VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The changing meaning of work, herding and social relations in rural Mongolia

By using ethnographic methods based on extensive participant observation, this thesis explores the role of pastoralism and rural work as a medium of social reproduction for families in rural Mongolia. This work is reported in four articles, which examine herder household management, decision making, and the spatial aspects of household social and economic production. As standalone pieces and as a united work, the articles make a case for understanding social change through the lens of spatialized performative relations. Pastoralism as a form of work and social system is one aspect of these relations. I contend that people consciously engage with herding as a form of work, which is an important reference point in political subjectivities and administrative practices that idealize the state. The policies and practices of government institutions, including non-state agencies, play powerful roles in the particular forms through which relations are spatialized. By taking this approach and prioritizing herder critical reflections on their own lives, I argue against the dual claim that herders exist outside the state and are bound to local environments. I show, in contrast, how herder efforts to access resources beyond local environments, such as formal schooling for children, spatially transform the labour, finance, and mobility systems of households.
My work presents three key arguments with reference to these concepts. The first is that patron–client relations continue to play a strong role in family hierarchies and wider social alliances used to gain access to needed resources and services. Secondly, I argue that pastoralist work is an integral part of governance and the propagation of the moral authority of the state. Pastoralism as a form of work should be seen as a political enterprise as much as an economic or cultural one. Finally, attention to the spatial organisation of household economies, including household splitting and new types of mobility, reiterates the significance of place in human agency.

Advisor: Chatty, D
Jeffrey, C
Sternberg, T
Citizenship undermined: messages received through the social assistance system in contemporary Hungary

Very few narratives go as unchallenged about the transition of Central and Eastern European countries from state socialism to market democracies as the following: before the transitions people in these countries had strong social rights but were lacking any civic and political rights, and while the transformations provided the people with firm civil and political citizenship, they lost out on social rights. In my dissertation I argue that this is an oversimplifying and highly distorted narrative that is blind to the deep inequalities in these societies. My research focused on one particular means of reproducing these inequalities, namely welfare institutions, and explored what recipients of social assistance provision learned about their citizenship in the post-transition Hungarian welfare complex. This analysis not only demonstrated an inextricable interrelationship between civil, political and social citizenship, but also allowed for a deeper understanding of the mechanisms through which apparent political inequalities were reproduced in practice. By the innovative method of institutional ethnography I constructed a mosaic of the various component elements of the institutional system of social assistance provision in contemporary Hungary and investigated the influence that each had on recipients’ civil and political citizenship. This study indicated a marked discrepancy between recipients' ideal and their lived experiences of citizenship, and found that certain characteristics of the system of social assistance provision played a crucial part in reproducing this discrepancy. The high level of discretion in the system, recipients' lack of information, the treatment they underwent in the welfare office, as well as the lack of institutional guarantees that could ensure that they enjoyed equal and fair treatment in all the welfare offices in the country proved to be the most important characteristics of social assistance provision that had direct or indirect effects on recipients' democratic subjectivity.

Keywords: citizenship
popular participation
welfare state
Advisor: Bennett, F
The interplay between global finance and Japanese firms

This thesis explores the interplay between global finance and remote firms and institutions. It highlights the interactions between global institutional investors and Japanese firms on environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) standards, and the process of change in Japanese corporate governance practices. It focuses on analysing the responses of large Japanese firms with a high level of foreign ownership to global finance and global institutional investors' strategies for engagement.
Japan provides an excellent research environment for the topic. It is geographically and culturally remote from the West, and has the world’s third largest economy with increasing foreign ownership on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Under the influence of global finance, the Japanese economy has been in transition despite the persistence of its traditional institutions. There are many globally recognised Japanese firms, although certain firms have come under scrutiny in several recent corporate governance scandals. Recently, corporate reform has become one of the priority policy agendas, which has led to incremental convergence to global standards.
The aims of this thesis are as follows: (i) to analyse the evolution of shareholder activism and corporate governance practices in ownership structure change (Chapter 3); (ii) to examine how global institutional investors privately engage with remote firms (Chapter 4); (iii) to explore the power of global investors in an industry with lower foreign ownership (Chapter 5); (iv) to analyse the perceptions of local firms towards global ESG standards under policy change (Chapter 6).
The thesis revealed the following findings. First, global investors provide one of the only opportunities for ESG-related dialogues for local firms, in a country where local institutional investors are not active shareholders. Global finance has the power to transform local corporate governance practices by breaking down path dependence and institutional complementarities, although the status quo does persist. Second, local firms' norms and perceptions based on the existing institutions are culturally derived informal constraints, which slow down the change of corporate governance practices even after instrumental change. Third, the target firms of engagement activities are home-biased and limited to a small number of large global brand firms; hence, non-target firms and industries maintain their ESG standards unless policy reform occurs. Finally, local firms' unfamiliarity with engagement activities limits the power of global finance in a remote market. There is a gap between global institutional investors' motivation for engagement and Japanese firms’ readiness to respond; hence, considered strategies and modes of communication are critical for effective engagement with remote firms, especially when language and organisational issues are present.

Advisor: Clark, G
Hydrodynamics of micro-swimmers in complex fluids and environments

Both biological micro-organisms and synthetic micro-robots propel through viscous liquids to achieve their goal, be it to invade new territories or to deliver drugs to infected regions. Considerable attention is devoted to learning how to prevent or encourage these processes, and understanding the interactions between micro-swimmers and their complex environments is an essential part of this. In vivo conditions provide a challenge to model, although novel experimental, computational and theoretical techniques have provided clear insights into the continuous interplay between the effects of strong confinement, hydrodynamic interactions, and local activity that drives living systems out of equilibrium.
To analyse the underlying mechanisms of micro-swimmer processes, we develop a hydrodynamic framework based on the fundamental solutions of the Stokes equations to compute swimmer-generated flow fields. These flows affect the motion of swimmers via reflections in surfaces, mix and enhance the uptake of nutrients, and enable cells to sense one another's presence.
Hence, we study the accumulation of microbes on surfaces, which could be relevant for the initial stages of biofilm formation, and compute the strength required for externally imposed flows to detach them. Moreover, we evaluate the ability to swim upstream and uncover that viscoelasticity can provide a natural sorting mechanism for sperm cells. Other ecological effects are considered, including the transport of nutrients by micro-flows, the interaction with water-air interfaces, and the impact of thermal noise and biological fluctuations.
To verify our results, we compare our theory to extensive simulations using a `Raspberry' swimmer model in combination with the Lattice-Boltzmann fluid solver algorithm. This allows us to determine previously unknown model parameters and hence make suggestions to improve micro-organism treatment and micro-robot design.

Keywords: Upstream swimming
Medical physics
Microfluidics
Stokes flow
Infection
Theory
Soft matter
Vortices
Liquid films
Drug delivery
Hydrodynamics
Interfaces
Biological fluctuations
Self-propulsion
Cell motility
Ecology
Computational fluid dynamics
Out of equilibrium
Stokeslet
Rheology
Active particle
Nutrient uptake
Micro-organisms
Microrobotics
Biological physics
Statistical physics
Confinement
Bacteria
Sperm cells
Viscoelasticity
PIV
Pathogen
Nonlinear dynamics
Brownian motion
Biofilms
Complex fluids
Active fluids
Shear thinning
Lattice-Boltzmann simulations
Chlamydomonas
Advisor: Yeomans, J
Do the candidates matter? A theory of agency in American presidential nominations

This thesis develops a candidate-centred conception of American presidential nominations. Candidates' choices in nomination politics remain under-theorised. The literature on nominations has tended either to downplay the role of candidates' independent influence or to suggest that the impact of their choices is too idiosyncratic to theorize about. I reject both of these positions; and instead develop the basic elements of a theory in which candidates are the principal agents of change in nomination contests. I argue that candidates make distinct identity, tactical, and management choices, and I show that this simple frame can be used to connect aspirants’ varying goals to their choices and actions.
In my theory, candidates' prospects remain relatively stable unless a shift occurs in their competitive setting in response to an unexpected event – for instance, a surprising election result. These shifts, or critical junctures, define a candidate's path to his party’s presidential nomination. I argue that the rival candidates' choices dominate the development of these critical junctures and, therefore, that candidates' choices are crucial to nomination outcomes. Structural factors, the actions of non-candidates and the effects of exogenous events, account for a minority of critical junctures.
In the empirical chapters of this study, I examine the Democratic and Republican nomination contests in selected years before the McGovern-Fraser reforms (1912, 1924, 1932) and in post-reform cases (1972, 1976, 1980) to demonstrate the pervasive influence of candidates' choices in contrasting institutional settings. These cases confirm my basic claim about the centrality of candidates' choices and also suggest significant ways in which candidates’ choices have changed between 1912 and 1980.

Keywords: presidential nomination
American election
structure
agency
Advisor: Bowles, N
Imagining 'demand' for girls' schooling in rural Pakistan

This study explores the normative frameworks through which selected parents, students, teachers, and education activists in three villages in rural Pakistan understand and articulate the value of girls' schooling. It argues that within the dominant analytical paradigms of human capital theory and neoliberalism, researchers and policymakers have tended to conceptualise 'demand' for schooling in terms that are narrowly focused upon measuring and boosting enrolment, and thus have failed to capture whether and how shifting enrolments correspond to shifting norms and to the broader imaginative regimes through which differently located actors experience and produce the gendered value of schooling. Typical analyses of 'demand' for girls' schooling have mostly focused upon what factors of schooling provision are most likely to increase parents' willingness to send their daughters to school, and thus inadvertently conflate 'demand' with 'supply' and reveal very little about whether or how such factors influence normative evaluations of girls' schooling by parents, children, teachers, and others across various contexts where enrolment is on the rise. This oversight hinders efforts at comparison that are critical for planning and interpreting transnational initiatives for achieving gender equality in and through schooling.
To improve upon this trend, this study illustrates a) the normative evaluations that underpin selected instances of 'demand' for girls' schooling in three villages in rural Pakistan, and b) how these normative evaluations have changed over time and in relation to particular interventions. Using data from seventeen weeks of fieldwork spanning two villages in the southern Punjab and one in Gilgit-Baltistan, the study explores perspectives about the value of girls' schooling in relation to the key themes of marriage, employment, and purdah. By bringing this data into comparison with mainstream discouses about 'demand,' the study highlights the limitations of those discourses and charts a path for further comparative inquiry. Findings illustrate how normative perspectives about girls' schooling are differentially contested and transformed over time even as enrolment trends converge across contexts, and suggest that researchers and practitioners concerned with promoting gender equality in and through schooling should lend greater attention to the social interactions through which 'norm-making' occurs. This sort of attention to 'norm-making' can reveal new opportunities for intervention, but also, and perhaps more importantly, it inspires humility by demonstrating that all normative evaluations of schooling – whether emerging from education 'experts' or from farmers in rural villages – reflect socially and historically situated notions of personhood, none of which is more 'natural' than any other.

Advisor: Johnson, D
Invisible spaces: variegated geographies of waste in China

With millions of people involved in collecting and treating recyclable products, waste recycling provides a critical entry point to an investigation of the spaces and dynamics of the Chinese economy. Based on sixteen months of in-depth ethnographic research, this thesis, 'Invisible spaces: variegated geographies of waste in China', describes and analyses waste and its boundaries, as well as the actors that deal with it at different scales within the country. The work examines how waste circulates, how it is regulated, and how it is represented in China. It presents stories of the people and places that configure the waste industry, and situates its analysis at the intersection of three different strands of literature: i) variegated capitalism; ii) informal economy; and iii) geographies of waste. The research contends that the 'afterlives' of goods are a productive prism which can be used to understand the variegated mode of capitalism in contemporary China and thus investigates the following question: to what extent do the different cultural, social, political, economic, and material dimensions of waste reveal the heterogeneous characteristics of Chinese capitalism?
Central to my analysis is the concept of invisibility. I conceive invisibility as a socio- political process that brings about an uneven access to resources and labour for subaltern groups, as well as a relational concept encompassing the three complementary and dialectical dimensions of absolute, relative, and relational space. Invisibility is not only a metaphor to define the agency of informal workers, but also an allegory to describe the marginalisation of their activities and spaces. It is an asset and a curse, a condition and a strategy. These multiple dimensions make invisibility a productive device bringing to light the geographies of different accumulation regimes and everyday practices, as well as a potent tool to analyse the alternative representations of waste, value, labour, and development at play in contemporary China. With this in mind, the thesis engages with a number of important debates in geography. In particular, the five empirical chapters engage with literature on global production networks, labour geography, primitive accumulation, geographies of waste, and urban political ecology. While drawing these literatures into conversation with the variegated capitalism framework, the work suggests that the invisibility of waste activities is a powerful tool to analyse the nature and the mechanisms of the variegated modes of production in contemporary China.

Keywords: Waste
Global production networks
Capitalism
Invisibility
Informal economy
China
Labour
Urbanisation
Advisor: Lora-Wainwright, A
Hobson, K
The social organisation of the Penan

This thesis is based in fieldwork carried out in Borneo from May 1951 to May 1952. It describes something of the history and mode of life of the Penan, a nomadic people numbering about 2650, of whom a third have settled and now live in a fashion similar to that of other more familiar Bornean peoples.
The nomadic Penan, with whom I am mainly concerned, live in the primary rain forests that densely cover the uplands and the rocky ridges of the interior. They wander in small groups of from thirty to forty individuals on the average, the extreme of which are separated on the map by about 140 miles of some of the worst country in southeast Asia. It is a harsh land and an exacting one; a land continually drenched with torrential rains throughout the year, folded into great ranges and broken hills and swamps, cut by fast muddy rivers and rocky streams. there is little in it to please a European who lives close enough to it to see it for what it is.
The quality of a report depends much on the way the ethnographer sets about his work, and the reception given to what he presents as facts about a strange people depends to some extent on the reader's imaginative realisation (however far short this may fall) of what it costs the observer to obtain them. 'A man must judge his labours by the obstacles he has overcome and the hardships he has endured, and by these standards I am not ashamed of the results.'
From introduction; continued in thesis

Keywords: Penan
people
southeast
Bornean
social
Asian
organisation
Borneo
Topics in population ethics

This thesis consists of several independent papers in population ethics. I begin in Chapter 1 by critiquing some well-known 'impossibility theorems', which purport to show there can be no intuitively satisfactory population axiology. I identify axiological vagueness as a promising way to escape or at least mitigate the effects of these theorems. In particular, in Chapter 2, I argue that certain of the impossibility theorems have little more dialectical force than sorites arguments do. From these negative arguments I move to positive ones. In Chapter 3, I justify the use of a 'veil of ignorance', starting from three more basic normative principles. This leads to positive arguments for various kinds of utilitarianism - the best such arguments I know. But in general the implications of the veil depend on how one answers what I call 'the risky existential question': what is the value to an individual of a chance of non-existence? I chart out the main options, and raise some puzzles for non-comparativism, the view that life is incomparable to non-existence. Finally, in Chapter 4, I consider the consequences for population ethics of the idea that what is normatively relevant is not personal identity, but a degreed relation of psychological connectedness. In particular, I pursue a strategy based in population ethics for understanding the controversial 'time-relative interests' account of the badness of death.

Keywords: Population ethics
Spectrum arguments
Time-relative interests
Moral vagueness
Veil of ignorance
Advisor: Greaves, H
Bader, R
Building linguistic confidence: A critical study of teachers' Target Language use in the MFL classroom and its implications for students' willingness to communicate

This investigation aims to delineate the ways in which the teacher's use of the target language (TL) influences the learner’s willingness to communicate (WTC) in a foreign language. The nature and extent of the teacher's TL use is a highly contested issue within the field of language pedagogy, and is thus deserving of sustained enquiry. While numerous studies claim that increased exposure to the second language (L2) equates to greater progress in language acquisition (Chambers, 2013; Carroll, 1975; Boulima,1999), others advocate the inclusion of the first language (L1) in effective teaching and learning (Macaro, 1997; Levine, 2003; Christie, 2013). Moving beyond the parameters of these projects, this study sets out to discover the effects of the teacher's TL on students’ own L2 production.
Building on both TL and WTC literature, this small-scale project involved the design and implementation of three TL models with two Year 7 French classes. Students completed a questionnaire before and after a six-week intervention in which the teacher spoke only in the TL. Based on students' feedback and researcher reflections, the second cycle involved a 'home and away' model in which the teacher spoke more TL in certain lessons, allowing a distinct comparison for teacher and students alike. The final cycle placed a greater emphasis on the students’ WTC TL use, with the implementation of four strategies designed to build students’ linguistic confidence. Three other language teachers then trialled the final model with their Year 7 classes to provide richer and fuller data about its usefulness. Interviews with colleagues, journals kept by the students, video recordings and surveys were all employed to examine the discernable parallels between the teacher's L2 use and the students' willingness to produce new language. Results indicated that students' WTC is far more dependent on the tasks they are given and the strategies deployed to increase their TL production, than on their teacher's use of the TL.

Keywords: MLT
MLT2016
Target Language
Modern Foreign Languages
Advisor: Mutton, T