Climate capitalism has emerged over the last two decades as the response of a section of the global elite to the crisis of global warming. Greater consciousness of threats to the stability of the global carbon cycle, and thus to the general conditions for capital accumulation, has led certain members of the global elite to design a project of climate capitalism, that holds the promise of a smooth transition out of the crisis and into a new era of accumulation on renewed, ecologically modernized foundations. However, climate capitalism has been contested from the start. For one, many still do not accept that there exists any problem that needs addressing in the first place. At the other end of the spectrum, climate capitalism is challenged on the grounds of its incapacity to reduce GHG emissions and its complicity with neoliberalism in entrenching existing inequality. Debates abound around the latter critique. Should climate capitalism be opposed by all means, or should it be cautiously supported, for want of an alternative that can be realized rapidly enough? The response to this question crucially depends on whether support exists among the corporate and other global elites for a climate capitalism that stands a chance of actually reducing climate impacts in a timely manner. This dissertation directly addresses the issue of the existence and extent of corporate elite support for climate capitalism. It asks specifically, what forces support climate capitalism, how and to what degree they are organized, and how powerful they are relative to the forces of the status quo. This study answers the question of the potential of the climate capitalist project to become entrenched at the core of the neoliberal hegemonic bloc with a qualified yes: although broad support has not yet emerged, it seems poised to develop in the future as the global ecological crisis deepens – perhaps as an outcome of the 2015 Paris Climate Conference. As to the question of the content of climate capitalism, and thereupon the issue of whether climate capitalism can actually provide a reduction in GHG emissions, the study finds that the dominant view of climate capitalism is that of a weak ecological modernization, taking place over the long term. In view of the scientific consensus on the urgency of massive GHG emissions reductions in the near term, this confirms the argument put forth by critics that a realistic response to climate change cannot be founded on climate capitalist principles. / Graduate / 0626 / 0700 / 0616

This thesis reports on aspects of information exchange in an online network whose members share an interest in travel. The Thorn Tree resembles a real thorn tree on which travellers hang messages. Using social network analysis, the network resulting from members participating in online discussions considers the importance of structure and position in an exchange network to travel information exchanges on the Africa category. Different ways and frequency of participation result in communication patterns giving structure to an exchange network in which participation in a thread determines the presence of a tie between actors. Actors are placed in various relations to others; network analysis makes measurements such as levels of reciprocity, density and centrality possible. At the heart of this study lies an inquiry into the Internet’s impact on society, more so, human interaction in cyberspace where spaces, places and even communities are qualified as being “virtual”. Scholars have different views in this regard. Some commentators claim that the Internet has spawned unique forms of community. The term “virtual communities” suggests new kinds of social interaction, with revolutionary consequences for local and global communication. Online communication could be a substitute for the loss of “traditional” physical communities, or even the cause of their demise. Others, however, praise the Internet for spawning communities even in the physical world. More complex theoretical perspectives are indicative of a need to interrogate the very notions of community and contemporary social networks resultant from the many-to-many communication capabilities of computer-mediated communication (CMC). Apart from community formation on the Internet, the concept community has not been tested among travellers yet. Networks, the ties people form and the exchanges that take place as a result of such ties relate to social capital. The notion of social capital in a computer-mediated environment needs more intense academic scrutiny. Nevertheless, for travellers and destination areas alike, information exchanges can be beneficial. However, not all information exchanges on the Thorn Tree or on the Internet per se are necessarily beneficial since verification is not always possible in a cyber environment. Nevertheless, for travellers with a need for travel information in a sparse network characterised by weak ties, content analysis linked to a network analysis proves that weak ties are beneficial for spreading useful information. On the Africa category discussions are short while threads have very limited life spans. Of the total number of actors in this dataset (1 282), it was found that a few are particularly active, while many contribute a few messages to a limited number of threads and clearly do not interact regularly on the Thorn Tree. / Thesis (DPhil (Information Science))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Information Science / unrestricted

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a group of non-infectious diseases that cause hyperglycemia. DM symptoms were first clinically described by ancient Greek physicians whose prescriptions included plant-based remedies. Today, DM affects >400 million people globally and prevalence rates are rapidly increasing in developing countries where basic healthcare relies on local knowledge of botanical remedies. Many developing countries are home to diverse peoples and plants—providing fodder for varied plant-selection strategies and unique botanical pharmacopoeias. I addressed the plant-selection strategies used in a multi-ethnic, developing country, Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), to ascertain their role in shaping the local antidiabetic pharmacopoeia and to assess their benefits and risks in identifying safe and useful remedies. Using literature reviews, field surveys, and laboratory bioassays, I completed three categories of analysis. Ethnobotanical analyses showed that T&T’s antidiabetic pharmacopoeia is primarily of recent origin as >50% of the 48 historical DM remedies were Neotropical natives, including congenerics of well-known medicinal Paleotropical genera. Nevertheless, conservative knowledge transmission was also evident as several Paleotropical species of T&T’s pharmacopoeia, including Momordica charantia and Catharanthus roseus were also used in Africa, India and across the Caribbean. Paleotropical natives with a long history of use are likely to be safer remedies. Ethno-medicinal analyses of the pre- and post-2000 DM remedies of T&T, totaling 99 species, suggest that the centuries-old hot/cold folk disease-model was the model predominantly used in plant-selection. Parallels found between T&T folk concepts and biomedical mechanisms of DM provide probable bases for efficacy but the chronic use of purgatives and bitter-tasting plants is likely to be risky. Phytochemical analyses revealed that 69% of the tested plant extracts contained phenolic compounds, with more than half producing >80% alpha-glucosidase inhibition. Phenolic content and alpha-glucosidase inhibition were strongly correlated among food plants used as medicines, suggesting higher probability of selection as a result of non-target effects. The medicinal use of food plants may provide the best margins of safety and efficacy in identifying antidiabetic remedies. Together, these analyses showed how culture-specific plant-selection strategies can identify safe, useful remedies for developing countries to address their increasing DM prevalence in a cost-effective and sustainable manner.

Individuals engage in competitive and cooperative interactions with conspecifics. Furthermore, within any population of interacting individuals there are typically consistent differences among-individuals in behavioural traits. Understanding the importance of both these types of individual-specific behaviours allows us to understand why populations are structured as they are, why individuals show apparently limited behavioural flexibility, and how these elements link to population-level properties. I used extensive video camera monitoring of a population of wild field crickets (Gryllus campestris) to study the interactions and behaviours of uniquely identified individuals. I studied the shyness, activity and exploration of individuals of this population across contexts: from young to old and between captivity and the wild. This allowed me to confirm that individuals were relatively consistent across their adult lifetimes for all three traits, but only consistent between captivity and the wild for activity and exploration. I then found that high activity levels were positively related to high mating rates and short lifespans. Crucially, lifetime mating success was not related to activity level, indicating that the trade-off between lifespan and mating success was sufficient to allow variation in activity level to persist across generations. I also found that cricket social network structure is stable across generations despite the complete turnover of individuals every year. This social network structure influences sexual selection, with some male crickets heavily involved in networks of both pre- and post-copulatory competition, yet males are unable to use pre-copulatory competition to avoid post-copulatory competition. Additionally, positive assortment by mating rate between males and females may reduce the fitness of males with high mating rates, as they face stronger sperm competition. Finally, I used actor-based models to determine the factors predicting cricket social network structure and to test and reject the social-niche hypothesis for the maintenance of among-individual variation in behaviour. I also demonstrated that little else is needed in a stochastically changing network aside from positive assortment by mating rate to simulate a population with a similar skew in mating success to the one observed in the real cricket population. These results give insights into the importance of trade-offs and stochasticity in maintaining the extensive variation in the natural world.

Riot Grrrl, Girls Rock camps and Ladyfest as social movements act as intermediaries in cultural production spaces, where music focused artefacts are made, collaborations forged, distribution networks established and reception practices enacted to create new conventions which can be understood as feminist art worlds. The growing literature on gender and cultural production, particularly in music communities such as Riot Grrrl, frequently speak of networks in qualitative narrative terms and very little is known about Ladyfest as a feminist movement and as a distribution network. This thesis offers an original contribution to cultural sociology by: employing a novel participatory action research approach to gathering social network data on translocal feminist music based cultural organisations; exploring how these networks can challenge a gendered political economy of cultural production in music worlds; understanding who participates and why; investigating how network structures impact the personal relationships, participation and collaboration opportunities for those involved. Engaging with Howard Becker’s Art Worlds theory as a framework, this thesis explores how music and art by women is produced, distributed and received by translocal networks. It takes into account contemporary issues for feminist music-based communities as well as the historical and international context of these overlapping and developing social movements. The literature suggests that one of the most pressing tasks for a sociology of the arts is to understand how organisational structures negotiate the domains of production, distribution and reception, with distribution modes being the most the most under-researched of the three. By focusing on UK Ladyfest festivals as case study sites, this research serves to address these gaps. Primary data sources include on-line social media, surveys, documents, focus groups and multi-mediainterviews. Findings indicate that those involved with Ladyfest tend to be motivated by a desire to challenge gender inequalities at a local level whilst drawing on local and international movements spanning different time periods and drawing on the works of feminist musicians. Homophily and heterophily both have important roles to play in the longitudinal development of Ladyfest networks. Participants show an awareness of intersecting inequalities such as ethnicity, class and disability with sexuality playing an important underlying role for the development of relationships within the networks. For some, Ladyfest involvement is a gateway into feminist activism and wider social and cultural participation, and for many it leads to lasting friendships and new collaborative artbased ties.

Introduction: Persistent health inequalities are the focus for much public health policy activity. Understanding the policy response to public health problems, the role of evidence, and the roles and strategies of different actors may help explain this persistence. Research suggests that policy actors often access knowledge through interpersonal relations, but current perspectives in the literature do not analyse relational aspects of finding evidence and influencing policy. Identifying powerful and influential actors (in terms of personal characteristics, strategies, and network properties) offers a method of exploring the policy process and evidence use. Methods: Network data were gathered from a public health policy community in a large urban area in the UK (n = 152, response rate 80%), collecting relational data on perceived power, influence, and sources of evidence about public health policy. Hubs and Authorities analyses were used to identify powerful and influential actors, to test whether powerful and influential actors were also sources of information; and betweenness and Gould-Fernandez brokerage were used to explore the importance of structural position in policy networks. These data were analysed in conjunction with qualitative data from semi-structured interviews (n = 24) carried out with a purposive subsample of network actors. Characteristics of powerful and influential actors, the use of evidence in the policy process, and roles and strategies used to influence policy were analysed using a framework approach, and combined with network data. Results: The most influential actors were mid-level managers in the NHS and local authorities, and to a lesser extent, public health professionals. These actors occupied advantageous positions within the networks, and used strategies (ranging from providing policy content, to finding evidence, to presenting policy options to decision-makers) to influence the policy process. Powerful actors were also sources of information for one another, but providing information did not predict power. Experts, academics and professionals in public health were represented in the networks, but were usually more peripheral and played fewer roles in the policy process. This study presents empirical evidence to support the suggestion that recognition of network structure assists individuals to be influential, and proposes a framework to categorise their activities. Conclusions: In order to influence policy, actors need good relationships with other influential actors, and the skills to exploit these relationships. The relational approach is useful for both identifying powerful and influential people (potential evidence-users) and for exploring how evidence and information reaches them. Identifying powerful and influential actors and describing their strategies for influencing policy provides a new focus for researchers in evidence-based policy, and for those wishing to influence policy. For academics and researchers, this study demonstrates the importance of directly creating ties with decision-makers

According to some commentary, employees are empowered by simple, flexible and lightweight social software such as blogs and wikis. Using such software, it is claimed they will be able to connect and collaborate beyond boundaries and to benefit organisations in innovation and growth. Extending such claims, commentators also argue that social software challenges existing ways of networking, communicating and collaborating and is likely to cause disruption to some organisations. However, a literature search reveals that it is still unclear for both researchers and practitioners how social software can be exploited for work purposes, and what are the grounds for its adoption. Systematic investigation of the adoption of social software for work collaboration is found to be absent in academic writing. Organisations continue experimenting on social software, seeking ways to encourage their employees to adopt the tools, and expect to benefit from self-organised, distributed collaboration. This technology adoption is a contingent process. The way members use social software is embedded within the social interaction process, group characteristics, tasks and environments. Adaptive structuration theory (AST) is adopted for social software-supported collaboration in a way that emphasised its value as a contextual analysis approach. A conceptual framework was developed from the researcher's experiential knowledge, AST and empirical evidence, and then revised with the findings from exploratory studies. The main theoretical insights induced from empirical evidence are: influence from 'meta-users', e.g., supervisors and managers, affects both users' use intention and behaviour. Social structures embedded in social capital can enable or inhibit the adoption of social software. Nevertheless, new social structures do emerge from online conversations. Additionally, the results show that task-technology fit has little relevance to social software adoption. A case study approach with mixed methods is adopted in this study. Social network analysis and statistical analysis provide complementary support to qualitative analysis. The UK public sector was chosen as the research context. Individuals are knowledge workers in distributed and cross-boundary groups. The asynchronous social software applications studied are blogs and wikis.

A pesar de la importancia de los parques nacionales para la conservación de la biodiversidad y de paisajes únicos y representativos de la biosfera, la gestión de muchas de estas áreas enfrentan serias dificultades, determinadas por una variedad de deficiencias, entre las cuales destacan sistemas de monitoreo que no abordan de manera integral sus principales problemas de gestión. La presente investigación examina los factores influyentes dentro de la efectividad de manejo de estas áreas, utilizando las metodologías DPSIR, ANP y ARS, con miras a proponer nuevos enfoques metodológicos que contribuyan a incrementar la eficiencia en pro del cumplimiento de sus objetivos de conservación. El enfoque DPSIR permitirá organizar un conjunto de factores influyentes a considerar en el sistema de gestión y aclara las relaciones de causa-efecto hacia una gestión más eficaz y eficiente, mediante la identificación de las fuerzas motrices, presiones, estado, impactos y respuestas en el sistema de gestión. El Proceso Analítico de Redes (ANP) se utiliza para modelar el problema de decisión y la red de criterios y alternativas estructuradas en grupos, a fin de priorizar su importancia en función de los objetivos de manejo. Este enfoque proporciona un lenguaje común de gestión para una mejor integración del sistema de gestión en los otros sistemas de la administración pública, con la activa participación de los principales actores, incluyendo las comunidades locales. El Análisis de Redes Sociales (ARS) servirá para describir las relaciones existentes entre todos los actores vinculados entre sí en forma significativa con el manejo y conservación del área protegida, documentando los patrones estructurales que surgen entre ellos dentro de la compleja red de interacciones del Parque Nacional, con influencia o autoridad en su manejo. / Díaz Martín, D. (2015). Aplicación de las metodologias DPSIR, ANP y ARS en el manejo y conservacion del Parque Nacional Waraira Repano, Venezuela [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/48804 / TESIS

abstract: What causes social systems to resist change? Studies of the emergence of social complexity in archaeology have focused primarily on drivers of change with much less emphasis on drivers of stability. Social stability, or the persistence of social systems, is an essential feature without which human society is not possible. By combining quantitative modeling (Exponential Random Graph Modeling) and the comparative archaeological record where the social system is represented by networks of relations between settlements, this research tests several hypotheses about social and geographic drivers of social stability with an explicit focus on a better understanding of contexts and processes that resist change. The Valencian Bronze Age in eastern Spain along the Mediterranean, where prior research appears to indicate little, regional social change for 700 years, serves as a case study. The results suggest that social stability depends on a society’s ability to integrate change and promote interdependency. In part, this ability is constrained or promoted by social structure and the different, relationship dependencies among individuals that lead to a particular social structure. Four elements are important to constraining or promoting social stability—structural cohesion, transitivity and social dependency, geographic isolation, and types of exchange. Through the framework provided in this research, an archaeologist can recognize patterns in the archaeological data that reflect and promote social stability, or lead to collapse. Results based on comparisons between the social networks of the Northern and Southern regions of the Valencian Bronze Age show that the Southern Region’s social structure was less stable through time. The Southern Region’s social structure consisted of competing cores of exchange. This type of competition often leads to power imbalances, conflict, and instability. Strong dependencies on the neighboring Argaric during the Early and Middle Bronze Ages and contributed to the Southern Region’s inability to maintain social stability after the Argaric collapsed. Furthermore, the Southern Region participated in the exchange of more complex technology—bronze. Complex technologies produce networks with hub and spoke structures highly vulnerable to collapse after the destruction of a hub. The Northern Region’s social structure remained structurally cohesive through time, promoting social stability. / Dissertation/Thesis / Webpage with data tables and R code / Doctoral Dissertation Anthropology 2020

As envisaged in the Sustainable Development Goals, eradicating poverty by 2030 is among the most important steps to achieve a better and more sustainable future. A key contribution to reach this target is to ensure that vulnerable households are effectively protected against weather-related extreme events and other economic, social and ecological shocks and disasters. Insurance products specifically designed for the needs of low-income households in developing countries are seen as an effective instrument to encompass also the poor with an affordable risk-coping mechanism and are thus highly promoted and supported by governments in recent years. However, apart from direct positive effects, the introduction of formal insurance may have unintended side effects. In particular, it might affect traditional risk-sharing arrangements where income losses are covered by an exchange of money, labour and in-kind goods between neighbours, relatives or friends. A weakening of informal safety nets may increase social inequality if poor households cannot afford formal insurance. In order to design insurance products in a sustainable way, sound understanding of their interplay with risk-sharing networks is urgently needed. Socio-environmental modelling is a suitable approach to address the complexity of this challenge. In the first part of this thesis, an agent-based model is developed to investigate the effects of formal insurance and informal risk-sharing on the resilience of smallholders. To lay the conceptual foundation for this approach, a literature review is presented which provides an overview of how to couple agent-based modelling with social network analysis. In two subsequent modelling studies, it is analysed (i) how the introduction of insurance influences the overall welfare in a population and (ii) what determines the resilience of the poorest to shocks when income is heterogeneously distributed and not all households can afford formal insurance. The simulation results underline the importance of designing insurance policies in close alignment with established risk-coping arrangements to ensure sustainability while striving to eradicate poverty. It is shown that introducing formal insurance can have negative side effects when insured households have fewer resources to share with their uninsured peers after paying the insurance premium or when they reduce their solidarity. However, especially when many households are simultaneously affected by a shock, e.g. by droughts or floods, formal insurance is a valuable addition to informal risk-sharing. By applying a regression analysis to simulation results for an empirical network from the Philippines, it is furthermore inferred that network characteristics must be considered in addition to individual household properties to identify the most vulnerable households that neither have access to formal insurance nor are adequately protected through informal risk-sharing. In the second part of this thesis, a broader perspective is taken on the use of models in socio-environmental systems. First, it is envisioned how models in combination with empirical studies could improve insurance design under climate change. Second, requirements for making socio-environmental modelling more useful to support policy and management and scientific results more influential on policy-making are synthesised. Overall, this thesis offers new insights into the interplay of formal and informal risk-coping instruments that complement existing empirical research and underlines the potential of socio-environmental modelling to address sustainability and development challenges.