‘Mourning Identities: Hillsborough, Diana and the Production of Meaning’ explores the meaning-making processes which contributed to the widespread public mourning that followed the Hillsborough stadium disaster of 1989 and the death of Princess Diana in 1997. It does so by the textual analysis of a sample of the public condolence books signed following these events and by drawing upon autobiographical stories related to each of them produced using the method known as ‘memory work’. Drawing upon a variety of theoretical frameworks, including psychoanalytic, poststructuralist and Bakhtinian influenced dialogics, it suggests that a range of social identities were ‘hailed’ and discursively mobilised in the public mourning events that followed the Hillsborough disaster and the death of Princess Diana. It further suggests that identification is an indispensable and precursory aspect of public mourning, which is summoned and given shape by epistolary and narrative practices of the self. Public mourning of the sort considered here is theorised along two principal lines: the iconic and the totemic. The former, it is argued, can be seen to relate to the largely feminine global structures of feeling through which the public mourning for Princess Diana were articulated, whilst the latter can be seen to relate to the largely masculine local structures of feeling through which the public mourning following the Hillsborough disaster were configured. In turn, it suggests that aspects of resistance to the public mourning following each of the events considered as case studies here can in themselves be considered as aspects of mourning, albeit for something other than the obvious referents of loss during these events. It further points to the situated social identity of the researcher as both instrumental not only to the motivation for, but to the outcomes of social research.

This study investigates the role of gender and, within that, class in changing English dining styles in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The period c.1750-1900 has been chosen to cover a major period for dining change, as it is during this time that service à la Russe superseded service à la Française as the dominant formal dining style. This change has been much discussed by food historians and sociologists, but the materiality of change has not hitherto been placed within an archaeologically-informed framework. Equally, while the artefacts of dining are among the most frequently recorded finds in domestic contexts in the historical period, archaeologists have rarely considered them in the context of long-term dining development. Drawing on data from country houses, collections, and published material on middle class and elite settings, this thesis investigates the hypothesis that dining change was driven by women, specifically middle class wives; and that dining-related ephemera must therefore be understood in its relationship with women. It also proposes a narrative of stylistic change using historical archaeological paradigms, introducing the concept of a third, clearly identifiable stage between à la Française and à la Russe. After introducing the data sets and giving a background to dining in the historical period, the first part of the study uses table plans and etiquette, together with depictions of dishes, food moulds and experimental archaeology in the form of historic cookery, to demonstrate the way in which the process of change was driven by middle class women. It argues that à la Russe suited gender and class-specific needs and that, far from being emulative, as has hitherto been assumed, the adaption of à la Russe broke with aristocratic habits. It proposes that a transitional stage in dining style should be recognised, and interprets food design and serving style in the light of this intermediate phase. The setting of dining is explored next, with data on dining décor, plates and physical location interpreted to support the conclusions of the previous section. Following this, the impact of change on food preparation will be used to demonstrate that à la Russe was the result of changes in underlying mentalities which also affected household structure and organisation. The ways women used the materiality of food, including cookbooks, to negotiate status will be demonstrated. A final section will broaden the discussion of gender, class and food. Tea has been chosen as a case study for the further testing of the conclusions drawn from the study of dinner for two reasons: firstly it was, from its introduction, immediately associated with women; and, secondly, tea-related artefacts are among the commonest of archaeological finds, but are rarely understood as engendered and active objects in a domestic context.

Ten experiments examined the way that automatic processing of the visual perspectives and eye gaze of others affects adults‘ perception and encoding of the social world. I investigated the amount of flexibility that automatic visual perspective computation accommodates. Experiments 1, 2, and 3 demonstrate that automatic visual perspective-computation shows some flexibility for enumerating and representing perspective contents. Experiments 4 and 5 further indicate that automatic visual perspective-taking allows selection of relevant perspective information. I also examined whether observing others‘ eye gaze affects adults‘ visual working memory encoding. Experiments 6, 7, and 8 indicate that agents‘ object-oriented gaze does not lead to more efficient encoding of agent and object information. Experiments 9 and 10 demonstrate that observing others‘ participant-oriented gaze disrupts visual working memory encoding. I argue that although adults have minimal conscious control over the activation of visual perspective-computation and processing of participantoriented gaze, the efficient mindreading system shows some flexibility.

In this thesis I develop a psychosocial approach to prejudice and discrimination among the Mexican-origin population in the U.S. state of Arizona. I argue that although the Mexican-origin population has been oppressed and discriminated against by the dominant white population for centuries, this minority group has its own history of intra-group prejudice and discrimination. Moreover, I argue that the attitudes and behaviours of Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans, and the interactions between them, are influenced by three main elements: 1) structural factors (such as exploitation and inequality); 2) dominant ideologies (such as colonisation and white supremacy/superiority) and; 3) cultural commonalities between Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans (in particular, the Spanish language). Within this context, I employed approximately thirty free association narrative interviews, notes based on ethnographic and participant observations, amongst other data sources (such as newspaper articles and informal interviews), to reveal much about the unconscious dynamics and processes under which Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans interact. In the first half of the thesis I describe the social and political context of Arizona, which includes the history of the Mexican-origin population in that state as well as the implementation of the anti-immigration law, Senate Bill 1070 and its effects on the Mexican-origin population. In addition to this, I describe the methodology I used to conduct this research (participants, types of interviews and analysis of the collected data). In the second half of the thesis, I analyse prejudice and discrimination coming from ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ the Mexican-origin population with the use of psychoanalytic (Freud, Klein, Dalal), sociological (Douglas, Jimenez, Clarke) and post-colonial theories (Fanon, Memmi, Bhabha). In conclusion, I argue that the phenomenon of prejudice and discrimination among Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans in Arizona cannot be reduced to psychological nor sociological explanations but that it needs to be addressed and approached by several disciplines.