Since Aristotle, we have categorized characters in terms of relative quantity and proportion. From Henry James's "center of consciousness," to E. M. Forster's theory of "round" and "flat," to Deidre Lynch's "pragmatics of character," to Alex Woloch's influential "one versus many," scaled distinctions between "major" and "minor" characters have remained unchallenged since the Poetics. Yet such classifications don't capture the ways characters claim amounts of interest and consequence that are disproportionate to their textual presence. My book counters these approaches to character by calling attention to how novels concisely render the rich interior fullness of even very minor figures. While literary critics associate representations of consciousness with major characters, I demonstrate that, through the application of narrative techniques such as first-person narration and focalization, the limited amounts of text allotted to minor characters can yield brief flashes of depth. These depictions of consciousness may lack the "exhaustive presentation" that Ian Watt claims is inherent to the novel, but they are nonetheless brimming with the personality and specificity critics typically associate with central characters. Indeed, many canonical novels, especially those of literary realism's highpoint in nineteenth-century Britain, resist the character hierarchy implied by distinctions such as major and minor. In addition to manifest examples such as Wilkie Collins's "experiment" with many narrators in The Woman in White (1859), we can count instances in which the centrality of a major character is disrupted or challenged. From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), where the title character's initial prominence is undermined by his creature's arresting autobiography, to George Eliot's Daniel Deronda (1876), in which readerly affections are split between a Jewish hero, an egoistic heroine, and a narrator's attempt to relate "everything" to "everything else," novels that are far from generic outliers fit uneasily into scaled models of characterization, even when their titles and critics imply otherwise. By recuperating the significance of representations of minor characters' consciousnesses, I argue that such novels disrupt the impulse for sustained identification with a single exceptional perspective, directing attention towards characters who might otherwise appear nondescript, inscrutable, threatening, or even inhuman. My rethinking of minor characters' interior fullness allows me to reframe our understanding of the social purpose that Victorian authors such as Dickens and Eliot claim for the novel. As Eliot suggests in "The Natural History of German Life" (1856), literature should "amplif[y] experience and exten[d] our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot," resisting stock figures and stereotypes to produce a form of social sympathy that is deliberate, sustained, and self-reflective. This view of the novel's morally instructive capacity is refracted in recent arguments by scholars such as Martha Nussbaum, who claims that readers' involvement with the novel's prolonged form and involved descriptions cultivates their ethical imagination. Yet both Eliot and latter-day critics suspect that the readerly experience of identifying with characters impedes the novel's social utility: the narrator in Middlemarch (1871-2) must ask "But why always Dorothea" of its likeable heroine, while Wayne Booth describes identification as an "immature" approach to literature that occludes "aesthetic experience." Character, however, is not always so all-consuming. I argue that both the brevity and the sheer numerousness of depictions of minor characters' consciousness make them the locus of novels' engagement with socially-oriented sympathy. By countering a protagonist's too-engrossing psychology with many full conscious centers, minor characters both mark and extend beyond novels' textual limits. In their ability to encompass and briefly reorient themselves around these many rich individual points, nineteenth-century novels themselves come to embody an ideally sympathetic perspective: capacious, inclusive, and free of excessive partiality.

This is a heuristic study about successful Ethiopian refugees in British Columbia. Heuristic research is another building block of phenomenological inquiry; it permits the researcher to discover his/her lived-experience within the phenomena. This research explores and discovers the lived-experiences of participants as articulated feelings and views on their sense of identity. Each participant's stories stand for the realities of who they are and how they made the transition of reconstructing their identity as a means of assimilating into Canadian society. Furthermore, their stories describe the patterns and processes of negotiation and re-negotiation of their identity in order to become successful in their new social environment. This research highlights ten participants' processes of adapting into a new environment, reconstructing their identity, and embracing change. Although the explored experiences represent only those who made a successful transition and reached a high degree of adaptation and assimilation in Canadian society, the results of this study provide a deeper understanding of Ethiopians in general, the integral role of culture, and its influence on individual identity to most immigrants. The study provides imperative information, as told by Ethiopians, to community, practitioners, professionals, and scholars as well as adds new knowledge about the complexity of Ethiopian immigrants' stories as no one had asked them before this study. The study found that participants whose tribal background was considered to be of a minority and experienced oppression and discrimination by the dominant tribe in Ethiopia, coped well with reconstruction of identity as well as with barriers in the Western world. Those who were rooted from the dominant tribe in Ethiopia, experienced adaptation and assimilation in the Western world difficult and at times intolerable. Similarly, the individual definitions of success and failure are associated with the strength of, or in-depth knowledge of one's sources of identity and the degree of connectedness and interdependency. The findings are comparable to explanations of identity patterns (individual, cultural, social, and political) found in similar studies of immigrants or refugees. However, one may notice that none of the participants in this study were from the same tribe and each participant's experiences and meanings either in Ethiopia or Canada are different. Nonetheless, the general sense of identity, roles, and influences of community found in this study validated the explanations and definitions posited in the literature (i.e., associated factors for self definition as well as influences on social and cultural identity). Furthermore, the extracted meanings also have confirmed sources of identity as being congruent to the adopted theory of this research as it linked to their roots, exposure to diversity, and creativeness not only in determining their skills of accepting or rejecting their new social, cultural, and economic values, but also allowing them to select (filter) values and beliefs that are desirable to become a member of the community in their new country. / Graduate

This thesis focuses on the relationships between Ministers and Civil Servants in British Government. It is argued that the deliberative space for officials to devise and critique policy in tandem with Ministers is contracting. The change occurred after Margaret Thatcher incentivised officials to behave in certain ways, and her embrace of New Public Management made relationships within government more transactional. Given this scenario the thesis explores how relationships between Ministers and officials can be improved. To determine this twenty-five former UK Government Ministers were interviewed complementing an earlier study which examined the issue from the perspective of senior officials. These Ministers reported that successful relationships were most likely to be established when Civil Servants demonstrated effective leadership, commitment to implementing policy, honesty, technical skill, and awareness of political and external realities. In addition it is thought that time invested early in the relationship helps to communicate Ministers’ expectations. Ministers also reported what they feel to be behaviours which undermine the relationship: misunderstanding the professional role of officials, relying upon special advisors rather than direct contact with officials, a lack of managerial experience, and public criticism of officials. Ministers also identified Civil Servants’ behaviours likely to result in poor relationships - appearing averse to change, being unable to rationalise the advantages of existing approaches, and a reluctance to lead or assume responsibility. Some of the perceptions identified in the literature, such as Civil Servants seeking control and lacking competence, were not afforded the same prominence by Ministerial interviewees. They highlighted systemic issues including the feudal and hierarchical nature of Whitehall, and their perception that the wrong skills and behaviours are incentivised. They also noted the lack of training for Ministers and their inability to pass on their experiences to colleagues. In addition to these observations about personal relations respondents expressed a deeper concern about the changing roles and expectations between Ministers and officials. Despite the evident contradiction between contemporary practice and the constitutional position created by Haldane in 1918, Ministers still appear to accept the latter as the basis for their relationships with officials. Further research may be required to explore this, alongside the disparity identified between the ministerial view from the literature and my interviewees, and the training lacuna. The thesis concludes by making a number of recommendations concerning future practice.

Graduation date: 1969

This thesis examines the past, present and future development and nature of Aboriginal archives and archiving in British Columbia, set in Canadian and international perspective. The thesis focuses on Aboriginal archives in BC because the higher number of First Nations there than elsewhere in Canada makes it one of the most prominent and important areas of Aboriginal archiving activity in the country. The thesis begins with an introduction to the holistic ways in which Aboriginal people in Canada traditionally recorded, preserved, and communicated knowledge and history over time, and thus the methods by which they “archived” up to the mid-twentieth century, in contrast to and compared with Euro-Canadian traditions of archiving. It then goes on to explore the various forces that directly and indirectly disrupted the processes by which Aboriginal culture and knowledge, and thus memory and identity, were transmitted from one generation to the next. As a result of these forces, and the inevitable intertwining of Aboriginal and Euro-Canadian cultures and worldviews, Aboriginal people increasingly found themselves having to access Euro-Canadian archives or establish their own along similar lines. In BC, where historically very few treaties were signed, the documentation created in the context of land claims and treaty negotiations in particular meant that such records were couched in occidental rather than Aboriginal people’s own cultural terms and thus demanded corresponding storage and use methods. Thus, the thesis suggests that such new approaches to Aboriginal archives and archiving were a “reactionary” or defensive response to legal, political, and social requirements and forces, rather than simply as a basis for communicating and recording a traditionally “holistic” sense of culture, memory, and identity. And, as will be seen, this reactionary response was not limited to BC, but would reveal itself concurrently in the rest of Canada, and in other colonised countries such as Australia and the United States. With the results of a questionnaire responded to in Australia, Canada, and the U.S., the thesis then presents comparative national and international approaches to, experiences with, and views on Aboriginal archives and archiving. With these explorations in hand, the thesis concludes with the suggestion that Aboriginal archiving is now coming full circle, returning to its holistic roots, having been positively influenced by the power inherent in the reactionary approach, but also newly challenged with varying issues. At the same time, Aboriginal archiving has challenged and contributed to a redefinition of traditional, Euro-Canadian notions of archiving, and thus pushed the boundaries of archiving as we know it. / February 2009

This article examines early twentieth-century British "Uranian" same-sex sexualities as a distinct entity from other labels for homosexuality. British sexologists, feminists, and other radical socialist/anarchist reformers invoked scientized versions of mysticism and Asian religions to conceptualize different, though intersecting, meanings for the Uranian. Historians of sexuality, however, tend to conflate the term "Uranian" with the other various and conflicting medico-scientific concepts circulating at the time, such as "homosexual," "sexual invert," and "intermediate sex." Overstating the slippage between terms, however, obscures the significance of Uranianism in the history of same-sex eroticism, and reinforces a dichotomy between spirituality and modernity. The Uranian discourses examined here epitomize a "progressive" historical moment that elaborated the scientific origins for the spirit, soul, and a divine will in the constitution of modern sexual/spiritual subjects. In many ways, Uranianism challenged the late nineteenth-century medical-sexological discourses that demarcated the homosexual as a pathological "type" by creating a more fluid understanding of sexuality through the interplay of Edwardian critiques of scientific materialism with New Age ideas about the mind, psyche, and spirituality. That is not to suggest that Uranianism offered an "alternative" (homo)sexuality that was disentangled from pathological discourses; on the contrary, the Uranian discourses implicitly consolidated the "homosexual type." Tracing the genealogy of Uranian sexuality through three case studies illuminates a modern moment when reformers attempted to create fluid sexualities. We find that Uranianism complicates our understandings about the supposedly dominant role of medical-scientific discourses in the construction of early twentieth-century British (homo)sexuality.

Diss.--Philosophy--Durham (N.C.)--Duke Univ., 1993. / Sources et bibliogr. p. 582-621.

The aim of this study is to examine the British policy toward the United Arab Emirates from 1820 until 1956. The relationship between Britain and the Emirates began in 1820 with the signing of "a general treaty between Britain and the Arab Tribes of the Persian Gulf". From that time until 1900, Britain set about consolidating its position in the region with the signing of a number of other treaties with the tribes of the region. British policy towards the Trucial States from 1820 to 1956 can be divided into two stages. The first stag~ lasted from 1820 to 1945. During that period Britain concentrated on maintaining her interests, and refrained from interfering in the internal affairs of the Emirates except when her interests were threatened. The second stage lasted from 1945 to 1956. That period which is the most important period in the history of the Emirates has, in my view, not been adequately studied. During that period Britain adopted a new pol icy aimed at developing the social, economic and political conditions in the Emirates. In 1952, Britain managed for the first time in the history of the Trucial States to unify the Sheikhs under a "Trucial States Council" to help Britain carry out its development programme. Such policy resulted in the establishment of formal education, a legal system, an administrative system as well as new stable economic resources. In this way the Trucial Coast Sheikhdoms moved from being a tribal society into a nation-state, albeit not a fully developed one. This is what this study hopes to describe on the basis of relevant documents.

No description available.

This thesis concerns groundwater quality with a detailed study of the Abbotsford-Sumas Aquifer and the high nitrate-nitrogen values that have been occurring for the past 20 or so years. Groundwater is becoming an increasingly scarce resource, both in terms of quantity and quality, worldwide. Aquifers are generally poorly understood, dynamic and are an integral part of the hydrological cycle. Aquifer contamination by land use activities threatens their utility as potable sources of water. The literature suggests that one useful measure of the effects of land use on water contamination is nitrate-nitrogen. This substance may be traced to such activities as agricultural practices and septic systems, two major concerns in the area above the Abbotsford-Sumas Aquifer in southwestern British Columbia. The Abbotsford-Sumas Aquifer was examined in detail with a review of the history, geology, hydrogeology, stakeholders, groundwater use and the current identified contamination. Based on the hydrogeology and land use of the aquifer, a representative study area was selected as a case study. With a focus on nitrate-nitrogen the principle objectives were: to determine land use effects on groundwater contamination, assess the contributions of various nitrogen sources and assess the overall impact of intensive land use on the groundwater contamination. This was investigated by a temporal land use evaluation, a nitrogen / nitrate balance and a review of water quality changes. The major land use change in the study area over the period 1969 to 1992 has been the increase in land used for raspberry production which now accounts for over half of the study area. The nitrogen balance revealed a large quantity of nitrogen unaccounted for which is potentially available for leaching. The predominate source of this excess nitrogen is attributed to the high levels of poultry manure fertilizer applied to the soils supporting raspberry crops. Calculations of the nitrogen sources suggest over 90 percent of the excess nitrogen comes from this source. This was well above the other nitrogen sources such as mineralisation, aerial deposition, septic systems, corn crops and pasture land. Although a minor overall nitrogen source, septic tanks appeared to have the potential for high local loadings of nitrate-nitrogen. The water quality data showed increases in nitrate-nitrogen concentrations in the groundwater over the last 40 years. Seventy percent of the water samples showed nitrate-nitrogen values above the Canadian Drinking Water Guideline maximum value allowed in drinking water. The data however displayed significant variability.