Magister Commercii - MCom / South Africa is faced with a triple threat of poor economic growth, poverty and unemployment. Concurrently, the production of waste is increasing predominantly among urban areas. If catered for, the informal recycling sector has the potential to create a notable amount of opportunities for improving livelihoods and generating jobs. Street Waste Pickers (SWPs) are identified as individuals who collect recyclable waste material from households or industrial firms with the aim of selling them to recycling firms. This study aims to identify the barriers and challenges for job creation along the value chain of plastic recycling that SWPs face in the urban regions of Cape Town. In the absence of national database on the informal recycling sector, this study utilises primary data collection methods in the form of semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. The findings in this study indicate that the informal recycling economy is predominantly male-dominated. This is particularly due to the labour-intensive nature of the activities in this sector. Furthermore, the informal recycling economy possesses little to no barriers of entry. This is substantiated by the slight difference found in the comparison of earnings by race, age and educational attainment. These results reveal that initiatives to absorb these individuals could potentially curb the large amount of unskilled unemployed citizens of South Africa and simultaneously help decrease the level of unemployment in the country.

This thesis focuses on the intersection of gender, households, and the non-timber forest product market. Based around the concept of commodity chain analysis, this research examines each stage in two non-timber forest products', straw brooms and coco baskets, life cycles from extraction to final sale. The first objective of this research is to contribute to the literature on NTFPs, and in general gender roles in Latin America, by examining the gendered division of labor within and among the stages of two specific NTFP commodity chains, and the ways in which this division influences how important these products are to household income and conservation. The second objective is look at how commodity chain analysis can be used to examine the above issues, thereby contributing to both NTFP and commodity chain analysis literature. The research shows that the construction of gender in Nicaragua underlies the different roles that men and women perform throughout the two non-timber forest product chains. The two chains represent varying degrees of participation by women and men, and this difference is explained by the prevalence of certain tasks. In the basket commodity chain there were more tasks that are labeled feminine, and in the broom commodity chain there are more tasks labeled male. In addition, the varying participation of men and women influence how income from these products are viewed within the households as well as where men and women stand as conservation stakeholders. Commodity chain analysis served as a useful tool to examine more closely the relationship of gender and households in non-timber forest products, and could be of great assistance to the various development projects using these products as a tool for sustainable development. / Master of Science

This study sought to analyse the role of foreign aid in poverty alleviation and economic development of Ghana from 1957 to 2008. Literature related to the study on foreign aid and economic development was reviewed to get an insight into the views of other writers on the topic under study. The study adopted both primary and secondary sources of data to examine the concept of foreign aid, poverty reduction and economic development in Ghana. The study collected data using qualitative interviews consisting of open- and close-ended questions from the field. Content analysis involving the use of existing materials by researchers and the analyses of data originally collected by others was also relied on as a complement to the primary sources in the study. The study found that donor aid is not well coordinated in Ghana because of the proliferation of donor agencies in the country. Though aid is provided to the Ghanaian economy to address poverty and economic development challenges, the study found that foreign aid did not achieve the set objectives because of poor management of donor resources. This study, therefore, recommends that the informal economy should be promoted with funding from microfinance as an alternative to donor-driven development to effectively harness the natural resources in the country for development. / Development Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (Development Studies)

Qu'apporte la sociologie de l'acteur-réseau à la sociologie du développement? Depuis l’implosion de l’URSS et la division du bassin de la mer d’Aral en cinq républiques indépendantes, l’Asie centrale est le théâtre d’une « guerre de l’eau ». Cette guerre se traduit notamment par la difficulté des républiques à s’entendre sur un accord de partage de la ressource en eau du bassin, dont l’optimum a été démontré par des modèles hydroéconomiques développés par la coopération internationale. Ce travail retrace l'histoire de la guerre de l'eau et montre dans quelle mesure les dispositifs de calculs contribuent à la performer. Nous suivons pour cela l’eau qui circule dans les champs de production, dans les statistiques administratives et dans les travaux des experts internationaux. En mettant les dispositifs techniques au cœur de l'analyse, la sociologie du développement se trouve enrichie par la sociologie de l’acteur réseau / What can bring the Actor-Network Sociology to the Development Sociology ? Since the breakdown of the Soviet Union and the political disintegration of the Aral Sea basin into five independent republics, Central Asia is witnessing a "water war". The republics have difficulties in finding an agreement for sharing the water resources, while international cooperation has many times demonstrated an optimum by producing hydro-economic models.This thesis analyses the history of the water conflict in Central Asia and shows how the experts’ calculation devices contribute to perform the “water war”. The research chases the water flowing in the production field, in the administrative statistics and in the work of international experts. It focuses on technical devices and demonstrates how the Development Sociology gets enriched by the Actor-Network Sociology

Situated on the north-eastern coast of Morocco, the Spanish enclave of Melilla is a paradigmatic case of an unusual yet increasingly common kind of community. These are small, rather isolated communities with no industry or natural resources of their own, which rely heavily on capital and labour drawn from outside. Together with Ceuta, Melilla is one of the two only land borders between Europe and Africa. The enclave’s economic and political set up reflects its geopolitical importance. Across the border from Melilla lies the Moroccan province of Nador, home to one of the largest communities of Moroccan emigrants in Europe and a steady source of unskilled labour on which the Spanish enclave relies. Connections across the border are strong, including kinship links, employment networks and a wide range of both legal and illegal commercial transactions. Based on twelve months of fieldwork conducted on both sides of the border, this thesis departs from prevailing images of the borderland as either an abstract space of ‘creolisation’ and ‘hybridity’ or a locus of resistance to state power, and suggests, instead, that we carefully consider the large-scale political and economic processes through which places like Melilla and Nador are produced, and analyse the ways in which such global structures shape local reality. A fundamental aim of the thesis, therefore, is to elucidate the nature of the relations between space, place and capital at the Spanish-Moroccan frontier, and understand how such relations affect the lives of those who inhabit the region. This involves thinking about the language of a ‘community’ and the discourses and practices of morality that sustain it; analysing discourses of ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ in contexts of institutionalised economic inequality; and understanding local conceptions of identity, morality and legitimacy, and how the three interact.

The inhabitants of Kinshasa, who call themselves Kinois, deal with insecurity and violence on a daily basis. Cheating and thefts are commonplace, and pillaging by street gangs and robberies by armed thieves are everyday occurrences. The state infrastructure is so poorly regulated that deaths by accident or medical negligence are also common. This, and much more, contributes to a challenging social milieu within which the Kinois’ best hope is simply to ‘make do’. This thesis, based on extensive fieldwork in Kinshasa, analyses different forms of violence which affect the Kinois on a daily basis. I argue that the Kinois’ concept of violence, mobulu, differs from Western definitions, which define violence as an intrinsically negative and destructive force. Mobulu is for the Kinois a potentially constructive phenomenon, which allows them to build relationships, coping strategies and new social phenomena. Violence is perceived as a transformative force, through which people build meaningful lives in the face of the hardship of everyday life. Broadly speaking, this thesis contributes to the Anthropology of violence which has too often focused on how violence is imposed upon a population, often from a structural level of a state and its institutions. Such an approach fails to account for the nuances of alternate perspectives of what ‘violence’ is, as evidenced in this thesis through the prism of the Kinois term mobulu. The concept of mobulu highlights the creativity of those forced to ‘make do’ on the streets of Kinshasa, to negotiate not only every day physical needs, for food and shelter, but also to navigate the mystical violence of witchcraft. By exploring the coping mechanisms across all sections of society, I analyse how the Kinois not only have built their lives in the wake of the violence of the state, but they have also found means of empowerment within it, using mobulu as a springboard for the development of some social phenomena. Whereas the anthropology of violence has focused mainly on physical and material violence, this thesis also argues that mobulu in Kinshasa is a total social fact that combines state violence with everyday violence, and physical violence with the invisible violence of witchcraft. This thesis seeks to enrich discussions on witchcraft in Kinshasa and in the African context in general, by analysing in depth how the cosmology of Kinshasa has differentiated itself as a result of the politico-economic events of recent decades. As witchcraft and material insecurity go hand in hand, a detailed analysis of the mechanisms of witchcraft is necessary, if we are to grasp the complexity of the concept of mobulu and how material and invisible violence inform each other.

Master of Arts / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / Robert K. Schaeffer / Informal markets are prevalent all over the globe. The work done in such markets is often for the purposes of supplementary or subsistence income and it is done by men, women, and children. The purpose of my research was to understand how micro-informal markets are created by informal workers in Manhattan, Kansas. This was done through examining how informal workers used their social networks to find customers and how customers used their social networks to find informal goods and services produced by such workers, or more specifically, how micro-informal markets were created. This builds on the economic theory of embeddedness, which states social relations are an important part of the exchange process even in today's capitalistic market economy. In addition, my research also looked at why customers consumed from informal workers, why informal workers decided to go into business for themselves, how the city of Manhattan, Kansas viewed informal workers and whether city officials and affiliates encouraged informal businesses or not.

Através do estudo do trabalho ambulante regularizado, a pesquisa discute as transformações na área central influenciadas pela espacialização dos circuitos de produtos que compõem o denominado \"comércio popular\". Cada circuito aciona uma rede de relações específicas, as quais podem existir na mais absoluta legalidade ou estarem ligadas ao contrabando, pirataria e falsificação. O mercado de produtos cuja oferta é criminalizada movimenta outro que transaciona \"mercadorias políticas\" - negociações de caráter político transformadas em valores monetários - tanto no âmbito das normas comerciais, quanto das que regulamentam a apropriação do território. A hipótese é que as negociações observadas no comércio ambulante constituem formas de gestão dos espaços da área central, as quais são compartilhadas entre o Poder Público e outros agentes. Por continuamente transitarem nas liminaridades do ilegal, ilícito e informal; elas caracterizam o território como uma \"zona de indeterminação\" entre o direito e o não-direito, a lei e a norma, o juízo e o arbítrio. Aborda-se a questão tendo como referência o caso de Campinas, cidade sede de uma região metropolitana localizada no interior do estado de São Paulo. A organização dos trabalhadores em ocupações nos espaços públicos - realizada pela Prefeitura desde os anos 1980 - resultou na construção de um imaginário sobre a atividade, no qual tem papel fundamental a negociação monetária da licença de uso. Para compreensão deste processo, foram analisadas especificamente as políticas de regulamentação adotadas de 2001 a 2004, período em que a regularização de novos espaços perpassou o debate sobre os sentidos da revitalização do centro. Os desdobramentos dessas políticas, captados nas falas dos entrevistados de 2005 a 2010, ajudaram a montar um quadro das negociações e a identificar a complexificação da população que vive da atividade. A convivência nas áreas regularizadas entre as dimensões clássicas e as reconfigurações do trabalho ambulante - provenientes do atual papel que a informalidade ocupa nos processos de acumulação - abre novas questões para a análise do chamado centro \"degradado\" e \"decadente\", locus do comércio popular. / Through the study of the regularized street trading, the research discusses the transformations in the central area influenced by the spatialization of products circuits that constitute the known \"popular trade\". Each circuit triggers a network of specific relationships which can exist in the strictest legality or be linked to smuggling, piracy and counterfeiting. The market of products whose bid is criminalized moves other which transacts \"political commodities\" - political negotiations converted into monetary values - both in the context of trade rules, as those which regulate the appropriation of the territory. The hypothesis is that the negotiations observed in the spaces of street trading constitute a form of downtown\'s territory management, which is shared between Public Power and other agents. By continually transiting in illegal\'s liminality, illicit and informal, they characterize the territory as a \"zone of indeterminacy\" between right and rightless, law and norm, judge and will. It is addressed taking Campinas as a reference, a regional metropolis located within the state of Sao Paulo. The organization of workers in public territory occupations - held by the Prefecture since the 1980s -resulted in the construction of an ideal about the activity, in which the license\'s monetary negotiation plays a key role. To understand this process, the regulatory policies adopted from 2001 to 2004 are analyzed specifically, during which the regularization of new territories pervaded the debate on the meanings of downtown\'s revitalization. The consequences of these policies, as captured in the words of those interviewed from 2005 to 2010, helped to set up a negotiating framework and to identify the complexification of the population which does this activity for a living. The living in the regularized areas between classical dimension and the reconfiguration of street trading from the current informality role in the process of accumulation opens new questions for analyzing the \"degraded\" and \"decadent\" downtown, locus of the popular trade.

Economie informelle et pauvreté en Turquie : une analyse des comportements individuels sur des données des dépenses monétaires et temporelles de 2003 à 2006. / Since it was first introduced by Hart in 1973, the concept of “informal economy” has had vast implications for social-scientific research. Over the last four decades, informal economy has received increased attention in literature and has been keenly discussed by public authorities and scholars. There were two main motivations behind these efforts to identify the informal economy: to measure its size and to know its determinants. From a practical point of view, informal economy has been an enigma for economists seeking to identify its nature and to measure activities that have various economic motivations. Informality has been denoted by many names, such as “shadow”, “underground”, “second” or “parallel” economy- a plethora of terms resulting from the struggle to define informality. Likewise, the various approaches to studying the phenomenon differ greatly in the way that they relate to socio-economic characterization. Although there is great variation between definitions of informality, these diversifications allow authorities to deal more easily with the source of the problem, being able to inform themselves and create accurate policies. Generally speaking, these policies aim to increase the level of productivity for any given sector and to protect growth in an economy as a whole. The implicit goal of these strategies is to prevent informal earnings by protecting formal market transactions (Schneider and Enste, 2002) and thereby combat informality. To this end, identifying the stimulating economic factors behind informal activities by gathering information about participants, their actions and the concurrency of these activities becomes essential for the optimal distribution of economic resources.

Los Angeles stands as the largest city in the United States without comprehensive street vending regulation. Over the span of ten years, between 1984 and 1994, street vendor activists challenged Los Angeles to regulate street vending through the work of the Street Vendors Association. Within the same ten years, the city hosted the Olympics; the city introduced broken windows policing; immigration from the global south increased; and, a riot broke out. This thesis explores how Los Angeles’ ambition as a “city of the future” and its Mexican “past” impacted the politics of street vending during this span of time.