5,605 research outputs found

    Panacea or producer? Analysing the relationship between international Law and disaster risk

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    This thesis seeks to critically analyse the relationship between international law and disaster risk. Despite the increasing global threat that disasters present, international law’s engagement with their prevention remains at a relatively nascent stage compared to the development of other areas of the law. However, the progress that has been made since the United Nation’s International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction in the 1990s suggests that international law is widely viewed as a valuable tool in addressing the issue and reducing the risk of disasters. In contrast to this, however, relatively little attention has been paid to the ways that international law itself may also play a role in the creation of disaster risk. It is here that the project makes an important and original contribution, by interrogating this presupposition and analysing the ways that international law itself may be culpable in the creation and exacerbation of risk. Through a novel, compound theoretical lens combining Marxist and Third World approaches to international law and insights from disaster theory, the thesis highlights the longstanding complicity of international law in the production of disaster risk. The thesis draws on understandings of disasters as processes that reach back through time, and thus begins its analysis with an examination of the early history of international law and the role of its colonial doctrines in the historic construction of vulnerability and hazards. It then turns to modern international law, particularly within the realm of international economic law, to examine the continuing legacies of these early developments and the ongoing role of international law in disaster risk creation. Overall, the thesis offers an original contribution to conversations on the connection between international law and disaster risk. Rather than focusing only on the positive role that international law can have in the reduction of disaster risk found in the majority of the literature, it seeks to highlight more pathological aspects of the relationship between the two and the implications of this. It ultimately concludes that unless the burgeoning field of international disaster law engages more with such critical accounts of international law and their understandings of the harm the law produces, then it will remain blind to a major source of disaster risk creation and be unsuccessful in achieving its normative aims

    The social origin pay gap in the UK labour market

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    This thesis is composed of four chapters; a critical literature review and three empirical chapters that examine the social origin pay gap in the UK labour market. The overarching research question of this thesis is: To what extent does social origin explain labour market outcomes independently of level of education? Chapter 1 provides a critical literature review of the social origin pay gap evidence base. Chapter 2 investigates whether recent empirical studies have underestimated the social origin pay gap by omitting respondents with undefined social origins. Specifically, this relates to individuals that were not assigned a social origin because their household composition was not clear, nobody was earning in the household, or the occupational identity of the main wage earner could not be identified. Data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) is analysed to establish the prevalence of undefined social origins and to what extent the socio-economic characteristics of those with undefined social origins are different from those who can be identified using the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC). We examine how omitting these groups affects estimates of social origin pay gaps. The results show that 10.5% of the working age population have undefined social origins and that the labour market outcomes of these people are on average much worse than those with defined social origins. Results show that omitting these respondents underestimates the range of the social origin pay gap and the number of people affected. This highlights that there is a further effect of parental association with the labour market or not clearly belonging to a household, which profoundly affects the life outcomes of a substantial share of the working age population. Chapter 3 uses data from waves 1 to 9 of the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) to examine the social origin pay gap and item non-response for social origin in relation to the pay gap. Following the dominance approach – proxying for respondents’ social origin via the ‘highest’ occupation of their parents when they were 14 – we observe a significant pay gap for those with undefined social origins in eight of the nine waves and a significant pay gap for those from NS-SEC 5 and NS-SEC 6 origins in seven waves. The pay gap is largest for those with undefined social origins in seven of the nine waves. When we examine the pay gap longitudinally, we find the pay gap is largest for those with undefined social origins, at 11.7%, followed by those from NS-SEC 7 origins at 11.2%. When we use total parental occupation as a proxy for social origin, we observe that the pay gap is generally larger for those from ‘lower’ social origins, particularly respondents whose parent(s) were economically inactive. This result supplements the findings from Chapter 2 in that individuals with undefined social origins report a larger pay gap compared to those with defined social origins. We observe similar results when we use parental education, total parental education, and highest parental occupation and highest parental education as proxies for social origin in that the pay gap is larger for respondents from ‘lower’ social origins. The results indicate the social origin pay gap may be larger when we consider both parents’ occupation and/or education. Lastly, Chapter 4 uses a range of proxies for cultural capital and social capital in the UKHLS to examine how these impact social origin wage gaps. We observe significant pay gaps for all social origin groups, except those from NS-SEC 2 origins, after controlling for cultural capital, educational attainment, and a range of labour market observables. The pay gap is largest for those with undefined social origins at 8.9%, followed by those from NS-SEC 4 origins at 8.7%. This indicates that cultural capital does not fully explain the social origin pay gap and thus we consider respondents’ social networks. When we control for social capital, educational attainment, and respondents’ labour market features, we observe that the pay gap is significant for those from undefined and NS-SEC 4 to NS-SEC 7 origins. The pay gap is largest for respondents from NS-SEC 4 origins, at 8.3%, and is second largest for those with undefined social origins at 7.9%. This indicates that part of the wage disadvantage experienced by individuals from undefined and NS-SEC 4 to NS-SEC 7 origins is likely to represent the impact of unequal access to social capital. Overall, the results indicate social capital plays a role in explaining the social origin pay gap. This thesis contributes to the social origin pay gap literature in three ways. Firstly, it examines the pay gaps for all survey respondents, including those with undefined social origins and highlights that omitting respondents with undefined social origins underestimates the magnitude of the social origin pay gap and the number of people affected. Secondly, it considers respondents’ parents’ occupational status and education to provide a more comprehensive proxy for respondents’ social origin to estimate class wage gaps. The results highlight significant pay gaps for those from routine and undefined social origins, indicating the pay gap is larger once we consider both parents’ occupational status and education, Thirdly, it uses a range of proxies for cultural capital and social capital to empirically examine to what extent these forms of capital play a role in explaining the social origin pay gap, the first study of its kind to do so. The results indicate that social capital plays a role in explaining the pay gap

    Social Prescribing for Autistic Adults

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    Background Autistic adults are affected by health and social disparities that impact life expectancy and quality of life, frequently resulting in escalating wellbeing concerns requiring costly acute care. Evidence suggests barriers to healthcare and a lack of post-diagnostic support may contribute to these inequalities. Social prescribing, a low-intensity personalised care model receiving increasing attention from policymakers and commissioners, offers opportunities to address isolation, build skills and promote health through collaborations between services and communities. However, social prescribing research and provision has overlooked wellbeing and access needs of autistic adults. This PhD project aimed to investigate factors affecting accessibility of social prescribing pathways, which can comprise a variety of models and mechanisms, and their suitability for autistic adults from initial referral through to prescribed activities. Methods The research delivered a systematic mapping review and mixed-methods study. The review synthesised previous reviews of literature on outcomes, settings and service pathways within community-based services for autistic adults. An online survey of 128 autistic adults explored barriers to primary healthcare, the point of access to social prescribing, across changing contexts using regression analysis. Semi-structured interviews with 23 autistic participants investigated perspectives on wellbeing, attitudes towards social prescribing as a response to wellbeing barriers, and provision of wider support in the community. Qualitative data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, incorporating critical realism and the candidacy framework, to examine individual, relational and systemic factors. Results Findings suggest that access to social prescribing for autistic adults via referral from health and social care services involves patient and provider evaluations, socioeconomic factors and wider contexts. Self-determination was found to link themes relating to meanings of wellbeing for autistic adults. Social prescribing may promote self-determination through its tailored approach. However, pathways require adaptions to maximise engagement, including offering alternative referral routes, novel prescriptions and additional support at key transition points. Providers should work with the autistic community to improve access and acceptability, and bring mutual benefits for individuals and services. Conclusions Service commissioners and policymakers should consider supporting a social prescribing pathway embedded in autism diagnostic services or upskilling existing social prescribing pathways to adapt their practice for autistic adults. The research also adds to understandings of peer support and self-determination as important mechanisms in wellbeing for autistic adults

    Gabriel Harvey and the History of Reading: Essays by Lisa Jardine and others

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    Few articles in the humanities have had the impact of Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton’s seminal ‘Studied for Action’ (1990), a study of the reading practices of Elizabethan polymath and prolific annotator Gabriel Harvey. Their excavation of the setting, methods and ambitions of Harvey’s encounters with his books ignited the History of Reading, an interdisciplinary field which quickly became one of the most exciting corners of the scholarly cosmos. A generation inspired by the model of Harvey fanned out across the world’s libraries and archives, seeking to reveal the many creative, unexpected and curious ways that individuals throughout history responded to texts, and how these interpretations in turn illuminate past worlds. Three decades on, Harvey’s example and Jardine’s work remain central to cutting-edge scholarship in the History of Reading. By uniting ‘Studied for Action’ with published and unpublished studies on Harvey by Jardine, Grafton and the scholars they have influenced, this collection provides a unique lens on the place of marginalia in textual, intellectual and cultural history. The chapters capture subsequent work on Harvey and map the fields opened by Jardine and Grafton’s original article, collectively offering a posthumous tribute to Lisa Jardine and an authoritative overview of the History of Reading

    On the real world practice of Behaviour Driven Development

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    Surveys of industry practice over the last decade suggest that Behaviour Driven Development is a popular Agile practice. For example, 19% of respondents to the 14th State of Agile annual survey reported using BDD, placing it in the top 13 practices reported. As well as potential benefits, the adoption of BDD necessarily involves an additional cost of writing and maintaining Gherkin features and scenarios, and (if used for acceptance testing,) the associated step functions. Yet there is a lack of published literature exploring how BDD is used in practice and the challenges experienced by real world software development efforts. This gap is significant because without understanding current real world practice, it is hard to identify opportunities to address and mitigate challenges. In order to address this research gap concerning the challenges of using BDD, this thesis reports on a research project which explored: (a) the challenges of applying agile and undertaking requirements engineering in a real world context; (b) the challenges of applying BDD specifically and (c) the application of BDD in open-source projects to understand challenges in this different context. For this purpose, we progressively conducted two case studies, two series of interviews, four iterations of action research, and an empirical study. The first case study was conducted in an avionics company to discover the challenges of using an agile process in a large scale safety critical project environment. Since requirements management was found to be one of the biggest challenges during the case study, we decided to investigate BDD because of its reputation for requirements management. The second case study was conducted in the company with an aim to discover the challenges of using BDD in real life. The case study was complemented with an empirical study of the practice of BDD in open source projects, taking a study sample from the GitHub open source collaboration site. As a result of this Ph.D research, we were able to discover: (i) challenges of using an agile process in a large scale safety-critical organisation, (ii) current state of BDD in practice, (iii) technical limitations of Gherkin (i.e., the language for writing requirements in BDD), (iv) challenges of using BDD in a real project, (v) bad smells in the Gherkin specifications of open source projects on GitHub. We also presented a brief comparison between the theoretical description of BDD and BDD in practice. This research, therefore, presents the results of lessons learned from BDD in practice, and serves as a guide for software practitioners planning on using BDD in their projects

    "It's not a career": Platform work among young people aged 16-19

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    In the online gig economy, or platform work as it is sometimes known, work can be organised through websites and smartphone apps. People can drive for Uber or Deliveroo, sell items on eBay or Etsy, or rent their properties on Airbnb. This research examines the views of young people between the ages of 16 and 19 in the United Kingdom to see whether they knew about the online gig economy, whether they were using it already to earn money, and whether they expected to use it for their careers. It discovers careers professionals’ levels of knowledge, and their ability (and desire) to include the gig economy in their professional practice. This research contributes to discussions about what constitutes decent work, and whether it can be found within the online gig economy. The results point to ways in which careers practice could include platform work as a means of extending young people’s knowledge about alternative forms of work. This study also makes a theoretical contribution to literature, bringing together elements of careership, cognitive schema theory, and motivational theory and psychology of working theory, in a novel combination, to explain how young people were thinking about platform work in the context of their careers

    A Tale of Two Trees: A Comparative Study on the Effects of Scale and Biodiversity Efforts in Ghana’s Cocoa and Shea Production Networks

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    This thesis presents two case studies on Ghana’s cocoa and shea production networks, focusing on the effects of scale on biodiversity sustainability dissemination. Analysis is done through my unique holistic framework for action-based production network analysis, which provides a robust and multiscalar analysis to answer my main research question How does scale affect biodiversity sustainability throughout Ghana’s cocoa and shea production networks? The two case studies focus on Ghana’s cocoa and shea production network coordination and the action taken up by different levels of actors within scale, their considerations of, approaches to, and outcomes of biodiversity sustainability dissemination throughout their Ghanaian cocoa production networks. These case studies focus on the history and context of the cocoa and shea sectors as they function within Ghana’s agricultural industry, the influencers, and barriers to biodiversity sustainability dissemination throughout the studied production networks, and the effects of scale on this sustainability attainment. My research is support through primary data collected in Ghana and secondary data. The two case studies are then cross-analysed to draw out the commonalities in context, issues faced, and effects of scale on the studied sustainability aspects. The findings of this research show that in order to achieve biodiversity sustainability, social sustainability must be incorporated into production network coordination and that the level of actors’ scale and scalar approach to network coordination significantly impact achievement of biodiversity sustainability dissemination. The results of this thesis are novel in the fact that it combines several streams of analytical consideration into a holistic framework and presents clear and applicable results that can significantly impact the approach to sustainability dissemination throughout global production networks in an equitable manner that is fit to the context within which production takes place

    A new global media order? : debates and policies on media and mass communication at UNESCO, 1960 to 1980

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    Defence date: 24 June 2019Examining Board: Professor Federico Romero, European University Institute (Supervisor); Professor Corinna Unger, European University Institute (Second Reader); Professor Iris Schröder, UniversitĂ€t Erfurt (External Advisor); Professor Sandrine Kott, UniversitĂ© de GenĂšveThe 1970s, a UNESCO report claimed, would be the “communication decade”. UNESCO had started research on new means of mass communication for development purposes in the 1960s. In the 1970s, the issue evolved into a debate on the so-called “New World Information and Communication Order” (NWICO) and the democratisation of global media. It led UNESCO itself into a major crisis in the 1980s. My project traces a dual trajectory that shaped this global debate on transnational media. The first follows communications from being seen as a tool and goal of national development in the 1960s, to communications seen as catalyst for recalibrated international political, cultural and economic relations. The second relates to the recurrent attempts, and eventual failure, of various actors to engage UNESCO as a platform to promote a new global order. I take UNESCO as an observation post to study national ambitions intersecting with internationalist claims to universality, changing understandings of the role of media in development and international affairs, and competing visions of world order. Looking at the modes of this debate, the project also sheds light on the evolving practices of internationalism. Located in the field of a new international history, this study relates to the recent rediscovery of the “new order”-discourses of the 1970s as well as to the increasingly diversified literature on internationalism. With its focus on international communications and attempts at regulating them, it also contributes to an international media history in the late twentieth century. The emphasis on the role of international organisations as well as on voices from the Global South will make contributions to our understanding of the historic macro-processes of decolonisation, globalisation and the Cold War
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