This thesis is concerned with the absence of substantive, functioning Palestinian cities, and of Palestinian urbanisation and urbanism in Israel. Framed and guided by conceptions of the city and public space, their potentialities, the possibilities they allow, and the challenges they pose to the state, the thesis using Umm al-Fahem as a case study seeks to investigate the Palestinian city in Israel, its materiality, the semiotics of its public space and socio-spatiality, and to deconstruct the historical, structural, political and social forces that shape its (un)making. Employing mixed qualitative methods of ethnography, photography, archival research, historical, sociological and discourse analysis, the thesis questions and deconstructs the nominal status of the city of Umm al-Fahem, the first Palestinian village to earn the official status of a city in Israel. It considers how to conceptualise Palestinian cities inside Israel and aims to give answers to questions such as: what can be made of Palestinian cities inside Israel? What kind of spatial configurations and arrangements are being formed and why? What kind of socio-political and cultural order is being formed and why? How does the city respond under (post)colonial conditions? Can there be a functioning Palestinian city and a fulfilment of the right to the city under (post)colonial conditions? Umm al-Fahem, the subject and object of research, suggests that the process unfolding is one of absenting the Palestinian city, depriving Palestinian citizens of the right to the city, and producing domesticated, suspended, fragmented city and citizens. The production and mastery of space is used as a technology of control to achieve this, and forms part of a governmentality project whose underlying objective is the management of Palestinians.

This thesis examines the cultures of shame in the latter half of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain. It offers a critical response to two oversimplified accounts of shame in the current non-historical literature: the traditional view, which identifies shame as a socially-constructed and morally-problematic emotion, and the recent revisionist view, which claims that shame is virtuous and entirely autonomous. By identifying shame as an emotion, a sense of honour, a moral sanction, a commodity, and a disciplinary weapon, and scrutinising it through the lens of religion, politeness, print, and law, this thesis explores how contemporaries experienced, interpreted, represented, and utilised shame for spiritual, moral, commercial, and judicial purposes over time. It demonstrates that shame, within different historical contexts, could be social as well as personal, morally virtuous as well as morally irrelevant or even bad. Shame was an essential religious emotion. Religious shame was a self-imposed and morally-virtuous emotion; it was desired and embraced by early modern Protestants, who saw it as a sign of piety and a means to come nearer to God. While religious shame was an emotion primarily concerning personal salvation, shame in a secular context was a socially-constructed concept dealing with a person’s public honour. Early modern people regarded shame as something of great moral and disciplinary value, which functioned as an inward restraint keeping people away from sin, and a form of community and judicial punishments. However, the moral and disciplinary characteristics of shame were not immutable; in the eighteenth century, shame faced the danger of being abused and reduced to a superficial and detrimental concept.

Over the past decade, NGOs and government agencies have helped millions of refugees repatriate to their countries of origin, providing them free flights, travel documentation, and modest stipends. This thesis considers when such repatriation assistance is morally permissible. Drawing on original data from East Africa, I distinguish between six sets of cases, which require six distinct policies. In the first set, refugees choose to return because they are unjustly detained by the government. In such cases, NGOs should avoid helping with return if their actions causally contribute to the government’s detention policy. In the second set of cases, refugees are not detained, but return to a country they know little about. In such cases, both NGOs and government agencies have duties to inform refugees of the risks of returning. If they fail to inform refugees of the risks, they are engaging in a form of wrongful immigration control. In the third set of cases, refugees regret returning and, based on this, NGOs and government agencies can predict that future refugees will likely also regret returning. I develop a novel theory of when future regret is a reason to deny a service, and apply this theory to the case of repatriation. In a fourth set of cases, refugees are paid a great deal of money to repatriate, and would not have returned had they not been paid to leave. I argue that paying refugees to repatriate is only permissible when conditions are safe in countries of origin. In a fifth set of cases, parents repatriate to high-risk countries with their children. I argue that parents, in general, do not have a right to live in a country unsafe for their children, and NGOs and government agencies should refuse to help with such returns. In a final set of cases, refugees of a minority ethnicity are provided generous assistance to leave, while refugees of the majority ethnicity are not. I argue that such discriminatory assistance is permissible only when third parties remain unharmed.

This thesis examines the genesis and evolution of the anti-discrimination norm directed at race and ethnicity. The thesis seeks to answer: how is the antidiscrimination norm linked to race and ethnicity produced and diffused transnationally and how is it internalised in domestic institutions and government practices? The inquiry mainly assesses the constructivist model of the norm life cycle proposed by Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink. The model presents the development of international norms as a process that consists of three stages: emergence, cascading and domestic internalisation driven by three different sets of actors who employ different mechanisms to bring about normative change. The thesis investigates and ultimately challenges certain assumptions of the proposed model by examining the factors that account for the construction and domestic institutionalisation of the racial anti-discrimination norm in five contexts – the USA (First and Second Reconstruction periods, 1865-1877 and 1954-1975), the UK (1960s-1970s), the EU (1990s-2000s), the Czech Republic (1990s- present) and Hungary (1990s-present). It uses process tracing to re-consider and problematise the model’s claims about the primary agents that drive the production and the institutionalisation of the anti-discrimination norm in each of the five cases, their motives and the mechanisms they employ to facilitate normative change. The thesis disputes several of the main assumptions of Finnemore and Sikkink’s model. The findings demonstrate that national political elites are a key factor that determines the progress of the racial anti-discrimination norm in each stage of the norm life cycle model. They also problematise the ideational basis for the motives of norm entrepreneurs, which, in fact, consist of a complex mixture of ideational and instrumental considerations. The thesis further develops the stages of the norm life cycle model. It challenges the overall design of the model and its assumed linear progression of norm evolution.

Prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) is high the world over, and in sub-Saharan Africa, between 30% and 66% of ever-partnered women aged 15 or over have experienced IPV at least once in their lifetime, and 37% on the African continent. Power imbalance in the household and unequal access to resources are often identified as triggers of violence. Microfinance interventions provide women with access to financial resources as well as soft-skills training (MF-plus). Evidence of microfinance’s impact on IPV is still however contradictory, often confined to observational cross-sectional studies, with narrow definitions of IPV, and no clear link with a process of empowerment. This thesis addresses these limitations by (i) analysing data from the randomised control trials (RCTs) of two microfinance and training interventions in sub-Saharan Africa aimed at reducing IPV; (ii) defining a conceptual framework for the analysis of impact that I term eudaimonic utility (EUD) and linking this with empowerment indicators; and (iii) interpreting this evidence with reference to sociological and economic models of IPV. EUD is the self-actualisation component of psychological measures of wellbeing (WB). I derive EUD from the triangulation of the construct of wellbeing I found in the milieu of sub-Saharan African women targeted by one of the interventions, psychological indices of wellbeing, and properties of plural utility functions. It comprises three psychological dimensions: autonomy (deciding for oneself), meaningful relations with others (maintaining mutually supportive and emotionally meaningful relationships) and environmental mastery (ensuring that the external environment is conducive to one’s flourishing). For the analysis of intervention impact, I group empowerment indicators on the basis of the factor analysis associations with EUD dimensions. Impact estimates suggest that women who access MF-plus services gain more control over their own time, experience improvement in proxies of eudaimonia, and experience reduced IPV exposure. Women who trained in negotiation skills in addition to access to financial services experience limited increase in cooperation with their spouses, but no IPV reduction.

This dissertation looks at slavery in early Mesopotamia (ca. 3200-1595 BC) in the longue durée and establishes theoretical foundations for interpreting the data preserved in the extant sources. Rather than attempting to define slavery, the forms the social institution took from proto-history into the historical era of early Mesopotamia are contextualised, while identifying the broader social changes which might explain the non-linear evolution of the practice. After considering the difficulty of defining the term ‘slave’ in relation to early Mesopotamia in general and numerous attempts to approach the problem, this work moves beyond definition, attempting to historicise slavery. To achieve this, slavery in early Mesopotamia is considered in the high points of the record in relation to key diagnostic features. The acquisition of slaves is studied alongside the release of slaves, demonstrating the numerous ways people in early Mesopotamia could be reduced to some form of bondage or slavery, while there remained relatively few means by which a person could experience upward movement out of slavery, opportunities which were reduced further for foreign and houseborn slaves. The following discussion of the economics of slavery seeks to place the question in an historical context of modern scholarship before assessing the motivations, benefits, and risks of owning slaves in early Mesopotamia. After this chapter which looks at slavery from the perspectives of the elite, the subsequent chapter attempts to move beyond the elite bias of the documentation to understand history from the bottom, by studying flight and the related means of coercion. By considering the ways in which runaways were pursued and the risks members of the lower stratum community were willing to take for a change in status, the discussion presents a way forward to understanding slavery in early Mesopotamia. These diagnostic features of slavery reveal a traceable non-linear evolution of slavery in early Mesopotamia.

Modern Singapore has been a focus of contact between the three culture blocs of China, India, and Indonesia, and between Orient and Occident. Asian migrants came as labourers, artizans, and entrepreneurs; the much smaller European migrant group introduced Western economic and administrative institutions. Subsequent modernization and development, necessitating improved coordination and development of all resources has been hampered by substantial cultural divergences relating to economic and social practice and attitude. Contrasting cultural patterns are commonly identified with ethnic differences and can most readily be analyzed on this basis; but even ethnic groups are culturally heterogeneous and the complexities introduces by this diversity are of the utmost significance in the economic and social development of Singapore. Integration at all levels and in all areas of life is essential id this small city state is to be a viable entity maintaining its role in the modern world. An examination of demographic, economic and social aspects demonstrates an increasing stability during the postwar era and analyzes the main strengths and weaknesses of many facets of development in a plural society in which common identity has been based mainly on locational contiguity and the unity deriving from political independence as a nation state.

This thesis explores the persistence of labour tying arrangements among female labourers in agriculture in India. This research is a comparative study of women’s labour tying in Aranthangi (Tamil Nadu) and Chinsurah (West Bengal). I argue that these labour arrangements are driven through familial/gendered relations, exercise of power at the village level, and macroeconomic and political forces. Set against the backdrop of rising feminisation of agricultural wage employment coupled with growing insecurity of work and survival, this study identifies that rural female labour (which is predominantly agrarian) is commoditized and under-valued. Consequently, the female labourer is often drawn into exploitative labour contracts. I identify rural labour in this thesis through Bernstein’s category of ‘classes of labour’ (1996; 2010). In this study, I identify the ways in which the classes of labour enter labour tying arrangements in agriculture. The presence of labour tying is often understood through the ideological divisions of Classical Marxist and Neo-classical analyses. Classical Marxist analysis understands these labour arrangements as remnants of pre-capitalist society, which withers away with commercialization of agriculture. Neo-classical theorists identify these labour arrangements as mutually beneficial relations for both the employer and labourer. Moving away from this binary understanding of the presence of tied labour, I use Hart’s analytical framework to show how the presence of tied labour among female ‘classes of labour’ are an outcome of multi-scalar power relations in rural society. I posit that these multi-scalar power relations in rural society create relations of dependency, obligation and privilege that draw female labourers into tied labour arrangements. I identify, these multi-scalar power relations as regimes of labour tying, where unfreedom experienced therein, are differentiated along gender, class and caste identities. The regime of labour tying, therefore, needs to be understood as a process that is here to stay, and of which female agrarian labour occupy an unfair share.

My dissertation research provides first systematic analysis of women’s early voting behavior. The key contribution of this thesis is that women’s suffrage made a significant dent into electoral politics. Such finding provides a direct contradiction to the so frequent claim that women voted as their husbands for most of the twentieth century. The thesis consists of three separate chapters, each addressing a distinct puzzle in the literature. In the first paper, I argue that, contrary to most of the extant literature, women contributed to the victory of the Republican Party in the 1920 election outside of the Black Belt. In the second paper, I argue that women in Protestant countries supported parties that appealed to their welfare and suffrage preferences in the first election after the vote was won. In the third paper, I argue that the redistributive effects of women’s suffrage were mediated by women’s support for parties with redistributive agendas. The key argument of this thesis is that women tended to vote on their redistributive preferences. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that women supported conservative parties, I find robust evidence that women’s suffrage mostly benefitted parties with redistributive agendas. While my research does not seek to challenge the notion that women held socially conservative preferences, it directly contradicts the notion that women voted on such preferences for conservative parties. In the Catholic South, women’s support for Christian Democratic parties most likely reflected women’s preference for Christian Democratic type of the welfare state, which emphasized family values. In the Protestant North, women supported Socialist parties for their welfare preferences, particularly once they entered the workforce. But even at the time of suffrage, women were mainly attracted to parties on the left, responding to both their welfare and suffrage appeals to women.

This thesis offers a systematic account of Žižek’s dialectical materialist Marxism that follows the development of his work from his initial Lacanian critique of Marxism and Stalinist totalitarianism, to his attempt to develop a new form of Communist politics including a conception of a Communist utopia. The core and overarching argument of this thesis is that Žižek develops his positions in response to three challenges that he confronts after the limitations of his previous radical democratic politics become evident. These are: an alternative to traditional Marxism and liberal democracy that continues to protect against repeating the errors of the former; an analysis of late-capitalism at libidinal, political and economic levels to explain new forms of ideology, the limitations of liberal democratic politics, and the continuing role of capitalism and class in our contemporary world; and, the reformulation of the Lacanian category of the Real in order to overcome the deadlock of the opposition between das Ding and lack and the political conservatism it produces. In the analysis of Žižek’s response to these challenges, I examine the tension that emerges between the Lacanian and Marxist dimensions of Žižek’s dialectical materialism and how he manages this tension in order to avoid returning to the problems associated with traditional Marxism.