Despite an increasing interest in civil agency and its role in armed conflict, little is known about the effect it might have on rebel groups' patterns of behaviour. In this study I explore the theory of collective action capacity, which is the population's ability to cooperate and forego short term incentives to preserve long term cooperation, and its effect on rebel groups' method of generating compliance in new territory. My main claim is that non-secessionist rebel groups won’t be able to persuade populations with high collective action capacity to surrender to their control, and must therefore use coercive measures to generate compliance. This claim is tested through a qualitative comparative case study, and finds that rebels might always initially apply persuasive measures, and then if they realise that the society in question have high levels of collective action capacity, and thus willingness and ability to resist territorial occupation, fall back on coercive methods. The results provide support for the theoretical framework and the hypothesis, but alternative explanations make the result require further research to determine their significance.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / There is general recognition regarding the importance of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses in assisting students acquire academic discourses appropriate to specific disciplines of study. However, undergraduate students in multilingual contexts, where English is a second or foreign language face challenges in managing the transition from secondary school into the university, where they are expected to appropriate as well as acclimate to new discourses of communication deemed to be essential for their survival in the academic world. Although studies show the importance of agency in language learning success, institutional demands have sometimes led to the adoption of teaching and assessment practices that ignore the learners’ English language learning history, background, experiences and needs, which impact on their sense of agency and voice in the EAP classroom and eventually their learning success.

Rather than being subject of democratic discussion, responsibility for questions of political character, such as climate change, have in a post-political time become decentralised and focused on individual self-regulation. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine how individual experiences of responsibility can be understood. This is examined by analysing individual responsibility in relation to climate change and perceived political agency. Today’s individualisation of responsibility in relation to climate change is focused primarily on behaviour and consumption related to the household and a traditionally feminine sphere, and research shows how women are more likely than men to take and experience responsibility in relation to the issue. Followingly, women have been chosen as informants in this study. The empirical material consists of ten semi-structured interviews with women in Umeå. The material has been analysed applying theories of emotions and an ecofeminist understanding of ethical actors and normative dualisms. The study shows how emotions are complexly intertwined with how responsibility is experienced and acted upon where the feeling of responsibility interacts with practical action. Distinctions between one’s private feelings and actions and the public, rational politics as well as a distrust in political action and meta-level actors to take on responsibility hinders the individual from visualising alternative futures and engaging in political conversations.

The payment of bridewealth is a near-universal cultural practice among the Igbos of SouthEast Nigeria. Bridewealth used to be a symbolic legitimator of marriage. However, its symbolism has been distorted by expensive items on marriage lists. In this context, bridewealth payment provides an excellent analytical tool for the structure-agency debate, which has, in varying degrees, engaged academic interest for centuries. Underlying this debate is the extent to which institutions determine human behaviour and its attendant power relations. While structure refers to the self-replicating, complex elements that sustain institutions, agency refers to the volitional, purpose-driven nature of human activities. In this debate, the structuralfunctionalist-Marxist view, symbolic interactionism, and complementarity view are prominent. From these views, this dissertation develops a needs-based approach to structure-agency interaction, arguing that a focus on the primacy of structure or agency obscures their underlying motivations. It posits that the structure-agency interaction is both the process and product of logical assessments and dialogue, which are driven by socio-economic needs. In the context of this framework, it explored one central question: In what ways do power relations play out in the negotiation process of bridewealth payment in South-East Nigeria? Using literature review, non-participant observation of bridewealth negotiations, and in-depth interviews of 47 key informants, it reveals an interdependent, complex web linking the custodians of culture with agentic tools such as wealth, religion, and education. Despite cultural inhibitions in spousal selection and bridewealth negotiation, prospective spouses have a range of creative tools for reducing exorbitant items on marriage lists, thereby deconstructing high bridewealth. These agentic tools are driven by socio-economic elements such as desire to marry, economic coercion, cohabitation, threat of extramarital pregnancy, and religious values. The study concludes that bridewealth negotiation reflects socio-economic dynamics within hybrid cultural spaces in which potential couples and their parents may navigate the powerful constraints of tradition or sustain tradition through their inaction. These socio-economic dynamics are so powerful that they produce widespread disregard for legislation limiting bridewealth amounts. The study’s findings demonstrate the ineffectiveness of a top-down approach to law, the value of policy sensitivity to people’s lived realities, and the importance of in-depth consultation in the formulation of legislation.

This study investigates the digital lifeworlds of rural and urban 13- to 18-year old young people in an African, specifically Nigerian, context. Children and young people’s digital lifeworlds and practices with technology in the global North is well researched and documented. By contrast, research focusing on their counterparts, particularly pre-teens’ and teenagers’ digital practices and participation in Africa is still largely limited and exploratory; and the field underdeveloped. This is more so despite the important role played by digital communication technologies in children and young people’s everyday life. Privileging the use of a mixed methods approach, this study conducted 16 focus group discussions with 175 participants and a survey of 380 respondents in public and private schools sampled across two of Nigeria’s major geopolitical zones. Supported by the child-centred approach and the domestication framework by Silverstone, Hirsch and Morley (1992), the study provides a multi-layered portrait of the ways in which Nigerian teens access, understand, work and play with and negotiate the digital technologies that are available to them. The study also broadly pays attention to how young people constitute their digital lives and the role played by contextual dynamics and community networks such as family, school and others. It was found that young people in Nigeria have a considerable access to and are predominantly using mobile phones and the Internet (via the ‘mobile internet’). However, this did not preclude the divides and marginalities between children from dissimilar social backgrounds. Teens’ significant outcomes with technology mostly centre around the need for communication and interaction with friends first, and then family. They also primarily use technology to cultivate and maintain their peer culture, for self-care, dealing with mental wellbeing, and as a critical resource for education and information-seeking. Nigerian children’s digital practices are substantially shaped and at the same time undermined by various mediators or digital gatekeepers. These include parents, teachers, guardians and older adults who are presented mostly as prohibitors and moral panic mongers. Issues such as the absence of digital literacy and skill on the part of the children, their parents and teachers also limit the teens’ agency and digital opportunities and result in unchecked risks such as access to pornography, meeting online with strangers/online grooming, distractions, identity issues/negative role modelling. Moreover, the opportunities and benefits of technology in children’s lives remain precarious, stratified and complex. This study attempts to place children’s digital lifeworlds in its wider socio-spatial context and experience, contributing an important dimension to children’s digital practices, especially as there exists a resonant paucity of and apathy towards research and scholarship in children and media studies in Africa. Techno-shaming children into silence, fear, scepticism, guilt or moral panic is a common, but flawed strategy. Instead, it is suggested that government, schools and families should reconsider the precarious subjective-subordinate and marginalised position of young people and allow them the agency to contribute to decisions relating to their digital lives. Adult decision makers must focus on expanding Nigerian teens’ digital opportunities and rights. There is equally the need to develop resources that might help empower parents, families and adults by providing knowledge of the opportunities and risks of the digital age.

Real earnings management has been a subject of increasing debate ever since the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley act in the united states. As research has pointed towards real earnings management increasing this has sparked discussions on whether real earnings management is damaging to companies, or if it is benefiting them, or if it lies somewhere in between. Forthis paper we wanted to examine how the financial incentives of a CEO would affect the usage of real earnings management. Are CEO’s being poorly motivated, and as a result harming their companies? To guide the paper,we decide to formulate our research question thusly: How do different forms of CEO compensation affect real earnings management? In this paper we attempt to find correlations between indicators of realearnings management and threedifferent forms of CEO compensation. For our indicators we follow to a paper by Roychowdhury, titled “Earnings Management Through Real Activities Manipulation”and calculate abnormal cash flow from operations, and abnormal production. These indicate usageof overproduction, reduction of discretionary expenses, and moving sales across periods (Roychowdhury, 2006). For forms of CEO compensation,we measure them as a ratio of total compensation. We track salary, bonuses, and stock ownership. In our results we can see that all three of these are significantly correlated to both of our real earnings management indicators. Bonuses have a positive correlation to abnormal production, and a negative correlation to abnormal cash flow from operations. Salary is positively correlated to both our indicators, and ownership is negatively correlated to both our indicators. Our final conclusion is that yes, the makeup of a CEO’s compensation has a significant effect on the usage of real earnings management within the company.

This thesis explores in what way the organisation IHOPE discuss the concept of Anthropocene in text. The texts analysed are based on a selection from publications on IHOPE’s webpage that encompass the word ‘Anthropocene’. The thesis further discusses the role of archaeology in the Anthropocene debate and glances at the agency theory in a discussion of the emergence of Anthropocene as defined as a new geological era. The thesis also discusses this definition and compares it to other alternative definitions as well as diving into the debate of the starting point of this proposed era. A short introduction is made of environmental determinism and its role in archaeology, and how that possibly relates to the background for the idea of Anthropocene. The texts analysed are presented through John Dryzek’s categories for discourse analysis on environmental issues in order to answer the research questions. / Studien utforskar hur organisationen IHOPE diskuterar konceptet Antropocen i sina texter. Texterna som analyseras baseras på ett urval av publikationer från IHOPE:s hemsida, specifikt de som använder ordet ‘Antropocen’. Studien diskuterar även rollen för arkeologi i debatten kring Antropocen och tittar på agensteori i en diskussion kring uppkomsten av Antropocen i dess definition som en geologisk period. Studien diskuterar även denna definition and jämför den med andra definitioner samt dyker in i debatten gällande när denna geologiska period anses ha börjat. En kort introduktion till miljödeterminism ges och dess roll inom arkeologi samt hur det kan relatera till bakgrunden för idén om Antropocen. Texterna som analyseras presenteras genom användningen av John Dryzeks kategorier som är utformade för diskursanalyser av miljörelaterade frågor. Metoden används för att söka besvara forskningsfrågorna.

Investment in hospitality firms is perceived to be riskier than investments in other types of industries. Based on literature linking good corporate governance to lower default risks and higher credit ratings, this quantitative study is designed to identify the effects of corporate governance on credit ratings in the hospitality industry. After exploring the various factors influencing the characteristics of corporate governance, as well as the specific risks for capital financing in hospitality firms, this research provides empirical evidence to show that hospitality firms with stronger shareholder influence tend to have higher credit ratings. In a related finding, this investigation confirms that hospitality stakeholders are able to evaluate their potential risks by determining a firm's credit ratings and can protect their long-term interest by increasing their power versus management in the corporate governance of the firm. / Master of Science

Thesis (M. Ed. (Mathematics Education)) -- University of Limpopo, 2017 / The qualitative study reported here was aimed at documenting and describing how agency is enacted through students‟ interactions in a mathematics classroom. A case study design was adopted and focused on a grade 11 mathematics class with all the students being participants. These participants were purposefully selected as they formed the class which was allocated to me for dayto-day mathematics teaching. The research question which the study sought to address was: how is agency enacted through students‟ interactions in a mathematics classroom? The classroom in which data was generated adopted a sociocultural perspective as a referent for its practice. Due to this perspective, agency was thus employed as conceptualised by Pickering (1995). Data was generated through interviews and participant observation. However, the interviews were not employed in their „tradition‟ view, but were mostly like focus-group interviews in nature. Data also emerged from classroom discussions, when students in their groups, worked through learning activities. These interactions together with the interviews were audio recorded. Meanwhile, observation data was recorded in a researcher journal in which entries were made after each lesson. Data was analysed following Polkinghorne‟s (1995) narrative analysis of eventful data. During the analysis the researcher listened to the audio records a number of times, and then transcribed all the audio into text. This was followed by reading through the textual data which led to a selection of excerpts used in data analysis. It was found that agency was enacted during student-material interactions, as students engaged in the „dance of agency‟ when deciding on learning a new approach or using an old one to respond to questions. Furthermore, agency was enacted during student-student interactions when students initiated either group or whole class discussion and they were able to sustain the discussions to completion without the teacher‟s intrusion. Finally, during teacher-student interactions, students accounted for their actions and shared their experience and decision making process.

The present study explores the ways in which young people’s relationships with adults and peers as well as their ability to express agency within their school environments influence their academic mindsets. Using a nationally representative sample of 3,300 high school aged youth, this study first investigates the ways in which the independent mindsets associated with an academic mindset (i.e., a sense of belonging, a growth mindset, self-efficacy beliefs, and the belief that one’s work is meaningful) are related to one another, and then explores the ways in which positive school based relationships and expressions of agency within their school environments contribute to those belief systems. The study is grounded in relational developmental systems theory and employs a positive youth development framework to understand the ways in which interpretive and recursive person-context developmental relations contribute to young people’s beliefs about themselves, their educational environments, and themselves in relation to those environments. As educational practices increasingly shift towards deeper learning and a whole child educational paradigm, understanding the ways in which relationships and expressions of agency influence positive academic mindsets may aid in enhancing educational experiences for all young people. This study finds that all four beliefs under consideration load onto the higher order construct of academic mindset, that relationships with both school adults and peers are positive associated with academic mindset, and that agency fully accounts for the association between relationships with adults and academic mindset, and partially accounts for the association between relationships with peers and academic mindset. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.