This thesis examines Shanghai’s urbanisation by applying Henri Lefebvre’s theories of the production of space and everyday life. A review of Lefebvre’s theories indicates that each mode of production produces its own space. Capitalism is perpetuated by producing new space and commodifying everyday life. Applying Lefebvre’s regressive-progressive method as a methodological framework, this thesis periodises Shanghai’s history to the ‘semi-feudal, semi-colonial era’, ‘socialist reform era’ and ‘post-socialist reform era’. The Shanghai World Exposition 2010 was chosen as a case study to exemplify how urbanisation shaped urban experience. Empirical data was collected through semi-structured interviews. This thesis argues that Shanghai developed a ‘state-led/-participation mode of production’. The state redefined its distributive role to act as both a regulator and a market player, and manipulated its regulatory power to generate revenue from land commodification. The state thus accelerated urbanisation by relocating residents to new towns. Inhabitants’ daily routines were rearranged. Lefebvre envisaged an urban revolution to occur when urbanisation is complete. But my data illustrates that civil resistance is not widely supported because urbanisation has generally improved living quality. This thesis concludes by examining the possibility of Shanghai’s resuming its status as the site of modernisation and the critique of modernity.

Computer and telecommunications technologies are commonly thought to provide solutions to the quantitative and qualitative demands on modern financial reporting. Extensible Business Reporting Language (‘XBRL’) is an emergent technology that is purported to ‘democratise’ financial reporting. This investigation of whether XBRL democratises financial reporting is undertaken from a constructivist perspective. An interpretive research framework is regarded as appropriate to the current maturity XBRL. XBRL-knowledgeable individuals are asked whether they agree with the assertion that 'XBRL democratises financial reporting'. In addition, their perceptions of each of 'XBRL', 'financial reporting' and 'democratisation' are elicited in order to assess whether they have a common interpretation of the assertion. Sixty-seven percent of survey respondents profess to agree with the assertion, 13% explicitly disagree and 20% are non-committal. However, interpretation and analysis of each of the concepts reveal statistically significant relationships between responses to the assertion and interpretations of its constituent concepts. It is concluded that respondents are not agreeing and disagreeing about the same phenomena. This thesis illustrates that the rhetoric of technological determinism does not yet describe the reality of the relationship between financial reporting and XBRL. However, as XBRL matures, the approach adopted in this thesis may be re-applied to monitor perceptions of XBRL over time.

Although the number of female leaders worldwide has yet to achieve par with that of male leaders, a growing number of female heads of state and female candidacies for that position signal that transformations are underway. Among them is Chile’s current president, Michelle Bachelet. Her first election generated significant debate since she possessed none of the qualities considered essential for eligibility. Attempts to lend logic to the contradictions imposed by that event are still largely inconclusive. This study investigates a deeper root system in Chilean history for causal factors with trajectories that lead into the twenty-first century. Under consideration are ways in which women attain political power, their management of power, and the role of the body politic in both of those. The latter part of the study establishes correlations between recent developments in the Chilean political landscape of female leadership and similar developments across the globe. During Bachelet’s first election, media coined the term—the “Bachelet Phenomenon”—to reference her unprecedented and improbable attainment of the presidency. This research consults a diverse body of resources to offer one interpretation of that. The findings contribute new perspectives to the existing body of literature that can be expanded by future research.

Despite the waning prominence of the vast and diverse literature on globalization, the debate remains unresolved, as globalization’s logics continue to buttress neoliberal economics (Hay & Smith, 2013; Smith, 2005). As Cameron and Palan posited thirteen years ago, “the spread of globalization in practice continues unabated” (2004). Of importance herein is how neoliberal globalization is understood, as a concept and in material terms (Marsh, 2009), as well as how it has spread spatiotemporally (Peck & Tickell, 2012). Contributing to constructivist globalization scholarship, this thesis argues that ideas are central to how “material reality” or “globalization in practice” is shaped and understood (Schmidt, 2013). Henceforth, it interrogates the space for alternatives to globalization’s logics by focusing on the ways ideas shape policy and normative understandings by (respectively) examining the IMF-Argentine consultations (1976-2006), and the discourses of the financial press (1997-2006). The methodology builds on Broome and Seabrooke’s (2007) historical content analysis. The findings show that in both cases ideas entertained came from within globalization’s logics, resulting in policies and a discourse that reflected and reinforced these ideas. Ultimately, this thesis shows the centrality of ideas to “real outcomes,” as well as how they are used to construct understandings thereof.

This thesis seeks to make a contribution to the debate concerning the adoption of the language of empowerment and participation into Post-Washington Consensus development policy. Whilst it is acknowledged that the de-politicisation approach makes some valid contributions, it is argued that it suffers from a tendency to focus on the construction of development discourse. This has rather one-sidely led to the conclusion that the concept of empowerment has been used as an instrument of subjection. It is argued that the transformation approach offers a more nuanced analysis of participatory development practices that seeks to identify the opportunities that exist for their re-politicisation. Accordingly, the concept of empowerment should instead be examined as part of an ongoing political struggle to construct meaning and to harness action towards progressive political goals. This thesis makes a theoretical contribution to this debate by extending and consolidating the transformation approach through neo-Gramscian theory. Through its analysis of Fair Trade in the Kenyan coffee industry, it provides further empirical substantiation for the transformation approach. Whilst acknowledging the limitations of the World Bank’s approach to empowerment, this research identifies the opportunities and possibilities that exist for reasserting an alternative approach to producer empowerment based on the more radical notions of critical consciousness and collective social action. Given the highly unequal power relations that characterise the global coffee industry, this supports the argument put forward by the transformation approach that participatory development needs to explicitly engage with the wider power structures and institutions that perpetuate exclusion and inequality.

This thesis examines the religious/political relationship between George W. Bush (the 43rd President of the United States) and conservative Catholics. Served by the over-lapping ideology of conservatism it presents a unique insight into the pragmatic, strategic and functionary role each played in the political service of the other. Unlike other studies this work argues that conservative Catholics, not Evangelicals, were at the vanguard of Bush’s political drive. Although a transitory arrangement – centred around a select set of characters - the religious, ideological and political dynamic surrounding Bush was purposefully informed by careful, empirical analysis. Apprised by decades of examples: of challenges and changes, mistakes and opportunities, we see certain individuals move beyond ideas and analysis into coordinated organisation. The narrative of this transition, its players and outcomes argues that faith and politics deliberately negotiated with one another to strategically gain a moment for political traction. This negotiation was not, as has been frequently argued, a negotiation with religion or theology singularly in mind; but politics and policy. Mutual ideology, political affiliation and core aspects of their particular religious creeds facilitated this.

The focus of this thesis is \(resistance\) \(to\) \(peace\) \(education\) in the conflict-ridden island of Cyprus. Departing from the premise that education, and in particular antagonistic historical narratives immersed in demonised articulations of the Other, have obstructed the transformation of the conflict, I attempt to uncover what is crippling constructive dialogue and critical thinking when it comes to peace education in the Greek-Cypriot community and bring forward ways to improve this. In particular, I analyse negative hegemonic discourses over potential changes to history textbooks that not only distort the objectives of peace education, but also exacerbate existing fears and insecurities. These nationalist discourses present changes associated with peace education as a betrayal and threat to the nationalist struggle, a process I argue constitutes the \(securitization\) of peace education. Through the ‘politics of peace education’ framework, I show how within a particular community, institutions and discourses both constitute and are constitutive of, asymmetric power relationships that act as impediments to peace education. I expose and interrogate the conditions of possibility that ensure resistance to peace education is not only reproduced, but is also successful through the exercise of asymmetrical power relations.

This thesis attempts an intervention in popular music classification. It argues that popular musicians do not only choose the titles to their works, but go further to define the genres of these works. The dynamic at play is such that most popular musicians claim to produce works of different and new genres with each new work they create. By engaging with the works of a selection of Nigerian popular musicians, the thesis demonstrates that the disorderliness in popular music branding can be restricted. Through a critical discourse analysis of the textual elements of the material and of ‘alternative’ audience contributions, the thesis advocates a new genre of popular music, namely the genre of ‘political music’. This distinctive genre is extractable from the otherwise conventional genres of popular music, and is composed of three comprehensible subgenres namely protest political music, unity political music and terrestrial praise political music. The study’s selection is made of popular music material from hip hop, reggae, afro-beat, and juju genres. They are delivered in popular Nigerian languages ranging between Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, English and Pidgin English.

Henry Longueville Mansel (1820-71), Anglican theologian and philosopher, hastypically been remembered as a Kantian agnostic whose ideas led to those of Herbert Spencer. This thesis provides a critical challenge to this picture, and offers a thorough revisioning of Mansel's theology in context. First, concerning misrepresentation, I argue it was Spencer himself who, having had a youthful relationship with Mansel's sister Katherine, developed a prejudice against him, distorted the reception of his work, and promoted the caricature image of Mansel as an unwitting agnostic and "Kantist". With the help of Liberals such as Goldwin Smith and Leslie Stephen, Spencer's portrayal has stuck. I refute this picture and offer an alternative reading of Mansel. Second, concerning personalism, I show that Mansel was essentially a theistic personalist, indebted to the traditions of Bishop Browne, Bishop Butler, and Scottish common sense philosophy. Mansel represents a mid-Victorian example of "IThou" philosophical theology, grounded in the religious practice of Christian prayer. Mansel's theistic personalism had much in common with Newman's theology, and I explore the ways in which Newman's Grammar of Assent was written in response to Mansel's Bampton Lectures. Third, concerning politics, I argue that Spencer's distorted picture of Mansel as a Kantian agnostic served the political interests of partisan Liberals, and was aggressively spread by them because of Mansel's own Tory commitments. Located in context, Mansel, is here interpreted with reference to key personal relationships and personal networks, including his connection with leading Tories, such as Lord Carnarvon and Benjamin Disraeli. Crucially, I interpret his controversies with Frederick Denison Maurice and John Stuart Mill with reference to the political events of 1859 and 1865. These controversies were simultaneously religious and political, and receive a careful contextual reading.

This thesis considers the role of the Zhenotdel (Woman's Bureau) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in Soviet Central Asia through a close reading of its activist journal Kommunistka from 1920-1930. This research seeks to address conflicting narratives within academic literature concerning the Zhenotdel's status within the CPSU, and in particular between accounts of its role in Central Asia rather than in European parts of the Soviet Union. Historians who have written on a campaign, known as the Hujum, launched by the CPSU in a direct attack on indigenous society in Central Asia in 1927, have tended to view the Zhenotdel as a compliant part of the Party apparatus. This interpretation contrasts with accounts of the Zhenotdel's far more problematic relationship with the Party outside of Central Asia during the same period. A close reading of Kommunistka throughout the entire period of the Zhenotdel's work in Central Asia has not previously been undertaken, although the journal has been relied on along with other source materials by various historians. Therefore, this study brings new and original material and analysis to further our understanding of the Zhenotdel's activities in Central Asia. It provides a close examination of the views of activists and leaders, and a better understanding of the Zhenotdel project on its own terms, as opposed to the goals of the CPSU. The shifts within Zhenotdel policy over the decade can also be situated within the changing conditions of the 1920s within Soviet Central Asia, and the discussions within its ranks. This thesis analyses the opinions expressed by Zhenotdel activists about indigenous women, along with the methods employed to interact with these women. It gives a detailed account of the Zhenotdel's social, economic and legal strategy and contrasts it with that of the CPSU. This thesis also considers the relationship of the Zhenotdel to the CPSU in the context of Central Asia. It shows how the tensions and conflicts within that relationship, already discussed through research focusing on the experience in the RSFSR and other European Republics, expressed themselves in the specific conditions of Central Asia. This research throws new light on many of the assumptions made about the Zhenotdel's programme in Central Asia and shows how this programme actually diverged very significantly from that of the Party leadership. A revaluation of the role of the Zhenotdel in the Hujum has been possible, based on this study. It shows that the involvement of the Zhenotdel in the Hujum and all other aspects of its activity in Central Asia has to be understood on the terms of an organisation which was committed to a woman-centred socialism. Ultimately this research shows the Zhenotdel in a struggle to make progress for its own programme while at the same time seeking to establish itself as a core part of the Soviet strategy in Central Asia.