The main objectives of this thesis are to examine the relations between people and things in American novelist Henry James's 1897 novel The Spoils of Poynton, and thus to deepen our understanding of James's engagement with material culture. Critics have tended to frame James's works in general in terms of his detachment from economic and material reality; and criticisms on the novel in particular have seen it as exemplifying the alleged detachment, interpreting the things accumulated by a female collector at Poynton, as something illusory and unsubstantial, such as a form of commodity fetishism, a Freudian fetish, or a Lacanian signifier. Contrary to the conventional view, however, this thesis argues that James, in this novel about a struggle between a mother and her son over a house and its furnishings, represents and explores physical and affective relationships between the characters and things. James, focusing on the characters' sense experience, attempts to criticize the phallocentric power of his own culture that not only excludes women from the legal right of possession but also undervalues female domestic work in spite of its support for the culture. Drawing our attention to the senses that have traditionally been thought "lower" and "feminine," and thus refusing the taxonomization and hierarchization of the senses, James expands the category of aesthetic experience. This thesis argues that in the novel, by adopting as his primary mode of writing immediate sense experience prior to philosophical abstraction, James makes clear the latent implication between cultural repudiation of the feminine and the material, on the one hand, and the political and institutionalized exclusion of women by patriarchal property law, on the other. Criticism that ignores the material urgency and presence in the novel will further replicate that patriarchal power structure.

Understanding the class position of family owned small scale agricultural production units, which constitute a common feature of the rural context in the later capitalized countries, have been one of the major discussion points in the Marxist literature. The continual existence of such a form of production organization with significant non-capitalist features under the enlarging capitalist organization of production despite the initial assumptions of Marxist analysis that it was a transitory form which will soon differentiate between proletariat and bourgeoisie have prompted a number if attempts at explaining the survival of this category. These debates have strongly influenced the analyses in the field of rural sociology from 1960s onwards, providing the conceptual tools for sociological analysis of rural relations of production. This thesis engages in an attempt of re-appraising the theoretical debates within Marxist analysis of petty agricultural production organization together with considering the recent transnational reorganization of agricultural production. The neo-liberal retraction of state as a regulating force and loosening the protectionist policies has lead to the rise of the power of Trans-National Corporations (TNCs) in the field of agriculture in the past couple of decades. Contractual farming is defined as a major form of direct relationship TNCs establish with petty agricultural producers to exercise their determining power over the organization of agricultural production. Together with a case study of contractual farming, the thesis discusses how could we define the class positions of this segment and whether their relationship with TNCs have a significant affect over our definitions.

<p>Abstract</p><p>The mixed messages provided in The Buddha of Suburbia together with its prevalent use of humour are the focal point for this essay. The aim is to defend my thesis statement that humour provides a justifiable forum for the critique and presentation of society, enabling the facilitation of serious, effective and powerful perspectives. As critical standpoints a mixture of Postcolonial and Marxist theories are applied together with Bakhtin’s theory of carnevalesque. By comparing historic facts with the portrayed environment depicted in the novel, a message is delivered that a change of a different worldview is required. This message is displayed with various uses of humour, wit and satire, which provide an allegorical veil for its seriousness. This analysis shows that there are no seeming changes in the lives of the characters, but it highlights that a need for a change of views is important.</p>

The Christian Right exerts considerable influence over female identity, especially through its members who have emerged as one of the most powerful voting blocks in the nation---the Christian Right woman. American Christian women, especially those considered to be on the political fringes, are virtually ignored in academic endeavors. Given their power, which defies their categorization as a "fringe" group, this academic silence is a gross oversight, especially in light of the rise of the Christian Right, which has successfully recruited millions of women to its service. This dissertation analyzes texts of Christian popular culture that contribute to the construction of feminine subjectivity---Tim LaHaye's Left Behind, selections from the most popular of Christian women's self-help books, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, and various online materials available on the website of Concerned Women for America. The consumption of these texts acts as a means through whi ch Christian Right women can support patriarchy through submission and affect their own personal transformations by reframing this submission in powerful terms. Most products aimed at and embraced by Christian women encourage a femininity that can be linked to Mary, the perfect mother of Christ. This Madonna paradigm and its accompanying subtext work with the aforementioned Christian texts to perpetuate an essentialized, yet contradictory portrayal of the feminine. The theory of subjectivity for Christian Right Women offered by this study utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to reveal these women's consciousness as a mixture of contradictions. These contradictions combine the ideologies of Christianity and capitalism, gender codes both archaic and contemporary, and the discourses of modernism and postmodernism into a force that simultaneously subjects these women and supports their personal agency. Ideas from Marxist and feminist thinkers---Louis Althusser, Valentin VolosÌ?inov, Judith Butler, Frederic Jameson, Chela Sandoval, and others---contribute theoretical structure to the discussion, which culminates in an analysis of the identification Christian Right women have with the rhetoric of victimhood.

This thesis is concerned with the negotiation of cultural and literary matters in South African public life during the period 1938 to 1960. While I begin with an exploration of the more 'orthodox' or 'academic' traditions of literary-cultural discussion in South Africa, the far more urgent preoccupation has been to explore a hitherto undocumented tradition of cultural-political debate in the South African public sphere, one which arose in the ' counter-public' circles of oppositional South African political groups. What has emerged is a rich and heterogeneous public debate about literature and culture in South Africa which has so far gone unrecorded and unrecognised. What sets this 'minority' discussion apart from more mainstream cultural discourses, I argue, is its overt engagement with contemporary socio-political issues. Articulated mainly by 'subaltern' writer-intellectuals - who occupied a precarious position in the social order either by virtue of their racial classification, class position or political affiliation - this is a cultural debate which offers a forthright critique of existing race and class norms. In these traditions, literary-cultural discussion becomes a vehicle for the articulation of radical political views and a means whereby marginalised individuals and groups can engage in oppositional public debate. In this regard, I argue, literary-cultural debate becomes a means of engaging in the kind of public political participation which is not available in the ' legitimate' public sphere. Focusing in the first instance on literary criticism 'proper', this thesis considers the distinctive reading strategies, hermeneutic practices, and evaluative frameworks which mark these alternative South African discursive traditions . Here I argue that the political, content-oriented, historical and ideological emphases of an alternative South African tradition are in marked contrast to the formalist, abstracted and moralising tendencies of more normative approaches. What the thesis points to is not only the existence of a substantial body of anti-colonial criticism and response in South Africa from the mid-1930s onwards, but also to a vigorous tradition of Marxist literary criticism in South Africa, one which predates the arrival of Marxist approaches in South African universities by some thirty years. Aside from the more traditional critical arena of literary consumption and evaluation, the thesis also considers a more general public discussion, one in which questions such as the place of politics in art, the social function of literature/culture, and the complex 'postcolonial' questions of cultural allegiance, identity and exclusion are debated at length. In this regard, culture becomes one of the primary sites of a much broader contestation of ruling class power. Regarded by many in these traditions as intrinsic to the operations of class and colonial oppression, culture also figures as one ofthe primary nodes of resistance. In seeking out these marginal South African 'subaltern counterpublics', the project has sought to retrieve a history of radical cultural-political debate in South Africa which is not available as part of the existing literary-cultural archive. In this regard, I hope not only to keep these ideas ' afloat' as a way of complicating and interrogating the present, but also seek to provide a more accurate and inclusive sense of the South African public sphere during the period under review. In particular, I offer a sense of the many competing intellectual discourses which formed the broader intellectual context out of which the dominant English Studies model was eventually constellated. I also give attention to the complex social processes by means of which certain intellectual discourses are granted legitimacy and permanence while others are discarded: what emerges in this regard, as I suggest, is gradual 'outlawing' of politics from South African cultural debates which coincides with the rise of the apartheid state. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2005.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, Dept. of Political Science, 2000. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 448-476).

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 221-225). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of English, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-133).

O desenvolvimento do processo de acumulação de capital fez com que o sistema capitalista sofresse grandes modificações em suas leis de movimento e se ultrapassasse seu estágio concorrencial, apresentando agora na maioria dos seus mercados características típicas de monopólio, o que fez com que se denominasse este estágio de capitalismo monopolista. As economias maduras sob a égide do capitalismo monopolista trazem consigo uma tendência a gerar uma quantidade maior de excedente do que alternativas para o seu investimento em atividades produtivas. Isto faz com que o sistema carregue consigo uma tendência inerente a estagnação, que só é contida por poderosos estímulos contrários, que impulsionam a economia enquanto seu efeito perdura, deixando novamente os sintomas da estagnação visíveis quando se esvanecem. Dentre estes estímulos contra tendentes, a financeirização, ou o desvio do excedente da esfera produtiva para a financeira, se tornou a mais poderosa força do capitalismo em sua luta contra a estagnação. / The development process of capital accumulation has made the capitalist system suffered major changes in its laws of motion and exceeded its competitive stage, representing the majority of its markets typical of monopoly, which led them to call this stage of monopoly capitalism. The mature economies under the auspices of monopoly capitalism brings with it a tendency to generate a greater amount of surplus that alternatives for its investment in productive activities. This causes the system to load with an inherent tendency to stagnation, which only contained a powerful stimulus to the contrary, that drive the economy while its effect lasts, leaving again the symptoms of stagnation visible when vanish. Among these stimuli aimed against the financialisation, or diversion of the surplus from the productive sphere to the financial, became the most powerful force of capitalism in their struggle against stagnation.

Esta dissertação tem por objetivo apresentar a evolução histórica e teórica do debate marxista acerca da relação entre as crises econômicas e o denominado “colapso” do modo de produção capitalista. Um debate que pode referido sob o nome de “controvérsia do colapso” e que esteve ligado ao surgimento e desenvolvimento das principais teorias marxistas de crise. Pretende-se explicitar os argumentos levantados ao longo da controvérsia para, posteriormente, efetuar uma avaliação crítica das diversas posições teóricas assumidas ao longo do debate. Para tanto, a exposição histórica da controvérsia será dividida em três “confrontos”, compreendendo a polêmica inicial em torno da obra revisionista de Eduard Bernstein, o debate sobre os esquemas de reprodução e a discussão acerca da taxa de lucro. Espera-se formar o quadro amplo de uma contenda histórico-teórica que atravessou a economia marxista desde praticamente seu início, destacando, na medida do possível, os autores mais influentes ou originais. Em especial, o presente trabalho é entendido como uma forma de retomar a importância de se pensar a relação entre a (re)produção capitalista, com sua crises internas, e seu fim como formação histórica. / This dissertation aims to present the historical and theoretical evolution of Marxist debate about the relationship between economic crises and the so-called "breakdown" of the capitalist mode of production. A debate that is called “the collapse controversy", and that was linked to the emergence and development of the main Marxist theories of crisis. It is intended to clarify the arguments raised along the controversy to then make a critical evaluation of the various theoretical positions taken in the debate. Therefore, the historical exposition of the controversy will be divided into three "clashes ", comprising the initial controversy surrounding the work of revisionist Eduard Bernstein, the debate on the schemes of reproduction and the discussion about the rate of profit. We expect to present the broad framework of a historical-theoretical contention that crossed the Marxist economics since almost its beginning, highlighting the most influential and original authors. In particular, this work is understood as a way of reasserting the importance of thinking about the relationship between the capitalist (re)production with its internal crises, and its end as a historical formation.