eTheses
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This community contains an online collection of PhD theses and selected undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations written by QMU students and researchers.
PhD theses are available to be browsed, searched, read or printed by anyone interested in their content.
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Item Materialism as Morality in the ANWR Oil Drilling Debate: A Critical Investigation into the Reification of Science, the Marginalization of Values, and the Power of Discourse within Environmental Conflict(Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, 2014) Moyer, JessicaModern science is well established as the institution through which knowledge is legitimated, facts are produced, and credibility is assigned. Operating within the prevailing capitalist socio-political order, science is also controlled by the wealthy elite, whose resources are required for its production, evaluation, and implementation. Beyond disproportionately serving powerful interests, however, science enables the most privileged groups within society to embolden certain understandings of the world and marginalize others, to shape public perceptions, behaviors, and norms, and thus to reinforce the existing social systems and institutions that support their own dominance. Building on critical scholarship that addresses inequality by problematizing the structures and practices that reproduce power, this thesis examines the prominent and politically opposed positions of the oil industry and mainstream environmentalists in the U.S. policy debate over whether to permit petroleum development in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Specifically, through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), I explore how these two 'mid-stream' scientific actors, which have effectively appropriated the wider 'for' and 'against' drilling campaigns respectively, each engage with the generation as well as dissemination of technical knowledge in order to substantiate their arguments and enhance the authority of their claims. The analysis presented here demonstrates that the hegemonic framing of the ANWR conflict, which I describe in terms of Materialism as Morality, reifies scientific expertise whilst burying values beneath assumptions of objectivity and neutrality. It also allows incongruent truth claims to eclipse the many legitimate but competing perspectives, priorities, investments, ideologies, risks, and ethical dilemmas that lie at the heart of the ANWR drilling debate. Moreover, this framing is implicit in the perpetuation of systemic social and environmental injustice. Ultimately, my research argues for a transformative politics that engages all stakeholders in the negotiation of competing interests, the discussion of social values, and the production of scientific knowledge; and above all, which recognizes the interconnectivity of all three.Item Female identity and the British female ensemble drama 1995-1998(Queen Margaret University, 2007) Ball, VictoriaThis thesis focuses upon a distinctive form of 'feminine-gendered' fiction, that of the British female ensemble drama, that has proliferated across televisual schedules since the late 1970s and which has received little academic attention. Although not a discrete genre, the female ensemble drama is nevertheless identifiable as a distinctive form of 'feminine-gendered' fiction that is largely written and/or produced by women, which diegetically focuses on particular communities of female characters and which is predominantly aimed at female audiences. The purpose of this text-based analysis of the female ensemble drama is to engage with a central concern of feminist television criticism, that of the gendered identity of this particular media form and the constructions of gender within it given its association with women at these three sites of production, text and audience. While I provide a historical overview of the development of this form of drama in relation to its textual precedents I isolate a particular moment in the history of this form of drama, that of the late 1990s, for closer analysis. Firstly I isolate the late 1990s to provide knowledge and understanding of the way in which the 'feminine' identity of this form of drama has contributed to its academic neglect within this socio-cultural period. Secondly I provide a close textual analysis of the constructions of 'women' within three female ensemble dramas in order to engage with and explore the textual negotiations they embody surrounding discourses of feminism and post feminism, de- and re-traditionalization in this particular period. While these themes have begun to be addressed in feminist television criticism they have largely been explored in relation to constructions of femininity in American dramas. This analysis then, allows for an exploration of these discourses in relation to a regional form of British drama. It is through investigating the academic neglect of this form of drama; providing a historical, thematic and aesthetic overview of the female ensemble drama as well as a detailed analysis of three of the female ensemble dramas of the 1990s that I contribute knowledge and understanding of this particular regional form of 'feminine-gendered' fiction to the field of Feminist Television Studies.