This thesis centers the voices of eight queer participants and explores their lived experiences of partner abuse, for the purpose of theorizing about queer partner abuse in ways that challenge and confirm mainstream heteronormative ways of understanding relationship abuse. The research was carried out using a critical qualitative thematic approach, which allowed for rich descriptions to be provided by participants through conversational interviews. The eight participants involved in this research were from the BC lower mainland and varied in age, socio-economic status, ability, mental/emotional health, race, and gender identity. Three themes emerged during the literature review and were central to the analysis: (a) gender; (b) power; and (c) service delivery. The findings indicate that participants not only internalized gender identities, but also constructed their experiences of relationship violence through the available discourse, which is mainstreamed and gendered. The most significant finding in this research has been the extent to which homophobia and heterosexism affected each of the participants within their personal relationships and in relation to their social environment.

A combination of quantitative and qualitative data analysis was utilized in the evaluation of a six module training program designed for new caseworker staff within the Alberta Ministry of Children's Services and Delegated First Nation's Agencies. A total of 102 participants completed the five modules of training over 32 sessions scheduled during the training program pilot. Evaluation data included the use of participant workshop feedback, participant pre-test and post-test knowledge improvement for each completed module of training, facilitator feedback and supervisor surveys. Evaluation outcomes demonstrated that the Alberta Children's Services Delegation Training Program provided new casework staff with the skills, knowledge and competency development required to provide intervention services to children, youth and families as mandated under the Child, Youth and Family Enhancement Act.

Thesis (doctoral)--Rijksuniversiteit te Groningen, 2004. / Cover title. Includes bibliographical references (p. 157-171).

Le monopole des chamanes sur de nombreuses actions rituelles chez les peuples turcophones de Sibérie méridionale fait que l'on parle à leur sujet de «chamanisme professionnel» par opposition au «chamanisme familial» connu dans d'autres régions. Cette thèse a pour objet l'étude des fondements anthropologiques de l'autorité des chamanes de ces populations à partir de l'exemple touva. On examine d'abord les tentatives corporatistes apparues après la chute de l'URSS et les raisons de leur échec. En l'absence d'organisation sociale légitimante, on cherche à définir les principes schématiques des représentations concernant les chamanes, l'origine de leurs pouvoirs, la nature de leur qualité et ses modes d'acquisition. L'examen de la question de l'héritage, replacée dans le contexte du système ancien des relations de parenté et d'alliance chez les Touvas, permet de faire ressortir les spécificités de la descendance chamanique. Le modèle essentialiste et naturaliste qui se dégage des récits d'accès à la fonction de chamane est relayé par l'idée d'une socialisation du talent inné grâce à l'acquisition des accessoires rituels. L'examen des registres de discours et des dispositifs rituels fait ressortir un système logique d'implications entre les compétences des spécialistes et la position négative de l'« homme simple ». Ces principes sont aujourd'hui remis en cause à Touva par l'apparition de scénarios interprétatifs nouveaux liés à la sorcellerie. Cette étude s'appuie sur plusieurs enquêtes de terrain chez les Touvas ainsi que sur un vaste ensemble de sources surtout russophones remontant au XVIIIe siècle.

This thesis examines the impact of reforms to disability benefits enacted by the Coalition Government of 2010-2015 on disabled people living in Scotland. Situating the Coalition’s reform agenda in the context of disability policies since the late Victorian era, it is apparent that the evolution of disability policy has not been a smooth, coherent, or strategic process. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify three trends that have been apparent since 2010. The first relates to the primacy given to participation in employment as the basis for ‘active’ citizenship, underpinned by a conditional approach to the receipt of benefits. The second relates to the conception of disability as an administrative category which is inherently expansive and therefore prone to crisis. Finally, the way in which reforms have been justified with reference to concepts such as ‘independent living’ is identified as a significant divergence from previous approaches to disability policy. Based on semi-structured depth interviews with twenty-three working-age disabled people, this thesis explores the impact of the Coalition’s reform agenda on disabled people living in Scotland across three dimensions. Firstly, it examines the extent to which behavioural responses to perceived ‘welfare dependency’ are based on a restrictive conception of agency that fails to capture the many and varied ways in which those in receipt of benefits act. Secondly, it explores the reforms as characteristic of a ‘crisis’ in the disability category, and considers the impacts of attempts to contain this crisis through increased reliance on medical testing. Finally, it considers the use of policy language derived from the disabled people’s movement to ascertain whether these changes are reflective of a citizenship agenda in disability policy. Key findings include that while the Coalition’s approach emphasized participation in the labour market, and drew disabled people increasingly into conditionality, this had not resulted in a rise in labour market involvement for those in this study. Nevertheless, this study also demonstrated that disabled people can and do make a range of contributions to society whether they are in work or not. The findings presented here therefore stand in contrast to narratives that portray those in receipt of benefits as feckless and work-shy. They also serve to challenge some of the dominant assumptions about the agency of those in receipt of disability benefits, and highlight that structural barriers continue to shape individuals lives in many ways. Furthermore, this work serves to illustrate the challenges of negotiating an increasingly complex process of accessing and being assessed for disability benefits. An important insight related to the way in which tighter eligibility criteria combined with a ‘climate of fear’ brought about by media reporting of the reforms to generate a form of ‘hidden conditionality’. Participants described being under surveillance by authorities and their own communities. Dominant narratives had served to foster feelings of resentment and indeed vindictiveness against a group who were seen to be receiving favourable treatment at a time of austerity. This was reflected in an increase in incidents of hate crime and violence against disabled people. Finally, this thesis provides an evaluation of the extent to which the Coalition’s linguistic support for independent living was reflected in the lived reality of their reforms. It finds that while the Coalition explicitly drew on the language of the disabled people’s movement in the framing of policies, this discursive support had not been reflected in the experience of these policies. New approaches to the organization of social care in Scotland have also sought to advance the citizenship of disabled people living here. While the introduction of Self-directed Support (SDS) demonstrated considerable potential for a citizenship approach, the overall trend during this period was towards a reduction in the amount of choice and control disabled people were able to exercise. This work is among the first substantive pieces of research to examine the impacts of the Coalition’s reforms on disabled people living in Scotland. It contributes to knowledge in this area across four dimensions: firstly to debates around the agency and assumed agency of those in receipt of disability benefits; secondly to the understanding of disability as an administrative category, and the implications of this for policy; thirdly in connecting literatures concerning the narrative trends around reform to those concerning surveillance, vindictiveness, and resentment; and finally to the literature on ‘personalization’ in health and social care, and the emerging body of work on the impact of SDS in Scotland.

Changes to homelessness legislation in post-devolution Scotland have resulted in an expansion of rights for homeless households seeking formal assistance from local authorities. These changes have led to Scotland’s homelessness arrangements being considered among the most progressive in Europe. In recent years, however, the Scottish Government has increasingly promoted homelessness prevention and Housing Options approaches as a means by which homelessness might be avoided or resolved without recourse to statutory rights. As part of that, they have promoted greater use of the private rented sector (PRS) as a key housing option, with the potential to meet the needs of homeless households. The arguments made to support use of the PRS have much in common with arguments for privatisation in other areas of social policy, notably greater choice for the individual promoting better welfare outcomes, and competition among providers encouraging improvements in quality of service provision. Critics have argued that such benefits may not be realised and that, on the contrary, privatisation may lead to exclusion or act to worsen households’ outcomes. This thesis considers the extent to which the PRS has been utilised in Scotland to accommodate homeless households, and the consequences of this for their welfare. The thesis uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. To examine trends in the use of the PRS, it presents quantitative analysis of the data on the operation of the statutory system and Housing Options arrangements, and of data from a survey of local authority homelessness strategy officers. To examine the consequences of this for homeless households, the thesis uses qualitative research involving face-to-face interviews with 35 homeless households across three local authority areas. This research considers the extent to which households’ experiences of homelessness, housing need and the PRS reflect the arguments presented in the literature, and how settled accommodation has impacted on households’ ability to participate fully in society. The research found an increasing but still limited role for the PRS in resolving statutory homelessness in Scotland, with indications that the PRS is being increasingly used as part of the Housing Options approach and as a means of resolving homelessness outside the statutory system. The PRS is being utilised to varying degrees across different local authority areas, and a variety of methods are being used to do so. While local authorities saw clear advantages to making greater use of the sector, a number of significant barriers including affordability, available stock and landlord preferences - made this difficult in practice. Research with previously homeless households in the PRS similarly found broadly positive experiences and views of the sector, particularly with regard to enabling households to access good quality accommodation in desirable areas of their choosing, with many households highlighting improvements relating to social inclusion and participation. Nevertheless, concerns around the security of tenure offered by the sector, repairs, service standards and unequal power relations between landlord and tenant persisted. As such, homeless households frequently expressed their decision to enter the sector in terms of a trade-off between choice and security.

The purpose of the thesis is to examine the relationship between tourism and the local culture expressed in culinary experiences offered in the traditional, nostalgic-themed markets that have arisen as popular attractions in the 21 st century. Central to the thesis is an examination of how the traditional cultural values are articulated in the production, promotion and consumption of culinary experiences in order to understand the value of culture when embedded in the process of commodification, as well as to understand influential socio-cultural factors. The thesis investigates the potential of traditional markets to promote food as the main attraction in the market. Field studies were conducted from December 2012–March 2014 in eight traditional markets in the central region of Thailand. Based on the ethnographic approach in studying the narratives in the markets, a variety of methods were implemented in the process of data collection. Besides observational analysis of the venue, semi-structured interviews and the self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data from actors who engage in food experiences, including management team members, food traders and visitors. Data was also collected from interviews with officers working for Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT).  Keys findings of the thesis reveal that the cultural expressions of food experience in each market is an outcome of both the interactions of worldviews expressed by actors involved in the traditional market and the socio-cultural condition of Thailand. The relationships between stakeholders’ attitudes towards food experiences and the commercial potentials and limitations of food were analysed. The analysis of the cultural value of culinary experiences demonstrates that the existing academic discussions of the authenticity of tourism are insightful in explaining the character of food experiences offered in this tourism scenario. Most importantly, authenticity in tourism experiences, being a desirable element in culinary experiences, is a reflection of the how the pre-modern aspect of Thai society is embraced in a contemporary context. In addition, the commodification of culinary culture generates multidimensional consequences on the value of traditional culture and local lives. Moreover, the performance of culinary experiences can be viewed from the perspective of how Thai society interacts with globalization. The thesis also points out that it is possible to compare the situation of the traditional markets with the marketing positioning of food in Thai tourism marketing policy.

Somalia has for more than two decades been in a perpetual state of conflict and more than a million Somalis have fled the initial civil war. Approximately 400,000 of them reside here in the UK. They have formed a large diasporic community and have set up their own websites and TV stations to remain engaged with the happenings of their homeland. Diasporic media is often hailed as a medium that allows immigrants to maintain their identity in their host country as well as providing a platform to sustain ties with their homeland. However, if these ties are being maintained with a homeland that is in a state of conflict, the potential to transport the dynamics of the conflict and re-create it amongst the diaspora audiences is very much a possibility. This thesis illustrates how diasporic media can re-create conflict through a theoretically developed and empirically informed argument that provides three analytically distinct approaches referred to as the three politics of non-recognition, solidarity and mobilisation. This thesis in essence, argues that diasporic media is more complex than what current scholars have demonstrated and that there is a need to broaden the scope of current academic debates concerning the interplay between diasporic media, transnationalism and conflict.

This research aimed to explore the privileging of growth and its influence on planning in England. The research examined two contrasting case studies: Middlesbrough Borough Council and Cambridge City Council. The analysis of growth privileging is rooted within a constructionist ontology which argues that planning is about the way in which people construct value relative to the function of land. This perspective enables the research to position growth privileging as a social construction; a particular mental frame for understanding and analyzing place based challenges and an approach which has been increasingly absorbed by the UK planning community. Through interviews with a range of planning actors, the first part of the research examined the state of planning in the current political and economic context and the influence that a privileging of growth has on planning. The second part of the research investigated the merits and feasibility of the capabilities approach as an alternative mental frame for planning, an approach developed through the work of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. The research results disaggregate the concept of economic growth, based on the responses of interviewees and conclude that it is characterized by homogeneity. Growth is valued, not only because of its economic role, for example, supporting jobs and income but its potential in creating diversity, enriching culture and precipitating transformative change. Pursuing growth as an objective has a range of influences upon planning. In particular, it supports a utilitarian framework for decision-making which values spatial decisions on their ability to support aggregate economic growth. The research demonstrates the feasibility and merits of the capabilities approach as a means with which to better understand the relationship between planning and human flourishing. Based on this analysis, the research proposes that the capabilities approach can provide an alternative ‘mental frame’ for planning which privileges human flourishing as the primary objective or ‘final end’ instead of economic growth.

Natural selection favours those individuals that respond best to novel features of their selective environment. For many, a critical challenge is responding to evolutionary change in mutualistic species. These responses create complex feedbacks, so only coevolutionary approaches are able to fully answer key questions about the maintenance or disruption of mutualistic behaviour, and explain the range of mechanisms that allow individuals to benefit from these associations. I first consider the hypothesis that economic models studying multiple classes of traders, where each trader seeks to optimise its own payoffs will yield insights into mutualistic systems. I show that individuals can be favoured to discriminate amongst potential partners based on the price for which they provide resources. Then, I show that market mechanisms can maintain cooperation and drive specialisation in mutualistic systems. I extend this market model to allow individuals to restrict a mutualistic partner's access to resources, and show that this strategy can stabilise cooperation and increase the fitness of both partners. I also explicitly incorporate relatedness in my market model. I show that high relatedness sometimes increases cooperativeness in members of a mutualistic species, but sometimes decreases cooperativeness as it narrow the scope for partner choice to maintain cooperation. Having studied market mechanisms, I consider indiscriminate costly help to members of another species. I discover that this trait can be favoured by natural selection and can be classified as either altruism between or altruism within species. Finally, I consider a framework for analysing coevolved phenotypic responses to a partner's cooperativeness, a challenging process to model. I demonstrate that this framework can yield firm predictions about behaviour whenever partners hold private information about their costs and benefits.