Diss. phil. I Zürich (Austausch beschränkt). / Im Buchh.: Wiesbaden : VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Literaturverz.

This thesis seeks to discuss the ways in which canonical Francophone Algerian authors, writing in the late-colonial period (1945 - 1962), namely Kateb Yacine, Mohammed Dib, Mouloud Feraoun, Mouloud Mammeri and Assia Djebar, approached the representation of Algerian women through literature. The thesis, divided into five chapters, each focusing on the late-colonial oeuvre of one writer, initially makes use of Bourdieusian conceptions relating to a gendered "dissymétrie fondementale" and concomitant Spivakian notions of representation, to argue that a masculine domination of public fields of representation contributed to, if not ensured, a post-colonial marginalization of women and a reduction of their public role. However, it is the principal argument of this thesis that the canonical writers of the period, who were mostly male, both textually acknowledge their inability to articulate the experiences and subjectivity of the feminine Other, to represent women, and deploy a remarkable variety of formal and conceptual innovations in an attempt to tentatively produce evocations of Algerian femininity that seek to upset or highlight the structural imbalance of masculine symbolic hegemony in literary and socio-political milieux. Though this thesis does not shy from investigating those aspects of its corpus that produce ideologically conditioned masculinist representations, it chiefly seeks to articulate a shared reluctance concerning representativity and an omnipresent literary subversion of a masculine subject pole. It deploys formal narrative analysis, Lacanian psychoanalytical frameworks and a conceptualisation of "pessimistic" form to achieve these ends and to argue that the texts of its corpus discreetly militate for a communal feminine self-representation to be inaugurated, before outlining in its conclusion a post-colonial Algerian feminine literary tradition, in particular contemporary symbolic conduits such as la bande dessinée that might serve as effective motors for progression in gender relations.

The thesis investigates the interaction that developed between a major art dealer, Thos. Agnew and Sons (Agnews), and a principal public collection, the London National Gallery, from 1855 to 1928. Agnews played a crucial role in the life of the National Gallery and greatly facilitated the museum accession of important paintings, such as the Madonna Ansidei by Raphael, the Rokeby Venus by Velazquez, the Portrait of Doge Vincenzo Morosini by Tintoretto, and many others. In turn, collaborating with the National Gallery allowed Agnews to penetrate the international Old Masters market and reach for higher social standing. Through the analysis of ten case studies of acquisitions, which are supported by new archival evidence and are contextualised within a broader historical and theoretical framework, this thesis charts the emergence, development and decline of the rapport between the two organisations. It analyses how Agnews and the National Gallery began as two unconnected entities in the mid-nineteenth century, explores how their distinct trajectories turned into a close, collaborative rapport during the 1880s, and finally examines how in the third decade of the twentieth century they separated and initiated a newly detached professional relationship. Appropriating sociological theories by Pierre Bourdieu, Bruno Latour, Viviana Zelizer and others, this study investigates museum acquisitions as resulting from complex interplays of cultural and commercial forces within the field of cultural production. Acquisitions are further enlightened by the analysis of the networks that underpin them, which provide additional evidence on how economic factors are embedded within broader social constructs. By detailing and locating these processes and relationships within the historical context of a broad shift towards commercialisation, yet demonstrating that cultural elements are part of the dealers activities and that commercial values are an intrinsic component of the museum, this study provides an insight into the historical origins of modern-day relationships between museums and art dealers.

Diese Arbeit ist ein Beitrag zur Erforschung des geschlechtsspezifischen Habitus. Anhand der Arbeit von Pierre Bourdieu, insbesondere seiner Konzepte von Habitus und männlicher Dominanz, untersuchte ich, wie Frauen die Ungleichheit der Geschlechter normalisieren und wie sie in jeder sozialen Klasse im heutigen Brasilien anders aussehen. Die Aspekte der Frauenidentität, die sich auf Schwächegefühle beziehen, die in einer eingebürgerten Form innerhalb der sozialen Klasse durch informelle Bildung übertragen werden. Meine Methodik wurde nach Souza (2011) Arbeitüber die soziale Ungleichheit in Brasilien entwickelt, . Somit wurden30 Mütter in verschiedenen sozialen Schichten interviewt.. Die Recherche beobachtete die Wechselwirkungen zwischen Müttern und Töchtern in ihren Häusern. Die informellen Bildungsansätze der befragten Mütter waren unterschiedlich. Der Diskurs der Mütter über die Ralé (Randschicht) war anders als die Mütter in der Oberschicht. Wir werden in Kapitel 6 ausführlich auf die Teilungsklasse eingehen. Ich habe untersucht, wie die Mütter ihren Töchter Identitäten, dessen einbetten, was es bedeutet, „Frau zu sein“, einschließlich der Wahrnehmung ihrer körperlichen Fähigkeiten und Verhaltensweisen, mit denen sie Gefühle, Verwundbarkeit,Schwäche und Zukunftsperspektiven ausgleichen. Nach meiner Forschung wurden unterschiedliche Konzepte von „Weiblichkeit“ gefunden. Einige Frauen hatten durch stark geschlechtsspezifische Habitus ein Verständnis für ihren Körper als relativ schwach und verletzlich erlangt. Die meisten Frauen hatten in jeder sozialen Klasse ein eigenes Verständnis dafür, wo sie eine Rolle spielen und was die Gesellschaft von ihnen verlangte - auch wenn es unbewusst war, aber von Handlungen und Aussagen wahrgenommen wurde. / This thesis is a contribution to research on gendered habitus. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, particularly the concepts of habitus and male domination, I explored women’s normalization of gender inequality and its distinct manifestations in every social class in contemporary Brazil. The aspects of female identity that relate to feelings of weakness are transmitted in a naturalized form within a woman’s social class and through informal education. The focus of this research is the possibility that women can transfer aspects of their identity through social practice on a daily social practices and that the way to being a woman in a lower class, for example, is unlike being a woman in upper class in Brazil. I drew on Souza’s (2011) work on social inequality in Brazil to develop my methodology and interviewed 30 mothers from different social classes. This research observed the interactions between mothers and daughters in their homes. I found that the informal education approaches of the mothers interviewed varied across social class. The discourse of mothers from the Ralé (marginalized class) differed from the discourse of mothers from the upper class. In chapter six, I describe this class division in detail. I explored how mothers inscribe the identities of what it means “to be woman”, including perceptions of their physical capabilities, compensatory behaviors to combat feelings of vulnerability and weakness, and future prospects. I found different concepts of “womanhood” in my research. Some women had acquired an understanding of their bodies as relatively weak and vulnerable through strongly gendered habitus. Most of the women in each social class had an understanding of their role within society - even if it was subconscious, perceptible only through actions and statements.

This thesis takes a closer look at the phenomena of taste in relation to kitsch, art and luxury, analyzing a visual campaign, by the luxury brand Louis Vuitton. The visual campaign is made by Louis Vuitton to promote a collaboration with the postmodern artist Cindy Sherman. In her art Cindy Sherman is stepping away from modern aesthetics turning towards nostalgia and, anti- elitism. In a provocative act she brings in traits of kitsch and other pop cultural references to her art and exposes it to a conflicted art world. Using the well accommodated theoretical framework by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, I seek to understand the underlying class related aspects of taste occurring in the collaboration between the two. In doing so I investigate the very use of Pierre Bourdieu’s theories it self, and I look to answer how these can help with revelation in a contemporary context. Later the use of Roland Barthes theories on modern myths, will be brought into play, when I shell decode the overall mythical story on taste, that Louis Vuitton, wishes to communicate through the campaign. It shell be concluded that Pierre Bourdieu’s theories, was very helpfull with pointing out the campaigns connection to cultural capital and different classified expressions of taste, that connects it to a growing middelclass, who wants an access to the world of luxury. In the very end I debate the question of taste looking forward, taking into consideration Bourdieu’s critics, to whom the classification of taste is a relic from the past.

Högt presterande tjejer i gymnasieskolan erbjuds positioner som ger dem ett högt feminiserat kulturellt kapital men att de presterar bra behöver inte betyda att de är fria från sitt könshabitus och därmed mer jämställda. Jag har följt tretton tjejer på gymnasiekolans språkliga inriktning och studerat deras vardag i undervisningssituationer samt lyssnat till deras egen syn på sina prestationer. De aspekter jag särskilt lagt vikt vid är hur det feminina kapitalet reproduceras genom könshabitus, symboliskt våld samt det androcentriska synsättet. För att studera deras livsvärld har jag använt den etnografiska metoden och presenterar min empiri i form av en narrativ berättelse. Mitt resultat visar att tjejerna är framgångsrika och kompetenta men eftersom de erbjuds vissa subjektspositioner utifrån skolans förväntningar och utifrån det androcentriska heteronomin är deras höga prestationer dock ett feminiserat kapital. / High achieving girls at upper secondary school are given positions that give them a high feminized cultural capital, however, their high achievement does not translate into a position free from gender habitus. I followed thirteen girls at upper secondary school with language as major in their lifeworld in the classroom. I have also been listening to their own stories about their achievements. I have especially put notice into how the feminine capital is reproduced thru gender habitus, symbolic violence and the androcentric heteronomy. Furthermore, I have used the ethnographic method in order to study their everyday life in school and I present my data as a narrative story. My result shows that high achieving girls are highly competent and successful in the discourse of the school, however, the expectations of the school and the androcentric heteronomy offer them certain subject positions which make their high achievements a feminized capital.

The thesis inquires into the entanglement between the unsettlement of the Greek model of social reproduction that heavily relies on self-regulated property ownership and the emergence of vigilant violence on behalf of local property owners against undocumented migrants in the relegated neighborhood of Ksiladika in Thessaloniki’s West End. It probes the extent to which incidents of vigilant violence can be used as indicators of the structural deficiencies in the Greek housing system and property paradigm. 
 First, the thesis points to the distinct historic trajectory of the Greek housing system and property regime that is carved by a strategy of minimal involvement of state authority since the end of the Greek Civil War (1949). In contrast to the (North) European paradigm, the Greek model of social reproduction is marked by a normalized laissez-faire attitude in the domain of housing and by the hypertrophy of the family institution that emerged as a substitute system of social protection vis- a-vis the atrophy of administration. The thesis then points to a political discourse investing in the figure of the householder, sketched as the ‘normal’ Greek subject par excellence, within which self- government connects up with the imperatives of good government, in times when access to housing has become scarce and social insecurity widespread. 
 I focus my study on the neighborhood of Ksiladika in Thessaloniki, where as of late a vigilant campaign of evictions of undocumented migrant squatters on behalf of local property holders was launched. I suggest that this campaign of vigilance is not an act of ‘pure racism’ but is linked with the unsettlement of the Greek model of social reproduction, the scarcity of outright homeownership as a resource of symbolic and material value and the particularity of Ksiladika, that is at once a stigmatized neighborhood and a land of promise. 
 I rely on data collected through micro-ethnographic fieldwork, participant observation and semi-structured interviews with local property holders in Ksiladika. I use the conceptual tools of social space, field of power and symbolic power found in the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant, as heuristic tools to identify the significance of property and home ownership in shaping perceptions of local property holders towards their neighborhood and in defining their actions. I present my empirical findings clarifying the diversity of choices, expectations and actions of different actors, active in this propertied field of power in the studied area. 
 The thesis draws to an end by using the findings from Ksiladika to contribute to a discussion that revolves around Wacquant’s three basic theses on the emergence of advanced urban marginality as an effect of the neoliberal state crafting on a global scale. First, I argue that in regions where the social state was inexistent, the implementation of neoliberal policies did not happen in a way identical to what can be observed in the North and do not entail a reengineering of the state. Then I suggest that Wacquant's schematization of a Janus-like Centaur state that performs liberalism for those at the top of the social scale and punitive paternalism for those at the social bottom immured in precarity does not hold, due to the expanding zone of precarity. Eventually, I suggest that neoliberal governing is not attained merely by the penal apparatus of the neoliberal Leviathan, but via a governing through subjects who internalize the postulates of the entrepreneurial ideology mediated through homeownership in times when the resource is scarce.

The aim of this paper is exploring questions regarding the problem of absenteeism among high-school students in Sweden. Fifteen students attending an urban high-school have been interviewed about their views and experiences of absenteeism. The author analyzes the students’ answers by taking into account two different sociological approaches which give two different explanations about the way young people experience and estimate education. The French sociologist Bourdieu theorized that differences in cultural capital influence the permanent internalization of patterns of thought and behavior. Bourdieu defined as habitus the result of the process of internalization of cultural and social structures which affects the way individuals think and act. The German pedagogue Thomas Ziehe explored the changes in norms and tradition connected with the modernization of society. Ziehe argued that we are witnessing a period of cultural release and erosion crisis that have deeply affected and changed the lives of young people today.  What does influence students’ attitude towards absenteeism? Does absenteeism reflect different possession of cultural resources or may be explained by the changes in norms that have occurred over recent decades? The findings of this study show that the students’ socio-economical background still matters in affecting their opinions and attitude towards absenteeism, but that is not an exhaustive argument in explaining all the reasons why students do not go till school. The students’ answer suggested that the relation to the teacher may be a determining factor in explaining absenteeism.

The selection process in tertiary education in Greece is characterized by a competitive and grade-oriented system that lays the foundations for the extensive use of private educational services. Family inclination towards private expenditure in education raises arguments for the conversion of public education into a private commodity. This thesis examines how a specific middle class group in an urban setting, the city of Larissa, deals with the system of private investments in upper secondary education. In particular, in the light of Bourdieusian concepts, this study attempts to analyse parental choice and strategies that families set in action for achieving educational success and the social advancement of their offspring, investigating also the role of education for middle class parents. 15 semi-structured interviews were carried out, delivering insightful narratives of parents who had experienced the national examination process. Interviews gave prominence to the unquestionable value of educational credentials for a successful educational and professional trajectory. For the accomplishment of quality education, parents deployed their cultural, economic, and social assets, which enabled them to be effective in the educational marketplace. Choice presented a complex task for parents, which presupposed an intensive devotion of time and energy. Accordingly, educational strategies started from the child’s early upbringing, being employed systematically at the upper secondary level of education. In fact, parental strategies appeared to be a “natural” process pertaining to responsible and caring parenthood. Parents took for granted that children should be satisfactorily equipped with valuable educational qualifications, which were seen as a necessity for a successful future, and an upward trajectory.

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