This thesis consists of four independent chapters on urban and development economics. Chapter 1 looks at the issue of distance and labour outcomes in urban areas of a developing country. It studies the effect of a housing relocation program on the labour supply and living conditions of low-income households across major cities in South Africa. For this, I use four waves of panel microdata collected between 2008 and 2014, and I exploit the arbitrary eligibility rules of the policy with a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to obtain causal estimates. In the short-term of two to four years following relocation, I find that the labour supply of recipient households decreases by one standard deviation, driven mostly by a decrease in female hours. I find evidence of a large increase in distance (km) to economic opportunities. This is likely to be an important factor behind the decline, directly or indirectly through within-family shifts in livelihood strategies. Evidence is limited regarding improvements in housing and neighbourhood quality. Chapter 2 examines how neighbourhoods where children grow up can play a significant part in shaping their opportunities later in life. It provides unique evidence in a developing country context by using the random allocation of households to ethnically segregated residential areas during apartheid in South Africa. The main observations come from a panel of young adults aged 14 to 22 at baseline and residing in the city of Cape Town. It covers 5 periods of their life between 2002 to 2009. I focus on black children in families living in former black-only residential areas. I find compelling evidence of neighbourhood effects on labour and educational outcomes in adulthood across deprived neighbourhoods. The differences are more marked for young women, suggesting a stronger hold of social norms and institutions for young men. Location, both in terms of access to jobs and access to higher quality public amenities (schools), social networks and the underlying human capital composition of the neighbourhood are positively correlated to having better socioeconomic outcomes in adulthood. Chapter 3 moves beyond socioeconomic outcomes, to study the relationship between extreme weather events and disease in developing cities. As climate change is making extreme weather events more frequent around the world, urban residents in developing countries have become more vulnerable to health shocks due to poor sanitation and infrastructure. The chapter empirically measures the relationship between weather and health shocks in the urban context of sub-Saharan Africa. Using unique high-frequency datasets of weekly cholera cases and accumulated precipitation for wards in Dar es Salaam, we find robust evidence that extreme rainfall has a significant positive impact on weekly cholera incidence. The effect is larger in wards that are more prone to flooding, have higher shares of informal housing and unpaved roads. We identify limited spatial spillovers. Time-dynamic effects suggest cumulated rainfall increases cholera occurrence immediately and with a lag of up to 5 weeks. Chapter 4 addresses questions related to the local impact of economic policies in developing countries. Specifically, I provide evidence on the local effect of a popular trade policy: export processing zones. The chapter examines the impact of their establishment on the levels of per capita expenditure across Nicaraguan municipalities for the period 1993 to 2009. Using the time and cross-section variation of park openings in a difference-in-differences framework, I find that on average consumption levels increased by 10% to 12% in treated municipalities. Yet, average effects mask significant disparities across the expenditure distribution. The results suggest that the policy benefited the upper-tail the most: expenditure levels increased by up to 25% at the 90th percentile. At the opposite end of the distribution, only the bottom decile registered a positive increase in expenditure levels of close to 10% across the period.

This thesis is an ethnographic study of urban development in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Drawing on 12 months of fieldwork, this manuscript explores the way that the city of Colombo is increasingly being re-imagined by policymakers, developers, government officials and elite residents as a “global city” similar to Singapore or Dubai. As my multi-sited project demonstrates, however, these visions of the new Colombo are far from being the current reality. Through chapters exploring diverse corners of Colombo including: a suspended Chinese-funded waterfront development project; a coastal fishing enclave; a new marketplace opened under the former government; and the city’s luxury apartment buildings, this thesis offers insight both into the varied forms of dispossession faced by the urban poor and working class as well as the aspirational projects designed to appeal to the Colombo elite. I argue that the primary principle governing Colombo’s urban development is the idea of “hubness,” an aspirational trope which emphasizes connection and mobility, especially across the Indian Ocean region. Rather than taking its island geography as a sign of insularity, many Sri Lankans hope to leverage what is now framed as the country’s “strategic location” to boost its appeal and transform Sri Lanka – and by extension, Colombo – into a major global hub connecting Asia, Africa and the Middle East. I argue that hubness as an ideal is both a spatial and temporal claim. Rather than being a self-evident statement of geography, hubness discourse is also a specific understanding of futurity. These complex entanglements of spatiality and temporality are present in each site. The ethnographic findings presented in this thesis point to the need to reconsider global city making as a process suffused with uncertainty, rather than as a straightforward, linear evolution. Global cities, I suggest, are not fixed or static entities, but contingent urban forms which are actively created as material and symbolic entities through various forms of dispossession and aspiration.

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Geografia, Florianópolis, 2011 / Made available in DSpace on 2012-10-25T20:41:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 297525.pdf: 2597498 bytes, checksum: 78153c61aa18c54c335152a0a011231d (MD5) / Este trabalho tem por objetivo elucidar a construção do espaço transitório socialista, com ênfase para o seu desenvolvimento no Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), em Santa Catarina, Brasil, de 1985 a 2010. Segundo o referencial teórico desta pesquisa, o espaço transitório socialista atua como espaço de superação do capitalismo, segundo o movimento autônomo da classe trabalhadora, em vista do acirramento das contradições sociais geradas pelo desenvolvimento hegemônico do capital. Destaque-se que o referido modo de produção social permite o crescimento das forças produtivas da sociedade com base na ampliação do trabalho coletivo (cooperação); porém, mediante a dominação do capital, as forças produtivas do trabalho coletivo impulsionam o processo da alienação do trabalho, em vista da crescente apropriação privada dos meios de produção sociais. O capitalismo produz, assim, ao passo da maior concentração e centralização do capital, forças sociais, cada vez mais, destrutivas, materializadas na crescente miséria da classe trabalhadora, incluindo os povos tradicionais, também tornados proletários, enfim, desprovidos do acesso aos meios de produção sociais. Partindo disso, buscou-se enfatizar o movimento histórico desencadeado autônoma e contraditoriamente pela classe trabalhadora, na perspectiva da superação do capitalismo, como base para o desenvolvimento das ações constituídas pelo MST, também no caso de Santa Catarina, entre 1985 e 2010. O método científico aqui reunido buscou inspiração, principalmente, na práxis dialético-materialista desenvolvida por Karl Marx e Friedrich Engels que, partindo do estudo das condições de produção da existência social em cada período histórico, identifica a luta de classes como motor do desenvolvimento social, notadamente, no período de ascensão da propriedade privada, que em se tratando do capitalismo desenvolve-se a partir da oposição entre capital e trabalho. Observe-se, ainda, em termos do período atual, a teorização de Milton Santos sobre o desenvolvimento da #globalização# capitalista como hegemonia contraditória das ações movidas verticalmente pelos grandes capitais transnacionais, em conflito com a organização horizontal dos #homens pobres e lentos# do planeta; bem como a teoria de Eleutério Prado sobre o desenvolvimento da pós-grande indústria moderna, que indica a maior centralidade da produção científico-tecnológica na atualidade # a qual repercute, também, na definição do atual sujeito revolucionário. Já no que se refere à produção da vida realizada pelo MST, verificou-se a tentativa de superação das oposições historicamente constituídas entre a base técnica de produção da sociedade e sua respectiva atividade política e cultural, também em vista da realização de uma superior cooperação. Ademais, repercute também no interior do Movimento Sem Terra a contradição entre capital e trabalho, cuja superação se relaciona não apenas ao MST, mas ao desenvolvimento da luta de classes em geral, caracterizada, atualmente, sob o ponto de vista dos trabalhadores, pela luta popular e anti-imperialista, que diz respeito ainda à práxis do MST, para a qual esta pesquisa buscou contribuir através do diálogo com a práxis científica aqui reunida. / The objective of this paper is to analyse and explain the construction of a transitory socialist space, emphasizing the Movement of the Landless Rural Workers (MST) in Santa Catarina, Brazil, from 1985 to 2010. According to the various literature as part of this research, this transitory socialist space acts as a means of this independent working class movement overcoming capitalism, and taking into account social contradictions engendered by economic development. The aforementioned way of social production allows the growth of the productive forces in society. This is based on the increase of co-operative work. However, through capital domination, the productive forces of cooperative work then stimulate the process of alienation with regard to increasing private appropriation of forms of social production. As such, capitalism produces social forces that are more and destructive due to the greater concentration and centralization of capital. This results in the suffering of traditional rural people who also become working class and who are ultimately unable to gain access to ways of social production. Therefore this study has sought to emphasize the historical movement that emerged in an autonomous and contradictory way from the working class in its efforts to overcome the capitalism, on the basis of development of actions by the MST, and also in the case of Santa Catarina between 1985 and 2010. The scientific method gathered here found particular inspiration in the dialectical materialism praxis developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who, having as reference conditions of social production in each historical period, indentified the class struggles as an engine of social development. This was most apparent in the private property boom, which developed from the opposition between capital and labour. Of equal importance are the current theories of Milton Santos regarding the development of capitalist #globalization# as contradictory hegemony of actions in vertical motion by large multinational capitals, in conflict with the horizontal organization of the #poor and weak#; As Eleutério Prado#s theory about the development post-large modern industry, which indicates the bigger centrality of scientific and technological production in recent times which is relevant to the definition of a revolutionary man. In terms of life production carried out by MST, one can verify their attempt to overcome historical oppositions by comparing technical production in society and the movement#s political and cultural activities # the aim being for a superior level of cooperation. Moreover, the contradiction between capital and labour in the Movemnet of Landless Rural Workers is evident. The overcoming of this is not just related to the MST, but to the development of class struggles in general, characterized, in workers view, by popular struggle and anti-imperialism. But the last one is related to the MST praxis, for which this research tried to contribute towards through dialogue with scientific praxis gathered here.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T18:36:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 arquivo7766_1.pdf: 1149818 bytes, checksum: 7fd370141a22ac9b5cfb2357c4453570 (MD5) license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2004 / Esta dissertação discute a constituição de uma identidade coletiva dos trabalhadores de Maceió através da atuação dos tipógrafos no período entre 1895 e 1905. Aliando o discurso de valorização do trabalho com o do socialismo da II Internacional, na forma como é entendido no Brasil, estes trabalhadores estabelecem uma identidade de classe através da organização de entidades representativas dos trabalhadores, da defesa e reivindicação de direitos, bem como através da crítica à sociedade vigente e à exploração burguesa

This thesis challenges established scholarship on fan cultures—based on foundational assumptions of fandom as an ‘imaginary community’ (Hill, 2016) bounded off from the mainstream—on a theoretical and methodological level. It traces these assumptions to canonised theoretical frameworks of Bourdieu’s (1984) economistic concept of cultural capital and to a lesser extent Foucault’s (1966) heterotopic spaces of otherness, and breaks with this tradition by placing fan/scholar practices in relation to the overarching socio-cultural structures and ideologies they remain part of. By synthesising a new theoretical framework from Bourdieu’s (1977) system of dispositions (habitus) and Foucault’s (1977) disciplinary notion of the panoptic sort (Gandy, 1993), I shift focus from mapping fandom to exploring scholarly sorting practices and the dispositional attitudes they serve. This not only explores naturalised fan scholarship practices, but also provides a means for scholars to move away from them. I then examine two academic case studies, analysing scholarly discourse of the BBC’s Sherlock and Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, chosen for their cultural omnipresence and abundance of scholarly discourse. Each case study is contrasted with over 400,000 words of discourse collected from 400 participant accounts through the transnational, multi-sited, ethnographic ‘Views on Fandom Project’. Through this triangulation, I demonstrate that scholar-fans implicitly draw from established brand, media, and fannish discourses, resulting in accounts that uncritically reproduce established, neoliberal value systems as the natural order of things. Through new theoretical pathways opened up by the framework of disposition and panoptic sorting—Sloterdijkian (2009) spherology and the Archerian (2012) reflexive imperative—I theorise the absence of scholar-fan reflexivity regarding these practices as attempts to maintain dispositional security. Additionally, I demonstrate that by focusing on fan/scholar dispositions, scholarship can break with this tradition of implicitly reproducing established discourses based on assumptions of fandom as bounded and different, and move on to critically analyse the complex relationships between fan cultures and the mainstream.

The pioneer study of A. B. Hollingshead and F. C. Redlich, recorded in their book, Social Class and Mental Illness, indicates that social class is related to a number of factors pertaining to mental illness. Subsequent studies prompted by this work have examined some of these factors. All of these investigations were carried out in the United States in various mental health settings. It became our purpose to examine the relevance of these factors in a Canadian mental hospital setting. Three hypotheses were postulated. First, that social class would be related to the type of treatment received in the hospital. Second, that the duration of stay in the hospital would be related to social class. And, third, that the patient's level of improvement upon discharge from the hospital would be related to social class. Routinely collected data from Riverview Provincial Mental Hospital were used to test these hypotheses. No statistically significant relationships were found between social class and of the three dependent variables. However, it was noted that the higher social class levels of psychotics, as measured by the educational index, seemed to receive more electro-convulsive therapy and group therapy than was the case with any other diagnostic category. Possibly this trend could be persued in subsequent studies. Also, duration of stay was not considered to be an important variable because of the relatively short stay of the majority of all persons admitted to the hospital. It was concluded that the definition of treatment was too narrow. Electroconvulsive therapy and group therapy were the most amenable to statistical examination. However, it is widely recognized that milieu therapy is a major form of treatment in Riverview Hospital and therefore, should be included in any consideration of treatment in subsequent studies. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / [Other authors, Allan Lloyd Failing Mary Louise Ferguson Pamela Dawn Gaudette Roberta Miriam Jauck Gordon Edward McLeod] / Graduate

Research has shown that there is an occupational prestige hierarchy, stable over time and from subpopulation to subpopulation. Occupations in the central part of the hierarchy, the so-called "middle range" occupations, are, however, subject to relatively high variability. The explanation commonly advanced for prestige ratings is the "rewards hypothesis". That is, perceptions (not necessarily accurate) of occupational rewards, operationally defined as occupational characteristics, determine prestige. If this explanation is viable, it ought to be possible to trace the learning of prestige judgments and of the rewards which determine them. Since age differences between older and younger adults and usually between older adolescents and adults do not seem significant, it was hypothesized that the learning of rewards and hence the hierarchy begins in early childhood. Inhelder and Piaget's theory of the development of logical thinking was advanced as a rationale for the increased similarity between adults' and maturing children's perceptions of the hierarchy. The child learns to appreciate the rewards appreciated by adults, and what rewards are thought to be gained from participation in various occupations. As his reasoning abilities improve, he is increasingly able to weigh these rewards "accurately", and so increasingly comes to view prestige as adults do. Previous research, concerned with "reasons" given by subjects for assigning high prestige ratings, with task learning, and with a number of other behaviours, has shown that different social class members have preferences for different rewards. On the basis of these findings, it was hypothesized that higher status individuals appreciate psychic and deferred rewards more than, .immediate rewards less than, and material rewards to the same degree as lower status individuals. The subjects were boys of 9-10, 12-13, 15-l6, and 17-18, chosen equally from "blue" and "white collar" backgrounds. Boys were chosen because more study of males than females has been carried out. The occupations studied were from the "middle range", since it was assumed that variability is a function of social class reward preference differences. The characteristics chosen, operationally defined as deferred-psychic, deferred-material, deferred, immediate-psychic, immediate-material, and material, were "power", "security", "education", "good working conditions", "income during training", and "average income". The study was modelled on that of the N.O.R.C. and Duncan's analysis of those data. Spearman's r was used to test the hypothesis that the older the subject group, the greater the similarity between their perceptions and those of an adult, group. This hypothesis was supported. Variance explained was used as a test of the hypothesis that this phenomenon would he paralleled by-increasing power of rewards perceptions to predict prestige. This hypothesis was not supported; although prestige perceptions were significantly correlated with most reward perceptions, the correlations were low and much the same at all age levels. Step-regression analysis was used to test the hypothesis that subjects from different social class backgrounds would show preferences for different rewards. Differences in the predicted directions were found for four out of the six operational hypotheses and for two of the four theoretical hypotheses. These differences were not marked. It was concluded that the data were reliable, but that reward perception measurements are not a valid predictor of the prestige of the middle range occupations. Methodological influences on the data were considered, special attention being given to "halo effects" and to familiarity of the subjects with the occupations being rated. A possible explanation for the findings in previous research of a high relationship between prestige and rewards perceptions is that verbal behaviour rather than rewards perception biases were being tapped. Several suggestions for further research were made. A study similar in design to this one, but including the occupations at the extreme ends of the hierarchy, would show if the results of this study can be generalized to all occupational prestige ratings. Further study should be made of children's perceptions of prestige; more knowledge of these would be useful in the modification of the rewards hypothesis or in the development of an alternative to it. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

This research project was undertaken to determine if there are social class differences in the pre-hospitalization and post-hospitalization experiences of individuals defined as mentally ill. Social class was defined through the application of educational level and occupational status. The data obtained from the Riverview Hospital covered a two year period from April 1, 1965 through March 31, 1967. Three main hypotheses were formulated to deal with the following topics: (1) The relationship between social class and employment. (2) The relationship between social class and duration of illness prior to admission to hospital. (3) The relationship between social class and contact with family or relatives. Significant trends were found to exist. Representative of these were: (1) Relating social class and employment before admission to hospital and following discharge from hospital, more higher class subjects than lower class subjects were employed before admission to and following discharge from hospital. (2) Relating social class and the period of mental illness prior to hospitalization, the results show more higher class subjects than lower class hospitalized within a one year period for psychotic mental illness. The findings of this research project support the stated hypotheses, confirm the results shown by other studies, opened new areas for further research, and indicated possible application of findings for social work practice. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate

Submitted in fulfilment ofthe requirement for the degree MASTER OF EDUCATION in the Department of Educational Psychology of the Faculty of Education at the University of Zululand, 1997. / The aim of this investigation was to determine the role of reception classes in bridging informal and formal education. An introductory description of the life-world of the preschool child was given. It is essential for the child to orientate himself in relation to his world; and for this purpose he must understand the significance of other people, objects/ ideas and himself The bases of relationships which the preschool child forms, namely the physical, psychological, social and cultural bases, were described. This was followed by an examination of the relationships he forms with himself, his parents, peers, objects/ideas, and religion The self-actualization of the preschool child as a person was discussed; that is helping the child to become the best that he is able to become. Conditions for the emergence of school readiness, criteria for school readiness and factors hindering school readiness were examined. An overview was provided of preschool education in the Republic of South Africa with specific reference to its origin and development thereof in the different provinces before 1994. Attention was also given to the inter-provincial movement regarding preschool as well as the present status of reception classes in the country. A literature study was also made of the existing preschool models for the different race groups in KwaZulu-Natal (former Natal), as well as governmental and non-governmental involvement in preschool education. The reception class model was discussed with reference to the programmes offered, curriculum, accreditation, training of teachers and funding. The quality of preschool education presently rendered in KwaZulu-Natal was explored with regard to the training of teachers, pupil-teacher ratio and preschool facilities. In conclusion, a summary of the investigation and findings emanating from the literature study was presented Based on these findings, the following recommendations were made: Provision for reception classes should form part of the free and compulsory education plan of the government. Urgent attention should be given to parent guidance and involvement programmes in the education of preschool children.

No description available.