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This extended case study investigates locally-founded voluntary self-help groups for people with chronic disease and how they change over time. It explores a self-help group and its partnerships with five local organisations. The aims are both to reach substantive findings and to elaborate Bourdieusian theory. The key concepts are habitus (disposition) and capital (resources). The methods are: participant observation (110 hours) and depth interviews (23). In the self-help group, a funding crisis arose after its Lottery grant was exhausted in 2006. This led to the election of honorary officers who had skills in gaining external funding. These members gained short-term primary care trust (PCT) funding to expand and professionalise the organisation but when this finished, they cut the range of therapies on offer against the wishes of many members. This led to challenges to their leadership from the family that founded the group and the volunteers. The evidence suggests that oligarchic tendencies within such groups may be resisted both formally through the democratic structure and informally through volunteering activities. Among cross-sector partners, the PCT had most influence over the direction of development of the self-help group because it provided grant funding. Even so, the group was not saturated by PCT targets. It retained a unique identity derived from its founding mission. The evidence shows that, because such groups are institutionally independent, it is possible for them to retain substantial control over their own development. These substantive findings may be useful to researchers and to small voluntary organisations. In addition, a theoretical model of the power relations of development in small self-help groups has been created, with dimensions that range from face-to-face contact between individuals through to the influence of state power on organisational assumptions. This model is in the early stages of elaboration and can be tested in further research.

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This thesis, Mothers, Work and Childcare: Choices, Beliefs and Dilemmas asks two questions: What factors are women in England likely to need to take into consideration when making employment decisions and childcare choices when their babies are under twelve months of age? What importance, if any, do mothers place on having carers in day care settings who `love' their children? The thesis begins by introducing the context and rationale for the study, including 21St century policies in England to encourage mothers to return to the workforce (HMT, 2004). A critical review of the literature explores three key themes: An historical overview of women in the workforce in the UK; Attachment Theory, and Policy perspectives in England since 1989. The thesis then discusses and justifies its life historical exploration of six mothers' decision-making about work and childcare. A four-staged process of meaning- making is used to analyse and interpret the women's life stories which are presented as `Interpreted Narratives'. Seven key themes emerged from the analysis: Childhood, Decision-making about returning to work, Influences and Dilemmas, Expressions of Emotion, and Indicators for Change, Identity and `Love Drawing on the data and key literature in the field three of these themes are discussed in detail: Decision-making about returning to work, Expressions of Emotion, and `Love'. The thesis contributes to the field firstly by highlighting the experiences of six mothers when they made decisions about child care early in their children's lives. This rich data complements the extant literature which reports broader, quantitative and generalisable studies. Secondly, it indentifies some of the complex decisions which women have to make when considering returning to work when their babies are young. Thirdly, the thesis explored the saliency of `love' in the context of mothers' choices, beliefs and dilemmas around choosing child care and introduced the notion of `professional love'. Finally, the study has developed a fourstage process of meaning-making which could be applied in life historical research focusing on other topics. The thesis argues that mothers of young children view the concept of `love' as a crucial factor in deciding whether or not to return to paid work. An original facet of the thesis is its introduction of the notion of `professional love' (the love of a practitioner for a child in his/her care) which, it is argued, needs further conceptualisation and exploration in early childhood education and care contexts. The thesis concludes that mothers' stories of their personal experiences are important and their decision- making is complex, involving compromises between `ideal' childcare arrangements and `real-life' choices of care.

This study attempts to identify the causal mechanisms linking social inequality and physical (im)mobilities, by way of a case study analysis. Adopting a methodological approach of critical realism, the focus of this study lies not with aggregate analyses of transport behaviour, but with qualitative judgements based on mixed-methods regarding the links between mobility, place, and identity, as they are played out in a deprived (though partially gentrified) neighbourhood. Following an examination of the Labour government's Social Exclusion Unit's work on transport inequalities (Making the Connections, 2003), I will attempt to link current trends in class analysis to the problematic of mobility and inequality, giving particular attention to the Bourdieusian inspired concepts of 'network capital' (Urry, 2007) and 'elective belonging' (Savage et al, 2005). In attempting to relate sociological theory to the level of individual experience, this work tends towards the ideographic, as against the macro analyses of authors such as Bauman, Beck, Castells, and Giddens. To locate this case study site within the broader array of social processes, a careful description of its contextual attributes will be undertaken, focusing especially on the impact of the mobility of capital (and of regional 'uneven development', Massey, 1995), and the restructuring of urban space around modernist planning ideals (Jacobs, 1961). The substantive empirical data presented in two chapters deals with everyday and residential mobilities, respectively. In the first of these chapters I engage with Urry's concept of network capital and, by relating its constituent components to the forms of capital conceived of by Bourdieu, question the independence of this form from other axes of stratification and especially from social class. In the second analysis chapter I thematically explore identity, belonging and residential mobility by reference to perceptions of the locality, discourses around regeneration, residential mobility narratives and residential mobility more specifically in relation to the transition to adulthood. This chapters ends with the assertion of the necessity of a conceptual antonym to Savage et al's 'elective belonging' that recognises the difficulty in achieving such a state for actors occupying more marginal class positions. To conclude the thesis, I will revisit the aims of the thesis and demonstrate how a search for causal mechanisms draws attention to the overwhelmingly structural reasons for the experience of unequal mobilities in a disadvantaged UK inner-city neighbourhood.

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This thesis examines the coping mechanisms employed by the wives and daughters of male Sikh problem drinkers using both qualitative and quantitative data gathered through structured and semi-structure interviews. Interviews were carried out in either English or Punjabi with a main sample of 24 wives in addition to a sub-sample of 10 problem drinkers and 7 daughters. From analysis of the qualitative data several themes emerged including 'the role of the wife', 'marriage' and 'the changing role of Sikh women'. Analysis was done in two stages and enabled the development and subsequent modification of a model showing the different stages of the wives' coping strategies. Quantitative results largely supported these models. Daughters exhibited similar coping strategies to their mothers while the problem drinkers tended to deny that their wives' behaviour (which they reported as becoming more independent and assertive) had changed. The implications of this work for practice in clinical settings are discussed given that findings challenge the stereotypical view of 'passive' Sikh wives.