This thesis addresses a combination of offline and online factors influencing negotiations of a belonging identity among millennials. Born between mid-1980s and 1990s, the millennials constitute the first generation to negotiate their belonging identity amidst local and internet mediated social interactions (Howe & Strauss 2000: 4). Drawing on the experiences of 46 millennial Poles located in Glasgow, Scotland, and using a mixture of social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner 1979), symbolic interactionism (Cooley 2005; Mead 1982; 1967; Goffman 1959) and postmodern interpretations (Bauman 2011; 2007; 2004a; 2004b), I examine the millennials’ experiences in negotiating their belonging identity across virtual and real-life locations by applying a qualitative and culturally tailored methodology, including semi-structured, open-ended interviews. The key research questions address the nature, process, and challenges inherent in negotiations of belonging identity, including the manner millennial Poles in Glasgow experience the contemporary multicultural and multilocal environments. The data is analyzed according to the emerging themes, such as the role of family and education system in Poland, as well as the impact of online interactions that enhance and broaden the belonging identity negotiation. Particularly, the digital (hyperlocal) dimension points to the emergence of a novel type of time-bound belonging, a now-here identity, which stands in a stark contrast to the previous, spatially-based conceptualizations, including that of the nowhere belonging of Bauman (2007; 2004b). Additionally, the thesis challenges the dominant metanarrative of ‘migrant’, it being the omnipresent stigmatizing moniker for non-citizen residents. Applying an intersectional perspective (Crenshaw 1989; 1991; Collins 2015; 1990; 1986), the research exposes in particular the ethnic and class discrimination encoded into the word ‘migrant’, with its connotations of a lesser-value identity (Klekowski von Koppenfels 2014) and non-belonging. The research also enhances transnational, networks and mobilities theories by applying social identity theory and symbolic interactionism into analyses of experiences of migration, and thereby challenges the prevalent citizenship identity discourse by highlighting instead the diversity of multicultural and multilocal affiliations. In regards to methodological contributions, the research emphasizes the significance of culturally sensitive and individually tailored methodology that acknowledges cultural subjectivity and is aware of a variety of interpretations. The research advocates a development of non-discriminatory theoretical and methodological approaches that recognize ongoing social and cultural changes brought by digitalization of information and the emergence of multilocalities.

In the long history of Olympic urbanisation, the creation of an “Olympic Park” where various Olympic facilities are concentrated has been favoured by both host cities and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), due to the regenerative opportunity it presents and its management advantages during the Games. Yet the usages and financial viability of such an approach after the Games were questioned by past Olympic cities, such that turning the post-Olympic Park into a multifunctional “mixed-use” urban precinct rather than a mono-functional sporting quarter was the approach taken in Sydney and London. This thesis explores the evolution of the mixed-use vision, its governance and integration into the wider urban tissues in the pre-bid, post-bid and post-Olympic phases, through the cases of the Sydney and London Olympic Parks, and highlights the evolution from Sydney to London. This long-term analysis shows that the vision of the mixed-use Olympic Park originated as a mixture of the existing urban socio-economic aspiration and the specific spatial demands of the Olympic Games. This evolved in different planning climates, along with changes in the governance of the Olympics and legacy planning. I argue that while in the case of Sydney the governance of the legacy in each phase was confined within the designated planning timeframe and focused on the vision within the Olympic Park, London’s approach was more overlapping and extended beyond the boundary of the Olympic site, which created a considerable difference in terms of the realisation of the initial mixed-use vision and integration with adjacent neighbourhoods. Although the thesis traces the evolution from Sydney to London, it also suggests how these cities shared the limits of their entrepreneurial urban governance through the application of the public–private partnership model to legacy planning and challenges in satisfying both local and regional political aspirations for the post-Olympic Park.

This thesis is an historical analysis of the culture of science and its use of animals in experiments by the British military and in medical scientific research, and its regulation by law, during the period 1947 to 1965. The overall aim of this thesis is to demonstrate the gendered nature of scientific experimentation on animals in mid-twentieth century Britain. To do this, it addresses two aspects of animal experimentation; firstly, exploring how scientific research forms power-knowledge relations through the use of nonhuman animals. Secondly, this thesis analyses the intersection of animal use in science with that of the broader socio-cultural context, asking was science in mid-twentieth century Britain gendered? As a consequence, it explores the effects of this knowledge production upon animals and women. My findings are twofold: that the construction of scientific knowledge through the use of nonhuman animals was one that created subject-object binaries, and this had powerful and detrimental consequences for nonhuman animals. Secondly, this objectification of the nonhuman had resultant power-knowledge effects that reinforced the continuation of specific kinds of scientific knowledge and its associated masculinist ontology of positivism. Consequently, the effects of these power-knowledge relations were gendered and had implications for (and intersections with) normative representations of women at the time.

In a broad sense this thesis concerns the politics (and ethics) of strategic management, organisational psychology, organisational narratives, knowledge management and conditions of innovation. More specifically, this is research into the dimension of politics and the legitimacy of power relations within the synchronization of time and space in social organisations, typically as part of the design and implementation of strategy, in context of organisational definitions of innovation and contestations of 'the new'. With a conceptual archaeology, the thesis contends that strategy research focuses on the nodal concepts of 'inertia', 'adaptation' and 'friction', in context of three past conceptual frameworks: namely, Newtonian mechanics, Hobbesian interpretations of evolution, and Clausewitzian military theory. A genealogical approach is used to reveal the persistent influence of the Newtonian notion of simultaneity (absolute time and absolute space) across these three frameworks in their combinatorial guise in the discourse of strategic management. The genealogy unfreezes the nodal concepts by showing the history of their contingent construction and selection. Finally, a critical analysis scrutinizes the contextual appropriateness of applying the concept of simultaneity to social matters. The thesis rejects simultaneity and its dominant position as an 'articulatory practice' of organisational strategy. By decoupling the notion of simultaneity from frames through which sense is made of motion and events, the grip that structuralism has on organisational strategy is loosened and by substituting simultaneity with political power the implications for strategic management become clear. The approach draws from Political Discourse Theory to reframe the strategy discourse, in its current conception, as hegemonic and an antagonistic system of 'Politics' that, instead of facilitating either stability or innovation, leads, instead, to 'conceptual inertia' and economic stagnation, by repressing emergences of 'the Political'. The thesis proposes a strategy of 'agonism' as an alternative. Rather than replacing one despotic concept with another, the suggestion of agonistic strategy is made because agonism allows for its own reinterpretation, thus does not represent a sedimented centre of a discourse. In this way, agonism is less susceptible to stagnation, and more amenable to innovation. The theoretical framework is then accompanied with a study of the design and implementation of strategy within a research institute engaged with the innovation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) using the CRISPR-cas9 technique. The selection of this case organisation allows for an analysis of the politics and power relations at play in the definitions of innovation, and a means to ground a study of the social construction of reality within an empirical setting regarding the strategic development of genetic constructs.

One of the most comprehensive collective rights regimes has been developed in the area of indigenous peoples and respective land and resource rights in particular. International legal instruments (ILO C169 and UNDRIPS) and Inter-American jurisprudence (e.g. the Saramaka and Sarayaku cases) significantly safeguard such rights. The latter materialise in the form of prior consultation mechanisms regarding natural resource extraction and ultimately exemplify indigenous peoples’ self-determination. However, practice shows that such collective mechanisms are established without truly taking indigenous peoples’ representative institutions according to their customs and traditions into account. This can be attributed to the fact that the interplay and local dynamics between indigenous communities, leaders and representative organisations are too complex to be reduced to collective wholes. In order to disentangle such dynamics, power relations between the players, issues of legitimacy, representativity and accountability of participatory mechanisms, and the inclusion of subgroups and individuals in collective decision-making are examined. By combining international legal standards and ethnographic research, a legal anthropological perspective informs this piece of research. Firstly, insights are gained by understanding individual or ‘subgroup’ rights in relation to collective claims in international and regional legal standards. Secondly, this relationship is observed by means of two case studies in the Bolivian Lowlands that shall shed light upon the implementation of such standards in the extractive sector. Thereby, specific subgroups are chosen to illustrate participatory exclusion and inequalities, including women (I), different age groups (II), monolingual people and persons with lower education levels (III) and local leaders (IV). Empirical insights draw on a prior consultation process with Guaraní people in the hydrocarbon sector and collective decision-making mechanisms in the case of Chiquitano people in the mining sector. Based on such empirical observations, a catalogue of guiding principles will be proposed in order to refine the existing UNDRIPS framework.

Western-origin women’s lifestyle magazines have enjoyed great success in post-Soviet Russia, and represent part of the globalisation of the post-Soviet media landscape. Existing studies of post-Soviet Russian women’s magazines have tended to focus on either magazine content or reader interpretations, their role in the media marketplace, or representations of themes such as glamour culture or conspicuous consumption. Based on a discourse analysis of the three Russian women’s lifestyle magazines Elle, Liza and Cosmopolitan, and interviews with 39 Russian women, the thesis interrogates femininity norms in contemporary Russia. This thesis addresses a gap in the literature in foregrounding a feminist approach to a combined analysis of both the content of the magazines, and how readers decode the magazines. Portrayals of embodied femininity in women’s magazines are a chief focus, in addition to reader decodings of these portrayals. The thesis shows how certain forms of aesthetic and cultural capital are linked to femininity, and how women’s magazines discursively construct normative femininity via portraying these forms of cultural capital as necessary for women. It also relates particular ways of performing femininity, such as conspicuous consumption and beauty labour, to wider patriarchal discourses in Russian society. Furthermore, the thesis engages with pertinent debates around cultural globalisation in relation to post-Soviet media and culture, and addresses both change and continuity in post-Soviet gender norms; not only from the Soviet era into the present, but across an oft-perceived East/West axis via the horizontalization and glocalisation of culture. The thesis discusses two main aspects of change: 1) the role now played by conspicuous consumption in social constructions of normative femininity; and 2) the expectation of ever increasing resources women are now expected to devote to beauty labour as part of performing normative femininity. However, I also argue that it is appropriate from a gender studies perspective to highlight Russian society as patriarchal as well as post-socialist. As such, I highlight the cross-cultural experiences women in contemporary Russia women share with women in other parts of the world. Accordingly, the research suggests that women’s lifestyle magazines in the post-Soviet era have drawn on more established gender discourses in Soviet-Russian society as a means of facilitating the introduction of relatively new norms and practices, particularly linked to a culture of conspicuous consumption.

Children and young people who sexually abuse others have emerged as a problem since the early 1990s in the UK. This thesis attempts to provide a reflexive account and analysis of developments in policy, procedures and services in England during the past decade. It is based on empirical research undertaken primarily during the period 1994-1996 but complemented by analysis of available information drawn from the early 1990s and post 1996. Based on the premise that the problem of children and young people who sexually abuse is both a `real' and a socially constructed phenomenon, my research strategy was exploratory and descriptive in nature. The research began with the analysis of documents which, in the early 1990s, comprised the only official and semi-official guidance for welfare professionals on how to respond to children and young people who sexually abuse others. In the context of this guidance developments in policy, procedures and services in 106 local Area Child Protection Committee areas (ACPCs) in England, in respect of young sexual abusers, were then researched using a variety of data collections methods. These included documentary analysis of ACPC annual reports and inter-agency guidance, telephone and face-to-face interviews with individual professionals and welfare agency representatives, and a national survey by questionnaire of professionals involved in this area of work. The findings from the research indicate that the problem of children and young people who sexually abuse is characterised by much complexity and continuing uncertainty, with uneven, varying and often minimal developments in policy, procedure and services across ACPC areas. A child protection discourse about the nature of the problem and how young sexual abusers should be managed and responded to, which was identified during the research, emerges as contested and problematic, with professionals and agencies struggling with both lacks in resources and more fundamental philosophical, conceptual and procedural dilemmas. It is argued in the thesis that this complexity and uncertainty can be more fully understood only when reference is made to wider theoretical debates about the nature of childhood and childhood sexuality and with reference to shifting policies and legislation in respect of child welfare and youth crime. The thesis concludes by assessing the strengths and limitations of the study and suggesting directions for future research. In addition, some final reflection is offered on how, over time, my role as researcher became somewhat modified as a result of the work I undertook. Specifically, having conducted research into an aspect of study in relation to young sexual abusers hitherto virtually unexplored in England, I found that I was being called on to make various contributions to the shaping of future policy and procedure.

This thesis examines the emergence of the Irish Catholic diaspora in the industrial diocese of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and the evolution of the West Riding's forgotten Irish rugby clubs, 1860-c 1920. In addition to considering the contributions of Irish immigrants in the history of rugby football this thesis explores their religious, nationalist, social and cultural experiences, set within the wider history of Irish immigration in England. The history and establishment of parochial and non-parochial Irish Catholic rugby clubs in the West Riding can be traced back to the 1870s. Diasporic Irish Catholics settled in the county have always been part of rugby football since it's inception, albeit, at a much slower and punctuated rate than that observed among English Protestant communities. The foremost aim of this thesis is to scrutinise the rugby antecedents of Irish Catholics domiciled in the manufacturing centres of the West Riding during the Victorian and early Edwardian periods. In the late nineteenth century, towns and cities across the West Riding had become the great citadels of rugby football. Rugby attracted much participation, giving rise to the Catholic Church establishing its own internalised parochial rugby clubs, which were intended to improve the spiritual and physical well-being of its poor Irish adherents. This thesis, moreover, examines the establishment of non-parochial Irish rugby clubs which acted as sporting auxiliaries to Irish nationalist clubs. Finally, this thesis investigates those opportunities which allowed some working-class Irish Catholics to participate in games of rugby league outside of their own ethno-religious clubs for some of the county's senior professional rugby clubs. Since the main objective of Irish nationalist organisations was to offer financial support and political muscle to the Irish Parliamentary Party, this thesis will argue that the establishment of non-parochial nationalist Irish rugby clubs initially centred on the sport's by products, "gate-money".

This thesis demonstrates that constraints on displacement as a consequence of gentrification can be complex. It suggests that some of the barriers to leaving an area that households face have been under-emphasised in previous research. It analyses the behaviour of households dealing with housing stress in a Scottish local authority area, East Lothian. This is a ‘pressured area,’ as defined by the Scottish government, where the ‘Right to Buy’ council houses has been suspended in most parts because of lack of affordable housing. The thesis uses qualitative methods to examine in depth how households respond to housing problems when their options for solving them are restricted. It investigates first, the kinds of problems that they face. These include unsustainable housing costs, overcrowding, antisocial behaviour and poorly maintained or unsuitable houses. Their attempts to improve their housing are then shown. The households are asked why they think they have been unable, so far, to solve their accommodation problems. They describe the housing market in East Lothian and they explain how they think it has impacted on their housing aspirations and choices. Gentrification theory predicts that, usually, pressured households will move to lower housing cost areas to meet their housing needs. In this study, the majority of the participants were resisting displacement. Their reasons for resistance are analysed and it is proposed that the role of ‘place attachment’ in holding back displacement has been under- emphasised in previous research. It is suggested moreover that households may be reluctant to leave because they believe that the government and local authorities have a duty to provide affordable housing in their own area, and expect them to do so.

This study analyses the ways in which gender relations are expressed and articulated through the use of folk proverbs amongst Pashto-speaking people of Pakistan. Previous work on Pashto proverbs have romanticised proverbs as a cultural asset and a source of Pashtun pride and ethnic identity, and most studies have aimed to promote or preserve folk proverbs. However, there is little recognition in previous literature of the sexist and gendered role of proverbs in Pashtun society. This study argues that Pashto proverbs encode and promote a patriarchal view and sexist ideology, demonstrating this with the help of proverbs as text as well as proverbs performance in context by Pashto speakers. The analysis is based on more than 500 proverbs relating to gender, collected from both published sources and through ethnographic fieldwork in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Qualitative data was collected through 40 interviews conducted with Pashto-speaking men and women of various ages and class/educational backgrounds, along with informal discussions with local people and the personal observations of the researcher. The study is informed by a combination of theoretical approaches including folkloristics, feminist sociology and sociolinguistics. While establishing that patriarchal structures and values are transmitted through proverbs, the study also reveals that proverbs’ meanings and messages are context-bound and women may, therefore, use proverbs in order to discuss, contest and (sometimes) undermine gender ideologies. More specifically, it is argued that: (1) Proverbs as ‘wisdom texts’ represent the viewpoint of those having the authority to define proper and improper behaviour, and as such, rather than objective reality represent a partial and partisan reality which, in the context of the present research, is sexist and misogynist. (2) While proverbs as ‘texts’ seem to present a more fixed view of reality, proverbs as ‘performance in context’ suggest that different speakers may use proverbs for different strategic purposes, such as to establish and negotiate ethnic and gendered identities and power which varies on the basis of gender, age, ethnicity, and class of the interlocutors. The thesis concludes that, rather than considering folk proverbs as ‘factual’ and ‘valuable’ sources of cultural expression, scholars should pay more attention to their ‘performatory’, ‘derogatory’ and ‘declaratory’ aspects as these often relegate women (and ‘other’, weaker groups) to a lesser position in society.