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The 2004 Gender Equity Education Act (GEEA) sought to challenge gender and sexual discrimination in Taiwan by focusing on the importance of spaces of education as sites where gender and sexual identities are normalized and reproduced. This thesis explores the production of the GEEA and its subsequent implementation in two schools in Taipei City. Through reviewing geographical literature on education, children/young people, gender and sexualities, this thesis explores four research questions: (1) how the aims of the GEEA are shaped in Taiwanese policy context; (2) how the GEEA is implemented in schools; (3) how teachers shape young people's gender and sexual identities; (4) how young people's experiences of teaching practices and peer cultures affect their understandings of gender and sexual identities. Methods including discourse analysis, semi-structured interviews, and observation are adopted to answer the above questions. The research aims to challenge the dichotomy of inward- and outward-looking approaches in geographies of education, to expand the construction of childhood and the gender model in existing geographical research in Western contexts, and to further the conceptualisation of different forms of heterosexuality. Consequently, based on empirical findings, the thesis argues that the objective of the GEEA, which is to enable the performance of diverse gender and sexual identities in educational spaces, has not been achieved yet because of the contradictory practices evident within school spaces. In conclusion, the thesis relates the research findings to some of the key debates within contemporary geographical literatures by highlighting the importance of combing inward- and outward-looking approaches to study education, the complex nature of young people's gender identities formation, and the age-dependent form of heterosexuality. Ultimately, this thesis demonstrates the crucial role of education spaces in shaping young people's identities in an East Asian context.

O presente trabalho teve como objetivo localizar junto à história da masculinidade no Ocidente elementos que contribuam para uma leitura específica das fórmulas da sexuação de Jacques Lacan. Utilizando a noção de homem como método, foram analisados seminários empreendidos entre 1967 e 1973, recorte que comporta tanto um momento de valorização da dimensão da história pelo psicanalista francês como o próprio desenvolvimento das fórmulas da sexuação. Constatou-se haver um possível limite da apropriação lacaniana do mito freudiano de Totem e Tabu, referente à especificidade formal exigida pela lógica interna das fórmulas. Buscou-se demonstrar de que forma uma construção histórica de representações da masculinidade e virilidade responderia melhor às exigências formais requeridas para a sustentação lógica da sexuação, tal como apresentada nas fórmulas. / This research underlines some elements from the history of masculinity in the West that would contribute to a particular reading of the Jacques Lacans sexuation formulas. Using the notion of man as a method, seminars undertaken between 1967 and 1973 were analyzed, in a period that includes both a valuation of the dimension of history by the French psychoanalyst as the actual development of the formulas. It is found to be a possible limit in Lacans appropriation of the Freudian myth of Totem and Taboo, bound to the formal specificity required by the internal logic of the formulas. The studys attempt is to demonstrate how a historical construction of masculinity and virility representations respond accurately to the demands required to support the formal logic of sexuation, as presented at the formulas.

The relationship between the chief Israelite deity Yahweh and his people is often figured in terms of the so-called ‘marriage metaphor’, by which Yahweh is husband and Israel wife. The sexual language used to describe Yahweh’s body and his attitude towards Israel is taken to be a convenient method to outline the thoughts, feelings and expectations Yahweh has of his people in terms of religious practice. However, this has led to various interpretations in which divine sexuality in itself has been labelled ‘pagan’, an activity which Yahweh supposedly ‘transcends’. The aim of this thesis is to question these interpretations. In the first part, an examination of other ancient West Asian literature from Sumer, Ugarit and Egypt, each depicting divine sexuality in stark terms, is completed in order to set a historical mark by which the biblical texts themselves can be judged. In the second, a selection of biblical passages is examined: some from the texts which are structured by the marriage metaphor (as from Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Isaiah) and others not (texts about bones, temples, urination, circumcision and loins). Ultimately, one discovers that Yahweh is in fact embroiled within sexuality, whether in the marriage metaphor or not, rather than transcendent above it and that Yahweh’s body, described in heavily masculine terminology throughout the Bible, while indeed sexualized, phallic and perhaps even penised, is nevertheless, ambiguous, liminal or ‘multigendered’ as to the features of his body. It is argued that this does not impede Yahweh’s masculinity but may even work to strengthen it.

Organisational improvisation is often seen as a way for corporations to be able to cope with emergent strategies (Cunha, et al, 1999) and a way to meet the challenges of modern ways of working which include agility, flexibility and responsiveness (Vera and Crossan, 2004). However, seeing improvisation as a tool that can be used to deliver desirable organisational change is placing it within a discourse of systemic consultancy techniques that are predicated on assumptions about organisational change which I argue do not reflect the everyday lived experiences of people at work. As a management consultant, I have worked with many organisations using tools and techniques in an attempt to deliver prescribed outcomes. However, these never seemed to turn out as expected, for my colleagues or myself. Through my research I have understood that organisational change is far more pluralistic and uncontrollable than is suggested by systems thinkers like Seddon (2003; 2008) because consultants or managers could never predict with certainty how change initiatives would play out. I build on Mead's model of communication (1934) where a gesture to another evokes a similar response in the gesturer as it does the responder as part of the whole social act. In doing so I argue that improvisation is a way of describing communicative interaction between human bodies which are interdependent and therefore in relations of power with one another. As groups and individuals we become invested in and caught up in organisational games where many different groups struggle against one another in an attempt to control the game and get what they want. As these improvisational moves in the game are played, narrative themes that organise our experience are both sustained and contested at the same time. But these narrative patterns are not solely about working practices or procedures but also include wider aspects of identity such as gender and sexuality, which are interwoven in our organisational lives. Specifically I am arguing that communication is not just one body gesturing and responding to another, but one sexed and gendered body gesturing and responding to another sexed and gendered body and this affects our interactions, assumptions and understanding of what it is we are doing together. These improvisations which both create and maintain narrative themes emerge through the paradox of the rehearsed and the unrehearsed at the spontaneous moment of performance, where the anticipation of an audience's reaction, represented by Mead's concept of the generalised other (1934: 154), both enables and constrains one's performance.

This dissertation centers on a perceived child safety crisis in the late twentieth century U.S. It charts the emergence of specific cultural anxieties regarding American childhood and the development of new mechanisms designed to safeguard young Americans from “moral threats” such as stranger abduction, exploitation, and pornography. “Stranger Danger” shows that the politics of child safety coincided with Reagan-era efforts to snip the social safety net, promote law and order, lionize the business sector, and shore up the “traditional” family. The study argues that, as the New Deal order crumbled in the late twentieth century, so too did the state’s commitment to shielding American youths from structural problems such as hunger and poverty. Measures focused on child safety arose as social welfare programs like Aid to Families with Dependent Children, school lunch and child nutrition initiatives, and the Comprehensive Education and Training Act fell by the wayside. The shift from provision to protection that “Stranger Danger” takes as its central focus relied upon the development of a child safety apparatus, a collection of legal-cultural mechanisms that have exaggerated the prevalence of moral threats to American children, especially those perpetrated by strangers. Launched by activists and the bereaved parents of slain children, and eventually sanctioned by the Reagan administration, the 1980s child safety campaign authored an array of new instruments intended to protect young Americans from kidnapping, molestation, murder, exploitation, and corruption.

Many researchers and academics argue that there is a significant disparity in the rates of attempted and successful suicide between the GLBT and the heterosexual community. Anecdotal evidence has also suggested this for well over a century. There appears to be several unique phenomena that intersect to place this minority at greater risk of suicidality. Heteronormativity, heterosexism, homophobia, rejection, bullying, violence, isolation, negative self-image and discrimination have all been implicated as significant contributing factors in increased suicidality within GLBT youth. It is the intersection of these issues as they relate to the GLBT youth that this thesis seeks to investigate with the view to inform progressive and sensitive social work practice in the future. / Honours thesis

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