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This thesis examines the heterosexual experiences of middle-class girls growing up in England between 1950 and 1980. Drawing primarily upon oral histories and Mass Observation testimonies, it explores the ways in which sexual discourses and practices shaped the adolescences lives of the post-war generation. Putting Laura Doan’s notion of ‘queerness-as-method’ into practice, the thesis uses the example of the youth sexual practice in the mid-twentieth century to reinforce claims that heterosexuality is unstable and dynamic. Paying particular attention to the logistics of sexual practice, the thesis makes two central arguments regarding youth sexuality at this time. Firstly, it argues that young women’s sexual lives were shaped by girls’ place in the life-cycle. Girls’ status as dependents and their lack of private space materially affected when and where they could engage in sexual activity. More than this, however, girls understood their adolescence as a period in which they were supposed to transition towards sexual maturity. Young women thus organised their sexual practice around the notion that they were ‘becoming sexual’. Secondly, this research demonstrates that teenage sexuality in the post-war period had an important social component. Far from being a product of individual morality, preference or personality and conducted in secret, girlhood sexuality was fundamentally social: girls’ sexual activities both defined and gained meaning from their relationships with their sexual partners, schoolmates and friends. Focussing on the politics of space, the thesis demonstrates how sexual activity was managed around competing imperatives of display and evasion as teenagers wished to hide their sexual behaviour from their parents but benefit from the social currency increasingly associated with sexual knowledge and experience. The thesis thus demonstrates the importance of understanding sexuality as being embedded within the social tapestry of individuals’ lives. For girls growing up between 1950 and 1980, questions of sex and sexuality could not be divorced from their roles and identities as not-yet-adults, girlfriends, daughters and friends.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the impact of the US Congress on the process of Sino-American rapprochement and diplomatic normalisation during the period 1969-1980. Thus far, research on Sino-American rapprochement and normalisation has focused on the role played by the Executive Branch, ignoring the role played by Congress. This study aims to place Executive Branch actions with regard to China policy in the context of domestic political trends and Congressional actions and attitudes, and locates the process of Sino-American rapprochement and normalisation in the broader context of shifting domestic attitudes toward the Cold War. This thesis demonstrates that rapprochement would not have been possible in the absence of dramatic domestic political changes in the United States, particularly important shifts of perspective within Congress toward the Cold War in general and China in particular. It traces the development of Congressional attitudes towards China, and examines the interaction between Congress and the Executive Branch with regard to China policy. This study argues that the interplay between the Executive and the Legislative Branches during a decade in which Congress was asserting its views on foreign policy is central to understanding the development of China policy during the 1970's. One of the most effective means by which Congress shaped China policy during the period of this study was by means of its ability to define the political space within which the Executive Branch was able to operate with respect to China policy. Attempts on the part of the Executive Branch to deny Congress influence were only partially successful, and although there were limits on Congress's ability to directly influence policy in the 1970's, this thesis demonstrates that Congress had a much greater impact on the development of China policy during the decade than has previously been acknowledged.

This thesis uses the content analysis of a large sample of advertisements to trace a narrative of changing self experience in post-war consumer culture. The thesis challenges the tendency in cultural studies of advertising to see texts solely as a record of advertisers' commercial intentions. It questions the assumption that advertising secures producers' control of the symbolic economy. As a complement to such 'producer narratives' the thesis presents a 'narrative of readerships'. This traces changes and continuities in readers' orientations to objects of consumption in the period. A detailed examination of the theoretical underpinnings of critical approaches to advertising leads to the proposal of an alternative to the models of reception evident in text based studies. This alternative model draws on object relations psychoanalysis. The thesis asserts the value of the close empirical study of advertising texts. This provides evidence to counter both negative and positive generalisations about advertisements as 'creativity 1 or manipulation. The thesis proposes instead that advertising serves a range of commercial, practical, aesthetic and social communicative functions. The thesis questions the validity of analyses of advertising textualities in the 'diagnosis' of pathologies of the self and culture, suggesting that the ascription of such pathologies depends upon an inadequate model of reception. The thesis sets out an account of psychosocial change binding an analysis of disruptions to sociologically conceived trajectories to an account of an increasing prevalence of anxiety in psychosocial experience. Advertising, seen in the light of these disruptions to cultural inheritance is presented as an increasingly important communicative mode because of its contribution to a symbolically rich cultural environment which can facilitate 'identity work'. The thesis presents evidence for a continuing preoccupation amongst consumers with function and practicality. This finding is explored as evidence, not only of a persistent strand of consumer rationality, but as an indicator of an emerging new orientation to materiality in culture. The thesis proposes that totalising narratives, either optimistic or pessimistic, about the cultural experience of consumption are suspect. A more complex and variegated account is more likely to capture the consumer experiences The thesis suggests the necessity for close empirical analysis of changing consumer cultures as a counter to overarching narratives of cultural change

This PhD thesis is an empirical research project in the field of modern Polish history. The thesis focuses on Solidarity, the Network and the idea of workers’ self-management. In addition, the thesis is based on an in-depth analysis of Solidarity archival material. The Solidarity trade union was born in August 1980 after talks between the communist government and strike leaders at the Gdansk Lenin Shipyards. In 1981 a group called the Network rose up, due to cooperation between Poland’s great industrial factory plants. The Network grew out of Solidarity; it was made up of Solidarity activists, and the group acted as an economic partner to the union. The Network was the base of a grass-roots, nationwide workers’ self-management movement. Solidarity and the self-management movement were crushed by the imposition of Martial Law in December 1981. Solidarity revived itself immediately, and the union created an underground society. The Network also revived in the underground, and it continued to promote self-management activity where this was possible. When Solidarity regained its legal status in April 1989, workers’ self-management no longer had the same importance in the union. Solidarity’s new politico-economic strategy focused on free markets, foreign investment and privatization. This research project ends in July 1990, when the new Solidarity-backed government enacted a privatization law. The government decided to transform the property ownership structure through a centralized privatization process, which was a blow for supporters of workers’ self-management. This PhD thesis provides new insight into the evolution of the Solidarity union from 1980-1990 by analyzing the fate of workers’ self-management. This project also examines the role of the Network throughout the 1980s. There is analysis of the important link between workers’ self-management and the core ideas of Solidarity. In addition, the link between political and economic reform is an important theme in this research project. The Network was aware that authentic workers’ self-management required reforms to the authoritarian political system. Workers’ self-management competed against other politico-economic ideas during the 1980s in Poland. The outcome of this competition between different reform concepts has shaped modern-day Polish politics, economics and society.

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