Taking Bermondsey as a case study, my thesis examines how two groups of inhabitants - long-term residents and early gentrifiers - respond to and contest changes in urban space brought about by gentrification. Bermondsey is a gentrifying neighbourhood in London that has rapidly changed in social composition over the past thirty years. The research involved two aspects. Firstly, an historical analysis of the area's social, political and spatial trajectories. Viewed through this lens I argue that the character of the area's gentrification stems from the extent of its integration into the cultural and economic functions of the adjacent City of London. Secondly, indepth interviews with members of the two inhabitant groups are also used to understand how they experienced change brought about by gentrification in the context of their everyday lives. The research found that long-term residents did not regard the presence of gentrifiers as a direct threat to their housing security. Rather there was segregation between the two groups and protection provided by a large social rented tenure. A third group - 'low-status incomers' - were, however, seen as a threat both to long-term residents' access to social housing and to their (nostalgic) notions of community. I identify a form of intra-class rivalry, differing from the inter-class rivalry between lower income residents and gentrifiers that the literature typically describes. Instead of housing, I describe how public space was the crucible of tensions over gentrification, demonstrated by long-term residents' negative experiences of the public realm on new-build gentrification schemes. This prompted their withdrawal to familiar neighbourhood spaces, a form of 'internal displacement'. I also found a loss of 'place' displayed by early gentrifiers. Through their political practices, such as lobbying for affordable housing, they aimed to mitigate against the excesses of the gentrification they helped initiate. Despite their own housing security, they felt threatened by the arrival of later gentrifiers with divergent consumption preferences and social ideals. The analysis therefore shows how experiences of gentrification among different inhabitant groups are not fixed but open, ambiguous and layered, with different groups representing real and imagined threats to each other in ways not necessarily typified in the existing literature.

Reflection of travellers' activities at the end of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century in Enrique Stanko Vráz's work The aim of the offered thesis is to study the issues of exotic lands' presentations given by Czech travellers. Attention is primarily paid to Enrique Stanko Vráz, his work and means of propagation of foreign countries. At the end of nineteenth century and the first half of twentieth century lectures, expositions and books of travels comprised an important part of informing the public about foreign lands. Countries outside of Europe attracted not only the people, who were coming to visit and experience them. But even people, who could not or did not want to leave their homes were longing for discovering those lands. The demand of reports from exotic places of our planet was undertaken by few Czech explorers, who decided to share their experience with the Czech public. The centre of the work will be the ways of the implementation and access of the travellers to the unique information. The main subject of the study will be the archive materials from the Náprstek museum archives and secondary literature from the field of travelling and orientalism.

Post-conflict reconstruction (PCR) policies often highlight gender issues during the agenda setting stage, but they largely fall off policy agendas as PCR processes advance. Interestingly, Rwanda is a counter-example to this trend. In 1994, Rwanda experienced a horrific genocide that caused a complete breakdown of the state. At that time, a new government, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) under the leadership of Paul Kagame, came into power. During the PCR period, gender policies were deemed a priority by the new government and this resulted in gains for women in several areas. The fact that Rwanda has a majority female parliament, for example, has resulted in significant international attention to Rwanda. Much of the credit for these gains and for putting gender issues on the PCR agenda has been given to the RPF and Kagame. However, is political will (as it is often described) a sufficient explanation for the post-conflict gender policy focus? I argue that it is not. By situating this research within a theoretical framework that draws upon feminist theoretical propositions, literature that questions the PCR dynamics of international aid and political outcomes, and Rwanda-specific literature, a fuller explanation of Rwanda’s PCR gender policy focus emerges. The evidence suggests that whilst political will was undoubtedly important, it is only one of five key factors: a majority female population, grassroots actions on the part of women, international aid, and the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women were also drivers behind this policy focus. However, these factors have largely been rendered invisible within PCR analysis on Rwanda. In this research I seek to explain why these factors were critical to setting the stage for a PCR gender policy focus and how this policy focus has been subsumed under a highly political agenda over the last two decades.

There is increasing evidence to suggest that Corporate Community Involvement (CCI) has gone beyond philanthropy towards more innovative approaches in addressing complex social problems. One example is particularly evident in developing countries where corporations organize the local community in their operational areas into community-based organizations (CBOs), such as self-help groups, and enable them to tackle social problems by themselves. In this thesis, I explore this emerging CCI mode, termed Corporate Instigation of Community-Based Organizations (CICBO), by focusing on the contexts in which such engagement is conceptualized, the process through which it is put into practice and the outcomes of such engagement. I adopt an institutional perspective, grounded in the umbrella concept of institutional work that highlights the recursive relationship between institutional environment and organizational actions within which a new CCI mode emerges. An analytical framework is built around the constituent components of institutional work (e.g., enabling conditions, agency, actions and consequences) that allows for a process-oriented exploration of the emergence of a CCI mode as an organization-level institution. The framework is employed to examine three key aspects of CICBO: company motives to initiate the mode and the contextual factors that influence those motives, the micro-processes through which the mode emerges, and its outcomes at multiple levels. In doing so, my study presents an alternative theoretical perspective on CCI, one based on institutional work. At the same time, it also contributes to the bottom-up theorization of institutional work. This research is interpretive in nature. A case study method is utilised for in-depth investigation of the CICBO mode of two oil and gas companies in India, the Oil India Limited and the Cairn India Limited, applying multiple qualitative research techniques such as interviews, focus group discussions and document analysis. The empirical findings provide valuable insights on the antecedents, processes and consequences in the emergence of the CICBO mode in particular and broader CCI discourse in general. This situates my research among the few studies that contribute to the processual understanding of CCI. The study identifies a legitimacy crisis at the community level arising from incompatible institutional arrangements, recognition of future business threat or opportunity, and a company’s habitual orientation towards community engagement as the key drivers for CICBO. However, prevalence of such a contingent environment alone is not enough to manifest the CICBO mode. As an intelligent and reflexive actor, the company reflects on its past, assesses the present, projects itself into the future, and assigns different levels of importance to each of these factors. As observed in the study, CICBO emerges when securing future business interest is associated with ensuring long-term social legitimacy through effective solutions to critical social issues. This finding makes explicit the connection between strategic motives and subsequent framing of CICBO as the solution to achieve them. CICBO aims to create a community-level practice of CBO-oriented collective problem solving. It focuses on gradually building important community capital in a way that enables the community to maintain the practice without company support. This signifies a dual institutional creation work where the activities for creating community-level practice in the field occur under the umbrella of a temporary CCI practice that is created in parallel. The company’s intention to continue the support for a limited time only reflects its commitment to community empowerment, rather than inflicting further dependence. CICBO unfolds through iterative phases of conceptual (design) and operational (implementation) activities, where a stable template gradually emerges through repeated incorporation of ongoing learning. As such, the emergence of CICBO depicts high interactions among company, community and other social actors. In particular, the process highlights diverse roles of the local community as the initial adopters of the CBO-oriented practice, supporters in the promotional activities, part of the maintenance mechanisms, and most importantly eventual upholder of the practice. The findings identify the ability of CICBO to create shared values for the CCI actors and potential for community empowerment. More importantly, the success of CICBO is observed to inspire various social actors including other organizations and the wider community to engage in similar and complementary practices, resulting in widespread diffusion of CBO-oriented activities. The findings bring new insights for practitioners, policy makers and communities, particularly in developing countries, who seek to design and implement similar practices as effective and sustainable solutions for complex social issues.

This is a sociological study of children's work in Indian families based on research carried out in Coventry (UK) and Lucknow (India). The data was gathered through unstructured and in-depth interviews of children from 10 Indian families in Coventry and 10 Indian families in Lucknow who run small-scale retailing businesses in each city. The research questions the assumptions of the existing literature on children's work in the family, where it is considered as a useful and beneficial task, and something that children ought to learn. Contrary to this understanding which marginalises the importance of children's work in the family, the evidence presented in this thesis demonstrates that children's work in the family is a specific part of their agency, which helps them to construct and reconstruct their own childhood and maintain their family's social order. It is the contention of the thesis that children's domestic activities are to be considered as meaningful 'work' that is not always oriented toward (future) goals of socialization, but rather toward the structuring of social relationships between children and adults. The data shows that although there is a slight difference in the expression of children's agency in Coventry and Lucknow due to different socio-cultural contexts, children's active involvement in housework and shop-work in both cities places them within the division of domestic labour. In particular, children's experiences in family businesses not only demonstrate them to be socially and economically useful members of their families, it also provides them with an opportunity to realise their potential.

Este trabalho de História Social trata de discorrer sobre as práticas corporais dos indivíduos durante o higienismo, especialmente nos primeiros anos da República Brasileira, em que as elites se apropriam do poder, as camadas médias buscam sua acensão e reconhecimento social por meio da distinção de suas aparências e de seus corpos ora saudáveis por conta do progresso e da ciência, tentando fazer do futuro da pátria uma nação do futuro ao extirpar a doença e o atraso. / This work of social history comes to talk about bodily practices of individuals during hygienism, especially in the early years of the Republic of Brazil, where elites get hold of power, the middle classes seek their rise and social recognition through the excellence of her appearances and their bodies healthy now because of the progress and science, trying to make the future of the nation to eradicate disease and backwardness.

The mid-nineteenth century was an age of reform, which affected the whole of British society. Working people in southeast Lancashire were far from passive at this time, and the co-operative experiment in Rochdale was an inspiration. Many had pinned their hopes on the Chartist Land Plan, but when this failed they seized an unintended opportunity offered by changes in company law. The result was that over fifty industrial worker-owned and controlled companies were created in the period from 1850 to the onset of the Cotton Famine in 1861, with shares sold to other local people through pubs and shops. A database of these shares forms the basis of this thesis and their analysis provides much of the raw material. Following the Cotton Famine, a commercial revolution in the Irwell Valley and adjoining districts resulted and by the 1870s brought about a virtual stock market, where companies of all kinds were floated, including traditional family businesses. Many such businesses became worker-owned and added to the prosperity of the Irwell Valley. This valley had a quite unique geography and culture, which bred men and women willing to turn their hands to a variety of tasks. The worker-owned companies were intended to provide profit, but independence, pride and self-help were also important factors. The concept spread, and contributed to the formation of the better-known ‘Oldham Limiteds’. Despite many attempts, the source of industrial finance in the late Victorian period remains an unanswered question. This thesis demonstrates that for some industries, in this area, the finance came from the working classes, including women, a possibility not previously taken seriously. They funded a diversity of industries throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, providing millions of pounds of capital. The thesis also breaks new ground in being able to identify a significant percentage of investors as individuals whose activities can be reconstructed, sometimes in detail.

Essa pesquisa apresenta como objeto central os Subaltern Studies. Trata-se de um grupo de intelectuais que se destacou no estudo da história social e política indiana no final dos anos 1970. O que ligou estruturalmente os intelectuais próximos aos Subaltern Studies, em sua fase inicial, foi a tentativa de reescrever criticamente a história colonial da Índia. Nesse sentido, o esforço do grupo correspondeu a uma busca por tentar resgatar a voz nativa silenciada e extrair novas perspectivas historiográficas e políticas não só do passado, mas da própria fraqueza da sociedade nativa. Protagonizados por autores como Ranajit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Partha Chatterjee e Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, se organizou uma série de coletâneas de artigos sobre a história social e política indiana que totalizaram onze volumes compreendidos entre os anos de 1982 e 2000. Amplamente discutidos, os Subaltern Studies passaram a nomear um campo de estudos abrangente, de caráter internacional. Em meio às diversas fontes que confluíram nos subalternistas (marxismo, pós-estruturalismo, pós-colonialismo), se busca aprofundar o estudo sobre as apropriações conceituais feitas pelos indianos. Se enfatizará seu percurso de mudanças e tensões intelectuais e se analisará os limites de sua realização teórica com destaque para a tradução e extensão à experiência latino-americana com os Latin American Subaltern Studies, fundados em 1993. / This research has as its subject matter Subaltern Studies. This is a group of intellectuals, who stand out in the social and political Indian history of the late 1970s. Intellectuals close to the Subaltern Studies, in its initial phase, critically tried to rewrite the history of colonial India. In this sense, the group sought to rescue the silenced native voice and extract new historical and political perspectives not only from the past, but also from the weakness of the native society. Performed by authors such as Ranajit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Partha Chatterjee and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a series of collections of papers were organized on the Indian social and political history that totaled eleven volumes, published between 1982 and 2000. Widely discussed, Subaltern Studies came to suggest a field of extensive studies, of an international character. Among the various sources that converged in subaltern studies (Western Marxism, post structuralism, post colonialism), this research seeks to study the conceptual appropriations made by the Indians. This research will emphasize its changes and intellectual tensions and will examine the limits of his theoretical achievement especially in relation to the translation and extension to the Latin American experience with the Latin American Subaltern Studies, founded in 1993.

Memoria or the medieval remembrance of the dead is integral to our understanding of medieval society. However, memoria was not just a liturgical practice intended to lessen purgatorial suffering, but a ‘total social phenomenon’ that impacted every aspect of life. This thesis follows in the tradition of the German Memoriaforschung school, especially the concepts formulated by Otto Gerhard Oexle. These concepts are here particularly applied to memoria as a group phenomenon. A particular contention of this thesis is that memoria was socially constitutive and thus not only a vehicle to remember the past but a means to create and maintain social groups. Therefore this thesis takes the form of series of case studies drawn from late medieval Livonia (present day Latvia and Estonia) c. 1400-1525. The groups chosen –associations of the urban elites, non-elite brotherhoods, the clergy and the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order – reflect both the strength of the surviving source material and the particular characteristics of the region. Each case study is considered through a series of research questions. How did memoria constitute and shape social relationships? How did memoria create and sustain groups? In what ways was memoria used for political purposes? How did groups use their past to maintain their identities in the present? What role did charity and the poor play? In addition to exploring the above themes, this thesis particularly argues that memoria was used to legitimize power by urban governments and by the Teutonic Order and the archbishops of Riga. This thesis also shows that memoria created the cultural memory of the Teutonic Order and the Rigan church. Memoria sustained the identities of urban elite groups and was essential to creating relationships between the urban elites and non-elite groups.

In 2014 the Ebola virus entered Sierra Leone, soon to become the epicentre of a global health crisis. A state of emergency was declared, propped up by a large-scale and far-reaching humanitarian intervention; characterised by stringent bureaucratic and biomedical protocols, restrictions on social and economic life, and novel monetary flows. Based on 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, immediately before and during the state of emergency, the thesis presents an intimate account of the lives and social worlds of young men living in an urban neighbourhood. The thesis outlines the centrality of the domestic sphere – home, neighbourhood, and family – in young men’s projects of coming of age, as well as in surviving and brokering ‘crisis’ and foreign intervention. Rather than ‘crisis’ halting the processes of social reproduction, such processes became central means through which a conflict between ‘foreign’ and ‘local’ expectations – brought to the fore by external intervention – was reconciled and negotiated. The thesis demonstrates how a political economy of crisis maps onto core social tensions between independence and dependence that young men ambiguously negotiate around the home, and how resultant social practices and understandings connect to Freetown’s deeper and more recent histories of intervention, crisis, and entanglement with the Atlantic World.