The complex relationship between human societies and the environment has become a thriving field of research over the past three decades. The contribution of human osteoarchaeology to exploring this relationship, however, has been rather limited. Two unpublished late medieval skeletal assemblages unearthed in the historical centres of Bucharest and Braşov (located in southern and north-central Romania respectively) seemed ideal choices for investigating the impact of substantial climatic and environmental changes that took place worldwide between the 14th and the 18th century AD. As witnessed by medieval artistic and documentary sources, this unsettled climate was mirrored by human populations with social and political instability, epidemics, famine, but also through the rise of new cultural movements. The analysis of over 600 individuals (a minimum number of 421 individuals from Bucharest and 206 from Braşov) was carried out to: 1) Provide a thorough osteological analysis, and compare and test statistically the collected data to reconstruct demographic and pathological patterning; 2) Identify ‘skeletal environmental markers’, i.e. possible indicators of the effect of climatic shifts on the human body; 3) Cross-reference osteological, archaeological, historical and climatological data in order to present a robust biocultural assessment of the impact of environmental and historical events on the Romanian population during the Middle Ages. The identification of low life-expectancy, higher mortality rates for children and young adults and general high morbidity levels were in line with other studies on medieval populations. However, evidence for a high prevalence of specific physiological and psychological stress markers was observed in these two geographically, culturally and economically different urban communities. As a strong mortality- and morbidity-shaping factor, the detrimental effect of climate anomalies is one of the main explanations for such findings, and is supported by medieval historical sources and recent advances in Romanian climatological studies. Despite some limitations (i.e. incomplete chronological information for most of the burial contexts, minimal local historical sources, lack of funding for isotopic analyses, and time constraints), the results of the present study have offered a new perspective on the relationship between Romanian medieval populations and their living environment, and have shown the enormous potential of interdisciplinary bioarchaeological research in Romania.

This thesis analysed the variety of views expressed about disparities between Romanian Roma and non-Roma by people who are actively engaged in redressing unjust social and economic differences. The focus was placed on the variability of views between and within three different contexts: academic texts proposing policy measures for addressing disparities between Roma and non-Roma people; policy documents concerning measures for Roma inclusion; and conversations by people involved in the implementation of Roma inclusion policy measures. The general concerns of this study were to identify (1) the ways in which the problem of ethnic disparity was portrayed, (2) the solutions proposed to the problem of ethnic disparity, (3) the ambivalent, dilemmatic or concealed aspects concerning the topic of disparities between Roma and non-Roma people living in Romania, (4) whether the perspectives of Roma people were accounted for in the contexts analyses and (5) the similarities and differences between the discourses of academics, policy makers, practitioners and beneficiaries of public policies concerning disparities. The theoretical foundation for this thesis was offered by the social psychological literature that links disparities between groups of people and racial or ethnic prejudice. There are four ways in which this thesis has contributed to this literature. Firstly, most of the social psychological research on ethnic disparities has been experimental, whereas in this thesis, the focus was on the often overlooked discursive practices concerning ethnic disparities. Secondly, although some of the social psychological literature, especially research on the contact hypothesis and social identity theory, has looked at the dynamic interrelationship between advantaged and disadvantaged group members, most research has focused only on the perspectives of the advantaged group members. Therefore, there remains a research gap in the literature concerning the perspectives presented in inter-ethnic interactions, and even more so, by disadvantaged group members. This thesis added to the analysis the perspectives of advantaged and disadvantaged group members, both separately and in interaction. Thirdly, whereas emergent work looks at the ambivalent views towards ethnic or racial minorities, and the possible ironic effects of prejudice reduction strategies, there is virtually no research about the possible ironic, ambivalent or dilemmatic effects of strategies which target systemic based ethnic disparities - issues explored in this thesis. Finally, most social psychological research focuses on a single context of study, most commonly the public perceptions about members of the disadvantaged groups, but also marginally mass media representations, academic publications or political discourses. This thesis places attention on an equally important area of study concerned with whether and how discourses can move between different domains, and the impact or acknowledgement of elite discourses on the everyday conversations. There are four key findings that emerged from the studies conducted for this thesis. Firstly, it was found that while expressing views about ethnic disparity, academics, policymakers, practitioners and beneficiaries of public policies for Roma people displayed subtle forms of ethnicism. Secondly, a great deal of political discourse was devoted to the encouragement of individual changes in ethnic minorities, without a similar focus on the roles of majority group members in perpetuating inequality. Whereas, the problem of Roma inclusion was acknowledged by academics, policymakers, practitioners and beneficiaries of policy measures, to be a matter for public policies, some of the attribution of responsibility for inclusion was offered to Roma people, who were encouraged to change as individuals in accord with majoritarian norms. Thirdly, the analysis showed the inclusion of the perspectives of ethnic minorities only in two of the three contexts where policy measures for Roma people were proposed and implemented: academic publications and conversations. The perspectives of feminist experts and women were only marginally present in academic publications and conversations, while missing from policy discourses. Also the perspectives of academics or the non-hegemonic voices of excluded or disadvantaged Roma people were largely absent from the arguments presented in policy documents for Roma inclusion. Lastly, this thesis found that there are ambivalence, dilemmas and concealment at work within arguments proposing policy measures for redressing ethnic disparities, with important political consequences. The findings of this thesis contribute to the important conversation about the meanings of disparity and the political solutions for achieving equality between groups of people. Also, the findings of this thesis have important implications for the social psychological theory of disparity, the policies for redressing disparity and the social work practice with disadvantaged group members.

No description available.

L’objectif de cette thèse est d’établir une ethnographie des formes de la mémoire de l’interdiction de l’avortement dans le régime totalitaire de Ceausescu. Entre 1966 et 1989, le régime communiste roumain a imposé des politiques pronatalistes, au nom du : binele natiunii socialiste (« le bien de la nation socialiste »). Une construction de la maternité comme « tradition roumaine » a été ainsi développée, en parallèle d’une stricte interdiction de l’IVG, et de la mise à l’écart des moyens contraceptifs modernes. La remémoration sociale de ce passé difficile reste encore un tabou dans la société roumaine d’aujourd’hui. Il semblerait qu’en Roumanie actuelle cette remémoration-faible joue un rôle important dans la santé reproductive, et qu’elle est déterminée par des relations d’intersubjectivité entre les différentes formes de la mémoire du pronatalisme, c'est-à-dire la mémoire officielle, la mémoire culturelle (publique) et la mémoire sociale-partagée. L’analyse développée sur ces formes et leurs relations d’intersubjectivité a pour base un terrain anthropologique (2004-2009) sur la mémoire de l’avortement en Roumanie communiste, et fut réalisée dans le domaine interdisciplinaire des Études mémorielles. / Taking the pronatalism of Ceausescu’s regime as a case study, this thesis is an an ethnography of the memory-formes of a recent delicat past, such as the banning of abortion in a totalitarist regime. From 1966 to 1989, the communist regime imposed extreme policies of controlled demography in Romania, as it was imputed, for ‘the good of the socialist nation’. A construction of maternity as ‘Romanian tradition’ was developed in parallel to the banning of abortion on request and the making of contraception almost inaccessible. The social remembering of such a difficult past is still a taboo in contemporary Romanian society. This law-remembering, which is maybe playing an important role in the current situation of Romania’s reproductive health, is influenced by the intersubjectivities devellopped between the different forms of pronatalist memory, i.e. its official memory, its cultural memory and its social memory. The analysis of those memory-formes and their intersubjectivities is based on an anthropological fieldwork (2004-2009) on the memory of abortion in Communist Romania, and is theoretically informed by the interdisciplinary field of Memory Studies.

<p>1998 förvärvades företaget Urbis Security i Rumänien. Urbis Security blev sedermera införlivat i dotterbolaget Assa Abloy Romania. Med tiden har problem börjat dyka upp och företaget har fått allt svårare att hävda sig både kvalitets, konkurrens och resultatmässigt. Följden av detta är planer på nedläggning eller förflyttning av vissa delar i tillvekningsenheten av Assa Abloy Romania. Undersökningens syfte är att med hjälp av den framtagna modellens fyra faktorer utvärdera hur dessa påverkade situationen fram till nedskärningarna av vissa delar inom tillverkningsenheten i Assa Abloy Romania. Metoden består av en fallstudie innehållande djupintervjuer bestående av fyra områden som ska undersökas dessa är ledarskap, kommunikation, relation och invävnad. Av undersökningen framgår att vissa av problemen hade kunnat undvikts om parterna haft en mer rak och konsekvent kommunikation och ett fungerande ledarskap vilket även hade påverkat relationer och invävnad positivt. Detta skedde inte och ledde till att outnyttjade möjligheter gick förlorade.</p>

<p></p><h1>Abstract</h1><p>Waste disposal is a global problem contributing to the ongoing climate change by large emissions of greenhouse gases. By using waste material as a resource instead of landfilling, the greenhouse gas emissions from landfills are reduced. Waste material can be used for waste incineration with energy recovery, thus decreasing the greenhouse gas emission from energy utilization by changing from fossil fuels to a partly renewable fuel.</p><p>Arges County in Romania has severe problems with its waste material, mainly sewage sludge and waste from households and industries. As a consequence of the Romanian EU accession in 2007, Arges County is obliged to close its landfills for waste in a near future. A reconstruction of the wastewater treatment plant and an improved management of the sewage sludge residue are necessary in order to comply with EU standards. The requirements from the EU regarding waste disposal together with the existence of a district heating network in the residence city Pitesti, makes it interesting to investigate energy recovery from waste material in Arges County.</p><p>Therefore, the goal of the study is to evaluate the possibility to extract energy from co-incineration of the waste material, sewage sludge and waste generated in Arges County. In order to reach this goal, the composition and quantities of the waste material is investigated. A suitable technology for the waste-to-energy (WTE) plant is proposed, based on the data of the waste material as well as on   established WTE technologies and their costs. It is assumed that the WTE plant will be implemented in 2020 and that all the generated waste will be incinerated. Furthermore, an environmental analysis is carried out, which presents the reductions of greenhouse gas emissions with the proposed WTE plant in comparison with the present system; including the management of waste and sludge and the district heating production, which is based on fossil fuels.</p><p>The result shows that the waste material in Arges County has a calorific value of 7.5 MJ per kg, which is suitable for co-incineration of waste and sludge. The suggested WTE plant has the total power of 130 MW, annually recovering 620 and 330 GWh of heat and electric power respectively. The investment cost of the WTE plant is estimated to 226 million euro with a payback time of 8 years. The environmental analysis shows that the proposed system in comparison with the present system will decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 88 percent.</p><p>A WTE plant appears to be a sound investment in Arges County and would sharply reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases in the county. However, some obstacles exist. Waste management is a new field in Romania and currently there are no WTE plants. Furthermore, the data used in this study concerning the quantity and composition of the waste, is uncertain and further studies are necessary before a WTE plant can be established.</p><p> </p>

<p>In the context of democratisation in the early 1990s, the governments in Central and East Europe (CEE) had to decide how to deal with property that had been confiscated under state socialism. Nationalised housing and collectivised land were to a varying extent returned to former owners and their heirs by means of restitution, as well as being distributed to other citizens who were in possession of the users’ rights to such properties.</p><p>This thesis examines the spatial impacts, in terms of ownership patterns, of the way the redistribution of nationalised housing and collectivised land has been dealt with politically and at the local level in post-socialist Romania. It also locates the Romanian property reforms in relation to those of the rest of CEE. The impact of political directives on the property redistribution is analysed in relation to both structural influences, such as democratisation and antecedent property regimes, and implementation patterns in varied place-contexts. The thesis demonstrates that restitution was stifled due to disagreements between leftist and rightist political blocs, with the latter arguing for restitution whilst their opponents wrote the first restitution laws. A re-privatisation law allowed for the public sale of nationalised housing to tenants and thereby blocked the implementation of a restitution law, thus constituting a dilemma for constitutional democracy. In liberal place-contexts in West Romania, these obstacles to housing restitution were in part avoided. By contrast, land restitution was most widespread in the east, a stronghold of the left. This was because the legislation gives priority to restitution in areas of this kind, where smaller land-holdings dominated prior to 1945. The left-wing government pursued an electoral strategy of distributing small properties to a large number of citizens, and to current users in particular. This resulted in a fragmentation of historical property. </p>

In dieser ethnographisch-soziologischen Fallstudie wird die Geschichte der chinesischen Immigration in Bukarest nach 1990 in ihrer Besonderheit und ihren allgemeinen Strukturen nachvollzogen. Dies geschieht durch eine Doppelperspektive auf den Fall: Die Rekonstruktion der diskursiven (Re-)Präsentation des Falles als methodisch-analytische Vorstufe wurde einer anschließenden historischen Rekon-struktion der erlebten Geschichte der Migranten vorangestellt. Die anschließende Kontrastierung der Ergebnisse aus beiden Analyseschritten diente der Heraus-arbeitung vorher noch nicht sichtbarer Interdependenzen und Bezüge zwischen diesen beiden Ebenen. Mit anderen Worten: Die diskursive Ebene und die historische bzw. erlebte Ebene bilden gemeinsam und in Verschränkung miteinander die konstitutive/n Struktur/en des Falles: Erstens geht es um die Besonderheit der Post-1989-Migration von China nach Rumänien im Kontext von Transformationen. So ist für die Struktur und den Verlauf des Falles bestimmend, dass sich mehrere Wandlungsprozesse sowohl im Herkunfts- als auch im Einwanderungskontext zugleich ereigneten. Dazu gehören die Globalisierung allgemein sowie die als Transformationen bezeichneten Prozesse in China seit 1978 und in Rumänien seit 1989. Auf nationaler, lokaler Ebene sowie auf der Ebene der alltäglichen sozialen Wirklichkeit der Stadtbevölkerung und der Immigranten in Bukarest war zu beobachten, dass diese mit rapiden Veränderungen konfrontiert waren und sind. So kamen zu Beginn der 1990er Jahre einige Pioniere mit Koffern voll China-Ware in Bukarest an und verkauften ihre Ware auf den unzähligen kleinen Straßenmärkten der Stadt. Im Jahr 2007 befindet sich auf einem großen Areal am Stadtrand von Bukarest ein Baukomplex aus acht großen Shopping-Malls. Chinesische UnternehmerInnen investieren nun in Großprojekte wie etwa der Telekommunikation in Rumänien. Neu ist auch die Rekrutierung von chinesischen Textilarbeiterinnen durch rumänische Unternehmer. Diese Entwicklung hängt mit dem gegenwärtigen Mangel an rumänischen Arbeitskräften aufgrund der Auswanderungs-wellen aus Rumänien zusammen. Charakteristisch ist jedoch, dass diese ge-sellschaftlich tiefgreifenden Änderungen, die nicht nur die hier genannten öko-nomischen, sondern auch politische und soziale Konsequenzen haben, in einem starken Kontrast dazu stehen, dass ihre soziale Wirklichkeit in der Forschung, der Politik und Öffentlichkeit unbeachtet und unbekannt blieb. Als zweites Themenfeld ist das Spannungsverhältnis von lokalen und globalen Prozessen für die Geschichte der Migranten zu nennen. Dabei sind die Bedeutung der „Verortung“ einerseits und die der Transnationalität andererseits strukturbildend für die Fallgeschichte. Dabei spielte die Auseinandersetzung mit dem wissenschaftlichen Transnationalismuskonzept eine besondere Rolle: Dieses behandelte ich als theo-retischen Diskurs, der zunächst kritisch betrachtet wurde. Die Frage, ob und wie die chinesische Community in Bukarest transnational lebt und was transnationale Lebens-formen sein könnten, wurde empirisch beantwortet. Drittens habe ich unter Bezugnahme auf das Konzept des sozialen Deutungsmusters aufgezeigt, dass Informalität als soziales Konstrukt auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen fallbestimmend ist. Informalisierungsprozesse sowie damit verbundene Illegalisierung und Kriminalisierung der Migranten in Europa bilden also ein weiteres Themenfeld der Fallstruktur. Schließlich stellt die gesellschaftliche Konstruktion kultureller Deutungsmuster über chinesische Migranten ein viertes zentrales Thema der Fallstruktur dar. Die chinesischen Migranten in Bukarest leben im Fadenkreuz unterschiedlicher Zuschreibungen. Im Herkunftsland werden sie als patriotische Kapitalisten, die Moder-nität ins Land bringen, gefeiert. In Europa werden sie der internationalen Welle ‚illegaler Migration‘ zugeordnet und auf Kriminelle und/oder Opfer reduziert. In Bukarest leben sie mit und in Konkurrenz der Bewertungen bzw. Abwertungen von Minderheitengruppen, wie etwa der Roma-Minderheit. Diese Bewertungen und Zuschreibungen haben mehrere Konsequenzen. Eine davon ist, dass chinesische Immigranten in Bukarest es gelernt haben, mit diesen aktiv umzugehen. So wurde deutlich, dass sich kulturelle Deutungsmuster nicht nur habituell verankern oder als biographisches Kapital gelebt werden, sondern situationsangemessen genutzt oder sogar teilsweise inszeniert werden, mit dem Ziel, einen Weg in die Gesellschaft zu finden und in dieser als Minderheitengruppe in eine respektierte Position zu gelangen. / Based on a case study on the new Chinese migrant network in Bucharest, this dissertation shed light onto this new migration pattern that has neither been investigated nor considered an important political matter in Europe. On the contrary, the issue of immigration has been consciously ignored by the Romanian public and was considered a ‘taboo’ for Romanian state agencies during the first half of the 1990s. Combining a variety of ethnographic methods, the following research-questions were addressed: Why and how are those immigrants ‘kept secret’? How are Chinese migrants regarded or represented in Europe and in the society of Bucharest? And what is the story behind these discourses? In this study, I reconstruct the historical development of the new Chinese migration wave to Eastern Europe, the immigration process during the early ‘wild’ years of transition in the 1990s and, finally, the rise and development of Chinese markets in Romania resulting in an urban project called ‘Chinatown of Bucharest.’ In particular, I intend to highlight with this the complexity of the immigrants’ network-building during this process, which implicates both their social embeddedness in the ‘transition-society’ as well as their transnational links to ‘homeland’.

1998 förvärvades företaget Urbis Security i Rumänien. Urbis Security blev sedermera införlivat i dotterbolaget Assa Abloy Romania. Med tiden har problem börjat dyka upp och företaget har fått allt svårare att hävda sig både kvalitets, konkurrens och resultatmässigt. Följden av detta är planer på nedläggning eller förflyttning av vissa delar i tillvekningsenheten av Assa Abloy Romania. Undersökningens syfte är att med hjälp av den framtagna modellens fyra faktorer utvärdera hur dessa påverkade situationen fram till nedskärningarna av vissa delar inom tillverkningsenheten i Assa Abloy Romania. Metoden består av en fallstudie innehållande djupintervjuer bestående av fyra områden som ska undersökas dessa är ledarskap, kommunikation, relation och invävnad. Av undersökningen framgår att vissa av problemen hade kunnat undvikts om parterna haft en mer rak och konsekvent kommunikation och ett fungerande ledarskap vilket även hade påverkat relationer och invävnad positivt. Detta skedde inte och ledde till att outnyttjade möjligheter gick förlorade.

Through the years, there has been a great deal of archaeological research focused on the earliest farming cultures of Europe (i.e. Early Neolithic). However, little effort has been expended to uncover the type and nature of daily activities performed within Early Neolithic dwellings, particularly in the Balkans. This thesis conducts a spatial analysis of the Early Neolithic pit house levels of the Foeni-Salaş site in southeast Romania, in the northern half of the Balkans, to determine the kinds and locations of activities that occurred in these pit houses. Characteristic Early Neolithic dwellings in the northern Balkans are pit houses. The data are analyzed using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology in an attempt to identify non-random patterns that will indicate how the pit house inhabitants used their space. Both visual and statistical (Nearest Neighbor) techniques are used to identify spatial patterns. Spreadsheet data are incorporated into the map database in order to compare and contrast the results from the two techniques of analysis. Map data provides precise artefact locations, while spreadsheet data yield more generalized quad centroid information. Unlike the mapped data, the spreadsheet data also included artefacts recovered in sieves. Utilizing both data types gave a more complexand fuller understanding of how space was used at Foeni-Salaş. The results show that different types of activity areas are present within each of the pit houses. Comparison of interior to exterior artifact distributions demonstrates that most activities take place within pit house. Some of the activities present include weaving, food preparation, butchering, hide processing, pottery making, ritual, and other activities related to the running of households. It was found that these activities are placed in specific locations relative to features within the pit house and the physical structure of the pit house itself. This research adds to the growing body of archaeological research that implements GIS to answer questions and solve problems related to the spatial dimension of human behaviour. / February 2008