In an expansive feminist literature on gender and development, scholarly research on widows and widowhood remains limited, particularly within the context of Nepal. While there are some important exceptions, existing work reinforces stereotypes of widows as old and poor victims, and widowhood as essentially a marginalised and vulnerable status. This thesis seeks to confront such homogenous views and to 'rewrite' widowhood. In particular, it explores the diverse experiences of widowhood through the adoption of an intersectional life-course lens, conceptualises well-being from the embedded perspective of widows and examines the complex ways in which widowed women assert agency. This thesis is born out of a longstanding academic engagement with Nepali widows. Based upon ethnographic qualitative research, the study involved two periods of intensive research in the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. The research was operationalised through a triangulation of qualitative methods resulting in a rich evidence base of eighty-one semi-structured interviews, eighteen oral histories, five focus groups and ten key informant interviews. This research shows that that widowhood is more complex than much of the scholarship to date suggests. Key findings include the particular salience of age, caste and the life course in shaping experiences of widowhood. It demonstrates that while widows' understandings of well-being can be categorised as material, perceptual and relational, relationships with children, family and the wider community in which they live underpin all of these. This research also uncovered widows' complicated and contradictory enactments of agency that can be placed on a 'resisting-conforming' continuum, and are shaped by gendered cultural norms, eschatological beliefs, temporality and intersectional identities. This thesis contributes to more nuanced empirical and theoretical understandings of widows and widowhood, intersectionality well-being and agency.

The main focus of this project is to chronicle whether or not social inequality increased among households and community-level interactions in Ucanha, Yucatan, Mexico, at the time it was physically integrated with a larger regional polity headed by Ucí around the Terminal Preclassic/Early Classic (50 BCE – CE 400) transition. My research seeks to identify how social distinctions emerged during the early moments of social inequality and how these distinctions did or did not become a threat to social cohesion, as seen in the Early Classic “collapse” in some areas. Using a relational theoretical perspective, I argue that political authority and economic practices are embedded in moral expectations of a household quality of life that is negotiated by all actors. Trenching and broad-scale horizontal excavations document five variables of social distinction—architectural energetics, feasting, diversity of household assemblage, caching/burial practices, and the use of space—at three dwellings. Gini scores that calculate the distribution of fancy ceramics and labor investments in architecture also contribute to measuring household wellbeing at Ucanha. Results highlight differential, yet relatively high, quality of life during the Late Preclassic and then greater inequality and an overall decreased quality of life by the middle of the Early Classic (CE 400/450 – 600). Excavations from contexts associated with monumental architecture indicate vast labor inputs into Ucanha’s built landscape around the time of broader regional integration. Excavations and multi-elemental chemical analyses from the Central Plaza suggest this large public space was built during the Late Preclassic and was used for a variety of rituals that incorporated the populace through processions and performances. By the first few centuries into the Early Classic, however, the Central Plaza was walled off and access became limited and more tightly controlled. Thus, it appears emergent leaders at Ucanha, as evidenced by the presence of iconography related to centralized decision-making and possibly kingship, were successful in providing a high quality of life for their citizenry in exchange for labor and devoted followers during regional integration. Yet, during the Early Classic, household quality of life diminished, access to fancy ceramics became highly curtailed, and many residential platforms were abandoned likely as a result of leaders failing to meet the expectations of their followers.

Several demand side management (DSM) techniques and algorithms have been used in the literature. These algorithms show that by adopting DSM and Time-of-Use (TOU) price tariffs; electricity cost significantly decreases, and optimal load scheduling is achieved. However, the purpose of the DSM is to not only lower the electricity cost, but also to avoid the peak load even if the electricity prices low. To address this concern, this dissertation starts with a brief literature review on the existing DSM algorithms and schemes. These algorithms can be suitable for Direct Load Control (DLC) schemes, Demand Response (DR), and load scheduling strategies. \end{abstract} Secondly, the dissertations compares two of DSM algorithms to show the performance based on cost minimization, voltage fluctuation, and system power loss [see in Chapter 5]. The results show the importance of balance between objectives such as electricity cost minimization, peak load occurrence, and voltage fluctuation evolution while simultaneously optimizing the cost.

Thesis (M.A. (Administration and Development)) --University of Limpopo, 2010 / Feminist studies show that gender inequality is an impediment for livelihoods diversification among rural households. Whereas women are understood to be the designers, planners and managers of livelihoods for household survival, their roles in diversification of the means of earning a living are generally undermined through a myriad of social and cultural laws, values, norms and beliefs. Despite the publicity, attempts and efforts in redressing gender inequality in a demographic South Africa, the dissertation argues that gender inequality in rural areas has remained persistent, posing an obstacle to the capacity of households to diversify their livelihoods. The study uses survey results from Sebayeng Village in order to demonstrate that the community’s perceptions of women’s roles perpetuate the status quo wherein women’s capacity to diversify livelihoods are undermined. The survey involved 200 households that were sampled through the simple random design. The respondents consisted of 56.5% females and 43.5% males. The survey results demonstrate that gender inequality remains deep in Sebayeng Village and that such inequality negatively affects the ability of households to diversify their livelihoods. Therefore, this study tends to confirm the general principle that gender inequality renders women as unexplored resources in rural development. To that extent, the study concludes that one of the tests for the success in gender transformation in South Africa is in releasing the energies of women in the sphere of livelihoods diversification.

Thesis (MPA) --University of Limpopo, 2010 / Rural households have always faced a variety of risks which rendered them vulnerable to poverty; hence, they have continuously adopted different risk-spreading strategies aimed at reducing and/or de-concentrating the risks that they face. However, there is always a chance that risk-spreading strategies adopted by rural households could intensify or increase the levels of vulnerability to poverty, because most of them are too informal and ineffective. The study examines different risks that households in the rural areas face, including their implication for levels of vulnerability to poverty. The effects of risk-spreading strategies on household level of vulnerability are analysed using a sample of 100 households from Tsianda village. The survey results reflect that a variety of risks faced in the village have a cumulative effect on households’ vulnerability to poverty. However, the risk-spreading strategies appear to be more helpful for the better-off households than for the poor, because the former experience short-term risks whereas the latter face apparently multiple perpetual risks. The village’s political, social, economic, cultural, institutional, technological and environmental contexts seem to perpetuate the status quo against the efforts of the poor households. The study concludes that the political,social, economic, cultural, institutional, technological and environmental contexts in the rural area have a huge impact on the concentration of risks that households face, the risk-spreading that they adopt and also their level of vulnerability to poverty. Hence, the poorer households’ risk-spreading strategies are not effective to reduce and de-concentrate the risks; moreover theyintroduce them to new risks and high level of vulnerability to poverty. / University of Limpopo

Le choix résidentiel s’articule autour d’un certain nombre de contraintes : qu’elles soient internes au ménage ou résultant de la distorsion du marché, ces contraintes modifient fondamentalement l’ensemble de choix des ménages. La première partie de la thèse porte les contraintes que le ménage subit et qui repose sur une de ses caractéristiques. La littérature a étudié en détail la question de la discrimination à l’accès au logement en mettant en évidence un accès limité et tacite aux ménages immigrés, mais aucune étude ne s’est penché sur la mise en évidence d’une potentielle discrimination résidentielle par les prix. Dans cet article, nous étudions les écarts de loyers effectifs entre les français et les immigrés, à l’aide de la décomposition proposée par Oaxaca & Blinder (1973). Nous cherchons à expliquer ces différentiels de loyers en une part imputable à des différences de choix individuels et en une part relevant d'une discrimination sur le marché du logement sur des données de l’enquête logement de 1996. Bien qu’aucune discrimination par les prix ne soit mise clairement en évidence, certains caractéristiques du logement semblent, toutefois, plus onéreuses pour les immigrés. La seconde partie de cette thèse porte sur sur les contraintes internes au ménage. Le travail de cette première partie s’inscrit dans la continuité des travaux effectués sur l’économie de la famille et celle de la prise de décision concernant leur mobilité. La première contrainte que nous présentons est celle de logements qu’occupent les agents avant de se mettre en ménage. La littérature a étudié en profondeur les choix de mobilité résidentielle des couples à travers la plupart des étapes du cycle de vie, sans se pencher sur celui de la mise en ménage. Cela permettrait pourtant de prendre en compte la pluralité des décideurs au sein du ménage. Ce chapitre présente un modèle collectif de mise en ménage, mesurant la probabilité qu’un couple occupe, ensemble, le logement que l’homme occupe seul, celui que la femme occupe seule, par rapport au fait de les refuser tous deux, basé sur un modèle d’estimation logit multinomal. Nous travaillons sur des données de l’enquête nationale logement de 2002 qui nous permet de retracer l’ensemble des parcours de mobilité des deux agents. Nous nous choix du premier logement du couple au sens de son occupation initiale. L’élaboration du modèle théorique, basé sur un modèle de type collectif, où les agents opèrent une négociation, inclue la situation où les deux agents peuvent ne pas être amenés à quitter leur logement dans les points de menace du couple. Nous proposons un enrichissement du modèle où nous faisons valoir le fait que la décision du logement commun peut impliquer une inefficacité dans les décisions futures du couple. Bien que le logement de l’homme semble un choix avéré, l’inégalité salariale entre les hommes et les femmes, ainsi que la différence d’âge au sein du couple semblent influencer significativement le choix des couples. Ensuite, le choix d’un logement, pour un couple, doit prendre en compte les temps de trajet domicile-travail quotidiens. Les agents, ayant un emploi localisé, choisissent un logement qui répond à leurs besoins dans une région dont l’occupation de l’espace est fortement hétérogène et dont l’offre de logement n’est pas distribuée de façon uniforme. L’idée de l’article est de mesurer l’impact des caractéristiques individuelles des agents sur la décision jointe des temps de trajet du ménage, ainsi que la façon dont les agents se répartissent ces déplacements. Les données sur lesquelles nous travaillons sont celles du recensement de la population de 1999, enrichies de données communales et des temps de trajet des agents. Nous mettons en évidence une distinction des comportements hommes/femmes basée sur l’attraction aux pôles d’emplois et à la stabilité de l’emploi. / The residential choice depends to a certain number of constraints: whether internal to the household or resulting from market distortion, these constraints change considerably the choices set of the households. The first part of the thesis is about the internal constraints to the household. The resulting work is a continuation of the work realized on the family economy and that of decision-making depending on their mobility. The first constraint presented is about the discrimination on the prices in the housing market. The literature has studied in detail the question of the discrimination in access to the housing highlighting a restricted and tacit access to the immigrant households, but no study has ever considered the highlighting of a potential residential discrimination by prices. In this article, we study the effective rent differences between French natives and immigrants, using the decomposition proposed by Oaxaca & Blinder (1973). We search to explain theses rent differentials by a part attributable to individual choices differences and another due to a discrimination on the housing market based on the data of the 1996 housing survey. Although no discrimination by price has clearly been shown, however some housing characteristics seem more expensive for immigrants. The second part of the thesis presents two constraints intra-households. The first of that is housing occupied by agents before they merge in order to create a household. The literature has deeply studied the residential mobility choices of couples through most of the stages of the life cycle, without including that of the household formation. However, this would allow taking into account the plurality of decision makers inside the household. This chapter offer a collective model of the household formation, measuring the probability that a couple, together, occupies the dwelling occupied by the man single, the one occupied by the woman single, compared to the fact of refuse them both, based on the estimations of a multinomial logit model. We work on the data housing national survey of 2002 which allow us to trace the totality the mobility paths of two agents. We studie the choice of the first household housing in the sense of its initial occupation. The elaboration of the theoretical model, based on a collective type model, where agents realized a negotiation, including the situation where the two may not have to leave the respective homes, in the couple threat points. We propose an enhanced version of the model where we argue that the decision of the collective housing can implied an inefficiency in the futures couple decisions. Although the man housing seems to be a proven choice, wage inequality between men and women, as well as the age difference within the couple tend to significantly influence the couples choice. Then, the housing choice, for a couple, has to take into account the daily travel time between home and workplace. The agents, having a localized job, choose a housing which meets their needs in a region where space occupation is strongly heterogeneous and housing supply is not uniformly distributed. The idea of this article is to measure the impact of agents individual characteristics on the attached decision of the household travel times, as well as how the agents allocated theses movements. The data are these of the French 1999 census of the population, enhanced with communal data and agents travel times. We show that a distinction can be realized between men and women on the attraction to the employment poles and the job stability.

Since 1999, there has been a significant increase in the number of food insecure individuals in the United States. The Great Recession (2007-2009) and slow economic recovery has led to additional increases in rates of food insecurity and the usage of emergency food assistance programs. Thirty qualitative interviews with individuals seeking emergency food assistance at a Tampa Bay food pantry were conducted. Interviews focused on collecting the life experiences of participants, the barriers they face in having food security, their strategies to cope with limited food budgets, and how food insecurity impacts their household's overall health and wellbeing. Recommendations for fulfilling the immediate need for food as well as addressing the larger issues that lead to and perpetuate food insecurity and hunger are presented in this paper. In collaboration with the food pantry, a booklet presenting personal experiences of hunger alongside broad institutional forces affecting food insecurity was disseminated in the community in hopes of increasing awareness of and support for combating this important social issue.

There is a plethora of development literature, both academic and policy oriented, that problematises female-headed households in normative ways, positioning them as socially isolated, stigmatised, lacking in agency and poor, equated with the ‘feminisation of poverty’. Through positioning female-headed households as ‘other’ there is also a notable lack of regard for the diverse socio-political and cultural context which within female-headed households reside. By situating this research within a feminist postdevelopment framework, and through the use of participatory methodologies and the articulation of individual biographies of the development experience, this dissertation seeks to re-position our understanding of the development experience of female-headed households. Drawing on the case of Samoa, this study demonstrates how fa’asamoa (the Samoan way), inclusive of fa’amatai (customary system of governance), the feagaiga (brother/sister relationship) and the practice of fa’alavelave (demonstrating love and concern), all support the welfare and wellbeing of female-headed households, including any children born of these households. They also afford women in female-headed households a certain level of voice and agency. The thesis further highlights that the category of female-headed households was not well understood within Samoa because neither villagers nor policy makers labelled women in this way. Rather, women were recognised in relation to the cultural framework of fa’asamoa which situates them in terms of their position within their family, their natal village and the wider community. This illustrates the importance of culture when attempting to frame the development experiences of female-headed households in any part of the world. Development researchers and practitioners need to seriously question just how useful the practice of categorising and labelling is to Development Studies. In highlighting the problematic nature of universal labels and categories, this thesis concludes that the starting point of analysis for female-headed households needs to begin with the sociopolitical-cultural context, as opposed to the category of female-headed households. Shifting beyond a desire to uncritically categorise and label will provide a space for envisioning new approaches to development thinking and practice, and for truly seeing the ways that people struggle, often successfully, to create and pursue opportunities.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on December 6, 2007) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thirty households were randomly selected to examine intra-household gender differentials in work roles and distribution of resources, between adult men and women, and boys and girls. Work related activities were assessed by time used in agricultural work, household work, and income generating work. Distribution of resources was assessed by expenses on clothing, education, and medical care. A significant difference was found in the amount of time spent in agricultural work by men and women, with women contributing more. Women were also found to contribute significantly more time in household work. In income generating activities, men were found to spend significantly more time than women. However, in the total time spent in work related activities, women spent significantly more time than men. The difference in the amount of money spent on clothing for men and women was found to be significant, with men receiving the larger share. The difference in medical care expenses between men and women was not significant. However, directional difference showed that women received less. Although, no meaningful analyses of children could be performed because of sample restrictions, the regression results showed women contributed significantly more than men, and girls contributed significantly more than boys in agricultural work. Similarly, women and girls contributed significantly more time than men and boys in the household work. The regression results also showed that men and boys received significantly more money for clothing than women and girls, and boys received significantly more money for education than girls. Similarly, men and boys received significantly more money for medical care than women and girls. / Graduation date: 1998