The majority of published work in the area of police occupational culture follows the methodological template of Skolnick (1994) which utilises both participant observation and the interview. The way in which this approach has been used has proved problematic for a number of reasons. First, it has promoted a view that police occupational culture is static and unchanging. Second, it has failed to acknowledge that officers have a choice whether or not to engage in certain behaviours. Third, it has promoted a view that police officers display essentially negative behaviours. The aim of the present research was to investigate, by means of techniques drawn from oral history, the culture or cultures of police officers within the Metropolitan Police Force in London between the 1930s and the 1960s. Firstly, there was a desire to find out to what extent accepted correlates of police occupational culture applied to police work in the period prior to the 1960s when it was first investigated. Secondly, if there did appear to be differences between the findings of the present research and those of authors charting post-1960s police culture, ideas would be forwarded in an attempt to explain such variations. Examples of factors which could account for such variations might include changes in the relationship between the police and the public, changes in police practice or changes in legislation. Through 26 interviews with retired officers, it was found that the intensity of Skolnick's key factors for the emergence of police occupational culture (danger, authority and the need to appear efficient) appeared to be greatly influenced by wider societal factors manifested in the state of police/public relations. Similarly, the present research found great variations within the officers' apparent adherence to key parts of the police 'working personality' as proposed by Skolnick. In short, the great variation in police behaviours exhibited in the present research could be attributed to the fact that wider social factors served to affect the intensity of Skolnick's three key factors.

Feminist theory and research has made a distinction between heterosexuality as a practice and heterosexuality as an institution and the line between the two is an area of confusion and contradiction. Discussions have been hampered by an unnecessary binary that hinders and limits theorising, working to silence the debates from either side, produce unnecessary divisions within feminism and inhibit the development of links between theory and practice. In examining heterosexuality as either an institution or a practice, it has been constructed as dangerous or pleasurable, victimising or agentic, oppressive or liberating, social or sexual. Missing between these two is a link that would suggest how these liberating activities challenge the heterosexual institution or how the analysis of the institution can make a material impact on women's sexual relationships. Women who identify as feminist and heterosexual are situated at the intersection of these two discourses where heterosexuality as an institution is defined as dangerous and oppressive, and heterosex as a practice is seen as pleasurable and liberating. To consider the intersection of institution and practice, the research asked 40 self-identified heterosexual feminists, between the ages of 19 and 68, about their sexual practice in the light both of feminist theorising around heterosexuality and its construction in the media. Taking the media as an institution that may both sustain and reinforce a discourse of heterosexuality, the research explores the mediation of women's heterosexuality and the potential for a feminist practice of resistance through the pleasurable consumption of media images. Employing a broad analysis of the media the thesis adopts a multi-methodological approach in the range of data collected, the methods employed and the analysis undertaken. It addresses three aims. First, to contribute to the wider literature within feminism. about heterosexuality and sexual practice. Second, to understand the role of the media in formulating feminist and heterosexual identities. Third, to consider the use and application of a range of different methods for a feminist cultural politics. Drawing on data from qualitative and quantitative media reviews, a questionnaire study; and diaries, focus groups and telephone interviews with the participants, I discuss the construction of heterosexuality and feminism, and the women's talk about their sexual practice.

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Debates concerning the veracity, ethics and politics of the documentary form circle endlessly around the function of those who participate in it, and the meaning attributed to their participation. Great significance is attached to the way that documentary filmmakers do or do not participate in the world they seek to represent, just as great significance is attached to those subjects whose participation extends beyond playing the part of eyewitness or expert, such that they become part of the very filmmaking process itself. This Ph.D. explores the interface between documentary practice and participatory culture by looking at how their practices, discursive fields and histories intersect, but also by looking at how participating in one might mean participating in the other. In short, the research is an examination of participatory culture through the lens of documentary practice and documentary criticism. In the process, however, this examination of participatory culture will in turn shed light on documentary thinking, especially the meaning and function of ‘the participant’ in contemporary documentary practice. A number of ways of conceiving of participation in documentary practice are discussed in this research, but one of the ideas that gives purpose to that investigation is the notion that the participant in contemporary documentary practice is someone who belongs to a participatory culture in particular. Not only does this mean that those subjects who play a part in a documentary are already informed by their engagement with a range of everyday media practices before the documentary apparatus arrives, the audience for such films are similarly informed and engaged. This audience have their own expectations about how they should be addressed by media producers in general, a fact that feeds back into their expectations about participatory approaches to documentary practice too. It is the ambition of this research to get closer to understanding the relationship between participants in the audience, in documentary and ancillary media texts, as well as behind the camera, and to think about how these relationships constitute a context for the production and reception of documentary films, but also how this context might provide a model for thinking about participatory culture itself. One way that documentary practice and participatory culture converge in this research is in the kind of participatory documentary that I call the ‘Camera Movie’, a narrow mode of documentary filmmaking that appeals directly to contemporary audiences’ desires for innovation and participation, something that is achieved in this case by giving documentary subjects control of the camera. If there is a certain inevitability about this research having to contend with the notion of the ‘participatory documentary’, the ‘participatory camera’ also emerges strongly in this context, especially as a conduit between producer and consumer. Making up the creative component of this research are two documentaries about the reality television event Band In A Bubble, and participatory media practices more broadly. The single-screen film, Hubbub , gives form to the collective intelligence and polyphonous voice of contemporary audiences who must be addressed and solicited in increasingly innovative ways. One More Like That is a split-screen, DVD-Video with alternate audio channels selected by a user who thereby chooses who listens and who speaks in the ongoing conversation between media producers and media consumers. It should be clear from the description above that my own practice does not extend to highly interactive, multi-authored or web-enabled practices, nor the distributed practices one might associate with social media and online collaboration. Mine is fundamentally a single authored, documentary video practice that seeks to analyse and represent participatory culture on screen, and for this reason the Ph.D. refrains from a sustained discussion of the kinds of collaborative practices listed above. This is not to say that such practices don’t also represent an important intersection of documentary practice and participatory culture, they simply represent a different point of intersection. Being practice-led, this research takes its procedural cues from the nature of the practice itself, and sketches parameters that are most enabling of the idea that the practice sets the terms of its own investigation.