Thesis (M.S.W.)--University of Hong Kong, 1981. / Also available in print.

published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work

Thesis (M. Dev) --University of Limpopo, 2011 / The struggle for land ownership in South Africa continues despite the successful democratic dispensation. Among other apartheid legacies, the new South Africa inherited a highly skewed land ownership pattern based on racial inequalities of the apartheid regimes stemming from the colonial era. The new government introduced a comprehensive land reform programme, aimed at a non-racial distribution of land. The land reform programme consists of three subprogrammes namely redistribution, restitution and land tenure reform. Equity - share schemes are types of land reform, through which previously disadvantaged and landless people can pool their resources to engage in agricultural and other land-related production activities with white commercial farmers, corporations or sectors of government. A critical question has centered on whether equity-share schemes can- and - do really result in redistribution of power and resources. Most of the research work already done on equityshare schemes focused much on investigating their social and political aspects, leaving much attention on their financial performance. This research investigated the financial performance of equity-share schemes using a recognized set of financial indicators. As an additional input to the research, the study investigated perceptions of the scheme’s general performance based on empowerment of farm workers, gender equity, decision making or power relations and tenure security. A combination of both quantitative and qualitative methodologies was used to answer key questions of the study. These involved obtaining quantitative data from balance sheets and income statements as well as holding meetings with management committee and beneficiaries.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1985 D38 / Master of Arts

Anthropological research conducted in the Indira Gandhi Nahar Project area of the western Indian state of Rajasthan during 1984-1985 assessed the impact of agricultural land settlement planning on village community formation. The large-scale project, begun in 1957, has brought irrigation water to the extremely arid Thar desert and has brought irrigation water to the extremely arid Thar desert and has dramatically altered the social and physical landscape. Significant efforts have been made by the Government of Rajasthan to select settlers from the poor and landless population, as part of a social welfare policy, allocate agricultural land to them and create new settler communities. A single village, one of the earliest established by the project, was selected for the study of community formation. Historical and contemporary data were collected on five themes: (1) the settler household, (2) kinship, (3) patronage, (4) institution building, and (5) socieconomic stratification. For each theme area, a series of questions were asked regarding the impact of settlement planning. Although settlement planning has been a major influence on the study village, research revealed that settlers arrived under highly diverse circumstances and played diverse roles in the process of community growth. Research also revealed that the village community has maintained some traditional features of Indian social organization in the face of great upheaval associated with settlement. Both the indigenous families and some of the earliest unplanned settlers have developed large local kinship networks, assumed positions of wealth in a hierarchical caste system, and have been involved in building political institutions based on a stratified system. They have also been responsible for attracting later settlers, including both landless agriculturalists and, to a limited extent, service workers. The settlers selected according to settlement policies have not developed extensive kin networks and have been less active in institution building and developing patronage relationships.

Beginning about A.D. 1250, the Zuni area of New Mexico witnessed a massive population aggregation in which the inhabitants of hundreds of widely dispersed villages relocated to a small number of large, architectecturally planned pueblos. Over the next century, 27 of these pueblos were constructed, occupied briefly, and then abandoned. Another dramatic settlement shift occurred about A. D. 1400, when the locus of population moved west to the "Cities of Cibola" discovered by Coronado in 1540. Keith Kintigh demonstrates how changing agricultural strategies and developing mechanisms of social integration contributed to these population shifts. In particular, he argues that occupants of the earliest large pueblos relied on runoff agriculture, but that gradually spring-and river-fed irrigation systems were adopted. Resultant strengthening of the mechanisms of social integration allowed the increased occupational stability of the protohistorical Zuni towns.

No description available.

Since the rise of the first urban centers, the Middle Euphrates has functioned as a routeway between Mesopotamia and Syria. The towns and caravanseri located along the river served as important conduits of international exchange and as frontier towns buffering larger empires to the east and west. My research has investigated one small district along the Middle Euphrates. I have tried to document not only site distribution but also levels of communication between the middle valley of Euphrates and the southern Mesopotamian and western Syria core areas. Site distribution patterns show over and over again the location of entrepots, staging posts, and forts in this district. The chronological span of this study extends from ca 10,000 B.C. to A.D. 1980, an identifiable longue duree in which recurring cycles of conquest, depopulation, and revivification can be discerned. The area appears to have fared best during periods of intense competition among rival states for access to long-distance trade routes. However, when interactions between rival states in the stronger core areas of Syria and Mesopotamia resulted in the formation of empires whose capitals and interests lay far from the Middle Euphrates, the towns of this region perished. Nevertheless, the capture of the Middle Euphrates appears to have always been an important strategic battle in expansionistic efforts of such empires. I have analyzed the spatial distribution of sites in this region using data from a multi-stage field program. This program combined data from reconnaissance survey, intensive surface survey, intensive jeep survey, and test excavations at the Uruk period site of Tall Qraya with information from the broad-scale excavations at the regional center at Tall Harīrī and the provincial center at Tall al 'Ashārah. It is only with such archaeological data of long time depth gathered from many sources, in combination with information from textual sources, that one can attempt a "total history" of this area.

The study of prehistoric Maya settlements has been hampered by simplistic views of cultural ecology, over generalized ethnographic analogy, and a lack of attention to both natural and cultural site formation processes. As a result, Mayanists have tended to expect very little variety in archaeological features and have assumed cultural uniformity over wide ranges of time and space. Traditional research designs support these assumptions. Current knowledge of Maya social organization suggests that more structural variety may occur in Maya archaeological sites than is ordinarily discovered. Some of this variation is evidenced by features not currently visible on the ground-surface. The Nohmul Settlement pattern project employed a "purposive" sampling design to search for settlement variation over time and space. Several assumptions about surface-subsurface relationships were tested. Surface indications were not found to outline subsurface variety. Excavating at intervals from site center in both visible and "invisible" features, showed that the Nohmul community was affected by both centralizing and decentralizing influences and grouped into residential clusters resembling neighborhoods. The degree of centralization and the location of the clusters, as well as some of their characteristics, changed notably over Nohmul's 2500 year occupation.

The Mpumalanga escarpment hosts a series of stonewalled settlements that occur along a narrow belt between Carolina and Ohrigstad. These sites are unique as they have networks of linking roads, vast areas of terracing as well as large cattle kraals which do not occur in combination or to such an extent anywhere else in southern Africa. Furthermore these settlements occur at an altitude unfavourable for living or agricultural purposes. With the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) layers of data relating to the Mpumalanga escarpment and the settlements within the area over the past five hundred years are viewed and compared in order to further understand the placement and structure of these settlements.