This thesis considers Liberian youth and the concept of Sport for Development and Peace (SDP). Since the early 2000s the notion of SDP has been strongly advocated, accepted and inserted into UN led policies and intervention strategies for uniting societies divided by violent conflict. Whilst little has been done to monitor and evaluate such programmes the notion has grown at an unprecedented pace and has been adopted by the development and humanitarian industry with real vigour. In many ways football has become the face of development in post-conflict societies. However, this fashionable intervention remains a development assumption rather than a tested method of programming. Liberia is a post-conflict society with a large youth population, an active large UN peacekeeping force and a long footballing heritage with a plethora of local NGO’s using SDP initiatives. My intention in this thesis is to question the assumptions of SDP advocates as they are applied in Liberia, in order to provide a better understanding of the social effects of football for Liberia’s youth population. I pursue this goal through an ethnography of one Liberian youth football team, Zatti FC, the community from which the players are drawn and the Catholic youth centre where they play. This thesis is significant as, despite its popularity, SDP has rarely been subjected to academic scrutiny, especially using the detailed qualitative methods I apply here. I will argue that, in this context, SDP is highly counter-productive for the purpose of youth development and the re-building of a peaceful Liberian society because football constitutes and reinforces the marginal status of youth. Seductive images rather than rational argument are central to SDP’s implementation and growth. Aiming to engage and integrate youth in post-conflict Liberia, SDP actively confirms youth status in a competitive and exclusionary age-based hierarchy.

Since the 1930s Lucha Libre Mexicana, Mexican wrestling, has evolved as a manifestation of popular culture combining spectacle, sport, theatre and ritual. Lucha Libre Mexicana, an event based performance using the mask, connects and reconnects to myth, stories, and ritual that societies, in this case the Mexican, need in order to find meaning within daily events and the contradictions and questions that confront every individual. This research analyses the cultural meanings of Lucha Libre Mexicana from the point of view of a diasporic artist and contextualizes knowledge to determine artistic practice. Identity and the construction of identity are explored throughout this thesis. The various aspects of Lucha Libre Mexicana such as the masks, the holds, the wrestlers themselves, and the performative nature of the spectacle, serve as referents to make connections to the artist’s own culture and the idea of constructed Mexicanness. This study includes a number of practice-based inquiries that are the result of the analysis and reflection on Lucha Libre and diasporic Mexicanness. The study reveals the manner by which creative processes including thinking in materials enable the artist scholar to acquire knowledge and thematic understanding. This thesis demonstrates how the traditional icons of the Mexican luchador and his mask acquire an even stronger iconic and symbolic value, emblematic of justice, outside the Lucha Libre ring. The study contributes to the field of cultural studies by adding to the understanding of the historical timeline of the development of Lucha Libre Mexicana. A large body of original work developed from the investigations and analyses of the subjects and issues discussed.

This thesis explores the cultural meanings attached to the visible appearance of the body and its parts in eighteenth-century understanding. It is situated within historical scholarship concerned with the embodied display of ‘politeness’ and the relationship between the body and categories of social difference. The research draws upon a range of popular literature, including conduct books, popular medical advice books, midwifery manuals and advice guides. Chapter one reveals the way that contemporaries conceptualised the relationship between the individual body and society through investigation of various aspects of abdominal experience. Chapter two illustrates how the appearance of the skin was thought to convey identity information about an individual’s health, temperament, character, gender, class and race. Chapter three then continues by exploring similar themes with respect to the face. The next two chapters focus on the corporeal display of gender; while chapter four argues that changing male and female hairstyles reflected shifting gender mores, chapter five evidences how female breasts were seen as visible markers of sexual difference. Chapter six examines how class informed how the hands were employed and displayed by different social actors. Finally, chapter seven looks at how ‘politeness’ informed how the legs were trained to enact various cultural performances. In this thesis it is argued that in the eighteenth century popular authors sought to uncover how bodies worked by appropriating anatomical models of examining the body through scrutiny of its parts. Yet, it will be demonstrated that discussion of the body’s parts within popular literature was distinctive because it reflected readers’ growing preoccupation with how the body, as a social actor, conveyed information about individual identity. The thesis contributes to present scholarship by detailing a range of meanings which were attached to different parts of the body that have previously been elided by historians. Additionally, it demonstrates that discursive dismemberment, though located in eighteenth-century discourses on the body, represents a historically reflective and methodologically useful mode of examining the lived body in the eighteenth century.

In this thesis I describe the complex uses and symbolic resonances of fur clothing in Krakow. During my fieldwork, fur emerged as an object that was at once quotidian and evocative of an uncommonly weighty set of associations. I describe fur industry workers’ ideas about how the production and consumption of fur changed throughout the twentieth century, from its status as a nationalized industry under socialism to its status in post-European Union accession Poland. Informants rely heavily on fur’s physical features, its materiality, when discussing the ways in which fur is an object to be passed through families. I demonstrate the ways in which beliefs about inheritance are heavily contingent upon the local understanding of work as a practice that creates adult personhood. The sections of the thesis which focus on the employment trajectories of furriers show, when placed alongside chapters that explore how fur is passed through generations, that whilst informants value highly both material and intangible inheritances from older kin, they also emphasise the importance of individual action, such as entrepreneurialism. I use the multiple ways in which fur can be interpreted: as part of a dead animal and as a valuable ‘textile’ amongst other meanings, to unpack local understandings of difference and social stratification, taking into account that ‘class’ is a term seldom used in Krakow. ‘Generation’ has a specific function and meaning within Krakowian society as a type of difference that is naturalized and easily spoken of. This contrasts with differences in religion and in class, local understandings of both of which are elucidated by fur due to its associations with, firstly, both Polish Judaism and Polish Catholicism and, secondly, bourgeois ways of being and ideas about poverty in Krakow.

The present study is an interrogation of theories of culture and nation in the context of spectacular sports. It proposes a view of nationalism as discourses that articulate and produce nations through narrative acts. A wide array of concepts and tools are drawn from the work of Pierre Bourdieu and contrasted with methods and notions from discursive and semiotic analysis to interrogate a national-sports nexus in which sports are vehicles to embody nations, their matrices of thought and perception, and their dominant order of masculinity and heteronormativity in the national subject, so that this order appears natural and commonsensical. Particular attention is given to the case of South Africa’s participation in the 1998 World Cup, and the way the epic genre was employed to frame the event and produce a particular kind of national body. Spectacular sports events provide nations with opportunities to disseminate narratives that regulate desire and conjure a particular kind of national fantasy – what Bourdieu referred to as illusio – in subjects. This work makes a distinction between an epic body of nationalism, a body enmeshed in "the natural and authentic," and an excessive body. However, mediations of sports are never merely reflections of social events but themselves participate in producing these events as meaningful and anchor them as national. Furthermore, an actively interpreting subject is required for the production of meaning, and in this regard the thesis offers a critique of Bourdieu’s limited view on what it entails for a recipient of nationalist discourse to be active. The questions addressed by this study is twofold: how and what kind of national order of the body and desire is manufactured through spectacular sports events, and how are mediations of such events made meaningful in subjects? The open-ended character of signification means that beneath the level of nationalist anchorage of spectacular sports events other articulations are possible. Drawing on Bourdieu’s view of sports as forms of silent dressage, the thesis suggests that there is a potential excess of meaning that enables such events to become potential sites of subjective truth: as viewers realise the fantasmatic character of such mediations they may come to question the notion that spectacular sports are something more than just a game.

The Scottish Gael is objectified in an un-modified ‘Tourist Gaze’; a condition that is best understood from a post-colonial perspective. John Urry showed that cultures are objectified by the gaze of a global tourist industry. The unequal power relations in that gaze can be mediated through resistance and the production of staged touristic events. The process leads to commoditisation and in-authenticity and this is the current discourse on Scottish tourism icons. An ethnographic study of tour guiding shows a pattern of (re)-presentation of a silenced and near invisible Gaeldom. By building upon Foucauldian theories of power, Said’s critique of Orientalism’s discourse and Spivak on agency, this unmodified gaze can be explained from a postcolonial perspective. Six related aspects of Gaeldom’s (re)-presentation are revealed ; the discourse of the Victorian invention of Scottish cultural icons, and, by metonymic extension, Gaelic culture; the commoditisation of Gaelic culture in the image of the Highland Warrior; the re-naming of landscape and invention of new place narratives; historical presence by invitation; elision with Irish culture; and, the mute Gael. Combined, the elements of (re)-presentation result in the distancing and the rendering opaque of Gaelic culture. The absence of informed mediators, either tourist authorities or individuals, the lack of an oppositional narrative and the pervasive discourse of invention reduces the Gael to a silenced subaltern ‘other’. Thus the unmediated tourist ‘gaze’ continues. This exceptionally singular condition of Scottish Gaeldom is comprehensible through analysis of Scottish tourism from a postcolonial perspective.

This thesis investigates how sport is employed in the new media age as mediated sport goes through the liminal phase of new media. Set against the contextual background of recurrent ‘moral panics’ that accompanied each new wave of media innovation, this study aimed to chart young people’s involvement in sport via the use of new media technology. The thesis concentrated on three research issues: access to, uses of, and the displacement effect of new media. Four major forms of new media were included in the study – digital television, the Internet, mobile telephony and video games. The study used a mixed method design of qualitative and quantitative research methods. The data collection was conducted in two phases: survey methods were first used to examine the audience experience of new media sports, and follow-up interviews of young people were then conducted to investigate motives for media choice and the perceived gratifications of new media sport. ‘Uses and Gratifications’ theory was utilised as the theoretical basis for examining user motives. Eight hundred valid responses were obtained from the questionnaire-based survey [a response rate of 94%] and follow-up interviews were conducted with 12 young people [selected purposively among volunteers from the pool of questionnaire respondents]. A key conclusion drawn from this thesis is that the Internet did not displace televised sport. The findings also suggest that the use of new media sport can have positive effects on sport and physical activities participation. Conversely, there was no support for the popular perception that media users participate in sport and physical activities less; many of them were in fact active in the pursuit of sport and physical activities.

Die Musikbetriebe der klassischen und der „Neuen“ Musik sehen sich gegenwärtig mit zwei publikumsbezogenen Problemen konfrontiert. Während „die Neue Musik einsam alt geworden ist“ und „das spärliche Publikum, das oft nur ein Konzert besucht, weil es zum Abonnement gehört, […] dieser Musik häufig verständnislos gegenüber [sitzt]“ (DIE ZEIT 43/2009: 57), droht das vergreiste und oftmals als „elitär“ etikettierte Publikum der klassischen Musik allmählich auszusterben. Diese Befunde beruhen methodisch oft auf subjektive, alltagspsychologische Betrachtungen der Konzertbesucher im Konzertsaal, was häufig zu einer Fehlinterpretation der tatsächlichen Situation führt (vgl. Dollase 1985: 371). Will man erfahren, ob es das typische Klassik- bzw. Neue-Musik-Publikum wirklich gibt und worin es sich vom jeweils anderen unterscheidet, so ist eine wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit dieser Problematik unumgänglich. Seit dem Boom der Kultursoziologie in den 1970er Jahren wurden der Konzertbesuch und der Musikgeschmack immer mehr zum Gegenstand soziologischer Forschungen. Ihre Ergebnisse führten zu der Auffassung, dass die musikalische und musikkulturelle Praxis nicht nur auf persönlich bevorzugte ästhetische Qualitäten, sondern auch auf die Zugehörigkeit zu sozialen Gruppen verweist (vgl. Neuhoff 2001: 752). Anzunehmen wäre deshalb, dass sich aufgrund der kulturellen Nähe der klassischen und Neuen Musik zueinander, auch ähnliche Publika herausgebildet haben. Dass sowohl theoretisch als auch empirisch vieles gegen diese Annahme spricht, soll die vorliegende Studie zeigen. Ausgehend von einer Publikumsbefragung des „Moritzburg Festivals“ für Kammermusik und des „Tonlagen-Festivals“ für zeitgenössische bzw. Neue Musik sollen im Folgenden die sozialen Strukturen der jeweiligen Publika aus der Perspektive der sozialen Ungleichheit vergleichend analysiert werden. (... aus der Einleitung)

This thesis looks into the relationship between dance and politics. It argues that dance is both a method of intervening in other symbolic languages and a system of inscription that is intertwined in that moment of intervention. Dance as a political language has a subversive potential; it can challenge verbal political statements. In the thesis I work with and against Jacques Rancière’s interpretation of politics as re-distribution of the sensible and with Aletta Norval’s reading of Rancière’s conception of democracy as egalitarian inscription which I expand and read as egalitarian embodied inscription. I show that Rancière’s focus on politics as rupture disables the recognition inscription as continuity. I show that dance enables a reading of politics as both rupture and continuity, an intervention that leaves traces that endure after it ends. Through a genealogy of the concept of the Dionysian I show that philosophers and dance practitioners alike have read dance as both subversive and affirmative, an intervention and a system of inscription that acts independently of spoken discourse. I show that Isadora Duncan created the first political moment in modern dance as a re-distribution of the sensible; at the same time although she created egalitarian embodied inscription she did not leave a codified system of movement, and did not contradict her politics in spoken language. I show that Martha Graham created the second moment of re-distribution of the sensible in which she created a codified movement language that subverted politics in spoken words. Finally, I revisit Rancière’s work and bind his discussion of human rights with the problematic of the tension between rupture and continuity. I re-read both these arguments with my interpretation of dance as political and argue that it yields a reading of dance as enabling the creation of human rights claims. Dance is both subversive and affirmative.

This thesis explores the impact of type 2 diabetes among Indian and Pakistani migrants. Indians and Pakistanis living in the UK have a high incidence of type 2 diabetes and associated complications. Research is needed in order to understand factors that make it difficult to adhere to lifestyle advice about diet, exercise and medication. Drawing on data collected during a sixteen-month ethnographic investigation, this thesis explores Indians’ and Pakistanis’ perceptions of diabetes. The research revealed that Indians and Pakistanis related the onset of diabetes to processes of migration and settling in the UK as well as to stress and depression. In particular, holding on to negative thoughts and worries, were perceived by respondents as directly affecting the body by causing stress, depression and eventually illness. Struggles over diabetes control were also perceived as to cause distress. Specifically, respondents struggled to adhere to a healthy diet regime, since food, especially taste, played a crucial role in forming, reinforcing and demarcating social relations and in ensuring cultural continuity. In addition, respondents struggled to ‘adhere’ to their prescriptions of diabetes medications due to the uncomfortable side effects that they experienced, particularly in the stomach. Respondents, however, counteracted side effects by turning to alternative medications which were perceived to facilitate flow within the circulatory and digestive system. Thus, in spite of the difficulties that Indians and Pakistanis experienced in following biomedical recommendations for diabetes control, they still actively engaged in searching and using different treatments available to them in order to control the disease.