In order to provide a comprehensive and clear investigation of media representation and public attitude toward Nanotechnology (Nano) in Taiwan, this thesis includes three studies. Study 1 investigates the media representation of Nano in Taiwan and the relationship among different Nano-based themes, frames, and media attitudes in the Taiwan. Study 2 is attempts to make salient the most visible actors of Nano-related news in the Taiwanese media discourse and how the relationship among main actors, framing effects, and media attitudes toward Nano Study 3 explores the overview of the Taiwanese public attitude toward Nano and how the Taiwanese public attitude toward Nano is influenced by framing effects and public confidence in news sources. In short, the results of the above studies showed that the Taiwanese media attitude and public attitude toward Nano are both overwhelmingly positive. The impression and role of Nano in the Taiwanese media has been shaped as an emerging scientific idol which not only benefits public daily life but also increases the national interest and competitiveness of Taiwan. This is of concern, since there is little evidence that the public understands the risks associated with Nano. This lackluster public and media-related risk awareness regarding Nano is exacerbated by a weak connection between the public and scientists. Nano has become a vital component of future science and technology development and a potential competitive economic benefit for Taiwan in the global economy. However, the importance and necessity of increased and enhanced science communication regarding Nano has not kept pace with public interest or commercial production of Nano-based products that are quickly becoming ubiquitous in Taiwanese society.

In light of the ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ of Ulrich Beck and Natan Sznaider (2006), this thesis aims to investigate the multiplicity of Chineseness produced in the Chinese schools in the Philippines. The study draws on participant observation based on my one-year teaching in a Philippine-Chinese school, on-site interviews with students, parents, administrators, educationalists and officials, and archival and documentary research. The major findings of the study reveal that: (i) viewed from different perspectives, three versions of Chineseness generated in Chinese school emerge: Huaqiao Chineseness with the nationalistic view of China as the motherland embodied by the traditional teaching approach involved in ‘teaching Mandarin as a national language’; Huaren Chineseness which proposes to seek a balance between the younger generations’ Mandarin learning and Filipino outlook; ‘communal Chineseness for integration’ by which the younger generations are provided with community-based resources to enter the upper-middle class in the social stratification of the Philippine mainstream society; (ii) Mandarin education practised in Chinese schools is predominated by the view of Huaqiao Chineseness which not only has a devastating effect on the effectiveness of its teaching but also impedes the educational reform launched by the supporters of Huaren Chineseness from promoting the teaching approach fit for Chinese-Filipino identity of the younger generations by means of teaching Mandarin as a second language; (iii) As the current Mandarin education fails to be adapted to the local environment, it is ‘communal Chineseness for integration’ that plays a role in their integration into the mainstream and in helping them enter upper-middle class positioning in the Philippine social stratification; by contrast, Mandarin education has become increasingly irrelevant to their everyday life and career development. These findings have implications for further researches that (1) the eye of methodological cosmopolitanism can help explore the extent of cosmopolitanisation in an overseas Chineseness community’s Chineseness in general and Chinese education in specific; (2) the extent of cosmopolitanisation of an overseas Chinese education in constructing and projecting Chineseness can affect its cultural preservation in the destination country and forge a unique path of integration into the mainstream society for an overseas Chinese community.

Based on empirical research in Nagaon, India, this study offers a post-colonial feminist analysis of subjectivities available to Muslim girls in contemporary Assam and the ways in which these girls inhabit and negotiate these subjectivities. To understand the subjectivities made available to Muslim girls, I first investigate how government policies for education authorize certain types of subjective possibilities for Muslim girls. I then analyze the narratives of teachers and parents to understand how gender, class, ethnicity and religion intersect in different ways to confer certain subjectivities as well as to challenge and reinforce the conferred subjectivities. Finally, I discuss Muslim girls’ reconstructions of self through a combination of resistance and conformity to the conferred subjectivities. The study begins by locating this research in the context of the wider sociological literature highlighting Muslim women’s overall invisibility, key gaps in understandings of contemporary Muslim girlhoods and the limitation of the liberal feminist conception of agency as resistance. Methodologically, the study combines an analysis of educational equality policies, data from interviews with Muslim girls, their teachers, and parents, and focus group discussions across five different types of schools in Nagaon. The conceptual framework has been drawn from the scholarships of Nancy Fraser’s perspectival dualism and Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural authorization, as appropriated by feminist scholars. Fraser’s perspectival dualism approach and the distinction between affirmative and transformative justice provide tools to understand various types of injustices at different levels (inter and intragroup) in the lives of school going Muslim girls. Feminist appropriations of Bourdieu help to think through discourses about class, gender, religion and ethnicity through which subjectivities are conferred upon Muslim girls. The Muslim girls’ responses to these conferred subjectivities are understood using the concepts of reflexivity, and agency conceptualized as resilience. The thesis concludes that the equal opportunity policy framework constitutes and normalizes the subjectivities of Muslim girls as economically subordinate and as culturally different. These abstract policy pronouncements are made real in the schools through teachers’ perception of deficit in culture, morality, merit, and language. Muslim parents challenge the teachers’ and policy perspectives through their investment in the idea of good girlhood that serves as a marker for ‘good families’, symbolically authorizing them as middle-class. Muslim girls resist and conform to the subjectivities conferred in the policies, by teachers and parents using their reflexive abilities. Mostly these negotiations are based on ad-hoc individual gains, rather than a transformative, collective feminist politics. They enable these girls to disrupt and negotiate the narratives ‘about’ them. Overall this thesis offers an alternative to identitarian politics or cultural explanations of Muslim women’s educational ‘backwardness’ in India, by applying insights from Fraser and Bourdieu to Muslim women’s intersectional educational disadvantage. The thesis also directs focus upon Muslim girls’ agency as encompassing their ‘reflexive’ articulation of suffering, conformity, and resistance to the subjectivities conferred upon them. This study offers an original contribution to the study of gendered minorities, institutions and relationships in the post-colonial contexts.

This thesis is a Science and Technology Studies (STS) inspired exploration of the design practices that brought London’s City Hall (1997-2002) into being. The minister responsible for finding a suitable building for the Greater London Authority (GLA) ambitiously declared it to be an exemplar project of “environmentally progressive objectives, the principles of sustainability”. Since there is much contestation about how to enact such an ambitious agenda, I as a form of theory in practice retrospectively follow architects, engineers, clients and others through the complexities of design process to investigate how the concept of sustainability and environmental problems were interpreted from the outset and then transformed into environmental (and other) design challenges and targets in order to guide and align the diverse practitioners who worked towards materialising City Hall. In order to develop a better understanding of how environmental challenges were addressed during City Hall’s contingent and unpredictable practices, I draw on the concept of translation to analyse how design problems were defined in the joint action plan to house the GLA, how design practices expanded through the concurrent production of design knowledge and association of additional heterogeneous elements, and how City Hall increasingly took shape through negotiations, choices, conflicts, transformations and adaptations. Through many translations the design briefing, building forms, landmark building requests, technological devices, specific interests, environmental performance targets, facade specifications and many other issues became reciprocally modified, reordered and stabilised. I then use post-occupancy data to explore City Hall in operation (2002 to 2011) to develop an understanding of how its facility management produced knowledge about the headquarters’ environmental operations. Thus I develop an account to what extent environmental performance targets were translated from the world of the design studio to the world of actual building operations.

This thesis is a theoretically framed and historically informed sociological analysis of how digital technology usage shapes religious identity in Pakistan. The development literature is dominated by assumptions of technologically driven progress towards secularisation and studies of technology projects, yet there are few empirical studies of everyday ICT day use, and religion remains significant in Pakistan. To explain this, I draw on theoretical literature, the Pakistan religious identity literature and twelve months of fieldwork (2014-2015) to present an analysis of how Facebook shapes the enactment of religious identity by young people in three cities in the Punjab, Pakistan. I conceptualise identity as the performative enactment of subject positions constituted by discursive regimes of knowledge and power, and technologies as assemblages of discursive and material elements that in their arrangement create possibilities for action. The entanglement of actors and assemblages in performative enactment produces phenomena, such as religious identity. Methodologically I adopt an agential realist perspective and utilise a mixed methods approach that includes a survey, document collection and in-depth interviews and observation of young Facebook users. My empirical findings show that the new technologies of social media, mobile phones and mobile internet interact with public discourse and everyday practice to shape religious identity. First, I show this by describing how Facebook’s construction as a blasphemous technology strengthens existing discourses of religious nationalism. Second, I show how Facebook’s technological discourses of singular authenticity shape the enactment of religious identity with implications for religious minorities. My final analysis theorises how the use of Facebook shapes religious identity through the emergence of what I call ‘digital secularisation’. Together this thesis makes the following contributions. First, it provides a much-needed empirical account of the adoption of a new communication technology being rapidly adopted. Second, it makes a theoretical contribution through showing how conceptualising identity as performative and technology as assemblage helps explain the resurgence of religion in processes of development and social change. This explanation is presented as a theory of ‘digital secularisation’.

Much evidence links early childhood factors to later antisocial and criminal behaviour. However, many ‘at-risk’ children do not develop such behaviours. Some families are subject to intensive intervention from services including social, health, criminal justice and special education services, yet little is known about what aspects of support are useful for the most vulnerable families in the longer term. This mixed methods study investigates parents’ experiences of the full range of services with which they and their children are involved during middle childhood. The major component is a longitudinal five-year qualitative interview study of eleven families, including practitioners parents nominated as helpful. Children were at-risk because of their difficult behaviour and additional family risk factors. Inductive thematic analysis suggested factors which appeared important in changing child behaviour and family functioning. A subset of these factors were further investigated using quantitative longitudinal analysis of a large cohort data set, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), to examine associations with antisocial and criminal behaviour at ages 16–21. The original contribution to knowledge is identification and explanation of factors influencing how families benefit, or fail to benefit, from intervention. These include the conflicting roles of services tasked with support, reform and surveillance of families. Some parents are skilfully supported to make lasting changes in their parenting behaviour, but non-familial influences such as peers, neighbourhood and school experiences mean improvements in parent-child relationships do not necessarily translate to improvements in the child’s behaviour and wellbeing outside the family. In addition, the study contributes analyses linking middle childhood factors to lower chance of future antisocial and criminal behaviour. These factors include changes in maternal hostility and depression, financial circumstances and children’s relationships with teachers. Findings suggest families could be helped by easier-to-access, on-call, non-judgemental support and, in schools, attention to consistent, supportive relationships.

The extant research concerning commercial-sexwork is extensive, covering a diverse range of issues, such as physical and psychological risks; with on-street work regarded as persistently perilous. CSWs are marginalised from mainstream society by their work identity and associated behaviours which are incongruous with societal mores and norms for ideal citizens. Yet, apart from research related to geographical space and citizenship rights, and a few studies relating to sexual citizenship; the relationship between citizenship status/identity and commercial-sexwork is overlooked or included as an ‘add on’ to other concerns. This is regarded as an omission as those who do not conform to citizenship ideals are offered a “hand-up” or experience increased monitoring by the state in the form of law and policy directives. Importantly, for CSWs historical and contemporary legal and policy discourses (such as nuisance, victim, abuser, exiting and criminal) impact negatively upon their relationship with citizenship status compounding their marginalisation. Thus the overarching aim within this thesis is that it explores the citizenship journeys of CSWs utilising Lister’s (2003a) differentiated universalism citizenship concept. To achieve this aim there are four research questions; ‘How do CSWs experience citizenship?’, ‘How do participants express their understandings of citizenship?’, ‘To what extent are values and ethics a component of commercial-sexwork?’ and ‘How does a citizenship identity relate to a commercial-sexwork identity?’. A thematic analysis of data from five semi-structured interviews and 123 online forum correspondents found three overarching themes: ‘Understanding citizenship: Civil rights and duties, and social rights’; ‘Enacting citizenship: active citizenship and intimate citizenship and commercial sex work’ and ‘Exiting commercial-sexwork: becoming ‘normal’ citizens’. The main findings were that CSWs understand the conditional nature of citizenship; they pursue the right to work and the duties to pay tax and national insurance; evidence active citizenship behaviours, a community of practice and there is support for the notion that the disembodied nature of commercial-sexwork corresponds to work within the public arena - challenging the public/private binary. Yet, the state has appropriated these CSWs citizenship contributions without the corresponding benefits of citizenship status or identity. Further, via the quasi-legal status of commercial-sex work, the state has ignored or misrecognised key citizenship attributes such as agency in terms of their right to choose to work in this arena; such omissions amount to an injustice. This is compounded by the state’s exiting process which does little to advance CSWs status and identity but rather leads to a disciplined citizenship status. This thesis concludes that for transformative recognition, a more differentiated citizenship concept which recognises the similarity between CSWs and other females in terms of claims to rights, agency and justice but acknowledges their diversity is a necessity. Additionally, policy and legal discourses are ineffective in reducing CSWs marginalisation which impacts on their citizenship status. The latter will continue unless law and policy makers explicitly recognise CSWs citizenship contributions whilst considering how legal and policy discourse negatively construct the citizenship status of those who conform (victims or those who exit) and those who do not (nuisances or criminals).

This thesis focuses on the contemporary phenomenon of ‘childhood obesity’ in England. A phenomenon historically situated in the neoliberal political economy. It is characterised by intractable high prevalence, by a social gradient of inequality, and as a complex and ‘wicked’ policy problem. It persists despite decades of food-related obesity policy interventions. While parents’ food practices are much researched, little research considers either their lived experience of food policy or their policy solutions. Understanding the working-class experience is important in the context of the social gradient. Disconnect between policy intention and the parent’s lived experience that unfolds through policy process may contribute to the intractability of the problem’s prevalence. The underlying importance is for child health and democracy. In the context of food-related obesity policy, this thesis explores disconnects between the state and its governance of parents of children with obesity, including the relevance of class. It explores the implications for policy and practice, and it aims to move forward parents’ involvement in food policy-making. The critical theory paradigm draws on Kincheloe and McLaren (2003) and provides the framework for a qualitative critical policy analysis, with an epistemology of critical hermeneutics and an ontology of dialectics. The theoretical framework explores class and power processes, and uses Marx, Bourdieu, Foucault and Gramsci. The qualitative methods include document analysis and ethnographically informed semi-structured interviews. The local state provides the interface between policy actors, who include parents as policy recipients. Thirty-one interviews were carried out, and twelve working-class mothers were among the participants. The research found multiple disconnects that would be counterproductive to achieving policy aims. These were neither superficial nor clearly demarcated, but rather they were meaningful and beneath the surface, and they interconnected and interacted. They include the material conditions of contemporary working life, unhealthful foodscapes, and governance processes around ‘responsibilities’ that produce subjectification and stigmatisation. Powerful processes of symbolic violence were found to reproduce the lived effects of class that contribute to the social gradient. Policy processes add to multi-layered stigmatisations. In essence, parents’ food policy solutions were divergent with UK government policies. Amid democracy deficits within the local state, parents believe they should contribute to food policy-making. The results support the view that the solutions to tackling the contemporary phenomenon of obesity in children are structural rather than individual, and that the balance of responsibilities is weighted against parents. Food policy needs to be integrated and ecological to ensure material realities support parents in their food practices. Meaningful processes of deliberation are required for parents to be involved in food policy-making. Key words: Disconnects, food-related obesity policy, parents, childhood obesity, social gradient, class, lived experience, critical policy analysis.

The turn of the 21st century arguably marked the point when circus gained recognition by cultural establishments in Britain and Colombia. Issues of identity and recognition were becoming central questions in the analysis of a practice regarded as marginal or lowbrow. This thesis addresses such questions by comparing circus movements in Britain and Colombia. The aim is to investigate global power structures that operate behind the current process of recognition. The analysis is conducted within the disciplines of cultural studies and circus studies. It follows mixed methods of research that include multi-sited ethnography, semi-structured interviews, textual analysis, archival research and political economy. Interviews were conducted with over 60 circus artists, arts administrators, and policy-makers; they enquire into the factors behind recognition and the distinctive character of the form. The research finds the internal peripheries of circus and a divided practice which is split into differentiated movements such as ‘traditional’, ‘contemporary’ or ‘social’ circus. While contemporary circus gains recognition as art, traditional circus is regarded as entertainment and social circus as therapy or social work. The historical review on the other hand, reveals that the 21st century is not the only period in which circus is gaining recognition. The 18th century saw the consolidation of ‘modern circus’ in Britain, the point when circus is said to emerge as a distinct genre and a performing art. The thesis brings those moments together as evidence of a cycle in which an itinerant and ambivalent practice encounters formalisation. Both periods coincide with a moment when cultural elites and official establishments embrace circus as a valid endeavour. In the process of recognition, crucial agents are often ignored and become invisible. The research contributes to understandings of circus beyond the West and the centre - more precisely, capitalism, the bourgeoisie, urban centres, expert knowledge and stakeholders. It highlights the influence that narratives found in 19th century Europe are having on contemporary developments of circus in both Britain and Colombia. It proposes that the understanding of global power forces operating behind circus transformations could help to alleviate internal disputes connected with intrinsic differences within circus. It also contributes towards a definition of cultural policies that embrace diversity and incentivise circus developments beyond central figures and models borrowed from the past.

In recent years, synthetic biology – an emerging science that promises to ‘democratize’ bioengineering – has emerged as a key site of regulatory interest and concern. In the United States, in particular, these concerns have largely been voiced in relation to synthetic biology’s perceived capacity to enable an act of bioterrorism. This thesis examines the regulatory response – a ‘risk management process’ – that has been mounted to address this contingency, and which seeks to ‘secure’ and ‘sustain’ a science characterized by sharply contrasting expectations. In particular, this thesis engages with the discursive and non-discursive practices enacted by diverse scientific and technical experts determined to assess and manage ‘risks’ that threaten to exceed the very capacity of risk, as a ‘calculative rationality’, to tame chance and legitimize responsible action. Yet, in the face of uncertainty, and in stark contrast to the ‘risk society’ thesis, this thesis underlines that uncertainty is not an inhibition to risk management, but a call for more intensive and more creative ways of organizing uncertainty, enabling action in the present. Indeed, in the case of regulating synthetic biology, risk management is, above all, tailored to finding practical ‘solutions’ to seemingly intractable policy ‘problems’. In addition to its contribution to recent scholarship that has drawn on Foucault’s concept of ‘governmentality’ to examine how diverse social problems, ranging from climate change to terrorism, are ‘governed through risk’, this thesis critically examines how biotechnology’s pairing with the perceived threat of bioterrorism is influencing the manner in which modern biology is understood, represented, practiced and controlled. Thus, the case of synthetic biology examined in this thesis not only provides a lens through which to advance risk theory in sociology, but also serves as a vector through which to explore changing configurations of ‘risk’ and ‘risk responsibility’ in the contemporary life sciences.