This thesis examines contemporary constructions of collective indigenous identity. It specifically focuses on the offline and online interactions among the members of Bibaknets, an online community for indigenous peoples from the highlands of the Cordillera Region, Philippines. The study explores the relational and positional nature of collective indigenous identity as Cordillerans attempt to resolve the tensions between their experiences of marginalisation and their goal for empowerment. Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality, the thesis critically analyses the processes of Cordilleran collective identity construction which are inscribed in power relations not only between highlanders and the dominant population but also among themselves. On the one hand, members are motivated to join and participate in Bibaknets discussions as a forum for Cordillerans. On the other hand, such participation is constrained by some members who direct the discussions and consequently define the membership of the forum.

The State of the Nation investigates discourses of British nationhood by analysing the coverage of migration on UK public service television news bulletins. These bulletins embody discourses of the national on a structural level through their public service remit and their position in the programme schedule. They also evoke the nation in and through their content—in particular in the context of the coverage of migration. The central line of enquiry of this thesis is focussed on the potentially problematic consequences of the interrelation of discourses of migration with discourses of the nation. That this is a question of how they interrelate rather than whether rests on three theoretical assumptions: discourses of nation represent a form of identification; identification is the outcome of encounter with and potentially exclusion of the Other; migration is a discourse of encounter. Two further assumptions relate to the current historical moment and the news coverage under analysis: discourses of the nation have increasingly come under pressure; and yet, public discourses do not fully recognise or even acknowledge this, instead insist on the nation‟s continued unchanged relevance. The key question is: Under what contingencies is migration positioned as an excluded Other in relation to theses imagined community discourses? The thesis relates these issues to wider questions about the possibility for a cosmopolitan ethic. It theorises that certain logics of narrow nationality are a key determinants, but have to be understood as variable rather than as constant. The first two chapters of section 1 develop these key theoretical assumptions as well as some methodological concerns. The third chapter provides some topical context and background for the main data set: material collected during six months of media monitoring in 2006 on three news bulletins with a public service remit. The data is analysed in section 2 across three case studies. The first considers so-called illegal migration in relation to questions of space, attempting to trace the boundaries of the nation. The second moves from the boundary to the inside of the nation and looks at the changing nature of citizenship. The third case study focuses on the conditions under which journalists and migrants encounter each other.

The study explores Filipino seafarers’ integration and cross-border practices using a transnational paradigm. As seafarers’ lives span the ship and the shore, a transnational framework entails looking at whether belongingness is manifested simultaneously and the extent to which this can be possible. The study’s multi-sited approach considers both the everyday realities in the community and on board the ship including the transnational linkages they maintain and deploy to remain part of both realms. The analyses show that seafarers’ repeated reincorporation and conformity in the community reflects how belongingness is largely constituted as aspirational at home. Integration on board, largely work-oriented and subject to a racialised hierarchy, favours less the social aspect of integration. The limited involvement in both contexts mutually reflects fringe belonging. Under conditions of high mobility, cross-border practices are constrained inasmuch as they are facilitated through access to communication technologies. The ties of reciprocity under extensive kin relations similarly accentuate the strain affecting connection at home. Such conflicting outcomes undermine the connectivity and continuity of social relations that is purportedly enhanced by linking across borders. Such ties are nonetheless employed as a strategy of counteracting labour insecurities despite the burden arising from such tenuous links. This thesis concludes that seafarers evince a form of transactional transnationalism such that they inhabit both worlds only if on board.

The objective of this study is to demonstrate the ability of riverstage tomography to estimate 2-D spatial distribution of hydraulic diffusivity (D) of Zhuoshui River alluvial fan, Taiwan, using groundwater level data from 65 wells and stream stage data from 5 gauging stations. In order to accomplish this objective, wavelet analysis is first conducted to investigate the temporal characteristics of groundwater level, precipitation, and stream stage. The results of the analysis show that variations of groundwater level and stream stage are highly correlated over seasonal and annual periods while that between precipitation is less significant. Subsequently, spatial cross-correlation between seasonal variations of groundwater level and riverstage data is analyzed. It is found that the correlation contour map reflects the pattern of sediment distribution of the fan. This finding is further substantiated by the cross-correlation analysis using both noisy and noise-free groundwater and riverstage data of a synthetic aquifer, where aquifer heterogeneity is known exactly. The ability of riverstage tomography is then tested with these synthetic data sets to estimate D distribution. Finally, the riverstage tomography is applied to the alluvial fan. The results of the application reveal that the apex and southeast of the alluvial fan are regions with relatively high D and the D values gradually decrease toward the shoreline of the fan. In addition, D at northern alluvial fan is slightly larger than that at southern. These findings are consistent with the geologic evolution of this alluvial fan. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This qualitative study examines the relationship between migration, foodways, ethnic identities and gender through a case study of a West African community in the UK, Ghanaians in London. The study is grounded in qualitative and theoretical research on meals. The micro-level analysis of food habits within households is set in a wider context by exploring the development of the food culture in the community as a whole. The main research questions are: 1) How are foodways maintained, transformed, and renewed by migrants and their descendants at both household and community levels? 2) What is the relationship between ethnic identity and foodways amongst migrant groups? 3) What is the role of gender in maintaining foodways and identities? At the household level, the focus is on the structure of food and eating in the past and present, and on food habits as symbolic expressions of ethnicities and gender. The study employs ethnographic methods of investigation in studying Ghanaian households, functions, restaurants and food stores. The thesis highlights the role of substitutes in maintaining meal formats and the identity of the food despite changes in its nutritional content. Transformation of food habits occurs through improved access to formerly unavailable foods or meals, enabling migrants to express hybrid identities. Transformation also occurs in the second generation due to shifting identities and the acceptance of other food cultures. Functions can form an arena for the renewal of commensal relationships among migrants. At the community and household levels, the role of gender is important in the maintenance of foodways and ethnic identities. Among first generation migrants it is possible to observe a shift in emphasis from ‘tribal’, or ‘regional’, to ‘national’ food, and among the second generation, a further shift away from ‘national’ or ‘continental’ food to food with a more comprehensive reach. These shifts express symbolically changing identities and ideas of difference.

The ‘black British movement’ is a consolidation of a diverse range of political, social and cultural priorities into a collective. Some of the more salient priorities include the opposition to British racism and imperialism, a challenge to hegemonic power and the invisibility of white ethnicity, and the eventual annihilation of the race concept itself. To ‘devolve’ this movement is to acknowledge some vital shortcomings in its critical practice. Firstly, an interrogation is needed of the assumptions that underpin the term ‘British’, specifically within a critique of racism and its derivatives. Secondly, the movement currently fails to thoroughly spatialise black British critique beyond the urban ‘metropole’ of London, and to a lesser extent, Birmingham; for instance, to the ‘margins’ of Scotland’s political, cultural and social milieu. Here, Scottish devolution provokes questions of how black Britishness might have become co-opted into a broader legitimation of ‘British’ culture. Literature has been a key site of contestation for black British cultural theory. Contemporary Scottish literature ‘writes back’ to the British management of difference through state-led multiculturalism and nationalism. Equally, the ‘Scottish Myth’ of egalitarianism, racelessness and a laissez-faire expectation of civic nationalism in Scotland are challenged by texts which foreground Scottish racism, whiteness and ethnocultural nationalism. In short, the texts featured herein expose and renegotiate the political practices of race, racism and culturalism in the context of two discourses of nation: Britain and Scotland.

Change associated with late modernity is argued to have diminished collective identification, particularly in relation to locality, as an approach to and resource for, navigating life paths. Young peoples‟ creation of a life course has been understood as particularly responsive, or alternatively vulnerable, to such influences. Contrasting research asserts, however, that collective identification with and through particular appreciations and understandings of locality continue to provide ontological security within the circumstances of modern change. Local collective identification can be carried out via its participants‟ shared investment in symbolic interpretations of culture and space. This identification is asserted through claims to affinity with, or competency in, these socio-spatial systems and practices and the building of symbolic boundaries that contrast identities not possessing such claims. This perspective renews the significance of academic explorations of young peoples‟ choice of collective identification with locality as a tactic in managing their biography and its negotiation as an influential social, cultural and spatial context in their lives. This thesis explores the ways in which young people negotiate the spaces and resources of local collective identification, in the context of late modernity. It employs a qualitative analysis of a community participation project – the Millennium Green Scheme - to access such issues. The participation of adult active citizens and inclusion/exclusion of young people within this scheme are understood to reflect some of the dimensions of collective identification with locality, at three case study sites. At each case study - two rural and one urban - the research takes an unusual intergenerational approach, exploring both adults‟ and young peoples‟ understandings of locality, collective identification and young peoples‟ relationship to these. The findings suggest that young peoples‟ access to the spaces and resources of collective identification, with and through locality, are negotiated within adult defined social and cultural contexts. Further, adults mobilise cultural representations of young people that regulate this access, in relation to the symbolic resources and boundaries of local collective identification. This regulation is influenced by adult reactions to wider pressures upon collective identification associated with modernity. The research finds that although modernity may influence young peoples‟ recourse to local collective identification, it is also central in shaping adults‟ inclusion/exclusion of young people from accessing this means of navigating the life course. Adults‟ geographies of locality are central symbolic material to their collective identification with locality. They are also found to dictate the logic of adult inclusions of young people within the spaces and resources of local collectivity. Adults at the case studies associated many young people within cultural affiliations and competencies they understood to belong to the late modern context, resulting in representations of „dislocated‟ childhood. At rural case studies these were perceived as inappropriate to local socio-spatial norms and rendered young people outside the symbolic boundaries of collective identification and endeavour. In the urban research, young people were perceived to require reinstatement into local collective identification through education about and encouragement into, its spaces and resources. Both understandings reflected broader adult reactions to late modern change. Young people took up the tactic of collective identification with locality or rejected it, in context dependent strategies. However their perceptions of opportunities to share identification with locality were significantly influenced by adult attempts to shape their inclusion/exclusion from spaces of collective identification. In addition, young people interpreted these inclusions/exclusions as broad comment upon their local socio-cultural and spatial status. This research finds that locality and local collective social contexts continue to be of significance in young peoples‟ lives. It adds texture to understandings of the way in which the influence of modernity upon young peoples‟ biographical choices is experienced and negotiated from within local social and cultural relations and spaces.

This thesis explores one of the key challenges in contemporary urban planning: understanding the production and dissemination of knowledge and how this shapes views and expectations towards urban policy and practice. Over the last four decades knowledge transfer has been considered as a ‘panacea’ for unsustainable urban growth. Private sector consultancies are believed to play an important role in this process as they are known to be policy advisors. As evidenced by the global growth of consulting businesses in the course of the twentieth century, so their influence might have strengthened. However, the role of consultancies in the production and dissemination of knowledge and the social outcomes of these processes have not yet been adequately evaluated: especially for the influence of sustainability assessment frameworks developed by these consultancies on urban policy and practice in a local context. In order to address this gap, the ‘Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse’ of Keller (2011) is deployed in the case study of the ‘Arena’ development. The framework draws on the tradition of social constructionism (Berger and Luckmann, 1967) and the power-knowledge scholarship of Foucault (1986) in order to explain how knowledge, intertwined with power, defines the outcomes of the sustainability assessment. Insights from semi-structured interviews with key ‘Arena’ project stakeholders, documentary and secondary sources, demonstrate that the processes of valorisation and objectification of knowledge in the context of consultants are contested across time and space with regard to: their credibility and reputation, the reliability of the sustainability assessment framework, and social interaction around it. This thesis defines the consultant-client relationship as the interplay of scientific-environmental knowledge and economic interests mitigated by the local socio-institutional context. It suggests that the ‘reputation’ of consultants is a ‘relational’ construct, limited by confusion over the meaning of sustainable development and the actions of their clients. It points to the pitfalls of using various frameworks in order to assess sustainability impacts with regard to a bias towards interests of a client. Finally, it also stresses the role of consultants in the production of competitiveness ‘imaginaries’ and how this fails under the pressure of local knowledge authorities and in the context of public-private relationships in Poland.

The migration of highly skilled persons is not a new phenomenon in the global economy. International labour migration has significant economic, social, political, and cultural implications in both developing and developed countries. Given this context this study explores the reasons that contribute to highly skilled persons migrating abroad, using the migration of highly skilled Tanzanians to the UK as an example. The study takes a qualitative exploratory approach that employs a subjective ontology to explore reasons that apply in Tanzania that contribute to the decision for highly skilled Tanzanians to migrate to the UK and its effect on brain circulation in Tanzania. Thematic analysis was used together with Nvivo 10 software to analyse the research findings. Data were collected through qualitative interviews that afforded opportunities to gain understanding from participants’ views, experiences and perceptions of the reasons that contribute to migration decisions. Moreover, remittances, diasporas and return migration were major migration issues perceived by participants who discussed these influences on brain circulation. By returning home, even for a short time, highly skilled Tanzanians can impart their knowledge and experience acquired abroad to ‘circulate’ or mobilise the resources and activities in Tanzania so that they can be used in the most efficient way. Lee’s (1966) theory was used to guide this study and the findings led to a modification of the theory that assisted in suggesting ways in which the Tanzanian government can develop policies that influence its highly skilled people to remain and work in the country, and its expatriates to return for brain circulation. Moreover, given the lack of previous qualitative research studies on the influence of migration of highly skilled Tanzanians on brain circulation, this paper contributes a qualitative method that is of value for future research.

This thesis investigates Local Area Agreements as a tool for the effective delivery of local public services focusing on three main areas: - Centre-Local Relations and the Vertical Governance of LAAs - Intra Local Relations and the Horizontal Governance of LAAs - Learning from LAAs to improve the future practice of local public service delivery. In exploring these areas, the thesis draws upon several academic theories; principally the Strategic Relational Approach and New Institutionalism. These themes are explored in a two-tiered methodology. The first is a national overview survey of LAA practitioners which then informed the second stage; detailed interviews across two case study areas (Liverpool and St Helens) as well as with civil servants and elected politicians from national government. In relation to vertical-governance, the thesis discusses the national indicator dataset and the ability for areas to adequately focus on local policy priorities, the top-down governance of LAAs and a discussion about the role of Government Office for the regions in negotiating and delivering LAAs. In relation to horizontal governance, the research identifies both stronger and weaker actors within the local governance process, discusses the value of differing actor approaches, investigates how internal accountability affects the relationship with a wider partnership and discusses the role of elected members. The final section discusses how practitioners feel that LAAs could be improved, before discussing how current Coalition policy addresses these concerns, before drawing some final conclusions about the relative success of the LAA project. The findings show that despite initial overtures of greater local discretion over setting priorities, strong central control remained. In particular, this was seen through the indicator selection process, with areas adopting indicators that were not seen as local priorities. At the local level it is shown that a long or short term operating horizon affected how actors worked with the LAA and that those actors that traditionally operated on shorter time scales (i.e. police, fire and rescue service) were more likely to register frustration with longer term bureaucratic processes. It was also found that those actors that viewed partnership working on LAA targets as an investment for long term results were viewed as being more effective than those which simply saw it as a cost. In terms of Coalition policy in the post LAA period, it appears that many lessons have gone unheeded, particularly around the components of effective partnership working. However, the new City Deal programme presents a renewed sense of optimism for effective (and locally responsive) local public service delivery.