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Orientador: Lucila Scavone / Banca: Vera Lúcia Silveira Botta Ferrante / Banca: Eliana de Melo e Souza / Banca: Margareth Rago / Banca: Eleonora Menicucci de Oliveira / Resumo: A presença e participação das mulheres na construção das sociedades é fato. Essa participação, poré, tem sido pouco valorizada pela ciência em geral, desperbida por grande parte dos pesquisadores. Ao institucionalizar como modelo de participação a presença em organizações formais como partidos, sindicatos ou em exercício de mandatos parlamentares, em cargos nos executivos ou ainda pelo ato de voltar, a sociedade exclui as mulheres da sua concepção de sujeito político. Os estudos feministas vêm demonstrando o quanto esse equívoco tem sido penoso para o reconhecimento da cidadania feminina. Esses estudos incoporam categorias largamente discutidas por Bourdieu e Foucault como "conhecimento","verdade" "poder", "habitus" e "discurso", para explicar como estas interferem e estruturam as relações na sociedade...(Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo). / Abstract: The presence and participation of women in the construction of societies is a fact. That participation, however has been given little value by Science in general, beeping unnoticed by most researchers. Considering the presence in formal institutions such as political parties and syndicates or the exercise of parliamentary mandates or in the Executive positions, or even the mere act of voting as participation models, Science has been denying or simply omitting women's condition as political subjects. The feminist studies have demonstrated how much that mistake has been painful for the recognition of feminine citizenship. These studies include categories largely discussed by Bordieu and Foucalt, such as "knowledge", "truth", "power", "habitus" and "speech", in order to explain how these interfere and structure relatiosn the relations in society...(Complete abstract, click electrinic address below). / Doutor

This thesis is about family law under the Ben Ali dictatorship where the women's rights embodied in these laws constituted a cornerstone of the state's legitimacy. in 1956, Tunisia became the first Muslim country to reform Islamic family law radically, abolishing polygamy and granting women and men equal rights in divorce. Whether these laws have supported gender equality or not has been hotly contested. Based on fieldwork in a suburb of Greater Tunis and in a court (2007-2008) thesis provides an ethnographic account of the practice of marriage and divorce. From these dual perspectives it argues that ordinary ethics are an essential part of the law. The thesis begins by exploring the uncertainties that surround marriage in a lower-middle class neighbourhood. it then analyses some of the mechanisms through which the law is intimately intertwined with ordinary ethics, notably through an examination of the documentary practices of divorce files. This thesis argues that the connections between law and ethics generate radical uncertainties and anxieties. First, there is uncertainty as to whether a litigant can access justice in divorce. To access rights in divorce a litigant must strive to display highly gendered forms of ethical personhood. Rather than supporting gender equality the legal processes contribute to the homogenization of moral values at a national level as particular gender roles are debated and reinforced vial legal practice. Second, there is uncertainty as to the state's moral legitimacy as it is exposed to the moral scrutiny of its citizens through the operation of the law. The thesis argues that the politically charged setting of the court is the scene for a kind of extraordinary ethics, as divorce cases are a site where the morality of marriage and the morality of the state are simultaneously at stake.

Sri Lanka gained prominence in international policy circles as an apparent 'success story' first as a model colony in early 1950s and later as a development model for South Asia by 1970s. In naming Sri Lankan 'success story' experts pointed to the decreasing population growth rate and decreasing mortality. Renowned demographers attributed this to the improvements in the field of social indicators such as high literacy rates, increased life expectancy and rise in female age at marriage. In this 'success story' women's health serves as a linchpin to the attainment of national progress. But a focus on women's health – as statistics and indicators – has also served to silence questions about Sri Lankan women's broader experiences of their disaggregated health. In particular, while Sri Lankan 'women's health' served the Sri Lankan state's 'success story' well, what is less clear is how women's individual bodies have fared within subsequent tellings of its other twentieth century Sri Lankan stories of late colonial, national, developmental, neoliberal and militarised phases. My thesis examines this question through a critical examination of women's health history of this island nation. I trace its history from initial birth control, family planning (1953) to development population control to militarisation, financialisation of women's bodies and ends with a critical examination of recent policies that claim to emancipate women's health 'beyond' a myopic focus on their role as reproducer. Although women's health was vigilantly 'controlled' and 'planned' for the state building project and women's bodies were framed around the notion of social reproduction for the nation building project of post independent Sri Lanka, women were neither subjects nor objects of these two projects. Women's reproductive bodies were, rather, the ground for a complex and competing set of struggles on population, family planning, development, modernisation and ethno nationalism of post independent Sri Lanka. Further women's health/women's bodies analysis helps to elucidate the manner in which we can track the operation of power that serves to silence women's own corporeal subjectivity and to delimit the realms in which she can exercise her own agency.

In the 1994 Rwanda genocide, an estimated 800,000 people were brutally murdered in just thirteen weeks. This violence affected all Rwandans, but women experienced the genocide in very specific ways. They were frequently raped, tortured and physically mutilated. Yet, because of their sexual value, the number of women who survived the genocide far outweighed the number of men, leaving them largely responsible for rebuilding Rwandan society. While it may seem abhorrent to suggest that anything good could result from such tragedy, evidence from the women’s testimonies analysed for this research project suggests that this is a reality. Traditionally, the study of psychological trauma has been pervaded by an illness ideology with an emphasis on its pathological consequences. Throughout history and across cultures, however, the notion of positive changes resulting from human suffering has been recognised in literature and philosophy. Positive change following trauma, or posttraumatic growth, refers to the tendency of some individuals to establish new psychological constructs and build a new way of life that is experienced as superior to their previous one in important ways. Little research has been carried out on the concept of posttraumatic growth in other cultures and, to date, no research into posttraumatic growth has been carried out in Rwanda. However, empirical research in other contexts suggests that efforts to harness and promote posttraumatic growth may not only enhance health and well-being but also reduce future need for formal mental health services. Through a discursive analysis of Rwandan women survivors’ testimonies, this thesis reveals that, although there are countless tales of horror, pain and loss, there are also many stories about strength, recovery and growth. The thesis examines the impact of external factors, such as victimisation, stigmatisation and gender, which appear to encourage personal strength among these women, but have also gravely damaged their interpersonal relationships. It also examines the impact of the genocide on religious beliefs and demonstrates that individual interpretations of trauma within a religious framework can provide existential reassurance. However, because of Rwanda’s history of theocratic leadership, religious interpretations can also give spiritual credibility to ideologies which have a negative impact on group identity. The final part of the thesis examines processes of growth at the collective level, exploring the impact of the genocide on these women’s group identities both as survivors in Rwandan society and as Rwandans in an international society. It suggests that for growth to take place at the collective level, survivors require access to a platform from which they can develop counter ideologies and pursue their collective needs for agency on the one hand, and communion on the other. Drawing on the findings of this research, the concluding chapter offers culturally-informed advice to trauma practitioners, policy makers and non-governmental organisations as to how posttraumatic growth might be facilitated in the socio-political climate of Rwanda.

There is an idea, currently fashionable amongst historians, that all history is really 'about' the present 1. This thesis does nothing to undermine this idea. Although most obviously concerned with ideas about the family in the twenty five or so years after 1945, it is also very much concerned with our own contemporary debates about the family. Indeed, it is conceived as a means of making an intervention into those debates. The thesis seeks to explore the complexity of debate, policy, representation and memories of the family in the postwar period. To do this, research is organised around three distinct strands: Consideration of official discourse and public policy (at both a national and local level); analysis of representations of family in popular culture, particularly in British film/ and consideration of remembered experience as evidenced in oral sources. Where appropriate, the London Borough of Greenwich has been used as a local example which acts as a reference point for discussion of national concerns. The research comprises work on new oral sources and on local authority and voluntary agency papers which have not previously been the subject of published work. It also involves new ways of thinking about some well research material in official publications and film. The thesis also engages with questions of method and theory associated with studying the history of ideas. It is particularly concerned with affirming the importance of studies of popular, non-literary culture and oral histories in understanding the past.

The aim of the study is to explore the hypothesis that children, between the ages of seven and eleven, not only have concepts of politics, but that these develop, following a basic Piagetian model, through consecutive, cumulative stages. Investigation of this idea is carried out by examining childrens’ responses, both verbal and written, to particular questions, and subsequently relating these responses to a body of theory, which draws together some important contributions to present knowledge of childrens’ cognitive and social development. This provides both a point of reference and a disciplined structure for examining the significance of the collected data, as it enables an analytic approach to be made to studying the ways in which children perceive and enact political ideas, and gradually acquire the ability to use political concepts. The first section of the study is concerned with establishing this theoretical basis. The second part of the study presents approximately eight hundred childrens’ responses to questions which were intended to elicit their perceptions of the content of political activity, concepts of the processes and roles of government and attitudes to authority, freedom and the rule of law. These are accompanied by commentary, and followed by further discussion in terms of the nature of the development observed at different stages, and what appear to be the formative influences upon it. These include the influence of social class on political understanding, and raise questions concerning the role of the family group's language in political concept-formation, the political function of early schooling, sex-linked differences in political understanding and the influence of television on that understanding. The study has therefore both a practical and theoretical content. It is a study of children in action cognitively, and of the structures and directions of their developing thought on politics, from its earliest identifiable appearance, in ways which have not emerged, or been taken into account, in existing literature.

As a Japanese cultural genre, animated works for girls serve as sociocultural texts which articulate hegemonic social norms and ideologies regarding gender in Japanese society. This thesis aims to critically examine representations of 'magical girl' protagonists in Jpanese Magical Girl TV animation programmes (anime) for girls from 1966 to 2003, and to analyse female audiences' viewing experiences and understanding of those programmes in relation to the context of sociocultural and feminist movements in Japan. By using a combined methodology of close textual analysis of six Magical Girl TV anime and of qualitative research, in which individual interviews with female audiences and a focus group discussion among girl audiences were conducted, this thesis explores how representations of Western-oriented witches and witchcraft in the Magical Girl TV anime facilitated constructions of female gender identity and idealised 'self' and how actual female audiences in three different age cohorts understood, took pleasure in, consumed, negotiated, resonated with and/or reconciled with those representations. Although Japanese witch animation texts articulated Japanese normative moral values and hegemonic femininity as well as ideal gender equality, they served as sites in which female audiences took pleasure in constructing an ideal 'self' and self-assertion through negotiating, resonating and reconciling with Western-oriented fashionable female protagonists and their lifestyle, and attaining self-expression through 'textual poaching' or exercising imagined magical transformations in an all-female or solitary environment. This thesis attempts to contribute to uncovering little-explored but important Japanese cultural texts of Magical Girl TV anime and explicate the way in which actual Japanese audiences responded to this gender-segregated genre of Japanese TV anime.

The thesis comprises three papers; a literature review, an empirical paper, and a reflective paper. The first is a critical review of studies of interventions aimed at preventing depression among children of parents with depression. Much research evidences the potential negative impact on this young population, and therefore researchers have begun to use family, cognitivebehavioural, and parenting interventions, to try to prevent the onset of depression in these children, instead bolstering resilience. The review finds that although the research is relatively new, there are promising signs that all of these types of interventions may help in some way towards preventing the transmission of depression from parent to child, but further research is needed to determine the validity and duration of these effects. The empirical paper presents a study of resilience in children who have a sibling with diabetes, as compared to a control group. It was found that when controlling for covariates of self-esteem and family functioning, resilience levels were the same for both groups. Previous research has focussed on the potential negative impact on siblings of children with health or learning difficulties, but this research suggests that this population may also be as resilient as their peers whose siblings do not have such difficulties. The final chapter discusses reflections on the research process, and areas of personal and professional learning and development that have arisen as a result.

This thesis examines the history of lone motherhood in England between 1945 and 1990. Most studies of lone motherhood after 1945 have focused on unmarried women, but this study looks at all routes into lone motherhood: pre-marital pregnancy, separation, divorce and widowhood. Existing research on post-1945 history has tended to prioritise the role of the state in determining demographic trends in family life and behaviour. This thesis uses oral history evidence to demonstrate how women’s agency shaped routes into lone motherhood as well as their management of female-headed household economies and their sense of identity within the post-war welfare state. A sample of fifty oral history interviews, primarily selected from the Millennium Memory Bank at the National Sound Archive forms the basis of the thesis. Interviewees are predominantly working-class and from urban locations across all regions of England. The sample is divided into five generational cohorts, which span the immediate post-war period, 1950s, 1960s 1970s and 1980s. Childhood, adolescent and marital experiences are analysed within each cohort in order to understand changes and continuities in women’s entrance into lone motherhood. In addition, contemporary sociological sources are discussed alongside the oral histories in order to understand the relationship between the sociological construction of lone motherhood and lone mothers’ developing social identities in the post-war period. Three categories of analysis in relation to the experience of lone motherhood feature: ‘Accommodation and Housing,’ ‘Maternal Economy’ and ‘Social Membership and Identity.’ The study concludes that women’s greater entrance into lone motherhood after 1970 was driven by their rejection of an untenable social and economic division of labour in marriage, which remained consistent across our period. The development of sociological classification in relation to one parent families in the 1960s is demonstrated to have been taken-up by women from the 1970s onwards to legitimize their entitlement to state assistance and housing. This entitlement is also argued to have rested on an inter-generational maternal identity that understood the importance of maternity and the false demarcation between waged and domestic labour, which working-class women, inside and outside of marriage, confronted across the twentieth-century.