published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Philosophy

In counselling and psychotherapy, the issue of class is neglected both theoretically and in practice. This thesis aims to address this anomaly by focusing on the class dynamic in the therapeutic relationship. First, the study offers a theoretical exploration of the three major concepts of class. Second, the empirical research aims to highlight how the working class research participants perceive therapists and counselling, and how the counsellor participants perceive class and manage class difference. I argue that class is complex and multidimensional. Therefore, no one theory about class offers a complete account. With this in mind three theoretical concepts are explored demonstrating their potential usefulness to the provision and practice of therapy. The position taken is that two of these concepts, class as a relational phenomenon, and class maintained and reproduced through habitus, capital and dispositions of the therapist and the client provide a means by which the class dynamic can be analysed, with consequences for the therapeutic transference. The empirical inquiry constitutes a theory led, constructionist, thematic focus group analysis, cross referenced to individual counsellor interviews. The data was gathered from six focus groups situated in Sure Start Children Centres across the West Midlands. Each centre was located within the highest percentile of nationally delineated deprivation factors. The research findings suggest that all participants called on latent socio-cultural accounts of class in relationally defining themselves in opposition to others; that the power dynamic in the therapeutic relationship is constructed differently between the working class participants and the counsellors; that therapists symbolise a homogenous middle class to the working class participants; that the cultural capital of the therapist is resisted by the working class client; and that the focus group participants’ constructions of therapy, coupled with the counsellors’ terms of therapeutic engagement when working in Sure Start centres, signal implications for practice. Class, as addressed in this study, indicates it is an issue in primary processing, and confirms its centrality to the therapeutic relationship.

My dissertation examines the political and formal aspects of poetry written by working-class women in England and Scotland between 1830 and 1880. I analyse a poetic corpus that I have gathered from existing publications and new archival sources to assess what I call the “literary labour politics” of women whose poetry encounters, represents, and reacts to socio-historic change. The poetry of working-class women sheds light on the multidimensional intersections between poetry about labour and poetry as labour. I show that British working-class women writers were essential in the development of a working-class poetic aesthetic and political agenda by examining how their poetry engaged with European politics, slavery, gender inequality, child labour, education, industrialism, and poverty. The first section surveys the political and formal nature of the poetry written by working-class women immediately before and during the Chartist era to argue that gender complicates the political rubric of the working class during a period of intense social upheaval. I discuss the poetry of women who were published in James Morrison’s The Pioneer, as well as E.H., F. Saunderson, Eliza Cook, “Marie,” and Mary Hutton. I read their poems against those written both by eighteenth-century working-class women writers and male Chartists to illuminate the intervention of nineteenth-century women in these literary and cultural contexts. The second section interrogates the politics of working-class women’s poetry published after the dissolution of the Chartists in 1848 through a discussion of two pseudonymous “factory girl” poets, Fanny Forrester, and Ellen Johnston. I argue that even as working-class women’s poetry increasingly engaged with broad social issues, it also reflected the continuing importance of poetry itself as a means of individual empowerment and worked against the prose tradition to argue for the unique possibilities of poetic expression. The thematic and formal complexity of the poetry of these working-class women allows us to assess the various poetic strategies they developed to respond to the urgent and vexed issues of social reform and personal and national relationships, as they articulated poetic and personal identities as women labouring poets against a society not attuned to their voices. / Appendix B comprises an anthology of the poems discussed in this dissertation.

The 1880s were turbulent years in the Dominion. Under the auspices of the National Policy, Canada was in the midst of a social and political ‘transformation.’ The social and cultural aspects of this transformation became a source of public debate as the ‘Labour Question’ and the relations between labour and capital reached a high mark of political and economic significance. Waves of strikes and the emergence of large international labour organizations challenged many liberal Victorian ideas about a strictly limited state. Many looked upon the federal government as responsible not only for economic growth, but also for protection from the more pressing problems of industrial life. The Royal Commission on the Relations of Capital and Labour is a testament to not only the turbulent economic relations in late-Victorian Canada, but the emergence of the Canadian state’s active role in social relations. Its very title envisioned a dual role for the Canadian state: to “promote the material, social, intellectual and moral prosperity” of labouring men and women, and to improve and develop “the productive industries of the Dominion so as to advance and improve the trade and commerce of Canada.” However, this thesis argues that the Labour Commission was more subtly designed to enhance the prestige of the Canadian state and install Ottawa as an authority on, and mediator of, industrial relations in Canada. Attention to the formation, activities, and impact of the Labour Commission suggests that, rather than an exercise in addressing a mounting social polarization between “labour” and “capital,” the Commission lends insight into the emergence of a Canadian middle class. It was a carefully-constructed exercise in the assertion of middle-class cultural hegemony whereby such values and understandings as respectability, morality, manliness, worth and expertise were naturalized. In the process, the tension between labour and capital was diminished and in its place were developed visions of social reciprocity and mutual interest. It is in this way that the Labour Commission was an exercise in ‘commissioning consent:’ it placed oppositional voices and wrenching exposés about industrial life in a framework that worked to quell rather than stimulate far-reaching critiques of the established order. The Commission’s formation, methodology and language functioned like an industrial exhibition rather than a pointed social investigation. The evidence presents a thriving economy that had grown exponentially under a wise and paternal government. It also presented a vision of the Dominion whereby the disturbances that occurred between labour and capital could be handled within a conventional language of liberal politics. In addition, social and intellectual elites were fully ensconced in the formation and legitimization of these social and moral understandings. Because it was up to the state to select who would speak for labour and capital, the Commission’s message was not one of class polarization. Thus, exploring who became ‘labour’ and who ‘capital,’ and what sorts of things they said to each other, sheds light on to the emergent strategies of the Canadian state as it sought to understand and influence civil society. The Commission is an indication, even anticipation, of a more activist and energetic state. / Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2007-12-17 14:59:08.581

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 282-299). / Microfiche. / xiii, 299 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

This thesis is motivated by a desire to explore the implications of recent debates in labour history circles on fundamental questions of theory and methodology. It is written in search of "history from below". (For complete introduction open document)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2005. Graduate Programme in History. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 371-390). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR19787

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2007. / Title from file title page. Pearl McHaney, committee chair; David Bottoms, Paul Schmidt, committee members. Electronic text (220 p.) : digital, PDF file. "Appendix B: Philip Levine interview with Jeff Rumiano, May 4, 2004": p. 194-220. Description based on contents viewed Jan. 31, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 171-193).