Over the last two decades, campus redevelopment in the UK and worldwide has accelerated. University building activity is frequently justified by architects and managers as responding to 'market forces'. These claims are reflected in institutional discourses about campus redesign and a growing academic and media interest in the organisational space of universities. Discourses often emphasise the positive transformative effects of redevelopment without considering the wider impact on the everyday life of the university. This thesis explores the relationship between institutional space and the construction of individual, social and professional identities, using a case study describing a ten-year campus transformation project at Manchester Metropolitan University. Over this period, the university aimed to: consolidate the number of individual campuses from seven to two; provide new 'world-class' facilities for staff and students; create opportunities for 'improved' teaching and research activity; and develop the university brand. In real terms, this meant closing existing campus locations and relocating staff and students to an 'iconic' new building containing open plan academic offices and flexible student pods. The management discourse around this ambitious building project revealed a deterministic stance, predicting a variety of 'improvements' to academic working practices, student satisfaction and efficiency as a result of these environmental changes. Viewed as a whole, these spatial manipulations were intended to influence internal and external perceptions of identity and act as an indicator of successful change management. Three interpretive approaches are used to examine the social production of a new university space: thematic; visual; and dispositive analysis. The analysis uses the work of Lefebvre, Foucault, and de Certeau to argue that specific discursive, non-discursive and material/spatial techniques are bound together in the imaginations of university management. These techniques are then employed to dismantle 'outdated' working practices in an attempt to 'spatially fix' particular new conceptions of academic labour and professional identity that fit with the neo-liberal university project. Lefebvre's spatial triad is used to structure the discussion around three research questions that focus on the creation of identities via the conceived space of institutional designers, the perceived space of work activities and the emotionally lived space of university life in the new building. The research revealed a conceptual void apparent in the design of university buildings where spatial aesthetics are appropriated from other sectors to 'fix' the problems inherent in academic capitalism. The data show how particular spatial arrangements are used to discipline academic labour and encourage particular managerially sanctioned working practices. The thesis also demonstrates the lack of recognition given to physical artefacts and personalisation of space in the design of academic offices and the detrimental effect that this has on staff identity.

Air quality in urban areas of Chiang Mai Province, Thailand has seriously deteriorated as a consequence of population growth and urbanization and due to a lack of effective air quality management (AQM). As a result, respiratory diseases among Chiang Mai residents have increased in these affected areas. The health status and experiences of air pollution of both children and adults in Chiang Mai was assessed and improvements recommended to the developing AQM scheme. Air quality modelling, using ADMS-Urban was used to identify probable air polluted and control sites for further study. The polluted sites were found to be located along major roads in the city. However, ADMS-Urban was unable to predict air pollutant concentrations accurately because it could not cope with the very low wind speeds and complex topography of Chiang Mai. As a result, the utility of other air pollution modelling programmes should be investigated. The results of a questionnaire survey conducted with adults showed that urban respondents had a higher percentage of respiratory diseases than suburban respondents. However, later investigations were unable to establish a statistical linkage between air pollution concentrations and respiratory diseases. An ISAAC study was conducted among children attending schools located in the selected sites to assess the potential impacts of air pollution on health. The results showed that the prevalence of asthma was similar in all of the schools (approximately 5%) but that the prevalence of rhinitis (24.3% vs. 15.7%) and atopic dermatitis (12.5% vs. 7.2%) was higher in the urban schools which were considered to be more polluted. Logistic regression analysis identified other factors which may be involved in addition to pollution, including some components of the diet and contact with animals. In order to investigate the adequacy of the AQM system in Thailand, a comparative study was conducted between Hong Kong and Thailand. Both countries were investigated with respect to conformance to Good Urban Governance. The comparison showed that there are significant differences between the two countries and the AQM system in Hong Kong was more highly developed. For example, in contrast to the system in Hong Kong, it was found that there was insufficient involvement of the population in the development and implementation of AQM systems in Thailand. In order to better understand the reasons why the AQM system in Thailand is poor at both the provincial and local levels in Chiang Mai, prioritisation of AQM was assessed for major national environmental policies and plans; at the provincial level, fund allocations to development projects were reviewed; and at the sub-district level; a questionnaire survey was conducted among local government officials. It was concluded that AQM was not given sufficiently high priority in national plans and was generally ineffective and that, due to the non-specific nature of guidelines and frameworks in these plans, it was difficult for government organizations at the lower levels to establish AQM action plans for effective implementation. A range of appropriate measures to improve air quality in Chiang Mai were recommended. These included a more effective management of air pollution, an identified need for training and major changes in the transport system in the city.

Through a selective review of the literature on sustainable development, this thesis identifies the concepts of networking, participation and redistribution as crucial to the philosophy and politics of sustainable development. Feminist perspectives on these concepts are used as analytical tools in a study of women's networks and their participation in, and influence on, the sustainable development agenda and the implementation of Agenda 21 (UN, 1992) in the 1990s. It is argued that the participation of women's networks in developing the sustainability agenda, although crucial to the implementation of Agenda 21. was limited. The dynamics between political actors resulting from international agreements, such as Agenda 21. and the influence of women's networks on associated processes and outcomes are currently under researched in the literature. This is explored in the thesis. It is suggested that the principles of associative democracy, group representation and “user involvement" could be synthesized and employed to strengthen democratic representation in the political arena relating to the sustainability agenda. It is further suggested that these principles could serve as a model for similar exercises in the future. The methodology used is qualitative. An empirical study involving interviews and participant observation of women's networks is presented. So too is a critical review of the "grey" literature on the influence of women's networks on Agenda 21 and the scholarly literature on the implementation of local Agenda 21 (LA21). The need for LA21 consultations to take account of the views of women's networks, and for new forms of democratic representation to be developed is illustrated.

Academic interest in the field of child sexual abuse remained consistently high during the latter part of the twentieth century. The research undertaken at this time demonstrated the relationship between child sexual abuse and gender; that is to say that men are the primary perpetrators of the sexual victimisation of children. Given this preponderance, it is of central importance to keep the significance of gender focal. Paradoxically, it is for this very reason that gender remains significant in cases where women sexually abuse children - because they represent the minority of cases. It is this disparity which provides a basis for this work. The purpose of this work is to examine and demonstrate that gender is significant in: the way in which an abuse experience is defined and made sense of; the process by which an individual becomes a survivor; and how abuse experiences are responded to by others. The foci of defmition, interpretation, subjectivity and ambiguity led to the utilisation of symbolic interactionism as an appropriate theoretical perspective in which to ground the study and to guide the research analysis. Designed as an exploratory study, the work combines qualitative and quantitative research methods aimed at survivors of abuse and relevant professionals (the latter drawn from both the 'therapy industry' and the criminal justice arena). In-depth interviews were carried out with survivors and analysed to examine survivors' subjective realities and interpretations of their experiences of abuse. Semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were used to explore the significance of gender in the responses of professionals to abuse experiences. The issues that arise from this work have profound implications for the way in which the significance of gender in child sexual abuse can be thought about and understood.

Mental imagery has been linked to creativity through the reports of many historically creative individuals. Following a review and evaluation of the theoretical, anecdotal and empirical literature, the material presented in the thesis investigates the role of individual differences in mental imagery in performance on psychometric creativity tasks. A meta-analytic review of previous research showed a small marginally acceptable criterion association between self-reported mental imagery vividness and control and divergent thinking performance. However, additional non-statistical examination showed that further investigation was required. This led to five studies of the variables under consideration and a revised meta-analytic review in the light of the findings. The main conclusion was that self-report measures of mental imagery have a statistically significant but inconsequential association with divergent thinking performance. Consequently a new series of studies was undertaken in which the creative visualization task (CVT) was employed using an individual differences approach. Having established the parametric properties of a test-format version of the CVT two behavioural measures of mental imagery were used to predict performance. As neither measure predicted CVT performance high and low vividness and Symbolic Equivalence Test groups were used to assess a dissociative model of CVT performance. A significant interaction effect showed that vividness plays a mediating role in predicting CVT performance. In two final studies the individual differences approach was employed in the context of a hypothesised perceptual mediation. The results showed firstly that High Imagers performed significantly better than Low Imagers in creativity tasks following perceptual isolation and secondly that Low Imagers performed significantly better on perceptually sourced creativity tasks than on verbally sourced creativity tasks. The combined findings suggest that, while established protocols do not support a strong imagery-creativity association, new methods of investigation may reveal the predicted differences in creativity between high and low imagery participants.

This thesis aims to provide an examination of the police experience of mental illness. The thesis highlights several of the dilemmas of the police, the perception of their roles and the methods used by the officers to deal with the mentally ill in the community. The police have consistently faced social problems in the community, including mental illness. There have been many changes and reforms of mental health policy over the past twenty years. This includes the introduction of community care policy. It has been acknowledged that these changes have impacted on the police and numbers of mentally ill being dealt with by the police. This thesis involves an examination of previous research into the police and the mentally ill, the policy and social context of this involvement, including an examination ofpeliinent mental health policy, and the practice of the police when facing a complex social problem. Operational officers from two police stations were interviewed to gain insight into their perceptions of the mentally ill. Senior, managerial officers also participated to provide an overview of the policies of several forces. Various issues were raised concerning the involvement of the police with the mentally ill. These included the dilemma of dealing with a vulnerable group in a climate where risk is at the forefront. The police adopt various methods for managing the mentally ill. The overwhelming approach, however, continued to involve the use of police discretion. The pragmatic use of discretion appeared to be the most useful mechanism, regardless of the policy and procedure of their specific forces.

The aim of this thesis is to consider how advertisers and their clients in the 1990s conceptualised social and technological change. In particular, I address how advertisers deduced and represented new characteristics in their customers. By reflecting on changes in the content of adverts, I take a symptomatic approach in considering how new conceptualisations were incorporated into new and broader ad styles. To do this, in Chapter 1, the Literature Review, I identify my central approach and key issues against existing literature in the field. Given that this study is essentially an industry-oriented analysis of advertising, which not been attempted this way before, I consider the relevance of existing industrial and academic-centred critical models for this study. Chapter 2 then maps out the key changes in advertising in the 1990s from previous decades. It considers what prompted the ad industries to change their perspectives and how advertisers restructured their operations in an attempt to re-imagine their consumers. In Chapter 3 benchmarks of the key changes are examined in more detail. Three campaigns are examined to explore how promotional strategies negotiated (perceived) changes in consumers. The campaigns for Britvic Tango (1992), Daewoo cars (1995) and Tesco Clubcard (1997) were chosen because they are symptomatic of key moments during the 1990s in which the way advertising targeted consumers was re-addressed. In the final part of this chapter I consider how shifting methods of advertising during the 1990s registers in the 'bigger picture' of twentieth century communication. Following the case studies, the next two chapters review two key issues for advertising during the 1990s. Chapter 4 considers how advertisers changed their tone of address. Here issues such as national/personal representation and 'boutiques of history' are considered. Most notably, changes in youth mood is considered against advertising's own strategies for coping with change. Chapter 5 then considers changes in modes of address, and in particular the impact of digital technology on advertising's means of communication. Unlike the previous chapter, which demonstrates how advertising negotiated change, this section shows how the existing agency system was forced to change. Before 1990 an attitude perSisted in the ad industry that changes to the way agencies communicated and did business was (to a large extent) determined by advertisers themselves. This was not the case in 1990s. This study maps out how change was negotiated in a climate of cultural fragmentation and digitised communication.

This thesis attempts to address the reasons why, in the anonymous case study of Southview, a 'night-time economy', based around the consumer demands of a young white popUlation, came to predominate in an area largely defined by its African/Caribbean population and the cultural forms arising from that population. It examines the interrelationship between culture, economy and law. Specifically, this involves examining the interface between the different cultural forms and meanings of nightlife, forms of regeneration initiatives and licensing law and practice in the locality. The research uses an anonymous case study to examine these interrelationships through a combination of ethnographic techniques, semi-structured interviews and documentary sources. Chapters One and Two deal with relevant literature, methodology and research design. Then, the research findings are presented in an approximation of a chronological order, whilst examining the key processes involved in the change and transformation of nightlife spaces. Chapter Three explores the way in which historical conflicts defmed and bound the locality. Chapter Four examines the conflicts emerging from economic development plans and the differing interpretation given by different populations. Chapter Five outlines the conflicts and dynamics involved in the development of the 'night-time economy' in Southview. Chapters Six and Seven explore the issues of subjectivity and differentiation that arise in the formal and informal processes of licensing law and practice. The conclusion attempts to examine the interrelationship between culture, economy and law in explaining both the process of change and the reproduction of social differentiation. While the research found that there were no long-term strategic plans to convert nightlife spaces in the area, a conjunction of local institutional subjectivities, practices and legal or regulatory strictures served to re-orientate or 'normalise' local nightlife, and in the process eliminate or exclude some of the key cultural forms of the Afro-Caribbean population. This involved a number of interrelated processes. First, the evolution of a racialised problematisation of the locality that impacted upon the development and marginalisation of forms of black entertainment. Second, a combination of regeneration and policing initiatives aimed at normalising and reclaiming unregulated space, although to different degrees of intent. Third, the application of licensing law and its local interpretation that reproduced and concretised this process of differentiation. Finally, the impact of the growth of a population of young professionals who were overwhelmingly represented in the new night-time economy and who exhibited specific forms of spatial consciousness. The interrelationship of such multi-causal processes, it is argued, highlights the importance of complexity in explanation, in that separate elements of the whole are largely unrelated and unconscious of the other. However, the impact of such processes served to create new social differentials based on an evolving combination of class and racial exclusion, and in doing so sideline the potential of experimentation and diversity within nightlife spaces.

The process involved in deciding to submit my publications for examination for a PhD by Published Works' has been a peculiar one. The peculiarity has been the separateness of the two endeavours, namelyihewriting of the publications and the submission for a PhD. When I wrote each of the submitted publications the idea that they would become part of a PhD submission had not occurred to me. They were publications primarily for practice, with the hoped for intention of improving practice and practice outcomes for service users. They were written during the last ten years during the time that I had entered academia and had become a hybrid academic/practitioner. The 'research' process involved in the publications was inductive; the writing was the culmination of ten years in social work practice as a social worker and as a team leader of a generic team in an -inner-L-ondon-socral-servrees -department during the'decade of the 1980s. The writing was a synthesis of my reflections on practice experience and literature reviews, the culmination of which were the submitted publications. The submitted works fall within what Fullerand Petch-refer tCfas"'practitionerrese-arch' -(Fuller and Petch, 1995) and what Buchanan refers to as 'practice experience' (Buchanan, 1999). The publications, at the time, were a record of my practice experience, reflections, contribution to and learning from practice, a way of giving back' something to my colleagues and my clients of ten years. However, even though my intentions when writing the publications did not include a PhD, here I am writing my ~ntext statement with the pursuit of a PhD as the goal in mind. This has involved considerable reflective critical analysis about the 1 processes and thinking I engaged in, in relation to each publication and the body of work as a whole. It has also involved analysis of myself as the researcher and my part in the creation of 'knowledge'. The 'reflexive journey' involved in this submission has helped me position my work but also to some extent myself and has helped me feel slightly less antagonistically ambivalent to the role of academic.

In Britain, within the contemporary drive of using sport to tackle the isolation of socially excluded groups, association football (football) fandom has been implicated in many policy documents as a possible site for learning-disabled people to become more socially included. However, whilst there is some evidence of the benefits of playing football for learning-disabled people, there is little evidence to support these claims. Drawing on empirical data from learning-disabled people about their experiences of football fandom and from relevant authorities responsible for facilitating the fandom of learning-disabled people, this thesis provides a critical analysis of the opportunities to tackle social exclusion that football fandom provides learning-disabled people. This includes examining the experience of football fandom for the learning-disabled people involved, any opportunities for social inclusion football fandom provides, and the response of relevant football authorities to learning-disabled fans. The thesis concludes that whilst football fandom offers social benefits to learning-disabled people in terms of opportunities for social interaction, a sense of belonging and a shared social identity that go some way towards tackling their social exclusion, football fandom is unlikely to result in the 'social inclusion' characterised by Government.