School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemMediating risks : investigating the emergence of court ADR through the risk society paradigm( 2007)In the US, England and Australia alternative dispute resolution (ADR) has been increasingly employed as integral component in the handling and disposal of garden-variety civil cases. This thesis examines the quality and character of changes brought about through the uptake and continued use of ADR in the courts, a configuration that I refer to as Court ADR, in non-family law cases. Ulrich Beck's risk society paradigm provides the theoretical lens through which those changes in the courts are to be understood. In short, Beck claims that institutions and individuals' relationships to those institutions are transforming in contemporary societies, a transformation that is organised by and around risk. According to Beck, these transformations, while partial and incomplete, describe how the fundamental structures that generate and maintain society redound and confront their very foundations, a process that Beck refers to as reflexive modernisation. Moreover, individuals' relationships with institutions are caught up with such transformations. Beck describes this through his concepts of individualisation, whereby individuals are increasingly invited to make decisions regarding particular risks, which are simultaneously enabled and constrained by expert systems. I argue that these two central risk society conceptualisations - reflexive modernisation and individualisation - provide an informed theoretical framework for understanding those transformations in certain US, English and Australian courts as they relate to Court ADR. With the institutional emergence of Court ADR, and the growth of court-sponsored mediation in particular, the rationale underlying its development and continued use can be understood through the risk society paradigm. In terms of reflexive modernisation, the process of producing legal goods as they take shape in a judgement has and continues to produce negative side-effects, including expense, delay, undue complexity and limited accessibility to the courts themselves. One result is the emergence of Court ADR, which provides new procedures to structurally address many of those negative side-effects generated when legal goods are produced through processed that are oriented around adversarial adjudication. The emergence of Court ADR evidences the qualities and characteristics of individualisation insofar as litigants are invited into new decision-making spaces, inclusive of court-sponsored choices over whether arbitration or mediation might be more appropriate to handle and dispose of the case, as well as the attendant decisions once mediation, arbitration or other alternative processes are selected. Moreover, while litigants' entry into these spaces is enabled by legal actors and systems, they are simultaneously constrained. In short, Beck's risk society paradigm provides clarity with respect to how those alternative practices themselves have been legalised when used to handle and dispose of garden variety civil cases in the US, English and Australian courts.
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ItemThe devil is in the pamphlets: witchcraft and emotion in seventeenth-century England( 2014)The links between English witchcraft and the Devil have not been the subject of sustained historical analysis. This thesis represents the only study that systematically analyses the content of seventeenth-century English witchcraft pamphlets. It explores all forty-eight of these sources and suggests that English witchcraft was widely conceived of as a diabolical crime. The thesis focuses on the emotional interactions between witches and devils and a witch’s supposed motivations for succumbing to Satan. It has two objectives: to suggest that the content of English witchcraft pamphlets challenges our understanding of English witchcraft as a predominantly malefic, non-diabolical crime, and to highlight how witchcraft narratives emphasised emotions as the driving force behind witchcraft acts and accusations. At its core, this thesis is about relationships between witches and devils. The thesis is divided into six chapters, each of which analyses the different ways in which witches and devils were believed to interact. These chapters explore: the changing nature of beliefs about the Devil in post-Reformation England and the way in which these differing beliefs were incorporated into witchcraft narratives; the role of familiars and how these animalistic spirits forged personal connections between themselves and the witch; the inherently malicious nature of witches and their decisions to make a pact with the Devil out of a desire for revenge; the sexualised nature of English witchcraft narratives and the manner in which sexual desire was understood as maintaining ongoing relationships between female witches and their devils; the intimacy in the relationships between male witches and the Devil, and the personal bonds they shared with their familiar spirits and; beliefs about witchcraft as a form of group activity or conspiracy which sometimes involved meeting the Devil at a night-time meeting. Cumulatively, this thesis argues that English witchcraft was frequently imagined to be a diabolical crime and that witches’ relationships with the Devil were defined by strong emotions such as anger, fear, malice, a desire for revenge, hatred, lust and love.
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ItemFactory girls: gender, empire and the making of a female working class, Melbourne and London, 1880-1920( 2007)Between 1880 and 1920, something remarkable happened among the women and girls who worked in the factories of the British Empire. From being universally represented as the powerless victims of industrial capitalism, women factory workers in the cities of Melbourne and London burst onto the stage of history, as bold, disciplined and steadfast activists and demanded their rights, not merely as the equals of working-class men, but as the equals of ladies. The proletarian counterpart of that other subversive fin de siecle type, New Woman, the factory girl became visible at a time when the nature of femininity was being hotly contested, and coincided with the growing militancy of the organised working-class. Her presence in the streets, economic autonomy and love affair with the new mass culture, represented a radical challenge to conventional bourgeois ideas of how women should behave. Her emergence as a new social actor also coincided with a crisis of confidence in Empire, radical disillusionment with the project of modernity and a growing unease about the consequences of urban poverty. As middle-class anxieties proliferated, so surveillance of the factory girl intensified. In this way, female factory workers came under the scrutiny of missionaries, medical men, demographers, social workers, socialists and sociologists. This study traces the role of female factory workers in the emergence of a transnational movement for working-class women's rights. As more women entered the factories in search of independence, their shared experience of exploitation emboldened and empowered them to demand more. During this period, increasing numbers of female factory workers in both cities thus confounded the stereotype of female workers as submissive, shallow and innately conservative, by organising and winning strikes and forming unions of their own. Such explosions of militancy broke down trade unionist prejudice against women workers and laid the foundations of solidarity with male unionists. They also forged of a new model of working-class femininity; based not on the pale imitation of gentility, but one which expressed a profoundly modern sensibility. In the process, women workers fashioned a new political culture which articulated their common interests, and shared identity, as members of a female working class. Yet the rise of working-women's militancy also coincided with the mature articulation of a racialised labourism and the rise of male breadwinner regimes. As the white populations of Empire were re-configured as one race with a common imperial destiny, the corresponding preoccupation with the white settler birth rate, increased hostility and suspicion of women workers. The first decades of the twentieth century thus saw the solidification of a regulatory apparatus which sought to police and discipline young working women in preparing them for their racial destiny as mothers. The contemporaneous demand of the labour movement for a family wage worked to further marginalise wage-earning women, and ultimately reinforced the sexual division of labour.
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ItemCharles Wesley and the construction of suffering in early English Methodism( 2006-07)This work examines the construction of suffering in the hymns of Charles Wesley, co-founder of the Methodist movement. Wesley wrote thousands of hymns, many of which focus on the experience of overwhelming pain. As eighteenth-century men and women sang or read Wesley's hymns, they were encouraged to adopt a distinctive approach to suffering, one which drew on long-standing elen1ents within Christian tradition as well as new patterns in eighteenth-century English culture. Identifying the construction of suffering in the hymns illuminates the culture of early Methodism and its complex relationship to its eighteenth century English context. My analysis places the hymns within the broader ‘narrative culture’ of early Methodism, which encouraged individuals to interpret their lives and experiences within a story of great spiritual significance. The hymns engaged men and women with a spiritual drama of conviction, conversion, sanctification and heavenly reward. I argue that suffering was central to Wesley's depiction of this drama. I examine his construction of the suffering of Christ, the suffering of Christians and of Christian responses to the suffering of others, den10nstrating that each of these had an important place in his depiction of the normative Christian experience. Those who read or sang the hymns were exhorted to embrace and endure suffering as an experience that offered opportunities for intill1acy with, and imitation of, Christ. Recognising Wesley's construction of suffering does not explain exactly how Methodist men and Women responded to affliction, but it does illuminate their responses. I explore the implications of Wesley's construction of suffering for early Methodist understandings of the self, spirituality, charity and gender, as well as specific kinds of pain such as childbirth and bereavement. These understandings contributed to a Methodist identity that was both related to, and distinct from, the eighteenth-century English culture in which the hymns were written.
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ItemRoger Barlow: Tudor trade and the Atlantic world( 2008)This thesis is about Roger Barlow. He was born near Colchester, sometime between 1480 and 1496, into a family with connections to the woollen cloth trade, and he died in Pembrokeshire in 1553. Barlow lived and traded in Seville during the 1520s as a member of a community of English merchants who prospered there. When Sebastian Cabot sailed from Seville in search of a route to the Moluccas or Spice Islands, Barlow accompanied him and joined in his exploration of the Rio de la Plata. He returned to Castile in late 1528 before returning to England around 1530 and marrying the daughter of a Bristol merchant. In the mid 1530s, Barlow moved to Pembrokeshire and cooperated with his brothers to further the Crown's policy for Wales while building up an estate around the dissolved commandery of the Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem at Slebech. He retained his links with trading networks in London and Bristol and in 1541 presented the king with a cosmography, subsequently titled A Brief Summe of Geographie, and a proposal, initially developed with fellow merchant, Robert Thorne. The crux of the proposal was that the English should undertake exploratory voyages to establish a trade route to the East via the Northwest Passage. As Barlow had inserted his personal account of the Rio de la Plata, including a description of a Tupi cannibal feast, into his cosmography, this would have been the first personal account of the Americas to appear in English, had Henry supported its publication. The contention of this thesis is that Roger Barlow's story is significant because it reveals the complex and influential role of guilds and informal merchant networks during the Henrician period, the nature of England's trading relationship with Spain and its Atlantic settlements before the Reformation, and the reactions of merchants, power brokers and monarchs to the New World during the first half of the sixteenth century. As well as connecting a myriad of geographical locations, Barlow's story links the mercantile world with that of the landed gentry and the clergy at a time when both social structures and forms of belief were being challenged. Barlow accumulated a knowledge of the world and its opportunities that was extraordinary for an Englishman in the first half of the sixteenth century. Such knowledge was the bedrock of the exploration, settlement, colonization and mercantile developments that gained momentum in the century that followed.
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ItemThe Puritan quest for enjoyment of God: an analysis of the theological and devotional writings of Puritans in seventeenth century England( 1997)This thesis explores the distinctive vision of enjoyment of God presented in the works of the seventeenth century English Puritans. The main sources for the thesis are the extensive writings of Richard Sibbes (1577-1635) and John Owen (1616-1683). Their works are placed in the broader context of Puritan theological and devotional writings: treatises on union and communion with God; sermons and commentaries on the Song of Songs; devotional works which outline the practice of piety and accounts of spiritual experience in biographies, autobiographies and memoirs. The thesis argues that there were strong mystical elements in Puritan piety, despite the traditional scholarly stereotype of Puritanism as antithetical to mysticism. While scholars have come to acknowledge the existence of mystical elements within Puritan piety they have sometimes suggested that these elements were exceptions within an otherwise anti-mystical movement. Others have detected mystical characteristics more widely in Puritan piety, yet have implied that these characteristics represented an adoption of existing Catholic devotional methods, rather than a natural development from the Puritans' own theology. Certainly, the Puritans were familiar with a rich heritage of patristic, medieval and contemporary spiritual writings, but the internal structure of Puritan devotion was provided by its own Reformed doctrine of God. Out of the rich soil of the Puritans' experiential and affectionate theology, grew an earnest and devout practice of piety, enabling an immediate union and loving communion with God, which was expressed in a sensual and lyrical love-language. The Puritan quest for enjoyment of God was a distinctive and confident vision, which has never received detailed attention in its own right; a virtually uncharted area which demands careful and sympathetic study. This thesis explores the Puritan quest for enjoyment of God in four main areas: its theology, vocabulary, devotion, and enactment. The first chapter deals with the theology which undergirded Puritan mysticism, for the inner shape of Puritan devotion must be sought in its own doctrinal formulations. It demonstrates that Puritan theology was not rationalistic and restrictive, as historians often assume, but a "mystical" and "experiential divinity", aimed at enjoyment of God. In their treatises and sermons, Puritan divines explored the intimate delights of union and communion with God, and the ecstatic joys to be gained through silent adoration of God's incomprehensible mysteries. The second chapter describes the language used by preachers to communicate the goals and ideals of Puritan mysticism: a heavily coded vocabulary which has remained largely unfamiliar to scholars, so that they often misinterpret or overlook descriptions of spiritual joy in Puritan writings. Enjoyment of God was communicated in a lyrical and imagistic love-language, chiefly taken from the marriage-metaphor and the Song of Songs: a passionate and sensual vocabulary which entered the shared language of the godly community, and was used by Puritan "mystics" and ordinary believers to express their spiritual joys. The third chapter outlines the Puritan practice of the means: a demanding devotional system which was deliberately shaped to the constraints of an active calling, a monasticism of the ordinary life. Puritan devotional disciplines have often been characterised as rationalistic and word-centred, dominated by sin and self-examination. But Puritan prayer was actually an earnest and affectionate quest for communion with God; meditation made use of the imagination and senses as well as the mind, and included rapturous contemplation on God's essence; and the Lord's Supper enabled a unique spiritual communion with God. Yet it cannot simply be assumed that ordinary believers followed the advice of Puritan preachers, as given in pulpit and press. The fourth and final chapter therefore concentrates on the records of spiritual experience preserved in biographies, autobiographies and memoirs; accounts of men and women, lay persons and divines, wealthy and poor. Puritan mystical piety was not an elitist or unappealing devotion: many individuals from various walks of life were attracted by its doctrine of God, modelled their lives on its archetype of experience, practised its devotional disciplines, and attained great heights of enjoyment of God.
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ItemThe sins of the Fathers: a study of the lay concept of guilt in late medieval England( 2010)This dissertation is an enquiry into why there was an explosion of lay devotion and piety in fourteenth- and fifteenth century England when the Church offered faithful penitents the perfect, divinely ordained means of forgiveness, absolution, reconciliation and salvation through the administration of the sacraments. Certainly the late medieval period was one of persistent social, political and economic upheavals and corruptions and inefficiencies in both spiritual and secular institutions, but these have occurred throughout history without resulting in such profound and sustained steriological angst. It is the contention of this thesis that for the laity there was another influential factor at work, a concept I have labelled ‘collective guilt’. Guilt results in punishment, therefore it would seem that punishment is indicative of guilt; however, from biblical exegesis theologians demonstrated that the conversion of the argument is untenable. But for those without access to scholarly discourse the experience of widespread and ongoing disasters which were interpreted as divine punishment for post-baptismal human sin but suffered by the good and wicked as though they were equally guilty, was evidence that the guilt of personal sin was shared; a theologically erroneous concept but nonetheless seemingly confirmed by ecclesiastical sanctions and punishments meted out by both church and secular courts. Moreover, and again contrary to theological opinion but unexplained, lay people believed that the same collective punishment would continue after death. This was a frightening prospect because as every soul had to be entirely cleansed of sin and guilt before it could enter heaven, the length of purgation for others’ post-baptismal sin and guilt would exceed the time left before the Last Judgement. Thus, collective guilt not only resulted in communal punishment on earth but threatened personal salvation. This thesis is a study of the origins of the misconception, and the influence of the belief in collective guilt in the devotional lives of the laity in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England and as such, the study is divided into two parts. In the first, I trace the theological justification for the punishment of communities for the sins of one or a few, and of children for the sins of their parents, through the works of Thomas Aquinas, the foremost scholar of his age. I examine the inferences of collective guilt in texts and sermons, and in the celebration of Baptism, Penance, the Mass, and Last Rites – those sacraments by which the individual was identified with Christ and reconciled with the Church and the universal community outside of which there could be no hope of salvation. In the second part I demonstrate how, by forming religious gilds which by common consent admitted only people with a pious reputation and regulated and disciplined the behaviour of members, lay people endeavoured to control the sinful behaviour of members, and augment the collective merit of the community with which they were spiritually identified. Private devotions are then considered. I argue that, by enlisting the help of the most powerful mediators in heaven, penitents sought to overcome the burden of collective guilt at death; and postulate that the visionary experiences of mystics encouraged others to seek personal identification with the supreme salvific act of atonement wrought by Christ on the Cross. And finally, I show that the similarities between ecclesiastical and folk rituals suggest that traditional charms were practiced to draw down divine power to counteract the physical effects of collective guilt. My conclusion is that the concept of collective guilt, albeit theologically wrong, was the cause of profound spiritual angst, and that as a facet of late medieval religious thinking it is a useful tool for helping to explain the fervour of lay devotion and piety of the laity in fourteenth and fifteenth century England.