This thesis addresses theoretical and methodological concerns to embody sociology. It offers an account of the body, health and illness in everyday life that uses a sensorially attentive research practice to take the body seriously and make it audibly, visibly and viscerally present. The thesis is based on empirical research conducted over a year using a multi-method approach to unlock everyday bodily experiences. Thirteen participants aged between twenty-three and forty-three were interviewed about their experiences of living with a long-term physical or mental health condition (asthma, bi-polar disorder, chronic pain, depression, type 1 diabetes, epilepsy, joint hypermobility syndrome, muscular dystrophy, and rheumatoid arthritis) and asked to make a video diary and/or keep a journal to show and tell about their body and their condition. In addition Polaroids and hand-drawn questionnaires were used to add dimensionality. The accounts that were made are presented in this written thesis and in the film that accompanies this text, with the aim of conveying a sociological analysis of illness that keeps the vitality of bodies alive. In doing so, the thesis offers an account of illness that is not based on anguish, isolation and powerlessness but on the embodied activity of living.

This thesis examines the issue of policy change by focussing on time and space as the conditions of possibility for change. Drawing on post-structuralist theory, it interrogates existing theories of policy change with special attention paid to how these theories construct time and space. This engagement with policy theory, time and space leads to the introduction of a new theoretical logic which is termed the logic of demarcation. The logic of demarcation is then deployed along with other concepts, rooted in the post-Marxist political theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, such as political, social and fantasmatic logics, to investigate changes in New Labour youth policy from 1998 to 2008. The thesis focuses on the related but separable policy areas of Anti-social Behaviour and Every Child Matters and aims to explain change and/or resistance to change with respect to these policies as well as their relationship to each other. The aim is to examine the how the demarcations and exclusions that constitute these policy areas change over time. This is achieved by examining a mixture of textual data and drawing on data gained from primary interviews with key actors.

Dominated by a number of humanities-based disciplines and influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis and French post-structuralism, queer theory emerged in the early 1990s as a critical project that problematised the theorisation of sexuality and its relation to lesbian and gay politics. The purpose of the thesis is to have a discursive conversation between queer theory and sociology. I want to consider the current unproductive relationship between the two. From both a queer and sociological perspective, I will examine, problematise and rework sociology’s uncritical reading of queer theory and queer theory’s general failure to acknowledge and engage with sociology, with the intent to move them towards disciplinary cross-fertilisation. I will argue that disciplinary cross-fertilisation can only happen if sociology reads queer theory carefully and critically and queer theory and sociology facilitate and promote discursive spaces that are theoretically and methodologically integrated. In considering their relationship, I will draw upon a number of diverse theoretical perspectives, for example: social-historical constructionism, symbolic interactionism, post structuralism, and feminist theory. I will also draw upon my ethnographic work on gay male male-to-female drag that took place in the United States between September 1995 and June 1997, with a brief revisit in February 1999. I will finally conclude by proposing that an ‘outsider-within perspective’ serve as a basis for future engagement between queer theory and sociology. It is my opinion that the facilitation and promotion of queer and sociological perspectives that are neither full outsiders nor full insiders to their disciplinary domain would generate the conditions for disciplinary cross-fertilisation.

This dissertation contributes to a Sociology of Happiness by examining the social context of subjective well-being. It follows in Emile Durkheim’s footsteps, whose study Le Suicide initially proposed that being connected is beneficial for human beings. The empirical evidence on the relationship between social capital and subjective well-being has indeed grown considerably over the last years. However, the academic literature has a major shortcoming, as studies usually assume the importance of social capital for subjective well-being to be exactly the same between individuals. Interestingly, though, sociological theory gives reasons to expect the association between the two concepts to vary between societal subgroups based on the idea that people have different roles and find themselves in different circumstances. Hence, this thesis responds to a need to examine a new level of complexity and fills a research gap by investigating how social capital is correlated in different ways with life satisfaction by gender, age, parental status, and marital status. OLS and ordered logit regression analyses are conducted in order to systematically examine slope heterogeneity, using data from the European Social Survey for the UK. It turns out that the social context of well-being varies considerably between the subgroups studied here. For example, while among childless women volunteering is positively and very strongly associated with subjective wellbeing, the relationship is slightly negative for mothers. Consequently, this dissertation adds significant value to the happiness literature by looking beyond population means when studying the relationship between certain explanatory variables and a well-being response variable. Moreover, the thesis contributes to a much-needed theory building in research on subjective well-being by resorting to sociological theories. Important implications for current policy issues around well-being arise from the study, and it paves the way for a new wave of research which goes beyond a unitary ‘happiness formula’.

This study offers a definition, description, analytical theorisation and critical discussion concerning the relationship between internal and external conversation. 'Internal conversation' refers to the inner dialogues that individuals have with themselves· about themselves and the social environment, while 'external conversation' refers to those parts of internal conversation that the individual shares with others. The central question of this research, concerning the relationship between internal and external conversation, derives from a common observation which remains unanswered: why do people produce different external conversations or different actions or responses when they face similar social situations? In other words, why do people react in different ways to analogous stimuli or circumstances? The individual constantly interacts in a specific way with both her external environment and herself; this process links the inner and outer cosmos of each person. This relationship is formed according to specific phases and operations, and it constitutes an 'agential filter' comprised of certain stages that enable the individual to relate her internal and external conversations. The individual uses a specific process in order to decide which part of her internal conversation she will externalise. This process is defined as 'mediation' and operates differently for each individual. It does, however, have a common aim: the main objective of mediation is to achieve a subjectivelydefined degree of 'inner balance' between her inner and external world which is satisfactory to her.

This thesis is a theoretical and empirical investigation into the self-understanding of thirty sociologists in England and their relationship with the discipline. It investigates sociologists’ aspirations and how they unfold and are compromised in sociological practice. Based on the work of Alvin Gouldner, the thesis both examines the changing shape of sociology as a body of knowledge and institution as well as sociologists’ changing relationships with their theories and practices. At the core of this study is the recognition of a close intertwining of our ontological states, epistemological outlooks and actual practices as sociologists. The three-part analysis of the empirical research reflects a Gouldnerian understanding of sociology as the inextricable link between theory and practice. In ‘Part I: The Calling of Sociology – Sociologists’ Claims and Practices’ I analyse sociologists’ processes of sociological becoming and what they consider to be the key features of the discipline – synthesis, the social and critique. These key features and my respondents’ aspirations are the point of departure against which the realities of their sociological practice are measured in ‘Part II: Sociological Practice – Realities and Tensions’. Analysing social theory as a sociological practice, I illustrate how the social as an analytical key category in sociology becomes frequently compromised. Furthermore, Part II encompasses an analysis of the RAE in its overemphasis on research and publications at the expense of teaching, and shows how this fractures sociologists’ initial disciplinary aspirations. Thereafter I demonstrate sociologists’ dilemmas in practising sociology in a synthetic way, and how they face the disciplining nature of the discipline within the current political economies of research and publishing. This is followed by a discussion of how sociologists’ claims of contributing to critique and public discourse are practised and compromised. Against the background of the analysis in Part II, the question of what is left of sociologists’ aspirations and the discipline’s aims in being critical, analysing the social and being a synthetic discipline, is raised. Finally, in ‘Part III: Living Sociology’, I revisit my respondents’ initial aspirations in the light of their practices and analyse how they live and practise sociology’s key moments – critique, synthesis and the social. The last part of the analysis draws an outline of how sociology can be practised against current constraints, living the synthetic and critical character of the discipline in the 21st century.

This research project is an investigation into the lives of bisexual men and women who are also Christian. It is a sociological exploration of their identity and the negotiations which they undertake against the backdrop of a religion that sees their sexuality as a choice and fails to fully grasp the complexity of bisexuality, and a society that does not understand their sexuality. Bisexual Christians are an under-researched group, yet researching such a group can speak to sociological understandings of identity, sexuality and religion. This research project has found that identity is a complex negotiation between the private, public but also the situational/the context in which it occurs. Identity is a project of reflexive choice but within these confines and always with regard to the context in which they are being negotiated and done. Such negotiations take place around a ‘core’ identity which helps the respondents to feel grounded throughout. Bisexuality itself is misunderstood both within the secular and religious spheres. The research calls for bisexuality to be understood in terms of ‘dimensions’ of sexuality which carry different weightings for individuals, rather than producing a universal definition. Bisexuality challenges both monosexism and heterosexism that exists within secular and religious society. In terms of their religious lives the research has found that religious individualism and the ‘Turn to Life’ (Heelas and Woodhead 2005, Woodhead 2001) is more heightened within the lives of bisexual Christians because of the points highlighted above. Without any guidance and both a society and a religion which does not understand bisexuality, the respondents are left to creatively understand and give life and meaning to both their religious faith and their sexuality.

In this thesis I investigate causal inquiry in the social sciences, drawing on examples from various disciplines and in particular from conflict studies. In a backlash against the pervasiveness of statistical methods, in the last decade certain social scientists have focused on finding the causal mechanisms behind observed correlations. To provide evidence for such mechanisms, researchers increasingly rely on ‘process tracing’, a method which attempts to give evidence for causal relations by specifying the chain of events connecting a putative cause and effect of interest. I will ask whether the causal claims process tracers make are defensible, and where they are not defensible I will ask how we can improve the method. Throughout these investigations, I show that the conclusions of process tracing (and indeed ofthe social sciences more generally) are constrained both by the causal structure ofthe social world and by social scientists’ aims and values. My central argument is this: all instances of social phenomena have causally relevant differences, which implies that any research design that requires some comparison between cases (like process tracing) is limited by how we systematize these phenomena. Moreover, such research cannot rely on stable regularities. Nevertheless, to forego causal conclusions altogether is not the right response to these limitations; by carefully outlining our epistemic assumptions we can make progress in causal inquiry. While I use philosophical theories of causation to comment on the feasibility of a social scientific method, I also do the reverse: by investigating a popular contemporary method in the social sciences, I show to what extent our philosophical theories of causation are workable in practice. Thus, this thesis is both a methodological and a philosophical work. Every chapter discusses both a fundamental philosophical position on the social sciences and a relevant case study from the social sciences.

This thesis makes a contribution to the debate about the status of the social sciences. Many philosophers have argued that the social sciences are unlike the natural sciences because they involve a kind of interpretative inquiry which has no parallel in the natural sciences. Stronger versions of this argument suggest that the social sciences are dominated or exhausted by interpretation. In many cases, this stronger claim is supported by an appeal to an analogy between interpretation in the social sciences and interpretation in the arts. The claim of this thesis is that the analogy between interpretation in the arts and the social sciences is not as strong as it is often thought to be. Works of art can be subjected to several distinct kinds of interpretation. Not all of these different kinds have analogues in the social sciences. In particular, conceptions of interpretation which allow for multiple incompatible interpretations of a single artwork have no corollary in the social sciences. By questioning the analogy between interpretation in the two fields, I seek to develop a limited version of naturalism in the philosophy of social science. That is, I argue that there are similarities and points of contact between the social sciences and the natural sciences. This position is strengthened by a further argument: that those who have opposed naturalism have tended to rely on an outdated and overly-rigid view of the what the natural sciences are like. The naturalism I defend is limited because it accepts that there are differences between the natural and social sciences, including the fact that there is a role (but not a dominating role) for interpretation in the social sciences.

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