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This thesis examines questions of identity among multiethnic( or "mixed race") women through a qualitative analysis of twenty-four open-ended interviews conducted in Toronto, Canada. It is primarily concerned with exploring how multiethnic women contest challenge and negotiate their identities in relation to socially constructed racialized categories. The thesis demonstrates how the multiethnic woman has been positioned as "out of place" in a historical and social context. Through the empirical analysis, it examines how women of multiethnicity in this study mobilize both their gendered and racialized selves in powerful ways. The cartographies of belonging among multiethnic women in this study are documented, with an emphasis upon the ways they forge alliances with others. The thesis proposes alternative readings of the multiethnic experience outside of oppressive representations. Engaging with vocabularies in cultural and feminist geography, the thesis explores the potential of conceiving of the multiethnic individual in a way that spills over the analytical categories of race and gender. In conclusion, it suggests future avenues in feminist geography by calling for a profound rethinking of those categories of identity which currently frame our analyses.

The thesis examines influential groups' perceptions of social problems in Estonia, Russia and Finland. The context of the study is the ongoing "Eastern transition" in Estonia and Russia and the "Western transformation" in Finland. Each is changing the accustomed ways to define and treat social problems. The focus is on comparing definitions of social problems, including the causes and solutions suggested by the influential groups. The main assumption is that the framework of defining social problems is changing in all three countries: the state's role as the body responsible for people's welfare is diminishing, while more emphasis is being placed on the role of individuals, the market and civil society. Theoretically, the approach is close to social constructionism, according to which social problems are products of collective definition processes. Furthermore, I assume that the influential groups, formed of journalists, administrators and business people, have the power and the possibility to influence the course of social change. The data consists of focus group interviews conducted in Tallinn, St. Petersburg and Helsinki in 1995-1996. The thesis suggests that, for all three countries, the determining factor behind the definitions of social problems is the heavy social costs of the transition and transformation. According to the interviewees, Estonia and Russia are now afflicted with vicious circles of social problems, centered around the problems of crime, poverty, housing, poor health and environmental pollution. In Finland, unemployment and poverty were regarded as the most serious social problems. Mainly due to the severe social problems, the interviewees were not willing to transfer the responsibility for people's welfare from the state to the market or civil society. The changes in the framework of defining social problems thus turned out to be much less dramatic than expected. Altogether, the results indicate that the welfare systems created during the post-war era are now being partly dismantled in all three countries. However, in the opinion of the influential groups, there is no overall disillusionment with big state solutions to social problems.

The purpose of this thesis is to develop a new perspective for the classification of sectarian forms of organisation and the study of their dynamics . It is not intended as a definitive study of any particular group s or of the British far-left as a whole . Existing typologies of sectarianism in the sociology of religion are subjected to a critique on two grounds: 1) They often have a theological characters based on the content of the belief systems of sects rather than on the social structure . 2) Their roots lie in an 'essentialist' tradition of static hierarchical classifications of dynamic phenomena . One of the reasons for studying political groups in this context is that they have not been subjected to these classificatory assumptions, and can be approached more objectively in the development of new perspectives . The argument proceeds to the exposition of grid and group, both as a 'polythetic' system of classification and as one based on a matrix rather than a hierarchy . This provides us with a potentially dynamic classificatory approach . In order to test and advance the model two themes are selected for special attention in terms of grid and groups from an historical review of the far-left since the second world war. These are the schismatic character of the groups and their tendency toward . utopianism which are examined in selected groups over the decade that followed their watershed of 1968 . Utopianism is discussed in the framework of the relationship posited by grid and group , between spatial and temporal aspects of the cosmology and the social structure . It is argued that this approach is more informative than traditional general notions of relative deprivation . Splits and alliances are examined in terms of the organisational dynamics and mode of exercise of power in sectarian forms; and conclusions are drawn about the patterns of relative stability which emerge as groups are distributed across the grid/group matrix . Finally the distribution of power within the selected groups is compared with the perceptions of the members of how power is exercised.

The thesis examines and evaluates the effects of socialist transformation in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia on the position of women. The changes which had taken place are examined historically, i.e. from 1917 for the Soviet Union and from 1945 for Czechoslovakia, to the present time. The main explanatory variables are the spheres of economics (productivity and the need for women's labour); ideology (Marxist commitment to women's emancipation); politics (upbringing of children in line with the objectives of the Communist Party and the need for political support of women as a social group); socialist feminism (its auxilliary character within the over-all working class movement and the implication of this for the role of women and the Party strategy towards women) and demography (the need to enhance the population growth). The ways in which these spheres mutually correspond to or conflict with each other, as well as a specific Party objective at a particular time, is seen as explaining much of the making of the socialist policy towards women and the family. This policy is then contrasted with the objective daily reality of Soviet and Czech women. The role of women is explained in terms of mutual reinforcement of the private sphere of the family and the reproduction of labour power; the social sphere of production, and the pre-industrial sexual division of labour. It is argued that these forces form the 'root' causes of persisting women's inequality within the family and in society at large.

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No description available.