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This study explored the lived experience of middle class retirees in India through 40 qualitative semi-structured interviews. Interviews were conducted with 20 male and 20 female middle class retirees covering 30 married, 4 widowed, 1 divorcee and 5 never-married retirees aged between 58 to 75, who had been retired from formal sector employment (e.g. managers, bankers, professors, doctors, engineers, administrators) for at least a year. The interviews were analyzed thematically using a Grounded Theory approach. The main findings of this study suggest that middle class retirees in India searched for an alternative structure to frame their time in retirement to gain an identity after loss of their work-related identity. A strong sense of ‘retirement pride’ influenced their retirement adaptation, which was the aggregate effect of their life’s accomplishments, a successful family life, possession of good health and financial freedom. They enjoyed freedom, but paradoxically longed for a routine in retirement. This thesis argues that routine in retirement was conceived as under the control of the retirees. They enjoyed freedom by structuring their time creatively through meaningful activities, in particularly part-time work, volunteering and leisure activities besides active engagement with family. Both male and female retirees valued the importance of health for Active Ageing with the twin objectives of maintaining good health and not becoming a burden on their family. They actively pursued diverse social relationships with family and friends to remain in control for physical and emotional health. Both male and female retirees maintained an active lifestyle and found satisfaction through the process of Active and Productive Ageing. An important gender difference in middle class retirement was that women showed greater ability to engage in multiple activities by successfully combining their family role with leisure activities, volunteering, part-time work and care-giving. The findings from this study strongly suggest that for middle class retirees in India, a Third Age can be recognised on the basis of a positive attitude, resilience, acceptance, retirement pride, freedom, mental and physical health, companionate marriage (for those who are married), rewarding social relationships, and participation in meaningful activities with a desire to pursue a goal and Active Ageing.

This thesis investigates women consumer's lifestyle through the meanings they give to their everyday consumption experience from an interpretivist researcher point of view. Nine women life stories are presented which were collected through in~depth phenomenological interviews. The emic cultural approach taken in conducting this research has uncovered rich and contextualised account of women's consumption experienced which elucidates the nuanced differences in women's lifestyle, they are Hands on Lifestyle, , Idealistic Lifestyle, Pragmatic Lifestyle. Prudent Lifestyle, Climber Lifestyle, Entrepreneur Lifestyle, Survivor Lifestyle, Easygoing Lifestyle and Devoted Lifestyle. These various genres of lifestyle reflect each woman's self~identity in relation to their existential concerns and social contexts. Thus is in stark contrast with many studies on (married) women lifestyle in consumer research which portrays women's lifestyle as only concentrating on the problematic concern of 'juggling' between their work and family (Casey & Martens, 2007; Thompson, 1996). This study has been able to empirically illustrate lifestyle as a concept and space for consumer's to construct their self-identity as was very much suggested conceptually in the consumer research literature (Featherstone, 2007 [1991]; Giddens, 1991; Slater, 1997). The study saw women consumer's creatively construct their identity by negotiating their way in the consumer culture, for example consumption and non-consumption was important to the sense of being, life themes were significantly driving these women's construction of lifestyle and women were reflexively using lifestyle as a dynamic space in an effort to realize their personal goal for and also in relations to their significant others. Three snapshots of lifestyle emerged from this study which further categorises these women's different genres of lifestyle into three pattern, they are Adapting Family into Lifestyle, Changing Lifestyle to fit Family's and Settled Lifestyle. These lifestyle snapshot demonstrates women's different dimension's of 'caring self(Gilligan, 1982; Meyers-Levy, 1989; Stern, 1990) which differs from the unilateral information that currently informs the consumer literature (Casey & Martens, 2007; Thompson, 1996) with regard to this feminine identity. In addition the cultural framework established through this women's account which are the Caring Framework, Cultivating Piety Framework and Bilateralism Framework, further shed light on the contextual differences that may inform and influence consumer's consumption practice. This reinforces the need for consumer researchers to move away from the stra i tjac~et of conducting lifestyle research using the 'behaviourist' or the 'universalist' model that is unable to capture the nuance differences underlying consumer's action. It also goes to show that by taking an emic approach; looking from the inside rather than relying on using universalise models to establish lifestyle framework in investigating consumer's lifestyle, contributes to much more thicker insights on the knowledge about consumer's consumption practices. Equally important is that this lifestyle studies have illuminated that being women and practicing the same religion doesn't mean applying the same monolithic consumption practices, instead these women consumers carry out creolised consumption practices - they carefu lly appropriate and select suitable consumption by juxtaposing from the traditional and modem, local and foreign sources in their daily lives to articulate their self-identities.

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Email is, in the early part of the 21st century, an integral part of organisational life. Its centrality has resulted in it being more than a mere organisational process. Rather, email represents a vehicle by which organisational culture develops. Using concepts of “email communities” and “insider-outsider social habitus” statuses, this phenomenon is explored through evocative ethnography and is found to be both benign and malign. Issues of alternative hierarchies, bullying, inclusion and exclusion emerge. These issues are characterised by a lack of awareness of the effects of their actions on the part of protagonists. Because the protagonists’ actions are not usually deliberate, those suffering the effects doubt the validity of their experiences and feelings. From the organisational perspective, official notions of organisational culture and organisational values are compromised or even rendered irrelevant. This in turn compromises the honesty and integrity of organisations in respect of the ways in which they present themselves to their employees and the outside world. Organisations, however, are largely unaware of these effects as the insider-outsider social habitus concept does not engage with the structural culture-as-an-entity understanding favoured by organisations. Remedies, examined within the compass of organisational learning and knowledge management are explored, with a need for remedies within both concepts being found to be necessary, together with a need for emotional intelligence.

This thesis discusses the consequences of different institutional forms in various settings, with a particular focus on the interactions between institutions, cultural transmission, and public goods. Chapter 1 introduces the main ideas, motivation, and results of the subsequent chapters. It provides a detailed summary of the thesis. Chapter 2 considers how institutions that modify behaviors affect the transmission of cultural traits. It argues that they create an environment that crowds out the behavior they were trying to promote. When applied to a model of public good provisions it illustrates how institutions that reduce free riding may decrease the level of public good in the long run. Chapter 3 extends this framework to make institutions endogenous. Individuals vote for their preferred institutional arrangement and the outcome is determined by majority voting. The crowding out of behaviors imply that agents have an incentive to affect strategically the transmission of preferences through collective socialization. Institutions can induce the formation of additional institutions such as schools in order to guarantee their sustainability. Chapter 4 considers that children acquire preferences through the choice of friends in the population, and that parents try to influence this choice. It shows how this creates a game between parents where their efforts to socialize their children to a particular cultural trait constitutes a public good. It studies the consequences for cultural groups of being intolerant and how they can survive cultural transmission. Chapter 5 uses the important example of commons as an institutional failure. It examines the case for privatization in an environment with different resources that may not be all privatized. It shows that labor reallocation reduces the gains of privatization, potentially to the point of reducing welfare. First best institutions may fail in a second best environment.

This thesis explores the complex economic conditions under which life satisfaction can flourish or be thwarted. It identifies three trends in life satisfaction in Europe - rising, stagnant, and declining – a theme which has been the subject of a long- standing debate focusing upon the Easterlin paradox. I measure the relationship between life satisfaction and income-related factors in 24 European countries from 2002 to 2012 using European Social Survey data. Results of pooled OLS CLSE regression analysis show that income is significantly correlated with life satisfaction, but only up to the point at which financial distress is included in the analysis. The negative effect of financial distress on life satisfaction is mitigated by national wealth and (to an extent) type of social policy. In addition, the ‘tunnel effect’ was found to be still present in CEE nations in the years 2002-2012 despite the end of their transition period, and in the north of Europe status comparisons prevailed. But this effect was only relevant for people with higher levels of income. Therefore, the thesis confirms Veenhoven’s basic needs theory emphasizing the importance of the livability of the society for those less well- off. The ‘tunnel effect’ recorded in CEE countries compensates for lower standards of living as it enables the toleration of income inequality in the context of rising living standards for all. Conversely, the negative effect of income comparison on subjective well-being in the north of Europe can be moderated by the already very high and growing livability of the society. I conclude that the livability of a society makes the Easterlin paradox an illusion for some countries in Europe, while for others it makes it a reality.

With life expectancy rising and the State Pension Age (SPA) increasing, understanding patterns of retirement and drivers of working up-to,and beyond the SPA, is a key policy priority. Academic research has highlighted that demographic, health, socio-economic, geographical and caring characteristics are associated with economic activity in later life. However, research has often examined these associations in isolation as opposed to together. To improve the ability of policy-makers to identify individuals who are most likely to be economically active in later life, further research, which explores individual characteristics and their association with economic activity, was required. This research uses a quantitative approach employing bivariate and multivariate methods to explore the combined relative associations of a number of derived variables from Wave 5 of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), among male and female individuals who are above and below the SPA. The results show that factors associated with economic activity in later life vary between individuals who are above or below the SPA, and there are important gender dimensions at play. For example, among individuals who are above the SPA, the factors of age, housing tenure, occupational social class and pension scheme membership are associated with economic activity, whereas among individuals who are below the SPA, a person's self-reported general health (SRGH), reports of a limiting long-standing illness (LLSI), housing tenure, pension scheme membership and caring status were associated with economic activity. Among men, it was age, housing tenure, occupational social class and pension scheme membership which were consistently associated with economic activity, whereas among women, the variables of marital status, reports of a LLSI, housing tenure, pension scheme membership and caring status were significant for economic activity. These findings can help to inform policy-makers in designing legislation in the area of work in later life, as well as retirement and pension provision.

Population ageing and shifting boundaries between work and retirement create important research opportunities. However, research on life course factors that impact on the retirement transition is lacking, especially in a UK context. This thesis uses longitudinal data from the 1997-99 (age 49-51) and 2009-11 (age 62-64) surveys of the Newcastle Thousand Families Study (NTFS), birth cohort born in 1947 in North East England, to take a life course approach to the investigation of retirement transitions in this early ‘baby boom’ cohort (N=155 men and N=212 women). The mixed-methods approach used quantitative data to investigate factors associated with transitioning to retirement and quality of life in later life; an embedded qualitative study of a cohort sub-sample (N=27) explored experiences in depth. Gender differences were apparent from analysis of antecedents of retirement. Socioeconomic advantage and relationship factors were strong ‘push’ factors for men’s early retirement. Among women, working beyond state pension age was positively associated with divorce, mortgage commitments and a working spouse. The qualitative phase identified important additional factors strongly influencing retirement behaviour, including attitudes towards work, positive attitudes towards retirement as a period of ‘freedom’ to ‘enjoy life’ and beliefs about healthy life expectancy. Integrating the quantitative and qualitative data showed that choice and autonomy were important factors, with women and less advantaged participants reporting constraints around their ability to make retirement and employment decisions. A pathway model was developed and identified both proximal (e.g. health, employment and mortgage-freedom) and distal (e.g. father’s social class, childhood health and education) life course factors as making important contributions to quality of life in the NTFS cohort. Combined, these findings highlight the within- cohort differences surrounding determinants of retirement transition and quality of life post-retirement. Heterogeneity and structured inequalities need to be better- reflected in policies aimed at helping people to retire or to extend paid work successfully.

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