This thesis represents an attempt to develop a critical analysis of the context and development of anti-racist social work in Britain, specifically refracted through the experiences and accounts of black practice teachers. It is based on an analysis of primary and secondary data relating to ‘race’, racism, anti-racism and social work. The thesis is divided into two sections. The first section, constituting the literature review, develops a detailed critique of the development of the discourses and ideology of ‘race’ and racism, and the origins and development of anti-racist social work in the UK over the past 30 years. Section Two outlines the empirical data, constituting a short postal survey and focus group discussions to build research themes, and 21 in-depth semi-structured interviews. The overall paradigm is framed within a notion of ‘critical emancipatory anti-racist research’. The research highlights sustained levels of institutional racism in social work faced by black workers and service users. It also indicates high levels of awareness of the nature and extent of racism amongst black practice teachers. The thesis is concluded by a summary of the key findings and implications for the future development of anti-racist social work. It is argued that, due to a range of socio political and organisational factors surrounding the restructuring and reorientation of social work and the emergence of new racisms, the space for anti-racist activity is becoming increasingly restricted. The thesis concludes by outlining some principles for a renewed anti-racist social work project, bearing in mind the prevailing conditions.

The focus of this thesis is on the care career patterns of black children. Empirical findings of the research are analysed in the light of existing literature. Particular attention is directed towards the decision-making role of field social workers. The study examined the perceptions of the principal individuals associated with the care process (namely field social workers, natural parents and children). A cohort group of 564 children were found to be in the care of Wenford Social Services Department (294 black and 270 white) . The care careers of these children were explored. A follow-up study conducted six months after the initial inquiry was part of this process. Also, a sub-group of 80 children (who had been admitted into care within the previous six months) were examined in depth. Here, interviews with the principal individuals were conducted to gain their perception of the situation. Both the cohort and the sub-group included children of all ages and all legal routes of entry. In the sub-group, restrictive criterion liable to bias results was applied in that only children who had been admitted into care in the previous six months were selected The study attempted to analyse the similarities and differences in the treatment of black and white children in the public care system. Results shed new light on the situation of black children and suggest that due to individual and institutional racism within the personal social services, black families and children receive a poor service.

In this thesis, I present a theoretical framework in which children's voluntary participation in armed conflict becomes a reasonable act within their social environment. I argue that in order to gain a more analytical understanding of why children volunteer, social scientists require an in-depth knowledge of the political, social and economic conditions in which they join up And of the meanings that children attach to those situations and their reactions. Prior quantitative data on the social distribution of child volunteering have often been used to proclaim that `the most vulnerable of the vulnerable' are recruited. On the basis of a discourse analysis of UNHCR's policies and activities in relation to under-age recruitment, I illustrate my claim that dominant Euro-American conceptualisations of childhood have primarily shaped research and humanitarian aid regarding child soldiering and resulted in the portrayal of child soldiers as innocent victims who are corrupted by adult wars. I subsequently go on to show how a new paradigm for the study of childhood can enhance contemporary knowledge on the social processes and factors that lead children to consider and eventually join a military group or opt for an alternative mode of action to cope with their dire situation. In my qualitative case-study of child soldiering in the anti-apartheid struggle, I found that in joining a political organisation and subsequently its military wing, young South Africans sought to assert their (political) agency within the structural and cultural features that shaped their social environment. Within the context of changing peer and intergenerational relationships, these children carved out more powerful identities for them to address the social injustices that had affected their personal and collective lives.

The academic study of Association Football and other sports is now regularly regarded as a valid and essential part of disciplines including psychology, history, philosophy, geography and sociology. The sociology and social history of Association Football in England for the period after the Second World War has, until recently, been dominated by the study of hooliganism and the recent commercialisation of the game. This has left a significant gap in the historiography of English foothall, particularly in terms of supporters' changing relationships with clubs in the period from 1946 onwards. This project has four principal aims. These are to assess the social make-up of postwar football crowds in Lancashire; to analyse the fall in attendances that occurred at most Lancashire football clubs in the post-war period; to assess the developing relationship between football and social identity in post-war Lancashire; and to evaluate attempts to reconnect football clubs with football communities from the late l970s to the mid-1980s. The project is focused on Lancashire as this region provides an exceptionally good context for analysing post-war football supporters, containing both declining town-based clubs such as Preston North End and Blackpool, and bigcity teams such as Liverpool and Manchester United. It centres on the period from circa 1946 to 1985 as most professional football clubs returned to normality after wartime dislocation in 1946, whilst the game underwent a number of fundamental changes after the Bradford City fire, Heysel Stadium disaster and other incidents that occurred in 1985. Through documentary analysis, the evaluation of socio-economic statistics, oral history interviews, and sociological debates concerning the respective influences of structure and agency on historical developments, the project produced a number of important conclusions. It was found that football crowds in the immediate post-war period were probably more heterogeneous than has previously been thought in terms of class, gender and geographical origins. It was also discovered that a variety of socio-economic influences including increasing affluence and consumption, rising marriage rates, geographical movement, increasing home ownership, and rising unemployment all acted as important factors in determining the frequency of people's football attendance in Lancashire at various points between 1946 and 1985. The project also found that football clubs were central agencies in producing feelings of local and regional identity in Lancashire in the 1940s and 1950s. However, it was noted that people came to construct their social and sporting identities differently from the early 1 960s onwards with the result that a bifurcation occurred between many football clubs and football communities. In the final section of the project, the successes and failures of responses to this situation are judged by studying formal football and community initiatives and changes in football fan culture in Lancashire in the l980s. These developments are used to partly explain how certain Lancashire football clubs and football communities came to be connected once more in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

On 11 September 1936 a Times editorial made reference to the 'clamourous partisanship' that had been brought about by the civil war in Spain. In literature since the war this polarisation of opinion has been central to representations of British responses to the conflict. Much attention has focused on the divergent British political responses, and particularly on those of the left, responses which became increasingly bitter as Spain became a 'distorting mirror in which Europe[could] see an exaggerated reflection of her own divisions'. Yet, as The Times editorial continued at the time, in spite of all 'incitements the great mass of public opinion (remained) firmly opposed to any taking of sides. This public resistance to the 'clamourous' efforts of supporters of the Republic or advocates of the Nationalists has been noted in subsequent literature but has not been explored in any depth, explanation generally centring around the policy of appeasement. While not ignoring such explanations, this study argues that the imagery and language employed in the various contemporary interpretations of events played a significant part in distancing events. The study, then, aims to add a cultural perspective to the more widely examined political understanding of British responses to Spain during the 1930s. Through an analysis of representations in mass culture, and through an examination of the experiences of the growing numbers of British visitors to the Peninsula, the study first seeks to identify the expectations of Spain and the Spanish people most commonly held in Britain of the 1930s. It then goes on to examine how, during the life of the Republic and especially throughout the Civil War, supporters of both sides, in every form of mass media available, repeatedly referred to this framework of preconceived notions as they endeavoured to interpret issues and events for their British audiences. Particular attention is given to differing portrayals of the Spanish political scene and the Catholic Church, to the representations of the two sides and what they reportedly stood for. Finally, by looking at reactions to events in the Basque provinces, examining responses to humanitarian aid appeals and once again assessing the attitudes found in fictional representations of the war the study offers some measure of the impact of the war on the wider British public.

The thesis, supervised by Jean Lafontaine, focussed on migration from the Comoro Islands near Madagascar, to Zanzibar and the East African Swahili coast, between the 1830s and the 1970s. Comorians had shared a common history and culture with the Swahili for many centuries; in colonial East Africa, chance offered them a unique ‘racial’ and employment niche which evaporated abruptly after 1964 and East African independence. They had suddenly to reassess marriage, residence and self-definition strategies, and their implications for the future. The thesis addressed ethnic identity (which had focussed excessively on its immutability) and demonstrated its adaptability to changing political and economic context. The study also attempted to escape from timeless, fixed-location ethnography, and followed links which led to data-collection in several East African and Comorian locations. Finally, by following Comorian choices over 150 years, the thesis made a contribution to an understanding of broader Swahili history which demands similar light-footed mobility through time and space for the processes of change to be understood. Gill Shepherd completed her PhD at a time when university recruitment was a standstill. Instead she built a career in tropical forest policy at London’s Overseas Development Institute, and focussed on rights for forest peoples.

What are the dialectics of the endogenisation of ‘otherness’? This thesis is a study into the interaction between social representations, identities and power in relation to South Asian, Muslim, male youth in Bradford (UK) within the historical context of the ‘Rushdie affair’. The methodology is structured in order to investigate alternative locations of the identity-representation interaction. The studies include participant observation followed by 18 interviews with ‘specialists’, a rhetorical analysis of five television programmes that were aired on national television during and on the Rushdie affair, and an examination of the manner of reception of one of these programmes through 8 focus group discussions. The findings are that ‘otherness’ and difference are central to notions of identity for South Asian Muslim male youth, as they are surrounded by representations of themselves as ‘Muslim’ and ‘Paki’. Their identities take the form of three ideal-types – ‘coconuts’, ‘rude boys’ and ‘extremists’ – which rhetorically engage differentially with the representations. The Rushdie affair is interpreted firstly as a moment of subaltern contestation of its representation through ‘identity politics’ discourse, and secondly, dialogically as both rhetorical positions (hegemonic and subaltern) attempt to psychologically distance themselves from each other – through the construction of the ‘Bradford Muslim’ on the hegemonic side. However, both positions shared techniques of rhetoric, types of discourse, and a common narrative. Furthermore, ‘identity politics’ discourse (for two of the ideal-type identities) acted as the interpretative prism through which the reception of the programme made sense in relation to, for example, the content and manner of reception, the reception of representatives and the call for strategic essentialism. The thesis shows that attempts to escape negative evaluation result in the incorporation of representations, discourses and rhetorical techniques that position identities firmly within the hermeneutics of the hegemonic discourse.

This thesis examines the connections between ideologies of modernity and social power for three interrelated sets of elites in Mozambique. My research is based on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork primarily, but not solely, among the now adult children of high-ranking members of Frelimo (Mozambican Liberation Front, the ruling party since independence) and those closely associated with the party in the capital city of Maputo. It examines how elites’ transforming relationship to the project of modernity has allowed them to survive periods of dramatic social change while maintaining power, although in a modified form. The thesis argues that “local” understandings of modernity held by dominant groups in Mozambique have created the wider political field that unifies elites and creates the parameters in which they operate. It allows them both to control the positions that underwrite their social power and to attempt to justify their positions of power. The thesis examines the source of elites’ social dominance and how it has been transformed over the generations. I also investigate how recent social, political and economic changes have created a growing backlash among social groups who were once Frelimo’s strongest supporters. The thesis argues that through the acquisition and monopolisation of “modern” skills, such as high levels of education, elites can survive contested legitimacy because there are few who seem capable of replacing them.

This thesis is a comparative investigation of how federal institutions accommodated linguistic and religious identities in India and Pakistan. There are three explanatory variables. The first is the history of self-rule for the principalities within South Asia; tracing continuities in territorial autonomy from the Mughals up to independence. The second is the distribution of linguistic and religious identities within the states of India and Pakistan, both at the provincial and national levels. The third is the articulation of a national identity in India and Pakistan. These explanatory variables are not independent of one another; their interaction accounts for the different strategies adopted by India and Pakistan in the formation and stabilisation of their federations. The differences in federal design are calculated according to a scoring system that measures the degree of consociationalism within the federal plans proposed before independence, and the constitutions created after independence. The state-sponsored national identities are distinguished according to their recognition of identities in the public and private spheres. They are further categorised according to the costs for a non-dominant group of being managed by this strategy. The three explanatory variables explain why linguistically homogeneous states were created in India but not in Pakistan. It is argued that this variable explains the stabilisation or otherwise of their federations. It therefore confirms Wilkinson's rebuttal of Lijphart's claim that India under Nehru was consociational. Unlike Wilkinson, it argues that the degrees of consociationalism that emerged since the formation of the constitution have enhanced federal stabilisation within India. It defines federal stabilisation according to continuity in state borders, the number and type of secessionist movements, but more importantly by correlating the effective number of linguistic groups at state level with the effective number of parties in national elections. It concludes that federal accommodation of linguistic groups in homogeneous provinces has enabled the party system to fractionalise in India and Pakistan; an indication of the security of these groups. Where secessionist movements have existed in India and Pakistan, their emergence is explained by the lack of security for a group - defined on either linguistic or alternative criteria.

Fuel cladding is one of the most critical components of nuclear reactors; so it is important to improve our understanding of various properties and behaviors of the cladding under different conditions approximating the nuclear reactor environment. Moreover, the efficiency of energy production, in addition to safety concerns, has resulted in progressive improvement of nuclear reactors design from Generation I to Generation IV. To complement this progressive trend, materials used for fuel cladding need to be improved or new materials should be developed. In this thesis, I address problems in the improvement of present fuel cladding and also investigate fuel cladding materials to be used in future Generation IV nuclear reactors. In the case of current Zircaloy-4 fuel claddings, a detailed evaluation of the surface roughness effects on their performance and properties of Zircaloy-4 fuel claddings was studied. A smoother surface on Zircaloy-4 cladding tubes is demanded by the customers; however no systematic study is available addressing the effect of surface roughness on the claddings’ performance. Thus the effects of surface roughness on texture, oxidation, hydriding behaviors and mechanical properties of Zircaloy-4 cladding tubes were investigated using various methods. It was found that surface roughness has some effects on the oxidation of Zircaloy-4. Increasing the surface roughness would increase the weight gain, however, this effect was more pronounced at the initial oxidation stages. Synchrotron techniques were used to characterize the electronic structure of zirconium alloys in their oxidized and hydrided states. With this approach, complex interactions between hydrogen and oxygen in the zirconium matrix could be investigated, which could not be resolved using conventional methods. As a candidate for future fuel cladding material, Incoloy 800H/HT, which is expected to be considered in super-critical water-cooled Gen IV reactors, was studied in order to optimize microstructure, texture and grain boundary characteristics. A specific Thermo-Mechanical Processing (TMP) was employed to manipulate the texture, microstructure and grain boundary character distribution. The deformation and annealing textures of thermo-mechanically processed samples were investigated by means of X-ray diffraction and orientation imaging microscopy. It was found that different rolling paths lead to different textures. The origin of different textures in differently (unidirectional and cross) rolled Incoloy 800H/HT at high deformation strains were investigated. In addition, the recrystallization kinetic of differently rolled samples was studied. It was found that the oriented nucleation plays an important role in determining the recrystallization texture. Unidirectional rolled samples exhibited a faster recrystallization kinetic compared with cross rolled ones, due to the presence of γ-fibre. The effect of the aforementioned microstructural parameters (grain size, texture and GBCD) on the oxidation resistance of Incoloy 800H/HT in super-critical water was investigated. It was found that the oxidation resistance of Incoloy 800H/HT can be improved by TMP. The optimum TMP process for enhancing the oxidation resistance was proposed. Microstructural parameters that can improve the oxidation resistance of Incoloy 800H/HT were identified. These findings will contribute to the effective selection of fuel cladding material for application in Gen IV SCW reactors.