‘Apocalyptic’ theories of the social, from different theoretical schools of thought, declare that diverse social, cultural, economic or technological changes have impacted negatively on contemporary social life to the extent that the social is reduced, minimised or is even ended. In particular, macro-historical changes have had consequences for the regions in which actors communicate, interact and socially construct. These pronouncements are concurrent with some lack of confidence in social theory itself. While accepting that the characteristics of modernity have substantially altered since the nineteenth century, this thesis argues that inadequate attention has been given to the way in which its consequences for ‘sociation’ have been conceptualised. Three schools of apocalyptic thought are identified and discussed: ‘dislocation’ theorists (Habermas, Giddens and Bauman); social constructionists (Berger, Berger and Kellner) and cultural absorptionists (Baudrillard, Lash and Urry). In each case the consequences of change have been registered to effects and experiences in the ‘ground of social activity’: i.e. reciprocity, mutuality and situated exchange show more ironic distance, insincerity, moral expropriation, ambivalence, alienation, simulation and dissimulation. This thesis argues that our understanding of this ground of social activity, based on a simplistic model of reflexivity and skill, is not at a detailed enough level of analytic resolution to warrant these claims. However, in identifying flaws in the development of apocalyptic claims, a more sustainable account is produced, ‘the zone of social making’. Based on a return to the work of Weber and Schutz, the new account suggests that the symptoms of late modern life are better viewed as chronic features of sociation, constitutive of constructive activity itself. An alternative, more detailed model of activity is proposed

Throughout the thesis, the issue of whether eyewitness decision strategy (relative or absolute) is indicative of accuracy was examined. Results were mixed but where an effect emerged (studies 1, 2a & 2b), the data suggested that eyewitnesses were more likely to be accurate when using an absolute decision strategy. The likelihood of using such a strategy was maximised when lineup members were viewed under a sequential presentation rather than a simultaneous presentation. In this respect, the sequential lineup was recommended over the more usual simultaneous lineup. The effect of lineup member similarity on accuracy and decision strategy usage was also examined through the manipulation of lineup construction methods (similarity-to-suspect; match-to-description). Results indicated that neither construction method significantly influenced accuracy or decision strategy usage. The thesis also examined the influence of an emergent factor - facial distinctiveness - with the expectation that a distinctive target would be easier to identify from a line-up because of (i) a more resilient memory trace, (ii) a representation which elicits less confusion with similar faces, or (iii) a more heterogeneous set of foils as a match to the distinctive target face. In a series of experiments (studies 2a, 2b, & 3) in which target presence, lineup construction, and lineup presentation type (simultaneous; sequential) were manipulated, distinctiveness failed to influence eyewitness performance. A partial replication of experiments of 2a and 2b in which delay was shortened also failed to find the expected distinctiveness advantage (study 4). The lack of a distinctiveness advantage was unlikely to be due to the particular targets used as a traditional laboratory-based old/new task yielded the expected advantage when recognising distinctive faces over typical faces in general, and the distinctive target over the typical target in particular (study 5).

The first part of this thesis contains a narrative review of the literature relating to how people with mental illness cope with stigma. The majority of the research has focussed on models of stigma, the impact of stigma on individuals and campaigns to combat stigma. There is limited research exploring how people cope with stigma and the effectiveness of these strategies. The review highlights the need for further research in this area to inform interventions. The second part of the thesis contains a qualitative research study, which aimed to provide an understanding of how individuals with a mental illness described their experiences of being discharged from psychiatric inpatient stays. Suicide rates post-discharge remain high despite discharge planning and discharge interventions, yet little is known about why discharge can be so difficult for individuals. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to analyse interviews from eight individuals who had been discharged within the last three years. The analysis highlighted five superordinate themes: the hospital experience, the experience of discharge, the outside world, the journey to health and self-beliefs/identity. The results are discussed in relation to previous findings and implications for future research and clinical practice.

Critical reflection is increasingly regarded as a necessary requirement of professional practice. Yet there are many differing perspectives on what it is, and how it should be taught in professional education, and it is not easy to see how they all relate. This is often confusing for students and educators. This potentially leads to poor standards of reflection, and little rigorous research or development of critical reflection. This thesis aims to address this problem by developing an integrated understanding of critical reflection. It draws together the different perspectives on critical reflection (including reflective practice, the concept of reflexivity, postmodernism and critical perspectives), and shows how these different understandings can be integrated under the rubric of learning from experience. Although the idea of learning from experience in fact underpins early understandings of critical reflection, this thesis demonstrates how later formulations add to and develop this conception. In doing this, the thesis traces the practical and theoretical development of critical reflection into a framework which might be used as a basis for researching professional practice experience. The thesis begins with an introduction which outlines the context of my thinking about social work knowledge, in which my thinking about critical reflection is located. The body of the thesis traces how I have developed these frameworks, from a mix of practical experience, theorizing from different perspectives, and reviews of literature, into the potential for its use as a research method. The concluding section of the thesis returns to the original outline of social work knowledge, and shows how this integrated understanding of critical reflection is also congruent with basic principles of social work. In this sense, the development of thinking about critical reflection is also a contribution to the development of social work knowledge.

Access to paid employment has conspicuous economic, political, cultural and social implications, for both personal autonomy and gender equality. Eight most advanced postsocialist countries that entered the European Union in 2004 have boasted comparatively high full-time employment rates for women since the socialist period. However, the proportion of women who withdraw from paid employment when they care for pre-school children differs significantly among these countries. This thesis examines why women’s employment rates drop so sharply subsequent to childbirth in some of the post-socialist countries, but not the others. It seeks to answer this question by exploring childcare policies. The main research question is whether, and how, these policies shape mothers’ employment in the eight countries. This thesis first analyzes the emancipatory potential of national policies on childcare leave and formal childcare service provision between 2000 and 2008, in order to determine whether or not childcare policies provide options for carers to engage in paid employment. It probes the applicability of the varieties of familialism literature to the post-socialist countries, and draws attention to policy characteristics that received insufficient attention in earlier comparative research. It finds that among eight post-socialist countries Slovenia and Lithuania create conditions for women’s continuous employment, while Hungary, the Czech Republic and Estonia provide financial incentives for women to retreat from the labour force for a longer period after childbirth, whereas parents in Poland, Slovakia and Latvia are left nearly without public support. Drawing upon maternal employment data, the thesis finds evidence in favour of the childcare policies explanation. In countries with gender-neutral leave of moderate duration and affordable, adequate and accessible formal childcare services the employment rates for mothers with pre-school children are significantly higher than in other countries. Such policies are especially important for the employment of low-skilled and low-income mothers with pre-school children, who are usually employed in less protected and less secured jobs. The thesis also suggests that educational attainment and the income needs of households suppress rather than rival the childcare policies explanation, and that the unregulated service markets and day care by other family members account for mothers’ employment in countries with limited state support. The findings in this thesis underpin the importance of childcare policies for enhancing women’s continuous employment and indicate that childcare policies have broader social implications upon women’s economic and personal autonomy. The thesis sheds new light on childcare policies and maternal employment trends in eight post-socialist countries. It helps differentiate their overly simplistic characterization in earlier comparative research, and allows a more meaningful discussion of how childcare policies shape employment practices of mothers with pre-school children.

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This thesis comprises three essays on convergence issues in selected Asian countries, focusing on both macro and micro perspectives. These papers encompass issues on convergence testing from time series and panel perspectives, with in-depth coverage on convergence in aggregate and structural ( inter sectors and sub sectors convergence) of the Asian economies. The first essay examines the convergence hypothesis using both time series and panel frameworks, from a macro perspective. Utilizing the concepts of stochastic convergence, the study tests the income convergence hypothesis by using both linear and nonlinear unit root tests. The present study emphasizes the usefulness of the nonlinear unit root tests due to Kapetanios, Shin and Snell (2003) and extended by Chong, Hinich, Liew and Lim (2008) to permit the test of long-run convergence and catching-up hypothesis. Next, the study utilized the recent panel unit root test for the nonlinear heterogeneous panel model proposed by Ucar and Omay (2009). In the present study, despite using the univariate and panel nonlinear tests for convergence, the results suggest strong evidence of divergence among the Asian countries with Japan. Further analysis was undertaken using tests for convergence with two robust tests that do not require stationarity in the data generating process suggested by Nahar and Inder (2002) and recently proposed by Phillips and Sul (2007a). On the one hand, the Nahar-Inder test indicates divergence between the Asian economies with Japan (except for Singapore), however, on the other hand, the Phillips-Sul test suggests that, all the other Asian economies converge towards Japan. The study suggests that since the Asian economies are in iii various stages of development, the Phillips-Sul test for convergence is more appropriate for such transition economies. Thus, testing for convergence using the unit root and cointegration test for transitional dynamics in the data may not be appropriate. Bernard and Durlauf (1996: p.172) have cautioned that “the (time-series) test may therefore be invalid if the data are largely driven by transition dynamics” and in this study, this found support. The second paper tries to bridge the gap between the macroeconomic issue of productivity convergence at the aggregate level and the microeconomic issues of convergence at the industry level. The study investigates structural convergence in selected Asian countries over the period of 1970-2005 using the non-linear time-varying coefficients factor model proposed by Phillips and Sul (2007a). This model has the flexibility to model a large number of transition paths to convergence, and allows for convergence clubs as well. Structural convergence exists if the convergence progress in income is accompanied by convergence at a sectoral or disaggregated level. The study finds strong divergence in income convergence at the aggregate level, and the clustering shows four clubs. To be robust, the study presents three measures of structural convergence, namely productivity, labour shares and value added. Convergence tests on productivity and value added shares indicate divergence in all sectors that leads to possible creation of club convergence. On the other hand, the labour share shows convergence in aggregate in three sectors (manufacturing,mining and construction). Also, the paper reveals that there is strong sectoral club convergence within the manufacturing sector in Asian whereas the evidence of convergence club for services, agriculture, and construction as well as for mining is rather weak. While the integration process is actively geared in Asian, the question of candidates’ suitability for the AEC (Asian Economic Community), as proposed in this study JAKITH (Japan, Korea, India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and ASEAN) is still a debatable issue. Utilizing the concept of sub-sectoral convergence, the third study tests the convergence in competitiveness for 13 Asian countries for medium/high technology manufacturing sub-industries in three decades. This paper focuses on the issue of competitiveness measured in terms of productivity and labour input efficiency at the industry level within the manufacturing sector of Asian countries. The study applies the non-linear time-varying coefficients factor model that allows for large transition path to converge and also convergence clubs (Phillips and Sul, 2007a). The results indicate that in general Asian countries have a constant increase in its competitiveness yet no aggregate convergence is achieved. Club convergence indicates that labour productivity is likely to iv be driven by high income countries, as opposed to labor input efficiency. However, the low income countries show significant increase of productivity and high labour input efficiency as compared to richer countries. The high labour input efficiency indicates low wages paid to workers, significantly correlated with high density population countries as India and Indonesia. Based on comparative advantage theory, focusing on the industry level, the study also utilized the Krugman specialized index to show the clustering of concentrated industries among countries in Asia. The study found no trace of close to convergence situation, which indicates that the economic activity of Asia is focused or concentrated in specific activities, explaining the divergence in the sub-industries. The growing similarity of Asian economies in terms of overall productivity masks a continued high degree of specialization in particular industries. These findings should help policy makers for both target groups in designing appropriate growth-oriented programme as well as in setting priorities in their implementation

This thesis investigates empirically three topics related, respectively, to school leaving, unemployment and retirement. It consists of three independent research articles, accompanied by a general introduction and a conclusion section. Chapter 1 investigates the extent to which the demand for post-compulsory education of British 16-year-olds responds to local labour market conditions. The findings show that prevailing unemployment rates influence the schooling decisions of students from a less affluent family background, while students from better-off families tend to enrol in post-compulsory education irrespectively of labour market conditions. Factors associated with the family’s socio economic status, such as parental tastes for education and social norms, are arguably at the base of the different behaviours. Chapter 2 analyses the persistence in unemployment incidence during the last two decades. The methodology employed allows disentangling the true state dependence from the confounding role played by observed and unobserved heterogeneity. The evidence supports that unemployment experiences "scar" British workers by compromising their future employability. The findings also suggest a countercyclical pattern of true state dependence as unemployment scars more during recessions. Chapter 3 studies the extent to which retirement influences the cognitive capital of British older workers. The analysis relies on an instrumental variable approach to address the endogeneity bias. Consistent with the "use it or lose it" hypothesis, the results suggests that retirement contributes significantly to the cognitive decline suffered at older ages by British workers. The final section of the thesis summarises the main findings of the three chapters and discusses policy implications and extensions.

This thesis challenges the widely held theories based on quantitative research which suggest entrepreneurs are a particular type of individual, and exhibit certain traits. The study analyses the contention that entrepreneurs have to act in particular ways during the evolution of their business. It adopts sensemaking as a conceptual tool, to examine the effects of cognitions, motivations, and self-efficacy on organisational change. The study is based on a combination of auto-ethnographic and ethnographic methods; this approach offers a unique insight into the working lives of different entrepreneurs. The thesis underlines the practical and emotional issues individuals’ face when placed in context of their organisations. The magical view of entrepreneurs held by society is one of many issues raised which negatively affects them during their journey. The main contribution of the thesis is to the field of Entrepreneurial and Organisational Studies in advancing knowledge and understanding.

This thesis puts forward the hypothesis that there exists within us an Immortality Phantasy which can help to explain the relationship between creativity and destruction. The Immortality Phantasy occurs in response to sublimation, leading to desexualised libido and the release of self-destructive impulses and can help to explain the connection between creativity and destruction. As a result of the first identifications with the Oedipal parent, we can see a defusion of instinct occur, which allows for the concurrent release of creative and destructive energies. The ego is left unprotected against the death instinct, resulting in guilt and punishment for Oedipal phantasies. However, through creativity and reparation on the page, a survival can occur, and it is this survival which must be repeated; it is also responsible for the oscillation often viewed in creative artists between manic creativity and melancholia. Each repetition is a symbolic phantasy of victory over the father, but with the survival, there is also the accompanying destruction. So we can define the Immortality Phantasy as the symbolic matrix of the desire for survival, stemming from the repetition of the defusion of instinct following sublimation. The Immortality Phantasy allows for an indulgence in destructive behaviour due to an omnipotent belief in our immortality. The ego acts as if it cannot be destroyed, which allows it in turn to survive this created destruction, reinforcing this idea. This thesis explores in detail Freud’s theories of the life and death instinct, whilst giving close considerations to the existing theoretical ideas on creativity, aesthetics and melancholia. Three novels are used as case studies to test the Immortality Phantasy hypothesis: The Spire by William Golding, Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe.