This thesis highlights and interrogates the mutually constitutive relationship between marginality, state power and borders. In doing so, it focuses specifically on the U.S.-Mexican border, and the role of the citizen/ subaltern binary. I use a Postcolonial approach to state power which reads Foucault’s work on power alongside Gramsci’s work on the state to see state power as decentralised and dispersed in society; to see power as acting productively through civil society, and power and resistance as inseparable. Subsequently, I introduce the concept of marginality through the work of Agamben and the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group, focusing on the mutual constitution of the citizen and subaltern whereby state power is reaffirmed through its ability to distinguish between lives and their value. This, I argue, becomes a logic of everyday life in the borderlands that makes sense to ordinary people. The empirical chapters of the thesis apply this theory to the Undocumented and subaltern women at the U.S.-Mexican border; illustrating the binary nature of state power and how the subaltern both at once sustains and disturbs this binary structure. I argue that citizen-led movements to ‘help’ the subaltern, although well intentioned, tend to act in solidarity with state power, reinforcing subalternity through the binary structure of power. By taking the naked life of the subaltern as their referent point, they too become implicated in the project of statecraft and the (re)production of the border. The thesis concludes by revisiting possibilities for resistance via disturbing the citizen/ subaltern binary in the context of representation. Drawing from Agamben, Spivak and Beverley I tackle the thin line between resistance and recolonisation within representation. Certainly there is an injustice of talking about without talking to. Indeed, I argue that to avoid using subalterns as tokens we must address and acknowledge this.

This project attempts to identify the various ways in which the projection of state power on the international scene can be affected by global migration patterns. It begins by examining some key aspects of state power that might be influenced by migration, and then assessing the impact that migration might have on those aspects. It closes by analyzing the ways in which these changes might alter state power and behavior, and proposing some areas for future research in this topic. / text

This dissertation examines the way in which contemporary fiction is highly concerned with sovereign power and the state of exception, as described by Giorgio Agamben in State of Exception. While in the last decade Agamben’s work has provided a new locus for the study of state power, I argue that disquiet over the reach of state power into everyday life has existed in fiction since at least the 1980s. Reading James Joyce, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, Don DeLillo and William Gibson alongside Agamben’s theories of state power and the state of exception sheds light on fictional representations of modern developments in power, the state and the corporate world. Through close analysis of philosophical and fictional texts, I draw out the complex politics of contemporary novelists and underscore the importance of both fictional and theoretical representations of contemporary political power. The dissertation consists of four chapters. Chapter One examines what I contend is new about Agamben’s work on power which is that, unlike Foucault, he accounts for the kind of power that may produce a concentration camp, and examines the place of this power at the heart of contemporary politics. Through analyses of James Joyce’s Ulysses and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale¬ I examine the ways in which Agamben’s theories move us towards a clearer understanding of representations of state power in contemporary fiction. In Chapter Two I discuss sovereign power in Rushdie’s postcolonial India and England, and I describe how the national identities of citizens of, or migrants to, those countries take shape in a society whose very fabric is affected by power that is frequently unrestricted by the law or by democracy. In Chapter Three I consider the “aftermath” of sovereign power in the work of Kazuo Ishiguro. In particular, I argue that he represents the extent to which sovereign power conditions culture and society, and how contemporary art and intellectual thought have failed as effective countermeasures to the power that may produce the state of exception. In the final Chapter, I consider the ways in which violence constitutes a form of resistance to sovereign power in the novels of William Gibson and Don DeLillo’s White Noise; further, I assess Gibson’s new narratives of space as potential counters to the state of exception. While Agamben’s work provides an opportunity to highlight the extent to which sovereign power and the state of exception are at work in contemporary novels, I contend that fiction represents these phenomena and their significance more completely than Agamben is able to. The use of figurative and experimental language and narrative techniques is highly effective in conveying the nuances and the experiential realities of state power, thereby moving the reader’s understanding beyond the abstract and the conceptual.

This dissertation examines the way in which contemporary fiction is highly concerned with sovereign power and the state of exception, as described by Giorgio Agamben in State of Exception. While in the last decade Agamben’s work has provided a new locus for the study of state power, I argue that disquiet over the reach of state power into everyday life has existed in fiction since at least the 1980s. Reading James Joyce, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, Don DeLillo and William Gibson alongside Agamben’s theories of state power and the state of exception sheds light on fictional representations of modern developments in power, the state and the corporate world. Through close analysis of philosophical and fictional texts, I draw out the complex politics of contemporary novelists and underscore the importance of both fictional and theoretical representations of contemporary political power. The dissertation consists of four chapters. Chapter One examines what I contend is new about Agamben’s work on power which is that, unlike Foucault, he accounts for the kind of power that may produce a concentration camp, and examines the place of this power at the heart of contemporary politics. Through analyses of James Joyce’s Ulysses and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale¬ I examine the ways in which Agamben’s theories move us towards a clearer understanding of representations of state power in contemporary fiction. In Chapter Two I discuss sovereign power in Rushdie’s postcolonial India and England, and I describe how the national identities of citizens of, or migrants to, those countries take shape in a society whose very fabric is affected by power that is frequently unrestricted by the law or by democracy. In Chapter Three I consider the “aftermath” of sovereign power in the work of Kazuo Ishiguro. In particular, I argue that he represents the extent to which sovereign power conditions culture and society, and how contemporary art and intellectual thought have failed as effective countermeasures to the power that may produce the state of exception. In the final Chapter, I consider the ways in which violence constitutes a form of resistance to sovereign power in the novels of William Gibson and Don DeLillo’s White Noise; further, I assess Gibson’s new narratives of space as potential counters to the state of exception. While Agamben’s work provides an opportunity to highlight the extent to which sovereign power and the state of exception are at work in contemporary novels, I contend that fiction represents these phenomena and their significance more completely than Agamben is able to. The use of figurative and experimental language and narrative techniques is highly effective in conveying the nuances and the experiential realities of state power, thereby moving the reader’s understanding beyond the abstract and the conceptual.

A detailed critical review has been made of both solid state power devices and circuit topologies with emphasis on their application to high frequency electric process heating power supplies operating between 3and 30 MHz. A number of prototype units have been designed and constructed and their suitability for high frequency induction heating and dielectric heating applications investigated. Desirable qualities being robustness, tolerance to load mismatch, ease of design, simplicity and cost of constituent components as compared with present day valve equipment The experience gained in these investigations has resulted in the choice of the power MOSFET as the most appropriate device and Class E amplifier as being the most applicable circuit topology for the generation of RF power for high frequency electric process heating applications. A practical and theoretical study has been made of the limitations of the power MOSFET as a high frequency switching device. The effect of source feedback on the switching speed of T03 packaged devices has been investigated by the addition of a second source terminal in a specially modified T03 package. Novel drive circuits have been developed enabling high frequency switching of both power and RF MOSFETs. These have been employed in inverters operating at 3.3 MHz at power levels up to 600 W and at frequencies between 7 and 27 MHz at power levels over 100 W, with conversion efficiencies of up to 95%.

How political authority and legitimacy are sustained in societies marked by socio-economic inequality and political exclusion is a long-standing preoccupation in the social sciences. Since the end of its civil war in 2002, Angola has often been cited as a paradigmatic case of such ‘illiberal peacebuilding’; of successful post-war transition to economic recovery and formal, political liberalisation, closely managed and tightly controlled by a ‘neoauthoritarian’, dominant-party regime. Based on 12 months of fieldwork in Luanda, this thesis offers an empirically and analytically innovative perspective that balances the ‘Africa rising’ narrative pervading mainstream media reports of post-war Angola, and complicates the clientelist account of Angolan politics that predominates academic literature. It does so by privileging an ethnographic approach rooted in urban life, encompassing social strata commonly studied separately. This seeks to delocalize the anthropological gaze and capture the radical social and spatial mobility of everyday life in Luanda. By working through the emic notion of the ‘system’, this thesis pays attention to both material practices and symbolic repertoires mobilised in the co-production of the political. For Angolans the ‘system’ is simultaneously a moral ordering device, a critique, and a mode d’emploi for their current political and socio-economic environment. It is characterised by multiple internal tensions: between the stasis and speed of urban life; blockages and mobility; the past and the future; ‘memory work’ and selective amnesia; and between fear and hope; and the affects and aspirations produced by ‘power’. Through detailed analysis of the practices through which people ‘work the system’, and of the political imaginaries and discursive repertoires that ‘make the system work’, the thesis looks at the myriad processes through which relationships between ‘power’ and ‘the people’ are constantly remade, renegotiated, and dialogically constructed. The analytical value of this notion of the ‘system’ is that it avoids reproducing a simplistic distinction between ‘state’ and ‘society’. By revealing the multiple linkages between these two spheres, we can think beyond ‘resistance’ and ‘complicity’, drawing out a more subtle account of hegemony, beyond the ‘cultivation of consent’ by the dominant. Examining the ‘functioning’ of ‘the system’ through the eyes of its ‘users’, the thesis therefore builds upon, and extends anthropology’s critique of dominance as something ‘produced’ by a group of select individuals, and investigates instead what it means and how it feels to live in and be part of such a polity. Its chapters explore the interweaving strands that make up this complex, mutually dependent relationship: history and the disjunctures between official and affective memories, ideas of racial and class identities, the idioms of kinship, and the practices and symbolisms of money-making. However, instead of reifying notions of ‘memory’, ‘tradition’, ‘identity’ or ‘corruption’ as analytical concepts, the thesis shows how social actors mobilise and modify these idioms in everyday interactions with ‘power’. Both in practice and in imagination, this ‘New Angola’ is constituted as essentially urban, upwardly mobile and aspirational, with rural areas left ‘behind’. Thus Luanda epitomises both a lived reality and a political project that stands for the entire country, as well as ‘laboratory of the global’, offering new insights into the politics of the everyday in dominant-party regimes in the 21st century.

In the decade (1992–2001), the Chinese architecture profession, (hereinafter using abbreviation the CAP) has been largely promoted to a higher level under the socialist circumstance. It is pivotal to note that the evolution of the architecture and the profession does not occur as a natural process, but rather as a result of power relations. In effect, the transformation in the architectural field is a result of interplay between many agents, with the state authority sitting as a predominant force amongst many components despite the complexity and complicity. / On the one hand, the CAP has experienced independence, self-improvement and integration into the world through the journey towards a liberalized position. On the other hand, the operation of architectural practice is highly channeled by the state authority, is closely tied to government policies and shaped by government regulations and facilitated by socio-economic dynamics. The state authority, at various levels, affects the direction of the CAP’s development as well as how it is evolving. This is implemented through interrelations not static but dynamic, that are constantly being re-enacted. / In the midst of the range of architectural phenomenon, the thesis focuses on changes of the CAP, and the relationship between the CAP and the state authority in China during a crucial decade of post–Mao reform, as reflected in the publications in Jian Zhu Xue Bao. It is based on a textual analysis of Jian Zhu Xue Bao, and observes the interrelations that occurred or re-occurred through historical review, discourse analysis and case studies. At the conceptual level, the study considers the interaction as that of power and knowledge. / Against the background provided, the dissertation argues that the underlying power–knowledge correlations react in the Chinese architectural field and at the same time; various interactions that drive the development related to the CAP are unfolding in Chinese architectural discourse. Drawing on scholarship concerning power and knowledge, findings are of four kinds related to: (1) the CAP obtained a relative autonomy; (2) the improvement of professional systems and enforcement; (3) the facilitation role of the state authority; (4) integration into international practice and discourse.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 397-406).

The work that is submitted here for the degree of PhD by publication comprises one book, one book chapter, and fourteen papers published in peer-reviewed journals. Many arise from qualitative research projects on which I was the appointed researcher. I am sole author on five of the publications, lead author on seven, and joint author on four. The publications span the years 1998-2007. They are included in full, and are examined, using Foucault's notion of 'governmentality', in an overview. The projects were designed and conducted during a particular era in history (characterised as 'risk society' or Yeflexive modernity'), dominated by a particular political ideology (characterised as 'neo-liberal'), and all examined aspects of public service delivery and use. Using Foucault's notion of governmentality, this body of research is concerned with questions of how we govern, and how we are governed, and with the relation between the government of ourselves, the government of others, and the government of the state. Foucault suggests that it is only through the analysis of various micro-sites that practices of power or governmentality might be identified. The research collected here represents a study of governmentality in the 'micro-sites' of welfare, (in this case, the provision and use of social security benefits); health care (the delivery and 'consumption' of NHS Direct, an innovative health care service); and education (in particular, the management of change in Higher Education, and the production of university learning, teaching and research).

This research employs a framework of social power, as coined by Michael Mann (1986; 1993), to understand the processes of state formation and development in Uganda. Using historical knowledge to understand the extent of social power relations in Ugandan society, the thesis assesses how these relations have shaped Ugandan state formation from the mid-1850s through to the present day. The research aims to bridge a gap between the discussions from African political theorists and historians and those of historical sociologists. It posits that state formation is a useful subject of study within the field of Development Studies, especially when it engages with historical empiricism. However, rather than providing a historically descriptive account of how the state formed, the research employs the theoretical framework of social power to guide the investigation of Ugandan state formation. Four units of analysis - ideological, political, military and economic sources of power form the basis of the approach. A historically and sociologically grounded analysis of the formation of the Ugandan state provides a contextually thick framework through which state development can be understood. By employing Mann's macro-historical sociological framework, this research aims to respond to calls not only for greater macro-theorisation, but also for history to be taken into account in development discourse. Unfortunately, the study of history and the use of historians' work is an investment of time which many development scholars struggle to afford There is an emerging critique that Development Studies scholars should not only acknowledge the historical processes underlying and framing their research, but that they should also actively engage with history to inform theoretical approaches to development. This thesis aims to demonstrate, from a historical sociology perspective, that history does matter for development and should, therefore, secure itself a place within the discipline, ensuring that Development Studies does include the study of social change in societies over long periods of time. Consequently, the analysis of this thesis argues that Mann's model of social power can cast light on development trajectories and specifically for the purpose of this study, on processes of state formation in Uganda.