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Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Vincent R. Amanor-Boadu / Maize is a staple food to many Zambians. It is for this reason that it has received a lot of support from government as a way of maintaining food security in the nation. No other crop in Zambia currently receives such level of support from government. Factors influencing its availability can thus seriously affect food security. In recent years, Zambia has not been spared by adverse climatic changes that have continued to affect the entire globe. In the early 1980s the southern “maize-belt” part of the country that was devastated by continuous drought that caused villagers to go hungry and lose a lot of livestock that was their main livelihood. The trend of decreasing rainfall in consecutive seasons has continued in many parts of the country. Because most smallholder farmers, who are the major contributors to the nation’s food supply, depend on rain for crop production, there has been a deliberate policy by government through the Ministry of Agriculture and Co-operatives to encourage the farmers to diversify their on- and off-farm activities to improve food security at household and national level. To this end, the government has continued to encourage the growing of cassava. Several studies have suggested that cassava is a nutritious food crop (Chitundu, Droppelman and Haggblade, 2006). Cassava has a number of industrial uses too. Good attributes of cassava lie not only in the nutrition content of the tuber and leaves but also in the fact that as a field crop it does not require expensive inputs like fertilizer and is better able to withstand drought compared to the maize crop. This study attempts to understand the economic factors that influence consumption of cassava to shed light on its potential to avert potential crisis associated with prolonged droughts. Based on the survey conducted in 2007 in Lusaka, the study found that price and quality of cassava meal are the principal determinants of cassava meal demand in Lusaka. Direct price elasticity of demand for cassava is -1.32, suggesting that cassava meal is price elastic. The study also found that the cross price elasticity between maize meal price and cassava meal demand is 0.04 suggesting that cassava meal is a substitute to maize meal, but inelastic. The income price elasticity of demand for cassava meal is -0.12. However, income was found to be statistically insignificant in determining the demand for cassava meal. As such these economic factors are keys to the consumption of cassava. Therefore, the study suggests that the demand for cassava meal in Zambia may be improved through deliberate promotion.

The Hot Spot effect is an issue that reduces the network lifetime considerably. The network on the field forms a tree structure in which the sink represents the root and the furthest nodes in the perimeter represent the leaves. Each node collects information from the environment and transmits data packets to a "reachable" node towards the sink in a multi-hop fashion. The closest nodes to the sink not only transmit their own packets but also the packets that they receive from "lower" nodes and therefore exhaust their energy reserves and die faster than the rest of the network sensors. We propose a technique to allow the data sink to identify nodes severely suffering from the Hot Spot effect and to move beyond these nodes. We will explore the best trajectory that the data sink should follow. Performance results are presented to support our claim of superiority for our scheme.

Thesis advisor: Juliet B. Schor / Fragrances in consumer products have become a contested topic in daily life. Workplace fragrance policies problematize fragrances, which, for many people, are normal aspects of consumer products. This mixed-method dissertation focuses on employees in a large non-industrial workplace with a fragrance-free policy. It examines employee reactions to a policy that requests behavioral changes based on claims that everyday consumption of fragranced products may be harmful to employee health. In order to develop an understanding of how and to what extent fragrances and indoor air quality are problematized in the workplace, I engage a number of different constructs from environmental and consumer sociology. The dissertation expands upon constructs of contested illness (Brown, Kroll-Smith, & Gunter, 2000; Phillimore, Moffatt, Hudson, & Downey, 2000; Shriver & Webb, 2009); framings of environments in bodies (Kroll-Smith & Kelley, 2008); lay assessments of health impacts (Burton-Jeangros, 2011; Collins, 2010; Heikkinen, Patja, & Jallinoja, 2010; O'Sullivan & Stakelum, 2004; Scammell, Senier, Darrah-Okike, Brown, & Santos, 2009) and understandings of the role of scents in social life (Largey & Watson, 1972; Low, 2006; Synnott, 1991). My findings show that a majority of participants understand fragrance impacts through an individual health frame, as an allergy, that locates the problems associated with fragrance within the bodies of specific individuals who exhibit symptoms due to fragrance exposures. While this orientation has had positive impacts on the implementation of the policy and reducing corresponding impacts on those who are Fragrance Sensitive, the degree to which fragrances have been problematized is limited by understandings of fragrance impacts as allergies. The limiting framework of fragrance sensitivity as allergy has practical efficacy because it helps employees to connect with the idea that fragrances cause health issues for some individuals. However, it also stymies assessments and connections to potential broader environmental health impacts of fragrances in part because allergens such as pollen are generally viewed as benign and only problematic to the anomalous individuals who experience reactions. Limitations of the framework are reinforced by established moral and cultural assessments of good and bad fragrances and the appropriate use of fragrances (Low, 2006; Synnott, 1991). This dissertation examines what happens when people are confronted with information that the industrial traces associated with their consumption practices - in this case wearing and using fragranced products on their bodies and in their work environments - may be contributing to negative health outcomes for their coworkers. This study is the first to analyze the social dimensions of the use of synthetic fragrances in connection to environmental health impacts in the context of everyday life. The findings have relevance for other organizations considering regulation of fragrances as well as for efforts to use health rationales to encourage changes in consumption practices. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Student Number : 0420494F - MSc research report - School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies - Faculty of Science / Government reforms aim to provide free basic and affordable electricity in poor urban areas. However, the growing rate of urban poverty, limited development of energy infrastructure, the cost of modern services and fuel use culture further contribute towards the consumption of multiple fuel use. The diverse ways in which urban households utilise the available energy can make fuel transition very difficult to achieve. This research aims to investigate household energy consumption patterns in Diepkloof in order to understand the factors limiting a fuel transition from coal and wood to electricity. The analysis in this report uses data collected from the household survey in Diepkloof as well as key stakeholders in this field including the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee and Eskom. The reason for using these two stakeholders was because SECC is a social movement activist group advocating free electricity while Eskom is the electricity service provider. Household data examines the range of fuels, factors affecting fuel choice and the attitude of people towards alternative energy sources. The two stakeholders help to critically assess the effectiveness of energy policy document supporting the supply of electricity to poor communities, including Diepkloof. This research concluded that there is no clear evidence that an energy transition is taking place in Diepkloof. Moreover, the results indicate that the energy policy has good intentions but there are still some difficulties with affordability, and culture or personal choice. As a consequence of the underlying problem, most poor households still rely on multiple fuels use for major thermal purpose such as cooking and heating.

Thesis advisor: Juliet B. Schor / Thesis advisor: Leslie Salzinger / <bold>White Weddings: Fantasy, Femininity and Consumer Desire</bold> Patricia Arend Advisors: Juliet B. Schor and Leslie Salzinger The white wedding, the dominant form of marriage ritual in America, is a key site for the study of gender inequality because it ritualizes, dramatizes and makes pleasurable patriarchal gender relations. While men and women are becoming more equal in education, the labor force and other social institutions, many women are opting for a traditional, highly gendered wedding ritual. This dissertation unpacks this paradox through the use of qualitative methodology on women's subjectivity and subconscious experience. My methodological strategy includes participant observation, survey research, free association narrative interviewing and photo-elicitation. These varied methods reveal not only that the majority of my respondents desire a traditional, white wedding complete with a standard package of goods and practices, but that in so enacting heteronormativity they seek a singular emotional and romantic experience. Study participants express varied attitudes to their own desire, however. Those without major ambivalence--both straight and a few lesbians--take their desire for a white wedding for granted, an attitude emerging with apparent seamlessness from their emotional experiences attending other people's weddings, the sharing of wedding-related evaluations, perspectives and activities through female-centered social networks, and their prior consumption of wedding related media. Wedding media are consumed by engaged women like an instruction manual, while others often view it with other women, socially. Not all of the participants' relationships to this ritual is so straightforward. Some feel guilty for wanting a wedding they have come to see as sexist or wasteful. They cope with this guilt through a complex process of dissociation and projection focused on other women- a process we find in other aspects of consumer society as well. In addition, a much smaller number of women who identify as lesbian selectively do not conform to the full white wedding format and feel good about their choices. Yet none of these women desire the "camp" elements found in previous studies of lesbian commitment ceremonies and most incorporate some aspects of the white wedding, indicating a trend toward greater conformity. Identifying as a feminist was not correlated with a desire for a particular type of wedding or the experience of desire, which I argue relates to the complex historical context of the movement for marriage equality, the cooptation of feminism by advertising as the "new consumer feminism" and contemporary third wave feminism, which emphasizes individual identity and a liberal politics of choice. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences. / Department of Economics

Apesar de milenar e ricamente inserido na cultura, o consumo de drogas ainda é encarado como um tabu na sociedade de hoje. Este trabalho visa entender e discutir de maneira crítica as características do consumo de drogas na sociedade contemporânea. Para isso, no primeiro capítulo é estudado a história da formação do sujeito e da sociedade Moderna, que nas revoluções burguesas e nas guerras mundiais definem o cenário de ascensão do consumismo. No segundo capítulo é feito um breve levantamento da história das drogas com suas diferentes inserções na vida dos homens, marcando que seu consumo é histórico, e posteriormente é traçado o atual estado da discussão sobre drogas nos âmbitos políticos e científico. No terceiro capítulo discute-se sobre o sujeito que consome a droga e sua formação subjetiva e psíquica e a intima relação que esta formação tem com o social. No quarto capítulo é explorado as características sociais em que o sujeito consumidor de drogas se insere e é analisado as características contraditórias que constituem o consumo de drogas na contemporaneidade. Amplamente utilizada, as drogas são divididas em categorias quanto a sua legalidade ou sua finalidade e desse modo se incentiva o consumo de alguns tipos e se proíbe o consumo de outros. Tal contradição permite que se projete nas drogas, pelo seu consumo e pelo seu combate, toda a agressividade do instinto de morte gerado por um sistema que idolatra o novo e é excessivamente repressivo, cobrando o máximo de desempenho dos sujeito. Neste contexto, o consumo torna-se a principal atividade mantenedora do sistema produtivo, tanto pela parte econômica de dominação, quanto por romper os vínculos com o passado e com toda a tradição que poderia oferecer algum tipo de suporte ao sujeito que se encontra desamparado. O consumo de drogas, irreflexivo, serve bem a esse sistema pois dele se ignora todo o passado e o possível futuro, exigindo apenas o prazer máximo e momentâneo / Although ancient and richly inserted in culture, drug use is still seen as a taboo in today\'s society. This work aims to understand and discuss critically the drug use characteristics in contemporary society. For this, the first chapter is studied the history of the formation of the subject and the Modern society, which in bourgeois revolutions and world wars define the rise of consumerism scenario. The second chapter made a brief survey of the history of drugs with their different inserts in the lives of men, marking its consumption is historical, and is later traced the current state of the drugs on discussion in the political and scientific fields. In the third chapter discusses about the subject consuming the drug and its subjective and psychological training and the close relationship that this training has with the social. In the fourth chapter is explored social features in the drug consumer subject is inserted and is analyzed the contradictory characteristics that make up the drug use nowadays. Widely used, the drugs are divided into categories as its legality or its purpose and is thus encourages the consumption of certain types and prohibits the consumption of others. This contradiction allows you to design on drugs, its consumption and its combat, all the aggressiveness of the death instinct generated by a system that worships the new and is overly repressive, charging the maximum performance of the subject. In this context, consumption becomes the main sponsor activity manufacturing, both for the economic part of domination, as to break ties with the past and with all the tradition that could offer some kind of support to the individual who is helpless. Drug use, unreflective, serves well to this system because it is ignored all the past and the possible future, requiring only the maximum and momentary pleasure

A partir de uma análise sobre o conceito de consumo hedônico, serão estudados os conceitos de Marketing Experiencial, a partir das teorias desenvolvidas por Pine e Gilmore, e também o pensamento de Bernd Schmitt. Com base nisso, verificar-se-á que o conceito de Marketing Experiencial ainda apresenta certa confusão, e é usado em situações bastante diferentes. Comparando os autores principais, e tendo como pano de fundo uma série de estudos sobre a experiência do consumidor, conclui-se que, o que efetivamente é mais importante neste conceito é o uso que se faz das experiências sensoriais como ferramenta de marketing. Com isso, será desenvolvido um estudo de caso múltiplo onde se procura analisar o uso da experiência nos hotéis 5 estrelas da cidade de São Paulo. O resultado mostra que este é um processo que ainda está no início, mas que já apresenta algumas ações interessantes e que devem ser desenvolvidas. / From an analysis of the concept of hedonic consumption, we studied the concepts of Experiential Marketing, from the theories developed by Pine and Gilmore, and also the thought of Bernd Schmitt. On this basis, we find that the concept of Experiential Marketing is still very confusing, and is used in quite different situations. Comparing the principal authors, and with the backdrop of a series of studies on the consumer experience, we conclude that, effectively is more important in this concept is the use made of sensory experiences as a marketing tool. With this, we developed a multiple case study where we attempted to evaluate the use of experience in five star hotels of the city of Sao Paulo. The result shows that this is a process that is still in the beginning, but already has some interesting actions and should be developed.