Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Education – Social aspects – Great Britain'
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1
Jordan, Steven Shane. "The Technical Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) and the making of the enterprise culture." Thesis, McGill University, 1996. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=40371.
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This thesis is situated in the history of British debates over the relationship of technical and vocational schooling to capitalism. It analyses the impact of 'new vocational' policy initiatives on English education from the 1970s, using an approach termed 'historical ethnography.' Using this methodology, it draws on ethnographic studies of the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) between 1985 and 1992.My argument is that TVEI represents the most recent manifestation of a long history of educational policies that have systematically produced and ordered the social relations of class in an educational form. In this vein, I argue that the technical and vocational curriculum can be seen as an integral site within the English educational State for the production and formation of class relations within schooling. TVEI, I assert, was central to such a process through its capacity to concert and co-ordinate the social relations and practices of secondary schooling around the concept of enterprise, which acted as an organising device for management/administration, teaching, learning, and most crucially, the formation of individual subjectivities. Understood this way, we can see how TVEI effected reforms that contributed to the formation of clusters of social relations that produced class in new ways.
I show how this process emerged under TVEI through my ethnographic studies of enterprise, school-based management, business studies, and assessment. What each study reveals is how TVEI worked to effect a generalised shift in the culture of schooling away from the post-war social democratic politics of education, to that of a 'managed market' and enterprise culture. In this respect, I argue, TVEI prefigured many of the reforms that were to flow from the Education Reform Act (1988).
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Yoda, Otoe. "Human capital selectivity, human capital investment, and school to work transition of those from immigrant backgrounds." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.669814.
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Khalid, Amr. "Aspects of Islam and social coexistence : the case of Britain." Thesis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.683357.
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Zadeh, Sophie. "Thinking on fertile ground : a study of social representations of single mothers by sperm donation in the UK." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.708877.
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Haynes, Kathryn. "(Sm)othering the self : an analysis of the politics of identity of women accountants in the UK." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14191.
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This thesis examines the politics of identity of women accountants in the UK who are mothers, by exploring the links between working in the accounting profession and the experience of motherhood. It takes a sociological approach to analyse how social, political, cultural and moral forces, in relation to accounting, motherhood and wider society, affect identity, or the self. The accounting profession is arguably a masculine enviromnent into which the accountant is socialised. Motherhood illustrates the tensions between an essentialist and a non-essentialist view of identity. The thesis explores the contradictions and juxtapositions between these two identities of accountant and mother, and the struggle of women to exercise agency within the confines of the profession. It uses a feminist methodological framework based on the subjective experience of women. As such, I present my own autobiographical account of being an accountant and mother, and the oral history narratives of fifteen other women, arguing that narrative forms an integral part of identity construction. The thesis concludes that the narrative approach and the use of oral histories has much to offer to accounting research and has important implications for our understanding of the interrelationships between accounting and motherhood. These include the emotions, transformations and constructions of identity of women accountants.
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McKay, Ralston William. "At school with looked after children : a study of the views of children in public care." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/1838.
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This thesis is concerned with the education of children in care. Its analytic focus is on ways in which children in public care are and have been constructed by knowledge and policies that are embedded in the discourses that surround them. A literature review of empirical research conducted in the UK concludes that the dominant research strands and epistemologic studies in this area have failed to allow foregrounding and exploration of children's own accounts of their experiences at school as children in care. Other literature concerning policy and historical contexts is considered within subsequent analytic chapters where a Foucauldian approach is adopted. The empirical work reported is of the content of interviews conducted in schools with 27 children and young people who were in foster care. A Foucauldian perspective allows consideration of the fashion whereby practices of surveillance and "the gaze" construct children by adults. The children's accounts are foregrounded in the data chapters where, firstly, their experiences of adults are explicated in terms of the three mechanisms of surveillance that Foucault identified. Adults' writings about the children, particularly within Records of Needs that had been opened to delineate the special educational needs of some of the children, are described and the fashions whereby these too construct the children, often negatively, are exposed. A sometimes overpowering sense of public intrusion into the children's private lives permeated their accounts but the final data chapter considers the ways they utilised their own agency sometimes as a struggle to resist the markers of difference experienced. Here again their own stories are given prominence. The implications of these accounts lead to suggestions about how changes to adults' practices in their dealings with children in care could be introduced in a range of settings including schools, the meetings held about children and educational psychologists' activities where, fundamentally, a need for adults to display more genuine respect to children and young people is required.
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Bregman, Abigail Sibley. "The view from the classroom : English school-teachers' responses to domestic and international problems of the interwar years 1919-1939." Thesis, McGill University, 1986. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=72832.
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Koch, Insa Lee. "Personalising the state : law, social welfare and politics on an English council estate." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4335c11c-c0a5-44dc-bd15-5bbbfe2fee6c.
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This dissertation offers a study of everyday relations between residents and the state on a post-industrial council estate in England. Drawing upon historical and ethnographic data, it analyses how, often under conditions of sustained exclusion, residents rely upon the state in their daily struggles for security and survival. My central ethnographic finding is that residents personalise the state alongside informal networks of support and care into a local sociality of reciprocity. This finding can be broken into three interconnected points. First, I argue that the reciprocal contract between citizens and the state emerged in the post-war years when the residents on the newly built estates negotiated their dependence upon the state by integrating it into their on-going social relations. A climate of relative material affluence, selective housing policies, and a paternalistic regime of housing management all created conditions which were conducive for this temporary union between residents and the state. Second, however, I argue that with the decline of industry and shifts towards neoliberal policies, residents increasingly struggle to hold the state accountable to its reciprocal obligations towards local people. This becomes manifest today both in the material neglect of council estates as well as in state officials' reluctance to become implicated in social relations with and between residents. Third, I argue that this failure on the part of the state to attend to residents' demands often has onerous effects on people's lives. It not only exacerbates residents' exposure to insecurity and threat, but is also experienced as a moral affront which generates larger narratives of abandonment and betrayal. Theoretically, this dissertation critically discusses and challenges contrasting portrayals of the state, and of state-citizen relations, in two bodies of literature. On the one hand, in much of the sociological and anthropological literature on working class communities, authors have adopted a community-centred approach which has depicted working class communities as self-contained entities against which the state emerges as a distant or hostile entity. I argue that such a portrayal is premised upon a romanticised view of working class communities which neglects the intimate presence of the state in everyday life. On the other hand, the theoretical literature on the British state has adopted a state-centred perspective which has seen the state as a renewed source of order and authority in disintegrating communities today. My suggestion is that this portrayal rests upon a pathologising view of social decline which fails to account for the persistence of informal social relations and the challenges that these pose to the state's authority from below. Finally, moving beyond the community-centred and state-centred perspectives, I argue for the need to adopt a middle ground which combines an understanding of the nature and workings of informal relations with an acknowledgement of the ubiquity of the state. Such an approach allows us to recognise that, far from being a hostile entity or, alternatively, an uncontested source of order, the state occupies shifting positions within an overarching sociality of reciprocity and its associated demands for alliances and divisions. I refer to such an approach as the personalisation of the state.
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Kell, Patricia Ellen. "British collecting, 1656-1800 : scientific enquiry and social practice." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.670252.
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Nanabawa, Sumaiya. "A discourse analysis of print media constructions of 'Muslim' people in British newspapers." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006767.
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This research study aimed to examine how the identity of ' Muslim' people is constructed in British print media today, and whether or not these constructions promote or undermine a xeno-racist project. The research draws on the idea that identity is partly constructed through representation, with an emphasis on how language can be used to construct and position people in different ways. Using a social constructionist paradigm, the study further considers the role that print media has in providing a discursive field within which the construction and reproduction of racist attitudes and ideologies in contemporary global society can take place. Sixty-five newspaper articles were selected from the online archives of British newspapers, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph using systematic random sampling. These were analysed using the six stages of Foucauldian discourse analysis outlined by Carla Willig. To provide a more fruitful account, the analysis also incorporated the methods of Potter and Wetherell whose focus is on the function of discourse, as well as van Langenhove and Harre's focus on subject positioning, and Parker's use of Foucauldian analysis which looks at power distributions. The analysis revealed that Muslims are discursively constructed as a direct politicised or terror threat, often drawing on discourses of sharia law, and Muslim-Christian relationships. They are also constructed as a cultural threat, drawing on discourses of isolation, oppressed women, the veil/headscarf, identity, visibility and integration. The analysis also showed some variation in constructions, and these extended from the racialization of Muslims to showing the compatibility between Islamic and western values. This study discusses the form these different constructions take and the possible implications these constructions might have in contributing toward a prejudiced and largely negative image of Islam and Muslims.
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Diaz, Martinez Elisa. "Does social class explain health inequalities? : a study of Great Britain and Spain." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2004. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ca53a88e-0459-47d0-b13a-2525745d0d6a.
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The main research questions examined in this thesis concern the extent to which social class influence individuals' health, and how and whether individuals' occupation, education and lifestyles mediate between class and health. The conclusions drawn from the analysis of these empirical questions cast further light on the widening health inequalities seen in developed societies in recent decades. In particular, this research suggests that, employment conditions as well as educational levels are variables that need to be taken into account when planning policies aimed at tackling differences in health outcomes. Lifestyle variables, on the other hand, would appear to be almost irrelevant when explaining why the members of the more privileged social classes not only live longer than those in other classes, but also enjoy significantly better health over the course of their lives. In trying to understand the association between class and health, I define a theoretical framework that specifies the mechanisms through which class is linked to health. Social structure influences health by distributing certain factors such as material resources or some health-related behaviour that ultimately result in individuals having different living conditions. Educational attainment also affects the way these resources are employed and, therefore, lifestyles. A fundamental element of a social class is occupation: individuals' employment and working conditions also affect their health. Furthermore, the nature of a social structure has an effect on health at the aggregate level of analysis since social policies are partly the result of the structure of class interests. Four mechanisms are specified in order to systematically test this theoretical framework. Mechanisms (2) and (3), those that relate class and health through education and lifestyle lie at the heart of the empirical analysis. This analysis employs individual-level data drawn from health surveys carried out during the first half of the 1990s in the two countries selected for the analysis, United Kingdom and Spain. These countries are treated as contexts in which to test the theoretical explanation. The main results of the analysis reveal the importance of social class in determining health outcomes. Indeed, individuals from different classes enjoy distinct degrees of health. Specifically, individuals in the most privileged class categories have persistently better health than those in the other class categories. Differences exist in terms of both objective and subjective or self-perceived health. Moving on from observation to explanation, the analysis suggests that the distribution of certain resources across classes accounts for some of the variance in health outcomes. Hence, education is identified as a significant variable to comprehend part of the health inequalities in developed societies. Lifestyle, on the other hand, does not appear relevant in accounting for health outcomes. The small differences found between the United Kingdom and Spain in the mechanisms that link class and health suggest that the process through which class affects health is essentially similar in developed societies.
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Kenny, Caroline. "Reconciling social justice with economic competitveness : the coherence of New Labour's discourse on education." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2010. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/647/.
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According to key figures within New Labour, the advent of the knowledge-based economy has ended the “sterile” battle between social justice and economic competitiveness; this now means that it is only through the provision of opportunities for all, achieved through high quality education, that the demands of the two goals can be fulfilled. I investigate the claims made by Blair, Brown and the Education Ministers that social objectives are being reconciled with economic considerations in the Party's approach to education and, in doing so, explore the existence and content of a putative 'New Labour' discourse on education. I highlight the limitations of the existing literature in dealing with issues of discourse, agency and time. I contend that in overlooking questions of discourse and ignoring the potential for differences over time and between actors, the current literature fails to capture the dynamism and complexity of the Government's discourse leading it to reach two inaccurate conclusions about New Labour as well as prohibiting us from gaining a proper sense of whether the Party has been coherent in its discussions of education. Conversely, I set out an alternative view of coherence, proposing discourse as an equivalent unit of analysis to policy and demonstrating sensitivity to differences both over time and between agents. I show that there is not one coherent 'New Labour' discourse on education, but a shared conception that is underpinned by three discourses that appeal to arguments about the knowledge-based economy, opportunity and responsibility. Within this however, are eighteen different arguments the use, meaning and significance of which varies between Blair, Brown and the Education Ministers and, over the three terms between 1997 and 2007.
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Fitton, Sarah Louise. "Social value in practice : a case of flood alleviation schemes." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.709198.
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Hodges, Sushmita. "Women and education : social feminism and intellectual emancipation in England and America." Virtual Press, 1989. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/720136.
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Social Feminism, as influenced by the Enlightenment, manifested itself between 1780 and 1860. An important aspect of social feminism was intellectual emancipation for women. Such intellectual emancipation came about through the blending of ideas emanating from prominent cultural and social centers in the western world. Women had been absorbing the reformist ideas of the Enlightenment philosophies, incorporating them into their own lines of thinking, and producing a social theory aiming at educational freedom for women. The individual efforts to initiate change in time reached beyond national boundaries through the pioneer social feminists' literary works and word of mouth. It is the intent of this dissertation to examine and analyze the linkage between the concept of social feminism and educational emancipation.The purpose of this research is to establish the significance of education as a major branch of social feminism within the context of the women's movement. To overcome language barriers that prevented research into other countries' women's movements, I have restricted this study to England and America and developed the concept of transatlantic feminism.Between 1780 and 1860 the women's "question" in England and America gained its theoretical foundations. Although there was no organized feminist movement, societies in both countries were being made conscious of the problems stemming from the subordinate status of women. This social awareness resulted from the tracts and discussions of certain male philosophers and of various exceptional females who focused on the question of women's rights and other related issues.The major emphasis during this early stage of the women's "question" was the issue of education as a vehicle for elevating the position of women. The education of available to women at that time was limited in nature. Training caring mothers was what social feminists protested against in their writings and discourses. Yet they understandably differed in their aims and formulas for change. Some spokeswomen, while accepting the societal status quo, promoted education as a means for women to recognize their moral superiority. There were yet others who demanded a "separate but equal" education so that women could exploit their full potential and, in some cases, assert their economic independence. All these social reformers, through their own unique experiences, also set examples for their contemporaries and future generations to follow.Despite some inconsistencies in their approaches to educational reform for women, almost all of the individual feminists discussed in this dissertation felt that intellectual emancipation would pave the way for improved social standing for women.Department of History
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Doherty, Robert Anthony. "New Labour : governmentality, social exclusion and education policy." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2011. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2667/.
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This thesis critically explores the broad relationship between New Labour’s adoption of social exclusion as a policy concept and the outworking of this commitment within instances of policy directed at compulsory education. It presents and deploys Foucault’s idea of governmentality as a perspective from which to undertake critical policy analysis. It considers approaches to policy analysis and posits a layered model that looks to explicate levels and forms of power within the policy system; including a concern to integrate the place and function of policy texts. An account of the main dimensions of New Labour’s Third Way politics is developed, together with a broad account of New Labour’s attempts to govern compulsory education. Critical Discourse Analysis is applied to interpret and explain two texts posited as capturing a particular historical moment in New Labour’s adoption and commitment to a recognisable conceptualisation of social exclusion. A governmentality perspective is employed to analyse policy around social exclusion within the Third Way politics of New Labour following 1997. This analysis has a particular focus on how this social exclusion dimension was accommodated within the broader schematic of Third Way governmentality and how it interacted with and emerged within policy around compulsory education in the early years of New Labour. The analysis concludes that the social exclusion dimension of New Labour’s policy ambitions was present, but sublimated within the conflicted policy climate of compulsory education arising from New Labour’s distinctive governmentality.
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Dmytryuk, S. "Educational technologies in art and design higher education of great britain." Thesis, Diamond trading tour, 2017. https://er.knutd.edu.ua/handle/123456789/8263.
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The article provides an overview of different types educational technologies used for learning and teaching in Art and Design higher education of Great Britain. In particular, special attention is paid to the use of 3D visualization technology for educational purposes.
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Urk, Felix van. "Function-focused implementation fidelity for complex interventions : the case of Studio Schools." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5c73b308-efbf-48aa-91b1-f8c06b7eb885.
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This thesis is concerned with an initial assessment of the implementation of Studio Schools, a novel and highly flexible model of secondary education, in England. Responding to the methodological challenges towards evaluating a 'standard' national social programme that is encouraged to be adapted to context by local schools, the thesis also reports the development, operationalisation, and testing of a new approach towards the concept of implementation fidelity for evaluation science. The thesis commences by presenting the modern-historic foundations and challenges of the current English secondary education system that gave rise to Studio Schools, and describing the nature and objectives of the schools. This is followed by a discussion of the general challenges involved in the development and evaluation of complex social interventions and the specific challenges presented by the case of Studio Schools. The remainder of the thesis reports the development, use, and assessment of methods to overcome these challenges - with particular focus on evaluating implementation as part of process evaluations - as well as the current state of implementation in the schools. Delphi-inspired consensus methods were used in order to develop an explicit programme theory for Studio Schools where none previously existed, involving stakeholders in the theory specification process. The process demonstrated that stakeholders without a background in programme evaluation can agree to a specific and explicit theory of change after a programme was designed but prior to its evaluation. Next, a novel conceptual approach towards defining and measuring implementation fidelity was developed to translate a standard programme theory into flexible implementation measures. This approach focuses on the functions - or targeted change mechanisms - of a programme alongside its form of a given set of activities. Implementation measures were developed in the form of quantitative, paper-based questionnaires that were used to rate form- and function- focused fidelity of implementation of project-based learning (PBL) and personal coaching in schools on ordinal Likert scales. These measures were piloted and refined, and subsequently tested for their psychometric properties through the use of factor analysis in addition to established methods for determining the reliability of instruments in terms of internal consistency and inter-rater agreement. Findings show that it is feasible to monitor programme functions alongside form in process evaluations, and that the validity and reliability of measures based on this approach can be established using common psychometric methods. The measures developed earlier in the thesis were used by the doctoral candidate as well as teachers and students to rate the current state of implementation practices of PBL and coaching in Studio Schools was monitored over a period of four months in four participating schools. Ratings were based on observations made in-vivo or based on video- and audio recordings made during repeated visits to the schools. Quantitative implementation scores were calculated per rater group for PBL and coaching by aggregating ratings given to individual sessions, and were compared within and between schools. Spearman's correlation coefficients were calculated to assess correlation between form- and function-focused fidelity scores. The results of this study imply that implementation in Studio Schools likely varies substantially between individual schools and can be improved in all of them, but also suggest that the model could be evaluated for its effectiveness as long as implementation and process are carefully monitored. The additions of this thesis to the evaluation literature are considered, as well as its strengths and limitations and implications for practice and research.
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MacRae, Rhoda. "Becoming a clubber : transitions, identities and lifestyles." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/1451.
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This thesis examines how young people identify and affliate with particular club scenes and how these practices and processes relate to their transitions, identities and lifestyles. It aims to give a sense of the processes and the resources that are required to 'become' a clubber over time. The thesis engages with the recent attempts to reconcile the conceptual and empirical divisions between the two main approaches in the sociology of youth. It suggests that the work ofSchutz serves as a heuristic framework to conceptualise data, and when synthesised with other sympathetic conceptual frameworks, links disparate literature to allow for a better understanding of the role of knowledge in the transitions, identities and lifestyles of young people. This focus influenced my choice of method: the ethnographic techniques of participant observation and in-depth interviewing were employed to access participants' experiences and knowledge of becoming a c1ubber. The findings suggest that the process of becoming a clubber is a gendered, dialectical and transformational process: informed by the social heritage and locally situated experiences of clubbing participants. It is a process that manifests itself through embodied practices involving cultural knowledge and taste. Participants place one another on the basis of their participation in and identification with a clubbing lifestyle. These placements appear embedded in the social order: they call not only on old social markers but also on the increasing hierarchies of difference within and across social groups. Social competence, cultural knowledge and consumer activities are all implicated in the placement of others, and the construction of boundaries that clubbing collectives engage in. These are young people who can afford materially and socially to extend both their structural and cultural transitions. The social confidence and adept skills of exchange that 'proper' clubbers develop are resources that help them develop and create social and cultural capital of their own. Becoming a clubber requires competency, skills and dispositions: it is a process that transmits privilege and disadvantage.
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Slade, R. D. "Faith and peacebuilding in UK community cohesion since 2001." Thesis, Coventry University, 2012. http://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/items/95df9d29-b654-4c08-b3af-70fe5bbdbfdc/1.
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The focus of this study is faith and peacebuilding in UK community cohesion since 2001. The central feature is a presentation of action research findings set in a collaborative relationship between the researcher and an inter-faith community dialogue project established to address divisive right wing extremism in the fieldwork locality of South Yorkshire. A decade of New Labour governance has seen community cohesion policy evolve from initial concerns regarding urban unrest to mainstream strategies targeted on violent religious extremism. Dialogue between ethnically diverse and white mono-cultural communities has been seen as the best way of helping people to get on better with each other. However community cohesion policy can be criticised for a significant failure to address issues of inequality and exclusion that are relevant to inter-community tensions. Since 2001, faith has been an increasingly prominent, albeit ambivalent, presence in UK society. Protagonists, arguing faith should have little or no role in public life, contest bitter disputes with those who perceive that an encroaching tide of secularism is attacking their faith beliefs and identity. Against this background right wing extremists have made astute use of faith identity, embedding their presence in some communities by utilising extremist discourses of Islamophobia that frame Muslims as a threat to the indigenous culture and resources of white communities. However some writers have identified the positive contribution that faith can make to public life. A commitment to social justice and addressing exclusion are examples of the resources faith can bring to addressing societal issues. Peacebuilding methodologies are similarly concerned with such issues. Processes for addressing protracted4 social conflict provide a framework within which faith and secular perspectives can cooperate to address these complex issues. The study’s action research found a strong relationship in the field work locality between electoral support of the extreme right wing BNP party and high levels of deprivation in white mono-cultural communities. Anger and resentment arising from industrial conflict and decline, and perceptions of being ignored by mainstream political parties, have been exploited by the BNP, opening a portal to hostile discourses of racism and Islamophobia. However the study’s research found that faith and faith values can bring rich and positive resources to inter-faith activity that aims to challenge divisive extremism that targets ethnic minority communities in general and Muslims in particular. In such circumstances it is usual practice to reduce hostile perceptions by arranging programmes of community interaction. However this study found that in communities where this strategy is not feasible, implementation of an intra-community dialogue framework may be effective in reducing hostile prejudice and stereotyping on which extremism feeds.
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Grošelj, Darja. "Keeping up with technologies : revisiting the meaning and role of Internet access in digital inclusion." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5f5b5b31-2428-4723-b649-b3e8efd7356f.
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The ways people go online have been transformed by the emergence of new mobile Internet technologies. As modes of Internet access are becoming increasingly diverse, this thesis sets out to examine how various forms of access shape engagement with online resources. Inequalities in Internet access have been neglected in the "second-level digital divide" research, which has focused on differences in skills and usage. Thus, I argue that inequalities of access have to be revisited and their role in digital inclusion reassessed. To study individuals' arrangements of Internet-enabled devices and locations holistically and as a dynamic entity, access is conceptualised as infrastructure. Theoretically, I distinguish between material dimensions of access and social practices shaping access, and draw on existing models of digital inclusion to examine the role of these dimensions and practices in online engagement. Empirically, a mixed methods research design is employed, complementing longitudinal analyses of survey data representative of the British population with 29 qualitative interviews with British Internet users. This study contributes to our understanding of material and social dimensions of access and their impact on Internet use patterns. First, the conceptualisation of Internet access as infrastructure is empirically validated. Second, quality, locality and ubiquity are established as material dimensions of access, where offline social and economic resources most strongly affect inclusion in high-quality, multi-local and ubiquitous Internet access. Third, three specific practices encompassing how users develop and maintain their access infrastructures are identified: spotlighting, distributing and being stranded. They reflect differences in roles Internet technologies play in individuals' daily lives as well as differences in availability of offline resources. Fourth, the results show that, controlling for a range of digital inclusion factors, the access inequalities have significant effects on a range of online engagement types, but are most strongly related to commercial and communication uses of the Internet. In sum, this study provides a nuanced understanding of how different mechanisms underlie the development, maintenance and engagement with Internet access, depending on whether access arrangements are shaped by digital exclusion or choice. Specifically, by outlining critical differences among all-round, mobile-mostly, mobile-only and home-only Internet users, broader policy and research implications are also discussed.
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Wilson, John Campbell. "A history of the UK renewable energy programme, 1974-88 : some social, political, and economic aspects." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2012. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3121/.
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Following the global oil crisis of October 1973 the UK government funded and administered a range of R&D programmes in renewable energy. Despite the discoveries of large deposits of oil and gas in the North Sea during the late 1960s and continuing faith in nuclear energy the government was keen to explore the potential of renewable energy as what it described as an ‘insurance technology’. This thesis examines the creation and evolution of the UK renewable energy programme from 1974 until its demise prior to the privatisation of the UK’s nationalised energy industries in the late 1980s. The thesis shows the important role that social movements - in this case, the new environmentalism - played in the promotion of renewable energy in the UK. This will suggest that the programme can be seen in some senses as a tokenistic gesture by the government acting within the uncertain political, social, and economic landscape of the 1970s. This thesis shows that government decisions on renewable energy were continually driven by socio-political factors which overwhelmed the unreliable economic case for renewables at that time. This is achieved by a close historical account of the two key elements of the wider programme: the Wave Energy Programme and the Wind Energy Programme. Using a mix of the existing literature, historical archive and interviews this thesis builds a historical account of renewable energy R&D in the UK between 1974 and 1988.
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de, Aguiar Thereza R. S. "Corporate disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions : a UK study." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/840.
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Two beliefs drove this dissertation to be centered on the analysis of the UK corporate disclosure (CD) related to global climate change (GCC). Firstly, GCC is the most significant environmental concern of our current age (IPCC, 2001; Stern, 2006; IPCC, 2007). Secondly, CD could illustrate the values of organizations and possibilities for changing organizations’ responsibility regarding to GCC (Gray et al., 1996; Bebbington and Larrinaga-Gonzalez, 2008; Bebbington et al., 2009). This study utilizes content analysis as its principal method and seeks to achieve its goal by way of a two investigations. The first investigation focuses on disclosures made by direct participants’ (DP) in the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (UK ETS). It captures GCC disclosures from both stand alone (SA) and annual reports (AR) during 2000 - 2004. This part of the study explores if joining the UK ETS changed GCC disclosures. This is tested on both a longitudinal and matched pair (MP) basis. An analysis using institutional theory suggests that instruments of environmental policy may influence GCC disclosures. Results showed that DP increased GCC disclosure, especially in the AR where mainstream business rationale is accepted. MP disclosures, in contrast, focus on the SA media and on different topics than DP disclosures. AR and SA both contain CD, but in this study they showed different patterns of disclosure and therefore may constitute different disclosure media. The second investigation suggests a method to compare GCC disclosure for a sample of DP and MP, using three different media: carbon disclosure project (CDP), AR and SA. Analysis shows that GCC disclosure did not provide sufficient information to compare GCC initiatives and disclosures. Despite the fact that organizations have similar characteristics in terms of sector, size and origin country, they showed different views on GCC issues and this may partially explain differences on GCC initiatives and disclosure.
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Withall, Caroline Louise. "Shipped out? : pauper apprentices of port towns during the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1870." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:519153d8-336b-4dac-bf37-4d6388002214.
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The thesis challenges popular generalisations about the trades, occupations and locations to which pauper apprentices were consigned, shining the spotlight away from the familiar narrative of factory children, onto the fate of their destitute peers in port towns. A comparative investigation of Liverpool, Bristol and Southampton, it adopts a deliberately broad definition of the term pauper apprenticeship in its multi-sourced approach, using 1710 Poor Law and charity apprenticeship records and previously unexamined New Poor Law and charity correspondence to provide new insight into the chronology, mechanisms and experience of pauper apprenticeship. Not all port children were shipped out. Significantly more children than has hitherto been acknowledged were placed in traditional occupations, the dominant form of apprenticeship for port children. The survival and entrenchment of this type of work is striking, as are the locations in which children were placed; nearly half of those bound to traditional trades remained within the vicinity of the port. The thesis also sheds new light on a largely overlooked aspect of pauper apprenticeship, the binding of boys into the Merchant service. Furthermore, the availability of sea apprenticeships as well as traditional placements caused some children to be shipped in to the ports for apprenticeships. Of those who were still shipped out to the factories, the evidence shows that far from dying out, as previously thought, the practice of batch apprenticeship persisted under the New Poor Law. The most significant finding of the thesis is the survival and endurance of pauper apprenticeship as an institution involving both Poor Law and charity children. Poor children were still being apprenticed late into the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Pauper apprenticeship is shown to have been a robust, resilient and resurgent institution. The evidence from port towns offers significant revision to the existing historiography of pauper apprenticeship.
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Borsay, Anne. "Patrons and governors : aspects of the social history of the Bath Infirmary, c.1739-1830." Thesis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.683159.
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Bannerman, Sheila J., and University of Lethbridge Faculty of Arts and Science. "Manliness and the English soldier in the Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902 : the more things change, the more they stay the same." Thesis, Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Faculty of Arts and Science, 2005, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10133/240.
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This thesis uses the Victorian ideology of chivalric manlines to explain the class-oriented army hierarchy developed by volunteer soldiers from northern England during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. Newspaper reports, advertising, and popular fiction reveal a public mythology of imperial manliness and neo-chivalric ideals that was transferred onto civilian volunteers, creating an ideal warrior that satisfied a thirst for honour. This mythology created a world view in which northern communities, once supporters of the burgeoning peace movement, became committed supporters of parochial units of volunteer soldiers that fought in the newly expanded army. Soldiers' letters and diaries reveal that ingrained ideals of manliness and chivalry led to class-differentiated hierarchies within the army that mirrored those in civilian life. Contrary to the conclusions of some current historians, the Regular soldier remained in his traditional place at the bottom of the army structure, so that "the more things change, the more they remain the same."vi, 138 leaves ; 29 cm.
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Reynolds, Teddy. "Pulling back the curtain : an examination of the English Defence League and their use of Facebook." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6927.
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As social media becomes an integral part of our daily lives, and groups seek to utilize this medium to facilitate activism, understanding the nature of these communications and the impact of the content on the individual user becomes a valid area of interest. When one then considers that extremist and terrorist groups have found social media to be an inexpensive and effective means for communication, radicalization, recruitment and member mobilization, the need for this understanding becomes critical. This research seeks to provide just such an understanding in its examination of Far-Right English Defence League and their use of Facebook during a period of increased activism and online growth. Important elements of this work include an understanding of the legal and ethical issues surrounding the collection of online content, particularly in extremist environments; the role of traditional media in their coverage of the group and whether the comments of the members reflect the group's mission statement of the characterization of traditional media; the ability to enhance data segregation and analysis through the development and use of specialized software; and most importantly the findings from the data analysis. Contained within these findings is an understanding of the intricacies of online participation in extremist social media. These include insights into overall traffic generation, the use of links within communications and their impact on the member traffic, and how the group narrative put forth by the administrator is reflected in the dialogue of the users. The most important finding was an understanding of individual user participation within the group and how, even with such an inexpensive and pervasive media outlet, activist groups still struggle to overcome the problem of participation. That this knowledge can be applied in a meaningful way in counter extremist and counter terrorism efforts was an interesting and satisfying development.
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McMurray, David, and University of Lethbridge Faculty of Arts and Science. "'A rod of her own' : women and angling in victorian North America." Thesis, Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Faculty of Arts and Science, 2007, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10133/537.
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This thesis will argue that angling was a complex cultural phenomenon that had developed into a respectable sport for women during the Early Modern period in Britain. This heterogeneous tradition was inherited by many Victorian women who found it to be a vehicle through which they could find access to nature and where they could respectably exercise a level of authority, autonomy, and agency within the confines of a patriarchal society. That some women were conscious of these opportunities and were deliberate in their use of angling to achieve their goals while others happened upon them in a more unassuming manner, underscores how angling also functioned as a canopy of camouflage within Victorian society. In other words, though it outwardly appeared as a simple recreational activity, angling possessed the ability to function as a meta-narrative for its adherents, where the larger experiences and intentions of women became subtly intertwined, if not hidden, within the actual activity itself.viii, 197 leaves ; 29 cm.
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Butterss, Philip. "Australian ballads : the social function of British and Irish transportation broadsides, popular convict verse and goldfield songs." Phd thesis, Department of English, 1989. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/6189.
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Morehart, Miriam Corinne. ""Children Need Protection Not Perversion": The Rise of the New Right and the Politicization of Morality in Sex Education in Great Britain, 1968-1989." PDXScholar, 2015. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/2207.
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Two competing forms of sex education and the groups supporting them came to head in the 1970s and 1980s. Traditional sex education retained an emphasis on maintaining Christian-based morality through marriage and parenthood preparation that sex education originally held since the beginning of the twentieth century. Liberal sex education developed to openly discuss issues that reflected recent legal and social changes. This form reviewed controversial subjects including abortion, contraception and homosexuality. Though liberal sex education found support from national family planning organizations and Labour politicians, traditional sex education found a more vocal and powerful ally in the New Right.
This thesis explores the political emergence of the New Right in Great Britain during the 1970s and 1980s and how the group utilized sex education. The New Right, composed of moral pressure groups and Conservative politicians, focused on the supposed absence of traditional morality from the emergent liberal sex education. Labour (and liberal organizations) held little power in the 1980s due to internal party struggles and an insignificant parliamentary presence. This allowed the New Right to successfully pass multiple national reforms. The New Right latched onto liberal sex education as demonstrative of the moral decline of Britain and utilized its emergence of a prime example of the need to reform education and local government.
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Faber, Pierre Anthony. "Industrial relations, flexibility, and the EU social dimension : a comparative study of British and German employer response to the EU social dimension." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1999. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:959fa1ee-cd08-450b-8e94-68b9858dd9e3.
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This study sets out to explore employer response to the EU social dimension, in answer to the question, "How are employers in the UK and Germany responding to the EU social dimension, and why?" Using case study evidence from nine large British and German engineering companies, as well as material from employers' associations at all levels, it is argued that there is little employer support for extending the social dimension. Focusing on micro-economic aspects of the debate, it is also argued that a common feature in both British and German employer opposition is a concern for the impact of EU industrial relations regulation on firm-level flexibility. This stands in direct contradiction of the EU Commission's own contentions about the flexibility-enhancing effects of its social policy measures, and appears paradoxical in light of earlier research findings of a German flexibility advantage over UK rivals on account of the country's well-structured regulatory framework for industrial relations. Evidence from participant companies, however, suggests that, in the global environment of the late 1990s, much of Germany's former flexibility advantage has been eroded, and the regulation-induced limitations on both the pace and scale of change are increasingly onerous to German companies. German managers perceive a need for targeted deregulatory reform of their industrial relations system; by strengthening (and often extending) existing industrial relations regulation, EU social policy measures meet with firm disapproval. In the UK, by contrast, the changed context has contributed to a significant increase in firm-level flexibility. British companies now operate to levels of flexibility often in advance of their German counterparts, at far lower 'cost' in terms of the time taken, and the extent to which change measures are compromised, to reach agreement. For British managers, EU social policy measures are perceived as a threat to these beneficial arrangements, and vigorously opposed. The thesis concludes by suggesting that such fixed opposition, in the face of Commission determination to extend the EU social dimension, points to an escalation of the controversy surrounding the social dimension.
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Weeks, Douglas M. "Radicals and reactionaries : the polarisation of community and government in the name of public safety and security." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/3416.
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The contemporary threat of terrorism has changed the ways in which government and the public view the world. Unlike the existential threat from nation states in previous centuries, today, government and the public spend much of their effort looking for the inward threat. Brought about by high profile events such as 9/11, 7/7, and 3/11, and exacerbated by globalisation, hyper-connected social spheres, and the media, the threats from within are reinforced daily. In the UK, government has taken bold steps to foment public safety and public security but has also been criticised by some who argue that government actions have labelled Muslims as the ‘suspect other'. This thesis explores the counter-terrorism environment in London at the community/government interface, how the Metropolitan Police Service and London Fire Brigade deliver counter-terrorism policy, and how individuals and groups are reacting. It specifically explores the realities of the lived experience of those who make up London's ‘suspect community' and whether or not counter-terrorism policy can be linked to further marginalisation, radicalism, and extremism. By engaging with those that range from London's Metropolitan Police Service's Counterterrorism Command (SO15) to those that make up the radical fringe, an ethnographic portrait is developed. Through that ethnographic portrait the ‘ground truth' and complexities of the lived experience are made clear and add significant contrast to the aseptic policy environment.
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Boyd, Victoria A. "'Looking okay' : exploring constructions of fluctuating or recurring impairments in UK Higher Education." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/11014.
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This research explores constructions and understandings of fluctuating or recurring impairments in Higher Education in the UK. It considers ways in which institutional discourses within one UK University have shaped policy and provision for disabled students, and how students with fluctuating or recurring impairments negotiate and enact identities in this context. For many students, impairments such as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)/ myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), epilepsy or diabetes, for example, have the potential to vary in intensity, and thus impact, on participation in learning activities and on self-perception/ identity. With increasing disclosure, yet limited recognition, of such types of impairment comes a need for institutions to better understand changing impact in terms of inclusion and in observing anticipatory aspects of legislation, as well as furthering insight into how student identities are negotiated and constructed in an educational context. This research uses a social constructionist framework to explore constructions and subjectivities as regards fluctuating or recurring impairments, and comprises both staff and student perspectives. The staff perspective is based on the thematic narrative analysis of interviews with three members of staff, and is presented in conjunction with an example of institutional policy to highlight discourses drawn upon in constructing disability and disabled students. The impact of these discourses on institutional constructions and practice is key to the analysis. The student perspective is based on two phases of data collection: firstly, 24 semi-structured interviews with students who self-described a fluctuating or recurring impairment; and secondly, five students’ responses to six bi-weekly emails over the course of one academic trimester (January – April 2011). Summary data from the first phase is used to frame discussion on issues raised by students regarding institutional constructions and support. A ‘hybrid’ narrative analysis framework incorporating positioning analysis as well as both ‘big’ and ‘small stories’ has been used in analysing the phase two data. The approach considers the influence of institutional discourses on how students are positioned institutionally and position themselves, as well as ways in which performances of identity may be shaped. The thesis concludes by considering the implications of the research outcomes for Higher Education. In so doing, it notes the significance of policy implementation and cultural change, and makes recommendations for areas of focus in raising institutional awareness of fluctuating or recurring impairments within existing constructions of disability.
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Graham, Ian D. (Ian Douglas) 1961. "The episiotomy crusade." Thesis, McGill University, 1994. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=28764.
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This thesis traces and analyses the evolution of obstetrical and midwifery doctrine and use of episiotomy in the United States and United Kingdom. In the U.S., the routinization of episiotomy resulted from strenuous lobbying efforts of a small group of obstetrician/gynecologists between 1915 and 1935. These physicians claimed episiotomy prevented perineal lacerations, infant mortality and morbidity, and gynecological problems. In the U.K., the liberal use of episiotomy came about during the 1970s from pressure from obstetricians although no overt campaigning for the practice occurred. In both countries adoption of routine episiotomy was encouraged by social forces which involved changes occurring in the dominant belief system in obstetrics, maternity care practices, and the obstetrics and midwifery professions. Questioning of the practice by childbirth activists and others eventually led to declines in episiotomy. This was facilitated, particularly in Britain, by midwifery interest in resisting obstetrical control. Neither the adoption nor rejection of routine episiotomy was informed by scientific evidence. This study contributes to understanding the process of innovation in maternity care.
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Bastow, Sarah L. "Aspects of the history of the Catholic gentry of Yorkshire from the Pilgrimage of Grace to the First Civil War." Thesis, University of Huddersfield, 2002. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/4675/.
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This study looks at the responses of the Yorkshire Catholic gentry to the immense changes to their religious landscape in the early modem period, between 1536 and 1642. It examines how they continued to adhere to the Catholic religion, despite all attempts first to induce and then compel conformity and highlights the ways in which they managed to survive and prosper throughout the period, demonstrating that previously neglected groups such as women and younger sons had a crucial role to play in this process. The overwhelming theme to their actions was one of pragmatism, rather than the heroic and self-destructive behaviour that was much admired by earlier historians who wanted to identify martyrs to the Catholic cause. The areas that are to be examined reflect both public and private gentry activities. In the public sphere the Yorkshire gentry's part in the rebellions of the Tudor and Stuart eras are studied along with their rejection of plots. The importance of marriage as an early modem tool for building alliances and social advancement is acknowledged and the impact that a continuing adherence to Catholicism had on this is considered. The gentry and the church are examined through a study of the Catholic gentry's involvement with their local parishes, their reaction to the dissolution and their continuing adherence to monasticism, as shown through their devotion to English orders on the continent. To reflect the changes that were occurring in this period Catholic involvement in education, the law and medicine are also explored showing that the Catholic community was not isolated from the wider society. Lastly the role of Catholic women is given specific consideration in order both to redress the imbalance in previous studies and due to the crucial role that women played in the continuation of the Catholic community within Yorkshire.
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Blakestad, Nancy Lynn. "King's College of Household and Social Science and the household science movement in English higher education, c. 1908-1939." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1994. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ab86830a-8703-4d12-ac88-c3020a9eb7ef.
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This thesis is an account of the 'household and social science' course opened at King's College for Women in 1908 and its evolution up to 1939. The course was a significant departure for women's higher education in England as it was the first attempt to define a special university discipline based upon women's 'domestic' roles. However, historical accounts of women's higher education have either ignored or dismissed it, largely because of the predominance of'separate spheres' analyses in the historiography of women's higher education of the 1970s and early 1980s. Such accounts have presented the household science course in a negative light because of its 'domestic' image. This thesis thus offers a reassessment of the household science movement and those who supported it. The 'household science' concept owed its origin to the American 'home economies' movement which originated in the mid-nineteenth century. Chapter 1 provides a history of the home economics movement in America, tracing its evolution in the context of women's higher education until 1914. Initially home economics was seen as a 'vocational homemaking' course aiming to train women for home life. At the turn of the century, however, a 'scientific' model was developed by women scientists in order to promote research into social problems connected with the domestic sphere. These two models~the vocation and the scientific, have developed in tandem in American home economics. Chapters 2 and 3 consider the origins and early evolution of the 'household science' course in England, which was largely influenced by the American 'scientific' model. Chapter 2 first considers the concept of domestic education in the history of women's education and factors that precluded the development of a 'vocational homemaking' course in English higher education. The rest of the chapter analyses the origins of the household science movement in its social and intellectual context, in particular its connection with Edwardian preoccupations with 'physical deterioration' and infant mortality. Like their American counterparts, the founders of the course saw household science as a reform movement which aimed to promote research into domestic problems such as hygiene and nutrition, as well as to create a more useful and relevant university discipline for women's domestic roles, whether as housewife/mother or in 'municipal housekeeping' roles. Chapter 3 discusses the household science course from a disciplinary standpoint, looking at how the syllabus was constructed, the contemporary educational controversies it engendered, and its evolution up to 1920 when the B.Sc. degree was granted. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 examine the main factors which ultimately undermined the success of household science as a discipline. Chapter 4 evaluates career trends amongst KCHSS students from 1910-49, analysing to what extent the KCHSS administration was able to create a professional career structure for the household science discipline. The interplay between administrative policy, career trends, and professionalization is analyzed in relation to three career fields-social welfare, laboratory research, and dietetics. Chapters considers the professional conflicts between KCHSS and the domestic subjects teaching profession. Chapter 6 analyses KCHSS's failure to carve out a unique academic 'territory' or expertise and the various factors that affected this. The final chapter assesses how successful KCHSS was as an institution, looking at how students themselves experienced the course, their motivations for taking it, and its impact on their lives. Although household science was unsuccessful as a discipline, the course did give students a wide choice of career options, creating openings in less conventional spheres for women who did not want to teach and providing opportunities for the less-able student to follow a scientific career. The conclusion considers how the social climate of the interwar period affected the working out of the original household science ideals.
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Daniel, Lakshmi Kiran. "Privilege and policy : the indigenous elite and the colonial education system in Ceylon 1912-1948." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1992. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:652d093a-bcd6-49ca-aa17-787cd251e4c3.
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The development of educational policies in colonial Ceylon has hitherto been examined from the perspective of either the government or missionary agencies. The role of the indigenous elite in this process has not received the attention it deserves, but merely treated as a peripheral theme. This thesis attempts to redress the imbalance by focusing on the interaction between elite initiatives and the growth of cultural nationalism as key factors in the formulation of educational policy. The many dimensions of the elite's concern with educational policy are explored. The nature of their involvement and their contribution over time are the central themes of the present study. Newspapers, contemporary journals, various school magazines, the writings of the elite themselves and transcripts of debates in the Legislative and State Councils provide an insight into the public and private opinion of the English educated Ceylonese. Chapter one sketches the social background of colonial Ceylon. It describes the plural composition of the population and highlights the importance of language and religion as components of plurality. It also identifies the economic and educational opportunities through which elite status could be acquired. The form and content of education are similarly discussed. Chapter two describes the formulation of government policy and the early contributions of the indigenous leaders. Particular attention is paid to two issues - language and the administration of schools - which emerged as problems crucial to Ceylon's educational structure under colonial rule. Chapter three traces the organizational and individual responses of the upper strata in local society to education as shaped by growing cultural nationalism. The issues of language and religion now assumed a greater degree of political significance. New techniques of opposition, including the establishment of schools and cultural associations on Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim denominational lines, are analyzed in this chapter. In chapter four the repercussions of universal franchise in the educational field are assessed. The increasing political and social aspirations of the masses became the catalyst for action on the part of the leaders, as did the ethnic and caste antagonisms that had surfaced as potentially powerful factors. In chapter five, further political developments that induced the leadership to take a bold step forward - the construction of a free and egalitarian system of education - are examined. How elite competition emerged as a determinant of policy implementation is also discussed. This thesis concludes that while knowledge of English remained the sine qua non for the acquisition and preservation of status, the response of the privileged social group to educational problems in the face of increasing political challenges was to ensure that the availability to the masses of an education, albeit a vernacular education remained secure.
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Saunders, Julia Edwina. "White slavery : Romantic writers and industrial workers, 1790-1840." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2000. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:655d1502-34a7-4bf7-b0e6-fa8a85a31b43.
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In this thesis, I argue the case for putting the industrial revolution back into literary accounts of the Romantic period. Writers of fiction played an important part in disseminating knowledge about the changes to technology and society, as well as helping to form the image of the newest social class: that of the industrial workers. Literature aspired to educate and integrate this class, as well as to influence the parallel process of educating the upper classes about the advent of the new manufacturing order. I have taken as the governing metaphor for industrialization that of 'white slavery', drawing the contrast to the contemporary movement to abolish black slavery. To illustrate the thesis, I have chosen six writers: three Romantic poets - Coleridge, Southey and Wordsworth - and three women educationalists - Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth and Harriet Martineau, each of whom represents a significant philosophical approach to a manufacturing society and who each made an important contribution to imaginative literature. Whilst the Romantic poets analysed industrialization as a divisive and demoralizing phenomenon and looked to the past for solutions, the educationalists responded to the challenge presented by the factory system by suggesting new visions of social relationships which bound moral and economic behaviour together. The thesis aspires to restore the voices of neglected women writers in the industrial debate with the aim of promoting a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the Romantic period and a fuller comprehension of its creative expression.
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Matthews, Blair. ""I wouldn't imagine having to go through all this, and still be the same person. No way" : structure and agency in the international student experience." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/26829.
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Research on the experience of international students often suffers from conflation, in that it uses culture (or nationality as a proxy for culture) as a categorising agent, thereby granting causal powers to cultural differences, and contributing to a deficit model of international students. In this research, I will argue that, while culture and structure both provide new sets of constraints and opportunities for international students, participants are active agents in shaping their own experiences, as they think, reflect and act in response to their situational context. Drawing on Archer’s concept of reflexivity, this thesis demonstrates that because international students are often not immediately able to exercise agency through conversation (thought and talk), they find a need to reflect on their experiences and develop a course of action based on greater autonomy (that is, they become more independent). However, while some students make the transition to independence relatively smoothly, for others, it is not so easy, and some participants may find it difficult to convert thoughts into effective action (or displaced reflexivity). Participants in the international student experience confront a situational context marked by four specific features: first, a lack of a sympathetic interlocutor (that is, they find themselves on their own); second, contextual incongruity (commonly conceptualised as culture shock); third, shared experiences, which leads to congruity; and fourth, troublesome events, which blocks agential action. This research provides empirical evidence of specific generative mechanisms which contribute to the shaping of agency in the international student experience.
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Hill, Sandra J. M. "Employability and social capital : an exploration of the missing link in the enhancement of employability of business school graduates." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/2312.
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This study explores the role of social capital in the development of employability skills and attributes of first generation undergraduate students in a business school. The research, based on the reflections of graduates, examines the impact of social capital on participation in higher education and investigates the conditions within the learning environment which enhance or inhibit the development of bridging and linking social capital, as students connect with networks within the institution and with the wider business community. The findings suggest that the ability to recognise and activate bridging and linking social capital is an important determinant of employability. The analysis illustrates that when students have opportunities to connect with and work within a variety of networks, they build a range of employability skills and capabilities, particularly the interpersonal and social skills valued by employers. Students, who are confident and have the necessary skills to participate in a variety of networks within the immediate environment and with the wider business community, are not only able to access a greater range of resources but are more able to recognise the potential benefits that these activities have to offer. The reflections of the participants also illustrate that the skills and competencies which enable them to network effectively need to be developed deliberately. By supporting students in recognising the relationship between bridging and linking social capital and employability, and giving them the opportunity to reflect upon the achievement of interpersonal skills and affective capabilities, including the importance of relating to diverse others, their understanding and acknowledgement of employability will be enhanced. The study also reflects on Quinn’s concept of imagined social capital and considers its impact on the development of employability. Building on her work, the analysis identifies two new typologies; unimagined and unimaginable social capital. Both categories are important in understanding how students acknowledge the potential networks and resources available to them.
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White, Carol. "Sixth form general studies: some aspects of curriculum development in English schools foundation schools withparticular reference to King George Vth School." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1985. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31955514.
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McCaffery, Susanne Leigh. "They will not be the same : themes of modernity in Britain during World War I /." Thesis, This resource online, 1994. http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-06112009-063627/.
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Boyle, Raymond. "Football and cultural identity in Glasgow and Liverpool." Thesis, University of Stirling, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/2162.
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This project examines the relationship between football, the media and the constitution and reconstitution of cultural identities within Glasgow and Liverpool. It explores the extent to which a range of contemporary religious, political and national identities can be understood by focusing on the role that football and the support for particular clubs, play in their formation. Throughout, there is a concern with the relationship between supporters, the clubs, the media and identity-formation. There is also a realisation of the importance of placing this material within an histo rical framework, which emphasises how political, economic and social changes have all shaped the specific relationships in each city. This is achieved through the use of a number of case studies. The geographical areas used for the studies are the west of Scotland and the north-west of England, with specific attention focused on the cities of Glasgow and Liverpool and the football supporters within these cities. There has long been a strong connection between football and a range of social identities in these two cities. This study examines the theoretical debates regarding issues of the formation of identity in contemporary society, and argues for the need to have contextually grounded studies informing these broader theoretical discussions. This project, focusing on religious, political and cultural expressions of collective identity, emphasises the continual need to be wary of unproblematically allocating a central role to the media in any process of identity-formation. It suggests that in the cities of Glasgow and Liverpool today a range of more socially and historically grounded factors are crucial in understanding the configurations of collective expression which football support provides for many in these cities.
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Poon, Scarlet, and 潘穎思. "Colonialism and English education at the University of Hong Kong,1913-1964." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2003. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B29521531.
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Foggo, Anthony. "The radical experiment in Liverpool and its influence on the reform movement in the early Victorian period." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 2015. http://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/2012339/.
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This thesis investigates the development of radical politics in Liverpool in the first half of the nineteenth century and argues that distinctive events and trends in Liverpool exercised an important influence on the activities of the Reform Movement nationally between 1848 and 1854. It addresses two important but largely neglected areas of historiography: first, the political history of Liverpool in the years between the abolition of the slave trade and the mass influx of Irish refugees in mid-century, during which time the town rose to commercial pre-eminence; secondly, the influence of major provincial centres such as Liverpool on politics at the national level. The origins of Liverpool’s reformist Town Council of 1835-1841 are traced and show a continuity of thought and personalities over several decades against a backdrop of Tory paternalism and institutionalised corruption. The new reformist administration is seen as laying the foundations of a modern society through good governance, financial economy, civil liberty and innovation. On the Corn Laws issue, Liverpool’s reformers were reluctant to follow Manchester’s lead, preferring to pursue free trade on a broad front. This study follows their progress and shows how, ultimately, their thinking on financial reform influenced Cobden’s “National Budget” and remained an ever-present stimulus for several decades. The most prominent of Liverpool’s radical reformers was Sir Joshua Walmsley, whose achievements in both municipal and national politics have received much less attention from historians than they have merited. This study details the influences and experiences in his early career and then traces how, through political dexterity, he pushed parliamentary reform to the forefront of the national political agenda and established the National Parliamentary and Financial Reform Association in 1849. The influence exerted by his Liverpool background on both his political development and style of campaigning may be seen throughout his parliamentary career.
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Newton, Michael John. "GCSE music : year nine and ten students' perceptions and enrolment intentions in relation to music education rationale and government educational policy." University of Western Australia. School of Music, 2008. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0126.
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The international drive among western countries to shift from industrial to knowledge economies has focussed considerable attention on education. United Kingdom government educational policy, influenced by the global knowledge economy, has shifted responsibility for learning work skills from the workplace to schooling and post-compulsory education. Government policy emphasises the importance of education's role in preparing students with the skills, knowledge and understanding required to enhance the United Kingdom's competitiveness in the global market. In contrast to the work-related emphasis of the wider educational context, music education emphasises the enrichment of experience. The value of music education is related to people's needs, and the functions it performs in their lives. Music education should be transformative, creative, enriching and relevant. Participation in music education is motivated by the intrinsic satisfaction of making music, rather than the extrinsic need for work-related competencies and qualifications. Music education competes for students with other subjects in the educational marketplace when the music curriculum ceases to be compulsory at age fifteen. Therefore, it is important to understand how students relate not only to music education, but also to the wider work-related educational context in which their subject participation choices are made. Therefore, the purposes of this study are twofold: (1) to establish an overview of how students perceive music education and the factors that influence their enrolment intentions, and (2) to establish an overview of how students perceive music within the wider context of education. Statements were chosen that were considered representative of the rationales for education presented by the government and the music education community. Questionnaires and interviews were developed using the statements, and were ii administered to a random sample of Year Nine and Ten (GCSE Music and non - GCSE Music) students Music was not a relevant subject for most students. However, the perceptions of a small percentage of students (mainly Music students) did find music education relevant in the ways the literature suggested it should be. The most common influences on enrolment were perceptions of ability and enjoyment (or lack of). Despite the strong emphasis on work-related skills and qualifications in the wider educational context, students generally agreed that Music was a subject better suited to enhancing life and lifestyle than career options. However, reflecting the wider educational context, Music was perceived as being more careers/future study orientated than transformative, creative, enriching and relevant.
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Pustelnikovaite, Toma. "The working lives of migrant professionals : exploring the case of migrant academics." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14129.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines the working lives of foreign-born academics who come to work to the UK. Its main aim is to understand the degree and conditions of migrant scholars' inclusion in professional practice abroad. The thesis fulfils this aim by developing a conceptual approach to encapsulate how migrant professionals' working lives are conditioned by the pre-existing professional structures. Grounded in the principle of social closure, this framework proposes that migrant professionals' employment abroad is influenced by the different forms and rules of closure, as well as by the sites in which closure rules are applied. The synthesis of the theoretical framework with findings from sixty-two interviews with foreign-born scholars employed in thirteen British universities shows that migrant academics' working lives are explained by ‘modes of incorporation'. ‘Modes of incorporation' designate the distinct ways in which the academic profession has reacted to the increased presence of foreign incomers, and comprise integration, exclusion, subordination and indifference. The proposed framework extends the understanding of the demographic change in professions, and offers a way to capture migrant professionals' movement across countries.
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Lindsay, Christy. "Reading associations in England and Scotland, c.1760-1830." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:cfeb9aa2-6917-4356-8d11-b26237c795a5.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines provincial literary culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, through the printed and manuscript records of reading associations, the diaries of their members, and a range of other print materials. These book clubs and subscription libraries have often been considered to be polite and sociable institutions, part of the cultural repertoire of a new urban, consumer society. However, this thesis reconsiders reading associations' values and effects through a study of the reading materials they provided, and the reading habits they encouraged; the intellectual and social values which they embodied; and their role in the performance of gender, local and national identities. It questions what politeness meant to associational members, arguing for the importance of morality and order in associational conceptions of propriety, and downplaying their pursuit of structured sociability. This thesis examines how provincial individuals conceived of their relationship to the reading public, arguing that associations provided a tangible link to this abstract national community, whilst also having implications for the 'public' life of localities and families. The thesis also considers how these institutions interacted with enlightenment thought, suggesting that both the associations' reading matter and their philosophies of corporate improvement enabled 'ordinary' men and women to participate in the Enlightenment. It assesses English and Scottish associations, which are usually subjected to separate treatment, arguing that they constituted a shared mechanism of British literary culture in this period. More than simply a 'polite' performance, reading, through associations, was fundamentally linked to status, to citizenship, and to cultural participation.
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Kark, Daniel History & Philosophy Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences UNSW. "Equivocal empire: British community development in Central Africa, 1945-55." Publisher:University of New South Wales. History & Philosophy, 2008. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/41225.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis resituates the Community Development programme as the key social intervention attempted by the British Colonial Office in Africa in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A preference for planning, growing confidence in metropolitan intervention, and the gradualist determination of Fabian socialist politicians and experts resulted in a programme that stressed modernity, progressive individualism, initiative, cooperative communities and a new type of responsible citizenship. Eventual self-rule would be well-served by this new contract between colonial administrations and African citizens. The thesis focuses on the implementation of the Mass Education programme in Nyasaland, and, more specifically, on a small but significant Mass Education scheme at Domasi, that operated between 1949 and 1954 in Nyasaland??s south. The political and social context in which the Mass Education scheme was implemented in Nyasaland is important. The approach taken by the government of the Protectorate before the mid-1940s is discussed, and previous welfare interventions described and critically assessed. The initial approach to Mass Education in Nyasaland is also dwelt upon in some detail. The narrative concentrates upon the scheme itself. Three themes emerge and are discussed successively ?? the provision of social services adapted to the perceived needs of Africans, the enforcement of environmental restrictions and inappropriate social and agricultural models, and the attempted introduction of representative local government. All three interventions were intended to promote the precepts of Mass Education, but instead resulted in the extension of state administrative power. The manner in which this occurred is explored throughout the thesis. Mass Education at Domasi did not result in the creation of a new form of citizenship in Nyasaland. It contributed instead to a breakdown in the narrative of social development and eventual self-rule that had legitimised British rule. The riots that occurred in 1953 tore at the precepts that underpinned the Mass Education programme. The immediacy of self-rule and independence resulted in a shift in emphasis within the Colonial Office and the colonial government in Nyasaland from social intervention and to constitutional reform and political development. There simultaneously emerged a new rural transcript, one that privileged open opposition to the colonial social prescription over subtle and hidden rural resistance. At a time when nationalist politics was in disarray in Nyasaland, rural Africans spoke back to colonial power.
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Westphal, Ralf. "'We have the fjells, but you have character ...' : a comparative study of personal and social development (PSD) within the discourses of outdoor education in Great Britain and Friluftsliv in Norway." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/25300.
Full textAbstract:
Great Britain and Norway have a long tradition of being role models for outdoor education in Europe. In Victorian times Great Britain witnessed a growth in public schools often referred to as 'character factories' whose aim was to foster personality and team-spirit via outdoor experiences. Conversely in Norway outdoor education (Friluftsliv) was rooted in a nature consonant theme that was further influenced by the 1970s deep ecology movement. These two countries offer contrasting insights into how their specific culture affects attitudes toward wilderness and its exploration plus the relation of 'self and its relationship to 'others' associated with personal and social growth (PSD). This comparative study traces the transitional nature of PSD-related issues in outdoor education (OE) and Friluftsliv particularly those embedded in each nation's historical antecedents. The study also explores each country's current external influences, such as ideological forces, market-forces and political parameters. Finally, the study attempts to reconcile the past with the present. Scrutiny of the relationship between traditional and contemporary factors and its concomitant impact upon the sector is pivotal to the research interest. Thus the investigation considers future influences on personal and social development through the use of the outdoors, and juxtaposes findings from the two countries. By drawing on comparative education methodologies, the study draws together two approaches. The first is a philosophical inquiry into the antecedents of outdoor education and Friluftsliv from a PSD perspective, while the second comprises a set of qualitative semi-structured interviews involving two sets of informants - one from Great Britain and the other from Norway. The sample was selected by 'reputational' case selection which resulted in a cohort consisting of four key informants at university level from each country. The cross-national study shows that the antecedents of each nation's outdoor movement is multi-facetted and culturally embedded as a specific phenomenon borne of their unique political, social and historical background. In Great Britain an explicit PSD tradition has evolved while in Norway it is implicit. The findings show that the 'city-bound' philosophy of the British approach to outdoor education, contrasts strongly with Norway's 'classical' Friluftsliv tradition, which reflects its natureconsonant theme. The concept of PSD seems to depend on ethnocentric constructions of self, disparate ontological paradigms regarding pedagogy and diverse mythological rationales in the antecedents of each nation's narrative.
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Jenkins, Kirsten. "Discourses of energy justice : the case of nuclear energy." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/10255.
Full textAbstract:
The energy sector faces sustainability challenges that are re-working the established patterns of energy supply, distribution and consumption (Anderson et al. 2008; Haas et al. 2008; Stern 2008; Shove and Walker 2010). Amidst these challenges, socio-technical energy transitions frameworks have evolved that focus on transitions towards decarbonised, sustainable energy systems (Bridge et al. 2013). However, the ‘socio-‘ or social is typically missing as we confront climate and energy risks in a moral vacuum (Sovacool et al. 2016). The energy justice framework provides a structure to think about such energy dilemmas. However, the full extent and diversity of justice implications within the energy system have been neglected. Thus, borrowing from and advancing the framework this research explores how energy justice is being articulated with attention to three emergent areas of growth, the themes of: (1) time, (2) systems component and (3) actor. It does so through a case study of nuclear energy, which was chosen because of its points of enquiry with regards to these three areas of growth, and its historical and on-going importance in the UK energy mix. Using results from 36 semi-structured interviews with non-governmental organisations and policy actors across two case studies representative of the nuclear energy stages of energy production and of waste storage, disposal and reprocessing – the Hinkley Point and Sellafield nuclear complexes – this research presents new insights within each of these previously identified areas of development. It offers the contributions of (1) facility lifecycles, (2) systems approaches and (3) the question of ‘justice by whom?' and concludes that the energy justice framework can aid energy decision-making in a way that not only mitigates the environmental impacts of energy via socio-technical change, but also does so in an ethically defensible, socially just, way.