Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 312-338).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Bowling Green State University, 2006. / Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 186 p. Includes bibliographical references.

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Although International Relations scholars make frequent reference to the Middle Ages, most of our ideas about the period are not based on extensive empirical studies. Instead, they rely on a common imaginary of Medieval Europe as an unspecified and idealised system of overlapping authority and multiple loyalties. This thesis recovers a historical understanding of the late-medieval international order by focusing on the fundamental conceptions of the organization of the social held by medieval international practitioners. In particular, it examines a specific community of practice: lawyers of the ius commune from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. In doing so, this thesis makes three contributions to the IR literature. From a theoretical point of view, it adds to both English School and constructivist studies of historical international order by focusing on the process of differentiation through representation, as well as on contestation within it. In doing so, it argues for a move from a static understanding of order to the more dynamic notion of ordering. Secondly, it contributes methodologically to the historical study of ideas by proposing a methodological emphasis on communities of practitioners as a middle-ground between abstract constructivism and narrow Skinnerian analysis that facilitates the historically grounded consideration of the ordering role of language and ideas. Finally, empirically, this thesis demonstrates the analytical leverage gained from these theoretical moves by providing a detailed account of the international order from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, focusing not only on stability, but also on the contentious process of ordering. As a result, this thesis provides a new understanding of late-medieval notions of political authority, community, polity, and identity, while simultaneously highlighting the politics of representation behind them.

The principal aim of this thesis is to elaborate a politicized reading of Amartya Sen's Capability Approach. It explores how capabilities are augmented through the forging of contentious political subjectivities. In it, I build on the criticism that Sen's framework can be more sensitive to questions of power and politics. Against some of his critics, however, I argue that its 'politicization' must focus analytical attention on politics as the struggle to produce subjects rather than limiting its understanding to negotiations over authority, resources and allocations. I draw on quantitative and qualitative analysis of ethnographic data from rural eastern India to substantiate my argument. The first two chapters outline the contours of the debates and introduce the social, economic and political life of the study localities. Each of the four subsequent chapters elucidates the manner in which the contentious processes through which political subjectivity are forged augments capabilities. In Chapter 3 I advance the case that any discussion on capabilities needs to analyze how subjects interrogate the relations of domination and subordination which they have hitherto been compelled to inhabit. Based on an analysis of the contentions spawned by the Indian Government's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, I point to how the notion of cooperative conflict is helpful in understanding these processes. In Chapter 4, I draw attention to the analytic importance that needs to be accorded to 'voice' in order to understand how subjects contest and reconstitute these relationships: I base my analysis on the claims made on elected representatives by different groups of people in respect to 'poverty cards'. This emphasis leads in Chapter 5 to an investigation of the ways in which agonistic exchanges in public spaces augments capabilities: this I do through an examination of two specific disputes involving a variety of local actors. I develop these insights further in Chapter 6 to show how our understanding of the processes through which capabilities may be enhanced gains analytically from an analysis of the manner in which subjects construct their identities. Chapter 7 concludes.

Derived from a marxist/liberal humanist view of power, conventional critiques and historical accounts of the socio-medical sciences in South Africa see only their power to repress and negate the true bodily attributes and authentic person of the African. In so doing, they ignore the productive capacity of these knowledges and practices as a manifestation of what Michel Foucault termed "disciplinary" power, by which the human body is manufactured and made manageable as an object of medical knowledge and industrial utilisation. Accordingly, this thesis offers just such a Foucaultian reading of western socio-medical knowledge in South Africa to demonstrate how it has operated to fabricate the bodies of Africans as visible objects possessed of distinct attributes that have provoked particular strategies for their surveillance, management, and government in health and disease. / Psychology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Psychology)

The thesis proposes a theory for the development of substantive representation among social movement organisations (SMOs). Substantive representation (SR) is the extent to which political institutions advance the policy interests of their constituents, in particular the most disenfranchised. Despite their noble proclamations, institutions of representative democracy often fail to advance the interests of groups who have been ignored and absent at the proverbial table. The thesis establishes a causal process to explain the divergence in SR outcomes among informal SMOs, or all-volunteer groups that disavow formal hierarchy in favour of egalitarian modes of decision-making. It utilises a case study of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), an umbrella organisation dedicated to ending the HIV/AIDS crisis in the United States and worldwide. It explains an anomalous story of SR attainment through the ACT UP Philadelphia chapter, compared to sister groups in New York City and Boston. The analysis draws from 92 semi-structured interviews, 13 months of participant observation, periodical review, and archival databases. ACT UP Philadelphia translated common SMO intentions of inclusivity into the uncommon rituals of practice. It forged a deliberate pipeline to invest not only in the presence but also the power of disenfranchised people with HIV, people too dark and poor to interest counterpart groups in other cities. Through an analytic retelling of ACT UP's history, the thesis argues that the fulfilment of SR depends on the ability of SMOs to appeal to member self-interest. Critically, SMOs can offer material incentives and nurture feelings of debt and obligation: causal steps to recruitment and sustainability of a heterogeneous membership. In building a crucial if contentious core of dissimilar people and partnerships, SMOs can unleash an oft-unrealised power for collective action and SR, by and for disenfranchised peoples who had thought change to be impossible.

It is argued that South African feminism in the 1990's risks sabotaging itself as a movement and as a form of social critique because it has (1) not completely eradicated key positivist elements from its ontology and epistemology; (2) inadequately examined a crucial issue in an emancipatory social science, namely power; (3) increasingly opted for relativist and pragmatist perspectives in theorising women's oppression and social transformation. It is further argued that the over-reliance on relativism, standpoint theory and pragmatism is problematic for contemporary feminism. As an alternative, Bhaskar's transformational analysis of power in combination with an anti-racist feminism and social psychology is used to provide a robust framework within which complex social issues may be addressed. In this study, 16 female participants were interviewed about their experiences of living in an impoverished township. Themes identified in the data suggested that the theoretical perspectives used in the study provided insights into the subtleties and complexities of the operation of power in society. These insights enabled productive understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of development initiatives and political decision-making processes in the community, and the survival strategies of its women. It is hoped that research work of this sort could make a real contribution to the ongoing women's emancipation struggle in Port Alfred and similar communities.

Orientador: Verônica Fabrini Machado de Almeida / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Artes / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-16T05:47:04Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Frias_CassianeTomilhero_M.pdf: 3569078 bytes, checksum: d9c0428c2f4e4972db506b74c49433af (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / Resumo: Esta pesquisa propõe uma investigação sobre os aspectos políticos presentes nas obras de Antonin Artaud e as implicações do trabalho deste autor na relação entre teatro e poder. Levando em consideração a extensa obra de Artaud e sua grande contribuição para o teatro e para a cultura, visando fazer um recorte para este trabalho, escolhemos dar maior ênfase em escritos produzidos em dois períodos da vida do autor: a participação no movimento surrealista e o período de internação em asilos da França, principalmente em Rodez. Com intuito de trazer um caráter híbrido à pesquisa teatral, procuramos analisar o estudo das obras de Artaud à luz de conceitos advindos da filosofia, principalmente às questões que se referem às relações de poder abordadas por Michel Foucault. No último capítulo, propomos uma aproximação entre as propostas artaudianas e sua contribuição para o teatro hoje através de autores como Antônio Negri e Hans-Thie Lehman, visando discutir qual é o espaço do teatro atual nas relações de poder contemporâneas / Abstract: This research proposes an investigation about the political aspects in the works of Antonin Artaud and its implications to the relation between theater and power. Due the extension of his entire work and the impact through theater and culture, we decided to focus in his writings done in two periods of his life: the participation in the surrealist movement and the period of hospitalization in French asylums, mainly Rodez. In order to bring a hybrid character to theater research, we analised the study of Artaud's works through filosofical concepts, especially issues related to power relations pointed by Michel Foulcault. In the last chapter, we approach Artaud's proposals and contributions for today theater through authors such as Antonio Negri and Hans-Thie Lehman, trying to discuss which space is left to theater in contemporary power relations / Mestrado / Artes / Mestre em Artes

Orientador: Rubem Murilo Leão Rego / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-05T11:15:27Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Pascoal_Isaias_D.pdf: 17135356 bytes, checksum: 313940e099f76977965abd53766734a4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005 / Resumo: Esta pesquisa procura explicar a forma como a força de trabalho se reproduziu socialmente no sul de Minas no século XIX, constituindo-se no elemento fundamental da reprodução do sistema econômico que aí se configurou. Sem desconhecer a importância do poder condicionante das várias instâncias da vida social, notadamente da economia e da cultura, ela enfatiza a proeminência do poder politico, exercido em nível local e nacional pelos mais diversos sujeitos sociais, comoo ponto definidor do processo que permitiu a contínua sujeição da força de trabalho escrava, diversamente configurada, que conviveu ao lado de uma massa heterogênea de trabalhadores livres. Só no decorrer de um longo processo histórico foi possível o aparecimento de condições que impediram a continuidade do processo de reprodução social, conduzindo os vários atores à busca de novos arranjos capazes de sustentar a produção econômica e o status e a hierarquia social por ela sustentados / Abstract: This research aims at explaining the way work force has been produced socially in the South of Minas in the nineteenth century, basing on the fundamental element of the reproduction of the economic system that there took place. Not unknowing the importance of the conditioning power of the various levels of social life, especially economic and culture, it emphasizes the preeminence of the polítical power exercised in local and national level by the most diverged social subjects, as the defining point of the process which allow the continuous subordination of the slave work force, diversely configured, which existed together with a heterogeneous mass of free work. Only in the running of a long historic process was it possible the appearing of conditions which prevented the continuity of the process of social reproduction, leading the various actors in search of new arrangements capable of sustaining the economical production and status and the social hierarchy sustained by it / Doutorado / Doutor em Ciências Sociais