The rise of women’s rights movements in the Middle East has a long, varied, and complex historical trajectory, which makes it a challenging area of comparative study. This thesis explores the development of notions of cultural authenticity and womanhood, and how women struck bargains with men around such notions, by looking at the rise of women’s rights discourses and movements in Egypt and Iran from 1880 to 1980. More specifically, it investigates how changing notions of ‘cultural authenticity’ and ‘womanhood’ affected the relationship between ‘nationalism’ and ‘feminism’, women’s relationship with modernizing states, and ‘female activism’ within revolutionary and Islamist opposition movements. 1880 was chosen as the starting period of this study to assess the modernist and nationalist debates of the late 19th century, which incorporated new women’s rights discourses in both cases. 1980 was chosen as an end point as the Iran'Iraq war, and the advent of ‘Islamic feminism’ debates over the next decades in both Iran and Egypt, introduced new factors and issues, which would not have been possible to assess properly within the scope of this study. The two countries were selected not only for their political significance, but because of key differences, particularly in terms of dominant language and religion, to help challenge generalizations about ‘Arab versus non'Arab culture’, and notions of a monolithic ‘Islam’, ‘Muslim culture’, and/or the Middle East. Differences between regional cases need to be highlighted to avoid generalizations and simplified readings of women’s histories. This thesis places its original contributions within existing historiography on women’s movements in Iran and Egypt, contributing to the wider debates on women’s histories and ‘feminisms’ in the Middle East. Its arguments contribute to existing historiography on women and nationalism, women and revolution, and women and the state in Iran, Egypt, and wider studies on Middle Eastern women’s histories.

By 1973, the period of uncertainty that followed independence in the Maghreb was over, and the regimes in place - whether civilian or military were there to remain. Legitimising formulas were no longer rested on the ideological rhetoric that had been derived from the euphoria of independence, and by now the Maghrebi elites had to seek other legitimising sources. Thus they embarked on consolidating the state through institutionalisation and through new policies that sought to associate key constituencies with the conduct of the government. The intense social transformation over the last two decades, with greater access to education, has been coupled with the new emphasis on the state. Ideology has retreated before the advance of pragmatism and a greater awareness of the developments both at home and abroad. Accordingly, our work suggests that foreign policies of the Maghreb States, in the period under study have been executed in accordance with, and in response to, the exigencies of 'national interest'. The thesis is divided into five parts: The First Part, discusses different theories of foreign policy-making and sets out our suggested framework for analysis; The Second Part, deals with the conflicting and competitive nature that commands Inter-Maghrebin relations. The strife and rivalry for leadership and supremacy in North Africa has been a crucial factor dictating Maghrebi policies in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and beyond; The Third Part, treats Maghrebi relations with the Arab World and their attitudes with regard to issues ranging from the Arab Israeli conflict to the Iran-Iraq War, while competing for support and allies in their inter-Maghrebin altercations; Part Four, is concerned with the Maghrebi African policies. While the continent became a battle ground for the struggle against Isreal, it has also become a forum that for long has been dominated by inter-Maghrebin rivalries; Finally, the Fifth Part, deals with the Maghrebi foreign policies with regard to Europe and the super powers. As in the case of their relations with the Middle East and Africa, relations with Europe and the super powers have also been conflicting and competitive as far as the Maghreb states are concerned. Here, however, Maghrebi pragmatic approach has prevailed through the divorce of the foreign policy utterances from economic practices.

The shift from pre-modern to modern sex work meant the “professionalization” of transactional sex, its commodification and the attending social stigmatization of the essentialized category of prostitutes as “public women”. This dissertation explores the construction of social marginality of sex workers in colonial Cairo (1882-1952), in the context of major economical and social changes and the development of dramatically new concepts about the scope of intervention of the State on society. The quantitative and qualitative change in sex work which took place in Cairo since the end of the nineteenth century was made possible by a number of structural factors such as the integration of Egypt in the global market in a subaltern position, the restructuring of autonomous households’ economy, the augmented economic social vulnerability of female economic roles in the job market, migration and rapid urban growth. At the same time, the new social meaning of prostitution, a permanent symbolic threat to the physical and moral welfare of the rising Egyptian nation, was discursively constructed by dominant positions, both by local and colonial elites. Prostitutes were used as dense referent to express a wide range of dominant anxieties about the social order, the definition of normative notions of Egyptian citizenship and colonial racial hierarchies. Positing the inextricable link between material and discursive formations, this study analyzes the political economy of sex work and combines a wide range of sources – governmental reports, reformist societies’ papers, court cases, contemporary press and semi-academic literature – to explore a space of subaltern and gendered agency which has been overlooked for long and endeavours to restore prostitution, generally considered as a marginal activity, to the history of the Egyptian nation.

The existence of indigenous slavery in the Gold Coast’s British settlements and the Fante wives of British officials were inconvenient truths of mid-nineteenth century Cape Coast. As such, they were marginalised within contemporary documents in favour of heroic narratives of thwarting the efforts of pirate slavers and outlawing the custom of human sacrifice. However, evidence reached London in 1839 that forced the British government to respond to rumours that merchants tasked to enforce British law were continuing to aid the slave trade. In 1841 Dr Madden was sent to the Gold Coast as Commissioner of Inquiry to investigate the claims. He found merchant magistrates engaging in domestic slavery and wrote a report to expose them in the hope of bringing about its abolition. In the absence of sufficient documentary evidence and with the aim of offering a voice to the marginalised historical residents of Cape Coast’s Anglo-Fante households, an interdisciplinary approach incorporating literary, historical and anthropological research has been developed. Previously undocumented family histories have been recorded and interpreted in the context provided by historiography, archival documents and literary works including plays, poetry, novels, and nineteenth-century memoirs. Having critically evaluated these sources in terms of the authorial motive, verifiable data and historical instability that are identifiable within oral and written memory, the accumulated evidence is employed to create an imaginative representation of Madden’s time on the Gold Coast. Within the narrative Madden visits the Fante wives of British officials - collectively referred to as the Principal Mulatto Females of the Gold Coast - to explore the existence of domestic slavery. This creative piece forms part of a wider historical and theoretical consideration of a slave-holding community that is publicly forgotten and privately remembered in Cape Coast society, and of the function of memory within the relationship between history and literature.

The introduction (chapter I) will present the topic of the present research in two paragraphs. The one will discuss the problems relating to the study of domestic art in Roman Africa and the approach of scholars to them in order to highlight the new aspect of this research. The second one will describe the methodology that will be used in the study of the relationship between architectural forms and mosaic decoration of African domestic architecture during the high and late Empire (Maps 1-2). The following chapters will describe eight room-types in term of architectural layout and mosaic decoration. By following the imaginary route of an ancient guest visiting the Romano-African house, the analysis will begin with the description of the spaces of higher accessibility: the vestibulum as the point of transition from outside and inside and its annexed spaces such as audience-chamber, cella ianitoris, and room for storing sportulae (chapter 2); and the peristyle as a passageway to rooms arranged around it (chapter 3). The analysis of the peristyle as an open space will be followed by the study of the secondary courtyard in chapter 4. The discussion will continue with the description of the reception rooms as public spaces where the house-owner received his selected guests: main triclinium (chapter 5), secondary triclinium (chapter 6), and assembly-rooms (chapter 7). The analysis will end with the description of the most private parts of the house: the cubiculum as the room of a more selective admission (chapter 8) and the private apartments as the spaces reserved for the members of the master's family (chapter 9). Conclusions will follow in chapter 10. The whole analysis will be carried out with the support of the catalogue listing the main Romano-African houses.

This work analyses the main lines of the attempts of the post-colonial state to ensure the implementation of a project of social change to respond to the expectations Angolans had of independence. Focusing on the functions and limits of the state and law, it aims to inquire about the barriers to social change generated by state intervention and the role of law in the shaping of social relations. After references to the colonial society and the social groups and responses it generated, the conditions in which Angola attained independence are summarised. Chapter 3 describes the project of change as in 1975 (the so-called socialist option) and the different changes in the constitutional framework up to 1989 as a result of political struggles, emphasising the progressive centralisation of decision-making within the state and related loss of participation of grassroots organisation. Part II deals with the central command economy. It describes the project of change in the period 1976-1988, as well as the different national and international factors leading to the failure of part of the avowed goals it aimed. Chapter 4 analyses the legal regimes of public enterprise and the planning system, from the standpoint of resource allocation and shortage, approaches of state bureaucracies to the system, problems of co-ordination and information, and struggles for the control of allocative apparatuses. Chapter 5 approaches the central command economy from the standpoint of control of wages and prices, statisation of trade and welfare provisions. It demonstrates that in the area of distribution the central command economy was not capable of satisfying the needs for consumer goods and lost the control of this economic area for the informal economy. Chapter 6 refers to specific problems of change in peasant societies and the policies of the post-colonial state to deal with them. Chapter 7 describes different aspects of post-colonial legislation dealing with international economic relations, emphasising the progressive fragmentation of state property rights under international contracting as one of the conditions for the failure of the attempts to implement a central command economy. The third part deals with the main lines of the 1988-1992 economic and political reforms, analysing their background and outcomes, within the (analytical) boundaries of the short time-span of these changes so far. The conclusions focus on the economic and social, national and international, boundaries of projects of radical change implemented from above in an underdeveloped country, on the role of the peripheral 'soft state' and on the functions performed by postcolonial economic law in promoting change and enabling social groups access to resources.

The central question posed in this thesis is as follows: why did the apartheid urban system change over time and in space during the 1980s? Based on a case study of Langa Uitenhage, the changes in this local urban system are explained in terms of the complex and irreducible relations of power that exist within the urban system between three primary sub-systems that interacted at the local level, namely the state agencies (especially local governments and the security forces), community- and workplace-based social movements, and formal business sector, particularly the local branches of large-scale national and multi-national corporations. The primary findings of the thesis are as follows: (i) Uitenhage's urban system changed over time and in space as a result of the complex interactions and transactions between the elements of this local urban system and as a result of the dynamic interplay between this local urban system and the wider non-local urban, socio-economic and political systems within which Uitenhage's local urban system was embedded. (ii) Local urban politics can be explained as the organised expression of those interactions and transactions that resulted from conflicting conceptions of urban meaning and the corresponding urban functions and urban forms that flowed from different urban meanings. (iii) The dynamics of local urban politics cannot be explained as the epiphenomena of underlying structural contradictions. There were key moments when certain interactions occurred that decisively changed the qualitative nature of the relationships between the elements of the local urban system as a whole. Herein lies the importance of such occurances as police massacres of peaceful demonstrators, violent crowd attacks on representatives of the state, local-level negotiations and mass detentions. (iv) This local case study contributes to an explanation of urban system change and the dynamics of urban politics. However, the case study has not been designed to generate another general theory of urban sysem change or urban politics. It only demonstrated the usefulness of systems theory as a guide for case study research.

In the last few years, there has been growing attention given to the weakening of the place identity of many contemporary cities that have grown up as a result of rapid development and urban transformation. For this reason, place identity has been identified as one of the subject matters to consider in urban design in order to achieve good quality for future urban environments. In respect to this, over the past four decades, there has been a spate of attempts to reveal a wider understanding of place identity, particularly in relation to humans’ built environment relationships. To date, however, there have been relatively few attempts to integrate the concept of place identity into a more holistic theory of person-place relationship. Notions such as meanings and place attachment are rarely integrated with the physical characteristics in assessing place identity. Consequently, this research focuses on examining the influencing factors that are associated with place identity in the city centre of Misurata in Libya. This will be conducted using the three concepts of place as a multidimensional framework in defining place identity. The primary aim of the research is to examine place identity in light of the distinctive characteristics of place through identifiable place qualities as seen by the residents. Therefore, it is believed that, a qualitative inquiry is the best approach for this study; however, the quantitative methodology was also employed in this research in order to validate findings through triangulating the data. Accordingly, the research for this PhD has adopted a mixed methodological strategy in data collection and analysis. The techniques (methods) utilised for data collocation were survey, face-to-face interviews and mental mappings. The data analysis procedure was a rational-inductive approach based on the grounded theory strategy (data-led analysis). The research concludes that the main factors of person-place relationships (perception, meanings and attachment) significantly contribute to sustaining the place identity. The research demonstrates that there are seven characteristics of urban place that are strongly associated with place identity, as perceived by residents. These are imageability; visual quality; legibility; liveability; diversity; transparency and active frontages and walkability. These qualities were found as essential key performance criteria of urban place, evoking human perceptions and are important conditions for reinforcing place identity. The significance of meanings in fostering place identity was confirmed by seven identifiable factors, namely, place memory; life stage and place meaning; historical knowledge; symbolic meanings; likeable environment; a sense of belonging and pride; perceiving urban change and place meaning. Factors associated with place attachment were the emotional attachment; functional attachment; length of residence; familiarity and level of engagement. The main findings of this study confirm that both physical characteristics of place as an object component together with the meanings and attachment factors as subjective dimensions are important for sustaining place identity and creating a successful place in general. This study adds to the knowledge of the importance of understanding the complex layers of perceptions, meanings and attachment resulting from the person-place relationship in shaping places and sustaining place identity. In this regard, it also seeks to be part of the foundation or criteria to guide and formulate better urban design policy and innovative design for the future of Libyan towns and cities.

This thesis uses the city of Dar es Salaam as a prism for exploring the intersection of the Cold War and decolonisation with political life in post-colonial Tanzania. By deconstructing politics in the city through transnational and international approaches, it challenges prevailing narratives of the global Cold War, African liberation, and the contemporary Tanzanian history. In the decade after Tanzania became independent in 1961, President Julius Nyerere’s commitment to the liberation of Africa transformed Dar es Salaam into a cosmopolitan epicentre of international affairs in Africa, on the frontline of both the Cold War and decolonisation. In shifting the focus away from superpower relations and the paradigm of the nation-state, this thesis shows how African politicians exercised significant influence over Cold War powers, but also how the global context pushed Nyerere’s government into increasingly authoritarian methods of rule. The political geography and public sphere of Dar es Salaam, as a ‘Cold War city’, provides an interpretative lens through which diverse but ultimately entwined narratives are understood. These include the international rivalry between East Germany and West Germany; the politics of the exiled Mozambican liberation movement, FRELIMO; the local experience of the global ‘1968’; and thecourse of elite politics in a critical period in the Tanzania’s recent history. This multilateral history is made possible by a multiarchival approach, to shed light on developments in Dar es Salaam from multiple, triangulated perspectives.

This thesis is primarily an attempt at an economic history of slavery in Barotseland, the Lozi kingdom that once dominated the Upper Zambezi floodplain, in what is now Zambia’s Western Province. Slavery is a word that resonates in the minds of many when they think of Africa in the nineteenth century, but for the most part in association with the brutalities of the international slave trades. In the popular imagination and academia, the functions and significance of slavery in Central Africa have received scant attention. Moreover, Central African bondage, in the form of ‘lineage’ or ‘domestic’ slavery, has long been considered more benign than that practised elsewhere on the continent. For too long have these assumptions, rooted in both colonial and functionalist misunderstandings, clouded our understanding of the realities of slavery in pre-colonial Central Africa. One of the central purposes of this thesis therefore is to demonstrate not only the inapplicability of this outmoded paradigm to Barotseland, but of its blanket application to Central Africa as a whole. The thesis is presented in three substantive parts. In the first, following the introduction, a methodological chapter reflects on the challenges involved in researching slavery. That is followed by a historiographical survey, which locates the thesis within a broader intellectual landscape. The second part commences with a study of the ecology of the Upper Zambezi and its floodplain, the heartland of the pre-colonial kingdom, elucidating geology, climate, flora and fauna, before reflecting on the interactions of environment and human agency in the history of the region’s peoples. The chapter following traces the evolution of the Lozi state and the political history of the kingdom up to the 1870s, developing the argument that slavery was central to the turbulent nineteenth-century in the floodplain. The subsequent chapter, on the place of slavery in Lozi society, continues the argument, presenting a new understanding of the meaning of Lozi slavery. The third part of the thesis consists of three consecutive narrative chapters. The first of these opens in 1878. Besides charting a time of intrigue and rebellion and early colonial intrusions, it explores in depth the development of a vast programme of public works with the view to foregrounding both the economic significance of Lozi slavery and its fundamentally exploitative nature. The second narrative chapter begins in 1897, on the eve of the colonial era, and follows the events which led to the formal abolition of slavery in 1906 and the shifting balance of personal, political and economic power which underpinned it. The final chapter charts the slow decline of slavery over the next two decades. The long persistence of Lozi slavery, it is here argued, speaks volumes for its former centrality to both the Lozi economy and to Lozi understandings of their society and themselves.