<p>This paper focuses on what people in Saga, a village on the periphery of Niamey, the capital of Niger, do in the face of illness. With limited economic assets and in a context of medical</p><p>pluralism, to which therapeutic alternatives do they turn? And what factors are determinant in the choice that they make? Saga is an old village, which has become increasingly integrated into the expanding urban community of Niamey. It can be described as a semi-urban area in</p><p>which elements of both rural and urban Niger are present. The therapeutic field in Saga is, as in all of Niger, characterised by medical pluralism. A number of therapeutic alternatives exist side by side. They range from ‘western’ or hospital medicine provided by the local public dispensary, the private confessional dispensary and by the unlicensed sale of medicine by ambulant vendors to ‘traditional’ treatments, such as Islamic medicine practised by marabouts and ‘traditional’ healing using herbal remedies and spirit possession rituals. This paper is about the various institutions and actors of ‘modern’ medicine in Saga, namely on the public dispensary, on the confessional dispensary and on the informal sale of pharmaceuticals. To better understand the quest for therapy in Saga this paper focuses on everyday practices of</p><p>therapy seeking, on the actual and everyday choices people make in the face of illness.Special attention is paid to the therapeutic alternatives and to the relation between therapy seeker and therapy provider in what may be called the therapeutic encounter. It is argued that socio-economic factors as well as social relations, personal experiences and perceptions of trust are central to the therapeutic recourse taken. Furthermore, it is suggested that the ‘quest for therapy’ can and should be seen as a ‘quest for relief’.</p>

<p>This thesis aims at investigating the relationship between citizens' attempts to influence decision-making in a democracy and the representativeness of policy outcome. The question is to what extent the degree of citizen political activity, in terms of expressing policy preferences, affects: 1. The <i>policy agreement</i> between citizens and their elected representatives. 2. The <i>perceptual accuracy</i> of citizen opinions among representatives. It is argued that both policy agreement and perceptual accuracy are potentially important prerequisites to attain responsiveness in a democratic political system. The important normative question of the thesis is based on the fact that citizen's attempts to influence public decision-making often seems to be biased in favour of social groups already rich in resources. If political participation is socially biased the question is if this participation also will cause a bias in the opinions articulated towards decisionmakers and in the end also in a biased political influence.</p><p>Earlier research on the topic of this thesis has basically been limited to the classical study published by Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie in 1972: <i>Participation in America. Political democracy and social equality.</i> In order to examine this issue further, a survey was conducted in 40 Swedish municipalities. Included was a random sample of citizen from each municipality as well as a sample including all elected councilors in the municipalities. The effects of four different channels of citizen preference articulation is examined 1) participation in local elections, 2) non-electoral political participation, 3) activities and membership in voluntary associations and 4) everyday contacts between citizens and their elected representatives.</p><p>The results of the empirical analyses show that electoral participation does not have a positive effect on either policy agreement or perceptual accuracy in Swedish municipalities. The main tendency as regards the non-electoral channels of citizen preference articulation indicates a linear and positive effect on the policy agreement between citizens and representatives but no similar positive effect on the perceptual accuracy. </p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of History, Mar. 2004. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

This thesis aims at investigating the relationship between citizens' attempts to influence decision-making in a democracy and the representativeness of policy outcome. The question is to what extent the degree of citizen political activity, in terms of expressing policy preferences, affects: 1. The policy agreement between citizens and their elected representatives. 2. The perceptual accuracy of citizen opinions among representatives. It is argued that both policy agreement and perceptual accuracy are potentially important prerequisites to attain responsiveness in a democratic political system. The important normative question of the thesis is based on the fact that citizen's attempts to influence public decision-making often seems to be biased in favour of social groups already rich in resources. If political participation is socially biased the question is if this participation also will cause a bias in the opinions articulated towards decisionmakers and in the end also in a biased political influence. Earlier research on the topic of this thesis has basically been limited to the classical study published by Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie in 1972: Participation in America. Political democracy and social equality. In order to examine this issue further, a survey was conducted in 40 Swedish municipalities. Included was a random sample of citizen from each municipality as well as a sample including all elected councilors in the municipalities. The effects of four different channels of citizen preference articulation is examined 1) participation in local elections, 2) non-electoral political participation, 3) activities and membership in voluntary associations and 4) everyday contacts between citizens and their elected representatives. The results of the empirical analyses show that electoral participation does not have a positive effect on either policy agreement or perceptual accuracy in Swedish municipalities. The main tendency as regards the non-electoral channels of citizen preference articulation indicates a linear and positive effect on the policy agreement between citizens and representatives but no similar positive effect on the perceptual accuracy.

The problem for women in the labour market has been and is still being widely treated from different disciplines, there are still many gaps linked to it. Although the equality between genders has simultaneously risen, gender inequality becomes especially evident in top management positions. This fact attracted our attention and motivated us to analyse the women’s situation in the management in Spanish companies. The masculine man has developed different theories linked to organizations. But when the society and the organization change, that man discovers that his recipe book is not worth nothing anymore. For instance, values like hierarchical organization, aggressiveness, competitively, individualism, etc. In brief, all attributes that women called: “macho man”. This paper investigates the barriers that women have to overcome in order to achieve the senior positions, as well as, the identification of the traditional leadership style to the masculine stereotype. As consequence, we have had in mind the progressive implantation of a new organizational culture, the values that belong to the feminine stereotype (group orientation, emotion, cooperation, etc). Therefore, the success leadership is no longer linked to the masculine stereotype. The practical method involves the development of semi structure interviews to men and women in top managerial positions in order to analyse if both men and women follow their gender stereotypes, and therefore, they have different leadership styles according to gender. Due to this fact, companies should adapt the idea of a pluricultural style in order to get organizational culture more flexible.

Syfte - Syftet med denna uppsats är att redogöra för förslaget om en skrotningspremie på lastbilar som lagts fram av Sveriges Åkeriföretag till regeringen samt redogöra för de påverkansmöjligheter olika aktörer har i denna beslutsprocess. Dessutom ämnar författaren spekulera i utsikterna för ett faktiskt genomförande av detta förslag. Metod - Denna undersökning bygger på intervjuer med representanter för fyra intresseorganisationer, två politiker och två statstjänstemän. Teoretiskt perspektiv - De teorier som används i uppsatsen behandlar politiska beslut och påverkansmetoder genom pluralism (innebär att staten sätter inte upp några tillträdeshinder för intressegrupperna) och korporativism. Analys - Empirin finner gott stöd i teorin om den politiska och institutionella beslutsprocessen. Vidare får empirin störst stöd i teorin om pluralism. Dock är det inte enhälligt fastställt om en beslutsprocess är öppen för alla eller om det är resurserna som avgör tillträde. Den skandinaviska korporativismen och producentkorporativismen får ett relativt svagt stöd i denna uppsats. Slutsats - Pluralismens två sidor får störst stöd i uppsatsen. Detta, kombinerat med den faktiska sakkunskap som aktörerna besitter, gör att samtliga intervjupersoner anser att de har något att säga till om i den politiska beslutsprocessen. Baserat på informationen från intervjupersonerna går förslaget ingen ljus framtid till mötes med det finansiella läge som råder och med den sittande regeringens inställning i åtanke.

While commitments made at the Rio+20 conference paved the road for the building of a green and fair economy, the ability of economics to provide a satisfactory intellectual framework to support this process has been increasingly questioned, particularly since the 2008 global financial crisis. In order to make economics more responsive to present and future challenges, this study argues that education in economics must be centred on the pursuit of sustainable development with what has been termed Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). To qualify as ESD, this paper contends that economics education must embrace pluralism on four levels (theoretical, methodological, disciplinary and pedagogical). This fourfold pluralism will improve economists’ capacity to deal with societal challenges and allow for the long-term building of resilient green-er and fair-er economies. The University of Versailles Saint-Quentin (France) Bachelor of Economics and Management is chosen as a case study to identify the current institutional factors hindering the opening of economics education to pluralism. The thesis draws on relevant literature in the field, and also utilises interviews undertaken with five economic professors teaching in the Bachelor. Following analysis of the case study, five main barriers to a plural economics education were found; these barriers are professionalisation, recruitment, evaluation, laziness and performance.

The thesis provides a political analysis of a position paper on government programming recently adopted by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) a national ethno-cultural organisation that ostensibly represents over one million Canadians of Ukrainian heritage and a historically important player in the development of multiculturalism in Canada. The impetus for such an analysis is to explore whether there are alternative policy directions available to the UCC that could satisfy its mandate developing and enhancing the Ukrainian-Canadian community while taking into account the reality that Ukrainian-Canadians culturally resemble more and more the broader Canadian society. <p>In a wide-ranging analysis that criticizes both, official Canadian multiculturalism for falling short in meeting its commitment to cultural pluralism and the UCC for upholding a position that relies on a static or retrograde version of culture, the thesis makes the case for a multiculturalism that can recognize cultural differences while allowing for change. <p>The thesis is significant because it asks relevant questions concerning how multiculturalism in Canada takes into account an increasingly heterogeneous citizenship characterized by cultural change. In this regard, the thesis is of particular importance to Canadians who claim a multiplicity of cultures rather than a single ethnicity and yet still express a desire to be included in the discourse on Canadian national identity.

This study describes and analyses understanding ‘illness’ among clients and leaders of the spiritual tradition Candomblé in Rio de Janeiro. The study focuses on the individuals’ narratives of illness and of healing rituals within the cult. Particular attention is given to the consultation ritual called jogo de búzios, which is one of the main practices of finding the reason for the illness as well as its cure. The emphasis in this study is on the necessity to look at medical pluralism, the socio-individual context of illness and narrativity as an intersubjective practice. The conclusion is reached that illness within Candomblé ideology can be understood as disequilibrium in a person’s lifeworld. The individual is approached from within the plurimedical context of both biomedical and Candomblé healing tradition in Rio. Here it is argued that the person creates meaning of the illness in relation to different aspects of his lifeworld. The individual’s lifeworld includes the urban context of Rio de Janeiro; therefore a brief discussion is developed about how this context influences the individual meaning production of the illness. The Candomblé house is described with its social structure and other elements that are important for understanding how the cult might work for the clients as an alternative and/or complementary medical treatment. The study progressively introduces and analyses the lifestories of the individuals that approach the Candomblé cult in order to seek treatment. It also is concerned with stories of the Candomblé leaders and their view on the phenomenology of the Body, the Self and the social milieu of the person. Finally, the study emphasises the importance of studies that focus on the individual’s interpretation of the relations between the Self and the Body, and the individual’s understanding of medical knowledge and practice.

This thesis offers a comparison, which rarely, if ever, has been made between Isaiah Berlin and Charles Taylors account of the ideas of Johann Gottfried Herder on the relationship of language, culture and nationality. It argues that Berlin misrepresents Herders ideas in emphasizing the extent to which differences in language and culture necessarily result in ethnic and national conflicts between incompatible cultural worldviews, while Taylor does correctly understand that Herder sees no reason for why such conflict between cultural entities should be inevitable either within a single state or between states. The thesis concludes by offering reasons for why Herder, properly understood, allows us to be optimistic about the future of both intrastate and interstate relationships among diverse cultural groups.