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This thesis takes as its object of study issues emerging from the synthesis of documentary practice and theoretical discourse. Its context is formed by the production of four published works commissioned and broadcast by the BBC in 2011/2012. These comprise: a drama-documentary, an observational documentary and two radio programmes. The programmes gathered archival and recorded memories and oral histories from Scarp, a small, now abandoned, island off the coast of Harris in the Outer Hebrides whose oral history and memories are in danger of being lost forever. The thesis argues for the acknowledgement of the 'situatedness' of the producer by exploring background, cultulral positioning and professional training, specifically within the context of Gaelic culture and broadcasting. The thesis makes the specific claim that the published works and the research appendices, in combination with the critical essay, make an important contribution not only to our understanding and ethnographic knowledge of island cultures on the west coast of Scotland, but also to our understanding of the processes of media production and respresentation as critically reflected upon by an academic practitioner. Through a cross-disciplinary engagement with debates within documentary, ethnography and oral history, this thesis will also demonstrate that narrative, subjectivity, generic delivery, commissioning constraints and intervention need not exclude television programmes, and the research produced to create them, from containing valuable ethnographic information that (under academic analysis) makes a contribution to our understanding of culture. A self-reflexive methodology reveals the extent to which the producer intervenes in, changes, and brings their own subjective perspective to, any work of ethnographic data gathering or oral history collection, and how this research is constrained by the commissioner.

This thesis examines how states develop and implement urban planning and governance policies and programmes in response to segregation and socio-spatial inequalities. Rio de Janeiro has long been constructed as both a “marvellous city” and as strictly “divided” between the so-called formal city and the self-built favelas that developed into “consolidated” neighbourhoods. While never granted full legal tenure and continuously denied basic rights as guaranteed in the 1988 “Citizens’ Constitution,” public policy in the late twentieth century recognised the permanence of the favelas and state interventions evolved from demolishing to “upgrading.” Since the early 2000s, the municipal, state-province, and federal governments have all pursued objectives to “integrate” the favelas. These include participatory urban planning interventions, militarised occupation and policing of favelas, implantation of social and cultural infrastructure, and technocratic good-governance projects. I argue that these combined efforts amount to a new paradigm of “favela integration,” and I seek to understand how “favela integration” is produced and contested; in what ways state interventions meant to “integrate” the favelas transform urban space; and how techniques of urban planning and governance establish favela space as legitimate and constitutive of the city. Based on 18 months of mixed-method qualitative fieldwork, and drawing on the literatures of landscape and critical mobilities, I argue that “favela integration” is hegemonically defined through state facilitation and regulation of flows of people, goods, and services in and out of the favelas. Discursively produced based on liberal notions of citizenship and favela residents’ right to the city, I use critical mobilities analysis to reveal how “favela integration” reproduces spatial inequalities. I then consider the paradigm as a state spatial strategy of territory. I build on contemporary theories of state space and territory as effect and consider how planning, technocratic governance, and infrastructure employ social technologies to bridge the favela/city binary and produce the “integrated city.” I engage with literature concerning state spatiality under neoliberalism to examine how “favela integration” follows hegemonic socio-economic ideology, but I argue for a nuanced understanding of the state and discuss how such ideology is contested at various scales.

This thesis explores the care experiences of looked-after, dual heritage young people with one white and one black African Caribbean parent. These young people have a history of spending longer periods in care than others and the assumption is that they experience identity confusion because they are neither white nor black. Given that very little is actually known in this domain, it has been necessary to examine their care experiences in order to unpack the myths and assumptions surrounding them. Perspectives from their carers, practitioners and, in some cases, the young people’s files informed this thesis. The term dual heritage has been used throughout to refer to this group except when making reference to other people’s work. When considering placements for all children and young people, Section 22 (5) (c) of the Children Act 1989 stresses the importance of taking into account their religion, race, language and cultural background. In addition to these factors, I found that practitioners also took into account the placement family’s ability to support dual heritage young people in coping with racism. In most cases, this resulted in the young people being placed in black families. Thus, the implementation of Section 22 (5) (c) can result in the neglect of dual heritage young people’s ‘white heritage’. This qualitative study used in-depth, semi-structured interviews involving sixteen young people, carers, practitioners, and case files. The stories told by the young people highlighted respect as the most important factor in placement and the need to be seen as individuals with different personalities rather than labelled purely on the basis of their skin colour. Like all looked-after individuals, these young people need to be listened to, loved and cared for at all times. This thesis found that looked-after, dual heritage young people are a heterogeneous group with diverse needs and for them; the ethnicity of their practitioners or carers is irrelevant. Although they used different terms to identify themselves, these young people were all comfortable with their dual heritage identity. They reported experiences of racism from black and white people, institutional racism, as well as racism within the family. Perhaps, given the diverse groups of vulnerable children and young people in Britain today, the time has come to re-examine practitioners’ interpretation of the ‘best interest’ of the dual heritage young person or child under Section 22 (5) (c) of the Children Act 1989.

Formal volunteering, through an organisation, is frequently associated with providing benefits to individuals and to communities. However, surveys consistently show that participation in formal volunteering varies by class, ethnicity, age and gender. This research seeks to expand upon existing theories which have identified that participation in formal volunteering is shaped by the possession of human, social and cultural capital, by applying Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, capital and field to the study of volunteering in the National Trust. Drawing on over 12,000 responses to a National Trust volunteer survey, and 50 semi-structured interviews with volunteers and paid staff, this research explores the relationship between different types of capital and volunteering. To date, the perspective that formal volunteering requires the possession of resources or capital has not been integrated with literature which recognises that volunteering can be a form of work or leisure. Interviews reveal that people volunteer for the National Trust as a replacement for the positive aspects of paid work in retirement, as a way of gaining work experience, for pleasure and enjoyment, and as a way of participating in heritage or the countryside. Explanations for the inequality in particip ation of formal volunteering can be improved by recognising that volunteering is a form of work or leisure, which requires capital to perform, and which produces further capital. While formal volunteering is often promoted as a way to tackle social problems, in practice, the case of the National Trust suggests that volunteering can exacerbate social inequality by enabling those with resources the opportunity to gain more. This thesis argues that Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, capital and field, and the work and leisure perspectives on volunteering, can be applied to extend existing resource explanations and improve understanding of why participation in formal volunteering varies by class, ethnicity, age and gender.

India is a cultural melting pot. It has a rich and illustrious history with many different people from the Greeks to the Moghuls and latterly the English, Portuguese and French influencing its traditions that were initially set by the Indo Aryans. India’s classical dances and songs have a strong presence on the world stage. India’s cuisine can be found in all major cities of the world. Yoga has become the new-age mantra for healthy living with millions of people practicing it every day. Bollywood’s reach and effect on the pop culture is becoming more prominent, and some of the Indian film stars are even more popular than Hollywood stars. The country has various other soft attributes that it has contributed to the world, such as dance, music, and food. This work will explore the various soft attributes that contribute to communicating India as a soft power. A communication model is proposed that develops the idea of understanding how various people perceive India as a soft power and to overlay this with how these attributes are communicated to individuals. While there are many positive soft power attributes of India as seen above, the vicarious attributes of India outshine its positive counterpart; at least in the CBI Rankings (Futurebrand.com, 2014) and Monocle soft power rankings, (Monocle, 2012) where India has been constantly dropping in the ratings. While studying the soft power attributes it was found that there is little significant research undertaken to understand international perception about India as a soft power. This piece of work will attempt to find the missing piece of the jigsaw. i India is a complex set of nation states unified by Bollywood, deep spirituality, food and dance culture, so a study in these areas would help to understand the impact that they have outside India’s borders. One could argue that none of the attributes discussed is mutually exclusive as Bollywood for instance can portray dance, food and spirituality in one go. At the same time yoga philosophy and practice also incorporates food principles via Ayurveda. Dance looks at spiritual aspects and history together with music that is often incorporated in Bollywood. The soft issues pervade Indian culture together with a passive acceptance of an oftenrigid caste system that rarely flares into riots such as those witnessed recently in Egypt. The study therefore needed to reconcile these opposites and the fluid interweaving of softness that comes across internationally and appears to exert such an influence on so many nations. Why does softness create such a popular nation and how does the hardness or vicariousness of the way people and women are treated create imbalances? The research throws light on how a nation can use its soft power attributes to define its status and to move forward in the world. The study looks at soft power from a new perspective. First of all, a qualitative approach was undertaken where a country’s influence on media (content analysis of newspaper articles), influence on a group (focus group on four different cultural groups) and influence on an individual (visual case study of 22 individuals belonging to four different cultural groups) was studied through triangulation method. This was done to understand how people from different parts of the world perceived India and to what extent Indian culture influenced them. Secondly, it was proved that the influence of soft power varies from one country to another. Some countries may like a certain cultural aspect while another country may not find that aspect interesting and influential. In this way new ideas about understanding soft power have been developed. The research indicated that people’s perception of India as a soft power varies depending on which country they originate from and at the same time media (newspapers) can influence people’s perceptions of a country as well. It is also interesting that the main finding indicates that a country like India needs to be country specific in terms of the key cultural attributes that it wishes to broadcast.

My thesis examines the work of the German-Jewish writer and intellectual Maxim Biller. It focuses on his literary self representations in his prose texts between 1990 and 2009. Jewish life in Germany has changed significantly since the political events of 1989. This is largely the product of migration and generational shifts within German Jewish communities, coinciding with shifting German identity discourses. The Jewish communities have subsequently become more diverse and ‘visible’. Despite this striking reestablishment of Jewish life and culture in Germany, it is still regarded an inexplicable phenomenon by many Jews from Israel and the US. It is also debatable as to whether this new Jewish plurality has really changed the German perceptions of Jews – or their attitudes and behaviours towards them. Young Jewish writers such as Maxim Biller face the challenge of redefining what it means to be a German Jew and of battling persisting stereotypical perceptions of Jewish identity. In their texts, they are creating spaces of negotiation and representation for their complex Jewish experiences. I argue that Maxim Biller, who has critically commented on German-Jewish discourse for about 25 years, publicly performs and establishes his own identity discourse. As a journalist for big German newspapers and magazines, Biller wrote provocative and controversial articles. Whether willingly or not, through his articles, he helped the German majority to define the Jews as ‘the Other’. He soon grew tired of this role and instead turned to experimental and self reflexive autobiographical prose in order to emancipate himself from this merely illustrative position. This prose is the subject of my analysis: I focus on his latest autobiographical novel, Der gebrauchte Jude (2009), his controversial and now banned first novel Esra (2003), his early short stories from 1990 and 1994 and his first novel Die Tochter (2000). To show how Biller establishes new ways of speaking about the self, I apply both a performative understanding of identity and a hybrid definition of the genre of autobiography as these concepts succeed in representing minority discourse. I want to show how Maxim Biller’s work helps to understand the new German-Jewish self perceptions and illustrates that Jewish plurality has returned to Germany. Through his autobiographical writing, Biller actively contributes to a broader counter-discourse to tendencies of particularism and essentialism as reactions to globalization and migration.

This thesis examines how a hegemonic ideal that I refer to as the ‘able-responsible man' dominates the discourse and performance of masculinity in the city of Nanchong in Southwest China. This ideal, which is at the core of the modern folk theory of masculinity in Nanchong, centres on notions of men's ability (nengli) and responsibility (zeren). It differs from, while not always being in contradiction with, the ideal of the ‘wealthy and worldly man' that many scholars of contemporary China have written about. For my research informants, an exemplary man is expected to excel financially but also to shoulder his responsibilities, first and foremost within the kin group, and then to society and the country. I explore the formation and nuances of this ideal in an economic and social milieu that has been radically transformed by forces such as modernization, labour migration, the one-child policy, and changing ideologies and practices of leisure, individualism, filial piety, gendered power and nationalism. Through ethnographic accounts from teenage boys, men of marriageable age, and married men alike, I show that the hegemonic model is coercive, yet negotiable. These accounts reveal the vulnerabilities of male youth and adults in different circumstances, and the multiple and varying strategies they take as they enact their masculinities. The hierarchical nature of relationships amongst men and between the two genders is complicated by an intersection with other social divisions and individual life trajectories. At the apex of the hegemonic model are the country’s leaders who exemplify for their political subjects what it means to be an exemplary Chinese man in the modern era. The thesis looks into not only what men think of being men and their performance as men, but also at what women think and how they construct and, in some regards, sustain the male mode.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the major perspectives on the social and economic situation of "blacks" in Britain and the U. S. A. As part of this, alternative concepts are suggested which we feel are of greater theoretical depth and relevance than race relations theory. By race relations theory we mean any text which implicitly or explicitly does not treat "race relations" as a concept. That is to say, one which attempts to explain race relations rather than investigate it epistemologically. The race relations perspective justifies itself with reference to the actors' definition of the situation, namely, race consciousness, racism and racial discrimination. We hope to demonstrate that its epistemological and methodological basis generates a formidable theoretical incoherence and unavoidable inconsistencies. Our method is to take the theory at its word and confront its conclusions and propositions with its methodological principles. We then extract the inadequacies and trace them to epistemological assumptions. This procedure is accompanied by a suggested resolution of the problems identified by race relations theory, namely, that to explain the social and economic situation of "blacks" it is necessary to analyse the class structure of capitalist society. In other words, the most theoretically consistent approach would be that whose point of departure is capitalist relations of production. Such an explanation, however, must be prefaced by the analysis of race relations as a concept, i.e. as a term within a specific epistemological and theoretical tradition. This development displaces "race relations" as a theory and paves the way for the posing of different questions about modes of labour exploitation, and capitalist production. Thus the last two chapters are concerned with the explanation of the conditions of existence of social segregation and changes in the processes of labour exploitation via an investigation of the relations of production within the capitalist mode of production.

This study proposes to examine three strategies of resistance undertaken by ‘Negroes’ and ‘Mulattos/Coloureds’ of African descent in Bermuda, between 1700 and 1834. The first concerns the politics surrounding the poisoning episodes of 1726 to 1731; the second, the rise and fall of revolutionary resistance from 1761 to 1764; and the third, the politics of what will be identified as nineteenth-century radical resistance. Overall, it will chart what has been heretofore implied in the literature on Bermudian history as a change in resistance to the ‘customs of the country’: a change from an era of violent and revolutionary methods and goals to an era dominated by non-violent and non-revolutionary- radical- approaches. Contexts for these changes will also be provided. Three classes of people will emerge as fundamentally connected to each of these strategies. Persons of a ‘Gold Coast’ heritage will be argued as mainly connected with the introduction of poisoning technology. The enslaved merchant-sailor will be associated with the development of a revolutionary conspiracy. Free ‘Negroes’ and free ‘Coloureds’ will be focused on when examining the development of nineteenth-century radicalism.