Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 149-162).

Very few narratives go as unchallenged about the transition of Central and Eastern European countries from state socialism to market democracies as the following: before the transitions people in these countries had strong social rights but were lacking any civic and political rights, and while the transformations provided the people with firm civil and political citizenship, they lost out on social rights. In my dissertation I argue that this is an oversimplifying and highly distorted narrative that is blind to the deep inequalities in these societies. My research focused on one particular means of reproducing these inequalities, namely welfare institutions, and explored what recipients of social assistance provision learned about their citizenship in the post-transition Hungarian welfare complex. This analysis not only demonstrated an inextricable interrelationship between civil, political and social citizenship, but also allowed for a deeper understanding of the mechanisms through which apparent political inequalities were reproduced in practice. By the innovative method of institutional ethnography I constructed a mosaic of the various component elements of the institutional system of social assistance provision in contemporary Hungary and investigated the influence that each had on recipients' civil and political citizenship. This study indicated a marked discrepancy between recipients' ideal and their lived experiences of citizenship, and found that certain characteristics of the system of social assistance provision played a crucial part in reproducing this discrepancy. The high level of discretion in the system, recipients' lack of information, the treatment they underwent in the welfare office, as well as the lack of institutional guarantees that could ensure that they enjoyed equal and fair treatment in all the welfare offices in the country proved to be the most important characteristics of social assistance provision that had direct or indirect effects on recipients' democratic subjectivity.

British politics at the start of the 21st century provide a good setting for examining factors associated with mobilisation for extremist politics. This thesis is concerned with the relationship between individuals' preferences, their local setting and political behaviour. With focus on two outcomes - participation in urban rioting and support for a far right party - this thesis is divided into two parts and consists of five research papers addressing different aspects of mobilisation. In the first part we focus on urban disorder and examine police arrest records from the London riot of 2011. Much of the sociological literature has focused on variation in rioting across cities; here we examine variation within London by mapping the residential addresses of 1,620 rioters onto over 25,000 neighbourhoods. Our findings challenge the orthodoxy that rioting is not explained by deprivation or by disorganisation. Furthermore, we present evidence suggesting the importance of political grievances, in particular relations with the police, and examine the process of mobilisation to show that it was aided by spatial proximity and social similarity. In the second part we look at factors associated with engagement with far right politics. We use individual attitudinal data from the British Election Study to examine whether concerns over immigration are associated with the actual experience of immigration in one's place of residence. The results suggest that local setting does play some role, although individual factors seem to be more important. Secondly, we use leaked British National Party membership list to map 12,536 far right supporters onto over 200,000 neighbourhoods in Britain. Our findings underline the importance of a larger geographic context, where some spatial configurations present particularly fertile grounds for the far right; we also report the relative unimportance of cultural threat and significance of the social distance. Lastly, we question the recently advocated 'legacy effect' and suggest that white flight mechanism may possibly be an alternative way of thinking about organisational continuity.

Thesis (B.A.)--Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-01

Aujourd’hui, un discours dominant affirme que le travail humanitaire est devenu dangereux. Face à l’insécurité croissante, les organisations humanitaires ont développé de nouvelles politiques de sécurité afin de mieux protéger le personnel et les infrastructures. En se fondant sur la sociologie des professions d’Abbott, ainsi que sur la théorie du pouvoir de Bourdieu, cette thèse propose une sociologie politique internationale de la professionnalisation de la sécurité humanitaire. Afin de combler les lacunes des explications et des critiques de la sécurité humanitaire, ce travail examine les conditions de possibilités à l’émergence d’un microcosme de professionnels. Du fait de cette transformation de la division du travail, les humanitaires considèrent désormais que certaines des populations les plus nécessiteuses se trouvent au-delà des limites raisonnables du sacrifice. En comparant le coût de la perte d’une « vie d’humanitaire » à la valeur potentielle du sauvetage des vies, les humanitaires participent à l’intensification des inégalités mondiales. Les humanitaires ne contentent plus seulement d’atténuer la souffrance de lointains étrangers, mais ils contribuent aussi à redéfinir la notion de « populations dans le besoin », en les étiquetant comme « populations dangereuses ». Ainsi, la mise en place de la sécurité comme sens pratique de l’humanitaire inverse les impératifs humanitaires fondés sur le sauvetage des vies et sur la défense d’une humanité partagée. Tout en contribuant aux débats sur la sécurité humanitaire, cette thèse participe également à faire avancer les études sur les élites transnationales, sur la sécurité et sur les organisations internationales. / In recent years, a dominant discourse has emerged asserting that humanitarian work has become a dangerous profession. In response to growing insecurity in the field, humanitarian organizations have developed new security policies to better protect humanitarian staff and infrastructures. Drawing from Andrew Abbott’s historical sociology of professions and Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory of power, this thesis proposes an international political sociology of the professionalization of humanitarian security. To address the shortcomings of normative-functionalist explanations and poststructuralist critiques of humanitarian security, this thesis examines the conditions of possibility fostering the emergence of a microcosm of humanitarian security professionals. As a consequence of this transformation in the division of humanitarian labor, humanitarian organizations now classify some of world’s neediest populations as beyond the limits of reasonable sacrifice. In the production of this exclusion, humanitarian actors reconstruct “populations in need” as “dangerous populations.” By weighing the cost of the loss of a “humanitarian life” against the potential value of saving the lives of needy others, humanitarian actors contribute to the intensification of global divides in their quest for a common humanity. In sum, the imposition of security as a humanitarian logic of practice is analyzed as a driving force of the inversion of the humanitarian imperative to save lives and act in defense of a shared humanity. Contributing to debates on humanitarian security, this thesis also advances the study of international organizations, security, and transnational power elites.

Growing economic inequality and cultural heterogeneity has brought increased attention to the issue of 'unity in diversity', that is, the state of being joined together or being in agreement in the presence of actual and perceived differences among people. Despite the growing interest in 'politics in divided societies', many political-sociological aspects of this issue remain largely unexplored. At the heart of this thesis lies an interest in explaining how social forces shape political preferences regarding the tension between unity and diversity in contemporary democracies. More specifically, this research seeks to understand how social (and identity-based) cleavages affect public responses to the idea of solidarity-based welfare provision and the reconciliation of increased ethnic diversity with national unity (including the functioning of the welfare state). Drawing on the institutionalist view that pre-existing policy creates mass politics (policy feedback effect), the study also investigates whether institutional structures condition the association between social forces and political attitudes. Although several chapters put particular emphasis on policy feedback effects (e.g., Chapters 2, 3, and 5), they are still within the general scope of this thesis, that is, the 'social embeddedness of political attitudes'. The thesis consists of two parts: the first assesses the explanatory power of socioeconomic status and social policy structures in predicting public attitudes toward income inequality, redistribution, and taxation policies (Chapters 2 to 4), and the second examines how differences in occupational status and national identity result in differences in reactions to welfare chauvinism and multiculturalism (Chapters 5 and 6). Taken together, the findings of this study underscore the importance of social cleavages, identity, and institutional structures in explaining why and under what conditions people are more likely to sacrifice part of their private interest or particularistic identity for the common good or the general welfare of all individuals in a community, in a situation of growing economic inequality and increased cultural plurality.

Orientadora: Heloisa Pait / Banca: Edemir de Carvalho / Banca: Laura Robinson / Resumo: A partir de um histórico da relação da cidade de São Paulo com os meios de comunicação, que resgata facetas de nossa cultura política, de um apanhado conceitual que ilumina os vários significados pessoais e coletivos da comunicação mediada e de uma pesquisa empírica viva que destaca imagens, experiências e lugares das manifestações de junho de 2013, essa dissertação oferece uma contribuição teórica que descortina o elo entre as pequenas telas individuais e as grandes telas coletivas que são palco da ação política contemporânea. Investiga-se a constituição de uma nova esfera pública a partir da atuação nas tecnologias móveis de informação e comunicação, que são denominadas pequenas telas. Através das pequenas telas os indivíduos se colocam na esfera pública, a grande tela. Atuar no espaço público, nesse contexto, envolve estar presente em tais telas, mas isso não basta. Os novos meios de informação e comunicação, como ímãs, atraem os indivíduos para determinados locais que se tornam centrais na ação, ao mesmo tempo em que os espaços somente podem se tornar centrais e se constituírem como espaços públicos quando a ação neles ocorre. O registro da selfie, dos vídeos e dos relatos das experiências vividas no espaço público durante a ação política, feito através das pequenas telas, são ferramentas de atuação política através das quais os espaços da cidade são ressignificados numa relação íntima, porém mediada, do usuário com eles. Tal experiência é vivida, então, coletivamente nas grandes telas que são palco da ação política. / Abstract: From a historical account of the relationship between the city of São Paulo and the media, which retrieves facets of our political culture; through a conceptual overview that show forth the various individual and collective meanings of mediated communication; and through a vivid empirical research that highlights images, experiences and places of the demonstrations of June 2013, this dissertation provides a theoretical contribution that reveals the link between the individual small screens and the big screens that are the collective arena of contemporary political action. The establishment of a new public sphere is investigated from the deeds that take place through mobile information and communication technologies, namely small screens. Through these small screens, individuals set themselves into the public sphere - the big screen. Acting in the public space in this context involves being present in these screens, but this is not enough. New information and communication media, like magnets, attract individuals to certain places, which become central to action, insofar as spaces themselves can only become central and be constituted as public spaces when people effectively act within them. The selfie, the videos and the narratives of experiences occurred in public spaces during political action perpetrated through small screens are tools of political activity in which the city spaces are reinterpreted in an intimate, even though mediated, relationship with their individual users. These experiences, then, are lived collectively on the big screens, the arena of political action. / Mestre

The present essay attempts to explain the formation of a sector who leaded the campaign to revokeLima Metropolitana’s mayor, Susana Villarán, in 2013. The analysis focuses on the nature of power relations, within which institutions, actors, interests and chances of action are constituted. Our hypothesis is that the conglomerate of interests that organized for this purpose reveals a type of power organization in a network way: a flexible structure of links between people, groups and organizations, around different resources, one of which is State access. Sectors that led the «Yes» campaign express, rather than ideological differences, some networks resistance, bothered by management actions. / El ensayo se pregunta cómo explicar la constitución de un sector impulsor de la campaña por revocara la alcaldesa de Lima Metropolitana, Susana Villarán, el año 2013. El análisis se centra en el carácter de las relaciones de poder dentro de las cuales se constituyen instituciones, actores, intereses y posibilidades de acción. La hipótesis propuesta es que el conglomerado de intereses que se organizó para tal fin revela un tipo de organización del poder en forma de red: una estructura flexible de vínculos entre personas, grupos y organizaciones en torno a distintos recursos, siendo uno de ellos el acceso al Estado. Los sectores que impulsaron la campaña del SÍ expresarían, antes que oposiciones ideológicas, la resistencia de redes incomodadas por acciones de la gestión.

This paper seeks ways of understanding the new challenges of a rapidly changing world, and does so by attempting to resist the disciplinary power of orthodox research methodology, by critically and reflexively inquiring into the politics of (in)security, and ultimately, by seeking novelty. It begins by first declaring its ethical and methodological starting points, then draws out an assemblage of contemporary security problematics. This leads over and narrows down into an inquiry into how to understand the developing structure of information and cyber security in Sweden. Drawing from critical security studies and feminist research ethics, it sketches out an analytical story of power and knowledge in an age of boundless risk, security and information. It furthermore argues for the need of security scholars, practitioners and politicians alike to move beyond simplistic understandings of the world, and to revision it as shaped by more complex dynamics and flows of the global, digitalized and virtual reality of the world.

L’une des principales sources de changement dans le système de santé est actuellement la numérisation et la mise en réseau technique, se traduisant par le développement de la télémédecine. Si cette « médecine à distance », utilisant les TIC, a pu se résumer en quelques expérimentations menées essentiellement dans le cadre hospitalier, le gouvernement entend lui donné une nouvelle impulsion. Elle doit constituer un facteur clé d’amélioration de la performance du système de santé. Son usage dans les territoires doit incarner une réponse organisationnelle et technique aux nombreux défis épidémiologiques, démographiques et économiques auxquels fait face le système de santé aujourd’hui. Cette recherche apour but de contribuer à établir le sens social et politique du développement de la télémédecine. Il s’agit de cerner de façon systématique et dans leur ensemble les dynamiques qui conduisent ce changement, tout en mettant en avant les conséquences dans la démarche de soin classique au niveau des usagers. Analyse des politiques publiques et étude du changement technologique se fondent dans l’approche choisie de la sociologie politique des usages. Ancrée au confluent du modèle des politiques publiques et de la sociologie de l’innovation, la recherche a permis d’identifier et d’expliquer les principales dynamiques conditionnant le processus de développement de la télémédecine, en partant des politiques publiques jusqu’à la mise en place des technologies. La télémédecine est la fois le moteur et le résultat de la réformede la modernisation du système de santé. Son référentiel est fortement imprégné par les exigences de rationalisation et de gestion du réseau socio-sanitaire et demeure principalement légitimé par des critères de rentabilité et de performance qui sont probablement incompatibles avec l’efficience clinique et thérapeutique des services de soins. La télémédecine pourrait rendre de nombreux services dans la gestion des activités humaines et professionnelles, par une gestion davantage réfléchie, concertée et planifiée du changement technologique / One the main source of change in the health service system is the digitization and Networking technique wich can be seen in the development of telemedicine. If this « medicine at distance », using ITC, could be summed up in a few experiments in the hospital field, the government wants to give it a new impulse. It must be the key to improve the health service system. Its use in the territories must embody an organizational and technical answer epidemiological, demographic and economic numerous challenges, to wich the health system has to face nowadays. This investigation is aimed at contributing to settle the social and political meaning of telemedicine development. One has to identify systematically and in the whole the forces which lead to this change, while at the same time highlighting the consequences in users the classical approach. The analysis of the public politics and the study of the technological change convey in the political sociology uses. Anchored between the public politic model and the sociological innovation, the investigation has allowed to identify and explain the main dynamics which influence the telemedicine development process, starting by the public policies to the implémentation of technologies. The telemedicine is both the impulse and the result of the health service system modernization reform. Itsrepository is strongly influenced by the rationalizing of the requirements and the management of the health and social network and remains mainly legitimized by profitability and performance criterias which are probably incompatible with clinical and therapeutic efficiency of health services. The telemedicine could make many services in the management of human and Professional activities, thank to a management more thought, concerted, planed of the technologic change