Thesis (M.A. (Sociology)) --University of Limpopo, 2017. / The study sought to investigate the problem of dissatisfaction by residents of Malamulele in Thulamela Local Municipality (LM) with service delivery. The dissatisfaction of the residents manifested in violent protests in Malamulele and surrounding communities where citizens demanded to have their own municipality separate from Thulamela LM. Residents alleged that the Thulamela LM gives preference to Thohoyandou area and surrounding communities on issues of governance and service delivery while neglecting Malamulele. The problem under study was viewed from a social exclusion and relative deprivation points of view, which elucidate possible causes of dissatisfaction and resultant protests. The study adopted a qualitative research design where data was collected through interviews with sampled residents that were purposively selected took into consideration the manner in which the sample would assist in providing data towards achieving the aim and objectives of the study. Data was analysed using the thematic method of analysis where themes and categories emerged to assist in interpreting the data. Based on the findings of the study, recommendations were made. Some of the key findings were that Malamulele residents were dissatisfied with poor service delivery and poor governance by Thulamela LM, the violent protests were due to poor service delivery and tribalism and poor service delivery, Malamulele residents needed their own municipality, and that the relationship between the Venda-speaking people and Tsonga-speaking people is bad. Some of the key recommendations are leaders should engage communities to manage their hopes and expectations from government, exercising Constitutional rights should not result in devastating government property and violence, and citizens should be consulted in policy-making and other government activities that involve them. It is believed that these recommendations will go a long way to address similar problems and to enhance literature on the ongoing debate on governance and service delivery issues.

The First Teacher Reform, implemented in 2013, was part of a reform package to strengthen the profession of teachers, raise teacher salaries and thereby increase the attractiveness of the teaching profession in Sweden. A first teacher would lead school and subject development and then receive a salary increase. However, the formulationof the reform was unclear which led to a strong skepticism among teachers and damaged its legitimacy. There was also a normative resistance. The purpose of this paper is to understand how normative institutions and organizational structures have influenced the implementation of the reform. The study shows how the first teacher reform collides withthe normative institutions of teachers. The Swedish school's flat organization and the way of looking at development work and collegial cooperation was challenged. This threatened teachers' autonomy, identities, social roles and thus their ontological security. At the same time principals and first teachers stood and still stand between different normative systems where the normative logic differs. When these collide, problems arise during implementation. The conclusion is that, besides making a clearer policy formulation, teachers and principals should be prepared to change normative institutions and the organizational structure of the Swedish school in order for the reform to have an even more positive effect.

Using anomie theory, in this paper it is argued that the new generation migrant workers (NGMWs) in China are not only receptors under structures, but also a reactive force towards those structures. However, anomie theory has faced theoretical ambiguities, controversies and misunderstandings. It also lacks the power to explain micro-to-macro relationships. For these reasons, anomie theory is first clarified and refined in this study based on its classical roots. It is then further developed by introducing the concept of social momentum to mend its theoretical lacuna. It is argued that anomie naturally reflects structural discoordination at the macro level, and that deviance and normlessness, although typically seen as indicators of anomie, are only its symptomatic presentations. Furthermore, social momentum, determined by the quantity, solidarity and modes of adaption, reveals the capacity of a social category to influence structural relationships. This study demonstrates that China entered a comparatively anomic age after its economic reform. The NGMWs can be considered as a potential antithesis to anomie in China, as implied by certain qualities of their uniqueness indicated in earlier studies. The NGMWs’ social momentum is analysed according to a field study carried out by the author in 2015 in Shanghai and the 2011 Chinese Social Survey (CSS 2011). The data from the survey and study are used to discuss whether the NGMWs will help to remedy anomie. The findings show that (1) the NGMWs’ social momentum is strong but segmental and fragile due to the primary level solidarity of them, i.e., they lack a strong identity, and (2) the directions of their social momentum can be narrowed to two undetermined modes. The NGMWs tend to aggravate the symptoms of anomie, as they are weakly attached to cultural norms. However, they have an uncertain and not yet fully formed effect on the essence of anomie.

While the strict boundaries and ideal measurement of prediabetes remain contested internationally, health officials and private donors in the health sector in Mexico have promoted its diagnosis and treatment as a key strategy in the nation’s fight against diabetes. This dissertation examines the circumstances under which officials have come to view prediabetes diagnosis as a feasible strategy for the Mexican context and the implications of treating individuals, situated across deep lines of social inequality, who are not yet sick, but deemed at risk of developing disease. Set against Mexico’s chronic disease crisis, where diabetes was declared a national sanitary emergency in 2016 and where experts suggest up to 40% of adults likely have prediabetes, this dissertation engages the prediabetes diagnosis as a lens through which to illuminate the social forces, values, and assumptions currently at work in Mexican health politics. The project foregrounds the dilemmas raised by highly medicalized and clinic-based approaches to chronic disease prevention and mobilizes the case of prediabetes in Mexico to illustrate the broader convergence of the fields of biomedicine and public health. Centered in Mexico City, field research for this project was carried out over 30 months, employing multi-sited ethnographic methods, including 106 in-depth interviews (47 of which were with individuals diagnosed with prediabetes and their families), observations of 382 medical exams, and attendance at 71 scientific, community health, and activist-hosted events. Alongside the powerful influence of the pharmaceutical industry, my findings bring to the fore a new set of actors and circumstances involved in the circulation of predisease diagnosis to this developing country context. These include (1) the epistemological limits imposed by “projectification” in global health science, (2) the influence and ideologies of an elite-mega philanthropist and his Foundation’s conviction that technological innovation will foster better health, and (3) local and global imaginaries that endorse the power of Big Data analytics to solve a plethora of development challenges. Further, in tracing the enactment of the prediabetes diagnosis across public and private clinics, I show that the pre-disease condition that economic elites experience when they are diagnosed contrasts sharply with that experienced by working class and low-income patients—I argue that in practice, prediabetes is multiple and its diagnosis amplifies existing social inequities. I also show that the emotional and ethical responses to the diagnosis among patients can differ substantially, particularly across socioeconomic divides. I argue that in Mexico, increased access to risk knowledge does not foster a spirit of “optimization” among the majority of Mexicans, but rather an alternative ethic, which I term “strategic preservation.” Finally, I show that many health experts in Mexico share a common set of values and norms in thinking about diabetes risk. On a macro level, they discursively link the looming threat of prediabetes, diabetes risk, and diabetes itself to the nation’s potentially disastrous macroeconomic future, effectively charging individuals with the responsibility to mitigate this threat through behavior and lifestyle modification. Health experts in this arena also frequently communicate the notion that the Mexican body itself is a key source of diabetes risk. I point to other elites in Mexico who, relying on a similar conception of the Mexican body, are investing in molecular technologies to better detect embodied diabetes risk, and to expand the reach and precision of medicalized prevention strategies in the future. These findings have implications for developing countries globally, which now bear the highest burden of chronic disease. Developing countries are already or will soon grapple with a similar epidemiological crisis and, as this occurs, Mexico’s strategies and experience will set precedents and establish key paradigms for public health action globally. With this in mind, I call for the disentanglement of expertise between the fields of biomedicine and public health and for a turn toward more structural, indeed socially radical, policies for chronic disease prevention at the population level.

The purpose of the present essay is to clarify whether or not there is a core/canon in the subject of sociology and how the formation of this canon in such cases becomes a reality? Furthermore the intention is to elucidate which premises that control the subject selection at different levels of curriculum interpretation – textbook authors and sociology teachers – and how these actors legitimize their respectively selection. The theoretical basis is in large extent inspired by Michel Foucault’s view of discourses which is combined with John I. Goodlad’s concepts formal and operational curriculum. To fulfill the abovementioned purpose and answer the questions of this essay I have interviewed two authors who each individually have written a textbook in sociology and five teachers of sociology.The results indicate that the formal curriculum combined with the discourses of the sociological discipline in the form of educational content and design contributes to form what is considered to be an adequate textbook content in the subject of sociology and this selection then forms the primary basis for the sociology teachers’ operational curriculum.

Wealth has been found to be associated with financial wellbeing in ways not captured by income as well as increased social connections, improved physical and mental health, and increased emotional, cognitive, and behavioral development among children. Preliminary research indicates that a gender disparity in net worth exists in the U.S. However, research in the U.S. thus far has been limited to unmarried households. Research conducted in Germany finds that the gender wealth gap is substantially larger among married households as compared to unmarried households. Using the 2008 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, this dissertation is the first to examine whether the same is true in the U.S. This dissertation is comprised of three papers: Paper 1 descriptively examines the individual wealth holdings of men and women among married, widowed, divorced, and never married individuals. Results further consider the intersectionality of gender and race in relation to asset ownership and liabilities. Paper 2 provides the first examination of the determinants of the gender wealth gap in the U.S. among the married as well as the unmarried. Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions are conducted in order to examine how much of the gender wealth gap can be explained by labor market characteristics, education, demographic characteristics, and receipt of benefits. DiNardo, Fortin, and Lemieux decompositions are additionally conducted to determine if determinates differ across the wealth distribution. Paper 3 is the first attempt to merge the gender earnings and net worth disparities literature. Weisbrod & Hansen (1968)’s augmented earnings measure is utilized to combine net worth and earnings into one annual measure. Annual earnings, net worth, and augmented earnings are descriptively compared. Paper 1 multivariate results indicate that divorced and never married women own less than $0.30 of wealth for each dollar owned by comparable men while married women own $0.92 for each dollar owned by married men. Black women experience a substantially larger gender wealth gap. Paper 2 finds that the gender wealth gap among divorced and unmarried individuals is not explained by the characteristics listed above and is instead primarily attributable to differences in the rewards or penalties men and women receive for characteristics. Among married individuals, the gender gap can be explained largely by differences in characteristics, particularly labor market characteristics. Paper 3 finds that the gender gap in augmented earnings very slightly increases the disparity as compared to earnings alone. Results indicate that the gender wealth gap among married individuals in the United States is substantially smaller than among unmarried individuals. Paper 2 indicates that for the most part, married couples share assets and debts. The remaining differences in wealth may then be a direct result of the division of labor as determined by the labor market characteristics. Racial differences in the gender wealth gap are stark and particularly concerning. Lastly, Paper 3 indicates that although the augmented earnings measure increased gender disparities only slightly, it suggests that the gender wealth gap captures additional aspects of disparities not captured by earnings. Future research is needed to determine the impact this disparity has on wellbeing.

The main focus of this work is the relation between sociology and mathematics, especially the relation between sociological theories of conflict and cooperation and the game theory. In the work four general theories of conflict (and coopera- tion) are introduced - theory by John Rex, Kenneth Boulding, Louis Kriesberg and František Znebejánek. Each is accompanied by a critical review. Next, the formal game theory is introduced. The main effort is to shed new light on game theoretic concepts known in sociology and introduce some of the less known ones. The text is focused on the main ideas and explanation without mathematical for- malism. Historical relation between sociology and game theory is discussed. Also some topics that are not well handled in game theory from sociological point of view are further elaborated - assumption of rationality, definition of utility and preference, assumption of general knowledge etc. There are also topics from mathematics and informatics slowly penetrating sociology - computer simulation, prediction, that we also discuss. The possible modifications and merit of game theory for sociology is also included. Inspired by the previous theories, at the end of this work a new theoretic model of conflict and cooperation is introduced, which tries to overcome some imperfections of the...

In September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted A/RES/70/1, 2015, a resolution that entails 17 integrative and indivisible UN Sustainable Development Goals, by the name of 2030 Agenda, a plan of action that calls for the transformation of the world to ecologically, economically and socially sustainable planet where peace and prosperity endure. With its indivisibility and universality characteristics, the Agenda puzzled the world states, demanding a new form of governance style for its realization. With the use of qualitative research methodology, this thesis, therefore, examines how the Agenda's policies are coordinated by the Swedish Government Agencies and what activities and mechanisms they use to integrate the Agenda' policies into their daily operational activities. Through collaborative governance and sociological institutionalism theoretical lens, results show that Government agencies use several mechanisms such as collaboration, dissemination of knowledge, leadership and communications to enhance the implementation of the 2030 Agenda in Sweden. Nevertheless, some challenges hinder the agencies from working with the Agenda on a full scale, that if addressed properly, it could have improved the current conditions.

The aim of this thesis is to analyse the sppecific meaning of non- alignment policies of Sweden and Finland after joining the EU in 1995. In doing so, the research design is based on sociological institutionalism and its key concepts and phases that are connected to the study of Europeanization. Thereby, the study compares the domestic policies of national identity and its changes in Sweden and Finland before and after the accession to the EU. This shall answer the reserach question on how far the foreign policies of Sweden and Finland have been Europeanized and whether or not non- alignment policies are an obstacle in this process. Since social constructivism considers Europeanization as a socialization process, the paper will also investigate the main challenges for Sweden and Finalnd to face with reagrd to crisis managment, territorial defence issue and Crimea Crisis.

The rise in globalization coupled with the exponential growth in technology has placed greater emphasis on a skills-based economy. This in turn has increased the demand for a labor force with advanced post-baccalaureate education. In order to better devise strategies and/or enact laws to promote, support and enhance post-baccalaureate education, it is imperative to understand the forces that drive or hinder individuals’ post-baccalaureate aspirations. Using PowerStats, an on-line analytical tool made available from the National Center for Education Statistics, I use data from the 2008/12 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study to develop a linear probability model of graduate enrollment incorporating variables informed by the research on human, social, and cultural capital as well as habitus. The results indicate that GPA, type of undergraduate institution attended, and expectation of post-baccalaureate credentials are statistically significant and positively associated with Master’s degree enrollment three years after earning a Bachelor’s degree. Older students and those with higher incomes, meanwhile, were found to have statistically significantly lower probability of graduate enrollment. Many of the variables previously used by researchers as proxies for social and cultural capital did not have a statistically significant effect in this model specification. This finding suggests that these measures may have been confounded by acting through other variables (interdependencies) in the model. This underscores the difficulty in assigning appropriate, direct and independent measures that capture the intended underlying effects proposed in Bourdieu’s theories. Additional research is needed in this area to better understand the influences that different groups experience in their pursuit of post-baccalaureate education. This dissertation also examines the impact of business cycle fluctuations on graduate enrollment over a thirty-year period, encompassing three major economic downturns, using a fixed effects approach. Using IPEDS enrollment data and national unemployment rates as a proxy for the business cycle between 1988 and 2017, I find graduate enrollment to be counter cyclical. Additionally, the expansion of Grad PLUS loans eased the credit constraint on graduate borrowing and seems to have had a significant and positive effect on graduate enrollment, regardless of the business cycle. While the expansion of Grad PLUS loans had a positive effect overall, there are racial differences that could suggest other barriers or constraints to graduate enrollment for minority groups during economic downturns.