This thesis presents the first in-depth qualitative study of Russian complementary schools in Scotland. The fieldwork was conducted from November 2013 to April 2015 in four Russian schools in Scotland (in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee). The thesis offers novel insights and contributes to existing theoretical, methodological, and empirical research on migrant communities through a novel lens of heritage language complementary schools. It brings a new focus to existing work in this area through its consideration of language preservation as the key factor supporting this group of Russian-speaking parents to be involved in different types of social networks and socio-cultural transnational activities. Heritage language preservation is a negotiable process which flexibly responds to the interests of the parents, teachers and pupils who participate in the activities of the Russian schools and contribute to shaping their aims. These interests can be considered as the main driving forces for a wide range of aspects of the Russian schools' everyday life such as educational programmes, styles of teaching, the social relationship between members and additional cultural events organised by these schools. Russian-speaking communities bring together individuals with a range of characteristics (including different paths to migration, skills and educational levels, national identities, plans for settlement in the UK/Scotland). The present study has shown the importance of this diverse composition of Russian-speaking communities to the everyday operations of the Russian schools. By using the Russian schools as a context, the thesis brings a new angle to understanding how social networks emerge and develop in this particular migrant group, which has previously been characterised as lacking strong social bonding and bridging connections (Kopnina, 2007; Molnar, 2011). In addition, the findings contribute to the discussion of socio-cultural transnational activities provided by complementary schools (Willis, 1992) and their role in migrant community development (Moskal & Sime, 2015). Expanding on the existing literature in this area, the thesis investigates heritage Russian language learning as a two-way process influencing both the transnational activities emerging around the Russian schools, and the Russian-speaking community in Scotland itself.

This study examines the concept of territorial stigmatisation and both the extent to which a specific community has experienced this process and the impact it has had on them. The thesis critically examines the ways in which policy, academic and other forms of representation have worked to socially construct social housing estates and those who live there as, predominantly, ‘problematic’. The study also explores how officially produced data – in the form of the Indices of Multiple Deprivation and the 2011 Census also work to construct this area as one of deficit. The study employs semi-structured, qualitative interviews with a diverse sample of twenty residents of a large, peripheral housing estate in Oxford that has experienced territorial stigmatisation over a number of decades. The study presents an analysis of the rich data drawn from these interviews which examines the views and experiences of these residents and how they account for this stigmatisation, how it impacts on their lives and their community and the extent to which they present alternative and oppositional readings of where they live. The thesis demonstrates that the stigmatising narratives of the Leys are problematic because of the responsibility they seem to place on the residents for their own exclusion and deprivation. However, the thesis also demonstrates that while this estate has experienced long-term territorial stigmatisation, residents’ responses to this experience are more complex, nuanced and reflective than some literature suggests.

During their transatlantic journeys to Britain throughout the nineteenth century, African Americans engaged in what I term “adaptive resistance,” a multi-faceted interventionist strategy by which they challenged white supremacy and won support for abolition. Alongside my recovery of this mode of self-presentation in sources I have excavated from Victorian newspapers, I use an interdisciplinary methodology that draws on literary studies, cultural history, memory studies, African American studies and the visual culture of antislavery iconography to (re)discover black performative strategies on the Victorian stage from the late 1830s to the mid 1890s. Performance was only one strand in the black activist arsenal, however. The successful employment of adaptive resistance relied on a triad of performance, abolitionist networks and exploitation of print culture. For the first time, I have identified and unified these themes as central to black abolitionist transatlantic visits, and conclude that if an individual ensured an even balance between all three, it was likely their sojourn was successful. This changes our previous knowledge of black abolitionist missions, as we can use this analysis to explain why some activist visits were more successful than others. To share their testimony of slavery, black men and women such as Moses Roper, Frederick Douglass, William and Ellen Craft, Henry ‘Box’ Brown, J. Sella Martin, Josiah Henson and Ida B. Wells “adapted” to the location and the climate in which they spoke in. Intervening in white public spaces, they subverted white power and refused to exploit themselves as spectacles or objects for white consumption. To maximize their message, they exploited the connections made available through Victorian print culture to foster favourable coverage of their lectures, befriended newspaper editors and organized the printing of narratives or pamphlets recording their speeches. Synonymous with this was their utilization of as many white abolitionist networks as possible. Through the exploitation of performance, print culture and abolitionist networks, black men and women forged a black American protest tradition in Britain. Their acts of resistance infused this tradition with a spirit of independence that could be deployed against paternalistic white antislavery reformers as well as white racists, both on an abolitionist and non-abolitionist stage. An essential part of this African American protest tradition was the creation and celebration of black testimony. Black men and women sought to make their voices heard in a climate dominated by white supremacy; they refused to capitulate and educated thousands of people on slavery and its legacies through physically and mentally demanding tours organized across Britain. This protest tradition continues to this day, with #BlackLivesMatter activists travelling to Britain to campaign against transatlantic state violence.

Siting the Olympics in the Lower Lea Valley has been widely represented as a means to improve quality of life for the ethnically diverse, deprived communities living there, in part through the creation of a new ‘community parkland’, the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Ethnic minorities however, are under-represented as users of parks and other green spaces across the UK, at a far greater level than can be explained by income alone. Little has been done to investigate this phenomenon, despite its implications for social justice and public health. Limited research has found examples of ethnic variations in normative cultural practices, racist and territorial behaviour in the public realm at large, and structural discrimination with less greenspace in the areas where ethnic minorities live. Aiming to address a gap in the existing research literature, this case study investigates the relationship between the cultural inscription of park spaces, spatial practices of park making by the primarily ‘Anglo’ groups designing this new city space, and the experiences, preferences and values of the ethnically diverse communities who currently live around the London Olympic site. Using a mixed methods approach, the empirical research finds that while seeking inclusion, exclusionary values are unintentionally embedded in production and management of UK parks. This thesis evidences the cultural values embedded in UK spatial practices, their exclusionary nature, along class and ethnic dimensions, and reflects on the importance of cultural consciousness in spatial design in our increasingly multicultural cities.

This research investigates the information behaviour of cult media fan communities on the internet, using three novel methods which have not previously been applied to this domain. Firstly, a review, analysis and synthesis of the literature related to fan information behaviour, both within the disciplines of LIS and fan studies, revealed unique aspects of fan information behaviour, particularly in regards to produsage, copyright, and creativity. The findings from this literature analysis were subsequently investigated further using the Delphi method and tag analysis. A new Delphi variant – the Serious Leisure Delphi – was developed through this research. The Delphi study found that participants expressed the greatest levels of consensus on statements on fan behaviour that were related to information behaviour and information-related issues. Tag analysis was used in a novel way, as a tool to examine information behaviour. This found that fans have developed a highly granular classification system for fanworks, and that on one particular repository a ‘curated folksonomy’ was being used with great success. Fans also use tags for a variety of reasons, including communicating with one another, and writing meta-commentary on their posts. The research found that fans have unique information behaviours related to classification, copyright, entrepreneurship, produsage, mentorship and publishing. In the words of Delphi participants – “being in fandom means being in a knowledge space,” and “fandom is a huge information hub just by existing”. From these findings a model of fan information behaviour has been developed, which could be further tested in future research.

This thesis explores the practice of community history-making in England in the period 1970 to 2000. Community history has been seen as a radical challenge to conventional history-making, with process and participation often as important as the end product. I explore the origins and development of community history, taking History Workshop, the Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers, and the Oral History Society as the starting points. These movements all sought to democratise the practice of history, and to challenge ideas about who could make history, and I consider the influence of these movements on understandings and practice of community history. I examine how groups committed to democratic history-making work in practice, and the tensions that may arise in the process, through three in-depth case studies of community history groups: QueenSpark, Brighton; Bradford Heritage Recording Unit; and Living Archive, Milton Keynes. Whilst initial critiques tended to focus on the ‘value' and content of the histories produced by such groups, my findings suggest that these critiques have ignored the complicated factors at play in the making of these histories. These groups had to contend with a rapidly changing political and social climate, and balance conflicting needs. The complex mix of external and internal factors such as funding, technology, the structure and organisation of groups, personalities and interests of key ‘members', sales viability and audience expectation, has all shaped how the groups worked and crucially what histories got told and how. Fundamentally this thesis challenges conventional understandings and meanings of community history and demonstrates that definitions of community history are historically, regionally and politically contingent. In doing so it adds to the debates about the production of knowledge and intellectual authority within history making.

The promotion of a ‘home-owning democracy’ in Britain was bolstered by the Thatcher government’s Right-to-Buy policy and from this point onwards a chasm opened up between housing tenures. This broadly speaking resulted in the categorization of owner-occupation as the tenure of choice and the social rented sector as the ‘tenure of last resort’ (Daly et al., 2005, p. 328). When New Labour came to power in 1997 the creation of mixed tenure communities was regarded as a key policy tool for tackling the interconnected problems or social exclusion manifest in the most disadvantaged and residualized mono-tenure, social rented housing estates. The thesis is concentrated on New Labour’s mixed community policies from 1997 until 2007. The study drew on the policy and academic literatures (area-effects, social exclusion and sustainability) which inform the concept of mixed communities and on health and place literatures (health inequalities, relative deprivation) to develop an analytical framework. The over-arching aim of the thesis was to explore the ways in which features of neighbourhood may impact upon health and well-being in the context of mixed communities. The research concludes that with regards to the bigger policy picture the mixed community policy agenda has put communities and especially disadvantaged communities at the heart of urban regeneration, social inclusion and housing policy. However, although this is to be welcomed the danger is that tenure diversification is seen as the ‘silver bullet’ which can be used to combat all of the problems which are often manifest in disadvantaged social rented housing estates.

This thesis is about the experiences of children born as a result of sexual violence in war and armed conflict. It explores how children conceived in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) are perceived and how those perceptions affect their everyday lives once they left the LRA and joined the families and communities of their mothers in post-war northern Uganda, and particularly in Lango. These children are offspring of forced wives - girls and young women who were forced into sexual relationships with LRA militiamen. Kony used fear and mysticism to manipulate his followers and control their sex life and hence, re-organise their reproductive choices. Yet Kony’s approach to sexuality and procreation was perceived as incompatible with Lango norms and institutions regulating sex, marriage and motherhood. This gave rise to tensions over the reintegration of formerly abducted women and their children. This study explores the circumstances under which these children were conceived and what happened to them when they left the LRA and joined their mothers’ natal families and communities. Moreover, it explores related fields – such as ideas and practices of kinship and gender - influencing the treatment of children conceived in the LRA.

Despite growth in research investigating online consumer behaviour there appears to be a lack of study focusing specifically on how consumers are involved within online settings. Involvement is defined as the perceived relevance of a stimulus object such as a product to the individual consumer (Zaichkowsky, 1984). The study of consumer involvement is valuable as it is believed to be important mediator of consumer behaviour (e.g. Slater and Armstrong, 2010; Knox, Walker and Marshall, 1994). This study explores member involvement with Online Brand Communities (OBCs) focusing specifically on two questions: (1) What is involving about OBCs? (2) How are members involved with OBCs? The study employs a netnographic methodology consisting of participant observation of two OBCs over a nine month period. Based on the findings from the observation data two conceptual models relating to the characteristics and development of member involvement with the OBC are presented. The ‘Typology of Online Community Involvement’ model identifies four distinct types of member involvement with the OBC: (1) utilitarian involvement, (2) social involvement, (3) ego-related involvement, and (4) affective involvement. The ‘Journey of Member Involvement with the OBC’ model charts the different pathways that members who are involved with the OBC may undertake during their membership. The findings provide deeper insights into online consumer behaviour such as triggers that prompt members’ initial and continued involvement with OBCs. Recommendations for management focus on developing tools and strategies that help cultivate and sustain member involvement with the OBC.

The purpose of this research is to explore the nature of an emerging practice known as ‘prosumption’, and interrogate its potential as a discursive practice which empowers consumers in an online community named Instructables. Prosumers combine the roles of consumers and producers to make their own products. A review of prosumption and closely-related practices (consumer co-creation) alongside discourses of consumer empowerment provides a guide to the research. A netnography-informed approach is used to collect data through a degree of participant observation and online depth interviews. Findings suggest that prosumption in Instructables is multidimensional in nature and benefits to prosumers. It suggests a typology of prosumers (assemblers, modifies, artists and inventors) to make a distinction between prosumer and co-creator roles. Findings also offer evidence of prosumption as a discursive practice of consumer empowerment through self-discipline and collective education in contrast to other exploitive practices such as consumer co-creation. This research finally contributes to the on-going evolution of consumer productivity and how consumers and producers participate as producers of value in market and society.