Over recent decades there has been significant progress towards gender equality in the workplace and at home. Transformations in work and childcare domains have occurred for families in Western societies, including de-gendered parenting, in which childcare responsibilities are shared equally or assumed primarily by the father. Although these arrangements constitute a recent and rare phenomenon, this increase in proportion has been matched by an academic interest. Using quantitative data from traditional and role-reversed couples, this research aims to explore the social psychological mechanisms underlying non-normative behavioural choices, as well as the consequences for couples' relationship quality, well-being and life satisfaction. Traditional couples are those in which the mother bears primary responsibility for child care while the father is the main breadwinner. In non-traditional role-reversed couples the opposite occurs. A sample of 242 individual parents with children from birth to 12 years old, completed an extensive questionnaire. Involvement in work and childcare, social psychological variables, relationship and life satisfaction, perceptions of their division of responsibilities and socio-demographic characteristics were examined. Results show how social prescriptions and structural characteristics are limiting the intersection between the mother and the father role, and help us understand how both roles can be more similar than different. The findings also disclose how by being involved men are assisting women’s career and help make a distinction between traditional and role reversed women’s views of the appropriate parental role for men and women. Furthermore, the results contribute for a better understanding of how gender ideologies and non-essentialist perceptions differ between couples in different arrangements and how they relate to involvement in childcare and well-being, as well as the role of choice in well-being, life and marital satisfaction.

This thesis contributes to discussion surrounding the importance of reflexivity in social theory and sociology by illustrating some of the paradoxes involved in the development of a reflexive social science. It does this by focusing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, arguably the main advocate of relexive sociology. It is argued that Bourdieu's emphasis on a 'science of practices' limits his ability to be completely relexive because it excludes moral reflexivity. This is ironic, given that Bourdieu believes that reflexivity increases scientificity. The thesis argues that Max Weber's work on religious rationalisation offers an insightful understanding of these paradoxes. His work reveals how and why Modernity witnessed a separation and tension between moral reflexivity and epistemological reflexivity. It also reveals, despite Weber's best efforts to do so, that such a paradoxical tension cannot be overcome. The thesis uses these insights to show the dilemmas and tensions facing any relexive sociology / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This study is positioned within existing debates about the meaning and role of academic literacy, how it shapes and then frames the academic and professional writing practices of business students. It explores relationships between literacy, individual writers and the academy. It goes beyond merely locating these relationships, pointing more to the need to understand how particular student and staff groups within the faculty describe academic writing practices, and in turn act upon these descriptions. Current formulations of academic literacy reflect a heavy emphasis by academic and professional communities on the commodity value of 'literacy skills'. This happens despite the fact that not much is known about the details and current culture of literacy practices in Australian universities, and how these are inflected by different disciplinary areas and cross-cultural factors. Given the divergent applications of literacy that exist across the business professions, there remains a distinct lack of consensus over the meaning of literacy in business higher education communities. Institutional responses reflect this lack of consensus, and are expressed as inflections around a perceived 'crisis' in tertiary literacy standards. Business and professional faculties, while simultaneously embracing the economic and policy imperative underlying mass education, are seen to remain scornful of the service obligation this brings. Implicit in current understandings of academic literacy are the taken for granted connections between basic literacy, reading and writing, schooling, education and employment. These connections underwrite the relations of institutional arrangements, everyday practices, policy construction, and the conditions for student evaluation in the faculty. This study begins from where literacy is located 'bodily', and provides in the first instance a content analysis which explicates and presents student discussions on various ways of thinking about, framing and reframing academic writing. The project then turns to contemporary literacy theory for an explanation of how a community discourse of 'academic literacy' is conceived, produced and in turn reproduced. Contemporary literacy theory has embraced three theoretical frameworks in its move away from a traditional uni-dimensional view of literacy, namely critical social theories, discourse and textual studies, and ethnographic research methodologies (Smith 1988). This trinity of frameworks is used in the second instance to examine a series of interviews with student writers. This data makes visible the means by which institutions value certain literacy practices over others, practices which support the naturalized world of writing required by the faculty and its professional communities. Dominant literacy practices are identified, and interpretive procedures from the field of Ethnomethodology are used to account for the ways in which discourses on academic writing both reflect and produce social and community realities. Theories of discourse are used to examine the social construction of student writing practices within this local faculty community by identifying the attributes and assumptions that are attached to different community members to account for aspects of writing practice. The key to understanding academic literacy practices is found in explication of the social processes and practices that organise the 'everyday' world of the business faculty. This project discloses how the subjective world of academic literacy is organised, and how this form of organisation is articulated 'to the social relations of the larger social and economic process' (Smith 1988:152). In the strict context of this study, this means being able to disclose for certain groups of student writers, how their situations and literacy practices are organised and determined by social processes outside the scope of their 'everyday' world. This process of discovery requires the researched to actively construct 'local' referents as categories and concepts which, when applied to a faculty context, can form an observable, local practice as a dialectic 'between what members do in tending the categories and concepts of (an) institutional ideology' on academic writing (Smith 1988:161). The interpretive practices students use to analyse literacy practices bring academic literacy into being. The outcomes of the study show that the relationships between literacy, the individual and the academy are currently explained and understood in terms of the connections that can be made between existing professional and academic community discourses. Here the concept of a 'literacy crisis' resides. It is expressed through informant talk as a perceived fall in academic literacy standards. Informant debate on what has caused this decline is generally expressed through two key positions. One of these holds a rhetorical view of literacy as a somewhat natural and procedural outcome of the higher educational process, positioning literacy within an oppositional framework of deficit cultural and linguistic models. A second view evokes a competitive agenda of limited and limiting academic and professional opportunities. Behind these arguments and their rebuttals, lie assumptions about the 'literate' person as a member of the faculty. In arguing that research into the field of academic literacy has concealed a student sub-text, this study argues that literacy has been constructed, implemented and investigated from the perspective of the institution. It follows that academic literacy can be better understood as a socially constructed and signifying space, one which includes opportunities for students to create their own powerful identities as writers and as members of professional and faculty communities. This project bridges many aspects of student experience, with the major focus upon that which has been excluded by the absence of students from the making of the topics and the relevance of the discourse. For this compelling reason, this project has direct relevance to teachers, researchers, fieldworkers and policy-makers involved in the overlapping fields of literacy and higher education.

Pre-literate children experience written text as a meaningless material object, the word-object, but the compulsory and institutional aspects of reading pedagogy make this an experience from which they cannot escape. Some children begin to associate their own negative experiental sense with the word-object before they are able to learn to read. As reading pedagogy continues, these children begin to read back experiental sense which prevents them from converting the word-object to meaningful text. Experiental sense is repressed because it is psychically painful. It retains qualities of phenomena repressed from childhood: it is active and intractable to reason. The result is an intractable illiteracy which may be interpreted as biologically based �dyslexia.� Further attempts at reading pedagogy in childhood and adulthood generally result in reproduction of the inability because this pedagogy requires learners to attempt to read linguistically which elicits experiental sense. As these children become adults, their avoidance of reading sometimes structures their social relations to accommodate and compound their problems. The method to overcome the problem replaces experiental sense with positive feelings about written language. The power of language to denote emotions of pleasure and affirmation from learners� lives is used. These emotions are enhanced through a technique of affirmative intersubjectivity. Short spoken affirmative texts are made by learners, tape recorded and reproduced as written texts by the literacy worker. Through allowing learners control and autonomy over their spoken and written texts, the positive emotions in them are associated by learners with the written texts. Exercises on the affirmative written texts are used to demonstrate regularities about written language. Learners then progress to reading suitable independent texts and other activities. There are suggestions about how to enhance learners� feelings as competent readers and writers. The thesis uses a methodology of action research and includes five case studies of adults with literacy problems. Concepts from social theory, psychoanalysis and object relations theory are used and adapted to understand written language, schooling and illiteracy.

The integration of technology into classrooms, the education of gifted learners, and the challenge this presents to classroom relationships as a result of engaging with computer technology are significant issues for teachers in this decade. The evolving paradigm of technology use, the deep learning of computer skills that students will require for future employment and how this can be incorporated into appropriate pedagogies for gifted learners also poses challenges for teachers. This thesis reports on a unique mentoring program that was developed to utilise desktop videoconferencing (DVC) technology and designed to specifically address these challenges. The study was undertaken in a large independent school (K-12) in New South Wales, Australia and involved six students and six teachers, none of whom had any previous experience of DVC or mentoring. The aim of the study was to investigate learning outcomes for teachers and gifted students. This study employed DVC as a didactic strategy over a 10-week period. The mentoring sessions of the cohorts and their post-mentoring interviews were evaluated using grounded theory methods of data gathering and analysis over a 2-year period. The findings demonstrated that the nature of learning during DVC could be constructed as an emergent theory, based on the teaching philosophies of the teachers and their goals for their students. Technical support, relational mentors and motivational tasks created supportive environments for DVC. Perseverance, enthusiasm and resilience enhanced the uniqueness of mentoring program. Several recommendations are also posited for further research.

This paper offers a new theoretical framework for studying the problem of generations and social change in contemporary Iran. It offers a model which is called „articulation of cultural modes“. The paper agrees with Ronald Inglehart that ‘culture’ is now playing a more dominant role in the social formation of current societies, as ‘technology’ once did in the modern era. But it goes one step further by arguing that culture cannot be approached as a holistic concept building on a comprehensive theoretical framework.

Despite widespread health promotion and nutrition education efforts, gaps between official healthy eating messages and people’s actual eating practices persist. There is increasing recognition that emphasizing individual responsibility for eating may have limited applicability in improving people’s health. Many experts advocate that future research on healthy eating should involve exploration of how food practices are shaped by social structures (or determinants) and individual agency. The purpose of this study was to explore the ways in which people engage with food structures to construct everyday notions of healthy eating. ‘Food structures’ draws on the concept of ‘structure,’ described by the social theorist Anthony Giddens, to refer to the range of food rules and resources people draw on. The research was conducted as part of a qualitative study on family food decision-making that included 144 participants from 13 African Nova Scotian, 10 European Nova Scotian, 12 Punjabi British Columbian and 11 European British Columbian families. These groups were chosen for their potential differences in perspectives based on place, ethnocultural background and histories of immigration to Canada. Data collection consisted of individual interviews with three or more family members aged 13 and older, and, with each family, observation of a grocery shopping trip and a family meal. Analysis followed common qualitative procedures including coding, memoing and thematic analysis. Together, the analyses support views that the gaps between official healthy eating messages and people’s eating practices may not be closed by further education about how to eat. Drawing on the theoretical concepts of Anthony Giddens and Michael Foucault, the findings suggest that one way to understand why people eat the way they do and how changes in eating habits occur is to think about the constant exposure to change through everyday, taken-for-granted practices. The findings also suggest that further healthy eating discourses may require more reflection with respect to the roles of nutrition educators and the social roles/autonomy of people in goals for health and well-being. Dietary goals for the population cannot be considered as isolated scientific objectives without taking into consideration how healthy eating discourses provide social standards beyond messages about healthy eating.

The distribution question of the land is a distribution question of the social wealth at the same time,but because will produce the antithesis of the position to assign naturally, so a successful land reform is to need accepting by society and cooperating. Republic of Taiwan in 38 years onwards to promote land reform,by most scholars, is praised as a model of successful reform.The achievement is considered to be effective at easing or solving the land problem, and because of narrowing the wealth gap, reduce the contradiction of the society,thus stable at the time of Taiwan society,later, more to promote economic development miracle. Taiwan's land reform as a starting point,enhance the tenant farmer economic, social status,improving rural life,adequate stable social environment, in fact, the social level, is also a successful social reforms. Lorenz von Stein, is a national scholar, is also a pioneer in sociology, administrative science and history scholars,jurists, Its academic contribution to the integration of the four areas of the national science, economic theory, social theory, administrative theory and financial theory,advocated the philosophy of man and state the purpose of considering and development, countries with independent ability to promote "national organism," said,the individual must be set free only in groups,the purpose of groups in the protection of individual freedom,the problem for society, social order and social change, and other social issues and more insights. This article by Lorenz von Stein social theory perspective,to observe Taiwan's land reform process,and bring about social reform its evolution, and to explore the social changes in, the interaction between state and society, And the idea of control Society, it is not the social inequality, But society does not flow,and countries in social class inequalities caused by the flow of the class should not play a role.So that the task of the State to break the social classes in the defense and on special interests dominated,and integration of the interests of all social classes, to avoid special interests above the national class of cases. Therefore, Taiwan's current social problems,state if the integration by the interests of all social classes, uphold the principle of priority of public interest, although the social problems will continue to occur,but society still more to upgrade because of reform.

Upon identifying the multifaceted and disparate array of ever-changing environmental informants to architectural discourse, one is confronted with how to unite this dialogue in meaningful ways to current modes of thought and action. The question gains more significance as our knowledge of the greater environmental domain becomes more systemic and complexly heterogenic, while at the same time, approaches to the issues have proved to be progressively more reductivist, disconnected, overtly abstracted or theorized, and universally globalized in regard to multifaceted and content-rich human particularities in situ. This research focuses on the implications and applications of Critical Environmentalism (CE) to propose a corresponding epistemological framework to wide-ranging socio-environmental complexities occurring across architectural endeavors, primarily within urban and community developments as comprising the greatest number of intersections between human constructions and the greater environmental domain. CE addresses environmental issues reciprocally emerging across numerous disciplines and theoretical stances and fosters critical and systemically collective approaches to knowledge integration, amalgamating multiple stakeholder perspectives within an interconnective and operational goal of creative communal development and betterment of the human condition in relation to environmental concerns. Situating the environment (Umwelt) as an interconnecting catalyst between divergent points-of-views, CE promotes a multi-methodological, co-enabling framework intended to foster increased ethical and participatory dynamics, communal vitality, co-invested attention, and productive interchanges of knowledge that cultivate an overall quality of knowing and being within the intricacies of the greater domain. As such, it engages broader definitions for architecture within its social community, significantly embodied and epistemologically co-substantiating within a shared, environmental life-place. Fundamentally a hermeneutic standpoint, this investigation elucidates conceptual connections and mutual grounds, objectives, and modes-of-operation across knowledge domains, initiating an essential, socio-environmentally oriented framework for architectural endeavors. In this, it brings together common threads within critical social theory and environmentalist discourse to subsequently promote distinct interconnective components within a framework of socio-environmental thought for architecture. The research then provides case examples and recommendations toward stimulating progressive environmental initiatives and thus increased capacity to improve existing epistemic conditions for architecture, urban design, and community development within the broader scope of Critical Environmentalism.

The purpose of this thesis is to offer an exposition of Anthony Giddens¡¦ thoughts on modernity. The terms ¡¥modern¡¦ and ¡¥modernity¡¦ are probably among the most frequently used yet rarely discussed with regards to meaning and connotation. In contemporary social theories, the term modernity is frequently taken as either obsolete or true by definition. In this thesis, I try to interpret Giddens¡¦ ideas on modernity to offer a better purchase on current ideas within the field. In the first chapter, I explain why I think the research on modernity is critical to contemporary social science. Moreover, to explicate Giddens¡¦ thinking, I also discuss Giddens¡¦ academic life and the contemporary academic study in Taiwan of Giddens¡¦ writings. In the second chapter, I briefly describe Giddens¡¦ most widely discussed theory, the Structuration theory, for I think it is the theoretical basis of the thoughts on modernity. I also refer to two important contemporary thinkers¡¦ to trace Giddens¡¦ theoretical background, namely Roy Bhaskar and Jürgen Habermas. In following two chapters, I detail Giddens¡¦ theory of modernity, focusing on its fundamental characteristics, consequences and implications for the study of an increasingly globalized world. In the fifth chapter, I review the criticisms on Giddens¡¦ theory of modernity and try to defend some of those criticisms. In the conclusion chapter, I briefly go through the major points of this thesis and assess Giddens¡¦ insights to the study of modernity.