The 'mobility turn' in social sciences (Cresswell 2006; Hannam, Sheller et al. 2006; Sheller and Urry 2006) is based on the inevitable impacts all types of mobility currently have on contemporary living and "examines how social relations necessitate the intermittent and intersecting movement of people, objects, information and images across distance" (Urry 2007: 54 ). Mobility studies include research on migration, tourism, residential mobility and urban daily mobility - the latter is the central interest of this thesis. Urban daily mobility refers to all the ways people relate experientially to change of place on a daily basis, which means that it encompasses more than the sum of journeys made or the time it takes to make them. This understanding of mobility as a social practice requires methodological access to the social meaning invested in movement, whether that movement is physical, imaginative, virtual, or a combination of these. How do practices of urban daily mobility shape the way urban living is experienced in contemporary cities. This thesis addresses mobility as a social practice and uses an ethnographic approach to explore the way mobility is experienced daily by selected individuals in Santiago de Chile. It argues that an urban daily mobility approach captures an ontological shift in the way the urban spaces are experienced. This shift has implications for the way urban relations and urban structures are observed; that is, from fixed physical entities to moving and dynamic relations. Moreover, this shift has significant implications in various areas of urban analysis, each of which is examined by this thesis. First, it requires adopting methodologies that can reveal daily mobility experiences and find adequate ways of representing these experiences. Second, it incorporates mobility into the notion of place, by introducing the concepts of mobile places and transient places it discusses the possibility of mobile place making. Third, it questions the static way of analysing urban inequality and expands the notion of urban social exclusion to incorporate differentiated mobility as another one of its causes, consequences and manifestations. Fourth, it provides a way of looking at spatial relations in the city by understanding the implications of urban daily mobility in terms of place confinement and enlargement. Finally, it affects the way urban policy interventions are understood, analysed here in terms of the implementation of the Transantiago transport system. Mobility in these terms becomes not only a practice through which daily living can be observed, it may also be a locus for encounter, conflict, negotiation and transformation, thus requiring further research as a space of socialisation.

Based on 17 months ethnographic research carried out in a medium sized village in North West Rajasthan, this thesis explores the relationship between status, security and social change in a context of extreme economic uncertainty. Through changes in tenancy laws, the redistribution of land after the abolition of Zamindars in the 1950s, the withdrawal of high castes from the village, success through affirmative action policies, and caste mobilisation via Sanskritisation an extended family of the untouchable leatherworking caste Meghval in the village of Mudharamsar have risen to be the new village elites. Their unusual position as wealthy landowners and political agents has caused conflicts, alternative commensalities, and 're-traditionalised' practices amongst other villagers. This was further exacerbated by the temporary closure of mines in the area that provided the bulk of employment for other villagers causing many of the lower castes to search for alternative means of income and status-making. Some returned to their traditional caste occupations, others organised as a 'labour class' and Meghvals drew on kinship obligations in search of solidarity and security. I argue that social mobility and change amongst the rural poor involves both confluence and variance of what Betielle (1974) termed the 'ideas of caste' and the 'interests of class' underpinning agrarian relations. In doing so, I extend Beteille's analysis to situate my informants' ideas of caste, class and religion within their broader interests in constructing, claiming and using identity and status as mechanisms for coping with economic uncertainty, social change and inequality. I highlight the contradictions between normative ideals concerning caste, kinship and religion on the one hand, and changing class and power relations on the other. I am concerned to look at the spaces between these oppositions wherein alternative discourses and identities are generated, which at times bring unlikely actors together and at others reaffirm pre-existing relations.

This thesis focuses on intellectual self-repositioning after the end of Mao’s regime. By examining the literary works of two eminent contemporary writers, Zhang Wei (1956 -) and Yank Lianke (1958), this study shows the complicated process of defining and re-defining the meaning of “intellectual” in the context of the drastic social and economic transformation that took place since China opened itself to the world. Since positing one’s own identity necessitates comparing oneself with another well defined group, in my study I use peasants as this balancing group because, historically, intellectuals (or literati) and peasants are intimately associated. Without the existence of peasants, the traditionally defined intellectual would have no significance. Zhang Wei and Yan Lianke are two Chinese writers who for decades have consistently concerned themselves with and written about peasants, and have paid close attention to political and intellectual trends. Therefore, to a great degree, their literary works trace the various stages undergone by contemporary intellectuals in their struggle for self-identity/definition and recognition of their new social role. This research employs close reading, intertwined with narratology, and new historicism, to explain and discuss the stories. The high moral qualities conventionally attributed to Chinese peasants, as well as the intellectual’s sense of mission are two focal points of this study. Expanding these two themes, the ideal nation of living community, otherwise referred to as utopia, is discursively discussed. This study demonstrates how these two writers mine different sources of moral values from primitive energy, Chinese legends, Confucianism, Taoism or historical figures in order to construct their textual utopia. This concern for moral quality also develops into a discussion of a controversial element in the image of peasants; their numbness. This study elucidates how these two writers treat this topic in their narratives, and their different attitudes when encountering the contradictory qualities of peasants.

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This study provides fresh insights into the process of social exclusion by comparing it with the discourse of developmentalism to offer a wider theoretical understanding of the issues related to marginalisation and powerlessness. The study argues that people experiencing exclusion from the social and economic processes are further left out in a media environment largely biased against minorities, driven by commercial considerations and protected by tight regulatory regimes. As an alternative to this media situation, the thesis explores the role of small-scale and community-based media in developing a contextual approach to communication that can help to validate marginalised points of view, and develop a dynamic link between people‘s experiences and expression. These arguments are illustrated through a participatory action research project, using an interdisciplinary framework informed by a variety of emancipatory, spiritual and critical perspectives. Looking specifically at the pertinent issue of inequalities in health faced by the members of the Mirpuri community in the UK, the thesis examined the role of Radio Ramzan, a faith-based community broadcasting initiative, in facilitating a communicative interaction during a multi-agency health education campaign. The study established that peoples‘ reference to cultural practices and experiential knowledge empowers them to counter their situated, stigmatized and essentialised existences. Within this discourse, the study demonstrated that a community radio station can provide a socio-cultural context to develop and promote a holistic approach to deal with exclusion.

This thesis studies how middle-class cultures are assembled in contemporary Chile, by looking at a group of lower-middle-class families who move to new houses in the suburbs, focusing in particular on the role of home and home possessions, place of residence and housing markets in the production of people's social and spatial positions. Class is broadly understood here as a process that happens within people's experience. It is understood, thus, more as an outcome of actors' production than as a pre-existing category. By taking this standpoint, this thesis draws on a rather heterogeneous set of theoretical frameworks for exploring the different set of mediations -places, discourses and materialities- that assemble the ordinary experience of class. The thesis is based on seven months of fieldwork (2005-2006) in Los Pinos, a new real estate development in Santiago, Chile. The fieldwork is a case study and does not claim any generalisation; notwithstanding, the field site was chosen as embodying -in terms of both the place and its inhabitants- what has been recently described as the "emergent" contemporary middle classes, which have emerged with the neoliberal reforms of the last 30 years. Specifically, the research aimed to grasp families' experiences of buying, moving into and settling into their new house. Against this backdrop, the thesis focused on three interrelated stages: first, the design, production and purchase of houses; second, the material culture of the new home; and third, neighbouring practices and the production of Los Pinos as a middle-class residential area. Analysing this process of social and spatial mobility, it empirically traces how actors live and perform class and how, in doing so, they produce particular cultures of inequality.

This thesis examines the elite of the Maldive Islands, during a period of great technoeconomic change from 1976 until 1983. This ethnographic study is concerned with the nature of the Maldivian national elite, in particular the reiterative evidence of both repetition and change in its sociopolitical organisation. The first part of the thesis presents the principles of the study and introduces the ethnographic setting of the elite of Maldives. The Preface establishes the historical and methodological foundation of the study. Chapter 1 outlines the foci of the thesis and places it within a general anthropological framework. Chapter 2 places the elite within the context of the Maldivian geographical setting, history, and classification systems. The second part of the study sets out the basic building blocks of the elite system. Chapter 3 essentially defines the Maldivian elite and describes the stratification system, politics, and the economic basis for the elite's power. Chapter 4 presents the basic building blocks of kinship and affinity-- including sibling group, affines (especially brothers-in-law, lianoo), and friendship. Chapter 5 focuses upon the special role of the ''house" as the basic political unit of the Maldivian elite. The third part of this thesis discusses the use of the elite system over time. Chapter 6 provides a detailed description of the ''political game", including the importance of protocol, ritualistic functions, and government service. Chapter 7 details the means of social control, including the rewards and punishments for the elite. Chapter 8 describes the patterns and cycles of political conflict within the Maldivian elite system. The conclusion argues that the complex Maldivian elite system, with its evidence of change at the time of this study as a result of complex processes of modernisation in combination with a clear repetition of patterns and reiterative cycles over time, presents a model of evolutionary replication of a sociopolitical system.

This thesis is an investigation into youth homelessness and its spaces in contemporary London. As an issue, homelessness has often been equated with the category of the street homeless individual and the place of the street. Arguing that existing approaches do not capture the complexity of youth homelessness in the multicultural city, this thesis offers an alternative analytical framework based on an exploration of space as dynamic and processes of mobility, fixity and displacement. A multi-method project conducted in a day centre for young homeless people in central London, this research explores participants' lives and daily trajectories, the systems in which young homeless people are implicated and the survival tactics they practise within them. In framing the day centre as a place of the displaced the thesis provides a different angle on how movement makes city space, foregrounding types and scales of displacement where movement is shaped by loss and violence. The research explores not only the `global in the local' (Massey: 1993) but the other shorter forms of displacements and daily movements that also make urban spaces. A range of spaces of homelessness - including the street, the hostel, the day centre - are explored revealing both the kinds of surveillance that shape participants' pathways and the place-making tactics (de Certeau: 1988) that are practised within them. The thesis argues that young homeless people are fixed in mobility a condition that impacts on both everyday life and possible futures. It examines how the enmeshing of systems, the presence of persistent pasts and the lack of tangible imagined futures suspends these young people in a precarious present.

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