The daunting sojourn of migrant church members can be likened to what’s described in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. What the Church offers them are the rituals of formation and a host’s temporary benevolence. Their expressed spirituality sees sacraments as means of grace towards a higher status through competition. The quest for earthly status by using sacraments as means to economic salvation is an expression of a progressive spirituality. This thesis closes the gap between spirituality and earthly status through a progressive form of liberation theology as an evangelistic framework, using farming as an ancient and economically beneficial ritual.

This study examines three important conceptions of social and human progress, evaluates them critically, and proposes an alternative conception of a rather different type. The first three conceptions are respectively found in, or at least based on, Condorcet’s theory of the historical progress of the sciences and the arts; Adam Smith’s conception of the progressive increase of national wealth; and Karl Marx’s ideal of the communist society. Despite their fundamental differences, these three theories have several common elements. Each one proposes a social project aimed at achieving an ideal society; each ultimately seeks the improvement of the human condition; each focuses however on social rather than human progress, so that its conception of the latter (and of humanness) must be constructed from a set of associated ideas about human nature, life, needs, worth, potential, or fulfilment, and about relations among these.

We live in an age of rapid change. The advance of science and technology, throughout history, has culminated in periods of transition when social values have had to adapt to a changed environment. Such times have proved fertile ground for the expansion of the imagination. Utopian literature offers a vast archive of information concerning the relationship between scientific and technological progress and social change. Alterations in the most basic machinery of society inspired utopian authors to write of distant and future worlds which had achieved a state of harmony and plenty. The dilemmas which writers faced were particular to their era, but there also emerged certain universal themes and questions: What is the best organisation of society? What tools would be adequate to the task? What does it mean to be human? The dividing line on these issues revolves around two opposed beliefs. Some perceived the power inherent in technology to effect the greatest improvement in the human condition. Others were convinced that the organisation of the social order must come first so as to create an environment sympathetic to perceived human needs. There are, necessarily, contradictions in such a division. They can be seen plainly in More's Utopia itself. More wanted to see new science and technique developed. But he also condemned the social consequences which inevitably flowed from the process of discovery. These consequences led More to create a utopia based on social reorganisation. In the main, the utopias of Francis Bacon, Edward Bellamy and the later H. G. Wells accepted science, while the work of William Morris, Aldous Huxley and Kurt Vonnegut rejected science in preference for a different social order. More's Utopia and Bacon's New Atlantis were written at a time when feudal, agriciTfural society wasbeeing transformed by new discoveries and techniques. In a later age, Bellamy's Looking Backward and Morris's News From Nowhere offer contrary responses to society at the height of the Industrial evolution. These four authors serve as a prelude to the main area of the thesis which centres on the twentieth century. Wells, though his first novel appeared in 1895, produced the vast bulk of his work in the current century. Huxley acts as an appropriate balance to Wells and also exemplifies the shift from utopia to dystopia. The last section of the thesis deals with the work of Kurt Vonnegut and includes an interview with that author. The twentieth century has seen the proliferation of dystopias, portraits of the disastrous consequences of the headlong pursuit of science and technology, unallied to human values. Huxley and Vonnegut crystallised the fears of a modern generation: that we create a soulless, mechanised, urban nightmare. The contemporary fascination with science in literature is merely an extension of a process with a long tradition and underlying theme. The advance of science and technology created the physical and intellectual environment for utopian authors which determined the form and content of their visions.

This thesis covers a broad range of topics in the general area of economic growth theory and economics of technological change. It is primarily about the ultimate sources of growth and its ultimate limitations. We scrutinize the implications of several specifications of long-run growth "engines" which can be found across the theoretical literature and put forward their generalizations and extensions. At the highest level of generality, we provide a formal proof that balanced (i.e. exponential) growth requires knife-edge assumptions which cannot be satisfied by typical values of model parameters. This result implies that at least one such knife-edge assumption must be made if a given model is supposed to deliver balanced growth over the long run. Next, we deal with the issue of resource-based limits to long-run growth. We propose to promote technological progress which would improve the substitutability between non-renewable and renewable resources: if the elasticity of substitution between the two kinds of resources exceeds unity, production will not fall down to zero even after the non-renewable resources will have been completely depleted. Factor-augmenting technological progress can also be helpful, but its effects are much less pronounced and it must go on forever in order to assure sustainable production. Another question asked is whether it is plausible that R&D-based growth, fueled by steady increases in the world’s population, can be extended into indefinite time. We answer this question by introducing endogenous fertility choice, with population entering the utility functional multiplicatively, into an R&D-based semi-endogenous growth model. The next issue addressed here are the idea-based microfoundations of aggregate production functions. We discuss the correspondence between the shape of production functions, the direction of technical change, and the possibility of sustained endogenous growth. A broad class of production functions, nesting both the Cobb-Douglas and the CES function, is derived. Finally, we discuss the impact of the heterogeneity of innovations on long-run economic dynamics: we extend the semi-endogenous growth model with a distinction between radical and incremental innovations. Total R&D output is assumed to depend on technological opportunity which is depleted by incremental innovations but renewed by radical innovations. The dynamic interplay of the arrivals of the two types of innovations is shown to give rise to oscillations along the transition to the economy’s balanced growth path.

This work is a study of the concept of progress in Bukhara between approximately 1860 and 1920. It is based on unpublished and published sources from this period. The study suggests that not only the technological and social developments that took place on a global scale between 1860 and 1920 affected the conceptualization of progress in Bukhara, but that globalized narratives on progress did so as well. Cosmographical concepts and explanations that previously were more common were notably absent in what during the 1910s became a discourse on progress, but the concept of progress still had an important eschatological dimension and was closely related to apocalypticism. Chapter One presents the context of the study. The second chapter discusses the theoretical framework and the analytical concepts. The next chapter continues by outlining the political, economic and cultural conditions in Bukhara during this period as well as providing a short historiographical discussion. The fourth chapter discusses the concept of geography and how it affected metaphorical constructions of time. Chapter Five is a study of how Bukharan travellers conceived of novelties. The following chapter discusses the direction of discontinuity and its eschatological implications. Chapter Seven studies how knowledge was temporalized and affected by a shift in the direction of discontinuity. Chapter Eight discusses the lexeme taraqqī, in which the concept of progress later was embedded, as well as various synchronic and diachronic orders. Chapter Nine discusses the eschatological and apocalyptic discourse in Bukhara during the 1910s. The last chapter contains general conclusions in the form of a discussion of the operational environment of progress in Bukhara between approximately 1860 and 1920.

Motivation är det som driver oss människor till handling och som får oss att agera på olika sätt. För att genomföra en livsstilsförändring krävs det motivation, men vad är det som motiverar människan till handling? Syftet med studien är att undersöka vilka faktorer som motiverat till att ta beslutet om att en förändring är nödvändig samt hur motivationen påverkat förändringsprocessen. Studien undersöker även om det går att urskilja någon gemensam motivationsfaktor inom olika livsstilsförändringar. I studien har fem informanter som genomgått olika livsstilsförändringar intervjuats. Resultatet visar på att informanterna har motiverats på liknande sätt och att en viktig faktor har varit önskan om att få tillbaka kontrollen över sin situation. Informanterna har även påverkats och motiverats av sitt sociala nätverk, grupptryck, sociala normer och sina egna värderingar. För några informanter var det saknaden av socialt stöd och umgänge som verkade motiverande till att göra en förändring. För samtliga informanter har det varit viktigt med grupptillhörighet och att uppleva en gemenskap under förändringsprocessen. / Motivation is what drives humans to act and what makes us behave in different ways. To implement a change of lifestyle, motivation is required, but what is it that motivates humans to act? The purpose of the study is to examine which factors that motivated people to take the decision to make a necessary change and how motivation impacted the change process. The study also examines whether it is possible to discern a common motivating factor in various lifestyle changes. In this study, five informants who has underwent various lifestyle changes have been interviewed. The result shows that the informants have been motivated to make a change in a similar way and that an important factor has been the desire to get back in control of their situation. The informants were also influenced and motivated by their social network, peer pressure, social norms and their own values. For some informants the lack of social support and interaction justified the lifestyle change. For all informants, it was important to experience a group membership, and to see that they belonged to a community.

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the differences and changes in integrated and segregated white students' self-concepts, racial attitudes, and academic achievements.

Gross Domestic Product has historically been the dominant, often sole, yardstick regarding a nation's economic development, growth, and well-being. This paper acknowledges GDP's shortcomings and aims development more rounded metrics to better measure well-being. The aim of this thesis is to advance the work done by 2009 Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress by reassessing the twelve recommendations made by Stiglitz, Sen, and Fitoussi and attempting to apply them to a new dashboard of metrics. JEL Classification I31 E01 E21 Keywords well-being, economic performance, GDP, Stiglitz Commission, quality-of-life, social progress Abstrakt Hrubý domácí produkt je historicky dominantní metrika v souvislosti s národním hospodářským rozvojem, růstem a blahobytem. Tato práce potvrzuje nedostatky HDP a jejím cílem je vývoj více vyvážené metriky k lepšímu měření blahobytu. Zaměřuje se na prohloubení práce Stiglitze, Sena a Fitoussiho z roku 2009 (Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress), přehodnocuje jejich dvanáct doporučení a pokouší se je aplikovat na kolekci možných měření společenského rozvoje.

The New Deal was one of the largest government programs implemented in the twentieth century. Yet only recently have historians begun to explore the impact of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) on American culture by studying its smaller programs such as the Federal Writer's, Theatre, and Art Projects. This paper explores the life of Caroline Wogan Durieux, a New Orleans artist, WPA Federal Art Project (FAP) administrator, and representative for the United States' State Department, centering upon Durieux's career from 1917 to 1943. Durieux's work with the FAP, and later the State Department, helped to redefine the role of art in American society by making art widely accessible to the public. With her influential connections in New Orleans society and her commitment to public art, Durieux bridged the gap between art for the privileged few and art for the masses.

O Programa de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Socioambiental e Cultural da Terra Indígena Apucaraninha foi criado como condicionalidade para que a comunidade pudesse receber parte dos recursos oriundos da compensação pela construção e operação da Usina Hidrelétrica de Apucaraninha, instalada dentro das terras indígenas. Teoricamente criado para ser um programa em que os índios participassem de forma ativa e igualitária na sua construção e implementação, já nasce contraditório frente à hegemonia da ideologia da sociedade envolvente imersa na ideologia do management. É assim que tenho como objetivo compreender como o management, enquanto ideologia que se materializa em discurso, atua sobre o Programa de Sustentabilidade Socioambiental e Cultural na Terra Indígena Apucaraninha, Paraná. Para isso, faço uma pesquisa qualitativa em que os discursos, coletados por meio de entrevistas semiestruturadas e grupo focal, aplicados aos indígenas e aos não-indígenas participantes do programa, foram interpretados sob a perspectiva dos elementos da Análise do Discurso na Linha Francesa. Como apoio, ainda analisei documentos do programa e os emitidos pelo Ministério Público Federal. Os principais resultados mostram que, como eu já desconfiava, o programa exclui a participação dos indígenas de fato, uma vez que eles são considerados pelos \"brancos\", de maneira estereotipada, como irracionais, indolentes e atrasados e, assim, incapazes de escolher o \"melhor caminho\" para a sustentabilidade do programa que, neste momento, passa se orientar por uma visão economicista e materialista, contrário a lógica dos índios Kaingang. Ao discurso do management, sustentado pelo discurso capitalista, que promete a felicidade, se junta o discurso do colonizador, que trabalha desclassificando o modo de vida dos indígenas, os colocando em uma situação de vulnerabilidade que pode, assim, promover o seu extermínio, mesmo que não seja físico / The Environmental and Cultural Sustainable Development Program of the Indigenous Land Apucaraninha was set as conditionality for the community be able to receive part of the proceeds from the compensation for the construction and operation of hydroelectric power plant Apucaraninha, located on the indigenous lands. Theoretically designed to be a program in which the Indians where to participate actively and equally in its construction and implementation, is begins contradictory against the hegemony of the ideology of the surrounding society immersed in the management ideology. That\'s how I aim to understand how the management, as an ideology that is embodied in discourse, acts on the Environmental and Cultural Sustainability Program in the Indigenous Land Apucaraninha, Paraná. Therefore, I make a qualitative research in the discourses, collected through semi-structured interviews and focus groups applied to indigenous and non-indigenous participants in the program, were interpreted from the perspective of the elements of Discourse Analysis on the French Line. As support, it was also analysed program documents and those issued by federal prosecutors. The main results show that, as I suspected, the program excludes the participation of the fact that indigenous people, since they are considered by the \"white\" of stereotypical way, as irrational, lazy and backward and thus unable to choose \"best way\" for program sustainability at the moment passes be guided by an economistic and materialistic view, contrary to the logic of the Kaingang. The discourse of management, supported by capitalist discourse, which promises happiness, joins the discourse of colonizer, working disqualifying the way of life of indigenous people, putting them in a vulnerable situation which can thus promote their extermination even than physical.