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Massive migration is one the most significant phenomena of China's urbanization. In the thirty years since the "Reform and Open Up" policy began, Guangzhou has experienced economic growth and urban expansion and attracted a vast number of migrants. Seen as the product of the rapid urbanization, urban villages accommodate the majority of migrants by providing low-rent housing, but at the same time cause many social problems. This thesis aim at improving the migrants' standard of living, helping them gradually integrate into the city, and enhancing the potential for social interactions in the neighborhood. / Master of Architecture

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2008. / Title from screen (viewed on August 28, 2009). Department of History, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): William Schneider. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-98).

What is the connection between people and the landscape that surrounds them? How do changes in that landscape affect social life? This study of a dual-sited village community in southern Manggarai (eastern Indonesia) argues that places and pathways are crucially implicated in the constitution of persons and social relationships. Manggarai life takes place within a complex and contested 'landscape' of kinship and history, in which state policies and religious conversion are leading people to reinterpret traditional notions of growth, fertility and the land. In considering this landscape, the study connects literature on the southeast Asian 'House' with the analysis of transformative journeys, and descriptions of village layout and sacred geography with the ethnography of family intimacy. Rooms are shown to be central to the constitution of households and notions of siblingship, whilst ordinary houses are egalitarian collections of rooms, and sites of ritual remembering. Clan identity is embodied in the drum house, but the significance of this 'House' as a social institution is changing under the influence of state cultural politics. Marriage is conceptualised as creating 'paths' of relatedness, and individual alliance connections are maintained by emotional journeys along these paths. Within origin villages, named fields and sacred, stone platforms are potent signs both in and of history, but their absence in recently settled villages contributes to the ritual 'emptiness' of these sites. History is also revealed in the landscape through topogenies that relate ancestral journeys from place to place, and through the growth of seedling villages. However, recent histories have created new interpretations of this landscape. In particular, people engage with their community's division between a highland site and a lowland, satellite village by 'swinging' between the power of 'the outside', and the authority of the centred, ancestral interior.

The thesis focuses on changing medical beliefs and practices in Bani Ghazl, a village of 631 inhabitants in the ~ugariyya district of North Yemen. The analysis of medicine is first placed in a broad ethnographic context, with a presentation of the economic and political experience of the Hugariyya in this century. The medical data suggest that traditionally, great emphasis was put on personal responsibility for the prevention of illness and promotion of health. This orientation remains but is supplemented by simultaneous use of western medicine, which does not emphasize personal responsibility but rather reliance on the extra-household cures of specialists. That one set of symptoms can have many explanations in the community is discussed. Finally, the influence of a new economic and religious elite on village medical practice is discussed.

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The graduation theses "Kacov Castle" by Jan Závěta deals with the foundation, development and reconstruction of Kacov strongholds and later of the mansion up to the present. The main part of the thesis is related to historical development of the Kacov Castle and its extensive Baroque reconstruction during the reign of Toscan Princess. The author separately depicts the constructional-historical exploration of the castle and corroborates it with a copious photodocumentation. The architecture of the square, vicarage and the Church of Virgin Mary is brought in in other chapters. The Baroque sculptural group of The Fourteen Saint Servants, which was made under the previously mentioned Toscan Princess as well, is described in the same way. The author pursues the development of the community during the first half of the 20th century, when the village experienced the second golden age after the period of the Toscan Princess. Every year the community was visited by thousands of summer guests. The life there was very abundant, which he furnishes with "Sokol", decorative, theatral and other institutions' activities. In the last chapters the author occupies himself with the development of the village up to the present. He highlights so much needed, albeit fiscally challenging reconstruction of the Kacov...

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Thesis--Uppsala. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 172-177).