Master of Regional and Community Planning / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Jason Brody / Community leaders have substantial interest in fostering the local cultural economy as the arts attract both businesses and residents. Because art and creativity are regarded as spontaneous, organic processes, most researchers recommend planning initiatives that capitalize on a community’s existing cultural economy rather than producing contrived elements of creativity. One strategy that fits the framework of such recommendations is the concept of cultural district development. These districts typically evolve naturally to some extent, due to pre-existing urban form and cultural activities. Because this revitalization strategy does not demand large public investments, it is attractive to public leaders. However, revitalization strategies may have unanticipated results at the detriment to those “urban pioneers” who initially improved the area and catalyzed the districts’ reinvestment. While such districts rely on the collaborative efforts of community members, local governments and public organizations can play a pivotal role in allowing them to address such threats with effective policies. This master’s report investigates the process and effects of cultural district development through a case study of the Crossroads Arts District in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. This illustrates how this particular district evolved, why and how planning initiatives formalized the district, what processes and players were involved, and the resulting changes to the area. As the Crossroads Arts District is becoming increasingly formalized, this report will explore the past, present, and future of the neighborhood with insights drawn from interviews and supplementary historical document review. Through a case study of planning activities, through the scope of cultural district development, this report illustrates the organic nature of creative synergy, the importance of community associations, the relationship between the arts and revitalization, the role of public planning in addressing citizen needs, and the dynamic character of communities.

This study aims to identify how cultural development and the European cultural capital event applies within the context of city development in Umeå. Furthermore, the study aims to examine how the European cultural capital event affects the local cultural actors. The analysis is a case study based upon how local and municipal cultural actors use culture to develop the municipality of Umeå and how the European cultural capital event has affected their work. To answer the aim of the thesis six semi-structured interviews was performed with cultural actors both within the municipality and private sector. This was to get wide-ranging information about cultural development in Umeå. The method to extract information was through thematic analysis of the preformed interviews, this allowed me as researcher to fully analyze the extracted material.   The results of the study reveal that culture permeates city development in Umeå. Primarily the municipality makes great effort to make the city development rich with culture. Despite the effort culture is not a certainty in urban development and it is a constant political struggle to maintain and emphasize the importance of culture in city development. The study revealed that some actors feel that culture has become too commercialized in the municipality’s effort to generate urban growth, especially in the wake of the European capital event. All interviewed actors indicate that the European cultural capital event has had a great impact on their work and working methods. Primarily internal collaborations between the municipality and private cultural actors have been identified as meaningful, due to the many possibilities it brought, for all actors and the lack of collaboration in the post cultural capital Umeå is missed. There is an underlying understanding that all actors want to collaborate again but the lack of resources and common goals interferes.

Departing from an understanding of today’s liberal capitalist society as deeply concerned with individual growth through higher education, this paper aims to explain the well documented fact that working class students are underrepresented within the higher levels of the Swedish educational system. The study assumes that the prevailing recruitment pattern is created by informal societal structures influencing the individual decisions of would-be students. It then continues to explore the decision-making processes leading a number of students from working class backgrounds into higher education, as well as their experiences of navigating this new environment, in order to better understand the obstacles that this group need to overcome in order to enter the academic area. This is done through an analysis of semi- structured interviews, informed by the career choice theory of Careership. The reading shows that these student’s choice to enter higher education largely has been a pragmatic-rational one, driven more by the need to adapt to circumstances like a changing job market than social expectations to continue their education. The interviewed students often describe the process of entering this new arena as filled with feelings of inferiority and a sense of not belonging that seems to persist even after they acquire additional cultural capital in the form of knowledge and acceptable behaviors. The results of this study implies that a long-term approach towards reversing recruitment bias within higher education must start with the development of a full understanding of these and other challenges facing underrepresented groups.

Shanghai Symphony Orchestra is a fascinating institution. It was first founded in 1879 under the name of Shanghai Public Band and was later, in 1907, developed into an orchestra with 33 members under the baton of German conductor Rudolf Buck. Since Mario Paci, an Italian pianist, became its conductor in 1919, the Orchestra developed swiftly and was crowned the best in the Far East by a Japanese musician Tanabe Hisao in 1923. At that time, Shanghai was semi-colonized by the International Settlement and the French Concession controlled by the Shanghai Municipal Council and the French Council respectively. They were both exempt from local Chinese authority. The Orchestra was an affiliated organization of the former: the Shanghai Municipal Council. When the Chinese Communist Party took over mainland China in 1949, the Orchestra underwent dramatic transformations. It was applied as a political propaganda tool performing music by composers from the socialist camp and adapting folk Chinese songs to Western classical instruments in order to serve the masses. This egalitarian ideology went to extremes in the notorious 10-year Cultural Revolution. Surprisingly, the SSO was not disbanded; rather it was appropriated by the CCP to create background music for revolutionary modern operas such as Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. The end of Cultural Revolution after Mao's death in 1976 ushered in a brand new Reform-and-Opening-up era marked by Deng Xiaoping s public claim: Getting rich is glorious! Unlike previous decades when the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra together with music it performed was made to entertain the general masses, elitism came back under a social entourage characterized by Chinese-style socialism. The concept of elite, however, is worth a further thought. Shanghai is not only home to a large number of Chinese middle class but also constitutes a promising paradise for millions of nouveau riches which resembles, to a great extent, the venture land for those Shanghailanders a century ago. This thesis, as the title indicates, puts the historical development of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra from 1879 to 2010 in C major applying Pierre Bourdieu's cultural capital theory so as to understand how this extraordinary musical currency is produced, represented, appropriated and received by different groups of people in Shanghai across five distinct historical stages. Cultural appropriation tactics and other relevant theories such as cultural imperialism and post colonialism are also combined to make sense of particular social environment in due course. To put the SSO in C major does not infer that this musical institution and music it performed through all these years are reduced to economic analysis. Nonetheless, the inner value of music itself is highlighted in each historical period. A psychological concept affordance, first applied by Tia DeNora in music sociology, is also integrated to help comprehend how and what Chinese people or the whole nation latched on to certain pieces of music performed at the SSO in different historical phases. Moreover, musicological analysis is carried out in due course to elaborate on the feasibility of, for example, adopting Chinese folk songs to Western classical instruments and creating a hybrid music type during Cultural Revolution. Aesthetic value of music is thus realized in the meantime. Archival research is mostly used in this thesis supplemented by one focus group and one in-depth interview with retired players at the SSO. Fieldwork of this research is mainly based in the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Archive; although materials from Shanghai Library and Shanghai Municipal Archive are also collected and made use of.

This thesis seeks to explore and understand the appointment process of first-time FTSE 100 NEDs. It has been widely acknowledged for over three decades that the appointment process of NEDs is an opaque process involving a homogeneous group of people in an ‘old boys’ network. Corporate governance reforms recommend a formal and transparent appointment process which taps into a wider pool of talent. Companies comply with these recommendations yet there has been scant change in the composition of corporate boards. The pilot study consisted of nine interviews with the main stakeholders in the appointment process of a NED, namely Chairman, Executive Search Firms and NEDs. Analysis of the interview transcripts revealed that reputational capital was the basis on which a first-time NED appointment was made after the Chairman had carried out an extensive vetting process to establish the fit of the individual. The main study, based on 15 first-time FTSE 100 NED interviews, sought to understand reputational capital, its constituent parts and how individuals developed it. Further, it sought to explore how an individual’s fit for a NED was established. The analysis revealed that the reputational capital of an appointed NED was a blend of sufficient levels of human, social and cultural capital which had been communicated to the Chairman and other members of the corporate elite. A first-time NED, in gaining a foothold on a corporate board was also entitled to membership of the corporate elite. As reputational capital drives success of directors in the corporate elite, new individuals needed to fit with the norms and values appropriate for membership and carry no reputational risk for existing members particularly the Chairman. This research offers three main contributions to the literature. Firstly, at a theoretical level it extends the concept of board capital to include cultural capital in addition to human and social capital. Secondly, it proposes a conceptual framework which demonstrates how an individual builds reputational capital over the course of a career to secure fit for a first- time NED, as a position in the corporate elite. The framework clarifies our understanding of reputational capital as a combination of human, social and cultural capital in a unique blend of board capital. This board capital is communicated through reputation building activities to members of the corporate elite. Thirdly, at an empirical level it provides an understanding of the FTSE 100 NED appointment process.

This thesis examines the links between Bourdieu’s concept of the capitals and social mobility. By using interviews conducted with families who have imigrated to Austin from Latin American countries, patterns of social mobility are traced alongside the accumulation of capitals, such as cultural capital, social capital, economic capital, symbolic capital, and techno-capital. Three generations of women are interviewed from three different families, allowing the family history to serve as the unit of analysis. Links are made between the transmission and transmissibility of capital and the ascension or descension of social mobility. / text

Educators face multiple forms of misbehavior in the classroom on a regular basis. Quantitative data in the academic literature indicates that some subgroups, particularly minority students, lower income students and boys, face higher rates of disciplinary actions than their peers. Whether this indicates that those students misbehave more often, whether their actions are perceived differently by educators, or whether they are punished more harshly for their misbehavior are issues that are not well-settled by academic research. This research project addresses this gap in the literature, by addressing how the overrepresentation of subgroups may occur and by addressing the decision-making process in general, regardless of a student’s social characteristics. This qualitative research project provides an in-depth account of daily life at a rural high school in Kentucky, illustrating instances of misbehavior within the classroom and the various methods that teachers employed to control the misbehaving students. This project gives voice to the teachers, giving consideration to the factors that impacted the decisions they made with respect to consequences for misbehavior. This research project triangulates observations and interviews with disciplinary data from the school to provide a detailed picture of misbehavior and the resulting consequences. The teachers at this school typically gave students ample opportunity to rectify misbehavior before moving to more serious sanctions and considered consequences for most misbehavior on an individual basis. Nonetheless, minority students were overrepresented among students referred to administrators for misbehavior, indicating the possibility of a cultural mismatch between white educators and students of color. At the administrative level, consequences were fair and consistent, and no evidence of discrimination against any subgroup was demonstrated.

The purpose of this study is to review the lives of three immigrant women from the town of Doctor Mora, Guanajuato, Mexico. The following questions were used to gather and analyze the data: 1) How were their lives prior to migrating to the U.S.? 2) What was their experience crossing the border? 3) What are their life experiences in the U.S.? This study is intended to analyze the history and path of acculturation of these three immigrant women. This study analyzes Alejandro Portes's theory of selective acculturation, concept of funds of knowledge, Gordon's classical theory of assimilation, and the concepts of cultural and social capital. Selective acculturation theory is applied as a basis for analysis of the case studies. These studies were conducted using observational, audio-taped and open ended interviews. This study took place in Tucson, Arizona. Interviews took place in Spanish, the interviews were transcribed, translated, verified and analyzed. Findings show the persistence of these participants to become part of American society through education and involvement in the host society, utilizing their inherent cultural and social capital and supporting the theory of selective acculturation path. The next section gives a more detailed introduction of this study.

The papers assembled in this thesis all address, in a Bourdieuan tradition, the question of the social structure of the Swedish education system, focusing on the Stockholm region, and how this structure can be explained by the distribution of cultural and other assets among individuals and social groups. Although economic, social and political changes during the period covered by the various studies are not the main focus of the work here, the articles depict the effects of such changes on upper secondary education in particular. While upper secondary education was radically changed by the political reforms of the 1990s, characterized by decentralisation and marketization, the analyses advanced in the studies indicate that its basic social structure remains stable. In one dimension, this structure opposes an “elite” pole having a particularly high social and scholastic recruitment to a “popular” pole with a correspondingly low recruitment profile. In a likewise durable second dimension, a “cultural” pole built up by schools and study programmes that are particularly popular among culturally strong social groups, opposes an “economic” pole favoured by social groups close to the economic and private sectors of society. The various papers reveal that the last opposition corresponds to both differences in life styles and deeply rooted convictions related to family and formal education among cultural and economic fractions of the upper-middle and middle classes. At this level, a belief in education as a development of the personality, with connected values such as individuality and originality, stands against a conviction that education is a rational investment in a future competitive career; as such, it is subject to calculated, measured risks. The existence of deeply rooted values among social groups with different structures of assets or capital also explains why schools –in the institutional strategies imposed on them by the school market– tend to express convictions (topoi) and symbolic values that correspond to those of their target groups. The various studies included in this thesis employ a combination of statistical approaches, mainly correspondence analysis, and qualitative ones such as: interviews, ethnographic observation and text analysis.

HOPE VI, instituted in 1993 and subsequent related policies, resulted in the demolition of traditional public housing and the relocation of former residents. For former residents living on low incomes, combining housing subsidy and other social services is important to survival. One crucial type of social services support provides food supplements. Research indicates that among low-income families, many do not receive necessary food social services. For example, among eligibles, food stamp utilization is at 50 to 60%, and for Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women Infants and Children (WIC) rates vary from 38 to 73%. Research indicates that 35% of food insecure older adults are ineligible for the Elder Nutrition Program, and approximately 60% of eligibles are wait-listed upon application. Social services utilization patterns among eligibles are affected by neighborhood contexts. Relocation due to public housing transformation policies has been shown to change neighborhood context. This in turn has affected former public housing resident’s cultural capital and social capital. But how this affects food social services utilization has not been studied. I use Klinenberg’s (2002) activist client thesis as a framework to investigate the effect of cultural capital and social capital for housing subsidy recipients (relocated public housing residents) in Atlanta on their utilization of food social services using secondary longitudinal data from the Georgia State University Urban Health Initiative analyzed using ordered logistic regression. Most specifically, my research investigated how varying neighborhood contexts affect food social services utilization for former public housing residents in Atlanta. This research informs public policy on the provision of housing subsidy and the provision of food social services.