This thesis explores how 'home', as both an idea and a physical space, operated in the formation and expression of popular political radicalism in late-eighteenth and early nineteenth century England. With a regional focus on London and the South Pennine areas of Lancashire and Yorkshire, the thesis intervenes in a rich historiography of popular radicalism in this period to argue for the importance of everyday practice in bringing together and sustaining a beleaguered movement, especially during periods of repression. In doing so, it offers new perspectives on the importance of the intersections of class and gender within radicalism, and sheds new light on the crucial and underappreciated role of women. Home could offer opportunities for political involvement, but could also restrict the emancipatory possibilities open to women in particular. The thesis unpacks ideas and practices associated with the home, including family relationships, consumer practice, and the use of objects, to expose it as an insecure and unstable site from which to launch a campaign for political legitimacy. Because 'home' was embedded in so many moralistic and political discourses, its deployment could be politically powerful, but could also hinder attempts to thoroughly rethink the social norms which underpinned classed and gendered inequalities. Throughout, however, the thesis stresses the continued unknowability of many aspects of working-class domestic life and the problematic nature of the sources we use to interrogate it, arguing for continued sustained work to unpick the diversity in the nature and meanings of home for working-class people in this period.

This dissertation will examine the Vietnamese communities of Texas and consists of two parts. The first part explores the circumstances that stimulated the growth and eventual dominance of Vietnamese immigrants in two entrepreneurial niches – the nail salon and the shrimping industry. This study is thus a sociological examination of private enterprise, and the first research objective is to investigate the roles of the various market and non-market factors that were crucial in fueling the development of these two businesses. In the sociology of entrepreneurship, a key concern is locating the causal determinants of entrepreneurship. That is, aside from regular market forces, the social conditions associated with patterns of entrepreneurship need to be investigated. This study therefore explores the political, institutional, and cultural circumstances that help to explain the development of the nail salon and fishery businesses in Texas that market forces cannot govern. The second research objective of this dissertation is to use a racial formations framework to investigate the racial implications of the proliferation of these two entrepreneurial niches in their respective communities. The growth and spread of these businesses have had consequences for the loss of traditional community, the construction of racial identity, and the maintenance or reconstruction of new racial identity in the context of a multicultural work setting that includes other racial and ethnic minorities. The following seeks to provide insight into these racial phenomena by way of the case of Vietnamese Americans engaged in entrepreneurship. / text

This research study explores how future educational and occupational aspirations are constructed by young Sikh adults. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten young Sikh adults, both their parents, and their teachers at one school in West London to investigate how future aspirations are constructed, which resources are employed, and why certain resources are used over others. In some previous research on aspirations and future choices, Sikhs have either been ignored or, instead, subsumed under the umbrella category of 'Asian' and this study seeks to address this. Furthermore, the study seeks to shed light on how British-Sikh identities are constructed and intersected by social class, caste and gender. This is important to explore since it can have an impact upon how young adults are structured by educational policy. A 'syncretic' social constructionist framework which predominantly draws upon Pierre Bourdieu's notions of habitus, capital and field, along with the cultural identity theories of Avtar Brah and Stuart Hall, is employed to investigate the construction of identities and aspirations. In addition, the study contains ethnographical elements as it is conducted on my 'own' Sikh group and at my former secondary school. Consequently, I brought a set of assumptions to the research which, rather than disregard, I acknowledge since they highlight how I come to form certain interpretations of phenomena over others.

Thesis advisor: Willaim A. Gamson / What are the class culture differences among US progressive social movement groups? This mixed-methods study finds that activists speak and act differently depending on their class background, current class and upward, downward or steady class trajectory, confirming previous research on cultural capital and conditioned class predispositions. In 2007-8, 34 meetings of 25 groups in four movement traditions were observed in five states; 364 demographic surveys were collected; and 61 interviews were conducted. I compared activists' approaches to six frequently mentioned group problems. * Lifelong-working-class activists, usually drawn in through preexisting affiliations, relied on recruitment incentives such as food and one-on-one relationships. Both disempowered neophytes and experienced powerhouses believed in strength in numbers, had positive attitudes towards trustworthy leaders, and stressed loyalty and unity. * Lifelong-professional-middle-class (PMC) activists, usually individually committed to a cause prior to joining, relied on shared ideas to recruit. They focused more on internal organizational development and had negative attitudes towards leadership. Subsets of PMC activists behaved differently: lower professionals communicated tentatively and avoided conflict, while upper-middle-class people were more assertive and polished. * Upwardly mobile straddlers tended to promote their moral certainties within groups. A subset, uprooted from their working-class backgrounds but not assimilated into professional circles, sometimes pushed self-righteously and brought discord into groups. * Voluntarily downwardly mobile activists, mostly young white anarchists, drew the strongest ideological boundaries and had the most distinct movement culture. Mistrustful of new people and sometimes seeing persuasion as coercive, they had the weakest recruitment and group cohesion methods. Analysis of class speech differences found that working-class activists spoke more often but more briefly in meetings, preferred more concrete speech, and used more teasing and self-deprecating humor. The professional-middle-class (in background and/or current class) spoke longer but less often, preferred more abstract vocabulary, and used less negative humor. Group styles were formed by the interplay of members' predominant class trajectories and groups' movement traditions. Better understanding these class culture differences would enable activists to strengthen cross-class alliances to build more powerful social movements. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Utilizing elements of Lightfoot and Davis’s (1997) portraiture method and life history interviews, this qualitative research study explores the portraits of four Mexican-origin scholarship boys. Two Mexican-origin students and two professors were selected from a snowball sample. A snowball sample consisted of gathering referrals from graduate students and faculty who contacted me through email to comment on their personal identification with the scholarship boy themes discussed in the essay I authored, "Lost in Degree: a Chicano PhD Student’s Search for Missing Clothes" (2007). I use the term “Mexican-origin” as a concept that identifies the subjects of this study as being of Mexican descent. All of the participants were born and raised in low SES, urban settings in the United States and they are children of Mexican-born parents. Hoggart’s (1957/2006) scholarship boy framework serves as the primary theoretical lens guiding this work. Rodriguez’s (1982) seminal work on this topic, Hunger of Memory, enumerates how this concept may apply to Mexican-origin scholarship boys. This study also utilizes Dubois’s (1903) double consciousness and Anzaldúa’s (1999) mestiza consciousness to analyze the ways in which Mexican-origin scholarship boys used culturally situated constructions of giftedness, “ghetto nerd” (Diaz, 2007) masculinities, and philosophical perspectives related to “home” to pursue academic excellence and cope/challenge the microgressions they experienced in K-12 schooling and higher education. The scholarship boys in this research provide critical information germane to the struggles and strategies used by academically successful Mexican-origin students as they negotiate the experiences related to the contrasting working-class culture of their upbringing and the middle-class culture of academia. While studies often focus on academically low-performing Latino students, this work explores the narratives of working-class Latino students who attained a graduate level education. Moreover, this research complicates clean “victory narratives” by unearthing various aspects of loss and gain inherent to the Mexican-origin scholarship boy trajectory. Findings inform scholarship in the areas of pedagogy, education reform, philosophy of education, education policy, curriculum, and revisionist conceptualizations of giftedness and human development. / text

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 249-253).

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to trace the reflections of critical issues, such as neo-liberalism, cultural differences based on social class, gender stereotyping, and nationalism in the elementary mathematics education in Turkey. Critical discourse analysis was conducted to examine these possible reflections. By researching mathematics education from a critical perspective, this study aimed to contribute constructing a starting point for socially responsible mathematics education. There were four main data sources in the study: elementary mathematics curriculum, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade elementary mathematics textbooks, workbooks and teacher&rsquo / s guide books, 7th grade mathematics classroom observations, and pre- and post-interviews with participant teacher. The discourse analysis of mathematics education contexts implied that elementary mathematics discourse: (i) oriented students to use their mathematical abilities and skills for the benefit of private corporations instead of public welfare / (ii) replaced the &lsquo / real life&rsquo / in mathematics problems with the life of middle and upper middle classes / (iii) included sexist expressions / and (iv) fostered nationalism via ignoring ethnic and non-Muslim groups living in Turkey. It appeared that teachers might not be aware of such discourse. Findings have addressed that policy makers and textbook writers should consider these critical issues in order to reach all students and teachers&rsquo / awareness should be increased. Future research should clarify these issues in a broad sense including pre-service teachers, teachers, students, and mathematics instruction in schools.

Submitted by Izabel Franco (izabel-franco@ufscar.br) on 2016-10-11T14:31:47Z No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseJDB.pdf: 4183210 bytes, checksum: e426931186baff77cb47689923c6bfa2 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marina Freitas (marinapf@ufscar.br) on 2016-10-21T12:11:08Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseJDB.pdf: 4183210 bytes, checksum: e426931186baff77cb47689923c6bfa2 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marina Freitas (marinapf@ufscar.br) on 2016-10-21T12:11:13Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseJDB.pdf: 4183210 bytes, checksum: e426931186baff77cb47689923c6bfa2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-10-21T12:11:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseJDB.pdf: 4183210 bytes, checksum: e426931186baff77cb47689923c6bfa2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-06-29 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / This thesis aims to analyze the contradictions present in the cultivation of flowers, highlighting the life experiences of men and women working in the fields and greenhouses of flowers in the region of Holambra, São Paulo, Brazil. The theoretical references are the studies on rural wage and on the globalized intensive agricultural. The field research was conducted in four cities: Artur Nogueira, Holambra, Mogi Mirim and Santo Antônio de Posse. The narratives were collected through conversations and interviews at workers home. The methodology used was the Oral History, which allowed us to view the work in addition to the data brought by the official statistics, trying to break with the analyzes that polarize the productive and reproductive spaces, and naturalize the female skills. The research has allowed us to verify the existence of a variety of settings that make the work morphology in growing flowers - this diversity relates to the size of the properties and greenhouses, forms of employment (family labor, wage, unregistered work), and the place of residence of workers (rural districts, urban districts, producing colonies of flowers). People interviewed related that the working hours are intensified to fulfill the demands, there is exposure to pesticides and thorns of flowers, and carrying out the activity in the greenhouses and fields is often strenuous, which makes some people use medicines to face the workload. Finally, we present a discussion on ways of estrangement and the possibilities of creating emotional bonds with the plants, which causes the activity to be evaluated positively by workers. / Esta tese tem como objetivo principal analisar as contradições presentes no cultivo de flores, destacando-se as experiências de vida de homens e mulheres que trabalham nos campos e estufas de flores na região de Holambra/SP. Utilizamos um referencial teórico assentado nos estudos sobre o assalariamento rural e a agricultura intensiva globalizada. A pesquisa de campo foi realizada nos municípios de Artur Nogueira, Holambra, Mogi Mirim e Santo Antônio de Posse. As narrativas foram colhidas por meio de conversas e entrevistas nas residências das trabalhadoras e dos trabalhadores. A metodologia utilizada foi a História Oral, que nos permitiu visualizar o trabalho para além dos dados trazidos pelas estatísticas oficiais, tentando romper com as análises que segregam os espaços produtivos e reprodutivos, e que naturalizam as habilidades femininas. A pesquisa nos permitiu verificar a existência de uma diversidade de configurações que marcam a morfologia do trabalho no cultivo de flores – essa diversidade diz respeito ao tamanho das propriedades e estufas, às formas de contratação (mão de obra familiar, assalariamento, trabalho sem registro em carteira), e ao local de residência dos trabalhadores e das trabalhadoras (bairros rurais, bairros urbanos, colônias produtoras de flores). Os sujeitos da pesquisa também relataram que as jornadas são intensificadas para atender as demandas, há exposição à agrotóxicos e espinhos das flores, e que a realização da atividade nas estufas e campos muitas vezes é extenuante, o que faz com que algumas pessoas utilizem medicamentos para enfrentar a jornada de trabalho. Por fim, apresentamos um debate sobre as formas de estranhamento e as possibilidades de se criar vínculos afetivos com as plantas, o que faz com que a atividade seja avaliada de forma positiva pelas trabalhadoras e pelos trabalhadores.

This thesis examines the effects of de-industrialisation on the lives of adult learners attending adult education programmes in the former coal mining and steel working communities of County Durham. It presents the outcomes of a qualitative study of life history stories which are 'person centred'. Focusing on the subjective experiences of learners, both past and present, was an appropriate way in which the learner voice could be heard as well as helping to understand their experiences and views on the effects that de- industrialisation has had on their lives, and if lifelong learning was improving their life chances. The importance of social class and gender in configuring and understanding adult learner experiences are critical factors whilst, at the same time, the collective resources of these working class communities have been systematically undermined. Furthermore, the provision of publically funded adult education has declined dramatically since the 1980s. Through the prism of learners' lives the study explores experiences of employability skills programmes and community adult education programmes on shaping the position, disposition and identity of learners who have experienced a major trauma to their communities, their families and themselves. Ontological insecurity, a product of de-industrialisation, has a critical impact on the lives of these adults. The thesis adopts Hirschman's (1970) framework of 'Exit, Loyalty and Voice', originally used to frame the responses of workers confronting the possibility of job losses in a firm, as a way of understanding the reactions of adult learners to the impact of de-industrialisation on communities. In Hirschman's framework the relationship between exit, loyalty and voice followed a distinctive pattern. Loyalty, for example, was the opposite of voice, as people in a firm stayed silent in order to be saved from job loss. In this study, loyalty to the community has enabled individuals to benefit from support and community provision, which has given them a lifeline for survival and a step on the way to finding a voice. Exit, in the original framework, involved proactive workers getting 'ahead of the curve' by finding alternative employment before others. In this study, employability skills training - as a resource for exit - does not deliver. Instead, it systematically demoralises individuals and undermines their capacity to act. It involves churning learners between welfare and more training programmes and, where and when available, into short-term work. The overall impact has resulted in the social exclusion of these learners from the labour market and from the community - the opposite of agency. It is argued that this is a paradox given that social and economic inclusion was an aim of lifelong learning policies. The thesis challenges the claim of neoliberal ideology that purports to promote the freedom of individuals to determine their own fate. Those attending employability skills programmes are expected to find solutions to structural problems, and are subjected to coercive methods through psychological interventions that are expected to bring about attitudinal behaviour changes to achieve employability. It is argued that this is a paradox given deficient labour market conditions which are beyond the control of the learner. Attention is given to public sector community adult education that once offered liberating models of adult education, but have now been subjected to the logic of neoliberal governmentality. This is creating new 'subjectivities' for educators, who are being coerced to deliver learning for the economy rather than social purpose education. What has emerged is a new role of the employability trainer.