Social and Political Sciences, School of
Established in 2001, the School brings together core social scientific disciplines to promote the critical understanding of social and political processes and the development of effective policy and practice through a wide range of teaching and research programmes. The School was formed from the departments (now subject groups) of Politics, Social Anthropology, Social Policy and Sociology; the Graduate School of Social and Political Studies; the Centres of African, Canadian and South Asian Studies; the Science Studies Unit, the Research Centre in Social Sciences and the Institute of Governance. It has recently been joined by Social Work, and now forms part of the College of Humanities and Social Science.
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Recent Submissions
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Competition, masculinities, and peacekeeping: constructions of Soviet nuclear identity and policy from Stalin to Gorbachev
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-07-31)This thesis examines the most powerful constructions of Soviet nuclear identity at three stages of nuclear decision-making (acquisition, the arms race, disarmament) throughout the course of the Cold War between the Soviet ... -
OTC commodity derivative rulemaking at the CFTC, 2010-2016: a cultural political economy approach
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-07-29)Rulemaking undertaken by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) between 2010 and 2016 for the regulation of over-the-counter (OTC) commodity derivatives comprised an essential component in the implementation of ... -
Contending with space and time: the navigation of class, marriage, and identity by Chinese temporary migrants in the UK
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-07-22)The dominant discourses on young Chinese middle-class transnational migration, especially in the form of educational migration to developed western countries, view such movement as part of personal and family strategies ... -
Gendering self-reliance: constructing the ideal refugee wo/man within livelihoods support for displaced Syrians in Turkey
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-07-16)My thesis sets out to explore how self-reliance is gendered within global refugee support. It contributes to scholarship on refugee self-reliance by pointing to gendered components of the concept itself, and analysing it ... -
Fixing development: breakdown, repair and disposal in Kenya's off-grid solar market
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-08-06)The development project is a repair project. Schemes and initiatives to improve the human condition are borne from the belief that there is something broken in the status quo that we must fix. Small solar-powered products ... -
Interplay of authority and expertise in online self-improvement communities
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-08-06)In online environments, users who wish to learn anything face several problems. Other users are usually anonymous or pseudonymous, information is plentiful and its quality variable, and it can be difficult to discern ... -
Infrastructuring Yachay: contexts in action, temporalities and expectations in Ecuador's 'Yachay the city of knowledge'
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-08-06)This thesis explores the temporalities involved in the infrastructuring of “Yachay, the city of knowledge” - the most ambitious and controversial public infrastructural project in Ecuador’s history. Yachay, which means ... -
Armed intimacy: in pursuit of security and self with gun rights activists in Southern California
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-08-06)This thesis explores how a desire to own guns is constituted within locally situated human lives in an attempt to explain why firearms have become such important objects of contestation in the United States. I spent a ... -
Deminutio capitis: theories of Western Civilization and World Order, 1919-2019.
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-08-06)During the long nineteenth century 'civilization' was the highest-order concept through which European empire was imagined and justified. It divided the world into a hierarchical space of identity and difference on the ... -
Using intimacy as a lens on the work and migration experiences of ethnic performers in Southwest China
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-08-06)This research explores how the lens of intimacy can be used to understand migration and inequalities and demonstrates the value of such a theoretical lens. It does so by focusing on the experience of a group of rural to ... -
Being and becoming Jewish: kinship, memory, and the politics of Jewishness in post-socialist Slovakia
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-08-06)This thesis, based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, examines the entanglement of kinship, religion and politics among Jews in Bratislava. It uses marriage as a lens to explore how young Jews identify with ... -
Fabricating Silicon Savannah
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-07-06)This PhD research thesis offers an historicised account of Silicon Savannah, a digital technology entrepreneurship arena in Nairobi, Kenya. Silicon Savannah is an opportunity to study the appropriation of technology ... -
Populist communication and strategic behaviour on Twitter
(The University of Edinburgh, 2018-11-27)Background While earlier studies on the German right-wing populist party AfD on Twitter have noted a very high frequency of the party’s hashtag use, there is a lack of understanding if this expresses support or opposition ... -
Small-area estimates in local governance: Use of small-area estimates in local governance in the development of service-delivery and resource-allocation mechanisms
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-07-06)The existing decision-making processes informing local resource-allocation mechanisms across Scotland tend to utilise historic or most recent data on life outcomes and deprivation without placing sufficient emphasis on ... -
Women and religious racisms in Inverclyde: feminised intra-Christian sectarianism and gendered Islamophobia
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-07-06)This thesis re-problematises the issue of intra-Christian sectarianism from the standpoints of women from different denominational backgrounds, social classes and age groups. It foregrounds alternative gendered knowledge, ... -
Limits of liberal plurality: from political identity to strong recognition
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-07-06)Through the analysis of liberal theories of plurality and diversity –multiculturalism, interculturalism, nationalisms, cosmopolitanism, communitarianism-, I make a series of arguments regarding the positive recognition ... -
Imagined futures of same-sex couples
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-07-06)This research explores how older same-sex couples in Scotland imagine their future. While there is a growing number of sociological studies looking at lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) ageing, ... -
How co-innovation anticipates scaling: the modulating function of a co-innovation space
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-07-06)Characterised as a mindset rather than method, co-innovation is a systems-inspired approach to agricultural innovation activity. The application of co-innovation is underpinned by guiding principles of collaboration, ... -
WTO and technological development of transition economies: the 'crucial case' of Kazakhstan
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-07-06)After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, former communist republics started the process of integration into the global economy by joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO). To become members, transition economies were ... -
Political afterlives of Mexico's dead and disappeared
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-07-06)This PhD thesis is a study of Mexican activism that aims to show how relatives of Mexico’s disappeared—often without earlier experience of human rights advocacy—become activists protesting violence through public displays ...
