The theme of the diploma thesis is based on conclusions of the pre-diploma thesis which tried to find lost potential of the village Strachotín and outline its possible development. Strachotín is located in a major wine region. Therefore, the potential of the municipality is mainly in wine, tradition and tourism. The stragedy builds on these potentials and creates two main themes. I live, I discover. The living factor represents inhabitants of Strachotín and the possibility of housing, work and recreation. The discovering factor represents traditions and tourism. The key theme becomes a village square. This is primarily a place for local residents, but also a place for the municipality to represent and support tourism. The village square is the most important part of the village, but the current state of affairs is not the case. Village square lost its identity thanks to inappropriate placement of objects and their functional use. The design tries to clean the village square from objects that are not functionally and aesthetically suitable. Objects that remain in the proposal are a municipal house and former school. They have a historical position here. The proposal adds a new object that combines and complements functions that have been missing or lost in the village in the original solution. The newly created public space creates not only a place for the inhabitants of Strachotín, but also a new tourist destination.

Oita University in Japan has created a meeting space called the Global Village that was inspired by Marshall McLuhan's (1962) theory that globalization contributes to an increased community between people from different parts of the world. It was created to increase interaction among students on campus and is intended for both international and local students. The vision for the place is for individuals to exchange information, knowledge, ideas, and cultures which promotes knowledge exchange and shared learning. However, the University of Oita faces a challenge regarding the Global Village as there is a lack of participation and interaction in the place. Which leads to the vision of Global Village not being fulfilled. The purpose of this thesis is to study how the students experience the Global Village. This was done to gain an understanding of how the place works and to develop ideas to improve the Global Village with the support of the co-creation perspective. Co-creation is about collaboration between individuals who could create some kind of value in the form of new ideas and solutions. Based on the problems identified in the study, the improvement ideas have been inspired by the co-creation theory to include in the Global Village at the university. The study was based on a qualitative approach to answer the research questions and there were several semi-structured interviews conducted with students from Oita University. The study found that open innovation has some factors that are important for developing the concept of the Global Village. And to make it a well-functioning co-creation space that provides value for the students. Those factors that were used within open innovation are networking and value creation, which were an inspiration to create a model. The different solution in the model is based on the problems that were identified in the Global Village. The model contains several different solution proposals to improve the Global Village at Oita University. / Med inspiration av Marshall McLuhans (1962) teori om att globaliseringen bidrar till ökad gemenskap mellan människor från olika delar av världen har Oita Universitet i Japan skapat en mötesplats vid namnet Global Village. Det skapades för att öka interaktionen bland studenterna i campus och är avsedd för både internationella och lokala studenter. Visionen för platsen är att individerna ska utbyta information, kunskaper, idéer och kulturer vilket främjar kunskapsutbyte och delat lärande. Dock står uppdragsgivaren inför en utmaning gällande Global Village då det finns brist på deltagande och interaktion på platsen vilket leder till att visionen inte uppfylls. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur studenterna upplever Global Village i nuläget för att få en förståelse av hur platsen fungerar och därefter utveckla förbättringsförslag med stöd av co-creation. Co-creation handlar om samskapande och samarbete mellan individer som i sin tur kan skapa ett slags värde i form av nya idéer och lösningar. Utifrån de brister som identifierats i undersökningen har förbättringsförslagen utgått från att inkludera co-creation miljö i Global Village som befinner sig i universitetet. Studien utgick från ett kvalitativt angreppssätt för att besvara forskningsfrågorna och det genomfördes flertal semistrukturerade intervjuer med studenter från Oita universitet. Det framkom i studien att faktorer inom open innovation är viktiga byggstenar för att utveckla konceptet av mötesplatsen och skapa en välfungerande co-creation miljö som ger värde till studenterna. Dessa faktorer inom open innovation är nätverkande och värdeskapande vilket användes som inspiration för att skapa en modellutveckling utifrån de brister som identifierades i Global Village. Modellutvecklingen innehåller flera olika lösningsförslag för att förbättra Global Village vid Oita universitet.

Many rural village schools have closed over the years, both in Sweden and internationally, because of urbanisation, centralisation and the quest for efficiency. This study shows the impact of two school closures in the rural area of Ydre, south-east Sweden, and describes the reactions of children and families concerned. The aim is to analyse what rural village schools mean for everyday life and how such meaning is based on time-spatial everyday stories. How the children and families view the school closures emerges in the time-geographic perspective, on their own terms, given their opportunity to demonstrate how they use different time-space components. This was studied by interviewing and sketching mental maps with 28 pupils of various ages, and by interviewing and drawing up weekly time schedules with 12 families. This also enabled the analyses to be extended, using the time-geographic conceptual framework, and in particular the interplay between structural changes and individuals’ day-to-day lives, and the interconnections between school and private life, to be clarified. One conclusion is that a school is no mere teaching venue. It is also a key meeting place for children, part of community life and a space for social networking and daily decision-making: a local community hub for the children and their parents alike. When a local school closes and the pupils need to travel further for schooling elsewhere, it affects their travel and activity patterns and social networks. Children’s drawings express their perceptions of place, time and distance. This study shows that the locations where children spend time and have their social networks, as well as how and how often they travel on particular routes, are crucial for their assessment of distance, both temporal and spatial. Describing the value of the closure-threatened school, parents express concern about their local village. They stress the importance of the village school, which they regard as excellent, unique and a resource for the family, but also for the community as a whole. Thereby, they highlight their hope that their community will be attractive to visitors, and also to themselves, the residents. The threats of closure upset them and provoke discussions on how to sustain a living countryside. Studies of children’s and families’ experience of school closures pinpoint the complexity of rural life and show it in a more human-centred, everyday light. Since children are absent from the municipal closure procedure, views of children’s participation are also discussed.

The population of older persons has increased dramatically over the years in South Africa as well as internationally. As populations continue to age, the concept of active ageing has received increasing attention from researchers. Active ageing can be defined as the process of optimising older persons’ opportunities for health promotion, participation, and security in order to enhance their quality of life. In this definition, “health” refers to physical, mental, and social well-being. “Participation” refers to the optimisation of participation in activities such as employment, education, the arts, and religion, and “security” refers to ways in which the protection, dignity, and care of older persons can be maintained and improved. The distribution of older persons in South Africa by ethnic group is disproportionate with older white persons representing 21% of the total older population. Many of these white older persons reside in retirement villages resulting in their being populated by older white persons more so than by members of other ethnic groups. Retirement village policies and programmes generally incorporate an active ageing philosophy. However, most research on active ageing in retirement villages is conducted internationally, and, furthermore, it does not include the subjective experiences of older persons in these active environments. The aim of this research was therefore to explore the experiences of older residents in a retirement village with an active ageing approach. Barker’s behaviour setting theory and the continuity theory were applied in this study. The behaviour setting theory holds that the environment (retirement village) in which people function is important when explaining human behaviour and exploring the subjective experiences of older persons. The continuity theory rests on the premise that ageing is not a static process but rather an ongoing process and that continuity is a primary strategy used by people to deal with changes associated with ageing. According to this theory, people endeavour to continue with the psychological and social patterns they developed and adopted during their lifetimes. The study was conducted at a retirement village in Boksburg, Johannesburg (Gauteng, South Africa), that follows an active ageing approach, making it an ideal context for exploring the subjective experiences of older persons in an active ageing environment. The retirement village has a dedicated life style consultant who has developed specific programmes for every day of the week with time slots allocated for different activities in which older persons can participate. The programmes exclude frail people in the facility who cannot participate owing to their physical limitations. The director of the organisation that is responsible for many retirement villages, and this one in particular, contacted the researchers and asked them to explore the residents’ quality of life experiences so that the services provided to them could be adjusted if necessary. Ethical approval for the research was obtained from the Health Research Ethics Committee of the North-West University. The manager of the retirement village was also asked to distribute posters indicating the nature of the research. On the day of the data gathering, the participants were told about the research and that they would be required, if they wished to participate, to engage in individual interviews with the researchers and take part in the Mmogo-method®, a projective visual research method (Roos, 2008, 2012). The residents who agreed to participate gave their informed consent and confirmed that their participation was voluntary and they had been made aware that they could withdraw from the study at any time. Twenty participants were recruited for the study of whom 16 were women and four were men. The ages ranged between 65 and 80 years with an average age of 73. Two of the participants were English speaking, and the remainder were Afrikaans speaking. They were given the Mmogo-method® materials, which consisted of clay, straws, and colourful beads, and were invited to make visual representations of their lives and activities at the retirement village. The research request was, “Build something that describes your life here at the retirement village”. When all the participants had completed their visual representations, the representations were photographed and served as visual data. The researcher then asked each participant what he or she each had made and why he or she had made it. An informal group discussion was subsequently held with the 18 participants who had taken part in the Mmogo-method®. Individual in-depth interviews with two participants were conducted after the Mmogo-method® had been carried out. All the discussions were audiotaped and served as textual data. The visual data were analysed by getting the literal meanings of the visual representations from the participants in relation to the specific research request. The textual data were analysed thematically, which involved identifying, analysing, and reporting patterns or themes in the data. Different techniques, including crystallisation and member checking, were applied to ensure the trustworthiness of the research process and findings. The findings revealed that the participants were actively involved in a variety of activities on a daily basis. The activities included physical activities organised by the life style consultant or self-initiated activities such as playing tennis, doing line-dancing, going for brisk walks, working out in the gymnasium, and engaging in recreational activities such as fishing, reading, and scrapbooking. The objectives of these activities were to maintain joint flexibility, general health, and mental fitness. Some of the older residents had formalised roles in the retirement village, which they had previous experience of. The participants also took part in different social activities such as paying social visits and making friends. The spiritual activities of the participants were solitary as well as communal. The participants thus experienced the retirement village as a very busy environment with full schedules. In such an environment, people often engage in activities to distract themselves from dealing with difficult circumstances in their lives. Barker’s settings theory holds that older residents’ physical presence in an active environment influences their levels of activity and their subjective experiences. For some residents, an active environment fits into the continuation of the active life styles they developed during the course of their lives, but for others it may have implications for their psychological well-being if they do not have self-regulatory skills to navigate themselves and act merely on feeling obligated to do something. Using an active environment to deal with difficult circumstances can be either a constructive or a destructive coping strategy for older persons. The individual needs of residents should always be taken into account, and retirement villages with an active ageing approach should be aware that one size does not fit all. This study aimed to draw the attention of retirement village managers to the need to take cognisance of the experiences of older persons when implementing ageing policies in their facilities. It also shed new light on the experiences of active ageing among older residents. / MA (Clinical Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

The population of older persons has increased dramatically over the years in South Africa as well as internationally. As populations continue to age, the concept of active ageing has received increasing attention from researchers. Active ageing can be defined as the process of optimising older persons’ opportunities for health promotion, participation, and security in order to enhance their quality of life. In this definition, “health” refers to physical, mental, and social well-being. “Participation” refers to the optimisation of participation in activities such as employment, education, the arts, and religion, and “security” refers to ways in which the protection, dignity, and care of older persons can be maintained and improved. The distribution of older persons in South Africa by ethnic group is disproportionate with older white persons representing 21% of the total older population. Many of these white older persons reside in retirement villages resulting in their being populated by older white persons more so than by members of other ethnic groups. Retirement village policies and programmes generally incorporate an active ageing philosophy. However, most research on active ageing in retirement villages is conducted internationally, and, furthermore, it does not include the subjective experiences of older persons in these active environments. The aim of this research was therefore to explore the experiences of older residents in a retirement village with an active ageing approach. Barker’s behaviour setting theory and the continuity theory were applied in this study. The behaviour setting theory holds that the environment (retirement village) in which people function is important when explaining human behaviour and exploring the subjective experiences of older persons. The continuity theory rests on the premise that ageing is not a static process but rather an ongoing process and that continuity is a primary strategy used by people to deal with changes associated with ageing. According to this theory, people endeavour to continue with the psychological and social patterns they developed and adopted during their lifetimes. The study was conducted at a retirement village in Boksburg, Johannesburg (Gauteng, South Africa), that follows an active ageing approach, making it an ideal context for exploring the subjective experiences of older persons in an active ageing environment. The retirement village has a dedicated life style consultant who has developed specific programmes for every day of the week with time slots allocated for different activities in which older persons can participate. The programmes exclude frail people in the facility who cannot participate owing to their physical limitations. The director of the organisation that is responsible for many retirement villages, and this one in particular, contacted the researchers and asked them to explore the residents’ quality of life experiences so that the services provided to them could be adjusted if necessary. Ethical approval for the research was obtained from the Health Research Ethics Committee of the North-West University. The manager of the retirement village was also asked to distribute posters indicating the nature of the research. On the day of the data gathering, the participants were told about the research and that they would be required, if they wished to participate, to engage in individual interviews with the researchers and take part in the Mmogo-method®, a projective visual research method (Roos, 2008, 2012). The residents who agreed to participate gave their informed consent and confirmed that their participation was voluntary and they had been made aware that they could withdraw from the study at any time. Twenty participants were recruited for the study of whom 16 were women and four were men. The ages ranged between 65 and 80 years with an average age of 73. Two of the participants were English speaking, and the remainder were Afrikaans speaking. They were given the Mmogo-method® materials, which consisted of clay, straws, and colourful beads, and were invited to make visual representations of their lives and activities at the retirement village. The research request was, “Build something that describes your life here at the retirement village”. When all the participants had completed their visual representations, the representations were photographed and served as visual data. The researcher then asked each participant what he or she each had made and why he or she had made it. An informal group discussion was subsequently held with the 18 participants who had taken part in the Mmogo-method®. Individual in-depth interviews with two participants were conducted after the Mmogo-method® had been carried out. All the discussions were audiotaped and served as textual data. The visual data were analysed by getting the literal meanings of the visual representations from the participants in relation to the specific research request. The textual data were analysed thematically, which involved identifying, analysing, and reporting patterns or themes in the data. Different techniques, including crystallisation and member checking, were applied to ensure the trustworthiness of the research process and findings. The findings revealed that the participants were actively involved in a variety of activities on a daily basis. The activities included physical activities organised by the life style consultant or self-initiated activities such as playing tennis, doing line-dancing, going for brisk walks, working out in the gymnasium, and engaging in recreational activities such as fishing, reading, and scrapbooking. The objectives of these activities were to maintain joint flexibility, general health, and mental fitness. Some of the older residents had formalised roles in the retirement village, which they had previous experience of. The participants also took part in different social activities such as paying social visits and making friends. The spiritual activities of the participants were solitary as well as communal. The participants thus experienced the retirement village as a very busy environment with full schedules. In such an environment, people often engage in activities to distract themselves from dealing with difficult circumstances in their lives. Barker’s settings theory holds that older residents’ physical presence in an active environment influences their levels of activity and their subjective experiences. For some residents, an active environment fits into the continuation of the active life styles they developed during the course of their lives, but for others it may have implications for their psychological well-being if they do not have self-regulatory skills to navigate themselves and act merely on feeling obligated to do something. Using an active environment to deal with difficult circumstances can be either a constructive or a destructive coping strategy for older persons. The individual needs of residents should always be taken into account, and retirement villages with an active ageing approach should be aware that one size does not fit all. This study aimed to draw the attention of retirement village managers to the need to take cognisance of the experiences of older persons when implementing ageing policies in their facilities. It also shed new light on the experiences of active ageing among older residents. / MA (Clinical Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

L'objectif de cette recherche est, d'une part, de faire l'inventaire et l'analyse des facteurs d'intégration des VRS du Sénégal dans leur collectivité locale respective, identifiés par les populations et les intervenants sociaux, à l'heure où la décentralisation interpelle les populations à la base et, d'autre part, analyser les principales pratiques d'intervention utilisées dans les VRS pour mieux saisir les philosophies qui les sous-tendent et leur impact sur la vie des populations afin de proposer des pistes de changement orientées vers une meilleure intégration des villages privilégiant le développement local, social et communautaire. Pour mener cette étude à caractère exploratoire et qualitatif, trois villages ont été choisis sur la base d'indicateurs d'intégration et avec la collaboration d'"experts"; il s'agit de deux"villages typiques" (Peycouck et Koutal) et d'un"village-témoin" (Sowane). Le choix des participants s'est fait avec la collaboration des chefs de village des villages choisis. Ils ont été sélectionnés à partir de catégories déjà identifiées. Cinq entrevues individuelles semi-dirigées et deux de groupe ont été menées* dans les"villages typiques" et une entrevue de groupe l'a été dans le"village-témoin". L'analyse des résultats met d'abord en évidence les facteurs positifs d'intégration influencés par les progrès de la médecine moderne, les services offerts par les infrastructures communautaires installées dans les villages, le sentiment d'appartenance des jeunes et des femmes et le dynamisme de certains organismes communautaires. Ensuite, le manque d'ouverture des villages, les préjugés, l'ignorance, l'analphabétisme, le manque de formation, le manque d'aménagement des villages et la loi de protection sociale devenue une loi d'exclusion sociale ont été identifiés comme des obstacles majeurs à une meilleure intégration des VRS dans leur collectivité locale. En effet, même si la décentralisation prône l'autonomie des collectivités locales et vise une plus large représentation des populations dans les organes de décision, les VRS sont encore exclus et marginalisés de cette dynamique. Les pratiques sociales identifiées dans les villages depuis leur création ont connu une évolution. Ainsi, les villages sont passés de pratiques d'aide psychosociale et médicale qui coïncident à la période du"top down" aux pratiques de développement local communautaire coïncidant à l'ère du"bottom up" et accompagnant les initiatives locales novatrices. La nouvelle stratégie pour une meilleure participation des VRS dans leur collectivité doit passer par des programmes et politiques d'intégration spécifiques impliquant les conseils ruraux, les populations locales des VRS et les représentants des différentes structures d'intervention des villages.

In the face of high population growth and declining natural resource base, tackling rural poverty necessitates an increase in overall factor productivity or a rise in the market rate of return of assets possessed by the poor. Towards achieving these objectives, the role of spatial integration of markets and the efficiency with which these markets operate are considerably important, as these factors shape the structure of incentives and the level of opportunities open to the rural poor. As a result, factors that hinder the spatial integration of markets and their efficient operation will have significant impact on rural poverty. In Ethiopia markets are often segmented mainly due to high transport cost associated with poor road infrastructure. The existing poor quality and low road density are expected to contribute to rural poverty through limiting the size of the market, increasing market risk (price volatility), widening the spatial prices gaps, reducing the market return to land and labour, inflating the profitability of new technologies and reducing the incentive to produce for market. This research endeavours to empirically substantiate if there is a robust link between farm income and the quality of road infrastructure farm households have access to as well as the pathways through which the effects of road on rural income are felt. The empirical result consistently showed that improving rural road access will have significant impact on rural income in general and the income of the poor in particular. The mechanisms by which road boosts rural income and reduce poverty are also found to work through narrowing down spatial price gaps, promoting technology adoption, boosting resource allocation efficiency and raising the market return to land and labour. The result also showed that the rural poor benefits from road induced income growth.

本論文共乙冊，約七萬餘言，全部分為六章二十節。 本論文透過實證調查分析，找尋現階段農村基層建設問題，並針對這些問題提供政府 一個更具體可行的建設方案。 第一章：說明研究動機、目的、地區、內容、方法、步驟以及基本概念。 第二章：分析研究地區之自然、經濟、社會及居住環境。 第三章：敘述農村基層建設之內容，並說明村民及相關人士之反映。 第四章：針對土地利用、交通運輸、公共設施、住宅建設及其他限制發展問題加以探 討。 第五章：就問題之性質，配合相關之計畫，提出未來發展的目標及策略。 第六章：結論與建議。

The world has been transformed through the internet into a "global village",and social media platforms have possibly transformed the world into a larger neighborhood covering many regions of the world. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter came into people’s lives through the Internet, growing daily at a large rate, and it has been proven that they are very popular. This study examines links between different phenomena through social media platforms (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.). It is discusses cohesiveness, desire to belong, sense of community, beliefs and opinions about different forms of these phenomena in popular virtual platforms in correlation with trust in social media, criticism of information that is spread by these virtual platforms, and if people are influenced in consumer decision making. A questionnaire has been distributed to a convenient sample of 159 international and Swedish students in Sweden in October-November 2012 in both English and Swedish versions. According to the peoples’ answers, tendencies were observed such as to not trust the platforms, and also the information received, beliefs such that social media are "controlled", negative critique, but also an expression for a need for ‘membership’.

The thesis is devoted to village society. The main theme of the work is the issue of annual customs and traditions, amateur sports and cultural associations and activities, their tradition and importance for the South Bohemian village Kostelní Radouň. The main aim is to map the current state of the annual customs and rituals and other collective activities. Further attention is paid to their role and function in social and cultural life of the village inhabitants. The work is divided into several chapters, with the introducory chapters is devoted to the development of interest in traditional folk culture within the study area and the changes in village society in the second half of the 20th century, which affected the annual customs and habits. The next chapter describes the atmosphere of the village and its facilities. The following chapters deal with local associations and organizations, which are the main organizers of collective entertainment. Another chapter describes the annual traditions and customs, their traditional form and the current state in the village Kostelní Radouň. Based on data collected during field research realized in the village, and the study of existing sources was found out that in the village Kostelní Radouň currently maintain several annual traditions and customs that...