This thesis explores the relationship between a global industrial actor and its regional host, and what that can tell us about neoliberalism and globalisation. The relationship between the nuclear industry, in particular the Sellafield site, and the West Cumbrian region where it is located is the specific focus for the data collection and analysis. West Cumbria is an isolated region in the very north-west corner of England. West Cumbria was the site of the UK’s first nuclear reactors. Over seven decades, as other industries have declined, West Cumbria has become home to, and economically dependent on, one of the largest and most complex nuclear sites in the world. The core concepts employed to analyse this relationship are power and scale. In particular, this thesis analyses how power is rescaled in the context of state restructuring and the wider changes associated with globalisation. To be able to analyse power it was necessary to develop an applied understanding of the concept. This is informed by a diverse literature, and takes an implicitly geographical and relational understanding of the exercise of power in its diverse forms, bases and uses. Firstly, policy documentation is analysed to understand the impact of the changes to the governance and management of the UK’s oldest and most hazardous nuclear sites. Secondly, survey and focus group data is analysed which focusses on the position of the nuclear industry in the local economy and specific changes made as a result of the part-privatisation of the industry in 2008. Finally, an analysis of economic development plans which aim to grow West Cumbria’s economy, and demonstrate an increasing priority being given to new nuclear developments. Finally, these three areas are brought together to explore how power is rescaled, its implications and the wider relevance of the thesis to other locations and policy areas.

The present study is an investigation of the relationship between male value systems and male interpersonal conflict, with particular emphasis upon inter-personal violence. The study adopts a naturalistic methodology (Archer 1995) and draws on concepts drawn from a range of disciplines that are integrated using an evolutionary analysis (Daly and Wilson 1988, Archer 1996). The triangulation of methods comprising case studies (study 1), questionnaires (studies 3 and 4) and ethnography (study 2), form the basis for a descriptive phase of research (Archer 1989) that enabled specific hypotheses to be formulated and tested using experimental methods (studies 5 and 6). The research findings from the questionnaires and ethnographic observations suggested that male values may constitute important determinants of male aggression reflected, for instance, in the utility of physical aggression to acquire and defend status and to confirm a masculine identity. The case studies demonstrated that male value systems provide insights into the causation of extreme acts of violence. The Fight Self Report (study 3) highlighted features of fights and that they were more likely to occur in or around pubs and night-dubs, the provocations that were most likely to lead to aggressive ads and how males are expected to behave in conflict situations. The ethnographic observations (study 2) provided insights into how males interpret information about potential opponents' perceived threats and challenges and how age, social support and alcohol consumption influence aggressive responses. The observations also generated data that indicates that inter-male conversations may have ritual elements and may be used to maintain and acquire status. The Masculinity Questionnaire (study 4) provided further insight into the type of provocation that may lead to physical aggression and attitudes to how certain provocations should be responded to. The hypothesis testing stage of the project (studies 5 and 6) used questionnaires to manipulate Resource Holding Potential (RHP) and Provocation and to measure their influence on escalation of aggression. The study 5A demonstrated that young men are much less likely to indicate that they would respond to an insult with physical aggression if their opponent was bigger than them, had more potential allies and had a reputation for being successful in the use of physical aggression, which represented high RHP. Conversely young men were much more likely to use physical aggression against an opponent of low or medium RHP. The Provocation Study (study 5B) demonstrated that incidents involving insults to a sexual partner were the most likely situation to provoke a young man into using physical aggression. The final method used in the project, the Human Conflict Questionnaire (study 6), also manipulated RHP and Provocation and used measured variables that included not only physical aggression (as in study 5) but also a range of immediate and post-incident behavioural and cognitive responses. Principal Components Analyses identified three sub-scales, Direct Aggression, Non-Provocation Behaviour and Negative Impact (post-event negative emotional responses). Scales derived from these factors were used as DVs in an ANOVA The analyses. indicated that a challenge from an opponent of higher RHP than oneself is likely to reduce the chance of reacting with physical aggression but to increase non-aggressive responses Including subsequent negative cognitive reactions. Conversely high provocation from opponents of lower RHP than oneself are more likely to lead to physical aggression, and less likely to lead to nonaggressive responses, and to subsequent negative emotions. The findings of the various methods are interpreted using evolutionary concepts and a case is made for the existence of evaluative mechanisms in males that are used to assess RHP in other males and which may make males sensitive to status interactions with other men.

Whilst scholarship has shown that conflict between the major churches and the National Socialist regime was inevitable, there has been little written on the relationship between the Nazis and the Christian sects. This work takes five of the largest and most representative sects in Gennany and examines what happened to them during the Third Reich. Two introductory chapters set the scene. Chapter One examines the complex and often contradictory views of the Nazis on religion and summarises the position of the major churches. Chapter Two outlines the history and teaching of the five sects and introduces those Nazi government agencies ith which the sects caine into contact. The central body of the work is devoted to an analysis of the fate of the sects. The Jehovah's Witnesses are accorded two chapters, one discussing their experiences in the Reich and one outlining their life in concentration camps. Christian Science, Seventh Day Adventism, the New Apostolic Church and Mormonism are each discussed in sepaxAate chapters. Of the five sects, one was banned, one survived untouched for eight years and three suffered little or no harassment. Nevertheless, it is clear that the Nazis were suspicious of all sects and only accepted a modus vivendi with reluctance. Those sects who enjoyed a temporary co-existence had more to offer than just a loyal and patriotic membership, for all managed to convince the government that they were useful. This was done by financial or welfare contributions to the state, or by the use of foreign contacts, and all had to implement positive and carefully worked out policies to ensure their survival. Each group's survival strategy was worked out according to its own criteria, based on its own history and theology. To the Witnesses, survival meant the preaching of God's word, whatever the personal costs. To others, it meant the safety of members and of the sect, even at the cost of some compromises. All the sects represented rival claimants to the loyalty and obedience properly due to the Nazi state and even with these compromises, it is likely that, had the war been won, what happened to the Witnesses would have happened to all sects in Germany.

Through a mixed thematic and chronological approach, this thesis attempts to place working-class anti-catholicism. within a broader social context whilst retaining. sight of the intricacies of the subject itself. Chapter One describes the city of Liverpool in the nineteenth century, with a view to providing not just a backdrop to the thesis but Pýso revealing some of the forces permanently exerting an influence on working-class opinion. The thesis argues that the most important of these forces was economic, in the form of intense rivalry for limited resources between Protestant English and Catholic Irish working people (Chapter 3). The sectarian dimension to this struggle is provided by the long-term popularity of an anti-Catholic agitation, in this case, the Papal Aggression. It finds that anti. -Catholic, in various intensities existed throughout the social classes of nineteenth century Liverpool, though its manifestations varied from class for class and between Protestant Sects. In Chapter Seven it is later suggested that the middle and upper-class deserted sectarianism leaving the working-class alone in their anxiety and outrage by the end of the century. In Chapter Five the physical manifestations of working-class anti-Catholicism are explored and it is argued that they fit into the mainstream picture of working-class leisure and middle-class respectability. Chapter Six suggests that a dual class and sectarian identity existed within the Protestant working-class which made any union with the social elite troublesome and even permitted Protestantism to be used as a vehicle for limited forms of class conflict whilst failing to prevent unity of industrial action across the sectarian divide. Chapter Seven reviews the development of anti-Catholicism as it shrinks in appeal between 1870 and 1914 to being a workingclass, Low Church or Nonconformist obsession.