This thesis examines the creative cultural production, consumption and representation of individuals within Britain, classified as of ethnic minority backgrounds. It draws together the fields of 'race', ethnicity and nationality and argues that these wide ranging themes have been conflated to produce simplistic, inaccurate, understandings of contemporary identity categorisations. The thesis challenges these prescribed understandings and argues that they produce identity as situated within a binary perspective, British and Other. The need for an intersectional, relational perspective is outlined, not just for individuals but also when engaging communities. The thesis draws together two case studies to explore these issues. The first considered the research subjects' engagement with participatory arts practice within a youth centre setting in Coventry, UK. This case study highlighted the complexities of the cultural identities of those often marked as alterior. The second case study involved working with Asian women and young people in Birmingham to develop a visual arts exhibition, a publication and performance event. The case study particularly highlighted the ways in which people negotiated existing cultural institutions whose arts practice often moves towards an assimilationist agenda. Together the case studies provide a means by which the complexity of everyday life can be considered in relation to art, cultural production and representation. The thesis contributes to debates on culture, identity and art particularly in terms of public policy and how publicly funded cultural institutions fail to serve the needs and interests of ethnic minority communities within the UK. The thesis argues instead for the need to use arts and cultural practice to deconstruct binary perspectives, replacing them with intersecting cultural crossroads.

This paper is the fifth in a series of six written as part of an investigation of consumer beliefs and attitudes towards luxuries. Numerous studies concerned with luxury consumption look at what luxury is and enables (Berry, 1994; Dubois and Laurent, 1996; Dubois et al., 2001; Lageat et al., 2003; Phau and Prendergast, 2001; Vigneron and Johnson, 1999). This document is aimed at filling a gap in knowledge by investigating how consumers create the meanings they associate with luxury and how consuming luxury influences their identity.

No description available.

The purpose of this study is to construct a comprehensive and authentic picture of the Chinese orchestral scene in Singapore by piecing its history and identifying the social characteristics and relationships within Chinese Orchestras (COs) In Singapore. Specifically, the dynamic interaction of the structural characteristics and the social processes within and without the COs, as well as its impact on the musicians, the orchestra and the quality of their work are analysed. This thesis shows that the formal structures, roles and tacit rules of interaction have not enabled COs in Singapore to produce music as a collective successfully and harmoniously. The disunity within the COs can be attributed to several factors identified in the research process. At the individual level, many of the professional CO musicians perceive that they are working in an oppressive environment characterised by excessive work with little creative stimulus and pay. Even CO musicians at the amateur level, especially school CO musicians, are not fulfilled creatively due to the absence of a nurturing learning environment. They lack enjoyable performance opportunities and suffer from stressful preparations for concerts and competitions. The CO musicians' unhappiness is also exacerbated by high levels of competitiveness and cliquishness within the COs. So instead of a unified CO, each CO is divided into microcommunities that are at odds with one another. Finally, external forces such as governmental agencies, schools and the general public exert a considerable influence over the existence and the development of these COs. Because of their focus on results, prestige and image, they have fostered an environment that is antithetical to the cultivation of love of CO among CO musicians at the amateur or professional levels.

This thesis explores the way that parent(s) is display family through food materiality within the context of time-space and the emotional connection between people in relation to their everyday existence. It is concerned with examining the normal daily actions of families using diary-interviews supported by a participant observational approach, which examines the relationship between food activities and parent(s) practices. This research adopts a case study approach in order to offer a rewarding encounter with everyday family activities both in the United Kingdom and Hungary. Together, the two case-studies outline the differences and similarities encountered in each location as representative of everyday family life. In summary, this thesis offers to engage both empirically and theoretically with the notion of family practices. Each chapter examines different aspects of foodways, specifically; provisioning, cooking-eating and remembering, which enables family life to be displayed. I explore these through the examining in each of these aspects, considering the materiality, time-space/space-time and emotion that are displayed through foodways and which shape parent(s) practices. The aspect of materiality that this thesis addresses draws particular attention to the influence of mutable objects, viewing food more, playing more than a symbolic role in life. The project focuses on framing time-space in terms of contextualising and rooting activities and, in tum, practices. Emotions within the context of this research are seen as being displayed through connections between people and practice, showing how and why particular practices are recognised as being parenting practices. This thesis extends current literature by considering recent developments within practice theory which accepts that practices are more than just actions brought to bear on the notion of family practices (Morgan 1996). This thesis contends that family is something that is done continually and cannot be captured in one meal, and family practices are more pervasive in everyday life than recent moral panics may suggest.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with Kosovo Romani (i.e. Roma and Ashkali) forced migrants, NGO workers and volunteers, local politicians and city councillors, civil servants and social workers in Florence and Venice, this thesis examines the complex interplay between discourses, policies, and practices which contribute to the definition of the Romani population as a social and political 'problem' in Italy. The thesis traces a genealogy of current Italian policies toward Italian and foreign Romani people, which provides the background for investigating how, and to what extent, Kosovo Roma and Ashkali forced migrants are, discursively and socially, constructed as a part of the broader 'Gypsy problem' (rather than as 'refugees') and the implications this framing has on their everyday lives, experiences, and coping strategies. The thesis also shows that the 'Gypsy problem' is time- and space- specific, and assumes different configurations in Florence and Venice. These are a product of the Italian 'municipalist' political tradition and decentralised administrative structure, as well as of different understandings, approaches, agendas, and actions of local politicians, civil servants and front line bureaucrats. The examination of the dominant discourse on 'Gypsies' also reveals a strong culturalist bias centred on the idea of the Romani population as inherently nomadic. This characterisation, it is argued in the study, has important policy implications. By framing the Romani population in this way, not only has it become possible for Italian authorities to legitimise the rejection of well-founded claims from Romani displaced people for humanitarian protection; they have also been able to refuse newcomers opportunities for permanent settlement, and to develop and implement public policy which has contributed to the spatial and social segregation of these communities. The so-called 'nomad camps', an important product of this culturalist logic, epitomise this chain of processes and form a privileged analytical standpoint from which to examine the 'Gypsy problem' in Italy.

The thesis proposes to understand contemporary discourses on cosmopolitanism in Britain and Germany as situated outlooks influenced by specific national cultures and nation state histories. These discourses are also embedded in the transition of the current nation state order that is driven by global capitalism and new forms of social and legal integration. Within Europe, the legal integration project of the European Union has to be regarded as at the core of these contemporary discourses. While situating discourses of cosmopolitanism historically, the thesis traces back dominant discourses of commercial (Britain) and cultural (Germany) cosmopolitanism that influence contemporary national outlooks of British (David Held, Chantal Mouffe and Homi K. Bhabha) and German voices Qiirgen Habermas, Ulrich Beck and Hanna Behrend). The main argument is that those discourses are framed by historical pathways, particular memories and national horizons situated differently in various countries, but also situated differently regarding the social locations of concrete intellectuals engaging in these discourses. Thus, the analysis of the different authors' writings pursues a double aim. On the one hand, it explores to what degree national discourses are situated as hegemonic public communicative sphere historically; on the other, it reveals how specific voices are situated individually within the larger discourse, thereby unearthing their contribution to confirming or challenging a hegemonic discourse. Most significantly, the Utopian vision of a cosmopolitan 'opening' that evolved during the 1990s shifted to a hegemonic ideological discourse of European 'closure' after 9/11 2001. The analysis reveals the appearance of a discourse of European cosmopolitanism conveying cultural Europeanisation. Apparently, this discourse neglects the problematic legacy of a distinction that was typical for the German discourse of the late 19 th and lasting until the mid of the 20th century, i.e. the distinction between the world citizen (Weltbürger)and the cosmopolitan (Koswopolit). The former had a positive connotation of mobility whereas the latter was used as an anti-Semitic signifier for Jews as unwanted 'wanderers'. The contemporary discourse conveys still biased meanings of 'mobility' and 'migration' being decisive for e.g. the notion of EU citizenship as die privileging frame of free movement constructing new insides and outsides of populations.

No description available.

I reveal the ideological orientation of a British overseas development agency - Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) - as evolutionary and male-centred, and springing out of European imperialism and a patriarchical social order. Ultimately, this ideology has a detrimental effect on ITDG's appropriate technology project work. I evaluate two improved stove projects, one in Sri Lanka and the other in Kenya, and conclude that while some cooks and stove-makers gained from the project, most of the benefits were unintended and/or inequitably shared. Mistaken assumptions arose out of a process of donors and technicians defining problems, needs and solutions with reference to neatly packaged, unilinear causal chains, and with little recognition of regional diversity. Beneficiaries are apparently passive recipients of the results of expert's decisions for example, in the area of stove technology, the knowledge of cooks is invisible to technicians, and so ignored, because their work is carried out in rural areas, is not part of the market economy, and is considered untidy, unhealthy, and smelly. On the other hand, stove makers and users often resist the interventions of others, and only take on new ideas when they work effectively in practice. Finally, moving further down complex sets of relations in the development process, I describe how the roles of recipients and donors in development agencies are played within a boundary of the 'spirit' of project aid. The power of donors is not simply purchased like a commodity and displayed through the disposal of funds; power relations are observed in the structural relationship between groups or organisations. For example, donors are powerful and so in a position to define policies, rules or conditions attached to aid. Even so, as with any system of rules, it is the appearance, but not the practice, of obedience that is usually the criteria of success. It is this which allows people within recipient agencies to construct their own rhetoric and interpret their own world.

Part 1 (Chapters 1 to 5) focuses on the theoretical aspect of social anthropology and how the problems in the study of the Tibeto-Burman peoples and Naxi religious texts can best be approached. Chapters 1 to 2 are the discussion of the theories in social anthropology, its relation with history and the meanings of history. Comparison is discussed as the important aspect of social anthropology. The specificity of comparison in the study of Naxi religious texts is formulated. Chapters 3 to 5 on one level of comparison is some examination of the scholarship between social anthropology and the cultural elite tradition in China, as related to the study of the Tibeto-Burman peoples. On another level is a historical ethnographic survey of the Tibeto-Burman peoples and their relationship with the Han Chinese. The cases discussed are the kinship of the Naxi/Moso peoples and the Han Chinese in ideological terms, the cultural identities of the Naxi/Moso and the Tibeto-Burman peoples in the region. Part II (Chapter 6 to 8) focuses on the interpretation of Naxi religious texts. This covers four aspects in the texts: 1. The question of Naxi pictographs and the writing in the region. The nature of the variety of writing in the region with reference to the origin of Naxi pictographs (Chapter 6). 2. A discussion on the relation between Naxi religion and Tibetan Bon religion, through a comparison between the legendary spiritual leaders of the two religions, a brief history of Tibetan religion and 3. The authors of the texts identified through a stylistic comparison of the texts, the ritual practitioners, the <I>dto-mba, </I>the ritual activities and the dating of the texts discussed through the analysis of authorship and other sources (Chapter 7). 4. The question of translating the pictographic texts: how to read the texts, the nature of the pictographs, interpretation and comparison in the question of translation (Chapter 8). The main argument of the thesis is that Naxi religious texts are interpretable through anthropological-historical approaches and that textual comparison can enrich the scope of comparison in social anthropology. The specific problems to be solved are the dating of the texts, the ritual activities and the translation/interpretation of the contents of the texts.