Department of Development Studies / PhD (African Studies) / There is a political conflict in Zimbabwe between the ruling Zimbabwean African National Union-PatrioticFront (ZANU-PF) and the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Political conflict is a battle that occurs between two or more sides with different beliefs. Although Zimbabwe is a sovereign state, South Africa used a foreign policy of “quiet diplomacy” to contribute to the peaceful resolution of Zimbabwe’s political conflict. A sovereign state is a state which administers its own government and is not dependent upon or subjected to another state. Dissent in Zimbabwe centres around the land issue, land ownership, land reform, and land appropriation – problems caused as a result of parliamentary and presidential elections. Land reform led the government to introduce “Operation Murambatsvina” which was a campaign to forcibly clear slum areas across the country. The government depicted the operation as a crackdown against illegal housing and commercial activities and as an effort to reduce the risk of the spread of infectious disease in these areas. South Africa’s “quiet diplomacy” succeeded in the peaceful resolution of the Zimbabwean political conflict because the land issue was deemed legitimate; however, the methods used for land reform seem to be problematic. For a way forward, the Zimbabwean government needs to be accountable, transparent and democratic. The researcher used a qualitative research method to gather an in-depth understanding of human behaviour and the reasons that govern such behaviour. The researcher asked broad questions and collected word data from participants. The researcher used different approaches in collecting data, such as narratology, storytelling, classical ethnography and shadowing. In addition the researcher used primary and secondary sources.

Kultur är något som i vardagen styr hur människor värderar, tänker, tror och tycker. Det påverkar också hur vi tar oss an ett visst problem och handskas med det. Funktionsvariation är något som existerar i hela värden men ändå är det så olikt hur vi människor väljer att bemöta det. När vår värld globaliseras allt mer bidrar detta till att fler och fler kulturer tvingas samexistera trots dessa spridda värderingar som kan förekomma. En internationell synvinkel var eftertraktat i uppsatsen och därför gjordes en komparativ litteraturstudie där nio vetenskapliga artiklar från fyra olika länder undersöktes. Syftet med studien var att undersöka hur dessa fyra länder arbetar kultursensitivt. Teorin som valdes för att granska materialet var den postkoloniala teorin eftersom teorin belyser de maktstrukturer som existerar kulturellt efter postkolonialismen och hur detta påverkar människor än idag. Det resultat som gavs från artiklarna delas in i motiv till, utförande av och resultat från kulturkompetens. Det som samtliga artiklar trycker på är hur organisationerna måste rekrytera personal från olika kulturella bakgrunder samt kunna ge ut information på de språk som målgruppen talar. Resultatet belyser att även att socialarbetarna behöver reflektera kring både deras egen kultur och läsa in sig i hur andra kulturer normalt sätt ser på funktionsvariation. I diskussionen belyses de maktrelationer som det sociala arbetet bygger på och att det är viktigt för en person tillhörande en majoritetskultur att kritiskt kunna reflektera över sina egna värderingar i relation till en klient från en minoritetskultur. Behovet av att rekrytera personal från olika kulturella bakgrunder samt även kritik till kulturell kompetens lyfts upp. Slutsatsen genomsyras av om huruvida det är den kulturella kompetensen som endast är viktigast i arbetet med människor från olika kulturella bakgrunder eller om det riskerar att bidra till generalisering och stigmatisering av minoritetsgrupper. Istället betonas vikten av att det postkoloniala synsättet värderas högre då detta förser socialarbetaren med ett maktperspektiv som blir av vikt i arbetet med denna utsatta grupp. / Culture is something that in everyday life control people’s opinions, how they value, think and believe. It also affects how we deal with a problem and work with it. Different ability is something that exists in the whole world ​​but still it differs how people choose to respond to it. As our world becomes increasingly globalized, this contributes to more and more cultures being forced to coexist despite these scattered values ​​that may occur. An international perspective of cultural competence was the main interest, therefore a comparative literature study was made in which nine scientific articles from four different countries were examined. The purpose of the study was to investigate how these four countries work culturally sensitive. The theory chosen for examining the material was the postcolonial theory since the theory highlights the power structures that exist culturally after postcolonialism and how this still affects people today. The result given from the articles is divided into motives for, performance of and results from cultural competence. What all articles imprint is how the organizations must recruit staff from different cultural backgrounds and be able to publish information in the languages ​​that the target group speaks. The social workers also need to reflect on both their own culture and study how other cultures normally look at people with different abilities. The discussion sheds light on the power relations that social work is based on and that it’s important for a person belonging to a majority culture to critically reflect on their own values ​​in relation to a client from a minority culture. The need to recruit staff from various cultural backgrounds as well as criticism of cultural competence is highlighted. The conclusion is permeated by whether it’s the cultural competence that is the most important aspect in the work with people from different cultural backgrounds, or if it risks contributing to generalization and stigmatization of minority groups. Instead, it’s emphasized that the post-colonial approach is more valuable as this provides social workers with a power perspective that becomes important in the work with this vulnerable group.

My diploma thesis, called "The new religious movements and brainwashing", could be divided into two imaginary units. The first one is more general but technical. This part analyzes the term brainwashing as a whole, from a different point of views. The term brainwashing appears throughout the whole paper; from its formation, across the development, until its usage in everyday life. This contains the usage in media, advertising, and other spheres. This chapter should point out the importance of this topic, which is often forgotten. The second part of the thesis aims to contrast the book by Ted Patrick and Tom Dulack, which describes the term deprogramming. This term was allegedly invented for the new religious movement practices and brainwashing purposes. This chapter outlines the Ted's Patrick stances and gives an impartial reaction on it. The third part of the thesis is more of a narrative. It gives a fundamental explanation and typology of new religious movements, which connects the previous two parts. The following chapter clarifies the opposition theories. Nonetheless, it focuses on the anti-cult movements, but also the perception of media, the majority society, or a role of the state. This part of the thesis is vital in order to take a stand on the brainwashing itself. Its careless usage is an...

Tidigare forskning visar att byggbranschen är en av världens mest mansdominerade branscher där jämställdhet är svår att uppnå. Denna studie är en kandidatuppsats på Personal och arbetslivsprogrammet vid Högskolan Dalarna. Studien syftar till att utifrån ett genusperspektiv analysera mäns och kvinnors erfarenheter av att arbeta i en mansdominerad byggbransch. Vi vill med denna studie framföra både mäns och kvinnors perspektiv av att arbeta i en bransch som enligt tidigare forskning upplevs som tuff där machokultur förekommer. Det finns en hel del forskning som beskriver kvinnors perspektiv utifrån normer och genus i byggbranschen, men inte lika omfattande forskning om männens upplevelser kring detta. De huvudområden som omfattar studien är arbetsmiljö, jämställdhet, sociala relationer samt genusnormer. Åtta respondenter, fyra kvinnor och fyra män från olika byggföretag har genom en kvalitativ forskningsmetod intervjuats. Respondenterna har medverkat i semistrukturerade intervjuer genom fysiska och digitala möten. Svaren har sedan sammanställts, tematiserats och analyserats med hjälp av en tematisk analys. Resultatet visar att både män och kvinnor välkomnar en jämställd byggbransch som genom utbildning, generationsskiften, medvetenhet samt arbetsmiljöarbete succesivt förväntas öka den kvinnliga arbetskraften i den svenska byggbranschen. / Previous research shows that the construction industry is one of the world's most male-dominated industries where gender equality is difficult to achieve. This study is a bachelor ́s thesis in the program Personnel and work at Dalarna University and the study aims to analyze men's and women's experience of working in a male-dominated construction industry from a gender perspective. With this study, we want to present both men's and women's perspectives of working in an industry that according to previous research is perceived as tough where macho culture occurs. There is a lot of research that describes women's perspectives based on norms and gender in the construction industry, but not as extensive research on men's experiences around this. The main areas that include the study are work environment, gender equality, social relations, and gender norms. Eight respondents, four women and four men from different construction companies have been interviewed through a qualitative research method. The respondents have participated in semi-structured interviews through physical and digital meetings. The answers have then been compiled, thematized and analyzed with the help of a thematic analysis. The results show that both men and women welcome an equal construction industry which, through education, generational shifts, awareness, and work environment management, is gradually expected to increase the female workforce in the Swedish construction industry.

Web 2.0 has significantly transformed the way how modern society works now-a-days. In today‘s Web, information not only flows top down from the web sites to the readers; but also flows bottom up contributed by mass user. Hugely popular Web 2.0 applications like Wikis, social applications (e.g. Facebook, MySpace), media sharing applications (e.g. YouTube, Flickr), blogging and numerous others generate lots of user generated contents and make heavy use of the underlying storage. Data storage system is the heart of these applications as all user activities are translated to read and write requests and directed to the database for further action. Hence focus is on the storage that serves data to support the applications and its reliable and efficient design is instrumental for applications to perform in line with expectations. Large scale storage systems are being used by popular social networking services like Facebook, MySpace where millions of users‘ data have been stored and fully accessed by these companies. However from users‘ point of view there has been justified concern about user data ownership and lack of control over personal data. For example, on more than one occasions Facebook have exercised its control over users‘ data without respecting users‘ rights to ownership of their own content and manipulated data for its own business interest without users‘ knowledge or consent. The thesis proposes, designs and implements a large scale, robust and fault-tolerant key-value data storage prototype that is peer-to-peer based and intends to back away from the client-server paradigm with a view to relieving the companies from data storage and management responsibilities and letting users control their own personal data. Several read and write APIs (similar to Yahoo!‘s P NUTS but different in terms of underlying design and the environment they are targeted for) with various data consistency guarantees are provided from which a wide range of web applications would be able to choose the APIs according to their data consistency, performance and availability requirements. An analytical comparison is also made against the PNUTS system that targets a more stable environment. For evaluation, simulation has been carried out to test the system availability, scalability and fault-tolerance in a dynamic environment. The results are then analyzed and conclusion is drawn that the system is scalable, available and shows acceptable performance.

The aim of this work is to tell part of the story of the Brazilian evangelical missions movement by focusing on the work and Brazilian evangelical transcultural workers serving in mission in the context of the Arab-Muslim world. These participants are members of a broader movement of more than 5000 Brazilian evangelicals serving around the world - an evangelical labor force large than that of England or Canada - which has grown significantly since 1976. In order to locate the work of Brazilian evangelicals in an Arab-Muslim context, it was important to first offer a historical narrative showing how Brazil has shifted in the twentieth century from being a “mission field” to being a base for sending missions. Relying on key historical literature, this has been accomplished first by recounting how Brazil was evangelized largely by North American missionaries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Building on this narrative, the argument has been made that while the Brazilian evangelical church does share common characteristics with North American and global evangelicalism, it has also begun to forge its own evangelical identity. One important part of this identity is its concrete participation in global mission efforts. As transcultural mission necessarily involves cultural adaption, forty-five past and present Brazilian evangelical workers were invited to participate in a collective case study and reflect upon their own “Brazilianness” and how they have adapted in the Arab world. The perspectives of ten Brazilian mission leaders have also been included. In this study, I have treated Brazil as an affinity bloc of cultures in which there is clear diversity as well as some elements of cohesiveness. I have approached the Arab world in the same way. Hence, the framework for discussing Brazilians in the Arab world has been to reflect upon two affinity blocs and to ask members of one group (Brazilians) to share their collective experiences living in a second group (the Arab world) specifically regarding seven aspects of culture that have clear missiological implications. They include: race, economics, time, communication, family, relationships, and spiritual worldview. After hearing these Brazilian voices, it has become evident, culturally, speaking that Brazilians are not Arabs and that Brazilians must surely work to adapt culturally. However, it also appears that there is generally less cultural distance between the Brazilians surveyed and their Arab contexts than what is normally experienced by Western missionaries in the Arab world. This study was also concerned with asking, how are Brazilian evangelicals approaching mission in the Arab-Muslim world? Following a collective case study methodology, this question was posed to individual Brazilians and teams, but also to Brazilian evangelical missions organizations working in the Arab world. While a number of themes (strategies and practices) emerged, it seems that Brazilians are particularly concerned about humanitarian work and personal evangelism and would regard these areas as strengths of their movement. On the other hand, Brazilian workers and mission leaders also identified the most apparent challenges in their work among Arab-Muslims. They included: a lack of Brazilian local church support for missionaries, deficiencies in language learning, lack of financial support, and difficulties faced by Brazilian women in Arab contexts. For each apparent difficulty, I have proposed some solutions based on the collective input of Brazilian voices. Finally, in this study, I have posed the question, how do Brazilians think theologically about mission? Also, how is this Brazilian missiology relevant to transcultural mission work in the Arab-Muslim world? While I have approached this question primarily through surveying the literature from Latin American and Brazilian theologians, I have also looked for missiological themes in the thoughts of Brazilian evangelical workers and through observing their concrete mission practices. From this, four theological themes have emerged that are descriptive of Brazilian missions. They include: that mission is holistic (missão integral); that mission is church-centered; that authentic mission originates from “below” or from a posture of vulnerability; and that one‘s missiology must be undergirded by an awareness of the spiritual world. In summary, through this work, I have have endeavored to tell part of the story of an emerging majority world missions movement by listening to the voices of Brazilian transcultural workers who serve in the Arab-Muslim world. The goal of this study is to inform the global church of this phenomenon in order that the global church would learn from the Brazilian experience as it moves forward in mission and missiological reflection. Secondly, my desire is to provide a framework of self-reflection for Brazilian evangelical missionaries and missions organizations serving in both the Arab-Muslim world but also in the entire world. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Science of Religion and Missiology / unrestricted

The thesis is devoted to the topics of multicultural and intercultural education. The aim of the thesis is to illustrate the cross-sectional theme of multicultural education and its shift to intercultural education. The aim of the empirical part is to contribute to intercultural understanding through a thematic series of art assignments with intercultural content. In the reflective balances of past art blocks, the research probe uses the open coding method to find answers to research questions. The author's own collection, presenting the pupil's final work, forms part of every artistic assignment carried out.

The objective of the Ph.D. thesis "Analysis of the Elections and Electoral Behaviour to the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic" is an analysis of Senate elections on a micro- level of districts in regular terms from 1996 to 2012, including by-elections. Data file comprises a total of 2153 candidates and their election results at the municipal level aggregated to five defined categories by number of registered voters. Analysis is mainly focused on the differences in electoral support for candidates in municipalities up to 999 voters, in municipalities between 1000 and 4999 voters, in municipalities between 5000 to 9999 voters, in municipalities over 10 000 voters and finally in districts covering territory of the four largest cities in the Czech Republic (the Capital City of Prague and cities Brno, Ostrava and Pilsen). In the theoretical part, the Ph.D. thesis presents the Senat as the second house of Parliament of the Czech Republic and deals with the majority run-off system. A quantitative research of Senate elections is performed in the analytical part, where electoral success of candidates conditioned by their political parties, socio-economic and political circumstances in districts and individual profile of candidates is examined. The analysis describes differences among...

The thesis investigates how FDI intra-industry spillovers are affected by MNE ownership modes and sub-national locations. A conceptual framework is developed which utilises IB theories to propose how MNE ownership modes and sub-national locations are likely to matter for FDI spillovers. The research propositions are explored quantitatively using an unbalanced firm-level panel dataset of 1624 Indian manufacturing firms (1991-2008) with 5203 firm-year observations. The model estimation is carried out in STATA 13.0 in two stages; firstly, by using semi-parametric (Levinsohn-Petrin) method to derive the dependent variable (TFP of domestic firms); and secondly, by using fixed effects model estimated in first-differences to relate TFP of domestic firms' with different measures of foreign presence. Results from the first model reveal that WOSs and MAJVs have positive spillover effects whereas MIJVs have negative spillover effects in the Indian manufacturing sector. The second model finds that the net spillover effect in non-metropolitan regions is higher than in metropolitan regions. The thesis discusses the possible major policy implications of the results and considers possible reasons for the differences in the spillovers for different ownership modes and sub-national locations. / PhD Studentship, University of Bradford

This paper examines the relative price spreads between dual-class shares issued by the same firm on the Swedish market in order to investigate if a voting premium exists and what factors contribute to it. Previous research has found diverging explanations for the variation in price spreads between dual-class shares. Some find explanatory power in the concentration of ownership whilst others find trading costs and liquidity to determine the size and direction of the voting premium. This study tests factors of control and liquidity against the relative price spread in the Swedish market and in accordance with earlier research, the results indicate that a statistically significant voting premium exists in Sweden, although it is relatively small in comparison to many other markets. The paper contributes to the current pool of research by the choice of market, and by adding up-to-date information regarding the voting premium as well as evidence that increased domestic institutional ownership affects the voting premium negatively. At the same time, foreign institutional ownership has an opposite effect and leads to increased price differences between share classes. The general conclusion of this paper is that while some factors related to control and ownership concentration show significance long-term, other unobserved aspects could provide greater explanatory power of the voting premium in the short term.