This thesis is a qualitative study based in in-depth semi-structured interviews with fourteen female to male transsexuals, concerned with the social and discursive processes through which female to male transsexuals construct their new 'male' gendered social identities and the ways in which their bodies may be seen to impact upon these processes across a variety of personal and social relationships. Chapter One provides an overview and critique of key and competing perspectives concerning the relationships between transsexual subjectivity and embodiment, and the hegemonic discourses/discursive practices of heterosexuality, sex and gender, and medicine. Chapter Two establishes the epistemological and innovative methodological framework of the thesis, moving from the analysis of representations of transsexuality to a sociologically informed analysis. Dealing with issues of experience, voice, power, agency and representation through contemporary work in feminism and the sociology of health and illness, the Chapter adapts the multidisciplinary methodologies and methods of 'narrative analysis' to the study of female to male transsexual identity in social interaction. Chapter Three engages with existing perspectives on written transsexual autobiography within feminist, literary, cultural and transgender theory and, through rigorous and detailed narrative analysis addresses the significance and specificity of 'oral autobiography' where constraints and opportunities for the construction of an 'authentic' transsexual selfhood are produced in a dynamic, interactional context. In Chapter Four personal narratives are examined to extend the issue of transsexual 'authenticity' into the broader area of relationships with parents, siblings, partners, children, friends and work colleagues. It deals with the ways in which past and present knowledge of the interviewees as particularly embodied and gendered individuals by these 'knowing' others impacted upon their recognition and acceptance of them as men. The thesis concludes that taking this analytic approach which moves 'beyond the text' into social and interactional contexts reveals complex negotiations of 'traditional' stories, the significance of others' past knowledge and investments in sexed/gendered embodiment and the interviewees' own active management of their embodied gendered selves which earlier work has overlooked or not fully addressed. Finally it identifies fruitful areas for further research suggested through this study.

This thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Agincourt, South Africa, between 2009 and 2010. It examines social relations of care involving young people in the context of the country's AIDS epidemic and increasing economic inequality. The thesis focuses on three sets of care relations, which constitute gift exchanges involving young (orphaned and non-orphaned) people: 1) children's labour for guardian care; 2) girls' labour and sex for support from boys and men; and 3) the local manufacturing of 'orphans' for charitable gifts from tourist-philanthropists. The thesis further examines how the contested constructions of orphanhood, childhood and care are expressed through these three sets of relations. It theorises how Western and local constructions of care, childhood and orphanhood meet on the ground through orphan-targeted assistance. Evidence derives from ethnographic fieldwork carried out with two non-profit organisations serving 'Orphans and Vulnerable Children' (OVCs) in two separate villages, as well as with 14 households connected to the OVC organisations. Ongoing, semi-structured interviews were carried out with young people and significant adult caregivers from participant households. Participatory exercises, including a photography project and a 'Girls Club,' were also carried out with young participants. Interviews with key stakeholders involved in the OVC care scene were conducted. Stakeholders included local government workers and officials, faith-based leaders and staff from private tourist game lodges conducting community development projects involving young people in Agincourt. This thesis develops the concept of the 'materiality of care' to address the dearth of ethnographically informed theorisations of care involving young peopled affected by AIDS and poverty. It argues that understandings of care for and by young (orphaned) people must be placed within local, emic perspectives and practices of care, as well as within the broader, historical and political economic context shaping relations of care. Findings have implications for policies and interventions for young people people affected by AIDS and poverty. The thesis contributes to the growing body of evidence that is critical of orphan-targeted interventions in sub-Saharan Africa; interventions which fail to recognise the familial context of parentless children and the broader context of poverty and hardships caused by AIDS that cut across the lives of orphaned and non-orphaned young people.

This local study of single-sex organisations in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire is an attempt to redress some of the imbalanced coverage given to this area of history thus far. A chronological study, it examines the role, importance and, to some extent, impact of a wide range of women's organisations in the local context. Some were local branches of national organisations, others were specifically concerned with local issues. The local focus allows a challenge to be made to much current thought as to the strength of a "women's movement" in the years between the suffrage movement and the emergence of a more radical form of feminism in the 1970s. The strength of feminist issues and campaigning is studied in three periods -- the inter-war period, the Second World War and its immediate aftermath, and the 1950s and 1960s. The first two periods have previously been studied on a national level but, until recently, the post-Second World war era has been written off as overwhelmingly domestic and therefore unconstructive to the achievement of any feminist aims. This study suggests that, at a local level, this is not the case and that other conclusions reached about twentieth century feminism at a national level are not always applicable to the local context. The study also goes further than attempting to track interest in equality feminism in the mid years of the century by discussing the importance of citizenship campaigns and the social dimension of membership of women's organisations. The former has been introduced into the academic arena by Caitriona Beaumont and her ideas are assessed and expanded upon. As a result the thesis makes strong claims that citizenship activity was of vital importance to the empowerment of British women in the twentieth century. The importance of a single-sex social sphere in allowing women to develop as individuals, is also recognised in each of the three periods.

Within the UK recent research has suggested that a belief in gender equality is becoming increasingly prevalent. Women are frequently framed as empowered individuals who are now enjoying a freedom to choose in every aspect of their lives, placing them on equal terms with men. From this perspective, feminism is consequently viewed as outdated and redundant. Such ideas have been labelled as ‘post-feminist’ by feminists and cultural theorists. However, as many feminists have argued, whilst considerable advances have been made, women in the UK are in fact far from experiencing ‘true’ gender equality. This study focuses on UK journalism, examining the impact of post-feminism on the experiences and beliefs of women working in an industry that has been identified as contributing to upholding post-feminist ideas through its cultural products. In 2002, the most recent large-scale survey of UK journalists revealed that this traditionally male-dominated industry was now one of the few occupations with almost equal numbers of men and women. However, despite this numerical equality, more women in journalism are clustered in lower status roles and in less prestigious areas than their male counterparts. It is possible that female journalists may thus be experiencing sustained workplace inequalities of a type not acknowledged by post-feminism. This research aims to provide an insight into the experiences of women working in the UK journalism industry through 49 semi-structured interviews with female journalists from newspapers and women’s magazines. There has been little previous research in this area; earlier work suggests however that female journalists’ experiences may be uniquely shaped by the existence of an individualistic occupational culture. This study consequently looks from a feminist perspective at the beliefs that female journalists hold about gender (in)equality, to reveal the way/s they interpret their working lives, investigating a possible affinity between journalistic work culture/s and post-feminist ideas.

The thesis was basically exploratory in nature. A staged life cycle model, with three key stages, was developed which jointly incorporated women's work and motherhood roles. The chosen stages led to a focus on white middle-class women. This was therefore the target group from which the samples were drawn and the focus of any generalisation from these studies. The primary focus of the work was on the decision-making processes that women go through in making the transition from one stage to the next. This was looked at in terms of a cost/benefit model that incorporated meaning through an exploration of the stresses and satisfactions that women experienced at the three identified stages. This allowed the initial decision-making model to be 'unpacked', and the relevant factors to be identified. These were considered in detail and looked at in the context of the relevant literature. One factor, role conflict, was explored further in a separate survey where roles were found to be potential sources of support as well as of demands. In looking at the decision to return to work, five factors were found to be particularly important to the women, and these were successfully checked for reliability in a separate study. The research was started in 1986, and the surveys were undertaken in 1987 and 1988. Results also allowed the formulation of a stress/satisfaction model, and when looked at in relation to the decision-making processes, it was postulated that decision-making would be easier if certain criteria were met. The decision-making model was used to explore the implications for women's training in general, and the training of women returners in particular. In relation to the latter, it was found that women anticipating the return to work expected it to be more stressful than did those women actually experiencing that stage, suggesting that women may overestimate the size of the problem at the post-break stage, and thus delay returning to the labour market. The strengths and weaknesses of the models were recognized and certain recommendations for further research were made.

This research focuses upon a group of women who are white and working class they live on the St Anns council estate in Nottingham and they are all mothers to mixed-race children. The focus of this study from the outset is to challenge the often negative and homogenous readings and namings of council estates in the UK and their residents. The problems that are within Britain's council estates are often complex and difficult to understand, therefore the research sets out to explain some of those complexities, whilst highlighting the disadvantages the women experience in their daily lives. The research explores the interaction between class, race and gender but also space, examining how poor neighbourhoods have become known in recent times as spaces of social exclusion and their residents have become known as 'the excluded'. The research explores how the women find value for themselves and their children when their social positions have been subject to stigma, and disrespect and their practices are misrecognised. Therefore the research examines the local value system and the local resources which are available and used by the residents of this council estate and asks in the absence of universal social and economic resources can people find value locally.

This thesis is an exploration of the production of feminist theory as a material, social, and institutional practice: it aims to understand feminist intellectual production as to some extent circumscribed by historical, biographical, political, and especially academic conditions. Specifically, it compares the intellectual trajectories and scholarly output, feminist and otherwise, of theologian Mary Daly (1928-2010) and philosopher Judith Butler (1956--). The analysis tries to keep three aspects of those lives in mind at once: firstly, the properly intellectual character of the intellectuals’ ideas; secondly, the specifically institutional (that is, university) conditions in which they have found themselves; and thirdly, the broader biographical conditions of their lives. By keeping all three in mind at once, we get to a potentially fuller and more nuanced picture of their intellectual trajectories than may be available through critical appraisal of their works alone. The thesis is an original contribution to knowledge both in as much as it brings together Daly and Butler, two apparently fundamentally opposed feminists, in order to see what thinking them together allows us to do, and in the applications and adaptations of Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory which help explain these feminists’ trajectories. Through a re-working of Bourdieu’s theoretical apparatus, the analysis works through the concept of fields of intellectual endeavour. Academic disciplines but also broader structures such as the field of intellectual production work with and against intellectual producers, creating both possibilities and constraints for intellectual work. Developing a broadly Bourdieusian theory of symbiotic relations between what Bourdieu terms habitus and field (that is, trying to identify the mutual constitution of these aspects of social life rather than the primacy of either), the thesis argues for the fundamental role of agential negotiation and strategy in the context of institutional and disciplinary constraint. And in the context of this adapted Bourdieusian theory, I argue finally for the disciplinary field of women’s studies as a potentially fruitful institutional and intellectual space for a feminist negotiation of the university.

Key words: Thailand, sex tourism, sex industry, authenticity, voyeurism, tourist experience Research on sex tourism in Thailand has often focused on western men’s sexual interactions with local women (Cohen, 1982; Enloe, 1989; Brown, 2001), and the sexualized entertainment on offer in eroticized tourist spaces/places is assumed to be aimed at western male tourists (Manderson, 1992; Bowes, 2004). While a number of academics have studied sexualized spaces and venues, little has been written on how and to what extent western women engage with this type of touristic entertainment in the Thai (sex tourism) context (Odzer, 1994; Manderson, 1995; Sikes, 2006). This is despite the fact that the number of female tourists visiting Thailand has increased over the past decade (TAT, 2007), and some evidence suggests that the sex industry in Thailand caters for female tourists (Vorakitphokatorn et al, 1994; Williams et al, 2007). This thesis will argue that western women are curious about the nature of the Thai sex industry, and that some tourist women seek to visually explore sexualized tourist areas as part of their ‘tourist experience’ in Thailand. Sex tourism is a contentious subject area, and investigating the extent to which western women might engage with the sex industry as part of their tourist experience necessitates a critical engagement with theoretical understandings of female sex tourism. The findings suggest that western women’s desire for an authentic tourist experience in Thailand facilitates their entry into sexualized zones. While the history of the sex industry in Thailand has helped to popularize its notoriety, discourses on tourist-oriented sexual spaces suggest that visiting a sexual show is something that is ‘ok’, and further is part of ‘real Thailand’. However, women’s visual engagement with the Others who inhabit these spaces reveals a darker side,and perhaps a voyeuristic desire to visit these venues. While part of their motivation to consume the sex industry stems from their understanding of the sex industry as authentically Thai, their contradictory interpretations of Thai sex workers reveals a darker, more complicated picture. This thesis will examine the lines that divide tourism from sex tourism practices to suggest that consuming difference and the desire to engage with exotic (and erotic) Others underpins all touristic engagements, including tourist interactions with the sex industry. Visual sex tourism practices will be outlined here, and current definitions of sex tourism will be deconstructed to reveal a more complicated picture of tourism/sex tourism practices, which calls for a closer examination of gendered tourism behaviors.

This thesis explores how Muslim family carers of chronically ill or disabled family members in Britain perceive, perform and negotiate their caring role. Drawing on data collected from forty-three semi-structured interviews, this thesis shows that although Muslim family carers are not a homogenous group; perceptions, performances and negotiations of care within the family are often mediated through a Muslim religious lens. This manifests itself in three predominant ways explored in this thesis. Firstly, Muslim religious beliefs act as a "sacred canopy" through which carers draw comfort and spiritual meaning for both their caring role and the illness and disability of the cared for relative. Secondly, certain state services are deemed as particularly problematic for upholding Muslim religious identities. Whilst health services are positively received, social services often are deemed as "dangerous" and potentially threatening to family honour (izzat). This is particularly pertinent for carers of females with learning disabilities. Thirdly, Muslim religious and cultural beliefs maintain traditional gendered perceptions of caregiving within the family, often with very little support from outside organisations. This thesis also argues that Muslim carer support organisations use interesting and innovative methods of engaging Muslim family carers as a form of "bridging social capital" to health and social services.

The question of when a child is old enough to be left at home alone, and under what circumstances, is a dilemma faced by many parents and professionals. Adopting a social constructionist perspective of social problems, this thesis explores professional perceptions and policy responses to the issue of children left at home alone since the passing of the Children Act in 1989. The law in England and Wales does not specify an age at which it is deemed safe to leave a child unsupervised at home, a practice sometimes referred to as 'self-care'. Professionals respond to the issue through non-legalistic, more persuasive interventions. The media also plays a role in regulating parenting practices, as demonstrated in the early 1990s, when the British press covered a number of stories involving parents who left their children at 'home alone'. The issue continues to bubble up from time to time, but calls for more specific law to manage the problem have gone unheeded. Drawing on interviews with child welfare professionals and campaigners who work at national level, and on an analysis of policy, campaigning and educational documents, I explore how the issue is constructed, responded to and resisted as a social problem. I conclude that this is an example of an 'unconstructed' social problem because, despite continued public and professional concern, there has been no clear legislative response. Understanding how and why some social problems 'fail' is a key contribution to the literature on the social construction of social problems, which has focused mainly on 'successful' social problems to date.