Sociology thesis and dissertation collection
Welcome to Sociology, part of the School of Social and Political Studies at the University of Edinburgh. The Department began in 1964 and remains one of the most eminent in the UK for research, undergraduate teaching and postgraduate research.
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Recent Submissions
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Dealing with uncertainty: a historical sociology of evaluation practices in UK life insurance, 1971-present
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019)This dissertation examines the evolution of UK life insurance arrangements by investigating how the ways in which life insurers evaluate the economic worth of insurance contracts have changed since the early 1970s. It draws ... -
Azadi activists abroad: transnational activism in the New Kashmiri Freedom Movement
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-11-25)The Kashmir movement for azadi, or freedom, from India is rooted in pre-Partition mobilisation, but has evolved over time. With the end to the violent resistance throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, a predominately ... -
‘What nursing’s all about’: the caring ideal and ambivalence to ‘profession’ in nursing’s occupational discourse
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-11-25)This thesis examines the occupational discourse(s) of a group of nurses working on a single medical unit in a Scottish NHS hospital, in light of debates concerning the contemporary function and focus of nursing. There ... -
Constructing legitimacy: an ethnography of the struggle for financial capital in two Paris-based private equity funds
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-11-25)This dissertation uses an original qualitative empirical material (two ethnographic observations of private equity funds and 44 interviews with managers of these funds) to investigate how fund managers construct their ... -
Traveller community and health practitioner stories of self and each other: a poststructural narrative analysis
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-07-08)Research attention to Gypsy and Traveller health has grown in recent decades and highlights significant inequalities in health and access to services experienced by these groups. Existing work in this area tends to ... -
“But they’re gay though”: how LGBTQ+ audiences are queering contemporary drama
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-07-08)Previous research and the existing literature on LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender, Queer) representation in the media has neglected to examine how LGBTQ+ audiences are actively queering media in order to fill ... -
“I am who I am because of who I was” – refiguring childhoods through Colombian former child soldiers’ stories
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-07-08)The recruitment and use of children in war are common characteristics of modern conflict. In 2017, the Child Soldiers World Index reported that at least 46 States still recruit and use children under the age of 18 into ... -
In sight and in mind: social implications of marine renewable energy
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-07-08)Scotland has significant marine energy resources and is at the forefront of the research and development of wave and tidal marine renewable energy technologies. Much of this research has focussed on the technological ... -
Diverse individualisations and interdependences: how adult only-children's marriage and family formation affects parent-child relationships in urban China
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-07-08)My research focuses on the first generation of only-children and their parents, to see how the only-children's marriage affects the relationships with their parents thus contributing to debates around intimacy and ... -
Improving health care access for low-income patients in a mixed insurance market: investigating the impact of the U.S.’s Affordable Care Act on Federally Qualified Health Centers
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-07-08)Background: The Affordable Care Act (ACA) aimed to enhance access to health care in the United States, particularly for those without comprehensive insurance. This thesis examines the impacts of the ACA on equity of ... -
Gender, cultural capital and transnational mobility: Chinese female international students’ transnational aspirations and transnational lives in the UK
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-07-08)Drawing on 25 semi-structured interviews and participant observation at a Scottish university, this thesis explores the ways in which gender and cultural capital are closely linked with Chinese female international students’ ... -
Doing feminist text-focused institutional ethnography in UK universities
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-07-08)My thesis concerns how to do feminist sociology using Dorothy Smith’s ideas about Institutional Ethnography (IE), exploring the textually-organised relations of ruling focusing on UK higher education. How and in what ... -
Religious practice, religious change: Evangelicals and Catholics in Santiago de Chile's civil society
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-07-08)Religious life in contemporary Chile is marked by both a sustained growth of Pentecostal churches and by an increase in those without religion affiliation. These developments suggest that Chile is an interesting case ... -
‘Condition’: energy, time and success amongst Ethiopian runners
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-07-08)Long distance runners in East Africa are often portrayed in the international media as ‘naturally’ gifted or as running away from poverty. This thesis – that traces the athletic lives of Et ... -
Randlords and figurations: an Eliasian study of social change and South Africa.
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-07-08)This study investigates the role that the Randlords, a group of mining magnates with wide-ranging concerns operating in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, played in social change in South Africa. The ... -
Sociology and statistics in Britain, 1830-1990
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-07-08)This thesis examines the historical relationship between British sociology and statistics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It begins with an analysis of the role that the early development of statistics played ... -
Volunteering as a balancing act: who’s got time for that?
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-07-08)This thesis explores the temporal dimensions of women’s voluntary involvement in civic activities. How and why people find or make the time to volunteer within their busy lives is a puzzle given that volunteering is not ... -
Running on time: domestic work and commuting in West Bengal, India
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-07-08)While there is a significant and burgeoning body of literature on (paid) domestic work in India, much of which explores the broader context of migration within which this labour often takes place, very little looks at ... -
Making of the Confucian individual: morality, subjectification and classical schooling in China
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-07-08)This research explores the complexity of Confucian schooling in the context of contemporary China. Based on fieldwork in a Confucian-‐style classical school (given the pseudonym Yiqian School), ... -
Becoming technologists: a study of the recruitment and adjustment of graduate scientists and engineers to industrial employment
(The University of Edinburgh, 1974)During the 1960s there was widespread public concern and controversy in Britain about the flow of graduate scientists and engineers into industrial employment. This thesis summarises some of the major viewpoints in this ...
