Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-164). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

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published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

This study addresses the absence of scientific knowledge of leadership behaviour among gays in the management echelon of the South African Department of Defence and provides some tangible knowledge in this regard. This valuable knowledge was obtained through an in-depth qualitative research design, namely a life story of one South African citizen, who is gay, male and white, and who held a senior management position in the Department of Defence (DOD) for a number of years. Themes and hypotheses from both the existing literature on homosexual behaviour and leadership generally, and on gay people employed as leaders by the military particularly, were compared with the rich, everyday experiences of this particular gay person on his leadership tasks in the local military world. This study provides insight into homophobia, and particularly into how it was managed by an authentic gay. The study also makes a modest contribution to the methodology of case studies and particularly the applicability of life stories in the organizational and leadership fields. Finally, I believe the study provides knowledge on homosexuality and leadership and the relation between these in the South African Department of Defence, and, in this way could offer valuable information in assisting with “examining” its Draft Policy on Non Discrimination on the Grounds of Sexual Orientation. I am of the opinion that the insight into an authentic gay officer’s life provided by the method, could inform policy impacting on leaders, and particularly on gay officers, of the DOD. / Prof. W. J. Schurink

Australia had the world’s first gay film festival at the Sydney Filmmakers Co-op in June 1976, part of a larger commemoration of the Stonewall Riots in New York City of 1969. In 1994, South Africa became the first country in the world to prohibit discrimination in its constitution on the basis of sexual orientation, whilst allowing for positive discrimination to benefit persons disadvantaged by unfair discrimination. South Africa and Australia, both ex-British colonies, are used in this analysis to explore the way local Queer Cinematic Cultures have negotiated and continue to negotiate dominant social forces in post-colonial settings. It is rare to have analyses of Queer Cinematic Cultures and even rarer to have texts dealing with cultures outside those of Euro-America. This study offers a unique window into the formations of Queer Cinematic Cultures of two nations of the ‘South’. It reveals important new information on how sexual minorities from nations outside the Euro-American sphere have dealt with and continue to deal with longstanding Queer cinematic oppressions. A pro-active relationship between Queer representation in film and social-political action is considered by academics such as Dennis Altman to be essential for significant social and judicial change. The existence of Queer and other independent films in Sydney from the 1960s onward, impacted directly on sexuality, race and gender activism. In South Africa, the first major Queer film festival, The Out In Africa Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in 1994, was instrumental in developing and maintaining a post-Apartheid Queer public sphere which fostered further legal change. Given the significant histories of activism through Queer Cinematic Cultures in both Australia and South Africa, I propose in this thesis the existence of a new genus of cinema, which I term Fifth Cinema. Fifth Cinema includes Feminist Cinema, Queer Cinema and Immigrant/Multicultural Cinema and deals with the oppressions which cultures engage with within their own cultural boundaries. It can be informed by First Cinema (classical, Hollywood), Second Cinema (Art House or dual national cinemas), Third and Fourth Cinema (cinemas dealing with the decolonisation of Third World and Fourth World people), but it develops its unique characteristics by countering internal cultural colonisation. Fifth Cinema functions as a heterognosis, where multi-dimensional representations around sexuality, race and gender are used to assist in broader cultural liberation.

The gay sauna played a central role in the battle for gay liberation in Sydney during the latter part of the twentieth century. This thesis examines the conjunction of social and political forces which contributed to the acceptance of the gay sauna by Sydney???s civic society. Two questions reveal this process: 1. How was an illegal and clandestine place for homosexuals, perceived as a threat to the moral standards of Sydney, transformed into an institutional entity, legally recognised as ???crucial???, and important within particular environs of this city? 2. How did the evolving public domain of gay saunas contribute to the development of gay culture in Sydney by fostering the opportunities for individual and collective expression of homosexual practices? This study is contextualised within international and Australian studies of the sexualisation of urban spaces???such as Michel Foucault???s, Manuel Castells??? and Lawrence Knopp???s???and the role of the built environment in the development of sexual identity and sexual practices???such as Gayle Rubin???s, John Ricco???s, and Joel Brodsky???s. The first part of the thesis is an empirical analysis of development applications for gay saunas in Sydney between 1967 and 2000 which reveals the play of forces within state and local government, legislative processes, the homosexual community and broader civic stakeholders through which the gay sauna achieved acceptance in Sydney???s civic society. Two principal research approaches???documentary research and twenty in-depth interviews???were used in this first part. The second part of the thesis is an ethnography that uses twenty-nine in-depth interviews to provided a unique insight into the evolving public domain of Sydney???s gay saunas and how they fostered the experiences of gay men, allowing gay men to develop individual and collective sexual identities and practices. This exploration of the interplay of built form, sexuality, civic governance, social identity and social action provide a sociological contribution which will also be of interest to gay studies, anthropology, architecture, geography and planning. Essential to an experience of the thesis is a concurrent reading of the Special Enclosures???a schematic chronology of Sydney gay saunas, plans of Sydney and architectural plans of its saunas.

Prior research focused upon the intersection of race, ethnicity, citizenship and identity produced as a result of the Census Schedule. In this dissertation, I focus on the Census, as an instrument of the state, to capture the process of inclusion and exclusion as it relates specifically to the intersection of sexualities and family formation. Using Sewell’s (1992) concept of dual structures, that is, cultural schemas and resources, I argue that sexuality is structural. Using mixed-methodology and three different data sources, I produce five different indices to determine settlement patterns of same-sex households in various geographic areas. Secondly, drawing on variables operationalized as cultural schema and resources, I identify characteristics of metropolitan areas that have arguably been related to levels of gay and lesbian concentration. In the multivariate context, the variables that are most influential in predicting levels of gay and lesbian concentration are physical temperature index, poverty rate, and heterosexual cohabitation rate. Variables focusing on characteristics of the metropolitan areas of relevance mainly to gays and lesbians such as those dealing with sodomy laws and anti-discrimination laws pertaining to sexual orientation, as well as the presence of political and religious conservatism are either not statistically important predictors or exhibited minimal influences. Through the Internet survey and thirty interviews, I examine how gay and lesbian couples answered the Census Schedule. The highest percentage of individuals marked single on the Census Schedule, suggesting that partnered homosexuals are being underenumerated by the Census Bureau. Furthermore, in regards to the Census and the state, two underlying ideas influence individuals’ enactments of agency: legal consciousness and statistical consciousness. Legal consciousness refers to people’s lay understandings of the law, while statistical consciousness refers to everyday knowledge of statistics. In both cases the production of legal interpretation and statistics by authoritative sources is then variously understood, consumed, and employed by ordinary citizens for their distinct purposes. This understanding takes on forms of generally unquestioned folk knowledge, despite being socially constructed in specific historical-cultural contexts. The production and consumption of statistics serve as a pivotal point of contestation of power and resistance, especially for these interviewees.

Prior research focused upon the intersection of race, ethnicity, citizenship and identity produced as a result of the Census Schedule. In this dissertation, I focus on the Census, as an instrument of the state, to capture the process of inclusion and exclusion as it relates specifically to the intersection of sexualities and family formation. Using Sewell’s (1992) concept of dual structures, that is, cultural schemas and resources, I argue that sexuality is structural. Using mixed-methodology and three different data sources, I produce five different indices to determine settlement patterns of same-sex households in various geographic areas. Secondly, drawing on variables operationalized as cultural schema and resources, I identify characteristics of metropolitan areas that have arguably been related to levels of gay and lesbian concentration. In the multivariate context, the variables that are most influential in predicting levels of gay and lesbian concentration are physical temperature index, poverty rate, and heterosexual cohabitation rate. Variables focusing on characteristics of the metropolitan areas of relevance mainly to gays and lesbians such as those dealing with sodomy laws and anti-discrimination laws pertaining to sexual orientation, as well as the presence of political and religious conservatism are either not statistically important predictors or exhibited minimal influences. Through the Internet survey and thirty interviews, I examine how gay and lesbian couples answered the Census Schedule. The highest percentage of individuals marked single on the Census Schedule, suggesting that partnered homosexuals are being underenumerated by the Census Bureau. Furthermore, in regards to the Census and the state, two underlying ideas influence individuals’ enactments of agency: legal consciousness and statistical consciousness. Legal consciousness refers to people’s lay understandings of the law, while statistical consciousness refers to everyday knowledge of statistics. In both cases the production of legal interpretation and statistics by authoritative sources is then variously understood, consumed, and employed by ordinary citizens for their distinct purposes. This understanding takes on forms of generally unquestioned folk knowledge, despite being socially constructed in specific historical-cultural contexts. The production and consumption of statistics serve as a pivotal point of contestation of power and resistance, especially for these interviewees.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Covenant Theological Seminary, 2000. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-138).

This thesis describes and explores the development of forms of cultural participation, using photography and digital imaging, with young people in informal contexts. The process has been one of action research, within which groups of young people have developed distinct forms of cultural participation with the researcher over a sustained period. Workshops have been conducted over a three year period with young people in the indoor markets at Birmingham's Bull Ring and with a group of young people based at a lesbian, gay and bisexual youth group. The later group directed the construction of, and made images for, a web site entitled Young, Queer and Safe? This work, along with pilot studies, has informed the development of the research and the focus of this thesis. As such this thesis seeks to represent the experiences of young people who have been overlooked in previous research in the field. Previous research in this field has focussed on the experiences of young people with privileged access to digital technology at home or through formal education. Such research has informed the prevalent vision of young people as engaged with, and by, new media and posits the idea that all young people are competent users of digital technology. This ignores the experiences of many young people. This thesis is not a critique of the ideology which clusters around young people, digital technology and education, but an attempt to undercut it through research with young people who have not necessarily had such access as would enable them to identify skills in digital technology informally. This research has shown that: 1 Young people's priorities in cultural participation should not be assumed. 2 Young people's different agendas are significant, and can be made explicit in spaces where traditional social, age, and cultural hierarchies are less pervasive. 3 The representation of different agendas through cultural production is significant to wider cultural understandings of young people's diverse contemporary experiences. 4 Different ways of making, as well as differences in focus for production, are significant to the pursuit of democratic cultural practice. 5 When outcomes are diverse and transient, as has been the case within this research, traditional forms of classification collapse, problematising the way we consider those outcomes. The research has developed an inclusive pedagogic practice which is significant to formal education, community arts practice, and, contemporary research methodologies.