This aim of this study is to investigate the manner in which Deleuze’s individual and collaborative work can be productively understood as being concerned with the question of living well, where it will be suggested that living well necessitates that we not only become aware of, but that we also explore, the forever renewed present possibilities for living otherwise that each moment brings. In particular, this study will make an original contribution to existing Deleuzian studies by arguing that what legitimises this conception of living well, and what can motivate us to engage in such a practice, is that a life that becomes aware of and explores the open field of present possibilities for living otherwise that each moment engenders is a life that reflects, or that is lived in accordance with, the challenging ontological account that can be discerned throughout Deleuze’s individual and collaborative work; a life lived in accordance with his open, dynamic and thoroughly temporal theory of Being or what I will suggest he came to refer to simply as ‘Life’. In addition, I will argue that in so far as each individual human being is to be understood as an ongoing and immanent expression of Life, an immediate expression of Life understood as a universal, impersonal and pre-individual dynamism, then a life that strives to explore the forever renewed present possibilities for living otherwise that each moment brings - a practice that I shall propose also necessitates that each individual strives to resist the diverse ways in which their present possibilities are continually hindered, thwarted and negated - is not only a life that strives to live in accordance with the temporal dynamism of Life, but is also a life lived in accordance with our own dynamic and thoroughly temporal being.

A review of the literature revealed that investigations into the use of trace metals to determine the geographical origin of heroin have been performed in the past. However, the findings of these studies could not be substantiated due to a lack of seized heroin samples of known provenance with which comparisons could be made. This study involves a novel approach in which opium poppy plants (Papaver somniferum L.) were grown in pots of soil each containing different concentrations of copper, lead and zinc. Leaf and resin samples were collected from each of the plants along with a sample of the soil in which they were grown and, after appropriate sample pre-treatment, the concentrations of copper, lead and zinc were determined using differential pulse anodic stripping voltammetry and atomic absorption spectroscopy . Hierarchical clustering and discriminant function analysis were used to investigate two hypotheses. Firstly, whether resin samples that were known to have originated from plants that were grown in the same soil type could be clustered together and secondly, whether resin samples could be linked back to the soil from which the corresponding poppy plants were grown. The findings showed that when soil types with a greater difference in concentrations of copper, lead and zinc were considered, metal concentration ratios in resin could be used to determine the soil in which the corresponding poppy plants had been grown. However, the classification techniques proved to be more successful when attempting to cluster together resin samples that were known to have originated from poppy plants that were grown in the same soil type. iii In comparison to the findings of this study, previous studies demonstrated a greater ability to distinguish between seized heroin samples of different origins using the same classification techniques. This suggests that the addition of metals from sources other than the soil contributed towards making the samples of heroin unique.

This thesis presents a social ontology. It takes its problem, the emergence of social structure and order, and the relationship of the macro and the micro within this structure, from social theory, but attempts a resolution from the perspectives of contemporary French philosophy and complexity theory. Due to its acceptance of certain presuppositions concerning the multiplicity and connectedness of all life and nature it adopts a comparative methodology that attempts a translation of complexity science to the social world. It draws both this methodology and its inspiration from the work of Michel Serres. After explaining this methodology, it presents a critique of the work of those prominent philosophers of multiplicity who have written on the social: Alain Badiou, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and Manual DeLanda. Having argued for the need of a ‘non-unit’ of social organisation, it then unsuccessfully surveys the work of Michel Foucault and Gabriel Tarde in search of such a ‘non-unit’. It produces one by extracting elements from different theorists and then proceeds to offer a novel explanation of how these expectations first emerge from the ‘social noise’ and then go through a complex process of self-organisation to produce social structure. Apart from complexity theory, this explanation draws on the temporal ontologies of both Serres and Deleuze. In doing so, it argues that the social replication necessary for this self-organisation cannot be achieved through direct imitation. Instead, it draws on an idea from Stuart Kauffman and argues that this is achieved through autocatalysis. Finally, it argues that social structures and what is perceived to be social order are the effect of the codification, to varying degrees, of these emergent expectations. It concludes that this structure is at its most creative when on ‘the edge of chaos’, when at a point of social chaosmos.

This study bears upon the ‘Heidegger case,’ that is, the relation of Heidegger’s philosophizing to his political involvements as Rector of the University of Freiburg 1933-4, and his subsequent silences on the subject of the Holocaust. I use the phrase ‘bears upon’ for Heidegger’s political involvement will serve as the ‘horizon’ for the study, my concern being the genesis of Heidegger’s position. Grounded in a musical ‘intuition’ and attunement, I take up the Nietzschean cipher for understanding proposed by Heidegger himself for the self-understanding of the German people: the Apollonian-Dionysian duality, which I apply to the ‘being’ of Heidegger’s own philosophizing. Through this approach I hope to make an original contribution to Heidegger scholarship by showing that Heidegger’s fundamental ontology is overdetermined, evolving out of both the phenomenological demand for a rigorous method in establishing fundamental structures of existence and - at the same time – out of an Apollonian attempt to ‘tame’ Dionysian existence, including Heidegger’s own. Inextricably interlinked will be the argument that Heidegger’s Auseinandersetzung, his ‘confrontation,’ with Nietzsche precedes the overt engagement of his ‘Nietzsche’ lectures of the 1930s, and, further, that this more pervasive concern with Nietzsche figures in the Apollonian-Dionysian strife within Heidegger’s thinking and within his ‘being.’ Heidegger’s silences in the face of the Dionysian - as well as the Auseinandersetzung with Nietzsche - will be seen to precede his ‘silence’ in the face of the actuality and history of the Third Reich. What I am proposing one might characterize as Heidegger’s Auseinandersetzung - through Nietzsche - with v Heidegger, in a disclosure of the ontic roots of Heidegger’s ontology, an exercise in his own hermeneutics of facticity. I will pursue the trace of the Apollonian-Dionysian duality: in the Western philosophical tradition which Heidegger confronts, using Husserl and Nietzsche as exemplars; in Heidegger interpretation; in the relation between his texts and his letters; and in the suppressions and intensifications within Being and Time. And I will propose that the fugue and the mutually generative duality of suppression and intensification within Heidegger’s academic thinking were conditions of the possibility of Heidegger’s ‘way’ towards political involvement.

The relationship between Epicurus and Nietzsche is an increasingly popular research topic. There are a number of publications that attempt to detail the nature of this relationship by investigating specific aspects of their writings that interrelate. Such research is valuable because it reveals an otherwise hidden dynamic to Nietzsche studies, however, all previous discourse on Epicurus and Nietzsche are limited because they fail to recognise both thinkers as philosophers of immanence. This thesis proposes that ‘immanence’ is the central concept that allows the influence of Epicurus upon Nietzsche’s thought to be revealed most appropriately. Furthermore, it proposes to account for the development of ‘immanence’ within the works of Epicurus and Nietzsche in order to disclose the nature of immanence itself. By following Nietzsche’s genealogical method, this thesis will demonstrate that Epicurean immanence emerged through the conceptualisation of all existence within the cosmos and nature. Moreover, immanence developed as an atomistic response to the transcendent philosophies of Socrates and Aristotle which opposed Democritean materialism. Nietzsche recognised that the increasing popularity of Platonism in late antiquity led to the event of Christianity, which dominated Western thought until its success eventually destroyed the conditions that maintained it. Nietzsche predicted that in the light of Christianity’s demise, mankind would be plunged into a state of crisis and unparalleled nihilism. In response, he proposed that the body and spirit must be reunited in an act of overcoming, and those capable of that act would ‘inherit the earth’. Immanence for Nietzsche is this unifying act and inheritance, and he demonstrates that redemptive doctrines such as Epicurus’ ataraxia, modelled on nihilism, must be rejected and overcome by a philosophy modelled on ‘cheerfulness’. It is in this respect that his philosophy from The Gay Science onwards can be recognised as a discourse on immanence.

Social capital, as conceptualised to date, has looked at the composition of social networks and the socio-economic outcomes they produce, with very little reference to context, space, place, agency, or power. This thesis contributes to our understanding of social capital by looking systemically at the socio-spatial context in which networks emerge, and how social capital is exercised through mediating relationships with the objective of understanding how these processes are enabled or constrained in practice. Jane Jacobs approach to observing real-world, city processes from the ground up is applied to a case-study of creative practitioners working in the Stoke-on-Trent area from 2007-2011. Research methods were designed to elicit narratives from participants using a mapping exercise as a way to enact the everyday practices of the participants. These enactments were filmed as participants performed/narrated the story of their network. The narratives collected show that when social capital is conceptualised as an effect of dynamic social networks, rather than a static fund of potential resources, the processes by which individuals and groups win, lose or maintain advantage are uncovered. Exercised social capital has its own spatialities and modalities which place us nearer to, or further away from our goals. This thesis contributes both a novel framework and methods for analysing the exercise of social capital in a real world context which furthers our understanding of the co-constitution of space and society.

Husserlian phenomenology has often been cited as having influenced research methodologies within nursing research and psychology. However, at the same time, Husserl is explicitly opposed to what he termed as psychologism. The following thesis argues that Husserl’s opposition to the psychology of his day was based specifically upon his opposition of naturalism’s treatment of consciousness. Moreover, the thesis argues that there is a tendency within the Social Sciences to misread Husserlian Phenomenology as a type of introspectionists’ account of subjective states. The thesis critiques the claim that cognitive therapy is Husserlian phenomenology, but concludes that there are aspects of cognitive psychotherapy which do appear to be using parts of a methodology that Husserl would have recognised as a legitimate phenomenology. Indeed, the thesis argues that by gaining a further understanding of Husserl’s ‘discovery’ of attitude and interest and the fundamental structures of intentionality, cognitive therapists could enhance and further their understanding of what takes place within the change process during cognitive psychotherapy; and conversely, cognitive therapy’s description of the maintenance of emotional disorders can contribute to Husserl’s own account of the natural attitude. That is, that the natural attitude consists of a universalising attitude which is fundamental to the natural attitude per se. The thesis develops this argument further, by examining the theoretical underpinnings within cognitive therapy and extrapolating what appears as the incidental, yet significant, phenomenological structures within cognitive therapy’s clinical interventions. The thesis uses the identified phenomenological structures within cognitive therapy’s treatment of emotional disorder to firstly, further develop the phenomenological description of the universalising attitude as a subset to the natural attitude which, it is argued disguises or presents itself as the ‘genuine natural attitude’. Secondly, the concept of the universalising attitude is developed further to suggest a hierarchy of attitudes within the natural attitude.

This research project investigated techniques for composing visual music and achieving balance in the relationship between sound and image. It comprises this thesis and a portfolio of compositions. The investigation began with an interest in the relationships between colour and sound and later expanded to include form and motion, the remaining factors of Thomas Wilfred’s lumia (1947). Working with a cohesive theme, such as lumia, proved to be an effective way of creating a coherent aesthetic in portfolio pieces. Other themes were therefore investigated including composing with visual and audio materials recorded from the single source of Thailand, the wave phenomena of refraction and diffraction and a filmed natural sunset interpreted in electroacoustic music. Two distinct compositional techniques were used, material transference, where qualities were transferred between sound and image, and compositional thinking, which assisted in creating audio-visual compositions that possessed musical qualities. Material transference proved to be the most productive technique during composing and it was discovered that effectuating it algorithmically created a strong bond between sound and image. Compositional thinking assisted in creating the form of the portfolio pieces and was found to apply to both video and music. Compositional thinking was found to be useful at the macro level, where structural form was designed, and material transference worked at a finer micro level, transferring individual qualities between sound and video objects.

This thesis investigates faith-based youth work – establishing how it operates and what it does – in the context of the Big Society political initiative popularised during the period 2009-2013. Religion, politics and young people are subjects that promote lively debate, yet literature about faith-based youth work is limited. What is available does little to reveal the complex factors that underpin and portray such work. Whilst a variety of literature about youth work, young people, religion and social policy exists there is no body of work that brings these considerations together. Using a tripartite mix-of-methods approach, this study has developed an original contribution to knowledge in the form of an explanatory model for faith-based youth work: involving a scoping survey, focus group consultations and four case studies, a contemporary portrayal of such work has been established. Data was collected from faith-based youth workers from a variety of backgrounds and practices to develop the model, which establishes the foundational ethos of faith-based work, the grounding upon which it is developed, the philosophical shape of how it operates and the pedagogical intentions of what it does as it supports transformation in young people. The findings indicate that faith-based youth work is focused on helping young people flourish in pursuit to the common good; such work relates to the Big Society notion, but this is because of an overlapping consensus regarding mutual aspirations rather than any causal considerations. The place of faith within such work is motivationally foundational, but often not explicitly identifiable, in day-to-day operations. The investigation concludes that rather than perceiving young people as problems to be fixed, faith-based youth work offers a means of helping young people flourish for the collective good.

This PhD submission by previous publication comprises independent critical work from 1997-2001 on 'hypermodernism'. Hypermodern 'new cultural theory' and 'technopolitics' designates a rejection of the binary opposition between modernism and postmodernism as a response to the crises of contemporary culture. Hypermodernism thus refuses the prefix 'post', substituting instead the prefix 'hyper' or 'excess'. Hypermodernism is neither a denial of the domineering epistemological optimism of modernity nor a dismissal of the peremptory theoretical pessimism of postmodernity. Rather, it is an original analytical engagement with and acceptance of 'double moments' of cultural affirmation and negation or 'the continuation of modernism by other means'. The contribution to knowledge represented by the published work is the innovative interpretation and extension of hypermodernism to 'new social theory' and technopolitics. It delineates the renunciation of the binary antagonism between modernity and postmodernity through an acknowledgement of the exigencies of 'hypermodernity'. The premise of hypermodernity is confirmed through the prefix 'hyper' and the discovery of the 'economies of excess'. Hypermodernity therefore integrates the hope of `dromoeconomics' with the despair of the 'project(ile)s of hypermodern(organ)ization'. Here, autonomous critical abilities and the recognition of double moments of social confirmation and contradiction are understood as 'the continuation of modernity by other means'. The concluding section of the PhD submission deals with recent work from 2001 that explores the hypermodern. New cultural, social and technopolitical theory is positively applied to the reaction of the French cultural theorist, Paul Virilio, to the 'strategies of deception'. Hypermodernism repudiates the prefix 'postmodern war', exchanging it for the assertion that 'The Kosovo W@r Did Take Place', merging a critique of the promises of the modern Persian Gulf war and the despondency of postmodern 'cyberwar'. Finally, individual evaluative powers partake of and identify such double moments as the 'orbital space' of the 'integral accident' or 'the continuation of politics by other means'.