This thesis concerns the relatively recent phenomenon of part-time managers and professionals. The focus is the part-time working arrangement (PTWA) and specifically the process by which it emerges and develops, building on existing literature on working-hours preferences, the role of the organization in part-time working and alternative work organization for temporal flexibility. Two large private-sector organizations, each operating in the UK and the Netherlands, provided four different research sites for narrative interviews with 39 part-time managers and professionals. The key contribution to knowledge is to identify the process of developing a PTWA as a combination of the formal negotiation of a flexibility task i-deal and an informal process of job crafting. In a situation of high constraint – where the individual’s goals conflict with organizational norms and expectations – the tensions between ‘being part-time’ and ‘being professional’ necessitated identity work at each stage, as individuals constructed a ‘provisional self’ which in turn enclosed each stage of the development of the PTWA. The four stages were: first, evaluation of alternative options, including postponing the transition to part- time until more appropriate circumstances arise; secondly, preparation of the individual business case for part-time; thirdly, formal negotiation of a flexibility task i-deal; and finally an informal, unauthorized adaptation of the arrangement over time. Collaborative crafting of working practices (predictability, substitutability, knowledge management) provided greater opportunities for adaptation than individual activities. This study’s contribution to theory in the nascent field of part-time managers and professionals is a process model which suggests how three sets of discourses act as generative mechanisms at each stage of the emergence and development of the PTWA, creating or destroying ‘action spaces’. These discourses are: the perceived ‘nature’ of managerial and professional work, the perception of part-time as a personal lifestyle choice, and the understanding of part-timers as either ‘other’ or the ‘new normal’.

This research aims to relate the modern Swedish curriculum development to the political discourses liberalization and European integration through a critical discourse analysis of the Swedish curriculum Gy2011. These political discourses constitute the cultural context of Gy2011, which according to critical discourse theory is synonymous with the terms social sphere or praxis. The term cultural context includes the environment in which the text has been created as well as its intertextuality – in this case its relations to earlier curricula. The analysis of Gy2011 exhumes scientific research done in the field of curriculum studies, which enables future research. The Gy2011 analysis shows that the political discourses liberalization and European integration stands out within the texts cultural context, and have done so for more than 70 years, a fact that is illustrated by an overview of Swedish curricula history. This research also illuminates how the liberalization discourse accelerated during the 1980’s, by both social democrats and the political right, and that the European integration process has gained momentum in recent years.

This dissertation explored the ways in which the everyday life practices of most urban Indians embodied the "modernization of tradition" (Hancock, 1999) and the role that media texts played in facilitating and encouraging this modernization. The research is based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted from June through December 2005, in the south-Indian city of Chennai, which has traditionally been regarded as a conservative city. Examining the Indian media as a discursive site where normative ideologies are not only constructed but also co-constructed, the study explored and examined how the discourses of tradition and modernity were contested in the south Indian media. It also identified and interpreted the ways in which dominant ideologies at the nexus of color/caste and gender/morality were negotiated by an urban city and its residents in the move towards modernity.Data included three different but inter-related sub-genres of print media texts -- visual images, textual advertisements, and news articles. The primary dataset of visual images consisted of 300 product advertisements culled from four, nationally available, English-language magazines gathered from the two genres of news and film. Textual data sets comprising the matrimonial advertisements and the news articles were gathered from the local editions of two nationally-available English-language newspapers. The broader ethnographic investigation included participant observations, individual formal and informal interviews, and focus group discussions with adult residents of Chennai. The data were analyzed using a multi-discursive and multidisciplinary approach. The analyses were informed by conceptual approaches which included: social semiotics and the multimodal theory of communication, genre analysis, critical discourse and feminist critical discourse analyses, and alternative modernities.In examining the media texts as the site where dominant sociocultural ideologies were being constantly configured and reconfigured, the analyses identified and examined the workings of three interconnected themes - fairness (in relation to skin color), gender, and morality. Through these themes, the dissertation examined the larger contestations and negotiations between the discourses of traditions and modernities as experienced by adult residents of urban Chennai. The discourses of identity construction and reconstruction were thus examined at the nexus of the individual self situated within the larger frame of the city.

The title of this monography is Discourses of Writing in the Curriculum of the A-course in Swedish. The aim of this monograph is to find wich forms and discourses of writing that are emphasized and premiered in the curriculum for the first course in Swedish during secondary education in Sweden, grades 10-12. What kind of writing are presented to the students and what potentially miss due to the selection? Is any form of writing presented more thoroughly or as more important than any other in the curriculum? The professor of linguistics, Roz Ivanic, has formed different discourses of writing that she has found being used in education of writing. With these discourses of writing  I have applied them on the curriculum and then been able to see wich forms of writing that are premiered. By using close reading as a method of analyze I have been able to interpret the curriculum. I have connected close reading as a method with the hermeneutic analysis tradition. The discourses of writing is my tool and my theory wich holds different forms of writing that are connected to earlier science of writing that I present as a background in the monograph. The conclusion I have reached are that the curriculum holds four discourses of writing. That means that the form of writing that are presented to the students are a writing to imitate other types of texts, a grammatical correct spelling, a thotoughly processed text and knowledge about their own mental process that is activated during writing. The diskourse of writing that is presented as the most important in the curriculum is the skills discourse of writing. That leads to a form of writing in grammatically correct writing and prepares the students to adjust to a writing that is presented mainly in higher forms of education.

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> <p align="left">In this study, the two most dominant sexual discourses were the male sexual drive discourse and the have/hold discourse. These discourses, together with traditional gender constructions, made condom negotiation difficult for women. Nevertheless, the discourses and constructions were also resisted and challenged. This study was limited by its focus on heterosexual women and the negotiation of condom use. Future studies which explore alternate forms of safe sex, sexual orientation and allow men&rsquo / s experiences to emerge would provide greater insight.</p> </font></font></p>

During the last decades, scholars have discussed the changes of Swedish alcohol culture. Among other things, it has been suggested that parallel with increased consumption levels men’s and women’s drinking is becoming more similar. In connection with this discussion, the purpose of this thesis is to examine Swedish alcohol culture(s) by analysing the meanings that focus groups from different generations ascribe to drinking in relation to different life periods: childhood, adolescence and adulthood. More specifically, it aims to analyse how the interviewees specify and negotiate normative boundaries and self-presentations in relation to norms and discourses of gender and age. An essential part of the analysis is to examine differences within gender and age-groups, as well as the similarities between them. The findings suggest that even though drinking patterns are changing in terms of quantity and choice of beverage, meanings, motives and norms seem to be rather stable – especially in regard to gender. Overall, a distinction is being made between men and women: Femininity is constructed in terms of control, responsibility and caring, and masculinity in terms of fearlessness, breaking of boundaries, and loss of control. Men’s and women’s drinking are also accounted for in different ways. While men’s drinking behaviours are excused with arguments about biology and hormones, women’s (anticipated) responsibility is explained with their connection to motherhood. However; these norms vary in strength and are expressed in different ways, depending on the drinking norms of different life-periods; mainly moderate in childhood and adulthood, and mainly orientated to binge-drinking in adolescence. With regard to positive meanings ascribed to drinking, similarities between age and gender groups are also generally greater than the differences between them. Thus, gendered differences are mainly constructed in relation to behaviours that are perceived as risky or problematic.

This thesis explores: (1) how young women make decisions about Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination and (2) how they negotiate and evaluate public health discourses that work to promote a responsible female subjectivity to manage the risks of HPV. Public health professionals have promoted HPV vaccination as a responsible and informed choice for young women, whose sexual practices are considered to put them and their sexual partners “at risk” of HPV. I conducted semi-structured interviews with thirteen young women between the ages of 21 and 28. My interviews with women and the public health literature on HPV vaccination reflect cultural and moral priorities regarding the “right” kinds of female sexuality and individual responsibility to manage sexual and reproductive health risks. Many of the women I interviewed were critical of the identification of their sexual practices as putting them and others “at risk” of HPV and maintained that their “safe” sex practices mitigated these risks. All of the women I interviewed prioritized concerns about protecting their reproductive health from cervical cancer over the risks of HPV when discussing their responsibility to be vaccinated. Based on these interviews, I argue that women‟s decisions about HPV vaccination are practices of self-making, through which they strive to enact identities as responsible young women, who endeavour to protect themselves, their bodies and health from harm. These decisions are complex, dynamic and reflect their ability to make competent, informed decisions that are inextricably bound to their social and material circumstances. / Graduate

This thesis argues from a contrarian point of departure that the successes of GMO agriculture have thus far been limited or underwhelming. It thus asks what accounts for the limitedness of the GMO food economy. From this overarching question, the research is divided into three further questions that consider the roles of law, the structural requirements of the capitalist system, and the use of discourses of nature amongst activists respectively as factors influencing the underdevelopment of GMO agriculture. These questions form the basis for three chapters that comprise the thesis. Chapter one draws on the work of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi in evaluating the consequences of legal regimes that regulate GMOs. Against the tide of neoliberalism, I discuss how a binding, precautionary agreement over international trade in GMOs emerged through the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. I argue that this Protocol is an example of what Polanyi termed the “self-protection of society,” the second phase of his double movement. Chapter two uses Marxist theories of agrarian capitalism to understand both the early successes and later setbacks of GMOs as a capital accumulation strategy. I argue that the successes and failures of GMO agriculture are partly circumscribed by the structural requirements of the capitalist system, as well as by the materiality of GMO crops themselves. The chapter builds on the work of Gabriela Pechlaner and David Goodman to show how processes of appropriationism, expropriationism and the logic of capital more generally can explain not only why some innovations have succeeded but also why so many others have been unsuccessful. Innovations that are geared at consumers rather than farmers have largely failed due to their status as value-added products (whose value is subjective and market-driven) rather than capital goods. Chapter three considers the role played by nature narratives in structuring the cultural politics of GMO agriculture. It argues that natural purity discourses have been central to the success of GMO activism as they have mobilized widely resonant nature-culture dualisms that separate the natural world from the human world. However, though strategically effective, these discourses hold dubious political implications, as they entrench or naturalize unequal power relations in the social world and deflect attention away from the problematic political economic consequences of GMOs under neoliberalism. The chapter argues that activist campaigns that directly target the political economic, neocolonial, and class implications of GMOs within the context of neoliberalism have also had successes without resorting to appeals to the purity of nature, an approach that I argue ought to frame opposition struggles against GMOs going forward. The thesis uses a mixed methods approach that includes document analysis, historical analysis, discourse analysis and literature review. It incorporates a wide lens approach, drawing on a range of case studies from multiple scales to animate the conceptual arguments being analyzed. By problematizing how GMO agriculture has evolved as a capital accumulation strategy for large transnational corporations, this thesis seeks to critically evaluate the practical social justice implications of anti-GMO resistance efforts for those opposed to neoliberal globalization. / Graduate / 0366 / 0615 / mylesc@uvic.ca

A cultural studies approach is applied to an analysis of land-use planning theory and practice to seek a holistic understanding of events struggling in praxis to construct ideologies and paradigms about the supermarket phenomenon, in a post- Fordist age. This links interests shared and contested by Govemment and key parties as agents of social change, including Sainsbury's as a typification of the supermarket business and the planners' professional body. The thesis challenges positivist assumptions embodying tenets of classical economic theory and rationalist, empirical methodology. It focuses on attempts to achieve ideological hegemony by the re-articulation of common sense explanations through everyday events mediated by late industrial capitalism's commodification process. The nature of the post-modernist dialectic centred on Capital's modernisation project favouring a new service economy is explored in relation to an organic interplay between ideas and action, and the linking of planning theory to reification. The nature of ideological code systems in relation to retail land-use planning, as a feature of culture and their discursive role in an ongoing struggle for power and dominance, is evaluated in the deconstruction of historical and contemporary texts. A new concept of dialectical pluralism is offered which acknowledges the dynamic construction of ideologies and paradigms between parties in everyday relational experience. The methodology offers a wide, topic-based inductive research focus taking the four poles of Government, the planning profession, academia and the business sector at points of apparent harmony and disjuncture, to review the means by which events in time and space are struggled for to establish ideological hegemony. A priority is to compare and contrast assumptions underpinning the training of land-use planners that reward or inhibit vested and less defined interests, including those legitimising and funding professional research projects.

The thesis approaches the phenomenon of ethnic residential segregation in Sweden froma critical perspective in which the structures of social, and in particular of racial relationsare central. Firstly, the role of the Swedish state in processes of what is called urban racialization isexplored through an examination of the sequential ideological discourses and housingpolicies valid during the twentieth century, seeking a historical continuity in processes ofresidential segregation as well as in social constructions of the Other Secondly, a cluster analysis is carried out in the medium-sized Swedish city of Uppsala.The analysis indicates that a spatial division of residence along racial lines to some extentis taking place in Uppsala, as can be the case in other Swedish cities, Thirdly, a phenomenological survey is carried out in the suburb of Gottsunda, Uppsala,The interview survey finds no empirical support for the culturally deterministic postulatebased on the otherwise common belief that spatial patterns of ethnic segregation couldhave been generated by immigrants when choosing their allocations in the city, strivingthus the proximity to countrymen. Finally, symbolic mechanisms, such as everyday discourses, the drawing of invisibleboundaries between We and Them and media representations, are explored. These,together with structural ideological and political factors, are constantly interacting in theprocesses of maintenance and reproduction of racialized residential patterns in theSwedish urban structure.