This thesis is about the power of political elites to establish the framework of political discourse, and to thereby control political power, in Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rican 'status question' - the debate about the island's ultimate juridical and political relationship with the United States and the rest of the world – is considered a manifestation of such power. Formal domestic politics in Puerto Rico is structured around three party political desires for an uncertain and unknowable postcolonial future, and not around any set of distinctive ideological positions for engaging with political issues in the present. An unresolved question of nationalism and state building therefore becomes the structural filter through which all politics must necessarily pass. Inspired by the concept of hegemony, the thesis is firstly interested in how political elites exercise power to establish status as the framework for domestic political discourse. Secondly, and more importantly, it is interested in how this framework is reinforced, modified, resisted and even overcome through elite exercises of power in concrete political settings. The thesis takes a particular focus on the relationship between status positions and everyday political practices in three Puerto Rican municipalities: Guaynabo, Caguas and Lares. The author arrived at this focus through an ethnographic engagement with the field that was made possible by his research positionality as a white British outsider to Puerto Rico. The thesis tells the story of the nuanced ways in which local political elites engage with the status question through practices of politics on the ground. Elite performances of local state power do not straightforwardly reproduce the hegemony of status, but rather, create a more complicated empirical terrain of contradictory, unexpected and subversive effects. In certain places, everyday practices of municipal politics appear to reflect the intractable entanglement of local priorities and centrally prescribed status positions. In others, politics gets done in ways that leave the status question behind, creating effects that include city-state sovereignty, elevated standards of living, non-nationalist forms of politics, and non-state-centric possibilities for decolonisation. Ironically, therefore, a political system that is so profoundly shaped by discourses of nationalism and state building is disrupted in practice by some of the very actors who help to give the system this shape. These findings contribute to critical geographies of the Caribbean and to recent debates on politics, power and decolonisation in Puerto Rico.

The research draws on an ethnographic research and explores the everyday practice of collective action in Ugbawka in Enugu State by using interviews and participant observation. The study reveals that smallholder collective action is not best fitted into formal institutional arrangement but takes place within a complex and intricate process that involves interaction with diversity of institutions and actors. Equally, the interactions that occur amongst actors are mediated at the community level through interplay of socio-cultural and political factors. This study recognises and places emphasis on understanding of agency and the exercise of agency at the local level arguing that smallholder farmers are not robot but active individual who exercise their agency purposively or impulsively depending on conditions and the assets available at their disposition as well as their ability to navigate the intricate power dynamic inherent at local context. The thesis thus questioned the simplistic use of formal institutional collective action framework in smallholder collective action at the community level and argues that institutions are not static and do not determine outcomes but are informed by the prevailing conditions at the community level. The study emphasises the role of existing institutions and socially embedded principles in community governance and argues that actors should be the focus of analysis rather than the system in understanding smallholder collective action. The study concludes by advocating for further research that could explore the possibility of hybrid approach that accepts the advantages of both formal and informal institutional forms of smallholder collective action.

The study seeks to answer how midlife gay men in Manchester manage growing older. It analyses accounts generated through in-depth interviews with 27 middle-aged gay men living in Greater Manchester (aged 39 - 61) and 20 participant observation sessions conducted in Manchester's 'gay village.' It deploys an interpretivist methodology and a 'pick and mix' analytical framework developed by Thomson (2009) that uses of Foucault's 'technologies of the self' (1987) (that concern capacities for agency) but located within 'fields of existence' (with their own norms) adopted from Bourdieu (1984). Through analysis of participants' accounts of bodily practices (dress, grooming, diet, exercise) and their relationships in various fields, the study examines the constraints on and choices around expression of midlife identity and ways of relating. The study's structuring theme concerns the mechanisms through which midlife gay men in Manchester differentiate themselves from others. Differentiation is achieved largely through moral and epistemic claims-making around an 'authentic' gay male midlife self that is central to the notion of a legitimate, (age-appropriate) form of socio-sexual citizenship. As extant scholarship has identified, there are normative restrictions on expression of a midlife self and the possibilities for interaction (especially with younger gay men) but men can use self-worth and political knowledges gained from life experience ('ageing capital' and age-related technologies of the self) to do other than comply with such restrictions. But, this study also illuminates men's ambivalent responses to age, ageing, gay ageism and homophobia that involve negotiation with discourses that inform understandings of ageing and sexuality. The study also maps a cultural "politics of the minor" (Rose 1999) operating at the micro-level, which is concerned to affect the context of interaction. The power relations of gay male ageism that are crucial to this expression of politics are multidirectional. Midlife gay men are not just the targets of ageism from younger gay men. They distinguish themselves in ways that can express ageism towards younger, (some) peer aged and old gay men. The study also complicates assumptions about midlife gay men and their lives: 1) Dressing for 'comfort' (part of an 'authentic' midlife self) contradicts the idea that midlife gay men obsess about the body, prolonging youth and maintaining sexual marketability. 2) Manchester's gay village is not overwhelmingly a site of exclusion for midlife gay men. They negotiate with the rules of the game and use emotional and cultural political knowledges gained through life experience to resist ageism and carve out a conviviality that involves friendship, affection and care for others in sexualised space. 3) Gay men continue to experience unequal access to public space but gains in self-worth with age and the recent tolerance dividend indicate that this is now more often experienced as safer. Gayness is now being claimed as integral to broader sexual citizenship. 4) Midlife gay men do not live outside of kinship. Subjects creatively reconfigured their kinship circles/friendship families over time. This form of kinship has special political significance for this present generation of middle-aged gay men in Manchester. Paul Simpson, Manchester University, PhD. Sociology. 11 September 2011.

The research draws on an ethnographic research and explores the everyday practice of collective action in Ugbawka in Enugu State by using interviews and participant observation. The study reveals that smallholder collective action is not best fitted into formal institutional arrangement but takes place within a complex and intricate process that involves interaction with diversity of institutions and actors. Equally, the interactions that occur amongst actors are mediated at the community level through interplay of socio-cultural and political factors. This study recognises and places emphasis on understanding of agency and the exercise of agency at the local level arguing that smallholder farmers are not robot but active individual who exercise their agency purposively or impulsively depending on conditions and the assets available at their disposition as well as their ability to navigate the intricate power dynamic inherent at local context. The thesis thus questioned the simplistic use of formal institutional collective action framework in smallholder collective action at the community level and argues that institutions are not static and do not determine outcomes but are informed by the prevailing conditions at the community level. The study emphasises the role of existing institutions and socially embedded principles in community governance and argues that actors should be the focus of analysis rather than the system in understanding smallholder collective action. The study concludes by advocating for further research that could explore the possibility of hybrid approach that accepts the advantages of both formal and informal institutional forms of smallholder collective action.

This study uses the concepts of everyday politics and cultural resistance to explore how young people are experimenting with ‘free spaces’ in which to develop alternative ideas and practices within the food justice movement. Through a case study of the Spring Ridge Commons – a youth-generated free space – this research describes how youth are redefining relationships to place and to people by practicing alternative foodways like urban foraging; creating decommodified food sources; sharing skills and knowledge through peer-to-peer networks; building community through relationships of mutual support; and experimenting with non-hierarchical governance. Such practices have potential implications for child and youth care such as: reconnecting youth and adults through shared practice and meaningful work in “real life” politics and community building, reconceptualizing 'youth' and 'adult' such that both have greater access to acts of cultural production, and creating experiences of democracy in everyday life. / Graduate

Abstract This study examines people-centred Thai NGOs trying to help peasants empower themselves in order to compete better in conflicts over land, water, forest, and capital, during the 1970s to 1990s. The study investigates how the NGOs contested asymmetric power relations among government officials, private entrepreneurs and ordinary people while helping raise the people’s confidence in their own power to negotiate their demands with other actors.¶ The thesis argues that the NGOs are able to play an interventionist role when a number of key factors coexist. First, the NGOs are able to understand local situations, which contain asymmetric power relations between different actors, in relation to current changes in the wider context of the Thai political economy and seize the time to take action. Secondly, the NGOs are able to articulate a social meaning beyond the dominating rhetoric of the ‘state’ and the ‘capitalists’ which encourages the people’s participation in collective activities. Thirdly, while dealing with one problem in social relations and negotiation with local environment, the NGOs are able to recognise new problems as they arise and rapidly identify a new political space for the actors to renegotiate their conflicting interests and demands. Fourthly, the NGOs are able to recreate new meanings, new actors and reform their organisations and networks to deal with new situations. Finally, the NGOs are able to effectively use three pillars of their movement, namely individuals, organisations and networks to deal with everyday politics and collective protest.¶ The case studies in three villages in Northern Thailand reveal that the NGOs were able to play an interventionist role in specific situations through their alternative development strategies somewhat influenced by structural Marxism. The thesis recommends that the NGO interventionist role be continued so as to overcome tensions within the NGO community, for instance, between the NGOs working at the grass-roots level and the NGOs working at regional and national levels (including NGO funding agencies); local everyday conflicts; and the bipolar views of a society among the NGOs expressed in dichotomous thinking between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’, ‘community’ and ‘state’, conflict and order, actor and system.¶ The fragmentation of NGO social and environmental movements showed that there is no single formula or easy solution to the problems. If the NGOs want to continue their interventionist role to help empower ordinary people and help them gain access to productive resources, they must move beyond their bipolar views of a society to discover the middle ground to search for new meanings, new actors, new issues and to create again and again counter-hegemony movements. This could be done by having abstract development theories assessed and enriched by concrete development practices and vice versa. Both theorists and practitioners need to use their own imagination to invent and reinvent what and how best to continue.

Scholars and experts speak of a political apathy and a lack of political engagement in Jordan. In conventional studies of political engagement a large part of the actual everyday engagement of “the ordinary” is overlooked as it does not conform to the prevailing view of political or civic engagement.  Everyday politics as a field has developed as a response to this lacking view of political engagement or political behavior. The aim of the thesis is to find everyday political behaviors performed by Jordanian individuals. Additionally, everyday religious aspects according to the lived religion theory are discussed in relation to everyday politics as found.  A number of everyday political behaviors and everyday religious aspects of these were found through observations and interviews during two months of fieldwork in Amman, Jordan. Such behaviors were e.g. operating within the informal sector, relying on family and friends for money and labor, and derogatory joking about the regime. Religious aspects of these behaviors were e.g. explicit religious reasons for the behaviors, physical religious artifacts, and religious language.

Cette thèse de doctorat examine l’impact social de la Première Guerre mondiale dans l’Empire ottoman sur les femmes turques défavorisées et la réaction quotidienne de ces femmes aux conditions négatives de la guerre et aux mesures de l’État concernant les femmes. Elle utilise l’approche de l’histoire populaire et des nouvelles sources des archives ottomanes pour démontrer les voix et les expériences des femmes ordinaires, surtout leur lutte contre l’appauvrissement à cause de la guerre et les politiques sociales insuffisantes. Par conséquent, elle contribue à combler une grande lacune dans l’historiographie sur l’Empire ottomane et les études sur les femmes qui examinent rarement les femmes turques ordinaires. Elle renforce l’idée que les femmes ottomanes ont eu des grandes difficultés à cause de la guerre contrairement aux comptes de modernisation soulignant seulement les développements positifs concernant les libertés et les droits des femmes après la guerre. Elle réfute les comptes acceptant la guerre comme une période pendant laquelle toutes les femmes turques ont vécu une « émancipation. » D’ailleurs, elle met en lumière les formes et les aspects des points de vue critiques des femmes et de la politique quotidienne des femmes pour survivre les conditions négatives de la guerre, pour faire entendre leurs voix, pour protéger leurs droits et pour recevoir des aides sociales. / This dissertation examines the social impact of World War I in the Ottoman Empire on ordinary poor Turkish women and their everyday response to the adverse wartime conditions and the state policies concerning them. Based on new archival sources giving detailed information about the voice, experience and agency of these women and based on the history from below approach, this study focuses on poor, underprivileged and working Turkish women’s everyday experiences, especially their struggle against and perception of wartime conditions, mobilization and state policies about them. By doing so, it contributes to filling the great gap in late Ottoman historiography and women’s studies, which rarely examine ordinary women and their everyday problems and struggles for survival and rights. First, it scrutinizes how ordinary women experienced the war and argues that, in contrast to the modernization accounts that overlook women’s sufferings at the cost of post-war developments in women’s rights and liberties, ordinary Turkish women had great difficulties during the war years. It presents a major caveat to the accounts accepting the war years as a period during which Turkish women monolithically experienced a gradual liberty and « emancipation. » Second, it brings the unexamined forms and aspects of women’s critical and subjective views, their everyday politics to circumvent the adverse conditions and state policies, to make their voices heard, to pursue their rights, and to receive government support into the light. / Bu doktora tezi Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Birinci Dünya Savaşı’nın sıradan yoksul Türk kadınları üzerindeki sosyal etkilerini ve kadınların olumsuz savaş koşullarına ve kendileriyle ilgili devlet politikalarına yönelik tavırlarını incelemektedir. Kadınların sesleri, deneyimleri ve tarihsel rolleri hakkında detaylı bilgiler veren yeni arşiv kaynaklarına ve aşağıdan tarih yaklaşımına dayanan bu tez yoksul, temel sosyal haklardan yoksun ve çalışan Türk kadınlarının gündelik deneyimlerine, özellikle de savaş koşulları, seferberlik ve devlet politikalarını algılayış ve bunlarla mücadele biçimlerine odaklanmaktadır. Dolayısıyla, bu tez, sıradan kadınları ve onların gündelik problemleriyle hayatta kalma ve hak mücadelelerini çok az inceleyen Osmanlı tarihçiliği ve kadın araştırmalarındaki büyük bir boşluğu doldurmaya katkıda bulunmaktadır. Bu tez, bu anlamda, iki temel temaya odaklanmaktadır. Öncelikle, sıradan kadınların savaşı nasıl deneyimlediklerini mercek altına almakta ve onların çektikleri acıları savaş sonrası kadın hak ve özgürlüklerindeki ve üst ve orta sınıf eğitimli kadınların etkinlik ve deneyimlerindeki gelişmelerin bir bedeli olarak algılayıp gözden kaçıran modernleşmeanlatılarının tersine sıradan kadınların savaş yıllarında büyük güçlükler çektiğini savunmaktadır. Bu bağlamda, bu çalışma, Türk kadınlarının savaş yıllarında bütün olarak görece bir “özgürleşme” yaşadıklarını kabul eden anlatılara önemli bir uyarıdır. İkincil olarak, bu tez, kadınların zorluklarla gündelik mücadelelerine odaklanarak kadınların eleştirel ve öznel tutumlarının ve olumsuz koşullar ve devlet politikalarından kaçmak, seslerini duyurmak, haklarının peşine düşmek ve destek görebilmek amaçlı gündelik politikalarının keşfedilmemiş biçim ve yönlerini gün ışığına çıkarmaktadır.