Co-operatives and housing co-operatives as main consideration of the dissertation are historically and philosophically developed institutions. Co-operative culture, although emerged in Britain during early phases of the industrial revolution, has been adapted by other countries within socialist, social democratic and even communist systems. In the contemporary era, housing co-operatives are still in existence and contribute housing production all over the world in every economic and political system. Institutional development of housing co-operatives in Turkey can be regarded as a process of adapting a Western institution and it shows how contextual differences result in changes in terms of ideology and implementation. In this respect, the thesis aims to evaluate Turkish housing co-operatives by putting forward their contextual differences. Housing co-operatives are non-governmental organizations and produce considerable amount of housing in Turkey. The dissertation regards housing co-operatives as a kind of collective action and discusses underlying factors of success of them with respect to collective action theories. Free riding, group size, critical mass, heterogeneity, network density and selective incentives are the factors obtained from the Theory of Free Rider and the Theory of Critical Mass and discussed regarding the Turkish co-operative development case to be tested via &ldquo / The Housing Co-operatives Interview Survey&rdquo / in istanbul and Ankara. The thesis&rsquo / findings provide that despite there might be expected effects of factors on success of housing co-operatives, these factors might be different due to the fact that they depends on desires of the critical mass / whether to act in favor of collective or individual benefits.

This thesis concentrates on the effects of poverty and socio-spatial exclusion on the local communities and the solidarity ties among the poor. The field research conducted in Bostancik Neighbourhood revolved around two basic questions / socio-spatial segregation of the poor communities from the wider society and the impact of this on the internal structure of these communities with special reference to the solidarity ties and networks. The findings of the research show that the urban poor have been excluded from the mainstream economy and such an exclusion is companied by their further exclusion from social and political processes and public spaces of the city which resulted with their confinement in such physical settings looking like ghetto. Likewise, the research findings point to the fact that in Bostancik Neighbourhood, the community relations revolving around supportive networks, so-called common norms and interests have been severely damaged by the increasing poverty and exclusion. What replaces such relations is a new life style characterised by fragmentation and atomisation of not only community but also other forms of solidarity. In turn, it is observed that there is a high level tension and hostility within the community. The overall findings show that as a result of the economic, social, political and spatial exclusion and social isolation, the communal characteristics of the neighbourhood have been largely dissolved in favour of an atomistic life style threatining the conditions of living together.

This study tries to identify agencies&rsquo / strategies in the &lsquo / urban restructuring&rsquo / of Antalya into a &lsquo / city of culture&rsquo / by examining the underlying relation between urban cultural policies and global capitalism. Pursuing the relational thinking of the Marxist urban political economy paradigm, the theoretical frames for the concepts of &lsquo / restructuring&rsquo / and &lsquo / city of culture&rsquo / were investigated using multi-dimensional approaches of existing scholarly literature. Since the concept &lsquo / city of culture&rsquo / involves growth oriented development strategies of cities competing with other cities for capital, the concept is examined in these sub-fields: (field of art and culture / subfield(s) of urban -planning, -governance, -politics, -design / field of economy / field of tourism). Thus, to outline a theory of practice for the &lsquo / growth machine&rsquo / agents, the transformation of the &lsquo / forms of capital&rsquo / that both the agents and Antalya &lsquo / city&rsquo / possess is examined in four sub-fields in the general field of power in Antalya. Various qualitative research methods were used to understand what underlies the restructuring process. Most of the qualitative data resulted from direct interviews / 28 individuals from six groups (the representatives of -cultural, educational and academic institutions / -capitalist investors / -local government / -NGOs / -central government / Antalyalite Intelligentsia) and a group interview (with 6 academics at Akdeniz University) during the field research conducted between 2006 and 2008. This thesis identifies the Antalya Greater Municipality (AGM) as the leading agency in the pro-growth coalition in Antalya with support from ATSO (Antalya Chamber of Trade and Commerce) among various other local and global agents (T&Uuml / RSAK, iGM-istanbul Greater Municipality, WTO, EU) with their wealth of economic, cultural, commercial, social, and symbolic capitals influencing urban restructuring in Antalya. Opposing them is a group critical of cultural, economic and urban policies compatible with the policies trying to ease the transformation of Antalya into a festival marketplace or fantasy city. Eventually, it is argued that the urban elites&rsquo / strategies to transform Antalya into a &lsquo / city of culture&rsquo / have produced a &lsquo / growth machine&rsquo / using the world city ideology to convince people of the benefits of this transformation. The essential finding of this study is that the &lsquo / state&rsquo / is the most active player in the restructuring process through its interventions in various fields.

Tourism has been supported as a development strategy by central governments for the settlements mainly located in the western and southern coasts of Turkey since 1970s. The replacement of agricultural production with tourism was not only resulted in the transformation of social and economic relations but also spatial developments in these places. This thesis is an attempt to investigate socio-economic and socio-spatial consequences of tourism policies and the positions of local people in this process in the case of izmir-Ala&ccedil / ati. Qualitative data gathering methods (in-depth interviews, participant observations etc.) are used in this study in order to obtain necessary information about the research area. The findings of the study indicated that local people, new comers and migrant workers whose positions are determined according to their ownership of different forms of capital in social space which determine their success or failure in the tourism field have been influenced in different ways from this process. For instance, most of local people are the losers of this process as a result of lack necessary forms of capital in tourism field and mismatch between their historically constituted systems of dispositions (habitus) and tourism field. In the conclusion part, it is emphasized that there is the need for a comprehensive approach to tourism issue and the impacts of different policy implementations to the coastal areas should be taken into consideration by decision-makers in order to achieve more egalitarian development strategies for local communities.

A conservation approach developed without considering the conflicts and inequalities of political, economic and social fields can not achieve that purpose of conservation of historical and cultural values as well as engendering conflicts within relations of property relations-conservation field, social justice-conservation field and tensions between relations of property owners in areas planned to be conserved &ndash / and- state. Justified as a preference of transferring from private to public ownership of the areas those should be conserved and as a tool for solution of problems arising from restrictions on property rights of property owners, the &lsquo / barter&rsquo / system, on the one hand is becoming dysfunctional because of the contradictions between legal regulations and implementation practices, is used as a tool for production rents in reaction to the vulnerability to economic and political speculative pressures / on the other hand as being a sensitive system to inequalities in society, it deepens the disadvantageous state of property owners and produces tensions between conservation field-property owners-and-state / accordingly the justified purpose can not be realized. These findings constituting the focus of the study, verifies the necessity to reproduce the policies at &lsquo / barter&rsquo / system, justified as a conservation tool and a tool to solve the inequality problems produced while performing the conservation aim, and policies of conservation field as well.

This thesis problematizes to relationship between gender based poverty and exclusion and urban space. Five forms of oppression, namely exploitation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, violence, marginalization, faced by women in highly patriarchal urban setting are examined to identify the spatial dynamics of each forms of oppression. A field research was carried out in one of the poor neighborhood of Ankara / nearby Siteler where male dominated furniture production is carried out. Through the in-depth interviews, women&rsquo / s perception and experience of spatializedoppression is documented and used to develop the arguments put forward in the theoretical section.

In 2000 more than one fifth of Istanbul&rsquo / s population lived in a different place than their place of residence five years ago. If we consider that the 2000 population of Istanbul was around some 9.2 million, this figure means that nearly 2 million people were not living in 2000 where they used to live in 1995. Of these two million mobiles, more than half (11.5% of total) were intra-urban movers who moved from one district to another in Istanbul in the same period. Changing the place of residence can be seen as one of the major sources of changing in the socio-spatial composition of a city. In the case of Istanbul, intra-urban mobility or Residential Mobility is the major process that redistributes people in the city since the 1990s. In simplistic words, Residential Mobility is one of the fundamental decision making process which in turn is influenced by macro processes of economic, social and demographic changes in urban setting of a city which are also the determinants of urbanization, and the urban setting of a city is an outcome of mobility decisions of households at the aggregate level. In this regard, this study on residential mobility behaviours of households in Istanbul presents an avenue to further our understanding of the urbanization experience of Istanbul. In the broader context, this study focusses on the period between 1980 and 2000. It is well-known that the post-1980 period shows quite different urbanization setting from the former ones in terms of demographic, economic, political and socio-spatial settings in the world, as well as in Turkey. Within this backdrop, changing characteristics of population as that of economic structure provides unique backdrop to explore how residential mobility changes in metropolitan areas. Moreover, this study is an attempt to reach clear understanding of residential mobility which is one of the poorly understood and studied dynamics of Turkish urbanization.

This study, preconceives space as a social phenomenon, and emphasizes the fact that the urban space cannot be separated from its inhabitants. Accordingly, it suggests that the investigation of both the city and its inhabitants is crucial with respect to everyday life and practice. Hence, the study questions how inhabitants create their spaces following their needs and demands, and how the urban space is re-defined and re-produced through appropriation. Moreover, the study aims to understand how the inhabitants express themselves and how they resist through the spaces they produce in their daily practices. With this aim, the thesis investigates a spatial activity performed by young people in Ankara, the case of &lsquo / Minibar&rsquo / , for understanding the process explained as &lsquo / re-definition&rsquo / of urban space. The research reveals that these spaces become possible through their spatial characteristics. These spaces transgress the established space, yet they are sustained due to their ephemerality, impermanency and flexibility. Furthermore these spaces are discovered to be a medium of expression for the inhabitants. In conclusion, this study asserts an approach towards the city and explains that through looking to the &lsquo / lived spaces&rsquo / rather than rhetorics, calculations and presumptions, we can obtain a clear and actual picture about the city and the inhabitants.

Long after women have successfully entered many other occupational fields once considered to be 'men's work' they have remained a small minority in after-death work in the funeral industry in Aotearoa New Zealand. Women and their contributions to the funeral industry have been excluded, marginalised and devalued. In the last decade, however, there has been a marked increase in the numbers of women funeral directors and embalmers. In the same decade, the occupational specialism of funeral celebrant, comprising a large majority of women, has been established to fulfil a growing demand for non-religious funeral ceremonies. This thesis examines the means by which men have excluded and marginalised women from the funeral industry in Aotearoa New Zealand. More importantly, it examines the ways women are successfully overcoming exclusion and marginalisation by men. To this end I analyse research material from a range of sources. These include: unstructured interviews with funeral directors, embalmers, celebrants, clerical workers and members of clergy; my observations from previous funeral industry research and fifteen years' experience as organist in the industry; plus data from the association magazines of the Funeral Directors Association of New Zealand. To develop a theoretical framework with which to explain how women are surmounting exclusion and marginalisation, I draw on two strands of literature that highlight different aspects of women's involvement in paid work. The first strand includes theories of gendered occupational control, focusing on both practice-based and discursive-based strategies of gendered closure. This strand reveals women's exclusion from, and their strategies for entering, the funeral industry. The second strand of literature focuses on theories of gendered organisational structures, culture and power, uncovering women's marginalisation within the funeral industry. There are five analytical chapters. The first two are largely historical, examining the masculinisation and commercialisation of after-death work, and the ways women and their contribution to after-death work have been devalued and made invisible. The third and fourth analytical chapters investigate men's and women's closure strategies in after-death work. The fifth is a discussion of the ways women promote and position their contribution to after-death work by claiming that, as women, they bring different values from men to after-death work. In this, they adopt discourses of new professionalism; resistant discourses invert the masculinist discourses of the old model of professionalism, valorising long denigrated 'feminine' attributes. I argue that the hierarchical gendered boundaries in the funeral industry stem from the early development of funeral firms in Aotearoa New Zealand as family firms, plus their failed attempts, throughout the twentieth century, to achieve professional status. In this, they reflect the patriarchal power of the masculinist projects of modernity, the society in which funeral director leaders established their professional project. Further, I argue that the failure of their professional project has, paradoxically, facilitated the men's continuing discrimination of women by leaving access to education in the industry's control. I also argue that the recent rise of women in the funeral industry reflects the growing feminisation of the public sphere, with a subsequent increase in women funeral industry clients, who bring different expectations and needs from those of men clients. Women after-death workers claim to facilitate the needs of women and men clients: they are able to do the work equally as well as men, while also drawing on skills they have learned from their experiences as women.

The adoption of modernisation as the national development strategy has put Indonesian cities at the centre of development for boosting economic advancement. Occasionally, as those cities grow through processes of densification and agglomeration, some of the indigenous settlement (kampung) areas are put at risk of disappearing under corporate sector investments. However to some extent there is an indication that the kampung dwellers, the corporate-sector developers and those who are involved in the wider activities of the corporate sector, have an economic and social symbiotic relationship. The aim of this research is to identify the processes of change in a low-income inner city neighbourhood’s community system, in an area that is being encroached upon by modern business activities and other aspect of modernity, to explore shifts between conventionally understood roles of the kampungs, and to speculate on present theory in throwing light on processes of change which might be able to lead to new paths for urban development. The research approach is to work through the relevant literature, and then to move on to a case study approach in an Indonesian city, through which it will be possible to reflect back on the efficacy of prevailing theory. Surabaya was chosen as a representative city and kampung Kaliasin as the observed area.