Background Most environmental epidemiological studies are conducted in high income settings. The association between ambient temperature and mortality has been studied worldwide, especially in developed countries. However, more research on the topic is necessary, particularly in India, given the limited evidence on the relationship between temperature and health in this country. The average global temperature is increasing, and it is estimated that it will go up further. The factors affecting vulnerability to heat-related mortality are not well studied. Therefore, identifying high-risk population subgroups is of particular importance given the rising temperature in India. Objectives This research aimed to investigate the association of daily mean temperature and rainfall with daily deaths (Paper I), examine the relationship of hot and cold days with total and cause-specific mortality (Paper II), assess the effects of heat and cold on daily mortality among different socio-demographic groups (Paper III) and estimate the effect of maximum temperature on years of life lost (Paper IV). Methods The Vadu Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) monitors daily deaths, births, in-out migration and other demographic trends in 22 villages from two administrative blocks in the rural Pune district of Maharashtra state, in western India. Daily deaths from Vadu HDSS and daily weather data (temperature and rainfall) from the Indian Meteorological Department were collected from 2003 through 2013. Verbal autopsy data were used to define causes of death and classified into four groups: non-infectious diseases, infectious diseases, external causes and unspecified causes of death. Socio-demographic groups were based on education, occupation, house type and land ownership. In all papers, time series regression models were applied as the basic approach; additionally, in Paper III, a case-crossover design and, in Paper IV, a distributed lag non-linear model (DLNM) were used. Results There was a significant association between daily temperature and mortality. Younger age groups (0-4 years) reported higher risk of mortality due to high and low temperature and heavy rainfall. In the working age group (20-59 years), mortality was significantly associated only with high temperature. Mortality due to non-infectious diseases was higher on hot days (>39°C), while mortality from infectious diseases and from external causes were not associated with hot or cold days. A higher heat-related total mortality was observed among men than in women. Mortality among residents with low education and those whose occupation was farming was associated with high temperature. We found a significant impact of high temperature on years of life lost, which confirms our results from the previous research (Papers I-III). Conclusion The study findings broadened our knowledge of the health impacts of environmental exposure by providing evidence on the risks related to ambient temperature in a rural population in India. More specifically, the study identified vulnerable population groups (working age groups, those of low education and farmers) in relation to high temperature. The adverse effect of heat on population is preventable if local human and technical capacities for risk communication and promoting adaptive behavior are built. Furthermore, it is necessary to increase residents’ awareness and prevention measures to tackle this public health challenge in rural populations.

By May 1945, most major German cities lay in ruins, and a largely demoralised population struggled for subsistence in many areas. National Socialist remnants, Christian faith and communist ideology met in the rubble of the Third Reich. The Protestant and Catholic Churches attempted to ‘re-Christianise’ the Volk and reverse secularisation, while the German communists sought to inspire dynamism for their socialist project in Eastern Germany. This thesis recreates the religious world of Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia in the Soviet zone, 1945-9, and analyses ‘religio-politics’ (the interactions between the secular authorities and the Churches), the affairs of the priesthood/pastorate, and the behaviours, mentalities and emotions of ‘ordinary people’ amongst the pews. After the American withdrawal in July 1945, the Soviet authorities occupied the entirety of Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, and they proclaimed a ‘freedom of religion’. The realities of this policy were different in each state, and the resolution or non-resolution of local-level disputes often determined Church and State relations. At the grassroots, though, many people engaged in a latent social revolt against all forms of authority. The Churches’ hopes of ‘re-Christianisation’ in 1945 were dashed by 1949, despite a brief and ultimately superficial ‘revival’. The majority of people did not attend church services regularly, many allegedly practiced ‘immorality’, and refused to adopt ‘Christian neighbourly love’ in helping often-destitute refugees. ‘Re-Christianisation’ also did not incur comprehensive denazification or a unified pastorate, and there was even a continuation of the Third Reich Kirchenkampf in some areas. Christian ideas of guilt for a popular turning from God, much less for Nazism and its crimes, rarely resonated amongst the population and some sections of the pastorate. This mentality encapsulated the popular rejection of authority, whether spiritual or political, that endured up to and beyond the foundation of the German Democratic Republic in October 1949.

This research study explores how future educational and occupational aspirations are constructed by young Sikh adults. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten young Sikh adults, both their parents, and their teachers at one school in West London to investigate how future aspirations are constructed, which resources are employed, and why certain resources are used over others. In some previous research on aspirations and future choices, Sikhs have either been ignored or, instead, subsumed under the umbrella category of 'Asian' and this study seeks to address this. Furthermore, the study seeks to shed light on how British-Sikh identities are constructed and intersected by social class, caste and gender. This is important to explore since it can have an impact upon how young adults are structured by educational policy. A 'syncretic' social constructionist framework which predominantly draws upon Pierre Bourdieu's notions of habitus, capital and field, along with the cultural identity theories of Avtar Brah and Stuart Hall, is employed to investigate the construction of identities and aspirations. In addition, the study contains ethnographical elements as it is conducted on my 'own' Sikh group and at my former secondary school. Consequently, I brought a set of assumptions to the research which, rather than disregard, I acknowledge since they highlight how I come to form certain interpretations of phenomena over others.

Thèse diffusée initialement dans le cadre d'un projet pilote des Presses de l'Université de Montréal/Centre d'édition numérique UdeM (1997-2008) avec l'autorisation de l'auteur.

This thesis examines the homefront experience of middle class, white women living in Winchester, Virginia during the Civil War. The experience of women in Winchester was unique because of Winchester's proximity to both the Union and Confederate capitals. Although the majority of Winchester's women were Confederate supporters a significant minority of the population remained loyal to the Union. Winchester citizens' divided status was further complicated by numerous occupations of the town by both armies. This thesis argues that in order to cope with wartime hardships women's concepts of patriotism changed as homefront morale waned. While early in the war women's patriotism reflected their support of the military, as the war progressed women began defining themselves as either Unionists or Confederates in order to maintain a sense of self. These wartime identities centered on the legitimacy of a particular cause and the vilification of the "enemy" thereby creating a clear line between good and evil to help women cope with the death and destruction of war. Winchester's various wartime occupations, however, undermined women's emotional justifications for war as contact with soldiers humanized the enemy and skewed the battle lines.

This paper crafts a narrative about how elite, white Richmond women experienced the fall and rebuilding of their city in April and May 1865. At first, the women feared the entrance of the occupying army because they believed the troops would treat them as enemies. However, the goal of the white occupiers was to restore order in the city. Even though they were initially saddened by the occupation, many women were surprised at the courtesy and respected afforded them by the Union troops. Black soldiers also made up the occupying army, and women struggled to submit to black authority. With occupation came the emancipation of slaves, and this paper also examines how women adjusted to new relationships with freed blacks. By the end of May, white women and white Union soldiers bonded over their attempt to control the black population, with some women and soldiers even beginning to socialize.

The collapse of Nazi Germany was accompanied by a humanitarian disaster of staggering proportions. The newly-founded United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and its successor the International Refugee Organization (IRO) identified repairing the damage that the war had inflicted on Allied displaced populations as one of its foremost humanitarian obligations. These UN agencies cast themselves as pre-eminent agents of ‘rehabilitation’, facilitating a fast transition from war to peace through scientific methods of refugee management conducted along Rooseveltian lines. Departing from earlier relief efforts, their ambition was to provide more than a mere ‘soup kitchen’ charity, their aim being to ‘rehabilitate’ Displaced Persons (DPs). Their methods were, however, vigorously contested in the field by military and occupation authorities, by members of established voluntary societies, and by UNRRA/IRO’s own continental recruits. This thesis explores these confrontations through the lens of French DP administration. Although these UN agencies proclaimed a new era of internationalism, solutions to DP problems were often defined in nationalist terms. DPs were organised by ethnicity and strong ties attached relief workers to their own national groups. For French planners and humanitarian workers, the DP question was much more than a humanitarian problem, and was bound up with issues of domestic reconstruction, culture and identity as much as the provision of medical aid and relief. This thesis demonstrates that distinctive diplomatic constraints, economic requirements and cultural differences influenced the thought and practices of refugee humanitarianism, shaping alternate ways of arranging interim provision and ‘rehabilitating’ DPs in the French zone of occupation. Despite the fact that Allied responses to the DP problem mirrored divergent wartime experiences and differing national visions for the post-war future, this thesis argues that the history of UNRRA and the IRO in the French zone cannot be solely understood as a story of inter-Allied confrontation and clashes of political culture. Numerous transfers of expertise and the circulation of ideas and people between the zones belie such a view. New-Deal influenced methods penetrated the French zone and local UNRRA/IRO staff progressively embraced the organizations’ declared mission of ‘self-help’, albeit on terms that reflected their particular interpretation of DPs’ best interests. The real impact of UNRRA and the IRO lies in this grey area of subtle processes of imitation and re-interpretation.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

In response to the challenge of helping clientele function in a productive and personally satisfying fashion, the counseling profession assumed the responsibility for assimilating vocational information. The need. was expressed for integrating fragmented vocational information into more meaningful, psychological and sociological theory. More research pertaining to adults is needed to continue the work on this task. This exploratory and descriptive study's primary objective was to analyze vocational stability, achievement, and job satisfaction variables and their relationships to assessed and inferred personality variables for male college graduates with post college work experience who sought career counseling. Holland's assumption which states that congruency between personality and environment produces stability, achievement, and satisfaction was investigated.

This work is based on the analysis of media image of the occupation of Czechoslovakia by troops of the Warsaw Pact in contemporary Polish press with focus on the role of the Polish army. The purpose of this work is to assess used media discourse of Polish communist newspapers which were informing about these events with focus on elements of propaganda, which were typical for the 60's in the Eastern Bloc countries. At the same time there is a comparison to media discourse of Polish emigration press in the United States. In the beginning, I will describe basic sources and literature and present results of research on topics such as the Prague Spring, Operation Danube and elements of newspeak. The theoretical part of this thesis begins with the context of historical progress which leads to the Prague Spring and Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia afterwards. The subsequent chapters are dedicated to a brief history of Polish press after World War Two and also the theories of propaganda and newspeak. The practical part of this thesis is dedicated to the analysis of selected articles from newspapers such as Życie Warszawy, Żołnierz Wolności and Słowo Polskie. These articles are confronted with texts from Chicago's Dziennik Związkowy. I will summarize these findings in the final chapter. Key words...