The thesis adopts a post-colonial approach to examine the relationship between historical and contemporary visual representations of Jamaica and identifies the repeated visual associations made with blackness and servitude, and whiteness with luxury from the colonial period in Jamaica and the imperial context in Britain. The thesis addresses a range of tourist advertising images of Jamaica which are analysed in terms of their representations of race, gender, class and sexuality. The theoretical context of the thesis combines post-colonial theory with black feminist theory to make explicit the significance and relevance of conducting critical analysis of visual representations of Jamaica from a social, economic and politically marginal standpoint. Homi Bhabha's concept of ambivalence in colonial discourse, Foucault's approach to discourse analysis and Roland Barthes' semiotics were combined to establish the methodological framework of the thesis and to identify, historicise and deconstruct the repetition of familiar colonial relations constructed as privilege and servitude. The economic and social context, which led to the shift towards tourism in post-emancipation Jamaica, is discussed through the analysis of a selection of visual texts. The discussion notes the particular references to the essentialised categories which are retained in the accounts of Jamaica by nineteenth-century travellers and early twentiethcentury tourist promotion of the island. This informs the empirical analysis in the final chapters by centrally addressing the construction of racialised and gendered categories in the shift away from the black female body to the white female body to carry the discourse of sexualised desire. The empirical analysis focuses on the celebratory display of whiteness and heterosexuality in the form of the key signifiers of romance, white weddings and marriage in the Sandals visual texts and examines the use of the white feminised body as the legitimate recipient of luxury and pleasure. In conclusion, the thesis argues that post-coloniality is more complex and fluid than identifying post-colonial identities by the geographical location of former colonies. The thesis confirms then significance of the analysis conducted from a marginal position which identifies the central use of the white female body to promote themes of pampering and service, and conveys the central role that the white female plays in maintaining the assumed 'natural' association with whiteness and luxury as 'lady of the manor'.

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This research is a cross-national comparison of longitudinal studies, designed to compare the quality of life, to identify the physical, mental, social, environmental factors contributing to quality of life, and predict the relationship between quality of life and mortality in old age. Although previous research has suggested that health, functional ability, psychological well-being, social relationships, socioeconomic status, and environmental conditions can affect quality of life among older people, little research has compared quality of life in old age across Asia-Western countries. The overall aim of this study was to compare the factors affecting quality of life among older people in the UK and Taiwan. Data were derived from the 1989 and 1993 waves of two nationally-representative samples of older people: the Nottingham Longitudinal Study of Activity and Ageing (NLSAA) in the UK, and the Survey of Health and Living Status of the Elderly in Taiwan. Data from the two studies were harmonised to ensure their comparability for the statistical analyses, and life satisfaction was used as a measure of quality of life. Secondary analysis was performed on the harmonised data sets containing data from 690 (1989) and 410 (1993) NLSAA participants and 1,438 (1989) and 1,003 (1993) SHLSET participants. Factors related to physical (e.g., self-rated health, perceived health relative to peers, specific diseases) and mental health (e.g., loneliness, depression), social factors (e.g., attending religious groups, having a TV or radio, having friends), demographic characteristics (e.g., age, gender, marital status, income), and life satisfaction (as a measure of quality of life) were examined using MannWhitney tests, chi-square tests, stepwise multiple regression, and logistic regression. The association between quality of life and mortality was assessed using Cox proportional hazards regression models. Cluster analysis was used to examine the patterns among older people in terms of life satisfaction, and the relationship of these clusters with mortality was assessed. The results of this research suggested that the sample of older people from the UK had higher life satisfaction scores than their peers in Taiwan; however, this difference did not remain in the multivariate analyses. The analyses also identified that self-rated health, mental health (loneliness and depression), income satisfaction, and using a walking aid were common predictors affecting quality of life in the two countries. The results from Chapter 5 showed that the study location variable had an interactional effect with particular variables on life satisfaction between the two countries, i.e., people in the UK who were married, had excellent self-rated health, smoked, had heart, stomach, dizziness, high blood pressure or walking problems, used a walking aid, and those with high level of depression. People in these groups in the UK tended to report a high level of life satisfaction compared with their counterparts in Taiwan. Older people in Taiwan without friends had lower life satisfaction than their counterparts who had no friends in the UK. Survival analyses showed that life satisfaction is associated with mortality in the two countries, especially older people who reported positive feelings in life satisfaction tended to have a decreased risk of mortality. Life satisfaction had a less persistent effect on mortality for the sample of older people in Taiwan, suggesting that other factors explain the relationship with mortality in older people in Taiwan, or that they are more resilient. However, in the UK people who had higher life satisfaction scores had improved survival, independent of demographic, physical and mental health, and social engagement. There was no relationship between change in life satisfaction (1989-1993) and mortality. Finally, patterns of life satisfaction were related to mortality - older people with patterns of higher life satisfaction within cluster were more likely to live longer. Statistically significant differences were found between most the of factors of life satisfaction in the two countries. For instance, older people in Taiwan tended to live with someone, suggesting that the extended families are more in Taiwan than the UK. While some of the differences found, such as depression and loneliness, may be due to cultural variations, further research is required to identify further predictors of life satisfaction. Finally, the term 'life satisfaction' is one component of quality of life, and life satisfaction was used as a measure of quality of life in the research. This comparative research described and explained the differences and similarities in quality of life among older people living in two different cultures and societies. To conclude, a common data set is a unique opportunity to identify the factors affecting quality of life and to compare quality of life between the UK and Taiwan for increasing our understanding of older people.

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This study is concerned with care in the context of later life marriages. Taking a qualitative approach, it explores how forty spouses experienced and made sense of care within their marriages. From the data that these spouses provide in joint interviews, it identifies how they supported and cared for each other and how they sought to maintain their relationships and life styles in the face of disability. It also reflects on how within their care experiences these men and women strove'to preserve not only their spousal roles and identities but also their autonomy as couples. Thus it emphasises that they experienced and made sense of care both as individuals and as couples and how this duality resulted in care practices and constructs that supported and challenged gendered care expectations. This study also looks at the couples' support networks, in particular what care the spouses were prepared to accept from whom and teases out their reasons for their choices. This reveals that they understood care in terms oftheir relationships; it was about being a spouse, a relative, a friend and a neighbour. Hence, their acceptance and provision of care were underpilUJ.ed by their values and moral principles, and in particular reciprocity and fairness, that structured their personal and formal relationships. Within this context the use of services offered them a morally acceptable means ofmeeting their care needs and protecting their informal relationships. This study also gathered interview data from fifteen home service providers to examine how they experienced supporting older couples and how they understood the use ofthis service by such service users. From a comparison ofthese data with how the spouses perceived serviceuse, significant implications for social policy and care practice emerge.

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There has been much academic work on autonomy and on identity in both political theory and feminist theory. Although this work provides valuable insights, there is arguably less theory that considers both. In part, this is the result of the predominance of a particular liberal position on autonomy depicting an isolated individual. Both communitarians and feminists seek to correct this and argue for a different view of autonomy that takes into account the situated self, but there is little discussion of the identity of this self. Also, feminist theory on identity has mostly been concerned with exposing the extent to which identity is tainted by power and by patriarchy. Inevitably there is little discussion of autonomy. These theorists seek to show the lengths to which autonomy, as a means of liberation, is an illusion. However, this thesis seeks to pursue a different approach. It combines some of the issues raised by feminist theory and contemporary political theory around questions of identity and autonomy with the application of the history of political thought to these questions. The concept of autonomy and identity constructed here hopes to go some way to avoiding the imposition of rigid identities and instead suggests that identity is better understood as changing, multiple, but also something we need to take control of ourselves. In order to support this version of identity there needs to be a concept of autonomy which denotes self-direction to control our identity. As well as control this thesis puts forward a notion of autonomy as a process which means that we have degrees of autonomy, it uses the notion of recognition, it considers the impact of a 'masculine' approach to autonomy and it emphasises autonomy as dynamic.

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A growing body of literature on health and social inequalities has identified Pakistanis as having a particularly heavy and premature burden of long-term ill-health compared with people from other ethnic backgrounds, and long-term sick Pakistanis are also a sub-population in the UK with disproportionately high rates of unemployment and inactivity. In this thesis, I argue that there is a need to turn fresh attention to the practical and material consequences of ill-health, and to the impact of ill-health on livelihoods. I make a case for shifting the focus of medical sociology and medical anthropology away from the subjective, psychological processes of coming to terms with, coping with and managing a long-term health condition, and onto the realm of overt behaviour and the everyday consequences of living with ill-health in specific historical contexts. I also make a case for examining how the experience and consequences of long-term ill-health are embedded in the local worlds of family, household and community, and how these are inflected by power relations. The thesis broadly documents the process of impoverishment engendered by ill-health, stressing how the economic impact of long-term ill-health is embedded in particular production and welfare regimes and differentiated by generation, class, education and gender among Pakistanis. Far from being a uniformly deprived and disadvantaged group located at the bottom of British society, I examine the significance of class relations and social mobility among Pakistanis, and show how long-term ill-health contributes to increasing economic polarisation within the community. Within certain material and cultural constraints, individuals and households also resisted the potentially ruinous consequences of long-term ill-health and impoverishment, and strived to maintain social status and membership in a moral community by engaging in strategic action via their interconnected means of production, consumption and reproduction, within a specific local regime of value. The thesis employs a mixed-methods approach combining statistical analysis of the Labour Force Survey with ethnographic material from East London. It is located analytically in Bourdieu's `theory of practice' (Bourdieu 1977), which offers a way to formulate the interface between structure and agency, and material and cultural factors as interweaving influences on the predicaments of long-term sick Pakistanis.

No description available.