Violence perpetrated in the name of ‘honour’ is neither a new phenomenon, nor one associated exclusively with any particular culture or religion. Nevertheless the concept of honour has become a powerful expression through which certain ‘culturalised’ forms of violence have been differentiated from ‘mainstream’ forms of violence against women. Indeed, while the latter is viewed generally as a pattern of individual deviance and desire for power and control, HBV is perceived as symptomatic of deviant and problematic cultures and cultural pathology. Subsequently although there has been increasing academic attention paid to the problem of ‘honour’-based violence within the UK, much of this existing research has focused on urban areas with large South Asian Muslim populations. Problematically, Larasi (2013b) argues, this limited focus can create silos that do not necessarily represent ‘victims’’ real lived experiences of violence and abuse. This thesis is based upon data collected from semi-structured interviews conducted with twenty-six participants – twelve service users and fourteen service providers – from various ‘rural’ locations spanning across five English counties. By re-examining the notion of ‘honour’, this thesis considers the extent to which the culturalisation of HBV has hindered contemporary Western understanding of VAW and our ability to provide services to those seeking help. Although, by drawing upon the lived experiences of service users, it is shown how honour and shame operate as more pervasive features of all intimate personal victimisation, this thesis demonstrates how culturalised perceptions of honour and HBV restricts service provisions – particularly in rural areas which are conceptualised as lacking in ethnic diversity. Ultimately this thesis argues that, given that honour underlies so many forms of gender-based violence, rather than resituating HBV within a broader framework of VAW, we should instead situate VAW within a broader theoretical understanding of honour and shame.

Constructing criminals: the creation of identity within criminal mafias This thesis seeks to demonstrate that there has been a change in the social and cultural aspects of established organised criminal sub-cultures by observing the changes that have taken place in how identity is constructed. The literature is comparatively lacking in emphasis when compared to information about specific criminal activities and the threat of the organisations. This study finds that the social and cultural dimensions of established organised criminal sub-cultures can be equally important and indicative of changes in those organisations. This thesis analyses the change in how established organised criminal sub-cultures, or mafias, have perceived and used identity over the last twenty years and asks whether this can be indicative of a change in the social and cultural model of these organisations. The study is comparative and will focus on how identity in four distinct mafias from across the world - the Russian mafiya, Sicilian mafia, the Japanese yakuza and the Chinese triads - is constructed and how this has changed. The Russian mafiya was the first of the established organised criminal sub-cultures to demonstrate this change whereby identity was used in a different way from its criminal underworld roots. The study also analyses the literature available from gang studies to ask whether the recognised focus upon identity can be interpreted with reference to the established organised criminal sub-cultures. This thesis considers that a criminal identity is constructed through a variety of customs and behaviours including mythology and legend, language and oral traditions and the visual image that a group portrays. A contextual approach is proposed, whereby organisations create and negotiate criminal identities at different scales, by which a street level identity might be more distinctive.

This thesis is a study of the sociological significance of crime and punishment discourse in early-nineteenth-century broadsides. Broadsides were a form of street literature and, for almost 300 years until the late nineteenth century, were a forerunner to our modern tabloid newspapers. As such, they were published on a wide range of topics, but by far the most prevalent were those covering violent crime, especially murder, and the public execution of criminals. The publication of this genre of broadside reached a peak in the first half of the nineteenth century and its popular appeal was greatest among the labouring poor. This has led several scholars to propose two prominent, yet contrasting, arguments: namely, that this ‘gallows literature’ should be read as either evidence of attempts at ideological social control or merely as a form of debased, sensationalistic entertainment. However, this thesis proposes that broadsides actually reveal ordinary people’s thoughts and feelings about crime and criminal justice and, as such, reflect common moralities and mentalities. By presenting a detailed discourse analysis of 650 broadsides printed all over Britain between the years 1800-1850, this thesis provides an alternative interpretation as to the form, function and meaning of their narratives of crime. This interpretation is based upon the social theories of Emile Durkheim, who recognised the higher utility of crime and punishment as being one of social integration and the preservation of moral boundaries. The central argument of this thesis, therefore, is that broadsides relating to crime and punishment were a form of moral communication for the masses and that they are examples of how the working class once attempted to bolster a sense of stability and community, during the transitional years of the early nineteenth century, by effectively representing both a consolidation and celebration of their core values and beliefs.

The collation and use of criminal records by the state has conventionally been regarded as essential for the prevention and detection of crime, the administration of justice and the maximisation of public safety. For instance: the police may check the criminal records of suspects to determine whether they are ‘known offenders’; those working in the judicial sphere may investigate the prior ‘form’ of witnesses and defendants to adduce ‘bad character’ or determine an appropriate sentence; and educational authorities and social services departments may conduct criminal background checks to determine the ‘suitability’ of individuals to work with or foster children. Whilst not disputing that these official functions provided the original justification for the state’s development of criminal record repositories during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this thesis argues that other unofficial and quasi-penological functions are now served in the present by the collation, retention and dissemination of criminal background information. This contention is examined through a critical history of legal rehabilitation in England and Wales as introduced under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. This legislation determines if, when and under what circumstances a previous criminal record can be deemed ‘relevant’ for a number of purposes. Effectively, it regulates the extent to which a wide range of social actors can permissibly treat people with convictions less favourably than those in society without any criminal background. The thesis argues that legal rehabilitation as a social practice determines the boundaries of redemptive possibility in late-modern society by enacting a discriminatory biopolitics which uses criminal records as a moral apparatus to regulate life chances. Underpinned by neoliberal and authoritarian governmentalities, this biopolitics distinguishes a ‘law-abiding citizenry’ - constructed as deserving of access to social goods - from a ‘denizen class’ of convicted people whose ‘punishment’ is perpetuated through exposure to various exclusionary conducts.

This thesis provides an original investigation into the status of violent veterans in the United Kingdom post 9/11. Drawing upon a series of interviews conducted during 2011-2014, it frames the problem through the focused lens of Veteranality. Veteranality is understood here to be the regulation and rehabilitation of veteran offenders within the criminal justice framework, with a conscious attempt to understand the limitations of governing regimes by foregrounding questions of political agency. It looks directly at the tensions and conflicts veteran offenders experience as they move from a war paradigm to one of criminal justice on domestic soil. Central here is the ethical decision to “give voice” to the veterans by allowing them to narrate their own experiences prior, during and after war, which proves crucial to the study. As violent veterans expose the limits of juridical approaches to their crimes, so they add further empirical weight to the claims that times of war and peace are less easily demarcated and set apart. Embodying the normalisation of violence in new security terrains, their testimonies present significant challenges and demand a thorough rethinking of the violence of warfare in the 21st Century.

Samaritans volunteers have been visiting prisons since 1991 to select, train and support prisoners to provide confidential emotional support to other prisoners. Despite its existence for approximately two decades, the Listener scheme has received very little research attention other than a few scattered examples of in-house or small scale reviews (for example Davies, 1994; Richman, 2004; Snow & Biggar, 2006; The Samaritans, 2001a; 2001b). This paucity is also reflected in the current lack of knowledge about peer mentoring and support more widely, despite the significant government attention it has received. This thesis explores and analyses the operation of the Listener peer support scheme in four prisons in England. It investigates how prisoners used (or did not use) Listener support in their patterns of coping and helpseeking in prison, how the Listener scheme was perceived and used by prisoners, Listeners and prison staff, and how Listeners described their experiences of conducting their voluntary work in prison. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted, including a survey of prisoners (n=331), and interviews with prisoners (n=14), Listeners (n=16), and prison staff (n=12). This thesis contends that the prison environment shapes and influences help-seeking by prisoners and the operation of peer support schemes in important ways. It is asserted that helpseeking by prisoners is ‘strategic’, that there is a need to recognise the importance of the factors that drive help-seeking in prison, and the impact this has on the spectrum of helpseeking activity that prisoners exhibit. Furthermore, this thesis examines the dilemmas and contradictions that arise, when prisoners attempt to engage as citizens by volunteering and helping their peers, with whom they share the same pains of imprisonment and experience of subordination.

Activation of the intrinsic aqueous water-wire proton conductance (GAQ) in Hv1 channels is controlled by changes in membrane potential and the transmembrane pH gradient (ΔpH). The mechanism by which changes in ΔpH affect the apparent voltage dependence of GAQ activation is not understood. In order to measure voltage sensor (VS) activation in Hv1, we mutated a conserved Arg residue in the fourth helical segment (S4) to His and measured H+ currents under whole-cell voltage clamp in transfected HEK-293 cells. Consistent with previous studies in VS domain containing proteins, we find that Hv1 R205H mediates a robust resting-state H+ ‘shuttle’ conductance (GSH) at negative membrane potentials. Voltage-dependent GSH gating is measured at more negative voltages than the activation GAQ, indicating that VS activation is thermodynamically distinct from opening of the intrinsic H+ permeation pathway. A hallmark biophysical feature of Hv1 channels is a ~-40 mV/pH unit shift in the apparent voltage dependence of GAQ gating. We show here that changes pHO are sufficient to cause similar shifts in GSH gating, indicating that GAQ inherits its pH dependence from an early step in the Hv1 activation pathway. Furthermore, we show for the first time that Hv1 channels manifest a form of electromechanical coupling VS activation and GAQ pore opening. Second-site mutations of D185 markedly alter GAQ gating without affecting GSH gating, indicating that D185 is required for a late step in the activation pathway that controls opening of the aqueous H+ permeation pathway. In summary, this work demonstrates that the Hv1 activation pathway contains multiple transitions with distinct voltage and pH dependencies that have not been previously identified. The results reported here novel insight into the mechanism of VS activation in Hv1 and raise fundamental questions about the nature of pH-dependent gating and electromechanical coupling in related VS domain-containing ion channels and phosphatases.

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No description available.

The structure of the voltage-gated proton (H+) channel Hv1 is homologous to the voltage sensor domain (VSD) of tetrameric voltage-gated Na+, K+ and Ca2+ channels (VGCs), but lacks a pore domain and instead forms a homodimer. Similar to other VSD proteins, Hv1 is gated by changes in membrane potential (V), but unlike VGCs, voltage-dependent gating in Hv1 is modulated by changes in the transmembrane pH gradient (DpH = pHo - pHi). In Hv1, pHo or pHi changes shift the open probability (POPEN)-V relation by ~40 mV per pH unit. To better understand the structural basis of pHo-dependent gating in Hv1, we constructed new resting- and activated-state Hv1 VSD homology models using physical constraints determined from experimental data measured under voltage clamp and conducted all-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Analyses of salt bridges and calculated pKas at conserved side chains suggests the existence of intracellular and extracellular electrostatic networks (ICEN and ECEN, respectively) that stabilize resting- or activated-state conformations of the Hv1 VSD. Structural analyses led to a novel hypothesis: two ECEN residues (E119 and D185) with coupled pKas coordinately interact with two S4 ‘gating charge’ Arg residues to modulate activated-state pHo sensitivity. Experimental data confirm that pH-dependent gating is compromised at acidic pHo in Hv1 E119A-D185A mutants, indicating that specific ECEN residue interactions are critical components of the ∆pH-dependent gating mechanism. E119 and D185 are known to participate in extracellular Zn2+ coordination, suggesting that H+ and Zn2+ utilize similar mechanisms to allosterically modulate the activated/resting state equilibrium in Hv1.