This thesis analyses the political development and the growth of popular political awareness in Glasgow and the west of Scotland from the Union with England of 1707 to the burgh reform movement in the mid-1780s, examining political disputes among the urban elite as well as the activities, arguments, and ideology of ordinary people. Through the rapid growth of Atlantic trade and manufacturing industries, Glasgow and the west of Scotland in this period experienced social and economic changes which had significant implications for the ways that political control was contested and political opinions were expressed. The region also possessed a distinctive tradition of orthodox presbyterianism and loyal support for the Revolution Settlement and the Hanoverian Succession, both of which underpinned the growth of popular political awareness in the mid- and later eighteenth century. By taking these social and economic changes as well as traditional religious and political characteristics of the region into account, this thesis establishes a dynamic picture of eighteenth-century Scottish politics which has in the past been overshadowed by an image of its stability. Chapter One outlines the conditions, structure, and operation of urban and popular politics in eighteenth-century Glasgow. Chapters Two and Three demonstrate the existence of challenges to the political management by the great landowners and point out the popular dimension of these struggles. Chapter Four analyses how and why popular political consciousness developed in the age of the American Revolution, which led to the emergence of the burgh reform movement. Chapter Five examines popular disturbances, revealing the agency and vibrancy of the politics of the people. Chapter Six explores popular political ideology, focusing on the widespread appreciation of the British constitution and a distinctive Scottishness in the concept of liberty. This thesis concludes by asserting the importance of understanding politics in its broadest sense and also of incorporating the popular element as an integral part of any understanding of eighteenth-century Scottish politics.

This thesis – Online Parody Videos and the Enactment of Cultural Citizenship – examines the enactment of the practice of cultural citizenship in new media contexts. Through a cultural study approach, it seeks to find how citizens enact the practices of cultural citizenship, participate in public deliberation, engage in politics and construct identities as citizens in an informal way through digital creativity. In this thesis, “JorKawTeun,” an online news parody program, is selected as a case study. The main research question is, “based on the case study of “JorKawTeun,” how are the practices of cultural citizenship and popularization of politics enacted through online parody videos in Thailand? Specifically, how is humor utilized in the videos, and what rhetorical strategies/tactics are used to make political points?” The theoretical framework is comprised of monitorial citizenship and cultural citizenship. In addition, the concept of “parody as genre” is also employed in order to be implemented in the analysis of the techniques used in the videos. The methodology is critical discourse analysis. The findings of the study reveal the complex and paradoxical dimensions of citizenship, the tendency towards individualized political participation, and the subversive potential of parody: a vernacular form of political communication that is remediated in a media convergence environment. Finally, the thesis aims at contributing to an understanding of the relationship between popular culture and politics in contemporary mediated contexts, as well as the rethinking of the notion of citizenship, political participation and civic engagement based on a culturally-oriented perspective.

This thesis explores the shifting political culture of inter-war Scotland and Britain via an examination of political identities and practice in Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh. Drawing on the local and national archives of the Labour movement and the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) alongside government records, newspapers, personal testimony and visual sources, relations on the political Left are used as a means to evaluate this change. It is contended that, as a result of the extension of the franchise and post-war fears of a rise in political extremism, national party loyalties came to replace those local political identities, embedded in a sense of class, trade and place, which had previously sustained popular radicalism. This had crucial implications for the conduct of politics, as local customs of popular political participation declined, and British politics came to be defined by national elections. The thesis is structured in two parts. The first section considers the extent to which local identities of class and established provincial understandings of popular democracy came to be identified with an appeal to class sentiment excluded from national political debate. The second section delineates the repercussions this shift had for how and where politics was conducted, as the mass franchise discredited popular traditions of protest, removing politics from public view, and privileging the individual elector. In consequence, the confrontational traditions of popular politics came to be the preserve of those operating on the fringes of politics, especially the CPGB, and, as such, largely disappeared from British political culture. This thesis thus offers an important reassessment of the relationship between the public and politics in modern Britain, of the tensions between local and national loyalties, and of the role of place in the construction of political identities.

Le but de cette recherche est d’analyser le rôle politique des opinions collectives au Portugal aux Temps Modernes. Bien avant l’avènement du concept d’« opinion publique », plusieurs sources renvoient à un jugement « public », « commun » ou « général », associé fréquemment à l’idée de Fama. La présente thèse étudie l’élargissement du débat public portugais dans un contexte marqué par une intense agitation populaire et par le développement de conceptions radicales du patriotisme et de la liberté. / The purpose of this research is to analyze the political role of collective opinions in Early Modern Portugal. Long before the advent of the concept of « public opinion », many sources refer to a « public », « common » or « general » judgment, frequently associated with the idea of Fama. This thesis studies the expansion of Portuguese public debate in a context marked by an intense popular agitation and by the development of radical conceptions of patriotism and liberty.

Le Costa Rica s’est construit comme une société homogène sans valorisation ni représentation des classes populaires. Dans les discours savants et dans le champ politique, la faible représentation des couches inférieures des classes populaires est généralement expliquée par leur atomisation. Incapables de se retrouver autour d’intérêts communs, ces groupes ne pourraient exister collectivement dans l’espace politique institué. À revers de ces analyses, cette thèse interroge l’émergence de porte-parole et leur accès à la politique instituée à travers l’étude de carrières de dirigeants de deux quartiers populaires à San José. En l’absence d’une structuration clientélaire ou corporative, ces dirigeants sont en général considérés comme des acteurs isolés ayant tout pouvoir sur une clientèle de voisins apathiques. Or, leur leadership repose sur des liens personnalisés et localisés et sur des logiques d’unification. Pour résoudre les problèmes locaux, les dirigeants s’attachent à mettre en forme des attentes autour desquelles leur voisinage peut se retrouver. Mais, leur action se déroulant hors de structures d’encadrement préétablies, leur position est précaire. Face aux échecs des projets qu’ils portent et à la position inconfortable que cela leur vaut localement, certains dirigeants tentent de poursuivre leur engagement en entrant en politique. Or, cela est rendue difficile par une gestion partisane des carrières militantes peu favorable à ces groupes sociaux. Ainsi, à travers une analyse par le bas des modes d’action de ces dirigeants, cette thèse contribue à l’analyse des formes d’engagement et de politisation populaires se déroulant à la marge de la politique instituée / In academic discourse as much as in the political field, the poor representation of the lower classes of Costa Rican society is generally attributed to the fact that they are dispersed. Unable to gather into communities of interest, these groups could not exist collectively in the political field. Taking an opposite position to these analyses, this thesis investigates the emergence of spokespersons and their access to the political field by studying the neighbourhood’s leaders’ careers. These leaders are generally considered to have all power over a clientele of apathetic neighbours. However, if their leadership relies on the strength of personalised and localised ties, made and kept by a range of exchanges of goods and services, this investigation sheds light on processes of unification. In order to resolve local problems, the leaders focus on rationalising, even perhaps inciting needs that their neighbours can rally behind. Faced with regular failure and the subsequent uncomfortable position this leaves them him, some leaders can attempt to pursue a career in the political establishment. However, their entry in politics is particularly difficult due to the political parties who manage political careers and are not in favour of urban working class groups. Through a bottom-up approach, this thesis contributes to the analysis of the forms of political engagement and the politicization of the lower classes, which can happen on the margins of the political field

From 1838 until the end of the European Revolutions in 1852, the French Revolution provided Chartists with a repertoire of symbolism that Chartists would deploy in their activism, histories, and literature to foster a sense of collective consciousness, define a democratic world-view, and encourage internationalist sentiment. Challenging conservative notions of the revolution as a bloody and anarchic affair, Chartists constructed histories of 1789 that posed the era as a romantic struggle for freedom and nationhood analogous to their own, and one that was deeply entwined with British history and national identity. During the 1830s, Chartist opposition to the New Poor Law drew from the gothic repertoire of the Bastille to frame inequality in Britain. The workhouse 'bastile' was not viewed simply as an illegitimate imposition upon Britain, but came to symbolise the character of class rule. Meanwhile, Chartist newspapers also printed fictions based on the French Revolution, inserting Chartist concerns into the narratives, and their histories of 1789 stressed the similarity between France on the eve of revolution and Britain on the eve of the Charter. During the 1840s Chartist internationalism was contextualised by a framework of thinking about international politics constructed around the Revolutions of 1789 and 1830, while the convulsions of Continental Europe during 1848 were interpreted as both a confirmation of Chartist historical discourse and as the opening of a new era of international struggle. In the Democratic Review (1849-1850), the Red Republican (1850), and The Friend of the People (1850-1852), Chartists like George Julian Harney, Helen Macfarlane, William James Linton, and Gerald Massey, along with leading figures of the radical émigrés of 1848, characterised 'democracy' as a spirit of action and a system of belief. For them, the democratic heritage was populated by a diverse array of figures, including the Apostles of Jesus, Martin Luther, the romantic poets, and the Jacobins of 1793. The 'Red Republicanism' that flourished during 1848-1852 was sustained by the historical viewpoints arrived at during the Chartist period generally. Attempts to define a 'science' of socialism was as much about correcting the misadventures of past ages as it was a means to realise the promise announced by the 'Springtime of the Peoples'.