The aim of this study was to explore how visually impaired students’ learning journeys in educational environments vary by individual characteristics and prior experiences, and by the type and nature of the institution they attend. In particular the study aimed to uncover how both barriers to learning and good practice are understood, in relation to the enactment of inclusive education policies. Disability is formulated and enacted in the intersection between the individual, their impairment and psycho-emotional status, and the social context (Thomas 1999). For visually impaired students in further education settings, biographical experiences, impairments, and encounters with education all have an impact on their ability to access learning, to achieve educationally, and to formulate their sense of self and identity. The thesis draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted across three further education colleges, with six visually impaired Welsh students aged 16-25. Data were generated through interviews with student participants, staff members and peers, observation, and documentary analysis. Findings suggested that inclusion is only successful if tutors provide valid learning opportunities for visually impaired students. Access to information and other learning opportunities such as demonstrations, practical tasks, and physical activity may be compromised by inappropriate teaching and support methods. Access is also significantly affected by the nature of the visual impairment, the modes of information retrieval, and students’ attitudes and skills. The emphasis on the practical in further education settings makes this analysis particularly significant. Detailed specialist knowledge of appropriate teaching techniques and organisational considerations exists, but is located in the main in a very small number of specialist colleges across the UK. Analysis also identified two competing ideologies; commitment to the provision of inclusive mainstream learning environments as part of an inclusive society, or commitment to the provision of appropriate teaching in a specialist institution, to facilitate future inclusion in society.

This thesis interrogates what a whole family approach is in Welsh policy and practice utilising an Integrated Family Support Team (IFST) as the case study. The study examines the construction of ‘family’ in policy, practice and by parents themselves and the impact of gender on practitioner and parental normative constructions of mothering and fathering as care practices. Both the UK and Welsh governments locate their use of a whole family approach within a social exclusion framework that views strong familial bonds as the source of sustainable social capital. Documentary analysis is used to examine the policy construction of a whole family approach and of the target families themselves, as this has implications for the application of a whole family approach in practice and the type and nature of family engagement. To date there has been very limited articulation of the therapeutic process entailed in a whole family approach. Through the use of practitioner interviews this thesis addresses that gap in research. It is imperative to gain an understanding of how practitioners conceptualise and engage with families within a whole family approach as this determines which individuals are included and excluded. This is a particularly pertinent issue given the well-rehearsed arguments regarding mother-blaming and lack of father inclusion within child protection practice. Parental perspectives on the construction of ‘family’, and aspirations for both family life and their own mothering and fathering practices, are explored via analysis of parental accounts and values card-sort statements as recorded (and thereby mediated) by IFST practitioners. The findings from this analysis are that there is a considerable degree of constructive conceptual alignment between policy, practice and parental perspectives on the construction of family, and the gendering of parenting as care practices.

This thesis examines the lives of a group of young working-class men in a post-industrial community in the South Wales Valleys. Using a longitudinal ethnographic approach, I focus on how young masculinities within a specific community are performed across a variety of educational and leisure spaces and indicate how social, economic and cultural processes impact on the formation of self. This thesis also describes how, within the limits of place and during different social interactions, individual young men can be seen as active agents in their own construction of identity. Ideas and issues drawn from Erving Goffman’s work on the performance of self and the formation of social identity are central to the theoretical framing of the thesis. I suggest that Goffman’s dramaturgical framework has important implications for analysing performances of masculinities. When applied to masculinities (and femininities) this framework highlights how gender comes into being through socially constructed performances which are understood (consciously and unconsciously) as socially acceptable in a given situation, setting or community, not as innate biological accomplishments but as dramaturgical tasks. Throughout the thesis, through paying attention to the diversity of social identities and relations within an ostensibly homogeneous working-class community, I challenge commonly held beliefs about working-class young men that appear in the media and in policy discourses. I argue that for a group of young men in a community of social and economic deprivation, expectations and transitions to adulthood are framed through geographically and historically shaped class and gender codes.

‘Honour’-based violence (HBV) is defined as a form of crime, predominantly against women, committed by the agnates of the victim, often in collaboration, which are justified by the victims’ perceived violation of social norms, particularly those around sexuality and gender roles. While HBV is often considered as a cultural phenomenon, I argue that the cross-cultural distribution of crimes fitting this definition prohibits a purely cultural explanation. I advance an alternate explanation for HBV through a deployment of the cultural materialist strategy and the anthropological theories of Pierre Bourdieu, Claude Lévi-Strauss (as interpreted by Gayle Rubin) and Eric Wolf. I argue that HBV is an epiphenomenon of the ‘exchange of women’ model of marriage transactions occurring within the patrilinear kinship structures typical of Central Eurasia, and that this is particularly marked amongst peoples with a history of agrarian and pastoral modes of production, in which kinship underwrites relations of resource and labour sharing. Within these scenarios, marriage is an aspect of the political economy of the group, since it extends or consolidates kinship networks. In post-agrarian neopatrimonial states, kinship relations remain salient to social status through nepotism and the intensification of subgroup identification. I argue that women’s embodiment of the standards of marriageability — their ‘honour’ — within their communities is a form of symbolic capital which inflects the status of their families, and their ability to participate in strategic marital exchanges. This theory is investigated through an extensive and historicised survey of kinship and marriage in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and through original survey data on marriage forms and attitudes and experiences of HBV in the region, suggesting that HBV and understandings of gender, marriage and kinship are intrinsically linked. Thus, this thesis argues that while HBV may appear to be enculturated, its aetiology may be material in nature. Efforts to reduce HBV in the Middle East should encompass reform of personal status laws which posit the patrilinear, patricentric family as the ideal model, and that campaigns to reduce forced and child marriage should be considered as part of the process to reduce HBV.

This thesis examines the process of street trader displacements through the views of street traders and other urban actors, and through the lens of the Right to the City concept, reviewing the ways in which public space is viewed and regulated and the interplay of rights in urban public space within the context of Lagos, Nigeria. The Right to the City concept is also critiqued in this particular African context through the case study of trader displacements in Oshodi Market, Lagos, in 2009. This investigation was conducted through a case-study and mixed-method approach using interviews, documentary analysis and observation. The displacement of street traders from public spaces is a common government policy in developing world cities despite widespread arguments that displacements lead to marginalisation of street traders. The spread of global capitalism has escalated tensions as street trade and neoliberal urban development fundamentally depend on public space, but street traders are often relegated, with urban public space perhaps the clearest physical domain in which exclusion is manifest. The Right to the City has been used to question competing claims to the city and has gained wide acclaim globally, it has however been criticised as lacking adequate contextual grounding. The research reveals wide-ranging negative impacts of displacements on street traders and other urban groups, and significant lapses in urban management in Lagos. It was found that the Right to the City did not feature in the experience of street traders in Oshodi as traders do not possess any rights in public space. In addition key context specific challenges of implementing the Right to the City are identified. The thesis establishes a rights-based framework for urban governance based on the Right to the City which can be implemented in Lagos and similar contexts.

The modern public sector equality duties (PSEDs) have been described as positive duties, ground-breaking and transformative. Described in these terms because the pseds partly addressed limitations in anti-discrimination laws by placing designated public bodies, and others exercising public functions, under a legal obligation to proactively consider various equality aims. The duties were introduced in England, Scotland and Wales between 2001 and 2011. This thesis investigates the Race Equality Duty, the Disability Equality Duty and related provisions in the Public Sector Equality Duty. It provides an interdisciplinary, socio-legal analysis of these pseds by investigating two interrelated research questions: 1) Have the race and disability equality duties been effective positive legal duties and legal public accountability tools? 2) Does Scheingold’s theory of the Politics of Rights add to our understanding of the constraints on the potential impact of positive legal duties in advancing equality? This study makes a unique contribution to the literature by analysing: the justiciability of the pseds and their effectiveness as legal tools to hold public bodies to account; the outcomes of substantive race and disability public sector equality duties (pseds) judicial review judgments; and the significance of the roles played by cause lawyers, community activism and legal empowerment in extending the race and disability pseds’ reach and impact. The unique contribution made to the literature is augmented by the inclusion in this thesis of a socio-political analysis of the impact on these pseds of major changes in the UK’s anti-discrimination framework, equality laws and developments in relation to immigration, community cohesion, integration and austerity over the last fifty years.

Considerable attention has been given over to the politicisation of life within the 21st century: the threat of new disease and the promise of new drugs; the advancement of technology capable of transforming live anew; and the recasting of biological citizenship. This thesis, however, responds to the growing calls, made by the likes of Kearns and Reid-Henry (2007), to consider the other side of our contemporary biopolitical regime and the avoidable suffering that is played out against this backdrop of possibilities. Utilising malaria as the disease specific entry point, the thesis aims to disclose the way in which health is mediated by (biological) events within the body as well as (political) events outside of the body and explore the dialogue that takes place across the body’s fleshy barrier. In doing so, I aim to interrogate the injustice and reveal the structural violence anonymously enacted through systems but personally embodied by certain individuals. Thus, the thesis contributes to, and moves forward, the on going work on the critical geographies of global health by traversing scales, bringing the critical conversations that have been predominantly focused at the all-too-impersonal global level down to those ‘at the sharp end’ (Dixon and Marston 2011, 445), ensuring such voices join the conversation and speak back to the global narrative. In doing so I provide a more geographically and personally attuned account of the ‘epidemiology of inequality’ (Sparke and Anguelov 2012) currently being sketched out within the discipline. By embedding personal experiences of (ill)health within a national and international context, I work to ensure that such episodes of illness are not framed as sad, unfortunate, biologically inevitable, or bad luck, but unequivocally as episodes of violence (after Craddock 2009). The thesis does so through a series of distinct chapters, each offering different perspectives yet threaded together with the themes of (structural) violence and the valuation and management of life today. From an initial focus on the (de)valuation of life implicit in an economic conceptualisation of the disease burden within the global health arena, the thesis goes on to focus on the politics of life from the perspectives of individuals themselves. Drawing on conversations with women in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the thesis seeks to recover the journeys travelled to and through the health system, pausing to reflect on the situations that influence the contours of this journey as well as the biological consequence of them.

The social and environmental responsibility of corporations is a subject that continues to ignite public passions. No wonder, given the regular reminders of the kinds of trouble that irresponsible business practice can get society in! The persistence of corporate social responsibility in this context has proved controversial. A strategy for managing the social and environmental responsibility of business that relies on self-regulation, CSR is a concept that strikes an uncomfortable chord with the already high levels of corporate autonomy. Yet, there seems to be no shifting from CSR. The activist shopping, of which it boasts, has ingratiated itself with democratic politics and, as such, seems set to remain. Everyone today agrees on the need for business to be more responsible. CSR is an important part of how this responsibility is managed and organised today. This thesis analyses this entrenchment of CSR in terms of what it describes as ‘the double play.’ Markets first make demands on people, time and resources, in order to secure productivity and profitability. They then make a second play to service the social and environmental fall-out of this first drive for marketisation. CSR takes place on this second play, deploying market incentives and techniques to the remedy of market generated problems. Corporations participate, drawn to the security accorded their autonomy. They see in CSR a chance to right wrongs created in earlier cycles of exchange, without the risks created by external interference. The public engage where, as the ultimate source of economic demand, they feel the responsibility for everything that goes on in the market. They try to ‘shop better’ on the second wave, to instil recovery and prevent the rematerialisation of harm. This thesis problematises CSR and the double play. It does so in a series of critical provocations directed at CSR informed by the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard. It discusses CSR’s capacity to politically disempower public participants, by drawing their energies into a perpetual cycle of economic imperialism and exchange. It discusses the difficulty CSR creates, in terms of raising conflict with business actors, and the tendency for the system to leave inert, or exposed and abandoned, those that try. Finally, the thesis pushes up against an ultimatum in CSR – ‘buy, or people perish!’ – through which the market is able to indefinitely extend and regenerate itself. The thesis argues for the disengagement of this ultimatum. For only when social and environmental concern is not held hostage to the market can the political ambition, which is somewhere present in all of this, be realised.

There is a wealth of literature suggesting that breastfeeding for 6 months offers the ideal balance of nutrients for complete infant growth, and that all infants should be: “exclusively breastfed from birth to six months of age” (WHO 2003). However, although 98 percent of new mothers are capable of breastfeeding, only a minority of infants continue to be breastfed at six months following birth. In addition, breastfeeding rates are socially patterned whereby women living in the most affluent neighbourhoods are three times more likely to breastfeed their infants than women living in the least affluent areas (Bolling et al 2007). This thesis set out to address a range of research questions in relation to women’s lived experiences of breastfeeding in private and public spaces throughout the first 6 months of motherhood within a sample of mothers from the most and least affluent neighbourhoods. Given that breastfeeding is an embodied health behaviour, the epistemology adopted a position of interpretivism as a means of capturing the meaning and lived experiences of women’s breastfeeding. Breastfeeding women were recruited at 2 days following birth from the most and least affluent areas of Glasgow south and 41 in-depth interviews were conducted over 3 time periods following birth: 4 weeks (n18), 10 weeks (n12) and 26 weeks (n11). The results from this public policy health service research study suggest that breastfeeding is a learnt skill and women work hard to develop their skills and confidence in order to breastfeed comfortably and discreetly in private and public spaces. Breastfeeding is commonly discussed as a private domestic activity, and home is generally considered the most appropriate place for breastfeeding to take place. However, with the constant flow of visitors a new baby attracts, the boundaries between what are considered private and public space breaks down. As a result, women develop an awareness of appropriate and inappropriate spaces for breastfeeding both at home and outside the home. Women suggest, at times, they feel a greater degree of privacy breastfeeding within public spaces than they do in the private space of their own home.

This thesis considers the aspirations of a group of pupils in a post-industrial community in the South Wales Valleys. Using a mixed methods approach, I explore and consider a range of social, economic and cultural issues to understand how educational and occupational aspirations are influenced and shaped. The recommendations made will hopefully help develop the role of personal tutor, as set out in the Welsh Baccalaureate Qualification and help others within the education sector understand the complex, multifaceted nature of pupils’ hopes and dreams for the future. The ideas on the formation of aspirations which are developed by the economist Ray (2002, 2006) and the anthropologist Appadurai (2004) act as a strong reference point in this thesis. These works, coupled with the theory of circumscription and compromise which has been developed by Gottfredson (1981) provide a conceptual framework with which to facilitate a better understanding of the ways in which the educational and occupational aspirations of young people could be affected. I suggest that aspirations should be considered from a socio-cultural perspective. Such is the dynamic nature of aspirations that pupils’ dreams about the future begin to grow and be affected from a young age. For this reason, schools should consider a range of interventions to challenge gender stereotypes and ensure that sufficient guidance is provided from a young age about the many different academic and occupational pathways that pupils can choose in life. Throughout the thesis, I argue that for a group of young men and women in a community of social and economic deprivation, aspirations and transitions to adulthood are framed through geographically, familial and historically shaped class and gender codes.