This is a qualitative study of women and change in the coalfields and nearby mining areas of Southwest Virginia in the Central Appalachian mountains, a peripheral region in a core country at the end of the twentieth century. Intensive interviews with working-class women in grassroots associations explicate women’s experiences in the intersection of social structures of class, gender, and Appalachian ethnicity. Conditions and positions of marginalization are explored through analysis of women’s lives in the family, through work, and in communities. The study also examines grassroots associations as contexts for empowerment, and how women struggle for development and change. A grounded theory of empowerment as a process of coming to personal autonomy through political community is presented as an alternative to the economism and individualism of conventional women in development analysis. / Ph. D.

This thesis examines the emergence and development of the African working class in Durban between 1959 and 1985. It begins with an analysis of Durban's economy, which significantly changed .the lives of Africans. It shows how, during an era of economic boom, of intensive state repres•ion and unparalleled social engineering, the state intervened in the shaping of the African community and created the oppressive setting of the African working class, which was to pose the greatest challenge to the established order. The forced removals of the underclasses to the newly established apartheid townships during the late 1950s and early 1960s had a profound influence on the social and political history of this working class. Once African trade unions had been crippled and formal oppositional politics crushed, South African industrial relations enjoyed relative "peace" which was disturbed by the covert forms of worker resistance. In the 1970s the economic position of Durban's African working class was rather tenuous, as earnings had remained static since the 1960s despite the booming economy. Because of this, urban workers felt social and economic pressures from both apartheid and capitalism and responded in a way that shocked both employers and the government. In January 1973 Durban was rocked by strikes, which broke the silence of the 1960s when the South African Congress of Trade Unions declined and the African National Congress and Pan-African Congress were banned. The outbreak of the 1973 Durban strikes marked a new beginning in the labour history and industrial relations of Durban and South Africa in general. A new blend of African independent trade unions emerged with their distinctive style of organisation. They focused on factory-based issues which reaped benefits for the workers in the long-run and managed to sustain pressure from both the state and employers. During this period, however, the African working class paid a high price, enduring miserable conditions, earning wages below the poverty line, experiencing a breakdown in family structure, and living with crime and violence, police repression and the criminalisation of much social and economic life. By 1985, these unions had established themselves so firmly that the state regarded them as a serious challenge. Indeed, the making of Durban's African working class was no easy task and its history shows suffering, change, mobility and accomplishment. / History / D. Litt. et Phil. (History)

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Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 1953. / No Abstract Available

The purpose of this thesis is threefold: firstly, to serve as a contribution to the history of the Marseilles working class; secondly to illustrate the impact of the Popular Front at local level; and thirdly, to act as a case study of working-class mobilisation. In the first section of the thesis the Marseilles working class is briefly described. It was highly heterogeneous, being made up of various racially, occupationally, and spatially-defined communities. The divisions between these communities were to some extent neutralised by a strong sense of the local community of Marseilles. Marseilles' claim to special status within the nation was, however, increasingly coming under challenge. Prior to the Popular Front the most successful political organisations on the Left in Marseilles integrated themselves into the rich community life of the town by playing down ideological issues and by practising the politics of locally-based clientelism rather than those of class. The movement for the Popular Front encouraged a new mood of militancy within the Marseilles working class which both contributed to, and was itself encouraged by, the growth of Communist influence within the Popular Front alliance. At different moments the strikes of the period facilitated or prejudiced the unity of the working class and its integration into the nation. Initially (1934-1937), the strikes which were undertaken advanced the interests of workers against those of employers whilst increasing working-class unity and support for the Popular Front. At the same time the election of a Popular Front Government and its success in resolving strikes to the satisfaction of workers aided the integration of the working class into a new, enlarged, national political consensus. The fragility of this consensus was, however, later revealed (1938-1939), as the Government called for sacrifices in the workplace and the Communists called fcr the launching of an unpopular war against fascism.

This thesis investigates how hegemonic white masculinity adopts a new mode of material accumulation by entering into an ambivalent existence as a historical agent and metahistory at the same time and continues to function as a performative identity that offers a point of identification for the working class white man suggesting that bourgeois identity is obtainable through the performance of bourgeois ethics. The thesis postulates that the phenomenal transitions brought on by industrialization and deindustrialization of 50's through 90's coincide with the representational changes of white masculinity from paradigmatic cowboy incarnations to the postmodern action heroes, specifically as embodied by Bruce Willis. The thesis also examines how postmodern heroes' "intero-alterity" is further problematized by antiheroes in Tim Burton's films.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts / This dissertation shows how both poets and their audiences have played a central role in the emergence of Durban Worker poetry. A review of critical responses to worker poetry concludes that insufficient attention has been paid to questions of audience. Performances of worker poetry are analysed, highlighting the conventions used by the audience when participating in and evaluating the poetry, Social, political and literary factors which have influenced the audience of worker poetry are explored, as are the factors which led to the emergence of worker poetry. In discussing the influence of the Zulu izibongo (praise poetry) on worker poetry, particular attention is paid to formal and performative qualities. The waye in Which worker poetry has been utilised by both poets and audience as a powerful intellectual resource are debated. Finally, the implications of publishing worker poetry via the media of print, audio-cassettes and video-Cassettes are discussed. / Andrew Chakane 2019

This exploratory research project explores the production and use, and subsequent closure and eviction of the community-designed and managed Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford – a predominantly working-class area in south-east London. This community garden played a key role in the lives of many local residents and its closure and subsequent demolition to make way for a large housing project drew a significant backlash from local residents which included protests, law-suits, and the occupation of the garden itself. Why this small, half-acre community garden garnered such a notable response is the main focus of and motivation for this research project. Using a combined-methods approach consisting of semi-structured interviews and participant observation, this research investigates what it was about Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden which resulted in this backlash, and why the local council’s decision to close it drew such a militant revolt from local community members. Combining the empirical results of this research with a deep inquiry into the concepts of space and power within urban theory, this thesis seeks to understand the rights working-class communities have to contribute to the production of public green space, and how such community-led contribution can impact on the space produced, both inside and outside the context of Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden and its former users.

Esta pesquisa visa compreender o projeto estético-político do cineasta inglês Ken Loach dentro da história da arte política, e como fruto de um processo histórico de crise da Esquerda e fragmentação da classe trabalhadora, intensificado durante a segunda metade do século XX. Observamos de que maneira a obra de Ken Loach estabelece relações entre a criação de uma forma que possua um resgate de elementos formais (como o melodrama, o naturalismo, o neo-realismo italiano e a Czech New Wave) que teriam um potencial utópico em sua origem, e a busca por conteúdos que explicitem a luta de classes. A refuncionalização desses materiais estéticos o aproxima da concepção benjaminiana de História e dos pressupostos políticos do teatro épico de Bertolt Brecht. Os filmes usados como base para a análise são Terra e Liberdade (Land and Freedom, 1995) e Uma Canção para Carla (Carla\'s Song, 1996), filmes cujas temáticas enfatizam momentos de verdadeiros estados de exceção, como a guerra civil espanhola e a revolução nicaragüense. Além disso, ambos os filmes trazem à tona a discussão sobre o papel do cinema político, de suas possibilidades e limites dentro da indústria cultural e da conjuntura sócio-histórica do final do século XX. / This research aims at understanding the aesthetical-political project of the English filmmaker Ken Loach in the course of the history of political art, and as a result of the historical process of crisis of the Left and fragmentation of the working class, intensified throughout the second half of the 20th century. We observe the ways in which the work of Ken Loach establishes relations between the making of a form which possesses a rescue of formal elements (such as melodrama, naturalism, Italian neorealism and Czech New Wave) that have a utopian potential in their origin, and the search for themes that make the class struggle explicit. The refunctionalization of those aesthetical materials brings him closer to the Benjaminian conception of History and the political assumptions of the epic theater of Bertolt Brecht. The movies used as basis for the analysis are Land and Freedom (1995) and Carlas Song (1996), movies whose themes emphasize moments of real states of exception, such as the Spanish civil war and the Nicaraguan revolution. Besides, both films bring about the discussion over the role of political cinema, its possibilities and limitations inside the cultural industry and the socio-historical conjuncture of the end of the 20th century

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