My aim is this thesis is to explore how and why Korean female clerical workers have experienced sexual harassment within the organisational structure of their workplaces.  My data derives from qualitative interviews with 28 female clerical workers who work in Seoul, South Korea. However, my own position and experiences as a Korean feminist scholar are also embedded within the research process and explicitly incorporated into my analysis.  Despite having focused upon the experiences of Korean female workers, this thesis will contribute to an understanding of how experiences of women as sexual victims are embedded within the oppressive of heterosexuality and male-dominated organisational culture regardless of the socio-cultural differences of each society. In order to do so, this thesis first highlights the specificities of Korean heterosexuality and heterosexual culture whilst also examining features of organisational culture in relation to both gender and sexuality. This approach reflects my belief that incidents of sexual harassment are deeply embedded within the socio-cultural features of each society and, in particular, based upon the changing and ongoing features of gender and sexual culture.  The representative elements of Korean heterosexuality are identified as the enforcement of female sexual chastity and subservience and the permitting of solely marital sexual relations for women, while men expect varied sexual experiences. The super-heterosexual forces are interrelated with the promotion and maintenance of male-dominated and sex-discriminatory organisational culture. Thus, I understand the specific features of Korean heterosexuality and organisational culture to be the predominant contributors in the perpetuation of sexual harassment within Korean workplaces. In relation to experiences of sexual harassment, I suggest that the definition of sexual harassment is both flexible and contextual and its varieties diversely constituted within the socio-cultural features of each society.  Moreover, I discover the fact that the victims’ reluctance assertively to respond to sexual harassment is greatly affected by heterosexual and male-dominated organisational culture.  Therefore, my suggestion is that possible strategies to combat sexual harassment would be also based upon these socio-cultural features.

This thesis demonstrates the day-to-day experiences of victimisation and opinions about crime as they were encountered by a group of pupils in a rural school at one particular point in time. A number of key themes are addressed, the first being the notion of the adolescent as a victim of crime. This thesis considers what ‘crime’ means to the pupils at this school and documents their views of crime in the wider community. The next area addressed is the victimisation of adolescents by fellow adolescents; here the focus is on incidents of bullying that occurred on and off the school premises. Third, whilst men as victims is an under-researched area, boys as victims are even less adequately studied, and the question of masculine identities are incorporated. Furthermore, the roles the female students played are investigated as with their involvement in both acts of violence and bullying. The fourth area is the limits of moral conduct and how this particular age group makes decisions about the unwritten moral codes and boundaries affecting the display of violence. This in turn invites the question of how teenagers made sense of larger moral problems and problems of living inside a school interpreted as a form of institution with a distinctive ‘underlife’. These themes are addressed within an analysis of the larger social organisation of childhood and adolescence. Criminologists have long recognised the importance of peer group influence in the development of offending behaviour, but the research took into account the rural context of that setting, the final analytical lens through which it is focussed. This thesis demonstrates that the intricate patterns of violence and bullying are a process whereby status and power reinforce an established hierarchy of pupil’s informal relations. The importance of the peer group emerged as the key to understanding interactions between the pupils at the school researched. The power of the peer group would have to be taken into consideration in any strategies devised to curtail bullying.

This thesis is concerned with perceptions of bullying.  It examines the constructs associated with the social representation of bullying within the police service, and the social psychological processes and factors influencing the likelihood that individual officers will share such representations.  The work is framed within the social psychological theories of Social Identity Theory (SIT) (Tajfel & Turner, 1986) and Social Representations Theory (SRT) (Moscovici, 1961, 1984). The research comprised two studies.  Study one used an innovative twist on the qualitative multiple sort procedure to establish the constructs of bullying used within the police service.  Seventeen participants drawn from civilian support staff, uniformed and CID officers used themes based on issues of context, power and the type of behaviour (personal or task directed) in their evaluations of bullying.  Departmental differences were noted in the interpretational strategies used. Study two was designed to ascertain the relative importance of the constructs, identified by study one, to the constabulary’s SR of bullying and the degree to which differences in sharing such SRs could be explained by identification factors.  The manipulation scenario, which formed part of the questionnaire design, provided support for the effect of type of behaviour on the SR factor of acceptability and common-ness, but he construct of power, as represented by rank and authority, produced a more complex result, with an interaction occurring between the two.  There were significant differences between high and low identifiers and department in the degree to which respondents concurred with the constabulary’s SR of bullying.

Bullying is widely acknowledged as an insidious form of victimization that is prevalent within our schools. In the context of a wider society that may in itself be racist, racial bullying in schools is beginning to be acknowledged both in the academic literature and the media. However, studies of ethnicity and bullying are scarce. The present study aims to highlight the experiences of bullying at school for both ethnic minority and ethnic majority pupils. In particular, the relationship between ethnic identity and the experience of bullying is examined. A total of 199 secondary school pupils aged between 12 and 13 years (Year 8) from an inner city school in Leicester participated. Two questionnaires were completed which assessed their experiences of bullying and ethnic identity. Significant differences were found for ethnicity regarding the overall experience of being bullied, with ethnic majority pupils reporting experiencing more bullying than their minority peers. Ethnic minority pupils were more likely than ethnic majority pupils to experience bullying with a racial content. No relationship was found between the effect of racial bullying and ethnic identity status. Some gender differences reported in the literature were reflected in the results of this study. The results proved difficult to interpret and a critical discussion of methodological limitations is offered. Implications of the findings for schools, and the clinical implications for psychology are discussed. Future research needs are also considered.

A social-psychological perspective is used to study young people’s representations of bullying across in-groups and out-groups in eight mixed-sex British state secondary schools (a total of 471 pupils aged 11-16 from Years 7, 9 and 11, 54% girls and 46% boys).  Four of the schools were from an area of high ethnic mix and low socio-economic status (SES), and four are from an area of low ethnic mix and high SES.  The study explores the usefulness of making a distinction not investigated in the bullying literature: that between abuse based on individual characteristics, and abuse in terms of group membership, such as one’s race or sex as a whole.  The literature contains an implicit value judgement that group-based bullying is worse, and therefore more difficult to cope with, because it maligns not only the individual but also the individual’s entire reference group.  The aim of this thesis is to understand children’s evaluations of the severity of the two distinguishable bases for being bullied, with a focus on victim representations.  Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used, in the form of group-interview methodology and forced-choice questionnaires administered individually to 400 pupils.  The 96 group interviews used specially designed vignettes about a male and female victim, with the ethnicity and facial expression of the models manipulated.  Responses only partially support the assumption in the literature; children mentioned many other dimensions upon which evaluations are conditional, ranging from social conventions, intention, frequency, and truth, to the type of target and the nature of the stigma.  Results are interpreted in terms of the general heightened awareness of bullying and racism that permeates schools.  This research contributes to knowledge about the complex processes through which adolescents are both susceptible to and protected from bullying.  The topic is contextualised by a wide range of literature including: bullying, gender, ethnicity, racial and sexual harassment, stigma, adolescent peer groups, identity, self-esteem, attribution theory, and cognitive coping strategies.

Baden Road School was part of a Sheffield Project and results in 1992 indicated that bullying among pupils was getting worse. Unfortunately, bullying among pupils is usually covert and tends not to affect teachers in the same way that disruptive behaviour does. Despite the introduction of an anti-bullying policy little was done by the school to alter the trend. Curriculum has been at the forefront of planning and evaluation in school and the issue of bullying has failed to be reviewed. Teachers were already burdened trying to implement the 1991 National Curriculum orders when, with Government pressure to cut costs, the LEA closed a local primary school and class sizes increased by at least 10%. In the same year the junior school amalgamated with the infants to form Baden Road Primary School with a 3+ to 10+ age range and where the number more than doubled from 220 to over 500 pupils. In a second attempt to persuade the school that something must be done about bullying, case study was a useful way to collect more evidence. While experts cannot agree on a standard definition of bullying, as children are the real experts of what happens, the pupils at Baden Road School found the task easy providing a basis for other data about bullying to be analysed. The case study then gave rise to action research which examined closely appropriate preventative and interventionist methods. Name-calling emerged as the most common form of non-physical bullying in school. Language was found to be critical as a way by which children determine who is bullied and who is not and as a solution to bullying behaviour. While the language used by Baden Road pupils is not representative of any other school it served to demonstrate connections between teasing, bullying, toleration and their effect on pupils. A model hypothesis arose from the question of what determines offensive and tolerable name-calling. The evidence suggests that Baden Road School needs to change to planned routine ways of preventing bullying and intervening in the cases which develop. First though, teachers have to believe that the issue of bullying needs reviewing and evaluating. The success of this study is in the effect it has on facilitating any changes which will promote further awareness, a permanent anti-bullying ethos and better uniform ways victims and bullies are helped in school. Teacher support, as in any school, is critical to the degree of success or failure of this initiative.