This thesis contributes to the field of strategy-as-practice by developing understanding of the enacted performance of power within strategic interactions, an area that is underdeveloped. This is addressed by voicing the silences within the field of strategy-as-practice using an organisational studies lens. The study investigates the macro-influences of power, gender, body, culture, and Westernisation on micro-strategising activities and is based on an empirical cross-cultural study of a Saudi Arabian business college. The strategy-as-practice approach faces the challenge of balancing a focus on the specified actions of individuals and remaining aware of the social influences that govern them. This study complements linguistic approaches to understanding strategy with an embodied socially enacted dramaturgical approach to strategy analysis. Dramaturgy is the theoretical and methodological framework used to focus on micro-face-to-face interactions of strategists, complemented by frame analysis which enables invistigation of macro-level aspects of analysis at the meso-organisational level. The analysis focuses on two main areas: first it explores the embodied gendered aspects of strategising, which have previously been marginalised within the field. This analysis shows how the doing and undoing of gender on a managerial level in mixed-gender strategic interactions reflects the values that govern the family context, maintaining traditional values and often constraining women from assuming active roles as participants in strategising. Second, it analyses the tensions that arise between the clash of modernity and tradition by the adoption of international/Western management practices. These institutional influences create conflicts within strategists’ scripts when tradition encounters modernity in confronting a significant aspect of the Arab struggle. This analysis focuses on the importance of adopting a multi-level of analysis that aknowledges both structure and agency within strategising contexts. It also considers the importance of adopting a different type of ethics that is more sensitive to the particularities of caring for the ‘other’.

Vernacular houses reflect the social complexity of the times and region in which they exist. These houses are continually evolving in response to changes in the residents’ sense of well-being. However, the rapid progression of modernity and urbanization over the past fifty years has strongly altered the underlying cultural meanings of domestic well-being in traditional societies. This has caused the disappearance of vernacular houses in various localities. The present research is especially concerned with surviving Thai vernacular houses. Its aim is to establish an understanding of the relationship between changes of Thai residents’ experiences of well-being, or Khwam Phasook in the Thai language, and the physical and socio-cultural evolution of their vernacular houses. The study was conducted by examining the evolution of vernacular houses in Tambon Pakkran of Pra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya in central Thailand. Two main types of data were collected: evolution of the physical characteristics of vernacular houses, and the changes of patterns of use and the meanings attributed to them. The data obtained were analyzed and discussed through systemic taxonomy, cross-case analysis and graphical representation using multiple criteria. The residents’ narrations were also used to explicate the historical development of the houses investigated.

The thesis carries out a critical examination of the problematic and complex dynamics aroused by the conceptual gap between the Modernity and Tradition, suggesting that such polarization is present in the way people think and talk about sex and sexuality in Kenya. Considering the difficulties of implementing Comprehensive Sexuality Education in Kenyan secondary schools, the study questions the possibility of isolating and distancing different sexual values and attitudes, and supports instead the need for a different approach to teaching sexuality, capable of bridging those differences through an inclusive language. Digital Platforms are critically examined as potential spaces for the realization of the theoretical project of an “Ecology of knowledges”, thus as places for developing respectful and comprehensive dialogue about sexuality among adolescents.

This thesis addresses needlework between 1920 and 1970 as a window into women's broader experiences, and also asserts it as a valid topic of historical analysis in its own right. Needlecraft was a ubiquitous part of women's lives which has until recently been largely neglected by historians. The growing historiography of needlework has relied heavily on fashion and design history perspectives, focusing on the products of needlework and examples of creative needlewomen. Moving beyond this model, this thesis establishes the importance of process as well as product in studying needlework, revealing the meanings women found in, attached to, and created through the ephemeral moment of making. Searching for the ordinary and typical, it eschews previous preoccupations with creation, affirming re-creation and recreation as more central to amateur needlework. Drawing upon diverse sources including oral history research, objects, Mass Observation archives, and specialist needlework magazines, this thesis examines five key aspects of women's engagement with needlework: definitions of ‘leisure' and ‘work'; motivations of thrift in peacetime and war; emotions; the modern and the traditional and finally, the gendering of needlework. It explores needlework through three central themes of identity, obligation and pleasure. Whilst asserting the validity and importance of needlework as a subject of research in its own right, it also contributes to larger debates within women's history. It sheds light on the chronology and significance of domestic thrift, the meanings of feminised activities, the emotional context of home front life, women's engagement with modern design and concepts of ‘leisure' and ‘work' within women's history.