This thesis explores how self-employed barristers responded to the reforms that have reshaped the profession in the last 25 years, to assess if and how their professional lives and perceptions of Bar identity and culture have changed as a result. The loss of its advocacy monopoly, cuts to legal aid, the liberalisation of the rules governing the Bar’s working structures and external regulation go to the core of the reforms. It is a qualitative study, based on semi-structured interviews with barristers and chambers staff, together with observation in chambers, at court and at informal and formal Bar events over a period of 18 months, triangulated by in-depth reading of the trade press, the national media, social media and official pronouncements from the profession’s representative and regulatory bodies for the same period. The study takes into account the literature on the sociology of the professions and tests its applicability to the Bar’s distinct and idiosyncratic structures and ways of working. It considers Abbott’s (1988) professional development thesis, which focuses on jurisdictional battles between professions for control over tasks and the attendant changes that emerge as a result of such conflicts. It further considers a range of studies on the concept of professionalism and, with reference to the legal profession, how it has been developed in the light of commercial, regulatory and managerial reform. It concludes that much of that literature focuses either on other professions or on the solicitor branch of the legal profession, which are different in structure, governance and professional culture and is thus not always applicable. The findings develop existing research on the Bar or create new knowledge and point to a more commercially oriented and management driven Bar. The chambers model has evolved significantly, as have practitioners’ views and methods of seeking work, in an effort to be more customer-centred and competitive. Regulatory reforms have reshaped chambers’ organisation and accountability, as well as entry, selection and training processes. Pupillage numbers are down, obliging prospective new entrants to be even more highly qualified, motivated and entrepreneurial to get in. The dramatic reduction in legal aid, together with a decrease in work has resulted in a two-tier profession, with something of a winner/loser dichotomy. Although interviewees share a strong sense of professional identity and culture, there are those that feel the profession has fragmented.

With the introduction of the Criminal Justice and Licensing Act (Scotland) 2010, the Community Payback Order became the default non-custodial criminal justice sentence in Scotland as of February 1st 2011. The order’s focus upon reparation as a means to reintegrate offenders back into the community represented a shift away from retributive practices towards a relationally beneficent approach. The terms of the order, however, remain ambiguous. Lingering suspicions as to how this philosophical switch in policy manifests itself in practice remain. By ethnographically studying the working practices of Criminal Justice Social Workers’, this study presents CPO’s articulation of reparation as practiced. In addition the role of the social worker is interrogated using a performative lens to understand how the tensions between reparation and retribution, care and control, the courts and their clients, are made coherent in their practices. As a result the barriers to enacting a reparationally oriented criminal justice response are articulated so that the Habermasian intersubjectivity that reparation requires can be more wholly understood in the context of criminal justice workplaces for future practice innovations.

This thesis critically examines the military disciplining of trauma through a detailed ethnographic study of post-9/11 lower-enlisted soldiers and veterans in the U.S. who have links to a national movement of resistance to, and healing from, militarism. Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork at two G.I. coffeehouses and with the post-9/11 veteran anti-militarism movement in U.S., it analyses the journey of joining the military, becoming a soldier, leaving the military and veteran identities. It explores militarism and military power as a cultural process which reproduces and conceals itself within normative conceptions of the everyday, and military trauma as a site of contested power and resistance. In doing so, this research addresses an urgent need to critically engage with military trauma as a means to challenge normalised discourses of militarism. This research reveals a disjuncture between the imagined and lived reality of military identities in the post-9/11 era. It explores the politics of recognition of veterans’ public and private lives, their contested identities, and their constrained relationship to the state. It argues that veterans are silenced and their identities reduced to symbolic tools in a public military imaginary which constructs military trauma into politically manageable categories, while disciplining and silencing the nation from critically examining war and militarism. In this way, this thesis argues that veterans serve a vital function in U.S. society by absorbing and containing the violence of the state, which then becomes unspeakable, unhearable, and inescapable. This thesis shows how a small number of soldiers and veterans are pushing back against this narrative. In sum, this thesis seeks to challenge the disciplinary effects of militarism upon trauma and support veteran voices to speak their own truths.

Holiness and interdenominational movements have been neglected by sociological studies of religion. This is an investigation of two modern British conversionist groups, Emanuel and the Faith Mission, which in varying degrees possesses both of these qualities. They are considered in tmers of their historical background and development, their place among contemporary British Holiness movements, their social and theological teachings, their organization and social composition. They have experienced to a greater of lesser extent the pressures towards organizational change eg the routinization of charisma, professionalization of personnel, legalisation of procedure and structural formalization, to which the sect-denomination-church framework has drawn attention in the analysis of the dynamics of religious groups. However, these two movements, which are Institutionalized missionary agencies, do no fit into that typology. An Institutional analysis of the two movements, using the Parsons-Bales-Shils system model to give order to a number of detailed sociological observations, interprets them as functioning wholes, maintaining themselves by means of a set of roles, techniques and procedures. There is evidence of tension and conflict between these separate structural elements, between the goals within each movement, and in the relationship of the groups to secular society. A clear understanding of them requires an examination of the internal and external social factors involved in their operation. While this study is not psychological, there are suggestions that groups like Emmanuel and the Faith Mission have a capacity to integrate personalities by providing individuals with a sense of belonging to a friendly, purposeful and divinely supported fellowship. Within the structure of contemporary society these groups are functional alternatives to such groups as delinquent gangs and criminal subcommunities in the sense that they provide their member, which include groups of marginal individuals, many of them culturally and educationally deprived, with a sense of identity, a meaningful comprehension of a confusing world and a recognized status and a purposeful role within a sustained structure of motivation.

This dissertation compares aspirations and life-choices among highly educated young adults in urban China and Taiwan: places that, at least notionally, share a cultural heritage while having very different political-economic systems. The objective of my research is to assess how the different socioeconomic and political trajectories of China and Taiwan have influenced young people's decision-making and hopes for the future. Drawing upon 18 months of ethnographic research, I analyze young adults’ choices in the areas of education, career and marriage under consideration of their individual social backgrounds and economic resources. In this context I also discuss how feelings of hope, doubt and disenchantment are mitigated by the specific societal atmospheres and ideological discourses. Whereas stable employment and marriage appeared to be universal goals among my informants, I found that young adults in Beijing had much more autonomy in decision making than those in Taipei. In my research, I consider various factors behind these findings, which are linked inextricably to the specific socioeconomic and political trajectories of China and Taiwan. Among other things, China's demographic controls and urban migration policies appear to increase the independence of young people. Further, the prevalence of boarding school education in China compared to Taiwan provides an opportunity for earlier autonomy and independent decision-making in China. Due to China’s specific socio-political history, parents of informants in Beijing perceived spatial separation from children as a necessity to secure the future well-being of the family, while parents in Taipei appeared to be more likely to interpret a child’s prolonged absence as unfilial behaviour. As a consequence, young adults in Beijing arguably have greater autonomy than young adults in Taipei when it comes to issues such as partner choice, premarital cohabitation and job selection. These differences have an important impact on future expectations of family life and the realization of filial obligations. However, while young Chinese showed more agency and autonomy in the pursuit of personal goals, their Taiwanese peers were more engaged in communal political activism prompted by an economy with lackluster opportunities for the next generation. Due to the political propaganda of the CCP, young Chinese held a positive outlook for the future of their society which made them less prone to engage in communal action against the ruling party, while disenchantment with the government among young Taiwanese ignited unprecedented student protests in 2014.

This current study explores the everyday lives of male and female domestic workers in Lagos, Nigeria. Drawing on narrative interviews with 63 domestic workers, in-depth semi-structured interviews with 12 employers and fiction-based research, it aims to understand the terrains of struggle and negotiation in the places people work, live and move through on a daily basis. This thesis is also concerned with the ways in which intersecting identities of gender, age, social class and ethnicity shape the experiences of workers. To do this, a framework of everyday life is used, drawing on the work of Susie Scott (2009) that consists of rituals and routines (specific practices), social order (rules that organise these practices) and challenging the taken-for-granted (norm-breaking acts). The three empirical chapters are explored in terms of these three themes. The first one explores how female live-in domestic workers’ everyday experiences of control and resistance are shaped by discourses around perceptions of their sexual availability - which is heavily impacted by the fact that they work and reside within the private space of the home. This is followed by discussions on how female live-outs who are mothers challenge the notion that paid domestic workers should only have obligations to the employing household and not to their own households, but what living out then means for these women – long daily commutes and balancing their paid domestic work with their unpaid domestic responsibilities. The final Chapter analyses how male domestic workers challenge the construction of their masculinity by employers as simultaneously safe and dangerous. Combined, they enable me to make sense of everyday life in paid domestic work and why it is important to do so.

The number of people living with multiple chronic illnesses (multimorbidity) is increasing and this trend is set to continue. In recent years, there has been a significant increase in epidemiological and clinically informed research into this patient population. However, the extant literature offers relatively little insight into how lay individuals make sense of multimorbidity. Social resources, or the physical and emotional sustenance provided by others, are recognised increasingly as a means towards affecting health outcomes. Social resources are apparent as a nascent theme at the levels of health and social care policy, service organisation, and increasingly, at the level of primary care delivery. However, the apparent enthusiasm for social resources is not universal, and critics have questioned both the socio-political motives behind this trend as well as its underlying social theory. This study employs in-depth qualitative interviews and applies an interpretive approach to analysis. 15 participants living with (at least) osteoarthritis and cardiovascular disease took part in up to two interviews. In addition, a small number of participants’ spouses (four) were recruited into the study. Findings illustrate the ways in which lay individuals make sense of multimorbidity. This thesis draws attention to certain biomedical assumptions made by clinically informed literature. These assumptions are discussed with regard to the concept of illness prioritisation and the relevance of multimorbidity (in conceptual terms) to lay experience. Findings also illustrate the complexity of social resource exchange during illness. A novel conceptual model is developed to elucidate participants’ accounts of supportive practices. Further, findings highlight the role of morality in shaping the experience of support. These observations are synthesised under the theoretical banner of gift-exchange theory, and implications are identified for the application of social resources in policy and service delivery.

The number of international students coming to the UK to study has increased significantly over the past decade and while much has been written about their recruitment and retention, the development of a deeper understanding of the international student experience is often overlooked. This thesis does two things; first it critically analyses the policy context and international student experience literature from a theoretical perspective concerned with transitional capital. Secondly, it offers an insight into the diversity of these experiences from the perspective of a particular cohort of international business students at a post 1992 UK university. Drawing on interviews with twelve students at the start and towards the end of their study, it explores how they are negotiating the transaction of different forms of capital during their time in the UK. The study finds some diversity among this group, but also a consistently complex process of reprioritisation of different forms of capital, with some clear points of imaginative transition and consistent reference to the importance of family expectation and inter-student relations. The multiple realities that emerge challenge current international student discourses which tend to assume that international students are a homogeneous group. This perspective needs to be revised to take account of the diverse reality and complexity of the international student experience.

This thesis is a qualitative examination of the meanings, messages and experiences of those using and receiving on the spot penalties across a range of contexts in which such penalties arise. It explores the policy framework in which communications and expectations about “effective” criminal justice clash with everyday experiences of citizens receiving on the spot penalties. The thesis examines how these penalties have been allowed to increase so dramatically that they are now the main means through which justice is experienced when a citizen engages in problematic / deviant behaviour. This growth in reliance on the on the spot penalty arises from the need to provide an “effective” justice system, one that provides an effective deterrent and takes a zerotolerance approach to offending, but, at the same time, seeks a proportional response to that offending. This thesis argues that this proportionality is not experienced by citizens who receive these notices, who argue that the penalty notice interaction lacks an essential element of procedural justice, the ability to engage in a ‘rational and reciprocal’ (Duff, 2001:79) communication. Inadequate opportunities for citizens to “voice” their concerns within the system leads to claims that enforcement agencies lack “common-sense”, are illegitimate and untrustworthy. This thesis argues that citizens then lose respect for enforcement agencies, and the laws they enforce through the on the spot penalty. Such citizens find that being motivated to comply with the law is not a good indicator of actually complying with it. When punished whilst holding a positive motivation about the law, citizens can become deeply frustrated and angry about the treatment they receive. This thesis concludes that policymakers need to decide whether a ‘simple, speedy and summary’ (DCA, 2006) on the spot penalty can be achieved without significant damage to the legitimacy of the justice system.

A substantial body of research has addressed the continuing popularity of sunbed tanning despite increasing evidence of the associated risks. Much of this research has tended to be atheoretical or underpinned by theoretical assumptions which neglect the wider socio-cultural context in which sunbed tanning is positioned. There is a need to adopt a social psychological perspective to explore how this apparent conundrum is made sense of by those who use and do not use sunbeds. Informed by social representations theory as well as rhetorical psychology, the overarching aim of the thesis is to develop and obtain an extensive social psychological understanding of sunbed tanning. The thesis adopts a number of complementary methods. Firstly, an online survey was conducted which provided a starting point for exploration. Building upon these findings, interviews were conducted to enable more in-depth insight. Study three explored how sunbed tanning was being discussed in interaction in online forums. Findings revealed that sunbed tanning was consistently represented in two interrelated ways by those who had never used sunbeds: as a risky behaviour, and as a vain, aesthetically motivated practice. Inherent within these representations was considerable negativity. Findings revealed that the sunbed users’ discourse was dominated by attempts to manage and resist this negativity, enabling them to defend and negotiate positive identities for themselves. Finally, an ethnographic study of two sunbed salons was conducted in study four to explore how the wider negativity was influencing the actual behaviour of sunbed users. Despite discursive attempts to resist the negativity, findings of the final study revealed the influence of the disapproval through its internalisation at the behavioural level. Overall, this thesis demonstrates that sunbed users are engaged in a considerable amount of identity-work in light of the negativity surrounding their behaviour, which is essential for campaigners and researchers to take into consideration when designing interventions aimed at reducing sunbed usage. Implications for health psychology research and theory are discussed.