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This thesis examines the impact of symbolic and instrumental stigma in touch interactions between people living with HIV and their supporters. The important role which the body plays in the perception of these physical contacts is highlighted through a material-discourse orientation and a reconceptualization of support as touch. Two levels of analysis are adopted throughout: the macro level of representations and negative images impacting on social support; and the micro level of body experience and touch influencing psychological well-being. Social representations theory provides an important framework for this topic, showing how constructions of health, illness, HIV, and associated imagery create a sense of Otherness around the person with HIV which is reflected in the body, and in a sense of tactile hunger. This focus on discourse and representations is counter-balanced by an experiential perspective on the body, gained through using interview data and a repertory grid technique. Results, in a longitudinal design, showed that the 18 HIV-positive participants perceived their bodies more negatively than the 15 HIV-negative supporters. This had a detrimental influence on psychological well-being and quality of life, as measured by the GHQ-28. Participants in the HIV-positive group also expressed a significantly greater desire for more physical contact that those in the HIV-negative group. The longitudinal data show that negative body image moderated somewhat over the time period, but that the tactile hunger expressed by the HIV-positive group remained a significant issue. These findings are discussed in terms of physical and representational aspects of the body, symbolic and instrumental stigma, and touch in support interactions. The importance of continuing support for people living with HIV, the impact of new treatments to contain the action of the virus within the body, and the role of these in moderating tactile hunger are further stressed.

The focus of this thesis is to examine the structure of inequality in Malaysian society. It begins with a class based approach by measuring the class structure for peninsular Malaysia between 1970 and 1990. This time frame is considered crucial in the history of Malaysia's economic progress. It is during this period that Malaysia's New Economic Policy (NEP) was implemented. The NEP aimed to promote rapid economic growth while attempting to correct ethnic imbalance between the Malays and the Chinese in particular, by propagating a policy of positive discrimination in favour of the Malays. This makes the issue of class inequality more complicated and calls forth an examination of the interplay between class and ethnicity in the structuring of inequality. Gender inequality, another issue central in the debate on class and stratification is also brought in. Inequality in this case is defined in terms of access to economic resources which in turn determine the income and social status of individuals. The class structure derived, therefore, represents the distribution of individuals based on differential access to available economic resources. Considering that the majority of Malaysians are wage earners, the class structure is measured using occupational position as a starting point. Employment status, education, job characteristics and definitions are then taken into account. Other supporting evidence is included wherever necessary. Such an approach is arguably not flawless. Nevertheless, given the limitations confronting this study, it has to consider a framework which derives a measure of inequality which incorporates some of the common criteria identified in economic as well as sociological theories in the analysis of social stratification. This framework draws upon the vast theoretical and empirical literature developed in Malaysia and in the West, especially in Britain and the United States. It is premised to some extent on the Marxist and Weberian conception of social classes and guided by the empirical methods used by Goldthorpe for Britain and Wright for the United States.

The thesis looks at a town called Rotherham in South Yorkshire. The focus is upon the extent of changes in working class culture that have issued from the loss of industry and the collapse of the local economy. Alongside this picture of a community in change the main body of the thesis is concerned to develop an account of working class people as necessarily suffering because of their changed position in the national economy. The thesis locates the most personally felt tragedies in the Social sphere and is an exercise in socio-analysis: that is, an attempt to expiate the pain of the people involved in these experiences through their being offered the possibility of recognising their personal plight as a social destiny. The thesis is a product of three years of work that has generated around 400,000 words worth of transcribed material that records the thoughts of the people of the town. The vast bulk of the interviews is with people who are socially vulnerable and marginal but I have also tried to involve the local police and health services. The thesis, therefore, contributes to our knowledge of the deeper effects of contemporary economic and social organisation. The task of analysis utilised the works of diverse social thinkers, from Bourdieu to Habermas but the analysis of the personal has rested heavily on the Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and the philosophical meditations of Wittgenstein and others, including, Charles Taylor and Stephen Mulhall. The central thesis, that working class culture has become asocial, atomised, alienated, rests upon the theoretical work carried out in making sense of what is actually being said by the people who I interviewed. Indeed, the conclusion points toward a theory of alienation and dispossession that has robbed working class people of any meaningful human life: one in which they experience a sense of value and esteem.

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This dissertation explores the self-help initiatives of the poor in Egypt and articulates their perceptions of well-being. It argues that an increased role of the poor in the alleviation of their own poverty can render poverty reduction strategies more sustainable. Using Egypt as a case study, the dissertation compares the poor’s perceptions of well-being in two Egyptian sites (a rural village and an urban slum); and compares different patterns of self-help initiatives in Egypt: (i) an Islamic model of self-help in a rural village in the Delta; (ii) an anti-Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) women’s self help group and a semi syndicate for quarry workers in rural villages in Upper Egypt; and (iii) different cases of self-help in Manshiet Nasser, a slum area in Cairo. The case studies are drawn on to understand the role of religion and civil society in promoting these initiatives. At the conceptual level, the research adopts the capability approach and combines it with the literatures on collective action, institutions and social capital. It emphasizes the importance of collectivities for the expansion of human capabilities and develops a new integrated analytical framework that captures the interactive relationship between individual capabilities and social structures. Through the example of self-help, the research demonstrates how the poor- by pooling their resources together – are usually able to gain new capabilities that each individual alone would neither have nor be able to achieve, i.e. new ‘collective capabilities’. The research depends on qualitative research methods, such as an open-ended well-being questionnaire, semi-structured interviews and participant observation to articulate the poor’s voices and analyse their self-help initiatives. The research challenges the conventional top-down model of development by encouraging governments, donors and NGOs to build upon these existing initiatives of the poor thus promoting a new bottom-up model whereby the ideas of the poor come <i>first</i> and assistance is provided accordingly.

This study examines the relationship between migrant civil society organisations (CSOs) in Beijing and Shanghai and the Chinese state. The research explores how stakeholders interact, and subsequent impact on state-society relations. With the Chinese state gradually withdrawing its support and finances across a number of social sectors, CSOs are appearing to be ever more important in bridging the shortfall. The emergence of migrant CSOs and the general diversification of Chinese society can be understood within China’s economic reforms, leading to unprecedented levels of internal migration. In the case of migrant CSOs, they have surfaced to tackle the diverse challenges migrant workers face, given the failure of central and local states to address their welfare. The state recognises its own shortcomings in the provision of welfare, and has therefore accepted the involvement of CSOs, but with trepidation due to their potential threat to social and political instability. The Beijing and Shanghai case-studies reveal the critical importance of looking at the local level when analysing state-society relationship. Fieldwork consisting of in-depth interviews with migrant CSOs’ project sites, are the foundations for the study. Fieldwork data reveal that the Chinese state is not a single entity, but manifests in various forms of new and old spaces including local and international CSOs, and the government’s mass organisations. Through the study of migrant CSOs, we see state actively co-opting these CSOs to meet its own agenda. However, we also see the CSOs adopting strategies in negotiating with different levels of the state in order to optimise their work.

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