This thesis will examine the `Chav' subculture in order to establish a new contribution to subcultural critical theory. It will also establish the cultural shift when `Chav' was created. As a prominent British stereotype since 2003, Chavs have received a limited amount of discussion within academia and this thesis will address this issue. While this lack of academic coverage leaves much of the pertinent theoretical ground untraced, it also provides an academic niche within which 1 can work. Using a multi-disciplinary methodology this thesis will examine Chavs through both its discursive representations and its lived identity structures. The first six chapters cover a literature review and then the discursive fields of language, social policy, mass media representations, public space and subcultural style. The next two chapters look at the lived social structures of class and masculinity, and race and ethnicity. The thesis concludes with the exploration of a new theoretical model for youth formations. This model is based upon a cyclical system that perpetually repeats itself through stages of publically defining an inherent lack, public crystallisation of these lacks, demarcation of these discourses upon the subject and public castigation for bearing these signifiers of lack. The theoretical model created in this thesis has far reaching implications in my field of study due to its closed nature- the cycle continually repeats itself, adding new demarcations of exclusion upon each repetition. This cyclical theoretical system could be applied to another social group as it is dependent upon which types of capital- social, cultural or otherwise -are defined at that moment in time as `wrong'. Consequently, the theoretical framework developed throughout this thesis could represent a significant contribution to the field of critical theory.

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This study is about how one group of Singapore professional women view their lives as first generation professional women in a new rapidly urbanised society, Singapore, whose only natural resource, is human resource. The thesis will also try to determine any commonalties, in terms of characteristics, perceptions and lifestyle, that might exist among the group. The women chosen were Chinese married to Chinese men, with children and having post-secondary qualifications. The fourteen informants came from a variety of occupations and professions. After analysing the results it was found that these women, unlike their mothers had been well-educated, and to a certain extent were financially independent. Through paid employment, they had started to be offered similar opportunities to men. Having these changes in their status came about because of economic necessity. In spite of their new found independence, the support from their husband, their higher expectations of their relationships and, often equal say in family matters, they recognised that their primary role was that of mother and wife, - the caregiver. They had many commitments and in nearly all cases, one of their coping strategies was religion - a religion of Protestant-denomination, generally different from the religious of earlier generations. This type of teaching which stresses responsibility for one's own actions may be the reason that throughout the interview these women exhibited more of an internal locus than an external locus of control. Internalisers acknowledge the role they play in contributing to outcomes.

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This study focuses on what is on the surface a deeply patriarchal society, the Kuria of Tanzania. Although little agency is overtly ascribed to women, the study demonstrates how some women and disadvantaged men manage to overcome the constraints in their lives either by utilising the existing structures of marriage to their advantage or else by engaging in entrepreneurial activities, alone or with others, to improve their economic situations. It shows how the various forms of marriage help individuals to achieve full personhood in Kuria terms. The study explains why people wish to have many children and how they are able to overcome infertility, and even death, to increase the number of their descendants. Taking a historical perspective, the study is positioned against the backdrop of Kuria marriages. It looks at the ways these unions are tied into and shaped by wider social structures, including the laws and ideologies of Christianity, Islam, and the state in its various forms. The study concentrates more on local meanings than on legal or political rules. Despite far reaching politico-economic, religious and cultural changes, the Kuria have continued to tenaciously embrace their main ideas about marriage and fertility in relation to personhood. This is seen as a form of resistance, best understood in terms of the structures of agnatic descent and processes of individual agency, reflected in status and access to rights and resources in the community. Moreover, new stimuli in the local economy, like mining, have created market for local produce and services enabling households, individuals and groups to have various income-generation activities. The study argues that gender is flexible; it can be negotiated and circumvented by pragmatic changes in roles and status, rendering gendered identities a highly fluid process. Thus sonless or childless, living or non-living, and wealthy women can have daughters-in-law (female wives), and men who are dead, disabled, impotent or sterile, and mad can have children. Gender is also, however, in other senses circumscribed and fixed, because only women can bear children.

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