Management and the dynamics of labour process: study of workplace relations in an oil refinery, Nigeria

The focus of this thesis is on labour-management relations in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Nigeria. The study explores current managerial practices in the corporation and their effects on the intensification of work, and how the management sought to control workers and the labour process. The study explores the experiences of workers and their perception of managerial practices. Evidence suggests that managerial practices and their impacts on workplace relations in NNPC have become more subtle, with wider implications for workers’ experience and the labour process. Using primary data obtained through interviews, participant observation, and documentary sources, the thesis assesses how managerial practices are varieties of controls of labour in which workers’ consent is also embedded. This embeddedness of the labour process generates new types of worker subjectivity and identity, with significant implications for labour relations. The study suggests that multiple dimensions of workers’ sense-making reflect the structural and subjective dimensions of the labour process. In NNPC, the consequence of managerial practices has been an emergence of a new type of subjectivity; one that has closely identified with the corporate values and is not overtly disposed towards resistance or dissent. While workers consent at NNPC continues to be an outcome of managerial practices, the thesis examined its implications. The thesis seeks to explain the effects of managerial control mechanisms in shaping workers’ experience and identity. However, the thesis shows that while workers remain susceptible to these forms of managerial influence, an erasure or closure of oppositions or recalcitrance will not adequately account for workers’ identity-formation. The thesis shows that while managerial control remains significant, workers inhabit domains that are ‘unmanaged’ and ‘unmanageable’ where ‘resistance’ and ‘misbehaviour’ reside. Without a conceptual and empirical interrogation, evidence of normative and mutual benefits of managerial practices or a submissive image of workers will produce images of workers that obscure their covert opposition and resistance. Workers ‘collude’ with the ‘hubris’ of management in order to invert and subvert managerial practices and intentions. Through theoretical reconceptualization, the thesis demonstrates the specific dimensions of these inversions and subversions. The thesis therefore seeks to re-insert “worker-agency” back into the analysis of power-relations in the workplace; agency that is not overtly under the absolute grip of managerial control, but with a multiplicity of identities and multilevel manifestations

Courtly mirrors: the politics of Chapman's drama

This thesis argues that the drama of George Chapman (1559-1634) can be read in light of his deep ambivalence towards the political elite of the Jacobean court. It suggests that Chapman’s lack of success in securing courtly patronage, and his constant battle with indebtedness (which resulted in several court appearances and two imprisonments) left him divided in attitude towards the system of courtly reward – he resented his lack of success but continued to struggle to fit in and gain the approval of the powerful figures of the era. I argue that this gave him a critical perspective on many of the important issues of the time. My work examines the configuration of English national identity in his plays, positing an idea of Englishness which is separate from, and often critical of, the monarchy, and which relies on a structural parallel with the French court in order to imagine English identity. It then considers the ways in which money and debt are dealt with in several plays, arguing that Chapman felt deeply concerned by the perennial indebtedness of Jacobean culture but was also aware of the necessity of maintaining his own credibility and supply of credit. It further examines the representation of patronage, suggesting that Chapman saw the soliciting of aristocratic patronage in distinctly sexual terms, almost as a form of artistic prostitution. It then considers the many situations in the plays where royal patronage towards a favourite breaks down, and argues that this often results in allegations of treason which Chapman shows to originate in the paranoia or suspicions of the monarch. Finally, it looks at the concept of virtue in the plays, arguing that Chapman viewed virtue as fundamentally unsustainable in a corrupt court setting, but that he saw some form of engagement in public life as being a moral obligation on the virtuous man. Throughout I argue that Chapman was deeply radical in his social outlook, critical of inherited privilege and government by personal or absolutist rule. The social tensions and political struggles presented in his plays were to find their full expression in the violence of the Civil War and in the trial and execution of Charles I

Charting the Constellation of Science Reform

Over the past decade, a sense of urgency has been building in the scientific community. They have discovered that much of the literature body is unreliable and possibly invalid thanks to weak theory, flawed methods, and shoddy statistics. This is driven by a widespread competitive, secretive approach to research, which, in turn, is fueled by toxic academic incentive structures. Many in the community have decided to address these issues, coming together in what has become known as the ‘scientific reform movement’. While these ‘reformers’ are often spoken of a single, homogeneous entity, my findings underscore the heterogeneity of the reform community. In my dissertation, I explore the scientific reform group using ethnography and social network analysis tools. I primarily studied their online Twitter engagements to understand their culture, practices, and structure. With Wenger’s Community of Practice theory as an interpretive framework, I analyze scientific reform discourse playing out between reformers on Twitter. Using quantitative Twitter friend/follow data, I investigate which reform members engage online, using following behavior to understand aspects of their social structure. I link the quantitative exploration with my qualitative analysis, to conclude that while the reformers are united by their interest in improving science, they are better characterized as a constellation of small communities of practice, each with their own norms, priorities, and unique approach to the group enterprise of scientific reform. My investigation is an exercise in reflexivity as I have studied a community in which I am an active part

Looking for privacy in Shakespeare: woman's place and space in a selection of plays and early modern texts

Grounded in a multi-faceted theoretical framework that examines the dynamic interaction between the public and the private spheres of Elizabethan everyday life, this thesis aims to trace how the concept of privacy and its associated terms were developed, constructed, evoked, and configured both in Shakespearean drama and in other illustrative early modern texts. The author suggests that Shakespeare's configuration of space results from a combination of the conditions of representation - empty stages - metaphorical language, technical dramatic devices, and textual markers that create a sense of space in the texts and onstage. The research also explores the place and space of early modern women and of Shakespeare's female characters in terms of their relation to the private space; that is to say, their construction of 'self-in-relation-to-space', as well as their movements and activities within and outside the private's real or imagined boundaries, thus their ability to fashion the public sphere from within the private. Rather than analysing the role of women in the plays exclusively from the point of view of opposition between spheres - public man versus private woman - the study wants to question and pose, at the same time, the relevance of approaching Shakespearean texts from a spatial perspective, a choice that may have an impact on the very interpretation of them

'Bushcraft' and 'Indigenous Knowledge': transformations of a concept in the modern world

The relationship between 'bushcraft' and 'indigenous knowledge' is investigated through a historical review, an examination of ethnographic literature, fieldwork amongst bushcraft practitioners, and through original case studies. Fieldwork was carried out in Sweden, the USA, and the UK. Case studies of the Saami 'kuksa', the 'figure 4' deadfall trap, and making fire by friction are used to explore a number of themes in the contemporary bushcraft world: the role of skilled-practice, ethical values, notions of an individually experienced connection with nature, practice as a personal transformative experience, and as an intersubjective relationship between practitioner and craft engagement with the material affordances in the landscape. It is argued that motivations for practice foreground a relationship with an environmental experience that counters 'alienation' through the development of techniques required to spend un-insulated time in nature which counter modern Western technocratic lifestyles. Bushcraft destabilises apparently similar categories of activity, particularly tourism, outdoor adventure recreation and education, historical re-enactment and survivalism

Focus on Cities: Proceedings of a conference organised by the Institute for Social Research, at the University of Natal, Durban, 8th-12th July, 1968

See also 'Focus on Cities' Abstracts of papers, Programme and the Excursion handbooks which accompany the conference

A conceptual framework for classroom acting behaviour.

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN012159 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo