views and activities on the central question of parliamentary reform. The most important primary sources for this study are to be found in Manchester. The newspapers are invaluable; there are also substantial collections of contemporary pamphlets and miscellaneous ephemera which provide essential information as well as the material necessary for an appreciation of the wider Manchester setting. Members of the band have left certain materials - correspondence, scrapbooks, lectures, books and pamphlets, reminiscences and personal records - which are of importance when used alongside their letters, articles and editorials in the local newspapers.

<p>My dissertation, "The People's Republic of Capitalism: The Making of the New Middle Class in Post-Socialist China, 1978-Present" draws on a range of visual cultural forms - cinema, documentary, and fashion - to track the cultural dimension of the emergence of the new middle class subject in China's encounter with global capitalism. Through cultural studies methodologies and critical theoretical practices, I explore the massive reorganization of national subjectivity that has accompanied the economic reforms since 1978. How, I ask, has the middle class replaced the proletariat as the dominant subject of Chinese history? What are the competing social forces that contribute to the making of the new middle class subject, and how do they operate? By considering these questions in terms of the cultural cultivation of new sensibilities as much as identities, I trace China's changing social formations through the realm of cultural productions. This project is organized into three parts, each of which attends to a particular constellation of middle class subjectivities and ideologies. In Part I (Introduction and Chapter 1), I explore how the Chinese middle class subject is shaped by historical, political-economic, and cultural forces. I show that the new social actor is structurally dependent on the national and transnational bourgeoisie and the post-socialist party-state. In Part II (Chapters 2-5), I focus on the relationship among fashion, media, and Chinese consumer culture in the socialist and post-socialist eras. By engaging with films such as Xie Tieli's Never Forget (1964), Huang Zumo's Romance on Lushan (1980), Qi Xingjia's Red Dress is in Fashion (1984), and Jia Zhangke's The World (2004) and Useless (2007), I suggest that the representation of fashion and consumption in Chinese cinema, documentary, and new media is a privileged site for deciphering otherwise imperceptible meanings of class, ideology, and history in the formation of the Chinese middle class subject. In Part III (Chapter 6), I attend to the repressed underside of Chinese consumer culture: rubbish. This project reorients our understanding of socialist and post-socialist China, seeing them as underpinned by the contradictions emblematized in the Chinese middle class.</p> / Dissertation

Immigration is a topic that has experienced an evolution of social importance across centuries. While the United States has welcomed individuals seeking lives of promise and opportunity, its neighboring border with Mexico has also encouraged significant migration into the United States Therefore, immigration into Texas was not a new and unusual development. However, the flood of Mexican citizens trying to escape the regime of Porfirio Diaz was noteworthy and left San Antonio residents struggling to accept their new neighbors. The purpose of this dissertation is to study a historically Mexican middle class neighborhood in San Antonio, in order to identify factors that made it possible for some residents to experience socioeconomic prosperity while others were less successful. I believe that positive socioeconomic success resulted from two important factors: high levels of human and social capital and the synergistic interactions of sociopolitical elements. I begin by presenting an overview of the shared turbulent history between Mexico and the United States, the rise and fall of President Porfirio Diaz, and the role that the Mexican Revolution played in San Antonio's 1910 immigration flux. Since this research focuses on the Mexican middle class, I explore the literature pertaining to racial/ethnic definitions, the middle class, and human/social capital, as well as the relevance of each concept within the context of my research question. This research utilizes comparative/historical, qualitative, and quantitative methodologies. I present a quantitative analysis of Prospect Hill's residents, particularly those of an anomalous nature. Of the cases identified, I discuss the case of Romulo Munguia, a native-born Mexican who presented as the third anomalous Mexican resident. Munguia moved to the U.S. in 1926 and established himself as a successful, middle class printer who became heavily involved with San Antonio's Mexican community. Ultimately, Munguia's success indicates a dependency on two specific factors. First, he possessed considerable human and social capital that afforded him social, economic, and political advantages. Secondly, he settled into a community that desperately needed his skills and expertise. Munguia's case supports the hypothesis that immigrant prosperity requires both human/social capital and specific synergistic interactions to achieve success.

My Body/My Playground is a theoretical and historical inquiry which firmly locates the spaces in which consumption has infiltrated much of the thinking, and in turn daily practices, of those who understand themselves to be American middle class. It is my theory that the American middle class has become so firmly entrenched in consumption that it has rendered its members objects to, rather than subjects within, its culture. My Body/My Playground narrates the historic and cultural foundation of the hegemony of consumption in an effort to understand an aspect of America's lost subjectivity. It then refocuses our attention on the marked bodies (both tattooed and pierced) of generations X and Y in an effort to locate a possible window in which the body can be employed as a vehicle toward reclaiming subject status. In the end, this text both opens the ways we might collectively read body marking and offers new ways to read personal acts of resistance in an effort toward reclaiming a sense of subjectivity without being forced to exchange it for middle class privilege.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2008. / Principal faculty advisor: Bernard L. Herman, Dept. of Art History. Includes bibliographical references.