Custom, governance and Westminster in Solomon Islands : charting a course out of the political quagmire : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Development Studies, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

This thesis investigates whether the people of Solomon Islands would be better served by a form of governance that is politically hybrid than through the current Westminster unitary-state model. In remote provinces such as Choiseul, the reach of the state is limited. Here, notions of citizenship and national identity have gained little traction because kin group relations underpin society and form the basis for peoples’ identity. In such societies customary institutions, in the form of chiefs, and the church provide order. In these self-governing rural communities governance is distinctly parochial in its application and often hybrid in form. This study examines whether the hybrid polities of such communities have an application within the proposed Federal Constitution of Solomon Islands. The thesis, first, examines the international concepts of governance that have shaped and provided a framework within which the state of Solomon Islands, and its systems of governance, have evolved. State governance today, is very much a product of historical antecedents. However, an analysis of these antecedents demonstrates that Solomon Islanders have been particularly adept at appropriating introduced systems for their own purposes, and matters of governance are no exception. Using semi-structured interviews, the fieldwork component of this thesis examines the hybrid form of governance that exists in a Choiseulese village to determine whether such models have an application within the proposed Federal Constitution, thus providing a greater degree of political legitimacy than exists under the current Westminster system. Three tiers of government are proposed in the Federal Constitution – Federal, State and Community Governments. Of these, Community Governments provide a particularly suitable political arena where hybridised forms of village governance, which locally have a considerable degree of political legitimacy, can be combined with such functions of state as are necessary to achieve good governance. This, it is argued, will allow the development of forms of governance that are much more suited to local conditions than is possible under the current constitution

The cost and trade impacts of environmental regulations : effluent control and the New Zealand dairy sector : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Applied Economics at Massey University

This thesis investigates the impacts of current water quality regulations on the New Zealand dairy sector. The dairy industry is expanding, with dairy exports constituting 20% of total merchandise trade receipts. In recent years however, concern has grown in New Zealand and worldwide, regarding the negative environmental impact of intensive dairying, in particular the nitrate levels in ground and surface waters. In New Zealand both the protection of the environment, and trade are important for the economy. This research looks at the possible effects of increased on-farm costs on the competitiveness of the New Zealand dairy sector in the international market. In response to the Resource Management Act 1991, Regional Councils throughout New Zealand have required dairy farmers to operate a land-based disposal system for dairy shed effluent. An estimate is made of the additional cost this imposes on dairy farmers. An applied general equilibrium approach (GTAP) is used to analyse the possible impacts of these additional production costs on New Zealand's dairy export trade. This analysis is conducted under two scenarios, the first being that New Zealand acts unilaterally in imposing water quality regulations. The second scenario assumes that New Zealand's three main dairy export competitors, the EU, Australia and the US also enforce their own water quality regulations and internalise the costs of such regulations. The cost to the dairy farmer of implementing a land-haved effluent disposal system in order to meet water quality regulations is estimated at 2 to 3.2% of total farm costs. In the first scenario, given this increase in costs, the model predicts a loss in international competitiveness for the New Zealand dairy exporting sector. Under the second scenario, the global dairy export price index is predicted to rise by considerably more than the increase in the supply price of New Zealand's processed dairy products. This will mean a realignment of international trading patterns and an expansion of the New Zealand dairy exporting sector, thereby increasing its global market share

Help-seeking From a Counsellor or Psychotherapist: a cross-sectional study of Irish adults

The factors that contribute towards an individual seeking help from a counsellor or psychotherapist for a mental, nervous or emotional problem are explored in this study. A multivariate logistic regression is applied to analyse data from the 2006 National Psychological Wellbeing and Distress Survey. Individuals living in rural areas and in towns with populations of between 5,000 and 10,000 people are found to be less likely to seek counselling, relative to individuals living in Dublin City. Respondents earning the lowest income were less likely to enter therapy compared with respondents earning the highest, while having private health insurance increased the probability of a respondent entering therapy. Individuals aged between 18 and 39 years and between 50 and 64 years are more likely to seek the help of a counsellor. Finally, attending a general practitioner, psychologist, social worker, or member of the clergy increased the likelihood of an individual seeking help from a counsellor or psychotherapist. No such effect was found for attending either a psychiatrist or nurse

A review of the causes of abortion in farm animals with special reference to lesser known bacterial species.

A comprehensive review of abortion in farm animals is presented. Initially it includes a study of the most important non-infectious causes other than bacteria. This is followed by more detailed discussion of the common bacterial agents Brucella and Salmonella. In addition the role of other less well recognised causes of abortion Campylobacter, Leptospira species as well as others the more sporadically reported species of Corynebacteria, Haemophilus, Nocardia, Pasteurella, Neisseria,Mycobacteria, Bacillus and Streptococci is discussed in terms of occurrence, clinical symptoms, pathogenicity and pathology. Subsequently other contributory factors such as the immune status following production of antibodies in adult and foetus is discussed. The possibility that mixed infections can contribute to abortion mechanisms is examined. The value of recent diagnostic tools in determining the causative agents of abortion is considered and their significance in controlling abortion in farm animals analysed. Future areas of research including diagnostic investigation is briefly discussed. An extensive Bibliography of references to farm animal abortion is included

Reassembling the monad: the intellectual genealogy of an actant rhizome ontology

The monad, of which we will speak here, is nothing else than a simple substance, which goes to make up compounds; by simple, we mean without parts. (Leibniz, Monadology) From its origins in antiquity the monad is a concept that has time and again beguiled and attracted philosophers. This thesis will argue that it is a concept that lives on in the work of Bruno Latour and that it continues to have a contemporary relevance, offering a way out of sterile debates rooted in Cartesian dualism – subject/object, interior/exterior, essence/accident, whole/part, mind/body – and an alternative to those traditions which privilege one side of the dualism over the other – positivism on one hand, postmodernism on the other. The present study charts the development of the monad through the modern period, beginning with the work of Gottfried Leibniz and, thereafter, its recurrence in the work of Gabriel Tarde, Alfred North Whitehead, and, finally, Bruno Latour. However, rather than simply sketching a chronological history of the monad this study takes as its starting point Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory, or to use Latour’s preferred formulation, Actant Rhizome Ontology. Arguing that Latour’s work is best understood as being another instance of a monadological metaphysics that – contra Graham Harman – owes more to Whitehead than Heidegger, to Tarde than Nietzsche, to Leibniz than Spinoza; the thesis traces the genetic intellectual relations between Latour and his three co-monadologists. Latour himself frequently identifies Leibniz, Tarde and Whitehead as intellectual antecedents in his own work; in the spirit of Latour’s own Actor-Network Theory, this thesis takes a closer look at these claimed chains of association. The first chapter surveys Leibniz’s monadology and argues that, far from being an idealist, Leibniz was committed to a monism that recognized the materiality of simple substance through his corporeal ‘de Volder’ monad. This does not necessarily lead, as argued forcibly Pauline Phemister, to pan-psychism, as Leibniz anticipates William James’ ‘depsychologized’ category of experience with his three level system of bare, soul and spirit monads, where only the spirit monads possess anything resembling a mind; however, it takes Whitehead’s transformation of the monad into the actual entity to complete the break between experience and mind. The second chapter provides a close reading of Gabriel Tarde’s Monadology & Sociology, a work only made available in English in 2012. Latour has played a significant role in the rediscovery of Tarde, claiming his criminologist compatriot as an intellectual forefather; yet throughout the 20th century Tarde’s work quietly influenced continental philosophy through Giles Deleuze who, despite only ever mentioning Tarde parenthetically, borrows Tarde’s very own formulation for the title of Difference et Repetition. The chapter presents Tarde’s work as being an explosion of the Leibnizian monad where the universe is no longer reflected but literally embodied in each individual entity while at the same time diffused through the universe of monads by virtue of relations of possession. Taken together with his theory of repetition and imitation, his privileging of difference over identity, and his philosophy of having – his ‘echontology’ – Tarde’s monadology provides the foundations for a truly relational ontology; foundations which Latour will retrospectively claim for Actor Network Theory. The third chapter considers Whitehead’s metaphysical scheme as presented in Process and Reality. Whitehead resolves the ‘audacious fudge’ committed by Leibniz – the doctrine of pre-established harmony – through a complex and sophisticated realist metaphysical system, one held together by ‘creativity’. Whitehead’s categoreal scheme, his peculiar vocabulary, his reiterative method whereby ideas are presented over and over again in different contexts mirror the very metaphysical scheme he describes. This – along with his insistence on the atomic nature of time and the instantaneous emergence and realization of each ‘actual entity’ – lays the basis for Latour’s democratic ontology which, as well as famously according equality between human and non-human actors affords concepts the same ontological status as the thinker in whose mind they have been formed. The final chapter returns to the work of Latour himself to find the monad reassembled as the ‘actor-network’. Latour’s ontological scheme is discussed in detail with reference to his three antecedents, and his ontology is presented as a reiteration/renewal of the monad; an ontology that itself demands to be renewed each and every time it is deployed. Finally, the thesis argues that Latour pays insufficient heed to Whitehead’s understanding of abstraction with the result that, despite developing the idea himself, Latour fails to fully embrace the ontological reality of the abstract. This in turn leads to his preference for litany over critique and results in a philosophy with a great deal of descriptive power but little or no transformational power. The ‘compositionist’ politics that emerge from Latour’s Actant Rhizome Ontology are ambiguous and utopian, and the thesis concludes by suggesting that more work is required to further Latour’s democratization of the monad, to include its radicalization, in pursuit of a monadology that provides an ontological basis for: …the genuine resolution of the conflict between man [sic] and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. (Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

El modelo Educativo de la BICU: el caso de los estudiantes afrodescendientes e indígenas en la década 2007-2016

Este estudio describe la Educación Superior de estudiantes de origen indígenas y afro descendientes en la BICU. Se realizó análisis documental y entrevista no estructurada a informantes claves dentro y fuera de esta institución educativa. El acceso para estudiar en BICU es irrestricto para toda la población indígenas afro descendiente y mestiza. Desde 2007 hasta 2016 se han matriculado 58,166 estudiantes. El 50.25% de becas corresponde a estudiantes mestizos y 49.75% entre minorías étnicas. Para el periodo 2007-2016 en la modalidad regular, el abandono global estudiantil es de 59.95%. El marco jurídico reconoce a BICU como comunitario e intercultural, sin embargo; el perfil profesional de los estudiantes indígenas y afro descendientes, no se corresponde a su cosmovisión. El modelo educativo de BICU es absorcionista de homogeneidad cultural en transición hacia comunitario e intercultural. La implementación de software traductor de lenguas nativas puede mejorar la calidad equidad educativa de los indígenas y afro descendientes. Instructores comunitarios con habilidades y competencias interculturales y pedagógicas es una buena opción para fortalecer la interculturalidad en el contexto comunitario de BICU. Sin perder su esencia BICU puede funcionar como Comunitaria e intercultural, Universidad Comunitaria y Universidad de modelo mixto. Se requiere de liderazgo e innovación organizacional socioeducativa, comprometida para alcanzar este estatus

Youth social exclusion in Australian communities: a new index

Using specialised data from the 2011 Census, this paper presents a new index intended to be representative of youth at risk of social exclusion. Abstract Social exclusion and inclusion has been given a great deal of attention in Australia and throughout the world. This broader concept of disadvantage has replaced much of the social discourse around poverty and inequality, with the realisation from researchers, practitioners and policy makers that disadvantage is often a multi-dimensional occurrence, spanning many dimensions of an individual’s life. Despite the attention social exclusion has been given, particular population groups are often overlooked – particularly young people. A growing interest in the power of geographic data and the prevalence of social exclusion, has lead the authors to develop the first nation-wide geographically disaggregated index of youth social exclusion for Australia. A number of domains and indicators deemed important to youth wellbeing were identified and constructed to develop a comprehensive index of youth social exclusion for young people aged 15-19 years. Using specialised data from the 2011 Census, supplemented with national school assessment data, we use a domains approach to construct an index that is representative of youth at risk of social exclusion, using a combination of principal components and equal weighting techniques. Particular attention is paid to ‘youth’ as an important stage of life in its own right and the implications of the delayed transition into adulthood that is now seen in many developed nations. Many more young people now remain as dependent children well into their twenties. A final index of youth social exclusion across Australian communities is presented and discussed

The Efficacy of Financial Futures as a Hedging Tool in Electricity Markets

Abstract This paper estimates and applies a risk management strategy for electricity spot exposures using futures hedging. We apply our approach to three of the most actively traded European electricity markets, Nordpool, APXUK and Phelix. We compare both optimal hedging strategies and the hedging effectiveness of these markets for two hedging horizons, weekly and monthly using both Variance and Value at Risk (VaR). Our key finding is that electricity futures can effectively manage risk only for specific time periods when using hedging strategies that have been very successful in financial and other commodity markets. More generally they are ineffective as a risk management tool when compared with other energy assets. This is especially true at the weekly frequency. We also find significant differences in both the Optimal Hedge Ratios (OHR’s) and the hedging effectiveness of the different electricity markets. Better performance is found for the Nordpool market, while the poorest performer in hedging terms is the Phelix market