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This research project is based on face-to-face semi-structured interviews with 35 female respondents and written responses to a questionnaire from 29 male respondents. The research was primarily designed to increase understanding of the experience of women within marital relationships and the ways in which domestic abuse shapes that experience in Saudi Arabia, Jeddah region. The thesis also explores the views of men in relation to the same issues, but the main focus of the research is on the experience of women in the context of these relationships. Marital relations in Saudi Arabia are being influenced by a range of changing factors. The thesis explores the changing culture of the country describing the history of Saudi Arabia, the current social climate and the religious and legal perspectives which form the context within which marital relationships are entered into, carried on and ended. The role of voluntary and government organizations in providing support for women who are victims of difficult marital relations and domestic abuse is described and recommendations are offered for improved support drawing on the findings of the research.

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This thesis concerns crisis among women in early adulthood. A sample of women aged 20-40 was screened for the occurrence of stressful life experience, and a woman qualified through the screen if she had experienced 11 or more stressful life events in the year prior to questionnaire administration. The women who qualified thus were interviewed about their experience in order to investigate the possible occurrence of crisis. A pre-fieldwork model of the development of crisis situations was designed. Women's interview accounts of crisis were matched against the model and the validity of the model was proven. A pre-fieldwork typology of objective crisis situations was modified in the light of the research data, as was a typology of crisis response. The thesis investigates objectively identified situations of crisis (which may or may not be subjectively identified as such) and subjective crisis experience. A discussion of these topics provides information on the nature of crises in the locality studied and also on the local meaning of the term 'crisis', a term that it was necessary to define objectively in the thesis to avoid the pitfalls of using such a multivalent word. The underpinnings of the social meaning of crisis are therefore discussed, with reference to the way crisis is socially constructed by the interviewees. In the course of the thesis, the significance of the relationship between interview format and interview content is indicated. This is discussed per se, and with reference to the relationship between an interview's format and the view of coping with crisis (and therefore constructing it) held by the interviewee. Three types of coping schema are identified, that correspond to the three types of interview format discussed.

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The dissertation focuses on an analysis of elites in Roseau, capital of Dominica, West Indies. The study indicates that political and economic changes of the 1950s and 1960s, particularly the rise of a successful peasant based banana industry and internal self-government and universal adult franchise had important implications for the changing composition of, and integration between, elites. The perspective used to interpret these findings is derived from Max Weber, whose direct contribution to analysis in the area has been minimal. Weber's concepts of class, status and party; charismatic, traditional and rational legal dominiation, and his concern with history and bureaucratization are used to illuminate the changing situation among the elites of Roseau. The general paucity of research on the island encouraged as full a description as possible of the context in which the above exercise was carried out.

This thesis examines perceptions of social difference by white residents of South African cities in general, and Durban in particular, with regard to urban racial desegregation. Under apartheid, segregated cities were created by a white hegemony that was driven by what can be called a segregationist mindset, a belief in the existence of discrete racial groups, and the importance of keeping such groups apart. As cities have undergone a process of desegregation over the last two decades, the people who believed in the appropriateness of racial segregation have been thrown into crisis. This crisis revolves around the mismatch between old beliefs about the best way to plan and manage an ordered, modern city with homogenous zones created through the use of strong boundaries, and contemporary realities of mixing, free transgression across boundaries, creating for some the impression of disorder. This thesis concentrates on white responses to three forms of desegregation: the arrival of street traders in the CBD, the arrival of squatters alongside suburbs, and the arrival of non-white middle class groups in suburbs. Discourse analysis of interviews with residents and newspaper material explores the way in which segregationist mindsets have adapted to the new non-racial atmosphere, where separation is no longer justifiable on racial grounds. In an attempt to avoid the impasse that usually results from debates around the relative importance of race and class, this discussion argues that the use of both race and class by whites has to be understood within the broader attempts by white people to achieve certain senses of themselves through the manipulation of identity and space.

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This study stresses the importance for professionals who work with Chinese families to respect and appreciate individual experience and opinions which may vary from the general theories. The oral histories of Chinese parents have highlighted the similarity and differences in their experiences and feelings as well as their strength and difficulties in Britain. Ecological, situational, cultural imperatives, personal background and circumstances, survival and adaptive strategies all have their impact in Chinese parenting and cause intragroup variations in the ways that Chinese children are brought up in Britain. Moreover, the childcare concepts expressed in the parenting practice of Chinese families have to be understood within their cultural and social context. The research findings support an interactionistic cultural-ecological view of Chinese parenting in Britain. The conclusions reached in this thesis lead the researcher to argue that there should be a greater level of co-operation between mainstream professionals and Chinese professionals/individuals in understanding childcare welfare in Britain, and a far better understanding of each other's roles and expertise in this process of change.