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By means of a case study of a small, socially mixed, and ecologically oriented community in South Africa, known as the Lynedoch Eco-Village, this thesis sets out to identify motivations of people from different socio-economic backgrounds for joining such a community, and as a result live a more sustainable life. The case was studied during a minor field study (MFS) in the South African spring of 2015, during which sixteen eco-villagers were interviewed. The study discovers a wide range of motives reported by the respondents; some motives stemming from materialistic concerns and others being of a more idealistic nature. The socio-economic comparison of the respondents´ accounts is analysed using post-material theory and, interestingly, some accounts directly contradict the accounts that this influential theory would predict, with respondents from a lower socio-economic background reporting highly idealistic motives and views.

In theory of population migration, two major points of view are ¡©economic benefits¡ª and ¡©amenity of life¡ª. However, this research found that people still migrate to where land taxes is higher than others. This research tried to observe relation of individual value and migration of population and provided suggestion of factors of youth labor migration to authority. This case study of youth included questionary and analysis of statistics , treated affection of value change of youth to factors of population migration. By way of case study, results of this research reveal that affection of value tendency and selection of region conditions. First, there is significance regarding age, sex, city and county of census register, city and county of people grow up before 15 years, region, trade of father, level of education of father, socioeconomic status of family, value tendency of youth and selection of region conditions. Second, there is significance regarding value tendency of youth and selection of region conditions. Third, there is significance regarding value tendency of youth and selection of locate region conditions. In contrast, there is not significance regarding value tendency of youth and selection of work region conditions.

The importance of value lies in its potential influence of people¡¦s behavior and decision. It also determines how people distribute their available resources. After the World War II, in the western developed countries people¡¦s value has changed to post-materialism due to the stable growth of economy in these countries. People transferred their value priority from economy growth, stable job, authority, order, and rationality, to freedom of speech, environmental protection, multi-value, leisure time, art, and self- expression. These changes have caused governments to react these issues think about how to govern the diversity and complicity of changing value. This research focuses on value of time and space transformation by analysing data from Taiwan Social Change Survey (TSCS). Through re-construction scale and calculate score of post-material value, the paper examines trend of value changes from 1985 to 2005 by adopting one-way ANOVA, two-way ANOVA and three-way ANOVA approaches to analyse the differences of value among socio-economic variables. From the findings this research reveals that: (1) In Taiwan, value including period effect, age effect and cohort effect has significant changes along with time passing by; (2) Variables influencing value changes include age, income, education, job, marriage, and urban attributes. Income interacts with urban attribute, and moreover, income, urban attribute, and marriage interact with one another; (3) The effect of gender has not been proven for influencing value change; however, value of female gradually changes toward post-material value; (4) The influence of income value decreases when income decrease; however, this influence does not have significant change between people of age 40 to 59; (5) Job does not have significant influence on secondary industry and tertiary industry in early stages, and it also does not have significant influence on primary industry and secondary industry in lately stages; (6) People with high income, high education, or in unmarried status have high post-material value; (7) The difference of urban attribute shows that there is significant difference between urban, town, and rural, due to urban value changes toward post-material in early stage; however in lately stage there is no significant difference between urban and town. From the finding above it indicates that value changes from urban to town in space respect; (8) Between urban and income interaction of value change, people in urban area show significant difference of income value, then comes to people in town, finally people in rural area. As to the interaction among urban, income and marriage, it shows that single people with low income show significant difference in urban attribute; (9) Governments of urban area with post-material features should distribute resource in post-material governance. This research finds that there are significant post-material features in urban area, and significant material features in rural area; (10) Form indictor of macroeconomics, personal expenditure, interpellation of city council, election bulletin, final accounting of expenditure, this research shows that urban governance also shifts as researched value changes; (11) Since 2000, Taiwan has faced economic recession and raising unemployment problems which cause value changes toward material value. This change leads local governments to decrease expenditure on both environmental protection and community development during 2000 to 2007; (12) Urban government should focus on good governance, and value changing toward post-material contributes to foundation of good governance. Governments should improve the way of governance based on these value changes.

There are experiential products that through a digital transformation wholly or partially have taken new place in our everyday lives. Just a few years ago, we had music on CDs, movies on tape and books in bookshelves. In Sweden, we are now facing a transformation when the e-book begins to take place alongside the printed book. This paper focuses on what values play a role in the attitude towards ebooks among a selected group of Swedish book bloggers. A qualitative content analysis was performed on blog posts concerning the ebook from twelve different Swedish book blogs. The posts were then coded into categories and values. We found five broad categories in which value was displayed; Ownership, Availability, Price, Ergonomics and Environment. These could in turn be linked to two basic ways to give value to ebooks and reading, through its Utilitarian and Experiential value. The findings suggest that Availability was the one most important to the bloggers.  We also found that most posts took place within two discourses - Technology Dissatisfaction and Technology Fear. Technology Dissatisfaction was more frequent and strongly linked to the construction of the e-book and the technical systems that are available today.

This thesis draws upon the young theory of eco-masculinities and the aspiring movement of economic degrowth. We find the concept of eco-masculinities to be an underrepresented complement to the movement of ecofeminism. Studies show that masculine people are less involved in sustainability-related issues in conventional society. We identified this phenomenon as the ‘eco gender characteristics gap’. In the following pages, we elaborate what eco-masculinities can look like at an ecovillage and where we can see possible connections between eco-masculinities and a degrowth mindset. We do so by analysing qualitative data derived from observations of, interviews with and a questionnaire filled out by people living in ecovillages. At an ecovillage, it seems that awareness about feelings and emotions as well as communicating them are highly valued. Our analysis shows that these factors form crucial parts of precepts for eco-masculinities to develop. Connected to degrowth, we can see that eco-masculinities have to be actively implemented and are not automatically attained by living in an alternative setting. We hope that our gained insights contribute to gender characteristics research and to the understanding and acceptance of diverse eco-masculinities in society. / <p>Due to COVID-19, the presentation was held online in a Zoom meeting.</p>

This thesis studies the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement and what achievements it has been able to accomplish related to its objectives, in order to create a better under- standing of how new social movements work and what they can accomplish. The objectives and achievements were divided into different categories: cultural recognition, physical security, socio-economic, and other. The findings show that most of the objectives were of the physical security and socio-economic category while most of the achievements were outside of the objectives the BLM movement set and are mostly related to the cultural recognition category. The study argues that this is due to the characteristics of the BLM movement as a new social movement as well as the BLM not being specific enough in its objectives. With this knowledge there is an understanding that new social movements are very good at engaging people but could improve in their achievements.

This thesis examines the measurable effects of changing cultural values on American presidential election year issues from 1972 to 2000. Topics discussed: the long-term shift in cultural values and their impact on political parties, party support, and political priorities. There is congruence between the content of the two major political party platforms from 1972-2000 and the cultural priorities of party supporters as defined by their presidential vote. This relationship also holds true for the 'most significant issue facing the nation' variable in the National Election Studies and presidential vote choice. These results are reproduced in a completely different data set of active political participants (follow the news closely, participate in political campaigns, vote consistently) assembled by Sydney Verba. Both political parties must contend with the tensions that arise from differing cultural priorities of their supporters. This applies both within the parties as they must assemble winning electoral coalitions and between the parties which have taken on the cultural and political priorities of their strongest supporters. As the cultural priorities of major political party supporters shift, so have their quadrennial party platforms. / Master of Arts

O presente trabalho traz um estudo sobre um tema importante para a qualidade da democracia, especialmente para novas democracias, como são o Brasil e a Argentina. Referimo-nos à participação política não eleitoral, materializada em abaixo-assinados, manifestações, greves, boicotes e atividade partidária. Distintas teorias buscam entender os determinantes que levam os indivíduos a se envolverem nesses modos de participação, dentre os quais destacamos as características individuais, a cultura política, a experiência com o sistema político e a racionalidade da ação. Diante disso, nosso objetivo é investigar a dinâmica da participação política desses países nos últimos vinte anos, visando explicar como se relacionam fatores sociodemográficos, políticos, econômicos e de cultura política com as diferentes modalidades de participação, assumindo-se que qualquer mudança que mexa nesse conjunto de fatores, junto com o funcionamento efetivo da democracia, afeta também as percepções e comportamentos dos indivíduos, fornecendo as bases para uma reaproximação dos cidadãos com o sistema politico e tornando-os mais críticos acerca do que demandam da democracia. Para isso, no primeiro capítulo revisamos o debate teórico a respeito dos condicionantes da participação, lançando mão das abordagens clássicas da cultura política e daquelas que defendem uma mudança rumo a sociedades pós-materialistas, críticas e comprometidas politicamente; das perspectivas que focam nos fatores político-institucionais; das abordagens que levam em conta os recursos para participar; e da teoria da escolha racional. Reconhecendo a necessidade de se considerar a realidade das sociedades onde a participação política ocorre, no segundo capítulo identificamos características da cultura política local e as principais mudanças estruturais ocorridas. Utilizando dados produzidos pelo projeto World Values Survey, no terceiro capítulo analisamos empiricamente por meio de regressão logística como um conjunto de fatores afeta a participação em 1991, 2006 e 2013. Sem encontrar diferenças significativas entre Argentina e Brasil, destacamos quatro pontos principais. Verificou-se a importância da educação, o interesse político e o pós-materialismo em todos os tipos de participação, o que apresenta um cenário promissor uma vez que ambos os países tendem cada vez mais à universalização da educação, fator desencadeante de um círculo virtuoso. Ainda, apesar do aumento das capacidades e a diminuição dos custos para participar, ao olhar para as motivações confirmamos a necessidade de se considerar as expectativas quanto ao funcionamento institucional, que encorajam ou desestimulam o comportamento, sendo que o bom desempenho da democracia aumenta as chances de o indivíduo participar. Terceiro, à exceção da atividade partidária, são os jovens nascidos em democracia que participam mais, e apesar de existirem várias particularidades que não se encaixam nos modelos teóricos tradicionais, confirma-se uma mudança na cultura política que traz boas notícias para a qualidade da democracia. Finalmente, a despeito de a educação, o interesse e as preferências ideológicas especialmente de esquerda afetarem positivamente todas as modalidades de participação, verificamos que há diferenças entre elas, sendo que os abaixo-assinados e as manifestações foram as melhor explicadas pelos nossos modelos, sugerindo que nos outros tipos pesaram mais os fatores contextuais. / This paper presents a study of an important issue for the quality of democracy, especially for new democracies, as are Brazil and Argentina. We refer to the non-electoral political participation, through petitions, demonstrations, strikes, boycotts and partisan activity. Different theories seek to understand the determinants that lead individuals to engage in these forms of participation, among which we highlight the individual characteristics, the political culture, the experience with the political system and the rationality of action. Therefore, our aim is to investigate the dynamics of the political participation of these countries in the last twenty years, trying to explain how socio-demographic, political, economic and of political culture factors relate with the different forms of participation, on the assumption that any changes that modifies this set of factors, along with the effective functioning of democracy also affects the perceptions and behaviors of individuals, providing the basis for a rapprochement between citizens and the political system and making them more critical about what they expect from democracy. In order to do that, in the first chapter we reviewed the theoretical debate about the conditions of participation, making use of traditional approaches to political culture and those who advocate a shift towards post-materialist, critical and politically committed societies; perspectives that focus on political and institutional factors; approaches that take into account the resources to participate; and the theory of rational choice. Acknowledging the need to consider the reality of societies where political participation takes place, in the second chapter we identify some local political culture characteristics and the major structural changes. Using data gathered by the World Values Survey project, in the third chapter we analyze empirically - through logistic regression - how a set of factors affects participation in 1991, 2006 and 2013. Without finding significant differences between Argentina and Brazil, we highlight four main points. We confirm the importance of education, political interest and post-materialism in all kinds of participation, which provides a promising scenario since both countries increasingly tend to universalize education, trigger of a virtuous circle. Still, despite the increased capacities and lower costs for participating, looking at the motivations we confirm the need to consider the expectations regarding the institutional functioning that encourage or discourage the behavior, and it is the good performance of democracy that increases the chances of the individual to participate. Third, except for partisan activity are young people born in democracy that participate more, and although there are several characteristics that do not fit the traditional theoretical models, we confirm a change in the political culture that brings good news for the quality of democracy. Finally, regardless of education, interests and ideological preferences - especially the left side - positively affect all modes of participation, we find that there are differences between them, and the petitions and demonstrations were best explained by our models, suggesting that in other types of participation contextual factors weighed more.

O presente trabalho traz um estudo sobre um tema importante para a qualidade da democracia, especialmente para novas democracias, como são o Brasil e a Argentina. Referimo-nos à participação política não eleitoral, materializada em abaixo-assinados, manifestações, greves, boicotes e atividade partidária. Distintas teorias buscam entender os determinantes que levam os indivíduos a se envolverem nesses modos de participação, dentre os quais destacamos as características individuais, a cultura política, a experiência com o sistema político e a racionalidade da ação. Diante disso, nosso objetivo é investigar a dinâmica da participação política desses países nos últimos vinte anos, visando explicar como se relacionam fatores sociodemográficos, políticos, econômicos e de cultura política com as diferentes modalidades de participação, assumindo-se que qualquer mudança que mexa nesse conjunto de fatores, junto com o funcionamento efetivo da democracia, afeta também as percepções e comportamentos dos indivíduos, fornecendo as bases para uma reaproximação dos cidadãos com o sistema politico e tornando-os mais críticos acerca do que demandam da democracia. Para isso, no primeiro capítulo revisamos o debate teórico a respeito dos condicionantes da participação, lançando mão das abordagens clássicas da cultura política e daquelas que defendem uma mudança rumo a sociedades pós-materialistas, críticas e comprometidas politicamente; das perspectivas que focam nos fatores político-institucionais; das abordagens que levam em conta os recursos para participar; e da teoria da escolha racional. Reconhecendo a necessidade de se considerar a realidade das sociedades onde a participação política ocorre, no segundo capítulo identificamos características da cultura política local e as principais mudanças estruturais ocorridas. Utilizando dados produzidos pelo projeto World Values Survey, no terceiro capítulo analisamos empiricamente por meio de regressão logística como um conjunto de fatores afeta a participação em 1991, 2006 e 2013. Sem encontrar diferenças significativas entre Argentina e Brasil, destacamos quatro pontos principais. Verificou-se a importância da educação, o interesse político e o pós-materialismo em todos os tipos de participação, o que apresenta um cenário promissor uma vez que ambos os países tendem cada vez mais à universalização da educação, fator desencadeante de um círculo virtuoso. Ainda, apesar do aumento das capacidades e a diminuição dos custos para participar, ao olhar para as motivações confirmamos a necessidade de se considerar as expectativas quanto ao funcionamento institucional, que encorajam ou desestimulam o comportamento, sendo que o bom desempenho da democracia aumenta as chances de o indivíduo participar. Terceiro, à exceção da atividade partidária, são os jovens nascidos em democracia que participam mais, e apesar de existirem várias particularidades que não se encaixam nos modelos teóricos tradicionais, confirma-se uma mudança na cultura política que traz boas notícias para a qualidade da democracia. Finalmente, a despeito de a educação, o interesse e as preferências ideológicas especialmente de esquerda afetarem positivamente todas as modalidades de participação, verificamos que há diferenças entre elas, sendo que os abaixo-assinados e as manifestações foram as melhor explicadas pelos nossos modelos, sugerindo que nos outros tipos pesaram mais os fatores contextuais. / This paper presents a study of an important issue for the quality of democracy, especially for new democracies, as are Brazil and Argentina. We refer to the non-electoral political participation, through petitions, demonstrations, strikes, boycotts and partisan activity. Different theories seek to understand the determinants that lead individuals to engage in these forms of participation, among which we highlight the individual characteristics, the political culture, the experience with the political system and the rationality of action. Therefore, our aim is to investigate the dynamics of the political participation of these countries in the last twenty years, trying to explain how socio-demographic, political, economic and of political culture factors relate with the different forms of participation, on the assumption that any changes that modifies this set of factors, along with the effective functioning of democracy also affects the perceptions and behaviors of individuals, providing the basis for a rapprochement between citizens and the political system and making them more critical about what they expect from democracy. In order to do that, in the first chapter we reviewed the theoretical debate about the conditions of participation, making use of traditional approaches to political culture and those who advocate a shift towards post-materialist, critical and politically committed societies; perspectives that focus on political and institutional factors; approaches that take into account the resources to participate; and the theory of rational choice. Acknowledging the need to consider the reality of societies where political participation takes place, in the second chapter we identify some local political culture characteristics and the major structural changes. Using data gathered by the World Values Survey project, in the third chapter we analyze empirically - through logistic regression - how a set of factors affects participation in 1991, 2006 and 2013. Without finding significant differences between Argentina and Brazil, we highlight four main points. We confirm the importance of education, political interest and post-materialism in all kinds of participation, which provides a promising scenario since both countries increasingly tend to universalize education, trigger of a virtuous circle. Still, despite the increased capacities and lower costs for participating, looking at the motivations we confirm the need to consider the expectations regarding the institutional functioning that encourage or discourage the behavior, and it is the good performance of democracy that increases the chances of the individual to participate. Third, except for partisan activity are young people born in democracy that participate more, and although there are several characteristics that do not fit the traditional theoretical models, we confirm a change in the political culture that brings good news for the quality of democracy. Finally, regardless of education, interests and ideological preferences - especially the left side - positively affect all modes of participation, we find that there are differences between them, and the petitions and demonstrations were best explained by our models, suggesting that in other types of participation contextual factors weighed more.