Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Feminist post-structuralism'

Based on my research aim of covering a gap in the literature on corporate gender equality standards, I research the effects and limits of corporate gender equality standards through a feminist poststructuralist perspective using the case study of the EDGE standard. Based on a qualitative research design, I build an analytical framework on Carol Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be’ (WPR) approach to analyze the material in form of the five assessment areas of the EDGE standard. Based on the feminist post-structuralist perspective, my analysis showcases that the EDGE standard as a governance tool is not guided by tangible ‘problems' that exist ‘out there’ but rather through the representation of ‘problems’ as framed in the EDGE standard. The EDGE standard is thus a productive force that give shape and meaning to various problems of gender inequality which at the same time, the standard is also meant to address. I conclude that in some cases, the EDGE standard can have positive effects. However, the lack of an intersectional approach limits the EDGE standard too. This thesis contributes to the field by closing a research gap in the academic literature on the effects and limits of corporate gender equality standards analyzed through a feminist poststructuralist lens.
Jeg undersøger virkningerne og begrænsningerne af ligestillingsstandarder i organisationer gennem en feministisk poststrukturalistisk analyse af organisationsstandarden ’EDGE’. Baseret på mit mål om at afdække manglende forskning af ligestillingsstandarder anvender jeg et kvalitativt forskningsdesign som bygger på Carol Bacchis 'What’s The Problem Represented To Be’ for at analysere materialet i form af de fem vurderingsområder i EDGE-standarden. Med baggrund i det feministisk post-strukturalistiske perspektiv viser analysen, at EDGE-standarden som et styringsværktøj ikke styres af konkrete 'problemer', der eksisterer 'derude', men snarere styres gennem repræsentationen af ​​'problemer' som de indrammes og konstrueres i EDGE-standarden. EDGE-standarden er således en produktiv kraft, der giver form og mening til forskellige problemer inden for diskrimination og ligestilling mellem kønnene samtidigt med at standarden også er udviklet til at tackle disse ’problemer’. Jeg konkluderer, at EDGE-standarden i nogle tilfælde kan have positive effekter, men manglen på en tværgående og intersektionelle tilgange til EDGE’s fem vurderingsområder begrænser imidlertid også EDGE-standarden. Dette speciale bidrager til feltet inden for ligestilling og organisationsstandarder ved at afdække virkningerne og grænsningerne af erhvervslivets ligestillingsstandarder analyseret gennem en feministisk poststrukturalistisk perspektiv.

The aim of the dissertation is to highlight how different ideas about gender and gender discourses have created varying conditions for the formation of school leadership in different eras. The empirical material consists of historically documented material in a text-based study and interview material comprising interviews with a total of 18 comprehensive school principals from two interview studies. The period covered by the material is 1830–2006. The theoretical point of departure is post-structural theory formation, where Joan W. Scott’s and Judith Butler’s theoretical line of reasoning constitutes the basis of the dissertation’s gender and discourse analyses. The analyses highlight active gender discourses throughout the history of school leadership and which gender discourses regulate principals’ everyday work in the 21st century, how different gender discourses intervene and gain ground among principals and have significance for which gender and professional positions are possible for today’s principals to adopt and allocate to teachers and students. The dissertation highlights four active gender discourses: the essential sexual difference discourse, the sameness discourse, the difference discourse and a transgressive gender discourse. The results indicate the survival force of the essential sexual difference discourse, where femininity is always subordinate to masculinity. The greatest gender battle has been around femininity. Throughout its history school leadership has mainly been focused on and talked about in terms of female/feminine and male/masculine, but where femininity has always been questioned and subjected to constant definition and redefinition. Thus far in the 21st century the difference discourse’s femininity affirming dimension has been normalised and takes shape in a new and transgressive gender discourse where both femininity and masculinity are available for both female and male principals’ identifications and materialisations. However, at the same time as principals have related to new and transgressive gender ideals in certain situations they defer to the essential sexual difference discourse’s gender stereotyped and hierarchical divisions and expectations. The dissertation shows how the transgressive gender discourse contributes to the dissolution of gender polarity, with optional identities. Parallel with this and contrary to what in terms of gender could be described as the basis for a more democratic and equal school, the dissertation also shows how female principals and female teachers, together with certain groups of girls, sometimes find themselves in continued subordinate and vulnerable positions in accordance with a very old essential sexual difference definition.

Den här uppsatsen har till syfte att belysa hur heteronormativitet kan ta sig uttryck i förskolan, och vad några femåringar säger om hur de ser på familjebildning och kärleksrelationer. Undersökningen bygger på intervjuer om familjeformer med åtta femåringar. Intervjuerna genomfördes med utgångspunkt i ett antal bilder föreställande människor i olika familjekonstellationer. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten för uppsatsen är en normkritisk pedagogik, med rötter i feministisk poststrukturalism och queerteori. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att barnen i studien hade ett starkt heteronormativt sätt att prata om familjebildning. I ljuset av den tidigare forskning som redovisas i uppsatsen, blir det tydligt att förskolans sätt att arbeta med frågor om sexuell läggning inte lever upp till de krav som läroplanen ställer.

The subject of this study is gender norms in the preschool and children who oppose those norms. The aim is to investigate how the discourses are linked with the way in which preschool teachers and teaching assistants talk about children’s gender identity. This study is founded in feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis, which was a basis for the interpretation of the results. My research questions are: • How do educators express themselves concerning gender norms? • What do educators need to work with a gender critical agenda? • How do the educators describe their work concerning gender, gender norms and children who oppose those norms? • For educators who have experience with children who do not identify with the gender they was given at birth, how do educators describe their own treatment of said children, and how would they describe the treatment from the other members of the teaching team? The study consists of qualitative interviews with five educators who were asked questions relevant to: norms, gender, gender criticism and how they work with those topics. I found both positive and negative aspects of gender work in preschool. Generally norms are seen as something you have to adapt to. Sometimes there are collisions between the different approaches from younger and older educators gender work, and sometimes this collision takes place between educators and parents. I found that the educators I interviewed generally want to question the heteronorm, only they sometimes dont realise how affected they are by it themselves.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the discursive construction of school leadership in a gender perspective and the meanings attached to school leadership. Theoretically, I draw on discourse analysis, and feminist poststructuralist theories have been my source of inspiration. Discourse, subjectivity, subject positions and power are key concepts applied to the analysis of the data. Four male and four female school leaders representing eight primary and secondary schools were interviewed. Furthermore, interviews were carried out with two teachers at each of these schools: in total nine female and seven male teachers were interviewed.

The leaders and teachers talk about leadership in relation to four different arenas, which I have labelled the teachers’, the children’s, the parents’ and the societal arena respectively. Three main positions have been identified for the school leaders: (1) the supporter, (2) the manager and (3) the pedagogical leader. Most of the statements deal with the relation to the teachers, whereas the parents’ arena is not much talked about.

As for gender, both male and female school leaders construct themselves as leaders in rather similar ways. Both men and women activate the three positions in similar ways. Women do not repeat the supporter position more often than men, and men do not position themselves as managers more frequently than women. This indicates that traditional gender discourses do not govern the school leaders’ talk about school leadership. For the position of pedagogical leader, some gender differences have been distinguished. The men position themselves as pedagogical leaders, whose mission it is to take the lead in pedagogical issues, whilst the women talk about the importance of evaluating and reflecting on their pedagogical leadership. Gender discourses seem to affect the way teachers construct school leadership, as male leaders who act as supporters are sometimes positioned as deviant. Instead, especially female teachers expect their male leader to act as a manager. Furthermore, the female teachers construct female school leaders as supporters to a higher extent than the male teachers.

Interpersonal violence and abuse in New Zealand is so widespread it is considered a normative experience. Mental health nurses witnessing the inscribed effects of abuse on service users are lead to consider whether we are dealing with a breakdown of the mind or a breakdown in social or cultural connection (Stuhlmiller, 2003). The purpose of this research is to examine the cultural context which makes violence and abuse against women and children possible. In 2003, the public debate on prostitution law reform promised to open a space in which discourses on sexuality and violence, practices usually private or hidden, would publicly emerge. Everyday discourses relating to prostitution law reform reported in the New Zealand Herald newspaper in the year 2003 were analysed using Foucauldian and feminist post-structural methodological approaches. Foucauldian discourse analysis emphasises the ways in which power is enmeshed in discourse, enabling power relations and hegemonic practices to be made visible. The research aims were to develop a complex, comprehensive analysis of the media discourses, to examine the construction of harm in the media debate, to examine the ways in which the cultural hegemony of dominant groups was secured and contested and to consider the role of mental health nurses as agents of emancipatory political change. Mental health promotion is mainly a socio-political practice and the findings suggest that mental health nurses could reconsider their professional role, to participate politically as social activists, challenging the social order thereby reducing the human suffering which interpersonal violence and abuse carries in its wake.

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS RE-IMAGINING THE VICTORIAN CLASSICS: POSTCOLONIAL FEMINIST REWRITINGS OF EMILY BRONTË by Yannel M. Celestrin Florida International University, 2018 Miami, Florida Professor Martha Schoolman, Major Professor Through a post-structural lens, I will focus on the Caribbean, specifically Cuba, Guadeloupe, Marie-Galante, and Roseau, and how the history of colonialism impacted these islands. As the primary text of my thesis begins during the Cuban War of Independence of the 1890s, I will use this timeframe as the starting point of my analysis. In my thesis, I will compare Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heightsand Maryse Condé’s Windward Heights. Specifically, I will examine Condé’s processes of reimagining and rewriting Brontë’s narrative by deconstructing the notions of history, race, gender, and class. I will also explore ways in which Condé disrupts the hegemonic and linear notions of narrative temporality in an attempt to unsilence the voices of colonized subjects. I argue that Condé’s work is a significant contribution to the practice of rewriting as well as to the canon of Caribbean literary history. I argue that the very process of rewriting is a powerful mode of resistance against colonizing powers and hegemonic discourse.

Studien undersöker hur könsroller gestaltas ur ett genusperspektiv i bilderboken Se upp för krokodilen! (Moroni & Eriksson, 2013). Syftet är att få djupare kunskaper om hur dessa skildringar speglar målen i läroplanen för förskolan om att motverka traditionella könsnormer och främja jämställdhet och likabehandling mellan könen. Forskare menar att bilderboken är ett användbart och didaktiskt verktyg för att fånga barns intressen och påverka deras tankegångar. Tidigare forskning (Kåreland, 2005) visar att könsstereotypa föreställningar lever kvar i en stor del av utbudet av barnböcker. I studien analyseras bilderboken Se upp för krokodilen! (Moroni & Eriksson, 2013) både utifrån bilder och text. Analysen fokuserar på karaktärernas yttre- och inre personskildringar, det vill säga, karaktärernas utseende, ansiktsuttryck, kroppsspråk respektive karaktärernas egenskaper och personligheter. Studiens resultat visar att karaktärerna i boken, till viss del avviker från de stereotypa föreställningar om vad som anses som maskulint och feminint, dock visar karaktärerna att de båda har egenskaper som kan representera båda könen.
The study examines how gender roles are portrayed from a gender perspective in the picture book Watch out for the crocodile! (Moroni & Eriksson, 2013). The aim is to get deeper knowledge about how these depictions reflect the goals of the Swedish syllabus for preschool that counteracts traditional gender norms and promote equality and equal treatment between the genders. Researchers consider that the picture book is a useful and didactic implement to capture childrens’ interests and influence their thoughts. Previous research (Kåreland, 2005) shows that gender-stereotyped conceptions persist in a large part of the range of children’s books. The study analyzes the picture book Watch out for the crocodile! (Moroni & Eriksson, 2013) both from photographs and text. The analysis focuses on the characters external and internal personal depictions, that is, the characters appearance, facial expressions, body language and the characters properties and personalities. The results of the study show that the characters in the book, partially differ from the stereotypical conceptions of what is considered as masculine and feminine. However, the characters show that they both have properties that can represent both sexes.

Syfte och frågeställningar: Det övergripande syftet handlar om att undersöka hur villkoren för killars och mäns deltagande i ridsportverksamheter gestaltas i berättelser om ridsport. Annorlunda uttryckt är jag intresserad av hur kön konstrueras, eller ”görs”, i killars och mäns ridsportberättelser. Centrala frågeställningar är: Hur hanteras killarnas och männens könsgränsöverskridande i berättelserna? Vilka normer och föreställningar kring kön och sexualitet blir synliga i berättelserna? Hur positionerar sig killarna och männen i förhållande till rådande köns- och sexualitetsnormer? Metodologi: Studien bygger på kvalitativa intervjuer med 19 killar och män, 13 till 55 år gamla, aktiva på såväl bredd som tävlingsnivå i verksamheter knutna till Svenska Ridsportförbundet. I ett första analyssteg genomfördes en narrativ analys, där fem berättelser – eller narrativ – konstruerades. Dessa illustrerar på olika sätt centrala teman, erfarenheter och problematiker i intervjupersonernas berättelser. I ett andra analyssteg gjordes en feministisk poststrukturell läsning av de fem narrativen. Resultat och diskussion: Sammanfattningsvis verkar det som att deltagandet i en kvinnligt kodad idrott som ridsporten kan öppna upp för andra, och mindre stereotypa, sätt att vara kille än traditionellt manligt kodade idrotter. Eftersom den vardagliga verksamheten innehåller både sådant som (i vår kultur) brukar definieras som kvinnligt, exempelvis omsorg, kommunikation och lyhördhet, och sådant som brukar definieras som manligt, exempelvis handlingskraft, styrka och mod, får man som kille (och tjej) möjlighet att inta såväl feminint som maskulint kodade positioner. På detta sätt utmanas dominerande diskurser om hur tjejer och killar, män och kvinnor ”är”. Samtidigt måste man som kille inom ridsporten förhålla sig till det omgivande samhällets syn på ridning som en ”tjejsport” liksom till en heteronormativ särartsdiskurs enligt vilken killar inom ridsporten är tävlings-, prestations- och målinriktade, inte gillar att pyssla med hästarna och tycker att det bästa med ridsporten är tjejerna. Det verkar göra att det kan bli extra viktigt att betona maskulinitet – och framförallt heterosexualitet – för att visa att man trots allt är en ”normal” kille. Bögen blir här en form av ”gränsvakt”, en stereotyp som både möjliggör och begränsar, men som framförallt synliggör en heteronormativ ordning.
Aim: The overall aim is to investigate how conditions of boys and men’s participation in equestrian sports activities are framed in stories about equestrian sports. In other words I´m interested in the construction of gender, or the ‘doing of gender’, in boys and men´s stories about equestrian sports. Research questions are: How is the gender bending of the boys and men treated in the stories– both inside and outside equestrian sports? Which norms and representations about gender and sexuality are visible in the stories? How do the boys and men position themselves in relation to prevailing gender- and sexuality norms? Methodology: 19 boys and men, between the ages of 13 and 55, active on different levels in the Swedish Equestrian Sports Federation, were interviewed in the study. In a first step, a narrative analysis was conducted. Five narratives, illustrating central themes and experiences in the informants´ stories were constructed. In a second step a feminist post-structuralist reading of the five narratives was carried out. Results and discussion: The results indicate that participation in female-coded sports, like equestrian sports, can open up to other and less stereotypical ways of being a boy or man than participation in sports traditionally seen as masculine. Since the everyday activities contains both elements that we usually (in our culture) define as female, for example care, communication and sensitivity and elements we usually define as male, for example initiative, strength and courage, boys get the opportunity to practice assumed feminine as well as assumed masculine positions. In this way dominant discourses about boys and girls and men and women – how they “are” and what they like – are challenged. At the same time the stories make visible that boys and men in equestrian sports have to relate to the surrounding society’s view of horse riding as a “girl sport” and to heteronormative gender discourses in which men in equestrian sports are competitive and goal oriented, don’t like to cuddle with horses and think that the best thing with horse riding is the girls. It seems as if one strategy for handling this is to emphasize masculinity – and especially heterosexuality – to show that you in spite of everything are a “normal” guy. In this way the “fag” becomes a sort of “border agent” – a stereotype that both allows and restricts, but above all makes visible a heteronormative order.

Uppsatsen tilldelades stipendiemedel ur Överste och Fru Adolf Janssons fond för VT 2014.

This dissertation explores ten teachers´ approaches to managing conflicts with/between pupils. The relevance of gender is analysed according to the strategies and representations chosen by the teachers. The methods used for data collection include ´rounds´, role-plays and ongoing reflexivity, mainly in single-sex groups. Three main strategies were identified in managing conflicts with/between pupils: challenging, confirming and physically touching. The strategy of challenging reveals that teachers have high expectations of how competent pupils ought to be. It is no longer enough to be competent and independent as a pupil (in Sweden); he or she is also expected to have an integrated ethic of caring. Values such as an ethic of caring are conventionally associated with femininity, and are usually invisible and/or low status; though they have now become the dominant norm for both female and male teachers. The strategy of confirming is used to give support to the pupil but there is a risk of confirming one individual “too much” which can lead to relational problems with other pupils. Physical touching as a strategy relates to dilemmas arising from gendered expectations of physicality in teacher-pupil interaction. Overall, difficulties were found in getting male teachers to discuss and ‘role-play’ conflicts with girls, which did not arise with female teachers concerning conflicts with boys. Also criticized were the demands on teachers’ workloads as a result of their social responsibility for pupils’ welfare, and also lack of institutional support. When the teachers had time to reflect together on their experiences, they seemed willing to criticize norms and representations. Four phases in the mode of talking were identified: (1) the telling of an experience; (2) interpretation of experience as a form of difference, either as deviance or according to gender; (3) narration of experience that contradicts the above dichotomy of difference; and (4) ongoing reflexivity resulting in motivation to change strategy or strengthen former strategies based on a wider awareness of work context.

This master thesis deals with the gender perception in leaderships positions. Starting from our awareness of a gendered leadership gap, this thesis aims to show our development towards our understanding of reality as socially constructed. We apply the Discourse in order to see how oppression works on women. In the course of our master thesis, we came across poststructuralists, like Foucault, Derrida and Lacan, philosopher and psychoanalysts, like Freud, Beauvoir, Irigaray, Kristeva and Butler, as well as sociolinguists, like Cameron, Miller, Baxter and Tannen. Their ideas have enriched our gendered Discourses. Furthermore, by dealing with their ideas, we were able to understand how powerful words can be. Words have the power to create identities, our reality and oppress certain groups of people. The group of people we have focussed on are women. Although the category “women” is fragmented and gender is one of many features of persons, there is something that all women share – oppression through language. Thus, women are less likely to move in the corporate ladder and lead. In two Discourse Analysis based on job advertisements for leadership positions offered in Germany and Italy, we see how language-in-use may cause a reason for a gendered leadership gap. The Discourses available to us influence how we understand the reality around us, construct our identities and negotiate our roles. With this thesis, we hope contribute to today’s Discourses and raise people’s awareness of how our language keeps women from entering leadership positions.

This thesis focuses on politically active women within The Swedish Social Democratic Women’s Association, also known as S-women. By applying discourse analysis to interviews with active s-women and to meeting conversations between the association’s members, the study approaches ideas of feminism, feminist politics and political commitment. “Solidarity” – the central concept of the labour movement – serves as the point of departure for a feminist discussion about class, gender, ethnicity and age/generation. Political inclusion and exclusion are other keywords when the power relations within feminism in general and this women’s association in particular are examined. The theoretical framework of the thesis covers post-structuralist feminism, intersectionality and discourse psychology.

This thesis examines the portrayal of authorship in Byatt’s novels with a particular focus on her use of character-authors as a site for the destabilisation of dominant literary and cultural paradigms. Byatt has been perceived as a liberal-humanist author, ambivalent to postmodern, post-structuralist and feminist literary theory. Whilst Byatt’s frame narratives are realist and align with liberal-humanist values, she employs many different genres in the embedded texts written by her character-authors, including fairy-tale, life-writing and historical drama. The diverse representational practices in the novels construct a metafictional commentary on realism, undermining its conventions and conservative politics. My analysis focuses on the relationship between the embedded texts and the frame narrative to demonstrate that Byatt’s strategies of representation enact a postmodern complicitous critique of literary conventions and grand narratives. Many of the female protagonists and minor characters are authors, in the broad sense of cultural production, and Byatt uses their engagement with representation of women in literature to pose questions about how cultural narratives naturalise patriarchal definitions of femininity. That Byatt’s female characters resist patriarchal power relations by undermining the cultural script of conventional femininity has been under-explored and consequently critics have overlooked significant instances of female agency. Whilst some branches of postmodern and feminism literary theory have conceptualised agency differently, this thesis emphasises their shared analysis of the discursive construction of subjectivity, as it illuminates Byatt’s disruption of literary conventions. My focus on the embedded texts and the discursive construction of authorship in Byatt’s fiction enables me to address the numerous paradoxes and inconsistencies in the novels as fertile sites that undermine Byatt’s presumed politics.

Unter Queer Politics wird eine spezifische Form des politischen Aktivismus verstanden, bei dem eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit gesellschaftlichen Konstruktionsprozessen von Geschlecht und Sexualität, die sozialen Folgen solcher Prozesse und ihre Einbindung in Macht- und Herrschaftsverhältnisse fokussiert werden. Queer Politics wurden insbesondere durch die Befreiungskämpfe der lesbischen und schwulen sowie der feministischen Bewegungen des 20. Jahrhunderts geprägt. Die Queer Theory bildet den wichtigsten theoretischen Hintergrund. Kritik wird vor allem hinsichtlich der Unschärfe des Begriffs queer, als auch queerer Identitätspolitiken formuliert.

Unter Queer Politics wird eine spezifische Form des politischen Aktivismus verstanden, bei dem eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit gesellschaftlichen Konstruktionsprozessen von Geschlecht und Sexualität, die sozialen Folgen solcher Prozesse und ihre Einbindung in Macht- und Herrschaftsverhältnisse fokussiert werden. Queer Politics wurden insbesondere durch die Befreiungskämpfe der lesbischen und schwulen sowie der feministischen Bewegungen des 20. Jahrhunderts geprägt. Die Queer Theory bildet den wichtigsten theoretischen Hintergrund. Kritik wird vor allem hinsichtlich der Unschärfe des Begriffs queer, als auch queerer Identitätspolitiken formuliert.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
The thesis involves a re-examination of feminist views of the childbearing body from a post-structuralist perspective and applies these theoretical ideas to an empirical investigation into contemporary childbirth and midwifery. Critiques of medicalised childbirth developed in Australia, Britain and the USA in the 1970s are related to debates within feminism about appropriate ways to theorise motherhood and the female body as well as to understand the role played by midwives and doctors in childbirth. It is argued these critiques were the product of three strands of feminism that differed in their analysis of gender politics, their philosophy of knowledge and their understanding of power. The three critiques are also related to differences between the USA, Britain and Australia in respect of their medical system, ways in which the history of childbirth practices are viewed and differences between the professional roles of midwives. It is argued that these critiques need to be modified by more recent post-structuralist feminist approaches, particularly the way in which bodies are shaped by language and power is related to the distribution of knowledge The empirical study concentrates on a maternity unit in a regional town in New South Wales. The unit was studied through repeat interviews with mothers attending the hospital for the birth of their second or a later child, interviews with the midwives and doctors working in the unit and observations over several months. Childbirth is re-imagined as a drama and found to be an intense embodied experience shaped in turn by the practices of the hospital and the changing boundaries between medicine and midwifery, relationships of the women with the staff and the women’s own diversity. This approach to the analysis of the interview data demonstrates the limitations of the liberal feminist critique that there is insufficient rational and ‘scientific’ evaluation of childbirth practices, the radical feminist critique that the key issue is men’s domination of women’s bodies and the materialist feminist critique of the lack of fairness and support given to childbearing women, while showing how these discourses continue to circulate in debates over the management of childbirth.

This project explores the gender relations among a group of recyclers belonging to a consortium of nine recycling cooperatives in the ABC region of São Paulo, Brazil. Employing a feminist geographical lens and participatory research methodologies I examine these uniquely gendered spaces. This thesis is divided into four sections. Each section is written in an attempt to improve understandings of the ways in which the spaces of the recycling cooperatives are gendered. In the first section I provide information that frames the thesis and the larger research project. I begin this section by providing a geographical and socio-economic overview of the region where the research took place. This is followed by a discussion of my research methodology, a literature review of the relationship between women, solid waste, and labour in Brazil, and a look at my reflexive positioning as a researcher on this project. Section two explores the relationship between gender, empowerment and equity among cooperative recyclers involved with this study. This section poses the question: in what ways has the recycling cooperative allowed for women to inspire personal and social change and have the power to influence the institutions that affect their lives? I argue that the recycling cooperatives involved with this study are spaces where individuals who have traditionally lacked access to power are granted the opportunities to empower themselves. Section three is about performed social relations, specifically the role of hegemonic masculinity in shaping gendered space within the recycling cooperatives. Drawing from qualitative research data, this section critically explores the deployment of power within the lives of the cooperative recyclers. First, I explore the concept of hegemonic masculinity, and suggest its importance for understanding gendered space. Second, I draw on my personal research experiences and qualitative data to provide a spatial examination of the most salient aspects of hegemonic masculinity in the lives of the female cooperative recyclers. Third, I support the notion that masculine domination is not something only established by men and designed to oppress women, but women themselves can construct and reinforce hegemonic masculinities. Section four concludes the study by highlighting apparent shortcomings of the research and implications for future research. Concerned with apparent contradictions between the arguments in sections two and three, I provide a discussion of the multiplicities of space and explain that such contradictions are inherent to the nature of social space. Following this I offer a critical self-reflection of my methodology were I discuss my complicity in reproducing gender binaries and post-colonial research practices.
Graduate

My study examines trauma informed practice (TIP) policies in BC, Canada. My chosen methodology, what is the problem represented to be (WPR) (Bacchi 2009), makes politics visible in policies. I am interested in the effects of trauma policies on women who experience male violence. How does discourse produce certain effects and constitute specific subjects within these texts? I extend a politicized analysis of TIP policies, specifically, an in-depth feminist post structural analysis. I advance an understanding of the effects of policy, particularly for women who have experienced male violence and who receive services under the TIP guidelines. I note the absence of an intersectional analysis and the lack of attention paid to power relations, specifically associated with the provision of care within the health care system, the construction of the traumatized female subject and the absence of a social justice lens in TIP policies. My study addresses the meanings, and resulting practices arising from the TIP policy and its impacts on women's lived experiences. My feminist post structural analysis provides a critique of TIP policies glaringly absent from the literature. I examine available literature, which evaluates TIP. My analysis deepens the understanding of the policy's inherent assumptions by revealing the problem of trauma, as represented in TIP policies. I explore the emergence of the dominant concept of trauma in the completion of a genealogy of trauma. I uncover the commonly accepted trauma ethos, a set of principles and beliefs about violence against women that has set the path for a trauma discourse in BC's guidelines, policies, and programs. I explore my interest in iv the ontology of trauma, the nature of trauma itself and the way of being when trauma has occurred. While exploring this interest through a genealogy of trauma, I identify five historical figures; the traumatized female figure, the assaulted woman figure, the wounded veteran figure, the colonized Indigenous woman figure and the emancipated woman figure. My study explores how women are obscured and invisible in policies intended to address violence against women. I demonstrate that this invisibility results in gender-neutral policies-if there is no gender-based violence- we, therefore, do not have to think of gender-based treatment. The patriarchal erasure of women from trauma policies continually repositions what the problem is represented to be. These policies constitute women as the less valued subjects, fundamentally damaged and flawed. Trauma policies shape women as people who can damage staff; assuming they are a source of trauma infection; they can infect staff with their trauma resulting in vicarious traumatization of staff. Trauma policies characterize the traumatized female subject as fundamentally different from the staff or the professional expert. Only certain kinds of women can be traumatized, the mentally ill and substance-using women. My study exposes the presupposition embedded in policies that only certain women are violated, and other women are unlike them. This trauma discourse is grounded in racism, colonialism and sexism, built on stereotypical patriarchal representations of women, resulting in the stigmatization of women who experience male violence.
Graduate
2022-08-25

This thesis mobilizes a feminist critique to examine the ways in which New Public Management (NPM) represents a gendered discourse. Using Foucauldian discourse analysis, NPM is mapped as a discursive field in order to tease out its dominant and subordinate discourses. The tensions between the dominant discourses and between the dominant and subordinate discourses are examined. The discursive themes of NPM are then engaged using a feminist post-structuralist framework in order to develop a feminist critique. From this critique, it is argued that NPM discourses reinscribe dominant masculinity as well as challenge the Weberian model of bureaucracy by reconstructing a gendered division of labour that takes place entirely within the public sphere.

Missing children is one of the horrors that we are confronted with in today's society. The case study method, a feminist co-search methodology, is used to give a missing child's mother the opportunity to tell and re-tell the painful story. During this co-search process the following aspects of doing ethics and pastoral care and counselling with the mother are constantly negotiated. The term "missing child" is defined and the relevance between the distinction of "missing children" and "run-away children" is discussed. Furthermore, this study explores the many diverse practices of narrative pastoral care and counselling with parents of missing children within an economically disadvantaged community. The conceptualisations regarding loss, hope and meaning-making and how these are utilised in the life of a missing child's mother is discussed.
Practical Theology
M.Th.

Dominant discourses on power, childhood and gender lead to power inequalities in social relationships in families and schools, allowing abuses of power (the subjugation and marginalisation of women and young people). These dominant structures of belief are often disrespectful of young people's experiences, stories and knowledges. This research attempted to respond to dilemmas in child relationships, to challenge belief structures that construct relationships between adults/young people, and to empower young people to stand up for their beliefs and make their voices heard. The research was guided by a post-modern, narrative pastoral approach. To deconstruct discourses that restrict young people within social institutions, social construction discourse, feminist post-structuralism, narrative theology and feminist theology were used. Narrative practices were used to look at depression, guilt, trouble and anger. Re-authoring conversations were used to construct preferred stories about young people's identities and to explore alternative stories and the not-yet-said on drugs.
Philosophy, Practical & Systematic Theology
M. Th. (Practical Theology (Pastoral Therapy))

Dans Trouble dans le genre, Judith Butler conteste l’aspect identitaire du féminisme, qui selon elle produirait de nouvelles possibilités d’exclusion, basées sur la catégorie même de « femme ». Je ne contesterai pas le mouvement qu’elle adopte, à savoir que la sexualité informe du genre, qui produit le sexe, bien que j’exposerai les difficultés que cela soulève. Mon intérêt se situe dans la vision que Butler a de la formation des sujets individuels et de leur rattachement à des identités collectives, via la performativité du genre. Sa position voulant que le genre soit un acte et l’identité une pratique, je vais expliquer comment elle conçoit l’humain constitué par ses actes et critiquer, avec deux auteures féministes, sa conception du genre. J’en conclurai que Butler doit admettre qu’une forme d’identité féminine soit nécessaire au féminisme tout en tenant compte de son plaidoyer d’inclusion des individus aux sexualités marginales.
In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler challenges feminism as identity politics, which, according to her, would produce a new set of potential exclusions, based on the category “woman”. I will not dispute how she articulates that sexuality gives sense to gender, which produces sex. My interest lies in how Butler understands the process of becoming a subject for an individual, and how people tend to belong to a collective identity, via gender performativity. She states that gender is an act and identity a form of practice. I will explain how she understands that human beings are constituted by their acts and criticize, according to two feminist authors, her conception of gender. I will conclude that Butler has to admit that some kind of feminine identity is necessary to feminism, even when we consider her plea for the inclusion of individuals sexually marginalized.

This thesis focuses on the work of two contemporary authors, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson, and their treatment of the concepts of history and gender in their fiction. I argue that, by openly speculating about the nature of time and history, and by making their readers think about the origin of these notions, Smith and Winterson uncover the seemingly stable but, in actuality, very fragile roots of the 'truths' we take for granted. They explore the potentiality of the past, which, in turn opens up the present and the future. To support my argument, I turned to Hayden White and his theory of historiography and Paul Ricoeur's philosophy of time and history. The latter part of the thesis deals with gender, as well as biological sex and sexual orientation, and the way in which Smith and Winterson's texts put into practice Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity, and work towards the subversion of gender norms as well as the destabilisation of heteronormativity. Both parts of the thesis are closely connected; history serves to keep the laws that define gender, sex and sexuality intact, and, in turn, these laws are often adhered to solely by the virtue of their historicity. What is more, myth and language are equally exposed to be supporting these norms. The aim of this thesis is to...