This thesis is an anthropological investigation of the interconnections between personhood and place in rural northern Kyrgyzstan. It studies the way people negotiate and experience relations with others and with the places in which they live and work. It is based on 18 months of fieldwork carried out in Kochkor raion between June 2006 and August 2008. I look at how the interplay between conceptual forms and everyday practices constitute personhood. I show how both formal ways of reckoning kinship, such as recounting genealogies and tracing back seven generations of male ancestors, and everyday forms of socialising are both integral in what it means to be a person, and are flexible in their designation of persons of the same kind and persons that are different. I go on to show how place holds particular significance for the attribution and negotiation of personhood, but that this meaning is emergent and processual. Providing an historical overview of the linking of persons to places by successive bureaucratic structures, I highlight how understanding places as “cultured” or “pure” have important consequences for how people understand themselves and others as more or less “Kyrgyz”, more or less “modern”. I show how recent reworkings of the meaning of “lineage places” following privatisation and village resettlement have led to changing forms of personhood, shifting from state farm worker to independent farmer. Other kinds of places are also meaningful for personhood. I highlight how the home and the objects it contains are active in the negotiation of a daughter-in-law’s personhood. I examine everyday practices of caring for the home, as well as more unusual practices of building new kinds of homes. These practices are integral to varied personhoods such as being a village daughter-in-law, or seeing oneself as “modern”. These personhoods and relationships with place are subject to ongoing negotiation, and death and grief disrupt these connections. A focus on emotion both within ritual practice and during grief lived everyday enables a better understanding of how personhood emerges from intersubjective processes which involve negotiation, rejection and incorporation of social and political processes. A focus on the co-production of place and personhood allows us to see both as becoming meaningful through these interactions.

Background: The Marschak Interaction Method (MIM; Marschak, 1960) is a video-based observational assessment of parent-child interactions and relationships (Lindaman, Booth, & Chambers, 2000). Parents are videotaped while they engage with their child in a series of play-based tasks, followed by a therapist-guided reflective review of the interaction. This process is intended to highlight areas of strength and difficulty within parent-child interactions to be addressed in subsequent therapeutic intervention; however, initial reports suggest that the MIM may have additional therapeutic utility beyond this rather narrow application (Lindaman et al. 2000). There is a growing evidence base for the use of video-feedback in family interventions to improve the quality of parent-child interactions (Fukkink, 2008). Such approaches are believed to enhance parental reflective capacity and sensitivity to their child’s needs, thus supporting more positive parenting behaviour (Svanberg, 2009). The MIM is similar in its approach to other video-feedback interventions, and so conceivably may effect comparable therapeutic action; however little is known about parents’ experiences of the MIM. Aims: This study aimed to explore the therapeutic nature of the MIM through interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) of parents’ and caregivers’ experiences. Methods: In-depth interviews were conducted with six parents and primary caregivers who had participated in the MIM as part of on-going therapeutic assessment and intervention with their child. Results: Analysis of participant accounts identified five key themes concerning; their experiences of the MIM interactional procedure, reflective and emotional processes and the therapeutic factors that supported these, and subsequent attitude and behaviour change. Conclusions: Findings suggest that the MIM has potential therapeutic utility as a brief video-feedback intervention to support positive parent-child interactions. This therapeutic hypothesis is discussed in relation to current theoretical explanations for the efficacy of video-feedback interventions in child and family mental healthcare practice. Further research is needed to test the clinical effectiveness of the MIM in improving parent-child outcomes.

This study explores the marketing dynamics of the Fairtrade Towns movement in the United Kingdom and presents unique, empirical insights and understandings of its place-based marketing dynamics. It recognises that Fairtrade Towns, despite their rapid growth and recognition as a major contributor to Fairtrade marketing, still remain significantly under-researched. It also argues that the activities of Fairtrade Towns need to be considered through a marketing lens and presents a comprehensive application of grounded theory, to empirically capture the marketing dynamics of Fairtrade Towns directly from the people and places that socially construct them. This study theorises that Fairtrade Towns have capitalised upon the significance of symbolic interactionism to develop their marketing dynamic. It argues that Fairtrade Towns have embraced consumer culture and have used media not necessarily associated with marketing practices to validate their actions. It theorises that the Fairtrade Towns movement has generated a marketing dynamic built upon both intrinsic and extrinsic validity. Intrinsic validation transpires from better quality products, increased availability and the development of the Fairtrade mark. Extrinsic validity emerges from the strengths, backgrounds, skills, situations and symbolic value of other people, places and social movements. Fairtrade Towns demonstrate an ability to identify spaces and places not normally recognised for their marketing potential. This study explores how Fairtrade Towns transform and develop these spaces and places into media capable of effectively marketing Fair trade products. Fairtrade Towns display increasing consumer citizenship sophistication, achieved through a marketing dynamic, emerging from a collision between sustainable/ethical consumption, place and responsibility. Fairtrade Towns are therefore presented as a place where marketing functions are socially constructed around a ‘unique to place’ ethos, in which people and places are developed to their full potential in their capacity and desire to increase Fair Trade consumption wherever and whenever possible.

Some football fans go to matches, but what do others do? This thesis examines online football fan forums in order to explore the construction of fan identities and positions. By implementing a cyberethnographical approach supplemented by online interviews with fans, it explores how football fan communities operate, discussing aspects of forum management, control and hierarchies, all the while illustrating how these factors contribute to the development of individual and collective identities. In considering this, it presents football fans as inhabiting a multitude of complex positions, taking into account arguments of 'active' and 'passive' fandom and the importance of fan status (Hills, 2002.) I argue that that there has been a significant lack of research into 'everyday' football fandom, with both the mainstream media and academic perspectives preferring to focus on the extraordinary instances of performance and behaviour, which, I further argue, are simplistic in their treatment of fans. Mainstream media representations are addressed; with the latter sections of the thesis illustrating that discourses produced by fans themselves often contrast significantly with dominant narratives at play in the news media. The football fan is found to demonstrate articulate consideration for his/her own position, with this being frequently determined by the overriding importance of the team's success and the part that the fan plays in this. This is particularly apparent when considering national and regional allegiances, and how these can be seen to present regular areas of conflict in regards to dominant affiliation, yet all the while contributing to the fan's position as an extension of the football club.

This thesis studies the application of geometric concepts and methods in the analysis of strategic-form games, in particular bimatrix games. Our focus is on three geometric concepts: the index, geometric algorithms for the computation of Nash equilibria, and polytopes. The contribution of this thesis consists of three parts. First, we present an algorithm for the computation of the index in degenerate bimatrix games. For this, we define a new concept, the “lex-index” of an extreme equilibrium, which is an extension of the standard index. The index of an equilibrium component is easily computable as the sum of the lex-indices of all extreme equilibria of that component. Second, we give several new results on the linear tracing procedure, and its bimatrix game implementation, the van den Elzen-Talman (ET) algorithm. We compare the ET algorithm to two other algorithms: On the one hand, we show that the Lemke-Howson algorithm, the classic method for equilibrium computation in bimatrix games, and the ET algorithm differ substantially. On the other hand, we prove that the ET algorithm, or more generally, the linear tracing procedure, is a special case of the global Newton method, a geometric algorithm for the computation of equilibria in strategic-form games. As the main result of this part of the thesis, we show that there is a generic class of bimatrix games in which an equilibrium of positive index is not traceable by the ET algorithm. This result answers an open question regarding sustainability. The last part of this thesis studies the index in symmetric games. We use a construction of polytopes to prove a new result on the symmetric index: A symmetric equilibrium has symmetric index +1 if and only if it is “potentially unique”, in the sense that there is an extended symmetric game, with additional strategies for the players, where the given symmetric equilibrium is unique.

Radical, ‘eventful’ bodily vulnerability has yet to receive sustained attention in contemporary human geography. As one way of addressing the implications of existential vulnerability, this thesis explores the social geographies of people living with epilepsy. It draws upon multiple-methods research comprising an extensive mixed-methods questionnaire and semi-structured interviews, all conducted with people with epilepsy who are members of the charity, Epilepsy Scotland, the project partner. By paying attention to the (post-)phenomenological experience of ‘seizures’, the thesis argues that a failure to appreciate the complex and often extremely troubling spatialities of epileptic episodes invariably results in sustaining the stigmatisation of epilepsy and the partial views of ‘outsiders’. By exploring changed, changing and changeable relations between self, body, space, time and others, the thesis suggests that spatial behaviours in and across different places shift according to various biographical, social and illness experiences and contexts. More specifically, it contends that certain spaces become risky some or all of the time because of the body that not only threatens personal disorientation but also the very foundations of the social order. While there is a corresponding risk that individuals with epilepsy will confine themselves within the socially (although not materially) contained homeplace, many adopt active and resourceful practices, taking into account immediate time-space and embodied knowledges so as to resist being told what they can do, where and when. Disciplining the ‘epileptic body’ and environment to accommodate the unpredictability of seizures are put forward as a challenging case study for thinking through how the vital vulnerabilities of everyday life are made sense of through the very governmental regimes that they will always escape.

This thesis is an inquiry into the economics and ethics of residential integration. Efforts to integrate otherwise segregated black and white households in the United States over the last 40 years has been met with legitimate skepticism. Primarily, there is an absence of evidence as it relates to whether neighborhoods cause disadvantage (neighborhood effects) in addition to a lack of evidence related to whether “mixing” actually produces adequate social benefits for those being moved or for society as a whole. I intend to move the conversation forward by presenting two additional considerations. First, in the economic paradigm, it is useful to explore the issue of segregation through what has been described as adverse impacts occurring in the wake of a market failure (“subprime financial crisis”). Second, there are ethical considerations relevant to the integration discussion that offer new norms by which to engage and advance our approach to residential integration and endeavors to mix. This thesis makes a contribution to knowledge by explicating these two points and ultimately providing a more morally capacious evaluative framework by which to appraise this complex social issue.

Regional economic growth and development is triggered by a combination of many factors such as public sector intervention, national and regional policies, and private sector investments. Regional development funds, through the application of pertinent objectives, focusing, participation, and co-ordination can certainly make an important contribution on regional development. In Chile one of the main public sector policy instruments for regional development are the Regional Investment Funds. The role of these funds in the economic and social development of regions in difficulty or whose development is lagging has significantly increased in recent years. The country has had a regional development fund, the "Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Regional" (FNDR) since the mid-1970s. This fund, modest in its beginning, was significantly increased starting in 1985 due to loans from the Inter American Development Bank. The FNDR has played an important role providing basic social infrastructure in regions. However, despite the increasing amount of resources channelled to regions, twenty five-years of existence of the FNDR, and almost a decade since establishment of Regional Governments in Chile, few improvements can be recorded in the way the Regional Funds are being used or on their overall effect on regional development. The main purpose of the study is to analyse the action of the regional development fund of Chile (the FNDR) and its relationship with the overall objective of regional development. Two different empirical approaches evaluated specific effects of the FNDR. The first was concerned with the analysis of particular aspects of the fund labelled as the "key elements" in the running of the FNDR. The second presents and compares the experience of a similar fund for regional development. The fund selected to carry out this comparison was the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The specific questions to the "key elements" address three different aspects of the existence and performance of the fund: questions 1 and 2 deal with the very existence or the overall aim of the fund; questions 3 and 4, with the way the fund is being allocated and used; and question 5 is rather different as it tries to explore the possibility of finding other potentials for regional development, not exploited as such, due to the dominance and statutory primacy of the fund.

Implementation of the Community Care (Direct Payments) Act 1996 in April 1997 enabled local authorities to make cash payments to service users under the age of 65 with physical and sensory impairments, learning difficulties and mental health problems. This gave users control over money spent on meeting their community care needs rather than receiving services arranged for them by the local authority. The policy is often represented as a victory for the disability movement and as a push towards independent living and social justice. However, direct payments also need to be understood as part of a wider market discourse prominent in the restructuring of welfare. Therefore, a growing culture of localised care markets led by local authorities with increasing ideological diversity may ultimately erode the scope for independent living, choice and control. This thesis examines the impact of these policy discourses informing the planning constructions and user experiences of direct payments in two contrasting areas - one in England and one in Scotland. A third authority - also in Scotland - is examined where direct payments have yet to be implemented and an indirect payment scheme remains in place. In the English authority - 'East Anglia' - findings show direct payments promoted both as part of a wider marketisation of community care and development of independent living services. Implementation has seen a relatively rapid promotion of policy but this is found to be located within wider New Right confines of cost efficiency and accountability. Like East Anglia, the Scottish authority - 'East Scotland' - has also demonstrated a long-term commitment to independent living services and has worked in partnership with the local disability movement to establish a momentum for policy change. However, wider policy use is shown to be restricted by a more dominant anti-market discourse. Similarly for the second Scottish authority in the study - 'West Scotland' - planning fears of service privatisation coupled with limited disability activism and a chaotic aftermath of service reorganisation has resulted in non-implementation of direct payments. By focusing on the impact of these discourses alongside wider controls made by central government, this research examines user experiences of direct payments in East Anglia and East Scotland and indirect payments in West Scotland through a series of semi-structured interviews. Additional information is generated through a discourse analysis of key policy documents and discussions with planners. Whilst findings highlight an overall enthusiasm for both direct and indirect payments, user experiences are shown to be strongly influenced by market and independent living discourses in each area. This has implications not only for individual user constructions of independence but draws more widely on an understanding of collective disability identities.

A variety of topics on the statistical analysis of time series are addressed in this thesis. The main emphasis is on the state space methodology and, in particular, on structural time series (STS) models. There are now many applications of STS models in the literature and they have proved to be very successful. The keywords of this thesis vary from - Kalman filter, smoothing and diagnostic checking - to - time-varying cubic splines and intra-daily effects -. Five separate studies are carried out for this research project and they are reflected in the chapters 2 to 6. All studies concern time series models which are placed in the state space form (SSF) so that the Kalman filter (KF) can be applied for estimation. The SSF and the KF play a central role in time series analysis that can be compared with the important role of the regression model and the method of least squares estimation in econometrics. Chapter 2 gives an overview of the latest developments in the state space methodology including diffuse likelihood evaluation, stable calculations, etc. Smoothing algorithms evaluate the full sample estimates of unobserved components in time series models. New smoothing algorithms are developed for the state and the disturbance vector of the SSF which are computationally efficient and outperform existing methods. Chapter 3 discusses the existing and the new smoothing algorithms with an emphasis on theory, algorithms and practical implications. The new smoothing results pave the way to use auxiliary residuals, that is full sample estimates of the disturbances, for diagnostic checking of unobserved components time series models. Chapter 4 develops test statistics for auxiliary residuals and it presents applications showing how they can be used to detect and distinguish between outliers and structural change. A cubic spline is a polynomial function of order three which is regularly used for interpolation and curve-fitting. It has also been applied to piecewise regressions, density approximations, etc. Chapter 5 develops the cubic spline further by allowing it to vary over time and by introducing it into time series models. These timevarying cubic splines are an efficient way of handling slowly changing periodic movements in time series. This method for modelling a changing periodic pattern is applied in a structural time series model used to forecast hourly electricity load demand, with the periodic movements being intradaily or intra-weekly. The full model contains other components, including a temperature response which is also modelled using cubic splines. A statistical computer package (SHELF) is developed to produce, at any time, hourly load forecasts three days ahead.