The state's retreat from its traditional post-1952 role of providing trajectories for the reproduction of social status and distinction created new formative social processes of political agency for the Egyptian upper middle class. The de facto handover of such processes to mechanisms of the neoliberal market since the early-1990s has changed the modes of conditioning the relationship between the upper middle class and the Egyptian state. As a result, the social contract sustaining the upper middle class' traditional consent to the Egyptian state's successive political orders suffered serious erosion. In this context, the political discontent of the Egyptian upper middle class steadily grew beneath a thick layer of apathy towards farcical formal politics under Mubarak. In 2011, the active participation of the upper middle class in the Egyptian revolution represented the debut onto the political stage of a social segment previously thought to be at the heart of crafting renewed legitimacy for authoritarian rule. The study uses gathered narratives of upper-middle-class Egyptians to demonstrate the dynamics of the upper middle class' negotiation of status preservation and privilege reproduction in the neoliberal environment. By contextualising these narratives within structural transformations in the areas of education, employment and lifestyles, the study analyses the development of new upper-middle-class modes of socio-political critique of the state based on the social experience. Furthermore, the study examines the effect of class-typical encounters with the state in the social space as a medium for sharpening critical appraisals of the latter's role, informed by a neoliberal ethos acquired during the various stages of the process of status reproduction. These discursive inferences about the nature of the state as a political composition accumulatively informed the development of an appetite for political change, and will arguably continue to shape the patterns of future politicisation of Egypt's upper middle class.

Grand strategy is an amorphous concept, more often employed casually than rigorously defined. Its many definitions are frequently at odds with one another, sometimes being actually mutually exclusive. Grand strategy as a collection of contradictory concepts thereby, when used in learned debate, produces greater heat than light. Further, understanding within the academic disciplines of strategic I studies and international relations of the history of grand strategic thought is largely incomplete and actually mythologized. This mythology is premised upon one, or sometimes two, iconic theorists of grand strategy, ignoring the rest of the historical development of grand strategic thought. This historical work aims to illuminate the full evolution of grand strategic thought in the English language. It mixes semiological/semantic and onomasiological/thematic modes of inquiry to underscore not only how the term itself evolved in a myriad of different ways as geopolitical and geostrategic contexts changed, but also the effects of other ideas within strategic studies upon the shaping of grand strategic thought. Semantically, it traces the evolution and creation of ideas of grand strategy from the term's introduction into the English language in 1805 to the present day. Thematically, it examines how other concerns impacted the development of new concepts of grand strategy by invading grand strategy's conceptual space or by changing the strategic theoretic landscape within which those new concepts of grand strategy were conceived. Thus maritime strategy propelled grand strategy to embrace non-military instruments, and nuclear strategy elevated it into the realms of statecraft or policy. Grand strategy has always been sensitive to its context. Grand strategy as a concept has continually expanded. The thesis concludes by reflecting theoretically upon what the history of grand strategic thought may tell scholars, including ruminations concerning whether grand strategy is even a term worth retaining in the strategic lexicon.

This thesis will argue that environmental rights are not new, that they are not the response of the modern world to unique contemporary problems. Contributing to two areas of scholarship within environmental political theory, that of re-examining the political canon and developing the concept of environmental rights, it will show that there is a tradition of engagement with the concept of rights to natural resources within past political theory. This argument will be proved through an examination of past political texts, drawn from thinkers as varied as the republican theorists Niccolò Machiavelli and James Harrington, the natural rights thinkers Hugo Grotius and John Locke, the eighteenth-century radicals and the leading theorists of the nineteenth century, Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill. As a result of this analysis, it will be clear that previous political thinkers were aware of the problems inherent in securing the rights of all to finite resources. Through their work on rights, and specifically environmental rights, labour and property, they engaged with the contradictions at the heart of this concept. Yet the value of the previous work on environmental rights does not rest only on their awareness of these tensions but in their responses. These thinkers reimagined and reconceptualised environmental rights as limits to property; as justification for reclaiming and redistributing resources; as entitlements to ‘as good’ equivalents and as necessitating the exclusion of some from natural resources. This examination of awareness of these inherent tensions and the creative solutions offered in response shows the depth and variety of the past conceptions of environmental rights. The historically informed understanding of environmental rights that results is one which endeavours to balance the claims, equality and freedom of all in the face of finite resources, offering both a source of inspiration and variety of options for contemporary environmentalists.

History education has been seen a tool to transmit a socially accepted historical narrative and related characteristics of national identity across generations, often with the goal to cohesively prepare and integrate citizens into society. By utilizing a relatively privileged sample that simultaneously exists both within and outside of national and international contexts, this research contributes to the existing academic literature by providing qualitative evidence that promotes the questioning of the notion of the simple transmission of values through history education. With evidence drawn from student interviews from an international school in northern Germany as part of a micro-case study design, this thesis shows that students retain and exercise considerable agency in encounters with history and the subsequent processes of interpreting and making sense of those encounters. Students exercise significant agency through the utilization of temporal elements as tools through which they construct and deploy revised historical accounts that are relevant to their personal identities and worldviews. Additionally, social factors significantly influence the form, content and understanding of encounters with history. As such, history education is influenced by salient elements of both students’ achieved and ascribed identities in a complex and dynamic manner where students actively formulate their identities and understandings of history. Through characteristics specific to the international school, such as dedicated space for discussion and the perception of an inclusive and supportive community, students further the development and exploration of achieved identity and agency with the result of a stronger sense of self and an expanded worldview. Although the research upholds some elements of the existing debate, this research highlights that student encounters with history are more wide-ranging and complex than previously acknowledged. The level of agency that students retain in fashioning their identity in relation to and through encounters with history is significantly more considerable than previously thought.

This study analyzes US foreign policy towards the GCC states during the two terms of the G. W. Bush administration in the period 2001-2008. It concentrates on describing and analyzing US interactions with Arabia; a region of central geo-political importance as it possesses bountiful proven oil reserves, upon which American and western prosperity depends. Furthermore, it provides a detailed account of US interests and strategic objectives in the Gulf region. Of particular interest to this study is exploring what associations can be made between the US's strategic relations with its GCC allies and the objectives of US grand strategy. This synthesis of analysis is appropriate to demarcate a proper framework that will enhance understanding of US-Gulf policy. US relations with the six GCC member states (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain) have been entrenched over a course of more than six decades and have evolved on solid foundations based on oil and security. Simultaneously, the US's relations with its Arab Gulf partners have experienced turning points and tumultuous periods in the aftermath of the trauma of September 11, due to which US relations with Saudi Arabia, in particular, were put under a tremendous strain. As a result, many scholars saw a remarkable change in US-Gulf policy. Conversely, this study argues that the Bush administration policy towards America's longtime allies in the Gulf region has been one of continuity as opposed to change and has not departed dramatically from the conventional policy. Interestingly, US economic and geo-political interests in the Gulf region have created a deep relationship between the US and its Gulf ‘friends’. Therefore, Gulf security has preoccupied American strategic thinking and preserving Arabia remains the core objective of US security engagement with the region. This security relationship is at the core of long term US-GCC relations and was never going to be affected by post-9/11 neoconservative ideologies.

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