VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Power and happiness: C.B. Macpherson’s overlooked contribution

Although theories of ideology or ‘internal impediments’ have been sidelined in most academic and popular discourse, they remain vital to the improvement of democratic politics. This essay argues as much insofar as theories of ideology have been dismissed on the grounds that their supposed reliance on conceptions of human nature necessarily undermines their potential contribution to human improvement. The argument is advanced in the context of a now obscure debate surrounding the work of C. B. Macpherson. Macpherson provides a framework which, for the very reasons it is dismissed by those interested in developing theories of ideology, remains alive to objections against such theories typically considered decisive. These are that the conceptions of human nature upon which such theories rely imply an essentialist and egoistic individualism resulting in an inability to appreciate the extent to which human beings are shaped by social and historical context. Using Aristotle as a counter-example to such charges, and in demonstrating Macpherson’s heavy reliance upon a relevantly similar form of individualist perfectionism, the dissertation provides reason to rethink the intellectual marginalization both of theories of ideology and of Macpherson’s political philosophy insofar as this has been effectuated or is considered justified by the claims here disputed.

Keywords: happiness
internal impediments
ideology
democratic theory
individualism
power
Advisor: McNay, L
Change, continuity and cultural identity as traced through the people and place of Ambohimanga, Madagascar

This thesis is about the Tsimahafotsy Merina of Ambohimanga, Madagascar, and the relationship between their collective concept of cultural identity and the cultural landscape in which they live.
The Tsimahafotsy, once the dominant cultural group on the island have, over the last century, lost their political and social dominance, yet they remain united in a position of perceived privilege and power, a situation which inspired my thesis question: How did the Tsimahafotsy Merina build and maintain such a distinct, coherent and enduring sense of cultural identity in spite of significant and prolonged forces of change?
I argue that the Tsimahafotsy have built and maintained their position as a result of a shared concept of socio-cosmic order in which they hold a dominant position, with their ancestors and tradition serving as a mediating mechanism to excessive change. Although the Tsimahafotsy appear to have undergone significant political, economic, social and cultural transformations from the early phases of their history to the present, evolution has in fact been conservative and additive, and the fundamental imago mundi upon which the Tsimahafotsy's collective identity is based has therefore remained consistently intact.
I attempt to demonstrate that the cultural landscape of Ambohimanga has played a significant part in creating and maintaining this "ideal" socio-cosmic order over time, through its role as a powerful communication system. The order has been explicitly and symbolically mapped onto Ambohimanga's cultural landscape (an integral part of the Tsimahafotsy's everyday and ritual lives) as it slowly and additively evolved from the early phases of Tsimahafotsy history to the present. As with their political, economic, social and cultural world, the forces of change that the Tsimahafotsy have encountered have exerted influence over Ambohimanga's cultural landscape, but this has been largely surface change. When we peel back the layers by considering archeological and anthropological sources together (a method I call "archaeological anthropology"), a fundamental continuity of meaning for those initiated into this powerful visual language is revealed.
Thus, as a result of their conservative approach to change, the visual vocabulary of Ambohimanga's cultural landscape has remained comprehensible to the Tsimahafotsy, and its meaning consistent - thereby playing a significant role in the Tsimahafotsy's rise to a position of domination in Imerina and Madagascar, and maintaining their collective image of themselves as privileged and powerful despite current political and economic realities.

Advisor: Gosden, C
Reporting from ‘the field’:  foreign correspondents and the international news coverage of East Africa

There has been significant academic criticism of the international news coverage of Africa, but little or no first-hand research on the forces that create this news. This thesis draws on 51 semi-structured interviews and ethnographic work with practicing foreign correspondents in Sudan, Kenya and Uganda to explore the question: how can we explain and theorise the production of international news on East Africa?
The thesis argues that Pierre Bourdieu’s Field Theory, and its analytical toolbox of ‘field’, ‘capital’ and ‘habitus’, can be meaningfully used to examine international journalistic practice. Field theory has been widely and productively used to understand domestic news production, but it has not yet been employed to empirically investigate journalistic production in the global sphere.
The analysis is presented in three sections, each of which focuses on a different ‘layer’ of the international news system: the global field, where newswires compete for clients and capital; the national field ‘back home’ where traditional, nation based news outlets are based; and, finally, the local and immediate site where foreign correspondents work.
Each of these layers is explored through an in depth case study of a major news producer/group of producers working in East Africa. The first and most substantial section examines the global journalistic field, and the position and practices of the Reuters newswire within this field. The second examines the foreign correspondents who report on Africa for print outlets in the UK. The final section presents two case studies of correspondents at work, negotiating a local news ecology: the election violence in Kenyan (2007-8), and the international coverage of the Darfur crisis. The discussion explores the fluidity between these three layers.
Each analysis section stands alone as an investigations of major news producers in Africa today, and the forces that influence their work. Together, they build the argument that field theory is a useful approach to conceptualising the contemporary global news system, and examining journalistic practices within this. The main strengths of the theory lie in its notion of habitus; the extent to which it can incorporate and explain change; and its ability to link macro level phenomenon with micro level practice. The theory is ideally suited to capture and study the way in which foreign correspondents negotiate a complex and fluid global news system.

Keywords: communications
media
Africa
Sudan
international news
Kenya
newswires
newspapers
Uganda
Bourdieu
news production
Reuters
newsroom ethnography
Advisor: Örnebring, H
Stremlau, N
Pension fund capitalism in Europe: institutional organisation and governance of Finnish pension insurance companies

Pension capital is the single largest block of capital in the global domain of finance and a transformative social force. However, the studies on pension fund capitalism have been geographically limited. Although vast pools of pension capital have been generated outside the Anglo-American institutional environments, we still have little knowledge on the social construction of pension fund capitalism outside that context. The purpose of the study is to develop theoretical-methodological tools for studying the institutional differences in pension fund investments with habitual institutionalist theory at the level of organisation fields, and to apply these tools in an empirical case study that has theoretical relevance concerning the recent financialisation of European pension provision. The case study is focussed on the field of Finnish pension insurance companies that execute the nationally mandatory partly funded TyEL pension scheme. The case study includes a single case analysis at the organisation field level with embedded case analyses on the investment processes in two companies. The study is based on multiple sources of textual and interview data gathered and analysed with content analysis. It is argued that the institutional life of Finnish pension insurance company investments illustrates divergence from the Anglo-American pension fund capitalism and has reinforced elastic institutional solutions especially in domains of governance and regulation even under Europe-wide financialisation pressures. The Finnish case shows that there are alternative institutional solutions for various domains of pension fund capitalism, but the strong Europe-wide trends have all characterised recent institutional change in the TyEL field as well. It is concluded that although the European shift towards pension fund capitalism with the generation of increasingly independent portfolio investors with increasingly principle-based regulation and risk-based supervision has not necessarily implied strong institutional convergence, the European pension investors are likely to share a number of common questions in the future.

Keywords: Europe
organisation fields
investments
governance
institutional theory
pension funds
pension insurance companies
Advisor: Clark, G
The electrochemical detection and characterisation of single nanoparticles

This thesis presents experimental work with the primary aim of developing new approaches for the detection and characterisation of nanoparticles via electrochemical methods. The first chapter introduces the fundamental aspects of electrochemistry while the second chapter discusses the need for nanoparticle detection methods and the nonelectrochemical and electrochemical techniques that are currently used in the measurement of nanoparticles.
A novel way to quantify silver nanoparticles in aqueous solution is proposed via nanoparticle-electrode impact experiments. In this technique a suitably potentiostatted electrode is immersed in a nanoparticle solution so as to bring about the oxidation or reduction of a single nanoparticle upon its collision with the electrode surface. This “direct” nanoparticle impact technique is then employed to detect laboratory synthesised silver nanoparticles in seawater. It is further shown that this method is capable of sizing silver nanoparticles contained in a commercially available cleaning product. Commercial silver nanoparticles are subsequently monitored via a sticking and stripping technique where homemade gold electrodes fabricated from CDs are immersed in a seawater sample spiked with nanoparticles prior to stripping voltammetry.
The reduction of hydrogen peroxide on the surface of silver nanoparticles impacting upon an electrode is also examined. This “indirect” nanoparticle detection method is shown to provide an accurate route to nanoparticle sizing. A Fickian model is subsequently proposed to describe nanoparticle transport to the substrate electrode in both direct and indirect nanoparticle detection techniques. The importance of determining the proportion of nanoparticles which adhere to the electrode surface upon impact is highlighted and the sticking coefficient of a gold nanoparticle at a carbon surface determined. This technique to monitor nanoparticle sticking is optimised by chemical modification of the substrate electrode in order to achieve a “sticky” surface improving the rate of silver nanoparticle sticking.
Finally, the nanoparticle collision method is shown to be applicable to C60 nanoparticles where their detection and sizing is achieved in non-aqueous conditions. The methods developed in this thesis make a significant contribution to the promising application of electrochemical techniques in the detection and characterisation of single nanoparticles.

Keywords: Nanoparticle Detection
Nanoelectrochemistry
Advisor: Compton, R
Highly comparative time-series analysis

In this thesis, a highly comparative framework for time-series analysis is developed. The approach draws on large, interdisciplinary collections of over 9000 time-series analysis methods, or operations, and over 30 000 time series, which we have assembled. Statistical learning methods were used to analyze structure in the set of operations applied to the time series, allowing us to relate different types of scientific methods to one another, and to investigate redundancy across them. An analogous process applied to the data allowed different types of time series to be linked based on their properties, and in particular to connect time series generated by theoretical models with those measured from relevant real-world systems. In the remainder of the thesis, methods for addressing specific problems in time-series analysis are presented that use our diverse collection of operations to represent time series in terms of their measured properties. The broad utility of this highly comparative approach is demonstrated using various case studies, including the discrimination of pathological heart beat series, classification of Parkinsonian phonemes, estimation of the scaling exponent of self-affine time series, prediction of cord pH from fetal heart rates recorded during labor, and the assignment of emotional content to speech recordings. Our methods are also applied to labeled datasets of short time-series patterns studied in temporal data mining, where our feature-based approach exhibits benefits over conventional time-domain classifiers. Lastly, a feature-based dimensionality reduction framework is developed that links dependencies measured between operations to the number of free parameters in a time-series model that could be used to generate a time-series dataset.

Keywords: classification
high throughput methods
time-series analysis
Advisor: Jones, N
Little, M
“Enough! or too much”:  forms of textual excess in Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge and De Quincey

My thesis explores the potential and the peril of Romantic literature's increasingly complex forms through a close comparative study of the works of William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas De Quincey. These writers exemplify the Romantic predicament of how to make vision manifest – how to communicate one's imaginative and intellectual expansiveness without diminishing it. They sought different strategies for increasing the capacity of literary form, ostensibly in the hope of communicating more: clarifying meaning, increasing accessibility and intensifying original experience. But textual expansion – materially, stylistically and intellectually – often threatens more opportunities for confused and partial meanings to proliferate, overwhelming the reader by dividing texts and undermining attempts at coherent thought. Expansion thus becomes excess, with all its worrying associations of superfluity. To further complicate matters, Burke's influential tenet of the Sublime makes a virtue out of excess and obscurity, raising the problematic spectre of deliberately confused/confusing texts that embody an aesthetic of incomprehension. I explore these paradoxes through four types of 'textual excess' demonstrated by the writers under discussion: firstly, the tension between poetry and prose adjuncts, such as prefaces and notes, in Wordsworth and Coleridge; secondly, De Quincey's indulgent verbosity and struggle to control the freeing shapelessness of prose; thirdly, Wordsworth's and De Quincey's parallel experiences of revision as both uncontrollably diffusive and statically concentrated; and lastly, Blake's more deliberate, systematic attempt to enact a literary Sublime in which the reader is forced out of passivity by the competing demands of verbal and visual media. All are motivated and thwarted in varying degrees by their anxious preoccupation with saying "Enough", and the difficulty of determining when this becomes “Too much”. These authorial dilemmas also incorporate larger concerns with man's (over)ambition at a time of rapid and unprecedented economic, social and intellectual acceleration from the Enlightenment to industrialism. The fear that the concept and process of 'progress', or 'improvement', marks deficiency rather than fulfilment haunts Romantic writers.

Keywords: cities
syntax
Edinburgh
French Revolution
balance
Burke
Malthus
De Quincey
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Kublai Khan
Sospiria de Profundis
Prelude
London
flux and reflux
illuminated books
labyrinth
sublime
editing
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
Laocoon
Biographia Literaria
Wordsworth
Coleridge
Piranesi
fragmentation
excess
prose and poetry
illustration
population
limits
Blake
Advisor: Perry, S
Modelling the seasonal variation of the Florida current

The linear response of a two layer ocean model to a periodic wind stress curl in the presence of bottom topography has been investigated. For periods much less than the time taken for the wind generated baroclinic Rossby waves to pass over the topography (i.e. 'short' periods), the ocean response is primarily that for a homogeneous ocean and thus strongly modified by topography. For periods much longer than this time (i.e. 'long' periods), the Rossby waves compensate for the effect of topography and the non-topographic Sverdrup balance holds. For the Atlantic at 25°N, the long period limit is of the order of years to decades, so at annual period the non-topographic Sverdrup balance is not applicable. Variations in transport can be forced by a wind stress over varying topography, and by the passage of a coastal baroclinic Kelvin wave over varying topography.
The relative importance of the above dynamical considerations for the Florida Current can only be determined from a model calculation involving realistic winds, topography and geography. Such a model calculation has been done with observed Bunker wind stress over a two layer ocean. The predicted variation has a Summer maximum and a Fall minimum, in agreement with the measurements of Niiler and Richardson [1973] and more recent STACS data.
The one layer model has been forced by monthly means of ATOLL wind stress for the years 1981-1984. The predicted variation was found not to be in agreement with concurrent STACS measurements. A comparison was made between the Bunker winds and the ATOLL winds via various diagnostics. It was found that the meridional component of the wind, which is crucial to the overall Bunker Summer maximum, is of much reduced importance for the ATOLL winds. This could account for the lack of predicted Summer maxima.

Advisor: Anderson, D
Statistical analysis of natural selection in RNA virus populations

A key goal of modern evolutionary biology is the identification of genes or genome regions that have been targeted by natural selection. Methods for detecting natural selection utilise the information sampled in contemporary gene sequences and test for deviation from the null hypothesis of neutrality. One such method is the McDonald Kreitman test (MK test), which detects the the molecular 'footprint' left by natural selection by considering the frequency of observed mutations within the sampled population. In this thesis I investigate the applicability of the MK test to viral populations and develop several new methods based on the original MK test. In chapter 2, I use a combination of simulation and methodological improvements to show that the MK test can have low error when applied to analysis of RNA virus populations. Then, in chapter 3, I develop an extension of the MK test with the purpose of estimating rates of adaptive fixation for all genes of the human influenza A virus subtypes H1N1 and H3N2. My results are consistent with previous studies on selection in influenza virus populations, and provide a new perspective on the evolutionary dynamics of human influenza virus. In chapter 4 I develop a formal statistical framework based, on the MK test, for calculating the number of non neutral sites at any frequency range in the site frequency spectrum. In this framework, I introduce a new method for reconstructing the site frequency spectrum that incorporates sampling error and allows for the inclusion of prior knowledge. Using this new framework I show that the majority of nucleotide sites in hepatitis C virus sequences sampled during chronic infection represent deleterious mutations. Finally, in chapter 5 I use the generalised framework introduced in chapter 4 to develop a statistic for evaluating the deleterious mutation load of a population. I apply this test sequences that represent 96 RNA virus genes and show that my approach has comparable power to equivalent phylogenetic methods. In this thesis I have developed computationally efficient methods for analysis of genetic data from virus populations. It is my hope that these methods will become useful given the explosion in sequence data that has accompanied recent improvements in sequencing technology.

Keywords: adaptation
influenza
RNA virus
Site Frequency Spectrum
McDonald Kreitman Test
evolution
Advisor: Pybus, O
Invisibility, struggle and visibility: women workers' strategies of survival in the informal sector

Across the world, women constitute the bottom segments of the informal labour market hierarchy, and the story is no different for Turkish women, except they are further constrained by a patriarchal family culture and corporatist welfare state structure which favours high-skilled workers in full-time employment. A reading of the literature on the reasons for participating in the informal sector suggested that workers either end up in the informal sector as a result of structural factors, such as high unemployment, horizontal and vertical labour market discrimination and limited job opportunities for the low-skilled and low-educated, or they actively chose to participate in the labour market to seize the opportunities it provides, such as evading tax and/or bureaucratic costs, or testing out business ideas. However, this dichotomous understanding provided little scope, if any, to understand why women also entered the informal sector, in ever growing numbers and what the gender-specific constraints and opportunities in the informal sector are. Against this background, this thesis aims to show that this dichotomous theorisation of the informal sector is an exaggeration of reality, and that women workers position presents a middle ground, in which they recognise the constraints on their ability to improve their lives but they are also not powerless. Hence, by focusing on the variety of survival strategies used by women workers in the informal sector, the thesis attempts to show the choice among these strategies, including the conditions in which these strategies can be adopted and the barriers to do so.

Keywords: Turkey
informal sector
gender
survival strategies
informal employment
women
Advisor: Kariya, T
Hertog, E