This thesis examines the social psychological significance of 'community', as it is experienced and talked about in Brixton, a culturally diverse area in South London. There are two points of entry into the social psychology of a community: (1) the negotiation of social representations of the community and (2) the co-construction of community identities. The theoretical perspective that I have developed through this research is grounded in the theory of social representations (Moscovici, 1984, 1988; Farr, 1987) and draws on other theories of representation (Hall, 1997a), community (Cohen, 995), identity and self-consciousness (Hall, 1991a; Tajfel, 1982; Mead, 1934), stigma (Goffman, 1968) and the media (Thompson, 1995). It is an ethnographic study which combines ongoing participant-observation, 7 focus groups with 44 adolescents aged between 12 and 16, 5 in-depth interviews with deputy-heads of Brixton's schools, a media analysis of a documentary set in Brixton, and follow-up discussions. These accounts are woven together to answer the principal research question: how is `community' lived in Brixton? This study shows that communities emerge as sites of struggle in the negotiation of self-identity, belonging and difference. Community identities are constructed through and against social representations of the community, particularly those in the media. Two competing representations of Brixton - 'Brixton as Diverse' and 'Brixton as Bad' — were found in the same representational field. The data illustrate the different ways in which people affirm, manipulate and contest these ambivalent social representations in order to defend their perspective on Brixton, and so either claim or reject community membership. I examine how these representations both reflect and construct the social reality of Brixton. This reveals the potential of social representations to construct, delimit and empower the living of community. The systematic analysis of social representations of community and community identities demonstrates the pressing need for a social psychology of community.

Through a historical account of the Pro-Canada/Action Canada Network (PCN/ACN), this dissertation examines coalition formation among social movements. It argues that the complex process of cross-sectoral coalition formation and thus the potential for convergence of social movements can best be understood by combining elements of different analytical frameworks. This dissertation draws on elements of the two dominant paradigms for the study of social movements, resource mobilization theory and new social movement theory. Specifically, it utilizes the formers' attention to the specifics of organization and structure and the latter's focus on the discursive formation of identities. Both are then combined with the uniquely Canadian but theoretically underdeveloped concept of the popular sector and a neo-gramscian perspective on social formation and mobilization that draws on political economy and class-analytical traditions. With its formation in 1988 around opposition to the Canada - U.S. Free Trade Agreement, the PCN/ACN was an early example of a broader trend for trade and investment to become key arenas for social and political contention at the turn of the century. This dissertation challenges the assumptions of most analytical frameworks concerning the limits to coalition formation and argues that the nature of the unifying issue is an important determinant of the potential for the growth and deepening of social alliances. After reviewing the historical conjuncture in which the PCN/ACN emerged, this dissertation traces the history of key sectors and member organizations - labour, women and ecumenical justice - paying specific attention to their approach to political engagement and the issue of free trade. As a result, it establishes the necessary background to understand both the initial basis for unity and the Network's progression beyond a lowest common denominator alliance around a single issue, to a broader mandate. This dissertation provides empirical evidence on which to judge the potential of social movements to displace other discourses and agencies on the left. Given the contemporary interest in the role of social movements, NGOs and civil society, this dissertation provides some essential signposts for two types of practitioners: academics seeking to understand outcomes and activists hoping to determine them.

This thesis explores how a disadvantaged context impacts on secondary school organisation and processes, and how this affects quality, as measured by OFSTED inspection. OFSTED data indicates a school quality problem in disadvantaged areas. This is often interpreted as arising from factors internal to the school. Policy interventions have concentrated on generic school improvement measures. However, it may be argued that if poor quality arises from context as well as from internal factors, policy responses should also be contextualised. Earlier work (Gewirtz 1998; Thrupp 1999) has begun to reveal process effects of disadvantaged contexts. This thesis builds on that work by exploring differences between disadvantaged areas, making an explicit link to quality measures, and using wider literatures from the fields of neighbourhood studies and organisation theory to develop an understanding of schools as contextualised organisations. The thesis begins with a quantitative analysis of context/quality relationships, but is principally based on four qualitative case studies. These consider context objectively, analysing socio-economic, market and institutional factors, and also explore staff’s subjective interpretations. Process implications for schools are examined, as are the schools’ responses, in terms of the design and delivery of schooling. These findings are discussed in relation to OFSTED quality measures. The research reveals that the quality problem in poor areas is partly an artefact of the inspection system but also reflects contextual effects. It also finds that there are significant differences between the contexts of schools in disadvantaged areas, and that these are not captured by typical context measures. The study concludes that changes are needed in school funding and inspection to recognise contextual effects, and that specific practices need to be developed to enable school improvement in poor areas. Relying on schools to apply generic ‘good practice’ within existing constraints will not be sufficient to eliminate the quality problem.

Colon cancer is the third most common type of cancer, with high mortality throughout the world. During tumorigenesis, normal cells transform into tumour cells following changes in the expression of oncogenes and/or tumour suppressor genes, which are involved in many processes including the cell cycle, differentiation and apoptosis. An imbalance in the regulation of proliferation and differentiation in colon epithelial cells is usually associated with the development of colon cancers. Uncontrolled proliferation with a lack of differentiation is one of the major characteristic features of cancer cells and a remodelling of the Ca2+ signalling is linked to these pathways. Among the Ca2+ transporting proteins, P-type Ca2+-ATPases, the plasma membrane Ca2+ ATPase (PMCA) pump, has a high-affinity for Ca2+ and is involved in the efflux of Ca2+ against the electrochemical gradient from the cytosol across the extracellular space. Four PMCA isoforms have been identified. PMCA1 and 4 are expressed in most tissues. Changes in the expression of PMCA have been documented in breast cancer cells, whereas the expression profile of PMCA isoforms in colon cancer cells remains unknown. Up-regulation of another P-type Ca2+-ATPase, expressed in the endoplasmic reticulum, SERCA3, occurs during the differentiation of colon cancer cell lines and is down-regulated in colon cancers. Changes in PMCA expression have not been assessed during colon cancer cell differentiation. The first part of this thesis describes the analysis of the expression profile of PMCA during colon cancer cell differentiation. Both PMCA mRNA and protein levels were assessed in differentiated HT-29 cells by real time RT-PCR and western blotting analysis, respectively. The results showed changes in PMCA4 expression, whereas changes in the expression of PMCA1 were not associated with differentiation of HT-29 cells. PMCA mRNA levels were also reduced in some colon cancers suggesting a remodelling of PMCA-mediated Ca2+ efflux during colon carcinogenesis. The second part of this thesis involved exploring the functional role of PMCA4 in Ca2+-mediated signalling pathways such as differentiation, proliferation and apoptosis. PMCA4 expression was altered in HT-29 colon cancer cells via transient and stable over-expression of a PMCA4 expressing plasmid or siRNA-mediated silencing of PMCA4. An increase in the PMCA4 level did not alter or induce differentiation of HT-29 cells. Hence, up-regulation of PMCA4 expression may be a consequence rather than a cause of HT-29 colon cancer cell differentiation. PMCA4-mediated reduction in proliferation was observed in HT-29 colon cancer cells where PMCA4 was stably over-expressed. Stable PMCA4 over-expression was also associated with the down-regulation of the transcription of the early response gene, FOS. Despite the apparent augmentation of cytosolic Ca2+ responses to G-protein coupled receptor Ca2+ mobilizing agents, the sensitivity of cells to the apoptotic inducing agents such as TRAIL and/or CCCP was not affected following siRNA-mediated PMCA4 inhibition in HT-29 cells. Collectively this thesis describes PMCA isoform-specific changes during differentiation of HT-29 colon cancer cells and alterations in PMCA levels in some colon cancers.Evidence is also presented to suggest that alterations in PMCA expression in colon cancer cells may provide a growth advantage by promoting proliferation without increasing sensitivity to apoptotic stimuli.

This thesis takes ‘mixed-race’ individuals and parents of ‘mixed-race’ children in Scotland as its subject, exploring the meanings and significance of ‘mixed-race’ and the process by which ‘mixed-race’ identities are constructed. Contributing to the burgeoning ‘mixed-race’ scholarship in Britain, and more broadly to the intersection of the sociology of ‘race’ and the sociology of family relationships literature, this thesis presents a qualitative analysis of ‘mixed-race’ identities by exploring how mixed individuals view themselves through interactions with others. Informed by a theoretical approach combining interactionist and intersectional perspectives, this thesis stresses the role of everyday interactions with family members in shaping one’s views of the self, but it also pays attention to the ways in which meanings associated with ‘mixed-race’ are conditioned by and produced in the wider social context. Based upon thirty-one in-depth interviews with ‘mixed-race’ individuals and parents of mixed children conducted over a 24-month period, this thesis qualitatively examines interviewees’ experiences and interpretations of ‘mixed-race’ by locating them within the wider socio-cultural context. Focusing on personal and family experiences of being ´mixed race’ or being associated with mixedness, this thesis pays particular attention to family dynamics, seeking to explore the ways in which family practices influence children’s attitudes towards mixed heritages. In so doing, empirical data is analysed and presented in a ‘thick description’ fashion. Illustrative cases are employed to draw out and exemplify the complex processes of negotiating and constructing meanings of ‘mixed-race’. Contending that the relative centrality of mixedness varies between individuals, the analysis shows that ‘mixed-race’ identities are embedded in various forms of social relations and conditioned by structural constraints. Due to the uneven access to symbolic and material resources, mixed individuals have different capacities to mobilise collective meanings ascribed to ethnicities in order to negotiate racialised differences. Within this process, ‘mixed-race’ families play a pertinent role in providing their children with access to knowledge about their mixed heritage. Furthermore, parents have an impact on children’s early attitudes towards their ethnic heritages by either reinterpreting or reproducing racial ideologies. Once again, parents’ priorities, strategies and specific plans to communicate the idea of ‘mixed-race’ are structured by their racialised, classed and gendered positions.

This study provides a critical analysis of the influence of social class on life chances in post-reform Vietnam. As the country underwent a profound structural transition from a centrally planned to a market-oriented economy in the mid-1980s, social class gradually replaced political class as a major source of inequality. Knowledge about this phenomenon is rudimentary – not least because of the continuing power of state ideology in contemporary Vietnam. Throughout the investigation, Bourdieu’s framework of class reproduction guides both a quantitative analysis of the Survey Assessment of Vietnamese Youth 2010 and a qualitative research of 39 respondents in the Red River Delta region, including young people of the first post-reform generation – now in their 20s and 30s – and their parents. The study discusses the ways in which class determines the ability of parents to transmit different resources to their children, focusing on those that are usable and valued in the fields of education and labour. It finds that, across several areas of social life in contemporary Vietnam, implicit class-based discrimination is disguised and legitimised by explicit and seemingly universal ‘meritocratic’ principles. The study makes a number of original contributions to sociology, three of which are particularly important. (1) Empirically, it breaks new ground for a sociological understanding of both the constitution and the development of class inequalities in contemporary Vietnam. (2) Methodologically, it offers numerous useful examples of mixed-methods integration. (3) Theoretically, it proposes to think with, against and beyond some of the most relevant Bourdieusian research on this topic. The empirical application of Bourdieu’s framework in toto, as opposed to a more customary partial appropriation, facilitates comprehensive insights into: class-specified practices as governed and conditioned by internalised powers and structural resources; the multidimensionality of class-based advantages and disadvantages; and the causative transmission and activation of capital across and within generations.

Culture is all around us, it is the glue that holds us together as a people. Through history, cultural heritage has been deliberately targeted in attempts to eradicate all traces of the targeted people. This thesis analysis the normative evolutions of the concept know as Cultural Genocide through history up till today. The first part of the thesis deals with the understanding of culture and the importance of culture for the surviving of a people. Since culture in large involves identity, the chapter looks at the various definitions of identity through various aspects. The chapter also address the various values that culture incorporates; such as group or community, nationalism or humanity. The second part explores the normative evolution of the legal protection of cultural property and cultural heritage and will show how such protection has developed through time. It will conclude that the normative evolution regarding the legal protection of cultural property and cultural heritage has been following the thoughts of its time and society – always reacting to make the protection even better for the future. The third part will take a similar look at the normative evolution of genocide and especially cultural genocide. Through addressing the historical development up till the 1948 Genocide Convention, including an analysis of the drafting of the Convention and the reason why cultural genocide were left out. In conclusion, this part argues that, in regards to genocide, the normative evolution has not been in any way progressive after 1948. Finally, the thesis evaluates whether international law, at both its normative and enforcement level, deals with the concept of cultural genocide; especially in the context of deliberate targeting and destruction of cultural property. By examine the correlation between the 1948 Genocide Convention and the 1954 Hague Convention, the thesis will argue that that cultural genocide today can be argued to act as a 'autonomous' category side by side with genocide, so that the 1954 Hague Convention and its Protocols serve to complement the 1948 Genocide Convention rather than be considered under International Law as one distinct category of genocide.

The main objectives of this research are to investigate the interaction between the city of Edinburgh, Lothian Buses (Edinburgh's principal public transport provider) and people using specific bus routes within the city boundaries. A single overarching question dominated the nature of this research: ‘What can we know about the local character of the city from the vantage point of the bus?' The primary means of data collection were systematic participant observations along specific bus routes from 2004 to 2005. Consideration moves beyond solely examining the interaction between passengers, and treats the bus and the city as complex phenomena with which people have an interactive relationship. Through these observations, it explores the ways in which the bus is more than a mode of transport that links places, and instead maintains that the bus network forms its own multi-stranded signature within the city. Unravelling these strands reveals a mobile place where heterogeneous types of bus users engage in sense making procedures. In addition, the quotidian conversations that take place within the bus add their own unique rhythms and provide an added dimension to city life. Analysis draws on these systematic observations, delving beneath the surface of the familiar practice of bus travel, seeing the new in the familiar and subjecting these observations to philosophical enquiry. This research also considers the multifarious dimensions of the embedded experience of travel within its in-situ spatial and temporal imagination. The changing temporal and spatial nature of the bus creates a highly complex place within which contested identities produce knowable and recognisable corporal inscriptions upon the bus. Through the everyday practices and accomplishments within the lifeworld, we treat the city as a work in progress, in which there is an enduring tension between a community's need for inclusiveness and the concomitant practices that contribute to the process of exclusion. The embodied time spent travelling is the substantive life-blood of this thesis and the rich veins of the bus network present themselves as an essential part of the city's anatomy. In chorus, the theoretical foundation reflects upon itself as principled speech.

This submission for PhD by publication aims to capture, reflect upon, analyse and offer critical insights into how the use of land and exchange of property can help serve the search for sustainable urban development (SUD). This aim is subsequently met by: • hypothesising how the applicant's publications provide a representation of SUD able to get beyond the state-of-the-art and offer a conceptual framework capable of uncovering the positive role land and property can play in sustaining urban development; • reviewing the research undertaken by the applicant to define SUD and develop a framework for analysis, set of protocols and directory of assessment methods to evaluate the sustainability of urban development; • highlighting the possibility there is for the valuation methodologies and investment appraisal techniques underlying the use of land and exchange of property, to be constructive in terms of the relationship their corporate strategies and financial instruments have to the environment; • illustrating how it is possible to compute the informational basis of property management and draw upon the intelligence this offers cities to develop electronically-enhanced services underpinned by e-learning platforms, knowledge management systems and digital libraries, capable of supporting environmental improvements; • showing how the environmental improvements that surface from such developments in turn support the community-based approach to urban regeneration which underlies the UK government's socially-inclusive and participatory venture into ecological modernisation and democratic renewal; • providing examples of where the management of property by cities is intelligent, not only because the environmental improvement supporting their community-based approach to urban regeneration are socially-inclusive and participatory, but for the reason the ecological modernisation and process of democratic renewal underlying these developments meet the sustainability requirement; • reflecting on the contribution this representation of SUD as informational, intelligent, socially-inclusive, participatory, community-based, regenerative, ecological and democratic, makes to what is known and understood about the subject. Together these positive, analytical and constructive examinations of SUD augment into the informational basis of property management and surface as the corporate strategies and financial instruments of the electronically-enhanced service models needed for cities to be intelligent. In particular, the strategies, instruments and eGov(ernment) service models, cities need to be intelligent in valuing the environment and accounting for the socially-inclusive, participatory, community-based, regenerative, ecological and democratic qualities underlying their improvement programmes.

This study uses in-depth, qualitative analyses of narrative fragments elicited during nine months of ethnographic research in Delhi and elsewhere. I develop the notion of 'transcultural voices' to understand narrative practices of young, male, hip hop-affiliated ethnographic interlocutors. As participants tell stories about their lives, their plans, their fears, their urban experience and their views of the world, many voices seem to appear. These voices support and challenge each other in manifold ways, constructing complex polyphonic depth. I show that narrators other (Chapter 4), synchronise (Chapter 5) and embody (Chapter 6) this polyphony to construct narrative moments in which their ‘own’ transcultural voices can be recognised. In conversation with me or other audiences, these young men, most of who have migratory histories, narrativise their experiences of being hip hop practitioners in one of India’s complex megacities to discursively imagine themselves as part of a globally unfolding hip hop culture. I also analyse narratives told by North American and European hip hop practitioners, most of them diasporic Indians, who travel to India to practise, promote and research hip hop. From their accounts we begin to understand how hip hop in Delhi is narrated through hybrid subject positions from outside. My own ethnographic practices and the writing of this thesis surely have to be counted as such an account from outside, which leads me to assume my own authorship here with heightened reflexivity. The thesis shows that an analytical focus on voice in narrative, one which considers both the physical and the social voice and is informed by ethnography, can complexify research on urban subcultures in the contemporary globalised moment.