This doctoral dissertation traces the origins of the East River and the Hainan Base Areas, which were established by the Chinese Communist Party in Guangdong during the Anti-Japanese War (1937-45) and explains why they failed to achieve the kind of dramatic expansion as did their northern counterparts. As the case of the East River Base Area demonstrates, the major problem which confronted the Party was the limited scope of Japanese occupation. The absence of widespread political anarchy on the Guangdong mainland did not only trigger much initial debate among Party leaders over the possibility of guerrilla mobilisation but also imposed severe constraints on local attempts to construct Communist bases. In Hainan, although the political-military situation was more favourable, the Party's plan of developing the island into a Communist stronghold in South China still ended up in a merely theoretical construct. Among those important factors which contributed to its frustration were inadequate resources at the Party's disposal, the loss of radio communication between Hainan and the Party Centre in Yan'an, the intense Japanese "mopping-up" campaigns and the island's age-long Li-Han racial conflict. It was not until mid-1944 that the Japanese Ichigo offensive created in Guangdong an environment conducive to the reduplication of the Communist expansion in the north. Unfortunately, this extensive enemy occupation came to the province too late and was too short. Japan's sudden surrender in August 1945 thwarted Mao Zedong's ambitious efforts of combining the Communist bases in Central and South China. By examining the reasons for the underdevelopment of the two southern bases, this study raises some important questions about the Communist wartime movement such as the limits of Mao's model of base construction and the need of a dynamic balance between central supervision and local initiatives for achieving the Communist revolution.

The aim with this study was to investigate factors that affect the occurrence of mycorrhizal fungi species of nature conservation concern in sand pine forests in Norrbotten County in Sweden. In 2019, the occurrence of fruit-bodies of the species in focus was inventoried in 21 forest stands in three different areas located in three municipalities on land that SCA Skog owns and manages in Norrbotten County. The fungi included in study had been noted in the studied areas in previous inventories between the years 2013–2016, which makes it possible to compare variation in fruit body production between years. Specifically, the study tested whether mean age and diameter of trees, and base area and size of forest stands affect the occurrence of fruit bodies of the studied mycorrhiza species in the forest stands. A multiple regression analysis found a positive significant relationship between the number of species that occurred and the size and base area in the forest stands, while there was no effect of mean age and mean diameter of the trees. This indicates that it is important to consider the size and base area of forest stands to maintain mycorrhizal fungi when planning management in dry sandy pine forests. However, because fruit body production is highly variable among years further research is required to get a better understanding of how tree structure affect mycorrhizal fungi.

This thesis is an ethnographic account of social change, triggered by the civil war in Nepal (1996-2006). Based on an ethnographic fieldwork in the village of Thabang, the war-time capital of the Maoist base area, this thesis explores the transformative impact of the conflict on people’s everyday lives and on the constitution of key hierarchies structuring Nepali society. Rather than focusing on violence and fear – the commonly researched themes in warzones – the thesis examines people’s everyday social and embodied practices during the war and its aftermath, arguing that these remain central to our understanding of war-time social processes and the ways in which they shape the contours of post-conflict society. By focusing on mundane practices – such as meat-eating and alcohol-drinking, raising livestock and worshipping gods – the thesis demonstrates how change at the micro-level is illustrative of a profound transformation in the social structures constituting Nepali society. Theoretically, the thesis seeks to understand how the situation of war re-orders society: in this case, how people in the Maoist base area interiorized formerly transgressive norms and practices, and how these practices were normalized in the post-conflict environment. The research revealed that much of the change triggered by the conflict came as a result of the ‘exceptional’ times of war and the necessity to follow ‘rules that apply in times of crisis’. Thus, in adopting transgressive practices during the conflict, people were responding to the expediency of war-time rather than following Maoist war-time policies or ‘propaganda’. Furthermore, while adopting hitherto unimaginable practices and making them into habitual action, people transformed the rigid social structures, without necessarily intending to do so. The thesis puts particular stress on the centrality of unintended consequences in social change, the power of embodied practice in making change real, and the ways in which agency and structure are mutually constitutive.