During the 19th centaury Liverpool was an industrial city of great magnitude owing to the well-established communication and infrastructure in the area. During the 1950’s the industry decrease swiftly - and although Liverpool as a city gain interest as a result of the sensation of the Merseybeat and The Beatles - the reduction continued through the 70’s and during the 80’s the people of Liverpool suffered from great unemployment. Today Liverpool is a post-industrial city with a growing experience economy that mainly benefits from The Beatles tourism and the Merseybeat-era. The focus of these studies is the experience economy in Liverpool as a result of globalization and production in the late modernity. The study is bases on “partaking” observations and interviews with some of those involved with the experience economy.

Since introduced in 1985, the European Capital of Culture often figures as the most ‘successful’ European Union cultural policies. It is also regularly evoked as representative of contemporary strategies of culturally-inflected urban development. That is, where city leaderships look to ‘culture’ as a means to make their cities more competitive, and to manage urban populations. This dissertation uses this European cultural policy as an entry point through which to compare how culturally-inflected urban development has shaped understandings, representations and experiences of culture and social relations in two European cities: Liverpool, European Capital of Culture in 2008, and Marseilles, titleholder in 2013. The central question addressed here is whether it is possible to observe similar opportunities and barriers for urban dwellers of diverse backgrounds living in impoverished urban areas to participate in city and cultural-making processes. The two cities have comparative value because of similarities they share within multi-scalar hierarchies of power. Historically, both were significant global ports of empire; both have frequently been associated with large working class populations that are often racialised or criminalised; both are regularly depicted as ‘cities of crisis’ or ‘uncultured places’. The two urban localities are situated relatively low down on political and economic inter-urban league tables. Since the 1980s, they have become the sites of major market-led urban restructuring processes, exacerbated in the context of recent austerity policies. There are also significant variations; in national and local frameworks of urban governance, differing relations with ‘Europe’ and distinctive histories of race and class. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with a range of urban actors (urban dwellers in impoverished neighbourhoods, cultural policy workers and urban decision-makers) between 2004 and 2014, I explore how understandings and experiences of culture and social relations were differentially reconfigured in relation to this European cultural policy initiative. My findings point to similarities in the ways in which cultural policy materialised in these two places historically understood as lacking ‘cultural distinction.’ Dominant understandings of culture value were defined in relation to hierarchies of value constructed in social networks that extending beyond the city (the nation state, Europe, the world). In both, cultural policy-making was closely linked to economic growth policies. As elsewhere in the world, these trends resulted in growing professionalisation of the arts, gentrification of the city centre and increasing marginalisation of local cultural workers and urban dwellers living in impoverished areas, in processes inflected by gender, race and class. The study also draws out some of the complexities and unexpected outcomes of culturally-inflected urban policies. Nuancing studies on cultural diversity and gentrification, it offers an ethnographically sensitive yet critical reading of how such culturally-inflected urban development materialises in particular locations, contributing to broader understandings about the production of social difference and competing understandings of cultural value in cities, in unequal relations of power.

Liverpool and Baltimore in the 1980s were amongst the poorest cities in the United Kingdom and the United States, respectively. Since the 1960s, the ports on which they had built their economies and their reputations had all but collapsed and thousands of manufacturing jobs had been relocated or slashed. Property-led regeneration did more for the investors behind projects and the tourists who enjoyed them than for the cities' working classes. In such cities, battered by forces largely beyond their control, what could people disadvantaged by race and/or economic status do to compete for the resources necessary to improve their living conditions and wield power on a citywide level? This thesis explores the capacity of poor and middle-income people's pressure groups to successfully accomplish their goals in Liverpool and Baltimore during the 1980s. To do so, it examines three case study groups in Liverpool, the Merseyside Community Relations Council, the Eldonian Community Association, and the Anti-Cuts Campaign; and one in Baltimore, Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development. It follows their trajectories under unusually authoritarian local political regimes, the Militant Tendency-directed Labour city council in Liverpool and the Schaefer mayoral administration in Baltimore, through local elections in 1987, and finally under the more open local political regimes following those elections. Their success depended on three sets of factors. First, strong leadership and an animating cause were necessary conditions for groups to cohere, but were not sufficient to ensure their success. That further depended on a group's goals and the distribution of resources necessary to accomplish those goals, which in turn shaped the strategies each group chose to pursue its agenda. Third and finally, the effectiveness of those strategies depended on the group's ability to access and influence the resource-holders identified and, finally, on the scope for action of those resource-holders themselves.

Liverpool English, also known as Scouse, is an easily distinguishable accent, but whether or not it contains enough regionally specific grammar and vocabulary to be considered its own dialect is another matter. This Bachelor’s thesis set out to investigate this using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods on data consisting of informal interviews found on the website Youtube with people from Liverpool. These videos were selected based on the assumption that people with discernible accents are most likely to also speak with a dialect. The results of the research showed that discerning whether or not Scouse is a dialect is not as straightforward as it would seem. Depending on the judgment of how many regional features are enough, the conclusion of this project was that the appearance of any items is sufficient to claim that Scouse is indeed a dialect.

No description available.

This thesis examines the regulation of women in public space in Liverpool between 1908 and 1957. It considers the complex relationship between the laws used to police solicitation, governmental debate about female prostitution and local purity campaigners’ concerns with the moral vulnerability of young, working-class, urban women. It is argued that the ways in which prostitution was understood and managed had an impact upon all women’s access to and use of public space, together with wider definitions of female morality and immorality. The thesis adds to historical understandings about the implications of prostitution regulation in the twentieth century, by moving away from London-focused histories to offer a detailed analysis of the ways in which national debates about vice were taken up at local level and with what consequences. I begin by exploring the problems with policing prostitution in the early-twentieth century and argue that increasing concern about the difficulty in differentiating prostitutes from ‘ordinary’ women provoked anxiety amongst law makers and government officials alike. It is argued that the debates canvassed by the 1927 Macmillan Committee indicate the degree to which moral codes about female sexuality informed official approaches to prostitution. The thesis considers the implications of these broad debates in Liverpool. Focusing on the work of the Liverpool Vigilance Association (LVA), it is proposed that fears about the moral threat of prostitution fuelled the organisation’s belief in the necessity of preventative patrol work centred on the moral surveillance of young, working-class women. This thesis shows that in interwar Liverpool, women’s movements were circumscribed first and foremost by their gender. Traditional, nineteenth-century ideas about women’s place within the domestic sphere created a sense among local purity campaigners that female morality was being threatened by women’s visibility in urban spaces. Other aspects of social status, such as class, race and employment experiences, heightened the interest of the LVA in targeting distinctive groups of women. The thesis demonstrates that in their efforts to regulate women’s movements through the city of Liverpool, local purists singled-out working-class and immigrant (especially Irish) women, as they believed them to be the most susceptible to corruption. This thesis draws on a wide range of archival sources, especially Home Office Records relating to the Public Places (Order) Bill and the establishment of the 1927 Macmillan Committee, as well as the LVA archive, in order to show how national and local policies on prostitution were both interdependent and distinct.

No description available.

There is an increase in the prevalence of obesity among people with schizophrenia thought to be due in part to the weight enhancing side-effects of medications commonly used to treat the symptoms of schizophrenia. Despite the deleterious health effects associated with obesity and its impact on quality of life and medication compliance, little is known about body composition and energy expenditure in this clinical group. The primary purpose of this thesis was to enhance understanding of body composition and energy expenditure, particularly resting energy expenditure in men with schizophrenia who take atypical antipsychotic medications. Unique to this investigation is the evaluation of clinical tools used to predict body composition and energy expenditure against reference methodologies in men with schizophrenia. Further, given the known links between obesity and physical activity, an additional but less comprehensive component of the thesis was a consideration of total and activity energy expenditure in addition to the interaction between psychiatric symptoms, side-effects of antipsychotic medications and physical activity also occurred as part of this thesis. Collectively, the goals of this thesis were addressed through a series of studies – the first two studies were related to the measurement and characteristics of body composition in men with schizophrenia, while the third and fourth studies were related to the measurement and characteristics of resting energy expenditure in men with schizophrenia. The fifth and sixth studies the utilised doubly labelled water technique to quantify activity and total energy expenditure in a small group of men with schizophrenia and explored the use of accelerometry in this cohort. The final study briefly considered the impact of psychiatric symptoms and self-reported medication side-effects on objectively measured physical activity. In the first study, thirty-one male adults previously diagnosed with schizophrenia and sixteen healthy male controls were recruited. Estimates of body composition derived from an anthropometry-based equation and from bioelectric impedance analysis (BIA) using deuterium dilution as the reference methodology to determine total body water were compared. The study also determined the validity of equations commonly used to predict body composition from BIA in the men with schizophrenia. A further aim was to determine the superiority of either BIA or body mass index (BMI) as an indicator of obesity in this cohort. The inclusion of the control group, closely matched for age, body size and body composition demonstrated that there was no difference in the ability of body composition prediction methods to distinguish between fat and fat-free mass (FFM) in controls and men with schizophrenia when both groups had similar body composition. However this study indicated that an anthropometry-based equation previously used in people with schizophrenia was a poor predictor of body composition in this cohort, as evidenced by wide limits of agreement (25%) and systematic variation of the bias. In comparison, the best predictor of percentage body fat (%BF) in this group was gained when impedance values were used to predict percentage body fat via the equation published by Lukaski et al (1986). Although percentage body fat was underpredicted using the Lukaski et al. (1986) equation, the mean magnitude was relatively small (1.3%), with the limits of agreement approximately 13%. Linear regression analysis revealed that %BF predicted using the Lukaski et al. (1986) equation explained 25% more of the variance in percentage body fat than BMI. Further, this study also indicated that BIA was more sensitive than BMI in distinguishing between overweight and obesity in this cohort of men with schizophrenia. Because of the almost exclusive use of BMI as an indicator of obesity in people with schizophrenia, the level of excess body fat may be in excess of that previously indicated. The second study extended the examination of body composition in men with schizophrenia. In this study, the thirty-one participants with schizophrenia (age, 34.2 ± 5.7 years; BMI, 30.2 ± 5.7 kg/m2) were individually matched with sedentary controls by age, weight and BMI. Deuterium dilution was used to distinguish between FFM and fat mass. The previous study had indicated that while BIA was a suitable group measure for obesity, on an individual level the technique lacked the precision required for investigating body composition in men with schizophrenia. Waist circumference was used as an indicator of body fat distribution. The findings of this study indicated that in comparison with healthy sedentary controls of similar body size and age, men with schizophrenia had higher levels of body fat which was more centrally distributed. Percentage body fat was on average 4% higher and waist circumference, on average 5 cm greater in men with schizophrenia than the sedentary controls of the same age and BMI. Further, this study indicates that the use of BMI to predict body fat in men with schizophrenia will result in greater bias than when it is used to predict body fat in other sedentary men. Commonly used regression equations to predict energy requirements at rest are based on the relationships between weight and resting energy expenditure (REE) and in such equations, weight acts as a surrogate measure of FFM. The objectives of study three were to measure REE in a small group of men with schizophrenia who were taking the antipsychotic medication clozapine and to determine whether REE can be predicted with sufficient accuracy to substitute for the measurement of REE in the clinical and/or research settings. Body composition was determined using deuterium dilution and REE was measured using a Deltatrac Metabolic Cart via a ventilated hood. The male participants, (aged 28.0 ± 6.7 yrs, BMI 29.8 ± 6.8 kg/m2) were weight stable at the time of the study and had been taking clozapine for 20.5 ± 12.8 months, with doses of 450 ± 140 mg/day. Of the six prediction equations evaluated, the equation of Mifflin et al. (1990) with no systematic bias, the lowest bias and the lowest limits of agreement proved to be the most suitable equation to predict REE in this cohort. The overestimation of REE can be corrected for by deducting 160 kcal/day from the predicted REE value when using the Mifflin et al. (1990) equations. However, the magnitude of the error associated with the prediction of REE for an individual is 370 kcal/day. The findings of this study indicate that REE cannot be predicted with sufficient individual accuracy in men with schizophrenia, therefore it was necessary to measure rather than predict REE in subsequent studies. In the fourth study, indirect calorimetry (Deltatrac Metabolic Cart via ventilated hood) and deuterium dilution were used to accurately determine REE, respiratory quotient (RQ) and FFM in 31 men with schizophrenia and healthy sedentary controls individually matched for age and BMI. Data from this study indicated that gross REE was lower in men with schizophrenia than in healthy sedentary controls of a similar age and body size. However, there was no difference between the groups in REE when REE was adjusted for FFM using the mathematically correct method (analysis of covariance with FFM as the covariate). There was however a statistically and clinically significant difference in resting, fasted RQ between men with schizophrenia and controls, suggesting that RQ rather than REE may be an important correlate worthy of further investigation in men with schizophrenia who take antipsychotic medications. Studies five and six involved the application of the doubly labelled water (DLW) technique to accurately determine total energy expenditure (TEE) and activity energy expenditure (AEE) in a small group of men with schizophrenia who had been taking the atypical antipsychotic medication clozapine. The participants were those who took part in study three. The purpose of these studies was to assess the validity of a commercially available tri-axial accelerometer (RT3) for predicting free-living AEE and to investigate TEE and AEE in men with schizophrenia. There was poor agreement between AEE measured using DLW and AEE predicted using the RT3. However, using the RT3 to measure inactivity explained over two-thirds of the variance in AEE. This study found that the relationship between current AEE per kilogram of body weight and change from baseline weight in men taking clozapine was strong although not significant. The sedentary nature of the group of participants in this study was reflected in physical activity levels, (PAL, 1.39 ± 0.27), AEE (435 ±352 kcal/day) and TEE (2511 ± 606 kcal/day) that fell well short of values recommended by WHO (2000) for optimal health and to prevent weight gain. Given the increasing recognition of the importance of sedentary behaviour to weight gain in the general community, further examination of the unique contributing factors such as medication side effects and symptoms of mental illness to activity levels in this clinical group is warranted. The final study used accelerometry (RT3) to objectively measure activity in a group of 31 men with schizophrenia who had been taking atypical antipsychotic medications for more than four months. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between psychiatric symptomatology, side-effects of medication and physical activity. Accelerometry output was analysed to provide a measure of inactivity and moderate intensity activity (MIA). The well-validated and reliable standardised clinical interview, the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) was used as a measure of psychiatric symptoms. Perceived side-effects of medication were assessed using the Liverpool University Neuroleptic Rating Side-Effects Scale (LUNSER). Surprisingly, there was no relationship reported between any measures of negative symptoms and physical inactivity. However, self-reported measures of medication side-effects relating to fatigue, sleepiness during the day and extrapyramidal symptoms explained 40% of the variance in inactivity. This study found significant relationships between some negative symptoms and moderate intensity activity. Despite the expectation that as symptoms of mental illness reduce, inactivity may diminish and moderate intensity activity will increase, it may not be surprising that in practice this is an overly simplistic view. It may be that measures of social functioning and possibly therefore cognition may be better predictors of physical activity than psychiatric symptomatology per se.

This research examines how the practice of curating has been used to further counter-hegemonic agendas in public art institutions since 1989. The central aim is to provide a fuller, contextualised, and medium specific understanding of the how the institutional exhibition might be used to challenge the hegemony of neoliberalism and the post-political consensus politics that sustains its dominance. It provides insights, through both historic case studies and reflective practice, that problematise the idea that the institutional art exhibition is a viable medium for counter-hegemonic critique, or represents the ideal space for the development of an agonistic public discourse. This thesis presents collaborative research undertaken with Tate Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University. The research presented both extrapolated from, and contributed to, the development of an exhibition, co-curated with Tate Liverpool, entitled Art Turning Left (8 November 2013 – 2 February 2014) and a supplementary publication of the same name. The first section investigates how the idea that curators can counter neoliberal dominance, through institutional exhibition-making, developed. It draws from analyses of previous exhibitions, and the theory of Chantal Mouffe, in order to critically evaluate the curatorial application of counter-hegemonic critique and agonistic practice. It also provides a review of how exhibitions (held in major art institutions since 1989) have articulated politics, in order to determine their relationship to neoliberal dominance, and to identify significant gaps in the dialogue facilitated by these institutions. These analyses provides the theoretical and contextual grounding for the final two chapters, which provide a rationale and critical evaluation of my own attempt to develop an alternative counter-hegemonic curatorial strategy for the exhibition at Tate Liverpool. They document, and analyse, the areas of dissensus, and the ideological and pragmatic limitations that emerged, in trying to realise these theoretical propositions (in practice) in a public art museum. The thesis therefore provides a critical framework for the development of an alternative practice that positions the exhibition as a form of post-political critique and specifically targets the hegemonic role that institutional exhibitions play in reinforcing class distinctions and devaluing nonprofessional creativity.

Bis es im 19. Jahrhundert in die globale Peripherie abgedrängt wurde, war China selbst Zentrum eines ostasiatischen Weltsystems. Seither versucht das „Reich der Mitte“ die frühere Zentrumsposition innerhalb des modernen Weltsystems wiederzuerlangen. Hochschulbildung, ein ausländischer Import des späten 19. Jahrhunderts, dient der Modernisierung des Landes und spielt eine wichtige Rolle im Nationswerdungsprozess des Landes. In der jüngsten Vergangenheit fanden Veränderungen enormen Ausmaßes im chinesischen Hochschulsystem statt. Offizielle Forschungs- und Innovationsdaten deuten auf einen raschen Aufschluss Chinas an die Leistungen westlicher Industrienationen hin. Gemäß der Zielvorgaben der Entscheidungsträger in der Bildungspolitik hat die VR China nicht nur einen Aufholkurs, sondern einen Überholkurs eingeschlagen. China ist nicht mehr nur das wichtigste Herkunftsland für international mobile Studierende, sondern es will auch zu einem der wichtigsten Gastländer werden. Neue Stipendienprogramme (incoming wie outgoing) und Programme zur Rückgewinnung chinesischer Talente aus dem Ausland wurden eingerichtet. Zahlreiche internationale Kooperationsprogramme bieten „ausländische Bildung” innerhalb chinesischer Grenzen als Bereicherung des nationalen Bildungsangebots an. Gleichzeitig strebt China zunehmend danach eigene nationale Bildungsangebote am Weltbildungsmarkt zu etablieren. Die vorliegende Arbeit stellt einen Beitrag zur Positionsbestimmung Chinas im globalen Kontext dar. Zu diesem Zweck wurden statistische Daten durch Aussagen aus semi-strukturierten narrativen Interviews mit Akademikern und Entscheidungsträgern der chinesischen Hochschulbildung ergänzt. Die meisten befragten Experten arbeiten an einer von drei strukturell sehr unterschiedlichen chinesischen Hochschule, die dieser Arbeit als Fallbeispiele dienen. Bei den Fallbeispielen handelt es sich um die Tsinghua-Universität, die Qiqihar-Universität und die Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University. / China used to be a core country within an East-Asian world-system but was forced into periphery status during the 19th century. Ever since China strives to regain its former core position within the modern world-system. University education, a foreign import of the late 19th century, has become an important tool for China’s endeavor for modernization and nation building. In recent years the Chinese higher education landscape was subject to gigantic changes. Official research and innovation data seem to indicate a rapid affiliation with the achievements of western industrialized nations. Following the agenda of decision-makers in educational policy in the People’s Republic, the suggested course of action would be to overtake, not just to catch up: By 2020 technology imports should sink to under 30 per cent; in the same year China would like to receive a half million international students and thus become not only the most important sending country for international students, but also an important host country. New scholarship programs (incoming and outgoing) as well as programs to recover Chinese talent from abroad, were established. A multitude of international cooperation programs have been created to provide “foreign education“ within Chinese borders to further enrich the Chinese landscape of higher education. At the same time China also urges to establish its own brand of higher education abroad. This dissertation represents a contribution to determine the position of Chinese higher education within its global context. Statistical data is completed by semi-structured narrative interviews with academics and decision makers in Chinese higher education. Most interviewees are working at one of three structurally quite different institutions of higher education in China that serve as case studies in the thesis: Tsinghua University, Qiqihar University and Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University.