Using people actively involved in mountain climbing, this thesis explores people's motivations to participate in mountain climbing, an activity frequently characterised in terms of risk. Moreover, using a variety of both quantitative and qualitative methods the assessment of the role of risk as a motivation for mountain climbing is central to the thesis. The first study (N = 232) employed a theory of planned behaviour framework that incorporated beliefs about risk, together with other behavioural beliefs, as a means to investigate the motivations of mountain climbers. Although risk emerged as significant positive predictor of attitudes towards mountain climbing, it was the weakest of the four predictor variables. Study Two (N = 207) presents a psychometric analysis which mapped perceptions of eight types of climbing onto a three component (Challenge, Risk, and Enjoyment) representation of the characteristics associated with mountain climbing. The position of each type of climbing revealed some clear differences between these types in relation to each of the three dimensions. The results presented provide a useful insight into which particular types of climbing should be studied further to build upon the current understanding of the role and importance of risk to participation in mountain climbing. Study Three (N = 205) used a laddering methodology in order to identify the hierarchical relationship between motives reported by climbers who participate in three types of climbing. Individual cognitive maps were created for each type of mountain climbing. Inspection of both the cognitive maps and indices designed to reflect the importance of individual motives seem to suggest that the importance of risk to people's participation may be less than originally thought. Study Four (N = 37) was an on-line qualitative study which addressed mountain climbers‟ views concerning the popular yet controversial opinion that climbers are motivated by risk. Overall, risk appeared to acquire motivational status as a result of its instrumental relationship with other factors explicitly labelled as motivations for mountain climbing. Together, these findings suggest that, while risk occupies an important position within people's motivations to participate in mountain climbing, it is not risk per se that is key to people‟s participation. Moreover, the results presented hint at risk acting as a facilitator, something necessary to the fulfilment of other important motivations for mountain climbing.

Underpinned by Bandura’s social-cognitive theory (SCT), this thesis examined the perceptions of physical activity (PA) in healthy and unhealthy older adults, and examined imagery as a potential strategy to promote PA. Focus groups with healthy older adults (Chapter 2) and those diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (Chapter 3) examined how PA is incorporated into daily living, and the unique barriers and enablers of PA in older adults. The subsequent chapters focus on the role of imagery as a strategy to increase PA. Using the revised applied model of deliberate imagery use as a framework, Chapter 4 explored where, when, what, and why older adults image PA. Based on Chapter 2 and 3’s finding that older adults use a range of imagery types and functions, and the importance of self-regulation, Chapter 5 investigated how self-regulatory imagery (i.e., images of goals and planning) related with social-cognitive variables, enjoyment, and PA. Overall, the thesis recognises the importance of SCT in explaining the unique challenges older adults face in relation to PA while accounting for contextual factors including PA level, disease severity, and employment status. The thesis also demonstrates imagery as a potential strategy for promoting PA in older adults.

This thesis presents a sociological analysis of the organisation and significance of thoroughbred horse-racing in Britain. It focuses on both the internal world of racing and the relationship between racing and the wider society. It argues that such an approach is necessary for an appreciation of the full meaning of horse-racing as a social institution. The study finds two major points of articulation between racing and wider social processes: first in terms of the role of racing in elite sociability and structuration; and second in terms of its location in working class culture, particularly as it is mediated through the working class betting tradition. The precise linkages, continuities and changes within these areas are explored in order both to amplify and qualify the conventional observation of a coalescence of interests in racing between otherwise sharply differentiated social strata. The analysis points to the conclusion that while the symbolic legacy of this observation may be strong, the evidence for this symmetry and its pervasiveness is now more tenuous and its implications for the general process of class identification heavily circumscribed. The analysis of the discrete world of horse-racing concentrates first upon the social production of the racehorse as reflected through the position of the stable worker. Evidence is presented which both casts doubt on received images of this process and indicates some erosion of the distinctive cultural output of racing which has customarily attracted a benign curiosity in outsiders. Secondly, attention is focused on developments in the control and administration of racing. In particular, the emergent role of the state in this process is shown to have reverberated through both the production and regulatory sectors of the industry, provoking a profound dislocation in the exercise of power. Such intervention is also demonstrated to have reacted upon the production and consumption of betting, precisely the activity which provided the original rationale for intervention in racing. While there are important elements of continuity in the organisation of racing, the thesis expresses the view that racing has passed over a watershed in the last two decades which in time may prove to have eroded its distinctive contribution to British society.

This thesis draws from a bi-national comparative study on the importance of ‘winning’ within university sport in England and the United States, in two institutions, University College Worcester (UCW) and the British University Sport Association (BUSA) in England and Northwest Nazarene University (NNU) and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States. The thesis focuses on perceptions and attitudes related to the ‘amateur’ – ‘commercial’ ethos of winning, specifically of administrative personnel, coaches and athletes within these systems. In order to provide a contextual setting, the socio-historical development of sport culture generally and in universities in particular was examined in both countries. This context also provided an informed rationale for ‘participants’ perceptions and attitudes selected for this study. A multi-method approach for data collection was utilised comprising questionnaire and interview instruments supported by a comprehensive underpinning literature review including participant observation and analysis of primary and secondary documentation in a comparative dimension. The study’s findings suggest that the extent of the importance of winning within university sport in England and the United States is influenced by a range of shaping factors. BUSA’s central goal emanates from an ‘amateur’ approach that includes features such as ‘mass-participation’ and recreational enjoyment for the student-athletes participating. The NCAA is a business-run organisation that operates on financial budgets into the millions. Inter-collegiate sport serves as a major form of entertainment in American society, with ‘commercial’ pressures driving a ‘winning’ attitude on all levels. However, the empirical evidence and participant observations do suggest an emerging blurring of perceptions, especially amongst the athlete groups at both UCW and NNU. The evidence reveals features, which challenge accepted orthodoxy on the nature and extent of the ‘amateur’ – ‘commercial’ ethos continuum in both university systems.

This thesis provides a critical account of contemporary female sports films. The research presented here is interdisciplinary in nature as it is situated in relation to (feminist) discourses around women and/in sport as well as women and/in cinema. Taking into account the embodied, discursive and psychic dimensions of identity and subjectivity, I investigate the ‘troubling’ implications of female athleticism within cinematic representation. Focusing on fictional, feature-length films, I provide insight as to the wider generic contexts in which depictions of female athleticism take place (i.e., the (male) sports film, the action cinema, melodrama and the musical). I explore the kinds of (heroic) narratives constructed around athletic female protagonists as well as the significance of the display of athletic female bodies ‘in action’. This allows me to provide insights as to the identities and subject positions (re-)constituted and privileged by these films. I additionally discuss the ways in which depictions of the athletic female body and its active physicality complicate (conceptualisations of) cinematic spectatorship. The film analyses are underpinned by a concern about female spectatorship in particular – about the relationship between the female spectator and the athletic female bodies on screen – and about the pleasures and anxieties cinematic depictions of female athleticism might provide.

This thesis explores the performative enactment of identity and embodiment through an online ethnography of the online game Final Fantasy XIV. It is argued that online identity must be viewed as performative, that is, enacted through speech and action, and embodied via the avatar, which acts as a body project for the player. The avatar identity is also constrained by the notion of authentic identity, which denotes how a single body is expected to hold a single identity. The thesis makes contributions to three areas. Firstly, in substantive terms, the thesis contributes original sociological knowledge of online social interaction, drawn from an online game and its related spaces, which remain under-researched sociologically. Secondly, the thesis makes a theoretical contribution through a theoretical framing of how online, embodied identity is achieved in an online game in a performative fashion, which is centred on the body of the avatar, coupled with the speech and actions of the player. Finally, the thesis also offers a methodological contribution through its original use of photo elicitation in online interviews, and furthers the debates around (online) ethnography. An 11 month programme of fieldwork was undertaken, comprising 36 asynchronous, image elicitation interviews, extensive participant observation of the game over the 11 months, and observation of the official forum lasting nearly six months. The thesis concludes that online identity and embodiment in these spaces are heavily constrained by norms drawn from everyday life, such as heteronormativity, and racism. The game design is also influenced by the developers‟ norms and values, such as the avatar appearance. The possibilities for performative identity and embodiment are severely constrained by the community, who reify the game space as separate from “real” life and reject the inclusion of non-normative avatars.

This thesis examines the factors which influenced how social issue story lines were developed in the areas of sexual violence, breast cancer and mental distress in British soap opera in the mid to late 1990's. The soap opera production process was examined by conducting interviews with members of production teams from different programmes. This core study was contextualised by additional interviews with production personnel working in other areas of television (e.g. documentary). Spokespeople from different organisations who consulted on story lines or lobbied around different issues were also interviewed. In total, 64 interviews were conducted. The influence of soap story lines on public understandings of an issue was explored in an audience reception study of sexual violence in Brookside (12 focus groups). The soap opera production study identified a number of factors which influence story line development (socio - cultural positioning of the substantive topic, broadcast hierarchy and commercial imperatives). The comparative study of mental distress identified some cross genre constraints (narrative pace, commercial imperatives) and some genre specific issues (access to people with mental health problems). The audience study revealed that people bring their social knowledge of an issue to their viewing experience. Research participants 'read' the meanings of Brookside's story line in remarkably uniform ways however some participants responded differently to certain elements of the story (rejecting empathy with the 'collusive' mother). The story line was demonstrated to have made a lasting impact on Brookside viewers (in relation to the conflicting emotions of the abused child). There were also identifiable links between the intentions of the production team, the nature of representation and audiences responses.

In the global marketplace of the twenty-first century a proliferation of festivals, or festivalisation, has produced an increasingly pressurised and politicized environment for international arts festivals. Through a case study of the Edinburgh International Festival the thesis explores what strategies the Festival is adopting to maintain its lead position in this increasingly competitive international landscape. It examines recent cultural policy development in Scotland and the UK exploring how creative industry theory promotes the argument for ‘investment’ in cultural festivals as economic drivers and city or region profile boosters. Edinburgh’s cultural policy is to brand itself the Festival City and it has supported the establishment of a number of competing festivals in the city. The case study investigates how the Edinburgh International Festival is managing a range of new initiatives at a time of rapid political change in Scotland. These include: exploiting changing technology to assist marketing and audience development; establishing partnerships and collaborations with a growing range of non-cultural public and private bodies, and cultural diplomacy – the development of international initiatives on behalf of the Scottish and UK Governments. The case study also explores a unique model of co-opetition which has developed between the Edinburgh International Festival and rival festivals, producing new strategic cultural organizations. The thesis establishes how current cultural policies in Scotland and the UK require international arts festivals to engage in non-cultural roles in order to create profile and advantage for themselves and their stakeholders in addition to fulfilling their cultural remit and in an environment of dwindling public and private sector support. In conclusion, it considers the opportunities and risks for arts organizations of an instrumental approach to cultural policy.

The thesis takes as its subject the development of cultural forms and institutions, exploring constraints on the exercise of choice in the use of non-work time in an evolving capitalist society. By means of a local study, it aims to describe relationships between aspects of popular recreation, especially those involving working class participation, and to relate these to economic and political circumstances. The study focuses upon individuals and organisations providing facilities and creating institutions in which non-work time was spent outside the home. The body of the thesis consists of discrete but interrelated studies of themes in the development of recreation in Leicester. These concern the relationship between recreation and the workplace (ch.1), the role of religious organisations as providers and critics of recreational activities (ch.2), initiatives by the municipal authorities (ch.3) and licensing magistrates (ch.4), the bases of commercial provision in the drink trade, theatre and sport (chs.4-6) and the engagement of the labour movement (ch.7). The thesis is written from a critical standpoint which acknowledges as fundamental to the understanding of 19th century recreation the uneven distribution of free time, power and money within capitalist society. But while social control and hegemony are exploited as pointers to appropriate areas of study, they are found wanting as explanations of complex historical reality. In its empirical conclusions, the study confirms the significance of relationships between work and culture, identifying ways in which the economic development of Leicester constrained recreational provision. Commercial agencies are shown to have been relatively weak during much of the period whereas municipal and religious organisations were of considerable importance from the 1860s until the end of the period of study.

The popular perception of the years 1945 to 1960 is that they constituted a transitional period from austerity to affluence. Material gains in the post-war years gradually increased, enhanced by full-employment, the establishment of the welfare state and a growing quantity of consumer goods. At first glance, it seems that working-class people's nonmaterial life, too, greatly changed. 'Traditional' leisure such as cinema-, pub- and football-going declined, replaced by more consumption-oriented, home- and family-centred leisure, such as television watching, do-it-yourself and pleasure motoring. Critics have seen this was symptomatic of the erosion of 'traditional' working-class-life styles, underlined by more communal and solidaristic social relationships. A close examination of post-war leisure in two workingclass towns questions the above dichotomy, and shows the significant continuity and diversity of people's leisure patterns. These were often deeply divided according to gender, age, life-stage and locality. Despite the rapidly changing trends of commercial leisure, and the increased intervention of the public sector in social life, the selfdetermined nature of working-class leisure does not seem to have been eroded. On the contrary, the general affluence of post-war Britain seems to have contributed in a modest way to increased leisure opportunities in which people could express their personal and social identity with less hesitation than before.