<p>This thesis is an explorative excursion into the concept of place creation and place construction. It departures from the way place is discussed within both relational theory and humanistic geography. In pace with changes in the local economy and re-structure of the agricultural sector, the Swedish island, Öland, has gone through changes which has given new perspectives on place and the distinctiveness of single places. These changes have assigned new roles for single places and the processes of place creation and place construction takes new paths in these changes.</p><p>The study focuses on three major research questions:</p><p>• How is place created?</p><p>• How are processes of place creation manifested on Öland?</p><p>• What role does the distinctiveness of particular places have for tourism and entrepreneurship on the island Öland?</p><p>The approach to these questions is explorative. Place is studied as a concept which both reflects and influences processes of change in relation to other places and different actors, people and organizations. In this study, place creation is analyzed in relation to changing economic, social and cultural aspects. People’s actions in a certain place or in different places affect place transformation and creation of place just as changes in the national and global economy do. The different images people have of a certain place and their actions in this place are affected by relations to other places and cultural values, identities, global trends and the overall economy. This plays a vital role for place creation and how distinct places are constructed. This study explores these processes on Öland through three different projects or case studies. Methodologically, I have a qualitative approach to my research questions and the case studies are based on interviews, observations and analyses of marketing material, information material, texts and pictures.</p>

Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2010. Sammanfattning jämte 4 uppsatser.

In cities around the world, public water systems have increasingly come to be operated by private companies. Along with an internationally funded investment program to refurbish the dilapidated water infrastructure, private operations were tested also in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Only about a third of the households, however, are reached by the piped water system there; most households purchase water from those with pipe-connections or private boreholes. Thus, water distribution was informally privatized by way of water vending long before formal private sector participation began. This thesis explores individual and collective endeavors in water development, distribution, and access, along with the global and local influences that shaped the privatization exercise. With regard to the lease of Dar es Salaam’s water system, the institutional set-up has been found to mix the British and French models, having influenced the local situation through development assistance and conditionalities tied to loans. The institutional contradictions may have contributed to the conflictive cancellation of the lease arrangement. Due to the public utility company’s lack of operating capital and investment planning, infrastructure development has responded mainly to immediate individual demands, resulting in a spaghetti-like network and structural leakage. The long-standing under-performance and low coverage of the piped water system have forced many people to devise their own ways to access water. This thesis argues that the individually-devised artisan ways of water provisioning constitute the life-line of Dar es Salaam’s water system. Yet, they also undermine and divert resources away from the collectively-devised industrial form of piped water provision.

This thesis is an explorative excursion into the concept of place creation and place construction. It departures from the way place is discussed within both relational theory and humanistic geography. In pace with changes in the local economy and re-structure of the agricultural sector, the Swedish island, Öland, has gone through changes which has given new perspectives on place and the distinctiveness of single places. These changes have assigned new roles for single places and the processes of place creation and place construction takes new paths in these changes. The study focuses on three major research questions: • How is place created? • How are processes of place creation manifested on Öland? • What role does the distinctiveness of particular places have for tourism and entrepreneurship on the island Öland? The approach to these questions is explorative. Place is studied as a concept which both reflects and influences processes of change in relation to other places and different actors, people and organizations. In this study, place creation is analyzed in relation to changing economic, social and cultural aspects. People’s actions in a certain place or in different places affect place transformation and creation of place just as changes in the national and global economy do. The different images people have of a certain place and their actions in this place are affected by relations to other places and cultural values, identities, global trends and the overall economy. This plays a vital role for place creation and how distinct places are constructed. This study explores these processes on Öland through three different projects or case studies. Methodologically, I have a qualitative approach to my research questions and the case studies are based on interviews, observations and analyses of marketing material, information material, texts and pictures.

In education about climate issues teachers make choices. What is of most importance? To know how the green house effect works in a natural scientific way or to know about the political processes that can help us find a solution? Habits, or selective traditions, answers the questions why, what and how does teachers do when teaching about climate issues.  In this study selective traditions are investigated.The purpose of this study is to investigate and identify selective traditions among the Swedish geography teachers when it comes to teaching about global warming. A discussion about the implications of the selective traditions for the education from a pragmatic perspective, inspired by John Dewey in his work: “Democracy and Education is also included.The empiricism of the study consists of interviews where teachers tell about their ways of teaching about climate issues. The result is presented in the form of selective traditions. The study identifies three separate didactic typologies in teaching about climate issues. The natural science typology tradition which focuses on facts, the normative which focuses on changing the student’s attitudes and the pluralistic which focuses on the student’s democratic development. All three have different implications in a pragmatic perspective. These three didactic typologies have different implications for the democratic dimension in education. Typology 1 does not encourage the student to take part in debates about climate change. Instead the student only receives natural science facts. In Typology 2 it is the teacher or some other ruler who decides what attitudes to adapt. But in Typology 3 the student is encouraged to, and gets the opportunity to develop his- or hers own attitudes.

Many Swedish schools collaborate with schools in other countries. This research study focuses teachers’ experiences of transnational school collaboration between Swedish schools and schools in other countries. The aim of the study is to investigate the outcome of such projects and find explanations why teachers make a choice to use international school twinning as a part of their teaching in environmental education. The study concentrates on teachers’ motives for involving their students in transnational school exchange regarding environmental issues. A part of the investigation is also to elucidate how teachers conceive cultural meeting and cooperation that occurs in the context of transnational school exchange projects. The conditions for carrying on such projects are also investigated. The study uses semi-structured interviews with upper secondary school teachers from Sweden and Britain. Most interviews were performed at the respective teachers’ schools. The processing of the interviews consists of transcribing followed by a narrative report and analysis. The investigation shows that the teachers find that their students’ personal development is highly improved by international school exchange both through experiencing a different culture and cooperating with young people from another country. The teachers also believe that their students’ environmental awareness is improved by experiencing investigations and collaboration in another part of the world. The positive effects from the exchange projects are also considered as mutual for the students in both of the cooperating countries.

No description available.

This thesis is primarily based on a case study on how the Internet affects the advertising industry in Oslo, Norway, and on how the digitization of advertising adds to our understanding of the geography of innovation and urban and regional development. The study argues that the Internet fundamentally changes and challenges the advertising industry, and that advertising merges into market communication and even user experience and product development. The interactive nature of the Internet and its parallel social and commercial worlds contribute to transcend the role of a traditional medium and to coalescence between production and consumption. Despite the fact that those involved in online and traditional advertising are located close to each other in Oslo, the extent of collective learning, knowledge externalities and innovation has been scarce. The study shows that the creative destruction of this industrial sector is ignited by actors outside the traditional advertising industry. Due to path dependency along one-way mass communication media incumbents within the advertising industry have left room for new actors, such as web agencies and technology consultants, to explore and take market share in online market communication services. The reconfiguration of market communication is regarded as the result of an industry mutation across advertising and ICT, and creates a need for bridging skills and competencies across creative, strategic and interactive domains. The implications of such an industry mutation across diverse sectors are used to discuss the evolutionary potential of the related variety perspective. The study argues that localized industrial change may be conceptualised in terms of a cyclical relationship between externalities from localisation economies and urbanisation economies respectively. The implications of the findings from the case study are in this way used to discuss more general drivers of urban and regional development. / Creativity and Innovation in the Cultural Industries

The aim of the thesis is to investigate patterns and consequences of internal and international migration in Laos during the period 1985-2005 on both a macro-and a micro-level. The thesis focuses on the influences of socio-economic change and government policies on inter-regional and rural-urban migration as well as on crossborder migration from Laos to Thailand. The study also examines the effects of migration and industrial factory work on gender relations during economic transition and consequences of undocumented migration to Thailand. The background consists of a discussion on socio-economic change within the country and on government policies influencing migration patterns, as well as on how socio-economic change, urbanization and industrialization in the region affect internal and international migration in Laos. The thesis consists of three empirical studies which derive from different sources of data; the first is based on Population Censuses in 1995 and 2005 and the second and the third draw from empirical surveys in 2004-2005 and 2006. Paper I focuses on how socioeconomic factors and government policies influence migration patterns in Laos. The paper found that the interregional migration rate decreased in the later census period. This was due to significantly higher rural-rural migration in the earlier period, which in turn was influenced by various types of government policies. Papers II and III are based on micro surveys; paper II focuses on an urban industrial area in Vientiane Capital and explores the current feminization of rural-urban migrations during economic transition with specific focus on the effects of industrial work on gender roles and status of women as industrial workers. Industrial work was seen by the women as temporary jobs for saving money, for sending remittances, and for either returning home or moving to other jobs in Vientiane or Thailand. Paper III is based on surveys in three provinces, and deals with undocumented migration from Laos to Thailand and its consequences. Different income levels, existing social networks, similar language and socio-cultural backgrounds were determinants of cross-border migrations. The study found that migrants who had contacts with informal brokers were highly exposed to risks of human trafficking and violence.

Transboundary protected areas are a fairly recent concept that have been increasing in popularity and are increasingly being integrated into large international organizations’ environmental policy making. This essay examines the phenomena through the cooperation between two national parks, Parc National des Pyrénées in France and Parque Nacional Ordesa Monte Perdido in Spain. The theoretical framework used in this essay is based upon border theory, focusing on the different factors that influence the behavior of the border dweller and how the different social conceptions of nature influence the way it is managed. The results in this study result from researching published and private documents from the national parks and interviews carried out with staff from the park administrations from both countries. The collaboration between these two national parks dates back twenty years and the cooperation has been carried out in many small projects. Historical ties between the villages in the border region, which also shares a common culture and lingual heritage, have inspired the cooperation. There are also economical benefits that influence the collaboration, such as the European Union’s regional policy that provides funds for transboundary cooperation. A mutual world heritage site, Pyrénées – Mont Perdu, is also situated within the parks’ territories, which should be managed conjointly by the national parks. However, an in-depth and well-integrated cooperation has not been found, as difference in the nature and how the organizations themselves are managed and regulated has generated a long and complicated course for decisions regarding cooperation. It appears that even if nature itself might be boundless, the national jurisdictions that prevail over nature are clearly adhered to and there are no available transboundary structures designed to handle a cooperation of this kind. / Gränsöverskridande naturvård är ett relativt nytt koncept som alltmer ökat i popularitet och även inlemmats i flera stora internationella organisationers naturvårdspolicy. Denna uppsats syftar till att undersöka gränsöverskridande naturvård mellan två angränsande nationalparker, Parc National des Pyrénées i Frankrike och Parque Nacional Ordesa Monte Perdido i Spanien. Uppsatsen har utgått ifrån gränsteoretiska utgångspunkter i form av vilka faktorer som påverkar gränsbeteendet och med särskilt fokus på hur föreställningar om naturen påverkar hur denna förvaltas. Samarbetet har granskats genom dokument publicerade av parkerna samt genom intervjuer med personal i de båda parkerna. Nationalparkerna har under drygt tjugo år haft en viss samverkan som konkretiserats genom flera småskaliga projekt. Samarbetet har inspirerats av en historisk samverkan mellan byarna i gränsregionen som har ett gemensamt språk och kulturarv samt ekonomiska incitament i form av den Europeiska Unionens stöd för samverkan mellan gränsregioner. Inom nationalparkernas område återfinns även ett gemensamt världsarv, Pyrénées – Mont Perdu, som skall förvaltas av nationalparkerna tillsammans. Studien visar dock att en fördjupad samverkan mellan parkerna inte har kunnats implementeras i praktiken, eftersom naturen förvaltas och regleras på olika sätt i de båda nationalparkerna. Skillnader mellan Parc National des Pyrénées och Parque Nacional Ordesas förvaltningsstruktur och administrationssätt gör att beslutsvägen för samarbetsfrågor blir lång och komplicerad. Även om naturen själv är gränslös, visar studien att de bestämmelser som råder över den, är starkt bundna till den nationella organisationsformen och att det i nuläget inte finns någon gränsöverskridande struktur som kan hantera frågor av detta slag.