This research has found, in keeping with other studies, that most of the young people in the group studied are concerned about environmental issues. However, it also identifies that they seldom do anything practical to activate their environmental concern. This inactivity is compounded by their low social status as children. There was little evidence of pro-environmental behaviour undertaken in the home and where there was some, disagreement occurred between parent and child as to what this behaviour entailed. A surprisingly low amount of environmental activity has been initiated by youth groups and in the formal curriculum of the school the young people attended. Many of the young people have not undertaken pro-environmental activities with their friends and many do not even known whether their friends are environmentally concerned. The young people express feelings of resignation and frustration at their own and the government's inaction in dealing with environmental issues. They feel that environmental problems in the future will get worse. The media research found that the young people do not assimilate all of the environmental information broadcast, relying instead on previous knowledge and experience of the environmental issues in their discussions. Some of the responses in the research are distinguished by gender. However, while some of the data fits Gilligan's (1993) model of a different voice, much cannot be said to fit into her schema, suggesting instead a continuum of moral thinking rather than distinctive male and female voices.

Available evidence suggests that drinking habits, as well as the patterns of use of other drugs, in Northern Ireland are markedly different from those in Britain. In order to investigate these differences amongst young people, a cross-national study was conducted of self-reported alcohol and tobacco and illicit drug use amongst 1172 secondary school pupils in Northern Ireland and Scotland. Two age groups were included: 11-12 years old and 14-16 years old. It was intended that this would enable not only the comparison of national attitudes, behaviour and beliefs relating to use and misuse of alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs, but also an examination of how such variables may change during the early teenage years. The study group was also divided by gender, socio-economic status and religious affiliation. In line with other studies of teenage alcohol use, these data showed that use of alcohol increased with age and that males were more likely than females to drink, and to drink heavily. The results of this study also supported earlier findings that Northern Irish teenagers were less likely than their Scottish counterparts to have consumed an alcoholic drink. However, those that did drink were more likely than their British peers to be heavy drinkers and to consume alcohol in contexts associated with possible dangers, i.e. drinking in peer groups in uncontrolled settings. It was shown, that in Northern Ireland only, those attending Roman Catholic schools were less likely to consume alcohol. Again, in the Northern Ireland only, those from less affluent backgrounds were more likely than their wealthier counterparts to drink and also more likely to be heavier drinkers. The use of tobacco and illicit drugs also increased with age. Although the males in this study were more likely to have used illicit drugs, in relation to smoking no gender effect was observed amongst the Scottish study group.

I examined here how parents and children (N= 16) constructed moral order from their family member's suicide and their own bereavement in their interview talk. I employed a version of membership categorisation device (MCD) analysis to analyse qualitative data in which the interviewees interpreted notions of 'the family', 'suicide' and 'bereavement' by categorising their rights and obligations in the situation. Phenomena and talk always occur in a historical and cultural context, and people use socially sensible explanatory frameworks also to deal with their own life events. The method of MCD examines the way in which people make sense of phenomena by attaching to categories assumptions about their characteristics. This produces descriptions of things that 'go together well', as well as of those which do not. When combined into larger collections (MCDs), these categorisations become such culturally and historically comprehensible social constructions as 'the Western nuclear family'. In my data, parents and children analysed their (respective) family member's suicide and their own bereavement by talking about, for example, their feelings of 'guilt' and 'abandonment'. In doing this, besides referring to their psychological 'inner emotional experiences', they created moral orders by allocating responsibilities and rights to the different parties involved. The interviewees constructed concepts of 'the family', 'suicide' and 'bereavement' which implied a contradiction between the highly idealised Western image of a 'caring and sharing' family unit and the separate, selfsufficient individual, describing their own family's efforts and inability to understand and help each other. From this tension between ideals and reality in the dominant moral Western family discourse emerged the interviewees' production of moral adequacy in their suicide bereavement talk. The study offers useful insights to sociological research concerning people's 'lived experience', as well as to bereavement study and work where their experiences are often understood exclusively as individuals' inner sensations.

This thesis is concerned with the contemporary experiences of long-termWest Indian migrants to Britain, residing in a sheltered housing scheme in Brixton. It assesses their multi-layered negotiation of belonging, connections with the West Indies, their family and the British nation state amid the issues of race and social exclusion. The elderly people in this research migrated to improve their economic and social status. However, due to combined factors, such as estrangement from home and fragmented familial structures that do not fully support them, they maintained their original working-class status. They rely on state services but tensions in service provision test their inclusion. The housing scheme aims to create a community where the elderly people can associate with each other, bond, locate and root in the scheme and in the external local community. However, factions and divisions arise affecting their belonging. In addition, gender differentiation became apparent as my male informants are less connected to their family. Overall, my elderly informants remained culturally aligned to their sense of remaining West Indian despite the multiplicity of 'disjunctures' (Appadurai 1996, Besson 2005) they encounter amid shifting and fluid boundaries. Indeed, many travel to and from the West Indies. However, as the unsuccessful returnees show they cannot permanently settle due to kinship estrangement, insufficient finance and reliance on the British state. Therefore, I suggest, they stayed in England by default, becoming 'marginal within places'. Utilising Gramsci's (1990) approach to social change I assess my informants' agency and the agency of others on their behalf as the migrants strive to maintain their identity, culture and place within complex contemporary society. Bhabha's (1994) concepts of 'hybridity' and the 'third space' contribute to my analysis, highlighting the contradictory and confusing issues associated with the migrants' culture of movement, challenging the notions of settlement, inclusion and belonging.

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This report is an account of some aspects of the utilisation behaviour of eighty-seven lower working class families, in Aberdeen City. It examines some of the ways in which and the reported reasons for which these families acted in response to certain health, illness and social welfare episodes over a period of about one and a half years. The families were first seen around the second half of 1968 and were followed through until the end of 1969. Both in time and in depth, the investigation encompasses a wide and varied range of utilization behaviour for the study families, a range which could not be adequately covered in one report. In the six chapters that follow, therefore, only selected aspects of utilisation behaviour shall be considered. These are presented in a logical order, beginning with a review of a variety of studies which illustrate different approaches used in the study of utilistion (chapter two); this is followed by a detailed description of the methodology and field techniques employed during the investigation and of some of the advantages and disadvantages of the various research strategies adopted (chapter three); some socio-demographic characteristics of utilisers and underutilisers are than presented, both to add to existing knowledge of underutilisers, and to provide the reader with a detailed description of the sample drawn (chapter four), data are then examined to shed light on the social network differences between the utilising and underutilising study groups and some suggestions are offered as to how these differences may explain variations in utilisation behaviour (chapter five), following this, some ways in which the method of delivering medical care and social welfare appears to influence the utilisation behaviour of the lower working class, given the presence of some actual or perceived need, are examined (chapter six); the final chapter presents a synthesis of the foregoing discussion, as well as some suggestions for the possible reshaping of some health and welfare services, and a consideration of some of the broader implications of the study for continuing and emerging issues in sociological theory.

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