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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Making mothers, making fathers: the transition to parenthood in Edinburgh
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-11-30)This thesis investigates women and men’s experiences of the transition to parenthood in Edinburgh, UK, in the context of changing laws on parental leave and notions of ‘new fatherhood.’ In the UK, policies and care in ... -
Rhetoric, ritual and reality: understanding the relationship between ex-combatants and the TRC in Sierra Leone
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-11-30)This thesis explores the relationship between ex-combatants and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Sierra Leone. It fills important empirical and conceptual lacunae in foregrounding the transitional justice ... -
Helping the 'problem child' become loveable again? A discourse analysis on childhood ADHD in Switzerland and implications for social work
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-11-30)Diagnoses and treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children have seen significant increases in many parts of the world in the past two decades. However, there is a paucity of research on how ... -
Pan-Africanism versus partnership: African decolonisation in Southern Rhodesian politics, ca. 1950-1963
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-11-30)This thesis explores the process by which the decolonisation of Africa in the 1950s and early 1960s shaped the politics of Southern Rhodesia. Focusing on the era in which that colony was a member of the Federation of ... -
Emergent powers in the field of peacebuilding: modalities, interactions and impact of Indian and Chinese engagement in the peace processes of Nepal and Myanmar
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-11-30)The global emergence of countries like India and China has given rise to questions about how these emergent powers will engage with the various manifestations of the West-led liberal world order, including fields of ... -
Rolling changes in Russian foreign policy: divergent reactions to upheavals in the post-Soviet space and national role conceptions
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-11-30)Despite the increased interest in the analysis of Russian foreign policy (RFP), current approaches leave much unexplained. Many existing studies use either macro-theoretical approaches or are very empirical. Furthermore, ... -
Follow the bottle: PET recycling economy and waste picker empowerment in Brazil
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-11-30)This thesis seeks to understand and problematise waste pickers’ underprivileged socioeconomic condition in Brazil from the perspective of their active participation in the recycling economy. It uses a Cultural Political ... -
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 ...
