The microfinance revolution of the 1980s acclaimed micro-credit as a tool that would improve the lives of economically active people trapped in poverty. The 2006 Nobel prize awarded to Mohammed Yunus and Grameen Bank confirmed for the industry’s advocates that microfinance was a panacea, and billions of dollars have been channeled to financial services for the poor. However, a series of high-profile scandals in 2010 shook development agencies’ faith in micro lending, and support has waned in light of evidence that microfinance alone cannot change structural inequalities and end poverty. I show that politics operate throughout the industry, reproducing inequalities within the process of micro lending. In my political ethnographic study of 460 people in three countries, I find that race and class politics is entrenched in all three countries, yet there are different outcomes related to attitudes of microfinance managers. In Jamaica and Guyana, micro lenders demonstrate that historically rooted racial and class biases go beyond gender to determine the allocation of micro loan resources. Ingrained biases interfere with the allocation of loans to the urban poor because discriminatory practices reinforce pre-existing social divisions. The Haiti case is hopeful: lenders, particularly the caisses populaires (credit unions), are made up of socially conscious people who recognize the country’s exclusionary politics. Managers and staff have class origins similar to the clients they serve and view micro loans as a tool to contest class and race-based oppressions. Haiti’s case suggests that collective systems such as those found in the caisses populaires and informal banks are effective because they relate to people’s history; and managers influenced by the masses, organize financial programs that are responsive to their clients and remain free from elite capture. This bottom-up approach in microfinance determines a greater level of social transformation for the urban poor.

This thesis explores the application of vision-based augmented reality in formal and informal educational environments. It focuses on the common practices, concerns, and priorities that developers and content creators in each environment frequently encounter, offering insights into how these experiences are changing with the incorporation of new digital media technologies and the hardware platforms that support them. The research outlined in this thesis uses qualitative methods, assembled around a series of twelve hour-long interviews with highly-experienced educators, developers, researchers, and designers, and analyzed using a grounded theory approach. This thesis introduces original research about the role of computer vision-based augmented reality as an educational medium, a topical discussion in information studies, museum studies, learning sciences, and a number of other fields, and makes a theoretical commitment to addressing the ways that material and virtual objects come to interact meaningfully in a variety of learning environments.

Workplace learning and training is often explicitly or implicitly planned to serve the economic interests of the organization. Furthermore, training planning and processes are generally determined by managers, instead of those who will be engaging in the learning. What happens to learning in the workplace when workers themselves determine its content and methods? As seen in the Community Training Plan (CTP), implemented at the Toronto Community Housing Corporation in 2003, control over workplace training by frontline staff has resulted in profound changes in many facets of working and community life. Using testimonials from a recent participatory evaluation of the CTP as well as a series of promotional videos, all of which were created by participants in the CTP, I demonstrate that the CTP has created new forms of engagement and participation; new learning foci; new spaces in the workplace; and finally a sense of staff ownership over learning.

Progressive spatial segregation of Whites from other ethnic races in South Africa started in 1886. Apartheid rulers evicted three and a half million Blacks, Coloureds and Indians from white urban and residential areas between 1904 and 1994. Apartheid planners used natural, mining, industrial, and infrastructural buffer zones to spatially enforce segregation. They based their apartheid spatial governance on separation and control and not on urban development. Today remnants of apartheid remain deeply embedded in the urban framework, where large buffer zones continue to enforce segregation and disrupt economic growth. Victims of apartheid legislation believed the eradication of apartheid in 1994 meant the right to live in the city and the end of forced evictions. Since then the post-Apartheid government has conducted 2 million evictions, reminiscent of the 3.5 million evictions during the apartheid years. In an attempt to make Johannesburg a `world class city`, the municipality forcefully removed the poor from the city, and relocated them to rural locations where their livelihoods are severely challenged. To many, a new ``apartheid` has been born; one that segregates the rich and the poor. The government has released several strategies to provide land for the poor near the city, but the high cost of land in urban areas has disrupted implementation. The thesis proposes a three-fold strategic design intervention to provide land for the poor near the city and dissolve the apartheid-designed buffer zone between Soweto and Johannesburg. The site, a landmark from the apartheid spatial legacy and part of the Witwatersrand gold mining belt, separates Soweto, home to four million Blacks, from the city of Johannesburg. About one and a half million people commute to the city each day passing by the 14 km stretch of this toxic mining land. The thesis proposes three urban design strategies to transform the site into a community, which the local people would build: Remediation strategies to address the toxic mining landscape, infrastructural strategies to provide basic services and economic strategies to promote economic growth. These strategies operate in a codependent structure. Co-op centres implement these strategies, transfering strategy technologies to the local community.

This thesis is the result of two studies concerning children’s independent mobility, which means the freedom for children to walk or bike on their own or together with friends but without being escorted by parents. The studies are accomplished in four different areas and are also searching for different environmental qualities. The areas differ concerning traffic planning and architecture but also concerning commercial and cultural choice. The aim is to understand and describe how places are constructed and designed when they are used and experienced in a positive – or a negative – way by children. I emphasize, that we – through the responses in meeting with other people – learn hidden and visible rules and also how to change perspective and roles. I therefore focus on the meeting between children and other people but also on meeting between children and places. The issue is: What do places look like – what qualities or qualifications – can be notified as important to children to perceive coherence that consequently make them learn to control their environment and develop to harmonious grown-ups. The main questions are: In what degree can children’s independent mobility be related to the planning and design in the four areas? Why do some neighbourhoods/places appear as more important to children than others, making children use them in a varied way? Is it possible to describe qualities in neighbourhoods in a way that can be interpreted as meaningful for children’s development? In the first study 732 children in grade two and five in compulsory school, filled in a questionnaire and the questions focused on how they got to school, to friends, to activities etc. The results showed that in the area with more traffic than the other three areas, children were more often taken by car to school and to leisure activities. Even international research in the nineties did show that children had lost the accessibility to their neighbourhood. In the second study, 32 children in the same areas guided me around in their environment showing me the way to school and places they used to visit. At the same time they told me what they liked or disliked in their neighbourhood. Afterwards they were interviewed and they also had the opportunity to fill in so called “mobility maps”. The content in this text mainly focuses the second study. From the children’s statements, a summary of the most important differences looks as follows: I The accessibility in neighbourhoods and places: i.e. children’s independent mobility – or if they had to be escorted by grown-ups – and if they could fiddle about. II Children’s play and activities: i.e. if they had something to do, if they played in pairs or in groups and if play could take place without planning. III Children’s experiences of places and people: i.e. if they had something to show me and to tell me, if there were any meetings with other persons, if the children talked about their own yard and appreciated green areas, if they had fun or not, if they were afraid being out and if they told me any memories from some places. The theoretical framework is based on Johan Asplund’s theory on social responsivity and G. H. Mead’s theory on social relations and his view of the importance of objects. The study also is based on three different place theories as expressed by David Canter, Christian Norberg-Schulz and Clarence Crafoord and Asplund’s view of place and placelessness. This study has made it clear that everything children do in their neighbourhood can be related to concrete places and things but it differed concerning what and how they played, what they experienced and what the meetings looked like – if any. Environmental qualities arise, as I have interpreted my results, when neighbourhoods and places are safe, when there are landmarks, places for meetings, possibility of orientation and sense of locality and when the places are varied and challenging. Conclusions are drawn regarding differences in social responsivity, if there is a sense of having a place of one’s own – that in the same time is shared by other people – and if places are responding. From these statements place identity can be seen as a merging of the qualities in places and the perceived sense of place as described above. To have opportunity to investigate the neighbourhood is also an important part of children’s informal learning. They learn how to read the surroundings and how to find the way in a town or in an environment. They get to know the neighbourhood and the world outside and so they also learn how to behave and how to control themselves and even the life. Results showed though that the children in the four areas made those experiences but, certainly, in different ways.

This study aims to formulate an understanding of the structuring of informal home-based work at the plane of interrelations between capitalism and patriarchy. It examines informal home-based work with an understanding based on two foci, which are market relations and traditional gender roles. It develops its own suggestions of conceptualisations, namely deliberate concealment and devalorisation by obscuring, building up these concepts abstractly in the theoretical sections and concretely the analyses.

The primary aim of the thesis is to explain informality with the help of labor market segmentation theory in the case of Turkey. In so doing, the informalization process in Turkey is discussed with reference to not only the definitional confusions in different conceptualizations of the informal sector in the literature, but also trade liberalization, privatization, subcontracting relationships and the notion of &ldquo / flexible firm&rdquo / , as well. In order to find an answer to the question of &ldquo / how the dimensions of informality fit into the perception about labor market segmentation theory&rdquo / , the field surveys conducted by different authors are analyzed. The findings of these field surveys confirm a possible explanation of informalization via labor market segmentation theory in Turkey.

Over recent years, the study of industrial districts, and inter-organizational relations has become a major theme of interest in network research. Theories characterized by an increased inter-relatedness between heterogeneous actors and knowledge fields point to a new form of inter-organizational relationship development. This is basicly based on the idea of creating trust between firms to increase their chances of success and to keep pace with the development of all relevant technologies. In this thesis, we present some data from a research project we have conducted in OSTIM industrial district, Ankara, Turkey. First, we present the theoretical perspectives which appear relevant to such investigation, and which aims at developing a better a network model of the inter-organizational relations of district firms, as well as trust, informal contracts and centrality issues, particularly as regards technological innovation and technology transfer of firms, respectively. Moreover, the evidence presented in this thesis is unequivocal in noting that long term inter-organizational relations and trust may be a necessary and a sufficent condition for a small and medium sized enterprise (SME) to take its place in the center of a complex web of inter-organizational relations as seen in an industrial district.

Assessment of prior learning (APL) represents the task to identify and acknowledge an individual’s knowledge and skills regardless of how it has been obtained. In higher education this type of assessment is primarily used for the purpose of awarding access, credits or advanced standing. Because of the impact the results from APL have on the future working career for individuals claiming APL, it is of great importance that these result of APL is valid. The question of interest in this thesis is to what extent APL in higher education is a valid assessment. The thesis is written in the field of educational measurement and comprises four papers and an extensive introduction with summaries of the papers. The most recent views of validity theory were used as the general theoretical framework in all papers, and all papers are concerned with APL in higher education. Study I reviews the research area of APL in higher education from a validity perspective. The general conclusion from the review is that the majority of the studies conducted in this area primarily provide theoretical rationales and theories for a variety of APL practices, and that there is a need for empirically based studies examining and evaluating validity of APL. Studies II, III and IV are empirical studies based on, and exemplified with, an APL scheme related to higher education in Sweden. Study II examines validity issues identified from claimants (individuals or students claiming APL) view of APL. The claimants’ experiences from the specific APL scheme were examined using a questionnaire developed for that purpose. Conclusions drawn from the results are that possible threats to validity may exist in the administration of APL procedures, as well as in consequences of APL. Study III focuses on validity of admission decisions based on APL. The study examines decisions made by different higher education institutions for approximately 600 individuals applying for higher education based on their prior learning. The results show that the existing practice of APL needs improvements in order to obtain validity and trustworthiness in the decisions made in relation to APL. Finally, Study IV focuses on reliability in APL related to higher education. The study provides data of inter- and intra-rater reliability among judges in the specific APL scheme. The results show a lack of especially inter-rater reliability, and a conclusion is that reliability in this type of assessment should be further investigated. The general conclusion from this thesis is that there is a need to take validity issues in APL seriously, and that APL in higher education may not be as valid as it could be.

Deeper understanding of family health and support after childbirth from the perspective of first-time parents and their informal support network is needed. Postpartum experiences and health concerns of first-time mothers and fathers and, discourses on sexuality and informal support after childbirth were explored in low-income, suburban areas in Ilala, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Individual qualitative interviews with first-time mothers (n=10) and fathers (n=10), and 14 focus group discussions with first-time parents (n=40) and informal support persons (n=42) provided the data, which were analyzed through qualitative content and discourse analysis. First-time parents’ areas of concern were newborn care and hygiene, infant feeding, handling crying infant, maternal nutrition and hygiene, uncertain body changes for the mother and, sexuality. The mothers were burdened with caring responsibilities and fathers felt neglected and excluded from the care of the mother and infant after childbirth, both by the families and the health care system. Sexuality after childbirth created tension between new parents due to the understanding that abstinence would protect child health during the breastfeeding period, which could be several years. Women’s adherence to sexual abstinence was more emphasized compared to men’s. Men’s engagement with other sex partners and the risk of contraction HIV was a threat to family health. First-time parents drew on support from both informal and formal sources. Informal support networks played a major role in providing information, materials, guidance and supervision while conveying stereotypic gender norms. Contradictions in the messages to parents within and between the support systems created uncertainties that might have negative implications for family health. Poor parents and those who did not adherence to the social norms were less likely to get informal support than others were. There is a need for information and practical guidance on basic aspects of care for the mother and infant, male involvement, and the importance of social support to first-time parents, as new parents face physical, social and relational challenges after childbirth. The link between the health care system and informal networks need to be strengthened to enable them to complement each other in promoting family health after child health.