This thesis is based on material gathered as part of a larger, multi-methodological study of public participation in Structure Planning in Cleveland County in the North East of England. The variations in local responses to planning policies were investigated through the use of the social networks approach, in which the interaction between individuals and sets of individuals was the main focus of the analysis. The case-study in this thesis covers an area in which there was little, if any, response to the Structure Plans. It is, therefore, primarily an explanation of non-participation. The former "ironstone mining settlements of the Skelton and Brotton area of East Cleveland are marked by declining employment opportunities, poor roads and facilities, and much old and obsolete housing. The image of dereliction, fragmentation and deprivation is reinforced by the planners' treatment of the area, both in the plans and in the way that public participation in the area was managed. Analysis of interaction in networks shows some inter- penetration of group membership, but no coherent, enduring involvement by participators from more than one village together, raising questions of cohesion and conflict. Within the context of fragmentation and competition between villages, the impact of major demolition and renovation schemes is assessed. The explanation of non-participation in a situation of clear inequality and disadvantage necessitates the use of power theory of a more radical type than that which has usually been applied to the inherently political process of planning. A theoretical frame work adequate to deal with the powerlessness of a population whose interests are adversely affected by those in power, is a modified version of Lukes' three-dimensional approach. Ideological factors such as deference can thus be related to the acquiescence found.

The thesis explores the position and situation of lone mothers in Japan via a multi-scalar analysis, involving the consideration of public policy discourses, street level state bureaucracy, and experiences of lone mothers. It offers a rich account of practices of lone motherhood and the Japanese state, changing state policies, and social and economic change in Japan. The study draws on the empirical work with lone mothers and frontline welfare workers in J^an, which is balanced with extensive theoretical reflections and critically reflexive analysis of pubic policy discourses. A feminist perspective informs and enriches the analysis throughout. The thesis unveils the 'minimalist state' of Japan that lingers behind the front-screen renewal efforts of the Japanese state that recently involved eye-catching calls for a 'gender-equal society' (Danjyo Kyodo Sankaku Shakai) and universalisation of welfare. On the cusp of precariously modernising Japan are the frontline welfare workers who both struggle to enact and refract progressive policies, and lone mothers who face scripted normality that is coined by a policy trend that emphasises "differences should make no difference" without matching structural redress. The thesis shows lone mothers are faced with both the traditional and detraditionalising pressures of 'doing the self - as a 'good mother' and gender norm deviator, that is, the stigmatised self, as well as a self that is a reflexive endeavour. The thesis presents an innovative geographical enquiry into problems of lone mothers in Japan. A variety of geographic accounts are signposted that could be developed to reflect the various intersecting scales and topics that unfold in the thesis.

This research explores children’s consumption practices, and through doing so contributes to the sociology of children and of consumption. Although there exists a growing body of research on children’s consumption, children and childhood are often only viewed as one of the contexts in which consumption takes place. Furthermore practices of consumption are seen as something which children are socialised into, moving from incompetent (child) to competent (adult) consumer. There are many taken for granted yet ambiguous conceptualisations of children’s relationship with consumer culture, for example the dichotomy between empowered and exploited child consumers. Consequently this research attempts to go beyond these taken for granted assumptions by engaging in face-to-face empirical work which explores the ways in which a group of children, aged between six and ten years old consume. The children took part in interviews and accompanied shopping trips, as well as completing journals in order to provide a detailed account of their practices of consumption. The ways in which children come to consume were explored and in particular the influence of family, peer groups, and the market was examined. Ultimately, this research provides one of the first empirical explorations of Daniel Cook’s (2010) theory of ‘commercial enculturation’. In doing so this thesis recognises that children are not mini-consumers in need of consumer socialisation, instead they are agentic social actors who constantly create and re-create their own social worlds which includes aspects of consumption. For the most part consumption is not something which stands outside of childhood experience and it is neither inherently exploitative nor empowering. Additionally, an exploration of moderation provides an original insight into children’s consumption practices. Children do not simply pester significant others in order to get what they want, instead they adopt and maintain a sophisticated understanding and relationship with consumption. Furthermore an examination of children’s consumption practices acknowledges consumption as a relational practice firmly located within the wider social relationships of the family.

No description available.

Women who continue to pursue their careers full-time once they become mothers face a constant juggling act of priorities. Some women succeed but many well qualified and experienced mothers have ‘fallen by the wayside’ and have had to work at a level lower than their qualifications warrant, often in part-time positions. This is an unacceptable situation, squandering skills and talents that the United Kingdom and individuals personally have invested in. Whilst there is no shortage of literature on working mothers, most of it focuses on work-life balance and combining part-time employment with caring for children. This research focuses on full-time working mothers and asks what actually enables women to continue to pursue their careers and bring up children. The results of one to one interviews with 29 women, who are both pursuing a full-time career and bringing up children, form the basis of the research. The findings conclude that there is not one specific factor which can be pinpointed that enables a woman to work full-time and bring up children, rather a combination of interacting factors mainly support from a partner, the ability to work flexibly and having sound childcare arrangements in place. The findings highlight the role of househusbands in enabling mothers to be the family breadwinners. The findings suggest that a woman has to be realistic about what she can achieve and be prepared to compromise, recognising that ‘having it all’ is not always a possibility. Being able to accept one’s limitations and being prepared to identify where priorities lie, enable women to navigate conflicting demands in different areas of their lives, which make it possible to juggle and balance both a full-time career and bringing up children.

In recent years a growing body of academic research has identified the distinct phenomenon of rural racism. Despite this, the problem is largely unknown outside of academia and therefore those charged with a General Duty to promote effective race relations in the rural are often ‘blind’ to the problem. At the heart of the issue is the social and cultural conflation of notions of the rural as a problem free traditional ‘white landscape’ and the exercise of power and prejudice over those constructed as ‘other’. Whilst the Scottish Government has recognised the significant issue of racism in Scotland, the paucity of research means that little is known about the exact ‘nature’, ‘extent’ and ‘impact’ of the problem within specific rural localities. Accordingly, this research explores those key variables within five distinct rural areas of southeast Scotland and reveals how the process of ‘othering’ works to exclude and marginalise visible ethnic minorities by actively suppressing their diversity. The research methodology involved both qualitative and quantitative aspects and included a public attitudes survey questionnaire and focus groups with white residents, analysis of racial incidents reported to the police, a quality of life survey questionnaire and interviews with visible ethnic minorities who had been victims of racism. This analysis was conducted against an analytical framework provided by Philo’s (1992) ‘othering theory’. The research findings reveal a disturbing, complex and multi-dimensional landscape of endemic racism within rural southeast Scotland that has a profound impact on victims. In doing so, it also reveals and challenges the shifting lens of ‘agency’ and ‘state’ as the advocacy of multiculturalism so embraced after Macpherson has now apparently come to be seen as ‘yesterdays news’ through new post 7/7 state racisms which appear to reconstitute certain ethnic minority communities as a ‘problem’ that now requires to be ‘controlled’.

This study attempts to explain the emergence and possible resolution of the issue of human rights violation in modern Turkey. Underpinned by a portrayal of human rights in their relation to the development of capitalism and the social philosophy of natural law, a theoretical framework of economic self-interest and an emotional 'social imagination' is constructed. Being a contemporary variation on Adam Smith's understanding of self-love and sympathy, this theory develops a ‘world economy’ based view of ‘cosmopolitan responsibility’ for the institutionalisation of human rights. Empirically, a comparative analysis of the emergence of social dislocation and related inter-ethnic tension during the decline of the Ottoman Empire serves to illuminate further analyses of the social character of modern Turkey, and the challenges inherent in resolving the human rights violations of which the country contemporarily stands accused.

Choice or Constraint ideas have dominated theoretical approaches to the study of women’s lives. Preference theory, postulated by Hakim (1996; 2000) contrasts with the ‘constraints ideology’ evident in the work of Walby (1990) and Crompton (1997; 2006). This study revisits this dichotomy with the purpose of a thematic exploration of the stories of a group of working mothers in Ireland. The lived experiences of working mothers are thematically explored using a sample of 11 mothers who work in paid employment outside the home. Significant themes illuminate the role of maternal grandmothers and husbands/partners in the mothers’ search for balance between their home and work lives A biographical narrative approach is adopted within this study within an interpretive phenomenological epistemology where, through in-depth interviews, working mothers explore their experiences of work and home domains. Data presented is evidenced from two qualitative interviews with each participant; one in Spring 2009 and interview two in Autumn 2009. The creative use of second interviews creates a conversational space in which the mothers reflected on their daily lives as they cope with ‘competing devotions’ (Blair-Loy 2003) of work and home. This study highlights that while working mothers make choices with regard to paid work outside the home they do so within constraints. Given the competing devotions (Blair-Loy 2003) of home and work domains faced by working mothers, many of the working mothers in this study did take up formal work-life balance initiatives, while others relied on informal work-life balance supports from line managers and colleagues in particular. Despite these work-life supports the working mothers in this study not only faced the responsibilities of ‘the second shift’ (Hochschild 1989) but also evidenced the presence of ‘the third shift’ (Hochschild 1997; Kremen Bolton 2000) in their daily negotiations between choice or constraint across work and home domains.

This thesis is an exploratory study which examines, comparatively, the largely neglected area of female sports fandom. Using the UK East Midlands city of Leicester as a case study site for the research, 85 semi-structured interviews were conducted with three generations of female fans of football (Leicester City) and rugby union (Leicester Tigers). The thesis emerges, broadly speaking, out of the recent feminist tradition of research on sport and leisure, but uses Glaser and Strauss’s (2008) ‘grounded theory’ approach to data collection and analysis to seek to ‘add’ a sociological account of women’s experiences as sports fans to the existing research on women and leisure. The main aim was to consider the extent to which, and how, sports fandom figures in the leisure lives of women in different sporting contexts today and in the recent past. Continuity, as well as change, in women’s sporting lives was a central theme. Whilst some women overcame barriers to their involvement in sport as players and spectators, many obstacles continue to restrict women’s leisure involvement as active fans. The thesis examines the distinctiveness of women’s experience of spectator sport as a changing commercial and cultural product in England from the post-war period, stressing both similarities, but also important differences between men’s and women’s historical experiences of these sports. The differential extent to which sports fandom fosters a positive ‘sense of place’ for females was explored, as was the mutual hostility often expressed between female football and rugby fans which is largely attributed to the combined impact of relations of place, gender and social class. Little existing research has explored this complex terrain. Finally, important differences between women in terms of the wider meanings they attribute to their involvement in sport were revealed which other approaches to the study of fandom largely fail to acknowledge.

This study traces the implementation of The English Football Association’s Ethics and Sports Equity Strategy (E&SES), which aims to tackle inequalities - including racism – in English football, but particularly in the often overlooked local, grass-roots form of the game. Case studies of five County Football Associations were undertaken to assess the implementation of the E&SES, involving 57 semi-structured interviews with local football stakeholders and participant observation at County FA and National FA offices. Following critical realist principles, the structural conditions of local football were outlined using historical documentary evidence, tracing the legacy of amateurist ideas of fairness and apoliticism, and identifying the exclusivity of ‘club cultures’ at County FAs. The influence of more recent policy developments that have politicised and professionalised the local game were then assessed. Research found resistance to change among long-standing County FA Governance personnel, attributed to components of amateurism including ‘paternalism’, ‘protectionism’ and ‘fairness’. Here, many saw the E&SES as being unfair itself and causing fresh problems, as it supported preferential treatment of some members over others. Such an intervention was therefore seen as unnecessary and unwarranted, so long-standing amateurist conditions were legitimised and reproduced by key actors. The ‘club cultures’ of County FAs were also informed by ideas of race, often derived from Victorian British colonialism; this, despite widespread denials from key personnel of any racism in the game. The notion of ‘colour-blind’ racism was used to explain this often contradictory process. This colour-blind sentiment made any use of ideas of race as a form of resistance to County FA policy or procedure necessarily problematic. The structural conditions of local English football harbour complex processes of racialised exclusion that require further interrogation. Utilising ‘whiteness’ to account for the racism here has merit, but risks missing some of the wider mechanisms behind exclusion; something a critical realist framework may be better placed to identify.