This study was concerned with establishing why parents caring for a disabled child at home chose special schools. The method used was to survey parents of disabled children attending one of the three special schools run by the Acorn Society. The survey identified two themes. These being, that there was a gender differential suggesting that mothers were most closely involved with the care of disabled children and, that the decision to send a disabled child to a special school was measured and balanced. This was contrary to the pre-dominant view put forward in relevant literature, so, the research set out to identify the reality behind the choice of a special school. A qualitative approach was adopted using semi-structured interviews, focusing on the issues arising from the initial survey. The interview data demonstrated that mothers were the primary providers of care, support, and assistance, for disabled children living at home. Special schools, it was concluded, provided a level of emotional support and practical assistance, which went some way towards substituting for the absence of support from other sources. However, the situation has to be considered within the context of the twin movements of inclusive education and disability rights. The conclusion was made that there was little evidence to suggest that parents' needs would be met by their disabled child being included in mainstream education. However, it was also concluded that the present system of special education failed to meet the developmental needs of disabled children and young people. The two positions were seen as being diametrically opposed. A way forward was suggested which would, (a) offer the opportunity for disabled children and young people to acquire a positive identity, premised on the concept of disability as a unique culture, and would, (b) offer parents an appropriate level of support.

This thesis argues that representation is the embodiment of erotic thought. It does this by focusing on literary representations of the penetrated male body and challenging the standard approaches to masculine embodiment as a form of denial or absence: the male body - in its always already penetrated state - as a presence, though one which lurks behind representation. It argues that the (penetrated) male body is often characterised as a taboo the breaching of which is traditionally named 'feminine' or 'psychotic'. The dominant representation of this body links it with a chain of equivalences that binds it to a culturally abjected 'feminine paradigm'. Works by Huysmans, Baudelaire, Wilde, will demonstrate how the limits of the male body are mapped within a boundary that both excludes and necessitates an act of penetratioa But it also demonstrates the ways in which this taboo has been challenged. Schreber, Genet and Joyce play with that boundary, push those limits, suggesting that penetrability becomes a condition of the emergence of modern male subjectivity within the rubric of its own logic. For as much as the penetrated male body is marked by 'femininity' and 'psychosis', it in turn marks a discursive 'blind spot' which the thesis terms the 'behind', in order to highlight its links to the anus - a site of anxiety for masculinity. This articulation of a discursive aporia and corporeal liminality is shown to generate a specifically modern 'poetics'. This poetics will help to re-state a logic of the neither/nor as expressed by Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault and Kristeva, in particular. One major consequence of such conditionality is that thought must be seen as in a very real sense 'embodied', and that this process of embodying thought is predicated upon an eroticism that is subsequently denied. The 'behind' names that denial.

This thesis conducts a reconceptualisation of historical time as a means of reorienting feminist historiography and changing the ways that we construct and approach histories of feminism. Various feminist theorists have argued that feminist theory requires a multilinear, multidirectional model of historical time, to enable productive encounters and exchanges between past and present feminisms, and account for the coexistence of parallel, intersecting feminist trajectories. This is particularly crucial in light of the continuing dominance of the phasic ‘wave’ model of feminist history, which is bound to notions of linear succession and teleological progress, and severely curtails the ways in which diverse feminist histories can be mapped, understood and related to one another. However, whilst alternative, multilinear, multidirectional notions of historical time have been mooted, there is rarely any clarity or elaboration on what exactly what this might mean or how it might work. This, I suggest, is because ‘historical time’ is itself an under-investigated and under-articulated concept. My contribution in this thesis, therefore, is to offer a detailed study of historical time, which makes sense of the idea that historical time is multilinear and multidirectional. In the course of this investigation, I develop a ‘polytemporal’ model of historical time, arguing that historical time is generated through a mix of different temporalities and fields of time, including the ‘time of the trace’, ‘narrative time’, ‘calendar time’ and ‘generational time’. Analysing each of these ‘times’ in turn, the thesis offers a thorough and internally complex account of historical time, demonstrating how thinking history ‘polytemporally’ can work, and how historical time can be understood as multilinear and multidirectional. Further, it offers concrete suggestions as to how this reconceptualised model can translate into a more nuanced and effective feminist historiographical practice, which opens up conversations between past and present feminisms in order to positively transform our presents and futures.

This thesis is divided into three main chapters. The first chapter provides an analysis of intergenerational mobility across countries, across cohorts and over the income distribution. It compares the patterns of intergenerational income mobility between fathers and sons in Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States. Among other findings, the analysis highlights that mobility is lowest for families at the extremes of the income distribution. Among university graduates, mobility is still lowest at the top. This calls for further research on the drivers of intergenerational mobility. The second chapter investigates why intergenerational earnings mobility is lowest at the top and at the bottom, by exploring the role of social networks. The implications of a simple model are tested on data from the United Kingdom. The inverse U-shaped mobility patterns are explained in two steps. First, a range of findings is consistent with the hypothesis that family friends affect the offspring’s educational and occupational choices. Second, the friend’s job is correlated to the parent’s job, in different ways at different income levels. Specifically, the richest and the poorest parents tend to have friends that are more similar to them than median parents. The third chapter examines the effects of job polarization on individuals and households by assessing the roles of occupational mobility, changes in occupational wage premia, mating patterns across occupations and female labour supply. The paper uses the British Household Panel Survey to examine the UK over 1991-2008. The findings suggest that most of the factors listed above have important roles. The period is characterised by pronounced movements in occupational premia and important roles for occupational mobility and assortative matching.

Os documentos oficiais e a concretização das propostas no livro didático analisado abordam a ambiguidade lexical como algo a ser evitado e corrigido através de estratégias de desambiguação, ignorando a importância da natureza polissêmica da língua como recurso expressivo na comunicação cotidiana e como instrumento fundamental do humor, especialmente as variantes de humor popular e infantil. O presente trabalho busca abordar a ambiguidade lexical, polissemia e homonímia, no gênero tirinha cômica, texto multimodal e humorístico, visando observar a eficácia da proposta de leitura e produção como exercício de contextualização, levando os alunos a observarem, explicarem e produzirem texto, utilizando-se dos diversos significados possíveis das palavras em uso, em situação concreta de enunciação. A proposta se dá dentro do conceito de multimodalidade, trabalhando a ambiguidade lexical e o letramento visual, objetivando que o aluno não apenas observe e compreenda as tirinhas apresentadas, mas também que produza a sua própria, compondo o texto com os elementos verbal e visual. As atividades foram divididas em dez passos: pesquisa e compartilhamento de HQs, atividade diagnóstica, análise da ambiguidade lexical em tirinha cômica no livro didático, jogo digital Quem ri seus males espanta Piadas, consulta às diferentes acepções no dicionário, escrita do glossário de unidades lexicais polissêmicas ou homônimas, elaboração do roteiro da tirinha, autoavaliação, produção final de uma tirinha cômica e apreciação dos trabalhos das turmas. / The analised official papers and textbook proposals approach lexical ambiguity as something to be avoided and correct through desambiguation strategies, ignoring the importance of the polissemic nature of language as an expressive resource of the language in daily communication and as a fundamental tool of comedy and humor, especially popular and childrens jokes and puns. This paper aims to approach lexical ambiguity, polissemy and homonyms, within the comic strip genre, which is a multimodal and comic text genre, with the objetive of observing how effective this proposal of reading and writing can be to help students comprehend, learn and explain lexical ambiguity, by using a word in multiple possible meanings in the comic strip, in concrete enunciation. This proposal uses multimodality, by combining lexical ambiguity and visual litteracy, aiming to enable the student not only to observe and understand the comic strips presented, but also to produce their own by using verbal and visual components. The sequence is divided in ten steps: research and sharing comics, diagnostic evaluation, lexical ambiguity in the textbook, digital game Quem ri seus males espanta Piadas, searching for different meanings of words in the dictionary, writing a glossary of polissemic unities, production of a scratch comic, self evaluation, final production and appreciation of the classes works.

The aim of this study is to explore the lives and identities of gay Arab Muslim men living in the U.K., a group that has not been specifically or exclusively researched in any previous study within the British context. The thesis aims to demonstrate how various identities such as sexuality, race, ethnicity, gender and social class intersect with each other within three different contexts: in an intra-personal context, in the context of relationships with family and kin, and in the context of interactions in white-dominant gay and non-gay spaces. The thesis investigates the outcomes of these intersections and how these outcomes are managed and negotiated. The study’s epistemology aligns in a broad sense with feminist epistemological approaches in making subjugated voices and marginalised experiences heard. A qualitative research methodology is adopted involving individual interviews with 35 men. Intersectionality is utilised as a theoretical framework, and the thesis asserts that concepts such as intra-categorical and inter-categorical intersectionality are extremely useful for achieving an in-depth understanding of the complexities and nuances of the lived experiences and identities of these men, illustrating both the diversity of experience subsumed within supposedly homogeneous ethnic categorisations, and uncovering how these men’s interlocking identities may be characterised by experiences of multiple discriminations, including homophobia, racism and Islamophobia.

An examination of the employment situations of West Indian, white and Asian women waged workers in Britain reveals both shared characteristics and ethnic differences. My research considers the main similarities and differences and assesses the significance of four major determinants of women's employment options. Gender divisions within the labour market, state and employers' policies towards working mothers, cultural differences in the interpretation of gender roles and the ideology of parentcraft, and racial discrimination are examined. My analysis derives from an examination of existing literature and my own empirical research which was conducted during 1978 and 1979 In the Handsworth area of Birmingham. My research consists of a study of childcare facilities, a survey of local employment opportunities, which was conducted by means of interviews with major employers and follow-up enquiries in response to job vacancy advertisements, and semi-structured taped interviews with 31 West Indian, 22 Asian and 16 white mothers. Previous approaches to women's employment fail to recognise differences between women and do not sufficiently consider the relationship between the structure of the labour market and the role of women within the family. My research provides substantive evidence of the relationship between women's role in the family and their role in production, and demonstrates variations in the employment and family situation of women of different ethnic origins and the influence of state and employers' policies. I show that while a worker's gender is more significant than ethnic origin in determining their employment situation, ethnic differences must also be considered. Cultural variations in the interpretation of gender roles, and the ideology of motherhood, have a significant impact on the proportion of women who engage in paid labour, and the number of hours worked, while racial discrimination influences the type of work performed and the level of unemployment experienced by black workers.

Despite the growing evidence of the significant role of fathers in the emotion socialisation (ES) process, their ‘voice’ is scarce within the literature, leading to a dominant discourse surrounding maternal ES practices. ES occurs directly and indirectly with significant ‘scaffolding’ provided by parents, therefore emotion management is heavily socialised. Two ES practices aid or restrict children’s emotional self-regulation. Emotion coaching (EC) parents tend to use expression of emotion as opportunities for learning and development. Emotion dismissing (ED) parents are uncomfortable with negative emotions, so may dismiss, or use punitive responses. Fathers are thought to be shaped by socio-cultural norms and gender biases, therefore emotions may be socialised differentially, according to child gender and the type of emotion being displayed. An exploratory study of five fathers from a local authority in the East of England involved them responding to resource measures employing a combination of spoken and film scenarios reflecting negative emotions of sadness or anger in children. Transcribed data indicated that a number of positive ES approaches were being used. Future large-scale research with fathers from a broad demographic would strengthen the knowledge-base, perhaps also including partner and child opinions. There is a view that research regarding children’s emotional development should be considered incomplete, if data from fathers is not included.

This thesis explores the extent to which the incorporation of same-sex relationships into formal regulatory domains is working to reinforce heteronormativity. It focuses on this issue in relation to the provision of legal advice on civil partnership dissolution. It concentrates on three main questions: 1) How can same-sex relationships, in light of civil partnerships (and, by extension, same-sex marriage), help to challenge social and legal constructions about the gendered nature of roles in intimate relationships? 2) To what extent do solicitors construct the issues and legal framework as being identical in same-sex matters to different-sex cases? 3) How do lesbians and gay men understand and experience the law of financial relief? It is argued that heteronormative conceptions of gender have been carried over from (different-sex) marriage into civil partnership proceedings, and that lesbians and gay men have, to a large extent, been assimilated into the mainstream. That said, civil partner clients have also resisted the imposition of heterosexual norms on their relationship, preferring to settle dissolution matters on their own terms, and opposing substantive financial remedies such as maintenance and pension sharing. In this way, civil partnership dissolution does still pose some novel challenges for family law.

This study focuses upon the experience of identity through gathering and studying accounts of the personal and professional lives of twenty women who are headteachers and mothers in the North Midlands of England. The enquiry is shaped by a conceptual framework which grows out of an in depth review of the UK and international literature. The interplay between agency and structure within the social construction of a gendered identity and the value systems based upon this lead to a consideration of the history of headship and its reworking, within Government agenda, as school leadership through the National College for School Leadership. A consideration of research methodology explains the choice of survey as a qualitative approach influenced by the feminist stance, and a semi-structured interview method. Presentation and analysis of the fieldwork has an emphasis on ensuring that the subjects' voices are prioritised. The complex dialogic nature of identity is clearly heard and the women demonstrate that their struggle for agency within this demands a manipulation of Government and social agenda.