Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Everyday politics'
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Janssen, Jacqueline Jeannette Maria. "Becoming savvy : developing awareness of everyday politics." Thesis, University of Hertfordshire, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/2299/17116.
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This thesis explores the experiences of an educational project manager/team leader, and at some point job-seeker, mostly in foreign countries. The focus lies, in conclusion, on developing awareness of everyday politics, brought about mainly by a significant change in the understanding of three closely related concepts: culture, language and identity. The understanding of culture developed into a notion of culture of groups - part of complex networks of other groups - simultaneously formed by and forming interdependent people who are interrelating according to evolving/emerging, explicit/implicit customs, norms, values and ethics. The exploration of language revealed patterns of conversation, common to specific groups, allowing co-creation of significant symbols, of which appropriate use enabled communication, establishment and mutual recognition. Identity became recognised as a social construct - dynamically adapting to specific local circumstances (groups), to social acts, which it forms and is formed by at the same time. In researcher's management practice and career-coaching-trajectory rather abstract and idealised text and talk describing people and/in organisations was encountered frequently, seemingly aimed at reducing the inevitable uncertainty that results from the complexity of human relating. Attention is paid to ways in which people speak and write about them-selves and/at work and how this influences the experience of self and/at work, which revealed a relation between abstract and idealised conversational patterns and impacted sense of self. The career-coaching experience in particular exposed how these conversational patterns in/and the strategic construction of 'glossy' identities (of organisations and people) do not reflect everyday perception of self and/at work, as work is developed in social interaction, of which meaning is negotiated and evolves through people's differing intentions, expectations and emerging insights; through everyday politics. Becoming 'politically savvy', acquiring awareness of everyday politics, is necessary for our functioning in organisational life. The argument is that developing 'political savvy' - becoming self-conscious in complex organisational environments where strategically co-created idealised images of self, organisations and work are common practice - is increasingly taxing, as glossy identities 'airbrush' away the messiness of everyday work life. The challenge for managers is to endeavour to see beyond these images, explicit strategies and certain conversational patterns, and develop their ability to make sense - by reflecting and taking a reflexive stance - of what it is people are doing together. Taking seriously everyday experiences may provide choice, options to proceed, possibly to develop (trust in) 'political savvy', and may increase awareness of how people adapt, change and develop (in) social acts because of and despite this.
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Oduro-Frimpong, Joseph. "Popular Media, Politics and Everyday Life in Contemporary Ghana." OpenSIUC, 2012. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dissertations/579.
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How do popular media genres reinforce or provide alternative perspectives to circulating official political discourses, as well as articulate issues of social concern? In what ways do such media offer insights into aspects of cultural practices that inform and represent matters of key significance in people's quotidian lives? This dissertation investigates these two general questions within four distinct Ghanaian popular visual media genres: popular video-films, political cartoons, death announcement posters, and vehicle inscriptions (`mottonyms'). Regarding the Ghanaian popular video-films, I examine how the films (re)present the issue of cyberfraud (`sakawa') in Ghana. I contrast the films' (re)presentation of this phenomenon vis-a-vis that of certain official pronouncements on the issue, and argue that a critical approach to the `sakawa film series' reveals a robust counter discourse to official denunciations. My investigation of political cartoons, examines some of the works of the artist Akosua in the Ghanaian newspaper, Daily Guide. Here I focus on how Akosua's works, utilizing popular cultural allusions, function as an alternative media discourse in contemporary Ghanaian sociopolitical debates. As regards the death-announcement posters, I investigate how, situated as they are within certain well-known Ghanaian cultural values and practices, including funerary caskets, these posters remediate these cultural mores in the context of rapid social change. Lastly, regarding the mottonyms, I explore, through interviews with vehicle owners, the interactions between specific life experiences that spurred them to coin these inscriptions and the cultural fabric within which they have done so. Conceptually, this dissertation draws not only from cultural anthropology and its subfields of visual culture, and religion, media and culture, but also significantly from global/international media studies and from emergent works on African cultural and media studies. The harnessing of interdisciplinary conceptual frameworks, such as phenomenological and social constructionist approaches, to interrogate Ghanaian popular visual media in this dissertation advances our current thinking in the above-mentioned fields in several ways. For example, the social constructionist (Lee-Hurwitz 1995; Morgan 2005) and phenomenological approaches (Langsdorf, 1994; Lanigan 1998) that guide the investigation of vehicle inscriptions and death-announcement posters reveal purposeful intentionality in human communication. Furthermore, this dissertation, with its focus on popular video-films, press cartoons, death-announcement posters and vehicle inscriptions concretely elucidates recent expansive theorizations of `media'. Here `media' is understood as practices of mediation (de Vries 2001; Meyer 2003; Zito 2008), and broadly conceived to transcend narrowly defined traditional mass media formats (Downing 1996). In the latter case, I advocate for global/international media scholars to begin to pay equal `field service' to popular media artifacts within the current ambit of the `practice paradigm' in global/international media studies (Postill 2010:4; Couldry 2004).
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Gombay, Christie. "Eating cities, the politics of everyday life in Kampala, Uganda." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp02/NQ27935.pdf.
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Wilson, Helen Frances. "Living with diversity : everyday encounter and the politics of tolerance." Thesis, Durham University, 2011. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/854/.
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This study is concerned with the uptake of tolerance as a response to the contemporary problems of managing diversity and developing cohesion in western societies. Drawing upon recent work that has attempted to critically theorise its contemporary uses and reveal its paradoxical operations, political agendas and civilising tendencies, this study moves to question how tolerance takes place on the ground. More specifically, it examines the relationship between tolerance and everyday encounter to consider how it is embodied, produced, and sometimes compromised by the intimacies of everyday practice. Whilst state mobilisations and discourses of tolerance clearly inflect its practice, the study argues that current debates offer only a partial account of the politics of tolerance and its affectual geographies, which are shaped by additional constituents of agency. As a way into its everyday politics, the study focuses on three in particular – geographies of place, ways of thinking (including habit, memory and familiarity) and materialities – across three different spaces of encounter in Birmingham, UK. The first site focuses upon a public bus service, which presents a challenging arena for throwntogetherness and a space of intense materiality and unusual intimacy, where movement is constrained and differences are negotiated on the smallest of scales. The second focuses upon a multicultural primary school, which is positioned as a key site for the pedagogical promotion of tolerance, to question how parents negotiate difference and their parental responsibilities through an account of habit and familiarity. The final chapter turns to a conflict management workshop, where encounters with difference are carefully engineered in an attempt to develop more tolerant individuals through a series of exercises designed to cultivate techniques of thought. Taken together, these three sites develop an account of tolerance that is more plural, unpredictable and in many cases more optimistic than prevalent debates would suggest and demonstrate how, as a response to difference, tolerance might work as part of a wider telos of social change and ethical praxis.
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Kane, Patrick M. "Politics, discontent and the everyday in Egyptian arts, 1938-1966." Diss., Online access via UMI:, 2007. http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/fullcit/3289111.
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Skaten, Monica Hauge. "From refining to smuggling : the everyday politics of petrol in Ghana." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/25928.
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This thesis presents an ethnographic study of the downstream petroleum industry in Ghana focusing on trade, infrastructure, flow, politics and social relationships. In 2010, the West African Republic of Ghana started pumping crude oil from the offshore Jubilee-field. The rapid development from discovery to extraction, along with economic expectations generated by the development of the new upstream industry, led to exponential growth in the downstream industry. A liberalisation reform of the downstream industry was initiated in 2005 and the state started to redefine its role in the petroleum industry, allowing a range of private entrepreneurs to participate in the downstream sector. On the back of these key transformations of the industry, this thesis demonstrates the continuous politicisation of petroleum products on a national level and the significance of this politicisation on infrastructure, networks and social relationships throughout the industry. This thesis argues that the trade, distribution and price of petroleum products in Ghana facilitates and shapes political and economic reciprocity between the government, the publics and profitable economic networks. Even though there was adequate infrastructure such as refinery, pipelines and petroleum storage depots, petroleum products in Ghana were distributed in a way that allowed the most number of people to come into contact with petroleum, by having access to the actual product, but also through enabling job creation and profitable economic activities. The petroleum infrastructure would obstruct profitable networks and informal markets. I propose the term ‘Politics of Petrol’ to emphasise how the industry and the commodities were part and parcel of the political and social fabric in Ghana. Reflecting the negotiable nature of politics and reform alongside the changeable practices and networks in the industry - Politics of Petrol - demonstrates the productive purpose of petroleum in Ghana’s democracy.
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Alberti, Gabriella. "Transient working lives : migrant women's everyday politics in London's hospitality industry." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2011. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/54228/.
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By bringing together trans-nationalism and labour process studies my research develops an understanding of migrant labour that re-evaluates the social and political potential of migrants’ everyday relationships in, across and beyond their workplaces. It shows that, although increasing casualisation of employment limits workers’ organisational resources, growing diversity and mobility also prompts alternative modes of resistance to improve the lives of transient workers. The challenges this research poses for unions include overcoming the persisting ‘masculine politics’ of organising models, expanding their coalitions beyond an ‘industry-based’ strategy, and engaging directly with migrants’ communities to promote self-organising through alternative educational tools.
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Super, Elizabeth Harkness. "Everyday party politics : local volunteers and professional organizers in grassroots campaigns." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/4066.
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The decline in traditional methods of civic engagement is a cause for concern in many Western democracies. Similarly, studies of American party politics point to a transformation from locally-based volunteer organizations to national ones assisting candidate-centered, professionally-run campaigns, leaving little room for volunteer participants. This thesis analyses the recent resurgence of grassroots participation and organization in the United States. Using interpretive methods, I present a study of grassroots participants in Massachusetts Democratic Party primary campaigns in 2006. Primary documents, interviews with volunteers and paid members of field staff, and observations of canvassing work all detail the personal and organizational contexts of participation, illuminating the meanings individuals found in campaign work. Grassroots participation takes place in a loosely organized set of candidate-based campaigns, local party committees, and civic spheres. When participants first engage in this environment, they become socialized into a community with learned norms, practices, and ways of knowing. While those interviewed shared some of the motivations of party activists in previous studies, the motives and beliefs described by both professional organizers and volunteers were less policy focused than expected, and blurred the distinction between ideological and social categories. Indeed, while organizers and volunteers build distinct identities through their campaign participation, they share many more similarities than the literature on activism and professionalism in parties would suggest. Participants also serve a crucial role as translators between party elites and their fellow citizens, with important implications for linkage and the problem of decoupling. Rather than a return to traditional methods and structures of political engagement, the participants observed take part in and are building communities which have much in common with new forms of non-traditional participation. These findings contribute to the development of party organization theories and point towards the need for greater dialogue between scholars of party politics, organizational studies, and civic engagement.
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Ince, Anthony James Elliot. "Organising anarchy spatial strategy prefiguration and the politics of everyday life." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 2010. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/496.
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This research is an analysis of efforts to develop a politics of everyday life through embedding anarchist and left-libertarian ideas and practices into community and workplace organisation. It investigates everyday life as a key terrain of political engagement, interrogating the everyday spatial strategies of two emerging forms of radical politics. The community dimension of the research focuses on two London-based social centre collectives, understood as community-based, anarchist-run political spaces. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), an international trade union that organises along radical left-libertarian principles, comprises the workplace element. The empirical research was conducted primarily through an activist-ethnographic methodology. Based in a politically-engaged framework, the research opens up debates surrounding the role of place-based class politics in a globalised world, and how such efforts can contribute to our understanding of social relations, place, networks, and political mobilisation and transformation. The research thus contributes to and provides new perspectives on understanding and enacting everyday spatial strategies. Utilising Marxist and anarchist thought, the research develops a distinctive theoretical framework that draws inspiration from both perspectives. Through an emphasis on how groups seek to implement particular radical principles, the research also explores the complex interactions between theory and practice in radical politics. I argue that it is in everyday spaces and practices where we find the most powerful sources for political transformation. Grassroots politics are most 3 effective when enacted through everyday place-based relations. Prefigurative spatial strategies enacted by the groups studied not only strive to create relations fit for a post-capitalist society, but also seek to mobilise and articulate their politics in ways that are tailored to the specific context of struggle. Thus, groups such as social centres and the IWW can tell us a lot about how utopian ideas can be directly relevant to immediate everyday material needs and experiences.
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Tyerman, Thomas. "Border struggles : segregation, migrant solidarity, and ethical politics in everyday life." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2017. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/border-struggles-segregation-migrant-solidarity-and-ethical-politics-in-everyday-life(ca85af99-24ec-4fc9-8862-49a4b7baff43).html.
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This thesis analyses borders as sites of struggle in everyday life. Drawing on critical approaches across disciplines including international relations, security studies, citizenship, border, and migration studies, it argues for a perspective on borders as embodied encounters in everyday life as both a method and ethos of critical analysis. Drawing on empirical research in the contexts of the UK and Calais, this thesis presents an account of borders as everyday practices of segregation. In highlighting the everydayness of borders it points to the ordinary and often messy ways in which borders are made real in people's lives and also come undone. Framing the border in terms of segregation it traces how ongoing global histories of discrimination, domination, and racism underlying contemporary nation-state border-making are reproduced in everyday contexts and ordinary encounters in which we all become complicit. At the same time, this thesis elaborates a post-Wittgensteinian 'grammatical reading' (Pin-Fat, 2010; 2013; 2016) in order to trace how key debates within prominent critical approaches to borders, migration, sovereignty, and (bio)politics continue to be framed by the metaphysical seduction of nation-states and their borders as ontologically 'hard'. In doing so, it argues that several critical approaches risk reproducing the very borders they are often committed to challenging and risk undermining the possibility of solidarity and struggle. Instead, in turning to everyday life, this thesis proposes to read the ethical politics of borders and migration as ontologically 'soft': that is, contingent, socially constructed, and ordinary. Whilst this in no way makes borders less powerfully real or violent such a perspective, this thesis argues, provides critical insight into the politics of borders as sites and practices of struggle as well as into the ordinary ethics of 'migrant solidarity'.
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Ellis, Christopher David. "Ethnography of the status question and everyday politics in Puerto Rico." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/10448.
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This thesis is about the power of political elites to establish the framework of political discourse, and to thereby control political power, in Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rican 'status question' - the debate about the island's ultimate juridical and political relationship with the United States and the rest of the world – is considered a manifestation of such power. Formal domestic politics in Puerto Rico is structured around three party political desires for an uncertain and unknowable postcolonial future, and not around any set of distinctive ideological positions for engaging with political issues in the present. An unresolved question of nationalism and state building therefore becomes the structural filter through which all politics must necessarily pass. Inspired by the concept of hegemony, the thesis is firstly interested in how political elites exercise power to establish status as the framework for domestic political discourse. Secondly, and more importantly, it is interested in how this framework is reinforced, modified, resisted and even overcome through elite exercises of power in concrete political settings. The thesis takes a particular focus on the relationship between status positions and everyday political practices in three Puerto Rican municipalities: Guaynabo, Caguas and Lares. The author arrived at this focus through an ethnographic engagement with the field that was made possible by his research positionality as a white British outsider to Puerto Rico. The thesis tells the story of the nuanced ways in which local political elites engage with the status question through practices of politics on the ground. Elite performances of local state power do not straightforwardly reproduce the hegemony of status, but rather, create a more complicated empirical terrain of contradictory, unexpected and subversive effects. In certain places, everyday practices of municipal politics appear to reflect the intractable entanglement of local priorities and centrally prescribed status positions. In others, politics gets done in ways that leave the status question behind, creating effects that include city-state sovereignty, elevated standards of living, non-nationalist forms of politics, and non-state-centric possibilities for decolonisation. Ironically, therefore, a political system that is so profoundly shaped by discourses of nationalism and state building is disrupted in practice by some of the very actors who help to give the system this shape. These findings contribute to critical geographies of the Caribbean and to recent debates on politics, power and decolonisation in Puerto Rico.
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Gagné, Natacha. "Maori identities and visions : politics of everyday life in Auckland, New Zealand." Thesis, McGill University, 2004. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=84994.
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Indigenous peoples around the world have been involved, especially since the 1970s, in nationalist or sovereigntist movements, as well as in struggles for decolonization, self-determination, and recognition of their rights. Maaori of Aotearoa/New Zealand are engaged in just such processes and, particularly since the 1960s and 1970s, as part of the Maaori "cultural renaissance". Since about 70% of Maaori live in urban areas, cities---Auckland in particular---have become important sites of affirmation and struggle. This study, which falls within the field of urban anthropology, is an investigation of what being Maaori today means and how it is experienced, in particular in the city. The sense of place of Maaori living in Auckland and the appropriation of space in the urban context are important dimensions of this study. It explores the complexity of Maaori relationships to the urban milieu, which is often perceived as an alien and colonized site; the ways they create places and spaces for themselves; and the ongoing struggles to (re)affirm Maaori identities and cultural aspects considered important elements of these identities. The focus of this research is on everyday life and "ordinary" Maaori (in contrast to elites). It reveals the significance and importance to Maaori affirmation and resistance of the extended family and certain types of "city houses" which are based on "traditional" marae (Maaori traditional meeting places) principles. In contrast to many studies that have stressed the assimilation pressures of the urban milieu and global forces on indigenous societies, this research underlines processes of (re)affirmation. It shows how indigenous visions, and ways of being are maintained and even strengthened through changes and openness to the larger society. Coming to understand these processes also led to the exploration of Maaori realms of interpretation or figured worlds, the heteroglossic and complex ways people engage in or rel
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Carter-Sinclair, Michael. "Viennese culture and politics, 1861 to 1938 : everyday expressions of 'German' identity." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2012. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/viennese-culture-and-politics-1861-to-1938(d36f2a61-0b7a-4509-b414-469245c1f7ee).html.
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This is a work about identity and belonging in Vienna between 1861 and 1938. It engages with one of the great debates in Austrian history, concerning the nature, aims, depth and extent of radical German nationalist feeling that existed in the city in the period down to 1938. In particular, it addresses the level of support that existed among radical groups on the Right in favour of the joining of Austria and Germany into one country. This aim was known in German as Anschluss, which translates as union, and many, often small, political parties put it at the top of their priorities.1 This aim of joining all Germans together was also known as the Pan-German policy, as it was theoretically based on bringing together all Germans in one country, regardless of the state in which they then lived. The main focal points for early Pan-German efforts, however, were the lands which were to be brought together as the German Empire in 1871 and the German-speaking parts of the Habsburg Empire. After the First World War, Germany and Austria were the main, if not only, points of attention. Switzerland and its German-speaking population received little Pan-German attention, perhaps because of the long independence of Switzerland outside of the Holy Roman Empire.2 In examining radical German nationalism in Vienna over this period, much of the historiography has rested on an assumption that German nationalist sentiment was expressed in support for such an Anschluss? In this view, the outburst of pro-Anschluss enthusiasm in 1938 in Vienna - and elsewhere in Austria - was therefore a genuine and long-held expression of support for a German nationalist position. Yet throughout the period there was much disagreement about how, or even whether, Anschluss should be achieved, what kind of German state it would be desirable to join and what role Austrians - and Austria - should play within this state. There was also much disagreement over many decades about what it meant to be German, and who should belong as a German. In terms of this debate, the essence of the Germany that was on offer in 1938 presented a radical solution that can be expressed in three brief sentences. All Germans should be brought together in one state. A German was ethnically defined. A Jew was not a German. If they are taken at face value, the crowds that gathered in Vienna to greet the arrival of Hitler shortly after the Anschluss suggest that the Viennese did support these three elements of the radical vision being put forward in 1938. The size of the crowds suggests the extent of German nationalist feeling. The passion on display suggests that these people were willing supporters of the Anschluss, gladly surrendering the independence of Austria. More than this, however, these people must have understood the essence of the German state to which Austria was being joined. The anti-Jewish violence that swept the country as these crowds gathered suggests that, for these participants at least, this was an enthusiastic endorsement of a racial, antisemitic, exclusionary vision of what it meant to be German.4 Again, taken at face value, the members of these crowds seem confident that they belonged, that they were not excluded, and that they were part of the new order.5 Yet, as there had been so much debate in Vienna over these very ideas over many years, whether the support that these crowds appeared to show for Anschluss was widespread among the population in general, even on the Right, must be questioned. The purpose of this work is therefore to address two key questions. First, by 1938, had support for a radical, exclusionary German nationalism become deeply embedded in the political and social life of Vienna? Second, was Anschluss the fulfilment of the visions that those with radical, exclusionary, definitions of being German had been supporting in the lead-up to 1938? In order to understand whether these scenes were a momentary outburst, or the expression of a whole-hearted endorsement of this particular realisation of Anschluss, the work therefore focuses on competing, and yet at times overlapping, visions that evolved in Vienna of what it should mean to be German. In particular, this work focuses on those defined here as the radical Right, who promoted visions of being German which were predominantly based on the idea that an attributed ethnic origin could exclude someone from being German. The work aims to show how deeply these visions had penetrated Viennese thinking, who was promoting them and what they meant.
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Said, Maurice. "People, place, and politics : everyday-life in post-tsunami coastal Sri Lanka." Thesis, Durham University, 2015. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/11259/.
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This thesis emerges from a critical event; the Asian tsunami of 26th December 2004. It takes an analytical approach to narratives of everyday life events in two coastal communities in southern Sri Lanka. The villages of Po and Thomale, were both severely affected by the tsunami. They received varied and contrasting outside attention and aid in the aftermath of the disaster as a consequence of their different geographic and social characteristics. The thesis draws on my extended contact with these two communities over almost a decade, in the beginning as an aid worker, and later as a field-researcher. This extended contact has enabled me to explore the transformations in social and spatial organisation in the two communities, from the immediate aftermath of the tsunami up to the present day. Whilst Po benefited from numerous projects, aid, and development, as a result of its tourism and capital-generating potential, the fishing village of Thomale was largely side-lined. The characteristics of Po, and the changes that took place post-tsunami, promoted ‘outsider’ driven development and the appropriation of local land, by both foreign and Sinhalese entrepreneurs. The thesis answers two key questions: a) what strategies have locals developed to counteract this uninvited intrusion into their community? And b) how have the events and developments that have transpired as a result of the tsunami, affected locals’ ‘sense of place’ and their social relations? In tackling these questions, I explore local interpretations of kin and community, the role of kin-based factions, and the subsequent reconfiguration of a sense of place around novel kin-based social networks. Narratives of place are also explored, and in this context the thesis outlines how ritual is utilised to voice individual and communal concerns over the changing face and politics of place, as well as exploring violent conflicts that arise as a result of seemingly misplaced power relations, and identity. Ultimately, this thesis presents a segment of an on-going narrative of the relationship between people, politics and place in the aftermath of a disaster.
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Schluessel, Eric T. "The Muslim Emperor of China: Everyday Politics in Colonial Xinjiang, 1877-1933." Thesis, Harvard University, 2016. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33493602.
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This dissertation concerns the ways in which a Chinese civilizing project intervened powerfully in cultural and social change in the Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang from the 1870s through the 1930s. I demonstrate that the efforts of officials following an ideology of domination and transformation rooted in the Chinese Classics changed the ways that people associated with each other and defined themselves and how Muslims understood their place in history and in global space. Chinese power is central to the history of modern Xinjiang and to the Uyghur people, not only because the Chinese center has dominated the area as a periphery, but because of the ways in which that power intervened in society and culture on the local level.
The processes and ramifications of the Chinese government in late-Qing and early Republican Xinjiang demonstrates strong parallels with colonialism in the context of European empire. This dissertation does not focus on the question of typology, however, but instead draws on methods from colonial history to explore the dynamics of a linguistically and religiously heterogeneous society. In order to do so, I draw on local archival documents in Chinese and Turkic and place them into dialogue with the broader Turkic-language textual record. This dissertation thus proceeds from the inception of the ideology that drove the civilizing project, through its social ramifications, to the innovations that emerged in Islamicate literature and history in Xinjiang in this period.East Asian Languages and Civilizations
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Bullock, Chelsea. "Everyday Intimacies: The Politics of Respectability in Post-Recessionary Southern Reality Television." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/18359.
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Rather than taking a broad genre-based approach to analyzing reality television as digital media, this disserations understands the field of reality programming as operating within a new media model and as composed of micro-genres. My project specifically explores the "intimate" micro-genre, considering the politics of respectability and gendered labor as foundational elements in what is a particularly fertile and volatile site of meaning-making. Grounding my analysis in a comprehensive map of reality programming allows me to explore a pattern of politically rich programs set in the South. Shows such as Duck Dynasty, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, and Real Housewives of Atlanta offer insight into the circulation and currency of race, class, and gender with significant theoretical implications for an economically and politically unstable national moment. Using an intersectional lens to investigate reality television, my project seeks to better understand the gears driving our cultural anxieties and media trends through an analysis of digital paratexts, branding, labor, and affect.
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Armytage, Rosita. "Manufacturing Power: The Everyday Politics of Privilege Among the Pakistani Business Elite." Phd thesis, Canberra, ACT : The Australian National University, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/119249.
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This thesis interrogates the operation of modern capitalism
within a context of political instability and economic inequality. In doing so, it examines the relationship between power, instability, informal processes, and the accumulation of vast amounts of capital. Specifically, this thesis is about the process of acquiring, maintaining, and wielding economic power in Pakistan – an industrialising economy beset by high levels of political change and economic insecurity. Based on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this thesis examines the group of families who occupy the upper-most tier of the economic and social structure, the means through which they have acquired and protected power and influence, and the challenges non-elite
individuals face in attaining upward social mobility in developing countries. In contrast to studies that examine the ways in which global economic integration creates new avenues for the capture of wealth, privilege and political influence, my research demonstrates that forms of “hyper-capitalism” have not come to dominate markets globally. Rather, in many contexts, commerce remains governed by highly personalised and intimate relations determined by local cultural practices. I show that business in Pakistan has remained resiliently “local,” and dependent upon deeply rooted familial, ethnic and class structures. Localised elite business practices remain substantially independent from the “international standards” of business propagated by multinational corporations, international investors, and the international market. In this context, the resilience of local forms of business constitutes not only a site of interlinked personal, gendered and economic processes, but also a site of post-colonial assertiveness. This thesis explores the informal means through which elites navigate their social, marital and business environments to reconstitute their power in line with shifting economic and political conditions. Despite the economic transformations that have taken place in Pakistan over the past seventy years, and the shifts in social structure these changes have engendered, the Pakistani elite has routinely fortified and reconstituted the power and privilege of its members in a shared pursuit of profit and market dominance. The resilience of these modes of doing business reflect the inability of international forms of global capital to successfully re-colonise local markets and extract the nationally- generated wealth now held by domestic elites.
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satybaldieva, Elmira. "The nature of local politics in rural Kyrgyzstan : A study of social inequalities, everyday politics and neo-liberalism." Thesis, University of Kent, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.529395.
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Debevec, Liza. "Through the food lens : the politics of everyday life in urban Burkina Faso." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/7117.
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The subject of the thesis is the everyday life of several Muslim and one Christian family residing in different parts of Bobo-Dioulasso, the second largest town in Burkina Faso, situated in the south west, on the axis between Mali and Ivory Coast. Through ethnographic descriptions of food events I explore larger issues of everyday existence in urban West Africa. The joint use of `traditional' and `western' foods shows that the average Burkinabe shifts between several worlds in which s/he feels more or less comfortable. One is the home, where eating and other practices are traditional and safe, the other the outside world, where one is always at risk of the unknown. At the same time the outside world is a space invested with expectations, excitement and possibility of success. I explore the ways in which people negotiate between the `traditional' world, which they know and understand, and the `modern' ways of life, to which, while with hesitation and apprehension, they aspire. In order to understand people's everyday actions, I analyse their everyday lives, starting from the home life and everyday feeding practices, through celebrations and rituals, and their relationship with and ideas about the outside world through the media. Finally, I explore people's ideas about the future they aspire to, both for themselves and for their families.
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Scriven, Thomas. "Activism and the everyday : the practices of radical working-class politics, 1830-1842." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2013. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/activism-and-the-everyday-the-practices-of-radical-workingclass-politics-18301842(499e8040-fc6d-4711-904e-b86cf257d3a4).html.
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This thesis will re-evaluate the Chartist movement through research into day-to-day practice in four areas: sociability, material networks, gender and political subjectivity. It will demonstrate that Chartism's activism and the everyday lives of its members were indistinct. In the early years of the movement and the years preceding it, activism and political thought engaged with the quotidian to successfully build a movement that was not only relevant to but an integral part of people's everyday lives. This thesis will analyse how this interaction was not limited to Chartist activists politicising everyday grievances, but also how day-to-day practices and relationships contributed to the infrastructure, intellectual culture and political programme of the movement. This thesis will make original contributions to a number of debates. It challenges the dominant view of Chartism as first and foremost a political movement distinct from its social conditions. It will be argued that this dichotomy between the political and the social cannot be sustained, and it will be shown that activists were most successful when they drew from and were part of society. It will criticise the related trend in studies of Chartism and Radicalism to focus on political identity, meaning and forms of communication. It will argue that these topics are valuable, but need to be seen within a wider existential framework and integrated with an approach that sees cultural activity as one part of a range of activities. As such, it will illustrate the ways that cultural practices are bound with social relationships. Following this, it will make the case for practice to be looked at not just in symbolic or ritualistic terms but also in terms of day-to-day activities that were crucial for the development and maintenance of political movements. It will be argued that prosaic, mundane and day-to-day activities are integral aspects of social movements and as such are worthwhile areas of research. Finally, it will add to our understanding of Chartism by providing biographical information on Henry Vincent, an under-researched figure, and the south west and west of England, under-researched regions. This thesis is organised into two parts. The first will follow the work of activists in developing Chartism in the south west of England from the end of the Swing Riots until the Chartist Convention of 1839. Here it will be argued that Chartism relied upon a close and intensive interaction between activists and the communities they were politicising, with the result being that the movement was coloured by the politics, intellectual culture and practices of those communities. The second section will look at how the private lives and social networks of individual activists were integral to their political ideas, rhetoric and capacity to work as activists. Correspondence, documents produced by the state, the radical press and the internal records of the Chartist movement all shed light on the way everyday life and political thought and action merged.
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Bergman, Olivia Anna Kristina. "Designing policy feedback : experimental evidence on the everyday politics of the social contract." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2020. https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/128636.
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Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, May, 2020Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 167-172).
For most of history, people had only infrequent personal contact with their governments. The modern social contract generates everyday interactions between citizens and states. In this dissertation, across three papers and three countries, I examine when and how such policy experiences shape attitudes toward government, using experimental methods grounded in a comparative perspective. I explore traditional policy design factors -- the defining aspects of policies that shape "who gets what", which I term 'macro design' -- alongside factors receiving less attention in the literature --
those that often shape "when and how", which I term 'micro design'. In the first paper, I compare the experience of filing taxes in the US and Sweden, showing that design focuses citizens' attention in very different ways: on tax compliance and payment in the US, on refunds in Sweden. In a nationally-representative survey experiment, I link a US-style tax environment with perceptions that the government is wasteful. In the second paper, I conduct a large-scale randomized field experiment that shifts administrative burdens away from citizens. Using a highly scalable digital intervention that simplifies the claiming of a means-tested benefit, I substantially increase reported satisfaction with both the bank and government among 195,414 low-income customers of an Australian bank. This is true even though effects on take-up, ascertained by linking bank data to government records, are modest.
In the third paper, I situate these findings within a new theory of how the design of policy experiences shapes government attitudes. I propose that two dimensions affect attribution of credit for policies: the valence of the experience, and the salience of the government's role. After outlining how macro and micro design factors shape experiences, I present a nationally-representative survey experiment showing that channeling benefits through the tax code results in government not getting credit where due. Together, these experiments illustrate the powerful effects of subtle design factors on citizens' views of government. More broadly, this dissertation suggests that, in addition to how policy content affects politics -- "who gets what" -- studying "when" and especially "how" citizens experience policies in their everyday lives illuminates attitudes underpinning democracy.
by Olivia Anna Kristina Bergman.
Ph. D.
Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science
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Akin, Yigit. "The Ottoman Home Front during World War I: Everyday Politics, Society, and Culture." The Ohio State University, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1313179729.
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Wisaijorn, Thanachate. "Riverine border practices : people's everyday lives on the Thai-Lao Mekong border." Thesis, Loughborough University, 2018. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/33733.
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Pluralities of people s crossings of the Mekong Thai-Lao border occur as locals subvert, reject, ignore, and embrace the logic of the national border. From a state-centric point of view, the everyday movements of these people, who rely mainly on a subsistence economy and have their own modes of crossing, are undocumented. I argue that people s mobility co-exists with the practice of sedentary assumption. The aim of this thesis is to promote theory related to the Third Space in Borderland Studies by the presentation and analysis of people s pluralities in border-crossings. The borderland area of Khong Chiam (Thailand)-Sanasomboun (Lao PDR) is the location of an in-between state in which spatial negotiations, temporal negotiations, and negotiations of political subjectivities contribute to the nature of mobility in the Third Space. To achieve the objective of this thesis, ethnographic methodology was used over six months of fieldwork from March to September 2016, and included participant observations, interviews and essay-readings that involved 110 participants in the borderland site. People s movements across the Mekong River border occur daily without formal state approval. From the perspective of the Thai Ban, the river is a lived space in which they catch food and use for transport. However, their interpretation of the Mekong as the state boundary does not completely disappear. This thesis examines the everyday banal pluralities of the Thai Ban s border-crossings by weaving together the three concepts of space, temporality, and negotiations of political subjectivities. The spatial and temporal negotiations involved in the border-crossings shape and are shaped by this other interpretation of the Mekong as a lived space, and different political subjectivities contribute to the pluralities of the crossings. The presentation of these pluralities of border-crossings adds to Borderland Studies specifically and the social sciences in general in the development of an understanding of the Third Space. As this thesis focuses on people s mobility at quasi-state checkpoints and in areas along the Mekong Thai-Lao border with no border checkpoints, it is suggested that future research examines the everyday practices of border-crossings at land borders.
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Mathur, Nayanika. "Paper tiger? : the everyday life of the state in the Indian Himalaya." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.608992.
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Cann, Sarah. "The politics of ethnic identity in everyday life at the local level in Croatia." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/29051.
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The starting point in this thesis is a reconsideration of the genre of literature on the break-up of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that seeks to explain the causes of conflicts. The point made is that this search for causality not only results in accounts that are ‘ethnographically thin’, but also constructing an account that focuses on only one movement in the everyday lives of persons in Croatia. Applying a concept of the everyday that allows for moments of conflict – as opposed to considering conflict as something separate – the argument this thesis makes is that there is the presence of an apparently repeated movement to the way objects of shared interest divide and come together. By employing concept of ‘scale’ [Strathern 1991] this thesis draws out ethnographically the movement surrounding objects of shared interest, through an account of the work that persons do on their family houses, as well as their work on documents, and gravestones. The point this ethnographic account makes is that these objects of shared interest gain this appearance of movement as a result of the debates that surround them. It also draws out how these objects of shared interest are not passive objects, but how they take on the role of actants [Latour 1997] by shaping the form that these debates take. It is only after having drawn out this movement that this thesis then turns to consider the concept of narodnost [ethnicity]. The argument made here is that there is a similar movement to the debates surrounding narodnost as there are to the movement of the debates that surround inherited family houses and documents. This thesis then compares the movement surrounding to the debates surrounding anthropological objects of shared interest, and the movement to the debates surrounding objects of interest for persons in Rijeka, Croatia.
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Makram, Ebeid Dina. "Manufacturing stability : everyday politics of work in an industrial steel town in Helwan, Egypt." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2012. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/780/.
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A few days before Hosni Mubarak was ousted in 2011, he reminded the Egyptian people that ’istiqrār (‘stability’) was his legacy both domestically and internationally. Their choice was between ‘stability’ and ‘chaos’, he threatened. This thesis argues that stability is a mode of governmentality whose power cannot be fully appreciated at the level of political discourse only. Rather, stability as a practice of government is entangled with peoples’ values, aspirations, and the intimate politics of everyday life. In Egypt between the Free Officers coup of 1952 and the January 25th revolution of 2011, ‘stability’ embodied access to both tenured employment and the means to reproduce the conditions of ‘a good life’ in the context of the family. Adequate understanding of stability and its ubiquity as an ideal must take into account the complex ways in which state projects and imaginative appropriation of those projects intersect. The thesis draws on fieldwork in an industrial neighbourhood of Cairo central to political movements of Egypt to analyse the everyday politics surrounding access to tenured employment in the context of the casualisation of labour and deregulation of capital since the inception of neo-liberal reforms in Egypt in 1991. By analysing the politics of labour at a site of strategic interest to the Egyptian regime from Abdul-Nasser to Mubarak, the thesis highlights how adequate understanding of political economy, practices of governing and neoliberalism must include both the shop floor and the home.
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Busby, Amy. "The everyday practice and performance of European politics : an ethnography of the European Parliament." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2014. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/48830/.
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This inter-disciplinary thesis takes an ethnographic approach to the European Parliament (EP) in order to bring actors, agency, and social context into the study of MEP behaviour. It explores how MEPs practice politics at the everyday level inside the EP. The study approaches politics as an activity performed on a daily basis by individuals within particular social spaces. It takes an individual level and holistic approach to MEP behaviour by exploring their everyday practice of politics inside this institution. The thesis attempts to provide a deeper and more nuanced understanding of MEP behaviour than is currently available in the literature. The thesis primarily responds to gaps in the European Studies literature which mean we lack understanding of how MEPs practice politics within European structures as active, dynamic agents. The research design includes participant observation, elite interviews, and a survey. An inter-disciplinary theoretical framework is applied which combines tools from Goffman (1959), Wenger et al (2002), and Bourdieu (1990, 1977). It sees MEPs as actors accumulating capital and preparing backstage to give credible and thus persuasive performances to different audiences in this transnational political field and its habitus. This research particularly explores the role of the national party delegations and EP groups in MEPs' everyday practice of politics and the local meanings generated around these structures. The key narrative woven throughout this thesis concerns their role from participants' perspective. This thesis finds that these structures play a vital support role and that they can be conceptualised as collegial communities of practice in which members routinely exchange knowledge with trusted colleagues to enable them to cope with the work environment they face and to pursue their chosen interests more successfully.
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Hellström, Joanna. "Dehumanization in Everyday Politics : A study of discursive dehumanization of beggars on social media." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-375106.
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Social science scholars mainly regard dehumanization as a phenomenon of conflict and war. Concurrently, dehumanizing attitudes and behavior in democratic, non-conflict settings is a significant field within social psychology. Given the rise of right-wing populism and populist rhetoric, there is reason to believe that dehumanization has nestled its way into political discourse. With this background, the current study has investigated whether dehumanizing attitudes allegedly held by citizens are also expressed in their political arguments. Dehumanization can lead to support for aggression, discrimination, and violence even in democratic societies. Therefore, it is essential for political scientists to acknowledge its existence, as dehumanization can have a severe impact on equality and the defense of human rights. This paper is a cross-cutting study, which bridges the gap between political science and social psychology in the study of dehumanization by answering the question: Whether and how dehumanization is used in the debate on street begging in everyday politics? Discursive dehumanization on social media was mapped with the help of a novel analytical tool for content analysis. Social psychology has shown that people hold dehumanizing attitudes, and this study has shown that people are also willing to express these attitudes. This study finds that dehumanization is used in the debate on street begging to a significant degree. Dehumanization is mainly used in negative depictions of beggars, which undermine their moral capacity, civility, and refinement. The results of this study provide a foundation for studying both discursive dehumanization and dehumanization in political science.
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Briceño, Pablo Agustin. "Waiting for power : affection, ethics and politics in the everyday life of popular Chile." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/29600.
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Based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in población ‘La Victoria’, a working-class neighbourhood in the city of Santiago, this research describes the everyday lives of its inhabitants (pobladores) in the context of contemporary neoliberal Chile. Although the pobladores’ movement had animated Chilean politics since the 1950s, also becoming the main actor in the struggle against the dictatorship, after the return to democracy in 1990 pobladores disappeared from the political arena. Most researchers have proposed that the political absence of pobladores must be understood as an effect of neoliberal modernization – a set of policies implemented during dictatorship and maintained by successive democratic governments after 1990. Their main argument is that a major cultural transformation in Chile has degraded social ties producing a consumeristic, individualistic and depoliticized society. Instead, I propose that pobladores from La Victoria have, despite the transformations, preserved a form of conviviality based on strong affective bonds with kin, friends and neighbours – alongside equally sentimental separations and divisions from others. I argue that, due to their pervasiveness and importance in pobladores’ lives, social relationships are the main agents in the articulation of pobladores’ ethical frameworks guiding their decisions and actions in life. Pobladores’ affective social relationships have allowed them not only to mitigate the side effects of the current neoliberal model, but also to accept, adapt and contest specific aspects of it. In this sense, life in the población has a heterogeneous grammar, a way in which social relations are articulated and disarticulated, activated and de-activated, connecting personal lives to collective processes. This grammar of strong affective ties, terrible betrayals and deep but changing separations and divisions is what I call the ‘politics of the everyday life’. This politics of everyday life lies behind apparently very different historical processes, such as the pobladores’ struggle against dictatorship in the 1980s and their post-1990 absence from the political arena. I contend that what characterizes the current context is not a lack of politics or a ‘depoliticization’ but a particular way in which certain pobladores, known as ‘políticos’ – those interested in collective action in order to produce change in the world – are articulated with or disarticulated from other pobladores in the politics of everyday life in the población.
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Holm, Tanya. ""Shut Up, Fuck Off!" : Micro-politics amongst Young Women in Beirut." Thesis, Södertörn University College, School of Gender, Culture and History, 2009. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-2124.
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People are creators of their own acts. That is a premise of this thesis. Social contexts offer action alternatives but given their individuality people, to various extents, put the set of alternatives into question, re-shape them and make them into theirs. What people do in their everyday life has political significance. The theories that frame this work focus on how people reappropriate culture and in so doing bring forth infinitesimal changes in society.
I have interviewed seven young women in Beirut who take action to get to do what they desire. Given their social conditions and individuality they find different ways around the prohibitions that they are facing. Organized independently and within networks of foremost relatives they find their ways. They negotiate with family and community, make allies and create paths to 'forbidden' spaces. They seize opportunities and increase their space for a day, night or occasion. Then they accord their life to the surrounding's restrictions – until opportunity strikes again. The women also create an imaginary space where they are ruling queens. From there they tell the surrounding to shut up and fuck off, in there they hope, smile and fall in love.
The thesis then goes on to discuss the socio-political effects of young women's spacing practices. When the women do what they desire they enter, what they claim are, forbidden spaces. Their entry appears to be a threatening force; it diminishes gaps between the 'allowed' and the 'unacceptable' and between the 'good' and 'bad' girl- and womanhood. These practices, sprung from the daily life, challenge the surrounding and young women's spacing is thereby a micro-political phenomenon with subversive potential.
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Blackburn, Michael Lewis. "Movements of power and acts of resistance, Falun Gong and the politics of everyday life." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp01/MQ52785.pdf.
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Hubble, Nick. "George Orwell and mass-observation : mapping the politics of everyday life in England 1936-1941." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.249107.
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Mubarak, Kamakshi N. "Everyday networks, politics, and inequalities in post-tsunami recovery : fisher livelihoods in South Sri Lanka." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:6140f40d-9b68-4148-b62e-a3d8d9bdc646.
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The aim of this thesis is to explore how livelihoods are recovering in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka through the lens of the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework and the social networks approach—methods of inquiry that have gained considerable impetus in livelihoods research. The study is conducted with reference to two tsunami-affected fisher villages in the Hambantota District, Southern Province. It employs a qualitative ethnographic methodology that examines narratives emerging from households, local officials of government and non-government organizations, office bearers of community-based organizations, local politicians, village leaders, and key informants. Focus is on evaluating how particular roles, activities, and behaviour are given importance by these groups in specific post-tsunami contexts and how these aspects relate to broader conceptualizations of social networks, informal politics, social inequality, and ethnographic research in South Asia. The findings support four major contributions to the literature. First, social networks are significant as an object of study and a method of inquiry in understanding livelihoods post-disaster. Second, paying heed to varied forms of informal politics is critical in post-disaster analyses. Third, the concept of intersectionality can extend and improve upon prevailing approaches to social inequality in disaster recovery. Fourth, ethnographic research is valuable for understanding everyday networks, informal politics, and change in South Asia. Collectively, these findings present a human geography of post-tsunami livelihoods in Sri Lanka, where networks, politics, and inequalities, which form an essential part of everyday livelihoods, have been reproduced in disaster recovery. The thesis constitutes a means of offering expertise in the sphere of development practice, highlighting internal differentiation in access to aid as a key issue that needs to be identified and systematically addressed by policymakers and practitioners.
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Blatter, Jeremy Todd. "The Psychotechnics of Everyday Life: Hugo Münsterberg and the Politics of Applied Psychology, 1887-1917." Thesis, Harvard University, 2014. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:11636.
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This dissertation examines the relationship between experimental psychology and everyday life through the prism of Hugo Münsterberg and the Harvard Psychological Laboratory during the Progressive Era. Catalyzed by calls from the burgeoning educational community in the 1890s, academic psychologists were increasingly drawn into diverse cultural and political debates bearing on diverse facets of social reform and modernization. Educators, for example, courted psychologists to improve pedagogical techniques. Advertisers sought insight into the consumer mind. Electric utility companies even hired psychological consultants in studying street lighting conditions. At the same time, there was also pushback to such psychological interventions. Many lawyers, for example, opposed psychologists' incursions into the courtroom. Labor advocates protested psychotechnics as the handmaiden of industry. And vocational counselors favored common sense guidance to impersonal psychological tests. By tracing these debates over the place of psychological expertise in an array of contested sites, this dissertation argues that Münsterberg's psychotechnical movement represented a radical new view of the psychologist as an expert in modernization responsible for identifying, measuring and controlling the "human factor" mediating all human activity.History of Science
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Gukurume, Simbarashe. "New Pentecostal churches, politics and the everyday life of university students at the University of Zimbabwe." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/29290.
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In the past 15 years, there has been a concerted ‘Pentecostalisation’ of university spaces in Africa. Despite enormous growth in Pentecostal Charismatic Church membership and activities on African university campuses, and its attendant implications for academic and everyday life, there is hardly any study that explores this phenomenon. Thus, little is known about the complex entanglements between religion, politics and the dynamics of the everyday within the university campus and how this mediates students’ subjectivities. This thesis examines the lived experiences and everyday lives of university students at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ). The thesis is based on the narratives of students drawn through a qualitative methodology and more particularly, through participant observation, semi-structured and in-depth interviews over 15 months. Findings in this study revealed that university students convert and sign-up for new Pentecostal Charismatic Churches (PCCs) because they were imagined as spaces through which young people could forge supportive economic and social networks. PCCs’ gospel of prosperity and ‘spiritual warfare’ technologies were also deeply attractive to students who were caught in the hopelessness and uncertainty wrought by the country’s protracted socio-economic and political crisis. In this context, PCCs cultivate a sense of hope and optimism. However, although new PCCs reconfigure young people’s orientation to the future, many PCC promises remain elusive. The entrance of PCCs onto this university campus has also lead to institutional conflict as new churches struggle against the entrenched historical privilege of mainline churches- and the political influence of their followers in university management. New PCCs on the UZ campus have also become heavily involved in student and national politics, which further complicates their relationship with the university and the state. This thesis demonstrate the extent to which faith permeates every aspect of university experience for those who subscribe to its Pentecostal forms. I argue in this thesis that these complex linkages between faith and university life are mediated by the wider politics of the country, including linkages between the state and the university.
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Wright, Will. "Living with the tsunami : contested knowledges, spatial politics and everyday practices in South East Sri Lanka." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2015. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/9662/.
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The thesis offers an ethnographic account of the ongoing legacies of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, focusing explicitly on communities in Arugam Bay, South East Sri Lanka. It provides empirical evidence that the tsunami should not be considered ‘over’ or an ‘event’ confined to the past, but instead that it is ongoing, shaping everyday life. The thesis argues that ongoing experiences of the tsunami are not equal, and it unpicks some of the relationships that shape these inequalities, specifically with regards to knowledge production in relation to the disaster. In doing this, it highlights the contested geographies surrounding the area. The thesis presents three overlapping ways in which the tsunami continues to be experienced in everyday life: through its spectacularisation and commodification; through the practices of (I)NGOs; and through the lived coastscape. Informed by literature that seeks to understand disasters and places ‘on their own terms’, the thesis develops the concept of ‘communities of practice’: a theory of practice which highlights the contextual nature of practices in everyday life, emphasising that they are both influenced by discursive and embodied knowledges, and in turn, produce knowledges. This term is used heuristically to explore the tsunami’s legacies, and highlights the ways in which specific knowledges are produced and contested in the area. The thesis focuses specifically on four key communities of practice: fishing; tourism; surfing; and researching. These are central to the production of everyday life and hence embodied knowledges of the tsunami, and are therefore present throughout the whole thesis. Running alongside this are a number of themes: the agency of the more-than-human, specifically the sea; memory and memorialisation of disaster; and broader theories of space and place. These are mobilised to argue that people continue to live with the tsunami as a part of everyday life.
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Shewly, Hosna Jahan. "Life, the law and the politics of abandonment : everyday geographies of the enclaves in India and Bangladesh." Thesis, Durham University, 2012. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/5898/.
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This PhD strives to understand what roles politico-spatial-legality play in shaping everyday life in the enclaves located in the northwest borderland curve in the India-Bangladesh border. Conceptually and legally, an enclave is a fragmented territory of one sovereign power located inside another sovereign territory. Following the decolonisation process in 1947, both India and Pakistan/Bangladesh inherited more than 200 enclaves. By investigating an everyday geography of the politico-spatial-legality in Indian and Bangladeshi enclaves, the aim of this thesis is to understand how the long existence of these enclaves shape their residents’ everyday lives. This thesis examines four research questions – i) how do the politico-spatial-legal factors shape citizenship in the enclaves? ii) What role(s) do boundaries perform in everyday life in the enclaves? iii) What are the (il)legal-political vulnerabilities present in the enclaves? And iv) What are the (il)legal survival methods adopted by the enclave residents’? The whole research is based on a seven-month ethnographic account in six enclaves and short visits (one day in each enclave) to another twenty enclaves during the pilot study in India and Bangladesh. The field sites were selected based on enclave size, distance from the border, practice of religion and relationship with the concerned states. The ethnography involved observing mundane events at different periods of time in different segments of the enclaves and nearby borderlands, and participating in local gathering in tea stalls, women’s evening socialisation and other social events. 55 in-depth interviews with the enclave residents and 10 interviews with the state officials were conducted for a detailed understanding of personal experiences and negotiations, and state perspectives on the enclave matter respectively. The thesis reveals that the enclave residents live in a non citizenship status, and the border is experienced in myriad ways in the enclaves constituting politico-juridical, social and gendered forms of bare life. On the other hand, the enclave dwellers find ways of attempting to cope with such circumstances and try to survive and advance their life through the loopholes of the state-system. The approach adopted in this thesis to study enclaves through the framework of politico-spatial-legality interactions is expected to advance enclave research. In addition, the thesis contributes to the academic literatures on citizenship and abandonment, border, bare life and rhythms of survival tactics. At policy level, the thesis can help policy makers understand ground vulnerabilities and difficult lives in the enclaves as there is very little government work available on enclave life.
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Ehrenstein, Amanda. "Precarity and the crisis of social care : everyday politics and experiences of work in women's voluntary organisations." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2012. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/28987/.
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In the context of shifting public expenditure and related cuts to public services, the Voluntary Sector (VS) has been given a prominent role in the organisation of social care. Government reform agendas in the UK try to thrive on public support for 'empowerment of local communities', more 'voice and choice' for service users, and a discourse of 'partnership' with the VS for implementing policies that imply an increasingly competitive commissioning of sensitive services. This research traces the neocommunitarian turn in neoliberal discourse and develops a critique of the imposed pseudo-marketisation of social care by examining everyday experiences of labour. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in London's VS. In relation to reports in the sector on the loss of funding for women-only projects and services, it examines the transformation of working conditions and the strategies applied in dealing with the outcomes of reform. The study draws on in-depth interviews with 31 women working for 19 different women's organisations. Additional interviews were conducted with union representatives and officers working for local infrastructure organisations and commissioning bodies in two inner London boroughs, in which the outcomes of commissioning practices for the workforce in the VS were further explored. It is argued that neocommunitarian neoliberalism results in insecure work environments and the institutionalisation of volunteering, which will exacerbate the ongoing crisis of care. While employment in the women's sector has always been precarious – as being short-term, insecure, poorly remunerated and supported by high amounts of volunteering – women reported on a loss of control over the quality and direction of work as well as the imposition of inadequate workloads. This makes it increasingly difficult to endure and resist precarity in social care. It creates harmful work environments and implies a loss of needs-adequate service provision, both traced to intensify existing inequalities along the lines of class, gender and race.
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Mahir-Metinsoy, Ikbal Elif. "Poor Ottoman Turkish women during World War I : women’s experiences and politics in everyday life, 1914-1923." Thesis, Strasbourg, 2012. http://www.theses.fr/2012STRAG004/document.
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Cette thèse de doctorat examine l’impact social de la Première Guerre mondiale dans l’Empire ottoman sur les femmes turques défavorisées et la réaction quotidienne de ces femmes aux conditions négatives de la guerre et aux mesures de l’État concernant les femmes. Elle utilise l’approche de l’histoire populaire et des nouvelles sources des archives ottomanes pour démontrer les voix et les expériences des femmes ordinaires, surtout leur lutte contre l’appauvrissement à cause de la guerre et les politiques sociales insuffisantes. Par conséquent, elle contribue à combler une grande lacune dans l’historiographie sur l’Empire ottomane et les études sur les femmes qui examinent rarement les femmes turques ordinaires. Elle renforce l’idée que les femmes ottomanes ont eu des grandes difficultés à cause de la guerre contrairement aux comptes de modernisation soulignant seulement les développements positifs concernant les libertés et les droits des femmes après la guerre. Elle réfute les comptes acceptant la guerre comme une période pendant laquelle toutes les femmes turques ont vécu une « émancipation. » D’ailleurs, elle met en lumière les formes et les aspects des points de vue critiques des femmes et de la politique quotidienne des femmes pour survivre les conditions négatives de la guerre, pour faire entendre leurs voix, pour protéger leurs droits et pour recevoir des aides socialesThis dissertation examines the social impact of World War I in the Ottoman Empire on ordinary poor Turkish women and their everyday response to the adverse wartime conditions and the state policies concerning them. Based on new archival sources giving detailed information about the voice, experience and agency of these women and based on the history from below approach, this study focuses on poor, underprivileged and working Turkish women’s everyday experiences, especially their struggle against and perception of wartime conditions, mobilization and state policies about them. By doing so, it contributes to filling the great gap in late Ottoman historiography and women’s studies, which rarely examine ordinary women and their everyday problems and struggles for survival and rights. First, it scrutinizes how ordinary women experienced the war and argues that, in contrast to the modernization accounts that overlook women’s sufferings at the cost of post-war developments in women’s rights and liberties, ordinary Turkish women had great difficulties during the war years. It presents a major caveat to the accounts accepting the war years as a period during which Turkish women monolithically experienced a gradual liberty and « emancipation. » Second, it brings the unexamined forms and aspects of women’s critical and subjective views, their everyday politics to circumvent the adverse conditions and state policies, to make their voices heard, to pursue their rights, and to receive government support into the light
Bu doktora tezi Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Birinci Dünya Savaşı’nın sıradan yoksul Türk kadınları üzerindeki sosyal etkilerini ve kadınların olumsuz savaş koşullarına ve kendileriyle ilgili devlet politikalarına yönelik tavırlarını incelemektedir. Kadınların sesleri, deneyimleri ve tarihsel rolleri hakkında detaylı bilgiler veren yeni arşiv kaynaklarına ve aşağıdan tarih yaklaşımına dayanan bu tez yoksul, temel sosyal haklardan yoksun ve çalışan Türk kadınlarının gündelik deneyimlerine, özellikle de savaş koşulları, seferberlik ve devlet politikalarını algılayış ve bunlarla mücadele biçimlerine odaklanmaktadır. Dolayısıyla, bu tez, sıradan kadınları ve onların gündelik problemleriyle hayatta kalma ve hak mücadelelerini çok az inceleyen Osmanlı tarihçiliği ve kadın araştırmalarındaki büyük bir boşluğu doldurmaya katkıda bulunmaktadır. Bu tez, bu anlamda, iki temel temaya odaklanmaktadır. Öncelikle, sıradan kadınların savaşı nasıl deneyimlediklerini mercek altına almakta ve onların çektikleri acıları savaş sonrası kadın hak ve özgürlüklerindeki ve üst ve orta sınıf eğitimli kadınların etkinlik ve deneyimlerindeki gelişmelerin bir bedeli olarak algılayıp gözden kaçıran modernleşmeanlatılarının tersine sıradan kadınların savaş yıllarında büyük güçlükler çektiğini savunmaktadır. Bu bağlamda, bu çalışma, Türk kadınlarının savaş yıllarında bütün olarak görece bir “özgürleşme” yaşadıklarını kabul eden anlatılara önemli bir uyarıdır. İkincil olarak, bu tez, kadınların zorluklarla gündelik mücadelelerine odaklanarak kadınların eleştirel ve öznel tutumlarının ve olumsuz koşullar ve devlet politikalarından kaçmak, seslerini duyurmak, haklarının peşine düşmek ve destek görebilmek amaçlı gündelik politikalarının keşfedilmemiş biçim ve yönlerini gün ışığına çıkarmaktadır
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Jolly, Michelle E. "Inventing the city : gender and the politics of everyday life in gold-rush San Francisco, 1848-1869 /." Diss., Connect to a 24 p. preview or request complete full text in PDF format. Access restricted to UC campuses, 1998. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p9915066.
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O'Connor, Brendan Harold. "Racial Identification, Knowledge, and the Politics of Everyday Life in an Arizona Science Classroom: A Linguistic Ethnography." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/228119.
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This dissertation is a linguistic ethnography of a high school Astronomy/Oceanography classroom in southern Arizona, where an exceptionally promising, novice, white science teacher and mostly Mexican-American students confronted issues of identity and difference through interactions both related and unrelated to science learning. Through close analysis of video-recorded, naturally-occurring interaction and rich ethnographic description, the study documents how a teacher and students accomplished everyday classroom life, built caring relationships, and pursued scientific inquiry at a time and in a place where nationally- and locally-circulating discourses about immigration and race infused even routine interactions with tension and uncertainty. In their talk, students appropriated elements of racializing discourses, but also used language creatively to "speak back" to commonsense notions about Mexicanness. Careful examination of science-related interactions reveals the participants' negotiation of multiple, intersecting forms of citizenship (i.e., cultural and scientific citizenship) in the classroom, through multidirectional processes of language socialization in which students and the teacher regularly exchanged expert and novice roles. This study offers insight into the continuing relevance of racial, cultural, and linguistic identity to students' experiences of schooling, and sheds new light on classroom discourse, teacher-student relationships, and dimensions of citizenship in science learning, with important implications for teacher preparation and practice.
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Mehta, Akanksha. "Right-wing sisterhood : everyday politics of Hindu nationalist women in India and Zionist settler women in Israel-Palestine." Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 2017. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/24903/.
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Right-Wing movements have gained political momentum in the last few decades, drawing within their ranks women who not only embody their exclusionary and violent politics but who also simultaneously contest everyday patriarchies. This thesis examines the everyday politics of women in two right-wing movements, the cultural nationalist Hindu right-wing project in India and the settler-colonial Zionist project in Israel-Palestine. Based on fourteen months of ethnographic, narrative, and visual 'fieldwork' conducted with women in both these movements, I argue that through a politics of the everyday, right-wing women bargain and negotiate with patriarchal communities/homes, male-formulated ideologies and discourses, and male-dominated right-wing projects and spaces. These mediations replicate and affirm as well as subvert and challenge patriarchal structures and power hierarchies, troubling the binaries of home/world, private/public, personal/political, and victim/agent. I assert that dominant literature on right-wing women focuses on motherhood and family, ignoring various other crucial subject positions that are constituted and occupied by right-wing women and neglecting the agential and empowering potential of right-wing women's subjectivities. I use four themes/lenses to examine the everyday politics of right-wing women. These are: pedagogy and education; charity and humanitarian work; intimacy, friendship, sociability and leisure; and political violence. By interrogating the practices that are contained in and enabled by these four locations of Hindu right-wing and Zionist settler women's everyday politics, this thesis highlights the multiple narratives, contradictions, pluralities, hierarchies, power structures, languages, and discourses that encompass right-wing women's projects. By capturing the processes of subject formation of right-wing women, I encapsulate how my interlocutors shape the subjectivities of those in their communities, transforming the local and international landscapes of the Hindu right-wing and the Zionist settler project. Drawing together ethnographic narratives, 'story-telling', visuals, methodological and ethical reflections, and inter-disciplinary theoretical engagement, this thesis also asks what the many-layered textures of everyday politics of right-wing women might mean for feminist scholarship in gender studies, politics, and international relations, for feminist methodologies, for feminist ethics, and for feminist activism.
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Stanley, Liam. "The everyday politics of the age of austerity : crisis and the legitimation of fiscal consolidation in the UK." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2014. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/5510/.
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In 2010, the British Coalition government came to power explicitly promising spending cuts as part of a wider fiscal consolidation programme to resolve a debt crisis. Despite this promise to reduce public services, the British public seemed to reluctantly accept as necessary the imperatives of this debt crisis. Why? Through the analysis of data from focus groups conducted around Birmingham, this thesis tackles this puzzle of austerity acquiescence by answering a double-edged central research question: how do everyday actors make sense of austerity, and what do these processes tell us about the legitimation of austerity and the wider politics of crisis? The central argument is that while austerity is a vague and highly moral idea, it is simultaneously powerful and 'successful' inasmuch that it resonates with the 'mood of the times'. In other words, fiscal consolidation has been conferred a degree of legitimacy since it can be justified in line with some of the intersubjective beliefs and experiences of the public. Through this argument, this thesis primarily contributes to the discipline of political economy through a novel empirical account of austerity acquiescence and a constructivist framework for exploring how crises and narratives are conferred legitimacy through resonating with the mood of the times.
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Chatikobo, Tapiwa H. "Evaluating holistic management in Hwange communal lands, Zimbabwe : an actor-oriented livelihood approach, incorporating everyday politics and resistance." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/97083.
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Thesis (MSc)--Stellenbosch University, 2015.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Rangelands in the semi-arid and arid regions of the world support livelihoods through their provision of multiple goods and services. Livestock production, for example, occurs in rangelands both as extensive ranching under freehold tenure and as collective ranching under communal tenure systems. However, the sustainability of rangelands is threatened and has been a major concern this century, leading to a variety of interventions. Holistic management (HM) is one such example, designed by its proponents as a panacea to halt degradation and, recently, climate change effects in the rangelands of Africa and beyond. HM has been implemented in the Hwange Communal Lands (HCLs) of Zimbabwe since 2010. In principle, the programme is aimed at restoring degraded watersheds and croplands through utilising properly managed livestock. To achieve this, two principles are promoted under HM, namely (i) holistic planned grazing (HPG) and (ii) animal impaction of crop fields. However, the effects of HM on the livelihoods of its beneficiaries currently are poorly understood. In order to address this lacuna, this study aimed to determine both the intended and unintended effects of a community-based land restoration programme called Holistic Land and Livestock Management (HLLM) in the HCLs of Zimbabwe on the livelihoods of its beneficiaries through a conceptual framework that combined an actor-oriented livelihoods approach with concepts of everyday politics and resistance. This was done by exploring the impact of HLLM on the six types of farmers’ assets, adoption patterns, farmers’ reactions to the introduction of HLLM, and challenges preventing farmers from adopting HLLM. Case studies employing a qualitative and exploratory research design were undertaken in three communities that were selected purposively from a total of 18 communities in which the HLLM programme had been promoted by the Africa Centre for Holistic Management (ACHM) in order to discover different perspectives on the effects of the programme on the livelihoods of its beneficiaries. The study employed qualitative Participatory Rural Appraisal tools, focus group discussions, participant observation, document analysis, and key informant and semi-structured interviews. These lines of enquiry enabled triangulation and cross-checking of information to enhance the reliability and validity of the research findings. The study showed that adoption levels were disappointingly low across all the study sites. Several challenges, including livestock diseases, predation, cultural stigma, labour constraints and witchcraft fears, were among the barriers explaining the low rate of adoption in the HCLs. The findings reveal that the farmers were concerned more with immediate problems, especially lack of water, than with land degradation, which is the primary focus of HLLM. Thus the farmers responded by complying, accommodating and covertly resisting the ACHM’s efforts to implement HLLM in order to suit their needs, using creative everyday politics and resistance. The study concludes that, although HLLM is required in such semi-arid environments, it is not sufficient to sustain rural livelihoods in its current state. While the main focus of HLLM is to improve the natural capital (i.e. restoring degraded watersheds), it should be complemented by and aligned with the farmers’ other development priorities, especially those relating to water
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING:Weiveld in die halfdor- en dor gebiede van die wêreld ondersteun menslike lewensbestaan deur die verskaffing van ’n verskeidenheid goedere en dienste. Veeproduksie, byvoorbeeld, kom in weivelde voor as beide ekstensiewe veldbeesboerdery onder grondbesit en kollektiewe veldbeesboerdery onder gemeenskaplike eiendomsreg. Die volhoubaarheid van weiveld word egter bedreig en het in hierdie eeu ’n groot bron van kommer geword, wat gelei het tot ’n verskeidenheid ingrypings. Holistiese bestuur (Holistic management (HM)) is een van hierdie en is deur sy voorstanders ontwerp as ’n wondermiddel om degradasie, en meer onlangs die effekte van klimaatsverandering op die weivelde van Afrika en verder, stop te sit. HM is reeds sedert 2010 in die Hwange gemeenskaplike gronde (HGG’e) in Zimbabwe geïmplementeer. In beginsel is die doel van die program om gedegradeerde waterskeidings en landerye te herstel deur gebruik te maak van behoorlik bestuurde vee. Om dit te bereik word twee beginsels onder HM bevorder, naamlik (i) holisties beplande weiding (holistic planned grazing (HPG)) en (ii) dier-impaksie van landerye (animal impaction of crop fields). Die effekte van HM op die lewensbestaan van sy begunstigdes word tans egter swak begryp. Om hierdie leemte aan te spreek, was die doel van hierdie studie om die bedoelde en onbedoelde gevolge van ’n gemeenskapsgebaseerde grondherstelprogram (Holistic Land and Livestock Management (HLLM)) in die HGG’e van Zimbabwe op die lewensbestaan van die begunstigdes te bepaal deur middel van ’n konseptuele raamwerk wat ’n akteur-georiënteerde lewensbestaansbenadering met konsepte van alledaagse politiek en weerstand gekombineer het. Dít is gedoen deur die impak van HLLM op ses soorte van bates wat boere het, hulle aannemingspatrone, boere se reaksies op die invoering van HLLM, en uitdagings wat verhoed het dat boere HLLM aanneem, te ondersoek. Gevallestudies met gebruik van ’n kwalitatiewe en verkennende navorsingsontwerp is in drie gemeenskappe onderneem wat doelbewus uit ’n totaal van 18 gemeenskappe waarin die HLLM-program deur die Africa Centre for Holistic Management (ACHM) bevorder word, geselekteer is om verskillende perspektiewe van die effekte van die program op die lewensbestaan van die begunstigdes te ontdek. Die studie het kwalitatiewe Deelnemende Landelike Takseringsgereedskap (Participatory Rural Appraisal), fokusgroepbesprekings, deelnemerwaarneming, dokument analise en sleutel-informant en semi-gestruktureerde onderhoude gebruik. Hierdie ondersoeklyne het triangulasie en kruiskontrole van die inligting moontlik gemaak, wat die betroubaarheid en geldigheid van die navorsingsbevindings verhoog het. Die studie toon dat aannemingsvlakke teleurstellend laag was in al die studieliggings. Verskeie uitdagings, insluitend veesiektes, predasie, kulturele stigma, arbeidsbeperkings en vrese vir heksery was onder die hindernisse wat die lae aannemingstempo in die HGG’e verklaar. Die bevindinge wys dat die boere meer besorgd was oor onmiddellike probleme, veral die tekort aan water, as oor grondagteruitgang, wat die vernaamste fokus van HLLM is. Die boere het dus gereageer deur instemming, aanpassing en onderlangse weerstandbieding tot die ACHM se pogings om HLLM te implementeer om sodoende hulle eie behoeftes te pas deur kreatiewe alledaagse politiek en weerstand te gebruik. Die studie kom tot die gevolgtrekking dat hoewel HLLM in sulke halfdor omgewings nodig is, dit nie in sy huidige staat voldoende is om landelike lewensbestaan te onderhou nie. Hoewel die vernaamste fokus van HLLM is om die natuurlike kapitaal te verbeter (m.a.w. deur gedegradeerde waterskeidings te herstel), moet hierdie rol gekomplementeer word deur en belyn word met die boere se ander ontwikkelingsprioriteite, veral dié wat verband hou met water.
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Sun, Ling. "A Cognitive Study of War Metaphors in Five Main Areas of Everyday English : Politics, Business, Sport, Disease and Love." Thesis, Högskolan Kristianstad, Sektionen för Lärarutbildning, 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hkr:diva-7810.
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Iob, Elisabetta. "A betrayed promise? : the politics of the everyday state and the resettling of refugees in Pakistani Punjab, 1947-1962." Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2013. http://repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/items/64d284d0-34e2-0a48-a6a0-2dbb6a83c5ba/7/.
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Lahore, Anarkali, mid-1950s. A distinguished-looking refugee is standing in front of a petition writer in the hope of getting the better of the Pakistani bureaucracy and having a property allotted. A few miles ahead, another refugee, camped in a school, is drafting a letter to the editor of the Pakistan Times. He will hide his identity through the pseudonym ‘desperate'. Both of them belonged to the throng of those muhajirs who, back in 1947, had embarked on a dreadful journey towards what they perceived to be their homeland. Historiographical trends have tended to overlook the everyday experience of the state among those middle-class Partition refugees who resettled in Pakistani Punjab. Focusing mainly on their ‘less fortunate' fellow citizens, these explanations have reproduced that historically-unproven popular narrative that ascribes pain and sufferings only to the economically-backward sectors of the local society. Even more frequently, well-rooted argumentative patterns have superimposed historical and present-day socio-geographical mappings of refugee families onto both urban and rural Punjab. These somehow echo that government rhetoric that, up to the early 1960s, paid lip service to the notion of a ‘biraderi-friendly' rehabilitation. This thesis challenges standard interpretations of the resettlement of Partition refugees in Pakistani Punjab between 1947 and 1962. It argues the universality of the so-called ‘exercise in human misery', and the heterogeneity of the rehabilitation policies. As it sheds light on these latter original contributions to the current knowledge, it questions the ability of the local bureaucracy to establish its own ‘polity', the unsuitability of patronage political systems as an autonomous politological category, and the failure of Pakistan as a state. Individual chapters pursue questions of emotional belonging to spatial and political places, social change, everyday experiences of the state through its institutions, electoral politics, and the deployment of integration/accommodation practices as nation- and state-building processes.
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Sunderason, S. "The nation and the everyday : the aesthetics and politics of modern art in India Bengal, c.1920-c.1960." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2012. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1355959/.
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This thesis studies the practices and the polemics that structured the mid-twentieth century ‘field’ of modern art in India, as it registered shifts away from mythological classicism to new artistic imperatives of the everyday, the popular and the progressive. Concentrating on Bengal, this study follows the new agenda and anxieties around ‘formal’ autonomy and ‘social’ resonance of art that developed during the transitional decades of high nationalism, decolonisation and postcolonial nation-building in South Asia between the 1920s and the late-1950s. I argue that artists and art discourse in Bengal during this historical conjuncture invoked tropes of contextuality, habitation and socio-political experience in art-production, reinforcing the sensibility of realism within artistic modernism, of the everyday within modernist abstraction, and the locational within the national. Two themes map this mid-century ‘social turn’ in visual art: the first concentrates on institutional sites like the Government School of Art in Calcutta and the Kala Bhavan at Santiniketan, to follow the shifting registers of the ‘national-modern’ aesthetic, both in the elimination and re-figuration of orientalist classicism by new values of composition and contemporaneity, as well as in the pro-Gandhian rhetoric of the ‘local’ and the ‘popular’ that dominated cultural discourse during the interwar period. The second theme studies the left-wing intervention in formulating a socially-committed, politically conscious notion of ‘progressive’ art since the late-1930s. Resonating with anti-fascist cultural activism of the Popular Front period, and increasingly dominated by the Communist left, the progressive rhetoric became the site for ideological conflict between realism and modernism in the 1940s, with contesting values of socialist idealism and formalist progress of art. I close with the recurrence of the social as metaphor in postcolonial art production in Calcutta in the 1950s-60s, as the city negotiated both marginal location within the nation’s modernity and a persisting memory of post-partition trauma.
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Aniekwe, Chika C. "Collective Action and Everyday Politics of Smallholder Farmers in Ugbawka: Examining Local Realities and Struggles of Smallholder Rice Farmers." Thesis, University of Bradford, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/15705.
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The research draws on an ethnographic research and explores the everyday practice of collective action in Ugbawka in Enugu State by using interviews and participant observation. The study reveals that smallholder collective action is not best fitted into formal institutional arrangement but takes place within a complex and intricate process that involves interaction with diversity of institutions and actors. Equally, the interactions that occur amongst actors are mediated at the community level through interplay of socio-cultural and political factors. This study recognises and places emphasis on understanding of agency and the exercise of agency at the local level arguing that smallholder farmers are not robot but active individual who exercise their agency purposively or impulsively depending on conditions and the assets available at their disposition as well as their ability to navigate the intricate power dynamic inherent at local context. The thesis thus questioned the simplistic use of formal institutional collective action framework in smallholder collective action at the community level and argues that institutions are not static and do not determine outcomes but are informed by the prevailing conditions at the community level. The study emphasises the role of existing institutions and socially embedded principles in community governance and argues that actors should be the focus of analysis rather than the system in understanding smallholder collective action. The study concludes by advocating for further research that could explore the possibility of hybrid approach that accepts the advantages of both formal and informal institutional forms of smallholder collective action.
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Hetherington, Donna Marie. "Sociology of small things : Olive Schreiner, Eleanor Marx, Amy Levy and the intertextualities of feminist cultural politics in 1880s London." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/9854.
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This thesis investigates the cultural politics of a small group of women through their writing and other activities in 1880s London. Focussed on Olive Schreiner, Eleanor Marx and Amy Levy and the connections they had to one another and to other women, such as Henrietta Frances Lord, Clementina Black and Henrietta Müller, it explores key events in their everyday lives, the writings and texts they produced. It analyses a wide selection of textual sources, re-reading these for small details, intertextual connections and points of disjuncture, to allow for different ways of understanding the mechanics of feminist cultural politics as produced and performed by these interconnected women. Small things in texts can be revealing about such women’s everyday lives and connectedly the cultural politics which underpinned their actions, thus contributing to knowledge about how writing was used strategically and imaginatively to challenge, side-step and overcome oppression and inequality, in these years in London and after. Using the term ‘writing’ in a broad sense to include letters and diaries and other archival sources such as newspaper articles, reviews and manuscript drafts, as well as some selected published work and biographies, the thesis is anchored around four event-driven investigations: Olive Schreiner being accosted by a policeman; the first public performance of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House; the writing of a letter mentioning Eleanor Marx; and, the death of Amy Levy. Relatedly, there are discussions concerning working with historical documents, documenting and archiving the past, researching and representing the past in the present. These investigations allow for the operationalization of a research approach framed by ideas concerning micro, small-scale, everyday life and its qualitative aspects, which together contribute to a re-conceptualisation of a ‘sociology of small things.’ Specifically, it is argued that close and small-scale studies of women’s writing, whether undertaken alone or connected to others, sheds light on the importance of relationship dynamics in connection with writing output, on what writing was produced and what role each text played in larger scale political agendas. Concepts such as palimpsest, liminality and bricolage are interrogated with respect to researching and representing the spatial and temporal interconnectedness of the selected authors and textual sources. And contributions are made to contemporary thinking about epistolarity and social networks, focussing on reciprocity, gift-giving and receiving and notions of ‘letterness,’ along with the defining of boundaries, and the value of determining the nature of ties between women. The thesis also argues that the relationships between intimacy and distance, interiority and exteriority, public and private, are frayed with complicated overlaps.
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Metzger, Christopher. "Connecting Institutional Discourses and Everyday Understandings of Climate Change: Viewpoints from a Suburban Neighborhood in Tampa, Florida." Scholar Commons, 2014. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/5274.
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Despite a general consensus regarding anthropogenic global climate change across the international scientific community, many of the major greenhouse gas producers in the world, especially the United States, are hesitant to implement strict emissions regulations. According to some prominent atmospheric scientists, such as James Hansen and Michael Mann, if industrialized countries continue to produce carbon emissions at current rates, an irreversible planetary tipping point of raising temperatures 2°C above pre-industrial levels could be reached in less than 40 years. Societies have a wealth of information from the natural sciences to understand the climate problem and currently possess the technological means to address it. But substantial regulatory policies have not been implemented, clean energy technologies have not been established as the primary energy source, and widespread behavioral changes needed to create sustainable societies have not been fostered.
This dissertation seeks to understand why the preponderance of scientific evidence surrounding climate change has not produced a sea change of public perceptions of the climate change problem consistent with the dire projections of climate science. It is grounded in four interrelated questions: (1) What are the prevalent discourses of climate change and to which institutions can these be attached? (2) How do suburban residents understand climate change? (3) Since electricity is a major link between suburban lifestyles and climate change, how does knowledge of climate change compare with knowledge of electricity production and consumption? (4) In what ways do institutional discourses of climate change connect to the viewpoints of suburban consumers? These questions were explored through a case study carried out in a neighborhood in the city of Tampa, Florida. Forty-six semi-structured, face-to-face interviews were conducted to understand perceptions related to climate change, suburban consumption, and environmental conservation. The interviews compiled information pertaining to personal knowledge and representations of socio-ecological relationships.
The findings indicate that most relationships or connections to the natural world in general, and climate change in particular, are produced by the arrangements and processes of capital accumulation as experienced in everyday practices. Suburban residents seemed disconnected from or ignorant about how their everyday consumption is related to climate change. Based on ideological formations, as manifest in institutional discourses and material practices, suburban residents accept the social processes and spatial forms that they inhabit as being the only possible options for suburban living.