This thesis consists of three distinct but interconnecting case studies that took place between 2007 and 2010 in collaboration with Warwick Arts Centre (WAC), Britain’s second largest multi-arts venue. The study developed practice-led methods to investigate the dynamic interactions between notions and perceptions of ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘internationalism’ in relation to WAC’s theatre and performance programming and education activities. The first case study is a qualitative audience reception study designed to make sense of WAC’s programme in relation to multicultural and international issues. The second case study focuses on an educational outreach project that placed two local schools in collaboration with a commissioned teacher-artist and a University of Warwick academic. These encounters inspired the final case study, which made use of WAC’s newly built Creative Space as a site for a devising project with young people from nearby Coventry, culminating in a performance for an invited audience. The thesis explores the varied complexities that frame ‘multiculturalism’ by focusing on its origins as a political concept in post-1945 Britain and its subsequent association with contemporary contentious social, political and cultural national and international issues. An analysis of the negative effects of ‘multiculturalism’ is balanced by considerations of the project’s emergent concepts: ‘hospitality’ and ‘conviviality’, which articulate the possibilities of living in diversity in more ‘positive’ terms. These paradigms reverberate throughout each case study, informing their methodologies, influencing their conceptual frameworks and placing ‘multiculturalism’ in more dynamic and relevant dimensions of pedagogical and creative practices. Each case study considers collaboration between strangers and investigates the potential of WAC as a hospitable and convivial environment. These new perspectives demonstrate the optimistic possibilities of creative and humane action for producing a ‘positive multiculturalism’.

Poverty and underdevelopment are long standing concerns that characterise San communities in Botswana. Several policies and programmes have been put in place to address these concerns one of which is the Remote Area Development Programme (RADP), in place since 1974. Whereas past studies have reported on the failure of the RADP, this study employs it as a vehicle to understand the San’s development landscape. The main purpose of the study was to explore and describe the San’s perceptions and experiences of development A qualitative multiple-case study approach using semi structured interviews and focus groups were adopted to capture the experiences and perceptions of the San as they evolve within their environment. Critical social theory, which argues that all social relations are power relations and those who are dominant use their power to (re)produce their position of privilege, was used to construct the theoretical framework for the study. Data analysis produced three key findings. Key finding one was that development is a politicised concept interlocked within the politics of power. While the San are on the periphery of power as objects of the development process, the dominant Tswana speaking groups are located within the centre of power where they are privileged to control the development process, by deciding who gets access to resources. This creates a ‘virtuous cycle of self-reinforcing development’ for the dominant Tswana groups and a ‘vicious cycle of poverty’ for the powerless San. Key finding two was that poverty is a by-product of processes seated in unequal social relationships of power. Key finding three presents the politics of participation. Participation becomes evidence of the power and control of each group in the development process. This study thus concluded that poverty and underdevelopment are not economic in their mutation, but are by-products of unequal power relations embedded in a struggle of class interests.

This thesis explores the relationship between social and individual forms of ordering social life on one hand, and the emergence of a number of ‘spheres’ of disorder in the experience of life on the other. In modern society such evidence of disorder can only be characterised in terms that reinforce the negative or formless experience of the human confrontations with disorder. Manifestations of radical contingency (taken as the cognitive residue of such disorder) in experience are thus contrasted with the progress and limits of reason and desire (which create the ‘valuable’ part of life), and these are further examined within a language of being that establishes the discordant nature of the relationship. It is argued that reason and desire, in creating value, always construct an edifice of social and personal expectation that is justified on the basis of the reliability of causal relations between phenomena in lived experience, and in so doing ‘make’ an objective and orderly social world. Several notions central to an understanding of the accumulation of categories of being in modern society are examined as the positive expression of the conditions of autonomous action, and thus as crucial determinants of value and identity. The central relationship is further investigated through the elaboration of three negative categories of experience, which are seen to contain individual and social forms of action that forcefully remove, or contradict order and autonomous freedom as it is here defined. The thesis is therefore divided into three parts. Part 1 examines the loss of autonomy through gambling, and specifically through the singular experience of the wager, which is seen to be an intensification of the motion that constitutes life, but that boldly refuses to be contained, as rational autonomy would dictate. Part 2 deals with the atomisation of knowledge and experience in modern society, looking specifically at instances of ‘non-representational’ art of the twentieth century as the residue of developments that had as a positive aim the refinement of experience. Part 3 deals with the material exclusion of various kinds of garbage resulting from both social and technological progress, and from the emergence of a multiplicity of opportunities for the establishment of self-identity that are seen as both a product of dividing the world of experience into ever smaller categories (i.e., the refinement of the ‘objective’ world) and of the subjective relationship between the individual in modern society and the world of objects.

This thesis covers aspects of the history of the theorisation of sexuality and kinship in the period between 1860 and 1930. The history presented here' is selective. It is organised around a problem of contemporary relevance. This problem is why it has become difficult to produce a historically specific account of sexual organisation in society without falling into essentialist notions of sexuality. The thesis argues that there are two dominant explanations for the emergence of this theoretical difficulty. One is that during the period under investigation there was consolidated a division of attention between various theoretical discourses. Aspects traditionally entailed in any consideration of sexuality - kinship, marriage, the family, reproduction, sexual instincts - were raised in different ways by different discourses. The divisions between these discourses was consolidated in part around this division of attention. The other factor influencing our contemporary problem is that in so far as sexuality has been treated within the social sciences, it has come under a theoretical division between the individual and society. Consigned in general to the realm of the individual, sex has fallen prey to a dispute between modes of explanation. The division is between those explanations which insist on the primacy of the individual attributes and those which seek to explain all phenomena by reference to the interaction of elements in a given society. The thesis argues for the need to transcend the limitations imposed by this theoretical division. The thesis is in two parts. The first traces the treatment of sexuality which came to dominate in the second half of the nineteenth century through a particular study of kinship. It reveals both the dominant modes of explanation and the themes and preoccupations for which these debates were vehicles. These preoccupations reveal how discourses were consolidated with different objectives, modes of attention and modes of explanation. The second part traces the division of attention within those discourses which now have the greatest claim as explanations of sexual relations within society, that is between marxism and psychoanalysis. It shows how, and for what purpose, certain concepts were mobilised; it discusses whether the heritage of concepts drawn from earlier debates limits the advances which can be made while remaining within traditional disciplines. The purpose of this study is to reveal primarily the limiting effect of the theoretical division between individual and society on studies of sexual division. It aims to show that while this division is operative, accounts of sexuality will be dominated by essentialist explanations. It argues for breaking down the divisions between existing disciplines, and in particular the division between psychoanalysis and some of the social sciences.

Background During a period of continuing changes in society and increasing availability of medical information, publication of patients’ views on experiences of health and illness have gained greater prominence. By contrast, studies of medical perspectives have tended to concentrate on reported discontent and implications for workforce planning while leaving broader insights and concerns under-investigated. Since the applied skills of highly trained and publicly funded clinicians are vital for safe and effective delivery of the nation’s health care, it seemed important to explore new ways to consider components of medical professionalism and to set these in current NHS contexts. Rationale and fieldwork Focussing attention on the individual perspectives of NHS doctors in order to hear and understand their experiences of work was central to development of this thesis. An interpretive epistemological approach to biographical narratives as told by a group of 12 doctors drawing on 25 years of NHS experience included use of Situational Analysis Mapping to support detailed analysis of their richly informative, first-hand accounts. As knowledgeable and reflective informants with stories from diverse clinical specialties and differing personal viewpoints, their narratives produced a range of views and observations shaped by their lived experiences as clinicians. Poetic representation of sociologically-informative narrative extracts provided an effective vehicle for engaging mixed audiences and has evoked emotionally resonant reactions from doctors. Findings Strong connections between individuals’ core principles and enacted responses were evident; doctors identified preferred working practices which they believed supportive of delivery of high quality health care. Key aspects of professionalism, including professional autonomy, self-regulation and application of clinical knowledge, were challenged by progressive introduction of new working processes and regulatory mechanisms. Increased recording of clinical and administrative data for performance monitoring and achievement of targets produced reactive strategies in individuals and teams while challenging their sense of professional position or developed medical identity. Poorly performing colleagues and difficult team interactions caused much disruption while blurred ethical boundaries exposed contestable decision-making and demonstrated the limited effectiveness of external regulatory monitoring. Conclusions This research indicates that contemporary NHS doctors may experience conflict between what is expected in managed medical practice and their interpretation of best professional performance. Better understanding of these fundamental relationships could constructively contribute to reconsideration of contemporary medical professionalism and assist with progressive workforce preparation for an effective future NHS.

This thesis analyses the ways in which young people conceptualise crime, policing, safety and security in their own localities. It draws upon primary empirical research to elicit the experiences and perceptions of young people in two coastal resorts. The methods employed in this research give voice to young people and aim to provide a greater understanding of their lives. An ethnographic study was conducted in two coastal resorts, one in England and one in Wales, and access to young people was facilitated through centre-based youth organisations and outreach work in the communities over a period of twelve months (six months in each locality). The research participants were aged between 10 and 17 years old. In total, 100 qualitative interviews were conducted: 23 semi-structured interviews with young people in the youth organisations and 77 unstructured qualitative interviews with young people ‘on the street’. Additional qualitative data were also generated with young people in the youth organisations through a range of methods including: participant observation; various group work exercises; photographic methods; group discussions and other visual techniques. Additional data of 12 semi-structured interviews were generated with professionals in the field of crime prevention and youth work. The thesis offers a significant contribution to knowledge about the experiences and perceptions of young people in two coastal resorts. The thesis illustrates how socio-economic characteristics of ‘place’ and ‘social class’ profoundly structure and shape young people’s experiences and perceptions. The impact of social class on access and restrictions in public space, leisure pursuits, the formation of youth identities, attachment to place, fear of crime, and young people’s securities and insecurities are all examined. The context for the research, two very different coastal resorts in socio-economic terms, revealed significant differences in how young people are policed in coastal resorts; how youth policy impacts upon their everyday experiences; and how social class is a determining factor that shapes their lives. It also raised a number of questions regarding young people’s safety in local public space. With respect to this, the research explored the main issues of concern for young people within and outside of crime prevention discourses and, in doing so, compared and contrasted the ways in which questions of youth, crime, youth governance, youth victimisation and related issues are expressed and represented in official policy discourses with that of young people’s experiences and perceptions.

This Project builds upon Lucien Seve's time-based (biographical) approach to personality development. The personality is, he contends, composed of three core elements-need; activity; and capacity. In contemporary social conditions, needs are complex and subordinated to the structure of acts and the growth of capacities. The Hypotheses that flow from this prioritisation are critically appraised here, while the theory in toto is put to the ultimate test of historical inquiry and verification. This historical investigation seeks to explore the development of capacities and the structure of activity (use-time) in the Advanced Capitalist Countries since the mid-19th Century. Contra the deskilling perspective, the interpretation of that history proposed here is a contradictory one: a long term trend to reduced worktimes coupled with secular densification of tasks; a mechanical integration of the collective labourer combining with overt moves to deepen worker segregation; a concomitant polarisation of skills and continuing inequity in access to a growing biographical time fund. The ultimate indifference of the capitalist mode of production to the biographical interests of its supporting individuals prompts, finally, an evaluation of options for a human-centred path of social change for the future (an exploration of concrete Utopias), In this humanist reappropriation of history, the communist vision has been correctly typed as under-defined in crucial ways, including in the field of development of what Marx termed rich individuality. The overall assessment of the Marxian project remains, however, a positive one.

This thesis suggests an approach to landscapes both in and as performance, in order to explore how identity and belonging are sited and performed in contemporary South Africa. I deploy an inter-disciplinary concept of landscape, drawing from the work of Tim Ingold (2000), who defines landscape as 'a plenum' and argues that we engage with landscapes through a performative process of 'way-finding.' With this in mind, I position myself as a participant-observer in this thesis, and through a process of way-finding aim to 're-trace invisible maps' of identity in a selection of examples ranging from the theatrical to the everyday. Throughout my discussion I analyse how specific performances reflect/resist certain histories and social constructions of belonging. The thesis is divided into three thematic sections which explore how various cultural practices, or forms of 'mapping', attempt to make the world 'knowable', at the same time indicating what escapes or exceeds the limits of their own codes of representation. The first section entitled Fortress City investigates identity formation as a spatially situated process in Cape Town, using the example of the public arts festival Infecting the City and focusing on the period 2009-2011 when it was curated by Brett Bailey. In the second section Frontier Nations, I discuss the temporality of landscape by juxtaposing how collective/national memory and subjective/personal memory both emerge in and through performance. I compare two speeches made by Presidents Mandela and Zuma in Grahamstown in 1996 and 2011 respectively, and contrast the political rhetoric on nationhood with Brett Bailey’s use of mythic time in an experiential site-specific performance Terminal (2009). In the last section Corporeal Networks, I argue that the body acts as primary generator of meaning, identification and belonging. I discuss Juanita Finestone-Praeg’s Inner Piece (2009) a physical theatre work which tackles issues of violence and representation.

There have been many opportunities to study protest events over the last six years. From Occupy to the Arab Spring and 15M. After the financial crash, citizens of the world crafted their own original responses. What they shared – from New York to Cairo and Madrid – was a desire to take to the streets in political protest. In the UK the enemy was ‘austerity’. One of the first policies of this new era proposed a rise in Higher Education tuition fees. Students took to the streets in dissent. A host of political, institutional, technological and social transformations occurred. More specifically, it saw the birth of a digital platform designed to help protesters navigate during protests. It was called Sukey. This thesis interrogates the impact and legacy of the Sukey platform; over, and beyond, these tumultuous years. It does so through the lens of ‘disruptive cartography’, arguing that the platform was deployed to disrupt the smooth running of both so-called ‘A-to-B’ demonstrations, and police containment tactics colloquially referred to as ‘kettles’. I contend that the platform did so by providing up-to-date navigational information regarding active phenomena, such as police movements. In this thesis I undertake an aesthetic, interactive and mobile analysis to investigate the navigational dimensions of the project. I do so through an automobile metaphor in which I look ‘under the bonnet’, ‘through the windscreen’, and ‘on(to) the road’. In its absence, I argue that protesters have lacked the requisite navigational knowledges to perform unpredictable manoeuvres, during protest events. As a result, they have returned to using institutional forms that limit the navigational possibilities brought-into-being by the Sukey platform. I conclude by speculating on three possible ‘failures’ of the platform regarding its ability to faithfully ‘capture’ live events, provide a navigational ‘correspondence’ between cartographic ‘signposts’, and to protect participants from data-driven policing.

This thesis explores the communicative turn in critical theory, beginning with Jürgen Habermas’s and Axel Honneth’s criticisms of the work of the early Frankfurt school; it then analyses Habermas’s ideas on language and discourse ethics alongside Axel Honneth’s development of a ‘recognitive-theoretical’ model of Critical Theory. Following Honneth’s lead, I then bring the work of Michel Foucault into dialogue with the communicative turn and explore the merits of both approaches. Habermas’s and Honneth’s accounts of non-coercive dialogical exchange are found wanting, and I argue that they idealise the public sphere, communication and recognition, and also reproduce procedural conceptions of freedom that abstract from difference and particularity. Foucault compensates for this, but his genealogical work displays an excessive and indiscriminate view of power, alongside an inadequate conception of subjectivity, whilst his later work on ethics/aesthetics idealises the self as a work of art and lacks a substantive account of culture, democracy, and responsibility. I argue that Theodor Adorno’s account of non-reified culture and ethics – as a response to the suffering produced by commodification, identity thinking and technological rationality – overcomes the shortcomings of the work of Habermas, Honneth and Foucault, whilst providing us with a more complete account of recognition and solidarity.