Thesis
The Second World War in Glasgow and Clydeside : men in reserved occupations 1939-1945
- Creator
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 2012
- Thesis identifier
- T13369
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- This thesis explores the masculine subjectivities of civilian men who worked in reserved occupations in the Clydeside region during the Second World War. It contributes important findings to existing historical discussions about whether the war represented a catalyst for social change in Britain, and also adds to the historiography on personal subjectivities, particularly masculinity. While previous studies of social change have generally had a wide geographical coverage, this research investigates a specific and arguably unique British region. The thesis primarily uses both archived and newly conducted oral history interviews as source materials, as well as engaging extensively with official and cultural sources, including newspapers, novels, posters and films. Using the terms 'lived' and 'imagined' to describe the plural, fluctuating and co-existing influences of socially constructed official and cultural discourses on the masculine subjectivities of male civilian workers as well as the contingencies, necessities and immediacies of everyday life, this work takes a post-modernist approach and understands subjectivity as a fluid, oscillating and ultimately continuous concept, retaining an inevitable sense of personal agency through major historical changes. While the subjectivities of men in reserved occupations in wartime Clydeside are therefore understood as having been extensively influenced by a range of 'imagined' discourses, often resulting in feelings of guilt and emasculation, their subjectivities were nonetheless ultimately rooted in their 'lived' and immediate local vicinities, and the people and places of their everyday lives. This ultimate relevance of 'lived' existence and the everyday, distinct from essentialism, also meant that while wartime relations between men and women were clearly shaped by a range of gender discourses and were continually being renegotiated, gender boundaries were never fixed or truly separate. This thesis therefore challenges assumptions about gender identities in wartime and arguments for the Second World War as an agent of social change in a fundamentally new way.
- Resource Type
- Note
- Strathclyde theses - ask staff. Thesis no. : T13369
- DOI
- Date Created
- 2012
- Former identifier
- 989117
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