The purpose of this essay is to examine Judith Butler’s approach to the problem of ethics, and the ways in which she attempts to reformulate notions of morality and responsibility based on an understanding of the subject as inherently bound to others within a context of normative structures that exceed its own influence. For Butler, this bond implies that the subject’s constitution is structured within what she calls a ”scene of address,” where it emerges into a social field by being appealed to by others, and replying to that appeal by giving an account of itself. By setting out to examine the way in which she puts two influential thinkers—namely Foucault and Levinas—to work, I will examine her notion of scenes of address more closely, and try to show how it enables her to pose the problems of ethics and morality in novel ways. I will argue that her ethics should be understood as one of relationality, since it moves away from the self-sufficient, autonomous subject as the outset for ethics, towards an understanding our very being as dependent on the being of others. This, I propose, puts it in contrast with many established ways of thinking about ethics, both within the Western philosophical tradition, and in views of ethics more generally. Thus, I hope to show that Butler’s ethics constitutes a valuable resource with regard to the question of ethical responsibility. Finally, I will propose that it carries significant implications that point towards ethical nonviolence, and that these are of increasing importance to us today.

From academic scholarship to military policy and international law, legitimacy is regarded as critical in shaping the course and outcome of violent political conflict. Yet, our understanding of the conditions for legitimacy and its effects in the context of armed conflict has been limited by multiple challenges and inconsistencies. My dissertation addresses longstanding debates in the literature on armed conflict by turning attention to two key features of legitimation: the asymmetry between legitimacy and illegitimacy, and the relationality of legitimation. I argue that these concepts, which have been theoretically and empirically overlooked or underdeveloped in research on armed conflict, offer a path to overcoming the challenges associated with the study of legitimacy in this context. I advance this claim through three studies. The first study empirically develops the assertion that while the conditions for legitimacy vary by case, the conditions for illegitimacy transcend regional contexts, representing a more global phenomenon. Comparative analyses of 30 cases of civil conflict from 1978 to 2008 reveals significant patterns across space and time in the conditions for civilian perceptions that government sanctioned violence is illegitimate. And yet, consistent with existing literature, my analyses revealed no patterning in the conditions for legitimacy. Through historical research into the details of these 30 cases, I identify three general mechanisms that result in perceptions of illegitimacy. The second study turns attention to the effects of illegitimacy for violent non-state groups. Using historical and discursive data, I examine the effects of illegitimacy at this level through an in-depth study of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Turkey. I introduce important correctives to existing theories, examining the cumulative effects of multiple sources of legitimation and showing that illegitimacy can provide much needed flexibility for oppositional groups. The third study examines the causes and conditions that lead to intrastate conflict recurrence. Combining quantitative analyses with comparative and historical research, I identify four distinctive pathways to conflict recurrence. I show how the conditions associated with each pathway shape the networks in which relationships of legitimacy and illegitimacy are embedded, and I discuss how these conditions mediate the effects of legitimacy and illegitimacy on conflict recurrence. By focusing on the asymmetry and relationality of legitimacy and illegitimacy, this work engages fundamental assumptions that are widely taken for granted and overlooked in scholarship on legitimacy in violent conflict and suggests significant revisions to existing theories of legitimation in armed conflict. Through this shift, my research identifies previously unobserved patterns in how evaluations of rightness and acceptability are made across space and time, allowing us to better understand the power dynamics that shape and constrain the networks of actors engaged in armed conflict.

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I create a dialogue between films credited with reviving the Western film genre in the early 1990’s. I examine spatial representations in a group of films I label “the revival westerns”: Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves (1990), Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992), and George P. Cosmatos’ Tombstone (1993). Through the use of extreme long shots, characters demonstrating a confined sense of place, and continuity editing, the revival westerns erect a concentrically scaled conception of space and place and maintain a linear temporality. However, I offer Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995) as an intervention that reassembles these spatial and temporal notions. Dead Man’s abstinence from the extreme long shot, elliptical editing, and multiple, simultaneous, and rearrangeable narratives, envisions space as a uniting presence that precedes and always exists in place, as well as beyond it, realizing place as part of a trans-scalar assemblage and time as non-linear. These spatiotemporal alternatives unmoor the stasis and fixity associated with the revival westerns’ notion of space, place, and time. This spatial and temporal dialogue is then contextualized within the social anxieties and economic violences employed during the neoliberal boom of the 1980’s and early 1990’s. I analyze Dead Man’s trans-scalar assemblage and non-linearity through the ecocritical lenses of Jane Bennett’s “thing power” and Rob Nixon’s “slow violence” to comprehend how Dead Man promotes a structure to enable greater social and ecological care.

Abstract This research aims to provide additional knowledge and understanding to augment existing ideas and theories of responsible leadership, and to bring forward the voices and practical experiences of business leaders. It approaches responsible leadership from a constructionist perspective and highlights the importance of leadership processes. This approach considers responsible leadership in today’s fragmented business environment as increasingly formed through interaction between people. Thus, the practice of good responsible leadership is conceptualized foremost as the ability to work within and through relationships in which language plays a central role. This research is based on ten narrative interviews with senior leaders of different business backgrounds. The narrative approach is used because individuals interpret and make sense of their experiences using narratives, and narratives structure our ethical positions in the world. The focus is partly on the content of individual accounts but more on how the stories reflect the social world from which the stories arise. This information, in turn, allows us to interpret interaction in certain social leadership contexts based on leaders’ individual accounts. The results of this research suggest a fluid definition of responsibility. It is a continuously changing construction in which many participants in addition to the leaders themselves are involved. Therefore, the discussion on responsibility is polyphonic. Every leader negotiates the meaning of responsibility within the limits and possibilities of local settings. The results of this research highlight the importance of relationships among participants in responsible leadership instead of seeing responsibility as part of an individual leader’s personality or character. / Tiivistelmä Tämän tutkimuksen tavoitteena on tuoda lisää tietoa ja ymmärrystä vastuullisen johtamisen käsityksiin ja teorioihin yritysjohtajien kertomuksien ja kokemuksien kautta. Tämä tutkimus lähestyy vastuullista johtamista konstruktionistisella otteella korostaen vuorovaikutussuhteiden merkitystä. Vastuullinen johtaminen nähdään muodostuvan tämän päivän pirstaleisessa liiketoimintaympäristössä enenevässä määrin ihmisten välisissä suhteissa ja vuorovaikutuksessa. Siten hyvä vastuullinen johtaminen tarkoittaa käytännössä johtajan kykyä työskennellä ihmissuhteissa ja niiden kautta. Tässä työssä kielellä on keskeinen merkitys. Tämä tutkimus perustuu kymmenen yritysjohtajan kertomuksiin. Kertojat ovat senioritason johtajia ja heillä kaikilla on erilainen liiketoimintatausta. Kerronnallista lähestymistapaa käytetään, koska yksilöt tulkitsevat ja luovat ymmärrystä kertomusten kautta. Kertomukset jäsentävät myös meidän eettistä asemaamme maailmassa. Tässä tutkimuksessa analysoidaan osittain kertomusten sisältöä, mutta enemmän sitä, mitä kertomukset kuvastavat henkilöiden sosiaalisesta maailmasta. Tämä lähestymistapa auttaa meitä tulkitsemaan vuorovaikutusta johtamisen sosiaalisessa kontekstissa yksittäisten johtajien kertomuksista. Tämän tutkimuksen tulokset viittaavat siihen, että vastuullinen johtaminen voidaan määritellä vaihtelevasti. Se on jatkuvasti muuttuva määritelmä, jossa johtajien lisäksi moni muu osapuoli osallistuu keskusteluun. Näin ollen keskustelu vastuullisuudesta on moniääninen. Jokainen johtaja neuvottelee vastuullisuuden merkityksen paikallisten olosuhteiden antamien mahdollisuuksien ja rajoitteiden sisällä. Vastuulliseen johtamistyöhön osallistuvien jäsenten välinen vuorovaikutus korostuu vastakohtana sellaiselle vastuullisuuskertomukselle, jossa vastuullisuus nähdään yksittäisen johtajan ominaisuutena tai luonteenpiirteenä.

‘Sharing’ and being able to ‘share’ is often considered a positive virtue that we should be able to achieve. More recently, ‘sharing’ has received prominence as a possible route towards sustainable consumption rather than sovereign ownership by reducing manufacturing and encouraging collaborative, shared consumption of goods (Harris and Gorenflo 2012). But how do we ‘share’, what does ‘sharing’ involve, and how do we acquire the skills and knowledge that allow people to ‘share’ successfully? This thesis examines the ‘practice’ of ‘sharing’ in shared accommodation in South Manchester. Aiming to address current gaps in our understanding of how ‘sharing’ works as a practice of consumption, this thesis uses the context of peer-shared accommodation to consider the negotiation, coordination and practice of ‘sharing’ non-sovereign goods (goods that are not owned or controlled by any one individual within the peer-group). Based on 31 qualitative interviews across 18 households in South Manchester, coupled with an analysis of 360 house share advertisements, this research explores the process by which residents are recruited into houses and their practices, how sharing is ‘done’ across different ‘types’ of tangible and intangible assets, and how issues of conflict within the practice of ‘sharing’ are resolved (or not). Using ‘theories of practice’ (Schatzki et al. 2001; Shove et al. 2009; Warde 2005) and the ‘housing pathways’ approach (Clapham 2002; Clapham 2004; Clapham 2005; Clapham 2009) as analytical frameworks to view the practice of ‘sharing’, it foregrounds the importance of interpersonal relationships on the enactment of practice. This thesis explores how ‘sharing’ within shared accommodation is not an easy or straightforward ‘practice’, but one that involves skills often acquired earlier in a resident’s housing career that allows tacit negotiation and coordination of ‘practice’ within an often flat-hierarchy that gives rise to some conflicting and irrational forms of consumption. ‘Sharing’ is contingent not just on ‘what’ is ‘shared’, but also with whom, and at what time. The importance of interpersonal relations – or relationality – on the enactment of practice is a key contribution of this thesis, and suggests that further research into ‘sharing’ and practices more generally should consider the impact of interpersonal relations and the practitioner’s ‘pathway’ in analyses of social practice. This thesis presents a ‘contingency model of sharing’ within which further research can be deployed to appraise ‘sharing’ as a diverse set of practices that are practically and relationally contingent, and argues for further research to explore sharing across differing contexts with relational forms in order to better inform a conceptual understanding of ‘sharing’ more broadly.

The past three decades have seen a proliferation of research methods, both quantitative and qualitative, available to psychologists. Whereas some scholars have claimed that qualitative and quantitative methods are inherently opposed, recently many more researchers have argued in favor of "mixed methods" approaches. In this dissertation I begin with a review of the mixed methods literature regarding how to integrate qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Based on this review, I argue that current mixed methods approaches have fallen short of their goal of integrating qualitative and quantitative methodologies and I argue that this problem may be due to a problematic ontology. In response to this problem I propose and conduct an ontological analysis, which examines the writings of leading mixed methods researchers for evidence of an underlying ontology. This analysis reveals that an abstractionist ontology underlies current mixed methods approaches. I then propose that an alternative relational ontology might better enable mixed methods researchers to meaningfully relate qualitative and quantitative methodologies and I provide an exploration of what assuming a relational ontology would mean for mixed methods research.

Thesis advisor: Brian Dunkle / Thesis advisor: Margaret Guider / This thesis argues that in the History of the Church the question of the Trinity has been influenced by cultures, languages and ways of life. Despite these differences, there is a common understanding of the relationship among the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The thesis argues that the Trinitarian relationality as it was understood by the fathers of the Church and by subsequent theology is fundamental in appreciating human beings' relationships with each other. This thesis uses the historical investigation method to understand Trinitarian relationality and its impact on African Christianity today. The first chapter will elaborate the Trinitarian relationality approach in the cultures and the languages of the early centuries, the Cappadocians in the East, Augustine in the West, and in the sixteenth century, Ignatius of Loyola. The thesis seeks to demonstrate that each approach was meant to respond to heretics denying the factuality of the three distinct Persons in one God and emphasizing the Trinitarian relationality. The second chapter will focus on an African theological vision for togetherness. The key concepts will be the Ubuntu and Ujamaa. Ubuntu is a concept used in the context of South Africa to resolve the wounds of apartheid in its three periods of pre-, during, and post-apartheid. Ubuntu is the term used for togetherness. In Tanzania, during the post-colonial period, a relative concept is used in terms of "familyhood" to explain togetherness and its implications, the concept of Ujamaa. The third chapter will introduce the concept of Deou. Deou is a word for human being or person in one of the Chadian languages called Murum; this concept expresses the inter-relationality that exists in the life of Murum people. this inter-relationality is a cultural model of living that binds Deoudje (plural of Deou) together. The theological consequence of the concept of Deou is to allow the people of Chad to experience themselves as one despite their diversity. This model for Trinitarian relationality is the aim for this work. / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

Many societal problems in Brazil, including sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and fatherlessness, are said to be related to hegemonic masculine development, commonly known as toxic masculinity. Very little research has been conducted in Marriage and Family Therapy and related fields that explores masculinity in the context of family systems and within relational frameworks. Current research in this area focuses largely on the negative aspects of traditional masculinity that reinforce narrow stereotypes rather than highlight possibilities of relationally healthy masculine development. The aim of this study was to develop a constructivist grounded theory of relational masculinity in Brazil by interviewing 10 diverse Brazilian men who reject relationally unhealthy patterns related to hegemonic masculinity.

In this project, I suggest a Deleuzian ontological perspective to address the interconnected and relational constitution of Muslim women‘s experiences and practices to illuminate the multiple-layers of their lives. Namely, I call into question the category ―Islamist,‖ used for contemporary headscarf-wearing women in Turkey, and examine how this categorization erases contingency, specificity, and relationality of women‘s experiences. For this purpose, I articulate the conception of body as a relational and affective multiplicity based on a Deleuzian ontology. According to this ontology, bodies are composed of an infinite number of smaller bodies through the confluence of relations and the creative capacity of affects, which are produced by this relational flux. Since the body is a relational and affective aggregate and a multiplicity within an assemblage, it is not a stable ontological essence or determined by overarching structures, but it is instead dynamic, continually changing, and always in a process of becoming. Since this Deleuzian approach problematizes the stability and singularity of identities, it offers a radical change for the framing of the question of Muslim women. This approach provides useful means to illuminate the experiences, desires, and practices of women in their contexts and through the particular characters of their relations and affects. Therefore, this project stresses the idea that we need analytical tools which allow us to attend to dynamic configurations of Muslim women without reducing them to existing categories or marginalities. / Religion