This cross-sectional study examined differences in family needs (informational, social, financial, health, and household support), caregiver mental health (depression, satisfaction with life, vitality, social functioning, and emotional role limitations), and caregiver burden (personal life, guilt, and psychological) among caregivers of individuals with traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis, and dementia from cities in Colombia and Mexico (N = 343). The study also examined the connections among family needs, caregiver mental health, and caregiver burden in the combined sample of caregivers of individuals with neurological conditions. Many significant differences were identified among groups, and implications are discussed. Family needs, caregiver mental health, and burden were all robustly associated with each other, with financial and social support needs, depression, and burden-personal life and guilt emerging as particularly important. Clinicians should focus on helping caregivers meet financial and social support needs in order to positively influence caregiver burden and mental health.

Cette thèse est une étude appliquée de la taxation optimale et du risque du revenu en amérique latine, en particulier pour l'argentine, le chili, la colombie et le mexique. En faisant face a des niveaux élevés d'inégalité de revenu, l'impôt sur le revenu est pour l'amérique latine un outil essentiel de redistribution qui jusqu'à présent, n'a pas été pleinement exploité. L'un des objectifs de cette thèse est de voir jusqu'où ces pays sont à leur niveau optimal de taxation afin d'explorer la capacité d'amélioration que ce type de charge peut avoir dans chacun des pays de l'étude. Le risque du revenu est une autre caractéristique importante des économies en développement tels que celles trouvées en amérique latine. Etant donné leur vulnérabilité aux chocs macroéconomiques externes, ces économies ont tendance à être particulièrement volatiles. Dans ces conditions, les individus en amérique latine sont sujets à des revenus plus risques que les individus qui vivent des pays développés. La présence du risque a un effet sur comment les agents répondent aux changements divers de l'économie. C'est pourquoi, l'etude des niveaux de risque et en particulier comment les revenus plus risqués affectent la taxation optimale, est l'un des piliers de cette thèse. Le risque du revenu peut être décomposé en deux éléments, permanents ou transitoires. La dernière partie de cette thèse est consacrée à évaluer dans quelle mesure le risque de revenu présente dans chaque pays est causée par un composant permanente ou une composante temporelle. / This thesis is an applied study of optimal taxation and income risk in latin america, in particular for argentina, chile, colombia and mexico. Having to deal with high levels of income inequality, income taxation is for latin america a key tool of redistribution that until now has not been fully exploited. One of the aims of this thesis is to see how far are these countries from their optimal level of taxation, in order to explore the capacity of improvement that this type of tax may have in each one of the countries in the study. Income risk is another important characteristic of developing economies such as those found in latin america. Given their vulnerability to outside macroeconomic shocks, these economies tend to be particularly volatile. under these conditions, individuals in latin america are prone to riskier incomes than the individuals living in developed countries. The presence of risk has an effect on how the agents respond to divers changes in the economy. That is why, studying the levels of risk, and in particular how the riskier incomes affect optimal taxation, is one of the pillars of this thesis. Income risk may be decomposed into two components, permanent or transitory. The last part of this thesis is devoted to estimate how much of the income risk present in each country is caused by a permanent or a temporal component. Given the lack of panel data for latin american countries, these estimations were performed introducing pseudo-panel techniques into traditional panel data methodologies. Comparisons between pseudo-panel results and panel data results were made when the data was available.

This thesis is devoted to the complex of problems which characterize Latin American metropolis on the threshold of the 21st century. It is illustrated in the example of the Peruvian capital Lima which cumulates high amount of the symptomatic maladies of the urbanized areas in this part of the World. The emphasis is mostly put on the issue of the internal migration in Peru and its consequence in a radical change of urbanization, especially the fast growth of the slums on the peripheries. The work also deals with the phenomena which are closely connected with it - criminality, decline in quality of life in the city and disruption of its structures, exhausted environment and predisposition to davastation caused by natural disasters. The aim is to show the coherence of above- mentioned aspects, their common origin and to put them in the context of problems in Peru when the main accent is on the aspect of poverty and cultural-racial barrier.

Tourism is one of the progressively evolving fields and due to the influence of globalization has become attractive and easily accessible matter for a broad group of people across the continents. Economical aspects of this perspective branch supported generally uncritical perception of phenomena called tourism. In recent years, however the negative impact of mass tourism became the subject of discussion and efforts are being made to find alternative forms which respect the environment and contribute to the development of the visited regions. The aim of thesis is study of ecotourism and biospheres reserves. Both concepts contribute to the achievement of sustainable development in Latin America. Biosphere Reserves based on the effort of harmonious coexistence between man and nature are the ideal environment for the application of the principles of sustainability. Ecotourism in Latin American practice is analyzed on the basis of case studies from Costa Rica and the Galapagos Islands. Operation, management and benefits of biosphere reserves for the region demonstrate examples of Guatemala and Costa Rica. Keywords: biosphere reserve; ecotourism; Latin America; sustainable development

This thesis analyses representations of urban violence in Colombia within four cultural products published/released in the time period 1990 to 2005 . The cultural products belong to genres commonly regarded as distinct, and divided between ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction’ – a novel, film, ‘testimonio’ and documentary. Methodologically, the analysis focuses on each cultural product as a whole – the text itself and its marketing paratext. In this focus on the cultural product as a whole, it also considers the role of the audience in the consumption of the cultural products and their themes. The theme the thesis specifically engages with is the representation of violent actors, and focuses in particular on their status as fourth world inhabitants. The fourth world is a theoretical category developed by Manuel Castells to describe spaces which are excluded from global networks and flows of information, resulting in ‘black holes’, such as favelas, inner city ‘ghettos’ and slums, in which inhabitants are unable to gain access to services and regular employment. The thesis looks at the development of myths surrounding these spaces and their inhabitants, and the role played by cultural products in constructing and perpetuating divisive myths. It posits a growing globally homogenised representation of the fourth world inhabitant as violent and destructive, creating a binary between fourth and first world inhabitants to which the representations in these particular Colombian cultural products are linked. Overall, the thesis argues that the representation of violent actors in Colombia, and in particular the city of Medellín in this time period, illustrates that the distinction between fiction and non-fiction has collapsed, due to the strength of myths surrounding fourth world figures.

This thesis looks at the nature of civil-military relations in the post-Cold War and the post-9/11 era through the theoretical lens of social constructivism. The study looks at the inter-relationship between the respective civil-military relations and US-Mexican bilateral ties from a constructivist perspective, with the aim of deconstructing the ideational structures of civil-military relations within the state and the state based international system to promote stronger organic structures for civilian control over the state agents of violence. The aim of thesis is to provide a theoretical model to both unite the theoretical rationale for the humanisation, indeed demilitarisation, of security concerns within the Western Hemisphere and in particular the US and Mexico. Hence, creating a novel theoretical model for the understanding and explanation of civil-military and bilateral relations.

This dissertation presents a fresh approach to the study of Haitian art through research conducted in the emerging interdisciplinary field of exhibition history. In a deliberate attempt to move away from existing notions of Haitian art as a formal or aesthetic style of art practice associated with primitivism – based on mid-twentieth-century art historical narratives – I have opted to explore the display of works by Haitian artists outside of conventional museum and gallery settings. Taking a broader cultural studies approach centred on three case studies, I examine the exhibition of artworks within the transitory sites of national cultural display at two world’s fairs and an art biennial: the Haitian pavilion at the World’s Columbian Fair of 1893; Haiti’s “Little World’s Fair” officially titled Exposition Internationale du Bicentenaire de Port-au-Prince of 1949-50; and the Haitian pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2011. These exhibitions overlap in the sense that they all claimed to present an official representation of the Haitian nation-state and therefore an authoritative vision of Haitian culture. However, when we peer behind this veneer of official national rhetoric it becomes clear that at each of these sites there were numerous images of Haitian nationhood, as well as notions of a national cultural essence referred to throughout as Haitian-ness, being produced by various agents. Across the course of this study these include: Haitian and foreign state representatives, curators, artists, academics and cultural professionals drawn from Haiti, Haiti’s diasporas and elsewhere, as well as NGOs and other international collaborators. In each case those curating Haiti’s national displays at these events balanced assertions of national sovereignty against international marketability: delicate negotiations that, I argue, can be discerned through analysis of the forms, aesthetics, subjects and contextualisation of the artworks displayed. Across the course of this dissertation therefore I chart a shift in the substance of these Haitian cultural displays, and the artworks presented within them, from a fin de siècle expression of Francophile neoclassicism, through an uneasy post-war coupling of folkloric exoticism and western modernity, to a fragmented picture of contemporary Haitian-ness articulated with reference to poverty and cultural otherness as well as cosmopolitanism. Through an examination of these case studies I have sought to explore how the visual arts intersected with expressions of Haiti’s postcolonial nationhood at exhibitions staged within events scattered across the Atlantic World. Further, by charting shifts in the production and projection of Haitian nationhood and art across these three sites I have attempted to grasp a fuller picture of how entangled ideas of nation and culture have had a bearing on exhibition histories, international institutional engagement with and the marketing and perception of the work of Haitian artists through the long twentieth century.

Since the transitions to democracy in Latin America, women in the region have undergone major changes in their roles in society. From traditionally only present in the home to participating in collective action efforts, and finally participating at increasing numbers in governments, women have made incredible strides in the Latin American region. Latin American countries have successfully advocated for the inclusion of women in government, but few studies in academia focus on determining whether their inclusion has made a difference in government processes or in society. Borrowing from the literature positing that women are behaviorally different from men as well as their identification with motherhood and as wives in their collective action efforts in Latin America, I argue that women have different concerns from men both outside and inside of the public sphere and therefore make a difference in government with regards to policy priorities and government budget allocations. Studying 18 Latin American countries, I find that there is a gender gap in public opinion, which demonstrates that women are more concerned with social welfare matters than men. I also find that female concerns are carried into their behavior once in government as observed by female legislators’ heightened support for social welfare policies. Furthermore, I find that women in legislatures affect government behavior differently from their male counterparts as observed with female legislators’ positive effects on the allocation of the budget towards social welfare areas.

<p>Transnational governance has been advanced as a viable option for regulating commodities produced in emerging economies—where incapable or unwilling states may undersupply institutions requisite for overseeing supply chains consistent with the quality, safety, environmental, or social standards demanded by the global marketplace. Producers from these jurisdictions, otherwise left with few venues for securing market access and price premiums, ostensibly benefit from whatever pathways transnational actors offer to minimize barriers to entry—including voluntary certification for compliance with a panoply of public and private rules, such as those promulgated by NGOs like the Fair Trade Federation or multinational retailers like Wal-Mart. Yet, such transnational “sustainability” governance may neither be effective nor desirable. Regulatory schemes, like third-party certification, often privilege the interests of primary architects and beneficiaries—private business associations, governments, NGOs, and consumers in the global North—over regulatory targets—producers in the global South. Rather than engaging with the international marketplace via imported and externally-driven schemes, some producer groups are instead challenging existing rules and innovating homegrown institutions. These alternatives to commercialization adopt some institutional characteristics of their transnational counterparts yet deliver benefits in a manner more aligned with the needs of producers. Drawing on original empirical cases from Nicaragua and Mexico, this dissertation examines the role of domestic institutional alternatives to transnational governance in enhancing market access, environmental quality and rural livelihoods within producer communities. Unlike the more technocratic and expert-driven approaches characteristic of mainstream governance efforts, these local regulatory institutions build upon the social capital, indigenous identity, “ancestral” knowledge, and human assets of producer communities as new sources of power and legitimacy in governing agricultural commodities.</p> / Dissertation

According to a lot of experts presidential systems under conditions of multipartism are leading to instability, because there is peril of executive-legislative deadlocks. This thesis is focusing on three stable countries under these conditions (Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay). The main goal of this thesis is to find out the sources of system stability of these three countries. The thesis analyzes them on the basis of four criteria (number of parties, ideological distance, party system institutionalization and simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections together with electoral system). This thesis analyzes election results of these countries since their transition to democracy. The thesis demonstrated, that party system format is not crucial for stability. More important is his stability together with the same actors and unchangeable ties between them.