This thesis is an enquiry into the emergence of forms of privileged migrant activism. It looks at the experience of middle- and upper-class Mexican migrants living in Barcelona, and explores the way they narrate the process through which they come to be involved in political activism directed at Mexico. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out with over twelve migrant political and cultural collectives in Barcelona, and opens an anthropological window onto understanding the intersections of privileged migration and political ways of being. It looks at the experience of migrants involved in campaigning against the war on drugs, electoral corruption, and political repression in Mexico. The account draws upon the extended interview narratives of individual migrants, and employs the concepts of affect emotion and cosmopolitanism as interpretive tools through which to understand their experiences. It argues that our analyses must look at the individual aspects of experience which influence migrant subjectivities. This includes looking at ambiguous implications of migrating, the emotionally complex ways in which migrants relate to home from abroad, and the impact that multiple inhabitations of cosmopolitanism can have for the way political subjectivities are articulated. The account shows how affect, emotion, and cosmopolitanism interact within migrant narratives in diverse ways. It demonstrates their importance in transforming the way migrants think about home and political action, in revealing migrants’ own implications of structures of inequality at home, and in solidifying the political commitment of some activists. It also highlights their importance in shaping the form of protests which were enacted by migrants, and in influencing the likelihood of sustained political collaboration being practiced between individuals.

In this dissertation I explore the multiple social lives of ‘carbon’ as key object of contemporary forms of global environmental governance. Through an ethnography of a forest carbon project, I detail the many forms that ‘carbon’ takes as it is deployed in a small locality in the forests of Madagascar. TAMS was a forest carbon project that ran for two decades in eastern Madagascar. Its aim was to reforest degraded fallows from slash-and-burn agriculture, or tavy, and to provide farmers with alternative livelihoods through the benefits obtained from the sale of carbon credits. Carried out by major conservation organisations, international institutions and the Malagasy government, TAMS was once hailed as a pilot carbon project for the whole of Africa. Six years after reforestation began, however, it came to a halt due to a series of complications and it was abandoned. My ethnography focuses on a series of glimpses into ‘carbon’ in its many guises as part of TAMS. This leads me to an analysis of the ways in which carbon credits are produced by, and at the same time re-articulate, ideas of value and waste in relation to forests and tavy; the peculiar materiality of ‘carbon’ as natural resource and form of labour; the experiences of ‘carbon’ as an instance of state oppression for farmers; and the complexity that arises from project actors’ efforts to turn grounded trees into mobile carbon credits. All along, we see how, far from the bounded CO2 molecule, the ‘carbon’ of forest carbon projects is not a fixed or stable object, but rather appears and disappears in multiple ways through diverse material and discursive practices. My aim is to show how specific forms of ‘carbon’—in their articulation of people’s relationships to each other and to their environments—open or foreclose particular socio-natural futures.

This thesis contests the scope of the Women in Development (WID) perspective in understanding women's position in rural Bangladesh. It critically investigates how women perceive work and examines the effects of paid work on their lives. It discusses local women's engagement with globalization, modernization and neo-liberal capitalism, manifested in the proliferation of garment factories, modern farming, labour migration and microcredit interventions. The central question is whether, being influenced by such external forces, participation in paid work brings benefits to all women. The thesis examines how local women's understanding of work and the good life is not uniform but varies according to age, and social status (i.e. class and caste). It also highlights that by failing to recognize women's multiple interpretations of these issues, WID policies, such as the National Women’s Policy of Bangladesh (2011), may adversely affect the lives of some poor as well as affluent women. It is common for many poor, and some affluent women in riverine char land villages to participate in paid work along with doing household chores. They do not think of such work as an expression of gender equality, but as 'cooperation' necessary for the welfare, even the basic survival of their households. This thesis argues that by encouraging poor women to take part in income earning work, the National Women’s Policy of Bangladesh (2011), guided by the WID perspective, often increases women's daily burden albeit they benefit some women. Also, earning an income does not always improve women’s status within their households and the wider community. Microcredit organizations are part of women’s engagement in income generating activities. Though they encourage poor women to become entrepreneurs, not all women possess the necessary skills to be successful. They overlook that some poor women are involved in small enterprises without credit interventions, and participate in enterprising work as part of their household responsibilities. By focusing on the profit making demands of microcredit agencies, the thesis argues for the attention to the varied effects that access to microcredit and participation in market oriented enterprising work have on women. In a similar vein, it highlights how women's experiences of labour migration, both local and overseas, are also varied and have ambiguous impacts on women’s lives. While for some women it is a source of social mobility, increased independence and improved lifestyle, for others it causes conflict, exploitation and loss of honour. The thesis questions the potential of the economic growth model of development, modeled after the Western capitalism and identifies accommodation of the variation of women’s understanding of work and the good life as one of the main challenges for further women’s development. It stresses the need to acknowledge women’s multiple realities and their own interpretations of being in the world to ensure improvements in their lives.

This thesis is concerned with the nature of understanding in multi-racial social work practice (MRP), and in particular with the philosophy of anti-racist social work. After a review of the past and present literature on MRP which charts the development of anti-racism and black perspectives in social work, it is concluded that new approaches are needed to take account of the importance of racism conceived as a linguistic resource. A consideration of the wider literature on race and racism leads on to an exploration of hermeneutic philosophy as a general guide to the analysis of problems of communication and understanding in social work. The work of Gadamer and Derrida is reviewed in some detail, in the context of wider developments in the philosophy of language and in literary criticism and textual analysis. It is argued that analysis of social work texts can offer new insights into the problems of formulating guidelines for anti-racist practice. Two exemplary analyses are presented: the first of Dominelli 's text Anti-Racist Social Work and the second of Ahmad's Black Perspectives in Social Work. Finally, it 1S suggested that this analysis demonstrates the utility, and complementarity, of Gadamerian and Derridean perspectives in this effort - and that we must recognise that the positions we adopt on the best way forward are necessarily provisional, just as the commonly understood meanings of key terms in the debate about race and social work remain provisional.

The conflict in Darfur, largely regarded as the ‘worst humanitarian crisis’ of the 21st century, has been presented as a war between two exclusive ethnic/national identity groups. This study challenges such reductionist thinking, with the theory that ethnic identities in Darfur are not strictly divided by a primordial African/Arab dichotomy. Conversely, this project argues that such identities are a result of perceptual differences that transcend any biological essentialist mode of argument. Further, the cementing of these perceived identities is strengthened by various state policies espoused by several Sudanese governments’ vision of ‘Arabisation’ and ‘Islamisation’. These policies serve as tools for the marginalisation of non-Arabised groups in Darfur and, in turn, have served to exclude groups challenging perceived anomalies and injustices via means of force and armed struggle. In essence, this study problematises the issue of identity as it relates to marginalisation and development in Darfur. Given that the main theme of this study is identity, the principle methodology adopted is qualitative in nature, consisting of in-depth semi-structured interviews with, multi-ethnic informants. Darfurian identities, it is argued, are largely political in nature rather than strictly cultural or racial. Overall, this study argues that state-endorsed policies have led to discriminatory strategies which aid marginalisation and the under-development of certain groups in the region. This creates a dysfunctional patron-client state system which only seeks to support groups perceived to be in-line with the accepted definition of Darfurian national identity, as well as creating a widening gap between the co-existing groups in terms of political, socio-economic and human development. Such a gap only serves to strengthen the perceived differences amongst and between the ethnic groups under consideration and further reinforces the perceived ‘ethnic boundaries’ Barth (1969) wrote about.

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the implications of nation-building policies in Kazakhstan for the future of Kazakh identity. To consider the implications of largely inclusive policies, this dissertation investigates how young Kazakh adults, born and raised in different cultural and geographical contexts yet with a shared experience of studying and working in the capital city, perceive ethnic, civic, and cultural categories of national identity. A mixed methods approach is used, incorporating the comparative analysis of quantitative and qualitative data. A sample of 120 males and females aged 22 to 30, graduated from a higher education institution, and currently working in Astana, Kazakhstan, completed a questionnaire assessing subjective perceptions of their national identity. Quantitative data are complemented by qualitative data from 30 participants, providing depth and validity to the questionnaire answers. The young adults’ responses reveal that Kazakhs are becoming less segregated culturally, encouraged by the government’s inclusive form of nation-building, the relocation of the capital city and the economic growth. It is argued that the young adults are Kazakhs not only in blood and colour, but also in taste and perception. The prevalence of civic virtues despite the presence of robust ethnic identification was recognized and the urge to organise social life in terms of sharp nationalist boundaries proved thin. The implications of these findings for nation-building policies are discussed. Efforts should be directed towards introducing the historical inclusivity of Kazakh identity and highlighting the sufficiency of cultural integration of non-titular ethnic groups to become members of Kazakh nation.

Birmingham and Sheffield had strategic significance — demographically, politically and technologically — in English society during this period. Although their local industries had many similarities, particularly before 1850, structures of social differentiation and integration differed greatly between the two cities. These structures are examined in terms of two considerations: the processes of conflict and accommodation between a weakening commercialised agrarian order focused upon the county and the parish and a strengthening urban industrial order centred upon the large manufacturing city; and the shift of social and political initiative away from lower levels of integration (such as the neighbourhood and the parish) towards higher levels of integration, especially national networks of status and influence focused upon the metropolis. Birmingham had a very complex division of labour in which commercial and professional occupations were better represented than in Sheffield, the latter city supporting a narrower range of occupations and having a highly specialised position within the national division of labour. The balance of power between town and countryside was skewed more heavily towards the latter in the case of Sheffield for much of the period. Birmingham occupied a much more central position in the national network of communications. Strong neighbourhood-based movements (political, industrial, religious) in Sheffield were swamped by the development of heavy steel industry oriented to regional and national networks. Municipal solidarity remained very weak and class divisions very pronounced. Sheffield's largest manufacturers resisted arbitration, neglected civic involvements and sought to use education as a cheap but efficient way of subordinating their workforce. In education, industry and local government at Birmingham norms and practices oriented to the old agrarian and parochial order and the new constraints of industrial capitalism were interwoven, tending to diffuse conflict. Birmingham's bourgeoisie achieved greater solidarity and dominance within the city and great influence regionally and nationally.

This thesis analyses discourses of national identity and the nation, using the case study of New Zealand. The main empirical data are 'ordinary talk', from 41 New Zealanders interviewed in London in late 1994 and early 1995. The thesis investigates the work which is done in participants' talk by constructions of national identity and the nation. The first major focus is how national identity is used in the construction of self-identity. The analysis includes different ways of understanding the 'self', the interpretative resources available for the construction of an identity as a New Zealander, including alternative categories and positive and negative stereotypes, and the way that speakers position themselves in relation to New Zealand and other New Zealanders. A second focus is how constructions of nation and the national do ideological work around contentious issues, that is, work which has implications for relationships of power and authority in a broad socio-economic context and which tends to silence and delegitimise certain voices and identities, especially by establishing and reinforcing certain practices and relationships as 'normal' and therefore invisible and/or uncontentious. Finally the thesis considers how such constructions accommodate changes which are frequently associated with globalization and a decline in the relevance of the nation state. These changes include the reduced state provision of services, resulting from the reduction or abandonment of 'welfare state' policies; challenges from new migrants and from an indigenous minority to the status of the dominant population group; and the opening of national borders to both investment and migration. The analysis shows the continuing salience and ideological relevance of national identity

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