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The subject matter of the Master thesis is the potential unemployed, who will loose their source of living after the decommissioning of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, their expectations concerning social guarantees, which are provided for in the policy carried out by the Republic of Lithuania in this particular case. With the view to fulfilling the tasks set in the thesis, literature and other sources on the topic in the Internet, social studies on the decommissioning of the Nuclear Power Plant were analysed, interviews with the employees of the nuclear power plant, who will gradually loose their jobs due to the decommissioning of the power plant, were conducted. The Master thesis consists of three parts. The first part considers the problems encountered by the potential unemployed due to the integration of Lithuania into the European Union, threats posed by the increased competition of labour force and free movement of labour in the European Union area, social consequences of loosing a job and former social status, as well as problems relating to the necessity of re-qualification and taking new personal initiatives in order to cope with the threat of unemployment. The second part reviews the legal acts, following which the potential unemployed can hope for social security after the decommissioning of the Nuclear Power Plant, social studies and readiness of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant region and Visaginas town to meet the future changes in the labour market, and... [to full text]

This thesis explores the relationship between the National Film Board and its audiences, with particular attention to the ways in which the NFB has tried to respond to the needs of Canadians for media representations of themselves, through the Challenge for Change program (1967-1978) and Studio D (1974-). The focus of this work will be on the progressive aspects of NFB productions, which have frequently taken controversial stands against official government policy. / In the process, the place of the NFB within a politics of representation will be discussed, and its critical contribution to the constitution of a Canadian "national identity" will be examined. Finally, this study is part of an attempt to investigate characteristics of Canadian society, with respect both to the functioning of government and to the democratic use of film as a medium enabling culturally marginalized people to find their own voices.

In this action research project, a multimethodology (MM) approach for planning community development projects (CDPs) is proposed. The MM approach is composed of four planning stages; three Soft OR approaches; and a theoretical framework for sustainable community development. The aim of the research is to examine MM’s potential benefits in facilitating group planning and decisionmaking within the context of a particular CDP in Colombia. Thus, the research centres attention on illustrating a theoretical informed way for designing MMs and a systematic procedure for evaluating their impacts in practice. A case study is undertaken in order to evaluate MM’s benefits in a real-world situation. It unfolds within the context of a Colombian governmental project that seeks to improve the socioeconomic conditions of a group of families living in a deprived community in Colombia. MM is employed in order to assist an organisation to design ideas for new business units for some of the families of this community. The case study entails dealing with different complexities and difficulties, including with a decision-team that had highly deteriorated working relations between its members. The results suggest that the main benefits of MM were not only related to clarifying and structuring the content of the problem, but also to improving the quality of the social interactions between the members of this conflicting team. Hence, it seems that MMs might facilitate decision-teams to deal with some of the most common complexities that can be found in CDP-related problems, such as: assessing trade-offs between multiple community’s dimensions, managing uncertainty, etc., as well as facilitate the negotiation process of conflicting ideas and improve the quality of the CDPs planned by them. In this regard, this research aims to be able to contribute to the literature in MM and Community OR (i.e. OR for community development).

Since 2000, mixed-tenure development has been advocated in planning policy guidance to local authorities in England, as a means of providing subsidised housing alongside market rate properties. This research explores residents’ experiences of three large, high-density, mixed-tenure housing developments in East London. A combination of in-depth interviews and survey responses provide insights into various aspects of daily life in these schemes, including interpersonal contacts and social relations between residents, attitudes towards tenure-based differences, and perceptions of the local neighbourhood. These insights are, in turn, situated within the context of an analysis of the provision process for mixed-tenure housing, based on interviews with key informants from housing associations, developers, architects and regeneration agencies. Policies for tenure-mixing ostensibly constitute a novel means of providing subsidised housing within a more social inclusive residential form. However, this research reveals a distinctly ordinary quality to everyday life in mixed-tenure schemes, within which the majority of interactions between residents were casual and infrequent, with relatively few close or sustained relationships, especially with between those from different social, economic or cultural backgrounds. On the other hand, these ‘mixed communities’ were by no means immune to tensions, divisions or prejudice. In both these respects, residents’ actions, attitudes and experiences did not correspond to ambitious propositions for tenure mixing to create an inherently more ‘inclusive’ social milieu with instrumental benefits for lower-income residents. This combination of banal and occasionally divisive social relations therefore appears to challenge the rationale for policy programmes to ‘engineer’ positive social relations through market-led interventions in housing provision. Rather, if this model of mixed-tenure housing provision does have a role in structuring the lives of residents’, it is arguably through design strategies that in fact function to keep inhabitants of different tenure groups apart.

This thesis is an ethnographic study of the Uruguayan programme CEIBAL, which aims to promote social inclusion by providing children and teachers with laptop computers. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that it illustrates empirically the complicated work of conceiving, implementing and sustaining policy in practice, both at the macro level and through local instantiations. This was achieved in three inter-related ways. First, by looking at how the national project of development was conceptualised around themes of techno-modernity and consolidated the promise of inclusiveness through claims on the universality of ‘technical needs’. Technology provided the conceptual space in which to resolve a presumed dichotomy between themes of equality, education and paternalistic state and those of economic development, modernisation and innovation. Second, it was analysed by exploring the way in which heterogeneous assemblages of people, values, laptops, and interests, were mobilized to stabilize the programme’s material and conceptual order across a wide range of sites and actors. This was based on the recognition of a ‘natural affinity’ between CEIBAL and Uruguay, which concealed differences, provided coherence and built a strong sense of ‘national consensus’. And finally, as a result of the other two, it was analysed by examining the relationship between ‘the technical’ and ‘the social’ as inscriptions and ‘fudged’ values objectified in the device faced users and their expectations. This implied looking at how CEIBAL officials attempted to make the laptop embody a political and moral project of inclusion, and its infinite promises, so that it could perform them. People in the three localities studied in this thesis (Montevideo, Paysandú and Queguayar) created very tangible strategies for dealing with notions of ‘social inclusion’, expressed different understandings of how technologies created possibilities for them and enacted these beliefs through a wide range of practices. This included the creation of new metaphors of ‘social inclusion’ through the notion of ‘connectivity,’ reconfiguring both social values and definitions of what constitute ‘connections’ as a result: the laptop’s ability to connect children with each ‘wired up the social fabric.’ These negotiations over the possibility of making connections are explored through a new concept that I refer to as ‘geographies of possibilities,’ which describes topographies of power that influence people’s ability to make technology perform. The key to this notion lies in the recognition of several forms of agency that are enacted in strategies to navigate through different geographies: people are not mere recipients of policy but active constituents of its various forms and instantiations in practice.

This thesis consists of a brief introduction, which situates the work within in the intellectual history of development theory, and three papers that address important gaps in our understanding about the dynamics of urbanisation and urban development in sub-Saharan Africa. The first provides an interdisciplinary, historical perspective on the dynamics of urbanisation and urban growth in the region from the colonial era to the present day. I argue that these processes are fundamentally driven by mortality decline set in motion by improvements in disease control and food security. Viewed through this lens, the widely noted phenomena of ‘urbanisation without growth’ and very rapid urban population growth in the late 20th century are not as unusual as they have often been portrayed by development economists and policymakers. The second addresses the question of why sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of slum incidence of any major world region. I argue that slums can be interpreted as a consequence of ‘disjointed modernization’ in which urban population growth outpaces economic and institutional development. I trace the origins of disjointed modernization in sub-Saharan Africa back to the colonial period and show that colonial era investments and institutions are reflected in contemporary variation in slum incidence. I argue that ‘status quo interests’ and the rise of an anti-urbanisation bias in development discourse have inhibited investment and reform in the post-colonial era. The final paper presents and tests an empirical model designed to account for variation in urban protest activity across countries in the region. The model is comprised of basic demographic, political and economic factors that theoretically influence the motives, means and opportunities of potential protestors. The results of a panel data analysis are consistent with the core hypotheses, but several unexpected results emerge. More research is required to confirm these results, clarify mechanisms and account for broader trends in contentious collective action in the region.

This thesis is concerned with the way that modern political change affects social relationships in a prosperous predominantly Greek-Cypriot village. The first chapter traces the main social, political, demographic and economic changes to have affected the village in this century. The second chapter considers in detail the importance of landholdings, of supplementary occupations, and of status distinctions derived from education and work in the villagers' system of social evaluation. Chapter 3, in considering kinship and affinity as institutional constraints on the conduct of individuals, also stresses one prize of success in the village arena - the desirability of one's children as marriage partners. The fourth chapter is concerned with other types of social relations which constrain men, in particular fictive kinship, friendship and membership in the village itself (which is defined in a number of ways); this leads directly to the description of the village as a solidary community. Chapter 5 analyses the leadership opportunities provided by administrative office in the village, and considers how far power is achieved and diffused in other ways. Chapter 6 examined the scope of politics in the village, particularly the meaning of the opposition between left and right wing supporters, as well as the benefits of political alignment. The seventh chapter is a brief survey of politics leading up to Independence in 1959-60, and a slightly fuller discussion of the events of the last decade. Chapters 8 to 11 are all concerned with the detailed description and analysis of the most important political processes to affect the village since Independence. A number of internal disputes are the subject of chapter 85 in chapter 9 the village, in alliance with neighbouring villages, struggles to get government to start building a dam; in chapter 10 the administration of an agricultural cooperative shows prominent villagers in action, while chapter 11 concerns the first important elections to have taken place in the island for ten years, as they were seen to affect the village. In the final chapter I assess the introduction of new political resources into village politics, and the various ways in which some measure of control over political conflict is maintained.

The present study examines the impact of socio-demographic and attitudinal characteristics of pastors and laypersons on the implementation process. The research is based on the hypothesis that implementation of social action programs is related to the importance given to these programs by members of an organization. The findings reveal that different sets of socio-demographic characteristics are influential regarding the importance given to programs by pastors and laypersons. Additionally, the results show that the attitudinal characteristics have greater impact on pastors' perception of social action programs than that of laypersons. The priority in the implementation process of social programs is proven to be identical with the overall perception of the importance of these programs. / Department of Sociology

This study focuses on the demographic history of the island of Paros in the period 1894-1998. Two main villages of Paros, namely Naoussa and Kostos, have been chosen as a case study for a more insightful investigation of the demographic behaviour of the island population. The method of family reconstitution has been applied to civil and parish registers of Naoussa and Kostos in order to study in depth issues related to the demographic transition in the island. Moreover, the thesis, by means of aggregate analysis based on official statistics dated back to 1860 and on primary data collected on the field, constitutes a comparative study in four administrative levels: at the level of the nation (Greece), the district (the Cyclades), the prefecture (Paros) and the community (Naoussa and Kostos). In every case the results of the analysis of all levels are compared with each other and especially with that of Greece, placing the island populations in a national context and drawing some conclusions concerning the differences and similarities between island populations and their metropolis. The main findings showed that marital fertility in Paros was natural up to the late 1920s. The level of fertility at the beginning of the twentieth century, however, was rather moderate, mainly due to a relatively prolonged period of breast-feeding. Infant and childhood mortality were lower than the national average in the first decades of the twentieth century, but the difference diminished, or even reversed around 1950. The marriage pattern, which up to the 1980s demonstrated certain characteristics of the Mediterranean pattern, cannot be characterised as typically Mediterranean because of the moderately high levels of permanent celibacy that were exhibited throughout most of the study period. Migration was the main regulatory factor of the demographic equilibrium in the island.