This essay looks to examine the view on religious and non-religious people thoughts on the possible relationship between feminism and religion. The essay in itself relies on semi structured interviews conducted with five informants where focus has been centered on the informants main thoughts on the subject. The theoretic basis of the study is found in post-structuralistic feminism and intersectionalism. The result will show that while all the informants believe there is a kind of relationship between feminism and religion, this relationship greatly varies depending on the informants’ preconception of religion and feminism.

This thesis is concerned with lifestyles in Japan that have hitherto remained largely unreported. The main research categories are gay men, lesbian women, single men and women, and feminist men and women. In addition attention is given to transvestites, transsexuals and hermaphrodites. The main aim of the thesis is to provide an ethnography of the lives of the various categories, which is a new angle from which to view Japanese society. The research methods consist of participant observation and indepth open-ended free attitude interviews. Participant observation in this case includes all aspects of people's life: personal relationships and reading what people from the categories say they read. In addition I developed experiential research, i.e. experiencing what informants may experience. The major question from which the research started out is that of how people whose feelings, ideas or lifestyles do not agree with heterosexual marriage cope with life in a society in which everyone is expected to marry. In this sense the research goes a step beyond what much of anthropology does: establishing what are more or less standard lifestyles in a particular culture. After discussing the position of marriage in Japanese society in chapter three, including political and legal aspects, this thesis discusses how people of the various research categories may try to fit in with the idea that one should marry by entering marriage and the problems this may give in chapter four. In chapter five alternative lifestyles are discussed and in six ways of dealing with an outside world that has little understanding ~ people with alternative lifestyles, feelings, or ideas. In chapter seven ways in which the various categories are regarded and relate to each other, especially the relations between gender and sexuality and discourses of sex and sexual activites are investigated, as well as debates within and between individual and circles consisting of people from the various categories. In conclusion four themes, that played a role in the background throughout the ethnographic body of the thesis, are drawn together: 1) space, gender and sexuality, 2) constructions of homosexuality, .3) selves, and 4) changes: developments that took place while the research was conducted and have continued since.

This thesis is situated at the intersection of feminist political theory, identity politics and moral philosophy. Its broader aim is to show the positive consequences of returning the self and its inner activity to the ethical domain for feminist identity politics. To this end, it brings feminist identity politics into dialogue with contemporary developments in virtue ethics, in particular Christine Swanton’s pluralistic virtue ethics. As its starting point, it takes issue with the tendency to reduce the complexity of identity to issues of category. The first part of the thesis problematises this tendency and argues for a reconsideration of the question of identity politics by shifting the focus away from identity per se and towards a more complex picture of the self that is reflective of the constitutive relation between the self and identifications, commitments and values. The work of the post-modern feminists Wendy Brown and Judith Butlers are read as proposing just such a shift away from the identitarian engagement of identity politics of ‘who am I?’ towards a more ethically imbued engagement that centres a complex self with inner depths. Part Two of the thesis extends this reconceptualisation of the problematic of identity politics and elaborates on what it could mean to undertake such a shift and how such a project could be conceived. Drawing on both Michael Sandel’s and Michel Foucault’s formulations of the self, identity and its relation to the good, the thesis develops the argument that the problematic of identity politics, articulated in ethical language, enables the formulation of an argument for giving an account of the good life and that this entails developing a subject imbued with a full inner life. Part Three of the thesis argues that contemporary work in virtue ethics offers the best way to take this project forward, suggesting that it represents a positive development in conceptions of the self and that a complex picture of the person emerges that provides the basis for a richer approach to the ethical concerns raised in identity politics. The thesis concludes by illustrating the potential value of taking those feminist insights into the constructed nature of identity into dialogue with a pluralistic virtue ethical account of the self and suggests that this approach provides new opportunities for understanding and discussing the collective dimension of identity politics in situations of diversity and inequality.

This thesis is an examination of the intersection of mainstream American film, and postmodern theories of changes in economic and cultural formations, read through the prism of feminist discourse. The work examines the genre of postmodern film developed by mainstream American studios over the past ten years, asking questions of what a postmodern film text may mean, and how it relates to postmodern theory. The thesis presents the analysis in two parts in each section, the first a discussion of particular aspects of postmodern theory, the second a close textual reading of two films. The claims of postmodernism for a theory and culture that celebrates diversity and rejects hierarchy are countered by various analyses from cultural materialism, feminism and ethnography. The methodology of film analysis is derived from what has become an orthodox feminist film theory developed in the last twenty years in Screen. The first section examines the imaging of technology and mass consumption in the work of Baudr i Ll.a r d , Jameson and Lyotard, and in the genre of the horror film. The second section explores claims of the deconstruction of structures that determine what is regarded as culturally central and what is regarded as culturally marginal. The discussion focusses on two areas; the positioning of the Third lvorld subject in postmodern debate. Secondly, the fetishisation of others - here the black subject as representation, and the marginalisation of marginal groups from cultural production. The third section examines the process of reading and the interpellation of the subject into the (visual or written) text. Questions here address the theoretical model of subjectivity in postmodern texts, and the framework of enunciation in cinema. The last section problematises the figurative language of postmodernism, drawing out the implications of a language and imagery of violence and apocalypse, and suggests a politics of positionality for future discussion.

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published_or_final_version / Literary Studies / Master / Master of Arts

This thesis explores the participation of women in trade union activity at local level. The central question it addresses is why do women participate in trade unions at this level? It identifies the factors that shape and influence women's participation and, in particular, the role of gender. In addition the thesis critically exatnines the concept of women's interests. The methodological approach is that of a case study of women activists in the South Wales and Western division of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDA W), and a principal case study of women activists in the South and West area of the Banking, Insurance and Finance Union (BIFU). In recent years there has been a growing body of research considering the role of women in trade unions. The main focus of these studies has been the barriers to women's participation. Where women's participation has been investigated the majority of studies have been concerned with women full time officers and 'senior' trade union leaders. Within trade union renewal debates women have been highlighted as one of the groups to target in recruitment campaigns. As such, it is appropriate to consider women's trade union participation at local level. The general literature suggests that people join and participate for traditional collective reasons. This proposition is critically examined. The findings present a model of trade union activity that differs significantly from typologies created to examine 'senior' women leaders. Equally, studies of women at local level which attach one ideological position to women's attitudes and behaviour are argued to fail to capture the diversity of views evident at local level. As such, the typology developed from this study places the WOlnen activists in four groups; the individualist, the collectivist, the carer and the equal rights representative. These groups reflect the context in which the women are situated and the varied interpretations of their activism. The findings suggest the problems of addressing equal opportunities through the union structures and raise, in particular, the difficulties of developing 'separatist' policies for women. Barriers to women's participation in trade unions remain significant for local level activism. The thesis suggests that trade union renewal strategies need to recognise the richness and diversity of attitudes and interests that women bring to the trade union movement.

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