The thesis involves an inquiry into the little explored nature of the relationship between the processes of gentrification and displacement in the context of the Greater London area. Scant work has been previously undertaken in this country on these processes compared to be the wealth of work conducted already on gentrification. Displacement has barely been acknowledged as a component of the British gentrification experience except through anecdotal evidence and acknowledgement of basic causal association. Three separate but related methodologies were used to piece together evidence to test whether gentrification was a displacing force. First, the 1981 and 1991 censuses were used to examine broad social changes in London at a ward level, second, the Longitudinal Study (LS) was used to examine the linkages between identifiably gentrified areas and the migratory trajectories of gentrifiers and displacees. Finally the use of grounded research was undertaken to look at examples of these processes in situ through interviews with tenant's representatives and local authority officers. The cumulative weight stemming from the use of the three research methods and the view that displacement is a necessary corollary to gentrification is evaluated along with the implications of findings on the need for the retention of affordable housing and the potential costs of urban social restructuring. The evidence suggests a need for a wider set of social and economic costs to be considered in view of the damage that may be done by gentrification. Accurate quantification in the future will not result without the identification and monitoring of gentrification and displacement activity by local authorities via the monitoring of the housing histories of the vulnerable. The work concludes that the study of gentrification and displacement is theoretically and empirically problematic but that the results of the work also form a positive introduction and lever into wider work on such processes in the future and that such research should be continued in the future.

Up to a third of cancer patients have been shown to use some form of complementary or alternative medicine (CAM), with hospices being the largest provider of this care in the UK. The high demand for CAM among UK cancer patients and increasing political pressure to develop CAM services has led to a more integrative approach to cancer care, though progress is hindered by a narrow focus on medical determinants of efficacy. Subsequently, calls for a wider research perspective have been made in order to encourage a more complex and multi-dimensional analysis of this provision. The importance of setting and in particular, ‘place’, is recognised by the field of health geography, and it is suggested there is a need for a focus on how ‘place’ affects CAM and vice versa. There is little mention of hospice as a place for such research, yet as the largest provider of complementary therapies (CT) to cancer patients in the UK, hospices represent an important area for research. Though some studies have engaged with geographical perspectives and metaphors, there has been no consideration of hospices as places in themselves, which have utilised a humanistic geographical framework. This study explores patient, staff and therapist interpretations of their experiences of a hospice day care unit as a place. It seeks an understanding of how space and place affects, and is affected by the use and provision of complementary therapies within a hospice day care unit. The concept of therapeutic landscapes (TL) was initially proposed as an analytical framework. However, through the analysis of the data it was evident that concepts from humanistic geography combined with a phenomenology of medicine provided a more fitting conceptual framework for a critical examination of the data. A hermeneutic phenomenological approach has been adopted. The sample incorporates day care patients, complementary therapists and healthcare professionals. Photo-elicitation interviews, semi-structured interviews, participant observation and postcard diaries have been used. Twenty-three participants (6 therapists – 6 health care staff and 11 patients) were interviewed using a combination of these data collection methods. I propose three existential modes of being that characterised the patients’ experiences of hospice day care as a place. Drifting - characterised by states of uncertainty and anxiety; Sheltering characterised by homeliness, familiarity, and security; and Venturing, characterised by seeking and exploring new experiences, places and spaces. Through an examination of these modes, it was discovered that patients found ‘home’, both within the self and within the world. This was possible through various facets of the hospice including complementary therapies, which were seen as an integral part of the holistic landscape of care.

The aim of this study was to examine patients’ experiences of day surgery from a sociological perspective. Although there has been massive expansion in day surgery provision, both internationally and in the United Kingdom, there has been surprisingly little sociological research concerning this development. Within the space of three hours a patient is admitted to hospital, undergoes a general anaesthetic, followed by a significant surgical intervention and is then discharged home where responsibility for their care, which was previously performed by health service professionals, is now undertaken by the patient and their families. A study was devised to gain an understanding of the patients’ experiences within a sociological framework of analysis. One-hundred and forty-five patients and their relatives, from two different day surgery units within the United Kingdom, were recruited to the study. A qualitative framework, utilizing the grounded theory approach, enabled the researcher to gain deep insights into the patient experience. Fieldwork comprised semi-structured interviews and observation, as well as extensive use of field notes and memos. During a two-year span in the field, patients were interviewed on three occasions. The first interview took place in the pre-operative assessment clinic, where fitness for day surgery was assessed. The second and third interviews were carried out by telephone, at forty-eight hours and four weeks post-operatively. Data was simultaneously analyzed alongside data collection. Line by line analysis of the transcribed interview was undertaken whereby keywords and phrases were identified. Codes were then clustered into groups from which emerged core concepts. The core concepts which emerged from this study were: Time, the ambiguities of the Sick Role, Control, the importance of therapeutic relationships and formal communication. Recommendations include improved educational preparation for day surgery patients and their families as well as for the day surgery and community staff who are called upon to support the patient following discharge.

This study examined the perceptions of and responses to conflict of pupils and teachers in secondary schools in England and Denmark. It also examined the responses of schools to pupil conflicts and whether pupils and teachers found these measures to be effective in addressing and/or managing such conflicts. The inquiry into perceptions and responses involved questionnaires, interviews, classroom observations and documentary data collection instruments. There were a total of 347 pupil respondents (approximately 11-16 years old) and 34 teacher respondents across four schools. The results yielded significant perceptual differences both within the individual countries and cross-culturally. In the two English schools there were significant differences amongst pupil and teacher perceptions of conflict. There were also significant differences amongst pupil perceptions and responses to conflict crossculturally. More English pupils defined conflict and identified pupil conflicts in their schools as fighting, while the majority of Danish pupils both defined and identified pupil conflicts as verbal. However, for the most part there was more consistency in responses amongst pupils and teachers in Denmark than in England. Cultural and educational differences could be two contributing factors that played a role in the differences in perceptions of, and responses to, conflict amongst respondents in England and Denmark. For example, the Danish system administers a class teacher system where the class teacher not only spends several years with the same pupils but also takes on the role of pastoral carer. Moreover, it was found that while all four schools in this study had anti-bullying policies, none had policies pertaining specifically to the management of conflict. This was potentially an area of concern as pupils described conflicts that were beyond the scope of bullying.

The increased presence of religious diversity among the population of the United Kingdom, particularly over the past century, is particularly noticeable through population studies such as the national census, and tangible signs including the increase in public celebrations of religious festivals, the increase in the presence of religious dress and food, and the increase in construction of religious architecture for faiths other than the historic religion of Christianity. This change in the United Kingdom signifies the need to assess and understand attitudes toward this evident religious diversity among young people living in the United Kingdom. This dissertation is contextualised and conducted through a studentship role on the Young People’s Attitudes Toward Religious Diversity Project, funded by the AHRC/ESRC as part of the Religion and Society Programme, conducted by the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit. This mixed methods project employed quantitative methods to profile students aged 13- to 15-years in the different nations and school types of the United Kingdom, alongside findings from qualitative focus group interviews among 13- to 16 year-old students. The findings draw two conclusions; first, that attitudes toward religious diversity vary according to nation, with students in London and Northern Ireland exhibiting signs of particular difference in attitudes from the students in the other nations of the United Kingdom; and second, that attitudes toward religious diversity vary according to school type. The mixed methodology of the research in the setting of the United Kingdom, the comparison of nations and school types, and the large scale on which the research was conducted all offer an innovative contribution to scholarship within the field of the social scientific study of religion. The conclusions also contribute to a better understanding of the national contexts of the United Kingdom and the different values which the different methods of educating young people in the United Kingdom can promote.

The aim of the research is to analyze the ways in which the cultural meanings of professional sport associated with gender, ethnicity, and age are changing in the U.K. and the U.S. in the context of international social processes. This study contributes to the examination of mediated sport, and therefore, wider sporting and social processes, in several ways. It assesses mediated sport discourses as reproducing existing power relations as arranged around the social categories of gender and ethnicity. It acknowledges hegemonic masculinity remains as a useful concept for understanding the construction of gender, specifically within mediated sport. Elements of hegemonic, and therefore subordinate, masculinity are demonstrating nuanced changes. Discourses relating to media coverage of large-scale sporting events further emphasize the divisions and are implicated as resources for difference making between individuals and groups based on ethnic, ‘racialized,’ and national identities. Finally, this study offers an initial exploration of mediated sport and age. Here mediated sport discourses build a system of values and definitions related to cultural understandings of the body, social interaction, and behavioural convention; this establishes what the researcher has termed an ‘age complex’ derived from mediated sport discourses.

This thesis attempts to advance the underappreciated thought of Erich Fromm as both a crucial contribution to twentieth century intellectual history and a potentially pivotal point from which to transcend current theoretical impasses. In particular, I argue that Fromm’s radical humanism can participate in the rejuvenation of contemporary social theory, which is still largely constrained by the dual reductionism of positivism and poststructuralism, and that a return to it will encourage renewed theorising of, and empirical engagement with, the connections that obtain between the ‘psychological’ and the ‘social’, the ‘essential’ and the ‘constructed’, and the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’. I try to show that Fromm’s qualified essentialism and ethical normativism are sensible, viable, and desirable, and that they, coupled with his analytic social psychology, which is based on his underlying humanism and elaborated through a unique fusion of Marx and Freud, provide the basis for the development of practical strategies to realise humanism in the world. Perhaps above all, I try to show that there is a deceptive complexity and sophistication to Fromm’s ideas, which are all too often taken as simple and naïve.

‘Living with Cancer in Old Age’ is an exploration of older people’s experiences of living with cancer, using qualitative research methods. A qualitative systematic review of international literature found that the experience of living with cancer in old age is characterised by ambiguity. There are sources of suffering, imposed by cancer itself, by treatments for cancer and by co-morbid disease. At the same time older people have access to sources of comfort and strength, both internal (attitudes of mental fortitude) and external (strong relationships with family, friends, communities and health professionals) which mitigate the worst effects of suffering. This literature study synthesised and interpreted findings from 11 studies covering a heterogeneous population of people aged 55-90+, representing a wide range of cancers at different stages of progress and treatment, across four countries (Israel, Canada, Sweden, USA) and using a range of qualitative methods. A subsequent empirical study using narrative methods focused on a more homogenous population of older people aged 74-87, all resident in the same geographical region (NW England), with one of the four most common cancers (breast, colon, prostate and lung) at different stages of progress and treatment, but treated at the same cancer centre. In this study a biographical/narrative method of interviewing was used, in which 20 participants (13 men and 7 women) were invited to tell the ‘story’ of their life both before and after cancer. Interpretation of life history data reported by participants in this study suggests that the overriding features of life with cancer for people in their 70s and 80s are hope and hardiness, together forming a kind of resilience which appears to be psychologically protective and which fosters a determination to continue living positively, even at an advanced stage of illness. Whereas this ‘fourth age’ has been presented by sociologists as a life stage of inevitable decline, findings from the two studies conducted in this doctoral study indicate a quality of continuing robustness in the lives of some older people which runs counter to common assumptions about their vulnerability and frailty.

This thesis explores the place of the Bondo secret society, whose precondition for membership is female genital cutting (FGC), in Sierra Leone’s post-war politics. The Bondo society is considered a repository of gendered knowledge that bestows members with significant forms of power in the local social context. Members, especially Bondo society leaders, are dedicated to the continued practice of FGC even amidst calls for its eradication. The Bondo is much sought after and overwhelmingly supported by the political elite due to the role it plays in ordering community life and its position as the depository of cultural repertoires (Swidler, 2001:24). Most women gravitate towards the Bondo who also use it to shape and reshape their identity. For example, as part of post war recovery, I argue, the Bondo was employed by political actors to legitimate and extend the hegemony of political movements. This analysis, therefore, examines the complicated interplay of power between politicians and the Bondo society members in the context of an international outcry against the practice of FGC. The thesis argues that the Bondo society leaders are keen to maintain the status quo because of the forms of power accessible to them in the local socio-economic and political context. Faced with an over-arching discourse of eradication and change concerning the FGC procedure, the Bondo society has in turn fashioned a counter-discourse framed in terms of “defending traditional culture” to forestall changes that could affect the “privileges” they access. I explore the tensions of this situation in this thesis. That is, on the one hand, the tension brought about by opposition between the FGC reform agenda and the Bondo society members’ attempts to resist change in the ritual practice. On the other hand, I am concerned with the tension in the patronage they enjoy from politicians who are caught up in a double bind situation: they simultaneously need support from Bondo members but are, at the same time, reliant on international development aid. In exploring power from below, I examine Bondo society’s community stock of knowledge and how this symbolic power is employed in Sierra Leonean politics. This does not lead to a vindication of FGC but underscores the complex social, economic and political meanings embedded in the Bondo and in discourses of power in Sierra Leone. The thesis points out that eradication advocates need to take account of the various dimensions of the Bondo society’s embeddedness in relation to both state and society.

POPULATION AGEING IN SCOTLAND - IMPLICATIONS FOR HEALTHCARE EXPENDITURE Population ageing is a major concern for developed countries in terms of public expenditure required to pay for health care (HC). The broad aim of this thesis is to contribute to and expand the debate on the independent effects that population ageing and the time immediately before death (TTD) have on HC expenditure in Scotland. This study analyses, for the first time in Scotland, how HC expenditure projections are influenced through the application of two approaches; the first only accounting for an increasing proportion of the elderly population, and the second also implementing a TTD component. Several issues that are under-researched or have not been addressed in TTD studies previously, are explored and alternative approaches are presented. Utilising two large linked datasets this thesis addresses important methodological issues. Alternative methods to cost inpatient hospital stays are examined as this has pivotal implications for any analysis undertaken to estimate the independent effect of TTD and age on HC expenditure. Explanatory variables that have previously not been considered, such as health risk and health status measures at baseline, are included in these analyses. The issue of sample selection, arising through the inclusion/exclusion of survivors in a TTD study is investigated and the impact of individuals’ socio-economic status on costs is examined. The analysis of alternative costing methods clearly showed that any inference that can be made from econometric modelling of costs, where the marginal effect of explanatory variables is assessed, is substantially influenced by the chosen costing method. The application of a Healthcare Resource Group (HRG) costing method was recommended. This study found that TTD, age and the interactions between these two factors were significant predictors for HC expenditure. The analysis further identified some of the health status and health risk measures to be important predictors of future HC expenditure. An examination of how sample selection impacts on estimated costs at the end of life showed that if survivors were excluded from the analysis, costs might be overestimated. Drawing on a representative sample of the Scottish population, the investigation of the association that the socio-economic status had with HC costs suggested that less is spent on individuals from more deprived areas. This might partly be explained through the decreased probability of accessing hospital services for individuals from more deprived areas. Furthermore, results showed that projected HC expenditure for acute inpatient care for the year 2028 was overestimated by ~7% when an approach that only accounts for the higher proportion of elderly people in a population in the future is being used as compared to an approach that also accounts for the effect that remaining TTD has on costs.