Social Sciences

The advent of multipartism in 1992 was celebrated by academics, politicians, and civil societies. However, while the ruling party progressively performs handsomely, opposition parties have remained weak. In the 1995 general elections, the ruling party won about 60 percent of popular votes. This figure increased to 71 percent and 80 percent in 2000 and 2005 general elections respectively. It dropped to about 61 percent in the 2010 elections. I argue in this article that, such performance by the ruling party is largely attributed to its unfair mechanisms of mobilising support through state-party ideologies, human rights abuse, religion and corruption.

Malaysia has always been proud of her unique natural environment and cultural heritages, but still is searching for an exclusive identity of its own gardens. There is a great potential for development of a garden identity for the country, based on her rich legacy in traditions, cultures and beliefs, through which she could identify herself. The nation has a complex population composed of Malay, Chinese and Indian races. Hence, the icon, form, quality and appearance that are going to be introduced for Malaysian gardens should be appreciated, valued and respected by the Malaysian publics with diverse culture and preferences. This paper aims to propose a preferred iconography as a basic approach to create and develop a garden identity for Malaysia. Conducting photo surveys and testing public opinion of garden iconographies, including different garden scenes, reveals the preferred qualities for the image of Malaysian gardens. The result is expected to contribute towards the basic knowledge of Malaysian garden iconography as well as essential findings for landscape architects and garden enthusiasts to design and build garden with Malaysia identity acceptable by the Malaysian public. Moreover, this approach can propose a working model to identify preferred garden iconographies for new developing gardens and can be generalized to international scale.

This paper presents the results of a survey questionnaire that was administered to sample, to investigate those factors that are enormously influencing patriotism among Pakistani youth. In this regard related literature was reviewed and required data was collected from the sample of 84 with the help of questionnaire. Sample consists of young students of various educational levels as well as teachers. The study shows that these factors are not only essential for the stability and serenity of Pakistan but are also facilitative in order to impart loyalty, devotion, dedication and love for the nation in the hearts of Pakistani youth.

Kenya is administratively divided into forty-seven (47) counties each of which shall be under the stewardship of a County Governor once the new constitution is finally implemented. These officers shall be tasked with the coordination of governance and development in the respective administrative areas. Like specific country Heads of State in the case of New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), County Governors shall be regarded as peers and hence accountable to both the government and the local community for any development activities. In the NEPAD development thinking, specific countries are required to undertake in-house reviews of their development policies and performance in governance, human rights and social service provision among others. The resultant data are presented to other African Heads of State and Government for peer review and the particular Head of State/Government made to answer for any development shortcomings. Similarly, to improve governance and accountability of leaders in areas under their purview, County Governors in Kenya could be subjected to the same peer review, hence NEPAD from below. This paper examines the APRM philosophy as a development archetype and argues for its intra-country domestication in Kenya focusing on the County.

This study looked at the perceived effect of teenage pregnancy on agricultural productivity in Odeda local government area of Ogun state, Nigeria. About 120 respondents including pregnant teenagers, mothers who once had pregnancy in their teen ages, and other community members were purposively sampled through the snowball sampling method. Four objectives were pursued while a hypothesis was tested. The result indicated that poverty and parental styles are the two major causes of teenage pregnancy. Absence of male household heads is, however, not seen as a serious cause of teenage pregnancy. The study further showed that teenage pregnancy has a negative effect on agricultural production. The result of the tested hypothesis deduced that age, sex and religion has a positive relationship with their assessment of teenage pregnancy. Accessible, free and compulsory qualitative basic education and awareness campaigns on sex education are essentially needed in reducing the incidence of teenage pregnancy in rural areas.

A successful entrepreneur is a unit of society and hence, an entrepreneur is the contribution of constellation of factors or forces working in tandem within a cultural context. At the same time an entrepreneur is also a reflection of the cultural context he/she is a part of. Hence, it becomes imperative to highlight and explicate the role of those socio-cultural factors in a country like India where cultural diversity with regards to norms, values, beliefs, religion, kinship and institutions forms the bedrock for conditioning and tailoring of an individual to become a successful entrepreneur. Nevertheless, entrepreneurs are the creations of the socio-cultural environment. Thus, this paper with the objective of bringing to fore the imperative role of socio-cultural milieu in tailoring an entrepreneur in an Indian society is purely based on the secondary literature.

This article intends to explore the rise of cultural nationalism in Contemporary China. For most of the previous century, traditional culture had been widely condemned as “impediments to China’s development” and therefore needed to be uprooted. However, since the 1990s, the traditional culture has experienced an unprecedented resurgence and the cultural nostalgia (later defined as cultural nationalism) quickly ascended as one of the most powerful ideological trends among the contemporary Chinese society. This article seeks to discover what caused such a dramatic shift. It starts with a brief historical background for the emergence of the current cultural nationalism, and then moves on to explain its two main ideological themes: “anti-Marxism” and “anti-Western” by examining representative works. It explores the economic, social cultural and political causes for the rise of cultural nationalism by drawing Primordialism, Modernism and Huntington’s theory concerning “modernization and cultural resurgence” in non-Western societies.

Today, Literacy is one of the most important parameters to evaluate an area or region’s development phase. Literacy accelerates the social, cultural, economic, political condition and that it has a strong relationship with regional development. Banaras has ever remained the great centre of Hindu culture and civilization. The two religions, Buddhism and Hinduism, which still influence the thought of almost half the world, received their impulse and strength from this city (cf.Singh, R.L.1955). This city records a settlement history since ca. 1000 BCE. However, the present city has grown during the early 18th century. Since ancient period, Varanasi has become the great centre of learning, education and research and presently the city is the chair of ancient oriental and modern learning. It has vast scope of the education for the people of the country and abroad. Despite of these educational institutions and facilities the overall literacy in Varanasi is very poor. The present paper is an attempt to Study the trend and pattern of literacy in Varanasi City on the ward level and to highlight the problems, impact, and suggestions for the improvement of literacy in the City. The results are presented through various maps and tables generated in ArcGIS. Tables and data is calculated on the basis of 2001 census.

Today, the violence against women is the most pervasive yet under recognized social problem, not only in India but also throughout the world. It is present in every country, cutting across boundaries of culture, class, education and age. More significantly, with the increasing trend of urbanization the number of cases of violence against women has rapidly grown over the years. Hence in the present study an attempt is made to analyze the relationship between urbanization and increasing violence against women. For the said purpose, the data on the total number of cases registered under major six types of violence against women (Rape, Kidnapping of Women & Girls, Dowry Deaths, Cruelty by husband/in laws, Molestation & Sexual Harassment and PIT Act) during the period of 2001 to 2011 has been collected from all the police stations of all the seven divisions of Bangalore city. In the present study the pattern of violence against women in Bangalore city particularly during the period of 2001 to 2011 has been examined in the larger context of Indian society. The major casual factors for the violence against women have been discussed from sociological perspective. Further, important suggestions have been made to reform the existing legislative system regarding violence against women and at the end to provide gender justice in all the sections of the society.

The study sought to find out the influence of teachers’ work load on pupils’ academic performance in public primary schools in Nandi north sub county, Nandi County, Kenya. The study adopted descriptive survey research design. The target population was 172 headteachers and 1302 teachers. The sample size was 17 Head teachers and 93 teachers. The consistency of the study instruments was measured using test- retest reliability whereby the same groups of respondents were used repeatedly to test whether the same results could be obtained. The content validity was ascertained by the researcher in consultation with the supervisors and expert opinion from three lecturers of the School of Education, Kisii University. To select the individual teachers, the researcher used simple random sampling method. Data was collected by use of questionnaire and interview schedules. The questionnaire allowed measurement for or against a particular view point. Data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage tables) with the help of SPSS. There was high teaching workload which led to tiresome preparation of teachers in discharging their teaching duties hence lowering performance in national examinations. The study indicated that teachers had no enough time for professional development and workload conditions were not favourable hence the academic performance of pupils was affected