137 research outputs found

    Transience and durability in Japanese urban space

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    The thesis addresses the research question “What is transient and what endures within Japanese urban space” by taking the material constructed form of one Japanese city as a primary text and object of analysis. Chiba-shi is a port and administrative centre in southern Kanto, the largest city in the eastern part of the Tokyo Metropolitan Region and located about forty kilometres from downtown Tokyo. The study privileges the role of process as a theoretical basis for exploring the dynamics of the production and transformation of urban space. Three aspects of temporal experience identified by Giddens – routine, biographical and institutional time – are adopted as a framework for considering how the dynamics of social reproduction are expressed in terms of transience and durability within urban form. A methodology is developed to explore the changing interrelationship between six conceptual ‘entities’ – the individual, household, dwelling, establishment, premises and site. Metrics are identified for each to facilitate a consistent analysis over time of the changing relationship between these based on a formal diachronic longitudinal survey. An analysis of the spatial transformation of the material form of the city between 1870 and 2005 was completed based primarily on recording the changing use over time of about 4,500 sample points. The outcome of the study is presented in five substantive chapters. The first considers characteristics of the layout of neighbourhoods and dwellings that have endured largely through their close association with processes of social reproduction. The following four chapters examine chronologically the evolution of the city, documenting transformations in urban form and their expression in terms of changing use of volumes of space, the characteristic infrastructure, premises and dwelling types, and how these relate to broader trends in Japanese history. The final chapter summarises the interrelationship of these transformations and draws some conclusions concerning what promotes transience and durability in an urban environment

    Social change and educational problems in three modern Asian societies:: Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong a comparative study.

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    The main theme of the thesis is a discussion of education and social change in the three East Asian societies over the post-war period. The thesis is divided into four sections. The first is a background study. In this section, the social and educational backgrounds of the respective societies are discussed. Special attention is paid to the stress on modernization as a common orientation in social developments. Major concepts and definitions of modernization are discussed and an attempt is made to study the modern development of these societies in the light of modernization theories. The second section is a discussion of education in technological societies. The concepts of industrial, post- industrial and technological societies are discussed in the light of the works of the major social theorists and futurologists. The development of technology and its relationships with education are outlined. Further, the social implications and problems of technological and scientific education are analysed. The third section is a discussion of education in rapidly changing societies. The acceleration of social change in modern societies is traced. Rapid changes in the educational scene of the respective societies are also outlined. The social implications and problems of the rapidity of change and the role and functions of education in face of rapid change are discussed. The fourth section is a discussion of the emergence of credentialism in modern societies and its manifestation in education. Negative aspects of diplomaism, excessive competition and examination systems are discussed. In conclusion, an overall review of the relationships between education and social development is made. There is an analysis of the fundamental educational problems of modem societies, and finally, in this context, a suggestion that the objectives of education should be reconsidered

    A comparative study of late-imperial and early-republican private property rights institutions, as measured by their effects on Shanghai's early financial markets

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    This research presents an analysis of Shanghai's two separate, parallel but simultaneously coexisting institutional environments, one operating under control of the Chinese central government, and the other under an extraterritorial system defined by foreign (mainly British, American, and French) political and legal conceptualisations. This institutionally dichotomic condition characterised Shanghai for over one hundred years, from the mid-nineteenth to midtwentieth centuries, throughout the course of amid tumultuous political upheaval shaping the domestic political landscape. The nature of these parallel institutional environments in large part reflected the period's political events; the era's political turmoil, via their impact on the nature of institutional protections on private property, contract, and investor rights, concomitantly helped determine Shanghai's economic development, including the development of the city's financial markets. While China's broader domestic institutional framework over this period has received considerable attention in the literature, there exists debate regarding the nature of the strength and efficacy of the domestic institutional environment, particularly in regard to issues pertaining to state capacity and protection of private property rights. This debate is reflective of similar debate within Chinese economic history, one that has portrayed China's late-imperial and republican economic growth as signified mostly by failure, yet with recent revisionist work providing intriguing empirical evidence suggesting considerably stronger economic growth to have occurred throughout the period. In a parallel manifestation, a robust revisionist literature has presented an effective challenge to the standard conventional literature has tended to view the domestic institutional environment over the period as inherently weak and ineffective. In this research project, we utilise Shanghai's unique dualistic institutional setting over this period to help address this debate in the literature. Specifically, we identify how differences between these two institutional frameworks impacted economic actors' behaviour, with a particular emphasis on the revealed preferences displayed by investors acting within Shanghai's early financial markets. To undertake our analysis, we construct an original dataset based on archival records of bond and equity prices that traded on Shanghai's early stock exchanges. The market pricing and trading activity associated with similarly constructed financial instruments, differing primarily in terms of the issuer –whether a domestic or extraterritorial entity– reflect the differing perceptions that contemporaneous investors ascribed to the broader institutional environments. This economic and financial historical research project therefore utilises analysis of contemporaneous investor perceptions to examine not only Shanghai's early financial markets, but also to draw broader conclusions regarding Shanghai's dual institutional environment from a comparative perspective, as well as providing a new viewpoint on a long-standing debate in the literature regarding the efficacy and strength of China's domestic institutional foundations over the late-imperial and early republican time period

    Socio-economic aspects of South African history, 1870-1962

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    Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University.South African history is dominated by the encounters and relationships between English- and Afrikaans-speaking white people, and between white people and black people. This study describes and analyses some aspects of the history and structure of these two relationships as they developed in the wake of the country's industrial revolution. There are six chapters, the first four dealing primarily with the socio-economic basis of the White-White relationship, and the last two with the White-Black relationship and the problem of achieving compatibilltJy between White security and African advancement. [TRUNCATED

    Mortality change in Hermoupolis, Greece (1859-1940)

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    Ph. D. Thesis.This thesis examines mortality decline from 1859 to 1940 in the city of Hermoupolis, on the Greek island of Syros. A demographic approach is employed to understand the mechanisms of mortality decline at both local and national levels. This study produces important new insights into Greek and Mediterranean urban historical demography and is the first comprehensive study of urban mortality in Greece, utilizing the largest and one of the longest time-series yet calculated from civil registration and census data. Standard historical demographic methods were employed in this study along with the technique of nominal record linkage. A series of abridged life tables was constructed for the very first time for a Greek urban settlement, enabling the calculation of age-specific mortality rates and life expectancy. Cause-specific mortality analysis for the years 1916–1940 provided a deeper insight into the epidemiological profile of the city. Hermoupolis experienced much higher mortality levels than the national average. The findings presented here suggest that early childhood mortality started to decline rapidly as a result of mass immunisations from the late nineteenth century onwards, with declines in early adulthood and infancy following. This thesis has found that the second stage of Omran’s epidemiological transition theory was still ongoing in the 1930s, with high prevalence of infectious diseases, especially of tuberculosis among young adults and diarrhoeal diseases among infants and young children. Exceptionally high mortality levels were also recorded during the 1918 influenza pandemic. This thesis reinforces and confirms our limited knowledge about the timing of the mortality transition in Greece. It proposes that an urban penalty was clearly operating in the country even during the first decades of the twentieth century. Finally, this thesis suggests that a combination of factors was responsible for the mortality decline in Hermoupolis, including wider access to water, which even when it was not clean enough to drink, it nevertheless enabled improvements in personal hygiene among the residents of the city

    The great depression in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay: revisiting vulnerabilities and policies

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    In this thesis Marcelo Gerona and Silvana Sosa undertake an analysis of the Great Depression (1928-1934) in a sample of three highly interconnected South American countries: Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay (ABU). The problem tackled in this work is the relative vulnerabilities of ABU, which contributed to the strong impact of the Great Depression, as well as the nature of the policy responses to the economic emergency. In this context, the hypothesis is that ABU were highly vulnerable to the Great Depression, and among them the smallest country, Uruguay, was the most vulnerable of all. This research is original not only for having assessed jointly these three scarcely analysed countries from a historical-comparative perspective during this uneasy period of time, but also because of the introduction of a new eclectic conception of ‘complex vulnerability’ that involves many paradigms and points of view. Furthermore, the historic research along with a comparative reference to the Financial Crisis of 2008 helps the reader to understand the role of the semi-periphery, in an effort that is appealing for both historians and policymakers worldwide.Political Culture and National Identit

    Four Essays in Applied Microeconomics

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    Culture -- as defined by the collection of beliefs, norms and preferences shared within social groups -- interacts in complex ways with social and economic outcomes. It, both, shapes the economic and social environment of societies as well as adapts as a consequence to changes in it, such as economic and environmental shocks as well as social policy. In the four independent chapters of this thesis, I explore the complex relationship between culture, the social environment, policies, and economic shocks. I investigate what determines specific aspects of culture, how government policy can enhance potentially desirable cultural traits, how culture adapts to economic shocks and how this, in turn, translates into economic and social outcomes

    Kangkong (Ipomoea, Convolvulaceae) and the geographies of interstitial urban spaces in Southeast Asia

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    This is a study of the life and heritage of a plant and the people involved in the prod~ction of kangkong, Ipomoea aquatica Forskal within dynamic peri-urban spaces m mamland Southeast Asia. Kangkong has a distinction of being both a food in much ofAsia and a weed in other parts of the world. It has become an important vegetable in Cambodia, Thailand, and Viet Nam. The production of this vegetable largely occurs around cities. In Hanoi and Phnom Penh, the use of wastewater is an important aspect of its production while in Bangkok, though wastewater is not used, kangkong has become a commercial vegetable replacing rice production in 'some areas. Such disparate trajectories offer insights into the households involved in its production and the spaces upon which it thrives so that opportunities for understanding the desakota characteristics ofspatial change in mainland Southeast Asia can be made.In understanding desakota geographies, this study looks at the key factors that explain livelihood dependence through the use ofsurvey data and sequential regression. Then their geographical underpinnings are fleshed out The results showed that, in Bangkok, the occupational multiplicity of the wife explains dependence while it is the performance of kangkong production by both the husband and the wife in Hanoi. In Phnom Penh, it was shown that it is the occupational multiplicity of the husband that explains a household's dependence on kangkong production.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo
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