Glasgow Caledonian University
Division of Social Sciences, School of Law and Social Sciences
Research Studentships in Health History and Sociology
Applications are invited for three full-time research studentship in the Division of Social Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian University. The studentships are for three years, subject to satisfactory progress, and cover fees together with a stipend of £13,500 per annum (subject to revision). Students in receipt of a studentship are expected to contribute up to six hours per week unpaid teaching (including preparation and marking) or equivalent duties during term time. Registration is for MPhil in the first instance, with a transfer to PhD at a later stage.
The three studentship projects are: Maternal health and welfare in Glasgow, 1918-1940; Industrial welfare in central Scotland, 1918-1940; Disability and the 'Civilising Process' - the Historical Transformation of Impairment into Disability.
The successful candidates will work under the auspices of the Centre for the Social History of and Healthcare (http://www.caledonian.ac.uk/historyofhealth/index.html).
Further details of the projects are on the CSHHH website.
Applicants should have a good undergraduate degree in History, Sociology or a related discipline. Applicants are expected to submit a short proposal (under 800 words) on how they might approach the research project with the application form. Interviews will be held in July.
Application forms can be obtained from Diane Dickie, Academic Administration, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow G4 0BA (email [log in to unmask]). For further information contact Prof EW McFarland: (0141 331 [log in to unmask] The closing date for applications is 10 July 2007
The Research Programme
PhD Project i) Industrial Welfare in Central Scotland, 1918-1940
This PhD research project will investigate the extent and impact of employer welfare targeted at male workers in the Scottish central belt during the inter-war period. The research will focus on the male-dominated industries of coal mining, shipbuilding and heavy engineering, and will incorporate the history of health and welfare, labour history and business history. The heavy industries of the Clydeside conurbation have been criticised by business and labour historians for their lack of company welfare provision, as well as for the authoritarian labour relations strategies of their employers. These two assumptions have not been supported by comprehensive detailed empirical research. Therefore, this project will provide a much needed employer-centred study of company welfarism in Scotland, and make a considerable contribution to our knowledge of British welfare provision in the important but under-researched decade preceding the initiation of the welfare state. The successful candidate will utilise a rich seam of employer material located in archives in the west central belt. This includes company records (Business Record Centre, University of Glasgow) employer organisation records and Chamber of Commerce reports (Strathclyde Regional Archives, Mitchell Library), Scottish Trades Union Congress records (GCU). Employer and trade union records archived at the Modern Record Centre, University of Warwick will also be incorporated. Contact: Dr Ronnie Johnston: [log in to unmask]
PhD Project ii) Maternal Health and Welfare in Glasgow, 1918-1940
For this project the successful candidate will investigate maternal health and welfare provision in the Clydeside region over the period 1918-1940. This is a period which in general has been thinly researched by historians of Scotland, and this is especially so regarding the experiences of women. The study will encompass orthodox healthcare provision as well as employer welfare targeted at female workers. To this end the researcher will exploit unused archival material located at the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board Archive at the Mitchell Library, the Business Records Centre, University of Glasgow, Strathclyde Regional Archives, and at the Scottish Records Office. This material includes Glasgow City Council health committee records, Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital records, and company records of industries in which women were clustered - such as food processing, light engineering, factory work. Professor John Stewart [log in to unmask] or Dr Janet Greenlees [log in to unmask]
PhD Project iii) Disability and the 'Civilising Process' - the Historical Transformation of Impairment into Disabilty
Elias (1978, 1982) presents the journey of history from the medieval period through modernity as a 'civilizing process', a de-barbarisation of European manners that begins with court society and is taken up, successively by the bourgeoisie and the other 'lower' classes, who in embracing the practices of civility, simultaneously circumscribe their own libidinal desires and regulate their impulses. Civilisation, therefore, is the process of the strengthening of subjective self-control. It is ' the broad process of social and sensory change which ... began in the eleventh century and contributed towards a more mannered, structured pattern of bodily control' (Howson, 2004: 68). 'Civilization' is the process of change that simultaneously transforms the social and the emotional. Elias is interested in the processes of socialisation; how these produce acceptable behaviour and how what constitutes acceptable behaviour changes (and indeed) narrows during the period of modernity. Modernity, for Elias, as a process of the social regulation of the impulses, the formation of a new mode of being in that the body and emotions, all that is spontaneous and impulsive, are brought under the jurisdiction of social norms. Elias characterises this process as a shift from external control (fremdzwang) to self-control (selbzwang). The modern self is formed as a consequence of its role in the process of internalising norms of control in the form of manners, rules of hygiene and other behavioural codes related to ways of dressing, eating, sleeping and other practices of the body. In modernity, the physical self becomes a shameful thing, a source of embarrassment that requires constant vigilance.
A critique of Elias from a disability studies perspective would focus on the argument that while Elias concentrates on the coincidence of the psychogenic and sociogenic processes that transform external control into self discipline, he barely recognises the invalidating impact that this process has on people who have bodily differences that make it difficult or impossible for them to share in the interconnections of bodily civility that come to be ordered by ableist norms and which transform physical and mental impairments into subjects beyond delicacy, into monstrosities, anomalies, signs of barbarism and corruption. Those who do not appear to have control over their affects or their bodies must of necessity, become the flotsam and jetsam of the civilising process. Elias does, however, give clues to the ways in which impairment is historically transformed into disability when he argues that civilisation is an historical movement that works by segregation or concealment, the 'hiding behind the scenes of what has become distasteful' (1978: 121). The successful candidate for the studentship would be expected to develop this critique and examine the efficacy of Elias' thesis to the conceptualisation of the historical transformation of the relationships between disabled and non-disabled people.
Contact: Professor Bill Hughes: [log in to unmask]
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