Work and unemployment, care, and related social security policies have been flashpoints for gendered discourses and practices across many nation states. In the Czech Republic, this has been the case during Czechoslovak state socialism and in the emergence of market-based democracy since 1989. These systems have differently contested the figure of the working and caring woman, and the state’s role in providing support and resources to its citizens, but have both done so in gendered ‘productivist’ terms. The everyday experiences of those citizens living through these macro-level changes has not often featured in analyses of ‘transition’ and the (neoliberal) capitalism which has followed – their navigation of these gendered systems, and the ways in which this may be post-socialist, is further underexplored. Drawing on 22 interviews, alongside questionnaires and several months of observation with 10 previously unemployed single mothers participating in an NGO’s employability project, this thesis addresses this gap in the literature. Using a ‘needscapes’ analytical framework, I demonstrate that micro-level perspectives can usefully inform the design of policies and provision with which my participants were interacting. Many of my participants were experiencing financial, emotional and physical crises due to the Czech state’s disengagement with their needs, an inaccessible and low paying labour market which prioritised ‘independent’ male workers, and care services which excluded less well-resourced individuals. The group of single mothers and a small number of disabled people who numbered among my participants had particularly acute experiences of these issues. My participants’ experiences of labour market, social security and care provision issues associated with neoliberalism were often post-socialist. This included their navigation of a precarious and low paid labour market, which they critiqued using images of Communist scarcity, and in which discourses about the inappropriate figure of the Communist working woman contributed to disciplinary gender enactments and budget-saving policies which sought to channel mothers out of the labour market. My analysis suggests that (sometimes contradictory) neoliberal discourses and practices in the Czech Republic are complexly intertwined with and co-produced through post-socialism, and often function in tandem with neo-conservative discourses about gender. Many of my participants did not seek to live in the ways suggested by socially and politically prevalent discourses, that promote as the ideal citizen an (implicitly male) self-supporting, employed individual. My participants instead presented themselves as inter-subjectively connected to others, with their accounts of working, being unemployed, claiming social security, caring or receiving support experienced through their relationships with others and the needs of those around them. In their caring interactions, the value of dependent relationships and the involvement of both men and women in their caring kin networks highlight alternative gender enactments as characterising their navigations of post-socialist neoliberalism. Their perspectives dispute dominant political narratives about transition, which cast this as a process occurring at an individual – rather than collective – level, and resulting in a ‘self-supporting’ capitalist individual. Here, their experiences of ‘neoliberal’ change in the Czech Republic is complexly and inter-subjectively post-socialist, sometimes articulated through gendered enactments.

Peasants, workers, worker-peasants, nomenklatura and the state in northern Poland’s ‘Recovered Territories’ have employed a strategy they call ‘kombinacja’ to survive economic transitions into and out of socialism from 1945 to the present. Kombinacja is the process of manipulating space and legal, political, or cultural rules in order to appropriate a resource—food, commodities, labour, information, power—and then combine them into an ersatz product to meet an economic, cultural, or political end. No person, class, institution, or economy ‘owns’ kombinacja. The ‘who’ and ‘what’ are relational. The ‘when’ and ‘where’ are contextual. Yet, it is not ubiquitous; every kombinacja is a form of speech that charts a terrain of economic and political trajectories intended to shift the balance of power at a given point in time. This multi-sited historical ethnography tracks how these ‘arts of combination’ have pirouetted across agrarian and industrial, formal and informal, socialist and capitalist boundaries in the agro-industrial commune of Dobra. The arts of combination were forged through the exploitation of workers in Poland’s industrialising cities during the 19th century, across its popularisation as a survival strategy during Nazi-occupation, and towards its reformulation into an economic stabiliser for both villagers and the state during the ‘socialist’ era from 1945 to 1989. Villagers used kombinacja to access or hide resources from the state in the midst of broken supply chains, bureaucratic gridlock, food shortages, and complex regulations. When commune officials turned a blind eye to kombinacja to stay in power, they too drew from the arts of combination to ‘fix’ formal state problems in the commune. Kombinacja was used to subvert and accommodate the state. Reworking the state through kombinacja to ensure that no one went hungry informalised the command economy and contributed to the incremental breakdown of the local state apparatus into a feudal-like order. I then turn to nomenklatura privatisation, potato pilfering, alcohol consumption, mushroom foraging, and other practices to trace how kombinacja is being reformulated (or not) to rework post-socialism. The arts of combination call attention to practices that cut across a series of binaries - capitalist/socialist, formal/informal, state/non-state - to show how those marginalised by power seek to control the conditions of their subjection and how those in position of power seek to control the conditions of others’ subjection. Building upon J.K. Gibson-Graham’s ‘diverse economies’, the case of kombinacja shows us that informality does not always create alternatives that subjugate hegemony; rather, they can alternatively be used to crystallise a hegemonic imaginary. I suggest a much broader understanding of how informality has been a site of ingenuity and nequality, innovation and suffering, across time and space.

In both Soviet and Western historiography, Russian populism (narodnichestvo) has been studied more or less in isolation from the broader socialist movement in Europe. The aim of this thesis is to show that although it undoubtedly possessed characteristics peculiar to Russia, the populist movement should be understood as part of the Europe-wide revolutionary movement. To accomplish this, the thesis is structured around chapters discussing individuals who were involved in both the Russian revolutionary movement and the European anarchist movement, with which populism shared many ideas, ideologies tactics and internal disputes. These individuals are Mikhail Bakunin, Zemfirii Ralli and Petr Kropotkin. Around these chapters are studies of groups or movements connected with those individuals in Russia or Europe. Central themes include consistency, or the social groups which the revolutionaries hoped to address; organisational forms adopted by anarchists and populists; tactics to be used to rouse their constituencies to action and to organise and achieve revolution; relations of the revolutionaries to the masses; the differing concepts of political and social/economic revolution; and the rise of terrorism in both movements.

This thesis considers the reputedly constitutive effects of violence and (intergenerational) loss on youth political subjectivities and agencies, with specific regard for young Tibetans of the refugee-diaspora of Northern India. While the effects of violence on socialisation and agency are currently a significant concern, prevailing clinical, cultural, and even radical psychoanalytical explanations tend – in universalising the traumatic event – to advance underdetermined accounts of experience, subjectivity and agency, leading to depoliticisation of the young or overstatement of their agency. In contrast, this study draws on the Foucauldian concept of political subjectification to reflect on the displaced wider overdeterminative material-discursive field through which young subjects, their subjectivities, and agencies are constituted. Through an ethnographically-informed genealogical method I attempt to trace the signification and affective-internalisation of a specific masternarrative of (national) loss, and the displacements the advent of this account has caused –with specific regard for the displacement of classed, gendered and generational experiences of loss. Finally, drawing on Foucault’s parrhesia as a heuristic for decentred agency, I consider how far young people in exile are able to resist patrifilial hegemony through indexing alternative forms of loss.

The focus of this study is the property rights theories tested in the context of Modern China’s rural areas. It is divided into three parts: Part I presents the theoretical framework, concepts. These form the analytical tools. Part II briefly describes the three big transformation of rural arable land ownership in modern China. This is a particular case in which the theoretical framework can be tested. In Part III of this study I apply the analytical framework developed in part I to understand the puzzles and problems described in part II. This is the application of theory to the history and reality. In this research, I show that the change of property rights is central to political, economic and social change in that particular society. As a formal institution, property rights provide an incentive or disincentive structure for a particular economy. The contrasting economic performance in modern China’s agriculture can be well explained by the underlying force— the property rights institutional arrangement. The stagnation and decline of Chinese economy and universal poverty is conditioned by the disincentive structure of the Commune System. While the specular economic growth and its relief of poverty is driven by the incentive structure of the Household Responsibility System (HRS). The success of the HRS is in that it is not only a government institutional arrangement but also a communal institutional arrangement in its origin. The rules created by the peasants themselves are legitimized by the central government as property rights. It really matter who creates the property rights and for whom. This research attempts to enrich our knowledge in social science. It challenges the conventional and standard political and economic theory used to explain Chinese puzzles in its economic growth and social development. In the theoretical sphere, it contributes mainly to the literature of Marx’s theory of property, Honoré’s concept of ownership and Ostrom’s theory of common-pool resources and institutional change. In the practical sphere, it contributes to our understanding of the radical and complex change in Modern China’s rural areas.

Russian entrepreneurs have long faced considerable difficulties. While much is known about what these difficulties are, less is known about how entrepreneurs respond to them, what it is like to be an entrepreneur under these circumstances and why they bother in the first place. In this thesis I address these questions by conducting a multi-sited ethnography within three small Siberian enterprises, observing the directors as they conduct their everyday business. I find that these entrepreneurs all resent their vulnerable position in the political economy but that they have developed a capacity to survive or thrive in spite of the obstacles and threats they encounter. This capacity, I argue, is less a consequence of their commercial acumen than their understanding of what can be achieved given their particular circumstances, their knowledge that business-state relations take an informal, personalised form, and their preparedness to resist predatory outsiders. This leads me to reconsider the meaning of entrepreneurship in the Russian context. Furthermore, my informants’ agency presents a challenge to the idea in predominant political economic theories that the Russian state dominates the private sector. I therefore reconceptualise business-state relations using Douglass C. North et al’s Limited Access Order theory in combination with my empirical materials. This provides a more accurate theory that accepts the pre-eminent role of the state in the political economy while accommodating the agency displayed by my informants.

This thesis examines the evolution of Russia’s internal and external security perceptions from 2000-2008. Drawing on social constructivist ontology, it argues that the Putin regime’s articulation of security priorities evolved in relation to its reconceptualisation of Russian state identity from a ‘weak’ to a ‘strong’ state. To trace this evolutionary relationship between state identity and security perceptions, official discourse on Chechnya is examined. In this way, Russian narrative constructions of the process of securitisation and desecuritisation of Chechnya, and the role that this discourse played within the articulation of state identity and security priorities are investigated. The thesis suggests that the initial securitisation and subsequent desecuritisation of Chechnya are best understood within the Putin regime’s discursive construction of state building and changing security priorities, rather than as a reflection of shifting material conditions. The thesis concludes that analysis of individual security policies should take into account that the narrative construction of these policies shape, and are shaped by, the multifaceted and evolutionary meta-narratives of Russian state and security identity. Moreover, it is argued that Russian security policy should be studied as a subject in its own right, investigating both internal and external security issues, rather than being subsumed within a broader foreign policy analysis.

This thesis examines deindustrialisation, the declining contribution of industrial activities to economic output and employment, in Lanarkshire, Scotland’s largest coalfield between the early nineteenth and mid-twentieth century. It focuses on contraction between the National Coal Board’s (NCB) vesting in 1947 and the closure of Lanarkshire’s last colliery, Cardowan, in 1983. Deindustrialisation was not the natural outcome of either market forces or geological exhaustion. Colliery closures and falling coal employment were the result of policy-makers’ decisions. The thesis consists of four thematic chapters: political economy, moral economy, class and community, and generation and gender. The analysis is based on archival sources including Scottish Office reports and correspondence relating to regional policy, and NCB records. These are supported by National Union of Mineworkers Scottish Area and STUC meeting minutes, and oral history testimonies from over 30 men and women with Lanarkshire coalfield backgrounds, as well as two focus groups. The first two chapters analyse the process of deindustrialisation, with the first offering a top-down perspective and the second a bottom-up viewpoint. In chapter one deindustrialisation is analysed through changes in political economy. Shifts in labour market structure are examined through the development of regional policy and its administration by the Scottish Office. The analysis centres upon a policy network of Scottish business elites and civil servants who shaped a vision of modernisation via industrial diversification through attracting inward investment. In chapter two the perspective shifts to community and workforce. It analyses responses to coalfield contraction through a moral economy of customary rights to colliery employment. A detailed investigation of Lanarkshire colliery closures between the 1940s and 1980s emphasises the protracted nature of deindustrialisation. Chapters three and four consider the social and cultural structures which shaped the moral economy but were heavily altered by deindustrialisation. Chapter three focuses on the dense networks that linked occupation, community, and class consciousness. Increasing coalfield centralisation and remote control of pits from NCB headquarters in London, and mounting hostility to coal closures, contributed to an accentuated sense of Scottish-ness. Chapter four illuminates gender and generational dimensions. The differing experiences of cohorts of men who faced either early retirement, redundancy or transfer to alternative sectors, or those who never attained anticipated industrial employment due to final closures, are analysed in terms of constructions of masculinity and the endurance of cultural as well as material losses. This is counterpoised to women who gained industrial work in assembly plants and the perceived gradual attainment of an improved economic and social position whilst continuing to navigate structures of patriarchy.

This thesis investigates the understanding and practices of contemporary Mongolian management since the 1990s. In particular, it focusses on the shared experiences of local managing practitioners in Mongolia by exploring the conceptions of a manager, management, and managerial roles from the participants’ perspective and the contextual influencing factors on their understanding. Since the 1990s Mongolia has undergone a series of cultural and institutional changes in relation to its political, economic and societal development. The country has fluctuated between having the fastest growing economy and the world’s worst performing currency. Mongolia itself has become the land of opportunity for many by attracting foreign direct investment, however, the knowledge of local management practice is as yet little understood as there have been no academic or empirical studies conducted in English before. Therefore, this research aims to build an understanding of the concept of management in Mongolia by examining the narratives of thirty five local managers in relation to their experiences during and after the socialist period. Moreover, it investigates the contextual influencing factors from practitioners’ perspectives with an ethnographic approach. This qualitative study draws on interviews with three groups of local managers in Mongolia, who are described as socialist-era, transitional-era and non-native managing practitioners. There are some similarities and differences amongst these identified groups, but each was distinguishable by their formal training, work ethic and management approach. Furthermore, this research found that the intertwining contextual factors of a nomadic cultural heritage, socialist legacy, and the pressures of the current economic and societal changes and political interference influence management thinking in equal measure in contemporary Mongolia. The importance of this study lies in its theoretical and empirical contributions. By evaluating the relationship between classical management literature and indigenous management concepts with a focus on the varieties of contextual factors, this study attempts to provide an original insight into non-Western management practices. It aims to extend the current theories of crossvergence, indigenous management studies, and understand the nature of managerial work in a cross-cultural context. By carrying out the first academic study to examine Mongolian management perspectives in English, it contributes empirically to global management knowledge, and to the local business community.

This thesis questions the generally accepted view that mechanics’ institutes made little contribution to adult working-class education from their foundation in the 1820s to the last decade of the nineteenth century when, finally, government recognised the importance of adult and further education with the passing of the Technical Instructions Acts of 1889 and 1891. It addresses the issue of what impact the mechanics’ institutes exerted upon the adult working classes in a regional context. It has also questioned research previously carried out by a number of historians who hold the view that by 1850 the mechanics’ institutes’ movement was in decline. This thesis argues that in Yorkshire the movement, through no small contribution made by the Yorkshire Union of Mechanics’ Institutes, went from strength to strength and responded to the need for relevant curricula throughout the period of study. It establishes that mechanics’ institutes of the Yorkshire Union (1838 – 1891) were not only to be found in the urban and industrialising towns, but many were also located in the rural and semi-rural areas of the Dales and Pennines. Across the Yorkshire Union as a whole there were similar patterns in growth and development. This thesis establishes that not only did mechanics' institutes support the working classes but they also provided a firm foundation for technical and further education, which was built on through the passing of the 1889 and 1891 Technical Instruction Acts. Several institutes either became technical schools or had established a tradition of adult education which was taken up by the new technical colleges of the early twentieth century. Many smaller institutes either became satellite centres for local colleges or became public libraries and museums. The nineteenth century success of the mechanics’ institutes foreshadowed the later development of adult education.