Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Social movements – Great Britain'
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Mello, Brian Jason. "Evaluating social movement impacts : labor and the politics of state-society relations /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/10711.
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Lacey, Anita (Anita Nicole) 1974. "Networks of protest, communities of resistance : autonomous activism in contemporary Britain." Monash University, Centre for European Studies, 2001. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/8628.
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Elliot-Cooper, Adam. "The struggle that has no name : race, space and policing in post-Duggan Britain." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7efad2ea-75e2-4a54-a479-b3b2b265e827.
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State violence, and policing in particular, continue to shape the black British experience, racialising geographical areas associated with African and African-Caribbean communities. The history of black struggles in the UK has often centred on spaces of racial violence and resistance to it. But black-led social movements of previous decades have, for the most part, seen a decline in both political mobilisations, and the militant anti-racist slogans and discourses that accompanied them. Neoliberalism, through securitisation, resource reallocation, privatisation of space and the de-racialising of language, has made radical black activism an increasingly difficult endeavour. But this does not mean that black struggle against policing has disappeared. What it does mean, however, is that there have been significant changes in how anti-racist activism against policing is articulated and carried out. Three high-profile black deaths at the hands of police in 2011 led to widespread protest and civil unrest. These movements of resistance were strengthened when the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States mobilised hundreds of young people in solidarity actions in England. In this thesis, I argue that, over time, racist metonyms used to describe places racialised as black (Handsworth, Brixton etc.) and people racialised as black (Stephen Lawrence, Mark Duggan etc.), have led to the rise of metonymic anti-racism. While metonymic anti-racism was used alongside more overt anti-racist language in the period between the 1950s and early 1990s, I argue that such overt anti-racist language is becoming rarer in the post-2011 period, particularly in radical black grassroots organisations that address policing. Intersecting with metonymic anti-racism are gender dynamics brought to the surface by female-led campaigns against police violence, and forms of resistance which target spaces of post-industrial consumer capitalism. Understanding how police racism, and resistance to it, are being reconceptualised through language, and reconfigured through different forms of activism, provides a fresh understanding of grassroots black struggle in Britain.
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Hancock, Rosemary Joy. "Muslims Going Green: Islamic Environmental Activism in the United States and Great Britain." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/14655.
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This thesis examines Muslim environmental activism in the United States and Great Britain, utilising a theoretical framework of social movement theory. Through interviews with Muslim environmentalists, supported by textual data produced by Islamic environmental organisations, the thesis analyses the way Muslim environmentalists frame environmental crises, how they motivate and sustain their activism through emotion and identity work, and their use of ‘moderate’ forms of activism. Islamic environmentalism has not received due academic attention from social movement theorists or Islamic studies scholars. The thesis contributes to the literature on social movements by testing the theory in new ground: Islamic environmental activism is simultaneously a religious movement and a secular movement, and this offers interesting avenues for theorising on the role of religion in social movements. The thesis also contributes to Islamic studies literature: although there is a very small body of academic work on Islamic environmentalism, none apply social movement theory to this area. The thesis argues Muslim environmentalists are drawn into activism through (i) affective ties to friends, romantic partners, and charismatic leaders, and (ii) due to a strong sense of religious duty that stems from a very particular, environmental understanding of Islamic scripture and practice. Secondly, the thesis demonstrates the importance of ‘group culture’ for attracting and retaining committed activists. Finally, the thesis contends that Muslim environmentalists demonstrate a synthesis of political activism and religious practice. Religious ritual, symbolism, and narrative are incorporated into political action in such a way that activism becomes religious practice.
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Smitley, Megan K. "'Woman's mission' : the temperance and women's suffrage movements in Scotland, c.1870-1914." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2002. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1488/.
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This thesis discusses the connections that bound together the late-nineteenth-century women’s temperance and suffrage movements in Scotland. The importance of women’s temperance reform in the women’s movement has been discussed in other Anglophone contexts, however there has been little scholarly analysis of these links in British historiography. This study aims to fill some of this gap. Moreover, by focusing on the Scottish case, this investigation adds a more ‘Britannic’ perspective to discussions of Victorian and Edwardian feminism, and thereby reveals regional variation and diversity. My exploration of the women’s suffrage movement focuses on constitutional societies, and offers a fresh perspective to balance the concentration on militancy in the only major monograph on Scottish suffragism – Leah Leneman’s A Guid Cause: The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Scotland. This analysis takes a flexible approach to constitutionalism and argues that the women’s single-sex temperance society, the Scottish Christian Union (SCU) was an element of constitutional suffragism. Likewise, the Scottish Women’s Liberal Federation – peripheral to the historiography of British suffragism – is given a prominent place as a constitutionalist organisation. This study uses women’s roles in social reform and suffragism to examine the public lives of middle-class women. The ideology of ‘separate spheres’ is a leitmotif of much of women’s history, and discussions of the ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres are often linked to social class. My discussion of a ‘feminine public sphere’ is designed to reveal the ways in which women negotiated Victorian gender roles in order to participate in the civic life that was intrinsic to an urban middle-class identity. Thus, this thesis seeks to place suffragism and temperature in the context of middle-class women’s public world.
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Reynolds, Teddy. "Pulling back the curtain : an examination of the English Defence League and their use of Facebook." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6927.
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As social media becomes an integral part of our daily lives, and groups seek to utilize this medium to facilitate activism, understanding the nature of these communications and the impact of the content on the individual user becomes a valid area of interest. When one then considers that extremist and terrorist groups have found social media to be an inexpensive and effective means for communication, radicalization, recruitment and member mobilization, the need for this understanding becomes critical. This research seeks to provide just such an understanding in its examination of Far-Right English Defence League and their use of Facebook during a period of increased activism and online growth. Important elements of this work include an understanding of the legal and ethical issues surrounding the collection of online content, particularly in extremist environments; the role of traditional media in their coverage of the group and whether the comments of the members reflect the group's mission statement of the characterization of traditional media; the ability to enhance data segregation and analysis through the development and use of specialized software; and most importantly the findings from the data analysis. Contained within these findings is an understanding of the intricacies of online participation in extremist social media. These include insights into overall traffic generation, the use of links within communications and their impact on the member traffic, and how the group narrative put forth by the administrator is reflected in the dialogue of the users. The most important finding was an understanding of individual user participation within the group and how, even with such an inexpensive and pervasive media outlet, activist groups still struggle to overcome the problem of participation. That this knowledge can be applied in a meaningful way in counter extremist and counter terrorism efforts was an interesting and satisfying development.
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Blakestad, Nancy Lynn. "King's College of Household and Social Science and the household science movement in English higher education, c. 1908-1939." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1994. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ab86830a-8703-4d12-ac88-c3020a9eb7ef.
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This thesis is an account of the 'household and social science' course opened at King's College for Women in 1908 and its evolution up to 1939. The course was a significant departure for women's higher education in England as it was the first attempt to define a special university discipline based upon women's 'domestic' roles. However, historical accounts of women's higher education have either ignored or dismissed it, largely because of the predominance of'separate spheres' analyses in the historiography of women's higher education of the 1970s and early 1980s. Such accounts have presented the household science course in a negative light because of its 'domestic' image. This thesis thus offers a reassessment of the household science movement and those who supported it. The 'household science' concept owed its origin to the American 'home economies' movement which originated in the mid-nineteenth century. Chapter 1 provides a history of the home economics movement in America, tracing its evolution in the context of women's higher education until 1914. Initially home economics was seen as a 'vocational homemaking' course aiming to train women for home life. At the turn of the century, however, a 'scientific' model was developed by women scientists in order to promote research into social problems connected with the domestic sphere. These two models~the vocation and the scientific, have developed in tandem in American home economics. Chapters 2 and 3 consider the origins and early evolution of the 'household science' course in England, which was largely influenced by the American 'scientific' model. Chapter 2 first considers the concept of domestic education in the history of women's education and factors that precluded the development of a 'vocational homemaking' course in English higher education. The rest of the chapter analyses the origins of the household science movement in its social and intellectual context, in particular its connection with Edwardian preoccupations with 'physical deterioration' and infant mortality. Like their American counterparts, the founders of the course saw household science as a reform movement which aimed to promote research into domestic problems such as hygiene and nutrition, as well as to create a more useful and relevant university discipline for women's domestic roles, whether as housewife/mother or in 'municipal housekeeping' roles. Chapter 3 discusses the household science course from a disciplinary standpoint, looking at how the syllabus was constructed, the contemporary educational controversies it engendered, and its evolution up to 1920 when the B.Sc. degree was granted. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 examine the main factors which ultimately undermined the success of household science as a discipline. Chapter 4 evaluates career trends amongst KCHSS students from 1910-49, analysing to what extent the KCHSS administration was able to create a professional career structure for the household science discipline. The interplay between administrative policy, career trends, and professionalization is analyzed in relation to three career fields-social welfare, laboratory research, and dietetics. Chapters considers the professional conflicts between KCHSS and the domestic subjects teaching profession. Chapter 6 analyses KCHSS's failure to carve out a unique academic 'territory' or expertise and the various factors that affected this. The final chapter assesses how successful KCHSS was as an institution, looking at how students themselves experienced the course, their motivations for taking it, and its impact on their lives. Although household science was unsuccessful as a discipline, the course did give students a wide choice of career options, creating openings in less conventional spheres for women who did not want to teach and providing opportunities for the less-able student to follow a scientific career. The conclusion considers how the social climate of the interwar period affected the working out of the original household science ideals.
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Foggo, Anthony. "The radical experiment in Liverpool and its influence on the reform movement in the early Victorian period." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 2015. http://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/2012339/.
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This thesis investigates the development of radical politics in Liverpool in the first half of the nineteenth century and argues that distinctive events and trends in Liverpool exercised an important influence on the activities of the Reform Movement nationally between 1848 and 1854. It addresses two important but largely neglected areas of historiography: first, the political history of Liverpool in the years between the abolition of the slave trade and the mass influx of Irish refugees in mid-century, during which time the town rose to commercial pre-eminence; secondly, the influence of major provincial centres such as Liverpool on politics at the national level. The origins of Liverpool’s reformist Town Council of 1835-1841 are traced and show a continuity of thought and personalities over several decades against a backdrop of Tory paternalism and institutionalised corruption. The new reformist administration is seen as laying the foundations of a modern society through good governance, financial economy, civil liberty and innovation. On the Corn Laws issue, Liverpool’s reformers were reluctant to follow Manchester’s lead, preferring to pursue free trade on a broad front. This study follows their progress and shows how, ultimately, their thinking on financial reform influenced Cobden’s “National Budget” and remained an ever-present stimulus for several decades. The most prominent of Liverpool’s radical reformers was Sir Joshua Walmsley, whose achievements in both municipal and national politics have received much less attention from historians than they have merited. This study details the influences and experiences in his early career and then traces how, through political dexterity, he pushed parliamentary reform to the forefront of the national political agenda and established the National Parliamentary and Financial Reform Association in 1849. The influence exerted by his Liverpool background on both his political development and style of campaigning may be seen throughout his parliamentary career.
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Weeks, Douglas M. "Radicals and reactionaries : the polarisation of community and government in the name of public safety and security." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/3416.
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The contemporary threat of terrorism has changed the ways in which government and the public view the world. Unlike the existential threat from nation states in previous centuries, today, government and the public spend much of their effort looking for the inward threat. Brought about by high profile events such as 9/11, 7/7, and 3/11, and exacerbated by globalisation, hyper-connected social spheres, and the media, the threats from within are reinforced daily. In the UK, government has taken bold steps to foment public safety and public security but has also been criticised by some who argue that government actions have labelled Muslims as the ‘suspect other'. This thesis explores the counter-terrorism environment in London at the community/government interface, how the Metropolitan Police Service and London Fire Brigade deliver counter-terrorism policy, and how individuals and groups are reacting. It specifically explores the realities of the lived experience of those who make up London's ‘suspect community' and whether or not counter-terrorism policy can be linked to further marginalisation, radicalism, and extremism. By engaging with those that range from London's Metropolitan Police Service's Counterterrorism Command (SO15) to those that make up the radical fringe, an ethnographic portrait is developed. Through that ethnographic portrait the ‘ground truth' and complexities of the lived experience are made clear and add significant contrast to the aseptic policy environment.
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Banks-Conney, Diana Elisabeth. "Political culture and the labour movement : a comparison between Poplar and West Ham, 1889-1914." Thesis, University of Greenwich, 2005. http://gala.gre.ac.uk/5797/.
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This thesis compares two areas of East London, Poplar and West Ham,that ultimately became strongholds of the Labour Party. The thesis attemptsto answer the crucial question of why, prior to 1914, it seemed as if Labour had succeeded in South West Ham but had failed to achieve similar representation in Poplar. This thesis considers that although contemporaries had identified similar social and economic problems in both Poplar and West Ham in the early twentieth century, more detailed analysis reveals differences as well as similarities in the underlying economic and social structure, which had implications for political outcomes. The difference in attitude of local trade unionists and councillors was crucial as was the behaviour of the political leadership. The reason for this, it will be shown, lay in the characters of the individuals who led their respective activists, as well as in the social and economic structure of the two boroughs. Using the theoretical model of social movements and political parties it is hoped that an understanding may be reached as to why socialist politics in these two boroughs, apparently so similar, achieved different outcomes in the years prior to 1914. The initial chapters outline the social and economic conditions in the boroughs and the national attitudes to their problems. Chapters Three and Four consider the left wing activists and their leaders, exploring their differing attitudes to the social and economic problems and their different styles ofpolitical activity. Chapter Five discusses the difficulties experienced by activists in achieving local and national representation so as to effect social and political change. Chapters Six, Seven and Eight, by considering the issue of unemployment, the campaign for women' s suffrage and the history of the Great Unrest, exemplify the main argument of this thesis. Thus by assessing economic factors, employment patterns and trade unionism, problems with the franchise and elector registration, the quality of local party organisation and the different attitudes and aspirations of the local activists, this thesis will test the hypothesis that the reason for the difference in political fortunes in these two boroughs was that left wing activity in Poplar was more characteristic of a social movement and that of West Ham was more representative of a political party.
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Khalid, Amr. "Aspects of Islam and social coexistence : the case of Britain." Thesis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.683357.
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Jian, Ke Yue. "Historical analysis of British welfare system :origin, development, and prospect." Thesis, University of Macau, 2018. http://umaclib3.umac.mo/record=b3953425.
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Mackillop, Andrew. "Military recruiting in the Scottish Highlands 1739-1815 the political, social and economic context /." Thesis, Connect to e-thesis, 1995. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/680/.
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Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Glasgow, 1995.PH.D. thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts, Department of History, University of Glasgow, 1995. Includes bibliographical references. Print version also available.
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Lemelin, Raynald Harvey. "Social movements and the Great Law of Peace in Akwesasne." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp05/mq20929.pdf.
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Paris, Chris. "Social theory and housing policy." Phd thesis, Canberra, ACT : The Australian National University, 1986. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/130120.
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Reid, Sean. "Cricket in Victorian Ireland 1848-1878 : a social history." Thesis, University of Huddersfield, 2014. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/25016/.
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McLaughlin, Janice. "Discursive strategies within Thatcherism : family and market representations in its rhetoric and Community Care Documents /." Thesis, This resource online, 1993. http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-06302009-040329/.
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Whitworth, Adam. "Work, care and social inclusion : lone motherhood under New Labour." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.670080.
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Jabbari, Eric. "Liberal reforms and the statist agenda : the thought and politics of Liberal social reform in early twentieth century Britain." Thesis, McGill University, 1996. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=23847.
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This thesis examines the social reforms ushered in by the prewar Asquith cabinet. It deals with the progressive intellectual environment and how it related to the budget of 1909 and the National Insurance Act of 1911. The following demonstrates how ideologies contribute to a public policy process riven by political, personal and administrative forces.
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Kell, Patricia Ellen. "British collecting, 1656-1800 : scientific enquiry and social practice." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.670252.
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Koch, Insa Lee. "Personalising the state : law, social welfare and politics on an English council estate." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4335c11c-c0a5-44dc-bd15-5bbbfe2fee6c.
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This dissertation offers a study of everyday relations between residents and the state on a post-industrial council estate in England. Drawing upon historical and ethnographic data, it analyses how, often under conditions of sustained exclusion, residents rely upon the state in their daily struggles for security and survival. My central ethnographic finding is that residents personalise the state alongside informal networks of support and care into a local sociality of reciprocity. This finding can be broken into three interconnected points. First, I argue that the reciprocal contract between citizens and the state emerged in the post-war years when the residents on the newly built estates negotiated their dependence upon the state by integrating it into their on-going social relations. A climate of relative material affluence, selective housing policies, and a paternalistic regime of housing management all created conditions which were conducive for this temporary union between residents and the state. Second, however, I argue that with the decline of industry and shifts towards neoliberal policies, residents increasingly struggle to hold the state accountable to its reciprocal obligations towards local people. This becomes manifest today both in the material neglect of council estates as well as in state officials' reluctance to become implicated in social relations with and between residents. Third, I argue that this failure on the part of the state to attend to residents' demands often has onerous effects on people's lives. It not only exacerbates residents' exposure to insecurity and threat, but is also experienced as a moral affront which generates larger narratives of abandonment and betrayal. Theoretically, this dissertation critically discusses and challenges contrasting portrayals of the state, and of state-citizen relations, in two bodies of literature. On the one hand, in much of the sociological and anthropological literature on working class communities, authors have adopted a community-centred approach which has depicted working class communities as self-contained entities against which the state emerges as a distant or hostile entity. I argue that such a portrayal is premised upon a romanticised view of working class communities which neglects the intimate presence of the state in everyday life. On the other hand, the theoretical literature on the British state has adopted a state-centred perspective which has seen the state as a renewed source of order and authority in disintegrating communities today. My suggestion is that this portrayal rests upon a pathologising view of social decline which fails to account for the persistence of informal social relations and the challenges that these pose to the state's authority from below. Finally, moving beyond the community-centred and state-centred perspectives, I argue for the need to adopt a middle ground which combines an understanding of the nature and workings of informal relations with an acknowledgement of the ubiquity of the state. Such an approach allows us to recognise that, far from being a hostile entity or, alternatively, an uncontested source of order, the state occupies shifting positions within an overarching sociality of reciprocity and its associated demands for alliances and divisions. I refer to such an approach as the personalisation of the state.
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Perrone, Fernanda Helen. "The V.A.D.S. and the great war /." Thesis, McGill University, 1986. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=66086.
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Flame, Michael John. "'All the common rules of social life' : the reconstruction of social and political identities by the Dorset Gentry, c.1790-c.1834." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1997. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/3982/.
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This case-history explores the governing purposes of the Dorset gentry from the early 1790's until the mid 1830's. It is not a conventional political and administrative history. It seeks rather to reveal the gentry's governing purposes through the processes and contexts of their construction of social and political identities. It takes as its starting point the idea of the materiality of language itself The idea that language does not reflect or refer to a pre-existing anterior reality but creates meaning by distinguishing explicitly or implicitly what something is from what it is not. This case-history explores the gentry's construction of the terms of an overarching discourse I have called the 'common rules of social life'. In particular the evolving narrative terms of patriarchal oeconomy, political economy and paternalism. It does so to answer the question: 'By what means and for what purposes did this form of discourse and its narrative traditions become established by the gentry to prevail at this time in the past? ' The answers are found in the ways and the contexts in which the gentry used this discourse. First, how did the gentry exercise their power so that this discourse might come into being. Here the structures and institutions of the Commission of the Peace are significant. In particular the ways in which power was monopolised and used by a small fraction of active magistrates. This fraction was active in the committees of the Commission of the Peace and at quarter and petty sessions. Their power came to be deployed to reform county government and poor relief to impose 'natural' moral market relations on Dorset society. Second, how was the discourse and its constituent elements exercised by the gentry to constitute identities, and how did they determine how people thought and acted? Here the case-history reveals the gentry's construction of identities for Dorset, the parish and the poor. In particular the construction of an identity of Dorset as an arena of natural economic laws and moral endeavour. These identities were taught to rich and poor alike as part of the gentry's purpose to remoralise Dorset society.
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Neal, Derek. "Meanings of masculinity in late medieval England : self, body and society." Thesis, McGill University, 2003. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=84534.
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Masculinity is a set of meanings, and also an aspect of male identity. Understanding masculinity in history, therefore, requires attention to culture and psychology. The concept of a "crisis of masculinity" cannot address these dimensions sufficiently and is of little use to the historian.This analysis of evidence from late medieval England begins with the social world. Legal records show men defending, and therefore defining, masculine identity through interaction among male peers and with women. Defamation suits suggest a fifteenth-century identification of masculinity with "trueness": an uncomplicated, open honesty. A "true man," in late medieval England, was not just an honest man, but a real man.
Social masculinity constituted honest fairness, permitting stable social relations between men. Transparent honesty, good management of the household ("husbandry"), and self-command preserved males' social substance, their metaphoric embodiment represented tangibly by money and property. Lawsuits and personal letters show how masculine social identity took shape through competition and cooperation with other men. "Power," "dominance" and self-fulfilment were less important than sustaining this network of relations.
Men's relations with women are best understood within this homosocial dynamic. Men's adultery trespassed on other males' substance, while women's adultery indicated poor management of one's own. Sexual slander against men could injure their social identity, but was unlikely to demolish it, as it would for a woman. The celibate minority of men shared these concerns.
Medical texts, late medieval men's clothing, satirical poems, and courtesy texts prescribing self-control show that the male body provided important meanings (phallic and otherwise), through failure, inadequacy or excess as often as not. Sexual activity, and other uses of the body, might be managed differently as self-restraining or self-indulgent discourses of masculinity demanded.
A psychoanalytic reading of medieval romances reveals fantasized solutions to the problem of males' desire for feminine and masculine objects. Romance literature displays a narcissistic subjectivity created in defensive fantasies of disconnection. Such features derive from a culture demanding incessant social self-presentation of its men, which permitted very little in daily life to be kept from the scrutiny of others.
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McKay, Ralston William. "At school with looked after children : a study of the views of children in public care." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/1838.
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This thesis is concerned with the education of children in care. Its analytic focus is on ways in which children in public care are and have been constructed by knowledge and policies that are embedded in the discourses that surround them. A literature review of empirical research conducted in the UK concludes that the dominant research strands and epistemologic studies in this area have failed to allow foregrounding and exploration of children's own accounts of their experiences at school as children in care. Other literature concerning policy and historical contexts is considered within subsequent analytic chapters where a Foucauldian approach is adopted. The empirical work reported is of the content of interviews conducted in schools with 27 children and young people who were in foster care. A Foucauldian perspective allows consideration of the fashion whereby practices of surveillance and "the gaze" construct children by adults. The children's accounts are foregrounded in the data chapters where, firstly, their experiences of adults are explicated in terms of the three mechanisms of surveillance that Foucault identified. Adults' writings about the children, particularly within Records of Needs that had been opened to delineate the special educational needs of some of the children, are described and the fashions whereby these too construct the children, often negatively, are exposed. A sometimes overpowering sense of public intrusion into the children's private lives permeated their accounts but the final data chapter considers the ways they utilised their own agency sometimes as a struggle to resist the markers of difference experienced. Here again their own stories are given prominence. The implications of these accounts lead to suggestions about how changes to adults' practices in their dealings with children in care could be introduced in a range of settings including schools, the meetings held about children and educational psychologists' activities where, fundamentally, a need for adults to display more genuine respect to children and young people is required.
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Haynes, Kathryn. "(Sm)othering the self : an analysis of the politics of identity of women accountants in the UK." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14191.
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This thesis examines the politics of identity of women accountants in the UK who are mothers, by exploring the links between working in the accounting profession and the experience of motherhood. It takes a sociological approach to analyse how social, political, cultural and moral forces, in relation to accounting, motherhood and wider society, affect identity, or the self. The accounting profession is arguably a masculine enviromnent into which the accountant is socialised. Motherhood illustrates the tensions between an essentialist and a non-essentialist view of identity. The thesis explores the contradictions and juxtapositions between these two identities of accountant and mother, and the struggle of women to exercise agency within the confines of the profession. It uses a feminist methodological framework based on the subjective experience of women. As such, I present my own autobiographical account of being an accountant and mother, and the oral history narratives of fifteen other women, arguing that narrative forms an integral part of identity construction. The thesis concludes that the narrative approach and the use of oral histories has much to offer to accounting research and has important implications for our understanding of the interrelationships between accounting and motherhood. These include the emotions, transformations and constructions of identity of women accountants.
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Dougherty, Devyn T. "Exotic Femininity: Prostitution Reviews and the Sexual Stereotyping of Asian Women." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2014. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc700002/.
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Studies on prostitution have typically focused on the experiences, problems, and histories of prostitutes, rather than examining men who seek to purchase sex. Race has also been overlooked as a central factor in shaping the sex industry and the motivations of men who seek to purchase sex. This study utilizes online reviews of prostitutes to examine the way men who purchase sex discuss Asian prostitutes in comparison to White prostitutes. This paper traces the history of colonialism and ideas of the exotic Orient to modern stereotypes of Asian women. These stereotypes are then used to frame a quantitative and qualitative analysis of online reviews of prostitutes and compare the ways in which Asian prostitutes and white prostitutes are discussed. Further, the reviews are used to examine more broadly what services, traits, and behaviors are considered desirable by men who use prostitutes. The study finds that there are significant quantitative and qualitative differences in how men discuss Asian and White prostitutes within their reviews, and that these differences appear to be shaped by racially fetishizing stereotypes of Asian women. Prostitution also appears to reinforce male dominance and patriarchy in the form of masculine control and the feminine servicing of male sexual and emotional needs.
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Jordan, Steven Shane. "The Technical Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) and the making of the enterprise culture." Thesis, McGill University, 1996. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=40371.
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This thesis is situated in the history of British debates over the relationship of technical and vocational schooling to capitalism. It analyses the impact of 'new vocational' policy initiatives on English education from the 1970s, using an approach termed 'historical ethnography.' Using this methodology, it draws on ethnographic studies of the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) between 1985 and 1992.My argument is that TVEI represents the most recent manifestation of a long history of educational policies that have systematically produced and ordered the social relations of class in an educational form. In this vein, I argue that the technical and vocational curriculum can be seen as an integral site within the English educational State for the production and formation of class relations within schooling. TVEI, I assert, was central to such a process through its capacity to concert and co-ordinate the social relations and practices of secondary schooling around the concept of enterprise, which acted as an organising device for management/administration, teaching, learning, and most crucially, the formation of individual subjectivities. Understood this way, we can see how TVEI effected reforms that contributed to the formation of clusters of social relations that produced class in new ways.
I show how this process emerged under TVEI through my ethnographic studies of enterprise, school-based management, business studies, and assessment. What each study reveals is how TVEI worked to effect a generalised shift in the culture of schooling away from the post-war social democratic politics of education, to that of a 'managed market' and enterprise culture. In this respect, I argue, TVEI prefigured many of the reforms that were to flow from the Education Reform Act (1988).
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Childs, Michael James 1956. "Working class youth in late Victorian and Edwardian England." Thesis, McGill University, 1986. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=74015.
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Bray, Thomas. "In the gaps and on the margins : social work in England, 1940-1970." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2016. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/77675/.
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This thesis examines the role of social work within post-war England, particularly its place within the welfare state and wider society. The thesis focuses on social work’s ambiguous position ‘in the gaps’ and ‘on the margins’, where it operated between a variety of spheres, including other professions in the medical and social services, policy-makers, individual clients and communities, and social researchers. Within this position, social workers were commonly tasked with mediating between these different groups, and helping to interpret the various languages and expectations present in post-war English welfare and society. This meant that social workers aimed to make the provision and consumption of welfare more effective, both through working closely with individuals, families, and communities, and through promoting efficient coordination and cooperation between the welfare services. The thesis discusses the problems which this approach sought to address, and the issues which resulted. The study of social workers offers an insight into the negotiations and compromises implicit in post-war society, and also allows us to consider how issues of social change and the problems which emerged or persisted in post-war England were navigated. The thesis also considers the relationship of social work with the psychological and social sciences, and seeks to reconsider how concepts from those disciplines were utilised within welfare practice. This includes an emphasis on pragmatic practice, on the discretion of the individual worker, and on the attempts of social workers to generate knowledge about the field of their work and the efficacy of their intervention. Overall, the thesis shows how closer attention to social work can illuminate some of the tensions which arose in the post-war provision of medical and social services, in the everyday practice of welfare, and as a result of social, cultural, and demographic change.
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DiÌaz, MartiÌnez Elisa. "Does social class explain inequalities? : a study of Great Britain and Spain." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.400395.
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Hapgood, Lynne. ""Circe among cities" : images of London and the languages of social concern, 1880-1900." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1990. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/34820/.
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This thesis is an investigation of sociological, documentary and literary texts whose central concerns are the social conditions in London during the period 1880-1899. London is chosen as a focus because during this time it was perceived as being in a state of crisis which produced an unprecedented amount of writing in response. The investigation has two complementary objectives: (i) to analyse, through the changing presentation of London in literary texts, the response of novelists working within the realistic tradition to the challenge of divesting language and form of inherited social meanings; (ii) to ascertain how conditions in London were articulated in a wide range of non-fictional writings, and to assess the role played by discourses inherited from Christian perspectives of society in absorbing, hindering, expressing or developing radical thought. The first part of the thesis will establish what the dominant images of London were. It will concentrate on the inner city texts of the 1880s and the suburban texts of the 1890s. What these images reveal about changing moral and political responses to social issues are assessed. The second part will be concerned with a London of spiritual and moral significance. Certain doctrinal, sociological and fictional works which attempted to make Christian terminology appropriate to the contemporary city will be considered. The impact of Socialism on religious and fictional discourses is evaluated. The thesis will conclude with a discussion of London as a political construct and assess how far such a perception sets up a break with tradition. Fictional texts assume a peculiar importance here since they are strongly differentiated from each other and from their literary tradition. In fictional texts in particular, images of London highlight the particular difficulty of redeploying a tradition of realism to accommodate radical ideas and the consequent formal challenges. The presentation of London in a diverse body of literature can therefore be seen to offer a variety of perspectives on the process of change in both language and form.
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Kenny, Caroline. "Reconciling social justice with economic competitveness : the coherence of New Labour's discourse on education." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2010. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/647/.
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According to key figures within New Labour, the advent of the knowledge-based economy has ended the “sterile” battle between social justice and economic competitiveness; this now means that it is only through the provision of opportunities for all, achieved through high quality education, that the demands of the two goals can be fulfilled. I investigate the claims made by Blair, Brown and the Education Ministers that social objectives are being reconciled with economic considerations in the Party's approach to education and, in doing so, explore the existence and content of a putative 'New Labour' discourse on education. I highlight the limitations of the existing literature in dealing with issues of discourse, agency and time. I contend that in overlooking questions of discourse and ignoring the potential for differences over time and between actors, the current literature fails to capture the dynamism and complexity of the Government's discourse leading it to reach two inaccurate conclusions about New Labour as well as prohibiting us from gaining a proper sense of whether the Party has been coherent in its discussions of education. Conversely, I set out an alternative view of coherence, proposing discourse as an equivalent unit of analysis to policy and demonstrating sensitivity to differences both over time and between agents. I show that there is not one coherent 'New Labour' discourse on education, but a shared conception that is underpinned by three discourses that appeal to arguments about the knowledge-based economy, opportunity and responsibility. Within this however, are eighteen different arguments the use, meaning and significance of which varies between Blair, Brown and the Education Ministers and, over the three terms between 1997 and 2007.
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Connell, Kieran. "A micro-history of 'black Handsworth' : towards a social history of race in Britain." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2012. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/3568/.
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This thesis represents an account of the experience of race in contemporary Britain. It adopts a ‘micro historical’ approach: the focus is on those of African-Caribbean descent in Handsworth, an inner-city area of Birmingham, during the ‘long 1980s’, defined roughly as the period from the middle of the 1970s to the start of the 1990s. This was a period of heightened racial tension. Popular anxieties about the black inner city were brought to the fore following rioting in 1981 and 1985, after which Handsworth was conceptualised by the media as the ‘Front Line’ in an ongoing ‘war on the streets’. The long 1980s was also a period in which inequalities in housing, unemployment and other areas continued to disproportionately affect black communities in Handsworth. These issues were an important contributing factor to the black experience. However, this thesis argues that the black experience was by no means reducible to them. Race, it is argued, was something that was lived in Handsworth, sometimes in relation racism and inequality, but also in what E. P. Thompson famously argued to be ‘the raw material of experience’. Race was a ‘structure of feeling’ in Handsworth. It meant having to deal with the effects of discrimination or high unemployment, for example, sometimes on a daily basis. But the thesis will show that race was also often re-articulated as a positive identity, and was lived out in routines, traditions, institutions and everyday practices. Taken together, this constituted what can meaningfully be described as a black way of life in Handsworth, something that represents a significant part of the social history of contemporary Britain.
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Malfoy, Jordan I. "Britain Can Take It: Civil Defense and Chemical Warfare in Great Britain, 1915-1945." FIU Digital Commons, 2018. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3639.
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This dissertation argues that the origins of civil defense are to be found in pre-World War II Britain and that a driving force of this early civil defense scheme was fear of poison gas. Later iterations of civil defense, such as the Cold War system in America, built on already existing regimes that had proven their worth during WWII. This dissertation demonstrates not only that WWII civil defense served as a blueprint for later civil defense schemes, but also that poison gas anxiety served as a particular tool for the implementation and success of civil defense. The dissertation is organized thematically, exploring the role of civilians and volunteers in the civil defense scheme, as well as demonstrating the vital importance of physical manifestations of civil defense, such as gas masks and air raid shelters, in ensuring the success of the scheme.
By the start of World War II, many civilians had already been training in civil defense procedures for several years, learning how to put out fires, recognize bombs, warn against gas, decontaminate buildings, rescue survivors, and perform first aid. The British government had come to the conclusion, long before the threat became realized, that the civilian population was a likely target for air attacks and that measures were required to protect them. World War I (WWI) saw the first aerial attacks targeted specifically at civilians, suggesting a future where such attacks would occur more frequently and deliberately. Poison gas, used in WWI, seemed a particularly horrifying threat that presented significant problems. Civil defense was born out of this need to protect the civil population from attack by bombs or poison gas. For the next five years of war civil defense worked to maintain British morale and to protect civilian lives. This was the first real scheme of civil defense, instituted by the British government specifically for the protection of its civilian population.
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Withall, Caroline Louise. "Shipped out? : pauper apprentices of port towns during the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1870." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:519153d8-336b-4dac-bf37-4d6388002214.
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The thesis challenges popular generalisations about the trades, occupations and locations to which pauper apprentices were consigned, shining the spotlight away from the familiar narrative of factory children, onto the fate of their destitute peers in port towns. A comparative investigation of Liverpool, Bristol and Southampton, it adopts a deliberately broad definition of the term pauper apprenticeship in its multi-sourced approach, using 1710 Poor Law and charity apprenticeship records and previously unexamined New Poor Law and charity correspondence to provide new insight into the chronology, mechanisms and experience of pauper apprenticeship. Not all port children were shipped out. Significantly more children than has hitherto been acknowledged were placed in traditional occupations, the dominant form of apprenticeship for port children. The survival and entrenchment of this type of work is striking, as are the locations in which children were placed; nearly half of those bound to traditional trades remained within the vicinity of the port. The thesis also sheds new light on a largely overlooked aspect of pauper apprenticeship, the binding of boys into the Merchant service. Furthermore, the availability of sea apprenticeships as well as traditional placements caused some children to be shipped in to the ports for apprenticeships. Of those who were still shipped out to the factories, the evidence shows that far from dying out, as previously thought, the practice of batch apprenticeship persisted under the New Poor Law. The most significant finding of the thesis is the survival and endurance of pauper apprenticeship as an institution involving both Poor Law and charity children. Poor children were still being apprenticed late into the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Pauper apprenticeship is shown to have been a robust, resilient and resurgent institution. The evidence from port towns offers significant revision to the existing historiography of pauper apprenticeship.
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Tabet, Marie-Christine. "Household labour supply in Great Britain : can policy-makers rely on neoclassical models?" Thesis, University of Sussex, 2010. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/2358/.
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This thesis empirically examines whether the neoclassical economic model provides an adequate framework to analyse a couple's labour supply behaviour in Britain using recent data from the British Household Panel Survey. The thesis comprises three empirical chapters. The first chapter uses the instrumental variable (IV) estimation procedure to model the hours of work of married couples. This approach allows us to test whether some of the assumptions of the neoclassical model (e.g., income pooling and Slutsky properties) are satisfied by the data. In addition, further variables that have been identified as distribution factors in the literature are introduced to the empirical model to assess whether they play a role in explaining a couple's hours of work. The first chapter only considers couples in which both spouses work. In the second chapter, the sample is amended to include all couples (i.e., those that work and those that do not) and the analysis conducted models a couple's labour market participation decisions rather than their hours of work. After testing for income pooling and the impact of distribution factors, a further variable, the wife's mother-in-law work status when the male spouse was aged 14, is introduced into the model. This is done to determine the effect of 'cultural' variables on labour market decisions. In the last chapter, this issue is explored further by explicitly modelling attitudes to a woman's role in the labour market. This approach uses a bivariate ordered probit model given the ordinal nature of responses to the attitudinal questions and again restricts the analysis to couples only. Finally, gender-role attitudes are introduced to the labour supply framework used in the second chapter in order to evaluate whether beliefs regarding women's role impact on a couple's labour market decisions.
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Zadeh, Sophie. "Thinking on fertile ground : a study of social representations of single mothers by sperm donation in the UK." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.708877.
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Román, Zozaya Carolyn. "Participant ideology : the case of New Labour social policy, 1997-2001." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2007. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d4d4cfe0-2798-498a-9395-0085cbe514a1.
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This thesis examines the relationship of ideology to policy-making on two levels: on the theoretical level, it advances a distinction between philosophical, commentative and participant ideology; on the policy level, it takes as its major case study the reforms initiated by New Labour in the Departments of Social Security, Health and Education and Employment between 1997 and 2001. The thesis pays particular attention to the deployment of morphological analysis as a means to interpret and decode New Labour's policy practices and thereby opens up new areas for research on the role of ideas in politics. It also delineates the conceptual formulae for the core concepts of New Labour's ideology, stressing conceptual interconnections and contributing to interpretative and normative political theory. Using these to frame the analysis, it presents an account of New Labour's conceptual patterns easily accessible to political philosophers. Finally, the thesis counters the dominant modes of analysing ideology in social policy and shows the strong similarities between the morphological conception of ideology and standard forms of institutional and social policy analysis. New Labour is shown to create the following patterns: Individuals have rights to the conditions of freedom as self-development, which generate duties sanctionable by legal and direct socioeconomic penalties on others. Where rights do not apply, individuals have personal responsibilities that are presented as supererogatory expectations. The conditions of freedom are to be distributed equally in a manner consistent with progress and social justice for all members of a community who, relating to each other ultimately on the basis of enlightened self-interest, are interdependent and working together across the spheres of a social conception of civil society, a strongly representative and government-dominated conception of democracy and a capitalist market conceived of as a common good. By so doing, each enjoys the freedom of self-development.
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Brydon, Thomas Robert Craig. "Poor, unskilled and unemployed : perceptions of the English underclass, 1889-1914." Thesis, McGill University, 2001. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=32900.
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From the families of dockside London to the cautious cabinets of the Edwardian 'new liberals,' the search was on, after 1889, for a class of men Charles Booth characterized as so low in moral character as to require elimination from society-at-large. Responding as best they could, the poorest third of England's workers attempted desperately, yet usually failed, to avoid the stigma of the 'loafer' as they weathered economic downturn, increased policing, the fallout of deskilling, and the hatred and hysteria of a society, particularly in the wake of the Boer War, that refused them the status even of 'men'. In laws and literature, England's reforming and governing classes found their answers in Idealism, a philosophical movement taking progressive, moderate and labour leaders under its fold, and encouraging an understanding of poverty, and responses to it, on the basis of character alone. Piecemeal programmes and partial remedies for a host of principally urban, predominantly working-class social problems were the result, and they point---in a period of ostensibly 'progressive' housing and unemployment reform---to a disturbing, quasi-authoritarian policy demanding nothing less than social apartheid.
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Hodges, Sushmita. "Women and education : social feminism and intellectual emancipation in England and America." Virtual Press, 1989. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/720136.
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Social Feminism, as influenced by the Enlightenment, manifested itself between 1780 and 1860. An important aspect of social feminism was intellectual emancipation for women. Such intellectual emancipation came about through the blending of ideas emanating from prominent cultural and social centers in the western world. Women had been absorbing the reformist ideas of the Enlightenment philosophies, incorporating them into their own lines of thinking, and producing a social theory aiming at educational freedom for women. The individual efforts to initiate change in time reached beyond national boundaries through the pioneer social feminists' literary works and word of mouth. It is the intent of this dissertation to examine and analyze the linkage between the concept of social feminism and educational emancipation.The purpose of this research is to establish the significance of education as a major branch of social feminism within the context of the women's movement. To overcome language barriers that prevented research into other countries' women's movements, I have restricted this study to England and America and developed the concept of transatlantic feminism.Between 1780 and 1860 the women's "question" in England and America gained its theoretical foundations. Although there was no organized feminist movement, societies in both countries were being made conscious of the problems stemming from the subordinate status of women. This social awareness resulted from the tracts and discussions of certain male philosophers and of various exceptional females who focused on the question of women's rights and other related issues.The major emphasis during this early stage of the women's "question" was the issue of education as a vehicle for elevating the position of women. The education of available to women at that time was limited in nature. Training caring mothers was what social feminists protested against in their writings and discourses. Yet they understandably differed in their aims and formulas for change. Some spokeswomen, while accepting the societal status quo, promoted education as a means for women to recognize their moral superiority. There were yet others who demanded a "separate but equal" education so that women could exploit their full potential and, in some cases, assert their economic independence. All these social reformers, through their own unique experiences, also set examples for their contemporaries and future generations to follow.Despite some inconsistencies in their approaches to educational reform for women, almost all of the individual feminists discussed in this dissertation felt that intellectual emancipation would pave the way for improved social standing for women.Department of History
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Mustafa, Anisa. "Active citizenship, dissent and power : the cultural politics of young adult British Muslims." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2015. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/30533/.
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We need to stop being afraid and realise that as individuals we have power and that power is the ability to use your own reason and just try and look beyond this. (Saif, 27, male, academic activist) This thesis presents findings from an ESRC-funded doctoral study on the cultural politics of young adult Muslims who participate in political and civic activism within British civil society. Based on ethnographic research in the Midlands area, it offers an empirically informed understanding of how these forms of activism relate to themes of political participation, citizenship, security and governance in Britain today. The thesis argues that the diverse mobilisations examined by the research collectively constitute a social movement to resist the marginalisation and stigmatisation of Muslim identities in a post 9/11 context. The war on terror, in response to the international crisis of militant Islam, has placed Muslim citizenship in many Western liberal democracies under fierce scrutiny, prompting uneasy and hard to resolve questions around issues of security, diversity, cohesion and national identity. In Britain, as in Europe, political and public responses to these questions have precipitated a climate of fear and suspicion around Muslims, rendering their citizenship contingent and precarious and undermining their ability to identify with the nation and participate in its political processes. This thesis reveals how young Muslim activists negotiate these challenges by engaging in a range of activities typical of social movements, not only in terms of distinctive modes of action but also with respect to their transformative social and political visions and imaginaries. Muslim activists engage in cultural politics to demand a more inclusive and post-national notion of citizenship, by seeking to turn negative Muslim differences into positive ones. Participants’ engagement in democratic processes through political repertoires commonly adopted by other progressive social movements challenges the moral panic engendered by the exceptionalism ascribed to Muslim identity politics. This thesis argues that these cultural politics constitute a British Muslim social movement to contest Islamophobia through resistance to two dominant forms of power in contemporary Western societies. Firstly, this movement is a response to the multiple technologies of power articulated by Foucault’s concept of ‘governmentality’, which are difficult to distinguish and confront due to their imperceptible and socially dispersed nature. Secondly, cultural politics is necessitated by direct threats of force that Foucault described as a ‘relationship of violence’ and which are discernible in the rise of the securitisation of citizenship in the wake of 9/11. The nature of resistance from Muslim activists suggests that their cultural politics are not only a strategic but also a less risky political response to both these prevailing forms of power. Foucault’s argument that the nature of power can be deciphered from the forms of resistance it provokes suggests responsive rather than reactive political strategies by young Muslims. The thesis concludes that these cultural politics represent forms of active citizenship premised on a more equal, participatory and radically democratic social contract than nationalist and neoliberal forms of governance presently concede.
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Davies, G. J. "Settlement, economy and lifestyle : the changing social identities of the coastal settlements of West Norfolk, 450-1100 AD." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2011. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/12002/.
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The thesis explores social transformations in the settlement and economy of Anglo-Saxon England, between c.450 and 1100 AD, by using detailed case studies of rural settlement remains within a sub-region, coastal West Norfolk, to construct a systematic narrative of their development. The archaeological evidence for analysis is mainly composed of portable cultural material from rural settlements, combined with surveyed and excavated evidence of their morphology. Multiple and superimposed forms of evidence such as geophysical survey and fieldwalking survey are employed to analyse the diversity of rural settlements and the material expressions of social and economic change in this period and to challenge existing models. The key findings of this thesis are that surface-find sites discovered by metal detectorists, upon detailed investigation, show themselves to be complex rural settlements engaged in trade and exchange. Importantly, these sites also have the capacity to change over time. The findings of this thesis enables a re-characterisation of early medieval rural social identities as complex, dynamic and ever changing. It is argued that the employment of integrated survey methodologies in other sub-regions of Europe might achieve similar results.
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Reid, Robert James Kirkwood. "The rhetoric of Americanisation : social construction and the British computer industry in the Post-World War II period." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2008. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/290/.
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This research seeks to understand the process of technological development in the UK and the specific role of a ‘rhetoric of Americanisation’ in that process. The concept of a ‘rhetoric of Americanisation’ will be developed throughout the thesis through a study into the computer industry in the UK in the post-war period. Specifically, the thesis discusses the threat of America, or how actors in the network of innovation within the British computer industry perceived it as a threat and the effect that this perception had on actors operating in the networks of construction in the British computer industry. However, the reaction to this threat was not a simple one. Rather this story is marked by sectional interests and technopolitical machination attempting to capture this rhetoric of ‘threat’ and ‘falling behind’. In this thesis the concept of ‘threat’ and ‘falling behind’, or more simply the ‘rhetoric of Americanisation’, will be explored in detail and the effect this had on the development of the British computer industry. What form did the process of capture and modification by sectional interests within government and industry take and what impact did this have on the British computer industry? In answering these questions, the thesis will first develop a concept of a British culture of computing which acts as the surface of emergence for various ideologies of innovation within the social networks that made up the computer industry in the UK. In developing this understanding of a culture of computing, the fundamental distinction between the US and UK culture of computing will be explored. This in turn allows us to develop a concept of how Americanisation emerged as rhetorical construct. With the influence of a ‘rhetoric of Americanisation’, the culture of computing in the UK began to change and the process through which government and industry interacted in the development of computing technologies also began to change. In this second half of the thesis a more nuanced and complete view of the nature of innovation in computing in the UK in the sixties will be developed. This will be achieved through an understanding of the networks of interaction between government and industry and how these networks were reconfigured through a ‘rhetoric of Americanisation’. As a result of this, the thesis will arrive at a more complete view of change and development within the British computer industry and how interaction with government influences that change.
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Diaz, Martinez Elisa. "Does social class explain health inequalities? : a study of Great Britain and Spain." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2004. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ca53a88e-0459-47d0-b13a-2525745d0d6a.
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The main research questions examined in this thesis concern the extent to which social class influence individuals' health, and how and whether individuals' occupation, education and lifestyles mediate between class and health. The conclusions drawn from the analysis of these empirical questions cast further light on the widening health inequalities seen in developed societies in recent decades. In particular, this research suggests that, employment conditions as well as educational levels are variables that need to be taken into account when planning policies aimed at tackling differences in health outcomes. Lifestyle variables, on the other hand, would appear to be almost irrelevant when explaining why the members of the more privileged social classes not only live longer than those in other classes, but also enjoy significantly better health over the course of their lives. In trying to understand the association between class and health, I define a theoretical framework that specifies the mechanisms through which class is linked to health. Social structure influences health by distributing certain factors such as material resources or some health-related behaviour that ultimately result in individuals having different living conditions. Educational attainment also affects the way these resources are employed and, therefore, lifestyles. A fundamental element of a social class is occupation: individuals' employment and working conditions also affect their health. Furthermore, the nature of a social structure has an effect on health at the aggregate level of analysis since social policies are partly the result of the structure of class interests. Four mechanisms are specified in order to systematically test this theoretical framework. Mechanisms (2) and (3), those that relate class and health through education and lifestyle lie at the heart of the empirical analysis. This analysis employs individual-level data drawn from health surveys carried out during the first half of the 1990s in the two countries selected for the analysis, United Kingdom and Spain. These countries are treated as contexts in which to test the theoretical explanation. The main results of the analysis reveal the importance of social class in determining health outcomes. Indeed, individuals from different classes enjoy distinct degrees of health. Specifically, individuals in the most privileged class categories have persistently better health than those in the other class categories. Differences exist in terms of both objective and subjective or self-perceived health. Moving on from observation to explanation, the analysis suggests that the distribution of certain resources across classes accounts for some of the variance in health outcomes. Hence, education is identified as a significant variable to comprehend part of the health inequalities in developed societies. Lifestyle, on the other hand, does not appear relevant in accounting for health outcomes. The small differences found between the United Kingdom and Spain in the mechanisms that link class and health suggest that the process through which class affects health is essentially similar in developed societies.
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Karp, Mackenzie. "Ethic Lost: Brutalism and the Regeneration of Social Housing Estates in Great Britain." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/19319.
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Between the late 1940s and the 1970s, the New Brutalism attempted to establish an ethical architecture befitting post-World War II Britain. For this reason, it became a popular style for public buildings, including social housing. Brutalist social housing estates were conceived by progressive post-war architects to house Britain’s neediest. Through an analysis of the utopian roots of Brutalism and the decline of the style and its ethic in scholarship and popular culture, I analyze the current redevelopment of three seminal Brutalist housing estates and the rediscovery of the Brutalist aesthetic by contemporary scholars and consumers alike. In this thesis, I argue that due to multiple factors, including a housing shortage across Britain, rising real-estate values and a general consumer interest in mid-century design, these estates are undergoing such regenerations. My thesis enhances our understanding of how social and political influences have shaped post-war British social housing up to the present.
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Nanabawa, Sumaiya. "A discourse analysis of print media constructions of 'Muslim' people in British newspapers." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006767.
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This research study aimed to examine how the identity of ' Muslim' people is constructed in British print media today, and whether or not these constructions promote or undermine a xeno-racist project. The research draws on the idea that identity is partly constructed through representation, with an emphasis on how language can be used to construct and position people in different ways. Using a social constructionist paradigm, the study further considers the role that print media has in providing a discursive field within which the construction and reproduction of racist attitudes and ideologies in contemporary global society can take place. Sixty-five newspaper articles were selected from the online archives of British newspapers, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph using systematic random sampling. These were analysed using the six stages of Foucauldian discourse analysis outlined by Carla Willig. To provide a more fruitful account, the analysis also incorporated the methods of Potter and Wetherell whose focus is on the function of discourse, as well as van Langenhove and Harre's focus on subject positioning, and Parker's use of Foucauldian analysis which looks at power distributions. The analysis revealed that Muslims are discursively constructed as a direct politicised or terror threat, often drawing on discourses of sharia law, and Muslim-Christian relationships. They are also constructed as a cultural threat, drawing on discourses of isolation, oppressed women, the veil/headscarf, identity, visibility and integration. The analysis also showed some variation in constructions, and these extended from the racialization of Muslims to showing the compatibility between Islamic and western values. This study discusses the form these different constructions take and the possible implications these constructions might have in contributing toward a prejudiced and largely negative image of Islam and Muslims.
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Humphris, Rachel Grace. "New migrants' home encounters : an ethnography of 'Romanian Roma' and the local state in Luton." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:3af69cfa-2cd7-4972-afb2-14d92238d25a.
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This ethnographic study explores how 'Romanian Roma' migrants in the UK, without previous relationships to their place of arrival, negotiate their identity to make place in a diverse urban area. The thesis argues that state forms are (re)produced through embedded social relations. The restructuring of the UK welfare state, coupled with processes of labelling, means that the notion of public and private space is changing. Migrants' encounters with state actors in the home are increasingly important. I lived with three families between January 2013 and March 2014, during a period of shifting labour market regulations and the end of European Union transitional controls in January 2014. Through mapping families' relationships and connections, I identify encounters in the home with state actors regarding children as a defining feature of place-making. The thesis introduces the term 'home encounter' to trace the interplay of discourses and performances between state actors and those they identified as 'Romanian Roma'. Due to the restructuring of UK welfare, various roles assume different 'faces of the state'. These include education officers, health visitors, sub-contracted NGO workers, charismatic pastors and volunteers. The home encounter is presented as a public 'state act' (Bourdieu 2012) where negotiations of values take place in private space determining access to membership and welfare resources. In addition, blurring boundaries between welfare regulations and immigration control mean that these actors' seemingly small decisions have far-reaching consequences. The analysis raises questions of how to understand practices of government in diverse urban areas; the affect of labelling, place and performance on material power inequalities; and processes of discrimination and othering.
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Love, Gillian. "Contextualising abortion : a life narrative study of abortion and social class in neoliberal England." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2018. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/73444/.
Full textAbstract:
This project is a narrative interview study of fifteen women who have had abortions in England since 2008. It aims to answer the questions: 1. How do women in England make meaning about their abortion experiences? 2. What aspects of their identities and life experiences contribute to this meaning-making? 3. In particular, how does class structure this meaning-making? England is in the midst of a long-term political project of austerity and neoliberal governance which has prompted renewed sociological attention to the issue of social class. In this context, discourse on abortion reflects and reproduces societal beliefs about gender, class and reproduction: who should reproduce; who has a legitimate ‘excuse' not to reproduce; and what judgement should be passed on women who choose to end their pregnancies. Through the work of Beverley Skeggs and Michel Foucault, this study examines how women who have had abortions in this context make meaning about their experiences, and how class and gender are constructed in their narratives. This study contributes to literature on the internalisation of neoliberal modes of self-governance in relation to reproduction. It argues that the process of requesting an abortion extends a demand to women to perform precarity in ways that are more possible for some women than others. Abortion narratives are therefore shaped by access to classed ‘discursive resources,' and the women's relationships to responsibility were also shaped by their class positions. Finally, this study contributes to the rich literature on abortion stigma by applying the Foucauldian concepts of biopolitics and governmentality to abortion narratives, arguing that abortion experiences in contemporary England are shaped by the confluence of abortion stigma, the neoliberal injunction to self-regulate, and the societal construction of womanhood as biologically painful. Using Foucault's concept of ‘technologies of the self,' I conclude that through these women's accounts, the specific regulatory practices that produce middle-class womanhood can be better understood. The study therefore explores how wider processes of neoliberal governance might be insinuated, embodied, and resisted by individual women.
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MacRae, Rhoda. "Becoming a clubber : transitions, identities and lifestyles." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/1451.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines how young people identify and affliate with particular club scenes and how these practices and processes relate to their transitions, identities and lifestyles. It aims to give a sense of the processes and the resources that are required to 'become' a clubber over time. The thesis engages with the recent attempts to reconcile the conceptual and empirical divisions between the two main approaches in the sociology of youth. It suggests that the work ofSchutz serves as a heuristic framework to conceptualise data, and when synthesised with other sympathetic conceptual frameworks, links disparate literature to allow for a better understanding of the role of knowledge in the transitions, identities and lifestyles of young people. This focus influenced my choice of method: the ethnographic techniques of participant observation and in-depth interviewing were employed to access participants' experiences and knowledge of becoming a c1ubber. The findings suggest that the process of becoming a clubber is a gendered, dialectical and transformational process: informed by the social heritage and locally situated experiences of clubbing participants. It is a process that manifests itself through embodied practices involving cultural knowledge and taste. Participants place one another on the basis of their participation in and identification with a clubbing lifestyle. These placements appear embedded in the social order: they call not only on old social markers but also on the increasing hierarchies of difference within and across social groups. Social competence, cultural knowledge and consumer activities are all implicated in the placement of others, and the construction of boundaries that clubbing collectives engage in. These are young people who can afford materially and socially to extend both their structural and cultural transitions. The social confidence and adept skills of exchange that 'proper' clubbers develop are resources that help them develop and create social and cultural capital of their own. Becoming a clubber requires competency, skills and dispositions: it is a process that transmits privilege and disadvantage.