Through this research I aimed to understand more about the ethical issues youth workers face in practice, using a comparative mini-ethnographic methodology. Compared to relationships young people share with other professionals, this ‘youth work relationship’ often has greater flexibility, wider and more nebulous concepts of professional boundaries, and inhabits an inherently more informal space. I begin by highlighting the contested concepts of youth work, and how they relate to dominant discourses in professional ethics. I acknowledge the reality of youth workers who may be in a risk-averse organisational structure, which promotes particular ways of working predominantly for the protection of the organisation. The original contribution to knowledge within this thesis is in empirically recognising the ethical issues inherent in youth work relationships and beginning to develop a virtue ethics for youth work. In particular, it is through naming eight observed inter-related themes of the youth work relationship, and arguing that the appropriateness of behaviours and interactions should be understood holistically rather than through relatively simplistic codes and roles, that new understandings of ethical issues in youth work are created. I therefore conclude by arguing the complexity of the youth work relationship can be understood through a virtue ethics framework. Virtue ethics is helpful as the character of the worker is particularly important, and it is through both having a ‘major premise’ or telos of the youth work relationship, and through having a disposition to be professionally wise, act with integrity, and be trustworthy, that workers can navigate these complex relationships.

The analysis of policies designed to address health inequalities, or more broadly speaking “differences in health”, tends to focus on evaluating policies in order to determine their effectiveness and to improve the design of future interventions. Such approaches are concerned with problem-solving as opposed to problem-questioning. Consequently there is little exploration of how the problem of “differences in health” is problematised in these policies, how policy problematisations change over time, and how governable subjects are produced as a result of problematisations of problems. Bacchi’s (1999, 2009) “What’s the problem represented to be?” framework, informed by Foucault’s theory of governmentality and methods of problematisation, archaeology and genealogy, was used to analyse 32 English public health policy documents in order to address these questions. Following the analysis, three problematisations of “differences in health” and their corresponding governable subjects were identified: the Informational problematisation and the “responsible chooser”; the Constraints problematisation and the “constrained chooser”; and the Paternalistic Libertarian problematisation and the “flawed chooser”. The archaeological analysis made it possible to identify underlying frameworks of thought which shaped policy problematisations of “differences in health” at specific points in time. The genealogical analysis suggested that while new problematisations emerged over time as the result of contingent conditions allowing for the development of new ideas, ultimately there was a consistent concern across all the period with understanding how individuals make choices about their health and how best to ensure people made healthy choices in order to reduce “differences in health”. This is clearly demonstrated through the identification of subjects as “choosers” and helps to explain the continuing emphasis within public health on creating the “right conditions” to allow individuals to make healthy choices, and to encourage individuals to govern themselves when making choices about their health.

Reducing stigma and discrimination encountered by people who experience mental distress is a policy objective of the British government’s current mental health strategy. This strategy considers third sector organisations providing support to people who experience mental distress to have a responsibility for, and a role in, stigma and discrimination reduction. The study takes a case study approach involving two third sector organisations in the North East of England; participant observation over the course of 6 months, 30 semi-structured interviews with staff and members, and 6 focus groups also involving staff and members. It is this combination of methods and the location of the study which makes this contemporary empirical study on stigma and discrimination relating to mental distress and support, and its contribution to knowledge, original. The research explores, describes, and analyses members’ experiences of stigma and discrimination, and staff and members’ experience of providing, performing, and receiving support. The study not only explores experiences of stigma and discrimination but also focuses on interactions in the support environment. Particularly by considering how relationships fostered in the support context of the organisations contribute to support which members describe as relatively free from stigmatising interactions. Employing a predominantly interactionist analysis of the empirical material, the findings indicate that the notion of ‘proximity’ of actors in the support environment is integral to deepening our understanding of stigma and relationships deemed by members as ‘supportive’. Exploring the wider socio-political context in which support is performed highlights how aspects of the stigma discourse continue to be individualised via the paradoxical attribution of ‘self-stigma’ by some staff members- despite the ‘hidden labour’ of many members. However, and as identified by this study, the ways in which staff ‘work’ to reduce the distance that members are ‘set apart’ or ‘distanced’ seems to be a significant contributing factor to truncating the scope for stigmatising interactions in the context of the case study organisations.

Public health ‘expert’ knowledge and technical ‘solutions’ to environment-related diseases are often embedded in biomedical perspectives that emphasise objectivity and rationality. However, such perspectives tend to sidestep the ways in which knowledge and solutions are shaped by social and cultural contexts. Public health interventions have therefore been evaluated in terms of the ‘failure’ of their intended recipients to ‘comply’ with them and in relation to public ‘misperceptions’ of risks to their health. This research was developed in an attempt to understandhow social and cultural beliefs and perceptions mediate health and the way that they contribute to, escalate or reduce risks to health. The study explores these attributes in the context of two issues: firstly, environment-related health risks pertaining to malaria and diarrheal diseases, and secondly residents’ perceptions and views of public health interventions and programmes. The research was carried out in two villages in rural northern Tanzania to explore the complexities of villagers’ behaviours in their everyday lives in order to help understand common public health concerns such as: why do some public health programmes succeed and others fail? Why do some individuals who know how to protect themselves against a particular disease choose not do so? And why are control and prevention of preventable infectious diseases problematic? The study employed an ethnographic approach based on a socio-cultural perspective. Focus groups and interviews were the main tools for data collection, and analysis was done inductively through development of key themes. Research findings show that social and cultural values, especially in relation to social capital, frame health-related risks in such a way as to shape the vulnerability and resilience of citizens to environment related illnesses. The thesis demonstrates a number of ways in which adherence to socio-cultural norms and practices takes precedence over potential concerns about risks to individual health.

No description available.

Organisational child sexual abuse has received unprecedented attention over recent years with numerous local, national and international inquiries taking place. At the same time interest in female sex offenders has increased, however, despite this focus in both areas there is an almost total lack of research examining the phenomenon of female-perpetrated child sexual abuse in organisational contexts. This thesis combines these fields of inquiry and addresses this gap. Situational crime prevention theory framed the mixed methods approach examining 136 cases of sexual abuse perpetrated by women against children they worked with in organisational contexts. The sample originates from the UK, USA and Canada between 2000 and 2016. Freedom of Information request data from the Ministry of Justice and professional regulators was used to examine the current context of this abuse. Qualitative and quantitative content analysis of court reports, professional regulator decisions and media articles then examined 92 variables addressing: perpetrator and victim characteristics; offence processes and modus operandi and situational and environmental factors. The responses of organisations and criminal justice and child protection systems were also investigated, as well as the short- and long-term impacts upon victims. The findings show most women offend alone against a single, post-pubescent male victim, often with particular vulnerabilities. Abuse occurs predominantly outside the organisational environment and the use of electronic communication is common. The findings indicate these women were not pre-disposed offenders but rather their behaviour was influenced by socio-cultural, situational and contextual factors. This highlights the significant influence organisations can have in preventing this abuse and wider implications for policy and practice are also discussed. This thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge by being the first systematic investigation specifically examining female-perpetrated child sexual abuse in a range of organisational contexts.

This thesis explores the lived experiences of 28 young people in seven locations in the North-East of England who were unemployed and engaging with aspects of Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) between 2012 and 2014. The research set out to give young people who were directly affected by these Active Labour Market Policies, particularly in the context of shifting levels of support for young unemployed people and increasing conditionality and sanctions associated to benefits, a voice about how this was impacting on them. The research adopted a qualitative longitudinal multi-case study approach. The findings document the young people’s barriers to employment and their related perspectives and experiences of the JobCentre Plus in particular as an interface of the government’s ALMPs. It was found that corrective methods to unemployment kept churning these young people between being off benefits, albeit short-term, and back on again as new claimants. It was not a simple case of young people choosing not to work; there was an inter-play between structure and agency. The structure of place and institutions that interacted with these young people shaped the choices the young people chose or were able to make. Here the research argues that the structure of agency needs to be addressed in order to tackle youth unemployment.

Despite extensive research into China’s migrant workers, little is known about their happiness levels, particularly in the cultural and social context of China. Based on hedonic and eudaimonic theories, this study explores the happiness of China’s migrant workers in terms of subjective wellbeing, mental health, and self-actualisation, in addition to contrasting it with that of urban residents, by analysing 45 semi-structured interviews and 600 questionnaires conducted in Shanghai in 2014. The major findings are as follows: (1) migrant workers’ definition of happiness primarily focuses on their family lives, especially their children, and not particularly on themselves; (2) migrant workers’ definition of happiness is significantly influenced by traditional Confucian culture, while this is less true for urban residents; (3) demographic variables, i.e. gender, age, education, marital status, income, working hours, and number of children, appear to have no discernible effect on migrant workers’ happiness levels, except for housing status and length of residence; (4) seven factors affect the happiness levels of migrant workers: material wealth; meeting the basic psychological needs of relatedness; mental health; social environment; meeting the basic psychological needs of competence; family life; and job and career; (5) a happy migrant worker is one who has a healthy mind, satisfactory material conditions and relatedness needs, a basic level of satisfaction with the social environment, and a higher degree of satisfaction with his/her family life, job, and competence; (6) there is a happiness gap between migrant workers and urban residents, and distinctions in material wellbeing regarding income, social welfare, and housing are the main drivers of such a disparity. With regard to Chinese urbanisation, building an equal and free Chinese society, lowering property prices, improving migrant workers’ satisfaction with their material conditions, and improving migrant workers’ education and professional skills would best promote migrant workers’ happiness; (7) two theoretical models – ‘Mapping Chinese Happiness’ and ‘The Cupcake Model’ – are proposed to generalise the characteristics and influential factors of Chinese people’s happiness.

This thesis makes a five-fold contribution to knowledge in the areas of theory, context, method, and management practice. It combines brand heritage, communitas, brand image, work engagement, affective commitment and satisfaction with management to develop a new theoretical model showing empirically, the contribution of brand heritage - the history, image, symbols and story an organisation tells about its origins, evolution, and values - and the interplay between these theoretical constructs for the first time. Second, it contributes to context through empirical demonstration of the appropriateness of brand heritage and communitas to the non-profit sector. Third, contributing to method, the research applied a mixed methodology, which included the use of a formative (as opposed to reflective) measurement model for brand heritage. It also contributes through conceptualizing for the first time, brand image and volunteer engagement as higher-order measurement models. Finally, contributing to management practice, this thesis outlines to managers the importance of nurturing, and cultivating a strong brand heritage, and ensuring it is leveraged appropriately to retain and attract satisfied, and committed volunteers. The data was collected in two phases. The first was conducted via questionnaires distributed amongst Scout volunteers to test the newly developed theoretical model, while the second phase enhanced understanding through semi-structured interviews with volunteers, complementing the validated theoretical model. The data demonstrates brand heritage makes a substantial contribution to volunteer management, and can positively impact upon volunteers’ experiences, and a volunteer organisation’s ability to retain them. Furthermore, the data shows the importance of cultivating non-profit brand heritage and suggests heritage custodianship as an important, but previously unidentified area of non-profit management focus. More broadly, this thesis offers guidance to non-profit managers for retaining volunteers, and vindicates further consideration of the contribution traditionally private sector management practices can have within the non-profit sector.

This thesis focuses on the heritage and traditions of the Russian Old Believers community in Romania. The study begins with an examination of the limited recognition of the 19 officially recognised ethnic groups in the country. Analysed in connection with the history of Old Belief, the study then considers (a) the narratives developed around heritage, (b) the manner in which different forms of heritage are included in Old Believers’ lives and traditions and (c) the representation of that heritage. The theoretical framework is underpinned by a multi-disciplinary structure that draws on heritage studies, anthropology, ethnology and folklore. Methodologically, the study was designed as an interpretive multisited ethnography that combines extensive fieldtrips, interviews, observations and archival material. While acknowledging the challenges of UNESCO’s conceptualisation of heritage, the thesis relies in part on the organisation’s interpretation as a framework for analysis. The examination considers the representation of Old Believers in the media and in museums as well as the use of heritage and traditions in tourism activities. The data tracks the accelerated pace of change in the post-socialist period and the effects this brought on existing heritage processes. The relative success of revitalisation efforts is evaluated in parallel with the disruptions in lifestyle patterns by processes such as globalisation and migration. In conclusion, the study outlines the importance of both religious and secular heritage for identity-work and community-building.