Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 2000. Graduate Programme in Political Science. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 256-267). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ67911.

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published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Philosophy

Over the last twenty years, international environmental law has attempted to address the global threats to the health of our planet including ozone layer depletion, climate change, global deforestation, the pollution of freshwater resources and the oceans and species extinction. Unfortunately, the state of the environment is not improving as fast as environmental conventions come forth. The premise for this thesis is therefore that international environmental law is not effective in protecting the natural environment. Responsible for the survival of their families and communities, women in developing countries are the most vulnerable to environmental degradation as dwindling natural and freshwater resources and soil erosion threaten their survival base. Unfortunately, international environmental law does little to acknowledge this vulnerability and even less to assist women in developing countries cope with environmental degradation. The vast knowledge of ecosystems held by women in developing countries is also largely ignored, thus marginalizing their way of knowing and disregarding potential solutions to environmental problems. This thesis therefore takes a critical look from an ecofeminist standpoint at the traditional characteristics of international environmental law such as states' sovereign right to exploit their natural resources, states' right to development and the emphasis of international environmental law on science and technology. The thesis also examines emerging principles of international environmental law such as sustainable development, intergenerational equity, common concern of humankind, and the precautionary principle, which attempt to address some of the concerns raised by the more traditional approach. However, the thesis concludes that despite these new developments, international environmental law is still premised on an androcentric perspective of the natural environment which impedes it from achieving true environmental protection and which serves to continue the marginalization of women. In this thesis, I argue that a new conceptualization of the relationship between humankind and the natural environment is necessary in order to save our planet from ecological disaster and that ecofeminism can offer such an alternative view. Finally, the conclusion will suggest a few concrete ways of including women's perspectives and ways of knowing into the negotiation of environmental conventions and in their implementation.

The thesis examines the problems of the "observer" and "objectivity." I review Thomas Kuhn's concept of "paradigm shift" in order to access wider debates in the history and philosophy of science concerning epistemological development. I argue against traditional notions of "objectivity" and "rationality" that proceed to "naturalize" the binary opposition between the natural sciences and other intellectual pursuits. To make this argument I draw from feminist critics of science, including Sandra Harding, Evelyn Fox Keller, and Donna Haraway, who reconsider more palpable conceptions of "objectivity" and "rationality" for a feminist science project. / Jonathan Crary's revisionist, and non-linear approach to a history of vision and the modern observer suggests that feminist critiques of science represent an epistemological shift imperfectly constituted in the nineteenth century. In conclusion, I analyze Donna Haraway's multi-dimensional approach to cultural, and feminist theory as a visual metaphor that resonates with the nineteenth-century technology of the stereoscope.

This thesis is a discursive and historical analysis of the concept and usage of 'postfeminism' in contemporary feminist debates. The importance of the vocabulary used to frame these debates is demonstrated through a survey of popular feminist discourses in the 1920s, and the circulation of the term 'postfeminism' in 1980s and 1990s mainstream and feminist media, academic journals, and bestselling books. Foremost among these contexts are mainstream newspaper and magazine articles in which postfeminism is used as a descriptive term applied to trends in fashion, television and film. Through an investigation of the texts and contexts in which post feminism is used, associations to generational disparity, antifeminism, the 'death of feminism,' commercialism, and other 'post-' discourses such as postmodernism, will be illustrated. In the process, it will be demonstrated that feminism, as it is represented through discourses of postfeminism, resides in an area of cultural criticism which straddles the spheres of the academic and the popular.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 237-275). / Microfiche. / ix, 275 leaves, bound 29 cm

In the current Australian industrial context typified by an ageing workforce, ever increasing globalisation, industrial reform and workplace stress, retirement has become a topic of great interest for governments, institutions and individuals. For women, the years beyond paid employment have special significance as their paid work experiences are most often dissimilar from those of men, with subsequently different implications for retirement. While there is a wealth of research on the economic consequences of gendered workplaces and therefore gendered retirement, there are few if any studies of the on-going lived experiences of women retirees. This thesis is one attempt to fill this significant gap. Specifically, it tracks 21 old aged women, including myself, as we negotiate the times beyond paid employment. Beginning in the imaginings and practices of retirement taken up by time-stressed employees as responses to the promise of future liberation, the thesis traces how we as old aged women articulate our experiences within normalised notions of what being retired and old signify. / Retirement as an academic and everyday concept is constituted as the final stage of a periodised life, a transition that is linear, progressive, focuses on rational sequencing and is constituted as needing to be managed. These social and linguistic conventions are closed systems that appear to emerge from the life experiences of particular groupings: most notably white, middle-class, able-bodied men. There are few if any alternative positions available for retiring women to occupy. This thesis is one attempt to challenge such uncontested conceptions of retirement and to open spaces for womens experiences to be expressed. / My critical analysis of discourses of retirement is enabled through the use of feminist post-structuralist approaches that allow me to think beyond the unified, masculine notion of leaving paid employment, to open the phenomenon up to multiplicity and to expose our experiences of these times as embedded in wider political discourses. Utilising Foucaults ethics of care of the self as a practice of freedom and Deleuze and Guattaris figurations and notions of becoming, I develop alternative ways to read the womens experiences that do not slide into traditional understandings. Rather than as successful or unsuccessful adjustment to the position of retiree, I conceive of the womens retirement practices as disciplined exercised of on-going self-reformation. / Situated as the participants are at the margins of retirement as we struggle to enact practices that maintain and honour our lives and senses of who we are and who we might become, we express the possibility of other (un)namings, other becomings that carve out spaces for an aesthetic of retired that is strange and oppositional. We as old aged women find, invent or produce new knowledges and subjectivities that open other possibilities beyond retirement as the final stage/role of a paid employment-centred life. / Through examining the lived experiences of retiring women against the grain of cultural norms I argue that retirement is an uncontested site of power relations and politics emerging out of yearnings, preparations and imaginings impelled by neo-liberal rationalities of individualised responsibility and population control. These masculinised forces attempt to draw us as old aged women back into the domesticated spaces of home as docile bodies, available, silent, invisible and generous to former workplaces, family and community. My research suggests that retirement as a space/time idea has developed within terms of patriarchal hegemony and appears to allow no space/ time for women and our experiences, aspirations or desires. However, my reading of the multiple experiences of the women participants in this study provides alternative models for understanding and living times beyond paid employment. / Thesis (PhDEducation)--University of South Australia, 2005

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Depts. of Politics and Social Inquiry, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 181-195).

Thesis (M.A.). / Written for the Dept. of Philosophy. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2007/08/29). Includes bibliographical references.