Submitted by Ana Paula Lisboa Monteiro (monteiro@univates.br) on 2009-05-11T13:19:22Z No. of bitstreams: 1 AntonioCarbonari.pdf: 2106221 bytes, checksum: 4dcd62051e2bffd685d033fd8945dc2c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2009-05-11T13:19:22Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 AntonioCarbonari.pdf: 2106221 bytes, checksum: 4dcd62051e2bffd685d033fd8945dc2c (MD5) / Neste período, em que se tem observado profundas e significativas transformações organizacionais ocorridas em concomitância com as questões e problemas ambientais de âmbito global, o presente trabalho teve como objetivo em um primeiro momento, aprofundar através de um estudo exploratório de caráter bibliográfico o histórico, a evolução e os principais conceitos sobre desenvolvimento sustentável, juntamente com uma abordagem das motivações e criticas da adoção desta questão filosófica e sua permeabilidade nas organizações como assunto estratégico, outro fator foi às relações praticas de responsabilidade que as organizações destinam a sociedade, caracterizando alguns problemas potenciais e sua estrutura referente ao meio ambiente. O referencial teórico ainda tratou do tema marketing analisando suas formas, abordagens evolutivas, conceitos, tendências em relação ao mercado passando pelas suas aplicações societal, social e finalmente ambiental. Em um segundo momento o que ofereceu encaminhamento a esta pesquisa foi à realização de um estudo qualitativo por meio de entrevistas semi-estruturadas com empresários e gestores tomadores de decisões estratégicas e de questões ambientais em suas organizações. Sendo que dezesseis companhias, dos mais diversos setores da economia do norte gaúcho, participaram da busca pela identificação e análise do conhecimento que as mesmas possuem sobre o desenvolvimento sustentável e o marketing com ênfase ambiental, bem como o posicionamento assumido por elas no mercado e comunidade que estão inseridos observando a utilização das questões do estudo e suas conexões práticas. Espera-se com este trabalho explicitar o caráter estratégico do marketing ambiental perante o desenvolvimento sustentável e ampliar a reflexão sobre a possibilidade de se aplicar esta ferramenta como fator de ganho sócio-ambiental.

Accounting for indigenous forms of sovereignty poses difficult problems for the discipline of International Relations, which is framed by the story of the modern, territorial European state. Most attempts to conceptualize Aboriginal nations in the international system confirm the modern state as the benchmark for sovereignty. In this dissertation I address the problem of how to incorporate Aboriginal peoples into IR without granting the modern European state as the only legitimate form of sovereignty. I proceed through an examination of key moments in the European colonization of the Americas, from first contact through the geographic isolation of indigenous peoples onto reservations. In each case it is demonstrated that the assumption of “formal” sovereignty – based on recognition, and with insufficient regard for historical context – underpinning conventional IR accounts of colonialism is inadequate to theorize colonialism. I argue that colonialism is not a story of political-legal recognition (sovereignty), but of politicaleconomic social relations – specifically the appropriation of land (property). My contribution to the discipline is two-fold. First, I contribute to a richer understanding of sovereignty. Establishing sovereignty over territory in the New World allowed the English (and then American) state to set the legal, political and cultural framework for the private acquisition of land. Second, rather than using indigenous nations only as a foil for modern sovereignty, or as victims in a narrative of colonial domination, I make the case for incorporating the political agency of Indigenous communities into IR's account of colonialism. Far from the passive victims implied by conventional IR, they were central to a dynamic history of resistance and compromise, and their interactions with Europeans shaped modern sovereignty in lasting ways.

This thesis explores the recent phenomenon of music concert goers filming these concerts and uploading the footage to YouTube. This contemporary practice poses several questions of the nature of contemporary music culture. The status of the concert as live event is problematised by this mediation of the experience. The videos create producers of fans and allow these fans to make a substantive contribution to music culture as authors of music texts consumed through a major distribution network. The fact that these fans are not paid for their efforts begs the question as to what they gain from this enterprise; particularly as it serves as a distraction for filmers from the immersive concert experience. This thesis will use the work of Walter Benjamin on the ‘aura' as a yardstick against which to judge current attitudes amongst music fans as to the status of live music alongside other ways of experiencing music. The thesis will also offer a contemporary reappraisal of Pierre Bourdieu's concept of ‘cultural capital' that accounts for the recognition that filmers receive from other music fans for their efforts in filming concerts. Concerts are restricted spaces in which music is simultaneously produced and consumed. Broadcasting videos of these events on YouTube provides recognition for filmers both for having attended and managed to capture footage to be shared with those unable to attend for various reasons. Filmers are not paid for their efforts and so this recognition serves as a form of cultural capital in lieu of financial reward. The thesis is based upon interviews with a global sample of music fans who either film concerts or watch these films on YouTube.

Religious institutions have been tax-exempt from almost all taxes for more than two centuries. The two primary justifications used to protect this ‘status’ is the constitution and the concept that churches provide positive externalities that believers and non-believers all benefit from. This paper examines the relationship between religiosity and five socially important characteristics: high school graduation rate, a divorce rate, incidence of domestic violence, and levels of substance abuse and crime. I run multiple simple and full regressions across 207 counties in Texas. In four of the five analyses, religiosity has a strong statistically significant desirable impact. With the addition of control variables, other explanatory variables like median household income and number of divorces have coefficients with greater magnitude but the same statistical significance as that of religiosity.

Throughout her two collections of novelas, Novelas amorosas y ejemplares and Desengaños amorosos, María de Zayas, as a noble woman writing in Golden Age Spain, strategically holds onto aspects of the patriarchal society under which she lives, and from which she benefits, while simultaneously deviating slightly from some of these aspects. This adherence to and deviation from the norms characterizes her style and allows her to support some of the expected codes of conduct in her society while, at the same time, pointing out flaws and questioning these codes to show how they should be altered to make life better for both the men and women of that society. Through various narrative voices and characters, Zayas creates a type of guidebook, or manual, for both the men and women of her society. Through cross dressing she establishes an essential equality between the abilities of the sexes and establishes that the actions of men and women are chosen activities, and are not related to innate ability or disability to perform a certain way. How individuals position themselves in regard to accepted or expected behavioral codes of conduct is a choice and, as individuals, men and women can choose to perform either negative or positive practices associated with their sex. This dissertation looks closely at the guide that is created and the practices which are highlighted as good and bad, thus identifying which manners of being should be emulated and which should be avoided, and therefore altered as societal expectations or norms, by men and women. Through negative and positive portrayals, Zayas shows men and women how they should and should not act in order to create a more ideal and, consequently, more equal society that differs in some ways from their present society while still retaining the overall structure and values of the patriarchy under which they already exist. It is not the creation of an entirely new society that the resulting guidebook suggests, rather it suggests an alteration to the perspectives and behavior, toward the positive, of both men and women as they exist in their current society.

Although water is considered a renewable resource, there is only a fixed amount of water available. No additional water can be made, and we cannot easily control how fast water is recycled or in what form it will appear and where. With expected growth in the world’s population and economy, the same amount of water must supply more needs. Taking into account climate change projections and water-related environmental stresses, even less water might be available for human uses. People will need to decide how to serve a multitude of water needs. This dissertation uses the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s (SNWA) Groundwater Development Project to investigate how water policy designs handle the challenges of meeting urban and rural as well as human and ecological water needs when allocating scarce water supplies. The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) plans to build a pipeline to transfer groundwater from five rural basins in northeastern Nevada 300 miles south to the Las Vegas metropolitan area in Southern Nevada. SNWA has asked the Nevada State Engineer to approve its water right applications to develop and use groundwater from these rural basins. One of the basins, Snake Valley, straddles the border between Nevada and Utah. An interstate agreement allocating the groundwater between the two states is required before the State Engineer can approve water rights that would be diverted from Snake Valley. We found that policy debates and people’s rationales for how water should be allocated revolved around disagreements over beneficial use. In addition, water agreements need to be designed so that the risks from hydrologic uncertainties and impacts from other users are also apportioned clearly and equitably. Policy designs are purposefully crafted and have enormous impact, yet analysis of the actual contents of policies and their societal impacts has not received adequate attention within the policy sciences. The significance of this research is that it focuses on the foundational principles and rules for the allocation of scarce water resources that must necessarily balance urban and rural interests as well as human and environmental needs.

In this article, we review the limited but growing body of research on international skilled migrants and examine to what extent knowledge generated in adjacent research streams-specifically, work on assigned and self-initiated expatriates-can be meaningfully applied to aid our under- standing of the challenges, coping strategies, and acculturation dynamics of skilled migrants. We develop a framework that explains how variables and processes at multiple levels (individual, organisational, and societal) influence migrant acculturation and coping and result in integration-related outcomes in the domains of personal/family life and workplace/career. We discuss directions for future research and implications for practice.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Revised work with minor emendations approved by supervisor. / This dissertation considers three broad issues which emerge from the sustainability discourse. First is the nature of the discourse itself, particularly the underlying philosophical positions which are represented. Second, is the nature of the highly complex types of problem which the discourse exposes. And third is whether the engineering profession, as it is practised currently, is adequate to deal with such problems. The sustainability discourse exposes two distinct, fundamentally irreconcilable philosophical positions. The first, “sustainable development”, considers humanity to be privileged in relation to all other species and ecosystems. It is only incumbent upon us to look after the environment to the extent to which it is in our interests to do so. The second, “sustainability”, sees humanity as having no special moral privilege and recognises the moral status of other species, ecosystems, and even wilderness areas. Thus, sustainability imposes upon us a moral obligation to take their status into account and not to degrade or to destroy them. These two conflicting positions give rise to extremely complex problems. An innovative taxonomy of problem complexity has been developed which identifies three broad categories of problem. Of particular interest in this dissertation is the most complex of these, referred to here as the Type 3 problem. The Type 3 problem recognises the systemic complexity of the problem situation but also includes differences of the domain of interests as a fundamental, constituent part of the problem itself. Hence, established systems analysis techniques and reductionist approaches do not work. The domain of interests will typically have disparate ideas and positions, which may be entirely irreconcilable. The dissertation explores the development of philosophy of science, particularly in the last 70 years. It is noted that, unlike the philosophy of science, the philosophy of engineering has not been influenced by developments of critical theory, cultural theory, and postmodernism, which have had significant impact in late 20th-century Western society. This is seen as a constraint on the practice of engineering. Thus, a set of philosophical principles for sustainable engineering practice is developed. Such a change in the philosophy underlying the practice of engineering is seen as necessary if engineers are to engage with and contribute to the resolution of Type 3 problems. Two particular challenges must be overcome, if Type 3 problems are to be satisfactorily resolved. First, issues of belief, values, and morals are central to this problem type and must be included in problem consideration. And second, the problem situation is usually so complex that it challenges the capacity of human cognition to deal with it. Consequently, extensive consideration is given to cognitive and behavioural psychology, in particular to choice, judgement and decision-making in uncertainty. A novel problem-structuring approach is developed on three levels. A set philosophical foundation is established; a theoretical framework, based on general systems theory and established behavioural and cognitive psychological theory, is devised; and a set of tools is proposed to model Type 3 complex problems as a dynamic systems. The approach is different to other systems approaches, in that it enables qualitative exploration of the system to plausible, hypothetical disturbances. The problem-structuring approach is applied in a case study, which relates to the development of a water subsystem for a major metropolis (Sydney, Australia). The technique is also used to critique existing infrastructure planning processes and to propose an alternative approach.

<p>This thesis presents palaeoenvironmental data from equatorial Africa covering two important time intervals; i) the warming period forming the Pleistocene/Holocene transition and ii) the last millennium. The Empakaai Crater, in northern Tanzania contains a lake from where sediment cores, spanning two time-slices 14.8-9.3 ka and 800-2000 AD, have been studied. Palaeoecological and palaeohydrological reconstruction is based on a multitude of proxies from the sediments, representing both catchment environment and the lakes aquatic ecosystem response. Between 14.8 and 10 ka the catchment vegetation and lake hydrology responded to both regional climate changes and local environment, but with different amplitude and frequency, reflecting temporal and spatial lags between the two systems. However, at c 10 ka both lake conditions and catchment vegetation showed drastic changes towards drier conditions. The record covering the last millennium reveals environmental changes related to climate and human activities. The catchment’s vegetation was affected by frequent fires, most probably human induced, while near shore vegetation responded to lake level fluctuation associated with rainfall variability. About 15 km from Empakaai Crater is an extensive abandoned irrigation system, the Engaruka complex, which was in active use between c 1400 AD and 1840 AD. By comparing a number of social and environmental factors potentially influencing the societal development at Engaruka it is shown that wet climate conditions have had positive effects on the societal development but also that dry climate conditions were not always disastrous to the society. The resemblance of the pollen taxa present is strong between the two time slices and pollen representing catchment conditions respond in similar manner in both records. The lake conditions are however very different between the two periods Thus the lake responds to both long and short term changes of variable amplitude, while the catchment vegetation seems to responds to high amplitude, low frequency changes.</p>

<p> </p><p><em>The universal citizenship rights can not protect the interests of national minorities by systematically excluding them from social, economic and political life. It does this by denying national minorities access to their own societal cultures-a choice enabling background conditions. In order to enable meaningful choice, such cultures needs to be developing. The societal cultures of national minorities will, instead of being a living and developing ones, be condemned to an ever-increasing marginalization if the state follows a hands off approach to ethnicity. Thus the state must give a positive support to national minorities to help them develop their cultures in their own homeland. This can be done by drawing the boundary of the state in such a way that the ethnic minority can constitute a local majority to form a nation, and thus can be entitled to group-differentiated citizenship rights. This inevitably creates mutual-indifference among various nations, and seems to threaten the territorial integrity of the state. But as far as the multinational federation is the result of voluntary union of nations, though the social tie among these nations is weaker than the one found in a nation-state, it can nonetheless be enduring.</em></p><p>                              </p>