School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 359
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    The women on the hill : an ethnographic study of deinstitutionalization
    Johnson, Kelley. (University of Melbourne, 1995)
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    Feels like home : young people's lived experiences and meanings of home
    Chiao, Yuan-Ling. (University of Melbourne, 2008)
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    The status of women in Islam : a case study of Pakistan
    Rashid, Tahmina. (University of Melbourne, 1999)
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    The status of women in Islam : a case study of Pakistan
    Rashid, Tahmina. (University of Melbourne, 1999)
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    Regulating the risks of elder abuse in Australia : the changing nature of government responses
    Naughtin, Gerard Michael. (University of Melbourne, 2008)
    This thesis presents a policy analysis of Federal and State Government responses to elder abuse utilising three data sources, an extensive literature review, analysis of key government documents and interviews with expert stakeholders. Historical, sociological and criminological frameworks are used to explore contemporary responses to the abuse and neglect of older Australians. Modelling undertaken to estimate the current and projected scale of elder abuse predicted that there were 87,000 cases in 2007, that there would be 120,000 by 2017 and 200,000 by 2037. The ageing of the Australian population justifies the development of a more concerted and nationally co-ordinated strategy. Despite considerable contest between prevention and protection advocates, Australian Governments since the mid 1990s have adopted a fairly comprehensive and consistent policy framework involving prevention, investigation and case management, access to justice, legal and financial protections for older people without mental capacity, regulation and sanctions. This thesis argues that these six elements are likely to form the basis of future development and explores the utility of the responsive regulation thesis in such development. Several gaps in existing responses are identified, namely the lack of victim support services, the inadequate funding base, the low level of community and professional education and ambiguities about agency response responsibilities. Reforms needed over the next decade to address these gaps are identified.
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    The role of traditional authorities in conflict management: Cameroon
    Awoh, Emmanuel Lohkoko ( 2018)
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    Class, subjectivity, and the political in Pakistan: bridging the practice-theory divide in comparative political theory
    Jehangir, Hamza Bin ( 2019)
    In recent times, comparative political theorists have issued a call for pluralising political theory by going beyond the discipline’s primary reliance on the canon of western political thought. A key feature of this call has been to furnish new methods of studying non-western intellectual traditions with a focus on texts and their interpretation. This thesis supports the call for comparative political theorising but critically engages with methodological debates within comparative political theory (CPT). This thesis problematises the analytical focus on texts within CPT by challenging the predominance of textual scholasticism in comparative theorising. Consequently, this thesis argues for a greater focus within comparativist circles on real-world politics, practices, actions, protests, and lived experiences as tied to different subjectivities in post-colonial contexts. In particular, the thesis outlines, and makes the case for, a practice-based approach to CPT by drawing on fieldwork conducted amongst middle class lawyers in Pakistan who took part in the Lawyers’ movement (2007-2009). The thesis critically unpacks practices which underpin constructions of subjectivity within the Lawyers’ movement by drawing on stories, narratives, and lived experiences of lawyers who participated in the movement. Specifically, the thesis investigates meanings that lawyers attach to their participation in protests and delineates the limitations associated with idealisation of the rule of law, and subsequent imaginations of the political, in post-colonial Pakistan. The thesis concludes by outlining the contributions that a practice-based approach can make to the broader field of CPT by charting the advantages of going beyond binaries of ‘East’ and ‘West’ as well as ‘Western’ and ‘Non-Western’ to critically engage with relations of power that manifest themselves in real-world politics and constructions of the political in post-colonial settings.