This thesis explores the period of prominence experienced by wigs and wig wearing in England from the late seventeenth to the latter decades of the eighteenth century. Its primary focus is the ‘raw material’ from which wigs were made: human hair. Being produced from a part of the body placed wigs in a unique position as fashionable items. The act of ‘making’ a wig entailed taking a natural entity growing on the head, and turning it into an intrinsically unnatural artefact. ‘Wearing’ a wig meant for the wearer to invest time in shaving or cutting his own hair. Questions about why this became such an important and fashionable practice are explored here by starting with the hair itself, a topic not generally considered by the extensive literature on eighteenth-century wigs and wig-wearing. My thesis highlights the diverse functions a wig could fulfil, by presenting hair in the context of eighteenth-century understanding of medicine and the body. These functions included protecting the wearer from the elements and potential contagion, projecting a more healthy or youthful appearance, and marking status or profession. This thesis considers how hair - as part of the body - became a highly desirable commodity, and the moral and physical implications this entailed. The physicality of the raw material affected those who traded in human hair and made a living out of producing wigs, as well as those who wore wigs that defined their public image. This thesis challenges existing work, which has tended to focus on gender and dress, by emphasising the connection of hair to the body and how this was translated into the conspicuous fashion for wigs.

In recent decades, many Chinese have experienced changes in their eating as a result of a shift from food shortages to an expansion of food markets. Many urban Chinese make choices from a variety of food, and food safety incidents frequently reported in the media have raised consumer concerns with food quality and the potential effects of foods on human health. Meanwhile, some urban dwellers worry about overweight, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, and other health threats as a result of, for example, diets that are high in fats and sugar. Some studies have examined how consumers respond to food-related anxieties in China. These studies have suggested that they may change their eating or shopping patterns and rely on external indicators such as, brands and vendor types. A number of these studies are based on quantitative calculations of patterns of participants’ behaviours or perceptions. However, they pay little attention to how ordinary people experience and deal with food-related anxieties. Moreover, individuals seem to be passive and dependent on institutional efforts to control food-related anxieties. With the use of interview and participant observation data, this research analyses how participants deal with the food-related anxieties they experience in everyday life through their daily food and eating practices. The research demonstrates participants’ activity to deal with their food safety and health concerns in light of Mauss’s (1973) concept of ‘body techniques’, and de Certeau’s (1984) discussion of ‘strategies’ and ‘tactics’. By drawing on Mauss’s (1973) concept, the study offers an understanding of food-related anxieties and the practice of home cooking to deal with those anxieties through the perspective of embodiment. My research also challenges the existing literature which suggests ordinary people are passive and subject to institutional strategies to deal with food-related anxieties. With reference to Mauss (1973) and de Certeau (1984), participants have agency to respond to food safety and health concerns according to their acquired eating habits and the social circumstances to which they belong. The findings suggest that participants tactically use embodied knowledge and techniques of home cooking transmitted across generations to deal with food safety and health concerns in contemporary China.

The research at hand investigates how home is performed through foodscapes by focusing on the Turkish speaking communities in London. It is based on the premises that food has a strong connection to not just where home is, but how it manifests itself at different scales and registers of food activities in the ‘here and now’ of so-called migrant communities. Home is therefore taken as an act of dwelling that is both constitutive of and constituted by the specificities of the site of habitation. Based on Ingold’s conceptualisation of dwelling perspective, the research argues that the migrant skills deployed around food are trained and practiced in response to the environment of habitation (1993, 2000) as opposed to being imported as innate skills from the country of origin. Explored through the acts of eating, cooking, serving, sharing, celebrating and talking about food puissantly problematises the frameworks of host & guest migrants and home & host nations. Reflecting upon the constitution of home through food therefore has a double function: it liberates migrant homes from the geographical dominance of a past country where they are from and at the same time recognises the site-specific manifestations of their skills “within the current of their involved activity, in the specific relational contexts of their practical engagement with their surroundings” (Ingold 2000, p. 186). The economic, social, cultural and affective mobilisations of the members of Turkish Speaking Community in London display the dynamism and heterogeneity that is inherent to both food and home. The variety of the ways in which the ethnically and linguistically diverse members of this vaguely framed group relate to themselves, to each other, to the city and to the larger discourses of community and nation are explored in this research through performative and multi-sited ethnographic tools. From shopping together with the participants for the dinner ingredients to formal interview settings, from cooking along to temporarily managing an eating out establishment, practicing with and within the contexts of the participants contributed to the knowledge formation for this research. Three interrelated yet distinct foodscape clusters emerged out of this research: Restaurants, British Kebab Awards and the households. The term foodscape here aims at encapsulating the multiscalar, interconnected, always in-the-making and at times inconsistent practices and discourses that emerge in each of these sites. Even though all ethnographic encounters took place in London, in a seemingly singular site, the research gained a multi-sited character due to the different power dynamics, ethnographic requirements, and different imaginaries offered by each of these clusters. These three registers, in their heterogeneity, show that home, looked especially through the lens of food, appears to be re-creative, generative, tactical, site-specific, and multifold series of dwelling acts, rather than being the geographical elsewhere of a migrant. By means of food, the migrant becomes the skillful dweller, and London becomes home.

This thesis is an empirical study of the sociability and the public sphere in the Festival of the Fallas of Valencia (Mediterranean Spain). It argues (a) that festive traditions are not necessarily opposed to modernity but may be successfully interwoven with present-day experience, (b) that festive traditions have a 'festive sociability' which is 'reflexive' and (c) that this reflexivity generates a distinctive public sphere. Extensive interviews, participant observation and involvement in the work of several Fallas show that they are community associations which permanently deploy festive sociability in preparing an annual Festivity which reaches its climax between the 15th and 19th of March. These communities are widespread throughout the Valencian Region and beyond. There are 750 associations which, in the City of Valencia alone, have more than 100,000 members. Their main objective is to construct the gigantic satirical and artistic monuments which are burned on the night of the 19th of March in celebration of St. Joseph's Day. A network of close families and groups of friends are the main agents of the festive tradition of the Fallas; and the core mechanisms for transmitting it across space and time are play, humour, comensalism and 'festive work'. The tradition is flexible enough to link its permanent festive sociability with modem institutions such as schools or the City Council and rich enough to include modem economics, administration and voluntary associationalism in its community based action. This festive sociability makes selective use of forms of modem, critical reflexivity which feed into its corresponding public sphere, thereby preserving and modernising a form of European popular culture heavily influenced by Carnival. Fallas' sociable debates, their reflexive relation with the mass media, their satirical and critical parades with fancy dress and their satirical, artistic and ephemeral monuments are the centre of this public sphere. It incorporates modern experiences into a tradition which structures its social criticism in terms of myths and the symbols of the grotesque body.

The objective of any regulation is to realise the goal(s) that justified its intervention. One means of demonstrating this is to determine the extent of regulatory compliance. This study intended to determine the extent of regulatory compliance with the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 (Licensing of skin piercing and tattooing) Order 2006 in Scotland's tattooing and cosmetic body piercing industry. Implemented in Scotland in 2006, its aim was to minimise risk to health from skin piercing and tattooing. Philosophically underpinned by pragmatism, a concurrent mixed methods study was undertaken. All 220 practitioners and 78 enforcers engaging with this regulation across Scotland were invited to participate. Through analysis and interpretation of data from semi-structured questionnaires (n=107, 36%), qualitative focused interviews (n=35) and non-participant observations (n=8), users' experiences of regulatory implementation were explored and explained, to more fully understand regulatory compliance. Integrative analysis and interpretation of this study's mixed methods data determined neither substantive compliance (compliance with the collective goals of regulation) nor rule compliance (compliance with the regulatory standards) had been achieved following implementation of this new regulation. The existence of a significant level of shared activity between practitioners and enforcers during regulatory implementation was however established, where partnership working had derived from the ‘specialist' nature of industry practice. Consequently, it was deduced that ‘compliance' (defined in this context as ‘doing what was asked to conform to the law') poorly reflected the events of regulatory implementation. Instead, ‘concordance' has been discerned as the primary activity. The concept of concordance as ‘working towards agreement' more accurately depicted the experiences of practitioners and enforcers during the process of regulatory implementation. Subsequently, the extent of ‘concordance' was determined: The divergent attitudes/ experiences on the consistency of regulatory implementation and its ability to achieve its aim, coupled with the ambiguous understanding of ‘risk to health' and converse working perspectives of practitioners and enforcers led to the conclusion that goal concordance (agreement on the collective goal(s) of the regulation) had not been achieved. On the other hand, despite evidence of apparent inadequacies and omissions in industry practices, practitioner and enforcer confidence in industry infection control practices led to the conclusion that rule concordance (agreement on the regulatory standards to be met) had been achieved. From these collective findings, a ‘Specialist Industry Concordance-Compliance Model' was developed to explain the achievements of practitioners and enforcers as a result of implementing new regulation/ meeting regulatory requirements within a specialist industry. Complementing rather than conflicting with existing literature, this study offers ‘concordance' as an alternative and/or intermediate output of regulatory implementation, explaining the process by which practitioners and enforcers implement new regulation/meet regulatory requirements within a specialist industry. Moreover, the study findings provide a framework to support better understanding of the potential output from implementation, monitoring and review of regulatory interventions, frequently associated with sub-optimal compliance. In turn, through combined understanding of concordance and compliance, the design of good regulation can be promoted, thereby facilitating maximum reduction in risk/ risk to health through regulatory intervention.

In early modern England, the ‘banquet’ was a distinct meal type consisted solely of confectionery and fruit, accompanied by alcoholic distilled waters and wine. This dining practice has thus far received little scholarly attention, and this thesis provides the first full study of the sweet banquet. It takes account of a wide range of primary sources, including visual and material culture, architecture, household papers, inventories and literature in tracing the development of the banquet at court and its dissemination to the nobility, gentry and ‘middling’ sorts. That the practice of banqueting was ubiquitous at this time is a major new finding. The banquet is revealed to have fulfilled a range of well-defined social functions. An important element of court ceremony under both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, it expressed contemporary ideas about kingship and articulated England’s place on a European stage. From the mid sixteenth century, the banquet is shown to have been central to elite sociability beyond the court. It was an important indicator of group membership, and a key site for relationship building and the demonstration of social status. Close attention to primary sources reveals that the banquet was intended as a recreation of the ancient symposium, a new finding which undermines the widely held assumption that Tudor visual culture did not engage with the continental renaissance. Finally the gendered nature of the banquet is considered in relation to feminist theory. This sheds new light on the relationship between public and private in early modern England, the gendered nature of space within the country house, and the extent to which feminine agency was possible in a patriarchal society. Overall, this study of the banquet is indicative of the value of studying ephemeral cultural practices, and the wide range of insights that this can generate.

This study examines the archaeological reflections of group identity and socio-economic networks in the region of Essex and London in the Anglo-Saxon period, between c.400 and 1066. Given its location in the south-east of England, Essex was a key zone of socio-political interaction during the early medieval period. This doctoral research has brought together the stray and excavated archaeological material from the region for the first time. The thesis presented here is centred on diachronic, quantified distributional analyses of three key material culture classes: dress accessories, pottery, and coinage. The discussion synthesises the results of these analyses, examining the observed patterns within their broader archaeological context. The thesis reveals the emergence of a hybrid dress style in the 5th and 6th centuries. This appears to have been actively created in Essex to reflect a diverse cultural inheritance, but not a specific ethnic identity. However, from the mid-7th century these styles were rejected in favour of dynamic fashions, reflecting the maritime focus of the region, and especially links with the Merovingian/Carolingian Continent. From the later 9th century, Scandinavian dress and cultural practice are also apparent, particularly in north Essex This Continental orientation reflects the emergence and transformation of the North Sea network. The engagement of Essex communities with this network is studied in detail in this thesis. The coinage and pottery analyses reveal the emergence of several exchange hubs along the North Sea coast, as well as a generalized engagement with long-distance exchange among coastal communities. This system was disrupted, but not destroyed, by the Vikings, who linked Essex with wider Scandinavian networks. However, the long-term pattern shows the decline of coastal sites in favour of urban centres from the later 9th century.

This thesis provides the first sustained study of the material culture of dining among the gentry and ‘middling sort’ in early modern England. It focuses on the religious and ritual significance of the shared dining experience, interrogating the role objects played in engendering domestic commensality. The project establishes that through their material properties and ritualized uses, objects such as salt-cellars, eating utensils and banqueting trenchers, were essential instruments in the construction and communication of personal and social identities. I argue that developments in the material paraphernalia of dining functioned to create a sense of continuity and community during this period of profound religious and social change. Chapter One applies the anthropological theory of ‘distributed personhood’ to salt-cellars, offering new insights into why salts were considered particularly effective objects for conveying identity. Chapter Two draws connections between eating utensils and significant moments in the life cycle and argues that utensils could have strong ‘personal’ associations, which commemorated essential rites of passage and functioned as perpetual reminders of familial ties. Chapter Three investigates banqueting trenchers as tools for sociability and collective spiritual contemplation and examines how their visual and material qualities required a specific ‘performance’ from diners. As a whole, the thesis provides a framework for interpreting a neglected body of historical artefacts and it contributes new knowledge about how specific types of crafted objects communicated identity within the context of ritualized social activities.

This thesis is about popular rejoicing and public ritual in Norwich and Coventry from the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 to the Reform of the Municipal Corporations in 1835. It is distinctive in at least two ways; first in its attention to the local context, and second in its examination of public festivity as a separate, but not an isolated, cultural form. Previous studies of the subject have generally looked at rejoicing and ritual as but one strand of a larger, fairly amorphous, popular culture and done so on a national or even a continental level. The study is divided into three parts. The first is largely descriptive; an account of the festive events, whether on the annual holiday calendar or not, which took place in Norwich and Coventry at or about 1750. This not only sets the scene for the analysis which follows, it also indicates the extent to which rejoicing and ritual was subject to social, political and economic change. That this was so will become clear in the second part of this study which identifies the three major developments to affect the conduct of and attitudes to public festivity at Norwich and Coventry in this period; commercialisation, political change and the divergence of polite and plebeian cultures. The extent to which the impact of these developments varied between the two cities is also explored in this section, as it is in part three of the thesis which is made of two case studies, one of the Norwich Guild and the other of the Coventry Show Fair. The very different form and fortune of these two events will be seen to confirm the importance of studying rejoicing and ritual in relation to the most immediate context in which it was performed.

The taste for fish in England and the British Isles as a whole has fluctuated on several occasions and understanding the reasons behind these changes is vital, especially in light of the great importance fish held in later medieval diet and society. The beginnings of marine fishing have usually been thought to lie in the late Anglo-Saxon period and are believed to lie with economic changes. Indeed, most studies of fish in archaeology have centred around economic approaches. However it is extremely unlikely for economics to have been the sole reason. This thesis will attempt to fill in the gap currently extant in early medieval fish studies by taking a multidisciplinary approach to exploring the character of fishing and fish consumption in Anglo-Saxon England. Zooarchaeological data alongside isotope evidence, artefactual, structural and textual will be considered together to explore not just economic but also social factors, in effect, exploring the dynamics of fishing and fish consumption. This multidisciplinary approach will also hopefully highlight the fact that fish cannot just be studied in isolation; to gain a full understanding of the implications freshwater and marine fishing will have on communities and society as a whole all aspects of fishing must be considered.