[pt] Esta pesquisa discute a fila no Brasil sob uma perspectiva antropológica, buscando interpretá-la como um processo ritual que revela alguns valores fundamentais da identidade sociocultural brasileira. Tomando a fila como um fenômeno constitutivo da ordem liberal-democrática moderna – e não como um simples reflexo dela – o estudo explora matizes da fila na sociedade brasileira através de metodologia etnográfica, que incluiu observação participante e, sobretudo, um estudo das narrativas sobre a fila. A partir de variados referenciais sociológicos e antropológicos – entre os quais se destaca a obra de Roberto DaMatta – o trabalho demonstra que a fila no Brasil assume condições particulares a partir da sua associação a determinadas representações de valores culturais próprios, que podem ser interpretados através da compreensão ritual da fila. / [en] This research discusses the queue in Brazil under an anthropological perspective, seeking to interpret it as a ritual process that reveals some of the core values of the Brazilian sociocultural identity. Taking the queue as a constitutive phenomenon of modern liberal-democratic order – not as a mere reflection of it – the study explores nuances of the queue in Brazilian society through ethnographic methodology, that included participant observation and, above all, a study of narratives about the queue. From various sociological and anthropological references – among which the work of Roberto DaMatta stands out – the study demonstrates that the queue in Brazil embodies particular conditions from its association with certain representations of cultural values, which can be interpreted through a ritual comprehension of the queue.

Thesis advisor: Richard, S.J. McGowan / At the very core of the National Basketball Association’s labor negotiations between the owners and the players during the 2011 lockout was the league’s argument that its economic structure was broken. Owners contended that the NBA’s soft salary cap system, and the resulting payroll disparity, has put small-market franchises at a talent disadvantage and produced a league of haves and have-nots. To remedy this purported competitive balance problem, the owners demanded severe policy measures to decrease the pay dispersion among teams. However, the players union cautioned that these hardline provisions were merely an attempt to transfer wealth from players to owners. This charge warranted further analysis. Existing literature on this topic is either outdated or insufficient in scope. As such, using regression analysis, this thesis evaluated the league’s argument and determined to what extent the league’s soft salary cap system has contributed to its competitive imbalance.The empirical analysis of this thesis produced several meaningful conclusions. While the NBA has relative imbalance, it does not affect consumer demand for the regular season product. Moreover, while pay dispersion exists, additional salary expenditures only marginally add to a team’s winning percentage. There is no significant relationship between payroll disparity and competitive balance. Finally, with the escalating importance of media rights contracts and the historical appreciation of franchise valuation, the league overstated the financial distress of most of its small-market owners. Overall, the NBA and its owners used deceptive rhetoric and misleading economic policies to decrease player salaries, not to increase competitive balance, in a collusive effort to maximize profits and reassert its diminishing monopsony power in an increasingly star-driven league. / Thesis (BS) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Carroll School of Management Honors Program. / Discipline: Economics.

Thesis advisor: Ina V.S. Mullis / Equity in educational outcomes, particularly reading, is an important policy issue in countries around the world. This dissertation used data from PIRLS 2006 to explore an approach to measuring equity in reading achievement internationally at the fourth grade. Relative risk ratios were selected as a measurement approach and were used to create a composite measure, the Relative Risk-Percentage (RRP) Equity Index, to compare equity in reading achievement across countries. This index was used to present the likelihood of scoring below the PIRLS 2006 Low International Benchmark for student groups that were traditionally at risk for low reading achievement compared to other students. The `at risk' student groups that were the focus of this study included those with low parental education, who spoke a language other than the language of instruction, who attended urban or rural schools, and who were boys. To complement the RRP Equity Index results, the relative likelihood of students scoring within the lower 20 percent of their country's reading achievement distribution was also presented. The results of these analyses showed that students with these characteristics were more likely than other fourth grade students to have low reading achievement in a number of the PIRLS 2006 countries. Overall, having parents with less than secondary education and not speaking the language of the test before starting school were associated with inequity in reading achievement in the largest number of PIRLS 2006 countries. As an example of how individual countries could further explore potential reasons for inequities in reading achievement highlighted by the RRP Equity Index, logistic regression models were built for Germany, Iran, and Romania. These models explored the extent to which statistically controlling for differences in resources could diminish the effect of being in an `at risk' group on reading achievement. In all three countries examined, resources explained a substantial proportion of the risk for low reading achievement. Though the logistic regression model results were country-specific, lacking books in the home was strongly associated with lower reading achievement in all three countries. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation.

This thesis examines the contribution of urban greenspace to public health and inequalities in young people. Taking a comprehensive, environmental justice approach variations in provision, access, use and experience of greenspace related to neighbourhood level inequalities are explored in relation to physical activity, mood and wellbeing in 16-25 year olds. The project used a three phased, mixed methods design via spatial mapping, real-time monitoring and community-based participatory research. The first phase used Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to conduct an analysis of the provision, accessibility and quality of public greenspace in Aberdeen City. Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation data were used explore and contrast these characteristics between areas categorised as affluent or deprived. The second phase used real-time measures to gather within-person data on greenspace use, physical activity, and mood in 16-25year olds over a seven day period, further exploring how socio-economic variations in good quality greenspace influenced the use and effect of greenspace. The third study phase used qualitative, community-based participatory research to empower young people to explore their experience and importance of greenspace for health. The results suggest a potential positive role of greenspace in public health in relation to increasing physical activity, decreasing sedentary behaviour and providing opportunities for restoration in young people. However, they also demonstrate that social inequalities are present in the provision of good quality greenspace and highlight that quality of greenspace and wider issues related to area level deprivation play a crucial role in the use and experience of greenspace, as well as the effect on physical activity and mood in young people. This has important implications for public health as the promotion of greenspace at a population level could deepen rather than improve health inequalities, by exposing those in affluent areas to health enhancing good quality greenspace and those in deprived areas to the potentially detrimental effects of poor quality greenspace.

O presente estudo tem como objetivo a análise da questão da igualdade no acesso ao cargo público sob a perspectiva da teoria da justiça de John Rawls, com o propósito de verificar se as ações afirmativas de reserva de vagas em concursos públicos são justas de acordo com a referida teoria. Trata-se de pesquisa teórica que se desdobra em quatro fases. Na primeira, analisa-se a teoria da justiça de Rawls no tocante a seus elementos centrais e às ideias políticas que podem tê-la influenciado. Na segunda, analisam-se modelos de Estado e de administração pública como um modo de subsidiar as discussões relacionadas ao cargo público. Na terceira, busca-se discutir o acesso ao cargo público mediante concurso público e sua relação com os princípios da justiça de Rawls. Na quarta, passa-se à análise da conformidade das ações afirmativas com a teoria da justiça e à análise da reserva de vagas (cotas) para negros em concursos públicos federais no Brasil. Considera-se, ao final, que as cotas, na maior parte dos casos, violam a igualdade equitativa de oportunidades segundo a perspectiva da teoria da justiça de Rawls. / The present study aims to analyze the matter of equality in the access to public office under the perspective of John Rawls theory of justice, with the intention of verifying if job reservation affirmative actions in public civil service examinations are fair according to the above mentioned theory. It is a theoretical research which unfolds in four phases. In the first one, Rawls theory of justice is analyzed regarding its central elements and the political ideas that might have influenced it. In the second one, state and public administration models are analyzed as a way of subsidizing the discussions related to public office. In the third one, it tries to discuss the access to public offices by means of public civil service examinations and their relation to Rawls principles of justice. In the fourth one, the conformity of affirmative actions with the theory of justice and the reservation for blacks (quotas) in federal civil service examinations in Brazil are analyzed. It is considered, in the end , that quotas, in most cases ,do violate fair equality of opportunity according to the perspective of Rawls theory of justice.

Like many sociologists, I am perplexed by the fact that in meritocratic societies, individuals whose abilities or talent does not differ widely nevertheless enjoy considerably different levels of achievement and success. The present dissertation seeks to uncover some of the reasons behind such non-meritocratic inequality. There are two main approaches one can take to that problem. The first and more classical one consists in observing inequality that matters – inequality in earnings or career prospects for example – and to show that such inequality can be traced back to broad categorical attributes such as class, gender, or race and ethnicity. This is not the approach I follow here. Rather, I strategically select cases that make it possible to uncover the fine-grained processes and mechanisms generative of non-meritocratic inequality. Among these “pure” cases are art worlds – winner-take-all settings typically marked by high inequality, and where success is often vastly disconnected from merit or intrinsic quality. The first part of this dissertation focuses on one such art world as a laboratory for studying the social processes underlying the formation of economic value, and therefore the formation of inequality in economic success. CONSECRATION AS A SOCIAL PROCESS OF VALUATION My approach to success and inequality rests on the intuition that we can partially explain them by studying social processes of valuation, i.e. processes that shape the value of things or individuals without affecting their underlying differences in ability, merit, performance, or talent. In the first two chapters this dissertation, I outline and test a theory of one such process, namely consecration. The first chapter develops a structural definition of consecration that makes possible to study its occurrence, conditions, and consequences in a variety of social settings. The chief features of that definition are identified using a series of empirical instances of consecration. The chapter then shows how that definition can be operationalized with simple network concepts, and suggests a network-based strategy for capturing consecration empirically – in art worlds for example. The chapter finally draws testable implications from that definition, and explores its relationship with the notion of retrospective consecration. The second chapter uses that notion of consecration to solve an empirical puzzle in the sociology of valuation. Markets for unique and novel goods are often seen as privileged settings for the powerful influence of market intermediaries: when quality is uncertain, or when it lacks definition altogether, intermediaries can play a crucial role in signaling or specifying it, thereby ultimately shaping the prices consumers are willing to pay for products. Products, meanwhile, do not get much more unique or novel than in the market for contemporary art. Yet economic sociologists have repeatedly failed to observe any influence of art market intermediaries on the value of the artists they distribute. This puzzling finding, I argue, arises from a misconception of how intermediaries shape the value of artists. We usually think of intermediation as acting through two chief processes of valuation: credentialing, or the signaling of unobservable quality, and qualification, or the establishment of specific quality criteria. Yet I suggest that it also can influence value through consecration, or the structural signaling of the existence of quality differences in a population. Using the market for modern art in early twentieth-century Paris as an empirical backdrop, this chapter shows that intermediation as consecration, not credentialing or qualification, was indeed how art market intermediaries shaped the value of their artists in the heyday of French modern painting. SOCIAL PROCESSES OF VALUATION AND ELITE CONSOLIDATION IN GILDED AGE AMERICA The remaining chapter is a logical development of the previous two. It builds on the fine-grained insights they offer – on social processes of valuation, and on the mechanisms of non-meritocratic inequality more generally – to address larger-scale issues of social inequality and social reproduction. The chapter uses a new database of subscribers to the New York Philharmonic to understand how cultural participation cemented the status – or social value – of elites in Gilded Age America. The database has information on who subscribed to the Philharmonic between 1880 and 1910 – a period of huge upheaval, of threats to the dominance of traditional elites, and ultimately of elite consolidation in the United States, and in the city of New York in particular. In analyzing these data I seek to understand how culture worked as an elite resource in that era. The classic account of culture and elite consolidation posits that the formation of an upper class and its continued dominance rest on a mechanism of exclusion. In this view, cultural participation reinforces elites by setting them apart – a process akin to consecration as I delineate it in earlier chapters. My work on the Philharmonic challenges that classic view. For the distinctiveness associated with elite cultural endeavors to reinforce elite dominance, I argue, these endeavors have to happen against a backdrop of general agreement over their value. In Gilded Age New York, this agreement happened not through exclusion, but through the inclusion of a group of cultural experts into the cultural institutions championed by the social elite. The inclusion of that cultured group served to testify to the quality of the cultural endeavors of the social elite, and provided them with a stamp of cultural legitimacy. In other words, it valued the elite through a process of credentialing. The second analytical contribution of that final chapter has to do with class consolidation and the reproduction of upper class dominance more generally. While consolidation is often seen as happening through exclusion and closure, I argue that in a context of rapid social differentiation, marked by the emergence of new areas of expertise, maintaining dominance does not necessarily involve barring access to outside groups. It can also mean being flexible enough to include the experts in emerging spheres. To remain atop the social hierarchy, elites may benefit from incorporating external elements that testify to their own continued relevance. Such inclusion is not necessarily full integration – instead, I show that at the Philharmonic it involved a built-in mechanism of protection, namely segregation. Hence cultural experts were included to help reify and support upper class status and social power, but in a segregated fashion to protect the upper class from threats of destabilization. Finally, a word on title: the notion of purity is the recurring motif in this work. It conveys ideas of social exclusion and social closure, as deployed in the third chapter. When thought about in relational terms, purity may also refer to one’s absence of ties to others whom one does not wish to be associated with in the public eye. This relational take on purity has strong affinities with the idea of consecration developed in chapters one and two. As a heuristic tool for the sociological imagination, purity is the thread that connects all the dots in this dissertation.

This project is a relational ethnography that explores valuation as a social process and its relationship to the production and reproduction of inequality in urban space. I connect the subjective valuation process with struggles over material resources and the politics of recognition. With each chapter of this dissertation I demonstrate that race and ethnicity are encoded in the value of urban spaces through analyses of various micro-level meaning-making practices and structures that constitute cultural processes relevant to valuation. In addition to participant observation, I incorporate semi-structured photo-elicitation interviews, unstructured interviews, a semiotic analysis and analyses of existing literature to historicize the project. My overall epistemological objective is to marry a political and material focus on worth with a study of the mechanisms through which culture enters into valuation processes and, consequently, inequality.

This thesis provides a critical application of Robert P. George’s views to English equality law. The research question is what George, with his view of religion as a basic human good, might think about the religious liberty cases taken under the provisions of the Equality Act 2010. In addressing this question, it will be necessary to look at those - to some eyes - irreconcilable tensions which have emerged between laws protecting religious freedom. A number of legal claims have been brought by employees who have been instructed to carry out new legal obligations which they have been unwilling to perform. Questions have arisen regarding the current state of reasonable accommodation and proportionality analysis within indirect discrimination law. To examine these questions, this thesis will be in two parts: first, it will consider Robert George’s distinctive contribution to new natural law theory (NNL) and critically analyse George’s NNL approach that arises from this. To do so the key themes: a) practical reason and b) natural rights, will be considered in George’s work. Second, by reading George’s views on practical reason in line with his approach to natural rights, from this position this thesis will give an applied example of NNL, displaying George’s critique of the relevant equality law and arguing for an innovative understanding and approach to religious equality law. This is in an effort to find whether George’s theory is useful in exploring English religious equality law. By doing so this will reconstruct George’s NNL approach through using religious equality law as an applied example. This thesis argues that at a time when religious liberty often loses out in a balancing of rights, legitimate interests and protected characteristics, a superior way to approach equality law in this area may be through an application of a modified version of George’s NNL thought presenting religion as a public good. This will emphasise the priority of the good in religious conscience over legal rights within law viewed by George as a public morality. Viewing religion not only as a basic human good but also as a public good could provide the basis for future accommodation towards freedom of religious conscience and solve the tensions regarding the protection of religion or belief at work. Religion and religious freedom will be shown to be a form of flourishing within an understanding of the public good.

Only when the servant or wife is abruptly removed from the household and the well-oiled wheels of domestic machinery grind to a halt does the superior realize just how important such services really are. This quote shows how important domestic services are, it also points out who executes it and that society and people, at least the superior, tend to take it for granted. The quote also gives a hint to the aim of this study which is to analyze the arguments behind the policy proposal presented in Promemorian Skattelättnader för hushållstjänster from 2006. The study focuses on the social problems behind the policy proposal and if there were problems left unproblematized. Another aim is to study if assumptions on gender and class can be seen in the policy proposal. Two methods have been used; primarily argumentation, but to some extent (theoretically) also Carol Lee Bacchi’s approach ”what’s the problem represented to be?”. Bacchi’s approach is useful because the presented solutions to a problem depend on the representation of problems and how they are formulated. The results show, among other things, that the interpretation of women’s role in household and society, which also contain a representation of problems, line up the solutions of the problems. They also show that gender equality, as well as gender and class, has been left unproblematized in the policy proposal.

研究者主要關注人類公正感的意識加工層面，而忽視其無意識層面。基於文化社會學家的觀點和心理學家的雙通道模型，本研究旨在揭示平等意識（按平等分配）和優才意識（按能力和業績分配）的雙通道過程對行為的作用。 / 平等意識作為人類固有心理特質，操作过程較少依賴認知資源，所以更快、更穩定；優才意識更多是習得的，其操作需投入/收益、能力等信息，較依賴認知資源，因而操作過程較緩慢且不穩定。本研究認為，平等意識較之優才意識對行為有更顯著的作用，因而即便優才意識幫助人們合理化分配的不平等效果甚微。 / 本研究裏採用三階段任務：被試在第一階段通過努力掙得收入，在第二階段啟動他們的優才意識（僅啟動組有此操縱），在第三階段他們進行金錢分配任務。研究用不同的方法來操縱平等意識和優才意識。不平等感通過第一階段形成的收入差異來實現。優才意識通過按優才原則進行收入分配（無啟動組）和啟動方法（啟動組）實現。 / 實驗一的結果支持不平等的主效應，即被試在高不平等情境下分配給自己的錢顯著多於低不平等組（假設1）。盡管結果並未支持優才意識的主效應（假設2）以及不平等和優才意識的交互作用（假設3和4），研究觀察到性別差異：只在男性中觀察到此交互效應，在無啟動組裏男生分配給自己的錢顯著多於女生，而在有啟動組男女分配給自己的數額相似。結果揭示男生更易受到優才意識的影響而分配較多錢給對方，從而弱化自己的優勢地位和實現收入的平等化；而女生的收入在無啟動組已平等化，因而優才意識並未對女生產生顯著影響。 / 實驗二發現，認知資源和優才意識的交互效應不顯著，假設5和6並未得到支持。研究只在女生中觀察到此交互作用，但結果與假設相反，即在認知負荷操縱前啟動優才意識使被試更慷慨，而非將收入平等化。我們隨後證實替代性假設。盡管在啟動優才意識的兩個組裏認知負荷的效應不顯著，有認知負荷組的女生比無認知負荷組更慷慨，而男生的在兩個組裏一直保持與同伴較平等的收入。 / Most researchers have focused on deliberative aspect of justice judgment, neglecting processes through which justice judgment and behavioral consequences are automatically shaped. The purpose of this research is to depiict a full picture of behavioral consequences of justice judgment. Based on ideas from cultural sociologists and dual process models in psychology, this experimental research focused on two widely endorsed but antagonistic distributional rules, the equality and meritocracy rules, and uncovered how the deliberative and automatic processes of equality and meritocratic beliefs shape people’s behavior. / It is believed that equality is both socialized and inherited innate psychological ability, its processing is fast and stable; while meritocracy is believed to be mostly learned, and its processing requires information about a person’s input/output, ability, and contributions, so its processing requires cognitive resources and is relatively slow and unstable. This research proposes that equality is more powerful in determining behaviors than meritocracy; the legitimizing power of meritocracy is weak in many circumstances. / This research adopted a three-stage task in experiments: (1) earned money through efforts, (2) priming meritocracy belief (only in meritocracy prime condition), (3) monetary allocation. Equality was manipulated through income discrepancy in the first stage of the task (high/low inequality); meritocracy was manipulated by a merit-based reward method (in no meritocracy prime condition) and by a priming technique (in meritocracy prime condition). Among the two experiments, experiment 1 was conducted to show the basic pattern of the effects of equality and meritocracy, experiment 2 involved cognitive load manipulation to further explore how the two systems of equality and meritocracy affect behaviors. / Results from experiment 1 supported the main effect of inequality manipulation by showing that participants in high inequality conditions pocketed significantly more money than in low inequality condition (hypothesis 1). Though results did not substantiate the main effect of meritocracy manipulation (hypothesis 2) and interaction effect between inequality and meritocracy (hypothesis 3, 4), we observed unexpected gender difference: such interaction effect is significant only in males; the money males pocketed is significantly more than females in no meritocracy prime condition, but similar to females in meritocracy prime condition. Males were more influenced by meritocracy manipulations which reduced their advantageous inequality, achieving equalized incomes, while the money females earned in no meritocracy prime conditions achieved equality, so meritocracy prime exerted less influence in their behaviors when incomes were already equalized. / Experiment 2 showed that the interaction effect between cognitive load and meritocracy was not significant, thus hypothesis 5 and 6 were not supported. Again we observed gender difference: the interaction effect was significant only in females. However, the result of both males and females were opposite to our hypothesesthat is, priming meritocracy before cognitive load manipulation increased participants’ generosity toward partners. We put forward an alternative argument which fit the current data. Females allocated significantly more money to partners in cognitive load condition than in no cognitive load condition, resulting in a disadvantageous inequality; males in the two conditions maintained equalized outcomes. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Zhu, Yi. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2012. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-109). / Abstract also in Chinese. / Chapter CHAPTER 1: --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Identifying Problems in Justice Research --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Exploring the Two Systems of Justice Judgment in Action --- p.7 / Chapter CHAPTER 2: --- Two Systems of Equality and Meritocracy --- p.15 / Chapter 2.1 --- Distributional Rules --- p.15 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Sense of (In)equality --- p.15 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Two Major Perspectives on Distributional Rules --- p.16 / Chapter 2.1.3 --- Equality and Meritocracy Rules --- p.20 / Chapter 2.1.3.1 --- Equality Rule --- p.20 / Chapter 2.1.3.2 --- Meritocracy Rule --- p.25 / Chapter 2.2 --- Dual Process Models --- p.28 / Chapter 2.3 --- Meritocracy and Equality as Cultural Schemata --- p.32 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Cultural Schemata --- p.32 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Equality Schemata --- p.36 / Chapter 2.3.3 --- Meritocracy Schemata --- p.39 / Chapter 2.4 --- Meritocracy vs. Equality --- p.41 / Chapter CHAPTER 3: --- Research Designs and Hypotheses --- p.45 / Chapter 3.1 --- Experiment 1: Basic Pattern of the Effects of Equality and Meritocracy --- p.45 / Chapter 3.2 --- Experiment 2: Unveiling Automatic Processes of Equality and Meritocracy --- p.53 / Chapter CHAPTER 4: --- Experiment 1 --- p.57 / Chapter 4.1 --- Methods and Procedure --- p.57 / Chapter 4.2 --- Results --- p.63 / Chapter 4.3 --- Discussion --- p.66 / Chapter CHAPTER 5: --- Experiment 2 --- p.70 / Chapter 5.1 --- Methods and Procedure --- p.71 / Chapter 5.2 --- Results --- p.73 / Chapter 5.3 --- Discussion --- p.77 / Chapter CHAPTER 6: --- General Discussion and Conclusion --- p.80 / Chapter 6.1 --- General Discussion --- p.80 / Chapter 6.2 --- Future Research --- p.84 / REFERENCES --- p.88