The popular and scientific literature has been discussing the advent of ‘big data’ with a measure of excitement and apprehension. For the first time in history, it seems, every breath we take, every move we make, someone’s watching us. But beyond their unprecedented volumes and the anxieties they raise, new communication data have a less obvious aspect, in so far as they are (arguably) of a fundamentally different kind, compared to traditional network datasets. Traditionally, social network data describe relationships between individuals; quasistatic social ties such as friendship, trust, kinship and employment relations. But when they are used to model digitally mediated communicative transactions, the connections are of a different nature. Instead of representing stable social ties, transactions (such as emails, text messages and phone calls) constitute sequences of shortlived events, with each transaction being a possible response to a preceding one and a potential stimulus to the next. The point of departure of this dissertation is the distinction between the topology of the tie structure and the temporal structure of sequences of communicative transactions. Theoretically, the dissertation explores mechanisms of co-evolution between these two structures at three levels of aggregation: (i) the macro-level consisting of the network itself or substructures within it, the level of an organization or a community as a whole; (ii) the meso-level consisting of nodes and social ties; and (iii) the micro-level consisting of sequences of interrelated communicative transactions. On the one hand, networks, individuals and ties are seen as the backdrop against which sequences of transactions unfold. On the other hand, transactions are considered to have (cumulative) consequences on the evolving structure of social ties and the network at large. Methodologically, the thesis uses a publicly available dataset consisting of email transactions within Enron, an American energy and services company, during the few months of its bankruptcy. Two methods are applied to identify and explore the mechanisms. First, the dataset is disaggregated into various types of email transactions, revealing how different transactions contribute to various structural properties of the network. Second, a multilevel analysis approach is used to reveal how structural and transactional mechanisms combine to elicit new communicative transactions on the part of email recipients. The mechanisms identified in the empirical chapters challenge received wisdom about the nature of social networks and their link to the notion of social (trans)action while at the same time addressing practical problems faced by network modellers who need to construct networks out of digitally mediated transaction datasets. In addition, the findings raise general questions about new types of data and the consequences they may have, not only for the field of social networks, but also for popular ways of thinking about ‘the social’ and ways of intervening in its course.

The aim of this PhD is to draw together two very different strands of rural geography, namely: young people and partnerships. Partnerships and young people have been the subject of growing debate and, although there is interest in both areas, there has been little work carried out that combines the two to date. The aim of this thesis is to address that gap by studying one particular partnership, part of whose remit was to address issues and concerns of the rural young. Young people, despite initiatives such as youth councils, and youth fora, still operate in the shadows of the decision-making process and, as such, do not enjoy full participation; they are occupying a world in which adults still make decisions on their behalf. This is exacerbated by the fact that the decisions that are made are done so from an adult, rather than a young person’s, perspective. Considered from this position all young people, not just those in groups considered to be socially disadvantaged, are excluded by virtue of their youth and their powerlessness in an adult world. Partnerships, that is a group of public, private and voluntary actors working to a shared goal or goals, should have the capacity to overcome this lack of participation, as a significant portion of the partnership rhetoric is based upon integrating voices from the ‘top’ and the ‘bottom’. Hailed as the new form of governance, such collaborative partnerships are being increasingly utilised to deliver goods and services that were previously the exclusive domain of local government. Nevertheless, in their turn, partnerships are also vulnerable to issues of power, conflict and accusations of ineffective working practices. The thesis examines these two disparate groups through a study of one such partnership. However, despite the emphasis on ‘bottom-up’ input, this particular partnership did not have direct representation from the young. This compromised not only its ability to draw young people’s voices into political debate, but also problematised, from a research point of view, the ability to gauge how effective integrative approaches really are. This was overcome by drawing on action research as a methodology which, in effect, situated the researcher between both parties; on the one hand, acting, as far as an adult can, as a ‘voice’ for the young, and on the other, as a researcher, in a position to follow the partnership and gauge the success of integrative approaches to policy-making. Through a combination of focus group discussions and self-completed questionnaires, key findings are: although young people do not see themselves as deprived, they experience exclusion through a paucity of rural services that is exacerbated by their geographical position along a continuum of rurality; young people are not a homogeneous group - although incremental differences in age may be small, the physical and social needs of a 12 year old or a 14 year old are significantly different which, when overlooked by planners, results in the creation of inappropriate facilities; young people exercise power over each other through their own social codes and practices that excludes some groups either socially or spatially; that there is a considerable amount of intergenerational suspicion that is embedded in the cultural practices of adult/child relations. These findings, and more, were reported to the partnership, which, although unable to implement change itself, was able to provide a springboard from which to broadcast the concerns of the young and one particular concern, inadequate transport, was eventually brought into policy recommendations. The results suggest that, although the effectiveness of the partnership was hampered by the fluidity of its membership and the delay in creating a strategic framework, it was its ability to network, during and even post-partnership, that was its greatest strength. The thesis concludes with suggestions for further research.

In the last few decades, there has been an increasing interest in the field of sustainable urban planning and it is in constant evolution across the world. Cities in developing countries, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, are experiencing rapid and in many cases unsustainable growth. Since its establishment seventy years ago the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been transformed into a modern, developing country. This transformation has placed a great deal of pressure on many of the available resources, including oil and natural gas, and has introduced a number of serious issues, such as environmental degradation. Therefore, sustainable urban planning has emerged as a pressing concern that must be addressed by both governments and nongovernment authorities. The overall aim of this thesis is to assess the urban planning of the city of Riyadh, in terms of sustainability, and to develop a comprehensive consensus-based framework for the sustainable urban planning of Riyadh. The research is carried out to answer the following main question: can the urban planning of the city of Riyadh be managed sustainably through an adapted sustainable urban planning framework? The research highlights the significance of sustainable urban planning for cities and gives an inclusive review of important issues in terms of underpinning concepts, principles and challenges. The research aims to critically evaluate the most common and established frameworks of sustainable cities. The thesis provides a review of the existing urban fabric of the city of Riyadh and critically discusses its urban planning phases during the last few decades. This critical review is based on a proposed framework of sustainable urban planning. The proposed framework is evaluated based on the opinion of 35 experts, familiar with the local context of the city, through the use of the Delphi technique and the application of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Through the testing process of the proposed framework in different parts of the City of Riyadh, the results have proven the hypothesis of the research, which indicates that a comprehensive consensus-based framework for sustainable urban planning, supported by understanding the key issues of sustainability and supported by clear and comprehensive guidelines, can benefit and manage the urban planning for the City of Riyadh sustainably.

This thesis examines the experience of gay male student nurses during their university course, which leads to registration as a nurse with the Nursing and Midwifery Council. Using in-depth qualitative interviews I focus on the student’s choice of nursing as a career and their performance of sexuality within the differing spaces of their clinical placements and the university. This thesis explores how these gay student nurses negotiate their gender, masculinity and gay sexuality within the professional boundaries of nursing. Furthermore, it identifies how these students negotiate issues of caring and the formation of therapeutic relationships with their patients, as men and gay men. The theoretical framing of the thesis draws upon Goffman's theories of presentation and performance of the self and Rubin’s 'charmed circle'. Alongside analysis of interview material, I explore the space of the hospital from a personal perspective and interrogate its gendered and desexualized organization through the lens of human geography. Moving between these two analytical frameworks, I examine and draw together the experiences of these students and examine their negotiation of the nursing role as gay men. I argue that the experience of these students and the negotiation of their sexuality as student nurses is fraught and precarious due to the complexities and boundaries of professional nursing roles in contemporary healthcare. Within the conclusion I address the implications of my research for gay nurses, patients, educators and for those who recruit nursing students.

Literature suggests that the public sector has a unique responsibility to promote sustainable practice from within. Food systems impact on planetary, social, economic and human health, and Ecological Public Health (EPH) is making these holistic connections explicit. This study developed a new methodological approach based on the principles of EPH, which for the first time are used to empirically investigate a complex foodservice system, the hospital foodservice system. In addition, Street Level Bureaucrat theory is used at the ward level for the first time deepening understanding of workers’ practices, particularly on the theme of choice. Using a case study based within one Welsh Health Board, this research considered the translation of a new Welsh policy into practice through an exploration of two key elements within the foodservice system: menu planning and food service at ward level. Following the systemic and interdisciplinary thinking promoted by EPH, a multi-methods approach was taken using documents and formal interviews with 28 key stakeholders in the case study Health Board. Ward based studies took place in three Health Board hospitals: lunch service on a total of nine wards was explored through observation, 33 informal interviews, 104 patient experience questionnaires, waste data and an in-depth study of one meal (lasagne) with 48 participants. The study showed mixed findings in the translation of policy into practice: aspirations to improve sustainability through procurement and waste reduction did not materialise in practice, and the individualised approaches of workers led to high levels of food waste and inconsistent approaches to choice. Patient satisfaction with choice increased under new menus, but a drop in satisfaction around menu changeability was found, particularly for longer stay patients. Finally, the lasagne study showed that patients had diverse responses to the same dish, and that liking the dish did not mean enough was eaten to meet nutritional needs. Such findings, in drawing the fields of nutrition and sustainability together, have multi-disciplinary impact, particularly for nutrition, environmental and hospitality management studies. In turn the findings demonstrate the value of research that draws on the principles of EPH.

The overall goal of this thesis is to examine three divergent literature streams, cultural capital, social capital and communities of practice (CoPs), in the context of social marketing theory. The thesis explores the means through which social and cultural capital are exchanged between two groups using social marketing techniques within a CoP framework and considers anti-social behaviour, experiential marketing and relationship marketing literatures. Four theoretical propositions are examined using mixed method and longitudinal action research approaches within a practical road safety intervention. The goal of the ‘live’ intervention sought to encourage the adoption of advanced driving practices in a group of young male drivers. Behaviour change was measured pre- and post- intervention using In Vehicle Data Recorders (IVDRs), questionnaire surveys and measured driver assessments. Supplementary qualitative insights were generated using observations, one-to-one interviews and focus groups. An understanding of advanced driving practices was achieved through extensive participation in advanced driver training by the researcher. The results of the investigation identified two groups of road users each exhibiting distinct tastes and preferences within a framework of concepts derived from the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. The evidence suggests that following intervention, and including the socialisation of these groups, a positive shift occurred in the adoption of advanced driving practices. Contribution is made to social marketing theory through the application of Bourdieu’s cultural capital ‘taste zones’ applied to a social marketing context. Social marketing is then portrayed as playing a ‘bridging’ function between two groups. This approach portrays the role of social marketing as a facilitator of positive ‘customer–customer’ interactions as opposed to a more traditional ‘customer–change-agent’ orientation. Furthermore, the CoP concept is suggested as a viable mechanism through which this modified orientation can be achieved. Key words: social marketing, cultural capital, social capital, communities of practice, road safety, advanced driving.

This thesis investigates the development of regional agri-food systems and their supply chains to understand how they affect the sustainability of rural regions. It argues that the existing dichotomies of alternative-local and conventional-global do not provide a sufficiently nuanced understanding of the dynamic transitions and interactions that occur in regional agri-food systems. Deploying and extending socio-technological systems theory, the thesis explores the interaction between nested levels of sectoral and general agri-food regimes and reconstructs the emerging logics of interaction. Against this background, it analyses how alternative agri-food supply chain innovations evolve and assesses their various degrees of success. The meat, dairy and horticultural sectors in SW Wales are investigated as case studies, using a mixed methodological approach combining secondary data analysis and interviews with key stakeholders and supply chain actors. The research finds three sub-sectoral systems with highly differentiated socio-technological configurations and equally diversely configured niches. Using the socio- technological systems framework the: socio-technological configuration, degree of system stability and the future transitional pathways of the each sub-sectoral system is examined. This framework also creates the basis for an assessment of how likely their innovations are to be adopted or absorbed by the conventional agri-food system in SW Wales. The thesis finds that meaningful interactions occur not only within each sub-sector and betweentheir niches but also between sub-sectoral systems. The thesis ultimately provides a nuanced analysis of SW Wales’ agri-food systems that shows the complexity of regional food systems and critiques possible sustainable responses from public policy. It demonstrates that a socio-technical regime perspective can uncover the manifold relations between local and regional agri-food innovations and the dominant, multi-layered agri-food system. This constitutes a major empirical and conceptual contribution to the debates on sustainable food and rural development.

This thesis compares the identity politics of Frantz Fanon and ‘Periyar’ EV Ramasamy. After framing an interpretative paradigm through which the core ideas of Fanon could be deciphered, an interpretation of Fanon as a rigorous critic of identity politics is arrived at. Exploring Fanon’s strained relation with the particularist Black identity politics of Negritude and his own imperative for the need to transcend from particularist identity politics to a genuine, universal humanism, I seek to prove that while Fanon rejected the false universalism of European humanism, he did not support rigidly identitarian movements either. Fanon’s universalism was based on a reciprocal and respectful recognition between cultures and peoples, working towards a universal humanism. After a brief introduction to the socio-historical context of Ramasamy’s politics, I then use this Fanonist lens to critique the anti-caste political discourse of Ramasamy, especially how he articulated his concerns towards the Brahmin Other and the non-Brahmin Self, and his approach towards the untouchable Dalit castes. I argue that his fixation with the Brahmin identity as the ultimate Other responsible for the inferiorization of the non-Brahmin castes, and his consideration of this identity as immutable and irredeemable, made a lasting universality impossible. Yet, Ramasamy’s penetrating insights on the myriad ways in which native culture in the colony oppresses minorities and marginalized groups challenges Fanon’s beliefs in the redemptive power of Third World anti-colonial universality. In the conclusion, based on the dialogue between Ramasamy and Fanon, I explore the limits of particularism and the needs of universalism, making a case for a constitutive, but conditional, pluralism.

Arguments that a national identity could create a sense of social unity, solidarity and cohesion in a national group have a long tradition in social and political theory. J. S. Mill, for instance, argued that “the boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities” because a state with several nationalities is one in which members are “artificially tied together” (2001, 288). In Britain in the 2000s these arguments resurfaced in public and political discourse through a distancing from multiculturalism, which was increasingly seen as divisive, and a new emphasis on national unity and social cohesion through the promotion of British identity. There is, however, a lack of empirical research in Britain on what the relationship between national identity and social cohesion might actually be, and the strength of the relationship as compared with other issues that might also be important for social cohesion. This mixed-methods thesis attempts to address the research gap both through analysis of the Citizenship Survey covering England and Wales, and through semi-structured interviews with respondents of Black-African and Black-Caribbean ethnicity in an area of London. I argue first that the type of national identity in question is of crucial importance; a distinction between constitutional patriotism, civic national identity, and ethnic national identity is helpful, and evidence suggests the latter form may in fact be detrimental to some aspects of social cohesion. Second, I argue that social cohesion might be better broken up into two separate concepts – one referring to a commitment to certain of the state’s institutions (termed ‘institutional cohesion’), and the other to associational types of behaviour (termed ‘associational cohesion’) – since the correlates of each of the two concepts are rather different and their separation would resolve many of the confusions in academic and public discussions of social cohesion. Third, I find evidence to suggest that British identity may be of more relevance for the associational type of cohesion than the institutional type, but overall both British and English identity are of marginal relevance for social cohesion as compared to education, deprivation, and perceptions of discrimination. This suggests that attempts to use British identity as a tool to create unity and cohesion in the context of increasing diversity may not work or even be counterproductive; issues of inequality and discrimination may be much more important to address. Fourth, I reflect on the extent to which issues of unity and cohesion at the level of the nation-state are still relevant in the context of identity politics on the one hand, and processes of globalisation on the other. I argue that nation-states, for the time being, remain important sites of redistribution and reference points for perceptions of equality; to the extent that these issues are important for social cohesion, nation-states are therefore important too.

Key traditional foci in Traveller-related academic work have tended to be ’socio-economics’ and ‘culture’/‘ethnicity’. Diverting from these, this thesis takes a sociological Housing Studies starting-point in considering ‘Travelling people’ in the context of ‘housing’ as ‘home’, and ‘residence’ as an aspect of the human ‘way of life’. From the epistemological perspective of ‘weak’ social constructionism (Berger and Luckmann, 1966), and accepting a ‘universalistic’ understanding of ‘ethnicity’ (Malešević, 2004), I problematize the concept ‘way of life’ in its popular sense of socio-cultural ‘lifestyle’, identifying, and suggesting the term ‘lifeway’ to denote, a dichotomous (nomadic-sedentary) socio-ecological subsense within its English-language construction. Similarly problematised, the construct ‘Traveller’ and its commonly-accepted counterpart ‘settled’ appear as a pair of diversely multi-ethnic human lifeway collectives, differentiated not primarily by degree of mobility, but by contrasting ‘nomadic’ and ‘sedentary’ versions of ‘residence’, ‘dwelling’, ‘home’, etc. Using a reflexive, broadly ‘Foucauldian’ (Carabine, 2001), discourse analysis methodology (Potter, 1996; Wetherell et al. 2001), I consider Traveller/nomadic ’residence’ empirically through a case study (Yin, 2003) of the ‘Local Authority Traveller Site’ as a discursive ‘text’ central to dominant representations of Traveller/nomadic ‘dwelling’/ ‘home’. From Sedentarist and Nomadist socio-discursive accounts of social construction and contestation, I develop bi- and tri-modal understandings of seemingly incomprehensible and/or irreducible intra- and inter-paradigmatic tensions. In this initial attempt at a nomadism-sensitive critique, I argue that academic consideration of Traveller and other socio-ecologically non-hegemonic lifeways, within Housing and beyond, has been limited by a universally ‘Sedentarist’ discursive ‘bottom line’. I propose amelioration of this through reformulation of the concept of lifeway, a discrete, essential dimension of human identity cross-cutting (rather than reducible to) ethnicity, class or gender, from a dichotomy to a continuum of socio-ecological practice; and related expansion of Kemeny’s (1992) concept of ‘residence’. The now considerable theoretical and critical capability of Housing Studies and related fields, combined with the ‘lifeway’ perspectives offered by Romani Studies and related fields, could produce potentially very fruitful and far-reaching ‘integrative’ (Kemeny, 1992; also Acton, 1997) ‘trans-disciplinary’ (Clapham et al., 2012) and ‘theory-making’ (King, 2009) collaboration. This could enable more visible, comprehensible mainstream academic representation of Traveller and other non-hegemonic residence modes, and enhanced mobilities (Urry, 2007) accounts of hegemonic residence, housing, dwelling and home.