In spite of numerous international pledges to end hunger, progress has been slow in Sub-Saharan Africa. There is a large body of literature on the conceptualisation of food security, but there has been little empirical investigation of its contextual characteristics and root causes.

Despite the vast research covering the relationship between economic growth, poverty and inequality, little is known about national perspectives on pro-poor growth. The overall picture described by the literature on the topic almost unanimously highlights positive linkages produced by globalisation in terms of growth and poverty. This research recovers some of the proposals that due to lack of data did not go beyond the theoretical speculation. Our main concern is to put to the test the hypothesis that 'on average growth is good for the poor' for one country. The empirical approach followed consisted in a series of intermediate methodological steps: to clarify what is pro-poor growth, to build comparable panel from a series of national income and expenditure surveys, to measure poverty, to identify pro-poorness, and then to test the one-to-one hypothesis. They all in the end served one single purpose, to find out whether the income of the poor grows at the same pace than the average income. Our findings offer little support to orthodox views, and suggest that the elasticity of the income of the poor to the average income is about half a percentage point, and the extreme poor's is about a third. These findings have several implications at different levels: at theoretical level this research emphasises that the topic of pro-poor growth has several angles that need further exploration. At the empirical level, this research offers a methodological alternative to scrutinise the issue of growth and poverty at national level.

Epidemiological studies have documented a high prevalence of poor dietary habits and associated ill-health among low socioeconomic groups in the UK. Psychological research into health behaviours, including food choices, has been dominated by socio-cognitive approaches. However, these fail to take account of socio-cultural factors, and are limited in their capacity to attend to complexity and contradictions in food choices and feeding practices. Recently, research has begun to explore food and feeding as discursive phenomena. Discursive research can attend to the intricacies of everyday food choices, and sets out to privilege individual interpretations. This thesis builds upon such discursive work, examining the talk of low-income families surrounding their food choices, feeding and eating practices. Eighteen low income families, mothers (N = 18), fathers (N = 10) and children (aged 4-10) (N = 8), were interviewed in their homes. Participants were asked about their decision making around what to eat as a family and about their own dietary preferences. Discursive analysis was conducted to explicate the local, interactional functions of participant talk, namely the ways in which participants constructed and accounted for food and feeding decisions. Parents constructed their children's taste preferences and appetite in complex ways. These embodied states were attributed a range of causes by parents (e.g. physiological and behavioural). Each had implications for feeding decisions, such as when it was deemed appropriate for parents to feed a child food they disliked. The analysis also explored parents' conceptualisations of their own eating practices and how these were presented differently from their children's. Other key findings included a lack of orientation in participants' talk to healthy eating, and a privileging of other features relating to food, such as satiation. Implications are discussed in terms of everyday feeding and eating decisions, as well as the wider socio-cultural context (e.g. health campaigns). The current findings challenge the exacting frame of health messages, and suggest that there is a need to foster narrative space for participant values surrounding food and feeding.

This study discusses the effects of social tourism for low-income groups on personal and family development. it examines whether social tourism has wider benefits than just providing access to holidays to groups who would usually be excluded from tourism, and whether it could be seen as a potential measure against social exclusion. If social tourism can reduce social exclusion, it benefits not only the participants, but also has wider benefits for society. In several countries in mainland Europe, such as France, Belgium and Spain, social tourism for low-income groups is supported by public funding. This investment is usually supported by claims that social tourism can help excluded groups achieve greater inclusion through increased confidence, better family relations, greater independence and wider social networks. At present, these claims are rarely supported by research evidence: in academic tourism literature, social tourism for low-income groups is a little researched field. The aim of this study is thus to investigate whether social tourism can indeed reduce aspects of social exclusion, and have a beneficial effect on the holiday participants themselves, and through them, on society. If this is the case, the study will explore whether social tourism could be justified as a social policy. The study will start by defining the concept of social tourism, and categorise the different forms. Focusing on social tourism for low-income groups, it will then explore the potential ethical foundations of social tourism. It will be shown that for a number of ethical theories, social tourism for low-income groups can only be justified if there are benefits involved not only for the participants, but also wider benefits for society. Because these benefits could present themselves as a reduction of social exclusion, the concept of social exclusion is defined and the different views of the concept are presented. One of these views is potentially compatible with social tourism, on the condition that social holidays can reduce certain characteristics of excluded groups, that form the basis of their exclusion. It will then be argued that if social tourism can reduce these characteristics, it does so via a learning process. Two theories of leaming through experience will be examined, and strategies to maximise learning will be discussed: if social tourism is indeed a form of leaming, the benefits could be increased by maximising learning. These theoretical foundations formed the basis of the fieldwork for this study. In the fieldwork, a group of social tourism participants and their support workers was interviewed in two stages: a first round of interviews and focus groups were conducted in the first month after the holidays; a second round was carried out in the sixth month after the holidays. Participants in individual holidays and support workers were interviewed individually, participants in group holidays were interviewed together in a focus group. The aim of the two rounds was to examine the effects of social tourism in the short term, and in the longer term. The findings of the fieldwork examine the effects of social tourism for low-income groups, and investigate the conditions for successful social tourism provision (meaning holidays that maximise learning opportunities to reduce aspects of social exclusion). The findings indicate that social tourism for low-income groups generally has beneficial effects on the family development of the participants in the short and the long term. They also provide benefits for the personal development of participants, which are present in the short term and can develop further in the long term. In the long term, it is also shown that the holiday can act as a motivational factor in measurable behaviour change, resulting into a reduction of factors of social exclusion. It is found that an adequate level of support both during and after the holiday is an important condition for successful social holidays. This study concludes by exploring if social tourism could be justified as a part of social policy. The costs of social holidays will be compared to other social measures with similar aims and outcomes. Social tourism for low-income groups will be presented as potential cost-effective strategies to counter certain aspects social exclusion.

Kenyan informal settlements have been thoroughly depicted by previous researchers as biophysical, epidemiological, and economic risk environments in which food insecurity is recognised as one of the most persistent everyday challenges. Although unemployment and illness are key contributors to the inability to purchase sufficient food, the reasons why households experience food insecurity are more complicated and not fully understood. Part of the problem is that few previous studies have privileged socio-political contributions (e.g. gender-based power inequalities and the impacts of social networks) to household food security risk. Whilst food security researchers commonly utilise the concept of vulnerability to address household-scale risk, this concept is rarely applied to interpersonal dynamics within households. Using data gathered through participant observation, questionnaires, and 109 in-depth interviews with 67 participants, this thesis provides an ethnographic account of household food insecurity in an informal settlement which addresses three primary questions: (1) In what ways might interpersonal relationships within households contribute social and political obstacles to achieving food security? For instance, how and why might risk for food insecurity emerge from experiences of interpersonal conflict? (2) What role do extra-household social networks play in experiences of food security within households? (3) How useful is the concept of vulnerability for addressing experiences of risk which are negotiated between household members? In the informal settlement of 'Bangladesh', Mombasa, Kenya, conflict within domestic, especially conjugal, relationships represents a potential source of risk to food security for individual members or entire households. Contributing to this conflict are gender inequality, power differentials, the failure to meet marital expectations, and how people respond when presente with risk. Resulting experiences of food insecurity are shown to contribute to further conflict in the household, thereby creating a cycle of conflict and food insecurity. Those who find that they have insufficient food at home may receive assistance (food or money) from members of their social networks. However, these relationships may also contribute to experiences of conflict, and therefore insecurity, within households. Applying concepts of vulnerabilty to account for experiences of risk and their consequences (food insecurity) requires differentiating between what represents a hazard, a response, and an outcome. Within multi-person households, it is exceedingly difficult to divide lived experiences involving interpersonal conflict among these three categories. Thus, I argue that vulnerability is less useful for research concerning intra-household dynamics than it is for studies which assume households to be undifferentiated units.

The dissertation is a compilation of three essays on Turkey's poverty alleviation programs. The first paper focuses on the welfare impact of the global financial Crisis on Turkish households. The second paper considers the protective impact of the Green Card non-contributory health insurance program in Turkey during the Crisis in 2008-2009. The third paper uses experimental data from the field in eastern Turkey, to look at patterns of agricultural technology diffusion in a rural development program implemented in a post-conflict setting.