How can NGOs contribute to strengthening the democratic legitimacy of international intergovernmental institutions? The thesis pursues two lines of enquiry in order to contribute to this discussion in the context of global environmental politics: it looks at the external claims and internal practices of NGOs. With regards to external claims the thesis investigates the democratic demands formulated by the NGO communities interacting with the UNFCCC and the CBD respectively. Demands for equitable representation at the intergovernmental level and for participation by civil society stakeholders are especially prominent among the NGOs engaged with the climate convention. The thesis finds a convergence around very similar democratic demands across the NGO community, most of which draw upon recurrent governance norms and existing instances of good practice within environmental institutions. The thesis then turns to the internal practices of large international environmental NGOs to test the assumption that these organisations have the potential to act as “links” or as “transmission belts” between local communities and global policymaking processes. It proposes the adoption of a representation perspective for analysing the contribution of civil society organisations, and provides case studies of three large international environmental NGOs (WWF, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth) and of the two issue-­specific civil society networks that organise NGO activities around the two UN conventions referred to above (the Climate Action Network and the CBD Alliance). The thesis shows that the potential for large NGOs to ‘represent’ local communities is shaped by organisational structures, decision-­making processes, the strategy for bringing about change, funding sources, alliances and partnerships, and values. The findings underline the need to adopt a more differentiated understanding of the democratic contribution by civil society organisations to international intergovernmental institutions.

This thesis explores the career perceptions and experiences of 20 experienced Asian women teachers who had commenced their careers in the last 25 years. By focusing on the accounts / stories of those Asian women teachers, I have attempted to answer the question: What is it like to be a black teacher in British schools? The stories were collected through a series of life-history interviews. Early research on the educational experience of black people in Britain focused more or less exclusively on schooling and 'black underachievement'. All tended to locate the problem and its solutions, within black children, their families and cultures, hence isolating 'race' issues from those of gender and social class. The research also have tended to continue to focus on pupils in schools and on those who are seen to have failed within the system. Instead, this study examines the experiences of Asian women teachers who had largely succeeded in their education. Despite the fact that my interviewees did not comprise a homogeneous group, there was uniformity regarding their perceptions of their career experiences and the way they related to their social environment. The Asian women teachers in this study encountered barriers at all stages in their careers and faced racism, albeit in different forms and guises. These teachers were perceived by white colleagues, parents and pupils as being the inferior 'Other'. In addition, apart from the overt, wounding type of racism, they were subjected to institutionalized racism, which denied them their dignity and made professional advancement very difficult. Many of these teachers often had to find alternative routes to promotion, in multicultural areas of teaching and not in mainstream section. They, sometimes, had to survive in hostile environments. But they all succeeded despite the system, rather than because of it. Success was often made at considerable personal cost, and with great determination and commitment. The study concludes that the experiences of these teachers were racially affected. A number of generalised patterns regarding their career developments and on the articulations of racism in their working lives emerge from these biographies and are discussed in this thesis. However, despite the existence of structural racism in society, the Asian teachers in this study found different ways of managing and responding to it.

Despite the enormous apparatus of control at the disposal of employers and the state in South Africa, working class activity has not been eliminated nor organization erased. African migrant workers, such as those employed in the Durban docks, have held a leading position within the African working class for decades, absorbing the lessons of past struggles and putting forward demands which have led strike movements. These struggles demonstrate the uncompromising hostility of African workers to their class and national oppres- sion. With the growth of capital in South Africa an increase in class exploitation has been accompanied by intensified national oppression; the rule over African workers being enforced through vagrant, master and servant, and pass laws wh ich reproduce a cheap migrant labour force. Dock workers, for more than a century migrant workers, have shown a capacity for resistance in the city equal or higher than the level of class action by 'settled' urban workers. Their resilience is explained by their concentra- tion and commanding position in the labour process of the docks. During strikes the workers have laid claim to work and residence in towns in opposition to the employer and state strategy of expell ing strikers from th e urban centres. Decasualization has been introduced as a 'repressive reform' to reassert the control of the employers over an increasingly active workforce. Ironically, it has b~en accompanied by increasing priority to the development of contract labour in the docks and has also not eliminated the high turnover of workers nor the insecurity of employment. The consciousness of the dock workers has been shaped by the harsh discipline of capitalist production, national oppression, and the daily experience of international communications. These factors, combined with a long tradition of resistance, have encouraged the formation of a class con- scious section of the African proletariat.

This thesis is a historical study of middle-class members of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Although it is principally concerned with the period from 1933 to 1956 some attention is given to the Party's first decade and the years immediately after the great upheaval of 1956. The thesis examines the reasons why middle-class people were attracted to the Communist Party; the various cultural and political initiatives they were involved in and their changing role in the CP. The work describes the way middle-class Communists drew upon their professional and technical skills to contribute to the life of the Party and its political campaigns. Attention is also given to the relationship of middle-class Communists both to their working-class fellow members and to the Party leadership and how these relationships developed and changed over time. The thesis revises various previously accepted characterisations of middle-class Communists which have emphasised the superficial nature of their commitment to the CP in the late 1930s or concentrated attention on those who became entangled in the world of spying. The most important aspect of the study, however, is the examination of the way in which Communists in the professions related their Communism to their work and how in turn their professional concerns and attitudes influenced their politics. To this end detailed studies have been made of the political and occupational activities of Communists in three professional groups - architects, psychologists and school teachers.

This is a comparative study of two countries, England and France, two county towns, Warwick and Draguignan, and two families of the trading-manufacturing sort. It argues that, during the period around 1780-1820, the acquisition of a certain form of education, which included an emphasis on fluent reading, writing, and grammar. preferably Latin grammar, became as important as the acquisition of capital. This cultural capital gave its new owners a self-perceived distinction which allowed them to consider themselves and to be considered by others as different. Even if local, regional, and national differences are taken into account, this comparative study shows that this new perception developed as a transnational phenomenon, a form of culture sallS jrolltieres, even during the times of enmity and almost uninterrupted wars between Britain and France which characterise this period. This process had begun earlier in the eighteenth century, when the idea of a public opinion and its premise of equal interaction amongst its proponents was 'invented'; but it was facilitated by the French Revolution with its legacy of the notion of equality, and therefore of the importance of communication in forging democracy. The written word was the chosen means to achieve this. It is argued that this distinctive culture, in the production and consumption of which women played a considerable part, gave voice and a social and political consciousness to those who began to see themselves as the 'middle class'.

This thesis explores the significance of courtship and love in the lives of the enslaved men and women in antebellum North Carolina. It underlines how the current historiography concerning the enslaved has largely neglected the emotional terrain and dynamics of enslaved life and argues that the existing historiography of courtship and love has similarly marginalized the experiences of the enslaved. Whilst more recent research has focussed upon enslaved familial and personal relationships, there still remains the need for a more in-depth and sustained consideration of the meaning and importance of courtship and love in the lives of the enslaved. This thesis will attend to these gaps in historical scholarship by considering how the enslaved established and managed their courting relationships. It considers the practicalities of courtship for the enslaved as they mediated their own emotional needs and desires with the demands of the slave system and the slave-owner. it also examines the factors defining the shape of these relationships, including the opportunites available for the enslaved to establish courtships and the geographical and temporal spaces in which this could occur. It situates courtship within a narrative of resistance, illustrating the fact that courtship represented a significant social space for the enslaved through which they were able to resist and renegotiate the mechanisms of control and regulation embedded in the system of slavery. The majority of source material for this research derives from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) narratives. These narratives of formerly enslaved men and women reveal much to the historian interested in slavery and the psychology of the enslaved in the American South. As well as the WPA narratives this thesis draws attention to the folklore tale as an aspect of enslaved culture that can reveal much regarding the norms, values and ideals that structured the private and personal world of the enslaved.

My interest in comics began at about ten years of age. Reading difficulties and a dismissal as stupid by one of my primary school teachers left me believing that reading was beyond my capabilities. One morning when walking reluctantly to school I saw a comic lying in the gutter. Attracted by the bright colours I picked it up, I could not read the title 'Dandy' but the picture stories meant for the first time I could follow a narrative. Quickly I realised that the pictorial content gave me clues to the dialogue presented in the 'bubbles'. Reading for me was a possibility and I soon became addicted to a diet of comics. Unfortunately the racist nature of British society was reflected in those comic strips. Brought up in an environment where there were no visible black faces most of my racial education was from the society around me and the comics I read. I did not realise how deeply ingrained the racial conceptions were until I attempted to draw my own comic strip to amuse two small children for whom I had frequent care. Without thinking I automatically reproduced the same kind of stereotypes to be found in the comics I had read. Soon racial inequalities were to become a central concern in my life. I became conscious of the pervasiveness of racism in society and this consciousness increased as I embarked on a mixed race marriage generally disapproved of in the white dominated society of the early 1950s. My experience as a mother of mixed race children led me to join various anti-racist groups and thus become interested in all aspects of racial injustice. A combination of factors encouraged the undertaking of this research amongst them being, a teacher first, of young children and later of adolescents. A further influence came from the literature I read which encouraged me to write articles on the subject for such magazines as Roots and Youth in society. As a consequence of my past experiences and these articles this research project took shape and I make no apology for the fact that feelings and experiences have entered into the research process. The pre-occupying concern of this research is to investigate the degree of equality in presentations of white, black, Asian and Oriental groups in comics and magazines for children. The central aim is to locate any unjustifiable differences in the presentations. Each of the Chapters in this study attempts to deal with a specific area, related to racism and collectively they attempt to supply evidence to support an argument that presentation of black group characters is mostly concerned with negative portrayals. The opening chapter commences with a declaration of aims and objectives and proceeds with a discussion of the nature of racism followed by theoretical approaches and the general methodology available for analysing comic texts. A standard content analysis is adopted in order to extract the necessary figures involved in the distribution of imagery across the ethnic groups presented in the comic literature. Without this preliminary exercise another important objective of the study would be impossible, that is, to interpret the figures in a more refined, qualitative manner in the hope that some of the subtle details of stereotyping will emerge. Chapter Two reviews the historical development of comics and magazines and the influence of this development on racial imagery. Chapter Three concentrates on the construction of appropriate headings under which to place ethnic groups appearing in the comics in order that they might be analysed by the use of checklists which draw on the common usage of stereotypes, present established checklists, and other literature for children. Chapters Four, Five, Six and Seven focus on the analysis of a number of specific aspects commencing with areas where black Asian and Oriental characters are included and excluded. Chapter Five takes issue with the presentation of principal characters, while chapter Six investigates the reality or otherwise of a number of racial myths. Chapter Seven concerns itself with the distribution and nature of verbal and non-verbal contacts between ethnic groups and Chapter Eight consists of a number of case studies using the original visual comic material in an attempt to illustrate the nature of the racism within the comic sample. The final chapter is a review of the findings from the comics and magazines brought together and conclusions drawn from the data to see if there are a significant number of unfair differences in the presentations of white, black, Asian and Oriental groups. After a brief summary of the major findings the final chapter discusses some of the conclusions and tries to interpret these conclusions within a wide theoretical framework.

Becoming professional involves identity work The way in which people are 'transformed' into professionals has a fundamental impact on selves, yet the process has received scant attention from researchers Based on ethnographic research, involving in-depth interviews, participant observation and documentary analysis, this thesis examines the social practices responsible for 'shaping' undergraduate occupational therapy (OT) students into professional people By situating the everyday experiences of OT students in broader theoretical debates about structure and agency and the social construction of identity I suggest that the professional person is socially constructed The process involves being externally defined by others, which has implications for self-definition However, notwithstanding evidence that becoming professional is narrowly prescribed, I highlight a certain capacity for agency The notion of becoming professional is presented as a progressive narrative of the lived experiences of the OT students The narrative illustrates the tensions and uncertainties inherent in change as students begin to position themselves in relation to varying practices and discourses implicit in OT Their ambiguous location in terms of the professionalisation process is highlighted through a need for social support that is vital for definition and re-definition of self-hood Immersion in practice partially resolves the ambiguity of developing professional identities as students learn to respond to its demands For example, the taking up of caring discourses provides a focus of particular importance within OT The thesis contributes to an understanding of professional socialisation at both theoretical/conceptual and practical levels Social constructionism offers a lens through which professional socialisation may be viewed from an entirely new perspective Furthermore, increased awareness of the dynamics of the process has implications for the practice-base of OT education Finally, greater insight into the lived experience of becoming professional may benefit potential students

The main purpose of this research is to explore the interconnections between reproduction and production, and women's roles in a wide range of social and economic process in the Caribbean in general, and in Antigua specifically. The focus on Antigua allows for an examination of women's integration into the social, political and economic development of a small Caribbean territory. Using gender theory as an analytical tool, I analyze the results of a large social survey of Antiguan women (504), together with data obtained from my own interviews and from a wide range of previously unavailable and unpublished secondary data. These have enabled me to demonstrate both the contributions Antiguan women have made to development, and the constraints which they have confronted over the period 1834- 1990. The thesis is organized into eight chapters. Divided into two parts, it begins by examining a wide range of sociological and anthropological theories which purport to explain the nature of Caribbean family organization, and relations between men and women, namely the concepts of matrifocality and male marginality. It also looks at the utility of gender theory for analyzing Caribbean social reality. Chapter Two moves on to look at the contemporary situation of Caribbean women, particularly with respect to national development policy. Chapter Three then turns to the situation confronting Antiguan women from Emancipation in 1834 up to the present. Part Two moves away from the general Caribbean situation to an analysis of data gathered in 1980/81 on Antiguan women by the Women in the Caribbean Project, University of the West Indies. Chapter Four sets this data in perspective, while Chapters Five through Seven examine in detail the impact of education, work, and the family on women's lives. One of the major purposes of this section is to listen to what the women themselves have to say from their own experience. This section is then followed by a concluding chapter. In conclusion, we see that despite new opportunities and different behavioral patterns of women and men, Antigua is still very much a patriarchal society with power concentrated in the hands of a few men. Women's self-perception and social interaction continues to be mediated by their ascribed gender roles, and both young and old women conform to traditional gender stereotypes. It is hoped that the data generated by and included in this thesis will contribute to a cross-cultural perspective on women in development as well as offer a critical contribution to current and future research on Antigua.

The thesis develops from the introduction and analysis of an heuristic methodology, to a dedicated chapter that considers the issues raised in respect of minority ethnic citizenship, particularly in relation to identity. This chapter includes questions of semiotics, discourse, and the development of a dynamic model of change incorporating these related concepts. A critical perspective on the Crick Report follows, and examines whether the report does in fact give 'due regard' (CRE, 2001, p7) to issues of anti-racism and minority ethnic citizenship. The data chapters then present the results of field study both from within the Local Education Authority (LEA) as an institution, and from various schools throughout the county. Both contain comprehensive case studies; the LEA chapter introducing a 'typology of engagement' in relation to the issues raised by minority ethnic citizenship, whilst the pupil data returns to further analysis of identity related issues. The concluding chapter endeavours to pull the research findings together, considering the implications for both policy and practice, with attention given to further research that might follow from the findings. At the same time consideration is given to various texts and contexts presented throughout the thesis in order that these may be considered in overview from a more holistic perspective.