Access to family-friendly working time arrangements is unequally spread both within and between workplaces, leaving many working parents with difficulties in combining employment with family responsibilities. The British and German governments have started to address this problem, but have done so in different ways. Focusing on time allocation in the work/family interface and its implications for gender and employment relations, this thesis explores the differences between the British and German government strategies to improve access to family-friendly working time arrangements for working parents, and how variation can be explained. As the flexibility requirements of employers and employees often diverge and can be in conflict, the thesis further investigates to what extent the German and British policy strategies were designed to empower working parents to access the time flexibility they need. It applies an empowerment perspective to the analysis of policy choice and design and draws on the policy making literature to analyse cross-national variation. Between 1997 and 2005, the incoming centre-left New Labour and ‘Red-Green’ governments both introduced information campaigns and employment rights to improve access. The lack of economic incentives for the provision and take-up of family-friendly working time arrangements reduced the overall empowering potential of the British and German strategies. Although similar at the level of policy choice, employment rights and information campaigns varied at the level of policy design with different implications for access. The thesis concludes that family-friendly working time policy did not achieve a significant redistribution of control over working time to employees in either of the two countries. This can be in part explained by a strong employer lobby and opportunities to influence policy choice and design, but also by the ‘competitive advantage’ of childcare services over family-friendly working time policy, directing government resources to more ‘employer-friendly’ reconciliation policies.

The explanation of social behaviour requires an understanding of individual orientations to social issues as these exist relative to others. This thesis argues that whilst the attitude concept and social representations have illuminated certain aspects of social behaviour, both are handicapped by a restricted focus. The former’s focus on the evaluation of attitude objects excludes a reference to wider societal processes. The latter provides an account of societal contingencies, but excludes an explanation of individual orientations towards objects and issues in the social environment. This thesis postulates the point of view concept to bridge this gap, that provides an explanation of social behaviour at the situational level. This complements attitude and social representations in a nested, multilevel explanation of social behaviour. The point of view is defined as an outlook towards a social event, expressed as a claim, which can be supported by an argument of opinion based on a system of knowledge from which it derives its logic. It reflects an individual’s orientation towards a social object, relative to others. This thesis has demonstrated, in a series of empirical studies, that the point of view can be typified in three categories. A monological point of view is closed to another’s perspective. A dialogical point of view acknowledges another’s perspective but dismisses it as wrong. A metalogical point of view acknowledges the relativity of its’ perspective, and concedes to an alternative the possibility of being right. These different types were demonstrated to be characterised by differences in positioning and in individuals’ capacity to fit a given social reality. Such relational outcomes accrue as a function of the socio-cognitive structure of points of view in relation with another perspective. This thesis demonstrates that points of view, alongside attitudes and social representations, provides a multilevel explanation of social behaviour

Over the past three decades, the number of incapacity benefit claimants in the UK has trebled. Conventional wisdom argues that this rise cannot reflect ‘real’ incapacity; Britons are perceived to have got healthier and jobs to have become less physically demanding. Yet self-reported work-limiting disability (WLD) grew over the 1990s. Moreover, some working conditions deteriorated, with ‘job strain’ (the combination of high job demands and low job control) rising sharply. In this thesis, I investigate the possibility that rising job strain partly explains the rise in WLD and incapacity benefit receipt through four pieces of empirical research. First, different surveys appear to conflict on whether job strain has risen. Given that trends in job strain are of paramount importance, I systematically review the available trend data across 44 individual datasets. Second, I look at whether self-reported demands and control predict WLD and healthrelated job loss. Using the Whitehall II cohort, I look longitudinally at whether baseline job strain predicts WLD/health-related job loss at the following wave. I also look at the extent to which WLD mediates any relationship between job strain and health-related job loss. Third, the Whitehall II analysis is limited to civil servants and is based on self-reports. I therefore complement this analysis by looking at average job strain in particular occupations and imputing this into the nationally representative BHPS. I then relate job strain to later WLD and incapacity benefit receipt in parallel fashion to the Whitehall II analyses. Finally, the quantitative analyses leave unanswered questions about the meaning of ‘fitness-for-work’, the processes through which working conditions affect incapacity benefit receipt, and how these impact differently on different people. These are explored in a qualitative analysis of 32 interviews with people with health problems, culminating in a conceptual model of job strain, WLD, and incapacity benefit receipt.

Spatial disparities in economic performance are amongst the most pervasive and persistent characteristics of modern economies. In the UK and across the EU, minimising regional inequalities is an objective of government policy. Yet analysis of how local differences in unemployment, earnings and industrial structure affect individual agents is not straightforward. Individual heterogeneity and sorting behaviour make separating the effects of agent attributes and regional characteristics difficult – a problem which is only compounded by the potential impact of unobserved individual heterogeneity. This thesis seeks to disentangle the effects of agent attributes – both observed and unobserved – from the effects of local labour markets in three individual level decisions made by graduates in the UK. The chapters examine (a) how agents choose which degree subject to study at university, (b) the determinants of postgraduate participation and (c) the likelihood of a graduate finding employment after completion. In this way, this thesis examines micro-level choices which affect the aggregate supply of skilled labour in the UK. The methodology I adopt permits conclusions to be drawn about how individual behaviour varies across observably different groups and offers insights into how local economic performance can shape the supply of skilled labour. I conclude that while agent attributes – including gender, ethnicity and prior academic attainment – are the most important determinants of an individual’s academic choices, economic circumstances have a significant, if smaller role to play. The results have several public policy implications, ranging from the impact of educational inequalities to the funding arrangements for postgraduate study in the UK.

This thesis is about the experiences of 15 graduates as they made the transition over the course of a year from higher education into employment as trainee accountants at a multinational accountancy firm in the UK. The success of that transition has been argued to be a key stage in fostering individuals’ life chances because it means building on their education in order to start a career. The thesis demonstrates that gaining certain credentials is the central mechanism by which the middle and working-classes can accrue value under neo-liberalism. Therefore this thesis is about the ways in which individuals who occupy similar and different social locations become subjects of value and are then able to exchange that value as they travel through the field of education and transition to the graduate labour market. I argue that taking an embodied approach to the transition from higher education to employment can show us a great deal about how class and gender play out in individual transitions to employment. Rose and Miller (1995) argue for the important contribution that studying individuals in their workplace settings can make to contemporary analysis of the social. This thesis seeks to do this by capturing graduates’ experiences in their own words, in depth, so that we can better understand how processes of class and gender are seen, managed and negotiated by individual graduates. Analysis of 37 participant interviews demonstrates that becoming a subject of value hinges on complex social relations to which social class, gender and ethnicity are primary. Furthermore that some participants, owing to the advantages conferred on them by their parents, are further along this process than others. I have suggested that the ability to thrive as a neo-liberal subject does not just depend on the resources conferred upon an individual, but that how those resources – as well as transitional experiences – are framed, reflected and acted upon by an individual affects their resilience and ability to thrive and therefore their ability to accrue value.

This thesis aims to highlight the dilemmas within education provision for disabled pupils. This is the product of competing frameworks, coming from different historical and philosophical contexts. The Warnock Report (1978) only managed a partial transition within education for disabled pupils from segregation to inclusion. This midway stage of integration continued the bureaucratic and professional dominance over access to additional support and continued to segregate the most affected pupils despite using humanitarian and equality rhetoric to defend its position. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s this tension led to wide variation in policy interpretation throughout the UK, yet the SEN policy framework went largely unchallenged until the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA, 1995) launched the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act, also known as Part 4 in 2001 (DDA, 2001). The DDA attempted to impose a rights-based model of equality on education. The survey data and qualitative in-depth interviews generated by this thesis show that the existing tension fuelled a resistance that has challenged a thorough engagement with the DDA. Further the surveys sent to schools and local authorities suggest that insufficient time was afforded the DDA Part 4 to impact on Scottish schools before new legislation was introduced and ratified in Scottish law (Additional Support for Learning Act, 2004). In-depth interviews exploring the system of complaint under the DDA Part 4 revealed a further tension between impairment effects and social expectations of discipline in schools related specifically to a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or allied conditions. In following the ethos of the social model, this thesis concludes that the DDA Part 4 failed to account for the differentiation of experience within the disabled community, and so offered little support for those most challenged by the pedagogical structures in schools. Based on the findings of this thesis, the DDA Part 4 has had little impact on Scottish schools, due in part to the tension within the competing SEN framework and timing of other policies. In addition inherent flaws within the terms of the DDA Part 4, including the omission of auxiliary aids and services from the remit of discrimination, contributed to its failure to impact on Scottish schools.

This thesis examines the practice of campaigning journalism, where a newspaper seeks political influence and claims to do so on behalf of its readers or a wider public. It is a production and content study of campaign journalism in the Scottish press, examining the journalists’ orientation to their readers, both in terms of social responsibility toward them in facilitating their citizenship, and in terms of accountability or answerability to them as their quasi-representatives. The study also analyses the newspapers’ representation of the substance and legitimacy of public opinion to politicians at the Scottish Parliament, in particular the governing Scottish Executive (now Scottish Government), and the framing of politicians’ obligation to respond to public demands as formulated by the newspapers. In short, it seeks to investigate newspapers’ democratic claims to be the voice of ‘the public’. Existing literature indicates that a key legitimation of campaigning journalism is that the newspaper is acting on behalf of a public or publics. However, it is not clear how these claims are substantiated. Existing mechanisms of accountability and normative conventions of responsibility are based on the liberal model of democracy, whereby the press are responsible for informing voters. In campaigning, the press instead adopt the language of representing group interests or protest politics that would fit with a corporatist or participatory model of democracy. These alternative models presuppose active or at least attentive publics, and newspapers’ interaction with and representation of them in this sense. This would fit with popular notions of Scottish political history as characterised by activism, and the aspirations of the Scottish Parliament. However, the campaigns instead addressed an imagined public that were conceived of as a market, and represented ‘the public’ as a passive and powerless aggregate of interests. Despite campaigning being taken up on behalf of disadvantaged groups, those affected were only given a voice to express their feelings as victims, and political advocacy was largely reserved to the newspaper rather than extended to associations and organisations in civic society. The neo-liberal assumption of private (not political) self-determination and freedom as the defence of property and other personal interests meant that affected individuals were portrayed as passive and vulnerable ‘victims’ whose freedom and agency were oppressed by criminal perpetrators. Where social welfare was addressed it was dissociated from taxation, and portrayed in terms of consumer preferences. Publics were otherwise addressed and portrayed as an aggregate mass of instrumental interests and fearful, defensive feelings, not as associative or discursive.

National identity can be expressed in many ways by individuals, groups and states. Since the nineteenth century, Central Europe has been undergoing rapid changes in the political, social and cultural spheres, which was reflected in the self-definition of the nations living in this region, and in their definition by others. The Czech people, who until 1918 were a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, gave birth to a national revival movement in the nineteenth century and eventually emancipated themselves to create an independent Czechoslovakia. The idea of „national identity“ was, therefore, crucial and this was enhanced in many areas of human activity, including the construction of a historical legitimacy for the nation. The struggle for recognition of the historical existence of the Czech nation was also projected into the discourse adopted for historical and contemporary art writing and exhibition practice. In this thesis, I focus on the ways in which Czech national identity was constructed in the historiography of art. I shall argue that the various ideologies which influenced the writers led to an understanding of Czech art as epitomising certain qualities of the Czech nation. At the same time, the Czech nation was presented as highly advanced because of its artistic achievements. I shall explore how art historians, historians, artists, archaeologists and philosophers created their notion of a Czech national art on the basis of either negotiating a compromise with the various ethnic groups, methodologies and political affiliations, or by emphasising their opposition to the same. Another contested area was the concept and political uses of artistic quality. It will be my aim to examine broader circumstances of these contestations in the Introduction and more specific ideological motivations behind Czech art history in the subsequent chapters. In Chapter One, I shall outline the main places where art history was practiced in Bohemia and Moravia which were crucial for constructing the discourse on national art. Chapter Two examines the texts of the first Czech art historians in the second half of the nineteenth century who became interested in the national aspects of Czech art because of the political and cultural climate. In Chapter Three, I shall examine the nineteenth century debates between Czech and German authors on the origins of mediaeval art, confirming Czech or German national identity 3 respectively. Chapter Four studies the rise of Czech art history as a “scientific” discipline in Prague and the attempts of Czech art historians at its professionalisation, which – nevertheless – did not abandon a nationalistic discourse. The main focus of Chapter Five is the co-existence of nationalistic views of Czech art with the attempts of artists and art critics to bring Czech art into a dialogue with Western art. In the following chapter, Chapter Six, this practice is explored in the context of the Viennese university and the so-called Vienna School of art history, particularly the work and legacy of Max Dvořák. The influence of the School on Czech art history is the topic of Chapter Seven, which again brings up the question of the divide between international and national perspectives of Czech art. Criticism of the Czech Vienna School followers from various groups of art historians is examined in Chapter Eight. Finally, in Chapter Nine, I conclude with the exploration of the rise of a new concept of art historical identity, the concept of Czechoslovak identity.

This thesis examines the nature of the relationship between the educational environment of UK universities and the graduate labour market through the lens of correspondence theory. This theory was developed by Bowles and Gintis (1976), who asserted that there is a structurally reproductive relationship between the conditions of education and labour. One of the key aims of this research is to test the usefulness of this theory to contemporary UK higher education. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 students and key staff members in the Law faculties of three different status universities; Elite, Old and New. The interviews covered a number of key topics including class sizes, relationships between students and staff, career preparation and routines of working. Documents outlining the nature of the courses (e.g. prospectuses) were also collected and analysed. These data revealed that at Elite University, subject specific knowledge is the primary purpose of learning and the students encounter an intense working environment but are afforded high levels of autonomy. At New University, the educational experience for students is much more structured, with much less pressure on students to perform and a central focus upon employability. Old University occupies a position between these two universities, offering a form of education that encourages some autonomy within a structured teaching environment and values both employability teaching and subject specific knowledge. The significant differences between the teaching and conditions at these three universities reflect characteristics associated with different levels of graduate work thus indicating the continued analytical value of the correspondence theory.

After thirty years of neoliberal public sector reforms involving the increased use of the private sector and the import of private sector methods, in many respects, the public sector is barely recognisable from when Mrs Thatcher was elected. This study is about one specific part of the public services – the public library service – and is analysed in the context of the wider picture of change in the public services. In particular, the focus of the thesis is the attitude of library service workers to the public service ethos (PSE), whether and how it informs their attitude to their work and its potential for use by their union in mobilisation. The thesis addresses three research questions: • Has the public service ethos survived? And if it has, what does it mean for workers? • Is there a relationship between commitment to the public service ethos and union membership and activism? • Could the union utilise the ethos in its campaigning? And, if so, how? Starting from a theoretical discussion of the origins and meaning of the PSE and a discussion of the relevance of mobilisation theory, the study highlights three key areas. First, there is an examination of whether workers in the public library service believe that a PSE exists and, if so, what it means to them. It is demonstrated through qualitative and quantitative data, including a survey of union members in the library service that it is both alive and well and a significant influence on how they view their working life. Secondly, there is an analysis of whether there is a relationship between union activism and commitment and a belief in the PSE. Connected with that is a debate about the utility of the PSE as an aid to mobilisation at the workplace. Thirdly, there is a discussion of the relevance of the PSE to unions’ wider campaigning, given their expressed aim of drawing on external power resources through alliances with service user groups. The study shows that public service workers continue to believe in a PSE, offering their union the opportunity to associate itself with it, thereby distinguishing itself from the employer and strengthening the union both within and outside the workplace.