This thesis explores the role of social workers in suicide prevention. Using a mixed methods approach the research examines how social workers understand, and work with, suicidal individuals in multi-agency and interdisciplinary settings. In my first empirical chapter (chapter five) a secondary analysis of the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (2007) (n=7,403) explores the circumstances under which social workers come into contact with suicidal individuals. Using a multinomial logistic regression it has been possible to establish that substance misuse is associated with social worker contact. This suggests that social workers are having contact with a group at elevated risk of suicide. The second part of the thesis is based on a series of semi-structured interviews with statutory social workers (n=17) (chapters six and seven), service users with a history of suicide attempts (n=3) and Community Psychiatric Nurses (CPNs) (n=3) (chapter eight). A thematic analysis of the interviews found that although statutory social workers had little or no training in assessing suicide, both service users and CPNs believed that social workers have a vital role in supporting suicidal individuals. Social workers found peer learning to be important as both a source of knowledge and learning, and as a support network. The findings of this research indicate that social workers have particular expertise in taking a holistic approach to suicide assessment and prevention. The Approved Mental Health Professional (AMHP) role is also felt to give social workers a strong knowledge of the legal issues that underpin working with this vulnerable group. However further research into the contact between social workers and suicidal service users and the assessment of suicide is necessary. The findings of this thesis have implications for practitioners, policy makers and researchers.

This thesis explores women’s contribution to governance through a study of two housing associations in Wales. Whilst housing policy has developed to enhance the role of housing associations, governance and accountability, women are still underrepresented in senior and executive management roles, and are underrepresented at the strategic decision making structures, boards of management. The aims of the research were to: uncover the organisational typology and culture; the governance structures and prevailing board cultures of the housing associations; explore the motivations of board members’ participation and uncover the power relationships on the boards of management in relation to female participation and empowerment. The research used an in-depth case study format with interviews with key informants from the housing sector and Welsh Government; exploratory interviews with the executive teams and board members; discourse analysis of corporate documentation and direct observation of board meetings. The research process developed a unique theoretical framework which was wide ranging, to explore the research aims of governance; organisational typology and culture; empowerment; participation and power dynamics. The research found that whilst housing associations are not inherently sexist, the governance structures, typologies, organisational cultures, routes to participation and power dynamics operated at board level inhibit female participation on boards of management. Housing associations failed to consider the lack of gender and wider diversity on their boards of management. Housing associations have failed to address the situations where dominant members on boards of management hold onto their power, and influence the majority of the decisions made, to the possible detriment of the tenants. Governance and recruitment arrangements are based on a need to preserve the strategic and policy focus on finance, risk, legal and governance issues, and as it is mainly men who are involved in these professions, it is ultimately their views which direct the organisations.

This research study offers a contribution to the field of framing environmental policies in several ways. First, it makes explicit the ways in which a nomadic professional group such as seafarers frame and interact with the growing demand to protect the environment in general and the marine environment in particular. Due to the nature of their profession, this group is able to roam the world and compare the effectiveness of environmental regulations in various countries. The shipping industry is composed of different types of shipping companies, some of which can be described as more environmentally aware than others, an issue which would affect the frames of seafarers regarding compliance to environmental regulations as discussed in this study. Moreover, this research opens up a social qualitative inquiry in areas scarcely attended to by previous scholars especially when focusing on the relationships and tensions between seafarers and their personal and professional commitments to their global work place; the marine environment. This study argues that such differences not only impact on the social construction of seafarers regarding environmental protection but also affects their framing of daily compliance practices as well. This allows us to review the institutional and instrumental policies carried out by different ship owners in different parts of the world and verify how this impacts on the compliance practices of this professional group in the context of a demanding and challenging regulatory environment.

The aim of this research was to explore the contribution of critical realist metatheory to evaluation. The principal contention is that adopting a critical relist perspective overcomes the propensity of conventional approaches to evaluation, both quantitative and qualitative, to focus on pre-determined performance measurement criteria. This research is based on comparative analysis of the methodologies and outcomes derived from conventional and critical realist evaluation. Evaluation grounded in critical realist metatheory embraces methodological pluralism, which underpins critical realism, and emphasises more thoughtful forms of data interpretation in empirical research. Making use of an exemplar, publicly funded, scheme providing grants to enterprises engaged in commercialising innovation, the research examines the role of common forms of data gathering and analysis, contrasted with particular forms of data interpretation based on abduction and retroduction. Intrinsic and extrinsic research methodologies are presented, not as polar opposites, but as complementary stances in gaining a rounded understanding of the scheme. Conventional approaches to evaluation are shown to act as limited forms of performance measurement, emphasising anticipated outcomes and predetermined criteria but offering little explanation and understanding. Critical realist evaluation is shown to broaden the scope of outcomes identified and deepen explanation and understanding, whilst simultaneously acknowledging the implications of fallibilism in developing multiple, plausible explanations. Explanation is enhanced through recognition of the inherent uncertainty of the social world, despite the dominance of notions of universal regularities. Recommendations for undertaking evaluation are given. The research helps fill an identifiable gap in current literature and debate on mechanisms and casual inference in social science. It provides a practical example of evaluation in the context of support interventions for innovation. No equivalent example is known to have been published previously.

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The research presented in this thesis comprises a body of work dedicated to continuing and enriching past exploration into the impact cumulative life stress exerts on ageing cognition. In order to extend previous work into this topic, behavioural measures were paired with electroencephalographic recordings of the cortical oscillatory activity thought to underlie cognitive operations. In a theoretical sense, work presented in this thesis strengthens past investigations highlighting the adverse effects of life stress on elderly peoples’ working memory abilities by replicating the effect under conditions of increased experimental rigour. It further provides evidence that the detrimental effects of cumulative stress extend to the domains of executive control and spatial memory. Electrophysiological findings obtained during task execution and at rest indicate pronounced changes in the oscillatory activity of aged high stress individuals’ delta, theta, alpha and gamma bands and are thus the first to demonstrate that cumulative stress affects the underlying neural processes related to successful task execution. As such, from a methodological standpoint, the current research strongly advocates the use of neuroscientific tools such as the electroencephalogram to gain an increased understanding of the mechanisms by which increased stress exposure evokes progressive cognitive decline in old age. Combined, the work presented in this thesis demonstrates the negative consequences of leading a highly stressful life for the integrity of multiple cognitive functions in old age and is the first to provide an indication of how cumulative stress affects both cortical and (indirectly) subcortical regions of the brain necessary for successful cognitive functioning.

Studies focussing on Europeanisation and in particular on the return to Europe of postcommunist states have come to the fore in political science research since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. The way in which many states of the former Eastern Bloc have engaged with European geopolitical power structures such as the European Union and Council of Europe has been well-documented. Europe is a contested construct and its boundaries are still subject to redefinition. This study examines issues of Europeanisation, national identity and nation branding through the lens of popular culture. In particular the role that events such as the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) play in illuminating the more salient issues of European identity politics has until recently been an area which has lacked scholarly attention. Although the volume of literature on the event is steadily increasing, there has to date, been no in-depth study conducted on a Former Soviet Republic. This study aims to fill this gap. This thesis comprises a case study of the role of the Eurovision Song Contest in Estonia and Ukraine. The empirical findings highlight the contested nature of the construction of national identities in the post-Soviet region and in particular, this study has drawn out some of the more salient aspects of identity politics. By exploring these issues through the prism of the Eurovision Song Contest, I argue that the event is significant in terms of nation branding and image building, particularly in the context of the return to Europe of post-communist countries. The Eurovision Song Contest is often an event which is dismissed as musically and culturally inferior. However, this study shows that different nation states attribute different meanings to the ESC and as such there is a need to go beyond the dominant (western) view of the contest in order to explore the diversity of issues that this event illuminates in wider socio-political debates in Europe today.

This thesis explores the attitudes, beliefs and opinions of members of the cultural elite in Wales. This term is used to mean people who hold prominent, high profile and prestigious positions within the culture sector in Wales, specifically located around the capital city of Cardiff. Through the analysis of data collected from in-depth semi-structured interviews with twenty key informants I examine how they construct their biographies and make sense of the social world which they inhabit. I address two main research questions, firstly whether they see themselves as belonging to a closed, restricted and self-referencing network. Secondly, how do they try to justify their positions of power and privilege in society? Using themes from the literature I also consider to what extent the different sectors (culture, business and political) overlap, how the network is constructed in terms of a core and a periphery, what purpose this serves, and how the network is at once generally cohesive but also not without some internal divisions. This is all done in a specifically Welsh context and I argue that their national identity has a very important role to play in how they define and experience culture, and that this directly impacts on how they explain their reasons and motivations for their involvement. I use Bourdieu’s notions of cultural and social capital and demonstrate how these are exchangeable commodities. While members of the cultural elite are in possession of large amounts of cultural capital, success in the network depends on them being able to demonstrate this, and this in turn increases their social capital. The act of networking is fundamental for sustaining the network and this is a performance on their part. How the interviewees performed for me, the interviewer, lies at the heart of the discussion.

The incidence of mental illness is both a widespread and growing; and yet studies show that employers are reluctant to hire people with mental health conditions (MHCs). Despite often having an excellent set of qualifications and skills, backed up with a sound employment record, the stigma surrounding mental illness means that people with MHCs struggle to gain and maintain employment. This study explores the experiences of people with MHCs in work. The research focuses on how these individuals manage their condition while maintaining a legitimate identity at work in the context of widespread stigma over mental illness. Taking a critical poststructuralist approach to identity, and drawing on semi-structured interviews with people with MHCs, the research highlights a complex set of factors facilitating the construction of a pejorative mental illness subject position that prevails in contemporary society and in the workplace. The study also illustrates how individuals act upon this subject position and the effects this has on their working lives. Finally, the study considers the agential practices of self-management that are illustrative of the process of resistance and the negotiation of a legitimised identity. The study considers the effectiveness of these struggles over seeing, being and doing for the long term prospects of mental health at work. The study offers contributions to knowledge in three areas: to critical identities literature by including the experiences of mental health in the study of marginalised identities at work; to the literature on invisible and stigmatised identities, by providing a better understanding on the processes of identification; and to theorising on resistance and resistant identities as practices of self-care (Foucault, 1986). In doing so, the research not only critically analyses the concerns of a marginalised group at work but also offers broader implications to understanding mental health of all workers, and for society at large.

Volunteer tourism is an increasingly popular practice that provides tourists with the opportunity to contribute to community development or environmental projects, usually in Third World countries. This research explores the potential of volunteer tourism to develop cross-cultural understanding, transform tourists into more charitable, ethical subjects and foster more reciprocal relations between tourists and visited communities. The research uses a longitudinal methodology to follow ten young people from the UK through time and space as they embark on a journey to Kenya with a commercial volunteer tourism provider. Using a combination of repeated in-depth interviews and participant observation, I show how volunteer tourists produce understandings, or ‘imaginaries’, of poverty, authenticity and care that simultaneously enable and constrain their ability to act ethically. I argue that the complexities of the volunteer tourism encounter can only be understood through a psychosocial account of subjectivity that articulates the point of suture between the social and the psychological. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to interpret the volunteer tourists’ narratives, I show that it is possible to approach the psychological in tourism studies in a non-reductive and culturally engaged way. This psychoanalytic reading provides insight into how volunteer tourists’ perceptions are refracted through cultural fantasies of the non-Western Other, how they are confronted by the demands of contradictory ideological injunctions and how their investment in consumer identities presents a barrier to ethical transformation. The thesis concludes that in order to harness volunteer tourism’s potential as a means of achieving social transformation, greater attention must be paid to subjectivity and the psychosocial as a way of understanding the social demands, desire and investments experienced by volunteer tourists.